All the King's Men

by Alex Powell

  “They must have realized we’ve escaped by now,” Fox said, stretching extending his arm. “Does anybody feel anything?”

  That was the first thing Fox remembered about what it was like to be dusted. He’d looked at his hand and his outline had been blurry and slow-moving, as if experiencing a lag. Everything had sounded far away, like he’d been plunged underwater. His head was clear now, but they’d said he had a resistance to the dust.

  Seven shook his head and shrugged. “Nothing.”

  King shook his head as well. “I don’t remember being dusted. Should I be glad the experience was wiped from my head?”

  “I can’t imagine willingly giving up my memories,” Fox admitted. “Not even the ones that make me sad or angry. And you…you gave up all of them.”

  “It was for a good cause,” King said with a smile. “I liked them, the others in our little group. I’m glad they are still free.”

  “It’s only bad luck that I’m here at all,” Fox said. “Or, if it isn’t, I don’t know how this situation came to be, that I was in the right place at the right time.”

  “If only I had all my memories,” King said. “Then I might know how this all happened.”

  “No sign of Joanne or anyone either,” Fox said, trying to keep the worry from showing on his face.

  He’d left them all numerous messages in all the usual places, but no one had shown up yet. It had been hours. They should have come by now, if they were keeping a lookout for him and King. Had they been captured? It couldn’t be that—as far as Fox knew, the three of them were all safe in their home countries.

  It was only when he felt a hand on his arm that Fox realized he’d been pacing back and forth in increasing agitation. So much for not giving away his worry.

  “Let’s not start that again,” Seven said, and the corner of his mouth turned up, not quite a smile, but getting there.

  “I’d rather you not administer the solution in my presence,” King added. “The audio version was awkward enough.”

  Fox frowned in confusion while Seven turned crimson to the tips of his ears.

  “But you were in the next room,” Seven protested, covering his face.

  “Your walls aren’t soundproof.”

  Ah. Karl wasn’t the only one to witness what should have been a private moment. As Fox recalled, Seven had made quite a lot of noise. Now, Seven made a mortified sound of distress, and Fox wrapped an arm around him. Seven buried his face in Fox’s shoulder and clutched at the front of his jacket.

  “Why aren’t you embarrassed?” he mumbled, voice muffled.

  “Why should sexuality be embarrassing?” Fox asked. “It wouldn’t be nearly as embarrassing if people didn’t try to cover it up all the time. However, I wouldn’t subject you to a situation that you would find humiliating, so I’m sorry. I didn’t realize the walls were not as solid as I thought.”

  “That was my fault,” Seven said.

  “Even so, I am sorry,” Fox repeated.

  He ran his free hand through Seven’s hair and felt the agent relax slightly. Seven let go of his jacket in favour of looping his arms around Fox’s waist. The rigid lines of his body softened and melted into him, and Fox hummed in contentment.

  He wasn’t about to tell Seven not to be embarrassed. Fox knew Seven was still trying to sort out how he felt about intimacy—both emotional and physical. If Seven was comfortable sharing that side of himself only with Fox, then Fox wasn’t going to push him or ridicule him for not being more open. As for Fox himself, he didn’t generally associate physicality with emotional intimacy. This was all a bit new. But Fox trusted King, had trusted him for years, and didn’t mind if his friend knew he’d met someone as fascinating as Seven.

  “Is this where we’re staying?” King asked, looking around. “There are worse places, I suppose.”

  It wasn’t a bad place, it was just dull and terribly outdated. Long ago, someone had set up a chat forum of some kind. It looked like it was supposed to be the interior of a pub, but the details were blurry and sparse. There was a suggestion of a bar with stools lined up in front, but the bottles behind looked one-dimensional and pixelated. The chat windows themselves were all frozen on the last message entered, and no one had added a comment in a very long time.

  “This is where I told Joanne we would be,” Fox said. “So unless we’re forced to move, this is where we’ll stay.”

  “Do you think we’ll be forced to move?” King asked, taking a seat at the bar.

  “I can’t be certain, but I don’t think we will be pursued by any agents,” Seven said, finally raising his head from Fox’s shoulder. “Eighty-Eight and Twelve let us go. I have my hopes that perhaps the others will start resisting as well.”

  “Will all of them be so defiant?” Fox asked, frowning.

  “They’re human. No one can predict their reaction with absolute accuracy,” Seven reminded him. “You might see most of them as copies of one another or mindless beings to be programmed and reprogrammed, but they all have their motivations and fears as much as anyone does.”

  “But you’re the only one with blue eyes.”

  “We all wear goggles.”

  That was true. Fox never had discovered for sure whether Seven had been telling the truth about that, but none of the other agents had ever removed their goggles in his presence.

  “How long do we wait?” King asked, slumped over the bar.

  “What else can we do?” Fox pointed out with a tired sigh. “Does anyone feel any Dream Dust effects?”

  He received two head shakes in response, so he sat on the floor and leaned against the end of the bar, pulling down Seven with him. The texture of the wood was weird and rubbery, not programmed quite right. He settled in and wondered where Joanne was and if she was still okay.

