Chapter 2

Back at her office, Zandra stopped long enough to pick up and pocket several of the new personnel force field devices, as she was sure that she would need to make several more trips and might have to quarantine several other sites. She then proceeded on to the Operations Center.

Zandra appeared in Miranda's office while she was on the phone, and waited until she was finished.

"I've brought you a present," Zandra told the older woman when she hung up the phone.

"What kind of present?" Miranda asked.

"One of their new machines. Have our people examine it and determine how it works. See if they can develop an automatic counter to it. Something along the line of a feedback device perhaps, that would burn the damned things out."

"All right, I'll get them right on it," Miranda said, then changed the subject before Zandra could say anything else. "That was our people in Europe on the phone. They informed me that all of our people at the Olympics have been seized and our teams have all been scratched from competition."

"All of them?" Zandra asked in shock.

"All but Randell. Somehow he escaped and is in Scotland presently. He wants to organize a raid and recapture our people," Miranda told her.

"No, he must wait to see if we can develop a counter to the machine first. If not they'll have to go in there with full block shields on and that could be chancy," Zandra said.

"Are YOU going to tell him that?" Miranda demanded.

"No, I need to get back to find out what those people with the Ambassador know," Zandra told her.

"Randell isn't likely to listen to anyone but you," Miranda reminded her.

"Yes, I love the guy, but you're right, he can be pigheaded at times. All right, I'll record a message to him before I return to the Embassy," Zandra told her. "Send it when you contact him."

"You're going to have to tell him in person. He isn't likely to co-operate with just a recorded message, and you know it," Miranda told her frankly.

"All right," Zandra acknowledged, with a sigh. "I'll stay long enough to get a call into him. Those clowns at the Embassy aren't going anywhere. Are our satellites still functioning?" Zandra asked.

"Yes, they all have shields plus they are invisible to the normals, and we're in control of near space. We could knock out their communication satellites, if necessary, but haven't done so yet," Miranda informed her.

Miranda called her assistant who came in to collect the machine and have it analyzed. It was about twenty minutes later that Randell's call came in. Miranda answered the phone and handed the receiver to Zandra.

"It's Randell for you," she told her.

"Hi, Sweetie," Miranda heard Zandra say, sweetly. "How are you?" A long pause followed.

"Yes, I know, Sweetie," Zandra said next. "I know you're upset, but you need to wait." This was followed by a longer silence.

"Let me finish, Randell!" Zandra said next, angrily, and took a deep breath. "I went to the North American Embassy to see what I could learn. There were a couple of Neanderthals there that had one of the machines. I froze them in place and brought the machine back here. It's being analyzed now to determine how it works. We're doing our best to develop a counter to it. You need to be patient while we see what can be done. Then you can go back in there and get our people back. If necessary we'll send a shuttle to pick up all of you." This was followed by another silence, but it wasn't too long.

"What did I do with them?" Zandra asked. "I left them all facing their demons, what else? I'm going back to see what else I can learn when we're done here." Another silence followed.

"Yes, Sweetie. I love you too. I want you back here in one piece and not hurt. Have a little patience. We're going to get all of our people back, and then we are going to extract a price for what they have done to us. You can believe that. They cannot be allowed to attack our people and confiscate our property. It will be a stiff price that we extract," Zandra assured Randell before she hung up the phone.

"Will he listen?" Miranda asked when she was done.

"He said that he would," Zandra answered.

"Are you going back to the Embassy?" Miranda asked.

"Yes," Zandra answered. "I want to interrogate those people from Homeland Security and the Ambassador, although he apparently knows little," Zandra told her.

"As soon as they have a solution to the machine, make sure that Randell knows what it is, and if necessary have a shuttle take him some copies of it. He won't wait long. He's very angry and I can't blame him," she told Miranda after that.

"Do you want some one to go with you?"

"No, I have all that I need to handle them. What about our people at the NUN (New United Nations)?" she asked.

"We got all of them out before the Homeland Security goons showed up. Our Ambassador filed a strong protest before leaving," Miranda told her.

"Not as strong as the protest I intend to file, when we have this situation straightened out," Zandra told her vehemently before she vanished.

On returning to the Ambassador's office, Zandra ignored the Ambassador, as he knew little about what she was most interested in. Instead she chose the larger of the two Homeland Security agents to bring out of his trance first. Since it had been well over an hour since he had been sent to face his demons, he instantly reacted, as she knew he would. He vomited up the contents of his stomach while pissing on himself, and losing his bowels. The stench was awful.

"I have questions that need answering, and you are going to answer them. Do you understand me?" Zandra asked when he had recovered somewhat and ignoring the stink for the minute. She then released control of his voice.

"Fuck you bitch," he answered belligerently.

