The foot caught Mark just below the solar plexus, knocking the wind from his body even as he twisted to avoid the blow. Pain exploded in his gut, but Mark channeled it, storing it away for later processing. Right now, he just needed to survive.
A funny thought. Only moments earlier, Mark had been focused on winning this fight. Now, as blood and sweat blurred his vision and lack of breath sapped his strength, that goal seemed a distant dream. Jack Gregory was taking him apart with an ease that defied belief.
Marshaling all his neurally enhanced speed, Mark swung his body into a spinning side kick that should have hurled his tormentor across the room. Instead he felt himself lifted, propelled by his own momentum in a judo flip that slammed his back into the floor and sent white flashes dancing across his vision. Blinded and stunned, Mark whipped his legs around, somehow managing to land back on his feet and stay there, even though his knees felt like rubber.
“Enough.”
Jack’s voice sounded distant, as if it came from one of those tin-can-and-string telephones that he’d made with Heather and Jen when they were kids.
“That’s enough for this session,” Jack continued, stepping forward to slap him smartly on the back. “Good workout.”
A small titter of laughter from across the room caused Mark to glance toward his sister. “Seriously, Mark,” Jen managed to get out between chortles. “There were a couple of times I thought you had him at your mercy.”
Struggling to regain enough breath for a sharp retort, Mark finally abandoned the attempt.
“That’s OK, Jennifer,” Jack said. “Your turn.”
As Mark stumbled to a seat beside Heather, he managed a smile. After suffering a major-league ass-whipping, it was nice to have something to look forward to.
The ten weeks that Mark, Jennifer, and Heather had spent at the Frazier hacienda had been the most difficult of their lives. Mark didn’t know what he had expected, but this hadn’t been it. Jack and Janet had immersed the three friends in a training program more intense than any imagined by the CIA. For twenty hours each day they had oscillated between physical training, weapons training, martial arts training, and a variety of classroom work on the how-tos of clandestine operations.
How to spot a tail. How to lose a tail. How and whom to bribe. How to establish a base of operations in continental Europe, the US, Britain, India, Pakistan, Africa, Russia, Latin America, China. How to blend into societies where you should stand out. How to purchase illegal weapons, documents, and equipment. And just when they thought it couldn’t get any tougher, Jack ratcheted up the intensity. It was exciting, but it also kept Mark too busy and tired to worry much about other things, like what his parents must be going through.
Even though Jack knew about the neural enhancements they had received on the Bandolier Ship, he wanted to find out their limits. More than that, Mark knew that Jack wanted them to discover their limits.
Even though Mark loved that they were learning things very few people would ever know, he felt as if they would have made a break for freedom if it hadn’t been for the weekends.
Sci-Fi Saturdays and Sundays is what they’d come to call them, a sequence of Twilight Zone episodes driven by Jack’s desire to learn everything about the Bandolier Ship, its technologies, its agenda, and what it had done and was still doing to his three trainees. The lab sessions ranged from fascinating to downright spooky.
Recently Jack had them working in total darkness, letting their minds convert sound to images, a form of echolocation that produced imagery of their surroundings: the louder the noise, the brighter the resultant mental pictures.
Luckily, Friday and Saturday nights had been reserved for rest and relaxation, local R & R Janet called it. On those nights they could almost be mistaken for a family, Jack and Janet taking them to San Javier to stroll through the town, to stop for dinner over some Bolivian beers, to laugh and talk.
One thing Jack had said during their training sessions had imprinted itself on Mark’s brain. “This world will try to beat you down. Only laughter can counteract that. Laughter is ammunition. Resupply often.”
Mark remembered the sound of Janet’s throaty laughter echoing through the room at that remark, driving the point home. But since the birth of their baby, Robby, eight weeks ago, Jack had been their principal trainer.
Even the childbirth had been incorporated into their training. Yachay, the indigenous midwife, had managed the delivery, assisted by Mark, Jennifer, and Heather. The intensity of the experience had branded its details into his mind’s eye.
Janet had endured an agonizing eighteen hours of labor as Jack sat beside her, holding her hand and guiding her through a variation on Lamaze breathing exercises. A credit to her self-discipline, Janet never whimpered or cried out, although the sweat beaded on her forehead, forming tiny rivulets that Jack wiped away with a damp cloth.
As for Mark, Jen, and Heather, they had been kept busy doing whatever the Quechua midwife demanded. When the baby finally came, it had been Mark who assisted with cutting and tying off the umbilical cord, but not before a panicked few moments of wondering if the baby boy would start breathing. Although Mark had thought all new babies cried as a part of taking that first breath, this one hadn’t made a sound. Only a sharp word from Yachay had snapped him out of his frozen state and gotten him moving as she directed.
By the time they had finished all the post-birthing tasks, the three young friends hadn’t even bothered to eat, dragging themselves off to their rooms for rest and recovery, more bone tired than at any other time in their training.
