by Erik Carter
The only remaining bandages were in a small mound taped to his right shoulder. If the dressings had been removed from his upper body, then maybe…
He bent at the waist and leaned his face toward one of his restrained hands, touched his cheek.
Yes, his face was now bandage-free as well. His fingers explored. Scratchy stubble, but only a couple day’s worth. Someone had been shaving him. The skin surrounding the stubble was smooth and supple, almost rubbery.
He traced along his cheekbone, which bulged from his face. Must have lost a lot of weight for the bone to protrude so severely. It felt strange, foreign.
He reclined again, and this brought a tiny ache from his right arm. He looked. The pain had come from the patch of gauze midway up the inside of his right forearm.
Light flooded the room, and he squinted. The mustached man entered, closed the door behind him. He stopped at the foot of the bed, put his hands in the pockets of his suit pants, and gave a big smile.
“Welcome back, Mr. Rowe. I hope you’re feeling well, all things considered. Have you tried to speak?”
Jake shook his head.
“Try now.”
As Jake smacked his dry lips and prepared to speak, a pulse of discomfort came from his throat. It felt like a thicket of thorn bushes had sprouted there during his medical slumber, swelling his esophagus, the thorns slicing into him. He worked up some saliva, swallowed, and then spoke.
“Testing,” he said.
As soon as the word left his lips, he recoiled. The thorn bush sliced him up.
The mustached man’s eyebrows drew together, vicarious empathy.
“Hurts like hell,” Jake said, which was a stupid thing to do. A fresh thrashing from the thorns, pain sharp enough to water his eyes.
The other man’s mustache twisted into a little grin. “And it will continue to hurt. The medical staff tells me it’ll get somewhat better with time, but you’ll always feel it.”
Jake rolled his head back. “Great.”
A shot of pain. He grimaced. Swallowed.
Just shut up, he told himself.
The man stepped closer. “I haven’t introduced myself. You can call me Falcon. My organization saved your life. We’re the ones who run this facility.”
He pulled a hand from his pocket and gestured to their surroundings.
“And we want to offer you a second chance at life. Or, to put it more accurately, we’re offering you a second life altogether.
“I’ll cut to the chase. As you’re someone who works in bureaucracy, I’m sure you can agree that there are plenty of ways individuals elude justice, plenty of cracks to fall through. If a person knows the right people, if a person has enough money, he or she can get away with murder. Literal murder. But other horrible things as well. Often it’s the system itself that allows it. Corruption.
“And so individuals like me have set up an underground operation to right wrongs, to dole out justice to people who have escaped it. A secret group hidden in plain sight, watching it all, monitoring the government’s actions—local, state, and federal, even foreign affairs, things like CIA operations. When someone eludes the justice they so sorely deserve, we go in an administer that justice. Usually as a death sentence. We call ourselves the Watchers.”
Falcon looked at Jake now, awaiting a response.
It was a lot to consume at once, this concept of a secretive group embedded throughout American government with a mission of righteous murder, and Jake’s immediate reaction was one of loyal skepticism.
He worked up some saliva, swallowed. “Treason.”
The word hurt his throat, but not as much as the previous times he’d spoken. He’d lubricated the thorn bush more effectively.
Falcon chuckled. “Treason, you say? The first case I worked was a small-town mayor in North Carolina who tortured and killed the brother of his political opponent and had the police chief—his father-in-law—pin the murder on his opponent. One of our men broke his neck. Is that treason?
“Just last month, we uncovered a human-trafficking ring in Oklahoma, operating out of a Native American reservation, using legal loopholes regarding what is and isn’t federal ground to transport people. This had gone on for almost a decade. We ended it in one night. With two bullets. Treason?”
The man had a point. Even in Jake’s brief tenure as a law enforcement officer, he’d experienced the foggy gray areas within the law—people who should have been arrested but weren’t; corruption and injustice.
“What do you…” Jake said and stopped to swallow. “Want…” Another swallow. “From me?”
His throat crackled with pain. He needed to learn to use less syllables.
Falcon rocked on his heels and mugged broader. “We want you to be an assassin, Mr. Rowe. What we call an Asset. You’ve proven that you can kill. Four men in one night. Shit, man.”
Even with all the pain in his throat and the numb quality throughout the rest of his body, Falcon’s request made Jake’s stomach instantly roil with anxiety.
An assassin?
When he killed four of C.C.’s murderers, it was an act of passion-fueled rage. One night. And it ended with Jake himself being killed.
Since then, he’d been brought back to life—a life drifting in and out of drug-filled memories and dreams. He’d had no chance to come back to himself, to reacquire reality.
But he didn’t need to have his full wits about him to understand that he was no professional killer.
The very thought of it…
Insane.
There was a look of recognition in Falcon’s eyes, as though he could see Jake’s hesitancy, and before Jake could respond, he continued.
“There are four tiers to the Watchers’ organization. Let me show you.”
He stepped to the side of the bed, to a table, and picked up a small book. Jake recognized it. It was his PenPal notebook—yellow plastic cover, inky bloodstain on the back. He hadn’t seen it yet during any of his conscious moments in this medical room, as the table was hidden behind one of the larger pieces of medical equipment.
