Mind + Body

Mind + Body Published, New Official Website Launched

2008-10-19T19:30:00.000-07:00

After something like a million years, that book I wrote is finally done and for sale.

You can find all pertinent information like links to purchase and to download the book for free at the book's new official homepage:

AaronDunlap.com/MB

If you're one of the people who read Mind + Body as I was writing it, you may be interested to know that I completely re-wrote the first two chapters and the whole book has gone through an overall face-lift of corrected grammar and improved sentence flow.

Also, you people who read my book for free have essentially stolen from me, so if you'd like to restore balance to the universe you should probably buy 8 or 9 copies. It's in the Bible somewhere.

Either way, now is the time to bang on your friends and neighbors' doors to tell them to check it out.

Talking points for strangers might be that the book is a Bourne Identity for the digital age, including social engineering and technical espionage. Also, they can download and read the book for free.

This blog will no longer be updated.

Mind + Body To Be Published Soon

2008-08-30T19:00:00.000-07:00

Is anybody still out there? Sorry for the lack of status updates.

Edits for the book are finally over with.

Once I get an updated version of the cover from my designer pal, I'll be sending the book to the publishing company. After that, I'll be sent a copy to approve, and then in a few days it will be on sale at Amazon.

Only a year after I finished writing it.

The next one will be faster, somehow, I promise you that.

Since I'm not going with a major publisher, marketing will be up to me. I have a few clever ideas to get the word out, but I'll be relying pretty heavily on word-of-mouth. That means you people will have to tells your friends to tell their friends that reading is fundamental and reading my book is fundamentalist.

Pre-Order Mind + Body (Autographed)!

2007-08-06T15:03:00.000-07:00

Though the book isn't technically done (I'm still going through the wording and finding all kinds of annoying mistakes) I'll start taking pre-orders for autographed pre-published copies. These will be finalized, but pre-published versions meaning they'll wont be from a publishing house or available for sale at any store. They'll be 6"x9", the size of a regular hardcover book, and they'll be autographed by me, made out to whoever you want (nobody named "eBay buyer" please). It'll look a great deal like this.

No definite date for when they'll be shipping, but it'll most likely be inside of a month.

The price is $25. If I get famous later, these will be rare and valuable! Also, anybody who pre-orders through here will be considered part of an elite club. What happens inside this elite club? Well, in the event that I write the sequel in a format other than how I wrote this one (posting each chapter online to the public as I write it), people in the elite club will still be able to read chapters as I write them. More on that if it comes up.

Interested? Click here to pre-order.

Feedback Requested

2007-05-18T13:14:00.000-07:00

This isn't part of the story. If you haven't read to the end of the story yet, don't read this.

A note from the author...

Today is the first Friday in four months that I haven't woken up and had to decide what happens to Chris today, how to move toward the ending, and how to include elements in a story that tend to make any story they appear in seem completely ridiculous. The first step in the story of Chris Baker's life is complete now, as I see it.

If everything I have written here were to be printed in a standard sized hardcover book in standard font with standard spacing, it would be approximately 378 pages long. It's 130,000 words, about nine times the length of the average novella, or about one times the length of the average novel. At the beginning I wasn't expecting this to end up at book length, but once it became clear that it would be I decided it should be. A book, that is.

Getting a book published is a serious accomplishment, and a very trying one. The whole publishing industry is designed now for filtering out the thousands and thousands of people who think they can write, people the internet age has given a voice to when they probably shouldn't have one.

Before I start sending this thing out to literary agents or publishers, I'm going to take some time to look it over and see if it really is book-worthy. For that, I might need your help.

For those of you who have read the story from start to finish, I'd like your semi-detailed, honest opinion about it.

You can do so as a comment to this post, or by emailing me.

I'd like to know what you thought of everything. "It's really good" is encouraging but not super helpful. I'd like to know what you thought of the characters, if they were believable and they were all described well enough. What you thought of the pacing, does it start out too boring or have too many times where a whole lot of information is dumped and there's no time to recover from it? How about the secrets, mysteries and revelations, was there always enough motivation to keep reading to find out more or were there times when you didn't care? Did you care enough about the mysteries/secrets that you were surprised/glad/excited when they were revealed?

How about the narrative voice? Did Chris' internal babbling annoy you, or did it help you associate with the character? Could you tell that, as the story progressed that Chris' mind and voice were changing; that he started making fewer jokes and began to take things seriously? Or hadn't you noticed before reading that sentence? How about the underlying theme, the thousands of times when the difference between the mind and the body were mentioned? Did those seem tacked on, did they seem to be too frequent, did you not care or notice? Did anything make you think?

Does it interest you or do you even care that, except for a very small number of things, every technique, technology, weapon, medical term, element of psychology, and geographical description were entirely accurate? Did you think, "Hey, maybe this guy is actually doing research,"?

Did you notice that the first sentence of the first chapter and the last sentence of "Ask Questions" are the same?

Was anything funny? Was anything scary? Was anything tense, or shocking?

Did you learn anything?

Was it worth your time?

Answering any of those questions will help me out in a tremendous way. As I can tell, there are about 150 people reading this story and only about 5 or 6 who post comments. I'd like if those who don't comment could still contribute. Comments can be posted anonymously, or if you'd rather it be private you can email me.

Your feedback will be used as I go back and fix grammar and possibly re-work scenes or even re-write entire chapters.

Thank you very much for reading, and thank you in advance for any feedback. This has been quite an experience for me.

The sooner I get this published, the sooner I can start the next branch of the story. It's already bouncing around in my head, replacing the one I'd finally let free.

-Aaron Dunlap

Epilogue

2007-05-16T17:01:00.000-07:00

Time, like water, flows however it likes. Also like water, time acts as a diluting agent. Given enough time, even the most serious of issues can seem mundane. As time pulls us away from the events by which we measure our lives, all we can do is turn around and observe them as we inch further and farther away. When time draws us apart from these events, our view of them is worsened, the edges go fuzzy, fine details are lost entirely.

The only way to combat this is to kick against the current. You can keep living through that event, refusing to let go and allow time to carry you beyond it. Like fighting a river, fighting time is an active process. To move on you need only let go and let the waters carry you, but to remain still you have to fight. It's tiring, and the longer you keep it up the harder and harder it becomes.

You can only learn to let it go, or die from the struggle.

It was a month after my eighteenth birthday, three weeks since the last time I'd talked to Special Agent Rubino, two and a half since I'd talked to Amy, just over a week after my mom and I decided on a smaller house around Argyle Heights, and three days after I'd received my school diploma in the mail when I'd decided to let go.

Before then, I'd repeated the events over and over in my head and obsessed over the details I hadn't yet understood. I'd made dozens of crude flow charts trying to demonstrate the chains of events and command. I'd called Rubino every day for updates, he'd begun to ignore my calls. I grilled my mother on anything my father had ever said before he died, when I was born, before I was conceived, and when I was young. I pulled any event from my early memory I could reach my fingers around and tried to insinuate some meaning, some relevance.

Did my dad refuse to introduce me to any sports because he simply feared I might be hurt or because he always knew that high stress and my fight-or-flight response might break down the walls between my two personalities?

Did he simply take the fact that I was to become a government guinea pig as the price of having a child, or did he actually enjoy the idea?

His gravestone didn't answer my questions.

I went into the FBI building in DC twice to make statements. Once, a brief written statement for Rubino's benefit; the second time, a formal inquiry in front of a review board of five people whose names and ranks. I purposely did not observe. The FBI wasn't interested in satisfying my toxic need for satisfaction, however, they just wanted to waste time and look as if they were doing their job.

I'd nearly driven myself mad before that day when I finally let it all go. It was the beginning of summer, there was green all around, the air was warm but not uncomfortable. I got in my car for the first time without feeling anxious or that I needed to go shoot someone or do anything illegal; the first time I hadn't considered whether or not I should bring my gun and the first time I hadn't looked at myself in the rear-view mirror for a few seconds and wondering who was looking back.

I drove with the windows and the t-tops from my car down, felt the air on my face, found a foreign serenity in it.

I was halfway up the sidewalk to Amy's front door when she opened her bedroom window upstairs and called out, telling me not to ring the doorbell. My last conversation with her father hadn't ended well, she probably didn't want him to know I was there. While I waited for her to come down I looked around at the trees I'd never noticed and watched the clouds cascade through the sky.

Amy came out the front door and followed the sidewalk to where I stood. Her hair had grown out a bit and was pulled back behind her ears, no stray locks in her face. She'd also stopped using eyeliner under her lids. She looked her age, for once.

She stopped a few feet from me and crossed her arms. "What are you up to now?" she asked, her voice betraying the annoyance her face hid.
"Just going out for a drive," I said. "You want to come?"
She glanced at my car in the driveway. "Where?" she asked, her voice flat.
"North."
She let out a quick breath and shook her head. "I'm not going to the FBI with you and I'm not going to Quantico again, why can't you just--"
I cut her off, "I'm done with that. No more adventures, no more banging down doors. Just a relaxing drive," I paused, "to clear our heads."
She looked up at me for a few seconds with cautious eyes, then said she'd tell her dad she was going out.

After I'd navigated my way out of suburbia hell and onto I-95, I glanced at the silent girl in my passenger seat and asked, "So how are you doing now, with the thing?"
Amy looked out the window, "Fine, I guess."
"It doesn't bother you, knowing what's up there?"
"I don't know," she started, "it's different than with you, because it's all staying put. Nothing's leaking out. I guess sometimes when I think of something, I'll wonder how I know it and try to remember when I learned it. I don't remember exactly when I learned how many feet are in a mile, though, but I know it. I guess I'll always have to deal with that."
"Your training was just basic training type stuff. You don't have to worry about knowing or doing things you'd regret," I said.
She turned away from the window and looked at me. "Do you regret any of the things you did?"
I watched the road for a bit.

I asked, "If you could get rid of it, though, or even have it all activated so you'd remember it all, would you want to?"
She thought for a moment. "Get rid of it, like, have it all wiped from my memory, so it would be like it was never there?"
"Right."
"Or have it activated, so everything I was taught under hypnosis, I'd remember and be able to use?"
"Yeah. In a few minutes, know everything you'd know after a few months worth of boot camp."
She was quiet for a bit longer. "I suppose either would be better than this," she said. "Just having that stuff in my brain, but not being able to use it and not knowing what it is. Getting rid of it would be fine, I guess. Though if it's just boot camp stuff like, what, cleaning a rifle and the difference between a Sergeant and a Staff Sergeant? I suppose that wouldn't be too bad, unless it'd change who I am."
"Your personality, you mean?"
"Right. Aren't people who finish boot camp supposed to have this kind of somber, subservient attitude from all the brow-beating? If that's part of the package, I don't know if I'd want that. I could learn how to clean a rifle from a book if I wanted to."

"But if you could know the answer to that, and even if not, you'd definitely rather have it activated or have it removed than just having it sit there?" I asked.
"I guess so. Yeah."
"Alright then," I said.
"So just where are we going?" Amy asked.
"You'll see."

The drive north was becoming rather familiar for me. Interstate 95 went through Stafford than right through Quantico, then through Woodbridge, then Lorton and Fort Belvoir, then turned into 395 and straight through to Washington DC. Northwest of the city center was Georgetown University, right on the edge of the western branch of the Potomac. Around the university were blocks of tightly-packed, ages-old townhouses. I parked on one particular street in front of one particular house, which I explained to Amy was the home of Will Secomb, professor and head of the psychology department at Georgetown.

I'd found his name in some of the earliest of Schumer's files and from online archives of the university's website found that he taught a few classes in hypnosis theory back in the 1980s but now stuck mostly to abnormal psychology. From his personal page on the psych department's site I found his work and class schedule and determined that he would most likely be home at this exact hour.

Amy and I went up the short sidewalk and handful of stairs to the front door, and I knocked. In a few moments a taller gentleman of about sixty opened the door. He was balding, thin, and dressed in an a white shirt and gray pants that looked to have been through the wash a few too many times and wore wide-framed, thick-lensed glasses.

"Professor Secomb?" I asked when the door was opened.
"Yes?" he said, squinting as if trying to recognize me, then trying the same with Amy.
"Did you ever know, or work with, a Charles Schumer over in Quantico?" I asked.
Professor Secomb squinted again, but looking past my head, as if trying to remember the name. "Are you students of mine?" he asked.
"No," I said. "This would have been a while ago. Eighteen years or so."
"Oh, right," he said, scratching his head. "I think I remember. Just some contract work. He tried to hire me, as I recall."
"I don't suppose you worked with him on some kind of platform for training a child from birth to teen years using hypnosis so as for him not to remember the training?"
"Him or her," Amy said.
Secomb looked between the two of us for a moment. I smiled awkwardly.

"Oh dear," Secomb said, mostly to himself, after letting both of us in and we'd sat down on a small, old couch over which a brown and white afghan was tossed. "Oh dear, oh dear," he repeated, taking a seat in an old recliner opposite the couch.
"I never thought it was a practical exercise," he said. "Mr. Schumer just brought me in and asked me to determine whether it would be possible, and if so, to design a system to do it. To train or educate somebody without them remembering it. I thought it was hypothetical. I even told him that, that it may be possible but it was clearly an ethical and practical quagmire."
"But you developed the platform for him?" I asked. "One that should have worked."
"Well, yes. In the same way that in the 1940s somebody could have developed a platform for sending a man to the moon, but it wouldn't be possible or practical for another twenty years."
"Apparently it was both practical and possible," Amy said.
"Oh dear," Secomb said once more.

"Understand," he began after a moment, "that hypnosis has been around in one form or another since the 18th century, but advancements in understanding it come slowly and after long gaps. In the 1980s it, and most conventional forms of psychology, had become en vogue again. The CIA, FBI, and military started to bring in experts to see if it was possible to use it for interrogation, memory restoration, dealing with PTSD, contacting the spirits of dead people, anything. Most of my colleagues in psychological study were contracted for one program or another, developing the means to do any number of purely-hypothetical feats. Schumer's job didn't seem too far from the ordinary. Hypnosis has been shown to be a useful tool for education for decades, but using it long-term and for children was the hard part."
"So you had no idea that he was going to actually do it?" I asked.
"Heavens, no," he said.
"But for him to pull it off, then," I said, "would your... report have been enough?"
He thought for a moment. "I suppose so," he said. "In the hands of a trained psychologist or hypnotist, at least. What I outlined was just the mechanics for training a person. What was actually to be taught was left open. The platform could be used to teach somebody foreign languages or a thousand recipes for making cupcakes."

"But it could easily be used to teach somebody military strategies?" I asked.
"Sure, given the pace was slow enough."
"How does it all work?" I asked.
"I should have my notes and documents from the project here in my filing cabinet, so I could look up exactly what the process was, but the essence of it all is that, while in a hypnotic state, a person's subconscious is fully exposed and open to suggestion. The subconscious is the part of the mind that actually does the heavy lifting, coordinating the flow of information between the senses, the memory, and the conscious. Your five senses are consistently giving an extreme amount of information to the subconscious, and the subconscious actively decides how much of it to forward to your conscious, for example."
"What does that mean?" Amy asked.

Secomb took in a breath, then began explaining, "Have you ever been in a crowded room where many groups of people are having their own conversations, like a restaurant or a party, and you're having a conversation with your own group but you overhear someone in another group mentioning your name or a word that holds some significance to you, and your attention suddenly snaps over to that other conversation? Not only that, but you can somehow remember the last few words before your name or word was said, even though you weren't listening."
Amy furrowed her brow for a moment, "I think so."
"That happens," Secomb said, "because your ears are actually picking up every conversation within earshot, but your subconscious is only picking out the voices from the conversation you're having. It would be too much work for your mind to have to process every voice heard in a crowded room, so it picks out the important thing and sends the rest into your brain's version of the trash bin. But as your subconscious is filtering this out, if it hears a word that's important to you, it decides to send it to your conscious along with anything it can pick from that trash bin to go along with it."
"The Cocktail Party Phenomenon," I said.
Secomb looked over to me, a bit surprised. "Exactly," he said.
"That's also why you sometimes get a headache if people around you are speaking to each other in a foreign language," I said, "Your mind is trying to process the words to decide if it's important, but gets stuck on every word."
"Right," Secomb said. "This just shows how the subconscious acts as the messenger between your memory, your senses, and your conscious. When you're being taught something in class, or you're reading a book, there are a million other processes going on inside your mind that have to compete with each other. If a teacher tells you a new mathematical formula, for instance, that new information has to overcome the fact that you're also thinking about history class and the fact that your shirt is uncomfortable, and that your desk is tan and your pencil is yellow and the person next to you is humming.

"When you're in a hypnotic state, however, all those other inputs can be dismissed or set aside, and you can send information straight to the subconscious, so that when you're told that formula it's sent straight to the part of your brain that stores information to your memory while you sleep that night. The main problem with this is that most people learn by doing, not just hearing. To deal with that, I made a script where the subject could be instructed to actually perform whatever action and, if the instructor determines it was done correctly, the process is learned that way."
"How is the person kept from remembering all of this once he wakes up, and how does the process of 'unlocking' all that knowledge handled at the end?" I asked.

Secomb scratched his cheek and thought for a bit. "I'll have to check my notes to see the specifics for how I dealt with that," he said, standing up and heading down a hall and turning into another room.
"This is weird," Amy said quietly.
"Yes it is," I replied.

A few minutes later, Secomb came back with a paper accordion file in his hands. He sat back down and started pulling pages and notebooks out. He spent a few minutes sorting documents reading a few things to himself, before looking up at us and asking, "What was the question again?"
"How does a person not remember being trained under hypnosis daily, and how does activation work?" I said.
"Ah, yes, right," Secomb said. "Well, the memory is a tricky thing. It isn't like a big bucket where everything is dumped and can be poured out and reviewed. The best analogy I've heard is that memories are like tennis balls floating around in a vacuum. The tennis balls are all connected by strings, each one connected to different ones a number of different ways. A memory of the first time you tied your own shoes might be tied to a ball of 'accomplishments' and another called 'shoes' as well as several other, much more arbitrary connections. These string connections are created when the memories are first stored, but our subconscious is able to alter them at will. A person with a traumatic experience such as being raped or witnessing a violent crime, for instance, may just have that tennis ball dropped anywhere without any connections made. The mind does this as a way of self-preservation, repressing a memory that's too painful to process. A person could live his whole life without ever acknowledging or being aware of that memory, but most times as that tennis ball floats around it will 'bump' into a similar memory. If the event happened at a certain location or the day after something important like a birthday, it might try to make spontaneous connections to memories of that location or birthdays. This is one way for people in therapy to recall these events. The other way is under hypnosis.

"With hypnosis, the subconscious can be instructed to dive into that vacuum and start grabbing tennis balls, regardless of connections, and then the subconscious can be told to invent new connections so that the conscious mind can recall the event freely. In the same fashion, the subconscious can be told, with some restrictions, to sever connections. This can be done for entertainment in stage hypnosis where a person is made to temporarily forget his own name, or forget about the number seven, but using the correct procedure, the 'forgetting' can be made much more long-lasting. Under hypnosis, a person could be trained in whatever way, and then made to disconnect those new memories with anything else.

"This is how the 'activation' is handled, at the end of the training. If the subject wishes to be made to remember everything he learns, his subconscious can be instructed to find all those tennis balls he was told to disconnect over the years and re-connect them. Or, if he chooses to reject the training, the memories can be, more or less, thrown out."

"You said that if somebody forgets something that it isn't really gone, just disconnected. If the training tennis balls are already disconnected, how can they be removed forever?" I asked.
"That's the most complicated aspect of this whole procedure," Secomb said. "It's the thing I had to work hardest to sort out, but it's something I insisted that I include. I didn't think it would be right to, even in theory, give somebody training they weren't aware of without giving him the option of completely removing it, be it cupcake recipes or bomb making."
"So how did you do it?" I asked.
"I had to do a bit of theoretical mind-'hacking'," he said. "When you're sleeping, your subconscious is working with your memory to take all of the information you gathered that day and deciding whether it's something you should hang onto forever or just discard it. This is, effectively, what dreams are all about. Your mind is basically experiencing a vivid hallucination, a literal drug trip, but it's told to recall everything you experienced that day and go off on tangents. Important things, like things you actually did or important sensations, are sent off to your long-term memory. Things that serve no purpose, like sounds, smells, or sights you experienced that had no significance, are just flat-out removed from memory. This is why I tell my students to make sure they get plenty of rest before an exam instead of staying up all night studying. Your brain doesn't actually remember something until you've slept and it's had a chance to sort it out. Until you've slept, everything kind of swims around your short-term memory waiting to be dealt with."
"Ok..."
"Right. Well, I had to identify the actual process of the brain that does the permanent removal of useless information, and then I had to find a way to channel old memories into this process for them to be deleted. In a sense, if a person chooses to have his unconscious training removed forever, I found a way for the subconscious to grab all of those tennis balls and sneak them into that trash bin so that when the person goes to sleep, the brain just dumps it all out. That explanation kind of trivializes the size of that accomplishment, but for all I knew it was just hypothetical so I didn't care to spend any more time thinking about it."
"Let me make sure I have this straight," I said. "To permanently remove the training, you basically trick the subconscious into thinking that all training is useless and sneak it into the short-term memory's trash bin so it can be removed the next time the person sleeps."

"That's basically it, yes," Secomb said.
"Then, wouldn't the person be able to remember it all, until he was able to sleep. You said everything swims around up there until it's been sorted out in sleep. If eighteen years of training was swimming around where there's usually only a day's worth of stuff, wouldn't you notice?"
"That's true. For that, the person should be given a sedative and made to sleep immediately after the process, otherwise for the rest of the day he would, well, I'm not sure. He might feel like he'd been awake for years, or he might go insane. It's hard to estimate what would happen, which is why immediately going to sleep is required. The subject should be kept asleep for at least twenty-four hours, as well, to allow for all that information to be processed."

I let that settle in for a bit.

"Another question," I said. "Suppose a person had all this training, the tennis balls are floating around with no connections, could anything spontaneously create connections as needed. Say a person was taught how to tackle a bear but isn't supposed to remember, and there's a bear about to eat him..."
"Fight or flight," Secomb said, knowingly.
"Right."
"I made a note of it in my submission. The whole notion of tennis balls floating around with no connections only applies in an ideal scenario. Given the right stresses, or the overwhelmingly powerful reach of the FOF response, it was always entirely likely that such a situation might cause the mind to reach in and pull out anything it could use. This is demonstrated in reality, when some people are able to remember first aid or survival techniques they read about or saw on TV years ago in a life-or-death situation. The mind will do anything it can to keep itself alive, it will respect no arbitrary rules, even its own. If it thinks passing out will save you, you'll pass out. If it thinks repressing the memory will save you, you'll repress the memory. If it thinks creating a whole new personality to handle the stressing event while your original personality takes a nap in the back of your mind will help, it will do that. In the same way, if your brain knows how to escape a situation but isn't 'supposed' to remember, it will veto its restriction."

There it was. There was my answer. I then explained to Professor Secomb everything that had happened to me, that I had been in my first fight after a lifetime of avoiding confrontation, and I felt something snap and was able to fight. After that, I was in more and more life-or-death situations and each time, more and more of my training had become available. Each time, I felt more and more of myself slipping away.

"It's interesting, and completely understandable," Secomb said after I'd finished. "When you were in danger in a physical assault, your mind retrieved its information on how to handle that. When you were in danger in a car, the car training became available, then gun training as you needed it."
"I would have thought, knowing all this, that from the first time the sanctity of the tennis ball connections was broken, that I would be able to remember all of it," I said.
"No, what happened sounds about right. The training you received doesn't represent one giant memory, it's thousands of memories and skills. It wouldn't all rush out like poking a hole in a dam, it would only become available as needed, something like a reflex. If you were to be officially activated, all of the training would be moved to your active memory. Until then, it remains available on a need-to-use basis. If you tried to tell someone how to tie shoelaces without thinking about it, you might have trouble, but if your shoe is untied you can reach down and perform a complicated manipulation of two strings with two hands without applying any thought whatsoever. The motions and techniques of lace-tying just comes to you as you subconsciously ask for it. Do you understand?"
"I think so," I said. It made enough sense. I knew how to treat strychnine poisoning because I needed to, and I knew how to shoot when I needed to. When I tried shooting at the range in Lorton, I wasn't an expert when I first tried. It wasn't until I stopped thinking about it and treated it like a reflex that I was able to shoot so well. Each time I had to pull from the training, though, it seemed like more and more baggage came with it.

"You said you wrote scripts for everything, right?" I asked.
Secomb nodded.
"You have the script to remove the training?"
He blinked a few times, then said, "Yes, I believe I could do it."
"Would you?" I asked.
"On you?"
I nodded.
Secomb opened his mouth to speak, then hesitated, then finally said, "It would take a while. And like I said, you'd have to sleep right afterwards. It would be dangerous, and I'd have to review my notes and do some research to make sure all the information and techniques are current."
"What about activating?" Amy asked.
Secomb thought some more. "That would be easier. Much easier. I could do that in an hour."

Amy looked at me. "What do you think?" she asked. "If you got rid of it, you would be you again."
"Yeah," I said. "And if you got rid of yours, you wouldn't have to worry about being something you're not."
"Or," Amy said, "we could make of ourselves whatever we want. We could do it, to hell with the consequences."
"You can do whatever you want to do," I said. "You don't have to base it on what I do."
"I think we should go through it together, whatever it is," she said.

My heart began beating faster. Amy's eyes were sincere. Her hand, I'd just noticed, was on mine. I remembered saying once, "When this is over with." It felt like ages ago, of course, but I had known so clearly what I meant then. I also remembered the scar on my back, probably a remnant of an accident during knife training. I thought of what it represented, the lifetime of knife fights and gun battles I could get myself into and out of, the scars I might bear. I had an option here. I could opt for a simple life, a safe life, a life with somebody who might care enough to live it with me; or, I could opt for a life that would probably get me killed far before my time, but might just be more worth living, a road less traveled. If my training was as inclusive as Schumer made it seem, I could probably get any kind of position I wanted. "When this is over with," I'd said once, though.

"Well? Which will it be?" Secomb asked, cutting through the silence. "I'll have to prepare, whichever it is."
I looked up at Amy once more, then turned back to Secomb. With a slight smirk I said, "I think I have a different idea."

The End
...as if there wont be a million sequels

End of Side B

2007-05-14T13:30:00.000-07:00

I remember my hand, my left hand, groping against the smooth-painted brick wall, my fingertips in the groove under which there would be mortar. The world spun around me, buzzing, blurry, all except for my hand against that wall. The one thing anchoring me to reality as my mind clamored against a slick surface, looking for something to hold on to.

And in an instant, everything was fine.

I stood up straight and looked at the gun in my hand. No smoke. No recoil pounding in my still-clenched fist. So, I was dead.

I let go of the wall and brought my left hand to my chest, my stomach, my neck and my head. All dry. So, I was alive.

A few feet in front of me, Lieutenant Colonel Chuck Schumer was slumped on the floor, leaning slightly against the wall behind him. His eyes were wet, glossy, scanning slowly from left to right. His mouth was drawn on one side to a tight point, the other side hanging slack. His arms were down at his side, on the floor; his right hand empty, his hand open, his index finger still hooked around the trigger guard of a small revolver.

There was a fresh hole through his gut, his overcoat sure to be ruined by the free flowing blood.

To my right, just a few feet, Amy was still holding that silver Beretta I pulled off a Marine guardsman. She held it out, straight toward where Schumer would have been standing. Her hands shook, her eyes were wide, her breathing sharp. A few feet to her right I could see light reflecting from a brass 9mm casing on the floor. I could smell gunpowder, I could still hear the echo of the gunshot through the ringing in my ears.

She wasn't moving. Just standing there, arms outstretched, cradling the pistol with both hands in what something told me was called an isosceles stance.

Nothing is ever going to be the same.

Gathering my thoughts, I took a long breath and spoke, quite slowly, "What did you do?"
As soon as the last syllable was completed, Amy replied in one breath, "Idon'tknow."

She was still looking forward, at the wall, the end of the corridor. I looked down at Schumer. He was breathing, slowly. His eyes were as unfocused as Amy's.

I slowly held out my left hand toward the gun in Amy's hands, to lower it. When my hand was a few inches from hers, she sucked in an unsteady breath and suddenly turned sharply toward me, pointing the gun at me now.

The instructions were sent from my brain as clear as could be. Duck the left shoulder down, push left leg against floor, move to the right. I ignored them, though. I just stood there. Amy just stood there, nothing between us but a loaded gun.

"Is it true?" I asked, just as deliberately. "You're part of this?"

Her eyes were unchanging, like a spooked wild animal.

"Idon'tknow," she repeated.

Amidst the cardboard box Amy had brought in were scattered dozens of papers and folders, haphazardly dropped around Amy's feet. On top of them all was a file folder laying open, its contents spilled to the side. I could see pages and pages of typed text, some handwritten notes, and a few photographs. I saw a little girl smiling against a blue patterned background, like any school portrait ever taken. The girl had brown hair, and as she smiled her eyes narrowed in a familiar way. They were eyes I knew, eyes now staring at me.

It was a photograph of Amy, taken years ago. Around it were other photographs, some of her younger, some older.

There was a pain in the back of my throat. The pain came after the realization, the only explanation for why there would be a file full of documents and photos of Amy in a series of files about Schumer's program. I breathed slowly, letting the implications branch out in my mind. Schumer had just been trying to distract and disorient me. I hadn't killed Comstock and Amy wasn't working for anybody.

I grabbed the gun from Amy's hand, just as I had from the Irishman in Comstock's house. One quick arm movement and a turn of the wrist and she was disarmed. I dropped the gun on the floor, stuck my own gun back under my belt, and snapped my fingers in front of Amy's face a few times until her eyes refocused and the color seemed to return to her face. It was shock.

"You didn't know?" I asked as Amy began slowly looking around, rubbing her head.
"I..." she began, then seemed to lose focus again.

I repeated the question, louder this time, trying to break through the mental barriers our brains throw up when we can't process any more information.
"I..." she repeated, "No. I just saw a folder. My name was on it, there were pictures of me, logs, names, and I.." She looked over at Schumer on the floor, no longer breathing. "He had a gun," she said, looking back at me.

I nodded, then just stood in silence for a while. Amy did the same, and the silence began to fill up the room and hammer at my skull. There was a body in the floor, a pile of evidence. We had to get out of there. I had to go somewhere and let my brain explode.

"That should be enough," I said to nobody in particular. Then I lifted the front of my shirt, pulled the strips of medical tape from my skin, and freed the long wire running from my back pocked, around my side, and up my chest. I pulled Rubino's recorder from the pocket, turned it off, and stuck it and the bundled-up microphone wire back into my pocket.

"That should be enough," I repeated.

* * * *

Schumer's near-meticulous records painted a clear enough picture of the truth.

In the case of myself, it turned out, most of what he said was true. I was the first in a series of experiments to test the possibility of using hypnosis as a training platform where a subject doesn't know he's being trained. This was all shoehorned in with another project in in-vitro fertilization and, most likely, genetic engineering. The files didn't detail anything on the genetic side of the program, but the logs and notes made consistent reference to things like reflexes, vision, hearing, and critical-thinking skills.

