The REM Precept

by J. M. Lanham

  Finally, she looked up from the report and spoke. “I want you to know, Colin, that nothing over the last twenty-four hours has been easy. Not from a professional perspective, and certainly not from a personal one. You’re a good agent who, before recent events, I could always rely on to get the job done. In my six months in office, few other agents have shown the dedication, loyalty, and fidelity that you have in regard to your mission here at CIA. Which is why at this very moment”—she said as she glanced down at the psych evaluation—“I am most concerned with determining what exactly has transpired since the incident at Skyline earlier in the week.”

  Kovic sat uncharacteristically silent as Lancaster flipped to the last page. “Mr. Kovic presents as nervous, restless, and tense, while exhibiting speech patterns that are rapid and compulsive. The patient shows clear signs of paranoia, believing he is the subject of a conspiracy involving the intelligence community, a multibillion-dollar pharmaceutical company, and various coconspirators with a unique knowledge of a type of mind- control technology that, in the patient’s words, ‘would make the crimes committed during MKUltra look like a dash full of parking tickets.’ In summary, we are of the professional opinion that the patient is currently suffering from acute onset psychosis marked by paranoid and delusional behavior, and is not currently fit to perform his duties in the field. Further medical observation is recommended.” The director closed the file and set her intertwined fingers on the desk.

  “Permission to speak, director?”

  “That depends,” Lancaster said. “Am I going to get answers from a veteran CIA agent, or from the guy in this psych eval? It’s as if everything you learned on the farm dissipated into thin air.”

  “The agent you see sitting before you today is the same agent you trusted with the dismantling of Project THEIA a week ago. The only thing that’s changed is the protocol. Specifically, Cline. And this bloodthirsty desire to have entire lives eliminated to prevent a PR disaster—”

  “Enough with the idealist shit, Kovic. You’re CIA, for Chrissake. If you want to be free of the sins necessary to keep the entire western hemisphere safe then I suggest you join a fucking monastery. Besides,” she said, reaching for a remote, “I’m not going to sit here and get lectured by someone who is at serious risk of spending the rest of his life at Leavenworth.” A monitor slowly lowered from the ceiling in the corner adjacent to them and flickered on. A colorful scene developed on the flat screen overlooking the open porch of a rustic cabin in the woods as a man paced the porch end to end. “Recognize it?”

  “It’s the entrance to Skyline.”

  “Recognize the man?”

  “Of course. It’s me. We don’t exactly deal with gas-station-quality surveillance footage here.”

  “Then you of all people should notice your behavior was abnormal for an agent meeting a wanted asset with all the resources of the CIA behind him to back him up.” She froze the screen and zoomed in on Kovic. “Look at that face. It’s the face of someone who’s in anguish. Despair. Anxious and worried that his entire world is falling apart. I would expect to see that face on an outlier, Colin. Not an agent with years of experience in the field.” She turned to face him and leaned in. “So I ask myself, what’s eating Colin Kovic?”

  “Claire Connor was supposedly killed in the raid Cline signed off on at the original facility in Costa Rica. Then I get an email from a ghost saying she knows everything about the CIA’s involvement in Skyline and wants to meet there. What agent in his or her right mind wouldn’t be a little nervous, a little on-edge?”

  “Normally, I’d say you’re right. But then there’s this.” She hit the play button again. On the screen, Kovic continued to pace the porch, this time grabbing his temples and shaking his head and muttering something along the lines of “it’s wrong, it’s all wrong,” and then he stopped, looked down at his trembling, sweaty hands, palms up, and said aloud, “What is happening to me?”

  Lancaster stopped the video again and waited for the agent to explain. Only, he couldn’t. “What do you mean you don’t know?” she asked.

  “I mean I don’t remember saying that. I barely remember being there, meeting Claire. Something overtook me. Something I can’t really explain.”

  “If I were you, I’d try.”

  Kovic took a deep breath. “It’s like something took over my mind, putting it on high alert. An invasion of thoughts, so to speak.”

  “Voices?”

