Tattoo

Metallic scent, electric ink. Glowing sigils flow across my chest; a lost alphabet, new circuits illuminating tribal patterns. 

 

Joey was the only one I trusted to tattoo the mod, what with half my enhancements being old-school, and all of them custom. I still had implants for chrissakes, laid in when doped nanotubes were still bleeding edge. Joey had been doing my work since university, since before I was expelled. Not that they’d been able to prove anything. 

 I was here, finally. I’d spent the last six months banging my head against a wall of circuits and code, and the burn of the tattoo would be my reward. I’d finally worked it out. 

Black Hole, my band, would love it. 

Sure, Sonic Death and The Happy Torturers had managed to get some crazy holographic effects using bulky external signal amplifiers. They even made all the clunky equipment part of their show, working it into their whole TechDeathMetal aesthetic. 

 Black Hole had a more stripped-down sound, a stripped-down idea, just like my new tech. With the mods I’d made to  my neural implant, we’d be able to do costume changes, even identity changes, with the flip of a thought. Joey didn’t like the idea much. “You think that’s anything close to wise? I’ve heard stories of spooks using neural implants to control people.”

“C’mon Joey, what’s the big deal? I’ve had these implants for years. You know they’re hardened and insulated, so I’d never have to worry about unauthorized access to my head. Ever since the government spooks started putting passive EEG readers in the bus stations.” I gestured at the electromagnets that Joey needed to follow the board inking process. “Otherwise my head would have blown up when you turned those on. Besides, mine is so custom that they’d never be able to make enough sense of it to hack it.”

“They could… slave it to another implant...” said Joey, flipping a switch.”

“Yeah, sure, but those stories are just that, stories. Even if that were  possible, the mods I’m making to the implant would make no difference. And I made sure the band got as good as I did.”

“I guess so, man. Anyway, we’re done here. You’re ready for the install.”

As the hum of the magnets faded, so did the glow of my newly-inked circuits, and I was left with my traditional ink. They were mostly Tlingit and Haida, but I had a few Yakuza rip-offs done years ago to give me street cred, back when I worried about that shit. 

I nodded towards the now quiet machinery. “New MRI assembly?”

“Yeah, Doc Johnson needed some work done on a new gamer dermals. Some good work, but ugly as hell. I prettied up the circuit pattern so it’d look good when the kids slapped ‘em on skin, and took payment in trade. He even helped me with a few tweaks.”

I looked at the machinery again. It had been modified a fair bit but… “Those are Janssen 1340s, aren’t they? Solid work.”

“Yeah, and they have room for custom upgrades. Now quit stalling.”

I flipped Joey the bird. He just smiled. Swinging my legs off the side of the couch, I shuffled over to his workstation. I placed my right hand against the neural interface and picked up the memory stick with my left thumb and forefinger. The computer desktop overlaid my vision, the real world appearing only as a faint image on my retina. I turned down the overlay intensity so I could still see Joey, and activated the program install. I waited, and felt the burn of the new circuits as they activated. It was a fine gridwork of lines and nodes: contrasting angular grids for the logic boards, and flowing, branching lines along my nervous system. Joey, as always, had laid them with an artist’s eye. 

“Well?” Joey said.

“Yeah, yeah, give me a fucking minute. That was a big board, you know. Neural inhibitors or not, that still fucking stings.”

“Yeah, well wait until you get the real ink – no neural inhibitors for that, you pussy.”

 “Whatever, ya bloody sadist.” I paused, made a few keystrokes to move the install along and said, “So, you heard that new track from Biloxi? Shitty drums, but that girl’s got one kickass voice.” 

“You’re just a sucker for a pretty voice, but yeah, it’s not bad.”

“And you’re just a snob – you think that if it isn’t incomprehensible then it’s a sellout.”

“What I think is that good art isn’t easy,” Joey retorted.

“Depends on the art,” I said.

“Even simple is hard. You love all that Zen shit, you should know that.”

“Hard to do maybe, not hard to understand. You just want to have something the masses can’t touch,” I said.

“I don’t mind if the masses touch it, I just object if they get it grimy with use. I mean, Jesus, using Iggy Pop to sell Hummers?” said Joey.

And that was just too good a straight line to miss. The program had finished installing, and I had some old Iggy files in memory, so I did the video and audio overlays and sang, “Your skin starts itchin’ once you buy the gimmick.”

Joey fell out of his chair, his eyes wide, and then he laughed. “It works, man, even the facial when you talk! You did it, you really fucking did it! And you’ve got the audio boards in perfect sync.”

I walked over to the mirror and ran my hands over ‘Iggy’s’ face. The algorithms adjusted quite well, so I didn’t look like I was burying my hands in my face. There was a little distortion, but not much – it would only need a little tweaking. I wasn’t a small guy, but sure enough I now had Iggy’s build; ripped, but skinny as a scarecrow. The holograms made my body smaller, covered parts of me with the image of empty space. 

I pushed the empty space a little further, and Joey made a strangled sound as I disappeared. I moved quietly to the other side of the shop and turned off the field. 

“A god-damned cloaking device! You could be a Klingon.”

I flipped on that image for a second.

Joey gaped and laughed again. “Christ man, I’m tempted to take up burglary.”

 “If it were that simple so would I, but no one trusts cameras these days; they can be hacked too easily. Even if you were invisible, you’d never get past the doors locked with biometric cards, they’re everywhere these days.  When I discover antigrav, then I’ll be an awesome catburgler.”

“Well, yesterday I would’ve laughed at your ego, but today… man. This blows the hell out of anything that Jenkins ever did for the Torturers.”

“Thanks.”

 

 

Two days later I was back in Joey’s shop with the other four members of the band, who were getting the new holo-boards inked in and tested. Pitch nailed the interface fastest, which didn’t surprise me as she spent a lot of time in the online MUDs. That’s where she developed her dress sense – sometimes cool; often very, very bad, but it worked for the band. If you don’t have a lead singer with a tendency towards fashion crimes, then you might as well go mainstream. Zeke and Billy figured out the interface soon enough; both music geeks, they loved the technology as much as I did; already the two of them had their heads together, Billy’s mohawk brushing against the dead platinum that Zeke insisted was a stylish colour. I was looking forward to seeing what they would do with the system; they had begun playing with some random visual effects, streaks of colour rolling up Zeke’s bass, flashes of lightning spraying from each power chord that Billy struck on his guitar. They were chatting about how they’d link with some of their audio boards.

  Pitch shook her head and smiled, amused at their antics, but she seemed to have something else on her mind. She walked closer to Joey, who was still working on Ned. Ned’s new ink was beginning to shine, Joey activated the circuits as he progressed, now down Ned’s left arm. As she approached the humming magnets, her own board started to shimmer just above her root chakra, dark ink taking on a glow. She had on her torn black tank top, which she’d left hiked up to just under her breasts after her work had finished, showing off a pale white belly and the new ink on her back. Her leather pants, with the de rigeur trucker’s belt, rode low on her hips.

My eyes followed the luminescence twisting up her spine like the twisting branches of a tree, branching out along her arms and legs, even around to her temples, giving her a halo of sorts. Pitch had always had a rather...distracting effect on me, but I’d always avoided getting involved. Being a lead singer meant always being a tease; everything, everyone, a challenge.

She put her hand on Ned’s shoulder, just above the activated circuits. “How’s it going, Ned? Holding up okay?” she asked.

“I’m good, Pitch,” said Ned. 

“You like the shine?” asked Pitch. 

“It’s not really me now is it, eh?” said Ned. “But it looks good on you.” He paused, and then continued, “Sexy.” 

She smiled at him, and Ned gave a comfortable grin back. I didn’t know how he did it; he could look at her and see her, but he obviously wasn’t compelled by her. And she was okay with that. She looked over her shoulder, admiring the ink right at the base of her spine. Then she looked at me, looking at her, and the smile became a wicked grin. My throat went dry. 

“Yeah,” she replied to Ned, still looking at me. “I like’em. Kinda flash - maybe I should show them off a little.”

Struggling for a little cool, I went on the offensive. “What the fuck?” I demanded. “They’re not decorations, they’re there for the show.”

Pitch laughed. “And the effects aren’t just fashion, are they? These aren’t just off-the-shelf dermals that I can peel off to slap on something new and pretty, right? Look at it, it’s part of me. Instead of my past on my skin, it’s my future.”

I laughed. “It’ll be an obsolete future in a few years.”

“Then I’ll get upgraded. Or not. Either way it’ll be my skin, my ink. Electric or indigo.”

She ran her hands along the shimmering lines of her arms and neck and gave herself a hug. A dark angel, glowing with tech and tease.

 

The next day Zeke told us his plan. That was Zeke; he was the one who kept all of our rather strong personalities pulling in the same direction. How such a sweet guy had ended up with a guttermouth like Billy was one of the more bizarre romantic mysteries I’ve witnessed, but it seemed to work for them. 

None of us objected, except Billy – but that was to be expected, especially since the plan involved Vijay the owner of the legendary bar, Revolver. Billy had never liked Vijay. We talked over some of the details and then rehearsed in our little shitbox of a studio. The next day found us heading downtown to Queen Street, to implement ‘the fancy-assed plot,’ as Billy called it. The rest of the gang was keen on the plan, but all I was thinking about was sinking my teeth into the Revolver’s Huevos rancheros. Vijay made the dish with chutney that even made mornings worthwhile.

“Vijay,” Zeke called out as we came in.

Vijay turned. He was a tall chap, rail-thin, with the face of a Punjabi warlord, and he could be one of the most intimidating and foul-tempered people I’d ever met. A handy thing when you run one of the most successful alt-rock bars in the city. When he saw Zeke, he broke into a giant gleaming white smile. “Zeke baby, have you finally come to your senses and decided to leave that rabid dog you’ve been dating?”

“The rabid dog is right here, you ass-licking piece of shit,” said Billy helpfully.

“As charming as ever, you poor excuse for maggot fodder.” 

Billy and Vijay barely tolerated each other; the absence of fisticuffs was only for Zeke’s sake.  

Vijay gave me and the gang a quick glance. “Ah,” he said, “I see you’ve brought the whole posse. How... delightful.”

Zeke turned round before anyone could respond to Vijay’s scorn and said, “Just be quiet and go sit down, okay?”

