by S L Shelton
Seifert nodded, but the uncertainty lingered on his face.
Mac came around to join them. “Get going if you’re going. We know what to do.” Despite Mac being the largest of the SEALs, looking more like a professional wrestler than a sailor, his agitation made him seem almost childlike in his movements, fidgeting, impatient.
Wolf nodded and slung his jacket over his shoulder. “Only take the van as far as the—”
“We’ve got it,” Mac snapped.
Seifert playfully slapped Mac on the chest and shoved him against the side of the van. “What Mac meant to say was ‘Yes, sir’.”
“That’s what I heard,” Wolf said, grinning broadly then turned and headed for the wood line. Behind him, he could hear Seifert calling for Hawkins to hurry and finish loading his gear. It would be a long day for them, winding slowly through back roads to avoid traffic cameras then transferring all their gear to the boat they would take to the rendezvous in Occoquan.
Wolf hoped he would rejoin them by nightfall, but gave himself an extra day just in case. He had no way of knowing what sort of reception awaited him in Leesburg.
He jogged through the wood line and crossed the river on the railroad tracks. As he set his pace and stride to match the spacing of the rail ties, a panic attack rose from deep inside causing him to miss a step. He fell hard on the rail and lay there a moment, trying to put Scott back in a calm place.
The stasis Scott’s mind was trapped in had been less effective as time went on. It had become more difficult to pacify Scott with dreams of Kathrin, then wrap him in the darkness of a semi-comatose sleep. The false world Wolf had to weave each time Scott’s consciousness rose from its fog was draining and consumed too many mental resources.
**
Late afternoon, Upfingen Germany—sort of
I woke disoriented again. The ground beneath me was warm, and I opened my eyes to the failing sun hanging low and orange over a farmhouse—our farmhouse. In front of me, strips of old T-shirt littered the ground, shaded by the tomato plants they were meant to tie-up.
Though my mind was calm, peaceful, and filled with only slight embarrassment at falling asleep on the job again, my heart raced—and I didn’t know why. It was as if I had awakened from a nightmare I’d already forgotten.
A whistle from the kitchen window drew my attention to the house. “Dinner’s almost ready. Come get cleaned up.”
Kathrin’s voice settled my mind and my heart rate, and I scooped up the strips of cloth, setting them aside to finish my task tomorrow.
“Coming,” I called back, brushing the garden dirt off my pants.
I strolled casually to the house, glancing over at the chicken coop and across the orchard. The heavy summer air and the ensuing perspiration clung to my neck and back as I went to the spigot outside the kitchen window to wash my hands.
Cold drops splashed my neck as I bent to clean up, and I wondered their origin until I heard Kathrin’s giggle above me. I looked up to see her squeezing a dish towel over my head. She giggled again.
“That feels good.”
She poked her head out the window. “What feels good? Oh! Did I get that on you?”
I straightened up and leaned into the window to kiss her. I was rewarded with only a quick peck.
“Don’t forget to close the gate,” Kathrin said as she turned back to the stove.
I dropped my head and walked back to the garden. The damned rabbits around here seemed to be impervious to traps. No wonder—they managed to get in and fill themselves with our vegetables nearly every night; why would they ever bother with the scraps I leave in the traps. They must be gigantic by now.
I chuckled at the thought of a fifty-pound rabbit, rolling itself up to the gate each night and reaching up to unlatch the gate. Eventually, the problem would solve itself. As fat as they were getting from our produce, they would certainly be too slow to outrun the foxes much longer.
Once latched, I walked back to the house, stopping at the kitchen door to look out over my day’s work. The garden was coming along so well. We’d have tomatoes in a matter of days, and the carrots were near ready to start harvesting as well.
As hard as I tried to get away from farm life as a kid, it amazed me the joy I got from it now—especially with Kathrin there to share it with me.
“The tomatoes are coming in nicely,” I said as I wiped my feet on the mat at the kitchen door. “And we should have more squash in a couple of days, too.”
“I’m so proud of my farmer man,” Kathrin said, beaming as she glided over to give me a hug and a peck on the lips.
I slipped my arms around her waist and lifted her to kiss her more passionately than she had intended.
“You’re going to get me all dirty,” she giggled, her lips pressed against mine.
“Well then. We’ll just have to draw a bath, won’t we?”
“Yes,” she said, then pushed herself down. “After dinner. I made fish and spinach.”
“My fish?” I asked as we sat to enjoy the beautiful looking meal.
“Our fish.”
“Uh. I think your fish was a tad smaller than this.”
She stared at me for a second then burst out laughing. “It grew in the oven.”
“Then I need to take you fishing more often,” I said. “That never happens when I go alone.”
“I agree,” she said, draping her napkin across her lap.
“Agree with which?”
“Both. Take me fishing more often, and you can have more magic fish,” she said with a crinkly smile and pointed at my plate. “Eat.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She wasn’t far off from the magic part—it was the best fish I’d ever tasted.
When we were finished with dinner and had cleaned up the dishes, she walked with me to the coop so I could close the door on our six Red Star hens.
“I should put an automatic door on this coop,” I said as I exited the covered pen.
