by Astrid Amara
“Your plan?” she asked.
“He has a client, some bigwig who wants to bring down Trust. As soon as I find out when and where the rendezvous is, I’ll send a signal with my new osys.” I lifted my wrist to show her. “Once you get the signal, bring reinforcements and collect it.”
She narrowed her eyes. Her pupils were wide, and she did have a funny smell. It was a sour, off-putting odor, like a mixture of Peak and mold.
“You have any extra hits on you?” I asked suddenly, my mouth watering as soon as I thought of Peak.
She blinked. “I’m not giving them to you.”
“Thanks for the camaraderie.”
She pointed at the dog. “What’s it for?”
“It isn’t for anything. She was going to die.”
Agent 390 glared. “If you don’t retrieve the repository in the next two days, you will be reset.”
I shuddered. I couldn’t quite remember what being reset meant, but I had a vague impression of something unpleasant. I nodded.
“I’ll do my job. It’s just taking longer than I expected.” I walked away, out of the alley. By the time I glanced back, 390 was gone.
* * * *
I found a hotel not far from the Alspree open market, a clean place not so upscale that it wasn’t willing to take a dog as ugly as Carly. I also purchased some dog food, snacks, toiletries, and a change of clothes for myself that didn’t consist of noticeable armor.
The narrow room was clean, with a pale green interior. There was a round table with two chairs, a tiny sofa and lounge chair, and the bed. The windows opened over the crowded open market, and smells of simmering sauces and spices wafted into the room. My stomach growled. I peeled off my reeking uniform and tentatively stepped into the bathroom, poised beside the mirror with a razor and shaving cream.
It took more nerve than I’d imagined to step in front of the mirror and look at myself.
It was odd—my face was both familiar and yet that of a stranger. At least it was proportional, although my nose had gotten bent out of shape at some point in my years of soldiering. I had hazel eyes, and short brown hair, gray at the temples. Days of stubble hid a square chin, sharp cheekbones. I stared at myself as I shaved, feeling sick with the inability to remember what I had looked like before this mission, or a year before, or ten years ago. I tried to visualize myself with the longer hair Mack had mentioned, and I couldn’t see it.
Done mooning at myself, I took a blissful shower, forcing poor Carly into the water with me.
She enjoyed it a lot less than I did.
I couldn’t remember a shower ever feeling that good. The feel of the shampoo in my hair, the water on my back, sluicing over the aching joints of my arms and legs, softening hard knots of muscle—it was such a fabulous sensation, so much better than the dull sensationless state of Peak. For the first time, I thought it might actually be wise to stay off the drug. I missed being so carefree, but I also liked feeling things—hot water in my hair, Carly’s tail thumping, wet and pitiful, against my ankle.
I dried off, dried off Carly as best I could, then watched her dive onto the bed and soak the sheets as she rolled enthusiastically.
Mack’s gonna hate that. I shook my head. I had just betrayed Mack. I couldn’t afford to care if he disliked what I did to the bed.
I checked in with security, repeating what I’d told 390 in case she kept the information to herself. I then left a message for Mack, informing him the room number and that he’d better bring dinner with him because I was too lazy to go back out into the crowds for food.
I must have fallen asleep on the bed, because I awoke to Carly barking at the hotel door.
I shot upright, ready to fight. I had no weapon—Mack had kept his claim on our one energy pistol. My tension ebbed once I identified Mack in the security viewer. He struggled to hold three bags that steamed with the odor of food.
I opened the door for him and took some of his burden.
“Thanks,” he said. “We’re meeting with the client tonight.”
“Good.” I opened one of the steaming containers. Rice, vegetables, and a spicy sauce greeted me. My stomach rumbled appreciatively.
“Rosslyn doesn’t like the idea of you being here,” Mack continued. He laid out the boxes of food on the table. “So if she’s cold when you meet her, don’t freak out and shoot her.”
“I’ll behave,” I said.
