Spin (Captain Chase) Read online

  “I’ve been here 4 nights?” I exclaim.

  “Yes,” he replies from his wing chair as I twist and turn painfully, taking in the colonial reproduction furniture, the workstation with its Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNet) phone for transferring classified data.

  I can tell by the vague glow of a curtained window that it’s daylight and possibly too overcast for flying since I’m not hearing supersonic T-38 trainer jets or F-22 Raptor stealth fighters. We’re in corner suite 604 on the second floor of Dodd Hall, the Tudor-style officer’s quarters on the eastern shore of the peninsula that Langley Air Force Base shares with NASA.

  The century-old lodging house tucked back in trees is where one would expect the likes of a general to stay when on business here. But Dick never did during earlier years, preferring to bunk down at Chase Place, my family’s home on the river. A frequent squatter (he would joke), he used to keep a jump-out bag and other personal effects in the guest room near the kitchen.

  Hanging out with us in the peace and quiet of the farm while Carme and I were coming along, he’s not the sort to prefer pomp and circumstance, fuss or bother. Dick would rather eat Mom’s cooking, spending long hours talking with her in front of the fire or in the garden. Plus, he never stopped picking Dad’s brain, everybody’s brain, all sorts of ideas constantly flying around like crazed electrons.

  “Whatever you decided to, quote, implement,” I let Dick know, “you could have discussed it with me first.”

  “I couldn’t.”

  “I assume Carme has been through this same implementation?”

  “In stages. But yes, her Systemic Injectable Network, the original SIN, was implanted in her 6 months ago.”

  “Appropriately named since our behavior and choices are about programming good and bad,” I add, trying to stretch my aching legs, and if I’m not mistaken, I have on a diaper.

  “I’m sure you’re not surprised that there have been problems,” Dick replies, ensconced comfortably while I couldn’t be more disadvantaged. “The most serious glitches we’ve fixed, and other upgrades and patches are on the way. In a perfect world we would have waited a little longer before implanting the same SIN in you. Enhanced as it may be, I would have liked a little more time for troubleshooting.”

  “And you didn’t wait for what reason?”

  “It was now or never,” he says the same thing Carme did at the Point Comfort Inn. “Earlier this week, the project was cancelled after decades of top secret research and development. I’m sure you can imagine the danger of implementing a SIN in one twin and not the other,” he adds, and I can’t imagine Carme alone in this. “But DARPA, DoD have deemed it unethical to implant you or anyone else under the circumstances.”

  I’m not sure what circumstances Dick means but he ignored the government’s directive, didn’t get the memo in time, so to speak. I was implanted anyway, not that I would have resisted had I been asked. Because he’s absolutely right that it would be wrong to install a SIN in one prototyped twin and not the other, and I wouldn’t dream of leaving my sister alone to her own devices.

  “Are you hungry?” Dick asks.

  “Yes,” and my stomach growls as I keep looking around, noticing the portable IV stand peeking out from a closet . . .

  The black Pelican case on the floor in a corner . . .

  The coil of yellow nylon rope and extra flex-cuffs on the kitchen counter . . .

  The rolled-up sleeping bag next to the coffee table . . .

  “Everything’s within normal limits, and that’s good,” Dick looks at his phone. “Except your blood sugar is hovering at just above 70 milligrams per deciliter, and that’s not optimal. In addition, you’re dehydrated, based on your electrolytes. Do you feel dizzy, shaky?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thirsty and irritable?”

  “Yes.”

  Reaching down, he picks up something by his chair, “While you’ve been here, you’ve been calling out Carme’s name.”

  “Why wouldn’t I . . . ?” and I almost add, Since I was just with her.

  But I stop myself, remembering what she said. That I’m too much of a Pollyanna when it comes to Dick and his big plan, his cause. Of course, he’s behind everything leading up to this or I wouldn’t be in his custody right now. But he can’t know for a fact how much I encoded of what I’m not meant to recall.

  He doesn’t know the extent of my short-term memory loss, and how far back the tape was erased, so to speak. That’s not detectable like a fever, levels of glucose, lactate, carbon dioxide, a spike in adrenaline. It’s not as simple to read as the oxygen saturation of my blood, my pulse, or how vigorously I’m exerting myself.

  What I do and don’t recall is safe as long as I don’t give myself away. That’s going to be hard when I’m used to handing over my intel like a free gumball machine. Whatever Dick wanted, Dick got, not costing him a penny.

  “I’d like you to have a few sips of a Gatorade-like rehydrating drink if you won’t spit it all over me,” he gets up from his chair, inserting a plastic space straw into a silvery space bag labeled Lemon Punch. “Pretend we’re floating inside a spacecraft, an orbiting habitat, a laboratory,” bending close, placing the straw between my lips.

  I suck in the salty, lemony drink like an astronaut in the weightlessness of outer space, hands-free, one sip at a time, and in the process, he’s preventing me from using food or beverage as a weapon. I have a good idea who came up with the solution. It’s pretty much straight out of one of Mom’s playbooks about self-reliance and problem-solving, doing what you can with what you’ve got.

