by Quinn, Fiona
After they cleaned me and dressed my wounds, Jack and Striker lifted me, ever so gently, on to a roll-away bed they’d somehow produced. They lowered the lights, so I could sleep. I heard them talking as they sat on the floor, their backs against the wall, watching me.
“Fucking A,” Gater bit out. “What the hell was that? That was like living in some fucking sci-fi film. That was fucking insane.”
“Sir, is that what happened to Lynx in the safe house?” Blaze asked softly.
“Yes. Lynx went through a similar experience when she saved Lynda and Cammy.” Striker confirmed, his voice tightly controlled, masking his emotions. “Lynx trained with Miriam Laugherty, the psychic who does remote searches for the police.”
“I’ve heard of her. Laugherty was one of Lynx’s un-schooling teachers?” Deep asked.
“Yup.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Striker stretch his long legs out in front of him. “Someone noticed along the way that Lynx is intuitive, so they hooked her up with Laugherty. Laugherty was training Lynx to be her protégé, but you see what happens to her. Lynx decided that doing these kinds of remote searches wasn’t for her, and she walked away from all that.”
“Until the safe house,” Jack said.
“Right. She decided to help me when Lynda and Cammy went missing. Had I known then what she would go through, I never would have handed her my photographs. I’m not sure I understand why she went behind the Veil for this case. Jack?”
“Don’t know, Striker. She took the photos from Gater and sucked air like she was shocked by what she saw. Her eyes got that look. You didn’t see this part back at the safe house, but Lynx was in terrible shape before you got there with your photos. I can’t describe it, but I will never forget it. I knew what she was about to do. I tried to get her to wait for you to get in - thinking maybe you could talk her out of it. Maybe it had something to do with the baby,” Jack said, “You know how she is around dogs and babies. She just can’t help herself, even to her own detriment. Damned brave.”
“You know how she’s always saying that she don’t do no deeds of daring-do-or-die?” Gater asked. “Total crap. I ain’t never seen no one ever face something like that.” Gater’s voice cracked on the last word. Through slit eyes I saw his gaze resting on me. “She’s gonna be okay though, right? Like at the safe house - there was all that blood and slime, looked like a chain saw murder happened in there. But after a week passed, she woke up fine. She weren’t permanently damaged or scarred nor nothing.”
“I’m hoping that’s the case here, too.” Striker came over to see me. “Hey, I thought you were supposed to be sleeping through this.”
“Me, too. I want to. This is excruciating.”
“What can we do? We’ll do anything. Do you want meds to put you out?”
“No, no. I have to go on my own…” I panted as I waited for an answer to come to me. “It’s Gater. He’s taking this hard. He’s holding me here. Let me talk to him.”
“Hey, Gater?” Striker called softly, “Come here a minute.”
Gater crept over on silent feet, took a knee, and reached for my hand.
“Look at me and know I’m telling you the truth, okay?”
Gater forced his gaze to mine. “Yes, ma’am.”
“I’m going to be fine. I need to sleep to gather myself back, and heal. Your job, along with everyone else in this room, is to guard me, and my secret. The mission is over. I’m not going to be hurt anymore. I’m not going behind the Veil when I sleep. Do you trust what I’m saying to you?”
“Yes, ma’am.” His words were so soft I strained to hear them. But they brought a sigh of relief to my lips.
“Will you sit with me until I go under?”
He sat in a chair with my hand between both of his. I knew this was where Striker wanted to be, but it was Gater who was holding me to this plane. Maybe by holding my hand, he could let me go…
Twenty-Three
For six days, I drifted in blackness, unaware of anything happening around me. Finally, the world came into focus. A harsh light coming from my bathroom hit across my eyes — Striker stared at me from his place, leaning against the wall, arms crossed over his chest.
“Hi,” I whispered.
“Hi.” He worked his jaw. Tension tightened his eyes.
“What day is it?”
“Saturday.” He pushed off the wall and came to stand next to my bed. “You’ve been gone for almost a week. How do you feel?” Striker brusquely flicked on a lamp sitting near my head. I pushed my covers off and checked my arms and legs. They had healed completely. I moved around a bit to see how everything was working.
