Variant Exchange

by Fox J Wilde

  “Patrick...” she moaned, as the goosebumps formed. It wasn’t a good moan, but she knew he wouldn’t know the difference, or even care if he did.

  “I love your goosebumps,” he said, as his hands moved lower and lower. “They’re fantastic.”

  “I’m…what is the complication?” she tried to distract him. Anything to hold it off for just a few more moments.

  “You have made some unfortunate friends in some even more unfortunate places.” he said, as his hands finally found an area she really didn’t want him to. “I know you’ve been working with the Americans.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she shuddered, more from the touch than from the accusation. Hopefully he would understand that.

  “Go ahead...” Patrick said as he nibbled on her shoulder. “Keep lying. I enjoy it…it’s like foreplay to me.”

  “Patrick…please.” she said, as a very unfortunate wetness began to gather somewhere she really didn’t want it to. Oh, this felt so sick and wrong.

  “I know you’ve been working with the Americans, and I know who of them you are with.” he taunted, as he rubbed her harder. “More importantly, I know who you have been fucking.”

  “I don’t fuck anyone.” she said half-impudently as bile welled up, “I don’t want to.”

  “Oh that’s a lie, my dear,” he said, as the rubbing intensified, becoming forceful and rough. It was beginning to hurt.

  “That hurts, Patrick. Please...” she said as gently as possible. Yet he ignored her as he always did. Soon, she began to entertain thoughts no woman should ever have to. Maybe if she tried to give him what he wanted willingly, he wouldn’t hurt her the way he was beginning to. It wasn’t right, but it was better than it hurting. Wasn’t it?

  “I know about Matt,” Patrick seethed as he bit her shoulder hard. “I know how much he likes you, too.”

  “He knows about Matt?!” the hairs stood up on the back of her neck, “No…this…that can’t happen. He can’t know about him.” She knew the full extent of the situation now, and how very complicated things had become. The very last thing that Vivika needed was to get caught up between the worlds of the man who loved her and the man who didn’t love her at all. Not ever, certainly…but especially not now. She knew Patrick well enough to know that he would use this. He would use it to make things complicated for Matt, and then he would use it to make things even more complicated for her.

  “Matt sends his regards, of course,” Patrick laughed as he roughly pushed against her. “He made me promise to take care of you. So, I’m going to honor him and take care of you.”

  “Patrick…Patrick wait!” she gasped, trying to stall what she was beginning to see as inevitable. As the front of her pants came unbuttoned and the zipper ripped open forcefully, she knew it was coming soon. Yet her heart raced in refusal of it.

  “No.”

  His fingers grabbed the front of her panties, and for a moment she stopped to consider it. But when she felt his fingers brush against her skin, lower than she expected, a surge of adrenaline kicked in. Her body was finally on her side and demanded that she fight her way out of this dire situation no matter the cost. With her nerves screaming at her with anticipation of what failure would feel like, she began to slap at him. She tried to slap at his face and wriggle free at first. Then, when she realized this wasn’t working, she tried to take a mental breath and reason through her response.

  “Kick him between the legs, you idiot!” she yelled inside her head. “Elbow him in the face! Kick him right in the side of the kneecap and run as fast as you can! You’ve done it in your mind a thousand times—now is the time to use it! Kick his ass!” But as his iron grip tightened around her body, fingers digging into some very sensitive places, she began flailing wildly. Then, she flailed wilder still—she was losing all control of her faculties and she knew it. His grip only tightened, and his laughter only became more triumphant. He was enjoying this, and he wanted her to know it.

  “He’s stronger than me.” she thought as the tears began to flow. “He can do whatever he wants to me, and there isn’t a fucking thing I can do about that.”

  The blow to the side of her face came so suddenly that it didn’t even hurt. A flash of red and a popping sound that was hard to describe was the only real way she knew that it had happened. It felt like she was upside-down under water, still trying to reason why air wouldn’t enter her lungs the way that it normally did. Yet, she still paused to contemplate this strange sensation, attempting to reason through what the proper response was. She was still fighting of course…but only somewhat.

