“I’m sorry if actually killing people turns my stomach.”
Raze laughed out loud. “I don’t kill people, Grant. You know that. They’re already standing on the cliff. I don’t push them; I only serve to inspire them to jump. Their minds are already a fertile soil for their own destruction.”
“You’re an angel of death.”
“And you are still an accessory to all that we do here. You’re the ‘pioneer’ remember? We could have never done it without you.”
They continued walking down the hall in silence. When they arrived before the next set of doors Grant turned to Raze again.
“Good luck in there, Raziel,” he started to turn away, but turned back and leaned in closer to him. “Oh...and maybe you should watch your back.” Grant turned on his heel and walked back out the way they came.
Raze watched him, unruffled. Grant was never able to accept that Raze had surpassed him, making him almost completely irrelevant. Grant was nothing but a sycophantic pawn in these halls and a mere gopher for The 8.
After Grant was completely outside the inner sanctum, Raze turned back toward the doors. He placed his feet shoulder width apart, closed his eyes, centered himself, and concentrated on grounding.
When he was ready, Raze held his hand in front of a glowing plasma screen inlayed in the door where a doorknob would normally be. He projected his energy frequency through the palm of his hand toward it. The Qi panel began to shift colors—swirls of ultraviolet, indigo, gold, and pitch black blending and turning together. When the combination of colors identified Raze, the internal door mechanism clicked several times and the locks within it disengaged. The door slid open and Raze stepped through into Sanctum Sanctorum.
Located in the third level, subterranean basement of the building, the Sanctum Sanctorum was a cavernous room built in the shape of a circle. The rest of the building rose up from around this room. Stone walls towered up like a column from the ground chamber level to the tenth floor. The room was sealed by a domed skylight of multi-faceted cut glass above the tenth floor. Embedded in the center of the crystallized skylight was the company logo, a 24-karet gold infinity symbol overlapped with two, platinum, capital “I’s”. Seams of glass ran down the walls in geometric patterns, carrying the sun from the ceiling down to the chamber floor, separating the stone blocks with veins of light. It provided just enough ambient lighting to see by, but not in too much detail. The 8 refused to be scrutinized.
It was a rare exception that anybody even knew The 8 existed. While every employee of Infinium Incorporated and its subsidiaries played a supporting role in its mission, only the elite, integral players understood its true nature. The actual mission of the conglomerate was beyond Top Secret. Raze was one of those elite players.
He walked across the black marble floor and stood before them. They were seated in eight gold thrones behind an enormous arc table of illuminated glass. He did not know any of The 8 by name, only by their numerical designation. Numbers 2, 4, 6 and 8 were women. They sat in the semi-circle around the right of him. Numbers 3, 5, 7, and 9 were men, who were seated around him to the left.
An extra chair sat in center of the semi-circle, empty. In the 5 years Raze had worked directly for The 8, that seat had never been filled. There had never been a Number 1. It was a mystery—and one that would stay that way—for Raze was not in the position to ask questions, only to provide answers.
“Hello, Raziel,” Number 7 said.
“Good morning,” Raze replied.
“What do you have to report to us today regarding the Parrish Project,” a female, Number 4, asked.
Raze took a step forward. He’d already decided he was going to lie—well, withhold information, which in this world was the same as lying. It was a risk. If The 8 knew or was somehow involved in the situation that occurred today, they would know he was holding back. But chances were they didn’t have any knowledge of today’s events. They relied on Raze’s skills in The Fourth too much. Raze just needed to pacify them and buy himself more time to figure out what had gone wrong so he could remedy the situation on his own.
He decided to start with the good news. “The main target of the project, Mr. Scott Parrish, has been eliminated and is no longer a threat.”
This was the truth. The success of the morning’s operation had been confirmed through the media. Dr. Parrish had been found shot to death at his residence in Modesto. Now, for the bad news.
“Unfortunately, Blake Parrish did not follow through with his assignment, as intended. There was a fluctuation in his frequency pattern after he shot his father.”
