Gulf Lynx

by Fiona Quinn

  Striker had to stand in the doorway calling to me, trying to get me to rouse so I could stumble out on my own.

  Had it been a real emergency, and had Striker hustled in to save me, we would have been trapped in there with no equipment and no easy way to get out.

  Obviously, Leanne had ratted me out to General Elliot, or he wouldn’t be having his fun by handing me the pillow.

  I wriggled my knees as I waited for the general to phone his directives to Leanne. General Elliot’s office was always considered high security, and Leanne was not allowed to monitor by camera or audio.

  If the General wanted Leanne involved, he would have chosen his meeting room one door down from here.

  I left his office to join Leanne, who was standing outside ready for me. She looked down at the pillow and blushed as we walked through the suite.

  “You remember how this works.” She tapped in a code and the wall slid to the side to expose the hidden door. “I have to go in and get the research computer booted up. There’s no Wi-Fi connection in there. You can’t send files anywhere.”

  “It’s okay. I just wanted to read something. And you know, take a little nap.” I laughed.

  While I waited for Leanne to get through security and set the computer up for me, I made mental notes for next steps. I needed to throw a bag together with both hot weather clothes for Puerto Rico and cold weather clothes for Wyoming. And maybe I could take a piece of my art to Mrs. Coleridge as a hostess gift. Striker and the team would be gone, but Nutsbe from Panther Force was crazy about Beetle and Bella; I needed to find a pupsitter.

  It seemed Leanne was taking overly long in there. Of course, my anxiety was pretty high, so that warped my perception.

  When she re-emerged, she tapped the code panel again. Everything closed down, then opened back up with a yellow light shining over the door.

  Leanne opened her palm toward the antechamber where my biometrics would be read, reaching to take the pillow from my hand.

  The space was about the size and shape of a closet, and I didn’t like the idea of being trapped in there anymore this time than I did the other times I’ve walked through this process. With my hands at my side, I opened my eyes wide, trying not to blink.

  There was a flash of green light, then a panel glided open. Stepping up, I placed my palm on the scanner. Again, the light flashed green and this time the file room door slid open. I turned to Leanne. “Will the alarm sound and the gate slam shut if you hand me the pillow?”

  “He was joking,” Leanne said. “You aren’t planning on passing out again are you?”

  “I really don’t think I passed out last time. But I had a rough couple of nights, so I might just take advantage of my time under the Tsukamoto bliss mobile and take a power nap.”

  She gave me a half-smile.

  “I’m actually not kidding.”

  Leanne turned the pillow on its side and handed it straight out. There must be a hole in the security infrared system so files can be handed to someone to put into place, otherwise I’m not sure how one could get papers through the system.

  “You have to hold the pillow up and turn three-sixty,” Leanne explained. “Wait for the light to flash again. Security is monitoring.”

  I had forgotten how James Bond this all was.

  I went straight over to the desk and sat in front of the computer screen, typing ANGEL into the search bar.

  The number of entries that came up was a surprise.

  Scrolling back to the beginning, I was also surprised at how early his name appeared. Angel notes started well before Angel and I even met.

  But why?

  I scanned along: Scarlet wanted to marry Striker, and, in tasking to look at Striker’s future, Indigo saw I was the woman who Striker would marry. I thought back to what I knew of Striker’s relationship to Scarlet. And yes, that lined up. Gator told me that Striker and Scarlet had dated a year before the team had met me. Scarlet had thought that Christmas she’d get her engagement ring. When that wasn’t the case, then she thought new year, new relationship, she’d get her ring on New Year’s Eve at midnight. But no, instead Striker had broken up with her. All the while she’d been doing remote viewing trying to see their future together. And so had Indigo. Instead, he saw Striker and me happily married. He tracked me down. Found out where I lived. That was right after Spyder had gone off grid and mom had died.

  I read through the pages that followed. Task after task Indigo gathered more information.

  Some of it correct; some not so much.

  The trick I had learned with remote viewing was that you pick a subject matter you wanted to learn about, and you view it repeatedly. This repetition increased the probability that what you were seeing was correct. A sixty percent accuracy could rise into the mid-eighties. And that was a significant shift in probability, especially if you could then get eyes and ears on a situation to verify like Indigo did. And yes, here were notes that his henchmen Frith and Wilson had been helping to stalk me for information.

  Over and over the tasks were viewed, attacking the question from different angles.

  It was the same way I went about solving puzzles. The macro is rarely the thing that solves the puzzle; it’s the micro-information where I succeed in coming to an understanding.

  It was in this early time frame that Indigo wondered how I came to know Striker, thinking he could just thwart that meeting. But he saw I had already met Striker through my connection to Spyder and to Iniquus. He was seeing me as Alex from the description of the grey hoody and glasses, making me look like the Unabomber, sans mustache.

  Whew, that lit him on fire. Pages were filled with his rage. Even in transcription from his notebooks to the computer, his words held onto the power of his wrath. I didn’t want them polluting my already overwrought system.

  I moved quickly forward in the file.

