Masked (25 page)

Their faces were flushed from the
warm head gear. James’ hair was cropped short and Rachael’s dark hair was
pulled tight behind her head, loose strands plastered to the side of her face
with sweat.

“Hey Rachael. It’s been a long
time. I see you and James are getting along better than you use to.”

Rachael didn’t respond. She just stood
stoic, expressionless and alert.

“She is not the Rachael you knew.
Her part of this mission is not to communicate with you. I am the commander and
Titan’s voice for this mission.”

“Who’s your friend?” I said as I
gestured towards the door. “I didn’t recognize his voice.”

“He is no one you have ever known,
another one of our agents.”

If he really was another agent
like Rachael and James then why hadn’t he shown up when the truck driver friend
was tracking their approach? I guess it didn’t really matter at that point and
speaking of the truck driver, what the hell had happened to her?

“Since we have some time, let’s
talk,” James said. “Please remove your mask.”

I went ahead and removed my head cover.

“What would you like to chat
about? I don’t suppose you would like to tell me what this is all about?”

As expected James didn’t answer
my question.

“There is certain information I
want from you. If you comply and give me the information, none of your friends
will be hurt. If you do not, only one of them will return to the HUB alive with
you,” James explained.

Now that I could see his face, I
noticed when he spoke it was a calm mask, void of any expression or emotion. It
wasn’t the smug sneering James I’d known. This was just a tool of Titan in a
James shell, conveying the message they wanted to send.

I mustered the best acting skills
I could to keep up the façade of total compliance. “I’ll answer what
information I can,”

Of course, if I didn’t come up
with some sort of plan my false compliance would end up being genuine.

“What is the current location of
the woman who calls herself Laura, the one who assisted you in your flight from
the HUB?” James’ intense gaze bore into me.

He had no idea that I had no idea
how I even made it out of the HUB. If there had been a woman named Laura who
helped us out, I didn’t remember any of it. If I was honest about not knowing
what he was talking about, it would have either given them more information or
he just wouldn’t believe me. They already knew enough of us, enough to track
us. The less they knew about anything regarding Alex, Sara or myself was best.

I was just about to answer his
question when his calm stone-like expression twisted into agony. Rachael’s face
screwed up in the same way. Neither made any sound to correspond to the intense
expression, but both raised the palms of their hands to their temples and
seconds later fell to the ground, motionless.

“Well that didn’t exactly go as
planned now, did it?” said a woman’s voice from further in the warehouse.

The voice was familiar. It was the
same voice I’d heard over the ear piece, the voice of the truck driver.

From the shadows the girl behind
the voice appeared. There’d been some distant recognition of her voice when I’d
first heard her over the ear piece. Not a voice I knew well, but one I had at
least heard before. It was twice before in fact. The girl who stepped out of
the shadows was the same I had met in Montana, at the gas station and then
later at the café.

“Laura is it?”

Laura smiled. “Hello Michael.”

Her dark brown hair was pulled back
tight and her emerald eyes shone kindly at me. The contrast of the light blue
ski jacket I’d seen her in before with the black jacket made out of a heavy
canvas she now wore was significant to the perception of her. The contrast of
the black with her pale sculpted face gave the impression of strength, a
certain amount of toughness, not apparent before. She carried tablet in her
left hand and her right index finger was busy moving on the screen.

“I have to be honest. I didn’t
expect to ever see you again,” I smiled.

She walked closer until just a
few feet away. “It’s good to see you again Michael.”

“So, I guess you’re the
mysterious friend?”

“That’s right.”

I moved over to where Sara and
Alex’s bodies still lay motionless. I knew they were okay, I could somehow just
feel it, but I checked to see each was still breathing all the same.

After removing their headgear I confirmed
they were both fine, out cold, but fine. The injury Alex’s body endured when he
fell from the rooftop down into a twisted heap already seemed to be healed.

Relief swept over me and the
frustrated fear I’d been building up inside started to fade. It felt good to
have control of the situation again, well at least someone did. Sara and Alex were
unconscious due to whatever sedative the darts contained, but nothing more.

