“Who is Barrow?” Harlan asked.

“He appears to be the Piper’s confidant,” Victor said. “Among other things, he operates the boat and is the only one, aside from the Piper, who has the coordinates for the island.”

“Barrow uses a drug to make the students forget the location of the dock?”

“North thinks it reinforces a hypnotic suggestion,” Victor said. “Judging by Ash’s description, I think Barrow has a psychic talent for hypnotism.”

“You need to break through the hypnotic suggestion,” Harlan said. “We have to locate that damned island.”

Victor grunted. “Believe it or not, we know what we’re doing here, Rancourt. I’ve got the whole Halcyon team working on this.”

CHAPTER 42

The shivering was getting worse. Ink did not have a thermometer, but he didn’t need one to know that the fever was climbing. Ox and Trev were huddled on the floor of the cheap motel room. Trev had his arms wrapped around his knees. He rocked back and forth, moaning. Ox had already slipped into unconsciousness. Ash was the lucky one, Ink thought. He was probably dead already. Or maybe not. Maybe Ash was locked in a coma populated by nightmares.

Barrow had murdered them. The process was just taking time. When he had finally arrived at the motel he had given each of them a fresh auto-injector. But instead of another dose of the serum, the auto-injectors had contained poison.

When the drug had begun to take hold on all three of them, Barrow had quietly walked out the door, leaving Ink and the others to die in the shabby motel room. Ink knew that when their bodies were found the cops would conclude he and Trev and Ox were three addicts who had gotten hold of some bad shit. That was too fucking close to the truth.

They had all fallen for the Piper’s promise, he thought. Who could turn down an offer of genuine psychic powers? But it was more than that. The Piper had made them feel special. Important. Destined for greatness instead of a short life span in prison or on the streets. He had told them his mission was to take them to the next level of human evolution with the serum and the Vortex machine. They would become an elite special forces team, warriors. They would fight bad guys around the world. Fucking heroes.

Ink knew the only reason he was not deteriorating as fast as the others was because he was the strongest. He had been the first student and he had received more treatments in the Vortex chamber. He was the one with the high-grade talent it took to use the recorder. Trev and Ox were still in training. Sure, they had some talent, but he was the team leader because he was the only one aside from the Piper who was able to handle the recorder.

He was fucking special.