by Lauren Sabel
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I feel the car pull to a slow stop beneath me. Then the door opens, and the air immediately smells of lemon disinfectant tinged with Clorox. Indigo takes off my blindfold, and I’m back. The prodigal psychic returns. The bunker is concrete, with vaulted concrete ceilings and thick concrete walls. I know I’m underground, but I don’t know how far, and I never will.
The secret bunker is secret in two ways: First, few people know where it is. Second, it’s blocked from most psychic energy, like a giant, warehouse-sized Faraday cage, and it almost guarantees no enemy psychics will be able to break into our minds during our sessions. It was so expensive to build, the whole government shares it: we only get it when the CIA deems our mission important enough to use it for a day or two.
For once, the place is relatively quiet. It looks almost abandoned, so I know there’s a lot of work going on. Psychic viewers spying on targets, monitors writing down their impressions, manila envelopes being handed back and forth. Only questions, no answers.
Now that we’re out of the car, I see that Indigo’s wearing jeans for once, and that his usually tidy blond hair is hanging in stringy rivulets down his back.
At the conference table in the middle of the concrete room, Martina and Pat are waiting for Indigo’s instructions. Martina is chewing on a candy bar with what seems like an unnecessary amount of ferocity, and beside her, Pat is sipping his coffee with a look like he’s going into battle. I sit down at the table next to Pat.
“What’s going on here?” I whisper.
“Better be important,” Pat says. “I missed my kid’s Little League game for this.”
Jasper bursts into the room, followed by Anthony, who is staring at his shiny black shoes. Since Indigo shuts down the whole office while we’re here, Anthony becomes our driver. I can only imagine what kind of paperwork Anthony had to sign to be privy to the bunker’s location.
“You didn’t need to stop me on the side of the road,” Jasper is complaining as he and Anthony walk in together. “I did get your text; I was just on a joyride at the time. Ever heard of joy?”
“Ever heard of GPS?” Anthony mutters back.
Indigo shoots Jasper an irritated look. “Problems?”
“Nope. I was cruising around when I got your text. I was going to text back, but before I could, this joker shows up, blackened windows and everything,” Jasper says, dropping down beside me at the table. “You didn’t need to track me. I would’ve showed up eventually.”
“Apparently I did,” Indigo says calmly. “There’s something happening,” he continues, giving Jasper another annoyed look. “Something big. Just heard from one of the suits.”
“Which suits?” I ask, knowing Indigo won’t answer my question. Across from me, Martina and Pat lean forward in their seats, waiting for his answer. Jasper crosses his arms over his chest and leans his chair back so the chair’s front legs don’t touch the floor.
“Not that they intend on paying us for our work,” Indigo continues, ignoring my question. “At least appropriately.” With this, he seems to gather himself together, pulling his hair into a ponytail and smoothing down his jeans. “The suit was from high up, maybe even the Star,” he adds.
I’m surprised he told us; we’re usually just blind weapons.
“The Star?” Jasper asks.
I always forget that he’s new here. “The Pentagon,” I say.
“Then why not just call it the Pentagon?” Jasper asks.
“We need to drop all other projects, put all hands on deck for this one,” Indigo says. “That means you will be rotating with one another: viewing, monitoring, viewing, monitoring. We can’t waste a minute.”
“We’ll view more than once?” I ask, surprised.
“We’ll be taking long breaks between sessions to rest our minds,” Indigo says. “I know it’s risky, but this is important for our national security.” Pat shifts in his seat, and his chair screeches across the tile floor. Indigo glances over at Pat, who stops moving immediately. “I talked to some of the other viewers already,” Indigo says, gesturing to several closed viewing room doors around the bunker.
“Viewers we know?” Jasper asks.
Indigo shakes his head. “The CIA sent a team to help. But the less you know of each other, the better,” he adds. “Now, what I say doesn’t leave this office. Got it?”
We all nod solemnly.
