by Drew Avera
“I need a faster solution which doesn’t require a vote for me to jump through hoops over,” I said, plopping back into my chair and gazing out the window. The sun was just below the window sill and the light already gleamed indiscriminately as it settled over the room. “I just feel like I let her down.”
I knew my reasoning was because I felt guilty for how things ended between us. It was expected that members of the World Council not fraternize in personal relationships, but it was difficult to not fall into the trappings of lust. I cared for her, and I believed she did for me as well, but we walked a tightrope that was not going to end well for either of us if we had held onto our relationship. Moving her to Clenist was for the best. At least that was what I told myself at the time.
“You could send me,” Pollux said, interrupting my thoughts about Akran.
I looked at him with one eyebrow raised. For twelve years he had been my springboard for ideas to help reset the disaster Tetrim put into motion. I was surprised to find how my wife’s murder was just the tip of the iceberg in terms of tragedies which had befallen Archea under Tetrim’s watch. The fact that one man had such authority over the rest of the World Council at that time was cause for concern. I would be a liar if I said I didn’t envy that power some days. Despite what Tetrim had done for his own purposes, I could now see where he planned on going with his plans. All of it would have gone to waste had I not found a way to salvage parts of it.
One of those was the tools at my disposal was Pollux and the Agency. I thought about Pollux’s proposal in silence for a moment. I leaned on him for many things. Most of all, I depended on him being there when I needed him. That wouldn’t be possible if he was somewhere else. “You want to go to Clenist?” I asked skeptically.
He shrugged. “It’s my duty to do as you order. The Agency cannot support sending agents there, but I could go as your eyes and report back to you what I find. Perhaps with that information, a better solution can be made?”
I held my hand against my brow and pressed hard against the sinus headache permeating between my eyes. Each time I did that I remembered Castor fighting against the programming they performed on him. I could only imagine how my pain paled in comparison. I sat back up and gazed over at the head of the Agency, his face void of emotion. “How long would you need to ascertain the situation?”
“A few days, maybe a week,” he replied flatly.
The timeframe was much shorter than I anticipated. “Fine. Go visit Councilwoman Tyrel on my behalf while you’re there. Let her know we are going to handle this situation.”
Pollux nodded and rose from his chair. “Is there anything else you would like me to relay to the councilwoman?”
I looked up and scoffed. Pollux might not show it in his face, but there was more personality behind what he said than meets the eye. “I think it’s best if we let the past die. Those old feelings will only disturb the future we are trying to create,” I replied, not willing to divulge further.
“If you say so,” Pollux said as he turned to leave. “I’ll head to Clenist this afternoon and contact you one once I’m there.”
“Thank you,” I said as he opened the door.
His long jacket fell like a cloak near his calves as he turned and looked back at me. “Don’t mention it,” he replied with a nod. I watched as he stepped out the room, closing the door with a gentle click. Ever the one to make as little noise as possible. It was part of the programming which made him an effective assassin. I wished I could say his services were underutilized since I took the position as Pontiff, but the ugly truth was the Agency was instrumental in the cleanup effort of the World Council.
What shocked me most was my willingness to use them against the ones I once thought were my allies. It was sad how men turned against one another when spiteful jealousy came into the picture. What made matters worse was how I felt no remorse once my back was in the corner. I had little choice if I wanted to live.
Five-years-ago, I had been the intended target of that attack. The hit was placed against me by Councilman Etan Nayep, the man who put me in my current position. His reasoning was unjustifiable, and once I received word, I took immediate action with the Agency at my disposal.
Needless to say, retaliation was swift and final.
It was a necessary evil, as Etan might have said. I was certain he would have sung a different tune if he knew he was the one in the crosshairs. I owed Pollux my life for having the forethought to warn me. Without him, I would be just another victim of corruption.
Unsurprisingly, I felt like I was a victim regardless of whether or not I was still breathing. My life wasn’t supposed to be like this.
I glanced up at the picture of Marada on my wall. After a dozen years, I was ashamed that I hardly thought about her anymore. At least not in the way she deserved. Fidelity was one of her core values. I knew she would have wanted me to be happy, but a lot of darkness surrounded me after the decisions I made following her death.
Would she approve of the life I had now?
A part of me hoped she would, but I doubted the legitimacy of that hope. It was probably just my own inner justification for the decisions I had made. Truth be told, there were few things about my life I wasn’t ashamed of myself over.
Akran included.
But like a moth to flame, I couldn’t resist the burn.
Alone in my office, I sat back and played the message again, this time not listening to the whole thing, but the last few words. “I miss you, Halem— Bye.” I repeated it several times, focusing harder on the pause each time. I didn’t know if it was my imagination or not, but it seemed the real message was not what she said, but what she didn’t say. In the breadth of space between my name and her final word, I thought I heard a message not meant for anyone else to hear.
“I love you.”
