Vile Machinations

by P. S. Power

  Still, that didn't answer the older woman’s question at all.

  “I don’t know enough about the situation to even guess which is the right thing to do. Do we back up the C.I.A. or not, in general?” Honestly, he didn't expect an answer to that one, and had been careful not to mention the Order by name. Just in case any of the naked four managed to survive and recall their words, later.

  Instead of screaming at him to make a decision, Bennet actually laughed. It was pleasant this time.

  “Really, I think we can support our friends from Christians In Action here today. I’ll let the reinsertion team know that. We’ll have to fake a bomb going off, of course. Meaning that we don’t really need all of these people alive. You were asking if we could get rid of the loud one, earlier? Go ahead. Don’t take long, though.”

  Connor turned to glance at her, and shook his head.

  “Beating him to death with my bare hands, while tempting, will take too long.” Before he got to the end of the words, the older lady nodded, lifted her shirt in the back, which had been tucked in, or seemed like it, and pulled a small handgun. That was placed on the floor and slid over to him, making a soft scratching sound the whole time it moved across the rather smooth concrete.

  From the expression on his new boss’s face, he was supposed to whine, demure, stammer and stall, even though the man was being given to him as a present. Then, no doubt, she’d pretend his failure to kill was some kind of failed test on his part. A way to claim he wasn’t loyal enough. Instead, Connor picked it up smoothly, checked to make certain it was loaded and then aimed and fired from about five feet away from the man in the middle, just as Eve the U.S. agent came to her senses. A nice hole appeared in the center of the loud-mouthed man’s forehead. Not that he hadn’t taken to being more quiet with the announcement that Debbie, his bright haired and unshaved compatriot, was working for a foreign government.

  The women both screamed, though Kev, the skinny guy with the lacking looks just shook his head.

  “Well, this is fucked up. I don’t suppose you have a bullet for me, too? It’s one thing to play soldier and scare some people like we had planned in order to get a spare bit of trim. Another to murder all those people for the bloody Americans! Freaking hell.” His accent was decently nice, since most Australians had a pleasant tone, to Connor’s ear at least.

  From behind him, Bennet actually made a low sound that seemed annoyed.

  “I’m afraid we don’t have time for that right now. Though, I could leave orders with my people to give you a chance to run before the explosion goes off? You’ll have to vanish. You could take your little girlfriend here as well, if you want? That won’t be easy, since the C.I.A. will be coming for you, isn’t that right, Eve?”

  Connor wanted to shake his head, since there was no real reason to play with the people now. They had the information and a plan in place. It was his fault, of course, which would be the point, later. If he’d been more professional, then Bennet wouldn’t have tried to goad him into making a mistake by shooting Ali-Tom. Once he did it, the weapon still in his hand, the older woman had to shift gears.

  Which was probably about forcing him into a mistake again, if that was the game in the first place.

  He looked at Bennet and smiled.

  “That’s nice of you. We’ll put that into play. For now, let’s get out of here. Eve, do us a favor and don’t go after these two? Just claim that the bodies were found in the wreckage or whatever the plan was in the first place. There’s a schedule.” His voice wasn’t firm at all, since to his mind, they could stay all day and have fun. Torturing and doing other things to would be killers was fair enough in his mind. Even just to pass whatever tests might be given was enough for him.

  Bennet went still for a moment, then waved for him to follow along with her.

  “Come. Good plan there. Let’s head out.”

  That was done in a very similar way as before. The woman waved for him to walk ahead and even if she wasn’t at a control panel or anything, a purple flash had him back on the plane he’d started out on, instantly. Then, about a minute later, another, brighter seeming flash took place, with Bennet walking out of it.

  Connor still had her handgun, which dangled down to his side. Her hands were empty however.

  She gestured for him to sit, her face going still as she did it. Flat and almost reptilian.

  “That was… Fine, actually. You could have gotten more information from the C.I.A. agent there. When you were ordered to take a life, you responded perfectly. I’d honestly expected you to just stand there, sweating and gasping until I had to do it for you. About eighty percent of our own recruits can’t really go in for the kill like that. I left orders to have them all killed, of course.”

  There was a sinister air to the words, as if the real plan was ever going to have been about anything else.

  Connor sat, still holding the gun, which was pointed toward the side of the plane, the safety on. It was a semi-automatic, though very small and not of a make that he’d used before in practice at school. The hole made in the dead man’s head had been large enough for a single shot kill, so whatever it was worked pretty well.

  Across from him, his new boss took a deep, slow, breath.

  “In all, I think we can give you an eighty percent on that one. You did as you were told and tried to keep us on schedule. You missed some of the opportunities there. A C.I.A. field agent has limited information, but she’s going to know who she works for, how to contact them and what the stated plans for themselves were, last they heard. For most interrogators it wouldn’t be worth getting that information, taking too long. You could have had it inside half a minute. Fix that, next time.” She moved her fingers then, as if holding a cigarette. One that didn't exist. Her fingers weren’t stained yellow and she didn't smell of smoke, though she did try to put her hand up to her lips.

