The Snow Swept Trilogy

by Derrick Hibbard

  In Morales' opinion, the longer Ms. ANONX^17 was allowed to roam free, the more chances she had to make additional contacts with whom she could share whatever she knew about their organization, or their plans at the Summit.

  But, Morales supposed that Harrison was right. They had her devices cloned, and he was tailing her to make sure those contacts didn't happen. Once they were sure that she was not in contact with anyone else who needed to be terminated, Morales would be given the order to dispose of her, and he would wipe his hands of this mess.

  Morales climbed out of the car, leaving instructions for his driver to park and remain close by in case they needed to move quickly. He stood on the sidewalk, watching his breath mist in the freezing air, and counted to twenty before following ANONX^17 into the hotel.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  "I'm telling you, man, they came into the school with guns and took her," Adam said, taking a bite of his sandwich. He chewed for several seconds, thinking, before he continued. "I never saw her again after that, until just recently."

  "And you have no idea why they took her?" Ryan asked.

  "No, not really. We had dated for a few months up until that point, but there really wasn't anything about her, that I could think of, that would warrant such an extreme scenario. They had guns, these people, and they just took her. Like at your house."

  Ryan and Adam were in the cafeteria of the hospital, eating pre-made sandwiches they'd gotten from a cooler near the register. The kitchen had closed by the time they'd arrived, and the cashier had already closed her till. Ryan pointed to the sandwiches and the woman shrugged and said they could eat whatever they wanted from the cooler because all the food was past its expiration and going in the trash that night. The sandwiches were cold and stale, but neither had eaten in several hours, and both were starving.

  "What about her parents?" Ryan asked.

  "Seemed normal to me," Adam said, his mouth full of egg salad. "Her dad was a little weird, a bit over protective, but her mom was great. She liked me a lot."

  Ryan rolled his eyes and bit off the crust of his sandwich. Mae had never really spoken about her parents, other than to say that they had died. He wondered what had happened between the time Adam had known the family, to the point where Ryan had met her, on the run and in hiding with both of her parents dead. The change from a normal childhood to Mae's present reality was drastic, and Ryan wondered how it was possible for so many bad things to have happened. Of course changes had occurred in his own life. He rarely spoke to his parents anymore, and although he'd never moved out of their house, his parents travelled more and more and were at home less often.

  Ryan moved to take another bite of his sandwich and smelled smoke on his hands. His home had more than likely completely burned, the blackened pile of his life smoldering in the cold winter air. He didn't feel anything for the house, no regret at its loss. It was just another material thing his parents had purchased, and they would simply purchase a new home and new furniture. Losing the house didn't make him sad, but realizing that there was nothing he cared about attached to the home he'd spent so many years in was upsetting. For the first time in many years he thought about the lack of any real human connection in his life. Except for Mae, and the few friends he'd made while driving for the Lit Dragons, he was alone. He had everything he could ever want, but they were just things. He had virtually nothing by way of relationships, and he felt empty. Maybe that was why he'd been drawn to Mae so quickly, because she seemed to have nothing either. They filled an emptiness for each other, that need for an emotional connection.

  But she'd had that connection before, with Adam, and the realization that there was no one in his past, that Mae was the first to fill that emotional need, was depressing. He wanted Mae because she completed him. She made him feel more real and alive than anything ever had before in his life.

  With Adam in the picture, however, he didn't know if she would feel the same about him. He didn't know who she would choose, if either of them. The uncertainty that filled him was almost as bad as the emptiness.

  "This sandwich sucks," Adam said, his mouth full and twisted into a grimace. Ryan was brought back to the here and now. Mae was gone, but not for the first time. The pieces of the puzzle were coming into focus, but there were still too many holes.

  "Was it the military who took her from the school?" Ryan wondered. "Like the guys at my house tonight?"

  "They might have been, but they weren't dressed for combat. For the most part, they looked like normal people—dressed nicely. They were hiding guns, I remember that, so they could have been military. But not U.S. military. Mercenaries maybe. Hired guns."

  "Why do you say that?"

  Adam considered this for a moment and then shook his head. "I don't think the United States military would take a student out of school and cause her entire family to disappear…"

  "How is that not exactly like the military?" Ryan interrupted.

  "Let me finish. I just don't think they could do something like that without drawing some sort of attention. Too many people in government have loose lips. Too many low level administrators who would have access to that kind of information. And it's appalling, really. Her entire family, just gone."

  "And nothing from Mae for all these years?"

  "Nothing," Adam said. "No telephone call, no emails, letters, nothing. She disappeared, man. I can't even tell you how surprised I was to see her the other day. Took me a few minutes before I realized I wasn't talking to a ghost."

  "What was the story they gave the school?" Ryan asked.

  "That someone in the family was sick. The dad's sister, or something like that. But I knew it wasn't right. Mae would not have left like that, and she never even tried to contact me. Even if she hated me, she wouldn't have ended things like that. She's too good a person."

  Adam said that last part with a small smile of triumph, and Ryan looked away. He didn't like listening to this guy spout on about his relationship with Mae.

