Virtually His

by Gennita Low

  T. had told her about Flyboy’s love of anything that flew. He was the youngest of the original COS commandos, enthusiastic and eager.

  “Is that how you do everything? In hot pursuit?” she teased.

  Flyboy laid an arm over her shoulders and hugged her close to him. Lowering his voice, he said, “It can be hot, but it doesn’t have to be fast all the time, babe.”

  Helen laughed, shaking her head. He was incorrigible.

  “Look who’s going out,” Flyboy added.

  Helen turned and watched as Alex Diamond approached, motorcycle helmet tucked under his arm. He looked just as lethal in a leather jacket.

  “We’re bumping into each other a lot today,” Helen remarked. “You lunching, too?”

  Alex studied them for a moment. “I didn’t think you were allowed to eat anything other than the crap they feed you in there,” he said, not even pausing as he walked by. Clearly, he didn’t expect a conversation.

  Meaning alcohol, caffeine, ibuprofen…Helen went through a mental list of all the no-nos she had to observe. She shrugged. What was new about her boring life? She caught sight of the motorcycle parked nearby. Nice machine.

  “At least I can still speed, right?” she called. That was probably the longest sentence the man had ever said to her.

  Diamond turned. “Good luck, Helen,” he said quietly.

  “Thanks.” Helen frowned as she looked at his back.

  “What is it?” Flyboy rubbed her shoulder.

  “Nothing.” Except Alex Diamond’s stance, the way he stood so still, reminded her of…She shook her head mentally. “Just one of those passing thoughts. Now, let’s see you test drive this baby, Flyboy.”

  He unlocked the car and bowed extravagantly as she got in. “Zero to sixty in five point five secs, sweetheart. We’re going maximum horsepower.”

  Helen batted her eyes. “Oh, my. The things you do to a girl’s heart rate.”

  Helen liked to analyze a man by the car he drove. This expensive vehicle might not be Flyboy’s but he looked very comfortable in it. His hands ran around the steering wheel as if he were giving it a caress. He made some quick adjustments, then turned to make sure she had her seat belt on. He winked as he leaned over, pulling on the strap.

  “Just double-checking out of habit,” he said.

  She had a feeling that he did a lot of double-checking. In his job, the tiniest mistake could be fatal. The way he moved around, looking in control, he seemed to be about to take the car for a spin in the heavens. Like any sportster, the interior was more like the inside of an aircraft, with just enough legroom and head space, and the instrument panel lit up by all kinds of dials.

  “What’s the fastest speed you’ve driven in a car?” she asked, curious.

  “Two hundred, two hundred and twenty.” That was traveling the length of a football field a second. “Scared?”

  She arched a brow at him. He grinned. The car started with a smooth growl, like a wild animal ready to take off. Flyboy gave her a grin and an A-OK signal. “You ready?” he yelled above the engine.

  “Show me what you got,” she challenged back.

  Minutes later, they were flying down the scenic route. Not that there was much of that to see, Helen mused, as everything zipped by at an alarming blur. She glanced at the man beside her, his attention totally focused on the road. He changed gears and accelerated smoothly, one hand on the wheel and the other still on the stick shift. She watched the speedometer going up into the red zone.

  She liked fast cars, always had. And she was totally fascinated at the ease with which Flyboy was handling the vehicle. Minimum movement, as if the car was an extension of his body. Just a totally relaxed man, enjoying something that would have most people at the edge of their seats. He made her forget how noisy these cars were. There was joy radiating from him that would make a woman jealous.

  She didn’t interrupt his pleasure, preferring to let him take her wherever he wanted. This was probably a side of him that he seldom shared, when he dropped that heartthrob image and became pure pilot. Here, that teasing streak had taken on a quiet intensity that she had never seen in him before.

  When he finally slowed down, the car purring to a more manageable speed, he turned and flashed her a smile sexy enough to curl her toes. The man was definitely turned on by speed.

  “Thanks,” he said, simply.