Again, this was the truth.
Raze continued, “This may have been due to interference from the Third, where the actual assassination occurred.”
Not so much the truth here. It was a good thing that there wasn’t a frequency reader in the room, because Raze was sure it would have read the instability in his own energy patterns.
“What could have caused such a flux,” asked Number 2.
Raze noted the guileless tone of the question and the lack of suspicion in her disposition, so he proceeded, “It could have been one of a two things. First, the increased kick and the louder decibel level created by a weapon that Blake wasn’t used to using when playing Demesne could have shocked him out of the oscillation net slightly.”
This was a stretch. Manchurian assassination techniques weren’t new and they had been perfected in the past two decades to withstand such differences as using simulated weapons during trial runs versus real guns in actual operations.
“Or it could be attributed to the fact that our candidate was younger than most candidates.”
This was more plausible. Blake, at just under 13 years old, was three years younger than their youngest Manchurian subject had been, a 16-year-old who completed a mass murder on a high school campus in order to eliminate just one targeted professor.
“And while he was well-acquainted and enthusiastic about the product, Blake Parrish was not yet immersed in the culture or in an addicted state, yet. The intervention of Mr. and Mrs. Parrish could have provided enough of an antidote to counteract the game’s magnetism.”
This was not true at all. Little Blake was totally hooked. No matter what intervention his parents had tried, Blake was always able to access the game. Raze had made sure of that. And he had been Raze’s perfect little puppet. That is until an extremely attractive glitch invaded Demesne this morning and interrupted the operation.
Demesne was two things. It was a real video game—an intergalactic war simulator and role-playing game, where players used SurroundVison visors and controllers designed as replicas of real weapons to explore and take over worlds. Raze had developed the game during his tenure at Quantum Gaming Systems, who then produced and distributed it. It was their best selling video game to date.
Demesne was also a special, little sphere within the fourth dimensional energetic grid called The Stratum. The Stratum was policed and controlled by Infinium Incorporated. Demesne was created and controlled by Raze with The 8’s explicit blessing. Through the game, Raze could lure targets into his fourth dimensional funhouse and from there directly seed ideas, manipulate thoughts, and influence the actions of targets as directed by The 8.
Only Raze’s unsuspecting targets received his special SurroundVison visors that manipulated the oscillation patterns in their brains and opened the portal that transported them from the 3D game into his 4D, holographic space. There were only two of these visors in existence. Both were sitting in the crime scene at the Parrish house waiting for Raze to retrieve them once the heat cooled off.
When the stray creature interrupted today’s operation, she created a disruption in the oscillation patterns of Demesne, so Blake’s consciousness, and subsequently the whole construct, fell apart. But Raze wasn’t going to tell The 8 that. He didn’t want them to know Demesne was compromised. Not just yet. Hopefully, not ever.
He needed to sandwich the bad news with some good
.
“Fortunately, when I realized Blake was in flux, I initiated the option-lock command and I have confirmed that this was effective. The younger Mr. Parrish is in police custody under psychiatric observation due to his catatonic symptoms.”
Raze paused and let the state of affairs sink in before he offered his solutions. “The option-lock can remain in effect or it can be enhanced to place Blake in a vegetative state. I can also attempt to complete the original assignment, by getting Blake to commit suicide via dream seeding or remote influencing. I await your direction.”
Raze stepped back and waited while The 8 deliberated. They were quiet for a long while, mulling over the situation and its options amongst themselves. Raze kept his head respectfully lowered; he didn’t want to appear desperate by searching their faces for their thoughts.
“Obviously, none of us are pleased that the goal was not accomplished,” Number 7 finally spoke again. He always seemed to speak for the group; whether or not he carried more authority than the others was unknown. Raze found that sometimes the more people spoke, the less authority they actually had. “As for what to do, does anyone have a problem with allowing the option-lock to remain in effect?”
“I do,” said Number 6 immediately.
