Some agents feared they would never be called anything but a bunch of “humping hatchlings” or “pissing purgatories.” Derogatory names almost as bad as being labeled a “citizen.”
PAIC Blake wrapped his hand around the syringe in his pocket.
But something happened to “Jake,” most people called him. No agent had seen fit to tuck the arrogant hatchling of the infamous Agent Blake—Jake’s father—under their wing. “I don’t want junior under my protection,” they joked.
It seemed like every other purgatory from his class had found a place to perch. They had effortlessly flown from sentry to agent to citizen compliance. Some of them even went to Prime Officer protection—they became POPs guarding rich businessmen and powerful clergy. Others, with hardly a flap of their wings to glide them, landed at the peak of Protection’s great mountain of misery itself—intelligence interrogator.
Meanwhile, Jake learned to do things that “other” way, the hard way. Every young agent, pissing purgatory or humping hatchling, knew what that meant—twice the patrols, twice the traffic-ticks, and twice the time taking testament from panic-pissing people on the street.
Disgruntled citizens marked Jake’s career as he screeched and screamed his way through pedestrian compliance, traffic compliance, and he even did a stint of the shit duty on a clean crew—the ghosts.
It was hard to come out of a Protection clean crew and not have a little dirt on you, and he knew it. So many secrets, and he had to burn them all to ash—papers, prints … people, and not necessarily in that order. Jake burned every last trace of so many citizens, even he didn’t remember their names.
But clean crews were where they sent burned-out agents to serve out the remainder of their sentences, feather-dusting furniture and firing the fingerprints off of every last ounce of a citizen’s life. It was meticulous, meaningless and mind-numbing duty. But Jake dug in and did the job like he did anything. “Suck it up and do it to the best of your ability and better,” was all his father ever asked of him.
But he finally made it to compliance, a full two years after every other fledgling from his flock at the Rook. Then he put on the coveted black mask and boots of a “snag and bag” agent … and he went to do “real” work.
PAIC Blake placed his thumb on the plunger of the syringe. It was the same shit this bastard had pumped into Amy. He smiled a little downturned grin and then wiped it away. Frank King, was about to get a taste of his own medicine … literally.
After the clean crew duty, Jake had settled into citizen compliance, and things sped up. He had a sort of “sixth sense” for the one duty that every citizen-stomping, beak-breaking, testament-taking agent loved—gutting the gogos—grabbing the guns from the God-fearing gun owners.
Agent Blake could sniff out a weapons cache like a “hump-hound sniffs for whores in heat,” the old buzzard vets would laugh about it in the smoke-break room. After a successful raid, they would all smack him on the back and say, “AK, AR, or A-hole—shit, he smells better than a drone. If it fires something more dangerous than a fart, Blake’s the first one to bust through the door and bash brains with his billy.”
And he earned such a reputation by being so efficient at disarming dangerous dissenters that his department turned to no one else to lead the assault teams.
It got to the point that if the Scent-seeker module on a Vengeance drone caught a whiff of gunpowder or explosive, the whole briefing room groaned the next morning when the PAIC read the daily raid roster. There was no question who would be Agent #1 on the three-man team for that. And that only left two scrap spots for the rest of the flock to squawk and fight over.
Because by the time Agent #1 silently held up his fingers, counting to three outside a protectant’s bedroom… After first fire, what was the point? The unlucky weapons-harboring citizen was as good as gone—checked into the Fifty. Agents #2 and #3—what fun was that?
Life was good for Agent Blake from then on, and through hard work and guts, not to mention a few thousand guns and the countless tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition that went with them, he was poised to arrive at the pinnacle of his “chosen” profession—PAIC. Then he did what no mere mortal should: He started thinking … for himself.
Just a quick stick, PAIC Blake thought, running through the plan in his head. He always ran the plan in his head. Then hit the stairwell, down to the garbage alley and disappear. That plan was already in place.
