MJ-12: Inception

15

Maggie Dubinsky’s biggest secret — and she had a lot of them these days — was that even though she was under strict orders never to use her Enhancement outside of officially sanctioned MJ-12 exercises, she was always using it.

Always. Almost constantly for the past two weeks now.

How could she not? For one, she’d gotten pretty good at sensing the emotional state of those around her. Was that part of her Enhancement? Danny didn’t seem to think so; he thought she was simply better at reading people now. It was a theory that admittedly carried a little weight; for one, she didn’t feel the same kind of… surge… inside her that she did when actually changing emotions.

But she was still scary good at it, and the better she got, the more the line between observation and manipulation blurred. After figuring out what people were feeling, she found herself tweaking them in one direction or another — subtly, oh so very subtly, of course — as her control increased. Around Maggie, a good day got just a little better, and a bad day could always get a little worse. It was nothing, really. It was easy. And they were just… people.

Right now, Maggie was doing her best to ensure Frank Lodge didn’t have a worse day than he already did, because it was clear to her that he was already on one hell of an edge, pacing the floor of the mess hall like a caged tiger. She knew when someone was about to pop, and it took a fair amount of effort on her part to keep him anywhere close to even-keeled.

“You mean to tell me, Commander, that Harry S. Truman himself allowed this sick, sorry bastard into this country? He ought to hang! He’s a goddamn Nazi! He had Gestapo and SS guys saluting him under the goddamn Reich Chancellery. I saw it myself!”

Danny was also trying to keep it together but in a different way. Maggie could tell he agreed with Frank but couldn’t say so. And speaking of secrets, Danny had unleashed a doozy. And yet they hadn’t yet bothered to ask him about whatever Enhancement he had, because Frank was still moments away from a murderous rampage.

“Frank, I know. Kurt Schreiber was a top-level guy in the Nazi science department. He personally briefed Hitler on some things, though he says it was the other way around, and that he was just following Hitler’s orders,” Danny replied. “But you now know what we have in there, and you know firsthand how dangerous it is. Schreiber knows this stuff better than anyone else on the planet. Better than anyone, Frank. And so we brought him over to help.”

Frank looked ready to rip Danny’s head clean off. “You don’t play forgive and forget with the Nazis!” Frank barked. “I don’t care how much they know. Torture him until you get all the information you need and then leave him for dead. In fact, I’ll even sit with him as he goes, so we get every scrap of intel out of his sick brain.”

“We’re better than that, Frank! He spent a full year at Nuremburg!” Danny shot back. “And let me tell you, we weren’t exactly kind to him there.” Danny stopped, fists clenched at his sides. “We need him. And frankly, that should be enough for you.”

Frank continued to pace, while the others sat at one of the tables with cups of bad coffee in front of them. Once Danny had hustled them out of the science building — with that… thing… inside it — he personally drove them back to their little barbed wire playpen, where he dressed down the guards for failing the “exercise” and called for double watches until further notice. It was a smooth move on his part, and Maggie could tell without even using her Enhancement that Danny was worried — he wanted to spare them any discipline for their little adventure.

After that, only Cal had the wherewithal to think about making coffee. “These kind of talks at two in the morning, you need beer. But we ain’t got beer, so we’ll do coffee,” he said as he puttered around with Smitty’s coffee urn. Ellis merely sat, arms folded, staring at Danny intently, as if he could rip into his soul with X-ray vision or something. Maggie could tell Ellis was surprised and angry and very, very curious.

She couldn’t take Frank’s pacing any more, though. “Frank, please, sit down,” she said, trying to push a little more calm his way. Grudgingly, he stopped, shook his head, and plopped down onto a bench. Good boy. “Now, Danny, I think you need to start at the beginning. And tell us what your Enhancement is.”

Danny smiled wearily and took the seat across from her, away from Frank, and accepted the coffee Cal slid toward him. “Well, those two things are related, Maggie. The beginning, of course, was August 6, 1945. You remember that day?”

