by Gennita Low
“You’re only given a certain number of opportunities,” Armando said. “If I’d used my limbic talents on the numbers game, then it wouldn’t have directed me to you. So actually, you owe me a meal rather than with McNeil. We have so much more in common than you and he.”
“Is that right?” Helen asked, keeping her eyes on the man ahead, catching phrases here and there.
The dark smoothness of Jed’s voice was strangely soothing and at odds with the commotion that surrounded him. Armando didn’t seem to care that he could listen in if he chose to, even though he was talking to three or four people at the same time. “Yes, Miss Roston, we do,” he said, his hand under her giving her side a small squeeze. “Lost in a maze. Unfamiliar feelings. Stranger in a strange land. Speaking in tongues.”
Helen arched an eyebrow at him. “You’re the one speaking in tongues, Armando. Everyone can understand me fine.”
“Do you think blaming everything on the hypothalamus is a normal everyday topic?” he countered mockingly.
Helen conceded with a shake of her head. He had her there. Everyone was giving her scientific explanations and Armando was pointing out the obvious. No matter how they explained away the effect of the serum on her system, they couldn’t deny that there was something else happening, something that only she could feel. Her gaze caught Armando’s sardonic one. No, him too.
Dr. Kirkland and his assistant Derek, were looking at the recording Eight Ball had sent them when they arrived. Dr. Kirkland looked up, his eyes assessing, looking for injuries.
“How bad?” he asked.
“It’s just the same leg that was injured,” Helen told him. “I can’t put my weight on it right now, but I’m sure it’s nothing serious.”
“It’s serious enough that you can’t walk on it,” Jed pointed out.
Armando put her down on the examining table. “My fault,” he said.
“No, really, I like being carried around by commandos,” Helen said airily. “Why, a few days ago, Flyboy carried me to the restroom. Then Heath carried my useless tranqued body up to Medic. When is it your turn, Jed?”
She swore the man had no sense of humor at all. Everyone else was grinning at her attempt at humor. Hadn’t he ever tried laughing when something serious was going on? Apparently not. The darn man just stood there like a block of ice.
“That leap was awesome!” Derek said to Armando, then flushed. “Ooops, sorry, Dr. Kirkland.”
Dr. Kirkland just shook his head and turned to Helen. “If nothing’s broken, we’ll examine the leg afterwards. Let’s talk about what happened. Pull the two monitors forward, Derek. Let’s rewatch.”
Everyone gathered closer around Helen as Derek positioned the screens. Helen sat up and watched curiously, eager to see whether the micro eyes captured anything out of the ordinary.
The replay was exactly how she remembered it. They were walking down the hallway from the debriefing room. Sitting at debriefing for so long and just watching and studying Jed had made her clothes uncomfortable again and she’d tried to distract herself by talking as she tried to ignore the odd tension in the pit of her stomach. It took a few seconds but she’d suddenly become aware that not all of that strange tingling was caused by Jed’s nearness.
In the video, she saw herself suddenly give a start, the way a body reacted to a sudden jab or needle prick. She pursed her lips as she watched Jed caress her lower lip with his thumb. No one said anything but oh, what she wouldn’t give to read their thoughts at that moment.
The screen divided into four at this point, showing footage from around the corners of the corridor. Nothing.
“Now watch this as a whole scene with the video of Armando upstairs,” Kirkland said, using the remote in his hand. “The clock at the corner of the screen is especially interesting.”
Helen watched, going back and forth on the side-by-side screens. She could feel Armando’s tension as he leaned closer to the screen. In the video, the microeye was directly above him as he walked past. He suddenly grabbed the back of his head and stumbled, one hand reaching out for the wall. Kirkland paused the feed, clicked a couple of buttons and the screen divided into half, one showing Helen’s location, the other, Armando’s.
Helen brought up the obvious. “The clock. On both videos, the point where I jerked and where Armando held his head was the same,” she said. She turned to Armando. “What did you feel?”
He paused, his hand rubbing the back of his head. “Pain,” he said. “Extreme pain.”
