I sighed and reached for Richardson’s hand.
He eyed me uncertainly, and I explained, “I need an anchor when I do this because I stretch a long way down some of these network paths and sometimes it’s hard to find my way back.”
“Oh.” He relaxed visibly. “Okay.” His hand closed around mine, and I faded into the network traffic.
Down the convoluted data tunnels, I eased into Fuzzy Bunny’s network again. I poked around invisibly, slowly relaxing. The news of my public death had stirred up quite a bit of activity, and it appeared they’d thoroughly investigated all channels.
As Stemp had expected, the bulk of their research focused on the current time period. I discovered a complicated facial-recognition algorithm that was sifting through images on the internet, searching for any facial structure similar to my own. It had already garnered a few candidates, and I had the unsettling impression of looking into slightly distorted mirrors.
Unfortunately, the algorithm had also dredged up a revolting number of Arlene Cherry videos, which I avoided viewing. Harchman had obviously made extensive use of his simulation network before the government confiscated it. Slimy little bastard.
I contained a virtual shudder and floated on down the network connections.
A thorough search of all Fuzzy Bunny’s sites reassured me that so far at least, they believed I was dead. Again. I crossed my virtual fingers, hoping this time I wouldn’t be resurrected.
I rematerialized in the file room and gave Richardson a smile as I let go of his hand. “Thanks for the anchor. Looks like I’m safely dead, so let’s take a break.”
He chuckled as he rose to follow me. “You have to wonder about a line of work where it’s good news to discover you’re dead.”
We were almost at the portal when a wave of vertigo shook me. I clung fearfully to my sense of self, but this sensation was different.
I tried to turn to Richardson and failed.
The sim felt sticky around me, constricting my movements as if I was submerged in clear syrup. The virtual walls wavered. I concentrated fiercely, my heartbeat accelerating. The frightened sound drummed inside my skull while I fought to move. I managed a slow step, but not in the direction I’d intended.
Richardson’s avatar stepped into my field of view, his brow furrowed, lips moving. I focused desperately on his face, panic swelling.
Long moments later, the slow sound of his voice reached me, out of synch with his lips. “Aaydaannn… aare yoouu ookaaayy…?”
I tried frantically to shake my head no, but my leaden feet were pulling me toward the virtual file room. I fought with all my might while my amplified heartbeat blurred my vision. My soundless screams strangled in my throat.
Each step took long moments. The file room door loomed ahead, and more adrenaline slammed into my veins. Focusing every ounce of will, I battled my body to a halt. Compelled it to turn ponderously, degree by gruelling degree, my pulse thundering in my ears, my breath coming in hard gasps.
Back at the portal, a construct that looked like me stood stock-still. Richardson touched its arm, tense lines in his face, his brows drawn together. His lips were moving, but his words didn’t reach my ears.
My feet refused to move away from the file room. A shock of pure terror accompanied the realization that I was invisible. Richardson didn’t even know where I was. Nobody knew. I’d never escape…
My throatless screams couldn’t disturb the silence. I sank to all fours to drag myself by agonizing inches in the direction of the portal.
The hold on my body released so suddenly I pitched forward, sprawling on my face.
I scrambled up, my feet already scrabbling for purchase, my shrieks audible at last. Blind panic drove me into a berserk sprint. I barely heard Richardson and Spider yelling over the sound of my own screams as I hurtled for the portal and dove through headfirst.
Red-hot pitchforks of agony ripped through my eyes and gored my flesh. My body jerked and thrashed helplessly, beyond my control once more as it fought to escape the torment. My throat tore with my screams.
A gunshot exploded, too close.
I didn’t even feel the impact.
Chapter 11
I jerked upright, every muscle galvanized into terrified action before my eyes even opened. The first scream wrenched out while I lashed out blindly, sucking in the breath to scream again before Spider’s voice penetrated my terror.
“Aydan, you’re safe!”
My eyes flew open to focus on his face.
