“Happy now?”
she growled, angry and frustrated.
What did he say?
that inner voice repeated urgently.
Helen shook her head. Too many damn voices in her head.
“Not really, not where it counts. Does it make you feel better if I apologize? I’m sorry I have to use our sexual desire to get you to do what I want.”
“But you’re not going to stop,”
Helen said, rubbing the sides of her arms, trying to stop the tightness in her lower body that had nothing to do with remote viewing.
“No. Not if it means you going off without taking me with you
.
”
“My mind isn’t yours, Jed!”
“Not all the time. Just now. Want another demonstration? With my apologies first, of course
.
”
Helen wanted to scream. She was spitting mad and turned on at the same time. She turned around abruptly, ignoring his chuckle in her head. She was going to find that damn intruder. Then she was going back to virtual reality and kicking his virtual ass. Then kick his real one after that. It would double the satisfaction.
***
Jed ruthlessly strangled his own sexual thoughts as he focused in on Elena’s senses. The fact that he could feel her desire too wasn’t helping his own raging need to go away that easily.
He’d done what he did out of reflex. He told himself that it was necessary, but a part of him regretted that he had to. He pushed the feeling away. Careful. Elena was beginning to get wisps of his thoughts too. This brainwave entrainment experiment was unpredictable; no one knew exactly how she or he was going to be affected with prolonged synchronization.
Capturing each other’s thought-images as a side effect was logical. If he’d been doing it to her, it was also logical that she would probably be able to do it to him too. His lips quirked. So far, it was fortunate that they didn’t actually read each other’s minds. He didn’t think that would be possible, seeing that the brain generated a multitude of random thoughts and sensations in a second.
Jed shook off the analysis. Later. Questions and analysis would make them inattentive and put Elena in danger. He concentrated on Elena’s perception of this new wing of Stratter’s Pointe. He shouldn’t be surprised that the old building had been renovated and added on to. After all, it’d been twenty years or longer.
This new section looked nothing like the rest of the place. Very clinical, like a hospital. Stratter’s hadn’t had a medical wing when he was there.
“There are bars on the inside of windows on this floor, Hades.”
“Yes, I’m seeing them.”
Jed frowned. Prisoners in need of medical attention? At Stratter’s? Things had changed.
“There’s a reason why I bilocated here, Hades. Our intruder is somewhere in this place with bars in the windows that smells of antiseptic. I’m going to go check out a few of the rooms
.
”
“
Your attacker, Elena. Be careful
.”
The intruder somehow had managed to do something to Elena. In Jed’s book, that made him dangerous. That they had to deal with something as yet unknown, someone who could possibly hurt Elena while in remote-viewing state, didn’t sit well with him. It was difficult to protect someone from the unknown and it was his job to make sure she remained safe.
“I hear something. Follow it?”
“Yes.”
Jed let go of his thoughts about his past and concentrated on Elena. He knew, from previous experience, if he just kept quiet and let her work instinctively, she would relax enough to allow their thoughts to immerse even more, thus projecting her experience on him naturally. When Elena wasn’t concentrating too much on being tied to him, he’d found that her thought-images even projected themselves into the virtual reality environment, that he could see her surroundings with his eyes open. It was as if he’d bilocated with her. It didn’t happen often because they were both controlling persons by nature; sooner or later their self-consciousness intruded and he would find himself blinking away the sudden double vision.
He saw four people in a room. One of them was curled in a fetal position on the bed. He was drawing deep, sobbing breaths, as if he was in pain. A doctor was attending him. The others, in suits, were doing most of the talking. Their words, murmurs in the background, became more comprehensible as Elena focused in. Jed emptied his mind, letting the whole scene immerse like a movie into his consciousness, listening to the conversation taking place.
“The doctor said to let him rest up for a few days. Maybe we should
.
”
“He can rest on the plane. Bring the doctor, in case he needs more drugs to calm down, that’s all. Right, Doc?”
The doctor looked up from his patient
. “His BP is back to normal, but he’s suffering from some kind of mental trauma. Something happened to him out there in the ether and…”
He looked down and shrugged before adding,
“I’ve been told it happens more often than we know. Personally, I think these out-of-body experiences overwhelm the brain and it gets fried, so to speak.”
“Oh, like the drug doesn’t have anything to do with it?”
That was from the stockier of the two men in suits. He wore a sneer on his face as he, too, looked at the curled-up man on the bed.
“Like I said, I think it’s information overload for the brain.”
“Yeah, you said ‘fried’. Is it truly fried, like some of the others?”
The doctor shook his head.
