Читать книгу Virtually His - Gennita Low, Gennita Low - Страница 9

COVERT-SUBVERSIVE COMMAND CENTER

(COS COMCEN)

Virginia

Did he really want this assignment? He was used to being asked to seduce, but never one of their own, and agreeing to do so would mean getting closer than a regular monitor and trainer. His fingers tapped on the well-used dictionary on the small table next to him. The word for the day was quintessence.

How appropriate.

Here at COMCEN, the quintessential element uniting all its operatives was danger. He’d perhaps been here too long, because now they wanted him to train the newcomer. Not just any newcomer.

If situations were assigned as some form of karma, there was no question that danger was his. He thrived on it, not out of necessity, but because it was what was natural to him. Danger called to him and he’d always answered.

And by design, if there was karma, then it always came to him in the form of dangerous women. Poetic justice, he supposed. Everyone had a weakness. He was one of the fortunate few who knew exactly what his weakness was. He again looked at the woman on the screen.

There was something enticing about a dangerous woman. He should know. He’d been married to one. He understood his inclination for them very well. They had the aura of toughness that he admired—and enjoyed stripping down. Their strength, intimidating to some men, was both sexy and challenging at the same time. It added an extra kick, knowing that the woman he was bedding might kill him in bed. It must be that poetic justice thing again, the secret wish to die while fucking around with danger.

His lips curled mockingly at the thought as he continued studying the screen in front of him. How could a woman everyone called Hell be anything but dangerous in and out of bed?

And he knew instinctively that sooner or later, he would be inside her. His eyes followed her movements, catlike and sure, as she went through her morning exercises. Even in a controlled environment, there was something untamed in the way she threw herself into the training. Wildcat. If they even made it into bed.

From the beginning, his reaction to her had been visceral. Any normal male’s would have been. After all, he’d watched her in training for months, watched her eat, sleep, drink, watched her take her clothes off whenever she went swimming in the pool. She didn’t like to swim with any clothes on, and he’d enjoyed those sessions, knowing that it was partly voyeuristic, partly because he knew she knew someone was watching her. Mostly, it was because of all the candidates, she had won. A woman who’d beaten out a bunch of men in mental and physical war games. He already knew that all the male operatives at COMCEN were curious about her.

She’d started her nude swimming innocently enough, and he’d enjoyed the undisguised pleasure of a woman comfortable with her body. He hadn’t forgotten that first time. Her hands carelessly unzipping her pants. Her long, long legs kicking them aside. And she’d looked at the warm water and a small smile had spread out, a glimmer of sheer abandon that had pulled at something inside him.

It’d caught him by surprise, that emotional tug. He wasn’t usually so easily moved. He’d had to stop himself from leaning forward, closer, as he continued taking in the sight of her slipping off her underwear.

He recalled that moment even now. She was impatient, as if she couldn’t wait to be free of the restrictions of clothing. He was equally impatient, too, in that male sort of way that was also restricted by clothing.

Her lightly-tanned body was surprisingly feminine for someone who’d gone through so much training. He’d caught a few seconds of soft feminine curves before she’d dove into the water. She’d surfaced with a small sigh of delight, sweeping her hair out of her face. Pure unadulterated delight. And that smile…he’d dreamed of that smile that night. He’d known it wouldn’t be there as soon as she figured out that there were always cameras at COMCEN.

The day had come. He’d felt the difference immediately. It was in the way she stripped her clothes, in the furtive motion of her eyes trying to find the camera eye. The interesting thing was, it hadn’t stopped her from continuing to swim naked. She did another unexpectedly interesting thing. She hadn’t gone to Kirkland, her medical advisor, or her any of her trainers. Instead, she’d asked the interactive supercomputer at COMCEN. He’d listened in to the conversation with interest.

“Hey, Eight Ball, am I being watched at this moment?” she’d asked aloud. “Besides by you, I mean.”

“Yes, Hell.”

“By how many people?”

