by David Archer
Noah sat there for another minute, watching her eyes. He liked the fact that she didn't flinch, because most people couldn't play stare down with him. He suddenly smiled, and leaned forward with his hand extended.
“Noah Whoever-I-am, ready to report for duty. Just tell me what to do next.”
“Well, the first thing I want you to do is to sit down and write as detailed a narrative as you can about your life. What I want is to know how you see yourself, who you believe you are. Just write it out in your own words, and keep it in your cell. We’ll pick it up when we come to get you.”
Noah's eyebrows went up slightly. “No problem, I can do that,” he said. “Is it going to matter that you'll find out I'm nothing but a wolf in human clothing?”
FIVE
Noah was asleep when they came for him. His door opened, which woke him instantly, but he stayed on his bunk as if sleeping. A second later, he felt the light sting of a needle, and then he was asleep again.
He came back to consciousness slowly, and could tell that he was lying on something that was moving. He tried to open his eyes but they wouldn't, and when he tried to move his hands, he found that they were unresponsive as well.
He could hear, though, and the sounds coming through told him that he was in a vehicle. The steady hum beneath him was from tires on the surface of a road, of that he was sure. The purring noise was certainly from a well-tuned engine.
“Ma'am,” he heard a voice say, “I believe he's awake. It'll take a few minutes for everything to wear off, but his breathing says he's conscious.”
“Thank you, Marco,” he heard, and he recognized the voice as Lieutenant Colonel Hogan. “Noah, just relax. We've gotten you out of the Castle, and we're well on the way to the training facility. The cocktail of drugs we gave you should wear off the rest of the way shortly, so don't fight it. You'll be able to sit up in just a few minutes.”
Noah took her advice and relaxed, and a few seconds later he began to feel some of his muscles twitching. He tried again to open his eyes, and this time it worked. A quick glance around told him that he was in the back of an ambulance, and Hogan was sitting beside him along with a paramedic.
“Well, hello,” Colonel Hogan said. “Welcome back to the land of the living. Oh, wait a minute—I spoke too soon. You're actually quite dead, just wait and I'll show you the news stories about it.”
“No problem,” Noah said. His voice sounded rough. “I'm not worried about the news of the past, just what's to come in the future.”
“Well, that would spoil all my fun,” she said. “It's really quite a story. It seems that this young sergeant, who was sentenced to die for killing his platoon leader and several of his men, had this horrible attack of conscience and hung himself in his cell. There was a faint heartbeat when he was found, so of course he was rushed out to the hospital, but unfortunately, he passed away in the ambulance. He'll be buried in the prison graveyard tomorrow morning. Pretty good story, don't you think?”
Noah, his muscles still weak and sluggish, struggled up to a sitting position. “I think I read a book with that plot, once. In the one I read, though, the hero got a second chance at life. Your story go anywhere like that?”
Hogan reached up and took off her wig, tossing it into a bag at her feet. A moment later, she scratched just in front of her left ear and Noah saw a flap of skin come loose. She tugged on it, and a rubber mask peeled off of her face. The woman who sat there in Hogan's uniform was suddenly blonde and twenty years younger.
She extended a hand. “I'm Allison Peterson,” she said, and Noah shook hands with her. “I'm the administrator of E & E, and your new boss.”
Noah grinned and nodded. “Pleased to meet you,” he said, “for the second time. So, I gather everything worked the way you expected? I did as you said, didn't eat a thing all day and tried to act depressed.”
“Like a charm,” Allison said. “Fasting helps the drug work better, so it can slow your heart down to almost nothing. We needed the prison doctors to call for the ambulance. However, you've actually been out cold for almost thirty hours. Your death has already been certified, and your body has already been shipped back to the prison for burial. Fingerprint records have all been changed, dental records, everything; the body they got looks so much like you that even you might believe you're dead, if you saw it.”
“I doubt it,” Noah replied, still grinning. “I tend to disbelieve things that are obviously not true, and since I'm sitting here, well…So, what's next?”
She took a deep breath and let her smile relax a bit, even though it stayed in place. “Next is your initial training. We have a facility set up here in Colorado where you'll be instructed in new styles and techniques of martial arts, various new weapons, and lots of other super-spy-type stuff, and some of the most intense physical training you've ever experienced.”
“Sounds cool,” Noah said. “I've been involved in martial arts since I was eight years old. My grandfather thought it would be a good idea, something to help me focus my ‘anger and other emotions.’ I enjoyed it, because it had so much structure to it.”
Allison watched him coolly. “I know,” she said. “I also know that it was one of the things that caused your grandparents to send you back to the foster homes. They said you became violent and too intense, that you scared them.”
He shrugged. “This man showed up at our house one day and started screaming at my grandmother,” he said. “I thought he was threatening her, so I ran into the room and attacked. Turned out he wasn't actually screaming at her, he was a friend of theirs who was crying because his wife left him. That was the one that actually set them off, but it seemed like the more I got into the martial arts classes, the faster my reactions became. My instructor said I was a natural, but my grandmother thought there was something weird about me, because I was always working out anytime I didn't have something else to do.”