“Why automate? It’s so much more real like this.”
Something about that comment pinched at my chest and left a lingering bad taste like biting into an onion you thought was an apple.
“Only three today,” she said breaking me from my puzzle.
“Huh? Three what?”
“Eggs…What did you think the girls would give us? Bricks?”
“Well, you can’t expect them to lay every day, now can you?”
“Why not?” she asked, grinning.
“Put yourself in their place.”
She shook her head and pursed her lips. “I’d rather not if it’s all the same.”
I chuckled and stared at the coop for a minute. Even though I knew I had built the coop, I didn’t remember doing it. I recognized each piece, but for the life of me, I couldn’t remember putting it together.
“I helped,” Kathrin said, slipping her hand around me from behind and pressing her lips to my ear. “You cut and I hammered.”
I nodded as the memory swept over me. “Right…I remember now.”
“Good,” she whispered in my ear and then kissed my neck.
When we got back to the house, she put the eggs with the others in a bowl on the counter and I watched her turn off the light in the small study at the end of the kitchen.
“How old are the hens now?” My memory had been shit since…since…
“Almost two years,” she said. “We got them when we moved in.”
I nodded absently for a moment. “Maybe we should get a Rhodie Rooster and a couple of White Rocks so we can breed our own Stars.”
“That sounds like a fun project.” She stepped up to me, placed her feet on mine, then stood on her toes to kiss me.
I struggled trying to remember where we had purchased the hens and finally surrendered. “Where did we get the hen’s from again?”
“Just in town,” she replied, smiling. “They were spring chickens.”
“Oh right.” Even with her hint I still didn’t remember. She had become my su
rrogate memory since the…since….
She took me by the hand and tugged me up the stairs. “Let’s draw that bath,” she said seductively.
My worries about memory lapse melted as I followed behind her. We kissed as we undressed, the sound of water acting as white noise further distanced me from my concerns.
I stepped into the water and turned off the tap. As I settled down into the steaming warmth another thought came to me. Storc! I haven’t heard from Storc in ages.
Kathrin leaned over and kissed me as she lowered herself into the tub, her gorgeous form filling my sight and my mind. “He’s busy,” she said reassuringly. “He’ll come around once things calm down.”
I instantly felt more at ease.
“You’re right,” I said. “It’s not like it would be easy for him to just pick up and head off for…” I paused, unable to remember the town we were in. Then a moment of panic when I realized I couldn’t even identify the country.
“Upfingen,” Kathrin said, smiling slyly. “You really should learn that.”
“Right. Upfingen,” I said as it returned to my mind. “Germany…near the Swiss border.”
“Ja,” she said playfully. “…und ich habe einen Mann, der ein Bauer sein mag und hast du eine Frau, die einen Mann mag, der ein Bauer ist.”
“Ja,” I agreed. “Ich muss Deutsch lernen.”
Kathrin laughed, splashing water in my face before leaning over to kiss me again. She drew my hands over her pert breasts and turned, lying against my chest. There, she nuzzled her nose under my chin and kissed my throat.
The warmth of Kathrin against me and the warmth of the water tugged at my sore muscles and pulled my eyes closed. It felt as though I was sinking into bliss. Like a favorite blanket wrapped around me in front of a fireplace, any worry, real or imagined, melted away.
She kissed my neck again, deepening my contentment.
I’m the luckiest man in…in….
**
WOLF relaxed and opened his eyes. That little shove, cramming Scott back into his dark coma had taken more effort than the time before. And the time before had been exponentially harder than the first time he had done it back on the beach in Cayman Brac.
Worse, the mental resources required to do it were becoming less available as the neurological damage in Scott’s brain worsened. If Scott were to succeed in reseating himself in his brain, it would be a disaster for both of them. Both Wolf and Scott would merely be prisoners in a useless pile of meat, unable to make Scott’s body move.
He pushed himself up from the tracks and continued his jog, swearing silently at the prospect of both he and his host being trapped together in one head, unable to affect any action on the outside world. He had to get that damned bullet out of his head or he would eventually lose control of Scott and Scott’s body.
After crossing the river to the C&O Canal Path and reaching his ditch vehicle in the gravel parking area, he drove the long winding course to Leesburg. There he would confront Mike Nance, former colleague of his deceased father at GGP Labs. It had been months since Scott had visited Nance—or rather, months since Scott had been kidnapped and delivered to Nance.
Mike Nance, living under an assumed identity since around the time of his father’s death, remained the hidden genius behind the Defense Intelligence Agency’s enhanced asset program. It had been months since Nance set to work, looking for a treatment for the damage done to Scott’s brain by an unlucky Taser jolt to the head on his first night of CIA training.
Certainly, in that time he’d been able to formulate a treatment for the neurological degradation in Scott’s brain. The bullet had entombed Scott in his own head, but the long lingering decline of brain function was most assuredly caused by that electric assault, and was even now preventing Wolf from fixing the physical damage.
A sheriff’s cruiser approached Wolf from the other lane as he neared Leesburg. He turned his head as if reaching for something in the back seat as the cruiser neared. The last thing he needed was a windshield cam snapping a shot of his face. The NSA—and probably the Spryte owned BRE Cryptography and Security—would have facial recognition software working on every available video feed until Scott was captured.
