She kept her voice low so the others wouldn't hear. "Was that man part of your program?"
Souris shook her head. "No."
"Don't lie to me."
"Why would I invent something like that?"
"I don't know, but you need to understand what we're doing here is very serious."
"I've spent the last twenty years of my life on this," Souris said. "I know it's serious. Far more than you could imagine."
"The man said he was drawing power from Aura. How can that be if he didn't come from here?"
"I’ll have to check my data," Souris said.
Valika glanced over her shoulder. The men were still marveling about the women and what they had just experienced.
"He said he was American," Valika said. "From this Bright Gate. You never told us of such a thing."
"It was experimental," Souris said.
"It doesn't look experimental any more," Valika noted. "If he's still working for the Americans, it means they've penetrated us."
"He said he wasn't," Souris said.
"'Said'?" Valika shook her head. "And because he said this, we should believe him? And even if he has been cut off by the Americans, if they could put him on the virtual plane, couldn't they put others there too? This is a threat!"
"It is also an opportunity," Souris said.
Valika was going to ask her what she meant when she was distracted.
"Gentlemen!" Cesar's voice cut through the excitement "Gentlemen!" When he had everyone's attention, he continued. "What you saw today was only level two. There is much more that Aura can do.
"Please enjoy my hospitality. I assure you that you will find the young women I have waiting above much more real."
Valika gave a hand signal to Cesar that she needed to speak to him. After the others left, the leader of the Ring came over to the Russian.
"What is it?"
"We were contacted on the virtual plane," Valika said.
Cesar frowned. "What do you mean?"
"Someone met us on the virtual plane."
"Who?"
"Someone named Raisor," Valika said. "He said he could help us. I believe he's an American."
Cesar's face tightened. "Come to my office."
*****
Raisor jumped from the Aura control center to the north. Then twice more, until he was above the glass-walled building that housed the headquarters of the National Security Agency. It was shielded on the virtual plane. He knew he could wait until the bitch got off work, if she ever did, as he had seen her spend the night quite often, but then what could he do? He was in the virtual plane, without the power or programming of Sybyl to enter the real. He could watch, but that was all. And watching was not enough.
He felt rejuvenated, full of energy. Aura had recharged him, but he knew that the effect would not last.
Raisor jumped west to a spot he knew well.
He was above the Mount of the Holy Cross, where Bright Gate was headquartered. He could sense the psychic shield that surrounded the place and knew he could not enter here either. But someone was out. Raisor knew it from the line of virtual power that came from of the mountain and arced southward, a connection from Sybyl to wherever the Psychic Warriors were.
And HAARP? Wherever it was, the information had been compartmentalized from him. He had no doubt though, that his sister had discovered the existence of HAARP or something about HAARP and because of that she and the rest of her team had been cut off. But why had McFairn done that if HAARP was just another program like Bright Gate? Wheels turning within wheels, Raisor realized.
Raisor jumped, following the line south. Until he arrived above the villa in Colombia.
*****
The bodies were in the walk-in freezer in the basement of the villa. Separated from the meat by a thick plastic sheet hung across the middle of the freezer, the three dead Special Forces men were hung on hooks. One's head was half missing; another was lacking the lower half of his body-- which Dalton had seen back at the ambush site. The other had taken several rounds, including many, which Dalton knew from the lack of blood, were inflicted postmortem, especially to his face. What remained of their uniforms had no markings.
“Jackson,"
he relayed through Sybyl.
"Yes?"
"I've found three bodies."
"Damn.
“You find anything?"
"Not yet."
"Continue searching."
Dalton came out of the virtual plane, into the real, assuming the form of his avatar.
"
What are you doing?"
Kirtley's voice echoed inside his head.
“This is a reconnaissance mission only.”
Dalton ignored him. He went up to the first body and lifted it off the hook, laying it down on the ground. He took a long strip of brown paper and covered the dead man. He did the same with the other two.
Then he knelt next to them silently for a minute. He was startled when Jackson contacted him.
"I've found the others. Alive."
Dalton went back on the virtual plane and moved toward her essence until he arrived in a dark room. Several men lay about in the dark, some of them wounded. Jackson was a glowing form in the corner.
