CHAPTER FOUR: Suddenly An Orphan

“So,” Agent Z said, squatting down on the concrete near the edge. “I take it you have questions? Inquiries? Curses?” She sits with her back to the sunset, the setting sun framing her head and the ring of gore-splatter frozen in time like a saint’s iconography. Broken teeth within it catch the light like a constellation. The predator it belonged to is dead and its ideatic limb, the ‘saboteur’ has become inert. So these gobbets of blood and broken jaw, along with the semi-obliterated corpse sitting atop the roof of the apartment building with them, are visible. The eye and the finger no longer bend.

The second of the creatures had come and it had died.

“A few,” Jacob said numbly. He was staring. At her, at the corpse, at the sky behind her that was so perversely the same as it always was and did not care that his cozy little world had just been destroyed. “I-I don’t know where to start.”

“That’s a good place! Nowhere. If you never question anything, you’ll never be disappointed. You’ll live a rich and pleasant life.” Zed was hypothesising here, since she’d never had much in her life that was:

1)Rich.

2)Pleasant

3)Or a life, sometimes.

So she didn’t know. But it sounded right. Besides, they had to exist, right? Someone out there is having a rich and pleasant life, right? They had to be. If nobody was, then what was all her work for?

“Kennedy,” Jacob eventually said, his mind seizing a liferaft. “Who killed Kennedy? That’s secret agent shit, right?” This was absurd but its absurdity was the point. It was better than actually trying to unwrap what his life had become. He wasn’t expecting a serious answer but neither was he expecting Agent Z’s completely blank expression.

“Kennedy? Is that a friend of yours?”

“What? No! He was a President! He got killed in the 60’s. How do you not know that?”

“Probably because I’ve got a hole in my head,” Agent Z said and rapped her skull with her knuckles. It didn’t make the sound that a human head should. “But mostly because that’s not important. Presidents of THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA are not my priority.” Her pupil-less eyes rolled back in her head briefly, as if she was examining something on the inside of her eye-sockets. And she was.

“Oh, him! That guy. We had nothing to do with that. Who do you think we are, the CIA?”

“And by ‘we’ you mean this ‘Agency’.”

“The Agency. It’s not ‘Agency’. There’s an article attached. But yes, yes, yes. As a quick guide, any answers relating to hot-button issues in history are likely to be a ‘no, no, no’. We are the Agency. We don’t do history. If it’s in a textbook, we aren’t there.” Not entirely true, by the way. A medical college textbook published in 1996 featured an X-ray image of Agent Z’s hand as one of seven example pictures detailing metacarpal fractures. She does not know this.

“Right. You do stuff like this thing. This living headache.”

He motioned at the corpse. It looked like some sort of giant ferret or weasel, long and orange-furred and vicious. It’s exact form and function was now hard to make out, having been thoroughly mangled. As far as he could tell, Agent Z had shot it once and as a result it had been deconstructed. Whatever it was, it bled red. “And whatever the fuck happened back where we first met.”

“Nothing happened.” This is an automatic response. Agent Z is not good at talking. It is not part of her job description.

“Oh no,” Jacob said, pointing a shaking finger at her. His voice was rising and a tremor was finally shaking itself free in his tone. It would shake the whole world down if it could. “Don’t tell me that. No, sir. It’s all I can do to keep it in my head as it is.”

“Keep what in your head?” Poor Agent Z wasn’t trying to gaslight this man. She’s genuinely confused.

“Stop that. There’s a hole,” Jacob said desperately. “Like you were saying. I’ve got a hole in my brain. There’s something I’m not remembering.”

“Yes. I put it there.”

“You-”

“I can do that. In that case, it was for your benefit. You were screaming an awful lot.” Jacob didn’t look very reassured by that so she continued. “Here, let me give you the orientation. Listen. Perception and conception and reality are not contingent on one another. This is a…”

She doesn’t stop talking here. She’s just giving him a basic rundown. You might recognise it from the start of Chapter Three. If you’d like to read it again, feel free to page back and check it out. She’s saying it word for word, mostly.

“..that creature was not so scary, not so strange. In the end it was just an animal, wasn’t it? Like a big dog.” It looked more like some sort of mustelid. “But it can be much worse. That’s why the Agency exists. We stop anything too nasty from happening. Or at least, we make sure people don’t know about it.”

As she was saying all this, another half of her brain had been working on something else. A write-up on the deceased was now being prepared for the inevitable after-action report that she was going to have to submit to the Agency once she was done tying up loose ends. And if it were ever put on paper, it might look a little something like this:

Specimen Field Report

[Insert picture here later- Agent Z]

Type: Fauna

Status: Two specimens dead. Appears to be non-unique. Likely at large.

Threat Grade: 3

Meat: Positive. [Also possesses a cognitive limb, bound to conception-object]

Tendency: Hostile. [Territorial/Prey-driven/Scavenger behaviours possible]

Mnemocide: Negative.

Androphagi: Positive. [Carnivore]

Priority: Low.

Classes of Note: Medusa [Conceptual-type, Low-grade, Nonlethal/Defensive], Invisible Man [Active, Sensory?], Gemini [conception-object/’real’-object synthesis?].

