Chapter 2

He leads Sloan to a room down the hall that has been turned into a war room, the central office for the dominants. He sits her down on a chair. He says to her "I believe Tom has formed an attachment to you. If this is true I may be able to tell you if he is alive. I don’t know if I can or I if I can tell you any more than that. Do you want me to try?"

"Yes, tell me what to do."

"Give me your hand. Now, think of Tom, only of Tom."

She closes her eyes and thinks of Tom. His eyes so liquid blue they surround you. The half smile he gives her when he’s pleased. The way it feels when he holds her with his hands entwined in her hair. When she thinks of him like this it’s almost like he’s here. She can feel him.

Mark holds her hand and feels her emotional state. Yes, she cares deeply for Tom, but the echo of Tom is within her. When he met her two weeks ago there was no echo. Tom had formed the lifebond while imprisoned, with no help from Sloan. He had never heard of that either. It would appear that both Sloan Parker and Tom Daniels were both extraordinary individuals.

"Dr. Parker"

"Sloan, please call me Sloan"

He nods. "Sloan, I can feel the echo of Tom in you. I can’t tell you more, but he is alive."

Sloan is so pleased she throws her arms around his neck and hugs him. Mark is so startled he stands stock still, not knowing what will come next. "Thank you so much. I feel so much better." She looks at the expression on his face and backs off. "Umm, do you think you could help me with something?"

"Perhaps, it depends on what it is?"

"Tom’s knife. Do you think you could rig it up where I could wear it? I mean it kind of makes me feel better to have it with me. Does that make any sense?"

"Not really, but you are human. I will adapt the sheath for you on the condition that you wear it peace bonded."

"What’s that?"

"A peace bond makes the weapon unable to be drawn from the sheath. We attach cording from around the hilt to the sheath so it may not be drawn. It is a far too dangerous weapon to let an unskilled person have without taking precautions. I do not believe Tom would want you injured in that way. When the cording is removed the knife is perfectly serviceable again."

At that minute someone enters the room. Who was it? Yes, Jason, Marks second in command. He hands Mark a CD case filled with CD's. "This was just delivered. It comes from Nexus. Does that mean anything?"

Mark looks at him sharply. "Not to me. Perhaps it means something to Walter. He has many contacts. Sloan, would you mind?"

When Sloan and Mark leave the room, Ed comes over to talk to Walter.

"Walter, now I'm wondering about what Sloan didn't say?"

"What do you mean?'

"Well, her little lecture started with 'what if' that means she has been looking at some other possibilities. Sloan always tries to look at all sides of an argument. I think it means she thinks there may be other reasons for the new species coming to fore. If she's right, we could have a whole lot of other people after us."

On that note he returns to the television, he is not going to waste a free day. Soon enough it will be back to the grind. After this he doesn't want to look at any numbers for a year.

Soon, both Sloan and Mark enter. Sloan is smiling. Mark carries something in his hand. He goes over to Walter and shows him the CDs. Walter actually smiles. "Well, it seems that I have some friends after all.

"Who is Nexus?" Mark asks.

"Someone I knew in Europe, when I was being shot at. He was perhaps the best information agent in the game. He must be in his 60's or 70's by now. He was old and well known when I was there. I wonder how he traced me and knew I needed help?"

"It would appear if he is an information agent, he keeps well up with what is going on."

Well let's see what he sent us." Walter pulls over a laptop and puts the CD in that is labeled '1'. "Well, it appears it is my ex-bosses career. And it is quite a bit more detailed than the information I had before. This appears to be mostly her top secret and eyes-only information. Someone went to a great deal of trouble to get it. Now we have a whole new area to search."

'Ohh, no." A groan rose up from Ed, sitting in front of the television. "That is exactly what I did not want to hear."

"Would you like to hear what you have uncovered so far? It is some very interesting information."

"Like what?" Both Sloan and Ed chimed in.

"Like she has been skimming almost a million dollars a month, money that is simply disappearing from the books. In the last 5 years she has almost 100 million disappear. This likely means she has more than one base. I don't know what she is up to but the first order of business is to find where she could be holding Tom. It is most likely that he is at one of her illegal bases. After that we start going through her top sec file. This is something I will go through first. There are things that could put you in danger. I don't want to do that."

They start in the next day. In less than a week they find that she has several projects that are suspicious. Going back several years they discovered that there was a multistory office building that was built and never occupied, a warehouse built at the edge of a medium size town that never caught on–empty and a country resort that went bankrupt all with her fingerprints on the deals.

Every bit of evidence pointed to the fact that she picked them up at bargain prices at government auctions with government money, all in all a pretty slick deal.

While Mark and his people are out checking the sights they have found. They start searching through her past in the top sec file. She has been involved in some pretty nasty business.

Two weeks later they find that none of the sites discovered have Dominant signatures coming from them. Now is the discovery of a base the government constructed and is now turned to something foul.