10/04/12 - I Will Never Be Clean Again - pt. 3

The President of the United States now realizes the enormity of his mistake.

He should not have hesitated. He should not have assumed he had the time to take a second and think about what he was doing. He should have taken the shot and killed Wen Boxiong.

But now he has no recourse. The Imago are here, floating around him. He will simply have to wait for one of them to get out of the way for him to fire.

And he realizes that, the moment he fires, the Imago will sense his presence, and come for him. He may just have enough time to press the button and destroy his apartment, and press another button and destroy the gun. But he won't have any time to get away after that.

The moment he pulls the trigger he is most likely going to kill both the General Secretary and himself.

(Thus proving a whole, probably-now-deceased gaggle of Washington Neo-Cons right, he grimly notes.)

But that is of no matter. The man must die. The President must be the one who kills him, even if it kills him, too.

He tries to vector the shot differently, wondering if he would have a better angle if he stood, or moved to another window. But by the time he left, anything could have happened. It would be far better to watch and wait for the right moment. 

As he watches the encounter go on, he realizes that Wen is becoming agitated -- quite animatedly so. He cannot hear what he is saying, but he seems to be screaming it at them.

"What are you doing?" he asks, wondering why the man he was about to kill seems ready to commit suicide by alien invader. 

* * *

 

"Greetings to you, O SPYGOD," a booming, self-satisfied voice announces, just a second before its owner teleports into the empty room, there to join the fifty or so Specials who arrived just five seconds before. 

The ex-President of Russia and SPYGOD are in the center of a circular firing squad, staring down a lethal ring of gauss rifles. The Imago appears in the doorway they came through, his Orange and Gold arms outstretched as if in welcome, or if he were gracefully landing. His smile seems as wide as his face.

And his eyes are afire with malice thinly disguised as kindness.

"Well howdy-do to you, too, !@#$face,' SPYGOD snorts: "I guess you found me."

"We did indeed, O SPYGOD."

"You didn't seriously think that !@#$ty plan of yours was going to work, did you?" he asks, weighing his options: "You really should have just !@#$ing killed the President, !@#$hole. I eat nasty-!@#$ alternate realities for !@#$ing breakfast. Ask anyone."

"You are indeed an unusually resilient man, O SPYGOD. But-"

"Wen talked, didn't he?"

"Wen?" the Imago asks, seemingly perplexed: "Which Wen would that be?"

"You know who, you tin-plated !@#$-"

"No," the ex-President says, holding up a hand while fishing around in his mouth for another, broken tooth: "I just told you, SPYGOD. I told them where we were, after a fashion."

"Explain, Valentina," SPYGOD says, taking a step back from his captive but still pointing his gun at his head.

"I was charged to make a report every night. If I did not, then it could only mean that I had been compromised, and that could only be by you, or one of your people. So they would begin tracking me, and follow where it led. Though I think the ending point was never in doubt."

"You...?" SPYGOD says, blinking and taking another step back: "Not Wen? You?"

"Yes, SPYGOD," the ex-President says, smiling through a mouth of broken teeth: "Me."

* * *

"Just do it, already!" Wen Boxiong shouts at the Imago surrounding him, jumping up and down like some kind of idiot: "I know that you know! I know what she told you!"

"Who is this person you speak of, O Wen Boxiong?" One of the Imago asks.

"You know who she is! Stop toying with me!"

"What are we supposed to know, O Wen Boxiong?" Another asks.

"You know what I've done! She told you! Stop it!"

"Perhaps you should calm down, O Wen Boxiong," yet another suggests: "We do not know what you are talking about-"

"Stop it stop it stop it!" the man shrieks, balling up his fists and shaking: "I hate you! You and your smirking faces and metal brains! This is torture!"

"Why do you accuse us of torture, O Wen Boxiong?" One asks.

"Why are you so certain we know something worth harming you over, O Wen Boxiong?" Another asks.

"What are you trying to say, O Wen Boxiong?" Yet another asks.

The man howls and screams, his face turning as red as blood and his eyes screwed shut. Even like that he can see their smiling faces and friendly eyes, and feel the contempt they hold him in. Why won't they just tell him what they know and then kill him?

Why are they being so !@#$ cruel?

* * *

"Bull!@#$," SPYGOD snorts, looking at the Imago and then his captive: "Then why did they blow up that train just after I found out my contact in Beijing might have been made?"

"A necessary deception," the Imago announces: "We did not want you to suspect you were being set up for a trap. We calculated that throwing an attempt on your life in your path would make you feel as though you were, as you say, jumping through the correct number of hoops."

"Well it's a !@#$ funny coincidence-"

"It was just that, SPYGOD," the ex-President says, finally getting his hands on that pesky, busted tooth and pulling it out for inspection, and disposal: "A coincidence. But at the same time, a coincidence you can believe in."

"The proper poetry of things," SPYGOD glowers: "And if I hadn't seen it was coming, what then?"

"You would have survived, and made certain that he did as well," the Imago says: "The ammunition we used on that train was not anywhere as harmful to you as what these guns are loaded with."

"And even if you did not save me, I would see to it that you were given the means to get here," the ex-President says, fishing in his pocket and holding out a small, black cube: "This key also opens the door."

"You !@#$ing idiot," SPYGOD says, looking at the man he's been bullying, beating, and carting around Russia for the last few days: "Why? What on Earth could have !@#$ing gotten you to go in with these things? Don't you know what they are? Don't you know what they do?"

"They came to me after I disappeared," the ex-President explains, his eyes suddenly wet and reverent: "I thought I could evade them, but they showed me the lie in that. And they told me of the Day, and the plan, and I realized that this was the moment my entire life was building towards."

"Really? What the !@#$ are you getting out of this? A lifetime supply of Vodka?"

"I will be leaving with them," he says, smiling: "When the Day comes, and this world is forfeited, I will be riding their ship with them. Together we will go into the darkness, hand in hand. I will know eternity, my friend. And you will help me."

"When the day comes?" SPYGOD asks, looking at the Imago.

"Oh yes, O SPYGOD," the Imago says: "We are surprised you had not pieced it together already. This is not an invasion.

"This is an escape."

* * *

As the President watches the encounter go on, he realizes he cannot make the shot. Not cleanly, anyway.

It will only be a matter of time before one of them reaches out, takes hold of Wen's face, and begins to drain his memories. At that point the entire game will be up, and everything they have worked for will be over. 

He decides on a course of action. It will not be clean, quick, or pretty, and it will leave no chance for escape at all, but he will have to do it.

He adjusts his aim. One shot to the knee will bring the man down so that his head is on the ground. And one more shot after that will turn that head to useless, red mush.

But two shots will delay him a few critical seconds, which will be all the time they will need to find him. And then all he'll be able to do is die in such a way that they learn nothing. 

He thinks of his wife as he does this. He wishes he could find a way to say goodbye, and that he loves, her, just one more time.

His finger is on the trigger, and he makes ready to pull it.

* * *

"O Wen Boxoing, I fear you are trying to tell us something," the Imago who's done most of the talking says: "What is it? What should we know? What are you so afraid of us knowing?"

The General Secretary unscrews his eyes and looks up at the floating, metal man. And in those eyes he realizes, for the first time, that he has misjudged this encounter. 

They were not here to kill him for his sins. They were not here to question his loyalties, or confirm their suspicions. 

They really did just want to know if he was alright, given that he went off the grid the last few days.

"I..." he stammers, realizing that he has condemned himself. There is no way out of this. They are going to kill him.

Unless...

* * *

"Getting out ahead of the big nasty thing you've been warning us about, huh?" SPYGOD asks, wishing he had a cigarette to pull on, right about now: "Yeah, I didn't really !@#$ing think you were going to save us."

"Exactly, O SPYGOD," the Imago says, gesturing to the room they are in: "The spacecraft is not meant to defend against (UNINTELLIGIBLE CONCEPT). If we wished to fight it, we would simply use Deep Ten, but even its mighty armaments will mean nothing to the creature when it arrives."

"It's meant to get them and their trusted servants off the planet in time," the ex-President says, the look of starry-eyed reverence still making his eyes glow as he turns to look at the Imago: "Everything that has been done... the orbital elevator, the harvesting of energy, the freeing of the Imago from their prison... all has been done to further this goal."

"Trusted servants," SPYGOD says, looking at his captive: "Your escape is built on the backs of the dead, Valentina."

"Isn't everyones?" the ex-President asks, smiling at his savior.

SPYGOD raises his gun and shoots the man in the skull, right in one temple and out the other, pulping his eyes in his sockets at the same time.

