Sleeper Code

by Thomas E. Sniegoski

Madison was feeling incredibly uncomfortable and was about to excuse herself from their conversation when she noticed a strange look appear on Tom’s face.

  And then he went suddenly rigid, his head snapping back violently as he lurched to one side.

  “Tom?” she asked, reaching out to him.

  “Not … now,” he said in a whisper, falling backward into the table and then to the ground.

  “Oh my God!” she shrieked, dropping to her knees beside him. Madison watched, horrified—helpless—as Tom’s eyes slowly began to close. There was such fear in his expression.

  “It’s going to be okay,” she told him, taking his hand in hers. She fought to keep her voice from quavering. “Remember what I said; I know these things.”

  Mason Lovett came through the doorway and stood beside her.

  “Excuse me, Madison,” he said, practically pushing her out of the way. “We’ll take it from here.”

  She moved out of his way as Tom’s mother ran out onto the deck. The two of them pulled the unconscious boy to his feet and half carried, half dragged him back into the house.

  Madison didn’t know how long she stood there, expecting at least one of Tom’s parents to come out and tell her how he was doing, but nobody came. And after a while, certain that she had been forgotten in all the activity, she climbed the fence back to her aunt and uncle’s yard. The vision of Tom falling unconscious flashed again and again before her eyes.

  A sight she would never forget.

  Chapter 9

  The eleven o’clock news had already begun, and Madison was still too wound up to call it a night. She had put the television on in her room, hoping that it would lull her to sleep. Hours later, she still couldn’t get over the image of Tom Lovett crumpling to the ground.

  After a few minutes she gave up, grabbed her pillows, stuffed them behind her back, and opened her journal in her lap.

  Her eyes skimmed the entries she had made over the last couple of days and she smiled. Almost every one of them had a reference to Tom. She glanced out the window, biting her lip, and again wondered if he was all right. It didn’t matter that they had just met; Tom felt like the one solid thing in her life right then, and all she wanted to think about was spending more time with him.

  Jotting down the date and time, Madison began her entry. Her writing had become almost stream of consciousness, unfiltered thoughts and feelings spilling onto the empty page. Tonight she would write about her experience at Tom’s house. She was surprised at how much detail she remembered, as if her eyes had been cameras, taking mental pictures of everything she had seen. The first thing she recalled was Tom’s smile when he opened the door and how warm it made her feel to think that somebody was actually that happy to see her. She liked that smile. She could definitely get used to seeing it every day.

  Madison paused, looking up from her journal at the television. A newswoman with perfectly styled blond hair was reading a story about a local politician arrested for drunk driving and how this was his seventh offense.

  Sucks to be you, dude, she thought, going back to writing.

  It was odd, but she had noticed that Tom didn’t look like either one of his parents. Sure, his dad was sort of tall and thin like Tom and his mom had the same sandy blond hair, but there was usually more of a family resemblance, something that made it obvious they shared the same genes. She had inherited her father’s slightly protruding ears and fair skin and her mother’s nose. When she was standing side by side with her parents, there was no mistaking whose kid she was. In Tom’s case, though, she just didn’t see it.

  Madison leaned her head back against her pillows and closed her eyes. She was starting to feel tired. Closing her journal, she leaned over to the nightstand and opened the drawer, placing the book inside. She slid the drawer closed and was thinking about brushing her teeth when something on the news broadcast caught her attention—they were saying something about narcolepsy.

  Madison crawled down to the foot of the bed, listening to the story. The scene switched from the anchor desk to a film of a lake in Maine. There were boats and divers in the water and the voice-over said that they were searching for a man who had been reported missing by his sister.

  Madison was just about to dismiss what she thought she had heard when the missing man’s name was read: Quentin.

  Isn’t that the name of Tom’s illness? Quentin’s narcolepsy? She was almost sure it was.

  She listened more closely.

