ANOM: Awakening (The ANOM Series Book 1) (18 page)

Mandel
shuffled his feet back and forth, stomping his boots down against the frozen
ground. He opened and closed his fingers around the grips on his M-4. The
temperature was dropping, and even these small movements helped to keep the
blood moving. He looked down at his watch. Almost quarter after three.

It
was a crap assignment, and Mandel knew it. Then again, he also knew Ellison.
The major was gunning for his own command, and when he got it, he would
remember Mandel. He would remember his service, and hopefully reward him for
his loyalty. And if Ellison forgot—Mandel chuckled to himself—he would just
have to remind the major of the time he was ordered to run unauthorized
surveillance on a CIA agent.

That
was the one thing Ellison was right about—this was Mandel’s chance to turn half
a dozen years of service into a career. This was his ticket, so he would follow
orders. He would stand in the dark, shuffling his feet against the cold,
watching for the ember of a cigarette, and when it was over, he would collect
his due.

“Cold
night, Sergeant?”

The
voice came from behind him, and it was much closer than it should have been.

Mandel
spun around. He could see Hayden standing in the shadows, leaning against a
tree. He was only a couple of feet away, but it was still too dark to make out
any details. It didn’t matter. Mandel knew it was him. He could tell from the
thin shape of the man. He knew it from the voice.

Hayden
reached into his pocket, then drew up his arms toward his face. Mandel could
hear him flick open a lighter. For a second, half of Hayden’s face was visible
from the light as he touched the end of his cigarette to the flame. Then the
lighter went out, and all Mandel could see was the orange ember.

Hayden
stepped closer. “You want one, Sergeant? I think they help at times like this.”

Mandel
shook his head; he could feel the muscles in his forearms and fingers tense.
This wasn’t right. “No thank you, sir.”

Hayden
waved the words away with his hand as he blew out a long stream of smoke. “We
don’t have to pretend anymore, Sergeant. I knew you were watching me. I mean,
from the first day you came out here, I knew. The real truth is, I didn’t care.
I’ve always said, ‘If people want to watch, let ‘em watch.’ Right?”

“Yeah,
you’re right, I guess.” Mandel’s own voice sounded far away. He slipped his
finger inside the trigger guard of his rifle. This wasn’t right. None of it
felt right.

Hayden
dragged again on his cigarette. “The problem is, the colonel found out you were
watching me, and he
does
care. So that means I
have
to care, even
though I don’t. You follow what I’m saying?”

Mandel
didn’t answer. His whole body was tense now, like a coiled snake ready to
strike.

Hayden
blew another cloud of smoke into the air. “The other thing you should know is
that it was Major Ellison—he gave us your name anyway. He sold you out like you
were nothing. So really, what has to come next, that’s all on him. You sure you
don’t want that smoke? I swear they help.”

Mandel
swung up his rifle and pulled the trigger. A three round burst cracked out,
aimed right at the center of Hayden’s chest. It should have dropped him where
he stood. Even with body armor, Hayden should’ve reeled back. But the man
didn’t react—he didn’t even flinch. He just stood there, smoking his cigarette.
It was like the bullets had passed right through without ever touching him.

Mandel
squeezed the trigger again—another three round burst—but now Hayden’s hand was
on the weapon, turning it aside, pointing the barrel down at the dirt. Hayden
punched Mandel in the face, a hard right cross aimed at the soldier’s eye
socket, but at the moment of contact, Hayden’s hand turned to vapor, and it
didn’t stop. His whole fist seemed to sink inside Mandel’s skull. For a second
there was a look of wild terror in Mandel’s eyes. Then his eyes rolled back and
he fell to the ground.

Hayden
stood over the body. They would have heard the gunfire on the base. A response
team would no doubt be on their way. They would find the dead sergeant and six
spent rounds of ammunition, and tomorrow, the doctor would have to rule the
cause of death as sudden and massive brain aneurysms. Uncommon, maybe, but
effective.

Hayden
knelt down, opened Mandel’s breast pocket, and pulled out a small notebook. He
thumbed through a couple of pages, looking at the chicken-scratch notes. They
were mostly times of day either followed by the word “in” or “out.”

Hayden
stood up, tucking the notebook inside his coat pocket. He took a final drag
from his cigarette, letting the smoke trail away from his open mouth as he
looked down at Mandel. Finally Hayden turned away and walked to the south, gone
again in the shadows.

Lara
was awake, but she hadn't yet opened her eyes. This was out of habit. It had to
be.

She
felt her heart racing in her chest and her shallow breath catching in her
throat. She was afraid and confused. Disoriented. Panicked. If she opened her
eyes now, all those fears would be confirmed, and then she would truly be lost.
So instead she lay in the bed, eyes closed and awake.

Lara
forced herself to take a deep breath.
It will all be fine.
The words
formed inside her head, slow and deliberate, spoken in her own voice. Of course
Lara didn't believe them, but then another deep breath. Another silent
affirmation:
It will all be fine.

Lara
took another deep breath. It was getting easier now—comfortable. It somehow all
felt familiar.

