Virtually Hers: Virtually, Book 2

by Gennita Low

  Helen couldn’t stop looking at him. In a room full of men, she was drawn to him and him only, and they hadn’t even greeted each other yet. The idea that it might all be that trigger he’d put in her head nagged her.

  She’d been prepared for some arrogant display from him, perhaps ordering her back to rest. Once again, he had surprised her by giving her center stage. His light eyes looked back at her coldly, his face stern and unsmiling. He was always light and playful when he was Hades, but out here, no such luck. Number Nine was all about work. She wasn’t deceived. He wasn’t happy she wasn’t resting, even though he was choosing not to say anything about it.

  “You experienced it firsthand,” he continued, misreading her hesitance. “I’m here to confirm what was seen as well as point out the clues that pinpointed the locations.”

  He clicked on a small remote pad by his side. Each of their computer screens lit up. Helen looked at the images carefully.

  “We saw a few on this list last night,” she confirmed quietly, still a bit wary that he was letting her run the show. “We tried changing the universal agreement midway during the RV session, and it worked.”

  “Do we really have the exact locations?” Sullivan asked, impressed. He took a large swallow from the largest coffee cup she’d ever seen.

  Helen shook her head in answer. She’d only been to two of these debriefings. She wasn’t sure how much these guys—her team, she corrected—understood about the ins-and-outs of remote viewing.

  They’ve all been testing you in their own way these past months, Hell. They knew about RV and all experiments you and Jed were undergoing.

  “Sully, your caffeine’s not working. Exact isn’t a term used in remote viewing,” Flyboy said.

  “We were pretty good the last mission,” Sullivan pointed out. “I mean, Hell was. Heck, she made every one of those department heads sit up when she gave the exact location and proved them right by coming back with the decoder.”

  “I think it might have made a few of them determined to get the same results at their agencies,” Jed said. “Continue, Hell.”

  She was slightly amused that he’d never called her Hell except during a meeting. Maybe the serum was making her more analytical about what he’d done to her. Instead of anger and resistance, she was able to sort of understand him—she was Elena in private, Helen in formal situations, and Hell in the team. Jed McNeil seemed to relate to her differently at different times. She found that odd and sexy at the same time. It made her feel as if he didn’t see her the same as the others.

  “I find remote viewing specific only in certain details, Agent Sullivan,” she said. “The previous mission gave very obvious clues. Foreign language usage, among other things.”

  “Perhaps we can only up our remote-viewing percentage with foreign locales,” Armando suggested. “Like a worldwide game of hide-and-seek.”

  “Isn’t that what this entire mission has been?” Jed asked. “Everything on our list is spread all over the world and hidden by different hands. I believe you’re familiar with how the weapons game’s played, Armando, seeing that you moved them around for your family at one time.”

  Armando smiled humorlessly. “Yes, I’m extremely good at making things disappear.”

  “Things don’t just disappear. They’re hidden,” Jed countered softly, “but we’ll get back to that in a bit.”

  Helen looked down at her notebook. Armando was in trouble, all right. In spite of what Heath had told her about punishment being for school, she had a feeling Jed had his ways of reining in those around him.

  “Let me just start from the beginning,” she said. She gave a brief account of the first place, the bars in the windows, and the person curled up on the bed surrounded by the doctor and two other men. She told them that she recognized the man as one of her few rivals during the inter-department contest for SSS. “Since we were looking for my attacker and my bilocation led me to him, it’s a fair assumption that this man is being used as a remote viewer by another group to either spy on us or take me down.”

  “The first attack on Hell in Munich,” Flyboy interrupted. “I traced that van to a CIA ID, remember?”

  “It’s CIA,” confirmed Jed. “I’ll get more into the details in a few minutes. Go on, Hell.”

  Helen then described how she and Jed decided to try jumping locations by adopting the other remote viewer’s universal agreement. “It seems that his handlers are more ambitious because I kept bilocating from one place to another instead of returning to Hade…Jed back in the Portal.” She paused. “I know it all sounds like bad science fiction, all this jumping from one location to another. I didn’t even know it could be done. During training, my CIA monitor told me that multiple universal agreements weren’t conducive to operations because most viewers become spatially confused. In other words, the more times one bilocates during a session, the more the brain is deceived that what the viewer is going through is real.”

