As his legs went weak, I shifted onto my knees and drove my shoulders into him. It threw him backwards again and bounced his head off the wall of the small cell. His eyes rolled back in their sockets for the shortest of moments and allowed me the time to jump on top of him and wrestle his rifle free.
I grabbed the stock and barrel of the gun and wrenched. I twisted the strap around his neck and cut off the blood flow, making him lose consciousness in a matter of seconds. I fought the urge to shoot him to make sure he wouldn’t wake and call for help, but I knew that gunfire would send the guards running to my cell for sure, and I didn’t have the heart to grab the knife and drag it across the throat of the unconscious man who was already slowly bleeding out. I did, however, stoop to retrieve it and the gun before I left the room. I hoped I wouldn’t need them but didn’t want to be caught unprepared.
I had only been unconscious for a minute or two earlier, but I had been able to dream jump enough to get the layout of the control center and find the posted guards’ routes. That helped immensely as I snuck through the barren halls, but I still had to use the all the stealth I could muster to keep from being detected. At least I wasn’t flying completely blind.
I ran through a mental checklist as I skulked through the compound.
First I had to make my way to the garage and find a way to escape. Once I was safe, I would find a way to gather more information on whatever they were planning. Try as I might to recall what had been said in the first dream, I couldn’t remember any details of the attack they were planning.
I cursed as I heard footsteps echoing through the hallway scant meters away from the shadows I slid into. What’s he doing here? I don’t remember seeing anyone one here in the rotation. I must have missed something.
I shifted as the guard passed by and scuffed my foot on some piping. It let out a faint ring that sounded too loud in the silence. I panicked as the guard turned around and walked back to inspect what had made the noise. I prayed that he wouldn’t find me as he came within mere inches of my hiding place, but before I could finish my prayer an enraged shout resounded from the cell I’d escaped from.
They must have found my guard, I thought, surprised that he’d gone unnoticed this long.
* * *
I knew the shout coming from the cell was my cue to run, and I abandoned all stealth and broke into a dead sprint. I knew that the compound would soon be crawling with guards, and my best bet would be to fight my way to the vehicles, so I ran with abandon.
Thankfully, I was closer to the garage than I’d first thought, and within a minute I had made it there without incident.
As I ran into the garage, I skidded into a soldier and immediately found myself tumbling through the air as he instinctively twisted to throw me over his shoulder with an expertly performed judo throw. The breath exploded from my body as I slammed into the concrete with only the AR15 shielding my back from the floor.
I gathered what little breath I could in the time it took for him to raise his foot to stomp on my ribs, and I used the air to scramble away from the oncoming blow. I clumsily rose to my feet, pulled out the knife that I’d wrestled off the first guard, and took a couple of wild slashes in his direction. One of them tore through the skin of his forearm as he tried and succeeded in batting the knife out of my weakened hand.
The soldier came barreling down on me like an enraged bull. He sent me hurtling back with a tackle that was followed by a quick succession of short punches to my face. One of his fists slammed into my eye, causing it to erupt with tears. I desperately squirmed under his weight, clawing for any chance to throw him off of me. My thrashing moved him just enough to give me the second that I needed to scramble out from under him.
As I scooted backward my hand landed in something gravelly. Some part of my mind realized that it was the kitty litter that garages would often use as a cheap way to clean minor oil spills. The soldier rushed again, and I gripped a handful of the stuff and threw it in his eyes while he was diving at me. He immediately rolled through me, clutching his eyes while he screamed in pain. I winced as he screamed, knowing that the sounds of the struggle coupled with the cries would bring a swarm of the guards down on me.
“Sorry, man, but it’s you or me, and you've given me no choice,” I said as I grabbed the semiautomatic rifle and emptied half of a clip into him.
I fought back a wave of nausea as I watched the bullets tear through his body, leaving it a torn and bloodied mess.
As I turned from the scene I felt something burrow through the meat of my leg from behind, and I screamed, falling to the ground in pain. As I fell, I swung my body around and sprayed the rest of the bullets in the general direction that the shot had come from. My eyes caught the second guard falling to the ground where one of the bullets had torn through his neck.
I gotta get out of here as soon as possible.
I knew that I most likely had less than twenty seconds before the other guards arrived with their guns bringing a wall of death, so I was exhilarated and let out a little whoop as I noticed the lock box in the office behind the guard that I’d just slain. I ran to it as quickly as my injured leg would carry me and grabbed the first set of keys that my hands chanced upon after blowing the lock and ripping the cabinet open.
I pressed the alarm button and turned and followed the obnoxiously loud series of beeps that came from a black SUV that looked uncomfortably similar to the ones that federal agents used. As I ran to it, I had second thoughts; I made a quick detour toward the body of the first guard, ripped my pants open where I’d been shot, and jammed a handful of the kitty litter into the bullet hole to stop the bleeding. I let out a shout of pain as it tore against my mangled flesh. It would slow the bleeding, but it wouldn’t be pleasant.
