Virtually His (4 page)

“Shut up!” she yelled out.

All of a sudden, there was silence. A lone figure climbed on top of her. It was him. She recognized the shape of his body. For some reason she recognized his scent.

“I thought you died,” she whispered.
Where did everyone go? And why couldn’t she feel the danger?

She felt his hands on her useless body, felt his hands on her thighs as he slowly parted her numb legs.

Helen squeezed her eyes shut. She must be mistaken. She’d thought—wait, maybe something happened in the dark room and someone took her while she was unconscious. Maybe her kidnapper was a hostile, too.

She let out a hiss of outrage as his hands intimately slid up her inner thigh, then up her rib cage, across her breasts. She was going to kill him when this drug wore off. She was going to tear his hands off first. A thumb caressed her lower lip for a second.

He kissed her on the mouth, his lips moving over hers lazily, as if he had all the time he wanted. She gave an outraged gurgle at the back of her throat when he nudged her lips apart and swept his tongue inside, engaging her in intimate play. She could feel his tongue exploring hers, not like a rapist, but like a lover, coaxing and playful. Blinding fury welled up as she tried her damnedest to turn her head but it was useless. Her mouth was his toy, muffling her curses.

It was the longest kiss she’d ever shared and it was
sharing.
There wasn’t much she could do when she still couldn’t shake her head free and her mouth was open for him to taste. Their tongues tangled silkily, seductively, as he controlled the pace, opening her wider, till she found herself growing breathless from trying to speak and move at the same time.

He likes your mouth.

Oh great. Now her warning voice was also analyzing kissing techniques. And why was her heart beating so erratically? She was shocked to find that her eyes had closed…She forced them open, blinking rapidly. She was
not
getting turned on by this man. No matter how good his kissing technique was!

He finally released her and she heard herself gasping for breath. His shadow moved over her, his hand deliberately cupping her breast.

“I’ll kill you if you touch me,” Helen managed to say through what felt like swollen lips.

She heard the front zipper sliding. She felt the coolness of the air on her bare flesh. He pulled the front halves of her shirt apart and she could feel his knuckles grazing her naked breasts. Her heart galloped like she was having a heart attack.

Wait a minute, wait a minute! Something’s not right. I was wearing a leotard with no front zipper. I was wearing a bra.

Test.
Suddenly everything fell together like a well-designed puzzle.

Test. No sense of danger. The drug. All the different smells and sounds. Nothing solid…just tactile. They weren’t testing her physically. Everything was a mental test.

“This isn’t real,” she declared firmly and loudly. “I was wearing a bra in a tight leotard with no zipper. I’m not half-naked. Game over! Now let me see you, you fucking bastard!”

The next time she was faced with a tiny pill, she was ready.

“You know what to do with it.”

Helen shook her head. “I’m not taking it.”

“Why not?” His voice, even electronically enhanced, was soft, persuasive. “Are you afraid?”

“Of course not.” She wasn’t. She just didn’t like the feeling of being helpless. “I already know what you’re trying to achieve. You want me totally in your control. You want me afraid, or are trying to make me afraid. Am I right or wrong?”

“Somewhat, Elena. If I ask you to take off your clothes now, would you?”

She cocked her head in the dark. “No.”

“Why not? It’s totally dark in the CAVE and I promise it won’t hurt.”

“Look, I know what you’re trying to do,” Helen said, exasperated now. “It isn’t working. You’re trying to find chinks in my psyche and I’ve been trained to resist. You aren’t going to win.”

“But why are you resisting your trainer? Wouldn’t it be simpler to go along with it, knowing what I’m going to do, and then following through with today’s training lesson? Why the need to tell me that you aren’t going to lose? Or, are you just afraid, Elena, that you will lose?”

Oh, he was good. Whoever her new trainer was, he definitely wasn’t just some Special Forces guy or CIA shrink trying to beat her into shape mentally or physically. This man was trying to figure her out by pushing her sexual buttons. The thing was, she couldn’t figure out why he was doing it…yet. It’d only been a couple of weeks, but already he’d challenged her more than any of her other trainers, both physically and mentally.

