MJ-12: Inception

26

Maggie pointed her gun at Yushchenko as Frank let his pistol fall to the ground. “Drop it or you’ll never see your family again,” she said, and by God, she meant it.

But Yushchenko merely smiled. “Why don’t you stop me? Is it because you can’t?”

She reached out again with her mind but once again found the threads of his emotions incredibly elusive — she could barely fuel his already-present nervousness.

She pulled the trigger — and the gun merely clicked.

“God damn it,” she spat. Out of ammo. Rookie mistake. We’re fucked.

Yushchenko turned his weapon on her. “If you use your ability, I will kill you. Do you understand?” He didn’t bother waiting for an answer, instead turning his head and shouting loudly in Russian.

“You weren’t defecting,” she said quietly, her head spinning, her heart sinking. “You were drawing us out.”

Yushchenko smiled. “Of course. It took great effort, too.”

Maggie altered her stance somewhat, preparing to lash out in whatever direction she could — part of a plan that came to her in the moment. “So, what do we do now, comrade?”

“Now we wait for my comrades to join us,” he said, smiling at the word.

She sighed at this, then theatrically relaxed and leaned against a tree. She could hear the voices of Yushchenko’s backup off in the distance. Slowly, with her eyes locked on Yushchenko, she used one hand to rustle around in her pocket for her cigarettes. “Then I need a smoke to get through this. You mind?” The MGB man merely smirked at her, so she carefully picked one out of her pack and lit it, then waited.

The cigarette disintegrated as the dart flew out and into Yushchenko’s neck. His eyes grew wide as he turned… and fell to the ground before he could get a shot off.

“That makes everything a lot easier,” Frank muttered as he picked up his gun. “Nice play.”

Maggie tossed the butt aside. “Now what?”

“This.”

Frank fired two shots into Yushchenko’s chest.

Maggie watched in shock as Frank quickly dragged Yushchenko’s body away from the trail. “INSIGHT was our whole mission!” she said. She had to deliberately stop herself from raising her gun at him.

“Tough choices,” Frank said as he put Yushchenko down next to Cal and placed the injured man’s hand on the Russian’s chest. “Cal, he’s going fast. You gotta get everything you can outta him. Right now, you hear me?”

Cal managed a slight nod — he probably didn’t even know who he was about to drain — as Frank put a hand on Yushchenko’s forehead and started whispering.

“You know, I’m trying hard to feel bad about this, but I don’t,” Frank said quietly. “Our mission was to get what’s in your head back to the States, one way or another. Turns out we don’t really need you around for that.”

Then Frank stiffened — Maggie figured Yushchenko was far enough along to start the transfer of information. Not knowing what else to do, she assumed Yushchenko’s position overlooking the trail and kept an eye out with the scope of the Czech rifle she’d found there.

It didn’t take Cal long enough to realize what was going on. “What the hell just happened here?” Cal asked, sitting a little more upright. He seemed older and grayer, maybe around fifty years old now — maybe he was using whatever Yushchenko had left to trade age for healing.

“Yushchenko… turned on us. Just get as much… as you can,” Frank said, seemingly struggling with the transfer.

“You all right, Frank?” Maggie asked, a bit more loudly than she should have.

“Trying to… get it all,” Frank said. “There’s a lot.”

Cal gingerly got to his feet. He looked like a hale, strong middle-aged man — she wondered if he had looked like that back when he was working at the Firestone plant. “What now?”

Maggie tossed the rifle down toward him, which he caught. “Check on Ellis. See what you can do. It’s bad.”

Cal immediately rushed over to Ellis’s side and looked under the bloody coat across his stomach. He stretched a hand over that area and closed his eyes for a few seconds. “Gonna take a lot just to make sure he don’t die,” Cal said. Maggie could practically see the concern radiating off him — genuine concern about a man who always seemed to feel nothing but contempt for Cal.

Frank finally straightened up a bit, grabbing something from Yushchenko’s pocket before standing up. “Can you just get him stable for a minute or two?” he asked.

“Maybe. Gonna take something out of me, though, for sure. Why?”

“Just do it. Maggie, hold fire.”

“What do you mean, ‘hold fire’?” she demanded, her shock receding, replaced with thoughts of revenge.

Frank looked up at her. “Don’t fire the fucking rifle, and stand down on your Enhancement, too.”

She put the rifle down, reluctantly, and reached out toward his feelings. “You have a plan. You’re scared. But also… I don’t know what.”

“It’s called hopeful,” Frank said with a slight grin. “Try it sometime. Cal, go ahead and stabilize Ellis, but make sure you can still run a bit if we need to do that.”

