AGENT G: ASSASSIN
Book Three of the Agent G Series
By C. T. Phipps
A Gordian Knot Production
Gordian Knot is an imprint of Crossroad Press
Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press
Smashwords edition published at Smashwords by Crossroad Press
Crossroad Press Edition published 2019
Original publication by Amber Cove—January 2018
LICENSE NOTES
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Meet the Author
C. T. Phipps is a lifelong student of horror, science fiction, and fantasy. An avid tabletop gamer, he discovered this passion led him to write and turned him into a lifelong geek. He is a regular blogger and also a reviewer for The Bookie Monster.
Bibliography
The Rules of Supervillainy (Supervillainy Saga #1)
The Games of Supervillainy (Supervillainy Saga #2)
The Secrets of Supervillainy (Supervillainy Saga #3)
The Kingdom of Supervillany (Supervillainy Saga #4)
The Tournament of Supervillany (Supervillainy Saga #5)
I Was a Teenage Weredeer (The Bright Falls Mysteries, Book 1)
An American Weredeer in Michigan (The Bright Falls Mysteries, Book 2)
Esoterrorism (Red Room, Vol. 1)
Eldritch Ops (Red Room, Vol. 2)
Agent G: Infiltrator (Agent G, Vol. 1)
Agent G: Saboteur (Agent G, Vol. 2)
Agent G: Assassin (Agent G, Vol. 3)
Cthulhu Armageddon (Cthulhu Armageddon, Vol. 1)
The Tower of Zhaal (Cthulhu Armageddon, Vol. 2)
Lucifer’s Star (Lucifer’s Star, Vol. 1)
Lucifer’s Nebula (Lucifer’s Star, Vol. 2)
Straight Outta Fangton (Straight Outta Fangton, Vol. 1)
100 Miles and Vampin’ (Straight Outta Fangton, Vol. 2)
Wraith Knight (Wraith Knight, Vol. 1)
Wraith Lord (Wraith Knight, Vol. 2)
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Table of Contents
Foreword
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Foreword
Welcome to the third and final installment of the Agent G series.
When I first started the series, I said it was my goal to start the story in the then-present of 2017 and move to a dystopian cyberpunk future. That event finally occurred with the release of all the hidden Black Technology plans on the internet. It’s promptly followed by a disaster I predict will probably happen in the not-too-distant future. We’ll be making a time skip of about fifteen years in this book, and it’s been an enormous amount of fun figuring out what the world will be like after such a world-changing pair of events.
My biggest worry with this transformation wasn’t that I’d change the nature of the stories, which was always the plan anyway, but that I’d lose focus on the characters across the fifteen-year time skip. I thought long and hard whether it would be better to take my books through the resulting time or whether to trust that I could pull off keeping them recognizable, but older. These fifteen years turned out to be the perfect place to put surprise changes as well as flashbacks.
I think fans will appreciate the new world we’ll be visiting. G, or “Case” as he’s known now, has significantly expanded his social circle and gotten a chance to show his softer side to a small number of individuals. However, the previous books have hardened an already hard man into something even tougher. No one ever said being a cyberpunk protagonist was easy.
As always, kudos to my fans who have been contributing their fan art, trailers, and reviews to this work. The Agent G series wouldn’t be nearly as successful without all your inspiration. As usual, I encourage perceptive fans to notice all the homages and references I’ve scattered through the story, from Blade Runner to Resident Evil.
Enjoy!
Prologue
I soaked up the sun’s rays while laying back on my chaise longue. I was on an Indonesian beach I hadn’t bothered to learn the name of. I’d changed my features, voice, and identity with the practiced ease of a Letter. I had no doubt there were parties in the U.S. government and various megacorps who wanted to track me down, but my guess was they’d have a hell of a time doing it. The only people on Earth who knew my location were the AI known as Delphi, Lucita Biondi, Marissa Sanchez, and S.
I wasn’t worried about any of them. Delphi was enjoying manipulating the stock market, S was off the grid, Marissa was in Washington trying to deal with the collapse of the global economy, and Lucita was three feet away in a chair like my own. I questioned the necessity of tanning when she was a Shell, but she said the synth-skin that made up her body was photo-receptive. A year ago, I’d been a Letter, a man with no identity other than the letter G, who worked as an assassin for a private mercenary company called the International Refugee Society under then-President Douglas. Both had used me with no care for my humanity, which turned out to be nonexistent since I’d been created in a lab with false memories.
Crazy huh?
