Thompson raised his gun, then aimed it at me. I wasn’t going to fire at him because I didn’t want to kill him.
Instead, he walked off the side of the building.
“G?” S spoke, shaking me from my repose.
My involuntary flashback had ended and I was back in the real world, so to speak. I looked up to see my ex-wife, a woman with long black hair and cheekbones you could cut glass with. S was a woman who was capable of masquerading as nearly anyone, but had chosen a look that was attractive but not beautiful. She was wearing a faux military uniform with brass buttons and a somewhat antiquated look—the “dress” uniform of Atlas. Personally, I found the whole thing ridiculous.
“Hi,” I said, blinking. “Sorry, zoned out there for a second.”
“That’s a common problem with us all lately,” S said. She paused. “Doctor Madison claims our memory systems weren’t designed to handle the excess of life experiences even if we’ve overcome the physical time limit of our bodies. He says the maximum we probably have is fifty years, and that’s pushing it.”
I shrugged. “Thirty years is a long time to work a medical miracle. Especially since I’m probably going to be long dead by gunfire before then.”
S smiled. “You’ve survived this long, old man.”
I paused. “What’s the emergency?”
S blinked. “There’s been an incident at our regional headquarters in Chicago.”
“And?” I asked. “I may be the CSO, but we’re a frigging security company. It’s not like I have to personally manage everything.”
S narrowed her eyes. “It happened just thirty minutes ago. We’ve found a body in the upper floors. It seems to be Marissa’s.”
I stared at her. “I’ll be there in two hours.”
Chapter Two
My next flashback was voluntary, a chance to go back over the days gone by and experience them once more. A useful trick which came from having a computer-brain that stored every sight, smell, and touch with perfect accuracy. I occasionally used it as free porn but, let’s be honest, who wouldn’t? Right now, I wanted to remember Marissa and not under those circumstances. I wanted to remember the day I walked back into her life during the worst of the disaster years.
It was five years into the disaster and the final months of the refugee crisis. Well, at least as the government defined it. Afterward, it would cease to be a crisis and become the new reality for the people driven from their homes. From this point on, they would live in the outer walls of America’s largest cities. It was a bad time, but not as bad as it had been before.
The snow poured down on the refugee camp in the former city of Detroit. The United National Alliance (UNA) had taken over the duties of FEMA, and that had been a blessing even if it was stretched far beyond the limits of its resources. So many people had been forced from their homes in hopes of relief, and they were still located in camps like these, especially given the distribution of food was erratic outside of them. Erratic here some days, too.
The camp was composed of thousands of pre-made shelters and trailers, most of them bearing the Atlas Security logo. It was disgusting to profit off the suffering of others, but no one was else doing the job, and these camps were places we recruited others to help themselves. Their families ate because they helped with the process of acquiring, scavenging, or distributing food.
Holding a crumpled picture of Marissa and myself in my hand, I walked through the section of the facility that was currently being taken over by the United States Army. They were carting out laborers to the government camps that had been set up to handle rebuilding. The Great Reconstruction Project had already killed more people than the Panama Canal but was widely held as a triumph for the Emergency Government.
It was also a time to meet old friends—and enemies. Walking past huge concrete garages full of food and guarded by armed men, I passed a wall where a dozen men had been executed for looting. I finally arrived at the former fire station, which was presently serving as the dual communications center for Atlas and the army to care for the refugees. The government was much harsher than Atlas, though, mostly because it had the authority to be.
I wore a thick winter coat, and I could see my breath in front of me. The cold didn’t bother me because I was more machine than man (to quote Obi-Wan Kenobi and Elsa both), but I wasn’t about to go advertising my status as a cyborg. The United States military had taken to upgrading their troopers with enhancements, but it was still rare enough that I half expected people to tear me apart with chains and tractor trailers if they knew what I was.
“Man, I can’t remember when I was last warm,” I muttered, heading into the fire station and walking up the staircase to the side while watching dozens of soldiers communicating with the refugee stations across the nation. The walls were covered with posters straight from World War II, advocating obedience to the government and suggesting citizens sign up for the Citizens Reserve. In a future all too much like one out of science fiction, it felt a bit like we’d regressed.
A part of me wondered why I’d even bothered staying out here in the thick of things. The fighting was over, and there were far better administrators. Atlas had eliminated hundreds of gangs, petty warlords, and even a few traitorous military units when the government was still getting its shit together, but there was nothing requiring a cyborg assassin anymore. I wanted to selfishly get back to one of the civilized cities of the world. A place where they still took credit cards. Yet for reasons I couldn’t understand, I was still here.
Reaching the top of the stairs, I saw the woman who had both ruined and saved my life. Marissa Sanchez was a Hispanic woman with black hair tied in a ponytail, wearing a light brown colonel’s uniform that was two ranks up since our last meeting. The fact that she was working with the Army despite being an agent of the NSA wasn’t new. Task Force-23 had authority over virtually every department of the government as it was the President’s personal hit squad. Here, she was talking to a major before spotting me. She dismissed him, leaving us alone by a window.
