Alpha Project

by James 'Fel' Galloway

Prologue

The young pines swaying in the breeze of a fine summer day rustled back and forth along a fenced perimeter, marking the boundary between public ground and Quantico Marine Corps Base, one of the most well-known military reservations in the United States of America. On that base were logistical and command centers for Marine operations, the training academy for the agents of the F.B.I., and numerous "black ops" compounds and buildings, places where having a top secret clearance wasn't enough to get within a quarter of a mile of the buildings that housed their dark secrets. They were scattered all over the vast expanse of Quantico, hidden within the mixed pine and hardwood forest of north-central Virginia, surrounded by fences and patrolled by guards who would shoot to kill anyone they found trying to break in. There were several of these ultra-high security compounds on the base, and in true secretive fashion, there was nothing to distinguish one from the other to those who even knew they were there. Each was protected by a measure of anonymity, for each compound was little more than a single lane paved road guarded by a guardhouse and armed guards, meandering into the protective cover of the forest which concealed them. One might know that a road led to a black ops compound, but unless one had prior knowledge, he wouldn't know which one led to which compound. And not knowing could get one shot, if he got too curious.

Each compound was unique. Some were but a single shack, nothing but decoys to throw off would-be invaders. Some were single small buildings surrounded by electrified fences, some were multi-building compounds enclosing yards, testing ranges, and occasionally even greenhouses or gardens. But there was one particular compound hidden in the expanses of Quantico that was unique among all of them, for it was the only compound that enclosed a playground for children.

It didn't have a name. None of them did. But because of the multiple buildings of different sizes and architectural styles scattered willy-nilly across the grounds, the residents of that compound had nicknamed it "the rabbit warren," or simply "the warren." The people who worked there called it Site Alpha, its official government designation, turning it into a name, but not officially acknowledging that it even had one. Nobody ever visited Site Alpha. Supplies were brought in by workers, and nobody even got within a mile of the compound's perimeter fence that wasn't supposed to be there. It was defended by more than roving patrols of soldiers who belonged to no officially recognized governmental organization, it was defended by an armada of motion sensors, cameras, thermal detectors, land mines, limpets, ambush zones for automated machine guns, three separate electric fences, high-powered lasers for blinding reconnaisance aircraft and satellites, white noise fields to defeat sound surveillance, and Phalanx anti-projectile systems, which used a massive barrage of .50 caliber rounds that saturated the air around what they defended with a layer of flying steel, to strike and destroy any oncoming missles, aircraft, skydivers, or drones.

Site Alpha was more heavily defended than the White House, and it was one of the most closely guarded secrets that the government had managed to keep.

Site Alpha didn't house ultra-high tech research or weaponry. It wasn't the storage and test sites for wreckage of alien spacecraft. It was actually a rather mundane and unassuming place, with its playground and little schoolhouse. It was the occupants of Site Alpha which were why it was so heavily guarded. There were seventeen people who lived at Site Alpha, ranging in age from nine to twenty-four, remarkably unassuming children and young men and women who shared a singular trait that invariably brought them together, and made them America's most precious and guarded asset.

They were all psyhic.

That, of course, was a very crude term. The technical jargon that the scientists and researchers used was psionic. "Psychic" abilities were actually a subset of psionic ability, a part of a greater whole. Seventeen young boys and girls who the researchers had started to call Alphas, after the site itself, and the nickname had stuck. Those in this most inner of inner loops always referred to these gifted boys and girls as the Alphas. And in a way, it was an eminently suitable monicker. They were the first human beings to display psionic ability to any great degree. There had been people with true talent before, but never of a level to make it worth the government's while. But these seventeen, these Alphas, these had powers and abilities that were formidable, to the extent where the government had seen the incredible value of having them working for it. They were seventeen, but they were only the seventeen Americans who had displayed talent, and other governments were seeking out and collecting up their own citizens who were starting to develop psionic ability.

Nobody was sure yet why these powers were expressing themselves now. Pollution, climatic change, evolution, racial progression, no one was certain, and there were no hard scientific answers. They only knew that they were, and because of that, it was of the most vital importance to the security and prosperity of the United States that those people out there with psionic talent be located and recruited.

