Killfile

by Christopher Farnsworth

  “I’m not sure I can do what you want,” I said.

  “Oh, I think you can do more than you know. Sergeant Leary up there is the proof.”

  I thought about Leary’s dead stare and immediately shoved it away.

  “Let me ask you something,” Cantrell said. “You ever tried making someone do something? Just by thinking about it?”

  I probably just looked stupidly at him. Up to that point, I’d only read other people. Or at least, that’s what I thought at the time.

  “Give it a try. See what happens.”

  “You think I can control people’s minds? That’s insane.”

  “I admit, it sounds that way. But if anyone could do that, we wouldn’t have wars anymore. So you can understand why I’d be interested.”

  “Aren’t you afraid that would put you out of business?”

  He smiled. “Everything I do is to keep people from dying. Everything. If there was a way to stop wars altogether, then I’d happily find another line of work. You join up with us, and you’ll see that for yourself. That’s what I’m offering. We’ll train you. Put your talent to use. Save some lives and keep another 9/11 from ever happening.”

  I have to give Cantrell credit. He was a hell of a salesman. He was offering a chance to work for the good guys. To finally understand a little bit more about the weird echoes I’d always had in my head. To be valuable. To be needed.

  And there was the stick too, just in case I wasn’t smart enough to see it on my own.

  “What happens if I say no?”

  Cantrell yawned and stretched, as if that was the least interesting question he’d ever heard. “You can always go back and finish your time in the regular army,” he said. “’Course, I’m not sure how much of a future there is for a guy who crippled his drill sergeant.”

  I hesitated. Cantrell knew when to back off. “You still got some healing to do,” he said, pushing his chair from the table. “Sleep on it. I’ll be back in the morning.”

  I WANTED TO sleep that night. I wanted to rest. But once I was awake, the pain wouldn’t let me.

  I hit the buzzer for the nurse once, then waited. Nothing. Hit it again. Still nothing. After a while, I just kept my thumb down on the button.

  The nurse came in, looking pissed. “What is it?” she said. “We’re busy with other patients.”

  “Hey,” I said. “I could use something for the pain.”

  She gave me a cold look. “Sorry,” she said. “You already had your shot.”

  she thought.

  That’s when I realized my talent was functional again. I could read her. And I saw clearly what was going on.

  The medical staff didn’t know why I was there. They’d seen the handcuffs and the MP, and they’d seen Leary brought in at the same time. Nobody could figure out what had happened to him. Rumors started, and I became the villain in all of them. I’d been beaten bloody, but I could still talk and walk and wipe myself. Leary was simply gone, AWOL from his own body, and that was deeply frightening to all of them.

  Just like Cantrell said, they decided I’d permanently damaged a superior officer, and they took it out on me in the only way they could. They wouldn’t compromise my actual medical care, since they took pride in their work. But they were happy to skip any extras that might make me comfortable. That included withholding my pain meds.

  I wondered if Cantrell was right. If I might be able to change that.

  The nurse turned to leave the room. “Hey,” I said sharply. “Give me my painkillers,” I told her.

  And as Cantrell had suggested, I pushed. For the first time, I tried transmitting instead of just receiving. It felt like moving through syrup rather than air. But I felt something. I got something back, instead of an echo.

  She wavered. There was a little resistance, a nagging thought somewhere in her head that told her this might be a bad idea. Even though I was pushing as hard as I could, she still had to make the final decision.

  What the hell, I figured. Might as well be polite. “Please,” I added.

  That did it.

  She turned and opened a drawer, moving automatically, just like she did for every other patient. She took a syringe and injected a clear liquid into my IV.

  Then she went through the ordinary steps of disposing of the syringe and marking the shot and the time on my chart. The warmth of the military-grade morphine was already making the pain a distant memory.

  It wasn’t a huge victory. I’d really only convinced her to be a nurse, to do her job.