  Then, after a few moments of confusing numbness, it began to hurt. As she started to wince at the sudden headache and equally sudden reality, another blow caught her in the eye. This time, the flash of red only went away in half of her vision, and the headache became intolerable. Finally, she stopped fighting and sank down to her knees.

  “I’m going to take care of you, Vivika.” she heard his voice say through the dizziness as she felt her legs open, “I’m going to take such good care of you.”

  ‘Click, click, click, click, click’...

  The camera shutter opened and shut repeatedly. It made a barely audible sound as the scene with Vivika and Patrick unfolded before the wart-covered face of Open-Wide. Truth be told, he couldn’t see precisely what the camera was taking pictures of. Mirrors in cameras made an awful amount of noise when they went up and down and he was reduced to looking through a bland pinhole, much like sights on a gun. Of course, he didn’t need to know exactly what the camera saw. The camera only had monochromatic capabilities, which gave it an especially good resolution—a useful thing at night—and the development of the photos could account for a wide variety of exposure issues.

  But at this point, the photos were merely ‘window dressing’, as his word would be more than sufficient. Open-Wide’s case officer already suspected that this dimwit had been less than altruistic in his asset handling. His case officer really only needed the word of a trusted agent to confirm his suspicions. Then, hopefully Patrick would be removed from the team and Open-Wide would be one step closer to accomplishing his goal: being rid of all the damn drama.

  Needed or not, however, the pictures would certainly embarrass Patrick. That alone made the effort worth it.

  Patrick really should have known better. Sure, he was young, and impetuous, and stupid, and all sorts of other negative words that Open-Wide could think up if he really felt lent to it; but he should’ve really understood the difference between business and pleasure by now. Open-Wide understood, especially with the long weeks he spent away from his wife and children. But regardless of the ease with which a scared asset’s nether regions presented themselves, sex never ended well for anyone in this profession—especially for twerps like Patrick. No, he had a knack for being where he ought not to be, and for making the dumbest possible decision while there.

  Their Case officer hadn’t really put him to this task, truth be told. It was more of an unofficial suggestion. ...perhaps more accurately, Open-Wide took certain duties to heart, and his case officer was responsible enough to see the worth in them. This was counter-intelligence after all.

  Open-Wide had made his mistakes, same as everyone. Hell, maybe even his case officer before him might have made a mistake or two. But that would have been years upon years ago, and he would have never done something as stupid as this. Perhaps this would finally be the nail in Patrick’s coffin. Their case officer had a soft spot for youth, and wasn’t much for brutality. He always thought too much about his ‘grand-kids’ whenever he had to do something disgusting, and had long since lost the taste for things that had to be done.

  But this…indiscretion…of Patrick’s wasn’t something that had to be done…and this Patrick’s case officer would have to deal with. Their case officer may have been the only one in the unit with a distaste for black
mail and the occasional torture; but even Open-Wide had a distaste for rape. And this—the scene imprinting itself onto the minute length of photo-film as clearly as it would Open-Wide’s mind—was rape of the highest (or lowest) order. This asshole was about to get what was coming to him. Then Open-Wide need only ruin the Dragon Lady and he would finally have his beloved HVA back in working order.

  Vivika rocked back and forth, back and forth. She was too shaken to stand up right this moment, let alone walk away. Her entire skin felt the way a limb does when it’s been asleep for a long time. If she moved any more than she did with the rocking, the pins and needles became too much to bear. The achy, burning feeling of something torn seemed to agree with that assessment as well. She was soaked through with the adrenal misery that only an eviscerated nervous-system could excrete, and her shattered nerves screamed warnings over and over, as if she was still in the throes of the last few minutes. She couldn’t sit still, certainly, but she also couldn’t stand. Thus, she allowed herself a compromise: she would just rock in place, furiously rubbing her arms and screaming inside of her head.

