by Paul Tassi
Hope. There was hope. After “breaking” and admitting he was a spy, Mark had been offering up information to the Chinese the CIA had told him to give away as enticement. Submarine positions. Japanese codebreaking cyphers. Drone surveillance schedules. Useful, but ultimately not damaging enough to pose a serious threat to US interests. Enough to get his foot in the door.
“I just … want to help,” Mark choked out through chapped lips. He was lucky to get water even once a day. Food came every three or four and even the rats in his cell wouldn’t touch it.
“I still think you are a lying snake,” Zhou said in Mandarin. “But it is not up to me. And I am due for a promotion for my role in helping you see the light of our glorious republic.”
After all this time, Mark didn’t think Zhou was really a true believer. Just an ambitious man trying to climb the ladder of chaos. And he was another rung.
“They ask something of you,” Zhou said. “It will mean you leaving this cell. Rice and meat every day. Your own quarters.”
Mark’s heart leapt in his chest involuntarily. This was it. What he’d been waiting for. The chance to become a full double agent, and finally, maybe, be treated like a human being again. Unless this was another one of Zhou’s cruel jokes.
“Think I am fucking with you?” he said, reading Mark’s mind. He arched an eyebrow that had a tiny scar running through it. “I wish I was. I would bury you alive in here for eternity for your disgrace. But instead …”
He produced a keycard. As he ran his finger over the center of it, Mark’s electronic cuffs beeped, and then opened. Mark rubbed his raw wrists and pulled himself to his feet.
“Thank you,” he managed to spit out. Zhou merely frowned.
“Come, they are waiting.”
Mark limped after Zhou out of the cell, half considering clawing his eyes out with his overgrown fingernails as revenge for the abuse he’d endured. But again, all it would do was widow Mark’s wife and orphan his child. The CIA often chose operatives based on their lack of family ties, but Mark couldn’t imagine how this mission could be done by someone without them.
They didn’t have to go very far before arriving at another cell only six over from Mark. The rooms were soundproof, so it was impossible to tell how many were occupied. Mark was sure the blacksite, which he guessed was several miles under Beijing, was full with new political dissenters China was rounding up daily. Or at least they had been the last time he’d seen daylight.
The door opened. Inside were three figures at a table, faces hidden by shadow. Two wore suits, one had the stripes of an admiral. Mark’s pulse quickened. All were smoking. Everyone smoked here.
Maybe they’ll all just die of lung cancer.
They said nothing. Suddenly Zhou stripped the rags from Mark’s shoulders. What was left of his prison jumpsuit was torn away, and he was naked before them. Mark was used to such embarrassment by now, but was not expecting what came next. A hose and a mist of soap. Attendants emerged from the walls and violently scrubbed him from head to toe. They shaved off his mangled beard and buzzed his matted hair so he was almost bald.
Zhou threw a uniform at him. A soldier’s uniform with no rank on it. He gingerly put it on, enjoying the sensation of actual clothing brushing past clean skin. His sudden lack of hair made him cold, but he didn’t mind. He laced up his shoes and donned his hat. Everything fit to perfection.
He turned to Zhou, who was holding up a mirror.
“The traitor reborn.”
Mark did a double take. He almost didn’t recognize himself. His face had lost what little fat it had, and his skin was gray as ash. He could only imagine what he’d looked like before being cleaned up. But now he realized perhaps there was a reason Zhou had never cut up his face, nor removed any fingers. He was at least, to some extent, valuable.
“I’m ready to serve,” he barked, turning to the table and clicking his heels together in salute. The gesture was minimal, but painful all the same. Everything hurt. Always. Maybe that was over now. Maybe.
The figures regarded him in silence still. One of the suits lit a new cigarette.
“And serve you shall,” one finally growled from the darkness. He waved his hand toward Zhou.
Zhou nodded and took a chair from the corner. It was metal, and Zhou fixed it to the ground with bolted clamps. It was the same chair Mark had sat in many times before.
No, no, no, no, Mark’s mind raced. Not more. Not again. That’s all this was. Just a big headfuck. He should have known.
