Robbery, Homicide, Arson, Vehicular

I only had a vague idea where the police station was in Fredericksburg, so we did some driving around town for a few minutes before I was onto its trail.

I didn't really have a plan for what I was going to say. The police would wonder why my house had burned down and why someone had called 911 saying men with guns had stormed it just prior. Were it not for that 911 call I could just say I wasn't home, or that I left some stress-release candles burning next to the drapes while I was scraping the safety labels off of all my aerosol cans with a knife and cooking bacon in my bedroom with a portable stove, using wood shavings for that hickory flavor. Without that 911 call, it was just another house burning down in the middle of the night. Instead, it was a whole conspiracy that I didn't have the capacity to lie my way out of. This is all peripheral to the fact that my car was found bisecting a guy with a dead cop in his trunk seven days ago.

"What exactly did you say when you called 911?" I asked Amy as I parked in the lot of the station, a rather modern-looking building made of tan stone blocks and metal accents. It looked more like a mall food court than a police station, and the architecture reminded me of my high school. Maybe they were designed by the same guy.
"Last night?" she responded, not seeming to appreciate the slight curvature of the roof line or the amount of natural light that would come from the glass atrium on the eastern side of the building.
"In my closet."
"I don't know, why?"
"Because depending on what you said, I might have to go into there and tell some nice police officers that some guys burned my house down to hide the evidence of their failed attempt to kidnap or kill some teenagers because of, or as a product of, the fact that I had my DNA screwed around with as an embryo and have been secretly trained as a soldier every day in school in some black-ops experiment run by the Marine Corps and designed by my dead father, who may have been killed for trying to sell those designs to foreign governments."
"Let me think..." she said, pursing her lips and rolling her eyes slightly upwards.
"Did you say who you were, at least?"
"N--no," she said.
"What did you say?"
"I gave them your address, which I didn't really remember because I've never sent you a letter so I just said the brownish house about nine houses down on your street, and said to send the police."
"You-- you didn't say anything about guys with guns?"
"I didn't know about any guys with guns. You started watching that video of yourself on your computer, then you stopped talking, darted out of your room, then came back and stuffed me in your closet and handed me your illegally-purchased handgun and told me to call the police. This was all before I heard shooting downstairs and you came and jumped out your window."
"So all you said was to send the police to my house?"
"Yes. They asked for my name but I hung up."
"Oh."
"Is that good?"
"Yes it is."

I put my hand on my door's handle and started to open the door. Amy did the same with hers, but stopped and looked back at me. "Am I coming in?" she asked.

I thought about it, and decided it was probably best if she did. I tried to remember everything that happened that night so I could put together a reasonable story. Amy had called 911 from my cell phone, so that number would be on record, so I couldn't exactly say the call was from a neighbor who noticed the house was on fire. We'd gone out to eat just before and I'd used my debit card to pay so there'd be that as proof that I was out of the house. But why would I call 911 from my phone if I had nothing to do with the fire?

"We were driving back to my place and from outside we saw people breaking into my house, so we parked and you called 911 from my phone while we watched from across the street, or something."
"And why didn't I give my name or say what was going on?"
"Because... you were scared, and trying to make the call quick because you didn't want any of the guys to hear you."
"And why didn't you make the call?"
"Because... I'd left the car and was going to sneak around to the back of my house to see what they were doing, and I gave you my phone and said to use it."
"And why didn't I use my phone?"
"Because... yours had died."
"And why didn't we go right to the police?"
"Because... we're stupid teenagers? We went to your place."
"That doesn't make any sense. Anybody would go to the police if their house was being broken into."
"I don't know, maybe we were all kinds of high and didn't want to go to the police until we'd come down."
"That's dumb."
"Then what? Stupid teenagers? We were going to wait at your place until the cops came but we both fell asleep and didn't wake up until a few hours ago."
"Right. Fell asleep. Because of all the drugs."
I sighed.

After a few minutes we had our story straight, making sure we were synchronized on every made-up detail so we couldn't be separated and made to contradict each other. We went into the police station, stopping at the front desk and saying my house had unfortunately burned down and I believed my mother was inside the station somewhere. I was directed to the second floor, and so to the second floor I went. The sign by the stairwell door on the second floor said "Investigation: Robbery, Homicide, Arson, Vehicular" and I paused, noting that in the past few days I'd dabbled in a bit of each. I couldn't think of any robbery per-se, though, so I awarded ten points to my own scruples. Bank fraud must be on the third floor.

When I pulled the heavy metal door open I remembered stealing that kid's passport in the Vienna airport and took back those ten points.

The floor wasn't the bustling, open floor of littered desks and furious investigation and stale coffee I somewhat expected. Instead, it looked like I was in an office building, standing in the midst of a hallway flanked on both sides by rows of office doors and wide windows. Amy and I wandered the halls until though one of the windows I saw my mom sitting inside a large conference room, sitting at a long, wooden table with her back to the window. Across from her was sitting, in the same plain black suit I'd seen him wear a few days ago, Special Agent Bremer. He was talking to my mom from his seat, his left hand idly spinning an empty Styrofoam coffee cup on the surface of the table.

"Who's that?" Amy asked, peering into the window along with me. "He doesn't have a badge."
"It's on his belt," I said.
"So he's a cop."
"No, he's FBI."
"One of the guys who talked to you before?"
I nodded in the affirmative.
"What would he be doing here?"
"No idea," I said.

Then, into view strolled Special Agent Rubino, walking and talking into a cell phone. He was pacing the room and had stopped behind Bremer when he glanced up at me through the window, acknowledged recognition, and waved me into the room.

I shrugged, took in a breath, and pulled the wooden door to the conference room open and waited for the bullets to start flying at me. When my mother saw me she got up and darted toward me, hugging me and asking if I was alright. I couldn't remember the last time I was so embarrassed. I realized that the last time I'd seen her, the biggest concern I had was a fight at school and an unwillingness to return. With her out visiting my aunt and leaving me alone, I'd gotten used to the slight amount of freedom and having to fend for myself. With her back, I feared I might slip back into being a kid again. Maybe, I pondered, if that happened all of this madness would go away again. Maybe all the death and guns and lies were all just teenage home-alone antics I'd "gotten myself into" and, with at least one parent around again, I'd take my scolding and have everything sorted out by grown-ups.

Just maybe.

I noticed that there were no police officers in the room. Just two FBI agents, two Bakers, and one confused girl trying to decide her place in all of this.

I sat down at the table across from where Bremer sat, and Amy sat a few seats over, I suppose to suggest her disconnection. She was only really there to back up my story to the police.

"How was Vienna?" Bremer asked with a grin once I'd sat down.
I opened my mouth slightly and darted my eyes in my mom's direction.
"She knows," Bremer said.
Rubino, having just finished his phone conversation, said, "We just told her everything."

I looked over at my mom, noticed the redness in her eyes and the tears drying on her face.

I looked back at Bremer. Rubino was sitting down next to him.
"And what does 'everything' include? Because I'm not exactly crystal-clear on everything myself," I said.
Rubino glanced at Amy, then back at me. "Looks like you've answered that question at least," he said.
Bah, more question talk. "Which question?" I asked, very near losing my patience. I wondered how easy it would be to flip this table over.
"How to tell if a girl likes you. I thought you were joking at the time."

I glanced at Amy, grinning and shaking her head, her face leading into her hand propped up on the table.
"I was joking," I said, "but I really need you to tell me what's going on here. I've had a very tedious week and haven't gotten much in the way of answers."
"She'll have to step out," Rubino said, indicating Amy.
"What? She already knows everything here," I said.
"It's adorable that you think that," he said, "but she'll still have to be outside the room for this."

Amy looked over at me, I shrugged at her. She shrugged back, then got up and exited the room. My mom watched both sides of that exchange.

"You said you were in Quantico this morning," Bremer started, "we assume you were there to get Schumer to tell you. About the program, I mean."
"You know about the... program?" I asked.
"Well, yes. We always have."

I thought I felt my jaw twitch. "You knew, this whole time, and you didn't tell me? God, if you'd have told me about this last week I wouldn't have had to go through all of this!"
"We weren't sure that you didn't already know yourself," Bremer said. "We couldn't tell you about it if you didn't know, and we couldn't ask you if you knew without telling you. So, we just asked if you had any questions. We figured, if you knew or didn't, the fact that somebody tried to kill you last Saturday, or that you managed to kill him amazingly, might make you just a little curious."
"What do you mean you couldn't tell me if I didn't know? That would be the main reason to tell me, so I wouldn't have to go trekking across the globe and scaring the hell out of my pretend-principal to find out."
Rubino spoke up, "It's not exactly you can just go up to somebody unsolicited and tell them."
Then Bremer said, "And it was important for us to know how you found out yourself. If you'd already known, that meant that your father had to have told you before he died. If not, we needed you to track down the information from its source."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean," Bremer said slowly, "we needed to use you as a source to get the information for yourself so we can get the rest of the story."

"Still not making any sense," I said.
"We still don't know exactly what Schumer's did and we don't have enough evidence to take him down for it. We were planning on approaching you just before your birthday and telling you, hopefully get you to wear a wire or something for when he or one of his stooges tells you that he just has to say a few words and you'll wake up as a fully trained soldier or whatever lie he was going to tell. We wanted you to be able to find out naturally, so we could track the information organically until we had enough evidence."

I sat silently, contemplating. I still hadn't had any caffeine today so my brain was a little slow in processing all of this new information.

"Were you two the ones on my dad's case before he died? Is that how you knew him?" I said. Schumer said that the FBI was who found out that my dad was trying to sell secrets, and that it was an FBI sting operation that lead to his death.
"Yes, we were dealing with him. We were hoping he would get us enough information about the program to be any use for us, but he died before we had enough."
"Wait, what are you talking about? 'Be any use for you'? What do you care about the program itself? I thought it was enough that you had my dad trying to sneak out the information. Why would you care about the program itself?"
Bremer furrowed his brow. "I don't follow," he said.
"And neither do I," I replied.

"Alright, look," Rubino cut in, holding his palms up, "the relevant information here is that we need to know about what Schumer's little project and you're in the best position to help us do so."
"And with no motivation for me to do so---"
"Your motivation is that we and the entire Bureau are the only people holding the police back from locking you in a cell. We had to tell them that you're an asset to us last week when they had you for a dead cop and John Doe in Lorton, and today we had to tell them a similar lie when they wanted to know why neighbors heard shooting at your house and then watched out their windows as the place exploded."
"Exploded?"
"Since all of this may be our fault for not approaching this correctly and putting you in harm's way, we're keeping the heat off of you. When the Austrian government or Interpol or Europol call us up to ask us about whatever havoc you probably caused over there, we'll be holding them back too. All of this is still on the condition that you remain an asset, and continue to provide us with information about the program or whatever else we ask for." He shut up and folded his arms.
"I guess that means I play ball," I said through my clenched teeth.