I grimaced as I heard a chorus of shouts heading my way. With all the speed I could muster, I sprinted the rest of the way to the SUV through the gunfire that’d erupted, yanked the door open, jammed the keys in, and pressed on the gas as hard as my leg would allow. Bullets ripped into the vehicle as it screamed through the garage toward the sunlight.
I drove in the direction of a muzzle flash near the side of the corrugated metal building and crashed through. The vehicle jostled violently, indicating that I’d hit exactly what I had aimed for. Some small part of me registered disgust at the fact that I gloried in ending a life, yet I sighed in relief.
The shattering back window of the SUV broke me from my reverie and let me know that I was still a long way from being in the clear.
I slammed down on the gas again and nearly tipped over in an effort to avoid the pickup truck full of soldiers that’d stopped right in the space where I’d just been. A piece of glass sliced across my cheek as another window burst apart from a round of bullets.
Man, I bet that I’ll be cleaning glass out of my hair for a week! The sarcastic part of my mind tried to keep me from panicking as I swerved again, trying to avoid the arroyo that had popped up out of nowhere.
I drove along the side of the small canyon and started to form a desperate plan after I noticed the huge natural gas container about half a mile away on the lip of the canyon.
I grabbed the AR15 and jammed the stock onto the gas pedal. Staying as close to the arroyo as I possibly could, I opened the door and dove out of the car seconds before it impacted the large gas reserve. My body kissed the ground, and I felt a huge wave of pressure and heat that sent me tumbling the rest of the way into the canyon. I hit the bottom hard.
10
“Where is he? There’s no body in the wreckage!” I called out with a stranger’s voice as I watched through the eyes of a guard who was combing through the aftermath of the explosion.
“He must have jumped out of the car before it hit the gas tank. Take a team and check the canyon. I’m sure he didn’t get too far in his shape. Remember, though, he’s already killed three of us, and he’s armed, and if you don’t do your job and find him, the rest of us will be as good as dead, starting with you.”
“Yes, sir!” the well-muscled redhead crisply saluted.
Crap! I need to wake up now! I thought as I realized that I was dreaming. I must have gotten knocked out from the blast.
The moment I left the guard’s body and let myself drift, my consciousness pulled itself back to the physical form it was tethered to. As my mind returned to my body I entered a diaphanous sleep state. It was like I was experiencing sleep paralysis. I was aware of what was happening, but my body wouldn’t respond.
I’d been in other bodies before and had always made it back to mine at the research center, but then I had had a team monitoring me, had specific targets, and had alarm clocks. Even during the interrogations they’d been committed to keeping me awake. Here, all I had to wake me was willpower and a broken, worn down body that demanded rest.
“He’s close by somewhere! This must have torn of his dungarees!” I heard someone shout and assumed that my pants had ripped. I ever so slowly started coming to.
Hurry and wake up! They’re practically on top of you! Get up, get up, get up!
The voices grew louder.
Get up now! I mentally commanded myself.
With a great effort of will, I fluttered my eyelids open. I winced as wakefulness dawned. It felt like my whole body was one giant bruise, and my ears were still ringing from the explosion. As quickly as my body would allow, I stood, gripped a split in the earth wall for support, and stumbled forward. I was determined to put as much distance between me and my pursuers as earthly possible. I pressed onward, making sure to stay flush against the side of the small canyon. I prayed I wouldn’t be spotted.
I trudged forward for hours, and sleep started to take me. My vision blurred from exhaustion, and I stumbled over a rock and lost my footing, falling into an overgrown patch of sagebrush.
What in the— my brain screamed as I tumbled through an unseen opening in the canyon wall. Terror consumed me at the idea that I might never stop falling, but the impact that drove the breath from my lungs replaced the fear.
Just take some time and breathe, I coached myself.
Soon I had calmed, and my breathing settled. I turned to get my bearings and explored what I could see of my surroundings with the ambient light that trickled into the small cave. To call it a cave was being generous, though, since it happened to be more like an indent that terminated a couple feet from where I had landed. I judged it to go back into the canyon wall about fifteen or so feet, and the climb back to its mouth was about the same.
I tried to climb up the incline back to the entrance, but my feet lost their purchase, and I tumbled back down the incline. I tried a couple more times but eventually gave up. My body wouldn’t let me go further without rest. It had reached its limit; I had been up for something close to three days, and it refused to do any more until it got the sleep it needed.
The bags under my eyes must be atrocious, I tried to find some humor as I drifted into unconsciousness.
I didn’t dream. All my body’s energy diverted itself into healing all the damage that’d been done to me.
I don’t know how long I was out, but I awoke to find a small lizard using my face as a heating rock. After a stifled curse and a couple of poorly placed slaps, I noticed that light was still filtering through to the bottom of the cave I was in, and judging from the intensity of that light, I placed it to be sometime in the mid-afternoon, meaning that I must have either escaped sometime early in the morning or had slept much longer than I’d intended to.
After an internal debate, I decided to stay in the cave a little longer and sleep some more to see if I could dream-walk a way to safety. I figured that whatever knowledge I’d glean would be worth whatever risks it entailed.
OK, let’s find a way to get the heck outta here, I thought as I closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep for a second time.
