The Titan Strain

by Virginia Soenksen

  “And ‘why,’” Seth said grimly. “Who in the government would care about mods dying?”

  “Useless to wonder about that now,” she said tersely, instructing, “Save the files to your home computer. I’ll encrypt them when I get back. And don’t tell anyone else about this until we know who’s interfering with the case.”

  “I thought you’d be more rattled than this,” Seth commented, bottles clinking as he fished a soda out of the fridge. “Aren’t you afraid?”

  “No,” she answered honestly.

  He let out a short laugh, shaking his head. “Well, maybe you should be. I guess I’ll just have to worry for the both of us, then.”

  Liane straightened, asking with curiosity, “Do you really? Worry for me, that is.”

  “Of course,” Seth returned, frowning. “That’s what friends do.”

  Liane went quiet, unable to think of anything to say. After a moment, Seth said, “I’ll start working on the files. Call me when you’re back in the city, alright?”

  “I will,” Liane said, holding the phone to her ear until the line clicked and she was certain he was gone. She set the burner cell aside carefully, then turned back to look at the city. A man laughed on a distant terrace and she thought back to Seth’s question to her. Aren’t you afraid? Well, maybe you should be.

  Liane didn’t feel fear. She hadn’t since she was sixteen, and she had Damian to thank for that.

  The seven years of Agency training were difficult to remember. Classes and lessons blurred together, a maelstrom of pain and brutality. The only softness in the world of the Program was Damian. He was the one who accompanied her to the medic bay when she was injured, who advised her on how to survive the sadistic simulations. It didn’t take her long to realize that he was an unusual Handler. Most of the others treated their Agents like dogs or machines, ordering them from assignment to assignment with little thought for anything but success. Damian talked to her and seemed to care what she had to say. That didn’t stop him from being any less controlling or inflexible, but it did make her fight to please him. A difficult task, when what he demanded was nothing less than perfection.

  He encouraged her to learn about things outside the Agency as well. So while the instructors taught her how to shoot and scale buildings without equipment, Damian taught her about music, art, and literature. She was eleven when he first took her to the British Museum, and she still remembered the look of reverence on his face as he’d gazed at the paintings lining the gallery walls.

  “This, Liane, is what we’re fighting for,” he’d whispered. “The smallest, and very best part of humanity.”

  She hadn’t truly understood what he meant. What she did know, however, was that she wanted him to look at her with that same expression one day.

  After that Liane began to read voraciously, devouring the works of Shakespeare, Dante, Tennyson . . . She read what Damian read, because he would discuss his favorite works with her for hours on end. But as she grew, her taste in literature shifted. Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina, Lady Chatterley’s Lover . . . Books that she never mentioned to Damian, but ones that began to change the way she thought. Her awareness of the Agents’ bodies increased, as did the attention she paid images of muscular nudes in the video commercials as she walked down the city streets. Most of all, she began to savor the scent of Damian that clung to her clothes when they practiced together.

  Then, not long after she turned sixteen, she noticed that some of the older Agents shared rooms with their Handlers at night. And she wanted.

  One night, she waited until the dormitory was silent and still and then went to Damian’s room. The door unlocked at her touch, and she went inside.

  He sat up in his bed, gun already automatically drawn and pointed at the door. But he lowered it when he saw her, asking with a frown, “What is it?”

  Liane’s heart was hammering in her chest; she’d never been so nervous before. Shooting and fighting was what she knew . . . she didn’t know the first thing about love. With hesitant steps, she went and sat at the foot of the bed, drawing her bare feet up under her. Her voice shook slightly as she said, “I wanted to be with you.”

  Damian’s dark eyes gleamed in the low light, seeming to understand despite her hesitancy. He sat up, the covers falling to reveal his bare chest. Liane found herself staring; she’d never seen Damian undressed before. He leaned back against the headboard, the gun still gripped loosely in his hand as he watched her. Waiting.