  Logically, she knew that it was over. Yet no matter how many times she tried to remind herself of that, it didn’t feel the same. No—before she had simply been penetrated by a person. It was a single-minded act, with a very simple conclusion at her expense. After he finished, it was finished. Over—poof!

  Yet now, something else began to penetrate her. Now something nearly as bad began: the complete and utter confusion of who, what, and where she was now.

  “Everything is different!” her brain screamed at her, “You didn’t fight hard enough and now everything is different! Everything you were…everything you knew…all the ways you went about living your simple little life…it’s all different. Welcome to the new reality of a world you never knew before—that you now know even less about!”

  Was it her fault it had happened? Surely it was…somehow, in some way, she could have fought harder. Did she really even fight at all? No, she had simply lost her cool, flailing about without a single tactical thought in her head. She had simply given in to his madness like a fool and a weakling.

  If only she had just listened to him, she wouldn’t be here! Hell, if only she had just never raised the attentions of him in the first place! If only, if only…the tantalizing premise of long-gone possibilities stung just as bad as the thought of the future. She could have done any number of things differently, but she hadn’t. Somehow, against all odds, she had made every possible bad decision that she had needed to in order to end up where she was right now. Now, no matter how fair or unfair, deserved or undeserved, wanted or unwanted, the reality was ironclad: she was now a girl in a dingy alleyway kneeling in equal parts dirt and blood, staring at a dumpster—a dumpster that may as well have been filled with her hopes and dreams.

  Awareness began to dawn like radioactive fallout. With that newfound awareness, the world began spinning—slowly at first, then faster and faster. Questions mounted like a dizzying sick, both in the pit of her stomach and a stomach-sized pit in her throat. Her heart pounded erratically and sweat began dripping out of her pores to signify that the contents of her stomach were no longer content where they were. She fought it at first, before realizing that the time for fighting had long since passed. Leave it to her own body to amplify her misery.

  “Get it over with.” she consoled herself as best she could, “Just throw up all over the place. Fuck it.”

  As the rivulets of hot, soggy curds spewed out, coming to rest on the ground in front of her, she realized that it actually felt better to just let it all happen. It wasn’t like things were going to get much worse, and it felt good to just give in to however her body felt like dealing with things. After a few minutes of unearthing the contents of her guts, however, she rested her forehead against the soggy ground, spitting out tainted saliva and sweating profusely.

  “How…?”, she whimpered to herself, “How in the hell did I get here? ...how?!”

  She had tried so hard to make it all work. For months upon months upon months, she had done the very best she could with the hand she was dealt. Now here she was, broken in so many ways, in so very many places both inside and out—a product of her own damnable ambitions. But really…what had she done to warrant such abuse? She wanted adventure, sure. She wanted intrigue, of course, and a little novelty, now and again. Who the hell didn’t? But mostly, all she really wanted was to be left alone to create her own novelties. She wasn’t the smartest person in the world, as far as she knew; but she was smart. She knew how to entertain herself. Was it really so much to ask that she set her own course? She wasn’t hurting anybody.

  Oh no, that wouldn’t do, of course. She had the intense misfortune of not only being a woman—a human woman with male counterparts that had their contemptible and insatiable desires—but being a relatively attractive one as well. For some reason she couldn’t really understand, this made her property in the minds of men. She was a thing…a thing to be protected and pursued all the same. In the minds of men, she couldn’t stick up for herself, of course, and couldn’t be trusted to be intelligent enough to think things through. No…she needed a man to do all of that for her. It had been that way with every man. It had even been that way with Matt York.

  That had only been a one-time thing; something that had happened back when the Americans had first come calling with an offer she couldn’t possibly refuse: the promise of adventure and novelty. Matt had been so protective of her, and such a good teacher. Eventually, however, he had become far too protective and jealous, the same way that all men did. After a while of that, well, then the overtures started—the pledges of romantic fealty and all that sugary nonsense that men thought up when both of their heads thought in tandem. She was reticent to turn him down, of course. He was so very, very easy to fall for, what with his boyish charms and all. And the confidence that he had, even now it was practically irresistible.

