Trial Run (13 page)

W
hen Karla led the four new recruits next door, Reese said to her seven tested team members, “We're still working on the attrition level.”

Joss said, “As in, why my buddies are out prone in the room down there.”

“I want a volunteer,” Reese said. “Somebody to monitor their transit.”

Neil said, “Is that possible?”

Reese glanced at where Kevin Hanley stood frowning by the back wall. “I have no idea.”

“So we could go out there, follow the wrong crew, and never come back?” Neil shook his head. “I don't think so.”

“You've all lost friends. We need to know
why
. Where do they go?” Reese gave that a beat. “If we track their progress, can we discover what's going wrong? And if we find that out, can we bring them back?”

The final member of Reese's team was the quietest person Reese had ever known. Elene Belote was a former mid-level CIA staffer and the
oldest of the team, an operations analyst who had chafed at her desk, so much so that she had volunteered for a project that had neither name nor description attached. Elene was from a south Louisiana parish and spoke English with an accent that rang of shadowy bayous. “I'll go.”

Kevin caught Reese by the coffee machine in the kitchen alcove off the front foyer. “Did I understand what that hacker said?”

“His name is Neil.”

“I want to know if it's true. Have you already cracked that safe?”

The question confirmed Reese had been right to let him come. She hid her satisfaction in her cup. “Yes.”

“Your orders were to inform the colonel the
instant
you got inside that safe. Why in the world are you sitting on this?”

“That's an interesting question, Kevin. Here's another one. My assistant said I was taking a foolish risk, letting you in here. Is she right?”

Kevin shook his head. “What you really want to ask is, am I of any use to you.”

“I knew you were smarter than you looked.”

“Where did the technology for this project originate?”

“Not with us, if that's what you're asking. It was sold to us by one of the original research group. They have no idea we've obtained their technology. No one does, except the agency funding us, and now you.”

“So you stole it.”

“Actually, when we first learned about their work, we tried to shut them down. We failed. So yes. We used an inside source and stole their research. And we copied it. Do you have a problem?”

“No, Reese. There are times when ‘whatever means necessary' actually applies. This is one of those times.” He glanced at the wall separating them from the Departures Lounge. “If it actually works.”

“It works.” Reese caught movement out of the corner of her eye. “Yes?”

Karla said, “We're ready to go.”

“Two minutes.” She waited until the foyer was theirs, then went on, “This whole experiment was never about getting inside the safe.”

“Colonel Morrow has repeatedly stated—”

“The colonel is a parrot in a uniform. He'll say whatever order is passed down from on high. You want an answer to your question, Kevin? Fine. Here it is. I don't
know
what Washington is after. But even more important, I don't know how far I can take this. What I do know is, there's more at stake than reading some note in a Baghdad palace. And whatever that is, I want to have the answer for it before I walk into that Pentagon briefing.”

Kevin studied her. “You were right to trust me.”

Reese met his gaze. “Prove it.”

Reese knew it was against protocol to have her entire team observe these transits. And she didn't care. Either she trusted them or she didn't. Besides which, she had two further reasons for this inclusion. She wanted to build a tightly cohesive unit. And she wanted to develop a sense of normalcy within this core group. Perhaps someday when they'd discovered a way to stop losing so many subjects, her admin staff would want to volunteer themselves. It would be good to have team members who weren't drawn from the more unstable fringes of society.

As she started to enter the main control room, Kevin asked, “Have you ever, you know, done it?”

Reese had no interest in ever discussing her own internal cauldron, or all the ghosts she could never confront. Which added cold force to her response. “You are here to observe. You don't open your mouth. You don't budge from your chair. You don't make a sound. Is that clear?”

She turned away before he could respond. Karla Brusius cast Reese another of those looks, the one that said,
This
is insane, letting a stranger and possible enemy observe.
Reese ignored her too. “How are the monitors?”

“All within the green, but number three is spiking on the heart rate.”

“I'm going to go down and have a word with them.”

“Are you sure that's—”

“Open the door, Karla.”

Her number two unsealed the side door, and Reese took the stairs down to the transit room. The chamber was a muted cream color—floors, walls, ceiling, even the frames rimming the reflective glass windows to the control room. The control room was positioned half a floor higher, so that the monitors could observe all the subjects at once. Reese had never entered this room before a transit. But the loss of so many trial subjects bothered her a great deal more than she revealed.

The four trial subjects were laying twenty degrees off full prone in adjustable leather chairs. Padded straps were fitted around their waists and chests. These four were the youngest trial subjects they had yet used. Reese had no problem with their age. The vectors for a number of cutting-edge technologies were constantly shifting down the age scale. But laid out as they were, the four appeared both childlike and terribly vulnerable. Which was why she had insisted on coming down and speaking with them.

“We'll start this the same way we have all your trial runs. I will count you up, then you will disengage and transit. I will hold you in the room here for final orientation. Then I will give you your destination. Five minutes later I will call you back.”

