Lisa Marie Rice - [Ghost Ops] Read online

  Elle had no relatives. Nick knew that. No aunts and uncles, no cousins. It had just been the judge and her. He’d got it that the judge’s illness had separated her from the rest of the world. If she had friends to bolt to, he had no idea who they were. Her laptop was gone. From what he could tell, it was basically the only thing she’d taken with her.

  He had no clue where she was. For all he knew, she was starving in the snow somewhere. That thought was wiped right out of his head, pronto, because it was too painful to even contemplate. But the echo of it remained. One thing for sure—wherever she was, she was hurting.

  So was he.

  He sat all through the night in the nest of bedclothes they’d made, head hanging low, not thinking, just feeling. Twisting his note in his hands.

  Realizing with each painful beat of his heart that Elle Thomason was gone from him forever.

  Chapter 6

  Palo Alto, California

  Ten years later

  The view was muddy, as if under water in a swamp. Men moved quickly, their movements exaggerated, like ants in an anthill that a stick has just stirred. A wailing siren sounded, filling the air.

  She was following one man in particular, not tall but immensely strong, with thick shoulders and a barrel chest, with three red stars on his collar. He was in charge, his body language that of dominance, the body language of those around him that of extreme subservience.

  The man in charge pointed imperiously, but she couldn’t make out at what. There were two doors, side by side, and a huge sign in the middle with two arrows, one pointing right and one pointing left. The writing was strange, a completely foreign alphabet, with words running up and down not left to right.

  The column of soldiers didn’t hesitate. They poured through the right-hand door at a dead run. Disciplined and fast.

  I must follow them, she thought, but the scene was already shifting as she moved past the door and down a white corridor. The men were already at the end of the corridor, in front of a steel door like a bank vault. A screen was to the right. It had odd markings. The commander of the soldiers pulled back his sleeve, punched in numbers on a skin keypad, slapped his palm against the screen.

  Even over the wailing siren the hydraulic hiss of a releasing lock was loud. Two dull clangs and the door started opening slowly outward. There was a massive change in air pressure from the corridor into what lay behind the door. The air behind the door was at a much lower pressure and it was as if a sudden wind pressed against the soldier’s backs, the high-pressure air flowing into the room behind the door.

  She couldn’t feel the difference in air pressure, of course, but the soldier’s uniforms flattened against their backs. One soldier, taken unawares, stumbled.

  The bank vault door continued its smooth progression outward. What lay beyond the door would be visible in a moment or two. She mentally leaned forward, anxious. She’d traveled almost ten thousand miles to see behind that door. It reached midpoint and started swinging to the right, and she could see two huge rails with an electromagnetic engine at the back. The soldiers ran into the room and took up stations around the huge piece of machinery, backs to it, rifles pointed outward. Their leader stepped forward and—

  BLACKNESS

  Deep swirling blackness.

  A sickening rush …

  “—all right?” A tapping of her cheek. “Elle? Elle? Talk to me!”

  She was weak, unable to move. Hands, feet, neck—all unresponsive. Her eyes fluttered open to see a pretty face hovering anxiously over her.

  “Elle? Can you hear me?”

  “Yes.” It came out an unintelligible croak. She coughed. “I can hear you.” The features of the anxious face were familiar, they worked together, her best friend— “Sophie.” Sophie’s face smoothed out instantly, the lines of anxiety disappearing.

  “Wow, you scared me. We couldn’t get you to wake up.” Sophie looked around, tapped on the counter to connect her to the adjoining room where the control panels were. “Dr. Connolly’s awake. Did the fMRI show a change of status?”

  A disembodied voice answered. “Yes. Subdural involvement. Parahippocampal gyrus lit up like a Christmas tree.”

  “Thanks, Rahjiv. Save the data and we’ll collate with the other data tomorrow. I think we can wrap this up for today. You guys can go home.”

  “What—” Elle’s mouth was so dry she had trouble articulating. “What time is it?”

