by Jack Heath
The thought is uncomfortable. I push it away.
‘You know, Donnie cut that dude’s foot off.’ Samson smiles and shakes his head, amused by Donnie’s shenanigans. ‘If I hadn’t been here to treat the stump, he wouldn’t have lasted until—Ow! Fuck!’ Samson is sucking on one of his fingers.
‘What’s up?’
‘Just cut myself. Badly. Goddamn it.’ He goes to the sink and turns on the water.
I glance over at the chopping board. He’s dropped the knife. Next to the blade, I can see a sliver of skin, pink on one side, red on the other.
‘Can you grab some paper towel?’ Samson asks.
‘Huh?’ I’m still staring at the chopping board.
‘Paper towel. It’s right behind you.’
I tear my gaze away from the thin piece of Samson’s finger. At my house the paper towel would be stuffed into a cupboard, still half-wrapped in plastic. Here, it’s mounted on a neat little rail. I tear off some sheets and hand them to Samson.
‘Thanks.’ He presses the paper against his hand and it blossoms red immediately, like the flowers I saw in the greenhouse.
‘I’ll clean up the mess.’ I turn back to the bloodied chopping board and the knife.
‘Just give it here. I’ll wash it.’
‘Okay.’ I bring them over to the sink.
Samson examines the board, frowning. ‘I think I sliced off some skin, but I don’t see it anywhere.’
‘Huh. Weird,’ I say.
His lip curls. ‘Sure hope it didn’t end up in the food.’
‘Yeah.’ I clear my throat. ‘That would be bad.’
‘Lux,’ Fred says from behind me.
It takes a second to remember that’s my name now, but I turned around as soon as I heard his voice, so he shouldn’t have detected any hesitation.
Fred has changed into cargo pants and a sweatshirt with a faded purple logo on the chest. He breathes on his hands and rubs them together.
‘Your room is ready,’ he says.
CHAPTER 4
Under my crown I’m sometimes flushed, but I can move any distance in any direction. Who am I?
An ex-CIA contractor once visited the field office to teach us about undercover work. He wasn’t popular. The FBI agents thought the CIA was full of shifty, self-important assholes who refused to follow anyone else’s rules. This contempt was envy in disguise—many of them had gone to Quantico only after flaming out at Langley.
I wasn’t supposed to be at the presentation, but I had heard there would be food, so I snuck in. The conference room smelled of yesterday morning’s coffee and Friday’s five o’clock beers. The rumour of food turned out to be false. It may have been a deliberate trick to improve the turnout. This seemed like something the CIA would do.
The contractor’s name was Hassan. He was slight and softly spoken, with a crisp grey suit, a tattoo on one side of his neck and an old knife wound on the other. He told us he had been embedded in both Afghanistan and Iraq, and he strongly hinted he had been to other places that he couldn’t talk about.
‘There are two kinds of cover,’ he told us. ‘Official and non-official. In an official cover role, you tell everyone you work for the US Government, but you pretend you’re in a less interesting organisation than the CIA. The department of transportation, or education. Or perhaps the FBI.’ No one laughed. ‘You act like a normal bureaucrat, while recruiting local assets to do the real spying for you. If you’re caught, you just get sent home. No big deal.
‘I did the other kind. Non-official cover, where no one knows you work for Uncle Sam, and you therefore have no diplomatic protection if you’re caught. Agents with non-official cover are often executed. Since you’ll be going undercover with gangbangers and mobsters, the stakes will be similar.
‘To be an effective undercover agent,’ Hassan continued, clicking through to the first slide of his PowerPoint presentation, ‘the secret is preparation. You need to be able to quickly recall every detail about all the people you’ll be embedded with. Make flash cards. Build memory palaces. You need to know your false identity inside out. Not just the biographical details, like your parents’ names and when you were supposedly born, but personality traits. How would the person I’m supposed to be walk into a room? How would he greet a stranger? How would he answer this question or that? I recommend spending a few weeks inhabiting this character before you go into the field.’
The surly FBI agents just glared at him. Their budget was pitiful. They didn’t have a few weeks to devote to anything. Half of them were supposed to be on vacation right now, and all of them would have to work twice as hard this afternoon to catch up after wasting all morning listening to him.
