by J. M. Lanham
What had been a surety just moments before was now causing Donny serious doubts. He continued squeezing through the crowd and peering into storefronts, looking for a face similar to dozens he had already seen. Even the recollection of his dream—vivid and vibrant at first—was now feeling more and more like a distant memory.
He came to the entryway of a semi-vacant space. Two painters were inside, one taping off the windows while the other laid a plastic drop cloth over the bar. A radio sat on the bar and blasted “Take Me to the River.” Donny stepped inside, coughing a little from the amount of dust in the air. Tables and chairs were stacked on one wall, with toolboxes and ladders on the other. Two signs were propped up by the door: one badly weathered that read “Mary Lou’s,” the other a brand-new metallic plaque promoting “Kerry’s.”
A worker emerged from the back. Donny asked, “Hey, man, have you seen this kid?” He held out the photo as the worker approached. The man looked it over, then said, “Nah. Never seen him.” He grabbed a toolbox, then returned to the back.
Just a few minutes in, and Donny was already discouraged. He looked around the empty restaurant under renovation and cursed. This is pointless, he thought. If I really made contact, why is this kid so damn hard to find?
He turned quickly to exit just as a tall black man was walking in, a box of dinnerware weighing heavy in his arms. The two collided, startling both parties and causing the man to drop the box. He watched in horror as several stacks of plates shattered on the sidewalk. When the noise subsided, he looked up at Donny, expecting some sort of apology.
Donny didn’t have time for that. “Watch where you’re going, pal.” Then he stepped over the broken mess of plates and left.
Arlo Vaughan stood in disbelief and watched the stranger disappear back into the crowd, not so much as a sorry or my bad or any acknowledgement he’d just cost the man a chunk of change. He yelled, “Who do you think you are?”
There was no verbal response. Instead, Donny hung the finger behind him, too busy to take the time to turnaround and properly flick off a stranger.
“That son of a bitch!” Arlo muttered. A thought crossed his mind and he considered chasing the man down, but he wasn’t the type. He hung his head, disappointed in the human condition, and began picking up the pieces to his plates.
Chapter 21:
A Woman Scorned
“Which one is this?” Kovic asked, staring through the soundproof glass at the sedated patient on the other side.
Ramírez checked his clipboard. “Diana Everly.”
“What’s so special about this one?”
Ramírez looked up, lips pressed, then returned to his clipboard. “Nothing, really. Ms. Griffin would have done just fine, but the outliers tend to get exhausted after a single round. Ocula 2.0 really takes it out of them.”
“We’ve got two men in holding who are outliers, too.” He thought of Claire’s experience at the Costa Rican facility. He asked, “Tanner seemed to prefer using women. Any reason why you’re doing the same?”
“Actually, yes. From a biological standpoint, women don’t sleep as well as men do.”
Kovic cocked his head. “Isn’t the whole point of this to get them to dream?”
“Yes, but therein lies the problem with using men to influence dream sequences. Men are naturally better sleepers than women. They tend to sleep longer, while females have shorter circadian rhythms. Some scientists think this is because women are responsible for childbirth and by their very nature have to sleep in shorter spurts to take care of their offspring.
“At any rate, women work better because they are less likely to experience R.E.M. cycles on their own in conjunction with the drug, which can lead to additional content that is uncontrollable and disruptive.”
“So you’re saying men are more likely to dream what they want?”
“Precisely. Women respond better to what we give them, which in turn helps to broadcast more convincing messages.”
“Makes sense. Women are naturally better listeners.”
“Uh-hum. The men, however, have been a mixed bag in the past. When our content collides with what they may already be dreaming about, it causes an internal conflict in the mind of the outlier. Messages then become convoluted and are often forgotten by our target—useless. Like a vivid dream that flees your memory the moment you wake.”
The woman on the other side of the glass was resting peacefully. It wouldn’t be long before the dose of Ocula 2.0 was administered. Then the first stage of Project THEIA would officially be underway.
Kovic and Ramírez stood and watched as two lab techs entered the room to prep Mrs. Everly. They tightened her restraints, checked the IV port of her arm, pressed fingers into her wrist and checked her pulse alongside the machines to verify accuracy. Everything was in working order.
One of the techs returned to the observation room adjacent to the lab with Kovic and Ramírez. Inside, a control panel stretched below the observation glass. A score of buttons and switches and touchscreens covered the counter-height panel.
“We should be ready to begin,” Ramírez told him. He nodded, noted the time, and then began the process of turning Mrs. Everly into a mind-altering broadcast television.
A button was pressed and Kovic watched as the antenna hanging above Mrs. Everly’s head descended from the ceiling. “This is the way out?” he asked Ramírez.
“In a manner of speaking, yes.” Ramírez pointed to the antenna that was now inches from Mrs. Everly. “See the small orbital globe at the end of the antenna? That’s the same type of high-sensitive receptor used in brainwave experiences conducted at cutting-edge universities like MIT and Virginia Tech. The receptor amplifies everything we are putting in, and then transmits it to the broadcast tower two-thousand feet above us at the top of the mountain. This gives us the ability to transmit signals at a range far greater than we could in Costa Rica.”