The look on Sara’s face was peaceful
and of course beautiful, but peace and beauty were not the words to describe
the emotions I felt coursing through me, replacing the retreating fear and
concern. I had no doubt what James said was true, no doubt they would have killed
at least one of us. I’d seen that when I’d looked into the cold mind of
Caldwell back at the HUB.

It was clear they had the means
to control us and sacrificing one to get two powerful assets to do their bidding,
whatever the purpose of their bidding was, could only be a plus for them. On
top of that, I knew absolutely nothing about what was going on. What the hell had
they been doing for the last year? Who was Laura and how did she know so much about
all of this?

I decided to put those thoughts
aside for the time being and I turned back towards Laura, now standing above
the still bodies of James and Rachael.

I forced a calm composed state of
presence. “What happened to them?

“Well, if everything has worked as
I anticipated, I just corrupted the signal they were receiving and well, essentially
fried the interface of the chip to their brain.”

I guess she recognized the cringe
of pain and worry on my face because she quickly added “Oh, sorry, I do think
they’ll be okay. What I just did will have damaged some of the tissue
surrounding the chip, but their bodies should be able to repair the damage, at
least the damage inflicted directly from the overloaded chip. I believe Sara
and Alex explained that we cannot be certain if the damage caused from
long-term exposure to the active chip can be repaired.”

“If all would have gone as
according to plan, I would have waited to corrupt the signal in a more controlled
manner, but with the way everything played out I was left with no other choice.”

“How long will it take to know if
they’ll be okay?” I asked.

She shrugged. “I really have no
way to know. The tissue damage should heal fairly quickly, but like I said, I
just don’t know.”

“What about the third agent who stepped
outside?”

“He’s down as well. He’s just
outside the door.”

“I thought you weren’t able to
get a signal from the third agent?”

“It’s strange. I didn’t at first.
It wasn’t until several seconds after I sent out the corruption signal that the
third agent’s signal appeared for a second and then disappeared. He’s down. The
signal I sent to run interference corrupted all incoming Titan signals in the
immediate area. The only possible explanation I can think of as to why I
couldn’t see him before is there was some variant in the signal he was
emitting, but that still wouldn’t explain the reappearance after I corrupted
the incoming signal…” she explained, starting to trail off into a conversation
with herself.

She realized what she was doing.
“Sorry, like I said, I can’t be sure.”

I opened the door and saw the
third agent lying on the ground just a few yards away. There was just enough
shade cast from the building to allow me to step out and carry him in without
having to re-cover my face. I brought him inside and laid him next to James and
Rachael.

Once settled I removed his mask
and as James had said, he was someone I didn’t recognize, close to my age with
cropped sandy colored hair and pale skin.

I turned my attention back
towards Sara and Alex. “How long do you think they’ll be out?”

“At least a couple of hours. The
sedative Titan uses is very similar to the one we used on you. We don’t have a
couple of hours though, we need to get out of here, and soon. Titan knows where
their agents are at all times. They track them the same way I was able to. When
the corruption signal was sent, both the incoming and outgoing signals were
killed. The second their signals dropped off of their radar they would have
rounded up a team to be sent here to investigate.”

“How do you know so much about
them? Who are you?” I asked.

“Believe me Michael, that is a
really long story and we just don’t have the time right now. You’ll just have
to trust I know what I’m talking about.”

I was sick of being blown off and
had to force a sharp reply back down. If what she said was true there wasn’t time
to sit around and talk. Trust me, I’ll tell you more later, it’s a long story,
blah, blah, blah.

My feelings and emotions were so
jumbled. I wasn’t sure what to feel or how I should feel. As happy as I was to
know Sara was alive, that they were all alive, I couldn’t shake the bitterness
I felt.

For the last several weeks they’d
known where I was but I still mourned their deaths. For the past year, as I
felt the devastation of my failure to them, to Sara, and had to live with that
despair and anger, they’d been here the whole time. The anger at what had
happened, what I thought had happened had been the only fuel I had to keep
myself going, all the while poisoning me. Meanwhile, they were working together
in their little group or club or whatever the hell it was. It turns out I was
the one left behind.

Again, I had to push back those
thoughts. “So what’s the plan?”

