The room snapped out of existence. Valika felt her body seem to fade, then come back, stronger than before. She felt the seat, could hear the sound of others stirring, smell the faint odor of the leather. She blinked, eyes adjusting to the dim lighting in the room. She ripped the leads off of her skull, not caring about the hair that got torn out with them.
She swung her legs over the side and stood, feeling dizzy for a second. She could hear the members of the Ring exulting over the experience, congratulating Cesar. She walked to the rear of the room where Souris was peeling one of the leads off her skull.
She kept her voice low so the others wouldn’t hear. “Was that man part of your program?”
Souris shook her head. “No.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“Why would I invent something like that?”
“I don’t know, but you need to understand what we’re doing here is very serious.”
“I’ve spent the last twenty years of my life on this,” Souris said. “I know it’s serious. Far more than you could imagine.”
“The man said he was drawing power from Aura. How can that be if he didn’t come from here?”
“I’ll have to check my data,” Souris said.
Valika glanced over her shoulder. The men were still marveling about the women and what they had seen.
“He said he was American,” Valika said. “From this Bright Gate. You never told us of such a thing.”
“It was experimental,” Souris said.
“It doesn’t look experimental anymore,” Valika noted. “If he’s still working for the Americans, it means they’ve penetrated us.”
“He said he wasn’t,” Souris said.
“ ‘Said’?” Valika shook her head. “And because he said this, we should believe him? And even if he has been cut off by the Americans, if they could put him on the virtual plane, couldn’t they put others there too? This is a threat!”
“It is also an opportunity,” Souris said.
Valika was going to ask her what she meant when she was distracted.
“Gentlemen!” Cesar’s voice cut through the excitement. “Gentlemen!” When he had everyone’s attention, he continued. “What you saw today was only level two. There is much more that Aura can do.
“Please enjoy my hospitality. Although I cannot match what you just saw exactly, I assure you that you will find the young women I have waiting above much more real.”
Valika gave a hand signal to Cesar that she needed to speak to him. After the others left, the leader of the Ring came over to the Russian.
“What is it?”
“We were contacted on the virtual plane,” Valika said.
Cesar frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Someone met us on the virtual plane.” “Who?”
“Someone named Raisor,” Valika said. “He said he could help us. I believe he’s an American.”
Cesar’s face tightened. “Come to my office.”
Raisor jumped from the Aura control center north. Then twice more, until he was above the glass-walled building that housed the headquarters of the National Security Agency. It was shielded on the virtual plane. He knew he could wait until the bitch got off work-if she ever did, as he had seen her spend the night quite often-but then what could he do? He was in the virtual plane, without the power or programming of Sybyl to enter the real. He could watch, but that was all. And watching was not enough.
He felt rejuvenated, full of energy. Aura had recharged him, but he knew that the effect would not last. He would have to get back to Aura soon.
Raisor jumped west, to a spot he knew well.
He was above the Mount of the Holy Cross, where Bright Gate was headquartered. He could sense the psychic shield that surrounded the place and knew he could not enter. But someone was out. Raisor knew it, from the line of virtual power that came out of the mountain and arced southward, a connection from Sybyl to wherever the Psychic Warriors were.
And HAARP? Wherever it was, the information had been compartmentalized from him. He had no doubt, though, that his sister had discovered the existence of HAARP or something about HAARP and because of that she and the rest of her team had been cut off. But why had McFairn done that if HAARP was just another program like Bright Gate? Wheels turning within wheels, Raisor thought.
Raisor jumped, following the line south. Until he arrived above the villa in Colombia.
The bodies were in the walk-in freezer in the basement of the villa. Separated from the meat by a thick plastic sheet hung across the middle of the freezer, the three dead Special Forces men were hung on hooks. Dalton didn’t recognize any of them immediately. One’s head was half missing; another was lacking the lower half of his body-which Dalton had seen back at the ambush site. The other had taken several rounds, including many which Dalton knew from the lack of blood were inflicted postmortem, especially to his face. What remained of their uniforms had no markings-Dalton knew they had gone in “sterile” with no ID tags or insignia that could be traced back to the States.
“ Jackson,” he relayed through Sybyl.
“Yes?”
“I’ve found three bodies.”
“Damn.”
“You find anything?”
“Not yet.”
“Continue searching.”
Dalton came out of the virtual plane, into the real, assuming the form of his avatar.
“What are you doing?” Kirtley’s voice echoed inside his head.
Dalton ignored him. He went up to the first body and lifted it off the hook, laying it down on the ground. He took a long strip of brown paper and covered the dead man. He did the same with the other two.
Then he knelt next to them silently for a minute. He was startled when Jackson contacted him.
“I’ve found the others. Alive.”
Dalton went back on the virtual plane and moved toward her essence until he arrived in a dark room. Several men lay about in the dark, some of them wounded. Jackson was a glowing form in the corner.
“Should we show ourselves?” Jackson asked.
Dalton considered that. He knew what it was like to be held prisoner. Hope could be a good thing, but disclosing themselves could also compromise the rescue mission. He’d done what he had with the bodies to cause confusion among the ranks of the guards. No, check that, he realized, he had done it out of respect for the men who had died.
“Sergeant Major!” Kirtley’s voice was on a power setting unnecessarily loud and brought him out of his thoughts. “You will return immediately. You will not disclose yourself to those men.”
“A little hope wouldn’t hurt them,” Dalton argued, more for the sake of disagreeing with Kirtley than anything else. “To let them know they aren’t abandoned.”
“You’ve done what you were tasked to do,” Kirtley said. “I’m ordering you to return immediately.”
Dalton reached out to Jackson directly, touching her avatar on the shoulder. “Let’s go back. We’d have to explain who we are, and then we really couldn’t do anything to help them right now.”
Jackson turned toward him in surprise. Dalton put a finger over his lip, indicating for her to be silent. He counted-seven men. “Straight jump to the rally point.” He let the real world fade from view until he was completely in the virtual and prepared to jump.
Jackson reached out and grabbed his arm. “Jim.”
Dalton caught himself just as he was ready to jump. “What?”
“Someone’s here-in the virtual plane. Watching us.”
Dalton felt foolish as he craned his head and looked about. He saw nothing but featureless gray. “Who? This Droza?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Go. Now.” Jackson jumped.
Raisor caught their virtual essence as they snapped by, like a bird looking in the window of a supersonic jet as it flew past, catching just the tiniest of glimpses. He was pretty certain they hadn’t seen him, because he had no avatar, just a presence. He headed back to Saba.