Agent Zero

by Lilith Saintcrow

  He had loved her, she realized. He’d probably been just as scared as she was, and tried not to show it. Maybe he hadn’t been cold at all.

  Just terrified.

  Finally, a pause, as someone jangled little bits of metal. Soft electronic tones—a keypad, and there was the chuk of a heavy lock thrown.

  “Rendition?” One of the soldiers, very young from the sound.

  “No fun with this one.” Older, with the snap of command. “Just set her down.”

  “What is this place?”

  “Best not to ask, soldier. Come on, we have to chemwash. Could be biologicals.”

  A low, collective groan. She was dropped unceremoniously into a chair, and the jolt made her teeth click together painfully. They trooped out, the door closed, and she bent forward, trying to lift her hands high enough to yank the hood free.

  It took a little work, since the cuffs at her wrists were chained to the ones at her ankles, but she managed. Just as she did, there was a soft whoosh—another door opening. Light stung her eyes—fluorescents, buzzing and hideous. Tiled walls, a table and two chairs. A man strode in—no uniform, just a dark suit and a maroon tie, sharp-shining shoes and combed-over strings of hair trying to hide a glistening bald patch.

  Her hair was full of static, so she was shaking her head and trying to blow the strands free when he laid the by now depressingly familiar manila file folder on the long, polished table. A reek of cigarette smoke and English Leather cologne, a greasy layer of fried food. Smelled like a French dip and fries, with ketchup instead of au jus. Lots of fat, and grease, and an acrid note that said he didn’t wash as thoroughly as he could.

  Eww. She was hard put to restrain a shudder.

  Behind him, a woman. Black turtleneck, black skirt, black blazer, a pair of sensible black pumps with grippy soles. Blond hair scraped back in a tight ponytail, her hazel eyes flat and dead, she moved very economically. No motion wasted. She didn’t smell washed-out, though—her scent was blue, like those smelly markers you got in elementary school. The blueberry ones, nothing like real blueberries at all but instantly recognizable.

  She smelled, oddly, like Cal.

  The real shock came when the man settled himself in the other chair. The woman stood by the door, arms folded. She would have been pretty except for the complete lack of expression, a doll’s set stare. The small gold hoops in her ears, the ruthlessly short but buffed nails and the hair all said businesswoman—one who would leave a precisely calculated tip just short of insulting. Nothing would be wrong with the service, but a slight lift of her eyebrow would tell you that she had judged your effort and found it wanting.

  You would have to look a little closer to catch a glimpse behind that flat gaze, the subtle tension that shouted hurt.

  She’s like Reese. Like me. What did they do to her?

  “Ms. Candless.” The man with the fried-food aftershave had obviously decided it was time to pontificate. “You’ve had an exciting week.”

  Holly’s stomach lurched. I know that voice.

  The last time she’d heard it, she’d been drugged out of her mind.

  * * *

  It probably wasn’t the best idea to start talking, but she couldn’t help herself. “It was you.” I sound like I’ve been punched. “You told them to kill me in my own house.”

  His pitted face—if he ate French dip enough to reek like he did, no wonder he had bad skin—pursed up like she’d made an embarrassing bodily noise. “The situation was...complex.”

  “You told them to murder me.”

  “Well, they died for it. Did Agent Six kill them, or did you?”

  She opened her mouth to tell him she’d been too busy trying to stay conscious enough to breathe, but recognized the trap just in time. Agent Six. That must be Reese. She pursed her lips instead, just like his prissy little frown, and simply glared at him.

  That made him even more sour, if that were possible. Really, he smelled awful. “You also gave our seizure team quite a bit of trouble.”

  They shot Reese with something. Neither of us smelled them—they were covered in something weird. Was Reese even still alive? Even if he was, Holly was on her own.

  Could the other woman smell her, too? Would being infected make her more valuable? Should she tell them?

  “Now. You’ve become very much a liability, Ms. Candless. You are now property of the United States government, and we expect your full cooperation.”