  Ryan took another bite and realized the cheese on his sandwich had turned bad. He peeled back the stale bread and noticed a few spots of grey mold on the slice of cheese. He pushed it away, deciding he wasn't that hungry after all.

  Ryan's phone buzzed with a text. He pulled it closer and smiled.

  "Who is it?" Adam asked.

  "Heather. The girl who called earlier,” Ryan said, “and she’s got a plan.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  A small cardboard sign hung from the door to Paul's room, reading: DO NOT DISTURB. Heather sighed and removed the sign from the knob. She saw that the door opened with either a key card or a numerical code, as she'd expected. Thankfully, Paul had included that numerical code in a list of passwords he kept on his phone, which was stored on his cloud server. Heather opened the list on her own phone, which she'd downloaded while on the bus to Chicago, and entered the code. A tiny light on the lock switched from red to green, and the lock clicked open. She took a deep breath and pushed through the door. Her heart raced as she briefly thought about the possibility that the reporter was still alive and well, just hiding out in his room. The thought was bittersweet to Heather. She did not want to break into someone's home and intrude on their privacy, but she did want the man to be alive and well.

  But the room was quiet and dark and looked as though it hadn't been touched in a few days. A single light from the bathroom bled out into the room through the half-closed door, but even from the entryway, Heather could see it was empty.

  "Hello?" she said, knowing that she would go unanswered. The reporter was probably dead, or in the off chance that he was still alive—tied up somewhere and being questioned—he would be dead very soon. As soon as all their questions had been answered. She hoped he was still alive, because if he was still alive there was still hope, however small.

  Regardless, the room was empty, and the reporter had not been there in some time. She let the door close behind her, the latch clicking softly as it sealed her in the
room. She avoided the stack of papers and folders in the living room, knowing that if she started searching for answers there, she might get so distracted that she'd miss other clues in the apartment.

  Instead, she walked first to the bathroom, noticing a tube of toothpaste on the counter sitting next to a toothbrush. The cap was missing on the toothpaste, and a dried crust of bluish goop had formed on the lid. The trash can near the toilet was mostly empty, except for a few candy wrappers. She bent closer and saw that the wrappers were all from the same brand of spicy cinnamon candy.

  In the kitchen, she found dirty dishes in the sink and a half-eaten bowl of oatmeal on the table. The package of oatmeal was still on the counter, featuring cartoon drawings of dinosaurs and lumps of sugar shaped like dinosaur eggs.

  The trash can in the kitchen was also sprinkled with the same cinnamon candy wrappers. Heather felt a little nauseous at the thought of so many sweet things. This guy clearly had a sweet tooth to be reckoned with.

  In the bedroom, the bed was unmade and there was an empty glass on the nightstand near a bottle of painkillers and yet more candy wrappers. Clothes hung in the closet, and several pairs of shoes had been lined up neatly at the foot of the bed. Car keys, loose change, crumpled receipts and cinnamon candy sat in piles on the dresser, along with several stacks of books. She glanced at the titles and cringed. The books ranged in subject from unexplained mysteries of the universe to conspiracy theories and psychokinesis. There was even a book called UFOs Exist! mixed in the lot. For the first time, she wondered if she was following Freeman down some crazy rabbit hole.

  But no, they had tried to kill her and had probably already succeeded in killing the man who had lived in this apartment. Though probably not UFOs, this rabbit hole was real.

  As she turned to leave the room, she saw something sticking out from under one of the pillows. She leaned over the bed, catching the faint scent of the man who'd slept there. The scent was faint but pleasant, citrus and cedar.

  Heather pulled the pillow aside and found a stack of papers, crinkled and bent from multiple readings. She sat down on the bed and thumbed through the pages, containing emails to and from: and .

  She skimmed through the messages, settling on a paragraph in one of the first messages:

  Considering all angles. Am leaning more toward a version of telekinesis, of a psychokinetic ability. Perhaps most similar to the subject was a French girl in the mid-1800s. Angelique Cottin called herself the "Electric Girl" and was an alleged generator of PK activity. Cottin and her family claimed that she produced electric emanations and from her presence, pieces of furniture and scissors moved across the room.

  She read through the paragraph and immediately glanced at the stack of books on the dresser.

  Psychokinesis.

  Heather had a vague understanding of the phenomena. Something about manipulating or moving things with just your mind. The stuff of science fiction and magic shows. Phenomena that could neither be proven nor replicated to any degree of certainty, yet debunked numerous times.

  she kept reading the messages, noting several different names of people who the author of the email claimed had this ability. The thing that stuck out to her was that the message seemed to be reporting on findings, referring to a SUBJECT—like the subject of an experiment—and the sender seemed to believe that psychokinesis was an observable phenomena.

  She tried to think back on movies she’d seen or websites she’d come across that had anything to do with this ability, and she had faint memories of stories and pictures that specialized in the unexplained. She remembered an old black and white photograph that depicted a woman in a simple dress standing with her eyes closed and one hand outstretched. The room was empty except for a chair that appeared to be levitating several inches from the ground.

