Past
Rohan
Iexpect FISA to have some pretty stringent rules about what their agents get up to on missions, a clean-cut way of looking at things that turn the breakable ropes of freehold morality into titanium chains of political bureaucracy. It’s the oldyou can’t kill people unless they’re the right people, and even then, only when the government says it’s okay to kill them.
But FISA is also well-known for working with the world’s leading vigilantes, which means their ideas about what constitutes lawful justice must be somewhat stretchy and malleable.
I’m right on both counts.
The first job I’m sent on for FISA is needlessly complicated by the agency’s flimsy devotion to The European Convention on Human Rights, although Aaron gets very sensitive about it when I point that fact out.
“He’s an OI scientist,” I sneer, holding up the picture of a forty-something-year-old man with a bad haircut and too many freckles, provided to us by FISA’s intel unit. “Why the hell would we take him alive?”
Aaron doesn’t seem ruffled by my abrasive tone, nor the belligerence in questioning his orders so early on in our working relationship. There doesn’t seem to be a lot that will rattle Aaron’s cage. I’ve become determined to find out which bars to crack my bat against to get an authentic, uncontrolled reaction from him. Not because I want to hurt him. He doesn’t matter enough for me to want to hurt him. I just want to knowhow to.
“Primarily?” Aaron says, snagging the picture from me and slipping it back into the intel file. “To find out what he knows about OI and the Liquid Onyx project.”
I snort, unconcerned. “We can ask him thatbeforeI kill him.”
“Ask him?” Aaron looks decidedly unamused. “How?”
“Very nicely.” I tilt my head from side to side. “Then maybe not so nicely after that doesn’t work.”
“FISA,” Aaron says reproachfully, “does not allow torture of prisoners, Agent Sathe.”
“Good, then we’re agreed,” I say with false cheer. “If we don’t arrest him, it doesn’t count.”
“Interesting idea, but no.” Aaron leans over me to open the passenger side door to our agency car, a black BMW that’s far too big and ostentatious for any kind of covert mission. He nods for me to get out. “Bag him up, and we’ll question him back on base, where he will be held. Legally.”
He doesn’t wait for me to argue again, powering on through like I’ve already agreed. “You have one week to track and grab him. Good luck, Agent.”
I think about making him shove me out of the car, for the sake of my eternal commitment to the art of pettiness, but ultimatelysettle for giving him an obstinate glare before slipping out and disappearing onto the streets of downtown Paris.
For the first three days, I don’t even bother searching for my target. Paris is a comparatively small city. Armitage Delour, my target, is a man who comes from money, and his work with OI has only increased that personal wealth. According to the intel FISA gathered, he’s here working temporarily in an OI facility, developing some top-secret chemical. We don’t know if it’s anything to do with Liquid Onyx, but it could be. I’ll likely find him in one of Paris’ high-end hotels, and it’ll be one near the facility, which narrows things down quite a bit.
I spend those first three days scoping out the OI facility. It’s one I’ve been to before but only on brief visits with my dad. From the outside, it just looks like a concrete office building, small and inconspicuous, with a sign out front that proclaims it to be a mortgage broker. Just dull enough that people don’t look too closely at any strange goings on surrounding it.
When I get bored with my self-imposed recon assignment, I go off in search of the scientist. As I suspected, it’s almost embarrassingly easy to find him, staying in the penthouse of a sickeningly expensive hotel. Breaking into his room and drugging him is equally as straightforward, with a little help from a bellhop disguise and some drugs to knock him out that were helpfully provided to me by FISA.
Armitage looks deceptively innocent, his eyes too young for his face and the toxic mind that lies behind them. It takes a lot of will power not to suffocate him using a fancy hotel pillow and be done with it. But Aaron would more than likely throw a fit over the whole thing, and it’s not that I mind pissing off Aaron, but I’d rather not deal with the hassle of it all.
Afterward, I take Armitage to where Aaron is staying, at a far more reasonably priced hotel, and leave the scientist in the boot of his car, ready to be discovered by my handler. The man is toowell trained not to realise when his car has been messed with, so I doubt it’ll take much time for him to figure out his part of the mission is complete.
The second part is just for me.
A day later, when I’m standing on top of a building a few streets over, watching as the OI facility goes up in flames, singing Ladyhawke’s “Paris Is Burning” to myself, Aaron appears behind me. He materialises out of the shadows like a vampire from an Anne Rice novel, classically handsome and thrumming with a low-level danger that I’m instinctively aware of.
“You find our boy Delour all wrapped up nice and pretty for you in the boot?” I turn my head to smile at him congenially.
Aaron comes to stand beside me. “Was that really necessary?” he asks rather than answering my question. I’m assuming by his glower, aimed at the burning facility, that he means the unsanctioned arson, not the boot thing.
“If we only ever did what was necessary, how boring would life be?” I counter, just to be a shit.
Aaron sighs slightly but doesn’t reprimand me any more than that, and together we watch as orange and red fire devours the OI facility, turning it to ash at my dad’s feet.
Present
Jack
