The human now running Saldana Ri’s newly constituted Praetorian Guard, Patrick Murphy O’Brien, was a veteran troublemaker from his days in the conflict in Northern Ireland. He had had no allegiances to either the IRA or the British Government; he just enjoyed watching his countrymen kill each other. He was neither Catholic nor Protestant; he was instead still an adherent of the old gods whom his kind continued to worship. His fervor, and that of all his fanatical followers, was that of an unmatched zealot whose devotion to cause and leader was beyond rationality.
His detour into the service of the Black Shirts was easy; almost too easy. That the Black Shirts were a small group of radical extremists, even more fundamentalist than any other group within the Gens Collective, only served to provide him with the necessary rationale for his treason.
Patrick believed in the ideological purity that the Black Shirts espoused, whether true or not. Personally, for O’Brien, his psychosis and bloodlust had to be fed in some manner and his previous master’s didn’t often find him sufficient work or amusement. The old regime was getting soft.
This new cause, the Black Shirts, was as good as any and, to him, formed the only legal basis he required for his various rampages. He felt quite justified in carrying out his direct orders from Saldana. He had no reason to question them, and, therefore, he did not.
Patrick liked one thing and would ally himself with any movement that would give him the opportunity to pursue this vocation. He enjoyed killing. He could kill using many tools, but he preferred an assignment that required his one-on-one skills. And, he preferred assignments in which the victim or victims needed to be taught a lesson before they perished at his hands. If whole families were involved, as they sometimes were in Gens executions, he would take his time and make sure the whole family witnessed, and experienced, the suffering he would impose. Then death would come swiftly and often simultaneously in a manner he would work out beforehand.
Patrick Murphy O’Brien was a sadistic murderer without compassion or remorse. Only his unparalleled skill and thoroughness kept him alive after years of dangerous assignments. Both the Gens Collective and the Black Shirts recognized that he could easily turn on them, if so tasked by a new master, and probably would anyway even if he wasn’t. Sometimes Patrick just needed to keep busy.
Idle hands, you know.
“Meet me in Boston and come alone,” she said. “I have multiple assignments and it’s important that I detail each to you in person.”
“Where?”
“You’ve been to the apartment on Bleeker Street?”
“Yes. Lived there for a month after that assignment in upstate New York. I must thank you for that one; I still enjoy recalling the details. Eleven victims, all women and children. The fear, the terror of knowing their turn was coming. The revulsion and begging for the lives of those they loved most dearly as I found new ways to deprive each of them of the sap of life. Drained slowly, carefully with meticulous attention to every element that would prolong both life and pain. Your instructions, so expressive of the intimacy I felt in generating true agony and torment. And … creative. Ah, the satisfaction had been immense. I cannot thank you enough. I can still conjure it often.”
“You’re an artist, Patrick. And I, well, I just provide you with the canvas on which to express your inner creativity. Few understand you as I do; they couldn’t understand the strength, the will, and the patience it requires for you to … perform. The planning, the attention to detail, the confluence of inflicting both physical and deeply psychological trauma. I have enjoyed your work too.”
“Shall I film your new projects too?”
“I insist. I must maintain records of the retribution we exact for both failure and for disloyalty. Disloyalty or treason merit death. Failure merits your intervention using non-lethal skills. Examples must be made.”
“And your role this time?”
“Same as the past, with a new experiment or two I’m devising. One I will want to … experience personally. Perhaps with you, perhaps with another. I believe corrective action for my sister is past due for her own failures. I’ll want to watch that experiment. Just pain though, I still need her alive. I’ll want top quality audio, and video for that. You may have assistance with her; perhaps me, perhaps one of my lieutenants. Lydia is due for reward and needs also to be fed. She isn’t you, but she aspires to her own unique concept of greatness. You two would make a darling couple.”
“It would be my pleasure to meet and collaborate with your … staff. I claim no monopoly on craft; I am always willing to learn.”
“Is it true you have never…” Saldana hesitated, “That you remain pure?”
“I am.”
“I shall consider that for our next encounter. I have some thoughts on the matter.”
“I await your instructions, Saldana.”
“Then meet me at the Bleeker Street apartment on Friday night. I shall arrive around seven. Be prepared for my briefing. If you do well, I’ll bring you a small treat for us both to enjoy. Just amusement, though. This one I’ll need later too. I have something special in mind for her, and her family. She should be disciplined though. Only fair. I may decide to hunt her family and let her decide who lives and who dies.”
“Sophie’s Choice?”
“Exactly.”
***
Saldana knew that eventually, and perhaps sooner rather than later, it would be time to send Patrick off to his reward to the afterlife. As an adherent of the old gods, Patrick could conceive of no afterlife, and promises of numerous virgins or eternal bliss held no sway. His was a “here and now” existence and only the most depraved of contemporaneous rewards would be sufficient to motivate him. As that seemed somewhat more likely to be in a living Hell as anywhere else in the cosmos, it seemed he would have no incentive that didn’t involve still living toys for him to enjoy.
