Mind Games

Chapter 19

See Chapter 1 for disclaimer

A/N: We're entering my personal favorite part of the story. The next couple of chapters will be very Don-intensive, but don't worry, Charlie fans; his turn is coming.

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Don started therapy the second day after his surgery. Dr. Allman had told him the physical portion of his therapy needed to wait for two more days, but he had Don up and walking a bit already. Truthfully, Don felt weak but otherwise in decent shape, although he suspected he would have a pounding headache without the pain medication they'd administered. It was an odd feeling to know that someone had been inside one's head, and odder yet to find that he really didn't feel much different afterward. His thought processes were dulled just a bit by the pain meds, but he'd found with relief that he seemed to be thinking logically. Apparently, everything was still working the way it should, and he was about to undergo testing to verify that.

For the therapy session, they'd put him in wheelchair with a headrest and wheeled him into a room. It was sterile-looking, with a white tile floor, white walls, and a very high, two-storied ceiling. All of the white might have been hard on the eyes, except for the fact that the room was dimly lit. On one wall was a large video screen, and set into the back wall was a section of dark glass, which looked like a one-way viewing window. It was placed high on the wall; whoever occupied it would look down into the room from the second floor. The walls on either side contained speakers, and directly overhead hung a large piece of equipment, suspended from the ceiling. The man pushing his wheelchair positioned Don underneath it. "Thermal imaging scanner," he explained, as he lowered the piece of equipment over Don's head. "They'll take pictures of your brain as you respond to visual images, scents, and sounds. They explained to you that you can't have an MRI anymore, right?"

Don nodded. "Dr. Allman told me. He said I have a small metal plate in my head where they went in. I can have X-rays, but no MRIs."

"This is okay, too," said the technician, patting the piece of equipment hanging over Don's head. "Although you probably won't run into one outside of this facility – it's pretty cutting edge. It gives pictures similar to an MRI. This facility has the best post-op rehab and testing in the U.S. If you pass it, you'll be cleared for field duty again after another few weeks of recovery – you won't have to go through it again when you return home."

"Okay, let's get started." A voice suddenly emanated from the speakers, and the technician glanced up at the window set into the wall.

He looked at Don, gave him a pat on the shoulder. "I'll be just outside. There's water on the table next to you, and we'll stop for breaks periodically. If you need something, just tell the guys in the booth." He stepped out, closing the door behind him, and the room dimmed further as the lights in the ceiling went out and the large flat screen on the wall in front of Don powered on, and filled the room with a blue glow. Overhead, the thermal imaging scanner came to life with a soft buzzing sound.

Up in the control booth, three men examined the subject below. One of them was a technician who had a degree in biomedical engineering; it was his job to manage the electrical impulses through the wires in the various areas of the brain. He sat at a set of controls, with a set of monitors surrounding him. A second man was designated as 'speaker;' he sat in a separate, soundproofed section of the booth. He wore a headset so he could hear the others and the subject in the room below, but his microphone needed to be insulated from all other sound, except the sound of his voice, so he was isolated. He and the third man both had degrees in psychology. The third man stood in the main section of the booth, behind the technician. He was in charge of the reprogramming, and was an expert in brainwashing technique. He stepped forward to the set of controls, depressed a button to turn on the microphone, and spoke into it. "Okay, agent, my name is Jonathan Wilkes – you can call me Jon. I'm right behind you in the control booth with our technician, Mike Korb, who will be putting pictures on the screen for us, and running the thermal imaging machine. Can we call you Don?"

"Sure." The subject's voice floated into the booth, clearly.

Wilkes kept his voice friendly, casual. He purposely hadn't mentioned the second man, the speaker, Rod Jamison, in the isolation booth. Jamison would jump in when necessary, his voice coming from the auditory module inside Don Eppes' head. The goal of the 'speaker' was to make Eppes believe that the voice inside his head was his own.

Wilkes spoke again, genially. "Okay, Don. With head injuries, we need to test a variety of responses to make sure that your brain is functioning normally. Some of those are whole body responses, like reflexes. Others are sensory, like sight and smell. You've already been through some of those basic tests, and the report tells me you passed them with flying colors. What we're going to try to do in here over the next several days is test your cognitive and emotional responses. Those are much more difficult to assess, and will take much more time. They are necessary; however, I'm sure you're aware that head injuries can cause personality changes, among other things. We need to make sure that you're responding normally before you return to work."

