“So let me get this right, you want me to make my way across a nation gone nuts to the biggest nut house of them all, where there probably already eating each other, if things are as bad as you say they are. Once there somehow, in the ruins of the city, I’m too find one little Asian chick hacker, who knows how to hide and bring her back to you? I have to admit Chantry that there is a heck of a complement in there for whatever abilities you believe I might possess, but the fact of the matter is that I’m not God and there’s still nothing in it for me. So no deal!”
Chantry was unfazed, “After you rescue her I want you to bring her here and I want you to keep her here safe, while she works on breaking the Code up to a year’s time from now.”
You could’ve heard a pin drop in the room.
“You really think I’m going to be able to keep my hands off of a hot chick like her for an entire year?” I asked disbelievingly.
Chantry’s gaze didn’t waver, “Given your track record with women I very much doubt you’ll last longer than a few days without putting your hands on her. All that I ask is that you be as gentle with her as you can be and that you keep her safe, while she works on the Code, until I can come for her.”
I had to admit that Chantry had surprised me with this one. “You’re actually serious about all this aren’t you.” I said wonderingly.
“I’m afraid I am.” Chantry stated resignedly.
I glanced off to the side at the Maria girl, as an old bitterness welled up inside of me that made me see red, which caused the headache I was suffering from to pound with earnest intensity. Maria’s jaw had fallen open in complete incredibility, as she stared at Chantry, as if she’d never known the man.
“This!” I said speaking directly to her, “Is what being hung out to dry and burned looks like! Remember it well and if you take my advice you’ll run from the Agency before some bean counter decides that you’re expendable to!”
Maria regained control of her face only to respond questioningly, “Is that what happened to you?”
Everything came back to me in an instance from the past and I couldn’t control the old hatreds that overwhelmed my sense of control. I looked at Chantry. I would kill him now! I started up, but was halted by my brother’s strong arms surrounding me tightly. He hadn’t had to do that. He could have just shot me, as my attention hadn’t been on him.
“No John!” He spoke directly into my ear.
I could break his hold, as even though I was the younger of the two of us I was the stronger. I was stronger than anyone I knew, but some modicum of respect for not just killing me and grappling with me instead bade me to respond.
“Let go before I hurt you!” Flint’s arms released me and I stood up and walked away to a window putting my back to them.
“Despite how I know it must seem I did not abandon you willingly John.” Chantry said softly.
Words was all it was, just words. I turned from the window with a mask of control firmly in place. “Despite how tempting your stock offer is Chantry I feel that I must turn it down. If I get desperate I’ll sail northward and pick up a few Eskimo chicks at far less peril than your Asian one. Now get out! I won’t say it again!” I said pointing towards the door.
Chantry stood up stiffly, with the use of his cane and a hand pushing off on the table. He walked to the door before turning back to me.
“There is another reason that I came seeking help from you.” He said.
I regarded him contemptuously having known all along that there must be some other reason behind his visit. “It was never like you to act on just one motivation. Well what is it?” I asked harshly.
“I asked him to come here.” Temple said speaking for the first time.
I had wondered at his presence here, but why he would ask such a thing, especially in concern to me I could not fathom.
He stepped toward me, “I’ve found evidence linking the people behind the Code with the people who captured you and Lori. I want to save the world, but even more than that I want revenge!”
I glanced down at his shaking hands. Here was a man that lived for only one purpose. It was a lifestyle I was familiar with.
“If you want revenge Temple, all you have to do is pull the trigger. I told you that years ago and the offer stands.”
Temple nodded, “I know and part of me wants to kill you, but I know enough to know how someone can be twisted into doing something that they wouldn’t have done by reason of their own choice. I can live with what you did knowing that, but I still want revenge against who brought it all about in the first place. This Asia Smith, she’s better than I am with technology. She can break the Code. If we find out who’s behind the Code not only will we save countless lives and restore balance to the world, but we both will have vengeance. I want you to do as Chantry says John, on the blood of my dead sister I ask it!”
I stared at him miserably, there had already been so much sacrifice and now this!
“Okay I’ll do it.” I responded gruffly.
Temple nodded and set a folder down on the table, “Everything you’ll need to know.” He said before leaving the room.
Chantry spoke, “I’m sorry more than you know for having to pull that card out on you John. For the duration of the mission your agent status has been reaffirmed. You are once more agent Logan Sackett.” He turned to go, but my words stopped him.
“Why a year Chantry?”
He hesitated in telling me, “You didn’t talk the first time so I doubt you will if you’re caught again so why not tell you I suppose. We need a year to prepare a coordinated strike with armed forces we are in communication with the world around. The extra time will also hopefully make them go to sleep over this breach so they won’t be expecting us when we strike. That’s why I need a year. If I haven’t come back by then assume the worst and take care of yourself and Asia. Temple is unloading the equipment that she’ll need to break the Code. Godspeed Logan.” Chantry left the room followed by Maria and I was left alone with my brother.
