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  Brigid nodded. “Perhaps that is why there was that form of manifestation.”

  Smaragda looked down at the screen, watching as her friends suddenly appeared, deposited on the ground by streams of light emanating from the torch held by the flying female figure, Vanth.

  She could recognize them by the subtle differences, the little bits of customization on each of her fellow soldiers’ armor, even before the camera focused on the faces inside their open-visored helmets. She looked at one set of eyes and her heart sank. Every instinct was to grab the tiny monitor and hurl it aside, but she didn’t even possess the will to lift her arms, to even touch the image of lost brothers.

  Edwards leaned across the table, his long arm snatching up the tablet and turning it away from her.

  “She doesn’t need to see that shit,” the big man gruffly announced. “Pardon my language.”

  “It’s excused,” Diana stated. “I’m sorry, Myrto.”

  The failed soldier just shook her head, tried to say, “It’s okay,” but could only manage a mumbled, garbled semblance of human speech.

  “Are you sure you’re all right to continue this debriefing?” Edwards spoke across the table.

  A hand rested upon her shoulder and she looked up to see that it was Brigid Baptiste. Her touch was delicate and her expression was one of concern. “Let me talk with her alone, everyone.”

  Smaragda shook her head. “I can be useful…”

  “We know that,” Brigid answered her. “I just want to talk to you. One-on-one.”

  Smaragda looked into the emerald, shining eyes of the tall woman, seeing a warmth that made her dislike herself even more, not wanting to deserve any of that for all that she’d failed to do. And yet the offered hand was irresistible and she rose, guided to a doorway.

  * * *

  EVEN IF BRIGID BAPTISTE were not possessed of a photographic memory, enabling her to recognize the signs of severe emotional trauma, she would have noticed the turmoil that wrapped up the frost-haired Smaragda. Taking her into the hallway, away from the presence of others, she managed to give the young woman some privacy. The corner of the corridor was well lit, but no one was using it.

  “I’m sorry for dragging down the debriefing…” Smaragda began.

  “You aren’t,” Brigid told her. She braced Smaragda’s face in both of her hands, locking eyes together. “Just look into my eyes and concentrate on my voice.”

  “Why? What are you doing?” Smaragda asked.

  “First, I’m going to get your complete testimony without causing you more conscious mental harm,” Brigid explained. “I’m hypnotizing you now, lulling your senses, making you feel more and more comfortable. As the notes of my voice strum gently in your ears, I am commanding your visual attention. With sight and hearing focused, calmed, you will become more attuned toward the cues that interfere with your detailed memory, as well as separate yourself from your emotional barriers.”

  Smaragda’s dark, red-veined eyes slowly unfocused with Brigid’s continued description of the hypnosis process, calming her, fixating her until Brigid was able to draw her hands away from the girl’s cheeks.

  Smaragda stood stock-still and the Cerberus archivist began asking her questions and receiving honest answers. The trick to hypnosis was simply a case of distraction of the conscious mind, taking away filters of behavior and emotion that would otherwise interfere with clarity of communication.

  The shell-shocked soldier was much more forthcoming in her responses, and didn’t seem as if she wanted to fold herself away under the table. And since this was Brigid Baptiste, not a single syllable, not a single impression, would be forgotten or lost in the translation. Her brilliant mind absorbed every fact and description uttered by Smaragda, as well as opinions and impressions on things she could only speculate about.

  The whole hypnotic session took only fifteen minutes for the direct questioning and Brigid was partially of a mind to continue, digging into Smaragda’s self-loathing and attempt to take care of it, like a surgeon having discovered a tumor in the midst of an operation. However, Brigid realized that if she attempted to dig too deeply, she could cause as much harm as she’d attempt to undo. No, meatball surgery on the traumatized young woman was not going to be on the menu today.

