ã€ŠRed Mistã€‹


 Chapter One - The Scene

    Wet, was her first thought. Damp. Heavy. Wet.

    For a moment, she shut her eyes, listening silently to the pit-pat serenade of droplets from across the hallway. Then she looked around and saw them now ¡ª everything wet and slick and red.

    But most of all the floor. The floor. She reached down and peeled off her heels.

    "Ma''am, what are you doing?" the man asked behind her.

    Bodies. Broken against the walls they leaned upon. Without turning her eyes, she mumbled something something slippery. And then, casually apologizing, she extended her arm and said, "Hold these," and in an even quieter voice, almost thoughtfully, almost reflectively, before dropping her shoes in front of his chest, she said, "Please."

    She didn''t see if he caught them or not. But when he looked up, she had stepped forward and the rivulets of blood were trickling already between her bare, pink toes.

    Crouched and picking at the soggy skin, half-flayed from what appeared to have once been a forearm, she asked, "How long?" and then turned back to look at the officer when he didn''t respond.

    He shook his head; he did not know.

    ---

    It was nearly morning when she arrived home, although it was still very dark out, not unusual for this deep into the winter. Stepping through the door, greeted by the familiar voice of her apartment, she felt relaxed for the first time in days.

    "Welcome home, Katya."

    With the barest of effort, she mumbled, "Shower," her coat already dropped to the floor and stumbling as she was towards the bathroom before she had even finished uttering the command.

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    There was a hiss as steam immediately began to fill her small loft.

    She liked her water hot. In contrast to the frigid air outside, she liked it scalding. The heat made her feel clean, like it could burn her skin away and leave her raw underneath.

    Home now, her thoughts returned to the scene again. A hundred men and women, their bodies strewn throughout the building like so many pieces of waste paper. She had been over this, through and through, playing everything she had observed over and over again in her head ¡ª the bodily contortions, their arrangements, the groupings.

    No. Stop. There would be time to think on that. There was always time for that. No, right now, in the sweltering heat of the shower, where the stream of water beat and flogged against her, alone and uninterrupted, she turned her thoughts to the officers that had been with her.

    The shock on first sight of the lobby, littered less with bodies as with body parts  just one room in a building with many others ¡ª had been so surreal and disorienting that a few of the men escorting her had immediately retreated outside, their murmured apologies and broken excuses interjected by sobs and gasps. The others stood as stoically as they could, but even the best of them had to occasionally wipe away some inexplicable debris in their eye or clear the scratch in their throats, while she had plodded calmly, impassively forward.

    She thought about this, because it was always like this. She never felt any welling in her chest, or tickling in her nose. Not this time, not ever.

    The razor nicked her skin and let loose a thin red stream down her leg. She frowned impatiently and waited for the blood to run dry.

    So, why did they feel so strongly? What did they see in those bodies that she, apparently, overlooked? As it always did when she thought about this, her mind reeled back towards the facts she had gathered and the observations she had recorded: The streaks in the blood. The paw prints -- their length suggesting dizzying acceleration streaking down the floor. The claws ¡ª wolf-like, perhaps ¡ª but what kind of wolf had prints like that?

    Lost in the patter of the water around her, she felt herself losing focus. She tried to circle her thoughts back again to the officers but found that she had none for them. She raised her head and ran her hands through her long, black hair. Her eyes opened to look at herself through the misty shower doors, her slim silhouette cloudy in the mirror. She wondered if she should feel guilty for not expressing anything for the victims. But the feeling didn''t come. It never did.

 Chapter Two - Heart, Lungs, and Liver

    Returning to the office from the field was always an odd experience for Katya; the badges and smiles on entering the building, the patient queue through security, and the quiet ding of elevators coming and going. Even her desk, her monitor pulsating with expectation, her books, and the photo of her father, leaning down to allow her gangly teenage arms to wrap around his shoulders -- it was the only item of personal memorabilia she had on her desk, and it, along with all the rest, seemed to stand like the Pikevale Psychiatric Sanitarium''s illuminated sign had, so blissfully unaware of the other side.

    Presently, she heard Avanti''s voice. She blinked and turned.

    "Good morning," she said, putting her bag down.

    Avanti smiled. "How was the trip back? I''m sorry I wasn''t able to get you the earlier flight."

    Katya waved it off. "It''s no problem," she said, pulling her holo-slate out. "It gave me time to think."

    She swiped it underneath the monitor and watched as both came to life.

    "Could you take a look at this when you get a chance?" Katya stepped over to Avanti''s side of the desk and looked over her shoulder.

    Avanti nodded, and then, thoughtfully, she spun her chair around and looked at Katya''s worn and tired eyes.

    "I''m fine," Katya answered gently, "Didn''t sleep much but...." she shrugged, as if it couldn''t be helped, and then leaned in further towards the monitor. "Did you find anything else? Any other matches besides Warrentown?"

    Avanti shook her head, "Not yet. There are so many incident reports to sift through, and a lot of it is just noise. The ones from the Fringelands and the other territories are especially difficult since they don''t seem to follow any standard protocols. There¡¯s probably a ton that simply doesn¡¯t even get reported, too.¡±

    Katya pondered for a second and then reached for the projection keyboard. She began to type.

    "They still don''t fully trust us--those reports are going to be incomplete and likely inaccurate as well. We need to tap into their local nets to capture the feeds directly."

    "We¡¯re not allowed to do that though," Avanti said. ¡°Right?¡±

    Katya stopped typing and stepped back, amused at this remark from her Operator.

    Avanti understood. "I''ll add it to the list," she said, as she turned back to the half-finished query on her terminal and rapidly filled in the blanks.

    There was a gentle tremor on Katya''s wrist. "Incoming page from Director Revner," said a voice in her ear.

    "That was quick," Katya quipped.

    Somehow, she always felt less somber after seeing Avanti.

    ---

    She tapped on the door as she opened it. It was purely by habit, as she had never known the director to keep her away, even when he had others in his office. But right now there was no one else.

    Without looking up from his papers he waved her in. He was nodding.

    She noticed the header on the document he was holding -- it was one of her field reports. He leaned back into his chair and, shutting his eyes, arched his neck back towards the ceiling. Silently, he mouthed the words she remembered entering into her report: "Ten feet in length, 50 to 60 inches in height...."

    Katya waited patiently, letting her eyes drift serenely over his austere desk top, bereft of photos and keepsakes from the children the director never had and the wife he never married. Devoid, even, of his Distinguished Service Award, kept, perhaps, in a drawer somewhere, which he never talked about and never mentioned. A calendar hung listlessly on the wall behind him.

    "Ok," he finally said. He spun the folio around and nudged it towards Katya, "Walk me through this -- what are we looking at here."

    She pulled out a photograph. This would be a good starting point. She motioned for his slate and bringing it over, she waved the photo over it. A video began to play on the screen.

    "This is the main hallway," she said, voicing over the slow pan of the video. "You can see from the broken glass that they must have burst in from these windows on either side of the door. There were two of them. They were coordinated, staggering their entrance so as not to stream in one after the other."

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    The director nodded. "This is when the guard fired?"

    "We believe so. We found three shell casings but no bullet holes. Two, we think flew out the window. The third was found in the main hallway on the fourth floor."

    Katya moved the video forward.

    "How do you think it got up there?"

    She was silent for a moment. "We think the bullet may have somehow been lodged on the body of one of the assailants, and then somehow shaken off during a period of activity later on."

    "But you found no identifiers on the bullet."

    She shook her head, "No, sir. We found multiple unique blood samples on its surface, but they were all human. Also, on that note, we compared all the collected samples with the sanitarium''s records and found that the match was not complete--"

    "Obviously picked up as it rolled around in this pool here," the director made a circling motion over the screen. It took a moment for Katya to realize he was still talking about the bullet. Quietly he said, "And they didn''t suffer any cuts from the glass when they broke in, either."

    Katya nodded and let the video play forward again.

    "Jesus." She looked up to see the director shaking his head. With just the slightest trace of discomfort, he said, "It''s a slaughterhouse."

    She pushed forward, ignoring the comment. She paused the video to zoom in on the bottom-left corner, "Here, you can see one of their prints. You see the forward-facing toes, but far thinner than we would expect wolf or bear paws to be. And they end, as you can see, in claws that extend at least an inch forward. The evidence suggests they''re retractable. We believe this print is of a front-leg. The prints from their back legs are about fifty-percent larger and tend to be wider."

    She panned the video, "From the bite marks, it seems that their jaw structure is relatively wide, rather than forward-protruding like a canine''s. The flesh looks ground here," she said, zooming in on a detail, "--like it was gnawed at. And as you can see from the total separation of the L1 and L2 vertebrae in the victim''s spinal column, we can assume specialized musculature in the assailants'' jaws and necks."

    With a grimace, the director asked, "This is where they fed?"

    Katya played the video again, "Yes. By this time they had reached the top floor and had completely neutralized all occupants in the building, so I imagine they felt it was safe to eat. As an aside, sir, I feel I should mention an observation about their feeding pattern that I found particularly strange."

    "Yes?"

    "The assailants clearly demonstrated a preference for the heart, lungs, and liver, along with muscle meat and fatty tissue. We found streaks on the floors at various levels that suggest that they brought certain victims up to the fourth floor with them, but what was strange was that a few of them--" she paused for a second to find the right words, "--their skulls, uh, were smashed in and the brains, though uneaten, looked to be deliberately--" she hesitated again, "--destroyed and scattered, sir."

    "Was this a consistent behavior?"

    "No, it seemed to be confined to the patients but other than that there were no other discernible patterns."

    Director Revner rubbed his eyes. "We don''t have any other video? No surveillance, no security footage?"

    Katya shook her head, "As mentioned in the report, there was a power disruption before the attack commenced."

    "And we have no record of anybody in the building calling out to inquire about the outage?"

    "No, sir. It was a particularly dark night so most of the victims inside might not have even noticed."

    "The security guard seemed to be a pretty alert fellow, though. You think he wouldn''t bother checking?"

    "I''m not sure, sir. The power company was only able to isolate the time of the disruption to within a thirty-minute window."

    "Fringelands," he muttered.

    As if suddenly remembering something, Katya flipped through the folio until she found another photograph, which she then swiped over the slate.

    "There was one other camera in the back. The ward has to maintain life-sustaining equipment so they did have an old back-up generator -- one of those ancient Fringeland models that run on diesel fuel."

    She unpaused the video, "Look. The door is open and you can--"

    "Wait," Revner had jumped out of his chair. "Go back. Did you see that?"

    Katya motioned the video back and stutter-stepped it forward.

    "There--" he said, "--that line; a bump, and it''s gone."

    Katya saw it too now as she followed his finger along the screen. "A third."

    Director Revner raised an eyebrow. ¡°Are there more of them than we originally thought?¡±

    Excitedly, she said, "I knew it. All the reports say they¡¯re solo hunters, or at most that they move in pairs. This proves they can move as a group.

