Kayci was already putting this together, she knew there was a hijacker but didn’t understand how. Now it was all coming into focus. “You think whoever has this thing is basically playing God with it.”
Colleen nodded. “We do. The problem is, since no agency is going to admit the existence of Project Pyrite, no finger is going to get pointed and there’s no way to admit and or prove it. No one is going to admit that these random shootings are linked, and that they are the fault of a multi-agency project gone bad. Besides, there are certain individuals that would love nothing more than to push their anti-gun agenda and something like this only helps them. So they don’t want to find it as long as it’s being used to commit random acts of violence with guns. They don’t feel there is an imminent threat to national security, so they’ve dropped the ball into the dumpster and closed the lid.”
“So you want me to find it?”
“I think you’ve already found it.” Colleen flicked the screen on her phone. “Here look at this.”
Kayci’s phone beeped and another file came through. It was a list of mass shootings ending with the most recent one at the mall. “We had hunch they were connected.”
“I need you to dig very carefully. You’re going to have to do this the old fashioned way. If the user of this nugget zones in on your frequency you’ll never get away alive. It will be an onslaught of random people coming at you. Whoever he is, he’s learned how to manipulate on an effective level.”
Kayci felt a little skip in her breath, she knew they’d already found them.
Colleen narrowed her eyes. “Kayci, something happened. Didn’t it.”
Kayci stood up and looked out the window onto the river. “It’s already happening.”
Colleen got up. “Then I don’t have to tell you, you’ve felt it.”
She shook her head. “No, I haven’t.” Turning to face Colleen, she said, “It’s not me they’re after, it’s Jordan.”
Colleen’s eyes grew wide then she rubbed her hand over her forehead. “Oh boy, I’d hate to lose him. He’s got the potential to be an invaluable asset.”
“I love him, Colleen, and I’m not about to lose him.”
“Then you need to find a way to get ahead of this. I wish I could help in some way but you know the rules.” She turned her palms up. “None of you officially exist and it’s better if I don’t anyway. I’m no longer practicing, and haven’t in a long time. I’d only get in your way.”
Kayci nodded firmly. “I know. You don’t use it you lose it…and for the record I prefer not existing. I know the protocol.”
“The DRC is both a blessing and a curse. But this is the opportunity of a lifetime, Kayci, I hope you know that.”
“I get it. And I’m beyond thankful. I didn’t want my career to end and I knew the NSA wouldn’t have a place for me in a traditional unit. I’m an intelligence risk to everyone. So I’m thankful for this beyond words.”
“Not all that long ago, someone gave me the same break I’m giving you.” Colleen walked over to her desk. “If you need anything, you know where to find me. You still have full access to level-one extraction teams any day—twenty-four-seven. Make sure you read the new operating manual on your phone. In includes protocol to call in other agencies and usurp their resources and such. Of course, be very mindful if you do that and know that once you do, you’re no longer working that case. Although they can’t tell you what to do, they can call legal jurisdiction on any case.”
Kayci nodded and took a couple steps towards the door. She turned to face Colleen. “I really do thank you for this. You’ve given me something just when I needed it.”
“You deserve it. You’ve been a wonderful agent and, in a way, Monty and I have kind of designated your our second daughter. Though you didn’t know it, we’ve both kept tabs on you over the years. I’ve never told anyone this, but if the Dewitt’s hadn’t taken you in, Monty and I were prepared to do it. We felt just terrible about what Cayden had done, and your mom…well…”
Kayci was surprised at how good being wanted felt. Even though she was thankful for the Dewitt’s taking her in, she never felt like they were family. They watched after her, cared for her and made sure she had all the things a teen girl would need, but they certainly never made her feel warm and welcome. They never wanted kids and it was no secret.
“Thank you, Colleen. It means a lot to hear that.”
They hugged and Colleen said, “Don’t forget if you need to, me call. My door is always open for you.” Then she whispered, “Just don’t tell any other agents that.”
“Thank you.”
Kayci turned and headed out.
Chapter 16
Jordan didn’t quite understand all the junk on this phone they’d given him. It had all these weird symbols and icons than led to apps and programs he didn’t recognize. That kind of bothered him since he considered himself something of a tech guru. His overall poorness led him to a lot of innovative ways to keep computers running, not the least of which was forgoing the popular Windows and Macintosh operating systems for free Linux based systems. He kind of wanted to toss it into the trash and go back to his old phone. But he’d already transferred all this contacts over, and by all his contact he meant his mother and Kayci.
He looked out the window of their new-ish Ford SUV and scanned across the parking lot. He didn’t really want another one of these Explorers but they stopped at the first used car dealer they saw and bought the most decent SUV they had. Kayci on the other hand loved the Fords. Not like it mattered anyway, chances are this one was just going to get shot up or smashed to crap before long. He was a fan of the forest green color though, and he usually didn’t like green cars.
