Missing: The Body of Evidence (36 page)

A strong headache from banging her head
on the corner of the desk, made it difficult for Nancy to think straight.
Despite this, everything was falling into place regarding events, except for
motive. Blake tapped his fingers on his knees in his first display of nerves.
Nancy sensed an opportunity to appeal to his inner-self before he had time to
answer her question as to what he had in mind for her. Besides, she had already
worked out the answer.

‘Mr. Blake, you and I know I’m not leaving
here. Thanks to you and your cohorts, I no longer have a future with LAPD. I
have no family to worry about, so I may as well go with the program. So why
don’t you tell me why I’m considered a threat to you and the program?’

A knock on the door interrupted
proceedings. Mary opened the door.

‘Coffee and cakes?’ Mary asked.

‘I really don’t want anything,’ Nancy
replied.

Blake jumped off the desk, walked over to
the door, and spoke to the woman with the cart.

‘Go to room fifteen and see if our visitors
want coffee,’ Blake said and turned to Mary. ‘Go to my office and work out a
schedule for Miss Roberts to start her tests tomorrow.’

Mary closed the door behind her and Blake
turned to face her, taking a sip of coffee from a plastic cup. Nancy pulled
over the other chair and beckoned Blake to sit facing her. She hoped the
psychology of him sitting at her level would be lost on him.

‘Listen to me. I can tell you’re a good man
and you want to do what’s right. I’m not asking you to confess anything, but
trust me; you’ll feel better just to talk about what’s happened. It’s not as if
I’m going to have the opportunity to tell anyone. Besides, I need closure in
order to concentrate on what you have planned for me.’

He bowed his head and looked at the floor.
He shuffled in his chair and threw his head up to look at the ceiling.

‘You said you wouldn’t insult my
intelligence. I know what you’re doing.’

‘Trust me, I’m not insulting your
intelligence, but you and I know that you can’t move forward with guilt nagging
away at your mind.’

He interlocked his fingers and rubbed his
palms together. His head swayed and his eyes closed as if trying to fight an
inner turmoil. Finally, his vocal chords opened up like a release valve letting
off steam.

‘Look, it was all a mistake that got out of
hand. You have to understand we’re doing secret government work here and well…
well, we do things differently to protect the secrecy and integrity of our
country. I’ve put all my life to this project, to the exclusion of all else. Not
that I started it, but we, as a nation, can’t afford for the project to stop.’
He stood from his chair with such force, the chair fell over and he paced
around the room. His tone turned venomous as he spat out the words, displaying
a temper that took her by surprise. ‘All you and that damned CSI woman had to
do, was to accept the damn death as a freak accident the way Mary explained,
but no, you had to keep digging and you both had to be stopped.’

‘So you framed me by using the Piru Street
Gang and arranged the fire at the CSI lab.’

‘Yes, yes, but it was taken out of my hands
by security. I left them to the detail.’

‘You mean your two CIA agents who just left
the room?’

‘Yes, I didn’t expect them to kill the
young man, or Kelly.’

‘Why Kelly?’

‘Because David escaped the program with the
help of someone from the facility, that’s why. We were losing our control of
him and his dad tried to keep him from returning despite all the money we’d
paid him over the years.’

‘And the fire at the cabin, I take it that
was your doing?’

‘Security persuaded me to give it to
David’s brother as a mission. Not a successful one as it turned out.’

‘Mission?’

He stood in front of her and gripped her by
the shoulders. His eyes were glazed over, as if he were on drugs. He spat out
his next words through gritted teeth.

‘Don’t act dumb. You know from your travels
that he can create plasma energy.’

He released his grip. Any lingering doubts
about her ability of astral travel were dispelled by the veracity of his words.

‘What about the attempt on my life with the
car chase?’

‘Security decided. You just wouldn’t let
things lie.’

Nancy could see the full picture of what
started the events, if her hunch was right, the victim at the apartment was
murdered and the fire was merely to get rid of the body of evidence. The
reasoning for all the events was now clear. She just needed to face Blake with
two last questions to get to the motive for the fire and death at the apartment
and to discover who was responsible.

