Friends In Spy Places

by Diane Henders

  After that came years of grinding farm labour, topped by the additional burden of motherhood. Planting and harvest, calving and butchering, gardening and picking and preserving fruit and vegetables; and none of it had used more than a fraction of her intellect. Had she secretly resented it?

  Resented me?

  What if she had felt the same as I did about children? What if she had gritted her teeth and done her duty until her child was old enough to survive without her; and then fled for her own sanity, never looking back?

  Gut-deep sympathy welled up, squeezing my heart with equal parts pity for her and pain for myself.

  But if that was the case, why would she suddenly change her mind after thirty years?

  She wouldn’t. If she had hated her life with me that much, she’d still be hiding.

  Unless she had something to gain by returning.

  Shit.

  I switched to Howard Coleman’s file.

  His qualifications were impressive, too, and his file ended with a copy of his autopsy report. Interesting. Was that a standard procedure if an employee died while still in MI5’s employ, or had someone suspected something?

  And was Ian that ‘someone’?

  I examined the report but the complicated medical terms only seemed to translate to ‘Fatal heart attack of unknown cause’. No surprises there.

  A quick survey of the rest of the files showed that nobody had died before Nora took over any of her previous positions. No sign of promotion-by-murder.

  Maybe Ian had only been bullshitting to lure me into his bed. That seemed a whole lot more likely than him fearing that a petite seventy-two-year-old woman would sneak into his hospital room and kill him.

  Time to investigate Ian.

  But his data would be with MI6, the Brits’ foreign intelligence branch; not here in MI5. Thank God I’d finally figured out how to breach high-security servers without getting thrashed.

  Slithering back into the internet, I sought out MI6’s servers and the telltale trickle of data that offered me easy access. Moments later I found Ian’s personnel file.

  Reading between the lines of his commendations and promotions, I recognized the brash young agent who had slowly matured into Ian’s current James Bond persona. His early ops were full of breath-taking risks that somehow turned out well, often through sheer luck. If I’d been his director I would have wanted to slap him in the head.

  Sure enough, notes in his personnel file showed multiple rebukes from Ian’s commanding officers; but they were mere formalities when stacked against his success rate.

  As I skimmed through his later mission reports I noted the development of Ian’s devious nature: Lies and half-truths exploited for maximum benefit, successes achieved through deception of such jaw-dropping magnitude it seemed that nobody should have believed him; but clearly they had. He was remarkably convincing, the bastard.

  My attention snagged on his mission report from the hippie commune last year, and I slowed to read it thoroughly. All the details coincided with what Moonbeam and Karma and Skidmark had told me and what I had experienced myself, except…

  If I’d had a mouth in my current bodiless state, it would have fallen open. That sneaky bastard.

  He’d lied to me again.

  Chapter 14

  Granted, Ian’s lie wasn’t a huge one, but as far as I could see he’d had no reason to lie to me at all. Last week he’d told me that he’d taken all the credit for subduing the terrorists at the commune in order to keep our names out of his official report. His words echoed in my mind as though he’d just spoken them: ‘My official report states that I singlehandedly eliminated sixteen terrorists.’

  The report didn’t say that.

  Instead, it said that Ian had killed one terrorist before being shot himself, and that other undercover operatives had killed the remaining fifteen terrorists. As he had promised, our names weren’t mentioned in his report. But had he simply placed that information in a different file?

  I flung virtual feelers in all directions, letting go of my conscious mind and opening myself up to feel/smell/taste/listen for any familiar names.

  Long minutes later I came up empty. If Ian had recorded our names somewhere, it wasn’t in any official files.

  So far, so good.

  And what about his claim that he had investigated Nora himself when she had mentioned my name?

  Another long search netted no results; but that didn’t mean much, dammit. If Ian had secretly investigated Nora, he wouldn’t have left any records behind.

  So had he lied to me about his investigation or not?