As Cal placed a hand on Ellis once more and began praying, Frank lifted his head and shouted in Russian. “My sdayemsya! Prikhodite, brat’ya i sestry!”

A minute later, they were surrounded by soldiers with guns — and four others, two of whom Cal had already met. One was the once-teenage Variant who could disappear and reappear; he seemed to be stable at a healthy sixty or so — about where Cal was now, given that he had managed to keep that damn fool Ellis from dying. The boy-turned-old-man fixed Cal with a righteous glare of anger.

Then there was the little Superman-girl. Whatever anger she had about her brother seemed spent for now, and she eyed the MAJESTIC-12 agents with a kind of detached curiosity. Cal figured it was the kind of look she had when she looked at ants under a magnifying glass — right before the glass caught the sunlight and fried them.

Third one was a bulky fellow, kind of Asian-looking, almost Eskimo, really. He had a bandage tied around his arm and a gun in his hand. Cal couldn’t really say much more about him than that, other than that he kind of looked like a big statue — emotionless. He wore a dark suit that seemed to stretch across his body like a canvas on a frame.

And finally, there was a middle-aged, severe-looking woman, blond-haired and dressed in a jumpsuit — kind of like the coveralls Cal had had to wear in some of his factory jobs, but this lady’s was formfitting to the point of being almost indecent. Cal had to admit she wore it well, but admonished himself for the thought. Then again, his list of prayers was growing real long, and his time to pray was running short.

Ellis groaned slightly, and Cal knelt down beside him again. “Doing what I can, Mr. Longstreet. I think Frank’s gonna try to get me some livestock or something, and I’ll fix you up, all right?”

Ellis’s eyelids fluttered open. “Why am I still laid up?” he muttered, brow furrowed.

“Ain’t got the gas in the tank to get you where you need to go yet,” Cal replied. “You just rest there, and I promise we’ll get you taken care of.”

Ellis seemed like he wanted to say a little bit more, but fact was, he didn’t have the strength, and he fell unconscious again within a few seconds. Cal sighed and looked over to Frank. Whatever he had planned, it had better work.

“This does not look like surrender,” the woman said in English. “Your weapons are not on the ground.”

“She is Maria Ivanovna Savrova. Her ability is to track a single individual once she has touched him. Do not let her touch you!” Yushchenko said in Frank’s head. “She tracked me, forcing you to be constantly on the run, in a position where you could not gain intelligence from me easily.”

Frank nodded at Savrova. “We are brothers and sisters, are we not, Maria?” Frank replied in perfect Russian. “We are all Empowered.”

Savrova and the kid traded a look. “How do you know her name?” the girl demanded.

“The same way I know yours, Ekaterina Giorgievna Illyanova,” said Frank as he switched to English for the benefit of Maggie and Cal. “I know all your names, and why you’re all here, and your plans for us. That’s why you had Yushchenko here pretend to defect, teasing us with information about your Bekhterev program.”

Mikhail Tsakhia, the Mongolian man — he was the negative-zone generator, but through Yushchenko, Frank knew he had to be completely healthy to pull it off — cocked his gun. “You already know too much, American. Why let you live?”

Honestly, I was really hoping you wouldn’t ask that. “Because your numbers are too small. There’s a lot of people in the Soviet Union. There’s a lot of people in America, too. Not enough of us to do what needs to be done in either place — unless we concentrate our numbers more effectively. We are, after all, brothers and sisters, right?”

Now all four of the Russian Variants started looking at each other incredulously. “We were told you were all working for your government,” Savrova said. “We approached you and yet heard nothing since.”

“And we were told you were all working for your government,” Frank bluffed. “And at the time, we were being watched. Couldn’t really respond. But here we are. Variants — that’s what we call ourselves. You call yourselves Empowered. I admit, I kinda like that more. So, what do we do now? Especially since we switched to English so these Czech boys don’t understand us?”

Frank stood through the subsequent awkward whispering between the Russians, hoping Maggie was keeping a bead on his emotions. If this was gonna go south, he wanted her on the ball and ready to unleash the worst sort of fear on these guys.

“Frank.”

He turned to see Cal kneeling next to Ellis and looking a whole lot older — almost as old as they day they had first met. “He’s slipping. I’m too low to help out. Gonna need something real soon.”

Frank nodded and turned toward Savrova. “Before anything else happens, I need to borrow a few of your men here,” Frank said in English. “Our man here can heal our wounded, but he needs life force to do it with.”