“Okay, fine.” She popped the pill into her mouth, crushed it between her teeth because she was that pissed off. She wanted to taste its bitterness. “I’m not going to be very happy if you start taking my clothes off again when I wake up. I’m tired of it. That’s a warning.”

“Then I’ll make sure they’re already off before you wake up.”

“You…” She didn’t even have time to finish cursing him, falling forward as the world spun into darkness.

When Helen came to, she didn’t say anything, using the time to figure out what he was trying to do. Again, she couldn’t see the person carrying her. This time, she was in his arms, the way a man carried a lover, and he was walking slowly. She heard the lapping of water. Splashing at his feet. He kept walking.

She knew it was useless but she still tried to move. She really, really hated this feeling. She felt the water touching her bare buttocks. She gasped—both from the cold water and her outrage that she was indeed “naked”—as he took both of them deeper into the water.

“I’m so going to kill you,” she said between her teeth. “I told you not…”

She gasped again as he let go of her. She sank, water getting into her mouth. She couldn’t move; she was going to drown.

This isn’t real. This isn’t real! You got to keep your head!
She realized now that he’d purposely done the one thing he knew would distract her—making her think he undressed her. She needed to remember that virtual reality was all in the mind. He was pushing her to accept this, getting her ready for the next phase.

Willing her panic and anger away, Helen relaxed, allowing her body to float. He was her trainer; he wasn’t going to let her drown. Just as she reasoned this to herself, she felt his arms gather around her, pulling her upward to the surface. Her face burst through the water and she took deep breaths of air into her lungs as she felt him lifting her higher, till her chin rested on his shoulder. She coughed, very aware of his arms around her nude body.

“Total immersive virtual reality between two people is going to be different from going solo, Elena,” he said softly in her ear. “I give you the reality that you have to accept in your mind. Just as I have to accept what you see when you remote view because if my mind rejects it, then this experiment will fail. You have to get very comfortable with whatever reality I provide here, just as I have to do the same with the reality you say you see when you remote view. Am I making sense to you?”

“Yes.” But that didn’t mean she had to like it.

“The nudity is just a little quarrel between us. I know you don’t feel comfortable when you aren’t in control, I totally understand that, and that’s why you are naked now, in the water, in my control because you have to get comfortable with this notion.”

“Only in virtual reality,” she assured him sharply.

“That’s fine.”

They were still in the water. She shivered. How deep was the water?
Not real, Helen, it’s not real.
She breathed slowly, steadily. Fine, she got the lesson, so she would shut up and just let the drug do its thing until she was able to move again.

His hand came behind her neck, gently turning her head up. Looking at his shadowy form was the most frustrating thing after the fact that she was in someone’s control.

“Do you know what made you even madder than being stripped naked by someone?”

“I’m not stripped naked. It’s all in my head,” she said, and tried to smile nonchalantly, “so I’m not mad at all since none of this is real.”

“Then you aren’t allowed to lose your temper if I kiss you again,” he whispered, his head coming down on hers.

And there was nothing she could do as she floated in his arms, nothing at all, as the hand behind her neck firmly forced her head back. He explored her mouth intimately, his tongue tangling with hers.

He was enjoying this too much, she thought dazedly, even as she fought against her own response. He liked being in control of her and the more she fought him, the more ways he would find to get at her. It was all standard operating procedure in the book of mind manipulation. But, besides what he was claiming to be doing, what else was he trying to manipulate her to do?

Later, back in the changing room, she stared at her lips, which looked redder than normal. He was diabolical. He hadn’t undressed her. It had been all in her mind because he’d
made
her think he was going to do it while she was out. Again, playing with her fears.

She traced the outline of her lips with her fingers. Sensitive. As if she had been kissed thoroughly.

“But it’s not real,” she whispered to her reflection.

I
nternal focus wasn’t Helen’s strongest point. She much preferred action; thinking too much only muddled up one’s life. However, these new games were designed to make her work mentally as well as physically, and she couldn’t help but feel a little pissed off. She hated being manipulated and these days,
someone
was doing a whole lot of manipulating of her mind and body.

