When the embrace was over, she turned away.
“What’s the matter?” he was confused and more than a little hurt by her sudden distaste for him. “Still angry with me?”
“Yes, but that’s not it. I had a visitor just now, right before you came.”
“Hatman?” Rev searched for signs of the scheming sorcerer. “Was Hatman here with you?”
“Of course not,” she had nothing to hide, still he was skeptical. Insane with jealousy was more like it. “I don’t think he’s going to come around for quite a while.”
“Don’t be too sure.”
“Why?” her question had the tone of demand in it. “What is it? What do you know that I don’t?”
His silence was more telling than anything he could have said. So he didn’t want to talk about it. Abby wasn’t okay with it, but didn’t push…for now.
“Who was your visitor?”
“Alexandra Petrovic.”
“Alexandra? What was she doing here?”
“She was frightened. She came to me with a pretty incredible story.”
“About what?” Rev was intrigued.
Abby thought about what she was going to say. Even she still was having a hard time believing.
“ParaIntell.”
“What about them?”
“Alexandra said they’re forcing Emile to build a more powerful Controller.”
Rev had a sharp eye suddenly. “Looks like we need to talk to Mahoney. In person.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” Abby said reluctantly.
“We’ll infiltrate ParaIntell and shut the Controller down before they can activate it.”
“Good. Great,” she looked away from him. “But you know that won’t automatically get you off the hook, right?”
“Here we go,” he breathed heavily for effect. He was just as exasperated as she about the tension in the air. “Katherine meant nothing to me.”
“Oh, she’s Katherine, is she? First name basis. Nice. Real nice. All the others were just no name bimbos. But not her. Not Katherine.”
“I can’t believe you could be so immature.”
“Immature? Who’s immature here? You can’t go one mission without getting entangled in some illicit affair.”
“There was no affair!” he was getting so angry his ghostly visage began to fluctuate in brightness. “There was nothing illicit. It was innocent, I tell you.”
“If it was so innocent then why was she all over you? Why did she have to kiss you like that? What did you do, Rev? Did you cast another one of your spells on her?”
“Every time! Every damn time I do my job, you have to find something to bitch about!”
“And you have to do something to make me bitch! Rev, can’t you see what you do hurts my feelings?”
“And can’t you see I’m not trying to hurt your feelings, Abby? I never want to hurt you. All I ever want to do is complete our missions. Sometimes I have to do whatever it takes.”
“Even if that means seducing some woman?”
“I didn’t seduce her!” he yelled so loudly it shook the glass in the window. “I didn’t do anything to her. She came to me!”
“That’s what you always say,” she still couldn’t look at him. “You never take responsibility for your actions. You never…”
“Hell with this!” his frustrations went to the boiling point. He had to leave, and now. “Keep on doing it, Abby. Keep pushing me away.”
“I’m not—” she stopped herself when she realized he had gone. She didn’t even see him leave, but knew he’d left her.
Chapter 29
Abby Rhodes, aka Lieutenant Cassandra Frederickson, strode with the grace and poise of a supermodel on the catwalk. Straight up to the sally gate she marched, the first checkpoint at ParaIntell’s secret hub. She was prepared for the initial security protocols, the usual pat down inconveniently administered by two incompetent looking young men in service uniforms. She was prepared with all the mental and physical tools for this particular job. She had a complete and detailed plan and the hubris to pull it off. More than that, she had these unbelievable legs, attached to these unbelievable hips. The end result was mind-bending, and the two guards at the gate noticed immediately.
The first guard, Houston was the name on his chest, addressed her sleazily after a thorough sweep of his metal detector wand up, down, sideways and back again over her taut and tawny body.
“Thanks, Hon’,” was all he could say, and when he did, he got the surprise of a lifetime.