Amy's file told, with a cold disconnection, the story of her entire life. Erik Westborne, her father, was approached because his Marine Corps profile listed personal financial trouble and problems with his wife conceiving. He was told that by volunteering for a new project he could solve both problems. His wife could receive an in-vitro fertilization without cost, and he would receive an initial payment of $63,000 and a conditional bonus of $15,000 when the child turns eighteen.

The "catch" was of course clearly explained.

And so Amy was born and raised, at first, on base in Quantico. Her training was done on-site at the project headquarters within the Marine Corps University until her father withdrew himself from the Corps and they moved to Fredericksburg so that she could attend my school and her training could be orchestrated by Comstock as well. Every day, she and I would report to an empty classroom for what we thought was study hall. A hypnotist would put us under quickly, using phrases we had already been programed to respond to, and the schooling began. Different instructors were brought in to cover different topics for around an hour, and then the hypnotist repeated the necessary prompts to keep us from actively remembering the whole process, and told to remember sitting quietly at our desks for an hour and reading or daydreaming.

Our files each stated that we were told not to talk to each other, perhaps in fear that if we ever got to know each other we would expect to talk during out imaginary study hall. We would expect to have conversations and remember them, or we'd decide that today we'd work on homework together and afterwards wonder why nothing was accomplished.

After my father's death and my return to school, which was, I later realized, rather soon, there was apparently some concern that my social isolation would be amplified and I might develop the the very disorder that I indeed developed. It was suggested, then, that Amy should start talking to me. She should find me interesting now, so that I would have somebody to talk to. They decided that, should we become friends, it would be worth the extra effort of making up excuses for why we can't talk to each other during study.

The day before my fight at school was the last entry in both of our logs. The day of the fight, when the imaginary wall holding back a lifetime of training finally broke, I left school before my fourth hour study hall and, I found out, Amy did too. The next day was when we tried to get into Comstock's bank account. I didn't attend any classes that day, and Amy skipped fourth hour to perform the phone scam with me. After that, I never went back to school and Amy started leaving at lunch so she could join me on my inane adventures.

With the benefit of hindsight, the events of the past few weeks became perfectly clear to me. It was that we both started missing our daily training sessions that got people worried. Comstock feared that we had somehow found out, and that Schumer was angry with him. He hired Dingan, Schumer's apparent go-to guy, to track us down and see what we were up to. Dingan took the job a little too seriously, and made the mistake of threatening my life. After I killed him, Comstock really got nervous, and apparently tried to flee to Austria, where he'd stowed away most of the insane amounts of money Schumer was paying him. After our little encounter in his hotel room, he assumed that I was a messenger from Schumer and that I hadn't killed him must have meant that Schumer wasn't too angry.

After that, though, things get a little fuzzy. Schumer must have found out that I was working with the FBI and feared that I had found out the truth and would help them raise a case against him. He must have sent the men to my house, and he must have had Comstock killed and put the hit on me that almost killed Amy. It wasn't as clear-cut, but it was the only thing that made sense.

The biggest surprise in any of it was that it wasn't just me. I had a stack of names of kids, ages ranging from barely-seventeen to just over six. Just children, who, like me, were designed at a genetic level and daily taught the art of soldiering.

The sense of isolation I'd had was gone, though somewhat rebuilt when I learned that I was the only one who had his program changed, as Schumer described. Amy and the rest of the kids scattered across the country were only being trained as Marines, as I once was. Only I had been fortunate enough to have all those awful things put in my mind.

To find out that one's entire life is a lie is not an easy thing to just deal with. I, it seemed, was taught to suppress trauma and distractions as part of my specialty. People who pull triggers for political gain need to be able to wash themselves of the guilt, they need to be able to see their friends slaughtered and still pull that trigger. They need to march over a field of butchered innocents to get within range of the warlord whose will ended those lives. Mental compartmentalization was a part of my programming and, ironically, was the only way I could handle learning of it.

Amy wasn't so fortunate. She seemed to take most of it in stride, until she figured out that the reason her mother had left was because she'd found out everything and couldn't be around her or her father knowing what he had done and what she really was. I didn't see much of her after that.

When Rubino gave me the recorder and microphone, he had been expecting some kind of confession out of Schumer to tie him to my father's killing, not a giant box of evidence. All of it was enough to open a formal case within the FBI to investigate the entire history of Schumer's program and hopefully bring charges against any other people responsible.

Like all government bodies, though, the FBI moves slowly.

It all likelihood, the entire operation would be swept under the rug and forgotten about until anybody could be brought to answer for it. With Schumer gone, those who had been taking orders from him would all disband and wander around aimlessly until finding new jobs. There would be no way to guess what would happen to those kids who had been in the middle of their programs. Would their hypnotists and instructors be there when they showed up for their nonexistent classes? Would their unconscious training stay buried without daily intervention to keep it so?

Dead men couldn't be convicted, and for this, I suppose, Carl Dingan, Chuck Schumer, and the Irishman later identified as Thomas McMahon got off easy. It was likely that one of those three had killed my father for trying to expose Schumer.

In the end, I'm left with too many unanswered questions. There was no evidence at all to suggest who Schumer's newer sponsor was. Nothing connected me with any deaths in Austria. There was no telling who those people were who'd come to my house and, ostensibly, blew it up. None of Schumer's records actually outline, detail, or even mention the specifics of my altered training program.

It almost seemed if Schumer wasn't the top dog he made himself out to be. Everybody takes orders from somebody, they say, and removing somebody who only takes orders just leaves open a position for a new fall guy. I once thought this was all about Comstock and was quickly proven wrong. I wondered, how long until thinking this was all about Schumer will seem just as silly.

Confronted by confusion, the best thing to do is to look at facts. Nothing I could learn would bring back my father. No amount of revenge would justify his death, or that of Bremer or everybody else who died for nothing. My mind was very nearly lost to one invented for me, the mind of an unquestioning killer. Everybody said I acted different after Schumer died. I never smiled.

I hoped, above all, that there would be a way to free myself from the weapon inside me. Perhaps time would wash him away. Perhaps, after a lifetime of solitude, he would simply die of atrophy. Perhaps, whatever happens, he'll always be in there. Perhaps I like being him better than I liked being myself. Perhaps I'm more good to the world as a means of chaos than as a simple kid who just wants his life to be normal again.

What say should I have in my own destiny, after all, if I was built to be a weapon? Built, all that I am. Mind, and body.

Ask Questions

2007-05-11T14:28:00.000-07:00

Lt. Colonel Schumer drove into the underground parking garage of his apartment building just after 10PM. The subtle roar of his over sized Cadillac's engine echoed from the confining concrete walls as he navigated two turns and pulled into the space marked with his apartment number. He sat in the driver's seat with the engine idling for a few seconds before killing the engine. He opened the door and stepped out, straightening his long gray trench coat as he surveyed the area around him in one broad turn of his head. The dim overhead lighting emphasized the drooping lines in his unshaven and weary face. He let out a breath and closed the door behind him, sidestepping to open the door to the backseat and reach in. He stood up again, clutching a square cardboard box to his chest with both hands and about to swing the door shut with his left knee.

He hadn't seen me, ducked behind the hood of a car in anticipation of his headlight's direction and the limits of his sight-lines. He hadn't heard me, baffling the sounds of my footsteps by carrying the tension of my weight in my knees and timing major movements to be covered by the sound of the engine shutting off and doors opening or closing. He hadn't even smelled me, for the whole place smelled of exhaust and rubber.

He felt me, though, when I was finally within range and drove my right knee into his back, shoving his body into the side of his car. He felt me when I drove my left elbow down into the back of his neck, slamming his chin into the roof of his car. He felt my right hand gripping around his neck, my thumb pressing into the base of his carotid artery, causing his head to draw in to the right and his legs to weaken as a reflex. He felt me pull his left wrist around and press it into his back, making him drop the cardboard box onto the cement floor. He felt me force him back and away from the car and forward, into the narrow hallway leading to a single elevator and a musty stairwell.

When I stopped four feet short of the far wall and gave him one last shove, when he had enough time to raise his arms to blunt the impact with the wall, when I'd had enough time to draw my gun and train it two-handed at the center of his mass, and when he pushed himself away from the wall to turn around, he finally saw me. The look on his face was neither shock or recognition, it was a slight grimace with a hint of a smile.

"This is how you're going to do it?" Schumer grunted before I could speak. "A bullet, in cold blood? A dance in pale bravado." The grin on his face remained.
A slight tingle crept up the base of my skull and swept across the top of my head. "Can't think of anything more fitting," I said.
"It's just," he said before stopping to let out two dry coughs, "I thought you'd developed a thing for poisoning. Haven't eaten anything but fast food since you did Comstock."
"What?"
He leaned backwards against the wall and brought his left hand up to his neck, rubbing the right side. "Trying to kill your way to the top until you get your revenge, huh? It's noble, I guess."
He wasn't making sense, trying to distract me or take me off balance. "Answers first," I said, "then revenge."
Schumer straightened up a bit, dropping his hand from his neck. "What the hell haven't you figured out already?"
"I want to know the truth about your program, why I can do much more than you claim I should be able to. I want to know how you could have been training me my whole life when there's not any missing time in my day-to-day. And, mostly, I want to know why you killed my dad."
The expression fell from Schumer's face for a moment. "Wow," he said, flatly. "You're a lot farther behind than I thought you'd be."

"What are you talking about? All you've told me is lies, how would I know anything else?"
Schumer leaned his head back and chuckled deeply, sickly. "This is quite a situation, then," he said through a grin.
"So tell me, then," I said. "What am I supposed to have figured out already?"
"The program change!" said Schumer. "I thought this was all because you'd found out."
I just looked at him, the gun still pointed at his heart.
Schumer let out a low sigh, then adjusted his footing slightly as if his legs were cramping. "What I told you about the program was true, my intentions, how it was designed, that was all the truth. For a while, it was, anyway."
"I'm listening," I said when he stopped talking.
"Over a decade into the program, there was a regime change. New President, new bodies in the White House, new oversight committee, new superiors. The people who had approved my project, who were providing me with the funding under the table, they were all gone. Retired, redistributed, whatever. The people who came in after them didn't want to hear word one about what I was doing, about all the money already spent and how much we'd lose if we scrapped the project. They wanted nothing to do with it. It was a new world, a new military once more. The climate that made the project a possibility had changed. The money was gone.

"So, I was forced to find new avenues of financing. I was approached by someone who wanted to fund the project, so I took the shot without asking questions. Questions I should have asked."
"What was the problem?" I asked.
"It turned out I wasn't getting straight funding so much as a promotional sponsorship or an investment. The ones with the money had their own agenda for how to use the program, beyond military recruiting."
"What kind of agenda? Political, or commercial?"
"Yes," he said. I smiled slightly; that's the answer my mother once gave when I asked if a tomato was a fruit or a vegetable.
"There was tremendous pressure on me to do what they wanted. They wanted results. They didn't want duty and honor taught through hypnosis, they wanted to see how far we could take it. This was late in the game, though, you were already in your teens, only a few years from completion. Still, they wanted results or the money would disappear."
"What did they want, then? You said you changed the program, what did you change it to?"
"You," he said. "Exactly what you are now. A ruthless, unquestioning, mechanical delivery system of death. 'What is the point of having an advanced training platform if you only teach what can be learned in a few months of training?' they asked me. They wanted the product of years of service and training. They wanted Special Forces. They wanted kites, shadow men, wet workers, black ops. They wanted Navy Seals coming off of an assembly line."
"And that's what you gave them," I said through grinding teeth.
"I had them change your training schedule, brought in some of our SF instructors to write a new 'curriculum' for you. Battlefield ethics and squad formations were out, knife fighting and improvised explosives were in."

So that's what it was. I wasn't supposed to be the perfect soldier, I was supposed to be the perfect killer. It explained everything I'd been able to do, it explained the fleeting grasp I had on myself.

"Who are these people? Who's paying the bills now?" I asked.
Schumer leveled his gaze at me. "People with more power than they should have. People who stand to gain from having people like you on staff."
"You said this was all about that, the program change?"
He nodded. "In essence, when I changed your training program, I set the roof on a house of cards. Something messed up your hypnotic compartmentalizing, and the training started leaking out, as you've discovered. Stress, fear, whatever it was, it shouldn't have happened. It wouldn't have, if we'd stuck to the original program."
"That stress was from my father being killed!" I barked.
"Well," Schumer said, "house of cards."

I pulled back the slide of the pistol with my left hand, chambering a round. "Explain please."
"I didn't think he'd like the idea of the new specialty we were preparing you for, so I tried to keep it from him. He had, after all, agreed to have you taught about discipline and all that 'The few. The proud. The Marines.' garbage. When he found out, he didn't take it very well."
"It was illegal, unethical. He tried to report it to the FBI."
"We couldn't have that," Schumer said in a disgustingly coy tone. "I tried to talk him out of it. Told him we could reverse the training once it was proven, told him it was under control, even offered him more money since there was a newfound surplus of it. He wouldn't take."
"So you killed him."
"Not myself, no."
"Just because he was going to shed light on your secret project?"
"As I said, there was tremendous pressure to keep it running. I might give you a moment to process that but I know it would be useless, you were taught to suppress your emotions. Box them up, drive yourself crazy later, just get the job done now. You can't even make yourself care now, can you? Knowing why your father died. A normal person would care."

My mind did seem rather blank. I knew Schumer was responsible for my father's death, but hearing him admit to it should have affected me somehow. No, he's just trying to distract me again.

"Shut up--" I started.
"As for your other question," he began before I could finish. "As for when exactly the training was conducted, I'm not entirely sure. That was all Nathan's job, I figured you would have asked him that before you killed him."
"What are you talking about, you had him killed!"
"Is that how you're painting it for the police? If you can pull it off, I guess."

What was he talking about? I killed Comstock? No, I didn't. I would have remembered that. Like how I'd remember being trained as a killer in the first place. Could he be right? Could I be doing things still without realizing? No, don't lose your focus.

"That box," I said, glancing for a moment behind me and toward the parking area. "What was that?"
Schumer chuckled again, "That? Files. Everything that's left of the program. I shut it down, Chris. It's over. I figured that since you've started shooting FBI agents now, there would be no way to keep the heat away from this thing anymore. I destroyed most of it tonight, I thought I'd bring the rest home for one last hurrah, you know?"

More nonsense, he's still trying to kick me off balance. I called Amy's name and she appeared from the stairwell behind me.

"Over by the car there's a cardboard box, bring it here," I said, keeping my eye on Schumer who seemed very surprised to see Amy.

When the sound of her footprints vanished out of range, Schumer stopped following her with his eyes and looked back to me. "Either she's gone rogue or you're one hell of an idiot," he said.
"What?" I asked.
Schumer's smile returned. "Do you think Nathan Comstock was our only means of keeping an eye on you? Hah, how old did she say she is? I've heard her go as low as sixteen."
Shaking my head slowly, I said, "What are you talking about?"
"Please," he said. "When did she first start talking to you? What has ever happened to you when she wasn't around? I didn't think she'd last this long."
"No," I muttered, "What are you--" and I trailed off in thought. Amy first showed up in my life right after my dad died and she took an unusual interest.

She was there in Lorton, when Dingan somehow tracked me down in a city nearly an hour away from home. It was her plan to go there in the first place. She was the only person who knew I was going to Austria, and she was the only person who knew when I was supposed to return, which was exactly when the guys showed up at my house, which she was there for. She was the only one who knew I was on my way to Comstock's house, where I showed up just after he'd been killed. She was surprisingly good at deceiving people over the phone or in person, and she was the only justification I'd had that my fourth hour study hall couldn't have been when I was being hypnotized.

God. No, wait. I'd met her father, though he was involved with the Marines as well. I'd remembered Amy from long before she actually started talking to me, though. Right, that.

"She was around a long time before my dad was killed, though," I said, "I remember her."
Schumer's face became oddly sympathetic. "You remember her," he tapped his forehead twice,"or you 'remember' her?"
My hand wavered a bit. It could have been a distraction, but it made so much sense. As an administrator, Comstock could have fudged the paperwork to transfer her into school to watch me or make sure I did the right things or didn't figure out the wrong things. I couldn't remember her ever being too scared whenever I, or "we" were in danger.

Amy walked back into the corridor, the cardboard box in both hands. I turned sharply to look at her, then back at Schumer.

"Here," she said. "It's full of file folders."
"I--," my voice stuttered, "what's in the folders?"
She sat the box down on the floor and knelt down, Schumer watched with a satisfied smirk. "Looks like..." Amy started, "orders, more orders, logs, charts. Some of the folders have names and words on the tabs some don't. Here's one with your name on it."

"Nothing in there links me to your father," Schumer said to me.
"Oh, I'm not planning on bringing this to trial," I said.
"Right. You just want to shoot me," he said, crossing his arms.

He stood there, saying nothing for half a minute, as if waiting for something. "For killing your father," he said, as if a prompt.

If he was banking that I couldn't summon the rage, he was wrong. His distractions had worked well enough, I'd lost the train of thought I'd been riding earlier, but the fact still remained that Schumer killed my father, who had done nothing wrong. Who tried to do the right thing. Who knew he might die, and wanted to make sure that if he did die that I wouldn't be put out.

I'd wanted to kill Schumer for days now.

This was my chance.

I straightened my right arm, centering the reticule in the middle of Schumer's chest. I told my heart to slow down, my breath to steady, the thoughts and feelings in my mind to silence. I tightened my grip on the pistol. I felt Amy's presence just a few feet behind me. I put my finger on the trigger, and told my hand to squeeze.

Nothing happened. I tried to pull the trigger again, nothing. I couldn't. My hand wouldn't move. Then, the more I thought about it, the sillier the idea of killing that man had seemed. He was so friendly.

"What is it?" Amy asked.
Schumer smiled, then broke out into a laugh. I lowered the gun and shook my head slowly.
"I can't kill him," I said, turning to Amy.

"Of course not," Schumer said. "I'm so friendly."
I turned back at him, heard Amy go back to flicking through the folders and rustling pages.
It was odd, Schumer saying 'friendly' after I'd thought it. Looking at it again, it seemed odd that I'd thought it in the first place. It seemed like a foreign concept, something surreptitiously slipped into my mind.
"What did you do?" I asked.
Schumer held his smile. "I'm not an idiot," he said. "I'm not about to let loose a rabid dog without putting a leash on him."
"Ummm..." Amy said, from the sound of her voice I could tell she was looking down, still looking through the box. I ignored her.

"What do you mean?" I said, lowering the gun.
"Safe words," he said, simply. "I couldn't let somebody learn how to kill without learning the weight associated without a safety mechanism. 'Dance, pale, bravado.' Those are yours. I had to look yours up. If somebody says the safe words, the hypnotic programming in your head overrides everything else and tells you that whoever said it is a friendly. I wasn't entirely sure if it would work on you, since you weren't officially activated, but it seems to work out just fine."

I clenched my teeth again, raised the gun again. I couldn't make myself do it. The whole idea of it seemed wrong, like smashing a puppy with a brick. I practically growled at my uselessness, then stopped suddenly.
"Chris..." Amy said behind me. I ignored her again.
"Wait," I said to Schumer, "What do you mean look mine up?"
Schumer smiled that dreadful smile.

"Your name isn't the only one in here..." Amy said, continuing to thumb through the folders.
I looked back at Schumer, a new flavor of rage in my mouth. "There are more, aren't there?"
He kept smiling.

I raised the gun again, realizing still that it was probably pointless. "How many are there?!" I screamed for the first time.
Schumer took a step away from the wall. "It's not like building guns, where you go from spec to production in a few months. This is building and programming people, I couldn't wait eighteen years for the first prototype."

My mouth went dry, my head started to pound. It was too much, I couldn't process any more. I thought I was the only one. I thought this was all about me.

"How many?" I asked weakly, my whole throat seemed dry. "Five? Fifty? Hundreds?"
"Oh my God," Amy said quietly, to herself. She dropped most of the folders she was holding and stood up.
"A few," Schumer said, taking another short step. "Each in different stages, we started a new subject every year or so, adjusting the program as we found errors. Did you think you were special, Chris. You were just the pilot program, kiddo."
"Chr--Chris?" Amy said, I still wasn't paying attention to her.

Kiddo. My dad called me kiddo.

My heart picked up its pace, started trying to escape my chest. My stomach and lungs tried to join it. I felt slightly dizzy, the room and my head starting to spin. Where Amy was standing, it looked like she was reaching for something shiny stuck into her pants. Where Schumer was standing, it looked like he was moving forward and pulling something shiny from the front pocket of his coat. I was stumbling backwards, unsure of where I was or what was going on, but I knew I saw a gun. Hell, it could have been mine. Still, an instinct took over and I pointed my gun in the direction of the gun I thought I might have seen as my body wearily stepped backwards. I held my breath, closed my eyes, and tried my best to pull the trigger knowing full well that I probably couldn't and that even if I did, I was probably already dead.

A lone gunshot cut through the silence of the darkened corridor.

Super-Secret

2007-05-09T14:31:00.000-07:00

Amy, dressed in regular clothes now, and me, going out of my mind, got out of the hospital without drawing any attention to ourselves. It took longer than I'd hoped because Amy could only move her legs so far before they ached, but she did an alright job of hiding that from me. Amy disappearing from her room would probably cause a bit of a panic, I told her, but she didn't care. They'd see that some of her clothes were missing and the hospital gown was in the bathroom and figure out she left of her own volition. I'd heard that some hospitals had weight sensors on the beds that would send a signal to the nurse's station whenever someone got out of bed, but that either wasn't the case or wasn't a problem.

We both got in my car after I'd moved Rubino's box from the front seat and we began the hour-plus drive north to DC. The drive was mostly long stretches of silence with some scattered conversations mixed in.

"So," she said toward the middle of the trip, "do you have an agenda?"
I thought about the different applications of that word for a second, then asked, "Agenda like, 'Today's Agenda' or like 'Hidden Agenda'?"
She turned from me to look out at the road ahead of us. "The first one," she said. "Are you just planning on going in there and saying, 'My name is Chris Baker. You killed my father, prepare to die'?"
I blinked twice, trying to remember what movie that was from and then giving up. "Not exactly that terse," I said. "There are still some things I need explained."
"Like what?"
"Everything Schumer told me about the whole brain-washy hypnotic training program kind of makes sense to me, except for two things that don't add up. He said that Comstock's job at the school was to make sure I always had a free hour so the trainers come come in and knock me out, but I can account for every one of my classes for the last two semesters still. Every class I either have with multiple people that I've talked with and done group assignments, I can remember very vividly, or I have with you. Study hall, the most boring hour and what seems like the perfect opportunity to take me out a back door and flash lights in my eyes, I have with you. Have you ever seen me leave that class for more than a few minutes?"
She thought for a few seconds, then said, "No, I don't think so. Maybe they do it before or after school, like you're signed up for some nonexistent club and don't know it. They could make you think you go straight home after school, but really you hang around for an hour so they can do the... thing."
"Military History Club!" I said with sarcasm dripping from my tongue, "It's all a conspiracy."

She didn't seem so amused. "What's the second thing?" she asked.
"Ok, well, Schumer said that this whole thing is just a way to skip basic training. That the stuff I was taught under hypnosis would just be enough for me to know the basic stuff they teach, how to make your bed, how 1300 hours means 1PM, chain of command, how to hold a rifle with the business-end forward, how to climb a rope, how slapping another man on the ass isn't gay, stuff like that. If that's the case, though, why do I know much, much more than that? Dumping milk in your eyes if you're hit with pepper spray, a thousand different ways to get people's addresses or bank accounts over the phone, picking security-bar locks, picking handcuffs, treating strychnine poisoning, disarming two Marines of two weapons apiece, it all seems far beyond your average jarhead's training."
"When did you pick handcuffs?" she asked.

I remembered then that I never told Amy about Pratt, the Interpol officer in Austria.

"I forgot to mention," I said, "I may or may not have killed some wealthy guy in Austria two years ago."
"Two years ago? When you were fifteen?"
"At least one person thinks so," I said.
"Well, let me know how that all works out."
"I think it might have just been a ruse to get me into custody, like when Dingan said I'd kidnapped you. I don't know how Schumer would be able to pull that off in Austria, but it's more likely than anything else. That or there's someone who looks like me, pulling hits in Europe."
"What, like, maybe they saved your genetic blueprints when you were just an embryo and they sold it abroad as a grow-your-own assassin kit?"
"If clones have anything to do with this," I said, "I'll lose all faith in reality."

Schumer's apartment building in downtown DC was in a semi-upscale area but wasn't quite as nice as the buildings around it. There was no doorman or lobby, just a locked door and an intercom/buzzer with a button for each tenant. I had his apartment number on the sheet Rubino gave me, but the nameplate for that unit on the intercom was blank. He must not have wanted many visitors.

Seeing nothing better to do besides scaling a ten-storey building, and because my car was illegally parked on the street, I pressed the call button for Schumer's unit. Then I pressed it again. Then I leaned on it for thirty seconds. No door buzz, no voice through the intercom. Either he wasn't home or the intercom tone inside the apartments wasn't annoying enough.

"Not home?" Amy asked over my shoulder.
"Could be. Or he could be dead," I said.
"That would be unexpected."
"And inexplicable."
"Could still be at the office. Quantico's on the way home."
"It's late, he should be home soon."
"Want to wait here?"
"It would be easier than breaking into or out of Quantico."
"Probably," she said.

The thought that Schumer might be dead was starting to weigh on my mind. The last time I went to someone's home to try and get some answers, that someone was lying dead at his front door. I couldn't think of anybody besides me who would want to kill Schumer, but it still bothered me.

"Maybe we should go up and see, just to be sure," I said, walking across the sidewalk back to my car.
"Up is this way," she said, standing at the door of the building, pointing her thumb over her shoulder.

I opened the passenger door of my car, reached into the box in the back seat, and pulled out my as-yet unused USP. For no reason I made sure the magazine was full, the chamber was empty, and the safety was on, then tucked the gun awkwardly into the back of my pants. Seeing this, Amy came over and seemed about to protest when I stuck the handle of one of the Berettas into her chest.

"Just like your dad's," I said.

She made a pained face, then grabbed the gun and turned around with her back toward me so she could tuck it into her pants without being quite as obvious as I. Back at the the apartment door, I looked at the intercom panel for a good while.

"Know any super-secret ways to bypass these things?" she asked.
"I know one," I said, counting the rows of buttons and the number of buttons per row.
Amy didn't say anything, perhaps trying to decide if I was serious or not.

There were fifty-two buttons total. It seemed like enough. I pressed the first button, then the second, then all the rest of the buttons, sliding my finger down the rows of buttons like a kid selecting all the floors in an elevator. About twenty variations of "hello?" and "yeah?" came through the intercom before there was a loud buzz and the door's lock clicked open. With fifty-two units, at least one person is expecting somebody or doesn't care who they buzz in.

"Gee, I never would have thought of that," Amy said with just the right amount of derision as I pulled the door open and let Amy through.

Schumer's apartment was on the fourth floor and, though I had a compulsion to take the stairs, we took the elevator for Amy's sake. The hall on the fourth floor reminded me of a hotel with the vertically striped wallpaper and the overly-complicated pattern in the short-fibered carpet. Schumer's door was in the middle of the hall and, of course, locked. I pressed my ear to the door and knocked, listening for movement but hearing nothing. Not home, or not alive. The door had a lock on the knob and a deadbolt above it. The knob wouldn't turn at all, meaning the knob lock was enabled. Most people don't bother with both locks, opting for one or the other, when they leave. The knob can usually be locked from the inside with the door open before leaving, requiring far less effort. Odds were, the deadbolt wouldn't be locked.

"Know any super-secret ways to pick a door lock without a lock pick?" Amy asked.
I tapped on the wood above and below the deadbolt before saying, "I know one."

I took a step back and kicked the door just to the side of the knob, putting more pressure into the follow-through than the drive. With a sharp crack followed by a loud thud, the small latch ripped through the soft wood of the door jamb and the door swung open freely. The noise was louder than I expected, so I went in, pulling Amy after me, before anybody would come to investigate.

"Your creativity is inspiring," Amy said.

I shut the door and looked around the apartment. It was sparsely decorated, with unmatching furniture and nothing but military junk on the walls. There were no dead bodies in any of the rooms. Amy began roaming around the small living room, looking at the plaques and photos on the walls while I tried to survey the apartment as an ambush location. Right next to the front door was a tall bookcase, and on the middle shelf on the end closest to the door I found a loaded revolver hidden by a leaning book. There was another pistol in the drawer of the small table beside the bed in the bedroom. In the closet of the other room, made into an office, were two locked gun cases and several boxes of ammo. Above the door, inside the closet, was a shotgun mounted on the wall. This guy seemed a mite paranoid.

I closed the closet door and came back into the living room. "We're leaving," I said.
Amy turned from a black and white group photo on the wall to look at me. "Why?" she asked, "We could wait for him here."
"You know how they say, 'Is it still paranoia if people are really out to get you?' The answer is yes, and there's no way I could completely clear this place of guns without missing something."
"Then where?"
"Parking garage," I said without thinking.

Fix You

2007-05-07T14:42:00.000-07:00

I got out of Rubino's car and stood alone in the parking lot for a bit with the box tucked under one arm. I watched him drive off, watched the tail lights turn and disappear. I stood, in the twilight with a soft breeze playing with my hair and clothes, ignoring the world around me and trying for a moment to exist only in my mind. I tried to feel the things I should be feeling, tried to relive the things I'd experienced and remember who I was before any of them. It was useless, I knew. I opened my eyes a completely different person from what I once was. The walls from the sandbox in my mind had been kicked out, and all the things I was afraid I'd become were pouring into the spaces reserved for myself. The real me. The person I would be if my dad wasn't who he was and if my brain hadn't been used as a proving ground for untested forms of manipulation.

Of course, without those things, I wouldn't even exist.

I should have cared about my mom, about Bremer or his family, about the police officer gunned down for being within the same field of fire as me. That I wanted to wasn't enough, I couldn't make myself feel these things. When I looked into myself I saw only a cold commitment to vengeance. Schumer wanted me dead, so I'd make him dead first. It was as simple as that to me, and the casualness in which I'd decided such frightened me, the last shred of myself that remained which was capable of such fear.

Something had changed me. Were it the chaos of gunfire all around me, seeing Bremer go down, seeing Rubino risk his life to fetch those keys, or the moment I pulled the trigger to thoughtlessly yet willingly end a human life, it didn't concern me. What mattered was that I was fundamentally changed from the kid I had been even a month ago. Even at the beginning, when the switch was flipped in my brain and the training in my brain started taking over, I was different. The fight at school, the encounter at Lorton, even the gunmen in my house, when I was attacking I was working on autopilot, letting myself issue pain and escape death as I may and only reacting afterwards. After that, though, it became by choice. I was choosing how to disarm and incapacitate the bodyguards in Schumer's office, and this morning chose to make a one-hit-kill from over a hundred feet; it wasn't autopilot, it was all me. That's what scared me. But, I supposed, the fact that I could still frighten myself represented one glimmer of hope that there was still some small part of the old me left.

That small part even found it a happy coincidence that, now that I really needed to kill Schumer, I was fully capable. Before this, I doubted I would have been able.