  Is that the royal we? Holly glanced at the woman by the door. She hadn’t moved. She was barely even breathing. Her forehead glimmered a little under the assault of fluorescents. Her skin looked polished, it was so flawless. Not a divot, not an old zit or a rough patch.

  Bitch. Holly sagged in the hard wooden chair. She couldn’t even pretend this was a bad dream. It was too real, right down to the splatter of dried blood on the back of the man’s hairy hand as he picked up the file, tapping it against the table as if to straighten the contents. Was there even anything in there? It looked suspiciously thin.

  Holly found her voice again. “Whose blood is that?” If it’s Reese’s...no, it can’t be. It just can’t.

  He frowned a little, muddy-brown eyes narrowing. It was the woman who spoke, instead. Contralto, very flat, somewhat breathy...and terribly familiar, again.

  “Sloppy, sir.” She didn’t move, and the sheen on her forehead had to be sweat.

  It was the woman who had called Holly collateral.

  Everything in the room slowed down to nightmare speed. Even the air thickened, and a spike of pain went through Holly’s temples to add to the growling in her stomach and the aches all over her.

  Something was about to happen.

  The man didn’t notice. He merely looked at the back of his hand with that same small frown, like there was a tiny, interesting insect crawling there. Then he sighed and tapped the file one more time. “Three, I think this loose end needs to be tied up.”

  “It does, sir.” The woman’s tone was just as flat, and she moved so fast she almost blurred. The spike inside Holly’s head gave one last twist, and blood spattered across the tabletop and the manila file.

  * * *

  If he hadn’t been burning off the trank, he would have killed the bastards before they even got close.

  As it was, he was slack-jawed and slow when the black copter descended. Some of the soldiers even wore a fading ghost of Holly’s scent, or maybe he was just high on whatever they’d shot him with. Confusing smells whirling inside his head, walls coming down, everything unsteady and whirling.

  He was in the home again, sitting in the green plastic chair in the room he shared with Tommy Flisk and George Octonok. George was a Polack, and his lazy eye wandered; Tommy was a klepto and a talker, too. Kept muttering about setting the night on fire, and Reese was smart enough to know that was a Bad Sign even if it didn’t mean anything Antisocial. So Reese just sat staring out the window, institutional fried food a lump in his stomach and his brain a mess of fuzzed yarn, rocking back and forth and humming to keep the chaos outside from spilling in.

  A jolt, a snap, and he found he was in restraints, his shoulder almost dislocating with a crack of blue pain as he worked his arm loose. You could yank yourself out of cuffs if you didn’t mind losing a little skin; zips were bad but they’d taught him things, oh, yes, they had.

  Teach a dog to dig, and he goes and digs.

  Where was she? Tranked him up—was she collateral? Or was she taken—insurance to make him behave?

  Motion. The world was spinning.

  A gush of cold sweat all over him, the drug metabolizing all at once. The little bastards in his bloodstream were just eating it up. Did they like the various things the tolerance tests stuffed them with? They ate everything. Booze didn’t dent them, smoke didn’t slow them down.

&nbs
p; They’ve killed her.

  Dark. It was dark, and there was a metal shelf underneath him. For a second he thought he was in the passage again, leading her along, her gloved fingers tight in his.

  You’re real to me. Really real.

  No, he was in the stockade. High lockdown, cuffed and stuffed. Blinking, unable to clear the grit from his eyes because his hands were tied down. He was working one hand free, the grease of blood filling his nose with red rage.

  Someone else was bleeding, too.

  The dark was almost complete, but he heard another heartbeat. A harsh acridity—someone else metabolizing the drug. It wasn’t Holly.

  Reese cleared his throat. He still had to try twice before the word would slip loose. “Cal?”

  A heavy slurred mumble in reply. “No, Trace, don’t gooooo...”

  It was Cal. They were in the same boat.

  Great. The chains meant to hold wrists to ankles made a soft slithering as he moved a little, testing his body’s responses.

