Flash Point

by Thomas Locke

  Kevin asked softly, “Think it worked?”

  What she thought was, asking the question showed just how exhausted the man was. Reese replied, “You really need to get some sleep.”

  Vera came back on. “You get half a million.”

  “That’s not enough.”

  “This sum is not negotiable. Split it however you like.”

  “Look, I’m trying—”

  “And I’m looking for a reason to give out an all-points,” Vera snapped. “‘Escaped federal convict, multiple felonies, considered extremely dangerous, shoot to kill.’”

  Reese smiled at the conference phone. Vera probably thought the silence was her way of tamping down on justifiable terror. But Vera was wrong. This was Reese taking aim. “Agreed.”

  “We have two more companies you need to investigate. High-priority targets. One British, the other Japanese. Is language a problem?”

  “I have no idea,” Reese said. “But first we need the funds to reward our team—”

  “Payment will be effected immediately. Get to work.”

  41

  Reese left Kevin’s office and crossed the parking lot. It was almost nine o’clock, and traffic along the highway was heavy. As she entered their cafeteria and ordered a latte and a toasted bagel, Reese felt eyes follow her everywhere. The café was about half full, but no one was eating. Reese had developed the safety sense every inmate used to survive, the ability to see without actually looking, the skill of finding danger before it materialized.

  She felt nothing bad. Just the eyes.

  She walked over to a table occupied by three voyagers she had never spoken to directly and indicated the empty chair. “This taken?”

  “It is now.”

  She slipped into the seat and asked their names. They responded without an instant’s hesitation. She asked when was the last time they had been on a voyage. They told her. She asked if they ever visited the outside world. They talked about a trip to Disney. A couple of local restaurants. Cinema. Reese listened and ate her breakfast and hunted for the unspoken. Finally she acknowledged the change as real. These voyagers had accepted her. She was one of them. And it wasn’t simply because she had confronted Heather and Esteban, or delivered an ultimatum to the midnight crew.

  They bonded because she had known the nightmare.

  Ridley entered the restaurant and came over, Carl one step behind. They pulled up two chairs and settled down a fraction removed from the others. Reese liked how they remained a team, even here in the café where everyone could see. She also liked how others drifted over, not asking permission to join them. She felt it as much as anything she was actually able to see, the sense that she was gathering them into a unit. They were willing to give her a chance to prove herself. Willing to expect a better outcome than they had known so far. Reese liked that a lot.

  She said, “We’ve been given a new target. Two of them.”

  Carl said, “I’ve found a couple of others who want to try to link like me and Ridley.”

  “Excellent.” Reese explained to all the others, “We want to develop an alternative midnight crew.”

  The same woman who had spoken in the hallway the night before said, “Those hungry ghosts, they scare me.”

  “Too right,” another said. “Scare me white, almost.”

  “You wish,” the woman said.

  “Girl, I’m happy enough with my skin just how it is, thank you very much. I just don’t like sharing it with no monster from dreamland.”

  “That time is over,” Reese said.

  “You’re sure about that, are you,” Ridley said.

  Reese rose high enough to look over the group. Three more voyagers were clustered by the doorway. Another four were at the window table. “Can all of you join us, please?” When they were together and seated, Reese said, “Awhile back I was put in charge of the first-ever experimental team doing what we’re doing now.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “We were forcibly dispersed.” She held up her hand. “I’ll answer your questions. Only not now. We are on the clock, and we need to prep. Something we did back then might help us now.”

  Reese described how two of her team had gone hunting as a sniper-spotter team. She related how the pair had developed a weapon of sorts, drawn from negative energies and emotions they’d found waiting for them. Or perhaps had brought with them. Reese kept it vague, giving them only what was required, the bare bones. Then she waited.

  To her surprise, it was Carl who got it. “We can make shields.”

  Ridley watched him. “You think?”

  He shrugged. “Worth a try. Energy is energy.”

  The waifish young woman from the hallway said, “Or maybe even fashion a weapon.”

  A dark-skinned guy asked, “You’d take on a hungry ghost?”

  “Hey. I am about done with running from them all night.”

  “Least you can run, girl. I wake up in my dreamtime, they’re already wearing me like a human Gucci.”

  Reese showed her palm a second time. “Let’s hear what she’s thinking.”

  “If anger works as a weapon, I’m locked and loaded,” the woman said. “And if fear works too, we’re talking a nuclear bomb.”

  Reese had heard enough. “Okay. We’re going out. With two changes. First off, we’re blocking the midnight crew for today. If they ever work with us again, it’s with a complete and total understanding that this is a whole new ball game.”

  Several of the faces blanched tight. The young woman asked, “Is it safe?”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Erin.”

  “I need to learn all your names. And I will. For now, everybody, meet Carl. Carl is part of our first new protective team, a group I’m calling Lifeguards. That sound okay, Carl?”

  “Works for me.” He smiled for the first time Reese had ever seen. “Works just fine.”

  “And here’s how confident I am that Carl can keep you safe.” Reese did her best to hide the terror rush. “I’m going in with you.”