"Should we show ourselves?"
Jackson asked.
Dalton considered that. Disclosing themselves could compromise the rescue mission. He'd done what he had with the bodies to cause confusion among the ranks of the guards. No, check that he realized, he had done it out of respect for the men who had died.
"Sergeant Major!"
Kirtley's voice was on a power setting unnecessarily loud and shook him out of his thoughts.
"You will return immediately. You will not disclose yourself to those men."
"A little hope wouldn't hurt them,"
Dalton argued, more for the sake of disagreeing with Kirtley than anything else.
"To let them know they aren't abandoned."
"You've done what you were tasked to do,"
Kirtley said.
"I'm ordering you to return immediately."
Dalton reached out to Jackson directly, touching her avatar on the shoulder.
"Let's go back. We'd have to explain who we are and then we really couldn't do anything to help them right now."
Jackson turned toward him in surprise. Dalton put a finger over his lip, indicating for her to be silent. He counted: seven men.
"Straight jump to the rally point."
He let the real world fade from view until he was completely in the virtual and prepared to jump.
Jackson reached out and grabbed his arm.
“Jim."
Dalton caught himself just as he was ready to jump.
"What?"
"Someone's here-in the virtual plane. Watching us."
Dalton felt foolish as he craned his head and looked about. He saw nothing but featureless gray.
"Who? This Droza?"
"I don't know. Maybe."
"Go. Now."
Jackson jumped.
*****
Raisor caught their virtual essence as they snapped by, like a bird looking in the window of a supersonic jet as it flew past, catching just the tiniest of glimpses. He was pretty certain they hadn't seen him because he had no avatar, just a presence. He headed back to Saba.
He arrived over the island, looking down from the virtual plane. Then he descended, through the building to the underground chamber. Souris was waiting for him. Along with the Russian. And there was someone else with her. They had Aura turned on. Raisor tapped into the power.
*****
Barnes found the site of the battle in Russie without much trouble. He hovered over the rail line, noting that it had already been repaired, the derailed cars gone.
There was nothing on the virtual plane that he could pick up. No sign of the men of his team who had been ‘killed’ by the Russian avatar.
Barnes jumped several times, in an ever widening circle, searching. It was as if the men had never existed.
*****
Hammond had her attention bouncing between the screen that showed the status of the three deployed Psychic Warriors and the lines of programming code and data files for Sybyl that she was slowly scrolling through. Her right index finger rested on the ‘up’ key, tapping to reveal the lines one by one. She was working her way backward, trying to find the source of the virus and the exact nature of it.
She was alone with the three bodies in the isolation tanks, monitoring the data. She could read the numbers that Sybyl was displaying on the monitor and translate them into information. What they were telling her was that one of the Psychic Warriors, Barnes, was not with the other two. Indeed, he was a long way from them. And she knew that wasn't what the mission called for. Her finger paused in midair as something caught her attention in the code.
"What happened to your predecessor?"
Dr. Hammond spun about in surprise at the unexpected question. Kirtley was right behind her. She had not heard him enter the control room.
"My what?" Hammond stammered.
"The person who ran Bright Gate before you," Kirtley said. "What happened to him?"
"You mean Dr. Jenkins. He was killed in an accident."
"Really?" Kirtley glanced at the computer monitor, then back at her. "Something wrong?"
"No. No. Everything's going fine."
"And the first team? What happened to them?"
"The first team?"
"The CIA team," Kirtley amplified.
"I wasn't here then," Hammond said.
Kirtley sat down, steepling his fingers. "You're not very inquisitive, are you, Doctor?"
"I do my job."
"I've put safeguards in place," Kirtley said, "to guarantee that if you do anything to threaten me, you'll be killed. I'm very serious about this. Do you understand?"
Hammond swallowed, then nodded.
*****
Barnes was back at the battle site, his search fruitless. He was above a high, craggy peak overlooking the rail line and the site of the battle against Chyort. He was ready to make the first jump to head back to Bright Gate when he picked something up, the slightest of presences on the virtual plane. Not an avatar, nothing he could see. But there was something, someone, nearby. He waited, hoping the presence would get stronger, that it would be one of his teammates, but it was gone, just as quickly as it had appeared. He wondered if what he had felt was real; as real as anything could be on the virtual plane. For all he knew, it could have been a disturbance in Sybyl's programming.
