Eldritch Ops

by Phipps, C. T.

  “Maybe you read 1984 a little too thoroughly.”

  “Says the man who used to be obsessed with William Gibson.”

  “I turned to Tolkien when I hit twenty.”

  “If Dracula is going to attack Camp Zero, now might be a chance to strike at the resources. Your team, whomever it’s composed of, can move in and eliminate the records of the facility. We’ll then blame it on Dracula. I can provide you where we back up the research, the location of the physical records, and those individuals who’ll have to die.”

  “You ruthless bastard.”

  “I’m sorry, did you think stopping a world-changing technological development was going to involve yarn and kittens? When one is faced with an implacable enemy, one needs to use force. Even if it means killing people on your side.”

  I stood there silent, then said, “All right.”

  Nathan seemed surprised. “I’m pleased you’ve made the mature decision.”

  “There’s nothing mature about any of this. I’m just so sick of this mission, I want it done.”

  “Including the demon in your head?”

  “I’ll deal with it,” I said calmly.

  Nathan gave a half smile. “Then here’s a word of advice. Demons desire to be dominated. They require a master and the more powerful, the better. She will betray you for Dracula if he is stronger, and the reverse is also true.”

  Bloody Mary hissed in my mind.

  “Thanks for the tip.” I removed my ring, which had inexplicably returned to my hand, and put it once more into my pocket. “You’re holding something back. You mentioned the person who cracked the so-called code of mesmerism twice in pretty oblique terms. Who is it?”

  “She is a complication. One I leave you to decide how to solve.”

  “Still pretty damn evasive here. Who is it?” I was expecting it was one of his mistresses.

  “It’s your sister. She’s the overseer of Protocol Zero’s research.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  It was times like this I hated how interwoven the families of the House had become. “My sister? Are you fucking kidding me?”

  Nathan picked up his walking stick off the ground and held it under his left shoulder. “I don’t find much humor in the matter, so no.”

  “Which sister? Hoshi?” I didn’t believe for a second it was Penny.

  “Rebecca,” Nathan said.

  I tried to reconcile that in my head. “The girl I used to take trick-or-treating around the mansion because it’s the size of a small city?”

  “Yes, my third eldest daughter. Your sister by another mother. The one I smuggled in two more pandas for the sixth birthday.”

  I still couldn’t believe it. My next words were just absent-minded mutterings. “You need to stop doing that. I’m pretty sure that’s bad for them as a species.”

  “You loved our panda collection growing up.”

  “That was before I knew what endangered meant,” I said, taking a deep breath. “What the hell is Rebecca doing overseeing a gulag?”

  “I believe that’s my fault. I never recognized Rebecca’s ambition or drive to prove herself worthy of the family name. With so many siblings and a father on the Committee, she was compelled to try and stand out as a scientist. She was working on healing shattered minds suffering from PTSD and magic-inspired psychosis when she changed.”

  “Changed?”

  Nathan nodded. “At some point she did a study of how blood slaves were controlled by their masters to ignore even the most traumatizing atrocities. Getting a team to capture some of their kind, she dissected their brains and figured out how mesmerism worked. Rebecca submitted her results to the Chairman himself and got herself a big fat promotion.”

  “Dissected?” I asked for clarification. Most vampires turned to ash when they died, at least if they were a few years old.

  “Vivisection would be a better term, but vampires aren’t alive,” Nathan said. “It’s easy to think of the moral sacrifices we make as hard, but for others, they are eager and ready to do so. Rebecca believed breaking the Hippocratic Oath and other medical ethics was a way of demonstrating she was ready to serve at a higher level of the House’s ranks.”

  “And she was right,” I said, looking out onto the ocean waves behind us.

  “I suppose she was.”

  I paused for a second. “I’m not going to kill my sister.”

  “I never wanted you to. Accursed is the kinslayer, for he is one of the few damned to hell without hope of forgiveness.”

  “Is that why you refuse to sign off on Stephen’s execution?”

  “Rebecca isn’t Stephen. She’s a scientist, first and foremost. What she’s doing is evil, but perhaps she can be dissuaded from it.”

  “Have you tried?”

  “Yes, and I failed. She thinks this is her chance to make a mark on history. Her chance at immortality. You’re much more personable than I am, though. Also, I suspect you’re capable of finding alternative means of removing the knowledge from her mind.”

  “Alternative?”

  “Figure something out. Just don’t tell me the details.”

  “How courageous of you.”

  Nathan looked contemptuously at me. “You have no idea the sacrifices I’ve made for you and the rest of the world. We need to move carefully if we want to stop the Red Room from being able to turn freedom into a joke. Other people have tried to stop our organization in the past, but unless you want to end up like the Kennedy brothers, we need to move swiftly as well as intelligently.”

  “You told me the Kennedy assassinations weren’t the Red Room’s doing,” I said, realizing I was living in a world where it was entirely possible they had been killed by my allies. That was the problem of being a paranoid lunatic when you worked for an all-powerful conspiracy—everything insane seemed suddenly reasonable.

