by J. N. Chaney
The trick, Burner had discovered, was to keep things close to the truth. By sticking with similar variations of the truth he was unlikely to blank when pressed during casual conversation.
The dentist came in with his face buried in a data pad. He was wearing a white lab coat and thick, silver spectacles that made him seem more like a lab technician than a doctor. “Hello, Mr. Lian. I’m Dr. Alan Suffolk. It says here you have tooth pain that you think is from a cavity?”
Burner rubbed at the bottom of his jaw near the sensitive area. “That’s right, doc. Back tooth on the bottom right. Been bugging the crap out of me. Your office said you could squeeze me in for a filling.”
“We’ll see what we can do.” He lowered the data pad and pulled the stool around to the side of the patient’s chair. He had gray hair that almost matched the silvered rim of his glasses and that was kept at a shaggy mess. It gave him a mad-scientist vibe. “Let’s see what we’re working with. Say ‘Ah.’”
No small talk, no pleasantries, right to business. Burner could appreciate that. For a private practitioner, Dr. Suffolk had a large number of clients, as evidenced by the size and busyness of his waiting room. It probably served him to be as efficient as possible. If that meant Burner could get a filling without having to talk about the latest in celebrity gossip, all the better.
Dr. Suffolk pushed a button on a small, mirror-like device that linked it to his data pad and used it to get a look inside Burner’s mouth. He scanned the back of the mouth for a while, running the mirror close to Burner’s affected tooth and alternating between glancing at the readouts on the pad and manually looking at what the mirror was reflecting. “There is some serious decay here, Frank. How long has it been since you last visited a dentist?”
Burner answered honestly. “It has been a while. A long while.”
The doctor gave a disappointed tsk. “Not good. You should be getting check-ups at least once a year. Especially for a big coffee drinker like yourself. Yes, I can tell by the stains on your teeth.”
Burner didn’t want to tell the dentist that in many parts of the universe, forcing someone to open their mouth so you could jam pointy metal instruments into it was a popular and effective form of torture. Having been on both sides of that table, he wasn’t eager to volunteer himself for that treatment more than was necessary.
Dr. Suffolk pulled away and scooted the stool back a few paces. “I’ve got some bad news, Mr. Lian. I’m afraid what I’m seeing is much worse than can be fixed with a simple filling. The cavity has gone down deep. You’re going to need a root canal.”
Burner cursed himself for ignoring the discomfort for so long in hopes that it would go away. He, of all people, should know that if you ignore a problem too long, it only festers. He rubbed at the bottom of his jaw. “When can I get that done?”
The doctor tapped on his data pad a few times. “We could do it right now, if you want. I’ve got enough time in my schedule. It will require us putting you under a pretty strong local anesthesia. If you have other plans today, we can reschedule, but I highly recommend getting it done now. It’s only going to get worse. In fact, it could develop into an abscess, and believe me, those are no fun.”
Considering all Burner had planned for the rest of the day was to grab a coffee and catch up on current events, it was as good a time as any. He nodded. “Let’s do it.”
The doctor stepped out for a moment then returned with one of the dental assistants who helped him hook up the overhead lighting and a metal charging station for the dental tools to the chair’s power supply. He whispered something to her. She nodded and left, then she returned a few moments later with a syringe filled with a clear liquid. He took the syringe and scooted his stool back closer to the Burner’s chair.
He hesitated. His gaze was fixed on the syringe, as if studying it.
“You alright there, doc?”
Dr. Suffolk shook his head as if waking himself from a daze. “Oh, yes. Long day. But don’t worry, I’ve done enough of these that I could perform a root canal in my sleep.”
Burner forced a smile. “I believe you, but try not to fall asleep during the procedure, alright?”
“I’ll do my best. Open wide.”
Burner complied, then the doctor leaned in and stuck the needle into Burner’s lower gum. A cold sensation washed over him as the liquid from the syringe was forced into his tissue.
Suffolk shifted back in his stool and let out a sigh. It was only then that Burner noticed the thin sheen of sweat on his forehead. Burner began to suspect that there was more to the doctor’s vacant stare than just tiredness, but he was having an oddly tough time placing it.
Drugs? But he wasn’t showing any other symptoms, and his hands were steady when he was holding the needle.
Anxiety? But about what? Like he had said, this was a pretty standard procedure, one that an experienced dentist should have no issues with.
Dr. Suffolk rose from the stool. “It’ll take just a minute for the anesthesia to kick in and then we can get started.”
Burner was beginning to have second thoughts. If the dentist was having issues, perhaps he should reschedule. He began to push himself up on his elbows to say so, but he was suddenly overcome with dizziness. Suffolk had said there would be some wooziness, but this seemed extreme. He felt as though if he got off the chair he would fall flat on his face.
“Hey, doc, I think…” Whatever he was going to say was lost to him as his trail of thought evaporated.
Something was wrong. Almost reflexively, his adrenaline kicked in to compensate, a response from years where a momentary lapse in alertness could be fatal. His mind cleared enough for him to recognize the sound of someone else entering the room. Everything was too blurred for him to make out faces, but the doctor and the newcomer were talking, rapidly. The doctor was upset about something, agitated. Panicked.
