Think fast, Jax told himself. Do something while you still can!
That was when he noticed the mirror. It was on the wall outside the elevator, providing a view around the corner. Jax couldn’t see himself in it, but he could see the man, whose mouth was already open to sound the alarm.
And if I can see him, then he can see me.
Jax locked his eyes on the man’s image in the mirror, praying that the wide-angle glass would reflect his mesmeric thunderbolt to its target. There was no time to wait for a PIP. “That’s my lunch in the Walmart bag!” he complained loudly, struggling to conceal his hypnotic instruction in what sounded like real conversation. “Is it okay to eat after X-rays go into it?”
There were chuckles around the checkpoint, but not a word from the man behind the machine. The Walmart bag waited at the far end of the conveyor belt.
Jax passed through the metal detector without incident, but another agent noticed the bulge in his pocket where the water bulb of his squirt flower was hidden.
“What’s that?”
Nimbly, Jax broke the mesmeric connection with the scanner man and bent this new questioner. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. There’s nothing in my pocket.”
“There’s nothing in your pocket,” the man agreed, waving him on.
He retrieved the bag and stepped into the elevator. When the doors closed in front of him, he practically collapsed with relief. He held it together, though, when he noticed a security camera mounted in the corner. Was there no way to escape from prying eyes in this place?
He peered directly into the small lens with as much intensity as he could still muster after all the bending he’d done to get himself this far. Seriously, this had to be some kind of record! He breathed a silent apology to Axel Braintree, who had devoted his life to keeping his Sandmen honest.
The picture-in-picture image took longer than Jax expected, and he soon saw why. His face was on a monitor in a bank of several screens providing views throughout the building. He was surprised he had gotten attention as quickly as he had. He leaned into the camera, and very slowly and carefully mouthed the words: There is no one on this elevator.
He got off at the fourth floor, which was not nearly as deserted as he would have wished it to be. A kid with a Walmart bag drew a lot of stares, but no one stopped to question him. The Ryviker facility had so much security that anyone who’d made it to this point was assumed to have the right to be here, kid or not.
Jax followed the numbers on the doors until he reached suite 420. A brass plate on the wall announced: C.O. MAJOR JONATHAN WIDMARK. There was an outer office where a young man in uniform worked at a computer.
Jax entered, eyes blazing. The aide was bent almost immediately. “You never saw me,” Jax told him. “I was never in this office.” He set the Walmart bag down on the desk. “And don’t touch my clock.”
He headed for the door to the inner office, fingering the rubber bulb in his pocket. He felt an unexpected rush of exhilaration. He’d done it! As much as he hated Brassmeyer’s idea of using hypnotism as a military weapon, how could he ignore the results? He had made it through multiple layers of security using nothing but the power of his mind. The old Jackson Opus, New York City middle schooler, never could have imagined it would be possible, much less that he would be the one who could pull it off.
He burst into the C.O.’s inner office and marched up to the desk where the major sat studying an open file in front of him. “Yes, Parker?” He looked up and saw not his assistant, but Jax. “What —?”
Jax squeezed the bulb. A jet of water shot from the plastic daisy on his chest and caught the major full in the face. For a split second, the C.O. was too shocked to respond. Then he lunged across the desk at Jax, uttering a string of curses. Jax danced back a step and locked his gaze on the major. But the subject was blinking water out of his eyes, and Jax could not get through to him.
He tried again, and this time a PIP image began to appear. “You are very relaxed,” he intoned.
“I’m pretty far from relaxed!” sputtered the major. “Relaxed is the last thing I am! Who are you? How did you get in here?”
“You don’t see me,” Jax persisted.
“What in blue blazes are you raving about? Security!”
Jax was bewildered. Why wasn’t the major following his instructions? He had to be bent. Where else could this PIP be coming from?
That was when he noticed that the PIP image was … wrong. It wasn’t Major Widmark’s view of Jax in the office; it was a different room altogether. There was a TV, and on that TV —
Oh, no! he thought, numb with horror. Not today! Not now!
