I won’t bore you with the details of the tale of how we managed to smuggle Vlad out of Switzerland and to take us all back home … or sort of, since we ended up in a secluded farm in a rural area that looked like Chernobyl the day after. As Tom had said, Vlad was drugged but eventually came to, luckily just as we were preparing to carry him to the airplane, so he walked it. He was confused and spoke sparingly. His speech was hesitant, and he didn’t act at all like the man I had come to know from the night he had spent with Mary. Perhaps he needed more time to get the drug out of his system.
But that came later. We spent the second night after Liv joined us, catching up in the chalet. I felt rested enough by then to tell my tale all over again from the beginning and to answer questions, so by the end of that evening, everybody was on the same page. By midnight, we tired of each other’s company, and everybody went to his or her room. At one point, I suggested bringing poor Tom, who was sleeping on the couch, in with us, as a token of my appreciation for everything he had done for me, but I read Liv’s mind and saw that she wasn’t liking the idea, so I dropped it. Thanking Tom would have to wait.
Mary was a miracle worker. During the day and a half that we spent in her safe house, she managed to come up with a cover story to tell through her “secretary,” who smoothed out her disappearance from the Davos talks. She also managed to arrange for a private flight from Zurich, which we took early in the morning of the second day, to a destination in the Balkans that I am not at liberty to disclose. Through her contacts, she produced in a matter of hours fake papers for all of us to take along. The only beef I had was about the name she had come up with for my fake passport: Annabelle. Do I look like an “Annabelle” to you? That, and the takeaway food that we had to eat, although the strudel that Tom brought back with the pizza and other nondescript stuff, was mighty tasty.
On arrival, Vlad was taken by a couple of men in black coats and hats to an undisclosed location, after a whispered farewell from Mary, and the rest of us headed for a minivan parked at the airport. A man who looked like a shoeshine had approached Mary and handed the keys to the minivan to her.
Getting back felt great. Here I wouldn’t have to deal with Victors, Uglies, and mixed unidentified goons, who wanted God knew what. I still had to survive Quinn, though, and I didn’t forget that even for a second. You forget, you’re dead—that’s what they had taught us in basic training.
Tom drove as directed by Mary, who sat in the front with him, while Liv and I used the trip to catch up on our sleep. I had been too worried to be able to sleep on the last flight, and that shows you how hard all this business had got to me. I’m normally asleep well before the safety movie is turned on. I woke up when Tom hit a bump in the road and sat up. Outside was the wilderness, or the closest thing to it. We were driving along an unpaved road, and I had to close the window to keep the dust out. Mercifully, after a couple of miles, we arrived at our destination. I don’t know if you have ever seen a movie in which a serial killer hides in an abandoned farm away from civilization, but I did, and that’s the picture that came to my mind when I saw where the road had taken us. We got out of the minivan and piled onto the porch, waiting for enlightenment from Mary as to what was coming next.
“Welcome to our temporary home from home,” she said, with a crooked smile. Mary didn’t have a knack for jokes. “It’s not as bad as it looks, and inside it’s actually pretty comfortable, with air conditioning, TV, and all that. Seeing that we don’t have any baggage, you’ll be able to organize quickly. Pick any room you like; they’re all the same.”
She was right that all rooms were the same, and they all stunk the same. A squeaky bed and a small chest of drawers, with a night lamp that wasn’t in the mood for lighting more than one square foot, were all the room had to offer. I dropped the little bag with my documents, real and fake, which was my only belonging. It bounced on the bed, and I watched it bounce, worrying where a change of clothes would come from. Liv had taken the room next to mine, and she joined me in the living room, where we waited for Mary to tell us what we were supposed to do here. Mary wasn’t talking shop, but to our delight she took us to a large walk-in closet, with drawers full of underwear and with assorted farmer-looking clothes hanging. I took a set that looked decent back to my room. The kitchen was furnished with all kinds of food, and whatever else happened to us, we wouldn’t starve. Tom impressed us with his prowess at the skillet, which produced large omelets for everybody.
We had just settled down in that God-forsaken farm, when a faraway column of dust announced the approach of a car. I wasn’t at all surprised to see ESA15 step out of it. Mary went out to greet him, and I waited on the porch. I had a bone to pick with him, about letting me go into the machine that he knew would eventually fry my brain, so I surprised myself by realizing that I wasn’t looking forward to annoying him. After all, he had gone out of his way to help me, and sending Liv to me had been a kind gesture. So I decided to be civil to him, and when he “Hello, Tessa-ed” me, I responded, “Hi,” as politely as I could manage.
“Good to see you back here in one piece,” he said. “Now we need to make sure that you stay that way.”
“You’ll get no argument from me on that, for a change,” I said.