"A foolish gesture, O SPYGOD," the Imago says as their loving servant falls to the ground, dead as a stone: "Do you not imagine we already know everything that he does?"

"That wasn't protection for me, !@#$face," SPYGOD says, dropping his gun on the floor and raising his hands: "That was mercy for him. I'm sure whatever you had !@#$ing planned for him would have been !@#$ing awful."

"We merely would have used his energy to further our goals. Not a painless fate, but not awful either-"

"You took a walking weasel of a man who believed in nothing but what he could gather for himself, and made him believe in a cause higher than himself for the first time in his life. You filled his head with bliss and his heart with joy. And then you were going to !@#$ing pull the rug out from under him right when he thought his reward was due?"

"That is essentially correct, O SPYGOD-"

"Well, maybe they don't have the word 'cruel' where you come from, you metal !@#$-stain, but that's about as cruel as it gets."

"Oh, we understand cruelty, O SPYGOD. Perhaps better than you do."

"I !@#$ing doubt it-"

"You do not understand our story, O SPYGOD. You know only the edges of it. You know nothing of who we were, or how we came to be here, or why. You see our actions as evil, perhaps monstrous, but you of all people should know that a people will do anything to survive."

"And you should !@#$ing understand that we might have helped you, if you'd just !@#$ing asked," SPYGOD says: "All you ever had to !@#$ing do was ask for help."

"That is not in our nature, O SPYGOD." 

"Well, neither is rolling over and dying, O !@#$face. We will also do anything to survive. And if there's one thing I can do, it's do anything." 

"You can, indeed. We have clearly underestimated you, O SPYGOD. It will not happen again."

SPYGOD smiles as the Specials re-aim their guns right at him.

"Just so you know," SPYGOD says, looking right at the Imago: "Everything that !@#$ing happens from here on out? That's on you. All of you."

"It is indeed," the Imago says, and gives the order to fire.

* * *

The President of the United States of America pulls back on the trigger, making ready to shoot Wen Boxiong in the knee.

Wen Boxiong pulls out a small box and presses a button, expecting to get help from the man who's about to shoot him.

SPYGOD outstretches his arms, as if he is ready to embrace death at last. 

And then...

(SPYGOD is listening to Strobe: Fragments (Front 242) and having a Baltika no 6)

10/04/12 - I Will Never Be Clean Again - pt. 2

Of course, walking for "some time" turns out to be a long time. Several miles, in fact -- all done along a very old, very unsafe length of underground tunnel that seems ready to all come down at a moment's notice.

The walls writhe and pulse with generations of strangely-colored spiders the size of a young boy's hand, none of which care to skitter out of the way of the flashlight beam the way such things should. The ceiling and walls have collapsed in some areas, especially around the center of the city above, necessitating close squeezes and careful crawls around the falls.

And this means getting up close and personal with the legions of arachnids, leading to bites that they only hope aren't poisonous, or worse.

Along the way there are revelations -- broken doors and collapsed walls revealing treasures from a bygone age. Old soviet powersuits rust in the damp, awaiting a war that will never come, now. Rack upon rack of fully-grown clone soldiers rot in their jars, the preservatives having long since ceased to be worth the name. Harvested psychic brains still kept alive after all these years feebly whisper of missile launches yet to come, unaware that no one has listened to them for almost a quarter of a century.

"Ah, Sverdlovsk," SPYGOD says as he regards the ruins of a captured alien spacecraft more jellyfish than saucer: "You guys really had some weird !@#$ going on here, back in the day."

"You should know," the ex-President of Russia says, itching a very bad spiderbite at his neck: "You penetrated the defenses enough times, you and your men. Did you not stop to look? Or were we chasing you too swiftly?"

"Mission specific maneuvers, Valentina" he says, casting his flashlight back on the path ahead: "If you come for the crown jewels you don't have !@#$ing time to grab the Rolls Royce, too."

"Unless you can escape in it."

"Spoken like a true professional."

"And you would know, wouldn't you?"

"Says the man I caught !@#$ing napping in his safehouse," SPYGOD snorts: "How much were you paying that poor metal !@$ to be your human shield? You should get your money back."

"Perhaps I will," the ex-President says. And something about how he says it -- and how he reacts to SPYGOD's silence at the end of that reply -- tells SPYGOD that he knows what's coming next.

Which makes him just a little more dangerous, now. But it's not like he can get away from down here, now is it? All SPYGOD needs to do is step on the flashlight, and he's !@#$ing dead.

And the more he thinks of it, the more he thinks he might just do that.

* * *

The President of the United States of America breathes slowly, trying to enter the slow, grey space he needs to be in to make this shot work. He imagines the rifle as an extension of his own body: his eye the scope, his finger the barrel and the trigger.

The bullets his will to see this man dead.

He blanks his mind of any thoughts of that man. They did not work together, or talk together. He did not teach the man how to blend in better, and shake his security detail. They did not share confidences as one leader to another. They did not laugh at jokes or have that one meal, at a corner noodle place that the man liked to visit incognito.

He is not betraying him now, even though he is. 

But it is one betrayal for the freedom of the world. One death to save billions of lives.

"I'm sorry," the President says, wondering how true that really is. But it's now or never, never or now.

And then he takes a deep breath, compensates for the wind, and makes ready to pull the trigger back as soon as the target -- no longer deserving of a name -- comes into view.

Any second now.

* * *

"This is it," SPYGOD's captive says, gesturing to a sealed door to his left. It's a big, green, metal thing, with a keypad attached to it, and what looks like a rifle sight attached to that.

"The room containing all the !@#$ files on Unit 731," SPYGOD says: "That and all the equipment you had up there, trying to replicate their results. All grabbed and shoved down the memory hole after that little accident with the !@#$ing anthrax. Just like this city's old name, huh?"

"That would be correct," the man says: "But as always, the memory hole is not always final. We keep some things alive, just in case."

"And boy is that !@#$ing good for you," SPYGOD sneers: "Open it up. Let's see what's been keeping your sorry !@#$ alive for the last few days."

"But let me ask you this," the ex-President turns to look SPYGOD in the eye: "Do you really think you will have the time to find what you need to? There is a lot of information in there. Files upon files, in Japanese, Chinese, Russian... you would need an army to sift through it, and another to decode its many secrets."

"So you're saying it's too tough, and I should just !@#$ing quit?" 

"I'm not saying you should quit, but I am saying-"

A crack across the face with the butt end of a gun ends his sensible talk, and he holds his hand to his cheek, wondering if it's broken.

"You need to hear what I am saying, Valentina," SPYGOD says, getting right in his face and putting a finger right between his eyes: "Right now, you are looking at a desperate man. I have a planet to save, and so far the only way I've found to do it is to do something that is so !@#$ing terrible, that even I couldn't !@#$ing live with myself if I had to do it. And if anyone ever finds out that I did it, I'd be !@#$ing tossed in a cell and thrown into the !@#$ Sun to roast like a human marshmallow. 

"Now, do I look like I want to be turned into a !@#$ing human marshmallow, Valentina? Because something tells me you know the answer to that is 'no.' And that means that if the only way to find a solution to this problem is to go in there, get on my hands and knees, and root around like a pig to find out if there's something about GORGON that wasn't in the files in Beijing, then by God I will !@#$ing get on my hands and knees and root around like a !@#$ pig. I'll even !@#$ing squeal and roll around in mud if it'll help.

"Now are you going to help me save the world, or am I going to jam your !@#$ing skull into that retinal reader and guess at combinations until I get the right one?"

The ex-President looks at him, and then at the reader, and then goes to the door. He puts his eye up to the sight and types in a six-digit code. A light shines from inside the sight, and he steps back, squinting at its brightness.

And then, with a foul, metal-and-oil smell and a satanic hiss, the green metal door slides out, then in, and then to the left, revealing a dark hole beyond.

"On the third wrong try you would have triggered a bomb," he says, rubbing his zapped eye: "One that I think would have even killed you."

"Well, guess we'll never know, now," SPYGOD says, hoisting up his gun and looking inside.

* * *

At last, the target steps into view, and he's all alone. 

Wen Boxiong walks into the kill zone, looking like a condemned man on the way to the gallows. He's going slowly, as if he was in no hurry to get to work. And maybe he isn't.

The President adjusts his aim. All he needs is one good, clear shot, right through the medula oblongada, and this can all be over. The explosive ammunition will turn the man's head into a red cloud of smoke, wiping away all chance of the enemy finding out what he knows.

Wiping away all traces of there ever having been a conspiracy against their evil order. 

