by Fiona Quinn
“I didn’t want to upset your appetite, Lynx, but I did want to ask how you’re feeling. I was very worried when you passed out in the file room. You were so still and pale, I thought you were dead.”
I slapped on a happy-go-lucky smile. “I’m good. Just had a little bit of a weird experience. Thank you again for your concern.”
Leanne shook her head. “I can’t imagine having been through what you went through. And if I hadn’t seen the drawings, I wouldn’t believe it was true. I mean, you don’t look that different from the time you went away until now. There are subtle changes—you don’t look older, but you do look more mature. I took you for a teenager when you first started working here.”
My mind caught on the word “drawings.”
“I asked my church to pray for you.” She gave a quick glance over her left shoulder, then offered up a wave as she changed lanes. “I didn’t know what else I could do. I knew that was okay for me to share with my church, since the reporters announced the story of your disappearance on the news. I told our pastor that I knew you, and we put you on the prayer list. We have a group of retired parishioners who go to the sanctuary every day and pray for the people on the lists. I knew God had your name in his ear.”
“Thank you.” I rubbed my palms down my thighs and cleared my throat.
“We were all hopeful. Your team–wow. They were rabid about it. I’ve never seen anything like that before.” She sent me a glance; her eyes seemed a little sad. “I guess every girl wishes for that kind of display of loyalty.”
I nodded my head, not sure how to respond. I guessed maybe Leanne misinterpreted my silence because she jumped back in. “Not that I would go through what you did to have that become a reality.”
“Leanne, a second ago you said you had seen drawings of me. You saw drawings? Not a video tape?” I asked as Leanne tucked her car neatly into her assigned spot.
“I knew there was a video—I overheard Command discussing it with Striker. But General Elliot had drawings of you.” She frowned. “I wonder who drew them. Maybe one of the guards at the Honduran prison?”
That didn’t make a whole heck of a lot of sense. “Are the drawings in a file somewhere? Can I see them?”
“I can check and make sure your name is on the access list for the file. But if it’s not, please don’t go asking someone else about them. I assumed you had seen them so–gosh, I don’t want to get in trouble. I shouldn’t have said anything. Those drawings are classified.” She pulled off her sneaker and bobby sock, then slid on her high heel and adjusted her stockings. Her face bore the storm cloud expression of someone cussing themselves out for making a royal mistake.
“Why don’t I go to your office with you, and you can check the security clearance?” I asked.
I waited impatiently outside of General Elliot’s file room. Finally, Leanne moved back through the anteroom and put her hand on the panel to close up the file room. I clenched my teeth and closed my eyes. I thought I was going to get some insight, but the door glided closed on the opportunity.
Leanne flipped her hair and sent me a glance. “I have to close out, then I’ll put in the visitor code, and you can go in the same as last time. I put the file of drawings on the reading table.”
My heart tripped over a beat. The door slid open, and I walked in to have my biometric markers identified. As the second door slid open, I glanced appreciatively up at the Tsukamoto mobile, then to the desk with a very thin file.
I sat down in the chair, adjusted myself, and pulled on the nitrile gloves that Leanne had lain out, giving myself a couple extra seconds before I looked at the drawings. My muscles braced and with a shaky hand, I opened the file.
Twenty-Three
I had opened the file backward, so I would be moving in a linear progression from the first piece of information to the most recent, knowing that Leanne filed the most recent on top. A manila envelope, closed with a toggle, came first. On the front, someone had penned the numbers 55569921 in cramped precise handwriting. Inside, I found my Iniquus ID picture. I turned it over, where someone had written “Female. Identify location and condition.” I replaced the photo and positioned the envelope on the desk to the side. I turned the next piece of paper over. My eyes read over the page:
Session: CRV.HET/02:12:14/10:23hrs/55569921/91449715/01
Monitor: Your target is a specific woman. Describe her state.
HET: Winking. Okay. Human. Female. Blonde. Young. Blood. Got her.
Monitor: State of being?
HET: Alive.
Monitor: Physical state?
HET: Elevated cortisol. Elevated adrenaline. High ketones. Increased Specific Gravity. Bruising. Exhaustion.
Monitor: You mentioned blood.
HET: Non-life threatening.
Monitor: Mental state?
HET: Confusion. Guilt. Shock.
Monitor: Location?
HET: Stone.
Monitor: More?
HET: Environmental Emotional distractions
Monitor: More?
Monitor: Focus on the location.
HET: Too many emotional distractors at location. Horrible.
Monitor: End the session. Draw your data and write your conclusions. (10:53hrs)
Female target is in her early twenties. She is of average height and has a fit body. Long blond hair to mid-back. Dressed in jeans, a t-shirt, hoodie, tennis shoes. Her jeans are ripped at the knees. The skin on her knees is abraded and bloody. She seems otherwise unharmed. The impression is that her hands were knotted. Whether this means in ropes or that she is clasping her hands is unclear.
Target held against her will in a stone area. Her physical state indicates lack of sleep, food, and hydration. Non-life threatening if corrected.