He’d authorized certain information to be released. “One, Hell,” the computer had replied.

“Man or woman?”

“Man.”

“Is he my trainer, the one who’s been watching my workout every day?”

That question had amused him. He should’ve known she wouldn’t have bought into Kirkland’s explanation about it being standard procedure since she was now going into a new phase. She was smart enough to figure out that they had tapes and records of all her training since day one, so her asking now was for someone’s benefit. His.

“Sort of.”

“What do you mean, sort of? What kind of computer are you anyway? Computers don’t say sort of, don’t you know that? It’s either positive or negative.”

But Eight Ball, short for “Magic Eight Ball,” a prediction-through-computation program, was a different kind of computer. His programmer wasn’t averse to adding odd little programs that gave his creation a unique personality. The result was a computer that frequently mixed up its language usage between that of a surfer and a robot.

“It’s neither positive nor negative as of now, Hell. So…sort of, dude.”

“Where’s the camera?”

“I have not been authorized to tell you, dude. Do you have the password for information access?”

“For a computer that’s supposed to be way cool, you suck, Eight Ball.”

He’d laughed at her reaction. But since that day, that smile had disappeared. He’d kind of missed it, except that it was now replaced by a different kind of smile. A knowing, dangerous curve of those shapely lips, as if she were challenging him to show himself. She was, after all, a GEM operative; like all the female operatives in her elite independent agency, she knew how to get a man’s attention, even if she couldn’t see it.

If it was male reaction she was going after, he had plenty on his end. A naked dangerous woman like her didn’t get angry. She got even. Even though she couldn’t see it for herself, there was now a mockery in her eyes and her smile that told him she knew. Any normal man watching her slow taunting movements would combust from the heat.

But normal wasn’t a word usually associated with him. Ice water flowed in his veins. Women had accused him of having a lump of ice for a heart. He had wondered, sometimes, if maybe he’d forgotten what love was. So before they’d even met, they now played a game.

He kept watching, assessing how he could push this woman out of her comfort zone. She kept fighting him with a nonchalance that was targeted to make him feel male discomfort.

It had been a long time since he’d reacted to someone so strongly and thoroughly.

Not that he didn’t like women. Just mostly the dangerous kind. He sat very still as he watched the woman wrap her lithe body around the dangling chain, her hands looking small in contrast to the thick links. She pulled, testing it, her head cocked slightly as she looked up at her target.

Elena Rostova, GEM operative, now working for COS Command. Although others called her Hell, and she preferred to be called Helen, Elena suited her. There was something about her….

It must be that challenge thing again. His instinct told him that the lady had something to hide. But then, didn’t every operative? He had quite a few secrets himself, things that he preferred not to share with anyone. He respected an operative who kept certain things to himself because one who blindly followed orders and told every single detail exactly as it happened, like the perfect little soldier, could be very dangerous to him and his team.

His eyes narrowed slightly. Therein lay the problem, didn’t it? He watched Elena’s graceful body as she attacked her routine. The perfect soldier-spy. Every agency had been looking for one, training dozens and experimenting on countless others to find the perfect combination of traits. Someone high up on the covert chain had managed to convince different agencies to train special candidates, even as they sweetened the deal by giving them extra funds for which to compete. It didn’t matter. There were limited bodies to get to the finish line.

“Quintessence,” he murmured. He liked opening the dictionary randomly every morning to pick out the word for the day. Uncanny, how it fit. COMCEN wanted a supersoldier-spy, contracting the best available inde-operative from their new partner, GEM. Elena Rostova was very good at many other things besides soldiering. Supersoldier-spy. The quintessential dangerous woman.

And she was his. At least, he amended, for a while. Then, like all of them, she would go and do her job. Because she wasn’t just going to be a supersoldier.