Don shifted slightly in his chair, and leaned his head back against the headrest, getting into a comfortable position. "Yes, Dr. Allman explained that to me."

"Good," said Wilkes, genially. "Now if you remember, we showed you some pictures of people you know to evaluate your emotional responses, before the surgery. We're going to run through them again now, and spend some time on each of them individually." He chuckled. "Consider it a bunch of free psychotherapy sessions, if you like." He nodded to the technician. "First slide."

A picture of Alan Eppes showed on the screen. "Don, can you tell me who this is?"

"My father."

"Good. Now, Don, just sit still for a moment with your head on the headrest, and look at the picture. We're going to take a quick thermal image."

Don focused on the image of his father, trying to fight down the twinge of homesickness the picture generated. God, he couldn't wait to get back home. The equipment over his head was still buzzing softly, continuously; he couldn't tell when they were taking images.

"Okay, we've got the image." Wilkes' voice came over the speaker. "You're pretty close to your dad, aren't you?"

"Yeah," said Don.

"Yes, the image shows that, and it compares well to your pre-surgery image. Tell me about him," urged Wilkes. "Were you close to him growing up?" He let go of the button to cut the sound to the microphone, and spoke to Mike. "You getting it?"

Mike nodded, his eyes on the monitors in front of him, his hands on knobs, twisting, fine-tuning the readings. "Yep, dialing in leads C, D, and E. Got it – the settings for familial love are set. I'm going to power the leads up."

Wilkes was keeping one ear on the speaker, as Don's voice floated through it. "…he was always the one at my ballgames, and ended up spending more time with me than he did with my brother. My mom was the one who took Charlie to tutors, so Dad and I had more than our share of time together."

"Powering up," said Mike.

Wilkes pressed the button for the microphone. "Good. Don, we're going to take another scan. Just look at the picture, that's great."

He let go of the button, and Mike said, "Okay, the current is being applied. He should be feeling synthetic emotion now."

Don gazed at the picture of his father, and felt a deep sense of love, a peaceful feeling pervade his body and mind, and the equipment over his head buzzed again. Words floated through his brain – 'I can't wait to see you, Dad' – it sounded almost as if someone had spoken them aloud.

Up in the booth, Wilkes glanced at the two images that had come from the printer in front of him – the first one truly generated by Don's actual feelings for his father, the second, artificially generated by the electrodes in his brain. "Good," he said, "they look exactly the same. Familial love is mapped."

"Okay," said Mike, as he pushed a button, "I'm locking in the settings."

Rod Jamison's voice came over the speaker, and Wilkes turned to look at him in the soundproof booth. "I just fed him a verbal," said Jamison. "'I can't wait to see you, Dad.' He didn't respond."

"That's good," said Wilkes, "as long as the auditory module is functioning correctly. We'll test for that later. No response means he's assimilating your voice. Okay, let's do romantic/sexual love next."

He pressed the button for the microphone. "Okay, Don, that went well. We're going to do another one." A picture of Robin Brooks came up on the screen. "This one is your girlfriend, is that correct?"

"Yeah," replied Don. "Robin." It felt a little odd to see the pictures there; it was disconcerting that within hours of giving the doctor his real name, the CIA had generated pictures and personal information about him and the people close to him. He knew the men who were evaluating him had high-level CIA clearances, but still… 'Talk about your invasion of privacy,' he thought to himself.

Jon's voice came over the speaker. "You're not concentrating on her, are you, Don? I'm seeing some negative patterns on the imaging screen."

"Sorry," replied Don, "you're right."

"Why don't you talk about how you met?"

Don focused on Robin's image in front of him. She was smiling in the picture, the smile that had first hooked him – teasing, slightly knowing, as if she could read his mind. One corner of his lip quirked slightly in response. "She's a prosecutor," he said. "I met her working on a case. We dated for a while; then she broke it off." His face turned rueful. "I haven't exactly been Mr. Commitment, over the years, so I really couldn't blame her. Lately though, we've gotten back together – it's been pretty good."

"Okay, good," came Jon's voice. "We're going to take a scan. Just look at her for a moment."