Marissa gave a somewhat bitter smile. “You know, when I last saw you, you said you were going to go live on a beach somewhere.”
“I did,” I said, shrugging. “It turns out it’s hard to sunbathe in a volcanic winter.”
“I understand you and the others are Atlas.”
“So, they tell me,” I said. “Multi-billion-dollar government contracts await to reform the prison system, corporate-run zones, and security because apparently, the government can’t do any of that.”
“It’s cheaper this way,” Marissa said. “Which is somehow a concern with mass starvation.”
“How’s that anyway?” I asked.
“Better than it has been,” Marissa said. “The genetic information in the Black Technology files let us create crops that could be grown year-round with minimal sunlight. It just required us seizing massive amounts of land and forcing people to work it.”
“The Soviet Union is laughing from its grave,” I replied.
“So is Russia,” Marissa said, looking out the window. “Things are stabilizing, at least. Unfortunately, I don’t think we’re going to be getting our country back anytime soon.”
“Our country?” I asked, wondering where she got off talking about my patriotism. The United States had used and abused me along with every other Letter. We had been disposable tools to them.
“Oh, that’s right, you don’t think you count as a citizen,” Marissa said, with surprising judgment for a woman who knew Karma Corp had made me out of test tubes and wires to be a disposable super soldier.
“I’m a citizen of the world,” I said, putting my left hand over my artificial heart. “The only problem is just about everywhere is suffering from one set of problems or another. I can assure you, I’m solely trying to save as many lives as possible, so I can get back to a life of sleazy self-indulgence.”
Marissa smirked. “I’ve missed you, G.”
“Case,” I said, correct
ing her. “You were the one who gave me that name, after all.”
“By Egyptian beliefs, that means I could control you,” Marissa joked.
“Yes, well, we’re not in Egypt,” I said. “I haven’t forgotten all the lies and betrayals.”
Because of Marissa, I’d managed to bring down the Carnivale, the International Refugee Society, the Reapers, and President Douglas. I should have felt good about all that, but the simple fact was all those accomplishments had come from her using me as a tool against the people she’d been ordered to take down. Her loyalties had been mutable, and she’d gone from double to triple to quadruple agent before everything was said and done. I could have forgiven her all that, but the worst of the betrayals had been turning on me.
Love died hard.
Marissa smiled. “I was born on the streets of Los Angeles, Case. I learned the only way to survive was to learn to make sure you could play the people around you like a fiddle. The National Security Agency refined those qualities before the Task Forces perfected them. Even if I wanted to, I don’t know if I could ever stop manipulating everyone around me. I incorporate every bit of data I learn into profiles, then become the person people need me to be. You needed someone to love you and cherish you. A cute goth girl hacker who was half Lisbeth Salander and half Angelina Jolie’s character from Hackers. If it’s any consolation, I liked that Marissa better than most.”
“Is there a real Marissa, or are you just a borderline personality sociopath blank slate?” I asked, not having intended to come there to insult her but clearly failing miserably.
“I’m here to help other people,” Marissa said. “We owe you, Case, for all you’ve done. If Black Technology hadn’t been distributed to the world, then casualties would have been far worse. Billions might have died.”
“Instead it’s just hundreds of millions,” I said bitterly.
The death toll was impossible to calculate for the Big Smokey eruption, but a rough estimate was five hundred million people had died worldwide from the initial eruption itself, freezing to death, starvation, civil wars, and other conflicts. It was the worst disaster to hit humanity, arguably ever, but certainly since the near extinction of the Toba Explosion circa 70,000 years ago.
“How’s your life?” Marissa asked. “Are you still with Lucita and S?”
“I’m not with anyone,” I said, shrugging. “They’re their own women.”
Lucita occasionally did work for Atlas but had decided to make sure she waited out the apocalypse in style. As such, she’d moved from employer to employer while keeping away from the worst of the disaster. I didn’t blame her. Not everyone was cut out to be a hero and I wondered who I was fooling trying to do some good out here. S and I had a cold but formal relationship. Whatever had been between us before didn’t exist anymore now that there was no cover identity for us to maintain.
Marissa paused as if dissecting that. “If it’s any consolation, I’m not with anyone else.”
“It’s not,” I said, honestly. “I’m not going to be your puppet again.”
“Good,” Marissa said.
I paused. “You’re lying.”
Marissa smirked. “You’re right. You’re one of the best soldiers I’ve ever worked with. I’d very much like to use you in the future.”
“Fat chance,” I said. “I’m never working for the government again.”
Marissa smiled, almost amused. “I’m not going to be working for the government after we finish transferring the last of the refugees from the camps.”
“Oh?” I asked, curious.
“Yes, I’m hitting the private sector after this,” Marissa said. “I can’t stand the corruption anymore.”
I snorted. “You’re making a lateral career move then.”
“Am I?” Marissa asked, her voice calm and collected but carrying more bitterness than nearly anyone else I’d talked to this year—and this was a refugee camp. “I think the Invisible Hand is back in power.”
I blinked. “Err, duh?”
“Duh?” Marissa asked. “Are you a thirteen-year-old girl?”
