Six months ago, my initial account of what happened to my team would have
had my superiors bouncing my ass into a psych ward so fast no one could’ve stopped them. Hence the amnesia alibi. Now Kayden was sitting here telling me
he worked for them?
The military never admitted to things they couldn’t prove. I was proof of that. Granted, you couldn’t escape the rumors of crackpot conspiracy theorists on
how the military housed deeply buried specialized divisions running from
unchecked, black ops groups to genetically mutated soldiers. Yet, everyone knew
it was just bullshit. Yes, the military ran numerous, undisclosed operations and highly secretive divisions, but not the woo-woo type that would give X-Files a run for its money.
“You really find it that hard to believe?” he asked. “I told you earlier, you aren’t the only psychic out there. Extraordinary abilities tend to result in extraordinary crimes.”
While I considered my ability more a curse than extraordinary, I could admit
to wondering if there were others out there like me. It was just I never thought to
find anyone willing to admit it. Still, I had to ask, “You belong to a unit of psychics?”
Not taking his gaze off the road, he nodded.
Stunned, I let his latest bombshell tumble in my mind. When it settled, I muttered, “Wow, that’s not encouraging.”
Puzzled, Kayden frowned. “What?”
“If an entire police force is needed to keep all us psychics in line, what does
that say about our mental states?”
He stroked his goatee, to hide a smile or out of habit, I couldn’t tell. “Some
abilities lend themselves to serious repercussions. Say a pyrokinetic gets into a heated argument with a friend over a bad hand of cards and sets the room on fire.
Everyone gets out alive, but the building is torched. Investigators get involved,
claim it’s arson and attempted murder. The fire-starter gets sentenced to twenty-
five years for basically losing his temper, because for all intents and purposes there’s no way the fire wasn’t intentional. Is that fair?”
“No.” Reluctantly intrigued, I asked, “Did that happen?”
He nodded. “Yeah. We were able to overturn the sentence because of lack of
evidence on how the blaze started, but he still spent three years behind bars.”
“For losing his temper.” I couldn’t imagine living under the constant worry
of harming those around you simply because you got mad. “That sucks.”
He slid me a look. “Justice may be blind as a bat, but it isn’t always fair, especially when it can’t understand what’s really happening.” He turned his attention back to the road. “What do you know about CIA’s psychic experiments
from the fifties and sixties?”
“Back after World War II the CIA got their panties in a bunch when they thought Russia had developed a psychic warfare program. Not wanting to get left in the dust, they started their own programs. Most of which, if I remember
correctly, were defunct by the seventies.”
He nodded and took over. “The CIA wanted to find ways to create the perfect
sleeper soldier, someone they could plant behind enemy lines, then use when the
time was right. They collaborated with leading psychologists and scientists, all under the cover of research. They tried it all, drugs, electroshock therapy, hypnosis. You name it they did it.”
“At the time there wasn’t as much oversight from the government, so
boundaries were nonexistent. Because their subjects were either convicted
criminals, mental patients, or enemies of the state, no one cared about human rights. When they created MKULTRA, only then, did they turn their attention to
U.S. soldiers, turning them into unwitting subjects.”
His history lesson rang a few bells. “Didn’t a guy named John Marks do an
exposé on this?”
“Yeah, wrote a whole book about it. He culled information from unnamed
sources and redacted documents. He focused on the CIA drug experiments and
how the government tried to cover its ass. What he missed, and what the government kept deep under wraps, was that they had found some individuals who were the real deal.”
I grimaced. “And the government, being who they are, aren’t going to sit by
and let an advantage slip through their fingers.”
“Nope,” he agreed. “Since you can’t force the general public to disclose
private information without just cause, the powers-that-be focused on military
recruits. One of the personality exams administered to prospective recruits tested for actual psychic ability. From there, it became a matter of tracking those individuals and combining them into cohesive groups. Over time, they managed
to create specialized units in each branch.”
Something began to scratch at the back of my brain, but, caught up in the conversation, I ignored it. “If you have a unit comprised of untried psychics, something is bound to happen,” I said, starting to see where he was headed. “So,
there were accidents?”
