The walls and doors were soundproof in this place, yet it wouldn’t matter to a clairaudient whose ability had now been perfected. He knew they were aware of this; after all, his flourishing ability was the subject of the meeting. He felt certain that they would be speaking telepathically, a meeting of the minds, mind to mind, so to speak. But Myra had missed the fact that his own telepathy had forced its way to the forefront, a crucial factor that Foster would not have overlooked.
Instinctively, he drew back from the window. Quick shadows interrupting the light against the opposite wall told him that the door to the next room had been opened then closed. He gasped hard and sat back down, bringing the chair toward the wall. He closed his eyes hard and honed his mental ear, knowing what he had to do.
His instinct had been right. As the deafness numbed his ears, no voices could be heard from inside the small room next door. They had been communicating telepathically, insuring that he would not overhear. Caleb was also in that room—why? He was a remote viewer. Was he watching him?
He threw his head back and exhaled, opened his eyes, and stared at the ceiling. Then with his mind, he refocused as the deafness died away. He allowed a natural calm to wash over him, and concentrated on the wall that separated them. Voices broke through, exposing random thoughts like camouflaged enemies.
“Is he telepathic?”
It was Foster. His words were thick in a soft, surrounding silence, but unmistakably, he’d asked the question about him. A lengthy pause had followed before the next voice invaded his mind.
“Very little...has an undeveloped talent for telepathy.”
The words were fast, fleeting, fading, but it was the voice of Myra explaining that he, the subject, was not a developed enough telepath for the goals at hand...
She’d made a serious and fatal blunder.
His crafty deception of her had been successful; he’d figured it out through Foster’s mistake of mentioning thought cloaking. He had managed to avoid her more experienced telepathic mind as it searched for signs that could ultimately threaten their plans. Her voice was heard again, referring to the testing in which he’d pulled words from her mind.
“Only scored five of ten...capable...not strong enough. Powerful listener, though. He’s clairaudient...highest capacity.”
He listened as Foster’s response confirmed his suspicions.
“Cannot leave here...he’s needed for our efforts...next part of the plan...”
“What if he resists?” Myra’s tone was skeptical.
“There are ways...”
Foster’s scattered words continued, and the words that came next, though broken, triggered his alarm like the day at the bridge.
“We are not the FBI...have to move fast...before...find us...rogues...treason.”
Shock struck him, terror gripped him, and disbelief had stumped him. This unexpected revelation incited everything he’d felt on the battlefield, all over again, and the slightest strain of rage caused his mind to dance along the edge of insanity. His blood stirred and boiled, while raw, ripened nerves caused his body tremors. They were not the FBI; they were a highly sophisticated, psychically intelligent rogue group, and they had kidnapped him.
Kidnappers...and they had plucked him away from his enlistment right under the government’s eye...but how? At first, Foster spoke of the government’s psychic studies of remote vision and hearing, and how they would be used towards issues of national defense, but then...
The powers that be, however, are beginning to shun the results of our efforts...
Both Foster and his team were either rejects dismissed from the government’s studies, or else the whole project had been shut down. The elder agent had struck him as an outsider from the very beginning. Why hadn’t he trusted his instincts?
Now they were planning on stealing him away from his home, his family, and the love of his life, capitalizing on his abilities, utilizing him as a psychic Guinea pig, an unwitting slave to their secretive game of paranormal espionage.
He closed his eyes in helplessness; then he suddenly jolted as a pair of crystal blue eyes peered back at him through that momentary darkness.
Caleb was watching him from the other room!
He closed his eyes again, and still, the perfect crystalline orbs of brilliant blue gazed back. He could even make out the sinister, pointed arch of the shapely, blond eyebrows. Quickly, he abandoned the feelings of fear and helplessness in favor of a newfound sense of empowerment that had overtaken him. Now he not only gazed back at those eyes, but through them.
And so easily, he slipped inside Caleb’s mind.
A quick picture of Caleb’s brain flashed before him, and then the eyes appeared again, only somehow strained. His new telepathic talent had turned into a toy, and with it, he playfully reached further into the recesses of Caleb’s mind.
“Something’s wrong!” He heard the bulging hulk give a weakened gasp and speak with a slight tremor in his voice.
His mind like a battering ram, he gave one final push into Caleb’s mental barricade. He saw a vision of himself, as though he were staring in the mirror.
The eyes returned, peering upward in a heightened state of fear. He watched as blood vessels climbed like ivies across the whites of the eyes and burst behind the blue orbs. A slight phantom pain mimicked in his own eyes.
“AAAHHH!”
The scream had come from Caleb. This time he’d heard it with his naked ear through the so-called, soundproof wall. Slowly, he backed with baby steps away from the wall, uncertain of what had occurred beyond it. If something happened to Caleb while he remotely watched him, then they must be on to him or at least close.
There was only one exit from this room, yet his head turned in multiple directions, scanning and searching for a way out. Safety and security had now slipped away unexpectedly. He had to make a break from this place even if they killed him; they were going to take his life one way or the other.
