Chapter 16
“Danny, do you hear me?” There was a voice in my skull, so loud I couldn’t ignore it.
“Yes,” I said and the voice quieted. I couldn’t think, I was floating somewhere, no light, no reference point, except for my own frantic heartbeat and the voice. I thought I should know it, fear raced through me and the only thing I could remember was my Uncle Townsley, telling me to make a room for myself, an impregnable vault.
Instead, I reached out. Screaming, searching for a mind, any mind where I could still be a part of the living world and the only thing I could even touch was so alien that I fell back sobbing in terror for the mind of a roach could not shelter me. Wherever I was, no other animals were close enough to enter their minds.
Brick by brick I built it, laying one atop the other against the titanium shell of girders, surrounded by nuclear bombproof concrete buried a hundred feet in the ground. I built the door of titanium and steel balanced on a ball bearing hinge so only my finger’s touch could open it. When I turned the key in the lock, I was inside, sitting in the room with my memories, where no one could touch or hurt me. I kept an image of my Dad in front of me and it brought me courage.
*****
The head scientist in charge of the project was a PhD at the age of twenty-two, his specialty was brain wave phenomenon and mind altering techniques grossly called brainwashing, but the techniques had come light years from the Manchurian Candidate days. His name was Everett Hawthorne, his fellow researcher Doctor Marian Cohen, herself a neurologist and psychologist.
Their subject was three days in the SDPT, (sensory deprivation tank) when the brain monitor flat-lined, to a chorus of alarms.
“It’s too soon,” he gaped. “Three days is too soon for the core to disintegrate. We have to get him out, now.”
Running for the room at the end of the corridor, they had the tank opened and drained in seconds and hauled the boy out onto the floor. He was naked, dripping with saline, leads attached all over his bald skull, pulse points, heart and groin so that he looked like one of the characters from the Terminal Man.
His brain waves were flat, his heart in de-fib as a crash team joined the two. As they started CPR and established a heartbeat on the first try, picked up the boy and rushed him into the OR where they hooked him onto the cardiac monitors, IVs and drugs to bring him up but not quite aware. Pain meds for the aches that surely he would feel from both rib cracking CPR and cardiac stimulants.
“Can you hear me, Danny?” Doctor Hawthorne asked as he flicked a penlight into the dual colored eyes.
“There is no Danny,” the eerie little voice returned.
Cohen murmured, “alpha waves are flat, feedback is completely different from baseline, Everett.”
“He broke in three days? That’s not normal,” he protested. “The super id is usually too entrenched by age 10 to reprogram that quickly.”
“He’s a kid, Ev. Your youngest subject was twenty-two and he took 6 ½ days. Truth is, you don’t know how age plays a part in the dis-associative stage.”
“Yeah, well, I never had one flat line on the cardiac, either,” he returned. “Do we even have a profile set up?”
“I’ve been working on it. They want someone they can easily control and use as an agent, someone quiet, non-obtrusive and capable of blending in.”
“How complete is it?”
“It’s not, it is bare-bones. I have a computer fleshing it out.”
“It’d better be done soon, I don’t want to leave him blank for too long, it makes it harder to download the new personality.”
“You have a name?”
“Daniel. I want to keep as close to his real name for the programming success.”
“Daniel, it is.”
The boy lay there with absolutely no reaction on his face, no emotion, no personality.
“What about his eyes,” she asked. “They’re unique and memorable.”
“We haven’t succeeded in changing eye color or replacement eyes yet, Marian. Best we can do with them are contacts. Or remove the eye itself.”
She shook her head. “A kid missing an eye is also memorable. Besides, we don’t know how that will affect his talent.”
He fiddled with the lines and watched the monitors, pleased with the strengthening heartbeat and brain waves.
“How are you feeling, Danny?”
“Don’t know,” the flat voice said. “There is no ‘I’.”
“Your name is Daniel. Daniel Atkinson.”
“Okay. My name is Daniel Atkinson,” the boy closed his eyes and his breathing slowed as his body relaxed.
“Keep an eye on him, Marian. I’m going to report to the Director, and let him know we are ready to start the next stage.”
“You expect any more setbacks?”
He shuddered. “I hope not. Be a shame to lose this one. First case of real psychic ability I’ve been able to document.”
*****
Mitchell Gaines wasn’t in his office, the labs in the research division of HS, but in the backseat of a black Denali sandwiched between two big men in dark suits, sunglasses and shoulder holsters. They had flashed FBI credentials, but he knew most of the special agents in the area, and he didn’t recognize either of them or the driver. He suspected they were either NSA or NIA.
“Where we headed?” Gaines asked expecting no answer.
“Director wants to see you,” goon number one on his left answered.
“Director Walters?” He named the present head of the FBI. Neither man replied. “Couldn’t we do this with a phone call?”
“The Director will answer your questions.”
The drive was over an hour, heading out of the city towards the Blue Ridge Parkway and the complex he knew to be a government facility called Spook-Land. He was escorted inside the sprawling high-tech security to an inner office reached by key cards, hand scanners and retinal readers. Against the wall was a chair that cost more than a luxury car behind a desk worth a new Mercedes, and the man who entered the black on chrome office through the rear door was of medium height, wore a Colonel’s uniform. He was instantly recognizable as Colonel Mathias Washington Pierce. He stared at Gaines before he sat down.