  She understood. They had a love for living on the edge and not caring about the consequences. “Was it good for you, too?” she teased.

  He laughed, a carefree sound, as if this was the best ride of his life. “Ah, Helen, Helen. What you do to a guy.”

  “Tell me what you think of this car.”

  He took the turn off the scenic route, back to normal highway traffic. “It corners extremely well. I barely needed to move the steering wheel. That’s what makes a great car, in my opinion, the cornering speed.”

  “It’s a good driver that makes the cornering speed,” Helen pointed out.

  He glanced at her briefly. “How did you get to like racing? You’re obviously familiar with cars. I know you’ve driven very fast before because you didn’t even hold on to anything just now. Either that, or you’re an adrenaline junkie.”

  Helen laughed. “Or both,” she suggested, as a slight evasion. “Speed is fun, and being the one in control of it is an indescribable feeling—like being at one with the world.”

  “As close to Zen as one can get,” agreed Flyboy. “How experienced are you behind the wheel?”

  “Not as experienced as you think. I don’t have the resources that you have.”

  “So, who owned the few cars you did drive?”

  She studied her nails. “Boyfriends.”

  “Whoa. Wealthy boyfriends. I’m not in your league, Miss Roston.”

  “Yeah, I’m a picky girl,” Helen mocked, “but you got one thing going for you, babe.”

  His laughing eyes met hers. “What’s that? Fantastic sex?”

  Oh, he would be fantastic in bed. All he had to do was lounge there and be devoured, but of course he knew that already. “Nope.” She leaned closer conspiratorially. “Being a pilot, you have other bigger things for me to ride in.”

  They both laughed. One thing fun about flirting with Flyboy. He didn’t take himself too seriously. That was very important in Helen’s playbook, especially in a good-looking guy.

  Lunch gave a good opportunity to ask some questions outside the Center. Helen was never sure who was listening in at that place. She’d watched T. carefully scan the ladies’ room, where they usually met, with one of her special rings. Granted, her operations chief was a very careful woman by nature, but if even she was paranoid about her workplace, then Helen figured she had better be, too.

  Flyboy and she had a mutual passion—racing—and she understood his love for speed very well. He actually described it better than she could, probably because he had traveled at faster speeds than she would ever have the chance to try.

  “Euphoria, or close to it. You’re flowing and floating, even though you know you aren’t, and you have total control of the craft. You can go upside down or nosedive, and still feel perfectly at ease. There’s no conscious effort, yet…” He trailed off, studying her. “Not boring you, I hope.”

  “No, no, not at all. It’s the feeling of fearlessness. Or lack of fear. It’s just you and…well, if it’s driving, you and the road and total focus.”

  He seemed surprised and pleased at her words, as if he hadn’t expected her to understand. But Helen had enough information to know that despite his flirtatious demeanor, Flyboy wasn’t all heartbreaker; he could fly some of the most sensitive aircrafts in the world. Besides that, he was a COS commando, a man who had undergone extreme experiments and training, just as she had.

  “Yes,” he agreed. “And trust, total trust in yourself and the vehicle.”

  Which brought up the subject of her vehicle, the Portal. Of the people she had been introduced to these past few months, Flyboy
was the most approachable. Because he had used VR for his work, their conversation naturally turned to aspects of her training.

  “Yes, I want to try out the Portal.” He answered her questions in between bites of hamburger. “It’s modeled after the one I’m famous for, you know.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They were creating a new simulation program to train aviators. I was the Flybot,” he said, then threw back his head and laughed at his own pun.

  “I’ve seen that film package with a simulated you,” Helen admitted. “Very patriotic, very nice…you looked marvelous.”

  Flyboy shrugged. “That one was a funding package for Congress. I haven’t seen that version, actually. Part of my work was to help improve sim-flight training and that was my main interest. The other thing was more…” He shrugged again, his blue eyes scornful, as he searched for the right word. “For show.”