  Smaragda’s healing would have to come from a more conventional source, but even as Brigid closed out the hypnotic session, she complimented the woman on her observational skills and her ability to bring vital intelligence to New Olympus. Positive reinforcement on the subconscious level could be a minor salve, but it wouldn’t upset the Greek woman’s thoughts such as an attempt to bury her feelings of self-loathing and survivor’s guilt. Putting that down deeper in Smaragda’s mind would be exactly the opposite of removing a tumor; it would be pushing a packet of septic and diseased flesh into a vulnerable set of organs, waiting for one moment to split and infect the rest of her, poisoning everything else she did.

  No, Brigid couldn’t sublimate the raw feelings on Smaragda’s part. She could only attempt to leave an impression that she actually had done some good.

  With a snap, Smaragda blinked her bloodshot eyes.

  There was a moment where the soldier seemed unsteady on her feet, but Brigid assisted her with a firm hand on her shoulder.

  “What happened? It feels like I fell asleep,” she said.

  Brigid nodded. “In a way you did. I hypnotized you.”

  Smaragda’s brow wrinkled as she looked up at the tall Cerberus woman. “Hypnotized. You didn’t do something like make me cluck like a chicken if someone says ‘dinner’ or something, right?”

  “Nothing like that,” Brigid answered.

  Smaragda managed a brief flicker of a smile before she cast her gaze to the floor. “At least I was good for something.”

  Brigid put her arm around the soldier’s shoulders. “Come on, let’s get back to the meeting.”

  This time she sat Smaragda right next to Edwards. The big man seemed confused for a moment.

  “She’s too hard on herself, just like you,” Brigid murmured. “Maybe keep an eye on her and take your mind off of your ill-perceived failures.”

  The CAT member nodded. “All right. I can take a hint,” he added with a mock growl.

  “How’d you screw up?” Brigid heard Smaragda ask as she returned to the head of the table. At this point, Kane and Grant put away the cards they were toying with as they’d waited for her to return. She chuckled at the two of them sitting back up and looking interested, as if they were schoolboys afraid of being busted by their teacher.

  “I thought you would be getting more information from Diana and Ari,” Brigid said.

  “We did. But after we got all of that, and showed more of the vid, we had time left over,” Kane told her.

  “What did you get?” Grant asked her.

  “I got deeper information on the situation,” Brigid said. “And it contrasts with the interview in only a few minor errors and differences.”

  “I told the truth,” Smaragda interjected.

  Brigid nodded. “You did. But human memory is, for most people, a fickle thing. The human mind alters perceptions upon reflection, adding details that might not have been there in the original case, and ignoring others that seemed irrelevant at the time. A study in the late twentieth century proved that eyewitness testimony was only accurate in one instance out of ten where there were other forms of corroboration such as audio and video recording.”

  “Really?” Kane asked.

  Brigid nodded. “In my instance, that kind of filter for memory is missing, most likely a genetic anomaly.”

  “Like a doomie.” Edwards spoke up.

  Domi shook her head. “Brigid’s too smart for that. Doomies can’t handle the future. They get crazy. Brigid looks straight back.”

  Brigid managed a weak smile. She didn’t want to correct her friend and oft-times student Domi. She could see the future, but only via educated calculations based upon prior data, a cause-and-effect f
orm of premonition. She didn’t engage in it too often, only for the purposes of planning for battle and avoiding dangers. And even then, her calculations were not one hundred percent.

  “Did Myrto see anything?” Diana asked.

  “She described the fog she mentioned in detail,” Brigid stated. “And as our initial evaluation of potential myths, there was a Stygian aspect to the cloud. And yet there was something equally familiar to us. During a recent expedition to Africa, we encountered a similar unnatural darkness. To every one of our senses, it was something that was a truly physical entity. Not even a flashlight or high-tech optics could cut through it.”

  “What was it really?” Aristotle asked.

  “It was a psychic projection. One that was so strong, it even numbed tactile senses,” Brigid stated. “So, what Myrto saw could have been something similar. A form of smoke screen.”

  “Why not just use an actual smoke screen? Wouldn’t that take a lot of energy?” Aristotle persisted.

  “Because they were facing soldiers. There had to be a focus for them to counter. Something akin to my hypnosis of Myrto,” Brigid explained. “The black, invulnerable fog was something that could draw the fire of the Olympian troops without endangering them in the process.”