Bremer and Rubino stood up in unison. "Good," Rubino said. "We'll leave you to deal with each other, and we'll take care of the police report on the fire so your insurance will cover it. One of us will call you in a few days when we need you."

The two walked to the door, which Rubino opened and walked through. Bremer followed, then stuck his head back in the room.

"Oh, I thought you should know," he started, "that Doe you left in Lorton. We tracked down his identity. Name's Carl Dingan, he had a file at the Bureau as a hitter and I guess we've been looking for him for a while now. So, nice work on that one."

"Glad to be of service," I said with a feigned smile as Bremer disappeared out the door.

All Forms of Brevity

If you're going to get lost somewhere on foot, don't get lost in Quantico. And if you do, don't do it with two handguns on your person after having just incapacitated two Marine guards. It's torture on your nerves.

I got back to my car after half an hour of hoofing it, nobody seeming to care about me. The base seemed deserted, and I wondered if the military in fact took weekends off. I only saw two other people the whole time, and neither of them seemed to notice me. All the walking reminded me of my early years of high school, when on warm days I'd walk home instead of taking the bus. This was bearable because of digital audio players and headphones. Without either of those, walking seems crude and pointless.

When I arrived at my car at last, I opened the door and used it for cover while I removed the two guns from myself and hold them awkwardly with one hand while I got in the car and shut the door. Amy had her seat reclined all the way back and seemed to be trying to find some measure of comfort; a pointless endeavor in an American sports car. Sitting in the driver's seat, I looked the two guns over briefly, confirmed that they were Beretta 92s, and only for a moment wondered how I'd known before. I couldn't be sure if it wasn't just my own unique situation, but I was quite certain that every teenage boy's dream is to hold the same gun in both hands. Berettas akimbo. Thanks, video games.

Amy leaned her seat back up and watch me drop the clips from both guns at the same time (another fantasy) and set the two guns in the back seat next to the USP. Nice little collection I was starting.

"Have a good time?" Amy asked, looking back at my new arsenal.

I opened my mouth, ready to say something, but I couldn't think of a thing to say. I still wasn't sure how much of Schumer's story I believed, but even if it was all true it wasn't something I could condense into a few sentences.

So I sat there, my face frozen in an expression of mid-speech. Amy waited for noises to come out, then ran her eyes around the inside of the car as if looking for the remote to turn my volume up. She pulled my cell phone from the center cup holder and handed it to me, saying, "Your mom called."

As if I'd forgotten each, the fact that my mom was supposed to come home today flashed into my mind, then the fact that home wouldn't be there.

"Called me?" I asked.
"Your phone," she said.
"Did you answer it?"
"I did."
"What did she say?"
"'Who's this?'"
"And what did you say?"
"'Amy'."
"And she--"
"'Amy who?' 'A friend of Chris.' 'Where's Chris?' 'Meeting with someone.' 'Meeting with who.' 'Someone in Quantico. 'Oh.' 'Yeah.' 'So he's alright.' 'As far as I know.' 'Ok, could you have him call me back as soon as he can?' 'Ok.' End of communication."
"You told her I was here?" I said.
"Yeah, I didn't really know what else I could say. I didn't know what would be believable for you."

I sighed, not knowing either, and called my mom's cell phone from my own. It rang once.

"Chris?"
"Yes."
"What are you-- oh, God, so you're alright?"
"I... am. Are you back in town."
"Yes. I mean I, I'm at the police station. Do you know what happened to the house?"
The phone felt hot on my ear. "Oh that, it's this whole... thing. I can't really talk now, I'll come meet you at the police station in 45 minutes or so."

I hung up, started the car, and drove out.

"The police station?" Amy asked.
"Oh... no," I said in realization, "I'm trying to avoid them, aren't I?"
"That's what I thought."
"My mom's there, though, so if they still think the dead cop in Lorton was my fault they'll have already told her. And the fact that you called 911 last night saying there were guys with guns at my house."
"Should you call the FBI people? Maybe they can keep the police off you like they did before."

The FBI. If what Schumer said was right, the FBI may have been the ones who killed my dad. Or responsible for it, or something. I didn't know, what I really needed was a few hours to just sit down and process everything I'd been told.

"Chris?" Amy said after I'd said nothing.
"What?" I'd just pulled onto the highway.
"FBI?" she repeated.
"I don't think--" I started, "What was our working theory for what's going on with my dad and the money and me and all this?"
"Umm, I think we were at him being a spy and getting killed overseas."
"And about me?"
"Stress plus super movie-fight-scene-absorbing powers?"
"Had we ever brought up brain washing?"
"I think it may have come up once."
"Well, whoever came up with that one gets horseshoe points for being closest."
"Huh?"

Trust

The wood slatted bench was beginning to get uncomfortable. The air was getting colder. The slight breeze was becoming offensive.

"Ok," I said, "so, explain this to me. Step by step."
"Step by step?" Schumer said, breaking his own silence.
"How all this happened. How this program works, how I came to be."
"You want me to tell you about the birds and the bees?" he said, arms still crossed.
"Alright, genius, you just told me that I was a test for your insane fetal recruitment program."
"No, I didn't."
"Yes you-- you just did."
"We should talk about this later."
"Yeah, after my birthday. My eighteenth birthday when someone takes me into a dark room and waves a gold pocket watch in front of my face and tells me I'm feeling very sleepy."

Schumer scoffed, or guffawed; I don't think I could ever tell the difference. The wind was picking up, knocking around the branches of the trees.

"The program was nearing its tenth year, we had all of the specifics worked out. The genetic profiles, the training curriculum, everything. Powers-that-be were getting tired of paying for such a preposterous program, so Daniel said we should try it. A clean run-through, prove we can do it."
"Easy to objectify the creation of human life, isn't it?"

Schumer unfolded his arms and sat up straight, looking over and down at me like I'd just insulted his haircut.

"I don't know what you think, but we're not monsters here. We don't grow creatures in vats and strap electrodes to their bodies and tell them to be killers. We took the young field ofIVF and made huge breakthroughs, doubling the success rate. People are conceived and born from in-vitro every day, there's nothing unorthodox or unethical about it. Your parents were trying to conceive and failing. It was IVF or adoption, and considering your father's vocation, the choice there was rather obvious."
"And this... hypnotic training. How is that orthodox and ethical?"
"Because hypnosis is equally legitimate and perfectly ethical with parental permission. A person can be put into a hypnotic state very easily by a trained professional, you're just told to visualize yourself going down an escalator or something, and the subconscious takes over and is open to suggestion. It's not like in the movies, where you can hypnotize somebody and tell them to kill the President. The hypnotist just acts as a stream of consciousness communicating with your own. If you tell a hypnotized person to jump off a bridge, his mind will reject it. You can only tell him things you could tell him while awake, the only key advantage is that the subconscious is more willing to... pretend. This is how those stage hypnosis shows are possible, you can suggest to somebody that their shoe is a telephone while hypnotized and they'll go along with it, but they know it isn't."

Like lymphocytes attacking a transplanted organ, my mind was rejecting the entire concept. I kept going over it in my head, trying to find a weak spot to attack. The problem was, it was so huge. So huge, yet I couldn't react to it.

"So the training, how does it work?"
"Hypnotize somebody, tell them that a mile is 5,280 feet, wake them up, and ask them how many feet are in a mile, they'll know. Hypnotize somebody, tell them how many feet are in a mile but tell them not to remember until you instruct them to remember, then wake them up and they'll have no idea how many feet are in a mile until you put him back under and tell him to remember. Do that a thousand times with a thousand facts, and you've got hypnotic training. It's a lot of work, but it's the only way to train somebody without them remembering it until you want them to, so it's the only way we could train a child."
"And you'd just take one of these kids on their eighteenth birthday and, what, say, 'If I snap my fingers, you'll know everything a well-trained soldier knows. How would you like that?'"
"We had a script prepared for that conversation. The important thing, the psychologists told us, was that we be able to answer all of the questions they'd have. Questions like these."
"And the training, when exactly do you do that? If I was being hypnotized every few years, wouldn't I be missing time? Have periods that I couldn't remember or not know how I got somewhere?"
"You weren't being hypnotized every few years, Chris. Training somebody in everything that a reasonable soldier knows, deliberately, point-by-point takes an extraordinary amount of time. You were being hypnotized every day."

My heart skipped a beat.

"Every day?" I said, no longer taking time to think about what I was saying, "How is that possible?"
"In school. You've always had a class or a period of the day that wasn't a real class. You went to an empty room where a team would put you under, train you for an hour or so, and bring you back. You were told to remember a typical boring class, your mind making up the details as you needed them."

I was breathing faster, sucking the chilled air into my lungs; it felt like shock was slowly taking over my body. I was shaking my head, slowly, without realizing it at first.

"No. No. Too many lies, all of it, my whole life?"

Schumer ignored me. "Obviously, to facilitate this we needed to have somebody inside the school system to coordinate everything and to monitor your progress and behavior. Nate Comstock was looking for an early retirement from the Corps, so we gave it to him and put him into your schools since Elementary. He made sure that your class schedules allowed for a free period, coordinated the training team, and made sure you were behaving normally for the rest of the day. We had to keep moving him around from school to school to follow your scholastic career."

My face felt hot. "Comstock," I said, finding it harder to speak. "He... Dingan."
"Dingan?"
"Some guy, in Lorton. Police officer."
"Oh, him," he paused.

"This all started with the fight in your school," Schumer continued.

I tried to remember it. Just over a week ago, it felt like a distant memory. Vodka in orange juice. A locker handle into my back. Hands on my arms. A fist coming at my face. A twitch in my brain. That was it, I realized, that moment. Something snapped in my mind when I was attacked, and my life was never the same after it.

"We hadn't anticipated the effects of the fight-or-flight response when we were developing the program. All of your training, knowing how to fight, how to use weapons, how to live like a soldier on the battlefield, it was all protected from your conscious mind through a series of mental barriers put in place during hypnosis so that the only way to 'unlock' the knowledge would be for a trained hypnotist to specifically reverse the series of barriers. But fight-or-flight is above all that, it seems, a core component of our basic evolutionary programming. When one feels like his life is threatened, the mind literally grasp at anything it thinks it can use to defend itself. As far as we can tell, acute stress of being in a fight combined with external stresses like grief over your father's death or other social issues weakened the mental barriers, and when you thought you were in mortal danger for the first time, your mind broke down its own walls and used whatever it could. Unfortunately, you never returned to classes after that event so we were unable to repair the damage."