I’d managed to turn the tables on them and pull a Snowden, uploading millions of terabytes of “Black Technology” information, along with secret files, onto the web. It had brought down the Douglas administration and destroyed my ex-employers, but had changed the world as well as technology. I’d been smart enough not to attach my name to the data and was planning to spend the rest of my life enjoying the local hospitality. Lucita, a fellow cyborg assassin but not a Letter, had decided to join me.
I sipped my margarita. “You know, you should probably wear a swimsuit when tanning.”
“Eh,” Lucita said, wearing only a pair of sunglasses. “Not my problem. It’s our
beach, after all.”
“Technically, it’s my beach,” I corrected her. I wore a pair of mirror shades and red swim trunks. I was tempted to remove them and enjoy the environment like Lucita. We weren’t a couple, but we enjoyed each other’s company. Assassins with benefits, if you will. It was probably the most serious relationship I was going to have since I’d never be able to share who I was with anyone else. Those people I’d trusted most had turned out to be the people most likely to betray me. In the end, it was just me, an AI named Delphi and cyborg hiding with me from the governments we’d pissed off.
“Then what am I?” Lucita asked, lowering her sunglasses to the bridge of her nose as she gazed at me.
“You’re a guest who doesn’t pay rent.”
“I’m fun,” Lucita said, shrugging. “Besides, you’d grow bored with just the local women to keep you entertained. What’s the latest one’s name?”
“You know her name,” I said, frowning. “Besides, it’s interesting having a lover who isn’t either paid or trying to kill me.”
My need for human companionship transcended my need for honesty and I’d made dozens of friends under my fake ID. As far as the locals were concerned, I was Mr. Case and I’d made my fortune in the tech industry. I’d made up friends, family, and a tragic backstory which was all verifiable on the internet save for the fact I had no decent pictures on Facebook. Sometimes, I even believed my fake backstory myself. Was it an adequate substitute for genuine human intimacy? How would I know? I wasn’t human.
“If you say so,” Lucita said. “Do you think it’s serious?”
“No,” I said, sighing. “In addition to bartending and spearfishing, Toni likes to tell fortunes. Per Indonesian astrology, I’m going to eventually get married again. Two more times, in fact.”
I’d been married once before to a fellow Letter named S. S had never loved me, was sometimes not even my friend, but we’d shared years together as man and wife in a cover identity. I’d never been as good at compartmentalizing as other Letters. It was possibly why I was the first one to rebel and the only one who’d actively turned against his employers. Personally, I put as much stock in tea leaves and divination as I did in the honesty of politicians. Still, it was a nice thought even if I suspected it was also a way of Toni telling me we weren’t going to get serious no matter how often I paid her rent.
“Marriage is just a tool to enslave the economically dependent partner,” Lucita said, stretching. It was distracting. “Is your future wife a cyborg? Do you see it happening soon? If so, I want a heads up so I can kill someone for their mansion before you force me to move out.”
“The zodiac did not say,” I said, putting down my margarita and looking down at my Karmapad handheld computer. I was currently reading last week’s news since I didn’t keep an internet connection near my home. Instead, I downloaded my books from the public library’s server and bought local papers in town to enjoy.
“Anything good?” Lucita asked, clearly bored with paradise. She needed to take up a hobby, hopefully not involving murder. Unlike her, I was perfectly content to read and soak up rays until my cyber-brain shut down in however long its warranty remained working. Given it was originally only supposed to last ten years before I’d jury-rigged it, that was something I didn’t count on being long.
I read her the news. “President Karl Trust has done a bunch of embarrassing and unconstitutional things. The economy is up. The Democrats are fighting. He’s not going to press charges against President Douglas, though. She’s decided to stick with public speaking and writing a book about her experiences being the first woman President.”
“A small punishment for being an autocratic technocrat,” Lucita said. “How many people did she have you kill?”
Too many. “Eh, it’s probably the worst thing that could have befallen her. Besides, the Invisible Hand really was every bit as dangerous as she foretold. I may have misjudged her.”
The Invisible Hand were the Military Industrial Complex, which wasn’t a conspiracy so much as a sociological phenomenon. A dozen of the world’s biggest military suppliers and technology companies had gotten together to make the International Refugee Society. I’d been their puppet for years before switching sides to President Douglas. In the end, I’d fought for my own side as I wanted to work for the one person who didn’t want me to continue being a hired killer. I’d ended up exposing their secrets, Snowden style, and sharing all the top-secret Black Technology that had allowed both to thrive. It had helped thrust Trust into power—but I considered that a small price to pay for wrecking the gameboard—even if I didn’t like the guy or his policies.
“Any news on the Hand?” Lucita asked.