  “That’s why your vitals were fluctuating so wildly,” Shahrukh said. “Even after the one time when you stopped breathing, your readings were never truly stable. The only reason Dr. Kirkland never shut it down was because Jed’s remained steady after that one incident.”

  Helen shrugged. “Well, my monitor wasn’t having his brain served with a side of Twilight Zone crazy.”

  They chuckled at her attempt at nonchalance. She couldn’t tell, from a quick glance at Jed’s direction, whether he found that amusing too.

  “When I bilocated that second time, I landed in total darkness. Normally, I’m not afraid of the dark, but this was also in a confined space and it took…ah…a little adjustment, shall I say, before I realized that I was inside a crate, or rather, my bilocated self was. My brain was totally deceived and Jed had to help me out of my initial panic. It was a very uncomfortable feeling, to sum it mildly. Even though physically you aren’t there, bilocation is so real to the brain that you feel the tight confines of being in a crate. I had to keep reminding myself that I wasn’t really there, that I could do physically impossible things.”

  “Yeah, I can relate,” Flyboy said. “The newest experiments with virtual reality in flight simulation are so real that some pilots got air sick when they tried top warp speed.”

  “That’s exactly how it affects me in the Portal,” Jed agreed. “What Helen was seeing and experiencing in her remote viewing, I was able to experience as if I was going through a virtual reality simulation, except that, with our form of deep immersion techniques, Hell and I have found a way to communicate while she’s doing her thing. And yes, I felt the trapped feeling of being locked in a small space, just as she did.”

  The others were intently listening.

  “But why did you both stop breathing at the same time?” T. asked. “I know training should have prevented you from panicking so quickly in the dark or being locked up. That’s just so not like you, darling.”

  “Maybe I have agoraphobia,” Jed said, amusement creeping into his voice.

  “Do you?” T. challenged. “Did that make you lose control?”

  “Our brainwaves are in sync during immersive RV, remember,” Helen said, not sure why she felt the need to defend Jed. “My believing that I was being buried alive triggered the panic attack, which then brought on a similar experience for him. Jed realized quickly what was happening and brought me out of it.”

  “So you both sensed each other’s feelings too. How incredibly interesting,” T. observed. She looked pleased, as if she’d finally gotten an answer to some question.

  Helen could see her operation chief’s mind racing with obvious questions. What other things did Jed and she share? The others had the same expressions she’d seen on their faces a time or two—disbelief, discomfort, intrigue, paranoia.

  “It’s not a constant thing. It was just this one-time experience, probably because it was totally unexpected.” She looked around. “RV isn’t about reading minds, even though I teased you guys about it. It isn’t as simple as tha
t. As humans, I believe we automatically block our thoughts off from each other anyway, but during an unguarded moment, certain safeguards get knocked out temporarily.”

  “Like a psychic crash,” Armando said suddenly, leaning forward. “Listen to this theory. In the hallway yesterday, if indeed there was a remote viewer and somehow we both became aware of his presence, and if it was that man you saw on the bed, he first crashed into you in Munich, but this time, I crashed into him.”

  “Well, actually, you crashed into me,” Hell reminded him, pointing down at her leg.

  “Yes, but I had to run into—okay, through him first—before crashing into you.” He frowned. “All I know is the pain in my head was suddenly unbearable and then—” he gestured with his hand, as if he was performing a magic act, “—run, run, run, my mind said. Before I knew it, I was running to where you and Jed were standing. I knew something was there. I don’t know how, but I did.”

  “Good theory,” Jed said. “We have many questions about that incident which we can’t answer now. We have certain weapons that need to be located first. Sieve these questions through the back of your mind while we work on our more immediate concerns.

  “One, why did they send their remote viewer here? Was it to attack Hell again, or for something else? Two, why was it part of his universal agreement if he was also looking for weapons? It’s the third question that is most relevant to the motivation behind all this. That certain elements in the CIA are involved isn’t in doubt here, but if they were the same people who stole the weapons from right under the government’s nose in the first place, how come they don’t know where they are now? Why are they racing us to get to each item?”