“Is it similar to the headaches you complain about?” Kirkland asked.
Armando shook his head. “No. This time I could see.” He turned to Helen. “When I get my headaches, I become blind. In this instance, I was knocked down by the suddenness of it and then I became angry and got up and just ran downstairs.”
“Angry?” Jed interrupted. He pointed at the screen. “You were down with pain and then you just got up and ran? Not just the clock. I think if we use a site map, we can confirm Eight Ball’s report that Armando was right above Helen and me. Unpause it, Dr. K.”
Dr. Kirkland clicked on the remote. The video showed Armando holding on to his head with both hands for a few seconds. His eyes opened. Even on film, Helen caught the anger in his dark eyes. And then he started running. The video blinked as the next micro eye took over, recording Armando disappearing through the exit door.
Both screen clocks mirrored each other on the screens as they showed the simultaneous actions of what happened next, first from Helen’s location, and then from Armando’s, splitting the screen when they were only divided by the corridor wall. One thing was screamingly obvious. There wasn’t anyone else shown, just Jed, Armando, and Helen.
When the video reached the part when Armando was leaping in the air toward her, Helen tapped Jed’s elbow, remembering something. “I thought I heard something right then,” she said softly, thoughtfully. “Not from Armando. I thought I heard a scream. It sounded strange, though, like an echo.”
“I didn’t hear anything. Did you?” Jed addressed Armando.
“No.”
“What about your headache? Do you have one now?”
“Disappeared. The moment I landed on Hell, in fact.” Armando snapped his fingers. “Like magic.”
Helen sat back against the pillow. “I give up. I have no idea what that was all about.” She waved at the screen. “Nothing was captured on video except Armando charging at me like he knew something bad was going to happen, and now he’s saying he just had a headache and decided to go for a run. Right to where Jed and I were standing, funny, that. Meanwhile Jed didn’t see or hear anything. I didn’t see anything. And the microeyes didn’t pick up anything. So, if it were just my imagination, why did you decide to run downstairs to where I was?”
Everyone turned their attention on Armando, who shrugged. “I can’t explain the unexplainable. All I know is that I was very angry and I just ran in the direction of—” he paused, slowly finishing his sentence, as if it’d just occurred to him, “—the anger.”
“The anger?” Helen repeated, really puzzled now. “Well, that explains everything clearly.”
Armando shrugged at her sarcasm.
Jed walked to the glass window that looked out into the next room and lifted one of the plastic shutters with his finger, peering through it. “Everything’s all about feelings,” he said softly. “SYMBIOS 2. Synthetic biochemistry. Armando’s headaches. Pain. Elena has sexual sensitivity. Both experienced their problems at the same time. Armando rushed toward what he felt was anger. Elena walked toward what she felt was danger. Both collide. Headache gone. Sense of anger and pain gone.”
Armando nudged Helen. “Sexual sensitivity?” he murmured.
“Hey, you called it the ‘reckoning,’” Helen reminded him dryly. She really had to talk to the man about privacy. Talking about her sexual sensitivity in front of four other males, even though two of them were in some measure her doctors, was a little too much information.
A part of her, however, was busy admiring yet again how Jed McNeil could pull apart a complex situation. Right now, even as her mind was busy trying to put together what he’d broken down, he was already turning toward the screens, snatching the remote from Dr. Kirkland’s hands. He replayed the scene one more time, slowing down the film frame by frame. He paused at the one where Armando was in mid-air.
“There. Helen wasn’t looking at Armando. Her gaze was in this general direction.” He pointed at a spot in front of where he stood in the video, then clicked the remote. “Eight Ball, use the trajectory and pinpoint the exact spot Helen was looking.”
Geometrical lines aligned and separated on the screens as Eight Ball started his program. “Trajectory is ninety-eight percent accurate. The angle of Hell’s eyes falls right about a foot in front of Jed McNeil. The arc of sight goes from there to five feet beyond you to the wall, dude.”
