The Whole Truth (The Supercharged Files Book 1) (10 page)

Beau rubbed his forehead. “Damn,
I don’t have time for this.”

“You’ve been saying that for a
month.”

“When I think about the weeks
we’ve wasted, it makes me want to cry. You’ve made less progress than anyone
I’ve ever worked with. I’m going to insist Yuri take me off your case.”

Boo fucking hoo. Beau could be a
real bitch sometimes.

As had become my first line of
defense when he got ugly, I responded in kind. “Maybe it’s you, not me. Are you
positive you’re not an evil entity from the government sent to make sure nobody
learns how to do anything?”

His reply was a nigh-incoherent
growl. “Positive.”

I caught another flash of shadow,
a skein of dishonesty as sudden as a bird pooping on the windshield. I couldn’t
be sure unless I dug further, but it seemed Beau the Mighty was starting to
have doubts about his skills as a teacher. All because of me.

Man, I was a terrible chameleon.

~ * ~

Aside from Beau, searching for
the leak was the hardest part of being at YuriCorp. Every day I flopped was
another day the company and its employees might be harmed. Guilt draggled
behind me like toilet paper on my shoe. I was failing—guilt. But I was
succeeding—at learning everyone’s other secrets. More guilt. And even then, I’d
caught no glimmers from anyone of disloyalty to YuriCorp beyond your typical
porn surfing, on-the-job loafing, and office supply theft.

I’d never been so social my whole
life. I’d never loitered by the receptionist’s desk to intercept the latest
gossip. I’d never sought people out for lunch dates, joined groups at the drop
of a jaunty yet stylish hat. I had to prove I was worth the big bucks, and I
wanted to get it over with so I could move forward with my career. I’d grown
attached to the idea of using my skill as an asset instead of a drawback.

I worked out of the garbage
dumpster, as did most of the consultants, trackers, scientists, and deeper
supra personnel in charge of YuriCorp’s other interests. Marketing, human
resources, accounting and sales worked downtown. We’d hired some norms in the
know, family members or others who’d stumbled upon our existence. There was a
database for them at the Registry, for easier monitoring.

YuriCorp, like any corporation,
had a distinct pecking order. Stronger sensors with abilities more like the
superheroes I learned not to joke about (out loud) were highest on the food
chain. Some disdained folks lower on the chain, at the bottom with the carbs. I
was a potato until proven otherwise, chameleons being as common as four-leaf
clovers. I know those don’t seem common, but certain people with suped-up eyes
can spot them in an instant. There are more of the little green mutants than
you might think.

If I proved myself a functional
chameleon, I’d get to be cheese.

Hierarchy at YuriCorp shouldn’t
have surprised me. Supras were as human as anyone and beset by the same ills—the
same weaknesses, the same needs, the same lying.

Oh my God, the lying.

After two months, I knew the
cliques. I knew who used to work where. I knew Samantha wasn’t YuriCorp’s most
popular employee but nepotism was widespread. Pavarti’s father worked in
security, Al’s brother worked downtown, Lou’s sister in law worked with Beau,
and other Lampeys were scattered throughout the ranks. That was just for
starters.

I knew who resented whom, who
lusted after whom, who looked in whose lunch to see if it was worth pilfering.
I knew who called in sick because he was hung over, and I knew who was sleeping
with whom, even when they didn’t tell me.

Especially when they didn’t tell
me.

While I didn’t know who’d sent me
a couple notes from “a friend” warning me not to ask so many questions,
considering my interview with Sheila, I could hazard a pretty educated guess.

The one thing I didn’t have a
clue about was the mole.

~ * ~

Despite Beau’s plea after my
misadventures in training, Yuri refused to hand me off to another senior
chameleon. Beau’s second formal written request was bracketed by verbal ones.
Beau was displeased. For the next week, he was so nasty, he put Alexis
Carrington to shame. The assistant DNA tech, Lou’s sister-in-law Jolene, had
taken to hiding in the office.