On that TV was Jax himself, in the video he’d recorded for Operation Aurora. They were playing it in Delta Prime. The blowback was beginning! Even as that thought crossed his mind, the image doubled, and then doubled again — different rooms, but the same Jax on TV.
You can’t worry about that! Jax exhorted himself. Bend Widmark! Concentrate on here and now!
But by the time he tried to refocus on the major, at least a dozen PIPs filled his field of vision, leaving him dizzy and half blind.
He heard rather than saw the MPs storm the room. Rough hands grabbed him, threw him to the floor, and flipped him over on his face. He felt his arms pinned behind him as cuffs were slapped on his wrists. Hypnotism was out of the question now. All he could see was the carpet.
“All right,” said the major in a no-nonsense voice. “The jig is up.”
Throughout the interrogation, Jax remained handcuffed to a high-back wooden chair.
“Who are you, and what are you doing here?”
Jax didn’t answer, and not just because he was being bombarded by mesmeric impressions from Delta Prime. The Hypnotic Warfare Research Department was top secret. Brassmeyer was constantly drilling into the HoWaRDs’ heads that they were absolutely forbidden to discuss it with anyone, even the non-HoWaRD army personnel at Fort Calhoun.
“Who sent you?”
Again, silence. It would have been so much easier just to bend Widmark, but he couldn’t — not with two armed MPs standing there watching.
“What’s in that clock?”
Finally, something Jax could answer. “It’s just a clock.”
“What did you spray me with?”
“Water.”
“Do you expect me to believe that?”
A shrug.
“What did you do to my aide?”
“I didn’t hurt him,” Jax defended himself.
“He claims he never even saw you, and you must have passed within three feet of his chair! And when I asked him to move the alarm clock, he defied a direct order. Then he burst into tears like a two-year-old. Parker’s a good man! I want an explanation!”
Jax felt bad about that. He had specifically commanded Parker not to touch the clock. To be placed in conflict between a hypnotic order and a military one could tear a soldier in two. No wonder the poor guy cried.
“He didn’t do anything wrong,” Jax said. “It wasn’t his fault.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” the major barked. “Whose fault was it?”
Back to silence.
“I called down to the desk to ask who admitted a young boy. And you know what they told me? There was no young boy! How did you get in here? The same way you managed to ghost-walk past Parker?”
There was a knock at the door, and a technician in a voluminous silver hazmat suit waddled in. He flipped up the face guard. “All clear, sir. The clock is clean — old-school analog alarm clock with a mechanical bell.”
“What about radiation?” Widmark persisted.
“The Geiger counter says it’s clear,” Hazmat reported. “And the squirt flower was standard joke-shop stuff, filled with pure H2O. Nothing to worry about.”
The major clearly thought he should be worrying about something. The fact that there was nothing was even more disturbing.
“This isn’t over,” he told Jax wh
en the technician was gone. “I’m going to get to the bottom of this — don’t think I won’t.”
Through the storm of blowback from fourteen hundred miles away, Jax wondered how scared he should be. He hadn’t mentioned Brassmeyer or HoWaRD so far. But surely there would soon be a time when his responsibility to protect the secret installation at Fort Calhoun would come second to his responsibility to protect himself. He had broken into a secure facility. You could go to jail for that, especially since Widmark was absolutely convinced that something sinister was at play here. Jax had the perfect explanation all cued up: He had done it on a direct order from a US Army colonel. Except that order violated another order to keep HoWaRD secret. And there were probably consequences for breaking that one, too.
Eventually, they brought him to a small basement holding cell, took away his belt and shoelaces, and locked him inside. He was there for hours, hungry, thirsty, and scared to death. On top of it all, the blowback came in waves every time his hypnotic message was rebroadcast in Delta Prime. As the day drew on and TV viewership grew, there were so many images that they melted into a Technicolor collage that blurred his vision and gave him unbearable headaches.
