The Primal Connection (15 page)

Terry smiled inwardly and outwardly.
“Maybe, maybe not. But if this is working out this well, think of it this way. This could be your way out. If her field could sync up with mine, maybe mine could sync up with hers. In which case, you might be able to get out of my head and into someplace where you can remain anonymous.”

Charlie said nothing, but he had to admit the thought was appealing on one level. On another though, he had a different view. He liked Terry, despite the fact that he couldn’t leave. And his overblown sense of morality gave what they did meaning and purpose. A purpose Charlie suddenly found he didn’t want to give up.

As he again entered the search mode, he finally answered Terry.
“I will see what this new development brings. One thing though. When you were reading the file from Smyth, Mir picked up on some of the details. Probably thought they were from me. In any case, once he did, he seemed rather…disturbed by the news. And I got the distinct impression that he felt his host would be distressed by this news as well.”

Terry though about that for a minute.
Was it possible there might actually be a connection between this latest assignment and her?

It took him a full minute to reach a decision. He wasn’t sure if that was a record of some kind for him.

Mentally he yelled, “CHARLIE!”

The response was immediate.
“Now what?”

“Can you shut her down? Put her to sleep, I mean, like you do me when I need some rest?”

Charlie replied quickly. “
No, I don’t have that kind of access to her neural net.
”

“What about this Mir?
”

To Terry’s surprise, Mir answered.
“I can make her feel tired, but I assumed from what Tanoak was saying that you had plans for having your way with her again.”

Terry recovered quickly, pushing aside the thought that for the moment, there were two aliens in his head. Instead, he went on with his newly formed plan. And since part of that plan had been a conversation with her occupant, since he was there, he might as well start now.

“Can you maintain contact if she’s asleep?”

“With your occupant, yes. As for you, this is all new territory for me. I have never spoken directly with a human before.”

Terry thought to himself that this might not be the last time.
“Okay. Great day for discoveries. Make her sleepy. Once she’s out, I need you to fill me in on a few things.”

Mir suddenly hardened.
“I can sense some of your intentions for her, but some are unclear. I will not allow you access to her if I think you are going to hurt her.”

Terry felt relieved by that. At least it meant that this Mir thought enough of her to try and keep her safe. Terry found himself grateful for that.

“I have no intention of doing her any harm. I just want some information and I think you can give it to me. I just don’t want her to have to go through it. I saw the look on her face when she mentioned Chicago. Something happened there, and from the timeframe of this, I get the feeling the two are related. My job is to find out what happened and stop it from happening again. I think she or you know something I can use. I just want to get it without making her relive whatever is eating at her.”

Even without Charlie, he could feel the creature’s ambiguity. Charlie was one of his own but Terry was not. For all he knew, this could be a new development that signaled they had been discovered and this was their way of removing the
threat
they represented. He had no reason to trust either him or Charlie. Even though Charlie’s people were not evil, some of them, like the one in Montana, did a pretty good imitation while they enjoyed some of the very evil things their hosts did.

“I will cause her to tire and sleep. Although, she will not be pleased.”
After a few seconds spent, Terry assumed, finding the right words, Mir said, perhaps with a trace of uncharacteristic slyness in his voice,
“She has been looking forward to another round with you. And frankly, so was I.”

Terry was surprised to find that he really didn’t care if the pair of them listened in or whatever. Normally, he would have cowered at the thought of just Charlie soaking in the pleasures he and she enjoyed. Now, knowing there were two of them, he thought, at first, that he would go back to being shy.

Instead, he heard himself say, “
Just give her a catnap. This won’t take too long.”
Strangely enough, Terry could feel the newest Chrliti smile, while at the same time, he felt Charlie groan.

In the shadow of Willis Tower in Chicago, at roughly the same time, two co-workers, a man and a woman, walked bleary eyed toward the Blue Line. It had been a long day. There had been several meetings that had been canceled and restarted several times, thanks to glitches in the system and a storm somewhere. By the time they had received the final figures, there were several line items that had to be re-evaluated for feasibility. A real pain in the ass considering that their sister company was in Japan, making everything doubly slow.

Both of them had been integral in the final disposition of the matter and expected serious bonuses for their work but that would be later. For the moment, both of them were looking forward to a fast ride home and late dinners.

As they walked along, the man noticed a cab sitting at the side of the street. He noticed it mainly because it was parked illegally and still running. The funny thing was that the lights were on and he could see the driver and the passenger inside. As they came abreast of it, he noted that there was something on the side of it.

While the woman was oblivious, concentrating instead on the warm bath she knew she had waiting, the man though found himself drawn to the cab for some reason. He had heard there were some
incidents
involving cabs, but he had heard no details about it afterward. He was curious though thanks to what he had heard and now there was this cab in front of him looking strange. It took him just a second to see why.

The engine was idling and the car was still in gear. He could tell that by the way the car was still trying to climb up onto the curb. A slight nudge on the accelerator and it would have been into the front of the building next to it. Instead, it sat there as though it was parked badly. Had they not come down the street, given the hour, it was possible no one would have noticed it until morning.

Only that didn’t make sense either. He could see the men inside.
Why didn’t they just back up and head off?
The thought occurred that perhaps they both needed help. One had been taking the other in, say to the hospital, and the passenger had lost consciousness, while the driver could have had a heart attack or something. He moved closer to see if any of that was the case and if there was anything he could do to help.

“What are you doing, Frank?”

The woman, Cindy Moore, had called out as he sidled up to the car.

“Just taking a little look. Something doesn’t look right here. You got your phone handy?”

The woman was not happy. “Yeah?”

“Be ready to call nine-one-one if something goes wrong.”