Vijay smiled at that. “Yes, please do. Meanwhile Zeke and and I will sit and converse like adults, hmmm?”

I heard Pitch mutter “Fuck,” under her breath, and I exchanged a glance with her. Apparently Billy wasn’t the only one who found Vijay annoying. hen I looked over at Ned, he looked down, hiding his expression, but not before I saw the amused little grin on his face. I glared, but he seemed impervious to my Jedi powers. 

As we sat down, the waitress approached. She smiled as she tucked her pen behind an ear that jangled with piercings. “Hey Pitch, what's up?“ And in an instant they were deep in conversation, leaving the three of us to slowly starve and slide horribly into caffeine withdrawal. I took the opportunity to let my eyes trace the tattoos on the waitress’s arms, and to drink in her ample curves, without Pitch, or the waitress herself, noticing. Ned was doing the same thing. Billy had other concerns and kept shooting irritated glances at Zeke and Vijay (I noticed they already had their coffees). 

Shortly after the waitress finally left with our orders, Billy said, “Now.”

And we all activated our ink. Pitch had dressed down this morning, but now she was done up in full techno-fetish, with an unnatural amount of cleavage, and glowing black eyes that gave off little wisps of smoke. Ned had taken on the look of a ragged, desiccated mummy, bits of bandage still clinging to his face. Billy was supposed to have morphed into a wolf boy, all shining pelt and nasty claws, but I guess Vijay’s comment got to him, so instead he had become a walking health hazard. His clothes were torn and stained, he had a huge, dripping rat on his shoulder, and cockroaches were skittering in and out of the rips in his grease-stained trench coat.

Pitch stuck out her tongue and fired some Sith Lord lightning at him from her fingertips. Billy just smiled, displaying cracked yellow teeth.

Even Pitch couldn’t resist. “Nice touch.”

I’d opted for a cyborg, something I considered appropriate given the many generations of implants I had in me. Even if the laser shooting from my eye did end only a foot or so from my body. 

We were expecting a good reaction from Vijay, but he had his back to us, so it was the waitress who was coming back to the table with our coffees who saw us first. At the sound of a strangled scream and smashing crockery (“There goes our coffee,” muttered Billy) Vijay turned abruptly. 

“Rebecca, what the fuck—” began Vijay, and then he stopped for a moment and just stared. In a long, low, exhalation, he murmured, “Bhenchod,” which I took to be some sort of Hindi curse. He turned to Zeke and said, “Yeah, I can give you a Friday night. How about two weeks from now? You can go up between the Thrills and Narcoleptic. Narcoleptic’s always late anyway; they claim that it’s part of their shtick, but I’ll enjoy making them pay the price of it.”  He walked towards us, his glance shooting from one to the other. 

Finally he settled on Billy.  “I can see from Billy that this special effect can reveal your inner self, but I don’t really want to look at the trash that I have to let on my stage. Can’t you do something to cover that up?” He waved a dismissive hand in Billy’s direction. 

Billy changed so fast that it made my eyes ache. In an instant there was a full werewolf, bloody-mouthed, with extended claws that swept within a hair’s breadth of Vijay’s gut. 

The waitress behind him screamed again and even Vijay jumped back a foot, startled and a bit pale. 

Billy let the illusion go and grinned at Vijay. Then he turned to the waitress and said, “Sorry about that, can I give you a hand cleaning up?”

Vijay cursed under his breath. “Don’t bother,” he almost snarled, “I’ll help her out. Brunch is on the house. It’s not often that I’m so thoroughly entertained this early in the morning, even if it is by the likes of you.”

 

The night of the show, I saw Vijay at the bar arguing with the burly drummer from Narcoleptic. He gestured at the stage and I caught his eye and he grinned, a big shit-eating grin, as I worked the boards for the band - video, audio, and of course, enhancements for the holograms. 

Pitch was a dervish on stage, glowing with the crowd’s energy and of course, her boards. Between songs, she kept up a steady monologue for her audience, as Pitch Plus, with wings, fairy ears, halos and horns all flickering in and out of existence as her mood shifted. 

Zeke and Billy were her foils; Billy prancing on lead guitar, Zeke striding between bass and keyboards. And in the back, pulsing like a dying sun, Ned, on the drums. But it was Pitch at the center of it all. When she was in the song, she was a goddess, at times looming over the crowd fifteen feet high, crouched so her head didn’t go through the ceiling, then a fairy fluttering above the stage, scarcely more than a throbbing point of light with a voice that drove the crowd to dance in frenetic, sweaty time. 

Of course I cursed when she pulled that giantess stunt, it was really pushing the edges of what my tech could do, but it worked, and I worshipped her damn near as much as the crowd did. And they offered up their exultation with the flash and glow of dermals shining from their faces and flickering across raised hands lifted into the air; dermals which were recording the show as they sent out images of us on stage, bringing in virtual crowds in realtime. We were a hit.

After that we were doing two or three gigs a week in T.O. and then we toured for a month in the States, with three gigs in New York. 

 

 We got back into Toronto late Wednesday night at the end of March, and dropped the gear at the studio. We were lying around on the battered furniture, throwing back a few beers, when Billy, who had gone out in search of salty snacks,  burst into the studio only a couple of minutes after he’d left with a copy of inSight clutched in his hand. 

We’d made the cover. 

I watched Billy bounce around the studio, giving everyone a big kiss on the lips (including me; he was a good kisser, but could use a shave), saving Zeke till last. “Baby, you did it baby, you got us to the big time.” yelled Billy, and then leapt into his lover’s arms, toppling them both to the dusty floor. We all laughed, but when they started to pull at each others’ clothes, Pitch poured half of her beer over their heads.

“I’m as fond of a little boy-on-boy as the next girl, but I’d like to see this article that you two are bumping and grinding all over.”

Billy laughed again, bounced to his feet and gave Pitch another kiss, surprising her with the intensity of it. Still, being Pitch, she gave as good as she got. While they were occupied, Zeke got to his feet, blushing furiously, trying to look nonchalant about an obvious and, considering the tightness of his pants, probably highly uncomfortable erection.

I looked around, trying to capture the moment in my mind. Pitch trying to look hardcore and driven, but with a grin constantly sneaking onto her face. Zeke serene and content, his gaze focused on Billy, who was still hopping and dancing around the studio, singing “We are the Champions” at the top of his lungs. I knew that I had a huge, shit-eating grin on my face, but what was most memorable for me was Ned’s reaction. Phlegmatic, burnt-out Ned had a spark in his eye that I’d never seen before. Like there was some hope in the world after all, something good and real. I wondered what sort of junkie he’d been – it wasn’t as though he never touched anything now; he still drank, or took a hit on a toke now and again, but nothing excessive. And he’d always felt a little dead to me, as though he’d buried something of himself. But now it seemed as though our walking corpse had some life in him after all. 

“Pretty cool, eh Neddy?” I prompted, over Billy’s terrible singing.

“Yeah,” he said, and then for emphasis, “Yeah.”

* * *

After that, we started to see the normals at our shows. It was at our gig at Arisen, a big venue in the industrial lands near the lakeshore, that it became obvious. Guys in suits; girls in miniskirts. Not our usual black-on-black crowd. I even thought I recognized a couple of the suits, from other shows.

I turned to Ned to ask him about that, when I saw  he was already staring at them with a peculiar intensity. The deadpan look that he’d worn when I first met him was back in force. 

“Noticed our serious boys from the ’burbs have you?” 

“Yeah,” answered Ned, seeming distracted. “Not sure if that’s what they are though.”

“You expecting trouble?”

He shook his head, “No, they just remind me of my old crowd.” He smiled and looked at the band tuning on stage. “But fuck the past, eh? We’ve got a future. Don’t we?”

His tone threw me. “Um hell, yeah, we’re the bomb. Look around you.”

He smiled and headed towards the stage.  But I noticed that his path through the crowd carried him well away from the guys in the black suits. 

When we’d hired Ned he’d seemed a bit of a burnout. And a bit old, too, but he was a hard drummer and rock solid. Nothing seemed to rattle him. Not the crowds, not the club owners or bouncers. So I didn’t know what to make of his reaction to the suits. Maybe he was a disgraced derivatives trader, a refugee from Bay Street. I smiled at the thought of Ned in a suit. 

Still, after that night I started looking for them at our other shows and I began to share Ned’s unease. They weren’t at all of our shows, and when they did show up, they blended with the young wannabe hip crowd. But whenever I saw Ned looking tense, or just a little too flat, I’d look closer, and sure enough, there they’d be. 

Then Aria offered us a record deal. – They were the new big thing around town - fresh to the game, but they talked and acted like they had deep pockets. Turned out that one of the suits that Ned had been worrying about was from the label. That night Ned got drunker than I’d ever seen him. 

“You ever worry that someone might use your electric ink to do shit? Rob banks or plant bombs or stuff like that?” he asked me.

I laughed. “Fuck, I’ve thought of doing that. But nobody knows this shit like me. My old prof at York might’ve, but he blew his brains out over some faculty politics. And even if they could work it out, it would be fucking idiotic, no one relies on video security anymore. It’s too easy to hack. It’s all DNA-linked biometrics now. I mean, hell, that’s why you had to give a blood sample last time you got your health card. The government’s been using DNA-linked cards for what, five, six years now? And even that’s getting to be old news. The BlueChip Corps have proteome-responsive dermals now, they don’t bother with your DNA, they just look at how it expresses itself. No bluffing that shit.” I shook my head and continued.“Not that they’ve licensed it to the spooks though. It’s just another example of how governments have to lick the boot-heels of their corporate overlords - that’ll teach ’em to cut research funding. It’s one of the big reasons I never finished grad school you know, all the cutbacks.”

“And the expulsion,” said Ned.

I laughed and took a sip of beer. “Yeah, but still, I coulda worked that out.” I leaned forward, “You know, it’s kinda funny how desperate the Feds are for new tech actually, and how out of touch they are. I mean I know some wetware punks that are starting to hack the DNA imprint on their driver’s licenses so that they can get drunk on a Saturday night. When I was in school, it was cutting edge, but now it’s one step from being a joke.” 

“So your tech wouldn’t really be useful to the spooks or anyone?”

“Nah, not unless you combined it with all sorts of biometric shit.”

“Could you?”

“Shit, yeah, if some punk in the street can do it, I could. But why would I?”

