Sleeper Agenda

by Thomas E. Sniegoski

Tyler turned his attention to the other agent. The man was crawling away from him, still gasping for air, one hand clutching his throat while the other reached for a gun that had been dropped in the scuffle.

  “You guys just don’t learn,” Tyler muttered with disgust. Pulling back his leg, he drove the heel of his foot into the back of the agent’s neck. The man’s head snapped forward and whacked the floor, knocking him out cold.

  Sensing more movement behind him, Tyler spun around, believing that Agent Abernathy was tougher than he’d given him credit for, but he realized that it wasn’t the agent at all.

  Madison Fitzgerald stood in the doorway to her room, mouth agape.

  “No time to explain—we have to get out of here,” Tyler said breathlessly, doing his best imitation of Tom Lovett.

  He held out his hand, and she reached out to take it.

  Chapter 12

  THE DOCTOR SHONE the beam of the tiny flashlight into Agent Mayer’s eyes, making sure she was all right.

  “And he attacked you—just like that?” Tremain asked. He needed to know everything. Tom had broken into information storage and fought his way out of the facility, Madison Fitzgerald in tow.

  Mayer nodded. The doctor handed her a cup of water and some pills. “One minute he was standing at the back of the elevator, very quiet, and the next he was attacking me. I’ve never seen a kid with that kind of strength before.”

  Tremain glanced through the window of the examination room to the nurses’ station to see that the computer terminals there were still blank. Tom had introduced a virus that had completely shut down Pandora’s computer system. The entire network was offline, leaving them without the slightest clue as to where he had gone and what information he had accessed.

  “I know I shouldn’t have let my guard down,” Mayer added with a slight shake of her head. “But he seemed so upset after that scene with his former handler.”

  Agent Mayer wasn’t the only one who’d let her guard down. Tremain himself was well aware of the threat Tom Lovett posed and still found himself feeling sorry for the kid, having developed a completely unprofessional bond. The boy was a weapon, and he should have been treated as such.

  The doctor interrupted, telling Mayer that she was free to go but would need a day or so to recuperate. She thanked him, hopping down off the examination table.

  “It was almost as if Tom wasn’t there anymore,” Agent Mayer suddenly said to Tremain as the two left the infirmary.

  “What do you mean?” Tremain asked, stopping in the hallway.

  “It was like he wasn’t Tom anymore—the way he carried himself, the way he moved, even the way he talked.”

  Only a select few knew Tom’s real story. Most of Pandora believed he was simply a troubled youth who had been trained as a double agent by some rogue operatives. It was enough; they didn’t need to know the full extent of what had been done to Tom.

  “What else?” Tremain demanded, his anxiety rising.

  “You should have seen his eyes, sir,” Mayer said. She shuddered, pulling her jacket closed and buttoning it. “I’ve never seen them so cold.”

  The doctor came out of the infirmary with some paperwork that Mayer had forgotten to sign, and Tremain used the opportunity to excuse himself, quickly heading toward the elevator.

  It was time for Victoria Lovett to tell him the truth.

  Tom half expected to awaken in the belly of the huge, nightmarish creature that had swallowed him, but instead, he found himself back in the front room of the old mansion.

  “I guess this is where you want me to be,” he muttered, trying to figure out what he should do next.

  The thought of Tyler out there in the real world was almost more than he could stand. He had to do something. He looked toward the stairs and decided that the second floor would be as good a place as any to begin exploring.

  Tom started up the winding staircase, noticing as he reached the second floor that the long hallway was lit by gas lamps attached to the wall by tarnished sconces. He didn’t remember them being there before. He still found it so hard to believe that none of this was actually real, that the floor beneath his feet, the musty smell of age in the air, the hiss of the gas lamps were all elaborate manifestations of his fractured psyche.

  The hallway seemed to stretch for a mile, closed doors on both sides. Slowly he began to walk; then, out of curiosity, he reached out to test one of the doorknobs. It turned easily in his hand, and he pushed the wooden door wider to get a good look at what was behind it.

  It was as if the door had opened onto another place entirely. Tom was stunned, stepping back slightly as he peered through to what looked to be a school playground. He listened to the sounds of children playing—some swinging on the swings, others chattering happily as they played on the slide.

  At first Tom had no idea what he was watching. But then his brain began to tingle, and he realized that the playground scene unfolding before him seemed strangely … familiar.

  He stepped farther into the room—onto the playground, the children running around him paying him no mind, as if he wasn’t even there, a ghost—and he knew that he was in Sweetwater, Texas, at East Ridge Elementary School, where he had attended third grade…

  His brain felt like it was moving around inside his skull as he watched a little boy, no older than nine, step from one of the buildings, late for recess because he’d mentioned to his teacher—Mrs. Fogg, her name was Mrs. Fogg—that he wasn’t feeling well. And after a talk where the good-natured teacher had attempted to discern what was wrong with him, she’d decided that he was fine and sent him out for some sunshine and exercise.

  The child was him.

  Tom remembered the day specifically, knowing what was going to happen. He wanted to call to the younger version of himself, to go to the little boy and tell him not to be afraid.

