by G. D. Cox
It's Clyde's turn to stare at Fabry with a blank face, one that covers his stupefaction. The fingers of his left hand - with all their nails grown back six months after that disagreement - twitch just once on the table top.
Holy shit ... holy shit, how the heck did Fabry find out about all that? Sure, there were other people outside the bar when he was jumped by those assholes, but in the basement? There was nobody else apart from him and those goons. He knows for a fact that Lando had no cameras down there, and once those assholes went down, he got himself out of the ropes and was out of the place fast. Nobody got in his way. Nobody knew he'd escaped until he was long gone and already on his way out of the city. He never told anyone what happened. Just pushed it out of his mind and never looked back.
So how does Fabry even know how he took those goons down? Did Lando tell him? Fuck, next thing he knows, Fabry's going to tell him that he's the director of some international criminal syndicate or something and that Lando's on his way to this room to finish what his thugs failed to do. Granted, four years may be a long time to exact revenge but well, Lando was never known for being a forgiving guy.
"Yeah. You are a dangerous bastard and we know it," Fabry says.
Clyde should be smirking, rubbing that in Fabry's face and taunting the guy into releasing him from these cuffs to find out just how dangerous he can be. Instead, he stares on at Fabry with a blank face that he now has to strive to maintain, feeling Fabry's fierce gaze like a dragon's fiery breath charring him.
Fabry isn't scared of him. No, he's sure of that. Fabry's careful, which is totally different from scared. Fabry knows shit about him that nobody should. Fabry knew to clean out all his pockets and seams for any potential weapons and tools. Even took his boots, wallet and belt and its metal buckle. Kept him knocked out until he was chained up. Fabry's got armed men in thousand-dollar suits who respect him and do as he says. Fabry's even got an interrogation room that looks professionally constructed with high-end tech and spotless, sleek furniture. Fabry is powerful.
Fabry isn't a dragon. Fabry's a leviathan, a sea monster so terrifying that it will only be killed at the end of time. What the fuck is a lion compared to a beast as colossal as that? And holy fuck, how lucky is he that Fabry didn't kill him straightaway for mouthing off like he did at the start? Who knows, Fabry may just do it later, and bury his corpse in some undisclosed location and erase him completely from existence. Fuck.
"So," he says with bravado that he doesn't feel. "Gimme back my boots. And my wallet. And my belt. And let me go."
"No," Fabry replies, poker-faced as ever. "I'm gonna give you something else instead."
Clyde's mouth opens in the beginnings of an epic rant about how those items had set him back hundreds of bucks and that he has goddamn rights and that if Fabry's in cahoots with Lando - or any of the other mob bosses and nutjobs he's pissed off -he's going to find a way to wrap this chain around Fabry's neck anyway and make Fabry regret ever crossing his path -
"I'm giving you a job. A full-time, legal job that will allow you to put your expertise to good use for once."
Clyde's brain skids to a halt like a record skipping on a turntable and then hopping off it. His mouth remains open and yeah, he probably looks like a dumbass but ... Fabry wants to ... hire him? For a full-time, legal job? What the hell?
"Who are you?" he eventually asks, with a tone that from anyone else would be described as deferential.
Fabry leans forward again, forearms on the table and his fingers steepled once more.
"Nathan Fabry. Director of the Global Anti Terrorist Force." Before Clyde can say a word, Fabry speaks on, staring keenly at him, "And you are Clyde Barnett. Twenty-six years old, born in St. Louis City Hospital in Missouri on 28th June, 1980. The second son of Tobias and Eileen Barnett who were killed in a drunk driving car accident on I-70 in late November of 1989. Upon their deaths, you and your older brother Daniel were placed in an orphanage under the care of nuns, but less than a year later, you and Daniel ran away from the orphanage to join Circus Majestico, a now disbanded circus that'd been passing through St. Louis at the time. Five months afterward, Daniel left the circus while it was in Columbus, Ohio, and you've since received no contact from him."
Clyde blinks. Blinks a second time. The Global Anti Terrorist Force? What the ... he's never heard of it before. It sounds like one of those spy alphabet agencies, like the CIA or the FBI or the NSA. And it's global? So Fabry really is the boss of some international organization? An anti-terrorism agency? Jesus fuck, does Fabry think he's a terrorist or something? Is that why his stooges were so hell-bent on catching him?