“Aydan, you’re safe,” he repeated urgently. “It’s okay, just relax, you’re in your office and you’re safe.”
My bones turned to jelly and I collapsed back onto my small sofa where I lay panting, taking in the ring of worried faces above me. Shudders shook me.
“What the hell was that?” I croaked. I stared up at Sam, wondering when he had arrived. His normally ruddy complexion was grayish, his face strained as he leaned heavily on the back of the sofa.
“What happened?” I demanded.
Honey and Sam exchanged a glance, and Richardson spoke into the short silence. “To answer your last question first, you went through the portal too fast and triggered your pain reaction. I, uh… I shot you with my trank gun.”
He dropped his gaze. “Sorry. All I had was a ballistic trank… Sorry about your shirt. I… just didn’t want you to suffer like that. I didn’t know what else to do.”
I peered down at the large red stain on the shoulder of my sweatshirt and drew a deep breath. “Thanks, Mark. That was the kindest thing you could’ve done.”
He returned a twisted smile.
“How long was I out?” I added.
“Only about twenty minutes. These tranks are really short-acting.”
“Are you okay now?” Spider inquired tremulously. His hazel eyes were huge in his pale face, and my heart squeezed with sympathy.
“I’m fine, Spider, thanks. Don’t worry,” I assured him. I gripped his proffered hand to pull myself upright.
“Thanks,” I repeated, and leaned against the cushions to let the last of the dizziness subside. When the room stopped spinning, I squinted at the doctors. “So what did you see on the monitors?”
“Nothing, really…” Sam trailed off at Honey’s indignant expression.
“I saw a ghost tracery that shouldn’t have been there,” she said firmly. “It was almost like a second set of brain waves, but very faint.”
“A second set?” I frowned at her. “What could cause that?”
“Could it be… schizophrenia?” Smith spoke for the first time. I was surprised to see what looked like anxiety in his expression.
Jeez, I didn’t know he cared.
“No, definitely not schizophrenia,” Honey responded. “Schizophrenia shows very distinct markers, and none of those were present. This was a completely new phenomenon. I’ve never seen it before, and it’s never appeared in Aydan’s brainwaves before, either.”
“So what do you think it was?” I demanded.
She shot a troubled glance at Sam. “I don’t know.”
“Sam?”
He half-raised a shoulder. “I don’t know, either. What did you experience?”
“It was like walking through glue, and I couldn’t control my avatar or the sim. I couldn’t make the sim firm up, and then my avatar just turned invisible and walked away with me. I couldn’t stop it. I was all the way over to the file room when I barely got control. Then all of a sudden it was like the hold went away and I could move again, but I was panicking by that time.” I felt a blush spreading up my face. “Sorry. Stupid.”
“It’s not stupid!” Spider protested. “That was totally scary!”
I gave him a smile and turned to Richardson. “Mark, did you notice anything strange from inside the sim?”
“Yes…” He frowned. “The sim turned really faint, almost like it was fading away. And you didn’t respond when I spoke to you. You were just staring straight ahead like I wasn’t even
there. Then you blinked out and reappeared halfway down the hallway, running like hell.”
“That was just a construct you were talking to. I was invisible, and I couldn’t say anything.” I frowned up at Honey. “I want that thing out of my head. Whatever it is. Could it be from when I had that identity crisis yesterday?”
“No, there was no ghost tracery when I hooked you up yesterday,” Sam interjected.
Honey’s smooth brow furrowed and she picked up her case. “I need to see the traces again. Sam, I’ll need your lab. Spider, come with me. I’ll need your help with the feed from the video session.”
Sam looked distinctly put out, and I suppressed a snort. Too bad if he had a problem taking orders from a competent woman. For the first time, I was glad Jack was on my project.
They left, muttering technical dialect, and I leaned back in the sofa to massage my still-aching temples and tried not to panic at the thought of somebody else controlling me from inside my head.