  “No, they were both killed by lone gunmen. But my point still stands,” Nathan said, teasing me with conspiracy theory like the Professor did. “You need to eliminate Camp Zero’s backup drives at the main server by injecting a worm of some kind. I suggest uploading Red Room’s many off-site virus programs. Dracula’s attack will kill most of the scientists, but you need to make sure that the research in Rebecca’s head is destroyed. There’s a physical set of files in the lower levels. Those also must be destroyed. The entire building is monitored, so you’ll have to disable the security camera systems lest they discover your involvement. I can provide the spells to prevent divination from determining your complicity. Oh, and you need to time this with Dracula’s attack, so you may have to be there for a while.”

  “Is that all?” I asked.

  “You’ve done far more complicated missions.”

  He was right. I needed to get over the feeling I was betraying my cause, even if I was. “All right. I’ll communicate with my . . . group . . . and convey the details.”

  “The less I know, the better.”

  “I think we’re a little past the point of plausible deniability.”

  “Very well. Contact your people. I’ll give you a lift.”

  “A lift?” I asked.

  “You’re a member of the Committee. There’s nothing preventing you from visiting one of our black sites. You might even gain the respect of other high-ranking officials for figuring out we were lying to you this entire time. Although they probably hoped you’d figure it out sooner.”

  “Everything is a criticism with you.”

  “Says the man who has all but accused me of child murder and worse.”

  “Give me ten minutes, then we’ll head to Camp Zero.”

  My father nodded.

  Ten minutes later, I’d made all the necessary arrangements. Shannon and I communicated with text that she said Penny had arrived. They were short, businesslike texts, unworthy of repetition. If either of us died, they were poor last words to speak to one another, but I couldn’t bring myself to say anything meaningful. There was just too much going on and I couldn’t sort
it out in my head. Stepping into my father’s helicopter, Nancy took us off the ground.

  My father and I were left alone in the leather seats of the cabin as the transport traveled across the ocean. The two of us sat across from one another, silent, staring at one another for a long time. The trip convinced me of a fact I didn’t want to face: that I was on the same path Nathan had walked before my birth. He’d spent his entire life trying to do good using the House’s resources just to get sucked deeper into the lies, murder, and manipulation.

  The Hades-class choppers were a prime example of how much the House was hurting the world. This vehicle could probably travel a thousand miles on a test tube of gasoline, yet there were wars being fought over oil. Some of them at the instigation of the House. I believed the ends justified the means, but how many times could I use that excuse before it became a self-serving delusion?

  Was I past that point already?

  “Nathan . . . Dad, what would happen if the Truth came out?” I felt a kinship to the old man I hadn’t felt in years.

  Nathan didn’t respond for a minute, knowing what I was thinking. “Don’t go down this road, Derek.”

  “It’s my road to walk.”

  “Your mother left me because she thought differently.”

  “You never said why she left.” I stared at him. “I assumed it was . . . dragon stuff.”

  “Dragon stuff?” My father raised an eyebrow.

  “I was six when I started wondering about it. I stopped caring around puberty.”

  I’d never known Song Hawthorne except the descriptions given by my uncle and father. She’d left when I was a toddler, long before any impression could be made. I had photos, recordings, and even interviews from the Red Room’s World War 2 records, but nothing that told me anything substantial. Penny had gone to look for her when I was just a junior agent and didn’t return for a year.

  I never asked her what she found, just knew Penny met with my mother. Whatever she’d found had given her peace regarding their relationship, but I wanted no part of Song’s excuses. It had been the origin of one of my few fights with Penny, my twin not understanding why I didn’t want to hear all about it. I’d done my best to force my mother from my mind ever since. I didn’t want to care who Song was because she didn’t care enough about me to stay.

  My father got a thoughtful look on his face before leaning on his walking stick as he sat down. “Your mother was one of the greatest warriors who ever lived. For thousands of years, she fought against everyone from the Mongols to the Imperialists. When we fell in love, she saw the best in me and that I could change the world as it entered the next magical age.”

  I didn’t care what he had to say about her, but he clearly needed to talk about it. “What happened?”

  “She saw I would have a choice to change the world. To define whether it would be an age of light or continue as it was—ruled by the House, ruled by secrets, ruled by lies. I had a choice to work with her to bring down the Committee and reveal the Truth or join it and make sure the world stayed the same. I chose the latter.”

  That put a new spin on her actions. I thought of Ashley before dismissing the comparison. “Why did you?”

  My father stared at the floor, his shoulders slumping and his eyes deadened. “When my first family was killed by a wereshark, I grew to hate shapechangers with a passion you wouldn’t believe. I wanted to make the supernatural world pay for their deaths, and the Committee gave me the weapons to do so. If not for your mother and Talbot, I would have killed hundreds of the Pact. Thousands if I could. Talbot and Song reminded me the supernatural species were just people like any other.”

  “I know something about revenge on an entire race.”

  My father looked at me, surprised. “Yes, I suppose you do. In time, my anger subsided and I realized the Committee was less a shield and more a straightjacket for society. I should have realized it long before, but the lies we tell ourselves are comforting ones.”

