Collateral Damage

by Steve Beaulieu

  “All right. Let’s go.”

  • • •

  A helicopter picked them up at LaGuardia and deposited them at the New Angels’ HQ. Arch-Angel met them on the roof. They’d kept the New Angels banner and logo, Kyle noticed. The rooms were newly painted, too, and nicer furniture replaced the pieces he remembered. Way better computers and electronics, too. “I take it times have been good. If you can afford a helicopter ride from LaGuardia, I mean,” Kyle said.

  “Your willingness to help out means a great deal to us, Crypto. And who doesn’t like a chopper ride? Come on, we’ll set you up in the library.”

  “Wait, you have a library? When did that happen?”

  “When Braintrust spent six months getting her MLS. This way.”

  Braintrust was happy to show him the archived footage. “It’s not the best quality video,” she explained as she set up the feed. “The cameraman was evidently part of the assault team that took the assassin down. The camera shakes, the picture stutters, and words crowd together. You’ll see.”

  They watched the scene intently. The team of soldiers that bracketed a building worked in near silence as they scoped out her reported position on the roof, then finally neutralized her, applied zip-ties to her hands and feet, and bundled their quarry into an armored vehicle. Once subdued, the subject moaned in obvious pain but didn’t say anything audible. That changed when another film clip came up: a team of white-coated technicians muscling her onto what looked like an operating table with tie-downs. She thrashed and screamed, bellowing apparently random noises until one finally brought a mask to her face and she passed out.

  “I have no idea what any of that could possibly mean,” Braintrust sighed.

  “That’s because you don’t speak Chinese,” Kyle said, grinning at her confused expression. “How’s Kelsey’s French?”

  She softened at that, snorting and hanging her head. “She aced the city-wide and came in the top two percent in the nationals, thank you,” she said. “I insisted that she send you a ‘thank you’ note…did she ever do that?”

  “She did. Sent me an Amazon gift card, too. Good kid.” He coughed as he looked at his transcription. “Anyway, this woman has a very strange accent. She’s not code-switching between Chinese and any other language. I didn’t hear any loan words, either. It’s definitely not Mandarin, and people tend to lose their non-primary languages when they’re under duress, so I think we can rule out mainland China as her home. There are similarities to native Yue dialects, which you rarely hear outside of middle-aged Hong Kong residents in walled New Territory towns or outlying islands populated by Tanka peoples. I’d start looking for clues there. SCRAM must have records for Hong Kong residents, right?”

  “I’d be amazed if they didn’t. What’s she actually saying?”

  “‘My mother is night. Lao’…that’s a name…‘is dead. He’s underground. The holocaust told me to cry. It’s raining on Lao under the ground.’”

  “Who is Lao?”

  “Excellent question. What’s that beautiful mind of yours tell you?”

  “It tells me you still don’t know how to make a pass at a woman. But you’re getting better.”

  “Thanks. I guess.”

  She sighed. “I’m sorry, that came out more insulting that I meant it to be. Truth is, I don’t know how to proceed. It’s a new feeling. I’m handling it with less than my usual aplomb.”

  “I’m sure. It was a real question by the way. Care to answer it?”

  She folded her arms, settled into herself. “It makes me wonder why anyone would choose to hire someone like this. She’s clearly adept at killing, but she doesn’t act like a savant. Do you think the speech pattern was an attempt to silence her? If so, then why not just cut out her tongue?”

  “I don’t think that’s what happened here.”

  “No?”

  He shook his head as she brought up data sheets on the computer. “No, disfiguration is a form of torture and control. Someone who wants to be understood will find a way to make it happen. There’s also sign language or even Morse code. I think there’s more going on here.” He leaned back in his chair, re-playing the footage over and over again. “The words are out of order. But they’re all there. Who did she kill?”

  “Highly placed individuals,” she said. “One deputy prime minister, three top-level generals, and five corporate titans.”

  “Do they have names?”

  “I expect they did. But SCRAM won’t release the information.”