  This time, the security station’s door clicked open before Reese lifted her hand to knock. She stepped inside and shut the door behind her. The guard who had loaned her the weapons lifted his baton and said, “You up for another barbecue?”

  Reese smiled to acknowledge the jest, then asked, “Why don’t you wear name badges?”

  The guy shrugged. “Kevin said they weren’t required.”

  The female guard was taut and solid and wore her T-shirt and jeans like a rumpled uniform. “We’re only eight, two shifts doing twelve each. Which explains the dayroom. And Kevin’s ordered us to stay unseen.”

  Reese asked, “What are your names again?”

  “Val.”

  “Stu.”

  “Okay, Valerie and Stuart,” she said, committing them to memory. “Can you work me up sheets with photographs and basic details of everyone here, including the staff? I need to fit names to faces.”

  “Sure thing.”

  “Great. But that’s not why I stopped by.” At this point the two other guards were standing in the doorway. “I want you to bar entry to the midnight crew.”

  Stu asked, “Who?”

  “The four weirdos,” Valerie said.

  “Oh. Right. Sure.” He grinned. “A pleasure. Really.”

  “One or more of them should be coming downstairs any moment now. I’d like one of you on station in the hall leading back to departures. Tell them the whole area is off-limits.”

  “I’m volunteering,” Stu said. “What should I say when they ask why?”

  “Tell them they’re on probation. And that I want to see them all after the next voyage. And they better be on time.”

  “What if they object?” Stu was just loving this. “Or like, you know, try to get past me.”

  But Reese was already turning away, focused on the unseen next step, fighting down her fear. “Use your imagination.”

  42

  Kevin’s chief
technician responsible for calibrating each individual neural net was a dull-faced Salvadoran with a heavy accent and heavier build. She fitted Reese with nicotine-stained fingers. Even when she was back behind the monitor, Reese could smell the ashes on her clothes. The woman asked her questions for over two hours, continually making adjustments on her computer as Reese responded. The questions were endless and extremely personal and intended to elicit emotional reactions. Reese endured it because she had to. The woman’s flat, uncaring tone made it easier.

  When it was over, Reese returned to the monitoring station. Karla disliked the idea of Reese heading into Indian country, but she kept her objections to herself. Reese counted the main team in and gave them the targets. Then she gave Karla a set of handwritten instructions and said, “Read this when you count down me, Ridley, and Carl.”

  Karla frowned at the page. “The standard first voyage is simple in the extreme. You’re counted down and given very basic instructions. Come up from your body. Take a careful look around. Return. That’s it.”

  “I want you to give me a little more than that.”

  “More . . .”

  Reese started to say the word freedom. But decided it didn’t fit. “Mobility. Our aim is to find a way to operate without the midnight crew, and stop the voyagers from suffering through any more nightmares.”

  Karla nodded slowly. “It is all becoming clear.”

  Reese left the monitoring station and entered the second departures lounge. She settled into the seat on Carl’s opposite side from Ridley. Reese hated how the helmet fit on her, clamping down over her hair with probes like blunt needles pressing into her temples and forehead and rimming her skull. The chin strap was tight enough to make the helmet wiggle every time she opened her mouth. The cables dangled down behind her like metallic braids.

  She did her best to ignore the discomfort and said, “Karla, can you hear me?”

  “Loud and clear.”

  Reese shut her eyes and did her best to push away her dread. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

  Reese had little experience with the immediacy of terror. She had been afraid many times, but it usually hit her long after the event. When she reviewed the closeness of peril, when she recalled the way she had survived and saw how near she had been to her final breath, she knew fear then.

  Not like this.

  Reese decorated the space behind her closed eyelids with the beasts from her nightmare. Always before, she had survived by going in prepped and ready for battle. But this time she had no idea how to prepare, or what to do, or how to come back.

  A faint hiss sounded in her ears. Reese recognized it as the starting murmur that would rise into the auditory signal patterned after the optimal brain waves. In the chairs to her left, Reese heard Carl and Ridley exhale long and slow.

  Karla’s voice came through the headphones. But as she started her instructions, Reese opened her eyes and said, “Hang on a second.”

  Karla asked, “Something is wrong?”

  “No.” Reese turned to Ridley and said, “I want to try something. You remember what I told you earlier?”

  “About the energy weapon.”

  “The energy. That’s the key. So what if we use the energy to fashion an anchor as well as a shield?”

  Carl asked, “Can we do that?”

  “We can try,” Ridley replied. “I like it.”

  Reese was thinking out loud. “Carl, you bind yourself to me and Ridley. That’s your number one job. You station yourself in safety and you anchor us. Ridley, you—”

  “Fashion a shield against the hungry ghosts and move forward,” Ridley finished.

  “Right. And I play the observer.”

  “Hungry ghosts,” Carl said. “That’s good.”

  Reese lay back and released the tension. The fear she could handle now. “Karla, you there?”

  “Of course.”

  She shut her eyes. “Start the count.”

  Reese had secretly been hoping that it wouldn’t take. She knew how few trial subjects were able to extract themselves. Or willing to take that step toward what her earlier team had called a small death. Releasing their consciousness voluntarily from their physical bodies. Looking beyond the confines of what was called normal life.