“I have good intel that someone has control of several countries’ military-grade lasers,” Indigo says. “We’re not sure if it’s a terrorist act yet, or what locations they are targeting, but combined, these lasers make a nuclear weapon look like child’s play.”
I feel a bead of sweat gather on my upper lip, and I wipe it off with the back of my hand.
Indigo shakes a sealed manila envelope in the air. “But we have been given an image of the person who has access to this information.”
Jasper’s chair legs hit the floor with a loud boom. “What do we know so far?”
“That we will be here until we find out what this person knows,” Indigo says, nodding to the envelope. “And that this information is crucial for national security.”
“Do we have a name?” I ask.
“I’ve told you what I can,” Indigo says. Conversation closed.
Indigo drops down into the seat beside me at the conference table. On my other side, Martina continues to gnaw at her candy bar. “Any of those left?” I ask.
She nods and points across the room to a bank of candy and soda machines.
“Thanks.” I walk over to the candy machine. There’s one Kit Kat left, so I dig two quarters out of my pocket and slip them into the slot. The Kit Kat drops to the bottom of the machine and I slam open the slot with a bang.
“What did that Kit Kat ever do to you?” Jasper asks, coming up behind me.
“Sorry,” I say, loosening my grip on the candy bar. “I’m just nervous.” I unwrap the Kit Kat package and hand one half to Jasper.
Back at the conference table, Indigo’s still sitting there, his head in his hands, looking more upset than I’ve ever seen him. I nudge him on the shoulder and he looks up. I hand him my half of the Kit Kat.
“Last one,” I say, thinking that he needs it more than I do.
At least until I hear Indigo’s instructions. And then I want my chocolate back.
Our instructions are simple:
Find the person whose picture is inside the sealed envelope.
Break into that person’s mind.
Force that person to tell us what the lasers’ targets are.
I’ve never done the last one, and truthfully, I’m not sure I’m capable of it. It involves influencing, not just watching, and it borders dangerously on mind control.
I’ve read about mind control, seen all the same movies you have. Where a code word is spoken—kitten, for example—and the peaceful soldier becomes a killing machine.
The thing is, this stuff is real.
Indigo told me about how it started in World War II. During the Holocaust, there were these evil Nazi doctors, sort of mad-scientist types. They did experiments on the prisoners, really terrible experiments, like torturing someone almost to the point of death and then pulling their eyeballs out to see how they responded.
One of those experiments led to mind control, in which someone was beaten and rewarded over an extensive amount of time, until the Nazis could bury a word, matched with an order, so deeply into the prisoner’s psyche that he wouldn’t notice it until years later, when that word was spoken aloud. Then to the outside world, it appeared like the person snapped for no reason, but that word had been digging into his mind for years, stressing his brain until the very moment he heard it. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
In the psychic viewing world, mind control is kind of like that, only you don’t just bury a word in a person’s mind. You bury yourself in their mind, and control them from inside. And hopefully, you don’t stress their brain to the point of
breaking.
“Just get in and get out,” Indigo tells us after we’ve all come back to the conference table.
“But isn’t this dangerous?” I ask. “Isn’t this the kind of thing that made Michael—”
Indigo shakes his head. “You’ll just be existing inside the person, watching out their eyes. It’s different than taking over their brain and forcing them to take actions they don’t want to,” Indigo explains. “Is that clear?”
“As day,” I respond, and breathe a sigh of relief. I’m still not sure I’ll be useful in this mission, but at least I’m not expected to do something so obviously dangerous to the subject, even if they are involved in some sort of evil plot.
“Jasper and Callie will be working together,” Indigo says. I glance over at Jasper, who is still nibbling his half of the Kit Kat bar. “And Pat and Martina,” Indigo continues. “I’ll be checking in on everyone throughout the day.” He claps his hands together. “You know where to go.”
“Is there anything special we should look for in our sessions?” Martina asks in her thick German accent, apparently not understanding that Indigo’s hand-clap meant “meeting adjourned.”
