by Rob Horner
“I won’t let you down, sir,” Travers responded.
“Get your team in position near Bassett’s house,” Ortega ordered. “If you need to grab X-22, that’s probably where he’ll be. Even if you don’t need to take him, it’ll be simple to pick up his trail from there and follow discreetly. You keep monitoring, Lieutenant Barnes. No one moves without my authority!”
The line went dead. Barnes sat and stared at the monitor showing the pink phone on X-104’s couch. He could feel the shit piling up at the top of the mountain. It was there, waiting, an avalanche about to bury him.
Why was it so important for X-104 to believe her mother was dead? The captain had blown off the question, but it seemed very important to Barnes. He recalled what he’d seen while looking through the personnel records last night. X-104 had gone off the grid for almost three years. During that time, she was being—what was the word he used? —processed. Such a long absence would have worried any mother. He could only assume X-104 was allowed no contact with the outside during that time. Her mother would have asked questions, would have demanded answers. Unless…
Unless she’d been told her daughter was dead.
But how could unraveling one lie threaten an entire project?
That question might be the most important. He needed to figure out the answer before the avalanche hit.
Taking off the headset, he opened the door and yelled down the stairs for Lisa to return.
6
Sherry was barely able to hold a solid train of thought as she left the Target parking lot, following Holland Road until it became Independence Boulevard. Her thoughts kept flickering like the images in her dream, from one end of the emotional spectrum to the other. She was scared because her car was being tracked, and anywhere she went was no secret to those watching her. She was nervous about seeing her mother, or of finding out the woman was gone and she’d gotten her hopes up for nothing. She was excited by the prospect of recovering her stolen life, but the incomprehensible manner in which it had been stolen terrified her further, because how could she fight that? She’d been forced to accept a strange man into her life, into her body, which infuriated her.
How could they…?
Who would do…?
So many questions.
Perhaps the only thing keeping her from pulling over and pitching a hair-yanking screaming fit was the thought of Travis, her fellow sufferer. He knew what she was going through. And he’d promised to stand beside her, to help her, even as he helped himself. No matter what happened between them, if anything, he was the best person she could have on her side. She was grateful for that.
Independence Boulevard crossed Virginia Beach Boulevard at Pembroke Mall, continuing north, eventually running all the way to Shore Drive. She wasn’t going that far. Barely two miles past Virginia Beach Boulevard was the turn-off for Witchduck Road. How many times had she driven past this area in the last few months and not once thought about visiting her old home? Even if her mother was dead, how could she have avoided coming over here, if only to reminisce?
Sherry turned left onto Witchduck, following it past Jericho Road, then Aragona Boulevard. On her right was the Aragona Cemetery, where her mother was supposedly buried. Sherry had to fight still-life images of the burial service that threatened to drive out other thoughts.
Those were fuzzy. They had to be false.
Just past the cemetery was the right turn leading into the Westchester Courts neighborhood. Making the right, then an immediate left, Sherry aimed her Sentra for Westchester Courtyard, just another wide street with a big circle at the end. Opening off Titan Drive, the courtyard featured a dozen homes built in a variety of styles. Turning, she spotted the red brick ranch-style house where she’d grown up. And there, parked in the driveway, was the blue 2005 Pontiac Grand Am her mother drove. It was—her memory struggled to inform her—the same car she’d been driving when the drunk hit her, forcing her off the road and into a tree.
The visual before her put the lie to the memory.
The car looked perfect, a little road-weary and in need of a wash, but certainly not like a vehicle that had once been wrapped around a tree.
Still, she found it hard to shake the memory, and the contradiction—what her mind insisted had happened versus what she could plainly see before her—caused her eyesight to blur. A pounding started in her head, a pulsing ache behind both eyes, like one half of her brain was at war with the other. She blinked once, twice, and the blue car solidified. The false memory receded, then vanished.
Sherry parked her Nissan behind the Grand Am.
She didn’t care that her tail end was hanging off the driveway.
She barely registered that she left her door open as she jumped out.
The only thing going through her mind as she rushed up the driveway to the front door, passing the dogwood tree in the little parcel of earth that marked the front yard, was that she was here, that she’d come home, and that everything looked so perfect.
Her finger trembled visibly as she reached for the doorbell.
The faint chime was so familiar that Sherry almost broke out in tears again.
“Coming,” a female voice called from within, and Sherry let loose a ragged sob.
That was her mother’s voice!
“Mom!” she shouted, unable to wait.
Then the door was opening, and the face of a middle-aged woman appeared, delicately lined and with intelligent gray eyes. At first the features showed suspicion, as though the woman doubted what she’d heard through the door. But the eyes, those beautiful eyes, how they widened with surprise, the mouth dropping open in astonishment.
“Sh…Sherry?” Victoria Galer asked, her voice no more than a whisper.
Sherry nodded mutely, her body giving way to the wracking sobs tearing through her.
“Oh my God, Sherry!” she exclaimed, finding her voice. Victoria reached for her daughter.
Sherry returned the embrace with all the strength of a daughter’s love, sobbing uncontrollably as the last vestiges of planted memories fell to ruin.