Mack’s mouth curved into a small smile. He handed me a fork. “Bon appétit, killer.”
We ate nearly in silence, other than the groans of appreciation Mack gave as he shoveled rice into his mouth.
“Damn,” he said, once he was done. “Starving sucks.”
I shuddered. He looked over at me. “What?”
“Nothing,” I said, although I felt queasy. I’d probably eaten too much food after a week of subsisting on ration bars.
Mack sat back in the hotel chair, his big body making it look child-sized. He rubbed his belly. “Mm. Now what?” He wagged his eyebrows.
“How much time do we have until your contacts arrive?”
Mack’s glance shifted to the corner of the room. He was obviously reading the time from his embedded osys. “A little under three hours.”
I stretched. “I can think of a few ways to kill three hours.”
Mack reached into his vest and pulled out a thin tube of lube he must have purchased while procuring food. “I bet I’m thinking the same thing.” He sniffed at his clothes and wrinkled his face. “But let me jump in the shower first.”
I undressed and lay down on the bed and after a few minutes a clean, wet Mack joined me. We came together with no effort at all. How strange, the way the body remembered how to move with him, even after so much time. We kissed and touched and it took no effort at all to fall into a rhythm that seemed instinctive. I knew how to do this. Like learning how to drive—I might not remember the mechanics, the specific steps—but the muscle memory remained.
Peak had taken much from me, but it hadn’t stolen my body’s recollection of how to touch Mack, how to pleasure him.
“I want you to fuck me,” I whispered to him, and a surge of need electrified every nerve, every pore. I’d never said words truer. And the way Mack looked when I spoke them, the unadulterated affection in his eyes, heated my soul.
He was slow but firm, and when I felt his cock slip through my oiled entrance and fill me so deeply I could barely breathe, I shuddered with not only the sensation, but the sensation of all the other times he had done this to me.
“I remember this,” I gasped, tears springing to the corners of my eyes. “I remember this.”
Mack paused his relentless rhythm long enough to whisper in my ear. “Good, baby. That’s good.” Then he started up again, an undeviating thrust and withdrawal, until my insides curled and tingled and I had no choice but to touch myself or explode.
When we both lay spent, breathing heavily, smiling at each other, I realized with a sense of sickness that this was the last time we would enjoy this. I had to turn him in to the authorities. It was my job, my sole reason for existing. If I had no memories, I had no past, and that meant no loyalty to anything or anyone but the directive I’d last received.
Get the repository back to Trust.
Mack caressed my face, and I closed my eyes. God, I’d miss this. Miss him. How quickly I’d stopped shying from his touch. Even his smell was a pleasure to inhale. How could I have gotten so attached in such a short amount of time? How could I have trusted someone enough to lay my head on his shoulder, to let my metal hand rest on his breast, to enjoy the rise and fall of his body with each happy breath?
I fell asleep like that—naked, unarmed, wrapped in Mack’s arms—and only woke up when I felt the sensation of a tongue licking my closed eyelid. Reaching up, I felt the rough stubble of hair and scabby flesh underneath.
“Hey, Carly.” I opened my eyes, and Carly squirmed close. I rubbed her belly.
“Time to get moving, cowboy.”
I spotted Mack at the table, screwing at a circuit board, his tongue protruding slightly as he concentrated. He’d covered the entire table in electronic parts and wires.
“How long did I sleep?” I asked.
“Not long enough, from the looks of it.” He smiled at me. “But our guests will be here in the next fifteen minutes, so unless you want to give them a striptease, I suggest you pull on some clothes.”
I grunted, looking down at my sprawled nudity. A flash of an image—my leg being blown off—flashed through my mind, with pain chasing it.
I gripped my head.
“Headache?” Mack asked.
I shook my head. “Only when I try to think about something too hard.”
Mack snorted. “Good thing you don’t think that often then.”
I made my way to the bag of clean clothing and pulled on a pair of dark green cargo trousers, a clean black hydromesh shirt, and a new belt.
