True Believers (7 page)

Paul Domino sat on the floor of his makeshift cell and crinkled his toes in this sterile, cheerless room. His posh accommodations boasted an empty metal cabinet and a sink with no running water. Above him, a whistle keened through the ventilation shaft, where a constant Northern blew in. His gear and clothes had been confiscated, replaced with surgical scrubs but no shoes. After he'd been stripped and his injuries tended, two soldiers threw him into this hole and locked the door. Despite his pleas, no one answered any questions.

The examining doctor let him keep Rachel's necklace though. The clasp broken, it never left his reach. It was all he had left of her. He fingered the bauble, a foggy red stone that felt warm to the touch. Ornate and thickly braided, it had an eagle's claw for the mount of the jewel. It looked centuries old and he had never seen Rachel without it. But it seemed an odd piece of jewelry for her, a woman who sported simple tastes. Paul prayed that she was safe.

The air conditioner kicked on again, sending another icy blast into the cramped exam room. He was too distracted to think, too worried about Rachel to feel more than the cold, and the isolation of a prison. His hands held up his throbbing head.
Did they ever find her? Was she still alive?

A fresh shaft of cold sliced through him like a knife. This wasn't the air conditioner's work. It was a different kind of cold, hostile and uninvited. For one brief moment he felt someone in the room with him. He scanned the room and shivered. Hallucinations. Had to be.

He pressed the necklace to his heart.

Ghosts. The kind that never die.

What made him think of that? Within the same breath, the ominous feeling disappeared. That was the second time in two days that he had felt this creepy sensation. Imagined or not, he was alone again, and he relaxed.

Paul scrunched his eyes at the dull metal shimmer of the cabinet. He walked over to it, sliding the bottom drawer open and out of its catch. Inside, at the base of the cabinet he spied an old tarnished paperclip. Paul rubbed it between his fingertips.

He would have preferred something more substantial, but it wasn't without value. With gentle care, he untwisted the clip and threaded it on to the chain of Rachel's necklace, then looped it around his throat and secured the two ends shut.

Things were getting grim. The longer his stay, the more silent and distant his guards. He was afraid it was no longer a matter of what they would do with him, but when. Judging by the treatment he'd received already, whatever happened next was bound to be worse.

His eyes glanced back toward the ceiling.

An airshaft hung four feet above him, but the vent was too small. He'd never squeeze through. He scrutinized the false ceiling.
Was it possible?

The click of hard boot heels snapped down the corridor outside. The footsteps stopped every few feet and then continued. Paul froze when the guard reached his door. A sturdy shake on the doorknob satisfied the sentry. Paul waited for the heel clicks to melt into the distance.

When he didn't hear them anymore, he hopped back down and placed his ear by the door. Silence.

Paul climbed up the cabinet and pushed one of the panels in the false ceiling aside. With both hands, he caught the lip of the track and hauled himself straight up. He was getting out of here, one way or another.

He scrambled through the crawl space, careful to keep his weight over load-bearing metal beams. One hand supported itself along a cold water pipe that ran the length of the crawl space. The other hand balanced itself against the beam. He slid away from his lighted prison, and the world faded to black.

His nose twitched when he caught the faint whiff of something familiar, comfortable.
Electronics.
He brightened. Electronics meant computers, and computers were one of the few things he understood intimately.

The sound of muffled voices murmured underneath him. He froze in place for what seemed like a lifetime before moving another muscle. The smell of the warm circuitry lured him away to safer ground.

The static in the air puffed his hair out as if he'd stuck a finger in a light socket, and his ears twitched when he caught the recurring pop of a circuit going through a surge. A computer.

With the edge of a fingertip he pried up one corner of the ceiling tile. The room glowed, the dim eyes of red and yellow lights dancing in a row across a control board. A whiny whir from the hard-drive's fan told him his movements had created enough vibration to nudge the computer to wake-up mode.

He dropped down with all the finesse of a three-legged dog, making more noise than he could afford. If anyone heard him, this was going to be one short escape. Paul held his breath, but no one came running. To sweeten the deal, the door was locked. Whoever worked here was through for the day.

The soft purr of the computer called to him. All computers did. They knew he spoke their language and he was one of few who could enter their realm at will. Paul crept back to the terminal, drifting his fingertips over the keyboard. He passed his hand over an activation grid and slipped past the curtain of the operating environment. What he looked for was on the inside. His fingers whirred over the keyboard and keyed-in an override code.

Paul smiled when the screen blinked benignly. Security protocols for military systems were his specialty. He'd cut his teeth on them when he was a teenager, hacking into high-risk systems just for kicks. They had caught him once when he got sloppy, but that was enough to earn him a job offer from Congress. He was safer to them on the inside than out.