  If I could have blown out a frustrated sigh, I would have. This was a waste of time. Ian was a good agent and I believed he was loyal to his country and had kept his promises to me… so far.

  But no matter what I found or didn’t find here, I could never trust him to tell me the whole truth. Or hell, even part of it. He had his own agenda, and all I could do was hope my wellbeing didn’t conflict with it.

  Heartily sick of other people’s deception, I allowed myself a wistful thought of Hellhound. I knew with absolute certainty that he would never lie to me or compromise my safety or happiness, even if it meant sacrificing himself.

  Even Kane couldn’t match that level of integrity, despite our red-hot chemistry. He probably did love me; and I knew he would lay down his life for me if necessary. But it wasn’t the grand gestures that really mattered in a relationship; it was the mundane daily details…

  Hang on.

  Details.

  My drifting mind snapped into focus while Kane’s voice spoke in my memory: ‘The Weapons lab gave me the drug.’

  A deadly classified drug would be tightly controlled. If the Brits had any of it, the records should be part of their domestic security branch in MI5. And if Nora had stolen some, the shortfall should show up somewhere.

  I rocketed back through the data tunnels, sniffing for weapons or drugs.

  When I found their internal Weapons server, my mind recoiled.

  So much deadly technology. For someone like Reggie Chow who ate, drank, and breathed weapons, this would be a glorious bonanza. For me it was stomach-churning. So many ways to injure and maim and kill…

  I jerked my mind back to the job at hand. Concentrate.

  After a lengthy search during which I tried not to absorb too many graphic details, I discovered Substance X: ‘A colourless, odourless, tasteless drug undetectable except by specialised analysis; induces acute hypertension and thrombotic embolism resulting in death from acute myocardial infarction or cerebrovascular accident.’

  Pushing aside the horrible memories of the real-life consequences of those clinical words, I concentrated on the drug’s chain-of-custody reports. As I had suspected, it was only manufactured in tiny quantities. Only one or two doses were kept on hand at any time. The records were complete and no doses had gone missing.

  Ever.

  So unless Nora had somehow managed to procure a highly classified and extremely rare drug from somewhere else, which seemed unlikely in the extreme… Ian was full of shit.

  I had already suspected that; but disappointment scored my heart nevertheless. He had only been playing me, as usual.

  I was backing out of the chain-of-custody reports when another detail caught my eye. To maintain freshness, the drug’s stored doses were destroyed annually and new doses were created to replace them. A notation from six months ago indicated that a dose had failed during a mission, and the entire batch had subsequently been discarded and remade. The chemist attributed the failure to the fact that the dose had been nearing its expiration date and the survivor had been young and healthy.

  Inspiration sparked through me.

  What if Nora had pocketed one of the discarded doses instead of destroying it? The drug might still have been potent enough to work on an elderly man.

  Their protocol required two people to observe and sign off on the destruction of each dose, but someone as smart as No
ra could undoubtedly figure out how to circumvent the safeguards…

  A tiny tug on my consciousness shook me out of my train of thought. Spider, signalling me to return.

  Dammit, I wasn’t done here. Maybe I could stay a bit longer and pretend I hadn’t noticed his summons.

  No. I’d ravelled poor Spider’s nerves enough with my first disastrous trip. And what if he had some urgent news for me?

  Oh God, what if Daniel had taken a turn for the worse? The thought of Kane pacing alone in the barren corridors of the emergency room had me rocketing out of MI5’s servers without another thought.

  The distant thread of Spider’s connection guided me unerringly through the convoluted internet connections. Less than a second later I was outside Sirius’s firewall, closing the last millisecond gap to-

  A blinding explosion of data pulverized my consciousness.

  Chaos.

  Drowning.

  I was lost in…

  Sam Kraus.

  Nora Taylor.

  Sirius.

  Who the hell was Rebecca Stile?

  She was the owner of all these memories.

  Panicked comprehension flared. I’d collided with another mage. Shit, no! This couldn’t happen!