  Concrete walls, more sensed than seen. The only light a faint gleam under the heavy barred door. Two metal shelves they would call bunks and charge the poor bastard in the stockade for using. They did things like that to keep you indebted. Free was a politician’s word, meaning whatever they wanted it to mean and losing all importance when they decided they wanted it to.

  The restraints at his ankles took a little more work. Cal had stopped moving, and his breathing had changed. They’d dosed Reese hard, but it was already mostly worn off. He tasted salt, metal, grit and a fading ghost of Holly all over his damp clothes. They’d dragged him through the snow, the bastards.

  Cal began moving. Reese worked on his ankles. By the time he got them loose, almost slicing his fingers on sharp metal, Cal had his own hood off.

  “Location?” Cal whispered.

  South, probably. Arizona? There’s installations there. “Dunno.”

  “They got her?”

  “Guess so.” What was your first clue? Sarcasm was useless, no matter how much it might have made him feel better.

  “Then they’re dead,” Cal said, quietly. “What’s our plan?”

  Why don’t you come up with one? There was a wad of nasty, hairy mucus in his throat; he hawked and spat as quietly as he could and immediately felt better. Probably some leftovers from the drug. He felt at his aching shoulder, hot even through his clothes—healing up. That was good. “Door.”

  “What?”

  Holly probably would have understood immediately. Reese inhaled, deeply, pushing the rage down. If they’ve hurt her... Except he was the one who had dragged her into this. “Getting the door open.”

  “That first one’s a lulu.” Cal’s short, ironic, half-swallowed laugh wasn’t loud enough to be heard outside the room. They were probably being recorded.

  Reese found out he didn’t care. Where there was a will, there was a way. He’d figure out how to get that door open—or he’d find a way to overpower whoever came through it and keep going until he found Holly.

  Or her body. That’s what you’re afraid of, isn’t it?

  He told that little voice inside his head to shut up and began to examine the room, holding his stretched shoulder. His hands were bloody and missing some flesh. That might compromise his effectiveness, but—

  He froze. So did Cal, who had slithered off his own bunk and begun his own examination of the cell.

  There. “You hear that?” Reese whispered.

  Cal’s wolfish grin was a gleam in the darkness. “Visitors.”

  * * *

  The place was huge, full of concrete tunnels either badly lit or glare bright, and it smelled awful. The woman—Trinity, she’d said, her mouth pulling into a bitter line, you might as well call me that—went ahead, halting and cocking her head whenever she heard someone approaching. Holly did her best to move silently in Trinity’s wake, stepping with exaggerated care so her new boots didn’t squeak. At least her feet were dry.

  Well, dryish.

  She was surprised she wasn’t aching all over as well as stumbling, but her body seemed to know what to do. She was even further surprised when the woman began to talk to her, in that flat mechanical tone. “Odds are they’ve been transported already, which will up our chances of escape. Do you have ID?”

  What? “I, um, have my driver’s license. Reese said not to use it, he told me what to say if... Why?”

  “Because I need to know what to do with you,” was the crisp, flat answer. Trinity’s back was ballet straight under her blazer, and those sensible flats had thick soles that didn’t dare squeak. Cold and contained, and her expression hadn’t changed when she slammed the man’s head down onto the tabletop, breaking his nose and spreading blood everywhere. The man with the fried-food smell might even be dead, that’s how hard his skull had hit, and Holly’s stomach was queasy just thinking about the sound it had made.

  She waited, but Trinity said nothing more. God, she’s just like Reese. “Are you...you’re one of them. An agent.”

  “Infected. Like you. And yes, they...trained...me.”

  “For...liquidations?” I’m getting the hang of the lingo. Great for me.

  “Planning, not execution. They think a woman can’t kill.” Trinity chose lefts and rights almost at random, but one thing remained constant: they were going down.

  Oh, God. “Can you?”

  “I believe so.” Calmly. “If I have to. How do you think I got here?”