The clatter of heavy boots on the concrete floor snapped Jax out of his misery. Two extra-large MPs wearing mirrored sunglasses opened the door of the cell. Jax noted that these were new men, not the pair that had manhandled him in Widmark’s office and brought him here.
“Time to go, kid.”
“Where am I going?” Jax asked in a small voice.
There was no answer. Jax couldn’t help feeling a stab of sympathy for Major Widmark, who was also not getting any answers, through no fault of his own.
The MPs put the handcuffs back on, and then things got really scary. One of them slipped a black hood over Jax’s head.
“What’s that for?” Jax quavered, terrified.
“Sorry, kid. We’ve got our orders.”
“From who? Darth Vader?”
“Nothing personal, but if you’re going to make a fuss, we’ll have to gag you.”
The experience of being marched blindly out of the building was more terrifying than anything Jax could remember. He could feel the fresh air when they stepped outside. It didn’t last long. He was thrown in the back of some kind of vehicle, and sensed darkness when the door was slammed behind him. Then they were driving, with one brief stop — the gatehouse? The agony of being left guessing at what fate awaited him was worse than any torture the army could have dreamed up.
Where are they taking me? he thought desperately. Some secret prison? Or worse? Will I ever see my family again?
He made up his mind then and there that all promises to Brassmeyer were off the table. He had to do everything he could to save himself.
It seemed like hours later, but was probably only fifteen minutes, when they stopped again. Jax heard the door being opened, felt air touch his exposed skin.
“Is anybody there?” And when strong hands grabbed him and dragged him out of the vehicle, Jax knew it was now or never. He might not get another chance to explain himself.
“None of this is my fault! Call Colonel Roderick Brassmeyer! He runs the Hypnotic Warfare Research Department at Fort Calhoun! If you haven’t heard of it, it’s because it’s top secret —”
The hood was yanked from his head, and he found himself practically nose-to-nose with Brassmeyer himself.
The colonel’s face was a thundercloud. “What part of ‘classified information’ don’t you understand, Opus?”
Conflicting emotions bubbled up in Jax — relief at being out of Ryviker, embarrassment at spilling the beans in front of the very person who’d ordered him not to, mental exhaustion from the ordeal he’d just been through and the blowback that continued to haunt him.
He opened his mouth to apologize, and what came out was a tirade that even he hadn’t known was lurking there.
“They arrested me! They handcuffed me! They put me in a cell! And then there was a hood on my head, and no one would tell me anything, and I didn’t know if I’d ever see my mom and dad again!” There was more, but he never managed to get it out, because the stress of the day caught up with him, and he broke down.
Brassmeyer produced a key and freed him from the handcuffs. “You didn’t know I’d be coming for you? How could you think I’d launch an operation without a contingency for that? You’re a valuable asset!”
“But I was in there for hours!”
“That’s how long it took me to pull the strings to shake you loose! Do you think I’ve got the juice to waltz out of there with a prisoner just because I’ve got birds on my collar? You don’t know the army very well. You’ve got to be God to make things happen — or at least a general.”
“It’s your fault I got caught,” Jax quavered. “I made it all the way to the C.O., shot him with the squirt flower, and I was just about to bend him when I got blowback from Delta Prime! I told you about blowback, how bad it is! If I’m so valuable, why don’t you listen to me?”
“Operation Aurora started broadcasting your message this morning,” the colonel said solemnly.
“Well, I know that!” Jax shot back. “It practically blew my head off! And by the time I recovered, two MPs were sitting on me, pushing my face into the carpet!”
Brassmeyer was silent for a long moment. Then he said the last thing Jax expected.
“Sorry.”
Jax was amazed. Brassmeyer never apologized, not even when he’d backed a Jeep over Pedroia’s Vespa.