Description: Specimens are a pair of large orange-furred mammalians (most recent subject 2.3 meters long from nose to tail) with a strong resemblance to a member of the Mustelidae boodleboodleboodleboodleboodle

Boodle boodle boodboodleboo-

Okay, the boodle’s weren’t supposed to be there. But Agent Z had always had hard time maintaining attention on the dry stuff even at the best of times, even when she didn’t have a hole in her head and Jacob was talking at her. She didn’t like that but what was she to do? In a fit of personal responsibility she had ‘saved’ his life. She wasn’t about to un-save him any time soon.

“So let me get this straight,” Jacob was saying. “You, The Agency, whatever, you’re some secret conspiracy organisation of spooks. And you don’t work for any government?”

“States are security risks.”

“Uh huh.”

“What? They are.”

“Then who started you? Where did you come from? I mean-...,” He stopped for a moment, trying to put it into words. “Agencies don’t just come together. They get formed.”

Agent Z rolled her eyes. “That answer is beyond your security clearance. It’s beyond mine. It is a locked conception. So whatever you’re thinking of, you can know that that’s not it. It cannot be thought.”

“Okay.”

Jacob really had no option but to just go along with it. What was he gonna do? Everything Agent Z said was absurd but so was the idea that he had walked in on her in the shower and had not reacted at all. Because that’s what he remembered. It wasn’t any more absurd than the corpse stinking up the rooftop with them. The whole world is absurd now. Reality wasn’t real.

“And you do that kind of shit a lot, huh? That’s why my memory is so fucked.”

“If it’s any consolation, your memory was already fucked long before you met me. Statistically I am probably not the first mnemocide you’ve met! All kinds of horrible things could have happened to you that you don’t know about.” Agent Z had once spent six months living in the spare room of a house that belonged to a family of five, entirely without their knowledge. She’d had to remove their ‘Zed’ perception-objects manually, to ensure that they didn’t suddenly remember their cohabitation once she dropped Secrecy Protocols later but it was fine! It was fine! Nobody could perceive the scars she’d left on their skin as part of her mission.

“Anyway. Anyway anyway anyway. The purpose of the Agency is to, among other things, protect the current way of things. To stop this kind of stuff from getting out. And to stop anyone from doing anything particularly uh, problematic. Oh and we also kill and track all kinds of very dangerous entities that people can’t defend themselves against!”

“And who watches the watchman? Do you answer to anyone?”

“Would we be more legitimate if we did? Ahahaha.” Zed slapped her knee and ‘laughed’. She just sounded out the laughter phonetically. “Firstly, the upper ranks of the Agency is a need-to-know situation and neither of us need to know. Secondly: The buck has to stop somewhere. And it stops with us. We are the buck-stoppers. We are the buck-buriers. We are the slaughterhouse the buck is sent to. The proof? Look around you. You are living in the world that we all help create.”

Jacob did so. “I gotta be honest with you, Z.”

“Zed.”

“Zed. This world kinda sucks ass. It’s evil.”

“It does! It is! But it’s the only one we have.” Agent Z loved the evil world. She loves it still. She loved it like a bullet loves the chamber and for much the same reason. What other option was there to do, other than to beat your fists against it in vain? “And things could be so much worse. Tell me, Jacob, are you a very good mathematician?”

Jacob didn’t know what to make of this sudden change of topic but saw no harm in playing along. “Math? God. I was pretty good at it in high school, I think. Did some advanced subjects. Haven’t done shit with it ever since. So no.”

“Good. If you are to continue being an Agency asset, not being good at math is a strong trait. It’s good for survival. Now imagine what the world would be like if the Fish Number was declassified.”

“What the fuck is the Fish Number?”

“A number. A big one. One of those real big ones!”

Agent Z was not a math whiz herself. Maybe she had been, once. But even before the hole in her head there had been something wrong with her. She had probably never been born with an ‘effective’ brain. She had maybe never been born at all.

“It’s a function, apparently. If it was just a big number we might have left it alone since the odds of anyone thinking of it specifically are so low. So low! Lower than anything you can think of. But mathematicians are idiots and so the Fish Number serves a particular mathematical purpose in a few equations. Or it did. But we got it! It’s good now.”

“You ‘got’ a number?”

“Because it’s the Fish Number. It’s a mathematical constant that, if you solve an equation for it, whether it be on paper or out loud or just in your head, you turn into a fish. And then you probably die too because math rarely takes place underwater but that’s not the important part. One you’ve been turned into a fish I don’t think it matters if you’re dead or not. Fish are already dead in every way that matters.”

This was a little too much. “There can’t be a mathematical constant that turns you into a fish if you think about it. What does that- Why would-What does that mean for the universe?”

“Good question. Answer: Don’t know. But it’s what we call a ‘Medusa’ class occurrence and it’s probably fundamental to reality or whatever, since it’s math. For a while we left it alone since it’s naturally self-censoring through the virtue of everyone who discovers it dying of piscine causes. But the cost was too high.”