"Damage," I said, reflecting on it all. The damage. My car, some guy names Dingan, a wake of destruction in Austria, my house.

"After that, with the walls cracked, it seems that everything you know has been leaking through and you've been able to recall it as instinct for self-preservation. I didn't believe it at first, but then I saw what you did to the two guards in my office."
"Why did you even have bodyguards?"
"I called for them when you showed up at the front gate. I thought you might be out to kill me," he rubbed his stomach through his clothing where the edge of his desk had fallen on him. "Clearly I was wrong."
"Why would you be afraid of me?" I asked, "You didn't seem worried when I came the first time."
"The first time I didn't know how much you knew or even what happened. Comstock said you got in a fight, and then stopped showing up at school. After that he stopped contacting us. Apparently he thought we were trying to kill him. Nervous guy, Nate."
"That was you on the phone that day, wasn't it? Telling him not to punish me for the fight or to tell my mom. 'It could be expensive'."

Schumer's brow furrowed slightly.

"Why didn't you want him to tell my mother? Doesn't she know about all of this."

Schumer looked down at me again from the corner of his eye. He was getting better at telling me things without saying anything.

"She didn't?"
"Not as far as I've been lead to believe."
"So it was just my dad? He lied to her, just told her she was getting an in-vitro and don't ask questions."
"Don't ask questions," he repeated.
"She never knew about the training? The program?"
"Don't think so," Schumer said.

"Ok," I said, trying to get back onto one of the trains of thought I hadn't finished. "Dingan. Why did Comstock hire him to bring me in, and why did he try to kill me?"
"According to Nate, when you stopped showing up at school and things started happening with his bank account and car, he thought we were angry so he contracted somebody to scare you into coming back to school, or to bring you in so you could be put back under and the problems fixed. I don't understand why he did this, but he did. His mistake was that he contracted the wrong kind of somebody. Somebody who usually doesn't finish the job with the target still alive."
"Another member of the program?"
"No, somebody outside the program. Outside the military. Outside a lot of things, actually."

Ok, a hitman. At least I was right about that.

"You know more about what happened that night than I do, but you must have done something to upset him if he did try to kill you."
"I think I broke his wrist," I said, recalling the cracking sound and the feeling of pushing through the blistering pain in my eyes and forcing an arm into the edge of my car's open window. "Or his arm."

Schumer smiled slightly. "Well," he said, "we'll have to work on getting that cleaned up with the police. We'll also need to sit you down with one of the psychologists and work out what went wrong with your training and how to fix it."
"What?" I said, standing up from the bench and facing him. "You want to put me back under and start screwing around with my head again?"
Schumer looked up at me, confused. "Something has clearly gone wrong with your mind, you've practically got two conflicting subconsciousnesses. One of a teenager, the other of a trained soldier. We can have the training removed if that's what you want, but the broken parts of your mind still have to be put back together."
"How do I know you won't just make me forget this whole conversation, make me think I spent the last week camping in the woods or something?"
"Chris, you have to trust that what we're doing here isn't as devious as you assume--"
"Devious? You still haven't explained why my house was burned down last night, and why guys in tac gear with prototype assault rifles stormed my house, or why I'm probably a wanted fugitive in Europe now."
"I told you, some of your questions I can't answer -- because I don't know the answers. If you would just come with me back to the labs, we can have somebody go over your experiences and try to figure out what went wrong."
"What went wrong? Why would you need to know that? So you can fix your program and do this to more kids without the nasty side effects? Use me like the test subject I was born to be?"

I stepped back from the bench, turned to face the river, and then turned back to Schumer when he didn't say anything. "I'll just go to a regular therapist, have him undo whatever you did to my head."
Schumer stood up weakly, "You can't do that. If someone doesn't know what he's doing, he could cause more damage to your mind. He could either further blur the distinction between who you are and what you know, or introduce too much stress to your subconscious and make it collapse. You need to see somebody who knows the exact protocol for your training."
"You just want to clean up your own mess, put back together your broken toy soldier."
"You need to understand, Chris, you're in danger of literally losing your mind. Until those walls in your mind are put back up, any amount of stress will destroy them further. Haven't you felt it growing worse? Felt yourself doing things you can't account for?"

Doing things I can't account for? He was right, I realized, I was getting worse. I could feel my personality diminishing with every event. Looking back, I had no idea why I did what I did to those Interpol agents in Vienna. What I did to Comstock in that hotel room; or driving a knife into the body of a person I didn't know; or only passively wondering if I'd killed him when I'd twisted his neck with his own rifle strap; or aiming at a man's head down the slide of a rifle and being a hair from pulling the trigger; I didn't give those things a second thought as I did them, but I would never have dreamt of them before all this. Before all this, before the seams of a secret life were pulled free by the stress of my father being killed by and for that very secret life.

My jaw was clenched so tight that my whole head shook. I pulled the Beretta from my belt with my right hand and pointed it at arm's length at Schumer's chest.

"The only thing I'm in danger of is you, your program, and the hitmen you have on speed-dial. Whatever is wrong with me, I'll figure it out myself." I kept the gun pointed as I backed away. Suitably distant, I turned in the direction we'd came and started to walk forward.

"You have no idea how far any of this goes," he said with a whole new clarity.

I kept walking.

"You won't know who to trust," he shouted from a distance.

The Program (in which there are no ninjas)

The walk took ten minutes; outside, across streets and intersecting paths. There weren't many people milling about in the Eastern end of Quantico on this Saturday afternoon. Those who were around chose to mind their own business and not wonder why a teenager in a concert-tee was leading around a decorated Lieutenant Colonel.

"I might have underestimated your ambition, but this should still wait until next month," he said once en-route.
"And why is that?" I asked in return.
"Because then it would be less illegal."
"You're going to explain that one, too," I said, shaking my head.

As the sound of the Potomac grew closer, we cut through a line of trees and found ourselves indeed in a small park. There were some running paths weaving through the trees and out, a few park benches lined the edge of the fencing against the river's edge. To my right in the distance I could see the airfield and the hangars where they kept Marine One, the President's helicopter equivalent of Air Force One. I considered the existence of Navy One; does the President have a personal aircraft carrier, perhaps? Maybe a submarine. Maybe one of those inflatable motorboats the SEALs use.

My mind wanders, for lack of caffeine today. Getting back to business, I walked the both of us over to a metal-framed, wooden-slat park bench that sat on the well-maintained lawn and overlooked the Potomac. The white noise from the river was loud and variable, going from shrill to low at random as the water level and surf changed. I imagined this made the use of listening devices rather difficult, and I wondered how many wars and top-secret operations had been planned from this very park bench. Wandering again.

Schumer sighed, loosing some tension as he sat down and leaned back against the bench. I sat beside him and for a moment just watched the river roll. This point of the river was over a mile across, Maryland's shore looked in the distance like a foreign country with an ocean between us.

"How well do you know your history, kid?" Schumer asked beside me, facing the waters too.
"I can tell you anything about the French Revolution you want to know," I said. The gun I'd slipped into my belt was poking into my back, so I shifted in the seat a bit to ease the pain. The other gun was in my right pocket. I hadn't taken the time to examine them, but I assumed they were Berettas.
"I mean recent history. Political," Schumer went on. "The 1970s, the Cold War long gone, the military and its ancient tactics were beginning to show their age. Things like Iran-Contra were cropping up all the time, terrorist groups posing more of a threat than entire armies."
"Iran-Contra was in the 1980s," I said.
"That's just the one event that you'd have heard of," Schumer said. "The point is from the mid-70s the military became aware that they would have to change their outlook on the world. This is when the 'black budget' was invented. Each branch of the military was finding new and creative ways to skim millions of dollars from the defense budget for their own off-the-books projects. This is when the Army put together Delta Force, the Navy refined SEAL Team Six and built Red Cell, and the Air Force used the money to built and commission aircraft like the stealth bomber, the F-117, whatever they wanted. It was a whole new age, daddy's pocketbook was open and all we had to do was be clever about the bookkeeping and we could do or try whatever we wanted."

"Slush funds, right, I've heard all this," I said.

"What you didn't hear is what the Corps was doing with their share of the money," Schumer went on, his voice just a bit lower. "Besides a few projects I don't know about or won't talk about, our primary concern wasn't with new counter-terrorism units or magic, invisible airplanes, our concern was recruitment numbers."
"Recruitment?" I asked, glancing at him for the first time since I'd sat down.

"Yes. All across the military, enlistment was down. The sense of 'join up and fight for your country' was diluted, we weren't fighting for God and country anymore, everything we've taken up arms in the past 25 years has been about politics or money. Even the idiots at home on their couches could see that. Dropping your shovel and going to fight Hitler, that's one thing. Sitting around a hole in the sand, polishing your gas mask and waiting for another bio-attack alarm, it's a whole different thing.

"The only people joining up were the wrong kind of people. People join the Army now because they flunked out of college and have nothing else to do. They join the Navy because their dad, or uncle, or neighbor, or barber was a Navy man and never shut up about it. They join the Air Force so they can stand on, in, or near a ten million dollar jet fighter. The Marine Corps was always lucky enough to have the distinction of being the best, the warriors, but it still wasn't cutting it. So, while the Army was building black-ops death squads and the Air Force was building black-ops planes, we were forming black-ops enlistment strategies."

"And what does this have to do with me?" I asked.

"This has everything to do with you," he said, "and I mean that in the most literal way possible."
"Enlistment strategies? Posters and commercials?"
"No, not that. I'm talking about research, lots and lots of research. How to make the Marine Corps look better, how to make people want to join, and a few... more elaborate programs. I was put in charge of one of these back in the late 1970s. You have to understand the timing of all of this in the civilian sector, as well. It was a new medical renaissance, the first successful in-vitro fertilization was done in 1978, modern psychology was being re-invented, the human genome was all but mapped, it was very exciting times for anybody paying attention."

"This isn't one very long lead-up for telling me I'm a clone, is it?" I asked.
Schumer turned his head slowly and looked me over. "No," he said after a moment.

"My project was to look into a way to make enlistment seem like less of a gigantic life decision and more of a matter of course. If your father was a Marine and he spends his whole life talking about it, it's much more likely that you'll enlist than if he was a farmer or anything else. This is because, in a way, you feel like you've inherited it. Your destiny, or what-have-you. Of all the projects tasked with dealing with that, mine was the most advanced."
"Will you stop telling me about your stupid project and just tell me what you did already?"
Schumer grunted, "This is a very complicated subject and there is no way to explain it without explaining every component."
"Fine," I said, "go on."