“We have another vehicle, a van,
hidden in the next building over. We need something quicker than the truck we
came in. We dropped off the van in preparation last week. Even though we didn’t
know we’d be doing all of this today, we knew it would happen soon. We prepared
and set everything up so there would be options. As long as we can get out of the
immediate area, it will only be a twenty minute drive to a place I have set up.”

I nodded in understanding. It seemed
the general idea was to get out of there and I couldn’t argue. I tried to break
into her thoughts as she was talking and couldn’t. It was like before with
Sara. I couldn’t pick up anything. The only real option I had was to trust her.

Laura moved towards the exit but paused
before leaving. “There hasn’t been a second over the past year where you haven’t
been a part of Sara’s thoughts. It was my fault we lost you and Sara never gave
up trying to find you. We’ve all done what we’ve done for a reason. Sara has
done all she has done because she loves you.”

She turned back towards the door,
exited the building, leaving me with the five motionless bodies.

As I waited for Laura to return
with the van, I mulled over her words and tried to reconcile my feelings. It was
comforting, reassuring for her to say Sara loved me. It shouldn’t have been, I
should have just known it, but it was.

I wasn’t sure what was going on
with me. I was so happy to have Sara back. I loved her and I knew she loved me,
but was it just stubbornness? Was I just pissed off I wasn’t able to be a part
of her life over the past year? Did it really come down to petty jealousy that
she’d been able to spend more time with both Alex and Laura than the few weeks
we had together at the HUB? That they might know her better than I did?

I didn’t know the answer, but was
disgusted with myself once again. Sara deserved someone better.

Laura returned with the van five
minutes later. I heard the rumbling of the motor outside the door and then a
few seconds later she came back into the building.

“Okay. Everything’s ready.”

Sara was beautiful, so peaceful as
she slept. I’d never had the opportunity to lie next to her and watch her
sleep. It was comforting, calming, heaven.

Breaks of the setting sun through
the open blinds were all that lit the modest room, decorated mainly in shades of
blue and chocolate. The bed was the softest thing I had any memory of ever
laying on. It seemed to melt around us and was a definite upgrade from the thin
mattresses at the HUB or anything I’d slept on during my stint of motel hopping
over the past year.

Like Laura said, the drive only
took twenty minutes. The van was a monstrous full size white cargo van with
plenty of room in the empty back for all five of our unconscious passengers. It
took only a few moments to get everyone loaded and secure before we were off.

As we pulled away from the
factory grounds, a thought occurred to me. If Titan showed up and found the
large truck we’d come in, could they trace it back to us? I voiced my concern
to Laura. She smiled and said it was taken care of. A few seconds later there
was a loud explosion.

“There’ll be nothing left they can
use to trace back to us,” she said.

The rest of the trip went without
many more words said. It seemed we were going to make it and I was exhausted.
So much had happened over the last several hours. I had so many questions, but
wanted to wait until Sara and Alex were awake. I knew them, I didn’t know
Laura.

At some point I dozed off, I
hadn’t meant to and it couldn’t have been for long, but enough that I woke with
a start at Laura’s voice announcing we’d made it.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to fall
asleep,” I apologized, wiping some drool from my chin.

“No worries. The drive was
uneventful.”

When I got out of the van I was
surprised to see the place she’d brought us to. I’d expected a nondescript
hovel somewhere in the woods. The large estate sized lake house wasn’t a part
of my expectation spectrum.

We parked on a covered circular
paved area just behind the white three storied modern looking monster of a home,
with endless windows and multi-tiered flat roofs. The lake was about twenty
yards away. A path to the water led away from the parking area and ended at a
good sized boat house built at the lakes edge.

Laura explained she had a lab
down in the boat house and once we had Alex and Sara situated on beds in the
house, we would need to move the others to the lab so she could get started on determining
and monitoring their conditions.

Once everyone was situated, I
left Laura in the boat house and came up to the main house to watch over Sara
and Alex.

The house was huge. Definitely
nicer than anything I was used to. Whatever it was Laura did, outside of helping
to foil the plans of Titan and hunt serial killers living in the Seattle
underground, she didn’t seem to be doing too badly for herself. How old was
she? She couldn’t have been any older than nineteen. Maybe she’d inherited
money.

