How Spy I Am (2 page)

If I’d had a stomach
in my current form, it would have clenched at what I discovered. I
willed calm. Search it all out.

I sifted their data
with the finest filter I could create before moving on to the next
server. And the next.

And the next.

By the time my
exhausted consciousness oozed back into the file repository, it was
all I could do to recreate my avatar. When I faded into wavering
existence, Kane reached carefully for my shoulders.

“Stay with me now,” he
encouraged. “Come on, let’s get you out of here.”

“Okay…” I whispered,
concentrating fiercely.

He gathered me up and
guided me to the exit portal, the warm strength of his arm holding
my virtual form together.

My momentary relief at
getting to the portal was erased by the familiar explosion of pain
when I returned my consciousness to my physical body.

“Aaah-God-dammit-sonuva-fucking-
bitch
!” I spat, clutching my
temples.

Kane’s hands gently
pushed mine away to close around my head, and I whimpered gratitude
while his massage eased the worst of the pain.

At last, I slumped
back on the sofa. “Thanks,” I mumbled.

Kane stooped to look
into my face as I sprawled limply. “Are you all right?”

“Fine. Thanks. It just
hurts more when I’m tired.” I wedged myself into a corner of the
couch in an approximately upright position. “God. Shit.” I ran a
hand over my still-aching face.

“What?” Kane demanded.
“What did you find?”

I blew out a long
sigh. “Lots of chatter about me, unfortunately. They’re not
positive I’m alive, but they’re sure as hell stirred up about
finding me if I am.”

He eyed me, looking
concerned. “You’re shaking. Do you need to eat?”

“Yeah.” I consulted my
watch. “I know it’s only ten o’clock, but if I can’t have sleep, I
have to have food.”

I hauled myself up off
the couch and made for the lunchroom before I had to explain I’d
spent most of the previous night jerking awake from screaming
nightmares of captivity and torture.

After wolfing down a
cereal bar, I sank onto the sofa with a sigh and stepped back into
the network. Seated again in the network’s virtual file room, I
reached for Kane’s hand. “Okay, brace yourself for a couple more
exciting hours of sitting around.”

Kane gave my hand a
sympathetic squeeze. “I know how tedious this seems, but it’s
important. This kind of clandestine work is usually 99% boredom and
1% sheer panic.”

“I know, it’s just
that we never seem to get anywhere. Every day it’s more meaningless
file decryptions and more sneaking around in networks to cover my
ass.”

Kane chuckled. “You’re
our most valuable asset. It’s definitely worth the effort to cover
your ass.”

I sighed. “I just wish
I wasn’t the only person who could use this stupid key. You need a
trained agent, not a dumb civilian bookkeeper.”

“Aydan, you’re doing
amazing work. Nobody could do better.” He eyed me seriously. “And
those decryptions aren’t meaningless. We’ve managed to cripple some
very nasty operations in the past couple of months, thanks to your
work.”

I gave him a smile,
feeling a little better. “Our work.”

He returned the smile,
and I faded invisibly into the data stream.

My surveillance
finally complete, I eased out of the last of Fuzzy Bunny’s servers
a couple of hours later and slid into the public data stream. I was
just turning for home when a wave of dizziness shook me.

I tumbled in a riptide
of data, my essence shredding and scrambling despite my frenzied
attempts to hold it together. I knew my consciousness could neither
speak nor breathe, but panic seized me when my screams strangled in
my non-existent throat. Trapped in silent invisibility, my bodiless
struggle churned the surrounding data stream into chaos.

Kane! Where was my
anchor?

A few frantic seconds
later, I identified the faint sensation of his distant grip. I
concentrated all my will into a desperate surge, snapping back into
my avatar with such force I tumbled off my virtual chair, dragging
Kane onto the floor with me.

I lay gasping and
shivering, both hands clenched around his. He jerked to his knees
beside me, his gun already in his free hand.

“What?” he snapped,
his gaze scouring the void around us.

“Out,” I begged, my
voice a thin quaver of pure terror. “Get me out!”

He didn’t waste time
on speech or subtlety. Seconds later, I was jouncing over his
shoulders in a fireman’s carry while he ran flat-out for the
portal.

Spider’s frantic voice
sliced through the sim. “Slow down! She can’t go through the portal
fast!”