  “You mean that my men were opening fire on a cloud that wasn’t there, and it wasn’t even concealing the ones attacking us?” Smaragda asked.

  Brigid felt some relief as the soldier regained some of the fire in her belly.

  “It may have, in some instances. But being a black fog to your conscious mind, it allowed you to shoot into it and not even register any impacts. You could even have been steered to shooting between your friends. Or have known, subconsciously, where your brethren were. It is no good to take people as zombie prisoners when their own compatriots open fire and cut them down,” Brigid told her. “In that way, you protected your brethren, deliberately shooting not to hit them.”

  Smaragda rested her forehead on her palm. “Wouldn’t it be a mercy just to kill them than let them be zombies?”

  “We shall see. There may be a means of recovering them from this current state,” Brigid offered. “And if there is…”

  “Then shooting them would be condemning them to death for no reason,” Smaragda concluded. “Damn.”

  Brigid nodded. “There is hope.”

  “How did you tell that?” Smaragda asked.

  “I asked for every detail, and more than once you, in your hypnotic state, told me that you shifted your aim so as not to hit your friends. Even when you were alone,” Brigid said.

  Smaragda’s voice rose in frantic intensity. “But the cloud was bulletproof. It even was capable of smothering a Gear Skeleton!”

  “So it appeared. But that wasn’t the case,” Brigid replied. “But your unconscious mind could tell that the pilots of those suits were floundering, hesitant to strike into the fog. When their guns went off, they were shooting at empty air. When the fog reached at them, it was actually the captured soldiers and townspeople from the Etruscan countryside.”

  “Those were…townspeople.” Smaragda looked down at her hands. “Did we…?”

  “Again, the purpose of expanding your zombie army was not to lose them as cannon fodder,” Brigid said.

  “How are we going to deal with them, then?” Grant asked. “It’s not as if we’ve got a means of blocking out enemy thoughts.”

  “Maybe we do.” Edwards spoke up.

  Everyone looked to him and, as one, the group understood what he was saying. Edwards saw the zombified Olympian troops, and saw Charun and Vanth. As did the recording equipment on his hood.

  “Either the sealed helmet or the optics provided everything you needed to immunize yourself against the mind-muddling effects,” Brigid said.

  Smaragda nodded, catching up. “Our helmets aren’t environmentally sealed and the ‘fog’ was invisible in our multioptic visors.”

  Brigid nodded.

  “What about anyone inside?” she asked.

  “Only the two we sent in initially. And then the two we sent for Niklo and Herc. And they were gone on the IR,” Smaragda said.

  “Were you still listening to the prayer on your radio?” Brigid asked.

  Everyone turned toward her.

  “Prayer?” Diana asked. “What prayer?”

  “Myrto heard a voice inside a radio note while her helmet radio was jammed,” Brigid advised. “You didn’t remember the anomaly on your radio consciously.”

  “To be honest, all I remember is that comms were all jammed up,” Smaragda replied.

  “Just like with us,” Grant pointed out. “Except we didn’t hear anything other than static.”

  “But that is because we set the Commtacts to filter out bursts of transmission or white noise, and modulate the volume down low,” Kane offered.

  “I had my microphone off and I set the Commtact to passive, only activating on…a recognized call from another on the same Commtact network,” Edwards added.

  “So it was not even some form of atmospheric hallucinogen. It was a post-hypnotic suggestion carried on the radio interference,” Brigid noted. “One that allowed you to remember the alien prayer, but not enough that you could translate it.”

  “Even so, we won’t take chances for our infiltration,” Kane said. “Shadow suit hoods on at all times. Myrto, we brought a suit for you, as well.”

  “Me?” the woman asked.

  “You were there. Your friends are in peril. You can guide us to the spot where they were taken, and their familiarity with you will provide us with a coordinated group once we free them,” Brigid told her.

  “‘Once,’” Smaragda repeated. “You think they can be saved?”

  “It’s what we do,” Kane informed the soldier. “Especially when someone has their life literally pulled from them like this. I can’t imagine a worse punishment than losing your own will.”

