by Allen Zadoff
Why?
He must see the confusion on my face, because he answers the unvoiced question:
“Imagine you and I, with our training… the things we could accomplish if we put our skills together.”
“Accomplish where? With Moore? You traded The Program for a madman,” I say.
“I’ll admit he’s got his issues. But there’s room to shape his beliefs. We could do it together, build this into something special.”
He lowers his voice.
“The Program wouldn’t stand a chance with us together. Think about it.”
I consider teaming with Franky. There’s something nice about the idea of being together, soldiers united rather than alone and isolated in the world.
“You’ve only been here two days,” Francisco says. “I understand if you’re not ready to make a decision yet, but give yourself time to get to know Moore. Give us time to talk this out together.”
I hesitate, the tiniest seed of doubt creeping into my mind.
“I don’t have time,” I say.
I have a mission. I can’t allow myself to be confused.
“Listen to me,” he says. “I’m trying to throw you a lifeline.”
“I don’t need your lifeline. You betrayed The Program,” I say. “You betrayed your training, everything you believed in.”
“I never believed,” he says. He stares at me, his eyes piercing through the dimness of the forest. “Did you?”
That’s when I hit him. A roundhouse to the side of his head.
He’s startled by the speed of my attack. I go from stillness to a rapid strike in less than a second.
He reaches up to defend himself, and I hit him again.
He tries to grab a length of branch from the ground, but I’m too fast. I hit him again.
He tries to speak, but I don’t wait to hear what he’s going to say.
I’ve heard enough.
I’m trained to act instantaneously, to kill without leaving a trace.
I know two dozen ways to do it. When I don’t have my poison, I know how to do it with my hands. With items in the environment. I can always kill in a manner that is undetectable if I choose to do so.
Not now.
Now I take his head in my hands, and I bash it against a tree. I pull it back and I bash it again.
He goes limp in my arms, the fight drained out of him.
I push him up against a tree, my palm pressing into his throat, choking him out slowly.
“You said you recognized me earlier,” I say.
He groans, and I slap his face lightly, snapping him to attention.
“Listen to me,” I say. “Earlier you said you knew I was Epsilon by looking at me. What did you mean?”
“Your face,” he says through bloody lips. “It’s familiar.”
“How is it familiar if you’ve never seen me before?”
“You look like your father.”
My hand comes away from his throat. I stand before him, undefended.
“You know my father?” I say.
He stares at me, surprise showing through swollen eyes.
“You don’t know, do you?” he says.
“Know what?”
“How you got to The Program. Who you really are.”
“Mike brought me in.”
“But why? You must have thought about it.”
I have thought about it. Nobody is innocent, nobody who The Program targets. They’ve all done something to bring it on.
My father did something to bring it on.
But what?
Francisco strikes at me then, a ferocious blow to the head, a last-ditch effort to save himself. But his timing his off, his body injured beyond repair. I sidestep, the punch narrowly missing me but glancing off the side of my skull hard enough to start a ringing in my ears.
He is like a wild animal, injured but dangerous until the end.
“Who am I?” I say.
“I can’t tell you that,” he says.
“You won’t,” I say.
“I can’t,” he says.
I rush him, our bodies connecting in a savage exchange of blows. I feel his power waning with each one.
I kick out and connect to his belly, slamming him backward. He trips on a fallen tree trunk and goes down. I leap on top of him, kneeling on his chest, my hands closing around his throat.
“You can’t tell me who I am because you don’t know,” I say.
The last blow hurt him badly. The color drains from his face, a sign that he is bleeding internally. He struggles beneath me, a sticky line of blood dropping from the corner of one lip and making contact with the ground.
His voice is hoarse as he speaks.
“I can’t tell you,” he says, “because you have to find out for yourself.”
I squeeze his throat.
He gasps, looking up at me.
I meet his gaze, and I squeeze tighter.
My focus is singular. I must crush this boy.
I imagine him telling Moore about The Program before turning against us.
I think of him at the water treatment plant, holding Lee back, not because he was morally opposed to acting, but because he was awaiting instructions from Moore.
He fights for breath, but I do not allow him any.
This traitor. This boy who was one of us and is no longer.
I will protect The Program from the damage he has done. I will protect the country from the terrorist acts he might carry out if he is not stopped.
The phone in my pocket buzzes again and again. Someone is trying to reach me urgently, but the buzzing is like a fly far away on the edge of my thoughts.
Time seems to stop. There is nothing but this moment, and my mission.
Protect The Program.
I will destroy the voice that tells lies about my father.
The traitor’s hand that reached out to me with a lifeline.
The soldier willing to poison innocent people for an insane cause.
The mind that plots The Program’s downfall.
I squeeze until they are gone, and there is nothing left.
