by Milly Taiden
“That’s what I’m afraid of, Jag. A protecting mate’s mind turns to violence and killing as the first defense, not logic and communication. I can’t have you shooting first and asking questions later. Do you understand that?”
Hamel wanted to put his fist through a wall. “Yes, I understand it, goddammit. And I don’t fucking care. You can send in someone else, but I’m staying with her no matter what.”
“You know damn well I don’t have anyone to send.”
Hamel grinned. “I know.” His boss laughed.
“You stay for the time being, Jag. Keep her safe and find out what you can to help us here with who wants her serum and why.”
“Yeah, got it.”
“And, Jag, don’t be a stranger. Believe it or not, I do like to hear your voice. Most of the time.” Hamel’s phone beeped signaling the call had ended. He smiled and opened the door to Kintu’s office. Time to get back to work.
CHAPTER 11
Melinda scooted old equipment and boxes from the side of the room and set up a table to place the older portable maze they once used. Seemed the establishment had a bit of a hoard mentality, which in this case worked for her. She needed to keep her mind occupied while Hamel took care of her lab.
Which in itself seemed a bit weird. He was a PhD-level person who appeared more in the know with CSI than CDC. But what did she know about a real Oversight job description besides the required asshole part? Pretty much zilch.
And what the hell was with all that sniffing and deep breathing? If he needed a tissue, all he had to do was ask. For a moment, she was going to offer him a box, but he was so intense in what he was doing, she didn’t want to disturb him. Snot or not.
Whatever. Everyone had their little idiosyncrasies. Her habit of having a place for everything and being predictable—her ex complained about that once—could bug the crap out of others. But those two attributes were good for a research scientist to have. Especially when having virus-covered stuff sitting around.
She placed a treat in the far corner of the maze then walked around the table to put the baby mouse in the far gated slot. She looked at the clock above the door to mark the time, then realized she didn’t have her laptop to record her notes.
She sighed and searched the room for paper. Twenty drawers, six cabinets, and three shelves later, she found an old set of large sticky notes. That would work. She doubted much would happen on this first trip through. She just needed to know if the smells of unknown mice on the path would affect the baby’s willingness to complete the journey.
Walking back to the beginning of the maze, she noticed the treat she thought she put there was gone. She had put one down, hadn’t she? After placing another at the end, she rounded the side, glancing at the clock. Then she realized she didn’t have a pen to write with. She slapped a hand on her forehead to keep from screaming her frustration. She couldn’t get her laptop back soon enough.
Knowing there wasn’t a writing utensil in the room, she raided a nearby unused office to find a pink pen with yellow and green fuzzies on the top. No wonder it was there; no one wanted to use it.
Already tired and not caring, she snatched it up and headed back to her temporary lab. Again, passing the end of the maze, she noted the treat was gone. What the fuck? She glanced at the mouse still behind the wire gate on the other side.
Her eyes searched the room, making sure no one else was hiding or playing a prank on her. Now was not the time. Her nerves where shot from the invasion of her lab this morning. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, she laid another treat in the maze then leaned against the cabinet.
Maybe she should go home and sit on her balcony, relax to the waves for a while, and come back later. About a glassful of wine was left in the bottle. Even though Moscato had the lowest alcohol rate, it would still help—
The baby mouse squeaked and shuffled around in its spot, drawing her attention. The treat on her side of the table began to roll. Melinda didn’t move. Didn’t even breathe. She watched the treat clear each turn of the maze, never needing to backtrack, ending up in front of the mouse, who reached under the gate to pull the treat in and nibble it.
Holy teleporting freaky moving shit. Her heart pounded. She felt better knowing she had put treats down earlier and wasn’t losing her mind. But wow! Reaching for the desk phone, she dialed Dembe. “Hey,” she almost hollered into the receiver when her friend picked up, “can you do a Mickey hat right now?” Getting a reply of yes, Melinda snagged the mouse on the run out the door, down the hall, and into Dembe’s lab.
“Oh my god!” Melinda yelled as she slid through the door. “You’re not going to freaking believe this.”
Dembe stood next to the scanning machine, tiny metal hat with protruding wires in her hand. “Jesus, Melinda, you’re scaring me. What happened this morning?”
This morning? “Oh, yeah. That’s something totally different. Someone broke into the lab.”
“That was the rumor. Are you all right? Last I knew you were in Mr. Kintu’s office.”
She waved a hand through the air, brushing off any concern. “Yeah, everything’s fine. Hamel is taking care of it. I’ve got something more amazing.”
She reached toward her pocket to see her baby mouse’s front paws and head sticking up, looking at the world. It was soooo cute. “Come on, little guy. We’re gonna put Mickey ears on you and see what your brain’s doing.”
Dembe pointed to a medium-sized wire cage. “Put him in that and bring it over here. What did you discover?”
Melinda set the critter in the container, then wrapped her arms around it. “Just you wait—” When lifting the cage, she didn’t raise it enough to clear the soda can on the counter. “Oops.” Dembe always had at least one Diet Coke sitting around. “Sorry, Dee. I’ll buy you another one.”