  It was happening.

  Yanking my consciousness together with all my strength, I flung myself against the data storm.

  It surrounded me, its frantic data bits stinging like electronic wasps while I pried Rebecca Stile’s consciousness away from my own. Creating a virtual net, I deposited bit after bit of her into the net, snapping it shut after each addition to capture her pulsating data.

  The task was gargantuan. Fear and exhaustion weakened my grasp.

  She fought me, her consciousness clinging with such ferocity that detaching each piece of her felt like peeling off a layer of skin.

  God, what if I couldn’t do this?

  But I couldn’t fail. Couldn’t allow a single one of my memories to remain in her mind.

  My world contracted to three dogged steps on an unending treadmill. Pull off another piece of her, slip it into the data net, snap the net shut. Pull off another piece…

  When suddenly there were no more pieces, I wavered uncertainly in the data tunnel.

  Was that all of her?

  My net vibrated with the wild oscillation of her data bits. Straining to hold her, my consciousness dragged itself through one final inspection.

  Nothing. That should be all of her.

  But now what?

  How could I protect everyone from this woman who shouldn’t exist? This woman who had access to all the world’s secured data, but lacked the knowledge and ability to deal with it?

  My grip on the net slipped and nearly failed. Quivering on the verge of panic, I poured every ounce of my strength into the effort of keeping her contained.

  If I let her go, we would be doomed. Nobody could stop her.

  And I couldn’t hold on much longer.

  Only one option remained.

  Overcoming sickening guilt, I did what I’d sworn I would never do.

  I altered her memories.

  Just a tiny insertion. An absolute certainty that she could never have developed on her own.

  Done.

  Snapping my consciousness into an impervious cannonball, I released the net.

  Rebecca Stile’s explosion blasted me through Sirius’s firewall. My avatar crashed through the virtual file room, smashing into a chair and sending it flying.

  Tumbling helplessly.

  Floor-ceiling-floor-oh-shit…

  My back slammed into the edge of the table. Agony flared through my spine and ribs.

  Motionless in a crumpled heap, I lay panting and whimpering at the pain that blazed through my chest with each breath.

  “Aydan!” Spider sprinted through the door. “What happened?”

  My back was broken. I couldn’t feel my feet…

  The shock of panic slapped some sense into me. This is virtual reality. Get it together.

  As soon as the thought registered, my pain and paralysis faded into the bone-deep ache of fatigue that I knew my physical body would be experiencing.

  Spider was still firing questions at me with machine-gun speed. Kneeling beside me wild-eyed and trembling, he looked absolutely terrified.

  That made two of us.

  I held up a hand to deflect his questions, and a groan escaped as I hauled myself into sitting position.

  “Sorry to scare you,” I croaked. “I’m okay, but we have a really fucking big problem.”

  Chapter 15

  I hadn’t thought Spider could get paler, but virtual reality had no limits. His avatar went paper-white.

  “What’s wrong?” His voice came out in a squeaky whisper.

  “There’s another mage. One that only Sam knew about. And she’s in the internet right now.”

  “Oh, crap! What happened? Tell me everything!”

  “I will, but I need to tell Stemp, too. Might as well tell you both at once.” Suppressing a groan of sheer exhaustion, I hauled my avatar upright. “What time is it?”

  “Three-fifteen AM.” Spider followed me as I plodded out of the virtual file room toward the portal. “I signalled you at midnight because I thought you’d need a break,” he went on anxiously. “I was pulling and pulling on your anchor, but nothing happened. I was afraid to pull too hard in case I broke the connection, but it’s been hours and I didn’t know what to do…”

  “You did everything right.” I patted his shoulder. “I was busy separating my data from the other mage’s and I couldn’t leave until I was done, but I’m really glad you didn’t break the connection.”

  As I stepped toward the portal, Spider halted my avatar with an outstretched hand. “Let me go through first and break open a tranquilizer for you.”