“No reason.” He paused. “You wouldn’t, would you?”

I looked at him, shook my head at the strangeness that was Ned drunk. “No man, I’ve got no interest in that shit. Besides, why would I rob a bank? The band keeps up like this and we’ll own the bank.”

He smiled at that and said, “We are so going to kick ass,” and then he leaned to one side of his bar stool and puked.

 

*****

 

Billy and I were sitting around arguing about some of the levels on the ‘Hot Tamale’ track when I met him the first time.

“Richard Howard,” he said, “from Aria. I’m very happy to meet you. I hear that you’re the best sound guy in the business.” 

His smile seemed genuine and his handshake firm, but to call me the best sound guy in the business was bullshit. I was good, no question, but I wasn’t the best. The band kept me on sound because I understood how it worked with the holoimages.  I didn’t trust him from the beginning; the vibe was all wrong. He was too eager, too positive and had too little sleaze. A sincere suit; I should have known then. 

It didn’t get any better with time either. At first it was just my own paranoia – I’d been in the business long enough to see what the big labels could do, and every time he came by I was constantly expecting the hammer to drop: for him to announce a cut in studio time, cancel the contract, or, god help us, initiate a discussion about market numbers with gentle suggestions about changes in our ‘artistic direction.’ Anticipating disaster didn’t help my temper; I was irritable and Zeke was frustrated with me, since Howard was our main contact from the studio. 

Ned, though, seemed to share my distrust. At least I could vent my frustration to him. “The son of a bitch keeps asking me questions about the electric ink and I sure as hell don’t want him using it for some other band,” I complained one day. “And how does he know so much about this shit anyway? I’ve quizzed him and he just avoids my questions.”

Ned looked worried, well, as worried as Ned could look. Then he gave a ghost of a smile. “Why don’t you ask Pitch to explain it?”

“Pitch? She doesn’t...oh.” I smiled.

So Pitch explained the holo-boards, which she was happy to do, delivering a steaming pile of techno babble on demand. Some of it even made sense, and was perfect to snow someone with a hacker-lite understanding of the technology. 

So I was happier, for a while. But then Pitch decided to practice her skills at cosmetic holography, flirting with Howard and showing more cleavage than should have been physiologically possible. Which sent my mood into another tailspin. Made worse by the way he kept praising her for technical ingenuity while he stared at her tits. Hell, technically they were my tits; it was my work that made them.

The others got used to him, even Ned, who just seemed happy that he was talking to Pitch about the boards. But I couldn’t stop complaining about him and his stupid baritone. 

Eventually, one day, Pitch snapped at me. “Oh, why don’t you just kill him, then?”

I smiled, “A great idea,” and activated my boards. 

Zeke shook his head while Billy laughed. Pitch just looked a little disgusted.

I looked in the mirror and saw what they saw – Howard – well, almost: mine was a bit of a caricature. Howard was tall and well-built, but stiff, like he had a stick up his butt. On me, well, you could see the stick. He had sandy blonde hair, thinning a bit. I made it look like a bad hair transplant. His suits, usually grey or navy blue and utilitarian, were now too tight and poorly tailored, and complemented by cheap patent leather shoes. His face, square and strong, I made lantern-jawed and a little stupid.

“Lovely, lovely, you kids are doing a bang-up job,” I said, the voice more nasal than Howard’s plummy baritone. “But I know I’ve offended your wise technician and I’m going to do the right thing.”

And I grasped the short blade I’d conjured, and slipped it into and across my belly. Guts spilled onto the studio floor.

Ned walked in, looked at the guts and said, “Good to see that the old traditions are still respected.”

I felt better after that; my frustration at the situation had an outlet. The rest of that week the boys and I had considerable fun inventing ever more elaborate deaths. One night, Billy, in an exceptionally perverse mood, programmed something new. When I cleft Billy’s version of Howard from head to toe with a flaming sword, the separated halves of his body boiled maggots, even as he kept walking towards me. It was fucking eerie; I was torn between the urge to run or to hurl, but did neither, slamming a neutral image on my face and looking around. I wasn’t the only one that looked way too calm. In fact Ned was the only one looking like himself, and he gave the impression of someone who found such horrors boring and distasteful. Like he was too jaded to be scared shitless like the rest of us. 

When we all realized that we’d been projecting the ultra-cool faces we started to laugh, cursing Billy as a sick (if brilliant) bastard. Then Pitch made the fatal mistake of saying, “Oh I don’t think our Mr. Howard’s that bad.”  

The rest of the night consisted of enacting a series of increasingly saccharine and pornographic romantic scenarios between Pitch and Howard, with accompanying music by Disney, though with far ruder lyrics. It was when Pitch managed to cast me as Cinderella (baby blue is not my colour) that we all finally collapsed with laughter. After that, Pitch did stop saying nice things about Howard, but she still kept flirting with him.

A couple of days later  we did manage to come up with something that bothered Ned. I had just devised another lovely vignette with Billy, which culminated with Howard’s head exploding. Then we ordered a couple of pizzas. 

“Jesus,” Ned said, “how can you guys eat after that?”

Billy shrugged. “Dunno, creative energy expenditure I guess. I’m always hungry after a big illusion.”

I laughed. “That’s because the electric ink works off your body’s energy – ATP coupled. Heh, I could come up with a new weight loss program – look pretty to be pretty.”

 

*****

 

Later that week, the album was essentially done. There was still some technical work to be done, cleaning up and prepping the tracks for production, but the thing was pretty much in the can. The band decided to take a short holiday and I decided to go out and celebrate with a bit of a bender. 

 I took Ned along. I was beginning to feel like an old-timer, and he seemed like good company. We wandered into one of the big nightclubs, and that’s when I saw her. Dress of midnight blue, cut low and cut high, hair of jet, Christ, she was gorgeous. Obviously in from the suburbs, but not with a man, just a gaggle of girlfriends. I gave Ned the wingman signal and went in kamikaze. And who’d a believed it, she had a thing for sleight of hand and I was drunk enough to show her a few tricks with the holo-board, and she was primed. Ned seemed to be working his own charm with the friends. With a nod we left them and went off to her place, which wasn’t the 905 area code after all, but high on the waterfront, with lake view and shit. 

It was 4:30 in the morning by the time I staggered home. I felt like I’d run a marathon. I was stumbling up the walk when I saw Pitch and Ned on my front porch, sharing a cigarette, and all the alarm bells in my head, every foul instinct from my bad youth, started raising an infinite amount of hell. 

Ned was pale, shock evident on his face. Pitch wasn’t. She was green, and when Ned gave a quick wave I saw blood and I just knew it wasn’t his. I looked at Pitch closely and saw Ned’s fingers pushing hard against her side. There was a slow liquid ooze coming from between his fingers. I felt sick, understanding where the blood was coming from, but had enough sense to get my keys and help them upstairs. Ned settled her on my new couch — the only improvement I’d made to my apartment since the money’d started coming in. A place for me to watch the tube in comfort, play a few video games with Zeke and Billy. Now it was covered in her blood. 

 “They were in my apartment when I got home,” said Pitch, sounding faint. “One of them was Howard. I even thought it was some sort of joke for a minute. Then one of them grabbed me and I threw the banshee effect at the fucker. The volume was low, but they weren’t expecting it, that’s for sure.” She gave a weak chuckle, then closed her eyes and groaned. Ned tried to soothe her by stroking her forehead where it lay in his lap. His other hand was still pressed over her wound, now covered in the ancient roll of gauze I’d found in a medicine cabinet in my bathroom. “Fuck that hurts.” Her eyes opened then and she put one of her hands on my arm as I crouched next to them both. It left a smear of gore that left me feeling angry and guilty. I don’t know why I felt guilty, but I did. “You were right you know, Howard was a fucker — I even liked him a little, but it turns out was a fucker after all.”

She gave a little sigh and her head fell back into Ned’s lap. I looked up at him, panicked. 

“She’s just tired, she’s lost a lot of blood,” he reassured me. “Not so much now, but still.”

I opened my mouth to say something — though I didn’t know what the hell I was going to say — when Pitch’s eyes opened again and she continued her story.

 “I managed to put my knee into the crotch of the one blocking the door, but I only got as far as the elevator before someone shot me. Jesus, let me tell you, that hurt like hell. I fell, but managed to get to my feet and press the elevator button. I saw Howard slap the guy who shot me, and heard him say that they needed me alive.  Luckily the elevator was still on my floor and the door opened quickly. For once I was glad it was the only one in my cheap-ass building. When I got downstairs, I headed for Ned’s, it was closest. I just hoped they weren’t going after him too.”

Things started clicking into place, and not just for me.

“Aria isn’t a real label, is it? Dammit, all those questions about the ink…” Ned’s expostulation trailed away into silence. His voice sounded hollow.

“No… I don’t think so,” I said.

 “It must be a shell company. Some sort of front,” he continued. “Jesus, I knew it was all too easy, we should have checked them out more! Some new label with lots of money and even more questions suddenly coming along, offering us such a sweet deal. God, I should have listened to my instincts, my training...”

I looked at him questioningly, wondering what that was about, but he shook his head and just said, “We tried calling Zeke and Billy’s place. Someone answered, but it wasn’t either of them.” 

“Fuck,” I said.

“Yeah,” said Ned. Pitch just winced.

“We have to get to the hospital,” I said.

“Don’t be a fucking idiot,” she said through gritted teeth. “They’ll be looking for us there.”

Ned interjected, “She’s right. The ‘label’ knows she’s hurt and they’d know to cover the hospitals. And I don’t get the impression that these guys are hurting for manpower, you know. There were four of them at her apartment, plus Howard. The only reason they didn’t get us is that we were out. There was only one of them at my place, so I was still outside when Pitch came staggering to find me.” He shook his head in admiration. “She was bleeding pretty bad, and still walking like she had nothing more than a kink in her side. She’s a tough one.”

He looked up at me. “They couldn’t be bothered sending more than one agent for me, they just assumed I was some stoned out failure. And you, well, they never saw you use any effects. Never saw you talk any tech beyond mixing the sound. They thought you really were just some wanna be producer. It was Pitch that was talking the tech. Zeke and Billy were the ones really pushing it. So they must have figured that you weren’t even really part of the band, so they left you out of it. ”

We were both riveted, not really believing that it was Ned analyzing the situation like this. Something was swimming toward the surface of his eyes, and it occurred to me that there was more than one way to burn out. “I know someone,” he said. His voice was harder, but rusty, like a song that he hadn’t played in years. That he didn’t really like anymore. “It won’t be a safe place, but he might be able to help.”