He prepared to jump when he sensed the presence again. He turned, scanning. Out of the east came two forms, pure white, the shapes shifting faster than he could follow, but roughly man-sized.
The only thing he was certain of was that they were not his teammates.
Barnes willed his right arm into the firing tube. He fired at the form to the right. The bolt of power hit. The white glowed red, absorbing the strike, then returned to its original color and continued coming.
Barnes fired once again at the form to the left with the same negligible effect. He didn't wait to try a third shot He jumped to the point his team had used as the emergency rally point. Arriving, he prepared to jump once more when the forms appeared above him
He paused, mesmerized as the two merged into one, becoming a white cloud that floated down on top of his avatar, enveloping him.
Belatedly, Barnes tried to jump.
To no avail.
Valika spun about, pistol clearing holster.
"That won't do you any good," Raisor said.
Valika could see through his form, to the other side of the chamber. Slowly she lowered the gun.
"Who are you?" Cesar had not moved at the sudden apparition.
They were in the Aura operations center, Cesar in his chair, Valika behind him, and Souris hooked to her computer, projecting the field that allowed Raisor to take his form.
"They told you who I am," Raisor's voice had an echo to it, as if coming through a speaker. He was looking at his hands, as if seeing them for the first time, slowly rotating them in front of his face.
"They told me a name," Cesar said. "Perhaps I should ask
what
are you?"
"First, I want an answer," Raisor said. "Where is HAARP located?"
"I thought you were American," Cesar said. "You told Valika you were CIA. Surely you know about HAARP."
"I am, was, CIA, but I never heard of HAARP."
"Tell him the location," Cesar ordered Souris.
Her voice came out of a speaker on top of the computer she was facing. "Alaska. In the middle of the Wrangell Range."
Raisor walked right through a chair until he was opposite Cesar. "How is HAARP different than Aura?"
"It has greater power but is fixed in place," Souris said. "Aura is smaller and transportable but has less power."
"Why should we trust you?" Cesar asked, signaling for Souris to be quiet.
Valika wasn't sure what exactly Souris was seeing. Although the American scientist's eyes were open, they had a vacant stare.
"You don't have to trust me," Raisor said. "We just have to work together. I can give you information you need. For example, the Americans know some of the men on their Special Forces team are alive, and they know where they are being held. At your villa. In the basement."
"How can you know that?" Cesar demanded.
"Call your villa," Raisor said. "Have them check the bodies in the freezer. You'll discover that they've been removed from the meat hooks and covered. One of the American Psychic Warriors did that."
"'Psychic Warrior'?" Cesar repeated. He signaled for Valika to make the call. She left the room.
Souris answered. "The program is called Bright Gate and headquartered in Colorado. A program that sends avatars into the virtual plane, like we've done here with Aura, but also allows those avatars to re-form on the real plane at a distant site."
"Why did you not tell me about this?" Cesar demanded of Souris.
"It was only in the first phases when I left the States," Souris answered. "I was not aware that it had gone operational."
"If you could get the master computer from Bright Gate," Raisor said, "and use it in conjunction with what you've developed here, you would have the same capability." He indicated his form and then reached out and put his hand through a chair. "This is just an apparition with no substance. With Bright Gate I would have a real form here that could affect the physical world around me."
Cesar reached into a drawer of the desk and pulled out a cigar. He cut the tip off and lit it as he considered what he had just been told. Valika came back and simply nodded.
"What do you want out of this?" Cesar finally asked.
"I want my body back," Raisor said. "They cut me off, severing my connection with Bright Gate."
"Who is 'they’?" Cesar asked.
"My government."
"Why did they do that?" Cesar asked.
"I was betrayed."
"Why?" Cesar pressed
"I wanted to have revenge on the person who betrayed my sister."
Cesar could understand family loyalty coming before all else. "Why was your sister betrayed?"
"She was investigating HAARP. Someone didn't want her to do that."
“Who?”
“I don’t know. But I will find out.”
"What are your capabilities right now?"
"I can travel anywhere in the world on the virtual plane."
