Out of Sight
by T. J. MacGregor

prologue

October 10, 1998
Broward County, Florida

The hangar doors clattered shut with a finality that unsettled Logan Griffin. She fidgeted with the end of the silk scarf that held her blond hair in a ponytail and swallowed the remnants of the tiny pill that had been dissolving under her tongue. It left a bitter taste in her mouth, like limes mixed with cloves. It was the third dose she and Tyler had taken in the last twelve hours and was supposedly a necessity. No one had told them what it was. Such questions weren't allowed. That was in the contract.

She glanced over at Tyler. He seemed calm and probably looked that way to others. But the tension in her husband's jaw and the pinched wariness at the corners of his dark eyes told her that he felt uneasy. Not that he would ever admit it to himself or to her.

They were seated in the middle of the old hangar, in comfortable canvas chairs on a raised platform, their suitcases at their feet. They also wore backpacks stuffed with various items that George Nash had insisted they bring with them. It seemed excessive, but hey, she wasn't paying the bills. If Nash wanted them to bring mousetraps and birth control pills, she would do it. The project was his baby and he had paid her and Tyler thirty grand to be the first human guinea pigs.

That money would pay off some of their graduate school debt, allow them to update their car and move to a larger, more comfortable apartment. It would give them a cushion until they found jobs. They couldn't depend on Tyler's family for help and she had no family. They needed the money.
They had been told what the project involved and it had sounded exciting and cutting edge at the time. But now Logan was having serious second thoughts. Even though Nash had assured them repeatedly that they could back out at any time and keep half the money, she knew from the start that it really wasn't an option. They had signed too many legal documents with fine small print about liability issues. For thirty grand, they basically had signed away their rights to sue if something went wrong.

Nash and his assistant, Colleen Roth, had also assured them the process was reversible and that nothing would go wrong. And in private, Colleen had told Logan that if she really thought there was even a remote possibility that the procedure was risky, she wouldn't be involved. This little confidence had soothed Logan's misgivings at the time, but did nothing for her now.

Even though the temperature in the hangar stayed at a comfortable sixty-five degrees, her palms were damp, her shirt stuck to her back. She wished she and Tyler were inside the open cockpit bi-wing plane parked some fifty feet away, taxiing toward that the hangar door, about to soar through the blue skies above the South Florida peninsula. It was December and the thought of all that cool, sweet-smelling air held infinite appeal at the moment.

"You two know the routine," Nash said over the PA, his voice crisp and efficient despite the ridiculously early hour. "You'll hear a humming, the air may crackle, as if with static electricity, then there'll be a flash of light. At that point, you may feel some disorientation. Just breathe normally, stay seated, hold hands, do whatever roots you in the here and now. Any questions?"

Tyler took her hand, their fingers lacing together. "Not from us," he replied.

She envied the confidence in his voice, the apparent certainty. He brought her hand to his mouth and kissed one of her knuckles. With his other hand, he covered the mike attached to the collar of the shirt she had bought him for his birthday last month.

"An adventure," Tyler whispered. "Right?"

"Right." Logan looked over at him, Tyler with his big smile, his square jaw, and those dark eyes that looked rich enough to eat. "But Tyler, if anything goes wrong…"

"I know, I know." He sounded exasperated. "We've been over this five million times, Logan."

She jerked her hand away from his. "We need a few minutes here, George." She spoke loudly into the mike attached to her jacket, then pinched the thing open and set it on top of her bulging suitcase so the people in the control room wouldn't overhear them.

"Sure, no problem," Nash replied.

Tyler also removed his mike and set it down. "What did you do that for?"

"I feel uneasy. There are risks, Tyler."

"Well, shit, we knew that four months ago. If we walk out, we lose the other fifteen grand."

"And if they turn on their gizmos, we may be zapped into Never Never Land."

He rolled his dark, beautiful eyes toward the ceiling, making it clear that he thought she was having eleventh hour jitters, nothing more. "Look, they have all kinds of stringent rules and safeguards in place for this kind of research."

"Maybe so, but we're the first, so they really don't know." She gestured toward the side of the platform, where several Tesla coils were attached. "We don't know for sure what happens with those things."

