The Chimera Vector (11 page)

It was almost five weeks before he trusted her enough to leave her by herself in the library. He needed to restock their supplies from the local market, and said he wouldn’t be gone for more than an hour.

Sophia waited fifteen minutes before approaching the grand oak door. Did he really think she’d just wait around for him to return? She gripped the door handle and found herself unable to turn it. She’d built up her strength and stamina over the last few weeks, despite the library’s confined spaces. Her body was definitely up to the task. The door wasn’t locked. The handle wasn’t jammed. That wasn’t the problem. The problem, she realized, was her mind.

The cunning bastard.

She tried again. Her hand refused to turn the handle. It was impossible for her to leave.

She yelled, kicked the door. Smashed a chair into it. She tried again. Still, she couldn’t. Somehow, he’d switched something on inside her mind that kept her here. He didn’t need to tie her up with anything. She was holding herself prisoner.

Pulling her hand away in disgust, she listened to the silence around her. She felt pathetic. He’d stripped her of everything. There was nothing left. No purpose, no friends, no family, no certainty, no life. She had nothing left to believe in. There was Adamicz, of course, but that was it. Really, there was no one here for her but herself.

She collapsed on a dusty tribal rug, her gaze glued to the oak door. She let it taunt her for a while. She felt like she was falling endlessly. Adamicz had peeled away at her like the rind of an orange and the only thing left inside her was a lie.

She allowed herself to stretch out on the rug. Spreading her hands out at her sides, she looked up, watched dust particles float lazily above her. Tears escaped, ran down her temples. She ignored them and closed her eyes. She couldn’t feel anything. All this time she thought she was being virtuous. Now it was just a gaping black hole of nothing. And she had been feeding it all this time.

But there
was
something. Like a single particle of dust. Tiny and almost non-existent. It might very well have been her imagination, but whatever it was, it caught her attention. It wasn’t dark and it wasn’t feeding and it wasn’t a lie like everything else. Before she knew it, she was riveted to it. She didn’t know what it was, but the more attention she gave it, the more it grew.

She sat up and touched her right eyebrow, where her stitches had been. Opening her eyes, she realized what she had found. Her will.

She marched into Adamicz’s office and began with his desk. It was covered in mountains of papers and books. She rifled through them, one stack at a time, tossing them aside when she was done. Whatever was lying on top would be cover documents, of course, placed there on purpose, possibly to influence her. She glanced over them for only a moment before casting them aside.

Once she was through the layers of distraction, she began searching his desk drawers, his bookcases. She found a stash of euro banknotes in one of the drawers, twenties and fifties. There had to be at least a thousand euros in there. She ignored the money, and checked for hidden papers and books. Anything he was concealing from her.

She only found one book. She opened it at the bookmark just shy from its center, revealing half a page of handwritten text, black ink with a hint of blue. The words were Polish, tightly packed and skewed a fraction to the right. She recognized it as Leoncjusz’s handwriting. She could read Czech, but wasn’t sure how well she could decipher his Polish. She skimmed through the entry. He seemed to use W instead of V and G instead of H, but other than that she could understand it quite well.

The entry was dated in German; she recognized the month as August.

After a week of intense deprogramming, I am able to bring Sophia out of her slave state for the first time to archeopsyche—the real Sophia. She is calm and composed, but is suspicious still. I make a point not to prove any more to her; I only ask of her health, of her emotion and of her memory. I take notes of this. She tells me she cannot remember her true childhood. I do not know if the memories will come back in time or will be lost forever.

Her behavior is erratic. On some occasions, she is composed, others she is enraged, others she is silent and does not respond to conversation. Nothing I say appears to comfort or soothe her. I do not know what to do so I leave her alone when she behaves this way.

