Sanctify

When Michel opened his eyes in the mid afternoon of the next day, he found Jenna sleeping next to him, the sheets tangled around her body. He deftly moved to unravel her from them. He smiled, remembering how frisky she got when in the moment. The sexy librarian trick worked very well on him. He almost couldn’t believe how worked-over he felt by her. The movement stirred her and she peeked over to him, watching him pull on sweats and a white T-shirt.

Jenna rolled onto her stomach and sniffed her skin. She frowned and sniffed it again. She had fallen asleep, covered in sweat, and remembered a soft brushing feeling on her skin spreading a sweet scent of jasmines. She thought it only to be a dream or scented candles he must have lit to relax her, but Michel knelt at the edge of the bed and smiled down at her. He leaned over and kissed her forehead gently, sniffing her hair. “Mm, sweet,” he murmured.

Jenna smiled and asked, “I wonder how likely dreams are reality in disguise.”

Michel smiled and kissed her lips gently, just a peck. He bit his bottom lip and wondered if he should tell her about bathing her early in the morning or not. He didn’t want her to catch a cold from the sweat on her skin. In the tub, she had been too sore to move so he helped her move. He hadn’t expected to tire her out so much but he was quick and the close encounter brought them to another round of frenzied heat. He reached no climax of his own but fell asleep with his arms tight around her, enjoying the scent of jasmine from her hair.

He had researched it. Once, when she had fallen asleep at the lab, he arrived before everyone else. Unsure of why he did it, he leaned over and sniffed her hair. The light scent of jasmine made him smile. It made him feel inexplicably at ease whenever he smelled it. Almost enchanted. And yet, it only plagued him more, making him extra aware of whenever she passed him in the halls, in the lab, through the cafeteria, and even in the garden, where she napped, by a bed of jasmines. So, he scoured the Internet and picked up the one he thought best for her. He had planned to leave it on her balcony, but since the situation had changed so much from his original design, he had Oren stock up the bathrooms and put the rest in the basement. And though she didn’t see how this home was arranged for her, being unconscious when she arrived, he was anxious to show it to her.

The sound of the kettle made them freeze. Michel stood and Jenna sat up, alert. “Is someone here?” Jenna asked in a low tone.

Michel walked to the door and touched the cold knob. “Get dressed,” he stated and opened the door. He slowly stepped out of the master bedroom and shut the door, before walking down a dim hallway to find Head Lady Greta May of the organization seated at the dinner table, two steaming mugs in front of her. The one on her right was lighter and Michel knew it was meant for Jenna. He could smell the Rohypnol from the empty vial in front of the aged lady, unsure of which mug was actually drugged. He knew why she was there and yet, he wasn’t ready to give Jenna up.

He counted three men outside based on their shadows and two vehicles that could be seen through the translucent curtains Oren installed.

With ease, Oren held up the rod and waited as Michel shifted the translucent curtains and measured them carefully. Oren smiled and shook his head, “It’s always important to be mindful of the windows. Remember that and life will be much easier for you.”

Michel cut the material and nodded, “I know. I took the class, too.”

“Then you ought to know how stupid your Plan B is at this moment. Not only will our organization come down hard on you, but they will come after you, too.” Oren placed the rod on top of the main curtain rod and moved to help Michel make more so as to cover all of the windows. “Satin is safest, but silk helps with keeping the heat away.”

Michel smiled and asked, “How did you learn all that? Last I checked, your record never showed you had interest in home economics.”

“There are lots of things not on my record,” Oren replied, and then added, “officially.”

Michel nodded, looking around the house, “Like this place.”

Oren nodded, “It’s always interesting to see how they cover it. Will it say I’m away fighting an imaginary war, or on the moon, preparing for the new space station the government is secretly launching at the turn of the century? Who’s to say what is and isn’t possible, eh?”