General Elliot: Physical description meets that of operative. The clothing described in this session meets the description for what Lynx was wearing when abducted. The knee injuries meet the descriptions of the witness. Conclusion: Lynx is alive as of this morning.
Holy cow. I knew exactly what I was looking at. This was a remote viewing session. HET must be a military coordinate remote viewer, or CRVer.
The first time I discovered that I could get hurt, really, horribly, painfully hurt, going behind the Veil, I made the decision that I couldn’t finish my apprenticeship with Miriam Laugherty. Miriam had hoped that we would be partners, since her remote work seemed to be most precise when she used shadows from the past; and conversely, I get little or nothing from the past, but I’m spot-on in present moment. But present moment meant present physical danger, so I was done.
With my decision made, Miriam brought the Galaxy Project to my attention. Galaxy was the United States’ direct response to physic spying research that our government knew to be happening in Russia. Stanford University researchers had already developed means for performing remote viewing. The US tasked a military team to train in those techniques. Their abilities were not psychic in nature but the result of scientific protocol and methodology. Therefore, in theory, remote viewing was accessible to anyone who wished to train and gain the skills. The team documented everything with the goal of making their tasking more effective with enhanced techniques, which continued to improve over time, with trial and error. The scientists wrote up their finding in academic papers and presented their findings in scientific journals for peer review.
Miriam said that Galaxy had officially disbanded in the mid-1990s, but she believed they still functioned as a black ops unit, and she thought I should consider a career with them. After getting beaten up in the ether, however, a career in leaving my body was an absolute no-go for me.
I studied the codes at the top of the page. CRV is a coordinate remote viewer – that means that HET was not given any information about the case; he or she was simply given a group of random numbers to identify the case. Here, those numbers were 55569921 the same as on the manila envelope with my photo. This was good. A double-blind experiment, according to the autobiographies I’d
read about the Galaxy operatives, meant you get the best possible results. These numbers are usually randomly generated by a computer. In and of themselves, they’re meaningless. So HET is the CRVer, and then the date and time, the tasking code. The monitor code. And then finally, 01—this represented the first time that the remote viewers searched for me.
CRV.HET. – I wondered how I could get in touch with this person.
I turned to the next page.
Session: CRV.HET/02:13:14/20:36hrs/55569921/91449715/02
Monitor: The target is a specific woman. Give her present location.
HET: Target obtained. The emotional distraction here is profound.
Monitor: Does the emotion belong to the target?
HET: No. The whole place.
Monitor: Describe location.
HET: Stone. Damp. Solid. Very solid. Single window. Heavy bars. Rust. No glass. Trees. Wire.
Monitor: Describe.
HET: A hand on the bar. This physically hurts.
Monitor: Try to rise above the space. Where are you?
HET: Argh!
Monitor: Rise to 200 feet.
HET: Open space. Buildings. Trees. Pain, too much pain. I can’t. . .
Monitor: Rise to 1,000 feet.
HET: Trees. Clouds. This is too painful. I’m coming back.
Monitor: End session. Draw your data. Write your conclusions. (21:10hrs)
Found female target in a small room about eight-by-eight in size, made of stone. Very solid. She was alone. One window, without glass. Heavily barred. Outside of the window was an expanse of empty space, then a tall fence with concertina wire. Beyond that were trees. They smelled like pine.
Rectangular buildings line up within the yard. I interpret this to be a prison. Target held in solitary. Emotional distraction extremely high. There’s a lot of pain associated with this location. I interpret the feelings as physical torture. No physical indication that the target has been tortured.
No further data at this time.
This guy was really good. All of this was accurate, right down to the measurements of the cell. General Elliot made no notations on this report. How could he? He had nothing to affirm.
It was interesting to read the part about the emotions. After I got home from my imprisonment and worked on the case, I learned that I’d been shelved in a Honduran prison, which was there for the express task of torturing people. Sylanos’ cartel owned and ran the place, unbeknownst to the Honduran government, and later Omega and the Assembly all had a hand in the horror that took place down there. Pain. So much damned pain – physical, emotional, spiritual. HET was one hundred percent correct.
I glanced back at the picture of me reaching for freedom. It had always seemed to tease me – over the field, then over the gate, and liberty.
This person, HET, must be advanced in their training. Miriam and I had talked about this at length. She never experienced any emotional response when she was perceiving information psychically. I, on the other hand, used the emotion to help me understand and make sense of the different puzzle pieces I was trying to fit together. Miriam thought this was a bad practice, but I couldn’t figure a way to make myself stop feeling. I mean, I was a sentient being.
Miriam said that when the remote viewers were tasked to go into an environment, they could find themselves quite overwhelmed with the emotions they found there. These might be the feeling experienced by their target’s environment, a live target, or they might be the feelings the viewer was feeling as an individual. They might even be the feelings their brain ginned up based on the information they were gathering, and their minds told them that’s what they should experience–a sort of etheric placebo effect.