“Something definitely caught your attention, scream or no,” Kirkland said as he studied the different angles the super computer had drawn on the stilled frame.
Jed turned from the screen and looked directly at Armando standing by her. His voice was calm. “Two things. You used a dose of the serum about the same time Helen did. I want to know why.” Then he turned to Helen, his eyes gleaming, “There was another presence on site.”
“Huh? How did you get to that conclusion? The microeyes are showing noth—oh.” Helen blinked. The experience in the stairwell in Frankfurt…
Jed nodded. “It seems that, for some reason, those who have taken SYMBIOS 2 have some kind of sense of another remote viewer.”
“I did think about that incident in similar lines yesterday morning,” Helen admitted, frowning, “that I crashed into the remote viewer. But Jed, it’s impossible to feel another remote viewer’s presence.”
“You were wearing the energy alarm ring,” Jed said. “Where is it?”
“T. took it back to the labs. Probably to test what happened at the stairwell.” When she was at the CIA, she’d been told about energy alarms, which agencies used to detect the presence of remote viewers in a small area. She’d never seen one till T. had given her a ring to wear when Helen had been about to go for the test set by the agencies. It seemed her chief had been suspicious herself. She rubbed her bare finger thoughtfully. “According to T., the energy alarm shouldn’t have affected me at all. It sets off a warning at the lab and I wouldn’t know till someone contacts me about it.”
“It didn’t happen that way. Something set it off and you knew because you reported that you almost fell down the stairs,” Dr. Kirkland said.
“Well, that still doesn’t explain why Armando feels it.”
“He took the serum,” Jed said, an icy edge to his voice again. “Didn’t you?”
Armando didn’t show any emotion. “Guilty.”
“Why?”
“I needed to stop the pain.”
“How?”
“When everyone had gone off to the dog-and-pony show with Hell. Kirkland and Derek left everything easily accessible.”
Helen remembered how everyone had been eager to start the test. Almost the whole Medic department had left so they could be on hand if the serum had a negative effect on her. Of course, the few personnel that were left wouldn’t question a COS commando walking into the clinic.
“We’re going to talk later,” Jed said. He turned to Helen, his eyes raking her up and down, as if he was considering whether she was up to it. Apparently he thought she was, because he added softly, “Get ready for a remote-view session.”
“But her leg—” Dr. Kirkland protested.
“A quick check-up, but we must hurry. If there really was a remote viewer here at COMCEN, I want to know where he is right now.”
“But she’s barely got the serum out of her system, Jed.”
“We aren’t using the serum,” Jed said, his eyes never leaving Helen. “She can handle it.”
Of course she could. She’d been trained to be pushed to the limits, and one limping leg wasn’t going to be a problem. However, the feminine part of her was just a tad miffed that he looked at her as only some kind of extension to his spy games. They had been planning to go have a meal with an admiral before the incident, for crying out loud. And then afterwards…he’d promised her afterwards… This supersoldier-spy thing was really getting in the way of her love life.
Helen squinted, pretending to consider the idea of refusing him. “I’m still starving,” she announced. “If you bring me something from the cafeteria, I’ll work for food.”
“Done,” Jed said. He looked around. “Get started. Armando, you’ll stay in the next room and get thoroughly checked out. Thoroughly. Brainwaves, Kirkland, and a drug test. You’ll stay till it’s all completed, do you hear me, Chang?”
Armando hooked his thumb on his belt. “Time out, I suppose.”
“More like a spanking,” Helen said. What did he mean when he said that he injected the serum to stop the pain? Was his “reckoning” this pain that he kept having?
“Chang? I didn’t hear your answer.”
“Yes, I’ll be in the next room.” Armando exchanged a glance with Helen as he pulled open the door by the examination bed. “This is my reward for saving damsels in distress.”
She grinned. She couldn’t help it. He was probably in serious trouble but he didn’t seem at all remorseful. Dr. Kirkland ordered Derek to move the tables with the monitors out of the way, as he headed to the medical cabinets.