“Hon’?” she hissed. “Did you just call a superior officer Hon’?” she gave him exactly one second to reply, which he used to gibber, “Uh…uh…uh”
She proceeded to rake him over the coals. She criticized his tie, made fun of his haircut, wondered aloud if he was fit for duty. Guarding ParaIntell, she explained, was top priority for the US government. Higher than terrorism, global climate change, competition with China, rogue asteroids, and alien intelligence. All of these things combined, she told him, weren’t even close.
“We have a sworn duty, soldier, to uphold the tightest, most complete web of security for our spirit world allies, do you understand me?”
“Y-y-yes, sir—uh, I mean yes, ma’am. I understand.”
Abby clicked her heels as she circled the young, shivering soldier. “I’m your worst nightmare. My name is Lieutenant Sheila Fredrickson, and I’m from PIA.”
“PIA? That means you are…that means this is…”
“That’s right. Paranormal Internal Affairs. And this is a surprise inspection.”
“Oh shit! Oh shit! Oh shit!” the private moaned. “This is not happening. This is not happening.”
“It’s happening. And you know what else? You two are going to assist me in a mock infiltration of ParaIntell. We have only a few minutes. The security in this place, though annoyingly inadequate, does work on occasion. You must be quick. Give me a green status. Now.”
The two looked at each other, their eyes as wide as saucers. “Green status? Without authorization? We have orders to—”
“I don’t want to hear about orders!” She got in their faces, wagging her finger. “This is a surprise inspection. If we went to your COs for orders, then it would ruin the surprise, got it?”
They nodded like bobble heads.
She looked at her watch. “The clock is already ticking,” she grabbed Houston by his shirt and forced him to the seat in front of his access terminal. “Green status.”
“They’re going to string me up for this, you know?”
“I don’t want to hear it. Green. Now. Go.”
Houston scrambled, his fingers hitting touchscreen. The switchboard lit up. Green. Lieutenant Fredrickson stepped through the sliding glass door that was closed only a few seconds earlier. It rivaled any secured location in the world, and now it was wide open and waiting for her to walk right through.
“Thank you, boys.”
Her watch beeped the second she turned the corner and lost sight of the two dumbstruck security guards. She knew who it was, and without looking down touched the screen to accept the call.
“Abby, you need to step it up. We’re behind schedule by 32 seconds.”
“Morris, we’ll be just fine. Right now all I want to hear is that you have the security bypass protocols in place. Please tell me you have that done.”
There was a pause. Abby didn’t like it.
“Morris, what’s going on?”
In Sector One, Abby strolled along the main hallway leading to the first set of doors. This was farther than any citizen had ever penetrated the building, and it was only the first building. It took a special security clearance to get to this area. Attempting to enter Sector Two without the proper access code protocols and biometric indicators would mean certain death.
She knew it was certain because, all around her, on the floor, the walls, and the ceiling, were tiny, almost imperceptible holes from which all kinds of nasty things emerged. ParaIntell w
as unconventional to say the least. In their security measures, they employed several creative techniques. One of the most creative was the use of bio-mechanically engineered organisms genetically designed to kill. Designer viruses, tweaked in laboratories by billion dollar minds, all on the taxpayer’s dime, of course.
Alarm systems were going off inside her head. On the floor she saw a pressure sensitive switch. The biogenic security system was active. Morris was the only one who could deactivate it. He was the only one who could save her now. She couldn’t turn back. The doors had closed. It was supposed that anyone who went beyond this point had the code to deactivate the biogenics.
What deadly toxin was waiting for her? A genetically engineered nerve agent? A designer viroid? Whatever it was, she most likely had seconds before the deadly poison or the ravenous, exotic beasties were unleashed. Despite the grave threat, Abby believed in her teammates. That’s why she strode straight ahead, no hesitation, no wavering, no timidity.
She approached a facial recognition scanner and it ran a red laser vertically, horizontally, diagonally, crisscrossing her face like graph paper. Her features were deliberated, documented, and digitized. Then came the moment of truth. She was sweating because of the silence on the other end of the radio. Silence she wasn’t used to hearing. Morris was being unnervingly quiet, and it gave Abby the shivers.
