Blades of Winter

by G T Almasi

  I ask, “Do you think Badr and Kazim know each other?”

  “It’s likely,” Patrick comms. “Heck, Badr probably knows Winter.”

  “Why hasn’t Badr ratted him out?” I throw down a six.

  “Maybe he’s waiting for the most profitable time.” Patrick drops a nine and makes fifteen for two points.

  “What a slimeball.” I drop a two for seventeen and ask, “Isn’t it a big problem that the Darius Covenant bacteria can destroy oil?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, what if they decide to clean up all the oil, not just what spills out of ships?”

  “Oh my God Alix, there’s way too much oil for that.” Patrick drops a four for twenty-one.

  “How much is there?” I slam a king down for thirty-one and two points.

  “In the world?”

  I nod my head as I scoop up the crib.

  “Twelve hundred billion barrels, give or take.” He tallies his score and moves his peg up the board.

  “So it would take awhile for that bacteria to eat it all.” I add up my take and slide my peg past Trick’s.

  “Forever, essentially.” He shuffles the deck and deals out the next hand.

  I arrange my cards and ask, “What do we have on Carbon?”

  “A whole lot of nothing. It’s been off the CIA’s to-spy list since our own cloning program collapsed.” Patrick quickly orders his cards. “We’re on the first Job Number aimed at Carbon in almost twenty years.” We quietly trade discards for a minute, then he says, “I’m pretty excited, actually. I’ve always wanted to know more about clones.”

  I earn eighteen points and win the hand. I’m really clobbering Patrick now. He must be distracted by how great my hair looks. He shuffles the cards while I debate how to tell him about my hallucinations. The rule is I have to tell my IO everything.

  As Patrick distributes our cards, I take a deep breath and ask, “So, on a different topic, is it possible that someone’s vision Mods would make them see things that aren’t there?”

  Trick stops laying cards down. “You’re seeing things?”

  “I’m not talking about me. I’m only asking.”

  “Well, I am talking about you. If you have a problem, you have to tell me.” He’s still frozen in middeal.

  I mutter, “Keep dealing, will you.” He deals, puts the pack down, doesn’t pick up his cards, and looks at me. I try to talk, but my voice shakes too much.

  Trick takes my left hand, gives it a little squeeze. “Hey, it’s okay. What’s going on? You can tell me.”

  Another deep breath. “I’ve seen that bug-eyed girl, but I don’t want anyone to know. Because if they take me out of the field, you’ll get reassigned to another Level and I won’t see you anymore.” So much for the cool, unflappable seductress.

  Trick blinks a couple times and asks, “Bug-eyed girl?”

  “The one in New York, remember? I nearly blew her arm off. Then she bled all over the place. Then we—”

  “Yes, yes, I remember. But what about her?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve seen her a couple of times.” I tell him how I thought I saw the girl at the café in Paris and at Chico’s office in Riyadh. He sits back for a moment, still holding my hand.

  “You know, your father had stuff like this.”

  “He saw things?”

  “It was more like nightmares, but they were pretty debilitating.”

  I remember the nightmares. We’d all be asleep, and I’d spring awake as he shouted at the top of his lungs, “Motherfucker! I’ll kill you! You stay away from them!” I’d listen to my mother try to calm him down. Sometimes it worked, and other times it didn’t. When it didn’t, I’d hear Dad stomp down to his shop. We’d find him in the morning, passed out on his ratty old couch with a few empty bottles on the floor. My mother would silently gather them and throw them out.

  I’d climb on the couch and curl up next to him. He’d wake up after a while and run his fingers through my hair. I’d be careful not to put my weight on his stomach. My father got grouchy when I did that, especially after he’d been in his shop all night.

  Patrick ponders what I’ve told him. Finally he says, “We’ll need to take care of this, but I’ve heard much worse.”

  “Do we have to tell Cyrus?”

  “Oh, yeah. Alix, this rule is for you as much as anyone else. You need treatment.”

  I groan and take his hand again. Christ, I’ve only been doing this for five years and I already need to see a shrink about my job? “What’s wrong with me?”

  “It’s post-traumatic stress disorder. It happens after someone has been under a severe strain, especially over an extended time period.”