  Grant looked to Brigid. “So, half-hour hypnosis. I know you got the entirety of the chant that Myrto heard on the radio.”

  “And I’ve been attempting a translation as we speak. That was why I had overlooked the possibility of the transmission being a carrier signal for the origins of the fog and its effects upon the Olympian soldiers,” Brigid returned.

  “Multitasking in your mind,” Kane mentioned. “I’ll never get over how you pull that off.”

  Brigid frowned. “Especially while being cautious about my efforts at translation. There seem to be phonetic cues that manipulate thoughts in each word. I have to separate the whole of the context to the point where only one word is transcribed, and out of order.”

  Grant winced. “I’m already getting a headache trying to figure that all out.”

  “So when do we leave?” Sela asked.

  “In the morning,” Brigid said. “I’ll need time to work on the translation. It is a frustrating blend of Babylonian and Etruscan, which is annoying as it’s a prototypical language to Latin…and there are only ten thousand textual examples of the tongue that I can work from in this mix.”

  “Only ten thousand,” Diana murmured.

  “And most of which I have not read,” Brigid confessed. Even though she couldn’t have been expected to know everything, she hated feeling underprepared for this mission, especially in regard to linguistic translation.

  “Get some sleep at least,” Kane ordered. “And I mean you, too, Myrto. We’re going to pay a visit to Vanth and Charun. Without the benefit of armored support.”

  Aristotle frowned. “I’m sorry, my friends, but that sounds too dangerous.”

  “To you, it sounds dangerous,” Grant interrupted. “To us, it’s another day at the office.”

  Chapter 7

  Brigid Baptiste made her way to the quarters she was sharing with Sela Sinclair and Domi. The Mount Olympus barracks were full, so the accommodation of an individual room for each of the Cerberus envoys was an unlikely thing. The other two Cerberus Away Team women had agreed to share their quarters while Kane wa
s stuck with the gigantic Grant and Edwards as his “dorm” partners.

  “Still not walking good?” Domi asked.

  Brigid had wrapped her sprained ankle underneath the leg and boot of her shadow suit. It had been all right for the start of the day, but as the time stretched later, the ache grew and grew.

  “It’s just slowing me down a little,” Brigid returned.

  The little albino slowed her pace to match Brigid’s, then let the taller woman drape an arm over her shoulders. Brigid appreciated Domi’s tightly muscled arm supporting the small of her back. Sinclair dropped back and lent her shoulder for the other side.

  “Honestly,” Brigid said. “I’m not a cripple.”

  “We’re a team,” Sinclair told her. “We watch out for each other.”

  Brigid smiled. “Thank you.”

  “Besides, you interrupted workout,” Domi added.

  Brigid looked to the ruby-eyed girl, a frown turning the corners of her mouth down. “Are you saying carting me around is a workout?”

  “It’s not like toting Grant around, but…” Sinclair piped in.

  “And it’s a big butt.” Domi giggled.

  Brigid wrinkled her nose.

  “Just kidding, girlfriend,” Sinclair said.

  “I know you are,” Brigid replied with more than a little indignity. “But you two jokers wouldn’t be having as much fun if I took it in stride.”

  With that, Brigid lifted both feet off the ground with a grin and Sinclair and Domi let out gleeful yelps as they were suddenly off balance. Before anyone fell, though, she put her feet back down, wincing as that action only aggravated things more, which only added to Brigid’s laughter, this time at herself for being so silly that she ended up hurting even worse.

  The three of them reached their quarters and Domi and Sinclair helped Brigid onto her cot. It had been a long day of preparations and briefings, so getting some rest would be good for all of them. Tomorrow would be a huge day and there was no telling what Charun and Vanth were truly up to.

  Brigid was glad for the sheer comfort of the shadow suits. Their body-conforming nature and environmental adaptations made them quite easy to sleep in without need of a cover, so she merely stretched out on her cot’s mattress. There was a stretch and a tentative pivot of her foot on the other end of her sore ankle. She hadn’t caused serious harm to it with her horseplay, so once that was done, she closed her eyes.