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After a flicker of surprise, James just nodded. “Guess they can’t send the military in for me, huh?”

“Violation of Four Corners Agreement.” SOUFCOM could have sent a team in for him when he was still being detained, but not once he was “free.” Inside the Red states, the only way out of a detainment camp was through an oath of fealty and a real-time tracking device. Fortunately, oaths given under duress were considered invalid in the Blue. If Blue military personnel took the oath and got out, the military had to contract with QESA or another NGO to extract their soldier, but couldn’t do it themselves. That was an act of aggression, and against the Four Corners Agreement.

Tracking devices were tricky. Contracts to extract someone wearing a level-one tracking device were almost never issued. Nearly everyone had to wait the two years for the switch to a level-two device. So if an extraction agent was sent in after a guy like James, the Blue wanted him badly.

“What about your Brain-link?” If James had one, and he most likely did since he was an officer, they might be able to reactivate it, which would make all their com easier.

“Don’t have one. In Psi-force only com specialists do.”

Matt blinked. That was kind of weird. Most SF officers and non-coms had them. “Won’t really make a lot of difference; half the time I can’t turn them back on anyway.” The tech of implanting a com device in someone’s brain was tricky and delicate. And largely beyond Matt’s understanding.

James nodded, leaned back, and crossed his arms, tipping his chair back and looking thoughtful. And relaxed. Matt could tell by his twitching jaw muscle he was anything but.

“Our first backup is to head to Payette and walk across the Highway 52 bridge with our fake IDs. Our second backup is to grab a couple of bikes waiting for us in a barn outside of Weiser. We ‘steal’ those and ride like hell for the Snake River, then up Hells Canyon to the Hells Canyon Dam.”

“That’s pretty far north.”

“More safe spots, though, and sort of defies logic. Like, we should be getting out of the state as fast as we can, but instead we take forever. Creates circles of confusion.” Matt waved his spread fingers around.

“You’ve got this all planned out. Done it a few times?”

“Come out of Idaho with a similar plan five times.” Just never had to go through Hells Canyon. Matt held his breath, hoping James wouldn’t ask.

“Ever gone through Hells Canyon?”

Dammit. “No, never had to use that backup. We have a pretty extensive network of safe houses.” Matt sighed and admitted, “Which we can’t use, because you’ll have a live chip.”

“What do you normally do?”

“We bring out people who are already level-two parolees, and turn off their chip, leave a dummy somewhere they could conceivably be for a while. Camping or something. Then we walk really fast and avoid the militias. Sometimes we bring people out who haven’t been ID’d as queer by the Red, yet. That’s pretty easy.”

James gave him a long, unreadable look. Finally he said, “It’s not going to be that easy to get me out.”

“You sound very sure of that.” Which probably meant James had good reason to. He didn’t seem like much of an alarmist. And based on the little Matt could remember of James, he’d always been calm and level-headed.

Matt could remember when he was about fourteen, going out to fight a big grass fire, spending a day digging fire line with other teenagers from Weimer. Late in the day, they got trapped when the wind shifted and the fire changed direction.

They’d all been trained since birth on what to do, but only James had the calm to get everyone coordinated to set a big back-burn surrounding them, then get everyone down in their fire shelters to wait it out.

Matt had been dripping with sweat, but ice cold inside. Covered in soot, with goose bumps and chills sweeping over him. The tinfoil fire shelter that had been in his family for fifty years arched over his head, hooked under his thumbs by the corner straps. His heartbeat was echoing around inside it, or maybe that was just in his head. Matt was so scared he was sure he was going to puke all over the shallow depression he’d scraped into the sod before he could lie down in it.

He’d felt a hand on his shoulder, and looked up from under the edge of the shelter into James’s face. “Lie down.” That was the first thing he could remember James ever saying to him.

So Matt lay down, and the fire burned around their back-burn and never got close to them.

Matt pushed the memory away and refocused.

James ran a hand across his jaw, rasping his stubble. He must not have a sonic razor here. Then his hand traveled up through his hair, absently yanking on it. He blew out a big breath, puffing his cheeks out. Matt didn’t need a psychology degree to read James’s body language. He didn’t want—or didn’t know how—to tell him something.

