PD didn't speak again till they were in the car together, the latest in a long string of black Impalas. "I hear you got the lowest score ever recorded on the shooting range last month."
She shrugged, hiding her half smile behind her long blonde hair. "I guess I'm just not cut out for life in the CIA. Must be why I keep failing my finals. Shame you don't want me to start work for you till I graduate."
"Isn't it," he said. She'd grown accustomed to him in all the years he'd been dropping in and out of her life, but she still hadn't learnt to read him. She thought he seemed tense, though, and his tension gradually transmitted itself to her until she realised her hands were balled into tight fists.
"So what's the plan for this little outing?" she asked. "LSD? Prescription pain-killers? Crystal meth? It's kind of ironic, if you think about it. I've taken more drugs since I've been working for the government than I ever consumed as a private citizen. "
"And yet you've never seen anything worth telling us." He kept his eyes on the road as he took a right towards the Manhattan Bridge exit.
"Well, I did see an amazing light show when you made me take five hits of X in a night."
"But no visions, no insights into the spirit world."
She let him see her smile this time as she shook her head. They'd been playing this game for a long time. The fury she'd felt when they first recruited her had faded with familiarity and PD had become something like a friend. But she was ready for the game to be over. The Agency had to tire of wasting its money on her soon, didn't it?
It better
, said a voice inside her head that wasn't quite her own, and she felt her smile dropping. The visions had been getting stronger with every drug she took and it was growing harder and harder to deny them. She hadn't quite come to believe in this spirit world Hammond was so desperate for her to access, but she saw
something.
She was staring out of the window, mind drifting, when she finally registered the route they were taking. This wasn't the way to the isolated cottage in the Catskills where they usually performed their tests.
"We're taking a flight," PD said. She realised his attention had been on her the whole time.
"A field trip," she said. "Are we going somewhere exciting?"
He didn't smile and she noticed for the first time how stiff his face looked. They'd reached the messy sprawl of JFK and PD swerved the car into the nearest space and pulled on the handbrake. His seatbelt undid with a snap as he turned to look at her.
She took a breath, bracing herself, but he just smiled and said, "Happy birthday."
"Oh," she said. "I didn't think you knew. But then I guess you've got access to my personnel files, right? And the rest. You probably know what my favourite colour is."
"Blue. So, any nice gifts? Another Porsche? Your own tropical island?"
Alex shrugged, suddenly awkward. "My trust fund matured two years ago. After that, mom and dad said I could buy whatever I wanted for myself."
"Yeah, that's what I thought. What do you get for the girl who has everything? Something cheap."
He reached across to flick open the compartment on her side of the dash, his palm grazing her thigh as he dropped a paper-wrapped package in her lap.
She stared at it for several seconds. "You bought me a birthday present," she said.
He nodded, no longer looking at her.
She hesitated a moment, then tore it open. "A French phrase-book. You shouldn't have." She tried to sound dry but wasn't sure she succeeded. She couldn't quite believe he'd remembered.
"I know you wanted to study it, before we... sidetracked you," he said. He was looking at her again and his expression froze her. "I've done what I can, Alex. They wanted you to get in the game the second you turned 21. I told them to let you finish your degree, and when you made it clear that was never gonna happen, I told them to wait till you were willing - that we'd get the best out of you that way. But they've run out of patience and you've run out of time."
She dropped the phrase book to the carpeted floor of the car with a muffled thump. "I can't work for you if I can't do the job, can I?"
He sighed. "Hammond's not a fool. He's gone all in on you and there's no chance he's going to fold now. Alex, how could you think he'd just take your word for it? Your food at night was laced with sodium pentothal. Our best interrogators sat you down with our best hypnotists and they found out everything."
She had to swallow twice before she could speak. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"We know about the second selves you see, a black bear for Hammond and the coyote for me. We know about the fire in the house two blocks away, the one you saw burning three weeks before it happened. We know about the raven who speaks to you. He wants to be your spirit guide, only you won't let him."
"You know everything," she said.