“I’ve been in the army too long,” the colonel went on. “A soldier is used to being told only his own tiny part of things. Sometimes he’s expected to risk his life without ever knowing the big picture of what it’s all about. But you’re not a soldier. And you’re also a kid. I shouldn’t have hung you out to dry without making sure you understood absolutely that I had your six.”
“My six?”
“You know — your six o’clock, your hind end. Now tell me about this blowback.”
“It comes in waves every time the video airs in Delta Prime,” Jax explained. “The more people who are bent by it, the more images I get. It’s usually just a jumble, kind of a blur of color and motion. But after a while, it gets physical, like you have the flu — headaches, shakes, dizziness, nausea. I had this once in New York. I fell down the stairs in my school and ended up in the hospital.”
Brassmeyer thought it over. “We can’t pull the plug on Aurora,” he said finally. “The exercise is just too important. We built a whole town for it.”
“I don’t think I’m going to be much use to you until after October Fourth,” Jax warned, massaging his temples.
“Take some Tylenol,” Brassmeyer advised. “And stay away from stairs.”
“I’m not sick, Mom,” Jax told his mother through the steam of a bowl of chicken soup. “You know exactly what’s wrong with me.”
Undaunted, Monica Opus ladled out two more bowls, one for herself and another for her husband. “You’re not feeling well. What difference does it make if it comes from a germ or from some of that hocus-pocus?”
Resignedly, Jax took a taste, and burned his tongue.
The blowback from Delta Prime had been getting worse as October Fourth approached, and Jax’s hypnotic message was broadcast with ever-greater frequency. It didn’t matter that there were only seven hundred and fifty-three people in the test community. Every time they were exposed to the video clip, they were bent anew, and that mesmeric link rebounded to Jax. Late-night airings made sleep impossible. Just as he’d be about to drop off to uneasy dreams, some night owl’s mind would reach out to him through the link. And what little rest he could get would be cut short, because there were always the early risers watching TV with their morning joe.
“Ashton!” called Mrs. Opus. “Soup’s on.”
“Be right there,” came the reply from another room. There was a crash, followed by the tinkle of broken glass.
Jax and his mother exchanged a l
ong-suffering look. In the ongoing struggle to fight the boredom of Fort Calhoun, Dad’s latest obsession was a FreeForAll game called Virtual Tiffany, in which players designed elaborate stained-glass windows, lamps, and chandeliers.
Ashton Opus slouched into the kitchen. “That site is such a rip-off,” he complained. “Everything is supposed to be free, but it costs eight bucks to upgrade your dustpan if you get glass on the floor.”
“Have some soup,” his wife suggested.
Mr. Opus regarded Jax. “Feeling any better?”
“A little,” Jax lied.
“My parents never got sick from any blowback,” his father muttered. He looked thoughtful. “Then again, maybe they did, and I don’t remember it because they helped me forget it. I didn’t remember the ballet lessons either until I saw that picture of myself onstage in tights.”
“Your parents didn’t get blowback, Dad,” Jax reminded him. “It comes from remote hypnotism. I’m the only one who’s done that so far.”
“Well, stop doing it!” his mother said sharply.
“Tell that to the army,” said Jax bitterly. “They send people into war zones. So if all I get from them is a headache, I’m ahead of the game.”
“Colonel Brassmeyer should be ashamed of himself for putting you through all this,” his mother persisted. “I’d like to give him a piece of my mind.”
“Yeah, good luck with that,” her son told her, rubbing his forehead. “Anyway, he hasn’t been around too much lately. He’s got a big exercise coming up.”
The colonel’s absences had little to do with Operation Aurora. Brassmeyer had been taking a number of small trips with Stanley X. More than once, Jax spotted the two of them at the helipad, waiting for their lift to who knew where.
Jax found himself resenting the eight-year-old, which was unfair. It wasn’t Stanley’s fault he’d bent Jax that time. Jax never questioned the fact that he so easily dominated most of the others. But being dominated — and by a little kid — rankled him.
A valuable asset, Brassmeyer had called him. But was Stanley more valuable now?