Chapter Fifteen
It took Jed longer than usual to peel off his sensor suit. His legs felt wobbly and he had to hold on to the back of a chair till the lightheadedness passed. He reached for a bottle of water and took one long gulp, taking a few minutes to gather his thoughts.
He cracked his neck. Normally, he would wait for Dr. Kirkland, but he wanted to go to Elena quickly to see how she was. Dr. Kirkland would probably want to run a battery of tests, but what she needed was complete rest right now.
He wasn’t feeling exactly perky himself. Absolute focus took its toll on mind and body. As Elena’s monitor, he’d discovered that he needed to be several steps ahead all the time as he switched his attention back and forth from Elena-in-the-ether to Elena-in-the-Portal. What she could do—what they could do together—was so incredible that it sometimes distracted him. He’d listened in on remote-viewing exercises before, learning from experienced monitors how to guide and what to expect. They hadn’t prepared him for immersive remote viewing.
He downed the rest of the water and grabbed the towel set neatly beside his clothes. He felt clumsy and awkward moving about, as if he was slightly inebriated. He was just about ready to leave his quarters when a buzz sounded from the intercom. That would be Kirkland, checking on him.
Jed frowned. In his hurry, he’d forgotten to type the requisite code after logging off the Portal control pad, which was a signal to let Dr. Kirkland’s crew know that all was well at his end. He picked up the call.
“I’m all right and I’m on the way,” he said crisply. “How’s she doing?”
“Vitals are fine, but not normal. She’s barely coming out of REM. Aren’t you going to be at your quarters?”
“No, I’m coming over right now. She’s still in the sleep-dreaming state because she’s exhausted. I’ll explain more when I’m there.”
Jed rolled his shoulders discreetly while he was in the elevator, trying to rid himself of the knots bunching his muscles. If he were feeling out of it, she must be a hundred times worse. He wanted to be there for her. Besides, she was likely to be looking for a fight when she regained her strength and would insist on looking for him again, just as she did earlier. Even if she had to crawl. The corners of his lips lifted at that image.
He paused for a moment at the entrance, surprised and yet, not, at the sight that greeted him. This was one of the highly classified areas and usually, those who had access didn’t congregate in one room unless something important had happened.
Elena
. He was at her bedside in a few strides.
“What’s wrong?” he asked quietly. Her face was pale, her eyes closed.
“She’s fine, Jed,” Dr. Kirkland reassured him. “She’s just a bit out of REM, but she’s drifting in and out of consciousness. She was aware of her surroundings but needed help to get off the Portal.”
He touched her cheek with the back of his hand. Her eyes fluttered, then opened. “Goodie,” she mumbled. “All the boys are here.”
Indeed. Jed finally turned around to acknowledge the presence of most of his team. They were watching and no one seemed in any particular hurry to leave. He looked at them questioningly, lifting his eyebrows a fraction.
“Is there a reason why all of you are assembled down here?”
“Eight Ball sent a message to me that Hell wasn’t breathing,” Flyboy said. “I’ve asked the computer to let me know if anything went wrong during a session.”
“I was with him when he took off.” Shahrukh shrugged. “We were in the middle of discussing something so I came along.”
Not breathing. That was probably when she was in a panic. Flyboy was the friendliest with Elena so Jed wasn’t surprised he’d be down here.
“Your vitals were also alarmingly out of control, Jed,” Dr. Kirkland chimed in, “and I was about to shut the thing down when you signaled that you were aware and doing something about the situation.”
He remembered how his mind had been so immersed with Elena’s consciousness that he’d felt all her panic and fear at the idea of being buried alive. It’d taken him by surprise how real the sensation was and he’d undergone a few long seconds of sheer panic before his own logic broke through. He recalled his hand reaching out to curl around the emergency handle—if he’d pulled it, Dr. Kirkland would know something was very wrong; if he pushed it forward, that would mean that he wasn’t able to talk right now but was functioning. There were other buttons on it to help communicate any problems he couldn’t express but he hadn’t had the time while talking Elena out of her panic and had trusted Dr. Kirkland not to panic at his end too. He turned his attention to Alex. So that was why Number One and Tess were here together. His lips quirked. And not quarrelling. Chain of command was priority. If anything had happened to him, Alex would take over this particular mission.
Tess’s eyes narrowed. “It couldn’t have been that bad if you can still make snide remarks with your eyes.”
