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test, trying to get his knee to jump. He barely felt any
pressure as the tiny hammer connected to what should have been a knee. Nothing
happened.
    "I'm projecting an image of who I used to be so
it's easier to stay in a… material way, I guess. It's the only way I can talk with
Jane."
    "Does she know?"
    " I didn't know this morning. I'm pretty
sure she would have said something if she'd noticed it."
    Fox smiled at that, pushing his glasses up the bridge
of his nose. "Are there others like you?"
    "I need Jane here, doctor. We all do if you want
to hear that answer."
     
    4
    "Let me get this straight," General Pearls
said over the line to Mitchell, "You're telling me that this man was a Sleeper ?"
    "All we've got is that he claims he didn't know
he was what he was until this morning, sir," Mitchell answered. Both men
went silent. How many of you are out there?
    Worse: were all of them waking up today?
     
    5
    If memory served Dr. Greenwood right, Sleeper was a term used for agents who were planted in a country, and did nothing but
live their lives until they were needed. Or if one was inclined to read
fiction, a Sleeper agent could very well be unaware of this very fact,
hypnotized or brainwashed to forget it. Until someone, somewhere, used a
trigger word, and the Sleeper would go and potentially kill someone else.
    Greenwood watched the interaction between Nicholas
Logan and Dr. Fox, and thought about the old movies she used to watch when she
was just a psychology student. Now she knew better. Such kind of hypnosis was
unlikely but not impossible. One had to choose the right subject, work with him
for a very long time, and then give the mind a story that would make sense. It
was unreliable as hell, and largely thought of as unpractical—not to mention
unethical—but as an information-gathering mission, it sure could work.
    From the few experiments she'd read about, it was
incredibly disturbing for the subject. She could guess why without much
imagination. The thought that someone hadimplanted
ideas foreign to one's mind was frightening at best, downright chilling to the
bone when one thought about it for a minute.
    This man, though, this being captive in their medical
wing, was not exhibiting the classic signs of anxiety she would have expected
from someone who had been captured, and who essentially had to tell some very
stressful news to his wife. Logan looked remarkably calm.
    "What is he up to?" Mitchell whispered
beside her. His ever tactical mind had observed the same fact, probably a lot
faster than hers had.
    "You come back to enemy lines for two
reasons," she explained, her eyes following the glowing image as it sat
and talked to the doctor. "To get someone to safety, or to warn them to
get out of the way."
    "Since his wife's not going to vanish with him,
either she's in danger, or we all are," Mitchell concluded with a grim
tone.
     
    6
    "Married in October, ten years ago. No children.
No pets," Mitchell's officer read out loud from a list of condensed facts,
her hands steady despite knowing they were talking about an alien on their
Base. For the past hour, somewhere in Washington DC, every single piece of data
about one Nicholas Logan married to one Jane Logan was being analyzed and
scrutinized as if there were no tomorrow. Jurisdiction fights had already
ensued, a headache for General Pearls who supervised from the Capital City.
    "His parents died in a car accident five years
ago, her parents died of natural causes three and two years ago. No siblings
for either of them. She's a librarian at a small private library in town as an
acquisitions assistant; he's a sociologist who has published well-respected
papers and articles in his field, and is a professor at Seattle University. No
tickets, no unusual records. She's still at work today. From phone
conversations we're monitoring, she thinks Nicholas Logan is on a hiking
trip."
    "Don't let her out of our sight."
    "No, Sir."
     
    7
    "Are you hungry? It's noon now,"