“And what did your grandfather say?”
Noah chuckled. “He put me in the martial arts classes because he'd been a marine, years before. He naturally thought that being able to defend yourself was a skill every man should have, so he wanted me to be able to do so. He thought it was hilarious, though, six months into my training, when I began beating my instructor. Needless to say, he and I were not in the same weight class, so when he agreed to spar with me, it was more of a gag than anything else. Kinda surprised him when I began winning our little matches. Grandpa thought it was funny.”
“What made him become scared of you?”
“A lot of the guys in my class were into lifting weights, so I talked him into buying me a weight bench. I started working out every day, and it really made me feel good, so Grandpa decided he'd work out with me, make it sort of an ‘us guys’ kind of thing. We were both benching about a hundred, hundred and ten pounds when we started, but a month later, I could press two twenty, and he was only up to about one forty. That was when Grandma started saying I was weird and unnatural, and he started pulling back from me. It was only a month or so later when he told me they'd have to put me back in foster care because of health problems.”
Allison nodded. “Noah, you claim to have no emotions, and everything in your psych profile says that's completely true. Did you feel anything during that time? Any rejection, any sadness?”
Noah shook his head. “No. Like everything else in my life, I looked at it logically. It was obvious to me that he was lying about health problems, because he hadn't even been to see a doctor. Since he was lying, that meant he had other reasons for not wanting me living there anymore, and those reasons could only lead to them feeling resentment if they had to keep putting up with me. I told him it was okay, and that I would pray for him to get better, and I think that took away some of his guilt. For me, it just meant a change of scenery.”
“Just another transition,” Allison said. “You were sent to a foster home in the city where your grandparents lived, at first, but then you got transferred back to the one they took you out of.
How did that happen?”
“You know, Ms. Peterson, all of this is in the memoir you had me write for you,” Noah said. “It was lying on my table, did you get it?”
“We got it,” Allison said with a grin. “I've even skimmed through it, but I haven't had the chance to read it in detail. That's why I'm asking you questions directly. How did you get yourself back to your original foster home?”
Noah grinned. “If I was going to be in the foster system, I wanted to be back around my friends, and back with the caseworker that I knew and trusted. The one they gave me that time was a man, and he had a mean streak as wide as he was. Seemed like no matter what his kids asked of him, he would do everything he could to make sure they didn't get what they wanted. One of the first things he did was take away my weight bench; he said I couldn't have it because it would make other kids jealous.” He shrugged. “I cut school one day, and called Ms. Gamble, my original caseworker. I said this guy was making me uncomfortable, with the way he looked at me. Two days later, she got an order from the court to transfer me back to Mrs. Connors' house, and back to my few real friends.”
Allison nodded approvingly. “Good,” she said. “Deviousness can save your life, in our line of work. Among the things you'll be learning will be techniques for lying convincingly, beating a polygraph, acting and creative writing. You'll learn to use your imagination to create a character or scenario that will help you carry out a mission, and we'll develop your natural acting ability, this knack you have for making people think you're perfectly normal when you're not, so that you can become that character or act out that scenario.”
Noah shifted himself around until he found a comfortable position. “You mentioned a support team,” he said. “When do I get to meet them?”
“That depends on how well you do in training. Obviously, if it turns out we can't use you, then there won't be a need for a team. And incidentally, this isn't a pass or fail kind of course; it's more like pass or die, because if you flunk out, we simply eliminate you. Nothing personal, you understand, but we do everything we can to minimize the risk that E & E will ever be exposed.”
“Of course,” Noah said. “I was pretty sure that's how it would be, because it's just logical. Anyone you recruit who can't perform up to the standard you need would have to be eliminated. Nothing else would make sense.”
“I expected you to see it that way. Okay, so to actually answer your question, assuming you make it through your basic training, we'll introduce you to your team sometime in the next few weeks. Normally, we don't even bother to recruit people for your team until we know whether we're going to need them, but I'm feeling pretty confident about you, so I've got people in mind.”
“That also makes sense. I'm guessing you find them in the same kind of place you found me? Prisons, places like that?”
Allison nodded. “Prisons, county jails, juvenile detention centers and just about anywhere else our society uses as a dumping ground for people with some of the skills we need. For example, some of the transportation specialists we use are former car thieves, drug runners, bootleggers and such. Our intelligence specialists tend to be young and extremely bright, with a penchant for computer hacking.”
“And the muscle tends to be just that, I bet, guys who have a tendency toward violence, and just need a little direction. Am I right?”
“Of course,” she said. “If humankind were capable of being completely honest with itself, it would probably be possible to find a way to properly use every skill and talent that people naturally turn to evil purposes. One of the things that has always amazed me is how many people will work harder at doing something criminal, something that will make some fast cash but have a high risk of ruining their lives, than they will at doing something that's perfectly legitimate and can keep them happy for the rest of their days. To me, that is what I call illogical.”
“Ma'am?” the paramedic said. It was the first time he had spoken since Noah had awakened. “Driver says we'll be pulling into the compound in about fifteen minutes.”
