by W D County
Kingpin feigned a look of concern and turned to me, the fall guy.
“Still looking for them,” I said. The Pavloks had to be in one of their rooms, but the boss wouldn’t okay a search of their quarters, and I no longer had the access to do it on my own.
Mopes wrung her hands. “The watches are the best defense against illusions, but there are other things we can try. This morning I mentioned hypnosis. We should try it.”
“More junk science,” muttered Brainiac.
Steampunk whispered in my ear, “We’ll check the surveillance videos later.”
“What did the EEG show?” Doc asked. He saw some puzzled looks and added, “She wore a portable EEG when John appeared. It might show abnormalities in brain activity.”
Mopes said, “The machine failed to record the actual meeting. There’s a five-minute gap. I can’t find anything wrong with the unit.”
“Maybe we should all have an updated EEG reading,” Steampunk suggested. “That plus the MMPI tests should show if our brains have been affected by the taint.” She faced Kingpin. “It would be prudent, Gordon, to make sure your team isn’t being brainwashed, like your agency did to unwitting citizens during the sixties.”
Kingpin said dryly, “That was the CIA. I’m with the NSA.” His gaze roamed over the group. “Zita raises a good point. I want each of you to report to the infirmary this evening and get an EEG. Fill out the MMPIs as well and drop them off in Laura’s box. As for hypnosis, I leave that choice up to you.”
He leaned back in his chair. “Well, Nathan, that leaves you as the final report of the day.” He rubbed his hands in anticipation.
“As usual,” Slick said, “all of you are mistaken. The taint is a wellspring of genuine paranormal abilities. On day one I showed how powers could manifest as clairvoyance through the reading of Zener cards. Dreams came next, with veiled personal messages for each of us. Then the appearance of a departed spirit, Laura’s dear husband, John. Notice how, as the taint grows, the abilities increase in number and strength?”
He surprised everyone by jumping atop his chair. “And now, telepathy!” He captured our attention with the drama of his voice and movement. “That’s right. Barry and the taint have granted me the ability to read minds. Now I will prove it to you.”
Brainiac snickered. “Oh my, Nathan, you really have brought Vegas with you.”
“No act, my dear Sonja. Think of something only you would know.” He closed his eyes. “No, be serious, Sonja.” A few seconds passed. “Equations,” Slick said and spouted a bunch of Greek letters sprinkled with mathematical shit like cube root and factorial.
He opened his eyes and smiled at Brainiac. “Want me to write it down?”
I expected her to laugh in his face, but she sat in stunned silence.
Slick turned to Doc. “Think of something, Dr. Harrison. Anything.” Slick closed his eyes again and after a moment said, “Fifty milligrams of Clozapine completely metabolized. Didn’t show up at all in the blood or urine. We may need to just knock him out. Put him in a coma with Midazolam until we understand the taint.”
Doc’s mouth gaped. Slick laughed and turned to Mopes. “Didn’t know that, did you? Don’t blame Doc, I’m sure he intended to tell you. Not that it matters. Barry is operating on a plane where normal limitations no longer apply. Now, Laura, what thought would you like to share?”
Mopes’s face paled. “My God, that could kill him!” She looked at us, saw our questioning faces. “Midazolam is one of the drugs used in lethal injection cocktails by some states.”
Kingpin said, “You’ve made your point, Nathan.” Slick sat down and Kingpin spread his arms as if to encompass all of us. “No one is killing Barry. Far from it. I’m impressed with the progress this team has made in such a short time. I’m proud of each of you, and so is your country. At this rate, we may be able to wind up our work in another day or two, write up our reports, and all go home.”
His words didn’t ring true. Too bad I couldn’t read minds to find out what the boss actually had planned. On second thought, telepathy might mean trudging through mental cesspools. I didn’t relish that thought at all.
Chapter 30
Nathan left the mess hall smiling and joking with the rest of the team, leaving a sour-faced Miles to clean up. He brought it on himself, thought Nathan. Typical bully trying to strong-arm his way through life.
Zita walked a few feet in front of him, providing a delicious rear view of a very short maroon dress wrapped by a wide leather corset. Blue knee-high leather boots matched the curls peeking from beneath her black top hat. A black, diamond-studded collar circled her neck. He wondered if she’d wear a leash.