"In essence, I was to use all of the newest medical techniques to completely reduce the weight of one's decision to enlist. We looked at currently-available genetic and psychological possibilities and set ourselves the following hypothetical goal:

"A married couple has been unsuccessfully trying to conceive a child for years, and are candidates for in-vitro but cannot afford the several-thousand dollar procedure. They agree to let the government pay for the in-vitro fertilization, with the caveat that when the child turns 18 he will be given a presentation and offered the chance to join the Marines. Keep in mind that I said 'offered', not 'forced'."
"We'll give you a baby if you promise to give him to us when he grows up?" I said, actively choosing not to believe any of this.
"No. I said, we can't force anybody to enlist. In this hypothetical situation, we're footing the cost of a very expensive procedure to allow a couple to have a baby, and all we're asking is that the child be offered to serve his country. He would be free to decline, of course. This was the goal me and my project were given, my job was to make it seem realistic.

"The problem is that parents don't even like the idea of their kids joining the military, because they're afraid they'll be killed. We can run advertisements proclaiming the extensive training we conduct, but to them it's like sending their kids off to sleep-away camp where they'll probably die. To reduce that anxiety, the only thing we could think of was to convince the potential parents that not only would their children do fine in the Marines, they'd do better than anybody else. Since we were doing in-vitro fertilization, and we had the capability of slightly altering genetic profiles to allow for growth in a technically foreign host, it wasn't difficult to--"

"Wait," I interrupted. "Wait, wait, wait. You're saying your big idea was to screw around with fetal DNA or whatever to make it so their kid would be some kind of super-soldier, aren't you. Genetic super soldiers. I knew it, either you're crazy or lying your ass off."

"Stop getting ahead of yourself," Schumer said, "this isn't like the movies, we can't make people stronger or faster, all we could do was make sure that the right genes were there. When a person is conceived, many genetic traits are still left to chance. Things like metabolism, reflexes, cellular regeneration, these are all much more open to outside influences than inherited traits like hair and skin color. In the process of in-vitro fertilization, we had the ability to filter out any potential genetic defects for the highest possibility of a 'perfectly able' child. We weren't 'engineering' anything."
"It still sounds wrong," I said.
"Now," Schumer continued, "going back to our initial hypothetical, we can no say to a young couple who could get in-vitro but can't afford it, 'We'll pay for the procedure and do everything we can to make sure your child is perfectly healthy and has the best possible reflexes, metabolism, blood-clotting time, whatever, and when he turns 18 we'll just give them a talk and see if he'd or she'd like to be the best Marine he or she could be .' It's still a bit of a tough sell."
"Could you please drop the lead-in and just get down to it? What was the big stupid black-ops project of fantastic unethical baby-making that you came up with?"

Schumer sighed again, and said, "After looking at all our resources, the hardest possible version of that hypothetical to turn down would go something like this: Young couple, can't afford in-vitro. We tell them we'll pay for the procedure, we'll use genetic filtering to make sure he's healthy and has the best traits available to him from each side of the genetic tree, and after the child is born we will use discrete hypnosis to instill in him all the values and knowledge one would learn in boot camp but without him knowing. When he turns 18, we'll tell him that he has all of this training in the back of his brain, and if he'd like to join the Marines we can 'activate' that training and he would join at a Private First Class ranking, bypassing boot camp altogether. If he doesn't want to join, we can have all of the training removed."
"Hypnosis?" I said.
"Yes," Schumer said.
"...Hypnosis?"
"I just said--"
"HYPNOSIS!"
"It's possible," Schumer said, "we spent nearly ten years putting the program together. We brought in all kinds of psychologists ad hypnotherapists to help design the program. With hypnosis, a person can be told or taught something while hypnotized and instructed not to remember any of it when awake. According to the program we designed, for a few hours each day while the kid grew up we could have a hypnotist put him under, teach him problem-solving skills, teamwork, and so-on and told not to remember it or the hypnosis until later. At 18, a hypnotist could put the child under again, tell him to remember all of the hypnosis, and like magic he's a fully-trained soldier."
"And that's legal?"
"Amazingly, yes. While the child is a minor, the parents own him. They authorized all of this, and as long as there's no danger it's fully ethical. And like I said, if the child chooses not to enlist, we can have a hypnotist put him under and have him forget all of the training, and even forget the conversation of he chooses.

"This whole psychological component was developed in tandem with the genetic side. We brought in leading geneticists and put together the program to allow for the encouragement of healthy fetal growth without breaking any existing ethical boundaries. The two parts, building a solider, mind and body, was my project."

I didn't say anything.

"One of your questions, and I believe the loudest question, was what your father really did. Well, there you have it. He worked for me. He was my lead geneticist. He's the one who outlined the project on the genetic side, he's the one who made sure everything was on the up-and-up, that we wouldn't be creating a mutant and that we weren't doing anything unethical."

So that was it? My dad actually did work in a lab?

"And the Marine Corps University?" I asked.
"We used it for cover, for financial and logistical reasons. Genetic research being conducted by a University seems less suspicious than anything else."
"And this 'program' he helped you design, the whole not-quite-super soldier program. It was never, I don't know, 'activated', was it?"
Schumer laughed, a hearty chuckle. "Oh hell no, it never went beyond testing. The world is a different place now from when we first started. If such a program were in existence now, the second we went up to some couple and said, 'hey, let us make you a baby and we'll just hypnotize him every day', that couple would be on Fox News or blogging about it within hours. The project could never be put into use, not in this country at least."
"So, was it just an accident that killed my dad?" I asked, taking a few minutes to process everything and decide how much was a lie.
Schumer hesitated. "Well," he said, "as I just stated, it couldn't happen in this country. From what I can tell, either your father was approached by members of a foreign government, or he approached them himself. He was trying to sell the program to our enemies, Chris."
"What?"
"Yes. I can't say who to, but I can say it's exactly the people who don't need to be hearing about our dirty secrets, and not the type of people who would let ethics prevent them from doing what ethics prevented us."
"Thats why the FBI knew him? He was the one selling secrets?"
Schumer nodded, still watching the water. "The FBI became aware of his dealings a few weeks before his death. They informed the Marine Corps, and the news filtered down to me only after he was killed."
"Killed how?" I asked, a lump growing in the back of my throat.
"I don't know for sure, the word I've been getting is that the FBI moved in on a meeting between your dad and the foreign agents he was selling through. Things went bad, there was a shootout."

I was silent again, trying to process it all. It seemed like a lot, and none of it made sense.

"As you can see, this all involves many parties. Many agencies of many governments are all over this. Everybody on this side seems to want it covered up, people over there are upset about dead agents. People who are friends with 'over there' want to know what the big secret was, and everybody in between just smells blood in the water. We've all been trying to wrap this up, but it seems that it's all fallen into your lap just the same."
"And the money? The insurance money?"
"Oh, that. The FBI looked into it, as did we, to see if there was any foul play involved. It seems that your dad just knew that he was putting himself in a risky situation, and wanted to make sure you and your mother would be protected if he was killed. He took out a whole new policy as soon as first contact was made."

I thought of it, tried to feel some form of closure. I felt nothing, no satisfaction, no anger or sadness. Nothing. I thought of my list of questions, tried to shape everything I'd just heard so it would cover the whole list. Things still didn't make sense. Nothing has explained Comstock, or Austria, or Lorton, or the guys in my house.

"That doesn't explain everything," I said, my eyes on the water. "What about Comstock, and me, and everybody trying to kill me. What about the two guards you had on your office, and the video you had of me sitting at a---" I stopped talking, because I suddenly knew the answer. It had been staring me in the face since Schumer had started talking, since he chose his words so carefully, since everything he said had seemed unbelievable but all somehow very, very possible.

Schumer seemed to read it on my face. "I told you the program was never activated," he said, trying to dissuade me.
"You said it never went beyond testing," I said.

Schumer sighed, yet again. He folded his arms around his chest and stared out at the water.

Chicago Burning

I always loved fire. Even as a kid. If I'd been less responsible, I would have been what people call a "pyro". If I had one mutant power, it would be the ability to manifest fire. Think of the possibilities; you're eating some bananas and sipping cheap brandy and think, "if only I could put these together and light them afire," but you have no matches. Good thing you can shoot fire out of your hands, instant bananas foster.

Fire is the only thing that isn't a thing. Fire is a reaction, not an object. It contains no matter, no atoms or elements. It's just the physical structure of some object breaking away from itself. Civilization would be impossible without it. Water has to boil, food has to be cooked, bodies have to stay warm. Empires have to burn, to make room for new ones. They say Chicago burning down was the best thing that ever happened to the city, gave the town a chance to start over fresh. Unheard-of rebirth and cultural expansion.

At the time, though, it probably sucked a lot and for a lot of people.

I was frozen, in a way. I couldn't move, my brain was too busy exploding to deliver any muscle commands through my nervous system. My house, the only one I'd ever lived in, was gone. Some charred walls and a huge pile of ash. Gone was everything physical in my life that I could hold onto and say, "this is mine." All I had now was a bloody shirt, pants that probably had a grass-stain on the back now, my wallet, a knife, and a gun. All my clothes, both of my computers, my tv, all my movies, my books, everything. Gone. I'd left that USB drive in there too. Fantastic.

Amy was still pulling on my arm and saying something. Eventually the dull buzzing filling my head cleared enough to process her words. "Come on, we shouldn't be seen here."

I didn't know what she was talking about, but I stood up and let her tug me back behind a house and out of sight from the street. I leaned against the wall again, closed my eyes, and tried to take control of my breathing again. My head ached still.

From where ever Amy was, she sighed and under her breath said, "Man, your house..."
I opened my eyes suddenly, seeing the world differently now. "I can afford it," I said before turning and walking back toward Amy's.

Outside her house, I leaned against my car and waited while she went inside and came back with my gun and my keys. When she asked what I wanted them for, I said nothing. I took the gun and the few loaded magazines and set them in the passenger seat of my car before starting the engine. The passenger door opened and Amy picked up the gun and ammo and set it in the back seat after sitting down.

"You're not coming," I said.
"The hell I'm not," she said.

I looked at her, then back at the steering wheel. If I'd had some kind of plan, I would have tried to consider it and how to implicate her into it. I had nothing.

"Fine," I said, "but don't blame me if you get killed."
"Deal."

Amy stopped trying to ask where we were going once it was clear we were headed toward Quantico.

"Do you think it was the gas can?" she asked after a few minutes of silence.
"No," I said plainly.
"Any reason?"
I said nothing.