He hesitates for just a second, trying to rationalize this. Wondering if there really isn't any other way to do this. Couldn't they just talk? Can't they disappear together? Would that be so bad?

(SPYGOD screaming in his face. Hitting him repeatedly. Telling him he !@#$ed up everything. Never seeing his wife and daughters again. The world ending. God telling him he !@#$ed up the whole planet. Hell waiting just for him.)

Yes, it would be that bad.

He takes another deep breath, compensates once more for the wind, and again makes ready to pull the trigger back. The man, the tool, and the weapon, all united in purpose to do one swift and terrible thing, here and now. 

But just before he can, there's a weird light, all around Wen. He stops in his tracks and looks up, and suddenly he is surrounded by four Imago, who float around him like metal angels.

And one of them is blocking the President's shot.

* * *

SPYGOD roughly pushes his unwilling companion into the dark room ahead of him. Then he stalks in after, gun up and ready to fire, scanning it from left to right as he slowly puts one foot in front of the other.

The room is large and circular. It is lit with passive lighting systems that come on as they enter, creating a dull aura of visibility that's just enough to see by, but not much more than that.

But he doesn't need it, or his eye, to tell that there's nothing in this room.

Nothing at all.

"What the !@#$ing !@#$..." he says, turning in a circle, astounded by this.

"It is empty, my friend," the ex-President says, shrugging: "Even you can see that?"

"There's nothing here."

"That is what they mean by empty-" the man starts to say, but is quickly silenced by a rough blow to the face, sending him sprawling across the floor, teeth falling from his mouth as he goes.

"Where is it?" SPYGOD screams: "Where the !@#$ is the information, !@#$hole? Where are the files? Where is the !@#$ you got from the Japanese?"

"Gone," the ex-President says, struggling to get to his feet: "Destroyed."

"What do you mean, gone, destroyed?"

"I mean gone, and destroyed," he says, slowly rising and fixing SPYGOD with a look: "I saw to its removal and burning not that long ago, actually. A little over six months ago, in fact."

"Why?" SPYGOD hisses, stomping over and shoving his gun under the man's chin: "Why the !@#$ did you get rid of it?"

"In case this happened," he says, still giving SPYGOD the look: "And look, it has. I guess we deduced your moves correctly, my friend."

"What do you mean?"

"Didn't you think that it was too convenient that you actually found me?" the ex-President says, smiling with more than a little contempt in spite of the gun in his face: "You should have known me better than that, SPYGOD. I've been playing this game long enough to stay hidden, should I want to."

"So you wanted me to find you, and bring you here, to an empty !@#$ing room," SPYGOD says, getting ready to punch him again: "Why?"

"So they could have you."

"They who?" SPYGOD demands, but he already knows the answer to that question.

They're teleporting in, even now.

(SPYGOD is listening to Collision (Front 242) and having a Stary Melnik) 

10/04/12 - I Will Never Be Clean Again - pt. 1

Wen Boxiong does not get out of bed to turn his alarm off. He never does.

The piercing noise wakes him up, yes, but he does not leave his bed to be done with its annoyance. Instead he lies in his bed, staring at the ceiling and trying to catch the last vestiges of his dreams before they leave him. To let the final, fleeting strands of them play out as they will, before they are gone forever.

As a young boy he was saddened that his dreams were so quickly forgotten, shortly after waking. He did not want to leave the warm cocoon they had spun around his mind at night., but he could not catch them like this, then. He had to go to school, or to work, or to attend his mother's endless needs, and she was not one to let him lie about dreaming in his bed.

After one memorable occasion, in which the sweetest dream imaginable was shattered by her screaming in his face to wake up, he swore that when he was older, and no longer under her roof, he would not let a single dream go unresolved. He would watch them leave as gently as they came, and only then -- when their edges had blurred and plots had fallen to pieces, and there was no more joy to be had from them -- would he rise to meet the day.

And so he did.

This extended arrangement with his dreams has not always been easy. He has had to rise from slumber earlier than he would like in order to have the time to let the visions leave of their own accord without being late for his responsibilities. He has never had anyone stay the entire night with him, as their presence there would complicate his sleeping and waking. And this lack of total togetherness has all but ensured that his liaisons have been short and one-sided.

(Except for the time with her, but that was strenuous and strange, and left him erotically inspired and politically elevated, but broken inside.)

But he is happy with this. His dreams are his own, now and forever. No one can take them from him. And they come and go at his choosing.

Which is why, when his alarm goes off today, he lets it ring and ring for a full hour, until it shuts off by itself. He watches the dreams until they are shambling parodies of what they were when he first opened his eyes. And he cries to see them leave at last.

Because he knows this is the last day. The last morning. The last dream.

Today he will look in the mirror and see a man condemned.

* * *

SPYGOD doesn't so much wake up as crack himself back into motion, as though someone flipped a switch in his skull. He stands straight up, tenses and relaxes his muscles, cracks every joint in his body in one loud wave, and grunts. He blinks one eye, does a 360 scan with the other, and farts loud enough to wake the dead.

He's spent all night sitting in the corner of the underground bolthole he's sharing with the ex-President of Russia, hovering over the ridiculously-opulent vodka he appropriated for the revolution, yesterday. Why it costs three million dollars a bottle he'll never know; he's had a lot better for far cheaper. He figures it must be all the gold and gems on the outside of the glass, rather than what's sloshing around inside of it.

(Which probably explains everything anyone ever needed to know about life, quite frankly.)

SPYGOD has to be very !@#$ careful when looking at himself in the mirror. If he looks at himself straight on, the Chandra Eye creates an infinite and baffling series of reflections. Its much like being between two mirrors in a fancy hotel elevator, only without the eventual curve into grainy dissolution; he can literally see into the far, deep pit of the eternity inside him, one slightly-more-warped reflection at a time.

The first time it happened, not long after he put the eye in his skull, he stared at himself for days on end, and had to be roughly pushed out of the way to break the spell. Since then, it's only happened a few times, and he's usually been able to pull himself out of it after an hour or two. So he closes his eye to shave, doesn't bother with rear view mirrors when driving, and if he has to argue with himself, he does it while looking into whatever he's drinking at the time.

And he is almost always drinking something.

* * *

The President of the United States of America drinks water as he stands before the bathroom mirror. Two glasses a day, every day, right after he gets up and before he takes his shower. It re-hydrates, gets the digestive system working, and makes sure his vitamins get absorbed correctly.

And, recently, he's been using it to center himself, and hold onto his true identity in spite of everything that's happened. 

He looks at himself in the mirror as he does this, observing the false Asian face he's been wearing since he got to China. He does not like it. He looks like a weird amalgam of his own features and something else. Maybe someone he could have met in his childhood, in Malaysia.

Sometimes, he imagines that he's not the one doing these things, here. All the questionable things he's done since he teamed up with SPYGOD to save America -- to save the world, for that matter -- have been done by this strange character he sees in the mirror. It's been his hands shaking hands with the most powerful man in China. His lips making poisoned promises.

His fingers to be around the trigger of the gun that kills him, today.

He doesn't like having to do this. He knew it was a possibility -- possibly even an eventuality -- but he'd allowed himself to hope that, when it was all over, they could all just go their separate ways and say nothing of it. What would it matter if the leaders of two nations worked together to save the world from an invasion? What did they really do that was so terrible that it might later turn into blackmail or extortion?

But no. I would appear that the Imago have found out what he knows, somehow. They know that he told them about the lockup of information gleaned from Unit 731. They know why that's relevant, and why SPYGOD is in Russia, right now. They have even tried to kill SPYGOD, there, to stop him.

And if they choose to press their hand, Wen might tell them that the President of the United States is in the country, working alongside him. And that would be very bad for everyone involved.

Especially the President.

So today, when the man walks from his apartments to their house of government, as the President knows he will, he will be waiting for him, with a very powerful gun. He will assassinate him from a few football fields away, and then get as far away from Beijing as he can.

And hope it's enough.

He looks at this strange man in the mirror. He remembers the time that, when he wore his own face, he ordered young men and women to go and kill in the name of their country. He wonders if they, too, had some kind of similar ritual, or if they took full personal responsibility for the terrible but necessary things they did for their country.

The man in the mirror doesn't have an answer. Just an alien expression that's going to haunt his wearer for the rest of his life.

* * *

The Ex-President of Russia does not look at himself in the mirror. Not once. Not ever.

* * *

"Alright, President !@#$face," SPYGOD says at some point, pretending to look at his watch: "It's time."

