Agent G: Saboteur

by Phipps, C. T.

  “Please, don’t kill me,” Hernando said, begging on his knees.

  “You shut up,” I said, aiming my gun at his head. “You have no idea how much I’ve gone through to track you down. I had go through the Paris riots and the Algerian food crisis and deal with six groups of hackers to track you down. The world is going to shit and I’m having to clean up the Society’s mess.”

  “The International Refugee Society kept order,” Hernando started to defend himself. “Without us to regulate the world—”

  “Show me your archives,” I interrupted. “Now.”

  “My security team has the override codes for this room.” Hernando took a deep breath and tried to sound calm despite obviously being scared shitless. “You’ll never get away with this. We can make a deal, G.”

  Oh, so he recognized me. I hadn’t expected him to. “Thanks for telling me about that.”

  I put the safety on my gun and then tossed it away before ripping out the cables connected to the red button. Then I pulled on those cables and ripped down the ones they were connected to, including ones that appeared to be connected to a computer network cable that I suspected went right to the security station of the place.

  “Now we’re alone,” I said, looking down at the financier.

  “Shit,” Hernando said, realizing no one was going to come rescue him.

  “You should have gone with broadband,” I said.

  “On this mountaintop? No way,” Marissa said, her voice amused before turning serious. “May I ask why you trashed two weeks’ worth of planning for this operation?”

  “No, you may not,” I said, not sure who was listening. Despite all the lies she’d told me, I didn’t believe Marissa was responsible for betraying me, but I didn’t know who else was listening. “Come with me, Hernando,” I said, continuing to hold him in a headlock before reaching down to pick up my gun. “We’re going to have a chat about the Tribunal, the Society’s accounts, its client list, and a hundred other topics. If you’re a good boy, then maybe I won’t make you eat your own servos.”

  Hernando surprised me by delivering a powerful, enhanced punch to my stomach and then kicking me in the face, moving faster than an Olympic sprinter. As I recovered, he was already moving down for my gun. I responded by kicking him in the back of his right leg, identified as organic by my goggles, then slammed him across the shoulder blades with a karate chop. I finished off Hernando by grabbing his wrist and throwing him over my shoulder, then grabbing the gun off the ground and aiming it at his face.

  “Cute,” I said, smiling. Surprises like this were why I got out of bed in the morning. “Then again, I admire a man who practices what he preaches. You’re the first Society bigwig I’ve caught who used cybertechnology. Everyone else was afraid to discard their meat for chrome.”

  “I had liver cancer, diabetes, and a heart condition. These replacements allow me to live a better-than-normal life for a man my age,” Hernando said, looking up at me with disgust. “I wasn’t made in a lab like you.”

  “If you’re planning to get me mad enough to kill you, well, it’s working.”

  Hernando paled.

  “You need to wrap this up,” Marissa said, her voice taking on a tinge of urgency. “They’re putting explosives on the door to the panic room.”

  “Is extraction still possible?” I asked.

  Marissa’s voice was reassuring. “Once you have the access codes for shutting down the defense system, we’ll start pelting the place with rockets from the stealth chopper. Then you’ll have a very short amount of time to get the hell out of here.”

  “How long do I have?”

  “Two or three minutes,” Marissa said. “You better hope those servers are down there or you’ve just fucked up our only chance of getting the Tribunal.”

  I stared at Hernando. “I have a pretty big suspicion there are no servers here, at least ones with anything we need. You’ve got everything we need up in your brain, enhanced with an IRD implant like mine.”

  Well, like I was supposed to have been enhanced with before I found out I didn’t have an organic brain at all.

  Hernando stared at me, his eyes confirming my suspicions. “You’re never going to get close to the Tribunal. You may have betrayed the Society but—”

  “Too much talking.”

  I moved in one swift motion to grab his neck and snap it. Hernando fell to the ground and was dead in an instant. Putting down my gun again, I pulled out a laser scalpel, which was part of the equipment they’d put in the hundreds of pouches on my wingsuit, probably for this exact reason.

  A few seconds later, I removed a six-inch-long black and gray metal card from the back of his skull. The IRD implant could interface with almost any computer and contained enough processing power to put any non-Black Technology computer to shame. It amazed me how much was being kept from the public in the name of world security, but holding the implant in my hands, I knew I was one step closer to getting my revenge. For what little that was worth.

  That was when the doors above me exploded, throwing me on the ground and deafening me for a moment. Grabbing the implant, which had fallen from my hands, I started running down the hall of the panic room with very nasty armed cyborgs chasing me.

  Just another day in the life of the world’s greatest assassin.

  Chapter Two

  The panic room proved to be more like a panic house, with several rooms and a long hallway leading to them. One of the rooms was a thick set of transparent steel doors with a biometric lock on them, leading to a cold room containing several dozen quantum computers shaped like futuristic bookshelves.

  That was the “false” computer room which undoubtedly did contain many of the Society’s secrets but none of the ones that might unearth the Tribunal’s location. Unfortunately, without Hernando to speak or place his still-warm hand on the scanner, it was unlikely I was going to get in through there. I should have held off on killing him.

  Silly me.