I wasn't in a mood for talking. I wasn't really in a mood for anything. Going to sleep for a few weeks and not dreaming at all sounded like the ideal scenario just then. When I first saw that the house had burned down, I too had figured it was that gas can I lit and threw, or the van I threw it at. It couldn't have been, though. The street was was at least 100 feet from the house, so anything that could have gotten that far would have been small. It would have started a small fire and burned slowly until the cops arrived. They'd call the fire department, who would come out and put out the blaze while it was in the middle of tearing up the kitchen or ruining the carpet. The inside might have been destroyed, but the house would be standing. Houses don't burn all the way down these days, even the old ones. Not unless one makes an effort of it. Someone had either placed small charges on the supporting walls downstairs and initiated a hurried, but controlled demolition; or someone had strategically set large fires on both levels knowing how they'd burn.

It would be a good way to get rid of the bullet holes in the walls. Rounds can be dug from walls, their angles and trajectories determined and the type of weapons determined. Burn the wall down, and all that's left is a few small bits of lead in a mountain of debris. My house was burned down on purpose.

Yet another assault upon my life and everything in it. I was through with it. No more sitting around wondering whodunit or why. No more sneaking around, no more bank or computer espionage. No more unanswered questions. Now, I was going to find the answers even if it killed me. I had nothing left but question marks. Not for long, I told myself.

I drove to Quantico as I had done before. Off the highway, onto Russell Road, and to the security gate. The same elaborate dance of vehicle-circling and stupid questions was performed by a different man at the gate. I showed my identification and the guest pass Schumer had given me and I'd left in my car, said I should be cleared in the system, and waited while he looked it up and used the phone. He came back, told me the same story about parking in the lot to the left and waiting for an escort. The young lady would have to wait in the car. I nodded and pulled forward into the lot, into nearly the same spot I'd parked before. It was a Saturday, so the place was a bit more deserted than when I'd been there before. I hoped Schumer would be there on a weekend, but if not I wouldn't mind just walking around that "University" and seeing what kind of fun I could have.

A Jeep pulled up in a few minutes, I got out of the car without saying a word to Amy and got into the Jeep. The driver brought the car down the road in silence, dropped me off in front of the same building, and drove off. Outside the front door of the building was Lt. Colonel Schumer, flanked on both sides by fatigued Marines holding M16s and standing at attention. Schumer looked the same, albeit a bit more nervous. When I approached him he offered his hand, I just looked at it.

"Right," he said, retracting it. "Well, I assume you've thought of more questions for me. Why don't we head to my office?"
"What's with the Centurians?" I asked, looking at both Marine guards. They both eyeballed me as if they could shoot knives from their eyes.
"Oh, just part of their Executive Protection rotation. For their training. They pretend I'm somebody important and I give them a grade based on how well they keep me from being killed."
I couldn't decide which was more odd, the fact that Schumer was lying, or the fact that I knew.

Regardless, I followed them inside the building and through a metal detector. I didn't remember that being there the last time. Schumer and his guards each went to the side of the detector, but one of the guards stopped me from bypassing it and pointed me through it. I went through to no fanfare. I was glad I'd decided to leave my gun in the car.

I followed Schumer down the hall to the left and to his office. The two guards stood outside the office, one on either side of the door. When I sat down in the same seat as before,Schumer closed the door and stepped around and sat behind his wide oak desk. I glanced at the back of his computer and tried not to smirk.

The fact that I'd been kept from considering for the past 12 hours was that, for some reason, he had a video of me on his computer. A recent video, taken of me at a time I could not remember. The intruders had distracted me from it, and then the fire had swept it from my mind. I'd remembered it while I drove, though. I'd racked my mind trying to make sense of it, and came up with nothing more credible than there being a clone of me running around somewhere. Rather than trying to play spy, I decided to go right to the source.

"So," Schumer said as he settled into his chair and folded his hands on the desk.
"Shut up," I said before he could continue. I leaned forward against the desk to get closer to him. "You're going to tell me what the hell is going on. You're going to tell me why you have videos of me on your computer, you're going to tell me why my house was burned down last night after armed men came in and tried to kill me, you're going to tell me why Nathan Comstock is being paid to keep tabs on me for you and why he hired ahitman to 'bring me in', and -- for the love of God -- you're going to tell me what my dad really did here."
I leaned back in my chair and folded my arms, feeling slightly silly for still wearing a black concert t-shirt for a band I didn't know.

Schumer unfolded his hands and leaned back in his chair as well. He pursed his lips slightly and looked at me silently for at least twenty seconds, as if contemplating some elaborate mathematical theorem. I mimicked his posture and waited. Schumer opened his mouth to say something, paused for a moment, considering his words, and said at last, "Your house burned down?"

I felt my arm tick slightly. If I'd had my knife on me, it probably would have gone through his forehead just then. "Yes," I just said, calmly. "After a brick of guys in tac gear and carrying XM8s broke in and started shooting." I didn't know what "brick" meant, but it sounded appropriate.

Schumer leaned forward slightly and rubbed his leathery chin, then ran his hand through his stiff, graying hair. His voice deep and rough as ever, he said, "I can answer some of those questions, others I have no idea about. If you come back in a few weeks, I'll probably be able to answer them all."
"Just tell me what you can now," I said.
"It will have to wait. Come back in a few weeks, after the 5th, and we can talk about it as much as you'd like."
"The 5th? My birthday? What does that have to do with anything?"
Schumer closed his eyes for a second, then opened them and began to shuffle papers on his desk. "It's just the best time for me, my schedule is just packed until them. Look at me, I'm working on a Saturday."

I sighed, long and drawn-out. It was the same thing. Every time I wanted answers, some stupid thing came in the way. Everybody talking in riddles or treating me like an idiot. That was fine, kind of intriguing in fact, until someone burned my house down. Then the appeal was lost. Now, all I have time for is the truth.

Schumer knows the truth, but he expects me to wait for it? Wait while more Government agencies introduce themselves or try to shoot me or blow me up. No more waiting, no more games. The truth, now.

I brought my right foot up to the top edge of the desk and pushed with all my strength. The oak desk heaved, and tipped forward. The monitor and computer on the right side of the desk slipped forward and crashed onto the floor, then the desk itself fell forward to the floor, knocking Schumer over and pinning him down. He yelped as he fell and screamed as the edge of the desk came down around his stomach. The desk had come down onto the metal computer case on one side, propping it up slightly and holding some of its weight off of Schumer.

Behind me, I heard the door open. One of the guards spilled into the room, his M16 drawn and ready. I was on my feet and at the door in seconds, my hands around the barrel of the gun and yanking it from the Marine's hand. With a quick thrust I crashed the butt of the weapon into the guard's chin, then swung it sideways to strike the other around the side of the head. I dropped the rifle and pulled the pistol from the holster on the waist of the second guard, brought my elbow into his gut, and the butt of the pistol into the forehead of the first man's. In one flurry of motion I had the two men on the floor. I slipped one of the pistols into the belt of my pants, then grabbed the other pistol. The M16s I unloaded and threw the weapons and ammo down opposite sides of the hallway.

Back inside Schumer's office, I stepped around the desk laying on the floor and pressed the barrel of the pistol in my hand into the cheek of Schumer's wincing face.

"How about you tell me right now?" I asked politely.
Schumer coughed and groped at the surface of the desk pinning him to the floor. "You crazy little shit," he said between coughs.
"Maybe we should start with what you really do here and what my father's job was," I said, still pressing the gun into his face with a steady pressure. My right elbow hurt slightly from the impact against two skulls.
Schumer's breathing was getting weaker. "Fine," he said, "get this thing off me and I'll tell you."
"Tell me and I'll get it off you,"
"I can't breathe!"

I pulled the gun away, stepped over his head to the other side of the desk and pulled the edge of it up. With the few inches of clearance, Schumer was able to back himself out from under the desk. I let go and pulled him up, as he was having trouble getting his balance for the coughing. He hunched for a few seconds, catching his breath.
"I could have internal bleeding..." he said.
"Tell me something to make me care," I said, holding the gun into the back of his neck.
"Not here," he said. "Outside, by the river. There's a small park. We can walk there. I'll tell you there."
"Great," I said.

Excemate?

Clarity fades. Bare feet against a rubber pedal. My right hand grips the emergency brake for some reason. The growing realization that my life is an absolute mess creeps through my mind and echoes its mantra louder and louder. There's a girl sitting next to me, she asks what's going on. I have no answers. No answers, never any answers.

Don't ask questions.

My headlights reflect against a red Stop sign, pulling my attention back to Earth. I'd already run a few of them back in the maze of neighborhoods and subdivisions I was navigating, but the hard-wired reaction to the sight of this one overpowered whatever force was controlling me up to this point. Nobody seemed to be following me, but I'd taken the most complicated route possible just to throw off any possible pursuers. Eventually I ended in front of Amy's house, for I didn't know where else to go.

Amy sneaked me into the house and into her room like an expert. I could hear her dad downstairs watching TV. I thought maybe he'd like to hear my story about how I'd gotten to use my Emerson on some guy, but I decided to save that for a time I wasn't inexplicably in his daughter's room after dark on a Friday night.

I sat down in her desk chair like I did the last time I was there, put my head in my hands, and wondered out loud what I was going to do. A familiar feeling was coming over me, the same feeling I'd had less than a week ago, the feeling I had as I abandoned my car in the woods up in Lorton, after I'd just killed someone and tried to get myself to feel bad about it. It was like trying to regret something that I wasn't sure I'd actually done, like apologizing for a dream. My shirt was wet then too.

There was blood on my shirt, I'd just realized. On my chest, my right. I stood up in a panic and knocked Amy's chair over, pulling the shirt from my skin and feeling for a wound. There was none; it wasn't my blood. I groped at the fabric and pulled the shirt off and threw it in a corner. I was breathing heavily while Amy watched wordlessly from where she sat on her bed. I felt weak, and tired, and sick. I started to pull the chair from the floor, but decided to just sit on the floor next to it. I wanted to scream or cry, but I knew both would be just as worthless as trying to talk about any of it.

"This is it," I said, looking at the carpet through the slits between my fingers sprawled across my face. "My life is over. Nothing is ever going to be normal again."
"Were those guys the Police? Like, SWAT team?" Amy asked.
"No," I said. "Not SWAT. I distinctly remember deciding that earlier."
"Ok, so then the Police should be at your house soon; since I called them. Maybe you should be there and they'll be able to tell you who they were."
"The cops will find this all very interesting after Lorton. The FBI won't be able to hold them off this time. That, by the way, is not a sentence a seventeen year old is supposed to say."
"Eighteen soon," she said, almost hopeful.
"In a month. Looking forward to a birthday isn't the consolation it used to be. I don't even know if I'll be alive in a month."
"Come on."