  Nothing happened for a long time. Fox wasn’t sure how long exactly, but it was long enough that both he and Seven caught a quick nap in shifts and King got bored and started going through all the message boards.

  None of them felt hungry, so Fox had to conclude that their bodies were still being cared for. No agents came looking for them and no one had drugged them yet. Possibly most telling of all, no one had attempted to forcibly disconnect them. It was a risky business, as it made the brain chemistry unstable and the shock could cause permanent neural damage or even death. But Fox wouldn’t put it past Seven’s government to do it anyway. The government didn’t seem to care that they had escaped. What made Fox fearful was that Joanne hadn’t tried to contact them either.

  Something was happening, something so big that neither side had contacted them yet. Whatever it was, it was probably dangerous. Fox was scared for them, for Joanne and Mrs. Parks, even Simon.

  King went out to explore the dilapidated area around them, and while he was out of sight, Fox kissed Seven on the corner of his mouth. Seven turned into the kiss, and Fox held on tight to him. There was no one else to whom he could vent his fears, and Seven was facing the same danger. All of them were.

  Even the fact they had tried their hardest to overcome the obstacles before them couldn’t console Fox.

  It had been at least twenty-four hours since they’d escaped, and Seven was resting his head in Fox’s lap. Seven was somewhere in between asleep and awake and Fox ran his fingers through the agent’s hair. When King returned, he tried to pick up the bottles on the shelf, but he kept dropping them, and they would disappear through the floor and reappear back on the shelf. Fox was almost too bored to be scared.

  “Hello?”

  Fox sat up so quickly, that Seven’s head slid off his thigh and hit the floor. That sounded like Joanne, but it could be a trap. Why had she been gone for so long without contacting them?

  “Hello?” Joanne’s voice called again. “Fox? King? Are you here?”

  “Joanne?” Fox finally said.

  She appeared in the entrance, and Fox nearly cried with relief at the sight of her. He jumped to his feet and launched himself at her. He picked her
up and spun her around before putting her back on her feet. It wasn’t until he’d completed this manoeuvre that he saw the others.

  He was expecting Simon and Mrs. Parks, but behind Joanne were several people in official-looking uniforms instead of his comrades. Fox narrowed his eyes and suspiciously backed away from them.

  Joanne saw his face and immediately jumped in to explain. “Fox, these people are here to help. This is the representative of the Queen’s ambassador to Canada, Mr. Stonesmith. Also, the representative for the Governor General, investigators from the UN, and officers from the RCMP.”

  Fox looked at them all. “Why are they here?”

  “We thought we should speak to you,” said Stonesmith. “Your story is something that concerns several of us, and we need confirmation of Ms. Delacroix’s story.”

  “Story?” echoed Fox, trying to make sense of their sudden appearance.

  “Your body was being held captive by a section of the Canadian government and now that your unlawful confinement has been discovered, there have been investigations undertaken by many different sources, including the Canadian government itself. Your body is no longer under the control of those who confined you and is currently under the jurisdiction of the British representative.”

  “What about Seven? And King?” he asked, glancing over his shoulder at them, both of whom had gotten to their feet at the appearance of all the officials. “They’re being held captive as well.”

  “That’s what the UN and RCMP are here for,” said Stonesmith. “They are both Canadian citizens. However, their treatment was such that the UN is seeking intervention. We need them back in the physical world so we can question them properly. There are hundreds of former agents that need processing.”

  Fox looked at Joanne. “King’s memories.”

  “We can return them now, if that’s all right with King.”

  Everyone’s eyes turned to King, who slowly came forward. “I would like to learn how this all came about, so I suppose that would be best.”

  “I have Mrs. Park’s and Simon’s memories with me,” Joanne said. “They would let only one of us come with them.”

  “I have mine and Karl’s,” Fox said.

  Fox didn’t move. There were officials standing around him and Joanne was saying that everything was okay now, yet Fox couldn’t quite believe it. Had they actually won? Fox had been telling everyone all along that they could beat the odds, that they had to try to do something, because not trying would guarantee failure. Fox had said that, but he hadn’t really believed it. He’d just thought that trying and losing was better than letting them win without a struggle.

  They’d won, though. He hadn’t been expecting that at all.

  He’d remained still for so long, and Joanne stepped to his side and took his elbow. “Come on,” she murmured, and tugged him toward King. “I’ll go first.”

  King stood still, closing his eyes as Joanne touched their foreheads together. For a moment, nothing happened. Fox feared that, after all they’d accomplished, they’d done something wrong, and King would never get back his memories.

  Then, a bright light flared at the joining of their minds and coloured everything in the room a clear crystal blue. The intensity of the brightness forced away Fox’s gaze, and when the light finally cleared, Joanne was holding King’s shoulders to steady him.

  King blinked slowly, looking at Joanne’s face. “I still don’t know who you are,” he said, frowning. “Why not?”

  “I think it’s still here,” Fox tapped his own head.

  Fox still couldn’t get his feet to move, but King was quickly regaining his faculties. His stance changed, and he was holding his head more upright. Fox finally recognized the King they had all been missing. King’s eyes became clearer, more focused, and his mouth set in determination as he walked toward Fox.