Of course, I realized that if it was shooting the Irish hitman that had tipped me this far over the edge, there's no telling where killing Schumer would have left me. Somehow, I felt like it would be worth it, whatever it was.

Whatever small parcel of humanity remained inside of me seemed to be amplified in proximity to Amy, and at this time I somewhat regretted that fact, but I still had to see her before I went and jumped from one field of fire to another. I took one last breath of fresh air and got into my own car, setting the box in my passenger seat, and pulling my USP handgun from between the seat and console and dropped it into the box, creating a nice little pile of armaments.

I drove to the hospital for the second time that day. I took an entrance and followed a route that I knew would bypass any desks or checkpoints where people could tell me visiting hours were over. On Amy's floor I took a longer route just to avoid the nurse's station and as I rounded the corner nearest her room I saw Mr. Westborne, Amy's father, standing outside her door talking to a woman about his age. The way they spoke and the slight resemblance was enough to tell me that this was Amy's mother. They were too far away for me to hear, and it turned out that my list of superpowers didn't contain lipreading so I was oblivious to what they were saying, though they were certainly adamant about saying it. Amy's mom was flailing her arms around as she spoke, while he stood like an oak tree.

She seemed to have had enough after a while as she stopped, turned, and walked away. Mr. Westborne, whose first name I probably should have learned by then, called for her, then followed after her. When they were both out of sight I slipped down the hall and into Amy's room.

The lights were off inside the room, but there was enough coming from the TV to see around. Amy was awake, propped up in her bed, watching the screen with her arms folded awkwardly on account of the IV line in her arm. When I first entered there was an odd disconnect between the TV and sound, since I heard TV noises but nothing was coming from the TV set, then I realized that the sound was coming from speakers built into the rails of the bed. I was in the middle of thinking that was awesome when Amy saw me standing there, turned off the TV and pushed a button on the bed rail to turn on an overhead light.

"I can control the whole room from this thing," she said with a smile.
I was silent, not knowing what exactly I wanted to say and, if I did know, how to say it.
She got tired of waiting, I suppose, and asked, "What? What is it?"
"I thought you'd want to know," I said, stepping closer and lowering my voice, "the Irish guy, who poisoned Comstock, well, you too, he's dead."
Her face went blank for a moment. "Oh," she started. "That's, well, I don't know what that is. I guess it's good. How did he die?"
"There was a shootout at the hotel earlier today, right after I got back from here. I, well, we all were shooting at him. One of us hit him. Bremer, the older one, he was hit, though. Killed." It was a lie, of course, I knew I was the one who'd killed him. It felt a bit better to pretend I didn't know that, though.
Amy took a while to register all that, needing clarification on what exactly "shootout" meant and how Bremer had died.

"If the guy trying to kill you is dead, does that mean this is all over?" she asked with a spring of hope in her voice.
I shook my head. "Irish Guy was only hired, someone else could just be brought in to take his place. This ends with whoever hired him; it ends with Schumer."
"You know it's Schumer now?" Amy asked.
"He's the only person it could be," I paused, "he's the one who killed my dad."
"What? Why? For trying to sell the plans to--"
I cut her off. "He wasn't selling anything. He decided to report the project to the FBI, because it was illegal. Schumer found out about that, had him killed before he could bring any real evidence."
"So this is all Schumer?" she said after some consideration.
"All of it."
"Had your dad killed, had Comstock killed, tried to have you killed, nearly got me killed, and got Bremer killed."
I nodded.
"Does the FBI have enough evidence to move on Schumer now?" she asked.
"No. They might be able to put together some evidence to prove that he hired the Irish guy, but Rubino isn't hopeful. He gave me Schumer's home address and two guns. I think I know what he wants; what I want."
"Well... are you?"
I nodded again, "I think so. I'm certainly going to have a talk with him, at least."
She sank in the bed just a bit. "When?" she asked, carefully.
"Right now."

Amy bit her bottom lip and looked around the room. She looked past me at the small sink on the nearest wall and the cabinet above it.

"In there," she said, "I think there's gauze and Band-Aids up there. Grab me one of each."
I glanced behind me. "Why?"
"Because I'm coming with you," she said, "and I have to take this IV out."
"What?" I said.
"It's fine," she said, leaning forward slowly, "they took one out of my other arm, I watched them. I can do it."
"No," I said, "you're not coming."
"Why not?" she asked.
"Why not not?"
"I'm in this as much as you," she said, holding the IV up to her face and looking at all the parts. "Dingan could have killed me, I was there when guys with guns ran around your house, I'm in this bed because of all this. I have as much right to see the end as you."

I couldn't tell her the real reason I didn't want her to come, that her being there might make me too human to kill Schumer. That she could undo all the mental hardening I'd just unlocked.

"You're supposed to stay in bed, right? You're in pain," I said, instead.
Amy shrugged. "I'm mobile now. They came and took most the tubes out of me. I go to the bathroom on my own now, thank God. The only thing wrong with me is that my muscles are sore, and they can be sore anywhere."
"What is this? You want to get away from your parents?"
"No, this is because when I'm around, you're more careful. If you have to worry about me, you might not do anything stupid."

I sighed and wondered if this was actually why I'd come here. Maybe some part of me wanted to bring her along. I pulled a small piece of gauze from the cabinet and a bandage. Amy pulled the tape from her arm and unclipped the IV line from the needle in her arm and tossed it aside, it swung around the bed like a jungle vine. She told me to press the gauze down where the needle went in, and she slowly pulled the whole apparatus from her arm, then held the gauze down with the bandage. She got up to dump the needle in the biohazard sharps bin by the sink, grabbed some clothes from a bag by one of the chairs and headed toward the bathroom.

I sat on the edge of the bed and tried to think of the last time anything had gone according to plan, then remembered that I worked best without them.

National Security

2007-05-04T15:32:00.000-07:00

The police came, as they often do. The wreck on the street was cordoned off and traffic was restored.

"I won't be able to cover this up," Rubino said as the first sounds of sirens began to echo off of the buildings. "You'll have to make a statement, and I'll have a mess of paperwork."

I nodded, silently, and walked back to the hotel parking lot. I sat down on the edge of the sidewalk, rested my arms on my knees, and let the fully loaded Glock hang from my hand while I tried my best to keep the tidal wave of questions, feelings, and memories inside my mind at bay.

Behind the police came ambulances to take away the injured, but finding only the dead. The shooter, with fresh bandaging on his right leg under his pants -- making him and the Irishman one and the same, was dead. The cop, splayed out across the pavement, was dead. Special Agent Bremer, his back to the sidewalk, was dead. Rubino took the news with a slow nod and glazed eyes. Crime scene workers came in and floated around the parking lot like bees, placing numbered cards near spent ammo casings on the cracked pavement and taking meticulous photos. Everybody seemed to ignore me.

I set the gun down and walked back to the white panel van. The discarded assault rifle in the back was an XM8, the same carried by the men who had stormed my house and seemingly blown it up, only with the proper modifications to make it a full automatic rifle. I recognized the heavy 20-inch barrel, folding bi-pod, and 100-round drum magazine from the pictures I'd seen online when I first looked the gun up. As I recalled, the XM8 was a prototype project that was canceled before completion and the prototype units were very rare. This Irish guy and the men at my house having the same rare prototype weapon and them not being connected would be a phenomenally huge coincidence.

This means that, on top of the Irishman somehow knowing Dingan, he either works with, or gets his guns from the same person as, the guys from my house. It all comes back to the Marines, back to Schumer.

There was no other way to look at it. Schumer came up with the plan to train kids to be killers, Schumer had my dad killed when he tried to report the program to the Feds, Schumer had Comstock cover up my outburst at school, Schumer had Comstock killed, tried to have me killed, almost got Amy killed. Because of Schumer's affinity for reckless hitmen, two police officers were dead now, and one FBI Special Agent.

My life had boiled down to a series of unanswered questions interspersed with situations of danger, my dad was dead, and my only friend was in the hospital, all because of Lt. Colonel Schumer. That was all I needed now, no more mysteries to solve. No more bullets to dodge. Schumer was behind all of it, and he was going to pay.

My blood pumped with a newfound resolve. At last I had a clear purpose.

"Mr. Baker?" came a voice from behind me. There was a police officer, a detective from the look of him, standing just a few feet from me. "I'd like you to come down to the station with us to help fill out a report while they finish things up here."
I looked around the parking lot for Rubino, saw him over by the swarm of police cars, talking to another officer. He looked over at me, glanced at the officer staring me down, and nodded at me.
This would be interesting.

Four hours. I was there for four hours. Nobody seemed happy with my answer that I was assisting the FBI with an investigation, an investigation I could not talk about because of national security. They seemed to be missing the part of the story where I became so interesting to the FBI, but that too I could write off to national security. The key, it seemed, is to keep a straight face when you say, "national security." That's when they start taking you seriously.

The lead detective, an early-balding man with bags under his eyes, pulled out a file with my name on it, circled in red, and underlined four times in black. I thought they would have been using computers for these things by now, but that wasn't the case. The file was full of unanswered mysteries that all lead to me. A Martin Escamile's parents had tried to press charges against me for assaulting him in school, but school administration reported that I wasn't even involved. There was a dead Lorton police officer in the trunk of his own cruiser, which was split down the middle by a tree, and was practically fused with my old car; the FBI blocked their investigation. My passport was logged leaving the country and entering Austria, but not returning, and I was somehow sitting right there. Someone called saying to come to my house, and when the police arrived the house was effectively gone; the FBI blocked that investigation. I'd come into the hospital with a girl suffering a rare type of poisoning and I'd known exactly how to treat it at the scene; the FBI blocked that investigation. Now, I was in the middle of a shootout in the middle of Fredericksburg which resulted in the deaths of the assailant, a police officer, an FBI agent, and the injury of one female driver whose car was struck by a van; no FBI block this time.

My answer to all of the above: national security. With a straight face, of course.

The fact was, it was easier to answer no questions than to try to explain the real answers, especially without incriminating myself in the process. I couldn't imagine the police would be too receptive of any claims that I was in the center of a conspiracy headed by a corrupt member of the Marine Corps.

The detective was in the middle of explaining that I could be held for up to 24 hours without charge when Rubino came through the metal, windowless door into the interrogation room I'd been sitting in for the last four hours. Seeing him, the lead detective threw his arms up in disgust and the other detective tried to block Rubino's path but he slipped right past him.

"Officers, I assume you've had sufficient time to take necessary statements and file a report on today's incident," Rubino said in one breath as he placed a crisp, type document onto the table and slid it over to the detective, saying, "This is a formal statement from the FBI Assistant Director declaring that Christopher Baker is not to be held nor any charges be placed against him until such a time that the investigation he is currently assisting us with has been brought to an end. Presuming you have enough to file your reports, I will be taking Mr. Baker now so he can get some rest and be moved to a more secure lodging."

The whole monologue was delivered smoothly and without a break to allow any interjection. I was lead by the shoulder out of the room and the door was closed before the officers had even time enough to open their mouths.

As we walked out of the building, Rubino asked me, "What'd you tell them?"
"That I couldn't tell them anything," I said.
"Fifth amendment?" he asked.
"National security."
"Even better."
"Was that letter real?" I asked.
"Not even a little bit," Rubino said casually.

Rubino drove me, in the black sedan, back to the hotel and parked just next to my car. The bodies were gone, the van was gone, the spent casings were gone. But for some destroyed cars and a few bullet holes in the wall, it looked like any other hotel parking lot now. The morning's chaos just a memory, a news story, a police report, and something a few business travelers can go home and tell their friends about.

After a few seconds of sitting in silence, Rubino said, "We can see if that guy's face or prints match anything we have on file, maybe give him a name."
"Will that help you get any evidence, about who hired him?" I asked.
"Probably not," he said, flatly.
From a legal standpoint, there would probably be no way to move from here to Schumer. We both knew it. He would have funded the hits with an offshore account or gone through a proxy.

Rubino turned and pulled a small cardboard box from the back seat of the car and set it on my lap. Inside it was a piece of paper, below that were the two Beretta 92 pistols from the dresser drawer of my hotel room, a roll of white medical adhesive, and a few other things. On the paper was a single address, an apartment in downtown Washington DC.

Rubino turned and looked out the windshield, thoughtfully. "I think I've taken you as far as I can," he said. The sun was setting and long shadows were cast across his face, exaggerating the otherwise-subtle sorrowful look he'd worn since I'd looked at him over the body of our only remaining lead.
"I, Bremer and I," he continued, "have broken a lot of rules and laws to get this far, because of what your father did, or tried to do. If you want to end this, you'll have to take the last step. I have to do some explaining, take care of all of the paperwork required after discharging a weapon in the field, and call Bremer's wife.

I pulled a small, black gadget from the bottom of the box and asked, "What's this for?"
Rubino turned back to me and said, "You'll figure it out."

Beginning of the End

2007-05-02T15:34:00.000-07:00

I stopped trying to count after around 30 rounds fired without a break long enough to account for a magazine change. Either there were two of them, taking turns, or one guy with one heavy machine gun. The car I was hiding behind only swayed mildly with each hit, so it couldn't have been anything too big.

Rubino was ducked behind a car roughly ten feet from me, covering his head with one hand and holding his cell phone up to his face with the other. Whatever he was yelling was lost to me underneath the barrage of gunfire, but I doubted he was ordering Chinese. Behind the police car, Bremer was occasionally poking his head up long enough to fire a few rounds from his sidearm at whatever was firing rounds at us.

The volley of shooting stopped for a minute, then began again, this time peppering the police cruiser with new holes. I took the opportunity to get up and look through the battered windshield of the car I was behind to find the source of the shooting. Across the parking lot, about a hundred feet away, was a white panel van parked sideways across three parking spaces. The van had a sliding door on the side, through which I could see somebody laying flat on the floor of the van and positioned behind some kind of automatic weapon with a bi-pod . I couldn't see a driver or anybody else around the van, so I guessed it was some kind of one-man mobile turret system he had going on. I couldn't see him, but somehow I knew it was the Irishman. This was a stupid, foolhardy way to stage an attack and reeked of inexperience or thoughtlessness. Right up his alley.

The gunman saw me and turned the fire once again to the sad little heap I was hiding behind. I ducked, felt the shower of more glass scattering over my head, watched a few more rounds hit the brick wall in front of me, adding to the random pattern of holes.

If I moved to either side of the car I'd be completely exposed, same story with Bremer. It looked like Rubino had a whole row of cars without any gaps. If he stayed low and was quick enough he could probably make it all the way to the street, if that would accomplish anything. He was still on the phone, though.

When he glanced over at me, I made a cowboys-and-Indians handgun gesture with both hands to indicate that I needed a weapon. I thought maybe FBI Special Agents carried two. Rubino recognized and lowered the phone for a second, then yelled, "Where's yours?"
I pointed up at the building, two silver Berettas up in my room, then over at the other side of the parking lot, one USP in my car. I shrugged.

Rubino gestured over toward their car, the black Chrysler sedan parked in the middle row of cars, between this row and the shooter, then yelled, "MP5 in the trunk!"

The Heckler & Koch MP5 was a compact, automatic sub-machine gun and the star of most every counter-terrorist video game I'd ever played. It might help even the odds, and the cool points from having fired one wouldn't hurt either. I took a quick peek around the side of my car-shield and saw the sedan; the trunk was facing our direction. With some luck and quick legs, it might be possible; but not for me. I was pinned down.

"Keys?" I asked Rubino over the gunfire, which almost seemed random now.
He shook his head, then pointed at Bremer. I turned around, got Bremer's attention, and asked the same question. He reached in his jacket pocket and pulled out a shiny set of keys, then threw them straight-armed in my direction.

There was another burst of gunfire in my direction, forcing me to take cover and miss the keys. They passed me and landed on the sidewalk between me and Rubino, right in the gap between our cars. Rubino looked at the keys then up at me with an oh-what-next stare. I frowned and shrugged an apology.

Bremer seemed to have another idea. The unmoving, probably-dead cop laying on the ground beside the police cruiser was out of Bremer's reach, but he'd have a gun on him. If Bremer could get to the cop, get his gun, and get it to me, the three of us could rotate firing, drawing the shooter's focus away from the rest so the other two could take him down. He got this message across with some pointing and gestures.

I thought it was interesting how they'd both dropped the protect-the-kid attitude that one might expect in such a situation, but they probably both knew that I might be better at this then either of them. This was a bit disturbing.

Bremer pointed at Rubino and yelled for cover fire, for Rubino to fire at the shooter as a distraction so Bremer could reach out and pull the cop in toward him. Rubino nodded, Bremer set his gun down on the sidewalk behind him, then Rubino took a few blind shots over the top of his car-shield, then moved to the other side of the car and shot some more. In a matter of seconds the heavy fire from across the parking lot returned, cascading around Rubino and the car. Bremer saw this and lunged out beyond the safety of the police cruiser and grasped wildly at the police officer's belt. The automatic fire stopped. Bremer got a hold of the belt and heaved himself backwards, moving the cop's body a few inches. Bremer leaned out to prepare another heave, but a line of gunfire cut through the pavement between me and Bremer, cut through the officer's body, and cut through Bremer before he could pull the body toward him. Two pink explosions tore through the top and bottom of Bremer's torso, and he collapsed backwards onto the curb where the sidewalk met the parking lot.

My eyes wide, locked on Bremer; my mouth unmoving. Bremer lifted one arm slowly to his chest, then the arm fell.

Rubino took a few more shots around the side of the car then came back for cover. He looked around to see if it had worked, looked past me and over at Bremer. Horror and disbelief spread across his face. He called Bremer's name, Bremer didn't move.

Rubino looked down at the car keys sitting in veritable no-man's-land. He stared at them, fixated on them. He was going to do something stupid.

"Don't!" I yelled.
Rubino looked up at me slowly, broken. He started to say something, then his eyes cut suddenly past me. I turned around and looked over at Bremer. His arm was moving again, outstretched and feeling across the surface of the sidewalk around him like someone who'd lost their glasses. His fingers touched the edge of his handgun just beside him, and he stopped searching. He dragged the pistol in toward him enough so he could wrap his fingers around him, then he seemed to tense up his arm like a cobra preparing to strike. Bremer rolled his head just enough to see me out of the bottom of his eyes, then sprung his arm forward, sliding the pistol across the sidewalk. The metal scraped against the cement and the gun made a little hop as it hit the seam between two segments, and then ran out of momentum and came to a stop just three feet from me, beyond the cover of the car. Bremer didn't move after that.

Rubino looked at the gun, at me, at the keys, then back at me. "If we break for it in two directions," he said, "he can't target both of us!"
I knew what he wanted to do, and I wanted to stop him, but he was set. If he ran for the keys and I did nothing, Rubino would be dead. If he got the keys and switched directions, and I went for the gun, the shooter would have to choose which of us to aim for. That hesitation might be long enough for one of us to do something useful. The bigger risk was on Rubino, though. He'd be exposed for much longer. But if he moved, I'd be forced to move as well, or else I'd be killing him.

"No!" I said, but it was useless. He looked up with fire in his eyes and yelled, "Go!" and he started moving. He got in a sort of sprinter's stance and lunged from his cover toward me, grabbing the keys. I had to move. I had to.

I scrambled to my feet and ran out away from my cover and toward Bremer and his gun. I had the gun in just over a second, a black boxy Glock , and kept moving in the same direction. In my periphery I could see Rubino pop his car's trunk with the remote and head toward it, in the open. If I took cover, the shooter would go for the open target and nail Rubino, so I couldn't take cover; I just kept running, hoping that I was the priority target.

I stuck to the sidewalk and ran past Bremer and the cop, and was just passed the police cruiser when the shooting started. The police cruiser erupted in familiar destruction, then the next car as I passed it, then the brick wall just behind me as I sprinted. He was trailing me with a flurry of gunfire that hit the sidewalk, wall, and cars before my own shadow. He should have been leading me. If he knew what he was doing, I'd be dead.

When I reached the end of the sidewalk and the end of the hotel's front side I was out of the shooter's limited field of view. Firing through the open door of that van, he could only really see the hotel's front entrance and not much beyond it. I stopped for a moment to look around, saw Rubino ducked and running toward the open trunk of his sedan, bullets now flying just over his head.

I ejected the magazine from Bremer's gun and was slightly disappointed to find there was only one round in it, plus one in the chamber. Two shots, not quite enough for what I had in mind. Trying to think of an alternative, I made a bee-line toward the white panel van, staying out of sight from the opened door. Rubino was at the trunk of his car and seemed to have his head buried inside of it. He pulled out a black metal case and dropped to the ground, started opening it. The shooter was spraying bullets wildly around the sedan. When I was about twenty feet from the van I raised the Glock and fired a single shot through the right-rear tire. With a single gust of air the tire deflated and the van's rear corner sunk about four inches, and the shooting stopped. Rubino had the case open and was pulling the MP5 from its holder and freeing a long, banana-shaped clip of ammo. The shooting continued from inside the van, I kept running.

I could see the muzzle of the gun sticking a few inches out of the open door as I approached it from the rear now. When I was close enough, I kicked the side of the sliding door forward, rolling it on its rails and sliding it shut, knocking the tip of the gun to the left before the door latched clicked secure. Just as the door slid shut, a quick pattern of bullet holes appeared from the outside of the door just a few feet from my face. I turned and saw Rubino standing now, looking up from the rail of his raised MP5 and looking hopeful.

Inside the van I heard a quick series of thuds and saw the rear doors swing open, the shooter quickly climb out and point a handgun around the side of the vehicle at me. Rubino fired another string of shots, this time across the back side of the van, and the shooter ducked back around the other side of the van. In the moment I saw him, he looked to have a close buzz-cut, wearing a tight black t-shirt and urban camo pants. Rubino started walking, gun raised, toward the van. I leveled the Glock and turned sharply around the front of the van just as the shooter slid around again to the back, then I heard him jump inside the van through the open rear doors. Me on the left and Rubino on the right, we had him boxed in and he probably knew it. He'd probably want to have some kind of last stand with that full-auto of his, so I approached the rear slowly, minding the fact that I was only good for one shot.

The van's engine turned, suddenly, and the front wheels spun for a second and the van lurched forward. Why didn't I see that coming? I stepped around to the back of the van and looked through the open doors, saw a familiar-looking assault rifle discarded on the van's floor along with about ten drum magazines for it scattered across the floor, bare but for a single black foam mat rolled out where the shooter had been laying prone-sideways. There were two bucket seats in the front, and just as the van really started to move I caught the shooter's eye in the rear-view mirror. He turned quickly and fired three rounds out the back with his left hand, missing me as I jumped clear of the open doors to the right of the van. Rubino had stopped moving and opened fire, sending dozens of shots through the side window and across the side of the moving van before it picked up speed and approached the street.

The rear doors swung in both directions as the van sped off, Rubino pointlessly chasing it.

I just kept my eyes on the driver's seat, through the rear. I raised the Glock with my right arm completely outstretched, used counter-pressure from my left arm to steady it, and kept my eye on that driver's seat, waiting for the doors to swing open. When the van reached the parking lot's exit, I thought of nothing but that driver's seat, held by breath, and pulled the trigger.

About a hundred and fifty feet away, the van kept moving. It moved through the parking lot exit, onto the street, then straight into the front end of a car, and then stopped in the middle of the street. The rest of the street traffic stopped suddenly around the wreck.

Rubino ran, I ran. In a few seconds we were out of the parking lot and on the street. We both slowed as we neared the unmoving van, the people who had gotten out of their cars suddenly got back in when they saw Rubino's sub-machine gun and my empty Glock . Rubino saw the slide locked back on the gun in my hand and stopped to reach into his holster to pull out a loaded magazine and handed it to me. I took it, dropped the empty, slid the fresh mag into the Glock , and dropped the slide lock, all like second nature. He nodded me and we approached the van again, he around the driver's side and me around the side. I noticed that the left rear door was closed, and there was a single bullet hole in its blacked-out glass window. The right side of the van was covered in bullet dents and holes, the right rear tire was shredded from running flat on the wheel. The windshield and side window were smashed to oblivion, and the door handle was so shot-up it wouldn't work.

When I got up to the side window I looked through to see Rubino on the other side, looking down at the shooter. He was in the driver's seat, leaning forward, his face pressed sideways into the steering wheel, surrounded by a pillow of mostly-deflated airbag. There was a fresh hole in the bucket seat, just below the headrest. The shooter had a matching hole in his neck, just below the head. Through the windows, Rubino looked at me with a blank expression. I wasn't exactly sure how to feel, either.

Oh Look, Something Happens

2007-04-30T15:59:00.000-07:00

After a while a nurse came in to shoot Amy up with another dose of hydromorphone, which Amy described as feeling like being squished with a rolling pin from head to toe -- in a good way, before falling asleep again.

I figured I should get out of there before her dad came back, and that I'd probably be in trouble for sneaking away from the hotel anyway.

I was right. When I parked my car and walked past the officer sitting in his car he gave me a funny look and brought his radio to his face, and when I walked into the lobby I almost ran into Special Agents Bremer and Rubino coming around the corner from the elevator bank. They both looked annoyed.

"Where the hell have you been?" Bremer barked, his jowls flapping with each syllable.
"I had to get some clothes," I said, realizing I'd left everything I'd bought back in the trunk of my car. Rubino and Bremer eyed me suspiciously.
"We thought you might have been nabbed," Rubino cut in before Bremer could continue yelling.

I took a quick look around the lobby. A man in a suit was standing at the front desk, flanked on all sided by expensive luggage, probably checking out. Two people were reading newspapers on the couches set up around the front door. Across the lobby I could see a few people scooping hot food from the breakfast buffet, reminding me how very hungry I was.

"Alright, look," I said, breaking away from the two-man FBI huddle and heading toward the food, "if there's ever a situation where the options are that I'm either in mortal danger or just doing something reckless and self-serving, it'll be the second one."
"Noted," Bremer said, falling in step behind me.

Forgoing any fears that everything probably had strychnine in it, I grabbed a plate and shoveled a bunch of fruit on it, then opened one of the two waffle irons and dumped a carton ofpre-measured batter onto it, closed it, and set the timer.

"We need you to come with us," Rubino said while I waited for my waffle to manifest.
I looked at him, then at Bremer, then back at Rubino. "What, like, I'm under arrest?" I said.
"No, we have some photographs we'd like you to look at on the computer. People suspected of murder-for-hire in the States who come from Western Europe. Maybe one will jog your memory so we can ID your newest fan."
"Couldn't you have printed them and brought them here?" I asked.
"There's two hundred and thirty seven," Rubino said, crossing his arms.
"Huh," I said just as the waffle iron beeped behind me.

Seated at a table now, I jabbed at sliced strawberries with a fork while Bremer and Rubino sat opposite me and sipped water from plastic cups.
"Where is your office, anyway?" I asked. "Is there a field office in Fredericksburg or something?"
"No, we're in the FBI headquarters in DC," Bremer said.
"DC? That's over an hour away," I said. There goes my whole day.
Both Agents nodded.
"But you're always ten minutes away whenever I call," I said, trying to recall our past meetings. When I'd called Rubino from the hospital he was there in under five minutes.
"We're usually in the field during the day," Rubino said. "Investigating."
"That's what the I stands for," I said to myself before finishing off the waffle.

"So that's as far as you are with leads?" I asked. "Pictures from the computer?"
"You could say that, I guess," Bremer said. "Other departments are doing most of the legwork, we're mostly just liaisons between them and you."
"Fancy," I said, thinking. "Come to think of it, I think that guy's accent might have been Irish, not Scottish. Scotch. Scottish?" I hadn't thought of that before. Whiskey from Scotland is Scotch, the tape is Scotch, so are people Scotch or Scottish. Maybe Scottish is the language. No, that's stupid, they speak English. Well, they try to...
"Ok," Rubino said, "that doesn't really change anything."
"Absolutely nothing," I said for the second time in an hour.
"Though if he's Irish he might be ex-IRA. He might have fled to another country, so he could be working out of anywhere. If he's IRA, you or the Brits should have a file on him." Yes, perfectly normal thing for a seventeen year old to say.
Rubino and Bremer were both squinting at me, like I were casting blinding light.
"Y-yes," Bremer said, "hence, the pictures."
"I know, I know," I said. "I'm just trying to work this out from my end. If he expatriated from Ireland to somewhere else, he could possibly be from whatever country my dad was trying to sell Schumer's program to."

Rubino and Bremer blinked, almost in unison, looked at each other, back at me, and said, entirely in unison, "What?"
I looked up at each of them and shrugged. "What?"
Rubino squinted again. "What did you just say?" he asked, incredulous.
"That this Irish guy might not be from Ireland, he might be from whatever country my dad was trying to leak national secrets to. He could have picked up some heat for some IRA nonsense when he was in his twenties and moved abroad. Like a free agent. This could have nothing to do with Schumer, this killer guy might be trying to clean up the evidence or whatever around my dad's death."
"No," Rubino said, then shook his head slightly. "What are you talking about? Your dad wasn't selling anything to anybody."

My jaw went slack. "Huh?" I said.

Rubino's face almost matched my own, he turned to Bremer, who said, "Is that what Schumer told you?"

I said nothing for a few seconds, then managed to echo my previous, "Huh?"

"Kid, your dad wasn't selling anything to anybody. He realized that the work he was doing with Schumer was massively, massively illegal and he contacted us to see if the FBI could shut it down."

I had no muscles. Nothing worked.

Rubino said, "He was in the process of filtering out enough information for us to move on when he 'mysteriously' died. He told us, at the beginning, if Schumer found out what he was doing, he'd probably kill him." Both their faces were flat, slightly concerned.

My face felt flushed, my heart was pounding, my mind was racing in a thousand directions. I wiggled my fingers, just to make sure I was still alive. I put my hand to my forehead, felt a bit dizzy.

My dad was trying to sell Schumer's program, government black ops secrets, to a foreign country. He was killed. That's the information I'd been working with this whole time. Where did I get it? Was it Schumer? Why the hell did I believe him? My dad was the bad guy. He was selling secrets. The FBI was investigating him for that. That was the truth, it was written on the back of my mind in permanent ink, but it didn't make any sense whenever I thought about it.

I tried to put everything in line, from the beginning. The FBI knew about my dad because they were investigating him selling secrets. No, the FBI knew about him because he himself approached them to report on Schumer's secret program. My dad was killed in a failed sting operation while he was meeting with the foreign buyer. No, my dad was killed because Schumer found out that he'd gone to the Feds. My stomach twisted, I felt like throwing up.

Schumer had my dad killed? Or he did it himself? No, he would hire the job out like everything else. It could have been Dingan, or this Irish guy. The guy who killed Comstock, who almost killed Amy, who wants to kill me, could have been the one who killed my father! Was he shot? Poisoned with more strychnine, writhing on the floor, breaking his own bones with muscular convulsions? Schumer had Comstock killed, and wants me dead. He must be trying to shut the whole program down, clean up all the scattered pieces.

God, this is all about Schumer. Why hadn't I just assumed that from the beginning?

