Mania

  Woodbury, Minnesota

  Copyright Information

  Mania © 2015 by J. R. Johansson.

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  First e-book edition © 2015

  E-book ISBN: 9780738745312

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  Thank you!

  ONE

  Jack

  Staring into the pit that had swallowed every answer I needed, I could still feel the earth shaking and the burning heat from the fire against my face. The frantic yells of the prisoners we’d set free echoed in my ears. Every shard of memory from the explosion at Benton Air Force Base—which had stolen away my mentor, my father—was still vivid. It had only happened a month ago, but I knew it would always be hard to forget something that had knocked the wind out of me and thrown me clean off my feet.

  Especially when every time I remembered that night, my heart felt like it was happening all over again.

  The wind blew cold at my back and chilled me in spite of the warm summer sun. I stood at the very edge of the crater, balanced on the brink. I gazed down into the deep shadows and rubble far below, wishing that the knowledge Danny—no, my dad, I mentally corrected myself—had taken with him could somehow drift like the dust through the air, up toward me.

  Because from what I could tell, that might be the only hope I had of figuring out his damn puzzle.

  “I wish we’d found another way,” Parker muttered from a few feet to my right. I usually came here by myself, but he’d convinced me to bring him along this time. I was already regretting it.

  This was where I always came when I ran into problems solving Dad’s last riddle, his last assignment. Parker was a distraction here. Dad had given me a paper with directions and clues to piece together the formula for a new drug, and he’d told me I was the only one who could figure it out.

  You’ll be the answer. You’ll know what to do.

  Except I wasn’t … and I didn’t.

  And yet I was still expected to stop a war between the three different types of Night Walkers, a war that had

  been going on my whole life. Oh, and in order to do this, I had to solve Dad’s puzzle, make the Takers stop killing long enough to listen to me, and create a magical—and I believe untested—drug that would somehow save the day.

  No pressure.

  “This sure is a creepy old place to decide to build a society, isn’t it?” Parker asked. This time his question was directed at me and I couldn’t stay silent.

  “Dad picked it.”

  “Oh … ” My brother sounded frustrated as he added, “See, that’s the kind of detail I’d like to know about him. Why would he pick a place like this?”

  The smallest groan escaped my lips before I could stop it, and I could tell from the way Parker stiffened that he’d heard it. This was why I hadn’t wanted him to come. I came out here for time to think, and he wasn’t helping.

  “The structure is sound, there’s plenty of space, and much of it is underground,” I said.

  Parker’s reply was soft. “Now that actually makes sense. Thank you.”

  I sat down near the edge of the hole, then picked up some rocks and tossed them inside. The last thing I wanted was to hurt my brother, but it was hard to even look at him anymore when every detail reminded me so much of our dad. It wasn’t Parker’s fault that he caused me pain with everything he did.

  Giving up on trying to keep him quiet, I decided to smooth things over a bit. “What else do you want to know about this place?”

  “Why did the Takers keep so many prisoners here?” Parker hesitated only a moment before sitting down next to me.

  “They suspected some of them of being Watchers, like us. But the rest were mostly for leverage. They wanted to force people to give them what they wanted. We should know better than anyone that taking loved ones can usually get you anything you want.”

  Parker nodded. “And if the base is so big and so much of it is underground, how do you know for sure the Takers left?”

  “I’ve walked through every remaining hall—they’re gone. Dad’s explosion took out the majority of the space they were using,” I said. When Parker squinted at the other side of the base, I went on. “Yes, it’s huge. Much bigger than you’d think. There’s probably two-thirds of it left. ”

  “So then why’d they leave?” Parker grabbed a handful of sand and dropped it into the hole. “They were taking more and more bodies in Oakville, so they seemed to be setting up something big. Why not move to the other side of the base and pick up where they left off?”

  My voice dropped to a grim note. “Because they knew I’d come back.”

  Parker didn’t speak, but I saw him turn his head to watch me.

  “Plus, their entire plan revolved around Eclipse, and being able to set up a system nearby so a lot of Takers could take over Dreamers at will and not give the bodies back.” I pulled my shoulders up and tried to loosen the knot in my neck. “Since Dad destroyed Eclipse and any hint of how to make it, right now they’re scrambling. But once they get organized, they will come for us.”

  I thought of the few times in this twenty-year war when our side—the Builders and Watchers—had made any kind of headway against the Takers. The Takers always came back harder and more violently than we expected. People always died. Waiting for them to regroup felt like waiting for a bomb to drop from the sky—one you knew for certain was coming but didn’t know when. And you couldn’t stop it.