  Helen jotted down the questions. Jed in computational mode was formidable to behold. She couldn’t help but admire how he could take each clue and work it into the big picture. The conference/debriefing could have descended into a long discussion about science fiction, remote viewing and psychic attacks, but with a few questions, Jed had led it all back to the mission. It was true, whether there was anything woo-woo going on or not, certain CIA rogue operatives were after the same specific weapons that were on the list.

  “There is an endgame to this. We need to focus on how these weapons are connected. The decoder card is nothing without other weapons. The people at Deutsche International were trying to break its code for a reason.” Jed clicked his remote, enlarging each item as he mentioned them. “The explosive device trigger was in that crate because Hell saw Croatian words on the side of it. We already know this, though, because that was the last out-shipment the CIA dropped while Gorman was in charge. Gorman knew it was there, so why not these CIA moles?”

  “I wish there was a more definitive way to confirm all this,” Sullivan growled. His large hand curled around his mug. “Much as I don’t want to spoil our confidence in this remote-viewing shit, a crate with Croatian words on the outside doesn’t mean it was in Croatia or Macedonia or wherever else they speak that language.”

  “I would have been very surprised if you didn’t question my certainty about this,” Jed said. His light eyes had the spark of a man who was certain about his facts. “Last night, I double checked with Eight Ball and confirmed that the numbers I saw on the side of the crate belonged to the same shipment number sent out in the drone as relief aid. Also, there’s another very important piece of proof Hell can produce herself.”

  Helen blinked. That was the first she heard of any proof. She cocked her head at Jed.

  “Tell them what you heard before you bilocated again.”

  Realization dawned. “I heard a woman’s voice. She was barely discernible, but I think she was calling a name. Cameron?”

  T.’s startled reaction caught Helen’s attention. “A woman?” T. asked, exchanging glances with Jed. “As in Patty and Cam?”

  “You know a Cameron? And the woman too?” Helen questioned. She bit her lower lip. “She was locked in the crate and someone was beating the heck at the side of it. It’s…Jed, I told you he was talking like an American…was that this Cam?”

  Jed nodded. “Some of you were at that vault fire at the CIA HQ not long ago, helping then Task Force II O.C., Rick Harden, to rescue our Nikki. Cameron Candelaro and Patty Ostler, who worked under him, disappeared that night. Word was, their bodies were dumped into two of the crates being shipped out that night. Sullivan, Hell has never met either Cam or Patty Ostler and doesn’t know the back story.”

  He knew, and hadn’t said a word.

  Sullivan scratched the back of his ear. “Wow,” was all he said. He then gave a male shrug, as if that was good enough for now.

  “But that was months ago. If she were still in the crate, she’d be dead by now. How do you explain that?”

  Hell frowned. “Months ago? She was definitely alive during my RV session.” She thought for a moment. A mental snap. “The second universal agreement. It was where the weapons were dropped, not where they are now, so what I saw was at the point in time those weapons arrived at their location.”

  “So not necessarily the current location,” Shahrukh said.

  Jed nodded, his expression thoughtful. “But we’re close to the trigger. Since our SEAL contact is working on retrieving that item, we’ll wait till I talk to him. Next, we have the location of the missing Stealth. Shahrukh, you’re going to retrieve what’s left of it. It may not be at the same location, but a Stealth isn’t difficult to trace when we have a general location.”

  “Wait a minute—” Flyboy sat up, an indignant look on his face. “The Stealth’s mine.”

  “It’s in Kurd country. And he might have to travel through Pakistan to retrieve it. Shahrukh would be able to go in and out of those places better than a blond blue-eyed hotshot, Flyboy.”

  “There’s always another way,” Flyboy objected heatedly. “No one’s playing with a Stealth without me.”

  “Stealth parts, Flyboy,” Shahrukh corrected. “There wouldn’t be much left of it for you to fly.”