“I, as well,” said Number 5. “While we have had success with option-lock settings before, it has been with older targets whose brains and memories were already compromised. Due to the age of this target and the resiliency of his youthful brain, I am concerned he could reacquire a stable line to the Third, heal his synapses, and reintegrate. Even if he only partially reintegrates, anything he may reveal is too much information. I vote for remote influencing or dream seeding. Finish this thing.”
There was silence again.
“Is there anyone who disagrees with 5,” asked 7.
No one spoke.
Number 7 placed his fingertips together and looked down at the table a moment as if gathering his thoughts. Slowly and deliberately he spoke again. “Raziel, you are directed to finish the project. But let us be perfectly clear. There shall be no more failures. If you cannot accomplish our objectives cleanly and succinctly, you will be replaced. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir,” Raze replied.
“You may go.”
Raze turned and left the room. He had a busy afternoon ahead. The sooner he accessed Blake and got him to kill himself the sooner he could begin hunting down the girl.
No fucking bitch was going to invade his world and mess with his reality. He was glad he kept her to himself. It gave him more freedom to do what he wanted, how he wanted.
This was going to be fun.
CHAPTER 5
Mathis really just wanted to go home, pop open a beer, and hit the hay for a few hours before enjoying the rest of his weekend, but leave it to a Fuck ’em up Friday to ruin those plans.
After spotting the blood-soaked boy cowering in the corner, everything went from big nothin’ to cluster fuck, right quick. Mathis immediately called for a perimeter to be set up. Knowing that there was at least one critical patient in the house, Mathis made the tactical decision to have a rapid response team from his own shift attempt to secure the scene. Having the whole watch on scene already wasn’t such a waste of resources after all.
They called for anybody inside of the residence to come out, but there was no response. So, much to everybody’s delight, Mathis let them kick in the back door. As they went room to room, clearing the house, Mathis half expected to find it ransacked from a home invasion robbery gone bad. But just as he saw from the window, the rest of the house was immaculate, not a single knick-knack or bric-a-brac out of place. The only people who appeared to have been in the house all evening were the victim, Scott Parrish, and his twelve-year-old son, Blake.
When they entered the den, the boy wouldn’t comply with commands, but he didn’t put up any resistance either. He sat in the corner next to his father, cradling his knees, rocking himself back and forth, repeating the same nonsensical sentence over and over under his breath.
“Two sticks and a bucket. Two sticks and a bucket. Two sticks and a bucket.”
Blake was what Mathis would call a hot mess, slick with sweat, blood, tears, snot, and drool. They got him detained without incident; and once he was secured in the back of a patrol car, he resumed both his rocking and his mantra.
While the rest of the house was pristine, the office looked like a scene from a horror flick. Blood splatter and brain matter made a grotesque abstract work of art on the side wall and across the television screen. There was a deep red Rorschach pattern stained in the Berber carpet.
Mr. Parrish had one bullet hole right between the eyes, with a massive exit wound that was more out of the top of his head than straight out the back. The average fan of CSI could have figured out that the suspect was a good two feet shorter than the victim, just the height of Blake Parrish. Because of this, along with the handgun lying right next to the boy’s feet, it was not going to be a surprise when the gunshot residue test came back positive on Blake, identifying him as the shooter.
By the time Mathis handed the crime scene over to Investigations and got his officers squared away on their reports, it was nearly noon. If he went home and went to sleep he would be up again all night, so Mathis decided to just push through the rest of the day. He headed over to the Old Mill for some breakfast. There really wasn’t anything that a four-egg Denver omelet, sausage, bacon, biscuits and gravy and strong cup of diner coffee couldn’t soothe—not even the cold-blooded murder of a father by his twelve-year-old son.