Until all is silence, and The Program is safe.
WHEN I’M SURE FRANCISCO IS DEAD, I DRAG HIS BODY DEEPER INTO THE WOODS.
A section so dense that he will never be found.
The heat and moisture will start the process. The animals and their hunger will finish it.
I reach down and take the square gray device from his pocket. I’ll use it to get back into the camp.
I stop and listen in the darkness.
No movement, no footsteps.
I am alone.
I hear the call of a night bird and the distant gurgle of running water.
I follow that sound, tracing it back through the woods until I arrive at the river, and I plunge my hands into cold water.
I sit on the riverbank. I take off my shirt and rinse it in the river. I twist the fabric and watch water and blood pour from it. I do the same with my pants. I wash the blood from my boots.
When I’m finished, I put the cold shirt back on. It shocks me back to the present moment.
The text messages earlier.
I take out my Program iPhone, but that’s not where the messages are. They are on my other phone, the one I’ve been using to contact Howard.
Howard has sent half a dozen texts asking me to call him.
Howard.
I made a mistake asking him to come up here. I see that now.
Francisco crossed the line into treason and went insane. I will not make the same mistake.
After I am done, after I have killed Moore, I will get Howard out of here safely. I’ll cover our tracks. I’ll send him home, and I’ll never contact him again under any circumstances.
Then I’ll reconnect with The Program. Things like this will not happen again. Breaks in protocol. Questions.
Doubts.
I sit down in the woods. I feel the cool air on my skin.
I’ve gotten
confused in my last two missions. My job is not to understand the big picture of my life.
My job is the small picture of the mission. Acquiring targets, getting close, finishing.
That’s what I have to do now.
Finish.
I should stand up, but I don’t. Not right away.
I am tired. My body. My mind.
Time passes.
When I look up again, the moon is out.
When did it become nighttime?
I drag myself up off the forest floor. I am lost here in the darkness. I do not know where I am.
That’s when I remember the river.
On side flows down to Moore, to camp, to my mission.
The other goes someplace else, someplace I do not know.
I only have to make the right choice, and I will be fine.
I follow the river south toward Camp Liberty.
I have work to do.
I HIKE OUT OF THE WOODS.
I use Francisco’s device to turn off the laser perimeter and walk back into the encampment unseen and unchallenged. I go directly to my room and lock the door behind me.
I must sanitize this space. It will be my next-to-last act here.
I move through the room, erasing evidence of my presence, cleaning surfaces with tissue, then flushing them to erase genetic evidence.
My thoughts are racing below the surface, threatening to bubble up and confuse me, but I keep them down below where they cannot interfere with my tasks.
I stand in the center of the room, looking around one final time to make sure it has been properly prepared. Normally I call in a cleaning crew after I have finished, contact Father and have him send a team while I get a safe distance away. But I do not have access to those resources now.
I must act alone. I must prove myself.
Something happens to me now. I fuzz out, losing track of time.
When I come to, I’m standing in the center of the room. My hand is on my opposite arm, pressing at the bones of my elbow, searching for something there beneath the skin.
I am looking for the chip, just as Francisco said I would.
No.
I put my hand down.
Francisco lost his mind and betrayed The Program. His words are lies, his actions suspect. I cannot allow myself to get confused at a time like this.
I have a job. I have to finish what I came here to do.
I SLIP INTO THE MAIN HOUSE.
I hear the chatter of families eating dinner on the first floor. I bypass them, and I move deeper into the house, mounting the first-floor staircase and moving on to the second.
I have done this once before. That’s all it takes for the layout to be committed to memory.
I pass a few people into the hall, nodding to them as I go. There is no reason to hide, no need to mask my movement in any way. I project authority and people yield, allowing me to pass.
I take the corner stairs up to the third floor, and I arrive without incident.
The war room.
I pause in a doorway for a moment, steadying my body and mind.
I feel certainty deep inside, the laser focus that has always allowed me to accomplish my missions.
It’s a relief to feel it. The old me. The me without doubts.
The soldier.
I assume Moore knew about Francisco’s plan this morning. He would take me up the mountain, ostensibly to repair a satellite uplink, but really to test my allegiance.
A make-or-break scenario.
I would turn against The Program, or I would be killed.
Because I am still alive, it won’t be tough to assume I turned. But Moore will want to know the details of what happened on the mountain.
I will make my certainty feel like the certainty of a boy who believes he has seen the truth. A boy who has made a new choice for his life.
This is the boy I will show to Moore.
I step into the room.
HE IS NOT ALONE.
Aaron is with him.
No matter.
I stand in the doorway waiting for them to notice me.
Moore looks up, takes in my appearance, registers the fact that I am by myself.
He nods to me, and I step into the room.
“Where’s Francisco?” Aaron says.