"You don't need Aura to support you?"
"No. I only need Aura's power to appear like this; to come into the real plane as an image. And if I need to accomplish something more than watch, I would need Bright Gate’s power."
Cesar pointed the tip of the cigar at his scientist. "Souris says that with Aura's power she could enter a computer system. See it from the inside. Can you do that?"
Raisor nodded. "Yes."
"Could you manipulate the computer, change the programs, the data?"
"With Bright Gate I could. I imagine I could with Aura's power."
"Good." Cesar stood. "Then I have a job for you. To test your loyalty. Then I will help you in turn."
*****
Dalton wiped embryonic fluid off his face and tossed the towel into a basket. Jackson and Barnes were doing the same, both of them shivering, the freezing aftereffect of the isolation tube still clinging to their bones.
"Report." Kirtley was standing in front of the control console, arms folded on his chest.
"We found seven of the men still alive," Dalton said. "At the villa. In the basement."
"I want you to sketch out a floor plan diagram" Kirtley said. "And a complete report for forwarding."
"Forwarding to who?" Dalton demanded.
"Task Force Six is going to help us mount a rescue mission."
"I don't think that's a good idea," Dalton said.
"It doesn't matter what you think," Kirtley said. "Just do it."
"There's something more going on," Dalton said. "We sensed a presence at the villa. On the virtual plane."
"What kind of presence?"
"I don't know," Dalton said.
"The Russian SD-8 program is shut down," Kirtley said.
"It wasn't like Chyort," Dalton said. "Something or someone, different."
"Write up your report." Kirtley walked away.
Dr. Hammond was behind the console. As soon as Kirtley was gone, she came around and stepped in front of Barnes. "What are you doing?"
"What?"
"Where did you go? I tracked you splitting off from the others."
"Does Kirtley know?" Dalton asked.
She shook her head. "No. What are you up to?"
"We're looking for our teammates," Dalton said.
Hammond's eyes shifted to the door where Kirtley had gone and then back. "And did you find anything?"
They all turned to Barnes. "No-" He paused. "But just before I jumped to come back, I also picked up a virtual presence, something. I don't know what it was. Something happened . . ." He shook his head, confused.
"There's more going on than we're being told," Dalton said.
"Or that anybody knows," Jackson added.
"Kirtley asked me what happened to my predecessor," Hammond said. "Why would he do that? Dr. Jenkins died in an accident."
"No, he didn't," Dalton had everyone's attention. "Raisor told me he killed Jenkins because he cut off the power to Raisor's sister's team. Do you know why Jenkins did that?" he asked Hammond.
"I never met the man. When I got here to replace him, I was told the cutoff occurred because there was a programming glitch in Sybyl that had been corrected. That it was just a tragic mistake."
"I doubt that," Dalton pulled on his fatigue shirt. "I don't like this. I don't like it at all."
"There's something else-" Hammond began.
"What?" Dalton demanded.
"I think there was
another
Psychic Warrior team. One before the CIA team with Raisor's sister."
That announcement was greeted with a long silence
"Why do you think that?" Dalton finally asked.
"I'm finding information in Sybyl's data files that doesn't fit the other two teams. Someone obviously tried to clear all records before a certain date, but some of those records are tied to programs that couldn't be deleted without crashing the entire system."
"What happened to this first team?" Dalton asked.
"I haven't been able to find that out."
"Your predecessor, Dr. Jenkins, never mentioned a first team?" Dalton asked.
"That's another thing" Hammond said. "I don't think Dr. Jenkins was the original scientist in charge of Bright Gate. I'm finding information from someone before him. This Professor Souris that you asked me about," she said to Dalton.
Dalton turned to Jackson. "You mentioned something while we were out there. The Dropa or something like that?"
"The Droza," Jackson corrected. "It's a story my mother told me."
"And?" Dalton prompted.
"I don't want you laughing at me if I tell it."
"There hasn't been much to laugh at since we've been here," Dalton said.
“I’ve been thinking about it a long time," Jackson said. "Ever since I was assigned to Grill Flame years ago. Even when I was just remote viewing, I could occasionally sense other presences on the virtual plane. I know now one of those was Chyort, but there were others. Ones I couldn't identify. Then when I came here and was part of Psychic Warrior, I could still sense those presences but I could never see them. As if they were hiding from me."
