by Nels Wadycki
Jrue noticed a few vehicles scattered throughout the lot whose bright colors made them stand out as civilian-owned when compared to the dull earth tones used for Agency-issue transports. That made it clear there were people still in the building. Getting them out safely was what he and Ana had been sent there to do. He wasn't surprised that Ana had already made the decision to go off-mission. He liked her independence, quick thinking, and frequent rogue activity. And he knew she got results. But Jrue worried that his precarious mental stability would hinder or slow her down. He didn't know if she was aware of the full extent of his condition, even though she had been there for the doctor's analysis. She might actually know more than he did. Or she might be operating under a set of false assumptions based on what the doctor had told her.
"Ana, do you know what I was going through before I got to that hyperbaric room with you? I mean, was the doctor able to give you an idea of what I was seeing? What I was thinking?"
"You mean the part where you hadn't slept in forty-eight hours, but you were convinced you had to be dreaming because when else would you get to see me totally naked and glowing?"
Jrue stopped. They were in front of the elevators, so it didn't seem unnatural, but his feet would have become one with the cement even if they had been in the middle of the Sahara.
"So, you know. And you're still letting me—dragging me, really—into a hostile situation."
"Jrue, you're fine. You are an asset here. You got some sleep. You know Alando. None of the agents up there can communicate with him like you."
"I haven't seen him in… I don't know, probably three years? What if he's a totally different person?"
"He's not totally different. People don't change. Not fundamentally. Sure, you can change how you think, how you filter the world around you, but it won't change who you are."
"Three years, though, and now he's shooting up a mall? Something has changed."
--
"He's killed seven already. Seems like he's ready to take more if he has to." That was the assessment of the agent in charge of the operation in the Sushi Rio across the food court from Alando's Best Burger hideout.
"Have you considered that he's feeling trapped? Maybe he knows what he's done and he's afraid of dealing with the consequences."
"It's hard to know what he's thinking. We've tapped the security cams, but everything coming from the mikes is gibberish. The only thing that comes up consistently is his grandmother. We ran a check. She's been dead for ten years."
Ana looked at Jrue.
"He doesn't think he's talking about his grandmother, does he?" she asked.
Jrue recalled what he thought he'd said to the secretary in the Agency lobby. He'd asked for a doctor and gotten a Valkyrie. But they had communicated. Even with his brain twisting his thoughts and words, he'd found his way to the safety of Ana's arms. Perhaps he could provide some security for Alando.
"He has to have some awareness. If he's gotten to this point, he has to know that what he's thinking and what he's doing don't line up."
"His words, though, they do correspond to words he thinks he's saying," Ana said. "Even if they go through some translation before they come out, right?"
"They did for me," Jrue said. "When I thought I was saying something, I was saying something. It was just totally different from what I thought I was saying."
"So maybe we can communicate with him if we can figure out what he thinks he's saying."
"You're assuming he's having the same problem I was and is at the same stage in the progression."
"Two agents who trained together and have gone on ops together happen to have mental breakdowns at precisely the same time with the same symptoms?" Ana didn't have to put her hands on her hips; her tone did it for her. "I'm going with: not a coincidence."
"But he's already to the point of killing people!" Jrue argued.
"I think we can chalk that one up to differences in personality or physiology."
"Physiology? You think this is in our bodies? Like a virus or something?"
"Jrue, think about it. How many ops have you been on where there's a chance you've been exposed to a potentially mind-altering drug or bioweapon?"
"One that waits more than three years before it takes effect? That's a hell of a long fuse!"
"Let's just go see if we can talk to him, then. See if we can get some real answers."
Ana ended the argument by walking out of the restaurant. Jrue had little choice but to follow. The group inside let them go. They clearly thought it ill-advised to head into plain sight in front of a madman with an arsenal. Jrue knew that Ana didn't care. Her project was predicated on its ability to save people. Whether that was the mission objective or not, it was always the underlying goal. Apparently that applied to saving people from themselves as well as from their own agents who would just as happily take someone out as save them. Internally agents referred to the Valkyrie Project as White Ops, a PR stunt by the Agency to keep their funding after their failings during the war. Not that Ana had anything to do with that, but she'd worked for the project for nine years, and Jrue would be surprised if she hadn't drunk some of the Valkyrie Project marketing punch.
Halfway across the floor Ana stopped to let Jrue catch up. When he did, she said, "All right. Your show now. Where do you want to start?"
Jrue had assumed that her forward momentum would carry her into whatever the next action might be. He thought he had made clear his insecurities and misgivings about the clarity of his thought process. She had been pushing him since they woke up, and he let it work in her favor, so why would she stop?
"Establish that we are friends, or at least that I am, rather than another Agency co-worker who might not care what the outcome ends up being."
Ana nodded.
"Alando!" Jrue called out, "It's Jrue Gueye. It's been a while, right? What was the last mission we did together? Flying dead drops over Costa Rica?"
Jrue could not be sure it was the absolute last time they had worked together, but he knew Alando had flown down there and the memories of those missions stuck with Jrue like the flight suit he had worn in the overwhelming humidity of the tropical region. Not an experience that was easily forgotten.