Burner was in danger. Through the haze, that thought crystallized. He had become careless and missed the signs. The receptionist’s behavior. The dentist’s rushed examination. The lingering stare at the syringe.
He needed to act. But his body was no longer responding. Consciousness was falling away from him fast as his adrenaline wore out. One of the figures came toward him as the world began to dim.
And people wondered why he avoided the dentist.
2
Unknown Location
Burner wasn’t sure how much time had passed before he awoke in an unfamiliar, darkened room. The human instinct here would be to panic, but one of the first things he had been trained to do was defeat that emotion, because panicking led to reacting, and reacting meant you were on the defensive.
He still remembered his instructors drilling that lesson into him over and over again until he could repeat the lecture word for word. At the time, his experience had been with the Military Police, investigating crimes committed by and against members of the Union Military. For many of his peers that had meant tracking down deserters and looking into the occasional claim of sexual abuse. For Burner, though, it meant uncovering the corruption that had been running rampant among Union Officers. He had become so good at it that recruiters from Intelligence had reached out to him, offering to give him the chance to keep doing what he was doing, but on a larger scale. Special Ops.
Those early days, in an unmarked Intelligence facility on an unnamed asteroid in a system that did not show up on many charts, came back to Burner now. He could remember the smell of scrubbed air, the room with the single table that he had been forced to sit and read the entire operations manual repeatedly, and the simulations in which he had experienced the many ways his mistakes could lead to gruesome ends. All to instill one lesson into him, the core of Special Ops philosophy:
Assess. Plan. Act.
Three seemingly simple steps with a whole lot of meaning to them—all to avoid the pitfalls purely reacting to a situation would likely fall into. The methodology had saved Burner’s hide on many occasions, just as he was confident it cou
ld now.
Assess.
What was the last thing he remembered? He had been at the dentist’s office, Tooth-30 in Firstlanding on the planet Zanpus C145. Dr. Alan Suffolk had told him that he needed a root canal and had injected a local anesthetic into his mouth to numb it for the process. But it had been more than that. Suffolk had been waiting for him and had injected him with something to knock him out.
Burner ran through the known qualities of the drug to attempt to identify it. It had been a clear liquid while in the syringe. The area around the injection had been washed over with a cold sensation. Immediate symptoms were dizziness, followed by muddled thoughts, followed by loss of consciousness. It was fast acting, taking less than a minute to put even someone with Burner’s trained resistance down.
The only drug Burner could think of that fit that bill was Omnium, a powerful sedative used mostly in the transporting of dangerous wildlife from planet to planet. At one point, it had also been used by the Union when transferring prisoners convicted of High Crimes, but it had a nasty habit of causing some prisoners to never wake up, which raised ethical concerns that even they couldn’t ignore. These days it was a highly restricted substance and carried a hefty fee on the black market. It also earned one a minimum six month stay in Union prison accommodations and wasn’t worth the risk of carrying it. This gave Burner another piece of information. His captors had money.
What was the condition of his body? He tried to get up, but his legs buckled, still numb from whatever the Omnium had done to him. Sitting with his numb legs splayed out in front of him, Burner focused his attention inward to listen to his body’s aches and pains to learn if he was injured. It felt as though there was some bruising—not as if he had been worked over, but more likely that he had been handled roughly while being carried. Perhaps knocked into a wall or two. Nothing felt broken or out of place, though he couldn’t help but notice that the ache in his mouth was still present. If anything, it was worse than before. The least the dentist could have done if he was going to knock him out was fix his tooth.
How far had he been moved? That was a tougher one, what with the unpredictability of the drug cruising around his system. He sifted carefully through his memories, trying to see if he had any flashes of waking up and being re-dosed, but there was nothing. It had been a single dose, and not a particularly large one. He couldn’t have been out for more than a few hours, less than a day for certain. And since it didn’t feel like he was currently on a starship, it would reason that he was still somewhere on C145.
So, where was he? He hadn’t been on C145 for long, but he had a habit of studying up on a planet before spending time there. He was modestly familiar with the major civilization centers and landmarks. They had enough time to get him out of Firstlanding, but the next major city was a hundred kilometers away. From what little he could see through the darkness, he was in a well-constructed steel building, so it was unlikely he was out in the boonies where things would be made out of wood or concrete. Most likely he was still somewhere in Firstlanding, probably one of the lower levels where there were no windows that reached the sun and all lighting was artificial.
The only bit of illumination was provided by a faint blue light coming from the wall opposite Burner. It didn’t reach far enough for him to see the walls on the other side of the room. The part it did reveal had no entrances, just solid steel. There was no furniture or anything he could use as a weapon. The room was quiet except for the faint whirl of recycled air being pushed into it. He couldn’t see them, but he knew from the sound that it came from a number of small, circular vents roughly the circumference of a thumb, too small for him to do anything with.