I looked up from the floor at her. "It's been a week and I've had to fight for my life twice now, not counting the other two fights that weren't for my life. Those were just for fun I guess. The cops, the FBI, the Marines, Interpol, and whoever that was at my house all have files with my name on them now. In another two days I could be on the run from the Navy, Coast Guard, Ghost Busters, and MI-6."
"Maybe you should call the FBI guys," Amy said, "they always seem to know what's going on before you do."
"Well, the I does stand for Information."

Amy laughed slightly, then pulled my cell phone from her purse and tossed it to me. I tried Rubino's number from the redial menu, got a recording. I found Bremer's card in my wallet and tried his number, another recording. Worthless. I dropped the phone, stood up, picked up the chair, and turned on Amy's computer.

"What are you doing?" she asked.
"My own investigation," I said.

I searched for "XM8", the name of the gun those guys were carrying. I found out it was the Heckler & Koch (the same brand as my handgun) XM8, a prototype gun that was being designed for the OICW "competition" where the US Army wanted a futuristic, modular assault rifle to replace the aging M4 and M16 rifles and every weapons maker tried to get the contract by coming up with the coolest gun they could. The XM8 was designed the be modular, meaning from the same body its barrel, handguard, stock, and magazine could be broken down and converted into a carbine, a compact submachine-style, a sharpshooter sniper rifle, or a stationary full-auto weapon. It looked like a rather novel idea, being able to convert the same weapon to suit your application by swapping out a few parts, like some kind of Transformers toy or something. From what I read, it looked like the version the men were carrying into my house was the standard "baseline" version but without the optical sight, but the 12.5" barrel could have been swapped for a 20" and a high-end sight installed to turn it into a sniper rifle, or the grip handguard replaced with one with bipods and the 30-round box magazine replaced with a 100-round drum version and it would have been an automatic rifle.

I really wished I hadn't left one in my bedroom. It seemed like the ultimate toy.

I kept reading and, according to some articles, the weapon's development was put on hold and would probably be canceled because of the cost and more readily-available alternatives.

That meant that the guns were rare; very rare. Prototypes of in-development weapons wouldn't just slip onto the black market like how container 201 of a 400-container shipment of M16s can mysteriously vanish. Prototypes are numbered and sent to the military for testing and training on contract, the inventory tracked carefully. To be carrying them, then, you'd have to be either military or very friendly with the military.

That means it wasn't the Boy Scouts breaking into my house and possibly trying to kill me.

After some more searching, I read that outdated prototypes were being sold to the military wholesale. One article said that the Marine Corps had bought the largest share of them, because a lot of officers really liked them for training and other uses.

"Great," I said, "another big flashing arrow pointing at the Marines."
"Could those have been Marines in your house?"
"I don't know. They weren't wearing any markings."
"The military isn't allowed to operate within the US without a Presidential order or something," Amy said. "The.. Posse Coma-something act. Ever since the Civil War."
Since I was in a web-searching mood, I looked up "posse civil war" to see what she was talking about.

The Posse Comitatus Act, I found, was passed in 1878 and indeed restricted the use of the federal military within the United States in effort to prevent the Army from being used as law enforcement. After the Civil War, people in Confederate states feared that the northern Army would come in and generally "occupy" the South. Posse Comitatus meant policing had to be done by local law enforcement mostly. This means that the Army, Air Force, Marines, and National Guard aren't allowed to do things like breach homes and try to kill teenagers.

Amy got up and stood over my shoulder, reading the screen along with me.

"God, what is this scar from?" she said suddenly.
"What scar?" I asked.
"On your shoulder, here." She poked my shoulder blade quickly.

I tried to reach my arm around and feel it but I couldn't reach. I stood up and went to her bathroom and tried to look at it in the reflection over my shoulder. It hurt my neck, but I could barely see a long scar, maybe three inches long, on my back near my left shoulder blade. The skin was raised slightly, just a bit lighter in color than the rest.

"I've never seen it before," I said, my head still craned sideways. I turned around and faced the mirror, looking at myself and trying to remember why I would have a scar like that on my back. "I can't think of anything that would have caused it."

Amy was standing behind me, looking at it. "It looks old," she said.

She held out a finger and lightly circled it. The touch was light, but it made my heart leap. I could feel the warmth of her body through my back. She ran her finger over the scar again. I couldn't remember the last time someone had touched me, when I'd felt another person connected to me. My breathing was slowing. In the wide bathroom mirror I watched her behind me, looking over the rest of my back. She placed her palm softly on my other shoulder, her heat spread across my body and I felt my skin tighten. The muscles on my back went taught, along with my chest and abs. She pulled back on my shoulder slightly and I turned around and faced her, she went over my chest and stomach, as if looking for another scar or some other imperfection. She touched the middle of my chest, my sternum. There was still a slight discoloration from the bruise left by the seatbelt from when I crashed my own car into another.

"Things must be confusing for you," she said. "Your life, I mean. All of it."
I just nodded, slightly.

She looked up at me in silence. She was only a few inches shorter than me but my eyes fell naturally to hers. The bathroom light was dim, casting shadows from her hair across her face. She stepped ever so slightly toward me, her hand lingering still on my chest. Her eyes were deep, her mouth just barely open. She just looked at me. I said nothing.

Nothing in my life made sense, but when I was with her it all seemed to have some glimmer of hope. She kept me grounded, I realized. All I'd ever done, though, is put her in danger. Danger and death follows me like my shadow, I carry them with me wherever I go. Here she was, sticking through the bullets and the fire, and all I can do is bring her more of each. I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to take in the warmth of her touch for as long as I could, and sighed. I opened my eyes again, looked at her again.

"When this is over with," I said. She nodded, seeming to understand. She stepped closer and pressed her head against my shoulder. My right arm went around her waist, and I remembered the parking lot of the gun store in Lorton. When a stranger called out to me, I instinctively grabbed her waist and pivoted her behind me. I looked over at the mirror, at the both of us, then just at myself. I was beginning to see someone else whenever I looked at myself. I just kept looking, and wondered for a while how much of what I was becoming was the product of instinct, and how much was really me.

I woke up the next morning in a bed that wasn't my own and quickly ran through a mental checklist that every guy must have hard-wired into his brain for these situations. I had pants on, and that told me enough. I sat up and waited for the rest of my brain to wake up, and looked around. Soon enough I remembered the night before. I'd offered to sleep on the floor but Amy's bed was huge so we decided it'd be fine. I was unsurprisingly exhausted and fell right asleep. I'd slept until noon the day after Lorton, and I slept through my flight after Vienna. It seemed that whenever Instinct Chris took over and got me out of dangerous situations, I slept like a rock that night. I ran a hand over my head, and willed myself to stand up.

Amy was sitting at her computer doing something. When she heard me she turned the chair around and watched me try to pull myself together.

"You talk in your sleep, you know?" she said. She was dressed already. I tried to find a clock, gave up, and looked at her with tired-squinty eyes.
"I do? What do I say?"
"I couldn't tell. Sounded like you were reading a grocery list or something, all monotonous and stuff."
I shrugged, and started walking but stopped when I realized I didn't know where I was going.

"I have some mannish t-shirts if you want," she said, pointing at her closet, "and I got some of my dad's sneakers from downstairs."
I nodded. "We or I should walk over to my house and see if anybody's there still. If it's clear, I can get some of my stuff and try calling Rubino or Bremer again."
She nodded. I found a concert t-shirt that fit me and put on a pair of Nike cross-trainers that looked reasonably new.

A few minutes later, we set off together towards my house. The Spring air was crisp, but not too cold. It felt good in my lungs, like breathing new life. It smelled like someone was burning leaves. We cut through the lawns and climbed that small brick wall and slowly got closer to my house. Someone could have been there waiting, so I edged around a house across the street from my own so I wouldn't be seen. I heard trucks running; big, diesel engines like garbage trucks. I stopped for a second to yawn and leaned against the wall of the house. I should have gotten some coffee, but it was enough work sneaking out of Amy's house without her dad seeing me or the car. My brain still felt foggy. Amy got tired of waiting and went the rest of the way around the house to the opening between it and its neighboring house. She stood in the clearing and looked across the street toward my house in silence.

I just kept thinking about coffee. My brain is like mashed potatoes in the morning until I get some caffeine. I listened to the truck engines and smelled the air again, and remembered just then that it's the Fall when people burn leaves, not Spring.

"Chris..." Amy said.

I walked to her to the clearing and said, "Hmm?" She wasn't looking at me, though. I followed her eyes across the yard and across the street to my house. The mashed potatoes in my brain suddenly froze into a slush and pain shot from my skull. My house had burned down.

All of it. My house was gone. There were blackened walls and a charred lawn, and between them were mounds of black wood. Fire trucks lined the street, with Firemen walking between them -- a few rolling up hoses. Some men were climbing through the burnt remains and poking at the piles with long sticks. Amy said nothing.

I wasn't breathing. My house had burned down. I couldn't speak. I opened my mouth but nothing happened. My mind could not produce a valid thought. My house had burned down. My legs felt weak. I slumped backwards and sat down in the grass. Amy looked down at me, then back at the direction we'd come from. She grabbed my arm and tried to pull me up. She said something, but I couldn't hear her. The grass was wet. My butt was wet. My house had burned down.

Third Time

A moment of clarity. The jagged pieces of reality that make up my perception of the world suddenly snap from disarray and everything becomes clear for just an instant. At this time, I don't do things because I want to or need to, I do them because they are the only things that could ever make sense. Afterwards I'm left in a daze and barely remember the moments just before, but while I experience them they are the temporary embodiment of a perfectly executed concept. The universe seems to be in chaos, then for that second the fog is lifted and I see the world and my life through disconnected and clairvoyant eyes. Just as quickly, the fog returns and I'm snapped back inside my head and the world continues just as before, only reeling from whatever I had just done.

Twice so far this had happened to me. The first was eight days ago, when the comfort of my existence was interrupted by the threat of violence and a fist driving toward my face. The second time was six days ago, with another interruption of my stasis when a man began firing a silenced pistol through the darkness and through the windshield of my car. Both times, the violence sucked my attention from the typical malaise of my life and into that moment of clarity. Both times, I performed actions I would never have considered before. Both times, I hurt people in ways I didn't know I would ever be capable of. Both times, I couldn't have cared less about the pain I caused.

The third time happened like this:

A solitary desk lamp fought away the night darkness in my bedroom as I stood in silence, listening to the steady thumps as my heart forced blood through my veins. Downstairs, the front door's lock was picked, the door opened. My legs and arms relaxed, then moved nimble and dedicated through my bedroom door, down the hallway, and partway down the stairs. My knees and ankles shared the tension and accepted my weight so I made no noise.