Jed didn’t allow his smile to surface. Tess, as usual, was testing him, using her own way to assess his condition. “I’m never snide,” he said. He nodded toward Elena. “She’s okay, but we had the interesting experience of finding ourselves inside a crate. Not knowing our exact location and with the cramped space, the first conclusion was that it was a coffin or something buried.”
Understanding dawned in Tess’s and Alex’s eyes. A soft whistle came from one of the others and a few cusses.
“You mean—”
“Full-blown panic?” Alex asked, at the same time.
“And you experienced it too,” Tess finished. “That’s why your readings were going nuts.”
Jed nodded. “It took a minute for me to realize that I wasn’t actually buried and wasn’t unable to breathe. It was Helen experiencing it.”
“Wait a minute. From what I’ve been reading, remote viewing is like watching something from a distance. The person I talked to said it’s similar to seeing the reflection of an event. So how is it that her experiences are so real that she literally can’t breathe?” Flyboy asked, a frown forming.
“I think the most interesting question is why would her choking affect you?” Armando said from the corner of the room. His dark eyes met Jed’s. “You’re the monitor, not the remote viewer. Synced brainwaves can’t be that intimate, can they?”
Jed flicked his attention back on Elena. “My concern now is giving Hell some rest. Don’t wake her up, Doc. Believe me, she went through a lot.”
“Interesting non-answer,” Armando commented softly. “Isn’t that right, T. darling?”
“He’s looking a bit off himself, I think,” Tess murmured. “If nothing’s too urgent, questions later.”
“I have verification of a number of the locations,” Jed announced quietly.
There was a stunned silence.
“On the list?”
“Not all of them, but yes,” Jed confirmed. He absently massaged the stiffness in his neck. “I wouldn’t say it’s not urgent, but we have some time. I need a half hour to make some notes. Maybe an hour.”
“He needs sleep,” Elena interrupted, her eyes still closed. She yawned, then turned on her stomach. “Hey, if he can know I’m exhausted, and you guys believe him, then it stands that I can know he’s just as exhausted.”
“You should be resting,” Jed told her.
“Can’t. Too many people talking.”
He signaled for the others to leave. “Meeting in three hours,” he said, looking around. “Where are Sully and Heath?”
“Sully’s spending the night at his tree house. Heath’s somewhere in the complex,” Flyboy said, his eyes still on Elena. He didn’t look happy. “Are you okay, Hell?”
“Umm,” Elena replied.
Jed studied the little group around Hell. He reminded himself that they weren’t here to talk to him. Not counting Tess, who was Elena’s chief, in their own way, his men were worried and protective about the newest member of their group. They had all arrived here the moment they found out that Elena was in danger.
“She’s fine, Hunter,” he said, reaching out to flick Elena’s hair out of her eyes. “She’s just done the equivalent of several somersaults in a fighter jet, that’s all. There were some anomalies but she did great.”
“If the meeting’s not absolutely urgent, at least five hours of total rest for you,” Dr. Kirkland said firmly. “Then you can have your meeting. Your body can only take so much, Jed. At least five hours and that’s the doctor’s orders.”
He had to be at the summit in three days. There was some time to rest up and prepare. Not much, but enough to afford taking a few hours to recharge himself.
“Go make your notes and rest up,” Alex said. “I’ll let you know if anything urgent comes through.”
Jed nodded. What he really wanted was to stay with Elena. She was peeking at them through her lashes, trying to stay awake. No, he would just be a distraction if he stayed. Knowing her, she wouldn’t want him around when she was vulnerable and would fight complete rest. He caressed her cheek again and felt the small quiver.
“Go to sleep. I’ll be in my quarters.” He turned abruptly, adding over his shoulder, “I’ll see you all in five hours.”
By the time he’d reached the elevators, he’d already started to compartmentalize his worries and feelings about Elena. He told himself that she was more comfortable without him hanging around anyway. Now that he’d given himself five hours instead of three, he could take care of some other paperwork and a few calls, especially one to an old friend. First, though, he needed to make quick notes of all he’d seen. Outline the idea he had with targets and retrieval. He knew the others would have plenty of questions, some of which he wasn’t prepared to answer.
“Five hours? I thought he said three.”
“Old man needs his sleep.”
Eyes closed but still aware of the quiet conversation around her, Helen could hear them leaving the room. She made an effort to wave at the few who addressed her.