  “Yes, there were voices, but that wasn’t the worst of it. The voice spoke, and something triggered my mind like there was this deep sense of impending doom that overtook my entire body. It was dizzying, confusing, like some kind of depersonalization. For a moment I didn’t even know who I was or where I was, like my consciousness was hovering above this guy, Colin, watching him panic and flip out and lose his mind, but there was nothing I could do to stop it. Just watch.”

  “Uh-huh …”

  “Then I was sucked back into my body, and in an instant I was Colin Kovic again. Right away I noticed my hands, how badly they were trembling. Hell, my whole body was a giant bundle of nerves I haven’t felt since grade school. My chest was so tight I could hardly breathe. And the sweating … I mean I know the August heat in Virginia can be brutal, but I’ve never sweated that much in my life. It’s like my body became an overheating powder keg just waiting to explode.”

  “Panic attacks aren’t like you, Colin,” Lancaster said, resting her chin on her hand and tapping her cheek with two fingers. She pivoted, “You know, Cline advocated for you back at the mill. Said this entire episode wasn’t like you.”

  “That’s surprising.”

  “It is, considering what you put him through. But in the end, we’re all professionals here. And personally, I think he’s right.”

  “What are you saying, ma’am?”

  “I don’t think you’re compromised, Colin. At least, not by your own free will. I think someone got to you back at Skyline. One of the outliers.” Her words were deliberate, the director carefully scrutinizing her subordinate’s reaction.

  “That was my first thought when it happened,” he sighed with relief, “but Claire showed up just moments later, so it couldn’t have been her.”

  “She wasn’t alone, Kovic, remember? Our agents lost Paul Freeman in the woods, and we picked up Graham shortly after.”

  “Exactly, ma’am. None of whom could’ve taken Ocula to dream up a let’s-get-Kovic scenario. They were all wide awake. And unless you know something I don’t, this curse of a drug still knocks people on their asses for a solid eight hours.”

  “No, nothing’s changed on that front,” Lancaster said. “But that still leaves Donny Ford and Fenton Reed, two outliers with a history of Ocula abuse, out in the field somewhere. And then there’s Detective Dawa Graham, Atlanta PD.”

  “The guy we picked up loitering around Shenandoah … What about him?”

  “I keep forgetting you’ve been out of the loop.” She reached for a file and tossed it Kovic’s way. “That should get you caught up. When we first brought him in it was under the assumption one of the outliers had gone to Atlanta Police, hence the connection. But it turns out he has a personal connection with Donny Ford that goes back about a decade, well before all this mess.”

  “A decade? You’d think a detective would have more sense than to buy into Ford’s brand of self-help.”

  “That’s the irony of it,” Lancaster said, “because Dawa Shakya Graham is the person responsible for Ford’s motivational spiel.” Kovic flipped through the file as Lancaster explained. “The two met in Tibet about a decade ago while Ford was on a sabbatical of sorts. Graham taught him the basics of a sacred Himalayan meditative practice called Tummo for reasons that are still unclear. It appears that once he had the basics down, Ford brought what he had learned back to the States to try and make a buck off it.”

  “You don’t think Ford learned more than the basics?”

  “Impossible. Tummo is an esoteric practi
ce unique to a small region in northern Tibet that’s been highly guarded for millennia. These people spend their entire lives mastering it, and Ford was back in the U.S. after a month or two, signing partnership deals and LLC registrations and distribution paperwork with his business partner Bill Stevens. As reserved as Dawa has been with us, I highly doubt he signed off on Ford’s boisterous business endeavor.”

  “Uh-huh,” Kovic pondered. “So why help the man now? Especially after all this time?”

  “We can’t say, but the revelation has brought to light a disturbing possibility that we can’t ignore: that Dawa Graham may have had more to do with the attack on the facility than we ever could have imagined.”

  Lancaster could tell by the look on Kovic’s face that he had a litany of questions, but a ringing desk phone meant those questions would have to wait. It was her informant at the FBI, and the news was not good. She held the phone between her ear and shoulder, and after a few disappointing uh-huhs and several epithets she was off.

  “Damn, who was that?” Kovic asked.