The youngest kid, Eli, asked, “Is five minutes enough?”

She knew she shouldn't like this boy as much as she did. Their success rate hovered below 25 percent. Until they made it through the first real transit, Reese normally kept her distance. But something about Eli tugged at her heart. Especially now, strapped as he was in this chair. The room's muted light masked his tattoos and made him look about twelve.

Reese replied, “Everything we have determined thus far suggests that time has no real importance.”

“You mean, like, we can control time?”

“Let's leave these discussions until you return.” She included the others
in her look. “And that is the key here. Our experience thus far shows this transit to be the real cutoff. Those who survive control their destinies.”

It was much too flowery a way to describe what happened. But she was shooting off the cuff here, and she wanted to have them identify the real goal. Which was, plain and simple, making it back.

Reese went on, “I want you to focus on one thing and one thing only. Each transit, the only voice you've heard through the earphones has been mine. One purpose of these trial runs has been to familiarize you with the need to recognize my call. It is vital that you remember this. Whatever you discover out there, whatever you face, follow my instructions and I will
bring you home
.”

With every other initial transit, at least one of the subjects had chosen this moment to bug out. Just go into a screaming fit, clawing at their straps like they were chains, demanding to be let out. Reese could see they were all very scared. But they also remained planted in their chairs. She allowed herself a tiny sliver of hope.

“You heard what Joss said. There is
nothing
like the high of making a successful transit. You all have had a taste of this. Now it's time to discover the real thing.” She gave that a beat, then continued, “The night we brought you in, you were on the road hunting death because the world you knew held no meaning. But that is a different world, and you are about to become different people. You have a purpose now. You were chosen for this project because you have trained yourselves not to fear death. You understand what most people in the world spend their entire lives running away from. You know that death is inevitable. You
seek
it. Not because you want to die. Because you want to overcome mankind's deepest terror. Why? Because it gives you
power
. And that is what you will find out there today. A power that is all yours. Exclusively. A power that will transform a life you once called worthless into something that holds not just value, but potential.” She gave that a moment, then finished with, “Good luck, and good hunting.”

The transit room was large enough to hold a dozen chairs. Reese's shoes squeaked softly as she crossed the padded floor to the rear left
corner, where a fifth chair rested by itself. She looked down at Elene Belote and tried to put some genuine feeling into her voice. “Thank you.”

“No problem.” Elene's voice was scarcely above a whisper.

“Your headphones will be on a separate line. I will count them up and instruct them to hold while I lead you through transit. Then I'll send them off. After they're on their way, I will give you instructions to follow and observe only. Do not approach.”

“Roger that.”

“If something does go wrong, your instructions will be clear. Go after them, but only so far as it is safe. At the first sign of danger, you return immediately. Is that clear? You do
not
go forward if you feel threatened in any way. I do not want to lose you.”

“That makes two of us.”

Reese patted her arm. “Stay safe. Come home.”

She exited the transit room and climbed the concrete stairs. The control room's lighting seemed overbright. As she entered, Joss said, “I thought I'd been sent off on missions by the best. But that little speech you gave in there, that was top of the list.”

“Nothing but strong,” her security chief added.

“You were right to go down there,” Karla agreed.

Reese settled into her chair before the monitor panel. She pulled the mike's metal cord over close to her mouth. “You have the kids and Elene on different channels, right?”

“The newbies are on one, Elene on two.”

“Okay.” Reese willed her hands to stop shaking. She took a steadying breath. Another. Then she keyed the mike and said, “Here we go.”

R
eese did not need her notes to guide the four new team members through their transit. “You are going to transit now. Remain in the transit room. You are in complete control. You are completely safe.”

The Italian scientist, Gabriella Speciale, and her research group referred to these events as ascents. Reese had dismissed the name out of hand. She wanted to disassociate her operation from theirs. Plus the term reeked of higher aspirations. Reese had no interest in searching out the higher possibilities of anything. Her orientation was much baser.

Thus the term
transit
.

The panel's monitors showed the EKG patterns for each trial subject. Ditto for heart rate, oxygen consumption, the works. Cameras focused on each face. All these images were repeated in the flat screens that rimmed the ceiling. Reese gave the four a moment longer, repeated her instructions for them to hover and remain where they were, then keyed the mike's controls and said, “Okay, Elene, I'm counting you up now.”

A year earlier, Reese had considered herself as close to invulnerable as was humanly possible. She had been second-in-command of security and intel at one of the world's largest industrial groups. A new high-level threat had been identified, in the form of a research team led by Gabriella Speciale. Her security had been limited to one former Ranger named Charlie Hazard and a motley collection of untrained aides. Reese had been ordered to take them out. With all the forces at her control, the task should have been straightforward. She had done it dozens of times before. A simple eradication. Instead, Speciale and Hazard had demolished her team. Sixteen months later, Reese remained in recovery mode, trying to refit her fragmented life together and erase the nightly dose of tremors. Dawns were minefields. Remnants of memories still erupted with destructive force.

