He said he’d hurt you if you told, didn’t he?
If I tell, they’d take him away, then I’d really be all alone. Unless I can live with you? Can I?
No, Lilith. I wish you could, but it’s dangerous around here too.
Do you love me, Jacob?
Yes.
You wouldn’t ever hurt me, would you?
Why would I hurt you?
Just promise me you won’t.
I promise.
*
‘Jake?’
Dominique enters the pool area. Sees the figure lying motionless on the bottom.
‘Oh, shit-’ She dives in the pool. Swims to the bottom. Drags her son and the weight plate to the surface.
‘Jake! Jake, wake up!’
Jacob’s consciousness is hurled out of the white haze of the nexus into bright sunlight, his mind awhirl, fighting to catch up with what just happened.
‘… insane? Answer me?’
‘Huh?’
‘I said, are you insane? Are you trying to drown yourself?’
‘No. I was… I was just training.’
‘Don’t ever let me catch you doing this again? Do you understand?’
‘Yes, ma’am. You’ll never catch me again.’
‘Don’t sass me, young man. You know what I mean.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
Dominique climbs out of the pool, the sudden rush of adrenaline causing her muscles to quiver. ‘Get dressed. Your godfather flew in to see you.’
Dripping wet, she heads back to the house, her nerves shot.
The Faraday chamber, located in the basement floor of the Gabriel twins’ training facility, is a metallic enclosure, its wall-embedded circuitry designed to scramble all incoming electromagnetic signals. Soundproof and windowless, the chamber is painted in a neutral color, its softly diffused overhead light panels rigged to a voice- activated dimmer. Inside the room is a rectangular steel table, with two matching chairs positioned at either end. A video recorder and closed-circuit camera are positioned inconspicuously along the ceiling.
Jacob Gabriel sits at the far end of the table, facing the closed door. He doodles on a legal pad with a blue ink pen, waiting for the session to begin.
Chaney and Major Phillips watch him on a monitor from another room.
‘Okay, here’s the drill,’ Phillips says. ‘While I’m working with Jacob, you keep the other twin occupied in the SOSUS lab.’
‘You think these two can communicate telepathically to one another?’
‘It’s definitely possible. One thing I know from personal experience is that remote viewing across inter- dimensional lines is very frequency-oriented. Since tapping into wavelengths of a similar consciousness can affect the believability of the session-’
‘I understand.’
Jacob looks up as the major enters the antiseptic room and shuts the door. ‘Hi, Jacob. My name is Major Phillips. I’m the guy the president told you about.’
‘You’re here to test me?’
‘You say it as if it’s a bad thing. Actually, remote viewing is a lot of fun. I’ve been doing this sort of thing for a long time.’
‘My first time was an accident.’
‘Which means you should respond very well to formalized training.’
‘What do I have to do?’
‘For one thing, relax. Your mom tells me you practice yoga. Focus on your breathing. Let your thoughts go blank. Computer, dim lights 60 percent.’
The room darkens.
‘Jake, I want you to turn to a clean sheet of paper. Write your name and the date in the upper right-hand corner.’ Major Phillips reaches into his breast pocket and removes six double-wrapped, opaque envelopes. Inside each is a folded piece of paper, with words written in ink.
‘There are six stages to remote viewing. We always begin with stage one. Do you know how telepathy works?’
‘One mind tunes to another.’
‘Correct. Remote viewing works the same way. Information, whether it’s in our past or future, is stored as energy in the psychic realm. To acquire bits of this information requires a clue or signal line. Your mind can be subconsciously tuned in to the meanings of these clue lines, or, in the case of you and your brother, your minds may be genetically enhanced to evoke, or call them up. Clues will come to you as sharp, rapid influxes of significance. Your preconscious nervous system will transmit these ideas through the muscles and nerves of your arm and hand and express them as marks on your paper. It’s very important that you not try to analyze these marks, just let them come. In the process, you might envision or remote-view different imaginary shapes for clues. When this happens, just tell me what you see. Again, don’t try to interpret anything. So? Sound like fun?’
The white-haired twin shrugs. ‘I can already do this.’
‘You can? Then this first coordinate should be easy for you.’
Phillips slides the first envelope in front of Jacob. ‘Interface with the object. Tell me what it is.’
The boy touches the envelope, then closes his azure-blue eyes. ‘This is too easy. It’s a beach, the beach in back of our compound.’
Phillips maintains his poker face, inside he is quite impressed. ‘Let’s try another.’ He skips the second envelope, jumping ahead to number three.
Jacob closes his eyes. ‘Man-made… bronze and steel… surrounded by water. I hear echoes of a city.’
‘Where are you?’
‘Statue of Liberty.’
Phillips says nothing, but his heart is pounding like a kettledrum.
‘Let’s try one more.’ He slides another envelope forward.
Jacob focuses inward.
A mountain… its volcanic peak rising higher…
The clue lines of Hawaii’s Diamond Head tighten in his mind – then suddenly evaporate, morphing into an ominous, alien world.
Crimson coals simmer along a subterranean ceiling, its embers refracting below along the molten surface of a silvery lake. Standing alone by the lake’s volcanic-sandy banks is a tree, like none he has ever seen. Wide as a silo, as white as the driven snow, its bare branches and alien bark drips a syrupy alabaster goo.
Situated within the ‘V’ of the great trunk is an object.
Jacob’s consciousness moves closer.
It is a human head, the severed neck melding into the tree’s ivory-colored ooze.
The eyes flash open, blazing a fiery azure blue.
Who’s out there? Whoever it is, stay away!
Ennis Chaney exits the elevator on the first floor, then turns left down the main corridor to the double doors marked: SOSUS LAB.
The underwater sound surveillance system, known as SOSUS, is a network of undersea microphones and cables originally configured by the United States Navy during the Cold War to spy on enemy submarines. As the military’s need for SOSUS began to dwindle, oceanographers successfully petitioned the Navy for access to the acoustic network. Using SOSUS, scientists could hear the infrasonic vibrations made by ice floes cracking, seabeds quaking, and underwater volcanoes erupting, sounds far below the range of human hearing.
