The Delphi Effect (The Delphi Trilogy Book 1)

by Rysa Walker

  Aaron goes over to the window and pulls back the blinds a bit. He watches for a few seconds, looking concerned. I join him, but the street seems quiet. The only movement I see is someone on a bike at the far end of Atlantic Avenue.

  “Is someone out there?”

  “No. Just thinking.” He lets go of the blind. “I’m going to make some coffee.”

  I hear him moving things around in the pantry as I go back to the game shelf, hoping to find a Scrabble board. With Emily’s mad crossword skills at my disposal, I doubt it’s any more fair to Aaron than Trivial Pursuit, but it would be much more likely to distract me. My search comes up empty, however . . . It seems to be the only family staple that no one bothered to stock.

  “Instant okay?” he asks, leaning around the pantry door. He’s holding up two tins of the powdery stuff that’s at least as much sugar as coffee, and his expression suggests that it’s really not okay with him.

  I’d rather shoot caffeine directly into my bloodstream than drink that stuff, but I nod. “If that’s the only option, then, sure.”

  “Suisse Mocha or French Vanilla?”

  I opt for the chocolate version, and when he returns with the alleged coffee, I tell him, “This isn’t working. I need to do something constructive. The other day—” I shake my head, realizing that it’s been less than twenty-four hours. “Yesterday, at the townhouse. You said you think this program at Fort Meade is responsible for the things you and Taylor are able to do. And even if you didn’t come out and say it, I’m guessing you think the program—or Cregg, or someone else involved with it—had something to do with your dad’s death.”

  He nods once. “I’m positive about that last part. Whatever it may have looked like, Dad didn’t commit suicide. And Molly’s information about Cregg was the missing piece of that puzzle.”

  I feel incredibly stupid. That hadn’t even occurred to me. “You think Graham Cregg made your dad step in front of that truck?”

  “I do.”

  “But . . . why do you think Cregg wanted him dead?”

  “They were trying to restart whatever they were doing before. Maybe Dad was going to blow the whistle.”

  “What else do you know about Cregg? And the company he runs—what’s it called again?”

  “He’s on the board of directors for Decathlon Services Group. They’re a government contractor.” Aaron gives a humorless laugh. “And I’ve read pretty much everything there is to know about DSG that’s in the public record over the past few years. It’s an umbrella organization with lots of small companies involved in every aspect of military operations that can be contracted out—which, these days, means pretty much everything. Cregg generally doesn’t get involved in the day-to-day operations of DSG. From what I can tell, he shows up at meetings and that’s about it. But we believe he’s much more hands-on when it comes to one of the subsidiary groups, Python Diagnostic. He’s CEO of that one.”

  “Python. That’s what Daniel said last night. When we were coming out of the police station.”

  “Yeah. We’d just gotten him up to speed after his time in the military. I thought he might actually be useful in piecing some of this together—” He stops and runs one hand through his hair. “I’m doing it again. Sorry.”

  “My fault. If I need to refer to him from now on, I’ll just say He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named.”

  That earns me a full smile. He has a really nice smile.

  “So . . . what exactly does this Python Diagnostic do?”

  “Damn good question. The only information I’ve been able to get is that they handle human resources and staffing, but DSG has a second group that handles that, so I’d guess the description is a cover. Then there was an article in the Guardian a few years back. A woman claimed Python had something to do with the disappearance of her husband. I tried to follow up with her, because her husband was a celebrity psychic. Erik Bell. Had his own TV show for a while—”

  “Breaking the Veil with Erik Bell?”

  For some reason, the name carries the smell of antiseptic and a feeling of happiness, which is odd, because those two things definitely clash in my mind. I hate hospitals. They scare the hell out of me. But the hospital stay was a good memory for Bruno, Kelsey’s homeless patient. To him, it was almost like a vacation, the first time in four years that he’d felt completely secure. He didn’t like the needles, but the food was decent enough, the bed was warm and clean, and for part of the time, he had a TV remote all to himself. Kelsey even came to the hospital for his appointment, and she brought him a big tin of cookies. He was sad when they released him, even though the hospital stay had been enough to ensure him a guaranteed spot in a shelter until the worst of the winter weather passed. The shelter would be warm and he’d have food, but who knew when he’d get the TV remote again.