"Are you alright, Chris?" Rubino asked.
I looked up at him, my face red and my teeth grinding. "Do you realize that if you'd have told me all this two weeks ago, absolutely EVERYTHING would be different?"
Rubino frowned slightly. Bremer spoke up, "He told us not to tell you if you didn't already know."
"Who?"
"Your dad," he said. "And he told us that if he died, to watch out for you until we bring this whole thing down."
I closed my eyes, hoping no new information could come in. "A personal favor," I said.
"Why do you think we've stopped the police from tearing you apart three times now, deleted an Interpol request for your apprehension, and even got you a gun just in case?"
"Got me a gun?" I asked after opening my eyes.
"The guy at the gun store in Lorton, he's one of ours. He called us from the range, told us how well you were shooting. We told him to make sure you got a gun."
"You had people following me?" I asked.
"When we could," Rubino said.
I shook my head.

"Your dad was taking a big risk," Bremer said. "He knew what Schumer was capable of, knew that if Schumer found out your dad was 'betraying' him, he'd probably kill him. He said he wouldn't give us anything unless we could guarantee your safety. I told him if he was so worried, to increase his life insurance policy until it was all done with. That's what he did, so that if he failed, you would at least have enough money to protect yourself, to get away or move on."
I leaned back in my chair, tipped my head back, and groaned out loud. My world was imploding into itself.
"Had no idea Schumer told you that about your dad," Bremer said.
"Though it does explain some of the angst," Rubino chimed in.
"Ok," I said, still looking up at the ceiling, "I feel like I've asked this before, but can I go shoot Schumer now?"
"Maybe later," Bremer said. "Your dad was killed before he could get us enough evidence to convince our superiors to bring the hammer down on a Lieutenant Colonel in the Marine Corps. If you're willing, we'd like you to help us by getting close to Schumer somehow. If we put a wire on you and you had one more meeting with him, he'd probably say enough to hang himself."
"Meeting? He wants me dead!"
"Right. So, first things first, lets go to DC and take a look at some pictures."

We all got up, I left my plate and silverware on the table, and we walked to the front door of the lobby. I felt like I was walking through a fog, or there was sand in my shoes. Once again it seemed like everything I knew about everything had been wrong, and my brain was having trouble processing it all again. Hopefully I'd be able to clear my head during the ride to Washington DC, and hopefully I'd learn to stop dancing around questions from now on and just get right into it. I couldn't figure out why my dad, after working in this program for almost twenty years would only now decide to report it. Did something new happen? Did I not turn out the way they wanted?

The three of us went out the front lobby doors and I stopped to find the black, officious-looking car that Bremer and Rubino drove. I spotted it in the first row of cars and fell in line behind Rubino toward it. Bremer stopped at the police car in front and leaned into the front driver's side window to talk to the cop inside. Something felt weird, like it was a prisoner transport. Something else, though. Something nagging on me, which was surprising because there were a million things that should have been nagging on me, but there was just one little thing poking at my conscious like a sliver in my eye, but I couldn't figure out what it was.

I stopped for a second to look around, letting my brain filter out everything except movement. Bremer was still talking to that cop, Rubino was taking slow, steady strides toward their sedan, on the street a few cars drove past the hotel parking lot, there was nothing else. I turned to keep walking when a while streak caught my attention, the side door of a white panel van sliding open. I stopped again to focus in on what I thought I'd seen when I heard it.

A loud, resonant sound I'd heard before. It came and went in less than a second, and before I could even process the sound my right leg gave out, buckling completely, and my left leg pressed my foot against the pavement below just quickly enough so I'd fall sideways and onto my back. When I hit the ground I recognized the sound and heard it again, and again, and again. Gunshots, close, and a lot of them.

Behind me, the wall of the hotel was peppered with a line of small impacts that sent brick and mortar dust outward like tiny little land mines. Then a series of hits rocked and shattered the glass of the row of cars I was laying behind. I turned my head to the right, Rubino was ducked behind the hood of a car, pulling the sidearm from his shoulder holster. To my left, Bremer was bent over and making his way to the front of the police car, trying to put it between him and the shooting. Another quick round of shots trailed from the rear bumper of the police car, fragmenting the tail lights, straight up the trunk, piercing compact little holes through the metal, up the rear windshield, cracking then shattering the glass into a rain shower of glass particles, then cut sharply to the left to cut down the police officer as he tried to jump from inside the cruiser. The cop landed face-first on the pavement, unmoving. Bremer stared at him, wide-eyed, from where he knelt behind the car's front end.

I just lay on the ground, feeling bits of gravel poking into my back, and remembering how much I'd needed a massage.

Bedside

2007-04-27T13:10:00.000-07:00

Not really knowing what to say, I simply asked, "Are you alright?"

Amy shut her eyes for a moment and grinned just slightly. "More or less," she said. Her voice was a bit froggy.
"They were talking about a tracheot--tracheon-- cutting a hole in your throat so you could breathe, before."
She slowly lifted her hand to her throat and rubbed it with two fingers. "Ouch. No, they just stuck a tube down my throat for a while; that sucked. After a while they said I was breathing on my own so they took the tube out; that also sucked."
"Breathing on your own, so the strychnine is all out of your system?"
"Yeah, I guess so. I'm not twitching anymore." She raised both arms a few inches and dropped them onto the bed.

I sighed in relief. "So you're going to be fine," I said.
"That's what they tell me. I just have to stay here until my muscles come back."
"Come back?" I asked.
"They say I tore up most of my skeletal muscles from that little dance back at Costco. You know that kinda-good-mostly-bad pain you get in your muscles after a workout?" She spun her right hand around at the wrist. "Everywhere."

"At least it would be," she continued, "if they didn't come by and shoot some morphine-stuff into this thing every hour." She moved her right elbow and nodded toward the IV line running into her forearm. A clear rubber tube ran from it, wound slightly around the back of the bed, through a complicated-looking machine, then up into a plastic bag hanging from a silver pole. A smaller plastic IV bag was hanging next to the larger one, a tube from it connected it to the main line with a kind of Y-connector.
"The big one is just saline, to keep me hydrated, the small one is some kind of protein. For the muscles."

I took another look around the room. There was a flat-screen TV mounted on the opposite wall from the bed, above a dresser and below some bland artwork. Aside from the hospital bed and linoleum floor, you might think it was a hotel room.

"That pain you get after a workout," I said, "is partly from the muscle rebuilding itself after being torn up. When it rebuilds it overcompensates, making the muscles bigger. You might be pretty beefy after all this."
Amy chuckled. "Upside to everything, I guess."

After a few seconds, I asked, "How much do you know? About what happened, I mean."
She licked her dry lips and took a few breaths. "Strychnine. Isn't that what they said Mr. Comstock might have gotten?"
I nodded.
"And it was in that tea from your hotel room."
I nodded again.
"So that Irish guy tried to kill you, and killed me instead."
"Almost," I said.
"Right. Because you knew exactly what to do."
I nodded, a bit slower. My eyes fell down to the tube in Amy's arm.
Amy swallowed. "Was that you, or the -- other you?"
I looked back up, into her eyes. "The killing me?" I asked, then paused. "I'm not sure. It could have been something I heard before, or it could be part of whatever Schumer and my dad did to my brain. I don't know why a program just designed to skip boot camp would include first aid for specific poisons."
She shrugged. "I've never heard of cutting a Brita filter open and pouring it down someone's throat."

"Do you remember everything from when it happened?" I asked.
She rolled her eyes upward slightly. "I remember your zombie theory, and a headache, then my jaw not working, but after that it all kind of blurs together."
"Like you were passed out, or not aware of what was happening?"
"I think I was aware; I remember being aware, but not what I was aware of."
"So how did you know about the Brita filter?"
She grinned. "My dad told me. He says some FBI agent told him about it, and about what happened at Comstock's house but none of the other stuff. Was that one of your FBI people?"
I nodded. "Rubino came here."
"What for? Just to tell my dad?"
"No, I needed a ride because my car was still at Costco."
"A ride where?"
I dropped my eyes again, turned around and moved one of the chairs closer to the bed so I could sit down.

"To go kill Schumer," I said after I'd seated.
Amy was silent for a few seconds, then said, "Oh. Did you?"
I shook my head. "I wanted to, but I guess it might have been a bit overboard."
"Possibly," she said.
"It was good that Rubino was here, though," I said. "When the doctors heard it was strychnine and that I magically knew exactly what to do for it they called the police on me. Rubino smoothed that over, and told your dad just enough of the truth for him to hate me forever."
Amy rolled her eyes.

"Where is he, anyway?" I asked.
"My dad? He went back home to get some of my clothes and stuff after they moved me in here. They cut up the shirt I was wearing."
"I know," I said, "I was there."
"Oh," Amy said, blushing slightly. "Well it was stupid, it was a button-up shirt. They could have just unbuttoned it."
"They've got those shirt-cutting scissors and they like to use them," I said.
"I liked that shirt."

The hospital gown she was wearing had rather short sleeves that were being scrunched up because of the position she was in. On her left arm, just below her shoulder, I could see the long, thin scars I'd seen before. It looked like there were four of them. She saw me looking and perhaps too-quickly drew her right hand upward and pulled the sleeve down. She winced from the movement.

"What?" I asked, carefully.
"I didn't want you to see those," she said. Her eyes seemed to be watering, perhaps from the pain in moving too quickly.

I'd seen scars like those before, mostly in pictures on the internet but a few times on girls in school. Depressed teenagers who wanted the rush of cutting themselves but couldn't bring themselves to cut at their wrists would often use straight razor blades to cut very thin lines just below the shoulder. Same rush, less risk. People who cut at their wrists were usually just trying to get attention, it would seem. Doing it below the shoulder means you're doing it just to feel something. Using a razor blade also made a very fine, almost invisible scar; another sign that it isn't so much a cry for help as in other forms of self-mutilation. People who do this to themselves are called cutters, and doing so is practically a cliché among "emo" and "goth" subcultures.

My silence seemed to frighten her. "Not because I think you'd judge me," she said, looking away. "I just don't like what it says about me. I think it tarnishes me."
"I don't care about it, Amy."
She looked back at me, her eyes heavy with tears, then she leaned back and pressed her head against the pillow.
"Do you still do it?" I asked.
"No," she replied after a few breaths. "When I was, like, fourteen."

I tried to remember when Amy had said her parents split up. I thought it was younger, but it seemed to affect her later. From what I could tell, she was just coming out of a punk phase. I felt a bit of empathy for her, though my parental drama was much more recent and not as deep-seated as hers. Parents split up all the time, driving millions of teens into depression. The thought of it somehow made Amy seem more real.

"It doesn't tarnish you," I said. "Not unless you let it."
She was silent.
I went on, "Earlier I was trying to figure out what defines a person; is it the mind, the body, the sum of his actions, and so on. I think it's more than that. I think it's how we take our experiences and our actions and move forward from them. A bum isn't a bum because he lost his house and all his money, he's a bum because he doesn't do anything about it; he gives up and begs for spare change. Whatever you did before, it's not who you are. What you learned from it, and did to move on from it, that's who you are. That's something between the mind and body."

She was silent for a few seconds more, then rolled over slightly to look at me with her head still on the pillow. "You were trying to figure that out because you said your mind and body weren't yours. If your dad and some team of geneticists designed your body, and some psychologists and drill instructors designed your mind, like Schumer says, what does that make you?"
I thought about it. "I wish I knew," I said.

"Keep fighting until the answers come?" she asked.
"Or until there's nobody left to fight."

I thought about this guy who's coming after me. If I, the police, or the FBI can stop him -- what will that solve? If I knew who had hired him, would that lead me to the end of this mystery or just up another dark alley? Will a few more words answer all my questions, or just raise further ones? How many more people would have to be hurt before I felt safe, or before I had the truth? How much more of myself would I have to lose just to find out who I am? My dad, Schumer, Rubino, Bremer, Pratt, dead Austrian guy, Comstock,Dingan, Scottish guy, how do they all fit together? Don't ask questions, don't ask questions.

"Wait," I said. "You said Irish guy, before. I thought he was Scottish."
Amy blinked twice. "Umm," she started, "the accent sounded like Irish to me."
"Not Scottish?"
"No, Scottish is more Scrooge McDuck. That guy was more Colin Farrell."
"Huh."
"Does that answer anything?" she asked.
"No," I said, truthfully. "Absolutely nothing."

More Waiting

2007-04-25T11:10:00.000-07:00

I had a few hours of that uncomfortable, worthless, semi-waking sleep that most people settle for on airplanes or friends' couches. Bremer and a few FBI technicians were still in the suite, but the police had all left. I was annoyed that I had to put on the same clothes I'd been wearing, but by now it was too late to go shopping. My stomach was practically digesting itself as well. There was a picked-over tray of croissant sandwiches set up on the kitchen table that I eyeballed warily.

"Don't worry," Bremer said, "we had some police officers down in the kitchen watching them make these."
I couldn't tell if he was joking or not, but I didn't see anybody writhing on the floor from strychnine poisoning so I threw caution to the wind and ate a dry turkey sandwich, then roast beef, then another turkey.

The FBI techs seemed to be on their way out. All the gear they'd been using was packed up into metal locking cases and the bags of tainted food were nowhere to be seen. When one of them carried a case out and through the door I saw there were still two police officers standing in the hall and I felt a little bit better.

I looked around for my mom and didn't see her, but the door to her room was closed so I assumed she'd gone to sleep. Bremer pulled out a chair at the small kitchen table and sat across from me.

"You're wondering what you're supposed to be doing now," he said.
"You're going to tell me that we're waiting for him to try again," I said.
"That's what you're doing. We're hoping to find him first. Local PD is on it, and our people are looking too. It would help if you could give us any more of a description of the guy."
"I told you, I never got a good look at his face. He seemed average height, average build, and some kind of accent. Scottish, I think."
"Right. Well, you just described almost everybody in Scotland."
"There was some of his blood at the house. Can't you analyze that and get his DNA signature or something?"
Bremer scratched his almost-leathery cheek. "No, it doesn't really work like that. We could try to match his DNA against something, but we don't have anything to match it against."
"Prints from the gun?"
"Just yours."
"Security cameras from the hotel?"
"He looks away from every camera."
"But you have a shot of him, you know what he looks like?"
"Like almost everybody in Scotland."

I tried to recall any of the cop shows or detective movies I'd seen, tried to cull together a list of all the ways to catch a killer. It seems like in the stories they always left behind some kind of clue, and got in some kind of battle-of-wits with the lead detective. For lack of that, I didn't know how any real crimes are ever solved.

"What about grocery stores?" I asked.
Bremer's mouth tightened a bit. "What about them?"
"Can't you go to all the local stores and pull up receipt logs to look for transactions matching all the stuff he bought? That'd give you a timestamp, then you could check their security footage from that time and see if you can get a shot of his face. Or maybe he paid with a credit card."
Bremer tapped his middle finger against the surface of the table for a moment. "Ever considered a career in investigation?" he asked.
"I'll be done with mysteries as soon as this crap is sorted out," I said.
"We already put PD on grocery store duty. Most of the smaller stores don't have indexable logs so they have to be sifted through by hand. It could take a while."

I frowned, more upset that my genius idea wasn't very original than the fact that we were no closer to stopping the guy who wanted to kill me.

"Are you going to put me in a safe house or something? Protective custody? This guy clearly knows where I am."
"We can, at least we're going to be moving you to a different hotel and we'll leave some police on the place for a while until we can sort out some kind of legitimate security detail. One thing to keep in mind, however, is that these situations usually aren't like the movies."
"In what way?"
"Well, this guy isn't sitting around in a darkened room, staring at a photograph of you and sharpening a bowie knife. Professionals aren't the relentless at-all-costs arbiters of mayhem you'd imagine them to be. Right now the guy's probably got more on his plate than you, he's got covers and papers to deal with. You're just a job, and if was actually contracted to take out a teenager he probably expected little resistance. If anything, he's probably contacting his client and asking for more money."

I didn't say anything, just stared at the remaining sandwiches.

"All I mean," he continued, "is that this is a low-profile job. He's not going to blow up any buildings just hoping you'll be in it, and he's not going to take a thousand-yard shot at you from a clock tower. He might not even know how to work a gun. Maybe all he knows how to do is squirt strychnine into bottles of tea."
"If I happened to see this guy, and I happened to shoot him, where would I stand with the law there?" I asked.
"What, you going to go looking for him?"
"No, I need to buy some clothes and go back to the hospital. If he should jump around a corner and try to splash strychnine on me or something, I can shoot him, right?"
Bremer sighed and dropped his head into his palm.

The next morning, after some more worthless sleep, I put on the same damn outfit and grabbed my dead cell phone, wallet, knife, and the USP and headed out. Out in the hall were two police officers sitting in two chairs from the kitchen table from my suite. I hid the gun from view and told them, if they even cared, that I was going downstairs for some food. One of them nodded, the other said that there was another officer down in the parking lot.

The officer outside was easy enough to avoid.

I got in my car, pulled the gun from my pants, and slid it between the center console and the passenger seat. If I needed it, I could grab it and fire out the passenger window in one motion. For a moment I thought that was a weird thing for a person to think, but just added it to the pile of similar things I'd thought lately.

Across the street from the hotel was a shopping center with a few stores I could use. I'd thought about going to Old Navy, where I usually got my $18 jeans and $8 t-shirts, but opted instead for an outlet store of a more upscale department store. For some reason I felt like having some nicer clothes, maybe it was just because I could afford it. I left the gun in the car and did my shopping, consistently looking over my shoulder and trying to avoid blind corners. I bought some expensive pants and shirts that didn't have the brand's logo plastered all over the front for once. A few stores down was a Radio Shack, where I got a car and a wall charger for my phone. I looked at the fancy new phones and considered an upgrade, but really didn't feel like dealing with contracts and the fact that I wasn't 18 yet.

I changed into some of the new clothes in my car, somehow, plugged my phone in for the first time in nearly a week, and headed off toward the hospital.

At the front desk I asked where the ICU was and the lady said that only family members could visit people in the ICU. I told her I wanted to visit my sister, Amy Westborne. The lady typed into a computer for a bit, then announced that she'd been moved to a regular room that morning and gave me the number and directions.

I supposed that was a good thing.

After some tedious navigation of the poorly-laid-out hospital I found the right floor, wing, then room. I paused outside the door for a while, listening to hear if Amy's dad was in there and trying to figure out what I was supposed to do. Everything inside of me said I should feel horrible, feel scared, feel guilty that I'd almost gotten Amy killed. Somehow, though, I felt nothing. I knew how I should feel, but I couldn't get myself to feel it. It was like the first time I'd seen Citizen Kane and everything said I should be blown away, but all I felt was that I'd just seen an overly-complicated movie about an old rich guy who wishes he were young and poor again.

It didn't feel like denial. I'd been in denial when I heard my dad had died. It wasn't shock, either. It was just a kind of mechanical lack of emotion. Like whatever I was turning into wasn't the kind of creature who cared whether friends lived or died. Maybe I was compartmentalizing, I thought. Putting away the things I should be feeling now so I can feel them later when I'm in less danger. Maybe I'm just a robot.

After a few minutes I took in a deep breath and stepped in.

There she was. In the middle of the small, tan-colored room was a fancy-looking hospital bed. In it, under a sheet and attached to more tubes than I could account for, was Amy. She was asleep, her skin looked pale and her hair drawn back awkwardly. She was asleep; I hadn't anticipated that.

I thought about what to do for a bit, then decided to it down in one of the visitor's chairs against the window. I sat for a few minutes, used the bathroom attached to the room, then sat some more.

I almost felt myself drift off to sleep when I heard a weak, distant voice.

"You're here," she said, roughly.
I stood up and crossed the room. She was awake, grinning almost stupidly. "I'm everywhere," I said.

No Rest, For the Wicked

2007-04-23T13:21:00.000-07:00

It was like another life. Graduation day, the world coming together at last. Friends cheer when they call my name, Amy's waiting for me at my car after the meet and greets. We talk about what we'll do that night; everybody's throwing a party, or we could drive around. I tell her my dad is going to take me shopping for a new car the next day. I feel like my life is everything it ever could be. Amy and I drive around, we talk about anything that pops into mind. I smile at a joke she makes, pull a gun from my waist, and shoot her.

I woke up with a sore neck and hunger pangs beating at the sides of my stomach.

I'd stayed still and the hospital had moved around me. A whole new crowd of people were seated in the waiting room, I didn't see Rubino or Amy's dad anywhere. The trauma room where Amy had been was empty. I pulled my phone from my pocket to check the time but remembered it was dead. I tried looking around for a clock but found nothing. Everything seemed distant, out of reach. I wondered if I was still dreaming, but decided that if I were dreaming I wouldn't be able to wonder that. It must have been the tiredness and hunger.

Could I ask what happened to Amy? Is that one of the things they can't tell people? I stood in the middle of a hallway and closed my eyes, waiting for my thoughts to pull themselves together when I heard my name.

I opened my eyes and looked up to see Rubino, his little FBI badge hanging over the side of his belt. He looked tired and annoyed.

"What happened?" I asked when he was close enough.
"You fell asleep. It was cute."
"I mean with Amy," I said, pinching the bridge of my nose.
"Right. They moved her up to ICU for observation."
ICU. Intensive Care Unit. The 'I' stands for Information. I smiled for a second.
"So she's alright?" I asked.
"More or less. They said they have to leave the breathing tube in and that she's hypotensive, whatever that means."
"Was she still spasming?"
"I think she would be, they have her paralyzed from something."
"Ok, where is she?"

Rubino paused. "Uhh, I don't think you should go up there," he said.
"What? Why?"
"Because her dad said, 'Don't let that kid up here'."
"He's mad at me?"
"Yes."
"Why? What did you tell him?"
"That she got some food from your hotel room and that it had poison in it. I think all he heard was 'hotel room' and 'poison'."
"So you didn't mention the walking rampage of destruction I am or the pile of dead bodies I leave in my wake?"
"I did not."
"And he still doesn't like me?"
"Correct."
"Well I should still be able to see her," I protested.
"Not unless you want to get mauled. Besides, there's not much to see anyway, she's out cold and is riddled with tubes."
"So what am I supposed to do, wait?"
"Go back to your hotel, get some sleep and some unadulterated food."
"No, I want to go see Schumer and get some answers."
"No."
"What do you mean, no? What, 'we need him alive'?"
"No, we just have nothing connecting Schumer to any of this. Plus, if he does want you dead, which unlikely, but if that's the case -- you shouldn't just march onto his territory with no sleep and an empty stomach."
"So, get some food and sleep and then go kill him?"
"Nobody's killing anybody--"
"Everybody's killing everybody!" I said.
"Not anymore."
"Are you sure? Because I can't think of anybody I've met in the past month that hasn't been killed or tried to kill me. Except you, of course. I'm just here wondering whether you're going to be one of the ones getting killed or one of the ones trying to kill me."
Rubino smiled. "Killing you isn't really my job."
"And what is your job?" I asked. "I mean, I can't figure out what you or the FBI is even doing in all this. Shouldn't you guys be bugging mobsters houses or something?"
He held his grin. "I'm just doing a personal favor. Now lets go to wherever you left your car."

In an hour I was in my car and then back at the hotel.

At the front desk there was a uniformed police officer talking with some hotel staffer. Up in the hall of my floor there were two cops standing around, eyeballing me as soon as I got off the elevator. The door to the suite I was staying in was open and there was quite a commotion inside. When I approached the door, one of the two cops put a hand out to stop me. Just for fun I tried to imagine how many seconds it would take me to have both of these guys on the floor, but I decided to be polite and announce that I live in there.

Special Agent Bremer, Rubino's older partner, was just inside the door talking to somebody in the kitchen and he heard my voice, turned, and told the officers I was alright.

Inside the suite there were about four more cops and five FBI personnel. It was like a law enforcement cocktail party, but instead of lemon rickeys and gimlets people were mixing blue and clear chemicals in small glass bottles. My mother was sitting in one of the couches facing the TV talking to somebody with a notepad. When she saw me she got up and ran over to hug me and embarrass the life out of me.

"How's your friend?" she asked.
"Well enough, I think. She's in the ICU."
"You didn't have any of the food?"
"No, as can be seen by the fact that I'm alive."

The refrigerator door was open and everything from inside was either on the counter, the table, or being placed into large clear bags. Bremer saw me looking and came over.

"There's strychnine in pretty much everything," he said. "Heaviest concentrations are in the tea bottles, though. None in the water."
"The bottles were sealed, how'd he get the stuff inside?"
Bremer grabbed one of the bottles of green tea from the table and held it up to me, pointing at the plastic just under the rim and cap. There was a small raised bump in the plastic, like the bottle had a pimple. "Pierced the plastic with a needle and injected liquid strychnine, then sealed the hole over with some super-glue or by melting the plastic with a soldering iron."
"Diligent," I said.
"I'll say. We've been going over everything with the hotel management and staff. Nobody saw anybody come in with a carton of groceries and the guys who do that stuff say that there wasn't any food order form on your door last night."

I closed my eyes and tried to remember. When Amy and I left Comstock's house around eight, I came back here and sat around for a while, wrote out a grocery list for the hotel people and hung it on the doorknob like always, then tried to sleep. Whoever this guy is, he must have followed me from Comstock's, found out what room I'm in, saw the grocery list, and saw his opening. He bought all the food on the list himself, and laced all of it with strychnine. The thought of a killer with a knife wound in his leg at the grocery store, looking for green tea and cereal bars from a list seemed a bit absurd. That guy must have a whole vat of strychnine somewhere.

I told Bremer all of that, and he agreed. "Sounds about right, though for him to have followed you he would have had to have a car nearby your principal's house. It's possible that he didn't follow you and just knew where you were."
"If this was about revenge for last night, he wouldn't know who I was or where I was. If it was about revenge, he would have just kicked the door in and popped me in bed."
"Could be. Or he could just have a thing for strychnine. Some one's back at the office looking up all the strychnine poisonings in recent history."
"If this isn't revenge, though, then it means that whoever put a hit on Comstock also put a hit on me. That there's a guy out there with a paycheck riding on me being dead, and a guy willing to pay money to see me dead."
"Yeah. I really don't know why you'd be so popular," Bremer said, scratching his forehead with the top of his pen.

I tried to think, again, of all the people who would actually want me dead. It didn't make any sense for Schumer to put a price on my head; it made a little bit of sense for him to want to kill Comstock, him being a gigantic idiot and all, but is hiring a hitman really apt punishment for making the mistake of hiring a hitman? If not Schumer, who would want me dead? The Interpol guy, Pratt? He thought I was a hitman. Maybe it was the people my dad was supposed to be selling Schumer's program to. Maybe they thought that if they couldn't have it -- nobody should; so they kill anybody involved. Comstock, me, Schumer? My dad?

Considering Bremer and Rubino's odd interest in finding out exactly how the program works, I had been starting to wonder if it was them that my dad was in the middle of selling the secrets to. Maybe they'd turned on him, killed him, and now wanted to wipe the whole program off the books. Could Bremer, Rubino, or both of them be the ones behind all this. What does "a personal favor" mean? I was giving myself a headache.

If the FBI boys really did want me dead, they could have just pulled me around a corner and shot me in the face. They'd only be having a hitman do all this if they really, really wanted to insulate themselves.

At the beginning, I thought this was all about my money. Those seemed like simpler times now.

For all of that, in the back of my mind still was the thought of Amy. They had to paralyze her to stop her muscles from tearing themselves apart, but what if she woke up and was still paralyzed. Unable to move, with a tube down her throat, in pain. A mind trapped in a useless body. I told myself that couldn't happen.

The hotel suite was still stuffed with FBI and police and all I wanted to do was sleep. I also needed to eat, but I doubted I'd feel safe eating any food for a while.

How could eat when anything could have been poisoned? How could I sleep when I knew there was a guy out there who wanted to kill me?

Waiting

2007-04-20T10:16:00.000-07:00

Hospitals. Most people begin and end their lives in the same building. Were it not so creepy, it would be slightly poetic.

With absolutely no sleep in me, everything going on around me kind of buzzed on the edge of my attention. I felt like a tree stuck in time while the world evolved and moved around me, sitting in a hard plastic chair while Special Agent Rubino talked into his cell phone, Amy was still in the ER, her dad on the way, and nothing making any sense. I watched Rubino across the waiting room, pacing back and forth in his cheap black suit. Even though I was pretty sure he was probably somehow involved in my father's death, I felt like he was one of the few people I could count on. All the acquaintances I had in school had fallen off the map after I'd become dead-dad kid. In the past few weeks the only people I'd been able to talk to were Amy and my two FBI stalkers.

The longer I sat still, the more the gravity of the situation sank in. I'd become rather comfortable with the idea that there are actuallyhitmen in the world, a fact I'd have argued as fiction a month or so ago, and it didn't seem to faze me that I'd killed one of them and another was trying to kill me. Strychnine in the tea, what is that? If he wanted to kill me, why didn't he just stand outside the hotel room door and shoot me in the face as soon as I came out? It was all illogical.

I wanted to be doing something. I wanted a weapon in my hand and bodies at my feet. I wanted to be prying the truth from dying lips. I wasn't, though; I was sitting in a hospital waiting room while Amy struggled for oxygen.

"They picked up all the food from your hotel room and are testing it now," Rubino said as he walked over and sat in a chair across from me. "If that's what was poisoned, there may be some latent prints on the packaging."
"Is that likely?" I asked, wondering what the handful of people seated around me were making of this conversation.
"No," Rubino said plainly.
"And my mom, she's alright?"
"Yeah, Bremer's there with some local police and some lab guys now. She says she went downstairs for breakfast."
I was glad to hear that, though I hated that she had to go through even more of this nonsense. I hadn't even really talked to her since I'd found out any of this, just a few fragmented conversations to pass the time. I didn't know what she thought of me, anymore. I don't know what I'd think of me.

"Any progress in finding out who's behind this?" I asked.
Rubino met the glances of the other people waiting, warning them away with his eyes. He finally turned to me and said, "Some. That, uh, profession isn't exactly my or Bremer's department so we've had to bring in some guys from DC. They're starting with Dingan and working backwards, trying to see if knowing his name and having his fingerprints solves anything. They're also trying to find out where he keeps his money."
"So nothing really useful right now," I said.
"Right. It seems that we both know Schumer's the man at the top of all this, though."

Right, Schumer. The guy my dad worked for. The guy with the idea to use infertile hopeful-parents to grow a crop of unwilling lab rats.

"Do you think this guy is coming after me for personal reasons or as part of his contract?" I asked, a bit quieter.
Rubino shook his head. "This is all uncharted waters for me, Chris."
"He could come right through that door," I said, "pop me between the eyes. Do you think I should have protection?"
"Do you think you need it?"
"What does that mean?"
He shrugged. "If this guy's a pro, he wouldn't do something like that unless he was desperate. The name of their game is untraceability. Anybody can walk into a room and pull a trigger. People hire these guys for more personalized service."
"Personalized like, 'I want them to suffer'?"
"Could be."

Lovely. Whoever wanted Comstock dead, be it Schumer or whoever, clearly wasn't a fan of his. He could have gotten a shot in the head with that .22 and not known what hit him, instead of a lethal poison that kills you by either making you break your own back, crush your own lungs, or die of exhaustion from the uncontrollable muscle spasms. That could have been Amy. Pangs of guilt shot through me once more. What she must be going through, I hated it. It should have been me. Maybe the death would stop with me. If I hadn't known about activated charcoal and diazepam, Amy would probably be dead. How could I live like that? And how did I know about activated charcoal and diazepam anyway?