I targeted my coworkers as my body fell into its comatose state and found myself looking through Safid’s eyes.
“It’s been over three days since Stephen’s gone missing! Please somebody tell me that you have something! Remember how critical he is to us!” Helena practically screamed at the assembled team of researchers. Many were familiar, but there were new faces mixed in among them, some carrying themselves like intelligence agents.
“Right now we don’t know a whole lot more than we did a couple of hours ago when you called the same meeting. Helena, dear, let us do our work, and we will inform you as soon as something pops up on the radar. Remember, he isn’t just our tool, he’s also a friend,” Arthur said in his slow southern drawl. “But I do think we should review just to make sure we’ve covered all the bases. First, his car was found wrecked and abandoned just a couple of miles from here, and there’s very little CCTV evidence because the power relay for the area was attacked mere minutes before his abduction…and what few witnesses we were able to find said they saw an unmarked van full of people in paramilitary gear storm his car, which had been hit by a truck belonging to the strike team. They then proceeded to drag him, unconscious, into the back of their van before speeding away.”
There was almost no new information, so the meeting petered out, and they quickly went back to work and expanded the range of their search. As I watched them I fought off the anger at having been used and treated as a lost investment. I felt better when I looked into the eyes of Arthur and Sasha and a couple of others that I’d befriended and saw true concern in them.
Yeah, you were their tool, and you have every right to hate them, but what’ll that get you? You’ll just be bitter and angry. Put aside the anger for another time, when your circumstances are less urgent, I thought as I hopped from body to body to try to catch some clue they might’ve overlooked.
It was a couple hours later when I noticed something as I was watching from Sasha’s eyes.
“That’s it! That’s him!” I burst out with excitement. I knew she couldn’t hear me, but I couldn’t contain myself.
Sasha ticked her head as her eyes followed mine. “What’s this?” she asked.
“That’s him! That’s the man who kidnapped me!”
“Hmm, must be nothing…” Sasha chewed the end of her pencil, something she didn’t know I noticed and loved about her.
“No! Please read it!” I begged, unheard.
She scrolled down.
“Go back up! That’s him! He’s what you’ve been looking for!” I pounded on the walls of her mind.
“What was that?” Sasha silently mouthed as something on the screen caught her eyes and she scrolled back up and read the page.
Twenty minutes later she was still reading. “Holy crap! I think this is it!” she jumped up from her seat in excitement.
“Hey, I think that I’ve found something!” Sasha slammed open the door to Helena’s office.
“What? What is it?” Helena’s weary eyes bore into the younger woman.
“I know where Stephen is!”
“We’ve found something. We’re going to put all our energy into following this lead. Sasha, please come up and tell everyone what you’ve found,” Helena spoke in her clipped style as everybody settled into the conference room.
Sasha stood up and looked each member of the small crowd in the eyes before she started to speak. “We didn’t seem to be making any headway in our previous investigations, so I decided to chase down another avenue and started to look into anybody who might know about our research. As you know, we weren’t the first to know of these possibilities and powers possessed by people like our own Stephen. We all know that the government’s been pursuing physic phenomena and remote viewing since before the sixties. Stephen, though, was our first true success. There’d been others, of course, but none were able to match Stephen’s levels. He’s a prodigy in every sense of the word when it comes to his remote viewing abilities,” she said with pride. I blushed. “Anyway, as I was saying, I decided to dig into some of the history of our programs, from its not-so-kosher beginnings in the sixties to what we have now with Stephen,
and I was able to dig up some dirt. I know I don’t have to tell any of you about the Ultra program that we sprang from, but what some of you may not have known is that it continued into the early nineties. You also know that their methods were not nearly as ethical as ours now are. So anyway, when I was searching the reports something stood out to me. There was a general named Clayton Richter whose name was on file as a person of interest in our line of work. He seems to be well connected and somehow in the know about what goes on behind our doors. His face was familiar, but I couldn’t place it, like it hidden right in front of my eyes, which surprisingly enough it actually was. The general was the last person connected with the old sleeper program before it was shut down.” Sasha took a break to catch her breath. “He was given a dishonorable discharge when he was implicated in terrorist acts in Chechnya, and he soon fell off the map, resurfacing on multiple domestic terror watch lists. Before he disappeared, though, he was spouting off against some hidden psychics programs. The JAGS thought it was nonsense rantings of a madman, but we all know exactly what he was talking about. It’s gotta be him.”
I watched for a while longer as they broke down all the information they had on General Richter. Suddenly I was startled awake by the feeling of pebbles falling onto my face.
“I think I found something!” a weathered voice shouted.
They're right above me! I panicked.
“Look at these plants. They’ve been disturbed. He was here for sure,” the man’s voice rang. He was dangerously close to the mouth of the cave.
“Wait, there's something behind the shrubs!” the second man hissed.
A deadly silence followed, and seconds later I heard a click and saw something falling from the mouth of cave not more than ten feet from where I was lying. I barely had time to dive to the ground and cover myself as the flash-bang grenade exploded. I was still nearly deafened despite having covered my ears as best I could.
Sleeper Agent Page 4