We all went inside. The farm had a spacious living room with rustic furniture, and we sat in a circle. The director acknowledged Tom and Liv with a nod, took the cup of coffee that Mary handed him, and then turned to me, speaking in his customary toneless, low voice.
“You must be wondering what is going on, after everything you have seen,” he said. “I’m sure that you have a question or two.”
“Yeah, sure. Knowing that the government is out there, looking for me with intent to kill, I do have a few questions in mind.”
“I appreciate the reason for your sarcasm, and I don’t blame you, but you’ll understand after I tell you more. Now you all are in this together,” he added, gazing first at Tom and then at Liv, “so you need to hear this as well. Everything you are going to hear is top secret, so keep it in mind, but since it potentially also puts you in danger, you have a right to get the whole picture.”
We all nodded gravely. I had never seen ESA15 look as tense as he did now, which to me left no doubt that we were in deep shit.
“When we told you that you are one of a kind, Tessa, we were lying. There is at least one more who has skills similar to yours. I don’t know if he’s as good as you are, but he’s pretty damn close to that. This would not have happened, had I been as vigilant as I should have, so I take the blame for this entangled situation.”
“Wow, that’s a new one!” I said, still sarcastic.
“Yes, it never happened before. But here’s how this situation developed, and after you have the whole picture, you will agree that it was almost impossible to anticipate. After the long-distance experiment in which you participated failed, we looked for alternatives. During a single week we tested many subjects in the equipment—what you like to call ‘the slipper’—and we did see one or two subjects who developed some telepathic capability, although their ability was limited and did not extend beyond a short distance.”
“So those are obviously not the person you’re talking about,” I pointed out.
“You’re right. They have some innate telepathic ability, and perhaps with time and patience they may become useful, at least at short range, but they will never get even close to your ability. Their limited success, however, told us one thing: it is possible that other persons may develop into full telepaths by exercising powers that they possess but are not aware of having. Someone saw those results and understood the potential, and without my knowing, tested the equipment on himself afterhours. Can you guess who that was?”
“Quinn!” I shouted.
“Right, Quinn. What he didn’t know was that the so-called ‘slipper’ is connected to a range of control systems and data recording, which back up the results that you see in the lab computer, so data are never lost. He deleted the data from the lab computer, but didn’t know about the copy buried deep in the backup system. At one point, I got a red flag alert about the integrity of the lab data from our security system that compares them with the remote backup, so I went to check, and that’s when I found out.”
“But that means that Doctor Alexander is in on it,” I said.
“He knew that Quinn had tested the system but thought that he was just being thorough and wanted to learn personally how the equipment operates, as befits a good manager. He didn’t realize that Quinn himself was developing skills as a result. Alexander is not a bright guy outside the laboratory, in spite of his technical ability.”
“But why would Quinn want me dead?”
“I’m coming to that. Tests that we ran on rats show that exposure to the equipment for long intervals, without periods of rest, causes damage to brain cells. That’s why I made sure to devise tests for you that would require short exposures and would not put you in danger. I got that plan from our medical team, but I didn’t share the reasons for it with Alexander. Somehow I thought it best to keep it my thoughts to myself.”
“That’s because you never share anything with anybody,” I pointed out.
“Perhaps. As we know now—I wasn’t aware of it until Mary here explained it to me—that training plan fortuitously caused some changes in your brain structure, allowing you to function without an external stimulus, but didn’t damage you beyond repair. When the rats were exposed for longer intervals, however, they started to behave differently, even after only two or three experiments. They acted aggressively against other rats or kept away from them. They developed an asocial behavior and, after a while, a psychopathic one. Looking at their brains, it was easy to see that changes had occurred in areas responsible for those behaviors. So you see what that means?”
“Quinn has become a sociopath and psychopath like the rats? He’s being unkind to his co-workers? He wants to kill them?”
“That, and worse. He has disappeared, and with him disappeared the only other portable prototype that Alexander had made and left at the base. That can only mean that he is planning to do something really dangerous.”
“Like taking possession of the president’s body and ruling in his stead? I remember him giving that as a reason to get rid of me.”
“Yes, and that gives away his line of thought, doesn’t it? But he’s done more than that—he has sent a team to dismantle the equipment at the base, so nobody but he can acquire the same ability. And on my way here I got word that an ‘accident’ has happened to Doctor Alexander in Switzerland. He fell down the stairs and broke his neck. He was holding the two sets of portable equipment he had brought to Flims in his hands, so they smashed in the fall. Do you see now?”
“If he manages to kill me as well, he will be unique! He has the only portable copy of the pisspot left. That’s diabolic!”
I paused for a second to see if the news of Doctor Alexander’s death saddened me, but it didn’t, although the reason for it enraged me.
“He must be stopped!” said Mary, who until then had remained silent.
“But how?” I asked. “We don’t know where he is or what he’s up to. Who can stop a ghost?”
“You can,” said Mary.