  “Seven thirty, P.M. You’ve been out for almost six hours.”

  Elle closed her eyes, trying to absorb that information. Six hours outside her body. This was the third controlled experiment of an out-of-body experience. This time with specific coordinates. She’d gone far away and it had taken her a long time to get there and a long time to get back.

  It was all coming back. The injection of SL-61, an experimental drug to enhance psychic abilities. She’d been hooked up to blood monitors, to an EEG, EKG, and a mini functional-MRI. And she was restrained. Before she could think to resent them, fight them, the wrist, ankle, and neck restraints were released with a loud click.

  Firm hands supported her back and she fought the dizziness as she sat up. Disorientation, nausea—they were part of the mix. The price to be paid.

  “What are the—“ Elle’s tongue was too thick to complete the words. Sophie held her head and brought a glass of water to her mouth. Ice cold water, going down like a dream. “What are the readouts saying?”

  “Brain activity massive. But your body went into lockdown. BP 80 over 60, heart rate 60, temperature 96 degrees. No change whatsoever for the six hours.” Sophie’s deep blue eyes, warm and sharp, examined her carefully, the anxiety back. “We were really worried.”

  Six hours. Wow. Elle’s recorded journeys so far—to San Francisco and to Boston—had taken just a few hours. And she’d never felt as wiped out as she did now. “That new iteration of SL is powerful.”

  Sophie blew out a breath. “We need to tweak it. Not everybody would react as well as you have.”

  They were working on ground-breaking research. A young intern on the team joked about working on a project that would win the Nobel in twenty years. No one had laughed.

  Elle and Sophie had both earned their PhDs from Stanford—Elle in neurobiology and Sophie in virology—with dissertations that formed the backbone of the Delphi Project. It was run by a small specialized lab called Corona Labs, funded by a major pharmaceutical corporation, Arka Pharmaceuticals, which owned a majority share.

  Sophie came from a wealthy family, but Arka had paid for Elle’s studies from her junior year on. To pay back her scholarships, she undertook to work for Arka for four years.

  The work was fascinating and no hardship, except for the head of the project and CEO of Arka, Dr. Charles Lee. He took a personal interest in the study they were conducting. Very personal. Though he worked at the Arka Pharmaceutical Corporation headquarters in the Financial District of San Francisco, these past few weeks saw him here at the research lab in Palo Alto more often than not.

  His interest was keen, almost feverish, and he was pushing for them to keep a pace that was almost unscientific. Sophie had several times gently suggested that “given the controversial nature” of the study, progress should be made step by step, making sure that they were on solid ground before going forward.

  They were investigating what used to be known as ESP or paranormal abilities, though the field was now being folded into general neuroscience. Some of their data was irrefutable, but science progressed slowly and there were always those whose entire careers were spent in one paradigm and would fight to the death before admitting that another paradigm could apply.

  Elle had tried to recuse herself when an fMRI showed that she had the same enhanced part of her brain that the other test subjects had, but Lee would have none of it. He wanted her as part of the protocol and part of the scientific team at the same time. And then, she and Sophie had found out that a number of the researchers had similar fMRIs.

>   Elle knew that she was jeopardizing her scientific reputation, but she wasn’t unhappy at playing both roles. For the first time in her life, she was beginning to suspect that her Dreams were true out-of-body experiences and not some horrible pathological form of subconscious escape.

  That she could think of them as journeys and not as dream craziness was a huge step forward. This had been the subject of her doctoral dissertation, funded entirely by Arka. She’d been very lucky at Stanford in finding a professor who didn’t chuck her out for harboring dangerously lunatic ideas.

  And then, another miracle in the form of the brand-new Department of Psychic Sciences at Stanford. It was predicated on the existence of extrasensory perceptions, studied at a neuronal cell level, and had been established thanks to a huge grant by Arka.

  Elle swung her legs over the side of the cot, carefully planting her feet on the ground and testing whether her legs would carry her weight. She’d nearly given herself a concussion at the last test, trying to stand up and then dropping straight to the floor.