    "Also," she remembered, "the town''s residents didn''t report hearing any sounds coming from the building, so they must have been able to somehow stay coordinated noiselessly."

    "Nobody heard the gunshots either," the director pointed out.

    Katya considered this for a moment, "True, but given the separation of the sanitarium from the rest of the town, the fact that the shots were fired from within the building, and the abruptness and conciseness of gunshots relative to a wolf''s howl--not to say that the assailants were wolves, but just as an example of pack communication--"

    "Why not wolves?" Revner interrupted. "Don''t the locals call them ''hellhounds''?"

    "I wouldn''t put too much weight on that, sir. The locals know less than we do, and we don''t know much," she said.

    "Your report seems to suggest otherwise," he grinned as he quipped back.

    A faint rush of blood spread across her cheeks.

    He looked at her and suppressed a crooked smile, nodding slowly in consideration.

    The director eased his chair away from the desk. He turned towards the window and looked at the wintry landscape outside. For a moment, they both sat completely still, in his silent, barren office, watching the snow on the outer ledge of the window pirouette with the distant rumble of a helicopter lifting off.

    "Katya," he finally said, "this is a tough job. Avanti forwarded me the images from Warrentown. It was sharp of you to make that connection so quickly. I''ll approve your request to go out there, but there''s something you might be interested in knowing before you do."

    She looked up, but his eyes were still fixed into the distance.

    "There was one survivor from Pikevale, but you won''t be able to get access to him. Officially, he doesn''t even exist." He turned to her, a grimace across his weathered face. "He''s a telepath."

 Chapter Three - The Most Righteous Decision in the World

    Katya was eager to get back into the field. Warrentown was only about a hundred miles north of Pikevale, but the residents, she had been warned, would not be nearly as friendly. Pikevale, closer to the G.C.N. border, had developed an amicable trading relationship since the war ended and was not unused to Confederacy outsiders making visits. Warrentown was different. Isolated and sequestered deep in the Appalachia, the small mountain village did not have many friends, even amongst its neighbors in the Fringelands. Prior to the start of the war -- or the Tumbleweed Conflict -- as the media now playfully preferred -- Warrentown had been amongst the most vocal and outspoken in denouncing the newly-formed Global Confederation of Nations, but once the rebellion had begun, not a single townsman had turned out to volunteer, giving Warrentown''s citizenry a reputation throughout the Fringelands as spineless inciters, and not much more. Even now, after the attack, with the entire population dead or missing overnight and the town fading ignominiously into the receding memory of history, the popular opinion was one of righteous punishment -- the fate of Warrentown a story of justice, and not pity.

    "People say it served them right, what happened here."

    Katya turned to the boy beside her. He was pretty, in a girlish way, and young -- too young for the deputy''s badge pinned to his shirt and even younger, still, for the gun he carelessly tapped on, strapped to his waist. What good would it do him, she wondered, his delicate hands barely large enough, it seemed, to wrap around the handle.

    "You don''t think so?" she asked.

    He shrugged, sheepishly, and stopped chewing for a moment.

    "I don''t know," he confessed. Quietly, almost carefully, he turned his head to spit away from her. "There''s a lot of superstitions about these parts, ma''am, and a lot of folk think this here was some sort of divine justice."

    Katya looked at him, "Why do they think that?"

    He shrugged again, took a deep breath, and shook his head. "It''s just -- you know, all the firestarters here, especially that colonel. Getting us all into the war and then disappearing the moment shots actually get fired. But the whole town -- won''t send no volunteers, no supplies. Won''t even care for our wounded. My Pa was in the war, you know, lost a lot of friends because Warrentown refused to help, so, I s''pose Warrentown''s as much to blame as any, but--" he paused.

    He was shifting his weight, squinting at the sun as it peeked through the smoky gray skyline, he said, "I guess -- I just don''t see how all these dead folk makes up for losing the war."

    Katya studiously followed his gaze. There was merit in what he said, even wisdom, perhaps. And yet, looking at this boy, this youth -- though he was probably not too far off from her own age -- she couldn''t help but see such a gulf. Not just in intellect or experience, but in worldview, perspective. His assessment was correct, yet he seemed to regret the state of affairs, as if it were something that could be changed, rather than a fact, a simple reality to be understood and then, if so fortunate as to have an opportunity arise, to be exploited.

    Because it came so obviously to her, that his guilt over this attitude towards Warrentown could be used to her advantage -- textbook, even. She would feign some connection with the town, something that she was ashamed of, something non-specific that required her to be alone, something that would allow her to break away and pursue her investigation without the prying eyes of the locals who had no idea who she really was or why she was really there.

    That was what came to her, and yet this was what came to him. For a moment, she wondered if this was "normal". At this age, should she have been this innocent too?

    She pushed the thought out of her head as she turned away, knowing he was now watching her. "There were a lot of reasons we lost the war," she said, slowly tossing her neck back and baring her face to the sky, as if to remember events lost in those wild, gray treetops above.

    Her companion solemnly nodded and then, said, "She''ll rise again. She''ll rise again."

    This was her it -- her chance to draw him out.

    Katya''s mouth moved in a whisper. She formed a word so delicately, with so much reverence and memory -- as if she dared not say it, yet felt compelled to all the same -- that no sound came out. She had turned sideways as she did this, enough so to show him that she did not want him to see, but not enough so that he did not.

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    Katya whispered because she knew the ''She'' that he referred to. ''She'' was a name that had been banished in the Confederacy; a name that had been taken up as a banner to rally those most opposed to the G.C.N.''s quest for international hegemony -- many of whom lived here, where the name once held absolute dominion. While the Confederacy had inevitably won the Conflict, figuring out how to digest and assimilate the former rebels was still, even decades on, an ongoing effort, and one it preferred to do without the signature of an old thorn being used to incite any lurking spirits or passions.

    Yes, the G.C.N.''s strategy of censorship was crude and subversive, but ultimately effective, just as it had been in other places and with other peoples. Yet, it was her job to know the names that others did not. And beyond merely knowing this name, she also knew that here, in the Fringelands -- or, as she reminded herself again, the Freelands, as they smugly bastardized it -- it was a calling card; a handshake and a wink that she calculated she could take a risk with. And now, seeing him slightly taken aback, yet also more familiar somehow, she knew her gambit had worked and he would look upon her -- despite her clean accent and her proper diction -- just as he looked upon himself, a true Homesteader, as they proudly dubbed themselves.

    "God bless--" he said, nodding reverently.

    She didn¡¯t have to complete the phrase. She¡¯d gotten him to say it. She was in.

    He leaned back against his truck by the side of the road, more relaxed now. She caught him looking at her, and he smiled, shyly.

    Carefully, he ventured a nervous question, "You mind if I ask -- ask why you''re here?"

    She returned his smile, "Thaniel, right?" She giggled as she thought she might have if she were an ordinary civilian, "I don''t know, my editor assigned me? Which, I suppose is the same reason you''re here, right?"

    A rumble came from around the bend before he could answer. Katya looked up hopefully.

    "That''s going to be him, that''ll be the sergeant," Thaniel said, nodding as the SUV rounded the corner.

    As the car pulled up, her companion walked over to meet the driver. A ragged beard rolled the window down. They conferred out of earshot.

    After a bit, the beard looked at her. It bellowed, "You Katie?"

    She nodded, but kept her distance.

    "She''s alright, she''s one of us," she heard Thaniel say, beaming warmly at her as he did.

    Grudgingly, the beard turned his attention back. They spoke for a while longer, and then Thaniel was nodding. He turned and headed toward her.

    "This what you need?" he asked, handing her an old cellular phone.

    She flipped it open and then turning back to him, nodded. "This will do," she said, putting the phone into her pocket. "Thank you!" she yelled, waving at the SUV as it began its descent back down the mountain. Nimbly and invisibly with her other hand in her pocket, she popped the back of the phone open and inserted a thin film between the battery and the case, before closing it back up again.

    Then, softly, turning to Thaniel, she said, "Thanks for calling this up for me. My editor insists on hearing me describe everything as I first encounter it, and then I was in such a rush to get up here...." she trailed off, apologetically.

    Thaniel lifted a hand kindly, "Don''t worry about it. You all set now?"

    As the SUV faded beyond the bend, she reached a hand out for his arm.

    "Thaniel, listen, I know this will sound strange, but I didn''t want to ask you until I knew I could trust you." She looked at him imploringly, "I need a little time up there -- by myself, first."

    She turned away now, cheeks reddening, "I know I told you I was a reporter -- and that''s true -- but, my editor didn''t really select me. I volunteered."

    "Why--" he said, haltingly, "--would you do that?"

    "Thaniel, I can tell you''re an honest, good person," she said, not insincerely, "I can see that. And I can also tell you''re a true Homesteader, so you must understand that there are some things up there that I just need to be alone for -- the first time I see them." She cast her eyes to her feet and added, "Thaniel, I knew some people in Warrentown," and then quickly, as if to preempt him, "but they weren''t the type you''re thinking of. They just got caught up, that''s all."

    She stopped; and then finally, she said in her most confiding and trusting voice, "You know how dangerous it is for me to admit that. But, I hadn''t spoken with them for a long time. Then this happens. And...." she trailed off again.

    Slowly, he nodded, as he began to understand. "Ms. Katie, I''m really not supposed to do this. It''s not that it isn''t safe, but, I''ve got my orders. I''m supposed to just show you -- you know, some of the bodies and...."

    He was struggling to get to a point as his mind deliberated the issue. He looked at her face, thin and graceful. He did find her attractive, but that wasn''t why he was doing this. He grimaced, it had nothing to do with that; it was just the right thing to do, he felt.

    "Ok," he said, finally. "How ''bout I just wait here in the truck. It''s not that I''m afraid to go up there or anything," he said, "but I can see you''d appreciate some space."

    "Thank you," Katya said. "Thank you, Thaniel." She grabbed his hand and shook it emotionally between both of her own. Then, she brought out the phone from her pocket, "If I need you, I can call you with this right?"

    He nodded, happily.

    "I''ll let you know if anything comes up. I won''t be long," she smiled, turning towards the upward path that led to the mouth of the town. She took a few steps, then turned back around and waved.

    He was still watching her, his chest swollen with pride, feeling as if he had made the most righteous decision in the world.

 Chapter Four - A Door on the Other Side of the Oscilloscope

    When Katya had walked past the steepest part of the slope, she took one last look behind her and seeing that she was indeed not being followed, brought the phone out to her ear.

    "Three-five-five, Red Mists," she whispered, and then recited the code that she had memorized for that hour of that day. She pulled the phone away from her ear and covered the speaker. A muffled screech came over the line as her connection was scrambled and rerouted.

    Facing the faint outline of a westerly sun, she plugged in the earpiece she had brought for the occasion and fed the phone down through her shirt so that the wire wouldn''t tangle and get in her way. She slipped the phone back into her pocket as she began to climb the dirt road. She put the bud into her ear just as she heard a voice come through the line.