“No, I think he’s going to be fine. He’s coherent, although in shock. He just needs rest. I need to question him again when he’s less emotional, perhaps learn what set it off.”
The other man spoke up.
“Perhaps we can try another patient.”
He studied the man on the bed thoughtfully.
“He has been the most useful thus far, though, actually able to penetrate through COMCEN’s security net. Most of the others could barely function after five minutes. If we can get him calmed down enough I can ask him about the weapons and Macedonia. It’s crucial we find out whether they’re going to the summit.”
Jed stiffened. Summit? The mention of Macedonia and summit was too coincidental.
“We already have confirmation that the trigger pickup was on schedule, so we don’t really need him around. They aren’t good at locating things, remember?”
“Hades,”
Hell interrupted
. “I’m guessing that man’s a remote viewer.”
Her wonder and curiosity brushed against his consciousness.
“Agreed
,
”
Jed said.
“Do you think he’s the one who was spying on us at Center?”
After a moment, he added,
“Perhaps even the same one who might have run into you during the mission a few days ago?”
“He looks injured and in pain. If he were the one, not only do I want to know how, because my CIA trainers told me it was impossible, but also why he attacked me at COMCEN. What was he after? And why is he hurt anyway? This place’s giving me the creeps. The smell, the vibes, everything feels negative, Hades.”
“I think if we find out what his handlers are after, the rest of the answers will come.”
“Yeah. They mentioned something about a summit in Macedonia. How’s that connected to our last mission in Germany?”
Jed thought about it a moment.
“We were seeking out one of the lost weapons on the DC list as part of an experiment to prove your importance to the different departments. This place belongs to the CIA, by the way, so I’m thinking our men here are connected to the moles within the CIA.”
The DC list was a top secret document of all the weapons that a CIA director who had been caught recently had sold through the years. Of that list, there was another top priority list of sensitive weapons and high-tech Intel that had to be found ASAP. COMCEN, with their inner links to so many underground weapon dealers, had been given that list.
“Remember the missing weapons we were talking about at the meeting earlier? One of the weapons, a unique explosive trigger device, has been changing hands in the black markets. With the help of the SEALs, we’ve traced its move from Asia to Macedonia. The mention of Macedonia and the summit is troubling
.
”
“Why?”
“Can’t say. We’ll discuss this later. Do you think you can remote view if the universal agreement is changed?”
“What do you mean?”
Jed looked at the scene in the room again, considering their options. The man on the bed let out a soft moan and turned around, still in a semi-fetal position. Helen’s quick intake of breath interrupted his thoughts.
“What is it?”
he asked.
“I recognize that dude on the bed. He was in several of the beginning training classes.”
Jed checked out the patient again.
“The Super Soldier Spy tests?”
he asked, just to make sure. He didn’t recognize the face, so this man couldn’t have lasted too long.
“Did he remote view with you?
”
“We were divided into different groups. He wasn’t in my group but in the few experiments that we participated in together, he was one of the fastest to finish and I heard his accuracy ratio was pretty high. But he disappeared.”
“Did you ask why?”
“No, not really. We were competing for a job and I just assumed he didn’t pass some test. It wasn’t unusual for the training classes to get smaller and smaller as time went by, Hades.”
Until one was left standing, Jed added to himself. And Elena was probably the least expected to get the coveted Super Soldier Spy funding. It suddenly became very clear that the moles were inside so deep within the CIA that they’d view the Super Soldier Spy program, and hence, the winner, as a weapon that was worth selling. He looked at the man on the bed again. And perhaps, they were trying to create their own version.
“Yo, monitor darling, you’ve gone all quiet again. Am I supposed to be twiddling my thumbs while you solve the problem of world hunger here? Are we forgetting the focus thing? You know, that me on you and you on me mantra, babe, or we lose connection?”
Her sarcasm amused him. She was right, of course.
“Touché
,
”
he said.
“I was letting myself get distracted
.
”
“Not you!”
He hadn’t been teased like this in a long time and he was enjoying it too much. He changed the subject because there wasn’t a lot of time left.
“About the universal agreement, can we change it?”
“How so? What are we looking for now?”
“Our initial object was to look for the intruder. Just now, one of those men said it was crucial to find out whether the weapon’s going to the summit. That’s the explosive device and it’s supposed to be in Macedonia, but nowhere near the summit.”
“So you want to find out if the device is…where?”
Jed paused, wondering if the information would contaminate the remote viewing process. She already knew what the weapon was, but locating anything through RV was tricky. A mere suggestion could send the viewer on a wild goose chase, looking for something that wasn’t there. He had to be extra careful here.
