I’m in.
Now, she thought, mentally retracing the route from the diagrams pulled from Temple’s mind, time to find our lost birds.
Orlando was past screaming, and wouldn’t give them the benefit of seeing him whimper or, god help him, whine. He’d heard about waterboarding and had seen a dozen times that famous Star Trek TNG episode where Picard had been tortured by the Cardassian general with the bright lights, trying to break down his stoic will.
This, however, was different. He didn’t know what it was, other than pure psychological misery. Sensory deprivation was his best guess, but if that was it, no way, it wouldn’t work. Not on him. Not on Orlando Natch, who had once locked himself in a windowless dorm room with nothing but a six pack of Red Bull and five boxes of Zingers, before launching into an epic online Warcraft campaign, only to emerge victorious after four days.
Let them just try.
The problem was, this time — whatever they were doing — it was starting to work.
They had put him in a pod-like thing and he had lost track of time, here in the darkness. He couldn’t quite tell, had lost all feeling in his body. Muscle relaxants, induced paralysis? He might have been in a tank of water and breathing through a tube for all he knew. It was like his body was completely detached and he had no control. It wasn’t completely black, but it was definitely absent of almost all light. Except maybe some faint tinges of something less black around the edges of his vision, like the frame of his TV set back at home in the twins’ room.
Oh god, the twins… Phoebe…
How long had he been down here? Days, weeks maybe?
So black, so…empty.
He had called out, screamed, shouted. Called for the others, the psychics he had worked beside for years now. Called for the guards, the agents, whoever that had abducted them. Demanded a lawyer, demanded his rights, but of course… couldn’t even hear his own voice.
Where the heck am I?
That question popped up again, for the thousandth time.
And then, strangely, a sense of control returned.
He could start to sense his limbs. Different, strangely disassociated, but under his control at least. It was like his nerves had all been numbed and he couldn’t feel a thing, but could still move.
His environment defied all investigation. He could walk even. At least, it felt like walking. Carefully, afraid to bang into something with every step. The problem was, no matter how far he went, inching along in what had to be a straight path, he never encountered anything. No wall, no furniture, no anything.
As far as he could tell, he was somewhere without a bed. Without…hell even a bathroom. No free-standing toilet like in all the prison movies. Did he even go? They hadn’t fed him or given him water, so it was possible he just didn’t need to, but that raised another important question, the most important question.
Why can’t I feel my body?
He tried again, and maybe it was the hours down here deprived of light and interaction, where his normal senses had been flipped around, twisted inside and out and now nothing worked right, but he just couldn’t even register anything when he tried to feel his body. Tried raising his hands to his face, but couldn’t feel the normal features, the tactile sensations.
Come to think of it, he couldn’t even tell for sure if he was indeed standing, or walking, or sitting. Might even be lying down. The only thing he could sense about himself was a dull, subtle aching in the side of his head. His left temple?
Where the hell am I?
The thought, maybe voiced aloud, echoed somewhere — in this amorphous chamber or only in his mind, he couldn’t tell.
Except this time, after another minor eternity that could have been only seconds, something echoed back.
“Orlando…?”
He perked up. That voice… it didn’t sound familiar, and yet it did. Probably a trick.
He knew better.
Stopped walking (or whatever he was doing). Turned from the sound. Curled himself up. Not going to let them start interrogating me. Not now, not when I’m so messed up and don’t even know where I am.
“Orlando, can you hear me?”
It’s a trick, he thought, rubbing at where he thought that sore spot was on his temple. It was slightly flaring up now, like a dull pinprick.
“I’ve spiked in, accessing your…locality. Damn, this is a bitch.”
He frowned, or tried to, in the darkness, stroking harder at that itchy spot on his temple. Still couldn’t feel it though, as if he had thick gloves on. Why would agents talk like that? What kind of interrogator are you?
“I’m not,” came the voice in his head, or out there somewhere, hidden speakers in the formless dark.
Then who are you? Familiar now… a little. Are we enemies?
“Once,” came the reply, with a hint of joviality. “Just try to relax. This may come as a shock when you realize where you are.”
Why?
“Because it shocked me.”
Why?
“Because I came here to rescue you and the others…”
That I don’t believe. It’s a trick to get me to talk. Deprived me of my senses until I’m so confused and starved for human interaction, I’ll lock onto the first friendly voice claiming to be on my side. Classic technique, but—
“But you’re too smart to fall for that, Orlando Natch. Phoebe’s trained you too well, and so has her big brother.”
Still not buying it. So you know the people I care about.
“And the twins. Your boy and girl.”
Yeah so? Tell me something only Phoebe would know.
“I don’t have time for this, Orlando. If I’d known you’d be a stubborn little shit, I’d have touched your precious Phoebe a little longer and dragged some disquieting personal habit of yours from her memory, and… oh wait. I did — I do have one!”
What? What are you talking about? Oh my, are you—?
“I got an image of you clipping your toenails. Oh Christ, really? In front of the crib while the babies were sleeping, and Phoebe popping in to check on them — and you.”
Shit, yeah she gave me holy hell after that one, but honestly I’d just pulled a three day stint scrying the Afghan mountains for a lost French patrol, saving them from an absolute massacre. So, I neglected some personal hygiene factors.
“Whatever. Just focus here, Orlando. It’s me, it’s…”
He rubbed at the sore spot now on his head, and slowly gave in to a sinking theory of his predicament, even as he thought:
Nina?
“Bingo. Now, can we get to work?”
Nina lay cramped in a half-fetal/half-twisted position in the ventilation shaft above Orlando’s holding cell. She had managed to set up the high-powered, untraceable and extremely next-gen Netbook in a position where she could just reach the keys, after spiking into the conduit system she accessed by cutting through the panel on her left to reach the wiring leading down into his cell.
Nothing’s ever easy with the damn government.
But this seriously threw a wrench into her plans. Damn Edgerrin Temple. Didn’t mention this possibility. She might have predicted it though, if she were any kind of psychic herself with that sort of foretelling power, or if she had just thought about it for a minute.