But Zhou didn’t restrain him. Instead, the door opened and two more guards shoved a hooded figure inside, dressed in a relatively fresh-looking jumpsuit.
The guards slammed him down in the chair and secured the restraints. They pulled the hood off the prisoner. It was a young white man with an overgrown Army buzzcut and a face full of bruises. He glared at the room in silence.
“This is Lieutenant Oh-Connor. Special Forces. We caught him trying to sabotage a nuclear plant in Lianyungang last week, trying to make it look like an accidental meltdown. The People’s Defense Force killed most of his team, but a few members escaped. We have been asking him where they might have gone. Now, we would like you to ask him.”
Mark turned to regard the battered American soldier. His gut was churning.
“Lieutenant, what are the evac procedures for your unit? Where are they being extracted?”
The man looked surprised at Mark’s perfect English, but the answer he gave was the one Mark expected.
“Lieutenant Marcus O’Connor. United States Army. Service Number 8355521. D.O.B. 6/22/2002.”
Jesus, he was three years younger than Mark. He blinked.
“Lieutenant, we must know where—”
Zhou interrupted him.
“We have asked him like this. And like that,” he said, pointing to the recent bruises on O’Connor’s face. “Now, you ask him like I ask.”
An aide handed Zhou a suitcase.
The kit.
Mark’s heart was in his throat. Zhou opened it, and presented the array of knives. Some of them were still crusted with blood. Possibly his blood.
Could he just take them and kill everyone in the room? Everyone in the blacksite? No, of course not. He was weak from starvation and he’d be shot inside of two seconds. His breathing became shallow and he was dizzy. His hands wouldn’t stop shaking. Embers burned from cigarettes in the shadows. This was it. This was the last test.
Mark turned to Lieutenant O’Connor, the young man’s eyes now involuntarily wide with fear.
“Choose.”
14
MARK’S BRAIN SLOWLY TRANSITIONED into consciousness, the lights coming on one room at a time in his head, though some places remained permanently dark. His vision was blurred, his throat felt like he’d swallowed sand. He vaguely was aware of having control over his arm and flung it toward a nearby glass of water. His middle finger caught the rim, and flipped it. What soaked into the carpet smelled like jet fuel, and he didn’t imagine it would have been very hydrating. His stomach wrenched at the smell, and slowly even more pungent scents trickled in. Urine. Bile. What had to be some kind of dead animal. Or maybe it was just him.
He blinked, and the room became a little more clear. The tragic wall art and comforter with ancient stains indicated a motel room. His hand fumbled around so he could try and pick himself off the floor, but it slipped on a slick brochure that had probably once been on the nightstand.
MADISON: A PLACE FOR FAMILY FUN, it read, and the picture showed a smiling family canoeing down a river.
Madison? As in, Wisconsin?
Mark had no idea how he’d gotten there. The clock blinked 12:00 but the light behind the curtains said it was probably around mid-afternoon. He reached into his pocket for his phone, but found nothing but uncomfortable dampness.
His head was reeling and he took a single step and fell straight back onto the bed, which had been stripped half-bare by a thrashing madman, most likely him. He rolled his
head around and looked for clothes other than his own, thankfully finding nothing but the sock and shirt he was missing. His shoes were nowhere in sight.
It hasn’t been this bad in a while, he thought, his brain forming each word with a sharp prick of pain. Not since it happened.
Suddenly, the door was flung open and Mark was baked in searing, torturous light that made his mind catch fire. The cloudless Wisconsin sky felt like the ozone layer had vanished and the sun was burning all life on the planet away, starting with him.
In the doorway, an angel of death loomed. Mark reached for a gun he did not have, and tried to vault away to the other side of the bed but just rolled over and bumped his head on a lamp, which crashed to the ground. It felt like his veins contained more alcohol than plasma.
The figure approached and mouthed something he couldn’t hear, though he recognized his own name. He felt a sharp prick in his shoulder and saw the plunger of an injector release something lime-colored into his veins.