Special rewards were his favorite. The kind he preferred involved the loved ones of his fellow Guards or the intimates of his superiors. His craft was employed in that fashion when the Code of Strictures proscribed punishment of any sort. He had never seen or read the Code; he was forbidden to even speak the name aloud.
It wouldn’t be correct, technically speaking, to say that Patrick enjoyed killing. To be precise, thought Saldana, he enjoyed everything up to the very precipice of death. Death was often simply a consequence of what preceded it; sometimes it was simply the mandated outcome. His reward wasn’t only the stature, importance and identity of who was to come to his attention, but the length of time he would be allowed to enjoy his plaything.
Occasionally he would be commanded to kill immediately upon location of target and opportunity; most often he would not. He always tried to decline his instant kill orders; he came to understand that this was becoming less possible as time went by. Exigencies and short staffing of true reliable psychopaths had become drivers of fast action within the Movement.
Patrick needed the thrill of death’s foreplay. Where was the joy in mindless killing? He was an artist and his fellow beings the canvass he used to express this inner joy.
If Patrick had heard his master correctly, she was willing to share her sister with him. He had met Calista Gold on more than one occasion and was quite familiar with her scientific work. Utterly mundane, to his way of thinking, but essential to the overall goal of returning the world to its proper place. To the old world and the old ways.
He had always served the Gens Collective, though he knew it under other names at other times. The Black Shirt faction Saldana and her sister represented were worthy of his talents and he obeyed their commands without reservation. As had his father, and his grandfather before him with other Gens factions. The line of obedient family servants went back generations untold; his family history had only recently been revealed to him along with the entire history of tasks undertaken and completed by his forefathers.
His mind swirled with the possibilities which undergirded the unfl
agging loyalty she demanded of him. For Patrick, this was no hardship.
In two days’, time, he would return to his newly adopted home, Boston. Then he would sample Calista Gold, making sure not to damage her permanently. Saldana might allow him to mark her though and allow him the pleasure of her pain.
Anything was possible now.
Chapter 15
Patrick had arrived early in the morning and meticulously set about arranging the apartment to his demanding tastes. He was himself a fastidious man, well-groomed and well dressed. He hated clutter for the disorder it represented; had had never had a roommate or even close friend for that matter. He had begun living in Boston shortly after a lengthy stint in Northern Ireland, where he had played both sides as fools, and taken care to never leave a soul living who could later reveal him as the treacherous psychopath he was.
Patrick’s final goodbye to his fellow countrymen and comrades in arms was played out in a little country farmhouse about one hundred kilometers east of Belfast in the isolated rural countryside. He had claimed to have been the owner of the farm property which had belonged to an old Irish Republican family; in fact, that was, but a cover story invented by his father who had murdered the last remnant of family years earlier. The family, the Brannigan’s’, had been living in the United States for over a generation when news arrived that an elderly relation, and last proprietor of the farm, had passed away.
The farm had been left to Sean Brannigan and his son, Dylan, then residing in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. The story had come to the attention of the Praetorian Guards, through secret channels, who simply falsified documents and substituted Patrick and his father for Sean and his son. The old man had never met his distant relations, so neither he nor anyone in the County knew who or what to expect from their distant American relations. When they arrived, all documents had been certified to the satisfaction of the locals, and Patrick and his father took possession of the farm and all its holdings.
Patrick’s father, Lendral, was from a rural part of Ireland, but hadn’t lived there in over thirty years; he left Ireland as a young man, married and produced a son, then disposed of his wife, having little need for the encumbrance she represented. He traveled constantly on assignment for fringe organizations of the Gens Collective, took his son with him everywhere, educated him and taught him a trade.
Like his father, Patrick was an imposing 6’3” tall, lean and muscled and well educated by the finest tutors that the Gens could provide for their human colleagues. He was adept at the martial arts, though not a black belt in any. He preferred the use of knives for close quarters and a silenced 9mm pistol as a firearm. He was cold, calculating and cruel, but not stupid. While he reveled in terrorizing his victims, he was both cautious and careful. No target had ever escaped his capture, and their eventual end; his techniques were learned from a father whose lessons were both harsh and effective.
To the extent that Patrick loved anyone or anything, Patrick loved his father. Perhaps idolized would be a more apt description. The two were inseparable for many years and when Lendral died, he briefly felt the pain of separation. But, Patrick was prepared to follow in his father’s footsteps and when he was reassigned to Boston, he was given permission to end his presence in Northern Ireland with a memorable parting and final get together. The celebratory bash included the wives and children of his closest colleagues in Northern Ireland on each side of the political spectrum. Eighteen wives and children, all young and attractive, were invited to the party, nine each from the Brits and the IRA.
Patrick invited them to a location in Belfast, then transported them for a surprise party for their husbands at the farmhouse. Shhhh, he said, you wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise. None of the proud wives nor any of the excited children wanted that.
