Falling Into Place (29 page)

Jill Musik regained consciousness slowly. Her skull ached, her body was all pins and needles and she felt lightheaded as she opened her eyes. She also had the worst case of dry mouth in the history of mankind. From where she was on the floor, the therapist could see a half dozen people gathered around the bed where Darrell Meadows had been restrained. They seemed to be ignoring her completely, which suited Jill just fine. She tried to stand, but a sudden wave of weakness hit her, forcing her to sit back down. Dr. Musik shook her hands, trying to get the life back into them, but it was no use. She decided to play possum for a bit and listen to whoever was around that bed, hoping to discover what they were doing to Meadows when she’d barged in.

“Vital signs are rising but there is no pupil dilation or other sensory responses,” a man with a stethoscope around his neck said. “We’ll need at least a CAT scan before I can diagnose the problem.”

“Will the process work with the patient in this condition?” one of the techs said.

“Doesn’t really matter what condition she’s in, since it will take days if not weeks to fix the neuro-enchephalyzer,” a different technician replied as he inspected the machine.

She?
Jill thought.
Who are they talking about? Were they trying to use whatever that machine was on another agent?

A wave of anger coursed through her, giving her the strength to stand. “What are you people doing down here?” she screamed as she got to her feet. “Leave that poor woman alone!” She rushed over to the bed and looked down at the patient. “I said leave her alone–” Jill stopped in mid-sentence as her mouth fell open and her stomach lurched, a powerful nausea overtaking her. It was her unconscious body lying in that bed. She was looking at herself. A new wave of numbness radiated through her body as she struggled to focus past her rising panic.

“What’s going on?” she screamed. No one moved. No one heard her. Fear and desperation took over as she frantically tried to get someone to notice she was there. “Listen to me! What happened to me? Please, someone tell me! Please!” She reached for the edge of the bed but her hands passed right through the metal frame. Jill screamed for another minute before she started to cry, finally receding from the bed side, unable to look at her comatose body for another second. She sat in the corner of the room weeping uncontrollably, unable to comprehend what had happened to her. Was she dead? A ghost? How could she be dead if her body was still alive? Was she even really crying or just imagining it? The whole situation was almost too much for her to take as these thoughts permeated her mind. Was she going insane? She sat there for another half hour, half listening to the doctors and technicians discussing the situation, when she finally heard something that snapped her out of her lamentation.

“What about Meadows?” Harkness bellowed as he entered the room purposefully.

“He...He’s in solitary, sir,” the head technician said nervously. “The process was interrupted before it was complete. As per protocol, we are keeping him away from everyone else until the machine is repaired.”

“I suppose that will have to do,” Harkness said, looking down at Jill’s unconscious body. “Once the neuro-encephalyzer is up and running, complete Agent Meadows’ nullification and reaffirmation immediately. By the time the device is operational, I’ll have your marching orders in regards to dear Doctor Musik here. As for now, make sure nothing else happens to her.” He touched her hand and ghost Jill shuddered. “She really is an amazing creature; such a pity she couldn’t see things more clearly.”

Harkness turned and walked out of the room. Jill stood and followed closely behind in ghost form. She knew instinctively that if she was going to find the answers she’d been searching for since this whole ordeal began, Harkness was the key. At the end of the hallway, at what seemed like a dead end, Harkness took what looked like an ordinary car key fob and pointed it at the wall. A loud hiss filled the air as a doorway appeared, opening into an entirely new wing of the building. Harkness walked through the opening and Jill entered a few seconds later. The Special Assistant stopped to converse with one of the doctors, giving the confused therapist a chance to look around.

This section was buzzing with activity and personnel, much more like what she’d expected upon first entering the lower level. It seemed to be a fully functioning hospital with various doctors, nurses and orderlies all going about their assigned duties. Jill looked over the shoulder of one of the nurses and saw a progress report on a patient named James McElroy. It was stamped Priority One and at the top of the report was the classification Section 8. She looked around, noticing that designation stenciled on all the walls and equipment too.

“That’s weird.” she said out loud, confident that no one could hear her. “Isn’t that what Klinger on M.A.S.H. was always bucking for? A section 8? A psychiatric discharge.”