  Still, that was how I learned I could push people. Not into doing something they didn’t want to do, but into doing the things they would ordinarily do. I could nudge them into following their regular habits, the tasks they’d done so often they were almost unconscious. To break someone out of that kind of habit, to actively fight them, that woke up all kinds of defenses, convinced them to dig in and get stubborn.

  But there are a lot of things people will do without thinking.

  [7]

  Two hours later, Kelsey and I are at a truck stop about forty miles from the game preserve.

  We hit the highway on foot, after running for about thirty minutes as fast as we could over the uneven ground. We got lucky. We didn’t meet any more of Preston’s security detail, and I was able to steer us around the OmniVore guys still playing their live-action first-person shooter game.

  We walked for nearly an hour before we flagged down a trucker. He was friendly enough when he heard that our car broke down and gave us a lift here.

  I’m on full alert, scanning everyone in range. There are families out for the day, truckers, and long-haul salesmen of the kind I didn’t really think existed anymore.

  But no sign of OmniVore security.

  Kelsey hasn’t said much to me since the game preserve. She wanted to go back, to get our car and our phones, but I helped her do the math. Bad guys plus guns equals bullets in brain. She didn’t need a lot of convincing.

  We didn’t talk much around the trucker, but I know she’s still having a hard time believing that Preston suddenly went batshit crazy. She wants to know why. I don’t have a good answer for her yet.

  We get a table in the truck stop’s diner and take a minute to regroup.

  Kelsey talks first.

  “Jesus Christ, I’m starving,” she says. “How is that possible?”

  “Adrenaline,” I tell her. “Your body just used a lot of energy. You need to refuel.”

  She rubs her eyes, and for a split second, I see what she’s seeing in her brain. A man falling, blood at his throat. She didn’t get a lot of detail. Which is good, because I suspect it’s going to be with her for a long time.

  “Not what I meant,” she says.

  “I know what you meant,” I say quietly.

  She makes a small noise, not quite like laughter. “Of course you do.”

  “I’m sorry. I know this has to be hard.”

  She looks up at me again. “What’s happening?”

  “Honestly? No idea.”

  The package of memories and thoughts I scraped out of Preston’s mind is a big, gnarled mess, and it’s deteriorating rapidly. As I’ve said, what I do is not an exact science. Usually, I try to tailor an interrogation, to ask questions to guide people to the topics that I want to explore so I can get specific memories and knowledge. But if I have to, I’ll just take whatever’s available.

  This leads to holding on to a bunch of stuff from someone else’s mind that can be completely irrelevant, because there’s a lot going on in there. People’s brains are rarely tidy places. They jump from childhood experiences to sex fantasies to Hollywood gossip to concerns about random body functions, all in the space of a few seconds. When I do a quick smash-and-grab, like I did with Preston, I can get almost anything. It takes time to unpack it all. Time and quiet and space. None of which we’ve had.

  Still, there’s one thing I know for
certain: he didn’t know me, and he didn’t know why I was there. And yet he got a message from someone telling him to kill me. It doesn’t make any sense.

  I try to zoom in on that moment. That message on the computer screen. Who was it from? I pick at the memory carefully, keeping as much of myself out of it as possible. I don’t want to contaminate Preston’s thoughts with my own. I’m almost there, almost able to see it like he did.

  And then Kelsey starts talking again. “Hey. Hello? Anyone home?”

  “What?”

  It comes out sharper than I intended. She snaps back at me. “You were just staring into space. I asked you what we’re going to do now.”

  She’s scared, I remind myself. She’s out of her depth. And it’s not a bad question.

  “Tell you what. I saw a rack of pay-as-you-go phones over by the entrance. Buy one and get some time on it, then call your boss.”

  “I can’t.”

  Right. He’s out of reach. Convenient.

  “Fine, you can’t reach Sloan. Who are you supposed to contact if he’s not around?”

  “You don’t have to talk to me like I’m a toddler. I didn’t mean I couldn’t talk to Everett. I meant I can’t buy a phone. I don’t have any money.”

