The Agency, Volume II

by Sylvan, Dianne

  JM: Twenty-five, according to our latest estimates. The point is, Agent, you seem to go through Agency resources at an alarming rate. Uniforms, ammunition--thirteen trench coats in the last year. It says here that one was burned, two were shot full of bullet holes, one dissolved in some sort of organic acid--

  SA-7: Semen.

  JM: Excuse me?

  SA-7: The coat you’re referring to, if it’s the one from last month, was, well, come upon. A creature called an Ynigiri--not to be confused with the sushi--about seven feet tall, with five penises. Looks a lot like a hentai tentacle monster. They breed voraciously; each male is able to fertilize five females at once.

  JM: And...why was there one in El Paso?

  SA-7: Someone conjured it to make rape porn. The man who summoned the creature had half a dozen young women in schoolgirl outfits tied up nearby, white panties and everything.

  (Pause)

  VANESSA MCMILLAN, DIRECTOR (VM): You look a little green, Mr. Mechling, do you need a break?

  JM: No, no. I’m all right. So I’m assuming that you killed this creature, and in the process your uniform was damaged?

  SA-7: Yes. To completely kill it you have to lop off all five dicks. Unfortunately for my coat, one of them started...unloading...before I cut it off. Ynigiri semen has a lower pH than battery acid; it would have killed the girls, eaten their internal organs over a period of several hours.

  VM: Mr. Mechling? Are you sure you're all right?

  JM: Ah, fine...Janice, could you get me some water, please?

  (JANICE RETZINGER leaves the room. Returns two minutes later.)

  JM: All right. Why don’t we move on...here, on page 22, I have a list of the incidental expenses charged to your Agency-issued Visa card. There are a variety of questionable items here, the first one that stands out being a charge to an Austin store called Book People for $23.96 on March 5. We don’t have a receipt for that.

  SA-7: March...oh, yes, I bought my niece The Tales of Beedle the Bard.

  JM: Using the Agency’s expense account.

  SA-7: Yes.

  JM: How do you justify that expense?

  SA-7: Have you ever tried to say no to a baby Elf?

  JM: With all due respect, Agent, I don’t think--

  SA-7: Very well, Mr. Mechling, let me put it in terms you’ll understand. Dr. Nava is interested in learning more about Elven anatomy and there was no data on children. The girl willingly submitted to a battery of medical tests here at the base. As child labor laws and so forth are difficult to apply to immortals, rather than bringing up any thorny legal issues I compensated her with a book.

  JM: (Unintelligible)

  SA-7: If it makes you feel better I’ll give you cash for it.

  JM: Er...next on the list we have regular charges to Whole Foods market--usually less than five dollars apiece, but at least once a week for the last few months. Your species does not eat, Agent. What have you been buying at a supermarket?

  SA-7: Oh, for fuck’s sake.

  VM: I’ll field this one, Agent 7. One of our other Agents, an Elf, has a history of physical and psychological damage from his pre-Agency experiences. This past winter he was badly injured and as a result suffered a setback. Dr. Nava has him on antidepressants and a number of holistic therapies as well. One that seems to help particularly well, SA-7 purchases regularly at Whole Foods. We offered to take over the expense of that therapy from SA-7, as it is part of SA-5’s medical care.

  JM: What exactly is this therapy?

  SA-7: Blueberries.

  JM: Did you say blueberries?

  SA-7: Sometimes raspberries.

  JM: Fruit? Is that a therapy specific to Elves?

  SA-7: If I say it is, will you shut the hell up about it?

  (Pause)

  VM: While you’re looking, Mr. Mechling, there should be some charges to Strait Music company; those also apply to SA-5’s recovery.

  JM: Er...how so?

  SA-7: Violin strings.

  JM: What kind of injuries respond to fruit and violin strings?

  VM: Agent Rowan's entire family was slaughtered in front of him and he was sold as a sex slave for twenty years. In December his daughter kidnapped and tortured him and was then shot. In spite of all of that he continues to be a vital member of my team, has assisted in the development of groundbreaking technology, and has helped save the city more than once. I think that's worth some fruit and a few violin strings. And speaking of which, I want it on record that I object strongly to this review. SA-7 has my full confidence.

  JM: Then why did you insist on being present for these proceedings?

  VM: To keep him from killing you.

  (Pause)

  JM: Er...I think we can skip most of the rest of these, there's just a few that...oh, here. Here's one. You may be able to justify the fruit expenses, Agent, but given that you, as I said, don't eat, could you give me more information about this charge on May 11 for $86 at the Dog and Duck Pub?

  SA-7: My trainee had a bad day.

  JM: I'm afraid I need more details than that.

  SA-7: Fine. She had to kill someone. She doesn't like that. We were on a drug bust and I was injured--eleventh trench coat, by the way--and in order to stop the suspect from escaping I ordered her to take my weapon and shoot the man in the leg. She pursued the suspect on foot and he veered into a crowded area and attempted to take a hostage. She shot him. It was an excellent shot, too. She's come a long way.

