He placed his chair directly in front of Jocasta and loosened her gag. He sat down and peered into her sparkling blue eyes. She returned the gaze, but there was no willfulness behind the stare; she seemed merely to be waiting. "Well, Miss Palmer, I must say I’m pleased to see you like this. I don’t suppose you’d care to save us both some trouble and confess your sins."
No reply.
"I thought not." He fixed his attention on her eyes and as he did, the rest of the room seemed to dissolve into a gray fog. The matched orbs seemed to move together, forming a single eye in the center of her forehead; a swirling vortex into which Hobbs, disembodied, was drawn.
Only then did Jocasta seem to realize that she was under attack. She began thrashing against her bonds, even struggling to break free of his hypnotic gaze, but she was too late. Hobbs was no longer looking at her physical eyes, but rather into what Eastern mystics called the ajna, the "Third Eye." If as some claimed, the eyes were the window to the soul, then the ajna chakra was the front door and Hobbs had just walked in and taken off his coat.
He was instantly deluged by waves of light and color, a chaotic mosaic that represented the sum total of everything Jocasta Palmer saw, heard, felt and thought. The experience was not altogether pleasant. Although he did not realize it, a low wail escaped his lips as her stimulus flooded into his own mind.
Just as each person’s appearance was distinctive in spite of a basic commonality of physical anatomy, so too every person on the planet experienced thought and sensation according to a specific pattern, much the same way that a radio broadcast could only be understood if the receiving unit was tuned to the correct frequency. Hobbs did not attempt to find Jocasta’s unique "frequency;" most of it was just background noise. He was looking for something specific — something that did not belong. Through no effort on his part, it found him.
It began as a dark spot, like the pupil of an eye, unaffected by the swirling lights and colors of the gyre, but soon grew to planetary proportions, eclipsing everything else. Hobbs steered his consciousness toward it, but then was overcome with a trepidation he had never before experienced. He tried to turn, to flee before the swelling darkness, but it was too late. The shadow swallowed him whole….
"My goodness," exclaimed a man seated across the aisle. "We’re descending."
Hobbs struggled to comprehend where he was and the significance of the comment. His surroundings were familiar; the orderly rows of seats and small porthole windows were all things he had seen before. I’m on an airplane, he thought.
"Are you quite certain?" The voice, also quite familiar but this time from his almost forgotten past, had issued from his own lips.
The man that had initially spoken continued peering through the window. "Absolutely. I can see the ocean. I hope nothing is wrong with the plane."
For several minutes, the passenger compartment was abuzz with similar speculations, but Hobbs tuned them out as his grasp of the situation resolved. He comprehended that he was experiencing Jocasta’s last memory; the last thing that had happened to her before her mind was enslaved. Though limited by the prison of her flesh, he caught a few glimpses of his fellow passengers and was not surprised to see among them Professor Augustus Pendleton.
Jocasta paid close attention to the report given by some of the men who had elected to go forward and inquire of the captain, but Hobbs discounted their explanation. They had been assured that the stop was routine, but Hobbs knew better. This was where it had all started.
The plane splashed down with deceptive grace and cruised along in the gently rolling sea for a few more minutes. Jocasta, along with her shipmates, peered intently through the portholes, curious to see if they were going to put in on some waypoint island or rendezvous with an oceangoing vessel; it turned out to be the latter.
"That’s a U-boat!" exclaimed the man that had first noticed the change in course.
His observation was met with typical skepticism by most of the passengers, but if Jocasta had a response, she did not verbalize it. For his part, Hobbs had no trouble verifying the statement; the dark conning tower and deck of a submarine loomed about a hundred yards off the plane’s starboard wingtip. It was different than the unterseeboots which had roamed the Atlantic like a pack of hungry wolves during the Great War — more refined and with less superstructure — but certainly the offspring of that first generation of stealthy warships. The boat flew no flags and the men that swarmed over her still awash decks wore generic yellow rain slickers, but Hobbs felt quite certain he was looking at the product of Teutonic engineering; the German Kriegsmarine had been experimenting with new U-boat design and something told him this was the result.
Several of the crewmen deployed a motorized skiff which bounced across the swells toward the plane, but disappeared from Hobbs’ line of sight as they closed the gap. A general air of apprehension settled over the passengers that only deepened when a figure appeared at the front of the cabin, gazing down the aisle. Hobbs did not recognize the man, but his steward’s uniform and the passengers’ unquestioning acceptance of his credentials served to identify his role.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I’m sorry about this brief delay, but we’ve had to put in for a routine customs inquiry. I’m afraid I’ll need you all to bring your passports down to the lounge."
Hobbs knew better, but to his surprise, the passengers seemed relieved by the news; hungry for any explanation, this obvious deception was much more palatable than the bitter truth. They were being hijacked. One by one the passengers filed out of the cabin and went like lambs to the slaughter.
Hobbs could sense Jocasta’s anxiety as she moved along the queue, but her concerns were those of a criminal who fears the long awaited reckoning. She kept a brave face as the steward called her forward and admitted her into the plane’s small lounge. Only then did she give way to terror.
Hobbs ignored her cries, focusing instead on the garishly masked gang that waited beyond the door. They wore hooded cassocks, like monks, but each cowl was filled with the visage of a grinning skull. Two of them gripped her arms and dragged her forward to the figure who seemed to be the leader. The leering death’s head leaned close.
"Ah, Miss Palmer. I’m pleased you decided to take the job. But there’s been a slight change of plans.”
Jocasta flinched as a fourth masked man holding a large silver syringe emerged from behind the others. Hobbs caught a glimpse of the needle, a bloated crystal droplet glistening on its tip, before the pain surged through his borrowed body and darkness closed in once more…
He stood on a landscape of crushed cinders, scattered beneath a blazing crimson sun. He was no longer in Jocasta’s body and knew this only because she stood nearby, chained like a sacrifice to an upright wooden post. When she saw him, her eyes grew wide in terror and a hoarse scream escaped her lips. Despite his long-standing ire toward her, Hobbs felt a pang of sympathy; God only knows what she’s been through, he thought.