The Unseen (37 page)

Lucas dropped his gun, no longer caring. He'd reached the end of everything. His nerves were too frayed, his mind too tired to care.

“You're going to have to shoot me like this,” Lucas whispered.

“Unarmed.”

Donavan smiled. “I'm sorry, did you think you were the loose end?” he asked. Abruptly, Donavan pointed the pistol at his own head and pulled the trigger.

00:43:18 REMAINING

Lucas closed his eyes for a few moments, and when he opened them again, his vision swam in tears. He was lost, hopelessly lost, in something far beyond his understanding.

“Hello, Lucas.”

A new person at the door. Someone he didn't recognize. The man stepped through the doorway and walked across the floor toward him. Lucas thought his ears were buzzing from all the gunfire, but then he realized it was the man who was buzzing: yellow-and-black bees hovered around him in a giant cloud. As the man stopped to stand in front of him, more bees flew in through the doorway. No, they weren't bees, Lucas noticed on closer inspection, but wasps.

Lucas scrambled for his gun on the floor, trained it on the man, who seemed unconcerned. “Who are you?” Lucas asked, not sure he wanted to know.

“Who are any of us? That's a question we must all ask ourselves at some point—and a question I'm hoping to help you answer in a moment. Call me Swarm; it's the only name I've known.”

Swarm walked toward the Blackboard at the front of the church, flicked on the switch that bathed it in light. He shook his head. “I knew, someday, it would end up like this. It had to.”

“What had to?”

“This project.”

Project
—what everyone in Creep Club called their odd fixation.

“So you—” Lucas began. “You're a member of the Creep Club.”

Swarm spun around and began walking toward Lucas. “Let's take a ride, Lucas. I have a car waiting outside, and as you can imagine, this place will be crawling with law enforcement soon. No way to cover up several hundred rounds fired in just a few minutes. Not even I can do that.”

Swarm held out his hand, offering to help Lucas to his feet.

Lucas stared a few moments as sirens wailed in the distance.

“Hear that?” Swarm asked, still holding out his hand. “Time to go.”

Lucas let the man help him to his feet and followed him to the door. Out on the street, as promised, a black sedan waited, its back door hanging open. Without waiting, Swarm approached the car and got in, sliding to the other side to make room for Lucas. After a few seconds of hesitation, Lucas slid in behind him.

Immediately the car began to move; two men sat in the front seat, but all Lucas could see was the backs of their heads. Even so, he felt his terror starting to rise a few notches.

“You feel it, don't you?” Swarm said without looking at him. “Fear.”

Lucas swallowed, trying to calm his nerves. “Yes,” he admitted, without really knowing why.

“Scientists scoffed at the existence of human pheromones until 1982,” Swarm said. “Animal pheromones they had no problem with, but they couldn't buy into human pheromones. Well, most scientists, anyway; the ones I worked with were convinced.”

Swarm turned to him and smiled. “That's what you're feeling—pheromones. We have, unfortunately, the two men in the front seat to thank for that. They're part of one of my newer projects—a little something I call Dark Fear. A bit of genetics, but mostly good, oldfashioned pheromones, pheromones engineered specifically to light up the part of your brain that controls the fight-or-flight reflex. Scent, believe it or not, is the most deeply imprinted sense in your brain; you can't retrain it.”

He looked at Lucas again. “I think you've probably met these men before,” he said, gesturing at the two in the front seat.

The two men swiveled their heads to look at Lucas, and he had a good view of their features. Not for the first time.

Both of them wore his face.

“These . . .” he stammered. “They've been—”

“Yes, they have,” Swarm interrupted. “Believe it or not, with pheromones, with the body's sense of smell—and to some extent, taste—you can fool the other senses. That's why all the agents in Project Dark Fear can appear to anyone as the person who scares them most.”

“Who scares them most? But they—”

“You see yourself, I'm told. That's an unusual one, I must admit, but perhaps not unexpected, considering everything you've been through. Lots of times, we get movie influences: Jason, Freddy, Hannibal Lecter, that kind of thing. Adolf Hitler. Mothers and fathers a surprising amount of the time. I, myself, see the man who conditioned me. Raven.”

