by Lee Doty
“Until then, pizza?” Smith asked brightly, eager for a subject change.
Jo regarded her with skepticism. “Hm… okay, but if I start to feel woozy or in any way poisoned or sedated… gut shot, no hesitation.”
Smith nodded, “Fair enough… but please don’t eat too quickly, I’d hate to take my first bullet over indigestion.”
Jo snorted and nodded. She put the pistol back in her jacket pocket. “Do you have snipers covering me through any of the windows?”
Smith shook her head. “Both of my snipers are covering the approaches.”
“Just the same,” Jo said, “I’ll need Jeremy to pull all of the blinds.”
“Automation’s on my phone for that. I’m just going to pull it out slowly…” Jeremy started,
Jo took a piece of pizza with her right hand, then shifted her shoulders in a quick, clockwise jerk, throwing the pocket with the pistol behind her back. Her left hand blurred behind her back, plucked the pistol from her pocket, and casually leveled it at Jeremy’s nose as she took a casual bite of the pizza.
They both flinched, Jeremy quite badly. “Any questions?” Ash asked around a distractingly delicious bite of pizza.
Smith shook her head, Jeremy got his breathing under control, mouth pinched closed for a moment. “Would you please stop doing that?” he asked finally.
“Sorry Jeremy. I’m still mad about you pretending to like me.” She dropped the pistol in her left pocket and continued to eat. “That last one was left handed… and I am not left handed.”
“Wow, second reference tonight.” Jeremy mumbled, reaching slowly for his phone.
“You’ve got questions.” Smith folded her hands on the table.
Jo considered, chewing. “Who am I?”
Jeremy made a few gestures on his phone and the room’s automated blinds slid into place over the windows.
Smith took a deep breath, “I have no idea. You are a mystery to me, to us.” She gave a broad gesture that included Jeremy and presumably others.
“Okay then, how did this begin?”
Smith considered for a moment. “For me, when I left NSA and took a post as director of the OSI.”
Ash’s eyes brightened with inspiration, “The Office of Scientific Intelligence was merged into the CIA’s Directorate of Science & Technology in 1963.” She quoted as if reciting the correct answer to a grade school oral exam.
Smith gave Jeremy an inquisitive glance, “That’s a publicly available yet oddly specific piece of information, Jo. Any idea where it came from?”
Jo considered, then shook her head. “Feels like school, but no… no idea.”
“Let’s just put a pin in that one… maybe in one of our next sessions we could explore it a bit more, but for now it’s time to answer your questions. Fair?”
Jo snorted out a bitter laugh. “I’m not so sure we’re going to get from drawn weapons back onto your couch.” Jo took another piece of pizza.
Smith nodded. “That will be up to you, Jo, but please try to keep an open mind.” She steepled her fingers and continued, “The first time I saw you was on the security feed of an ATM in Connecticut. It was one of the very few cameras that your team didn’t disable or avoid. You walked briefly through its field of view not long after you and your team had murdered fifteen people and stolen a prototype superconductor from a research lab.”
Jo’s face went white, “Great.” The pizza fell to the plate and she covered her mouth with a closed fist, “Just great. I’m a murderer.”
“That doesn’t surprise you?”
“Dammit Jo!” Jeremy shouted, reflexively twitching his hands up between them. “You aren’t going to be happy until I have to change my pants, are you?” His eyes were locked on the barrel of her invisibly drawn gun.
Jo let out a whimpering bark of laughter and dropped the gun back in her pocket.
“Touché,” Smith said, a whisper of a smile making it past her discipline. “But it bothers you.”
“Of course it bothers me!” Jo almost shouted, throat trying to close around the words. “I feel like I’m going to throw up.”
“Don’t shoot.” Smith said with the faintest hint of humor pulling at her grave features, “That’s guilt, not poison.”
Jo gave her a confused shake of the head, the humor seeming to loosen her control on the sadness. Her eyes burned with unspent tears.
