Herokiller

by Paul Tassi

  Eventually Mark decided to start watching the finals again. He’d have to sooner or later via replay, so he figured he might as well catch them live. Instead of attending one of CMI’s lavish viewing parties or eating popcorn with Brooke on the couch, he went to the hospital and watched the remaining bouts with Carlo. Well, next to Carlo anyway, who was pumped full of tubes and had his eyelids taped shut.

  Mark talked to Carlo like he could hear him, and for all he knew, maybe he could. He did play-by-play of the action alongside the announcers, and critiqued the styles of the combatants. Together, they watched all the remaining finalists earn their spots. There was a veteran MMA fighter, a young boxer, a female SEAL, and as Mark suspected, three Prison Wars survivors. While Mark had put down Drescher, four others were still competing. One was a Triad lieutenant who had been knocked out by a burly lumberjack of a man in Salt Lake City during that region’s finals. But the other three had made it through: Ja’Von Jordan, a gangland assassin from Detroit, Matthew Michael Easton, the crazed woman-scalping serial killer, and then of course the Prison Wars legend, the massive Drago “The Undying” Rusakov. The monstrous Russian had nearly killed his final opponent, a young martial artist, but had managed to only break both of his arms and most of his ribs. A few days later, when he was downgraded from critical condition, it became clear Mark was still the only finalist who had killed someone in the ring.

  The last city was Charlotte, and Mark was surprised to see another woman in the finals, making it only the fourth time it had happened. Two had made it through: the scowling SEAL from Atlanta and Soren Vanderhaven, the vivacious former gymnast who had been plastered all over the airwaves for weeks now in the wake of her Nashville win. This time, Mark was surprised when the woman’s bio came up on the screen.

  “A … ballerina?” he said, turning to an unconscious Carlo. The fight commentators clarified.

  “Aria Grace Rosetti was the principal dancer in New York’s second largest ballet company until she unexpectedly quit five years ago and moved to Raleigh. She’s been dancing since she could walk, and has also trained in many schools of martial arts, which she believes works synergistically with dancing. Reports say her family is not supportive of her decision to enter the Crucible.”

  The feed cut to an interview with a teary-eyed older couple.

  “She doesn’t need to do this,” the mother said, her voice cracking. The woman’s gray-haired husband stood stoically beside her. “I don’t understand what’s gotten into her these past few years. Our daughter needs to be back on the stage! Not in this terrib—”

  The clip quickly ended, and the feed switched to Rosetti in the ring.

  “She’s going it alone,” the announcer said. “But she’s certainly got some fans in the house tonight.”

  “Wow,” Mark whispered to the silent room as he saw her.

  The woman onscreen was gorgeous. If Soren Vanderhaven was a real life Barbie doll, Aria Rosetti was like a fine marble statue, carved by hand, every line and surface detailed to perfection. She was tall and lean, as a dancer would be, and two decades of training for the stage and the ring had toned her muscles from head to toe. There was a power to her that wasn’t reflected in her size, but simply her presence. Her deep brown eyes flickered with life, and her long, chestnut hair was drawn up into a high ponytail. Her cheekbones were sharp and her nose was small and pointed, but there was nothing severe about her face. It looked oddly gentle, especially given the task at hand.

  Mark turned to Carlo and knew he’d be making some wildly inappropriate comment if he was awake. Instead, the announcers were doing it for him.

  “That body! My god!” the color commentator said. Naturally, they never said anything like that about the men who were almost always rippling with muscle during their own fights. Unlike Vanderhaven, Rosetti wasn’t spilling out of her outfit in the least. She wore black cropped athletic pants and matching sports bra, perfectly normal ring attire, yet the commentators were acting like she was in a string bikini.

  No such remarks were directed at her opponent, a hulking, white dump truck of a man covered in tattoos that made him look almost gray from the neck down on camera. Mark thought he might be another Prison Wars veteran. Instead he learned that “Rex,” as he was simply called, was a prominent member of an upstate “motorcycle club,” a.k.a. biker gang, which also explained his foot-long, gnarled beard. He’d broken the jaw of a champion prizefighter in the previous round to secure his spot in the final. The announcers were already making “Beauty and the Beast” jokes.

  Mark didn’t want to watch. It was moments like this that made his stomach churn. Either he’d see this woman get beaten to a pulp by a troll, or she’d somehow manage to beat a man twice her weight and advance to a tournament where she would almost certainly die in front of millions.

  It was the latter, to his surprise.