Then,
all at once, she understood. This was a routine—a trained reflex. She had
practiced that line herself. She must have. The words came back to her without
any real thought. So this was normal. She had been here before. How many times?
And why couldn’t she remember?

Then
the questions came flooding back again, and the panic came with them:
Where
was she? Why was she here? What was happening? Why couldn’t she remember?

No!
She stopped herself. She couldn't worry about any of that now. She had to
breathe.

She
heard the calm voice again inside her head:
Start with what you know.

Lara
took another slow breath and answered,
I know my name is Lara Miller.

She
felt instantly better; somehow safer, but why? Why did the name matter? Then
the answer came to her. It was because deep inside she knew that much was true.
It had to be. She was, without a doubt, the person named Lara Miller.

It
was a start. Okay, what else did she know?

Nothing.

Her
birthday, home address, phone number, favorite food, pets, allergies, mother's
maiden name…even her mother's first name—all of it was blank.

Lying
in the dark, her eyes still closed, Lara only knew two things for certain. She
knew her name, Lara Elaine Miller, and she knew she had to pee.

She
sat up in the bed and opened her eyes. The room was dark, but she sensed the
bathroom off to her right—instinct, maybe. She stood up.

"What
time is it?"

The
voice came from the bed. It was a man's voice, heavy with sleep. Lara looked
behind her. She could see the outline of a body under the sheets, his face
turned away and tucked against his arm.

He
asked again, "What time?"

Lara
looked at the nightstand on her side of the bed and found red digital numbers
glowing through the shadows. "It's almost four."

The
man grabbed at his pillow, trying to stay asleep. "You're like
clockwork."

Then
this was a routine too, at least for him. But who was he? A lover, obviously,
but what was his name? How did they meet? Did she actually love him? She didn't
feel like she was in love, but maybe she’d forgotten that too. How could she
know?

She
spoke again in the dark. "When's my birthday?"

"Huh?
What?" The man's voice was still muffled. "I don't know. When?"

Lara
turned away. So it wasn’t love then—she knew that too. If they were in love,
the man would have known her birthday. This was something else. She walked
through the door, feeling against the wall for the light. It flicked on, and
she closed the door behind her.

Across
from the door, she could see her reflection in the mirror over the sink. It was
strange. She couldn't remember ever looking in the mirror before, but now,
staring at her reflection, she looked exactly like she imagined herself. Same
hair color, hair length, eye color, smile—

Then
Lara saw the locket hanging from the corner of the mirror. It was a small
silver heart hanging from a thin silver chain. Lara knew it was hers, the same
way she knew her name and recognized her reflection.

She
reached for the locket, lifting it off the corner of the mirror, but as soon as
her fingers touched the metal, a current of electricity raced from her hand
down to her toes.

For a second, she could see herself again
—only it was
different
. She was seven years old, standing in her
grandmother's kitchen. Her hands and face were covered in flour. They were
baking a pie together.

Then
Gran reached down, clasping the locket around Lara’s neck. "If you're old
enough to help with the baking, then you're old enough for this. Happy
birthday, sweetheart."

Instantly,
a lifetime of memories flooded back, and Lara knew everything again—her age,
her social security number, her favorite dessert, and the name of the man in
the bed.

She
leaned forward, holding onto the sink with both hands. This part was always the
hardest, taking all the memories back in—all the bad choices and mistakes and
regrets of her life. She accepted them all. She reminded herself that there
were plenty of good memories too—lots of them, more good than bad actually—but
somehow those memories never felt as fresh. The bad ones always hurt like new.

Lara
looked up—forced herself to look in the mirror—and then the quiet voice was
back.
It will all be fine.

This
part of her day was routine. Wake up at 4:00, use the bathroom, brush your
teeth, take a shower. It made her feel like herself.

When
she was finished, she walked out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel, with
another towel twisted up and around her hair. Ellison was still lying in the
bed.

"You
need to get up.” She tried to make it sound like a suggestion.

Ellison
rolled over to his side, pinning his face against the mattress. "I set my
alarm for a reason. You don’t have to—"

Just
then, the alarm buzzed. Ellison slapped hard at the clock on his nightstand. He
missed. He tried again. This time the noise stopped, and he gathered the sheets
tighter around his shoulders.

Lara
ignored him. Instead she went to her purse and pulled out a silver bracelet
from the inside pocket. She slipped it on. This was her second anchor, a
back-up to the necklace and one more connection to her past—another way to
remember.

Like
the locket, her bracelet was given to her as a gift. She got it on her first
day at Reah Labs. She was only sixteen.

Lara
was a class-three telepath. More specifically, she was an Echo, an Anom capable
of reading the thoughts, feelings, and memories of someone else. When the
doctors at Reah Labs first told her the news, she burst into tears.

Lara
always knew she was different. She could tell things about people—more than
what kind of mood they were in. She would know all the details of why they were
upset, anxious, or afraid. When she was younger, before she learned better, she
would share these insights out loud, often to the person’s horror and her own
regret.