  “Yeah,” Aaron says. “That’s it. You’re familiar with the show?”

  “Sort of. One of my hitchers. Bruno. He watched every episode. Are you saying Bell got his ability from this same program at Meade?”

  “No . . . he was a touring psychic years before that. But in that Guardian article, Magda—that’s Bell’s wife—claimed that Python Diagnostic hired him to work with them around 2002. Promised to boost his natural abilities. She said she thought they actually did boost his psychic powers—that’s about the time he started doing the Breaking the Veil show. But he had a nervous breakdown and quit in 2008. Only did theater performances, mostly in Great Britain, after that. He disappeared after a show in Edinburgh in 2017. His wife said someone contacted him, asking about his time with Python, the week before he vanished.”

  “And that’s the only mention you could find of Python? Or anything that might be related?”

  “I’ve searched government records, all the major news organizations. Every credible source out there.”

  I have the feeling I’m going to regret it, but I grab the laptop out of Deo’s bag. “Then maybe we need to start rummaging around in some of the not-so-credible sources. If there was a government program operating for what—five years?—at Fort Meade and it had anything to do with psychic abilities, there’s no way that would have escaped the notice of the conspiracy nuts. Bruno . . . he’s the hitcher I mentioned? He spent a lot of time at the public library, combing through the conspiracy websites. And even though he was more into alien abductions, some of these sites have a little bit of everything.”

  “Okay . . .” He sounds dubious.

  “Hey, I’m not saying we’re going to find unassailable facts on these sites. But occasionally, there’s a nugget of truth hidden inside the layers of crazy.”

  I don’t add that those nuggets are really rare, and usually only tiny nuggets with so much crazy around them that it’s hard to find the true bits. I’m tired of sitting here doing nothing, and it can’t hurt to see what’s out there.

  I type in allglobalconspiracies.com. That was Bruno’s one-stop shop for everything wack. I’m relieved to see that the site is still active. It actually looks almost identical to the memory I have.

  Aaron sits next to me. “Well. Somebody likes bright colors.”

  “Yeah. Web design skills seem to be sorely lacking among conspiracy theorists. This particular site is sort of a hub. It’s been around almost as long as there’s been an internet. It doesn’t have a search engine, but it is well organized . . . well, it was back when Bruno was using it.”

  “When did he . . .”

  “Die? I was six, so . . . early 2008. Bruno was a nice guy, he just had some weird ideas.”

  And he liked to take stuff that didn’t belong to him, but I decide Aaron doesn’t really need to know that part. Bruno did his best to make amends—his entire reason for being in my head was to make sure that Kelsey and a few other people got their things back.

  I scroll through the index. “Does psychological operations sound like the right category to you?”

  He nods and I click the link. It takes us to a site called EyeOnPsyops. A big, garish eye star
es out at me from the top of the page, and the article’s title reads Exclusive!!! U.S. General Admits Role in 9/11 Planning. That headline alone is bad enough, but it’s on a solid black background page, and Exclusive!!! is coded in bright red. The word actually blinks.

  “This one’s from 2014,” Aaron says. “And it seems to be the most recent. Before that, new stuff was being added every couple of days. The site admin must have found a new obsession.”

  “Maybe.” I’m doubtful, though. I think it’s more likely the guy joined Bruno in the great beyond. Once they start down the conspiracy path, people don’t tend to move on to video games, or knitting, or whatever. “There’s a lot here. Why don’t you grab your tablet and start at the bottom, while I start from the top?”