Helen scowled, then quickly schooled her features. The last time she had betrayed herself like that,
someone
had pushed her through a series of exercises that he knew she would dislike, even though she now knew how everything worked, that nothing was actually real.

She looked around the room. She had learned much about it in the last couple of months. The CAVE Ultimate—Cave Automatic Virtual Environment—was a ten-by-ten-by-ten room that was the newest in virtual reality immersion. Since its invention at the University of Illinois in Chicago, certain government agencies had further developed and enhanced the unique features of this new technology.

One of the unique features of the CAVE was that it allowed multiple participants to experience the illusion that was virtual reality, with one participant controlling the environment. That first experience from two months ago—that had all been done with her alone in this room, with her invisible instructor in charge somewhere in the COMCEN complex. She now knew that he was in a similar CAVE somewhere, wearing the same type of special bodysuit that she was wearing but with the controls all on his side.

That part of it was tough for her. She hadn’t liked what had happened that first time, even though she now knew they were testing her. No,
he
was testing her. She’d had this feeling all along that that dream-world into which she’d been thrown was entirely his creation.

He’d had her put in darkness so she would feel unbalanced. That had solved the problem about the special glasses, too. If she had been able to see, she would have seen the VR goggles that covered half her face floating a few inches above. He had given her that stupid paralytic drug so that she couldn’t feel the rotating mechanical VR chair on which they’d placed her. All those feelings of being carried, being upside down, and the dizzying rush of movement were created by that equipment.

Even after watching it in action without her on it, she was still amazed at how everything coordinated with those goggles. Wireless tracker-tabs that looked like sticky markers were placed on certain points on a person’s body, and these tabs corresponded to the chair, letting it know exactly how to move the person. That was how she was manipulated physically. It was interactive virtual reality at its finest.

This was probably the most expensive playroom she’d ever had the privilege to romp in. Not bad for a dirty Russian orphan who only wanted a new Barbie doll, eh?

Helen grinned at the thought. Oh well, let him be diabolical. She was tired of controlling her emotions when he was around.

He was silent today. Not a word. It made her want to rile him to get some reaction, but that would only betray her irritation. Today they’d used the wireless trackers and a new pair of gloves. She’d stood on a glorified treadmill that created the illusion of motion while she got used to “spatial control of nonspace,” as her scientist-tutor Dr. Cunningham had explained to her.

She was being prepared for the final frontier, so to speak. TIVRRV, appropriately pronounced
TERROR,
stood for Total Immersion Virtual Reality Remote Viewing, the top-secret project that required body and brain immersion and stimulation. Anyone who volunteered for this crazy experiment ought to be terrified.

He was so damn quiet—why didn’t he say something? Or was that the new test?

“You know, I’ve never had my brain waves synchronized with a man’s before,” she drawled, touching the lever to the right of the chair. The goggles raised slowly above her head. She peered up into them. Nothing, of course. “What exactly does that do, in your words? These scientists haven’t been able to explain it to me satisfactorily enough. I can’t get excited at terms like Immersive Visualization and Interactive Mind Flow.”

She waited for ten seconds. The remote viewing training had been the toughest of everything she had been through, for her, because it was all about letting go mentally. But this new trainer, with his secretive ways, was taking it even further. He was ruthless with his need to control her and he didn’t care if he made her furious while doing it. In fact, she was sure he was somewhat amused by her rage. She was waiting for the day she’d see him in the flesh; she was going to wallop him.

When she’d told him that, he’d replied, in that odd quiet way that always made her nerves sing, “I look forward to it.” And then he’d kissed her.

Who was he? What was he? She wanted to know everything about him like she was sure he did about her. Not everything, she corrected fiercely. He couldn’t read her mind. If he could, he’d know just what she’d thought of him after what he’d put her through the first time in the CAVE. And all the torture she was going to put him through. It still pissed her off to think that somehow he managed to turn her on with his kisses. She had been celibate way too long.

After two months, he still managed to rattle her when he ordered her to walk into a dark room. Not fear. Anticipation. His body felt so real and hard when she was crushed against him. He’d slowly tip her head back and then bend his down toward hers, taking his time, until every nerve in her body screamed silently for that kiss. He was toying with her. Bastard.