  “The feds lost Freeman and Reed this morning. Train accident. It’s all over the local news in Atlanta.”

  “You’re shitting me …”

  “I wish I were,” she turned the TV back on and spoke instructions into her remote. Within seconds, Atlanta Action News was playing on the small screen in her office. Aerials of the scene showed wreckage strewn across the screen for what seemed like a mile, with a small army of emergency response vehicles blaring sirens and flashing lights, sealing off the intersection where the collision occurred from curious onlookers. And in the middle of the commotion was a derailed train, the smoldering cars laid out in a zigzag pattern on both sides of the tracks. They listened as the reporter in chopper nine narrated from above:

  Tom, we haven’t seen a train derailment in the Atlanta area since the MARTA scare back in 2019. Details are scarce, but reports are starting to come in from sources on the ground that a federal vehicle may have been involved in the accident. National Highway Traffic Safety crews are currently investigating the scene. We’ll continue to follow this story as it develops, and relay any information we gather to our viewers. Tom, back to you.

  “A federal vehicle,” Kovic muttered. “And word is they got away unscathed?”

  “My source at FBI says by the time the train came to a halt they were long gone. No sign of blood, injury … nothing of that nature. As I’m sure you could see by the footage, the collision occurred in a heavily populated area, making their latest disappearing act all too easy.” Lancaster spoke candidly, and would have been more upset if the last week of disaster hadn’t habituated her to a series of unfortunate surprises. The latest revelation was Murphy’s Law in action: what could go wrong, would go wrong. Still, Kovic couldn’t believe it.

  “This doesn’t make sense. Was your source on the scene of the crash when it happened?”

  “He was part of the motorcade transporting Freeman and Reed from Sturgis’ place back to FBI headquarters in Atlanta. Second car back. Says the car carrying our outliers began lurching forward as the train approached, eventually busting through the cross guards just before everyone in the vehicle bailed out. The agents wound up on the opposite side of the tracks, and that’s all they needed to make a run for it.”

  “And once again, Freeman and Reed are on the loose in Atlanta. So, where do we go from here?”

  Lancaster stood up to put her credentials in her back pocket. “I think you just answered your own question, Colin.”

  “Wait, you’re going to Atlanta?”

  “I’m not carrying the weight of this albatross any longer. If you want something done, you’ve got to do it yourself. Besides, I’ve already got Cline and Ramírez working on the backup plan at Skyline. If all I’m doing here is waiting for the next shoe to drop, I might as well be doing it at Outlier Central. And you’re coming with me.”

  “About Cline,” Kovic said, “there’s something you need to know. Something I’m sure he didn’t tell you. Something that’s been off the books since Ryan Tanner and Dick Doyle started drawing funds for their Costa Rican science project.”

  “I know Cline can be a duplicitous scumbag, Colin. You’re not telling me anything. But I’ve read all the files, and I’m sure I know everything there is to know about the Ocula conspiracy.”

  “Then you already know about the mobile broadcasting unit he was working on.”

  Lancaster stopped loading her briefcase with files and asked, “What unit?”

  Chapter 25:

  Last Hurrah

  It was Friday evening by the time Paul and Fenton made it back from Teddy’s apartment to the roadside motel that Claire and Sarah had checked into the night before. Calling it a one-star would’ve been a stretch; the smoked-stained curtains, broken mini-fridge, and peeling wallpaper only added to the unwelcome ambiance of one of the seediest parts of South Atlanta. Still, the room had power, running water, and a Wi-Fi connection, which was all they needed to plan their next move; the only move they had left.

  Breaking into Asteria Pharmaceuticals.

  A million things could go wrong in the next twenty-four hours, but at least they weren’t standing around a wobbly wooden desk and drawing maps of Asteria HQ on cocktail napkins. If there was one silver lining, it was that Fenton had his equipment back, and the kid with the golden keystrokes had been able to crack his way into Bennett and Thompson Architecture in less time than it took to heat up a microwave dinner. Once they had the schematics for Asteria’s twenty-five-story building they were back in business, planning the next day’s operation by the light of a dingy lampshade and a glowing laptop screen.

