Sleeper Agenda

  “Father Cook?” Mike called out. “We have the boy, sir.”

  “Bring him downstairs,” said a muffled voice from below.

  Nate led the way down the short hallway and through the kitchen to a door in the far corner. Mike guided Tyler down the steep wooden stairs to the basement.

  “It’s us, Father,” Nate said, as if Cook had forgotten they were coming.

  “Be with you in a minute,” Cook said as a table saw came to life, the whine of its rotating blade filling the basement workroom.

  Tyler’s eyes immediately took in his surroundings. Cook was directly across the room, his broad back to them as he worked at the saw. He seemed bigger, heavier than the dossier had reported.

  He finished his work and switched off the machine. Smiling cheerfully, he turned around and removed his safety goggles. He had round features, pink cheeks, and salt-and-pepper hair worn in a buzz cut.

  “Hello, there,” he said, approaching Tyler with his hand outstretched.

  Tyler couldn’t respond.

  “Take the restraints off,” Cook ordered, then held out his large hand again.

  Tyler took it weakly in his own.

  “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you in the flesh, boy.” Cook let his hand go and casually strolled toward another worktable, where an unassembled chair and some tools were resting. “Been a long time since me and your daddy talked as well.”

  Tyler rubbed at his wrists and lowered his head sadly. “The government came and took him.”

  Cook shook his head slowly, leaning his bulk against the worktable. “It’s a sad day when our elected officials can persecute us for the friends we once kept, but this is just a sign of the times, I’m afraid.”

  From the corner of his eye Tyler could see Mike and Nate nodding in agreement.

  “Me and your daddy used to talk about how the world was changing, moving further and further away from God and what our forefathers fought for.” He picked up a chair leg from the table, hefting its weight in his large hand. “I told him I would change the world if I could,” Cook said. “That I’d wake up the people of this great nation, make them see what’s happening to their way of life right under their very noses.”

  Tyler cleared his throat nervously. “Daddy said that you were a great man with great ideas and that the world could learn from you.”

  Cook smiled, still holding the chair leg in his left hand.

  “Did your daddy really say that?” he asked, the pink in his cheeks growing darker.

  “Yes, and he said that if anything ever happened to him, I was to come find you—which is exactly what I did.”

  The father of the brotherhood chuckled heartily and reached into his back pocket with his right hand. “You done good, boy,” he said as he removed a folded piece of paper and tossed it to the ground in front of Tyler. “Pick it up.”

  Tyler reached down and grabbed the paper, unfolding it to reveal a photograph of a family in front of a Christmas tree. He recognized Ryan Childs at once, guessing that the woman and the boy in the picture were his wife and son. He also saw the problem—he didn’t even come close to resembling Brady Childs; the kid was heavyset, with dark hair and evidence of a serious overbite.

  “Got that with a card a while back; can’t rightly think of the reason I saved it,” Cook explained, a sneer twisting his friendly features. “But I’m sure glad I did.”

  Then he stepped quickly away from the worktable, pulling his arm back and throwing the chair leg at Tyler’s face.

  Tyler watched the chair leg leave Cook’s hand as if in slow motion, spinning through the air toward him. And at the precise moment he reached out and plucked it from the air before it could do him any harm.

  He considered trying to explain why he no longer appeared the same as the boy in the Christmas photo but knew it would be useless. Besides, he was getting itchy.

  It had already been nearly three months since his last kill.

  It was like watching a movie—a very dark, violent movie.

  Although the really scary thing was, he knew it was real. They were memories. They belonged to another, but they were leaking into his own thoughts—his own dreams.

  Tom Lovett shared his mind with a killer. Tom Lovett was the killer, but then again, he wasn’t. Pieces of the story cascaded through his thoughts, a bizarre set of footnotes, as this latest memory of violence unfolded before his mind’s eye.

  He wanted to look away, sensing the mayhem to come, but he was a captive audience, held in the unrelenting clutches of deep sleep.