“Elena, I need you to just concentrate on the missing weapon because I can’t project what I know on you.”
“Hmm. I see your problem.”
There were a few moments of silence and Jed could feel her weighing different options. He couldn’t get the thoughts but he saw random images—the man on the bed, the quick flash of the device that she’d seen from the video during the meeting, then back to the people in the room.
“I’m going to guess that one of these men is our patient’s handler and monitor. How about I concentrate on what that man over there said, about finding the weapons and Macedonia? We can shift the universal agreement to that man’s next remote view point.”
Jed smiled internally. She’d managed to surprise him at her quick, innovative ideas. She always found a way.
“Can you do it? Two universal agreements, one after another. You’re going to be totally exhausted when we’re finished
.
”
“I’m doing my job.”
He smiled again. She was in outright mocking mode all right, sarcastically paraphrasing his oft-used words. The woman was still angry at him for what he’d done.
“I’m ready when you are. We have to both mentally think of the agreement at the same time,”
she told him.
“I remember his name, so it’ll be easier. I’m pretty sure it’s Jonah.”
“Let’s do it,”
Jed said.
“What about this place? And them?”
“They’re after what we’ll be finding out next. So we’re one step ahead.”
Which would be very good indeed. The international summit in Skopje was going to be attended by some world leaders, some of whom had a few enemies for balking the old Russian system.
He looked around one more time before he closed his eyes to merge his thoughts with Helen’s. This place might look new, but it was also attached to a very familiar old system. Things on the outside might have changed, but old spies and their world didn’t die easily.
Chapter Thirteen
During Elena’s remote-viewing training, the concept of going somewhere using the mind didn’t quite click into place until she found the “vehicle” of choice, her race car, which she’d nicknamed “The Rocket Ship”. Breathing control, check. Relaxation and reaching an altered state, check. Consciously groping for some unknown destination identified only as a universal address—half the class had failed that exercise. Describing the target successfully, whether it was a bag of marbles on top of a building or the inside of a cave filled with bats, tested her senses and belief system. And yeah, half of the class had failed that one.
Those who were left—Elena included—started advanced training under the care of two operatives from the CIA’s Directorate of Science and Technology. She was introduced to “long-distance remote viewing”, a program focusing solely on operation-based objectives, moving from Point A and B with minimal guidance, the use of a mental trigger, and, most important of all, moving from Point B to A without losing control or information.
The use of a familiar travel or observation device was just a means to an end. To escape the grueling internal war with the belief system, it also became a comfort zone, or an escape hatch, should the surroundings or sensations start to overwhelm. Now, the mental leap of jumping into her vehicle and taking off was a natural extension to her remote-viewing process.
Change gear. Speed up. Focus on the universal agreement.
The mental toll exacted a heavy price. Seventy-five percent of her “class” didn’t complete the course.
Having seen firsthand how a few of those who failed had to deal with the stress, Elena was very aware of the danger of overextending her remote-viewing session. One universal agreement was usually it. She’d never done two, and an unspoken universal agreement that was somebody else’s at that.
She stepped on the gas, adrenaline fueling her excitement. That feeling that had haunted her during and after completing her training—that she was in some state of “becoming”—filled her again, pungent as the sweet smell of strawberries, her senses unfurling in some kind of need that she couldn’t even explain. She stuck out her tongue as if she could taste it.
“Elena.”
Hades’ Southern drawl made her shiver. Strawberry and a chocolaty mudslide. Oh, man.
“Elena, Dr. Kirkland’s reporting a spike in your readings. Are you feeling okay? If you don’t feel right, we won’t continue.”
She smiled, her eyes looking at the speeding space and colors zipping past her race car. Was he showing some concern?
“I’m fine. The colors seem brighter this time. Can you see it?”
There was a pause.
“No. I can feel your excitement. And I taste strawberries
.
”
Elena grinned. It struck her as funny how her feelings could be transferred, just like that. She didn’t even understand why strawberries were invading her senses, so how was she going to convey to him what was happening to her?
“It’s my excitement,”
she offered an explanation.
“Your excitement tastes like strawberries?”
Even there, in the middle of mind space, she could hear that slight twang in his voice, his amusement slipping through.
“I feel…amazing. Like I can go faster and faster.
”
“Concentrate on the universal agreement, Elena.”
That was definitely the monitor exerting his control. She made a face. The temptation to put her foot on the pedal and just go where the flying colors would take her was very strong. But Hades was right. This was unchartered territory for her and she must be careful. She closed her eyes, extending her will over the unknown universal agreement.