I looked at Pitch, but she had her own problems right now. Her eyes were shut tight, fighting the pain. I nodded, not daring to speak, fear and anger boiling inside of me. I pulled Ned to one side.

“Agents?” I asked in a whisper. “Are you fucking sure? Are we in fucking spook country?” 

Ned looked at me. “We need to help Pitch. Now. And we can’t go to a hospital. Okay?”

I clenched my fists, ready to swing at anything, anyone. It was this kinda shit that made me quit school. This fucking government bullshit. 

“Fine,” I said. 

We shuffled her outside and into the back of the van, making her as comfortable as we could among the amps and power cables. We thought about tossing them, but instead we used them to keep her from rolling around in the back while we drove. We’d be moving fast. I sat in the back, her head in my lap, one hand on her wound, the other stroking her hair. As close as I’d ever been to her, and in its own way, as intimate as you could ever get. And a part of me wondered why I’d not done anything about how I felt about Pitch sooner. All my hesitations seemed so trivial now. 

Ned made the calls. He had to go through a couple of people to get the location, but he’d known roughly where it’d be. It was so damn odd, Ned being decisive, but by the time we hit the 427 he had his directions. It wasn’t an area of town I knew, but then I’d avoided suburbs ever since I’d moved out of my parents’ house. This wasn’t like where I’d grown up, though. My neighborhood had been all manicured lawns and three car garages; this had row houses with peeling paint scattered like bird shit amongst rusting apartment towers. We got off at West Mall and went north, pulling into the back of a shabby strip mall. We left Pitch lying in the back of the van, and rang the bell at one of the rear doors - the only one without any label. 

The battered door opened and the smell of tobacco and grass rolled out. A greasy shape with slick hair and dandruff was standing in the doorway, blocking the way. “Neddy boy,” the shape oozed, “never thought I’d see you again. But that don’t look like your blood, boyo.”

“Can the small talk, Gerry, just get the stretcher – she’s in the back.” Ned nodded his head towards the van. 

“That’s my boy. Your levity brings a smile to my face.”

I would have gotten annoyed, but as he was talking he was wrangling a stretcher with surprising efficiency, so I let it slide. In short order we got Pitch into the back of the storefront. 

It was a scene from the obsessive-compulsive renovator’s handbook. Studs and joists were exposed, but everything was sparking clean and bright. Finished surfaces painted white, plastic sheeting draped everywhere.

Gerry saw me looking around. “Lovely décor, eh? All very clean, and if it’s under sheeting, it’s sterile. I’d use glass walls, but they’re heavier to pack if it becomes necessary, if you know what I mean.” 

We rolled the stretcher next to a hospital bed surrounded by equipment and shrouded by plastic. I looked down at Pitch, lying there, unconscious. Her pale skin had shaded into green, a tone that left me feeling sick just looking at it. Her shirt was almost completely soaked in fresh and drying blood. She looked so small. Always larger than life, she seemed to have shrunk as she’d lost blood. I’d seen Pitch sleep while we’d been on tour, and even then, when she’d looked her most vulnerable, she’d never looked like this. So defenseless. I took a deep breath and forced myself to pay attention to what we would do to get her back together.

 Gerry pulled on a couple of ropes and the plastic rose into the air via an extensive series of pulleys, and suddenly we were in a small operating theatre. We opened one side and transferred Pitch to the bed; she groaned a little, but softer, weaker. I gritted my teeth for her and my hands gripped the bars of the stretcher until they ached. My throat was dry and my eyes were burning. 

“When did this happen?” asked Gerry - he was pulling on gloves and an operating gown. Between his sudden concentration and outfit, he seemed a changed man from the lump that had met us at the door. 

“About two hours ago,” said Ned. “She’s strong.”

“Yeah,” said Gerry, very, very focused on Pitch. He had opened up her shirt and cut away her bra. When he pulled away the fabric from the bullet wound, now visible as a red-black hole, the bleeding started again, bright and red. Gerry licked his lips, and prodded at the wound. Pitch made a pained sound and Gerry made a small grunting noise that made me feel a bit nauseated. And suddenly I could see the greasy creep who had first greeted us again. I wasn’t comfortable with some of the examination, especially with how far his bloodstained hands wandered, but I didn’t know enough to object. 

Ned was a bit more knowledgeable. “Don’t let your… interests… get the better of you, or even you wouldn’t be able to patch yourself up,” he warned.

“Neddy, you gone soft?”

“You sick son-of-a—” I took a step forward but Ned held up a hand. 

Then he leaned towards his ‘friend’, putting one hand on the back of Gerry’s neck and tapping him on the nose with two fingers. “Not when it counts. Remember just who I am, Gerry. Alright?”

“Jesus, a boy can’t even have his fun anymore.” 

Ned squeezed Gerry’s neck. His whole body went stiff and his hands started to twitch. Some sort of nerve hold, I guessed. I smiled at that, willing Ned to squeeze harder. 

But Gerry managed to stammer out, “I got it, Ned.”

Ned gave him a little shake. Like the big man was just a toy. 

Gerry’s voice was a bit shrill this time. “I fucking told you, I got it! Now let me work.”

 

Two hours later he was done, and Pitch was sleeping, or passed out. I couldn’t tell. I was exhausted, but wound tight. More sketchy than I’d ever been after a night of booze and coke. It was all I could do to swallow my rage and think of anything but increasingly bloody ways to make that bastard Howard pay for what he’d done. I knew that wouldn’t help. I had to try to figure out what to do next - something practical. Whether it would be safe to leave her here, or... fuck, I had no idea. That was the simple truth. As I was sitting, wrestling with my options, Ned pulled out a stack of cash, some U.S. currency, a few in Euros, and handed it to Gerry. “Supplies,” he said. 

Gerry grunted, leafed through the bills and passed Ned some ampoules, pills and bandages.

“So what now, Neddy boy?” Gerry began. “Riding off into the sunset with your damsel? Still got some bolt-holes scattered around the city?”

Ned looked at me and jerked his head toward the door. We stepped outside. Taking out his cigarettes, he lit up. I reached for a smoke for myself. He raised an eyebrow at me at that, but handed one over.

“So?” I asked, “Do you still have bolt-holes all over the city?”

He shook his head. “No, nothing secure.”

“Where then?”

He looked at me and shrugged. And in that moment, I realized that he was a burn out. Just never from what I expected. I couldn’t rely on him to make decisions outside of an adrenaline rush. Unless it was fight or flight. So any real planning was up to me. Great.  

“One of the fans…?” I suggested. “We could tell some story about wanting to keep the news out of a bad situation. They’d just eat it up.”

“Sure,” said Ned. “And so would their friends. It’s too risky. I mean what fan could resist telling their friends about having the lead singer from Black Hole couch surfing to escape a stalker. Even if they played us straight, there’s a search on for her. Who knows what they’ll do to get her back. We need to find a place so far off the grid that it would take a satellite to find us.”

“Fuck,” I said, ”I don’t...” Then it hit me.

We both said it together: “Alistair.”

  We went back inside and nodded an abrupt, uneasy goodbye to Gerry. Loading a still-unconscious Pitch into the van, we drove towards the highway.

We pulled into a strip club by the airport to call because they always had payphones. We didn’t dare use our cellphones in case they could track the call. The line was fuzzy; Alistair bounced his calls through shifting exchanges. 

“Who is it?”

“It’s me.”

He paused. “How do I know that?”

“Look,” I said, “This isn’t one of your delusional fantasies. Right now it’s all for real. Right now, well, I need to find you – no names, no locations.”

There was a pause. “Blue and gold, north of 401.”

“Got it,” I said.

I hung up and Ned looked at me. “He’s parked at that fucking Scandinavian furniture store up near Bayview,” I said. “And let’s hope that anyone listening doesn’t find the location any easier to figure out than their assembly instructions.” 

We tried Zeke and Billy again, and got nothing; we looked at each other, a little sick, and then checked our messages. There was one for each of us. My, weren’t we popular. 

Ned let me listen to his. “Mr. Wheatly? Ned Wheatly? Well, we did a background check on you, and let me say that it would be in your interest, as well as that of your band mates, if you were to come in and chat with us. We know you have the girl, and we would like her too, along with her board designs. Call soon.” They left a number and a name. Richard Howard. 

My message was from the police. They were looking for the band members, as witnesses to a supposed ‘incident.’  

Ned did make a call, to check the number Howard had left. It turned out to be part of the anti-terrorism branch of CSIS, spook central in Canada. The alternative news feeds had reported that the branch facilitated the work of American agents in Canada, and while Ottawa denied it, no one really believed them. Ned and I looked at each other. We were in deep shit.

The drive up was quiet; it was after evening rush hour, thank god. Ned and I both looked back frequently at Pitch in the back seat. She still looked pale, but her breathing was quiet and steady and I didn’t feel quite so sick.

Alistair’s Winnebago was at the far end of the parking lot, in shadow, beside a small utility building. The parking lot lights nearby were conveniently dark. Alistair was deft at finding concealment in plain sight. He came out just as we drove up, dressed, as always, in pinstripe pants and white shirt open at the collar.

“Well, well, well. I haven’t seen you in this much trouble since you got kicked out of school,” said Alistair. “Looks like old habits die hard.”

“Cut the reminiscences, Alistair,” I snapped. “We have more serious problems than a hack of some prof’s encryption algorithm.”

“That just happened to be for the military?”

“One, it was for their recruiting department, not combat, and two, I don’t give a shit – will you help us or not?”

“Alright, alright, jeez, a boy can’t even have a little fun these days.”

Ned and I exchanged looks.

“I need an upgrade to my ink,” I said. “I have an idea for a new interface.”

Alistair shook his head. “Jesus, I had twenty-three patents by age thirty, and you still blow my mind. No wonder your parents were so pissed when you got swallowed by the underground.”

“No worse than you – you see half the shows on our tour,” I said.

“Yeah,” said Alistair, “but I’m a paranoid schizophrenic. What’s your excuse?”

“Bad attitude.”