Thinking… Normally deadly for a citizen, whose best chance at survival was compliance and submission, but for a god-like PAIC of Protection? Jake figured he could keep it in his head.
Sure, he and his wife, Kelly, and their daughter, little Amy, were happy … happier than most. And why shouldn’t they be? Agent Blake was at the top of the roost now, finally responsible for “Ensuring Peace and Prosperity…” It was a job that he’d excelled at for years. And the job rewarded him for doing it well. He saved citizens from themselves. The Rook taught him that, too.
Because a disarmed and compliant citizen was a peaceful citizen, and peace brought prosperity to all. “Ipso-facto,” the instructors at the academy liked to joke. Though when rookie Jake Blake looked it up, he figured they messed up the true meaning.
“All citizens must endure to keep the peace at all costs,” they said. Sometimes that cost was high. Agent Blake knew that—he had brought about that cost on more than one occasion.
Ensuring peace and prosperity … “for all.” It was that last part, the one that was never spoken, that stuck in his craw like grain he couldn’t swallow. A little nuance left to interpretation. That was how language worked. Nuance and translation—make sure that whatever was said could be interpreted any way the people in charge saw fit. But they didn’t teach that at the Rook.
Over twenty years after he was cracked, Jake still learned everything that “other” way.
The easy way—compliance—was Protection’s preferred citizen response. Yet PAIC Blake could not understand why so many citizens chose the hard way to their own certain death.
Compliance brought peace and commerce, and commerce ensured peace and prosperity. There could be no simpler logic than that. He never saw the irony of forcing compliance to—why would he even wonder? The things Agent Blake did, he did because he was Protection, and Protection kept the peace and the peace brought prosperity … for all. That’s what he was taught. He never understood why citizens resisted it. And he might never have … if it hadn’t been for Amy.
For all… PAIC Blake thought. He gripped tighter. The tiny syringe full of Judgment might not be enough “wet on his wings” to quench his thirst for revenge. Today, it would have to do.
When he finally slowed down and thought about it, Jacob Blake … because at that point he had already made his decision… But as Agent Blake stood in the rain outside the State Med-mart, his tears mixing with the drizzle and the futility of life, before it all ran down his face, he finally understood the price of compliance.
“For all,” actually meant that occasionally, but really more often than that, an individual citizen’s peace and prosperity would not—could not—be ensured. For doing so would jeopardize prosperity … for all.
PAIC Blake could hardly contain himself now. You killed her, you evil bastard! And now—
Set aside the fact that no one really knew where the framing tenet of the new world came from, it didn’t really matter. What did matter was what the highest levels of State and Protection interpreted it to mean.
An individual citizen’s prosperity could not be assured when weighed against the prosperity needs of so many others. Only afterward did Jake realize it was just a convenient way to cover up the truth.
Regardless, the result was the same: suspend all dissent, force compliance on each citizen individually. Then a select few would be able to control an increasingly common and overly-available workforce of billions.
As Agent Blake, none of what was behind it had mattered. Until one day, just another ordinary citiz
en compliance day, a name popped up at the Utah datacenter—“Amy Ann Blake.”
A common enough name, to be sure, but one that would change the fate of humanity and the Earth itself … eventually. It was a tiny mistake—a “citizen slip”—but that’s how catastrophes happened. A spec of fly in the ointment and the trajectory of one’s life changed forever.
And as the Protection paper-pusher in Utah typed the name on the printout into his computer, the auto-complete-tech on the application filled in the name and then the man pressed “ENTER” before he finished typing. Then up popped, “Amy Anne Blake.” Anne … with an “e.” One tiny little letter—small enough to go completely unnoticed, yet one that would have mountain-shaking consequences.
Agent Blake would have never even considered that his child might be randomly selected for inclusion in one of Protection’s contractor trials. And it was unthinkable that she would be given that contractor, K&T Enterprise’s, experimental interrogation drug without his consent. Unfathomable that his little angel would be stuck in the arm with a needle by a monkey-minion follower of the very man next to him … twice before Agent Blake ever found out.