  But Matt was a man of novelty, just like everyone in this realm of secrets was. He had gotten too close…he had broken the first rule of tradecraft: ‘don’t shit where you eat.’ Vivika knew the direction this was headed, and had expressed it to him, and Matt…well, Matt was a man. Vivika, being an attractive woman, of course couldn’t be trusted to make her own choices for herself in his eyes. So, Matt had to make his own assessments about things and become very jealous and bitter. When his Boss had found out that Matt had compromised her, the only safe thing to do was to separate the two. It was one agent or the other, after all.

  So now here she was, caught on this side of the damned Wall, with whatever protection she had left all the way on the other side. He may as well have been an ocean away for all the good he could do her. Even when she had been on that side, he had all but ignored her for fear of raising the ire of his case officer. That was then, though. Now, things were different. She had suffered the evil advances of Patrick for far too long already, before this. And, for all the lying, evil bastard that Patrick was, Vivika believed him when he said that Matt was involved, and that some score somewhere was being settled.

  “No.” she thought to herself. “No, this will not do. This is all Matt’s fault that this happened. He’s going to know…I’m going to make him know what happened to me. He’s going to hear. He’s going to hear me, and Patrick, and every single fucking thing Patrick did to me. So will his case officer. So will all of the Americans—they’ll care. I’ll make them care.”

  Weakly, she reached into her purse and turned off the audio recorder. She had to make it back to the phone-booth immediately and phreak the hotline one more time. It wasn’t protocol, but she didn’t care. This changed everything. It was Matt’s job to fix this. He had fucked up everything for her, and now he was going to fix it.

  Quagmire

  It was early morning when Lena finally walked through her apartment door, stretching and yawning. She was young, and should have been far more accustom
ed to all-nighters than she was. Than again, she was also a young woman who loved the feeling of thick blankets wrapping her in a safe cocoon, and the feel of soft sheets filling in any crack and crevasse just in case. Sleep was something she treasured almost as much as she did late-night forays—and certainly, more so than she treasured…ugh…mornings.

  It didn’t matter if she was just going to bed in the morning or waking up. Mornings were mornings, and they were by far God’s worst invention ever. Instinctively, she knew that if there was a God, he wasn’t a morning person and wouldn’t save people before 8 am. So, if you died at 7:45, you went straight to hell—at least until Jesus or whoever had some coffee. Hell, even Lena’s mother hated mornings with a burning passion and refused to arise before 11, unless she had good reason to. For this reason, Lena thanked all the pantheons, real or imaginary, that her mother was still fast asleep. Lena was soooo-oo-oooo tired, and really didn’t want to play caregiver right at this very moment.

  Step by silent step, she stole through the apartment, thanking Patrick for all of her lessons. As much as she had hated the extra anti-surveillance training, every silent step she was able to masterfully pull off today was a precious blessing from the HVA itself. It ensured that her mother would remain snoring obnoxiously and fretfully murmuring in her sleep about Soviet soldiers, while bringing Lena closer and closer to her bedroom.

  As her hand touched her bedroom door, she reached down and silently turned the doorknob, breathing a sigh of relief at how uncommonly silent the thing was being. “Almost there!” Oh, she could already feel those warm blankets wrapping her up with hopefully not too much teenaged-brain fuss. “Almost there! ...so close!”

  When she opened up her door, however, everything changed.

  Vivika was there. This, in and of itself, wasn’t anything new—since their arrival back on this side of the Wall, she had spent almost every single night sharing Lena’s bed, blissfully adding cuddles and warmth to the chilly nights. But this…this was neither cuddly, nor warm, nor even human. This was…something new; and whatever it was, it was wrong. Though Lena was struggling to understand this new reality, Vivika’s black eyes told a story that wasn’t all that hard to figure out.