Kane skidded to a halt
in front of it and dropped my feet to the ground, holding me up
when my knees tried to collapse. I stepped slowly out of the
network.

“Aaaah! Golly jeepers
whiz, son of a sea monkey! That hurts!” I clenched my hands around
the stabbing agony in my real-world temples and doubled over. “Holy
fudge! What
was
that?”

Silence greeted my
outburst and I straightened slowly, squinting through the pain.
Spider, Smith, and Kane were all eyeing me, frowning.

I felt slow heat
spreading up my cheeks. “Please excuse my language. I just have an
awful pain in my head. Does anyone have some ibuprofen?”

Spider shot a worried
glance at Kane. “You always carry it in your waist pouch. But you
said nothing touches the pain.”

“Oh.” I frowned down
at my waist pouch. “Right…” I shook away the muzzy confusion,
reaching for normalcy through my pounding headache. A glance at my
watch made me leap to my feet.

“Crumbs, I’m going to
be late to pick Cassandra up from daycare. Where’s my purse?” I
peered around the room, but didn’t see the purse I knew I’d grabbed
on the way out of the house this morning.

“Who’s Cassandra?”
Kane inquired cautiously.

“My granddaughter. You
know that.” I shot him a frown. “Where in the wide blue heavens did
I leave my purse? Did you see it? It’s pink with a silver
buckle…”

Kane took my arm
gently. “I think you’d better sit down for a minute.” He pressed me
down on the sofa. “You don’t have a granddaughter. And I’ve never
seen you carry a purse.”

I frowned at him. What
in heaven’s name was the man going on about?

“Of course I have a
granddaughter,” I argued. “She’s three and a half, she goes to
daycare in the mornings and spends afternoons with me while her
mama works, and I’m going to be late to pick her up!”

I tried to get up
again, but he held my arm firmly. Spider closed in from the other
side, wide-eyed. “Aydan, you’re scaring me.”

Merciful Lord, they’d
all lost their minds.

“Who’s Aydan?” I
asked.

Spider turned a
chalk-white face to John Smith. “Call Dr. Kraus, quick!”

Smith was already
reaching for the phone. Kane placed a hand under my elbow and
lifted me gently.

“Let’s go downstairs,”
he said, his calm voice completely at odds with the tense lines
around his mouth. “We’re just going to have a doctor check you
over.”

“For heaven’s sake,
John, I know where Sam’s lab is, but you know I don’t have time for
this right now,” I protested. “That poor child will think I’ve
abandoned her just like her daddy did. I have to go.”

Spider came to stand
beside me, wearing a sympathetic expression. He slid a comforting
arm around my shoulders to give me a squeeze, but I could feel his
hand trembling.

“It’s okay,” he
soothed. “You go and pick Cassandra up, and we can finish up
tomorrow. We’ll just walk down to the lobby with you.”

My surge of gratitude
and affection was tempered with an odd sense of displacement, but I
let it go. Cassandra had to come first, no matter what. Thank
heaven Spider understood that.

I made for the door,
Kane still hovering at my elbow while Smith brought up the rear.
Spider slipped ahead of us to disappear down the stairs.

When we came out on
the main floor, a glimpse of bare tree branches outside the window
made me stumble to a halt, my head swimming. That’s right, today’s
forecast had threatened the first snow of the season.

But the grass had been
green when I left the house in the morning, and it was shaping up
to be another hot, humid day in Macon.

Another wave of
dizziness shook me.

Hello, Betty, you’re
not in Georgia anymore.

Spider and Sam Kraus
hurried toward us. Sam’s normally jolly face was drawn with
concern. “Aydan, what’s wrong? Are you all right?”

“I think so.” I turned
my head experimentally back and forth. “I was really dizzy for a
minute there, but it’s gone now.”

Sam shot a questioning
look at the frowning faces surrounding me.

“Aydan?” Kane asked
cautiously.

“Yeah…?” I frowned
back at him.

There was something
important I was supposed to do…

“Do you know who you
are?”

“Yeah, why?”

His grey gaze searched
my face. “Tell me your name.”

I surveyed him
worriedly for a second. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. Just tell
me your name, please.”

“Oookay… My name is
Aydan Kelly.”

A faint sense of
wrongness made me rub my temples while another name flitted through
my mind, fading into invisible distance.

Betty.