“Thank you John for honoring Temple’s request.” Flint said.
I nodded flatly not wanting any further conversation on the topic.
“About the mission I……”
“If you’re going to give me a big long spiel about how I shouldn’t freely enjoy humanity’s last hope then forget it! You heard Chantry she’s mine to do with as I please for a year.”
Flint’s jaw worked powerfully in anger, but he didn’t say anything. He stormed out of the house, anger in every movement of his long stride. That was good. As long, as he was angry, he would have no inclination to think. Moments later Maria stepped back inside the room.
I had been headed for my bed and her reappearance was unappreciated, as at this moment the throbbing pain in my head wouldn’t even allow a momentary thought of desire to enter my mind.
She looked nervous, as she held something out to me, “Chantry told me to give you these with his apologies for the last two years.”
“Thank you.” I said gratefully taking the bottle.
She looked at me a little surprised and before she could ask any questions I said, “Now go and rejoin the herd before the big bad predator ties you up to his bed.”
She backed away quickly and I soon heard the chopper take off and leave the island. I opened the bottle and chucked two of the blue pills back into my mouth. I set the precious bottle of pills down on the table and collapsed on my bed rubbing at my temples with both hands profoundly grateful for the pills that would take away the brunt of the pain and shorten the duration of the episode. I didn’t know for sure what was in the pills, but they always worked.
For the first three years of my stay on the island a plane had made a once a year flyover dropping a care package, which among other things had contained a bottle of these pills. The flyovers hadn’t happened the past two years and I had just assumed it was a sign of Chantry cutting off all ties. Little had I known that the world was falling apart outside.
I
was a fool to let myself be manipulated like this. People would die. It sounded like they already were though. I’d brought the folder with me and I opened it. The picture fell out of it and I picked it up. Asia Smith was a very beautiful woman. Right now she was running for her life and in peril of being captured at any moment, but all I could think about was how much I wanted to kiss her and much more.
Chantry glanced to the side at Maria seated beside him, who was fixatedly staring out her window. She’d never once looked at him unless she’d had to.
“All right Maria this isn’t going to work. Speak what’s on your mind. You’re angry with me?”
Maria nodded, but didn’t say anything. Chantry sighed and waited for her to relinquish her silence.
“I can’t believe you set that girl up like that.” Maria said softly, still staring out her window.
Chantry nodded, but didn’t say anything.
Maria turned from the window to stare at him directly in the eye. “Would you sell me out like that?”
“If the fate of billions rested on the situation then yes I would entertain the risk of any of my agents, but they would know the stakes going in. What happened to Logan was different, and completely unexpected. I’ve gone through great pains to see that it never happens again.”
“What happens again?” Maria pressed.
Chantry just shook his head negatively in denial of answering the question.
“I want to understand Chantry! I need to understand! It defies everything I know about you to treat what happens to another innocent individual so callously!”
Chantry craned around in his seat to see if Flint was asleep, he was. Temple was busy flying the large chopper and out of hearing range. Chantry kept his voice low, “I tell you this on the strictest confidence Maria! Logan has as much integrity of character as his brother does!”
Maria glanced back at the sleeping Flint incredulously, “I don’t believe you!” Maria said, thinking back over how Logan had looked at her and the things that he had said.
“Didn’t you hear what he said to me or the way he looked at me?” She asked.
“That’s your problem. You listen too much to what was said. Some people are far more cagey with disguising their hearts and motives than you could imagine Maria.”
“You’re saying that this Asia is as safe with Logan, as if she was being escorted by Flint?”
Chantry shook his head no, “As you saw Logan is a very passionate man and I can’t say that nothing will happen between the two, but I very much doubt that it will be rape.”
Maria looked completely befuddled, “You said he raped a fellow agent and then killed her!”
“Oh it goes much deeper than that. You see Logan and Temple were once best friends. Logan and Lori were engaged to be married. All three of them made up one special close knit team.”
Maria was speechless for a moment, “Why would he do that to his own fiancée and best friend?” Maria exclaimed, in a hushed whisper.
“Why indeed!” Chantry intoned offering nothing further on the subject.
Two rows back Flint’s eyes opened to view the back of Chantry’s head in contemplative silence for a moment before they closed again.
Chapter Four
Time to go a’Viking
I woke the next morning my headache and the ordeal it always entailed over and done with. I packed mostly weapons and food. My fingers traced the curved patterns of my sword’s handle. It was a bit bulky not to mention old-fashioned to take along and I decided to leave it behind. I turned away, but then turned back and picked it up.