Swarm went quiet for a few moments.

“The van driver said he saw Charles Manson,” Lucas whispered.

“Manson's in the top ten.”

They drove in silence for a few minutes as Lucas tried to process all this information—especially as his heart trip-hammered, terrified of the two in the front seat. He prayed they wouldn't turn around again.

Lucas looked back at Swarm, tried to ignore the cloud of wasps. The insects seemed calm, almost drugged. Most of them hovered within a foot of his head, until they tired and landed on his head or shoulders. They crawled, unhurried, around his skin before flying again. In many ways, it seemed as if the man were a human hive.

“I'm sorry for the wasps, on top of it all. When I was the project, the experiment, if you will, they didn't understand nearly as much about pheromones, genetics, anything. Mostly synthetic drugs back then. They were trying to create a Super Soldier, a drone who sacrificed himself to save his homeland. The way drone wasps do.”

Lucas closed his eyes, wishing for the first time he was in the midst of a firefight between Viktor's mafia men and Saul's secret agents. This was a bit too Twilight Zone for him.

“You deserve an explanation, Lucas, and that's what I'm here to give you. Because I also created another project, one called Inside Information. Or, as you know it, the Creep Club.”

“You started the Creep Club?”

“Yes. Two dozen people, beginning with Snake. He knew more than the others—I needed someone to be a contact, a liaison with government agencies, since I don't officially work for any agency myself. Officially, I don't exist. Like you.”

Swarm dug in his pocket and produced something Lucas had forgotten all about: the small black cube from Saul's briefcase. Where had he left it? How did Swarm find it? Swarm turned it in his hands, over and over, as he spoke.

“Project Inside Information began about twenty-five years ago,” Swarm continued. “It was my brainchild, a way around the age-old question of what you do with intelligence agents who get caught.

In an ideal world, of course, they don't get caught alive. Like Donavan—perfect example. If they follow their training, as he did, they kill themselves first. But that doesn't always happen. Add in the temptation to be a double agent . . . well, you can see some of the difficulties.”

“Like Saul—um, Saul Slater.”

“You really think he was a double agent?”

“He . . . I found files.”

“Just as you were supposed to. I was sorry it had to be Saul; he really was a good agent. But he was getting a little too close to the truth, so he had to be part of the cover-up.”

Lucas felt like he was about to get sick. “That's what I am too,” he said.

“You're catching on,” Swarm said. “My idea for Inside Information was rather simple: we create agents who don't know they're agents, you see? Enlist very young people for our purposes. Very young people who seem to have a . . . let's call it a predisposition . . . for this work. The right build, the right mental capacities, as determined by their schoolwork, that sort of thing. Work with them for years, conditioning them. Some like to use the word
brainwashing
, but I find that somewhat distasteful. I like
conditioning
much better.”

“These kids,” Lucas said, afraid of the answer to the question he was about to ask. “Did they come from orphanages?”

Swarm smiled. “I know what you're asking, Lucas, and the short answer is: no, they didn't come from orphanages. But there's a longer answer you'll want to hear. Well, maybe
want
isn't the right word, but an answer you should hear.” He tilted his head at the ceiling of the car, considered for a moment.

“Long story short, we began Project Inside Information during the Cold War era, used participants to keep tabs on ambassadors, foreign dignitaries, that sort of thing. Perfect cover, you see? If the person gets caught, he is nothing more than this creepy Peeping Tom. He doesn't even know he's collecting information or evidence.”

“Evidence to bring back to that church.”

“Yes. All the files, everything going back to the church. Not horribly secure, I grant you, but once again, something unexpected—hiding information in the open. Anyone who investigates, finds out anything about the church . . . well, they'd just find this group of creepy Peeping Toms once again, wouldn't they?”

“That's why you conditioned them to revere the place, treat it as holy. Didn't want them snooping through old case files.”