I sat on the edge of the bed and pulled on new socks. As I stepped into my combat boots, Mack said, “You look good.”
I smiled against my will. I lowered my pant legs over my boots, then stood. “Where’s the gun?”
Mack’s small grin didn’t alter. “I have it.” At my annoyed grunt, he added, “You’ve got a hand full of useful tools, make do with that.”
I nodded at the rectangular device in his hands. “What’s that?”
He held it aloft like a great trophy, smiling proudly. “A thing!”
I took it from him. It looked like an oversize transmitter, about three inches wide and five inches long and a good inch thick. It was cobbled together with different colors and textures of plastic, with a singular round button in the center with wires protruding out from it and back into the device.
“Nice thing.”
“It’s a low-level transmitter for the chip,” Mack told me. “It will send a short-range signal wirelessly, or it can be plugged in here”—he motioned to a hole cut crudely from the plastic to reveal a charge slot—“to any osys to transfer the code over a system.”
“What code?” I asked.
“One that erases all code sequences embedded in other chips.”
“How do you know that?”
“I spoke with our client a few days ago. He informed me.”
I blinked at him.
Mack shrugged. “Sorry. But I wasn’t sure then if I could trust you to play nice. I knew if I told you I had a working comm link, you would simply overpower me and try and get more drugs.”
A fury boiled in me at being betrayed, but I tamped it down. I’d need to recall and use that anger later, when I betrayed him. Still, the idea that he let me suffer through that withdrawal when there had been a cure rankled me.
“I could have died from the withdrawal,” I growled.
“You didn’t.”
“You didn’t know that!” I spat.
“Neither did you,” Mack replied calmly. “And if it looked like your vitals were dropping too severely, I would have given you the drug, or called for backup. I didn’t want you dead, baby. I wanted you sober.”
Luckily for him, a knock at the door interrupted any further insults from me. Carly barked and rushed toward the door at Mack’s heels.
Mack peered at the security viewer, then opened the door. I stood, wary of being cornered in this room with strangers.
“Dr. Seoras?” Mack asked. A thin blond man stepped forward and offered his hand.
“Hello, Mr. Mackenzie.”
“Call me Mack,” Mack said.
“Then call me Tiergan,” the doctor said.
Mack grinned. “Come in. And you are…?”
“I’m Levi,” the second man said, also shaking Mack’s hand. “Tiergan’s husband.”
Mack glanced over his shoulder at me, eyebrow raised. I wasn’t sure if this was in surprise of having two guests instead of one, or the fact that they were a couple, but it didn’t matter to me. I scowled at them both.
Mack politely offered them the seats around the table and pulled up the recliner and the small stool from the corner of the room. He motioned to me. “You want to sit, Ivo?”
“Nope.” I leaned against the wall and crossed my arms. Carly had wagged her tail in greeting at the visitors but now came to my side, unsure of my body language.
“Cute dog,” the man named Levi said. He was shorter than Tiergan, with a head of silver-and-black hair. He looked to be in his early fifties. In contrast, his husband looked at least fifteen years younger than him, with light but full hair, and keen blue eyes. His face and neck were lined with old scars, but otherwise his age was hard to place.
There was another knock on the door, and I tensed.
“It’s only Rosslyn,” Mack assured me. He answered the door, and a diminutive but fierce-looking older woman entered the room. She had curly silver hair and sharp brown eyes and wore some form of peasant shirt that billowed around her small body. I also noticed the outline of weapons hidden on a belt under the blouse and realized if she was the one who I reminded Mack of, she was likely a lot deadlier than she looked.
The four revs made their introductions and laughed as Mack told them the story of Carly’s rescue. Then Rosslyn approached me, hand held out in front of her.
“Agent?” she asked.
I nodded. She stuck her hand out farther. I shook it quickly, then pulled back. It had been too long since I had socialized to remember how to do it comfortably, and I began to sweat.