Savrova cocked her head at this request. “And how many do you need?”

“We can spread it out over most of them here so that they don’t suffer any long-term effects. And if we can get enough, we can make Boris Giorgievich young again, too.”

“If we help you? What then?” Savrova asked.

Frank cringed inside. “We’re not going to play it that way,” he replied. “Or do I need to start talking here and now and ruin your day?”

Savrova’s eyes went wide for a moment, while the other Empowered clenched their weapons tight; the little girl looked ready to rip Frank’s throat out with her teeth — and probably could. “You would condemn these men to death, then,” Savrova finally replied. “And you would still be without your precious life force, whatever this is. Now, you are right about numbers. So, this is why you will come with us, rather than we let you go.” At this, Savrova switched back to Czech. “Zamířit!” A moment later, there were at least ten barrels bearing on the Americans.

Frank frowned. There really wasn’t a good way out of this. He knew — rather, Yushchenko knew — that this particular team of Empowered wouldn’t drift from their particular brand of ideology. It was worth a shot, but no luck.

He looked at the ground, trying to go for a defeated look, and dropped his weapon even as he felt his heart rate start to increase. That’s right. It’s go time. Tense up. Broadcast it to Maggie over there. “Fine,” Frank said. “Then can one of your boys give our man here a hand? He’s in pretty bad shape, and our colored fella here could use some help too.”

Frank turned to Cal, who had a quizzical look on his face. Frank nodded at him, then turned to Maggie and motioned for her to lower her weapon — but giving his hand enough of a wiggle that, he hoped, would get her ready to deploy her Enhancement. Maggie threw the rifle aside with disgust — a little too real to be feigned — but gave Frank just the slightest of nods.

“Vezměte své zbraně. Nápověda stařec,” Savrova barked. “Získejte nosítka pro zraněného muže.”

Mikhail suddenly straightened up and blinked several times, his gaze wandering for a moment. “Maria Ivanovna, ya chuvstvuyu, chto vernetsya,” he said in Russian.

“Slava Bogu. Rezyume negativnoye pole.” Savrova turned and smiled at Frank, whose heart dropped.

Here we go. “Now!” Frank yelled, pulling his knife again and sending it flying toward Mikhail in a smooth, expert motion. It buried itself in Mikhail’s stomach — not enough to kill him, but enough, according to Yushchenko’s memories, to continue to keep him from disabling all the Variant abilities in the area.

“Zachyťte je!” Savrova yelled, prompting several soldiers to rush toward the three remaining Variants. For a moment, Frank was surprised they weren’t just shooting, but then he remembered Yushchenko again — that wasn’t the plan. They were to be captured. Taken to Leningrad. And experimented on.

Frank dove for the mud on the trail, grasping his pistol with his right hand. He hit the deck and looked up to find two bodies lunging for him. There were two shots, and then Frank was covered in wounded men — but only for a moment. Just as the two soldiers fell on him, they were lifted back up — by that goddamn girl. Frank immediately rolled away just as the girl tried to hit him with the bodies of the men he’d just shot.

“Maggie!” Frank yelled. He ventured a look up the ridge, only to find her wrestling with the disappearing guy — the teleporter, as Yushchenko called him — and another couple guards. They would keep her distracted enough to prevent her focusing. Shit. Instinctively, Frank dodged just in time, avoiding another 185-pound soldier being used as a goddamn club.

Ekaterina tossed the two guards aside — very, very easily — and picked up a rock from the side of the trail that was easily fifty pounds, chucking it toward Frank as if it were a baseball. Frank ducked again, rolling into a crouch and getting his gun up. And then he paused.

That’s a ten-year-old girl.

The girl smiled wickedly at Frank, a smile that reminded him of a wolf baring its teeth, and then threw another large rock, sending him diving toward his left. He landed at the feet of Savrova, who trained a pistol down at him. “Don’t move a muscle,” she warned.

Suddenly, there was a horrible shriek.

Frank looked to see Cal — now looking like a goddamn twenty-year-old football player — with his hand on Ekaterina’s shoulder. “You need to put the gun down, ma’am,” Cal warned in the clear, baritone voice of his youth. “This girl here don’t need to get hurt now, does she?”

Frank couldn’t see what effect Cal was having on the girl, but he somehow seemed to be getting stronger — like someone was inside his body with an air pump, blowing up his muscles all at once. It was the damnedest thing in a long line of damned things Frank had seen lately.

Savrova turned to train her weapon on Cal — or at least, that’s what Frank thought she was doing.