In the end, COMCEN’s candidate had won the big prize, and to all intents and purposes, Elena Rostova was his to mold. She didn’t know that yet, of course. She’d been given the usual need-to-know-only information and she had apparently followed her contract to a T, so far. Well-paid for it, too, and now, very, very well trained. But a woman didn’t give up two years of her life just to train herself for an experiment. No, she definitely had something else she was keeping to herself. Knowing that pushed away some of his reservations a little. He didn’t want to be part of a program where the candidate was just an obedient contract employee out to make money.

She was an attractive woman—some might say exotic—with a natural strength and grace that showed in the way she used her body. From the different tests given, she’d shown that she wasn’t afraid of taking risks, almost foolhardy sometimes, but her report cards from various trainers before him sang nothing but praises. And these were from men he knew were very difficult to train under.

Having seen her on tape and close-up, he had no doubts about her extraordinary skills. Once he agreed to include himself as part of this experiment, they would find out for sure how good she was because he would be there to watch her. Not just physically, but mentally.

That was why he’d been watching her. Wanting a dangerous woman was one thing; agreeing to do dangerous things with her was another. And this coming experiment would mean he’d be a lot closer to this woman than he’d ever been with any other.

And watching her had become…a habit. The physical package alone would tempt a man, but he’d found himself wanting access to her mind, to know her as intimately as he knew how she liked to nudge one of her hands between her legs when she slept.

He’d seen her in action with other trainers; he knew her capabilities. Yet, there were moments when she’d let down her guard, when she’d thought no one was watching. He’d seen that look in her eyes, and had wondered what’d put it there.

And COMCEN—damn its knowing think tanks, always measuring and calculating—was waiting patiently, letting him walk into this himself. They hadn’t had him all these years without knowing a little about how his mind worked.

He watched as she climbed at a slow and controlled pace that showed the physical fitness some of the best from Special Forces had honed into her. The length of the chain extended for nearly thirty meters from ceiling to floor and she was halfway there already. He glanced at the stopwatch on top of the screen. She must be going for a personal record today.

He’d never seen a woman with such an intense need to succeed. There was something personal in this contract for her and it was the driving force that had motivated her from day one.

So there was a woman inside that trained body, even though she had kept it well-hidden for these two years. Smart, very smart. And his intrigue grew.

He tapped on the communication pad next to his hand. “Put Elena through Test Alpha.”

“Helen, darling. She prefers to be called Helen.” The low, distinctive voice belonging to GEM’s chief came through the intercom. “And if she passes?”

His gaze left the screen for a second. He hadn’t expected T. to be on the other end. These days she very seldom showed up at COMCEN. They must really want him to sign on to the experiment to bring her in. “Then I’m one step closer to being convinced to be Elena’s monitor,” he said, his attention returning to the subject matter.

“She’s passed every test so far,” T. noted, her amusement at his soft emphasis apparent.

“So what’s a few more?” he asked. Elena Ekaterina Rostova definitely sounded more dangerous than Helen Roston.

“They think you have apprehension.”

“Yes, do calm my fears, T.,” he said dryly. “I’m quaking in my shoes.”

T.’s laughter was husky. “Darling, that’d be the day. I’ll initiate Test Alpha tomorrow.”

“No,” he said. “Now.”

“She’s already overexerted.”

“Exactly how I want her.” He was going to do a lot more than overexert her. And because he knew it would heighten his own sense of awareness, he didn’t want to allow her to take her usual naked swim. It would fuel his part in Test Alpha. “Now, T.”

“Anything to make you happy, darling. That was what they said to me.”

“Go mess with someone else’s mind. We’ll talk later,” he said, and tapped the button to turn the intercom off.

Elena continued her climb to the top, the gleam of perspiration coating her smooth tanned flesh, then gave an exultant hoot of satisfaction as she hauled herself onto the small ledge at the top. Hands on hips, she looked down from her height, her face glowing with the intensity born from adrenaline and exhaustion.

And that was why there was little room to fail. Her fierce competitiveness wouldn’t allow it. Besides, he had no intention of losing this wildcat.

