“I know you are, Jake. But what if he’s right? How will you know if you’ve gone too far?”
“I don’t know. I’m kind of playing it by ear right now.”
She nodded and put her head back on his chest.
“How are you with all this?” Jake asked. “Do you believe I’m doing the right thing?”
She was quiet for a moment and then said, “I trust you Jake.”
She reached up and kissed him softly, and then more passionately until Bodey yelled from the kitchen, “Yo! Bro! I’m exhausted. Take me home and put me to bed.”
Jake and Maddy both laughed into their kiss and he yelled back, “Coming!”
She kissed him once more and said, “Sleep tight. Sweet Dreams.”
The irony of that request would haunt them both until morning.
23
January 14, 2010 – 3:31 a.m.
Orange Park, Florida
Maddy woke screaming.
Sara was right there, quickly, as a booming sound rattled the windows in the house. Mike followed shortly behind her, his hair sticking up in spikes and clumps, sleep still lingering in his face and eyes.
“What the hell is going on?” he said.
Sara held Maddy, trying to calm her down. “Another nightmare,” she said.
“But what was that loud bang?” Mike asked.
Sara shrugged, looking afraid.
Mike said, “Is she all right?
“She’s frightened, Mike, but I think she’s ok.”
“All right, I’m going to look around. Yell if you need me.”
Sara held Maddy and stroked her hair. “Are you all right, sweetie? Do you want to talk about it?”
“I’m ok now, Mom, thanks. I need to call Jake.”
Sara looked concerned and stopped Maddy as she reached for the phone. “Honey, what’s going on? Why do you need to call Jake at this hour? He’s probably fast asleep.”
“Because he’s having his dream too.”
“You’re not making sense, Maddy. How do you know Jake is having a dream?”
“Because we’ve been having dreams about Ryan and Beth, and we’ve been having them at the same time. Remember, I told you about it? Ryan said something else to me, in my dream, and I need to tell Jake.”
“You’re having the same dream as Jake and at the same time as he is?” Sara asked, incredibly.
“Sort of, Mom. I’m having a recurring dream about Ryan and he’s having a recurring dream about his wife, Beth. But yes, we have them at the same time, about 3:30 in the morning.”
Sara looked perplexed, but let her hand go and Maddy picked up the phone and dialed Jake’s number. He answered on the first ring.
“Hey,” Jake said, as if he knew who it was without waiting for her to tell him. “Are you ok?”
“Yeah, Mom is here with me. I woke up screaming and she and Dad were awakened by a loud bang. Dad’s checking the house out now. Jake—Ryan said something new to me tonight.”
“Beth did too. She said, ‘The balance.’”
“The balance?” Maddy said. “Balance what?”
“I don’t know, but I do know the dreams are getting worse and stronger. Bodey woke up. He said he heard a loud voice. He wasn’t sure, but he thought it said, ‘balance.’ He was just waking as it ended.”
“Ryan said ‘must not.’ And Jake?”
“Yes, Maddy.”
“I could see him this time.”
“Who? Ryan?”
“Yes,” she whispered, a tear trickling down her cheek. “After the sounds of the crash ended, instead of the mumbling voice I normally hear, I could hear scraping noises, as if someone were crawling through gravel and broken glass. Then I could hear someone trying to pick the phone up. When I looked down at the phone in my hand, the screen was showing a video. It was Ryan, bloody and broken, crawling across the pavement toward his phone. He had a horrible grinning, blood streaked face and as a tattered hand reached for his phone, he said ‘Jake… must not.’”
“Honey,” Sara said, “how horrible.”
Ignoring her mom, Maddy said into the phone, “What did he mean by ‘Jake must not?’”
“I have no idea,” Jake said. “This is becoming more confusing than ever. I wish I knew what this was all about.”
“Me too.”
“Will you be ok there with your parents?”
“Yes, I’ll be fine.”
“All right, we’ll figure this out in the morning. Try and get some sleep.”
“Jake?” she said before he could hang up.
“Yes.”
“I wish you were here.”
“I do too,” and they said goodbye.
24
January 14, 2010 8:33 a.m.
Orange Park, Florida
Jake walked into the lab feeling exhausted.
Bodey and Maddy followed shortly behind, her eyes red rimmed and droopy, the last two nights seeming to catch up with her. Bodey’s sneakers shuffled across the vinyl floor making harsh squeaking noises.
Teri was on a ladder running her hands along the top of some cupboards and storage shelves. She jumped down when they came in. Looking refreshed and full of energy, she said, “What? Did you guys stay and party all night after I left?”
Jake said, “Nightmares again,” and walked to the coffee pot.
Bodey said, “Jet lag and someone else’s nightmare,” and followed Jake to the coffee.
Maddy said, “Me too,” and stood in line for coffee.
“Well, I slept great,” Teri said. “I got here a little early to start looking for—you know.” She looked around the room suspiciously. “I found one too,” she whispered.
She held up another one of the small battery shaped devices, only this one had been crushed by something.
“I stepped on it to disable it,” she said.