“Oh baby,” her mother crooned, her own voice shaky with tears. “They told me you were dead!”
7
Lisa was back in the pilot’s chair. The video images of the empty barracks room and X-104’s house had been shut off. Now the first monitor displayed a blank screen with a speaker on it. It was broadcasting an audio feed from Agent Bassett’s house, though the only sound coming from it was an incomprehensible chattering, like that from a television or radio set to low volume and being heard from behind a wall.
The second monitor showed a similar scene, a speaker over darkness, broadcasting silence from the home of one Victoria Galer, the dead-but-not-dead mother of X-104.
The third monitor displayed a bare bones topographical map, a red dot centered on the screen. The dot didn’t appear to move; rather, the map moved around the dot. The dot was labeled S.A. and showed the route X-104 was taking to her mother’s house, though it had only just begun changing. She’d apparently been idle outside a Target for some time.
They were tracking X-22 on a fourth monitor. Lieutenant Barnes understood that, at any time, both targets could be visualized on the same screen, but they needed to be in closer proximity, or the intervening roads would be too small to identify. His dot was labeled T.W.
Barnes wondered if he should begin thinking about them by name, rather than their respective code numbers. Maybe if he could humanize them, he could understand them. If he could understand them, he could anticipate them, find a way to regain some control over the situation.
As things stood, he could see himself being dismissed from the project, even if both subjects—both Travis and Sherry—were brought in peacefully. After all, if they were brought in, it was unlikely they would go back to their normal lives, which would mean no one would need a Lieutenant Barnes to monitor them. He’d be forgotten, a one-time part of a defunct project. That was the best outcome. At the worst…well…maybe he knew enoug
h to be dangerous to certain people. And there was a strike force stationed nearby…
Captain Ortega hinted that some process had been performed on them, that it had taken much longer to work on…Sherry…than it had on Travis. Part of that process had to do with making her believe her mother was dead.
How did you make someone believe something like that? Do you stage a funeral? Do you go all out with a big production, fly the person from Illinois back to Virginia Beach? Did you fake news articles and print a false obituary? What about friends and family? A quick Facebook search revealed Victoria Galer had at least one other daughter, who was married with two children. When asked to backtrack Victoria’s Facebook feed, Lisa found dozens of postings regarding Sherry’s death, with hundreds of comments from friends and family on each, expressing disbelief, shouting outrage, offering encouragement, words of spiritual uplifting, and the requisite smattering of nuts who blamed a government cover-up.
At least this time, the nuts were right.
“Sir, I found an audio feed from the woman’s car. It’s kind of hard to make out; there’s music in the background, and then it disappears after a few seconds…”
“Play it,” he ordered.
There was a faint sound of a phone ringing. Then a broken conversation. Lisa turned knobs, clicked things with her mouse, and the background music faded noticeably.
Travis? Silence. How did you get my number? Silence. Oh.
The music sounded like something from The Cover Girls, Barnes thought. We Can’t Go On, maybe.
How could I refuse? Silence. Didn’t you feel it?
I…yes.
Then the volume of the music increased, and there was the sound of the car door opening and closing.
“He told her to get out of the car,” Lieutenant Barnes said quietly. “He knew it was bugged.”
For years, Barnes had watched Travis, never knowing why. He’d assumed he would be given more information about the project, especially after Sherry arrived. He’d been all but assured that an assignment like this would show his worth to the Navy, that he could be more than a middle manager over a personnel department. His own pride and ambition had enabled them to play him, and now he might be forced out of the assignment empty-handed. Or worse.
Both cars were moving, getting closer to their destinations.
What would his destination be?
What could make a daughter believe her mother was dead aside from seeing the body, attending the funeral?
“Why, they could be brainwashed to believe just about anything, like in those Maze Runner movies,” Lisa answered, shocking the lieutenant. He hadn’t meant to ask the question aloud. Her matter-of-fact tone showed she believed this was at least plausible and not purely a science fiction trope.
Could he discount it as science fiction?
She’d been processed for almost three years.
They had been paired before.
How far-fetched was it to consider brainwashing? Hell, it might even be the lesser intrusion. Captain Ortega also referred to them as an experiment. Anything to do with brainwashing had to be experimental, didn’t it?
What about those unexplained lapses in their service records?
Everything pointed to Illinois.
Whatever else, they were both Naval Aviation Electronics Technicians, intellectually among the best of the best the Navy had to offer. Left free, they could probably work this out, get answers for themselves and for him.
Lieutenant Barnes made his decision.
“Lisa, I need you to make sure the cameras stay on in Travis’s barracks room, and in Sherry’s house.”
“You don’t think they’ll go back to one of them, do you?” she asked.
“Make sure they keep recording, just in case. You wouldn’t want to be the one who missed something, would you?”
“God, no!” she exclaimed.
“I’m stepping outside for a minute. I need some fresh air.”
“Don’t take too long, sir. Looks like Sherry just stopped, and Travis should be getting close to his destination.”