“Our life stories are written with invisible ink. Never leaving a trace of where we’ve been, who we’ve met, what we’ve done, and who we were.” Michel sighed and burned the ends of the fabric so as to melt them together for a better hold. He swallowed and turned to see Oren staring out the window with his arms crossed.

“This house is too open. We should have gone for the house with the trees around it,” he added, pondering the endless possibilities.

Michel continued to cut the curtains as Oren pulled them onto the curtain rod. “This house has the easier access roof and deeper basement. Also,” he smirked, “the walls are thick and quite sound proof. This is quite the home for a newlywed, right?”

“Enough with your analyzing mind, call your lady and have a seat,” Lady May ordered. Her sudden snappy tone broke through Michel’s thoughts and he sighed.

Michel knew better than to question her but he stood his ground. Her eyes were hard and then she turned her eyes to the dark hallway behind him that he protected carefully. When she looked back at him, her eyes were softer and waiting. So, Michel asked, “Will you let her choose me?”

Lady May sighed and rolled her eyes, “We shall see.” Michel knew that answer was the most he would get and so he turned and walked back into the bedroom.

The moment Michel left the room; Jenna sat up on the bed and cringed a bit. She was very sore from the sudden active sex life she woke to with her dream guy. She’d fantasized secretly about how it would be if they started a serious relationship. For some reason, it never went beyond that thought. As if she knew better than to push things in her mind, or was it that she simply didn’t want to bring it up?

After a moment of waiting from Michel, she walked over to the dresser and pulled on a white shirt and long pajama pants. When he entered, she walked to him and embraced him. Though fully dressed, Michel could still smell the jasmine on her skin. “Who is it?” she asked quietly, muffled by the cotton of his shirt.

If they made a run for it in Rayner’s car… Michel looked down at Jenna and replied. “My boss is paying me a house call. She wants to meet you,” he added, not moving.

Jenna looked over his grave features and sad eyes. She nodded and let him go, “I’ll meet her.” Michel slid his hands down her arms and clasped her hands for a moment.

He smiled and nodded, “Okay then.”

Michel led Jenna from the bedroom, down the hall, and pulled out a chair for her to sit down in, next to Lady May, who watched with hard eyes. Jenna’s eyes followed Michel as he took a seat across from her. She turned to Lady May and greeted her with a gentle, “Hello.”

Lady May looked her over before turning to Michel, commanding, “Have some tea.”

When Michel didn’t obey immediately, Jenna reached for a mug but Michel reached over and took the mug from in front of her. If it contained the drug, he would be unable to help her for the next several hours. But if she were hurt during that time, or taken –

“Drink it now,” Lady May repeated, none-too-kindly.

Jenna watched as Michel took a sip and replaced the mug on the table. She reached forward and pulled the other mug to her. She lifted it to her lips and sniffed it. A moment later, Michel’s head fell forward and he was still. No one moved for a moment of time as his breathing smoothed in to that of a slumber. Lady May, then, reached under the table and removed the bug. She dropped it into the filled mug Jenna held and heard the zip of it go dead. Lastly, she spoke a name and snapped her left hand in front of Jenna, who blinked a few times, before the uncertainty in her expression was replaced with that of a usual Shadow’s; emotionless yet confident.

Lady May waited and Jenna turned to the older woman, “I’m sure there was another way we could have talked without making such a scene.” Her tone was lower with much less attitude than her words held.

Lady May smiled, her crocodile-like grin made her face wrinkle. “It has been a while since you’ve come out and yet you speak so rudely to me. You ought to remember your place,” she goaded.

“And you, yours, my Lady,” Jenna replied haughtily but not aggressively. Lady May watched her cross her arms across her chest. “You’ve grown more senile than before,” she commented.

Lady May let out a laugh and reached into her bag, “Looks like you’ve done well for yourself as well.” Lady May pulled out a thick folder and placed it on the table. Jenna opened it with familiar moves and scanned through the papers. She frowned halfway through and when she was done, she removed the digital pad from the back and the papers she had flipped through absorbed into the pad. “So Diem is on the rise and Sanctus is moving again? What’s this Haven crap that I’ve been hearing about?” she demanded, flipping and clicking through the digital pad without looking up.