He walked a bit faster, trying to catch up, confident of conquest now that he could read minds and the Marine had been publicly trounced.
“Nathan,” called Gordon from behind.
He watched the swaying hips depart before turning around. “Yes?”
“My office. We have something to discuss.”
Nathan’s pulse quickened. Suddenly wary, he used his sparkling smile to hide the feeling. “At your service.”
Did Gordon know about the stunt Zita pulled... and the help Nathan provided? He tried and failed to read the leader’s mind. The sights, sounds, and sensations of walking down the corridor overwhelmed the diaphanous mental connection. Fortunately, telepathy wasn’t his only tool for reading people. Tension showed in Gordon’s posture and the way his attention shifted among the other people still in the hallway. Gordon’s face held no hostile micro-expression when looking at him. Good. I’m not the target or the source of his anxiety.
The boss man opened his office and motioned for Nathan to take a seat in one of the two chairs facing the desk. Gordon shut the door and eased behind the desk, where he plopped down in the executive chair and drew a heavy sigh. “Colonel Hauser informed me of a serious problem, one I think you can help fix.”
Nathan felt the weight of Gordon’s gaze. “What do you need?”
“There’s a traitor on the team.”
Nathan blinked and drew on his skill as a performer to conceal a flinch of guilt. He showed doubt with a hint of humor, via a raised eyebrow and sardonic twist of the lips. “What makes you think that?”
“I’m serious, Nathan. Someone sabotaged the surveillance videos. Subtle job, using a sophisticated computer virus.”
Nathan feigned boredom by examining his fingernails. “Simple. Who on the team has programming experience?”
Gordon’s fingers drummed on the desktop. “No one, according to background checks. Closest is Zita, whose skills in pattern recognition helped the tech guys at the FBI locate a stealth virus in SIPRNet software. But there’s no indication that she can write original code.”
“Sipernet?”
“Secret Internet Protocol Router Network,” Gordon said. “Government version of the internet for classified information. Our breach is more serious.”
If he leans hard enough on Zita, she’ll finger me. His heart threatened to gallop; he reined it in and kept his breathing even. “Someone on the outside must have slipped through the firewall.”
Gordon shook his head. “No, the IT boys say the security office was the epicenter. The virus spread from there to Hauser’s computer and then to Jaywics.” Gordon frowned impatiently. “Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System. It’s what we use for the really top-secret stuff.”
“Then it had to be Miles. He’s the only one with access to the security office.”
“I’d agree, but the sergeant can barely use a computer, let alone program one.” Gordon’s fingers stopped drumming. “He must have an accomplice. Someone who created the virus or smuggled it in. I want you to tell me who.”
“Me?” He let all traces of boredom evaporate.
“You can read minds. Ought to be a snap to find the traitor.” He doesn’t know I can only read surface thoughts. “Okay. Might take a while, though. Surface thoughts are the clearest and easiest to rea
d. Memories are harder to probe.”
“Can you do it now?”
Nathan’s mind raced, considering and rejecting possible patsies faster than a Vegas dealer could riffle a card deck. Zita was out, of course. Laura? Too depressed—although she’d do anything to resurrect her husband. Sonja? Sabotaging software would ensure she alone developed practical teleportation. Doc? Maybe, but what was the motive? Hauser? The colonel had access to the records and the software systems. Getting kicked out of his own facility provided motive. Painting Gordon as incompetent would be sweet revenge. There was also the Marine to consider.
The best fall guy had to be someone Gordon already suspected, to minimize the need for additional confirmation.
“Sure. Anyone in particular you’d like me to start with?”
Gordon rubbed his chin. “No. Check out everyone.”
Nathan closed his eyes and relaxed, tuning out distractions. A room took shape in his mind, a room dominated by a whiteboard with photographs of the team taped in a row along the top, with pertinent facts scribbled below each picture. Gordon paced along the rogues gallery, pausing at times to study the notes.
The photograph of Hauser didn’t surprise Nathan, but pointing a finger at the colonel would be risky without some incriminating facts, especially secret ones. The notes beneath the picture read, “Has means and opportunity. Could have fed the virus to our computer, and then let it percolate back up the chain. Resents being kicked out of his own building. He’s hiding something, too. But what?”