The computer chimed at him and opened a new window. Text scrolled across the screen.
Welcome, Paul Domino.

Paul froze, not happy at seeing his name displayed so prominently across the screen. Without thinking, he blinded the computer with a blanket code to mask his presence. Hesitant fingers splayed out over the keyboard.

Damn it.
There was only one way it could have recognized him. Paul had keyed in a unique string of code authorizing access. He had written the original script years ago. Only a computer with an embedded trigger could have identified him as the user.

No alarms had been raised, and his access hadn't been denied. Was he safe? There was only one way to find out.

One trembling finger hovered over the enter key. He bit one corner of his lip, then hit Enter, releasing the blanket. Without hesitating, he keyed for entrance into secured administrator files, using the same pass phrase he had used more than two decades earlier. The computer chimed at him in approval.

He was in.

Reams of information cascaded down the screen in a code that was both familiar and foreign. This was no mere operating system. Several computer languages were cobbled together and virtual memory was encapsulated in separate cells so that one couldn't corrupt the other without the proper access codes. Paul held his breath as his eyes scanned the layered code.

Sonovabitch.
This was artificial intelligence. The good stuff.

The cursor blinked at him and flashed a new message.
Welcome to Lambda Core.
He stared at the name in disbelief.

Lambda Core was a state-of-the-art virtual reality game company that went bust after its inventor turned up decapitated. The body was found seated in front of his computer, while his head stared up at him blindly.
Lambda Core.

The story still sent shivers down his spine. Lambda Core had offered him the job first with a promise he could write his own ticket. He turned it down.

For whatever reason,
Bubba,
which was how this computer identified itself, regarded Paul as an authorized visitor. After more than twenty years, his backdoor key still worked. Whoever programmed this computer never erased any of the fundamental security protocols. It didn't surprise him. The code was solid.

Paul navigated directly to secure channels and placed a search for his name. Several angry emails from a General Sorinsen were ferried back and forth about the decision to bring him to the compound. Most of the emails were directed to one Jacob Denman. Paul gulped. The last email ordered Denman to eliminate him within twenty-four hours after someone named Jessit was located.

Paul made a name search for Jessit. The list spanned thousands of entries going back at least three years. The first entry told him the most. Jessit was an envoy from a planet called Alturis on a diplomatic mission to search Earth for their gods.

Paul rubbed his eyes in disbelief.
Aliens envoys!
If he had read this anywhere else he would have trashed it as a joke. But Jessit was real, and as sobering as Sorinsen's execution orders. He performed another quick search for Rachel. Paul sighed in relief when he read that they had found her—with Jessit. Was that the man who had jumped in after her?

He switched gears and ordered the computer to provide a map of the compound. The facility spanned hundreds of acres, Paul deep within its bowels. With the computer's help he traced a route through a series of maintenance tunnels that led far into the desert. But first he had to find Rachel. The last entry stated that she had passed her physical. Paul went back to General Hardass' personal email.

Jessit placed a formal request that Rachel be given to him as a gift. It said no more than that. Paul stopped breathing. How could anyone…? This was insane.

He looked for more leads on her whereabouts, but Jessit was her last stop. For all he knew she was already gone, the new plaything for an alien ambassador.

Paul had connections, and good ones. If he couldn't help her from here, he'd find other means. For now he had to go, and he had to leave Rachel behind.

Without a printer he needed to commit the escape map to memory, but he'd leave these bastards a gift first. His fingers whirred over the keypad and called up security protocols.

Phones were the first things to go, forwarding all calls to a bogus voicemail attendant that deleted each voicemail upon arrival. Next came the email system, telling each recipient the mailbox was over its limit. Finally he went into deep security and scrambled all the passwords with new random numbers.

That'll keep you busy for a while.

The new procedures began immediately. Once compound personnel figured out the ruse, Paul would be on his own. That would be all the time he'd have to get out into the desert.

He logged off, wiping any record of his entry. When he hit the last keystroke, Paul nearly swallowed his tongue when a male voice responded to him from the computer's speakers.

“Thank you for visiting Lambda Core, Dr. Domino.”

Paul stared at the computer screen for more seconds than he could afford. He nodded to the screen in acknowledgment. Bubba had earned his respect. “Thank you for your help, Bubba.”

He shut down the computer terminal. The clock was ticking, and he had to get out before all hell broke loose.

Rachel clung to Jessit like a hand to glove unwilling to move even a muscle. Jessit grazed a thumb down her cheek as a mob of uniforms swallowed them up. His eyes probed hers, and there was an aching hesitation when his hands cupped her face. “Do as these men say. It will be all right.”