  “If you can work on SCRAM opening up to us, I’ll concentrate on getting her to talk. Between us, we can figure out who, or what felt motivated to kill those particular power brokers. Sound good?”

  Her muscles tightened. “It does not.”

  “Why, what’s wrong?”

  Braintrust looked around, nodded her head, red tresses obscuring her eyes. “Arch-Angel doesn’t want to involve SCRAM. He’s pissed off that we never had the resources to break away and go independent after you left. Frankly, he’s not thrilled that we brought you in.”

  “Could have fooled me. Anyway, forget about him. This is a big deal.”

  “It is a very big deal. That’s why we need to keep it in-house.” She leaned back and frowned. “But I do have friends at the University of Hong Kong. Also at MI-6. I’ll make some calls.”

  “Close enough. I think I should meet her.”

  She relaxed into an easy smile. “That, I can do. This way.”

  • • •

  They kept her in the Tank. A soundproof glass enclosure that looked like a cross between a shipping container and an aquarium. She sat buckled into a chair with heavy four-point harness. She looked up as Kyle and Braintrust entered and immediately started yelling in the same language she’d used on camera.

  Braintrust winced. “What is it, what’s she saying?”

  ‘Tie me up, tie me down,’” he translated. “‘The bugs in your eyes will kill us all.’”

  “Lovely image there,” Braintrust murmured. “Good luck, Crypto. I’ll let you know what I find out.” She shook her head, patted him on the back and left them alone.

  Kyle wanted to whirl on her, tell her to never call him Crypto again, that he wasn’t a part of the team when they worked together every day and now that he was basically a civilian contractor, he definitely did not want to hear it. The moment passed and he stood alone with the patient. No, prisoner…she’s a prisoner.

  The prisoner’s eyes followed Braintrust from the room, then settled on Kyle. They swept from top to bottom, left to right, back again. She checked him out, analyzed his posture and body language the same way he was trying to do to her. As he approached the enclosure, he noticed that she was a lot younger than he’d originally thought. Twelve, maybe thirteen. Fourteen at most. She had a slim, precise build, with wiry arm muscles and a slender neck. Not a bodybuilder, then. Strength from hardship, though. Not a rich man’s daughter.

  “My name is Kyle,” he said. “What’s yours?”

  Her voice, reedy but loud, came from the grille below the glass. “Send the clown to Mars and kick the rabbit high!”

  He pulled the lone chair in the room close, staying about five feet from the glass. “Yeah. That’s a little long. How about I just call you Rabbit?”

  “Killjoy! Whiplash!”

  He shrugged. “Well, I have to call you something. Rabbit is a character from the only John Updike novel I managed to finish.”

  “Come! Set the night on fire!”

  “So you’re a Doors fan? Is that what you’re doing? Quoting words back to me?”

  “That’s not my name.”

  “Now we’re quoting the Ting-Tings. Great. What is your name, then?”

  She sagged a bit in her harness. “Every girl becomes my mother in the end,” she sighed.

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” Something stirred in Kyle’s brain, something that despite his flippancy, she really was trying to talk to him. But quoting song lyrics was just…not w
hat he’d been prepared for.

  Still, it was a start.

  That evening, Kyle gathered his notes and met with the rest of the New Angels. Arch-Angel smiled at him. Strongarm slapped him on the back and told him, “Good job.” Braintrust handed him a cup of coffee the way he liked it: half and half, no sugar. Even Psy-Block became solicitous, winking at him. Psy-Block never winked at anyone.

  “Progress, Crypto? Tell us what happened. Who is she, where is she—?”

  Kyle held up his hands. “We’re not there yet.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, son,” his old boss chided. “We’ve been watching the feed through the security system. You’re doing something. You understand her, at least.”

  Kyle scratched out a doodle on his notepad. “I understand the words she’s saying. And I get the idea that she understands what I’m saying. The issue is how to break through the nonsense. If it is nonsense, which I’m doubting more and more.”