Thankfully, his vitriol had the desired
effect of increasing the number of times I faded on command, which meant he sort
of got off my case. When I concentrated on escaping Beau’s presence, I could
fade like I meant it.

Which is what I was doing when
Samantha burst into the lab, a coat halfway covering the pinstriped designer
suit with the red belt I’d envied this morning. The requisite lab booties
looked ridiculous on her red stilettos.

“Walker,” she said. “Where’s
Cleo? I need her.”

“The million dollar question.”
Beau cut his gaze to me, sulking on my naughty stool near the door, and strung
Samantha along. “Too bad I have no idea. Maybe she got fired.”

“Don’t think so.”

I held the fade. If I realized I
was doing it, I could maintain it. It was like forcing yourself to stop tapping
the toe you hadn’t realized you were tapping when someone grabbed your knee and
yelled, “Stop fidgeting, you’re making me mental!”

“She sucks,” Beau said
conversationally. The mask from his previous lie lingered.

“We found her late. It’s to be
expected. Is she at lunch?”

“It’s barely nine in the
morning.”

“She eats a lot.” Samantha
checked her watch. “You haven’t seen her?”

Beau shook his head, the dark
mask around his features giving lip.

Too bad I wasn’t good enough to
fade and interrogate at the same time. This would be the perfect opportunity to
ask Samantha if Alex could be tricking information out of her. It had occurred
to me, if she wasn’t the wily traitor herself, she might be an unintentional
leak. Psytech was the obvious choice for companies likely to want to destroy
YuriCorp, according to everyone. But anytime I asked Samantha about Alex, she
changed the subject.

However, lots of folks mingled
outside YuriCorp’s pool, so the same could be suspected of anyone with supras
in the family circle. An angle worth investigating, but how to do it? I could
go house to house hawking goodies for the YuriCorp “Find the Mole” fundraiser.
Lou’s extended family alone had so many kids who sold stuff for their schools,
nobody would notice. Half the knocks on my apartment door were Lampey offspring
with offers of candles, cookies, magazines and wrapping paper.

“It’s urgent,” Samantha said. “If
she shows up, tell her—”

“I’m right here.” My face
prickled with anxiety. Urgent might mean she’d gotten a lead. John pretended I
was a normal employee, but Samantha aided my campaign to stamp out espionage. I
wasn’t sure if it was because she was Yuri’s granddaughter or actually cared.

“Jesus!” Samantha rubbed her
forehead and laughed. “That’s a strong fade. After years of working here, you’d
think I’d be used to stuff like that. I thought you said she sucked.”

“She does,” Beau said. “She only
fades when I piss her off, and she can’t speak or it blows it. While I find her
silence restful, it won’t be useful on the job.”

I spluttered. “You knew that?”

“Why do you think I’m so hard on
you?”

“Because you’re an asshole.”

“That, too.” Beau picked up his
clipboard and started scribbling. “You have ten minutes to solve Samantha’s
wardrobe crisis, and then I need you back here. I have to run some tests.”

Scrapings and pokings and
proddings, oh my.

“I need her until this evening.
Pop-Pop’s orders.” As she walked out of the lab, Samantha shrugged out of her
coat and gestured for me to follow like a dog to heel. “She’ll work late to
make up for it.”

“No, I won’t!” I sputtered. “Tonight
is the
Hero Wars
season finale.” But the door had already swung shut.

Chapter 8

Sneak Thief

Samantha briefed me on the way to
a customer site. Three YuriCorp consultants had been running a motivational
seminar at a company in Cool Springs, southwest of Nolensville, when my
shopping buddy Pavarti had unexpectedly burned out. Yuri suspected sabotage and
told Samantha to get me there ASAP so I could question people.

“Is Pavarti all right?” I
smoothed my skirt over my legs. Pavarti, Ursula and a guy named Mike Mason had
been on this assignment.

“We don’t know yet.” Samantha cut
around a slower vehicle on the interstate, pushing the speed limit. “Ursula
went with her to the hospital.”

“We get treated in regular
hospitals for burnout?”

