The Supervillainy Saga (Book 4): The Science of Supervillainy

by Phipps, C. T.

  Wow, I was so bored I was talking to myself.

  Redmond backed away in disgust, yelled some obscenities at the man, and walked over to the car before climbing into the backseat. According to the profile, Redmond had never been comfortable with Dulcimer as his bodyguard. At the risk of pulling the race card, I suspected the ex-mercenary’s looks had a large part to play in it.

  I was biracial myself, one of the few clues I possessed to my identity pre-memory wipe, but light-skinned enough to pass as a white man. Really, my appearance was perfect for putting people like Redmond at ease. I was mid-thirties, five-foot-ten, one-hundred-and-sixty-five pounds, possessed short black hair, and had striking crystal blue eyes. All of these things I could disguise with the right wigs, contacts, and prosthetics but tonight I was going as something close to the ‘real’ me.

  “Take me home, David,” Redmond said, looking at his shoes. “God almighty, those people. Do we have a napkin or something in here?”

  I reached into the glove compartment and removed some McDonald’s napkins I’d collected just in case this sort of situation happened. Putting on a stereotypical Southern drawl, I said, “Here, sir. I hope these help.”

  Redmond took them before shooting me a dirty look. “Have you been eating in my car?”

  I continued speaking like the expected hick. “No, sir, I ate outside, washed my hands, and came back in. I put the napkins in because you can never have too many napkins.”

  “Good,” Redmond said, patting his interior lovingly. “Do you know that fucker actually wants to rezone the city to attract more foreign investment?”

  That fucker, I assumed to be the mayoral candidate. “Really?”

  “Ugh. I’d tell him to go to hell but I’m getting first dibs on several of those projects.”

  I’d been working for Redmond for the better part of a week, having arranged for his previous driver to take a preferred assignment with an ex-fashion model known for banging her chauffeurs. I’d then taken over his job after making sure my name was at the top of the list via my assistant’s computer hacking. Breaking into the limousine service Redmond used wasn’t exactly a challenge for a woman who had cracked the Society’s servers, but Marissa was itching for work as much as I was.

  I proceeded to pull out the car onto the busy Chicago streets. The most difficult part of the mission was over and I could dispose of Redmond at any time. However, as I mentioned before, I was a curious man by nature. “Do you ever give any thought to the matter of identity?”

  Redmond reached into his jacket and pulled out a bottle of prescription pain killers before popping three into his mouth. “What the fuck are you going on about?”

  It was over now. Redmond just didn’t know it. I’d managed to replace the contents of his bottle with a much-much stronger dosage plus several other recreational pharmaceuticals which would kill even a healthy man Redmond’s age. That was just the backup plan, really, to make sure he didn’t get away. Not that I was afraid he would but I wasn’t a Letter because I took chances. I also had something more…elaborate planned for his demise.

  “Memory. It’s the basis of our identities but so much of it is malleable. We recast events how we want them to be and how our present-day opinions influence them. For example, a person who commits a terrible crime might think of himself as completely justified in the events and recall things which drove him to it—even if they never happened. It’s why eye-witness testimony is so unreliable because a lot of times, what people recall happening didn’t happen at all.”

  Redmond started coughing, unable to respond.

  “For me, I can’t help but think it raises some interesting philosophical questions. Do we ever really know a person? Are all the various wars and conflicts of history because we interpret events solely to our own perspective? If you are a person without a memory, do you have an identity at all or are you simply a hollow shell? I prefer to believe we’re like cups, emptied and waiting to be filled anew but retaining some semblance of our past selves.”

  “You...” I heard a gasping, labored voice speak behind me. Looking over my shoulder, I watched Redmond clutching his chest, sweating like a pig and reaching for his cellphone. He was desperately trying to enter the number for 911.

  I lifted up a small black box. “This is a cellphone jammer. You can buy them at almost any electronics store. It’s hilarious.”

  Redmond dropped his cellphone on the ground. “Why? Is it...is it Mahad?”