"Or they were in a place on the virtual plane that you couldn't see," Hammond said. "We don't know exactly the dimensions or physics of the virtual world."
Dalton couldn't help but wish that Hammond had been more forthright about what she didn't know when he had first arrived at Bright Gate with his team. Things might have turned out differently and some people might still be alive. He grabbed a chair and slid it over to Jackson. She sat down as Barnes and Dalton took other seats and gathered round her. Hammond remained at her place behind the console. Kirtley and his team were in the prep room, running final checks on their fittings.
"There's a legend among my people, among the Roma, the Gypsies, as they're more commonly called," she said. She briefly told Barnes and Hammond the same thing she had told Dalton, about her background and her mother, before continuing her story.
"I tried to get as far as possible from the Roma, but I think I went in a circle." She waved her hand about the room. "My mother would have loved this: Psychic Warriors, remote viewing. Even Chyort. She would have found him fascinating. The devil that she insisted existed." Jackson's eyes darkened as her mind went inward, into her memories. "She wasn't so big on talking about heaven or angels, though; just the dark scary stuff.”
Barnes opened his mouth as if to say something, but the confused look crossed his face once more and he snapped his mouth shut.
Jackson continued. "She told me many stories when I was a child. They were the tales her mother had told her when
she
was a child. And her mother's mother on down the line through the ages. The Roma are not fond of writing things down. Everything passes by word of mouth. It is an integral part of our culture and one we do not share with the gadj-- outsiders.
"The stories were entertaining and interesting but I thought they were fiction." She glanced over at Dalton. "But now we know the virtual world is real, right?"
Dalton didn't say anything, not wanting to interrupt the thread her mind was unraveling.
"My mother told me the story of the Roma and of those the Roma came from. I promised her only to pass it to my own children as is our way, but I think it’s important I tell you this now, given all that has happened. It might mean nothing, but-" She shrugged.
"What you tell us stays with us," Dalton promised. He looked at Hammond and Barnes. "Right?"
Both nodded their agreement.
Jackson rubbed her palms over her eyes for a moment. "Mother said that the Roma were special. I told you earlier that the rest of the world calls us Gypsies because a long time ago it was believed we came from Egypt. But we actually came from India. Far northern India on the border with Tibet in the foothills of the Himalayas. Even that place, though, wasn't where we originated from according to our legends. My mother told me that much. Although where we came from before there, she could not, or would not, say. Other than to speak of a people called the Droza. I'll get back to that in a moment but let me work from what I know to what I'm guessing about.
"We, the Roma, were outsiders there, of different ethnic background from the others. Long before Hinduism swept through India and divided all the people into castes, my people were despised and threatened. We learned to survive by making ourselves useful. We made up a large part of the
Kshattriya
warrior class. We fought and died for others, so much so that there were those among us who realized something had to be changed or we would eventually be wiped out.
"Some advocated rebellion. We were warriors after all. Others pointed out how terribly outnumbered we were and espoused escape. In the end, that was the decision that was made. The Roma left the lowlands and went into the mountains. They knew they had to find land no one else would want. Some place desolate and remote.
"They found the isolation they sought high in the Himalayas. They did such a good job finding what they were looking for that in just a few generations, there were few Roma left, given the harshness of the land, almost bringing about their own extinction in an attempt to avoid the very same fate. Then they met the Droza.
"Even my mother could not confirm to me if they were real. She told me about them as if it were only a story, a legend." Jackson closed her eyes as she remembered. "In the high mountains of Kharta Changri, the Droza came down from mountaintops. Our people ran and hid from them for a fortnight, but when it was clear that the strange ones meant no harm, our people came out of their caves.
"The Droza let my people know that they came from a special place they could not mention. And that they could not return from whence they came. They were trapped here. With my people they built a new place to live. They hid their homes underground, a great city called Agharti. The Roma were given a fertile valley hidden deep in the mountains near Kharta Changri called Shambhala." Jackson opened her eyes, returning to the present. "I think this is where the modern legend of Shangri-la comes from."