“That’s why Ursula went with
her.” Samantha didn’t elaborate.

I knew Ursula better than Pavarti
and could imagine the tall, striking woman was quite capable of protecting
Pavarti’s secret. I lunched with her, Samantha and Lou frequently. Ursula
wasn’t a spy but she did have a secret—a secret thing for Samantha. She didn’t
know I knew since she kept her sexuality to herself, and Sam didn’t know,
period.

“You think you can handle this?”
Samantha asked.

“Sure,” I said, though I had
doubts. I’d been studying business economics, project management, and corporate
infrastructures, but the emphasis had been on chameleoning.

“You’re not dressed for a site
visit.”

“Why, because I’m not wearing
Dolce & Gabbana?” Today I’d worn a grey pencil skirt and pink secretary
twin set. I hadn’t joined the suit brigade yet.

“At least you aren’t wearing
those cropped Hawaiian pants.” Samantha didn’t bother to lie. “Now those are
unprofessional.”

“They’re comfortable and Beau
hates them.” Nerves fluttered in my gut as I prepared for my first site visit
where I wouldn’t be acting as an observant bystander. I didn’t want to let
everyone down, especially Pavarti. It pissed me off our nemesis had targeted my
guide to the area’s outlet malls.

“What are we walking into?” I
asked.

“Mike is there alone. I’m
replacing Ursula and Parvarti at the motivational seminar, where the employer
has asked us to inspire people in the wake of a budget crunch.”

“Inspire people?” I’d been in a
few such seminars in my time in corporate America and, yep, they’d been
useless.

“Motivational seminars run by
norms are largely ineffective,” Samantha said. “But our clients ask for them
because they’re less expensive than our standard asset evaluations.”

I could understand how Samantha
could inspire—push a mood of efficiency on people or something. But the
Samantha effect was temporary, and it would be creepy if she went around laying
on hands like a faith healer. “What’s the supra spin on one of these seminars?”

“We find out what motivates the
employees besides money and advise human resources. All under the guise of
personality profiles where we watch people solve group problems.”

It sounded geeky. “Do they work?”

“They could, but what do you
think management does with the information?” Samantha snorted. “Usually
nothing. Well, we still get paid.”

I wasn’t tagging along to galvanize
the working stiffs. I was supposed to find out what had happened to Pavarti.
“What should I ask?”

“Who the new hires at the company
are. Who interacted with Pavarti. If anyone who isn’t an employee has been
around. If there were any electrical surges. Whether Pavarti ate or drank
anything that wasn’t in her lunch kit. Which you know about, right?”

“Security regulation eight point
two point five. Eat only what you take in so nobody can amp my food.”

“See if anyone noticed anything
out of the ordinary. Detective work, Cleo. Indulge your nosy side.”

“In other words, act like Lou.”
If I hadn’t known Lou’s only suprasense was to alter memories, I’d have assumed
she could do what I did. She knew everything about everybody. The mole
predicament could have been solved ages ago if Yuri had put Madame Lampey on
the case, but she wasn’t part of the inner circle, and it wasn’t for me to ask
why.

Correction. It wasn’t for me to
get an answer when I asked why.

Samantha chuckled. Lou was one of
the few people she seemed to genuinely like. “Find out if anyone besides Mike
or Ursula went anywhere with Pavarti.”

Pavarti was a bi-sensor to my
tri-sensor and another senior consultant we’d be hard pressed to replace. She
had an uncanny knack for bargain hunting, but her supra ability had something
to do with reading moods. We’d lost four senior consultants since I’d started
with YuriCorp. Only one showed signs of recovering his abilities.

“Won’t they think it’s weird some
random trainee is poking around?” Burnouts were explained as nervous breakdowns
to norms if the supra didn’t have the wherewithal to plead stomach flu or
migraine. “I can’t fade and ask questions.”

“You faded today.”

I sighed. “Beau made me mad.”

“He makes everyone mad, even
John.”

“I believe it.” I’d only noticed
John get frustrated with Samantha and myself, but Beau was a total pill. Even
Iron John snapped sometimes.

