by Tex Leiko
Before he could even blink, five men piled out of each car and encircled him. All of them armed to the teeth, all of them fit, soldiers. One of them stepped forward into the circle that they had formed around him.
“Our boss, Badger—you met him the other night…remember?—would like for you to take a ride with us. He has some things he would like to discuss with you.”
This asshole doesn’t know how much I hate condescending rhetorical questioning. Let’s see, there are ten of them. If I take him down quickly and start firing off rounds from his pistol, I should be able to kill most of them before they even know what’s going on.
Zarfa’s body tensed and he got ready to execute his plan before a disembodied voice stopped him.
“I wouldn’t if I were you.”
“What the hell?” Zarfa asked.
“That’s right; I can hear your thoughts and can even send you messages. You are a new recruit, only had one treatment, right? It’s enough for me to speak to you, and if you are really talented and have a lot of focus, you could even intentionally send a message. Anyway, we are all mere underlings here, but I assure you, we are more than capable of killing you or taking you by force.”
“I don’t want to join you, but if I understand right, I have no choice once I’ve injected the final treatment of bots. So why are you guys hassling me?” Zarfa was carefully trying to stifle any thoughts he might be having outside of the conversation. He didn’t want this guy getting any more information out of him than he could help.
“We would like you to come with us, Zarfa, the easy way, please?”
Zarfa felt defeated. He relaxed his body and dropped his guard. For now, the right move was to do nothing. How could he fight ten men, especially when from what he could tell, they could all read his mind? He was broadcasting already, and he didn’t like it.
“Okay fine, I’ll come with you and hear Badger out.”
Five men piled back into the car straight ahead of Zarfa; two got back into the car immediately behind him. Two of the men directed Zarfa into the back seat and asked him to sit in the middle. He complied; he didn’t want this to end badly for himself. After he had made himself comfortable, the other two got into the back with him and one stayed on the sidewalk; there was no room for him.
Hotdog, canary, goldfish, butterfly. One, two, three, four, five, six, pepper, eight, nine, ten.
Zarfa started thinking of anything he could in his head to keep anything vital from slipping. Even if he did formulate an escape plan, he was hoping to do so while thinking strongly about something else, so as to muddle his message and make it unclear to them what he was planning on doing.
The whole ride to the warehouse that he had been at the night before was awkward and silent. While he tried to keep the goons Badger had sent out of his mind, they tried breaking in. When they did, all they got was his garbled ramblings or him counting loudly in his head. He was smarter than they had given him credit for.
I hope there isn’t two thousand or more of them in there like last night.
Zarfa’s concentration had slipped and he broke his pattern of useless thoughts. He was upset at himself already. He didn’t need the voice of the guy sitting next to him saying, “There isn’t,” inside of his head. But there it was, annoying overkill. He had already caught himself mess up. But at least he could relax a little bit now knowing he wouldn’t have to fight through a sea to get away if it came to that.
“Very clever making psychic soldiers under the ruse of a band,” he stated as they directed him to get out of the back seat.
As he got out of the car, the nine men surrounded him again and directed him to go inside the warehouse. They had him outnumbered and circled to be sure he didn’t try anything funny. This certainly wouldn’t be an easy situation to get out of.
A large, roll-up cargo door opened as they approached the warehouse. They were directing him to go in through this instead of the small side door he and Max had used the night before. As the door rolled up, it revealed from the feet up a man large and daunting that he recognized as Badger.
“Zarfa, so nice of you to join us without a battle. Their direction was that if you were too much trouble, they could go ahead and kill you,” Badger said with a smile.
He was tall, hairy, and intimidating. Even worse, he wore darkly tinted glasses so that Zarfa couldn’t see his eyes. As if he didn’t already have every disadvantage working against him.
This is just great! Seventy-eight, forty-five, sixty-nine.
“What is great?” Badger’s voice invaded his head.
“I can’t even read your eyes with those douche bag-looking glasses of yours, asshole. Like you don’t already have the upper hand on me, you had to push it that far? Seriously?”
“I see your point; come in and have a seat,” he said, mocking as if he was going to take the shades off but in the end leaving them on.
They directed Zarfa to sit on a bare wooden chair in the center of the room. The chair was facing another three that looked exactly the same. To the right of where he would be sitting he saw Zax; to the left, Surge, and he was certain Badger would fill the middle seat.
He sat as he had been asked, and waited attentively and respectfully for the conversation to begin. He assumed there would be one of some sort. He assumed if they wanted him dead, they wouldn’t have gone to all of the theatrics to do so.
His heart and his observations about how they approached him told him that everything Crimson said about them was true. He could see this organization was large, powerful, and probably didn’t have people’s welfare in mind. He knew they were dangerous and most likely the evil she said they were, but he had to keep these feelings and thoughts out of his mind.
Badger took what felt like a lifetime to Zarfa to take his position at the middle seat. When he did, he just sat there facing Zarfa’s direction. He couldn’t even tell if his eyes were open or not; he refused to take the shades off of his face.
“Let’s talk,” Badger said, finally.
“Then talk,” Zarfa said with a shrug.