Instead, she fired two rounds into Ellis’s prone body.

“Make your choice,” Savrova sneered. “Her life or his.”

Cal began to rush over, but the girl — apparently free of whatever Cal had been doing to her — grabbed him and leaped upon his back, pulling herself up onto him and shrieking hysterically in rage. She must’ve had enough strength left to unbalance Cal — she should’ve been able to throw him clear down the trail — and both came tumbling down onto the mud and rock.

Frank ran over to Ellis, sliding down next to him as if he were sliding into second. Immediately, Frank checked his pulse, felt for breath, all the little things the doctor told him to do. Nothing.

“Frank?”

Oh, shit. “Ellis? That you, Ellis?” Frank whispered, grasping the man’s hand as the Southerner’s voice echoed in his head.

“This isn’t good, Frank.”

“I know, Ellis. Cal’s on his way. Cal’s gonna help you.”

“Ain’t nothing that nigger can do now, Frank. He’s not a bad man. Tell him that for me, will you? It weren’t personal.”

“You tell him, Ellis.”

“They got me, Frank. They got me here. And it don’t look good. What they got planned.”

“Who? The Russians? What plan?”

“Frank… it… not… the Russians. Not the Russians. The thing that’s… it’s… no. NO!”

“ELLIS!”

And then Ellis was gone. Just… gone. Like nobody Frank had ever watched over before. All Ellis’s memories, his knowledge, literally torn away from the world, torn away from Frank’s waiting mind — pulled away violently, Frank realized with a dawning dread that focused his eyes down onto Ellis’s face. Ellis stared back, glassy-eyed, his mouth open, his brow furrowed, frozen in a death unlike any other Frank had experienced.

The dread spread through him, and Frank squeezed Ellis’s hand so hard. “Ellis, God, Ellis, you gotta come back. You gotta fight through.”

Nothing. And inside Frank, the fear and abject terror grew and grew, like a beast trying to claw its way out of his very soul. Such intense fear… whatever had happened, Frank knew as surely as he knew himself, was so very, very wrong.

“Frank.”

He looked up to see Maggie standing over him, Cal beside her.

“Wh… what?”

She shrugged. “They took off. Retreated. Like they heard a dog whistle or something and went running. No idea why.”

Frank let go of Ellis’s hand, felt his skin slowly peel away from Ellis’s cold, clammy fingers. “Good. That’s… good, I guess.” Frank staggered to his feet. “Cal, we’re taking Ellis home. Can you carry him?”

Cal nodded. “Could probably carry a truck right now, Frank. I got him.” He stooped down and scooped up Ellis’s limp body with the ease of picking up a baby.

Frank looked to Cal, then Maggie. “Got it from the girl. He somehow acquired her power,” Maggie said. “Something, isn’t it?”

Looking down at Ellis’s still-scared face, Frank reached over and closed the dead man’s eyelids. “Something, all right. Let’s go.”

Truman threw the report on his desk. “Commander Wallace, you mean to tell me that the deputy prime minister of the Soviet Union — a man I’ve met on several occasions, mind you — is covertly gathering his own band of Variants together? What for?”

Danny cleared his throat. “He is, Mr. President. Yushchenko found out that Beria was starting to gather his own Variants, separate from the MGB or the Army. And he found out why.”

Truman stared hard, so much so that Danny almost lost his train of thought. “Well?” the President demanded.

“He’s planning a coup.”

The words hung in the air for a long while, then inexplicably, Truman barked out a short laugh. “Well, hell, son, everybody in Stalin’s circle wants to be the next guy in charge! Abakumov, Zhdanov, Bulganin — they all want in on it. The MGB and the Army all have their own self-contained Variant programs too, right?”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

“So, why is it such a big deal that Beria has his own little group?”

“According to INSIGHT, Beria believes the Soviet Variants are destined to become the new leaders of the proletariat, the true leaders of the Revolution, the sons of the new age of socialism. INSIGHT saw his job as controlling the Variants for the good of the Party, not the other way around. If we’d known any of that, we might’ve been able to actually turn him. He didn’t like the thought of Variants being in charge.”

Truman leaned back in his chair, thinking, then slowly began to nod. “Been on my mind a bit too, son. We have a Variant of ours start getting ideas like that, it’ll be a tough thing to deal with, you know.”

“We’ve been developing contingency plans, Mr. President.”

Truman smiled. “I know, son. And I know what you are. You, me, and Hilly are the only ones who do. Can you honestly tell me you’re ready to arrest one of your own or, worse, kill one of your own if they start down that road?”

