The Facilitator by Sahara Kelly Page B

and led her to a room he told her was theirs.
    Martine knew she should spend some time familiarizing herself with her new accommodations. But her mind was darting around like a drunken lightning bug trapped in a bottle. She pretty much ignored the room and focused on John, who was still talking.
    “Those of us here share a certain chromosomal structure, a characteristic which makes us unique. It has to do with DNA replication and circular chromosomes—”
    “Oh,” she interrupted. “ Theta . Theta-type replication. I remember running across that somewhere…”
    “Yes. That’s where the name came from, I guess. It has to do with the way our brains are put together which permits us to transfer our consciousness…” He frowned. “Damn. There’s really no easy way to explain it.”
    She rested a finger on his lips. “Then don’t try. We’re here. We have a self-assigned job to do and then we’ll see what happens next. For now, just kiss me.”
    “I can do that.” He grinned. And did. Several times. Most enthusiastically.
    Then they drew apart, the knowledge of unfinished business lying heavily on their shoulders.
    “I won’t kill him, John. I wouldn’t even if I could. That will make me no better than him and his cohorts.”
    “I understand.” John’s face sobered. “But I could kill him simply for what he made you do. That doesn’t even take into account what he might have made other facilitators do or what he would have asked of them. The man is without conscience, Martine.”
    “Yes, but he’s every bit as much a tool as I was. If this had all been his idea, I’d say yes. Exterminate him. But his strings are being pulled by Shanxi. Those are the ones we should be looking at.”
    John frowned. “We are. But as yet we haven’t found a way in. They’re good. Very good. And we’re pretty sure they know about Theta. Their security procedures make our federal facilities look like a fragile spider web ready to disintegrate at a single touch.” He looked frustrated. “There’s too few of us in Theta. We need more, but…well, we’re limited in our numbers. It’s very annoying.”
    “So we deal with the one threat we can reach for now. Do you have any ideas, John? How do we even do what we have to do?”
    He nodded. “Come on. You’ll see when we get there.”
    She followed him, knowing that her feet were moving, she was walking, breathing, doing all the autonomic activities her body expected.
    What she didn’t know was how many of them were merely signals being sent to a certain brain cell and how many of them were actually happening. And the brain cell specific to headaches was still active because that line of thought was apparently giving her one.
    She turned her mind away from the complexities of the universe, which she would never fully understand, and toward more mundane matters. Like ensuring the eventual destruction of Director William Williams II.
    John led her to the end of a corridor and stopped in front of a door bearing the Theta symbol. He took her hand in his. “When we pass through this door, our corporeal bodies will disappear and we will become, in essence, clouds of energy. We will still be us, because that’s what we are, fundamentally. We are all collections of unique energies.”
    “Okay.” She nodded. It made sense…so far.
    “In this energy form, we can travel anywhere there’s a digital network. Go anywhere, see anything or anyone, absorb any data we choose to absorb and, of course, manipulate any data we choose to manipulate.”
    “Sort of like a…a…free-thinking data signal?”
    John considered that. “Um, yeah. I guess so.”
    “You know, I’m surprised that Theta isn’t filled with physicists and cosmologists.”
    “They don’t know how to party like we do.” John grinned. “Ready?”
    “Wait.” She reached out and touched his arm. “Where are we going? What are we going to do? Shouldn’t we have a plan or something? Can we communicate as