It seemed like something I'd already known, second nature, just like how I'd been doing most of my harrowing activities lately. I didn't have to think about it, it just came to me. But why would that be up in my head? Why would most of the stuff I've magically known be up there? If the whole purpose of Schumer's program was for people to bypass boot camp or basic training with hypnotic training, all I should know how to do is shine my own boots and climb a rope. Where in standard Marine training does one learn how to bypass a security-bar lock on a door, or interrogate someone with a tape recorder, or con his way into a hotel room, or field-treat a strychnine poisoning? Schumer must have lied about something, but what?

"You know a bit about Schumer's program, right?" I asked Rubino, who'd taken to reading messages on his phone's screen.
"Some," he said. "We were hoping that sometime you could fill us in on the rest."
Right, because you killed my dad before he could sell you everything.
"Why would I know how to treat strychnine poisoning?" I asked.
"What?"
"When Amy went down and I realized it was probably strychnine, I knew exactly what to do. Activated charcoal and diazepam. Why would I need to know that?"
"I don't know what you..."
"The only reason I can think that I'd need to know how to treat a specific kind of poisoning is that I'd also know how to administer the poison. You don't teach someone how to arm a bomb without teaching him how to disarm it..."
"Ok, well..."
"So part of my program must include strychnine use. But why would I need to know anything like that?"
Rubino looked confused. "I thought you knew about all that."

I tried to figure out what that meant, but I heard the doors behind me slide open and a man's feet pounding against the floor. I turned and saw Amy's dad stop at the entrance for a moment and look around, then he spotted the desk and headed toward it.

"Man..." I said.
"What?" Rubino asked.
"What are we going to tell him?" I asked.
"Is that the girl's dad?"
"Yeah. How do I explain that she was poisoned by a guy who's upset that she stabbed him in the leg last night?"
"I'm not sure. Did you call him?"
"No, a nurse found her cell phone and dialed the 'home' number programmed in."
"Someone will tell him that you were with her. Does he know you?"
"Just as a guy who hangs around his daughter. He was in the Corps, we think he might have been Special Forces. He could kill me."
Rubino smirked, then ran his hand through his hair. "We'll see," he said before standing up and walking over to Mr. Westborne, still frantically trying to get information out of the nurse behind the front desk.

Alone again, I thought before I dozed off in that hard, plastic chair.

E.R.

2007-04-18T14:53:00.000-07:00

Sirens slammed against my head in steady intervals as I bounced around the back of an ambulance. It was too bumpy to put in an IV, so they'd strapped Amy in tightly and shot something into her leg and pumped oxygen into her mouth with a clear, plastic... oxygen squeezy thing. I was trying not to notice that her shirt had been cut open.

Someone had tried to poison me. Amy had taken it instead. Her body was out of her control. Her mind locked in a convulsing prison.

I watched a heart monitor displayed on a screen mounted to the side of the vehicle, lines danced their merry dance. It was then that I realized this was my life now. As much as I tried to run from it, nothing was ever going to calm down. Something in the core of me seemed to summon havoc, manifest it all around me. I let go of any hope for a normal life then, and just hoped that my curse wouldn't spill onto any more of the people close to me. I did not want Amy to die, I couldn't let her take my bullet.

The ambulance screeched to a halt and the doors burst open, the chaos amplifying. White jackets and green scrubs yelled back and forth between blue coats. Everything was moving, everybody was making noise; I couldn't track any of it.

"This the poisoning?"

Out of the ambulance.

"Amy Westborne, 16. Suspected oral strychnine poisoning, muscular spasm, diffuse esophageal spasm."

Automatic doors.

"Pulse ox 88 and slipping."

Past a desk.

"Twenty-five of diazepam and unknown dosage activated carbon administered orally at scene. Ten-cc phenobarbital administered en route."

Around a corner.

"Trauma three is clear. Any idea how much strychnine was ingested?"

More people show up.

"Get me a line of saline with two milliliters of diazepam and seventy dantrolene."

Through double doors.

"We need to intubate."

Past a waiting room, people's heads drawn to the motion.

"No, not with DES. Keep bagging."

More doors. Curtains and beds everywhere.

"Who's he, a relative?"

Last set of doors. Even more people.

"Boyfriend, I think."

"Sir, do you know how she was poisoned?"
I figured the voice was talking to me so I answered without tracing the source, "She drank from a bottle of tea, said it was bitter. After ten minutes she complained of a headache, after another ten she went lockjaw and dropped."
"You recognized it as strychnine poisoning and gave her activated carbon and valium yourself?"

The rolling stretcher stopped beside a bed on wheels. Four of the people floating around her slid Amy from the stretcher to the bed.

I turned to look at who was talking to me, it was a doctor, female, forties. "Yeah," I said. "I mean, no. There was a guy there, a med student."
The woman nodded, then turned to a nurse and said what I thought was, "Get Petey down here." The nurse nodded and went out a set of doors behind her.

Another nurse was running an IV line into Amy's left arm, another standing over her head and squeezing the plastic bag pumping air into her mouth and nose. A few doctors shouted terse directions back and forth.
"Is she going to be alright?" I asked the doctor who'd been talking to me.
"Don't know yet," she said, "we're pushing anticonvulsants to keep the muscles from spasming, but her lungs aren't working properly so she's not getting as much oxygen as she should be. We can't run an orotracheal tube right now because her throat keeps opening and closing. If that doesn't stop we may have to perform a tracheotomy, cut a hole into her trachea so we can run air into the lungs."

The doctor stepped away from me and over to Amy, a flurry of hands moving all around her. Amy just lay there, motionless, like a CPR dummy. Something in my mind was telling me to get out of there, like something was wrong. I should call Amy's dad, I knew, and I should call my mom and make sure she doesn't touch any of the new food. It was something else, though. Who's Petey? Get Petey down here, it kept repeating in my head. Do I know a Petey? Or could she have said "PD," the police?

A girl was poisoned with some obscure chemical, and I just happened to be able to identify it and know how to treat it. That might look bad. Cops would want to talk to me. They'd want to know where the strychnine had come from, how it got into a bottle of tea that was technically mine. The fact that I was on the shitlist of a Scottish-accented killer who'd used the same poison to kill my principal the night before probably wouldn't go over too well. They might also wonder why I wasn't at school, if that made any difference.

I started to back out through the door we'd come in when I realized that I was clutching Amy's purse in my hand. I set it down on a small cart of supplies by the door, and slipped out the door into the hall. I pulled my cell phone from my pocket, the screen was black. I tried to turn it on, but nothing happened. Shoot, I was supposed to get a new charger for the phone since the original one was in my house. The one that burned down. I headed toward the main waiting room for the ER and found the payphone. I slid my debit card through the phone's slot and dialed Rubino's cell number from the business card I was given last Sunday.

Four rings. "Rubino."
"It's Baker. You need to come pick me up at Mary Washington Hospital."
"I, uhh, why?"
"So you can take me to Quantico and so I can put three bullets in Schumer."
"Ok," he said, "any particular reason?"
"So he can tell me who the guy is that he hired to take out Comstock," I said.
"What, did he come after you?" Rubino asked with little concern.
"Someone put strychnine in food delivered to my room. Amy got some of it,---"
"Your little girl pal?"
"She's in the ER right now, they're talking about cutting a hole in her throat so she can breathe. Are you going to pick me up or not? I need to get out of here before the police find me and start asking why there was poison in my tea."
"I can deal with the police, for the hundredth time," he said. "I can also send Bremer over to your hotel with some uniforms to check on your mom and watch the place."
"Ok, good," I said. "He'll probably try to come after me again when he finds out I'm still walking."
"Alright," Rubino said, "I'll be there in a few minutes."
He hung up, I hung up.

I paced around the waiting room while I waited.

Strychnine. Damn it all, someone tried to poison me. Some crazy hitman. What is this? This isn't normal. A guy my dad worked for hired a hitman to take out my pretend school principal because he screwed up in hiring a hitman, and now the hitman is upset that Amy stabbed him, or upset because I'm the one who actually killed the first hitman? This, all because I'm the product of some insane program to build pre-programmed soldiers from scratch? I felt like my head was about to explode. I'd been awake for over 24 hours now and my brain felt like mush. Amy was laying on a slab in the ER unable to breathe for herself, my dad was dead, my ankle still kind of hurt from when I'd kicked out the back window of a stupid little European car in Austria, I hadn't eaten anything all day, and my house had recently exploded.

I wanted to go find Schumer, dragging the wrath of a holy hellstorm behind me. I wanted to make this all go away, make him tell me what's going on, make him call off the hitmen and put my life back together. I knew that wouldn't happen, but I'd be satisfied with a bit of revenge.

Rubino finally came in through the main ER entrance, spotted me, and walked toward me.
"Congratulations," he said, "it looks like you did manage to piss of a hitman."
"Looks like," I said with my arms crossed, trying to contain my roaring stomach and ignore the screaming madness in my head.
"I suppose it will be no surprise to you that the lab report came back on Nathan Comstock, and the cause of death was, in fact..."
"Strychnine," I said.
"You bet," Rubino said. He looked around for a moment, then asked, "how's the girl?"
"I don't know," I said, truthfully, "I'm afraid to go in there. Plus, the police will have questions I can't answer."
"Alright kiddo," he said, putting a hand on my shoulder. "Let's go face the music."

My dad used to call me "kiddo".

Activated

2007-04-16T09:25:00.000-07:00

Through all of this, the one thing I'd never felt was helpless. I conned my way into bank records, broke a guy's arm without caring, slipped into a double-locked hotel door, and escaped a slow-moving car drifting through oncoming traffic; and through all of it, the only fear I felt was that it wouldn't be enough. I'd never feared that there was just nothing I could do. Never felt my heart beat echo in my own ears and my breathing stutter because something was just out of my hands.

My hands were gripped around the back of Amy's neck and her arm as she lay on the cold, cement floor of a Costco Warehouse. Her muscles twitched rhythmically as her eyes darted in all directions. A few feet away a man was half-screaming into his cell phone about a girl having a seizure, or something, in the middle of the store. The guy tried to repeat instructions and questions from the 911 operator, but he made a poor proxy and I couldn't concentrate on anything except the girl in my arms. The only language I could process was the, "No, no, no" playing on repeat throughout my skull and escaping as whispers from my lips.

What was going on? I had no idea. My mind raced in circles but couldn't stop on anything. Sixteen year olds don't have seizures. People don't die when you care enough about them.

A slight panic was spreading outward from my position like ripples on the surface of a sea of self-concerned shoppers. What's all the commotion? Is someone hurt? My god, she's just a kid. Is she on drugs? Is there a doctor? Does the coupon for applesauce apply if I buy the three-pack or is it just for single jars?

After the first concerto of dread finished in my mind and the encore was about to begin, a guy who didn't seem much older than myself filtered through the forming crowd and knelt on the floor across from me. He said some words I didn't hear, pulled up his sleeves, and put one hand on Amy's chest. What kind of pervert, I thought. I tried to focus my consciousness onto something nearby I could bludgeon him to death with. He repeated the same words, but they were again lost to the thick soup my brain had turned into. I had a knife. I could flick it open and swing it up into the base of his jaw. The blade wouldn't reach his brain, but it would get him the hell away.

"I said, is she a diabetic?" he said again, much louder this time.

The volume seemed to trump my hysteria. My thoughts pulled together slightly.

"Are you a doctor?" I asked in one quick breath.
"I'm a medical student," he said, dismissively. "Do you know this girl? Is she a diabetic?"
I tried to process the words. "Diabetic. I don't think so. Medical student?"
"I'm a third-year. I started my internship at the hospital a month ago," he said, leaning in and putting his ear near Amy's mouth. "This looks like hypoglycemia. Insulin shock. You don't know if she's diabetic? Has she eaten or drank anything yet today?"
Diabetic. Diabetic. The word hung for a moment before I remembered what it even meant. "I haven't seen her take insulin or anything before," I said.

I let go of her arm with one hand and grabbed a hand, looked at the tips of her fingers. I didn't see any puncture marks. I pulled the sleeves of her shirts up to look at her arms, saw no needle marks or scabs. There were a few long, very narrow scab-looking scars on her bicep in a neat row. Was she a cutter? Did she ever mention that?

"I said did she eat anything to drink? If she's hypoglycemic she has to get a certain amount of sugar. These spasms are severe."

I tried to remember. The only thing I remembered her having was that bottle of tea back at the hotel, but she didn't have much because she said it was bitter. Bitter. Something about that tickled on the back of my brain. Bitter. The groceries. What was it? My mind was trying to tell me something. Why is my mind trying to tell me something? That doesn't make sense. I am my mind. What does it know that I don't? Well, besides all those handy ways to kill people...

"Wait," I said, then let my mouth hang open. Amy had stopped spasming for a moment. They seemed to come and go.
"What?" the guy said.

Something was seeping into my mind, my real mind, but it was coming slow. Ways to kill people. How did they say Comstock died? Spasm something. Where did that tea come from? Somebody usually had to sign for the groceries when they were delivered. This morning they were just sitting there after I'd left the shopping-list on the doorknob the night before. Bitter tea. Plastic bottle. Comstock. What was all of it? The lady said Comstock may have been dosed with VX nerve gas or something else. Can you put nerve gas in tea? Is it bitter? Shouldn't nerve gas be a gas? What was the other thing? Damn it. It started with S.

"Strychnine," I said at last, in a low, somber voice.
"Strychnine?" the med student said, incredulously. "What about it?"
"She might have been poisoned. Do you know what strychnine is?"
"Yeah," he said, "it's poison. How could she have--"

Amy started spasming again. The muscles in her chest and back seemed to heave against each other. The medical examiner said most people die by breaking their own back.

"Oh god," the guy said, looking down at her.
"What?" I asked.
"This is going to be bad."
I swallowed.

He looked up, tried to pick out the guy in the crowd who had called 911. He was still on the phone, seemingly narrating the events.
"Is that still 911?" the med student asked the narrator.
The man said yes.
"Tell them to inform the ambulance dispatch that it's strychnine poisoning. They'll probably want to prep the ER for her arrival."
The man nodded slowly.

I looked back at Amy. Besides the twitching, she looked almost peaceful. Not yet, I thought.

"So it's poison," I said, "can't we just induce vomiting?"
The med student placed a hand on her throat. "No," he said, "I don't think so."
"You don't think so?"
"No, I mean. If the throat muscles are in spasm, reverse peristalsis is impossible. She would choke on the vomit." He sounded like he was reciting study notes from memory.
"What can we do, then?"
"Wait," he said. "And try to stop her from snapping her spine. Strychnine activates all the skeletal muscle tissue at the same time, her muscles are flexing against each other at once. If they ever get into a contrary rhythm, they could tear themselves apart or break her bones."

"There are couches over there," I said, "we could move her off the floor."
He thought about it, then said, "No, motion can make the spasms get worse." He turned around and asked the crowd, in general, to go fetch a pillow. A few people scampered away.

Wait? Wait. Amy was lying there on the floor, her body turning against her and we just wait?

The med student repositioned himself and pressed one hand against Amy's chest and the other against her stomach, like he was pushing her into the ground. he told me to hold her legs, but the words bounced right of me. I had an idea, but I didn't understand it. For a moment I wondered if I had slipped into the other me, but I didn't care.

"I'll be right back," I said as I stood up and ran through the circle of onlookers and down the aisles of the store.

I ran full speed, bobbing my head in all directions like a robin to look down the aisles as I passed them. Office supplies. Desk chairs. Clocks. Kitchen knives. Water filters. There. I stopped in my tracks and doubled back, cutting through the aisle and stopping in front of the home water filtering pitchers. I grabbed a box of replacement filters, and then started running again. Winter jackets. Toothbrushes. Shovels. Car batteries. Books. DVDs. Wine. Cakes. Raw meat. Fresh shrimp. Produce. Bottled water. I stopped again, pulled my knife out and cut away the plastic wrapping from a large case of bottled water. I grabbed two bottles, replaced my knife, and headed back to the pharmacy area. I slipped through the crowd and slid on my knees back to Amy's side. The two bottles I set on the floor, the box of replacement filters I tore open and produced a single plastic, tube-ish water filter.

The medical student, and everybody whose face I could see, looked at me like I was crazy. If I had the time, I would have smiled.

I pulled my knife back out, set the water filter on the floor, and stabbed into the side of it with the knife. Once through the thin plastic exterior the knife stopped against something dry and sandy. I used a sawing motion and twisted the filter with my other hand to cut the whole top off of the filter and tossed it aside, leaving a kind of makeshift plastic cup in my hand. Inside the cup, and overflowing onto the floor, was a black, slightly crystalline powder with a few plastic-looking, tiny rubbery balls mixed in. I had no idea what the balls were, but the black powder was pure carbon. Activated charcoal.

The med student was holding Amy's torso against the floor still, someone else was holding her legs down by the ankles. When the med student realized what I'd done, he let out a slight laugh.

I poured some of the charcoal onto the floor to make some room in the filter-cup and topped it off with water from one of the bottles. I covered the top and shook the filter to get the carbon particles all wet, then poured the sandy sludge right into Amy's mouth, followed by some water. She coughed a few times, but it went down.

"What the hell was that about?" the man holding Amy's legs down asked.
The med student turned his head toward him and said, "Activated charcoal. It absorbs the poison in the stomach so it isn't metabolized. Most people get it in tablets."
"I'm not most people," I said, standing back up and retreating again. I squeezed through the crowd and headed over to the small, white mini-building that acted as the store's pharmacy. I looked around for people in white coats, but the room was empty. I turned back around and saw that pharmacists were all in the midst of the crowd, standing out like grains of salt in a pile of pepper.

"I need Diazepam," I said from just outside the pharmacy window, loud enough for the pharmacists to hear me. "Or Valium."

The outer ring of the crowd turned toward me, pharmacists included. The oldest of them, a man with graying hair, walk-jogged over to me.
"You need what?" he asked.
"Diazepam," I repeated.
"For her?"
No, I just remembered I had a prescription to fill and thought this would be a cool time to fill it. "Yes, for her!"
He looked around, nervous and distraught. "I can't issue meds without a doctor's authorization--"
"This is an emergency!" I interrupted.
"Even still. Only a doctor can know what she needs."

I sighed, then turned around and slid the pharmacy window open a bit wider and jumped onto the counter and dropped into the pharmacy.
"Hey!" the guy said. What was he going to do?
I looked at the shelves, hundreds of white bottles perched at the edges of each shelf. I tried to make some kind of sense out of the ordering of the medications, incorrectly assuming it would all be alphabetical, and after about seventy seconds stumbled upon the Diazepam. I grabbed the whole bottle and hopped back over the counter and pushed past the protesting pharmacist, through the crowd, and back to Amy and the men keeping her down.

I held the bottle out to the med student, the label facing him, and said, "How much?"
He squinted to read the label, looked at Amy, then back at me. "What are you?" he asked.
"Unique," I said. "How many pills?"

Entry Number Fifty

2007-04-13T13:39:00.000-07:00

I didn't sleep that night.

It wasn't insomnia, and it wasn't bad dreams from seeing a disgustingly dead guy or finding myself in yet another situation where I have to wait around for a more-prepared version of myself to take the reins of my body. It was more of a crisis of identity, a thing I couldn't stop thinking about. I brought Amy back to the hotel where she got her dad's car and went home, then I came up to the room and tried to inhabit every inch of the bed but couldn't find sleep. The TV helped pass the time, but through all the commercial breaks I sank right back into my brain and kept re-thinking the same things.

I wished I had a computer. I thought I might head to the store and just buy a computer, like I'd done before. Something about that made me feel impressive. Like those people who can just go into a store and buy whatever they want and not even consider the prices. Too bad, I thought again, that such things come at the price of death and destruction. More to think about, less to sleep for.

Dawn came eventually, light began to slowly blot out the darkness and brought sounds of morning; birds chirping about whatever they have to be happy about. Reruns of shows long-canceled and advertisements for hair removal cream were replaced by morning news shows and morning talk shows. First we banter about recent news events, then we have a fun little game, then someone comes to talk ever-candidly about the movie they happen to be in that happens to come out on Friday, then somebody shows us how to bake a pie with half the carbs , then someone comes to drone on about a book they just wrote. Somewhere in there, a band plays and somebody in the audience wins a trip to someplace depressing like Boston or Seattle, places millions of people live day by day and don't consider it a vacation. Betwixt all these segments are three minutes of advertisements for cars, coffees, and travel websites.

I got tired of telling myself that if I slept now I'd probably sleep until 2PM, then 3, and so on. I got out of bed, opened the window the rest of the way, and took a shower in the bathroom connected to my room. A few times I nearly nodded off with hot water hammering my neck, but I held on to my lucidity. I felt like I needed a massage, if not from the car crash at least from all the stress. When we first got to the hotel I made a point to see if they had a spa and they didn't. Maybe when I'm out buying computers by the armful I can stop for a day in a spa. Drape salad toppings over my eyes while some Dominican rubs sea-salt cream or ground up snapping turtle shell all over my body. Pish, it's only money.

When I was through the bathroom and into my other outfit, I got my knife out of the plastic FBI evidence bag and dumped it in the sink and ran some hot water on it, then wiped it dry with a towel and clipped it in my pocket. I went into the kitchen and opened the front door to get the newspaper and found a plastic bin with the groceries we'd asked for yesterday. Trying not to make too much noise since my mom was probably still asleep, I brought the bin inside and started putting the food away. Crackers and granola bars in the cupboards, bottled waters and green tea in the fridge. I probably should have specified a brand of green tea when I wrote it down, since they got the cheapest and most notoriously-awful brand. When I put the three bottles in the fridge I thought about having one then, for the caffeine, but figured I'd get something better down in the lobby later.

The room phone rang, loud and annoying. A quick wave of concern pulsed through my mind, but I scrambled over the phone and answered it as casually as I could manage.

"They won't give me your room number," Amy said through the handset.
She must have been at the front desk. "Well, you could be a crazy person," I said. I tried to get a handle on what time it was and why Amy would be here, but I could only manage one thought process at a time.
"When has my being crazy ever gotten in the way of our visits?"
"You're going to scare the person at the desk," I said before telling her the room number and hanging up.

It could have been a trick, or she could have been making the call under duress. I could never seem to figure out whether I was the one who was in danger or I just kept stumbling into danger. My only source of information on this matter, the Federal Bureau of "Information" was being tediously glib on the subject. I'd have to call one of those boys sometime in the day and find out if they know who hired Scrooge McDuck to kill Comstock or why, and whether I should be concerned.

I watched through the peep-hole until Amy finally appeared, alone. I opened the door before she could knock.
"Good morning, sunshine," she said. She was wearing khaki-colored cargo pants and a striped button-up shirt. No bands I'd never heard of.
"Do you know what time it is?" I asked, still in the doorway.
"Do you?" she asked.
"No," I admitted, dropping my arm from the door and letting her through.

She took a few steps in and looked around at the kitchen area, the couches, the tv, and the open door to my room.

"It's seven," she said, "the time you used to have to get to school every day."
"Huh," I said, rubbing my head. "Yeah, I used to go to school."
"So did I," she said, looking out the window by the couches down at the parking lot.
"Not anymore?"
"I don't know," she started, then turned around. "I woke up, got dressed, got in the car, and drove towards the school, but I just couldn't give myself any real reasons to go. I mean, after all this, it just seems like..."
"Another life."
"Right. How do I go back to that, seeing what I've seen? FBI, hitmen, it's all way above high school level stuff. I don't know how you went back, after your dad and all that."
"You made it easier," I said, leaning now against the refrigerator. "I didn't stay very long, anyway."
She nodded. "So, it was either home or here."
"Home away from home," I said to myself.
"So, is there any sleuthing for us to do, perhaps?"
"Not today," I said, "I'm going to leave that to the professionals. Maybe this afternoon I'll call Rubino or Bremer and see if they know anything, but I don't really feel like sticking my neck out anymore."
"Then what were you going to do today?" she asked.
"Was thinking about getting some of the shopping done with the home insurance money. I need clothes, a computer, maybe some food for here. Do you want to go shopping?"
"Well, they tell me I'm a girl," she said, "so I guess that means I like to go shopping. Where were you going to go?"
"I don't know," I said, "if I had a computer I'd probably just buy it all online."
"Do you have a Costco membership?"
"I... do not."
"I do," she said. "It'd be a good place to start. They have food and some cheap clothes. They have furniture, if you want to start decorating your new house."
"I think the decorating will be my mom's job, but we could go there."

"Do you have anything to drink?" Amy asked. I pulled the fridge door open and went back in my room to get my wallet, phone, and keys.
From the kitchen I heard Amy cough and say something to the tune of, "Eugh!"
I came back out and saw she was holding one of the bottles of green tea. "This stuff is nasty," she said.
"I know, I didn't tell them what brand to get," I said. "Did you shake it? I think you're supposed to shake it."
"I shook it," she said before taking another sip and wincing. "It's bitter," she said after forcing it down. She held the bottle out and said, "You try it."
"Well, with such a ringing endorsement..." I said, not moving.
She said, "Alright," and set the plastic bottle down in the sink, I could hear it running down the drain. "We going?" she asked.
"We going," I said, opening the front door and letting Amy through.

I held the door open for a second to make sure I had a card key, and the door to the other bedroom in the suite opened and my mom came out in a bathrobe.
"Hey," she said, "are you going to school?"
Amy was in the hallway, so my mom didn't see her. "No," I said, "I was going to go get myself some clothes and stuff."
"Ok, she said, sitting down at the kitchen table.
"Don't drink the tea they brought, it's nasty," I said as I pushed the door open and went through it.

Amy and I went down and got in my car, and she told me where the nearest Costco was. It was about 20 minutes away, so I opened and closed my eyes a few times to make sure I was awake enough to drive.

Once on the road, Amy asked, "Did you not sleep or something?"
"Why?" I asked.
"You look like you didn't sleep."
"Did you sleep?"
"Some," she said, "no worse than after the day in Lorton or after the siege whatever on your house."
"I didn't sleep," I said.
"Why? Afraid of--"
"No," I cut in. "Just, thinking."
"Thinking?"
"Thinking."
"About what?" she asked.
"It's complicated.
"Everything's complicated with you."

I sighed, realizing this conversation wasn't going to go away, and resolving not to bring up with a female something I don't want to talk about.

"It's just, when someone talks about their body, or their arm, it's 'my body' and 'my arm'."
"Right..." she said.
"And when they talk about their mind, it's 'my mind.' Like, your body and your mind are both something you own. But if you aren't your mind or your body, what are you?"
"You... what?"
"What makes you you, what makes me me? If your mind and body are just possessions of yours, what exactly is the 'you' in that scenario? There's that thing, 'I think, therefore I am,' like there's no real way to know that you even have a body because the only way we experience it is through our senses -- through our mind, and our senses can be tricked, so the only thing we can know for sure is that we're at least thinking. So, the only guarantee is that you have a mind."
"Alright."
"So if the you in 'you' is your mind, how can it be your mind if your mind is you?"
She thought for a minute. "I don't know. Your mind exists on a conceptual plane and your body exists in the physical plane. Maybe the only way to bind together something from both planes is with an abstract concept like the self."

I drove in silence for a while.

"Ok," Amy said, "maybe we are nothing but our minds. Maybe our bodies are just manifestations to serve the purpose of the mind, since our minds would be useless if they couldn't move around and interact with objects. Like, if the purpose of a knife is to cut things, then the physical knife is just a manifestation to allow for the knife's purpose."
After exactly five seconds I said, "I don't think I'm high enough for that to make sense."
Amy laughed her little laugh, then said, "So what's the point of all this? Are you considering a career in philosophy?"
"No," I said. "I'm just... I don't know. Most people are content with that they are because their minds and their bodies are all they have and they're both the products of chance and effort. But me, if I'm to believe Schumer, my body is the product of some genetic screw-turning and half of my mind was given to me like people get organ transplants. If I'm nothing more than my mind and my body, there's very little here that's me. The only thing I have that I made myself is the me that I am now, when there aren't any guns or badguys around. The body, not mine, and the part of my mind that keeps me from dying a few times a week, isn't mine."
"But Schumer also said that you can have all the hypnosis-garbage removed if you want, so it'd be all you up there."
"The problem is, though, that I like it. I like being able to do the things I can do. I like being able to protect myself, and you. I like the answers to all my questions popping into mind before I even ask them. I just don't know if I like it enough to always be wondering what's me and what's the other guy."
"Ok, I can imagine losing sleep over that."
"I'm glad," I said.
"Alright look, there's that other saying. That a man is nothing more than the sum of his actions. It's not your body or your gray matter that makes you Chris Baker, it's the things you do. Your cells are dying and regenerating a million times a day. You're not even the same physical person you were a few months ago, and your mind changes just as often. The only thing that makes you you is that through it all, you do what you do. If I told you to draw a picture of yourself you'd probably draw yourself in that shirt and those pants, but those are just as peripheral as your hair and your body. The you is what you want it to be, whether it's a high school kid with a dead dad or the pre-configured Marine running around inside your skull."
"You just put that together yourself?" I asked after a bit.
"Yes, but now I have a headache."

At Costco, Amy flashed her membership card to get us through the door. A quick gust of heat from an industrial heater mounted right above the door seemed to cook the top layer of my skin as we stepped into the giant warehouse. We were then standing surrounded by flat-screen HDTVs , delicious, reasonably-priced televisions. Suddenly I could feel the debit card attached to hundreds of thousands of dollars in insurance money burning a hole through my wallet.

"Come on," Amy said, "I need something for this headache, the pharmacy and stuff are over here."
"I thought you were joking about that," I said.
"The real joke is that we'll probably have to get a bottle of 400 pills when I only need one."

I followed her past the TVs, around a corner with a few laptop computers set up on display and told myself I'd be coming back here. As we approached the white, boxy pharmacy inside the store Amy stopped in an aisle covered in over-the-counter meds . While she looked through those for something for a headache, I looked around at the store, the shelves, the door, and the stuff they carried.

"You know something?" I said, still looking around.
"What?" Amy asked, looking at a box of some kind of medication.
"If there was ever a full-scale zombie outbreak, this would be the perfect place to come."
She set the pills down. "Zombie outbreak?"
"Yes. Zombie outbreak. Like, zombies everywhere so you'd have to hole up someplace safe."
"And you'd go to Costco?" she said, looking at another brand.
"Yes. Just look at it. Tall, brick walls. No windows, the only entrances are at the front, and there's two separate sets of locking steel shutters with a vestibule between the two. The store is laid out so you can see each corner wherever you're standing, whereas most stores are set up in sections so you can't see very far, so there'd be a lot of blind corners and places for a zombie to pop out. There's a ton of food here, a whole meat section in the back, bottled water, clothes, plenty of tools for makeshift weapons, they even have grills and stuff here. And generators. And there's a gas station out front. You could live in here for a year or more, I bet."

Amy turned around and looked with me. Her face seemed to show some of the pain from her head ache, and she rubbed the base of her neck with one hand.

