Wormhole (The Rho Agenda #3)(86)
When she set the plate, hot from the microwave, down beside the laptop, Jennifer didn’t even notice.
“Brunch is served.”
“Yeah, OK. Give me a sec.”
Having watched Jen in some of her programming Zen states before, Heather left it and walked back to the kitchen. If it got cold, Jen could heat it back up if she wanted to.
Retrieving her own plate from the microwave, Heather sat down beside Mark, who had amazingly almost finished clearing his first plateful. The smell of the food made her mouth water so she was afraid drool would leak over her lips as she took the first bite. It didn’t, and the meatloaf tasted as good as it smelled. But somehow, Heather couldn’t swallow.
Standing up quickly, she strode to the sink, leaned over, and vomited into the garbage disposal. Immediately Mark was beside her, his arm around her waist.
“What’s wrong?”
Heather spit, tried to answer, and then succumbed to another retching bout. It was stupid. Jack and Janet had warned them about this, the aftereffects of killing a man. Somehow she’d thought, since she’d already seen Mark kill men, that she’d be immune to the reaction. But now that she’d dropped the mental guard she’d maintained throughout her captivity, the thought of the Navy SEALs she’d killed and the guards at the NSA facility flooded her mind. America’s finest. Heroes serving their country. They had families too. But she’d killed them all. And even though she thought she’d done what she’d had to, that didn’t make it better.
Turning on the cold water, she rinsed out her mouth and washed her face, then flipped on the disposal. When she turned back to face Mark, he didn’t bother to say anything, just pulled her close and wrapped his strong arms around her body. As he held her, tears leaked from Heather’s eyes, gaining volume until they formed streams down her cheeks.
“Oh, Mark. I’ve seen our futures. And most of them, the most probable ones, are so...so dark. And not just for us. For everyone.”
“Look at me.” Mark leaned back until his gaze held her, pulling her out of her visions and into his eyes. “I don’t give a shit about those futures. None of them. I’m the now. And I’ve got a message for anyone trying to bring on that darkness. They try to take this away from me and they’ll be sorry.
“I know this doesn’t make mathematical sense, but I want you to forget about any future that doesn’t go our way. Even if it’s 99 percent likely, throw it away. We can’t waste energy fighting to prevent bad outcomes. The only way we’re going to get through this is by focusing on what we want to happen. Visualize that. Find us a way through.”
Heather steadied herself, wiped her eyes, and nodded. When he tried to pull her close again, she stopped him.
“I’m OK now. I think I’ll try to eat again.”
As she seated herself in front of her plate, Heather did what Mark had asked. As she began to chew, she pushed all the dark visions out of her mind. As her grandfather had always said, “If you’re going to bet the long shots, then let those ponies run.”
Eileen Wu was frustrated. The four a.m. drive from her Annapolis apartment to Fort Meade hadn’t bothered her, at least not until she got to Meade. The post was still bottled up tight, and with all the NSA recalls plus the continued arrival of military and government investigation teams, she hadn’t actually made it through the gate until 6:35.
The NSA parking lot was a nightmare. The parking garage that concealed the Ice House had been sealed off, forcing everyone out into the huge exterior lot, and, despite the early hour, Eileen had been forced to cruise the full rows until she found a slot to squeeze her car into a half mile from the facility.
Her mood didn’t improve when she got to the building and discovered she would not be allowed down to her lab until after the forensics teams had finished the crime scene investigation. Worse, they hadn’t even started the actual investigation yet. The security folks had refused to allow the investigators and medical examiners access until their clearances could be confirmed. Even after their security credentials were verified through the Joint Personnel Adjudication System, JPAS, security again refused to grant access. Yes, they had top-secret clearances, but they weren’t cleared for SCI, sensitive compartmented information, and the Ice House was an SCI facility.
As for Eileen, no amount of reasoning, arguing, or even ranting and raving made the slightest bit of difference. She wasn’t getting access until the forensics teams were finished. She’d even tried the old “I’m doing the electronic forensics investigation” ploy. Nope. The cone of silence had descended, and nobody was listening.
Even a direct appeal to General Wilson hadn’t helped. He was already involved in forcing through security waivers to get the crime scene unit access to the Ice House, and she just wasn’t at the top of his priorities right now. She’d get her chance at figuring out how someone had penetrated the facility’s electronic control systems, but only after all the dead bodies were removed.
By the time she was allowed into the building, it was already four thirty in the afternoon. She paused in the foyer to take in the scene. The building was a mess. The tile floor was littered with chunks of concrete, broken glass, and wood from walls and furnishings riddled by bullets and explosive ordnance.
Eileen wound her way to the stairwell through a maze of yellow tape designed to keep people out of the areas where investigators were still working. The bodies had been removed, but the smell remained, the stench of death clogging her nostrils. Everywhere she looked the standing water was red.