“Hiroshima?” she asked.

He nodded. “That’s the same day, in fact, that Frank got his ability. He knows this because he stumbled into a shit-show in Berlin and was captured by a cell of underground Nazis who’d somehow anticipated the whole thing.”

“How did they know?” Frank demanded. “You’re now pals with the same guy who was in charge that day in Berlin. How did they know?”

Danny frowned. “Frank, I’m not sure I even understand it. The Nazis did a lot of really questionable experiments in a lot of areas we would’ve considered pseudoscience at best, occultism at worst. Schreiber was one of ’em.” Danny stopped and closed his eyes a moment, realizing his slip. “Fuck. Don’t fucking repeat that name to anybody.”

“We won’t,” Maggie soothed. Focus. “Go on.”

“So, that vortex you saw in there… there was another one in Berlin — Frank knows that because he was there. Schreiber knew something would happen because the Gestapo still had a few moles in Washington, and he thought the sudden release of energies would create some sort of anomaly. And he was right. It created two.”

“Berlin and… Hiroshima?” Cal asked.

Danny nodded. “Why there were two… a fissure in what… we don’t know. The vortices emitted several dozen streams of strange radiation and signaling for several days after. That signaling strength has reduced significantly, but they’re still throwing off a string now and then. And that’s how people become Variants, by somehow absorbing these streams. Again, why us? We don’t know. We’re studying it.”

“And so, what happened with you?” Maggie asked. “Your power?”

“I was on Guam, serving on Admiral Nimitz’s staff. I was doing intel, reporting to Admiral Hillenkoetter — he was a captain at the time, head of Pac-Fleet intel. It was the middle of the day when I felt something… happen. And suddenly I could hear all these people. In my head. Everyone else who’d been affected. The Variants.”

There was a long silence, broken by a few sips of coffee here and there. “That’s how you found us,” Ellis said after a while. “You said you were looking at newspapers and court records and whatnot. But you weren’t, were you. You already knew who we were and where we were.”

“More or less. The range isn’t always that great — maybe five hundred miles, tops — and after that initial surge, I discovered I had to concentrate really hard to find someone. So, I still needed to do the research. Think of it like a really good head start. But there’d be times when I’d just go to a new city and I’d home in on someone. That’s how I found you, Maggie — I did the paper trail afterward, right before I visited you for the first time,” Danny said.

“Who else knows?” Frank asked. “Who knows you’re one of us?”

“Hillenkoetter and, well… Truman.”

Everyone went a little wide-eyed at this, and there was more absorbing silence. “So, it goes up that far,” Cal said finally. “The President himself.”

“There are less than a dozen people who know about MAJESTIC-12,” Danny said. “Truman, Hillenkoetter, Secretary Forrestal, Montague, Dr. Bronk, Gen. Vandenberg, a couple others. That’s it. Nobody else in the White House, nobody at Defense or CIA. Nobody in Congress, for damn sure. That’s it.”

Maggie thought about asking about all the secrecy, but knew the question was dumb before she spoke it. If word got out…

“Tell us about the others, the ones at the north end of the base,” Frank demanded.

“No.”

“Excuse me?”

Danny stared Frank down as best he could. “No. You already figured out there are others. You’re a smart bunch, real smart. But right now, you don’t get all the details. You probably won’t ever get all the details. You gotta get used to that, for your own good.”

“And what happens when they come for us?” Frank asked, his voice rising as he stood. “What happens when the people with comic-book powers get too scary? Or stop being useful? Then what? How will we even know they’re coming for us?”

“That’s why only the President and Hilly know about me,” Danny replied. “Because if it gets to be that bad, I’ll be the one to tell you to bug out. I’m still one of you. I brought you together for the sake of our country, and if that country turns on you, then it turns on me, too.”

“And how can we trust you? How do we know you won’t just cut yourself a deal? How do we know you haven’t already?” Frank shouted, so much so that Maggie reached out again with her ability to calm him — with only partial success.

