by Tommi Hayes
So, a subject and I, in a remote location, beautiful, snowy and isolated, with every amenity on tap... We synchronize, as I sieve his brain for sedition, search out every loop and strand that might lead him to use his new wolf strength and gifts to resist assimilation, co-option into being an asset to deploy. Synchronized, he relaxes, and lets go of resistance, offers up his mind to my probing. For me, it's a professional challenge, though not much of one. For him, it's a subjective experience that approximates to another very important peak moment for a werewolf. Though as a newly-turned were, usually, he may not understand what he's feeling. Or at least, misinterpret it.
He feels–though he may resist, initially, if he understands–as if he's found his mate. It makes him wonderfully malleable. I suppose as a human, we would call it love. It translates pretty much that way. Analysis finished, our minds meshing with extreme grace and completeness, all of his resistance and desire to escape is at an end. He adores me, hangs on my every word, seeks with every gesture and movement to come a little closer, to court, to win permission to woo.
But I, I have my own objectives. Analysis complete, my first task is to remove all threat posed. Any trace of rebellious spirit I have found in him – whether native or inculcated by his turner, whether conscious or deep-rooted and waiting to spring out at a later date–must be rooted out. That spirit is why he has been selected for conscription. It's why he merits it. It's the justification. This, too, is a quick job, like a swift bit of weeding in the garden, even in the mind of a dedicated militant, devoted to the overthrow of the government.
That's the preparing of the ground. Then comes the sowing. Not much, for the government department involved doesn't desire its conscripts to be mere golems, dull-eyed automatons incapable of initiative, or self-directed planning and execution of an assassination or coup. A total brain-washing is nothing like what is called for. So all I do is a little attitudinal adjustment. I'm planting the faintest hint or suggestion here of pro-government sentiment, a slight hint there of concern for the safety of the populace. A trace of ego, an unconscious desire to be the hero of the hour, not the villain despised by media and the masses.
The rest, the specifics, that's up to them. The results are generally excellent.
And that's the intensive stage. It's planned out by the likes of Amisa, and the rest of the strategy managers, to take perhaps a week to ten days, two weeks at most. In truth it doesn't take a full afternoon, not for me. But the results aren't monitored over the length of the stay, only at the end. I usually feel I might as well get it over with. There's more to do once the groundwork is laid out in any case, and instead I get a head-start on that.
Because the next stage is the maintenance stage, at which wins are consolidated, the subject is kept under observation, and the telepathic bond is shored up and strengthened. It can last for anything up to three months, and is designed to ensure the continued appropriate positive orientation of the subject, no backsliding or sudden reversions allowed. After intensive re-orientation, they used, in the initial stages of the program, to just throw the subjects back out onto the street with a very little memory modification, enrolled in the appropriate Wolf Unit cadre with their peers, but otherwise unsupervised. For new turnees, keeping up links with friends and family was discouraged, via mental jabs if necessary. In any case, the need for secrecy was even more severely impressed upon their grey matter. For members of radicalized units, it wasn't necessary. Any such was invariably wiped out by that time.
As a system, it was imperfect. Depending on the strength, rigour and carefulness of the telepath who'd inducted them, there were a few unfortunate failures, and since then...
There's the Honeymoon. That's what they call it. It's not the official term, but it's popular with operatives and back-room boys both, and it's stuck. It's a few weeks of close companionship. The objectives of the program are bolstered, and the happy couple–the subject and his telepath handler–have a nice vacation, and spend a lot of time together.
The wolf is generally as happy as Larry. Even when he has a vague awareness, that this lovely creature who's taken a fancy to him isn't his true mate, however strong it feels, however true and compelling and giddily joyous the bond. It's hard to pull one's mind away from love and the beloved, when you're in love. Certainly it's difficult to do it enough to feel the subtle manipulations going on, the strings attached to your shoulders. Poor little puppets!
His memories are carefully smudged over, the subject. He's allowed to remember that he's been recruited, yes, but not that it was a forcible conscription, or that he's been tampered with. The bite, his original turner, the activist cell if he was part of one, the details of these also are smudged and vague in his mind. He has–is implanted with–a disinclination to think about them. He has better things to think about.
For the handler it's a working holiday. One must monitor, enhance and reinforce the re-orientation of the subject. By any and all means, of course. We have professional objectives, but a disinterested observer might not class our external behaviours as professional, exactly, strictly.
Yes, it's a honeymoon. Yes, it's exactly what you think. (If the subject wants it. If he wants sex and love and long nights of intimate lazy chatting, shared baths and dancing and lazy mornings sleeping in, spooning cuddles. Well, scratch that. They always want it.) Escort services are part of the package, part of the job description, and there's no bones made about it when we're inducted. The euphemisms don't do much to disguise the facts. Our bodies are forfeit when we're identified as suitable handler candidates. (A suitable candidate, the cream of the telepathic gene pool – as far as the state can identify – and also youngish, as attractive as possible, personable, convincing, and preferably, sociopathically unemotional.)