"But there's no guns or ammo here," she said. "A Wal-Mart or something like that would have all this plus guns and ammo."
"Yeah, but they all have windows, and glass doors. Plus, like I said, the different departments are walled off and there's a whole warehouse in the back of those. It would be impossible to lock the place down, and it would take forever to clear the place out of any residual zombies."
"Residual zombies."
"Yeah, zombies already in the store," I said.
"But here...?"
"Since everything is so sparse, and you can see through all the shelves, there's very few places where you'd have to make a blind turn or anything."
"But how would you clear out the residual zombies if there's no guns here?"
"You'd need to start off with some guns first, to get here. That's the only downside, really."
"Uh huh."
"Oh, and look at those shelves where the food and stuff are. They go all the way to the ceiling, practically, and the top few levels are just storage. You could clear out the stuff off of those and use the top shelves for sleeping, and use ladders to get up there. If zombies did ever get in, they couldn't get you up there since they can't use ladders; so you could use the shelves as a fall-out spot."
"Zombies can't use ladders?"
"No, they don't have the coordination."
"I see," she said, going back to the painkillers.

After a few minutes of complaining about the headache, she grabbed a package of Excedrin and said, "Hrrr."
"What?" I asked, turning back to her.
She made the sound again, dropped the package onto the floor, and brought her hands up to her jaw. She said a few more garbled words without opening her mouth, then her eyes went wide and she started breathing faster. Her arms went stiff and she shot backwards a step and backed into the shelf. She kept breathing quickly, her eyes darting around, her arms at odd angles and her fingers half-taut.

It was a decent imitation of a zombie.

I half-laughed and said, "What are you doing?"
She didn't laugh. She kept trying to talk but her jaw wasn't moving. He breathing quickened more and she started to whimper. Tears began to flow from her wide eyes. I repeated the question, but she fell to the floor before I could finish.

I caught her as her legs gave out and she slid against the shelf, dragging allergy pills and decongestants down with her. Her arms and legs were flailing in quick bursts now, her chest heaving with each breath. Her eyes begged for something.

"Hey, is she alright?" came a voice from somewhere around me.
"I don't know!" I yelled.

I shook Amy slightly, called her name. She just looked at me, and kept twitching.

"I'll call an ambulance," said the same voice.
"Ok," I said, "I think she's having a seizure."

Crime Scene Crew

2007-04-11T13:30:00.000-07:00

Before long the stinging had completely faded from my eyes, without the help of milk, even. There was still a distant ringing in my ears, but it wasn't that bad.

Amy had apparently had the presence of mind to duck when she saw what she thought was a grenade fall to the ground, so the only hit she took was to her ears.

The both of us were still sitting on Comstock's couch. I was looking out the window at the tree-filtered moonlight. I didn't know if those were actual woods behind the house, or just a patch of trees. That guy, Shamus O'Flashbang , could have fled away under the cover of the trees, or he could just be hiding out there waiting for another chance to strike. For perhaps the fifth time I realized I had his gun in my hand, and felt better about my odds for a moment.

Still, I found my phone and dialed Rubino's number and told him that I had to reschedule our meeting, and that Comstock was dead and the guy who killed him was probably about to kill him so this girl I know stabbed him with my knife and he jumped out the window under cover of flashbang . Rubino had me repeat the sentence a few times as if I were speaking too quickly or reading a physics equation, then said he would be over with a crime scene crew.

While we waited patiently in the unlit living room of a dead guy, who was just in the other room, I asked out loud, "What was that?"
"What was what?" Amy replied, leaning against the arm of the couch and looking uncomfortable.
"That. You grabbed my knife and stabbed the guy," I said, looking for somewhere prudent to set the gun down.
"Oh, that. You're welcome."
"You don't think it was a little, I don't know, dangerous?"
"And grabbing a gun with your hand isn't?"
"That's different, I'm..."
"A guy?"
"Capable. But you're..."
"A girl?"
"Not."
"Not?"
"You know what I mean," I said, setting the gun on the floor.
"Yeah, there's something wrong with your brain and when you're in danger you turn into Batman. That doesn't mean I can't help out."
"By stabbing someone?"
"What were you going to do?"
"I don't know. Ask him questions."
"So I should have done nothing?"
"I don't know. I don't like my danger spilling over onto other people."
"It's spilled. I'm covered in it. I was there in Lorton, I was there at your house. I'm in this thing too."
"I wish you weren't."
"I wish none of this was happening, but here it is. I stabbed a guy and our principal is lying dead by the front door."
"My principal."
"No, I was assigned to him too. I just never saw him because I was never sent to him."
"Because you waited until now to start stabbing people."
"Something to tell my grandkids, I guess."

I didn't say so, but I wasn't sure if I was going to live that long.

Special Agents Bremer and Rubino soon showed up, along with their "crime scene crew" which, I found, was practically a small army. FBI forensic agents milled around the house, some uniformed police officers showed up to watch the outside of the house, and some detectives came and mostly stood around and waited for somebody to tell them what to do. It seemed on their end like another jurisdictional pissing match. Once again, the FBI calls dibs on a crime that the cops would love nothing better but to occupy themselves with. Once again, I was in the middle of said crime.

We two youngsters stayed in the living room mostly, and after ten minutes or so Bremer and Rubino came over to again go over what had happened.

I told about how we'd come over to talk with Comstock, how we'd found the door slightly open and his body blocking it. I told about walking through the kitchen and around to the living room, talking out loud about Dingan and all that, when Angus McHitman stepped from the shadows and confronted me about my involvement with Dingan's death.

"He referred to Dingan by name?" Bremer asked, looking a bit tired.
"Yeah," I said. "He said he thought that the police had killed him, not me."
"He seemed interested in him? Like he knew him, and this was personal?"
"Yeah, like they were friends or partners or... partners."
Bremer made a slight face. "Nothing we know about Dingan indicates that he worked with others," he said.
"Well this guy didn't seem too happy about Dingan being dead. He gave up his position just to confront be about it."
"He might have been planning to kill you two anyway," Rubino said.
"That's nice to know," Amy said with a nod.
"He wouldn't have expected us," I said. "We hadn't made plans to come here, it was last minute."
"Did you talk about it over the phone?" Bremer asked.
I thought for a moment, then said, "No, we talked about it in person. Do you think my phone is tapped?"
Bremer and Rubino both shrugged. I decided I needed a new phone, and a new account.
"We'll be able to figure more out once forensics determines a time of death," Rubino said.
"How?" I asked.
"If Comstock was killed just before you arrived, maybe you caught the killer in the middle of his escape," Bremer started, "or if he died hours ago, maybe he was waiting for you; or waiting for someone. Or maybe he was looking around the house for something."
I nodded, about to reply when two uniforms came through the back sliding glass doors. They each had flashlights and were switching them off.

"We've finished checking the perimeter," one of them said to Bremer or Rubino. "We found a trail of blood leading into the woods, but it ends a hundred feet or so in like he patched himself up. We could bring in K-9 and continue a foot search, or call in some choppers from State."
Both FBI men seemed to consider it. I said, "Couldn't hurt," feeling good about contributing, then Bremer said, "It's been over half an hour. If he's a pro, he should have disappeared by now. You can try the dogs but a chopper would be a waste of time. This isn't a manhunt."

The two cops nodded and went about their business. Over by the fireplace, some forensics people were poking at the drops of blood on the floor with cotton swabs or something. One of them was dropping my knife into a plastic evidence bag.

"Ah," I said, loudly, "do you have to take that?"
Everybody in the room stopped and looked at me, decided who I was talking to, and everybody but the forensics people went back to what they were doing.
"It has his blood on it," the woman holding the bag said.
"There's blood all over the place," I said.
"What, is it your knife?"
"I... maybe," I said, not sure if I should have admitted it or not. I just didn't want my knife to get taken and absorbed into the system.
The woman, on her knees, shook her head and tossed the bag across the room over to Rubino. He held the bag up, looked at my knife through the clear plastic, then handed it over to me, saying, "Happy birthday."
I took the bag, looked at the knife through it, and decided to wait until I could clean the blood off of it before taking it out.

"So, why isn't this a manhunt?" Amy asked.
Bremer and Rubino turned toward her, then looked at me and saw that my expression matched hers.
"Some guy gets drunk and shoots his wife," Bremer started, annoyed, "you have a manhunt. Someone breaks out of prison by shanking a guard and scaling a fence, you have a manhunt. Both of those people are scared, sloppy, untrained, and predictable. If this guy is a real hitter, he spends hours each day planning how to evade a manhunt. Someone like this, you have to track down with your brain, not a bunch of yokels with bloodhounds."

Over by the door, examiners in blue FBI jackets had finished fluttering around Comstock and were loading him onto a stretcher. Forensics people were coming out of the kitchen loaded with evidence bags full of various items. One of the medical people, another woman, came over to our little circle and snapped off her latex gloves.

"Cause of death?" Bremer asked.
"Unsure at the moment," the woman replied.
"Time of death?" Bremer asked.
"Also unsure," she said, hesitant.
Bremer lowered his head slightly to look at her from the top of his eyes.
"The problem is, external indicators all say he died no more than an hour ago. But, just looking at the body, it looks like three to four hours. His body is in mid-stage rigor mortis, which takes three or so hours to even begin; but the musculature is locked into the position it was in at the moment of death, while usually the body will relax into a more natural posture before going stiff. It looks like cadaveric spasm, or instant rigor. That almost only happens in drowning, but nothing indicates he was drowned and dumped here."
"Is there anything else that can cause that?" Rubino asked.
"Nerve gases like VX will do it, and a few glycine-antagonist poisons like strychnine can do it. Both of those usually cause death by spasming the skeletal muscles until the spinotrapezius and latissimus dorsi muscles work against each other and break the spine, but it doesn't seem like this guy's back is broken. It could also cause the diaphragm to displace itself, which may have happened. We'll know more once we pump the stomach and analyze some of the foods it looks like he's eaten."
"You said VX nerve gas?" Rubino said, concerned.
"Yes," the woman said, "though if it were in the air right now we'd all be on the floor dead. It's possible he was given a quick dose of it. Again, we'll know for sure once he's on the table."

Bremer thanked her, and she headed out the door with the rest of the science brigade. "You didn't eat anything while you were hear, did you?" Bremer asked me.
"No," I said, "and I didn't sniff anything, either."
"Me either," Amy chimed in.
Bremer nodded, then noticed the gun on the floor by where I'd been sitting before. It was partially knocked under the couch.

"That yours or his?" Bremer asked. I turned and looked at the gun. It seemed like a nice gun, and I rather liked the idea of keeping it.
"His," I said, unfortunately.
"Then that, I'm sorry, we will have to take."
Bremer pointed to it, and Rubino stepped over and picked the gun up by sticking a pen through the trigger guard.
"A Walther," he said, "a .22, with an AAC silencer."
Bremer chuckled and said, "Well there you go."

I looked from him to the gun, then said, "What?"
"Two types of people use .22s," he said, "target shooters that are just beginning, women mostly, and hitmen. Add a silencer, and it's pretty obvious. A .22 bullet is so small, it can barely pierce bone. Sometimes they get caught up in the abdominal muscles and don't even get through the gut. They're only any good at point blank range, but they're so quiet -- especially with a silencer -- that it's like a housefly's fart. Takes two or three shots to do any damage, but the noise is what people like about them. That, and their velocity is so low that they rarely exit the body."
"So there's no mess," Rubino added.

"Wow," Amy said, dryly, "this is all very fascinating and I'm sure I'll one day use that information in a novel, but I think a more relevant topic would be what is going on to catch this guy, and when can we go home?"

Rubino stood for a moment, holding the gun from his pen in silence. He pulled an evidence bag from his suit jacket and dropped the gun into the bag.

"Finding the guy isn't likely," Bremer said, "more feasible would be finding who hired him. If this was supposed to be retribution for something to do with you, or for screwing up by hiring Dingan, then there are few suspects."
"What, Schumer?"
"Probably."

I sighed, wishing I had some kind of clue as to what was going on.

"So there's nothing stopping this guy from coming after us now?" Amy asked.
"Coming after you? If he wasn't contracted to kill you, he's got no reason to bother," Bremer said.
"These types never go off-book, unless you really piss them off," Rubino then said.
"It's a good thing neither of us stabbed him in the leg, then," I said, looking at Amy.
She shrugged. "You grabbed his gun and hit him in the throat, I'm not the only one he'd be mad at."
Bremer looked at both of us, and asked, "Are you two in some kind of piss-off-hitmen contest or something?"
"We do have a knack for it," Amy said.
"Oh yeah," I said, "Dingan was supposed to be bringing me in, but I managed to coax him into wanting to kill me. How's that for off-book?"
"I don't understand this," Bremer said, "you want credit for annoying people into wanting to kill you?"
"I'm just saying, this new guy could still be a threat."
"I wouldn't worry about it," Bremer said.

"How about my house? Do you have any idea who came to my house and burned it down?"
"Blew it up," Rubino said.
"Huh?"
"It wasn't burned down, there was an explosion. If the house had just been set on fire, it would still be standing."
"Ok, so... wow. Um, do you know who blew up my house?"
"Nope," Bremer said.
"Awesome," I said, sarcastically. "Since I have little to no idea what the hell is happening in my life, could you perhaps provide some kind of list of people who might want to shoot me or blow me up?"
Bremer looked confused, "Well, it's a short list. It starts and ends with Schumer."

Why would Schumer want to kill me? If nothing else, it seems like he would want to strap me to a chair and have some hypnotist take a swan dive into my mind and undo his mistakes. I represent the last two decades of work for him, and probably millions of dollars were spent on the stupid program that produced me. There was no reason for him to want me dead, so why were my FBI stalkers saying he would?

I remembered something Schumer had said. "You won't know who to trust." At the time, I thought he was just trying to be mysterious. He implied it was the FBI who'd actually killed my dad, as little of a fan I was of him at the moment. Lately, it seemed as if all Bremer and Rubino cared about was using me to mole out as much information about the program as they wanted. Maybe the FBI cared more about the program than about me. Maybe the FBI is who my dad was trying to sell the program to, not a foreign government. Maybe the FBI double-crossed him, or he double-crossed the FBI, so they killed him, and are now pumping me for the information he couldn't get them. I supposed if that was their goal, they would want me to hate Schumer, wouldn't they?

My head was spinning and my stomach felt sick. I didn't like the thought of being used. I didn't like the thought of anything that was happening to me. I didn't like that my dad was dead, or that my house had exploded, or that I was wanted in Austria, or that for the last 17 years I'd been having my head screwed around with without knowing about it. I didn't like that I was still standing in my dead principal's living room, or even the fact that my principal was dead. I also didn't like the fact that wherever I went, I was putting my and Amy's life in danger. Once again, I was fed up. For all I know, Bremer and Rubino could have blasted Comstock with VX gas, or hired the .22-Caliber-Killer to "off" Comstock.

Wasn't VX gas the stuff in that movie, The Rock? The little, green, glass balls? Whatever.

I told Bremer and Rubino I'd call them later, grabbed Amy's hand, and left the building.

Distractions

2007-04-09T11:40:00.000-07:00

Fiction betrays the reality of certain situations.

Much like how shooting a car's gas tank will not make it explode and no security system on Earth is comprised of a series of red laser beams, it is not easy to be curt and dismissive when there's a gun pointed at you.

It's a gun. You know what it can do. I've seen it, I've shot holes through paper villains to great effect. A gun can put a hole clean through you. Or your windshield.

I didn't know why there was a guy with a gun in Comstock's living room, nor did I know why Comstock was dead or why I was there. I couldn't move; that's all I knew. I tried to remember what the guy had said, "You killed Dingan?" How is that relevant?

The man stayed in the shadows, I couldn't really see his face.

Someone said my name. The voice came from behind. I turned my head just enough to see that Amy was still standing in the foyer. Great. She was supposed to cut through the kitchen, grab a knife, and throw it at this guy's face. Why wouldn't she instinctively do that? I would have.

The guy's still there. Why isn't he saying anything? Was I supposed to answer that question? Is he enjoying the panic he's put me into?

"Dingan tried to kill me," I managed to say.

"So it's true?" the man said, finally. I still couldn't figure out what that accent was. His voice was light, as if whispering.

I said nothing. Just stood there like an idiot with a cell phone in my right hand.

"I was told he was at fault," he said, probably talking about the corpse by the door.
"So you killed him for it?" I said, waiting for a plan to float to the surface of my brain like they usually do.
He was silent for a moment, then turned his head slightly and said, "You, away from the door. Come in here." He was talking to Amy. A few seconds later I felt her standing a few inches to my right.

After another pause, the man asked, "Who are you?" He seemed to choose his words carefully.

I tried to measure the distance between us. It was over six feet. At a distance, the guy with the gun always has an advantage.

"You don't know?" I said, mildly incredulous, "I thought I was at the core of all this."
"I guess I'm being kept in the dark," he said. The accent sounded Scottish maybe.
"Hey, I've been kept in the dark for a while now. I find the best way to get answers is to threaten people, though I usually don't get that far," I said, pointing at Comstock.

The man stepped just a bit closer. Maybe five feet away now. "I do as I'm told, I don't look for answers. I was told to kill the man responsible for Dingan, and I was told that was him."

Hired to kill the man responsible for Dingan's death? Who would do that, other than Schumer?

"You're just a kid," he continued, "how the hell could Dingan have tried to kill you?"
"I'm scrappy," I said. He took another step forward. Four feet. I could see the gun in his right hand better, it was a black pistol with a silver suppressor. It wasn't a Beretta or a H&K, those being the only two guns I know by sight. The fact that I couldn't identify the gun made me wonder if I was only myself. If I'd had weapons training, wouldn't I be able to recognize a gun by sight? I thought that whenever I was in danger, the training took over like a second personality. I felt alone in my mind.

I said, "Dingan was an accident. He tried to take me in, I escaped. He tried to kill me, I killed him back. My understanding is that Comstock hired him, but he did so for someone else. If you want revenge, you'll want to head up the ladder, not down."
"And you're down the ladder?" he asked, less careful with his words. The accent was definitely Scottish. Or Irish. Welsh, maybe?
"At the bottom, and off. I'm off the ladder. I'm running around the yard trying to find the ladder."
"But you're here," he said. "I can't exactly walk away with two witnesses."
"Not my fault you showed yourself. You had a nice hiding spot going there."

After a moment, he said, "Toss the phone."
I frowned and threw the phone in my hand over to the couch.

He took another step forward. Three feet.

Close enough.

My left arm went left, my body went right. I gripped the top of the gun's slide and pulled it backwards, heard the chambered round tumble from the gun and onto the hardwood floor. My right hand went knuckles-first into the man's wrist, freeing the gun from his grip. My right elbow flexed into the man's neck, and I brought my fist down into the back of his head while I turned the gun in my left hand to hold it by the grip. I felt it, that feeling of running on auto-pilot. That clarity. I was glad it was back, comfortable in handing my safety over to a voice inside my head.

I felt something on my leg for a moment, and before I could process it and my surroundings, I saw that Amy had the knife from my pocket in her hands, open, and she lunged forward at the man and plunged the blade into his right thigh. They both howled at the same time, for different reasons. Slightly taken aback, I pulled Amy away from him and kicked the assassin backwards. He stumbled and crashed into the stone fireplace mantle.

"What the hell was that?" I asked, moving the gun to my right hand and keeping it pointed at the man.
"Just helping," Amy said, breathing heavily. I put a hand on her shoulder and walked her to the couch and sat her down.

The man was leaning now against the fireplace, keeping his weight off his leg. He grimaced and winced, both hands wrapped around the handle of the knife stuck into his leg. After some panting, he pulled the knife from himself with a quick tug. He held the knife in front of himself with both hands.

"Drop it," I said, leveling the gun again, and holding it with both hands like you're supposed to, so that somebody can't just grab it and rip it from your hands.

His fingers went limp and the knife fell to the floor. His hands retracted and he held them both over the wound in his leg.

"Now, while we wait for the police, you can tell me all about who you're working for," I said.

The man just kept grimacing. I turned to Amy for a moment and told her to call 911. She asked where the phone was, and I told her it was on the couch by her. She looked, and said she couldn't find it. I turned my head for another moment to look at the couch, but I noticed a slight flurry of movement from the corner of my eye. I turned back to the man at the fireplace just in time to see a small, black cylinder fall to the ground with a slight clank. I quickly tracked my eyes upward to see the man had turned and was holding his face against the mantle, a small shiny ring of metal around his index finger.

I tried to say, "Oh, crap," but was cut off just after the "oh" by a sharp, blinding white light and a deafening explosion. My ears and eyes gave out in an instant, the image of the man holding his face to the wall burned into my vision as I stumbled backwards and tripped over a piece of furniture and fell to the floor. I barely noticed myself hit the hardwood with my back, my senses had all gone away. I existed in a world of sharp ringing and painful blackness. I was aware of the gun in my hand, but there was nothing I could do with it.

For the second time in as many weeks, I wondered if I was permanently blinded.

After a few seconds, the photosensitive cells in my retinas wore themselves out and my vision slowly crept back. All I could smell was ammonia and gunpowder. My ears were still ringing and I found it hard to balance, but I pulled myself up to my feet and tried to figure out what the situation was.

Amy was still on the couch, only now lying down and rubbing her eyes. I discovered the gun in my hand and drew it upwards, scanning the room. There was nothing at the fireplace but a bit of blood, my knife, and a black metal canister, the frame covered by a series of uniform holes, and an aura of black soot covering the floor for about a foot around it. Still fighting for balance, I stumbled into the kitchen, and then the foyer. Comstock was still there, as dead as ever. I set out to inspect the other rooms but back in the living room I noticed that the glass window closest to the fireplace was broken. Outside it, surrounded by bits of glass was one of the small wooden chairs from the table just by the window. He must have used the distraction to escape.

I went over to Amy and put a hand on her shoulder. With her eyes still closed, she tried to fight my arms away until I yelled her name loud enough for me to hear it. I sat down and we took a few minutes to let our senses return.

"Was that a flashbang?" she asked, her voice a bit raw.
"Yeah," I said, rolling back through the series of events. The flash was a magnesium flare, the bang was an ammonium perchlorate reaction probably thrown in with some phosphorus. The intended effect was achieved; not prepared for it, the flashbang had incapacitated me long enough. He could have taken the gun from me and shot me, or used the knife at his feet on me. That he had only escaped seemed unusual, if highly fortunate.
"I thought it was a grenade, or a bomb," she said, "I thought we were dead."
A dull ringing still echoing in my skull, I said, "We're not. Not yet."

And In This Corner

2007-04-06T11:13:00.000-07:00

"Ok, I wasn't expecting this," I said, standing in the open doorway of Nathan Comstock's house and looking down at his corpse.
"Is he dead?" Amy, standing beside me, asked. If she was either shocked or alarmed, she demonstrated neither.

I took a broad step over the body, into the house, and looked around for a light switch for the foyer. I found one, and flicked it with my knuckle. An overhead light turned on, scaring away the shadows from around Comstock's face. Oh yeah, he was dead.

"Still wondering?" I asked, looking down still.

Comstock's body was rigid, lying across the wood floor like he'd stopped suddenly in the middle of running. His legs were bent, his arms tucked in against his body. His fingers were flexed as if holding invisible baseballs. His face was pale and sickly, trapped in an expression of panic. There was no blood anywhere. He was wearing khaki slacks, a turquoise polo shirt, and brown loafers; as if he had planned to go out for a late brunch, got as far as the front door, and dropped dead.

"Why does he look like that?" Amy said before stepping over the body.
"It looks like rigor mortis," I said. "The more pertinent question, I think, is why he was killed."
"I thought rigor mortis takes a few days to set in. And why do you think he was killed?"

I looked up from the body, around the parts of the house I could see from where I stood. Everything looked reasonably normal. He couldn't have just died, though. Not when he's in the middle of this whole stupid conspiracy that keeps trying to kill me. I was somehow involved in a spinning swarm of death and secrets. Anybody inside that swarm suddenly dying, it wouldn't be an accident. I tried to explain that.

"We should call the police," Amy said.
"Should we? I mean, are there any reasons we shouldn't?" I asked, trying to think through it. They'd wonder why we were here, but there's nothing too suspicious about that. The FBI would probably swoop in anyway and take over.
"I don't know. Maybe you should call one of your FBI pals instead," Amy said.
"I was just thinking that," I replied.

I pulled out my phone and held it in my hand as I took a few steps around.

"It's disgusting," Amy said as I walked away. "Look, his eyes are still open."

I stepped around a corner and found myself in the kitchen. It was nicely appointed with stainless steel appliances and Italian-looking tile. There were some bags and wrappers from a carry-out place nearby scattered around the counter. Maybe he had brunch in, instead.

"He might just be paralyzed," I said, loud enough so Amy would hear me from where she was. "Should check for a pulse."
"I'm not touching him. It could be contagious," she called out.
"Death isn't contagious," I said, going around a corner into the living room.

The lights were out in the living room, but enough light from the kitchen and foyer came in to let me see rough shapes. There was a glass sliding door in the back, a long sectional couch facing a square TV set sitting on a wooden stand, and a fireplace on the opposite wall.

"Who could have done it?" Amy asked, now in my line of sight.
"He was afraid that his bosses in the Marines were going to kill him, I guess he was right," I said, standing in the middle of the living room.
"If they're capable of doing that, if Schumer or whoever would kill for that, then this is worse that you figured."
"Yeah," I said, "it's bad."

It was very bad. I'd always hoped that the threat was coming from some outside party. Schumer acted like he wanted to help me, the FBI agents acted like they wanted me to help them. Someone came to my house, shot at me, and then burned the place down. If it was Schumer or the Marines behind all this, there's nothing I could do to stop them. I couldn't outrun them, I couldn't hide. The real mystery was why I wasn't dead already.

The sight of Comstock's face flashed in my mind for a moment, sent chills down my spine. The last time I saw the face of a dead guy was that photograph Pratt showed me in the Vienna coffee house. Some political guy that Pratt thought I'd killed. Killed with some injection that causes or mimics a heart attack. I wondered if that's how Comstock died. Could they have been connected? Comstock and some Austrian guy;Nes-something, Nessiri? Nessimi? Swanson?

If the death was the same, it meant somebody came in here and shot him up with something. Somebody good. There's not a lot of people with the ability to call professional hitters for every little job. The only person I knew with a hitman on his speed-dial was Comstock, he called Dingan to -- allegedly -- bring me in for questioning or more brainwashing. Maybe Comstock had a whole Rolodex of hitmen. Maybe Schumer has his own Rolodex, or the same. Maybe Schumer did have Comstock killed. But why?

"I can't figure out why someone, Schumer or anyone, would really want Comstock dead," I said, still in the living room.
"Comstock thought there was somebody after him because he lost track of you and screwed up with the Dingan thing," Amy said.
"Is that worth killing the guy over? Because I stopped going to school? It couldn't have messed them up too bad. I marched right into Quantico twice now, if they really needed me back in the hypnosis-chair, they've had plenty of chances to grab me."
"Because he talked, then? Maybe since Vienna, he's been talking to someone else. The FBI, the press, anyone."
"I don't know. I guess so. From what I can tell, the stupidest thing he's done in the last month has been sending a hitman to track down a teenager and then having that teenager end up killing the hitman."

"You killed Dingan?" came a different voice, from behind me.

I turned around, and from the darkness in the corner of the room, behind the fireplace mantle, stepped a man. He was dressed in black, like the men who'd come to my house, with various indiscernible shapes hanging from his vest harness. In his hand was a black and silver pistol with a long, silver cylindrical tube jutting from the barrel. The gun was pointed at me.

"I'd heard the cops got him," he said, "that changes things just a bit." His voice had a bit of an accent, though I couldn't put my finger on it.

Amy hadn't said a word. I assumed she was still in the foyer and was seeing this.

I looked at where the man had come from. Unless he'd been creeping around, I would have walked right by him and not seen him. That, the suit, and the gun; it all added up to one thing.

Ladies and gentlemen, I thought, may I introduce: the second hitman.

Home Away From Home

2007-04-04T14:45:00.000-07:00

The insurance company put my mother and me in a hotel while they figured out what they were going to do about our burned-down house. The options were seemingly to have them pay to rebuild it or for them to just send us a stupid huge check for the value so we could buy our own house. I wanted the latter, for receiving stupid huge checks from insurance companies was becoming a pastime of mine.

Though I wasn't a fan of losing the things important to me beforehand.

The hotel they put us in wasn't a traditional hotel in the "bed and a bathroom" sense, it was one of those home-away-from-home places for traveling businessmen or families whose homes have burned down. All the rooms were suites with two bedrooms and bathrooms, a living room, and a full kitchen. Down in the lobby they had full meals served buffet-style for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and inside the room there was a card we could fill out for what kind of groceries we wanted and some hotel lackey would run out and get it, charging it to the room. Insurance was paying the room bill, so we went a little nuts on the lackey groceries.

After one day, the insurance company had a guy go out and look at the remains of the house and he determined that it was a total loss and cut us a rather large check for us to start replacing clothes and furniture. He also noted that the garage had fallen onto my Dad's Cadillac and suggested we call our auto insurance for that.

My mom was still a mess from all of this, but I was almost enjoying it. It was unique and interesting, and nobody was shooting at me so I could remain myself through it all. It seemed that I wasn't too attached to any of my stuff after all, at least not so attached that I couldn't re-attach myself to something that insurance check couldn't replace. Maybe I could get that larger bed I always wanted, or the more expensive clothes I had been thinking about; only this time using the new insurance money instead of the old. Tracking my windfalls was getting complicated, though, it seemed like I could make a new profession out of having insurance companies buy all my stuff.

Don't be morbid, your dad died for some of that money, echoed a voice in my head. I was beginning to think it was worth it, after all. My dad practically built me from scratch and unloaded me onto some mind-warped doctors to test some unethical experiment, then he tried to sell all that information to, what, Russia? North Korea? That insurance policy was just so we wouldn't be completely screwed if his plan failed and he was killed for his treason. Some consolation prize. Did he hope I wouldn't find out? Or that the money would make me overlook the fact that my whole life was a lie and that he tried to sell that lie for a quick buck?

Whatever he did, it was probably his fault that the house was destroyed. It's probably his fault that people are coming at me from all angles, trying to get their hands on the amazing hypno-killer boy.

Screw it, I'd take the money but I wouldn't accept it as some kind of reparations for my bungled life. I'll buy overpriced jeans, handguns, or a million candy bars if I want to. I'll let that postmortem bribe buy me a new life, not forgiveness.

Amy, surprisingly, had opted to return to school on Monday. She must have been worried about graduating, because at this point I couldn't be bothered to even consider school. I was living in a hotel, the only things I owned were a pair of pants and a handful of weapons. I was slowly coming to accept the fact that there was a killer inside my head, and that there was little chance that my life would ever be normal. Ever since that phone call a month ago, my life took a running leap away from normal.

It was Tuesday when the insurance adjuster came out and cut that check. We'd just gotten back to the hotel when my cell phone, for which I no longer had a charger, rang. I recognized the number as either Rubino or Bremer's, didn't really care either way which one it was, and answered accordingly.

"Chris, it's Special Agent Bremer."
"Special. I know," I said. I could tell it was Bremer from the first word, the coarseness of his weary old voice was more pronounced over the phone.
"We'd like to see you for a bit of a debrief, sit down with you so you can tell us what it is exactly you know so far, what Schumer told you, and so on."

