I gazed at the man asleep in bed with me. I couldn’t see his face, but from behind, he looked good. He was strong, tanned, and sexy. Unfortunately, I had no idea who he was or how I had wound up there. Then I looked at my body. We were both naked and my milky-white, slim body, with silky skin, was pressed against his back, making my breasts look really big. Problem was, my skin is golden-honey, not pale, and my bra size is a 32A.
Then I remembered. The skin wasn’t mine. It was Mary’s, and she was in bed with Vladimir. But how did that happen? How did I end up sleeping there? I probed Mary’s thoughts, and there were none that I could find. I mentally nudged her into awareness—don’t ask me how it’s done, I can’t explain it if you haven’t experienced it yourself—but nothing doing. I decided to break contact and just leave her to sleep it off, but to my surprise, I didn’t jump back into my own head as always. Instead, I felt rather grounded, so to speak, bound to Mary’s body. I recalled being yanked back into my body by the pain in Liv’s knee, when she fell down on that hill, so I pinched Mary’s arm as hard as I could, but nothing happened.
I looked at the clock beside the bed. The time was five-thirty a.m., so I still had a little time to figure out what was going on before meetings resumed. My head buzzed, and I felt nauseous and dizzy. I sat up cautiously and in doing so I apparently woke Vladimir up, because he jumped out of bed and started dressing hastily.
“That … what you gave me … was too potent,” he mumbled. “I should have left. They can’t know I was here.” He was puffing as he spoke while he dressed. “I’m going now,” he concluded, as soon as he was fully dressed.
All I could do was nod, which I did, and he left hurriedly, without looking back. I really didn’t care what he was doing or where he was going. What bothered me was something else: why was I stuck in Mary’s body? Why wasn’t she alert and in control? What had happened to get me to this point?
I sat still, trying hard to remember, and it all came back to me—Vladimir coming over, Mary’s plan to get the information she needed from him, to prove that he was really ready to turn, and how the plan had gone bad. I replayed the evening in my head. It had begun with Vladimir kissing and feeling Mary up, which, I’m ashamed to say, I enjoyed so much that for a while I stopped reading Mary’s thoughts and concentrated on feeling her body as it reacted to Vlad’s touch. But when Vlad stopped for a moment, to pour himself a vodka, I pulled myself together and got back to work. I’ll make him take the coke mixed with the scopolamine derivative as soon as I can. Before sex, I think. I need to know if he’s sincere, and if I can trust him to work with us.
I know that scopolamine is considered a “truth drug,” although mixing it with coke sounded dumb to me, but what do I know. Anyway, that proved that Mary’s heart was in the right place. She was a patriot all right and had a nice plan of her own to reach her goal. She was also going to “sacrifice herself” and have repeat sex with this amazing man. She wouldn’t get any pity from me. I should have left her there, since I already had the answer that I needed to bring back, but I admit that I wanted to hang around for a while longer and enjoy the party a bit. Stupid of me, but I still had to plan what to do with my own troubles, and I was in no hurry to report that everything was good with our Mary.
“I brought you good stuff, this time, the kind that you don’t get at home,” Mary said, after Vlad finished his vodka, which he gulped down like you and I drink water.
She pulled a small plastic bag containing white powder from a trolley marked “Diplomatic Baggage” and showed it to Vlad.
“Wow!” said Vlad. “Let’s party!”
He took the plastic bag and placed it on a table. He then approached Mary and started to undress her. If my eyes weren’t closed already, I would have had to shut them tight, and it was all I could do to keep my mouth shut and avoid making noises that would bring the doctor to my room, in fear that I was sick or something. Mary didn’t have my constraints and was louder than I would have expected.
“Wait!” Mary said after a while, panting. “Take it. It will be great!” she said, picking up the drug’s plastic bag and dangling it before Vlad’s eyes.
Vlad emptied the contents on the coffee table, made it into lines with the room key card, and snorted a good portion with a straw he had taken from the bar.
“All right. Here’s for you,” he said.
“I don’t need it. I have as much as I want, back home. I brought it all for you,” said Mary.
Shit, she thought, what do I do if he insists?
“Nonsense. Go ahead. Let’s party.”
Mary hesitated for only a second before snorting the remaining strand—a true patriot, as I said. As soon as all the drug was gone, Vlad took her up, dropped her on the bed, and the things he did to her, I’m too shy to tell. I should have left right then, or at least when I started to feel the effects of the drug that ran through Mary’s brain, but it was hard to up and go, right in the middle of what we were doing … well, what Mary and Vlad were doing. By then the “I” and “she” had become a bit mixed up, and at times I wasn’t completely sure who I was. What’s more, I no longer cared. So I hung on, and at some point Mary passed out, and apparently I passed out with her, and that’s all I remember.
So now what? I sat on the bed, trying to think rationally in spite of the nausea that kept burning in my throat. I drank water from the bottle on Mary’s nightstand, and it calmed the burning a little. I obviously had to break contact with Mary, and then I’d be able to figure out what to do next. I had no idea if words that Vlad had whispered in Mary’s ears, half of which I wouldn’t have understood even without the drug that was screwing up my brain, were the proof she needed, and I didn’t care. That wasn’t my job. I lay down on the bed again, closed my eyes and thought of my safe place, with the beautiful lake and serene waters. My safety switch out of telepathic connection. I imagined myself in a wooden boat, gently lulled by the lake waters, and … nothing!
I opened my eyes, and I was still in the hotel room, in Mary’s body. For the first time, I hadn’t been able to break contact with the host body. Apparently, Mary’s brain only worked enough to run very basic functions such as breath and blood circulation, but all other areas had been shut down, perhaps indefinitely. I felt trapped. The time was almost six a.m., and soon enough someone would come for me, back at the chalet, or for Mary, here at the hotel. I couldn’t stay there, and I couldn’t leave my body at the mercy of Doctor Alexander.
There was only one thing that I could do: as long as I was forced to be Mary, I had to stop feeling sorry for myself and use her to fix this mess. I got up and went to look at Mary’s wardrobe, which looked like a corporate display—not rugs I would have put on myself to win a bet. I picked one of the less ghastly and more sportive outfits I found, dressed quickly, drank more water, and left the room. Luckily, I didn’t meet anybody on my way down and managed to slip out by a side door that led from the hotel’s evening room to its garden. I had taken Mary’s purse with me, and it contained a fat roll of Swiss francs, so at least I was in funds. A quarter of a mile up the main street I found a taxi stop and negotiated a ride to Flims with an English-speaking driver. What I would do when I got there I had no clue, but I had to be in a position to pull myself out of the hole into which I had dug my telepathic brain.