The families were gassed in the van, bound, and brought to the basement chamber of horrors at the farmhouse. It took Patrick a full two weeks of play with his victims to finally end their nightmare. He had found a way to rotate, and not kill his playthings; he was somewhat distressed to receive a call from Boston that his presence was required sooner than planned. He negotiated for an extension of few more days, then wrapped up his diversions. He left plenty of photographic evidence for the authorities, then departed for America.
He left no fingerprints or any evidence of who he really was. Both sides claimed he worked for the other side but when they realized they had both been played, neither side wished to pursue the matter. If they had, it might all come out in the tabloids and that simply wouldn’t do. He had gotten away cleanly and would never be found.
And it was a mystery the authorities would never even attempt to solve.
***
Saldana Ri and her sister, Calista Gold, arrived promptly at seven in the evening at the apartment on Bleeker Street, in downtown Boston. They were accompanied by another woman, Tory Bright, the woman in charge of another project that was falling behind schedule at their secret Lab in Oakland, California. Both Calista Gold and Tory Bright had been asked out to dinner by Saldana, but before moving on for their reservation at eight at a toney Bistro in the Boston Financial District, they would stop by an apartment on the way, and drop off some new work assignments for one of their field operatives.
Saldana’s countenance betrayed no deception; in fact, Saldana was dropping off the instructions for Patrick’s next assignments, including the termination orders and instructions for her husband and children. There were also several more exciting assignments he had been given, but two lessons in disappointed expectations were to be meted out this evening. Saldana was there to witness the punishment and to participate in the evenings entertainment. She didn’t enjoy inflicting pain in the same way as Patrick; nonetheless, she derived her own sick satisfaction from the experience. Had she been human, she would’ve been diagnosed as a sadist. But she wasn’t human; to her, this was just plain fun.
After they were done, Saldana would meet a few of her colleagues elsewhere, and enjoy a new wine one of her loyalists had discovered.
“It’s from Napa,” she said. “I’m surprised you weren’t already familiar with the vintner. I know you keep an apartment in the City; you must not get out much anymore.”
Saldana smiled at the passing thought. She hadn’t gotten out in years; her obligations to her pet human and their three little mongrels had been time consuming. But was that all; just passing meaningless time? Was there not some element that she could call happiness? She mostly knew and accepted that her life was a sham but then, on the other hand, sex with her human monkey had been gratifying. He was … satisfying, and in many, many novel and creative ways. Not like Gens males; always in a hurry and procreation only. Humans were a pathetic and inferior species but, at times, they were delightful in their creativity and singular pursuit of wanton physical pleasure.
Her pet took his time, was concerned for her sexual gratification, and delayed his own until, she had achieved hers. Perhaps she would keep him around and, in a cage, under the guise of preferring to consume his blood. She had frequently. He didn’t stint in this ritual; he was … considerate of her needs and desires. She would miss him.
Miss him? What foolishness for the leader of the Movement whose core tenet was the destruction of the species homo sapiens.
Thinking this way about a human for any other Gens in her brave new world would earn immediate death. She might make an exception for her own perversions though. Perhaps she would reinstitute slavery as in Roman times. Yes, that might be the answer for her … deviant behavior. She would recreate a nobility, and the nobles would be allowed personal slaves. Human slaves.
Saldana would think about that. Perhaps the death sentence she was intent upon passing should be reconsidered.
For now, at any rate. There was still loads of time and she might want some personal physical recreation before success was final and certain behaviors banned. After all, it had been a while…
She missed her old life. And him.
And them.
What was wrong with her?
***
The door swung wide open, and Patrick Murphy O’Brien welcomed the ladies into his rooms. Both Calista Gold and Tory Bright were aware of the fearsome reputation owned by PMO, as he was often called. The Gens did not, as a rule, want to know him; few wanted to be anywhere near him for any reason. While the old Gens Code of Strictures didn’t forbid Gens on Gens murder, it was almost unknown outside the realm of political assassination.
Human on Gens murder was a different matter entirely. It had always been employed by the Gens leadership; why the subterfuge was tolerated, or even what difference it made, was a quirk of Gens psychology. Still if a Gens couldn’t locate a willing human to carry out the act, there would be no victim. The occasional Gens lucked out that way.
Saldana asked the girls to repair to the living room while she and Patrick discussed business. When she concluded her business, they would leave. Eventually that was true; however, they wouldn’t be leaving together this night.
“Patrick, have you done as I ask? Is the room prepared?”
“It is, Mistress. To your exact specifications and with all the audio and video you requested. All copies of the video will be handed over to you tonight; I will retain nothing. The disc and the hard drives are removable and will be sealed and handed over before you leave the premises.”
“I am promoting you tonight, here and now Patrick. You will henceforth be the Captain of my personal Praetorian Guard. Do you swear personal allegiance to me, obeying no other?”
The suddenness of the offer shocked Patrick. There was no higher office his kind could attain. Even his father had never even considered reaching these heights. What this would mean in terms of advancement in status, and perks, would establish him with high office and privilege. And the power, the power to pursue his own pleasures freely, restrained only by her, would mean his own immense freedom.
Probe Page 77