Waiting for Kayci to emerge from the spanning brick building, he just sat there enjoying the nice breeze, blue sky and puffy clouds. He wasn’t even sure exactly which building she’d gone into since the four sprawling structures all shared a single entrance. He wanted to go inside with her but she insisted he just wait outside. It worked out well though because these moments of complete downtime were welcome. Disorder had become too commonplace in his life. Sure, battling random moments of chaos in which some tragic event would rear it’s ugly head was annoying, but at least it wasn’t every day. Since that stormy night that Kayci landed on his doorstep half-naked, it had been one crazy thing after another.
He might be an asset but he didn’t want to be an agent because that might mean carrying a gun. Guns were not really his first choice of weapon, he preferred to pass on violence altogether. But if he had to he’d use one. He liked being alive more than he hated using a gun. Being a psychic prodigy was unavoidable; carrying a gun was optional.
Things are so different now, but in a way, different is still the same. If only there was a way to have a completely normal life. Accepting that ship has sailed happened so long ago he can’t even remember what it was like to have a normal life. But if it’s one thing Jordan has always been good at, it was going with the flow. The insanity of his life has taught him to just keep moving forward no matter what happens.
Moving around to so many different cities, seeing so much death, it really should have screwed him up a lot more than it has. Maybe it was just wishful thinking and in reality he was more screwed up than he was aware. After all, most crazy people don’t know they’re crazy. He could be a whole roof short of a dry shelter and he’d never know it.
Kayci appeared from the automated sliding doors onto the colorful bush-lined sidewalk and Jordan twisted the key to bring life to the engine of the SUV.
She jumped into the passenger seat and closed the door. Jordan looked to her and asked, “Mystery solved?”
Kayci tilted her head. “Yeah, more or less.”
“Is it what you expected?”
“Not really. Well, I didn’t know what to expect.”
“Most things are never what we expect.”
“I suppose that’s true.”
Jordan rubbed his unshaven face, he
didn’t usually let the stubble live on for very long but he was a few days in and it was growing a little itchy. “So what did you learn in there that you want to tell me?”
“We’ve got a new lead.”
“A good one?”
Kayci nodded. “It’s pretty good.”
Jordan pulled out of the parking lot and almost immediately got that tickle in his head again. “Uh-oh.” he looked behind them.
Kayci looked around. “What is it?”
Jordan wasn’t sure what to do with this feeling, it was only a slight tickle. But he knew it, there was going to be another shooting. Of course, last time he had this feeling it was a false alarm. “We need to get to get to…” He stopped.
“Where? Where do we need to be?”
He was sure he felt it, but couldn’t place it. “I don’t know. But there’s going to be another shooting. I can feel it.”
Kayci twisted in the seat to face him. “Are you sure, it could be another false alarm to trap us. C’mon, dig deeper. You’re getting closer to figuring this out.”
He nodded and closed his eyes, letting go of every preconceived notion about the world that might be clouding his ability. Of course, that was so much harder than it sounded. Every thought he had also came with a feeling of doubt that he couldn’t do anything about this, that someone was going to die and he didn’t have the ability to stop it.
Something was different this time. It wasn’t the immediate need to get there because he didn’t know where there was. He got the idea to examine every frequency he saw, even the lower insignificant ones. That wasn’t something that was normal procedure because it could take hours to look at all of them.
With a new approach, he started cycling through the lines of frequency, taking one small bit of data from each one and quickly rolling to the next. But there were thousands of them, there was just no way to do this the way Kayci had taught him.
It was time to think about this logically, or illogically. Thinking outside the box was something he did well, so he took a chance and tried something new. Instead of weaving through each line, he took his frequency line, wrapped it around the others and squeezed them together into one line. He had no clue what he was really doing, but it was something.
In a few seconds, a continuous stream of data started to blast into his brain. But there was no real advantage that he could see right away. The first thing he noticed was that he couldn’t decipher which line had which data on it. Okay bad idea. But what it did do was sort of lasso all the weaker lines and that made it easy to isolate the stronger ones even the hidden ones. He noticed another strong line, it was Kayci and she was picking up on what he was doing. After a few seconds, she touched his hand and it blew apart the box of frequencies and brought him back to full focus on the interior of the SUV.
He met Kayci’s eyes, and she said, “We need to get to Atlanta.”
* * *
They’d gotten off the plane, rented a car and were now standing in the center of a small tree-lined walking path called Broten Square Park in a small town east of Atlanta. Jordan’s feeling had stayed with them the entire time.
Now that he was here, the feeling had changed a bit. It was kind of amazing how they’d been able to work together to find the location. Kayci was able to weed through the stronger lines of data while he squeezed all the weak ones.
“You did it again.” Kayci said.
“What did I do again?”
She laughed. “You’re such a shit, you just made up some crap and it worked.”
He shrugged. “I hate rules.”
“Yeah, but you have to know you’re literally rewriting the book. The government has been studying remote viewing and psychic warfare for seventy-plus years and you’re single-handedly blowing everything they’ve learned out of the water.”
Jordan raised one side of his upper lip, doing his best Elvis face. “Thank you very much. But since when does the government do anything right? I’m just doing what feels natural, what makes sense to my head.”
Kayci nodded slowly. “I guess I’m just more clouded by what I was told was possible than I knew. I thought I was doing it right.”