He opened the door, warm air wafting in to replace the air-conditioned chill. "You can fail all the shooting tests you like, and you can fail out of college as well if you want, but this is happening. So you might wanna learn how to fire a gun straight, because from now on it's real, and you're part of it."
The airfield was a strip of pitted tarmac in the middle of a forest, a grey streak in the endless green. Alex felt her ears pop as the plane landed and the sound of the engine changed from a muted rumble to a fierce roar before spluttering into silence as they taxied to a halt.
Her legs were cramped from the long journey and they ached dully as she descended the stairs to the airstrip. The drooping trees looked as weary as she felt but she forced her back to straighten as the car drew to a halt beside them.
PD sat beside her as they were driven away, staring out of the window. She didn't know what time of day it was or in which country they'd finally ended their flight, and she refused to ask. They were in Eastern Europe, she knew that much, and the tired quality of the sunlight suggested the day might be drawing to a close. The journey took less than an hour as dusty woodland scrolled by outside. Alex's stomach felt uneasy and her mind hazy with a combination of sleep deprivation and fear.
When the car finally braked PD grasped her arm, his fingers transmitting the anxiety he kept from his face. "Listen to me, kid. Hammond didn't get where he is by being a nice guy. If he can't have you, he won't let anyone else. And officially, this place doesn't even exist."
The warning hung unanswered in the air as they drew to a halt outside their destination. It was hidden in the heart of the forest, an old Soviet prison repurposed for the War on Terror. Decaying walls were topped with new razor wire but the aura of despair felt like it had hung over the place for centuries. Despite the stifling heat, Alex shivered as she and PD exited the car.
A sentry with sunburn and a Kalashnikov slung across his hip waved them to a stop outside the gate. The planes of his face shifted seismically as he frowned down at their IDs, and he looked twice between their photos and them before standing aside.
Another soldier led them to the officers' mess, deserted at this time of day. He gestured at a small plate on which Alex could see a pile of the dried brown flakes she'd learnt to recognise as peyote. His expression was openly curiously but PD just smiled and thanked him and waited for him to leave the room before looking at Alex.
"OK," he said, "You know what you have to do."
She picked up a fragment of the dried cactus and turned it in her fingers but didn't put it in her mouth. "This is a bad place," she said. "If I take a trip here, I won't see anything good. I'm not bullshitting you, PD, I'll do what Hammond wants - just please, not here."
He studied her. She knew from the small mirror in the plane's restroom that her hair hung lank and greasy and the foundation she'd applied did little to disguise her pallor. She looked sick, at the end of her endurance.
PD's expression softened. "It has to be here, they want you to look at some of the prisoners, tell them what you sense. It won't be so bad, kid. It's just a vision - nothing you see is really real."
She couldn't articulate why that was wrong, why reality wasn't the right metric by which the world of her visions should be measured. So she just nodded, then put the drug in her mouth and swallowed, scrunching her face at the bitter taste. PD's eyes didn't lower and she ate another piece and then another, until the plate was empty - a far greater dose than she'd ever taken before.
"Sit down," he said. "Relax. It'll be a while before they're ready to see us or you're ready to see what they want."
She couldn't cope with his kindness. She wanted to hate him for his part in this, and he kept making that impossible. She opened her mouth to tell him that, then closed it again when she realised the drug was already taking effect, faster and more powerfully than anything she'd previously experienced. Colours writhed at the edge of her vision, struggling to free themselves from the shapes which confined them.
She could sense the peyote inside her, a living presence that wasn't quite a possession. She imagined it as warm water, flowing through every part of her. And every part of her it touched, it changed. Her hands felt looser and lighter. They throbbed in a pulse that was like a heartbeat, but not hers. She could see the bones shining white beneath her skin. She shifted her gaze and there was PD's skull, grinning at her as all skulls did.
A blink of her eyes and his face was back, worried and unsmiling beneath short black hair. Another blink and she saw his other face with its long muzzle and lolling tongue. The creature was his companion and also a part of him, the contradiction of being both self and other somehow perfectly reconcilable in this parallel world.