Don gazed at her face, his eyes following the glossy dark hair flowing over her shoulder. She had sexy shoulders, he thought to himself. The equipment buzzed over his head.

Up in the booth, Mike spoke. "Okay, I'm dialed in – I've got the settings. I'm gonna power up."

Jon Wilkes spoke into the microphone. "One more scan, Don." He nodded at Mike, who turned on the electrodes.

In the wheelchair, Don felt a rush of heat, longing tinged with lust. 'Man, she's hot,' the voice inside his head said, 'I miss her.'"

"Just gave him another verbal," said Rod Jamison, and Wilkes nodded, looking at the two images, again comparing Don's real feelings to the emotions they had just artificially generated. They would learn the proper settings for a wide range of emotions, and store them for later use. "Good match," he said to Mike. "Lock it in, and then bring up Marko Stiles."

He pushed the button and spoke into the microphone. "Okay, Don, it's going very well. Your pre-surgery and post-surgery images are matching very closely; that's a good sign." Actually, both images were post-surgery, one generated by Don's actual feelings, the other by the electrodes in his brain, but Don Eppes didn't know that.

Jon Wilkes continued. "Now we're going to switch it up here, and look at some negative emotions." Mike hit a button, and the image of Marko Stiles' mug shot filled the screen, his dark eyes flat, dead looking. Wilkes studied it, and spoke again. "Do you recognize this man?"

Don nodded, his brows drawn together, his lip curled in disgust. "Marko Stiles. I put him away for juvenile rape. He kidnapped and assaulted three young girls four years ago. He showed no remorse, whatsoever."

The men in the booth quickly ran through the procedure again, and Mike locked in the settings for several negative emotions – hatred, revulsion, loathing; then Wilkes spoke into the microphone. "Okay, Don, we're going to try something a little different on this one – the images we showed you pre-surgery did a good job of capturing most of your emotions, but none of them generated significant anger. I need you to imagine something that would enrage you – perhaps if you think of Stiles attacking someone close to you, like Robin. We want to see if the appropriate areas of your brain scan light up."

"Okay." Don closed his eyes for a moment, concentrating, then opened them, glaring at the image on the screen, his hands clenching the arms of the wheelchair as the thermal imaging equipment buzzed over his head.

"Got it," said Mike, quietly.

"Okay," said Wilkes, "lock in that baseline for anger, then ramp up the current – increase the emotional level gradually, while feeding it back to him. Let's see how pissed off we can make him."

He pushed the button for the microphone. "That's good, Don, but we need more. Concentrate – he's hurting her, hitting her."

Don stared at the screen, and felt a rush of anger surge through him. He was breathing heavily now, and beads of sweat began to dot his forehead as the hatred mushroomed inside him, black and ugly, blotting out everything else. He was trembling now, his hands gripping the rails, his face twisted in a mask of rage. 'Sick bastard,' whispered the voice inside his head, 'locking you up was too good for you.' He was so consumed with hatred, with loathing; he didn't hear the buzzing of the machine above him.

Wilkes studied the image and grunted. "Wow, you've got him going, Mike – lock in that setting for rage and bring him down – you're gonna make him blow a gasket." He glanced sideways at Rob. "You get in a verbal on that one?"

"Yeah," replied Jamison, through the control room speakers. He quoted, "'Sick bastard. Locking you up was too good for you.'"

Wilkes grinned at him. "You're good."

"He's coming down," said Mike. "I removed the picture from the screen."

Wilkes looked down at the man in the room below. Don Eppes was visibly shaking, drenched with sweat, and breathing heavily. Wilkes pushed the button for the microphone. "You doing okay, there, Don?"

"Yeah," Don rasped, gasping. He took a deep shuddering breath. "You picked a good one for that – man, I hate that guy." He spoke lightly, trying to mask a feeling of deep discomfort. He'd felt out of control on that one – where in the hell had that come from?

Wilkes' voice came over the speaker. "Yeah, that was quite the response – you might have a future teaching method acting. Don't worry if your reaction seemed a little over the top – you've just spent the better part of an hour trying to access your deepest emotions. It's normal as you get into one of these sessions that you become a bit hypersensitive to the stimuli. Rest assured, you're doing great – your reactions are perfectly normal. We don't see any impairment in emotional function so far. Look, we're going to give you a break, you can relax for a couple of hours, eat lunch, and if you're up for it, we'll do some more this afternoon."