“I’m a little stiff - but that’ll wear off. You look as bad as you did in the safe house. Your face is gray.”
“Yeah?” He scratched his hand through his hair. “It’s a pretty hellish thing to participate in. We’re all pretty messed up about this. It’s probably a conversation that needs to wait, but what in blazes did you think you were doing?” He glowered at me.
I sat cross-legged on the roll-away bed in a pair of panties and an over-sized T-shirt, my covers pulled up to my hips. “I don’t know. This is something I would normally have refused.” I furrowed my brow in thought. “This time, though, the call was strong, and I had the impression — and this is going to sound crazy, but I had the impression that your ladies from Africa were involved here.”
“They wouldn’t be. I don’t have any personal connection to this case.”
His tone shocked me. “No, no.” I was off-kilter — my body, my thoughts, my emotions. “This wasn’t about you. It was supposed to be a gift to me. There was something I was supposed to learn — uh-uh that’s the wrong word …” I sat for a minute and waited for the right word to bubble up. “…Discover. There was something I was supposed to discover that would help me — save me.”
“And, what did you discover?” He tilted his head to the side. Curiosity crept into his gaze.
“I have no idea.” I shook my head in confusion. “Maybe when I need it most, it will come to me.”
“Maybe or maybe you’re just trying to spin this in a direction that feels safe.” He was back to angry.
What a slimy thing to say. I couldn’t keep up with his yo-yo un-Striker-like emotions. I had my own to deal with. “And you say this because you’ve known me to lie? Or stretch the truth with you before?”
He threw his hands in the air and then rested them, balled into fists, on his hips. “No, Lynx, your honesty is not in question. It’s…” His voice broke, and he was pleading. “Chica, I don’t want you to do this ever again. I mean if you’re trying to save yourself, or someone that you love or care about, someone directly connected to you, then maybe, maybe I would understand that, but, Lynx, this isn’t to happen again.”
“Is that an order?” Defiance painted my words scarlet. How dare he tell me what to do.
“I’m talking to you as Team Lead. I know you don’t fall under my command. I’m not commanding you.” His face had affected that impermeable mask. He wasn’t open to debate. “You need our support and our resources to be effective, and I won’t make those available to you, if you go Veil walking on a whim.”
“Veil walking?” My eyebrows shot up.
“Whatever. I don’t even know what to call this. It’s terrifying to watch.” His nostrils flared with exasperation.
I was obviously taxing his patience, and Striker’s patience always seemed ocean-deep.
When he looked at me again, his equilibrium was back in place. “Okay, Let me put this another way. You have the idea that this event was teaching you, preparing you for some challenge to come. Until then, can we leave this tool in your toolbox and only take it out on rare occasions? I mean like never?” He was sitting beside me now, pulling me into his arms.
My voice lost its defensive timbre. “Believe me, that’s my plan,” I whispered back.
Striker shifted his hip to pull his phone out from his pocket, then punched a number
on his speed dial. “She’s awake,” he said, and disconnected.
“Who was that?” I asked.
“Gater. He’s on his way.” Striker pushed another button. “Jack, she’s awake.”
I excused myself to the bathroom for a minute to brush my teeth and run a comb through my hair. When I came back, my office was full.
I flashed them a big smile. “Hey, guys.”
No one smiled back. They all looked exhausted and haunted. They sat and stared at me, and I let them.
“Men, normally after an assignment like this, we’d have already debriefed and been assessed. Obviously, that’s not going to happen here. The best I can do is to let you talk to Lynx, ask her your questions.”
No one said anything for a long time. I decided to start, “Can you tell me the status of the case? How is Anyushka?”
“She’s been moved off to middle America under a new name. They’ve got her at a mental care facility within a hospital. She’s scheduled for surgery next week to repair…some things that were damaged by Brennon. Brennon is being held under high security.” Striker answered in his normal debriefing voice. Facts not emotions.
More silence.