  The story went on to describe Quentin as a Boston native and Harvard Medical School graduate who specialized in narcolepsy and in 1980 had been responsible for the discovery of a rare version of the sleep disorder that bore his name.

  Madison was riveted, staring at the television screen as black-and-white photographs of Bernard Quentin were shown—one of them of the smiling man wearing a tuxedo and accepting some sort of award.

  The newscaster returned and finished up the story by saying Quentin had been living at his Maine cabin since his retirement in the early spring and had not been heard from since late May, when he had last spoken to his sister. The search of the lake and surrounding woods would continue at sunup.

  How weird is that? Madison thought, rolling onto her back to look at the ceiling. She made a mental note to be sure to tell Tom all about it, but she wondered how long it would be this time until she saw him again.

  The bed beneath her was beginning to feel incredibly comfortable, her eyes growing heavier. She forced herself to roll off the bed and walk over to the television to turn it off. On the way she passed the window and glanced through the sheer curtains at the Lovetts’ house next door.

  There was a black van parked in the driveway, its engine idling as if waiting for somebody.

  Madison turned off the television and then the lamp, plunging the room into darkness. She padded back to the window.

  Who could be over there at this hour? she wondered, standing to the side of the window so she couldn’t be seen from the driveway. She checked the van’s side to see if there was any writing on it. It was blank, its reflective surface shining in the light that emanated from the Lovetts’ house.

  At that moment three figures exited the garage, approaching the van very quickly.

  What’s the rush? she wondered, noticing how they were all dressed in dark clothes. One of the men climbed into the driver’s seat while another slid open the side door of the vehicle for the smallest of the three to crawl into the back.

  The smallest of the three. There was something about that one—the way he moved. She pulled back the curtain for a better look. Something familiar.

  The light from the driveway caught the side of the third person’s face just as he was about to disappear into the belly of the van.

  It was Tom Lovett.

  There has to be a mistake, she told herself, watching as the second of the three men quickly slid the door closed and climbed in on the passenger side. The van backed down the driveway into the street.

  Her heart hammered in her chest as she got in bed and pulled the covers tightly around herself. Who were those men, and why would they be taking Tom out so late and so soon after a narcoleptic attack?

  Madison had felt like something was up with Tom, more than what he or his family admitted, but now it was becoming clear. Tom and his parents were most definitely involved in something, and Madison had the feeling it wasn’t anything good.

  The trap had been set, and all Tremain had to do was sit back and wait for it to be sprung.

  He sat at a small circular table wedged into the motel room’s corner, its wooden surface mottled with years of burns and deep gouges. An unopened pack of cigarettes lay at the table’s center, and it took all the strength that he could muster not to tear it open and light one up, followed by a second and likely a third.

  This was at least the sixth time he’d done this since deciding to quit, and he wasn’t entirely sure why he had. Maybe it was a challenge, he guessed, to see if he was strong enough to o
vercome the temptation. If he could manage that, then he would be strong enough to deal with just about anything life could throw at him.

  And life had been tossing some pretty wild stuff his way lately.

  He had taken the job with Pandora for all the right reasons. Tremain wanted to see the world remain safe, but in recent years he had come to realize the world contained a lot more danger than he ever could fathom.

  He reached across the table, taking hold of the cigarette package, admiring the red-and-white box more closely. His hands still shook and his thoughts were jumbled, unfocused. God, he missed them, the alcohol, the smokes, one right after another. He was beginning to believe that his thoughts might actually have been clearer then—his brain so sharp that everything had come to him in a flash, that there wasn’t a problem he couldn’t have easily dealt with.

  Despite his best efforts, certain technologies and scientific breakthroughs were finding their way onto the black market. At first it had been chalked up to pure luck and the tenacity of the enemy, but something hadn’t seemed right. So he had decided to perform his own, private investigation.

  Tremain hadn’t liked what he’d found.

