Dead Shift (The Rho Agenda Inception Book 3)

by Richard Phillips

  A clearing opened up before him and in its midst, Jack saw another body lying faceup, eyes closed. As he approached that dark form, the cold hand of dread reached into his chest and squeezed his heart. There on the ground before him lay the bloodstained body of Janet Price. Kneeling beside her, Jack could see that she was alive, but her breathing was labored. When he tried to touch her, he found that he couldn’t and realized that it wasn’t the doors, trees, or people here that lacked substance. It was him.

  Here he was the ghost. And though he told himself that this was only a dream, he couldn’t shake the feeling that good people were dying here and that he was the one doing the killing. Rising to his feet, he shook his head. There was nothing he could do for Janet. But perhaps he could still find Anchanchu.

  Jack turned his back on the clearing and resumed his hunt. As time passed, it became clear that when he had stopped to look at Janet, he had let that chance slip away. It was time to end this dream that was more than a dream. Time to wake up.

  The trouble was, he couldn’t do it. Now Jack knew why he had avoided sleep for the last several days. After the difficulty he’d had waking up from the Hawaiian meditation, he had feared that, like an acid trip, each new journey into this lucid dream-state might bind him more tightly to the dream world inside his head.

  This was Anchanchu’s domain, and Jack couldn’t find his way out.

  So Jack returned to the clearing and sat down beside Janet. Her eyes fluttered open and, for a moment, he thought she could see him. But then her heavy lids closed once more. Blood had soaked through the bandage on her left thigh and her lips were dry and cracked. Surely the other Jack had applied that bandage, but why had he left her here on this lonely mountain while he murdered FBI agents? He should have stayed here. He should have taken better care of her.

  As Jack listened to Janet’s breath rattle in her chest, the certainty that she was dying froze his soul. There wasn’t a damn thing he could do to ease her passage, but he could sit here and bear witness as she slowly drowned in her own fluids. And he could care. With every passing second blurring the distinction between what was real and what was dream, one thought screamed in his head.

  Damn you, Jack! What the hell have you done?

  CHAPTER 48

  Janet looked out over the summer-brown hills that dropped away to the east of the rocky outcropping where Jack lay peacefully sleeping. For the last three hours, the sun had climbed higher into the morning sky and, had it not been for the breeze from Mount Diablo, the day would have grown unpleasantly warm. But the steady breeze felt great, and if Paul Monroe hadn’t lain dead inside some garbage bags in the garage near the base of the hill, Janet would have thought the day perfect.

  Turning, she looked down at Jack. He hadn’t moved so much as a finger since he’d closed his eyes and fallen into a deep sleep, but it would soon be time for Harry to take his turn on watch, so she would have to wake him. And despite the brown Hawaiian tan on his face and arms, she thought she detected the first hint of sunburn. Now that he’d had a few hours of sleep on a pile of rocks, a bed would probably feel great.

  Kneeling beside him, Janet whispered, “Jack.”

  When he failed to respond, it surprised her. No matter how exhausted Jack was, he had an uncanny sense of awareness that brought him to full alertness when summoned. But not this time. Janet studied Jack’s face. It seemed to contain a strange tension for someone sound asleep, and his eyes moved beneath his eyelids with the rapid eye movements commonly associated with intense dreams.

  Janet grasped Jack’s left arm and squeezed hard, and then shook his shoulders, but got no more reaction than she would have received from a coma patient. A sudden memory of the look on Jack’s face when she’d asked him why he feared falling asleep flashed through her mind, bringing with it a sense of dread that made her swallow. Janet placed the fingers of her left hand against his carotid artery and counted fifty-four strong beats per minute.

  But when she lifted Jack’s eyelids, the sight of the deep red shine in his wide pupils leeched the warmth from the late-morning sun. That, and the way his eyes continued to move, as if Jack was watching something that only he could see. Fearing that the bright sunlight shining into pupils opened wide enough for a dark night might damage his eyes, Janet closed Jack’s eyelids and leaned back, well aware that her own pulse was racing.