He's no terrorist. He's just former circus white trash trying to survive however he can. He's never, ever hurt anyone who didn't deserve it. It's his code, man, to only target the bad guys and walk away if good people ever get involved, and how the heck did Fabry find out all that about him? He is in way over his head here.
And god, Danny. Does Fabry know something about Danny? It's true, he really hasn't heard from his brother for over sixteen years. As soon as he left the circus, he'd sent out feelers for any hearsay on a twenty-four-year-old Daniel Barnett from St. Louis and gotten nothing back, apart from one ominous lead that claimed a Danny Barnett had rubbed shoulders with the wrong folks in Detroit and paid for it. It was why he'd ended up in Detroit at all in 2002, and no, he never found Danny or any further clues to help him with his search. It was like Danny was never in Detroit. Or nobody wanted to or dared to talk about him.
"For the next nine years in Circus Majestico, you were mentored by Javier Duchaine, also known as The Gladiator. You became adept at gymnastics, equilibristics, archery, impalement acts with blades and a variety of firearms for your circus acts. You left the circus when it stopped in St. Louis at the age of nineteen due to disagreements with Duchaine as well as the circus losing too much business to sustain itself. For the next seven years or so after that, despite one legitimate job for two years in Minnesota, you regularly committed petty crimes such as trespassing, theft, forgery, simple assault, disorderly conduct ... and prostitution."
Again, Clyde's brain skids to a halt with an internal screech. It sounds like the death cry of a small animal being crushed within the talons of a gargantuan sea monster. Fabry is staring at him with those heavy-lidded, brown, piercing eyes again.
"Your clients, in at least three cities in the country from late 2004 until May this year, were all male," Fabry says quietly, coolly.
"Shut up," Clyde says, his hands trembling fists once more, and not knowing it.
"You picked them up most often in bars after ingesting a considerable amount of alcohol -"
"Shut up -"
"And your only trade was fellatio, with a doubling of price if the man wanted to be rough -"
Clyde slams his fists down hard and loud on the table. The chain between his cuffs that's also tethering him to the floor jangles sharply. His vision's gone totally red, the red of blood when it sprays out of a bullet wound, out of a gash from a blade. He's lunged across the table but Fabry has calmly backed off, sitting back with that goddamn stony face. Clyde's hands claw at the table top, unable to reach the fucking bastard's neck. The cuffs dig into his wrists but he doesn't feel them.
"Fuck you!" he hollers, slamming his hands on the table again, baring all his fangs. "Fuck you, fuck you, I am not some faggot! You dunno what you're talking about! You shut the FUCK up!"
Fabry doesn't appear the least bit daunted. Fabry just stares at him with this gleam in his eyes, like Clyde's already lost some fight with Fabry he didn't even know he was in. He hates it. He hates it, he hates this arrogant fucker who thinks he can judge him for doing what he had no choice to do, for enduring when nobody else was looking out for him except himself. Fuck Fabry, fuck him and all the vile, perverted faggot johns who forced him to do those things to survive. Fuck them all, he's not gay. He is not a faggot like them. No. No. He isn't.
He hears himself panting harshly from very far
away. Fabry just keeps staring at him, and he hates this feeling of being flayed. He feels like all Fabry has to do now to destroy him is to look down at his torn open chest and see his hammering heart within its coop of bone with all his nerves exposed. He feels like a child again, like the pathetic boy he was whenever Pop hit Mom until Mom was crying and begging him to stop, whenever he tried to stop Pop and Pop turned on him instead and hurt him and hurt him until he was the one trying to stay still on the floor under the strikes of Pop's belt buckle, to stay quiet and alive for another day.
He is not a faggot. Pop's wrong. Pop's wrong and Pop is goddamn dead while he's still alive.
He collapses back onto his chair and slouches in it. His breaths are erratic but they're slowing down, stabilizing as he folds his arms over his chest as best he can with his wrists shackled. He tries to glare at Fabry. He knows what the fucker just did to him, testing him like that, but he glances away and glares at the table top instead. He doesn't want to know how Fabry found out about that shit. He doesn't want to know why Fabry's apparently giving him a job in his agency or whatever, even knowing what he's done in his past.