Undaunted, Hassan clicked through to the next slide. ‘Trust your handler and your superiors. They’ll do the actual investigating—you’re only supposed to be their eyes and ears. You can’t focus on your cover and bring your own agenda to the mission. There’s not enough room in your head.’
‘Not in your head, maybe,’ muttered Richmond. The agent next to him snickered.
Alan Richmond was my handler before Reese Thistle took over. He was equal parts sleazy and lazy. I got away with a lot while he was supposed to be watching.
Hassan looked at Richmond and his buddy for a second, just to let them know he’d heard. Then he moved on.
‘All this is easier if you use the role to become the kind of person you always wished you could be. The broad details will be provided by your handlers, but there’s wiggle room. Say, deep down, you fantasise about working in a restaurant instead of here.’ He waved a hand at the shabby conference room. ‘In that case, your cover can be a chef, or you have been a chef at one time, or at least love cooking. Or say you’re secretly gay?’ He glanced over at Richmond, hoping to get a reaction. It worked. ‘Great. While you’re in the field, you’re openly gay. This makes you seem more authentic, so your cover doesn’t look like a cover.’
Thistle was there, too, although I didn’t know her name at the time. She was in the front row, her spine straight, nails clipped, her wild hair tied up in a bun. She was scribbling on a spiral-bound notepad—but I noticed that she looked at Hassan himself doubtfully, like he was a designer handbag, too cheap to be anything other than a knock-off.
‘Why would an agent sign up for such a risky assignment?’ Hassan continued. ‘This is why. It’s not patriotism. It’s not loyalty. It’s the desire to be the person society doesn’t allow you to be.’
After a bit more rambling and showing of documents that were too redacted to be useful, Hassan asked if there were any questions. It was clear by now that no food was coming, so I stuck up my hand. ‘Is the CIA secretly torturing people in Kabul?’
Hassan looked annoyed. ‘I’m not here to discuss conspiracy theories.’ He glanced at his gleaming watch. ‘Actually, I think that’s all the time we have.’
Now I’m at Fred’s house with a cover so non-official that no one at the FBI even knows I’m here. I wish I’d asked Hassan more practical questions. The tips he gave us are useless. I don’t have a handler. I don’t have two weeks to prepare. I know next to nothing about the man I’m pretending to be or the people I’m trying to fool.
‘Bathroom’s just down the hall,’ Fred is saying. ‘The solar water heater is pretty good, but if a couple of people have had showers right before you, best to wait a half-hour or so. Don’t go upstairs, for obvious reasons.’
I don’t know what he means by that. Maybe the second floor isn’t structurally sound.
The bedroom he’s showing me is nicer than any I’ve ever slept in. A queen-size mattress on an actual bedframe. Clean sheets. A bedside lamp. A window overlooking a grassy slope. Donnie is out there with a flashlight, feeding the dogs. I can see the greenhouse and the compost pipe, but the slaughterhouse is just out of view.
I know the basic layout of the house now. It’s L-shaped, with the front door, the living room, the kitchen and the dining room all in a row, followed by a right
turn towards the bedrooms, the bathroom and a stairwell.
The window is padlocked shut. Fred doesn’t offer me a key. To get outside, I’ll have to walk past all the other bedrooms and open the back door.
‘There are some clothes in the closet that should fit,’ Fred says. ‘If not, we can order you some better ones. Money is no problem.’
‘Thanks, man.’ I sit on the bed, testing the springs. Turns out there are none. It’s memory foam, or latex, or something.
As I move, the hammer slips out of my pants and flops onto the bed.
Fred sees it. Frowns.
The blood roars in my ears. I’m sitting down. If I attack him, he’ll overpower me easily.
‘Did you come here to kill me, Lux?’ he asks. He smiles, as though it’s a joke.
‘No,’ I lie. ‘But I wasn’t sure what kind of reception I was gonna get. Sorry.’
Fred says nothing.
‘I figured there was a chance you’d decided I knew too much,’ I continue. ‘Invited me here to tie up a loose end. I figured I should come prepared to defend myself.’