  When an even harder shake failed to rouse him, Janet slapped him hard on the cheek, first with her left hand and then with her right. The last blow stung Janet’s palm and rolled Jack’s head to the side, bloodying the lip she’d split just a few short hours ago. As she swung again, Jack’s left hand caught her wrist and his eyes opened, squinting up into the bright sunlight.

  When he spoke, his words carried an odd tone, as if they echoed into this world from another, and their impact left Janet speechless.

  “Damn you, Jack! What the hell have you done?”

  For the first time, Jack’s eyes focused on her face as he wiped the blood from his lower lip with the back of his right hand. Maintaining his iron grip on her wrist, Jack sat up, his expression indicative of the difficulty of his struggle back to full wakefulness. But the red was gone from his brown eyes and the pupils had returned to a normal daylight size.

  Jack wiped more blood from his lips.

  “I gather you had some trouble waking me.”

  With a sharp twist, Janet jerked her wrist free.

  “Shit, Jack. You scared the hell out of me!”

  This time, there was no witty response, just the stone-cold truth in Jack’s voice.

  “Yeah. You and me both.”

  Jack sat up and Janet sat down atop a slab of rock facing him. “It’s time for you to give me some answers about what’s going on with you.”

  Janet watched Jack’s eyes narrow, but he made no attempt to change the subject.

  “You sure you’re ready for this? Because this is going to sound crazy.”

  “I’m getting used to it.”

  “I’m not kidding.”

  “Neither am I.”

  Jack started with the vision he’d experienced on his Calcutta deathbed, continuing with detailed descriptions of his battle to reestablish self-control, with his heightened sense of intuition, and with the dark compulsions that assailed him. Janet tried to avoid a rush to judgment and for the most part succeeded. But when Jack’s tale turned to his sleepwalking in Bolivia, followed by the waking dreams that had led to him walking through that cavern, seeing events that had happened five hundred years ago instead of the firefight going on all around him, Janet had to intertwine her fingers to still the quiver that crept into her hands.

  Jack paused, his eyes drilling into her, studying her face for a negative reaction, something Janet was determined not to show. When he continued, his voice lowered ever so slightly and it seemed to Janet that the sounds of the birds and insects quieted in response.

  “Over the last two months,” Jack said, “I’ve had the growing feeling that I must directly confront the thing inside my mind that calls itself Anchanchu. Four days ago, I performed a type of meditation that allowed me to enter a lucid dream-state. Unfortunately, although I encountered Anchanchu, I allowed myself to be distracted and failed to catch him. And for the first time, I found myself stuck in my dream, unable to wake up.”

  “But you did wake up,” Janet said, licking her lips to wet them.

  “Barely. After that, I didn’t sleep again until just now. I think you can understand why.”

  Again Janet felt his eyes upon her and she looked up to meet them. “You believe this Anchanchu is real?”

  “Either it’s real or I’m insane. Not great choices, but of the two, I choose to believe the first.”

  Janet studied Jack’s face as intensely as he’d previously looked at hers. It left her with no doubt that Jack really did believe he was possessed. No, that wasn’t i
t. He believed that he had come back from the dead sharing his mind with the same rider that had haunted some of history’s most violent people. And the side effects were getting progressively worse.

  “In this latest dream, did you catch Anchanchu?”

  Jack worked his jaw. “No. But I came close.”

  “And what do you think will happen if you catch him?”

  Jack rubbed his eyes with his left hand. “I don’t know, but I think Anchanchu doesn’t want that to happen. So I do.”

  Janet felt her gut clench. God, she wanted this disturbed man. He might be crazy, but . . . Jack was a force of nature. She’d stood shoulder-to-shoulder with him, had felt the aura that bathed him in battle. And no matter what she thought about the cause of his current struggles, if he was going to make it through this, he couldn’t go it alone.

  She swallowed hard and made the decision.

  “Okay. How can I help?”

  Jack’s grin crinkled the corners of his eyes. “You might be as crazy as I am.”

