Infected

48.

Perry would never know how close he came to getting real help. The NarusInsight STA 7800, the machine that scanned all the calls, picked up the word triangle from his call to Triangle Mobile Home Sales but did not find any of the context words that would alert the CIA’s watcher. Had Perry changed a few words, possibly even just one word, if he’d said, “I had seven to start with, but I killed three,” instead of, “I had seven to start with, but I got three,” help would have already been on the way.

But Perry didn’t use the right words. The system didn’t forward the call to the watcher. Still alone in his fight for survival, Perry slept.

He slept like the dead.

The Triangles did not.

The subconscious mind is a powerful device. Repeating things over and over to yourself, visualizing a success again and again, virtually programs your brain to go out and make those images a reality. The opposite also holds true-if you’re convinced you’re a loser, that you always seem to lose your job, that you can’t save money, that you can’t lose weight, you tell yourself these things over and over, and guess what? They come true as well. The subconscious mind takes the things it hears over and over and makes them reality. The subconscious mind doesn’t know the difference between success and failure. The subconscious mind doesn’t know the difference between what helps you and what hurts you.

The subconscious mind doesn’t know the difference between good and evil.

All night long, Triangles repeated the phrase in Perry’s head. More than a hundred times. Definitely thousands, perhaps tens of thousands or even a hundred thousand. Over and over. kill him kill him kill him

It was a short phrase, and they didn’t even really have to “say” it-all they had to do was send it to his auditory nerve, a high-speed data dump into Perry’s programmable subconscious.

There were others close by, others of their kind. Sometimes they heard voices, like their own, but not coming from within the host’s body. Some hosts were far away. One was very, very close.

They knew nothing of where they came from or what they were, but the stronger they became, the more they knew why they were here.

They were here to build.

And soon the Triangles would join with those of the nearby host, become one group, one tribe, then move to join even more of their kind. The glorious construction would begin. But first they had to keep the host alive, keep him out of danger, keep him away from the Soldiers. kill him kill him kill him

Mental and physical exhaustion held Perry in a deep, deep sleep. He was stone-cold out for just under fourteen hours. The Triangles incessantly repeated the phrase until the Tylenol kicked in, they caught a solid buzz, and drifted off with visions of the glorious construction that would soon become a reality.