Lady May replied coldly, “The Haven is the real thing; a safe ground for hackers to build, protected against crackers, and although Diem is rumored to be of good intentions, Sanctus has all but killed that poor soul. I still think we ought to have collected her when the others were brought in,” she added wistfully, and quietly.

Jenna only knew bits and pieces about the Silent Campaign conducted so long ago, but the remnants were lost when Sanctus ransacked their systems, which triggered an unintentional wipe of certain compartments of old data and information. So whatever was kept a secret fell into the shadows of mysteries and legends. All anyone knew was that the Dane-Hawkins Estate was abandoned during that time when the rest of the family moved to Europe. And then there was that explosion, followed by the murder and the abduction. Or was it a kidnapping?

Jenna sighed and leaned back in the chair. She looked over to see her dubious and sleeping mark. “He never realized anything, did he?” her question lacked the usual emotion humans naturally had in their tone of voice.

Lady May sat forward and looked Jenna over, “Are you ready to return to your post? These three years ought to have been enough of a vacation for someone like you.” By someone, Jenna knew she meant ‘something’, but bit her tongue. In truth, Jenna had enjoyed the false memories built by TriVerse for her cover and wondered what her Origin would have done. But she shook her head and sat forward, eyeing Michel curiously.

“What does he know?” she asked softly, noting the way his eyes moved in a dream-like state.

Lady May shrugged and stood, picking up her bag. “He knows he has been recruited and disobeyed orders when told to let us recruit you individually. I assume he has left a mark on you, or thinks he has, and intends to run should we remove you from his life.” She walked over to the kitchen window and peeked outside. “Oren reported nothing out of the normal and Rayner is, as always, very protective of him. I suspect his dalliance with the technology of Sanctus has given Rayner a different curiosity towards Michel, but as for that, only time will tell.”

Jenna frowned over the new intel before her and shook her head, “That would mean he has crossed over. If he has signed on for the program,” Jenna observed, watching the images of Rayner turn before her. Sanctus has long since began his campaign to recruit disgruntled members of TriVerse but they have yet to discover the identities of those involved and wooed.

That was, until Alpha and Beta picked up on chatter from the cyberscape that everyone has, until then, overlooked. A signature traveling through their systems that was both foreign and ancient. It was obvious that there were ghosts in the systems from the days of old, but the reality of Sanctus became more evident when identification numbers of older and retired or missing agents surfaced on the activity logs.

Jenna frowned and pinned two different tags to the virtual board and frowned, “These two are identical. There’s no way to fake it, and yet, they are using binary codes to divert the system codes to the older formats before re-modifying their access to include a wider scope. I feel this is enough to switch from the past to the present so as to include future ramifications. Sanctus just keeps getting deeper into our system, so it seems.” Jenna flipped the page of information and stopped, seeing Rayner relaxing on a collegiate campus with a young man in the TriVerse system.

Lady May nodded, “We suspect he’s trying to recruit others to join his rebellion.”

Jenna nodded, “He’s an active little virus, isn’t he?” she murmured, scanning over the images of the two men talking and laughing. And then she stopped, “Is he a covert agent?” she asked, locking in on Michel in the image.

Lady May nodded, “Yes. He was placed there to oversee the activities in that network. He will complete his studies in six months. After that, if not recruited by Sanctus, he will move on as TriVerse tells him to.”

Jenna opened his case file and nodded, “An expert on the evolving technologies regarding coding and massive searching on multiple platforms at the same time. He is quite useful. But many are like that, why go after him?” she asked.

“Perhaps, it’s because of his obsessive nature and inability to move on unless finishing the project,” Lady May put in, half sarcastic and half serious. She had worked with the young man and found him quite boring, if much else. “His personality is quite dry and he’s not easy to get along with,” Lady May continued in a warning tone.

