[i]Previously...[/i]

Sam was not there for the tour. She found herself on the streets of New York, desperately attempting to cover her escape from federal agents. She ducked down an alley and flipped open her netbook.

[i]"How do they keep [b]finding[/b] me?"[/i]

She decided that her adversaries were more intelligent than she'd previously thought...and set about using that strength as a weakness. Keystrokes blended with one another as her fingers worked furiously to establish the code which would obfuscate her true intentions. The local cell network broadcast her jamming signal in a sufficient radius to deny triangulation within a few miles, then put to work an algorithm which would slowly shift that jamming signal northward. She took great care not to make her deception obvious, employing every trick in her arsenal to prevent the Feds' discovery of how she was achieving the scrambler code.

The code, as it turns out, was the important part. Whether or not an individual could interpret a scrambled signal was only half of it. What she needed was not to hide transmissions, but to hide the [i]reason[/i] for those transmissions. With a shifting signal source, her enemy could track changes in a developing pattern and follow the trend. They would chase that wild goose to the tip of Canada before they realized they were being had.

Naturally, the prescribed reaction was to head south. Sam had seen that movie. If the Feds managed to determine that the signal shift was computerized, they may suspect it as a diversion. She therefore randomized her movements within the jamming field, keeping always within range of it, but never near the fore or aft of it. There were square miles of it to cover, and logic dictated she'd be either north or south of the phenomenon. Her true intentions were never to escape at all, but to make them [i]think[/i] she had. Why burn resources if they can be slightly charred and later revitalized?

That had been her intention...

[hr]

[i]Ten Days Ago[/i]

Sam had given them the slip. She'd holed up in a dense industrial section near Detroit, Michigan, having led her adversaries into international territory. She knew that would be a jumble of paperwork and posturing, and so she was safe...for the moment.

The new facility had little to offer her. She kicked a defunct conveyor and made a face. The old warehouse still had power, and served a [i]hell[/i] of a lot better than this run-down pit. But, sacrifices had to be made if she was to remain free. Her recent brushes with the Men in Black had taught her a thing or two about radio frequency broadcasts, and she was eager to see how they would respond in her most recent experiment. Like Ahab and his whale, Sam could not leave well enough alone. She spent the next day setting up her equipment to try again.

[hr]

"You're not gonna get away that easy..." Sam threatened her equipment. She scrounged for a length of wire and tested its electrical properties. In a pinch, it would hold the necessary current to complete this phase of the experiment. She jammed it into the fuse box and threw the switch, half hoping, half daring it to fail. When the device failed to demonstrate any visible phenomenon, Sam slumped her shoulders and mentally resolved to punish her equipment with death-by-melting.

"Current flow is stable," she mused, probing the power circuit with a multimeter. "Electron beams...beaming..." She tweaked the phase of the CRT monitor tube array she'd salvaged, on a whim, and -seeing no tangible evidence anything had happened- set about returning the entire mock-up to position one. That is to say...she [i]attempted[/i] to do so...

"What the fu-" she instinctively uttered, frozen in mid-stride by an unseen force. She tried reaching forward, but her arm would not budge. Her feet refused to move from the cement floor, and she found she could not even turn her head. Once her stubborn streak subsided, however, she did discover she could retreat backward, away from the phenomenon.

Sam grinned as the cat and the devil should. "Bingo..."

[hr]

[i]Present day, present time, The Lodge...[/i]

Sam's head lolled back, curving to match the natural shape of the back of the couch. Her jaw fell open, producing a contented snore. On occasion, her leg or arm would twitch, and a mind less acclimated to REM sleep might have suggested she was chasing something...or someone.