  “There,” Paul pointed to the screen. “That’s the twenty-second floor. Zoom in on that.”

  A few clicks and the crew had an overhead view of the southeast corner of Asteria’s C-suite. “That office there. It’s Ryan Tanner’s old digs. Of course, who knows whose name is on the door now.”

  Sarah asked, “Any reason to believe there’s still information we can use there?”

  “Not really,” Paul said. “Sturgis would’ve gotten rid of any evidence linking his company to the Costa Rica project the moment Tanner turned up dead. Then again, what do I know?” He turned to Claire. “What do you think?”

  “I think we need to focus all of our attention on the isolated server room. We won’t have a lot of time in there, and there’s no point wasting it on files we may be able to hack into later.” She looked to Fenton for confirmation. “She’s right,” he said. “Email accounts and cloud storage aren’t a problem from the outside. But even the best hackers in the world can’t break into an isolated server room because, well, duh. It’s literally mission impossible.”

  Paul got the point. “We’ve only got one shot at this, guys, and it would be foolish to think there’s not a damn-good chance we’re going to get caught—”

  “—which is exactly why we need to make sure we’ve got Plans B, C, and D at the ready in case something goes wrong,” Claire said.

  Plan B. The words brought the successful Sturgis escape plan to the forefront of Paul’s mind. He pulled Claire to the side while Sarah and Fenton continued to go over schematics. “About Plan B,” he said. “I forgot to thank you for bailing our asses out of that FBI fiasco back there.”

  “Come again?” Claire asked inquisitively.

  “Plan B. The dream, remember? If anything went wrong at Sturgis’ place you were going to pop an Ocula and lucid dream our asses right out of there.” Paul kept talking, but the words drew nothing but a blank from Claire.

  “I’m sorry,” she cocked her head, “but what exactly are you talking about?”

  “Plan B?” Now it was Paul who was confused.

  Claire said, “Plan B was to rendezvous back here should anything go wrong. And that’s exactly what we did.”

  “What about the Ocula? The lucid dreaming, like what Donny pulled at Skyline. You told me he taught you how to do it back at the cabin.
”

  “No, no, no,” she shook her head. “I mean, he taught me the theory behind it, but lucid dreaming takes a lot of practice. Months, years, even.”

  “But you said—”

  “I was joking, Paul. You should know me better than that. It was scary enough counting on Donny to get the job done back at Skyline, and he’s a meditation expert. No way I’d rely on my nonexistent abilities to get you guys out of a tight jam. Hell, with my luck, I’d manifest some horrific scenario that led to you two getting eaten alive by rabid wolves or something.”

  A look of concern flooded Paul’s face. “Then if you didn’t dream anything, how—”

  “Good fortune? A little luck? A train that was actually on time for once? Not every good thing has to be the result of divine intervention, Paul.” She patted him on the shoulder and said, “Sometimes, we just luck up,” then rejoined the others.

  A simple answer, for sure. But for Paul, simple wasn’t enough. He didn’t mention it to Claire—she was back to work refining the plan to break into Asteria with the others before he ever had the chance—but it was clear the actions the driver of the SUV had taken were not of his own volition.

  Or, were they? Any number of conditions could’ve overcome the driver, Paul reasoned, from a stroke to a mild seizure, but then how did any of that explain his reaction? The man had been conscious, fully awake, and completely aware of the fact that he was losing control, but had absolutely zero ability to do a thing about it. A stroke couldn’t explain that. Neither could a seizure.

  In Paul’s mind, there was only one explanation. And now he was being told it wasn’t the influence of a lucidly dreaming Claire Connor.

  So, if not Claire, then who?

  ***

  It was just after 2 a.m. when Cline pulled up to the warehouse in Atlanta where his little side project had been stored, headlights illuminating tiny droplets of water from a midnight shower that had speckled the rusty metal door ahead. He hopped out into the humid air and sorted through his keys, searching for the small silver one that belonged to the steel padlock. A couple of jiggles of the lock and he was in, taking a step or two into the darkness before using his phone as a flashlight to find the breaker box inside.