Wormhole (The Rho Agenda #3)(67)

Also, this void wasn’t four-dimensional space, but consisted of one or more additional dimensions, each of which touched all points in space. The void was full of these ripples, crossing over each other, waves of varying frequencies and amplitudes, most completely unfamiliar. Heather let her mind drift, scanning the wave sources in an expanding spiral until she recognized a familiar pattern. Jennifer.

Heather felt her as surely as if they had touched, the strength of the feeling jumping in intensity as she focused on the flame that was Jennifer. Rather than try to establish a connection, Heather relaxed further into the meditation, letting her mind center on the wave source in its own way.

Then it happened. It was as if their two candle flames merged, hers with Jennifer’s, and in that moment their minds joined as thoroughly as if they’d just slid into the alien headsets. Only this time neither of them threw up any mental blocks, joyously accepting the complete mental union.





In her padded cell, Heather’s readings underwent a remarkable shift, as if she’d suddenly entered a terrifying dream. As Dr. Jacobs turned his head away from the monitor to gaze into Heather’s milky white eyes, he was startled to see tears streaming down the sides of her face to dampen her brown hair.

He briefly considered trying to rouse her from the hallucination, but rejected the idea. Better to watch and see where this went. Perhaps whatever mental trauma Heather was experiencing in her fugue could be turned to some future advantage.

Leaning back in his chair, Dr. Jacobs let the electronic data collection continue.





General Balls Wilson was pissed, more than pissed. He was mad as hell. As he stared at his assembled staff, his usually jovial brown eyes seemed ready to spit bolts of liquid lightning that would leave only charred skeletal imprints of each person who had attracted the full force of that gaze.

“Who the hell authorized making this video and showing it to Mark Smythe?”

As the silence in the room acquired the density of a thick London fog, his long stride carried him around the NSA conference room, first clockwise, then counter-, until the weight of his presence became unbearable.

“Gentlemen. Maybe you aren’t hearing me. I want to know who gave the OK for this piece-of-shit video to be produced and shown to my prisoner without my direct authorization. Unless I get an answer in the next thirty seconds, every one of you bastards is going to be looking for a new line of work.”

Carl Christenson was the first to respond. “Sir, it appears that Dr. Krause ordered the video production and showed it to Mark Smythe in person.”

“Then he’s lucky he’s dead, because if he was still alive, he’d be mine.”

Balls Wilson’s powerful stride carried him back to the front of the room, where his hungry hawk’s gaze swept the assemblage. “Three NSA men dead. And you know what? After what I’ve seen, I don’t know how Smythe managed it, but I don’t blame him one little bit.”

His eyes turned on Dr. Jacobs. “How did Dr. Krause get the original video of Heather McFarland for his little greenroom production? Aren’t you in charge of her interrogation?”

“Yes sir, I am. Dr. Krause asked for access to the video. I assumed it was to assist with the Smythe interrogation.”

“You assumed.”

“Yes sir.”

“Goddamn it. I assumed I had a competent staff. I guess we’re all a bunch of idiots.” General Wilson’s chest heaved as he fought to bring his emotions back under control. “I’m not running some sort of half-assed Abu Ghraib operation here. If I find another instance of someone trying out an interrogation technique without my explicit approval, you’ll wish you never heard my name. Am I making myself clear?”

“Yes sir!”

The thunderous response from all those in the briefing room lent credence to their answer.

General Wilson’s eyes locked, person by person, with each individual in the room.

“Good. Make sure you don’t disappoint me again.”

He let several seconds of silence hang in the air between them before speaking again.

“Dismissed!”

In less than thirty seconds the room, save General Wilson, was empty. Turning once more to the frozen image of Heather McFarland bound to her bed as three convicts were about to be released into her room, Balls Wilson hurled the remote control into the video screen with enough force to shatter the glass display into a thousand pieces, the falling fragments creating a sound like freezing rain on a car windshield.

Balls Wilson stared at the mess, his hands clenched so tightly that the muscles in his upper arms bulged with the effort. Then he turned and strode from the room.





Louis Dubois had come to despise Donald Stephenson on a personal level. But he had to admit the man had intellect and drive that went beyond any conventional definition of genius. He was an * who unveiled glorious theoretical and practical breakthroughs, seemingly on an as-needed basis.

The latest scientific marvel was a design for a device that Dr. Stephenson called a stasis field generator that, if it worked as the theory predicted, could create powerful force fields, manipulating them with incredible precision. Louis had worked around the clock the last forty-eight hours reviewing Dr. Stephenson’s white paper, trying to find something wrong with his theoretical derivations, but all he’d done was confirm Stephenson’s work.