    "Avanti? Operator, can you hear me?"

    With a crackle, the reply came back, "I read you, Katya. Hold on, the memory strip just finished uploading."

    Katya waited patiently as Avanti listened to the conversation she had just had. She amused herself wondering what Avanti would say.

    "Alright. SPN tunnel established. Well-done. You always make it seem so easy. The aural polygraph analysis showed no suspicion on his part."

    Katya smiled to herself. "If only everything could be so straightforward," she mused softly.

    "Hold on," Avanti said, "there''s a little bit of static on the positioning -- the signal scrambler, probably." After a moment, she said, "Ok, there we go -- looks like you are already in town."

    "Correct. In fact, I think I just walked past the welcome sign."

    "Does it say, ''Welcome to the Freelands''?"

    "<u>Freelands</u>? Does Revner know you''ve switched sides?"

    Avanti grinned, "What''s that old saying? ''When in Rome...''?"

    ---

    Katya was walking slower now. Despite the high altitude and the chilly air, Warrentown had not seen much snow. Instead, the unpaved dirt roads were left bare and the yellow-brown buildings stood stoically in the shadows of the giant deciduous forest surrounding them. Katya had made a career out of being fearless, but even she couldn''t help but feel a little bit colder as the pale wind rustled through the little, empty town.

    Occasionally, she would come across a torn body and the heavy crimson-dyed dirt around it would remind her of why she was there. In those instances, she would kneel down and find the corpses frozen in slow decay, their brokenness captured and preserved by the frost. Carefully, she took her photos: a shotgun, barrel snapped, laying across the severed torso of a man still in his long-johns; the punctured chests of a woman and a young girl, slumped together in the doorway of a cabin; the fireplace behind them, its ashes long without heat and now bedding for the single, slender finger that had rolled, improbably, onto this final, white resting place. But when she stood back up, it would be just her -- no local detectives peeking over her shoulder, no paramedics waiting on cleanup duty, no bystanders milling about with outstretched necks -- no attention at all -- just a lonely, lonely town.

    In the background, Avanti''s soft voice came through her earpiece, "The building in front of you is the sheriff''s office."

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    Katya stopped and stood for a moment. She looked at the ground around her and stated with absolute certainty, "This is where the attack started."

    "How can you tell?" Avanti asked.

    She turned to the windowless building before her. "There are no bodies here. No bodies on the street, I mean. Given the state of dress that we found most of the victims in, we know the attack clearly occurred at night and that most people were in their homes. The victims we found on the streets were ones that must have been roused from bed, awoken by the noises outside. But there is a fifty meter radius around this building within which we''ve seen no outdoor victims."

    Katya walked up to the splintered board that had once been the door and pushed it aside. She said, as she stepped through, "I think we can hypothesize that at this point during the attack, the alarm hadn''t yet been raised. How''s the video feed, Avanti?" Katya turned on her omni-device''s flashlight. "There''s very little natural light in here," she noted, inching forward into the building.

    "It''s choppy. I don''t think I''ll be able to help much with visual analysis from this side," Avanti piped through. "Temperature scan reveals no active heat sources, although ambient temperature appears to be quite a few degrees warmer than outside."

    "It is. Bodies are in an advanced state of decomposition. The air here--" Katya pulled her arm up to her nose, "there isn''t much circulation it seems." She looked around for a window but found none. There was no escape from the fetid smell of decay and rot. "These bodies look to be about a month old," she whispered. "Attack pattern similar to what we saw in Pikevale. It looks like the victims here had just a few seconds of reaction time. One or two pairs but most bodies are isolated; suggests there wasn''t much time for reaction or organization."

    Slowly, she penetrated into the long hallway, avoiding the thick, congealed pools of human putrefaction where she could. She had noted from the outside that this building was unlike any of the others she had encountered in the town. Whereas those tended to be wooden and brick, the sheriff''s office had a solid, concrete construction. And inside, the outside light died quickly. To each side she saw rooms scarred with the same splatter patterns she had seen all over the sanitarium in Pikevale. There was no need to investigate the victims with any greater degree of detail. She knew what she would find, and what she wouldn''t.

    As she continued along, a pile of debris to her right caught her attention. She would not have been able to articulate what it was that stood out about it, but she had come to trust the tingling sensation she felt in her shoulders, and pushing aside some of the fallen mortar, she noted, "There''s a staircase here," as she pointed the light down into an otherwise blackened basement.

    Avanti crackled through, "No active heat sources detected, but proceed with caution. It''s my duty to remind you that you''re unsupported out there."

    With the static in her ear as her only companion, Katya carefully stepped down into the darkness.

    "What do you see? Video is breaking up. Please maintain audio relay."

    As she stepped off the last stair and onto the hard concrete floor, she noticed the air in this damp, unventilated basement felt even denser.

    She whispered, "There are bars -- it looks like old-fashioned holding cells. I guess this building was also used as a jail. No structural damage to any of the bars or walls. Doors seem to be--" she coughed, "--sorry, the air down here is--" she bent over, her chest heaving against the thick, foul atmosphere.

    Katya felt hot. She lifted her forearm to wipe her brow and then brought it back down to cover her nose and mouth. "Victims'' bodies in the cells show signs similar to others upstairs and outside. Eviscerated offal scattered across cell floors. I can''t be confident but on first glance it seems to match the patterns we saw in Pikevale, with livers and hearts, in particular, missing. Faces are entirely liquefied and unidentifiable through cursory visual inspection.

    "It''s interesting," she said, "there are a few empty cells here that have been opened. Fecal matter in buckets suggests inmates at one point but--" she gagged, involuntarily.

    Avanti''s voice went twisting through the static, "Perhaps they were dragged elsewhere?" She leaned towards her monitor, there was still no visual feed. She kept her eyes fixed cautiously on the charts and gauges at the bottom of her screen.

    "Katya?" she said when there was no reply. "Katya?"

    As she hesitantly began to call her Agent again, a spike appeared on the oscilloscope.

    "I found something..." came the scrambled sound, "...it''s...door...open...."

 Chapter Five - Avanti

    Avanti was holding her breath. When she realized that it was beginning to hurt, her body forced her to gasp, and only then did her lungs deflate, slowly, so she could inhale again. The timer had been at exactly 00:38 when Katya''s last transmission had come through. It was now 00:51. Soon it would be fifteen minutes with no audio or visual relay, and at 00:53, she would have to press the little red button that every Operator had been trained to dread.

    ---

    Even as a child, Avanti had always imagined herself working at the Agency, although she did not know it at the time since the Agency, itself, was never named or publicly acknowledged. It wasn''t until after she had been one day, surreptitiously, recruited; after she had passed at the top of her class, a star candidate, with the best combined field and analytical score of her year -- it wasn''t until her first day, after casually arriving at the remote pickup site and getting into a car driven by a thin, polite, raven-haired girl who she thought was to be her secretary -- it wasn''t until then that she found out that the Agency wasn''t even called the Agency at all. Instead, her paperwork showed her employer to be the officially but dully named General Intelligence Service. And yet, everyone simply called it the Agency because that''s what they learned when they had been recruited, herself included, said the girl, her short boyish cut flapping and waving in the chilly morning air that blew in from the window of the car. Her name was Katya, she had said, and this would be their first assignment together.

    It had taken Avanti a while to come to grips with the fact that she wouldn''t be out in the field. At first, she wondered if she didn''t resent her partner, but quickly she realized that Katya was someone special, even by Agency standards. In due time, Avanti began to realize that the things that Katya could do -- the intensity at which she could operate and the discipline with which she was able to transition from one challenging assignment to another -- were beyond even her own prodigious abilities. And then there was the instinct. Katya hated admitting to trusting in something so seemingly irrational, yet Avanti saw the value in the decisions and leaps in judgment which she and the armada of computational power at her fingertips eventually got around to agreeing with, but were, for Katya, simply obvious and intuitive.

    Being self-aware, Avanti knew she was capable of doing the things that Katya did, but, she also recognized that she would never be able to do them consistently, on demand, and under pressure the way that her Agent did on a regular basis. It was the difference between the best human swimmer and the lowliest cetacean whale -- she might be able to swim and survive for days, or even weeks, out in the open ocean, but it would be impossible for her to ever live in it, to thrive in it.

    Still, it didn''t take long for Avanti to realize the other side of the coin either. As great an Agent as Katya was, it required an equally as great Operator to not just keep up, but to stay ahead and provide the air cover and support that she would need. And she knew that in these aspects, she was the best. In fact, in the eyes of some superiors, it was Katya''s ability to fully utilize Avanti''s tremendous breadth of talents and insights that truly made her stand out as a potential leader in this generation of Agents.

    Whatever the case, the two had not only become trusting professional partners, but in the siloed environment of the modern G.I.S., where the identities of all Agent-Operators were kept secret, even from other Agency members, they had had to become personal friends as well. This was not surprising given the intimacy of the work. It wasn''t unheard of for Operators who had -- in some way or another -- lost their Agent, to never again pick up their headsets, no matter who they were asked to pair with next. Oftentimes they would trade in for a more traditional "desk job", a less direct support role with responsibilities that did not have to so often feel so explicit or visceral, but could still make use of their uncommon mixture of creativity and analytical reasoning. The research and development group, for instance, was said to be filled with ex-Operators. In other cases, they would choose to leave the Agency entirely, even preferring the change of identity that was mandatory procedure when leaving the G.I.S., than to have to rebuild the emotional ties that came with their line of work, and then again risk the possibility of having them forcefully severed.

    This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

    For the Operator was the Agent''s sixth sense, or as they joked in the Academy, the Agent''s sixth, seventh, eighth, and so on and so forth. What the Agent experienced, the Operator experienced too, but where an Agent experienced it deeply and from within her single, individual perspective, the Operator experienced it broadly and holistically. The headset, so often made fun of for its clunky, helmet-like appearance, could only be appreciated when worn and connected. For within it, all that an Agent said or heard, felt or touched, smelled or tasted, could be translated into a stream of data that would immediately convey to the Operator the same information, only to be processed numerically and rationally as opposed to sensationally and emotionally.

    And so when Katya coughed in the basement of the sheriff''s office in Warrentown, her standard-issue omni-device -- reattached to her wrist once she had separated from her trusting police escort -- transmitted the same data to Avanti, and unconsciously, Avanti, too, felt her throat tickle and reached for a glass of water. But it had been nearly fifteen minutes now. And the last thing she had heard was that half-broken statement: "I found something...."

    Since then, there had only been static.

    Avanti had often wondered at how placid Katya was able to stay under what would generally be considered extraordinary duress. And yet for Katya, as the rhythmic silence of her neurological waves showed, it was literally effortless. As the seconds wound down, however, to the fifteen-minute mark of comms silence that would force Avanti to signal for escalation, and would pull Revner out of whatever meeting he was in to come observe and make the final call -- in that moment, Avanti couldn''t help but second-guess her earlier sangfroid, and wondered if something might have happened to her Agent.

