The Valkyrie Project (10 page)

Ana quickly stole back to her desk. Her mind whitewashed in fuzz and static, love and hate, giddy school girl inside a government special agent. The message from Malcolm was there amid a few other inconsequential items.

Just as she was ready to dismiss them and get lunch
—or was it dinner?—a new message popped up. A message from Aerin, which she might have just put off anyway, but the short subject and creative capitalization hit an inquisitive nerve.
A Memo from Aerin
.

She flicked it open and played the brief video message. Then she played it again, just to be sure.

"Ana, I have come across a lead on an old mission target you were unable to track."

She caught herself staring blankly and shook her head. It wasn't the first time she'd received such a message from Aerin. He was careful and clever, but she'd puzzled it out the first time. He delivered it again this time with the same seriousness and sense of gravity in his voice. Almost too well
—his usual jittery nerves were almost completely concealed under the deadpan exterior. Utterly unbelievable if you knew Aerin at all.

Ana's heart continued its rapid pace, but an icy cool washed over the crackling fire of static that had filled her mind. Focus and clarity took over, her muscles steeling themselves for a new feat of endurance. The butterflies that had occupied her stomach just moments before fell dead, as though they'd never been there at all.

Jrue was an interesting concept. The obstacles appealed to her rogue nature. And there were the slaves—that was what they were—working the hole for the Continuum. Certainly she could do something about that. Ana was used to breaking rules. She often thought the Project had known she would push the envelope and hired her for that exact reason. The Valkyrie Project was bound by many rules and regulations, but the Valkyries still enjoyed the freedom to make exceptions in the field. They needed someone who wouldn't just think outside the box, but would make a totally separate box to fit new ideas. Jrue was another such idea that would allow her to crash through the current box and build a new one. But he wasn't Guillermo.

Ana jogged back to Jrue, her decision already made. There would be time to sort out the box that would enclose the complications of dinner
—and their feelings—later. She was much less sure about the timeline for a lead on her brother.

"Jrue, hey. Sorry, I just got a message from Aerin. High priority. I need to go see him."

"Sure, no problem. You want me to hang around?"

His eagerness bit through her like small
-caliber slugs. Of course, her turnaround probably dealt a good share of its own pain. He hid it well.

"Yeah, well, you know, I don't know how long this is going to take. Go on ahead without me."

She knew there wasn't anywhere to go on ahead to if she wasn't going with him. He'd probably just go home and wrap himself in self-pity and loneliness like she did after most missions. Or whatever the guy equivalent of that was—maybe going to a strip show or something.

"Okay, sure. No problem."

"Thanks, Jrue. Give me a rain check?"

She did want to try it again at some point. But she could tell he struggled to believe it.

"Yeah, sure." He walked away with his powerfully built shoulders and neck holding his head up. Then the shoulders slumped. Just a centimeter or two. Not enough to admit defeat. But it certainly wasn't a victory.

–

Ana stared down the long hallway tiled with aging plastic squares, dingy off-white with dark speckles intended to hide the gathering dust and dirt. The window at the end of the hall let in blinding sunlight despite being as grimy and unwashed as the floor.

Ana's stomach muscles clenched, the tension spreading through her, making roots of her legs, holding her feet tight to the floor. Yeah, she was afraid to face what
was waiting down there. Why shouldn't she be? If this Jasper Jonze knew where her brother was—or even if he could just lead her in the right direction—she would find him.

And then what? What if he was getting along fine, just like his short, infrequent messages indicated? If he was out there still, fourteen years later, he wouldn't need her, would he? He'd been making his way this long, he could clearly take care of himself.

No, she told herself. This was what she wanted, whether Memo wanted it or not. Whether he even knew. This was the reason she'd agreed to join the Valkyrie Project in the first place. She couldn't stop now. The fear was just because she felt closer than she had in a long time. She was more worried about what
she
would do if she found him than how he would react.

She forced her feet up, one at a time, and made her legs move them forward, squinting against the reflected light the whole way.

The antiseptic smell grew as she made her way down the corridor. It contained a surprising number of people, from the haggard doctors helping patients shuffling through their first steps after surgery to those being rolled around attached to oxygen tanks because they had not yet recovered enough to walk by themselves. It wasn't as crowded as the walkways and skyways outside were even at their most clear, but the walls closed in around Ana, and she caught herself holding her breath each time she passed someone.

Aerin had found the man in room 2016 through a word association alert he had keyed in for his name. Guillermo was a fairly common name,
but when paired with Callif the likelihood that it was her brother rose to just about a hundred percent.

And when it showed up on a doctor's report coming from a patient who had turned up with traumatic injuries and severe amnesia, there was certainly
cause to investigate.

Ana paused at the door, unsure of what might be contained inside, and perhaps unprepared as well. Of course, it could all turn out to be nothing. But she'd have to push through to see.

She knocked first, though.

A gruff monosyllabic word came from within, sounding like an invitation as much as anything else. The room she entered was as stark as every hospital room she'd ever seen, the bulk of it occupied by the bed
, which was in turn occupied by a thin man, dwarfed by the size of the bed and the machines surrounding it.

"Mr. Jonze? Sir?" Ana asked.

"Yes." The gravel-strewn voice stretched from the patient like a waking yawn. "I'm here."

"I'm here to ask you a few questions."

"I'm not sure if they've told you, but I don't think I'm going to be able to help you much there."

"I'm pretty sure you can. The questions I have are about a man named Guillermo
Callif."

"Ah, well, that works out well, doesn't it? The one thing I remember is the one thing you want to know about."