The coyote looked a little sad, its yellow eyes downcast. Alex thought it was because PD couldn't see it and wouldn't acknowledge it. "Look at yourself," she told him, but he just frowned and she knew he didn't understand.
"Are you ready?" he asked her.
She didn't reply, her eyes straining for what she knew would come next. She heard its cry before she saw it, a dry caw-caw that was halfway between a cough and a laugh. She didn't know its true name, but it always came, the guide she didn't want to a world she'd prefer not to enter. Recently she'd begun to sense it flying in her shadow in the real world.
"Raven," she said and realised this was the first time she'd ever openly acknowledged it.
The bird lifted its head from where it had been picking at its glossy black feathers. Its face was incapable of human expression but she read a smile in its bright, knowing eyes.
"Are you ready at last?" Raven asked, and this time she said, "Yes".
The bird flew down a long corridor that was also a path through the woods. Tangled briers caught at her heels as she followed. PD held her arm to guide her but Raven knew the way. Ahead of her she could see another figure - a man, she thought - hurrying away from her. She found her steps dragging, sure for some reason that she didn't want to catch this other traveller in the spirit world. But when they reached the cells, the figure was gone.
The soldiers who were waiting for them had wolf spirits. Their teeth glittered white as they smiled and Raven laughed, unafraid of these earthbound things. Alex dismissed them too, beta males who only knew how to follow.
The bars of the cage were cold iron, a brand on the world. Alex flinched away from them as she slid through the door of the cell, but she felt their chill. Inside it was worse. Terrible things had been done here, and the spirit realm never forgot. Alex felt Raven's weight settle on her shoulder and its beak brushed her ear as it ducked its head towards her. Its claws dug into her as she studied the three men in the cell. Their dark hair dripped with water and a sheen of it glittered across their faces. They had been drowned once, or more than once, and in their minds they were still drowning.
"What the hell have you done to them?" Alex whispered.
"You know, you know, you know," Raven cawed in her ear.
"They've been questioned," PD said. Though his human face was expressionless, she read a flicker of shame in the coyote's eyes. "We need to know if we can believe what they've told us. Tell us what you see."
"I don't see any-" She broke off, spitting blood, as if the words had sharp edges which had cut at her throat as they came out.
"Fool, fool, fool," Raven croaked in her ear. "Lies hurt the liar here."
"I see them drowning," Alex said.
"And before that?" one of the soldiers asked. He was different from the others, a silver-haired human whose wolf shadow was broad and powerful, the alpha-male of the pack.
She looked at the prisoners again. Their eyes were haunted and hollow behind the glitter of water, and for a second she saw their spirit selves, the part of them that torture had almost obliterated. They were mountain goats, tough and agile - prey, not predators.
But the soldiers didn't want to hear they'd been torturing innocent men. They wouldn't believe her and she might end up taking the prisoners' place - she understood that this was Hammond's unspoken threat if she didn't do as he asked. She realised suddenly that she didn't care. She was damned if she was going to let them feel good about the unforgivable things they'd done to these people.
"They're innocent," she said. "They're not Al Qaeda. You've hurt them for nothing."
The commander glared at her and PD frowned. "Don't play games, Alex," he said.
"I'm not. You wanted me to show you the truth, you forced me to. Don't blame me if you don't like it."
"No more truth," Raven said. "No more, no more. " It leapt from her shoulder and through the canopy of trees in the forest that was now all she could see. Its small body faded into the black of the sky and her consciousness faded with it.
She woke in a hospital bed looking down at the white sheets folded beneath her armpits. PD was asleep in a chair beside her, slumped inelegantly with one arm hanging at his side, knuckles grazing the floor. She took a moment to study his face and was reassured to see that it was fully human. The last of the drug must have washed out of her system and the spirit world along with it. Her throat was still sore, though, and she shivered as she realised Raven had been right. The lie she'd told had physically hurt her.