What Doesn’t Kill Her

It was Katrina’s first visit to Arlington National Cemetery. Her father had been there several times – some for official duty as part of an honor guard during the Korean and Vietnam Wars. Getting out of the sheltered underground parking, Katrina buttoned up her light jacket. Edwin welcomed the fresh air on his face; a contrast to the staleness of the retirement home. A spring landscape greeted visitors paying respect to the fallen. Blossoms graced the hallowed grounds to herald nature’s renewal. Katrina was struck by the symbolism. Death was not the finality most people fear. She believed death allowed one’s spirit to seek a new existence based on its past life. She wondered about her father’s spiritual fate, based on the callousness of his words and actions towards his family. Why was it so difficult for him to show kindness? Was his military bearing driven so deeply into his core to make being a gentle and caring father unfathomable?

Katrina found a comfortable place to sit as she revealed to Emma the details from her visit to Arlington National Cemetery. Emma sat, stunned, intent, quiet, but with occasional expressions of surprise, incredulity, and simple awe. When Katrina revealed her father had told her she had been abducted, Emma’s eyes began to tear.

“It seems so odd that I don’t know my own mother as well as I should,” her daughter claimed.

“That is really why I am here. After Grandpa revealed all those secrets to me, and told me things about myself and my brother that I had never known, I realized that I needed to have the same kind of talk with you before it became too late. Yes, I needed to let you know about Grandpa, but there is also a lot about me that I never told you.”

Her first session went well and she returned for three more sessions, learning the martial art of Chi. She learned that Chi, an eastern discipline, is not just for self-defense. Her instructor professed it was the vital life force energy of the universe. He maintained that the energy flows through the body at specific points known as chakras. Sonny explained that in order to communicate with the Chi, the students needed to learn to use their minds. They needed to imagine their center of gravity just below the navel. To demonstrate his point, he asked the class to form a group in front of him and try to shove him off his feet. In unison, they applied their strength to move him. They failed the first time. Surprised by the resistance, they put more effort into the push. They failed again. He could not be budged.

Although her father retired as a Navy officer when she was a young girl, the military continued to impose its will on him and the family. Other members in the family were involved with the CIA and NSA, so the rumors went. Because of her father’s involvement in highly sensitive activity, Katrina’s family was constantly under surveillance. But it wasn’t only the awareness of being watched that had an effect on her. Intelligence agencies conducted activities beyond eavesdropping and monitoring. They took aggressive actions against Katrina, impacting her day-to-day activities, not allowing her normalcy. They stalked her. They would even contact people she socialized with. Their intrusions caused her to always be on alert, always waiting for some form of harassment or at least an interruption of her effort to have a normal life.

However, Dr. Richards also happened to be a CIA asset. Richards held an ongoing role in documenting the damage and recovery from the 1986 Chernobyl incident in the Soviet Union. Like Garson, Richards showed an interest in Katrina. After her failed marriage, he conspired with other town doctors to make it difficult for her to start a serious relationship with any man. Men avoided her after they were dissuaded by the doctors and CIA operatives. The CIA cell was notorious for making life difficult for nonconformists and were intent on adding to the despair in Katrina’s life. Thus, her demeanor degraded to the point where she sought help for depression.

Weeks passed before Katrina sensed a different, more sinister sound in her mind. The hiss was replaced by a constant, louder, low hum. The earphones were ineffective at masking the invasive sound; her tormentors had apparently noticed her use of listening devices and adjusted the noise to punch below the belt, beneath their blocking range. The sound became a source of discomfort, then it started to impact her health. It interfered with her sleep pattern. The constant drone gave her headaches. After a couple sleepless nights followed by miserable, ineffective days at work, Katrina sought help with over-the-counter sleeping pills, despite fearing it would put her on cyclical path of chemical dependency.

The next morning, before being subjected to the electronic bombardments, Katrina took her daughter in her parents’ car, in order not to draw attention, and drove straight to the Russian Consulate in San Francisco, about a two-and-a-half-hour drive. The building, an ornate Italianate Revival edifice, occupied half the block. As she walked toward the entrance, she felt a tinge of anxiety. She realized she was walking into yet another situation that presented critical, unknown consequences to her and Emma. Pausing with her hand on the door, she recalled what her father had told her before retiring for the night: “You’ll be back.” She surmised there were as many reasons for her not to walk through those doors than to take the fateful steps.

“I’ll make it up to you with as much help as I can,” Sonny said, his interest and tone a welcome comfort. “There must be a way for you to be able to defend yourself with the abilities you have. After we talked on the phone, I called some friends familiar with the psychic phenomenon you possess. They were intrigued and want to meet you to hear more. They also suspect that what is happening to you in Grass Valley may not be sanctioned by the CIA. There are many rogue units around the world composed of people that were originally recruited for their psychological makeup. Deep down, they are sociopaths.”