  “Does this happen to the other Levels?”

  “Totally.” Now it’s my turn to blink a couple of times. I ask Trick to tell me what he knows about this. It turns out he knows a lot. Most Levels have some kind of reaction to the work—typically substance abuse problems and nightmares. Sometimes it’s paranoia or schizophrenia. Every once in a while a Level dive-bombs into flat-out delusional insanity.

  All Levels are monitored for this stuff as well as secondary issues like hallucinations and potential suicide. Some Levels have taken their own lives, and it’s thought that some other field personnel have stopped caring and purposely let themselves be killed.

  “Jesus,” I whisper. “Do Levels ever get old?”

  “Sure. Your father was in his forties when he disappeared.”

  “Forty? Trick, that’s not old!”

  Patrick looks down at the cards and mumbles, “It is for a Level.”

  CHAPTER 31

  THREE DAYS LATER, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 5:35 A.M. CET UNIVERSITY OF ZURICH, PROVINCE OF SWITZERLAND, GG

  She’s faster than me this time. I stand to return fire, but Jackie-O’s shot blasts through my heart and kills me. Everything suddenly goes silently black. I vividly experience the absolute emptiness of my own death.

  Eventually, the light fades back up. I’m in the temple again.

  The monk’s orange robe flutters as a cold wind blows in from the mountains outside the temple. He stands up, plucks his head off his shoulders, and sets it on a low table in front of me. While the headless body returns to its seat, the head looks at me and says, “The caterpillar’s bloom reveals a winged flower with dragon’s teeth.”

  I stand up and walk outside to see the mountains. A frightened voice echoes from the valley below.

  Alix!

  I jolt awake, covered in sweat, and gasp in a mouthful of air. Another nightmare. But I heard someone call out to me—a voice I know but can’t quite place. Now the room is quiet. I switch my vision to infrared. We’re in our student apartment at the University of Zurich: tiled bathroom, efficiency kitchen, two desks, two closets, and two twin beds that we pushed together when we got here three days ago. I don’t see any heat signatures except for Trick in bed next to me.

  Wait, that’s not true. I look back at my pillow. Behind the warmth from my head there’s another heat source. I reach under the pillow for Li’l Bertha and check her status indicator. It says “ready,” meaning she’s turned on. I always power her down when I’m in bed. She boots up so quickly that it’s not worth the risk of having a live firearm only an inch from my head while I sleep.

  Weird. She’s never booted herself up before. I’ll have to take a good look at her in the morning. I turn her off, lie back on my pillow, and wait for my pulse to slow down. I’d like to use some Kalmers, but I’m trying not to rely on them so much.

  I turn off my infrared and switch to starlight vision. Tree-filtered light from the main quad creates a pattern like a flock of birds on the ceiling. A light wind brushes the trees, and the birds look like they’re flying. I’ve still got Li’l Bertha in my hand. I hold her up in front of my face and slowly turn her from side to side. The spiraled neural interface connector built in to her pistol grip is magnetic. I click it in and out of the WeaponSynch pad installed in my le
ft hand’s palm while I think.

  Who called to me? It was familiar, but it wasn’t my mom. I don’t remember my father ever calling to me. He didn’t have to. When he was home, I constantly shadowed him to make the most of him being around. I switch off my starlight vision and put Li’l Bertha back under the pillow. I’m drifting back to sleep when I hear it again.

  Alix!

  My body freezes, and my eyes pop open. I activate my visual enhancements again and reach for Li’l Bertha under the pillow. My thumb feels for the “on” switch, but she’s already on. Dammit! What’s wrong with her? I fret and mull for a minute, then I have an idea. I rewind my Day Loop a couple of minutes and listen to the playback until it catches up to the present. The only thing audible was my breathing. I don’t know what to think now. The voice didn’t actually make any sound.

  I carry my gun into the bathroom, splash some water on my face, and look in the mirror. My reflection seems to stare right through me, like I’m the one made of glass instead of the other way around. I turn away from the mirror and dry my face with a towel. I won’t be able to sleep anymore tonight, so I field strip Li’l Bertha on the bathroom counter. I might as well figure out what the fuck is wrong with my sidearm.