It was China. It was Crayton. He tried to fight but his arms felt like he was swimming in tar.
Slowly, his head began to clear. Just a little, but enough for his eyes to finally focus on the face in front of him.
Brooke.
His ears started to work too.
“Jesus, Mark.”
She sat on the bed as he remained crammed into the corner between the mattress and the wall. Another figure was behind her, one he could now easily recognize. Gideon. And he did not look pleased.
“I knew you were a mess when I put you on this op, but I thought you were past something this stupid!” Gideon yelled. The volume made Mark’s head throb.
“What did you give me?” Mark said, his speech one long slur.
“Think of it like eleven cups of coffee,” Brooke said, putting the empty vial back into a little plastic case. “Military grade hangover cure.”
Mark almost corrected her to say he was still drunk, not hungover, but thought better of it.
“Carlo?” he asked, squinting. The light still burned.
“Critical, unconscious. The Riveras wondered where you went off to,” Brooke said.
Gideon folded his arms.
“We don’t have time for this,” he said. “We’re going to have to airlift you back to the city. Goddamn Wisconsin? And you ditched all your trackers and made us go full bloodhound on you? The brass is pissed about this. They want to pull you.”
“Too late for that,” Mark said, shaking his head.
“I know that,” Gideon snapped. “But you might be out of the running anyway if we don’t get you back in time for the fight. “
“That’s Friday,” Mark said, flinging his arm out dismissively. “I’ll be fine by then.”
“Mark,” Brooke said, holding up her phone. The news portal she had open displayed a headline that made his eyes widen, letting in even more burning light.
WEI VS. DRESCHER: BIGGEST CRUCIBLE MATCH YET? FIND OUT TONIGHT
Tonight?
Below that, there was a running countdown clock.
2:45:32
2:45:31
2:45:30
“Oh shit.”
MARK COULDN’T THINK OF two things that went together more poorly than air travel and alcohol-induced vertigo. He spent the entire trip back to Chicago dry-heaving, because there was nothing left in his stomach to evacuate. Brooke injected him with a few more colorful liquids that were meant to treat various symptoms normally exhibited by rescued POWs.
Gideon was trying to walk him through a debrief, and because of how quiet the new hexocopters were, he didn’t even have to yell. Still, anything above a whisper was torture to Mark, meaning he was only really hearing half of whatever Gideon was saying.
“We had to send the mobile data you ripped to Langley. The CMI-issued tech is beyond anything we can crack in the field. Might take a little while. That level of security is a red flag in and of itself. Elsewhere, the rest of the crowd had more middle-aged naked selfies than I’d care to see. If we dig enough we’ll find some kickbacks and favor trade among their little incestuous club, but that’s par for the course and not what we’re after. Crayton and his people are way more on their game. Nothing in the preliminary decrypt even hints at China.”
Mark was nodding, but was really only thinking of Carlo, battered and broken in his hospital bed.
“I want to see him,” Mark said, and Gideon looked annoyed that he clearly wasn’t paying attention.
Brooke knew who he was talking about, and shook her head.
“No time. At this rate we’ll have to have you parachute onto the field to even be a half hour late.”
THEY DIDN’T DO THAT, of course. They had to drop him outside the city and plant him in an autocab to take him home where a limo with an impatient escort staff was waiting. Five of them jumped on their phones when he rolled up, all letting their various bosses know that he had actually been located. All looked like they had just escaped the gas chamber.
“Don’t worry, boys,” Mark said, forcing a smile. “Party ran a little late is all.” His mannerisms, speech, and breath certainly all said that was true. But he left out the part about the “party” being a blackout rage bender that landed him in a city he’d never travel to of his own free will 150 miles away.
When he finally pulled up to Soldier Field, the sun had set. He was still mostly drunk. And fully angry. Brooke’s cocktail allowed him to walk and talk, but beyond that was anyone’s guess. Still, he knew he had enough fuel in the tank to beat a thug like Drescher. Not just beat him. Tear him apart.