  This was the day—the day he had experienced the first of his narcoleptic attacks.

  The wave of vertigo struck unexpectedly, and he thought for sure that he was on the verge of blacking out. The intense dizziness and nausea passed, but something had changed. Tom realized that he was no longer by the open door but across the playground—having become his younger self.

  Tom looked down at his hands, marveling at how small they seemed but finding no pleasure in the bizarre experience. He knew what was going to happen and dreaded the feeling of total helplessness that would soon be coming. He braced himself, feeling the strange sensations that he would eventually come to associate with one of his attacks—

  And the reality changed again. No longer was he at East Ridge Elementary. His world had gone cold. He was naked, strapped to some kind of bed, dim circles of light shining down on him from a ceiling above. There was something inside his mouth—something that prevented his teeth from coming together—from biting his tongue.

  And two figures, each of them wearing a white lab coat, came to stand above him on either side. He wanted to scream, but the rubber piece in his mouth prevented it.

  Where the hell am I? Tom asked himself, returning the stare of the man and the woman.

  “I think he’s awake,” the woman said, stepping closer, reaching down with rubber-gloved hands to pull open one of his eyes. He wanted to slap her rough hands away, but his hands were bound at his sides.

  “That’s not possible,” the man said, adjusting his glasses before he too took a closer look. “My God, you’re right.”

  The two seemed flustered, moving behind a console.

  “He’s a feisty one. Increase the phenobarb,” the man said as the woman acted, and Tom immediately felt his eyes begin to grow heavy. He didn’t want to sleep—he wanted to know what the hell was going on.

  “Memory implantation should be resuming shortly,” the woman said, her voice the last thing Tom heard as his eyes closed and he found himself falling into sleep. “Five … four … three … two…”

  “Where are we with that?” he heard the man ask, his voice growing farther and farther away
.

  “He should be at school in Texas, experiencing his first narcoleptic attack.”

  “Excellent,” the man responded. “This should be something that he remembers for the rest of his life.”

  Tom was in the hallway again, sitting on the floor and staring at the wall where a room used to be. He struggled to his knees, reaching out to touch the firmness of the wall, the peeling wallpaper beneath his fingers.

  What’s going on? he wondered, recalling it all—East Ridge Elementary as well as the disturbing moments strapped to the table. The room had contained a memory from his past—and something else. He could still taste the foul rubber inside his mouth. That had been a memory too, but one that had not originally belonged to him.

  The memory had been Tyler’s, and now it was Tom’s.

  He looked down the corridor at the many other closed doors that awaited him, wondering if behind each of them there existed a moment from the past.

  He climbed to his feet and slowly moved to the next door—the mystery of what was hidden behind it and what would be revealed drawing him forward.

  It was the third car they had stolen.

  Madison walked quickly behind Tom, looking over her shoulder as he picked the latest vehicle. They had been driving for hours, Tom hell-bent on getting them as far away from Washington as he could.

  He was being strangely silent. The few times that she had tried to find out what was going on, he’d just given her a look and then told her to trust him.

  And how could she do anything but? Tom had saved her life at least twice, and if she thought really hard, she could probably come up with a few more times as well. Madison had to trust him for now, but as soon as she got a chance, she was going to make him tell her what was going on.

  They were in another parking garage, this one attached to a mall. They had dumped their last car—a Ford something or other that smelled liked sour milk—in a space on the second level and had taken the stairs up to the fifth to begin their shopping.

  Tom stopped near a dark green Subaru Outback, tried the driver’s side door, which was locked, but then tried the back door. It opened, and he quickly unlocked the driver’s side and then the passenger’s so that she could join him.

  She thought it would never get old, watching Tom hot-wire a car. It had amazed her when she’d first seen him do it in the driveway of his home, which seemed like a hundred years ago, and it was still something.

  He broke the plastic casing over the steering column with a loud crack, and she watched as his fingers deftly sought out the proper wires. In a matter of seconds the car engine turned over and they were ready to get on the move again.

  “Tom,” she said as he put the car in gear.

  It was almost as though he didn’t hear her, he was so intensely focused on getting them to where they needed to go. But where is that?

  She reached out to touch his arm, and he reacted as though she were trying to attack him. He moved lightning fast, slamming the car into park, grabbing her wrist in a grip that she knew could have snapped it like a twig with just the slightest more pressure.

  “You’re hurting me,” Madison said as calmly as she could, even though she was suddenly feeling very unsafe. There was a look in his eyes, a dangerous look, and she felt a chill.

  He seemed to sense this and smiled. “Sorry,” he said, letting her wrist go. “Guess I’m just a little jumpy.”

  Madison took back her hand, rubbing where he had gripped it so tight, and she continued to watch him—to stare into his eyes.

  “What’s going on, Tom?” she finally asked. “If you want me to trust you, you have to tell me.”

  Tom sighed, the muscles in his neck and around his jaw tensing, and he slammed his head back against the headrest. “I found out some things,” he said, eyes closed. “From my mother, I found out that Pandora didn’t want to help—they wanted to use us.” He looked at her then, and she was held by the intensity of his gaze. “They wanted to use me like some kind of secret weapon, but first they had to make me go away.”

