Virtually His. Gennita Low
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way. Helen Roston was of the opinion that if she had to make a lot of money quickly by selling her body, she might as well do it training to be the world’s next mega-soldier-whatever. Which was about the hardest possible way to make a living but—she grinned wryly—at least her body would look good if she died from overtraining.
Her body being the operative concept here. After all, there was no guarantee that she would come out of this alive. Oh well, Enrique had always accused her of having a death wish. Hellacious, he’d called her choice of living on the streets alone. He was learning English because the American dollar was strong and American tourists were easy victims. So “Hell” she had been called ever since. Russians loved nicknames, and it wasn’t long before everyone on the street knew her by that name.
She hadn’t been able to resist the contract, though. After reading the questionnaire, she’d seriously considered it for a month before she’d shrugged and answered “yes” to all the questions and then made an appointment to see the director. What harm was there to enhance one’s special abilities? Blame it on her being an orphan. There were always those constant niggling questions at the back of her mind about her background. Once and for all, she would be able to find out exactly how special she was. No more questions. Or unanswered dreams.
A lot of money would get her out of GEM quicker and she could…She shrugged. She hadn’t quite decided what she could do yet. But once she bought out her contract with them, she would feel a whole lot better.
Not that they were difficult to work for. Far from it. GEM had given her a life an orphan girl from the Russian ghetto could only dream about, had given her the means to be somebody, but she didn’t want to spend twenty, thirty years of her life playing spy games, or being a contracted liaison between agencies, or running different lives under different aliases. There had to be more to life than that.
She wasn’t made to live within a group anyway. Even when she was a wild child on the street, she’d refused to run with the gangs. She preferred to take care of herself, thank you very much. She wasn’t going to succumb to any of those boys asking for the usual nasty payments, so she had to learn to fight hard and run harder, because she didn’t always win.
Ha, if they could see me now. Helen grinned at the ridiculousness of the old Broadway song running in her head. What she was being asked to do was show business of a sort, wasn’t it? So the song was appropriate.
Everyone wanted to see her, actually. It had been almost two years of training and now everyone wanted to see what she had become.
She wiped the perspiration off with a towel. What had she become? She asked herself that question quite a bit and had no real answer. She’d come close to a personal revelation the other night. She’d woken up in the middle of one of her too-darn-vivid dreams, sat up, and declared quietly to no one in particular, “I’m very close to being.”
It was one of those profound moments one couldn’t quite grasp, especially when one jolted up in bed suddenly. But Helen knew it meant something. She always had that voice-in-the-head thing that came out of nowhere, when something important was coming.
That was one of the reasons why she had been chosen for this project, of course. Having what they called psi—or strong intuitive abilities—was a definite plus. She didn’t care what they called it. Voice in the head. Psychic blah-blah. Intuition. That voice had saved her life a few times. She had explained to the CIA department that she wasn’t one of those people who communicated with some other presence or had any kind of power to; she just sometimes heard a warning or made a really good guess. Whatever. The CIA white coats seemed to have accepted her half-truth. She hadn’t told them about her dreams, but then, they hadn’t asked. Never tell them everything, that was her motto.
She was looking forward to her dip in the pool, more so than usual. That climb up the chain had tested her endurance and her muscles were pleasantly aching. A quick relaxing swim would make sure she didn’t cramp up later.
“Agent Roston, go to Chamber Two.”
Helen frowned at the electronic voice instructing her from the intercom. She walked over and activated the speaker. “Why?” Her training had stayed on the same schedule these last few months. “What’s there?”
“I’m just delivering the orders, Hell. Get your pretty ass over there.”
Helen chuckled. It was funny to hear a computer using her nickname with such familiarity. “If you weren’t a computer, Eight Ball, I’d find you and kick yours.”
Eight Ball was COMCEN’s computer. His programmer had given his mother program its own choice for personality and gender in certain communications feedback. For some weird reason, the computer had taken up a surfer’s easy laid-back drawl, although it tended to trip itself up while trying out surfer lingo. Eight Ball, she suspected, was another open-ended experiment on the loose in this place.
“If I had an ass, Fly Boy would say ‘go for it, dude!’” The computer mimicked the commando’s voice to perfection. “Chamber Two in twelve minutes, over and out.”
Helen frowned again. She didn’t have much time. She’d just have to go wearing her sweaty leotard and tights. At a sprint.
She dropped the towel, punched the buttons on the panel, and slipped out of the training area while the door was still sliding open. No time for the elevator. Chamber Two was three flights up. Trust them to pick a place that required climbing up instead of running down.
She pushed the door to the stairwell and starting running two and three steps at a time. She paused at the landing, taking a quick moment to flick her bangs away from her eyes.
“Test,” that voice in her head warned.
Her awareness immediately turned rapier-sharp. She pushed open the exit door that led into the corridors. She didn’t sense any danger around the corner. She didn’t think they were planning to kill her, not after investing all that time and money, but she couldn’t ignore that warning in her head either.
“Test.” The repetition was even more urgent now.
“They do that all the time, so what’s so different about this test?” she muttered. Realization came like sudden daylight. They weren’t testing her this time. Someone was. Maybe it was him.
The corridor was dead silent and she knocked on Chamber Two. An envelope was stuck on it, with her name, Elena Rostova, written in bold font, along with Do Not Open. She raised her brows. Very few people used her real name. She peeled it off the metal. The door swished open. There was no light coming from within.
“Games, games, games,” Helen murmured and stepped inside. The door behind her sealed shut and it was pitch-black in the room. Every one of her senses reached out into the darkness.
“Walk ten paces forward,” a voice said from all around her.
Sen-surround sound. “Do I get to turn and shoot?” Helen joked. Excitement roiled in the pit of her stomach. It had to be him talking to her.
“No. Ten paces forward, Elena.”
She obeyed, counting aloud. It was unbelievably dark in there. She stopped when she encountered something with her feet. A thickly-padded mat. She stepped onto it and finished her count. “Now what?” she asked when she was done.
“Open the envelope.”
She carefully did so. “This isn’t easy in the dark, you know,” she complained. “There’s nothing inside.”
“You’re expecting a note. Never assume anything in here.”
She wished she could see the person talking to her. The voice was a projected echo, deliberately masking any recognizable tone. She slipped her finger into the envelope and felt something.
“It’s small. Roundish. Too small to be a button,” she said.
“It’s a pill. Take it.”
Her mouth fell open. “You’re kidding me, right?”
“It