HET seemed to have a good grasp on sifting through the emotions and knowing what belonged where. They felt the sensations in my prison environment, and could tell which belonged to me–like the guilt, confusion, and shock from the first session. They could also determine that the gestalt of the environment was one of physical and emotional pain. They experienced this pain and were unable to support it, though. It ended up cutting their sessions short, and they didn’t gather the data that was listed in the directive–to figure out where I was hidden.
.
Session: CRV.HET/03:12:14/22:15hrs/55569921/91449715/03
Monitor: The target is a specific woman. Describe target.
HET: Target is asleep on a wooden shelf. Naked. Coarse sheet.
Monitor: Physical state?
HET: Target is thinner than last contact. High levels of cortisol. High levels of ketones.
Uncomfortable. Uninjured.
Monitor: Mental state?
HET: Target is in a state of lucid dreaming. She is aware of her dream and what it means.
Monitor: Emotional state?
HET: Angry. Frustrated. Vengeful. The emotional distraction... Oof.
Monitor: Hers?
HET: No.
Monitor: Report the location.
Monitor: Report the location.
Monitor: What’s going on?
Monitor: Give me a word.
HET: Hell.
Monitor: Your vitals are going ballistic. Come back. Draw your conclusions. Write your report.
(22:31 hrs)
Target located in the same cell as previous viewings (01, 02). Solitary. She is naked, lying on a suspended shelf. Her clothes are damp and hanging in the window opening. A coarse sheet drapes over her, keeping away the mosquitos. Visible ribs. Open, infected skin sores. Hair matted and tangled. Unclean. Foul odor. She is otherwise uninjured. Her physical state is markedly deteriorating.
Target was dreaming about a mythical monster. It looked like a Hyrda, but she called it “Sylanos.” The Hydra was fighting an enormous spider. Target viewed the spider as human in nature and called it “Spider” as a given name. In this dream, Target is vowing vengeance and destruction. Target is lucidly dreaming and this vow is consciously made. It feels like Sylanos is an enemy. Spider is a family member.
Target’s location is unknown. The emotional debris in the location makes it difficult to stay on mark for any length of time and is confusing, distracting, and extremely physically painful. The target, while in poor physical condition, is not experiencing the high levels of physical pain imprinted in the space. The pain belongs to others (plural) held in the prison. It feels like torture takes place there. The voices in the environment speak Spanish.
General Elliot: Spyder and Lynx have a father/daughter relationship. Spyder did refer to Sylanos’s operation as becoming a “Hydra.” Prior to his going off-grid to the hospital, Spyder gave this information to Lynx. Unbeknownst to her, Lynx’s puzzling assignments exposed various “heads” on the Sylanos/Hydra. This dream seems to indicate that she figured this out–bright girl. Damned shame. RV reports corroborate known data. I believe the findings are accurate in nature. Lynx is alive.
Very accurate. I pulled the elastic band from my wrist and plaited my damp hair into a braid. Looking at these pictures, reading these reports, my emotions overwhelmed me. They brought me right back to that moment in time. Brought back all of the sensations – the desolation, the hunger. I was so sick with constant terror. . . Hot tears dripped down my face. I reached out for a tissue to blow my nose.
I studied the drawing. In the here and now, reading these omniscient reports was such a disturbing feeling – knowing that any skilled viewer could look in on me at any point of time – know my feelings, know my state of being. My thoughts. Hell, they even knew my level of hydration and cortisol. I felt so exposed. Naked.
My skin iced. I had used those exact adjectives when I walked into Iniquus’s lobby on my first day back.
I turned to the last report.
Session: CRV.HET/03:19:14/11:20hrs/55569921/91449715/04
Monitor: Your target is a female. Report on physical state and location.
HET: Target. . .
Monitor: Report on physical state.
HET: Just. . .
M
onitor: Your pulse and respiration levels are in the yellow zone. Are you okay?
HET: I’m . . . I’m confused.
Monitor: Describe.
HET: Target is lying on same cell shelf. Fetal position. Light. Hot. Bacterial count high.
Damp. Gone.
Monitor: Gone? Describe “gone.” Target has expired?
HET: Her body is functional. Ill. Dying. She’s in the process of dying. She is gone.
Monitor: Reach out and touch target and tell me the temperature.
HET: 104.8 degrees Fahrenheit.
Monitor: Her soul has already separated from her body?
HET: Huh. No. That’s not what it feels like. Her soul is in her body—it is her
consciousness that is gone.
Monitor: Target is alive. Soul is attached. She is unconscious?
HET: No. It’s just gone. She’s gone. I’ve never experienced this before. . .
Monitor: Take some time. Try to figure it out.
HET: Do you know what this feels like? Is target one of us?
Monitor: Describe.
HET: Not a CRV, but an Extended Remote Viewer?
Monitor: Describe.
HET: I believe what I’m experiencing is that this target is a remote viewer and has left her body. Wow. Wow. This is incredible.
Monitor: Go to the location of her consciousness.
HET: Arrived. Men in dark suits. A meeting. Papers. Briefcases. Business. Politics. A large oval table. Expensive.
Monitor: Find an element that indicates who these men are.
HET: Lapel pins with circles.