  Psy-Block leaned forward. “She sounds a lot like an autistic boy I grew up with. Kid would say the phrase ‘That’s a happy man,’ when he saw any man put a hat on his head. Years later we figured out what it meant, that he was recalling a moment in his life when he heard the phrase and saw that action. The two events were completely unrelated, but in his head, they were connected.”

  Kyle took a sip of coffee and nodded. “She’s not autistic. She’s aphasic. There’s a real difference.”

  Braintrust folded her arms. “How?”

  Kyle sighed. “Spectrum disorders—including autism—are expressions of atypical neurological processing. Their focus on their environment is incredibly selective, so they process stimuli very differently from a neurotypical brain. Aphasia isn’t a cognitive dysfunction, it’s a re-wiring of the brain’s communication centers. She’s in there and she’s cognitive as hell. But she can’t hear or talk to us the way we hear and speak to each other. It’s like having a wall between us that randomizes pixels and words. All the bits are there, but she experiences them in a way that we’d experience as random bits of data. To her, the bits make sense.”

  Strongarm nodded. “Uh-huh. How do we fix it?”

  “We don’t. Not today. Not soon. Not all at once. But if you let me spend some more time with her, I think I can get through the wall.”

  Strongarm settled into his chair. “We only have three days, man.”

  “I’ve made some progress already. She can repeat back bits she’s heard before. That tells me something else. I don’t think her aphasia is natural. I think it was induced by her handlers. Some very specific type of brain damage. It keeps her functional but it prevents her from telling us anything. I’ll bet you her handlers can get through to her just fine. They’d have to in order to give her information about her targets. Clearly, some organization is supporting her. We want to find out how, we need to work with her.”

  Arch-Angel narrowed his eyes. “We? You mean you.”

  “Well, yes. I have to work with her.”

  Arch-Angel stretched and rose. “I’m shipping her out in three days. You have that long to find out who she works for and where they are. If you can’t, then the psych folks at SCRAM get their shot. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. Strongarm and I will be dealing with the Vice President’s security detail. I’m trusting you to get this done on your own, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Excellent. Good luck, Crypto.”

  • • •

  SCRAM didn’t permit torture in their guidelines on interrogation. But like in every bureaucratic organization dedicated to national security, corners were sometimes cut and rules sometimes ignored. But Arch-Angel was clear: the prisoner had to be treated properly. That meant two meals and two bathroom breaks a day. Kyle had no idea when she was supposed to sleep, because every time he visited her, the white fluorescent bulbs in the ceiling beamed down their harsh light. If there was a light switch in the Tank, he couldn’t find it.

  Her eyes snapped open as he dropped a catalog of books and another stack of audio discs down on the floor in front of her cage. She eyed him suspiciously, her gaze narrow, the gears in her head working to figure out what he was up to.

  “Listen, Rabbit,” he said, “We don’t have a lot of time. We have a few days to get to the point where you can answer some questions for me. But if not, my boss is going to drop kick you right out the door and then the real pain will begin. I won’t be able to stop it. And believe it or not, I want what’s best for you.”

  Rabbit blinked twice, then shifted her head to focus on the pile he made on the floor.

  “You want to read? I can’t let you hold the book but I can read to you. Would you like that?”

  A questioning look this time. Something between “Why are you here?” and “What are you talking about?” Gestures and body language could be powerful things, he knew, but it wasn’t enough.

  “Or,” Kyle continued, “we can go to this pile: music. I’m a fan of 80s tunes. I shouldn’t be, but…” He sat down and sorted through the pile, pulled out three discs. He showed them to her in turn. “The Doors, the Police, and the Ting-Tings. That last one isn’t 80s but you’ve heard it before. You’ve heard all these before haven’t you?”

  He leaned forward and now Rabbit shrank in her harness. “You can repeat back what you’ve heard, can’t you? You willing to work with me?”

  She trembled in her cage, finally sagging as if the air had been pumped out of a plastic dummy. “Work with me,” she said. She nodded, raised her head. “Kyle, work with me.”

  He grinned. “I will.”