“Good work,” Jake said. “Do you think there are more?”
“Probably. If I was hiding these, I’d put more around. I’ve been looking over here,” she said, pointing to where the ladder stood. “When you guys wake up, we should split up and cover the whole lab. I’ll continue searching the cupboards. Someone needs to check the kitchen and bathrooms. Jake, do you want to look over the console area?”
“Yeah, I’ll get it. Bodey, can you keep working on the software? I hate to waste your valuable time with this crap.”
“Sure.”
“I guess I get the bathrooms,” Maddy said, sounding a little irritated.
“I’ll help you when I’m through with the consoles,” Jake said.
Maddy smiled and said, “Ok.”
They all went to work.
25
January 14, 2010 9:30 a.m.
Mandarin, Florida
Peter was livid.
How could he have been such an amateur? He had never botched an assignment as miserably as this one. First, his training had failed him during the ruse as Peter Vargas. That piece of shit Jake Townsend had seen right through him and the General had been highly disappointed in him. He had reamed him a new asshole.
Now, the listening devices he had placed in the laboratory while impersonating some stupid Near Death clown were slowly being discovered by that lab tech bitch, Teri.
They hadn’t found the video camera yet and he was watching and listening closely to them as they searched the lab trying to find it. If they discovered this last piece of equipment, he would be blind in there for a day or two while he made other arrangements.
After watching the activity for a few more minutes, he decided he’d better start putting alternative plans in to motion. He did not like to rely on luck for a mission’s success, and at the rate they were thoroughly exploring every nook and cranny, it was only a matter of time before the fiber optic camera and microphone were found.
He picked up one of the new secure cell phones he bought at the kiosk in the mall and made a call to a number provided to him by The Organization. It was answered on the fourth ring.
; A woman’s voice said, “Hello,” and this surprised Peter. Either, he had dialed the wrong number, or the operative was the rare female The Organization used. He hoped it was the latter. She had a great voice, and this particular job would require the operative and himself to perform the work together.
Peter said, “Hyperlink.”
If the operative was genuine, he or she would respond with seven tones played by the pressing of the number pad on the phone. The numbers would correspond to the music of ‘Mary had a little lamb.’ If the person on the other line did anything else, Peter would terminate the call and dispose of the now compromised phone in the same manner as the one at the airport.
He had purchased five phones at the kiosk in the mall, but he did not like wasting the time or exposing himself to possible discovery if he had to return and purchase more prematurely. He was hoping the number had been dialed correctly.
Nothing happened for a moment and then he heard the familiar song being played by the keypad tones. He hadn’t realized he was holding his breath, but he let it out slowly and grinned at the prospect of working with a woman. Historically, the type of female who would be involved in this line of work could be very stimulating. He hoped so.
He said, “Ten Pin Lanes, Mandarin, 7:30.”
The woman responded with, “Yes.”
“Are you familiar with biometric cipher combinations?” Peter asked.
“Very,” the woman said.
“A local alarm monitoring system will be involved too,” Peter said, “but it should prove simple. The main problem will be the cipher lock.”
“That will not be a problem.”
Peter was distracted by the face of Teri looming large in the video monitor. A hand reached up and the view moved in a dizzying spinning motion as the camera was removed from the A/C vent overlooking the main chamber of the lab. Teri’s angry face came into view again and a hand came up with an obscene gesture directed toward the lens of the camera. Then the screen went blank.
Bitch! He thought.
The woman on the other end of the line said impatiently, “Hello?”
Peter looked away from the monitor and said into the phone, “Uh—good. See you tonight,” and ended the call.
He swore loudly and almost threw the phone through the window, but caught himself in time.
“All right, bitch,” Peter referred to Teri, “let’s see how you are the next time we meet.”
He relaxed and waited for 7:30 to arrive.
26
January 14, 2010 11:00 a.m.
Orange Park, Florida
After Teri found the fiber optic video camera and disabled it, they searched for another hour, but found nothing.
Jake decided enough time had been devoted to the hunt and went back to pursuing the problems with the sound anomalies.
Bodey had just finished writing the software which would allow them to hear the true sound of the recorded sessions and Jake anxiously waited for the program to boot up.
“This mother was huge,” Bodey said, referring to the sound file. “I’ve never seen anything this big.”
“Is it going to work?” Jake asked.
“Yeah. I had to program the main frame to handle these large files. Part of the problem was I had this workstation here networked with the CRAY and it was processing the audio and video display. It’s way underpowered and can’t handle this kind of conversion, so I routed the audio and video crunching into the CRAY system. You’ll have plenty of compute cycles now. Let’s give it a whirl.”
Bodey hit play.
The video of Sara’s NDE began like it always had and then they heard music. A complex chord was playing in the background as the video continued. The chord did not change or move up and down in the register of notes, but it was full and beautiful all by itself.
Maddy came over and said, “Now that’s a chord.”
“It’s music,” Jake said a little surprised even though he had heard Sara and others describe music in their NDEs.
“You sound disappointed,” Maddy said.