‘Well, then.’ He crosses his arms. ‘Take your best shot.’
I force a laugh. ‘It’s all good, man. I trust you. If you wanted me dead, you would have shot me when I was getting out of my car.’
‘I’m serious.’ He nods at the hammer. ‘Hit me.’
‘I don’t want to hurt you. I was just being overcautious.’
He reaches past me, picks up the hammer and presses it into my hands.
‘Take a swing,’ he says.
My heart rate is through the roof. ‘But … I don’t want to.’
Though maybe I should. Fred and all his friends have to die. Why not start now?
‘Stand up,’ Fred says.
I do, uneasily.
‘Swing.’
School bullies taught me how this game ends. The weaker kid thinks he’s getting a free shot at the tougher kid. Then the tougher kid knocks his teeth out.
‘You don’t need to prove anything,’ I say. ‘I know you can overpower me.’
‘I’m trying to show you something.’ Fred holds my gaze. ‘You’re not making it easy.’
The solution to the schoolyard game is to throw a punch before the bully expects you to. Act like you’re not going to do it, or you’re still thinking about it, then lash out mid-sentence.
I could cave Fred’s skull in with this hammer. A fast, silent death. Lead the other Guards into this room one by one and give them the same treatment. Chop up all the bodies, put them in the freezer, put the freezer on the back of the pick-up and drive away. Make an anonymous tip-off to the police so they can come here and let the prisoners go.
Call it an eighty per cent chance of killing Fred quietly. Then another eighty per cent for each of the others. That’s about a one in four chance of taking them all out. And I’ve already left it too late. Fred is expecting it now.
I swing the hammer. Medium speed. Not fast enough to hit him, not slow enough that he can’t make his point.
His hand shoots out like a striking snake, and suddenly I’m not holding the hammer anymore.
‘Shit.’ I’m genuinely impressed.
‘See, to get any power from the swing, your opponent needs to hold the hammer close to the base,’ Fred says. ‘But that leaves plenty of space right under the head. Easy to grab, with a little practice. And the head itself makes it easy to just rip the hammer out of their hand.’
Would he have been able to do that if I’d swung faster, harder? Maybe not. I tell myself there’ll be other chances.
‘Come with me,’ he says.
CHAPTER 5
I have five fingers but I’m not a hand. I have love in me but I’m not a heart. What am I?
Fred leads me to a door at the end of the corridor and unlocks it. The room beyond is as cramped and lightless as a basement, even though we’re still on the ground floor. It might have been a small study before someone bricked up the window. It smells like the theatre of a bad surgeon—bleach and blood.
The racks on the walls hold swords, railroad spikes, medieval maces, fireplace pokers, giant gardening shears, guillotine blades, rusty hooks, and rolls of barbed wire. Things designed to be sharp, blunt, hot or otherwise painful. There are only four guns, which rounds down to zero by rural Texas standards. But they’re big—two Remington shotguns and two Bushmaster XM-15 rifles. The Guards are prepared to defend this house if necessary.
As he walks along the racks, Fred tells me that he once worked at an electronics store. He was a pretty good salesman, always making customers think they needed a bigger screen, a faster processor, an extra warranty. He even convinced himself, squeezing a giant TV and a virtual reality set-up into his tiny living room. But he preferred working out the back of the store, with all the boxes and pallets and forklifts. Seeing all those shiny, heavy cubes be unloaded from trucks, checked off lists and stickered for sale. Good, honest work, he tells me. Except when he was assembling TV cabinets and computer desks for the displays, the tools often slipped in his sweaty hands.
There are wide gaps in this story. Things Lux would already know. He and Fred had exchanged hundreds of messages. Maybe thousands.
‘All this stuff is unnecessary, really.’ Fred is rummaging through a crate under the bricked-up window. ‘You don’t need purpose-built weapons to hurt someone. You can just use an electric kettle, or a screwdriver, or a hockey stick. But it’s all about presentation. The subscribers like … oh, here you go.’
He pulls out a hammer slightly longer than mine. A work glove is wrapped around the handle, as though the invisible man is clutching it. Fred slides his hand into the empty glove.