  Liane slid closer to him, kneeling so that the line of her leg pressed into his. She wanted to touch him, reaching out a hand and letting it smooth over his hardened chest. She could feel his heartbeat under her fingertips, though his was even in comparison to her own erratic pulse. Damian’s gaze seemed to burn as he reached out to her as well, fingers sliding along her neck to entwine in her hair. He leaned towards her and Liane closed her eyes; that was how it was done, she knew.

  Shock ran through her when Damian’s lips brushed over her forehead instead of her lips, and she opened her eyes as he murmured, “You’re too young to be in here, Liane.”

  She drew back, declaring staunchly, “I’m not.”

  Damian was shaking his head as he went on, “Far too young, and in no position to become distracted. You need to keep your focus on finishing the Program. I would be a poor Handler to let you falter now, when we’re so close . . .”

  “I can keep my focus,” she said, persistent. “Do you not think of me that way? Is that it?”

  Damian smiled, the gesture somewhat melancholic. “One day we’ll talk about how I think of you. But that day will be when you’re an Agent. For now, you need to go back to your room . . . please.”

  “I want you now,” Liane went on doggedly, her face beginning to flush with embarrassment and frustration. “I know that Agents and their Handlers are permitted to be together.”

  “You don’t even know enough to comprehend how naïve you are, Liane,” Damian interjected, his voice firm. “There is a protocol for trainees whose attentions are diverted from the Program. You don’t want to give me reason to utilize it.”

  Liane sat back on her heels, saying angrily, “I don’t care.”

  “I’d rather not resort to that,” he said, a note of reluctance in his words. “But if you insist, then I’ll have to.”

  “Then go on and do it,” Liane snapped, “I prefer action to threats, anyway.”

  Damian’s eyes narrowed seconds before the butt of his gun struck her temple.

  Liane awoke in the dark, aware of nothing but the cold, the smell of death and rubble around her. She sat up, instantly knowing that she was in the ruins beyond the city. In the distance, the lights of London glimmered. Damian wasn’t anywhere to be found.

  Liane felt a rush of panic. The ruins were a no-man’s land, a place where only the desperate and murderous dared to venture. She had been there once, but it had been a training exercise and she had been armed alongside other trainees. Now she was alone, unarmed, and barefoot in a place beyond the reach of the police and the Agency. Adrift in a wasteland that could and would swallow young girls whole. Liane comprehended her reality, and finally, at last, felt true fear.

  Liane heard footsteps scrape over stone nearby. Crouching, she slowly rose and prepared to meet whatever lurked in the dark . . .

  The sun was rising by the time she staggered into the Agency. The security guards stared at her but let her pass through the scanners and into the building. As the elevators carried her down to the dormitories, she realized that blood was steadily dripping from her soaked hands down onto the mirrored floor. It mingled with the grime from her feet, staining the dirt-smeared white of her tattered sleeping clothes, and it was impossible to say how much of it was hers and how much had once belonged to others.

  Damian was waiting for her in his room, dressed impeccably in one o
f his three-piece suits. He sat watching as she stood in the doorway, swaying from exhaustion and the trauma of what she’d had to do. Then he stood, coming close to her in order to say, “I warned you. Next time, perhaps you’ll simply listen to me.”

  Liane looked up at him, her mouth quivering with suppressed emotion. Damian either didn’t notice or didn’t care, shrugging, “After all, there are far worse places where I can leave you—”

  Liane lunged at him. Although she got in a few good hits, she was too angry and exhausted to be a danger to anyone. The fight was over quickly; it ended with Liane on her back on the floor, pinned down by Damian sitting on her legs. He held her arms by her side as she furiously tried to throw him off.

  “This was a lesson; a hard one, but a necessary one,” he said, his teeth gritted. “A lesson in fear, of what it really feels like to be without a Handler or the Agency. If you ever question or refuse my orders again, it won’t just be a night of it. It will be your entire existence, because the Agency will burn you, cast you out into the world. And life out there will be far more painful than life in here.”