I fulfil a lot of the criteria, and it's a good thing. Because I've had enough Honeymoons to make me dizzy, from whipping in and out of civil court for annulments, if there was any paperwork involved. I do it because I have to, partly. The state allows me an illusion of freedom, but I'm always watched, always tracked, and I may never really ever be free. To leave this post of my own volition, I'd need considerable ruthlessness, a strong stomach for bloodshed that I don't possess, and a willingness to live sub rosa, in a resistance underground, a makeshift life that would probably end in state termination eventually. That or get out of the country, out of the State, but it's easier said than done. It may come to that, but not yet.
I do it partly because it's necessary. The wolves we work with are picked as a threat to the populace, as well as the State. It's partly necessary. My brief always goes further than what's needed to neutralise the threat. It takes it that step further, in converting the subject into a weapon of the state. That's the problem, and I haven't found a way around it.
I do it partly because I bide my time, because freedom is nothing to the state, because I'm part of a suspect and carefully monitored group myself. Because there's collateral damage on the way to an effective resistance, and a new government.
What I don't do, is try to pretend that my hands are clean. I don't try to live without guilt, I don't imagine that all I do is beneficent. I'm warping them, the subjects, to an extent, and I'm warped myself. You try it, fucking one wolf after another, hypnotising them into love, trying to make it fresh each time. Every one of them is different. Not all of them are attractive. Not all of them are kind, or interesting, or friendly, or gentle. Just because someone adores you, personally, doesn't change their essential nature. (I change their essential nature as little as possible. What I can leave alone, I do leave alone.)
I don't even like half of them, as they paw me over and nuzzle into me. I'm not attracted to a good sixty per cent of them. (Which makes me sound something of a slut in itself, that forty per cent adequately do the job for me. But I'm young and highly sexed and isn't it fortunate?) But weres are still part of the human family. They are still people, despite their odd biology, and the potential threat they constitute. Over two or three mon
ths, when someone loves you with their whole being, and you spend almost all the time with them, you get fond of them. You don't have to actually like them, for that. Eight to twelve weeks, of sex and cuddles and lazing around together, luxurious hotel stays and weekend breaks and theatre visits, stabilizing their moods, evaluating their progress, ensuring their effectiveness as a tool of the state. Finalizing and giving a fine, high-gloss finish to the project du jour. They don't know it as it's ending. And when awareness begins to dawn right at the end, a handler lets them maintain denial, gives them a little hope.
The handler is 'called away'. Urgent business of a professional nature, that's the ticket. They know you've guided them through their induction, have assisted them in the adjustment, as they join a government special werewolf task force. But that's just the job. Right? Normally it's strictly hands-off, strictly professional. (So you've explained to them.) For them, just for them, you've made a special exception. You've slipped, you've let it get too personal, you've got up too close. It's a secret, just between you and them. But you'll stay in touch. They'll hear from you soon. (Or so you tell them with a last kiss.) They mustn't try to contact you. There would be trouble for you from higher-up, if your supervisors found out you'd been unprofessional with a recruit.
They cling as you leave. There are passionate kisses, hands on your ass, low growls in their throat that they rush and stumble to apologise for, as you turn to go. It's highly emotional, and the wolf wants out, to express its anxiety and need and possessive rage. Your hand is grasped and caught, as they beg for reassurance, for commitment and promises. (I'm always extremely careful about exactly what I promise. I keep it extremely vague. I rarely actually lie.)
The final plea is, “Don't go," but you go. You keep your promises, though, you stay in touch. Within prescribed limits, including four emails a year. Two furtively arranged drinks in a lowlife backstreet bar. One night together, impromptu, and rushed away from on an emergency call. Enough to keep them sweet, hooked, amenable. It keeps them still caught on the line. All of it on schedule, quite literally on a schedule. The schedule is up in my office, on the board, as well as in virtual form on the system servers. It's covered with stickers of different colours, denoting different subjects, different targets. All of those special weekends, those spontaneous calls, romantic secretive dates... All laid out as prescribed by the program exec, lest any operative forget a secret romantic assignation that keeps the Wolf Unit in check, love-sick, pacified.
It's a pain in the ass. What happens when the upkeep and maintenance of established inductions overtakes the processing of new 'hires'? I suppose it tapers off over time. I've been at the job, the Section, for three years. I'm just beginning to be treated as an old hand.
I feel like an old hand. I feel worn out and used-up, and wrinkled into a small ball like a used tissue. Isn't that how a hooker feels eventually? I'm just a highly recompensed, highly intelligent, unusually gifted version. I miss my old life so fucking much. I was getting published, I had friends on faculty, I was ready to make the move to tenure... It's no good. Those are the thoughts I have to wipe out of me, wipe my own mind, because the past is over and the past is dead. Government escort, handler, operative, that's what I am now.
It's a new day, a new morning, and Amisa beeps me. She calls me into the inner sanctum. I'd call it an office, but it's closer to a lab. Many functions combine, as you get closer to true power, though Amisa's pretty far down the totem pole. She's just a liaison really. But she's one with many points of contact, and vast experience. Pretty, dark-haired, youngish, Asian descent, ruthless and friendly and more than good at her job. Amisa likes me. It doesn't mean she'll cut me any slack, though.