In a short time, they were back. Spider and Jack volleyed incomprehensible jargon back and forth while they set up his laptop and her case side by side on the desk. Jack dropped into the chair, her attention riveted on the screen, a faint pucker of concentration between her flawless brows.
She scanned the display, the brainwave tracery scrolling on one side of the screen while the video record from my session played beside it. Sam and Spider hovered over her shoulder, and after a few minutes of silence, she jerked upright with a “Ha!” of triumph.
“There!” She jabbed an impeccably manicured finger at the screen and shot a look up at Sam. “See it? Right there, where Aydan appears out of thin air in the hallway. That’s where the ghost trace disappears. As if it suddenly released its hold on her.”
Sam grunted and leaned closer to study the displays. “You’re right,” he muttered. “So what was it?”
Jack’s face clouded. “That’s the million-dollar question.” She swivelled to face me. “Aydan, we need to have another look at your brainwaves. First I need a baseline before you go into the network.”
She rose to re-attach the electrodes to my forehead before consulting her instrumentation again. “Just relax,” she instructed. “Think about your mountain simulation for a few minutes.”
I leaned back on the sofa and eased out a long breath, closing my eyes to visualize.
“That’s fine,” Jack said a few moments later. “Nothing unusual here, wouldn’t you say, Sam?”
Apparently she knew how to handle a ruffled male ego. Sam’s piqued expression faded as he leaned over the display, nodding sagely.
Jack turned wide blue eyes on him. “What would you think about trying another short session with Aydan in the network? We wouldn’t be able to analyze the data the way we can in your lab, but we can monitor for a ghost trace with my equipment. Do you think we should?”
I recognized her tactic instantly. She knew exactly what she intended to do, but she was making it look like his idea. I started to like her as Sam drew himself up.
“I think we should monitor a session with your equipment from here and see how it looks,” he said.
I caught Jack’s eye and she turned away quickly, but not before I saw the sparkle of wicked humour in her eyes.
“It’s too dangerous,” Spider protested. “What if it happens again?”
“It should be okay,” I reassured him. “We’ll know what’s happening. You’ll see the ghost trace, Mark will know right away if I zone out, and I won’t panic because I’ll know everybody else is on top of it.”
“But what if the ghost won’t let you go this time?” Spider’s voice quavered. “What if-”
“Then you shut down the network session externally and kick me out,” I overrode him.
“Aydan, no! You’ll go through hell again…”
I shrugged, trying to hide how much I dreaded the possibility. “So Mark can shoot me again. That worked. This sweatshirt is toast now anyway.”
“No! Don’t make her!” Spider appealed to Jack, his face drawn with distress.
She laid a comforting hand on his shoulder. “It’ll be all right. Even if we have to shut down the network, Aydan won’t suffer like that again. Mark will be ready to shoot her immediately this time.”
“It’ll take a few seconds for me to get out of the network,” Richardson argued.
“I’ll shoot her,” Smith volunteered.
Yeah, that was more like the Smith I knew.
“Don’t worry, Aydan, everything will be fine,” Jack soothed. “Just go in and create your mountain sim. If anything happens, we’ll get you out.”
I cursed the trembling of my hand as I reached for the network key. Jeez, don’t be such a chickenshit. What could possibly go wrong?
“Mark?” My voice came out sounding thin and pleading, and I cleared my throat and tried again. “Are you ready?”
“Ready.” At least he sounded strong and confident. Then again, he was a spy. He had to be a good actor.
I clenched my teeth on fear and stepped into the white void.
Richardson popped into existence beside me. “Aydan, are you okay?” he asked immediately, the tense lines in his face belying his calm, firm voice.
I sucked in a deep breath. “Fine. I’m fine.”
“Try your mountain sim,” Jack encouraged from somewhere above the void.
“Okay…”
The mountaintop sprang into being around me, the intense blue of the sky matching the glittering lake a thousand feet below. The wind sang through the trees and whipped my hair around my face, carrying the powerful scent of spruce. Far above, a hawk circled, its distant screech floating down on the crystal air.