"I suppose it is," his guest says, getting to his feet. He looks terrible, frankly: puffy and red-eyed, with some nasty bruises around his face. Too many transpistol shots over too many days have turned his muscles brittle, and liable to snap and bleed. 

But that part of the journey is done, now. No more reverse gender assaults on his person. He needs to be who and what he is for this next bit to work. 

"Do you remember how to get there?" SPYGOD asks as they step out into the corridor of the unlit tunnel, apparently not worried about all the large, nasty-looking spiders that crawl over the damp and crumbling walls. 

"I do," the ex-President of Russia says: "We go left at the next junction, then right, and then left. And then we walk for some time."

"Any security we need to worry about?"

"No. Not down this deep. The only things you could find down here without someone like myself along would be supply closets and empty rooms."

"Well, good thing I've got you, huh?" SPYGOD smiles, gesturing with his flashlight: "You first."

"I would like a flashlight."

"I would like a billion rubles, ten ladyboys, and a steak the size of a card table. Start !@#$ing walking or I'll drag your sorry !@#$ behind me."

 

"Very well. But if I slip and fall-"

 

"Listen !@#$-o," SPYGOD hisses, grabbing the man by the lapel and yanking him uncomfortably close: "All I need to get into this room is directions and one of your eyes. I got the one, and the other doesn't need to be in your !@#$ head, now does it?"

 

There's a moment of silence as the two men look at each other, and then the ex-President nods, and, as soon as SPYGOD lets go of him, walks forward into the darkness, doing his best to stay in the splash of light his captor's flashlight provides.

 

There is nothing to do but walk, now. And if he knows he's going to his death, he's doing it rather bravely. 

 

But that will not deter his killer -- not one !@#$ bit. 

 

* * *

 

In Beijing, not too far from the houses of government, there's a building. In that building is a room with a window that, if you strained your eyes just so, you could almost see a decent amount of a certain walkway from. 

 

And if you had a high-powered rifle scope, you could see that walkway perfectly, and have quite a decent amount of visible space to set up a good killshot.

The President of the United States of America sits there, in that building, in that window, with the rifle in his hands and his eyes in that scope. 

Thanks to the emergency call box they gave Wen Boxiong, all that time ago, he knows that the man is on the move. He knows he and his small security detail will be in sight in a minute or so. And he knows that, with this gun, and the ammunition in it, he only needs one good shot to destroy the man from the neck-up, robbing the Imago of the ability to use his dead brain for any information.

He knows these things, but he does not like them. He also does not like that he planted a bomb back at his apartment that will not only destroy his rooms, but might also cause a fire that will bring the whole building down. He likes that he only needs to press a button to set it off remotely, but he knows that when the moment comes, he'll probably hesitate a few seconds, wondering if he should call in a threat first so that the building is evacuated.

 

He does not like knowing that, in spite of that hesitation, he will press it, anyway. His training is too strong for moral objections, now. What they have to do is too important to waste time or sentiment over. 

There is nothing to do but kill, now. And as he waits for the General Secretary of China to step into his field of fire, he feels like a !@#$ coward.

But that will not deter him. Not in the slightest. 

(SPYGOD is listening to The Figurehead (The Cure) and having a Толстяк)

10/03/12 - Bodies in Motion - Pt. 6 - The End of the Line

So no, son. We're not !@#$ing dead. Not yet, anyway.

They tried, though. I'll !@#$ing give them that. A big !@#$ station platform full of !@#$ing Specials armed with !@#$ing alien gauss rifles, and all of them aimed at the express train. I bet that was the !@#$ing highlight of their year, shooting a bunch of unarmed civilians who couldn't have shot back if they'd wanted to.

All just to get me.

I could go on, son. I could talk about how it's a bad !@#$ing thing that they know I'm back, now. I could talk about how they probably know why I'm here, and might even know who I've got along for the !@#$ ride. And if I really get !@#$ing wound up, I might be able to talk all about how this has essentially !@#$ed my plan right in the !@#$ eye, and out the !@#$ ear.

I could, but I'm too !@#$ tired right now. Too tired, too drunk.

Too angry.

...

Mostly, I'm angry at myself. I really should be angry at the President for not handling his Harold better. He should have been !@#$ing watching him more closely, and making sure he didn't come into extended contact with the enemy, or anyone we couldn't !@#$ing identify.

But maybe I didn't really cover the finer !@#$ points of this kind of work with him when I brought him up to speed. Maybe I was too busy teaching him to shoot guns and dodge knives, and forgot how much of what we actually do gets done before you draw steel and throw the !@#$ down.

Maybe I was having too much !@#$ fun getting to smack my former boss around to really teach him what he was going to need to know for the big !@#$ plan I was making.

But you know what they say, son. A bucket of maybes ain't worth a !@#$ fact. And the !@#$ fact is that the Imago know I'm back on Earth, alive, and on the move. And that's going to make all this a lot more !@#$ interesting, and maybe a lot !@#$ing quicker than I'd like.

Still, nothing to do now but wait. They probably figured out by now that I was not on that train when it pulled in. They probably also figured that the ex-President of Russia was not amongst the poor human kibble they scraped out of what was !@#$ing left of that train. So they're probably combing the city, looking for us. And that means that it's not safe to stick our heads up, right now.

Fortunately, Yekaterinburg, being a former closed city and Soviet military hot spot, has big !@#$ secrets buried under its more obvious secrets. And one of those big !@#$ secrets is that there's underground tunnels running all over the !@#$ place, most of which they probably !@#$ing know about, already, but some of which no one has any !@#$ing idea exist at all.

And that's because the people who knew about them aren't really !@#$ing around to talk about them, anymore. All courtesy of the Soviet Union's rather heavy-handed way of dealing with secrets, loose ends, and potential loose lips.

So of course, the man I've been dragging around since Moscow knows, seeing as how he's one of the people who dealt with the other people who !@#$ing knew. And I know, because I'm !@#$ing SPYGOD and that's my !@#$ job.

But just imagine that, son. It's the !@#$ing end of the Soviet Union, the military that isn't involved in the coup or the counter-coup is falling apart like river ice in the springtime, and there's a !@#$-ton of secrets that need to be kept forever. And because of that, a whole lot of files have to be shredded, a lot of computer tape unwound and burned, and a lot of people made as quiet as the !@#$ grave.

Literally.

Stone cold? !@#$ right, son. Any time something like that happens you have to be, or else all you worked for is going to go up in smoke.

Of course, they'll all say they'll never !@#$ing talk. But that's bull!@#$, son. Sooner or later someone always !@#$ing talks. They need money, or they want recognition, or fame. Or maybe someone gets a hold of them or their families and !@#$ing make them talk, which is never a good thing for anyone.

And that's why half of having a Harold is knowing when to violently end the working arrangement.

I mean, let's put it this way, son. You remember when I talked about Harolds? What I might not have made clear is that the only !@#$ way they're probably ever going to leave the spy game is in a !@#$ing coffin. And that's provided they can !@#$ing find enough of them to bury.

Not that it's an absolute, big !@#$ !@#$ing guarantee, though. Nothing in life is, other than death and !@#$ing taxes.

So there is just a chance that a Harold will never be activated. And if he is, there's nothing to say that it won't be just once or twice, and then he'll never hear from his !@#$ing handler again. And even if his handler decides to run him down like a !@#$ing farm nag, or get him to do something that's so massively illegal and career destroying that you'd normally have to !@#$ing pay someone a couple million dollars for it, he might just get away with it.

But it's a lot more likely that Harold's going to be !@#$ing stupid and pay for it. He'll talk in his sleep, or try to fess up to his !@#$ boss. He'll try to sell his !@#$ story for cash, or he'll blab to his !@#$ wife or his !@#$ing girlfriend or the part-time leather weasel he sees for some down-low action on the side, and they'll sell him out. Or maybe take too much !@#$ing initiative, or try and change the rules, and get noticed.

!@#$, son, he may just manage to hold it together long enough to do what you need, and then get sloppy, or just get caught.

And after that? He's !@#$ed.

If you're !@#$ lucky, then he'll just got shot, stabbed, poisoned, or drowned in a river while trying to !@#$ing get away. And if you're not !@#$ lucky, he'll get caught, which will mean he'll be !@#$ing tossed in a hole, somewhere. And then they'll start !@#$ing interrogating him. And maybe they'll be straight-shooters and try and talk sense to him, and make him promises about seeing his wife and kids, and maybe getting him life in prison instead of shot, hung, or gassed like a !@#$ rat.