“Colonel.”
“Gaines, what’s going on at HS and in their R&D labs?”
Gaines spread his hands. “How would I know? I do office work.”
“You’re working on something called the ‘Ed Project’ with a forty million dollar budget. What is it and what’s it got to do with President Rickover’s assassination attempt, Senator De Rosier son’s kidnap and murder?”
“What makes you think I know anything about it?”
The Director threw memos and reports down on the desktop with Gaines name on the requests for a detailed search of De Rosier’s background, the case report on the assassination attempt and medical records of the child, Dantan. All with Gaines’ clearances and signatures. He said mildly, “we are the NSA, Gaines. We’ve been around a hell of a lot longer than Homeland Security.”
“So, what do you want?”
“I want to know what the ‘Ed Project’ is.”
Gaines explained and the Colonel listened without any sign of skepticism or disbelief. When the HS agent was done, the colonel nodded once. Said, “Want to continue on the project?”
“Of course, sir.”
“You’ve a choice, Gaines. Work for me or be pushed out.”
“Pushed out? What do you mean?”
He looked at his watch. “As of twenty minutes ago, a black ops team hit your R&D department. They will remove the subject, the doctors, all computer data and files on this ‘Ed Project’ transporting everything to a secure location of my choosing. I will be in charge of the ‘Chameleon Project’. There will be a substantial increase in pay and security clearance. If you come on board.”
“Did you make the same offer to the doctors?”
The Colonel shrugged, his gray eyes lacking any sign of remorse or compassion. They were as cold as a gun barrel. “They are no longer with the project. They resigned due to their objections.”
“And the Director, Oliver Sustain? What do I tell him about my change of employment?”
“The two doctors, Cohen and Hawthorne e-mailed the Director with news of the subject’s death. It seems the boy coded. Heart failure. CPR cardiac shock was administered with no results. Subject was incinerated after a thorough autopsy.
“The computers and cameras will back up the scenario. Both scientists perished in a lab fire. It should just be hitting the news in the next half hour.”
“Was I in this lab fire?” Gaines asked grimly.
“No. You were asked to report to the Director’s office to confirm the boy’s death and was involved in a minor car accident where you sustained a minor concussion and a broken arm. You’re taken to Walter Reed, treated and released. Are now officially on leave, pending disability where you will resign with a full pension and move to Dallas, Texas.”
“Dallas? Why Dallas?”
“Because, according to our expert brain designers, the boy is fourteen and requires at least four years to become mature enough to activate. Dallas is not a city where either you, the Senator or any of the family’s circle had contact.
“How do you feel about kids?”
“Why?”
“It’s been determined that it would be preferable for the child to be raised with an adoptive family, in a normal social structure. We don’t want him placed just anywhere. You’re married, in a stable relationship and your wife wants kids. She can’t have any.”
“How do you know that?” Gaines snapped angrily.
The Colonel quirked an eyebrow. “We know everything about you, Mitchell, including your application to join us after 9/11.”
“You turned me down,” Mitchell Gaines pointed out.
“As did the Secret Service and the FBI. On my say so. I wanted you sufficiently hungry to be my man.”
“And I am now?”
“I can give you the man responsible for your brother’s death, Mitchell. With this… project, we can track them down and dispose of him and his cohorts.”
“You think this kid reads minds, Colonel? He doesn’t. He can’t get into the Kremlin or Al Qaeda headquarters or the Pentagon. You can’t make a super spy out of him. He’s not one of those guys like Men Who Stare at Goats.”
“I know what he is, Gaines,” the Colonel’s eyes burned hot as molten steel. “I know exactly what he is. I knew his uncle, Townsley Hutton. Went to school together. I knew Evangeline, too.” He turned to the back wall, spoke over his shoulder. “You’ll be airlifted straight to a safe house somewhere in the Midwest until the boy stabilizes and is ready to meet you in Dallas. We’ll take care of the details, your house, and your wife.” His eyes flickered as the door behind Gaines opened, and he turned around to see a man in a white lab coat, stick him in the neck. He collapsed without a sound.
The Colonel said tersely, “Minor concussion, broken arm, but don’t damage it permanently. He needs to be able to shoot and make the physicals.”
“Complete memory traces?” The white coated professional queried.
“Career move after the car accident. Wife pushing for less hazardous duty, job at high tech computer consulting, General Fiber-dynamics. Make him a Systems Analyst Grade 4. He has a degree in robotics and computer science.”
“On the project?”
“Yes. He’ll be the subject’s adoptive father.”
The lab tech looked down at the unconscious agent. “Big guy. He FBI?”
“HS. Make sure he’s ready by Friday. Rickover is doing a memorial for the Senator’s son on TV and pleading for help to solve the murder. I have to be there in Washington, and I want all trace of this gone before then.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll need a team to transport him.”
The Colonel waved a hand. “Get what you need. Just don’t scratch the furniture.”