“Maybe there are no limits. Preconceived notions and education are just fancy terms for limitations. Right? I mean we can’t begin to understand the world around us until we give those things away. That’s what I’m trying to do. Something inside me just has that nothing to lose attitude.”
“But, that’s just it. There is something to lose, you have to be careful.”
Jordan nodded. He knew what she meant. Just like Anna had warned him, getting too deep in can get you lost, stuck on the frequency plane unable to return to your physical body. Anna was a flesh and blood human many years ago, maybe somewhere her body still existed in some sort of medical coma, he didn’t know. But her mind was lost, wandering around as a frequency being, a ghost, energy, only a soul with no home.
Jordan looked around the plaza hoping that something would give away from where the shooter was going to appear. The worst possible part was that the feeling he had wasn’t getting any stronger. He’d hoped it would increase or something. It had changed when he got to this location. But then, just as he was thinking that, it did get stronger.
The bubble in his head started to swell, like his brain was about to burst. Death was coming and with it another lesson. “He’s here.” Jordan whispered to Kayci.
She leaned in close to him. “Where? I don’t see anything. I don’t feel anything.”
“You’re not tuned into the savior frequency, but I know he’s here. I can feel it. Death is here in the air, it’s coming.” Jordan looked around at the people in the plaza. There were two women eating lunch on a park bench to his left. A tall willow tree draped over them. One of them was laughing at something the other one was saying using boisterous hand gestures. There was a small group of mothers with young children playing on a small pea-gravel area with swings and a large wooden slide. If he wanted to he could psychically eves drop on their conversations but he didn’t need to. There was no reason to be alarmed from anyone he’d seen yet.
It was your basic late morning at the park and plaza and until he saw a young man dressed in a white painters outfit holding a white five-gallon bucket, he thought he’d made another mistake. But there was something about that guy. Jordan took a step towards him.
He set the white five-gallon bucket on the ground, reached inside and pulled out two pistols, one in each hand. Jordan started to run towards him as fast as he could but the psycho opened fire on a group of people on the sidewalk.
The world seemed to turn into jelly as everything slowed and moved in the gelatinous heaves of his heartbeat. Kayci didn’t wait for him to try and figure out what to do and she opened fire.
The shooter recoiled as the bullets hit him. Even after being hit, he didn’t stop shooting, firing shots into the air. The world came back to normal and Jordan could hear everything again as the shooter hit the ground.
Jordan got low, squatting over the man as he breathed heavy and shallow. He touched the man’s forehead. The hijacker was gone. His name was Felix Masterson. Kayci was on the phone calling for help.
“Felix, stay with me buddy.” Jordan looked into his eyes, the window to his soul. Their eyes were locked, and something started to happen. The moment Jordan dreaded, when the soul would escape didn’t happen. It was as if Jordan was forcing the man’s soul back into his body. It was a strange battle, Jordan couldn’t pull away from it, he took on the fight. He didn’t know what he was doing or why he was compelled to do it.
“No you don’t you slippery little sucker.” He willed the soul to stay with all his power. He refused to let it slip out and get away. It was hard, Jordan was straining. He felt himself starting to sweat, beads of perspiration exploded down his face and then it happened.
The download hit Jordan hard as Felix’ soul won the battle and blew into the energy field. He fell backwards onto his butt and blacked out.
Chapter 17
Jordan woke up, staring at a white drop-panel ceiling. His head was pounding but it faded with each passing breath and was soon clear.
While looking around and recognized he was in a hospital room. The curtains were drawn but enough daylight flooded the room that no overhead lights were needed. The bed next to him was empty and the hallway was quiet.
On the chair in the corner, there was a new orange Adidas T-shirt, draped over a chair on a familiar blue pair of Levis. A new pair of orange and gray Reebok sneakers sat on the chair with a pair of blue boxers and fresh socks. They were not clothes he owned but only one person could have gotten him such sweet orange threads.
“Kayci?” He called out but no one answered.
A touch of panic struck him when he realized he couldn’t move his legs, but then quickly he realized they were strapped to the bed. With a quick tear of the Velcro straps, he undid the restraints, slid his legs over the edge of the bed and touched his feet to the cold tile floor.
A nurse with long black curly hair came into the room and looked at him with a tilted head.
Jordan returned her gaze and said, “Hi.”
She shook her head, “I’m sorry, I just didn’t expect to see you awake. You threw me for a loop.” Moving towards him with pushing arms, she said, “Just stay down please. You haven’t stood for days and you could get dizzy.”
She began administering a routine exam. Jordan watched her dark eyes as she listened to his heart, instructed him to take deep breaths while she listened to his lungs, and shined a penlight into his eyes to check his pupils. With sure hands, she touched his wrist and counted his pulse, then wrapped the blood pressure cuff around his bicep and pumped it up.
“Okay, everything looks good. How do you feel?”
Jordan thought about the question. He felt okay physically, but something in his mind felt different. “I think I’m okay.”
“You think?”
He nodded. “I’m okay—just groggy.”
Soul Frequency (Frequency Series Book 2) Page 9