“In his room,” I say simply.
“I thought you two were together,” he says.
I note him looking at my forehead. I wipe there with my fingers. The skin is raw from a scrape. I feel the stickiness of clotted blood.
“We were together,” I say. “We took a hike, talked about some things. As you can see, we had a few issues to settle between us.”
“Were things settled satisfactorily?” Moore says.
I dab at my forehead. “Let’s just say we understand each other a lot better now.”
“Boys will be boys,” Moore says.
“And men will be men,” I say. I look at the blood on my fingers and smile. “You think I look bad? You should see Francisco. He’s cleaning himself up, and then he’ll join us.”
Aaron looks at me, distrust pouring off him. But he is not the important player in the room.
I check Moore’s eyes, searching for evidence of distrust.
I do not detect any.
“Francisco explained everything to me,” I say.
I glance at Aaron as if I’m unsure if I should say more with him in the room.
Moore takes the cue.
“Why don’t you grab a bite downstairs,” he says to Aaron.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Aaron says.
“Do as I tell you,” Moore says.
Aaron looks from Moore to me. His weight shifts from leg to leg, his uncertainty manifesting in his body. Aaron so badly wants to be a tough guy. He is brave but unskilled. I see that now.
“I’ll pick something up and be back in a few minutes,” Aaron says to Moore.
“Take your time,” Moore says. “Daniel and I have much to discuss.”
Aaron looks at me with narrowed eyes, then he leaves the room.
Six to eight minutes, that is my time frame. That is my estimate of how long it will take Aaron to get back here. It depends on what they’re serving downstairs, the length of the line in the dining hall, and how fearful Aaron is about my time with Moore.
But the important thing is that he is gone now.
I say, “I wasn’t sure how much Aaron knew.”
Moore shakes his head. “We thought it was better to keep him out of it for the time being.”
We.
“You knew about me all along,” I say.
“I suspected. I didn’t know,” Moore says.
I take a step toward Moore. He allows it.
He says, “Francisco warned me there would be others, that The Program would not let this stand.”
Hearing him say the name of my organization causes Francisco’s betrayal to hit me full force. Francisco told this stranger about The Program, breaking a fundamental code of our work.
Then I think of Howard waiting for me back at the hotel. I broke the same code.
Am I any different from Francisco?
I can’t think about this now. I push it to the side and focus all my attention on Moore.
I say, “Francisco warned you about me, but you decided to let me in.”
“I decided the opposite. It’s Francisco who persuaded me to give you a chance that night at the community center. He thought you were a Program soldier, but he also thought you could be something more.”
“A permanent.”
“A soldier,” Moore says, correcting me. “A new kind of soldier. And he was right, wasn’t he?”
I think of Francisco on the forest floor, his eyes bulging as I squeeze his throat.
Three minutes gone. Three remain.
“He was right,” I say. I touch the bruise on my head. “It took a little convincing, but that’s no surprise. I’ve always been stubborn.”
“The best one
s are,” Moore says. “But if you stay with us, you stay by choice. Not by force.”
“Choice,” I say. “That’s exactly what it is.”
Moore smiles.
“I’m glad to hear that,” he says. “You’re going to be an important part of things moving forward.”
“I know how Francisco convinced me, but I’m curious to know how you convinced him.”
“In the beginning?”
“That’s right.”
“I didn’t have to convince him.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t have that power, Daniel, not really. Francisco had already turned against The Program when he met me. He just needed someone to show him a different way to live. He needed a new mission.”
“Just like me,” I say.
“Like you,” Moore says. “You were already beginning to doubt the people you work for and the things they ask you to do. I saw it that night at the community center.”
I take another step toward Moore. I remove my glasses and repeat the now familiar gesture as I swing them by my side.
Moore turns his back to me, looking out the window at the camp below.
“Now you’re here to stay,” he says. “I have plans for us, big plans.”
“I want to hear all about them.”
“Of course,” Moore says. “As soon as Francisco gets back.”
He looks out across the encampment, his back to me.
“Where is Francisco?” Moore says.
“He went back to his room, but he should be here momentarily.”
“I see,” Moore says.
I step toward him, closing in on striking range. He continues to look out the window, his posture relaxed.
This is going to be easy.
Or so I think until Moore turns back to me with a pistol in his hand.
“Don’t come any closer,” he says.
I look at the pistol.
It’s a black Beretta M9. Standard-issue U.S. military pistol. Its 9mm bullets have questionable lethality from a distance, but we’re not at a distance. We are in the same room, a few feet away from each other.
“You’re here and Francisco is not,” Moore says. “I’m going to err on the side of caution and ask you to keep your distance until Francisco returns.”
The way he holds the pistol, it’s obvious he knows how to use it.