“Heather, you’re up.”
Jack’s words brought Mark out of his reverie as Heather stepped forward and Jennifer stumbled onto the seat beside him, her breath coming in ragged gasps. Although she hadn’t been bloodied, she was clearly teetering on the edge of muscle failure.
Every Friday was evaluation day, during which Jack tested their mastery of the training they had received thus far. Mark knew one thing for certain: never again would he think TGIF. Fridays flat-out sucked.
Suddenly Mark’s attention shifted to the center of the padded mat that covered the small gym’s floor. One of Heather’s punches had managed to penetrate Jack’s defenses, her small fist striking his chin a grazing blow. As the two combatants shifted stance, Mark caught a glimpse of Heather’s eyes. They’d turned milky white.
Shit. She’d gone deep, fighting Jack in the now as her savant mind gazed into the future.
Once again she lashed out, but this time Jack slipped the blow. For the briefest of moments, Mark thought Jack’s eyes glinted red. Then, as Heather whirled into an axe kick, Jack chopped her sharply in the solar plexus, sending the air whooshing from her lungs in one great burst. Heather doubled over on the mat, then rolled on her side, simultaneously struggling to draw breath and rise to her feet—for the moment, failing to do either.
As Mark and Jennifer started to move, Jack’s stern gaze sent them back to their seats. As he stood above Heather, watching her intently, Jack made no move to assist her. A month ago Mark would have been unable to contain his anger. Now it all made sense. For Jack to baby any one of them would be to dishonor that person. Before they’d started training, Jack and Janet had briefed them on the rigors of the program they would endure, and they had each consented. Too late now to back out.
With a Herculean effort, Heather raised herself from the floor, once again moving into a ready position.
“Excellent.” Jack said. He motioned to Mark and Jennifer. “Everyone have a seat out here on the mat.”
As they complied, Jack walked to a corner closet, retrieved a box from the shelf, and then seated himself on the mat directly in front of Heather.
“You have a unique ability,” he said to her. “All of you share various talents as a result of the neural augmentation you received from the Bandolier Ship headbands. But your minds have their own natural strengths and preferences.
“Heather, I’ve watched you play chess. There’s not a person in the world that can beat you, certainly no computer can. You see all the possibilities and know what is most likely to happen from any setup. It’s why you were able to hit me just now.”
Jack paused to remove a chess set from the box, setting it on the floor between them. Mark watched closely as Jack removed several pieces, arranging them into an endgame in which each side had four pieces.
White had its king trapped on the first row by the black rook and black had its king similarly limited to movement on the eighth row. Black had another rook and pawn while white had a queen and pawn remaining.
Jack spun the board so that Heather played white.
“What are the odds white wins?” he asked.
“Whose move?” Heather asked.
“White.”
“Checkmate in one move.”
“What are the odds of white winning?”
“One hundred percent,” Heather said.
“Show me.”
Mark saw Heather glance at him and shrug, as if to say, This is too easy. “If you insist.”
As she reached for the white queen, her hand accidently touched the white pawn. Heather froze, then reached for the queen.
“You touched the pawn. By rule, you must move it.” Jack grinned.
“Accidental touches don’t count.”
“You touched the pawn and lingered. That counts as an intentional touch.”
Heather frowned. Mark could tell she was confused about what had just happened. A winning move had just become a losing move. She had reached for the queen, but something had distracted her. Mark saw a light dawn as she swung toward her friend.
“Jennifer!”
Jack laughed. “Before you get angry with Jennifer, I want you all to think about what just happened here. The most talented savant mind on the planet just calculated the odds of winning a simple chess endgame at 100 percent, an absolute certainty. But she lost. Why?
“I prearranged for Jennifer to nudge Heather’s subconscious when she least expected such interference, forcing her to accidently bump the white pawn. I did it to teach you the most important lesson you’ll ever get. Before I let you off early today, I want to burn this into your minds.
“Don’t trust anyone, not even your best friends. Love them, but never trust them completely. At critical times, they can be influenced to do things you don’t want. Mark would throw away his life to save Heather, even though she’d hate him for it. Heather would do the same for him. In your own ways you would all betray each other, just like Jennifer betrayed Heather in this little game.”
Mark’s face clouded. “Wait just a minute! Jennifer didn’t betray her.”
“No,” Jennifer said, giving Mark a thankful look. “I didn’t.”
“Oh, you had good reason,” Jack continued. “I manipulated you by telling you it was a critical part of the lesson I’m teaching, but you still betrayed her by making her lose. Given the right reasons you would all do the same. Remember it.
“And remember this. No victory is certain. No situation is hopeless. When you find yourselves in a hopeless situation, change the rules.”
“You mean cheat,” Mark said.
Jack grinned. “Like the devil himself.”