47 | MEMORIES
The neuro-headset sat on a cradle beside the computer screen. Jaggard stared at it without enthusiasm.
He knew things he shouldn’t know. He had seen things he could not possibly have seen, and he could not understand how this could be so.
He had images in his head of a Ford pickup truck. An F-150 crew cab with off-road suspension. It was missing, stolen, from a north city car dealership. But how did he know that?
He clearly remembered seeing the same vehicle cruise past him in Fremont, although he had been nowhere near Fremont in the last few weeks. It was dark, but not so dark that he could not recognize Vienna at the wheel of the truck.
Even stranger was his recollection of the vehicle nearly colliding with him in Jean. He was driving a car, a small Honda.
It was dark, and he had forgotten to switch on his lights.
Suddenly, lights from another car were bearing down on him, and he had slammed on the brakes to see the big Ford pickup truck whistle past just in front of his nose.
The memory was vivid, yet he had never been to Jean and did not drive a small Honda.
He remembered seeing the pickup truck turn onto the old Boulevard in Las Vegas, which was the next strange thing to happen. Nobody went out along the Boulevard anymore. There was nothing there. Not anymore.
Just the contamination zone.
These memories were not his. That was clear to him. They were memories of other people, somehow filtering through to him as those people reconnected to the neuro-network.
Gasgoine entered without knocking and sat in the chair in front of Jaggard’s desk, leaning forward and resting his elbows on the desk.
“I need you to report progress,” he said. “How could it possibly take more than two weeks to find a bunch of teenagers and a missing agent?”
“I’ve located them,” Jaggard said, still not sure how he had done so. “Just now, the information has come through. They’re in Las Vegas.”