“I can tell you are quickly becoming adept at keeping us confused, keeping us from reading your thoughts, so I am going to be required to accept what you say as the truth. If Zax here can pick up that you are lying to me, the conversation is over, and that is when Surge does his job. You don’t want to see him do his job, not to you anyways. We have an understanding here?”
“Yes.”
“Good, now I’m going to ask you plainly what Crimson told you.”
Zarfa spoke, hoping that nothing he said would sentence Crimson to death. “She tried to recruit me. She said a war was coming. She said that Synaptix was already using mind control technology to build an army, the Psyker Scream army. She said that the other side of this war was going to be Polyhelix. She told me they, too, are building an army and the Faraza are part of that. She plans to somehow stop them both. She is also under the impression that both sides are seeking dominance of not only the Alexarien government but those of the entire world. Oh, she also said your two corporations are both too greedy to alliance together to avoid this whole thing.”
“Interesting. Well, let me tell you something about this little Crimson girl. She has been a disillusioned freedom fighter since the day she got her freedom when she was seventeen. You see, she was a house slave, a concubine, if you will, for a rich man named Chester Williams. Chester enjoyed taking the innocent schoolgirl fantasy a little too far, but as you know, if you own someone as a slave, you can use them however you see fit. He adopted her at six; the sexual abuse began by seven. He had a penchant for the young ones. I am not saying he isn’t sick, but it was his right. He did own her, after all.
“Anyway, his fantasy involved more than a simple young slave. He sent her to school as a little girl every day, sending her off with her packed lunch and a kiss on the forehead. Only to greet her as a cruel, tortuous devil when she returned home. She was told that if she ever tried to escape, he would murd
er her family in cold blood.
“I never did understand why she cared; they sold her to him. They knew what he was looking for. Anyway, I am getting sidetracked. She dealt with this torture and abuse until she was seventeen. Two more years and he would let her go to live her life however she could manage to. He hated it when they started looking like women; it disgusted her owner.
“Finally, one day, she got wise. She managed to make some Paraoxon in chemistry class. Before going home, she coated the outside of her vinyl gloves with the poison. She was a smart kid, she was. When she arrived home, she acted normal. The typical ‘Oh Daddy, how I missed you; is there anything I can do for you?’ routine that he loved so much, followed by her touching him in the most depraved manners possible. Well, she was sure this time to touch any part of his skin she could. When he requested she take her gloves off, she asked ‘if he could do it for her because she had been having trouble on her own.’ She was a helpless little girl, after all. Five minutes later, ol’ Chester was dead, and Crimson was a free woman with a large inheritance. Something she doesn’t tell many people, I am sure. You see, Chester didn’t have any family, no children, no wife. He had his living will state that whoever his current slave was would be the recipient of his large wealth. Crimson didn’t know that, it was just an added reward to her first assassination, one that is speculated but could never be proved. A vicious poison that Paraoxon is; it absorbs through the skin, kills in minutes. There is no solid antidote and it is untraceable in autopsies. Like I said, she was smart, still is.
“She lived through those awful days, but came out damaged, like anyone would. She got an education and built and empire, but the whole time she brewed with hatred. Hatred for the government for making it legal for him to do what he did to her. Hatred at society for voting in the laws. It is what still drives her to her very core. Hatred. Pure and simple, nothing more. We offered for her to join us; she has proven she is a capable assassin by killing many elite assassins on the roster. She has wealth, brains, and ability, all that would further our cause, yet she fails to see reason. She wants control, but she doesn’t want to rob the populace of the ability to decide for themselves.
“This is where we don’t see eye to eye with her cause, why she isn’t one of us, and why we aren’t allies. We want the same thing, to change the world, but she doesn’t agree to our terms. She is right, a war is coming shortly and Polyhelix cannot be dealt with reasonably. They want to turn us all into mutants!
“Until now, we thought Crimson was some daydreaming radical that could never pose a threat. We are beginning to think otherwise. She came to you because of the fact that you run Legion Nine, am I right?”
Zarfa was wondering how long Badger would drone on for. “Yes, she did,” he replied.
“We don’t know what she is planning, but it has to be big. I suspect that if she thought she could reason with us, she would have solicited us for her purposes as well. From here on out, she is our enemy. We won’t declare an all-out war on her until we know who her army is, but if an assassination attempt avails itself, then we shall strike. We can’t have that damaged idealist out in the wild.”
“Okay, well, thanks for the morbid tale and all, but I don’t see why you brought me here unless you want me to kill her.”
“No, we have our own wet crew. We don’t need you for that. We brought you here for the same reason that she pulled you aside. We want Legion Nine to join us. You’ve already declared war on Faraza, which makes you an enemy of Polyhelix.
“As you know, if you follow through with your injections, you will be able to hear the wasps and where they come from, where they go back to and hide. You will be able to go on the offensive and get what you desire. As our little friend Crimson also made you aware of was that if you go through with the injections, at any time we can flip a switch and regardless of you agreeing to our terms, you are our soldier. What we offer you is this, an agreement. You keep your free will, add your army as a separate independent army to the Psyker Scream revolution. Join us and fight for us and when the war is over, you will have a seat at our table of power. Sound good?”