  “Nothing like improvising,” Dick says. “Although when I tried earlier, it didn’t stop you from spewing your drink all over me. Okay. That’s enough for now. I don’t want you getting sick.”

  He doesn’t care if I’m still thirsty, and he sits back down, reminding me who’s in charge. Placing the drink bag on the floor by his chair, he picks up his phone again, no doubt glancing at data streaming from biosensors, nano-radios, chips, whatever is inside me.

  “Blood sugar’s a little better,” he announces, “and I’m guessing you’re calmer.”

  “Yes. Thank you,” I remember my manners because it’s not to my advantage to offend or challenge him. “Whatever you’ve done, I hope you haven’t ruined me,” I don’t say it rudely.

  “Actually, far from it. You’re sounding good, very good indeed,” he nods, splaying his hands, tapping his fingertips together like the mad professor. “This is excellent progress. Hugely improved from a few days ago, and now we can get down to business.”

  6

  “I DON’T EXPECT you to remember much. The less, the better, and we’ll fill in the blanks with your origin story,” he begins, lamplight shining on his platinum hair like a nimbus as he sits in his big chair.

  While I’m on my back in bed with my arms above my head, my joints screaming bloody murder, and adding insult to injury, I’m in surgical scrubs. There’s nothing under them except a diaper that possibly could use changing, and I worry what indecent states Dick has seen me in.

  “It all starts with going over certain points you never stray from,” he explains matter-of-factly. “Think of it as name, rank and serial number. You say the same thing again and again.”

  “Except it’s your story. Not mine,” I retort, feeling as indignant and trussed up as Gulliver, only at least he was dressed properly. “I wasn’t conferred with and would seem to have no say.”

  “We’re conferring now in complete privacy.”

  “If you don’t count cameras and no telling what else you’ve got in here,” I make sure he knows I wasn’t born yesterday.

  “Only those with a need to know are aware of what’s actually happened. From the beginning. And n
ow.”

  “Yes, from day one,” I reply. “Back to when you started knowing and doing things you didn’t share with Carme and me. Things you and Mom probably had in mind way before the Langley twins were born and none the wiser.”

  “Part of protecting people is not exposing them to more than they can handle,” he says presumptuously as if it’s for him to determine. “Because yes, things have been done that wouldn’t fly with an ethical review board. And I don’t need to spell it out.”

  “Then I will. Starting with what’s most recent. The commander of Space Force physically altering a NASA investigator, a scientist, a future astronaut while she’s tied up and drugged. Not exactly something to brag about on CNN.”

  “I can understand why you’re angry, Calli,” he says. “But you’ve always known this day would come. I regret the execution wasn’t ideal.”

  “I didn’t know this day would come, not like this. It would have been nice to have more of a warning.”

  “We’re out of time for warnings.”

  “Because of some unexpected complication?”

  “Unfortunately, more than one.”

  “It would be helpful to know what you’re talking about.”

  “You know more than you think.”

  “So much for free will,” and I’ve never felt so overpowered and controlled. “I’ve got no say about my own design, my own programming. Not even my own origin story or anything else I’m expected to recite and represent the rest of my life.”

  “You have more input than you know.”

  “What about Carme? What are you fabricating about her? And what does she have to say about it?”

  “Her origin story is even simpler than yours,” he says. “She’s deployed overseas in her usual special ops missions with the military.”

  “Is she wanted by the police?”

  “All you know is that she’s overseas.”

  “But is she in trouble? Did she do something . . . ?”

  “She’s overseas with the military,” he’s just going to keep saying it.

  “But she was here 4 mornings ago. Up on the hangar roof . . .”

  “People don’t know that. They know what you tell them, and Carme has a story she’ll stick with,” he replies relentlessly. “It doesn’t bother her that it’s not true. Or that as a result she can’t be out in the open the way you are, has to live off the radar, on the run, enduring difficulties and hardships you’ll likely get to avoid.”

  “I’ll have different ones.”

  “Carme doesn’t question the mission the way you do.”

  “You probably didn’t dope and hog-tie her either,” and I’m betting she didn’t have on a freakin’ diaper, it crosses my mind resentfully.

  “She was taken care of at Dover Air Force Base. It was very different.”

  “Where does my so-called origin story begin?” I ask. “May as well lay it on me so I know what to tell people.”

  “It begins when you were leaving Mission Control, about to drive home from Langley in the snowstorm,” he says. “But you didn’t. Instead, we brought you over here to Dodd Hall, where you’ve been ever since.”

  Without saying it outright, he’s letting me know that in the yarn he’s spinning, the Point Comfort Inn never happened. There was no tracking device placed on my police truck the night I was working Vera Young’s crime scene. I never set out for home in a blizzard. My GPS wasn’t hijacked. There was no hitman or room 1. Most of all, there was no Carme and no killing anyone.

  “It would be nice if you would let me loose,” is my response, sounding as easygoing as possible. “It’s hard to have a conversation like this.”