‘I…’

Blake signalled her to wait and took out
his cell phone. He read a text message and closed the phone.

‘I’ll be back.’

‘Please, just one last question.’

‘Later.’

The door closed, leaving the room in
silence, except for the pounding in her chest. His temper had alarmed her. From
first sight, he had looked like any Jane Doe’s friendly grandfather. However,
behind the facade, lay a dark side she wouldn’t want to cross. She had seen
that type of anger displayed before by her dad, but this was different. Her dad
always maintained a level of control without his eyes glazing over. Although
her dad demanded obedience, she never imagined he would lose sanity, unlike
Blake. Nancy took hold of his empty coffee cup, wrapped it in her clean
handkerchief, and squashed it into her pocket.

Nancy moved the chairs to the wall and sat
on the floor assuming the Lotus position. She faced the two-way mirror and
closed her eyes. She took steady breaths in a search for the serenity of mind
she sought, not certain if what she hoped to achieve would work.

With a headache and the questions
surrounding the professor’s death, she tried to empty her mind.

Frustration surged through Nancy’s mind.
Emotions vied for her attention as she sought peace of mind and a clear focus
for the task she had set. With slow deliberate breaths and a stillness of body,
the agony of picturing traumatic events that led to her becoming a captive
slowly dissipated. Calmness descended at hearing the voice of her mother
telling her she was looking out for her, and gave her peace of mind that she
had a guardian Angel at her shoulder.

Through a misty haze, her inner mind
envisioned a blurred outline of the Google satellite picture of the Astral’s
facility.

Gradually, the vision focused, as if she
had pressed zoom on her computer and she hurtled towards the roof of the ACI
building
.
She felt no sense of forces acting on
her body, but tumbled from the heavens like a skydiver without a parachute.
There was no time for fear, just an instance of shock as she lost consciousness
to streaks of white light flashing by in her vision.

She came to a halt, hovering, as if
caught between the two magnetic poles. There was no sense of self, only the
vision before her of her body still in the Lotus position, sitting in the centre
of the interview room. Bewilderment changed to a sense of purpose as she
recalled the nature of her task. A glimpse at the mirror and she could see an
outline of her translucent body as if formed into a silicone-like substance,
hovering in the room. The entire form had contours similar to gradients
depicting hills on a map. They seemed to emanate from the position of the heart
as if her body where held together by a magnetic field.

She reached out to touch the door
handle, only for her hand to slip through the door. The rest of her body
followed and she was floating along the corridor. Stopping at the sign ‘Room
I5,’ the woman with the coffee cart walked straight through her, pausing
briefly and shrugged her shoulders as if sensing a cold blast of air, before
the woman carried on walking toward where Nancy had seen David.

Nancy slipped into the room. Logan, Bill
and Kyle faced Blondie and Blake. They were all laughing as if they were
long-lost friends, except for Kyle, who sipped at his coffee. He looked as
though he had not slept. Nancy hoped he would choke on his drink. There wasn’t
time to wait to find out what they were discussing, nor did she have the
inclination to be in the same room as her former colleagues, whom she now
considered traitors.

Drifting along the corridor, she saw the
woman with the coffee cart had arrived at David’s door. She was tapping in the
code to release the lock mechanism. Impatient, Nancy attempted to penetrate the
wall, but couldn’t get through to the other side. Instead, she waited and
slipped through the open door with the cart woman.

Ignoring the woman, who was busy
collecting empty dishes, Nancy drifted through a glass partition and drifted to
David’s side. He sat on a swivel armchair facing a large monitor screen. Wires
from a machine connected to the probes on his head. A technician stood at the
machine pressing a series of buttons. On the screen, she could see a space
rocket ready for launch, displaying Chinese-style writing and a North Korean
flag on the outer body.

‘Forget about me, save yourself. You
have to get out from here before the door closes. The walls are lead and you’ll
be held here forever.’