We were all laughing when Pitch staggered from the van. “Wha’s so fuckin’ funny? Zeke and Billy are missin’, prolly perm’ently, and you goofballs are havin’ a fuckin’ sharing moment?”

Ned and I froze. It was Alistair who moved. “Jesus, Pitch, come in – the bunk has clean linens so you can sleep there.” His eyes widened as he took in her condition. “And don’t you worry, we were just laughing about the revenge we’re going to take on the bastards who did this to you.” 

Pitch took a step, but the drugs had kicked in. She staggered and Alistair caught her. 

“Thas alright then,” she slurred, and passed out.

Alistair carried her inside, looking as protective as a bear with its cub. He kept watch over her that night while Ned and I discussed options.

“The key,” said Ned, “is to find out how far this whole thing has gone. Over the last twenty years intelligence agencies have spent so much time chasing terrorists that they’re beginning to act like them. They are fractured into specialty units that look like terrorist cells. Fear of infiltration justifies the firewalls between units, so their unofficial motto has become, ‘make it happen or make it go away.’ If this is all still inside Howard’s unit, we need to make sure they can’t take this operation any further.”

“Fuck Ned, how do you know all this?”

Ned looked at me. “It’s enough to know that I know. We are fucked if this goes outside of this unit. We have to figure out how to stop that from happening.” 

“And how exactly do we do that? Kill’em all? Jesus, I don’t want to think about that. Besides, we need to figure out what happened to Zeke and Billy. If they were taken, we need to figure out how to get them out.”

Ned paused a moment, and studied his hands intently. Flexed them twice and then, “If, IF, they’re alive, they’re in a safe-house being interrogated.  Someplace the unit uses to do its dirty work. They should have filed a report, proof of progress and all that, but they won’t list the location –  it’s the kind of place where the ‘off the books’ things happen. 

“I’d drop all this now and just run, but they’ll want to tie up loose ends and those loose ends would be us. These guys are not the boys in blue; they’re international security, more privateers than police. If we don’t hit them first, and hit hard, they’ll rip us all to pieces. And I’m not being metaphorical.”

I looked at Ned for a second and then sighed. “What do you think we need to do?”

“You need to hack into the agency and find out who knows what.”

“I can do that,” I said. 

“Then it’s time for some recon.”

I used Alistair’s rig to hack the number Agent Howard had left, prepping the code and sending it back up the line. I breached the first firewall and the information flowed like a river, with me looking for the source. It sounds simple, but it wasn’t – I’m just that good. My family was disappointed in me for a reason.

The Rapid Cover Unit was small, with a few researchers and a handful of field agents. The Unit helped agents establish multiple identities quickly and easily, using the newest techniques. It all looked pretty trivial to me. 

I made the mistake of saying this aloud. 

Ned snapped, “Look, man, don’t be a fool. These guys might be minor players, but they’re trained, observant and ruthless. They managed to figure out that you actually made something new, really innovative, and that wasn’t just the usual hype and noise of the entertainment business. They may have gotten details wrong, but they got us all, and if it hadn’t been for one night of drinking, we’d all be sitting in a containment cell somewhere. By now they probably know that you’re the key, especially if they have Zeke and Billy, so we’d better just get this ball rolling.”

I didn’t have much to say after that.

 

The next day Ned and I were sniping at each other with increasing frequency. We were frustrated; we needed to get rid of the Rapid Cover Unit without looking like we’d done anything. The last thing we wanted was more people involved. 

It was Pitch who came up with the solution, and a good thing, too. 

"Don't do anything; get them to do the work for you." She was using her “stating the obvious" voice as a change from her “fuck off, I’m sick” voice.

“And how do you propose we do that, delirious one?” I asked.

Pitch giggled; she really was delirious. "Be at one with your enemy, silly. You're the one who’s always going on about that eastern philosophy and shit."

And it twigged in my moderately thick brain. 

Ned whacked himself on the forehead. "I'll get working on the sound files.”

Pitch nodded sagely and then threw up into the bucket beside the foldaway bed. Secondary infections are a bitch.

Two hours later I was sniffing ozone once again as Joey added another board. He’d made the run from his shop to Alistair’s RV after Alistair had dropped by. Joey was trying to act cool, but I knew he was getting a kick out of the scene. Luckily for us, he’d also had a few run-ins with the police, so he did understand about keeping his mouth shut. The new board ran from the back of my wrist down to my thumb, and it hurt like hell. Even Joey knew that this one stung, and it was a tough one, so he was concentrating. Alistair was busy implementing the other half of my latest design, a hand-held card. Once Joey was done I headed outside the RV for a drink and a cigarette. I could hear Ned inside, cursing. This was only the second board he’d had implanted and he was definitely not enjoying the process. I didn’t blame him.

Eventually, Ned emerged from the van, flexing his hand under the polyacryl bandage. I was just finishing my  beer.

“This thing better work,” said Ned.

“It’ll be anything you want it to be,” I said.

“It’ll look like anything, it won’t be anything.”

“Whatever. I’m not trying to give you a gun, I’m trying to make you magic. Houdini, not Robocop.”

We started working with the cards right away. I felt the burn under my skin as we initiated the uncured circuits. We had a little fun with it, imaging business cards and stuffed animals. When I tossed Joey a light saber I knew we were ready to start digging after our Agent Howard.  

 

*****

 

Ned and I were camouflaged as a couple of burnouts looking to fail their driver’s tests at one of the Ministry offices downtown. CSIS occupied two floors of the same building. 

We clutched our numbers – along with the rest of the hapless applicants – and kept our eyes on the elevators. The chime rang and the elevator doors opened to reveal today’s winner. She was big; a good match for my size. She had her security badge awkwardly clutched in one hand, along with her cigarettes, and she was holding coffee in the other.

We followed her through the revolving doors and as she fumbled to find her lighter I bumped into her from behind, jostling the arm with the card. It fell, along with her smokes. I scooped up the card and then just stood there, fingers twitching, staring blankly, as I processed the information on it.

Ned stepped in quickly and turned on the charm. “Sorry ma’am,” he said, bending down to pick up her cigarettes and offer them back to her. “My brother’s having trouble with his medication and is a little out of things these days. Can I give you a light?”

“Um, I really need that card,” she said. She didn’t look particularly worried; it was the city, crazies were everywhere. But still, she worked for the spooks, the last thing we wanted was for her to get nervous. I needed to be fast.

“Oh, ah, yeah. Could you just give him a minute? The doc said to try not to disturb him too much when he gets like this.” 

My fingers went a little faster. I almost had her biometric information. She stepped forward to take her card, looking increasingly impatient but not yet overly concerned about my addled state.

Ned moved towards her. “No please, let me. He gets a bit freaky sometimes.” He stood in front of me and waved his hands in my face. I could barely see him through the retinal overlay. He gave me a shove,  careful not to disturb my still-twitching hand. 

“I need that card now!” said the woman. 

“What?” I said, still caught in the last of the flow of data. “Oh yeah, yeah, sorry. Here.” And I held it out to her. 

She snatched it from me. “These things are for security, you know.”

“I hear you, ahh…” and Ned peered at the card, “Abigail. My brother’s really having a rough time right now. I’m sure a perceptive lady like you can see how messed up he is.”

I muttered, “I’m not that bad.”

Abigail stared at us for a second, and her expression softened a little. Then she took a close look at the card and said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude, but they’ve been very strict lately.”

Ned smiled and held up his lighter. “Well at least they let you out for a smoke now and again.”

She smiled back, and accepted the light. “Now and again.”

“Rough day?” asked Ned, as he lit his own.

 

*****

 

A few hours later, Abigail got a few strange looks when she went back to the office. It was after five – the time we’d chosen when we’d discovered, as we’d chatted over a smoke, that Abigail wasn’t one to work late. I just hunched over the takeout I’d brought to fuel my ‘overtime’ and bitched until my co-workers had their fill and straggled home.  Logging onto Abigail’s computer was a snap since I had a copy of her key card and thumbprint. I didn’t even try to crack the paranoia-level encryption on the Rapid Cover Unit’s server; I went around it, sneaking through the cracks between off-the-shelf admin-ware and the secure systems.

Following Ned’s advice, I looked for the incident report the night our lives went to shit. And while there was mention of a reconnaissance of our homes (it was a bit eerie to read just how much they knew about us) there was no mention of the shooting, or of Zeke and Billy’s capture. Absolutely nothing. And the report was filed, of course, by Agent Howard. Time to find out a little bit more about the son-of-a-bitch.

Just as I was to starting to get into the details of his file, a man walked out of one of the offices. He was balding and overweight, but seemed remarkably light on his feet, like a linebacker just out of training. He gazed around the office, a smug and proprietary look on his face. And saw me.

“Abigail!” he said. “Working late, are you?”

“Yeah,” I said, improvising in a minor panic, “Agent Howard got quite short with me today. He wanted me to finish up some case summaries.”

“Ah, well, our Agent Howard is a fine worker, though he can be a bit over zealous at times.” And without warning he swung around my desk. “So what’s he obsessing about this time?”

I had started closing windows as soon as he started talking to me, but everything was moving slow because I was working through a hack. The first thing he saw was the search page of the personnel records database.

“You don’t have the authorization for that,” he said. His voice was suddenly hard, muscle showing under the padding of good humour.

I started to sweat. I could hide it with the hologram, but that didn’t stop the nausea I was feeling. “I don’t even know how I accessed these files,” I protested. “This damn computer keeps dumping me places I don’t want to go.”

“Ah,” said the man. “Not that you’d want to peruse personnel files, eh?”

I let some of my tension show then. A little blush, some sweat on my upper lip and forehead.

“Well,” I stammered, “I may have read a few lines of one of them, but I couldn’t see anything much.” I put my hand on the screen to turn it towards my interrogator and clicked on the ‘next’ button. As the window came up, it flickered as I ‘pushed’ the hologram, but the screen was too large for my range. The ‘restricted’ sign that I placed was too small and you could see the file around the edges; Howard’s. Go figure. Still, I couldn’t see anything of significance.

“Well, it looks like you’ve managed to find your way to your nemesis. Coincidental, eh?”

“Ahhhmm…” was all I managed to get out. Very eloquent.

“You know that this is a serious violation of protocol. I’m going to have to call security about this.”