Old-fashioned or not a sword was likely to be a handy thing to have around in an apocalyptic typesetting such as the US had fallen into. My pack ready I gave my little home one final glance. Time to go and get a woman.
I had to admit to a certain amount of pleasurable excitement at the prospect of bringing a woman back to my island. She was likely to be more trouble than she was worth, but I was committed to the task regardless now.
I ducked under the camouflage netting I had woven over a small jetty along the shore and tossed my pack into my small, but sturdily built sail craft. I hopped in and threw off the mooring lines and pulled out the oars, as I began to back slice my craft out from the shoreline into the more turbulent waters of the breakers ahead.
It was a bit of a struggle, but I made it eventually out into more open waters. It wasn’t the first time I had gone out in my boat. I’d explored the other islands near to me and I’d done a good bit of deep-sea fishing in order to add variety to my diet and for lack of have anything else better to do.
The breeze was in my favor so I stored the oars away and let out the sail. The sale was constructed of the parachute material from when I had been dumped on the island five years previous and the care packages that I had received for three years. It was a little tattered, but it would still do for a few sails yet.
I stepped back into the tail of the boat and manned the rudder, as the sails slapped and caught the breeze. The boat took off at a good clip and I sat back against the stern smiling to myself, as I caught sight of my sword strapped to my pack. Time to go a’ Viking and rescue a damsel in distress.
My ocean voyage was an uneventful one, which I was grateful to experience, in these often turbulent waters. I put ashore just north of Vancouver by my calculations. It was eerie not seeing any lights at all along the coastline.
I did my best to camouflage the boat in the darkness, but I couldn’t help but think that my efforts were inadequate at best. I left the boat and headed in land and away from the rocky cliffsided beach.
The night was still, as I stepped onto the cliff top highway now littered with cars rusting in the sea breeze. The moonlight was enough to travel by and I started down the road. I saw and sensed others of my own kind on several occasions, as they huddled back in the bushes away from the stalled out cars.
Whether they were fellow sojourners or foes they left me alone, perhaps sensing that I was a bigger predator than they wanted to deal with in the dark of the night. Something shone white in the middle the road up ahead and I brought my sword from off my shoulder in preparation of an attack of some kind.
It was a human body now no more than a bleached skeleton, left to rot in the middle of the road like common roadkill. I stopped and looked around at the moonlit landscape. My how things had changed in my absence!
I left the road not liking what I had found there and headed across country using the stars to navigate by. As the sun came up I made my way more cautiously. I saw little game, no doubt a result of the voracious appetites of a population that no longer had supermarkets stocked to the gills with everything one could imagine.
I skirted by a small town in the late morning. It looked uninhabited and there were suspicious lumps lying around on the streets and among the broken windowed stores. I didn’t want to know. It became clear to me that in many ways being on my island for the past two years had been a blessing in comparison to the harsh wake-up call that the rest of this once proud nation had experienced, when the lights had gone off.
By the next day I left all signs of settlement gratefully behind, as I headed out into the wilds of British Columbia. I found a good many traces of man, but I saw no one. Once, I narrowly avoided a nasty snare meant for bigger game. As much as I wanted to believe that the trap had been meant for a deer or wild boar or perhaps even a bear I couldn’t acknowledge it. Most likely the trap had been set for both beast and man alike.
Cannibalism was one of those sins that mankind pulled out of the closet when the circumstances became dire enough. It had been around for a long time, since the colonization of North America by the supposedly enlightened non-savage Europeans. There was historical documentation that Jamestown, one of the very first settlements in the New World, had survived through the early harsh winters as a cannibalistic society.
It had been stated in the journal, of one early town founder, that while it remained illegal to kill and eat those s
till living, it was permissible to eat those who died from natural causes, even those long since buried in the ground. Personally, if things got that bad I’d cut my own throat. Humanity sometimes went way too far overboard in the quest to survive.
Some things just weren’t worth doing, in order to survive, in the quest to retain one’s mortality for a little longer. A queasy thought went through me. Had my little Asian chick turned man-eater on me?
That was a disturbing thought! If that was the case I would be finding a different island to live on, while she spent the year cracking the Code on my former island. I’d toss a fish onto shore for her from time to time that would be about the only interaction I would have with her.
My entire mood soured at the prospect that my playmate to be might already be untouchable. Why had I gone and spoiled everything with that likely scenario? Here I was rushing off to rescue a damsel in distress and instead of a look of yearning for something more intimate between us, she might be yearning to see and experience me Delmonico steak style. Life really sucked right now! I should’ve stuck with the Eskimo girl idea. About the most socially unrequitable things on their menu and attire were cute little fluffy polar bear steaks and baby sealskin boots.
Agent in the Dark (The Agents for Good) Page 3