  Janet climbed to her feet, extending her right hand. He gripped it and hauled himself up to stand beside her.

  “I want to try the meditation again,” Jack said. “The one I tried in Hawaii. I’ll need you to watch me in case I can’t find my way back.”

  “You just can’t get enough of me smacking you around, can you?”

  “Maybe I like it.”

  Janet shook her head and turned back toward the house, just managing to suppress the smile that threatened to reward Jack’s comment.

  “Come on. It’s almost time for shift change.”

  As she began the hike down the hillside, the sound of Jack’s easy laughter tickled her ears.

  CHAPTER 49

  When Jack followed Janet around the front of the house, he saw Harold Stevens step out onto the front steps. His dark brown hair buzzed high and tight, his fighter’s nose, and those steely gray eyes would have action-movie producers drooling if Harry ever decided to give up the real thing. By way of greeting, he just nodded toward the front door.

  “Spider wants to talk to you two.”

  Sure enough, Jack saw Spider Sanchez waiting alone in the living room. As Jack closed the door behind them, Spider looked up from the disassembled Glock spread out before him on the coffee table.

  “You were looking for us?” Janet asked.

  She took a seat on the couch and Jack sat down across from her.

  Wiping the gun oil from his hands with a gray rag, Spider leaned back in his chair.

  “We’ve been ordered to stay put while the NSA geek squad figures out who set us up and how.”

  “That doesn’t sound like a good plan,” Janet said. “Who’s to say that those who set last night’s trap can’t find out about this safe house?”

  Jack shared her sentiment and Spider’s shrug indicated that he felt the same way.

  “I’m just passing along Admiral Riles’s orders. In the meantime, get some rest, but be ready to move as soon as we get the word. We’re going to get that bastard who killed Paul.” Spider turned his attention to Jack. “You’re awfully quiet. I don’t remember you being shy.”

  “Just mystified,” Jack said. “We should split up into two-man teams and do our own hunting while the NSA tries to get its shit together.”

  “You’re not wrong. But we have our orders.”

  “I seem to remember someone telling me that she wasn’t real good at following orders,” Jack said, looking at Janet.

  Spider held up a hand to cut her off before she could respond. “While I’m in charge of this team, everyone will do exactly as I say. That also applies to you, Jack.”

  As much as Jack liked and respected Spider, this galled him. “I don’t remember Levi assigning me to your team. In fact, I was specifically excluded.”

  Janet interrupted, her voice hard. “That was on me. I told Levi, Spider, and the entire team that I felt you were out of control, that you presented too great a danger to those around you.”

  “And you were dead-on,” said Jack. “Still are.”

  “No!” Janet said, more forcefully. “My advice almost got the whole team killed. If you hadn’t shown up, we’d all be dead right now.”

  “But I was there because I violated Riles’s orders.” Jack looked back at Spider. “Now you want me to ignore my instincts and follow the orders of someone sitting behind a desk at Fort Meade. I don’t care how good Riles and Elias are. We’re the operators with boots on the ground and we have a better view of what needs to be done.”

  Spider’s jaw tightened, but when he spoke his voice held an icy calm. “I’m not asking you to follow Riles’s orders. I’m asking you to follow mine.”

  Jack looked into the dark eyes of the ex–Delta Force commando and slowly nodded. “Okay, Spider. For you, I’ll do it.”

  The tension melted from the room as Spider resumed cleaning his weapon. “Good. Get some rest, both of you.”

  Jack headed for the bedroom that had originally been assigned to Paul and was surprised when Janet stepped in after him and closed the door. When he looked questioningly into her face, it was quite clear that those weren’t hungry bedroom eyes. Too bad.

  “You said you wanted to try your meditation again. So do it.”

  Jack started to argue that she needed sleep too, but the look on Janet’s face told him not to waste his breath arguing. He’d seen that determination before. With a sigh of resignation, Jack turned toward the bed.

  What the hell? Might as well get this over with.