“Exactly. And really, a church was the obvious choice, wasn't it?”

Lucas's legs felt weak. The whole Creep Club had been an intelligence operation of manufactured monsters. But what did that make him? A natural freak? He'd never been part of Creep Club, and now, the one group of people he'd felt remotely connected to was forever gone. By his hand, no less.

“I can sense what you're thinking, Lucas. Indeed a tragedy—one of many associated with this project. Anyway, when the Department of Homeland Security was formed, you can imagine some of the more legitimate intelligence agencies took a great interest in Project Inside Information. Creep Club.”

“They started monitoring people with foreign ties,” Lucas said.

“For a while it was successful. But then, as I said, as more and more legitimate agencies became aware of the project's existence, the information became unstable. Until eventually someone started gathering information on the project, threatening to be a whistle-blower.”

“Saul.”

“Yes. The existence of a project that spies on foreign-born U.S. citizens . . . well, very messy. A PR fiasco. And so, we began to make it someone else's project.”

“Guoanbu. You set up Saul as a double agent, and now, when the story hits the media, this will look like the work of the Chinese.”

“And the shootings here, the explosion at your friend's house, those will be linked to Guoanbu doing some sudden housecleaning. It's pretty messy now, but it will all wrap up rather cleanly. And to make it all happen, these Dark Fear agents.” He gestured at the two in the front seat.

“They tried to kill me.”

“Just the opposite, actually. You would have been dead at least three or four times without their stepping in. In the Dandy Don's building, they woke you up and got you out of there before a couple of Viktor's thugs found you. They took care of the police with that convenient car crash when you got yourself in trouble. And of course, they provided your ride at Leila's house.”

“But they blew my cover at the Creep Club meeting, and they left messages with Viktor and Saul, telling them to meet me at the church.”

“I needed you to get back in the middle of it. I tried to help Snake hold on to control, you know, but things were getting out of hand. He knew someone was about to blow open the Creep Club, he just didn't know who. So I had to feed Saul to him—but not too much of a force feed, you understand. Needed to come from a third party. I knew Snake would protect you, find out what you knew, because he was hungry to find out who the whistle-blower was.”

“So your Dark Fear agents—the guys in the front seat. You say you sent them to protect me, to help me. Why? Am I just some random connection, a fall guy for you?”

Swarm smiled. “You are my greatest project, Lucas. My emergency escape. My End Game.”

“Emergency escape?”

“Come on, now. You know you always plan your emergency escape before you start. So, for Project Inside Information, I chose one person who was very special. I did many, many hours of extra work with this young man, teaching him all the techniques of Creep Club, but keeping him separate, keeping him rogue. Just in case. I even invented a fake background for the young man—conditioned him to think he had been in an orphanage from a very young age, when, in fact, he was part of a family until age six. But he doesn't remember that, doesn't remember any of that, because he was conditioned not to. He was conditioned with memories that never existed—memories of an orphanage, memories of being a loner who just liked to escape and lie on the roof, staring at the lights of the city. But those were false memories; in reality, the young boy spent most of his time locked in a large steel room. So he doesn't remember any of his
real
memories, none at all. Except.”

“Except what?” Lucas demanded, suddenly finding his gun in his hand and pressed against Swarm's cheek. Swarm made no move to stop him, and neither did the two men—or things—in the front seat.

“Except, I saw something of myself in this young man. I didn't want to totally cut his ties to his past, because . . . because I had all my ties to my past cut.” His eyes swiveled, held Lucas's gaze.

Lucas felt the hand holding the gun trying to shake, but he calmed it. This was a lie, had to be a lie. Memories of the orphanage flashed back to him, so real. The far-off lights of the city, the bread baking in the kitchen . . .

“What researcher made the initial breakthrough in human pheromone research?” Swarm asked. His eyes were staring intently, thin black dots.

The answer came to Lucas immediately. “Dr. Winnifred Cutler,” he whispered, and his mind bloomed with a full history of major pheromone researchers. How did he know that?