by Gennita Low
Eight Ball was COMCEN’s computer. His programmer had given his mother program its own choice for personality and gender in certain communications feedback. For some weird reason, the computer had taken up a surfer’s easy laid-back drawl, although it tended to trip itself up while trying out surfer lingo. Eight Ball, she suspected, was another open-ended experiment on the loose in this place.
“If I had an ass, Fly Boy would say ‘go for it, dude!’” The computer mimicked the commando’s voice to perfection. “Chamber Two in twelve minutes, over and out.”
Helen frowned again. She didn’t have much time. She’d just have to go wearing her sweaty leotard and tights. At a sprint.
She dropped the towel, punched the buttons on the panel, and slipped out of the training area while the door was still sliding open. No time for the elevator. Chamber Two was three flights up. Trust them to pick a place that required climbing up instead of running down.
She pushed the door to the stairwell and starting running two and three steps at a time. She paused at the landing, taking a quick moment to flick her bangs away from her eyes.
“Test,” that voice in her head warned.
Her awareness immediately turned rapier-sharp. She pushed open the exit door that led into the corridors. She didn’t sense any danger around the corner. She didn’t think they were planning to kill her, not after investing all that time and money, but she couldn’t ignore that warning in her head either.
“Test.” The repetition was even more urgent now.
“They do that all the time, so what’s so different about this test?” she muttered. Realization came like sudden daylight. They weren’t testing her this time. Someone was. Maybe it was him.
The corridor was dead silent and she knocked on Chamber Two. An envelope was stuck on it, with her name, Elena Rostova, written in bold font, along with Do Not Open. She raised her brows. Very few people used her real name. She peeled it off the metal. The door swished open. There was no light coming from within.
“Games, games, games,” Helen murmured and stepped inside. The door behind her sealed shut and it was pitch-black in the room. Every one of her senses reached out into the darkness.
“Walk ten paces forward,” a voice said from all around her.
Sen-surround sound. “Do I get to turn and shoot?” Helen joked. Excitement roiled in the pit of her stomach. It had to be him talking to her.
“No. Ten paces forward, Elena.”
She obeyed, counting aloud. It was unbelievably dark in there. She stopped when she encountered something with her feet. A thickly-padded mat. She stepped onto it and finished her count. “Now what?” she asked when she was done.
“Open the envelope.”
She carefully did so. “This isn’t easy in the dark, you know,” she complained. “There’s nothing inside.”
“You’re expecting a note. Never assume anything in here.”
She wished she could see the person talking to her. The voice was a projected echo, deliberately masking any recognizable tone. She slipped her finger into the envelope and felt something.
“It’s small. Roundish. Too small to be a button,” she said.
“It’s a pill. Take it.”
Her mouth fell open. “You’re kidding me, right?”
“It won’t kill you.”
She could have sworn she detected mockery, even with that amplified resonance. She looked around in the darkness. Not that she could see anything. “Look, this is getting irritating. Why am I in the dark and why must I take a drug?”
“It’s part of your training.”
“Usually, I’m given a set of instructions and my instructor tells me what’s going to happen,” she said. But she’d known this new instructor wasn’t going to be anything usual. He’d been watching her nonstop since her arrival. She’d felt him. He was everywhere. Funny thing was, she’d been more intrigued by the game than outraged at the lack of privacy.
“I see. Tell me, when you’re playing operative in the real world, do you have someone telling you what’s going to happen next?”
Helen narrowed her eyes, feeling just a twinge of impatience rising. “Training, I said.” She pivoted around. “I’m not taking any drugs unless it’s the serum that’s specified in the contract. This pill isn’t it, is it?”
“You won’t know till you try it. And in case you’re wondering, yes, I’m your instructor and yes, this is a training session. Take the pill, Elena. As specified in your contract, you’ll let your instructor direct you as he or she sees fit.”
“Within reason,” Helen argued. She’d added that part to the clause herself. “Tell me. If I take this, what’s going to happen to me? Besides not dying, I mean.”
“First you will fall unconscious.”
Her whole body went taut. “What? No f—”
“Then you’ll wake up in fifteen minutes. You’ll find that you can’t move your body. Certain parts of you will feel nothing. You’ll stay paralyzed for the duration of the session.”
In the two years of her training, even through medical tests, no one had given her any drugs to render her unconscious. She’d been extra careful to establish a mental block when working with the CIA; she didn’t trust them or their tendency to hypnotize certain subjects.
She rolled the pill between her thumb and forefinger. Why now? What did he want to do to her?
“Fighting what you can see is easy, Elena. It’s fighting what you can’t see that will be your ultimate challenge. Remember what’s coming up. A dose of the serum is just like fighting what you can’t see, isn’t it?” A tiny pause. “I can’t force you to take the pill, but you’ll be putting potentially more harmful drugs into your system. This one, I can guarantee you, is a common drug that I know to have very few side effects.”
Helen laughed incredulously. “I’m supposed to take your word for it,” she remarked.
Silence.
Whoever her instructor was, he was waiting.