“So, you know what Psi-force does, right?”

It took Matt a second. “Psychological warfare, right? Confusing the enemy, luring them into situations where we have the advantage, hearts and minds, stuff like that.”

“Yeah, we do stuff like that. What I do more is predict enemy behavior. Individual and group behavior.”

He seemed to need an acknowledgment. Matt nodded. “Uh-huh.”

“Yeah, so mostly we deploy with other SF as requested, maybe one to three of us per battalion, and we predict the way the firefight might go, and how best to end it fast. And usually we fight alongside everyone else while we do it.

“But it’s the fucking military, and somebody did some research somewhere and a bunch of someones came up with a plan to turn soldiers into a new kinda weapon. How unusual, huh?” James rolled his eyes and gave a disgusted—and kind of unhappy—snort. “And so they experimented on some Psi-Force troops. I don’t know how many. But of course they didn’t give
them
any choice in the matter. Just implanted something in their heads. And then they sent the altered Psi-force troopers out with bio-rhythm trackers and built-in uplinks implanted in them and started conducting their real-world experiments.”

Matt groaned. “So you’re telling me….” He made the “go on” motion with his hand.

“I’m telling you I’m one of the Blue’s guinea pigs. And the Red had to have found the extra tracking info on me when they disabled my chip. They know there’s something different about me.”

“How much do they know?” And what was there to know?

“The RIA knows I have tech implanted they’d like to figure out. I don’t know if they’re keeping that to themselves, or if they’ve let the whole Confederation of Red States in on it.”

“Jesus Howard Christ.” Matt groaned at the ceiling. “I thought this was going to be easier than normal since you’re SOUF. Fuck. I’d rather bring that lesbian couple with the two toddlers out of Utah again.”

“So would I.” James cracked half a smile. It
was
kinda cute, the way he could quirk up just one side of his mouth like that. And the golden stubble was kinda sexy. Matt sighed and shook his head.

“So, are you going to tell me what this implant does?”

“Sorta gave me a sixth sense, I guess.” James’s voice was flat, and his face was extra blank. “It’s like there’s another sensory organ hooked up to my brain. I can decipher emotional states and intent. Like an empath plus some. I know when someone is deceiving us to lure us into an ambush. Or when someone’s remembering what an asshole I was in high school.”

“But I wasn’t,” Matt said, lamely, after a moment of silence. That was all he had.

“Yeah, but I was.” James cleared his throat. “Sorry,” he added gruffly. “For being a dick about finding you, you know. With Steve.”

Matt stared. He had to deal with the news that James had some kind of implanted ESP,
and
his apology? He decided to deal with the easier issue first.

“You can’t really read someone’s mind, though, right? That’s what you said. You only pick up their intent?” It wasn’t like the idea of implanted ESP was unheard of. Gramma Anais had been talking about it for years. And they could hook up com equipment directly to your brain, now.

“Yeah. But by knowing someone’s intent and emotional state, I can usually make an educated guess about what they’re thinking.”

“You just woke up from brain surgery an empath? Didn’t that fuck with your head?”

Another disgusted snort. “Oh, yeah. I almost went insane at first. Took me months to get used to it. It was like I had an exposed nerve and everyone nearby was jumping on it. After a while I learned to ignore it. Like being in a crowded room and everyone’s talking, but you don’t listen unless you pay attention.

“I had to be sort of… tuned, I guess. If I worked with the same guys for a while, I knew who was feeling what, but there was this process I went through to ‘introduce’ them to my implant. So I’d know them. God, this makes no fucking sense, does it?”

“Yeah, it does. If you ran into someone you didn’t know when you were surrounded by guys you did, you knew what their intentions were?” James nodded. “But when you were thrown into a situation where you were around all new guys, you were lost?”

James looked thoughtful. “People’s brain waves can be just as distinctive as their voice. So I could actually get to know someone pretty fast, because the waves are directional. Like, if I knew someone was feeling ‘annoyed’, I also knew it came from that corner of the room. And then once I was familiar with their ‘voice’, I could ID that person.”