Her friend shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. After you called to say you were coming, I put another one in the fridge to cool.” Melinda laughed. Dembe knew her well. Melinda carried over her load while Dembe called housekeeping for cleanup on aisle five.
“Okay,” the cocoa-skinned woman said, “let’s get this cute little thing wired.” For the next five minutes, the ladies wrestled a miniature brainwave detector onto an even smaller, constantly wiggling head. “You know,” Dembe started, “if you could tell these pests to sit still, this process would be a lot easier.”
Melinda smiled. Dembe liked to tease her about her affection toward the four-legged animals her friend considered nuisances. “Sure, Dee. I’ll sign up for Mouse Speak 101 next semester.”
A knock on the door broke their concentration. A man Melinda hadn’t seen before stuck his head in from the hall. In native Ugandan, he said he was sent with a mop. Dembe pointed him toward the soda spilled on the floor. He pushed the door open and rolled in a yellow bucket with a squeegee attachment.
With the Mickey ears firmly in place, she set the mouse in the cage. Dembe fired up the equipment. “Okay, Mel. Show me what you got.”
CHAPTER 12
Melinda was about to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that something that once belonged in the realm of charlatans and witchcraft existed, with hard evidence to back it up. Stories and movies about ESP abilities flashed through her head.
She wondered if this was the first step to a better or worse world. Either way, there was no stopping science or the truth. Things happened for a reason and she was along for the ride.
Melinda took a treat from her pocket and held it next to the metal enclosure to get the mouse’s attention. Once the critter had sniffed a couple times, she laid the treat on the table, a few feet away.
The passive brain image on the screen exploded to life. Vibrant orange lit the screen from deep inside the brain. Yellow streaks of light flashed and zipped from one neuron path to another like comets shooting through the sky.
“There.” Dembe pointed to the screen. “Those pops
and flashes are the extra neurons firing. Look how many signals are going at once. This is incredible.” She leaned closer to the screen. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Greens and red bloomed in various regions, lighting up like cloud lightning on a hot summer’s night. “The red represents the most active parts, and then yellow, down to green and blue. See how quickly they come and go? It’s like a symphony conducted by an invisible maestro.”
The whole display was a fireworks show on steroids. Melinda had a new respect for the brain and the inherent abilities.
“Holy shit,” Melinda said. Dembe said the same in her language.
As quickly as it started, it ended. Both ladies looked down to see the mouse nibbling on the treat that was once well out of reach. They remained speechless. Behind them, a male voice sounded in awe. He said the TV showed beautiful color pictures. It looked like the sky sometimes at night when the gods were active and noisy.
When Dembe explained the pictures were from the animal’s head, the janitor looked at the mouse, then the screen, then back to the mouse. He smiled, a few teeth missing, and said something to the effect of, “You’re joking, right?”
Dembe shook her head. The man gave the mouse the evil eye, crossed himself, and rolled his mop bucket out the door. This worried Melinda. He wouldn’t do anything to hurt the mouse, would he?
“Dembe, I don’t remember seeing that guy around much.”
She shrugged. “Walog’s been here for a few months. He lives in a shack with his wife and kids. Like many on the outskirts of town, they have nothing and barely make a living. When Mr. Kintu asked if we trusted anyone to fill in a couple janitor spots, I thought of him immediately.”
“So you know him well?” Melinda asked.
“Well enough, I guess. I know his wife from the Saturday markets. They sell vegetables and everything they can. They’re a good, god-fearing family. He’d do anything to give his children a better life.”
Melinda thought back the last couple of months. “I don’t remember seeing him here before.”
“When I spoke to his wife last, she mentioned he’d been given a raise and shift change from nights to days. He’s here from noon to ten, I think. He’s always here after I leave. His wife thanked me profusely and gave me enough nakati and borr to last me three years.”
She laughed. “I’d wondered why you were eating so much of those veggies lately.”
Dembe grunted. “I can’t get to anything else in my kitchen. I have to eat my way in.” Both laughed. Dembe typed on her keyboard and hit enter. “Okay, the test is saved to the network. You can download it anytime.”
Melinda groaned. “My laptop was stolen this morning in the break-in. It’ll have to wait.”
Dembe’s eyes grew wide. “But your research? Is all of it on there?”
“All but the serum info. I saved that to the flash so I could take it home at night to study the day’s results.”
Dembe raised a brow at her. “You know the rules about taking data outside the building.”
“I know.” Melinda rolled her eyes. “That’s why it was on a flash. No one would know. But it’s a moot point. I dropped it in my tea and ruined it.”
Her friend busted out a laugh. “Only you, Mel. Only you.”
Melinda looked sideways at her best friend. “We’ve both been acting like we’re not coming out of our skins with excitement over our telekinetic mouse.”
Dembe looked like she was trying to hold back a smile, and failing. “I’m trying to be professional. Big brother is watching.” Melinda then remembered cameras were in each lab room. “Otherwise, I’d be peeing my pants.” The last words were almost a screech with excitement. “But you know we have to run another test for confirmation.”
“Yeah.” Mel smiled. “But you know what this means, right? This damn virus we found gives real psychic abilities.”