“Think, Jo.” Smith said, voice firm, “Think! The things you’ve done bother you… what does that mean?”
“That I’m not a joyful killer?” she sobbed, “I’m a monster, but not a super ultra monster?”
“That you are a victim.” Smith pronounced with a tone of absolute certainty.
“I seem like an easy mark to you?” Ash tried for sarcasm, but something resonated with her aching heart, somehow it felt true.
“You were being used, Jo. I don’t know why or how, but I’m sure. I’ve been betting a lot of lives on it for these last months.”
“Used? Why? By who? For what?” Jo gave Smith a dubious look, “Wait, aren’t you using me, too?”
“That was a lot of questions.” Smith shook her head, “Last one first: no. We are helping you. We’re doing it because we need to know who you worked for. We need information.”
“Using me for information, then.”
“Helping you in the hope of getting information.” Smith corrected. “Think about what you know. We’re trying to help you remember who you were, sure—but at the same time we’re trying to help you figure out who you want to be. We’re giving you the opportunity to bond with people, to nurture children, to live a full life. We’re hoping that when you remember the bad things you’ve done… that you won’t feel that those things have to define you anymore. Maybe you’d even help us with a little payback.”
“Payback!” Jo snorted bitterly. “You’re forgetting that I might have been the leader of this group of villains, maybe I’m the criminal mastermind…”
“I’ve got something to show you, if you wouldn’t mind.” Smith waited for Jo to nod before pulling her tablet slowly from her purse. She prodded it for a few moments then passed it to Jo.
Jo picked it up, on the screen was a paused video feed of a large, white circular room taken from a camera near the high ceiling at the edge of the room. At the room’s center a woman was stretched out and secured to a large fixed examination table with a multitude of heavy looking straps over her blue hospital smock. Her head was shorn in a way that made a marine’s first boot camp haircut seem both elaborate and stylish. Around the table, a large red circle was painted on the floor. Around the circle, several hazmat-suited technicians monitored equipment.
“Who is this?” Jo asked, glancing at Smith over the edge of the tablet.
“Watch the video,” Smith said, “and let’s see if you can’t tell me.”
Second Incursion
Rural Virginia, 2019
Crow sat in stillness, a stone at the bottom of an ocean of night. Around him, the forest stretched out, its symphony of life and death reaching his ears in the chitter of insects, the furtive rustle of foraging prey and the slow patient movements of small predators. To his left, Shadow sat on the ground, equally still. Tink had taken a position out of sight near the top of the ridge a hundred yards away. None of them had spoken since they had left the womb interface fifteen hours ago. None had moved since they had reached their current position six hours ago. They had simply reached the appropriate standoff distance from their target, found a tactically appropriate spot, taken off their packs, rechecked their equipment, repacked it, and settled silently to the ground to wait.
Their dark black-gray camouflaged armor muted them into the background of the forest, hiding their shapes in random patterns. It diffused their heat signatures, making them nearly undetectable to all but the most sensitive and tightly focused IR scanners, their stillness left no sound or motion to betray them. Undetected and nearly undetectable, they waited for the signal.
Crow
had needed to wait in stillness for longer on other missions, but then his mind had been as still as his body. Now he felt the same gnawing sense of wrongness that had threatened to overcome him as he’d waited for the mission clock to start on the foam couch of the Womb. Initially, the intensity of sensation and purpose of the Hallow and the joy of motion had combined to distract him, pushing his fear into a small and controlled corner of his mind as he worked and moved. But now, sitting like a statue in a Buddhist garden, the fear again expanded, elaborating in his mind and heart until he felt like he was burning from the inside out. If Shadow or Tink felt a similar pressure, the same wrongness, Crow couldn’t tell.