I panicked, not knowing what to do, but then suddenly I thought of Pitch flirting with Howard, and shifted more of Abigail’s bosom into view. “Can’t we consider this an exchange of favours?” My pitiful attempt at seduction wasn’t helped by the fact that I was in the body of an overweight, middle-aged chain smoker. 

The man stared at me for a few seconds. Hard. Then his voice took on a forced levity. “Well, just don’t let me catch you at this again, even if it is our Agent Tightass. If you’d gotten in, I’d have had no choice, but as it is we’ll consider this as payback for your help on the Padwar project.” He took a breath and seemed to let the tension of the moment go. Then, with a literal wink and nudge (heavy enough to make my chair move) he breezed off.

I spent a while recovering from the shakes and started digging. Howard was definitely going to pay.

Howard’s career read like a CSIS recruitment pamphlet. An engineer with a doctorate in PoliSci, he’d been recruited by CSIS direct from campus. From there he’d climbed the ranks, until he was stationed for a time in Mumbai. There he’d run into a local Indian freelance  operative, one Savita Agrawal, and had developed a relationship. There was a small portfolio of photos of the two of them, even a couple of them splashing about on a beach. It seemed the bastard had good taste - she was a knockout. 

It was all there in his psych profile. 

Client has expressed hostility to the idea he has been the subject of another agency’s profiling activities. Evidence of this failure of perspective can be seen in one of his increasingly frequent and hostile outbursts. I have included a sample here to illustrate:

 “Savita may have done some work for the R&AW, but that doesn’t mean that she was out to track me. She was just there on routine surveillance. Jesus, India surely has the right to send their own agents to their own parties. Was I not supposed to talk to anyone? Would that have helped me blend in with the embassy staff, eh? Is that policy at Foreign Affairs? It would certainly explain some of the messes they’ve created. Are they the ones who complained? Was I being too diplomatic for the diplomatic service?”

“Would that explain why you had dinner with Ms Agrawal on fourteen separate occasions, including several late night forays to the club district and one weekend together at a resort just south of Mumbai?”

“Okay, the resort thing was out of hand, and you’ll note that I stopped things after that.”

“But you still keep in contact.”

“Yeah? So?  You’ve surveilled my emails with her, you’ll note that I’ve never revealed any confidential information.”

“You’ve  discussed internal relationships.”

“I’ve complained about my fucking boss, is that against the law now?”

“Are you suggesting that this is circumspect behaviour for an agent in intelligence?”

At this point the client began shouting and left the interview. I feel that it would be appropriate to remove the agent from active fieldwork and place him in a domestic assignment until such time as he regains perspective.

So he found himself stuck in the rather obscure domestic Rapid Cover Unit. 

Howard’s attitude hadn’t improved in his new unit. Apparently he’d been the lead on a bit of encryption tech developed by Narayan Padwar in Saskatoon (Aha, I thought to myself as I read the file, this must have been Abigail’s favour). It had been classified and then declassified, with minimal paperwork for either step, despite Howard’s objections. It seemed that the Unit Director, Andrew Phillips (the burly man from the office, as it turned out), enjoyed appropriating technology for vaguely-defined national security reasons and then distributing the ‘peripheral’ (read repackaged) technologies to companies controlled by his friends. And however questionable Howard’s judgment regarding Savita, he was still a ‘by the books’ kind of guy. So he filed a complaint, but Phillips loved running the Unit just the way it was. The movie studios used a lot of these transferred technologies, so he got to meet the ‘important’ people and to bang the occasional starlet. It all drove Howard crazy, but Phillips had the political chops to keep him in his place. 

The only way we were going to find Zeke and Billy, would be if we could convince Howard to do something reckless. To defy his superiors.

It was time to push our G-man over the edge.

 

*****

 

“Savita Agrawal?”

“Yes?”

“We’re calling you on behalf of Mumbai Telecom. We were wondering if you would be willing to take part in our survey on your bandwidth utilization?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t have time right now, have a good day.” 

 

“Could I speak to Ms. Agrawal, please?”

“Speaking.”

“Congratulations, you have won–”

“Do you people always have to call me during dinner? I’m not interested.”

 

“You know,” said Pitch, as we planned yet another script we’d use to annoy Savita, “this would be fun if it wasn’t real.”

“Sometimes I think you missed your true calling,” said Ned.

“No, no I most definitely did not,” said Pitch, more serious than I’d ever heard her. We went back to work.

 

“Ms. Agrawal?”

“Who is this?”

“I’m calling on behalf of–”

*click*

 

“Enough?” asked Pitch, “She’s getting rather annoyed.”

“Yeah, that should do it,” Ned replied, and he sent me the compilation file.

“Alright,” I said, “did you want to try it out?”

“Sure thing.” Pitch cleared her throat, not that it made any difference, and said, “Would you like me to get you some tea?” in the slightly exotic British accent of the Indian upper-classes.

We smiled.

 

 Savita walked into the restaurant. She wore a red dress, clingy but not so tight as to look cheap. Every movement was suggestive. Her hair was up, dark and shimmering as a raven’s wing. She turned slightly, talking to the Maitre D’, and we saw the dress was cut to expose an expanse of dusky, luminous skin from the nape of her neck to the dimples we could see in her lower back.

I heard a small sound from a table close to ours and saw Howard staring. Like everyone else in the restaurant. I took a drink and glanced at Ned, currently disguised as a remarkably stylish-looking businessman. He’d done a nice job on his face - he looked like his younger, plumper brother. Self-satisfied rather than haunted, and with a voice that was filled with aggrieved entitlement. The waitresses didn’t even like him, and usually he was a favourite, always getting the best service. 

“She’s got style, eh?” he remarked, his voice even rankling me, who knew better. “No matter who she’s wearing.” 

I nodded, not trusting my voice. She was flawless in both her poise and voice. She was both Pitch and not Pitch, and she was perfect. It was obvious that Howard found her equally captivating, though not for quite the same reasons. He stood, almost to attention, as Savita swayed towards him. He gave her a slightly awkward welcome kiss on each cheek and remained standing until the Maitre D’ had pulled out a chair for her to take her place at the table. 

“Wow, Savita, you look great,” Howard managed. I was impressed; I wasn’t even verbal yet.

“Why, thank you Richard. How nice of you to say so,” she said, gazing at him through her long eyelashes.

Howard was lost again. The restaurant, which had gone rather quiet with Savita’s entrance, started to buzz again with the hum of conversation. We watched the silence at their table. Savita waited, smiling, until Howard managed to pull himself from his reverie. That was our Pitch, always knowing when to let the moment be - it reminded me of when she was on stage, bathing in the roar of the crowd, how they loved to adore her.

“You’ve let your hair grow,” he said.  “It suits you.” 

Pitch spent a moment fussing with her curly locks. “You think so? Well, perhaps I’ll keep it just for you.” 

“I thought you said you disapproved of long hair on Indian women,” said Howard. I believe you said that you considered it too stereotypical.”

“Oh, well, a woman does have the right to change her mind, don’t you think? Still, it’s a bit of a trial.” She smiled sweetly. “But I’m glad you like it, after all this time.” 

I  know it was stupid, but I really didn’t like the way she was flirting with Howard. It all seemed a bit too… sincere.

“Well, I didn’t really think I’d see you again, despite my hopes,” said Howard. “You were always affectionate, but I rather thought that I misunderstood the situation in Mumbai.”

“Oh?” said Savita, with a wicked smile. “And what situation was that?”

“Ahhh, well, we… umm.” said Howard eloquently.

“Oh, Richard,” laughed Savita. It was a good laugh, which we’d based on one call where we’d interrupted a dinner party. Boy, had that died quick on the phone. “You always were so easy to fluster about these things. I never thought I’d see you again either. After all, you left Mumbai in rather a hurry, so I assumed things went poorly for you, which is why I never really responded. And while I’m terribly fond of you, I’ve never been one to dwell on things I can’t have. I am a realist after all. But I’m here now, so…”

“So, what does bring you here?” asked Howard.

“Work. A possible deal with one of the film studios here,” said Savita. “Apparently there’s some sort of magic special effect coming to market from a government agent gone rogue, and I’m trying to broker a deal with some folks out of L.A.”

 “Ah, now I know why you really wanted to see me,” said Howard. “You seemed a little more subtle in Mumbai.” 

Howard didn’t look pissed though, he looked pleased, like he’d scored a point. 

I looked over at Ned, who shrugged. “Everyone’s got their kinks, man, spies tend to get off on subterfuge.”

“I guess,” I said. I took a bite of my meal and concentrated on Pitch’s conversation once more. She was still scrambling a bit to assuage Howard.

 “And what did that get me? I didn’t get you, and I got tagged as an Indian agent, which set me back quite a bit, let me tell you. Sometimes one has to be bold.”

 “A change in strategy?”

 “More a change in tactics.”

“There are easier ways of making money, you know,” said Howard. “Legitimate ways.”

“Perhaps, but the money’s never as good. And you know, I do truly enjoy finding things that we can use. In fact, I’m quite good at it.”

“We?” asked Howard.

“Oh, Ricky… India of course. Just because I work freelance doesn’t mean I don’t care about my own country.” 

“How altruistic. I guess you haven’t changed that much.”

Savita’s voice hardened. “Look, Richard darling, this is one of those things you never did really understand. I’m the one who decides what’s important to my country. Not some bloody bureaucrat who acquires technology for his own benefit. I’m being honest with you because of what we’ve shared.”

Ned and I exchanged a smile when we heard that line. It was Alistair who had suggested it. Like a lot of paranoids, he watched a lot of spy movies. 

“You gotta make him feel special,” he’d said to Pitch when we were workshopping our little improvisation. “Like he’s the shit. He’ll believe it because he wants to believe it.” 

Apparently Alastair had been right. 

“I won’t betray my country, Savita, not even for you.”

“Oh please, Richard, do spare me the melodrama. Point one: if it’s really, really big, well, it will end up at the American NSA, no matter who gets it first. Point two: if you bring this technology into your office, Phillips will sell it to the same buyers that I would. Point three: if I sell it to the Indian government, well, they’re allies with the West and they’ll share eventually, and that means Canada gets it. Point four: if I succeed I’ll get rich and you might just get a piece of that,” and here Savita put her hands over Howard’s. “Help me, Richard. Or are you telling me that you’re happy doing espionage in Toronto. Wouldn’t you like something a bit, well, bigger?”