  The fight, it turned out, was a thing of beauty. Rex charged at her like an enraged elephant, swiping at her with arms as thick as her waist, but she deftly dodged him until he started to visibly run out of steam. Her movements were fluid. Not a literal dance, but the influence was obvious. Everything she did was so smooth it seemed like she’d choreographed the entire fight beforehand, and her mangy dance partner had never rehearsed. He stumbled badly, struck by needle sharp kicks and quick jabs whenever she found an opportunity. There was a precision to her a moves that other few fighters had. She targeted nerve clusters, vulnerable muscles, weak joints. She was never going to knock him out with a haymaker, but she wove a tapestry of pain that had him crawling on his hands and knees by the end of the fight. Mark’s heart leapt into his throat when Rex finally grabbed ahold of her leg as she went to kick him and landed a few hard blows to her midsection that disrupted her rhythm, but she was strong enough to take it, and wrenched herself free before he could get any further advantage. Mark saw a flash of fear in her eyes, as she knew that if she was caught like that again, he could maul her in seconds. She circled him slowly, and inexplicably went in for the same kick that got her grabbed the first time. Mark yelled at the screen, but realized mid-expletive that it was a feint. As her opponent lunged again, she spun and leapt over him, whipping her back heel around and planting it in the base of his skull. Between that impact, and the front of his head slamming into the mat thereafter, Aria Rosetti finally had her knockout. She smiled and bowed and the crowd adored her.

  The sixteen were chosen.

  16

  MARK CUT THE S-LENS out of his thigh for the fifty-third time. It didn’t hurt anymore, and like the other fifty-two times, the tiny casing slid out covered in goo. He dabbed at the cut, which stopped bleeding almost immediately, and rolled his pants back down.

  Even as a flipped agent, China would never give him unrestricted terminal access, so it was his only way to communicate with command now that he wasn’t permanently bound to a chair. He was deep, very deep, into Phase II of Spearfish, and Phase III was fast approaching.

  The micro S-lens, which he popped out of the casing and slid into his eye, was his true wire to Washington. He had a separate decoy lens he told China he was using to report back to the US, but they monitored every letter and punctuation mark he sent them, AI subroutines scanning for codes in each transmission. So far, they’d been satisfied he was pulling his weight, and instead of beatings and blades he’d been getting hot meals and an actual bed like the one he was lying in now. The mattress felt like it was stuffed with tree bark, but it was better than the floor. Or the chair.

  The S-lens flickered worryingly, but finally blinked on. The overlay showed only one incoming message from command, prefaced by the usual SENSITIVE tag like all the rest. Like he’d ever be sifting the through lens messages in public. If he wandered into the wrong part of the base with the right kind of electro-surveillance, he’d be caught and in front of a firing squad by morning. And that wasn’t a figure of speech. In his short time working for the Chinese he’d seen political dissenters rounded up and executed routinel
y. Zhou made him watch. He was just thankful he wasn’t forced to participate.

  Mark was still haunted by the sky-blue eyes of Lieutenant Marcus O’Connor, which brimmed with tears as the knives tore his flesh. They could have never prepared Mark for that. It was the turning point. He was all in after that, or else all the horror would be for nothing.

  On any given day, he thought he was going insane. Juggling messages between China and the US, sending false info back and forth while scraping together real intel whenever he could. It was almost impossible to keep track of the lies and the truth, but if he slipped, even once, he would be back in Zhou’s chair, or more likely buried in one of the mass graves that did not officially exist a few miles outside the seaside base.

  Mark blinked through the S-lens’s settings, trying to bring the imagery back into focus.

  Mark jolted upright as the door blew open. He immediately blinked the S-lens to clear and bolted up to stand at attention. Zhou was in the doorframe … smiling? That worried Mark more than a scowl. He was further unnerved when Zhou stepped forward and clasped his shoulder. Old scars contorted in strange ways across his face, which wasn’t used to expressing happiness.

  “Sir?” Mark said, hating the word. He prayed Zhou couldn’t see the faint trace of the lens in his eye, but there was no way to lose it now.

  “That frequency you gave us,” Zhou said. “We used it.”

  “And the drones?” Mark asked. “Destroyed?”

  “Not destroyed, we actually landed them. We took them straight out of orbit and right into our palms, so to speak. The machinery alone is worth billions, and the sub-orbital propulsion technology we can now engineer from the American designs is priceless.”

  If your country survives that long, Mark thought. He forced a smile as well.

  “I am glad to be of service,” he said. Langley said they could part with that tech, but they were paying a steep price to keep him relevant in the eyes of the Ministry of State Security.

  “Due to my part in securing this material as your operator, you are now addressing Major Zhou of the MSS.”

  Mark stiffened his stance and saluted once more.

  “Sir.”

  “The formalities can wait. I have come to congratulate you personally on a job well done.”

  Mark nodded stiffly.

  Zhou looked back out into the hall briefly, then pulled something out of the back of his trousers. Mark flinched instinctively, but relaxed when he saw it was a bottle. A quarter of it was empty already, implying Zhou had already started celebrating.

  “This was my father’s,” Zhou said. It was perhaps the first personal thing he’d ever revealed to Mark. He seemed to be high off his achievement, and buzzed from the liquor. Mark barely recognized him as the same stern-faced monster from the cold cell miles underground.

  “He said we would share it when I enlisted,” Zhou continued, looking over the golden label of the brown bottle. “But he did not live to see the day. I would ask that you share it with me now. We have earned it, I would think.”

  Mark nodded, and Zhou sat, uncorking the bottle and pouring it into two plastic glasses on the table. It smelled ancient, delicious.

  “To the glorious Republic,” Zhou said as he raised his glass.

  “To Major Zhou,” Mark said.

