The town he’d spied from the hillside was a prison where the passengers would live out their days, unaware of the fact that they were being used to train Changeling infiltrators. It was a rehearsal stage, where the Changeling pretenders could hone their abilities, learn real world skills and practice the art of deception and manipulation.
The noise of the jet engines continued building to a climax but was suddenly punctuated by a much more immediate sound, his door bursting open. He rolled his head sideways in the direction of the disturbance and saw a pair of barely visible silhouettes framed in the doorway.
“It wasn’t locked,” he mumbled, wondering why his captors had felt the need to make such a dynamic entrance.
One of the figures stepped forward and then the room was filled with light. Professor winced, squeezing his eyes shut against the brightness, but in the afterimage, he saw a face that he had despaired of ever seeing again.
Jade?
“It’s him!”
It’s her. But how…?
He felt her arms enfolding him, smelled her hair, oddly counterpointed by sulfur tang of recently burnt gunpowder, heard her voice, trembling with emotion as she whispered in his ear. “Oh, God, I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”
“Jade? How?”
Another voice, low and insistent sounded from behind her. “We gotta go! This place is about to get hot.”
“I’ll explain everything,” Jade said, speaking quickly. “But we have to get to that plane. Can you walk?”
Walk? “I don’t know. How did you find me?”
She insinuated an arm under his shoulder and eased him to a sitting position. “I think they drugged him,” she said, looking back to the other commando. “Have we got any antidote?”
His eyes were getting used to the harsh light, which he now saw came from the small tactical flashlights mounted to the rails of the H&K MP5S pistols that Jade and her companion carried. The gunpowder residue he had smelled issued from the sound suppressor fitted to the machine pistol. They were both dressed in woodland camouflage fatigues — faces painted to match — with black watch caps covering their hair and tactical vests brimming with spare magazines and grenades. The man reached into a pouch and took out an atropine auto-injector device — standard US military issue to counteract the effects of nerve agents. The atropine would probably counter the effects of the drug in his bloodstream too, but the side-effects would be a lot worse.
American military. The guy’s an operator. The thought was a far more powerful stimulant.
“No,” Professor mumbled, gripping Jade’s arm. “I’ll be okay. Just help me up.”
She gave his arm a reassuring squeeze and then turned him on the bed until his feet touched the floor. He was back in his cabin, right where his captors had left him.
He stiffened, pulling free of her grip. “How did you find me?”
“We don’t have time for this,” the other man said, but Jade held up a hand.
“We’ll make time. I told you what these people can do. He deserves an explanation.” She knelt in front of him and stared up into his eyes. “They sent someone to impersonate you, but I wasn’t fooled for a second.”
He laughed. Of course she wasn’t. He had spent two days behaving erratically, spinning falsehoods about his life so that his captors wouldn’t know which buttons to push to get him to cooperate. Later, when he’d realized the true reason for their scrutiny, he had taken every opportunity to sell the notion of a fictional romance with Jade. He had purposely fed them bad data, with predictable results. Garbage in, garbage out. Jade had seen right through the pretense.
“I realized they must have taken you hostage,” she continued, “so I called some of your old SEAL buddies.”
He raised his head and scrutinized the camouflaged face. The man didn’t look familiar, but that didn’t mean anything. Almost everyone he had served with was either retired or had been promoted out of the Teams, but those people still had the connections to launch a rescue operation.
“But how did you know where I was? I don’t even know where I am.”
“The impostor. He was…” She raised a knowing eyebrow. “Very cooperative.”
Something about that explanation nagged at him. One cabin out of dozens, he thought. A needle in a haystack, but they found me.
“We have to go,” the commando insisted again. “That bird is taking off in five minutes, with or without us.”
Jade glanced at him for a moment then returned her gaze to Professor. “You heard the man. I’ll tell you the rest on the plane.”
The plane… “The passengers. We have to get them, too.”
“That’s being taken care of. We’ll get as many as we can.”
“You don’t understand. Some of them are… Might be…” The word caught in his throat. Changelings.
Jade nodded in understanding. “We’ll keep them quarantined until we can sort out who’s who.”
But how will you know for sure? He thought it, but didn’t say it out loud. How would he know for sure? His head was still addled from the drugs. His instincts were screaming for him to slow things down but the urgency of the situation was pushing him to make a snap decision.
He struggled to stand, leaning heavily on Jade, but as soon as he was up, he turned to her, pulled her close and kissed her, unleashing months of pent-up longing, all of the passion and desire that he had never dared reveal to her.
He felt her body instantly go taut, defensive, and for a moment, he thought he had made a grave misjudgment, but then she was returning the kiss with equal fervor.
It lasted less than two seconds before she pulled away. “Okay, lover boy. I’m happy to see you too, but we’ll have to save the rest of it for when we get back home.”
He nodded but did not let go. “You know I love you, right?”
She grinned. “Pete, please. We’ve got an audience.”
“Yes, we do.” He dropped one of his hands to her machine pistol, which dangled from the sling over her shoulder. In the same motion, he spun her around, grabbed a handful of her collar, and leveled the gun over her shoulder. “Drop it or she dies!”
The commando jerked involuntarily and then went for his weapon. Professor had expected something like this, and despite the chemicals clogging up his central nervous system, he was reacting even as the man started moving. He flicked the fire selector toggle to full automatic and pulled the trigger. The compact weapon shuddered faintly in his grasp, the suppressor and the distant jet engine roar masking the sound of the multiple discharges, but the commando went down twitching. Professor released the trigger and thrust the pistol against the woman’s neck. There was a faint sizzle as the hot metal branded her flesh.
“Who are you? Your real name. It’s not Carrera and it sure as hell isn’t Jade.”
The woman started to struggle in his grasp, and given his physical condition, he doubted he would be able to restrain her much longer, so he screwed the suppressor in tighter. “That was me asking nicely,” he growled. “Who are you?”
She grunted and lifted her hands in a show of surrender. “You win.”
“Name.”
She was silent for a moment, then finally said: “Eve.”
“Sure it is. That’s two strikes. You don’t want a third.”