Three
Pollux
As the sub-rail pulled into place on the platform, I saw my reflection in the mirrored window. After all these years, I still did not recognize the man whose face I wore. He was nothing to me, just like the man I used to be. I was caught in a paradox from which there was no escape and that realization felt like drowning in a sea of anxiety.
“Are you boarding, sir?” A voice asked, stirring me from my thoughts. I glanced up to see a kindly old woman standing next to me, her shoulders slumped from age. A part of me envied her for living a long life entirely on her own terms, but it may have been my sentimentality as I acknowledged something in her which made the grass seem greener than I had ever seen.
“I am,” I replied, grabbing my bag from the ground and shaking the flood of thoughts from my mind. “I guess I was lost in my own head for a moment.”
“It’s all right, just wait until you’re my age and you forget why you walk into a room.” She chortled lightly as she waited for me to board before her which struck me as odd. As I took my seat at the back of the rail car, she sat next to me. I didn’t mean to be rude, but I couldn’t resist the puzzled look I gave her in return.
She took notice almost immediately. “I hope you don’t mind, but I hate traveling alone. I used to make this trip with my husband a couple of years ago, but he passed away. I’m going to Clenist to visit my son.”
I nodded politely, not knowing how to respond. I was comfortable around those whom I worked with, but civilians were a different story. I felt out of place like a storm cloud on a sunny day.
“My son works for a construction company in Clenist. He has been working a lot of overtime after the southern power grid failed. I was afraid that there would be a fire, but he said the fire suppression system worked flawlessly. He was one of the ones who helped reroute emergency power from other grids so that the people who lived there could do so somewhat comfortably.” She continued to tell her son’s story as the sub-rail began to move. I had no idea how long she intended to give me her attention, but I already wanted to jump from the moving sub-rail at top speed and become a splatter mark on the tunnel wall.
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It wasn’t that she was doing anything wrong by speaking to me, but I felt trapped by the unwanted conversation, and I had no way of politely declining without coming across the wrong way.
All I wanted was silence.
“What do you do for a living?”
Her question jarred me, and my jaw fell slack for a moment as my brain misfired trying to provide an adequate answer. How to you tell someone you are part of a secret government agency which is often used to put people to death? The job description technically goes deeper than that but killing is usually where people draw the line in their own careers. “I work for the government,” I said, leaving the details out.
“Oh? That’s nice,” she replied. “That’s what my husband used to do.”
I couldn’t fight the grin threatening to invade my face.
If she only knew.
“What business are you conducting in Clenist?”
“I’m performing a security check prior to Pontiff Scrimpshire’s arrival,” I said. The truth wasn’t much of a stretch. In fact, this is was the most benign trip I had made in recent years.
“My name is Sada,” she said as she extended her hand. “I suppose I should have introduced myself before chatting your ear off.”
I took her hand in mine and held it gently. “My name is Pollux.”
“I’m pleased to meet you, Pollux,” she said before quickly glancing forward. “Oh, I just saw my friend Brena. Would you excuse me for a moment or two while I go and speak with her?”
“Take your time,” I said, muzzling the relief in my voice. Pretending to not be a coldhearted killer lacking in social skills taxed the hell out of me. I could use the reprieve if for no other reason than to let my jaw relax after so much courteous grinning as I played entertainer for a woman who had no idea what I truly was.
I watched silently as she grabbed her things and slowly made her way towards the front of the sub-rail car, leaving me to my thoughts.
As I gazed out of the window of the speeding car, the flickering between light and dark hypnotized me in a way. There was something familiar about the sensation that harkened back to my past in a way which made me uncomfortable just before the calm washed over me. I experienced it many times since becoming an agent but could never fully put my finger on it. For all I knew, the root memory was blocked, either by my brain’s desire to circumvent a tragic memory, or the programming I received burying it. Either way, the familiarity eventually waned as I fell into a slight meditative state.
So much had changed over the last decade. My existence as an agent before Halem became Pontiff was much darker as they forced us to lurk in the shadows, away from everyone and everything. Halem did not force that solitary prison upon me. Instead, I stood in the light, but I still did not feel like I belonged there.
I was reminded of an old saying I heard from my grandfather as a child, “heaven wouldn’t take me, and hell was afraid I would take over.” I related to that in ways I never imagined possible.
Still, there were things happening now that closely resembled life as it was before. When Halem first took over, I saw his desire to right the wrongs of the past. I felt inspired by his new leadership. But somewhere along the way, it appeared to me that he fell for the trappings of the World Council. The names may have changed, but the story stayed the same.
Corruption would bend any man, and I saw Halem flirt with it more than once to his own detriment.
That was when the dreams began, those brief stints where the subconscious revealed truths you did not want to admit. They grew more frequent over the last year, more demanding of my attention, more persuasive in relaying what I meant to discover; that Halem’s reign was drawing to an end.
So many times, I wanted to tell him that he was on the verge of straying too far off course; that something would be done if he continued his path in error. I knew he would understand what I meant, but how do you tell someone that people were on the verge of placing a hit on you to replace you?