I am in regular contact with Cecilia McLoughlin now. She is with the Akhana. After all this time of hoping, now I know they are real. She says once I have successfully deprogrammed Sophia I must send the deprogramming procedure in case my copy is lost or stolen. I tell her
this could take many weeks to achieve. She agrees with me and points out that I cannot risk traveling to the Akhana until Sophia has fully recovered. This is very important; we are too vulnerable and will be safer in hiding for now. I am hesitant to give Cecilia the deprogramming procedure; I will think on this further before making a decision.

I bring vegetable soup to Sophia’s room. She is asleep so I leave the soup with her and do not return for the day. The following morning we continue deprogramming. Portion by portion, I dismantle the subpsyches and parapsyches inside Sophia’s neopsyche. It is a long and arduous process that exhausts both of us.

When I visit her again, she tells me to stop doing this or she will kill herself. I still have some of the trigger phrases in place to protect myself, but I do not think I will have to use them. I tell her I will stop for now and tomorrow we can talk over lunch. She can ask me as many questions as she likes.

I make us some gnocchi from the market and tea. She asks many questions. About her life. About how she was recruited. About the real world. About families. About love. About vengeance. Sometimes, her hands shake as she listens to me speak. Other times, she is silent and does not ask anything. Once, she even smiles. It is the most amazing thing I have seen this year.

If one good thing comes of my dark existence, it will be Sophia.

She turned to the next page. It was blank. She flipped back to the previous entry, only to find it written in German. Was he trying to conceal something? She rushed to the shelf of dictionaries and picked out an Italian–German dictionary. It would be nice if there was an English–German one, but she was in Tuscany after all. Instead, she found an Italian–English dictionary. It would have to do.

Sitting at the desk she’d moved into the Pacciani Room, she scanned the German entries for anything that might catch her attention. She didn’t know what she was looking for, so she decided to just pick a paragraph with her name in it and work through it with the dictionary, translating from German to Italian and—if her basic Italian wasn’t sufficient—Italian to English. It was painfully slow, but she moved as quickly as she could, scribbling her translations on a loose sheet of paper.

Sophia has stitches . . . right eye and bruises . . . arms and face . . . unharmed. I . . . injuries but . . . to see her. I have the
Schlüssel.

She checked the Italian–German dictionary for the word
Schlüssel
. The Italian equivalent was
chiave
. She checked the Italian–English dictionary: it meant
key
. Leoncjusz had the key.

This was going to take some time. She’d give anything for Google Translate right now. She skimmed through the rest of the page. Its contents seemed mundane. She turned to the previous page and found a word right after her name that she didn’t recognize:
defekt
. Did it mean to defect, to work for the other side? She checked the Italian–German dictionary. It meant
difettoso
. She checked for the English translation.
Defective
.

She continued with the rest of the paragraph. On her sheet of paper, the meaning was beginning to take shape.

Another operative became defective . . . field . . . night and . . . killed. Denton dismisses me . . . service. Just as we planned. I am relieved, but I do not show it.

She turned to the previous page. If Adamicz had mentioned his true intentions anywhere, it might be in an earlier entry. With both dictionaries open, she got to work translating.

Sophia . . . operation . . . routine assessment. Precise changes. Sophia’s behavior . . . normal . . . tampered . . . neopsyche . . . under stress Sophia . . . shift to archeopsyche . . . performance . . . and I . . . held responsible. Cecilia McLoughlin stages . . . death. And . . . part of our plan.

Sophia checked her watch. She had another thirty minutes. It wasn’t enough time to translate the whole journal. And it would be a while before she would get another chance. She had to translate what she needed now. She flipped to the previous page.

I am scared . . . sleep . . . not wake up. Denton . . . is he waiting . . . us out? Or will . . . and torture . . . answers? I realize . . . belly of the beast . . . stay brave.

Trials . . . operative . . . routine assessment. Possible . . . suggest . . . Cecilia McLoughlin . . . Benito Montoya . . . operative . . . in mind. She . . . six on . . .

One string of words caught her interest.
Posthypnotischen Suggestibilität Index
. The German was so close to English she didn’t need the dictionaries.

She continued translating the rest of the sentence.