"Yeah," said Don, running a shaky hand over his face to remove the sweat, trying to keep his voice casual. "Okay, that sounds good."

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Jonathan Wilkes, Mike Korb, and Rod Jamison hunched over a table, eating sandwiches and studying the scans. Wilkes pushed two of them across the table to Dr. Allman. "Those are familial love – generated by his father. The one on your right was Eppes' own emotions; Mike created the one on the left with the electrical impulses."

Allman grunted approvingly. "They're almost identical." He looked up at Korb. "I didn't think it was possible, but you're getting even better at this."

Korb shrugged. "It has a lot to do with how the electrodes are placed, Doc. That's your doing." He looked at Allman, quizzically. "I know we're programming him to kill his brother, but can I ask - what did the guy do?"

"Charles Eppes is a double agent," said Allman. "He was caught sending secrets to Pakistan not too long ago, although he managed to wriggle out of that one. They've been watching him since, and have found that he's part of a plot to smuggle weapons to Iran. To make things worse, he's consulted over the years for the U.S. government on highly classified projects – he knows enough to be highly dangerous. The problem is they have nothing that will stick, no way to put him away. Eliminating him is the only way to protect national security."

"What'll happen to Don Eppes?"

"He's collateral damage, I'm afraid. We're to direct him to murder his brother in front of witnesses, so there is no question of who killed him. He'll be charged with murder and put away, somewhere safe. An institute for the criminally insane, most likely, just like Joan Simms. Some time later, after things have died down, I'm sure they'll tell us to go in and remove the hardware from his head, just as we did with her."

The men nodded; for them that was justification enough. They'd worked other cases that were murkier in the name of preserving American security.

Allman looked at Wilkes. "How far did you get?"

"Baseline negatives – hatred, loathing, anger." Wilkes pushed the scans over to him. "Then Mike generated synthetic rage – I thought Eppes was going to lose it right there." He pushed another scan across the table, and Allman frowned.

"You need to be a little careful – he's still recovering." He studied the image. "That's about as clear a picture of rage as I've ever seen, though." Allman pulled another scan toward him and studied it, and then pushed it toward the other men. "This was his pre-surgery scan for Charlie." He pointed. "Look at the amount of red, here, and here, and then the yellow areas."

Wilkes pursed his lips. "From a love standpoint, he feels at least as strongly about Charlie as he does about his father, or even Robin. Maybe more. The yellow areas are interesting, though. They're associated with negative emotions – they contradict the red areas." He looked up at Allman. "I've been studying these. As far as Mike goes, this will be a standard transfer process. He'll use the anger and rage settings that he developed from Marko Stiles, and apply them to Don while he's looking at the picture of Charlie."

"You need to do it gradually," said Allman. "He's going to resist at first – you need to make him doubt himself."

"That's where I come in," said Jamison. "I've been studying the transcripts and video from Don's initial conversations about his family, and also anything I can find on Charlie Eppes. I've got quite a bit of background – I should be able to generate some believable verbals to feed him, just mild negative statements at first, then as he progresses, I'll make them more caustic."

Allman nodded. "Good. When do you start him on Charlie?"

"This afternoon," said Wilkes, "if he's up for it."

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Ian Edgerton slipped out of Don's room and into the hallway, nearly bumping into Joe Bishop, who had stepped around a security guard and was reaching for the door when it opened. "Hey," said Joe, "how's he doing?"

"Sleeping right now," replied Ian, as they turned down the hallway. "He just finished lunch. I'm going to get some myself."

"How's his therapy going?"

"Good, he thinks," said Edgerton. "He says they're doing a bunch of scans, checking his emotional responses. They told him everything looks good so far. I think he's hoping he'll get out of here sooner than they thought, although it sounds like there's a lot of testing to go yet."

"Did you call Charlie today?"

"Not yet. I'll call him in a minute, give him an update."

"You'd better – he'll be stewing."

"Yeah, he frets worse than my grandmother. Maybe Don ought to stay here for a while – if they're both locked up in a safe house together, Charlie might drive him nuts."

Bishop laughed, and they moved down the hallway, Ian's last words hanging in the air.

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End Chapter 19