A small, mocking smile played on his lips. Funny. That almost sounded like he was making it personal himself.

Hers had never been the easy way. Helen Roston was of the opinion that if she had to make a lot of money quickly by selling her body, she might as well do it training to be the world’s next mega-soldier-whatever. Which was about the hardest possible way to make a living but—she grinned wryly—at least her body would look good if she died from overtraining.

Her body being the operative concept here. After all, there was no guarantee that she would come out of this alive. Oh well, Enrique had always accused her of having a death wish. Hellacious, he’d called her choice of living on the streets alone. He was learning English because the American dollar was strong and American tourists were easy victims. So “Hell” she had been called ever since. Russians loved nicknames, and it wasn’t long before everyone on the street knew her by that name.

She hadn’t been able to resist the contract, though. After reading the questionnaire, she’d seriously considered it for a month before she’d shrugged and answered “yes” to all the questions and then made an appointment to see the director. What harm was there to enhance one’s special abilities? Blame it on her being an orphan. There were always those constant niggling questions at the back of her mind about her background. Once and for all, she would be able to find out exactly how special she was. No more questions. Or unanswered dreams.

A lot of money would get her out of GEM quicker and she could…She shrugged. She hadn’t quite decided what she could do yet. But once she bought out her contract with them, she would feel a whole lot better.

Not that they were difficult to work for. Far from it. GEM had given her a life an orphan girl from the Russian ghetto could only dream about, had given her the means to be somebody, but she didn’t want to spend twenty, thirty years of her life playing spy games, or being a contracted liaison between agencies, or running different lives under different aliases. There had to be more to life than that.

She wasn’t made to live within a group anyway. Even when she was a wild child on the street, she’d refused to run with the gangs. She preferred to take care of herself, thank you very much. She wasn’t going to succumb to any of those boys asking for the usual nasty payments, so she had to learn to fight hard and run harder, because she didn’t always win.

Ha, if they could see me now. Helen grinned at the ridiculousness of the old Broadway song running in her head. What she was being asked to do was show business of a sort, wasn’t it? So the song was appropriate.

Everyone wanted to see her, actually. It had been almost two years of training and now everyone wanted to see what she had become.

She wiped the perspiration off with a towel. What had she become? She asked herself that question quite a bit and had no real answer. She’d come close to a personal revelation the other night. She’d woken up in the middle of one of her too-darn-vivid dreams, sat up, and declared quietly to no one in particular, “I’m very close to being.”

It was one of those profound moments one couldn’t quite grasp, especially when one jolted up in bed suddenly. But Helen knew it meant something. She always had that voice-in-the-head thing that came out of nowhere, when something important was coming.

That was one of the reasons why she had been chosen for this project, of course. Having what they called psi—or strong intuitive abilities—was a definite plus. She didn’t care what they called it. Voice in the head. Psychic blah-blah. Intuition. That voice had saved her life a few times. She had explained to the CIA department that she wasn’t one of those people who communicated with some other presence or had any kind of power to; she just sometimes heard a warning or made a really good guess. Whatever. The CIA white coats seemed to have accepted her half-truth. She hadn’t told them about her dreams, but then, they hadn’t asked. Never tell them everything, that was her motto.

She was looking forward to her dip in the pool, more so than usual. That climb up the chain had tested her endurance and her muscles were pleasantly aching. A quick relaxing swim would make sure she didn’t cramp up later.

“Agent Roston, go to Chamber Two.”

Helen frowned at the electronic voice instructing her from the intercom. She walked over and activated the speaker. “Why?” Her training had stayed on the same schedule these last few months. “What’s there?”

“I’m just delivering the orders, Hell. Get your pretty ass over there.”

Helen chuckled. It was funny to hear a computer using her nickname with such familiarity. “If you weren’t a computer, Eight Ball, I’d find you and kick yours.”

