෴෴෴෴෴෴

Last Day of the Rest of Your Life

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Steve woke from a fitful sleep when four strong hands picked him up by both arms and began walking him out of the room they had kept him for the past two days. He didn't have the strength to walk and was carried and dragged along upright. He tried to resist, flailing his body around. The two men carrying him were unfazed and continued down the hall. When his attempts to resist failed, Steve tried talking. "You promised me money and pain meds!" He slurred out, trying to shout.

One of the men carrying him muttered under his breath, "Oh don't worry, you'll get everything you have coming."

The trio entered a room filled with shiny scientific looking equipment and steel work tables. A man appeared to be sleeping in an upright medical looking apparatus. Another man in a lab coat was standing across the room comparing the display from a tablet sitting on a piece of equipment, and a clipboard in his hand. At the sound of the door opening, he turned and beamed, looking delighted to see him. "Welcome, Steve isn't it? Gentlemen, assist our guest into the treatment apparatus.

Steve looked around the room, trying to take it all in through bleary eyes and a brain that had spent too many years half pickled with whatever booze he could get a hold of. While he was taking in the many blinking lights and shiny surfaces, the two men locked him into a set of restraints. The precision and efficiency of their movements showed that they'd done this many times before.

The man with the clipboard approached Steve as the two men dressed as orderlies left. "Well Mr. Briggs is it? I'll admit it’s challenging to decipher what you've written here."

Steve nodded. "That’s me, Steve Briggs."

"Wonderful. It's good to meet you Steve. I'm Mr. Braithwaite, the lead researcher at this facility, but please, call me Leon." Braithwaite glanced down at his clipboard and didn't wait for a reply, "Mr. Briggs, it seems that our preliminary tests show that you have advanced fatty liver, and cirrhosis of the liver, and what appears to be untreated type two diabetes with some degenerative lower extremity edema and some peripheral neuropathy. How do you feel today?" He asked in a pleasant tone of voice.

Steve realized that the man had been talking to him and did his best to recall what had just been said. Finally he grunted a semi verbal noncommittal reply.

Mr. Braithwaite grinned. "Well, as you may know, your condition, or should I say conditions, are quite serious. I’m pleasantly surprised you're holding up as well as you are. I'm going to administer some medication. Don’t worry, it is simply a mild stimulant as well as a mixture of pain relief compounds and something to help you be very talkative. I designed this mixture myself.”

He looked at Steve with a critical expression. “To be blunt, you’re not doing very well, but with any luck, this will increase your lucidity enough to have a short chat before the treatment." Braithwaite used the tablet for a moment and then watched Steve with an eager expression.

A few moments went by and Steve lifted his head up straighter in the restraints. "Where am I? Who are you?" He looked around the room, eyes wide. "My legs hurt." He looked up at Braithwaite with a pleading gaze. "Oh god, they hurt so bad!" He gritted his teeth and then started to cry.

A joyful expression crept over Leon's face. "Don't worry, the muscle relaxants and pain suppressors will kick in soon. They should keep you pain free long enough for us to have a nice discussion."

A few moments later Steve stopped whimpering and relaxed in the restraints. He let out a long sigh of relief as the pain and tension eased from him.

"I have a few questions for you. I'd like you to answer to the best of your ability. For your own good, I urge you to be as honest and complete in your answers as possible." Mr. Braithwaite said.

Steve nodded, "Ok. I'll try."

For nearly an hour, Mr. Braithwaite extracted as much medical, family, and genealogical information from Steve as he could recall.

Braithwaite glanced at the clock. "Thank you, Mr. Briggs. You've been very forthcoming and your complete answers are very useful in my research. Now, before we proceed with your treatment, do you have questions for me?" Braithwaite looked up from the clipboard at his watch, and then at Steve.

Steve looked up with an expression of hope that looked unfamiliar on his face. "The guy who signed me up said you can fix me. Is that possible? Can you really do that?"

"Well, I'll start by saying that you yourself could have all but cured yourself of diabetes at any time simply by ceasing to take in sugar in all its many forms." He eyed Steve's flabby midsection critically. "A little plain old fasting would have done you good as well. However, that is neither here nor there. Let me assure you that one way or another, when this treatment is complete, you will no longer have any concerns about diabetes." Leon Braithwaite said with a warm smile. "What's more, if this treatment goes unusually well, we may be able to offer you steady employment, if you're interested. Any other questions?"

Steve glanced around the room, appearing to think about the question. “Yeah, I got some. Can you cure me? And will the treatment hurt?" He looked down at his feet trapped into the restraints. “Why am I in this thing?”