“Wrong like what? What are you talking about? You need to let somebody handle this shit that gets paid for it! It’s not our business! Frank? Frank!”

Suddenly, Frank Jones spun away from the car, the brief case in his hand flying off to skitter into the building farther down. His hand had flown to his mouth, but now, it held his tie to his chest as the pizza he had eaten earlier rushed back up his throat to leap out onto the street, almost as if it too wanted no part of what lay inside the cab.

Seeing this, the woman forgot about dialing and ran to help her co-worker. They had never really been friends, but they had ridden the same train every day almost since they had started working at Degas and Associates in the last wave of hiring. They were some of the few that actually knew more than the most superficial facts about any of their co-workers.

Seeing his distress, she ran to his side. Years ago, she had been a nurse’s aide. Now, that training came to his aid as she pushed his head down to help him keep oxygen in his brain as well as give his lunch a more direct escape route.

“What is it? What is it?” she shouted, guiding him away from the car he was gesturing wildly at by way of reply. Turning, she brought the picture into focus and realized the horror of what she was seeing.

In the car, two men took up the entire front seat. Between the two of them, she guessed they were about six hundred pounds at least. The passenger was the closer of the two, a beefy black man with dreadlocks and a beard, matted with blood. In the streetlight, it seemed to twinkle as the light bounced off the myriad angles formed in the quickly coagulating gore. His jugular had been slashed lengthwise for about three inches and left open to the air, allowing blood to gush out until there had been no more pumping action from the now almost-dry and barren heart. His t-shirt was soaked with the result. From the sheer amount alone, it was easy to see he was dead.

The driver had caused the problem for Frank. Taller than his passenger, his head was thrown back over the headrest as far as it could go. Farther even since there was a gash across his smooth-shaven throat that went deep enough in to see the blank spot that marked his esophagus. A blade, so sharp there were no tears in the skin, had severed both carotid arteries, just a smooth cut that later examination would reveal to be almost surgical in its precision.

Even that wasn’t the worst part. The man’s face had been butchered, slashed in crisscross patterns that formed crosses all over his face. Looking with the eyes of a nurse, the woman saw that the facial incisions were almost free of blood, just tissue ripped open with the same surgical precision and sharp blade.

That was as far as she got before she emptied her stomach as well.

Less than twenty minutes later, after a frantic phone call to the police, a squad car pulled up, along with a subdued and strangely inconspicuous ambulance. As the scene was cleared with a quiet and eerie efficiency, Frank and Cindy were ushered off to quiet meetings with representatives of the mayor. After lengthy discussions involving threats, promises and more threats, both agreed to keep mum on the situation until such time as they received an okay from the mayor’s office.

Such deals were not binding on the Chrliti that occupied Frank Jones, however, who, for all intent and purposes, was champing at the bit to tell any of his people what he could about it.

Traci was lying naked on the bed in the motel, dozing peacefully. Thanks to the strain her body had been put through with Charlie’s manipulations that had worked and Mir’s that had not, plus the long-awaited orgasm she had had, she had been ripe for a quick nap. It had taken Mir just the barest hint of a suggestion before she was apologizing for being so sleepy, and Terry had told her to get some rest. Although he had added not to expect
too
much.

She slept with a little smile playing at the corners of her mouth that made Terry want to ask her occupant what she was dreaming about but decided against it. He might ask later, but for now, there were matters that were more important.

Sitting in the chair across the room, Terry decided to test the limits of this new development.

“
Mir, can you hear me?”

Silence. No, that wasn’t right. There was a hum of some sort, but it wasn’t like anything that he had experienced before. It wasn’t a tingle like when Charlie wanted his attention. This was more like a persistent throbbing that was unintelligible by itself but signified something he didn’t quite understand.

He moved closer to the bed. It was a gamble, in any case, because as Mir had said, they were in new territory here. There was no guarantee that even with this new
connection
they had that they would be able to talk to each other while Traci slept.

So, to speed things along, he went to the other extreme. He simply slid into the bed and curled up behind Traci, with as much contact as he could with her body. It worked. At once, he could
hear
a sound in his mind that not only confirmed that he was in contact with Mir but what the humming he had heard was.

Charlie and this Mir were
talking,
for lack of a better word, in what Terry guessed was their own language. Although judging from the tone, it was more like an argument. But then, what the hell did he know?

Although he found it interesting to hear their language, now was not the time. So…
“Uh, guys? You wanna get back to the matter at hand? Guys?”
Nothing. This called for drastic measures. So Terry took a deep breath and gave a wolf whistle that caused Traci to stir slightly in her sleep. The result was both instant and dramatic.

Both voices stopped at once, joining in what could only be described as a mental grimace. And an audible, to Terry at least, groan.

“Arrgh, that sound!”
Mir shrieked in the chambers of Terry’s mind.
“Does he do this often?”
He had switched to English quickly.

Charlie let the moment pass before he answered.
“Only when he wants to really annoy me!”

“I would guess it works.”
Mir moaned tiredly.

Terry listened to the pair without comment as he let the effects of his siren imitation fade. Then, he quipped,
“My head, my rules! And rule one is I get top billing!”

Charlie was unimpressed, but he knew what Terry was getting at. It had been his fault. He just got so caught up in the conversation with Mir, he had ignored Terry when he was trying to make contact. And Mir didn’t know the etiquette the two of them used. He quickly began to fill Terry in on the things he had learned.

“Well, just so you know, we were not just, like your sergeant used to be so fond of saying, bullshitting each other viciously. Mir and I were going through the events that led Traci here, trying to correlate them with the things Smyth told you about the situation in Chicago. There seems to be several overlapping points here.”