  “Here’s the master plot,” Dick summarizes as if he didn’t hear me. “After NASA was sabotaged earlier in the week, it was deemed best to keep you in safe custody. You and others have been here with me working around the clock to deal with a massive cyberattack that the public knows very little about, an ongoing threat that has us on high alert.”

  “Except for one thing,” I remind him of reality. “I talked to Mom while I was driving home 4 mornings ago. I also talked to you and Conn Lacrosse on a CIA line, talked to all of you while I was in my truck,” as it flickers through my thoughts that Dick and Mom might have been together.

  Just because caller ID showed she was ringing me up from the farm doesn’t mean that’s where she was physically located at the time. It wouldn’t be hard for her to spoof our home number, making it appear that’s what she was calling me on. When in fact she was with Dick, headed to the Point Comfort Inn to help implant my SIN and oversee the fallout.

  “There would be an electronic record of our communications,” I continue making my case. “Plus, traffic cameras all over the place would have picked me up. You know as well as I do that I’ve left an electronic trail if someone wants to find it,” I add. “And it sure would be nice if you’d cut me loose.”

  “You’ve left a trail, and if anyone checked, it would show that you have the timelines confused,” he says what I know is a lie while ignoring my humiliation and discomfort. “The calls you’re referring to were approximately 10 hours earlier. On Tuesday night, December 3rd,” and there’s no telling what metadata has been changed to fit his disinformation.

  00:00:00:00:0

  A TOP MILITARY leader and close adviser to the president of the United States, Dick can tamper with traffic and security videos, GPS logs, satellite images, whatever he needs. Laws and boundaries don’t matter when bad individuals and rogue nations routinely violate them.

  “What are we talking about, Special K?” I inquire, constantly rearranging my position on the bed, my joints aching like a bad tooth. “You know, the discussions we’ve had about its ability to bend space-time? To alter the effects of gravitational waves on the brain?”

  I don’t mean to sound sarcastic, and what I don’t say is the obvious. That Special K, or ketamine, is also a common date-rape drug associated with amnesia and hallucinations. Dick has no reply, won’t confirm or deny that for days I’ve been subjected to a steady drip of what’s basically a horse tranquilizer.

  “Say what you will about the story you’re feeding everybody, we both know I didn’t get here on my own two feet,” I keep pushing him with questions while he stares at me from his wing chair. “Who was hauling me around like a sack of potatoes?”

  As physically powerful as he is, it would be nothing for him to carry me. And imagining it makes me squirm and feel slightly hateful.

  “Would you say you’re more aggressive?” he asks.

  “Than what?” Pinning him with my eyes as he leans forward, lightly touching his fingertips together like Freud.

  “What about more hostile?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be? And it sure would be nice if you’d let me go.”

  “Tell me the last thing you remember.”

  “I’ve already told you.”

  “Tell me again. What do you remember about the last 4 days?”

  And it’s like staring into the vacuum of space surrounded by flickering objects light-years away . . .

  Insights and snippets of data here and there . . .

  Shards of scenes . . .

  Fragments of conversations . . .

  Disconnected recollections of “Reveille” and “Taps” blaring over the Air Force base intercom . . .

  Sound bites of supersonic jets thundering and screaming . . .

  “I know you’re uncomfortable,” but Dick doesn’t sound bothered by my degradation and misery. “How’s the pain on a scale of 1 to 10?”

  “I’m trying not to think about it. Please don’t remind me.”

  “Fair enough.” He gets up from his chair. “Are you ready to act civil?” di
gging into a pocket of his Airman Battle Uniform.

  “Of course,” and I’m plenty civil considering circumstances that most people would consider sadistic and criminal.

  But I’m not going to say any such thing, common sense dictating that it’s suicidal to challenge the warden. There’s no point in goading my captor into flaunting his power and control more than he already has.

  “It’s just us at the moment,” Dick indicates that others have been in and out of Dodd Hall, including my mother, I’m all but certain. “I don’t want to explain a broken nose. And I don’t need you hurting yourself with a sharp object again,” alluding to my accident while under his command in Colorado Springs.

  He unfolds a wicked steel blade as if he’s about to take me out like Jack the Ripper. Approximately 15.2 centimeters (6 inches) long, serrated and sharp, it’s not so different from what I was using to slice open bagels at the Cheyenne Mountain military complex when I almost lost a body part. And I nervously rub my scarred index finger again.

  “Hold still,” he says, and I feel his breath on my hair, his uniform sleeve brushing against me. “As you’re probably gathering, I’ve had some help while you’re here, haven’t been on my own,” firmly holding my wrists as he gently cuts.

  “Who?”

  “I realize it’s disconcerting not recalling certain recent events.” As usual, he doesn’t answer what I asked. “Especially for someone like you who has a near photographic memory,” and the scent of his musky aftershave makes me self-conscious and nervous.

  I don’t move a muscle as he saws, staring up at his powerful arms, his ropy veins.

  “There we go,” he announces, and I lower my hands to my lap, scarcely able to bend my elbows. “I know this hasn’t been fun.”