Eight Ball was COMCEN’s computer. His programmer had given his mother program its own choice for personality and gender in certain communications feedback. For some weird reason, the computer had taken up a surfer’s easy laid-back drawl, although it tended to trip itself up while trying out surfer lingo. Eight Ball, she suspected, was another open-ended experiment on the loose in this place.

“If I had an ass, Fly Boy would say ‘go for it, dude!’” The computer mimicked the commando’s voice to perfection. “Chamber Two in twelve minutes, over and out.”

Helen frowned again. She didn’t have much time. She’d just have to go wearing her sweaty leotard and tights. At a sprint.

She dropped the towel, punched the buttons on the panel, and slipped out of the training area while the door was still sliding open. No time for the elevator. Chamber Two was three flights up. Trust them to pick a place that required climbing up instead of running down.

She pushed the door to the stairwell and starting running two and three steps at a time. She paused at the landing, taking a quick moment to flick her bangs away from her eyes.

“Test,” that voice in her head warned.

Her awareness immediately turned rapier-sharp. She pushed open the exit door that led into the corridors. She didn’t sense any danger around the corner. She didn’t think they were planning to kill her, not after investing all that time and money, but she couldn’t ignore that warning in her head either.

“Test.” The repetition was even more urgent now.

“They do that all the time, so what’s so different about this test?” she muttered. Realization came like sudden daylight. They weren’t testing her this time. Someone was. Maybe it was him.

The corridor was dead silent and she knocked on Chamber Two. An envelope was stuck on it, with her name, Elena Rostova, written in bold font, along with Do Not Open. She raised her brows. Very few people used her real name. She peeled it off the metal. The door swished open. There was no light coming from within.

“Games, games, games,” Helen murmured and stepped inside. The door behind her sealed shut and it was pitch-black in the room. Every one of her senses reached out into the darkness.

“Walk ten paces forward,” a voice said from all around her.

Sen-surround sound. “Do I get to turn and shoot?” Helen joked. Excitement roiled in the pit of her stomach. It had to be him talking to her.

“No. Ten paces forward, Elena.”

She obeyed, counting aloud. It was unbelievably dark in there. She stopped when she encountered something with her feet. A thickly-padded mat. She stepped onto it and finished her count. “Now what?” she asked when she was done.

“Open the envelope.”

She carefully did so. “This isn’t easy in the dark, you know,” she complained. “There’s nothing inside.”

“You’re expecting a note. Never assume anything in here.”

She wished she could see the person talking to her. The voice was a projected echo, deliberately masking any recognizable tone. She slipped her finger into the envelope and felt something.

“It’s small. Roundish. Too small to be a button,” she said.

“It’s a pill. Take it.”

Her mouth fell open. “You’re kidding me, right?”

“It won’t kill you.”

She could have sworn she detected mockery, even with that amplified resonance. She looked around in the darkness. Not that she could see anything. “Look, this is getting irritating. Why am I in the dark and why must I take a drug?”

“It’s part of your training.”

“Usually, I’m given a set of instructions and my instructor tells me what’s going to happen,” she said. But she’d known this new instructor wasn’t going to be anything usual. He’d been watching her nonstop since her arrival. She’d felt him. He was everywhere. Funny thing was, she’d been more intrigued by the game than outraged at the lack of privacy.

“I see. Tell me, when you’re playing operative in the real world, do you have someone telling you what’s going to happen next?”

Helen narrowed her eyes, feeling just a twinge of impatience rising. “Training, I said.” She pivoted around. “I’m not taking any drugs unless it’s the serum that’s specified in the contract. This pill isn’t it, is it?”

“You won’t know till you try it. And in case you’re wondering, yes, I’m your instructor and yes, this is a training session. Take the pill, Elena. As specified in your contract, you’ll let your instructor direct you as he or she sees fit.”

“Within reason,” Helen argued. She’d added that part to the clause herself. “Tell me. If I take this, what’s going to happen to me? Besides not dying, I mean.”

“First you will fall unconscious.”