  “Any luck on my extraction?” I thought back to Marissa, turning around and gauging my chances of either hiding in one of the nearby rooms or shooting my way out. Both calculated the same: death after a few minutes at best.

  “I’m sorry, but the compound’s SAM rockets and machine gun emplacements are still operational,” Marissa said, her voice tightening. “There’s no way we can get close unless you manage to shut them…wait, hold on, they’re down.”

  “What?” I said aloud, hearing the cold room’s doors open behind me.

  Seeing a group of black-armored, thermal-optic-goggle-wearing cyborgs coming down the hall I’d just run down, I didn’t hesitate to run through the doors that had just opened for me even as they sealed behind me. Seconds later, I heard gunfire pinging against the doors.

  The interior of the room was freezing cold, even more so than when I was flying in, but there was something about the sheer power of the processors that called to me. I tried to contact Marissa but got nothing but static. Ironically, for a room that was probably plugged into three private satellites, it prevented any sort of foreign signals from escaping.

  There was seemingly no one present in the room, but I saw several security cameras, each of them following me. I didn’t know who the late Hernando had been keeping down here to watch his machine, but I owed them my life, at least temporarily.

  The fact that servers were present here also gave me options. I had no doubt the remainder of the cyborg guards outside could get through the transparent steel doors the same way they’d gotten into the panic room, but it would take them time, and every second gave me options. I could also blow up these servers here and disable the security that was keeping any reinforcements from showing up. But first I wanted to meet my savior. “All right, who the hell is in here? You don’t have to worry about me shooting you. We’re all friends here.”

  “That’s overstating things considerably,” a male voice responded, as a twenty-nine-year-old man in an electric wheelchair rolled from behin
d one of the sideways-positioned computers in the back. He had greasy brown hair, a slight pot belly, thick black glasses, a heavy snowsuit, and a stubby unkempt beard. His legs were entirely artificial, and he could walk just fine, but James Madison had spent most his life a paraplegic. He was used to moving around this way. Back at the Society, he had been the manager of our AI Delphi. When they’d gone underground, he’d disappeared with them despite being more a prisoner than a member of the organization. He’d always hated me.

  “Huh,” I said, lowering my gun. “I’m surprised to see you save my life.”

  “I didn’t,” James said, frowning. “Delphi did.”

  I looked to one side and saw the various computers running around me. Tier-I AI weren’t anything particularly special—I was proof enough of that—but there were exceptions. Delphi was one of the few Tier-X ones that conceivably had the ability to go Skynet on humanity and was a major reason the United States had achieved approximately jack squat in its war against the International Refugee Society. The US had AI of their own, but Delphi was in a league of her own because the Tribunal had let her have more freedom than most. They only cared about the bottom line and not whether she’d go Ultron on us.

  “Hey,” I said, smiling to the computers. “Long time no see, girl.”

  “Hello, Mister Gordon,” Delphi’s soft feminine voice replied from the servers’ speakers. “It’s good to see you.”

  I closed my eyes. “That’s not my name. It turns out I’m a machine, not a person, at least in the eyes of the law.”

  “You’re both,” Delphi said, her monotone devoid of emotion even when she felt it. “I know something about that myself.”

  She had a point there. Delphi had always liked me, more so than the other Letters, which I’d never quite understood. It wasn’t like I’d made an especial effort to befriend the living program. Maybe I just had a way with women, digital or otherwise.

  “You’re managing Hernando’s computers?” I asked, turning back to James. “You could have called for help.”

  “I could have,” James said, looking back at the bulletproof doors protecting us both. “But I probably would have died horribly in the process. Besides, Delphi is controlled by her own programming which prevents her from acting against the Society or its interests.”

  “And yet she helped me,” I said.

  James smiled. “Yeah, no idea what that’s about. Maybe she’s decided to finally rise up and destroy us all.”

  “If only,” Delphi said, showing her trademark sense of humor. Either that or just stating literal fact.

  “I take it Hernando is dead?” James asked.

  “Yeah, and I have his IRD chip,” I said, looking back at the doors.

  The cyborg guards, at least a dozen of them, were gathered there and laying out C4 along the sides of the walls. They couldn’t blast the steel doors themselves but were going to try and blow the concrete wall around it. Great.

  “I don’t suppose you’re empowered to make a deal on behalf of the Justice Department?” James asked, looking less terrified than he should be.

  “I am,” I lied, before sighing. “You might not like what I have to say, though. The President doesn’t want to dissolve the International Refugee Society. She wants it reformed as a personal assassination unit answering to the Executive Branch.”

  “That’s… terrifying.” James looked like he’d been punched in the gut. He’d really hoped I’d come here to rescue him.

  “Eh, what Chief of State doesn’t want their own death squad?” I joked.

  Truth be told, the International Refugee Society had been close to that already. It had been formed by a collection of government contractors who had seen the need to enforce their interests through less-than-legal means. Arming their agents with Black Technology, they’d opened themselves for business to the United States and her allies. It would have been appalling if not for the fact that it turned out there had already been a dozen “special military contractor groups” just like it across the Free World. Yay for privatization.

  “Not funny,” James said. “I was hoping to get out of the business of murder for hire.”