She rolled the pill again, her thoughts going a hundred miles an hour. Test, that stupid voice in her head had said. He was testing her for something entirely different from her previous trainers. She chewed on her lower lip for a second, then, before she changed her mind, she popped it into her mouth and swallowed.
“Count from ten backwards when I tell you to.”
Helen noted that he didn’t seem to have any problems seeing her in this darkness. Special glasses with image-intensifier? But if so, he still wouldn’t be able to tell whether she had taken the pill. Her eyes searched the darkness. Where was he?
After a few minutes, he ordered, “Start counting.”
She turned around as she counted. “Ten, nine, eight…” There was just nothing to see, not even a hint of light anywhere. “Seven, six…” She had to stop moving. Could darkness spin? It felt like the darkness was swirling all around her. “Five, four…” She couldn’t feel her feet. “Shit…” She fell forward. So that was what the mattress was for, was her last thought.
Her eyes flew open. It was still that darkness but she felt strange. She tried moving but she couldn’t feel her body and she couldn’t see. She didn’t like this one bit. No reason to panic yet. He told her that she wasn’t going to be able to move, but she could feel a warm body against her. A very warm male body.
“What’s happening?” she asked. At least she could talk. “I feel funny.”
No answer. She could feel her vision swaying, like something was moving really fast around her. It suddenly occurred to her that she was being carried. And that she was upside down because her hair kept getting in her mouth when she tried to talk.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked, spitting her hair out. “Answer me, dammit.”
Whoever it was seemed to be going faster and faster, until she grew dizzy. He couldn’t possibly go that long. Where the hell was she? No longer in the room, for sure, but why couldn’t she see anything? She could make out shadows now—light and dark shades of blackness. There were
strange smells, like foliage and the outdoors, then the scent of clean laundry, then of burning wood, then of salty air. She frowned, totally confused, because she couldn’t see any forest or fire or anything that could give her any clues to her location.
She felt that floating sensation again and from the change of shadows, she could tell that her body was sliding off his as he swung her around. She stared up, trying to see who this stranger was, but it was that odd shadowy shape again.
He should be panting from that long run but she couldn’t hear him breathe at all. Suddenly, he jerked around and there were armed men all around him.
She could only watch in horror as they shot him and his body slid away from her view. She couldn’t help him! She gritted her teeth and tried to move but it was no use. She was totally at their mercy.
They surrounded her. She could hear them now—male grunts and cursing. She gulped in air as they pulled at her body. She could feel them pulling her legs apart….
She bit down on her lower lip. She wouldn’t scream. She wouldn’t panic. She was going to find a way out of this. If she could only see—
The noise around her was jumbled, as if she was standing in a very crowded room. She breathed in as someone started a fight and everyone around her, including her attackers, became involved. The shadows made everything even more confusing since she couldn’t tell who was hitting whom. But she smelt the blood, heard screams of pain, saw bodies falling around her.
And there was nothing she could do.
There’re too many bodies. Just too many people. Those screams.
“Shut up!” she yelled out.
All of a sudden, there was silence. A lone figure climbed on top of her. It was him. She recognized the shape of his body. For some reason she recognized his scent.
“I thought you died,” she whispered. Where did everyone go? And why couldn’t she feel the danger?
She felt his hands on her useless body, felt his hands on her thighs as he slowly parted her numb legs.
Helen squeezed her eyes shut. She must be mistaken. She’d thought—wait, maybe something happened in the dark room and someone took her while she was unconscious. Maybe her kidnapper was a hostile, too.
She let out a hiss of outrage as his hands intimately slid up her inner thigh, then up her rib cage, across her breasts. She was going to kill him when this drug wore off. She was going to tear his hands off first. A thumb caressed her lower lip for a second.
He kissed her on the mouth, his lips moving over hers lazily, as if he had all the time he wanted. She gave an outraged gurgle at the back of her throat when he nudged her lips apart and swept his tongue inside, engaging her in intimate play. She could feel his tongue exploring hers, not like a rapist, but like a lover, coaxing and playful. Blinding fury welled up as she tried her damnedest to turn her head but it was useless. Her mouth was his toy, muffling her curses.
It was the longest kiss she’d ever shared and it was sharing. There wasn’t much she could do when she still couldn’t shake her head free and her mouth was open for him to taste. Their tongues tangled silkily, seductively, as he controlled the pace, opening her wider, till she found herself growing breathless from trying to speak and move at the same time.
He likes your mouth.
Oh great. Now her warning voice was also analyzing kissing techniques. And why was her heart beating so erratically? She was shocked to find that her eyes had closed…She forced them open, blinking rapidly. She was not getting turned on by this man. No matter how good his kissing technique was!
He finally released her and she heard herself gasping for breath. His shadow moved over her, his hand deliberately cupping her breast.
“I’ll kill you if you touch me,” Helen managed to say through what felt like swollen lips.
She heard the front zipper sliding. She felt the coolness of the air on her bare flesh. He pulled the front halves of her shirt apart and she could feel his knuckles grazing her naked breasts. Her heart galloped like she was having a heart attack.