"I'm offering you the chance to wipe your slate clean. To become an agent of the Global Anti Terrorist Force," Fabry says as if he hadn't just snapped and showed Fabry what a terrible idea this is. "You have no fucking clue how rare an opportunity this is, so keep that in mind while you think about it, Barnett."
Clyde raises his eyes to Fabry's once more, his glare tempered down to a scowl. Fabry looks like he's dead serious. Fabry is dead serious. Fabry did send five stooges - no, agents after him just for this ... damn job interview. Christ, what is his life.
"You have twenty-four hours to decide. That's twenty-four hours more generous than I usually am."
Clyde believes him. He knows better than to mouth off again. Fabry really does have the power to make him completely disappear from the face of the Earth. And Fabry's behavior towards him so far? This is Fabry being kind.
He watches Fabry stand up from his seat while the steel door behind him opens again with a beeping noise. The sandy brown, curly-haired agent is back, this time with his gun holstered and tucked out of sight under his suit jacket. The agent enters the room but doesn't shut the door.
That's when Clyde mutters, "Danny." Fabry and the other agent glance at him, and he says, "He's the reason I was in Detroit in 2002. Is he ... alive?"
The other agent glances at Fabry while Fabry gazes at Clyde, his expression utterly inscrutable.
"Last we sighted him in December, 2001," Fabry says, "he was in Westwood Park in Detroit doing runs for one of the drug kingpins. He hopped from one location to another often and was extremely paranoid and wary. He was hooked on heroin."
The air in Clyde's lungs turns to ice.
"And ... you guys haven't seen him since."
"No," Fabry replies. "The interrogation of certain members of the kingpin's gang later on indicated that your brother left Detroit in February, 2002, but we've been unable to verify it so far."
Clyde swallows hard as he gazes on at Fabry. For Fabry and his agents to be surveilling his brother all the way back in 2001, Fabry must have been pretty damn certain even then about wanting Clyde as an agent working for him. And for them to be unable to verify Danny's whereabouts and condition is ... it's bad. It's real bad.
"If you guys were watching Danny and me, why didn't you just - why didn't you tell me about him then? Or at least leave some kinda clue, huh?" Clyde presses his lips into a thin, pale line. "You knew I was searching for my brother. You knew."
He can already guess what Fabry will say, just from how expressionless Fabry remains.
"He didn't want to be found."
Clyde lets his eyes fall shut.
"But that doesn't mean he won't be found. Consider that as well before you give me your answer."
Clyde doesn't reply or open his eyes. He hears Fabry say to the other agent, "Unlock him and accompany him to the mess with Perez. If he doesn't want food, accompany him to his room," and the agent's clear, "Yes, sir." He hears Fabry's heavy footsteps leading out the room and receding into the hallway beyond. He hears a different set of footsteps approaching him, and he opens his eyes to half-mast to see the sandy brown, curly-haired agent standing next to him with a strange-looking, silver key in one hand.
"You're not gonna flick fingernails at me, are you?" the agent asks with straight lips and eyes definitely glinting with amusement.
"I will if ya ask nicely," Clyde mutters, lifting up his shackled wrists towards the agent.
The agent snorts and inserts the key into small, rectangular holes on the cuffs along the outer sides of his wrists.
"Agent Stewart," the agent introduces himself casually, letting each cuff fall to the floor with a dull thud as he unlocks them. "Don Stewart."
Clyde shakes his hands a few times. The shackles were constricting but they didn't cut off his circulation either. Come to think of it, he's never seen cuffs like them before, never seen cops or criminals use anything like them. Do these guys make their own? If they do, what else do they make here? And where is here? The agency's headquarters?
He glances up at Stewart's face and notices the fine lines around Stewart's dark brown eyes. It seems Stewart really is older than he is, despite his initial impression of Stewart being around the same age as him. Still doesn't mean he likes being called kid, not by anyone.
"I want my boots and my wallet and my belt," he says, glowering at the other man as he stands up, ignoring the throb in his bandaged left thigh. "And don't call me 'kid', asshole."
Stewart's lips curl up at the tips into something of an amused smirk.
"They're outside."
Clyde glares at him again. He can tell Stewart was tempted to call him that another time.