He ran to the door, the nervous sweat drenching his face, and his heart pounding a hard and rapid percussion. The door had been locked as expected; it was his only shot, but the steel knob failed to twist in either direction. Even if it would’ve opened, where would he run? They’d blindfolded him before they brought him here, but he was a soldier now; he would die finding his way out if he had to.
Rising voices could be heard. He strained his eyes to see through the small window in the door, detecting only moving shadows that danced down the corridor. Approaching sounds came closer to the room, and the dancing shadows interrupted the light outside once again.
Abruptly the deafness came, and the voice of the fallen superior shouted this time, instructing him as before.
“Private, step away from the door! Be prepared!”
No other words were spoken. His hearing returned, somehow sharper. The sounds were coming for him, and he was told to be prepared.
A face appeared in the rectangular window of the door, displaying a stunned yet determined expression; it was Foster’s. Was Foster whom he was to be prepared for? What was he going to do? What had happened? He couldn’t know, but he knew one thing as the conversation he’d overheard continued to replay in his mind; he would have to kill Foster to leave here, and as the fury spread inside him, he now felt prepared.
* * * *
Foster pushed the door open and let it fly back, then steadily strode into the room, his intent gaze staring straight into his eyes.
“Well, it looks like you’ve accomplished much more in your time here than we’d originally anticipated. Your talent for telepathy seems to have evaded Myra, but not Caleb, but I must admit, you managed to slip past even me.”
Foster ogled him for a silent moment, searching his mind and sporting a maddening grin that spread across his face. In the intensity of the previous moments, he’d forgotten to shut down his thoughts.
“Yes, my little slip of the tongue about thought cloaking—how stupid of me. That is, of course, how you fooled Myra. What we weren
’t aware of is your heightened state of telepathy; nor did we envision your rare capability of entering and invading the mind of another. Those with such a unique ability have been known to cause severe damage and destruction, which you have just unwittingly demonstrated. You see, Private, you have an extremely powerful psychic instrument. One which, unfortunately, we cannot afford.”
His eyes widened as Foster pulled a revolver from his inner jacket pocket and pointed it straight at him. But he remained alert, treating the agent like a preying tiger, though Foster stood still, making no sudden moves. Without actually forming the words in his mind, he had the notion of talking to Foster, stalling him, hopefully distracting him.
“What do you mean destruction? What happened to Caleb?”
“Caleb is dead, my friend, no thanks to you.”
The automatic recognition surged inside of him; he’d gone too far.
“Those who are unable to understand or control that little unspeakable capability can cause great damage, as I said. As was explained to you before, clairaudience is a form of telepathy, though not all listeners are capable of telepathy. In some, it remains hidden for years, dormant for decades, possibly even the rest of their lives. But, you, Private, developed your telepathic sense to its fullest, just by our provoking it. And with it, came that ability so rarely accomplishable in others. This, we had not expected.
“You entered Caleb’s mind as he was remotely viewing you. You already know this, of course. He fell to the floor, blinded and bleeding by your intrusive handiwork. From what we have been able to ascertain, he suffered a massive hemorrhaging to the brain, dying instantly.”
Deep inside of him, he knew that this was not his intention. He wasn’t trying to kill Caleb, only to reach out to discover what was going on.
“We are well aware that it was unintentional”
He shut down his thoughts and let Foster’s voice echo through his ears.
“But you must understand, you are now a liability to us. You are a danger not only to us, but to yourself. If the powers that be discover your newfound ability, how long do you think they will let you live? I am actually doing you a favor, Private.”
“You had no intention of allowing me to leave here!”
“Well, that may be true. I am sure you overheard everything. That is the reason why you are no longer of use to us. The tables have turned on us; you are a more powerful psychic being than we had assumed. We cannot work with a subject who will purposefully thwart our efforts. Our cover has been blown, as they say, with you.”
“There’s only one thing I don’t understand,” he said, keeping his eyes closely on Foster’s hand and slowly sidestepping his position away from it. The two men began to move in circles around each other. “You claimed to be the FBI, but now I know you’re not. So, who the hell are you?”
“We once belonged to the FBI and their remote psychic study project. One might say I’m a ‘former’ agent. Those whom I refer to as ‘the powers that be’ became disinterested with our methods of study. They wanted to take the project to a lesser level than what we were undertaking, baby steps, so to speak. Our studies had thrived too much to be extinguished; that is why we have broken away from the government and its projects to advance our own.”
“But the Bureau will be on to you.” He began filling in the missing pieces that Foster failed to provide. “Your failure with me is bound to lead them to you, eventually.”
“Your hidden telepathy is evenly matched against your clairaudience, Private. It is a shame that you don’t find yourself on the same side with us, that you remain attached to familial ties. You could have been a powerful asset. I see no need, Private, to waste any more of our time together.”
Foster stepped closer to him, while he continued his steady sidestepping footwork, a slowly moving target distracting his would-be shooter. He could almost feel steam seeping from his body, a result of his boiling blood. The notion that Foster was going to kill him erected with hardened, concrete certainty. He was going to have to move fast because either he, or Foster, was going to die today.
