by O. J. Lowe
“But,” Subtractor had said. “I don’t want to give you the impression that I’m a difficult worker. I’m not. Far from it at all. I know what I want to do, I’ll move heavens and kingdoms to get it done. I just can’t abide the tape holding me up, the constant penny-pinching.”
Coppinger had smiled at him. The contract had been right in front of him, he’d taken it with him, determined to sign off on it and mail it back to her. The chance for his innovations to be marketed to millions, billions even and make everyone’s lives better, it wasn’t one he could ever have turned down. His heart told him that going to Reims was the right thing to do, and as his grandfather had told him all those years ago, he’d followed it.
He would have, at least, had the option been with him. Unisco had found out about his intents to leave, they’d told him he couldn’t and thrown a new ironclad contract at him with promises and assurances about position enhancement and financial improvement laced with just enough penalties and threats he’d found it hard to turn down. That had been the nail in the coffin for his relationship with Unisco. He could have walked but they wouldn’t have let that be the end of it. They’d have gotten something on him in the end. For all intents, he was trapped, locked in. Later, he’d had an uncomfortable conversation with Claudia Coppinger.
They’d met for drinks, no doubt cut an unusual couple, her elegantly refined and approaching forty with a poise that most women lacked. Him, enthusiastic with the scruffiness of youth that he’d never been able to shake off, clad in a suit that didn’t fit him properly. She’d wanted to celebrate, he could see that, expensive champagne had been to come their way before he’d dropped his bombshell. He’d readied himself for what was to come, he’d expected the screaming and the shouting, he’d played down his own part in it and assured her that it was all Unisco’s fault, that they were the only ones holding him back.
Right there, he should’ve seen the smile and realised something was running through her head, some sort of private plan only she was aware of. Instead, he was too filled with self-pity to feel insightful. The night could have been nice but all that had come out of it was the start of the simmering embers of resentment.
Subtractor finished his beer, cut the thought from his mind. There was such a thing as dwelling too much on the past, something he’d rather not do, he preferred to look to the future.
On his summoner in front of him, he could see the dataflow, he always liked to gaze into it when he needed to relax. There was something soothing about seeing it rush past, some of it encrypted, some of it not, some strands of information jumping out at him, some too fast to be seen. That didn’t matter, there or not. There they would be, somewhere if only one would look.
He could see the shots from the stadium where Roper had finished his makeshift duel with Saarth, just more examples of his thinking. Nicholas Roper was a textbook example of what happened when Unisco agents thought they were above the laws they set out to enforce. How many times had he been suspended, cautioned, threatened with the sack? Too many. He’d gotten results, but they were atop a pile of skulls, a castle of infamy built on a sandpit of the morally reprehensible. He had his own problems with Roper, going back a year to the whole Belderhampton fiasco when he’d cost Subtractor a perfectly good assassin by sticking his nose where it didn’t belong. Never mind that he’d been suspended while doing it either, killing an assassin and exposing a corrupt Unisco Agent-in-Charge justified the means apparently.
Hmmm…
An idea was starting to come to him, it might have been the beer giving him crazy thoughts, but this felt like a good one. A real prize of a thought and if he could pull it off, then it might solve a lot of problems, not just for him but for the Mistress as well.
He popped another bottle of Black Briar, took a swallow of the contents and let the sigh slip from him. The cat, as they said, would be amongst the pigeons if this was pulled off. If she wanted chaos, then he would give her chaos.
Do what you know is right in your heart, lad.
“I will grandfather,” he said aloud. “She is the way forward, I know that in my heart. She is what the kingdoms need to thrive.”
He liked these nights. He reached up to his temple, flicked the tiny switch there, hidden beneath his hairline. Invisible to the naked eye, he found it out by touch and let the mask retract from his face, his own spin on the muffler technology Unisco had developed to conceal their identities. Nobody saw his true face anymore. He’d even gotten used to not seeing it himself. He didn’t own mirrors, had always considered them a luxury aesthetic for which he wasn’t willing to pay. He didn’t want to look at himself. Not when the memories would suffice. Everything he did, he did with a mask on. These times when he was alone, he could be himself and that was enough.
The thoughts were still on his mind the next morning as he set out, a clear plan of action in his head. The idea was simple, he’d run it past the Mistress earlier and she’d laughed out loud at the thought of it. If this idea wasn’t a beauty, then he didn’t know what else to call it.
“Do it, Subtractor,” she said. “Make it happen and I’ll reward you beyond your wildest dreams. Muddy the waters. If they’re worrying about this, they won’t be able to divert as much attention to me. An enemy divided is as good as conquered.”
He always had an excuse to be wherever he needed, a face for every job and every job has its face. Today he wore the face of someone who’d have need to be here.
Unisco had always run a private prison within each kingdom, he’d found himself at the gates of the one in Canterage. Chessinghold, they called it, named for the small town a mile or two away. The main business there appeared to be catering for the families of those in there. Chessinghold wasn’t a normal prison though
At the academy, they’d always told tales about these prisons. Maybe they still did, he couldn’t say. Betray the agency and that’s where you’ll wind up. Traitors, murderers and cheats, all of them had worked for Unisco and all of them had been caught. There was no other way of putting it. The inquisitors had demanded that they get a place to put the specialist prisoners, those who had secrets they didn’t want spilling to outsiders.
