Their dog, a beagle, came trotting across the polished wood floor and rubbed against Benjamin’s leg. Charles took a treat from a jar on the desk and dropped it into the animal’s mouth.

“There you go, Maisie,” Charles cooed. “Good girl.”

“That dog of yours,” Benjamin muttered. “Why does she always rub against me?”

They went then to take their shower but were interrupted by news, brought to them by their body servant, Hardy, who was an old man with a wonderful ability to resist flinching when he looked at his two charges.

Hardy handed them a pad, open to a message. They read it as Hardy helped them out of their tailor-made clothing with the unusual zippers and openings.

“The trap,” Benjamin said.

“The Vincent flytrap,” Charles said, and that bon mot gave them both a hearty laugh.

(ARTIFACT)

To: Vincent

From: Lear

Proceed to equip Plath and Keats.

Note: The UN General Assembly attack must be stopped. No one’s life or sense of morality is more important than that goal.

Follow orders, Vincent. It will be your salvation.

(ARTIFACT)

To: C and B Armstrong

From: AmericaStrong, a division of Armstrong Fancy Gifts Corporation

Status: EYES ONLY ENCRYPT Read and safe-delete

A recent Wikipedia edit included information prejudicial to our interests (see paragraph #3 below). That paragraph has now been deleted and was online for only twelve minutes. We suspect source material from KSI, Swedish Intelligence.

Project MKULTRA

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

“MKULTRA” redirects here. For other uses, see MKULTRA (disambiguation).

Project MKULTRA, or MK-ULTRA, was the code name for a covert, illegal CIA human research program, run by the Office of Scientific Intelligence. This official U.S. government program began in the early 1950s, continuing at least through the late 1960s, and it used U.S. and Canadian citizens as its test subjects. [1][2][3][4]

The published evidence indicates that Project MKULTRA involved the use of many methodologies to manipulate individual mental states and alter brain functions, including the surreptitious administration of drugs and other chemicals, sensory deprivation, isolation, and verbal and sexual abuse.

Recent evidence suggests that MK-ULTRA also experimented with early versions of nanotechnology. When those efforts were frustrated by congressional budget cuts, the research was handed off to the Armstrong Fancy Gifts Corporation and their weapons research division. All records of AFGC’s involvement have been expunged. A number of individuals involved have died under suspicious circumstances.

THIRTEEN

A knock.

Sadie—she hadn’t begun to think of herself as Plath, not yet—said, “Who is it?”

“Vincent.”

Vincent. Sadie hadn’t seen him since he appeared suddenly in her bathroom. He looked the same. Twentysomething going on a thousand.

The boy with the blue eyes, Keats, was with him. Keats looked like he’d just been roused from bed. Of course, she probably did, too, considering that she had just been roused from bed.

Renfield was a few feet back in the shadows. He had struck an arms-akimbo pose, like a soldier on guard. She saw the wariness with which he looked at Vincent. Vincent didn’t seem to do anything to cause this reaction, he wasn’t angry or domineering. He was quiet and self-contained and looked a little sad in his dark raincoat. But Sadie had to admit that she felt a bit of Vincent-awe herself: she remembered the blade of his pen.

It was night outside. She had slept the sleep of exhaustion, all through the day.

“Things are moving a bit quicker than we’d like,” Vincent said. “Usually there would be time to teach you. Prepare you. But we have an opportunity tonight.”

Why was it absolutely impossible for Sadie even to imagine saying no to him?

Her eyes widened. Had they done something to her? In her brain?

As if he’d read her mind Vincent said, “Both of you are alone. Keats: Renfield retrieved his biots while you were asleep. And Ophelia’s are back with her, Plath.”

Plath.

“How do I know that?” Sadie demanded.

Renfield looked about ready to say something but stopped himself and took half a step back.

Vincent said, “Listen to me, Plath. You, too, Keats.”

He knew her real name. But he wasn’t using it. She had a feeling he would never slip and call her Sadie. Might not even think it.

Plath. It took some thinking about.

“I need you both to trust me,” Vincent said. “I don’t mean that I’d like you to trust me. I mean that I need you to trust me. For that reason, I will never lie to you. If you were ever to catch me in a lie, you would never fully trust me again. So I will never lie.”

Sadie glanced at Keats. His suspicion was an echo of her own. “Okay, then,” she said. “What are we doing?”

“We are going to make your biots.”

Her breath caught. “Now?”

Renfield led the way. Not the way they had come into the building, not through that alley, but down a steep, narrow set of steps, and then a broader set of steps, and then through a door, and a room that was obviously the dry-storage space of a restaurant. Cans of chili sauce. Big plastic tubs of mayonnaise. Pickles. Ketchup. A surprisingly tall stack of boxes of canned soup. Canned sodas and bottled water.

Sadie smelled grease, vinegar, and urine.

Renfield opened a second door, and they stepped out into a dark and regrettably fragrant hallway with a door labeled men and another ladies and at the open end of the hallway a side view of a lunch counter.