Indigo shakes his head. “Just the usual: Remain open. Do not assume anything. Remember that nothing is as it appears.”
The small viewing room is painted a light gray, and the only furniture is a leather chair, a coffee table, and a gray tweed couch. It looks almost exactly like our office. This confirms my theory that creativity is not exactly the CIA’s strong suit.
“Nice of you to join me,” Jasper says.
“Wouldn’t miss it.” I settle back against the couch cushions and try to ignore the annoying sound of Jasper tapping the envelope against the coffee table’s edge. I shake my head, hoping to jiggle the distractions out of my mind, but I can’t help thinking about how so far I’ve only played a passive role—watching, not acting, and certainly not influencing. Now I have to: Indigo is counting on us.
“What are you thinking?” Jasper asks.
“Nothing like breaking into a terrorist’s mind to start off a day right,” I respond.
“Besides a good breakfast,” he says.
“Right. Besides proper nutrition.”
“Don’t worry,” Jasper says, sitting up straighter in his chair, “I know what I’m doing.”
“Do I look worried?” I ask, and he shakes his head. I’m glad he’s by my side. Not that I’d ever tell him that.
I shut my eyes, and then I drop into the deep ocean and, releasing weights from my belt and breath from my lungs, I float down until I’m hovering ten feet above the sea floor.
“What do you see?” Jasper asks, and I think again about how strange it is that it feels as if two minutes have gone by, and it could easily be two hours, if not more.
Focus. I focus on the envelope, and then I’m flying through concrete walls, down a dim hallway, and then, to my fear and surprise, straight into someone’s body.
Being in the body of this person is not exactly uncomfortable, it’s just a heavy feeling, like lying under a thick comforter, but it’s dizzying keeping my view straight while this other person moves around, glancing from one object to the next.
When the person looks down, I can tell it’s a woman by her painted fingernails. But my gaze, looking out from the woman’s eyes, is blurry. Even if there were a mirror to see my reflection, my vision isn’t good enough to do so.
“I can’t see much,” I say. “There’s something wrong with my eyes.”
Even though I’m now in her body, I haven’t yet accessed her mind. I’m still watching the world, not changing it by manipulating her inner thoughts. There’s a huge gap between the two. Being in someone’s body is certainly new, but it’s not enough. It’s like getting into the White House, but being locked out of the Oval Office. I can’t actually change anything from here.
Everything’s blurry, but I can still see the cardboard boxes stacked on tall shelves around the room, and the high ceiling above me, crisscrossed with metal beams. “I’m in a big room,” I say aloud, feeling my fingers move the pen in jolts across the blank paper—a distant feeling. How can I feel her body and my body at the same time?
“Ask her what she’s targeting with the lasers,” Jasper says.
I try to force myself into her mind by imagining what she’s thinking, but I can’t seem to get in. “What are the lasers’ targets?” I ask, but the words just echo through her body. “Tell me what the lasers’ targets are.” But since I’m not in her mind, she can’t hear me.
I start to ask again, but then I notice that in front of me, there’s a bank of computer screens. Each screen is split into four parts, and in each part is the image of a laser on a different aircraft carrier.
“Tell me where the targets are!” I shout into her mind.
I suddenly feel something cold beneath the woman’s fingers.
Her hand is lifting a gun into the air and pointing it at someone.
At that moment, dizziness slams into my brain with an intensity that makes my eyes blur. I try to hold onto the scene, but it gets smaller and smaller as I’m yanked away.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
My eyelids pop open. I think a few hours must have passed, but I can’t tell what time it is. There are no clocks in this place. It’s like the mall, where they want you to get lost for hours at a time, only here you get lost in your own head.
I pull out my phone, and I’m surprised that it’s just eleven a.m. I’m supposed to meet Charlie at our noodle shop at two, and then help him hang his show. I should call him to warn him I might be running late, so I speed dial his number, but there’s no sound when I put the phone to my ear.
