Simon Sees (An Art Jefferson Thriller Book 5)

by Ryne Douglas Pearson

  “Yes, Doctor,” Carlton confirmed.

  Michaels thought for a moment, allowing a mild shake of the head at what his junior colleague’s ham-handed attempt at connection with Simon had wrought. Well, if that door had been opened, he might have to utilize it for the moment.

  “Simon,” Michaels said.

  “You have to…” Carlton reached past him to the intercom box next to the door. He locked the switch in the open position.

  “Simon, it’s Dr. Michaels.”

  There was no acceptable response. Simon continued to pound his clenched hands, in a slowing rhythm, against the door and the glass, red streaks smeared upon the inner surface as blood began to flow.

  “Leah Poole,” he said, the tantrum seeming to tire him.

  “Simon,” Michaels said, retrieving one of Simon’s old cards from his lab coat. He held it up and pressed it against the window. “Simon, look. This is what Leah showed you.”

  Leah…

  The name registered. Simon knew it. Leah Poole, with two ‘e’s. She’d been there, and then she was gone. People had put their hands on him and had dragged him away from the room where the injections were given. They’d put him in his bedroom. But it wasn’t his real bedroom. That one had the red rocking chair. That one… That one…

  Wait…

  Simon opened his eyes and looked to the window. One of his cards was pressed against the other side of the glass. It was the one that told him how to get from the bus to the blue house—not the blu house. But he hadn’t lived in the blue house for a long time. For a…

  …a very long time.

  Everything is wrong…

  “Simon, can you hear me?”

  It was Dr. Warren Michaels. The one who gave him the injections. The injections…

  “Hurt,” Simon said.

  I can say things…

  “Are you hurt, Simon?” Michaels asked.

  Simon stepped back from the door. Just a single step. Michaels lowered the card and looked to the man. The man who’d never met his gaze, but was now doing that very thing.

  “You’ve had a very trying day, Simon,” Michaels told him.

  “I can say what I feel,” Simon said.

  Michaels allowed a tiny smile, despite his aggravation at what this state was going to do to the protocol’s timeline.

  “Yes, you can,” Michaels confirmed.

  “I can say what I’m thinking,” Simon added.

  “Yes,” Michaels said, nodding, marveling at what he was witnessing. They’d unlocked what had been contained within Simon Lynch. They’d achieved access to, possibly, the greatest mind humanity had ever known.

  “Why can I do this?” Simon asked, calming, though his heart was throbbing so much he could feel it hammering against his ribs. “I can’t talk like this.”

  “You can now,” Michaels said.

  Yes, I can.

  “Why?”

  Dr. Michaels found his question immediately interesting. He wasn’t probing the ‘how’ of what was happening, ignoring the mechanics of the change in favor of the issue of motive.

  Why…

  “To help you, Simon,” Michaels answered, enough truth in his reply to allow a sense of sincerity to be imparted. “I’d like to come in and talk, if that’s all right.”

  Simon took another step back from the door as Dr. Michaels entered a code that unlocked the door.

  “Locks can be mechanical or electronic,” Simon said, a flash of the old flourishing for an instant as Michaels opened the door and stepped in. “They can be combination locks. Permutations of the available numbers correlate to the desired level of security for…for…”

  “Yes, Simon,” Michaels said. He looked to the technicians arrayed just outside the now open door. “Standard sedative, Mr. Lee.”

  Carlton nodded and withdrew to retrieve what the doctor had requested.

  “Simon, you’re experiencing some very new feelings,” Michaels said. “Sensations.”

  “Why am I doing these things?”

  “Which things?” Michaels asked.

  Simon tried to put together the words to properly explain, but the effort felt alien. Speaking, even listening, had held so little importance to him. Until a very short time ago. Until Leah…

  “Where is Doctor Leah Poole?” Simon asked, sidestepping the question he’d been asked.

  “Dr. Poole had to go away, Simon.”

