by Rob Horner
There was an answer to why she felt the way she did about Stan. Somehow, in some way, she’d been made to love him. What that meant, and what it portended, were part of the work she still needed to show. She just wasn’t sure she wanted to know the details.
But Travis…was he part of the problem, or the solution?
Considering how mixed up she felt thinking about him, this was something she needed to work out.
The song ended and Sherry shut off further speculation, putting her seat back upright and reaching for the phone. This time, it powered on when she pressed the END/PWR button. The little battery display notified her it was still charging, but the screen came to life with the Verizon logo, and a few seconds later it was ready to use.
Before she could second-guess herself, Sherry keyed in the number Travis gave her and pressed the green TALK key, lifting the phone to her ear. Slower than she was used to with her iPhone, the connection was made. She let the phone ring twice, then disconnected.
Could she have ended all this by not calling him? What would she have been ending?
She couldn’t go back to the way things were; there were too many questions she wanted answers to.
Before she could set the phone back in the little space under the stereo, it rang in her hands.
2
“Hello?”
“Travis?”
“Yeah, Sherry. It’s me.” Sherry shivered at the sound of Travis’s voice and wondered why she reacted that way.
“How did you get my number?” Stupid, she berated herself. Of all the important things she could have asked, she went for the inane.
“From your recall card in the work center,” he answered.
“Oh.” And that response was stupid, too. Where was the logical and intuitive woman of just a few minutes ago? There were a thousand things she wanted to say, probably more that needed to be said, and all she could come up with was oh.
“Listen, Sherry, I know my call probably confused the hell out of you, and I’m grateful that you even agreed to call me back.”
“How could I refuse?” she asked and was thankful her voice sounded closer to normal. With any luck, she might be able to start making sense.
“What do you mean?”
“Didn’t you feel it?”
Here was the moment. Either he would know what she was talking about, would be able to confirm that she wasn’t going crazy and imagining a connection, imagining a whole conspiracy that conveniently let her ignore her marriage, or he wouldn’t. In which case Sherry didn’t know what she’d do.
He hesitated for a moment. “Are you in your car?”
“I…yes.” Tears filled her eyes. He hadn’t answered.
“Turn up your radio and step out,” he instructed. God, he sounded so patient.
Tears began running down her cheeks, but she did as he requested.
“Yes, Sherry. To answer your question: yes, I did feel…something…I still do. It’s like a current—”
“A connection,” she interrupted.
“Yeah, something like that. I don’t know what’s going on, but I’ve found some pretty weird things.
“Like what?” she asked.
“I know this is going to sound crazy, and I hope you don’t take it the wrong way, but I had a dream about you last night.”
No, it doesn’t sound crazy, Sherry wanted to shout. “Me, too,” she replied.
“It was in a hospital. At least, I think it was a hospital, and—” Travis started to explain, then trailed off. “Wait. You had a dream too?”
“Yeah,” Sherry replied. “It was like I was watching a medical movie, or a drama about a plague outbreak, all these doctors dressed in protective clothing gathered around a bed. There was a patient strapped down, but he broke free. And when he sat up, I could tell it was you.”
“Oh my God!” Travis exclaimed. “That’s the exact same dream I had, except it was you strapped to the bed.”
For some reason, the thought of being strapped to a bed in such a way scared the hell out of her.
“What does it mean?” she asked in a whisper.
“I don’t know. But I’m pretty sure someone has been messing with my memory.”
Something clicked in Sherry’s mind. He wasn’t part of the problem, but neither was he the solution. He was in a similar situation, with a similar problem.
“I…your memory?” she asked.
“Yeah. It’s weird, but I have, like, two separate sets of parents in my head. I think I know which ones are real, because one set just doesn’t look right.”
“Like they’re fuzzy?” Sherry asked softly.
“Yeah…fuzzy, that’s exactly how I was thinking of them.”
“Jesus!” she breathed.
“Sounds like you’re going through the same thing.”
“Well—” Sherry hesitated for only a second before deciding, what the hell? “I thought my mom was dead. At least, that’s what my memories are telling me. But those pictures are fuzzy, and I don’t think they’re real.”
“Is she alive?”
“That’s what I’m going to find out.”
“How?”
“By going to her house. I’m from Virginia Beach.”
“Anything else,” he asked.
“Yeah, my marriage,” she replied.
“Your marriage?” Travis sounded shocked.
“I…I think my marriage is a fake. I mean, it’s like one minute I was single and free, a new Boot Camp graduate, and the next I’m starting AT ‘A’ school and I have this husband who doesn’t act like any of the memories I have of him. And those memories are fuzzy too, the same kind of fuzzy as the memories I have of my mom dying.”
Sherry knew she was rambling, but it felt good to speak her fears aloud. That it was to Travis made it even better, though it didn’t make sense that it should. She was startled to feel tears creeping out of her eyes again as the words poured out of her.