Clyde finds his beloved combat boots, wallet (surprisingly with all its fake IDs and credit cards) and leather belt on the carpeted floor next to the door of the interrogation room. He averts his face from Stewart as he pulls on his boots and buckles his belt on. For a few seconds, he struggles with temptation himself, the temptation to attack Stewart and seize Stewart's gun and fight his way out of this place. He can do it. He knows Stewart knows he can do it, that he's considering it. But he isn't stupid. Even if he does overpower Stewart and get his gun, he has no idea how many other armed agents are lurking around. There must be cameras watching them right now. And he doesn't even know how to get out of this place. He still hasn't seen any windows yet. Are they underground?
"I'm still in NYC, right?" he asks Stewart as he walks alongside the agent towards two elevators at the end of the bare, white-walled hallway.
Despite Stewart pointing a gun at him while he was still chained up plus the poke about his fingernails, the guy doesn't seem too concerned about hanging around him now that he's unshackled.
"Yep. You know that big-ass skyscraper in the heart of Manhattan? The one with the massive, curved walls and chevron lines of blue light?"
Clyde frowns as he tries to recall such a building in the city.
"Uh, no. I don't think so. I don't think there's a skyscraper like that."
"Exactly."
Clyde frowns in confusion at Stewart, but Stewart's expression is as composed as ever. (In just a day, he'll be told by Stewart about the truly advanced cloaking technology protecting all one hundred and fifty floors of the agency's headquarters, during an admittedly awe-inspiring tour of the place that includes passing by the Research & Development department taking up twenty-four floors, the very department that had engineered said technology.)
Clyde promptly forgets about Stewart's ambiguous answer when the doors of one elevator open to reveal a woman about five-foot-six in a black, stylish pantsuit and closed-toe pumps. She has long, straight and dark hair that parts in the middle and reaches her shoulders. Almond-shaped, brown eyes under defined, thick eyebrows. A slim yet patrician nose. Glossed, full lips and oh yeah, she fills out her dress shirt and jacket real nice. D
efinitely under the category of 'hot mama'.
"Angie," Stewart says in greeting.
"So this is the fresh meat we're dragging to the market, huh?" she says, scanning Clyde over with a smirk.
Clyde takes that as permission to blatantly leer at her as he and Stewart enter the elevator, letting his eyes linger on her ample bosom. So this must be Perez that Fabry mentioned earlier. Man, why didn't Fabry get her to point that gun at him in the interrogation room? Would have been nice to see her jacket unbuttoned, see her slide her gun into its holster and show the curve of her hip. If only she unfastened one more button of her shirt -
Stewart's snort drags Clyde's eyes from her chest to Stewart who now stands to his right. Stewart's lips have curled up again.
"Kid, she's way out of your league," Stewart mumbles from the side of his mouth.
Clyde glares at him and snaps, "Fuck you. Like you know me."
He doesn't have to look at Perez to know she's raised an eyebrow at him. Stewart gazes calmly back at him with that stupid glint in his eyes once more.
"You're right, I don't know you. Yet. But I know her," Stewart says, angling his head once towards Perez who isn't even bothering to hide her amusement now. "I once saw her kick this giant guy in the nuts so hard that he had an instant heart attack. Fell over like a tree. Just like that. We had to put him in ICU for days." Stewart makes a face. "Then again, he was one of them white supremacists who thought Angie would make good target practice for his machine gun, so he had it coming."
Now Clyde's the one who snorts, glancing at Perez with a disbelieving smirk. It dies a hasty death on his face when he looks her in the eye and realizes that Stewart is serious.
"You should try the meatloaf," Perez says, sending him a small smile that reminds him of tigress grinning just before it mauls its hapless prey. "Betty makes the greatest meatloaf in the universe."
Clyde makes sure to not look at her chest again.
When they arrive at the mess hall, the last thing Clyde expects is for it to be akin to a goddamn enormous, three-star Michelin restaurant. (Not that he's actually stepped in one, much less dined in one, but he knows class when he sees it.) There's the polished, parquet floor. The carrera marble tops and white, gold, wood and stainless steel accents. The curved leather banquettes in vibrant red jewel tones and the dark, round walnut tables. The kind of ambiance that's straight out of a posh interior design photo shoot.