I frowned at Kane.
“Who the hell is Betty Hooper from Macon, Georgia?”

“I haven’t a clue.” He
shot a glance at the others, who returned puzzled looks and shrugs.
Kane turned back to me. “Do you still need to pick up your
granddaughter?”

I squeezed my eyes
shut on another wave of vertigo. “I don’t have a granddaughter.” My
knees tried to let go. “Oh, thank God, I don’t have a
granddaughter.”

I slumped against the
wall, sucking in a breath of sheer relief. “I don’t have a
granddaughter. I don’t have a daughter who’s a single mother.
Nobody needs me. Oh, thank God.”

“Come and sit down.”
Kane’s strong arm closed around me, and he helped me to one of the
chairs in the reception area.

I collapsed into it
and hid my face in my shaking hands. The sense of deliverance was
as intense as waking in my own bed after the previous night’s
horrible dreams of captivity. I controlled my breathing with an
effort, wrestling for composure.

At last, I drew a long
breath and sat up.

“Are you okay?” Spider
asked.

“Yeah.” I took another
slow breath. “Yeah. I’m okay. That was… weird.”

The dizziness subsided
at last, and the vivid memories of people I’d never met and places
I’d never visited began to fade to sepia tones.

“Can you walk now?”
Sam asked. “We need to get you into my lab and see if we can figure
out what happened, if you’re okay to go down now.”

I shot an unhappy look
at the heavy steel door, my pulse pounding again. “Yeah, I’m fine.
Well, as fine as I ever am when I have to go into the secured
area.”

Kane hovered beside me
as I rose, and I trailed reluctantly over to activate the retinal
scanner.

When the latch
released, I turned to the others. “You guys go on ahead. I’ll come
after you.”

“No,” Kane disagreed.
“I’ll come with you. Just in case.”

I sighed and stepped
into the chamber. As soon as the door closed behind us, I stepped
forward for the next retinal scan. Kane stood beside me, and I
moved away as unobtrusively as I could, mentally counting down the
seconds and willing my fists not to clench.

As usual, he missed
nothing. “Sorry,” he said, and stepped back to flatten himself
against the opposite wall.

I drew in a shallow
breath, willing the claustrophobia away with all my might.
“Thanks.”

Seated in Sam’s
underground lab, I rolled my shoulders, trying to release the
knotted tension. A ring of anxious faces surrounded me as he placed
the band of trailing wires around my forehead.

“Just relax,” Sam
soothed. “I’m just going to do a quick scan and check it against
your data from last week. Nothing to worry about.”

“Easy for you to say,”
I snapped, clinging to a crumbling edge above the abyss of panic. I
clenched my teeth and concentrated on my breathing. In. Out. Ocean
waves.

Not trapped. I could
leave if I wanted. Oh, God, what if they decided I was crazy and
locked me down?

The chair arms creaked
faintly under my grip, and Kane tucked a warm hand over my
bloodless knuckles.

“Aydan, try to relax,”
he urged. “Just belly breathe. Nice and slow.”

“I
am
,” I
gritted. “This is me being calm, all right?”

“All right,” he
agreed, his grip tightening when I twitched violently.

“It’s okay,” Sam
crooned. “It’s okay, don’t worry, I was just moving one of these
wire leads…”

“Just get it
done
, already!” I barked.

Smith’s murmur drifted
from behind me. “She’s very agitated. Maybe she should be kept
under observation for a while.”

Before I could give in
to the urge to leap up and run screaming, Spider’s quick voice
reassured him. “No, this is normal. She’s just really
claustrophobic. I’d be more worried if she was calm.”

Thank you, Spider. I
mentally heaped blessings on his head, and a few minutes later, Sam
spoke again.

“I don’t see anything
to concern me here. There’s some higher-than-normal activity in the
frontal lobe…” He glanced at my uncomprehending expression and
elaborated, “…the area that controls cognition and memory. But it’s
certainly not outside the parameters of normality in the global
sense, and it was subsiding even while I was monitoring.”

Sam didn’t quite meet
my eyes as he gave me a reassuring smile and removed the
instrumentation from my forehead. “It sounds to me as though you
just got tangled up in some data, maybe somebody’s personal blog or
something, and you absorbed a great deal of their information too
quickly for you to process. Stay out of the network this afternoon,
get some rest, and you should be fine tomorrow.”