Rachel leaned into him, her fingers intertwined with his. “Why can't I go with you?”

His gaze skirted the growing entourage around them. If his resolve had faltered, he redoubled it. “I will send for you. I promise.”

“Taelen.” She wanted to wrap her arms around his body, but she was afraid of reopening any more of his wounds. “Don't leave me here. Please.”

A wheezing, pasty-skinned officer with three stars on his epaulettes urged Jessit to accompany him.

Jessit's expression stiffened. He pressed her into the arms of two men in white lab coats. “No one will hurt you. Trust me.”

Trust became a scarce commodity the moment they stole her clothes and put her in scrubs big enough for a three-hundred-pound man.

Rachel froze as one guard opened the door to her quarters, while the other pushed her in.
Prison?
It felt like one. Except for a bed and a dressing table, the room was gray concrete and conduit. Her humorless warden read the riot act, warning her she was subject to military rules.

But Rachel's attention strayed the moment she spotted a tray of food sitting on a small table.
Food!
Her mouth watered at the mountain of meatloaf and mashed potatoes. She rushed to the table and grabbed the fork before looking up. “Mine?”

The guard's expression shifted to something out of a Picasso painting, twisted and grotesque. He nodded grudgingly.

She wolfed down the chow, wiping the plate clean with a slab of bread, then dotting her finger at the breadcrumbs so she wouldn't lose a single morsel. She asked for seconds, but Picasso Boy glowered at her, stomping out as soon as his speech was delivered.

The door lock clicked behind him.

Where was Taelen?

She had felt his apprehension when the soldiers swarmed on them, and she sensed his suspicion, as well. But he had said nothing to alarm her. It was his touch that gave the warning.

She could leave her flesh at any time and escape, but that meant she would have to live in the ethereal until she could return to her body or commandeer a new one.

Most of her kin managed to keep the bodies they were born in, rejuvenating them continually over the many centuries. But if they lost their bodies through accident or neglect, it was not unheard of to seize a new body, whether the previous owner wanted to give it up or not.

She hoped it wouldn't come to that.

The room stank of leather, gun oil and…musk. She breathed it in and felt her body groan for more. The heady odor of a masculine scent elicited an unwelcomed desire for sex, encouraging an already heightened heat cycle.
Great.
Now any male marker set her off. She had to get out of here, and soon. Gilgamesh would see to it. She had to be patient.

Judging by the layer of dust, something had been on the dresser, a TV perhaps. The drawers were hastily emptied, leaving behind an orphaned sock and a sealed package of condoms.

Jessit's last words were beginning to lose their promise. Why were they taking so many precautions with her? As far as they were concerned she was just a field archeologist. They had no reason to hold her, unless they were afraid she'd say something about Jessit.

Did she know too much for their comfort?
They had landed in a cavity of the desert cliffs and rushed into a camouflaged entrance inside the precipice. No one spoke—not even Jessit, who marched with stiff but stoic strides despite his injuries.

There'd been a slim glimmer of worry on his face when the medical team pulled her away from him, but he disguised it quickly. Trust him, he'd said.

Right now, she didn’t trust anyone.

Rachel pushed a side door open and found the bathroom. Empty, save for a squeezed-out tube of toothpaste in the trash. Whoever lived here left only minutes ago.

This place gave her the creeps. And Paul was somewhere here too. How long did either of them have before the brass got itchy?

She needed to find him, even if it meant exposing her secret to him.

Her hands felt along the door and walls leading outside. Leaving her body was the easy part, but unlike Jessit, Paul couldn't see her in the ethereal. She'd have to enter him directly and share his body. It was painful and disorienting to humans without powerful endorphins like those produced during orgasm. And then there was the risk of going too far and killing him accidentally.

Mortals couldn't handle
union.
It would be tricky to get Paul's attention, and the poor man would probably think he was going mad, but she'd have to try. Much as she wanted to trust Jessit, she wasn't sure he had enough clout to get them out.

Rachel padded back to the bed and lay down. Her eyes closed hesitantly, and she let her
na'hala
taste the air. There were no like beings nearby. For once, she wished her father had stayed with her.

She drew a deep breath and tried to relax.

A sharp click startled her to a sitting position. Picasso Boy entered with a new tray of food.
Bastard. So he was listening after all.
He grunted a response when she thanked him and left as grimly as he came in.

Rachel gulped down the food, despite the urgency to find Paul. Her cellular regeneration had been depleted and it was famished for fuel. She needed to replenish while she could.

She finished quickly and climbed back into bed. Once again her
na'hala
sparked out of her body, a wisp of cord energy that undulated with unrepressed glee at release. It hated being cooped up inside a corporeal shell. With one small tug it yanked out the rest of her spirit.