  Brushing my hands against my jeans, I hopped to my feet. “When they come, we need to be ready.”

  “You think we can be ready by working on the formula Dad gave you?” Parker stood up beside me but kept his eyes on the crater. “You really feel sure thi
s one won’t go bad, the way Eclipse did?”

  “Eclipse caught Dad by surprise when it let Takers take over Dreamers permanently.” My gut wrenched inside me. I shared Parker’s fear but was trying to keep it buried. “I’m sure he wouldn’t let anything like that happen again.”

  I turned to walk back to Parker’s car, but my brother caught my sleeve and stopped me. His questions were making me feel smothered, and it took enormous control not to yank my arm out of his grasp.

  “Jack, Dad was Divided. At the end, he was pretty far gone … ” Parker let the question hang in the air, and it stung to hear it.

  “I trust him.” I spun back to face my brother, despite the pain it caused me to look into his ice blue eyes that were so much like Dad’s. Looking at them made me feel like I was ripping open wounds that were still too fresh to heal. “Maybe you should too.”

  “Okay, okay.” Parker held his hands up in front of him as a sign of surrender and took a step back.

  I immediately regretted my reaction. I considered apologizing, but instead turned to walk back to the car.

  “Tell me this, though.” It only took three steps for him to catch up with me. “This new formula is supposed to help the Takers sleep like Dreamers—like regular people?”

  I nodded.

  “Would it work on Watchers too? Could it make us not need Builders anymore?”

  It was a good question, one I’d looked into myself when Dad was first trying to come up with the formula. “No. Each type of Night Walker has a different brain chemistry. It wouldn’t do the same thing to Watchers because it’s designed to work in the brain of a Taker.”

  Parker scratched his cheek. “Okay, that makes sense. Well, at the very least it should put us on more even footing, right?”

  “What do you mean?” I kept walking.

  “I mean, Watchers would die too without Builders to help them get real sleep. So this drug should, theoretically at least, do what the Builders do … but for the Takers instead of the Watchers?”

  “Yeah … what’s your point?” When I reached the car I opened the driver’s side door, but Parker shook his head.

  “You aren’t driving again,” he said.

  “Why not?” Did everything have to turn into an argument with him? Every time we talked it felt like I was trying to swim upstream.

  “Because it’s my car.” Parker lowered his chin, but I just stared at him and waited. I’d wanted to bring my motorcycle. The only reason we’d even taken this crappy car was because Parker had insisted on coming with me.

  He knew it. I just had to wait for him to realize it.

  With a sigh, he tossed me the keys and climbed into the passenger seat.

  After I’d shoved the keys in the ignition, he continued, obviously irritated. “My question is, if the formula we’re trying to make is supposed to help them, then why don’t we just tell them that? Wouldn’t they want to help us help them?”

  I laughed.

  “What?” Parker’s anger was growing. “Chloe might be the only Taker I know, but she doesn’t seem that unreasonable.”

  “Yeah, sure.” I shrugged and then threw him a piercing look. “She just tried to take Finn over permanently and then kill you for finding out about it.”

  Parker frowned. “But she also helped me set him free, and she hasn’t tried anything since she’s been back in her own body.”

  “That we know of … ”

  “You don’t know—”

  “People don’t change, Parker. It isn’t in them.” I gave a firm shake of my head and tightly gripped the steering wheel.

  “Why do you have to be so frustrating?” He growled the last word out low, but his voice still echoed across the tiny car.

  “Better watch it.” I put the car into gear. “You’re starting to sound like him.”

  Parker deflated immediately and looked like I’d punched him in the gut. I almost regretted my words … but he needed to remember what it felt like, didn’t he? How else could he try to prevent his darker side from breaking free again?

  He slid down into his seat, completely silent as I drove toward the main road. Every minute of his silence added to my guilt until I filled the void with the answer he’d been asking for in the first place.

  “The Takers won’t help us help them because they don’t think it’s as simple as choosing to ‘live’ or ‘die.’ They believe that with Eclipse they had the power to be like gods, and they want to find a way to get that back.” Parker turned his head enough toward me that I could tell he was listening, so I went on. “To them, this is a choice between living like gods, or losing that ability and becoming normal.”

  Parker slouched down in his seat. “For so long, I would’ve done anything to just be normal. You’re telling me there aren’t any of them who would choose that?”