Danny, however, was surprisingly even-keeled. He was a lot braver than Maggie had given him credit for. “You could all be in jail right now. Or worse. Instead, I got you out of there. And now, you’re going to finally go to work.”

“Come again?” Cal said.

For the first time all night, Danny smiled at Frank. “You’re ready. I had a field test devised for you, a dry run — something covert and objective-based — but you went and did that on your own anyways and managed to get into a very secure facility using only your wits and your Enhancements. So, we’ll check that one off as done. Which means you’re ready for deployment, so long as I can trust you to stay out of trouble. If you don’t, we’ll have to hunt you down and lock you away, and nobody wants that.”

“Deployment where?” Ellis asked doubtfully.

“Any of you ever been to Turkey?”

Four hours later, Danny was in bed, wondering whether to skip the morning run and get another hour of sleep, or just forego sleep entirely, thanks to Cal’s coffee. The decision was made for him by a rap on the door.

“Yeah?” he called out, groggy and grumpy.

“Sir, Secretary Forrestal wants to talk to you,” came a voice from the other side — a young airman detailed as Danny’s clerk.

“He’s not supposed to call here,” Danny muttered as he swung his legs out of bed and sat upright. “Tell him I’ll call back in ten.”

“Sir,” the airman replied hesitantly. “He’s here. In your office.”

Cal’s coffee had nothing on that. Danny practically leapt to his feet. “Ten minutes,” he called out as he dashed into the washroom.

Nine minutes and forty-five seconds later — and yes, Danny checked — he walked into his office to find a grumpy-looking Jim Forrestal waiting there alongside a man in Air Force blue with four stars on each shoulder. Even before the man turned to give Danny a handsome smile and extend his hand, he knew it was General Hoyt Vandenberg, vice-chief of the Air Force and Admiral Hillenkoetter’s predecessor as Director of Central Intelligence.

“Mr. Secretary, General,” Danny said, saluting before shaking Vandenberg’s hand. “Good to see you both.”

Forrestal fixed Danny with a hard look. “You’re not in uniform,” he said. The secretary did not offer his hand.

Danny took the seat behind his desk. “I’m on detached reserve, Mr. Secretary. CIA’s a civilian agency. Besides, it’s Saturday, if I’m not mistaken.”

“I always liked to do surprise inspections on a Saturday,” Vandenberg said with the charming smile that had landed him on the covers of Time and Life during the war. “Puts more surprise in it. And the secretary had some concerns here regarding security. Since the Air Force is in charge of your safety here, he asked me to come along.”

Danny nodded; Vandenberg was one of the few others cleared for MAJESTIC-12, given his previous post in charge of intelligence. In fact, Vandenberg had been helpful in shepherding the whole idea through Washington and, in fact, probably set up Hillenkoetter as his successor largely because of MJ-12.

“I’m happy to report that, overall, the Air Force MPs have performed well, General,” Danny said neutrally.

Forrestal’s permanent frown grew deeper. “Skip the sugar coating. Honestly, Commander, I don’t know how any of your so-called Variants can even be remotely contained, except for perhaps Lodge. The rest? Their abilities are too flexible, too powerful.”

Danny closed his eyes a moment and took a deep breath before speaking. “Mr. Secretary, that’s why we’re using a combination of security and incentive to keep the Variants engaged here. That’s why they’re paid well and given perks unheard-of in the history of civil service. It’s also why we keep snipers on them twenty-four hours a day, because nearly all of them are ineffective outside of a twenty-five-yard range. Tranquilizers at first, then bullets if need be. This all has been detailed in the security planning you and General Vandenberg received when we set up shop here.”

“So, how did Mr. Longstreet end up in Vegas?” Vandenberg asked, his smile waning.

“That assessment is ongoing — the head of Air Force security here has taken it up, sir,” Danny replied. Security is your detail, not mine. I have more than enough to do. Sir.

“And what about last night?” Forrestal interjected. “Seems you had some activity. Dr. Schreiber noticed a ruckus inside the damn containment lab, where our Variants should not be.”