  We spend the next twenty minutes skimming to see if there’s anything of interest. Some of the links go to an outside site, and it’s about fifty-fifty whether the link is dead. Luckily, a lot of the articles can be dismissed by the title alone, but about every third title is vague enough that I click to see if it’s at all relevant.

  And yes, I also click on a few that mention aliens. I know it’s garbage, but I’ve got memories of almost every X-Files episode. Bruno had the first six seasons on VHS before he lost his job and his apartment.

  Aaron nudges me with his elbow. “Hey, I may have something.”

  I quickly close an article on Area 52 at Dugway Proving Ground and go back to the main index.

  “Scroll down to the section that says Psychoactive Weapons. There at the bottom. Two articles on something they call the Delphi Project. I haven’t finished reading the first one, but it mentions Fort Meade, and also the Stargate Project. From the video I showed you, the one that was on Frontline back in 1995?”

  “Nightline. Yeah, I remember.”

  The first link, dated 2008, reads: 22 Dead or MIA from Top-Secret Delphi Project. Right below it is a link to another article, this one written in 2014: Second Gen Delphi?

  “I’ll skim through the second article while you finish the first.”

  It begins with a summary of the author’s 2008 article, the one that Aaron is reading. Conspiracy Guy’s source, an unnamed former subject he calls Smith, claims the Delphi Project was located near Aberdeen, Maryland, rather than at Fort Meade. The project emerged “phoenix-like from the ashes of the Stargate Project,” pulling in around fifty individuals who ranked as slightly gifted on an entry test for psychic abilities. Most were from military backgrounds, including the anonymous source, but Mr. Smith claims several civilians, including Erik Bell, were attached to the program as well.

  Delphi participants were treated with a drug designed to increase native psychic abilities. And according to Smith, it did—by several orders of magnitude. Unfortunately, the drug had unexpected side effects. Mental instability was the biggest problem. More than a dozen of the participants committed suicide between 1995 and 2002, when the program closed. Four of them took out at least one additional person when they went. This one guy appeared completely okay when he left work one evening in 2001. The next morning, he walked into a Denny’s just north of Baltimore and opened fire, killing three customers and the guy behind the counter before turning the gun on himself.

  But the key focus of this article is Smith’s claim that the drug had epigenetic—that is, gene-altering—effects that were transmitted to offspring. Delphi participants were contractually prohibited from reproducing during their time in the program and for six months after it ended, due to a concern that the drug might be carried in the egg or sperm of the test subjects. But Smith says they didn’t factor in the possibility of transgenerational epigenetic impacts—that possibility that the subject’s genes might be altered in ways that would be inherited by all future offspring.

  Hundreds of these children have been born during the past decade, not just to the official Delphi participants, but also to parents in the control group, those who didn’t pass the Delphi entrance tests. Some of those offspring are perfectly normal. Others can at least pass for children with emotional or psychiatric problems. Many, however, are wholly unable to function in society. Those children are being rounded up by the corporation that ran Delphi, supposedly for the children’s own welfare.

  Smith has simply relayed the facts of the case. It is for others to consider the implications of what he has seen. What is this unnamed organization overseeing and possibly brainwashing these children who have the ability to read minds, predict the future, or even control the actions of others? Is it connected to the US government? Or perhaps to the UN? Are these children being protected or are they being trained by the New World Order as weapons to be used against an unsuspecting populace?

  “Whoa, Aaron. You might want to take a look at this—”

  I start to hand the laptop to him, but he’s staring at his tablet, mouth open. “You need to see this.” He looks at the laptop in my hands and his mouth twitches nervously. “Okay, yeah. Let’s swap. You can skip the part in the middle where he goes off on a tangent about how the Delphi psychics contacted the Grand Duchess Anastasia while on these drugs. Pretty sure she’d have been dead by then—”

  “Never stopped me.”

  He pauses for a moment. “That’s . . . true. Very good point. Anyway, start here with the stuff that happened at Bragg.”