  “She talked to me and I talked to her and I…”

  He couldn’t continue. Couldn’t express what he wanted to. What he needed to.

  “She…”

  “I know,” Michaels said, attempting to comfort the man with a reassuring tone. “There were some hiccups with all that, I admit. But we’re going to get you back on track.”

  Carlton returned to the room with a small metal tray, syringe resting on it, clear liquid within.

  “Thank you, Mr. Lee,” Michaels said. He took the syringe from the tray and looked to Simon, calm and smiling. “This will help you relax somewhat so you can transition more easily.”

  Simon looked between the syringe and Dr. Michaels.

  The needle hurt…

  He’d had injections before. Some were special. That’s what both doctors had said at various times while giving him the shots. Fifty-one shots were special.

  “Is this a special shot?” Simon asked. “Like the others?”

  Michaels shook his head.

  “No, we’re done with those,” he told Simon.

  None of this is right…

  Dr. Michaels reached to Simon’s arm and rolled the sleeve of his tee-shirt toward his shoulder, exposing his bicep.

  “This will just take—”

  “LEAH POOLE!” Simon screamed, pulling back from Dr. Michaels and flailing his arms, fists pummeling open air. “LEAH POOLE!!!”

  “Help me!” Michaels shouted.

  The technicians rushed toward Simon, groping at him through his windmilling arms as they took him down to the double bed in the corner of the room.

  “Steady him!”

  Michaels moved in as his technicians pinned their subject to the mattress, sheets bunching as he struggled.

  “WHAT’S WRONG WITH ME?!”

  “You’re going to be fine, Simon,” Michaels said, reaching through the tangle of arms and sliding the needle quickly into the fleshy muscle below the shoulder, emptying the syringe quickly.

  “LEAH POoooole…”

  Simon’s voice trailed off. His tensed muscles relaxed.

  “I’m not…”

  Dr. Michaels motioned to his technicians to release their subject and step back, Carlton adjusting Simon’s limp body on the bed before doing so.

  “I’m not…”

  “He’ll be out for twelve hours,” Audra commented.

  “Should we set up restraints?” Gary asked.

  Dr. Michaels shook his head as Simon continued to groggily mumble some incomplete statement.

  “I’m not…”

  “Damn you, Leah,” Michaels said. No matter the wonder of having a near normal exchange with their subject, what she’d done had shown a part of his psyche the light of day. A part that had only known shadows before. The Simon Lynch she’d let out into the world was bedeviled by what he could see. And, more tragically, what he could feel. “Damn you.”

  “Without restraints he—”

  “We can’t tie him down,” Michaels told Gary Emmett. “There’s a new liaison coming.”

  The technicians exchanged looks that were both puzzled and wary.

  “We’ve got to do this pharmaceutically,” Michaels said. “He just needs to sit in a chair for a while.”

  “Will that fly?” Audra asked, doubtful. “If he’s just drugged up?”

  “I’m…not…”

  Michaels eyed his subject as he slurred his unfinished thought.

  “They won’t know we’ve made a breakthrough,” he told his technicians. “Jefferson would notice if he’s just a drooling mess, but Jeffer
son is gone. Simon’s a blank canvas for whoever shows up. What they see is what they’ll expect.”

  Michaels turned toward the three young scientists he’d recruited, reminding himself that he’d recruited Leah Poole, as well. His judgment in that case had been ultimately flawed. He wasn’t going to suffer another failure from anyone.

  “If any of you feel at this point that you cannot continue with the project, leave,” he told them. “You must have no reservations. You must be fully committed to the remainder of what we have to do. You must be willing, through him, to change the world.”

  The technicians looked past their supervisor to where Simon Lynch lay on his bed. His eyes were partly open and rolled back in their sockets, lips quivering as he tried to form words. Each of them had witnessed the utter brilliance of which he was capable. Solutions to problems which had vexed theorists for ages trickled from his damaged mind like answers to simple riddles. None could imagine what they would be part of when an unfettered connection between his brain and the world beyond was fully established.

