She carefully did so. “This isn’t easy in the dark, you know,” she complained. “There’s nothing inside.”
“You’re expecting a note. Never assume anything in here.”
She wished she could see the person talking to her. The voice was a projected echo, deliberately masking any recognizable tone. She slipped her finger into the envelope and felt something.
“It’s small. Roundish. Too small to be a button,” she said.
“It’s a pill. Take it.”
Her mouth fell open. “You’re kidding me, right?”
“It won’t kill you.”
She could have sworn she detected mockery, even with that amplified resonance. She looked around in the darkness. Not that she could see anything. “Look, this is getting irritating. Why am I in the dark and why must I take a drug?”
“It’s part of your training.”
“Usually, I’m given a set of instructions and my instructor tells me what’s going to happen,” she said. But she’d known this new instructor wasn’t going to be anything usual. He’d been watching her nonstop since her arrival. She’d felt him. He was everywhere. Funny thing was, she’d been more intrigued by the game than outraged at the lack of privacy.
“I see. Tell me, when you’re playing operative in the real world, do you have someone telling you what’s going to happen next?”
Helen narrowed her eyes, feeling just a twinge of impatience rising. “Training, I said.” She pivoted around. “I’m not taking any drugs unless it’s the serum that’s specified in the contract. This pill isn’t it, is it?”
“You won’t know till you try it. And in case you’re wondering, yes, I’m your instructor and yes, this is a training session. Take the pill, Elena. As specified in your contract, you’ll let your instructor direct you as he or she sees fit.”
“Within reason,” Helen argued. She’d added that part to the clause herself. “Tell me. If I take this, what’s going to happen to me? Besides not dying, I mean.”
“First you will fall unconscious.”
Her whole body went taut. “What? No f—”
“Then you’ll wake up in fifteen minutes. You’ll find that you can’t move your body. Certain parts of you will feel nothing. You’ll stay paralyzed for the duration of the session.”
In the two years of her training, even through medical tests, no one had given her any drugs to render her unconscious. She’d been extra careful to establish a mental block when working with the CIA; she didn’t trust them or their tendency to hypnotize certain subjects.
She rolled the pill between her thumb and forefinger. Why now? What did he want to do to her?
“Fighting what you can see is easy, Elena. It’s fighting what you can’t see that will be your ultimate challenge. Remember what’s coming up. A dose of the serum is just like fighting what you can’t see, isn’t it?” A tiny pause. “I can’t force you to take the pill, but you’ll be putting potentially more harmful drugs into your system. This one, I can guarantee you, is a common drug that I know to have very few side effects.”
Helen laughed incredulously. “I’m supposed to take your word for it,” she remarked.
Silence.
Whoever her instructor was, he was waiting.
She rolled the pill again, her thoughts going a hundred miles an hour. Test, that stupid voice in her head had said. He was testing her for something entirely different from her previous trainers. She chewed on her lower lip for a second, then, before she changed her mind, she popped it into her mouth and swallowed.
“Count from ten backwards when I tell you to.”
Helen noted that he didn’t seem to have any problems seeing her in this darkness. Special glasses with image-intensifier? But if so, he still wouldn’t be able to tell whether she had taken the pill. Her eyes searched the darkness. Where was he?
After a few minutes, he ordered, “Start counting.”
She turned around as she counted. “Ten, nine, eight…” There was just nothing to see, not even a hint of light anywhere. “Seven, six…” She had to stop moving. Could darkness spin? It felt like the darkness was swirling all around her. “Five, four…” She couldn’t feel her feet. “Shit…” She fell forward. So that was what the mattress was for, was her last thought.
Her eyes flew open. It was still that darkness but she felt strange. She tried moving but she couldn’t feel her body and she couldn’t see. She didn’t like this one bit. No reason to panic yet. He told her that she wasn’t going to be able to move, but she could feel a warm body against her. A very warm male body.
“What’s happening?” she asked. At least she could talk. “I feel funny.”