  Tom was just seventeen, but he was a teenager with a rare sleep disorder called Quentin’s narcolepsy. It was a condition that caused him to fall asleep anytime, anyplace, and not awaken until the spell had run its course. At least, that was what he’d always been told. The truth, he was finally learning, was even worse.

  His focus returned to the violence. The killer’s movements were a blur, the wooden post in his hand suddenly the deadliest of weapons. He lashed out first at Mike, behind him to the left, smashing the chair leg across the bridge of the man’s nose. There was an explosion of brilliant crimson and Mike crumpled to the floor, clutching his face. Nate didn’t even have a chance to react before the heavy piece of wood connected viciously with the side of his head. And as he fell backward to the floor, the killer hit him again for good measure.

  Tom had recently discovered that his entire life had been a lie, perpetrated by the very people he had loved and trusted most. Tom Lovett wasn’t just some teen with a rare sleep disorder—he was something altogether different.

  Something deadly.

  The Janus Project—a covert government program charged with creating the ultimate assassin—had used his condition and shaped him into something unlike anything the world had ever seen. A single body with two distinct personalities: one second a normal teenage boy, the next, a cold-blooded killer who would stop at nothing.

  When a narcoleptic attack was triggered, Tom Lovett went away and the killer—Tyler Garrett—was awakened.

  Tyler was fast, but not fast enough. Cook had charged, and as the killer turned to meet his attack, the large man tackled him. They crashed backward into a series of cabinets, thrashing on the concrete floor as screws, nails, and loose tools rained down on them.

  Cook appeared to be dominating, but then Tyler managed to raise his arms, smacking both hands flat against the sides of the man’s head.

  Tom could hear Cook’s piercing scream as his eardrums were ruptured. He wanted to wake up; he knew how it would end; it always ended the same.

  With murder.

  And that was how it had almost ended for him as well. The Janus Project had wanted him dead, but he hadn’t wanted to die, and neither had the personality who shared his mind. And so the two had begun to merge. Tom had so far managed to maintain his dominance, but Tyler’s murderous persona was gradually leaking into his waking life. Almost every day he had begun to notice subtle changes in himself—knowledge of weapons he’d never seen, fighting techniques he’d never studied, violent, aggressive reactions to certain situations.

  And the dreams—the disturbing memories that were slowly becoming part of his own.

  The killer sprang to his feet and dove across the workroom, but Cook moved quickly as well, grabbing hold of his ankle, causing him to stumble. Cook was on his feet in a flash, twin trickles of blood trailing from both ears, the curved blade of a carpet knife suddenly in his hand.

  Tyler snatched up a stray piece of pine from the ground, using it to shield his chest just as the knife slashed across him. He lashed out with the piece of wood, the corner catching Cook’s arm, knocking the knife from his grasp. He jumped to his feet, driving the palm of his hand up under the man’s chin—a blow that would have rendered any ordinary man unconscious.

  But it appeared that Elijah Cook was far from an ordinary man. He stumbled back a step, his eyes flickering as he seemed to fight with passing out, but less than a second later he had fully r
ecovered, bringing his own fist down on the killer. Tyler managed to block the blow, but its force was so great that it drove him back. Again he lost his footing and began to stumble.

  Tom could feel Tyler’s emotions—while Tom was afraid, he could sense Tyler’s unbridled excitement at the same time. This was what he lived for, what he had been born to do.

  As he stumbled, Tyler twisted to the side and fell against the table with the power saw. Next to the machine were the spare blades. Without a moment’s hesitation he snatched one up and spun around, letting the blade fly at its target, a murderous Frisbee.

  Cook had retrieved Mike’s shotgun and was just aiming down its barrel when the spinning saw blade plunged into the soft flesh of his neck. The shotgun erupted as he dropped it and stumbled backward, desperately clawing at the blade in his throat.