  Her out-of-body experiences took an enormous amount of energy. The enzymes in her body showed that it was the equivalent of running a marathon. In one test she’d actually lost half a kilo.

  She tried to stand up but her legs wouldn’t hold her just yet. Sophie tried and failed to keep scientific detachment in her voice. She glanced down at her tablet, then back up. “Well?” She cleared her throat, bit her lips. “Did you do it? Did you get there?”

  This was the longest trip in Elle’s experience, the longest trip in recorded projection history. Halfway around the world, to a specific point Elle had never seen, and could hardly imagine. Merely on the basis of GPS coordinates and a Keyhole 15 photograph of a complex that was mostly underground.

  “I did,” Elle answered softly. She waggled her head left then right, feeling tendons pop. Coming back was always hard. Much harder this time, considering where she’d gone.

  “Yes!” Sophie beamed and held her fist up for a fist bump. Then sobered, looking around uneasily. Every word was being recorded. “Honey, protocol says that I need to debrief you immediately, but you’re looking pale. Maybe we could do this tomorrow?”

  “No.” As long as she was sitting, Elle could do this. She wanted to stick to the protocol as much as possible. Besides, she needed to get something out. Sophie would understand.

  Elle closed her eyes, thought back. Unlike dreams, her Dreams didn’t recede quickly into forgetfulness. Mostly they were images and they lingered. “Dark,” she said softly. “So it must have been night. Everything was strange and different. The shapes of things, the alphabet.”

  “The one you studied?”

  Elle nodded. “Mongolian.” She shivered. Her soul or whatever part of her traveled had gone far, far away. She felt lost, disoriented. Completely outside herself. The weakness in her legs was bad enough, but there was also a hollowness inside her chest, as if her internal organs had disappeared.

  The disorientation was complete. It hurt to move, but still she lifted her head, trying to focus on her surroundings. As she looked around, everything seemed new. A lab she’d worked in every single day for the past year looked odd, foreign. Different and slightly unreal.

  Elle closed her eyes as the room started to revolve, opening them when she heard Sophie’s voice.

  The protocol called for at least two researchers to be present during debriefing, but they were short-handed because three researchers hadn’t shown up.

  “And you were—”

  “In a facility. A military facility. It looked like a research station.” In reporting, she started to come back into herself, the world filling out, becoming a little more real. “I saw the symbol of the Mongolian Defense Force—their army. And there were the red-and-blue flags of the Mongolian Republic on flagpoles.”

  Sophie was tapping on her tablet. “Okay. Were you following a particular person?”

  “Yes. A very broad-shouldered man, of medium height. In a gray and green military uniform. He had three stars on his collar.”

  “We’ll look that up,” Sophie murmured.

  “Well, he was obviously a commanding officer. He led his men to an attack on the facility. They came in through a river or a deep sewer. I couldn’t tell. When the alarm sounded they ran through a lab. But they didn’t stay in the lab; they ran out a door on the other side, then made straight for an armored door. They must have been testing hazardous material behind the door because the lab had negative pressure. The soldier’s uniforms flattened against their backs as air rushed in. The man had the code. When it opened, he waited while his men rushed in. There must have been twenty soldiers with him. When everyone was in, he closed the door.”

  “Did you see what was behind the door?” Sophie asked.

  “Oh yes.” Elle’s voice was soft. “A huge piece of machinery. A rail gun. It looked like it might actually be functional.”

  Sophie’s mouth made an O. “A rail gun,” she repeated slowly and Elle nodded.

  Rail guns were the holy grail of military research everywhere. They were electrostatically charged rails that could hurl projectiles at up to seven thousand miles an hour. It had very few moving parts and, run by electricity, it eliminated explosives, thus rendering it invulnerable to enemy detection.

  The idea of rail guns had been around for over a hundred years. It was an amazingly complex piece of machinery. The first power to develop one would have a powerful weapon that could launch devastating attacks thousands of kilometers away and yet remain undetected.