Her whole body went taut. “What? No f—”

“Then you’ll wake up in fifteen minutes. You’ll find that you can’t move your body. Certain parts of you will feel nothing. You’ll stay paralyzed for the duration of the session.”

In the two years of her training, even through medical tests, no one had given her any drugs to render her unconscious. She’d been extra careful to establish a mental block when working with the CIA; she didn’t trust them or their tendency to hypnotize certain subjects.

She rolled the pill between her thumb and forefinger. Why now? What did he want to do to her?

“Fighting what you can see is easy, Elena. It’s fighting what you can’t see that will be your ultimate challenge. Remember what’s coming up. A dose of the serum is just like fighting what you can’t see, isn’t it?” A tiny pause. “I can’t force you to take the pill, but you’ll be putting potentially more harmful drugs into your system. This one, I can guarantee you, is a common drug that I know to have very few side effects.”

Helen laughed incredulously. “I’m supposed to take your word for it,” she remarked.

Silence.

Whoever her instructor was, he was waiting.

She rolled the pill again, her thoughts going a hundred miles an hour. Test, that stupid voice in her head had said. He was testing her for something entirely different from her previous trainers. She chewed on her lower lip for a second, then, before she changed her mind, she popped it into her mouth and swallowed.

“Count from ten backwards when I tell you to.”

Helen noted that he didn’t seem to have any problems seeing her in this darkness. Special glasses with image-intensifier? But if so, he still wouldn’t be able to tell whether she had taken the pill. Her eyes searched the darkness. Where was he?

After a few minutes, he ordered, “Start counting.”

She turned around as she counted. “Ten, nine, eight…” There was just nothing to see, not even a hint of light anywhere. “Seven, six…” She had to stop moving. Could darkness spin? It felt like the darkness was swirling all around her. “Five, four…” She couldn’t feel her feet. “Shit…” She fell forward. So that was what the mattress was for, was her last thought.

Her eyes flew open. It was still that darkness but she felt strange. She tried moving but she couldn’t feel her body and she couldn’t see. She didn’t like this one bit. No reason to panic yet. He told her that she wasn’t going to be able to move, but she could feel a warm body against her. A very warm male body.

“What’s happening?” she asked. At least she could talk. “I feel funny.”

No answer. She could feel her vision swaying, like something was moving really fast around her. It suddenly occurred to her that she was being carried. And that she was upside down because her hair kept getting in her mouth when she tried to talk.

“Where are you taking me?” she asked, spitting her hair out. “Answer me, dammit.”

Whoever it was seemed to be going faster and faster, until she grew dizzy. He couldn’t possibly go that long. Where the hell was she? No longer in the room, for sure, but why couldn’t she see anything? She could make out shadows now—light and dark shades of blackness. There were strange smells, like foliage and the outdoors, then the scent of clean laundry, then of burning wood, then of salty air. She frowned, totally confused, because she couldn’t see any forest or fire or anything that could give her any clues to her location.

She felt that floating sensation again and from the change of shadows, she could tell that her body was sliding off his as he swung her around. She stared up, trying to see who this stranger was, but it was that odd shadowy shape again.

He should be panting from that long run but she couldn’t hear him breathe at all. Suddenly, he jerked around and there were armed men all around him.

She could only watch in horror as they shot him and his body slid away from her view. She couldn’t help him! She gritted her teeth and tried to move but it was no use. She was totally at their mercy.

They surrounded her. She could hear them now—male grunts and cursing. She gulped in air as they pulled at her body. She could feel them pulling her legs apart….

She bit down on her lower lip. She wouldn’t scream. She wouldn’t panic. She was going to find a way out of this. If she could only see—

The noise around her was jumbled, as if she was standing in a very crowded room. She breathed in as someone started a fight and everyone around her, including her attackers, became involved. The shadows made everything even more confusing since she couldn’t tell who was hitting whom. But she smelt the blood, heard screams of pain, saw bodies falling around her.

And there was nothing she could do.