  The stray blasts ignited cans of paint thinner that had been stacked in the corner near the workstation. There was a fiery explosion, and the cellar became filled with choking fumes and fire. Tyler moved quickly through the smoke, avoiding the spreading flames, using pure instinct to navigate the blinding fog.

  And as he climbed the stairs to safety, Tom struggled with the overpowering sense of helplessness and fear that he felt every time he was forced to experience one of Tyler’s murderous memories. It was a fear unlike anything he had known before, the fear that at some point his guard would come down and the killer lurking in the shadows of his mind would grab the opportunity. The opportunity to take control.

  Forever.

  “Tom, are you all right?”

  Tom recognized the voice as Christian Tremain’s, coming from a speaker hidden somewhere in the room. He sat up in his bed, his body drenched with sweat.

  “M’fine,” he mumbled, running his hands through his sandy blond hair, trying to push the violent images from his mind.

  “Hypnagogic attack?” Tremain asked, referring to the bizarre hallucinations that were a symptom of Tom’s sleep disorder.

  “No,” Tom said, now searching the plain white room for a camera as well. “Didn’t realize I was being watched.”

  Tremain made a noise that could have been a chuckle. “You’re the product of an experiment to create the ultimate assassin. Of course you’re being watched.”

  Tom shuddered. He hated being thought of as an experiment created in a lab—images from countless old Frankenstein movies ran through his head.

  But at least Tremain was one of the good guys, or so he claimed. He was the director of the Pandora Group. The Janus Project and its director, Brandon Kavanagh, were once part of that agency, but Kavanagh had broken off on his own and was now trying to sell the sleeper technology to the highest bidder. Tom had never seen Kavanagh, but he was certain his other half had, and he was waiting for the day when the memory would be shared and he could see the face of the man who had taken so much from him—the face of the man he was going to kill.

  Tom tossed the covers back and got up; he couldn’t shake Tyler’s latest memory. He kept seeing the faces of the dead men, and as he thought of them, a slight tremble of excitement went through his body.

  The thrill of the kill.

  “I remembered another one of his…” Tom paused, not really sure what he would call it. “Assignments?” He sat back down on the side of the bed, suddenly exhausted.

  “What was it this time?” Tremain asked. “Another assassination?”

  Tom nodded. “Some guy named Cook—in Virginia.”

  “Founder of the Brotherhood of the New Dawn. I remember. He died in a mysterious fire that practically burned down his entire compound.”

  “Mysterious.” Tom laughed nervously.

  “The FBI went in after the explosions.”

  “Explosions?”

  “Yep, besides the stuff that went up in the fire, the agents found a hidden cache of high explosives—enough to cause catastrophic damage to, say, a federal office building.”

  Tom placed his face in his hands. “So he actually was a bad guy,” he said with a hint of relief.

  “This one was, yes,” Tremain replied.

  The image of a kindly, gray-haired old man dressed in baggy pants and a heavy sweater suddenly appeared in Tom’s mind. The man was sitting in a beat-up old chair in a cabin, happily puffing on a pipe. Tom preferred to remember Dr. Bernard Quentin this way rather than the other, on the floor of the same cabin, three bullet holes in his chest.

  Dr. Quentin had discovered the rare sleep disorder that bore his name, and it was his research that Kavanagh and company had exploited to create the sleeper agents. Quentin had known early on that his studies were being corrupted, and so he’d devised a way to stop Kavanagh—a way to use one of Kavanagh’s own assassins against him. He’d planted a secret message within the mind of a test subject, a fail-safe mechanism that, on Quentin’s murder, would trigger realizations in the sleeper subject of who he really was and what he was being used to do.

  Tom was that test subject, and as the truth had been revealed to him, his entire life had crumbled. Even the couple he’d thought were his parents had turned out to be nothing more than handlers in Kavanagh’s employ, keeping him healthy and safe until a killer was needed and a switch was flipped to make Tom go away.

  Well, thanks to Quentin, Tom wasn’t going anywhere anymore.