  Fox swiped the hair back from his forehead and King leaned forward. This time, the reaction was instantaneous. It was a strange feeling, as if something had latched onto something physical inside his head and was pulling on it, syphoning it off. It didn’t hurt, but Fox imagined that his brains were being sucked out of his head.

  When King stepped back, he smiled.

  “We should leave now,” Stonesmith said from behind them, but not one of them paid attention.

  King looked at Fox and Joanne. “You’ve done it. You’ve saved us all.”

  “King, what happened?” Joanne asked. “How did all this come about?”

  “You knew about Karl,” Fox added. “Why didn’t you do something before?”

  “We should go now,” Stonesmith repeated, louder this time.

  King favoured him with a flat glare. “I am going to tell them what they want to know. If we leave now, it will be a long time before I can explain. You can’t keep me from telling the story. They have a right to know.”

  “That’s not something we wanted to tell the general public.”

  “No, I rather thought it wasn’t, which is why I’m telling them.”

  “It’s too late,” Joanne added. “We all know what happened. There will be no stopping the spread of this news, not now that we’ve told the world.”

  “I think it will be easier if I just show you,” King said.

  “We don’t have time for this.”

  “You can come, too,” King replied. “As it’s transparency we’re all aiming for, it’s only right that anyone who wants to know can also enter my domain.”

  One of the RCMP officers raised her hand. “I’ll go.”

  “Me as well,” her companion added.

  “Everyone can’t go,” Stonesmith protested. “One of us should stay behind.”

  “Whatever for?” Joanne asked, glaring at him.

  Fox grinned as Stonesmith sputtered without any answer, and Joanne fixed him with an unimpressed look. Stonesmith glanced around, but no one agreed with him.

  “If you really want someone to stay behind so badly, it should be you,” Joanne said.

  Stonesmith sputtered a second time, but soon it was agreed that everyone would go. Stonesmith was disinclined to argue with Joanne when he had no authority to make anyone else stay behind instead of himself.

  King’s domain was set up like a castle again, the same one that the MindHacks had broken into when they’d given him Dream Dust. It was as if nothing had ever happened, as if King’s memories had remained intact and the entire chain of events had ceased to exist.

  King stepped up to the round table, and he waved his hand to indicate they should all take a seat. Once everyone had settled, King began.

  “I have known Karl since the beginning of our campaign. He’s a genius, and we found each other while trying to work towards a similar goal: to bring hidden knowledge forward. We made good allies, and we found that when we worked as a team, everything came together faster and more efficiently. It was a good partnership.”

  Fox wondered how long they’d known each other. He himself had met King over three years ago, and the King/Karl duo had already been well established. If this felt like a betrayal to Fox, it must be even worse for King, who had trusted Karl and relied on their partnership.

  King continued. “Eventually, problems from IRL began to creep into our conversations, and the more we were able to fix them between us, the more it happened. That’s how it came to be known to me that Karl’s research was valuable and there were those trying to take it from him. However, this was one problem for which we were having difficulty finding a solution.”

  That sounded like more, to Fox. Not just a partnership. King’s words spoke of a friendship, one that King had valued and that Karl had thrown to the wayside. How would Fox feel if Joanne were the traitor? Even then, he hadn’t known anything about Joanne IRL. This was even more than that.

  Fox tried to think of a friend IRL that he trusted as much as King had trusted Karl and drew a complete blank. The harder he thought about this, the more Fox wondered, where were all the friends he was supposed to have by this t
ime in his life? Did his mistrust run so deep that he couldn’t think of a friend like that?

  All bridges crossed will burn.

  Fox was beginning to understand that line.

  “It all came together one day,” King said, “when several things happened simultaneously. I think it will work better if I show it to you.”

  A memory suddenly came up around them, with the top of the table forming the floor of the memory.

  Memory-King was sitting in a dingy little café across from Joanne, and she gasped as her memory-self took out a file and placed it on the table.

  “Look at this, King. I’m getting closer. I can feel it. Karl’s been helping me find ways to access the information and Simon’s been advising me on the effects of Dream Dust. This story will break soon.”

  Memory-King looked at the file, and although Memory-Joanne was excited, King frowned. “You said Karl was helping you get access?”

  “He’s so quick at code-breaking. It took him seconds to get past that multi-layered wall.”

  The memory paused and King said, “What Joanne didn’t realize was that she was looking at the research Karl was doing, and the reason he could access all of this information was because he was the one with all the passcodes. If the company was going to cheat him, he was going to give Joanne all the information she needed to bring them down.”

  The memory started up again.

  “Joanne, there is something interesting I think that you should see,” memory-King said. He produced his own file and indicated a line in the text. “Look here. This is information I’ve been gathering in my home nation. I think maybe this company and this country are working together.”

  Memory-Joanne looked over the research. “Maybe, but why haven’t they made this breakthrough yet? There’s a discrepancy in this information.”

  During the resulting silence, King added, “That is because Karl had not yet sold the patent, and so the company he was working for could not yet legally pass it on.”

  The memory faded to black, then another one came up.