“I don’t think there’s a spot to download information about the Illuminati,” I joked. “A credible one, at least.”
“I meant the companies we know they’re involved with,” Lucita said. “I owe them some payback too, you know.”
Lucita was referring to her deceased father and friends, whom I’d played no small role in killing. Honestly, her feelings were more than a bit complicated on that matter, since the late Papa Biondi had been what we in the assassin business liked to call “a rapist child-abusing shithead.” I was glad he was dead, and so was Lucita. Still, she was Italian and they had very specific ideas of what to do when someone killed your relatives. Thankfully, she blamed the Hand for it rather than me. You know, the guy who pulled the trigger.
“Ah. The lawsuits against Karma Corp and the other Big Twenty will drag on for years,” I said, shrugging. “There’s been a lot of suicides, resignations, and firings, but I suspect the real power players will escape with a slap on the wrist. They always do. Black Technology is claimed to have been stuff they were just heavily testing, and its release was a breach of national security. Six Fortune 500 companies have gone bankrupt, though, while thousands more startups making their own variants have risen to power. It’s no longer a Big 20, but a Big 100. Their power is diluted if nothing else.”
“Sounds like you’re just trying to convince yourself that you didn’t change the world.”
“A little girl is running with new legs in Hong Kong, North Korea has surrendered to South Korea after their failed attack, and after Delphi revealed herself, the United Nations began drafting a universal human rights bill that will cover AI rights. I’m okay with how things have turned out.”
“All you had to do was lose yourself billions of dollars in Black Technology secrets by giving them away.”
I shrugged. “Giving away billions is easier if you already have billions. Just ask Bill Gates.”
Truth be told, change was happening at a more rapid pace than I could have imagined. Venezuela’s economy had returned to stable levels within two months of the release. They had created the world’s largest solar farm and were in negotiations to build a space elevator. Knock-off cybernetics were everywhere, and plastic surgeons proclaimed they’d be able to supply new bodies within two years. Plenty of people weren’t willing to wait that long, and a few grisly stories of homemade Shells had already emerged. Slicers—the Black Technology equivalent of Hackers—had also successfully crashed the Ukrainian stock market on behalf of Russian backers. Then, two days later, Russia suffered a reprisal that had almost triggered World War III. It was a new world. Or maybe just the old one revealed.
“Any word from Marissa?” Lucita said. “I know you still want to bang her. That’s why you’re stalking her.”
“No,” I said, rolling my eyes. “I’m not stalking her.”
Marissa had been the only woman I’d ever loved. Truly loved. She was also a woman who had turned me over my insane brother (clone base? father via genetic donation?) Daniel Gordon. It had been to save her sister’s family, but you didn’t come back from something like that. Still, the wound in my soul from her betrayal was as fresh that day on the beach as it was a year prior. Some things you never got over.
“Come on.”
I sighed. “She’s wor
king with a cybernetic commando named Stephen Wilcox. He’s a member of Task Force-22.”
“Ah,” Lucita said, her voice dripping with condescension. “Replaced so soon. Any word on the others?”
“I wish Marissa the best,” I said, half suspecting we’d end up back in each other’s lives again. It was just how the system worked. “As for the others—no idea.”
That wasn’t entirely true. James Madison had gone public with his story of being held prisoner by an American-based paramilitary organization. No one had believed him, but his story got a large amount of publicity, enough for him to launch his own technology firm. As one of the world’s leading experts on Black Technology, James had already attracted something like ten billion dollars in investment capital. Last I heard, he was already chilling in a Silicon Valley mansion with a paid harem. Good for him.
“No word from E or S?” Lucita asked.
I’d distributed a nanotechnology-based cure for the ten-year lifespan built into each Letter. It was something I’d nicknamed “The Blade Runner Curse.” It wasn’t much of a gift since only a few of us were left. We’d ended up killing most of each other off. Still, it meant freedom, and if we were a race doomed to extinction, then it was better we have a chance to live our lives to the fullest. It wasn’t like a bunch of incredibly strong, super-intelligent machines were going to starve in a world hungry for killers.
“Nope,” I said, shaking my head. “Whatever they’ve decided to do with their share of the Society’s money, they haven’t seen fit to include me in on it.”
“That’s insulting.”
“I’m okay with sitting here and reading Cthulhu Armageddon,” I said, tapping the paperback novel beside me. “I am done with killing people.”
Lucita snorted.
“I’m serious,” I said.
“Old soldiers don’t retire. They just get blown away.”
“That’s literally the opposite of how that saying is supposed to go.”
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