When she heard a ‘click’ and simultaneous ‘beep’ and saw a door crack open on its hinges, she heaved heavy sigh of relief.
“Did it work?” Morris broke his radio silence finally. His hands were twitching. His thought processes weren’t processing. This mission seemed wrong, and he was a bundle of nerves trying to execute it properly. It was a delicate balance between what he thought was moral and what he owed not only to his team but to the spirit world.
“I’m still alive, so yeah.” All Abby thought about were those unseen threats. “But I’m not loving this place. They take their security a little too seriously.”
“This is the world’s most secure supernatural nexus center. This is Area 51 for the spirit world.” Morris was still shaking, his voice and his fingertips, as he manipulated the security system remotely. He had to be one step ahead of Abby, knowing exactly when to disable the security protocols so as to not cause undue alarm. He used a sophisticated form of GPS along with his own design of sonar-enhanced lasers, infrared and ultraviolet sensors, acoustic vibrational receptors, and good old-fashioned video to do the trick. He had a keen eye and a strong penchant for electronic surveillance. But even this mission posed an incredible amount of difficulty and danger.
“It’s like the gateway to Hell,” Abby said skeptically. “It’s pitch black. Perfect, just perfect. Why does it always have to be pitch black?”
“Don’t be afraid, Abby. It’s only pitch black for the first 20 meters. There’s a left turn and then you’ll see a control panel with several LEDs in a well-lit area of computers.”
In the background, Abby heard Ruby chuckling in her shrill voice. Like a fingernail across the chalkboard.
“Ruby, that isn’t helpful.”
Ruby squealed, telling Abby not to worry about things like the dark. True evil, she said, didn’t need the dark to hide. True evil could lurk anywhere.
“Okay, I see the computers.” Abby was much relieved that the security measures had been disabled. What she didn’t count on was the freak show she was about to encounter.
It seemed like a basement, though Abby swore she never went down any stairs. A large but claustrophobic space jammed with dozens of long rectangular tables containing various objects of questionable origins in various states of dissection. Other objects, like freezers with transparent doors, were clearly visible, and the contents inside appeared frozen solid.
Her footsteps grew faster quite automatically. She didn’t want to see what was on those damn tables. She just wanted to get to the door at the other side, the exit to Sector Three, and leave this strange place.
She heard a crackle in her ear and knew right away she’d lost radio communication again. No reason to be alarmed. Happened from time to time. She flicked the receiver twice, which usually got the damn thing to work. Sometimes they needed a little kick. But it wasn’t that. It wasn’t even the signal. Morris was a wizard at boosting the RF, so it wasn’t that. This was something else.
It was those things on the tables.
“What the hell?” She was equally horrified and mystified. Though she was walking rapidly and on purpose, and though she tried to keep her eyes forward and focused, she allowed her sight to wander curiously. In those wanderings she dwelled on one given object on one particular table. In that dwelling she saw something that should not have been. Some strange mammalian creature. She knew was it was a mammal because she saw, inside the gaping hole cut into its body cavity, what looked like a set of lungs. But they weren’t human lungs. And they weren’t the lungs of any other type of biological entity she’d ever seen. Some sort new species? Maybe GMO? She didn’t know. She didn’t want to know. She didn’t want to care.
She couldn’t help but feel an instant rush of emotional turmoil and guilt, an automatic response to the suffering she perceived all around her. Guilt was a game changer. Guilt weighed down her footsteps until she found herself running slower, then slower, then even slower, until her strides became shorter and less deliberate, then mere meandering steps. Puzzlement mixed with a healthy respect of the unknown. She didn’t like to call it fear. It did scare her that she couldn’t get Morris on the radio. That was terrifying. But she tried not to let the gloomy surroundings and the acid white light from the operating tables bother her.
She didn’t want to look, so she didn’t look. She felt as if she walked fast enough and appeared official and didn’t make eye contact with anyone or anything, she would be fine.