His daughter had fallen victim to an unfortunate clerical error. She was sentenced without trial or consent to a living hell of blinding headaches and screaming nightmares … before she was finally condemned at the State Med-mart downtown. Wars in Heaven were started for less.
And why would Agent Blake have considered any of it? Every Protection agent’s entire family—right along with anyone who had the credits to exempt them—was flagged as “NP,” non-participatory, excluding them from many things that an individual citizen had to “endure” for peace and prosperity to be “ensured.”
Two years ago, Agent Blake stood outside the State Med-mart downtown, directly adjacent to the very building he was in now. It was in that very moment—his tears mixing with Seattle’s mind-melting drizzle—that Protection Agent Jacob Oliver Blake, Interrogator, badge number 333, finally met the demons of frustration, helplessness and rage that ordinary citizens made friends with every day. And it was also when he decided that no matter the cost, he would bring judgment and justice to the one responsible for it.
It took another year for him to claw his way to the coveted PAIC position he now held. And another to make his way to being in charge of all Prime Officer Protection agents. An eternity, it seemed to him. Interrogating, intimidating and violating all manner of man—mother to monster—in a cell just like the one they watched from the observation room.
Those demons flew around in his head most days and screamed and screeched at him like angry eagles in his dreams each night. But like a good compliant citizen … he endured.
PAIC. There wasn’t a hatchling or rookie at the Rook who didn’t dream of it. But the only thing that PAIC Blake dreamt of was dragging this murdering monster out in the street and sending his citizen-raping soul to Hell.
— CVII —
FATHER BENITO’S CHEST heaved violently, up and off the steel gurney, and his whole body tensed up and he screamed out, “Aaaah!” And his eyes got wide and he screamed at the pain again, “Aaaah!” The straps held him down.
Then the nurses started picking and poking at him, but he could hardly hear them.
And he barely heard the wave behind them, “Bravo eight-six, this is Kilo, over,” the voice squawked over one of the agents’ mini-wave. “I need a drone up here. We got heavy contact—repeat, heavy contact from an—it’s a—”
And then a response cut the wave off, “Negative, Kilo. Primary tasking, priority—”
“Aaaah!” and that was the first voice squawking again. And then the wave terminated.
Something exploded and the entire building shook.
“Son of a bitch,” one of the Protection agents against the wall said. “What now?”
Benito turned his head toward the agents. He recognized the one who shot the orderly in the hall.
That agent looked at Benito’s face briefly, before he looked at the doctor. “You got this?” he asked the doctor. “I want him judged and preparing for testament when we get back.”
The doctor looked at the nurses and said something to them.
Benito didn’t hear what it was, or didn’t understand it—he was focused on the waistband of the first Protection agent from the hall. He stared at his little King 9mm, tucked in the agent’s pants.
I need that, he thought. Then he felt his restraints being loosened and then something—someone placed something in his hand. Cold.
The little veteran nurse from the hall was fed up and done with the Fifty. The constant fear of rape at the hands of the orderlies, and the condescending and often brutal treatment from the butchers that called themselves doctors. Seeing all manner of poor citizen come through the front doors, only to watch them leave through the alley in a body-bin. And now they wanted her to help them condemn a priest to Judgment?
While everyone in the room reacted to the explosion outside, and then the squawking on the radio, she loosened the father’s straps. She knew she had little hope of helping him now, but she also knew that sometimes a little hope … went a long, long way.
She slipped the tiny scalpel from the instrument tray and gently placed it into the father’s right hand. Then she wrapped his fingers around it and gently squeezed his hand three times. That was it—all she could do. She knew she had even less hope of resisting Protection agents. At least this way, she wouldn’t end up face down on a gurney being “interrogated.”
She had almost let go of the priest’s hand when she felt him respond—his fist tightened two times. He understood!