  As Indigo’s fury settled to a seething poison, he noted that he wouldn’t let General Elliot or Spyder steal another morsel from his daughter. Not a single bite of her future. Not only would Indigo stop me, he’d use me. He’d extract his revenge through me.

  This was where my nightmare began with Indigo’s decision. It’s lasted all these years, and I’ve never been able to rouse myself and shake it off.

  It was Indigo all along.

  Emotions bubbled along the surface of my skin like the blisters of black plague, dark and deadly.

  I forced my gaze onto the screen. Forced myself to read on.

  Indigo searched the ether for another “mate” for me.

  He found Angel.

  He noted that Angel was part of my “warrior learning group” along with others. “Warrior learning group”…huh. I leaned over the pad Leanne had laid out and scrawled notes to take up to General Coleridge.

  Indigo said that as a member of my learning group, Angel would already feel familiar to me. He simply needed a way to tweak the role we played in each other’s lives this go-round. Indigo had no idea how to make that work; he’d think about it.

  Scanning down, I saw where Indigo noted how he used his military connections to find out who Angel was, where he was on deployment and if he’d get home alive and whole, “or no point in pursuing this avenue.”

  And then oddly, he noted:

  I took Daisy to the vet to have her spayed. They said that while they were performing the surgery, they’d like to do a gastropexy because Great Danes are prone to die from bloat.

  That note was a strange thought to add here. It was out of context enough that I took a picture of that screen. And again, this next thought seemed off:

  My first experiment was successful. I was able to make an incision. I think I’ll watch it for a day or two and see what happens. I’ll call this experiment GEMINI. And perhaps I should write this part in code. Tabby Cat, you know what they say about curiosity.

  Tabby Cat, Tabitha Catherine Leverone, Scarlet Vine’s birth name. There was a highlighted notation here that the person transcribing the lab not
es couldn’t type parts of the notebook because they were written in an alphabet that they couldn’t identify. Please see notebooks AZ6.AZ6, I wrote on my pad then looked toward the shelves on the far side of the room. I’d get pictures of those pages. Maybe one of the other remote viewers knew how to read that information.

  “I need to get Angel and Lexi in the same location at the same time,” it said. He traced down Abuela Rosa. He tracked down Angel’s deployment. He sent a note to Angel as if he were Abuela Rosa asking him to please come and visit when he was stateside.

  “Angel responded,” I gasped, one hand over my throat, the other over my mouth.

  Angel wrote to Indigo who was feigning to be Abuela Rosa, of course he’d come. I thought of Red Riding Hood and the wolf posing as the sick grandmother. Indigo as Abuela Rosa.

  I can push up the date of burning her nest. I can get Wilson and Frith out to monitor the Angel-Lexi meeting. The plan is afoot. It’s fun to play God!

  Whew! This was crazy! I had to keep looking at the dates and times. This was…wow.

  This was my timeline. This was how it all unfolded.

  I had met Angel in an inferno. It was the hellish night when the apartment complex where I was raised was burned to the ground and with it came not only the destruction of tangible things but also the end of our tight community that had lived there together.

  I always said that I had been raised by a village. Everyone at the apartment complex had treated everyone else like family.

  In the complex, I had the mentorship and tutelage of a group of older women whom I called my Kitchen Grandmothers. They came from different countries, spoke different languages, but their warmth and kindness had no boundaries. One of these women was Abuela Rosa. She escaped from the flames, thanks to her great nephew Angel Sobado, who was apparently tricked into place by Indigo’s letter.

  I was barefoot in the freezing night, clutching the two boxes I’d grabbed as I ran, filled with my parents’ sketchbooks, journals, and photo albums. I didn’t register the weight or the burden. It’s all I had of them in tangible form.

  Angel took my boxes and drew me to his truck, where he tucked me in and blasted the heat.

  There was a picture in the D.C. paper of that fire. The photographer happened to catch the moment Angel came up to me. We looked into each other’s eyes and our fate was sealed. I was his. He was mine. It was as if we’d always been and always would be together. Two pieces of a whole.

  I remember the relief of finding him.

  I remember the peace amongst the chaos, standing under the precipitation of ash and fire hose mist.

  Three weeks to the day after that, we were married by a justice of the peace. One day after I said I do, I said good-bye. He loaded onto the transport and off he went to war. A Ranger.

  He was supposed to come back a year later.

  Instead, he came back in nine months. In a coffin.

  That peace, that connection, it wasn’t real.

  “It wasn’t real,” I whispered, pressing my fingers against my lips as if to stifle the words. Goose bumps covered my skin as a cold wash of horror dowsed me.

  Indigo had done something to me. To us, Angel and me.

  Indigo had contrived my connection and my marriage to keep Striker free for Scarlet.

  I thought I was going to vomit.

  Grabbing at the trash bin, I leaned over. My stomach churned and my gag reflex spasmed.

  My mind whirled. I was supposed to be with Striker. Angel was supposed to be a friend.

  Somehow, Indigo had tried to change our destinies.

  I hugged the trash bin tightly like a floatation device as my head swam.

  I bet that whatever it was that Indigo had done was the reason I’ve lived in this state of anguish for so long.