There’re too many bodies. Just too many people. Those screams.

“Shut up!” she yelled out.

All of a sudden, there was silence. A lone figure climbed on top of her. It was him. She recognized the shape of his body. For some reason she recognized his scent.

“I thought you died,” she whispered. Where did everyone go? And why couldn’t she feel the danger?

She felt his hands on her useless body, felt his hands on her thighs as he slowly parted her numb legs.

Helen squeezed her eyes shut. She must be mistaken. She’d thought—wait, maybe something happened in the dark room and someone took her while she was unconscious. Maybe her kidnapper was a hostile, too.

She let out a hiss of outrage as his hands intimately slid up her inner thigh, then up her rib cage, across her breasts. She was going to kill him when this drug wore off. She was going to tear his hands off first. A thumb caressed her lower lip for a second.

He kissed her on the mouth, his lips moving over hers lazily, as if he had all the time he wanted. She gave an outraged gurgle at the back of her throat when he nudged her lips apart and swept his tongue inside, engaging her in intimate play. She could feel his tongue exploring hers, not like a rapist, but like a lover, coaxing and playful. Blinding fury welled up as she tried her damnedest to turn her head but it was useless. Her mouth was his toy, muffling her curses.

It was the longest kiss she’d ever shared and it was sharing. There wasn’t much she could do when she still couldn’t shake her head free and her mouth was open for him to taste. Their tongues tangled silkily, seductively, as he controlled the pace, opening her wider, till she found herself growing breathless from trying to speak and move at the same time.

He likes your mouth.

Oh great. Now her warning voice was also analyzing kissing techniques. And why was her heart beating so erratically? She was shocked to find that her eyes had closed…She forced them open, blinking rapidly. She was not getting turned on by this man. No matter how good his kissing technique was!

He finally released her and she heard herself gasping for breath. His shadow moved over her, his hand deliberately cupping her breast.

“I’ll kill you if you touch me,” Helen managed to say through what felt like swollen lips.

She heard the front zipper sliding. She felt the coolness of the air on her bare flesh. He pulled the front halves of her shirt apart and she could feel his knuckles grazing her naked breasts. Her heart galloped like she was having a heart attack.

Wait a minute, wait a minute! Something’s not right. I was wearing a leotard with no front zipper. I was wearing a bra.

Test. Suddenly everything fell together like a well-designed puzzle.

Test. No sense of danger. The drug. All the different smells and sounds. Nothing solid…just tactile. They weren’t testing her physically. Everything was a mental test.

“This isn’t real,” she declared firmly and loudly. “I was wearing a bra in a tight leotard with no zipper. I’m not half-naked. Game over! Now let me see you, you fucking bastard!”

The next time she was faced with a tiny pill, she was ready.

“You know what to do with it.”

Helen shook her head. “I’m not taking it.”

“Why not?” His voice, even electronically enhanced, was soft, persuasive. “Are you afraid?”

“Of course not.” She wasn’t. She just didn’t like the feeling of being helpless. “I already know what you’re trying to achieve. You want me totally in your control. You want me afraid, or are trying to make me afraid. Am I right or wrong?”

“Somewhat, Elena. If I ask you to take off your clothes now, would you?”

She cocked her head in the dark. “No.”

“Why not? It’s totally dark in the CAVE and I promise it won’t hurt.”

“Look, I know what you’re trying to do,” Helen said, exasperated now. “It isn’t working. You’re trying to find chinks in my psyche and I’ve been trained to resist. You aren’t going to win.”

“But why are you resisting your trainer? Wouldn’t it be simpler to go along with it, knowing what I’m going to do, and then following through with today’s training lesson? Why the need to tell me that you aren’t going to lose? Or, are you just afraid, Elena, that you will lose?”

Oh, he was good. Whoever her new trainer was, he definitely wasn’t just some Special Forces guy or CIA shrink trying to beat her into shape mentally or physically. This man was trying to figure her out by pushing her sexual buttons. The thing was, she couldn’t figure out why he was doing it…yet. It’d only been a couple of weeks, but already he’d challenged her more than any of her other trainers, both physically and mentally.