  Mahad al-Malik was a Saudi Arabian real-estate developer who was suspected of having ties to ISIL but was so low on the totem pole he was allowed to conduct business in the United States. I couldn’t make up this shit if I tried.

  “Do I look like the kind of guy who works with terrorists?” I said, crossing my arms. “Then again, you don’t exactly look like that sort of fellow yourself. By the way, my name isn’t David, it’s G. I know, that’s a letter not a name but it’s as close as I’ve got. No Men in Black jokes, please.”

  “I can pay—”

  I rolled my eyes. “I hate when targets say that, I really do. First of all, if I spared your life then you’re not going to pay me because you’d be going to call the police or the FBI. Next, if you paid me beforehand, there’d be nothing to stop me from killing you afterward. Use your head.”

  Redmond looked at me with pure hatred in his eyes. “You’re...insane.”

  “Possibly,” I admitted, shaking my head. “The people who employ me put me through a fairly punishing regime of mental conditioning and drug-therapies. Things designed to remove those qualities which don’t find humor in your situation, for example.”

  Redmond started to cry. It was kind of sad, really. I usually felt better about these things when my target was dirty as fuck. Then again Redmond was a racist white-collar criminal terrorist, which was a trifecta of things I loathed.

  “I would like to know why, actually. That might change a few things.” It wouldn’t but he didn’t know that.

  “The money,” Redmond said, raising his hand into the air. “ISIL robbed the banks of Mosul of...four hundred million dollars...they…needed someone to launder it.”

  I stared at him, frowning. “Money? Really?”

  So pedestrian a motive.

  “I had no choice.” Redmond wheezed. “They would have killed me and my family if I’d refused.”

  “I’m sure they would have, once you took their money.” I shook my head and turned on the lights again before driving toward Chicago’s industrial district. It wouldn’t be long, now, until Redmond’s heart gave out. I’d have to work quickly if I wanted to make sure I got this whole thing resolved the way I wanted it to. A good hit was like a work of art. If it was done properly, it was an amazing sight to behold and could be talked about for hours. It had to be done just perfect, though, or the whole thing was ruined.

  Redmond proceeded to surprise me again. “You...you work for the Society.”

  I looked into the rearview mirror. “Really? A twit like you knows about the Society?”

  Redmond gave a bitter gallows’ laugh. “You fucking bastard, they’re the people who arranged the meeting between Mahad and I.”

  “As bad as I think my employers are, I don’t think they finance terrorism.”

  Terrorists, by and large, couldn’t afford us.

  “They’re going to steal...the money.”

  “Good for them.”

  “I can arrange for the... CIA... to help you. To protect you. They can... get you your memories back.”

  Redmond knew way too much to be what he appeared. Worse, he was dangling the one carrot in front of my face which might entice me.

  The chance to know who I was.

  Pulling onto a set of train tracks just moments before the barriers moved down both in front and behind me, I heard the sound of the warning bells as the flagger began flashing. I could see the train coming down from my left. I turned off the headlights to make sure the car wasn’t visible to the engineer. I had to m
ake a choice now.

  Eh, who was I kidding? There was no choice. “The CIA is one of the Society’s biggest clients.”

  I stepped out of the car, went to the back of the trunk, pulled out a drugged and confused looking David Johnson a.k.a Josh Harden. He was the man whose identity I’d stolen. An ex-convict and registered sex offender who was operating under a false identity while he sold pills to rich clients. We had a vague resemblance. Especially when you put as much effort into not being noticed as I did.

  Putting him in the driver’s seat and adjusting his hat to be perfect, I shut the door and walked forward as the 11:30 train barreled down the tracks. I was fifty-feet-away before I heard the screeching, smashing, and crushing noise which was the death rattle of Redmond and his driver.

  Looking back, I confirmed both kills before walking away from the crime scene and turning my chauffer’s attire inside out. The black suit top became a Chicago Cubs sports jacket and the hat a ball cap. The pants would become blue jeans but I would wait until I was somewhere more private to change those. I also needed to contact the Home Office in order to confirm my kill.