She was wrong.
“Can I help you?” The question was more of a command. Abby knew that tone. It had nothing to do with helpfulness. It said, Who the hell are you and what the hell are you doing here?
“No, I—” she glanced up, and that halted any further speech. Her throat constricted at what she saw. She had extensive knowledge on various supernatural beings and creatures of the night. Undead monsters and unclean spirits, all kinds of sundry beings written about and studied throughout the ages. She knew a ghoul when she saw one.
Powder white flesh flaking around the eyes. Whiteheads bursting and blackheads festering. Bulging, sharp cheekbones high on leathery skin stretched over a thin and frail skull. Jagged and mostly missing teeth, those remaining black and decayed. Hair festering with insects. Parasitical insects. Insects infesting not only the scalp, but also the ears. Crawling things that made her stomach turn. She imagined some of those things creeping on her own skin and she cringed.
The thing was wearing a scientist’s lab coat, which was the ultimate irony since it had the look of something with absolutely zero intellectual capacity. Yet the way it (and she would always call this being an it, because it did not have any relation to a human) comported itself, the way it stood erect and flashed her a matter of fact stare was comical beyond belief. It actually took itself seriously.
“I’ll do the questioning, if you don’t mind.” Abby swallowed her repulsion and slid back into character. “Don’t you know who you’re dealing with? I’m Lieutenant Cassandra Fredrickson from PIA”
“Oh, sorry…Lieutenant.” Abby didn’t like its tone. Sounded like it was salivating over her as it spoke. “It’s just that I–I never get visitors.” It glanced over her shoulder to see behind her. “You have to be careful, Lieutenant. You never know what you’ll meet in here.”
“Well, I’m just passing through, so I don’t plan on meeting any—”
“Passing through? Nobody just passes through here. Where are you going so fast, anyway? You said you’re from PIA, don’t you want to see my work? I’ve been working so hard, and I’ve been doing so much for ParaIntell. I don’t understand why management won’t read my reports
.”
Abby felt compassion for this macabre thing all of a sudden. She did want to, but empathy was in her nature, for even the most pitiful of creatures. And it was pitiful. She envisioned why nobody ever checked in on this thing. What exactly they were thinking leaving it unsupervised? Then again, sometimes it seemed no one was thinking. Whatever the case, this thing, this strange and contorted and ghastly thing, was indeed a man. A man in need.
“Hold on just a second. You mean to tell me your report has been filed and nobody has read it?” She sighed, knowing she’d regret what she was about to say. “Let me look at it.”
“You…you want to read my report? You seriously want to?” He produced a black a three ring binder which he opened immediately, reading to himself here and there proudly, mouthing as he ran along. “You must see this.”
In the light, Abby saw some detail on a lab table that created a stir in her stomach. Repulsion, disgust, dismay.
“When I embarked upon this exotic endeavor, my initial goal was to discover and identify the connection between body and soul. Long story short, I exceeded expectations. Do you understand what this means? Do you even begin to understand?”
Abby tried not to show it, but what she did get out of it was a horrifying image. Experimentation, savage and brutal. Her whole life, her whole career, everything she knew, was wrapped up in this world. Ghosts, sorcerers, immortals, and even demonic entities. None of it fazed her. None of it was new. Yet for some reason this whole lab experiment thing made her skin crawl. There was something beyond what the man was explaining.
“You wouldn’t be hiding anything from me, would you?” she raised an eyebrow. She wasn’t sure if she was still in character as Lieutenant Fredrickson or if she was now Abby Rhoads.
The man, who Abby secretly dubbed Doctor Ghoulish, contorted his face into an expression of extreme confusion. He was measuring her response for his own response, calculating carefully and considering her rank. In the end he realized he could not hide anything from the savvy young officer. His shoulders lowered and his chin sank.
Ghost Guard 2: Agents of Injustice Page 21