  I had trouble sleeping when I was younger, but it’s been awhile and I’ve forgotten how frustrating it is. Once the staff at my grade school figured out that my home life was why I was so spacey, they took it easier on me. They’d gently suggest that I visit the nurse’s office to lie down on her sofa. There I was in third grade and I still needed nap time, like I was in preschool.

  The kids never made fun of me, though, because of what I did to Bobby Houseman at recess one day. You need to scare the shit out of people only once. The secret is to make it so frightening that they’ll never forget it. I was the smallest kid in class, I had an alcoholic semiabsent father, and a misspelled boy’s name. Yet nobody ever teased me. My daddy would have been proud of his little Hot Shot.

  I’ve got Li’l Bertha completely apart when Trick knocks on the bathroom door. When I answer his knock with a grunt, he opens the door and pokes his head in. His hair is mussed up, and his eyes squint in the light.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah. I can’t sleep.”

  “What’s up?” He rubs his eyes, then leans on the door frame. I don’t say anything. “Alix.” He’s a lot more awake all of a sudden. “What is it?”

  I take a deep breath and blurt, “A fucking voice called my name.” Patrick doesn’t respond, so I tell him how I rewound my Day Loop and there was no actual sound.

  “Trick, please don’t say anything to Cyrus. He’ll bench me for sure, and then I’ll never find my dad.” That last part surprises both of us. I’ve never said that out loud before. I’m not sure I’ve even consciously thought it before. He crosses the room, wraps his arms around me, and gives me a nice squoosh. Then he sits on the counter.

  We both fall silent for a moment. I whisper, “I guess we have to tell Cyrus?”

  “Are you kidding?” Trick says, “A field agent hears a nonacoustic aural signal? It might be some kind of psyop.”

  That hadn’t occurred to me. “Could my hallucinations be the same thing?”

  “Could be. I don’t have them, but you take a lot more stress than I do.” He yawns and rubs his eyes again. “How about nightmares? Did you have the same one you had last night?”

  “Yeah.” I sigh. “Jackie-O killed me, and then I was in that temple again.”

  “She killed you in the Hungarian restaurant?”

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “Was anything different?”

  “Nope. Same room, same waitresses, same Jackie-O and Hector.” I stretch my arms over my head. “I was wearing the same clothes and hiding under the same Redskins hat.”

  Patrick looks at the floor and thinks for a few moments. Then he slowly raises his head and locks his eyes on to mine. “You mean,” he scowls, “my Redskins hat.”

  Oh, dammit!

  “Alix,” he gripes, “I looked all over for that thing!”

  I’m snagged and I’m tired, so I take his hand and put myself at his mercy. “Trick, I’m sorry. I lost it in the firefight, and I keep forgetting to get you another one.”

  “Wait.” Patrick is still scowling. “Was my Redskins hat supposed to be your disguise?”

  “Okay, okay. Jesus!” I throw my hands in the air. “The Front Desk already reamed me for this.”

  “Yeah, but Cyrus didn’t know you were wearing …” He stops in midsentence, and his eyes drift off to Massive Brainstorm Land. He mumbles, “Oh, my God.”

  “What?” I ask, desperate to change the subject. “Are they gonna win the Super Bowl this year?”

  “No, no.” He shakes his head and says, “The Five O’Clock Club!”

  I tilt my head. “What?”

  “The Five O’Clock Club,” he repeats. “Fredericks, at our meeting, after we rescued your mom.”

  “Trick, do you need to see a shrink, too?”

  “Sorry, I’m not saying this straight.” He starts over. When Fredericks berated me about my conduct on the Hector job, he said that it was a covert op, not a meeting of the Five O’Clock Club. As any good Redskins fan knows, the Five O’Clock Club is an informal postpractice gathering of players in an old equipment shed near the stadium. The guys hang out, drink some beer, and blow off steam. The sports writers found out about it, and the club became an open secret. The coaches figure it’s a good bonding experience for the players, so they pretend not to notice.

  The reason Patrick has latched on to this is that there were only three people who knew I was wearing a Skins hat on that mission: Jackie-O, Hector, and XSUS One, who received a picture of me from Jackie-O before I blew her into little Protector meatballs.