    Suddenly, Avanti saw a spike. Everything, every panel on her monitor was abruptly alive again. Vitals were ok; heartbeat at 190 bpm though! Brain electrochemistry also inordinately active. What was going on?

    "Katya, Katya!" Avanti shouted.

    Through the line, she heard a deep sucking sound. And then a loud gasp as the bright, cold air shocked Katya''s lungs.

    "Katya, Katya are you ok?" Avanti asked, furiously checking the monitor to make sure there were no further instabilities in the signal.

    Finally out in the open again, her Agent coughed as her body violently tried to expel the sinister atmosphere that had permeated into her lungs.

    "I''m ok," she managed. "I''m here," she choked out.

    As Katya confirmed what the monitor was already telling her, Avanti''s attention turned to focus on something else entirely.

    "Katya, listen up, there''s another heat signature -- it''s large, at least eight-feet long. Thirty yards east. It''s moving away from you, south-southeast. Fifty yards now. I''ve never seen anything move this rapidly before."

    Katya was catching her breath now. She had been bent over, her hands on her knees, but now she straightened up and reoriented herself with the hazy sun poking through the western sky. She turned and began to run down the path from which she had entered into the town.

    "Avanti, where did it go? Do you still read it?"

    "No, it''s off the screen now. Your omni-device isn''t powerful enough off the grid to detect anything past sixty or seventy yards."

    As she heard Avanti''s last transmission, Katya, ever mindful about every detail, pulled her sleeve down to make sure her omni-device was covered. She knew its outline would be visible to someone looking for it, but she had no time to take it off now. She was running, now past the bodies, now past the man, his wife and their daughter, now past the welcome sign, and now over the curve of the hill, where she found the broken body of Nathaniel Whittaker slumped against the back tire of his truck.

 Chapter Six - What Lay in the Mirror

    She couldn''t remember why she had gotten into the truck. There were many reasons to, she just couldn''t remember which one in particular it was that led her to do it.

    She knew immediately that he was dead. At the Academy, she had excelled at anatomy and physiology, recognizing early on their potential uses in the field. Still, it didn''t require her expertise to see that the average human body simply didn''t bend that way, not if the spine and lower rib cage were properly intact. It had been an obvious assessment, yet she had hesitated a moment before walking up to the cabin of the truck. She had remembered him leaving the keys there.

    She hopped in and started the engine. Thaniel''s limp body slid down over the gravel road as she took off. She did not bother to look back as she accelerated down the dusty mountain path.

    It was strange to her, how long she had spent thinking about it. She had driven for a long time, until the truck was running low on gas and despite Avanti''s best directions, she had still felt lost in the great wilderness around her. Mechanically, she had told Avanti about the vault she had found, down in the concrete catacomb beneath Warrentown.

    The door had been well-hidden, and under different circumstances she might never have noticed it at all. Concealed by long passageways and blind corners, she had found it a black, smooth thing; an obsidian iron slab merged into the wall itself. She had run her hand along it and wondered at how one could have discovered it if not for that slightest crack in its seam, where the almost imperceptibly cooler air was leaking in. It was that wisp of air -- stale by any other standard, but still immeasurably fresher than the unclean atmosphere that she had then been in -- that had led her to it. With her omni-device, she had focused her light beam into an intense laser and split the door along the seam, and then, with considerable effort, had pulled it open just enough to be able to squeeze through.

    That had been her last transmission, though she had wished Avanti were there with her as she looked at the other side of the door, dented and bent by something that must have possessed immense strength and durability. As the signal linking her and her Operator faded, the internal timer of the omni-device began to count down. The echo of its periodic beeping stretched and ran along the cavernous stone walls. As she carefully ventured forward, her flashlight shining into the unending darkness, she began to notice specks of white in the ground that she tread upon. Kneeling down, she had found that they were bone fragments, and as she went deeper, she saw larger pieces -- discarded, it seemed, against the sides of the expansive tunnel. She took care to not get lost down any of the myriad side openings and split paths, but where she could, she would shine a light. Behind one corner, she had shone her flashlight straight across and found a blank wall. As she turned back, the cone of light brushed by the edge of the pit where suddenly it reflected off the bone white skulls that had been dumped there. Down in the pit, staring up at her were hundreds of pairs of hollow, black, abyssal eyes -- their empty sockets absorbing nothing, figurehead gatekeepers to the concave bone behind them.

    She had found other pits, filled with the skeletons of what appeared to be local fauna. The bones seemed canine, primarily, but she also noticed a few bear skulls, as well as the distinctive antlers of cervids that did not naturally habitate the region. With the omni-device''s timer beeping again to signal that another five minutes had passed, she had happened upon a cave that had no end. In its extensive vastness was a gurney, upon which lay an enormous wolf, seven or eight feet long--its chest and limbs split open along their length; its skin flayed and its bones bared. Its head was missing and she had noticed that its vital innards had been curiously removed. As she scanned the edges of the cavern, she found other animal parts, preserved as limbs and indistinguishable organs in formaldehyde jars, lined up along the wall.

    The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

    Realizing that her time was drawing down and that she would not find the end to this labyrinth anytime soon, she had turned to go when she heard a loud clang at the entrance to the vault. Almost simultaneously, she had felt an intense pain in her forehead, and her head pulsed as if her brain were contracting and yet ready to explode at the same time. An intense wave of nausea followed, and she had fallen to her knees. The ground was spinning underneath her, rotating clockwise beneath her left hand but then counterclockwise beneath her right. Her wrists felt limp and soft and as the blood rushed away from her face her eyes rolled into the back of her head and everything, for a moment, went black.

    When she had woken, her omni-device had been beeping again. As if suddenly rebooted, she wiped the vomit from her mouth and immediately crawled to her knees. There was no time. Against all her body''s urgings, she willed herself up and began to stagger towards the entrance. The tunnel pitched and swayed around her, but as she picked up speed, her dizziness began to subside as her body began to adjust to the equilibrium set by her forward momentum.

    She did not have to see the vault door, bent back and partially torn off its massive, bolted hinges to know what she had already somehow guessed at -- that something had been there. Rushing through the fetid atmosphere, she burst upstairs just as a massive shadow disappeared out the front door of the building. Following and stumbling out into the clean, wintry air, she began to cough as Avanti reestablished contact.

    She had told her all of this -- Katya to Avanti -- as she had driven deep into the woods far beyond any place the G.C.N. had ever before penetrated. She had had a direction in mind, but the roads were never direct, and she relied on Avanti to tell her how to stay on track. Southeast, she had said, I can''t explain it, but that''s where we need to be heading. It had been hours and the cloudiness that she felt ever since falling unconscious in the vault only seemed to be growing in intensity. And despite Avanti''s warnings, for she could see the impairment as well in her headset and from her consoles -- a concussion, perhaps? -- Katya refused to stop.

    Finally, it was Revner''s voice that had come over the line. He had been watching the whole time. He had heard her explain what happened during the signal-breakage, and then he had watched as Avanti plotted her course southeast. He had ordered Avanti to search through the archives to see where her bearings were leading her, and he had listened as she described the mountainous region Katya was heading into -- that it was home to an abandoned cave system from which the Fringeland rebels, during the war, had once staged guerrilla attacks against the Confederacy occupation. Finally, Revner had heard enough. Bring her in, he ordered, and when Katya refused Avanti''s continued demands to change course, he himself put on the headset and gave the direct order forcing her to abort and to redirect to a safe zone where he had already arranged for her to be picked up and temporarily relieved from duty.

    Throughout all of this, throughout the stealth copter pick-up back into Confederacy territory, throughout the debrief with Revner and the suspension for insubordination, throughout the train ride to New Charleston and the taxi''s winding passage to the hills above the city where the cemetery looked out across the river, and throughout her walk in the dark, weeping rain to the plot of land marked out by her father''s tombstone -- throughout all of this, she nursed a single question in her mind: Why had she gotten into the truck?

    Why -- when Thaniel was still lying there, spine and ribs smashed, unnaturally contorted as he was, no longer useful to her or to the Agency; but, still alive, whimpering, conscious and in paralytic suffering -- why, then, did she get into the truck, and as he began to scream in frightened despair, did she refuse to look back?

 Chapter Seven - Patience

    Revner studied her from across the table. Twenty years ago. Already? She had been here once before. Did she remember? She had been so little then. Her father had come in apologizing, saying, "Sorry, the babysitter couldn¡¯t make it this week."

    "Katya," her father had said, kneeling down by the raven-haired little girl whose hand wrapped so tightly around his pinky, "Say hello to Mr. Revner for me."

    She had looked up at him, her eyes bright, but penetrating, even then. He had seen that she was special immediately. For a girl as young as she was, six, was it? -- seven? -- she had been remarkably silent, still, and even ruminative as she''d stayed by her father''s side that night, around this same oak table twenty years ago.

    And even then, he could see that her placidity was not the usual kind. It was not a passive silence that contented itself with being ignored; instead, it demanded thoughtfulness, it asked for reflection, and ultimately, inspired others to possess the same careful introspection that Katya herself seemed always to be immersed in.

    She was still silent, now, looking down at the documents and the tablet screen he had put before her; her hands cupped around the glass of red wine which she had quietly accepted and not yet touched.

    "Are you hungry?" he asked, getting up and walking to the refrigerator. He pulled out a plate of canned ravioli and sniffed at it before he put it in the microwave. As it began to hum in the background, he walked back to the table and pointed at one of the papers, "Look," he said, "the results from the bite marks came back inconclusive. No animal DNA." He waited for her to say something and when she didn''t, he said, "You don''t seem too surprised."

    She shrugged and looked past to another document. It was a list of names.

    "What''s that?" he asked.

    The microwave was beeping. Revner walked back over and popped the door open. It was still cold. He shut it again and let it hum for a little longer.

    She shook her head slowly, "These unmatched DNA samples..." she said, handing the list to him as he came back over.

    He scanned the document but couldn''t see anything immediately abnormal.

    "There are too many. We have too many samples. There are more unmatched samples than there are unmatched names on the personnel count. Which means we have at least two or three individuals--"

    "--who we weren''t expecting to be there," he finished her thought.

    She watched the recognition come to him. "You think it''s the wolf handlers."

    His eyes jumped at her. The wolf handlers? Had he just heard her say that? Was it just a coincidence? Had she meant something else? No. He saw it in her tranquility, that she had meant it exactly as he had heard it.

    So she knew.

    "Oak Hill and--"

    "--Mansfield," he said, naming the incident that had earned him his Distinguished Service Award.

    The honor had always felt slightly dubious. He hadn''t served or saved anybody; he had barely saved himself. Or was it precisely because everyone else had died, that the Agency felt his being the lone survivor was, in and of itself, worthy of note and commendation?

    "Those reports are all classified. Even above your access level."