"That wasn't the answer I wanted, and as tempting as the idea is, you don't have the equipment for it. So just to prove that I wasn't kidding, I'm going to introduce you to pain, and we'll see what you have to say about that a bit later," Zandra finished, removed control of his voice and induced a moderately high level of pain in the man.

While that was working on him, she brought the second man out of his trance. He instantly repeated what the first man had done. Apparently they both had a rather powerful set of demons. The smell was even worse now.

"Go fuck your self, bitch," was the second man's answer to her question when given his voice back. Zandra didn't say anything. She merely induced a rather severe level of pain in the second man and increased the level in the first man. After five minutes or so more she stopped the pain in the first man and brought him back to speak to him again.

"Have you changed your mind about talking?" she asked, nicely. The first man was gasping for breath from the pain, but was still defiant and simply said, "Fuck you."

"Hmmm ... not in your wildest dreams, but perhaps you would be more cooperative if I set you on fire for a while," Zandra said and induced a vision of his body being consumed by fire in the man's mind, while inducing the pain that would come from such a fire on his nervous system. She did the same thing to the second man without even reviving him.

Again after five minutes, she revived the first man. All he did was scream for some time before she removed control of his voice and put him to sleep. She then revived the second man. He was much more cooperative now.

"What do you want to know?" he panted as his body shook from the stress it had been under.

"Who sent you here?" Zandra demanded. The man gave her the name of his superior.

"Where is he located?" He gave her the address of the local Homeland Security office.

"How long have you known about this operation?" she demanded.

"We got the information on it about a week ago. We have all been restricted to the headquarters building for that time," he informed her. Zandra put him to sleep then also, as she had seen in his mind that he was only low level muscle and knew little of the whole plan. Following that she rummaged through the sink hole that the first man's mind was but discovered little more useful information.

Zandra then revived the Ambassador, who repeated what the others had done. Zandra didn't ask him any questions, instead she simply rummaged through his conscious mind and did come up with some information that might be useful later. Finally, she spoke to the Ambassador.

"I'll be leaving now," she told him. "All of you will wake up in an hour and a-half or so. This place will be really ripe by then. I suggest that all of you get cleaned up before you do anything else. Do you understand?" she demanded, and inserted this as a command in each of their minds. She then put the Ambassador to sleep, collected her personal force field and vanished.

Zandra next materialized in an alley near the Homeland Security offices in San Francisco and got a very nasty surprise. Apparently they had one of the machines running in the Homeland Security building, and it staggered her for a few seconds before she adjusted her shield to exclude most its effect without having to go to a full block shield setting. It wasn't entirely eliminated at the present setting, but she could deal with it.

Following that Zandra turned her mind to investigating exactly what the machine was doing to her and soon found a way to block most of the effects of the machine without the use of a shield. It wasn't something most hybrids could do however. There were only a hand full of people on Earth that would be able to do it, in fact. They would definitely need to find a better solution.

Zandra transported to the hall outside the office of the local head of Homeland Security. The effects of the machine was even stronger here, and she decided that it was well that she hadn't materialized here first. She also decided that something needed to be done about this particular machine. She froze those in place in the immediate area while she located the machine.

It was located in a secure room where it couldn't be accessed by just anyone. Zandra simply transported in there, ignoring their locks and doors. The effects this close to the machine were even worse. Zandra opened a window to the dimension of crushing gravity. It had been one of the earliest dimensions visited by her ancestors. She moved the window to envelope the machine and closed the window. The machine was trapped in the dimension of crushing gravity, and there was little that could survive in that dimension. Zandra rested for a few minutes in the secure room until she felt better.

When recovered she transported into the office of Mr. Oscar Felderman, the local head of Homeland Security. He was already frozen in place, so she simply activated her personal shield to secure the room to insure that they weren't interrupted. After experiencing the effects of the machine, Zandra had decided that she was finished with playing nice. She didn't bother with demands, pain or threats. She simply ripped into his conscious mind and dug out what she wanted to know. This was not normally done as it could harm the person involved and even result in death, but Zandra was past the point of caring about that with these people.

Felderman was a mid-level bureaucratic hack with little regard for anyone else. She discovered that he had known about the plan for several months and had even been to their headquarters for briefings on it. He had instructed his people that it was all right to be as rough as they wanted with those they took into custody.

She also discovered that there were at present a number of hybrids in custody in the basement of the building. Lastly, she learned where the operation had been planned and who the planners in this country were. Zandra was sure the information on their headquarters and the planners would come in handy before this was over.

Zandra then sent Felderman to face his demons. She wasn't planning to return to bring him to of the trance either. Reducing the shield from room size to personal size, she headed for the basement and the hostages. There were those along the way that attempted to stop her. She used her shield as a battering ram, expanding it suddenly to trap them against a wall or force them into an adjacent hallway, while she went into their minds and disabled them leaving them paralyzed and unconscious in her wake. Their weapons had no effect on her shield.