  “No reservations?” Michaels checked, and each shook their head. They wanted to be part of what was to come. “Good. Mr. Lee, set up a dosing schedule to get us through the liaison’s visit. We’ll move to an isolation protocol after that to reduce stimulus. He’s come too far too quickly.”

  “I agree,” Audra said.

  Michaels turned a sharpened gaze toward her. “I should hope so.”

  He led the technicians from the room. Carlton Lee closed the door and locked it, peering in one last time, watching their subject, his mouth still moving. For a moment he listened, his ear close to the intercom, but all that came through were the same two words, over and over.

  I’m not…

  I’m not…

  Carlton turned away, leaving Simon Lynch alone in his room. If he’d stood at the door a moment longer, he would have heard their subject complete the sentence he’d been struggling to utter since the sedative took effect. Just one more word making it through the pharmaceutical fog and mental confusion that were raging in the man’s brain.

  “I’m not me…”

  Six

  Extreme innocent…

  That term held much meaning to Ezekiel Sanders. Or it had at one time. But the woman he was watching through the video feed from the coopted traffic camera did not warrant that classification. Not directly.

  She was innocent by association. Or would be. Just as Jefferson had been, though he’d thrown himself into the breach. This young woman was simply stumbling toward involvement in something she could not yet comprehend.

  They would have briefed her, Sanders knew. The operational security they demonstrated with their get together at the site of Jefferson’s burial was admirable. What they’d failed to comprehend was that the simple act of them being in the same place, at the same time, revealed more than the other side needed to put its own plans into action.

  The other side…

  What was it his mentor, Mr. Pritchard, had reminded him of on more than one occasion? ‘The other side is us.’

  How true, Sanders thought. He hadn’t appreciated the succinct insightfulness of that statement then, but, after years in the proverbial wilderness, he did now.

  Good. Evil. Right. Wrong. They were concepts easy to dismiss. Equivocation allowed shifting loyalties.

  ‘All you have is what you are.’

  Pritchard had also told him that, as he lay dying. A deathbed pearl of more than wisdom. It was a statement encompassing the man’s life just as it was ending. To Sanders, it also seemed to be more than a valediction—there was warning in the words.

  Ezekiel Sanders had always known what he was. Working with Mr. Pritchard, in the shadowy world the man had created, where operative parried operative, had shown the younger man that the path he’d chosen was the right path.

  Others walked that same path, but not for the same reasons. Motive mattered in the world that Sanders still monitored, and in the preceding weeks he’d become aware of forces once again gathering, from all sides, in search of a prize. Possibly the greatest prize the world had ever known.

  Simon Lynch.

  Her ride pulled up to the curb and Emily LaGrange tossed her shoulder bag into the back seat and slipped in next to it. The car was from a rideshare service, the kind one could summon from an app on their phone. That told Sanders more than he needed to know.

  She was reintegrating into the world. Shedding the anonymity of her undercover life, if not the edge she’d developed to keep herself alive while she was Dana Perrin. That was not all good. The rideshare arrival indicated that she was using a credit card, and possessed a smartphone. If those things were true it was equally likely that she would soon possess a collection of devices that could allow any desirous entity a window into her world. Smart television. Voice activated personal assistant. Laptop computer with integrated webcam. Those things could be useful to his ends, Sanders knew. But they were equally useful to those he knew he would soon be facing off against.

  Individuals who would, without a doubt, kill Emily LaGrange when her usefulness had expired.

  Sanders watched the car pull away on the monitor and turn at the corner. He was eight hundred miles from where the scene before him was unfolding, though it would not have mattered if it was eight miles. Or eight thousand. The entity he served had the power to do many things. At one time, almost anything.

  That time was no more.

  The other side is us…

  Those they’d fought against in the shadows had seen no limitation on their ability to pursue their agenda. Fifteen years now Pritchard had been dead. Gone with him were the pure ideals, and the curative force which the man could apply to reluctant functionaries. Something did remain, however, and Sanders held it in his hands.