“How did that work in prison camp?”

“Same.” James paused. “I was part of a Ranger platoon when I was captured, and they separated us once we were detained.” James cleared his throat. “I met my, um, ‘friend’ in POW camp. He was AirSF.”

Matt’s timepiece chimed suddenly, breaking his intense concentration on James. He didn’t want to know about James’s lover, anyway. “We have five minutes. Listen, just tell me this. Is this what got fucked up in re-education? Your ability to sense people’s emotions and intentions?” James gave a sharp nod. “So, how fucked up are you?”

“My range and ability got more acute. When I’m outside, any guy walking down the street even two blocks ahead might be feeling or intending anything I pick up, and I don’t know where it’s coming from without more info. I’m pretty sure it’s line of sight. Solid masses seem to block reception.”

“And they didn’t before?”

“I think they did, but range did, also. Like, I might see a guy a hundred yards away, but I couldn’t pick him up. Now I can.”

“Fuck,” Matt sighed. “And you want out of here, right? I’m not fucking with some secret mission by being here?” Although that was unlikely, since they’d been contracted by SpecOps HQ to get James out. ArmySF SubCom and SOUFCOM should have both signed off on the contract, first. Unless they had one of their famous miscommunications.

“I want the fuck out of here. But there’s another consideration: someone comes and checks on me from the RIA daily.”

“This just keeps getting better. So what time do they check on you?”

“It’s a surprise, usually. Sometimes someone comes to the door, sometimes a guy talks to me at the coffee kiosk, once I got a vid com. I think we should wait until right after my next check and take off. I think we should go through Hells Canyon, and I think you should turn off my chip altogether.”

“It’ll take longer, increase the risk for both of us and our operative in Colorado.”

“Militia patrols are a huge risk, my face could be all over the militia band within minutes of discovering me gone. And parts of Hells Canyon might be rugged enough to block the tracking satellites. They aren’t going to write me off as another Enforced Emigrant, Matt.”

It was true, and Matt knew it. The entire point of his career was to ensure the Enforced Emigration law worked—a law his great-great-grandfather Aaron McEvoy authored and shepherded through the new Blue States of America Congress in 2058.

QESA was the first and largest military contractor that sent agents in to extract moral refugees in the Red. Most people had to petition through the Blue underground for assisted extraction before the BSA Federal Court would approve the mission, but members of the military were different. Since James was no longer in a POW or re-education camp, he had to be extracted by QESA or get out on his own. But the BSA could still contract for his extraction without a Federal Court order since he was military.

“You really want out of here, huh?”

“It’s changing, Matt.” James stared off into space, rasping his cheek with his hand again.

God, he could be confusing as hell. “James! Snap out of it. What’s changing?”

“The implant. It didn’t just change when they started exposing me to their re-education and stabilization. It keeps changing.

“You’re good at remaining unnoticed, Matt. I knew you were tailing me because I could feel you back there.”

“I thought you said that was normal—”

“It’s not normal for me to know you were directing that intent at
me
. You could have been tailing anyone. Little things like that have been developing regularly. I don’t know what th’fuck this thing in my head is, or what it’s gonna do to me in the end. I want to go back and get the fucking thing out.”

“Gah!” Matt was reaching new levels of frustration. “Okay, we have to move. Go home, pack, and as soon as you’re contacted, signal me visually. What’s a good signal I could see from a hiding spot?”

“I live in an older part of town, one of those multi-use building areas. In the brick-and-mortar across the street behind it there’s an empty storeroom on the third floor, northeast corner. You should be able to get in from the roof—I’ve done it. Scale the drainage system on the building to the north and climb over the shared wall. When I’ve been contacted, I’ll turn on the light in the third window from the southeast side of my place.”

“Been planning ahead?”

“Wouldn’t you have every escape possibility mapped out?”

“Hell, yes. Okay, you go and I’ll be about thirty minutes behind you. I have to make another quick contact.”

“I assume my address was in my file?” Matt nodded. James stared at him a second before standing up. “Thanks, Matt,” he said quietly, tapping his knuckles on the table. Then he walked out.