We exited the interstate and
fought traffic in a heavily commercial mall area. “Don’t worry about fading,”
she said with a shrug. “If anyone gets uncomfortable with your methods, point
them out and I’ll lay hands. It’s what I do.”

“What if the bad guys are waiting
for us to show up so they can burn us all?” And that hadn’t occurred to me before
now, why?

“Pop-Pop wouldn’t send us if he
were worried about that.”

The burnouts had increased the
past year until not even the other firms denied something was amiss. Not that
there had been any round tables about it, though we’d all increased security
measures. Regardless, the other companies continued to steal our employees and
ideas whenever possible. How we’d managed to keep the incidents out of the
normal world, I had no idea.

Our destination was near the
furniture store where I’d special ordered a bed. We parked in a huge lot and
hustled into a tall office building.

“We have somebody procuring the
tapes from the security cameras, but without knowing who works here, it’s
challenging,” Samantha said. “There’s a guy with another company who can pick
out supras on tape, but there’s no time and money to hire him. All we can
verify is whether or not we recognize any of the...usual suspects.”

“Psytech employees?” The lobby
was marbled and cool, brass railings along the walls. A wide stairwell accessed
the second floor and a bank of elevators.

“Don’t believe everything you
hear. Or think you hear.” Samantha’s lips tightened and she punched the button
for the elevator. In short order, we whizzed up to the sixth floor where the
doors opened into another cool, marbled lobby with one of those glossy receptionists
who look like she belongs on a catwalk somewhere.

“Hi there,” she said in a chipper
Southern accent. “Can I help ya?”

Not the voice I expected out of
the icy blonde. Suprasensors came from all over the country, but the locals
sounded like Dukes from Hazzard.

“I’m Samantha Graves from
YuriCorp. This is one of our interns, Cleopatra Giancarlo. I’m here to replace
Ursula St. Marie and Pavarti Singh in the motivational seminar.”

“That poor gal who had the panic
attack. Just between you and me, I thought she looked peaked when she came in
this morning. Doctor Phil had a show about panic attacks recently, so I
recognized it right off.”

“Poor Pavarti,” Samantha said. “I
hope I don’t look peaked to you.” She smiled and held out her hand.

I wanted to yell, “Don’t take the
hand, it’s a trick!” but Samantha, like me, was here to do her job. Just
because she shook hands with the receptionist of the company where one of our
employees had taken ill didn’t mean she’d get pushy.

Yeah, right.

“You don’t look peaked at all.
Nice suit. Hi, Cleopatra,” said the receptionist. “Y’all sign this visitor
sheet here and I’ll get your badges.”

“Have you had many visitors
today?” I asked. I hoped it wasn’t an inappropriate question. I flipped through
the week. There was one name besides the YuriCorpers, a Loretta Lynn Cooter.

No way was that a real person. “I
see Loretta Lynn Cooter was here today.”

The girl angled the clipboard
toward her. “Oh, they got me.” She guffawed and scribbled it out before handing
the board to Samantha. “We don’t get many visitors.”

Samantha finished signing her
name and returned the clipboard. We accepted visitor badges on clips. Samantha
affixed hers to her blazer pocket, but I clipped the badge at the lower edge of
my cardigan, near my hip.

The receptionist smiled.
“Straight back, turn right after the break room, right after the potties, then
straight until you see the big room with the glass walls. Can’t miss it.”

As we walked, Samantha added a
few more details. “For a job like this, we do batches.” No heads popped out of
the vast cubicle farm as we passed. Either they were all in the seminar or they
were literally chained to their desks. “Ursula, Pavarti and Mike have been here
all week.”

“If the...thing...happens after
we’ve been on site awhile,” I said, attempting to couch our discussion in
general terms, “it gives outsiders ample opportunity to locate our
consultants.” Otherwise known as, the saboteur wasn’t inside YuriCorp, and I
was off the hook.