“A bag of marbles for him would still be a bag of marbles for any other remote viewer. Therefore, I’ll go to his bag of marbles,”
she mumbled.
She opened her eyes as the floating sensation slowed. And
voila!
she mouthed silently.
Here we are, wherever this is.
She exited The Rocket Ship with a thought, concentrating hard as the usual jumble of sensations poured over her consciousness. The key was to pick one thread, one sensation, and focus on it. Her CIA mentor had likened it to finding the end of a rope and using it as a guide in a maze.
It was pitch black and everything around her was shaking. She could hear labored breathing and jostling. Someone was speaking urgently, but his words were muffled and coming from above.
“I’m totally disoriented,”
Helen said.
“It’s hard to figure out where I am. I’m trying to crawl forward but I can’t.”
“Stand up?”
“Can’t either. Definitely someone upstairs trying to come down here.”
“How do you know it’s upstairs?”
Helen frowned.
“Well, his voice is coming from above me, but not directly, so I’m assuming it’s upstairs. For some reason, my senses are telling me that I can’t move, Hades.”
She gasped as her head spun, as if there was an earthquake.
“I think…I think I just toppled over.”
There were several loud thuds and a very distinctive American voice came through.
“Ah, fuck! My foot! Fuck, fuck, fuck!”
The voice grew less distinctive, but it wasn’t too hard to guess that each staccato-like enunciation was the same cuss word over and over.
“I’m seeing it through your eyes now,”
Hades said.
“Total darkness. It’s cramped.
“Tell me something I don’t know,”
she said, dryly.
“I feel heavy. Like, if I were here in person, things would be on top of me. Maybe I’m buried.”
“Do you think you’re in a coffin?”
Oh, shit. She hadn’t thought of that. Ugh. Coffin equals dead body. On top of her. Her mental self recoiled as if snake-bit. She started gagging. She thought of the confined space holding her prisoner. No air. Immediately she started hyperventilating. Her hands automatically reached out to claw at her containment, but there was nothing there. She began to choke, flailing around.
“Elena! Calm down.”
He gave the order tersely, anticipating her panic, speaking with a measured steeliness, as if he could impose calm into her by sheer force of will.
But it was difficult to concentrate when one was fighting for one’s life. Helen could feel her rising panic stifling the reasonable voice in her head. She was buried and her mind was telling—ordering—her to get out of there. Now.
He continued calmly. Firmly.
“Remember what you told me. It’s like the illusion of drowning when you’re underwater. Your mind thinks you can’t breathe because it seems so real, but it’s an illusion. You aren’t there. You’re here, with me, in my arms. Think of me, Elena, not in that coffin, but with me, in our VR space. You’re holding your breath here, and you need to take in air now. Now, Elena.”
Helen squeezed her eyes closed, paying attention to his voice even as fear threatened to overpower her. She wasn’t buried. Deep breath. She concentrated on Hades but couldn’t call his face up. The enveloping darkness seemed to have taken away all her senses.
“No, I’m still here. I’m seeing the same darkness too. Your fear is so real to you, you’ve projected it into our VR space. I’m actually seeing your remote-viewing target in virtual reality, Elena. Take another breath
.
”
There was a pause and she could feel his curiosity of what was happening at his end. The cool remoteness that was so uniquely Jed seeped through her fear.
Jed. Not Hades and that sinfully sexy body she’d designed. What Helen needed now was the man behind the program, Jed McNeil himself. The man with that calmness that took in every emergency and deflected them like a shield. She mentally reached for that iron stillness and wrapped it around her. The sense of safety enveloping her was immediate and exactly what she needed. And behind that watchfulness, she felt his concern and his preparation to end the session.
“No,”
Helen said, taking several breaths.
“Don’t activate the trigger, Jed. I’m okay. Just give me a few moments. I need to really concentrate on that voice up there, that’s all.”
“Maybe he’s trying to open this coffin you’re in. There’s a reason why you remote viewed here, Elena.”
Helen jerked. Of course.
“Hades, they’re tracking the same list we have from a few months back. This is the location of the first weapon there, the most recent one. The explosive trigger or whatchamacallit
,
”
she breathed.
“Wait a minute, wait a minute. They didn’t bury the weapons…you told me the CIA airdropped them, right? In crates. Crates that were marked as U.N. aid. I’m in a crate.”
That explained why she felt that she couldn’t stand up or move around. And the sensation of things piled up. She was under a cache of weapons. No dead body. She breathed out a sigh of relief. Somehow a crate was so much easier to deal with than a coffin.
