Chapter 6: Carriwhite Acres

Doug mumbled something in reply to Agent Hill. He was too absorbed in his surroundings to take much stock in what was coming from his mouth.

Inside this seemingly innocuous and bland facility, some of the most amazing things that Doug had ever seen towered over and surrounded him. He couldn't even begin to guess at the functions of everything he saw. There were monitoring machines, what looked like seismographs, and flashing lights and touchscreens everywhere. A mixture of black-coated S.H.I.E.L.D. agents and white-coated scientists were buzzing around the room, comparing notes and running various tests.

Hill stopped and followed Doug's gaze around the room, letting him take it all in. She walked over to Flumm and handed him Doug's Visitor's ID badge.

"Show him his room," Hill said. "I want him rested up tonight so we can get him started right away in the morning. Tell him where he is welcome to go, where he isn't, and what he can and can't touch. I'll introduce him in the morning to Masters, he doesn't want to be disturbed right now."

By this time Doug had regained his composure enough to sense the tension in Agent Hill's voice. He waited until she was out of earshot before asking Flumm who Masters was.

"He's the head honcho around here. He's an ex-CIA man and the head psychologist here."

"Are there real patients here?"

"That's one of the things that makes this place hard to find. Even our fronts are real."

Doug found his room comfortable, but he had too much energy to stay there. He had already seen too much to relax. Secret agents, highly advanced technology, it was all too much for the high schooler. At the same time, Doug was not willing to disobey the orders so recently given him by Agent Flumm. Foretuneatly, Doug was soon saved from his predicament by a knock at the door. It was Special Agent Carosella.

Carosella was even bigger than Doug had remembered him to be. He was close to seven feet tall and looked like he had been a regular member of World's Strongest Man contests. His apparel differed slightly from the other agents on site. Carosella's outfit was the same design and make as the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, but with yellow piping down the sleeves and legs. He stood at the door silent for a few moments, then ducked his head under the door frame and entered the room.

"I'm here to keep an eye on you," were the first words out of Carosella's mouth. Doug was surprised how soft spoken he was.

"I'm gonna be honest, I'm not much on this whole 'tough guy secret agent' stuff," he continued. "I'm here to do a job and make the best of it. I've got to keep you under supervision. I read the file they have on you, and I think I can see why. I wouldn't want you getting into any government secrets either, if I was them, which I guess I am."

Doug thought to himself that if Maria Hill had meant Agent Carosella to intimidate Doug into staying in line, Carosella wasn't doing that great of a job.

"I want you to call me Guido, like everyone else does," said the mammoth of a man, who Doug guessed was only about thirty years old.

"Call me Doug."

"I will."

Carosella flung off a backpack he had thrown over his shoulder and tossed it onto Doug's bed.

"These are your things. You need to wear this stuff at all times you are with us, except when you are off duty, which isn't going to be very often. I need to warn you that you need to stay inside the building at all times, unless you have permission to be out. We've got a public image to keep up, and we have to account for everyone inside at all times."

"Does that mean I'm going to be tracked?"

"We all are. When we leave and go off site we check out and can go where we want, but this is a high security area and very tricky to maintain, so we're all under wraps."

Doug was thoughtful for a second, and the result was his curiosity getting the best of him.

"So what's the deal?" he asked. "I saw a lot of technical stuff downstairs when I got here, and there's no way that they have anything to do with hacking. If I can do that on the things I have at home, there's no way they would need that much tech to break anything. What are they doing down there?"

Carosella hesitated. He got to his feet and went to the door, opened it, and looked both ways down the corridor. Finding it empty, he motioned to Doug to follow with one hand while using the other to indicate that silence was needed at this point.

They stepped from the door of Doug's room, which clicked shut behind them softly. Making their way back downstairs, Carosella led Doug to a small room just past the stairs that led to the main lab. He took a small key card from his pocket and held it to a scanner. In response, the door slid open revealing stacks of papers, and filing cabinets stretching from wall to wall. A lone desk sat in the corner of the room, which was only perhaps as big as a one car garage. Carosella strode to this computer, bent his large body over it and hit the power switch. He waved Doug over.

"These are the documents we have from the past four months. You passed Mount Charteris on the way here. There's been some crazy stuff going on, and it's coming from below the mountain. We're talking tremors, gravity fluctuations, and radioactive emissions. We're not looking at anything severe, but they have been increasing. There have been cases where flocks of birds will fall dead, or areas of vegetation dry out. We know something is going on in the mountain. There's a small base there that was used by covert military installations in the Cold War and it was supposed to have been abandoned. But when S.H.I.E.L.D. and the CIA traced it back to Charteris, we found new tech in place of the old stuff, and no way around the security of it all. We sent people in to check, and they come back messed up. We've got a whole ward of them here that Dr. Masters looks after. Some sort of synaptic disruption is what he calls it. I just call it weird."

Carosella had opened a video file on the computer of one of the people he mentioned. A voice, Doug assumed it was Masters, was asking questions. Each response was disjointed, as if the victims of whatever had happened were having several conversations simultaneously. Sentence fragments were followed by a series of clicks, made by the tongue of the victim.

The S.H.I.E.L.D. agent opened a few more video files, and each held footage of a similar patient, with different symptoms, but generally the same malady. On the third video, Doug stopped Carosella.

"So do they all do that same clicking pattern?"

"To the best of my knowledge, yes."

"Why do you think they are all calling for help?"
"I don't know that they are."

"Sure they are. Didn't you notice?"

"I didn't notice anything but random jibber-jabber."

"But the clicks…"

"What about the clicks?"

"It's Morse Code!"

Doug grabbed the mouse on the desk and replayed the latest victim. Sure enough, you could hear the 'dot dot dot, dash dash dash, dot dot dot' of an SOS relayed through the clickings of the tongue.

"But why would they be doing that? And how can they be doing that? They don't have any control over their faculties!" Carosella was skeptical. Doug didn't have time to answer.

"Those are excellent questions," said a voice from the door. "And I see we may have some help answering them."

Framed in the door was the gaunt figure of a middle aged man in glasses and a white lab coat. A white streak was rushing across his auburn hair. He seemed tired, and not pleased at having found people intruding into his activities. He continued in a stern, unfriendly tone.

"I think you're done here Guido, take your 'ward' and go. I'll want to have a word with you both in the morning."

The two startled persons, one a government agent, and one a high school hacker, stopped, embarrassed somehow at being caught in their covert mission.

"Yes, sir, Dr. Masters," said Guido.

But as they passed, Masters grabbed Doug by the arm and yanked him aside.

"Not a word of this, young man, not one word, not even to Hill, or we're going to find ourselves in some hot water. Understand?

"Yes, sir."

"Good, now get to bed."

In bed that night, Doug turned the events of the day over in his mind. He mostly thought of the strange malady that plagued the agents who investigated the mysterious Mount Charteris on foot. Why SOS? And what could possibly be there that would scare that many professional government men? Hadn't they seen it all? What caused these strange mental brakedowns?

With these thoughts running through his head, Doug drifted to sleep, ready to wake the next day and dive deeper into the mystery.

Then, suddenly, it came to him. What if the SOS wasn't coming from the agents at all? What if it was from someone else? Was it possible to re-program a brain?