Luckily, once all four revs were seated around the table, they didn’t seem to expect anything more from me. I stood behind Mack, against the wall, with Carly at my feet. My left fingers twitched restlessly, ready to pull out my scalpel if need be. It truly was a weapon of last resort, but it was all I had at the moment.
“We’ve got everything set up for the Beltway scenario,” Rosslyn told the men. They clearly understood what that meant.
Mack said, “Even with the chaos of the parade, we’ll only have a few minutes to broadcast the code before Trust catches on and comes looking for us.”
“On the bright side,” Levi said, “they won’t be able to use their agents, since they’ll all be out of action.”
“Out of action.” Mack scowled, then looked at me. “I don’t like the sound of that. If the rest are as drugged and brainwashed as Ivo—”
“Bad word choice,” Levi interrupted. “The chip you recovered has a lot of control sequences within its programming, but the one we want to activate is the agent erase code. Once it’s activated, the majority of Trust’s soldiers will be too confused to attack.”
My eye twitched.
Tiergan lifted the device Mack had built, turning it over. “You completed this? Without any schematic?”
Mack shrugged. “It’s short range only, a wireless connection to the agent addresses. I have it programmed solely to send the code sequence you requested.”
“Good.” Tiergan smiled crookedly. “That’s good.”
“Agent erase code?” I asked, too concerned by the sound of such a thing to care I interrupted. “What the fuck is that?”
The doctor’s eyes flashed to me. “You’re Mack’s agent friend, yes?”
I nodded curtly.
“What’s your number?” Tiergan asked.
I blinked. “505.”
Tiergan’s eyebrow raised. “I was Recommissioned Agent 75. A long time ago, obviously, but not so different from you.”
I studied his body, trying to detect how much had been rebuilt. He’d obviously not suffered quite the amount of violence I had been subject to. “On Calypso?” I asked.
Tiergan shook his head. “No. I moved around a bit.”
“You had the same treatment as Ivo?” Mack asked, practically vibrating with curiosity. “Did you get your memories back?”
Tiergan frowned. “Mine were never taken. Trust evolved its techniques in the twenty years since I was last an agent.”
“You’ve been fighting Trust for twenty years?” Rather than
dishearten me, I laughed. “I told you, Mack. It’s a pointless battle. They can’t be beat.”
“Now they can, thanks to you,” Tiergan said, nodding to Mack. “And believe me—it’s been a long time coming.” He glanced over at Levi. He laid his hand on Levi’s thigh and smiled. “We were once forced to sign a nondisclosure agreement with Trust, but after hearing about how they’ve modified their controls over agents, we decided we couldn’t stay silent anymore.
“Back in my day, Trust controlled its agents with a simple tracking chip, implanted in the base of the skull. It recorded movement and activity.”
I suddenly felt nauseated. I didn’t know why. I tried to hide it, but Mack could always read me.
“You okay?”
I nodded, trying to keep myself from being sick. Maybe my withdrawal wasn’t over?
“The chips have gotten far more sophisticated since my time,” Tiergan continued. “Now only the Trust execs and Security Managers have the old-fashioned embedded chips, which they use for sharing information through the net as well as recording activities should Trust need evidence. Indentured agents have more complex chips that are implanted deep in the amygdala and can no longer be removed.”
I rubbed the back of my neck, still nauseated. “So I will be tracked forever?” I asked.
Tiergan gestured to the transmitter on the table. “Not with this. The chip in the Trust repository belonged to the former, deceased CEO of Trust, and is one of only a handful that can be used to override and permanently erase all the codes in embedded agent chips.”
“Then Ivo can’t be tracked,” Mack clarified.
“Or mentally controlled,” Tiergan replied.
“Controlled?” I asked.
“The chip in your head suppresses memories, making you remain in a confused state. It also is directly tied to your spinal column and capable of paralyzing you should they need to shut you off for security reasons.”
I shuddered. “They’ve never done that.” But even as I thought it, I wondered, how would I know if they’d done it?