I wasn't sure how I felt about these FBI Agents -- Special Agents -- anymore. At first they had been a pretty decent, if unpredictable source of information. Now, it seemed like they only wanted information. Schumer said my dad was killed in a shootout at a botched FBI sting. For all I knew it could have been Bremer or Rubino who pulled the trigger, if even that was supposed to be a bad thing. The thing that bothered me the most was that they seemed to want to know everything about Schumer and his blasted "program" as he called it. If the FBI's only attachment to this was that they caught and stopped my dad from selling secrets abroad, why would they care about what those secrets were. If it was a black-ops, black-budget outfit, it seems that the FBI would want to keep its collective nose out of it, but here it seemed like my two Bureau buddies were just as interested in getting their hands on the specifics as whomever my dad was trying to sell them to.

"Ok," I said, knowing I didn't have a choice, "when and where?"
"We can come to your hotel room tonight, around seven or eight."
I looked around for a clock, found the one by the bed in the room that had become my own and saw that it was just after 2PM. "Alright, I guess. Though, maybe somewhere outside the room, like the conference room down in the business center."
"Why there?" Bremer asked.
I didn't want them in my room because I didn't want my mom hearing any of what they or I would have to say, and also I had some kind of instinct to protect my property from people I didn't like. I couldn't say that, though, so I said, "There's not a lot of room in here, it's kind of cramped with the two of us. And, hey, I can have the conference room catered. Insurance company's treat."
"Whatever, we'll call you when we're outside the hotel." He hung up.

I tossed the phone onto my bed and went back out into the common area and got a bottle of water from the fridge. My mom was at the kitchen table, looking through the paperwork the insurance guy had given her and idly tapping the check with her free hand.

"I should probably put this in the joint checking account so you can use your debit card to buy yourself some clothes or other stuff," she said, watching me spin the cap to the water bottle.
"Or you could put it in the savings account with the rest of the money, let it earn some interest," I said, leaning against the counter.
"Then you couldn't spend it with your card," she said, looking down at the paperwork again.
"I could withdraw cash from it at an ATM with my card," I said.
"You don't want to have to walk around a mall or a store with a bunch of cash on you."

I remembered being back at Dulles airport and pulling a thousand dollars from an ATM, and consistently feeling like a whole band of ninjas was going to appear from nowhere and rob me or pick my pockets until I'd spent most of the cash. I also remembered that I'd spent most of the cash on an Austrian sparbuch account, and that the only things proving I owned that bank account had gone up in flames along with the house. That sucked, wasting however-many real dollars that thing cost me. It meant that that account was going to sit idle, untouched, for years and years. That 100-Euro balance was going to accrue interest until the global economy fails. Some bank teller will notice in a thousand years that there's an anonymous sparbuch account that nobody's touched since the 21st century with a balance in the billions. Oh, my imagination.

I told my mom she could deposit it into the checking account and whatever we didn't spend after a while could go into savings later, then went back to my room and shut the door. If Amy was still skipping her afternoon classes, she should be out by now. I sent a text message to her phone asking just that. While I waited for a response I sat at the edge of my bed, opening and closing the bottom drawer of the dresser with my foot. Under a folded blanket were three pistols, the USP .45 I'd bought before and the two Beretta 92s I'd taken off Schumer's impromptu bodyguards. I didn't know what else to do with the guns, so I just hid them in the drawer and every few hours had a compulsion to make sure they were still there. I had three loaded magazines for the USP, and one apiece for the Berettas. The 92s used 9mm ammo, so I couldn't use any of the .45 ammo I'd already bought, though that wouldn't matter because everything I couldn't fit into clips was left in the house. The one that burned down.

Looking at the guns in the drawer, I did some mental arithmetic to determine I had 69 rounds if all the mags were fully loaded. If the boogeyman came through the front door of the hotel suite, at three-round bursts fired twice per ten seconds, I could hold the boogeyman off for just over a minute and a half.

My phone beeped, distracting me from my wandering mind. Amy said she was out and asked if I wanted her to come see the the hotel room. I sent back that she should come over around 6PM.

There were still some things I wanted to go over with her before I had a sit-down with the FBI.

In the meantime, my mom and I went to the bank together to deposit the check. She jokingly said I made a good bodyguard, since I was so quiet. The quiet was on account of the contemplating I'd been doing, but the idea was interesting to me. When I'd read that novel on the plane to Vienna about a bodyguard, I thought it sounded like it might be a cool job. Swearing your life to protect somebody, it seemed noble. It was interesting to watch the teller at the small bank branch try to hide her reaction to the amount on the check, the same way they had when we deposited our life insurance checks.

After a few hours of staring at my arsenal, Amy sent notice that she was downstairs. I told my mom I was going to go check out the dinner buffet in the lobby, but that's not what I did.

"Am I not going to see your room?" she asked when I approached her in the lobby.
"I'm sure you can imagine it," I said, walking toward the business center where there was a room with a few computers to rent. It was empty, and suitably private.

"So you're still leaving school at lunch?" I asked.
"Well, I wasn't going to. I was going to start hitting classes four through six, but yesterday I got a memo from the office that fourth-hour study hall was canceled for the day so I thought, what the hell, and called off the rest of the day."
"They canceled study hall?"
"Yeah, couldn't get anybody to proctor it or something."
"How hard is it? Everybody just sits there."
She shrugged.
"So, was Comstock there?" I asked.
"At school?"
"Yeah."
"No, not today or yesterday."
"Alright, we need to go talk to him," I said.
Amy paused, thinking. "Why?" she asked after not coming up with an answer herself.

I told her about the meeting I was supposed to have with my FBI friends tonight, how they wanted me to tell them everything I knew, but that there was too much I didn't know. Comstock would have those answers, so I had to ask him.

"Do you have his number?" she asked.
"I did," I said, "it went with the house."
Amy looked down at the bank of computers. "Is that camera thing still there? We could at least see if he's home."
I thought about it. I didn't have the address to view the camera feed, but I could get it from my email. "Good idea," I said.

I sat at one of the computers, logged onto my email, got the address, and in a few seconds the familiarly grainy and tree-obstructed picture of the front of Comstock's house was on the screen. The lights were on inside the house.

"Good enough for me," I said.

Before we left I stopped at the business center's main desk and asked if I could reserve the small conference room from seven to nine tonight. It was available, so I reserved it and asked for a coffee service and a sandwich tray or something for the room. I walked away feeling like a rich person, realized I technically was a rich person, but felt better about it knowing it wasn't my money I was spending.

"What do you need to talk to Comstock about, anyway?" Amy asked in the middle of the drive across town to his place.
"What Schumer told me doesn't add up," I said. "He says that Comstock's main job was to wrangle some free class into my schedule so I could have my brain blasted with Marine Corps trivia every day, but if that's the case, why do I remember every single class? There should be on class where I can't remember any classmates, or that I can't really focus on."

Amy and I walked through my class schedule for this semester. College Writing first hour I had with kids from other classes, and I had group projects that I'd talked about with other kids. Anatomy second hour I also had with kids from other classes, had done group projects, and I'd had to memorize and learn so many terms that it had to be real. Third hour was Pre-Calc/Trig, and while it was amazingly boring, I remembered it too vividly and I'd done too much homework for it to all be a self-imagined product of hypnosis. After lunch was fourth hour study hall, which I had with Amy so that had to be real, plus I can remember all the other students from the class. After that was Euro History and Computer Hardware, and there were two kids who were in both of those classes with me, and I walked from one class to the other with.

"Maybe all the hypnosis-classes were before, and since this is your last semester there aren't any fake classes this time," Amy suggested.
"Schumer said this all started because I stopped showing up for my daily brainwashing after the fight, and he said that if I had kept going to classes that they could have just 'fixed' whatever went wrong with my brain."
"So maybe Schumer was lying," Amy said.
"He was lying about something, I know that much. If he was lying about this, then it changes everything."
"So you want Comstock's side of it?" Amy asked.
"Yes, and another thing," I grinned.
"What?"
"I, uh, want to have him make sure I graduate," I said.
Amy was silent, then laughed. "What, you're going to hold him at gunpoint and tell him to make sure you have the credits?"
"I don't have any guns on me. I could hold him at knife-point. Again."
"You're serious?" she asked.
"I-- no, not about that, but I can still ask him. He owes me that. I don't want to have to make up a summer of classes if I want a diploma, all because of this stupid program. He can fiddle with my grades the same way he fiddles with everything else about my school life."
"Allegedly."
"Right."

We arrived at Comstock's house and, for the first time, didn't have to sneak around. I pulled into his driveway, and we both got out and walked up to the front door. I was practicing in my head how this would all go, I could play it straight or I could try to be the bully again. Did he even know that it was me in Vienna? I thought Schumer said he figured it out, but I couldn't remember.

We got to the door and Amy reached out to ring the bell but I stopped her. Something was twitching in the back of my mind, something wasn't right. The door was already open a crack, I noticed.

I stepped around and tried to look through the windows beside the door but couldn't see anything inside, just empty hallways and a living room. I reached my palm out the door and gave it a light tap to swing it open, but the door didn't move. I pushed again, something was blocking it. I used both hands and my shoulder and pushed, the door opened slowly, pushing whatever was obstructing it. After a few feet, the obstruction had been pushed out of the way and the door, newly free, swung open and slammed into the stopper loudly.

The foyer wasn't lit, but the thing blocking the door was evident. It was about five feet long, laying on the floor awkwardly, and looked a lot like a dead Nathan Comstock.

The Killing Me

2007-04-02T12:29:00.000-07:00

"So," I said, cutting through a thick silence in that police station conference room where I sat with my mother; the first time I'd been able to sit quietly and think for about 12 hours, "I'm a test-tube baby?"

My mom looked up from the table at which we were both sitting. "I guess you could say that," she said.
"Any reason you never told me?"
"When you were younger it would have been too hard to explain," she said, "and after a while it just seemed like it'd been too long to bring it up out of the blue. It's not an unusual thing. It's not as though you were adopted or grown in a jar. You grew inside me, and I gave birth to you."
"And dad never said anything about it? About genetic... whatevers?"

She was silent for a while, then said, "No."
"Nothing?"
"No. We had talked about having an in-vitro. I'd seen my doctor and he said I was a candidate, but they were expensive. Your dad said that he could have them done through his coverage at work, so we did that."
"Nothing about training regimens or hypnosis?"
"No, nothing like that ever came up. He did always seem protective of you, trying to keep you away from danger. I just thought that he was trying to protect his only child."

It was still too weird to think about. I couldn't be sure how much of what Schumer was saying was the truth, after all, and parts of it still didn't make sense. If I were being hypnotized every day at school, it seems like I would somehow be able to tell that the time was missing. He said I always had one class that wasn't real, but if that were the case how can I remember all my classes? How can I remember everybody who's in all my classes? They couldn't have me make up fake students during hypnosis, that would take just as much time as teaching me... whatever they supposedly were. They couldn't have made me have false memories of real classmates, because I might have one-day said I'd see him in whatever class and he'd ask what I'd mean.

There be more to this, I decided. The information I had now just didn't add up. If the only thing about me was that I was part of some training experiment and was having boot camp squirted directly into my brain, it didn't explain the growing number of people who seem to want me dead.

Even though it was less realistic, I could almost believe the clone theory. If there were a fleet of me's running around, it would explain how someone who looks like me was apparently in Vienna two years ago killing some guy. There can't be clones, though, it's just silly.

Though, they could have designed me from scratch and whenever someone comes in for an in-vitro, they end up with a me. That would be how they'd do it.

Still, though, no clones.

If there were clones, though, it would be cool to meet one. I bet clones of me would all be jerks, though.

Amy came back with a few cups of coffee from a machine. She set them down on the table, and the three of us took one.

"You really went to Austria?" my mom asked me a bit later.
"I did, yeah, last week," I said.
"How was it?"
"It was nice, I think. I was in a kind of mood the whole time, not really paying attention to the culture."
"I went to Europe when I was in college. Never went to Austria, though. We spent most of the time in Italy."

"Did you guys go over the part about your house burning down while I was outside?" Amy cut in.

"Oh, shoot," I said, "I was going to ask Bremer or Rubino if they had any idea who those guys were."
"What guys?" my mom asked.
"The guys who broke in and burned the place down."

My mom didn't seem to be handling any of this very well.

"Have you called the insurance company yet? We have fire insurance, don't we?"
"Fire. Yeah, it should be in with the homeowner's. I haven't called yet, I was told to wait until the police report was taken care of because they wouldn't cover it if it looked like you burned it down on purpose."
"I didn't burn it down at all," I said.
She nodded, slowly.

Bah. I was getting restless and anxious, but I knew things would be like this for a while. I had no leads, no trails to follow to Europe or any havoc to create. I began to worry that this was it, that this was the end, that my life actually was going to slow down and peter on from this point. The thought of no more running, shooting, fighting, stabbing, or lying seemed nice at first, but as I thought about it I actually worried I'd miss it. Special Forces types would come back from Vietnam, feeling like they were built for one thing and moping that they'd never be put to use again. They went through years of hellish atrocities in the jungle; I'd only considered my life interesting for a few days, could I already be addicted to the high?

I wasn't sure "high" was the right word, I never felt particularly elevated when I was in those dangerous situations. Perhaps it was the clarity I was addicted to. If my brain really was switching from one set of instincts to a second, maybe I liked the second one better. If there is a whole other Chris Baker in my mind, one who knows everything a trained soldier knows, maybe I'd rather be him. Always knowing what to do, knowing how to get myself out of danger, how to hurt people, how to protect people. Maybe I would enjoy that.

Would I lose myself, though? If there really is a way to have all of this knowledge "activated" and have it become part of me, would it really become part of me or would it just become me?

All I know is that I can't go on like this. I can't have a whole world of knowledge in my mind that's only accessible when I'm in danger. I can't keep wondering if the person controlling my body is the real me or the killing me. Worse yet, I can't keep knowing if the one doing the killing is perhaps the real me.

Robbery, Homicide, Arson, Vehicular

2007-03-30T14:50:00.000-07:00

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

2007-03-28T11:34:00.000-07:00

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

2007-03-26T13:37:00.000-07:00

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)

2007-03-23T14:14:00.000-07:00

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

2007-03-21T14:20:00.000-07:00

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?

2007-03-19T12:46:00.000-07:00

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

2007-03-16T13:16:00.000-07:00

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

2007-03-14T12:27:00.000-07:00

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.

On TV Somewhere

2007-03-12T15:04:00.000-07:00

Metal handcuffs were ratcheted onto my bare wrists in front of me, a spectacle that both intrigued the people in the cafe and somehow amused me to no end. As I was walked outside the place and lead down the street to where I assumed there was a car waiting, Pratt was saying something aloud to me but it wasn't registering. The hilarity of being cuffed hands-in-front and the absurdity of being taken into custody in Austria for a murder I didn't commit two years ago was monopolizing the attention capacity of my brain.

It was all very inconvenient.

It was Thursday night, my flight home left early Friday, my mom was supposed to get home late Saturday or early Sunday. If this loony Interpol guy wants to keep me for the 24 hours he's allowed to, that would royally screw up my plans. Not to mention, if this guy is touched in the head enough to decide that I was a fifteen year old super assassin based on a blurry photo and a glance at me from across the street, maybe he could find some "evidence" to connect me to the death of Princess Diana or the crash of the Hindenburg. His hand around my arm, I was still walking down the street lined on both sides with cars. The other guy Pratt was with seemed to have disappeared. Pratt was still talking, probably going on about having captured his mega super secret killer man, but I wasn't listening. I was too busy thinking.

We turned down an unlit side street and eventually stopped at a small black car, a model that I didn't recognize. Pratt pulled a back door open and kind of slid me into the backseat and slammed the door shut. The car wasn't meant to be used for police work, or at least prisoner transport. The front seat was open to the back seat. Stupid.

I couldn't take my chances with being "brought in" again. The thought of having my name, face, and fingerprints listed in Interpol databases seemed a bit disgusting at the time, and I had a plane to catch. No time for any of this garbage.

Now I just have to figure out how to get out of this without driving any cars through any people.

Pratt got into the driver's seat and turned to look out side window as the second guy, Markus approached the vehicle and got into the passenger seat. I guess he didn't feel safe riding alone with magical underage ninja hitmen . I suppose I wouldn't either. The two men spoke to each other in German for a second, then Pratt started the engine. I toyed with the handcuffs on my wrists for a second. I thought of the events of the past few days, the fight on Thursday, the Principal's office on Friday, the shooting and pepper spray on Satuday, the FBI on Sunday, new cars and Chinese food on Monday, Quantico and email hacking on Tuesday, planes and hotels on Wednesday, naked principals and Interpol agents on Thursday. It was all beginning to blur together, predicament to predicament, no explanation for anything. I wanted this all to just go away, I wanted to be a regular teenager again; a guy who doesn't know the names of any FBI or Interpol agents and doesn't have a gun in his bedroom closet.

I was beginning to dislike cars; you feel so vulnerable in them. Someone could just walk up and blast you with pepper spray through the window, and all you can do is sit there. I thought of Amy sitting next to me for all that, me telling her about "up" and "down"; "up" meant to turn away and cover her face, in case the guy...Dingan used the pepper spray. "Down", that was for if he drew the gun and started shooting. She was supposed to drop the seat recline lever and drop backwards. That would have been bad, if he'd drawn the gun and not the pepper spray. I leaned sideways to look at the driver's seat in front of me, between the seat and the door. There was a long plastic lever, just like on my old car. Looking around, the car seemed older. I'd bet the seat reclined wildly in both directions just like my Civic's.

That gave me an idea.

Pratt pulled the car into reverse and slowly began to back out from the alleyway and waited for an opening to back onto the street. I turned my foot sideways and carefully slid it in the narrow space between his seat and the door. It was tight, and something was poking into my leg, but I could feel the plastic lever with the tip of my shoe. Markus glanced back at me, then looked away. I took in a long, deep breath.

I pushed my foot upward, but it slid off of the seat lever and kicked part of the door, sounding a short thud. Both men suddenly looked to the left and Pratt said something quickly in German. I brought my foot back down and kicked upwards again, not having to worry about stealth this time. I felt the resistance of the lever as I brought it nearly straight upwards. I felt the back of the seat in front of me lose tension and slip backwards, and I brought my right leg up and slammed the seat-back forward as hard as I could with my foot. Pratt's torso heaved forward with the force of the seat folding, and I heard his face smash into the steering wheel. His foot must have slipped from the brake, because the car began to creep backwards into the traffic of the main road. Markus, in the passenger seat, screamed something and turned back toward me, reaching his left arm into his jacket. I pulled my left leg free from between the seat and door, feeling something tear my pants leg, and pushed myself backwards enough for clearance enough to bring my left leg around in one short arc to connect with Markus' neck and bring it, and his head, into the window behind him. He stopped moving.

The car, however, didn't.

The inside door handles didn't work, probably disabled for "safety". The engine was idling, the transmission in reverse, the car was still creeping into the perpendicular street the car had pulled off of. Cars were honking and swerving to avoid us. I was trapped in the back seat, watching headlights through the window as they drew closer and quicker, praying they would turn away quickly enough. My left ankle started to sting dully, it would probably bruise and swell before morning. Why was I thinking about that? I tried crawling into the front seat to open those doors but it was too cramped and they were blocked by two disabled Interpol agents.

I sank back into the rear seat as the car continued its slow reversed crawl. More honking, more screeching brakes, more near-misses. I had to get out of this stupid little foreign car.

Well, I suppose it wasn't foreign to these people. Why was I thinking about that?

I tried hitting the window nearest me with my fists, then tried clanking the handcuffs against them, but that just dug them into my skin. I laid back across the bench seat and tried kicking at the window to no effect. I adjusted my position, put my back against the opposite door and pressed against it to counterbalance my kicks against the glass. I used both feet, felt a heat in my left ankle with each impact. Two more times I kicked both feet against the glass, the second time I felt it give away slightly. One last time I heaved all my strength through my feet and slammed them through the window. The glass broke into thousands of tiny fragments adhered to a sheet of clear plastic and folded forward slightly. Safety glass. I spun on my knees and used my elbows to push the glass and plastic away from the window frame. I reached my arms out and felt for the outside door handle, felt it, and pulled at it but accomplished nothing. The door must have been locked too. Rather than try to deal with that, I just used the handle to pull myself head-first through the rather small window. When my chest was out, I spun around and pushed against the roof of the car to drag myself out the rest of the way.

The car had moved through the two lanes on one side and was now into the opposing lanes. I cleared the window and fell flatly onto the street as cars were now heading straight for me, all honking and swerving much later than I would have appreciated. I pushed myself up to my feet, both hands pressing against pieces of glass scattered on the street. I turned and ran away from the street, passing the car I'd just escaped from as it gently brought itself to a stop by backing into a car parked against the sidewalk. I heard glass breaking behind me as I awkwardly ran down the sidewalk in the direction of my hotel, slightly limping to keep weight off my left ankle and my arms swinging weirdly bound together. It was probably around 5PM, traffic was getting heavy as people got off work and the sidewalks filled with pedestrians. I had to cut through a lot of people as I ran against the foot traffic to get away. I tried to hide my handcuffed wrists inside my jacket, when I felt something light and wiry in one of the inside jackets. I stuck a hand in the pocket to see what it was, and pulled out the pair of reading glasses I'd bought as part of a disguise.

Still limp-running, I gleefully bent one of the sides of the frame and tore it from the rims and dropped the rest on the street. Left with only a thin metal strip bent at one end to curve around the ear, I stuck the broken end into the keyhole of the cuff on my left wrist with my right hand and bent it sharply to the left, turned it around, then bent it to the right. This made the frame into kind of Z-shape at the end, which I stuck back into the keyhole and fiddled around, still running, until the ratchet of the cuffs came free. The cuff wouldn't come off, but it could get tighter. I spun the strip of metal around and fiddled in the opposite direction for a few seconds until the cuff came loose and slid off of my hand. I did the same thing with other cuff, deciding I must have seen this on TV somewhere, and dropped the cuffs onto the sidewalk once the other cuff came free.

Behind me, I heard a squeal of tires and a familiar slam of metal against metal and sheets of glass turning into a dancing rain of fragments against pavement. I stopped and turned around. I couldn't see the car anymore, but assumed someone had finally crashed into it. I hoped to myself that I hadn't just killed two more people. Presuming I didn't, I still needed to get back to my hotel and collect my things as fast as possible.

I packed my clothes together quickly and threw them into my small suitcase, and shut off my laptop and slid it into my backpack. I quickly circled the room that had been my home for the last twenty-four hours and made sure I had everything, then used the menu on the TV to check out, and was outside the building within two minutes. Pratt knew where I was staying, he knew my name, and he knew about my travel plans. I had to get to the airport and get outside of the country before he recovered enough to start hunting for me again. I realized that if he'd previously just assumed I was some kind of killer, I'd just confirmed that for him. I hadn't killed him, though. At least, I really hoped I hadn't.

I got a cab and went to the airport.

My flight wasn't for more than twelve hours, but I didn't feel like sticking around that long. I'd assaulted two officers, I gathered. If Pratt didn't have any concrete reason to hold me before, he at least had assault to get me on. For that, he could get the actual police on me. My passport would be flagged. I'd be a wanted fugitive. Why, oh why, did I not think about things before I started hurting people?

I was dropped off at the departures terminal of the Vienna airport and stood on the curb, checking out all angles. It was too soon for a search to be organized, but I felt like being cautious. If I hurried, I might be able to get on a plane before the wrong people knew my name. This could follow me back home, I realized. Interpol and the US Government worked together all the time I'd heard. I started to hope Pratt was dead.

I went into the airport and found an ATM, used it to withdraw a thousand Euros, not knowing or caring how much that was in dollars. I'd need one heck of a story to justify a kid my age paying cash for a flight to America. I also needed to not be me.

There was a gift store before the security checkpoint. I went there and looked at postcards until I heard someone speaking English. Behind me, looking at shot glasses with "Austria" etched on them, were two Americans. One was about my age, maybe older; the other was in his twenties. They were joking about some stupid thing having to do with drinking. The one closest to my age was wearing an orange and blue backpack, and his blue US passport was tucked neatly in a pocket on the side. I stepped around them to get a look at his face, his hair was shorter than me, and he was a bit pudgier than me, but he was close enough. I stepped back around, bumped into his backpack, and walked away without saying anything. I heard him call me an asshole under his breath as I walked away.

In the bathroom, I looked at Ryan Trillan's passport and compared it to my own. He was eighteen, according to his birthday, and was from North Carolina. His photograph wasn't exactly a striking resemblance to mine, but to someone who looked at thousands of passports per day it might just work. Flipping through the Visa pages in the back, it looked like he'd been to Germany, Switzerland, and France, and had just arrived in Vienna. It'd probably be over an hour until he'd need his passport again and find it missing.

I went back to the ticketing area and paid cash for a flight leaving in two hours for Reagan airport in D.C., not Dulles which I'd come from. I checked my bag as Ryan Trillan, passed through security as Ryan Trillan, sat around the gate as Ryan Trillan, and boarded the plane as Ryan Trillan. I took two of the sleeping pills I'd bought from a store as Ryan Trillan, and slept for most of the flight to Reagan. I went through US customs as Ryan Trillan, turned the rest of my Euros into the money I'd grown up with, and took a cab from Reagan to Dulles to retrieve my car.

It was Friday afternoon, by my best guess and according to the clock on my car's radio, when I got to my house and went straight to my bathroom and fell asleep in the shower.

Shadow

2007-03-09T11:19:00.000-08:00

I knew one thing for sure: this guy wasn't going to give me a straight answer about anything. Everybody I've run into in the past week has been some kind of expert in half-answers and tricky question-dodging.

Thomas Pratt, as he called himself, was sitting across from me at an old, wooden table in an old, cozy cafe in old, historic Vienna. As my brain rushed to put together the few pieces of information I had at the moment, I couldn't presently back-track my actions to remember how I'd gotten here.

He knew my name, that was enough to freak me out. Either he actually knew who I was, or he got my name from my hotel, which means that time I was sure I wasn't being followed, I was. Interpol? What do they do? Oversight and cross-communications between African and European police organizations. Drug enforcement, probably anti-terrorism stuff, bank fraud. Oh great, bank fraud! The whole thing at the bank, with the newspaper ad for magical untraceable Austrian bank accounts was all a setup -- a sting. Wait for silly Americans to come wondering in asking for bank accounts practically invented for money laundering, then tell him the only way to do so is illegally.

Wait, that doesn't make sense. For one thing, that's entrapment. Besides that, it still doesn't make sense.

And how long have I been sitting here in confused silence?

"You're trying to think of how you might know me?" Pratt finally said. I nodded, then glanced around the place; there were three other occupied tables and three people behind the counter.
"Don't worry," he continued, "you probably don't."
"So what is this?" I asked, choosing my words carefully.
"This," he said with that stupid coy grin, "is the justification of the last two years of my career."

I didn't say anything. He opened his leather jacket and pulled a thick file folder from inside and set it down in front of him with a slight dramatic slam. He opened the top cover gently, flipped through a few pages I couldn't see, then pulled out a 8"x10" photograph and slid it over to me. I bent over to look at it, it was a portrait of a man in a strong navy-blue suit. Old, maybe fifties with silver hair and a powerful brow. He didn't look American. Pratt watched my face carefully as I looked at the photograph.

"Who's this?" I asked.
"You don't know?"
I looked down at the picture again, then shook my head.
"That is Jens Nesimi, an Austrian political figurehead and former military commander. You're sure you've never seen him?"
"If he was ever in a US newspaper or on the news, I may have seen his face before, but I don't recognize him at all. I don't usually follow Austrian politics."
"Don't usually?" he asked.
"Don't ever," this was beginning to sound like an interrogation; where the investigators will try to use your words against you. I was beginning to become uncomfortable.

Pratt slid the photo back onto the stack of documents and flipped forward a few pages, producing another photograph (this one smaller) and sliding it over. The shot was less formal. It was of an ornate bedroom shot from eye-level. A large, king sized bed was center frame, draped in lush-looking green sheets and a thick comforter, slightly disrupted by a man's body hanging awkwardly off the edge of the mattress. The body was dressed in blue pajamas, the face pressed against the wood floor, its torso hanging over the edge, and the legs were under the sheets. It looked as if the man was trying to slide onto the floor but his legs were tangled by tightly tucked sheets. I recognized the photo now as a crime scene photograph. The careless use of over-powered flash gave it away.

When I looked up from the photo, Pratt slid another over. It was the same room, the same man, but taken from another angle to show the man's face. It was the guy from the first photo, Nesimi. He was certainly dead, with a pale look of hopeless consternation on the part of his face that wasn't pressed against the floor. I frowned slightly. This was probably the first real dead person I'd seen outside of a casket.

"What's this about?" I asked, pushing both pictures away.
"Nesimi died in his home two years ago, apparently in his sleep, apparently he had a heart attack, tried to get up, but died almost instantly while his wife lay beside him. Because of the high profile, I was brought on by the local police to assist in the investigation."
"Investigation? I thought it was a heart attack," I said, forgoing the utter irrelevancy of any of this to me.
"That's how it seemed, but there were things that didn't match. He was a military man, in perfect health, except for HIV."

"He had AIDS?" this went from feeling like an interrogation to feeling like gossip.
"No, not AIDS, just HIV," Pratt looked annoyed that I didn't know the distinction. "He kept it a secret, fearing that if word got out his reputation would be destroyed. The official record is that there was some blood cross-contamination during his military career, but who knows, eh? The point of all that is, he was seeing a private physician in secret every month. After Nesimi turned 40, the doctor began running blood tests and heart EKG tests every month because of the risk of heart disease. Nobody knew about this doctor or his exams except for Nesimi and his wife. The thing that made people question the heart attack theory is that Nesimi had been to his doctor that very same day, given a clean bill of health."
"Even his heart?" I asked.
"Especially his heart. According to this doctor, Nesimi was so paranoid about having heart problems that he made the doctor run a full workup every month. The type of tests that aren't even necessary every year."
"So the doctor said his heart was fine just a few hours before he had a heart attack. Could the doctor have just been faking the test results since he thought they were pointless?" this really was beginning to sound like gossip.

"I thought of that, but I checked it out. No malpractice. Though, it wasn't really likely to begin with. The reason I was brought onto the investigation was that the security system at Nesimi's home had an abnormality. He lived in a large estate inside the city with fences, security cameras, door alarms, motion sensors, all the good stuff. When the local police happened to take a look at the camera footage, they found that the cameras had all gone down for 3 minutes, 2 minutes before the coroner estimated Nesimi's death. They checked the system logs, and the gate, door, and motion alarms had all shut down at the same time too."
"So..."
"So, someone may have disabled the alarms, snuck in, and somehow poisoned Nesimi with something that mimics a heart attack."
"In 3 minutes?"
"Sure."
"And what does this have to do with me?" I was getting a bit antsy. The coffee and juice had gone through me and I needed to find and use the bathroom.
"I'm getting to that," Pratt said. He was still leaning back, calm and comfortable.
He continued, "When I was brought on, the first thing I did was have a second autopsy done. This is how they found the abacavir in his system, which is what lead me to the doctor and the fact that he'd had all the heart tests that very day, confirming my suspicion."
This was getting interesting, like some police/medical drama. "The autopsy didn't show any signs of poisoning?" I asked.
"Well, we first thought the HIV treatments were the poison, but when we found out they were prescribed, we had to do another autopsy."
"A third?"
"Yes. There was nothing in his stomach or intestines that looked like a poison, so it must have been an injection. There were no visible needle marks on the skin, so I had the body flayed to look for any fine needle injection marks--"
"Wait, flayed?"
"Yes. The skin is removed from the muscle tissue over the whole body. Skin is elastic and will hide a needle mark if the needle is thin enough and injected into a muscle, not a vein, but the muscle tissue itself is disrupted by the injection, so the only way to find an injection point is to look at the muscle, not the skin."
"That is very gross."
"Nesimi's family agreed. They'd already asked for no autopsies after the first, so I'd done two more against their wishes. They had the last one stopped when they heard about it. They'd wanted an open-casket funeral, which would be impossible with the skin removed from the body."