Site Alpha was commanded by Marine Corps Major General Jackson Briggs, who was sitting behind his desk in his surprisingly small office on the third floor of the Nest, the central building on the compound, where the vast majority of testing, experimentation, and training was conducted. Jackson Briggs was the absolute soul of a Marine. He was in his late fifties, but was still in such shape that he could run men a third of his age into the ground without breaking a sweat. He was very tall, six and a half feet tall, and had pattern features for a black man; full lips, a rather broad nose, a stocky, burly body, a cap of curly black hair cut into a flat-top (yet still within Marine regulations for size and appearance), and piercing brown eyes that intimidated anyone who looked into them for any amount of time. He was decisive, calculating, observant, intelligent, and methodical. He had amazing attention to detail, and he could bring out the absolute best in every man and woman that served under him. He was a born leader, and he was what the Marine Corps envisioned in an officer. And that was why he was in command of the government's most important and secret project. He sat at his antique mahogany desk, a desk that had moved with him from assignment to assignment for nearly ten years, chomping at the end of a pencil as he studied pictures and bits of data on pieces of paper laid out on his desk. He was in his Class A uniform, the tan-brown and green dress uniform of the Marines, the creases of his pants and short-sleeved shirt so sharp that one could cut paper along the edges of them, a shirt on which he used Scotch-Guard on the inside so it never appeared that he ever sweated, a Drill Instructor trick he picked up when he commanded Parris Island.

Sitting on the edge of his large, beloved desk was a young woman who obviously was no Marine. She was a tall, athletically fit young woman wearing a black jumpsuit, the clothing that identied her as a resident, as an Alpha. She was a rather pretty woman in her early twenties, with curly hair that was black as midnight, tumbling over her shoulders and down her back in raven waves. Gray eyes so light that they almost looked white regarded those pictures laid out on Briggs' desk. Her name was Jessica Sheffield, or Jess, and she was the oldest of all the Alphas. She was a telepath, and quite a strong one at that, the most powerful of the five telepathic Alphas in the warren. She was leaning on one hand that was set on the desk, brushing her thick hair out of her face absently every time it slipped down over her eye. Jessica was a girl that Jackson Briggs would very much have liked to have met if he were thirty years younger. She was very pretty, she was built like a brick house, and she was very, very smart. He appreciated her beauty and her mind, but Mrs. Briggs would hit him over the head with a chair if she ever found that out. Mrs. Briggs was a very jealous woman.

"So, this is the one Alex keeps seeing," he said in his growling voice, putting the pencil down. Alex was the reason they had a Site Alpha. He was both a clairvoyant and a precognate, with a unique ability to see images of distant places and things that had an impact on the future. His power seemed strangely geared towards other Alphas, and for five years they'd had him searching for them. Alex was fifteen years old, a frail young man with a documented case of schizophrenia and a very fragile mind, so they had to be very careful with him, never push him too hard. He had his good days and his bad days, but he had led them to fourteen of the seventeen Alphas on the compound. But he had not led them to Jess. Jess was the first Alpha, who they had found as a terrified and nearly insane young girl ten years ago in a mental hospital, who they had realized was truly telepathic. Her powers had driven her to the brink of insanity, and they'd kept her controlled with massive doses of drugs that made her nearly comatose most of the time. They kept her like that because when she was not drugged, she terrified the institution's workers. She could hear the thoughts of others, and when she was greatly agitated, she could use her power to attack others, invading their minds and able to take any information within them that she pleased, among other, less pleasant things. The discovery of Jess had awakened the government to the existence of the Alphas, and her rehabilitation by the scientists who studied her gifts and trained her in their use were why the Alpha Project had been instituted. Site Alpha was a place where the Alphas could be taught how to use their gifts, a place where they would be understood and accepted, and all they had to do in return was perform occasional work for the government that had pulled them out of mental hospitals, homeless shelters, and the streets. All seventeen were so grateful to discover they weren't going insane, so happy to be among people who accepted them, that they all willingly agreed to become a part of Project Alpha on a permanent basis.

"It took them a while to find him," she affirmed in her low, throaty voice. "This one's different, Jack. He's not like the others."

"I can see that," he grunted. "Twenty-two years old, and he's been living on the streets since he was twelve. The local police suspect him for all kinds of shit, I can see," he said, flipping a piece of paper over to read the one beneath. "Burglary, extortion, arson, mob ties, even suspicion of killing a cop. They have quite a file on him, but they've never arrested him. Looks like a punk to me."

"That's why he's so dangerous," she said. "This one's not a scared kid, Jack. This one knows what the hell he's doing, and if even half of all this shit is true, he's going to be dangerous."