Of
course then she went to Reah, and she learned that in the world of genetic
anomalies, being an Echo was actually a pretty common talent—common and
valuable. Reah Labs recruited her, signed her to a contract, and started her training.
They gave her the rules to keep her functioning at a high level, and for a
class three Echo like Lara, the rules were everything.

Like
rule number one: Never separate from your anchor.

Lara’s
anchor was her locket. It was the most important thing in her life. It was the
connection to her identity. All of her past—her experiences, her memories—it
was all tied to that anchor. Without it she was little more than an empty
vessel. Without it, she was lost. Without it she was nothing.

That’s
why rule number two was back up your anchor, and then back up your backup.

The
silver bracelet was her first backup. Her second was a sapphire ring. Lara sat
down on the bed, opened the nightstand drawer, and pulled out the delicate ring
inside. Like the bracelet, the ring was another gift from Reah Labs. Neither
one worked as well as her locket—they weren’t as personal so some of the
memories were missing—but either one could serve in a pinch. Triple redundancy.
Standard operating procedure for an Echo.

Of
course Reah Labs knew what she was before Lara ever walked through their doors.
That’s how they worked. Find a potential candidate, verify their ability, and
then bring them in. That was the protocol.

They
recruited Lara, plain and simple, not that she realized it at the time. They
wanted her on the team. They made plans for her, and once she came into the
fold, Lara proved a quick study. By the age of eighteen she was farmed out on
her first assignment, a small Reah Labs research facility outside of Kingman,
Arizona.

That’s
when her insomnia started.

Reah
Labs’ rule number three: Disengage.

It
was the hardest skill for any Echo to learn, how to disengage from their
target. It was, for lack of a better word, unnatural. Echoes wanted the
opposite. They wanted to engage with another person—to connect on a level
deeper than most people could fathom. Lara knew that much about herself. She
could feel it—a yearning to share in the thoughts and memories of someone else.
That's when she felt most normal. For her it was like breathing. But
disengaging required effort and discipline. Sometimes it worked; sometimes it
didn’t.

Reah
Labs had over a dozen visuals to help Echoes understand the concept of
disengagement.
Imagine you’re a light switch.
When you engage, the
lights are switched on and you can see every corner of the room, but once the
lights are off, you can't see anything, even if you try.

Imagine
you're swimming
.
You strip off your clothes and immerse yourself in the water, but once you
climb out and dry off, you put your clothes back on and walk away.

Lara's
favorite was the Christmas present analogy.
Imagine a beautifully wrapped
Christmas present
. You open the box, look inside, and are truly surprised
by what you find. It’s just what you always wanted. But after you look, the
present has to be re-wrapped and forgotten until Christmas day. That was the
picture Lara held onto throughout her training, and it worked well enough, but
her first assignment was different.

The
people in Arizona weren't random targets anymore, set-up to test her clarity of
cognition. These were her colleagues, and after a month together in Kingman,
they were her friends. She couldn't just disengage from them—not completely.

Lara
experienced residual flashes—memories and feelings that float up when
everything else is quiet. It became a problem. She could manage it well enough
during the day. She could guard her thoughts, or distract herself with other
work, or she could simply force herself to forget. But at night it was
different. It was harder for her to focus then. She would lie in bed with the
lights off, almost asleep, and that’s when the nightmares would start.

Lara
would see faces—strange faces but somehow familiar, like seeing an old
forgotten friend in a new place and not making the connection. Then she would
see herself with them, and she would do terrible things—sometimes unspeakable
things—but she couldn't stop herself. Then she would feel all of the guilt and
the revulsion and the shame, and it was so real that she would wake herself up
in a cold sweat. Then she understood it was more than just a dream. It was a
memory—only not her own. Then sleep was impossible.

She
tried alcohol at first—lots of alcohol—and it worked. The drinking was just
enough to dull her senses. When she saw the flashes of memory, she didn’t care
anymore, or if she did care, at least she wouldn’t remember what she saw the
next day. When that stopped working she would keep drinking until she passed
out. At least then she could get some sleep. But even that didn’t last.

Once
the alcohol failed, she turned to ‘scripts. She used her “special abilities” to
get enough dirt on the facility doctor to keep her in a constant supply of
Valium and Ambien. Lara would slip herself a forget-me pill before bed, then
chase it with a couple of tranqs in the morning. Soon enough, it was Valium
with breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

By
the six-month mark she was a shell, barely holding it together. Her readings on
her targets were more and more incomplete, or even worse, non-existent. She started
falsifying her reports to cover herself, but that didn’t work for long. Reah
Labs found out. Then they intervened. They failed her performance review and
sent her back to the training facility. It became their
de facto
version
of rehab. That’s when Lara came up with rules of her own.

Like
lose the anchors.

Lara
remembered when she first had the idea of taking off her locket, bracelet, and
ring. It was a terrible thought and terrifying, like jumping into the deep end
of a pool before you can really swim, but she was desperate, and desperation
has a way of turning bad ideas into action. Even so, it took her a month before
she actually tried it. Lara needed that long to think through every angle,
plotting out every detail and then planning it all over again from scratch. She
couldn’t afford to make a mistake.