  His tremulous fingers held the cardboard package, ready to tear the cellophane away to get at the contents, to regain his clarity of thought. But he knew that was a lie: it was the addiction talking. There would be no solution from lungs clogged with smoke, a mind dulled by booze; in fact, it would likely get him killed.

  But the temptation was still there.

  He placed the still-unopened pack back at the center of the table, suddenly feeling a bit stronger. He glanced at his watch, startled at how quickly the night had passed while he had waited for what, he really wasn’t sure. Rising to his feet, he walked around the room, stopping to stretch his arms above his head. He considered lying down, eyeing his bed longingly, but the sun would be rising in a couple of hours, and he could drive to the Tri-State Airport early and take his chartered plane back to Washington.

  Instead he decided to take a shower, change into some clean clothes, and be on his way. A part of him was disappointed that nothing had happened during the night. He had thought for sure that ruffling the feathers of Brandon Kavanagh would produce some result to confirm his suspicions. Weeks ago he had been contacted by a scientist on the Janus Project who feared that his advancements were being abused, a scientist who had since gone missing. That plus the intelligence report from Albania had convinced Tremain that Brandon Kavanagh had turned traitor, selling the fruits of Janus to the highest bidder. He had believed that his arrival in West Virginia, and the announcement that Janus was to be shut down, would stir Kavanagh to action against him. But so far, nothing.

  Removing his watch, he placed it on the dresser outside the bathroom and started to unbutton his shirt, untucking it from his pants.

  Tremain stopped suddenly; he turned and crossed the room, snatching up the cigarettes from the table. He would only have one, and that would be that. No booze, just one lousy cigarette—a reward for being so damn ambitious, he thought, heading to the door. He would smoke it outside on the walkway that circled the Twilight Motor Lodge; it was a nonsmoking room, after all.

  Tremain eagerly pulled the red piece of stripping from the cigarette packaging, letting the thin plastic drift to the floor of the room. He’d pick it up later.

  He undid the locks and threw open the door, allowing the humid West Virginia night to envelop him like a wet blanket. He didn’t even notice the boy standing in front of the door until it was too late.

  “Hey,” the stranger said, a hint of a smile on his all-American features. “I was just about to knock.”

  Alarm bells went off in his head at the sight of the youth. There was a loaded nine-millimeter Glock pistol hidden beneath the left-side pillow on the bed, and he considered diving for it but never got the chance.

  The boy’s movement was a blur, one of his legs coming up to kick Tremain in his chest with the flat of his foot, sending him hurtling backward into the room.

  Tremain bounced off the wall, falling to all fours, gasping as he tried to suck the oxygen back into his lungs so that he could speak. It was like being underwater: no matter how hard he tried, the air would not come. A shiver of icy cold ran up his spine as he watched the kid quietly pushing the door closed behind him.

  “Hope you don’t mind,” the boy said, the casual smile still on his face.

  Instincts honed by years of fieldwork suddenly kicked into overdrive, and he struggled to his feet and dove toward the bed, hoping to reach the pistol hidden beneath the pillow before it was too late.

  Everything moved in slow motion. Tremain leapt for the bed, landing on the mattress as his hand slipped beneath the pillow to feel the comforting grip of the Glock. He rolled from the bed in one movement, aiming the weapon at where he imagined his opponent to be.

  But the boy was closer than that, and Tremain again marveled at his uncanny speed. He extended his arm, aiming the Glock, desperate to get off at least one shot to slow the boy down before he was upon him. The kid leapt up into the air, spinning completely around, the heel of his shoe connecting with Tremain’s gun.

  The Glock flew out of Tremain’s hand to become embedded in the cheap plaster wall to his left, followed by an angry cry came from the guests in the room next door. The would-be killer pounced, an animalistic viciousness glinting in his eyes, and Tremain could have sworn he heard a growl from someplace deep inside the teen.

  It was the first time he had actually seen what Brandon Kavanagh had worked for years to perfect in the flesh, and he hoped he stayed alive long enough to make sure the world never saw it again. How could they have done this to a child?