  He opened the small black notebook and paged slowly through it. Names were penned on straight lines in impeccable cursive, a throwback, he thought, to when men like his mentor wrote letters. Some to friends that would be delivered by postal workers. Others would be directed to colleagues, or superiors, hand carried by couriers in diplomatic pouches, secure from prying eyes.

  Those prying eyes were ubiquitous now. There was no true security in communication. The best that could be managed were exchanges carried out face to face.

  But so many of those faces were no more. For every ten names in Pritchard’s collection of contacts, nine had lines drawn through them. Death had claimed the cadre of associates the man had called upon in circumstances identical to what Sanders now faced. The old boys, it was sadly apparent, had departed the field of battle one by one. Muncy and Yost and Fredericks and dozens more were in the ground. Pike was no longer Pike, a neurological disease erasing the brilliant man he’d been and leaving a shell waiting to die in a care facility that his children visited on occasion. Others were too ill to be of use, their golden years fading slowly toward an endless night.

  A few still lived, though. One in particular. He’d come onboard with Pritchard’s very covert association after the Jefferson affair, and had proved himself both capable and cunning in the short time they worked together. Time, and changes in both the government and the populace, had blunted what efforts they could pursue in defense of what was right, and good. After a while, Pritchard’s heart hadn’t seemed in it anymore. Too many thwarted operations, abandoned to protect the very association which allowed them to act, had convinced Sanders’ mentor that his time, maybe their time as a whole, had passed.

  Sanders ran a finger over the name and the telephone number next to it. Eight years it had been since any of them had gathered to pursue a righteous deed. How many wrongs had gone unchecked in that time? How many extreme innocents had suffered?

  Too many…

  Sanders pocketed the notebook and stepped away from the laptop computer on the desk in the abandoned building. It had once been a twelve-story office tower occupied by the Internal Revenue Service. Asbestos and poorly sourced concrete had left it unusable. I
n a week it would be imploded, reduced to dust and rock and twisted rebar. For now it served his purpose, allowing a connection between the portable computer and a secure wireless node two hundred feet away in a Department of Agriculture field office. His intrusion could be traced, but would be seen as some outsider being mischievous by hacking Minneapolis traffic cameras. He could do more with the digital access he had, of course, but there was no need to. Not now. Not yet.

  He closed the laptop and slipped it into a crevice between concrete columns that had been jackhammered to bits in preparation for demolition. In seven days all that would remain of the laptop would be crushed bits of plastic and metal made unrecognizable under tons of crushing debris. The precautions he was taking were necessary in this new world. A world Mr. Pritchard had only begun to taste with disdain before he died. Sanders, though, was a creature of this age of connectivity. He knew its advantages and its dangers. Guarding against the latter with strict practices to prevent detection of his efforts, of their efforts, was the only way any of what he was envisioning could work.

  Sanders left the old office space and made his way to the stairs, railings stripped away, just bare concrete steps leading down. He crossed the old lobby and slipped out a side door. The place where the fence had been peeled back opened as easily on the way out as on the way in. In short order he was walking up the street in Rochester, New York, Lake Ontario’s brisk wind washing over him as he reached inside his overcoat and retrieved a cell phone from a pocket. He tapped the phone number from memory and lifted the device to his cheek. It rang once in his ear. Twice. Then a handset in Northern Virginia was lifted from its cradle and a man spoke.

  “Hello.”

  “Yes, I’m calling to schedule a lunch,” Sanders said.

  The man on the other end of the call went quiet, the silence lingering.

  “Are you able to schedule a lunch?” Sanders asked.

  Still, for several seconds, there was no response. But the call had not been ended. There was no dial tone. The man on the other end was simply listening. And thinking.

  Deciding.

  “Yes, I believe I can schedule a lunch,” the man said. “I’ll get back to you with a time.”