    "I learned from the best," she said, but there was a heaviness in her expression, and her eyes soon drifted down and her lips pursed together again. "You''re afraid they''re back. The dire wolves -- as you called them -- and the men who unleashed them, who controlled them."

    He stood quietly as he heard her words give voice to the truth of his fears.

    "You were there," she said. "At both of them. Why didn''t you tell me?"

    He sat down to consider this.

    The obvious answer was that it truly was classified beyond her access level; classified beyond his own, even, except that he had been directly involved. The fact was those incidents didn''t exist, and the very acknowledgement of their existence would have put at risk his job and his career, and hers as well.

    "Oak Hill was probably their first operation. Sloppy. I was assigned to investigate, and there was one there, waiting, observing. I was lucky and escaped, but they had me marked and made already. I didn''t know it at the time. But when I went to Mansfield -- Mansfield was supposed to be something else entirely. They tracked me down and came for me, and took the entire town out in the process.

    "We never knew why they stopped. We were glad that they did, but we never found out where they came from, or why...." he trailed off, not quite sure how else to answer her question.

    Because, the simple fact that it was classified couldn''t have been the real reason, or at least, not the entire reason. Because he was human and he could make choices. He could choose to obey his orders, or he could choose not to. He had, somehow, made a choice, and it had been to put her -- his direct report, his protegee, his charge -- in danger without arming her with her greatest and most necessary weapon: Information.

    As he thought of it now, he wondered how he thought that that was okay. How had he justified it in his own mind?

    Katya had been looking out the window for some time now. As Revner turned to see what she was looking at, he realized that it had turned dark outside, and that the windows showed only their reflections against the shadows of the night.

    It still didn''t make sense. He knew he would never willfully put her in danger unless there was a great need for it. Even now, when he framed the issue like that, he said no, no, no -- every time. So what was it then? Was it for their careers that he so wanted this case to be successful? Because he wanted her to succeed against these monsters when he had only run away? Was he just doing his job, for the G.C.N., its safety and security?

    Now, it occurred to him to wonder: Were any of these things what Katya wanted? He was not a selfish man. But perhaps, he had been a self-centered one.

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    The microwave had been beeping for some time now, but only now did they hear it. Or maybe she had heard it this whole time, and it was just his senses, dulling again, unfocused again, that had him ignore it.

    He brought the plate over and sat back down.

    He tried to remember what they had eaten that night. He remembered her sitting there with the fork too big in her hand, her fingers wrapped around the entire thing like it was a baton; red sauce all over her lips and chin.

    "Spaghetti," she said, breaking the silence. "You made spaghetti for us once, here."

    So she did remember. She looked up from the table. But she wasn''t looking at him. Maybe she had for a second, but she wasn''t now. She was looking off somewhere, to the seat to his right. And she smiled. She smiled for the first time that night, with a warmth that radiated across her entire face. Somehow, it saddened him, its very presence reminding him of how accustomed he had grown to its absence.

    How did things ever get to be this way. How was this their lives now, that he had forgotten what happiness looked like upon her face?

    He put his fork down and gently, after a spell, said to her, "Katya, how are you doing?"

    It had been so long since he''d said those words. It was almost hard to ask.

    Her eyes flashed and now they were dark again, looking off, still, but to a different place in her memory altogether.

    Slowly, hesitantly, she began to speak, "I went to visit my father. It was raining. His headstone was so black; it looked as if the rain were droplets of ink." She shook her head and looked down at her glass. "All I could think about was the boy I had left in Warrentown.¡±

    Revner began to speak, ¡°It¡¯s okay, Katya. I went through your medical debrief and psych eval. It was just procedure. Your return clearance has already been approved--¡±

    Katya ignored him. "All I could think about was how he laid there. He was dead. I knew it. There was no way he could be alive, no way to survive what had happened to him. But he didn''t know it yet. He looked at me like he wanted me to tell him something. He wanted to know, ''Is this real? Did this happen to me?'' And now he knew. He knew, without my telling him, and in that moment of understanding I could see the despair in his eyes. All of his hopes were in that instant undone -- but he wasn''t ready, he wasn''t ready.

    "It wasn''t his time yet. How could it be? There were still things he needed to do, things he needed to say -- to tell his mother he loved her, to tell his father he would miss him, to tell his brothers to stay out of trouble, to tell his best friend, his boss, his ex -- how he would have done things differently next time. But he couldn''t. There would be no next time. And none of them were there with him, anyway.

    "Only I was.¡±

    Revner¡¯s eyes narrowed.

    "He was alone, with me, and now he was embarrassed. He didn''t want me to see him like this. He didn''t want me there. Who was I? Had I seen him naked before? Had I witnessed him helpless and blind before? Would I love him, even now, ugly and distorted? Yet, he needed this. He wanted to be held, to hear a voice -- any voice -- say to him that it was ok, that it was alright. He wanted to feel warmth -- just, someone else''s heat against his. Something to say that he was still there. Some last flicker of human connection before the meaningless Absurd consumed him. He just didn''t want to be so alone.

    "So, so, so alone. He was going to die and he knew it now. And it was ok. It''s ok. It''s ok. It''s just cold. Just lonely and cold."

    Her eyes, unflinching, she said, "And I didn''t -- didn''t anything. Didn''t hold him, didn''t touch him, didn''t even speak to or look at him. I did nothing, except leave him. Dying alone."

    A vice tightened somewhere deep in Revner''s chest. The last time he had seen her like this was when they found her father''s body. She was so like him, devoted entirely to her work; to the Agency. He had taken her hand then, but now, watching her like this -- fraught, frail, and for the first time in a long while, uncertain -- he felt powerless.

    "Katya," he whispered, finally, "It''s not your fault. You had nothing more to do. You acted perfectly. You were the perfect Agent."

    The perfect Agent who never left a case unresolved. The perfect Agent with the perfect record. That was why he had charged her with insubordination; not because of some trivial lack of obedience, but because there was no other way to force her to rest, even when she was on the verge of collapse, as she had been, driving deliriously into the deep Appalachian ranges.

    All throughout, she had been staring down at her glass, as if the reflections in the somber, red wine in front of her bore some secret that her soul had long hidden away. But now, she turned to him -- to her mentor and guardian -- she looked at him, her eyes questioning with dark intensity, for she sincerely did not know: "What is the point of chasing monsters if, in the process, we become one ourselves?"

    In that instant he realized why he had made his choice -- his choice to follow protocol, to withhold information from her when asked to; his choice to pursue the G.C.N.''s interests over everybody else''s, including hers, including his own. Because his choice would have been to tell Katya to quit, right now! His choice, if he had had the courage to make it, would have been to tell her to stop, leave, and disappear. Go, start again, do something new, but get out -- just as he wished he himself would do.

    But he didn''t, because he never stopped to ask the right questions, and in so doing, he chose not to choose at all.

    Katya had always had good instincts. She always knew when to reassess her position and when to question her assumptions. He had seen this at a tactical level everyday in the field, and now he saw it at a higher level, perhaps the highest.

    She had possessed the wisdom to ask what it was worth.

    And he couldn''t help but smile a little now. All of this because of one boy. How many boys had Revner left dying. And how many times had he asked why?

    ---

    As he waved and watched her walk out to the waiting cab; as he shut the door, slowly, only after seeing her duck in and the taxi pull away; and then as he sat back down at the table, with all the papers and pictures still there in front of him, and with the white porcelain plate smeared with pasta sauce and his fork, lying face down in the middle of it -- it was in that moment that he recalled something she had said that night.

    It was after she had noticed the unmatched samples on the list. After she had brought up the handlers. After she had seen that he had withheld the truth from her, even as he had convinced her to continue her investigation without full knowledge of the danger ahead of her. And even after seeing him faltering tonight, seeing him hesitate to give her more information again; although this time, because he didn''t want to goad her further into the case. But she didn''t see that. She didn''t see him try, one last time, to pull her back from the path he had pushed her so far along on -- a path which he had never questioned until tonight, when she showed him how. A path that he then knew she wouldn''t have the experience or clarity to deviate from by herself. All she saw was his helplessness, his inability to alter the course he had already set in motion.

    Still, she had said something to him.

    In a whisper, as if she were lost in the memory of that night twenty years ago, she had said: "It was truly remarkable what you did. Everything you''ve accomplished, and everything you''ve done for me -- I appreciate it. You are the reason why I''m here today."

    Maddeningly, he had had to smile. She had said it so sincerely, with genuine admiration, as the child, the six year-old with her father''s bright eyes and her mother''s dark, black hair, her hands clasped around the spaghetti fork. She had no idea how bitterly it tore at him to hear those words, splashed like acid across his face.

    He was not proud of who he was or the things he had done, the masters he had served or the causes he had unwittingly advanced. He didn''t blame them. It was their job to use him, and it was he who had let them. But his greatest crime had been Katya, for in his ignorance, he had dragged her, innocent and naive, down into the pit with him.

    He was ashamed. But regret and guilt weren''t enough to absolve a lifetime''s lack of questioning. It was too late for penance, but not yet too late to start anew.

    So he lit a match, and flicked it. And as he looked back one last time at his cabin -- his home, his life, and now his past--engulfed in flames, the orange tongues flicking upward at the stars above, his thoughts turned once more to Katya. There was nothing more he could do for her now. He had tried to persuade her, but she didn''t understand. Not yet. She would have to take this last step herself. Hopefully, it wouldn''t be too late.

    He smiled, genuinely this time, as he turned and walked into the dark silence of the night, where he would wait for her, patiently, on the other side.

 Chapter Eight - Monsters

    Katya listened quietly as she was escorted through the lab complex.

    "As you''re probably aware, research into the human psionic potential was being conducted long before the formation of our precious Confederacy. Individual nation-state governments used to dabble in funding for what they called ''parapsychology'' in the hopes of uncovering some fantastical military applications," the man grinned. "The Americans, in particular," he added, with a particular, flaunting flourish on the forbidden word.

    His name was Dr. Gelemen. Revner had met this man once. Katya had found a scribbled note, barely legible in the margin of his official, classified report; just a summation: "genius, but... erratic".

    Revner, she thought.

    "Not surprisingly, without any understanding of or thought given to the actual biomechanical impulses that generate psionic effects -- what we now call ''mentalics'' -- all their experiments were inevitably failures," he shrugged, as if to show how obvious that should have been. "I apologize, by the way, for the broad-level summary, but, I imagine this is as much as you will understand, anyway."

    Katya nodded flatly as they pressed on through another hallway.

    Why have you been withholding information from me? The Oak Hill and Mansfield incidents, this unreported psionic research program (even though the G.C.N. was a party to the international ban), and even the fact that there had been other telepaths in Pikevale -- victims, too.

    "What we now know about human psionic capabilities is that it is almost entirely rooted in our ability to empathize, of all things," he lifted a brow and rolled one of his eyes. "Thus, the notion of the ''telekinetic psyker'' that moves objects with his mind and creates explosions out of thin air must remain relegated to the movies.

