“Hello, Blake,” he said with a somber face.
Although Blake had been upset by the professor’s ambiguity on the answering machine days earlier, and their present state of affairs, seeing the frail man saddened him. The last thing Blake wanted to do was let this situation jeopardize their relationship. “I’ve been trying to reach you,” he said, forcing himself to sound happy. “Is everything all right?”
“My house was infested with bugs.”
“Infested? I saw a few roaches, but no more than I’ve grown accustomed to living with Trevor.”
“I don’t like the roaches, but it was the bugs you couldn’t see that made me leave.” He motioned with his hand for Blake to step outside. “Let’s take a walk.”
The professor thought the easiest way to handle the situation with Blake was to tell him about the FBI, the break-ins at his house, and how this whole project had turned into a disaster, but he was a man of his word, and had agreed not to discuss Operation Patriot. “I’m having some troubles right now. I think I need to take a vacation. Get away. I want you to do the same.”
“Are the problems something I can help with?”
Since he told Blake a private corporation was funding his work, he blamed the problems on them, “I’ve lost my funding.”
“I see.” Blake’s thoughts turned to his personal finances. The professor’s funding was his funding too, and he didn’t have the luxury of a savings account to get by on.
The professor realized why Blake turned pale. He didn’t mean for him to take it that way. He hadn’t lost his funding; the FBI was continuing to pay him. That’s why he hated lies, even white lies with good intentions led to more lies. “I’m not trying to worry you, Blake. I want you to understand my state of mind. I’m not the least bit discouraged about the future. You committed to me and I’m following through on my end of the bargain. You’ll keep receiving your paychecks. In a month you’ll start your classes. I’ve seen to it the tuition is covered.”
“Where’s the money coming from if your sponsors canceled?”
“I’m funding everything myself,” was the first answer he could think of.
“Professor, I don’t want your money.”
“It’s the least I can do, Blake. I’ve received plenty of grant money over the years. This is one way of giving back. Funding your Ph.D. is also an extension of my work.”
“I don’t mind the government giving me educational grants, or some foundation awarding me a scholarship, but this is too personal. I’ll borrow before I take your money.”
“That’s ridiculous. This is something I want to do.”
Blake didn’t know how to turn the professor down. The passion in his voice and the sincerity in his heart, evident through tearing eyes, was too much to resist. He smiled, thinking what a decent man the professor was, and agreed to continue.
The professor handed Blake a paycheck, and an advance for the next month, telling him to relax until the next semester started, five weeks away. Then they would begin working on the science, no more chasing paper trails or UFOs.
CHAPTER 34
With each successive day, Owens furthered Kayla’s rigorous and profound progression into the Aquarius program. Never before had a candidate failed this late in the process, and Owens felt confident that Kayla wouldn’t be the first. He needed her to not be the first. Selecting her broke with two traditions: Kayla was a woman, and she wasn’t military.
Owens had trained other civilians, not as Aquarius agents, but as members of his Unacknowledged Special Access Projects. Ben Skyles was a civilian pupil of his, brought straight from MIT, and there was a second man — Aaron Liebowitz — who was lured from a civilian post with the Navy and nurtured into the program. Unlike Skyles and Liebowitz, however, Kayla would see every aspect of the USAP. That was why Owens needed to mold her, harden her soul, awaken her mind. Wake up and smell the coffee was a phrase his agents favored. Owens had a rare blend of coffee for Kayla to smell today. Additional proof that there was more to the world than mainstream predisposition dictated.
Boarding a small elevator, isolated at the end of a gray cement tunnel in an underground area of Papoose Valley, seen more through surveillance monitors than the naked eye, they descended to one of the base’s lowest depths.
“You won’t see anyone on this level,” Owens told her. “It’s a storage area.”
“Storage for what?”
“Knowledge,” he answered, chasing the word with one of his patented sinister smiles.
She didn’t return the smile, instead keeping a stoic face.
That was the reaction Owens liked to see — no reaction.
The elevator doors opened into a wide tunnel, expansive enough for semi trucks to traverse and dimly lit from stand-by lights that prevented sheer darkness. Their presence triggered a sensor and overhead incandescent floodlights began shining, one after the next, starting with the closest to the elevator. The sequence continued until the entire tunnel was free of shadows, revealing the concrete walls typical of the fortress and the usual supply lines, ventilation ducts and pipes along the ceiling that acted like veins and arteries, lifelines sustaining the environment the government had created underground.
Kayla counted five sets of large sliding doors along each wall — storage bays — and figured somewhere there was another elevator, a vehicle lift of sorts, besides the cramped passenger elevator they had used.
Slowly, methodically, Owens strolled the tunnel with Kayla at his side, not wanting to arrive at their destination before setting the stage verbally. “Do you enjoy museums?” he asked.
“I haven’t been to one in ages.”
They reached the third storage bay on the right. Owens placed his palm on a control panel, causing a motor to churn and echo for nobody to hear but them. Massive steel doors — twenty feet tall and equally wide — slid apart.
Center stage in the storage bay, under a solitary overhead light that cast a cone-shaped spot, was a long cylindrical object, the size of a bus, cast from a dull alloy.
Owens looked for the slightest expression of surprise or intrigue in Kayla’s demeanor, hoping not to see it, hoping she could hide her feelings. “Let me introduce you to my friend over here.”
“You say that like it’s alive.”
“It’s not dead.”
His comment broke her stoic look, but he was in front of her, walking toward the object so he didn’t notice her faux pas.
“Put your hand close, but don’t touch,” he told her as they neared the object.
She did as instructed, holding her palm inches from the object’s smooth metallic casing.
Extending his right arm, he shadowed her hand with his own and eased her palm against the alloy.
The dull gray metal reacted to her touch, brightening as various shades of purple, red and yellow spilled across the surface from beneath her hand.
He pulled his hand away, leaving Kayla’s alone on the surface. Red became the dominant surface color.
“What’s happening?” she asked.
“It’s a symbiotic alloy,” he said slowly, his mind captivated and admiring the reaction despite having seen it before. “The molecules are reacting to your touch … your body’s molecular output … understanding your state of mind.”
“Who built this?”
He didn’t plan to tell Kayla much about the engine. He wanted her to see it and start building a sense of what was hidden at the installation. Breaking from his trance-like focus on the object he said, “We’ll talk about that at a later time. Now we need to focus on our trip to San Diego. We’re going to visit a congressman.”