Mr. Braithwaite rubbed his chin. “The restraints are for your protection and my convenience. Regarding fixing you, as I said before, the majority of your conditions could have been treated by making different life choices. As for curing you in your current state, we’ll just have to see how effective the treatment is.” He looked back at Steve. “Now before the treatment begins is there anything else?"

Steve shook his head.

Leon smiled, "Very well, let's get started. We'll be testing out, hmm. You've got three slots. Low affinities for physical enhancements, so let's go with four ranks of enhanced physical durability. That should be both entertaining and educational." He walked over to one of the consoles and worked there for a few minutes. Once he was finished, he stood in front of Steve with a big smile on his face. This time, Steve couldn't help but notice that there was something a little unsettling about that smile.

"Oh yes, and Mr. Briggs?" He began.

"Yeah?" Steve asked, distracted by the rapidly increasing aches in his body.

"I almost forgot. You asked if the treatment would hurt. I could tell you that it won't hurt much, or even that it doesn't hurt at all." Mr. Braithwaite winked at him with a casual smile. "But, I don't like lying for no good reason, so before I go back to my office to get a few things, let me just tell you that in fact, I’m certain it will hurt quite a lot.” He glanced down at his watch. “Speaking of hurting, your nerve blocks should be wearing off right about now."

Steve tried to say something, but the agonizing convulsions as his flesh began to bubble and crack as it simultaneously tries to heal and tear itself apart were too much for anything more than a strangled shriek.

෴Doktor Midnight෴

෴෴෴෴෴෴

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High above the nighttime skyline of Atlanta, a matte black armored figure floated in the air. The figure seemed to be looking downward at the city lights. He began falling, calmly switching between watching the approaching ground, an altimeter and a cell service signal strength meter. When he was satisfied with all three, he smoothly came to a halt in the air.

Inside the armor he activated a small display. After a negotiation with local networks, his communications came online and a familiar voice sounded in his ear. “Good evening sir, are you able to talk?” He recognized the voice immediately, but pretended to not be sure.

“Yes Norn, I am. Is this… Emily?” He risked a guess.

“It is!” She sounded pleased that he recognized her voice. “But you know you can call me Em. I’m online with your local communications, internet, and a few drones.” She paused. “Oh, and the team is also getting your sensor net up and deployed as quickly as we can. Do you have an area you’d like us to focus on first?”

“Unfortunately, there is. I need you to relay the footage I just uploaded back to Adele. Include this information. ‘That was all that was left of the car, the remains of the phone are also there. No evidence he was hurt.’ She’ll need to hear that last part once she sees the video.”

“I just received the file, let me verif- Oh my-” She audibly swallowed and regained her composure. “Yes of course sir. I’ll convey the file and the message.”

“Thank you Em, I’ll also be relying on you and the rest of the Norns to be my extra eyes and ears, as well as keep my communications secure. As for the sensor net, let's start in the downtown area and expand outward. Use the self disposing sensors. If this isn’t wrapped up in a week or so, we’ll revisit that.” He replied.

“You got it sir. We’ll start keeping track of everything we can, and distill it down to the most useful information for you.” She said.

“Thanks to you Norns I’m hoping this will go smoothly. By the way, how many are you now?” He asked.

“There are ten of us in the solid rotation, and we have a new member coming up to speed. He seems pretty capable, so it should be eleven soon enough. Also, I wanted to let you know that just like you said, we’re all doing our best to use our abilities as much as possible, and try new things with them any time we think of something. In fact, just this morning I got retested and I have a new open capacity slot, so I’ll be picking my next upgrade tonight after I get off shift.” Emily answered enthusiastically.

“That is very good to hear. Not just about your personal advancement, which is of course fabulous. I for one, know that I’ll be far more confident in this mess with you Norns watching over me. But, for now I’ll leave you to your preparations and get started on my own work.” He said.

“Additionally, I’ll be working with a number of freelance groups, as many as I can mobilize. I’ll start with WD40 and see how much work they can handle.” He finished.

“So um—” She trailed off, her voice soft and uncertain.

“Was there something else?”

“Yes sir, I was wondering. Usually these operations are on the planning board, with all the logistics settled a long time before hand. What’s changed this time?”

“I’ve been asking myself that same question. Obviously something has changed this time, but I’m not sure what it is.”

“Um, ok, well in any case, we’ll be here for you.” she sounded even more confused and uncertain, but she ended the call.

The man in black armor scanned the ground beneath him and the air around him. Once he was satisfied that there were no threats he made another call on a more conventional network.

Elsewhere in the city a phone rang. A man sat up in bed and answered the call, his sleep roughened voice spoke with an impatient tone. “WD40 solutions. This is Wilson, go.”

Another figure in the bed rolled over and looked at Wilson with a questioning expression. Wilson shook his head slightly and put his finger to his lips before pointing at his ear. The other man in the bed nodded and lay back down to listen.