  When Heather had come across the picture, she’d been intrigued enough to read more about the circumstances surrounding the photograph. As it turned out, numerous tests were done to recreate the phenomena depicted in the photograph. Without any observable results, the photograph was declared a fraud and forgotten in history.

  That was the extent of her knowledge concerning psychokinesis: fiction in the best of circumstances, fraud in the worst. Her eyes fell upon the book on the reporter's dresser that covered the subject.

  Heather stood, taking a few steps toward the stack of books, but then hesitated. She wasn't entirely sure she wanted to take this trip down this particular rabbit hole. Already, her mind had stretched at the possibility of a secret organization so powerful that it could conduct military operations within the borders of the United States without consequence and detection. She grappled with the almost incomprehensible thought that she and the Duke had been tracked and hunted online like animals. She still couldn't believe that they'd killed the Duke, and had almost succeeded in killing her.

  To open her mind to the possibility of phenomena she'd long thought impossible, was almost too much for her mind to bear. She wanted to bury her face in the reporter's pillow and scream.

  It wasn't too late.

  Heather considered leaving right then and there. Walking away from the reporter's apartment and leaving it undisturbed and untouched. If she ran quickly and hid well, careful not to touch anything to do with this mess for the rest of her life, they might just forget about her. She could probably go back to living the life she'd been living before. After awhile, she might even be able to stop looking over her shoulder. There was a chance that if she just left, things would be normal.

  She caught sight of herself in the mirror that hung above the dresser. The knit cap she'd pulled over the wound on her scalp covered most of the gore, but she could still see pieces of her hair, stained with her own blood. She looked tired and beaten, and wanted nothing more than to get away, find somewhere safe and warm, and go to sleep. Her body hurt, and she knew that she was standing at a crossroads. It would be so easy to just turn and look the other way. So easy to ignore what was happening before her eyes, to not make the same mistakes the Duke and the reporter had made in seeking truth under rocks that should never have been disturbed. But both of them had been driven by something higher than simply solving a puzzle. They sought truth where it had been hidden and covered up. Not for themselves, but because truth often fell by the wayside. People wanted to be comfortable and ignorant, even at the sacrifice of truth.

  But even as she stared at herself in the mirror, she knew that the choice was already made. The price was high, but wasn't the price for truth always high? The Duke had spent his adult life searching for the truth and exposing the lies of people and companies with power and control over the people, and had paid the highest price. She could only assume the same with the reporter, with his insatiable lust to uncover the truth in spite of injuries and threats.

  Heather lacked the same drive to uncover truth and injustice, but she refused to let this rest until she'd exposed Il Contionum for what they were. The truth didn't matter so much as what they'd done to her friend without any fear of consequence. The sheer audacity of whoever was behind the Duke’s death disturbed her, and she could easily follow the logic to the conclusion that they would kill anyone in their path. Her heart thudded in her chest as she reached for the books on the dresser and chased the rabbit into its hole.

  Heather picked up the first book and was pleased to find that the reporter had done much of the work already, had tabbed several pages. She found passages marked on those pages and began reading.

  Pg. 26: Psychokinesis, a form of psi, is a technique of mind over matter through invisible means. Examples of PK are movements of objects, bending of metals, and determining the outcome of events. It can occur spontaneously and or can be caused deliberately, indicating both an unconscious and conscious process.

  Pg. 43: The term psychokinesis is derived from the Greek words psyche meaning "breath," "life," or "soul," and kinein meaning "to move." Occurrences of PK have been recorded since ancient tim
es. These include levitation, miraculous healings, luminosities, and other physical phenomena attributed to holy or magical individuals. Such phenomena is recorded in the Bible, especially in the New Testament. One example is cited in which St. Paul and Silas were imprisoned in Ephesus, where they prayed and sung hymns, and at midnight their shackles fell off as the prison doors swung open as if on their own accord.

  Pg. 47: The Soviets revealed their most famous PK subject to the West in 1968. A housewife from Leningrad, Nina Kulagina, born in the mid-1920s, demonstrated her abilities to Western scientists who observed the movements of many different sizes and types of stationary objects; the altering of the course of objects already in motion; and impressions on photographic film. She was also reported to have exerted PK effect on the heart of a frog, which had been removed from the animal. She first changed its rate of beating, and then completely stopped it. Kulagina was photographed apparently levitating objects.

  In the margin on the last page, there were several words scrawled that sent a chill down her spine.

  BOMB WITHOUT A BOMB?

  Heather vaguely remembered that the reporter had used that phrase when referring to the disaster in Miami in which an entire building had imploded on itself. She sat on the bed, considering the pieces of the puzzle that didn't quite come together. The pieces were there, but the rational side of her mind refused to fit them together. She needed more information. More data, and the only place to get that was Il Contionum’s computer servers.

  She looked again at the printed copies of the emails and studied the email addresses used for the correspondence, hoping for an indication as to the server. If she was able to determine the server, she would be one step closer to gaining access to the data.

  She checked her watch. Not enough time.