  “I don’t understand what you mean,” she said.

  “They were going to kill me—make me go away so that the other half would be all there was. I couldn’t let them do that,” he told her with a shake of his head. “I couldn’t let them kill me.”

  It was obvious that he was upset, and she wanted to reach out—to comfort him—but something held her back.

  Something still didn’t feel right.

  “I understand that we had to get out of there, but where are we going now?” Madison asked. “They’re part of the government, Tom. How can we get away from the government?”

  He smiled at her, and right then she knew what was wrong.

  Chapter 13

  TREMAIN’S HEAD WAS pounding.

  “Explain to me again how he was able to leave the facility with the girl?” he asked Agent Abernathy, whose face looked like twenty miles of bad road after his run-in with the boy. Tremain was certain now that Tom was manifesting the personality of the sleeper assassin, Tyler Garrett.

  “We’re not sure how exactly, but it was as if he was always one step ahead of us,” the man explained.

  They were on their way to the holding cells in the subbasement, where Tremain planned to have a long talk with Victoria Lovett. Whatever the woman had done, it had thrown his entire operation into chaos, and he wanted to give a little bit back to her.

  “Not sure how he pulled it off?” he asked, his voice sharp with aggravation. “I’ll tell you how he pulled it off—he knows exactly how we operate. He’s been here for more than two weeks, watching our every move and committing them to memory. He knew we’d do one thing, and he did the other.”

  Abernathy remained quiet, which was smart. Tremain had heard all about how the agent had attempted to use unauthorized lethal force to stop the boy.

  Fat lot of good it did him.

  “Anything new on the computer systems?” Tremain asked as they reached the guard stationed just outside the block of holding cells.

  “We think we have the bug isolated, and we’ll be able to retrieve most of the data soon.”

  Tremain handed his gun over to the guard for safekeeping. He wasn’t taking any chances with this woman.

  “I’m going in alone,” he said, and then turned back to Abernathy. “If you hear anything about our wayward souls, let me know immediately.”

  The agent nodded, the dark purple bruises beneath his eyes making him look very much like a raccoon. He seemed about to say something else.

  “What is it, Agent?” Tremain asked, trying to keep the impatience from his voice.

  “I just want to say how sorry I am that this situation has—”

  Tremain stopped him with a hand gesture. “That’s enough,” he said, proceeding through the door that had been unlocked by the guard. “Let’s concentrate on preventing him from making us look like jackasses again.”

  Victoria Lovett heard the sound of someone approaching and stood, waiting. She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw Director Tremain appear before her cell.

  “I can help,” she said, stepping closer to the bars.

  “Haven’t you already done enough?” Tremain asked.

  His words were like a physical blow; painfully true, striking deep to her heart. They both knew what she had done to her “son.”

  “I know what you think of me, but there wasn’t a choice,” she explained. “If I hadn’t triggered the transference, he would have known and—”

  “Who would have known?”

  “Kavanagh,” she replied. “This was all part of his plan: to have Tom brought here, then for me to be captured so that I could be brought here and trigger the change.”

  “The poem,” Tremain stated.

  She nodded. “You can’t begin to imagine how painful it was for me to speak those words … but if I hadn’t, he would never have checked in with Kavanagh and been given the specifics of his assignment.”

  Tremain steppe
d closer, taking hold of the bars. “Why should I believe you?” he asked. “After all you’ve done, what makes you think that anything you say could bear any weight?”

  “Because if I hadn’t done what I did, Brandon Kavanagh would be on the move again, disappearing from the face of the earth to plan some other terrible way to get even with Pandora for throwing a wrench into his plans.”

  “Well, if that’s true, why didn’t you tell me what you were up to right away and where Kavanagh is? Why the secrets?”

  She paused. “Maybe I don’t trust you,” she replied. “I had to follow this through because it’s the best thing for Tom. I wasn’t sure you would have allowed me to do it my way. In fact, I’m sure you wouldn’t have.”

  The director remained silent.

  “As of now, Kavanagh believes that everything is going according to plan,” she added.

  “And do you know what that plan is?”

  She moved closer, the two of them separated only by the metal bars of the jail cell. “Not everything, but I managed to piece together some basic intel from our conversations. The rest I got from reading notes scrawled on pieces of paper on his desk and snippets of phone conversations I overheard when I was coming and going from his office.”

  “Do you know where Tom … Tyler is going?”

  “I want to be involved,” she stated.

  Tremain shook his head. “That’s out of the question.”

  Victoria backed away from the bars and returned to her cot.

  “There are other ways I can get this information from you,” Tremain threatened.

  She looked up at him. “I want to help you—just let me be a part of this operation, and I’ll tell you everything I know.”

  Tremain turned and walked away from the room.

  Victoria felt her resolve begin to crumble; she couldn’t do anything from inside this cell. She was starting to consider alternatives to the offer she’d made Tremain when she heard the sounds of feet coming down the hall.

  Pandora’s director had returned with her jailer. The man unlocked the door, allowing it to swing wide, and Tremain moved to stand in the entryway.