But it's more likely they'll start what you might call "enhanced interrogations," which is a nice way of saying "do everything short of leaving a !@#$ physical mark." Waterboarding his sorry !@#$, or putting him in "extreme stress positions." That kind of !@#$.

And if that doesn't work, then they'll hit him in the face, just to show him they mean business. And then they'll pulling his !@#$ fingernails out, zapping his !@#$ with a taser, or going at his knees and knuckles with a steel baseball bat. Maybe even ship his !@#$ to some other country that specializes in doing even worse things, especially if they don't want his !@#$ blood on their kid gloves, much less their floor.

(And yes, son, I remember what I said about torture being a !@#$ ineffective way of getting information from people. But that's me. Other people are not so !@#$ing enlightened, which is why so many intelligence agencies are a !@#$ing contradiction in terms.)

And that, son, is where Harold is going to !@#$ing wind up, in the end. Either dead trying to escape, or dead in a dungeon in some rathole in a country no American can find on a !@#$ map, much less know the name of. And if he doesn't die there, after a few years, he'll be !@#$ing begging for it.

Which is why every handler should be ready, willing, and able to do his or her Harold the supreme favor of ending his or her life as cleanly and humanely as possible. Preferably something really !@#$ quick and !@#$ing explosive, both so they won't feel it and the enemy won't find out what he was up to, courtesy of a lack of eyes and brains. 

I mean, I hope the President didn't have any mealy-mouthed, liberal illusions of us all going our separate ways, waving goodbye like a family going on a boat to America, and leaving China in that guy's hands after we were !@#$ing done with him. Especially that !@#$ing worm. Sooner or later he'd try and get leverage over us, and blackmail us with what he knows, and what we asked him to do.

And if he didn't the people who !@#$ing replaced him sure as !@#$ would.

I hope he didn't think that, but I'm !@#$ sure a small part of him does. Thankfully, I've taken certain steps, just in case he can't do what's necessary, or just won't.

And with any luck, he won't have to tell me, and I won't have to know.

Just like he won't have to know about what's going to happen tomorrow, when the ex-President of Russia and I go to where we're going, and get what we came for. Because when I am done there, and have what I need, this sorry son of a !@#$ing !@#$ is going to get ended as unclean and slow as time will allow.

Not because I don't trust this piece of !@#$ wrapped in stolen human skin to not betray me, but because I owe Boris that much, as well as a lot of other people.

And I'm not going to lose any !@#$ing sleep over it, either. He's had this coming for a long !@#$ing time.

But then, so have we all, son.

And !@#$ me, so have I.

(SPYGOD is listening to Carnage Visors (The Cure) and having a bottle of Billionaire Vodka he stole from dead Russians. Because !@#$ you.)

9/30/12 - Bodies In Motion - Pt. 3 - Toys as Tall as Men

The room is dark -- lit only in patches -- and full of strange things, all promising pleasure and pain.

A naked, pudgy man hangs from the ceiling, suspended by straps and chains. An older woman stands in front of him, wearing a one-piece suit so white it almost has a light of its own. 

"Listen to me," the woman is whispering into the man's ear, while holding his !@#$ so hard that it's a wonder it doesn't explode in her hand like a ripe, pulpy tomato: "What we do is secret. What we do is safe. I will show you things you can never believe, but must never reveal. And in return, you will do what I want, whenever I want, so long as you may live."

She squeezes his manhood just that much harder, and blood begins to dribble from it: "Do you understand?" she hisses.

"Yes..." a much younger Wen Boxiong says, lost in the ecstasy of this one moment-

* * *

It's morning in Beijing, and an older, much larger Wen Boxiong wakes to find a hauntingly familiar scent in the air.

He blinks and rises, wondering if it's just something from a dream. But then he inhales deeply, and realizes that the smell isn't something he's imagined. It is all too real.

It is her.

He looks over at the table by his bed, where he keeps his glasses and teeth. A small, delicately-folded note sits there, tucked right under his glasses.

He puts them on and opens it up without hesitation, and with all due haste. As he reads the words he gasps, and holds his hand to his mouth. His eyes close tightly, and he knows fear and arousal in near-equal measure.

The Botanical Garden, the note instructs: Noon. Alone. 


She doesn't need to sign it. He knows her handwriting and style of delivery all too well. And if that wasn't enough, the scent of her perfume is unique in the world.

The Lady of Pain has come back to see him, and tonight he will either know love or death.

* * *

On a day like today, there is no time to be hesitant.

He changes his entire schedule, including his after-dinner meeting with the American President in disguise. He tells his security detail that they will accompany him on a tour of the city, but that they are to leave him after a certain point, and yet continue to radio in that he is with them. He will rejoin them at his residence, later, and they are to tell no one of this.

He picks out a suitable disguise, like the American President taught him to. A reversible coat, a ballcap, and bad shoes will make him look like an entirely different man, and the special contact lenses he pockets will confuse any optical scanners. 

(He mulls bringing the small, boxlike emergency communicator his new allies have given him, but decides to leave it back here; if she finds it on him, it's unlikely he will survive the encounter.)

He makes certain that various things are seen to, around his official apartment. There are some secrets that may come to light after his disappearance, or death, and he cannot control them. But there are other secrets that he can control, and these are hidden in such a way that his new allies will find them. Hopefully they will know what to do with these things, but if they don't, then it will no longer be any of his concern.

All that done, he takes his leave of the place -- possibly for the last time -- gets into a waiting car with his security detail, and prepares himself to do something he thought he'd never have to do again.

Not since she spurned him, anyway. 

* * *

The hasty plan goes better than he had hoped. 

He ditches his security team on cue, in a place where he knows the security cameras are broken and the advertisements old and useless, and they do not so much as blink an eye. He slips into a public restroom that isn't used that much, locks himself into a toilet stall, and changes his clothing. He puts the contacts in, hating the sting of them, but consoling himself that having red eyes will make him just that much less recognizable to others.

The change done, he goes out into public a different man, unworthy of special attention. He strides meekly and humbly through the crowded streets of the city, pretending to marvel at the new devices being installed on streetcorners and tall buildings, and be reverent to the Imago who float nearby, watching.

It's an educational journey. He almost gets pickpocketed waiting for a light. Older women make eyes at him and younger men sneer in his direction. When he gets onto the bus for the gardens, he only sits for two stops before he's impolitely urged to rise and remain standing so that some other, high party people he knows only by reputation can sit down.

(He amuses himself with how funny it would be to reveal his identity to them. It doesn't quite make up for how rude their minder is, but that can be dealt with another time. Hopefully.)

After all that, the actual ride to the gardens is quick and tidy -- almost anticlimactic. He gets there, pays to be let in just like any other person, and walks through the new, large security gate they placed there. No one calls or shouts after him as he walks through it, so it would appear the contacts work exactly as advertised.

But somehow that does not make him feel very secure.

* * *

The Lady did not tell him where they would meet, but he has a good idea where to find her. 

The tomb of Liang Qichao and his wife is in the northeast part of the garden. It's as much of a tourist attraction as any, but people tend to go there in small knots and clusters, if at all. It makes it a good place for two people to meet and have a quiet conversation while pretending to be admiring the scenery.

As he approaches, for a moment he finds himself hoping that she will not be there. Part of him hopes that this has all been a mistake -- maybe some kind of weird joke on his other ally's part -- and that he will get there, and be surprised to find that man instead, perhaps dressed as a woman. Or maybe this is some practical test on the American President's part, both to see how Wen would react to such a thing, and to ask him about that one, black secret in his new contact's somewhat-checkered past...

But no. He doesn't need to get more than halfway to the pavilion before he sees her there, resting up against a structure and looking right at him. She's dressed in a white coat with a long, round hat, and smoking a black cigarette on a long, white stem.

And she is as beautiful and terrible as ever.

He smiles. She does not smile back. He drops the smile and walks towards her, hoping this will be over quickly.

"You are late," the woman says as soon as he gets within earshot, her accent betraying a German heritage.

"The bus took longer-"

"No excuses, Wen Boxiong. I expect promptness, or have you forgotten?"

"I have not forgotten," he says: "But you told me never to expect to see you again."

"That is still no excuse for being late," she says, tapping her cigarette out. The smell of it excites his senses -- sweet, earthy tobacco with just the slightest hint of something else.

"No, it is not. I am sorry."

She smiles, puts her cigarette holder away, and pats his cheek: "I accept your apology. I am sure you were just confused, after all these years. You clearly have forgotten a few things."

"And some things I have not forgotten," he says, holding his hand to where she touched him: "And never will."