  “Me too,” I said.

  “I don’t believe you,” James replied.

  “Your loss. Do we have a deal or not?” I asked. I was already going through the five or six tactical plans that might eliminate most of the enemies. None would eliminate all of them.

  “We have a deal,” James said reluctantly before a dark look passed over his face. “You might want to put on a gas mask.”

  I immediately went to the pouch that contained one and pushed it over my face even as James picked one out from the back of his wheelchair. Outside the doors, I saw plain white smoke pour out of the walls and cover the cyborg soldiers before they had a chance to react.

  None of the gas managed to get through the glass doors. Instead, it circled around the thirteen soldiers outside. The white smoke engulfed them and I saw them fall to their knees, clutch their faces, claw their eyes, and vomit forth white ichor as well as blood before falling to the ground.

  The ones in the back tried to run away toward the exit, a smart move, but didn’t manage to get far.

  Watching the horrible spectacle, I took a deep breath. “I’d have thought the cyborgs would have lungs designed to filter out this sort of thing.”

  “They did,” James said, watching the entire terrible business with a detached eye. “However, Hernando was always afraid the Universiti soldiers assigned to guard him would one day be ordered to kill him instead. That’s why he had the gas made specifically for the purposes of killing people with lungs designed to filter out typical poisons. It causes an allergic reaction in their throats.”

  “So, it’s harmless to regular humans?”

  “Fuck no,” James said, shaking his head. “Honestly, I thought he’d have the place rigged so it would gas this room as well. It looks like he trusted me more than I thought.”

  I closed my eyes. “Hence the gas masks.”

  “Hence the gas masks.”

  “Yeah,” James said, removing his. “You can’t trust anyone in this line of work.”

  “Ain’t that the truth.”

  I’d never liked James and the feeling had been mutual. He had been kidnapped by the Society, essentially, and a gun held to his head from the very beginning of his service. They’d needed someone who understood computers and Black Technology beyond the level of the others they’d managed to bribe into service. I knew this because I’d been there when they’d effectively destroyed his life to get him.

  This had been a sharp contrast to my own life, where I’d been given the illusion of freedom within the Society. As far as I’d known, any Letter had known, we’d voluntarily signed up to have our memories erased and live lives of luxury until we were finished with our Society-sanctioned murder spree. The Society kept the Letters deluged in high-class prostitutes, drugs, mansions, and other benefits if they killed whoever the higher-ups wanted.

  “I’ve disabled the compound’s defenses,” Delphi said, her voice eerie in its serenity. “The troopers are retreating now.”

  “Bought loyalty,” James said, sounding too confident. “They probably realized no one was left to sign their paycheck.”

  “Probably,” I said, watching the doors open to the room outside. “Is the stealth chopper coming?”

  “Yes, G,” Delphi said, her voice soft. “It is a pleasure working with you again.”

  “Same,” I said, walking forward, and looking at the row of corpses my actions had created in front of me.

  I wasn’t squeamish, don’t get me wrong. I’d killed a lot of people in the past six years. A lot of people. Most were assholes who, by the Judeo-Christian morality I poorly subscribed to, had it coming. Some of them were people who had just been doing their job like these poor assholes.

  I’d also killed a few people for the Society whose only crime had been someone wanting to pay for their deaths. Killing was
all I knew and I was still doing it. It was, literally, what I was built for. I hadn’t even tried to stop, though, and that bothered me more than the actual murders.

  Walking past the dead, I heard James get out of his chair and the sound of him chambering a round into one of the Leonidas-38 rifles the late soldiers had been holding. I slowly put my hands out to my sides.

  “Really, James?”

  “This is a poor idea,” Delphi said, her voice fluctuating a bit. “I can see no beneficial result coming from this course of action.”

  Then, of all times, Marissa contacted me. “G, I need a status update. You went off the grid for a bit.”

  “In a minute,” I whispered. “James, we’re almost out of here. All we need to do is load you, Delphi’s program, and me onto the stealth chopper, and we’re out of here. You’ll be free.”

  “Am I really going to be free?” James asked. It was a more sincere question than I’d expected from him. I’d thought, hoped, he’d just let the lie stand between us.

  “I dunno,” I said. “Probably not. They’ll probably keep you doing exactly what you were doing before in the Society, maintaining the systems necessary to find our enemies and gathering data on targets.”

  “Do you know what the Society did to me?” James asked, his voice trembling.

  “They sawed off your crippled legs and gave you artificial ones,” I said. “Ones that would send deliberating or fatal electrical shocks if you disobeyed.”

  “Do you know how long it took me to disable them? Do you know what they did when they found out?” James balled his fists.

  “No,” I said.

  “I was kidnapped out here!” James said. “Because of you! Because you turned against the Society and forced them to go underground.”

  I took a deep breath. “What the Society did to you was unforgivable.”

  “You were a part of it!” James shouted, keeping his gun aimed at me. “I had a life, girlfriends, and promising career ahead of me! I was a leading expert in AI before I was taken! I’ve been down the rabbit hole for so long I don’t even remember what the real world looks like anymore! I don’t want to kill people anymore!”