This project had come to Reese via one of the shadow organizations that operated in the grey zone between DOD and the outside world. One of the Italian scientist's team had asked for Reese by name, then offered to become her own personal in-house spy and supply them the complete package—technology, full instructions, research data, the works. In return, he wanted his own lab, total control over his research, total freedom to publish, and a full professorship at UCLA. Reese said yes to all but the last. She had no swing inside the UC system. Her spy accepted the terms without a quibble. Clearly he was thinking the same as she. If the project was as successful as initially indicated, he could name his ticket to any school on the planet.

Then just as they planned an extraction, their spy within the research organization had gone silent.

Reese and her associates could only assume the spy had been caught by Charlie Hazard and eliminated. Given what Hazard had done to Reese, she felt a real pang of sympathy for the scientist she had never actually met.

Reese's superiors were mildly concerned about this possible threat to their clandestine world. More than anything, they wanted it to all just go away. Colonel Morrow represented the faction that felt Reese
and her team were nothing but an expensive waste of time. There were others, however, who were not so sure. Preliminary findings from numerous interviewed trial subjects suggested that Gabriella Speciale had actually managed to establish and control situations where human sensory awareness was no longer restricted to the human body. Reese's bosses needed to know if this impacted their ability to hold and maintain secrets. They needed to determine if these experiments could be channeled to stealing other people's secrets. And they needed to know this
first
.

The intensity of their concerns, and the opposition Reese faced inside the group, came through loud and clear. As well as their unspoken aim. And it was at this point, the issue that was never discussed, where Reese and her new bosses were in complete harmony.

The ultimate goal was simple. If it worked, no one else could be permitted to obtain this capability.

Reese needed to annihilate the opposition. Obliterate Gabriella's entire group. Wipe them off the face of the planet. Erase their very shadows. Salt the earth. And walk away.

When Elene Belote had transited, Reese keyed the mike to the off position, shifted the page of instructions over, took another breath. And still hesitated.

Karla glanced over. “We're good to go.”

“I know.”

“You've done everything you can.” When Reese continued to hesitate, she said, “Green lights across the board.”

Reese keyed her mike so she spoke to the four. She said, “Follow my instructions. On my say, transit to the Baghdad palace. Enter the safe, read the sealed document, come home. Accomplish the job and return. Remain perfectly safe and in control throughout. Those are your orders. Stick to them.”

She keyed the mike over, said, “Elene, I am about to send them out.
You are to track their progress, but only so far as it is comfortable. That is the primary objective. To go where it is absolutely safe. To observe. And to return. Safely.”

She returned the mike to the position for the new team members and said, “Here we go.”

There was actually almost nothing for the observers to see.

The first few times, Reese had regretted her decision to allow her team not transiting to observe. But when they moved from the initial trials to the first attempt to infiltrate the Baghdad safe, and two of the three subjects remained in a coma, Reese's tension became shared by everyone. That was the one good thing that had come from losing her people to comas. Those team members who survived became as intent and focused as frontline troops.

The group inside the control room was utterly silent. There was nothing to see through the glass except the five inert bodies, four clustered together in a tight row and Elene by herself against the rear wall. The monitors showed no change. Heart rates steady and very slow, oxygen levels down 80 percent from normal wakeful state. Brain-wave patterns steady and particularly strong in the alpha signals. Everything in sync with a deep meditative state. The left-hand wall held a large clock. There was also an electronic timer between the control panel's two center terminals. Karla had started the timer the instant Reese launched her team. Everyone watched the second hand. When it hit five minutes, Karla lifted one finger in a silent alert, but Reese was already keying the mike so that her voice was heard by both the four and Elene.

“You will now return to home base. You will do so in utter safety and complete control. You will return home now. You are home. You will reenter your bodies. The transit has been successfully completed. You are safe and in total control. You are now counting back to full wakefulness. I am counting you now. You are coming awake. You will open your eyes. Welcome home.”

And for once, she could say the words with total sincerity. Because for the first time since she had started her trials, four sets of eyes opened and stared upward. Four sets of limbs moved in jerky motions. Four voices chattered in vivid excitement. This was another of the discoveries Reese had made, how
thrilled
the returning transiters were. No matter that some of their mates did not awaken, the mystery and the danger on vivid display. The thrill, the excitement, the electric high was so intense that in that first moment all they wanted was to shout, to scream, to dance. In that instant of wakefulness, they were no longer trial subjects confronting the greatest of all human mysteries. They were a
unit
.

Just like the four of them were doing down below.

And for once, Reese wanted to join in. Though she wasn't sure how, clearly she had taken a major step toward achieving her goals.

Then Karla said, “We have a problem.”

Reese looked beyond the four. And instantly her elation was demolished.

Elene Belote was not moving.