She pushes me into the soft visitor's chair the moment I walk in. There's no courtesy and no messing around, with Amisa. Then she pokes and beeps at her keyboard a moment, stares at the screen and smiles. (She has a crocodile's smile. It's white, perfect and sinister.) "Izak baby," she says, finally, looking up. "Iz. Good news. I have a new objective for you. I sure hate to think of you getting bored."
I have a good four, maybe five years on Amisa. I'm not sure she's even twenty-five. She started working for the Section at a creepily young age, some kind of family contact involved. I could have taught her at college as a TA, even a junior lecturer. Sometimes I want to snap, when she treats me as a cross between a hired assassin and a whore. Like I was never anything else.
"Anything good?" is all I say, though, and I ask it quietly. I'm a good boy. I don't pick fights that'll gain me nothing. I save it.
Amisa just gives a negligible little hitch of her shoulders, and nods at her screen. "I just sent you the files, it's all in there. Standard issue case. You can handle it fine. The car'll pick you up for the ski-lodge in the morning. Be ready to go at six am. No, I just wanted to call you in, see how you're doing. How are you doing, Izak?"
Oh, she's a fair downy one. It's as if she can divine the seeds of sedition in me, the parts of my full psyche that I block off from automated scans, from the quarterly obligatory peer-led group assessment. As if she had a touch of telemetry herself. I know it's not true. It's only my paranoia. She perhaps just likes to make us all uncomfortable. To keep us on our toes, on the back foot, wondering what exactly she's angling for. "I'm good," I say, wary. “Very good. You?"
"You look tired, honey," is what she says, brushing off my fig leaf of civility. "Want to get a massage before you start your new assignment? Haircut? I could get a new bespoke suit dropped off this evening from our tailors, babe. Something to perk you up. You look... tired." Her gaze scans–not in the psychic sense, of course–up and down my body, and she shakes her head. "Not quite the pretty thing our retrieval team brought in here five years ago, are you?"
Or maybe she's just worried about deterioration and attrition of a valuable property. As well as not having done enough lately to crush my self-esteem. "Bullshit," I say sharply, pushing a self-conscious hand through my slightly untended hair. "I look fine." I do look fine. I was recruited for good reasons, and telepathy was only one of them.
She perks out a smile at me, but she knows she has me. “Seriously, honey. Take care of it. This one is pretty himself. You may be able to get him in synch by brute force, but the appearance is part of the package. Makes it easier and smoother, more credible, you know? When he's thinking about it later. Go down to the staff salon, get yourself polished up. That's an order, babe." And the rise to her feet is my cue, and her pat on my ass is also her farewell.
She's a fucking asshole in a lot of ways, Amisa, but also smart, an amusing distraction. I don't mind her. The beginner's level mockery and sexual harassment take my mind off the dystopian gloom of my life and my job. I go and get myself polished up to model standards at the Section's expense. That covers hair, body, clothes. Big day tomorrow.
New client tomorrow.
***
I'm up at five, pouring coffee down my gullet, running for twenty minutes on the treadmill, and then a harsh cold shower. Suited, booted, into the waiting car outside my swishy apartment block, and off to the slopes we go. It's a nice isolated ski-lodge up in the mountains, perfect hi-tech facilities and easy to secure. By this time, I hate the place. But it's homey.
I don't bother to inspect the guy I'm here for initially. I just check in with the security detail, transfer my files over to the system here, throw my cases into my bedroom and sleep for a couple of hours. They'll take care of him. Sleep is an avoidance tactic, and also bliss.
When I wake, when I'm rested and refreshed and all ready to suck the brains out of a new victim, I dress and head for the rec room that overlooks the slopes. It's where they usually put them. Jeff, head of security, stops me on the way.
"Anything you need, sir?" he enquires, shooting his cuffs. He's a little bored. This is getting routine for him, same as for me. But I can relax with him on the job. He is the best. "He's still bound and restrained, I'm afraid. He's a lively one. The drugs have only got him half-under. He
was pre-processed, but it hasn't done much." Sometimes–for difficult cases–an interim handler engages with a target before formal induction. This is mostly for purposes of subduing, in cases where the tech and the drugs are insufficient. It's not generally a good sign. A difficult prospect, then. A challenge.
"Anything else I need to know?" I ask.
And Jeff consults his clipboard. "Uh-huh, uh-huh... You'll already know that. Nah, I think you're covered. Rajan Donoghue, brought in to the emergency room unconscious and bleeding from a severe dog-bite, unidentified large breed, sustained during a morning run in the middle of the city," he says, and pauses a moment for the obligatory significant wry look between us. Not only for the minimal fig-leaf cover that the medical explanation gives, to the bite and run of a renegade wolf. But also over the fact that he's a newbie, not a volunteer for the bite, corkscrewed out of a seething militant wolf group. Not a born wolf on the extremist end of the spectrum of wolf politics. This is the norm, but still a relief, especially if he's going to be difficult in other ways.