The Valkyrie Project (18 page)

Jrue stopped at the side of the car, the door still open. His stomach soured and his vision blurred for a moment. After suffering debilitating insomnia for more than a day and a half, would he be able to pull himself together enough to be as important as Ana thought he could be? Did he have a choice but to try?

“
Hello, Agents Callif, Gueye.” A woman in black military armor with a helmet of matching short black hair approached. “I am Agent Han, coordinating director at the scene here. As you can see we have the Chicago Police here with us in addition to our Agency reps. We've got a few more combing the building for any additional civilians who might be hiding out. And obviously, we have a team in the food court with Agent Piscina. He's pinned inside the Best Burger up there.”

“Any line of communication open with Piscina?” Ana asked.

"We've tried," Han said, "the agents up there now say they've only heard incoherent babbling from him thus far."

"Does he respond to attempts at communication?"

"He might be, but they're not sure if his rambling is a reaction to their contact or just random. There has been no direct response."

Ana looked at Jrue, a look of compassion, understanding, sympathy, and hope fixed in her soft brown eyes. Did she know what he did and what he'd gone through? Could she have any idea?

“I think we should get up there,” Ana said. “Jrue, you ready?”

The pace of events continued to make his head spin. Ready? He had woken up barely an hour before after not sleeping for almost forty-eight hours and now he was expected to talk an old friend off a ledge?

Yes. Yes, he was.
Now was not the time to back down from a challenge.

He nodded with a conviction that belied his shaky self-confidence. They left
Agent Han with her team and headed across the cold gray cement to where the cold gray elevator doors waited. Their footsteps echoed against the distant walls, the voices behind them audible, but indistinct. The musty smell of concrete leaked through every crack in the pavement.

Jrue noticed a few vehicles scattered throughout the lot whose bright colors made them stand out as civilian-owned when compared to the dull earth tones used for Agency
-issue transports. That made it clear there were people still in the building. Getting them out safely was what he and Ana had been sent there to do. He wasn't surprised that Ana had already made the decision to go off-mission. He liked her independence, quick thinking, and frequent rogue activity. And he knew she got results. But Jrue worried that his precarious mental stability would hinder or slow her down. He didn't know if she was aware of the full extent of his condition, even though she had been there for the doctor's analysis. She might actually know more than he did. Or she might be operating under a set of false assumptions based on what the doctor had told her.

"Ana, do you know what I was going through before I got to that hyperbaric room with you? I mean, was the doctor able to give you an idea of what I was seeing? What I was thinking?"

"You mean the part where you hadn't slept in forty-eight hours, but you were convinced you had to be dreaming because when else would you get to see me totally naked and glowing?"

Jrue stopped. They were in front of the elevators, so it didn't seem unnatural, but his feet would have become one with the cement even if they had been in the middle of the Sahara.

"So, you know. And you're still letting me—dragging me, really—into a hostile situation."

"Jrue, you're fine. You are an asset here. You got some sleep. You know Alando. None of the agents up there can communicate with him like you."

"I haven't seen him in… I don't know, probably three years? What if he's a totally different person?"

"He's not totally different. People don't change. Not fundamentally. Sure, you can change how you think, how you filter the world around you, but it won't change who you are."

"Three years, though, and now he's shooting up a mall? Something has changed."

--

"He's killed seven already. Seems like he's ready to take more if he has to." That was the assessment of the agent in charge of the operation in the Sushi Rio across the food court from Alando's Best Burger hideout.

"Have you considered that he's feeling trapped? Maybe he knows what he's done and he's afraid of dealing with the consequences."

"It's hard to know what he's thinking. We've tapped the security cams, but everything coming from the mikes is gibberish. The only thing that comes up consistently is his grandmother. We ran a check. She's been dead for ten years."

Ana looked at Jrue.

"He doesn't think he's talking about his grandmother, does he?" she asked.

Jrue recalled what he thought he'd said to the secretary in the Agency lobby. He'd asked for a doctor and gotten a Valkyrie. But they had communicated. Even with his brain twisting his thoughts and words, he'd found his way to the safety of Ana's arms. Perhaps he could provide some security for Alando.

"He has to have some awareness. If he's gotten to this point, he has to know that what he's thinking and what he's doing don't line up."

"His words, though, they do correspond to words he thinks he's saying," Ana said
. "Even if they go through some translation before they come out, right?"

"They did for me," Jrue said
. "When I thought I was saying something, I was saying something. It was just totally different from what I thought I was saying."

"So maybe we can communicate with him if we can figure out what he thinks he's saying."

"You're assuming he's having the same problem I was and is at the same stage in the progression."

"Two agents who trained together and have gone on ops together happen to have mental breakdowns at precisely the same time with the same symptoms?" Ana didn't have to put her hands on her hips; her tone did it for her. "I'm
going with: not a coincidence."

"But he's already to the point of killing people!" Jrue argued.

"I think we can chalk that one up to differences in personality or physiology."

"Physiology? You think this
is in our bodies? Like a virus or something?"

"Jrue,
think about it. How many ops have you been on where there's a chance you've been exposed to a potentially mind-altering drug or bioweapon?"

"One that waits more than three years before it takes effect? That's a hell of a long fuse!"

"Let's just go see if we can talk to him, then. See if we can get some real answers."