“No wonder your research was stolen,” Dembe said.
“Yeah, but the drawback is the three monkeys died extremely young. Remember their burned-out brains?” Melinda looked down at the mouse finishing the treat. “I wonder how long these babies have.”
“Has the third mouse shown anything unusual?” Dembe asked.
“I haven’t worked with it yet. We had the clairvoyant one yesterday, and this one today. I’m so glad the thief didn’t think about taking the mice. But they think they have the serum, though.”
“If I were you”—Dembe turned to her keyboard—“I’d switch out your mice with others to keep them safe. Mr. Kintu won’t let you take them out of the building. Unless you want to hide them down your clothes on the way out.”
Melinda gave a full-body wiggle. “I love the little things, but not that much.” She gave another shudder. “The only hands down my clothes will belong to a hunky man prior to getting into my bed.”
“That was quite bold from you, little Miss Hasn’t Had It in Years.”
Melinda hip-bumped Dembe. “I can’t believe you said that.”
“True, isn’t it?”
“Maybe.” She grinned. They had this conversation all the time. Teasing each other about who had the most pathetic love life. That was the only way to survive: Laugh about it.
A sly grin spread across her friend’s face. “Any particular man in mind? Perhaps a doctor, say?”
She gasped. “I don’t think so.”
Dembe laughed at her overly dramatic reply. “Thou doth protest too much.”
“Whatever.” Melinda grumped. “Since when doth thou read Shakespeare? Push the freaking button and let’s watch the light show again. I have to get the paper typed before we talk to Mr. Kintu tomorrow morning.”
Even though she was trying to hide it, she didn’t deny the feelings the dream and her time in the lab with Hamel ignited. God, she’d been so gullible before, allowing herself to be set up. That would not happen again.
After running another successful brain scan, she and her mouse headed back to their temporary lab home. Yellow crime-scene tape draped both doors to her usual lab. She needed to get her purse from inside before she could go home. Hopefully the guard at the door would let her in. Hamel could even do it for her. But she hadn’t seen him since this morning.
She wondered what he’d been doing. For supposedly helping her, he wasn’t around much. Granted, he helped her move the mice and sort of get set up in the smaller lab, but after that, nada. And heavens, no, she wasn’t complaining one bit.
Something seemed wrong about him.
In the small lab, she put the mouse with the others and called up her friend at the CDC in the States. Atlanta was seven hours behind, so they were still in the morning hours there. Melinda got the voice mailbox of the Human Resources department and left a message to contact her about the credentials for Dr. Parish Hamel.
She leaned against a counter and rubbed her dry eyes. A day this productive hadn’t occurred in a while. It was nice to know breakthroughs could still happen.
The security guard outside her lab door was kind enough to allow her to get her purse, as long as he followed her and she didn’t touch anything more than she needed to. The room hadn’t been fully swept for clues nor had photos been taken. She grabbed her purse, and a cloth she used to wipe down counters.
Her feet carried her to the refrigerator with confident, purposeful steps. With the open fridge door hiding her actions, she grabbed the ESP virus, wrapped it in the cloth and stuck it in her purse. She moved test tubes and beakers around to make it look like she was doing something important, then closed the fridge.
She said to the guard. “Guess I don’t need to worry about locking up my laptop anymore, huh?” She stood in front of the destroyed cabinet and sighed. Time to go home. It was a bit early, but the day had still been long.
Plus, she wondered if the black cat she saw last night was still around.
C
HAPTER 13
Hamel lay in his jaguar form in the woods behind Melinda’s home. The events of the day really wore on him. Normally, he didn’t worry about things he couldn’t control, but with his mate so close to the action, he couldn’t help but stress over “what if.”
He’d spent the day scouring the facility for smells, clues, and any information that would shed light on their culprit. Early on he’d figured out the trespasser used hunter’s block to keep his personal smell and identity hidden. Which could mean a couple things: Hamel knew this person, thus the need to block the scent, or Hamel would come across this person during the day.
Perhaps he should dig deeper into the background of the guards at the facility. The captain of security he spoke with on the phone in Kintu’s office was a very capable ex-military Ugandan. Nice guy at face value. He held his men in tight formation and ran a clean ship. This made it hard to believe that someone outside the compound could get in and out without detection. Never overlook the possibility of an inside job.
But the big question for Hamel was why. Why did this person want a virus no one knew anything about? He wondered how long ago Melinda discovered the additional brain connections in the monkeys. The intel about someone taking the virus to “end the world” that his office received on the emerging threat was a week ago.
Did that mean someone understood the full implications of the added brain mass? That they already knew the virus would create the ability the mouse showed?
After the results come back from the forensics team, they would hopefully have more answers. The crew should’ve been in and out already. Even though the Ugandan virus lab could process the evidence, he’d ordered lab results from another location just to keep everything clean and at arm’s length. He didn’t want any cross-contamination affecting anything.
His tail flipped up, swatting at the flies buzzing around his fur-covered head. He’d decided to come in his animal so he wouldn’t be caught with his pants down, or needing to be down, like last night. That could’ve been bad for this operation. He’d never blown an assignment, and didn’t plan to start now.