Wait a minute, wait a minute! Something’s not right. I was wearing a leotard with no front zipper. I was wearing a bra.
Test. Suddenly everything fell together like a well-designed puzzle.
Test. No sense of danger. The drug. All the different smells and sounds. Nothing solid…just tactile. They weren’t testing her physically. Everything was a mental test.
“This isn’t real,” she declared firmly and loudly. “I was wearing a bra in a tight leotard with no zipper. I’m not half-naked. Game over! Now let me see you, you fucking bastard!”
The next time she was faced with a tiny pill, she was ready.
“You know what to do with it.”
Helen shook her head. “I’m not taking it.”
“Why not?” His voice, even electronically enhanced, was soft, persuasive. “Are you afraid?”
“Of course not.” She wasn’t. She just didn’t like the feeling of being helpless. “I already know what you’re trying to achieve. You want me totally in your control. You want me afraid, or are trying to make me afraid. Am I right or wrong?”
“Somewhat, Elena. If I ask you to take off your clothes now, would you?”
She cocked her head in the dark. “No.”
“Why not? It’s totally dark in the CAVE and I promise it won’t hurt.”
“Look, I know what you’re trying to do,” Helen said, exasperated now. “It isn’t working. You’re trying to find chinks in my psyche and I’ve been trained to resist. You aren’t going to win.”
“But why are you resisting your trainer? Wouldn’t it be simpler to go along with it, knowing what I’m going to do, and then following through with today’s training lesson? Why the need to tell me that you aren’t going to lose? Or, are you just afraid, Elena, that you will lose?”
Oh, he was good. Whoever her new trainer was, he definitely wasn’t just some Special Forces guy or CIA shrink trying to beat her into shape mentally or physically. This man was trying to figure her out by pushing her sexual buttons. The thing was, she couldn’t figure out why he was doing it…yet. It’d only been a couple of weeks, but already he’d challenged her more than any of her other trainers, both physically and mentally.
“Okay, fine.” She popped the pill into her mouth, crushed it between her teeth because she was that pissed off. She wanted to taste its bitterness. “I’m not going to be very happy if you start taking my clothes off again when I wake up. I’m tired of it. That’s a warning.”
“Then I’ll make sure they’re already off before you wake up.”
“You…” She didn’t even have time to finish cursing him, falling forward as the world spun into darkness.
When Helen came to, she didn’t say anything, using the time to figure out what he was trying to do. Again, she couldn’t see the person carrying her. This time, she was in his arms, the way a man carried a lover, and he was walking slowly. She heard the lapping of water. Splashing at his feet. He kept walking.
She knew it was useless but she still tried to move. She really, really hated this feeling. She felt the water touching her bare buttocks. She gasped—both from the cold water and her outrage that she was indeed “naked”—as he took both of them deeper into the water.
“I’m so going to kill you,” she said between her teeth. “I told you not…”
She gasped again as he let go of her. She sank, water getting into her mouth. She couldn’t move; she was going to drown.
This isn’t real. This isn’t real! You got to keep your head! She realized now that he’d purposely done the one thing he knew would distract her—making her think he undressed her. She needed to remember that virtual reality was all in the mind. He was pushing her to accept this, getting her ready for the next phase.
Willing her panic and anger away, Helen relaxed, allowing her body to float. He was her trainer; he wasn’t going to let her drown. Just as she reasoned this to herself, she felt his arms gather around her, pulling her upward to t
he surface. Her face burst through the water and she took deep breaths of air into her lungs as she felt him lifting her higher, till her chin rested on his shoulder. She coughed, very aware of his arms around her nude body.
“Total immersive virtual reality between two people is going to be different from going solo, Elena,” he said softly in her ear. “I give you the reality that you have to accept in your mind. Just as I have to accept what you see when you remote view because if my mind rejects it, then this experiment will fail. You have to get very comfortable with whatever reality I provide here, just as I have to do the same with the reality you say you see when you remote view. Am I making sense to you?”
“Yes.” But that didn’t mean she had to like it.
“The nudity is just a little quarrel between us. I know you don’t feel comfortable when you aren’t in control, I totally understand that, and that’s why you are naked now, in the water, in my control because you have to get comfortable with this notion.”
“Only in virtual reality,” she assured him sharply.
“That’s fine.”
They were still in the water. She shivered. How deep was the water? Not real, Helen, it’s not real. She breathed slowly, steadily. Fine, she got the lesson, so she would shut up and just let the drug do its thing until she was able to move again.
His hand came behind her neck, gently turning her head up. Looking at his shadowy form was the most frustrating thing after the fact that she was in someone’s control.
“Do you know what made you even madder than being stripped naked by someone?”
“I’m not stripped naked. It’s all in my head,” she said, and tried to smile nonchalantly, “so I’m not mad at all since none of this is real.”
“Then you aren’t allowed to lose your temper if I kiss you again,” he whispered, his head coming down on hers.
And there was nothing she could do as she floated in his arms, nothing at all, as the hand behind her neck firmly forced her head back. He explored her mouth intimately, his tongue tangling with hers.