“Sometimes it’s the first day.
Once it was during a layover en route. Scheduling has become restricted, for
obvious reasons,” she said. “Here we are.”

Mike hadn’t been trained to lead
seminars. Chameleons like Mike, Ursula and myself were confession prompters and
eavesdroppers. Even from outside the glass wall, I could tell Mike was doing a
terrible job. People who were supposed to be experiencing great rejuvenation
texted on cell phones or stared into space with glazed expressions.

Samantha knocked on the door, and
Mike acknowledged her with a finger wave. The employee closest to the door
leapt up and opened it. With a sheepish grin, she slipped past us and melted
into cubicle land as quick as a blink.

“This is my colleague, Samantha
Graves.” Mike didn’t introduce me; he might not remember me. No insult—I didn’t
know him from Adam, as Mike and Adam resembled one other a great deal, both
brown-haired, paunchy, and fond of grey suits with bright blue shirts. “If
everyone would like to take fifteen, I’m going to get Ms. Graves up to speed so
she can lead the rest of today’s seminar.”

The employees broke, and I could
tell without suprasenses several wouldn’t come back. Samantha hovered in the
doorway and shook hands with the parolees. Maybe they’d be back after the
break, after all.

When everyone cleared out,
Samantha cornered Mike. “What happened? Cleo, you need to hear this, too.”

Did she want me included in the
process or testing Mike for honesty? I watched carefully as he talked.

“No outside food or drinks, no
contact with anyone I could tell. Pavarti mentioned yesterday the employees all
had PMS or cubicle rage or something. Today she complained of a headache and
blurred vision before it happened. She was reading the room, nothing she hadn’t
handled before. She’ll be all right, won’t she?”

“Roxanne met them at the hospital.
She’ll let us know as soon as she makes a diagnosis.”

“Pavarti can read a stadium when
she’s fresh,” Mike insisted, believing every word he said. “This wasn’t a
normal occurrence. It was another attack. My God, I can’t believe this happened
right under our noses, and to Pavarti, of all people.”

I glanced through the glass
walls, where office drones meandered past. None of them looked deadly, but
looks weren’t everything.

“Are we in danger?” I asked Mike,
to see if he lied.

He shook his head. “There’ve
never been two incidents on a single assignment.”

Not a yes or no—a statement of
fact.

“None of us are in danger,”
Samantha said.

While Mike hadn’t lied, Samantha
had. She knew I’d see it. Was she trying to scare the shit out of me or tell me
something? Dammit! Didn’t she know we had to practice the bad supra, good supra
routine before it would work?

“Mike,” I said, “did anybody act
weird?”

“No weirder than usual,” he said.
“Any visitors today?”

“Loretta Lynn
Cooter
.” I emphasized
her last name. They ignored me.

“No visitors signed in.” Samantha
gestured up at the ceiling. “Security vid’s still a possibility.”

“Did anybody come to more than
one workshop?” I asked.

They glared at me. Why did that
question merit a glower when saying “Cooter” hadn’t? There were always folks in
an office who wanted to avoid the grind so much they attended every session.
Plus, free food.

“A few VPs were repeats,” Mike
said. “The human resources secretary came three times.”

The secretary probably hated her
job, but the VP behavior was suspicious. “I’ll start there. VPs and HR
secretary.”

Samantha coughed.

“Start there doing what?” Mike
asked.

“Oh, lurking and sneaking.” I
blushed. “I’m not great at the...thing we can do, but I’ve worked in offices
for years. Maybe I’ll pick something up.”

“Pop-Pop wants Cleo to approach
people who took the seminar and get evaluations,” Samantha said. “He wants you
with this group since it happened in their proximity.”

“I hate this.” Mike rubbed a hand
over his jaw. “I wish there was more I could do. I am sick over this, Samantha.
She’d lost consciousness by the time Ursula got her out of here.”

I felt a little sick myself,
sicker by the minute. I gulped. “Is passing out normal?”

“It’s getting to be,” Samantha
said grimly. She patted Mike’s shoulder. “Keep your chin up and your ear to the
ground.”