Kovic crossed his arms and nodded, impressed. He had kept up with the progress at the Costa Rica facility through Ryan Tanner, but they were still in the very early stages and had not yet determined a way to broadcast further than twenty miles. That was the reason the Dawkins operation in the Costa Rican jungle had been one of their first targets. It was also why Claire Connor had been picked up to begin with. Not only had she been identified as an Ocula outlier shortly after the clinical trials—she’d also had a personal connection to Dawkins that could have made influencing his behavior a much easier task to accomplish.
Putting unfamiliar content into the heads of complete strangers in the hopes of getting others to do your will, on the other hand, was a little bit trickier. Kovic knew this, and hoped that Ramírez had made some progress in the months he had been left in the dark.
His concern was soon lifted as he watched the tech still at Mrs. Everly’s bedside fitting what looked like a virtual reality headset over her eyes.
“What’s this?” Kovic asked.
“The content delivery system. We always called it THEIA, named for the Titan goddess of sight and light.”
“Interesting. I just assumed you guys pulled these project names out of your asses.”
Ramírez grinned as they watched the tech secure the headset across Mrs. Everly’s face. He tightened two side straps, plugged a cord in, then flipped a switch. A green light shone a ring around the device, outlining it on the patient’s face. Then the tech left, securing the door before stepping back into the observation room.
The four men stood and watched the room for what felt like an eternity. Ramírez played it cool, but in reality his heart was beating out of his chest. Kovic was nervous, too, but for other reasons that had nothing to do with the project outcome. He didn’t like any of this. He had worked hard to shut the program down at the onset of Lancaster’s appointment, and at the time she had been completely on board. Now they were bringing back a pariah; something that could ruin the agency for good.
And there were other consequences, too. Kovic knew how dangerous Oc
ula was. He also couldn’t ignore how valuable such a powerful weapon could be in the hands of a responsible superpower. But the difference between possessing a potentially catastrophic weapon and actually using it was stark.
While Ramírez and Kovic had their apprehensions, the two techs working on the groundbreaking and top-secret project were eager to get started. They looked to their superiors. “We’re initiating content now.” Under normal circumstances, Kovic might have asked why a peacefully sleeping patient was being fed visual content, but he already knew the answer. As soon as Ocula hit her veins, she would be thrust into one of the most intense experiences she’d ever felt.
The overhead lights in the observation room went out, leaving the green glow from the headset the only visible thing in the room. The men squinted as they looked inward through the glass, watching the light from the headset as it began to flicker at rapid speed. Subliminal messages had been transmitted through the headset and into Mrs. Everly’s eyes and ears for almost twenty minutes while the patient remained sedated.
“We’ve found running content prior to the delivery of the medication heightens the chances of the desired thought patterns playing out in the cerebral cortex,” Ramírez said.
“What’s on the menu?”
“A rather basic selection of anti-Ocula propaganda directed at Anthony Hoover.”
The head of the FDA, thought Kovic. It was a good place to start. Lancaster had a few trustworthy sources at the DEA, but she had always been close to Hoover. When it came to getting someone to take action against Ocula, he was the best chance for a quick turnaround.
Ramírez continued, “We had originally hoped to incorporate a small team of CGI developers to come in and create visuals and audio based on our content briefs. We would then deliver this content through THEIA while dosing with Ocula.” Ramírez sighed, “Unfortunately, this was a rush project, and we didn’t have time to prepare the way I would have liked.”
“Well, if it works, at least it’s a step toward ridding the world of Ocula.” Kovic took a deep breath as the two men looked inward toward Mrs. Everly. The pale yellow drug was beginning to cloud her IV line as it made its way toward her arm.
“But that’s a big if.”
***
Smuggling drugs for a living had its benefits. But as Claire chewed her thumbnail and stared out the window of her friend’s private jet, she couldn’t escape a single thought of Alejandro Aguilar.
Below were the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, a sea of pure blue with streaks of twinkling diamonds stretching as far as the eye could see. It was a scene that would’ve taken most people’s minds off their daily troubles, at least for a moment or two. But even the sparkling surface thousands of feet below reminded Claire of the tennis bracelets and necklaces and earrings the lonely aristocrat had tried to woo her with in the months after his wife passed.
Now a daughter was without a father, and a long list of extended family members, close friends, and business associates were without a patriarch. Alejandro Aguilar was dead, killed during an expedition Claire had talked him into going on.
Her eyes welled up as she looked away from the window, desperate to escape her guilt. She took her sleeve and dabbed her eyes, then asked the pilot in the cockpit ahead, “How much longer?”
“About three more hours, give or take.”
Claire nodded, then returned to staring out the window. Over and over, she repeated the events leading up to her escape—and the subsequent explosion at the facility that killed her friend. Why would Kovic order a strike before making contact? And why did I even ask Han to tag along to begin with?