Ana ended the argument by walking out of the restaurant. Jrue had little choice but to follow. The group inside let them go. They clearly thought it ill-advised to head into plain sight in front of a madman with an arsenal. Jrue knew that Ana didn't care. Her project was predicated on its ability to save people. Whether that was the mission objective or not, it was always the underlying goal. Apparently that applied to saving people from themselves as well as from their own agents who would just as happily take someone out as save them. Internally agents referred to the Valkyrie Project as White Ops, a PR stunt by the Agency to keep their funding after their failings during the war. Not that Ana had anything to do with that, but she'd worked for the project for nine years, and Jrue would be surprised if she hadn't drunk some of the Valkyrie Project marketing punch.

Halfway across the floor Ana stopped to let Jrue catch up. When he did, she said, "All right. Your show now. Where do you want to start?"

Jrue had assumed that her forward momentum would carry her into whatever the next action might be. He thought he had made clear his insecurities and misgivings about the clarity of his thought process. She had been pushing him since they woke up, and he let it work in her favor, so why would she stop?

"Establish that we are friends, or at least that I am, rather than another Agency co-worker who might not care what the outcome ends up being."

Ana nodded.

"Alando!" Jrue called out, "It's Jrue Gueye. It's been a while, right? What was the last mission we did together? Flying dead drops over Costa Rica?"

Jrue could not be sure it was the absolute last time they had worked together, but he knew Alando had flown down there and the memories of those missions stuck with Jrue like the flight suit he had worn in the overwhelming humidity of the tropical region. Not an experience that was easily forgotten.

"Remember the heat down there? Got through those jets like water through paper, right?"

No response.

Jrue thought back to his recent trip through the imagined landscapes of his mind. What would Alando be thinking? Jrue remembered the random images conjured from the most inane thoughts. The only common thread tying them together was the perception of an increasing threat from the outside world.

"Alando," Jrue called out, "I know how you're feeling. I know you can understand what I'm saying. I think you're trying to communicate and you think that you are but no one understands."

"I can't do it any more, man. All I see is the drop into darkness when everything ends. I can't keep doing this, pretending like everything is okay. It's not."

Jrue looked back at Ana. Her face shared the hope that Alando's response had inspired in him.

"I know it's not. I've been there. I might still be there. But there's a solution. You work for the Agency. Think of all the resources you have at your disposal."

Jrue worried Alando might get lost in connecting the dots of that one, so he added, "We can help. The doctors at the Agency helped me. I thought I was crazy. I didn't know what to do. But they got me right."

"I told you, I just want the androkal. I want to get back to Iona. I want to see her again before she is gone."

Ana froze. Even though he was a step in front of her, Jrue sensed her draw up with sudden tension as clearly as if he saw her running at full speed past him. He turned and the look of terror on her face made his stomach drop, his muscles clenching as they tried to hold onto the twisted mass of intestine that had disappeared leaving a hollow cavity in its place.

"What. Is. It?" He pushed the words with his dry tongue through fearful lips. Silence enveloped the entire floor, save for the buzzing of the large lights overhead. The team behind them didn't move, waiting to see what result their excursion toward the danger zone would yield.

"What did he say? What did you hear him say?" Ana spat the words like bullets through a silencer, her mouth fully automatic.

Jrue replied slowly, not wanting to get anything wrong.

"He said he wanted the androkal. He wants to get back to Iona. He wants to see her again before she's gone."

"There's a Continuum agent in here." The words came from Ana but her mouth didn't move, as though she had actually fitted it with a silencer. Even so, the words thudded in the pit of Jrue's stomach, knocking the wind from him like a punch to the gut, or falling and landing on his back, or an icy wind on a cold day, or the sudden realization that he too might be vulnerable to the control of a Continuum agent.

Jrue's eyes darted back and forth, but he forced himself to keep his head pointed straight ahead.

"How do you know?" he said in a hushed tone.

"Those words: that was what Allen Poole said in the hotel room in Gary. He was there for the androkal. I don't even know what it is, but I've only heard it two times in my life and this is one of them. Poole wanted to get back to Iona too, whoever she is. It can't be a coincidence. Someone is controlling Alando
, making him think those things, probably making him do these things too."

"Maybe they just brainwashed him and set him up for this."

Jrue realized that brainwashed or mind-controlled, it didn't much matter if Alando had fallen under whatever power the Continuum agents held over others.

"No, the effect wore off as soon as the agent was gone. It has to be someone here." Ana was convinced, but Jrue was overwhelmed with questions.

"One of these guys? A double agent?"

"Either that, or there's someone hiding out in here. Agent Han said they were still checking the building for additional civilians."

"Does it require a line of sight? They might be on a different floor, even a few floors up or down. There's a lot of stores, dressing rooms, offices upstairs, bathrooms. Plenty of places for someone to hide out where it would take our teams a while to find them."

"I don't know. The agent in the hotel had a line of sight; we
right there with him. It stopped when he left. No line of sight, but he could have been out of range. Some finite limiting distance."

"What if this one is different?"

He could tell Ana did not want this one to be different. But she was logical. And defeated. Her shoulders slumped a few millimeters, a significant admission of emotion for the strong-willed Valkyrie in Mission Execution Mode.

"If it's not line of sight, or if it's some sort of long
-range connection, then he could be anywhere."

"If we get Alando out of here," Jrue said, hope finding its way into his voice, "then we could free him from the control."