  Then she dropped it and waved at the gun in his hand.

  “You also came on a mission unarmed. You know how to use weapons, so I expect that to be addressed as soon as possible. From now on you’ll be dropped in a room alone to get at information, as likely as not. That or people will be brought to you for it. That might mean killing them at the end, depending on the situation. At times it will mean getting rid of the bodies as well. We can’t always have a full crew ready to go.”

  The older, still cute, if slightly unbalanced woman stared at him for a while. Her blue eyes a bit bloodshot at the edges.

  “On the good side, you worked out that it was a C.I.A. operation when most would have missed it, trying to question people inside that time frame. You’ll need to learn a lot more about who we tend to work with and who we don’t. When in doubt, leave people alive.”

  The words weren’t sweet sounding, though she didn't seem to be about to punish him for his failures, either. Most of what she was pointing out was just common sense, as soon as he heard it. It left him feeling a bit bad, realizing how much he’d missed. A lot of that was down to being used to simply taking orders. Not that he couldn’t think for himself. He’d done that when he’d gotten the instructors from school to confess to their crimes. It might not have been some kind of wonder plan, but it had been his and no one had told him to do it.

  Meaning he didn't really have an excuse in the moment, not to do better when it came to questioning people.

  “Sorry. I’ll make sure to do better, in the future.” He waited for the pain to shoot across his back. His words sounded weak, after all. Apologizing, even when required, had gotten that kind of thing, at Etain. To make it so you wouldn’t get used to groveling.

  The woman across from him, sitting not three feet away, simply smiled then.

  “Well, I shouldn’t tell you this, but you did better than most. We end up killing about half of the new people, on their first mission or the one after. Yes, there is real room for improvement, but you can do that. Now, leave the weapon on the seat and get back out to the car.” She paused then and checked her
watch. “It’s… Fifteen hours after you left the Charlie location. I know it didn’t seem that long, but we were in a distorted time field the whole time, and the backlash on the far end of those things can be a killer. Again, that isn’t something to mention. Go on now. I’ll call you when we need you for something. Until then, I want you to prepare and try to work your personal project. Finding those who have been getting in our way.”

  Connor moved then, leaving the gun. Hurrying to the door of the plane in case the woman was planning to shoot him from behind, for not having a weapon of his own with him. That would have been harsh training, but wasn’t outside of what he expected, for some reason.

  At the bottom of the metal stairs, which were there again, since it was clear the plane was in a different, though similar location, the small blue driverless car waited for him. It was daylight out and even if there were clouds in the sky, no rain fell as of yet.

  Settling behind the wheel, after the door clicked open to his touch on the metal strip near the lock, Connor moved to get his seatbelt on.

  “Um… I’m Connor Harriman again. How are you doing today, vehicle?” The words felt strained, since he didn't have a real name for the car. If it had one at all.

  “I’m operating inside of parameters, thank you. We should arrive at the primary outward location in fifty-two minutes. There is a small traffic delay on the freeway. Do you wish me to re-route?”

  Connor had no way to know what was the best plan, so just went with the thing that felt obvious to him.

  “Use your best discretion. There’s no particular hurry, as far as I know.”

  “Very good. Beginning trip, now.”

  They road in silence again. The trip actually took almost an hour and a half, since the minor traffic delay was a car accident that was far worse than the reports had made it sound, apparently. No one seemed to be dead, though everyone had to go around the two cars that were piled up in the far-right hand lane.

  While they drove, Connor tried to think about everything. That was surprisingly hard for him to do. Not because he was stupid, just due to the fact that so much of what he’d been hearing and seeing had been simply accepted by him. Fully and without thought. It was the only way for him to survive at the moment. At least as far as he could tell. Trying to pretend to be a moral person would be the same as committing suicide. Thankfully, his training at Etain was actually good for something.

  When given information, you accepted it. Now, given his powers, he knew it was the truth. His ability to just act and go on had been cultivated for years before that moment. Even things like killing had been made simpler for him. Almost every day, for close to seven years, he’d been made to stab, shoot and strangle life like dummies. Ones that bled and screamed in pain. Things that looked like men, women and children of all sorts. Some of them had been designed to seem like his class mates, even.

  A few had been boys that he’d dated. The meaning of which hadn’t been lost on him at all, even at the time.

  So to his mind, the man he’d killed, Ali-Thomas, was just one of the thousands that he’d done the same to already. It meant nothing to him and, he knew, wouldn’t be haunting his dreams. He didn't have those, as far as he could recall. The negative side of the whole thing was that it felt a good bit like nothing real had happened. Almost everything since he’d left school had that quality to it. Even before that, for a while.

  Ever since his power had come into being his entire world had just become surreal and strange to him one day. Part of him wanted to go back to that simpler time, when he was just a normal kid. The one who was tortured at school, and had a billionaire Father he barely remembered having ever been around. Exactly the same as all the other kids in the world. At least as far as he knew.