I nodded, feeling slightly sick.

"But they found it anyway, the needle point. In the neck, just above the shoulder. He'd been injected with something that didn't show up in the blood work. This meant whatever it was had crossed the blood-brain barrier, and the examiner told me the only way to find the poison would be to wring out the cranial fluid or the fluid inside the eyeballs."

Now I was feeling very sick.

"But we couldn't proceed, because the family had the body removed and buried. I knew the man had been murdered, injected with something that caused or mimicked a heart attack, at night while the security system was disabled. It was like a shadow assassin, the thought plagued me for weeks. I'd gone through all of Nesimi's contacts, friends, enemies, employees, and family members, and found nothing. There were no leads, and the case was closed. The family was furious at me for letting word get out about his HIV, and then having his body cut up. My career was put on hold, promotions lost, my life pretty-much ruined by this Shadow. I had to redeem myself, and answer this riddle that was driving me mad. I finally began recalling all security camera footage from any home or business within three blocks of Nesimi's home, but found nothing.

"Nothing, except one frame from the street security camera of a bank across the road from Nesimi's estate. It was a reflection off of the windshield of a car parked on the street outside the gate at Nesimi's home," Pratt trailed off and pulled another photo from the folder. It was an 8"x10" again, but flimsy as if printed on a desktop printer.

The shot was dark, and obviously had been digitally enlarged. I could see a road, and a row of cars parked against it. Beyond the cars was a tall iron-looking gate with brick columns every 10-or-so feet. At the far right of the frame, on the windshield of the car closest to the camera, was a slight reflection provided by a street lamp. The reflection was of somebody leaning against one of the brick columns somewhere outside the frame. The person was wearing black, as far as I could tell, and looking to the side, giving a slight profile of the face in the reflection. I brought the photo closer to my eyes and squinted to look at the face. It was a male, but he looked young and the reflection distorted everything. I shook my head.

Pratt handed me another flimsy photo, an enlargement of a single quadrant of the previous. The photo showed just the section of the car windshield with the reflection. I could see the guy leaning against the column, could now see that he was looking down at a wrist watch, and could clearer see the face.
It was my face.

Well, it sort of looked like my face. It was blurry, digitally enlarged, warped by the reflection, and very dark, but it looked a lot like me two years ago. It was silly, and preposterous, but still shocked me. My eyes widened and my heart picked up its pace.

"That photo was the only lead I'd developed after a 2 month investigation. A blurry reflection of a teenager's face. When I showed it to superiors and the detectives at the police department, they laughed at me. A shot of a teenager outside a man's house in the middle of the night hardly proved anything. They said it could be anybody, just some neighborhood kid walking around. But I knew it was the Shadow. I'd interviewed everybody who lived or worked within walking distance from the estate. And that posture, leaning against the gate and looking at a watch. That shot was taken about thirty seconds before the house's security system shut down. He's waiting for something, for word that the system was offline or waiting for whatever he'd done to disable it to be activated.

"That photograph haunted me. I put it up on my office wall, then on the side of my desk after I'd been demoted. I looked at it every day, knowing whoever that was had destroyed by career; but I respected him. He'd performed an almost untraceable hit. I've dealt with many assassinations, but never one so clean. Everybody I know and work with knows about that picture, they see it every time they come to my desk, know what it means to me. So when Markus, a former partner of mine happened to see you walking from that bank today, he thought he'd give me a call," he gestured to the guy he was with, the man I'd seen at the bank.

"I checked the bank, and called the hotel that Markus had followed you to. Christopher Baker. An American. I knew the Shadow had to be a foreigner, all the good assassins come from Russia or the Americas. Then I saw you for myself when you came out of the hotel, saw your face, I knew it was you. But how could I rationalize someone your age, who would have been fifteen at the time, being such a skilled killer? I can't, but here you are buying a Sparbuch account, probably to hold funds for another hit. Why else would someone like you need one?"

Ok, this guy was loopy in the head. "You think I killed some politician guy? That's insane."
He nodded. "I know it's insane, and this is why it works so well. I don't know how I'll prove it, but I will. I don't know how someone your age can do what you do, but you do it."

This was all too unbelievable. I shook my head and chuckled, I thought that I'd been caught for my visit with Comstock this morning, or worse, but this crazy guy just thinks I look like a kid who was outside someone's house two years ago the night someone died? You can't make this stuff up.

"Are you kidding me? There's billions of kids on the planet, yet you know that 'shadow' of yours is me because I kind of look like a sideways reflection taken off a camera in the dark two years ago? Do you go around to all the high schools in the country and interrogate any brown-haired kid with that nose and subtle cheekbones?"

Pratt slid the two photos back into the folder and closed it, folded his hands, and finally leaned into the table. "Do not mistake me for crazed idiot, Chris, I know that face. I know your face. You come from America, you pay for hotel rooms and plane tickets with your own money, you buy untraceable bank accounts used throughout history to launder money and to collect payment for illegal jobs. You're a minor yet you're visiting Europe by yourself on a three-day trip yet you've done no sightseeing as I can tell. I wouldn't make a mistake like this."

I sighed, feeling like I was going to be kidnapped by a lunatic obsessed with teenage boys. "You've got nothing to go on, though," I said, "they said that the photo of that kid wasn't enough to continue the case, so just finding someone who looks like him isn't going to change anything."
"True, but if I suspect you of terrorism I can hold you for at least 24 hours without charges. That will give me time enough to run your fingerprints and photograph through every Interpol database, put a hold on your passport, or track down your relatives or employers. It might even keep you from performing another of your miraculous hits if that's what you're here to do."

Suddenly this had all lost its gleeful air of ridiculousness.

Pratt stood up, motioning his friend Markus to come over. "As we suspect you of terrorist activities," Pratt began, "we're taking you into custody for questioning and examination." He pulled a set of silver handcuffs from his belt, and Markus stepped over and pulled me up by my arm.

All this, and I still really had to pee.

Not the band

2007-03-07T11:09:00.001-08:00

Nobody chased me. Nobody tailed me. Nobody gave me a second glance.

I'm going to drive myself nuts, I told myself. It was rather confusing though; I'd found out that the whole time I thought people were after me, I was just being paranoid. But people were after me, just different people. Is it still paranoia if there really are out to get you?

I shrugged it off again. I had to stop thinking about it. I just kept walking down the narrow Vienna streets, my hands tucked in my jacket pockets to keep warm. An hour later I was back in my hotel room,dorking around on the internet . All the things I should have been thinking about kept banging on the walls of my mind, but I kept pushing it back. This made it hard to relax, but kept me from thinking myself into a fit. Being cooped up in the hotel room was starting to make me feel a bit bonkers, and time just dragged on. I had to keep myself busy, I decided, so I picked up the phone and dialed the number on the newspaper ad offering Austriansparbuch accounts.

After two rings, someone answered speaking in German. I asked if the man spoke English, he said yes.

"I'm interested in a sparbuch account," I said.
"Yes," he said in the thickest accent I'd heard since I got here, "we have available."
"And they're with Erste Bank?"
"Yes, we have them from many banks but Erste is the best common."
"They come with balances already?"
"Ehh.. balance, yes. They have 100 Euro balance in account."
"How much for the account?"
"They are 400 Euro, but have the 100 in bank already so 300 actually price."
"And the accounts, they're completely anonymous?"
"Yes. Private account, no name or addresses. Best kinds. You want through mail or pick up?"
"Are you downtown? I could meet you somewhere."
"I have someone downtown, where are you now?"

I gave him the crossroads nearest the hotel, and he told me of a cafe a few blocks away and said someone would meet me in two hours. I didn't have anything to do besides sitting and stewing over the complicated nature of my life, so I grabbed the novel I hadn't finished and walked to the cafe.

Starbucks it wasn't. Most people were drinking espresso from tiny little cups, something so pretentious that even Americans can't stand. The cafe itself was small, very old looking but decorated nicely with a long singular wooden bench wrapping around the right wall to the back, stuffed with pillows and cushions and tables tucked up against them every few feet. At the counter I tried to cut through the language barrier and get myself a latte, I ended up with something that seemed like a latte but was more bitter than I expected. I settled in at a table in the back and started to read my book.

About an hour later a man came in that looked like what the man on the phone had described, young, dark hair, dark coat. He'd warned me also that he didn't speak English. I waved at the man and he walked over. He had a Manila envelope in his hand, which he held up and said, "Euros?"

I pulled the money from my pocket and set it on the table. He sat down and started counting after handing me the envelope. In it were as a small folding booklet that reminded me of a passport, but it had the same dimensions as a credit card and a muted yellow color. The back cover of the booklet had a magnetic stripe, which meant that you probably stuck the whole thing into an ATM just like a debit card; which meant that it was probably the sparbuch itself. Inside the booklet were a few pages that looked like rules or laws, written in German, and the account number was printed at the bottom. After that were a few blank pages that looked to be meant to use as a ledger. Also in the envelope was a small piece of paper that said "SECURE CODE" and a six-digit number. Finally was a full-page document, an official-looking account summary printed and sealed by the Erste Bank. It listed the account number, the same number printed inside the sparbuch, and showed a few random transactions dated over 10 years prior, then finally a recent deposit that brought the balance to 100 Euros exactly. I looked the page over, it was printed on a laser printer on heavy stock paper with a watermark of the bank's logo. If it was fake, it was worth the 400 Euros just for the authenticity.

He said something that might pass as, "All good?" I nodded, he smiled politely and left with the money.

I put the sparbuch and the sheet with the code number in my jacket pocket, folded the rest and sat it on the bench next to me, then got back to my book. I finally finished it, and had gone through three coffees and was now on to juices and sitting in silent contemplation as the sun went down.

I noticed someone standing outside the cafe door, and it took a moment for me to recognize his face. It was the guy from outside the bank earlier in the day. He was just standing there watching the door, not looking at me. It was illegal to carry a knife over three inches in Europe so I didn't have mine on me, though I didn't know my mind went right to that. A few minutes later he was joined by another man similarly dressed. He looked through the window around the cafe until his eyes landed on me. He appeared to take in a long breath, then turned back around. I kept telling myself not to be nervous, that I was probably overreacting again, but I had done all kinds of unlawful things today, crimes both white-collar and otherwise.

I downed the last of my bottle of orange juice and just watched the both of them as they stood outside, watching cars pass on the street.

Eventually they both sauntered inside the cafe, the first guy hanging around the door and the second walking straight toward me. My legs uncrossed and I pressed both feet against the floor, and the back of my mind kept focusing on the fact that I didn't have a weapon on me. The table wasn't locked down, I bet I could throw it.

As the man walked closer, I could see that he was a bit older than the first guy. He was in his forties but still fit, and wearing a short leather jacket. The panic poking at my chest eased a small amount, but the man was indeed coming for me. He had a kind of coy smile on his face, like a man playing hide and seek with a child and obviously knowing where the kid was hiding. He sat down across from me at my table, turned the chair at an angle and leaned back in in sloppy posture. I didn't say anything.

"You speak English, don't you?" he said with the same grin. His accent was light, and definitely not German. French, maybe?
I nodded. He seemed pleased.
"I thought so," he said, "My name is Thomas Pratt." He pronounced it "Toe-mahs".
I swallowed, and thought for a second about what to say. "Chris," I decided on.
His grin pulled taught for a moment, then he continued, "I'm a lead investigator with Interpol. I've been waiting to meet you for a long time, Mr. Baker."

Sparbuch

2007-03-05T11:41:00.000-08:00

I cut a small slit into one of the zip-ties holding Comstock's hands together so that they could be pulled apart with a bit of effort, long after I was gone.

I took the stairs down to the ground level, went out the side exit and dropped the ski mask, the recorder, and the gloves into separate trash cans as I passed them on the street. The mask went first, then I rewound the digital voice recorder and recorded myself blowing into the microphone until I'd reached the end, and took the batteries out and threw all the pieces away separately, then finally I got rid of the gloves. I knew I'd be clean, and I also knew there was no way Comstock would call the police. I walked around the Venetian streets in circles for half an hour, not looking at or seeing anything, then finally made it back to my own hotel and up to my room; where I pulled off my jacket and shirt and collapsed onto the bed, then screamed into the pillows.

I don't know what I expected. I sort of always hoped I was imagining everything, but if anything I hoped that this all had to do with Mr. Comstock and had nothing to do with me. I'd hoped he was selling government secrets and I was just somehow caught in the periphery. Instead, I was right in the middle of it. There was so much information, too much to process at one time. That guy, his name was Dingan and he was only supposed to bring me in and I'd sort of kinda accidentally killed him in self-defense. And where was he supposed to bring me into? To Comstock? He could see me any day at school. What did this have to do with the Marines? Comstock works for them? That's where he gets his money? And why is he talking to them about me? Do they think I did something illegal?

Trying to picture the Marine Corps for me was like trying to picture the wind. It was all around me, intertwined in every angle of my life. My dad worked and died for them, most of the people I know are related to a Marine of some sort, even Amy's dad was probably some kind of Special Forces guy for them. It wouldn't make sense that this would be the entire Marine Corps that Comstock was dealing with. If they wanted me for something, they could just come get me, they wouldn't have to involve school administrators, and they could have had me when I was right on the central Marine Corps base. They ran my name through the computer at the security gate, if I was really in their crosshairs, they could have had me long ago.

No, this would most likely be some small element inside the Corps. Maybe someone that knew my dad, or some rogue faction. Maybe I could ask Amy's dad, or that Schumer guy I talked to the day before in Quantico. Maybe they could help me.

Whoever I was dealing with, Comstock was afraid enough of them that he thought they might kill him. That was bad news for me. He also thought they might try to take his money. That was also bad news for me. If it is the government that's so interested in me, they'd have the resources to access and screw around with my bank account, and they'd definitely know about my money. I supposed that if Comstock thought it prudent to move all of his money to some kind of ultra-private Austrian account, perhaps I should do likewise.

Looking up Austrian banks helped take my mind off of everything else. I found what looked like a prominent bank, Erste Bank, which had a branch right on the river and not very far from me. I somehow knew that Erste means First, so if they really are the First Bank of Austria, they'd have to be old and rife with financial loopholes and rich customers who don't want their fortunes advertised to any governments.

I took a cab to the bank, expecting to find a giant stone-columned fortress with three levels of underground vaults. It was just a small little bank branch, like the sort of thing you'd see in the US between a donut store and another bank. Nevertheless, I went inside and asked for the bank manager. The teller at the main window picked up a phone and spoke to someone, then hung up and said in poor English that someone would be there in a moment. Sure enough, someone came from a row of offices just off the lobby area and walked me back to the furthest office. Inside was an old, meager man with thin hair and an expensive-looking suit. He stood up and offered his hand over his oak desk.

I sat down in a plush leather chair across from him, made sure he spoke English, and went on with it.

I explained in great detail how I was an American actor, how I'd had a few decent roles in Hollywood pictures but had just signed a contract to star in a three-part film series based on some popular children's books, that I'd be coming into a great deal of money, but was very concerned about my emancipated parents trying to get a hold of it in the courts because I was still a legal minor. I wanted to put it somewhere secure that couldn't be tracked down by investigators and the like, and I'd been suggested to try an Austrian account so I got on a plane, flew to Austria, and went to the closest bank to my hotel. It seemed more believable than, "The Marine Corps may or may not want me dead, and either way, they may want to use my money to make me dead."

The bank manager took all this in, seeming to follow my words perfectly, yet not reacting to any of my embellishments about how the movie series was going to be rubbish but was just being made to compete with the Harry Potter movies and because the studio would lose the license to the books if they didn't use it.

"The problem you'll run into here is the same one you will find in America," he told me, "you must be 18 years old to open a single-party account. You say your birthday is next month. We could start the processing now for an account and finalize it through the mail once you turn 18."

I frowned. "I've heard about these savings accounts with no identity associated with them. Just a number and a passcode. Couldn't I just open one of those?" I asked.

Now the bank manager frowned. "You mean a Sparbuch, eh... passbook account? Recent banking laws have required us to slightly modify how we process those, though there was a time when you could open such an anonymous account where whoever holds the passbook and knows the password is the legal owner of the account; no names, no mailed statements, highly transferable -- but because they made it rather easy to launder funds for illegal purposes, it's impossible to open a new account like this. Even then, you had to be an Austrian citizen to do this."

"You still have the sparbuch accounts, though?"

"Yes," he said, hesitant, "we offer anonymous and named sparbuch-type accounts, but they must be opened like any other account, with a name and proof of identity and such. If one chooses to make the account anonymous, the name is held securely in our records and statements and transactions will just refer to the account number and not the name. And, as before, one must be 18 years old for this."

It sounded like Rubino was right, modern anti-laundering laws made fully anonymous banking a thing of the past.

"You said you can't open any new totally anonymous sparbuch accounts, but there are still existing ones?" I said.
"Yes, we honor all accounts and could never close such an account because there's no way to contact the account holder."
"And you said those accounts are highly transferable?"
"Well, yes. Whoever has the 'passbook', which is now a secure bank card, and knows the account's security code is considered the account holder, so if you just gave the card to someone and told them the code, they become the new owner."
"So..." I started, "would there perhaps be any of those cards lying around that someone might know the code for?"

The manager looked nervous and rapped his fingers against the desk for a second, then said, "I know what you mean, but this is not something we or any bank can do. There are services that broker in pre-existing sparbuch accounts, or some people will just sell them outright through advertisements and such, but this can be dangerous as some are scams."
"Do you know of any services that definitely aren't scams?"

The manager darted his eyes back and forth once, then looked around the room as if making sure that nobody had snuck in, then he opened a lower desk drawer and pulled out a folded newspaper that looked a few weeks old judging by the coloring. He drew a circle around a block of text with a pen then slid the paper across the desk, saying "I'm sure I have no idea."

Circled was a classified ad that first said, "E.B. Sparbuch Accounts. Guaranteed balances." and had a phone number listed. Below that was seemingly the same thing in German. The bank manager probably had some relationship with whoever was selling these, probably supplying the accounts or getting a cut of each sold, or both. I took the paper and set it on my lap.

"One more thing," I said, "If I had such an account, could I wire money to it from a U.S. bank? And how do withdrawals and deposits work?"
"The account would come with a routing number and account number that could be used like any checking account for electronic transfers in either direction. Deposits and withdrawals can be made in person at any branch, or from any of our 24 hour ATM machines."

I thanked the man and left the bank. Outside as I waited for a cab, I slipped the newspaper page into my inner jacket pocket and as I looked around I saw a man across the street leaning against a car and looking at me. The man was early-thirties, had long black hair and a brown leather coat. At first he just glanced at me, then again, then he squinted at me as if trying to recognize my face, then he turned to look in all directions, then looked back at me as I tried to dodge his gaze by pretending to read a road sign. Across the street, the man got in the driver seat of his car and pulled a cellphone to his face, glancing at me one more time.

I reflected upon the last time somebody sat in a car and spoke on a cellphone while looking at me, and I just started walking. I thought I could feel my eyes start to burn.

4017

2007-03-02T12:45:00.001-08:00

The narrow point of the cool, black blade pressed firmly against the mound of flesh sagging between his chin and throat. It was an awkward position for me, standing behind him, arm crooked around his neck at an odd angle just so I could hold the knife this way, but I wanted him to see it; he had to know I was serious or this might not work. He was struggling his wrists against the zip-ties binding his hands together through the back of the solid oak desk chair, but a quick elbow to the base of his neck stopped that. His breathing was sharp and stuttered, through the glove on my left hand I could feel his skin getting hotter. Once again he asked who I was, what I wanted. I pulled the tape recorder from my left pocket, made sure the playback was set to slow, pressed play, and heard a deepened, ominous version of my own voice come from the silver device. It all comes down to this.

The night before, I had no problem sleeping.

It might have been the 24 hours plus I'd been awake, or the boring flight and the mental strain of pretending to be someone else for the benefit of someone who can get you the things you need. It might also have been that I made sure not to think about what I'd probably have to do in the morning.

The idea came to me as naturally as anything else, I just asked myself how I would do it, and the answer came. Just as when I asked myself how I was going to get into his bank account, how to get his home address, how to maintain surveillance of his house, or how to get access to his hotel room, the question of how to find out who Nathan Comstock works for (besides the Fredericksburg school district), what he wants with me, and why he's fled here to Vienna, Austria was an easy question indeed. Doing it, that was the hard part.

I had to wake up earlier than I wanted to, but I had to be up at least 2 hours before him. He'd had a longer day than I, leaving the Washington D.C. airport around 6AM and not arriving here until after midnight. His room was booked for another night, and as far as I could tell, all he had to do here was drop some checks off at a bank. If I were him, I'd be sleeping in today; and that's what I bet on.

First I'd need supplies. A ski mask, plastic zip-ties, a digital voice recorder with speed control, and some leather gloves; these would be the difficult things. If they had K-Marts in downtown Vienna, I'd be set. Unfortunately, I knew it would take at least two different stores. The rest -- rubber bands, paper clips, and a thumb tack -- those I knew I could get from my hotel's business center.

I walked the rest of the way to the Ambassador Hotel once my shopping spree was done with. I didn't need any cab drivers ready to give descriptions of me if this all went downhill. I walked with my purchases in a plastic bag, then when I was near the hotel I went into a small cafe where morning patrons were sipping orange juice and coffees and speaking rapid German, and found the lone bathroom wherein I removed the voice recorder from its packaging and inserted the batteries (wearing gloves), and began recording my questions. It would be doing the talking, not me.

Comstock's door lock turned a happy green when I slid my card key into the slot. I prayed he was still sleeping, but as I opened the door a crack I could hear a shower running inside the room. Slight change of plans. If he was awake, he was unpredictable. He could have made plans already, ordered room service, or requested maid service. I gingerly pulled the door back closed and retreated back to the elevator area at the end of the hall. I picked up the small phone resting near a pad of paper and a set of pens on a long, ornate wooden table and dialed for the front desk. I explained that I was Nathan Comstock from room 4017, that I hadn't gotten much sleep last night so I'll be sleeping through the morning, so please make sure there are no phone calls or housekeeping visits.

"And what of your breakfast order set for 8:30? Would you still like that brought up?" the voice asked.

"Cancel it," I said, hanging up.

The security bar, the evolved version of the security chain, was closed on Comstock's door. Any idiot knows to shut it, so it was an expected obstacle. I opened the door as far as I could, listening for any noises but only heard the shower head running and variable splashes of water against the shower floor indicating there was a person inside. When the door stopped against the security bar, I took one of the rubber bands from my right pocket and looped it tightly around the top of the bar and tried to stretch it to reach the wall inside the room, just near the doorframe. It reached, just barely, so I stuck it to the wall with a thumbtack. The principle of these security bars, just like security chains, is that they can only be opened when the door is closed. When the door is opened as much as the bar allows, the bar is blocked by the small knob on the door, so you couldn't just reach your hand inside and open it. Security chains can simply be cut with some bolt or wire cutters, and so the security bar was invented.

But with the rubber band pulling the bar towards the wall, as I slid the door shut again the band pulled the bar away from the door on its own. Another swipe of the key and a turn of the handle, and the door was free to be opened. This is why these doors also have deadbolts, though any idiot doesn't know to lock that.

The room was rather dark with the drapes shut, but from what I could see it was a rather lushly decorated room with royal blue accents against off-white walls. A sliver of light spilled from beneath the bathroom door at the end of the room and the shower was still running. I slipped the blank ski mask I'd bought over my head, adjusted the holes so I could see, and started looking around. One of the beds wasn't made, so he must have just gotten up, ordered breakfast, and headed to the bathroom. There was a heavy oak desk at the other end of the room, on it was a soft leather bag that probably contained a laptop computer, and strewn across it was a fabric belt with large, clear plastic pockets meant to be worn under your pants to hide your valuables from muggers or pickpockets. I zipped one of the pockets opened and pulled out a white letter-size envelope, inside it were at least 30 certified bank checks, from four different banks. I wasn't sure if I should take them or not. The FBI might want them as evidence, though if they were illegally obtained I doubted they'd be much use.

I waited about eight minutes for Nathan Comstock to come out of the bathroom. When the shower stopped, I darted to the wall and ducked behind the untouched bed. Then the sink ran for a bit, then the toilet flushed, then the door finally opened. Comstock came out of the bathroom wearing a white bathrobe, he swaggered over to the small couch near the window where his suitcase was lying open and stood over it for a moment, looking at his clothes by the light of the open bathroom door.

Good a chance as any, I thought.

I got up and crept around the beds and stood behind him as he stood next to the draped window and fished through his suitcase and picked up two white cotton socks. I felt a quick pang of guilt in my mind, but blocked it out just as quickly. This was going to hurt.

I grabbed his neck and slammed his head against the window to a muted thud, he let out a quick shriek which I ended by covering his mouth with a bundle of drapery I grabbed, then kneed him in the back sharply. So he knew I was there, now to scare him.

I pulled his body away from the window by the front of the neck and the left wrist and pushed him over to the bed so he keeled over it on his stomach, pulled my knife from my pocket, flipping it open, and then I turned his head to the side and covered his mouth while I plunged the blade of the knife into the mattress just a few inches from his widening eyes. He was still gripping the pair of white socks in his right hand, so I yanked them out and stuffed them in his mouth. So he was scared, now to make him feel vulnerable.

Nudity is about the most vulnerable a person can be, so I sliced the pathetic terrycloth belt from the robe with the knife and pulled the robe off of him by grabbing the neck and yanking downwards; his arms bent backwards wildly as they slid from the sleeves. I kept my other hand pressed firmly downward on his neck just below his wet black hair, pinning him onto the bed as he lay there wet, pink, and exposed. He probably thought he was about to be raped, so what would follow might be a bit of a relief for him.

I brought the knife to his neck and lifted him up and backed him over to the desk chair and sat him down in it, then brought his arms around behind him and tightened them inside the makeshift handcuffs I'd already made from zip-ties as I stood behind him. I was pretty sure he hadn't seen me yet. He just kept panting through his nose and making low groaning noises in his throat.

When my deepened, slowed-down voice came from the recorder held a few inches from his ear, it said, "I've been given clearance to kill you if I want to, but it isn't necessary, so if you're a good little boy -- don't make a fuss, and answer all my questions -- this might not be the last room you ever see. Understand?" I paused the recording.

Comstock groaned again, then let out a low sob. The socks still in his mouth, snot began bubbling from his nostrils with each breath. He nodded slowly.

The recording continued, "I think you know who I work for," Comstock nodded, "Our mutual employer has some concerns regarding recent behavior on your part. Particularly, why you've withdrawn all of your money and fled here. Speak." I paused it again.

I pulled the socks from his mouth. He coughed and flexed his jaw, panted from his mouth a few times, and then found his voice.

"They," he said between breaths, "or you, were already coming down on me. I thought you wanted me dead, or to punish me, so... so, I wanted to get the money somewhere where they couldn't get to it, in case you or they wanted to get to me that way." He kept panting and sobbing.

I had to be tricky with the questions. I couldn't exactly say, "Who do you work for?" when the only people who would be after him would be the people he worked for. He had to think they'd sent a hitter after him, one of their own. At the end of the series of questions I'd recorded, I included a few generic questions and remembered the timestamps for each. Since he wasn't exactly following the script, I had to fast forward and watch the time on the small LCD display.

"Why?"

"Why what? Why did I think they were coming after me?"

Silence.

"It was pretty obvious they were trying to screw with me," he said, still panting but sobbing less, "first my debit card number gets stolen, then they trash my car, and then I get an email someones trying to break into my email account. It was clear someone was trying to get to me. I figured it wasn't long before they started screwing around with my money."

Uh oh. All of those things were me. He thought that all of the stuff I was doing was his employer trying to get to him. My mind was racing now; the first thing I did was have Amy call and say his debit card was stolen so I could get into his bank account, then I broke his windshield as a distraction to get him out of his office. That all happened the day after I was in the fight, the day after he said those words. "It might be expensive." After that, all the things I did to try to figure out who he worked for, he thought it was who he worked for. He thinks his little clever request for a pay raise had set them off, just as I suspected. He was scared, but for no good reason.

It was silent for a few moments, obviously making Comstock nervous. "And there was the thing with Dingan," he said in a huff, "I tried to have him bring the kid in and he screwed it all up, now he hasn't showed up for few days and that's pissing them off." He started sobbing again, "I fucked everything up, and now they sent you to kill me. God, I shouldn't have used Dingan, that idiot. Killed a cop. That idiot."

Was he talking about me? Dingan? Was that the guy in Lorton who pepper sprayed me then tried to kill me? He tried to "bring the kid in"? He tried to blind me then kill me! He didn't spray me until I tried to fight back when he grabbed me, though, and he didn't try to shoot me until I fled and made him crash his car into a tree, probably pissed him off something mighty. If he wanted to kill me, he could have shot me in the face with bullets instead of pepper spray. Was he just trying to "bring me in"? God, that cop could have been alive in the trunk before the car crashed into a tree. What had I done? My heart began thumping harder and harder. Comstock was panicked because of my snooping, that guy Dingan and a police officer were dead because I had to make a big deal out of it and fight back. What had I done? This whole mess was my fault. I was going to be sick.

I have a guy, my principal, naked and tied up with a knife to his throat in a hotel room in Austria. All because I'd freaked him out with my ridiculous and illegal spying. How could I have done all this?

I still had no idea who was at the root of all this, though. Who was paying Comstock to look over me? Who was so bad that he would think they'd want to kill him because he (seemingly) made a mistake. The questions I'd prepared were now useless, I didn't expect the interrogation to go in this direction at all. The only thing that would be any help was part of a question I'd recorded, about why he'd asked for more money. I didn't know the timestamp, and the first half of the question wouldn't make sense, so I rewound and fast forwarded until I was somewhere that seemed right, and pressed play.

"-elieve the phrase you used was, 'it might be expensive'."

Comstock laughed weakly through his sobs, "Is that, what this about? For god's sakes, I wasn't even really serious. But come on, the kid was dangerous now and I'm supposed to let someone get away with a four-man brawl without so much as a call home? I could have been fired from the school for that, and that would have really messed them up. A little hazard pay shouldn't have been out of the question." He chuckled again.

So that was it. I got off for the fight because Comstock's real employer told him to. A suspicion was confirmed, but I still was no closer to finding out who he worked for. The rest of my questions were now worthless. I figured it was time to get out of here now, so I started cutting at the zip-tie on one hand to make it weak enough for him to eventually pull free, when Comstock spoke again through his eerie laughter.

"I mean, come on. I figured the Marine Corps would be good for it."

And then I stopped breathing.