Falcon made an eww face at the bloodstain, carefully avoiding it as he opened the notebook with only two fingers. He took the mechanical pencil out of the spiral binding and started writing.
Jake didn’t appreciate him marking up his personal belongings. But given the situation, he decided he should remain quiet. It was good practice, anyway. He would need to stay silent as often as possible with this painful throat of his.
After a moment of writing, Falcon put the pencil back in the spiral binding, smiled at his handiwork with over-the-top pride, and handed the notebook to Jake. There was a simple diagram with words connected via lines.
It reminded Jake of the mind mapping technique C.C. had taught him.
Falcon put his hands back in his pockets. “Everyone in the Watchers, aside from the lowest tier, the Assets, has a day job. ‘Hidden in plain sight,’ remember? At the top of the pecking order, we got the Captains, the big guns. There are only a few of them, and they all work in government.
“Beneath the Captains are the Prefects, like me.” He patted his chest, smiled with more of his animated pride. “Also members of government. We supervise the Specialists and the Assets. If we do well enough, and if a slot opens up, we can eventually become a Captain.”
He stepped beside Jake, pointed at the word Specialists in his diagram.
“Next we have Specialists. The lifeblood of the Watchers and by far the greatest in numbers. Some work in government; some are in the private sector. These are the weapons-providers, the bankers who funnel our funds into secret accounts, the attorneys who find the loopholes we need, the logistics professionals who’ll provide your housing and transportation.
“But most importantly, among the Specialists are the investigators, the ones who scour through countless records and reports to find people who have escaped the justice they deserve, the people we eliminate.
“Now that brings us to the lowest ru
ng, the bottom of the barrel, the low-end of the pecking order. The Assets. You.”
Falcon grinned and tapped his finger on Assets, way on the bottom of the page.
“Notice that while both Specialists and Assets fall directly below Prefects, I’ve put Assets well below Specialists. Should you choose to accept our offer, you won’t report to the Specialists, but they’ll be your superiors. Don’t forget that.
“Assets are the ones who get their hands dirty. All of the fact-finding and resource-management of the Specialists; all of the leadership of the Prefects; all of the decision-making from the Captains … eventually it all boils down to field work carried out by assassins. We call you Assets because, I’ll be frank, you don’t have a high survival rate. You folks are tools used to get the job done. If you live, super!, but statistically speaking, the odds aren’t great.”
Wonderful, Jake thought.
“Unlike Specialists, Prefects, and Captains, who’ve all been selected for high moral character, Assets have been rescued. They’re people who became violent criminals—typically murderers like you—but did so for righteous reasons.
“When we find a person like this, we have a decision to make: Was the person fully justified? Or was their crime so violent that it skirted the line between righteous and wicked?
“If we decide the crime was fully justified—say, a woman who killed her husband after he beat their daughter to death—we hook the person up with a new identity, a new life, and set them free. We call this a Benevolent Cause, a BC. Kind of the reverse of what we normally do, in that we’re getting someone out of their punishment.
“But if the crime was particularly brutal, it’s not right to just set the person free. In this case, we do one of three things: we let the system have them, we arrange alternate justice, or we offer them a path to freedom in the form of joining us as an assassin.”
Falcon stopped then. His perpetual grin went away, and his face became as serious as Jake had yet seen it.
“You murdered four people. Over several hours. Yes, they took your girl, and of course I sympathize. Had you blasted a guy in the heat of the moment, I absolutely would have made you a Benevolent Cause, put you in witness protection, gotten you a new start somewhere else in the country.
“But you just kept on killing. And killing … and killing. And you were a cop, man! That’s why we’re offering you this opportunity. Join us as an Asset—or we’ll leave you to your fate, which, by the way, is grim. Remember what I told you the first time we met? Life in prison or the electric chair, no doubt about it.”
Jake didn’t reply.
“As an Asset, we’ll give you a new identity, just like we do for BCs,” Falcon continued. “Typically we move Assets across the country, far away from where anyone would ever recognize them. But we had a unique opportunity with you. Burton’s guys really tore the shit out of your face. Just really destroyed you. So when the plastic surgeon put you back together—that would be one of the Specialists we just talked about—he reconstructed you into a whole new man.” He chuckled. “The doc’s a big shot out in Beverly Hills. You got some world-class work done and didn’t even know it.”
He took the mirror from the top of the monitor. Paused.
“This is going to be startling. You’re a new person. You need to be prepared.”
Jake nodded.
Falcon brought the mirror closer, turned it to face him.
And Jake gasped.
Falcon was right. Nothing could prepare him for this.
He breathed rapidly. His heart instantly jackhammered. And for some reason, he crawled back in the bed, as if he could escape the reflection.
“Calm,” Falcon said. All trace of that consistent smug, coy quality of his was gone. This was a man well trained in mediation. “Deep breaths. Calm. Calm.”
Jake’s feet kicked at the mattress as he pushed away from the mirror.
This wasn’t him in the mirror. And yet, as he moved, the reflection moved with him, this face of sharp angles, bulging cheekbones, a prominent jawline, square chin. His nose was smaller, straighter. His lips were much fuller and more full of color, and overall his mouth was narrower.