Security was tight, not that he’d have expected anything less. They liked to keep a monitor of who was coming and going and what they did while they were there. The inquisitors were nosey like that. Couldn’t wait to stick their nose into the affairs of people who’d come to see the prisoners. Visiting hours were restricted, families could only get limited and sporadic access. That was why Chessinghold town did such a great business, the visiting hours were announced at random through the week to take the prisoners by surprise. Given chance to plan, your average Unisco agent was a dangerous beast and should be treated as such. The prisons had to be good, they trained them to be able to escape from places like this.
Granted, it was probably less than humane, but the inquisitors didn’t care. Try and imagine the size of the fuck the average inquisitor didn’t give about the rights of their prisoners and you might be right, Subtractor always thought.
He’d managed to bastardise up an ID card that would let him enter without leaving a name he didn’t want investigated on the system. In what he’d consider later to be a rare moment of humour, he’d given the name of an agent on the Mistress’ personal shit list just solely to be a bastard. He’d been using said agent’s name a lot recently when it came to inquiries, it might bring a lot of trouble down on him eventually. Good. Anything Subtractor could do to increase his own value to the Mistress was worth it. And anything he could make Unisco do to sabotage themselves was worth it twice over.
They’d waved him through, hadn’t even given him a second glance. His face didn’t entirely match the ID. All they cared was that it buzzed him through. Thank the Divines for workers who spectacularly couldn’t be bothered. This wasn’t like it was national security or anything. Of course, this was only the outer layer. In theory, the deeper he advanced, the tougher the security should be. He r
eached up to the side of his head, fiddled with his optical mask. Just enough to fool a serious glance. When using a fake ID, everything had to match.
Checkpoint after checkpoint, they couldn’t wait to wave him through. Every time, his access card beeped to show he was authorised to be there. It was almost pathetically easy. A job like this bred endroids, they wouldn’t think for themselves if they didn’t have to. The system knew best, the system couldn’t be wrong, therefore why should they interrupt their day to question it? Probably just wasn’t worth it from their point of view. Especially when they saw such a famous face as his walking through the building. He’d had a few of them fawn over him, move to let him through that little faster. He’d been a spirit caller before, a town champion but he’d never known adoration like these fleeting sensations. All because his access card said he was who he said he was.
Hacking never had been his strongest skill, he’d learned a lot and improved on it though over the years. He couldn’t have gotten into the Unisco mainframe from the outside, not in a million years. Only the best could even hope to do that. Having access from within and being able to modify and implement his own protocols though, he could do that in a heartbeat. Okocha had taught him some of this stuff when they’d been stationed on Carcaradis Island, unaware of what he was about to unleash on Unisco. He’d liked Okocha, the man was just so damn trusting. He knew not what he could do with the power at his fingertips, not what someone with less than honest intentions could do with that knowledge. Naivety should always come with a price, he’d thought.
Eventually the cell block had come into view, he’d surrendered his weapons with the guard at the entrance to the block. No amount of hacking his access would change that. That was just prison protocol and immutable to the extreme. He doubted they’d check the serial number of the blaster against the agent it was assigned to. A momentary lapse he hadn’t considered, but when filling the form out, he left it deliberately fudged. More than that, it looked like it had been considered and then screwed up. It would have looked more suspicious if he’d walked in here without a weapon. Unisco agents went everywhere with their blasters these days, it was a war zone out there after all.
“Have a nice day, sir,” the drone behind the glass said, Subtractor watched as he went to put it away in a lockbox. “Enjoy your visit.” It sounded inane even as the words left his mouth, Subtractor wanted to laugh sarcastically. He didn’t, chose not to draw the attention to himself. That would be costly. Instead he just strode onto the wing, shut down his optical mask and activated the muffler in its place. Not the whole thing, just the part that fogged surveillance systems. When you knew what you were doing, it was amazing the extra levels of performance that you could get out of something compared to those that just took the technology at face value.
He didn’t look at the faces, tried not to look directly at the videocams, they wouldn’t pick him up, but it wasn’t worth someone looking on and wondering why someone in the cellblock lacked a face. They’d know the answer, but they might come down to ask him some questions he’d rather not answer. The best lies were the ones that you avoided telling.
Subtractor knew which cell he was looking for, he’d checked it out before entering. It was only the smart thing to do. Nothing ruined an effective disguise more than looking like you didn’t know what you were doing. A little prior research was priceless. He strode through them like he didn’t have a care in the world, ignored the few jibes thrown his way from the cells. Reacting to them wouldn’t do him any favours, he’d rather not reveal his identity before he had to. Honour amongst prisoners simply didn’t exist, most in here would say anything to get an early release. Whether they’d be believed or not was another matter.