  Of course. She left her purse in the car.

  I’ve got about a thousand dollars in my wallet. I carry a lot of cash. Mainly for situations just like this.

  I hand her a hundred.

  “I’ll call Lawrence Gaines,” she said. Sloan’s right-hand man. This ought to delight him. “He’ll arrange for some transportation for us. Then we’ll get someplace safe.”

  For a moment, I’m not sure what I’m feeling from her. Then I get it, but I still don’t understand. She feels responsible. It’s her job to manage the situation, and it’s gone spiraling out of her control. Other people might dissolve into a puddle at this point. She’s trying to solve the problem.

  I nod, and she goes off to buy a cheap phone.

  I spend the next few minutes trying to tease something else out of Preston’s ball of memories, but it’s like a string of old Christmas lights: just one knot leading into another.

  This isn’t the best place to concentrate either. Kids are wailing for ice cream, the exhaustion of the truckers fills the air like paint fumes, and the waitress’s feet hurt.

  On the edge of all of that, the death of the OmniVore security guy—the one with the long hair—hovers over me, waiting for my defenses to get weak so it can come in and tear out my liver.

  I shove it back again, but it will land eventually. The question is when.

  I realize the waitress is standing by the table, waiting for my order. I ask for a drink. The truck stop doesn’t serve liquor.

  This day just keeps getting better.

  I order what passes for a steak here and a chocolate milkshake—I need to refuel too—as Kelsey returns to the table.

  She’s already activating the phone. She puts the change on the table next to me, along with the plastic packaging. She makes a show of folding the receipt and putting it into her jacket pocket. “You’ll be reimbursed,” she promises.

  After the insanity of the morning, she’s finding comfort in assuming the familiar role of the hypercompetent handler, the gal who takes care of everything. I’m impressed, and a little surprised. I thought I’d have to be the one comforting her.

  “Shauna? It’s Kelsey. I need to talk to Lawrence.”

  Brief pause. “What? I don’t care. I need to speak to him, right now.” Another pause. “This is more important than any meeting, Shauna,” Kelsey says. The calm is starting to come off her voice in strips. “I don’t care. You get your ass into that room and you get him.”

  This is not a good sign. I have a bad feeling about the reason Gaines won’t answer Kelsey’s call.

  I reach over and gently take the phone from her. She looks exasperated. I don’t blame her.

  “Shauna?” I say.

  “Yes?” A female voice, younger than Kelsey’s. Snottier and more officious too.

  “My name is John Smith.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Smith, but I told Miss Foster that Mr. Gaines is not available.”

  Miss Foster. Not Kelsey. Another bad sign. I’d bet serious money that if Kelsey called from her usual number, nobody would have picked up. It would have been blocked.

  My talent doesn’t work over electronics, like phones or computers. So for this, I just have to rely on the people skills I learned in the CIA.

  “Shauna,” I say again. “You’re going to put Mr. Gaines on the phone. Right now.”

  A little snort of contempt. “Oh really? And why would I do that?”

  As I’ve said, my abilities don’t work over the phone. But fortunately, I learned a lot of other tricks while I was in special ops. One of those was how to threaten people properly.

  The essence of any good threat—especially when you are away from the other person and unable to carry out any actual physical violence—is making yourself believed. That you mean every word you say. That you are not joking or threatening, but simply describing what will happen if you do not get what you want.

  So I don’t foam at the mouth. I don’t use obscenities or raise my voice. Quietly, in simple words, with a minimum of drama, I spend about twenty seconds explaining to Shauna what will happen to her if she does not get Gaines on the line.

  And I make sure she knows I am not joking.

  There’s a sudden silence. Kelsey looks at me with revulsion, because she heard what I said.

  But a second later, Gaines is on the phone.

  “You sick bastard,” he says. “What the hell did you say to my assistant? She’s crying and shaking.”

  I ignore that. “What’s going on, Lawrence?”

  Pause. He’s stalling for time. “I should ask you that same question.”