“The walls cut the signal off,” Jasper says.
I frown at him. “But what if I have to make a call?”
He shrugs. “You don’t.”
I’ll be there in time, I tell myself. It’s only eleven.
“You ready? It’s my turn,” Jasper says.
We switch places: me on the chair holding the envelope, Jasper reclining on the couch, his pen poised over a stack of blank paper. He literally creases his brow in concentration. It’s adorable—I didn’t know that was actually a thing and not just an expression. As he falls deeper into the vision, his brow loosens and his muscles get more relaxed until he’s nearly limp, except for his hand, moving across the page.
“I smell something burning,” Jasper finally says, after an hour or so has passed.
“Are there any clues to your location?”
“There are several screens showing different images,” Jasper says. “But they’re kind of the same too.”
“What are the images?” I ask.
Jasper watches for a while. For him it may seem like thirty seconds or five hours, but I think it’s actually a little over an hour before he speaks again. “They’re all lasers.”
He stays in the vision for another hour or so, but he can’t see anything more. When he finally opens his eyes, he looks disappointed. “So much for focus,” he says.
“Ah, the difficulties of psychic teens,” I joke, but he doesn’t look amused.
“It’s not funny, Callie.”
“I know it’s not,” I say in a softer voice. “It is hard, isn’t it?”
Jasper nods. “Never knowing if something is real or not. Not trusting your own mind.”
“Does anybody?” I ask, the thought just occurring to me.
“I don’t know,” Jasper says. He shifts on the couch so he’s facing me straight on. “Do you ever wish you were born . . . normal?”
I briefly close my eyes, the viewing room disappears into darkness, and for a second I can be normal: I don’t have to see these terrible things happen around the world and be unable to do anything about them; I don’t have to have visions that forecast people’s deaths; and I don’t have to lie to everyone I love to protect them from criminals who would kill for the secrets I have in my mind. But then I open my eyes, and it all comes rushin
g back in. “Sometimes,” I say slowly.
“Only sometimes?” He looks at me skeptically.
I pick up the pen and start doodling a tic-tac-toe board on a blank piece of paper.
“Probably more than sometimes,” I say. I draw an X on the board. “A lot of times I just want to be like everyone else, you know?”
“I know . . . ,” Jasper says. He takes a deep breath. “Like, get married and have kids and live in a house in the suburbs surrounded by a picket fence with a little yappy dog.”
“That’s not normal.” I say. “That’s like . . . dreamland. Normal is a divorced family, two bitter kids, and a dog dying of cancer in the backyard.”
“Don’t make fun of me,” Jasper says.
“I’m not,” I insist. “I’m making fun of me.” I draw an O on the paper, followed by the last X.
I win against myself. And I lose, at the same time.
“The day before my parents died,” Jasper says, “I envisioned them at their funerals. And then, for years, as I got bounced around foster homes, I wondered if I could have stopped it. If I’d told them what I saw, I mean.”
Wow. Wasn’t expecting that type of sharing from Jasper.
I open my mouth to respond and then realize I don’t know what I’m going to say, but I’m saved by Indigo popping in. “Lunch,” he says, handing us each a paper bag.
We tear into the bags and pull out identical roast beef sandwiches and chips. Jasper lifts his eyebrows, but I shake my head at him. I can’t remind Indigo I don’t eat meat, because he’d feel like he had to arrange another lunch for me, and he has enough on his plate.
“Thanks,” I say, as Indigo closes the door.
While Jasper eats his sandwich, I peel the roast beef off mine and drop it in the trash.
“Hey, I would’ve eaten that!” Jasper says.
“Sorry.” I crumple up a few pieces of blank paper and drop them over the meat.
“Good tomato and lettuce sandwich?” Jasper teases when I bite into the dry pieces of bread.
“Better than dining on the tears of dead animals.”
Indigo opens the door again. “Your next session starts in an hour,” he says. “Take some time and relax.”