The trick to enduring the unendurable was simply to endure it. Focus was victory, discipline was victory, and victory was life. Crow had learned his catechisms well, had applied them successfully too many times to doubt them, and yet… and yet if he doubted the Clerics, what couldn’t he doubt? Could he doubt his training? Certainly not. But could he doubt his team? His eyes settled briefly on Shadow’s stoic shape in the gloom. Maybe. Could he doubt this new mission type, could he doubt their objectives? Clearly, yes. But what to do about it? Rebellion in the Hallow made no sense… nothing but complete obedience and valor made sense here, as his body lay helpless in the heart of the womb even now. There was no escape, no meaningful resistance he could conceive.
Crow’s thoughts were broken by the signal. Though every piece of their equipment that could emit an electromagnetic signature had either been disabled or left behind, the one minimal power trace they allowed was the receiver that had been tuned to the signal that the first combat adrenaline dump in Ash’s blood had just caused.
A rumble went through the earth as Crow and Shadow rose smoothly to their feet. A second later the sound of explosions reached their ears. A few seconds later, the sound of wailing alarms reached them from over the ridge.
Shadow fell in behind Crow as he jogged to Tink’s position at the top of the ridge. As they crested the ridge, the complex came into view. Smoke rose from the roof in several places, and parts of the building’s landscaping had been marred with smoking craters. The guard posts at the gate were intact, but there were bodies on the ground from where Tink and the other snipers had done their job with their usual ruthless efficiency. As they watched, secondary point defense radar systems came online at antiaircraft installations in other parts of the complex and were hit within seconds by radar-seeking rockets fired from the woods by two of the other teams.
Crow and Shadow fell to the earth on either side of where Tink lay, peering into the optics of his sniper rifle.
“Passive comms only.” Crow said, switching on his helmet communicator. He wasn’t expecting to hear any chatter from the other teams, but didn’t want to miss anything. He used a set of field glasses to check the compound below them while the other two enabled their communicators.
“Report” Crow growled.
“Betty and I cleared the visible guards.” Tink said, giving his rifle a loving pat with his left hand without removing his eye from the scope. “Though someone else clipped one before I put him down. Probably the ironically named ‘Master’,” Tink’s left hand made the sarcastic air quotes he always used when referring to HoldFire’s sniper, “Punk got lucky.”
Crow endured Tink’s boasting with the appearance of patience, “Tinker Bell, you are the most fabulous sniper in the League. I do understand we’re still holding, but the mission clock has started and I do need more than just a snipers’ leader board summary.”
Tink spent a second restraining a snide comment, then continued, all business, “The radar-seeking ordinance is keeping them blind, and we’re lasing point defense systems as they come online. If our artillery keeps responding, we’ll likely be able to bring in the CAP before too much longer. So far, we’ve neutralized everything they’ve brought online, but there’s no way of telling how deeply layered these defenses are.”
Time passed in the fury of the bombardment with occasional return fire coming from the compound before them. Shadow and Crow waited while Tink and the other snipers from the other three teams used the designators on their rifles to mark targets for the drones and artillery. Eventually, there was a silence as the bombardment paused. For a few moments, the scene was eerily peaceful. Smoke rolled across the landscape inside the tall perimeter fence. Wind stirred the smoke, rustled through the trees around them. There were a few more volleys of artillery, focused on the main entrance of the compound, but the volleys went unanswered. Crow didn’t buy the possum act. He knew that the alarm had made it out, and that their enemies were now likely waiting for rapid response forces that weren’t more than an hour away. If he were in their position, he would be retrenching and playing dead, hoping to expend his remaining resources only after drawing the attackers out into the open. In Crow’s experience, one of the more difficult tactical lessons was when to yield initiative, allowing your opponent to move, to make mistakes.
“We’re clear for air support.” sounded in their ears. The voice was distorted by encryption and clipped by expediency. “We’ve baited them with three electronic squawks with no response.” Crow recognized the speaker, it was Coma, the commander of FatalError. Crow winced, that was earlier than he would have been comfortable breaking radio silence against a target this hard and this subtle.