The way she said that word, it held all the contempt one could inject. The implication that the cities of Canada were, and would always be, provincial backwaters. And people like Howard, they always thought that was true. It was a sort of magic, really; I knew what Pitch thought about that kind of attitude, we’d run into it as a band. But hearing her say it with such conviction – I could scarcely believe it was Pitch. 

“And I’d get you as well, I suppose. Jesus, I guess I should be impressed that you’ve done your homework, but I don’t like being played.” said Howard.  

“Richard, Richard,” said Savita, “you can have me anyway, you always could. I wasn’t the one who held back in Mumbai. Fucking you was never part of my assignment. You weren’t that important; I was just getting a personality profile. And I did. You’re an uptight, loyal, repressed and passionate WASP, and I have a perverse taste for that in my men. My schooling, I suppose. Damn near got you too.”

I didn’t like her tone then. Didn’t like it at all. I’d seen her flirt on the road. Saw who she brought home. Straight arrow boys, looking all pleased with themselves that they’d nailed some alterna-chick. Fucking assholes, the lot of them, little junior versions of Howard, and here she was playing doe eyes with the bastard.

“I should have let you, all things considered,” muttered Howard. Then a bit more loudly he said, “I don’t remember you being this… forthright in Mumbai. You seem so… different.”

Pitch laughed. “You mean crass. Well Richard, we’ve both changed a bit since Mumbai.” 

Howard looked down, then looked back at her.  “Not through any choice of mine. The agency won’t listen to anything I say. If the source is suspect, then everything the source says is crap. They’d fire me, but they need someone to do the grunt work. I’ll show the fucking bastards, I’ve got a couple of… aces in the hole.” He smiled – it wasn’t pleasant. “I’m still willing to do right by the Agency if they do right by me, but unless they do, I’m going to do the right thing, my own way.”

Pitch smiled and gave a look that would have melted my spine. “Oh Richard, you always were obsessed with honour.”

“I’m just sick of Phillips using his position to help his friends and fuck actresses. It used to be easy to decide what the right thing to do was.”

Pitch leaned forward and slid her hand a little further up Howard’s arm. “I’d like to help you decide what you want,” she said, with a mischievous smile straight out of Bollywood. “If you’ll let me.”

Howard’s hand jerked. Then stopped. He looked at Savita for a moment as she gave him no more than an enigmatic half smile. Finally, he reached across the table and grazed his thumb across Savita’s cheek. “Yes,” he said.

Dinner ended abruptly for them.

“She…” I started.

Ned signaled the waitress for another round.

 

*****

 

Pitch came in as Ned and I were struggling to get ready for our next meeting. Ned, the bastard, just gave her a bleary grin and a thumbs-up. 

She looked at me, a smile and a look of triumph flickering about her face. I looked back at her and I saw the smug expression that I’d seen so many times before, after she’d had a good shag with some meathead I didn’t like. And the words were out of my mouth, before I could stop them.

 “Feeling better, I see,” I said. “I’m sure that Zeke and Billy would be happy to see you out and about.” I had the satisfaction of seeing something flicker in her face, and it was then that I realized that it was something else I’d seen there. A triumph of sorts, but one that she’d paid a price for. But it was only there for a moment.

“Oh yes,” she said, and stretched. “And you’ll be pleased to know that the hologram holds up even under the most exhaustive physical exertion.” Her voice had been steady, and low, but I heard bitterness creep in. “Now that you’ve got your dig in at the person who’s been shot, and pimped, and gone way beyond the call of duty to her friends, I’d like to give myself and my stitches a rest.” She headed to her cot. 

“Score one for Pitch,” said Ned quietly.

I gave him a sour look, stomach churning with guilt and anger. Ned ignored  me, focusing only on the next step. Otherwise all the shit we’d been through would be for nothing.

We were planning a ‘chance’ encounter. When we’d picked through Phillips’ personnel file we’d been fortunate enough to run across a name that we both knew – Simon Jenkins. He’d started years ago with the Torturers but then he’d moved on to work on special effects in the movies and became a name. 

We’d never met him, but had heard the stories. So we dug up footage, interviews and the like, and that gave us voice and appearance.

 

‘Jenkins’ ran into Phillips at Ouzo, the formerly hip restaurant in Yorkville, something that even I knew, though Phillips seemed oblivious to it — no matter how much he was trying for cool. “Andrew,” I said, “fancy meeting you here. You been holding out on your old friends? Tired of parties and all that?”

A pause. “Simon, Simon, how are you? Haven’t seen you about for a while. Saw you were nominated. Good job,” said Phillips.

“Thanks Andy, thanks so much.” My voice made me shudder a bit inside. You got so used to your own voice that you didn’t even hear it, but now I had this nasal tone to my voice that set my teeth on edge. Jenkins had been a great tech, but he always had sounded a bit like a weasel. “But you’re avoiding the issue,” I continued, “I’ve heard stories and I want to get in on the game. It is my specialty, after all, and I can get you top dollar. The nomination opens doors, eh?”

Phillips blinked and his gaze got sharper. I swear I heard everything click into place. “Simon, you know how these things work. I have… obligations, as you well know. But I assure you that you, my man, are at the top of my list just as soon as any of the material is available for release.”

“Good to hear, good to hear. Oh, you’ve likely heard that we’ve got a new project coming to town with Scarlett. We’ll see you at the wrap party?”

“Wouldn’t miss it, Simon.” 

 

*****

 

Pitch had lunch with Howard the next day. When she got back, she peeled a dermal off the back of her wrist and pasted it onto a projector. A somewhat distorted perspective of her meeting with Howard, a wrist’s eye view, began to play. It was some fascinating watching. 

“You were wondering if the agency would play you straight weren’t you?” began Savita.

“Yes….”

“I don’t think that they will. Phillips has been meeting with buyers,” said Savita.

“What? Already? He knows nothing.”

“Well, darling, that hasn’t stopped his type before, has it? The agency certainly doesn’t seem to be doing anything to stop him. And, I think that people may know that I’m hunting his quarry.”

“Shit.”

“Yes, he is moving a bit fast, isn’t he? Perhaps he’s been given free reign. Maybe he’s introduced some of his superiors to some fuckable starlets and they’re giving him a pass on this one,” said  Savita. “Honestly, though, Richard, does it make any difference why?”

“Do you have any proof?” 

 ‘Savita’ peeled a memory chip off of her thumb and handed it to Howard. 

“Watch and learn.”

He gave her a glance and popped it onto a small vid dermal on the back of his hand.

We watched Howard go pale.

 

We were ready. Or more precisely, Agent Howard and the Rapid Cover Unit were ready; all of them ready to explode on a hair-trigger, all of them itching for one last chance at the prize. So I sent an e-mail to Howard, telling him I was ready to deal. I was quite proud of it. It managed to be both whining and demanding, exactly what you would expect from a silver spoon rebel. It was a bit of a risk, but Pitch was convinced that between her charms and Phillips’ schemes he would come to Savita with this news.

He did. And once again, Pitch brought home a lovely holographic recording of Howard’s irritation. “He’s onboard,” she told us tersely. Scrolling through most of their meeting, she hit play on the dermal.

 Howard is staring down at his clenched fists. “You know,” he grates, “I must have known.” He pauses, looking up at her. “Known that this one was different. That I’m different.” He reaches out and takes Pitch’s hand. “You’re my proof, that I was right to pocket a couple of aces. To hold those two cards back from the game.”

There’s a catch in time as he says this. I’m feeling it, now as I watch it, and I see the same thing happening to Pitch onscreen. For the first time I see her composure break. Just for a second, her eyes go wide, her lips part and there’s a small gasp. We knew it, but we couldn’t be certain. We suspected; guessed the reason they weren’t in the data base. Now we knew. He had Zeke and Billy. 

He doesn’t notice her lapse though, he’s still going on about what a bastard Phillips has been. How he’s outsmarted them all. I look over at Pitch and I see her eyes are red-rimmed, she’s living it all over again. I reach over to take her hand, but she shifts and turns away. I don’t know if it’s to hide her tears or because she thinks I’m the guilty one, that I’m the cause of all of this. 

I know that’s the truth of it. And I hate Howard for this guilt, hate him for his self-righteousness, and part of me, right now, hates Pitch for regaining her composure so quickly after that small lapse.

“Cards?” asks Pitch, her voice bright. “What cards?” 

Howard looks at her, and speaks, his tone teasing, even coy, “What’s the point of having cards if you show them before the game is over? Don’t worry, it’ll be a great game. We’ll have the winning hand, and so we’ll get to set the rules.

Pitch laughs. “See? Setting policy is fun.” And she kisses Howard to seal the agreement. “More fun than a handshake,” she promises, handing him a disk full of my reaper code. “This will make you a free Agent.”

“Just like you,” he says.

She kisses him again. “Yes.”

 

*****

 

We leaked the meeting to Phillips through ‘Jenkins’ and Phillips played our game by playing his, pulling his agents into the mix. It meant that the whole situation would be finally, truly, closed. We set a meeting down by the dockyards, just for effect. Sometimes I’m a traditionalist.

I stepped out from behind a container, myself for the first time in a long time. It felt good. “Agent Howard, I assume?” 

“Well you’ve certainly led us on a merry chase, sir,” he said.

“But you have some assurances for me?”

“Yes and no. Your running has rather compromised the situation. It turns out that my superior has become rather infatuated with the idea of selling you out to his own contacts.”

 “What the fuck?” I demanded. “So who can I trust?” I didn’t have to fake the frustration evident in my voice.

“You mean, to not make you just disappear? No one inside the system. Trust me, you don’t want to end up like your missing band mates.”

My mouth worked a bit then. The two-faced son of a bitch was still pretending he didn’t have his ‘couple of aces’ locked away somewhere. Finally I could get something out. 

“So what then?” I said, my voice strangled. “Who the fuck am I supposed to work with?” 

“You’re frustrated,” said Howard, “I get that. So am I. So I’ve brought in someone who can help us both. Savita?”

And right on cue, ‘Savita’ stepped out. I frowned; it was remarkably easy for me to do, seeing them together.

“Who the hell is this?” I challenged. And part of me really wondered.

“She’s my contact.”

“So you’re turning on your own agency?”  I scowled at him. “Why should I believe you?”