"We've seen what happens, Logan. We've watched the experiments dozens of times."

Ha. They had watched experiments with objects - pens and pencils, gum, tools of all shapes and sizes, books, bottles of water, every conceivable type of inanimate object. But the only living thing they had seen undergo this process was a cockroach and that had happened accidentally. The bug was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and as the process had reversed itself, the cockroach had died.

Not exactly a rave review.

"They haven't even told us what's in these pills we've taken."

"They're probably just to take the edge off."

"But we don't know for sure. We don't know anything for sure. Suppose the process doesn't reverse itself?"

"Of course it will reverse itself." He sounded irritated now. "We've seen it happen over and over again. You're thinking about the roach, that what happened to it might happen to us."

"It could."

"There's nothing remotely similar between a roach and human beings, Logan."

"Are we ready, people?" Colleen's voice rang out in the cavernous hangar.

"Just about," Tyler called back. Then, to Logan: "If you're uneasy with this whole thing, then don't do it. I'll do it. The contract says we get paid as long as one of us participates."

Before Logan could say anything, George Nash limped out into the hangar from the control room. He was using his cane today, leaning heavily on it so that he could move more quickly. Colleen hugged his left side and to his right and slightly behind him stood a small man with hunched shoulders, a rich, olive complexion, and the features of a South American Indian. He had thick, black hair, long hair pulled into a ponytail. He continued to hang back as Nash and Colleen stopped just short of the platform. Logan knew she had seen the Indian before at the compound in northern Florida where she and Tyler had trained. But she'd thought he was just a campesino, one of the many migrant workers who tended the grounds. If that were the case, though, he certainly wouldn't be here, now.

"Well?" said George Nash. He fixed his hands to his hips.

He was an eccentric-looking man, Logan thought, very tall and lanky, with a wild, untamed beard streaked with gray. His right leg was apparently shorter than his left because he wore a special shoe with a stacked heel. Even with the shoe on, though, his limp was pronounced. His wire-rim glasses reflected twin points of light.

"Are we ready?" he asked.

"I am," said Tyler.

Nash stared at Logan, just daring her to back out. Tyler watched her, too, the weight of his gaze as heavy as a hand against her shoulder. "I'm ready," she finally said.

Nash smiled. "Excellent. The transponders attached to your shirts are already emitting a noise our radar will pick up, so don't worry about our losing you." He turned to the Indian. "Luis? Tienes algo que decir? "

The Indian gazed at Logan with dark eyes as ancient as the blood that rushed through his veins. She held his gaze, aware that something inexplicable and strange passed between them. "Solamente una cosa. Esto no debe pasar."

Logan's Spanish was basic, but she caught the gist of what the Indian said: This shouldn't be allowed to happen. It wasn't what she wanted to hear and it certainly wasn't what Nash wanted anyone to say in front of her and Tyler. He looked miffed and gave the Indian a dirty look. "Okay, let's start the sixty-second countdown now." Nash raised his arm and sliced it down through the air, signaling the control room to start the countdown. "Good luck," he added, and moved swiftly back toward the control room, Colleen hurrying alongside him.

The Indian remained still for a moment, watching them, watching her. "Who is that guy?" Tyler whispered.

"I don't know," she whispered back.

The Indian smiled slightly, then pulled something from the pocket of his baggy, faded cotton slacks and hissed, "Chica, guardelo," and tossed something at her.

Logan caught it , her fingers closed over it. Then he turned away and she opened her fist and stared down at a small, flat rock with some sort of fossil embedded in it. She looked up quickly, but the Indian was already gone.

What's that? Tyler mouthed.

A stone, she mouthed back, and pocketed it before Nash or anyone else in the control room could see her holding something that hadn't been authorized.

Colleen, her voice calm and businesslike, had already started the countdown. "Twenty-one, twenty…"

Tyler reached for Logan's hand again and gave it a squeeze. "I'm glad you stayed," he whispered.

"It'd be worse sitting inside the control room."

He laughed. "Love you, Logan."

"Ditto," she replied, an echo of the line from their favorite movie, Ghost.