The voice of the fellow superior officer spoke again...
“Be ready, Private.”
Foster tightened his grip on the revolver, his finger forming a squeeze around the trigger. He saw a slight expression of regret form on Foster’s face, seemingly aware of the ghostly guide that spoke—but not to him. And then in his mind, the soldier heard the words that had unleashed Hell on the other side of the world...
“Tan cong!”
Something snapped inside him. The fear from the far away jungle had returned with a newfound rage recently accumulated and never released—until now. He bellowed in a wild, untamed caterwaul as he rushed Foster full-force with his body. He managed to catch the right hand, which held the revolver, pinning Foster’s thumb down into the wrist muscle. Then with his right shoulder, he rammed the older man against the wall with a heavy thud.
Foster gasped from the impact, so he squeezed the hand holding the revolver even harder. Still clenching the subdued hand, he rocked him backward then forward against the wall, harder, slamming him over and over as he was, in many ways, the unseen enemy. He heard a solid knock as Foster hit his head upon the wall, and his deadly grip on the gun loosened.
He wriggled his fingers against the cold steel until he disentangled the frantic, fidgeting fingers that gripped it. Now the cold steel quenched the grimy sweat of his palm as he’d strategically stolen the weapon away. He stopped for only a second as Foster breathed in heavy gasps.
He was in control now, but Foster made the mistake of rushing back at him.
No further thought was needed when he pulled the trigger, and the small explosion magnified throughout the small room. It was all so fast.
He wasn’t even sure he’d hit the elder agent until he saw the gaping, fifty-cent piece sized hole that formed a canal in his chest. The blood was reddening his white shirt beneath the jacket as he stumbled backward a few steps. A mask of disbelief hardened on Foster’s face as he fell to the floor; the final table had been turned on him. His blood flowed fast, soaking his clothes. Then there was a gasp, a gurgle, then silence.
He searched to find a sense of relief in this final moment and failed. Newly infused fear and paranoia from entrapment and confinement surged within him, turning him wild. He hadn’t wanted this, but it was either him or Foster, and he was intent on surviving.
His breathing was heavy as he ran to the door. Foster had closed it again, and again, it remained locked. He pointed the revolver at the stubborn steel knob and blasted it into oblivion, replacing it with a black gaping hole that blew the door backwards.
He stepped out into the underground corridor that seemed deserted, silenced of the few random voices that had filled it. He could still hear the bleeps and blurbs of the machines. The doorway to the room where they’d held the meeting stood open, and he stared inside. A fresh puddle of blood soaked the floor, and the acrid, sticky smell of it wafted to his nostrils.
It was Caleb’s blood. He wondered what he had done to him. Would he ever know? What about Myra? Where was she?
He had no sooner thought about her when he’d heard a weak kiai of attack behind him and felt a hard, yet insignificant, thud against the back of his head and shoulders. He’d turned to find her rabid fear confronting him, her face wild, her eyes wide and her intent vengeful.
It was impulse that caused him to pull the trigger this time. The blast did not take her by surprise as it had Foster. She wilted like a broken willow against the floor, her hand covering the hole in her abdomen. He watched as she died, and the feeling of being alone in this abandoned underground allowed him to think, if only for minutes.
Where were the guards? He remained alert, ready to fire again. He reached out, honing his mental ear...no sounds approached.
He walked through the cool underground, facing the machines with their bright, blinking splendor, as they were the only sounds to be heard. Then a fast, whirri
ng sound turned him around to face the square screen that had remained blank and devoid of life or images the entire time he’d been there.
Tiny gray specks of static danced and developed into a forming image on what now loomed like a rare, enlarged, television screen. The image showed an elderly man with a storm of white hair, watching him where he stood. He had never seen him before, but the man stared back at him with what appeared to be not only recognition, but lack of surprise, and almost contentment.
The man spoke while looking directly down at him, examining his every move, as though he were a bug.
“Congratulations, Private! You have done amazingly well. You have completed your course of studies far better than our expectations!”
“Who are you?” he asked.
“Who I am is not important. It is who you are going to be that is our greatest accomplishment. Please, do come closer. I cannot bite, as you can see.” A wry, congested laugh escaped the old man.
He moved even closer to the screen.
“As I have said, well done, Private.”
“How? What do you mean?”
“I have been watching you for quite some time, knowing all along that you would make a far more effective psychic research tool than either Foster or Myra.”
Instantly, he thought back to the glass wall in the underground room he was taken to before being brought here, that ominous feeling of someone watching from behind it.
“You’re right, Private. Your talents serve you well.”
“So, you’re the brains behind this rogue group, not Foster?”
“That’s correct. Everyone answers to a superior don’t they? Foster, Myra, Caleb, all workers remitting to a higher establishment. I am the leader and overseer of this clandestine project, one that has mutinied with our government in effort to achieve success of the highest order. We have found the possibility of that success in you, young man.”
He felt the need to run, but to where? He looked around once again for the guards.
The Listener Page 5