  Do I really want to know? “You’re...working with Cal?”

  “Cal? Oh, Eight. No. They lost him in Boulder, until we got another ping on Six, cross-checking one of his old jobs.”

  “Six?”

  “Your infector.”

  That’s one way of putting it. “He didn’t mean to.”

  “Probably not.” She didn’t turn around, but Holly felt her attention sharpening. “It doesn’t matter. He’s high value, they’ll see if they can make him play.”

  Uh-oh. “How?”

  “Six was their poster boy. Amped mission fidelity, low emotional noise, everything. If it wasn’t for a doctor going insane and trying to kill him, he’d still be working, probably hunting down the agents who went off the rez.”

  “Off the rez?”

  “AWOL. Native. Off the grid.”

  “Okay.” What is it with these people and the euphemisms? “He said they might be shutting the program down.”

  “I do not think it likely. Too useful, even with infection vectors. The infected die out, except for the Geminas.”

  “Geminas?”

  “The complementary ones. Agents lock on, infect the Geminas and have a complete break. They vanish.” She sniffed the breeze, a queerly animal movement. Any second now she was going to freeze like a cat, one paw in the air, then go bounding off chasing a ball of yarn.

  She even smelled like a cat—dry, healthy, with a tang of oil. It wasn’t unpleasant, but it wasn’t as nice as Reese. As a matter of fact, it reminded her of Cal even more strongly. “Vanish. Okay. Look, why are you even—”

  “You’re a civilian.” Disdainful, as if that explained everything. Maybe for her, it did.

  Yes, if she was still waiting tables, Holly would definitely peg her as a businesswoman, expecting prompt service and leaving that tiny, precisely calculated tip. No please or thank you, just that slight judgmental eyebrow lift. She smelled like she worked out, too, an undertone of supple muscles and a faint whiff of habitual exertion.

  Another tang, shifting and elusive. It was distracting, to get all this information through the nose. How did Reese handle it?

  You smell...good.

  The intense color at the bottom of Trinity’s scent was odd. Like those scented markers in grade school, the blueberry ones. Holly finally realized what it
was. “Why are you sad?”

  “I’m not.” Trinity kept marching straight ahead. “Not happy, either. I don’t feel anything, since the induction. I calculate.”

  That’s so not comforting. Induction? “So what equation am I part of?”

  Trinity stopped at a metal door painted with red stripes. Looked like a stairwell entry, and it had the same funny little number pad all the other ones in this hall had. There was no sound as she pressed the keys—3-7-5-2-8—with little taps, but a chuk sound broke the hush and she pushed the door open with a quick glance and a sniff to make sure it was safe.

  “You’re not. I’ve simply decided to pursue this course, Ms. Candless. I saw how they were willing to have you suffocated in your own bedroom because someone didn’t want to sign extra paperwork.” A slight pause as they stepped into a dimly lit stairwell that reeked of cigarette smoke. A toilet flushed in the distance, and Holly almost flinched guiltily.

  “I started calculating chances,” Trinity continued, “of them liquidating me the same way sooner or later. That is why I’m bothering now. Please be quiet, I have to concentrate.”

  * * *

  Holly’s internal clock had taken a bit of a beating lately, but it felt like almost an hour later when Trinity stopped dead, holding up her left hand just in case Holly didn’t get the message. Her right hand reached across her body, quick as a snake, and she drew a very nasty-looking dull black gun. Trinity pointed, and Holly obligingly flattened herself against the wall at the precise spot indicated.

  The other woman stood very still, listening so intently Holly held her breath as if to help. The hall was full of echoes—stealthy faraway footsteps, a sudden impalpable charge of urgent electricity.

  “Damn,” Trinity breathed. Even that word didn’t have any inflection; it was just as dry and precise as the rest of her. “Bad news.”

  You know, I think I’m beginning to dread those two little words, but who doesn’t? “Which is?” The concrete wall behind her was repainted so many times the gray-green was slick under her fingertips, an institutional carapace.