Danny looked the President hard in the eye. “My own, Mr. President… ‘my own’ are Americans. I swore an oath, sir, just like you did.”

Truman fixed Danny with an appraising look, then nodded. “So, you got Beria jump-starting the whole master-race dogma again, just with a coat of Red paint.”

“Seems like it. Just trying to figure out why.”

Truman handed the folder back to Danny; the papers would be burned to ash before he left the room. “Theories?”

Danny shrugged. “Well, nothing official, but… think about it. We’re not telling our Variants that they’re the next level in human evolution or anything like that. Why?”

“Because you’re Americans and you have a duty to the people of the United States to use your abilities for the good of all,” Truman said, looking a little confused. “I wrote that line myself, you know, in their briefing books.”

“Yes, sir. And that’s because the government we serve is headed by an everyday person — you, sir. Nobody at the highest levels of government has turned out to be a Variant. The folks in charge are still normal, if you will.”

“Where are you going with this, Wallace?”

“What if one of the folks in charge of the Soviet Union wasn’t?”

It wasn’t very often that Danny saw the President at a loss, and couldn’t help but take pride in the look on Truman’s face before he finally found a response. “Stalin’s a Variant?”

“No, sir!” Danny quickly said. “No, no, no… latest we have on the power structure in Moscow is that Stalin doesn’t one hundred percent trust Beria. I think it’s Beria or someone close to him.”

Truman considered this. “You know, that Beria’s a real son of a bitch. Brutal fellow. Just brutal.”

“Yes, he is, sir.”

Finally, Truman rose and extended his hand. “Thank you, Commander. You trained a good team there. We got a lot of good information from that mission.”

Danny took the President’s hand and tried not to smile like an idiot. “Thank you, Mr. President.”

“We’ll need a replacement for Longstreet.”

“We have several candidates, sir. The other Variants are starting to be cleared for operations. We’ll be able to make substitutions as needed.”

Truman nodded and let Danny’s hand go. “Very well. Thank you. You’re dismissed, son.”

Danny saluted smartly and left the Oval Office, where Hillenkoetter was chatting amiably with the President’s secretary. He looked up and smiled at the junior man. “Well?”

“I’m alive, sir,” Danny said. “Went well, I think.”

Hillenkoetter gave the secretary a friendly nod, then stood and walked outside onto the colonnade in front of the Rose Garden, his outstretched hand shepherding Danny with him. The door closed, and the two began a slow walk. “What’s your take on him, Commander?”

“Sir?”

“The President. What’s he thinking about Variants?”

Danny looked down at his shoes a moment as he walked. “He’s worried. I think me being there helps, because I put a face to the idea. I look normal. My abilities aren’t scary. But yes, I think there’s some concern. Why?”

Hillenkoetter sighed and turned toward the younger man, putting a hand on his shoulder. “I admit, I’m worried. You got folks like Forrestal scared shitless of people like you, and now it’s possible that Beria’s building his own army of supermen. Men like Forrestal get too antsy about that and, well, you and yours are gonna find themselves in hot water.”

“But the President, sir?”

Hillenkoetter resumed his stroll into the garden. “I think he’s a good guy, Commander, but you’ve seen the polls. Dewey’s gonna clean up in November, and honestly, I don’t know where that fella’s gonna come down on all this. We need to keep our record as pearly white as we can so that MAJESTIC can keep operating as it has been.”

The two walked on in silence for a few moments until Danny piped up. “Sir, I gotta ask. Why are you standing up for us? Maybe Forrestal’s right — just look at what Beria’s commissars are telling the Variants over there. If some of our men start feeling that way, well…”

Hillenkoetter smiled. “I remember when I was the new XO on West Virginia, before Pearl Harbor, I chewed out a Marine lieutenant something fierce one day because of some slapdash something-or-other. And I saw such a look in that man’s eyes — he really wanted nothing more than to kill me. And he could’ve, too — just drawn and fired and ended me right there. And he didn’t. Instead, he went and drilled his men to the point where they were not only good — they were the best in the damn Pacific Fleet. I personally pinned a medal on that man’s chest after Okinawa. He trusted me that I was doing right by him, and I trusted him that he’d do his job and not let his anger get the better of him.”

“So… you’re going to trust the Variants.”

“No, Commander. I’m gonna trust you. I’m gonna do right by you, and you’re gonna be like that Marine lieutenant and make sure that these folks are on board with the program.” Hillenkoetter suddenly picked up his pace, prompting Danny to scramble to keep up. “Let’s get to work. We’re gonna need to find more of ’em.”