  “Those who would are going to be hard to find, let alone organize. Dad told me they spent years basically being brainwashed by a man named Steve Campbell. He was the leader of the Takers and started this war to begin with.”

  Even saying Campbell’s name made every emotion in me twist into a tight ball of rage. I’d deliberately kept Parker unaware of all the details about the man and what he’d done to ruin our lives.

  “He’s dead now,” I continued, “but he did plenty of long-term damage while he was still around. He convinced the Takers that even if their lives are shorter than Watchers’ or Builders’ lives, being able to use other people’s bodies and invade their minds is an immense power. Because of him, they believe that they truly live more in twenty years than a normal person does in a lifetime.”

  Parker shook his head. “That’s crazy.”

  “Exactly.”

  Two

  Jack

  The rumpled paper in my pocket felt like a branding iron waiting to mark me as a disappointment, a failure. Even from the grave, Dad was managing to give me challenges that felt impossible.

  I scanned down the laptop screen that I’d already read three times, knowing that it held nothing that would help me figure this out. There was a simple truth here … either Dad had screwed up, or I was missing something important.

  Moving to lean against the wall, I stared hard at all the lab equipment I’d managed to gather from Dad’s warehouses over the last few weeks. He’d rented storage spaces throughout Oakville and kept full labs in each one in case he needed to work. He said it ensured he’d always have a lab he could go to, and we’d never have to lug his equipment around when we had to suddenly bolt in the middle of the night.

  When Parker’s mom agreed to let me use the storage room between Parker’s bedroom and the door to the garage, I’m sure she didn’t expect me to set up a laboratory. But she hadn’t said anything.

  Maybe she did expect it … after all, she had been married to our dad.

  But despite all of my hard work, the equipment and chemicals were going mostly unused. Nothing, including visiting Benton Air Force Base yesterday hoping for some kind of inspiration, had provided the answers I still needed.

  “Jack?” Chloe stared at me as she leaned against a table on the other side of my lab, waiting. She’d asked the same question every day for the last month: when will the new drug for the Takers be ready? I still couldn’t give her the answer she wanted.

  The formula Dad had given me was fairly basic, nothing overly complicated. The only problem was that in place of three of the ingredients, he’d scribbled in the numbers 1, 2, and 3. Dad had always loved puzzles, and he was beyond paranoid at the end of his life, but so far I’d had no luck filling in those blanks. I’d hoped maybe to find a clue at one of his labs, but there was nothing.

  And I was going to have to tell Chloe the truth sometime.

  I wasn’t sure I even wanted to make this formula in the first place. Takers had been responsible for my mother’s death as well as my father’s. W
hy would I want to work so hard just to save the people I’d spent my life hating?

  But I knew why—it was because Dad had asked me to. He wanted this war between the different types of Night Walkers to end, and he was sure the incomplete formula in my pocket was the way to do it.

  So I would figure this out … even if it killed me.

  There was one extra word scribbled in at the very bottom of the formula. It was the main reason I’d gone out to the base to begin with, and even though I’d had no luck there, I had to believe he’d written it for a reason. The word was “buried.”

  Not my idea of hopeful, but hey, that was Dad …

  “The new drug isn’t ready, and it won’t be for a while.”

  I stood with my back straight, hoping that once I told Chloe everything, she would stop asking, at least for a couple of days. She’d been around a lot since Parker had separated her from Finn’s body. Some days it wasn’t half bad … I mean, she was obviously hot when she wasn’t pissed at me.

  “I’m working on it,” I added. “It’s just not going to be as simple as I hoped.”

  “The deal was, I help baby-bro Parker save his buddy Finn and you help me survive. Right?” Chloe shifted her weight and stepped closer. Her stance was casual, but her eyes were gray storm clouds. As always, they begged for a fight.

  A fight I could handle, but the darkening circles of sleep deprivation beneath her eyes made me look away. They were a reminder that this latest challenge from Dad was taking longer than either of us wanted.

  Chloe was the only Taker I’d ever spent more than five minutes with and not tried to throw any of my knives at. Actually, that wasn’t true. I did throw a knife at her once, but it was when she’d taken over Finn’s body, so I’d missed on purpose. I rubbed my fist against the rivets on the right leg of my jeans, trying to decide if that counted or not.

  Grabbing the neat stack of clean clothes from the corner, I threw them into my duffel bag, on top of everything else I’d never quite unpacked. I kept my voice perfectly calm. “Yes, that was the deal, but—”