    "Palm the pad again. Security is, as you can imagine, a priority here."

    She did so, and then waited for him to stride through the sliding glass door before she followed in step.

    You told me that I couldn''t find the survivor.

    He continued, "However, the stereotype of the mind-reading telepath is, actually, not so far off. Although, I doubt that anybody realizes that they indeed exist, or that there is at least one active government program to train and deploy them. But then again, that''s the point I suppose. They wouldn''t be much use if they weren''t able to hide in plain sight." Swiveling without letting up on his pace, he turned to her, "You weren''t aware of their existence before, either, were you?"

    "That''s classified," she replied, dryly, without clarifying whether she was referring to what informations she had access to or to the subject matter itself.

    You told me that I wasn''t becoming a monster.

    Without skipping a beat, perhaps without even hearing her answer, he proceeded, "Where the stereotype falls short, however, is the assumption that telepaths have total control over whose minds to read and whose to ignore, as if they can simply dash in and out of internal monologues like a little bumblebee between flowers. Once you understand the mentalics involved, it becomes obvious that that isn''t how it would work at all." He paused, this was his favorite part, "Do you know how it does work?"

    She said no.

    I don''t know why you no longer want to help me, why you wanted me suspended indefinitely, or why it was someone else who had to tell me that. I''m sorry that I had to go behind your back, but it seems like you don''t trust me to handle hearing the truth anymore.

    You told me that I have sacrificed too much already. What does that mean? Don''t you know I can''t stop now? I¡¯m an Agent. I am the scalpel of the Confederacy. You made me this way; this is all I know.

    So even if it means that I have to avoid you and go behind you, even if it means that I have to forfeit your trust, even if it means that I become a monster....

    He smiled condescendingly, "Of course not. As I said earlier, telepathy is simply an amplified form of empathy. Imagine thinking about someone so much that you begin to see yourself in their shoes. Not so hard, we can all do that much. But imagine if you weren''t seeing their shoes from your perspective, imagine if you could blot out your ego so entirely that you would view their shoes entirely from their perspective. Of course, you can''t imagine this, because your mind won''t let you. The ordinary human mind is incapable of emptying itself so entirely as to void its own sense of self.

    "But, that was the critical insight. That was the mentalic key that we had to unlock, to circumvent the mind''s natural protective mechanisms and override the preservation of its own ego. Once we -- once I identified that insight -- we just had to go find it, and once we did -- once I did -- we just turned it off."

    His grin had broadened to stretch from ear to ear now, so widely and so grotesquely that she thought she could see the scars they carved into his cheeks when they stretched his lips across his face.

    I... I have a duty to the G.C.N. to finish this -- to complete my mission, at any and all cost.

    "Each psychic can form a single mental link with one other individual. From then on, they share everything! Every memory, every experience, every sense and every perception. Of course, we train them to make sure the information flow is unidirectional. Obviously, there''s no point in having a telepath that bleeds all of his information back into the target.¡±

    Just as you said, I am... the perfect Agent.

    "We''re now experimenting with using them as a communication node -- pairing them up with on-the-ground targets who would serve as field sensors. We could keep our psychics safely back home then -- no more messes like Pikevale -- safely plugged in to their targets from a secure location, like an entangled quantum particle. Could you imagine that? A networked, psionic sensor array."

    He stopped walking. His speech had sped up as he had finished his last thought, and now another smile was coming to his lips.

    "Obvious--" he laughed again as he shook his head, "--so obvious. Sometimes you just need to hear yourself say these things out loud."

    Katya frowned in disgust, but did not say anything. Avanti, who had of course heard it all, reassured her that they were almost there.

    ---

    She knew that they had reached their destination. For some time now, she had been hearing a faint, but rhythmic whisper. It grew stronger with each step she took.

    No longer in the Fringelands and off the G.C.N. power grid, this time, Katya''s omni-device was broadcasting back environmental sensory input at full power. Avanti''s voice piped into Katya''s ear, "Do you hear that now?"

    Avanti knew better than to expect her to answer. Agents were trained to never vocalize to their Operators in the presence of others. If they needed to respond, they could do so subvocally, and even then only rarely and when they were sure they would not be noticed.

    But Avanti knew this and she had worded her phrase more as a prompt than as a question. She had, of course, identified the sound long before, but she was thoughtful about waiting for the perfect time to bring any particular environmental phenomena to Katya''s attention. It would make no sense to highlight the sound before Katya could reasonably be expected to hear it.

    But now, she did. It was a man''s voice. And it was chanting, "Three. Five. Five. Three. Five. Five. Three. Five. Five."

    When they arrived at the observation room, it was obvious that the words were being recited from inside the enormous glass cube where patient A32 was being held.

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    "Why is he saying that?" Katya asked.

    "How should we know?" the guard said. "He hasn''t shut up for days now."

    She could see a nascent insanity creeping within the man''s eyes as the patient''s plaintive refrain broadcast and reverberated over and over in the small, hollow room.

    "Let me in," she said.

    "Agent Tursyn, the patient is in a very fragile state and under close monitoring. Your presence could seriously disrupt his health," Gelemen protested. "I''m sure I could answer any questions you may have."

    "If that were true, I wouldn''t be here right now," she responded icily.

    Gelemen''s eyes darkened as he curled his lips. He turned and, slowly, nodded to the guards by the door.

    For a moment, Katya hesitated. Something was odd. No, not that. Something else.

    "It''s fine," Avanti said, "Hollow steel door with honeycomb core. Dual key authorization system with three-hour auto-shutdown. Standard grade-three security fare."

    "Why is the patient under such heavy lockdown?" Katya asked aloud.

    Gelemen tried to hide a sneer, "I thought the Agent understood everything." But there was more than just contempt in his voice, there was another thing, although she couldn''t tell what.

    "If a psychic empties himself of his ego when he forms a mind-link, what happens if the mind-link is broken?" she asked.

    "When it''s broken, the psychic''s mind will have nothing more to fill itself with," Gelemen replied.

    "What does that mean? What about his original ego?"

    "It fills the void, to a limited extent, but once obliterated it can never truly come back in the way the rest of us normally experience it."

    "So what is he experiencing then?"

    Gelemen shrugged. "A dream-like catatonia, perhaps? He is incapable of distinguishing between active experiences in the present and memories of experiences he -- or his target -- may have previously had."

    "May have?"

    "Maybe the experiences really did happen. Maybe they were simply dreams of experiences, or imagined fantasies. His perception of reality is quite permanently altered, without a foundation to ground it to."

    Katya shifted her feet uncomfortably, "When did this happen? How?"

    Gelemen smiled again, "A few days ago? A week? Maybe the target fell into a coma? Maybe death? This is a new program, Agent Tursyn. We have not had to deal with this type of situation very often before. Each case is a new experiment; it''s what makes this so exciting." He walked up to the glass and, leaning forward, placed his hands on the railing beneath it.

    "So why keep him like this? He¡¯s not dangerous anymore. Why keep a permanently disfigured mental amputee in a glass box?¡±

    This time, Gelemen could no longer hide his disdain.

    "Not dangerous? Your intuition is stronger than your reasoning, Agent. Not bursting in as you had been preparing to do was the smartest decision I¡¯ve seen you make. We have trained this psychic to develop his mind into one of pure, concentrated potency. And now, he has no more ego -- his own or anybody else''s -- to keep it in any way contained!

    "Isn''t it obvious? The shackles are off, Agent Tursyn! His mind is an unfettered beacon now, an uncontrollable psionic dirty bomb that blasts raw psychic radiation with every beat of his pulse. Do you know how we came to learn that the mind-link had been broken? Because we found the monitoring staff unconscious around his bed, blood seeping out of their eye sockets like freshly picked scabs.

    "That''s why we erected the cell around him, and that''s why we have these," he pulled out a small, wiry halo from somewhere in his lab coat and waved it mockingly in front of her.

    She recognized it: a mentalic dampener. And then she knew now what she had noticed in his expression earlier. It hadn''t just been contempt; it had also been cruelty.

    She opened her hand.

    ¡°You can¡¯t go in there,¡± Gelemen said.

    ¡°Give me the band.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s too late. There¡¯s nothing intelligible in that cage anymore, Agent Tursyn. This is the end of the show.¡±

    It was Avanti who was most aware of what was about to happen. Even more so than Katya, for whom the actions that came next simply arrived naturally.

    ¡°Don¡¯t¡ª¡± Avanti started.

    But for Katya, the decision had already been made. The choice ¨C if indeed she had had one ¨C had been decided before she¡¯d even arrived. Before she¡¯d begun to dig. Before she¡¯d gone dark and turned her considerable investigative skills upon her very own Agency, following the breadcrumbs that Revner had tried so hard not to leave for her.

    But he knew. He knew the die that he had cast. Just as Avanti did when she agreed, with zero hesitation, to answer Katya¡¯s call when she did resurface ¨C with a new set of coordinates.

    Just as she knew now.

    ¡°Katya, don¡¯t¡ª¡± she pleaded, but Katya¡¯s hands had already come up. In a single motion, she shoved Gelemen¡¯s far shoulder, blading him so that the hand that held the dampener would still be there for her to sever, which she did with the thin, almost translucent wire in her other hand.

    As the wire sliced through the air, slipping in between the atoms that had connected Geleman¡¯s hand to his forearm, separating them as if they were simply magnets reversing polarity, she followed through with the motion, which had started from her hip, and now turning her body and twisting her wrist as she did, she spun, extending her hand towards the still unaware guard standing on the right side of the room and releasing the wire dagger at the moment of full extension. The wire tensed as it approached the guard¡¯s neck, forming into a straight, nearly invisible needle as it pierced his left carotid.

    Katya was already on the floor when the first bullets were fired. She dove, rolling towards the man who now reflexively reached for his throat, unsure of why he¡¯d suddenly felt a prick in his neck and what it was that was pinning him to the wall behind him.

    She stood up, shielding herself with his body as it convulsed under the hail of bullets that now shredded his armor. She tore the man away from the wall, leaving the needle wire still stuck behind to be showered in the mist of blood that erupted from the sudden lateral tearing of his carotid artery.

    The two guards that had let her into the room had now come through. The needle, obeying some hidden command of hers, fell limp from the wall, floating into her palm as she shoved the torpid body shield in front of her, willing him ¨C it ¨C to take two final steps ¨C to buy her one extra second ¨C before it ¨C he ¨C collapsed to the ground.

    She closed the distance on the newly entered guards with lightening speed. Appearing above their waistline only when she was already in front of them, spinning, whipping the wire knife across their throats at just enough of a distance that she could sever the soft tissue without the wire getting stuck wrapped around any meddling vertebrae in the back. She completed her spin, ducking in between them as the final guard emptied his magazine.

    For him, the final one, the one with the birthmark just behind his chin strap. The one who had been standing at attention on her left when she¡¯d begun her lethal dance. It was not his fault that he was the last one standing. It was not his fault that she was curious now.