  The young man fell on him, driving him back against the bedside table and then to the floor. Tremain looked up into the kid’s blue eyes, searching for some sign of humanity, but found only a cold cruelty radiating back at him. It was like looking into a doll’s eyes.

  This was a killing machine, something set loose upon the world with one purpose and one purpose only. Tremain had only seconds left to act before that purpose would be achieved.

  Before he disappeared, the scientist had given Tremain the only weapon that would work at a time like this, a single word that would shut the murder machine down as if a switch had been thrown. And as the killer wrapped his hands around Tremain’s throat, he greedily sucked air into his lungs and was able to speak that word. “Janus.”

  The young assassin’s eyes widened. For a second he was completely still, frozen. Then he reared back, clutching his head as if it were about to explode, and fell motionless to the floor.

  As if one word had struck him dead.

  Madison couldn’t stand it any longer. Thoughts of last night’s strange events haunted her, and she knew the only way to get a grip was to see Tom.

  Her brief sleep had been far from restful, filled with bizarre dreams where her friend lay unconscious on his kitchen floor while his parents casually ate their dinner, their food morphing into gigantic ice cream sundaes that looked more like ice sculptures than desserts.

  How weird is that?

  She grabbed her sweats from the foot of the bed and quickly pulled them on, glancing at the clock to see 4:53 a.m. shining in the murky darkness. She tied up her sneakers and quietly left her bedroom. It was Sunday, and she didn’t want to wake Marty and Ellen. Descending the steps to the foyer, Madison went out the front door into the early morning. A light fog drifted over the street, making the usually boring cul-de-sac look sort of creepy.

  She crossed the dew-wet grass to the house next door, trying to think of what she would say when they answered the door. Maybe Tom’ll answer, she thought hopefully, and then, seeing that he was all right, she could go back to bed and sleep peacefully. But her luck didn’t usually work that way. His dad will probably answer, she imagined as she climbed the steps to the front porch. He looked like an early riser. One of those guys who got up at the crack of dawn just so he could h
ave a cup of coffee and read the newspaper before anybody else. She knew the type well, having lived with one for the last seventeen years.

  Madison raised a hand to knock.

  What the hell are you doing? an incensed voice inside her head hissed. It’s not even five o’clock in the morning. She knew the voice was right, but she couldn’t think of another way to calm herself down. You’re going to regret this, the voice of reason scolded as her balled fist rapped three times on the door.

  “You’re probably right,” she mumbled under her breath as she stepped back, folding her arms across her chest, steeling herself.

  Nothing happened for what seemed like a very long time, and she was considering knocking again when the porch light went on and she heard the sound of the door being unlocked from the inside. Her pulse quickened, and even though she wasn’t really all that religious, she said a silent prayer that it would be Tom on the other side of the door.

  Instead a bewildered-looking Mason Lovett stood in the doorway, looking very much as he had last night. He was dressed in the same clothes. He either had a very unimaginative wardrobe or he’d been up all night. Looking at the circles under his eyes and the heavy shadow on his face, she guessed the latter.

  “W-what…?” he stammered. “Madison … right?”

  She nodded.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked, with a chuckle that did very little to mask his annoyance. “Is everything all right?”

  “I’m worried about Tom—is he okay?” she blurted.

  “Madison, it’s five o’clock in the morning. Tom is still—” Mason began.

  “Is he even here?” Madison interrupted.

  The man looked startled. “Of course he’s here. He’s asleep; why—”

  “He didn’t have to go to the hospital or anything? I thought I saw him leave last night—in a van. I was worried.”

  A slight smirk appeared at the corner of Mason Lovett’s mouth. Again she was struck by how little his son resembled him.

  “Tom’s fine,” he said, the smirk turning into a smile. “He recovered from the attack a little while after you left, and then he went straight to bed.”