“That makes him an even better mark,” Jenna replied, scanning through his research with ease. “And he’s an origin, then?”

Lady May rolled her eyes, “One of a kind. His lineage is quite clean although, a bit hazy.”

Jenna cocked her head to the right and closed his folders, searching up the chain, and then she stopped. The two faces that looked back to her made her freeze as a tingle of familiarity shot through her. As if lifetimes ago, she remembered laughing with those two faces, as if in a dream. And then she shook herself out of it, focusing on her new mark and his blue-green eyes.

Jenna didn’t move, her eyes watching Michel’s closed eyes with as much fascination as watching ice melt. “What will you have me do?” she asked flatly.

Lady May turned to Jenna and leaned back against the counter top, partially amused by the turn of events before them, “What do you want to do?”

“Have I a choice?”

Lady May waited for Jenna to look up at her before offered, “It is unlikely you’ll ever have this chance again. You are a remnant of the Shadow Program. You can, honestly, choose another mark or assignment, or just stay with this one. Either way, I’m sure everything will work out.”

Jenna thought it over. It was true; despite being a Shadow, her talents were limitless though her functions limited. Without a human mind, she could only accomplish so much being in the field. She stood and walked both mugs to the sink. She dumped them out and washed them, setting them to dry on a rack. “Plastic that melts in specific liquids, I like how technology has evolved,” Jenna smiled more to herself than anyone else.

Lady May smirked derisively, “Doing house chores now, are we?”

Jenna didn’t respond to that taunt. Instead, she dried her hands and leaned back against the counter. She looked over her body and then to Lady May. “I’ll finish this job before moving on. Should he choose to discard me, I’ll gladly leave his side for another.”

Lady May nodded and pushed from the counter, “Then get to work. I expect no major changes to our routine.”

Jenna nodded but before Lady May reached the back door, she asked, “When should I tell him the truth?”

Lady May turned to Jenna, very surprised. No Shadow ever opted to reveal the abomination and shame of what they were. Before the task of tracking and protecting Michel, her mark, Jenna would never have done it as well. The change was there, and Lady May didn’t like it, but she couldn’t figure out why or how it had happened. Jenna caught herself and turned her face away, in a manner of shame that made Lady May uncomfortable with how human she suddenly seemed. “You will do what is in the best interest of the organization at all times. You are, after all, still only a Shadow.”

Jenna was silent.

Lady May turned to the door and turned the knob. She opened it and added, “Your team will arrive in a few hours. Prepare to meet them as the gentle and soft-spoken entity created for you. From now on, until called in, you are to report using signals. If you are discovered, we will send instructions.” Lady May sighed and stepped out of the house. The breath of fresh air felt cool compared to the thickness in the house. “Supplies have been left for you in the basement. All the arrangements have been made and you will be comfortable here.”

Jenna looked around the house and then walked from the kitchen to the living room. Her eyes alert, her hands searched every nook and cranny, before moving on from room to room. She was quick, efficient, and when she suspected a camera nearby, she simply touched the walls to feel the electrical waves, just to be sure. She managed to detect at least one camera pointed towards each door entering each room. The circuits were simple though very much like the way TriVerse liked teaching their agents to do things.

When she was sure she knew the layout and safe spots from each camera and angled microphone, she returned to the kitchen and took a seat. She found herself quite awake and then she checked her body before turning cold eyes on Michel, “You ought to treat my body better, punk. Be thankful to even embrace my perfection,” she added and then closed her eyes.

With practiced diligence, she reached into the deeper recesses of her machine consciousness and searched for the switch. And then heard the small mechanical click that indicated she had found what she had been looking for. She opened her eyes the moment the switch was flipped and blinked a few times, her pupils dilated, and her shoulders slumped. Like waking from a hypnotic nap, Jenna shook herself and stretched. She looked around and hurried over to Michel, who remained asleep. She pulled up a chair next to him and rested her head on her arms, enjoying an innocent nap next to him.