  • • •

  Psy-Block and Braintrust watched the recorded feeds with him. He set up a closed-captioning system to translate what they were saying to each other. Kyle went through one disc after another. She reacted to some of the tunes better than others and a few seemed to actually pain her. Kyle ended the session and returned to the control room, beaming.

  “What was the breakthrough?” Braintrust asked.

  “This one. ‘Hello,’ by Lionel Richie. She really seemed to like that. Sang along and everything.”

  Psy-Block tapped on her console and brought up a lyric sheet. “It’s a sweet song,” she said. “At least on paper.”

  Kyle glanced at the screen, replaying the moments he’d just lived through. Rabbit seemed genuinely happy, in another world as she sang to the music. Kyle didn’t care for the selection but he knew the backstory. “The girl he’s pining after is blind. Makes you wonder how many men heard this song in the ’80s and figured it was okay to stalk disabled chicks for the next thirty years.”

  “Eww.”

  “Yeah, problem is I’m not sure where to take this. Less than two days is all I have to get through to her.”

  Braintrust snorted. “Hey, this is better than I could have done. Kudos, dude.”

  “It’s not enough,” Kyle insisted. “We can share bits and pieces but we can’t talk to each other. It’s frustrating as hell.”

  “I might be able to help with that,” Psy-Block said.

  Kyle and Braintrust shared a look. He said, “I appreciate the offer, but the last guy you ‘helped’ had his finger on a dead man switch when he stroked out. The explosion totaled a high-rise’s garage. Remember that?”

  “That was before you left. I’ve learned a lot about myself and how to control my talent since then. Brainy can tell you—”

  “Tell him what? How you made a bank robber think that he was a hungry giant and his crew were ham sandwiches?” she asked. “That’s creative as hell, but it’s not fine-tuned control. What are you suggesting?”

  Psy-Block leaned forward, hands clasped together, deep in thought. “I can bridge your mind with Rabbit’s. It’ll be like the two of you are in the same room, able to converse. It’ll be dangerous…there will be defenses in there, trust me, but it should work.”

  “If it doesn’t?”

  “Then you’re no worse off than you are now and you take s
ome aspirin for the headache.”

  “What if his nose starts bleeding?” Braintrust asked.

  “Then take acetaminophen instead.”

  Kyle pinched the bridge of his nose. “This isn’t boosting my confidence.”

  Psy-Block settled back to her normal emotionless demeanor. “Fine, play her some more music. Dance around in there for the rest of the night. You might get lucky and hit the jackpot. But remember…messing with their minds is what I do. Your choice.”

  Kyle’s eyes moved to the clock. Nearly midnight. They were running out of time. “Okay. What do we do?”

  “The Tank is shielded. We need to get her out if this is to have any chance of working.”

  “I’m liking this idea less and less,” Braintrust admitted.

  “No choice,” Kyle said. “All right. We get her out. Stick her in a closet or something. What then?”

  “Then, I do my thing. It’d be like holding your brain by its ankles while dangling it in front of her. She has to want to connect to you. If I force it, I could cause you both real brain damage. And I won’t be doing myself any favors if I seize up while you two are in there.”

  Braintrust blinked. “Does she have to be conscious?”

  “Nope. In fact, it’s easier if she’s asleep.”

  “Then, I have an idea…”

  • • •

  They waited until the deep hours of the morning, when Arch-Angel and Strongarm were out dealing with the Vice-President’s hotel detail. The VPOTUS was surrounded by Secret Service and a few agents of SCRAM but having a pair of well-known superheroes on hand was deemed sufficiently attentive to detail by the deep state, so they went. And yes. Paycheck. It meant a narrow window of opportunity for Kyle, Braintrust, and Psy-Block to obtain access to the Tank without their boss knowing about it…or interrupting them if he did discover the plan.

  Opening the Tank was easy, as was administering a short dose of Fentanyl to knock her out. She’d see nothing, hear nothing, sense nothing for the duration of their experiment. They locked her into a wheelchair equipped with a harness like the one in the heavier enclosure, then moved her to a small office. Kyle sat down next to Rabbit while Braintrust looked on, and Psy-Block went to work.