  JM: And the charge...?

  SA-7: She was upset, so I took her out for a drink.

  JM: An $86 drink?

  SA-7: Okay, several drinks. And some chips. The Dog and Duck has fantastic fish and chips, I hear. We both got a little inebriated and ended up taking a cab back to base, which should also be on your report. I gave the driver a generous tip because Sara threw up on the seat.

  JM: You went out drinking on the Agency's account, on Agency time?

  SA-7: We were off the clock.

  JM: Nevertheless, Agent, I'm afraid I can't authorize--

  SA-7: All right, Mr. Mechling.

  VM: (Sotto voce) Here it comes. Clear the building.

  SA-7: According to your records you've been with the Finances department for a year and were just promoted. See, this sort of thing happens to me a lot--some new punk gets pushed up to a new post and decides to make himself look good by auditing me. You'd have done much better to give the Financial Director a blow job. He has a very nice cock. But the thing is, you're not going to intimidate me with numbers and facts, and you're not going to do anything about my expenses, any more than the last six pencil-dicks have done when they've swept in here with reports and reprimands. And do you know why?

  JM: Um...d...I...um...why?

  SA-7: Because if I were to walk because some snot-nosed kid from Harvard made me angry, you'd be eating your own testicles the second you got back to Washington. Without me this Agency would be nothing.

  (Pause)

  SA-7: Mr. Mechling, you're staring.

  JM: Um...udda...y...your eyes are ch...I mean...do...okay.

  SA-7: Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to code off for the evening, drink some blood, and get laid; and you are going to take your little report and go home, and not bother me again. And if I use up more bullets than the entire fucking NRA, you're going to get down on your knees and thank God that I'm out there keeping you from being eaten by things that go bump in the night. Have a nice day.

  (JASON ADAMS leaves the room.)

  VM: Will there be anything else, Mr. Mechling? If not you're welcome to stay for dinner in our cafeteria. It's fajita night.

  JM: I...

  (VANESSA MACMILLAN activates intercom.)

  VM: Steve, would you bring Mr. Mechling a new pair of pants from Uniform Services?

  STEPHEN PARKS, EXECUTIVE ASSISANT, OVER INTERCOM: Right away, Ma'am.

  VM: Those are $39.95, by the way. You can charge it to SA-7's Visa.

  (VANESSA MACMILLAN leaves the room.)


  Sage

  Sage wants cookies.

  She hasn't baked anything in months, and she tells herself she never will again, but gradually the trauma and shock have worn off and she keeps catching herself remembering the warm elastic feel of bread dough beneath her hands, the scent of cake at the precise moment it needs to come out of the oven. She never used a timer.

  She leans back in her seat, the headset clacking against the chair. Thankfully it's wireless so she isn't tethered to the console—it has a range of about twenty feet, so she can walk over to the printer without losing the signal. She twists the chair left and right, waiting, thinking of chocolate chips and brown sugar.

  [Coordinates?]

  Sage sits forward. [Stand by.]

  The satellite network is still searching—reading heat signatures, scanning for psychic traces, interfacing with the Eyes to locate the suspect's hiding place. He'd gone to ground somewhere downtown, and she had a sinking feeling he was somewhere on Sixth Street hiding among the Saturday night glut of revelers. Lots of people, lots of activity, and any attempt to apprehend him could cause a scene or possibly civilian casualties.

  Finally, a beep: the network locks on. Shit, she was right.

  [Sixth and Trinity,] she says. She imagines her thoughts traveling through the headset into the console, her telepathy boosted by terabytes of memory and processor speeds easily a hundred times faster than anything available to the public, then racing across space into the amazingly small bit of technology behind the Agent's ear. She enters a series of codes on her console commanding the computer to transmit the satellite imagery the same way, and again, she imagines it: a map unfurling in his mind, just behind the eyes, somewhere between thought and sight.

  He is not pleased with what he sees.

  [Fuck. He's in a piano bar. This should be fun.]

  Cookies. Or, perhaps, a cupcake—a loaded thought, but unavoidable. Would anyone eat them now, if she baked them? Was the memory still too fresh? She thinks of the pearly sheen of her Nana’s buttercream recipe, swirling into peaks in the bowl beneath the beaters, of adding a few grains of powdered coloring to produce a soft shade of pink, a whisper of the raspberry flavor hitting the nose a second before that first bite. A single plump berry placed on top—a color so perfect and deep she could never replicate it.

  She watches the tracker in the Ear, the blue dot on the secondary screen getting closer and closer to the red dot on the primary console. She knows that most Ears have the occasional signal loss and fade-out of their Agent's telepathy wavering, like a CD skipping, but she's lucky. Her Agent's power never falters. He's like a machine himself, never stopping, never tiring.

  She's terrified of him.