  “I don’t—”

  “You two can discuss this later,” Jed interrupted, “although I’d prefer that you handle Project X-S Bot, Number Five. It’s flight simulation and nano-technology, something you’re familiar with.”

  Flyboy scowled. “Give me the file. But that doesn’t mean I’m dropping the Stealth discussion, Rukh. Even if I have to fight you with a sword for it.”

  “That’d be a stupid bet,” Shahrukh said, white teeth showing.

  Helen couldn’t help grinning. Testosterone overload was so fun to watch.

  T. winked at her and rolled her eyes.

  “Alex, I know your plate’s already full with Maximillian Shoggi. I think we need to talk about setting him up with the decoder. Thanks to us, he’s already lost out on several important weapon bids. He’s a very hungry arms dealer at the moment.”

  Alex’s eyes glittered. “That’d be a pleasure.” He turned to T. “Time to get back into your Tasha skin, isn’t it? Mad Max thinks you’re his link to me.”

  T. tapped her fingers on the table before turning to Jed. “Evil.” She examined her nails. “I think I should be the one going after the Stealth parts.”

  Helen watched with growing amusement when both Alex and Jed didn’t spare her a glance, as if the whole thing was settled. That was so not the way to get T. to cooperate.

  “Armando,” Jed said, his gaze catching Helen’s. She saw the knowing gleam there. “You’re going to go undercover at the same place where that remote viewer is. It’s a place called Stratter’s Pointe.”

  “What, a quest for which no one will fight me?” Armando asked sardonically.

  His mask of bored attentiveness was back in place. Helen hid her smirk. That earlier outburst, though, had already betrayed him. Armando was more eager than he let on. His explanation about the pain disappearing made her question her own reaction to “crashing” into the remote viewer. She’d like to ask him later if he’d felt the odd sensation when it’d happened. Another question occurred. Ho
w were Armando’s bouts with pain connected to her own unique reaction? Using the chemical imbalance theory, she’d been sexually deprived the last few years, and her body overcompensated, so what was Armando’s “chemical” problem?

  When no one answered him, Armando continued, in a faux accent, “No send the Asian to no exotic places? No illusion with simulation? No rescuing the maiden in a locked box? I get…a prison ward?”

  “It’s not just any prison ward. A section of Stratter’s Pointe is for political prisoners, which your background would suit nicely. If they check, they’ll see that you’re connected to the Triads. The other section of Stratter’s is actually something you’ll find interesting.” Jed pushed a file toward his direction. “I was once there, a long time ago, and I met a few people who helped give me some direction. Read up on this place and we’ll talk about your next assignment.”

  Smooth. So smooth. Helen knew exactly what he was doing. It was NOPAIN at its best, manipulation without force. She recalled Jed saying something about him convalescing at that place, but the old photograph on the wall showed him so young. What could he have been recovering from at that age? Stratter’s Pointe didn’t look like a hospital, although it felt like a medical place in that new wing. Another reason to get to talk to Armando privately. She wanted to look at that file sitting in front of him.

  “Political prisoners—like someone who was a captured operative?” Helen asked. She wanted to draw T.’s attention to it. There was so much about this man she didn’t know and she didn’t think he was going to volunteer more information than necessary. She wanted more from him. “What did you do when you were there?”

  There was one of those pauses before he answered. She could feel him withdrawing into himself. He was a hard man to read, with that impassive expression honed, no doubt, from years of sidestepping and evading direct questions.

  “Stratter’s Pointe was actually my first U.S. home,” Jed finally said. “I was at a military hospital healing from some wounds before that and was brought to Stratter’s for the rest of my therapy. It was a state medical facility for those injured during active duty who needed a place to disappear to after emergency hospitalization. It still is, but I suppose it’s expanded its use. Since Armando has been using the SYMBIOS 2 serum, he’s somewhat familiar with the drug. I’m suspecting they’re experimenting with similar serums with their remote viewers, and putting our own man inside can find out more.” He turned, the intensity in those silver eyes pinning. “You and Armando have bouts of pain. This man too. I think it’s all connected. Once we figure out why, we can understand more about these ‘psychic crashes’, Armando called them.”