Crayton’s team had ridden in the autolimo with him the whole way, ensuring he didn’t go MIA again. They refrained from asking him prying questions, but once the doors opened, Mark realized they were going to let him be picked apart by vultures.
Mark had avoided the press pretty well so far since the Crucible propelled him to at least local notoriety. If he qualified for the main event, half the country would know his name. And it all started now, with dozens upon dozens of cameras pointed his way. The camera flashes reignited his dormant migraine and he stumbled out of the car with two buttons open on his hastily assembled pre-fight dress outfit.
Mark charted a course straight through to the stadium, trying to mute out the rabid press corps as much as possible and squinted to mitigate the flash photography. Some questions were screamed so loud he couldn’t ignore them.
“Will you avenge Carlo tonight?” a psychotic-looking beauty queen asked him, shoving a wand mic in his chin.
“Avenge?” Mark growled.
“Reports are that he’s in a coma, and has serious injuries. Burton Drescher has gone on record saying that he wished, and I quote, that he’d ‘killed the little wetback.’”
Mark stopped and swerved around to face the throngs. They all stepped back a couple feet.
“Burton Drescher is a disease,” Mark said, eyes bleary and bloodshot as he looked into the lens. “To this tournament. To this country. To the entire human race. I will eradicate him.”
The press stopped shouting long enough to cheer.
SIXTY-THOUSAND FANS CLAPPED LIKE a waterfall as the Muses finished their latest dance routine. Mark hadn’t bothered to look at the monitor in the locker room, and had forced all his faux trainers to leave. The Soldier Field crowd was sold out and then some, with extra seating crammed in to accommodate the last few thousand who wanted to see what was being pitched as the biggest fight of the Crucible so far. There was a story now. Revenge.
Mark’s knee bounced up and down uncontrollably as he buried his face in his hands. His head had been spinning for hours, and despite Brooke’s magic cocktail, it didn’t seem like it would stop any time soon. But even on his worst day, he should be able to beat a brute like Drescher, right?
An intro video started playing. His. It was a new one this time, no more heroic tales from days gone by. Rather, a voiceover and security cam footage from his local gym.
“Best friends and training partners, C
arlo Rivera and Mark Wei entered the Crucible together to prove their worth as fighters.”
The screen showed shots of them sparring late at night at the gym.
“Though from different backgrounds, they were inseparable, with the same big dreams of a better life, and each were convinced they’d see the other in the finals.”
A dramatic pause.
“And then, tragedy struck. In his semi-final match with Burton Dres—”
Mark let out a primal scream, grabbed a discarded practice football helmet from a nearby locker and hurled it into the TV, the thin screen spiderwebbing and shorting out as the helmet bounced on the tile floor. The bullshit was suffocating. His anguish and anger was being pre-packaged and sold as a goddamn product.
He didn’t want to fight. He wanted to burn the entire stadium down.
Again, Mark was last to enter the ring. The clouds above the field threatened rain, but if there was thunder, it was drowned out by the roar of the crowd. As he walked out from the player’s entrance toward the lit-up ring, he heard something he never expected, and half thought it was an auditory hallucination, the booze playing tricks on him again.
“Wei! Wei! Wei! Wei!” the crowd chanted, stomping their feet with each repetition. It was a far cry from his tepid reception at Wrigley. It seemed they loved Carlo and wanted to see justice for him. The narrative was working. How could it not?
In that moment, Mark forgot about the mission. Crayton’s corruption. His own anger. Hell, he almost forgot he was drunk. In that moment, he absorbed the cheers of the crowd and felt more alive than he had in years. It was downright euphoric. He smiled. He waved. He became what they wanted him to be. The white knight, there to slay the dragon. He was poised to be the hero, a title he’d never been able to wear publicly.
But the dragon looked murderous. Drescher was in the ring, punching air, but he turned to face Mark as he made his way into the ring amid the fanfare of the crowd. His sneer was encased in a pencil-thin goatee, which rested under a crooked nose and the blue eyes of the Master Race. His dyed black hair was already wet with sweat.