The Primus Labyrinth

by Scott Overton

  That knowledge came from skill born only of long experience. Fortunately, his tenure in the shadow world had enabled him to recognize most of the petty ploys and ignore them before they cost precious time. Even better, and only after many years, he had come to recognize the styles and trademark techniques of the professional cover-up artist. Small telltales revealed that there was an identity behind them, although too often that identity remained undiscoverable.

  True masters of concealment, the real geniuses of the clandestine culture, he had come to identify for his own purposes by letters of the Greek alphabet: alpha, beta, and so on. The best he had ever encountered, he called Omega. That one truly reached everywhere with abilities that spoke of the highest level of power and influence. Mannis, the Silent Man, whose connections gave him access to the finest investigative resources in the world, had never learned Omega’s identity or whereabouts. He had never even come close, so he rarely tried anymore.

  Until now.

  After the near-deadly sabotage to his car, Mannis had also survived both a hit-and-run attempt and a fire that had badly damaged his well-guarded apartment. Since then, he slept in his office, or sometimes in an obscure hotel under a false identity created just hours before. His pursuit of the perpetrators behind the president’s current crisis had become even more obsessive. All of his resources had been focused on this one labor, yet he’d encountered brick wall after brick wall. The work of a master.

  Omega.

  The futility of pursuit in itself was an answer. It confirmed his immediate suspicions that the ones he was looking for were no idealistic international terrorists, but denizens of the highest realms of power in the western world.

  Could they be stopped? It was hard to imagine how. Even Mannis, with all the powers of the presidency behind him, might be outmatched.

  He had exhausted nearly all leads. One of his remaining few involved a faint rumor pieced together from scraps of intercepted conversation on cellular phone frequencies. It suggested that several international mercenaries and some right-wing ex-military types had gathered together on American soil for an unknown mission. Their whereabouts were also unknown, but clues hinted at a half-dozen possibilities: two in Virginia, one each in Maryland and Delaware, and the others in Wyoming and Nebraska. The western sites didn’t concern him—they were unlikely staging areas for an attack on the project at Langley AFB. The intelligence was shaky—it might cause him to waste time none of them could afford, but what else could he do? Wait around in Washington until they got to him first?

  No, he would go into the field... track down those potential sites himself, keep his lines of communication open with Langley AFB and pray for some good news.

  # # #

  “They have guards posted at each corner of the building, plus double guards at the entranceways here, here, and here.”

  Kowalski leaned over the diagram, tapped it hard with a forefinger, took a drag from his cigarette and moved his hand in a circular motion.

  “Then there are eight more guards patrolling this area about fifty yards out. There are a half-dozen other observer outposts at any given time, but those are unpredictable because they’re changed every day so the regular base personnel won’t suspect anything. The observers are small groups of soldiers dressed to look like road construction, sewer maintenance, or landscaping crews. Even telephone repairmen. They aren’t hard to spot.

  “At night they are replaced with camouflaged teams of two, very skilled at blending into the surroundings.” He nodded with grudging respect as he drew in another lungful of smoke. “Signs have been posted indicating that it is a restricted area, but the whole thing is low-key, meant to be unobtrusive. The laboratory security people must know there’s talk on the base, but they still want to call as little attention to the facility as possible.”

  “That’s why there’s no heavy armament?” Rakov asked.

  “Exactly. The guards have side arms and standard issue rifles only. Anything more would be a giveaway that something high-level is going on there.” Kowalski smiled with half his mouth, the other end of the upper lip paralyzed by a knife wound that had left a pale scar. “Only the base commander and his second-in-command know the real story. Now you.”

  “What about this vacant zone between the outer ring of guards and the building itself?” Chavez pointed. “Are they using some kind of passive alarm system there?”

  “They tried,” Kowalski replied. “But birds kept tripping it. That’s what it looked like to me.” He laughed. “Each time it happened, it showed me a little more of their defenses as everyone scrambled to respond. So they recently removed the sensors, and haven’t replaced them.”

  Chavez shook his head. “Are you absolutely sure this is the right facility? I can’t believe the defenses would be so feeble for a target like this.”

  Kellogg responded. “I’m sure there was a big argument over that, but the president absolutely cannot risk a leak... to the press, or to enemy interests who might take advantage of the situation. Obviously he got his way, but now it will cost him.”

  “Still,” Hennings spoke for the first time, “these are only the defenses that can be seen. They must have taken other precautions to monitor the air space. Or the shoreline?” As their underwater expert, Hennings was bound to ask about that.

  “Absolutely,” Kowalski confirmed. “The base has underwater defenses active at all times, but they’re really meant to detect submarines, and they are fairly old. New, passive listening devices have been placed here and here,” and he touched the map, “but they’re portables and there are gaps in their coverage. The route I plan for us to take through here,” drawing a fingernail along the paper, “will take us through the biggest gap—as long as our navigation is perfect.” He looked up at Hennings. “Which is why you’re with us.” The other acknowledged the compliment with a quiet nod.