“Hello?” she called out softly. Fine. She didn’t want to be polite anymore. The memory of those first sessions with him still ticked her off. “Just so you know, I didn’t think that last kiss was that fucking great interactively. Next time, don’t freeze my body up and I might show you exactly how to kiss a woman, asshole.”

She turned at the sound of a cough. It was Derek the boy wonder computer wiz. A very embarrassed computer wiz, his face flushed as he looked at everywhere but her.

“Ahem, umm, Miss Roston, can you follow me to the programming room?”

Helen cocked her head. “Cutting short my training today?”

Derek shook his head. “Actually, we’re ready to go to Test Bravo. We’ve finished the program that will enable you to choose an avatar for yourself as well as your monitor. Now we’ll test it after we’ve connected the brain wave simulation program.”

More techie terms to learn. Test Bravo. That meant she’d passed Test Alpha. “Okay, let’s go,” she said, then stopped short. “Wait a minute…did you say for my monitor? Is that the same as my trainer?”

“Yes, ma’am. It’s the same person.”

“And we’re creating an avatar for him?” She understood the term. “I know an avatar is a representation of a user in a shared virtual reality. It’s usually some form of animated entity in web forums or web interactive games, right?”

“Our new program goes beyond that,” Derek said, with a proud smile. “You’ll be amazed at our human simulation software and advanced digital mapping. Everything looks and acts superreal. In any case, you have total control, ma’am.”

Helen smiled widely. “Is that right?” she drawled, and looking up at the goggles, she gleefully rubbed her hands. Test Bravo sounded more fun already.

“You mean I can program the avatar to look like some Greek god if I want to?”

Helen sat back in the chair, crossed her ankles and clasped her hands behind her neck. She laughed, her amusement ringing out in the small room, as she rocked her chair gently. She narrowed her eyes speculatively as she stared at the computer screen, then turned to Derek, who was standing in front of it.

“Yes, ma’am,” he answered, trying to keep his face straight. “Greek god or any deity you have in mind. Your monitor said you choose how you want to see him.”

Helen laughed again. This might be the easiest part of her training. A virtual reality simulator with her own self-designed trainer. After a grueling year of hand-to-hand combat training with handpicked military personnel, she liked the idea of being the one in control again. It wasn’t quite so much fun when a bunch of men were ordering her around and she had to undergo strenuous testing all the time. Not to mention the medics and scientists standing around, constantly poking and prodding her.

“Well, then…let’s modify this hideous male you’ve designed for me, sweetie.”

The programmer’s face flushed pink at her teasing. Clearly he wasn’t used to someone like Helen Roston. He slid a quick glance at her long Lycra-clad legs. “What’s wrong with the model? I thought most women like their men tall, dark and handsome.”

Helen arched a brow in mockery. “Excuse me, but are you telling me I’m like most women?”

“She isn’t. She’s one hot babe who will kill you in a hundred different ways,” a voice mocked back from behind them.

Helen didn’t turn around. “Ha, said the guy with the killer looks.” Flyboy was one of the most handsome men Helen had ever laid eyes on. An awful flirt, too. “How come you didn’t use Flyboy as a model, Derek? I heard he did a VR program for some big project to attract government funding.”

Flyboy came up behind her and Helen felt his hands on the back of her chair. “Sweetheart, why would you need a VR version when you have the real thing right here?”

Helen looked up and grinned. “You know, I can get Derek to make my VR trainer look like you and then I can do all those unmentionable things that you keep promising me.”

Flyboy grinned back and winked. Derek coughed. “I could,” he said in a careful voice, “but really, I think it best if your trainer-avatar is someone you imagine, Miss Roston. It is simulated training, but there’s a real person whose brain waves will be connected to yours, and, it’s not a great idea psychologically to bond with a real person who isn’t real…I mean, you know what I mean….”