  “You haven’t answered my question.”

  “You and Penelope changed everything. For both myself and your mother. For Song, who is one of the last spirit dragons alive, your birth was a herald to better things. For me, you were a sign I had something to lose again. Spartacus and his cohorts led seventy thousand slaves in an uprising that had morality, right, and justice on its side. It was a war that ended with them slaughtered and all six thousand captives crucified. The system can’t be beaten. You can only do a little steering.”

  “How much steering have you been able to do?” I asked.

  Nathan looked deep into my eyes. “Very little.”

  “But you think it’s better than the alternative.”

  “The world would be different, which requires change,” My father said. “Change can sometimes occur peacefully, but more often, it is a destructive process. The arrival of Cortez, the World Wars, the destruction of our Iroquois ancestors by the English who became our ancestors, and the Norse Ragnarok all changed the world. The revelation of the Truth would dwarf all of these and kill millions.”

  “It might save billions of lives in the long run.”

  “Such is the kind of justification for those who would make decisions for the world. We would not be able to fool humanity into thinking it’s alone in the universe if not for their desire to believe it. You might want to open the world up to the Truth, help them escape Plato’s cave, but in the end, they’ll stone you as a madman.”

  I was surprised to discover I didn’t believe that anymore. Somehow, somewhere, I’d lost my faith in the House and the belief that it was better to keep the Truth. I didn’t care if the world would change because of what was found out.

  The world wasn’t what it could be.

  The question was, what did I do about it now? I was in the same position I was when Ashley departed from the House. There was no place on Earth I could hide, and fighting was another form of suicide. Yet I didn’t want to continue to live like this. Joining the Committee was a mistake. In the words of Orwell, “The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”

  I didn’t want to be a pig.

  I was a man.

  My father surprised me by reading my expression. “Choose your path, Derek. However, don’t forget the people who will be affected by your choices.”

  The helicopter started to descend and I caught a glimpse of the island below. It was a tiny thing, barely more than a couple of miles, but beautiful. In its heart, I saw a large chemical plant, or at least that’s what it looked like from above.

  There were massive ball-shaped chambers, smokestacks, and an electronic tram around the place like the kind in Disney World. No smoke came from the smoke stacks, though, and I saw dozens of armed guards moving around the place. There were probably hundreds total.

  “Nice disguise,” I said, looking out the window. “A prison shaped like a factory. I should have realized from the plans.”

  “The panopticon design exists in all of those globes. Prisoners watching prisoners in a circle that allows no privacy,” my father said, looking with me. “I don’t know how many humans have been brought to this place over the years. Not nearly as many as the supernaturals. Most used to have merciful death awaiting them. Now, they aren’t so lucky.”

  “How has it been kept a secret so long?”

  “When no one asks questions, no one gets answers.”

  The helicopter touched ground on a helicopter pad in the middle of a square series of pipes that covered everything around us and led to a pair of metal doors surrounded by reinforced concrete. Once on the ground, I saw the pipes disguised unmanned gunnery emplacements that followed the helicopter via motion detection sensors.

  “Yeah, that’s not foreboding,” I said, staring at the machine guns.

  “I can assure you, you’re entered into the face recognition software as a person they’re not to shoot automatically.”

&
nbsp; “Which is so comforting.”

  “Machines only do what you tell them to do, not what they or you want. I find them singularly refreshing by comparison to people, who are evil and weak.”

  “And you wonder why I lost the faith.”

  “God forgives all but kinslaying, apostasy, and despair. This world is a form of hell, which is why bad things happen to good people, but we escape it upon death. Until then, the only thing you can do is mitigate the damage.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “That’s what worries me,” Nathan said, opening the door of the helicopter for me to step out. “I’ve already contacted Rebecca telepathically and told her of your coming. She’ll give you a tour of the facility. You can plan your next move from there. I’ll make my own arrangements on the side.”

  “Are you sure you trust me with this?” I said, looking at the pilot’s chair and wondering if we could trust my father’s mistress. Obviously, Nathan Hawthorne trusted Nancy to freely talk treason in her presence.

  Unless he had a spell guarding our conversation, which he probably did. Shaking my head, I stepped out and started walking to the concrete doors, which opened as I approached.

  “I don’t trust you at all, my son. You do whatever you think is right, regardless of who it hurts. It’s why I’ve always been proud. Do you have a gun?”

  “Is this the best place to ask?” I asked. “This is heavily monitored.”

  “And we’re both members of the Committee. Answer the question,” Nathan said.

  I lifted my empty hands into the air. “Been relying on magic, fists, and swordplay for the past few days.”

  “This is not one of your video games.” Nathan rolled his eyes. He unbuttoned his jacket and revealed a holster inside. Unstrapping it, he handed it over to me. “Take mine.”

  I took out the gun to look at it. It was a long RC-82, capable of three-burst round shots in an instant as well as using all manner of specialized ammunition. The thing was much heavier than my Pantheon .50 and wouldn’t absorb the recoil the same way. Still, I was glad to have it.