Gater started in slowly, carefully choosing his words. “Ma’am, I’ve seen a lot of things. Lot of them were heinous deeds no man should ever have to see. The thing about them was I were there in the fight. I never had to sit on my hands before and watch a female take it on. It’s not really in my make up to be able to do that…I know you’re an operative, just like me, and if I could have done what you were doing, it would’ve been me doing it. Or, maybe even if I were fighting beside you, it might have been alright. This weren’t all right.”
The other men nodded their agreement.
“I know Jack and Striker have been through this with you before. And I’m real grateful that you saved Lynda and Cammy. But this weren’t family. I guess maybe if you could tell me why you did this, it might help some. To be honest, I don’t ever want you to do it no more. Surely, we could have gotten Brennan some other way.”
“I understand what you’re saying, Gater,” I said. “Let me try to tell you a little about what happened, okay? First, Striker probably told you that I was training to do remote searches, and that going through the Veil is dangerous for me. So I stopped. I can do little things from time to time like find someone’s dog or even a lost child. But that’s a completely different skill set from what I used for Lynda and Anyushka.”
“Lynx?” Deep stepped forward. “Sometimes you say or do things out of the blue that seems like ESP, and it’s got nothing to do with someone being lost. Like when I need a certain file, and you walk in with it; or, I’m looking for a word when I’m writing a report, and you say the word I need out loud.”
“Things come to me.” I shrugged. “It’s nothing like walking behind the Veil, which I trained to be able to do, and demands so much more of me.”
I pulled my legs up to sit cross-legged on the roll-away bed and pulled the blanket back over me.
“So the Veil sort of sucks you in?” Blaze asked.
“No. It’s not like that. I accept the opportunity to go. I’m beckoned. In the safe house, maybe you remember, Deep and Jack, you were on duty the day that Lynda was kidnapped. You saw me.”
Both men nodded.
“I was being called to duty. I was glad to go. Like you said Gater - that was family. In return though, I was also given information. I was told about Wilson’s proximity, and I was told how to get him into custody. We don’t know how badly things might have gotten had we not known this information. We don’t know if I would have been hurt worse, or killed, or if one of you would have been…”
Again the men nodded, acknowledging what I was saying. I could tell, though, that there was a clear distinction in their minds between my helping Striker, and my helping Anyushka. Maybe they were forgetting that Brennan was a terrorist and America was at risk. Or maybe the alphabets had never planned to let Brennan on that plane and so our involvement was merely to put a feather in our cap, which would have made my efforts seem foolish at best. Except I hadn’t really been thinking about America when I made my decision. I was focused on the African women’s call.
“So, here we are a few months later and again the Veil was opened to me, un- bidden. It wasn’t the same experience as with Striker. Like you said, it wasn’t personal. This was a girl in a photo. All I can tell you is that…my instincts told me…I had a ‘knowing’ that, this was important. And while I thought it was important to help the girl in the photo, I thought it was more important to my own survival. I don’t know why. I can’t explain it. When I have it figured out, though, you guys’ll be the first to know.” I searched the skeptical faces in front of me for forgiveness. “You have to understand, I did this for selfish, self-preserving reasons. And I’m sorry for the obviously horrible distress I put you all through.” I ended in a whisper.
“This was your choice,” Blaze said.
“That’s right; I always have the choice to go beyond or not.”
“And when you went, you were connecting to different people, and what they experienced is what you experienced?” Blaze continued.
“That’s right. Though the physical damage done to me is a mere shadow of what is happening to the victim.” I nodded.
“You don’t have to connect to people. You can connect to objects. Like when you were searching for Lynda, you asked the car where it was going,” Jack said. “Wouldn’t it be safer to sit and observe through an inanimate object? Like, instead of connecting to Anyushka, maybe you could have been a vase on the shelf?”
“Objects don’t process sensory information. When I asked the car where it was going, my hand was moved on the map tracing the direction – no thoughts or insights were involved. In order for me to understand what’s going on, I need to have sensations and thoughts. Being connected to Anyushka gave me her story, and the way to save her. We never could have guessed any of that. We were after Brennon for extortion, cyber-terrorism, and espionage. Anyushka and Anastasia would never have been discovered.”