“Wow.” Richardson’s quiet voice made me twitch. “This is even more real than the real thing.”
I sank down to sit on the rough sun-warmed stone, stroking my fingertip over the rock wall beside me. At my touch, velvety green moss bloomed into a shady nook and a stream of sparkling water sprang out of the crevice to fling itself joyously over the edge of the sheer cliff.
“Yeah.” I took in the super-saturated colours and the minute detail of spruce needles, clearly visible even miles away. “Guess I’m over-compensating a bit.”
“Wow.” He leaned against the rock, gazing across the wide vista, and I waited in silence for my still-pounding heart to regain its normal rhythm.
A few minutes later, Jack’s sultry voice purred out of the virtual sky. “Everything seems fine. Do you want to try some decryptions?”
“Sure.” Feeling slightly more confident, I dissolved the mountain sim and made my way to the file repository.
Some tedious decryptions calmed my pulse more effectively than the mountain sim, and at last I looked up with a yawn. “Jack? What do you think?”
“So far, so good,” she replied cautiously. “Do you want to try the external network?”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Spider chimed in worriedly. “Richardson can’t go in and get you if anything happens outside our network. You could be in trouble and we’d never know.”
I tamped down the quivers in my stomach. “I’d like to give it a try.”
“But, Aydan…”
“How about if I plan to go in for five minutes? If I’m not back in five, just kick me out of the network.”
“But, Aydan,” Spider tried again. “We don’t know what will happen if you’re off in some other network and we shut down your session. What if your consciousness can’t get back into your body?”
That had always been one of my worries, too, but I wasn’t about to tell him that. “Don’t end it, then, just poke me with a pin or something to give me enough pain that I get pulled out.”
“That’s barbaric,” Jack snapped.
“But it’ll work. And hey, then Smith will get to shoot me. That should make him happy.”
“Very funny,” Smith sniffed from above the virtual ceiling.
I reached toward Richardson. “Let’s do it.”
H
is hand closed around mine, his eyes solemn. “Good luck,” he said.
I took a deep breath and vanished into the data stream.
I quivered in the busy flow of data for a few moments but nothing untoward happened, so I tentatively began to sniff packets for information. Out in the public data tunnels, I let off-colour email jokes and boring interoffice memos soothe me, and my five minutes quickly evaporated.
When I snapped back into the Sirius network, Richardson’s dimpled smile of relief warmed my heart.
I groaned my way out of the network and gradually straightened, managing not to swear too loudly. My stomach let out a growl as I rose, and Richardson’s humorously raised eyebrow made me smile back at him.
“I’m heading over to the Greenhorn Cafe,” I told him. “I’ll get lunch there and stay until three to do their books, so you might as well take a break.”
“Actually, take the rest of the afternoon off,” Jack said. “I want more time to analyze this data, and I don’t want Aydan using the network again until I’m convinced it’s safe. I’m going to work on this for a while and then take a late lunch, so we won’t need you before tomorrow morning.”
“Sounds good,” he agreed, and rose to follow me out.
Spider sprang up. “Aydan, hang on a sec. Would you have time to take on a little web design project for me?” He widened his eyes theatrically, and I controlled my urge to cast a shifty gaze around the office. His overacting went mercifully unnoticed by the others as they straggled toward the door, and I strolled over to pull up a chair beside him at the desk.
“Sure. Do you want to look at it right now?”
“That would be perfect. Here, I’ll let you scroll through it first.” I hoped Spider’s stilted tones wouldn’t alert the analysts on the other end of the bug as I carefully extracted it from my change purse and laid it in front of him.
In moments, he had electronic equipment spread across the desk while he fiddled and probed, frowning. A short time later, he straightened with a sigh.
“It’s okay, it’s not a bug.”
The air whooshed out of me. “What is it, then?”
How Spy I Am Page 8