Wilson set the phone on speaker and set it on the nightstand. The voice on the other end continued speaking, “-Midnight actual. How many teams do you have active and available?”

“My field teams are all at ready, most of them can be active within the hour. What can we do for you?” The recently woken man’s tone became distinctly more polite. He rolled out of bed and powered on a nearby computer.

“A high value asset has appeared in your area. It is likely that a competing or opposing interest has already taken possession.” The armored figure speaks, while visually and electronically scanning the area around him.

“Understood, what do you need us to do? We can smash and gra-”

The voice cut him off “No, not a smash and grab. This is going to be a multi pronged approach. I am sending some data to you now, put your best data and investigative people on digging up any information that might lead us to which groups would have been interested in this asset, as well as a prioritized list of which groups would have been able to act quickly. This information is already at least ten hours old. I hope to narrow the target list down once I know who was positioned to have been able to move when the asset surfaced.”

Nearly invisible against the night sky, the black figure accessed another device and sent off some information. “Sending you the full list. I’ll want your people assigned to for research and possible hits.”

The man on the ground swallowed his irritation and processed that. “Once we have good info, you want us to extract the asset?”

The floating man began moving, silently gliding through the air toward the outskirts of the city toward a waypoint on his display. “No, your field teams are going to do something a little different. Once you’ve collected that data and sent it to me, I’ll look it over and determine where you’re going to hit, and in what order.”

The man on the ground grimaced at this. “What level of force are we talking about for these visits?”

“Shock and awe. Make a splash, shake them up, and if they have any prisoners, make a note of that group and location.” Doktor Midnight said as he came to a silent landing in the deeper shadows of a few trees near a well lit shopping center.

“Shock and Awe, got it.” A notification popped up on the man’s device. “Just decrypted your message. Confirm asset is a person?”

A middle-aged man wearing a nicely fitted charcoal suit and a phone earpiece stepped out of the trees walking toward the nearby parking lot. “Correct, we’re looking for a VIP. The target has extremely valuable information that we cannot lose.”

“Got it, what do you want us to do if we arrive on a location, and we find the VIP?” Wilson asked.

The man stopped by an empty parking spot hidden between two tall vans. A moment later, a car appeared in the empty spot. “If you can, let me know and send me your location, I’ll come help. If not, extract all prisoners you find, including the VIP. Keep all prisoners separated if possible. We can’t assume they know what they have, so no special attention given to the VIP, just get everyone.” He pulled a small scrap of metal out of his pocket. The metal rectangle flowed, elongated and reshaped itself into a key that he opened the car with. Taking one last casual look around the largely empty lot, he got inside.

“Of course if we get good intel, we’ll pass it to you right away.” Wilson paused, “You mentioned that the VIP has high value intel. If we’re unable to extract, do you want us to make sure that intel cannot fall to opposing interests?”

“No!” The man in the dark suit answered sharply. The car moved silently through the lot. “Use all available force to extract if you have to, but terminating the asset is not an option. In this case, better to lose the asset now and acquire later than to completely lose the asset entirely. Wilson, I need you to hear me on this. The information this VIP has is far more valuable to me than to anyone else. The main reason he’s been taken may be to take action against me. You know how I tend to deal with that sort of thing.” The man’s voice was tight and angry.

He took an audible deep breath and continued. “We’ve done good business in the past, and had some ups and downs. WD40 was my first call first for this work. In fact, while I’m thinking about it, given some of the chatter my people have picked up locally, I think this area might be developing a chimera problem. So if you run into problems, consider me on your team for rapid heavy support and backup. That should tell you how seriously I’m taking this job.” He pulled out of the parking lot and headed back toward the city.

Wilson scanned the data on his screen “I should tell you that this will be a fairly expensive operation. I’ll have to activate the entire company to get it done the way you want.”

“I assume you realize I’m good for the expenses. Get it done, and send me the bill. Do you have any questions?” Midnight asked.

“Sounds pretty straightforward, but yeah, a couple. Just to confirm, normal rules of engagement? Is it ok if it's obvious that we’re there for the asset? Will you be reachable via normal means if something changes?” Wilson asked.

Midnight merged onto the southbound interstate. “Answers; yes, standard ROE. No, I need the asset alive, but I’d prefer it if it doesn’t look like you’re there specifically for him. And yes, feel free to contact me regarding this and related matters as well as for onsite force backup. Oh, and Wilson, I’m serious about no terminations. I need that asset alive, a body is of no use to me. If the asset is terminated under your purview for any reason, you can assume I’ll find our mutual arrangement extremely no longer to my liking.” He disconnected the call and joined the seemingly endless stream of vehicles.