SIX
“Thank you, Marco,” she said. “Incidentally, Marco, this is Noah. Noah, meet Marco. Marco is one of our thugs, and he's proven himself enough times that we use him in a lot of different capacities. At times, he becomes the fifth man on a team, if a little extra muscle is needed.”
Marco and Noah looked at each other. “Welcome to Neverland, Noah,” Marco said. “If you make it, maybe I'll get to back you up one day.”
Noah nodded at him. “Then let's hope I make it, so we get that chance.” He turned to Allison. “Neverland?”
“An inside joke,” she said. “Each of the teams is named after a place, person or thing from mythology or fairy tales. For example, if you make it through, you'll be heading up Team Camelot, since that's the next designation on my list.”
Noah's eyebrows went up. “Interesting,” he said, “especially in light of the fact that King Arthur is my own favorite historical character. Will that be my codename? King Arthur?”
Allison laughed, and Noah was surprised at how genuine and unpretentious it was. “No, I'm afraid not,” she said. “If a codename is used for you, it will be simply Camelot, and each of your team members would be designated as Camelot One, Camelot Two, Camelot Three, etc. We don't usually resort to such theatrics, though. In this day and age, secure communication depends more on technology than it does on subterfuge. Each of our people has a phone that is capable of ultra-secure communication, anywhere in the world, due to some awesome encryption technology. I can call one of them up, give them detailed orders and instructions on their missions without ever once having to use a code, because my phone will scramble it into meaningless and indecipherable beeps and tones, while the recipient's phone contains the algorithm that will turn it back into the sound of my voice. Oh, and by the way, it's the confirmed voiceprint of the person I'm calling that activates that algorithm, so even if someone else gets hold of the phone, they'd never hear those orders.”
Noah nodded. “Yeah, I can understand how that works. Pretty cool.” He felt the ambulance slowing down. “Seems like we're about there.”
“Yep,” Allison said. “Listen, when you go to get out of the ambulance, be careful. The drugs we used might still make you a little groggy, so don't be afraid to hang on to Marco. He'll help you get into your room. You'll find clothing and just about anything you might need already there. Needless to say, it's not possible to bring personal effects with you, since you're officially dead. We don't use a uniform, so our procurement department has just stocked you up on an assortment of clothing for right now. You'll find that we know quite a bit about you, and so your preferences should be pretty well reflected in the choices we’ve made.”
“Hey, just about anything would be better than the boxers they gave me in prison. Damn things feel like they're made of sandpaper.” He could feel the ambulance maneuvering its way along an apparently twisting path. “Good-sized place you got here?”
“Actually, it is. We've got about ten thousand acres, a little over fifteen square miles. There are various obstacle courses and training structures. We've got mockups of different kinds of rural and urban environments, military installations, terrorist enclaves and compounds, you name it. We're right on the edge of some government facilities, so we're under a no-fly zone. The only aircraft that can get into our airspace are our own and, in some areas, the same holds true for vehicles. Nothing comes in, unless it's one of ours.”
The ambulance stopped. Marco moved to open the back doors, and that's when Noah realized that it was daylight outside, early morning, apparently.
Allison reached into her pocket and withdrew a plastic card that she handed to Noah. “This is your temporary ID and debit card,” she said. “You'll use it to pay for things, here. We'll get you set up with proper ID within a day or so, and actually on the payroll.”
Noah glanced at the card, and saw that it was a simple debit card, without even a name on it. Allison went on. “
I'm going to guess that you're probably hungry. Once we get you into your room, Marco will show you how to get to the nearest restaurant.”
“Yeah, beats heck out of going to a chow hall,” Marco said with a grin. “They treat us pretty good here, and the food is awesome. You'll like it.”
Noah shrugged. “I could eat,” he said.
Allison rose and stepped down onto the ground, which Noah could see consisted of a paved parking lot, while Marco reached down to help Noah up. They got him on his feet, and Noah realized that he actually was a bit on the dizzy side. Marco stepped down first, then held on to Noah, who was also holding on to the edge of the door until he got both feet planted firmly on the ground.
Noah looked around, and realized he was standing in the parking lot of what looked like a small motel. The lot was surrounded on three sides by a U-shaped building, and he counted about thirty doors facing into the center. Several of the doors had cars parked in front of them.
“This is our temporary housing unit, where we put new people for the first few days, until we get them sorted out. It used to be a motel, and that's what everyone calls it: the motel.” Allison pointed at the door that was closest to him. “That one's yours,” she said. She handed him a key on a plastic fob. It was marked with the number seven, and he saw the same number on the door. “There's a TV and computer in your room, and you're connected to the internet. Don't try to make contact with anyone from your past; that's a guaranteed failure and we've already discussed what that means. Get yourself settled in, and then Marco will walk you over for breakfast. Your first class starts at ten this morning, so you've got a couple of hours to get breakfast, take a shower and get dressed. You'll be seeing me around, don't worry, but I'm not one of your instructors. We'll talk now and then, though.”