  Cramming my tie into my pocket, I pulled out my cellphone before removing a thin metal wire from its side with a needle at the end. I jabbed the needle into the right side of my temple, linking it up to the IED implant they’d removed part of my brain to install. Cybernetics came with being a Letter. The Society had access to a lot of technology well above what regular humanity did and, instead of using it to help people, used it to make better killers. Says something about the world, doesn’t it?

  A holographic image of an older, white-haired woman in a white business suit appeared in front of my vision. It was Persephone, the Society’s Director. It was unusual for her to be the one answering this sort of call. Usually, Marissa would be the one to check on my progress and relay it to my superiors.

  “Hello, G, is the mission completed?”

  “No, I just love stabbing myself in the head with an information jack.”

  “You should learn to watch your mouth. If you weren’t my favorite, I’d have it sewn shut.”

  “I bet you say that all the Letters.”

  “Yes, but you should at least have the courtesy to not point that out.”

  “Yes, Mom.”

  I could feel Persephone’s irritation. I had to wonder what sort of person I was to continually challenge my superiors like that. I didn’t want to. I wanted to just serve out my ten years and retire with the ungodly amount of money I’d made during my contract. Preferably some place with large amounts of sunshine and rum. Yet, I just had to push.

  It was unsettling.

  “Now, I repeat, is the job done? No complications?”

  “None. Tomorrow the headline will read a suicidal chauffer decided to kill himself and his boss after deciding he couldn’t live with his crimes. Add in the business with the pills in Redmond’s stomach and his businesses will be radioactive for the next few months. Just like the client wanted.”

  Technically, they’d just said Redmond should die in ‘infamy’ but I’d interpreted that to mean something like this.

  “We’ll be sending in financial cleaners to his office tomorrow for the next part of the contract. Did he mention anything of importance before you completed your mission?”

  “No, ma’am,” I lied, thinking about the whole ISIL and CIA business Redmond had mentioned. Was it true? Maybe. It didn’t matter now. He was in a hundred pieces and any connection to the Society in his files would be erased tomorrow. It wasn’t my problem, though. I needed to stay loyal. I’d served five years of my ten years of service. I would make it to Reassignment.

  “Good. Your payment is awaiting pickup with a bonus for prompt delivery. I’m afraid you’re not going to be able to enjoy spending it on your usual orgy of alcohol, hookers, and cocaine, though.”

  “I don’t use cocaine.” I’d also rapidly cut down on my alcohol and hooker intake since beginning my relationship with Marissa. I wasn’t about to tell Persephone that, though, since I didn’t know how that would affect our working relationship. They might reassign her, or worse, and I didn’t want to imagine what life would be like without her. Marissa was one of the few things which made me feel human.

  “I need you to come in to the Home Office as soon as possible. This is a time-sensitive issue,” Persephone said, shaking me out of my thoughts. “High priority.”

  “Understood.”

  “Say hello to the wife while you’re in town. I’m sure she misses you.”

  “Like a bullet in the head.”

  “Be prompt. Those can be arranged.”

  Persephone’s image vanished from view and I removed my information jack. The decryption built into my head meant no one, short of the supercomputers at the NSA, could decrypt our conversations. Theoretically. I couldn’t help but think the Society’s overreliance on technology was a weakness rather than strength.

  “Fuck, I need to get cleaned up,” I muttered, disappearing behind some empty rail cars as police sirens buzzed in the distance.

  I was gone before they arrived.

  Agent G: Infiltrator

  Chapter Two

  I returned to the hotel room I’d arranged for the evening to collect my things and take a quick shower before leaving. The Chicago Merlot was a five-star accommodation with bathrobes, mints, high-speed internet access, and a luxurious silk-sheet bed. Say what you will about the Society; it paid magnificently.