The man spoke as though he possessed wisdom beyond his years, and his eyes sparkled with a wit that belied the trappings of the bandages and the hospital room. He was thin, spindly, frail, but as the words continued to come from his mouth, his voice grew strong and the grit and rasp were polished out.

"So, what can you tell me about Guillermo
Callif?"

"Oh, my dear, where to start? Where to even start?"

"How about the beginning?" Her teeth clenched around the cliché, trying to bite it, to keep it from escaping her mouth, but the words were out and the man in the bed didn't seem to mind.

--

Steel. I tasted cold steel. My eyes were slow to open, edging their way back to reality from the la
-la land of intelligence community drugs. Perhaps you've experienced that.

When my eyes gathered enough light to take in my surroundings, well, there wasn't much to see. Gray concrete walls ahead and to either side. Couldn't turn my head around to inspect the fourth wall. The steel object that had captured my taste buds prevented that.

It was a gun. Put there to scare me, I suppose. And it would have worked except that if this was an interrogation they'd have to actually ask me a question before they blew my head off.

Just as I'd anticipated, the burly, dark-haired man in front of me withdrew the weapon from my mouth not long after he realized I'd regained consciousness.

"Hello, Mr. Jonze. Don't mind the firearm. It's just something I like to start with so you know how serious things can get."

"I will keep that in mind."

Having no memory of being interrogated before, I was at least a little scared at this point, but what scared me more than the weapon was the fact that I couldn't remember anything. It happens every once in a while. The worst part is that I don't remember that it happens. Waking up with acute periodic amnesia and not remembering that it gets better is something I'm not sure I can explain. Living with the condition isn't too difficult as long as you don't get pulled into something that leads you to a solid concrete interrogation cell.

I shivered a little. Probably had done it a few times already, but
I noticed it this time.

The big man leaned in
, bathing me in some off-brand cologne. Not sure what kind of person wears cologne to an interrogation. Not sure how I knew it was a cheap knock-off either, but strange things happen with the amnesia sometimes.

"Now
." His breath was heavy with cheap liquor. "Have you figured out why you're here yet?"

"That's going to be difficult. More difficult than you'd probably imagined."

"Don't worry, I've got plenty of ways to help you out."

"Yeah, I'm not so sure you do."

He laughed at that. Sure, I was being intentionally cryptic. It probably wasn't the best idea, given my position, but my underlying ingrained personality is the only thing that remains of me when my memories take a vacation, so it tends to take center stage whether I want it to or not.

"Yes, well, we'll see how long you enjoy playing coy, Mr. Jonze."

"I assure you, sir, that I do not enjoy playing coy. Just as I assure you that if I knew why I was strapped to a chair with a gun in my mouth, I would know what you wanted to me to tell you. Fairly axiomatic, if you will."

Then the gun was in my mouth again. Quick, cold, and clean. The man moved with a fluid quickness that rivaled a water nymph. My eyes dropped cross-eyed for a second, trying to figure out how he'd done it. A fruitless effort, as I quickly slipped into dizzying vertigo trying to see anything closer than his finger on the trigger.

Perhaps I should have been more scared, for my life even, but with the amnesia comes a kind of stupid calm. Even with no memories, you can fear for your life. You don't know if you're a good person or a blight on humanity, but the instinct for self-preservation is strong no matter what. When the shock hits, though, you lock your fear away with your memories.

"Oh, I'm sure it'll come to you. Let me see if I can't refresh your memory."

I almost laughed at the way he said it. It was like a bad actor auditioning for a short-form drama or film. Then there was a scalpel poking my quadriceps muscle. Clearly he intended to jab it through the denim cloth covering my legs and then through the thin layer of my skin that covered the lean muscle.

"Don't worry. You'll still be able to walk after this. It'll probably hurt, though. Well, not probably."

I think I squirmed a little at this point, but the way I was restrained, there wasn't much squirming to be done. So I tried to relax my muscles, figuring it would hurt less if he stabbed into a relaxed muscle.

"Where is the brain shunt transporter?"

There it was. The question, but it didn't make sense on any level. First, what was a brain shunt transporter? Transporting a brain shunt sounds like a fairly dangerous thing to be doing? Why is the brain shunted?
How
is a brain shunted? Perhaps that was what was happening to me. Perhaps my brain just periodically shunted itself. That was an answer to the question, though.

"How long has it been in its current location?
"

I hadn't even answered the first question
. How was I expected to know how long something had been somewhere when I didn't even know what the thing was? I said as much to my interrogator.

There was an incredibly uncomfortable silence. He pressed the point of the metal instrument into my leg. There was nothing I could say to stop him. Then he backed off.

"Get Guillermo."

There was another, longer uncomfortable silence then. He didn't actually wait for Guillermo, though. He kept asking me about this thing that I knew nothing about. It would have been a relief to know if I'd known about it before the old memory jumped ship. But, of course, it doesn't work that way. Because then I would have known. So I tried to explain a bit.

"Look, sir, I realize that I'm supposed to know where this brain shunt thing is, but my memory is not with me at the moment. And I don't mean that in an evasive sense. Not in the least. I mean I honestly can't remember."

For that, what I felt was a very heartfelt effort at explanation, I was rewarded with a cold, piercing stare. It was one thing to go amnesiac when you could get yourself to a hospital or police station and people would lend you a sympathetic ear. Quite another when you were trapped in a hostile environment. The stupid, fearless calm started to ebb, le
aching its way through my feet into the hard concrete floor.