  CHAPTER 50

  Steve Grange, accompanied by Dr. Vicky Morris, made his way down the concrete corridor deep in the bowels of his Grange Castle Winery, his mouth so dry that he couldn’t swallow. Today was the day when he would find out whether his driving ambition finally lay within his grasp. Here, buried beneath hundreds of feet of rock, electronically isolated from the rest of the world, he was now entering a remote section of the laboratory that took those precautions to the next level.

  Situated at the end of a fifty-meter tunnel, wrapped in a redundant array of Faraday cages, lay the Isolated Test Chamber, or ITC. Powered by its own set of generators, the ITC contained an ultrahigh-temperature incinerator of the kind only found in top-secret biological or chemical warfare laboratories, its cooled and scrubbed exhausts discreetly vented through the vineyards far above. But the ITC hadn’t been designed and constructed for biological or chemical experimentation. Quite the opposite.

  Passing through the final set of sliding steel doors, Steve stepped into the chamber. Dr. Morris was the only person in the world with a level of expertise on today’s subject matter that could be considered comparable to Grange’s. Comparable but not equal, and that was a good thing. Despite all the precautions that had been implemented to prevent the potential disasters that this test posed, human weakness to temptation was one of the worst threats of compromise, and Grange could really only be sure of his own motivations. So he alone served as the gatekeeper.

  He and Dr. Morris were the only people that would be allowed inside the ITC for this test. Everything would be handled by the mainframe supercomputer. A holographic data drive, or HDD, that contained the first iteration of the artificial intelligence seed and the digitization of Jamal Glover’s mind was connected via high-speed fiber-optic cable to the massively parallel array of blade servers in racks along the opposite wall.

  In shelves that covered the wall on Grange’s left were stacks of hundreds of identical HDDs, none of which had yet been connected to the mainframe. He looked at them and wondered how many of those drives would survive today’s testing.

  Grange walked to the workstation and sat down. He typed a command and brought up a checklist similar to the kind surgeons run through prior to a surgery, the kind designed to ensure that the patient, the surgical procedure, and the body part being operated on are all cor
rect. But instead of a head nurse, Dr. Morris would provide his double check.

  Dr. Morris seated herself in the second chair, positioned so that she could observe.

  “ITC isolation status?” Grange asked.

  “Confirmed.”

  “Stunting level for the first iteration?”

  “System set to self-limit neural activity to subconscious level.”

  Grange glanced at his checklist. “Trip wires?”

  “Automatic shutdown on detection of self-replication. Automatic shutdown on detection of genetic evolution. Automatic shutdown on detection of conscious thought patterns.” Dr. Morris swiveled toward him. “Connect your dead-man switch.”

  Grange swallowed, then clipped a small metal band, like an antistatic strap, to his left wrist, connecting the other end to the master circuit breaker slot on the left side of his workspace. It left just enough slack for him to do his work but not enough to stand up or push away from the workspace. There was no way to remove it without killing all power to the ITC. After that, an automatic two-minute timer would count down before resetting the breaker. He would have to perform that shutdown procedure between each test and prior to wrapping up today’s session.

  “Connected,” Grange said. “Now yours.”

  He watched as Dr. Morris fastened an identical strap to her right wrist and connected the other end to the master breaker slot on the right side of the workspace.

  “Ready.” Her voice held some of the same tension that elevated Grange’s blood pressure.

  “Booting up.”

  Grange initiated the mainframe boot sequence and waited for the Linux system to complete the process. Then, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly, Grange launched the process named VJ1, short for Virtual Jamal Iteration One.

  Since this iteration was designed to bring online only a portion of virtual Jamal’s mind, Grange didn’t expect any major fireworks and he didn’t get any. VJ1 did experience dreams that were every bit as chaotic and disorganized as normal human dreams. And because these dreams were digital, Grange could extract the sounds and images. Unfortunately these dreams were all nightmares in which Jamal stumbled upon his girlfriend’s corpse, only to have it open its eyes and reach out for him.