  Helen tapped his hand playfully with a straw. “Hey, you never know, your sacrifice probably brought some funding into the research for the Portal. And my training, too!”

  He smiled. “Well, put in that way, I suppose being treated like a piece of marketing meat is okay.”

  “I hope I don’t treat you that way.”

  Flyboy cocked his head. “No,” he said softly. “You don’t.”

  Helen chewed on one end of the straw. “You know, you really do have the nicest blue eyes, not a tinge of gray in them at all. And when you smile, all a girl can think about is…meat.”

  She burst out laughing, unable to continue her teasing. Flyboy joined her.

  “You’re a scamp, that’s what you are,” he told her, leaning over to tweak her nose. “You almost had me there. How they mistake you for a serious dedicated operative is a mystery.”

  She shrugged. Life couldn’t be all business all the time. “Are you going to be there tonight? I heard a couple of the commandos are interested in checking out X.”

  They had agreed to refer to the serum as X in public. The serum was, of course, the drug to be tried out on her later. Helen Roston, female supersoldier-spy. Say that fast three times. She grinned at the thought. After a year of training, she was well past the apprehensive state and into the macabre. That was, as any seasoned operative knew, as ready as one could possibly get before restless anxiety settled in.

  “I think I’ll be there, barring some commitments. But I know Armando Chang will, for sure. He’ll be there to answer your questions.”

  “Armando. I don’t think I’ve met him.”

  “No, he hasn’t been around lately, but of all of us, he’s the one you should talk to.”

  “Oh.” She made a mental note about Armando Chang. “Tell me what you know anyway.”

  “You mean, other than the chemical reports you’ve read? I don’t know how the new stuff will be different personally.”

  “No, how did the original version work on you?” Helen had read enough to understand the effects on a human body. They were words. She was interested in the experience. “What did it do to you?”

  Flyboy sat back, studying her as he weighed his words. Interesting that he would need to do that, since he had answered all her previous questions quickly. Maybe he thought she wasn’t ready to hear whatever it was he had to say. Again, interesting.

  “Armando should be answering this because he took the new stuff,” he began, “but I’ll try to give you just my take on it. Our dosages were small. It didn’t work on a few of us. For me, I felt very alert, which is great for flying. As far as I could tell, everything functioned normally except that everything was also noticeably easier to do.”

  More questions floated through Helen’s mind. Armando Chang had tried the new stuff? Could he remote view? “What do you mean?”

  “The most difficult tasks were…” Flyboy pointed to his dessert “…a piece of cake. I was very goal-oriented, but then, I am a pretty focused person when I’m working, anyway.”

  She had noticed that. “Yes, flying aircraft needs that. I imagine X makes an ordinary person extremely attentive to details,” Helen said thoughtfully.

  Flyboy took her hand in his. “It’s a drug. Always remember that. No matter how you feel, just keep that in mind, that it’s the drugs. You said you see the Portal as your vehicle, and yeah, in a way you have to trust it to help you do your job. But you have to trust X, too, and that’s tougher than you think.”

  She had already thought about that. Drugs, after all, invaded a body, took control of some aspects of it. To allow them to work, she had to trust them. Same as she had to trust Hades. Who in his right mind would? Yet, millions of people took drugs day in and day out, without thought, with total trust.

  “Why did you let them inject the stuff in you, anyway?” she asked, curious now that she had some answers. “Did you have a choice?”

  His smile was flippant. “I’m a COS commando,” he stated simply. “We’re different.”

  “And that means you aren’t ever going to tell me.”

  “You’ll understand more about it soon, so why go into details?”

  “Does that mean you know more about my program than I do?” She arched her brows. He was still holding her hand, his thumb massaging the fleshy part under hers.

  “They call you V2. What does that tell you?”

  Quite a bit, Helen admitted. Quite a bit.