“I don’t really know what to think about Stan. He’s not like my memories, and he disappeared last night after dinner. And then I had that dream, and I’m thinking about my mother, so I tried to call her, but the phone number’s been changed to an unlisted number, and I know that doesn’t prove anything but it also doesn’t mean that she’s dead.” Sherry stopped to draw a shuddering breath.
Travis’s voice was softer now, so sympathetic that she knew she’d been right in her impression of him. “Sherry, please, you’re going to need to calm down just a little. People will remember seeing a pretty woman crying outside of her car. The last thing we need to do is draw attention to ourselves.”
Collecting herself, Sherry asked, “What do you mean? Why would people remember me?”
He called me pretty!
“I…listen. Yesterday, just before you came into the shop, I saw some words written in my logbook. They said, ‘You’re being watched,’ but when I asked my coworkers about it later, the words had disappeared.”
Sherry gasped as soon as Travis said the words vanished. How many more coincidences were there between the two of them? She started to tell him about her own experience in McDonald’s, but he was still talking, finishing his story.
“Well, I couldn’t get those words out of my head, especially not after the other things that happened yesterday.”
“What other things?”
“The…well, it was kind of like I got a shock whenever we…um…locked eyes, you know? And I saw something really weird the second time it happened.”
“The circuitry,” Sherry breathed.
“Yeah, that. Wait a minute! You saw that, too?”
Sherry described what she’d seen, her mental trip through a schematic.
“Yeah…I…wow! Listen, we’ve really got to get together and talk about all of this.”
Sherry agreed. But finding her mother was her top priority.
“Okay, you go find your mother. But first let me tell you something. Whoever messed with us is watching us, probably listening as
well.”
“So that’s why all the cloak and dagger with the pre-paid phones?”
“Yeah. I found a microphone and a video camera in my room at the barracks. There was also some kind of transmitter attached to my car.”
“So mine is—”
“Probably wired as well. But don’t try to remove it.”
“Why not?” she asked.
“They’ve got them rigged so they’ll know as soon as you do.”
“Who are they?”
“I wish I knew.”
Sherry’s mind was reeling. What could she do now?
“Listen, if your house was bugged, then they probably already know you’re looking for your mom. It shouldn’t hurt anything for you to go there. In fact, it’ll probably look suspicious if you don’t.”
“I…okay.”
“I have another errand I need to run, and after that we can find some way to get in touch. Did my phone number come up on your caller ID?”
Sherry remembered seeing the strange phone number just before answering the call. “Yeah, I got it.” Now that the initial excitement of talking to Travis had passed, fear was taking its place. She needed to find her mother to prove that her memories, some of them at least, had been tampered with.
“Let’s talk again at ten,” Travis suggested. “Call me then. I’ve found a way to neutralize the transmitter in my car. I’ll leave it somewhere they’re likely to believe I’d spend several hours. You can give me the address where you are, and I’ll come pick you up.”
“All right,” Sherry replied, closing her eyes. That’s all it took. Just a quick plan for the immediate future. Nothing long term. But it was enough to settle her down a bit.
“Are you going to be okay?” he asked, and the concern in his voice was another small chip in Sherry’s defenses. This man just kept getting better.
“I…yeah.”
“Okay, I’ll be waiting to hear from you.”
“I…Travis?”
“Yeah, Sherry?”
But what was she going to say to him? How could she find words to justify something she wasn’t sure she could describe to herself? “Thank you, for helping me. Thank you for calling me.”
“Listen, we’re going to be okay. No matter what happens, we’ll work through it, okay? This…thing…it involves both of us. There’s no way I could not contact you. Whatever else is going on, there’s a connection between us. I’m not going to ignore that.”
“Okay,” Sherry whispered. Then, “I’ll call at ten.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
3
The first outgoing call X-104 made turned out to be a disconnected number. That happened at 7:48, one minute after she woke up. Lieutenant Barnes watched dispassionately as the woman dressed and headed downstairs. He had his right hand on the mouse connected to the far-right computer and was waiting to double click the blue numbers of the recorded calls as they were made on the video, almost like he was listening in real-time.
The next line was another handshake between the monitoring software in Watchtower and X-104’s iPhone.
X-104 sat on the couch, powered on her computer, and spent several minutes frustrated, if her facial expressions meant anything. The laptop was turned the wrong direction for him to see the screen.
“I can find out what she was searching for,” Lisa offered.
“Maybe later,” he replied.
A minute later, X-104 picked up her phone again and Barnes clicked the next blue line, which read: 08122017 0802 411 OUT 1:10. They heard both sides of the conversation between Sherry and the Verizon operator.
“Why’s she calling information for her mother’s phone number?”
“I don’t know,” Lieutenant Barnes answered. Before he could say anything else, the phone rang in X-104’s hand.
He double-clicked the last line.