    That she wanted to know.

    For him, she would have more time.

    Despite the auto-alarms now blaring at full blast throughout the compound, set off by the ricochet of bullets in the cleanroom outside of patient A32¡¯s cell, Katya knew that her Operator had already secured the doors behind her, slowing down the rush of guards that had all been suddenly alerted to what was now going on.

    Like a phantom, she emerged in front of him, kicking him, burying her foot into his midsection, not hard enough to incapacitate him, but just enough to double him over. As his head whipped forward, she met his nose with the palm of one hand while ripping his helmet off with the other. Clinching him behind the neck, she redirected his skull into the wall behind him, and then propelled his disoriented and stumbling body towards the glass door separating them from patient A32.

    By now, she knew the lock had already been disabled. Without even bothering to look at the whimpering, cowed face of Dr. Gelemen, still slumped in shock against the wall beside the door, she reached down and picked up the recently severed hand -- still warm as the capillaries slowly leaked out -- and the dampener that had fallen out of its clutches.

    She put the thin, metal ring over her head, resting it over her ears, before pressing the palm of his now disembodied appendage against the security panel beside the door.

    As it opened, she shoved the still dazed guard inside, and then quickly closed it behind him. In just that brief instant, a hint of the pressurized psychic energy inside the room burst out and flooded her senses.

    If she was capable of feeling remorse, this would have been the time where it should have hit her. But remorse was not a useful emotion for an Agent to have. The Agency did not need remorse. It did not like it. In training, it excised it. It needed decisions, and it needed action. She had already decided. She had already acted. Remorse was always late, and in the Agency¡¯s interest, never useful.

    She knew already what was about to happen. But all she could do now was observe.

    Clarity suddenly washed over the guard as he realized where he was. He turned back to the door, pounding on it and shouting silently to her, his eyes now clear and filled with panic. She watched him, curiously at first, and then morbidly, as his fist slammed repeatedly against the glass ¨C until it began to bleed -- and then his forehead ¨C until it did too.

    On one such headbutt, the guard¡¯s head slipped, so that the side of his face hit the glass instead of the dome. But like a child hitting a new piano note, the guard repeated it. Over and over, until his orbital began to fracture and his eye began to bulge out of its socket.

    He was getting tired now. He was mouthing less now. His eyes began to roll into the back of his head, a curtain of blood closing the stage over his eye sockets as the birthmark on his chin slid down the side of the glass, until finally, he collapsed at the foot of the wall. There, he continued to twitch, like a degloved frog leg sprinkled with salt, the electrical impulses stored in his muscles still randomly firing and discharging until there were no more.

    Without turning her head, she whispered to the man still unmoving by her feet. She wanted to tell him that he was a cruel and evil individual ¨C to do what he had done, so consciously, so recklessly with his patients¡¯ lives. To treat them as nothing more than data points, test subjects, observable fact structures.

    She whispered, as she removed the dampener from behind his ear, as she crushed it in her hands and as she prepared to open the door once again. As the maelstrom of psychic energy lashed out into the cleanroom, before the irony could stop her, she whispered to herself: You, too, are a monster.

 Chapter Nine - Just Human

    Avanti''s readings were off the charts. Her instrument panels had not been designed to display the measurements she was now receiving from her Agent. On the ground, she wondered if Katya had any idea what she was walking into.

    In the cleanroom, Katya had felt a slight, constant pulse against the front of her head. She¡¯d wondered if she had imagined it, but Avanti let her know that she had not. But as she stepped past the door -- the thick, sliding, acrylic glass pane with the dampening magnetic latticework -- as it closed behind her, she began to feel something she had not felt in years: sheer panic and utter terror.

    As she began to venture forward, she began to realize that this was likely further into the containment cell and nearer to patient A32 than anybody else had been since the deaths of the monitoring staff. After the incident, they had not bothered to even relocate him. The bed, the equipment, the materials that surrounded him had been entirely untouched. They had simply thrown the cube up around him. For days now, they had left him unfed and unwashed, hoping that fatigue would finally get the better of him; that his energies would literally evacuate him over time. And yet, the psychic tempest continued unabated.

    It took a tremendous effort for Katya to take each step forward. She had never felt this kind of acute stress before. Her body, it seemed, was turning against her. The muscles in her chest tightened and constricted her lungs so that she felt like she could not inhale fast enough. Blood rushed to her face so that she felt hot in her forehead, but simultaneously frigid around her eyes as her peripheral vision narrowed to a single point directly ahead.

    Only now did she notice that her mind was refusing to process sensory input -- the sensations of raw colors, lights, and sounds were being left uncategorized and unlinked to any coherent external experience; simply being, simply accumulating in her mind as assaulting phenomena without connection or orientation. The world was releasing her and she thought now that this was what it would be like to die, her senses in disarray and her consciousness aware of nothing except her own retreating sanity. Not even Avanti''s screaming instructions coming through her inner ear implant registered in Katya''s conscious brain now. And so she dropped forward to one knee, the energy to move one way or another entirely drained from her.

    Thus, began his onslaught.

    "Three. Five. Five," he said, continuing to call the Agent number -- her number. His voice now filling the mind that her own consciousness had evacuated, he uttered with straining concentration, "Finally. You arrive."

    Her head felt heavy, as if the voice itself was the densest, blackest ink that she now drowned into.

    ---

    She -- she knew she was. She felt wet. And sticky. She knew, suddenly and shockingly, that she was underwater and instinctively she sat up, gasping, coughing, spitting. It was thick, this liquid that was in her mouth and lungs. As she expelled it, she noticed suddenly that her arms looked different, foreign. Completely hairless, they were sinewy and swollen with muscle and blood. She liked it. She had desired it and even expected it, but how could she have known until now how it would really feel? She reached forward and grabbed the edge of the wooden pod and with just a twitch, ripped it open in two. As the amniotic fluid she had been bathed in gushed out onto the dirt and rock floor around her, she noticed the other pods around her. They had not opened yet. She was the first. She felt proud of this. And in the distance, she heard a hoarse howl echo through the cave.

    ---

    When next she opened her eyes, she was running -- flying, even. There were others around her, and their presence gave her excitement. She looked at them, their backs arched, necks bent low, and all four limbs pounding against the hard frozen ground. She could feel the power in her thigh. With each thrust of her leg she bounded forward in meters. She smelled him before she saw him -- the man. She recognized him. But now, he was not her neighbor anymore; he was just a man who had not joined them. He was a man with a shotgun in his hands. She swiped at him and felt her claws impulsively extend forward. The shotgun snapped and in the next instant she had already leapt at him and torn him apart from the belly where she had drawn him open. Under the strength of her arms his vertebrae folded like a twig. She felt intoxicated. Behind her, a door opened and she heard a woman and her child''s screams.

    ---

    This time, it was dark. Entirely black. But she could still see with her tremendous olfactory acuity. Blood. Pools of it. Her skin stood rigid with excitement. She had been shot at, but the wounds had of course closed immediately around the bullets, which she would expel later when she was safe. This, she had earned. She could not wait any longer. Yet she had to. She had to first smash his skull, and then reaching in, she scattered the brain matter so that he could not attempt to pierce into her mind anymore. But then, then there was nothing stopping her. She leaned her mouth down and tore into the flesh and blood and it tasted good. It felt nourishing, this human flesh, and she could tell that it would bond to her and she would gain the inoculation against these mind-howlers -- she turned around suddenly. But it was too late -- a hand! against her head, and then nothing more.

    ---

    She awoke again. She couldn''t move. She tried to heave free, but she was chained and confined. She could see the others; they wore the iron masks. They were speaking and conferring. She felt groggy. How long had she been -- dreaming? About a man. A human man in a black cell. Blindfolded, his ears and nose plugged to deprive him of sensation. So that his mind would wander. Was this a mind-howler? Were these the memories of a psionic? She could remember things. She remembered the assignment. Reconnaissance. Infiltrate the Fringelands. Infiltrate Pikevale. She couldn''t understand it. It didn''t make sense to her, even though she remembered it as if it were her own memory.

    But she heard them now. What they were saying. That she''d been mind-linked. Impossible! No, the hand! She tried to yell but her lips were sewn together. Father, she thought. Save me. And so she heard his voice. She felt it stir her heart to hear him again. Her creator. The creator of them all. Save me. But there was only silence. He said nothing. She remembered something else now, or was she experiencing it as it happened? A face. A human woman''s face, with long, raven hair. And then he croaked, in that low, gravelly voice, a command. And at once, she felt the burning; intense, insane burning as she watched them empty the enormous acid vat over her body. There was nothing left for her. Only pain. And then, that too melted.

    ---

    Only now did Katya realize she had been conscious for all of this. The memories, the dreams, and the memories of the dreams that patient A32 had projected into her mind, the experiences that he had himself absorbed from the beast he had found at the Pikevale Psychiatric Sanitarium, they had played over and over: Birth -- hunt -- feed -- die. She lost count of how many times she lived and relived that life that wasn''t hers.

    It was Avanti''s voice that had found her drifting in her Hindu eternity. "Wake up," she said, "Please wake up." Repeatedly without quit or fatigue, her pleas dangled into Katya''s awareness--a thin silver thread swaying breezily before her, daring her to leap at it, again and again, until she finally found it and grabbed it and tugged at it, following it until it led her through the tunnel of her mind, until she was awake again in the real world, finally out of the labyrinth of lifetimes that she had nearly lost herself to.

    As she blinked her eyes, Katya felt the winds in her head dying. The rhythmic incantation of her Agent call-number was slowing and lightening. She looked now, seeing clearly for the first time since she had stepped into the containment cell. Patient A32 sat on his bed, his thin frame barely holding the wispy medical gown upon his body.

    She was panting; she was still catching her breath. The chant of "Three. Five. Five." was now gone entirely -- the fog lifting from her head. She stood up with a nervous ease, as patient A32 toppled backward lifelessly across the bed.

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    She walked over to his limp body and, for a moment, she felt sad. For even though they had only been connected for a brief amount of time, they had shared experiences together more intimately than she had ever felt with any other individual. And in a very real way, she felt as if a part of herself were lying dead there in front of her.

    But the expression on his face was of utter serenity, of fulfillment, as if he had completed a great work and now he could finally rest and retire from the burdens he had faced all his life -- and this made her happy, and in a small way, perhaps, envious, as well.

    She turned back to the passageway and glanced over at the cleanroom behind the one-way mirror. Had they witnessed it all? Surely it''d been recorded. What would they want now, with their prize possession expired, having revealed his secrets to no one except her.

    "Wait!" said Avanti, suddenly.

    It came as a shock to Katya, who was still trying to organize her internal thoughts.

    "Katya, I''m tracking something," her Operator said. "I think it''s them."

    Before she had even said it, Katya began to feel a sense of light-headedness. In an instant, the lights blew out, and the entire cell was dark.