“Because you don’t have any choice. You want to trust the agency? Do that and you’ll end up like your little faggot friends.”

I was seething. It was him that took Zeke and Billy, not the Agency, but I couldn’t really let on that I knew. I was going to rip his throat out for what he’d done to them. “Fine,” I said.

And then I heard the scuff of a shoe off to my right. Time froze for an instant. I felt the cool breeze off the lake; saw the moon before it was briefly obscured by clouds scudding across the night sky; was aware of the pavement, rough and potholed, and still holding puddles from a morning rain.

I turned, my heart hammering hard in my chest, and saw Phillips. Any hint of the good old boy I’d met briefly when I’d been Abigail was gone, or hiding behind body armor and a scowl. 

He said, “Alright, I’ve heard enough. Take them all,” and time splintered.

Agents surrounded us, their faces obscured by night-vision goggles but still recognizable from the RCU database. There had to be at least a dozen of them; I could only hope that the hologram field extended as far into  infra-red as theory predicted. 

I felt panicked, but we had planned for this and I managed my line. At least it was an easy one. “Bastard,” I screamed at Howard, “you set me up!” I ran, pushing an image of myself off in one direction while I cloaked myself with empty space and waited, hoping that would keep me safe from the press of surrounding agents. A couple of them ran to intercept me and then stopped, staring at the empty space where the image had been.

Savita stood with Howard for a moment, a brief hint of solidarity, but then Pitch spoke, with something definitely off script. “Well Richard, looks like things slipped through your fingers once again.”  Then Savita gave a little wave and sprinted around one of the containers, heading in one direction. I trusted that Pitch, now invisible, was heading in another.

Howard’s face flashed confusion and then went absolutely blank. He looked to one side and shouted, “Follow me.” And two more agents stepped out from the crates. I recognized them from the files I’d hacked: McCulloch and Singh. They moved stiffly, awkwardly. “Great,” I thought to myself, “a complication.”

Both Pitch and I had moved fast enough (we did have an unfair advantage) to elude the loose ring of agents. I was still invisible. Howard gave a snarl as he charged after Savita, knocking one of Phillip’s agents sprawling as he ran into the maze of ship containers.  

As soon as Howard disappeared from general view Ned popped up from behind one of the other storage units, wearing Howard’s face and screamed, “Backstabbing bastards, you’ll fucking pay for this!” He fired dramatic shots at the agents from his fake gun before dropping back out of sight.

I moved around the periphery of the scene as the agents were seeking cover and drawing their weapons. I began throwing illusions of agents pulling guns on each other, and images of Howard into the midst of the agents. Pitch and Ned were doing the same. There was a great deal of chaos as the agents started to shoot at each other. We’d given legitimacy to their natural spook  paranoia  and now blood began to flow.

I had to take care not to get caught by a flying bullet. I might be invisible but I wasn’t impervious. Edging around the action I discovered Singh and McCulloch hunkered behind a stack of barrels and cast a quick strobe of light above them. They scattered, both looking a bit panicked, and went opposite ways around the barrels. 

Ned saw my signal, as well as the opportunity for confusion, and stepped out from behind one of the containers to confront McCulloch, looking like Howard. McCulloch stared back at him expectantly, but his posture seemed wary. Howard’s allies confused me; neither agent was known to be particularly close to him, but they’d responded to his commands earlier. But none of that mattered now. When Ned raised his gun, McCulloch’s mouth opened, but no sounds came out. 

I took that as my own cue to act, and went the other way around the barrels to find Singh no more than a few feet away, seemingly  paralyzed by the sudden absence of his partner. I stepped out of a shadow, reappearing as McCulloch. Singh’s relief was palpable. Until I pointed my ‘gun’ at him. He looked at me for a moment, incredulous, frozen. Then there was a shot and I heard a curse. My head jerked towards the sound, and that was all the time Singh needed; he bowled into me, knocking the wind out of me, and then he was gone. 

As I knelt, trying to catch my breath, I felt a presence beside me and was filled with sudden dread, thinking an agent had found me.  I cloaked again, knowing it was probably too late, but it was only Ned.  I let my cloak drop and he grabbed me and hauled me to my feet, shoving a real gun into my hand; he must have snatched it from one of the fallen agents. 

“Keep moving,” he said, and  pushed me towards a gap between two containers. 

I staggered away, and took a moment to catch my breath, cloaked in the shadows. Then I heard a gasp, and moved around another container to see Phillips pointing a gun at Singh. I lifted my gun. I knew, absolutely knew, what had to happen, but my finger refused to pull the trigger. I must have made some noise, because Phillips suddenly turned, his gun moving between Singh and me. 

“Throw down your weapons, you bastards, and you might get off easy, but do it now.”

There was a flash of light from above me and then I saw the side of Phillips’ head blow out. Ned had acted when I could not.

I felt my gorge rise and I knew that I was about to throw up. But then I saw Singh, empty-handed, move towards me. I panicked and fired. What I saw then did make me throw up. His image seemed to flicker as he fell, and then, there on the ground, lying in a pool of blood, was Billy. He was dead. He was also scarred and battered, with the back of his head shaved and fresh stitches all around one of his ears. Howard must have been working on him. Implanting control circuits to keep him docile while he dissected the tech right out of him. I flashed back to Joey’s shop. “They could slave it to another implant...” said Joey, flipping a switch.

“Fuck,” Ned said from above me. 

I slumped to the ground clutching my gun, knuckles scraping the pavement as I spewed out my guts, attempting to expel the guilt inside.

After that I hid until it was quiet.

 

*****

 

We had agreed beforehand that trying to regroup at the dock was impossible; instead we would meet in the alleyway behind our old hangout, the Rhino. We knew both the bar and the alleyway well, so we hoped it would be easy for us to see if we’d been followed. I got there to find Pitch pacing back and forth by the kitchen entrance, smoking, looking frantic. 

“Hey Pitch, you okay?” I asked.

“No I’m not fucking okay,” she snapped, “I shot someone today. They’re fucking dead; I can’t believe I ever agreed to this.  They’re fucking dead. And guess who it was?” 

I felt my shame well up. None of it had gone as I’d wanted. I’d planned it, but it had all gone to shit.

Before she could confirm my awful suspicions, there was a distortion in the air to my left and suddenly Ned was there. 

 “Howard’s still alive,” he said. “Everyone else is either dead or seriously wounded. But as I was doing the body count I suddenly realized that I’d seen the same agent twice. It took me a minute, but when I turned around to go back to where I’d seen him before, he was gone. There was blood, but whoever it was got away. It must have been Howard.” Ned shook his head, “I don’t know, he’s got the ink, at least in part The only good news is that without a full body count, and with missing agents, it’s enough of a mess that CSIS will have to hush up the whole thing. Make the incident, and the agents involved, just go away. But Howard’s still out there.”

“Fuck,” said Pitch, “and he’s got the ink. So I’m a killer for nothing.” 

“C’mon Pitch, that place was chaos. How could you know that for certain? Even I’m not totally sure I counted right,” Ned argued.

“Ned’s gotta be right,” I added. “I worked on that tech for years. There’s no way, you must be wrong.”

She looked at me. “He was invisible.”

“Fuck,” I said.

Pitch continued. “It happened just before everything got quiet. I saw McCulloch, one of the guys with Howard. He saw me, and even though I had the gun Ned gave me pointed at him, he kept coming at me. He was waving his gun around and moving his mouth but I couldn’t hear any words coming out. I didn’t know what else to do so I fucking shot him.” And she collapsed to her knees.

I looked at Ned but he had taken a step back, eyes wide, face pale. I knelt down and put my arm around Pitch’s shoulders. She was trembling. She looked up at me, anger in her eyes, and took a breath. Grabbing my shirt, she choked, 

“It was Zeke. I barely recognized him, he was a mess of scars. Howard saw me do it. The son of a bitch thanked me for cleaning up his mess. His voice was right beside me, but I couldn’t see him.”

“Shit,” I said, “But none of the other agents…”

“Well none of the other agents had Zeke and Billy to tear apart cell by cell, did they?” 

I looked at Ned. He was trying to light a cigarette, his hands shaking. Finally he succeeded, and took a drag, exhaling and slumping down the wall so he was at the same level as Pitch and me.

And then my frustration, fear and shame finally coalesced into a pure white anger. It was a relief really. So much time planning, all that work, and the fucker who was responsible for turning my life to shit, who conned my friends into killing two of the sweetest people I’d ever known, had gotten away. The rage was hot and fierce. It felt like I’d finally found my best friend.

I stood, and started pacing. “That bastard, we’ll make him pay,” I spat out. “I swear to God I’ll gut him like a fish. Feed him to the maggots – Billy was right, it was what he deserved, right from the beginning.”

Pitch stared up at me. And then she was shouting. “Are you fucking crazy? We’ll never find him. He’s been planning this, and playing us right from the beginning.”

“He didn’t know–”

Pitch cut me off. “He knew enough. He planned for betrayal on every side. And we don’t know anything about what he’s planning next.”

“We know enough,” I yelled. “We can track him – search his house and office again. We can hunt him down and kill him.”

“Oh please,” Pitch sneered. “I saw Ned save your ass. You froze. And what if you kill the wrong guy? Howard’s got the ink, remember?” 

I shook my head, trying not to think of Billy’s body. “What are you saying, that we should have sided with Howard?”

“Well maybe we should’ve, maybe if we had Zeke and Billy would still be alive!” She was yelling now. 

“Oh sure, we could have trusted the guy who cracked open their skulls to put in a control chip. He’s a right stand-up guy.” I turned and punched the wall, all my fury doing no more than giving me split knuckles. Scared, and sick with grief and guilt. I felt worse than I had known it was possible to feel.

Suddenly Pitch slumped. “That’s just it, Howard’s a monster; we can’t go up against him and win. I mean look what he’s done to us already.” And she gestured at herself, wild-eyed and shaking, and Ned, crouched on his heels, head in his hands, the cigarette burnt down to his fingers.

I took a breath. “I can’t, I just can’t let him go. He’s stolen my life’s work, killed my friends. I can’t.”

Pitch took a step back. “Revenge gives me nothing. Thanks to Howard and you and this whole fucked up situation, I can’t be who I was ever again. But I can look like, be, whatever I choose. And I choose the life I had before I ever met you.”

And with a shimmer, she was gone.