  And yet she thinks he's the most fascinating creature on the planet, second perhaps only to his lover, the Elf who helped save her life.

  Sage can't fathom why the two of them are together, much less how they've managed to become so inseparable: the one is a healer, gentle and compassionate and she's sure unable to hurt a fly; the other, a cold-blooded killer, a hunter, with an acid wit and absolutely no fear…almost no emotion, really, just drive. She had only seen him react emotionally to one thing: Rowan’s kidnapping. She knows he loves the Elf, and the fact that he is capable of love and still capable of such violence makes him that much scarier to her.

  She is telepathically connected to him, true, but there is a wall of technology between them, providing enough distance that she can speak into his mind without being afraid of what she'll overhear. She still doesn't like it, but she's good, and he likes her, and it's better than being a secretary or having her memory wiped so she can return to the private sector.

  [Entering the bar,] he informs her, following field protocol. The Ear records their conversations and logs all transmissions, so occasionally the Agents verbalize their locations and activities to match up with the tracking data. That way there's never any question that they're obeying the rules.

  She's well aware how he feels about the rules—generally he makes his own, and follows Agency regulations when it's convenient. She's been summoned to several pro forma inquests already to give her account of his behavior, just as a cross-reference with the network logs when something doesn’t fit. It usually only takes one meeting for Washington Agency representatives to decide it's best just to stay out of SA-7's way.

  He likes to kill people. He eats people's blood. She might have requested someone else, except that she can't help but admit that working with him is…well, fun.

  [Oh, for the love of God, he's singing 'Piano Man.' Let the record show the perpetrator was shot for egregious violation of good taste.]

  Sage holds back a snort. [What's the plan?]

  [Beam me the building, will you?]

  She pulls up a schematic of the bar and sends it to him; there's the usual four-second delay as he absorbs the information. It's all very much like The Matrix.

  Sage often wishes she'd opted for the blue pill.

  [Suspect has a surprisingly good vocal range for a Tantarian demon.]

  [You've got to be shitting me,] she replies.

  In answer, he switches the Ear to camera mode, and suddenly her console is a video display of the scene: a crowded, dimly lit bar, several dozen people perched on stools around tables, drinking, singing along with the man behind the piano, who is belting out Billy Joel like his life depends on it.

  Of course, she can't really see everything the Agent sees—his vision is far better than the telepathic camera's resolution, and there are nuances of shadow and light he takes in automatically that simply cannot translate over the network. He can tell the pianist isn’t human just by looking.

  That's how he often seems to act before he could possibly know what's going to happen; he senses motion and changes in the environment on a level that seems prescient but isn't really. There are times that he says things that make no sense until two seconds later, and the way he sizes up a situation is utterly inhuman. It's amazing, and scary, and another reason she doesn't ask for a transfer. How many people have a chance to look through the eyes of a vampire?

  The suspect looks human, but it's an illusion; she's seen the pictures of what's underneath the skin suit. He's got maybe another hour before his ectoplasmic energy begins to break down the dermis and the whole thing bursts at the seams—she's seen that, too, and it killed her appetite for days. Most demons are not intelligent, and are in fact little more than automatons, but the Tantarians are at another level, almost as sophisticated in their way as the Elder races. That makes them more dangerous and harder to kill.

  He's right; the demon can sing. He's got the crowd involved, too, dancing in their seats as he switches to a medley of songs from Grease.

  [Gods help me,] SA-7 groans. [I'll be you didn't know that Travolta isn't human, either.]

  [You're joking, right?]

  She hears him snort softly. [Scientologists. Look them up in the database sometime. Moving to apprehend suspect.]

  [How are you going to get him with all those people?]

  [Watch and learn.]

  He keeps the camera on, and she watches as he sidles around the dais where the piano is situated. People are going up to the piano and slipping bills into the glass bowl with their requests on pieces of paper, and between songs the demon, who she knows has killed the real musician and stowed his body in a bathroom stall, fishes out a request or two and plays whatever they've asked for, if he knows it. He has a pretty decent repertoire.

  SA-7 walks up to the piano and drops a dollar into the bowl, then lays a piece of paper directly in front of the demon, who glances at it and turns stark white.

  The Agent pats him on the shoulder, then walks away into the crowd, edging around the periphery toward the most likely exit: the hallway that leads to the restrooms.

  "All right," the demon announces as he finishes "You're the One that I Want" to thunderous applause. "Gonna take a quick break, but when I come back we'll have more requests!"
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br />   With that, he traipses lightly down the steps, and the crowd parts to let him through—he fakes a move toward the men's room, but turns left instead of right, making for the back door.

  [Locking down the building in three…two…one…] Sage says, entering another code, this one to send out an energy pulse through the Agent's Ear that will temporarily override the bar's security system. All the exits will be impassable for about fifteen seconds; any longer would arouse suspicion and violate fire codes, possibly getting the owners in trouble that would take the Agency days to unravel. It’s just long enough for the Agent to slip in behind him.