Nathan wondered if his telepathy could reach outside the confines of the facility. He temporarily left Gordon’s mind and reached out, probing the emptiness like a blind man with a cane. Within seconds a new image formed, that of the colonel sitting at a desk reviewing a folder stamped “Top Secret.”
The report covered Sergeant Reardon’s temporary transfer to the CIA in order to kill a woman en route from the Antarctic station Dumont d’Urville to Paris. The report hinted at the woman having knowledge of the tesseract and the taint. The extent of that knowledge was unknown. The CIA assumed the worst-case scenario: the woman knew everything and was taking that information to the French government.
The colonel jotted a note on the report. Did the woman make it to France? Dick won’t say.
Nathan withdrew from Hauser’s mind feeling uneasy. If the US government wasn’t averse to killing people who knew about the tesseract, what did they intend to do with Gordon and the team? Thank God I can read minds. Forewarned is forearmed.
He returned to Gordon’s mind and the leader’s thoughts about each team member. Nathan smiled at the notation under his own photo. “Arrogant,” read the caption. “Could not refrain from boasting if he’d hacked the world’s most secure code.” He examined Gordon’s thoughts about the other team members. Two entries stood out as if bolded. The first: “Miles alone has access to the security office.” The second entry surprised him. “Doctor Harrison on team by convenience, not selection. DoD and NSA vetting hasn’t been completed.”
Nathan opened his eyes wide to feign surprise. “Doc and Miles worked together.” The lies rolled easily off his tongue. “Doc has some kind of agenda for Barry; I can’t read the details. He convinced Miles to help, which wasn’t difficult since the grunt doesn’t want to be here anyway.”
“Why sabotage the videos?”
“I don’t know for sure. Probably necessary to hide more serious sabotage. They’re odd bedfellows. Miles is determined to kill Barry, whereas Doc thinks the patient is the key to a fountain of youth. I’ll keep both guys on my mind and tell you what turns up.” He saw no reason to admit the sergeant’s mind remained invisible.
Gordon nodded. A grim smile stretched across his taut face. “Thanks, Nathan. This is top secret, of course.”
“Of course.” Nathan still held a connection to the boss’s mind. He saw Gordon’s avatar draw a circle around Doc’s photo and add an annotation: “Observe, Arrest, Interrogate.” The avatar then covered Miles’s face with a question mark, adding, “Neutralize? Eliminate?”
A Rubik’s Cube appeared in the avatar’s hand. Each facet of the cube displayed words instead of colors. Gordon shifted the arrangement in an attempt to form a plan for eliminating Miles without incriminating himself. Complicating the solution: Colonel Hauser backed Miles, probably because the sergeant was the eyes and ears of the military in this otherwise civilian operation. If only some accident would befall the Marine. Some sad, tragic accident...
“Gordon,” Nathan said in a deliberate and somber manner. “I know what you need.” He let the implication sink in. “I’ll take care of it.”
Gordon nodded.
Nathan smiled. “As for Doctor Harrison, if you could call him and Laura away on some pretext and keep them busy for the next half hour or so, I can search his office for clues to what else he has planned.”
***
Zita fidgeted on the exam table in the infirmary while Doc used alcohol and cotton swabs to clean her scalp which hopefully wouldn’t cause any of her curly blue locks to fade. Laura then positioned twenty-one adhesive leads, all interconnected like a hairnet designed for a cyborg.
“You’re the fourth tonight,” Laura said. “Only Gordon, Nathan, and Miles left. It doesn’t take long, only half an hour or so.”
“Anyone have anomalous readings?”
“None that stand out. I’ll do the comparison tonight and flag any significant deviations from the initial scans.”
Doc said, “Zita, I’m starting the test. Be quiet. Relax.”
Zita gave a slight nod. Outwardly relaxed and silent, her inner self swirled with fleets of thoughts zipping by like a starship armada. Many of the thoughts circled an expanding nebula in which dreams sparkled in ever-shifting colors—her representation of the taint. She wanted to contain the nebula, stop its expansion, or better yet shrink it to nothingness in a black hole. The taint wasn’t evil, but it was dangerous, like a loaded gun in the hands of a toddler.