There were no easy answers, but as her analytical brain started ticking again, she did come to a few conclusions. First, making a deal with the CIA had been her biggest mistake. It was a sham proposal offered up by Colin Kovic after Claire made contact a month earlier. On the surface, the deal had sounded simple enough. Claire would infiltrate the Costa Rican facility, collect any intel she could gather on the Ocula program, then give the go-ahead to have the facility destroyed. Apparently, Kovic had missed the part where she was supposed to escape first.
In Claire’s mind, however, this was never a legitimate offer. Putting her trust in the intelligence community would have been akin to a battered wife returning to a house of abuse. It wasn’t in her nature to forgive and forget things like illegal kidnapping, torture, human rights violations . . . basically everything that kept Tanner ticking. She was well aware that technically speaking, Tanner wasn’t officially CIA while playing in the jungle. But, once a company man, always a company man. And there was no way she was trusting anyone with a past or present affiliation with Langley.
Which brought her to her true intentions: infiltrate the facility, let the CIA obliterate it into a bad memory, then disappear again with as much intel on the Ocula program as she could carry out. But wasn’t the intel just as valuable to Kovic as it was to her? If they really wanted her dead, and the promise of a pardon was just the bait needed to lure her out of hiding, wouldn’t it make more sense to wait until she had delivered the goods, and then have her killed?
Her feet tapped, her fingers danced, and her nerves were shot. The turbulence wasn’t helping, either. Soon she would be back in the United States, and without a solid game plan, it would only be a matter of time before Kovic discovered she hadn’t been killed in the blast. Unless Claire went back into hiding, but that wasn’t happening. This wasn’t about her life anymore. It was about all of the innocent lives that had been affected by Ocula. All of the murder and corruption and turmoil it had and would continue to cause.
If there was any good news to be had, it was little. But the fact remained that the blast at the facility was no small bonfire. Claire had seen destruction like that before, only from much further away. The sheer force of the explosion had shaken her to the core, and easily incinerated any trace of human activity in or around the secret jungle compound.
That also meant Kovic likely thought she was dead. Mission accomplished. One more loose end wrapped up in a pretty little bow.
That’s when it hit her.
Claire looked at the puffs of clouds overshadowing the gulf waters and made a host of promises to herself. She would avenge the deaths of friends lost, no matter what it took; she would bring down Asteria and any civilians affiliated with the illegal program; and then go after CIA both past and present.
They were all going down. No one would be left unaccounted for. Everyone would be brought to justice.
And she knew exactly how she was going to do it.
Chapter 22:
Come See Savannah
The old-fashioned streetlights cut on as the setting sun wedged in between the Talmadge Bridge and the Savannah River, marking the end to a busy day on River Street. The crowded streets thinned out as patrons dispersed into nearby restaurants and bars for dinner and drinks while a few stragglers smoked their cigars and took pictures and held hands and strolled across the cobblestones.
Dawa Graham checked his watch. A quarter past eight. The long August day should have been plenty of time to locate Fenton Reed; that was, if he had ever been in Savannah to begin with. Dawa shook his head, disappointed but not surprised. It would be dark soon, and in their search for the young Ocula outlier, the Atlanta crew had turned up nothing.
To the west, he could barely make out Paul, who was walking his way. He looked east; Donny was also making his return visit. He held his hands out as if to ask from afar if they’d found anything.
They both shook their heads. They hadn’t.
Worth a try, thought Dawa. The trip might not have turned up anything, but perhaps Fenton’s absence would finally be the proof Donny needed to realize he held no godlike control over the nature of reality. The very thought of it irked Dawa to no extent, and went against everything he believed involving spiritualism and Buddhism.
Ford should have known better. Maybe now he’d finally shut up.
The two men drew closer
to Dawa, and he said, “No sign of Fenton Reed.”
Paul said, “If he’s here, he’s not on River Street.”
“He’s here,” snapped Ford.
“Okay then, Mr. Ford”—Paul looked west, then east—“maybe you’d like to fill us in again on where he’s hiding. Because if you ask me, this entire trip was nothing but a waste of time.”
“You know, Paul, I’m really starting to question your role in this whole thing in the first place.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“You say you’ve had these experiences, these dreams. But if you really were an outlier, then why in the fuck are you so eager to doubt everything I’m telling you?”
“Because you’re a charlatan, Ford. I’ve known people like you my entire life. Regardless of what you say, there’s always a catch.”
Ford started to step into Paul’s face again, but Dawa was quick to intercede. “Boys, boys,” he said. “This solves nothing. We are all tired. We cannot afford to focus our energy in such a negative way.” He looked at Paul. “I know you have your doubts about Donald, Paul. But I have known him for a long time. Yes, he has made mistakes. Yes, he has tried to monetize every noble thing he has come across.”
Donny’s face scrunched as he waited for his old friend to say something positive. “But,” Dawa continued, “I do not believe Donald is a malicious man. Misguided at times, yes. But not evil. Whether his dream was real or not is of no consequence. If he said he dreamt Reed was in Savannah, we have to take him at his word.” He put his hand on Paul’s shoulder. “And, my young friend, you will get the same benefit of the doubt. Should you have the conviction Donald has, I will be more than willing to see it through.