Marie Harte: RetroCog

Bend, Oregon

His flesh pebbled with the cold, but Noah First didn’t feel the brisk wind as it roared over his sweat-soaked skin. Instead his mind was locked on the scene in front of him. Intrigued, he studied the rich scale of detail he saw in the woman kneeling on the ground. He placed her in the mid-1800s. Though he stood on a paved lot in the dark of early morning, he clearly saw the woman wearing a blue pioneer dress cradling her infant son in the light of day. She lifted her head, and under the brim of her bonnet, he saw the ghost of a smile.

Her young son cried, and she opened her blouse to feed him. The child suckled greedily while she crooned to him, her voice clear against the crisp backdrop of rustling grass in a small field near an uncluttered forest. The beauty of the moment struck Noah dumb. So peaceful. Nature devoid of the rough concrete, electric lights, and the constant sense of urgency of the city.

“Oh hell. Noah, break out of it, big guy. Hey, Noah.”

Hands tugged his arm, and he regretfully pulled back from the images that looked and felt more than real.

“Christ, you’re like a block of ice. It’s October, numbskull. Where’s your jacket?”

He blinked and stumbled, almost knocking Chloe over. He would have crushed the petite woman if Nathan hadn’t grabbed him and hauled him upright.

“Dude, I step out for a few minutes, and you desert me. You left me alone downstairs with Jack. Seriously, do you hate me that much?”

Nathan grinned, but Noah could see the concern in his gaze.

“I came up here for a break and got sidetracked.” A tale they’d heard all too often, but Noah couldn’t help what he saw. The images appeared where emotion had been strongest. And here, in this parking lot, a small child had once been born to loving parents who’d barely survived the trip west. Over a hundred and fifty years ago.

Jack Keiser, their boss and slave master, appeared in the doorway of the gym behind them. He frowned.

“Quit fucking around. Noah, with me. Chloe, go man the desk. You know we’re a body short tonight with Aidan out sick. Nathan—”

“Yeah, yeah. I know. Go see who needs help inside. Man, I’m seriously beginning to hate this job. Who the hell works out at two in the morning?” He glared down at his T-shirt, where the PowerUp! logo blazed in white on red cotton. “Power up, my ass. More like dumb down. My skills are so underappreciated.” He sulked, glaring at Jack.

Jack raised a brow, and Nathan broke eye contact in a hurry. He muttered under his breath but scooted past Jack and went inside. Instead of heading for the Employees Only door that led to a private downstairs—where Noah and Nathan had just been training—he continued down the hall toward the gym, Bend’s newest success story. In a town where people biked, swam, and hiked for fun, the fitness business was booming, despite the dour economy.

“Noah?” Jack asked again, his low, gravelly voice not as harsh as it normally was with the others.

“Sorry, boss.” Noah couldn’t control a shiver as the brisk fall wind whipped through him and preceded Jack back into the gym and down the private stairwell few knew existed.

Though PowerUp! had more than a dozen employees, only ten of them had come from Washington, DC, leftovers from the government’s Psychic Warfare Program, or PWP. Like so many other experimental programs, the PWP had been disbanded and scattered due to funding problems. Or so he’d been told.

Noah hadn’t exactly liked the clandestine work. But he’d more than appreciated the gene-altering drugs they’d given him, injections that expanded his abilities beyond anything he might have hoped. He could now focus the power, whereas before, he’d simply tried to live around it. Best of all, he didn’t suffer the aftereffects of withdrawal like the others on his team did. Noah didn’t turn psychotic from withdrawal, and he didn’t suffer mood swings if he didn’t exercise his mind or body. He simply lapsed into a strange lethargy that sometimes made it hard for him to feel excited about anything.

“Sit down,” Jack said from behind him as they entered Jack’s office.

Noah sighed, burdened with reality once more. Though he appreciated this new start in life, away from the government’s prying eyes, the night shifts made it difficult to function during the day. And Kitty kept giving him crap, more therapy nonsense he had no intention of following. A lifetime filled with doctors and drugs had done more harm than good, until it had led him to the PWP, where he’d finally found his place. He wished Kitty would understand that and leave him the hell alone. Unfortunately, the empath thought she could fix everyone and everything, even those who didn’t want or need her help.

He blinked, amused to see a young Asian man furiously digging right where Jack’s head should have been.

Jack snapped his fingers. “You with me, Noah?”

Noah coughed to cover his embarrassment at zoning out again and focused on the here and now. “Yeah.”

Jack narrowed his eyes. The light blue color always made Noah think of an arctic wolf, and he remained alert, cautious around a man who was a true predator. His boss’s massive chest, arms, and neck attested to the workouts they all practiced. Jack never acted out of sorts, but from the size of him, Noah figured the guy needed the constant physical exertion to keep his cool. And frankly, he didn’t even want to think about what Jack might be like out of control.

“I have a job for you. A retro job.”

Retro, short for retrocognition—the ability to perceive past events. The reason he’d been handpicked to join the PWP in the first place.

Despite not wanting to participate, Noah’s interest stirred. A few months ago, two of the guys working the day shift had gone on a road trip and returned with a woman and a supposedly powerful artifact. There’d been rumors that Jack was restarting the PWP, and the road trip proved it. Yet Noah was in no hurry to join the ex-agents keen on heeding Jack’s call to arms. Far away from the government that had often used them to discreetly clean up their messes, Bend provided them with normalcy. A fresh start away from conspiracies, bad guys, and the ever-present threat of death.

Noah had been delving more and more into the rich history of central Oregon. He felt no hurry to leave.

Jack ran a hand through his short dark hair and sighed. “You’re not surprised about this job. I knew Price and Foreman wouldn’t keep their damn mouths shut.”

“It wasn’t that hard to figure out.” He wondered how to reject the job without seeming like he was refusing.

Jack swore under his breath. “Fine. But for the record, we’re not restarting the PWP. We’re a discreet, and I’m emphasizing discreet , service that specializes in investigations and security. Our current client wishes to remain anonymous.”

Owen Stallbridge, a multimillionaire and one of Jack’s few known associates. Noah had seen the two of them planning the building of the gym in one of his visions of the past, but he kept that knowledge to himself.

“Anonymous. Right.”

Jack glared at him. “Sometimes I really hate working with psychics.”

Noah smothered a grin, surprised to find one wanting to curl his normally sober lips.

“Our client owns a warehouse that was broken into some time ago. Lately, items from the warehouse have started to reappear. Understand that no one but myself, our client, and the thief or thieves knows he was robbed. The items taken were…unusual, to say the least.”

Intrigued despite himself, Noah asked, “Unusual how?”