Immediately after the radio squawked with the end of Coma’s transmission, there was a booming scream as a cluster of rockets arced away from a building near the east side of the compound before them. The rockets swarmed through a quick S-curve then burst into an even more elaborate swarm of bomblets that blanketed half an acre of forest centering on a small rise to the east of the compound. At this distance, the cluster of explosions sounded more like the crackle of dry twigs burning. There was no fire to be seen, but after the minimal smoke was carried away by the light breeze the entire area was desolate. Not a tree stood, the ground was dark, furrowed by the antipersonnel ordinance. Nothing remained but wood chips and aerated dirt—and theoretically some paste that was once the ironically named team FatalError.
“Oops.” Tink said, swiveling his rifle slightly and lasing the building where the rockets had originated.
“Here lies the aptly named team FatalError.” Shadow said with faux gravity, “May their noob move inspire all of our hearts toward greater caution…” He was interrupted by the boom of the artillery strike that Tink had called.
“May it inspire us to greater focus and to less chatter.” Crow growled, “Ash is in there somewhere, and we’re going to get her or die trying.”
“And die trying.” Shadow corrected. “Remember?”
Crow gave him a direct look but bit back on his hot response.
Shadow blinked. “What?”
Crow gave his head a quick shake, but he couldn’t get the intensity off of his face. The continued radio silence was giving him an advantage that he had to play now. “Shadow, please draw your sidearm.”
Shadow obeyed immediately.
“Point it at my head, please.” Crow continued.
Again, Shadow obeyed without hesitation. “Chief, what are you doing?”
“Removing the need for reflexes.” Crow said with a small frown, “You have the complete drop on me now, you can kill me with a thought and the smallest twitch of your finger, right?”
“Sure, but…” Shadow started, but Crow interrupted. “Tink, I’m going to need you to come and do the same.”
Tink released the rifle, drew his pistol and rolled to the right and put the muzzle of the pistol against Crow’s other temple. “Is this going to be one of those things where you move real quick and we shoot each other, chief?”
“Less banter, Tink. I’ve got something serious to say, and I need you to listen.”
Shadow and Tink raised their heads fractionally and exchanged a curious look. “Again, why are we pointing our pistols at your head, Chief?” Shadow asked.
“Because I need you to take it for granted that you
can kill me, Shad.” Crow shifted his head and gave him an oblique glance, “Because your training, your reflexes are going to tell you to kill me in a bit, and I need you to know you can do it… I need you to not worry that you have to do it quickly, before I finish saying what I need to say.”
“Wait,” Tink said with a small smile that showed that he was still hoping for a punch line, “you’re saying that we’re going to need to kill you in a few seconds… shouldn’t we just trust you and do it now?”
Crow shifted his gaze to Tink and gave him a level look, “Maybe because we are friends you’ll hear me out first, maybe procrastination is my only hope.”
“What’s procrastination?” Tink asked, eyes narrowed and brow furrowed.
“I’ll tell you later,” Crow said with a small smile, “if I get around to it.”
Shadow snorted, Tink’s confusion deepened, Crow continued, “Now listen to me, please. And if you can, please just put off pulling those triggers until you’ve heard me out.”
“What’s this about?” Shadow asked.
“It’s about Ash.” Crow said, “It’s about us.” Crow paused, looking from Shadow to Tink, letting the silence lengthen for a few seconds, “It’s about the Clerics. They are lying to us, and I don’t know what to do about it. The only thing I know for sure is I need help and you are my teammates.”
***
Chicago, 2020
The image on the screen shuddered slightly, rocked by the same tremor that startled the two men and one woman in the foreground. The circular room began to pulse red with the wash of a flashing alarm signal and muted klaxons could be heard from the tablets small speakers.
The taller man with the dark skin and the dark gray suit looked with reproach at the man in the white lab coat and said, “How about something simple like ‘now’?” before turning and sprinting under the camera and off the screen.
On the screen, Dr. Smith answered her cell phone, spoke with urgent, hushed tones too low to be registered by the security feed, then stowed the phone and turned to the man in the white lab coat. “We’re under attack.”