  Seven

  The meeting was supposed to be informally formal, one of those terms at Center that Helen hadn’t quite figured out yet. She took it to mean that they didn’t have a dress code. Whatever. Q and A meant mean exactly that, no matter how they did it. Those attending had to do with her training in one form or another here, and this was the first time Helen would get to see them together. Flyboy had told her at lunch that Center was a very tight-knit community, especially within its special programs. The Q and A sessions before any mission cleared the air.

  Most of all, she wanted to meet Armando Chang. T. had told her that Center was keeping an eye on him. The newest COS commando, he had used the new version of the serum the most, and of them all, according to T., he was the most affected.

  “He has changed, Hell,” she had said during one of their private briefings. “Not just the way he acts, but the way he talks, too. I’ve met him before he was part of the program, so I can tell the difference. But the change is slow enough that Center can’t actually pinpoint it to the drugs themselves, you know? He’s still effective, he’s somehow worked his change into an asset for the operations.”

  “How so? How did the drugs change him?”

  “You watch him at Q and A. We’ll talk more later. He’s a matter of concern for GEM because we certainly don’t want to put you in any danger of losing your mind, darling.”

  Helen’s eyes widened. “You care, you really care!”

  “I don’t let any of my agents take unnecessary risks,” said T. “Even you, although I’ve always encouraged you to take chances more than the others.”

  That had been a revelation. She hadn’t known T. had such confidence in her. “I know I’ve sometimes gone against your orders. I don’t know why you put up with me.”

  “You work with what you have. And who said you hadn’t done exactly what I wanted you to do?”

  Helen had made a face. That was so T.

  “How am I doing so far with this contract?”

  “Everything showed that you’re the perfect candidate, Hell. They were looking for someone who had what they called ‘visions’ with proven results. GEM can vouch for your record. Of course, they could pull any number of government-tested psychics for that but they also wanted a highly-trained operative who could do covert work. Your training with them gave them an idea what kind of skills you have and calmed the fears of those against hiring a contract agent for something so special.”

  “There was only one snag, right?”

  They both had laughed because it had been very apparent the last year and a half that some of the more traditional departments were very miffed that t
he best candidate for supersoldier-spy was a woman. The sole exception had been the group of individuals from the remote viewing program. Their training had opened a brand-new world inside of Hell, one that had taught her how special she really was. She knew she had surprised many of them with her rapid progress; they had remarked that very few had gone through each level of training that quickly.

  Helen unzipped her jacket, popped a fresh piece of gum in her mouth, and entered the conference room. It was thoughtful of them to let her ask some questions before injecting her with their experimental drug, but part of her didn’t really trust that this was only to “clear the air.” Perhaps this was a test, too, to see how she handled anxiety and fear.

  Her long months of training was basically a walk through fire. Each government department had a piece of her, had molded her for its purpose. Each of the programs in which she had undergone training had tested her in its insidious little ways. The worst was the CIA bunch; they had tried their damnedest to make her paranoid. But that was good. It trained her to always keep an eye on everyone and everything around her.

  She walked past all the eyes watching. She was used to all that staring by now. It was amusing, really. She actually had had her fill of macho men; living in close quarters with two different special operations forces had made her very comfortable with having them as companions. Or enemies. Not everyone believed in using female contract agents.

  She wasn’t quite the object of lust for many of these men, so there went her ego down the drain. Yet she represented something more, even might have struck a note of fear in a couple of them, and so there her ego soared again. Boy, it was tough to be a woman.

  Normally, she would turn and give everyone a chirpy greeting but she didn’t feel like it today. After all, this was serious stuff. Later tonight, she was going to prove how all these months’ work and COS Center’s new training had molded her into their objective. It was time to put her game face on.

  So, Helen my dear, how does it feel to be a weapon? She sat down, crossed her legs daintily, crossed her arms, and blew a bubble. It felt pretty damn cool to have everyone wondering. At the moment, she felt like the strongest woman on earth, which was very strange. She should be feeling vulnerable and tense…shouldn’t she? Yet, she couldn’t deny the excitement surging inside.