  “I hate you!” she cried out, twisting under him as tears stung at her eyes. “I hate you—”

  Damian smiled thinly, holding onto her wrists while pressing the button on his watch that would bring reinforcement Handlers. “You can’t afford to hate me, Liane. I’m all you’ve got.”

  It took no less than five Handlers to restrain Liane; she was almost blind with rage and pain, and didn’t care about anything but strangling the life out of Damian. In the end a medic was called in, plunging a needle into her arm until her body grew heavy and slow and the world faded.

  Later, as she lay sedated in the infirmary with her wounds tended and dressed, Damian visited her. She looked up at him through the fog of opiates as he dropped a book on her lap. Her restraints were loose enough that she could pick it up, bandaged hands slipping on the smooth cover.

  “‘Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears’,” Damian said, sitting in the chair next to the bed. “The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. My Handler gave this to me when I entered the Program. She used to quote it when I argued with her. I hated it at the time, but later I came to appreciate what she was trying to teach me.”

  When Liane remained silent, still, and staring down at the book, he leaned forward and added quietly, “I know you think what I did was cruel. But what happened will one day help you.” She said nothing, only turned her head away from him, staring at the wall as he went on, “Knowing fear, real fear, will help you face our enemies without it.”

  “You didn’t have to do it last night,” Liane said, still refusing to look at him. “Not when I came to you . . .”

  Damian sighed softly, “If you’d only waited until you were an Agent, I would have been happy to give you what you wanted. In a few years—”

  “No,” she interrupted, her voice slow and trembling. “Not in a few years; not in a decade. You’re my Handler, and we have to work with one another. But beyond that, I’m never going to come to you for anything ever again.”

  “Maybe not at this moment, but we have a very long time to spend together.” Damian stood, looking off into the distance as he said, “Rest up; tomorrow we’ll continue . . .”

  Back on the terrace in Vienna, Liane let her head fall forward to rest against her forearm. It was too much; between Seth’s news about their maddening case and Damian asking her to reconsider the possibility of the two of them as more, her head was spinning. But coping with the impossible was one thing that her training had prepared her for, and after a minute she had a plan brewing. One that would, she hoped, see her survive into the next year.

  Chapter 7

  Hours after dusk, Seth stood at the edge of the gate that led to what had once been Chinatown, looking up at it in distaste. He had agreed to meet Liane there without hesitation, eager to continue their work, but now he wondered if he shouldn’t have questioned her choice of location and proposed an alternative. Somewhere police still patrolled, or where inspectors and regulators weren’t beaten senseless when they tried to do their jobs.

  The slum that filled the once-historic district had grown beyond the bounds of restrictions long ago. Right after the Third World War, a clerical oversight had permitted the area to go without government patrols or regulations for nearly four years. By the time anyone thought to venture into the slum, it was far too late to prevent the rampant, illegal construction, or shut down the black-market merchants. Here the streets narrowed into alleyways and the buildings rose so tall and unsteady that they nearly blocked out all light. Even after the city had cut off the electricity and water to the slum, the inhabitants just cheerfully went about stealing what they needed from the surrounding neighborhoods. Seth avoided Chinatown, as did most who valued their life.

  But Liane was waiting there for him, so with a sigh, he buried his hands in his pockets and walked through the Dragon Gate to the chaos beyond.

  Smells, sounds, and sights instantly surrounded him; red paper lanterns strung on cords across the alleyways, the scent of a thousand different types of food from countless countries, and the cries and shouts of peddlers hawking goods on the street. Seth waded through it all, feeling the occasional brush of pick-pocketing children. The restaurant Liane had specified was just off the main alley, the entrance marked by a large neon sign with Chinese characters.

  Liane sat at a table inside the tiny, cluttered shop, sipping on tea and looking utterly removed from the tumult around her. No one bothered her, aside from the toothless, shriveled old woman who brought out a fresh pot. The woman chattered to Liane in rapid Cantonese, brushing a gnarled hand over the girl’s blonde hair. Liane smiled faintly and nodded, and the old woman drifted away. Seth inched through the crowd to reach Liane, sitting down across from her.