The week was more of the same: fifteen-minute sessions on the hour, at an increased level of intensity. When her spine began to feel like it was burning, she drew a bath of cold water. Her sensitivity during the pulses was acute. She read and heard every thought, every conversation clearly. She visualized dull gray painted boxes in a dull gray painted room with fluorescent lights that made everyone look sickly and pale. Was it any wonder these men needed some outside stimulus to make them feel real and to give them a sense of purpose and reason? Every day, for eight hours, someone was assigned to sit on a stool, in a windowless cramped lab, taking notes and working the dials in the most impersonal way, the inhumane acts. It was hard to determine who was under surveillance and confinement—Katrina or the lab technicians.

For a while, all was quiet after the EMP attack. Then came a knock on the door. Looking out the window, Katrina saw a man in an Air Force pilot’s flight suit. She opened the door just enough for him to see her, and he introduced himself as Major Kyle Upshaw, a U-2 pilot stationed at Beale Air Force Base. She glanced back at her father. Meeting her eyes, he nodded, motioning to her to let the pilot in. Katrina was caught by surprise, not knowing what the visit was about.

“They think that they have a right to torture you ‘in the name of science.’ To them, you are a project, not a human with feelings. Using numbers to study you further dehumanizes you. They are not conditioned to care about your feelings. I, however, thrive on understanding the feelings of my subjects. Katrina, you do what you feel you have to do. I cannot stop you. But if you are going to succeed, you must think like me. You have to want to take pleasure in returning the pain they send to you. As for me, I will watch you again, and if they do decide to escalate these battles, not only will they suffer your wrath, they will also have to deal with me.”

Because of her connections, Katrina was hired as a specialist with a NASA lab in Nevada. Aside from the classified work she was involved in, her life was generally normal. She started her own blog, Dragon Lady. She posted information about the psychokinetic phenomenon and psychic activity in general, including remote viewing.

During her off hours, Katrina continued to write in her blog. To Katrina’s delight, it attracted sensible and knowledgeable people that indulged in engrossing conversation, exchanging ideas. New contacts through the blog allowed Katrina to enter another world related to psychic ability. This included Steven Aftergood, head of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, who approached her through a private message.

She continued writing her blog, gaining more followers and subscribers, including some considered to be on the fringe of society. She found herself often tempering their input of extraordinary conspiracy theories. Some cultish members would post strange, somewhat oblique messages daily. Out of a crop of those messages, she picked out an intriguing one from a cousin.

Talal-al-Elahi was a loyal subscriber to her blog. He was an Iraqi oil sheik living in Switzerland. Like Katrina, Elahi was an electrical engineer. Some people were intrigued by Katrina and what she wrote about her psychic ability. Others were obsessed. That was Elahi. Katrina had learned about Elahi before he ever made contact with her, through his second wife, Zia. Katrina befriended her through a meditation group on social media. Zia came from an aristocratic Filipino family. Katrina felt the need to call Zia about Elahi.

Katrina spent as much time with her mother as she could. Together, intrigued after playing the Jewish ruse to shake Ali, they decided to trace her lineage. They discovered Cherokee blood in her ancestry. Katrina, anxious to learn more, visited web sites concerning issues particular to Native Americans. At one site, she entered into in-depth online chats with a Jicarilla Apache woman living on a reservation in Dulce, New Mexico. Hiding her identity in the public eye, the Jicarilla Apache woman called herself The Awakened Orphan. Katrina enjoyed the chats with the woman and invited her to visit her own blog. They engaged in discussing spirituality and psychic phenomena.

There was silence for a moment before she replied. “I have reason to believe there is something going on in that mountain. Close to the top of the mesa, there are signs restricting access. There is a portion of the mesa that is government land. Some of the land is owned by an energy company. We have heard of trespassers being stopped by the Jicarilla Police. Some folks I trust were able to get close enough to hear sounds coming from underground. Someday, I am going to find out what the truth is.”

The veteran’s rough life made him look older than he was. Getting used to the absence of warmth at night, he imagined being in the mountains of Afghanistan. After a long day of panhandling, he surrendered his will and some of his day’s earning to a half-pint. It was his way to self-medicate, at the risk of corrupting his body and mind. The addiction diminished his spirit, deconstructing him from a hero to an anonymous lost soul.

Robert did not want to appear too knowledgeable, as it would give away his military past. Especially with a Naval commander in the room. He scanned the rifles, looking for a semi-automatic weapon. There were three to choose from. He suggested Katrina take an older version of the AR-15: an M-16. Katrina preferred a pistol and opted for a 9 mm Beretta that she had shot as an older teen. Her father had no objections to letting her take both weapons, and he provided necessary rounds of ammunition and accessories.

Katrina replayed the conversation between her and DD. Robert wasn’t surprised. She wasn’t the only expendable that he knew. It conjured bitter resentment from his tours as a soldier. Learning that a scoundrel like Ali was granted immunity and protection by the organizations he had defended presented more evidence of how the world had damaged itself through compromised values. He refused to accept it. He refused to feel helpless, and he refused to allow Katrina to feel it, too. Katrina then told him about DD’s plan to respond to Sweet’s role in the attack. It did not move him.