“Training exercise,” Danny replied, hoping he didn’t sound like the liar he was. “You and Admiral Hillenkoetter asked for a final assessment before their first assignment. What better way to determine their ability to infiltrate a facility than right here in one of the most secret locations in America?”

“They entered the containment lab! They saw the anomaly!” Forrestal thundered.

Danny’s heart was pounding like a drum corps in his chest, but he kept his composure. “They performed far better than anticipated. In fact, I’m going to have words with the security detail today about that. As for what they saw, they caught barely a glimpse and have zero understanding of it. I do not consider this a security breach.”

“The security detail wasn’t notified about this exercise,” Vandenberg pointed out.

“And they won’t be notified when it’s the real thing. This is, after all, supposed to be the most secure facility in the United States. Sir.”

For a moment, Vandenberg seemed ready to raise his voice a notch but apparently thought better of it. “Fair point, Commander.”

There was a long, awkward silence, Forrestal staring daggers at Danny and Vandenberg looking at his hands folded in his lap.

“So, what else can I do for you, Mr. Secretary? General?” Danny asked.

“When’s your report on the training exercise going to be ready?” the general asked.

“Later today. I need to further debrief the Variants once they’ve gotten some sleep.”

“I want to be there for the debrief,” Forrestal demanded.

“Of course, Mr. Secretary. Shall we?”

Forrestal and Vandenberg stood and headed out of the office, with Danny a few paces behind; he needed to grab a couple aspirin from his desk and dry-swallow them before he could continue. Once in the main office area, he saw Forrestal chatting with Andy Anderson, the Marine trainer, who nodded and smiled as he shook the secretary’s hand.

And that’s why they showed up at the worst possible time, Danny realized.

When the two VIPs walked outside, Danny stalked up to Anderson and shoved him up against the plywood wall of the offices. Or tried to — the shove didn’t really move Anderson much.

“What the hell, Andy!” he growled, anger overcoming discretion and a fifty-pound weight difference. “You just went over my head?”

Anderson, to his credit, didn’t immediately roll Danny into a small, bloody ball of meat. “I work for the Corps and DoD, Commander. Not CIA,” he hissed.

Danny shoved Anderson again. “What about them? You’ve been training them for weeks now! Forrestal gets his way, they’ll be chained up like dogs until we need ’em!”

Anderson finally pushed Danny back, the force of which sent the smaller man into a desk. “And maybe they should be! You’ve seen what they can do! Honestly, it scares the shit out of me, no matter how goddamn nice they are! All four of them slipped the leash last night, and where were you?!”

Danny straightened up. “Training exercise, Captain, and they fucking won. Where were you, anyway? They slipped right out of the pen and you were, what, sleeping? Jacking off to the girly mags?”

Anderson lashed out, grabbing Danny by his jacket lapels and lifting him high, to the point where he was barely on tiptoes. “Say that again, Navy man, and I’ll rip your fucking head off.”

Despite an inability to move or resist, Danny stared directly into Anderson’s eyes. “Captain, unhand me right now and report to the security chief to be confined to quarters until further notice. You’re under arrest for failure to adhere to the chain of command, gross insubordination, and attacking a superior officer. Dismissed.”

The look on Anderson’s face turned from anger to a mix of anguish and fury, but he slowly lowered Danny to the ground, giving him one final shove as the two airmen in the office stood — hopefully to back Danny’s play, but he couldn’t be sure. They simply stood there, aghast, at the sight of two officers almost duking it out and probably wondering just how much of the exchange they’d be ordered to forget.

“Aye aye, sir,” Anderson spat before wheeling on his heel and stalking out of the building.

Danny straightened his jacket and nodded toward the airmen.

“You want us to escort him, sir?” one asked.

He stuffed his trembling hands in his pockets and shook his head. “No need, airman. The captain’s on his own recognizance. As you were.”

With the two airmen watching, Danny walked out of the office and into the desert sunlight that, despite the brightness, did nothing to illuminate his way.