Virtually His

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 won’t kill you.”

She could have sworn she detected mockery, even with that amplified resonance. She looked around in the darkness. Not that she could see anything. “Look, this is getting irritating. Why am I in the dark and why must I take a drug?”

“It’s part of your training.”

“Usually, I’m given a set of instructions and my instructor tells me what’s going to happen,” she said. But she’d known this new instructor wasn’t going to be anything usual. He’d been watching her nonstop since her arrival. She’d felt him. He was everywhere. Funny thing was, she’d been more intrigued by the game than outraged at the lack of privacy.

“I see. Tell me, when you’re playing operative in the real world, do you have someone telling you what’s going to happen next?”

Helen narrowed her eyes, feeling just a twinge of impatience rising. “Training, I said.” She pivoted around. “I’m not taking any drugs unless it’s the serum that’s specified in the contract. This pill isn’t it, is it?”

“You won’t know till you try it. And in case you’re wondering, yes, I’m your instructor and yes, this is a training session. Take the pill, Elena. As specified in your contract, you’ll let your instructor direct you as he or she sees fit.”

“Within reason,” Helen argued. She’d added that part to the clause herself. “Tell me. If I take this, what’s going to happen to me? Besides not dying, I mean.”

“First you will fall unconscious.”

Her whole body went taut. “What? No f—”

“Then you’ll wake up in fifteen minutes. You’ll find that you can’t move your body. Certain parts of you will feel nothing. You’ll stay paralyzed for the duration of the session.”

In the two years of her training, even through medical tests, no one had given her any drugs to render her unconscious. She’d been extra careful to establish a mental block when working with the CIA; she didn’t trust them or their tendency to hypnotize certain subjects.

She rolled the pill between her thumb and forefinger. Why now? What did he want to do to her?

“Fighting what you can see is easy, Elena. It’s fighting what you can’t see that will be your ultimate challenge. Remember what’s coming up. A dose of the serum is just like fighting what you can’t see, isn’t it?” A tiny pause. “I can’t force you to take the pill, but you’ll be putting potentially more harmful drugs into your system. This one, I can guarantee you, is a common drug that I know to have very few side effects.”

Helen laughed incredulously. “I’m supposed to take your word for it,” she remarked.

Silence.

Whoever her instructor was, he was waiting.

She rolled the pill again, her thoughts going a hundred miles an hour. Test, that stupid voice in her head had said. He was testing her for something entirely different from her previous trainers. She chewed on her lower lip for a second, then, before she changed her mind, she popped it into her mouth and swallowed.

“Count from ten backwards when I tell you to.”

Helen noted that he didn’t seem to have any problems seeing her in this darkness. Special glasses with image-intensifier? But if so, he still wouldn’t be able to tell whether she had taken the pill. Her eyes searched the darkness. Where was he?

After a few minutes, he ordered, “Start counting.”

She turned around as she counted. “Ten, nine, eight…” There was just nothing to see, not even a hint of light anywhere. “Seven, six…” She had to stop moving. Could darkness spin? It felt like the darkness was swirling all around her. “Five, four…” She couldn’t feel her feet. “Shit…” She fell forward. So that was what the mattress was for, was her last thought.

Her eyes flew open. It was still that darkness but she felt strange. She tried moving but she couldn’t feel her body and she couldn’t see. She didn’t like this one bit. No reason to panic yet. He told her that she wasn’t going to be able to move, but she could feel a warm body against her. A very warm male body.

“What’s happening?” she asked. At least she could talk. “I feel funny.”

No answer. She could feel her vision swaying, like something was moving really fast around her. It suddenly occurred to her that she was being carried. And that she was upside down because her hair kept getting in her mouth when she tried to talk.

“Where are you taking me?” she asked, spitting her hair out. “Answer me, dammit.”

Whoever it was seemed to be going faster and faster, until she grew dizzy. He couldn’t possibly go that long. Where the hell was she? No longer in the room, for sure, but why couldn’t she see anything? She could make out shadows now—light and dark shades of blackness. There were strange smells, like foliage and the outdoors, then the scent of clean laundry, then of burning wood, then of salty air. She frowned, totally confused, because she couldn’t see any forest or fire or anything that could give her any clues to her location.

She felt that floating sensation again and from the change of shadows, she could tell that her body was sliding off his as he swung her around. She stared up, trying to see who this stranger was, but it was that odd shadowy shape again.

He should be panting from that long run but she couldn’t hear him breathe at all. Suddenly, he jerked around and there were armed men all around him.

She could only watch in horror as they shot him and his body slid away from her view. She couldn’t help him! She gritted her teeth and tried to move but it was no use. She was totally at their mercy.

They surrounded her. She could hear them now—male grunts and cursing. She gulped in air as they pulled at her body. She could feel them pulling her legs apart….