We brought Sara and Alex in
through the back, through a large kitchen area and then towards the front of
the house. The front of the house had a large open foyer area with a grand dual
staircase that led up to the second floor. Seven of the ten bedrooms were on
the second floor. Sara and Alex each occupied a room.

To be honest, I’d only checked in
on Alex who was in a room just across the hall when I first came back. I’d spent
the rest of the time next to Sara. Those moments lying with her seemed so
right, so perfect. I could imagine the room was ours and I was just lying in
bed with the girl I loved. I wished it was easier to forget the rest of the
story and the fact she wasn’t really asleep, but sedated.

After just over two hours in the
bed, Sara started to move some. She let out a small moan.

I stroked the side of her face
and spoke softly. “Can you hear me?”

If what they’d shot her with was anything
like what she’d given me, she wasn’t going to feel much for a while still, but
the motion on her face comforted me.

She moaned some more, her body
trying to move.

“Sara?”

This time she was able to answer
in a weak slurred voice. “Michael?”

I took her hand. “Yes. It’s me.”

“What happened?” she asked.

“You were hit with a tranquilizer.
You’re safe now. We’re in one of the rooms at Laura’s lake house.”

“So Alex did hit me then?”

I laughed a little.

“No, he was hit as well. James
and Rachael brought a friend and they were able to get the drop on us. He got
behind us and shot you before we knew he was there. Rachael was able to take
out Alex on the roof. It’s only thanks to Laura we’re here now.”

“Is Alex okay?”

“He’s fine. He’s resting in a
room across the hall.”

“Good.” Her voice already
starting to sound stronger and more steady.

I could see the effort on her
face as she struggled to fight the sedative’s lingering effects and her eyelids
fluttered as she tried to open them. Very slowly, she was able to work them
open. With what looked like a significant amount of effort, she held them in
place, looked up at me and smiled.

I stroked the side of her face
again. “Hey there.”

“This isn’t a bad way to wake up.
I wish I could feel more of you next to me, but this is nice,” she said. “So
what happened?”

I explained everything that occurred
after she was shot, how Laura corrupted Titan’s signal and how she was now down
in the lab with James, Rachael and the third agent.

“Sounds like a close call. I’m
sorry I slept through it all. I’m glad you’re okay.” She paused. “Are you
okay?”

“It’s been a really strange day. A
lot of things have gone wrong, but finding you again… By finding you again, I’ve
found myself again.”

I choked up some. I felt Sara
move in closer.

“I’ve been so lost, so alone. I
don’t want to be that person anymore. I just want to be happy. I just want to
be with you.”

Her eyes were now wide looking
intently into mine. “I want that so much.”

I kissed her forehead.

“Is it possible to have that with
Titan still out there looking for us? Is there anywhere we can hide, where they’ll
not be able to find us?” I asked and then turned my questioning from
philosophical to directly at Sara. “Where have you been all of this time?”

“What has Laura told you?”

“Nothing. She said it was her
fault I was lost, but that’s it. How did we get out of the HUB?”

“What do you remember?” she asked.

“I found you strapped to a table
screaming and I was being held by Caldwell and his agents. Dr. Roberts came in
and injected me with something and everything went black. After that, I woke up
alone at night in the forest.

“I had no idea what had happened,
how I was free from the HUB. As for you, Alex, everyone, I could only assume
the worst. I didn’t understand. I wandered for several days through the forest
until I came upon a small town. I figured out where I was and found
transportation. Since then, I’ve stayed on the move, trying to get by.” I paused.
“So what did happen?”

Sara was just about to speak when
there was a loud crash in the hallway just outside the room. We looked up to
the open doorway and saw Alex pulling himself up from the floor, using the open
doorframe for support.

“I’m okay, I’m okay!” he said as
he got back onto his feet.

“You should probably stay lying
down for a little while longer, until the sedative has completely worn off.” I said.

“I’m okay. I just need to steady
myself,” he said.

“Do you remember what happened?”
I asked.

“I remember enough. Rachael shot
me and pushed me off the roof. I’m just glad I was unconscious before I hit the
ground. That would have hurt.”