  “Back to the guards for a minute.” Romero, their communications specialist had his hand raised slightly, a holdover from his academy days only seven years earlier. “They must be in communication with each other. Regular check-in times and all of that? If we’re going to take them out one-by-one with suppressed weapons—I assume that’s the plan—then how do we get through three layers of them without anyone missing a check-in and giving the game away?”

  “No-one will miss a check-in,” Kellogg answered. “Because we will be in possession of the necessary code words.” His matter-of-fact statement silenced the room.

  “Jesus,” the ex-commando called Branson muttered under his breath. “This one is deep.”

  “As for the rest,” Kellogg added with a cold smile. “Remember that we’re talking about a building in the middle of a United States Air Force base. Within five minutes of an alarm being raised, fifty marines on standby will be charging across that tarmac from only a quarter-mile away. Within ten minutes, half the population of the base will be at their disposal.”

  “In other words, getting in will be child’s play for us.” He gazed out the window at the clear blue Carolina sky. “But if there is the slightest mistake, getting out will take a pact with the devil himself.”

  53

  “Don’t worry, I was the only one in the control room.” Bridges flashed white teeth. “Your secret is safe with me. For now.”

  “What secret?” Hunter tried, not expecting much from the gambit.

  “Only the fact that you can control Primus without being anywhere near the VR equipment.” The doctor sat down casually on the bed, doing his best to make the other man feel comfortable. “That’s quite a bit more than we expected.”

  “Than you...? What do you mean, expected?”

  Bridges’ face creased into the Cheshire cat grin of a man with a secret that he is finally able to reveal. “You must have wondered why we picked you for this mission when many others have the basic qualifications and less... baggage?” He watched Hunter give a hesitant nod. “Do you remember participating in some psych
ology experiments while you were in college? Your first semester, I believe. A rather lengthy series of interviews, but you volunteered for them.”

  “One of the psych students’ assignments. We didn’t exactly volunteer, though, the coach volunteered us. What does that...?”

  “Well, they weren’t really psychology tests. Perhaps parapsychology would be closer to the truth. I don’t think the students themselves knew that. Their professor was an old colleague of mine, Daniel Lesker. His real passion was psychic ability— everything from so-called ESP, to precognition, to the simple intuition that most of us possess to some degree.”

  “I fit into this because...?” Hunter asked.

  “You can guess what I’m about to say. Perhaps you’ve known it all along, subconsciously. You had the highest score for psychic aptitude, Hunter. By far. One of the highest scores Lewis had seen in five years of testing. Your name went into a private database, available only to a select number of researchers in the field, but no-one had any reason to make use of that information, until this little... project came along.”

  He shifted slightly to watch Hunter’s face.

  “You must have recognized that you have much stronger intuition than most. Powerful dreams, frequent deja vu? I don’t mean reading people’s minds, or moving objects with your thoughts. The ability rarely manifests itself that way.” Bridges tugged at an eyebrow. “In any case, that wasn’t what we were looking for.”

  “We?” The word had broken through the younger man’s daze.

  “Devon was involved in the choice, of course. How could he not be? We knew that we had a fantastically sophisticated submersible with tremendous potential, but when most people tried to pilot it, the interface proved to be too demanding. Not only did we feel that an experienced submariner would have an advantage, but we suspected that something more than mere virtual reality might be required. Given the incredibly small scale we were dealing with, we knew we might need a whole new approach to the communication involved.” He rubbed his chin. “That part we kept to ourselves. Our funders would have had a stroke. Yet we were right! Here you are, and look at the amazing things you can do!”

  “You—and Devon Kierkegaard—believe that I do what I do because of psychic ability?” Hunter asked, feeling his way slowly.

  “Are you going to tell me differently?”

  The younger man hesitated, then said, “No. I don’t know what else to call it.” He dropped limply onto the bed beside the doctor. “At first, I thought I was going off the deep end. And then… well it still feels like voodoo or something.”

  “There is a scientific explanation,” Bridges continued. “Skylar Tyson would tell you that your connection to Primus taps into something called wave interference patterns in the zero-point field. It’s a concept that many scientists forcefully ridicule, and others claim can explain nearly all psychic phenomena.”

  “I’ve never heard of it.”

  “Not surprising. A significant theory in quantum physics postulates that at the very deepest level of the universe there is a field of primal energy out of which comes a froth of sub-atomic particles—some call them virtual particles, because they exist for immeasurably short instances of time, yet they are the blocks upon which everything else is built and kept stable.” The doctor smiled. “My understanding of it is very basic, but I am told the concept has gained wide acceptance. What is not so widely accepted is that this so-called zero-point field is an underlying repository of all of the information that makes the universe function.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Skylar is. Though he’s embarrassed to have it connected to the supernatural.”

  “Connected how?”

  “Those who believe in such things propose that human minds attuned to the zero-point field can somehow make use of its information. Communicate across vast distances. Or across time. See the future. Maybe even change it.”