I ducked in the stairwell landing and peered from the darkness into the main floor, just as I had done years ago while my parents argued about baseball team tryouts. Through the wooden slatted banisters and down the main hallway I could see the front door, now open. One man was walking through it, one man was behind him, one man was already inside and turning into the kitchen. They crept like me, their knees crooked and steps silent. They wore uniform black body suits, black nylon harness vests around their chests, black domed helmets on their heads with tinted goggles covering their faces. They carried compact carbine submachine guns in their hands. When the sight of these peoples seemed in no way unusual to me, I realized I was again operating on autopilot.

The second man came through the door as the first disappeared into the kitchen, and the third came in as the second turned to his right into the living room. The third came straight down the hallway towards the stairs.

It wasn't a SWAT team, I thought, they weren't maneuvering in a stick formation and they were clearing rooms without cover. If it was a SWAT team, I would have just turned myself over. SWAT, a division of local Police departments, has rules to follow. They subdue people and take them into custody. They also bust through doors with rams and explosives, screaming "Police" and generally making their presence known. They weren't SWAT. That's all I needed to know.

When the third man turned toward the staircase, I sunk back into the darkness and went back up the stairs. To the left were empty bedrooms, to the right was my bathroom and my bedroom with soft yellow light seeping through the partly open door. The rest of the floor was pitch black, including my bathroom where I went, pressing myself against the back wall. I heard the soft jingle of gear dangling from a vest as the third man came up the first set of steps, turned across the landing, and started up the last set. I heard him stop at the top of the stairs, perhaps choosing a direction, and choosing right and heading toward the light of my room. I listened to my heart beat in pace with his steps, and I made sure I was breathing. My knife was still in my hand.

When the dark shape of a man passed the bathroom door, I sprang from the darkness in a single step and plunged the blade of my knife into the man's right shoulder through the back and brought my left hand around to cover the man's mouth just as he tried to scream from the pain. If I had been in a more rational place, I would have noted how the Teflon coating and unique tanto -point design let the blade slide through cloth, bone, and muscle with little resistance. With a quick tug I dragged the man backwards into the black of the bathroom. He dropped the gun from both hands and it dangled from the strap clipped to his harness and over his left shoulder. The knife still stuck into the meat of his shoulder, he wouldn't dare move his right arm, and his left was pinned by my own arm. He breathed hot and wet through his nose against my hand.

"Who are you with?" I asked as quietly and as menacingly as I could. I put a small amount of pressure on the knife, and slightly lifted my hand from his mouth.
After a few tedious groans and winces, he said, "I'm an American." His voice was younger than I expected.
That was obvious. "What's your objective?" I asked in the same voice.
Between groans and whimpers, he said, "Some guy. Whoever lives here."
"Extraction or hit?"
"What?" he said, "I don't know. Not my call."

I sighed. This guy was either an idiot or was very convincing at playing one. I pulled the knife from his shoulder, closing my hand over his mouth to muffle the inevitable shriek, then grabbed the nylon gun strap from the front, pulled it back and twisted it so it closed around the guy's neck, and then tripped the man forward, holding onto the strap so it pulled his head back as he fell to the ground and didn't move. A part of me, deep down, wondered if he was still alive, but I pushed through it.

I rolled him over and unclipped the strap from his harness, then unwrapped it from his neck and picked the gun up. In the limited light I could barely make out the shape of the gun but it seemed foreign, even for asubmachine gun. I felt around the sides for a bolt, found one, and pulled it back. The guy hitting the floor had made more noise than I expected, so the other two had probably heard it.

I started down the first set of stairs quietly, but I heard that jingling noise again. Around the corner, someone was coming up the bottom set of stairs. I stopped at the landing, waited for the jingling to stop, and swung the butt of the gun around the corner and felt it connect with a helmet or goggles, and heard what sounded like a few sacks of potatoes being dropped down the stairs. I turned the corner and followed the noise down the stairs where a man lay crumpled at the bottom. I leveled the gun and raised it to look down the rail and took the last few steps.

I found the other guy, he was in the hallway following the noise. He was looking at the guy on the floor, then saw me and lifted his gun. Mine was already on him. I took a breath and started to pull the trigger when more movement caught my eye. Four more men, dressed the same, poured through the front door. There were more than the first three; that changed things a bit.

Three small explosions sent three small bullets toward me. I ducked back to avoid them, thought about dropping down again to try my luck at shooting some people, but the odds weren't in my favor. I instead just stuck an arm out and fired off a few rounds blindly for cover, than ran back up the stairs to my room. I locked the door behind me, pulled my bookcase over to pin the door shut.

I called Amy's name, said I was me, and knocked on the closet door. She opened the door, the gun still in her white-knuckled fist. She looked a bit like a wet cat. "I called the police," she said as one long stuttered word.

"We have to get out of here," I said, setting the gun I was holding down on my desk chair. In the light now, my suspicions about the gun looking unusual were confirmed. It had unusual curves, making it look kind of like a gun from a futuristic space movie. "XM8" was printed in stylized letters on the side of the butt. I shook my head and went into the closet, grabbing all of the loaded magazines for the USP and stuffing them in my pockets.

"What's going on?" Amy asked, standing in one place and turning at her hips to follow my movement.
"I don't know," I said. "Guys, guns, shooting. Just another Friday night."

I crossed the room and looked out my window at the back of the house. There was nobody out there. I opened the window with the metal crank as wide as it would go, then I turned and stripped the sheets from the bed and started pulling the twin mattress off the frame. Amy just watched incredulously, until I asked her to help. Together we spun the mattress and slid it through my open window, it fell and landed in the grass on the ground about six feet below the window. Not too bad, I thought.

I took the pistol from Amy, switched the safety on, and somehow fit it in my pocket.

The door to my room shook, the knob wiggled. The lock didn't have a key, they'd have to bust it in. That's what they started to do. I grabbed my car keys from my desk, and threw Amy her purse, then went back to the window. It was a tiny jump, but I still hesitated.

"Land like I do," I said over the banging on the door, then I stepped up onto the window sill, and stepped downward onto nothing.

The landing came immediately. I hit the mattress with my feet, felt my ankle sting, and rolled sideways to disperse the energy. I stood up and looked up at Amy through the open window, and waved her down. She emulated my movement well enough, but made a slight huff noise when she landed. I just then remembered that I left hesubmachine gun, the "XM8" up in my room. Great.

I drew the pistol and we crossed the back of my house together, staying tight to the wall. The corner to the side of the house was clear, so we followed the wall to the side of the garage. The side garage door was still unlocked from when I took out the trash earlier in the week, so I opened it slowly and we went into the garage. Amy started to ask what I was doing, but stopped before finishing. I went around my dad's car and into the corner of the garage where the grill, the gas generator, the cans of gasoline, and the miscellaneous car stuff was. There was an older, metal gas can mostly full of gasoline. I grabbed that by the rusted handle, opened the cap and stuffed a cloth rag down it, and grabbed one of the butane lighters from next to the grill.

I hoped that the van or truck at these guys had come in wasn't blocking my car, and I got lucky. It was a black panel van, unmarked, with the back doors open. Inside were bench seats on both sides. Two men, not dressed like the others, were standing outside of it, looking at the house.

Crouching down, we crept from the side of the garage to the side of my car. I unlocked the passenger door manually with the key, and told Amy that when I said so, I would open the door and jump in and she would follow.

I lit the rag sticking from the mouth of the gas can, waited for it to start to burn, then stood up and hurled it sideways over the top of my car and toward the van. The can wobbled oddly in the air, a streak of orange light from the flame on the rag. It landed on the street just short of the van and rolled sideways beneath the van.

No explosion.

The rag had fallen from the mouth of the can as it rolled, but gasoline was now pouring freely from the hole. The two men heard the metal can hitting the pavement and turned around to investigate. Gasoline flowed in all directions from the mouth of the can, eventually spreading to where the barely-lit rag lay on the ground.

The flowing gasoline soon turned to a flowing lake of fire spreading from all sides of the van. The two men yelled and ran away from the van. As much as I wanted to stick around and watch the show, I pulled my car door open and crawled over the passenger seat and settled into the driver's seat as Amy got in and closed the door. I started the engine and backed out of the driveway, turning wildly to clear the blaze on the street, then put all of my weight on the accelerator and drove off. Behind me I saw movement around the house. As I turned onto another street, I saw a quick flash of light and heard what sounded like the gas tank of a black panel van exploding.

I wasn't wearing any shoes, I just noticed. That made me laugh.

Decisions

I found that when I slept, I didn't have to think about the many things I should have been thinking about. People didn't seem to want to blind me, shoot me, or take me into custody while I slept, either. I'd slept through the whole flight from Vienna and I was still tired when I got home, after dozing off in the shower I zombie-marched to my room and tumbled into my bed. Either the sleeping pills I bought at the airport were made of magic, or my subconscious really needed to stretch its legs.

I woke up to the sound of my doorbell. In my tired daze, I couldn't decide if it would be the FBI or the police. The clock by my bed said it was just after 3PM. I used the limited resources of my still-asleep brain to make sure I was wearing clothes -- t-shirt and shorts; that should cover it -- and walked down to the front door stiff-legged and still slightly wincing with each step on my left ankle.

Amy was at the door. Suddenly I felt better.

"You're here," she said as I pulled the door open.
"I'm everywhere," I said back, pleased with myself for thinking of it.

I moved out of the way and Amy stepped in, her school bag dangling from one hand. It felt like I hadn't seen her in a month; I was expecting her hair to be longer or a different color. She walked quickly and gracefully, as if she weren't wanted in two countries and had not a care in the world. I envied that.

I was still fuzzy from the sleep, trying to maintain a line of thought was like bobbing for apples in a vat of peanut butter. Apples and peanut butter sounded good. I pointed my feet toward the kitchen and willed myself to locomote.

From wherever Amy was, she said, "I drove by your place on the way home and I saw your car. I thought you flew in tonight."
"Yeah," I said, trying to locate some kind of caffeine delivery system in my cupboards. "Stuff happened. Had to catch an earlier fight."

"So how did the trip go?" she asked, now inside the kitchen.
I stared blankly at some small boxes in a cupboard for what felt like a long time, then turned around and looked at Amy. "Huh?"
Here brow furrowed and her lips sunk into an odd frown. "Your trip," she said again, "Austria. I believe you flew off to the Old Country to find out what was going on with our plucky Principal."
"Right," I said, holding two small cardboard boxes in my hands. One talked of herbal infusion, the other went on about English breakfast.

"I forgot about that part," I said, "it turns out all the suspicious stuff he was doing was because of all the suspicious stuff we were doing so he thought I was going to kill him. Well, not me, but his boss guys. Then an Interpol guy wanted to know why I killed some dead guy two years ago. They flayed him." I was confident that all made sense.