Mathis had been coming to this quaint little dive ever since he was a youngster. Back in the day, the cafe, trimmed in blue and white stripes with its miniature windmill sign, was nestled in a scalene wedge created by two intersecting streets and the railroad tracks that ran a mere 10 feet from the cafe windows. He and his grandfather used to drive into town to pick up supplies at the feed store, then head to the cafe for a hearty breakfast and some man talk before heading back out to the ranch for chores. They always sat in the same window table, timing their breakfast so Mathis Jr. could watch the trains parade up the Tidewater Southern, up the middle of 9th Street alongside traffic, and chug ever so slowly past them.
The city had demolished the beloved landmark years ago, but the owners relocated the cafe just down the street. It wasn’t the same, but it was his tradition and still the best breakfast in town. Mathis came here to reminisce about the good ol’ days when Modesto was all rails, rivers, and agriculture, when you didn’t come into town without seeing half a dozen people you went to church with and when you felt at home in the world.
Modesto lost that small town atmosphere when she spread her legs to the housing developers who cashed in on the real estate bubble, attracted a hundred thousand new residents within a ten-year period of time, and then dumped her like a two-bit whore. The old girl busted herself at the seams.
But she still had a way about her. Even though the orchards and crops that once graced the landscape had been plowed asunder to lay the foundations of cheap housing developments, their roots were still interlaced deep in the fertile soil and sprouted up into her people—roots that either anchored them to the place for a lifetime or brought them back. Only the lucky few managed to make a complete escape. Mathis was one of the former, grounded here for a lifetime. He hardly recognized the place anymore, but he didn’t mind. It brought him a certain comfort. He felt as rooted here as the trees in every orchard that surrounded the town.
His waitress came to the table to ask if he wanted anything else. She’d been working here for years and Mathis was a little in awe of her. He always thought there must be a factory in the Mid-west somewhere that spit out the cookie-cutter diner waitress: a heavy-set, with a back-combed, netted hair-do, snapping on her chewing gum type of broad that was found at Denny’s across America.
Well, that waitress factory broke the mold with Sabine. She was definitely not your ordinary diner waitress. Even on the bu
siest morning with the rudest customers, her eyes always held the light of a smile. Her long, wavy hair was lifted into a sexy, messy twist with loose tendrils curled down around her neck—and she had a damn fine set of legs. Mathis may not have been able to sit at his favorite window and watch the trains go by anymore, but he sure as hell made sure he sat in Sabine’s section of the restaurant so he could enjoy a completely different, and ultimately better, view.
Mathis was taken aback when he caught himself admiring Sabine the first time. He had been buried in grief for so long he was practically dead himself. But then one morning he noticed the way the morning light played through the honey and caramel of her hair, the easy sway of her hips as she sashayed table to table chatting up the locals, and the camber of her back as she leaned over to pour their coffee, and he felt jolted alive.
Sabine seemed to have an intuitive understanding that Mathis wasn’t much for small talk. She skirted around his table gracefully, respecting his privacy; and although he wanted to, he could never muster up the mojo to say anything to her. Besides placing his order, please, thank you, yes and no, and ma’am, his tongue froze up. He always felt awkward about the “ma’am” part, she was at least a decade younger then he was, but he didn’t want to act too familiar and call her by her name. He wanted to pay her a little respect.
Recently, he had been working himself up to attempt a conversation with her. It had been 35 years since he had hit on a woman—and that was Denise—their junior year in high school. Mathis was pretty sure that shouting, “Hey Sabine, you wanna go steady?” across the cafeteria wasn’t how it worked nowadays.
Maybe today he could think of a good icebreaker, like, “Nice weather we’re having.”
Mathis glanced out the window. It looked like God sneezed on the city today, leaving a wet low-lying fog that had embraced and sealed in one of the malodorous assaults Modesto was known to offer. You could never tell what fragrance would greet you on any given day. Some days the air reeked of maple syrup. The next day the town would be drenched in a perfume of dairy farm manure. Today was a dung day and Mathis was pretty sure that initiating a chat about the nice weather on a day that God’s sneeze smelled like cow shit would not elicit a very long conversation—or a dinner date.
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