The Chimera Vector by Nathan M Farrugia Page A

man’s chest, let the tips of her hair drape across his skin. When Adamicz stopped fast-forwarding, the man had passed out. Onscreen, Sophia stripped the man of his clothes. Two men and two women entered the room. She recognized the men as Damien and Jay. They flipped the man onto his side and slowly inserted a tube between his buttocks. One of the women unscrewed a bottle, removed several tablets and slid them down the tube.
    Adamicz fast-forwarded again. This time it was a different camera, different room. The bathroom. The bath was filled with water and ice. Damien and Jay carried the sleeping man—now tubeless—to the bath and placed him inside. His face and body were slicked with sweat, his cheeks flushed red.
    ‘That’s not what happened.’ She looked at Adamicz. ‘I remember that man, and we did not do that.’
    Adamicz hit the stop button. ‘The tablets placed in man’s anus raise his body temperature to dangerous level. By placing him in bath of cold water, you quickly and efficiently induce heart attack.’
    Sophia’s skin felt like it was burning. ‘That’s ridiculous.’
    She half expected the man standing behind Adamicz to start laughing, but his face was drawn, gaze fixed.
    Adamicz switched off the television. ‘All of your work as operative for Fifth Column, like what you see here, was not done of your own free will. Your programming involves artificially splitting your personality into dissociated alters, as is case with multiple personality disorder. This is accomplished using combination of hypnosis and infliction of extreme trauma, which in turn splinters mind into dissociated compartments.’
    She licked her cracked lips; held the glass of water tightly, but did not drink. ‘Are you suggesting I’ve been hypnotized?’
    ‘Your mind was split in two: one half was your real personality—your archeopsyche. The other half was your programmed personality, the neopsyche, splintered into little parapsyches. Used for assassination, espionage, even suicide if required. All this while your real personality sees something quite different. You exist in real personality right now, so have no clue that your parapsyches even exist. But while in the employ of Fifth Column, you are always operating in one of your parapsyches. Everything happens through veil. Operationally, you have no idea your archeopsyche exists.’
    ‘But I remember everything,’ Sophia said. ‘Don’t I?’
    Adamicz nodded. ‘Your memories are accessible across both psyches, but each has different interpretation. Your neopsyche is programmed to believe certain ideology so you will agree to undertake black operations that Special Forces soldier with morals and conscience might not have stomach for. Your memories are false. They mimic what you are really doing, but they are false. False but morally acceptable. The soldiers you killed in Iran were not soldiers—you know this, yes?’
    Sophia smiled weakly. He was trying to screw with her. ‘And how exactly do you know this?’
    ‘Because I am one who programmed you.’
    Her smile broke into a scowl. ‘Bullshit. The video is fake.’
    Adamicz took two deliberate steps back. ‘Mix sand with cider and wool with wine.’
    Sophia’s face flushed hot.
    ‘The man behind me,’ Adamicz said. ‘He is the soldier who was pursuing you in Iran.’
    Adamicz was right. How had she not noticed this before? The former Blue Beret standing at her ten o’clock was the Citroën driver. Iranian Special Forces. She was sure she’d killed him, but here he stood.
    She moved nimbly across the rug towards him. He aimed his rifle at her chest.
    ‘And welcome Queen Alice with ninety times nine,’ Adamicz said.
    Sophia was holding the soldier’s own knife, unsheathed, just inches from his neck. She blinked. He wasn’t who she’d thought he was.
    ‘Mistaken identity?’ Adamicz said, and nodded, mostly in agreement with himself.
    Something thin and shiny caught Sophia’s attention, on the floor