Those were the last words they spoke to each other before a piercing hum filled the air and the platform began to vibrate. She felt the vibrations through the soles of her feet and tightened her grasp on Tyler's hand. The hum escalated in pitch until it felt as if hot needles were being driven into her skull. She gritted her teeth and squeezed her eyes shut, but the noise got worse and she screamed and doubled over at the waist, hands pressed to her ears to block out the horrible noise.

The air exploded with light and for long, terrible moments she felt as if her body were being torn in opposite directions, the skin flaying, muscles ripping open, bones snapping like dry twigs. Her blood boiled, froze, then melted and froze again. Her brain screamed at her to leap up, to run, to flee, but her body paid no attention to her brain. It refused to move, couldn't move. She felt welded to the chair. She knew that she screamed, that she struggled to free herself from the paralysis that gripped her, but she didn't know if any sound came out.

Just as suddenly as the paralysis had seized her, it released her and she jumped up so fast that the mike and the transponder were torn away from her clothes. "You lied," she shrieked. "You lied about everything!"

Logan stumbled over her suitcase, fell off the platform, and landed hard on her knees. As she heaved herself up, she spun around and grabbed her suitcase, dimly aware of voices shouting over the PA system, of people running toward her, of the strangeness of the light. Yes, that more than anything. Everything beyond her looked as though it were enveloped in a thick haze. But when she glanced back at Tyler, who stood unsteadily in front of his chair, his features seized up with puzzlement, the light seemed normal.

"Tyler, fast, we have to get outta here!" She shouted the words, but he didn't seem to hear them.

Logan ran toward the hangar door, dodging the technicians who dived for her, her panic so extreme that she never looked back, never slowed. Voices blasted over the PA, locks clattered into place on the hangar door, employees poured out of the control room area. She barreled toward an EXIT sign to her right and slammed through it, setting off alarms, bells, whistles.

She raced outside, into bright morning light that pierced her eyes like shards of glass. Hide, fast, but where? Fields of vegetables to her right, a wall of pines to her left, the road to nowhere straight in front of her. But on that road to nowhere was a Florida Power and Light truck, its two technicians staring toward the hangar.

Logan, still moving, glanced back. Nash, Colleen, and a dozen other people spilled from the hangar door as though the building were spitting them out. She forced herself to run faster, faster. Air burst from her mouth, blood pounded in her veins. The FP&L guys would help her. She couldn't scream, she didn't have the breath, so she waved her arms frantically to attract their attention, waved until her pack slid off her shoulder and down her arm and she nearly lost it. She kept racing toward them.

They didn't seem to see her. Or maybe they thought she was part of Nash's group. She didn't know, couldn't tell. She almost had reached the truck when she tripped and fell gracelessly forward and rolled down the soft grass, into a shallow gully, her suitcase tumbling down after her.

She rolled into weeds, rocks, discarded bottles and cans, a roadside dumping ground. Dazed, her side aching, her eyes burning from the light, she sat up and saw the FP&L workmen not three feet from her. They were looking straight at her, but neither of them moved.

"Hey," she wheezed. "Hey…"

The men looked at each other. "You hear something?" the taller one asked.

"Uh, yeah. Must be those wackos from the hangar."

"Sounded closer than that."

JesusGod. No wonder I got away.

Logan shot to her feet, hoisted her bag to one shoulder and her pack to the other, and moved quickly toward the road, the waiting truck. She put her bags inside as quietly as she could, then climbed in, settling among the cables, the ropes, the tools. She gazed toward the hangar, across what now seemed like a vast distance separating her from Nash and his people and from Tyler.

Tyler, forgive me, I'm sorry, sweet Christ, I'm so sorry. But I can't go back in there.

The shrouding had worked.

Something broke inside her then, something huge and irreparable, and she sank down against her bags, hands covering her eyes, and wept for what Nash had done to her, to Tyler, to their marriage. She wept for her own stupidity, for trusting someone she didn't know.

She could feel pain. She could cry. She could feel discomfort, hunger, anguish, fear. None of that had changed. What had changed, she thought, was the most obvious thing.

She was completely invisible.