  “It’s still pretty early.” Tremain’s voice filtered through the speaker, forcing him from his reverie. “Why don’t you try to get some more sleep?”

  Thinking about his situation had left Tom restless, and he stood up from the bed.

  “I’m done with sleep.”

  Chapter 2

  AGENT ABERNATHY’S FIST connected with the side of Tom’s face, snapping his head violently to the right. Tom’s mouth was suddenly filled with the coppery taste of blood and his ears rang loudly. He stumbled back away from his assailant.

  “I don’t understand how kicking my ass is going to help anything,” he complained as he removed the padded headgear and looked to Tremain, who stood on the sidelines of the workout room, sipping coffee from a plastic cup.

  “We need to see how much of the Tyler persona has been assimilated into your own,” he said. “And if new information can be accessed when it’s needed.”

  Tom shook his head. He was tired of all the testing and prodding that had become his life since arriving at the Pandora facility. “You already know what I can do,” he said, exasperation creeping into his voice.

  Tremain had been there the day Tom had survived the attack by a Janus assault squad and his own parents.

  Tom felt his rage surge. No, those people weren’t his parents—they never had been, and the sooner he accepted that, the better off he’d be. No matter how many times he thought about their betrayal, he couldn’t bring himself to let them go. There were still so many good memories.

  But then, those were likely lies as well, implants, false memories to make him believe his life was real.

  All so they could hide a killer inside his head.

  Tremain took another sip of his coffee as two more agents dressed in workout gear entered the gym and joined Abernathy.

  “Humor us, Tom,” Tremain said. “Just spar with them. They won’t hurt you.”

  Abernathy grinned and winked at Tom as he slowly approached the three agents.

  “It’s not me that I’m worried about,” Tom grumbled, placing the padded gear back on his head.

  “So how do you want to do this?” he asked, standing in front of the men, focusing his attention on Agent Abernathy. “Want to crack me in the face again to remind me where we left off?”

  The man laughed. “That was just a love tap, kid,” he said, punching the knuckles of his red padded gloves together. “Thought you were something special—guess I was wrong.”

  The other agents chuckled, and Tom felt something within him snap. Abernathy didn’t even see it coming. Tom reacted instantaneously, smashing his fist across the agent’s handsome, grinning face. He stumbled back toward his budd
ies, who caught him and saved him from falling.

  Tom punched his own gloved fists together, imitating Abernathy. “Special enough to kick your ass, I guess,” he said.

  Abernathy recovered fast, shaking off the punch and coming at Tom straight on, fists raised to give him the beating of his life.

  Tom had planted his feet and was waiting for that spark of inspiration that would show him how to react when he heard Tremain yell from the sidelines.

  “All of you, take him down—hard, if you have to.”

  Tom shot him a quick, surprised glance, and Tremain raised his coffee cup in a mock salute. Tom turned back to the three agents in time to see Abernathy’s fist careening toward his face, and suddenly his brain somehow slowed down the action. He moved his head from the path of the punch, feeling a breeze as the leather-clad fist sailed past, dangerously close.

  Then Tom stepped in, grabbing hold of Abernathy’s arm at the elbow, bending it sharply in a direction it wasn’t meant to go. He heard the agent hiss in pain and applied even more pressure, forcing him to choose between a broken arm or dropping to his knees.

  “What’s it gonna be?” Tom asked, feeling the man begin to struggle, but then common sense prevailed, and Abernathy lowered himself to the floor.

  Tom pushed the man away and turned to the other two agents, who now circled him. He didn’t know their names, but he had seen them around the Pandora facility. They were stereotypical special agents—square-jawed, painfully serious, and in excellent physical condition.

  Just two more pieces of meat that need to be cut down to size, he thought with a weird tingle of fear and excitement as he attacked his opponents, not a doubt in his mind that he would soon be the only one standing.

  Well, I’ll be damned, Tremain thought, drinking from his cup, afraid that if he took his eyes from the scene, he just might miss something.