His lips had not moved; his frozen
expression formed a death mask. But, it was David’s voice. There was a rumble
above her and she looked up at the dome overhead. An opening appeared. She
floated up to the opening and out of the building. Looking down, the hatch to
the second dome opened.

Moving down to ground level, she worked
her way around the perimeter of the building and looked for an escape route.
She stopped at the sight of two men dressed in catering uniforms. They were
taking a smoke break, with the door wedged open. All she needed now was to find
a way through the outer fence, return to her body and to make an opportunity to
escape.

Drifting around the outer perimeter
fence, familiar figures appeared on the opposite side. It was Dad and the Boys.
Nancy drifted down to their position. They were dressed as if they were SWAT
and armed with automatic rifles. They had large-white crosses painted on the
back of their bulletproof vests. Nancy called out.

‘Dad, it’s me. I think I can get out.
Wait here for me.’

Her words were useless. They couldn’t
hear a word she spoke. Dad was on his cell phone.

‘For Christ’s sake, where are you? We’re
going in now.’ He listened to the reply before answering. ‘Okay, five minutes,
no longer. That’s my daughter in there.’ He turned to Uncle Dave. ‘Are the
explosive diversions ready?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Okay, listen up you, guys, the ground
sensors should be off during the day for the foot patrols. Five minutes and
we’re going in. If the diversion doesn’t distract the guards on the doors we’ll
flank them and use stun grenades.’

A sense of panic engulfed her thoughts.
As heavily armed as her dad’s team was, the internal security guards were
equally heavily armed. The last thing she wanted was a blood fight and for
people to die in rescuing her. She knew she had to escape if a body count was
to be avoided, and there was only one way she thought she could accomplish that
mission.

With haste, she made her way back to the
building and around back to where she had seen the people smoking. The caterers
were nowhere in sight, but the door was still wedged open. The image of David
appeared before her. His entire form was frosted over, as if his body was
fashioned from ice. His voice reverberated in her mind.

‘You need to get back to your body and
get out of here.’

‘What about you?’

‘There’s no way out for me, only like
this. Blake helped me to escape, but they brought me back.’

‘Blake? But…’

‘You need to hurry, I have to complete
my mission, or I may not be able to return to my body, please go.’

‘You mean Blake the project manager?’

‘Yes, I wanted to be finished with all
this and live with my father, now it will never happen.’

‘Your father? Yeah, I’m sorry about your
father.’

‘What about father, is he ill?’

‘You mean they haven’t told you? David,
I’m so sorry, your father died.’

‘How?’

He already looked hurt, but there was no
gentle way to tell him the truth.

‘According to Blake, I think security
here had your dad murdered.’

‘Blake?’

A figure appeared behind David. He
looked identical to David, save flames formed his body. His appearance
explained why she thought David had an evil side, when she had seen the figure
in her dreams she had mistaken Simon, his brother, for David. He turned to face
him.

‘Get out of the way, David. This time
I’ll finish her.’

A ball of flame left the palm of Simon’s
outstretched palm. The orb hit David in the stomach and extinguished as if his
body had absorbed the plasma. He doubled over, but not before he had released a
ball of ice from his own hand. The ball of ice struck his brother in the chest,
sending him reeling backwards and leaving a dark patch where it had hit him,
but flames re-formed to heal the area. David’s voice screeched in her mind.

‘Get out of here, I’ll try and fight him
off.’

Nancy didn’t need David to tell her
twice and she hurtled through the outer wall and back to the interview room.

Nancy opened her eyes to a jolt surging
through her body and shrugged her shoulders. Taking hold of her ankle, she
unwound from the Lotus position, and grabbing hold of the desk, she hauled
herself to her feet. She turned and froze at the sight of a fiery orb, as it
entered the room through the outer wall and skirted the room. A sudden
adrenalin rush sent her heart into overdrive as the orb bounced around the room
like ball lightening in search of a target. Nancy dropped to the floor and
screamed.

‘Mom.’