  My body became electric. A distress message zapped up and down my nervous system, now that the brain fog, buffering me at first from full clarity of Indigo’s words, was burning off.

  With shaking hands, I pulled my phone from my lap and took pictures of the screens to show to Herman and General Coleridge when I got up to them.

  Maybe whatever Indigo had done could be undone.

  I scanned forward and read again about how he saw that Angel had died. In the notes, he had tasked the question, “Next milestone in their marriage?”

  He came upon me at Angel’s funeral. At the end of the summation, Indigo had written on the next page:

  Angel’s death is actually wonderful news. I hadn’t thought this through. This will give me an opportunity to observe Lexi’s state of being and the result of the experiment. Yes, I should have thought of this earlier. Striker’s job being very dangerous, if Tabitha does marry Striker, and he were to die, what are the ramifications?

  A note was added December 20th two years ago, weeks after Angel’s death, just days before Spyder came back to Washington D.C.

  Adding this in here to have data for a hypothesis. My question was: if one dies, will the other die too? That’s obviously not the case. Frith says he’s checked on Lexi with his own eyes. She’s alive and in mourning but not so much so that she isn’t coping. She’s still useful not only in understanding the ramifications of my experiment but also in enticing Spyder out into the open. Things will need to escalate to accomplish the Spyder goal. Obviously, a stalker and his attacks on Lexi weren’t enough to get Spyder home. It will have to be something much worse. What does that worse look like? I’ll have to come up with something truly horrific and yet make sure Lexi stays alive so I can keep an eye on the Gemini experiment.

  Whatever Indigo did put it within the realm of possibility that if either Angel or I died, the other would also die.

  What did he do to us?

  There was a reference for a notebook entry by the transcriptionist.

  My rubbery legs had me clutching at the file cabinets as I made my way to the far corner of the room where the Indigo notebooks were catalogued. I sat on the ground, reaching for the correct reference numbered notebook.

  After photographing the squiggle-filled pages, I took the general’s couch pillow and placed it under the mobile that Tsukamoto constructed of prisms. I laid down and let the gentle movement of color and shape mesmerize me.

  Did I love Angel because Indigo had manipulated us into loving each other?

  How could I possibly tell?

  “It’s a puzzle, Lexi,” I said aloud. “You do this for a living. You can figure this out. One step, then the other.”

  How would I ever know for sure? I lifted my hand and looked at Angel’s rings, wondering if Indigo had made them into some kind of black-hearted charm. But no, that couldn’t be an aspect of how Indigo trapped me. Striker was having my rings redesigned when I was kidnapped and taken to a prison in Honduras. I was there for months and my feelings for Angel had never wavered.

  I knew Indigo had the capacity to seed thoughts. That wasn’t noted in the pages that I could read. Perhaps, they said something in the squiggle pages that would clear things up.

  It very well could be that Indigo did something in the ether that could account for how my psychic connection was so attuned with Angel’s while he was alive. And how even after he died, Angel was very much still a part of me, keeping me company in my nightmares and stopping me from moving forward with my relationship with Striker.

  I knew that both Indigo and Scarlet had tried to influence Striker, but they weren’t successful. He was so solid, when they had tried to plant thought seeds with him, they’d found it impossible.

  But me?

  I was a mess. I often felt susceptible to the ether, vulnerable to circumstance.

  I might have been fertile grounds for those seeds.

  Did I believe that? Maybe. Maybe not. There hadn’t been anything in what I’d read so far, I reminded myself, about influencing and seed planting. Just some experiment.

  They did a lot of experimentation in the Galaxy Project, trying new things, working to make progress in etheric manipulation.

/>   Angel and I had been Guinea pigs.

  To Indigo, I was a microbe in a petri dish, part of some trial.

  Here was the real question: if Indigo had trapped me, could I get free?

  Thank goodness General Elliot had signed off on my going to see the Galaxy folks. They might have a way to unwrap me from the spell. And there was that person he mentioned, Doc. Maybe there was an etheric cure.

  What a horrible thought that my love for Angel and his for me was just a madman’s ploy.

  What a sick, sick, sick thought.

  And yet. It made all the sense in the world.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Striker sat behind the wheel of the Iniquus Hummer as we powered our way to the airport.

  As he maneuvered through the traffic, I was jotting notes. Remote Viewing Tasks: 1) How do I stop the nightmares? 2) What is my connection to Angel? 3) How can Angel be helped? 4) Best method to locate and save Kaylie.

  These tasks were poorly written.

  The best way to get a good remote viewer reading was to make it as clear and as nebulous as possible at the same time. And then to do it as a double-blind experiment.

  I tried again. 1) How do I make it stop? 2) What happened? 3) Best action? 4) How?

  I lifted a lip as I read them over. I had very little idea what I was doing with the tasking questions. One thing I did know was that I had digested the Indigo information as best I could and decided there was nothing to be done until I got to Wyoming and could ask if someone could read the logs. If they couldn’t, I’d hire a cryptologist. I bet it was just a matter of figuring out the new alphabet. I didn’t think this was a new language.