Easier to deprogram . . . our cause due to . . . betrayal . . . violation . . . Fifth Column.

She licked her finger, then thought again and wiped her saliva away before turning to the previous page, where she saw
Chimäre Vektors
written three times.

McLoughlin . . . confident. I fear . . . get caught . . . thought everything . . . well. Benito Montoya . . . Chimera vectors . . . impossible . . . circumstance . . . high security and of course Denton’s . . . Chimera vectors. McLoughlin . . . lock it up for now . . . back later . . . lower security. She . . . encrypt the Chimera vectors . . . encryption key.

Sophia froze on the word
Schlüssel
. She checked the dictionary, translated the complete sentence.

She plans to encrypt the Chimera vectors and use part of her DNA as the encryption key.

Sophia realized she was holding her breath. Inhaling quickly, she continued translating.

But . . . Cecilia McLoughlin . . . back to the facility . . . very risky. I cannot . . . how we do this. Cecilia McLoughlin . . . of this too. She asked me . . . operative as the key instead.

This had to be important. Backtracking, she translated every missing word.

She asked me today if we could use an operative as the key instead
.

Sophia leaned back in her chair. ‘I
am
the key.’

Back another page. She had to translate faster if she was going to get anywhere.

My . . . offering . . . to me. I suggest to Cecilia McLoughlin . . . destroy the Chimera vectors. But she . . . idea. She wants to . . . against the Fifth Column. She . . . resistance called the Akhana  . . .

There was no entry for
Akhana
in the dictionary. Perhaps it was an English word. She continued reading.

 . . . nothing about. This . . . more complicated. Does . . . really exist . . . Belize. If there . . . need the Chimera vectors . . . destroy the Fifth Column.

She checked her watch. Fifteen minutes to go.

If she was, somehow, the key to the Chimera vectors, then the first thing she needed to figure out was what they were and what Leoncjusz and his resistance pals were planning on doing with them.

She continued reading.

I do not . . . Cecilia McLoughlin for many days. Our next . . . rushed. She tells . . . the Chimera vectors out . . . Fifth Column . . . safe. Before . . . I want to help. McLoughlin . . . and leaves. I have purpose again. Yet . . . burn these pages.

The entry ended. She turned to the previous page and started reading. No more mention of McLoughlin, of the Chimera vectors, of the Akhana. Just his research on programming. She turned back further. A poem in Polish. Another page. The Fifth Column and its imperfections, its flaws, morals, evil, test subjects, more programming. She continued, skimming for any words that would jump out at her. The further back she looked, the more introspective and vague the entries became. One on mind-programming research, one on his education, and several going further back to his university years.

She closed the book, checked her watch. Eight minutes. Her estimate had been conservative; it was likely he wouldn’t be back for a further half-hour. It was risky, but she couldn’t stop now.

Returning the dictionaries to their exact places on the shelves—her translations slipped into the middle of the Italian–German dictionary—she returned the journal to where she’d found it, and decided to go through his desk again, paying more attention to the papers she’d previously thought to be diversions.

The office door creaked.

She’d been so busy throwing papers around that she hadn’t heard him return. Her face warmed with embarrassment, then burned with anger.

‘You have some explaining to do,’ she said.

Leoncjusz frowned. ‘I imagined it was only matter of time before I caught you here.’

She dumped the papers she was holding onto his desk. ‘I’m your prisoner, after all.’

He hung his coat on the coat stand. ‘That is not true.’

‘Not true?’ she yelled. ‘You’ve had me cooped up in this shitty old place for how many months now? And to what end?’ Her saliva sprayed onto her arm. She didn’t bother wiping it away. ‘To keep me
safe
?’

She swiped at a stack of books, sending them crashing to the floor. ‘Why did you have to choose me? Of all the operatives running around playing terrorist dress-up, why pick me? Being kidnapped once is enough!’

‘Your post-hypnotic suggestibility index is lowest of all operatives,’ Leoncjusz said. ‘It makes you most difficult test subject to program.’