  “You’re not telling me you believe that.” Hunter didn’t know whether to laugh or grab a stiff drink.

  “I don’t know what to believe,” Bridges replied. “All I will say is that the evidence is intriguing. What really matters is that when the results of certain experiments pointed to a connection between the Primus interface and the zero-point field, Devon made an intuitive leap. Reasoning that it just might provide a critical advantage, he decided to look for someone who showed signs of being attuned to the field. He found you.”

  Hunter struggled with his voice. “Why didn’t you tell me? Save me so much grief. Let me know what to expect?”

  “That’s a big part of why we didn’t. If you had pre-formed expectations, it might not have worked at all. Abilities such as these almost always develop as part of the mind’s own intuitive processes, because it needs them. How can you contrive something like that? Besides,” he smiled, “would you have believed us? Or would you have thought we were the crazy ones?”

  Hunter grudgingly admitted the truth of that. If there’d been any suggestion of the paranormal about the project, he would have turned them down flat.

  The doctor stood with knee joints protesting, and began to pace, as much as the tiny room would allow.

  “There’s so much I want to ask you, like how well it works, what it feels like. Are there any side effects?” He arched an eyebrow. “But first there’s something else I need to tell you… and you may never trust me again once I do.” He stopped pacing and took a deep breath. “We implanted a device in your body. In your neck.”

  “What!” Hunter jumped to his feet.

  “Please hear me out before you do anything violent.”

  “What kind of device?”

  “Something very small, I promise you. These people are the experts in nanotechnology, remember. Implanting it only required a kind of large hypodermic needle, like putting a radio frequency ID chip in your dog.”

  “You’re dodging the question, Doctor,” Hunter growled. “What does it do?”

  “Part of it is simply a monitor that measures certain of your body’s vital signs and brain activity, and then transmits the information to receiving equipment in the laboratory.”

  “And the other part?

  “Yes, well, the other part is . . . experimental, but it has produced encouraging results in others. Without any harm,” he added quickly. “It’s implanted in your neck so as to be next to a part of the brain stem called the thalamus. Have you heard of it?”

  Hunter nodded. “Sure. I remember you talking about the patient’s thalamus once. Kierkegaard said it was where sensory information passes through to the brain.”

  “Very good. It is also the part of the brain with the greatest body of evidence linking it to what we consider psychic phenomena. Scans show that psychic functions are often associated with increased activity within the thalamus. We wanted to... stimulate that.”

  Hunter’s face was as blank as a mannequin’s as he struggled to comprehend.

  “Why. Why would you even consider something like that?”

  Bridges looked as if he needed to sit down. Instead, he swallowed hard and continued.

  “You weren’t the first pilot of the Primus. There was a young man named Travis Li—a gamer, with lightning-fast reflexes and other skills we were sure would be enough for the job. Except they weren’t. His brain apparently couldn’t handle the overload. It needed help. We came to believe that a certain amount of psychic ability would provide just enough of an edge, and we knew of an experimental means to give that ability a boost.”

  Hunter suddenly remembered the morning he had awakened with unexpected pain in his neck. “You implanted hardware into my neck to artificially stimulate my brain? Who the hell gave you the right to do that?”

  “No one. You have every right to be angry. At first I was dead set against the idea myself. But… well, it began to look like it might be the only way. As I said, in testing done by others, the device had provided significant results and caused no discernible harm.
”

  “No harm! Do you know what I’ve been going through?” Hunter nearly screamed, stepping close to the smaller man.

  “I’m so terribly sorry,” Bridges abjectly shook his head. “So much was at stake. Even so, we were wrong to keep it from you. It was… criminal—I know that. If you want to break my nose or knock out some of my teeth, I won’t blame you.” He stood there defenseless, ready to accept his punishment.

  Hunter slowly unclenched his fists, and turned away.

  Finally, he asked, “Are you going to tell Kierkegaard? About how I control Primus?”

  The psychologist’s shoulders slumped in relief. “No. No, I’m not. He suspects, I know, but he has no real evidence. If he did, I’m not sure he could keep it from his superiors, as bizarre as it would sound to them, and...” His face was forlorn as he looked into the younger man’s eyes. “If the government learns what you can do with your mind they will never let you go.”

  That hadn’t even occurred to Hunter. The prospect was as frightening as anything he had so far imagined.

  “What do we do now?” he asked in a subdued voice.

  “Now,” Bridges rubbed his hands together and sat back on the bed. “Tell me everything. Tell me what it’s like?”

  # # #

  He didn’t tell Bridges about his forays into their patient’s psyche. When he was alone again, he went to the nearest available computer.

  It was a wasted effort. The first lady didn’t have an uncle named Frank. No uncles, no great-uncles… only a distant cousin named Francis a few years younger than her, who’d always lived on the West Coast. He couldn’t even find any record of friends of the family named Frank. Maybe it was a dead end. Maybe he was wrong about the name.