Fired Up

are immune to the side effects of Sylvester’s formula.”
    She looked at him, appalled. “You injected Jack with the drug.”
    “Four times over the course of a twenty- four-hour period. Very high doses each time. He received more than enough of the drug to ensure a successful experiment. I had intended to keep him here another day or two to monitor the results, but he somehow managed to escape. No harm done, however. Miss Knight and I are both quite satisfied.”
    “You son of a bitch,” she whispered. “I thought you said you only used volunteers.”
    “Come now, Miss Harper, we both know that it was highly unlikely that Jack Winters would cooperate. It all had to be handled very delicately given his high profile not only within Arcane but also within the business community. I was careful to use a strong, amnesia-inducing sedative so that he would not remember anything of the experience. I assured Miss Knight that if he survived, any memories that might come back would seem no more than fragments of an unpleasant dream.”
    She hugged herself against the fever chills. “Bastard. You could have killed Jack or driven him mad with that awful formula.”
    “I am happy to report that the experiment was, all in all, a complete success. Winters seems to have done very well after being cut off the drug. Miss Knight is not the only one who is pleased.” Hulsey grimaced. “So is my current employer.”
    “What made Knight think that Jack could tolerate the formula?”
    “Allow me to explain,” Hulsey said, waxing enthusiastic. “The formula works by tapping into the latent power of dream energy. That’s how it enhances talents. It opens up the channels between the normal and the paranormal, allowing access to the reserves of energy available at the far end of the spectrum. But those channels are extremely narrow and very fragile. Furthermore, once open, only continuous doses of the drug can keep the channels functional. If the individual misses even a couple of doses of the drug an irreversible instability sets in. The result is insanity and death within a very short period of time.”
    “But that didn’t happen with Jack.”
    “Miss Knight suggests, and I’m inclined to agree, that outcome is likely the result of the genetic mutation created in Nicholas Winters all those years ago when the lamp was first used on him. You see, the Burning Lamp accomplishes, essentially, the same thing that the formula does. It opens up the channels between the dreamstate and the waking state. But when the lamp was first used it evidently affected Nicholas’s DNA. Certain of his descendants, including Griffin Winters and Jack Winters, evidently inherited a genetic ability to access the power of the dreamstate naturally. They don’t need the formula. From her reading of the Pyne journal, Miss Knight was convinced that age was a factor.”
    “Jack is thirty-six.”
    “Indeed. Miss Knight believed that if Jack had inherited the altered DNA the changes would have begun to manifest by now.”
    Outrage pulsed through her, as hot as the fever.
    “Let me get this straight,” she said. “You and this Miss Knight kidnapped Jack Winters and injected him with the formula to see if he was immune. After he escaped you sat back and waited to see what would happen to him. As far as you were concerned, he was just an experiment.”
    “Quite,” Hulsey said cheerfully. “And a very interesting one, I must say. Following the escape we concluded that Winters was not only immune, he had, indeed, developed an additional talent. We agreed that there was no other way he could have overcome the guard. Miss Knight established a twenty-four-hour surveillance on Winters’s residence. When he did not emerge for a few days, we thought that perhaps the experiment had failed. But when he finally did come out it was clear that he was in excellent shape.”
    “Except for the blackouts.”
    Hulsey frowned again. “What blackouts?”
    She stopped breathing for a few seconds, trying not to show any reaction. If Hulsey did not know about the blackouts, it could only mean one thing: The watchers Jack had frightened into looking the other way when he had gone sleepwalking had never seen him. They didn’t know that he had found his way back to the gym where he had been held captive.
    She cleared her throat. “I just assumed that there would be blackouts, given the mix of the sedative and the formula.”
    Hulsey relaxed and chuckled. “Not at all.