“I guess I expected more.”
Teri had joined them and said, “It’s beautiful.”
Maddy smiled and nodded her head. “Yes, it is, isn’t it. I’ve never heard such a beautiful chord of music and I’m a studied musician. I’m not sure, but this may be unique in all the world.”
“What are you saying?” Jake asked.
“When I took music composition, the instructor told us that all the music in the world had already been written. Mathematically, every combination of notes and chords had more than likely been played together by someone before us. Our job in the class was to arrange those combinations into something original. But this chord is something I’ve never heard before. It almost overwhelms me with its complexity. Don’t you feel it? It’s as if the music is right there in front of you and then it slips away. I can almost hear all the notes in the chord and then some of them escape me.”
Bodey said, “I was wondering about this…” and typed something into his fancy laptop.
“Wondering what?” Jake asked.
“What she said about the notes escaping her gave me an idea,” Bodey said. “I had a feeling this sound file was going to be beyond our human ability to hear, but she may have just confirmed it. Let me run it through this tonal analyzer and see what we get.”
He pressed a few more keys and then a waveform appeared in the analyzer.
“Whoa!” said Jake. “Look at that.”
Bodey whistled. “Off the scale. The gauge on this analyzer doesn’t measure above a certain note, and this thing has notes way above and below the capacity for human hearing. Or even dog hearing for that matter. And look here,” he pointed to a section in the middle of the cycle. “There are harmonics in here that aren’t even true notes as we know them. They’re notes in between notes if that makes sense.”
“Well,” Jake said. “This is fascinating stuff, but it doesn’t give me the breakthrough I was hoping for. At least we don’t have to listen to the distortion anymore.”
The recording was still playing and Jake saw something on the monitor which caught his eye. “Hold it, Bodey,” Jake said. “Back that up.”
Bodey rewound the segment until Jake said, “Hold it!—right there. Now hit play.”
They watched the video and Jake said, “There!” and pointed to the screen.
Bodey said, “What am I looking for?”
Maddy looked puzzled. Teri had a smile on her face as she bent forward and used the controls.
“Let’s slow it down,” Teri said, and she backed it up a bit and played it back at about a quarter of the normal speed.
The life review had cleaned up a lot. It was still not perfectly clear in places, and it seemed to be jumping and skipping a lot, but you could make out images and scenes, instead of just blurred colors.
Maddy gasped as she saw a scene with her nana in it. She was so young.
“That’s my nana,” Maddy said. “She’s so beautiful and young. Look! My grandpa.” Maddy was giggling. “Mom needs to see this. But where are the scenes of me and Charlotte? Or my dad?”
“They wouldn’t be here,” Jake said. “Remember, your mom had her NDE very young and her life review would only contain images of her life up to that point. You guys didn’t come along until much later.”
Maddy nodded, understanding now. “It’s like a home movie.”
“Bodey, it’s skipping around a lot, isn’t it?” Jake asked. “How much information is in this video?”
“Yeah, it’s skipping pretty good even slowed down to one quarter speed. I didn’t look at the video file, but the software right now won’t slow it down any more. You want me to work on that? It would be fairly easy to make adjustments.”
“Do it,” Jake said. “This might be what I’m looking for.”
“On it,” Bodey said, and started typing commands.
“Who wants lunch?” Jake asked. “Maddy and I will go pick it up.”
“Jake, you never told me about your dream last night,” Maddy said. “I mean you told me what Beth said, but was there anything else?”
“Yeah—are you sure you want to hear?”
She nodded.
“You remember me telling you I’m holding her in my arms and she’s saying nonsense words, right?”
“Yes.”
“And then I hear loud thumps and look around. When I look back at her, she’s staring up at me and says ‘Stop!’ That part didn’t change. But last night, after she spoke the word, she slowly stood up. Her neck was pouring black blood from the gash. She looked down on me and pointed. That’s when she said, ‘The balance.’”
Jake’s hand had become cold and clammy and she squeezed it tighter.
“Her face became this mask of pain and anger,” Jake said. “Something I could barely recognize as Beth. Bodey said I screamed. I don’t remember.”
Jake felt Maddy shudder.
“Oh—and something else,” Jake said. “I could hear a cell phone ringing, faintly. I’d never heard that before in any of my dreams.”
“Was your cell going off, or even Bodey’s, and it invaded your dream?”
“I thought that too, but it wasn’t my ringtone. Bodey’s either. He thought I was crazy asking him to play his ringtone in the middle of the night.”
Maddy had a strange look on her face. “What was the ringtone? Do you know?”
“Yeah—it was that T-mobile ring tone. I think they call it ‘T-Jingle’ or something. Do you know the one I’m talking about?”
She turned white as a ghost and let go of his hand as if it had turned to ice. She hugged herself.
“What?” Jake said. “What’s wrong?”
“That was Ryan’s ringtone. I can hear it ringing in my dream.”
Near Death (A Jake Townsend Science Fiction, Action and Adventure, Thriller Series Book 1) Page 11