  It was daylight, which meant that the tiny blue car pulled into the loading area of a large store of some sort. His hands were on the wheel, since everyone else on the road had been doing that and he didn’t want to alert anyone that he wasn’t actually driving. Then the thing parked there, the door clicking open with a definitive clicking noise.

  When the car spoke, it sounded pretty calm about the whole thing. As if it weren’t being difficult or annoying at all.

  “We have six hours before nightfall. Entrance into the Charlie location is forbidden until then. Use a known entrance at that time.” Then it stopped making noise and all the lights inside shut off. To save battery life while it waited, no doubt.

  It was tempting to go into the shop, but he lacked money for such things at the moment. A snack or two would have been nice, being that he’d barely been allowed or able to eat in the last several days. Not since the trip in the back of the truck. That was, of course, mainly down to his own lack of skill in cooking. There was food in the little kitchen provided to him, after all. A large load of things that he didn't know what to do about. If he’d had a camp fire he would have been better off and while it was clear the two concepts, using a stove and a pot over a fire, were similar in some fashions, he hadn’t gotten around to trying it out yet.

  Not enough times to feel secure in his abilities that way, at any rate.

  So, having hours to kill, he decided to fall back on his survival training. It wasn’t a wilderness situation, but he needed to know how to find his way to the alley with the little ill painted garage when darkness fell. That the whole of Charlie complex was literally underneath him as he walked out of the covered area, abandoning the little blue car, was clear. It was so large that the city above had to be resting on top of it, to a good extent.

  Obviously, there was a way into the second level from there as well, or else the car wouldn’t have picked that location to park. There might even be a man access in the area, if he got lucky and could find someone else who knew how to get inside of it at the right time. Then he could simply follow along. Unless he was wrong and such a thing didn't exist at all. If the little car took off and drove across town when night fell, he’d be a bit screwed.

  That meant finding the last entrance he’d used, if at all possible. At first it sounded nearly impossible. Cities were too large for him to randomly find things like that, just walking around. Especially if it looked different, during the daylight hours.

  As the rain started to fall on him, because that was apparently required to happen every time he got stuck outside someplace, his feet trudging almost hopelessly, Connor realized that he was walking directly in front of the house he needed. More than that, it was confirmed when he walked around the block to the right, since the familiar alley was there again. The store was no more than a block away, which meant it was one of the places that Ephraim the asshat had mentioned that first night.

  The alley was made out of gravel and potholes that were ill covered and added a run-down air to the whole thing. It was tempting to walk past it several times, just to be certain, but doing that might be a giveaway if anyone was watching. As it was, Connor was far too close for security to be happy with him. That meant walking off, down the street, counting the turns he was taking until he found first a very busy street, and across that a small but rather nicely groomed park.

  Even better, there was a covered area, which he could use for temporary shelter.

  The potentially useful structure was brown and rustic seeming, even if the rest of the grounds were far from reminding him of the wilderness. It took him a while to navigate across the street, since as far as he could tell, the traffic there never slowed or had large gaps in it. So, being daring and using his running skills more than was probably wise, he dashed over, walking on the grass to the covered sanctuary.

  Just as the sky itself tried to open up and dump tons of water on him. At least it tried to, missing only because of the sturdy bit of wood above him. The rest of the world ignored it happening, but even if already damp, Connor felt glad for the roof that was suddenly over his head. The wooden beams and shingles providing cover from a fairly severe pelting.

  It wasn’t, as it turned out, just him in need of shel
ter. A young woman, one who looked to be about his own age, more or less, dashed toward him, her bright red shoes flashing as she held a small back pack over her head. Laughing a bit, she looked at him as soon as she was safe from the worst of the downpour.

  “Mind if I share with you?” She waved at the large structure over them, which had clearly been designed for entire families to use at the same time. Large ones, or at least several of them. Even if he didn’t know that people held picnics in city parks all that often. It was a nice enough place, so it could happen, he had to suppose.

  The young lady was being polite, so he nodded. It didn’t hurt that she was attractive. Enough that he felt slightly interested in her, even if she hadn’t added anything to gain his attention just yet. She wasn’t even showing much skin, at the moment, her heavy coat preventing her figure from being seen at all. Which was probably just as well. It wasn’t as if he could date her or anything. As far as he knew, regular people didn’t understand that some people had super powers at all.

  “That would be a pleasure, of course. I’m Connor. Pleased to meet you.”

  The damp woman, who had red hair, which didn’t seem real, reminding him a bit of Eve the C.I.A. agent, though lacking in facial piercings for that style, smiled at him and moved closer. When she was about ten feet away, she stopped, and sat on top of a wooden picnic table. Using the bench like seat as a foot rest.

  “Faith. Well, my real name is Jenifer, but that didn’t really mark me out as being special enough, so I changed it a few years ago.” She patted the table next to her, indicating it would be a fine spot for Connor to take. Even if they were both a bit damp from their prior travels.