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Euphoria

Chapter 14: Anticipation

Author's note: I'm working on the final chapter now. We're very very nearly there (can you feel it?).

Tuesday

7:16 pm

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The floor was littered with pizza boxes and cans of coke. They had both given up on the last of the takeout, which had gone cold and crusty.

Melissa was sitting at the desk in the now-dry chair, cross-legged, two buttons open on her shirt, writing in a small notepad. Norman was laid across the bed with his arms behind his head, speaking aloud.

"So let me get this straight. You were instructed to investigate me and my... suspicious behaviour. You did as you were told and came over to D.C. like a good little girl to snoop on me."

"Geez, Norman," laughed Donahue.

"Sorry, a good little FBI agent."

She rolled her eyes, but was still smiling. "Essentially, yes. That was it. They wanted to get more info on you. I wasn't here to lock you away."

He shook his head against the bedspread. "No, I think you were. You just didn't know that bit yet."

There was a moment of silence.

"You think they were ready to rein you in?" Melissa asked.

Norman stared up at the ceiling, running his fingertips together as he constructed his sentences. "They came after me in black SUVs. I don't think there's any other plausible explanation. Maybe I was starting to draw too much attention to myself, or maybe they knew ARI and the drugs were getting too much. Either way they've had enough of me running free all over the place."

He sat up on his elbows. "Besides, Raine knew something was going on. He said the FBI thinks I know too much."

Melissa hummed in agreement. She was tapping her pen against the table. "But if we assume that's true, then... They were trying to silence you? You're more to them than just a disobedient agent. Even if they suspected you were on drugs, chasing agents down isn't standard FBI protocol. There's got to be more to it."

"Gotta be," said Norman.

"That means they do know what you know. They knew why it was so important you stay quiet."

Jayden pulled himself up off his elbows, forward so he could look at Melissa as she turned in the chair.

"Welles and Hyde were in the video. We know that those two, at the very least, were in on the ARI project," she carried on. "Was that it, or does it spread higher? Who did these orders come from? Where did the order to send me here come from?"

There was an electric spark connecting them through the air. Jayden looked closely into her honeyed eyes, found in them as much conflict and confusion as he could feel beating against his own breastplate. He took a deep breath.

"Who ordered you to come here, Melissa?"

She was shaking her head rapidly, remembering something that she refused to believe. "My direct superior told me. He said that it was a very important assignment. From the very top..." She froze and stared right at him. "It couldn't be."

"Who?" He was almost falling off the bed. "Who did he say the assignment came from?"

She swallowed hard. "Roland Warren."

The Deputy Director of the FBI. The second most senior position in the entire bureau. Roland fuckin' Warren. Just a hop, skip and a jump from the one running the whole show.

Melissa looked pale and afraid.

But Norman was nodding with a dreadful conviction. "I think it was. It has to be somebody high up, or else none of it would have gone on for this long this successfully. I think it was Warren. I think it was the fucking Deputy Director of the FBI."

Their eyes clashed again. It was a stretch, and they both knew it. They had their suspicions, gut feelings that made their stomachs churn, but the evidence to back them up was thin on the ground. This is what they called in the FBI a hunch. They were known to be dangerous, and deceptive.

But then Melissa did something crazy. "Me too," she said.

Norman took this as permission to carry on with the wild train of thought.

"That means the corruption is going on right now. Right now they could be planning, and scheming, and doing this to God knows how many other agents, and stopping God knows how much actual FBI work from being done." It made him want to slam his fist into the wall.

He was tired of running and tired of being less than he should.

"Let's go give the bastards what's coming to them," he said.

All of a sudden he knew what we had to do, and the path forward seemed clear. He got up and grabbed his suit jacket from the back of the chair. In its right pocket he found his black glasses, icy and slick to the touch. They had been neglected for several days at least. There was even a fine layer of lint and dust on them which he traced through with his thumb.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Melissa watching him. He realised he had been caught up in feeling ARI in his hands, as seductive as a shadow at the end of a long corridor.

He pulled his gaze away and looked back at his partner. "I'm going to put them on," he explained. She was listening. "But I need you to keep an eye on me. Take them off if anything bad starts happening."

Donahue had her hands cradled in her lap. "What are you looking for?"

"Warren's address. We have to find the poison right at the source." Norman set his jaw. Now he had come this far, he had no option but to see things through to the end.

"But wait... didn't you say the FBI can track you through those? Won't they be able to see what you find?"

Norman nodded. "Yeah. If what Raine said is true then they can watch what I do with ARI. Then again, if it is true they'll be able to track my location. They'll know we're here right now."

There was a heavy silence as the reality of that statement hung in the air.

"Well," said Jayden. "I guess I better be quick."

He motioned for Melissa to move. She stood up and Norman took her place in the chair. He cleared the uneven desk, throwing litter on the floor and Melissa's notepad on the bed.

"I won't be long," Norman said. Agent Donahue stood wavering beside him.

He smiled awkwardly at her. He could see the fear flickering behind her eyes. And suddenly he couldn't wait to be out of her company and back in there, back to the peace and stillness, and his fingers were twitching in anticipation, and he could feel the blood pounding loud in his ears.

Melissa wanted to ask more questions. She held her tongue. What bad things might happen while you're in there? He had already told her about nosebleeds and migraines. She prayed there was nothing worse.

Norman sat forward in the chair at the desk.

He placed the glasses over his eyes, hooked them on his ears. The world went black.