“Yeah, you were a mess.”

“Well, I see we made it to the
lake house. I’m starving. I’m going to head downstairs to get something to eat.
We’ll catch up later, when you two are finished up here.” The last part he said
with a grin, and stumbled out of sight.

A few seconds later there was some
cursing and another series of crashes from down the hall, near the stairs.

Sara smiled. “It’s a good thing
he’s nearly indestructible. So where we?”

“I think you were about to help
make sense of all this,” I said.

“Well, here’s everything,” Sara started.

“You’ve probably already figured
this out but our abilities and memory loss aren’t a result of some manufactured
super virus. We were never dying and then miraculously saved by the good people
at Titan. Everything they told us was a lie, they did this to us. They stole us
from whatever life we had, changed us and removed any memory we had of who we
were. We were to be the first in an army of super soldiers created for Titan to
control absolutely.”

One of the first things I’d done
once free from the HUB was to try and gather information on the virus they’d
told us about. It didn’t take me long to realize that, as Sara had just said,
there never was a super virus that killed thousands.

“Titan isn’t a secret research
arm of the military, there’s no secret terrorist government out there trying to
overthrow the US government. It’s just Titan, growing an army of super soldiers
to take control for itself,” Sara continued.

“So why even go through the whole
charade. If they have the ability to control us with the chip they implanted,
why feed us all the stories? Why not just activate the chip right away?” I asked.

“The chip works by interacting
directly with the brain and the person they control can only do what the
person’s brain already knows how to do. With just the raw power of those they
control, without spending the time to teach them how to control and use that
power, it is just destructive. They thought they could trick us into entering
their training program just long enough to learn the skills they wanted us to
know and then have control of us before we became the wiser.

“Some of us had our reservations
about what they told us, but they did have us. We all believed their tale. We
were all cooperating and if they hadn’t taken me that night, we’d all probably
be agents of Titan right now.

“After I got back to my room that
night, I went into the bathroom to get ready to head to bed. I’d just brushed
my teeth and was turning towards the room when, with a start, I noticed Emily
standing there. I hadn’t heard her come in and she was acting really strange.

“She asked how my evening went and
I told her it went well. She headed towards the toilets, passing me as I was
leaving. The moment we passed each other, she turned and injected me with
something before I had a chance to react. It was a sedative. A few seconds
later everything was dark.”

My body tensed as anger rushed through
me. I knew at least one of the people I’d thought were friends had betrayed
Sara that night, but now I knew who it was, I knew who to direct my anger
towards. Sara seemed to sense my change in emotion and was able to move her
hand, although weakly, to my face. Her touch was calming.

“I know. She betrayed all of us.
She never was one of us. She was there to watch, keep tabs on us,” Sara said.

I tried to suppress the anger, to
push back the venom that coursed through me.

“I’m not sure how long I was out,
but eventually the sedative wore off. I woke in the room you found me in,
completely empty, strapped to a bed. I laid there for quite a while until eventually
Dr. Roberts came in. I tried to ask what was going on, why they had me strapped
to a bed. She didn’t answer but instead asked how I was feeling. I swore some
and asked again what the hell was going on.

“Dr. Roberts asked how long I’d
been exhibiting telekinetic abilities. I was taken aback by the question. How
could she have known about that? Was that the reason I’d been taken?

“I tried to blow off her question
by acting like I had no idea what she was talking about. It didn’t work. She
told me I could cooperate with their tests or not, but cooperation would be
less painful. Either way, they’d find what they were looking for. I chose the
path of non-cooperation and it was, as it turned out, painful.

“I’m not sure what it was exactly
they did to me, but it was excruciating. You came in only an hour or two into
it. I saw them sedate you and take you away and I was so scared. I thought they
were going to kill you. The tests lasted for several hours and I eventually
passed out, my body exhausted from the procedures.”

Feelings of my failure that day,
the regret I’d felt every day since, returned. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t able to
do more.”

Sara moved her hand back to my
face. “There was nothing more you could have done. It was amazing you were able
to make it to me; that you came for me. There were too many of them. None of us
could have done more.”

Logically, I knew what she said was
true but still, I wasn’t able to save her that day. That fact would never
change.