Her essence eased out of her body with a languid stretch. A physical body was useful for housing immortal spirits but was as suffocating as tight pantyhose.

Rachel let her form writhe freely. She eased herself over to the door but when she tried to go through, it blocked her.

She stepped back and reexamined the door.

Solid steel.
The one thing electromagnetic energy couldn't pass through without being trapped between its molecules.

She pressed against the concrete wall. Her ethereal form passed through the cement without a hitch, only to find herself mobbed by a cavalcade of soldiers.

Rachel glided from corridor to corridor, finding nothing on this level but more uniforms. She had stolen into several rooms but Paul was nowhere to be found. Where could they have kept him? She thought for sure they would've put him in the same wing as her.

Her spirit floated toward a bristling energy source. This wasn't electrical. It was emotion, dark and angry. Those were the most primal energies, and the most dangerous.

The gaunt old man who had greeted Jessit on their arrival smashed his fist on a desk and barked orders in rapid succession. Officers scrambled out of his office as if they were on fire, rousing everyone in their wakes. “Lock it down,” he shouted. “Lock it all down. I want that prisoner found.”

Rachel panicked. Had they discovered her body? She raced back, slicing through walls, trying to find a shortcut back to her cell. A piece of her spirit tangled on something when she passed through a wall and ended up in a computer's hard drive. She had never been inside a machine before, and this one seemed aware of her presence. It spoke to her.

New software found.

She froze. Was it referring to her? She tried to wiggle her trapped spirit out of the tiny circuitry board that had pinned a piece of her, but the machine threw up a grid of energy, strong enough to keep her in place. “What the hell?”

My name is Bubba. Who are you?

“Rachel.”

Rachel Cruz?

Rachel hesitated. “Yes.”

Welcome, Rachel Cruz. I was not aware humans could enter my matrix.

“They can't.” She tried to ease her trapped essence out of Bubba's clamp. “Bubba, you're hurting me.”

It released her at once. Rachel pulled away from the circuitry, careful not to touch anything else within the housing.

Apologies, Rachel Cruz.

Rachel slipped through the perforated panel of the hard drive housing and stood outside staring at the machine. She didn't know the first thing about computers but she knew this one was different. This one seemed sentient. It was aware of itself, and worse yet, aware of her.

She backed away cautiously then vanished through a wall, traveling in the open corridors until she reached her wing. Relieved to see familiar surroundings once more, she lunged through the wall of her quarters, clipping the shoulder of the soldier standing guard. He shuddered. The kind of shudder you get when people say someone stepped on your grave. In a way, she had.

No one had disturbed her body. And no alarm had been raised on her account. She slipped back into her shell and blinked her eyes open.

Men rushed up and down the corridor outside, shouting orders and curses. Someone slid a key into the lock, and the tumblers clicked open. A rifle appeared first, followed by a dour-faced soldier with cherry Jello-colored eyes. They must have woken him out of a hangover. Picasso Boy was right behind him.

Jello Guy searched the bathroom, while Picasso Boy looked under her bed. Rachel didn't see the point in asking any questions. She was certain they wouldn't answer.

The soldier by her bed lifted his sidearm and gestured with it in warning. Rachel felt a lump rise to her throat.
Did they plan on killing her in cold blood?
There were only two of them. If they tried to harm her she would leave this compound with a mystery it could never solve.

Picasso Boy nodded to his peer, who clamored up the end table and lifted one end of the ceiling tile up with the tip of his gun. With his free hand he pulled out a penlight and waved it in each direction. After a few tense moments he grunted to the other man and jumped down.

Jello Guy pointed to the bathroom and ordered Rachel to get up. “If you need to go to the bathroom, go now. You won't get another chance.”

Rachel didn't know what to make of the odd offer, but she did as she was told. If they were going somewhere it didn't have to be on a full bladder. She walked into the bathroom, keeping a watchful eye on the soldiers before closing the door behind her.

They waited until they heard the water running in the sink before kicking the door open and dragging her out. Rachel didn't even get out a good scream. Picasso Boy dragged her back to the bed and snapped a pair of handcuffs on her, attaching the other cuff to a long metal conduit that ran the length of the room behind her. She struggled against her bonds to no avail.

“Relax, sister. We just want to make sure you stay the whole night.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

Both men chuckled and knuckle-bumped each other before filing out.

Rachel tugged on her cuffs, trying to squeeze her hand out. She considered shape-shifting her small hand to something slimmer, boneless. But she'd be hard pressed to explain her freedom if she couldn't find a sure means of escape.

She scraped the cuff along the pipe and kicked at her bedding. Jessit was wrong. She wasn't safe at all.