“I use the internet a lot,” I said, shrugging. “It’s amazing that it’s stood the test of time.”
“It was made to survive a nuclear war, and Delphi made sure plenty of satellites were there to keep going through the worst of it,” Marissa replied. “What do you mean ‘duh,’ though?”
“I know Karma Corp and most of the other companies were fronts for it,” I replied, staring at her. “I also know the Trust Administration bent over backwards to make sure they were immune to prosecution as well as able to field their own armies to keep them producing for the United States through the worst of this.”
“I don’t think the Trust Administration had much choice,” Marissa said. “The State of Emergency Government is the real power in the country. Still, I’m not going to stand by and see the world fall into the hands of private business.”
“Well, good luck with that,” I said, raising my hands. “You can continue chasing windmills for as long as you want.”
Marissa raised an eyebrow. “Why did you come here, Case?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. Wondering how you were doing? As much as you did to me, I also owed you for awakening me to my past. Maybe I wanted to see how you were doing or if you’d managed to find anyone yourself.”
Marissa shrugged. “I have four boyfriends and two married men I’m sleeping with. All of them mean precisely nothing to me. They’re all a little in love with me, though. Three of them have killed for me. The other three provide information.”
“Do they know about each other?”
“Of course not.”
I closed my eyes. “Shameful.”
“Says the assassin to the spy,” Marissa said, her expression empty. “Despite everything, we went through a lot together. Would you say you owed me for revealing the truth to you about Project: Letter?”
“No,” I said, frowning. “Because I paid you back by saving you from my brother.”
“Yes, but I saved you from him at the end.” Marissa lifted an imaginary rifle and made a boom gesture.
“Still doesn’t count,” I said, realizing I should probably get out of there before she persuaded me to do something I didn’t want to do.
“What if I could do you a favor now?” Marissa said after a pause.
I blinked. “What do you mean?”
“I’m the Deputy Director of Refugee Relocation in the Department of Homeland Security,” Marissa said, showing once more she was able to move to whatever department she wanted. “You’ve been here for over a year, making sure the people here survived as best they could. I even noticed you set up the Christmas celebration.”
“Kids deserve a Christmas even in a frozen hell,” I replied. “I don’t like where this is going.”
“I’m just saying there’s probably someone you care about that’s in need of a little bit of government assistance.”
I opened my mouth, slack-jawed. “What is this? Are you actually blackmailing me with the fate of refugees for a future favor?”
Marissa paused. “I’d prefer to say bribing. The simple fact is it’s a dangerous world out there, and I don’t think it’s a bad idea to have the world’s best assassin as a friend.”
Third-best assassin, technically. S and A were both better than me back at the International Refugee Society. Of course, S was now primarily an administrator, and no one had seen A for years. For all I knew, he’d been in Wyoming when the place had become an enormous crater they were considering turning into collective farms.
“You disgust me,” I said, turning around. “I should have known this was a mistake.”
“I promise it’ll be someone bad and I won’t be there.”
I laughed, then stopped mid-step. Goddammit.
I took a few pointless breaths. “I know I’m going to regret this, but could you look up Barbara and Kathy Gordon?”
Marissa paused for less than a second. �
��Done.”
“What?” I asked, turning around.
“I had my brain put in an IRD case,” Marissa said. “Most of my body is a Shell now.”
“I thought your breasts were bigger.”
Marissa narrowed her eyes. “Smooth, James Bond. Real classy.”
“Hey, you’re the one who did it.”
Marissa rolled her eyes. “They’re stuck in Canada on half-pay. They’re both alive but pretty heavy in bills.”
I paused. “Can you get them a spot back in America with easy work?”
“How much of a favor will you owe me?” Marissa asked.
“One,” I said coldly. “I regret even entertaining the thought, but unless you manage to suddenly put me up with the most charming person on Earth, one is going to be all you get. Lord knows I want to get out of murder and espionage for hire.”
Marissa shrugged. “Done. I’ll keep it for a rainy day.”
“You’re never going to change, are you?” I asked, disgusted with myself and her.
“You’ve got to have hope,” Marissa said.
Little did I know how I was going to eventually hate that word.
Chapter Three
Ten years later, I regretted making that deal with Marissa. Two hours after receiving S’s message to come to Chicago, I was sitting in the First-Class section of a Vertical Lift Off (or VLO) transport. They were one of the creations of the modern era’s technology and had replaced the jet. I had no idea how they worked, something about magnetism, but they moved across the globe at ridiculous speeds.
I had a private jet, but it was faster just to take one of the Atlas Security transports headed to our newest building. The VLO’s interior was comfortable, with leather seats to cradle the latest employees of our company as they were transported to take up their new jobs in one of the few thriving businesses in the new world: war. My only problem with them was the company—specifically that they considered themselves in a position to make friends with our companions.
“So where were you when Big Smokey erupted?” asked a blonde woman sitting beside me. She was middle-aged, with several plastic surgeries and a right hand that my cybernetic eyes detected as artificial, along with her kidneys.
Agent G: Assassin Page 3