There’s a long pause. Jacob was staring at the beast’s corpse. Agent Z was staring at Jacob’s. It’s some time before she broke the silence.

“You’re trying to think of the Fish Number right now, aren’t you?”

“No-” Maybe.

“Don’t worry, I know you can’t help it. Someone tells you about a bad number, you can’t help but try and think it up. Don’t worry. Your clearance isn’t high enough. Even if you lived long enough to count that high, you’d just skip right over to the next one. But do you get it now? We do good work.”

She had considered telling him about the Dryads but had ultimately decided against it. That one really was hard to believe. Zed personally couldn’t recall a time she hadn’t known about them but she knew from experience that, on average, people took them very poorly. Even more than telling them about Corkscrew Thought. People took the existence of monsters surprisingly well. But tell them the truth about trees and everyone loses their goddamn minds.

“I bet it sounds funny, doesn’t it? The whole fish thing. It is. But you’ve never had to console someone who lost a loved one to it.”

Neither had Agent Z. ‘Consoling’ wasn’t part of her job description.

Jacob gave up. “So what happens to me now?”

“Nothing? Nothing of any real note. I have decided that I like you, Jacob. Or at the very least I feel responsible for you. Besides, we still have much to discuss regarding the previous day. I am curious.” Zed held her hand to her throat and winced. Her voice, always gravelly, was getting worse. She wasn’t used to having to talk like this. She stayed perfectly still in that pose for at least five seconds before turning her head.

“Don’t you have to wipe my memory or something? Now that I know all this? Or…,” a hideous thought had occurred to him. One that didn’t make any sense but it was the only one he could think of. “Are you here to recruit me?”

“Haha. No and no. You are not Agency material, Jacob.” And she meant that literally. He was not physically composed of the correct matter. “And you are not a secrecy risk either. You know about the Agency now. And when you know about the Agency, it knows about you. Even if you go to the press the damage control would be very easy. There is nothing you can do that we cannot revert.”

Part of the benefit of being so supremely skilled at suppressing information is that it meant you often didn’t have to.

“Look. I’ll just requisition some good treatment for you that’ll keep you from getting eaten in the future and designate you a local asset. Threat level: Zero!”

+++REQUISITION PROTOCOLS: Unlocked+++

+++REQUISITION PROTOCOLS: Locked+++

+++Incorrect+++

+++REQUISITION PROTCOLS: Locked pretty please+++

+++Incorrect+++

+++REQUISITION PROTOCOLS: Locked you fucking thing. First Counter-Hostile and now this?+++

+++Incorrect+++

+++REQUISITION PROTOCOLS: Debug+++

+++Protocol offline+++

Before Jacob could answer, Agent Z suddenly stood up. “One moment please. One moment please. One moment please. One moment please. One moment please.”

+++MASTER PROTOCOLS: Locked+++

+++MASTER PROTOCOLS: Unlocked+++

+++MASTER PROTOCOLS: Debug+++

+++Protocol: Effective+++

+++MASTER PROTOCOLS: Standby for Dual Request+++

+++Standing by+++

+++MASTER PROTCOLS: Counter-Hostile+++

+++MASTER PROTOCOLS: Requisition+++

+++Protocols offline+++

+++MASTER PROTOCOLS: yeah but why+++

+++Improper Syntax+++

+++MASTER PROTOCOLS: Trace+++

+++Counter-Hostile: Unauthorised+++

+++Requisition: Unauthorised+++

+++Clearance: One+++

+++MASTER PROTOCOLS: Listen+++

+++MASTER PROTOCOLS: I know my security clearance is very low+++

+++MASTER PROTOCOLS: I don't know why it is but I know it is+++

+++MASTER PROTOCOLS: But why the fuck has my authorisation been pulled?+++

+++MASTER PROTOCOLS: Why are Secrecy Protocols fine if those aren't?+++

+++Improper Syntax+++

+++MASTER PROTOCOLS: Shove it up your ass+++

+++Improper Syntax+++

+++MASTER PROTOCOLS: Send error report+++

+++Connection denied. Report not sent+++

+++MASTER PROTOCOLS: what+++

+++MASTER PROTOCOLS: but+++

+++MASTER PROTOCOLS: that would mean+++

+++Improper Syntax+++

+++MASTER PROTOCOLS: Unlocked+++

Jacob watched as Agent Z startled back into life, her eyes like a wild animal. “Are you alright? What happened?”

He looked around, trying to see if another monster had snuck up on them again. But there was no migraine in sight. How fortunate!

Trembling, Zed raised a hand and clenched it into a fist. She stayed like that. Then she drove the fist into her own head. She punched herself a few more times before stopping. She didn’t bother saying anything to Jacob. Words sucked. Everyone sucked. This sucked. Her train of thought had been derailed and had crashed into a hospital, killing many and maiming many more. But its conclusion was inevitable. And it existed whether the train arrived there or not.

Everything was functioning as it should be. Everything but her. Due to something in her blind two days, she’d been cut off by the Agency. Disconnected. Disarmed. Rendered unto a relatively harmless state for an indefinite period of time until a sensitive matter can be resolved. Burned.

She was alone.