"What did Maggie say about him?" he asked. Maggie was a medium, who had connections to spirits and forces beyond human comprehension. They gave her information of all kinds, and when asked specific questions, sometimes she gave them informative answers. Sometimes she didn't. It seemed completely random.

"He's a telekinetic," she answered. "And he's a strong one. She hinted that he can do things that Pete and Lucy have never even thought of."

General Briggs was quiet a moment. "That makes a kind of sense," he announced. "The police down there has been watching him since he was seventeen, and they've never caught him doing anything illegal, or caught him using his power. If he's been surviving by using his power, then he's got about five years of practice on Petey. And when it comes down to doing something or dying, it tends to make a person pick up tricks." He held up a picture. "What's with the white hair?"

"We don't know," she answered, tapping the image and the jagged streak of white hair that marred the dark auburn color of the rest of the man's hair, with a hint of a scar on the forehead leading up to that white streak. "That scar there hints that it's a remnant of an old injury. But it does make him very easy to identify in a crowd."

"That'll make it easy," Briggs grunted.

"How are we going to do this?"

"I'm not sending you, Jess," he said immediately. "This one is dangerous. You said so yourself."

"I'm not a child anymore, Jack," she flared. "I don't need to hide behind your stars. I'm the best telepath you have. You should let me try to recruit him first."

"I'm sending Barry."

"Barry? Barry's too stupid," she said gratingly. "And he has a temper. You send Barry when you're going to abduct someone. We should try to recruit him first. If he's as strong as Maggie's hinting, we don't want to piss him off. How are we going to deal with him when we get him up here?"

"We've handled combative Alphas before."

"You've handled inexperienced Alphas, frightened children who didn't know what they were doing," she said quickly. "This one is not a child, Jack! He's probably already well versed in his power, and we don't know what he can do! Send me, Jack. Let me try to recruit him before we send in an abduction team."

General Briggs glared shortly at her. He'd considered that, but her reasons to send her were the same reasons he'd decided on Barry. This one was an unknown, and he had ten years--at least--to hone his telekinetic ability. Add the fact that he was a punk, a street hustler with quite a bad record, and it made it too dangerous to send in a single Alpha to try to persuade him to join the project. Jess was stronger than Barry, but Barry was a six foot tall hulking bull of a young man who could take care of himself physically as well as mentally. If this street punk fought back, Barry would be much better equipped to deal with it.

He had to take those kinds of precautions. Even if this street punk wasn't a telepath, their research had shown that if he'd become proficient with his own powers, that mental training would help him resist a telepathic attack. If he could fight off Jess's telepathic attack, she'd have no physical defense against him.

"Oh please!" she snapped. "I wouldn't be going down there to pick a fight with him in the first place! We need to woo this one, Jack, not kidnap him! And I'd be better at that than Barry any day."

Briggs suppressed a smile as he glowered at her. "Keep yourself out my head, young lady," he warned.

"I didn't do a thing," she protested. "I don't need telepathy to see it in your eyes, Jack. Send me. Let me try to persuade him. I'm better equipped to try that with him anyway," she concluded, passing a hand over her chest meaningfully to draw his attention to her breasts, a formidable piece of equipment when a woman was trying to persuade a man to do something.

Briggs did chuckle then. Jess was a rather bold young lady, and he always appreciated her sense of humor. "Sorry, Jess, not this time," he told her. "I'm sending Barry, Petey, and Michelle. Barry'll try to talk to him first, but if that fails, he'll be better equipped to handle him afterwards. Besides, I don't want you to be there. You're my best telepath, and you might need to try to persuade him after he gets here. I don't want his opinion of you tainted if we have to volunteer him to join."

She frowned, but said nothing more. Briggs looked at the picture, taken of him on a sidewalk from a car across a busy street, and he could do nothing but frown. Briggs had a bad feeling about this one. He didn't need to be an Alpha to trust those hunches, and those hunches were why he was sending Barry instead of Jess.

They were usually right.

He'd much rather leave him alone, not worry about it, but if he didn't come to Alpha, then some other government's psionics might discover him and try to recruit him. That could not be allowed to happen. If this MacKenzie didn't work for America...then he wouldn't work for anyone.

Briggs had orders about those situations.

He frowned again, studying the picture, feeling that bad feeling only get worse.

This Terrence Agamemnon MacKenzie was going to be a real problem.

Chapter 01