His voice trailed off and he shrugged. He opened his mouth to continue but Helen waved him off. “Understood,” she told him and shrugged at Flyboy. “See? Can’t have you as my dream guy either. There’s too much brain wave—” She waved her hand dramatically and added, in a mock British accent, “Brain wave immersion, creating cerebral confusion between reality and illusion.”

Even Derek couldn’t help chuckling at the wry mimicry of the professorial tone of Dr. Hollingsworth, the scientist in charge of Mind Viewer, the thought immersion program. Helen had had to sit through a few of his lectures as he explained what she meant to the program and how the experiments were supposed to work. That was when she’d first met Flyboy. Since he had been in a simulation program recently, he’d joined her a couple of times so he could also answer her questions. She was glad. She understood Flyboy’s easy layman’s description better than Dr. Hollingsworth’s technical language.

Besides, Flyboy was the only one of the infamous nine commandos who had taken the time to get to know her. He had introduced her to other operatives, widening her circle of new friends.

Helen liked him. She hoped the rest of the commandos would accept her as easily as he did.

“I’m heartbroken,” Flyboy said, giving her ponytail a swift tug. “You’ll just have to go out with me and I can make your dreams come true, Hell.”

“Yeah, yeah, okay, let’s get this started.” Helen straightened in her chair and sucked on her forefinger. “First, forget those bulging muscles. I mean, you made him look like some romance model, like what’s-his-name…”

“Fabio,” Derek supplied helpfully.

“Now how is it you come up with his name immediately?” Flyboy countered.

Derek whipped out a paperback. His face was flushed again. “I took this off my sister’s bookshelf. He is Fabio, isn’t he? I thought I did a pretty good job with the digital imaging. I did add some changes, of course.”

“You did use Fabio as a model!” Helen stared at the book cover in amazement. It portrayed a half-naked man with long hair, his muscles impossibly ripped. She looked at the other model on the computer screen. Yup, the likeness was there. Same longish hair and muscle tone. She thought of what had happened to her during that first run-through of CAVE Ultimate. Revenge was going to be so sweet. A wicked grin broke free. “Well, let’s see the goods, Derek. Take his pants off.”

“What?”

“Sheesh, if you’re going to design my trainer’s avatar and he’s to be specifically to my taste, shouldn’t I get to order all the details?”

There was a short silence. Flyboy burst into laughter. He pulled a nearby chair between Helen and Derek. “I want to see this. Let’s check out the junk on Miss Roston’s made-to-order trainer, Derek.”

“I…”

Helen patted the man on the back. He had the look of someone facing torture. “Come on, I promise it’ll be over soon. Let’s start easy. Peel off his pants. And I want him blond, please.”

“What happened to tall, dark and handsome? Or is it because I’m blond?” Flyboy asked.

“Oh, shut up, you. He’s my Greek god, and I want him blond, and much sleeker, with chocolate eyes.”

“Hey, I have blue eyes!”

“Make his eyes chocolate, Derek.”

“Yes, ma’am.” But he was clearly reluctant to give up his “creation.”

“Leaner, not so muscular.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I know you meant well, Derek, adding that fur, but really, not so much chest hair, please.” She suspected that Derek grew up playing too much interactive Dungeons and Dragons on the Internet. The avatar he created was the classic “I kill for food and magic” stereotype she’d seen advertised in game store windows.

“What, you’re going to bury your face in his chest? These are going to be some VR training sessions! Are you sure the powers-that-be want that?” Flyboy asked, laughing.

Helen turned to Derek. “Didn’t they order you to tailor the thing to my taste?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am. The idea for this phase of your training is to simulate the missions before you get your dosage. You need your trainer to talk you through as your body reacts to the drugs and the doctors thought it best to give you a measure of control of his avatar.”

“Uh-huh. Hear that mumbo-jumbo, Flyboy? That means I get to make the guy as sexy as I like, and I demand a blond Greek god with chocolate eyes. For a start.” Helen cracked her knuckles. They were going to play with her mind, anyway, so why not have some fun with it? It was strange, but meeting her so far invisible trainer added a level of excitement that she couldn’t explain. It wasn’t going to be a real meeting, but better than that shadow he’d been using in the CAVE. “Let’s start from the top.”