Father Benito felt the three squeezes. “I love you,” it almost felt like she spoke the words to his mind.
You too, he thought as he squeezed back.
Then he felt it all over him—the angel who came to him while he was dead on the gurney. And he also felt something he hadn’t in a long time—faith. In fact, for some reason he knew that was the angel’s name—Faith. Then he felt something else from that angel, something—a feeling he hadn’t had in a long time. Power, he thought.
As strong as that feeling was, he hesitated, frozen in fear. But then Benito gritted his teeth and did the one thing he knew might help him overcome it. When I am afraid … I put my trust in you!
Before Benito realized it, he sprang off of the gurney and the doctor’s throat was cut and the man clutched at his neck and blood sprayed between his fingers, turning his white coat red. And then Benito was on his feet and the second nurse screamed and then the room went into a slow motion cinewave.
And Benito saw the fear in the young nurse’s eyes, but he wouldn’t harm her. Then the other nurse was running at the one screaming, plowing her way toward her colleague through the sticky slowness of Benito’s perception of time. He read her citizen-badge. Thank you, Agatha, he thought. The two nurses were headed for the door, and their screams were muffled and he barely heard them.
Then things sped up for an instant, and the scalpel stabbed into the doctor’s belly and the man fell to the floor.
Then the molasses feeling again. Benito could actually smell it. And he was stuck, watching the barrel of the first agent’s submachine gun slowly raising up at his chest.
And the room sped up again—this time lightning fast—and the father rammed his forearm up at the agent’s rifle, caught the bottom of it and it pointed above his head and—Brrrrt!—bullets ripped into the ceiling and rock rained down.
Then the scalpel rammed up and into the agent’s armpit. And a muffled yell, and then it sliced through his black face mask and along his neck and blood sprayed, and the agent hunched over and then three stabs to the back of his neck, a crunch into a vertebrae, and the agent’s body dropped like a sack of rocks.
Slow motion again … blood pumped from the first agent’s neck … and then the muffled voice of the second agent came like a faraway loudspeaker, “Benito … Octavio … Benedetti … you … are … hereby … remande
d … to … protect—”
Then the father’s world went into fast-forward and his mind raced—gun-coming-up, keep-the-barrel-away-from-you, push-it-away-with-your-other-hand. Go-Benito, faster, the thought raced through his head. Grab-his-arm-stab-him-in-the-elbow, neck-neck-neck, pull-his-goggles-off, eye-for-an-eye! And two stabs, deep into the agent’s eye sockets, and it was over!
Benito stood in the middle of the room. He stared down at two dead and bleeding Protection agents and one sack of blood doctor at his feet. And the door was just swinging closed and he caught a glimpse of the back of the little veteran nurse, whisking her panic-stricken trainee down the hall again.
Benito’s father had trained him his whole life for this moment, but the fear was deafening. He knelt down next to the first agent. The artery in his neck was just finishing pumping the last ounces of his protective fluid out. Benito pulled his pistol from the man’s waistband and then he paused for a second and looked at the little gun in his hand. Then he looked at the agent’s submachine gun.
Benito stared at the gun for a few seconds, and then he looked at the agent’s black boots and uniform and he smiled.
Then the building’s alarms sounded.
— CVIII —
SALVATION WAS LOST, and more than a little bit panicked. She stood in the middle of Rain’s throne chamber and stared at nothing.
The scenes from the dungeon assaulted her mind, tearing apart the image of the person she knew as her husband. Sure, she had seen Jump commit every type of violence during the great cleansing of the garden, but that wasn’t completely his fault—he had no choice. But did he … have a choice?
From the look of the dungeon—a person, or angel, had to like doing that. The scene down in the tunnels was gruesome, but the thought that her husband was responsible for all of it was worse. It was unbearable to think that he had done that over and over in life, but that’s what that devil bastard told her. Jump—her husband Jake Blake … had been a monster.
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