“Oh.” Helen looked down on her lap. Her finger was pointing off the blueprint. “You said my hand was moving?”
“Yes. Rather, your finger was moving, as if it was drawing. I didn’t want to interrupt but you started jabbing your finger into your thigh really hard and I wasn’t sure whether you weren’t hurting yourself.”
Helen frowned. “Huh.” She turned her finger over and studied the tip of her finger. “And I didn’t wake up even though I was jabbing myself?”
“Obviously not.” Satisfied that she was okay, Alex straightened back into his seat. “What was that all about?”
“I’m not sure,” Helen said slowly, still studying her finger. “When we started remote viewing, one of our first exercises was kind of like automatic writing, where we were told to let ourselves draw out ideograms, but that was done with me fully aware. This has never happened before. Wish I was holding a pen.”
“Then you would have punctured your thigh,” Alex said quietly. “You were using quite a bit of force.”
“But what was I writing?” She frowned, trying to remember. “I can’t remember a thing. That’s never happened before either. I wasn’t actually asleep, I don’t think.”
“This might be a side effect of the serum,” Alex said. “Make a note of it and report it to Dr. Kirkland. He’s trying to find the right dosage for each individual.”
“To do what?” She turned her gaze to the man sitting across from her.
“To make sure you don’t OD.” He arched a brow at her. “Itisa drug in you, you know. Haven’t you considered that you can overdose on it? They think they can control the cause and effect through dosage, but this serum doesn’t stay the same in every individual.”
“So some would need more for it to take effect,” Helen finished for him, nodding as she added, “and for some, it would be way too much.”
She thought of Armando Chang’s fascination with illusion. Was that part of the effect of SYMBIOS 2 on him? She had to have that chat with him when she returned to Center.
But what was she writing? She had drifted off—if that was what one would call what happened—while memorizing the layout of Deutsche International. Whatever she was writing—did it have to do with the blueprint of the place? She wracked her brain, trying to remember. She had been tracing the elevator in the layout and had used what she could remember from the RV session earlier, focusing on the details. If she had somehow gone into remote viewing mode, she hadn’t been aware of it and for the first time, couldn’t recall anything. Besides, where was the downtime, that feeling of numbness?
She shook her head. The serum might be taking care of the downtime fatigue right now. No time to worry about it.
“We’re almost at zero hour. How are you?” Alex interrupted her thoughts.
Helen glanced up. “I’m fine. I feel fine.” Alex’s eyes narrowed a fraction, but he didn’t say anything. She cocked her head, a smile touching her lips. “Worried about me, Agent Diamond?”
Alex Diamond leaned back and closed his eyes again. “Try not to jab yourself before we get there.”
There was just something about him that tempted her to bait him. Maybe it was his lack of reaction to anything.
“I bet you would be more worried had it been T. who had the serum in her and she started doing weird stuff,” Helen said slyly.
“Yes,” he said, calm as could be, eyes still closed.
Helen stared at him, then laughed. She was beginning to like the guy.
Twelve
He had a little bit of time before operations got under way. Of course his thoughts revolved around Elena Rostova. When he had flipped through the dictionary this morning, the word that jumped out at him wasrevelation.He didn’t like surprises. Now was not the time for them, and he had experienced several today.
She was on her own. He had to let her do her job.
Nonetheless, he…worried because the serum was inside her and it was something he couldn’t control. He almost laughed aloud. Worry wasn’t an emotion that he experienced a lot, especially when it came to an operative and his or her job. He cared about the men and women who worked with him, but the risks and the sacrifices were not his problem; they were theirs. Surprise number one. He was worried about her.
It was eye-opening to him that he wanted to make sure she was all right, that she was drinking and eating even if she didn’t feel normal hunger or thirst, that she understood that she was not only what she felt. But he was her monitor and part of his job was to not interfere with the experiment.
As usual, he was going to break the rules. That wasn’t the surprise. The revelation playing on his mind was the knowledge that he hadn’t wanted her to take the risk at all in that last moment. The urge to yank that needle out of her arm lasted only a quick second and dissipated as he watched her behaving normally, but that second was enough to give him pause.
He had several rules that were important to him. Do not mix sexual chemistry with personal emotion in a seduction. It would be unhealthy. Creating a sexual bond outside the parameters of a relationship—imprinting need and feeding it—was only possible if the operative remained somewhat detached. To be crude, don’t mix business with pleasure.
Yet, when he saw Elena naked, he never denied the pleasure she gave him. Oh, at first it was pure male curiosity, but voyeurism was never much of a turn-on for him, since he’d spied on targets in all kinds of situations through the years. He’d liked what he’d seen. Since revelation was the keynote today, he might as well admit now that it’d grown into something else. Watching her had become a possessive habit.
He smiled at the term. He was sure Kirkland had thought so a couple of times even though the man hadn’t voiced any disapproval. Kirkland would probably have said the same thing: don’t mix business with pleasure.