Who had taken him, and why? Those were the big questions, and unfortunately the ones he had no answers for. He hadn’t been picked randomly, that much was clear from the behavior of the receptionist when he checked in with the name Frank Lian. And since Frank had never done anything to warrant any dangerous enemies, that meant his alias had been burned and his captors knew exactly who they had in custody.
That ruled out human trafficking as a cause as well. There were much easier targets than a former Union Intelligence officer with Special Ops training. Plus, if Dr. Suffolk made a habit of kidnapping his patients to sell to traffickers, he doubted the practice would have been nearly as busy or well-reviewed. The nervousness Suffolk and the receptionist had shown told him that this was the first time they had done anything like this. Something they had been coerced into doing, threatened instead of bribed. Someone who does something awful because they are paid to doesn’t show the flicker of remorse Suffolk did when he gazed at that syringe. That’s what it was when he hesitated. Remorse.
Money was a pretty common motivation for kidnappers, but neither Burner nor the Frank alias had anything notable there. Nothing worthwhile in the account, no wealthy employers, no friends or family with the kind of resources to make it worth the trouble. There was always the possibility that his captors thought that he had access to special expenditure accounts from his days in Intelligence—ones that he could draw on at his discretion. But that, like many rumors that made a career in the Union sound more appealing than the low-paying grind it actually was, was a complete myth. If he could assume his captors were intelligent, they would know that.
It was possible that one of his former enemies from when he worked in Intelligence had finally caught up with him. He had crossed paths with many dangerous figures over the years. Warlords, corrupt politicians, double agents in the highest ranks of the Union Military. While many of them had wound up dead or behind bars, just as many had managed to use their money and influence to skirt through the Union’s legal system and come out the other side. The ever-present danger of one of them catching up with him was why Burner still operated under aliases today, years after his departure from the Union. Even for trivial things like going to the dentist.
So unknown captors had taken him for unknown reasons, locked him up somewhere in the bowels of Firstlanding, and left him in a room with no furniture, no windows, and barely any light.
Overall, not a lot to work with.
Yet surprisingly, not the worst situation he had ever been in.
This reminded him of one of his first missions in the Deadlands. He had been working undercover to infiltrate a prolific gang of Ravagers and find out who in the Union was leaking the routes of transport ships. It had gone well for a while, with Burner working his way into the good graces of the man in charge, a Ravager who went by the name One Eye, on account of having one eye. For all their cruelty, Ravagers weren’t a particularly creative bunch.
It all went to hell in one of those ways that was completely beyond his control. One of the new boys was a Union deserter who recognized Burner from his time in the Military Police. Burner had been called into One Eye’s office one day, expecting to finally receive his invitation into the inner circle and learning at long last who his Union contact was, only to find the deserter standing there, looking smug, as a dozen weapons were pointed at him.
The Ravagers had locked him in a room much like this one, though that one had been on some no-name planet in the middle of the Deadlands. They had bound his hands together and shackled his legs to a chain attached to the floor that didn’t let him move more than a frustrating amount of centimeters from the center of the room. His time there had been... unpleasant, to put it mildly. The Ravagers might be amateurs in the field of torture compared to the Union, but a consistent schedule of beatings will wear a man down nonetheless. Burner didn’t resist, he needed to act as though he was defeated and had given in if he were going to make them relax enough to make a mistake.
His chance came when one of the boys decided they wanted to try using him like a pinata, so they unchained him from the floor with the intention of hanging him from the ceiling. Burner had learned a lot of things that day, such as how long it takes to strangle someone into unconsciousness with a short length of chain, and how to pilot a shuttle with your hands bo
und together.
At least here he was unbound, which either meant his captors were horribly underestimating him, or they had planned to keep a good distance from him. Instinct told him it was the latter.
Plan.
There wasn’t much he could do while his body was still partially paralyzed, but the Omnium would have to work its way through his system eventually. He’d take a lap of the room, figure out where the exits were. Feel around the walls in the dark if he had to. Get a sense for how big the room was and figure out possible camera locations.
And then he’d investigate the panel that was giving off that mild blue light.
As if commanded by his thoughts, the panel suddenly lit up, its mild blue glow turning to a bright white. Burner had to shield his eyes. There was a bad habit among captives who had been locked in the dark for a long time to look straight up at the sky when they were freed, which caused many of them to have permanent damage to their sight. As much as Burner’s curiosity demanded he look at what was happening to the panel, he resisted, looking instead to the ceiling where the light was dimmer and waited for his eyes to properly adjust. Once he was sure he could look at the panel without losing his sight, he slowly lowered his gaze.
The panel turned out to be a screen, built into the wall so seamlessly it was tough to pinpoint the exact spot the screen ended and the wall began. The screen was currently white and empty, with the exception of a single blinking black line. A text cursor.
As Burner watched, words began to appear, letter-by-letter in place of the cursor.
We have a mission for you.
Burner glanced around, hoping to get a look at a camera now that the room was lit a little better, but he still came up empty. “Mission? Do you know who I am?” He already knew the answer, but the way his captors responded, if they responded at all, could tell him a lot.