"I am glad to hear that," she says, taking his other hand in hers: "I am sure you were hurt by how I ended things."

"Yes," he admits.

"And I am sure that, being hurt, you were angry."

"I could not be-"

"Do not lie to me, Wen," she says, squeezing the hand in all the right spots to create an intense flare of pain: "You never could then and you cannot now."

"Yes," he admits, yanking his hand away and holding it: "I was angry. I still am."

"But you came, anyway."

"If I did not come, then the next time I saw you there would be no chance to talk."

"No," she says, smiling: "I suppose not. Do you still fear me?"

"Yes."

"Do you still want to fuck me?"

That word. The way she says "!@#$," like it had just been invented and unveiled for the first time. A million sense-memories exploding in his mind, like fireworks. Pain and pleasure, completion and rejection, love and hate. 

Having it all and then watching it leave him.

"Yes," he breathes, closing his eyes and letting her scent overtake him.

"Well then," she says, turning and indicating that he should follow: "That's a start, at least."

* * *

They walk in silence, for a time, until they are all alone on a path.

She lets him kiss her, then -- hard on the mouth. She places his hands under her coat, revealing that she's not wearing anything under it. She lets him explore her, there, under her coat, his hands and heart building to an amazing crescendo of desire.

And then, just as he might be wanting to pull out his !@#$ and put it inside her, she jabs a very long, very thin, glass needle right under his breastbone, and into his heart.

He gasps in surprise, but not pain. Oddly enough there is no pain, any more than there is blood.

But the look in her eyes is terrifying. There is no love or warmth there, anymore. Merely hate.

"You betrayed me," she states, simply: "You took the thing that I gave you and gave it to another."

"Yes," he says, knowing that it would not be a good idea to lie, right now.

"You told an outsider about what was locked down in those files I gave you dominion over."

"Yes... I did-"

"I want you to tell me why you did this."

He hesitates for a moment, and she nudges the glass needle ever so slightly. The pain it produces is explosive, and for a second he almost screams. But she clamps her other hand over his mouth before he can, somehow holding him up and in place with just one arm.

"No lies," she says: "Nothing held back. It is not yet too late for you to live through this. But I want you to tell me everything, even if I do not ask for it. Do you understand?"

He nods. Oh yes, does he ever understand.

And as soon as she takes her hand from his mouth, he tells her everything she wants to know.

* * *

Later, when Wen Boxiong gets back to his apartment, he only gets as far as his living room before he falls to his knees and vomits. He does this for what seems like hours, wracked by horrible chest pain as he does. And when he has thrown up everything in his gullet he cries and sobs for what seems hours more.

He told her everything. He told her about the American President. He told her about SPYGOD. He told her about their interest in Unit 731. 

!@#$ him to !@#$, he even told her why they wanted to know.

And when it was all done, and there was no more left to tell, she just looked at him, pulled the needle out of his heart as swiftly as she'd pushed it in, and left him to writhe in pain on the path.

"You will never see me again," she said, licking the blood from the needle: "I won't bother to kill you. You have done a good enough job of that already."

"Please..." he whimpered, holding out a hand: "I love you..."

"You do not even know what that word means," she hissed, stamping her foot onto his chest. He screamed and collapsed into a ball, mewling in pain. And when he finally came to, she was long gone.

No, he will never see her again. He knows this. And it would have been kinder if she'd just killed him.

But she might tell the Imago of what she now knows. She might want to do a deal with them. She may want to bring the entire arrangement crashing down around Wen Boxiong's head.

Can he tell the President? Should he? Does he dare risk SPYGOD's anger?

He doesn't know what to do, now, except to cry.

And so he does.

* * *

On the outskirts of Beijing, late that night, a woman in a white coat looks up at the sky, focusing on the stars.

Inside the city, you can't see a !@#$ thing, up above all the reflected light. Even out here it's hard to make it all out, with the clouds and smog. But at least it's a better view than in there, and even that's a better view than she'd have ever gotten back home.

Home. It seems a million lifetimes ago, now. She thinks of everything about it that she's missed, and tried to replicate here, and finds herself tearing up a little.

So she closes her eyes on her tears, and opens her mind up.

Are you there, my love? she asks her partner, who, though he may be halfway around the world from her, is always just one directed thought away: (REDACTED), are you there?

I am, Geri Yesterday, comes the languorous reply: I am a little busy, though. The three toys I brought back to my room are proving to be most distracting.

I'm sure, she says, luxuriating in the sensual backwash she's getting from the edges of his mind: But please, lover, don't call me that, anymore. That role is done, now. 

As mine should be-

Not quite, she thinks, feeling his pleasure as he watches the life slip slowly from one of his "toys": I have just learned some disturbing things from one of my old tools. 

Let me guess, lover, he replies: my damn twin is still in play, after all?

Yes, she says, somehow not surprised that he knew this, or kept this knowledge from her: And he's learned about the connection between the people we bargained with and the information that was hidden here, in China. 

I think he's learned about the Object, too, he says, sensing her curiosity at his motives, and doing his best to block them from her: He may have an idea on how they all fit together.

That could be a problem.

I don't fucking think so. So what if he destroys these metal-clad aliens? We'll still get what we need-

I'm not convinced. They may not have told us everything we need to know to make the device work. And if he manages to destroy them...

... then we won't know for certain until we activate it at home, he finishes her thought: That is a concern.

Especially since, once they're gone from this world, we won't have anywhere else to go if the device doesn't work.

You know, you really do know how to ruin a perfectly good artfuck, love, he sighs, killing the other two without much panache or pleasure: Where is (REDACTED)?

I do not know where your twin is. 

Find out for me?

I think you can find that out on your own, lover, she says, smiling: Consider it due payment for not telling me what you knew, before.

A fair price, he chuckles: Are you going to tell those metal fucks what you've learned, then? 

The line goes dead in his mind, and the SPYGOD from Alter-Earth shrugs, knowing that the !@#$ he's been sharing a mission -- and occasionally a bed -- with for almost an entire century will do whatever the !@#$ she's going to do.

As for him, he'll get on the trail of his unknowing enemy in the morning. But for now, there's art to make of these three, dead toys.

And he's not going to stop until he's convinced the most horror-hardened member of Capetown's police force will cry for hours after seeing what he's done with them.

(SPYGOD is listening to Splintered In Her Head (The Cure) and having a Naale Stoutbeer)

9/24/12 - Shapeless in the Dark Again - pt. 1

It's the dreams that get to him, these days. They always do.

In his dreams, Wen Boxiong is back on 3/15, and the Imago have just upended the would-be upheaval of the Chinese government. The pro-democracy forces have been quite literally broken, their battered and bloody pieces strewn over the floor like a scene from a particularly filthy slaughterhouse. He can hear screams echoing throughout the building as the revolution's remnants are seen to, and the sounds and the smells are so vivid and nauseating that even when he closes his eyes he can still see what's causing them.

There is no escape from this one terrible moment he is trapped within.

If this was merely a memory, the Imago would be hailed as liberators, and then tell their General Secretary (the one who's dead, now) to stand by for an important announcement. And Wen Boxiong would remain kneeling, praying that no one noticed that he had soiled himself while begging for his life. He'd remain there well past the announcement, miming shock, until he could excuse himself to a nearby toilet to be sick in, and then, weeping, clean himself up.

If this was merely a memory and not a nightmare, that is what would happen. That is what happened, all those months ago. And everything that's happened since then is further testament to either the power of cowardice, or the fact that something out there is looking out for him -- near-worthless coward that he is.

But in his nightmares, the Imago do not stand there like serene, metal statues, perversely beaming with endless smiles and kindly looks after having torn men apart like paper dolls. Instead they all turn towards him as he kneels, festering in his own filth, and point their bloody fingers at him.

"Traitor," one of them says.

"Collaborator," says another.

"Saboteur," confirms yet another.

They repeat their accusations, stepping just a little closer with each new round. He whimpers and protests his innocence, begging for his life to them just as he did to the now-dead revolutionaries. He falls to the ground and abases himself, losing control over his bowels yet one more time as they finally reach him.

And then they all raise up their fists like hammers, and bring them down on his head.

That's usually when he wakes up, eyes wide open and heart racing. Sometimes he dreams they're halfway through pulping him, first. Sometimes they're more creative than that.

He used to always scream when the dreams reached that point, and wake up to the sound of his own voice in his ears. These days he just sits up with a start, gasping and thankful that it was just another dream. His head is still intact. His pants are not full of !@#$.

And no one -- not even the American President  in exile -- knows all his dirty secrets.