She noticed Harkness walking away and fell in behind him again, wondering how much stranger all this was going to get. The Special Assistant entered the third door on the right, closing it before Jill could get there. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes and walked right through it. When she opened her eyes, she was in a large conference room. Harkness took his seat to the left of General DeVane while seven men and women she didn’t recognize filled the other chairs surrounding a large, rectangular, black table. She moved into the corner behind Harkness, eager to find out anything that would help her understand what was going on.

“Progress report,” DeVane said curtly.

“Agent Meadows’ procedure was interrupted by Dr. Musik, just as we planned,” Harkness said dryly. “She was led right to the procedure room by the fake blueprints uploaded to her computer. We could easily have altered her memory of the incident with Agent Meadows after his reprogramming was complete. However, she suffered an accident when she was pushed into the neuro-encephalyzer by an overzealous Sec-1 agent. Unfortunately, she is now in a comatose state.” Harkness hesitated for a moment before adding, “The machine is down for at least a few days, maybe longer. The techs weren’t able to give me a more accurate timeline. Meadows is in solitary until it can be repaired.”

“Well, isn’t that just a clusterfuck of epic proportions?” DeVane barked. “This complicates matters. A situation like this is exactly the reason I’ve been telling the appropriations committee we need additional funding to replicate the damn machine. Idiots.” The General turned to look Harkness in the eyes, “We’ll discuss Musik later, just the two of us.” Jill could swear she saw Harkness wince a little. Ha, so that bastard does have feelings. “Let’s get back to business shall we? Who’s up next?”

“That would be me, sir,” a rigid-looking man sitting in the third chair to the General’s right said. He paused, waiting for permission to go on.

“Get on with it, Kingman! I want to finish this meeting sometime today!” DeVane said.

“Yes, sir,” the man said. “Per your instructions, we placed a mole inside Gionta-Rictor Pharmaceutical two weeks ago and it’s already paying dividends.” He paused again, beaming with pride. When he didn’t get the accolades he’d hoped for, Kingman continued, “Their board of directors have been up to no good. Everything from sexual harassment to illegal dumping to industrial espionage. We definitely have enough intel to persuade the CEO to play ball.”

“Good, good,” DeVane said as he ran his left hand through his short, cropped hair. “That will be useful in the days to come. What about Constantine?”

“I have that right here, sir,” an African-American woman in a light grey pant suit said. “Joshua Constantine has recently moved his base of operations to New York City. The move was quite sudden and came after a fire demolished his home on Puget Sound.”

“Will he be a problem for us, DuBois?” DeVane asked.

“No, sir,” the woman answered. “He seems utterly obsessed with something new these days. He signed off on all the contracts with no negotiation or counter offers. He is now our biggest tech supplier. The first shipment of his new Zappers should be here by the end of the month.”

“Hmmm. It’s not like Constantine to roll over that easily,” DeVane said. “Something big must have his attention. Find out what it is.”

“Yes, sir,” DuBois replied, scribbling notes in a yellow legal pad. “I also have a report on the other New York issue: Lucifer Luongo.”

“What problems is that bastard causing now?” the Director asked with a sneer.

“Shockingly, none at the moment, sir,” DuBois answered. “Much like Constantine, he is focusing all his attention on something else.”

“Do we know what?” DeVane barked.

“Yes, sir,” The woman answered. “There is a gun for hire named Hardline in NYC making life very difficult for the Manelli family in general and Mr. Luongo in particular. I believe the crime boss will be sufficiently distracted until that situation is resolved.”

“Excellent,” DeVane said with a grin. “Send a squad there to watch the situation. Maybe even discretely help out this Hardline. The longer Luongo is focused elsewhere, the better it is for us.”

“I will handpick a squad for your approval by the morning, General,” Harkness said.

Jill listened to all this with shock and sadness. She’d thought something was wrong at the agency but she never dreamed of something like this. The NDSA had its fingers in every conceivable, illicit pie including espionage, organized crime, and the surveillance of private citizens. Her head was spinning from these astonishing revelations. It seemed like maybe she owed Colleen an apology.

“Anybody got anything else?” the General asked.

“No, sir,” each person said in unison.