  “WE’RE LIVING AT HIS house?” Mark said, incredulous. “I don’t understand.” He was staring at the digital plane ticket that had showed up in his mail along with a congratulatory note from Crayton himself for making it to the finals.

  “It’s not a house,” Gideon said, pacing near Mark’s window, peering outside through the shutters. “It’s a compound. The man literally grew a sixty-acre oasis in the desert and built a thirty-foot wall around it.”

  “There’s the main mansion, three guest houses, two gymnasiums, six pools,” Brooke said, reading about Crayton’s palatial Las Vegas estate.

  “And you think there will be something incriminating there?” Mark asked.

  Gideon nodded.

  “It’s been weeks and crypto has taken precious little out of the phones and mail servers. I know they don’t tell you much, but honestly, there isn’t much to say. China is nowhere to be found.”

  “So you think he’ll keep physical evidence if he wipes digital clean? Doesn’t seem likely.”

  “He needs weight on China just like they need weight on him. Especially if they’re butting heads now. If you can’t find any goddamn secrets in that fortress then you’re the worst agent I’ve ever heard of. Something is there, you can count on it. He spends more time there than at any of his dozen odd homes around the world. And we’ve searched most of those already.”

  “When do I leave anyway?” Mark asked Brooke. She flipped through her screen.

  “You’re heading out in time for the curtain pull-back on the Colosseum. Crayton only lives a few miles from the site, which is another few miles outside the Strip itself.”

  Mark re-read the message again. Your journey begins in earnest now. The Crucible will evolve in ways you never imagined. What the hell did that mean?

  “I still don’t even understand what’s happening now. He’s moving us all into his compound? All sixteen of us who are supposed to kill each other by the end of the summer? And what are these changes to the tournament he’s talking about?”

  “I’m sure he’ll explain it when you get there,” Brooke said.

  “You’re supposed to be explaining this stuff before that happens,” Mark said, annoyed. “I don’t like going in blind, and I feel like I know next to nothing about what this asshole has planned at any given moment. How am I supposed to prove his ties to China when we can’t even get the Crucible’s itinerary down?”

  “I assure you we are working on it,” Gideon said. “Suffice to say I don’t think you’ll be in much danger sipping piña coladas at Crayton’s pool, so calm the hell down. It’ll be a miracle if he finishes that monstrosity in the desert by the end of August anyway. I doubt he’s going to risk your health before then.”

  “How reassuring,” Mark said, growing angrier. “Nothing about this has felt right from the start. China. CMI. Even Langley. And on top of it, we don’t even have a roadmap. A compass. A goddamn north star to tell us where this mission is going. This is not Spearfish. At least we had a plan there, however fucked up it got.”

  Mark noticed Brooke cringe almost imperceptibly.

  “This should be cake compared to Spearfish, but yes, that’s the problem. We don’t know the stakes,” Gideon said. “It’s your job to figure them out.”

  “And your job to help me, in case you forgot.”

  “I don’t need this shit, Mark. I have enough to deal with. McAdams is breathing down my neck every day about your lack of discipline, which might be worth it if you yielded any significant intel.”

  “I’m sorry, was cloning the phones of every top Crayton Media executive shitty intelligence gathering? Man, you guys have really raised that bar.”

  “Stop,” Brooke said. “Both of you. Mark, Gideon put this whole thing together and knows what he’s doing. Gideon, with all due respect to your ability to fire me or drop me in a hole in Cuba, Mark has earned the right to be a little pissed. We took a secret agent and made him one of the most famous people in the country. That’s way outside the lines. Everyone he’s ever met is in danger, and one’s already halfway to dead.”

  Mark and Gideon were silent and sullen. Gideon rubbed his beard but kept his mouth shut. Brooke was a third of his age and his subordinate, but clearly knew him well enough to press his “off” switch in an emergency shutdown procedure. Mark’s too, for that matter. She was right, infighting was getting them nowhere.

  “You will have anything you need on the inside,” Gideon said. “We’ll get it through whatever security he has. Rest assured knowing that at least. By the end of your stay, there should be no stone left unturned in that gaudy place.”

  Mark looked at the pictures of the compound on Brooke’s screen
.

  “Jesus, it really is ugly, isn’t it?”

  The tension broke, and everyone laughed. Gideon’s was deep from his belly, and Brooke snorted through her nose, looking embarrassed. He could have a worse team, he supposed.

  MARK WASN’T GETTING OUT of Chicago that easy. Somehow, Rayne had managed to rope him into a going-away party thrown at the bar. Laird made sure no press or uninvited guests got inside, and so it was just Mark and a hundred of his closest friends. Or rather, a hundred of Rayne’s closest friends, the ones she deemed suitably cool enough to be there. The only person Mark knew there besides the staff was Brooke, who had snuck in a back entrance to avoid the photographers outside.

  Thankfully, Brooke had come, meaning he had someone to talk to other than overly exuberant fanboys. It occurred to him she probably never really socialized working this city gig for the Agency. Lord knows he didn’t. It was interesting to see her in fashionable bar clothes talking and smiling like a normal human. Years ago, she’d be exactly the type of girl he and his buddies on base would be hounding to come home with them. And she’d be the type to politely decline, he guessed.