"Remember the heat down there? Got through those jets like water through paper, right?"
No response.
Jrue thought back to his recent trip through the imagined landscapes of his mind. What would Alando be thinking? Jrue remembered the random images conjured from the most inane thoughts. The only common thread tying them together was the perception of an increasing threat from the outside world.
"Alando," Jrue called out, "I know how you're feeling. I know you can understand what I'm saying. I think you're trying to communicate and you think that you are but no one understands."
"I can't do it any more, man. All I see is the drop into darkness when everything ends. I can't keep doing this, pretending like everything is okay. It's not."
Jrue looked back at Ana. Her face shared the hope that Alando's response had inspired in him.
"I know it's not. I've been there. I might still be there. But there's a solution. You work for the Agency. Think of all the resources you have at your disposal."
Jrue worried Alando might get lost in connecting the dots of that one, so he added, "We can help. The doctors at the Agency helped me. I thought I was crazy. I didn't know what to do. But they got me right."
"I told you, I just want the androkal. I want to get back to Iona. I want to see her again before she is gone."
Ana froze. Even though he was a step in front of her, Jrue sensed her draw up with sudden tension as clearly as if he saw her running at full speed past him. He turned and the look of terror on her face made his stomach drop, his muscles clenching as they tried to hold onto the twisted mass of intestine that had disappeared leaving a hollow cavity in its place.
"What. Is. It?" He pushed the words with his dry tongue through fearful lips. Silence enveloped the entire fl
oor, save for the buzzing of the large lights overhead. The team behind them didn't move, waiting to see what result their excursion toward the danger zone would yield.
"What did he say? What did you hear him say?" Ana spat the words like bullets through a silencer, her mouth fully automatic.
Jrue replied slowly, not wanting to get anything wrong.
"He said he wanted the androkal. He wants to get back to Iona. He wants to see her again before she's gone."
"There's a Continuum agent in here." The words came from Ana but her mouth didn't move, as though she had actually fitted it with a silencer. Even so, the words thudded in the pit of Jrue's stomach, knocking the wind from him like a punch to the gut, or falling and landing on his back, or an icy wind on a cold day, or the sudden realization that he too might be vulnerable to the control of a Continuum agent.
Jrue's eyes darted back and forth, but he forced himself to keep his head pointed straight ahead.
"How do you know?" he said in a hushed tone.
"Those words: that was what Allen Poole said in the hotel room in Gary. He was there for the androkal. I don't even know what it is, but I've only heard it two times in my life and this is one of them. Poole wanted to get back to Iona too, whoever she is. It can't be a coincidence. Someone is controlling Alando, making him think those things, probably making him do these things too."
"Maybe they just brainwashed him and set him up for this."
Jrue realized that brainwashed or mind-controlled, it didn't much matter if Alando had fallen under whatever power the Continuum agents held over others.
"No, the effect wore off as soon as the agent was gone. It has to be someone here." Ana was convinced, but Jrue was overwhelmed with questions.
"One of these guys? A double agent?"
"Either that, or there's someone hiding out in here. Agent Han said they were still checking the building for additional civilians."
"Does it require a line of sight? They might be on a different floor, even a few floors up or down. There's a lot of stores, dressing rooms, offices upstairs, bathrooms. Plenty of places for someone to hide out where it would take our teams a while to find them."
"I don't know. The agent in the hotel had a line of sight; we right there with him. It stopped when he left. No line of sight, but he could have been out of range. Some finite limiting distance."
"What if this one is different?"
He could tell Ana did not want this one to be different. But she was logical. And defeated. Her shoulders slumped a few millimeters, a significant admission of emotion for the strong-willed Valkyrie in Mission Execution Mode.
"If it's not line of sight, or if it's some sort of long-range connection, then he could be anywhere."
"If we get Alando out of here," Jrue said, hope finding its way into his voice, "then we could free him from the control."
"Based on what we know, yes, that's true. But how do you plan to get him out of there?" Ana threw a hand up at the restaurant. "He's in there, armed and clearly delusional."
Jrue grimaced, his brow crushed into a triptych of deep wrinkles.
"I wanted help," he said, his voice low. "If we get him away, we can give him the same kind of help. The medicine. Safety."
"Jrue," Ana said, "if he's being controlled by the Continuum, you can't compare yourself to him anymore."
"But what if…" He couldn't finish. If the Continuum had somehow gotten to Alando and cast an unholy spell on him, even a purely scientific biological spell, Jrue was apt to be a victim of the same poisonous magic. The coincidence of timing and symptoms was too strong to be ignored.
A look of horror or shock or surprise or a combination of all three mixed with a pinch of worry took over Ana's tender lips and large, passionate eyes. Had she been trying to deny what Jrue already suspected? She was one of the most intelligent people that he knew, so Jrue wondered if the same emotions that kept her at the forefront of his mind also clouded her judgment when it came to evaluating his mental state and capabilities. He had seen her use logic and reason combined with her experience and well-honed Valkyrie intuition, and those faculties would lead any reasonable person to at least consider the same conclusion that Jrue had already reached. But she had fallen a step behind and ignored the obvious until he spelled it out for her. Maybe she was just too concerned with the possibility of facing another mind-controlling Continuum agent to extrapolate conclusions from the current situation.
