“Blue,” he said, and the door opened.

“Are you going to ask my favorite color?” Breanna asked, following him inside.

“Just thought I’d lighten things up for the colonel,” said a short woman dressed in a black pantsuit as she stepped out from behind the security station opposite the door. It was her voice that Danny had heard. “I watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail last night. I could have asked you what the aerial velocity of a swallow carrying a coconut was,” she added, pushing the mike of her headset away. “But I was afraid you’d get it wrong. Then I’d have to kill you.”

“This is Sergeant Mercer,” said Breanna. “She’s going to do a weapons check on you, even though that door wouldn’t have opened if you’d had a gun.”

“Procedure,” said Mercer. “Lighten up, Colonel. I promise not to hurt.”

Mercer took what looked like a lipstick holder from her pants pocket and waved it around Danny.

“He’s clean. Likes the Yankees, though. Might be a problem.”

“Your little wand told you that?” said Danny.

“We have our ways, Colonel. Welcome aboard.”

The room they had entered was a long, rectangular space that held a security station and an elevator to a lower level. The elevator had no visible controls, nor did it work by voice command. You simply entered and were whisked downward. Danny found that mildly annoying.

“What if I changed my mind?” he asked Breanna.

“Then you get out at the bottom and get back in,” she said as the door opened on the lower level. “But I don’t believe anyone has ever changed their mind. Come on.”

Danny had expected a hallway similar to the laboratory areas at Dreamland, most of which were also located in underground bunkers. Instead the door opened on a wide, open space that looked more like a parking garage than a science lab. Thick steel girders ran overhead, supporting a network of beams and pipes. The floor was cement. Girders punctuated the space at regular intervals.

Cabinets were clustered around the girders at the far end. These were computers, most working as massively parallel units in so-called “cloud” arrangements. Thick cables snaked across the floor, connecting them to different peripherals and in some cases to each other.

Overhead lights came on as Breanna and Danny walked, then faded behind them. Finally a set of spots came up on a black wall. There were no doors or windows in it; no visible opening of any kind. Breanna strode toward it. Danny followed, expecting at any second that the panel would move upward or back, that some hidden opening would appear to allow them to enter. But it didn’t.

He stopped a foot from the wall.

Breanna passed through it.

Danny had seen many incredible things at Dreamland—aircraft that flew themselves, blimps that could disappear, controllers that could be manipulated by thought. But disappearing walls was beyond anything there.

He put his hand forward, touching the surface of the wall. It felt solid, as solid as any of the walls in his house. He tapped his fingernails against it, made a drumming sound.

I’m losing my mind, he thought.

“Danny?”

Convinced he was about to wake up from the most involved dream he’d ever had, he took a short step to his left, aligning himself with the exact spot Breanna had used to go through the wall. Then he took a short breath and stepped forward.

Into a well-furnished reception area.

He turned back around. The wall was a solid, a darkish beige color on this side.

“It’s nanotechnology,” said Breanna. She was standing near him. “It is a wall. And an opening.”

“Is it really there?”

“Absolutely. Touch it.”

“I did,” said Danny. He did again, drumming his knuckles this time.

“But you can move through it, if you move deliberately,” she said. “And if it recognizes you. Like this.”

Breanna put her entire arm through, then turned and smiled at Danny, half in, half out.

“Parlor games are difficult to resist,” said a familiar voice.

Danny turned and found Ray Rubeo frowning at him.

“Doc!” said Danny. “You’re here?”

“Apparently,” said Rubeo. There was a slight bit of gray around the temples, but otherwise very little about him had changed in the past fifteen years, including his frown. “Though in this place you never really know.”

Rubeo was no longer a government employee. But several of his companies were under contract to the Office of Technology, and when Breanna had offered him the opportunity to brief Danny Freah on Whiplash, he had decided to take her up on it. Rubeo had always liked Freah and the Whiplash people personally, though he found many of their security procedures annoying. The pinkie rings had been his idea, an easy way of eliminating many of the delays imposed by the security checks and constant surveillance. Like everyone admitted to Room 4—the code name for the basement facility on the CIA campus—he, too, wore one.

“I suppose you want an explanation about the nano wall,” said Rubeo.

“Well, yeah.”

“Very well. It’s a parlor trick.”

The wall worked by arranging energy within certain frequencies; to put it crudely, it was as if molecules were iron shavings in a child’s Etch A Sketch game, and used to draw a wall. The field could be broken by movement at certain speeds, but not others; the wall could not be penetrated by bullets, for example.

“So it could protect against a missile?” asked Danny.

“Concrete is just as effective.” Rubeo waved his hand. “There are perhaps some uses for camouflage, that sort of thing. Or very expensive walls.”

It also made a high-quality projection screen.

“Have a seat,” said Breanna, gesturing to one of the nearby club chairs. “And I’ll show you what it can do.”

The wall morphed into a crisp video display, the sharpest Danny had ever seen, demonstrating its prowess with a scene from last year’s Super Bowl.

“Another parlor trick,” said Rubeo, this time with a touch of pride.

The video ended abruptly, replaced by the seals of the CIA and the Department of Defense.

“The Office of Technology is involved in a lot of projects,” said Breanna. “We work very closely with a number of government agencies. Some of us work for the Defense Department, and some of us for the CIA. You might say our responsibilities are intramural.”

The CIA still had its own technology department, separate from Breanna’s operation. The Wizards of Langley were responsible for a host of innovations, everything from supersonic spy planes to microscopic bugs. But changes in the organizational structure of the intelligence and military communities, along with severe budget cuts, had moved a great deal of their work over to the Defense Department. Some research had always been outsourced in any event, and many of the changes simply meant that the scientists, engineers, and other technical experts simply had a different paymaster.

Whether directly funded by the CIA or through the Defense Department, the problem wasn’t coming up with new technology. It was getting it out of the developmental labs and into the hands of field agents. Breanna, with her Dreamland background, had been picked to make that happen. One solution was to simply eliminate much of the bureaucratic infrastructure. Where once layers of liaisons and department managers had fought over turf in both Defense and Intelligence, now a handful of people worked with her and the scientists directly.

“Is Whiplash going to be a CIA command?” asked Danny. “Or military?”

“Neither,” said Breanna. “It’s more like a hybrid.”

“How?”

“We’re going to work that out. You’re going to help.”

“OK.”

Breanna glanced at her watch. Reid and Nuri Lupo were due to meet them in a half hour.

“Let’s introduce him to MY-PID,” she told Rubeo. “We have a meeting soon and I’d like him to be familiar with some of the technology.”