‘I just Krazy-glued the palm of the glove to the handle,’ Fred says. ‘Check it out.’
He swings the hammer at my head.
I duck. The hammer clangs against a battleaxe mounted on the wall behind me.
‘Dude! You were supposed to grab it, like I showed you.’
Fred swings at me again. This time I lash out and grab the shaft of the hammer.
His invention works well. I can’t pull the hammer out of his grip.
‘Cool, right?’ Fred says. ‘Plus, no need to worry about fingerprints.’
‘You use this on them?’ I jerk my thumb over my shoulder in the direction of the slaughterhouse. I watched all the videos on Lux’s hard drive, and I don’t remember seeing the hammer.
‘Nah, too quick.’ Fred slips his hand out of the glove and flexes his fingers. ‘Hit someone with this, and they’re dead. No screaming, no wriggling around … But I thought you’d appreciate it. I know you’re all about efficiency.’
Another reminder of how little I know about the guy I’m pretending to be. ‘Scammer died pretty fast.’
‘Sorry about that, Donnie can be … excitable.’ Fred sniffs the air. The smell of Samson’s cooking has wafted down to this end of the house. ‘Let’s eat, Lux.’
I didn’t, actually. I buried Lux’s body, all of it. I was being good.
As I follow Fred up the corridor, I promise myself I won’t make that mistake again.
It’s just as I feared—there’s no meat. No beef taken from the fridge and thrown into the stir-fry at the last minute. No side of roast chicken. Not even any bacon bits sprinkled through the salad.
I stare gloomily at all the plant matter on the table. The sharp smell of garlic turns my stomach.
‘You okay, bro?’ Donnie asks, sitting down opposite me. He’s changed from his tank top into a polo shirt, loose enough to hide his muscles. He’s wearing a smart watch, and from this angle I can see a stud in one ear.
I force a smile. ‘Yeah. Just tired.’
This is true. It’s only nine pm, but the drive from Houston took four hours, and I haven’t been able to rest since. The hairs on the back of my neck are constantly up, and my mind is whirling like a fairground ride, trying to guess the right answer to every question.
I was supposed to be dead by now.
Resting peacefully, having murdered Fred and myself. Plus, my last meal was supposed to be tastier than this.
Not that Samson hasn’t done a great job. The food is restaurant quality. The vegetables are crisp, the rice soft, the sauces balanced. Perfect for anyone other than me.
Thistle would adore this, says a voice in my head, one I quickly push away.
Fred sits at one end of the table. He has two bowls in front of him, while everyone else has one. Zara, the elegant brunette, sits at the other end. Kyle, the dour teenager, takes the spot next to Fred. I end up trapped between Samson and Cedric, the thin Black guy in the suit. Everyone starts serving themselves.
Zara has poured me a glass of wine. The fluid makes a prism, splitting the colours into a rainbow. I don’t want to touch the drink. I need to stay focused. But I also need to fit in.
‘You want to say grace, Lux?’ Cedric asks. His mouth is already full.
‘Uh …’ I’ve visited Lux’s house and his childhood home. I do a frantic mental walk through both, looking for signs of religion.
Zara saves me. ‘He’s messing with you.’
Cedric chuckles, as though the very idea of God is funny.
‘It’s so great to meet you in person,’ Donnie tells me, in a way that implies he’s exchanged a lot of messages with Lux.
‘You too,’ I say. ‘Put a face to the name, you know. You’re not like I expected.’
‘Really?’ He looks interested. Most people are interested in themselves.
‘Yeah. I pictured you with brown eyes, I don’t know why. And your voice is deeper than I heard it in my head.’
I didn’t know Donnie existed until two hours ago. But I’m desperate to convince these people that I’m the one they’ve been messaging for weeks. Or months, or years. I don’t even know how long Lux has been part of their online community.
‘Thanks.’ Donnie looks pleased, as though my comment on his deep voice was a compliment.
Zara scoops some spears of baby corn into my bowl.
‘But you’re exactly as lovely as I pictured,’ I tell her. This seems like the kind of thing Lux would say. I only met him twice, but both times he hit on the women around him.