Amy was sitting in a tall chair at the counter now. She started to say something, blinked twice, then finally said, "What?"
I was trying to figure out how to get water hot.

Once I'd had two cups of hot tea and had moved to the couch in the living room, I told Amy about the trip. About the Marriott and the Ambassador, conning my way into the latter, then breaking my way in, the voice recorder, the bank, how the coffees tasted different than Starbucks, about a dead guy named Jens Nesimi, and about what one might call my harrowing escape from a slow-moving vehicle. The absurdity of it all made it so had to stop a few times and make sure I wasn't just making all of this up.

"What is it with you, law enforcement, and automobiles?" she asked when I was finished.
"It's a character trait, I suppose," I said. "I'm starting to fear for the Trans Am."
"So you didn't find out who Comstock is keeping an eye on you for?" she said.
"What?"
"You didn't-- what I just said."
"I thought I told you," I said, confused. "It was an integral part of the story."
"You didn't say anything."
"Oh. Weird."
"So...?"
"Marines."
"What?"
"Marines. Marines-comma-'the'."
"What Marines? All of them?"
"I don't know, all he said was, 'I figured the Marine Corps could afford it.' Or did he say 'thought'? I'm not sure; my brain was too busy exploding at the time."

"So it could just be some Marine guy. It doesn't have to be the whole Corps."
"I didn't say anything either way," I said, "I think the larger issue is the fact that somebody affiliated with the Marines is/was paying Comstock to pretend to be a school administrator just so he could watch me and keep me out of trouble; also, Comstock hired some guy named Dingan to 'bring me in' just because I stopped going to school for a day, and later I drove a car into Dingan."
"That doesn't make any sense," Amy said.
"Put that to a tune and it could be the theme song for my life."
"No, I mean... you had the fight thing on Thursday, right?"
"Last Thursday, yeah."
"And Lorton was on Saturday. So you only missed school one day, on Friday, and he freaked out and hired a nutcase to bring you in?"

I leaned my head back and thought about it. "Friday was when I came in and we did the bank account thing, and I put a hammer through his car window for a distraction. When you called and said his bank card was stolen, and then his car was vandalized, he thought it was his 'boss' people -- some Marine guys -- trying to get to him. He thought they were upset about him asking for more money, or for letting me even get in the fight."
"Ok," she said, "what are our working theories regarding why you're so special that people are paying people to watch you and to pay other people to bring you in?"
"I don't know," I said, "my money? No, that's stupid. My boyish good looks?"
"Well, boyish..."
"I don't know. Unless this is all about the fact that a kid that looks slightly like me was standing outside a guy's house in Austria the night he died."
"That doesn't seem very likely."

"So, yeah. 'I don't know' is my working theory. Is this something I should be asking the FBI guys about?"
"I don't know," she said.
I crossed my arms and said, "Well this all sucks. I'm sick of sitting around and waiting for somebody to attack me so I can acquire another hint at what's going on here. Maybe my mom would know something about this."
"When does she get home?"
"Tomorrow or Sunday," I said. "It doesn't seem like she would have anything to do with this, but I think I'm in too deep now to keep this all a secret."
"What about your dad?" Amy asked.
"Him?" I said, "I think he might be dead."
Amy sighed. "I know that. I mean, maybe this has something to do with him. He did work for the Marines, after all."
"So did yours," I said, "and nobody's chasing, shooting at, or trying to arrest you."
"You don't think this could have anything to do with your dad or what he did?"

"Of course I do, but I don't like to think about it," I said. "I was a lot happier when I thought this was all grief or denial and I was just making all of this up to get attention. If this really is the Marines behind all of this, and it's connected to my dad and his work, then this is a lot bigger than I'd thought."
"This seems like a situation where you'd ask people for information," Amy said, "You know two FBI agents. The 'I' stands for Information."
"No it doesn't."
"It-- oh, right."
"Federal Bureau of Information?" I chuckled.
"Excuse me, then," she snapped back. "There's also that guy from your dad's work. Schumer?"
"Yeah, but I--" I suddenly remembered that there was a USB drive on my kitchen table potentially full of information copied from Schumer's computer. I'd forgotten all about the thing. I thought I was delusional after I'd brought it home, and I didn't want to incriminate myself by looking at possibly classified materials.

My answers could be on that USB drive. I stood up and dashed to the kitchen. There it was, on the table. I picked it up, this innocuous little hunk of plastic. Looking at it, the fear came back. If this whole mystery was as big as I thought it was, maybe I didn't want to find the answers. Maybe there were no answers, just more questions. I was afraid I might find out something about my father that I wouldn't like, or I'd find something out that could get me killed. This area's mantra kept repeating over and over in my head. Don't ask questions. Don't ask questions.

Amy soon followed me into the kitchen and stood to my side. "What's on that?" she asked.
I closed the drive in my fist. "Nothing," I said, turning toward her. "Have you eaten yet?"

* * * *

It was nearly dark when we came back from a locally owned bar & grill-type place. Besides needing to catch up on sleep, I also had a lot of eating to make up for. I couldn't remember eating a full meal during my stay in Vienna. I missed out on a lot of sausages. I'd put on pants before we'd went out, and the USB drive was tucked in my pocket. The same pocket as my knife, which I'd fished from my suitcase. I didn't know why, but it just felt good to have it on me. If I ever came across a letter that needed opening, or a Ugandan rebel that needed opening, I liked to know I'd be covered.

It had been nice to spend an hour or so not thinking or talking about the elephant in the room or the monkey on my back. When we got back to my place, though, they went right to my mind. I sighed, knowing that I'd eventually look at the files on this USB drive, if there were any, so I might as well get it over with. Maybe it had a nice, two-paragraph story that explained everything and pointed out that this was all one big misunderstanding.

I kicked my shoes off and went straight up to my room, Amy followed without a word. I sat down at my computer and plugged the USB drive into a port on the front of the PC tower. Amy set her purse on my desk, then crossed the room and sat down on my bed. I glanced over, again trying not to freak out about the girl-on-my-bed phenomenon. She didn't ask what I was doing; probably assuming I was going to check the webcam outside Comstock's house. She looked down at my open suitcase on the floor with my clothes spewed out.

"So," she said, "did you get me anything?" She was playfully dangling her legs over the side of the bed.
Something sharp stuck into the side of my brain. Shoot. I was going to get her something but I never got around to it. Trying to think of something to say, I opened the USB drive's contents on my computer and clicked the first thing I saw, and then spun the chair sideways to look around the room.

"Umm," I started, grabbing my backpack and fishing through it. There were two passports, an envelope with anonymous Austrian bank account credentials inside, my computer, two books, and, well...

I tossed Amy a small paper book of matches. She caught it and turned it around in her hand. "The Marriott?"
I stood up and walked over to her. "The Marriott Vienna," I said, pointing at the word. "How often do you see matches from Western Europe?"
"Personally?" she asked, with a grin.
"Alright," I said, "I didn't have time to get anything. I left in a bit of a hurry."
"It's fine," she said, looking at the matches in her hand.
"No, really, I was going to get you something. Something amazing, I'm sure."
She looked up, smiling. "No, really," she said, "you didn't have to. You weren't there for sightseeing, I know."

The silence was peppered with the sound of a truck driving down the road.

"You're still supposed to buy stuff when you go to another country," I said.
"Don't worry about it," she said softly, "we can pick something out when we go somewhere together."

I noticed my heart was beating just a bit faster than normal. I sat down beside her on my bed, looking at the matches in her hand. "Like where?" I asked.
She rolled her eyes in a circle. "I don't know," she said, "I've always wanted to see Paris."

I looked at her, she looked at me. It sounded like the truck on the street wasn't moving, but that might have been my brain thumping in my ears.

There was a slight sadness in her eyes, like a painful memory that kept creeping up. The side of my hand on the bed was barely touching hers. Her other hand was holding the book of matches, spinning them around, her eyes following. She smiled, then stood up and walked over to my desk and put the matches in her purse. She glanced at my computer's monitor once, then twice. Her eyes widened a bit and her mouth opened slightly.

I thought I heard a car door opening.

"That's you," she said, still looking at the screen.
"What?" I asked, sliding off the bed and walking around the desk. A video file was playing in Media Player. It must have been the file on the USB drive I opened without paying attention. The video was black and white, taken from an awkward over-the-head angle. It showed an empty-looking room, and me sitting at a desk directly in the center of the frame. It was definitely me, wearing my clothes. I was looking at someone or something outside the frame, and occasionally looking down at a piece of paper in front of me on the desk. There was no audio.

I stepped closer to my computer and sat down in the chair, watching the video frame closely.
"When is this?" Amy asked, over my shoulder.
"I don't know," I said, "I don't remember it at all."
"Where is this from?" she asked.
"Schumer's computer," I said without taking my eyes from the screen, "from Quantico."

On the video, I continued to look back and forth from the paper in front of me to whoever was standing in front of me outside the camera frame. A few seconds later. I folded my hands on the desk, leaned my head forward, and appeared to go to sleep.

"What the hell is this?" I said.
Amy started to speak but I silenced her. A sound from downstairs had grabbed my attention. A light clicking and the sliding of metal. I thought it sounded like a lock being picked.

I stood up and stuck my head outside my bedroom door. The noise low but constant. I also still heard the sound of a truck idling outside.

Everything after that was a sharply-focused blur.

I pulled back into my room and quietly shut my door. I turned off my computer monitor and opened my closet door. I found my handgun and the filled clips, slid one into the gun's grip, and pulled the slide back, chambering a round.

"What are you doing?" Amy asked, pulling me slightly from my focus. I looked at her, standing there. I glanced at the gun, then back at her. Decisions.

I pulled her with me into the wide closet and pushed her carefully into the corner, then handed her the gun and set the other loaded clips on the shelf closest to her. "You know how to use this," I said, "it's just like the Beretta." She looked at me in a stupefied gaze. I pulled clothes from shelves and hangers and dropped them into a pile on the floor. "You can hide under these if you want," I said. I stepped backwards out of the closet and grabbed the door knob.

"You'll hear my voice when I open this door," I said. "If you don't, start shooting."
I pulled my cell phone from one pocket, my knife from the other. I handed Amy the phone, she took it with her left hand; the gun still in her right. "Call the police," I said.
"What are you doing?" she asked again, eyes wider this time.

"I don't know," I said. Her eyes were pleading as I pulled the door closed, leaving her in the closet alone with my only gun.

I stood still, in silence. I heard the knob of the front door turn slowly downstairs, and the hinges whine as the door swung freely open. I flipped the blade of my knife open, spun the handle in my hand so the blade pointed downward, and held my breath.