  Tears of abject gratitude prickled my eyes, and I blinked them into invisibility before he could see them. “Thanks,” I whispered.

  He stepped through the portal, and I waited for his ‘Three… two… one’.

  I was so comfortable here in the warm friendly darkness. Everything was fine. So easy and safe…

  “Aydan.”

  Something jostled my shoulder and I grunted and pulled away, retreating into my interrupted slumber.

  “Aydan, wake up.”

  More shoulder jostling.

  I growled and flailed out a defensive arm.

  The resulting smack and cry of dismay jerked my eyes open to see Spider clutching his face.

  “Shit!” I sat up so fast my head spun and the edges of my vision darkened ominously. “I’m sorry!” I exclaimed. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.” He lowered his hand, revealing a reddening mark on his cheek. “You just startled me.”

  “No, I hit you.” Guilt twisted my stomach. “I’m sorry, I was dreaming, and I didn’t know what I was doing. I’m so sorry!”

  “It’s okay, I figured you were dreaming. You were unconscious for five minutes like I expected and then you started to, um… snore.” Pink rose on his cheeks and he hastened to add, “Just a little bit. Not loudly or anything, but…”

  I smiled despite the anxiety corroding my stomach. “It’s okay, you don’t have to be tactful. Thanks for the trank, and thanks for waking me up. If you hadn’t, I’d have snored the night away right here on this couch.”

  When I sat up, my neck cramped viciously. “Oh fuck, ow… ow…” Cautiously rotating my head, I eased the kinks out and staggered to my feet. My bladder responded with a painful spasm and I let out an involuntary gasp. “Holyshitgottago!” I scuttled for the door, every muscle in my body clenched with the effort of not peeing my pants.

  When I returned from the ladies’ room at a less urgent speed a few minutes later, Spider was pacing worriedly in my office.

  I flopped into my desk chair and reached for the phone receiver. “Are we the only ones here?”

  “Um…” Spider frowned. “As far as I know. I haven’t heard anything in
the past five hours, and nobody’s walked by in the hallway.”

  “Okay, good. Then I’ll put my call to Stemp on speaker so we can both talk to him. I’ll just check with the security desk to make sure we’re really alone.”

  A quick scan with my bug detector reassured me that we were secure, and the security desk confirmed that we were the only staff remaining in the building besides security personnel. I disconnected with a sigh of relief and punched the speaker button before dialling Stemp.

  His wide-awake ‘Yes?’ after the first ring made me feel even more exhausted than I already was. I managed not to groan, but my voice came out sounding as though I was at the bottom of a barrel.

  “Hi, it’s Aydan. Spider’s here with me and we’ve got you on speaker. The building’s secure, so we can talk.” I didn’t expect or receive a response, so I kept going. “I’m sorry to bother you in the middle of the night, but we have a serious security issue. I just encountered another mage in the network.”

  As always, I envied his nerves of steel. He didn’t suck in a horrified breath. Instead, his voice sharpened to a scalpel-edge. “From the U.S. program?”

  “No. Totally new. She wasn’t even in any of the Knights’ records.”

  A muffled word that might have been an expletive floated over the line. Any other time I might have been shocked at the breach of Stemp’s icy self-control, but under the circumstances it seemed like a perfectly appropriate reaction.

  “What did you get from her?” he snapped. “And more importantly, what did you disclose?”

  “I didn’t disclose anything. She doesn’t know I exist. And I got everything from her.” I rubbed my aching forehead, trying to ease the too-full sensation of someone else’s lifetime of memories squeezed into my mind along with my own. “She doesn’t know that the brainwave-driven network exists and she doesn’t know anything about the other mages or the network keys. She’s basically in the same situation as I was a year and a half ago, stumbling into something she doesn’t understand. And she has even less frame of reference to deal with it than I did.”

  “Which could be beneficial or disastrous,” Stemp said tightly. “What else?”