  Right now, I wanted to lie down on the bed and sleep for a year. There was something about killing people that always made me tired. I was fine during the act, but as soon as it was done, the weight of it all hit me. Not so much guilt—they’d conditioned that out of me—but the awareness of its absence. Having finished my shower and standing in front of my hotel room’s dresser mirror with a white towel wrapped around my waist, I couldn’t help but look at myself and try to put a name to the person staring back at me.

  I had clues, small ones, that told me a bit about who I’d been: I’d broken my leg twice as a child, and had two fillings, and there were signs I’d been asthmatic before growing out of it. I spoke eight languages, only two of which I’d learned with the Society, and my natural accent was Midwestern American. I’d also been shot twice in the chest, which made me think I may have been in the military.

  Or a criminal.

  There were other clues about who I once was, things I didn’t consciously choose but were a part of my personality nevertheless: the snarkiness to my superiors, the fact that I believed in God despite disobeying his most important commandments on a regular basis, and my preference for dark-haired women over blondes. Oh, and I absolutely despised shellfish.

  Then there were the dreams. They didn’t happen often, but when they did, they were terrifying in their vividness. They were the memories of someone who wasn’t an emotional cripple and felt everything in vibrant colors to my current dull greys.

  A woman in a yellow flowered dress. Laughing. A child, a girl, six years old, playing in a backyard.

  Computer screens, lots of computer screens. The Karma Corporation logo.

  Gunfire in a desert.

  Kissing a dark-haired, brown-skinned woman, passionately, in the shower.

  A man with a shaved head in a business suit, throwing me around the middle of my study.

  Blood. Screams. Emptiness.

  The dreams were a natural part of the conditioning process that removed Letters’ memories. Every one of us suffered them, and the worst part was we didn’t know if they were clues to our past or not. One of us, H, had been obsessed with a man he believed to have been his brother, only to commit suicide when he found out that he’d been thinking of an eighties movie star the entire time. The people in my dreams were real, though. They had to be.

  “Someday I’m going to find out who the fuck you are,” I said to my reflection. “I’ve got people out there who loved me.”

  But would they love who I’d become? That was a
question with no answer.

  Not yet, anyway.

  Seconds later, I heard a knocking at my door. I reached over for the gun on my dresser. I kept one behind the toilet, on the dresser, and underneath my bedroom pillow in case of an ambush. I made sure I was never outside of reaching distance of a weapon.

  Clambering around, I let my towel fall to the ground and walked to the side of the door. Normally, the kind of people I dealt with didn’t knock, but they might also have been checking to see if anyone was inside.

  Risking a look through the peephole, I saw a small olive-skinned Hispanic woman in her late twenties. She had midnight-black hair tied up in a ponytail, several piercings, and a jean jacket over a black halter top. The woman was wearing a black leather miniskirt over black pantyhose. A silver laptop bag with a vampire Hello Kitty design sewn into it was over her right shoulder.

  “Hey, G-man, let me in.”

  “Marissa.” I unlocked the door and undid the chain to let her in. I put my gun down on the side of the kitchenette table by the door. “You know, the goth look died out in the nineties.”

  “How would you know?” Marissa said, walking in. “You don’t remember anything beyond the last five years.”

  “Low blow.”

  Marissa’s eyes widened as she took stock of my nakedness. “Uh, could you—”

  I closed the door behind her before locking it up. “Put on my clothes?”

  Marissa looked me up and down before smiling. “I didn’t say that.”

  Marissa Sanchez was my assistant as well as my lover. Every Letter had a researcher personally assigned to help them through missions as well as serve as a source of logistical support.

  Marissa had been a hacker who’d had the misfortune of combing through the Society’s files. Instead of killing her, they’d put her through a milder version of my conditioning, which had reduced her capacity for empathy as well as instilled a loyalty to the Society’s goals. Assistants tended to have a shorter life than Letters despite their lack of field work. They were considered expendable, and the slightest screw-up was grounds for termination. I wasn’t going to let that happen to her.