Then gold. Then green. Everything swam into view, and he was there again, and that old familiar forest loomed high above him, moving placidly in the eternal fall winds, soothing his senses in that old familiar way.

Those trees. Painted in orange, red, russet. Their branches bent in homecoming, their leaves whispering greetings. The breeze toyed with his hair and caressed his fingertips. Into the distance the landscape stretched away, rendering the furthest reaches of a reality so incredibly real. He wanted to stay here for hours. In fact, he never wanted to leave.

It felt wrong, but so completely right. It felt like a part of himself he'd been holding back from. He wasn't sure how long it had been but as soon as he was back it hurt him right in the chest how much he had been yearning for it.

And then he remembered that he was here to find something.

And then he remembered he couldn't take long to find it.

There was a chill in the air, and he could feel a layer of leaves under his feet. He pulled at one of the drawers in the desk. Rows of digital files sprang up at his side. He rifled through them, slipping back into a fluid ease he hadn't felt in days. Nothing. He slammed the drawer shut again.

And then froze. He had looked up, and standing several feet away, the sunlight hitting her at an angle through the pattern of foliage, her hair loose around her shoulders, two buttons open on her shirt, was Agent Donahue.

She was staring at him.

He blinked. She was gone. He looked around, a little unnerved, but the forest was just the same. It whispered its calming susurrus.

Keep it together, Norman.

This time he tried the surface of the desk. There were several piles of files heaped atop of it, and with a flick of his wrist he was scanning through them. He knew what he was looking for: addresses. They were usually stored in a single place, but the residential addresses of FBI employees, especially ones high up the food chain, were a little harder. Not impossible. Just tricky.

With a pulling movement of his arm, not unlike the motion of shuffling a pack of cards, Norman expanded the files upwards and outwards. He drew himself in closer, peering at each one in turn, glancing with what would seem to an outsider like breakneck speed.

Jayden could feel the classic tingle up his spine. He could sense his eyes watering. He was operating just as fast as ever, but ARI was getting to him faster than ever before. He knew that when he looked up the forest would be darker, more drawn together, and the winds would be picking up the fallen leaves.

And the information he wanted evaded him.

He looked up. Directly in front of him stood Melissa.

He scrambled to hold onto the table, the chair rocking underneath his feet. She was so close he could touch her if he held out his hand, and her eyes were like darkened sugar, and her hair was whipping around her as the forest grew frantic and dull.

He was scared to move. Scared to blink. But when he couldn't hold his eyes open anymore he did blink, and then she was gone again.

He span around. She wasn't behind him. She wasn't anywhere. The trees were bending in the wind, groaning unintelligible threats.

The sky was growing greyer. Just as he'd predicted.

Norman had had hallucinations in ARI before, but never this bad. Never this real, never this quick, and never this erratic. He tried to swallow deep breaths. He couldn't give up now. Besides, Melissa, the real living and breathing Melissa in the honest-to-goodness real world, would get him out if things got too bad.

The cold sweat was soaking into his collar. He readjusted himself, his legs trembling.

Next he opened the drawers on his other side. He knew it was an address he wanted - somewhere he could find someone. Someone important. The hairs on neck were all standing up. He flicked through files, through an alphabet of names. Which letter was he looking for?

Slowly, like the information was swimming to him from a long way away, it came: W.

Warren. The Deputy Director of the FBI.

The name was staring back at him from the file in his hand. Surely not... And yet there it was, as clear as the day darkening around him.

I've found you, you bastard.

He flicked the file open. Inside was a partial profile, including job title, contact details... and address. Norman released his breath. Then he committed the three neat lines to memory.

If he had been in a better state of mind, perhaps he would have noticed how easily and quickly he had found that particular address. Perhaps the word would have come to mind: trap.

But it didn't, because he wasn't.

Instead, high on hope, he closed the file with the finality of a decision that could never be unmade. He placed it neatly back in its drawer.

Norman looked up.

She was there, in front of his face, barely inches away. Her eyes flashed anger. He could feel her cold hands on his shoulders, and they laid on him like lead. He wanted to yell but suddenly the breath had left his throat and the world had become a swirling maelstrom. Around her the trees beat the air, hurling leaves, and he was pulled in, falling into the vortex and her eyes.

For a long instant he imagined that this was all his life amounted to: long, grim corridors of branches constricting him to a single dark path, stretching out to infinity like a twisted house of mirrors. He felt his feet slipping away beneath him. He was set alight with rage by the prospect; he wanted nothing but to succumb to the dull certainty.

Norman buckled in the chair.

Melissa tried to keep him steady with her arms.

"Norman," she said. "Norman." She hoped she had masked the fear in her voice.

But he had gone limp. She extracted her right arm, grabbed the glasses from his face and threw them to the floor. His eyes were closed. She shook him, but he was a dead weight in her arms.

"Norman!" she called.

She placed a cool hand to his forehead. He was burning up, like his brain was in overdrive.

Instinctively she placed her lips at his temple, as she had done earlier, but now more desperately, with a sense that there was nothing else she could do, like a kiss you would give to a dying relative.

For a second he kept as still as a corpse.

Then he inhaled so sharply he nearly fell out of Melissa's grip.

His breathing was shallow, his eyes bloodshot. He was shaking all over. A single streak of red trickled down from his nose.

But his eyes were open, thank God. His eyes were open.

"The address. It's in Georgetown," he breathed, shivering in her arms. "I've got it."