I looked at the men’s eyes. They hadn’t softened. They still felt angry with me and my decision. I sighed loudly, a little defeated. “Anyushka will eventually be able to testify. She heard and saw quite a bit. That’s neither here nor there. To answer your question Jack - no, the way I do it, the rules that I have asked you to follow, that’s the best I can do to protect myself.”
“Okay, well what about it coming in from the other direction? Couldn’t you get the information from the attacker instead of the victim? That way you wouldn’t be hurt.” Blaze asked.
“Oh, no. I would much rather face the risks of being a victim than the risks of being in the head of someone like Brennon while he’s committing an act of violence. No. That’s much too dangerous.”
I could tell that my team didn’t understand what I was saying, and I had no good way of explaining the dangers of evil on the other side of the Veil. The seduction of it. How the evil seeped into my cells, sinking sharp talons into me. The few times I connected to evil, it was always a hard fight to extricate myself from its vice like grasp. I remembered the brief brush I had when I saw Brennon’s picture, and it took me to the vault with him, and I shuddered. That feeling was intolerable.
We sat for a minute in silence.
“And you’re okay now?” Gater asked.
I pulled off the covers and stood there in my T-shirt and pink cotton panties. I lifted my shirt to expose my belly. I showed them my arms and legs had healed as if nothing had happened. “The real scars of my life, like the ones I got from Wilson’s attacks, I keep those. The wounds and scars I get when I go behind the Veil are illusions of a sort. As I gather myself to me, and separate from the person who sustained the real trauma, then I keep what’s mine and they keep what’s theirs.”
“When you were helping Cammy, were you taking on the same medication she was?” Striker’s gaze pushed against me.
“Right. But she’s a tiny little girl. What was too much for her body could be supported by mine.”
“What about when Anyushka was sedated?” Jack asked.
“Once they tranquilized her, I tried to come back quickly, before she went all the way under. It was hard for me to walk back through the Veil drugged.”
“And that means if Anyushka had swallowed the poison, then you…” Jack stopped mid-thought, obviously unwilling to voice the outcome.
“Then I would have reacted to the poison as if it were in my body, probably to a lesser degree though. Again, what you saw happening to me was a shadow of what was happening to Anyushka.”
“Jeezus - that poor girl.” Blaze rubbed his hands over his head.
“If the person you’re connected to dies…if they had beaten Lynda to death while you were with her, then you would have died too?” Striker was standing now, hands on hips, face ashen.
“That’s my theory, though hopefully I’ll never know how that really bears out. It could be that I would have nothing to connect to anymore, and I could walk back through the Veil. I don’t know.” I whispered, shocked by his question. I hadn’t extrapolated it all the way out before.
Striker excused himself, and walked quietly out of my office.
“Lynx, when you were connected you could still talk to us, and you could ask us to confirm or refute something. How is that possible?” Blaze pulled me back to the Puzzle Room - my thoughts had gone through the door with Striker.
“Sometimes I’m not sure if I’m talking out loud; I hope I am. Sometimes I try to put one foot on each side of the Veil, one here and one there, so that I can relay information. It’s hard to do. It’s not exactly painful. It’s more… well there isn’t really a word for it.. . .exhausting. . .uncomfortable. . .I struggle to be in both places.” The men nodded. This part they seemed to get.
“As far as the confirmations go, they are incredibly important. That information is for my rational self and your rational selves. To me it’s like a horrible nightmare I’m living through.” I pulled on a pair of yoga pants from my closet and reached for a sweatshirt. “How do I know it’s not a nightmare? How do I know I’m not going crazy and telling you random crazy things? How do you have enough conviction to send teams of people out to follow up on my raving words? It is all so irrational. Having an outside source, who knows nothing about what’s going on, confirm the validity of what I’m saying, helps all of us stay sane. And you’ll notice that I’m never refuted. I’m always confirmed. That gives all of us a layer of confidence, which can help us get through.”