“A crate can be a coffin.”
“Oh stop being so darn matter-of-fact,”
she snarled, embarrassed now that she wasn’t that afraid any more. She didn’t like the idea of him knowing that she had given in to fear.
“I panicked, so I’m sorry about that. It won’t happen again.”
“There’s nothing to be sorry about. Normal reaction, Elena. It’s my job to anchor you, remember? Now you have a job to do.”
She scowled. He was a manipulative bastard, getting her defensive to distract her and succeeding with just that snotty tone. She turned her attention back to the voice outside the crate, grounding herself.
“Yes, I feel that we are exactly where one of the weapons is,”
she said. “
It’s in this crate. Someone outside is pushing on it very hard. It’s someone speaking English and because he’s cussing like a pro, I’m guessing he isn’t Macedonian. Or we aren’t in Macedonia. Can’t verify, Hades. I can’t go through the crate and not change the universal agreement. If I do, we lose trail of all the other weapons those guys were trying to locate through their remote viewer.
”
Location was so hard to pinpoint. In the first experiments, her monitor, who usually knew the universal agreement, guided her “tours”, making her describe the target area in detail. She never knew the location till she was back from the ether. They’d hand her the envelope that had the universal agreement written inside and then they’d wait for the “outbounder”, the person outside the loop, to call back to verify and confirm what she saw. As she advanced, she learned that the universal agreement was just that—there really wasn’t any need for an envelope containing coordinates or names—and just focusing on one would get her to the agreed target. When she finally became the lone viewer left in the supersoldier-spy program, they’d tested her with further targets, some top secret, that couldn’t be verified except by satellite photos.
All those earlier assignments seemed so easy compared to what she and Hades must now accomplish. Her monitor was as blind as she was, and without an outbounder, she had to depend on his experience to find a way to verify. It was hard, very hard. But she sat there in the dark, biting her tongue, ignoring the impulse to escape the feeling of confinement, and waited for further instructions.
“Is that man on the outside still shouting and trying to move the crate? Is he really trying to open it?”
Hades asked.
Helen tried to gauge the different muffled sounds.
“He did turn the crate over before he started cursing non-stop. He sounds a bit calmer, actually. I’d guess he’s talking to someone but I can’t hear any other voices.”
She paused as her surroundings started shaking, and like earlier before, her head began to spin dizzily, reacting to the sensation of freefalling upside down in total darkness. She fiercely reminded herself that the sensation wasn’t real, shaking off the urge to escape outside.
Following instinct, she pushed her senses outward, reaching for God knew what. Ever since she was a kid, there was a part of her who could “sense” things, a part inside her that somehow manifested itself into a voice that would warn her if she was near danger. She had long ago stopped questioning the feeling, trusting the voice when it ordered her to move out of the way, or to run the other way, or to pay attention to what appeared to be harmless. It was just a voice in her head, nothing more, until now. She’d never consciously tried to exert the sense before, didn’t even know she could do it.
Then, without warning, something inside burst out and there was a loud popping, like air pressure in one’s ears when a plane took off. It happened so suddenly that she couldn’t think of anything for a minute. It was no longer dark, yet she knew she wasn’t outside the crate. She didn’t know what had just happened, but she could
feel
what she couldn’t see, the outside of the crate. She let out a long breath of awe.
“Hades—”
“Shhh. I’m feeling it. Whatever it is, I’m feeling it.”
And there was wonder in his voice. He paused, and she could feel his curiosity and his will combating it.
“Later. We’ll talk about this after the session. I don’t know if you realize that you’re not wholly in the crate right now, Elena.”
Duh. Since she was the one here in the ether, shouldn’t it be her explaining the phenomena?
“Care to explain where I am then, Mr. Know-it-all?”
she asked, and refused to admit that she was doing so because she wasn’t truly sure herself, even though she suspected the answer.
“What did you see from your end?”
“I felt you trying very hard to stay inside the crate. Usually, when you reach a target, you’re free to move out and about, to explore for details, but to do so now would break the universal agreement because those men were after more than one weapon. There was a floating sensation that expanded and then you moved forward—or I felt you move forward because it was dark and I was about to say the trigger code to get you back into the race car—but you were too fast and then suddenly, you stopped. You stopped just before you were out there, Elena. You’re actually, for lack of a better explanation, stuck in one side of the crate.”
Helen reached up and patted her face. She felt about the same. His explanation sounded so ridiculous she couldn’t help saying something ridiculous back.
“You know, I don’t think I’ve ever heard you string so many sentences together. You should talk to crates more often.”