4
Sherry sat in her Nissan Sentra for several minutes after Travis hung up, drinking her coffee and trying to calm her racing heart. Breaking contact with Travis, even through the nebulous link of a telephone, had felt like losing a part of herself. She wondered if that meant something, like some deeper bond had already started forming between them. Could she really be so reckless? Or was it just another aspect of whatever it was that brought them together?
He hadn’t said anything that implied he felt anything for her. He’d only offered reassurance they would see it through together. Yes, he’d mentioned the same connection, but he hadn’t hinted at romance. That was all in her mind, her very confused and unreliable mind.
But it could happen, couldn’t it?
Sherry found she desperately wanted the answer to be a yes.
5
“Lisa, I need you to establish a secure connection with Captain Manuel Ortega. He’s part of the operational chain of command, and you should have access to his numbers.”
“Yes, sir, of course I do. But what does this mean?”
Lieutenant Barnes didn’t answer, his eyes fixated on the monitor which showed X-104’s living room, and the pale pink object lying on the couch cushion. He hadn’t known what he was seeing at first. But now that he knew it was her iPhone, he couldn’t look away.
“After making the connection, Lisa, I need you to step out of the room and stay out until I come get you.”
“Of course, sir,” she replied.
He knows, Lieutenant Barnes thought. He knows we’ve been watching, and he suspects we’ve been listening. How in God’s name did he figure it out?
“I have Captain Ortega on a secure line, sir,” Lisa said, handing him her headset and rising from her chair.
“Thank you, Lisa. I won’t be long.”
He waited until she left the room before saying, “Captain Ortega?”
The voice of the captain came through the headset speakers, all traces of his usual refined Hispanic accent gone.
“What the hell is so important on a Saturday morning, Barnes? I have a tee time in twenty minutes with the Secretary of the Navy.”
“Sir, X-22 knows he’s being watched and listened to. Just a few moments ago, he contacted X-104 and instructed her to call him back from a pre-paid phone. She left her personal phone at her house when she left.”
“What the hell, Barnes? How did he figure this out? Who told him?”
“From the video, sir, it looks like he worked this out himself. Organically.”
“Don’t you dare backtalk me, Lieutenant Barnes, or you’ll be the first goddamn ensign doing janitorial duty at Gitmo!”
“With all due respect, sir, I might be able to give you better answers if I had better information.” Lieutenant Barnes struggled to control his anger. He shouldn’t have tweaked the captain’s temper with the organically bit, but damn, it felt good. He drew a deep breath. “Early this morning, both subjects woke at the same time. X-22 put on a show of cleaning his barracks room, but I believe he was searching for monitoring devices. Towards the end, he shone a flashlight in the wall grill; he can’t have missed the camera. From that, I surmise he figured out his phone is tapped, too.”
“They woke up at the same time, huh?” Captain Ortega said. “What about the girl? What did she do?”
“Before X-22 contacted her?”
“Yes. Did she go back to bed?”
“For a while, yes. Then she got up and started calling information, looking for her mother.”
“Dammit! She’s supposed to believe her mother’s dead!”
“Why would she need to think that?” Barnes asked.
There was silence on the other end of the line. Barnes began worrying the call had been lost.
“Sorry, Lieutenant. I had to cancel my tee time. Listen, what I’m about to tell you expands your operational knowledge, as you now have need to know.”
“Absolutely, sir.”
“X-104 suffered setbacks in her initial processing. No, I will not go into anything about that processing with you. Suffice it to say, although she was paired with X-22 initially, i
t didn’t look like she would make it through the program. X-22, considering his intelligence, was already cleared for avionics, so he got put on NAS Oceana. Damn near two and a half years later, here comes X-104, ready to be placed at the same duty station.”
“Did they have to be together?” Barnes asked.
“Yes, it’s part of the program. The devil’s in the details, as it so often is. Somewhere along the way, after they were paired but before X-22 was placed here, it was forgotten that X-104 is from the area.”
“Why should that matter?”
“Above your need to know, Lieutenant. Now stop interrupting me. X-104 is supposed to believe her mother is dead so she won’t seek her out. That she is searching is very troublesome and calls into question the guarantees that were made about the program.”
“Understood, sir.”
“Good. Now listen. I’m going to fly down there as soon as I can get to the Pentagon and commandeer a helicopter. I need you to get your technician back in the booth and get me real-time data about where the subjects are and where they’re going. I’m going to text you an access code that will activate audio monitoring in X-104’s mother’s house.”
“You had her bugged?”
“We prepared for this eventuality, Lieutenant. We tried to prepare for every eventuality. Your technician can probably access other points as needed. Agent Travers, are you receiving all of this?”
“Who—” Lieutenant Barnes started to ask.
“Loud and clear, Captain,” the new voice, a deep rumble, answered.
“Lieutenant Barnes, Agent Travers is the senior agent for both Bassett and Frazier. He also has operational command of a Strike-Ops team and can secure our wayward subjects if necessary.”
Lieutenant Barnes couldn’t believe how quickly things were spiraling out of his control.