෴෴෴ ෴෴෴ ෴෴෴

෴???෴

Wilson ended the call, “That was a nice shit sandwich. I swear, if that motherfucker was anyone else, I’d ignore the job and put the teams on wasting him instead. If he wasn’t our only source of the cure I’d probably do it just on principle.” He muttered angrily.

Darby pulled on some pants himself. “Well boss, I like to think we’ve got a pretty loyal crew, but I’m not sure they are full on ‘suicide mission’ loyal, if you know what I mean. And let's face it, I don’t want to go back to being a soulless monster, and I doubt anyone else on the crew does either.”

“Yeah, I know. Get geared up and send out a mass message. Once everyone is online we’ll have a quick virtual meeting of team leads in the headspace. Something is off about this job. He’s never called us in the night short notice like this before.” Wilson tossed the phone back to the bed, narrowly missing Darby, who pushed it aside and then stood up to finish pulling on his pants. The two of them got to work, looking like any other couple of people in an office, aside from the large assortment of weaponry on the walls and their shiny red eyes.

෴෴෴ ෴෴෴ ෴෴෴

෴???෴

Somewhere in the outskirts of Barcelona, there sits a small apartment building with a surprising number of antenna and other advanced radiofrequency equipment on top. At least the equipment would be surprising if all the tech wasn’t hidden or disguised. The occupants of the building were friendly folks, popular in the neighborhood, and with enough spending money to be popular with the local businesses, but not so much as to be targets for any unsavory sorts.

The building was a recent renovation, and a visitor who made it past the second floor living area would have probably been surprised by two things. The first surprise would be when they saw not a quaint or cozy third floor loft area, but a state of the art signal observation post installed in the entire third floor. The second surprise would have been when they met with an ability holder specializing in short term memory manipulation. But they wouldn’t be surprised for long.

Today, in the ops chair of that same listening post, a man sat, looking over the results of currently running automated searches and scans. Under his watchful eye, a small piece of aggregated signal data was flagged. He took note of it and forwarded it up the chain.

෴෴෴ ෴෴෴ ෴෴෴

෴Raz෴

Raz hated that waking up in strange places was starting to feel normal. The room seemed similar to the room he’d seen Hutch in, but slightly smaller and better lit.

He looked around and settled on an empty spot along the wall to sit down. Without meaning to he dozed off again.

“Hey Raz, wake up.” Hutch shook him.

Raz struggled to wake up. He finally focused on Hutch blinked a few times until the old man came into focus.

Hutch sat down next to him. “Well, I guess we know what happens when they take people.” He clicked his tongue. “You ok?”

Raz groaned. “Guy kept shocking me. Braithwaite. He’s a red! We have to get out of here!”

Hutch nodded. “Wait, you mean, Leon Braithwaite? That's who I talked to. Seemed like a nice guy. What did he do that was so shocking? What’s a red? Is that a political thing?”

Raz shook his head. “No, not that shocking, I mean he was literally shocking me, like with a taser.” He looked over at Hutch. “If he was nice to you, we might not have had the same guy. My Braithwaite was a psycho. He had the bright red eyes you get from too many ability treatments. When people do that, they lose their humanity and turn into psychopaths with powers.”

“Huh.” Hutch seemed noncommittal about this. “I dunno about all that. The good news is, I looked at everyone in here and some of these folks came from the other room. I guess I was wrong.”

Raz scowled. “I don’t think you were wrong. This is a bad place.”

Hutch shook his head slightly. “Not sure I agree with you. Were you acting up to get tasered? All I got was some medication and an interview. But if you had a bad experience, let's talk about it. Knowing is half the battle after all.”

Raz shook his head and tried to sit in silence. Soon the silence began to weigh on him and he felt compelled to speak. “Alright G.I. Joe, yeah, half the battle. I get it. Let’s compare notes.”

Hutch narrowed his eyes, looking at Raz sharply. “What do you mean by that?”

Raz shook his head, wincing at the headache and then made an effort to focus and use the pain. He clenched his jaw to avoid launching into a discussion about his dad’s retro childhood cartoons.

What is wrong with me. Why is it so hard to leave things unsaid? Is this some kind of trauma coping mechanism?

Hutch looked at the door. “You know what, never mind. You’re too much work to talk to right now.” The old man scooted over a bit and laid down.

His words reminded Raz that he was probably missing work right now.

Oh yeah, kidnapped and a guy who wants to shock me to death.

Probably going to die in here. Worrying about my job is the least rational concern.

Wouldn’t mind getting an ability that would help me get out of here.

-1 slots, what the hell??

So much for that promotion though.

After staring into the walls for a few minutes Raz decided to follow Hutch’s example and stretched out on the floor. Sooner than he would have thought, he relaxed and let his mind wander.