But as he slowly takes control of his breathing, once again, and debates whether to try and go back to bed, pour himself a drink, or try and do both, he remains unaware that a pair of figures are watching him from the shadows. They remain both still and mute, watching and listening as he makes up his mind, and as he goes to turn on the light one of them nods.

The lamp goes on, but they're gone just before its light can reach them. 

* * *

It's 10:30 at night, and the biggest, best hospital in Addis Ababa has been closed to visitors for quite some time. Nurses perform their rounds, doctors check up on their patients, and surgeons go from case to case, looking forward to the chance to do what this time of the day normally demands.

Somewhere in all that motion, an unseen crime takes place. A strange noise is heard by no one, and then there are two people in a private room, meant for only one occupant.

He's young and good looking, the man lying in the hospital bed. He's also in a vegetative state, blank eyes staring at the ceiling. The only sounds in the room are his gentle, shallow breathing and the endless beep beep beep of his heart monitor.

It's a good set-up, this room, and the least that NGUVU could do for one of its stricken agents. But there's very little hope of this man ever getting any better. Some strange kind of sudden brain damage, his doctors figure -- nothing they've seen before, and nothing they'd wish on someone.

The two figures regard the young man as he stares at the ceiling. There's spy cameras all over the room, but they don't seem too concerned, any more than they're worried about the two fellows who are lounging outside in the hallway, their guns just a quick gesture away.

"It's time," one of them says, his voice old and scratchy, but quite forceful.

"So it is," the other replies, his voice strange and echoing, as though it were coming from a long ways down a tunnel.

The other waves his silvery hand, and something strange happens to the man in the bed. He blinks his eyes, screws them shut, and shakes his head, as if he were coming out of a bad dream.

"You're not dreaming," the one with the old voice tells the man, who starts at the sound, but is unable to raise himself from bed.

"Where... who..." Khalil asks, his voice weak and raspy: "Why can't I see?"

"Your sight will return in a few days. You've suffered brain damage."

"I... brain damage?"

"Yes. That thing your attacker used scrambles your brains into paste. If you hadn't put up your shield, it would have killed you outright. As it is, you were pretty much gone from the neck up for the last nine days, but darn lucky to be alive."

"I see..." the man says, trying to put his hands to his face but failing.

"Don't push it, young man. It's going to take a while to get back to normal."

"Who are you?" Khalil asks: "I remember... I was..."

"You were visited," the old-sounding man says: "And you might think you know who it was, but you don't. Not really, anyway."

"I do not understand."

"It is well that you do not," the one with the echoing voice chimes in: "But when your friends find you, tomorrow, you must not tell them who did this to you. It is not yet time for them to learn the true face of the one who attacked you."

"No," Khalil insists: "We promised... no more... no more secrets."

"Did you, now?" the old-sounding one says: "Well, we can't have that, can we?"

The other visitor waves a silver hand, again, and the expression on Khalil's face changes. He blinks his useless eyes and tries to get up.

"Do you remember who attacked you, son?" the older-sounding man asks.

"No..." Khalil says: "I thought I did, but... no, it's gone. I do not know who... who are you?"

But the two mysterious figures are gone, leaving Khalil to yell at an otherwise-empty room until the NGUVU agents out in the hallway come in to see what the matter is.

* * *

Human time is a hard thing to reckon at the black, crushing bottom of the Atlantic, where the Kingdom rises above the Wet Below. The Sun's rays do not shine down there, after all, and any landmade contrivances for keeping track of its passing tend to be flattened into hard, little balls of matter before they get even halfway down to its spiky, rock towers and glittering walls.

But it is enough to know that it is the later part of what they would think of as a day. And that is quite significant, tonight, as the activity within that city is much, much greater than it would normally be for this point in time.

The citadel has come alive, tonight. Swarms of living lights encircle its tall, craggy spires and shed light on its dark hollows. Near-mindless, globular things are goaded into floating about the city in an endless parade of alien pomp and circumstance. Its denizens' finest jewelry crawls about their carapaces, and all eyes are bright and filled with wonder.

For today is the day that the Emperor dies, and yet lives.

Today, Emperor Thurl, who has ruled the Kingdom for untold ages, will sink so that his spawn may rise.

At this very moment, in the room of the seven jaws, dignitaries and emissaries from every corner of the Dark are watching as Thurl is being consumed by his strongest, toughest spawn. The Emperor has been prepared with the utmost skill by the royal food preparers, so that he is most edible and delicious, yet still alive and conscious.

It is a complex and meaty ritual, this deathlifedreamsleep. His spawn and he must remain in conversation as long as possible as the former devours the brains of the latter. They must share their souls, their hopes, and their dreams as they become one in the flesh. Only then can the royal jewels truly accept their new Emperor, and only after that happens will the Kingdom truly kneel before him.

This ritual has happened many times, but this is truly a special occasion. It is not only the first new deathlifedreamsleep since the ending of the Overobligation, but also the first to be witnessed by an overlander. Yellow and Blue, Imago adviser to the Kingdom, floats above the sacred feast and watches, apparently quite fascinated by its savage intimacy.

(Or maybe she's smiling for a different reason?)

Outside the palace, at the outskirts of the city, the other Imago -- Orange and Green -- walks amongst the people, as has become his habit. He has found that watching a condemned and mewling leader spend his last days in power is not to his liking. And, as his companion seems better suited to make certain the Emperor does not renege on their agreement.

Of course, that's academic, now. The Emperor is soon to be dead, replaced by his child. That child will be advised by Blue and Yellow, and thereby kept from discovering the shocking truth that his father had uncovered, about the their City. And so will the mighty Kingdom be kept blind and docile to their plans, and what will come on The Day.

And after that, well...

He smiles a little at that thought, wondering if the soon-to-be-late Emperor's boasts of being able to survive another "overapocalypse" will amount to anything, this time.

As Orange and Green wanders, observing, he is in turn observed. Up above his head, hiding in the wandering shadows between schools of lightfish, two figures float. The one with the older voice is nestled inside the silvery body of the other, as though they were Russian dolls of a sort, and in this fashion they are both protected from the harsh environment, here.

The Imago comes to the very edge of the city, now, and turns to look around, taking in the few stragglers to the party, or those few who are choosing to leave it. As he does, he listens to a family as they devour their dinner in a cramped hole that may be their home, a restaurant, or just some corner they've ducked into.

It's two adults and a child, possibly no larger or older than the one who's about to be the new Emperor. He's not sure if what they're eating could be something that has a name, or is just food -- even after a few months he's not sure how they differentiate between the two.

"If the Emperor is dying, why are we happy?" the child asks.

"Because the Emperor never truly dies, my freshshell," one of the parents explains: "He dies in the mouth of the spawn but he lives in the heart of the spawn. This is how we continue, here in the Dark."

"But I thought when we died we went into Mother Dark?"

"Only if we choose to," the other parent said, letting her mate eat in peace: "Those like us have no power and no station, and must obey our masters, but ours is the right of joyrest. And those who have power are both master and slave to their station, and they must suffer the deathlifedreamsleep for all our sakes."

"Deathlifedreamsleep..." the child says, letting the word roll out of its mouth.

And Orange and Green hears this word, and remembers something that Thurl spoke of, the first time they met. He remembers something about "formlife," and how the Emperor had taken three forms since the Overobligation.

He had thought that Thurl had been referring to some kind of molting process, or some strange metamorphosis, unique to their species. But remembering the strange words he heard the massing guests and dignitaries whisper amongst themselves when he deigned to visit the citadel -- reverent mentions of sacred cycles, the gifting, and the oldnew --  he begins to understand that he has misunderstood.

He realizes he has made a mistake, and that they have been fooled.

Oh, there will be punishment for this deceit! This Kingdom is now forfeit. The Imago will rain down fire from Deep Ten to purge it from the seabed. They will send down reinforcements to rend and tear to pieces what manages to live through that. And they will ensure that this "oldnew" Thurl lives long enough to see the full consequences of his sorry, sad attempt to trick them...

But that is the last thought that Orange and Green has, at least along those lines.

The next thought he has is why everything around him is shimmering, and then blazing hot.

And then he never thinks anything, ever again.

The two figures in one watch as the small piece of Earth from a few billion years ago -- molten and hungry -- consumes everything and everyone that stood atop it. Those few beings closest to the Imago are instantly slurped down and immolated, and while Orange and Green's armor can withstand the stress for a time, its fleshy bits are less protected.

Its work done, the superhot maw begins to cool off. Those nearby either scuttle away from the intense heat, or kneel and pray towards it, hoping to supplicate its hunger with their love. The family in the cuttlehole leave their meal to observe, praying as they go.