Chapter 10
Travis
1
Travis felt the loss of contact with Sherry like a physical emptiness inside his body. That he should feel connected to her because of their shared circumstances was beyond doubt, but it didn’t explain the other feeling growing inside of him. He couldn’t deny the hope that surged through him when she mentioned her certainty that her marriage was fake. What if that were true? What if she wasn’t really married?
Why did that matter so much?
He pictured Angela and wondered that he could consider something with Sherry when he already had such a lovely woman waiting for him.
Travis was on his way to Angela’s house when Sherry called, so he’d pulled over in an IHOP parking lot before calling back. Now, before getting back into his car, he dropped his smartphone on the ground and stomped on it several times. The crunch of the glass was cathartic. He kicked the smashed phone behind his left rear tire, then got into his car and backed over it, one last nail in the coffin.
Angela. What was he going to do about the pretty blond?
Though he’d only known her for six months, he was more attached to her than to any of the other women he’d known in the past five years. There hadn’t been that many, he thought ruefully, a fact he could only blame on himself.
Travis didn’t think of himself as a shallow man and he hoped his relationships proved it. He liked to move slowly, take the time to build a friendship before going any further. With Angela, that had been easy. From the very beginning she understood him better than anyone else. She was intelligent and able to carry a conversation over almost any subject. More importantly, she was a good listener, a quality Travis tried to emulate.
But there was something preventing their relationship from progressing beyond boyfriend-girlfriend.
As he followed Holland Road onto Independence Boulevard, Travis tried to reason why.
He was happy when they were together, and he couldn’t deny there were times when he counted the hours until he could see her again. There was just…something about her, something a little distant. It felt like a part of her life, a part of who she was, lay hidden behind an invisible barrier he hadn’t been able to breach. Surely that was his fault, some failure of his that he hadn’t overcome. Perhaps if he were a little more attentive, more loving, he could overcome that barrier. Every time their conversations turned to discussion of a more permanent arrangement, Angela shied away, not as though she were afraid of such a commitment, but more like she didn’t believe that he was capable of it.
And now there was this new thing, this connection with Sherry. Even if it was premature to think of her in any way other than as a fellow dinner guest at a surprise Escape Room party, he couldn’t deny the strange things happening between them? What if those previous experiences were only the beginning?
Who would want to be in a relationship with him, always on the outside looking in, never able to share the kinds of things he may be able to share with someone else?
Shaking his head, he tried to discard that train of thought. Right here and now, on the drive to Angela’s house, the only thing that mattered was what he planned to tell her when he arrived.
Working through the sparse traffic, he slipped into the left lane, waiting on the light that would put him on Virginia Beach Boulevard heading west. He followed the boulevard for several miles, finally turning right onto Newtown Road. He made a left at the next light, Baker Street, eventually pulling into the parking lots of the Harbor Crest Apartments. Angela’s silver Ford Fusion sat in its assigned spot, with an empty guest space beside it. As Travis parked his Focus next to the Fusion, he had a flash of worry—call it a premonition—that this might be the last time he came to visit her. Shaking his head, he tried to dispel his doubts.
His in-dash clock read 8:55. He was right on time.
2
Outside of Watchtower, Lieutenant Barnes sto
od in the parking lot, eyes closed against the early morning light. The morning August sun warmed his place and lit the dark places behind his eyelids.
It came down to a simple choice between doing right by himself and doing right by his country.
How do you choose, when doing your job means undermining your own advancement potential?
If only he knew more about these people, the captain and the agents. If only he knew more about the program Travis and Sherry were involved with.
He didn’t consider this a moral question between right and wrong. Those were archaic concepts of a fabricated society, a lie told to the wives and children who waited for husbands and fathers that would never return, dead on a cold battlefield in a war they fought for all the wrong reasons. Patriotism, that was a good reason to die, but it had to be honest. Blindly yelling “Hoorah” and shooting at someone because someone else told you to, that was no better than a dog who attacked because a command word was given.
Tell me that we’re fighting to secure oil rights in Kuwait, and I’m your man. Tell me you want to kill Saddam Hussein in order to finish what your daddy started, and I’m your man.
Those were honest reasons to fight.
Tell me to just sit back and watch any chance I have of getting out of this rut called personnel management evaporate because someone else screwed the pooch? Hell no!
Lieutenant Barnes tapped in a quick text message to his brother, took a deep breath, and hit SEND.
Then he waited.
A minute passed. Then another. He didn’t worry his message would be ignored. Like many close siblings, there were enough skeletons buried in their collective closets to populate a graveyard. One specific event ensured his brother would always help him with a request like this.
Family loyalty, now that was a reason a man could go to war.
His phone buzzed. The return text read ORF UA SUN 1700.
Lieutenant Barnes did a quick check through his contacts list and committed a number to memory before powering off his iPhone and walking over to his car. Ducking down behind the vehicle, out of sight of the security camera, he selected a fist-sized rock and smashed the screen. He hit it three more times, not stopping until the screen was completely gone and the casing burst open, exposing the electronic guts. He removed the sim card, shoving it deep into the right front pocket of his khaki pants, and casually tossed the remains of his phone into the trunk of his car.