“Done,” Doc said after a thirty-minute eternity. He and Laura began removing leads.
Zita sucked in a breath and exhaled an avalanche of words. “Laura, you mentioned hypnosis as a possible stopgap measure to provide protection until the Pavloks are found which is an excellent idea so I’d like to take advantage of it but I’ve never been hypnotized before and don’t know if I can be because my mind moves really fast and everything I’ve read about hypnotic trances implies the subject’s thoughts need to slow down. Is that something you can compensate for?”
The psychiatrist stepped back and regarded Zita with sudden interest. “Yes.”
“I need that protection if I’m to continue studying the taint.”
“Hypnosis may help. I can’t guarantee it.”
“Would it also prevent dreams? Or give me more control over them? I’m a lucid dreamer but my dreams of late aren’t totally my own which supports my theory that the taint is trying to communicate, but I can’t risk surrendering to something I don’t understand.”
Laura pursed her lips. “I think appropriate post-hypnotic suggestions could help with dreams as well as give some protection while conscious. Essentially, we’ll turn part of your brain into an alarm. I’ll provide you with trigger phrases allowing you to set the alarm parameters, for example a specific time interval or upon a particular stimulus such as someone shouting your name.”
Zita wasn’t fond of letting anyone mess with her brain. It required extending a level of trust to someone she barely knew in order to gain an untested defense against an unknown entity. But no other option presented itself as capable of breaking the deadlock between her need to know and the fear of being consumed by illusions. Unraveling the mystery of the taint was of paramount importance and utmost danger. She was a moth drawn to the flame. She needed a firefighter’s suit of Nomex or Kevlar to survive. Or the mental equivalent.
“I want you to do it. Hypnotize me. Now.”
Laura seemed to sense her uneasiness. “Tom will remain
with us as a witness to assure—or reassure—you that the suggestions are appropriate to your needs. Besides, no one can be hypnotized to do something against their will.”
Doc nodded. “Nothing to worry about.”
They aren’t taking the taint into consideration. If it already infiltrated all their minds and made them more susceptible to suggestion (as seemed the case based on both the dreams and the increasingly realistic hallucinations), then how would it affect hypnotic suggestions? She had no answer. Her savant puzzle-solving persona chafed at that.
Laura discussed musical selections with Doc, who slipped a CD into a portable player. Laura turned to Zita. “First, lay down on the table. Get comfortable. Close your eyes. We’re going to play some music to help you relax and focus at the same time.”
The aria to Bach’s Goldberg Variations began playing softly in the background. “The music has patterns,” Laura said. “Follow them, see how they connect, how they repeat, the notes dancing with one another. Follow my voice as I guide you through their paths.”
Zita sighed. “My mind is too fast. I’ve already mapped out the interplay of each note, pretty simple considering the only instrument is a harpsichord. Bach composed this for Count Kaiserling, who often suffered from insomnia, so the count would have some smooth and somewhat cheerful music to ease his nights.” She opened her eyes. “It’s not going to help me.”
She closed her eyes again as Laura and Doc conferred in low voices about music and additional hypnotic aids. Laura then spoke in a normal voice. “We’d like to administer a low dose of Amobarbital. It will slow your mind and improve your receptivity. Okay with you, Zita?”
Misgivings filled her mind, but she needed the protection hypnosis could bring if she were to decipher the taint’s language and discern its intentions. “Yes. Go ahead.”
A pinch in her arm signaled the injection. With surreal detachment, she felt her thoughts shift from cheetah-fast to sloth-slow. The music changed as well. Powerful. Dark. Complex with numerous instruments. She had heard musicians complain about the difficulty of Alexander Scriabin’s Mysterium, not the least of which was the fact that he never completed the massive work, but he did sketch seventy-two pages of a prelude to it. Alexander believed his masterpiece could transfigure reality itself. The music reminded her of the taint. The complexity of the piece challenged her, teased her into false guesses when predicting the next note, the next instrument. It lured her ever deeper into a rabbit hole, with the only connection to reality being the reassuring sound of Laura’s voice. “Let go,” said the voice. “Relax.”