It was a familiar procedure. Helen returned her attention to Jed.
“If he’s going to draw blood from me, I’m going to need food. Send up some,” she hinted again. “Then I’ll see your fake ass in virtual reality, Hades.”
Jed walked to the examining table and paused to look down at her. Something indefinable flickered in his light eyes. He said nothing, simply locked his fist in her hair and pulled her head back. His mouth came down on hers hard. He angled her chin just so. His tongue tangled with hers for a brief moment.
It happened so quickly, she didn’t think Dr. Kirkland, intent on measuring meds, even noticed. Derek had his back to them.
“That,” he said softly, “wasn’t Hades kissing you.”
A smile touched his lips before he turned and strode out. Stunned, Helen stared after him. She touched her lips. The freaking man had a sense of humor after all.
Kevin Kirkland shut the cabinet door. There was a mirror on the inside of the door that Derek had recently hung there.
In all his years monitoring Jed McNeil in the Virus Program, Kirkland had never seen the man kiss any woman in public, not even Nikki Taylor, an injured GEM operative Jed had rescued and with whom he’d had a relationship a long time ago.
Such a long time ago, Kirkland reminded himself, that his head of hair wasn’t salt and pepper then. Before Jed brought her to GEM. Before she got her memory back. She was Nikki Harden now.
He considered Jed a friend. He’d started out as he was doing now with Helen, just charting vitals and making scientific observations on the subjects for the Virus Project, but over the years, the doctor-subject relationship had morphed into something closer. It had to, since Jed McNeil had to trust him when it came to things he had no control over, such as drugs and medical needs.
It wasn’t exactly a communicative kind of friendship. Jed wasn’t much of a talker when it came to his personal thoughts. An excellent communicator when it came to being a leader; a great conversationalist when it came to philosophy, music and sports; a remarkable chess player; even an excellent cook; but not exactly very sharing about his past or his beliefs.
Even after all these years, Kirkland had trouble getting him to talk about his past whenever the chance came up. He had learned to listen for clues and had pieced together some background information.
Other than a childhood in Dublin, Ireland, it seemed that Jed McNeil had pretty much been a CIA protégée for most of his life. He’d been sent into the Special Forces and Rangers school for t
raining and warfare experience, had been through one covert program and another, all at the behest of the CIA.
Kirkland still wasn’t sure exactly how Jed had parted ways with the CIA and become a COS Commando. COMCEN and CIA weren’t exactly great friends these days, yet he still had ties in the latter agency, giving him a lot more access to covert information than most operatives.
One thing was clear, though. Jed McNeil was a very powerful person and many people listened to him when he did communicate. Kirkland had personally seen how his wishes overrode a few powerful names, some of them generals and department heads, and other than voiced outrage and threats, there didn’t seem to be any repercussions. It was a simple rule: what Jed McNeil wanted, Jed McNeil got.
And from that kiss he’d just witnessed, Jed McNeil wanted Helen Roston. The act itself—a kiss—was telling. During times when he was in his element, when he was figuring out all the different variations of a spy scheme, Jed had always been unemotional, almost robotic, as his mind worked out the next best step.
It was part of the Virus Project training, the compartmentalization of emotions. In his personal file given to Kirkland in the beginning, there had been a small notation that had caught his attention. There were little things the attending doctor and a scientist must take into consideration when it came to his test subject. In Jed McNeil’s case, it was noted that his primary mentor had mentioned that the young subject had shown an inordinate capacity to sacrifice himself when it came to protecting someone close to him. Case in point, the notation went on, was Kitty. That was all Kirkland had, nothing else that would tell him what or who “Kitty” was. He did get to ask Jed about it a few years later, showing him the file.
The silence that had followed was telling. He’d learned that Jed liked to think over whether his replies would take him to places he didn’t want to go.
“She was my wife.”
It’d shocked him because Jed was the last person he’d thought would be married. “What does it mean by ‘inordinate capacity to sacrifice’ in the file?” he asked. “It’s important I know, Jed.”