    "I was so focused on you; I--" Avanti poured out. "They knew where the power source was. There''s a backup generator but it''s only connected to life support systems."

    Katya could see a dim light coming through the observation panels of the cleanroom. Now that her enclosure was darker than the outside room, the mirror had reversed, and now she was the one looking in.

    By now, a few guards had finally made it into the room. They were still checking the bodies of their comrades and Dr. Gelemen, but she could sense their panic now.

    "Get out of here!" she said, pounding mutely against the window. "Get out!" she screamed. "Avanti, you have to tell them to leave!"

    She pitched forward, dizzily, steadying herself against the wall. She had experienced this vertigo before, in that underground tunnel. A beast had been there too. Was her sensation connected to their presence?

    A thud sounded out from the other side of the window beside her. It was a hairy, distorted mass, sticking, disembodied, against the window, slowly sliding, leaving a trail of red, chunky blood against the glass. In the dim light, it was impossible to make out anything beyond two feet. A few shapes moved, there was a flash or two -- perhaps gunshots, which briefly lit the room like a strobe, and then shadows that split and fell in muted silence to the ground.

    What pounded against the glass next startled her. Pressed against the window, staring straight at her, or through her, was the iron face of a wolf. For a moment, it lingered there, and a pang of familiarity ran through her. She had seen this mask before, in a dream of a memory that had threatened to engulf her forever. But beyond the mask, or within it, she saw something else.

    "No," she whispered.

    A loud clang interrupted her. They were trying to smash the steel security doors.

    The unmatched DNA. The vault labs. Their cave systems....

    Memories of her powerful arms came to Katya now, emerging out of her vault, seeing moonlight for the first time as this new being, slowly joined by others from the caves around her. Then, hunting with her pack on all four, standing upright to tower over the enemy before finishing him; consuming him. Finally, the command, from the one she had most loved. Wearily, perhaps even sadly, she had heard him say, "Dissolve her." And she had experienced death, then.

    Aloud -- for Avanti¡¯s benefit, she told herself -- she said, "They don''t have handlers for the beasts. They are...."

    She cowered mutely, as she had been trained to do, as the steel door crashed down. Instantly, the muffled pounding of their strong, heavy paws -- she felt the memory of them in her own hands -- escorted the smell of blood into the cell.

    A bone cracked in the center of the room, where she now remembered the bed to be, and the sound of a sopping sponge dully splattering against the floor reverberated from somewhere across the darkness. The smell grew nauseatingly stronger.

    For a moment, she heard nothing as she concentrated on keeping her own breathing slow and steady. In the black silence, she could hear only her heart gently pumping against her chest, and for some odd, infantile reason she wondered if Director Revner would be proud of her right now.

    Limbs -- arms -- sinewy and hairless wrapped around her from behind and crossed her chest, pulling her tightly against a wall of rhinoceros flesh. Instinctively she formed the wire in her hand into a needle and stabbed behind her. She felt its subtle penetration. But before she could stir it, rip it through whatever part of her assailant¡¯s flesh was behind her, a vice came across her elbows, crushing her tendons and bones and involuntarily jolting her hands open.

    Something whipped along her shoulder, up her neck, and then stopped at the entrance of her ear before it slithered inside. She could not even recoil, the strength of the paws -- no, hands -- pressing against her capturing her and freezing her entirely.

    She held her scream the entire time, silent until she felt the cochlear implant being torn out. A hand moved up quickly to muffle her mouth and nose. Another went down her arm and crushed the omni-device around her wrist. With a swift tug it came off, its implanted sensors ripping away from the veins and nerve ends that it had directly fused to. She inhaled to scream again, but only drew in the black stench of blood from the hand covering her face, and wretched against it.

    "Shh," it said. "Shh. Be still."

    She didn''t know how, but she knew it was smiling behind her.

    "We''ve been watching you, Agent. Katya. Tursyn. We''ve been watching." It labored between the words, its voice hoarse and low, echoing densely throughout the cell. "You have impressed us. You have understood us."

    "Who are you," she mouthed torpidly, knowing that it could hear and sense everything she did now.

    "Who are we? We are your children, Katya Tursyn. We are the children of your G.C.N., and the children of your Agency. We are the fallout from your wretched society."

    It hissed.

    "I was a colonel. I was in your army. I fought in your wars. Did you believe the unification of the Confederacy came freely? No... not free. They made me into this. They taught me this.

    "But I see the truth now. And now I atone. I am a savior, you see. You saw that in Warrentown. I am the liberator now. I gave them the choice to join my pack. To have my gift. To become like me. Some did. And the others...."

    "You''re... monsters," she painfully exhaled, her head splitting from within.

    "Ignorant. Misguided. Some will always be this way. But, it is not murder to kill livestock. Or to hunt fleeing pigs. They serve us anyway by feeding us with their bodies and their sport. We teach the new ones this way.

    "Nooo," the colonel hissed. ¡°The abominations are you. You and all your creations. Your newest mutants. Your psychics -- your perverse mind-howlers. Your government is stupid, Agent Tursyn. Careless. Stripping life from their own people. They don''t even bother to teach them how to... turn off. So they broadcast, endlessly, incessantly. Until we find them, like a beacon in the black sky. That is how we came here. To liberate them through destruction -- your psychic idolaters.

    ¡°But we knew you would come to this one,¡± he said. ¡°We knew you would come. So we waited. You see? We go another path. We bonded our bodies with the beast. Because the body is infinite. Infinite, it adapts. Infinitely, we can become more...."

    She coughed, weakly, struggling to stay conscious. She knew she was only standing because he was holding her up.

    A vibration from her throat, "Your experiments are crude. You failed. You are still... just... human."

    She felt him tense up, and she knew he wished to crush her at that moment.

    But he relaxed; he was trained in discipline, too.

    "You are still naive, young Agent. The evidence of our ascension is in front of you. We are no longer just the masters of the beast. We have become them." He let loose a gravelly howl, and was joined by roars and shrieks from every corner of the cell. "You see? We are more than ''just'' human, Agent Tursyn."

    He inched his mouth closer to her ear. His whip-like tongue lapping at the blood that trickled out of it. He whispered, again, "We feel it. And now, Katya Tursyn -- you understand us. You more than any we¡¯ve watched before, are already one of us. Don¡¯t deny it anymore. Join us. I will save you. I will make you... transcend...."

    She shook.

    Your very existence offends me. You''re an alien, an imitation, a fraud. I am allergic to you like a foreign body. I reject you like a parasite, for hiding amongst us, for feeding on us, for using us, and then luring others into joining you and doing the same. For you are a mimic and a mockery of humanity. I reject you precisely for being not-human, like I reject Gelemen, like I reject the G.C.N., like I reject the Agency that everyone I have ever cared about has already given their lives to...

    Deliriously, her thoughts turned now to Thaniel again, the boy she had used up and then left to die alone.

    Because it¡¯s true, isn¡¯t it? I do understand you.

    To do whatever it takes. To cross every bridge and step over every body.

    I do understand you. I don¡¯t just understand you. I¡¯m already....

    NO!

    I don¡¯t want this anymore. I want it back! Dad. Revner. I understand now. I don''t want to give up anymore. Not this. Not me. Not what makes me me. I want that back. Give me another chance. I¡¯ll choose! I¡¯ll choose now! I choose to be human. To be ''just'' Human...

    But, she didn''t say any of this.

    She couldn¡¯t.

    All she could offer was a single, moist droplet that dribbled, languidly, down her cheek and off the curl of her lip, as the cold, black, emptiness rushed up to embrace her.

 Chapter Ten - All I Know

    Avanti woke up thirsty. This was the first night in weeks that she had been able to come home, and then only early into the morning, after she had decided and informed them that she would accept the transfer to research. They had offered her Agent training -- almost immediately after, in fact -- too soon, too soon, she had said. But it didn''t matter anyway, she had long stopped being interested in that role.

    The glass she kept by her bed was empty. She would sleep through it. She wasn''t so thirsty that she couldn''t sleep through it. She would... no, no she wouldn''t. She sat up and rolled, slowly, towards the edge of her bed.

    As she walked past her desk on her way to the kitchen, her monitor woke.

    "You have four new emails, Avanti," it said softly. "Would you like to read them now?"

    "No, not this time, save them for the morning," she mumbled.

    She flicked a switch on in the kitchen, and shielding her eyes from the immediate glare of the lights, she groped for the faucet. As her eyes adjusted, she put the glass underneath the flowing water and noticed a white envelope on the counter.

    It wasn''t hers. She knew she hadn''t put it there. There was no label on it. No address; not even a name. She covered her nose and mouth and lifted it up to the light. She could see through -- it was Katya''s handwriting. When did she leave this for me?

    Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

    Ripping through the envelope she recognized the oft-recited phrases from the Agent''s handbook. In Katya''s thin, scrawling script, it went:

    I am an Agent of the Global Confederation of Nations. I serve the free citizens of the G.C.N. I will find and neutralize our enemies from within and without our borders. It is my duty to defend, my responsibility to protect, and my honor to sacrifice.

    I am the scalpel of the Confederacy. The most important mission is the one chosen for me. For only I can complete the assignment; there is no one else that is able to do so. It is inconceivable for me to retreat. It is impossible for me to lose. I will let nothing stop me from fulfilling my objectives. I will succeed and the G.C.N. will be victorious because I refused to fail; because I will complete my mission, at any and all cost.

    Avanti looked back into the envelope to see if she had missed anything. But she hadn''t. That was it; that was all. She turned back to her room, puzzled. Maybe she would check her email after all.

    "Lights," she murmured, as she stepped back into her living room where the monitor was waiting for her patiently, knowingly.

    As the lights came on, she instinctively went to cover her eyes again. She had forgotten that they had already adjusted, and without the bright glare to blind her, she could only gasp and let the letter slip out of her stiffened hands as the full sight of her clean, ivory walls came to her now, from the ceiling to the floor, dripping with dark, red blood, it said:

    THIS IS ALL I KNOW. THIS IS ALL I KNOW. THIS IS ALL I KNOW. THIS IS ALL I KNOW. THIS IS ALL I KNOW. THIS IS ALL I KNOW. THIS IS ALL I KNOW. THIS IS ALL I KNOW. THIS IS ALL I KNOW. THIS IS ALL I KNOW. THIS IS ALL I KNOW. THIS IS ALL I KNOW. THIS IS ALL I KNOW. THIS IS ALL I KNOW. THIS IS ALL I KNOW. THIS IS ALL I KNOW. THIS IS ALL I KNOW. THIS IS ALL I KNOW. THIS IS ALL I KNOW. THIS IS ALL I KNOW. THIS IS ALL I KNOW. THIS IS ALL I KNOW. THIS IS ALL I KNOW. THIS IS ALL I KNOW. THIS IS ALL I KNOW. THIS IS ALL I KNOW. THIS IS ALL I KNOW.