“Okay, fine.” She popped the pill into her mouth, crushed it between her teeth because she was that pissed off. She wanted to taste its bitterness. “I’m not going to be very happy if you start taking my clothes off again when I wake up. I’m tired of it. That’s a warning.”

“Then I’ll make sure they’re already off before you wake up.”

“You…” She didn’t even have time to finish cursing him, falling forward as the world spun into darkness.

When Helen came to, she didn’t say anything, using the time to figure out what he was trying to do. Again, she couldn’t see the person carrying her. This time, she was in his arms, the way a man carried a lover, and he was walking slowly. She heard the lapping of water. Splashing at his feet. He kept walking.

She knew it was useless but she still tried to move. She really, really hated this feeling. She felt the water touching her bare buttocks. She gasped—both from the cold water and her outrage that she was indeed “naked”—as he took both of them deeper into the water.

“I’m so going to kill you,” she said between her teeth. “I told you not…”

She gasped again as he let go of her. She sank, water getting into her mouth. She couldn’t move; she was going to drown.

This isn’t real. This isn’t real! You got to keep your head! She realized now that he’d purposely done the one thing he knew would distract her—making her think he undressed her. She needed to remember that virtual reality was all in the mind. He was pushing her to accept this, getting her ready for the next phase.

Willing her panic and anger away, Helen relaxed, allowing her body to float. He was her trainer; he wasn’t going to let her drown. Just as she reasoned this to herself, she felt his arms gather around her, pulling her upward to the surface. Her face burst through the water and she took deep breaths of air into her lungs as she felt him lifting her higher, till her chin rested on his shoulder. She coughed, very aware of his arms around her nude body.

“Total immersive virtual reality between two people is going to be different from going solo, Elena,” he said softly in her ear. “I give you the reality that you have to accept in your mind. Just as I have to accept what you see when you remote view because if my mind rejects it, then this experiment will fail. You have to get very comfortable with whatever reality I provide here, just as I have to do the same with the reality you say you see when you remote view. Am I making sense to you?”

“Yes.” But that didn’t mean she had to like it.

“The nudity is just a little quarrel between us. I know you don’t feel comfortable when you aren’t in control, I totally understand that, and that’s why you are naked now, in the water, in my control because you have to get comfortable with this notion.”

“Only in virtual reality,” she assured him sharply.

“That’s fine.”

They were still in the water. She shivered. How deep was the water? Not real, Helen, it’s not real. She breathed slowly, steadily. Fine, she got the lesson, so she would shut up and just let the drug do its thing until she was able to move again.

His hand came behind her neck, gently turning her head up. Looking at his shadowy form was the most frustrating thing after the fact that she was in someone’s control.

“Do you know what made you even madder than being stripped naked by someone?”

“I’m not stripped naked. It’s all in my head,” she said, and tried to smile nonchalantly, “so I’m not mad at all since none of this is real.”

“Then you aren’t allowed to lose your temper if I kiss you again,” he whispered, his head coming down on hers.

And there was nothing she could do as she floated in his arms, nothing at all, as the hand behind her neck firmly forced her head back. He explored her mouth intimately, his tongue tangling with hers.

He was enjoying this too much, she thought dazedly, even as she fought against her own response. He liked being in control of her and the more she fought him, the more ways he would find to get at her. It was all standard operating procedure in the book of mind manipulation. But, besides what he was claiming to be doing, what else was he trying to manipulate her to do?

Later, back in the changing room, she stared at her lips, which looked redder than normal. He was diabolical. He hadn’t undressed her. It had been all in her mind because he’d made her think he was going to do it while she was out. Again, playing with her fears.

She traced the outline of her lips with her fingers. Sensitive. As if she had been kissed thoroughly.

“But it’s not real,” she whispered to her reflection.