His thought process ended there, cut short as the whine of a capacitive weapon charging echoed across the food court. It came from the Best Burger.
Ana's hands went to the guns slung across her hips. Jrue's pulse rose, vibrating his chest like a drum beat. The outline of his friend appeared in the door. Bullets sprayed from two guns, one in each of his hands, flying at them, cutting wide, wild swaths across the food court. Ana pulled on Jrue's arm hard enough to make him kneel and probably saved his life. He strained to watch the madness that erupted from the scene as guns flashed all around, Agents scattered like teens at an unsanctioned rock concert, the noise of gunfire rose in concert with orders and warnings yelled, and Jrue watched Alando twisting and collapsing behind panes of shattered glass.
Jrue shouted a warning into the chaos, but it was too late. At least two days late. Perhaps years too late.
Ana pulled on his arm again, and now the resistance in his muscles had disappeared. His desire to see what had transpired was gone. A friend, not a good friend, but a friend and a good man, was gone.
He dropped to the floor and Ana fell on top of him as the echo of gunfire, voices, breaking glass, and cries for help faded, soaked up by the walls that penned them in. Her body was warm on top of him: a shield, a blanket, a shelter, a barrier between the world blasting apart overhead and the fragile image of Alando hanging on to a tiny string of hope.
--
Jrue watched as Alando's body crashed to the ground, again and again, as he once again lay sleepless in his bed. He'd only been awake for four hours since they had made their way out of the shattered shopping center. It didn't look that bad, really, considering what had transpired, and Jrue knew that his own emotions transposed additional layers of carnage over the scene.
The sun had set and Jrue decided to see if he could sleep again. The four hours of sleep with Ana had revived him, but the stress of the events that followed had drained what little reserves of energy the rest had replenished. He'd collapsed into bed upon returning to his apartment, but he simply stared at the ceiling through the darkness, thinking about Alando, and Ana.
He wanted to call her. Half of him wanted to thank her for saving him—at least temporarily—from his burgeoning madness. That half could feel her warmth between his arms. The other half wanted to curse her for forcing Alando to his death. He had needed help, just as Jrue had, but instead of giving mercy, they had taken life. It might have been standard operating procedure for every other agent in the building, but Ana was a Valkyrie. She was supposed to decide who lived. She was as helpless as he had been. Her inner demons were probably battling it out in her head in the same sort of tug-of-war that wrenched him back and forth between love and hate, lust and anger, relief and mourning, the desire for sleep and the fear of not being able to.
The comm he had dropped next to his bed lit up, casting a pale glow on the ceiling, the white duroplast reflecting the image on the screen like a portal opened on another dimension by some arcane magic. He could make out Ana's face in the blue-tinged projection and the confusion of conflicting emotions swirled down on him like the funnel cloud of a tornado as he tried to decide if he should answer.
The screen blinked and then shone again, trying to attract his attention, unaware that he had been thinking about what to do for an hour and still did not know.
It pulsed a third time and its insistence made him lean over the side of the bed and pressed his finger to the screen.
"You awake?"
"I am now."
"You were before too. You can't
get to sleep again."
Quite presumptuous of her, but also quite true.
"I don't think it's the same thing, though."
Jrue had never been afraid of falling asleep, but his bed lay beneath him like a stone slab in a dark cave and he thought going to sleep might feel like freezing to death.
"I'm coming over."
"You, what? Now?"
"Yeah, I'm here."
The security buzzer inside the front door sounded. She wasn't kidding.
Jrue shoved himself up from the bed and went to the door. He looked at the video panel next the door and there she stood, waving at the cam that provided the feed to the panel. Jrue pressed his hand to the panel and the locks clicked open. Ana pushed the door in and then they stood facing each other.
"How did you get up here?" he asked, meaning how had she gotten in the front door and past the twenty-four-hour security guard.
"You would be surprised what these fingertips can do." Ana held up her hand and waggled her fingers.
At that moment of playful innuendo, Jrue noticed the rest of her. Used to seeing Ana in plain black or stark white, Jrue was surprised to see her in civilian attire. Very revealing civilian attire. The image of her as an ambitious and sexy young businesswoman headed after Alicia Portofil already felt like a distant memory after watching Ana take over the scene in Gallery 37 silhouetted in black military garb. She had turned back into Ana the Agent then, calling shots, pressing for every advantage, not taking 'No' for an answer, and reacting with the reflexes and instincts of someone who was most comfortable when guns were blazing.
She stood in front of him, a tight multicolored shirt stretched across her chest and wrapped around the curve of her waist. Dark jeans painted the skin of her legs, and she had come from her apartment to his in stunning—and certainly uncomfortable—black high-heeled shoes. It was the only trace of black on her. No, he could see the outline of a black lace bra through the thin—he tried not to look too hard, but yes, very thin—material of her shirt.