  Elle met Sophie’s eyes. Both of them had suspected for some time that the research they were carrying out was for military purposes. They’d set up a secure e-mail system to communicate to each other their suspicions. This was more or less confirmation of that.

  Elle had been sent on a military reconnaissance.

  It was clear to both that they had to pretend they didn’t understand the significance of what Elle had seen. They had to get away and discuss this privately.

  Elle yawned massively, fists thrust in the air. “Sorry,” she said, a sheepish smile on her face. “Really tired.”

  “What do you need?” Sophie put a hand to her shoulder. Elle was usually famished and thirsty when she came back from a trip of a couple of hours. Now she’d been gone six.

  “As usual, I’m hungry and thirsty,” Elle said as cover. Food and drink was the last thing she wanted. “And I want to go home. Rest.”

  “Sure. I’ll go get you some more water.”

  Elle wasn’t hungry or thirsty, she was depleted. And she had to go to the bathroom. She took care of her physical needs in the small bathroom adjoining the lab, washed her face, then looked at herself in the mirror.

  She looked exhausted, as if she’d run a marathon after a couple of sleepless nights. Her skin, naturally pale, was ice white, lips faintly blue. The harsh overhead light played tricks on her face, turning her light blue eyes the palest of hues. The mirror showed a ghost, even her eyes drained of color.

  Was it worth it?

  Yes.

  Probably.

  Maybe.

  She was learning to direct her Dreams now, and not be directed by them. Overwhelmed by them. It was why she’d chosen neuroscience—to understand. And as much as she considered herself a dispassionate scientist, a woman driven by a thirst for knowledge, she knew deep down why she was so driven.

  To exorcise Nick.

  Oh. Good. There was just the faintest prick to her heart when she thought of him, not the massive jolt that thinking about him had caused over these long years since he’d abandoned her.

  No, no. Not abandoned her. Abandoning something meant an implicit tie of responsibility, which Nick hadn’t had. Hadn’t in any way felt. Had made pains to avoid. So he hadn’t abandoned her, he’d just left to continue on with his life.

  Of which she had no idea, thank God.

  Since that horrible day in Lawrence, ten years ago, her Dreams of him had been few and far be
tween and mere flashes, not watching his life, as it had been before. Now she mainly dreamed about him, not Dreamed. And even those were now rare.

  Even obsessives lose sight of an obsession when there was nothing to feed it, she supposed. She scrubbed all thoughts of him from her head as much as she could during the day. And her life had kept her so busy it hadn’t been that hard. He invaded her head at night, though, in her dreams. There, big as life. So much a part of her mental landscape that much as she tried not to, every other man was measured against his yardstick, coming up short.

  Ten years.

  She’d accomplished so much since she walked out the door of her home that freezing winter evening so long ago. It seemed she had used up all her bad luck, and it was finally time for the good. On the long bus trip to the coast, she sat next to an elderly African-American lady, Cora, and they became friends. Elle didn’t say what had happened, but Cora understood very well that she was running from something. Cora didn’t ask and Elle didn’t tell.

  When they arrived at the bus station in the Castro, Cora’s son Darryl was waiting for them. Cora demanded that Darryl give her a job and the use of a room right above the bar-restaurant Darryl ran in the Tenderloin. Elle spent the next five years bartending and working for Darryl. After the first week, he gave her a raise, saying he’d never met a harder worker.

  Well, hard work was what Elle did. She’d done it for free before and being paid for it felt like a bonus.

  Darryl hadn’t always been a model citizen and once he understood she had no real ID, he got to work with his contacts in the underground and soon she had legitimate ID as Elle Connolly, California resident.

  She enrolled as a part-time student in City College and aced all the courses, not realizing how incredibly starved she’d been of intellectual stimulation. By the time she got her master’s in biology, she had three offers of a full scholarship to Stanford. Darryl always said that he was glad his momma lived long enough to see her graduate. Cora had been there, beaming in her wheelchair at the graduation ceremony.