The man in the final cell had seen better days from when Subtractor had seen him last. He’d been one of Subtractor’s first senior agents, a man whom always struck him as a tricky bastard with whom nothing could be taken at face value. How long had he fooled Unisco over his own betrayals, the harmless old duffer mask concealing the razor-sharp mind he surely must have possessed to get where he had. Unisco didn’t hand out promotions based on sympathy. If you deserved the job amidst a field of qualified candidates, you got it. He had to hand that to them, there was none of the sort of favouritism you found in other agencies. There was a reason Unisco had risen to the top of the pile after all. If he’d been a distinguished grey before, it had evolved into the unkempt now, the sort of grey associated with the homeless. He’d tried to commit suicide upon his arrest, had failed and now they didn’t even let him have the implements to shave with. A year-worth of beard lined his face, made him look like a vagrant in an orange jumpsuit. Those jumpsuits, dear Divines, was there any further symbol of how far the mighty had fallen? He’d always found them hideous.
Subtractor hoped he wasn’t broken beyond repair and some sort of fight remained within him. The eyes opened as he approached, Subtractor saw them follow him all the way to his cell without blinking, a spooky effect.
“Oh,” he said. Considering he was the first person in months to see Subtractor’s real face, there was a disappointing lack of surprise. “It’s you.”
“It is,” Subtractor said. He’d expected more of a reaction. A lot more of one than what he’d gotten out of the ageing man. “And how’ve you been, Nigel? Prison agreeing with you?”
Nigel Carling, former Agent-in-Charge of the Unisco operations in the Canterage city of Belderhampton rose from his bed and fixated Subtractor with a beady-eyed look. He looked like an abused eagle, his nose broken and crooked from where he’d resisted arrest. Larsen, if Subtractor remembered the reports correctly and there was no reason to assume that he hadn’t. In most other walks of life, getting your face smashed in by a woman half your size would see your reputation take a knock. Here, it was the least of Carling’s problems.
“Well, three meals a day, two hours in the yard and an unwanted wake-up call every morning aren’t to be complained about, old son,” Carling said. “It’s like the retirement I never thought I’d get.” The sarcasm in his voice was palpable, couldn’t have been more unmistakeable if he’d held up a great neon sign announcing his mood.
“Not loving it then?”
“What do you think?” Carling said. “It’s not going to make my career highlights, put it that way, old son.”
“That’s adorable. You think you still have a career.”
“Well, technically they never told me I was fired.” Carling’s grin as he spoke had a certain ghoulish element to it, his lips pulled back across to show his teeth.
“You’ve been locked up for a year on charges of corruption, abuse of position and collaboration with an enemy of the kingdoms, as well as accessory to over a dozen murders that THEY know about.” He emphasised the word, grinned as he said it. He liked the hint of threat. If Carling still had anything about him, he’d pick up on it. “I think they worked out that you were smart enough to get the message.”
That was one thing he couldn’t underestimate in all this. Carling wasn’t stupid. The man had managed to string along both a highly skilled assassin and his own colleagues for a too many years. Only Subtractor had worked him out and he wasn’t in position to throw him under a mag-rail carriage. Not when he might need to use them down the line. You didn’t remove potentially viable future assets from the field.
Carling wasn’t stupid, Subtractor knew that, but neither was he. If he kept his wits about him, this tiny dishevelled man wouldn’t get the better of him.
“So, you came to see me?” It sounded like a question, Subtractor knew better than to believe it was. It was a statement, a process of fact and a clear demand to know why he was here. All the time in the world and yet he didn’t want to waste it playing games. Subtractor could respect that. His own time was valuable after all. The longer he was here, the more chance it could go wrong.
“I did indeed. Can’t I come see how my old friend is doing?” Friend was pushing it. Old superior might have been more appro
priate. Never a good idea to remind people of how far they had fallen though. Once people remembered the past, it tended to stir up all sorts of emotions which didn’t make them easier to bargain with. Broken people were always more pliable, they agreed to things they might never do in a thousand years before.
“We were never friends. You were just one of many beneath me. Don’t even think I knew your name until you started building stuff.”
Now if that wasn’t the story of Subtractor’s life, he didn’t know what was.
“As for coming to see me, I’ve been here a year, old son and you’re my first ever visitor. Even the family don’t want to know.”
The perils of being branded a traitor, Subtractor wanted to say. He chose diplomacy, kept his mouth set into a neutrally sympathetic position. If he was lucky, Carling would buy into it. If he didn’t get many visitors, he might be more open to keep the one he’d got, rather than drive him away. Some people just wanted to talk. Loneliness was the best sort of interrogation tool. Leave someone on their own for long enough and sooner or later, they’d want to communicate, they’d want to hear a voice other than their own and they’d want a conversation. It was the reason the prison had been built like this. Each cell was soundproofed, the prisoners kept one to a cell and no communication with permitted one another. It must be, Subtractor had often thought, the worst sort of hells. The kind of place where you know there’s someone six feet away from you and yet you can’t talk to them in any way, shape or form.
He would kill himself before winding up in this place, he’d already decided on that. If things looked like they were going to go south in his quest to fulfil the Mistress’ dream, then he’d pull the trigger on himself. He wouldn’t talk, he’d make sure of that.
“Terrible,” he said. “Well I’m here now, Mister Carling and…”
“I heard you died. At the Quin-C final.”