  Trick pensively holds his hand up to his mouth. “My God, Alix, you may have been right all along. Fredericks could be XSUS One. Which would mean … holy crap!”

  It would mean that the Director of the Strategic Services Council is in bed with a terrorist organization, that he betrayed his own agent to the enemy, and that he took out a murder contract on that agent’s daughter to cover it up. If Fredericks is capable of all this, God knows what else he’s up to!

  “Ho-o-oly crap,” I echo. “Should we tell somebody?”

  “Well … Jeez.” Patrick rubs his chin. “Not yet. It’s still a guess. I need to run a trace on Fredericks’s comm code to see if it comes back positive for XSUS One.” He leans on the counter. “I’ll need a terminal. We’ll find one later this morning, when the school’s buildings are open.”

  Fatigue sneaks up on me like a ninja kitten. Even with these stunning revelations, my head droops onto my chest. Patrick takes my hand and leads me back to bed. The two of us curl up together, with Trick spooned behind me. We face the window, so I see it’s slowly getting light outside. I’m tired, but I’m afraid to shut my eyes.

  Trick doesn’t fall asleep right away like he usually does. He’s probably figuring out some fucked-up unsolvable math formula in his head. I’m convinced I won’t sleep at all, so of course two minutes later I’m out like a light.

  DATE: August 27

  TO: Office of the Front Desk, Extreme Operations

  Division

  FROM: Dr. Thomas Herodotus, Medical Director,

  Extreme Operations Division

  SUBJECT: Psych-Eval for Scarlet

  Cyrus,

  As requested I’ve compiled a psychiatric evaluation for your Level 8 Interceptor, Scarlet. While physically and mentally quite capable of performing her job, I have grave doubts about Scarlet’s emotional ability to positively assimilate her experiences as she matures.

  Her family history is not encouraging on this count. Philip suffered from alcoholism, depression, and anxiety. Cleo clearly struggles with codependence and self-esteem issues.

  I’m aware of Scarlet’s outstanding record, but I would be remiss in my duty if I did not alert you to my conclusions. Extreme Operatio
ns is getting tremendous field value from this young woman, but at her current pace of promotion we won’t be getting it from her for long.

  Respectfully and sincerely,

  Tom

  CHAPTER 32

  SAME MORNING, 7:55 A.M. CET UNIVERSITY OF ZURICH, PROVINCE OF SWITZERLAND, GG

  I return to the temple. No Jackie-O this time. The monk’s head is still on the table, but the headless body has left the meditation room. After I sit on the floor, the head recites:

  “Spring’s tender flirtation, cut short by summer’s wrath.”

  I wake up to full daylight outside. I pat my hand around on Trick’s side of the bed, but he’s not there. I turn over and see him in the bathroom, brushing his teeth. He’s already dressed in his white Chucks, blue jeans, and a gray long-sleeved shirt with a big yin-yang symbol on the back. His sneakers still have some dark brown smudges on them from the bloody mess we made at the Hotel Luther.

  I flop back toward the window while I build up the energy to get out of bed. I’m exhausted from missing so much sleep last night. Madrenaline would help, but I worry it’s contributing to my hallucinations. I drag myself out of bed and get dressed. I pull on a gray T-shirt printed on the front with some unexplainably popular blue-skinned German cartoon character wearing a floppy white hat. I complete my outfit with my jeans, black Purcells, shoulder holster, and dark red leather jacket.

  Our cover is that we’re chemistry students from New York University, so we want to look like everyone else. The fad in student fashion lately is peace and unity. This is symbolized by wearing iconography and fashions from all the major powers. We don’t have anything Russian on, but this is German territory, so that’s a good thing to leave out. Those two countries have always had tense relations.

  Patrick and I shuffle downstairs to the school’s main quad. Our time here has been spent scouting around, looking for clues about Kazim and Carbon. We’ve seen some of the labs but not all of them. Naturally, the ones we can’t get into are the ones we’re most interested in. We keep getting stonewalled by the university staff. The Swiss are graciously consistent about politely refusing access to restricted areas.