How to tell that person that you found no argument with the conspiracy to end them?
How do you tell them those whispers were in your sleep, a manifestation of your mind?
It was impossible not to show bias, even when it was supposedly trained out of you. There was no denying the dichotomy of my thoughts as I served a master who wore a new mask each time a piece of their humanity fell away.
I brushed a tuft of hair out of my face tried to focus on something else. The sub-rail car was close to full, but thankfully the sound of conversations didn’t make me feel trapped in a small can with no escape. I could at least take solace in the fact that in less than an hour I would be free to walk the streets of Clenist and away from the budding drama in Archea. This trip was as much for me as it was for Halem. Perhaps some time away from the chaos of life entangled with the World Council would clear my head or numb me to those stray thoughts lingering with their compelling argument for me to do something about it.
I would do as Halem asked because it was my job to protect him. But I would also do what I needed to do in order to try and restore balance in the mind, to serve the World Council as I was created to do.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. That was the dark truth when authority went unchallenged.
With my ear to the ground in Clenist, I hoped I would find a solution to the problem that did not result in my having to kill Halem.
Unfortunately, I was afraid the writing was already on the wall as I had the sinking feeling that fate was already sealed for my friend. I heard it in the whispers of my slumber at first, but the echoes of those words followed me while awake now. It was as if the devil sat perched on my shoulder and I was his unwitting accomplice.
When Pontiff Halem Scrimpshire arrived in Clenist, he would be targeted, and he would die.
Four
Micah Troth
“I’m afraid I have some bad news, Councilman Troth.” Khari said as he slinked into my office, his shoulders slumped as he seemingly blobbed his way before me. One would think he was afraid of the air around him the way he moved about, but I knew better. He was afraid of me.
“What is it, Khari? I’m busy,” I said under my breath, focused on the tablet before me. Pontiff Scrimpshire was due to be in Clenist in ten days. That meant I had ten days to ensure our plan to remove him from his seat of power went off without a hitch. There were too many variables to leave anything to chance.
“Councilwoman Tyrel was attacked last night.”
That was enough to catch my attention.
My eyes shot up at Khari so fast the short, balding man flinched. He looked much older than his slight twenty-eight years. Life must be tough for a rat, I thought as I reflected on the nickname most in our circle referred to him as. Sometimes, even to his face.
“Was it one of ours, or someone else?”
“T…two of ours,” he replied. “Ocar and Timut mugged her for money. They assaulted her enough to fracture a few ribs and they banged her up pretty bad, but she’ll recover.”
“How did you find out? I heard nothing about it until now.” I checked my comm for a missed alert and there was nothing. I dropped it to my desk with a huff.
“Let me show you, sir,” Khari said as he grabbed the remote from my desk and switched on the screen. An image of Councilwoman Akran Tyrel filled the corner of the monitor along with a digitized sketch of her assailants. There was no denying the likeness to Ocar and Timut. I didn’t know them well, but I recognized their faces.
“Idiots,” I spewed, slamming the tablet onto my desk and falling into my seat. “You can’t even buy good help in this godforsaken place. What I wouldn’t give to be back in Archea instead of enduring my self-inflicted exile here.”
“They’re downstairs seeking asylum, sir. Law enforcement is looking for them as we speak.”
“Are you kidding me; they came here?” I said through my teeth as Khari looked at me with fear in his eyes. I’d never lashed out at anyone when my anger was dire
cted at someone else, but I felt my heart flutter with anticipatory rage, and I wanted nothing more than to slam my fist through his plump red face.
“I wish I was, sir,” Khari said, barely above a whisper.
I let out an exhale muddled with expletives as I stared at the ceiling, trying to find my center before I lost myself to my anger. It was a challenge I still had not mastered, but at least I could focus on something towards resolving the issue instead of taking it out on Khari. “Who is in charge of these men?”
“Anail is,” Khari replied, his voice shaky.
I cursed his name under my breath. This was the third time I would have to cover for the foolishness of his men and divert law enforcement away from them. A part of me wanted to forego my responsibility and let fate sort it out. Unfortunately, we were in too deep to replace key members at this point in the plan. His men might be expendable, but his other resources were not.
“I want all three of them in here in the next ten minutes. Are we clear?”
“Crystal clear, sir.” Khari replied as he scurried away like the little rat he was. If science humanized rodents, he would be a striking resemblance, even to the way his nose twitched like he smelled danger lurking. He was right; danger did lurk in us working with the budding crime ring in Clenist. It was beginning to grow out of control. But the real danger was right in front of him. As my plan was threatened before its execution, I felt my anger grow unchecked. He was right to worry, because if we failed, then we would all fall.
I looked at the clock on the wall and waited.
Nine minutes passed before a knock at the door drew my attention from the clock.
Right on time, I thought, hiding my grin with my hand over my mouth while Khari escorted the three men into my office. I watched as the men made their way into the room, two of them walked slowly, with fear etched on their faces. The third man, Ocar, appeared angry.