“Calm,” Falcon said. “Breathe.”
Jake complied, took a deep breath.
Falcon extended the mirror toward him, offering it. He gave an encouraging nod.
Jake squeezed the shake from his fingers and took the mirror.
He turned his face, studied it. While his forehead and the area between his eyebrows were perfectly smooth with no lines to indicate a furrow, he still looked rather pouty, like this new face was going to be stuck on a permanent state of brood. Like a Calvin Klein underwear model.
His hand was still shaking, but his heartbeat had slowed.
He sighed.
Well, he did wear Calvin Klein underwear. Perhaps it was fitting.
Wait.
The mole.
He ran his fingers along the right corner of his jaw. Smooth skin interrupted only by his stubble.
At least they got rid of the damn mole.
“Ol’ Sawbones really went to town on you, didn’t he?” Falcon said, smug once more. “I think he really enjoyed himself. Probably the first time he’s ever had a clean slate like this. I mean, your face was pretty much hamburger when we found you. Doc turned you into some sort of pretty boy Adonis.”
Falcon laughed heartily, hands on his knees. After a moment of this, he straightened up and took the mirror from Jake, placed it back on top of the monitor. He returned his hands to his pockets.
“So with your new, completely unrecognizable face, we’re gonna leave you right where you are, in Pensacola. Assets are spread throughout the country, regionally, and we’ve needed someone in Florida for some time. We’ve stretched our Atlanta Asset really thin for several years. You’re gonna be our Florida man.” He laughed. “You’ve heard about that, right? The whole ‘Florida Man’ thing?”
Jake nodded.
Of course he had.
Florida was a quirky place that attracted a lot of quirky people. As such, the “Florida Man” phenomenon had arisen—a preponderance of whacky headlines, rather embarrassing to residents of the Sunshine State, that were then collected and shared nationally and internationally.
Florida Man Tackles Gator to Regain Stolen Can of Beer
Florida Man Attempts Robbery Using Green Plastic Water Gun
Florida Man Backs Trailer Into Police Headquarters
Falcon had started chuckling again. The guy sure did laugh a lot.
“You’ll cover most Florida assignments. But that doesn’t mean you’ll always be in the sand and sun. We’ll need you elsewhere, as needs demand. So you might be in Tampa for a week. Then the Keys for a month or two. Then you might find yourself in the middle of Montana for a while. Make sense?”
Jake nodded.
“And before you get any bright ideas about taking advantage of our generosity and making a run for the border or something, do know that we’re always watching you. We are the Watchers, after all. There’s a GPS dot in your arm.”
Jake looked at the small bandage on his forearm.
Ah. Mystery solved.
“Now, it’s a tradition of ours to let Assets choose their new first name,” Falcon said. “What’ll yours be?”
Jake thought.
And a name immediately came to his mind.
A word.
“Silence,” Jake said.
Falcon pursed his lips, clicked his teeth. “Silence? What the hell kind of name is that? Maybe Ryan? Sam? Gordon?”
C.C. in the ocean, to her knees, the waves tossing the bottom of her sarong, beckoning him toward her, the water, so warm.
Quiet, she’d said. Be here. With me. In this moment. Right now. This moment. Silence.
Jake swallowed.
“Silence,” he said again.
Falcon shrugged. “Silence it is.” He sighed, stroked his mustache. “You’re not gonna be a problem child for me, are you?
I put my neck out to bring you in. All right, all right. I usually throw some mundane, standard last name to go with the first name a new Asset chooses. Let’s call you…”
He trailed off and looked toward the drop tile ceiling. His mustache twisted as he thought.
“Jones. Silence Jones.”
Silence Jones.
It had a ring to it.
“You’ll be Asset 23. Or, A-23.”
C.C. would have been alarmed. Among her many esoteric interests was numerology, and a few months ago she’d told him about the 23 Enigma, a phenomenon that suggested the number twenty-three had a negative aura.
A cursed pair of digits…
That was a hell of a number to be assigned as an assassin with a short life-expectancy.
“I also have the great honor of bestowing codenames,” Falcon said. “You know, typical tough-sounding things, like sports teams or fighter pilot call signs. ‘Shark.’ ‘Maddog.’” His eyes twinkled with a thought. “And since you’re gonna call yourself Silence, your codename will be Suppressor.”
He grinned broadly.
“Silencer. Suppressor. Get it? Eh? Eh?”
Yes, yes. Another name for a gun’s silencer was a suppressor.
Amusing, but not as hilarious as Falcon seemed to think.
“Here’s our offer,” Falcon continued. “You killed four men. Join us as an Asset, or go to prison. Simple as that. The offer is provisional upon passing your training, of course, as well as successful completion of your first assignment. And, because I’m such a generous fella, I’ll sweeten the deal even more—your first assignment will be finishing what you started: we need you to eliminate Lukas Burton.
“This is your last chance to bail, no strings attached. Do you accept our offer?”
The man in the hospital bed, the man who been Jake Rowe, the man who was now in a strange, momentary limbo between identities, considered the proposal.