The cruiser passed, and Wolf checked his side mirror to make sure it didn’t slow or turn around. He kept an eye on it until it vanished around the turn, heading north on Route 15. A moment later, he turned off of Main Street two blocks before the traffic light and wound his way through side streets to the back entrance of Granger Psychiatric Hospital on the far edge of town.
He scanned the gated entrance out of the corner of his eye as he drove past and then parked a block and a half further down. The security on the facility had been beefed up since his last visit—or rather Scott’s last visit.
He got out of the old Bronco and scanned the inside for any traces that he’d been there. It would be his last time in the vehicle. Satisfied it was clean, he closed and locked the door then walked casually down the block to the western wall of the facility—nine feet of gray block and brick separating the psychiatric hospital grounds from the rest of the world.
No problem, he thought. On their best day, they couldn’t stop me from getting in.
It was getting out that worried him.
**
MIKE NANCE ran toward the isolation wing as the alarm sounded, echoing off the high ceilings of the prewar estate house. The original building housed very few patients after the more modern wings had been built, but aside from the occasional administrative emergency calling him to those wings, he rarely left the old mansion at the center of the complex—it was as close to a home as he could have.
Of course, no one in his employ knew that. To all of them, he was Doctor Carl Beecham, longtime Chief Executive and managing medical officer of the facility. Tireless worker of miracles, single-handedly maneuvering the board of directors to fund any need, small or large, on the sprawling, former English manor styled facility. They didn’t need to know there was no board—only Nance pulling strings as he had for years after fleeing GGP Labs, pursued by Defense Intelligence Agency contractors set on killing him.
He rounded the corner and entered the isolation wing, its lower ceilings and commercial grade carpet making it feel as if he had stepped through some sort of portal, transporting him from the past to the present. As his feet stepped off of worn hardwood and onto fresh, modern carpet, the alarm ceased.
He slowed from a run to a brisk walk but continued to the security room.
“What was that?” Nance asked.
The orderly in front of the monitors shrugged. “It was a window breach on the courtyard side, but I checked it already…locked tight, and nothing on video.”
Nance stood with his hands on his hips, bent, looking over the large man’s shoulder. He squinted at the screen as the video feed looped backward, then fast-forwarded to real-time. No sign of anything out of the ordinary.
He straightened up and turned to leave. “Replace the sensor. If it happens again, replace all the sensors.”
“Yes, Doctor Beecham.”
Nance walked away and breathed out his stress. If the Defense Intelligence Agency discovered he was doing genetic testing on their enhanced asset programs from GGP Labs, his name and appearance alterations would not protect him from assassination again. Security was commensurately improved to keep out prying eyes.
He walked back into the old manor house at the center of the complex and down the hall to his office. When he entered, he knew something was wrong immediately—the blinds were drawn, and they hadn’t been when he left.
He turned to leave.
“Don’t,” came a familiar voice, sending a jolt of fear through Nance.
He turned and looked into the dark corner next to his bookcases. “I wondered if I’d see you again.”
Scott Wolfe rose from the wide wing-backed chair in the corner, a silenced pistol hanging loosely from his hand. “I wasn’t sure I’d be welcome…you know, with my newfound f
ame and all.”
Uncertain of his inadvertent test subject’s intent, Nance side stepped, putting the desk between himself and Wolfe. “Yes, your new status does create a conundrum for me,” Nance said. “I figure I can only tolerate your presence here for another two minutes before I become a person of interest myself.”
Wolfe nodded and stepped closer. That’s when Nance noticed the gnarled scar on his forehead. He pointed at it. “What happened?”
“That’s why I’m here,” Wolfe said, touching the waxy slash with his fingertips. “I have a little problem but it’ll take more than ninety seconds to get through.”
“One phone call, one scream and we’re done.”
Wolfe smiled. “One bullet gets us to the same place.”
Nance chewed his lip, thinking. “This was a bold move on your part.”
“If this rabbit hole has a bottom, you’re as close as anyone has come to it. I’m betting you won’t pass up the opportunity to find out what’s on the other side.”
Nance moved toward him and gestured to the sofa. “Sit. Tell me what’s happened.”
Wolfe nodded and slipped the compact pistol into the holster under his jacket as he sat down across from Nance. “There was an incident in the Caymans…thanks to your research.”
“My research?!”
“Among other things.”
Nance squinted in confusion. “GGP projects flow from the Defense Intelligence Agency…as does its funding.”
Wolfe shook his head. “Some of it does. Enough to make it look legitimate anyway. But the bulk of your funding, and the reason Emrick has accumulated so much power is that an organization called Combine has been funding him. Has been for years.”
Nance tipped his head sideways. “I’ve never heard this before. Though I’m aware of an outside executive influence—Heinrich Braun, I think his name is.”
“Braun is the groundman for Combine.”
Nance sat back and wiped his face with an unsteady hand. “That explains a lot.”
“Like what?”
“Like how enhanced assets keep showing up as corpses in actions against the government.”