  “You picked a hell of a place to meet,” he said, shaking his head.

  Liane took another sip from the chipped china cup, saying with a shrug, “I like the barley tea here.”

  “Sure, as long as you don’t mind getting your throat cut in the process,” Seth said. The old woman shuffled over with a plate of complimentary dumplings, baring her gums in a smile as she set them down. Seth eyed the plate, muttering, “I wonder if the filling is cat, dog, or human.”

  The old woman’s smile vanished into a scowl, and she snatched back the plate and stormed off, her words sharp and clearly offended.

  Liane gazed at Seth, helpfully translating. “She says it’s probably better food than what your mother served, who should be rolling in her grave to have such a rude son.”

  “Joke’s on her,” Seth said, unbothered. “My mother’s alive and well in Cheshire, and only complains when I date shiksas. So why are we here?”

  “Because this is where my contact operates,” Liane said, drinking the remainder of her tea and calling out to the proprietress, “Màn zǒu, gù mā.”

  The old woman waved and smiled at Liane, then hawked and spat on the floor in Seth’s direction. Liane brushed past him to the alley, pulling up the hood of her jacket and commenting, “I wouldn’t try to eat here again, if I were you.”

  “Thanks for the tip,” Seth muttered, following her into the twisting streets of the slum.

  They wove single-file through the crowds. Liane seemed to move seamlessly around others, while Seth tended to bump into them, muttering hasty apologies afterwards. They left the area dominated by Chinese shops and stalls and moved into a mix of tech and medic stores.

  Seth darted around a peddler selling police scanners, asking, “Who exactly are we meeting?”

  “Ahmad el-Razi,” Liane answered without looking back.

  Seth’s eyes widened. “The dealer?”

  “You’ve heard of him?”

  “Of course, he’s been all over the media waves. ‘The Oxford Don’; expelled from t
he university for engineering mod serum in their labs. The commissioner has been trying to get him for dealing ever since. Wasn’t he convicted last year?”

  “Yes. The judge vacated the sentence,” Liane said, ducking her head as she passed under a dripping pipe. “At least, his successor did. I don’t think they ever found the one who tried to convict Ahmad.”

  Grimy water splattered onto Seth from above, and he shook the droplets out of his curly hair with a noise of disgust. “So how exactly did you fall in with a known criminal?”

  “All mods know him, or know of him. All roads used to lead to Rome; all modifications lead to Ahmad. He’s going to help us find out what was in the vials we found in Jeanelle’s kit.” Liane stopped in front of a tiny, dark storefront with a blacklight shining above the door. She passed under it, her hair turning a ghostly, luminous shade. “In here.”

  Seth looked at the storefront for a moment, making sure that his gun was secure in the holster under his arm before following after her.

  The interior was no brighter than the alley had been, and contained stacks of shelves holding old tech, junk cables, and out-of-date weapons. A thin, surly youth sat behind the ancient till. Seth looked around, while Liane said to the cashier, “Tell Ahmad that Liane is here.”

  The youth stood laconically, traipsing into the back room. There were distant footsteps, and then a tall man of Middle-Eastern descent walked through the beaded curtain. He was young and good-looking, the paunch around his middle disguised by his tailored shirt. Ahmad grinned when he spotted Liane, leaning on the counter and saying, “Here I was thinking that today was going to be a total waste, and in she walks. Liane, you get more beautiful every time I see you. When are you going to let me take you away from all this?”

  “When you stop being a lying cutthroat,” Liane returned lightly, unmoved by the compliment. “So I won’t hold my breath.”

  Ahmad laughed, teeth flashing against his dark skin. “God, I love the feisty ones . . . even if they do make me crazy.” His eyes lit on Seth, and he jerked his chin towards him, “Who’s he?”