“All right. Dismissed,” DeVane said. Everyone but Harkness stood and filed out of the room.

“About the good doctor, sir?” Harkness asked.

Suddenly, Jill felt a sharp pain in her left arm causing her to cry out. The two men kept talking but she could no longer hear them, their voices fading more each passing second. All she could hear was a rhythmic pounding in her ears. Forgetting about DeVane and Harkness she walked through the wall, her ghostly hands holding her intangible head. Just as she made it through the wall, the doctor felt something pulling on her, urging her down the hallway. This unknown force took her all the way back to the room where her body was being kept. She rushed to the bedside to see what was happening. A nurse was taking blood from her left arm, a lot of blood. Each time the needle pierced her body’s skin, Jill felt it in her ghost form.

“So, apparently I can feel what happens to my body in this form.” Jill hypothesized, instantly realizing the ramifications of that statement. “Holy shit! That must mean if my body dies, I will too.”

Once the nurse left, Jill stood at her bedside staring at her own face. It looked odd since she was so accustomed to seeing it reversed in the mirror her whole life. Instinctively, she reached out to touch it. Just as her astral fingers reached her face, she felt a small shock through her hand. It felt just a little stronger than the static electricity she’d built up when she rubbed her feet on the carpet and touched David to annoy him when they were kids. What did it mean? Could she simply re-enter her corporeal form, merge back together just by trying?

Concentrating as hard as she could, Jill sat on the bed and swung her feet up, trying to match her body’s position exactly. The electrical charges increased as she matched up her feet, legs and hips. Jill took a deep breath before lying back, focusing all her mental energy on uniting her two forms, desperately trying to make it work. Just as her ghostly head hit the pillow, an alarm sounded as the machines monitoring her vital signs went haywire. Her heart rate spiked, her breathing became erratic and her body started to convulse. Jill jumped off the bed and the moment she left her body, all her vital signs immediately returned to normal. The hospital staff rushed in with a crash cart, ready to resuscitate their patient, but by the time they approached the bed everything was completely fine. After a quick examination, they chalked it up to a technical malfunction but Jill knew better.

There was a very good chance she would never be able to get back into her body and an even better chance that if she tried again, it would kill her. Jill Musik sat in the corner of the room, watching her own comatose body all night long. The deep breaths of her body’s lungs creating a soothing cadence while she endeavored to understand what was happening to her, reconcile what she’d learned about the NDSA and tried to figure out what she could do about either. How long could her consciousness exist outside of her body? Which would deteriorate faster, her body or her ghost form? What is DeVane and Harkness’s endgame? How much does The Power Elite know about the NDSA’s shady dealings?

With no answers forthcoming, and apparently not needing to sleep, she spent most of the night lost in her own thoughts. She tried to remember when life was good, when she was happy, but those days seemed so long ago now. She thought of the simple joys of life, a good glass of merlot, the first taste of lamb vindaloo or the hug of her best friend. Would she ever experience any of them again? Would she ever know the sensation of another person’s touch? Jill cursed the heavens for this cruel fate, trying not to lose all hope. She didn’t want to give in to despair, to depression, but the truth was she felt lost and alone, like a fading memory in her own mind.

Jill stayed there watching over her body for the entire next day, watching the various scientists, doctors and technicians attempting to repair the machine the government used to fuck with people’s minds. Try as she might, she couldn’t make heads or tails of how that damned machine worked. Except for the nurse assigned to monitor Jill’s progress, no one seemed to even notice her comatose form was in the room. That night she paced back and forth in front of her own body, trying to work out a solution to this dilemma, struggling to maintain focus. She refused to give in to hopelessness, believing she could find a way out of this.

When the technicians came into work around 8 a.m. the next day, Jill left the room. She spent the majority of that morning trailing various members of the hospital staff around the facility. It was more out of boredom than fortitude that set her on this path but she kept telling herself to be strong and find answers to the questions that still plagued her. If she was indeed trapped in this ghost form, at least she could continue to gather as much information as possible. Just before noon she noticed a doctor with the same James McIlroy file from two days earlier standing at the central station. There is a continuity problem I didn’t notice before. His nametag read Dr. Carrasco.