  As if anything in her recent existence had been normal.

  Reese half expected that she would be one of the majority. Unable to enter the state of voyaging, blocked by some internal resistance over which she had no control. But as soon as the auditory patterns increased in volume and Karla began her count, Reese felt the release. She sensed its arrival before it actually happened. As though all the close calls she had known, the fractional distance she had maintained from death, had readied her for this moment. When she did what Karla told her to do. Almost before Karla shaped the words.

  “Now open your other eyes.”

  Reese did just that. She felt her consciousness lift away from the physical form that she knew—she knew—was still prone in the chair. She did not need to turn around and look down at herself. But she did so anyway. She saw the slightly canted features, the indentation in her skull. But this time she felt none of the customary rage that struck her whenever she studied her reflection. Reese inspected herself with the mild curiosity she would have shown a stranger.

  Reese was ready to move when Karla said, “You are to inspect your environment. See whatever it is that you need to observe in order to build a greater sense of safety for you and your team.”

  At one level, the instructions seemed unnecessary, because long before the words took shape, Reese was already in motion.

  What Reese had not expected, what she was not prepared for, was the sense of exultation.

  The weight and shadows of the past fourteen months, all the failures and rages that preceded her incarceration—they were just gone. Not merely erased. They had never happened. She recalled the events only with effort, like dredging up some long-ago conversation. But the exhilaration was far more than a simple freedom from the past. She was filled with a sense of potential. She could do anything. She could go anywhere.

  Power. Just thinking the word filled her to the point that she would have wept, if such an act were possible. Instead, she felt tremors course through her, tight as repressed sobs. She vibrated to the latent force that was hers to call upon.

  She felt a tug at the small of her back and turned around. The ephemeral Carl stood by his chair. His disembodied form was large and solid as a concrete block. Which was what he was focusing upon. She understood his intent. He was linking to her by an imagined chain, light as air, strong as titanium. He held a second link that bonded him to Ridley. Reese did not see the woman until she focused in that direction. Here was a limitation, she realized. She could only see the one thing upon which she focused.

  Ridley had fashioned a shield as tall as she was, an oval with a peaked top and bottom, like those carried by Zulu warriors. She pushed forward, and as she did streamers of incoming force flowed to all sides of her. Ridley was under attack. Yet she moved in safety and remained linked to her lifeguard.

  It was working.

  Reese focused outward and saw the assailants. The beasts formed an encircling mob, raging and toxic. But they could not touch them. Ridley’s shield deflected the incoming barrage from reaching any of them.

  Ridley moved forward, out to where the other voyagers searched for answers to their new quest.

  Reese could see how they clutched one another, her shadow company. Using this unity as a means of safety. Bound together by . . . what? Their experience, or newfound trust? Reese had no idea. So many questions she had to work through. The prospect of hunting down answers was positively thrilling.

  “Your ten minutes are ended,” Karla said. “You are returning now. You remain in absolute safety, in total control. I am beginning the count now.”

  Reese slipped back into the confines of her physical existence, breathed, sighed, breathed again. She opened her eyes because
she had to. There were things to do.

  But all she could think was, Too soon, too soon.

  43

  When Lena woke up, she knew a quick wash of fear before she remembered where she was, and why. The previous evening Brett had wanted her to take the apartment bedroom, but she had refused. Lena had not needed to insist or argue—the man had no strength for either. Brett had brought out sheets and a blanket and pillow and a clean T-shirt, then entered the kitchen and prepared a morning coffee service. At the bedroom doorway he had paused and thanked her, his voice so soft it might have gone unheard had she not been listening carefully. He was a strong and intelligent man brought very low indeed.

  Now she lay on her side, staring out the sun-splashed glass wall at an emerald garden. She heard only birdsong. She rose from the sofa, entered the kitchen, and switched on the coffeemaker. She then took her carry-on bag into the guest washroom. When she emerged she was dressed for the day ahead, though her feet were still bare. The floor was an inlaid pattern of marble and granite and coquina. Her heels would have made a racket, and she wanted to be alone.

  She sipped her coffee and studied the apartment. There were subtle hints everywhere suggesting that it had never been lived in. Brett’s presence was overlaid upon the formal setting like someone who had entered a hotel room and not yet had time to settle. Lena was fairly certain the apartment had been designed with a woman in mind. She walked slowly around and imagined what it would be like to live in such a luxurious place, a block off Park Avenue.

  She took her second cup and her briefcase out the glass doors and seated herself on a metal bench beneath a trio of blooming cherry trees. The rear garden was laid out with Oriental precision, the springtime flowers as fastidious as a wedding bouquet. She had come here for Brett. But the quiet hour felt like a gift intended for her alone. Since arriving in New York, Lena had known so few opportunities to sit and reflect.

  She was fully aware that her world was undergoing significant changes. The new job, the private jet, the meeting with Roger, the trip to Savannah, the formation of her own team, the bank account . . . All these were fragments that could easily remain disconnected through the speed of life. But the memory of Gabriella’s voice rustled with the morning breeze, and Lena nodded to the sunlight. She was part of something far greater. She needed to prepare. She needed to be ready for the unseen.