  “We’ve had a setback.”

  “Yeah, I should say fucking so. I heard from Eli. Personally. What the hell were you thinking?”

  “What? What did he tell you?”

  “It’s not something we can talk about on an unsecured line.”

  Jesus Christ. “You’re not a spy, Lawrence. Please don’t try to talk like one. Nobody else is listening. What did he tell you?”

  “He told me enough. You tried to shake him down, and then you hurt people.”

  “That’s an interesting version of events. Not at all true, but interesting.”

  Kelsey is growing more agitated on her side of the table.

  I send back to her, .

  “Yeah, well, you would say that,” Gaines says. “But I had a call from the FBI. They told me the truth about you. We’re going to be damn lucky to get out of this without an indictment. I told Everett this was a mistake.”

  The FBI? There’s no way they’d be involved this fast, not even if Preston had them on speed dial. He must have had his people impersonate the feds.

  But that’s irrelevant right now. We need to get out of town. Fast.

  To Gaines, I say, “Listen. Kelsey and I can tell you what actually happened in person. But right now we’re stranded. We need you to send a car to us, and some cash. We’ll get on the next flight and meet with you to discuss our next move.”

  He laughs at that. “What do you mean ‘our next move’? There is no next move. You’re fired.”

  “I don’t work for you. I work for Sloan. He’s the only one who can cancel my contract.”

  “You canceled it yourself. The only reason I’m not calling the FBI on you right now is because it would mean a world of hurt for the company and Mr. Sloan.”

  “You are making a mistake. And if you won’t see that, at least you can contact your boss and let him know that we need him.”

  Another laugh. “Not a chance. You are not going to bring us down with you.”

  Kelsey has had enough waiting. She grabs the phone from me.

&nbs
p; “Lawrence, it’s Kelsey. I don’t know what you think is happening, but I can tell you, we need help. Right now. I know Everett would never leave me hanging here like this.”

  The sound from the phone’s speaker is weak, but I can hear Gaines pretty well. “They told me you’d say that, Kelsey. I didn’t think you’d really help a guy like Smith. Guess I was wrong.”

  Kelsey is shocked. “What? What are you talking about? Lawrence, they shot at us. They tried to kill us.”

  A couple of people at the other tables look around when they hear Kelsey.

  I smile at them. They look away.

  Kelsey lowers her voice. “Lawrence. They tried to kill me.”

  There’s a moment of silence that stretches so long that I think Gaines hung up. Then the weak little voice comes out of the cheap phone again:

  “I’m sorry, Kel. I really am.”

  He hangs up.

  She looks at the phone in disbelief, then redials.

  I can hear the phone ringing. Nobody answers.

  “It won’t do any good,” I tell her. “They’ll block the number.”

  She glares, disconnects, and dials again.

  Let her. Gives her something to do.

  I take stock of the situation: trapped at a truck stop in Pennsylvania after dodging bullets and killing a guy, unable to reach my client because his manservant won’t forward his calls.

  I’m sure I’ve had worse jobs. There was that whole period of my career where armed religious fanatics were trying to kill me in the desert. But this is still pretty high on the list.

  As much as I wanted my own island, it’s time to face reality.

  “That’s it,” I tell Kelsey. “I’m going home.”

  She puts the phone down and looks at me like I’ve just spontaneously grown another head. “What?”

  “I’m out. This job is screwed. Your boss has burned me—”

  “—Lawrence is not my boss—”

  “Oh please. You think Gaines isn’t acting on Sloan’s orders right now? He knows this has been blown to shit. He’s cutting us off to avoid getting any on him.”

  “Lawrence might think he’s doing the right thing, but Everett doesn’t know about this, I guarantee you. You don’t know the protocols at Geneva. It’s no cell phones, no emails, no outside contact. They’re incredibly serious about it. They kicked Murdoch’s son out a couple years ago for sneaking his BlackBerry into his hotel room. The whole idea is complete silence so they can think big thoughts.”