“What about my men? If I understand right, after crushing Polyhelix, you plan to implement a technology that will control the masses around the world. Very few will have free will. What about my loyal soldiers? What will be their reward?”
“Their reward is they will get to see the day their dream comes true and Faraza is destroyed. When we do control the world…well, let’s face it, they can’t all have free will. That is reserved for the elite; however, they won’t know the difference.”
“And if I refuse this offer, what then?”
“Simple, you follow through on the treatments. You will have free will until the day we determine you don’t need it. You don’t follow through on the treatments and we will still let you live until our common enemy is defeated, or until you work up the nerve to try and fight us. No matter your answer, you walk out of here alive today. No sense in killing someone who is an ally, even if he is an inadvertent ally. I really encourage you to take our best offer.”
“I see. How can I be sure that if I follow through on the injections and take your best offer, as you put it, that I won’t be subjected to mind control? How can I be sure you aren’t lying to me?”
“Simple, say yes to us now and you stop the treatments. We give you a reversal nanobot that destroys the others. Then we implant you with a chip that will make you immune to the frequency that we are going to use to spark the mass controlling of the populace.
“The frequency is only a first step. All it will do really is make people want a new product we are going to release. The product will be cheap enough for everyone to afford and when the two combine, they will be under our control. By the way, I am telling you this because it is inevitable; you can’t stop it. Not even with Legion Nine. So I am sure you see where I’m coming from. We are truly trying to be generous to you, Zarfa. What do you say? Join us?”
Zarfa sat and stared at Badger a good long while. I wish the prick would take off his damn glasses already. I know he is doing it just to bug me. He knew Badger could read his thoughts, and he had alluded that Zax was even more skilled at it, but he didn’t care. He knew he was being careful to not give them anything.
“I am going to have to respectfully decline. If you make me some mindless subservient after the war, so be it. As for now, I am unwilling to make a decision. I am also unwilling to sell out my men only to save myself. So if our business is over now, can I leave?”
He was cool, calm, controlled. Badger’s cheeks were red, and Zarfa knew if he had his glasses off, he would see an annoyed look in those eyes of his. Zarfa could tell by the disposition of the other two that their plan had not worked the way they hoped. Zarfa, for his part, hoped they weren’t lying about allowing him to leave.
“You know we could forcefully implant you with a mind control device, right, and send you on your merry way, don’t you?” questioned Badger, trying to remain calm.
“Yeah, I know. You said you wouldn’t. You said you would let me leave unhindered. I questioned why that might be when you told me, and then I realized something…” Zarfa paused for a long while, making sure to think random things so they couldn’t discern what he was going to say.
“And what was that? What did you realize?”
“That you wouldn’t have a clue how to contact Legion Nine. Only I know that. They are secretive and hide other than when there are raids from the Faraza. If you controlled me now, my return wouldn’t be natural. I wouldn’t contact them the way I always do, the way that you don’t know. You can’t control me. That is what I figured out.”
Badger removed his glasses as he stared down Zarfa with a look of befuddlement mixed with rage and aggravation. Even with all of the tricks up his sleeve, he still couldn’t best Zarfa, and Zarfa knew that got under his skin.
“How are you doing this?” Badger’s voice blared in his mind.
His reacti
on only confirmed Zarfa’s hunch. Zarfa leaned back and smiled a bit in the satisfaction that he had found a way to beat the odds. He always had, and he always would. Folding his hands behind his head, he let out a sigh of mocking boredom. “So, gentlemen, how about a ride back down town? I need to get my stuff then I’m going home.”
Badger sent mental orders and before he knew it, Zarfa was being escorted back outside. They got him in a hovercraft and took him back to where they had picked him up as if nothing had happened. Several hours had passed and it was late in the day. Zarfa was hungry and near broke.
He began walking back to his house, relieved he was still alive. He was also happy to have gotten rid of the Psyker Scream freaks; he knew in his gut, though, it wouldn’t be the last he saw of them. He replayed Badger’s story of Crimson in his mind over and over and wished he had probed more into what exactly Crimson’s plan was.
He felt bad for her; he wished she had never gone through what Badger described. But Zarfa didn’t feel she was broken; he just felt that she truly saw the world. He wished he had listened to her better, but he still wasn’t sure if he would ally himself to her cause.
That night, after returning home to get his things, Zarfa boarded an underground rail back to Ilyeion. He had only a backpack full of belongings and he felt it best for him to bring the next four rounds of injections with him. He would be home in a matter of two days. He would be greeted by his men, and he would have to make a decision, one they would be a part of.
I’ve got to warn her about Badger. I have to tell her what happened. Hopefully, I am out of their range and they won’t hear me. I’ll be their mortal enemy for sure then.
He looked around and came to the realization he should have thought about it sooner. He didn’t have the number for her com-link; neither did he have the number for Max’s. He could look it up on the interface, but there wasn’t one anywhere on the train. It would have to wait until he reached Ilyeion.