  He taps the screen and I read:

  Smith claims that a test subject injected with the formula predicted that April 19, 1993, would be a day of fire. That over 120 people would die in three separate fires—one in Texas, one in South Dakota, and the last in South Korea. She said the fire in South Dakota would be from a plane crash, and she had the sense that it would be similar to Air Force One. Not actually Air Force One, but similar. The Texas fire would be at a church or a school, something involving children. And the one in South Korea might be at a prison. She drew images of shackles and burned bodies strapped to beds.

  On April 19, three major incidents occurred that mirrored the woman’s visions. A fiery plane crash in Iowa killed eight people, including South Dakota governor, George Mickelson. The siege at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, resulted in seventy-six fatalities. And that very same day, a fire in a Seoul psychiatric hospital killed thirty-four patients, many of whom were tied to their beds.

  There are about ten paragraphs after that, but I skim them because they’re pretty much a rehash of the other article. He discusses the suicides but gives a little more detail. All of the deaths were in the Baltimore or DC areas, except for one—the murder of a middle-aged couple that took place near Fredericksburg in 1999.

  “Oh my God . . . that sounds just like . . .”

  “Yeah,” Aaron says. “It sounds just like Daniel’s dad.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  We don’t find anything else of value at EyeOnPsyops. The rational side of me thinks that’s because these really are the only truth nuggets in the vast sea of garbage on this site, but there’s still a little bit of Bruno in there asking how I know the alien stuff isn’t true. Maybe I just need something to put it into context so that I can recognize the truth.

  That kind of thinking is the downside of spending too much time in my Bruno files.

  Aaron and I have expanded our search to a few other sites when I glance up to see Taylor on the stairs. She’s stripped down to a tank top and running shorts. Her hair is damp and her skin glistens with sweat, as though she’s just finished an hour of exercise. The larger of the two sketch pads is tucked under one arm and a Scrabble game is tucked under the other.

  “Do not tell me why you’re huddled over those computers. It will just distract me. But here—this was in the attic bedroom.” She hands me the game before she heads into the kitchen.

  “There are chips in the pantry,” Aaron says. “Some fruit. Cheese in the fridge.”

  Taylor tosses the sketch pad and pencil bag onto the counter and rips open a bag of Doritos. “Somebody has to deliver pizza around here, right?” she says, mouth half full. “It’s the friggi
n’ beach.”

  I glance down at the Scrabble game and then over at Aaron. “Did I say anything to you about a Scrabble game?”

  Taylor shakes her head. “Didn’t have to. I heard it floating around in the static when I was trying to focus. I knew what you were looking for was upstairs.” She glances at the laptop on the coffee table. “So, there’s internet?”

  “Yeah. Want me to find a pizza place that delivers?” Aaron asks.

  “Most definitely, but I could manage that on my phone. You’re going to need the bigger screen to start searching for this.” She flips the sketchbook open.

  “You found something about Deo?” I’m off the couch so fast that the Scrabble box tumbles out of my lap.

  “Oh . . . no. Not yet.” Her shoulders sag. “I didn’t mean to get your hopes up. I needed to fill in some details on the sketch of the house that I started after our meeting at Sam’s last night. It’s not that I prioritized this over finding Deo. It’s more like . . . this was in my printer queue and I had to get it out before I could start on something new?”

  Her voice rises at the end, like what she’s just said isn’t quite accurate, but pretty close. Or maybe because she doesn’t think I’ll believe her. “Molly’s still around, right? Can she check it out and see if I’m on the right track?”

  It’s only then that I realize she means it’s a sketch of the house where Molly was held.

  “She’s still here,” I say, feeling Molly shrink as far back as possible as I reach for the sketch pad. The drawing is in pencil and it’s not especially detailed. I can make out a large house off to the left, with a smaller house behind it. And I can tell from Molly’s reaction that Taylor’s pretty much nailed it.

  I don’t know about the area around it. I never saw any of that. It was night when I went in, night when they took me out, and I wasn’t really thinking straight on the return trip. I . . . kind of freaked out about being dead.