“Hey, see you later, Sleeping Beauty,” Flyboy said.
“Sweet dreams.” That was pure Armando.
“You’ll feel a little prick. We’re going to make sure everything is being monitored while you sleep,” Dr. Kirkland said.
Try as she could, she just couldn’t keep her eyes open. She was simply wiped out by the remote-viewing session. She hadn’t thought it possible to RV so many different locations, one after another. During her training, her instructors had told her that there had been previous experiments but most of the remote viewers had gotten confused about locations—going from one apparently distorted spatial awareness to another. After a while, there was also the weariness factor.
But none of them had a Hades to anchor them, she thought sleepily. None of them shared the remote-viewing session in such a way that one could monitor directly.
“
Viva la
brainwaves,” Helen murmured in self-mockery, then added, “I know you’re still here, T.”
“Just making sure.”
T. didn’t sound worried, but Helen knew that her spiked readings were serious enough to warrant the presence of so many commandos and her operations chief at her side. She was aware that she had stopped breathing at one point.
“Got y’all scared, huh?” Helen said wryly. “I’m sorry, I can’t think at the moment. It was quite a session.”
“I know. Do you have anything to tell me before I leave?”
“Yeah. Make sure Jed tells you about the girl in the crate. I’m worried about her. I’ll feel guilty if they find her body because she’s alive right now.”
There was a pause. “Okay, I’ll do that.”
“T.? Tell Dr. Kirkland to administer a dose of the serum if, in five hours, I can’t get up. I want to be able to make that meeting.”
“Hell—”
“It’s important that I’m with the team all the way, T. And it’s important I get the mission deets firsthand from Jed. I want to be sitting there and be part of the operation and not just some crazy experiment they pull out of bed when it suits them.” She sighed. Seeing that other remote viewer all curled up had really gotten to her. “That came out bitter, didn’t it?”
She felt T. move closer and a hand touching her forehead. “Well, no fever, so you’re lucid. What brought that on?”
Helen turned over on her back. She could barely stay awake now. She wondered whether Jed was asleep already. She wondered what it would feel like to curl up next to him, both of them sleeping soundly.
“I want to be at the meeting so I can ask Jed about Stratter’s,” she told T. “What is that place? And who are those people?”
“Okay, you’re definitely no longer making sense to me. Sleep. I’ll take care of everything. I’ll make sure you’re wide awake for the meeting.”
That was all the reassurance Helen needed to hear. She’d intrigued T. enough to make sure her operations chief get her there. She drifted off.
***
“Five-One, can you hear me? If you can’t continue, let me know. We’ll let you rest up, but you have to be honest with me. Can you continue? Our mission is very important and we need all the help we can get.”
The soft persuasion in his monitor’s voice didn’t reassure him. Liar. At least his partner was more honest about their intentions. He understood the veiled threats, even though they weren’t addressed to him.
“Why don’t you just tell him that if he fucks up one more time, we’ll just let his ass rot in a windowless cell instead of here? I don’t even know why you’re so damn nice to him. You weren’t so friendly with the last one we had.”
“This one has more potential. He’s gone further than the others and could have even beaten COMCEN’s remote viewer if not for the physical exercises. Have you checked his file?”
“Not interested. I care only to get our operation done.”
“Then you’d better look after our boy here, don’t you think? Unless you want to go look at the others we have and hope we find another who’s not so into the serum that he’d be lost within a day or two.”
“Fuck. I don’t trust him.”
“I’m sure he doesn’t trust us either, but we have what he wants and he can give us what we want. And you will, won’t you, Five-One? You know it’s important we get to the weapons before they do. The more successful we are, the more of the juice for you. Right? Nod if you understand me, please.”
He nodded. His monitor, bastard that he was, understood how to get his attention. From listening to their conversation, all the other remote viewers they had tried were all hooked on the high that came with the drug. He was too, in a way, but it was different for him. He wasn’t hooked like a junkie; he just wanted to seek out those secret sexual details from the people he encountered. They looked so damn prim and proper, but what walking storages of sexual energy they were indeed. Whatever happened just now was an anomaly. COMCEN was a fucking weird place, anyway. It didn’t feel “natural” to him, not like when he was remote viewing other locations. He remembered how difficult it was for him to focus, as if there was some kind of other energy interrupting his concentration. And then there was that bitch who was enjoying his collection of energy, and making more for herself. There had to be a way to get it back.