For they believe it to be the Red, come to take its due for this day. Such incursions are not unknown, even right here within the Kingdom. And while some may say that such a thing, in such a place, at such a time, augurs ill for the start of Emperor Thurl's new formlife, some will say that this is as it should be.

And with the disappearance of the two figures in one -- sad, but satisfied that what has needed to happen, here, has been done -- no one will be any the wiser.

Especially not Blue and Yellow.

(SPYGOD is listening to The Hanging Garden (the Cure) and drinking something under heavy pressure)

9/19/12 - A Monument to the Ruined Age - Pt. 1

It's a humid, rainy night in Beijing, and I'm half-in, half-out of the window of the room I've been dossing down in, trying to un!@#$ my brain.

Normally, getting outside in this kind of weather clears my head up faster than a bullet through the noggin. But not this time. This time, my brain is being a stubborn little !@#$hole, and hanging tooth and nail onto the nasty drunk I've foisted on myself.

(And I would be right out of tjbang sticks, now wouldn't I? God !@#$ing !@#$ it...)

Now, you're probably !@#$ing wondering why my !@#$ neural matter is being so mean about this? Well, there's two reasons, son. The first is that, after drinking about ten pots of the !@#$, I am righteously !@#$ing toasted on baijiu, which is some really nasty stuff, and best left to the locals, foolish tourists, and diesel engines. And the second...

...

The second is that, after burning down a !@#$ing building to get to the truth, last night, I have just discovered that the truth is way more than I can wrap my head around, right now.

Way !@#$ing more, son.

You see, all this time I've been treating GORGON as just another !@#$ing group of science terrorists. And while I always believed that they were the most !@#$ dangerous and messed up of all of their peers, it turns out I had no !@#$ing idea just how bad they actually were. 

!@#$, son, if the Nazis had fallen in with the Spider People, recruited a few nasty, best-forgotten gods to their cause, and set up shop on that one certain sunken city just south of Easter !@#$ing Island, they wouldn't be a tenth as !@#$ing dangerous as GORGON has been all along.

Turns out we've been living on borrowed time. It's only now that they've !@#$ing taken over that I finally get to see the !@#$ing clock.

And I am so very, very !@#$ing sorry to have to say that I have clearly been dropping the mother of all big !@#$ balls for the last five decades or so...

But yeah, let's back this caravan up to the county line, son. I went into a somewhat-unassuming repository for dodgy data that the People's Republic of China would really rather not admit to having, took quite a bit of it under my arm, and then lit the place on fire behind me so they wouldn't !@#$ing know what I took. 

It went up like a charm, and then down like a Thai Ladyboy on my magic alien lovesnake. And by the time the !@#$ Harbin fire department made it around, the place was a glowing pile of cinders, and I was halfway back to !@#$ing Beijing with the goods.

Since then, I've been alternating between reading what I got, cross-referencing what what I knew, and drinking myself blind on this nasty, pungent !@#$. And while I'm happy to say that my hunch was right, and there was a definite connection between Unit 731's activities, Japan's Super Soldiers, and what would eventually become GORGON (and now !@#$ing Imago), that hasn't detracted at all from the harsh as nails understanding that I !@#$ed up.  

Bad.

How bad is bad? Well, son, let's review some ancient history, and stop me when get to something you already !@#$ing know.

At some point after we decide to !@#$ing open them up like can of sardines, the Japanese go on a war footing and start doing a Pacman on their neighbors. Now, there's a lot of reasons behind it, and while there's some things I could say about the truth behind those reasons, a lot of it's !@#$ you're either not cleared for or !@#$ I don't feel like getting into.

Why? Because I'm !@#$ing drunk and testy, son. And armed.

So let's skip to the !@#$ing obvious. The Japanese go into China and decide to stay. They set up a puppet government, move troops further into the interior, and plan to march across Asia, one little bit at a time.

While they're here, in China, they set up what they call the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the Kwangtung Army, otherwise known as Unit 731. And it's a classic case of !@#$ing army doublespeak, because what they're really doing is looking into causing epidemics. It's a giant skunkworks for making !@#$ing plague bombs and researching how to spread diseases amongst the enemy in wartime, and they're using human prisoners as test subjects.

And that wasn't all they were !@#$ing doing, there. In addition to finding new and cruel ways to give people typhus, the black plague, and the !@#$ing clap, they were also performing weird and cruel medical experiments. They'd yank your stomach out and sew your neck-tube straight to your !@#$ing intestines. They'd freeze you and thaw you to watch you melt like an ice cream bar. They'd cut your !@#$ arms off and sew them back on backwards, just to see how they worked.

And then they'd !@#$ing vivisect your !@#$, without anesthesia, just to see the effects on living tissue.

You knew all that already, right? It's something you don't get taught in !@#$ing high school, 'cause Pearl Harbor was bad enough, apparently. But there are reasons why a lot of South Asian countries still !@#$ing hate Japan, almost a century later, and they never really appreciate the fact that we somehow don't know why.

Lucky for you, son, you got SPYGOD to tell you what's !@#$ing what. So you know the score. Or, at least we thought you did. 

I told you that the Japanese had their own strategic talents, before and during the War. I told you they were some nasty !@#$ers, put to work in a nasty war against soldiers and civilians. And I'm sure you remember that three of the nastiest, most sadistic ones vanished towards the end of the war, somewhere in New Guinea.

And I know you remember when happened when I found the three of them, June of last year, when I made the really bad !@#$ing mistake of trying to go after GORGON with a handful of Agents and a single, poorly-used Super.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's talk about the worst of the three, son. Let's talk about Dark Star -- the nasty !@#$ing !@#$ that eats your memories right out of your head like a woodpecker knocking on a tree.

I knew that the Japanese found her in a brothel for really !@#$ weird clients, and that she was turning tricks for men who wanted her to suck the bad memories right out of them, right along with their joy juice. And I knew they took her in, brought her up to speed, gave her a !@#$ing uniform, and sicced her on whatever nation they were invading at that time as a combination interrogator and fear weapon.

What I didn't know? When she wasn't traipsing through the jungle, looking for villagers to terrorize and partisans to brain-!@#$, she was hanging out at Unit 731, "observing."

One of the things I got out of that lockup are fragments of the diary of one General Shiro Iishi. He's the mother!@#$er who put Unit 731 together, designed the set-up, and oversaw its operations, right up until the war came crashing the !@#$ down around his head, and he and his cronies all ran like !@#$ before the Soviets caught up to them.

After the War, we got hold of him, and essentially let him off the !@#$ing hook in exchange for his information on biowarfare. It wasn't one of our country's best !@#$ing moments, but it was nothing I was involved in. In fact, by the time I found out about it the deal was decades old, and all I could do was keep the !@#$ing secret.

But looking over those files, and reading about his debriefings, I always got the sense that he was holding something back. There was something missing in his otherwise-frank recollections of what they'd been !@#$ing doing, there, with all those prisoners.

And when someone'll !@#$ing calmly tell you about how they put some poor Chinese guy in a pressure chamber, just to watch his guts fly out his !@#$, you really have to wonder how bad what he wasn't talking about actually was.

Well, here's the big secret, son. You want to know the reason why they were doing those nasty-!@#$ medical experiments that didn't have anything to do with spreading disease?

He was doing them for her.

Apparently, not long after he got the Pingfang facility up and running, he received orders that this weird-!@#$ girl was coming over to observe the goings-on, and that he should indulge her curiosity. Of course, they never !@#$ing told him why, and he didn't ask, but over time she told him enough that he not only understood, but supported it enthusiastically.

According to Dark Star, she wasn't just some !@#$ weird kid they'd found in a seaside whorehouse. She was a member of an advanced race of beings, whose ship was crashed underwater, halfway across the !@#$ing Pacific. She'd managed to come ashore, years ago, but the experience had messed up her mind to the point that she was lucky she should walk and chew gum at the same !@#$ time.

So of course, when she accidentally puts the whammy on some fishermen who find her, the underground gets their hands on her, she winds up at the freak whorehouse in Tairausuiso. But with the push on to find people with usable powers, the Army comes in and collects her. And it just so turns out that her handler's a friend of Shiro Iishi, who's also quite fond of paying for !@#$, as it turns out.

Where was I? Oh, yeah. Dark Star tells the Army that there's a ship down there with massive amounts of weapons, wealth, technology -- everything they !@#$ing need to win the war. And they believe it, but obviously they don't have the technology to go down there and get it. So she agrees to help them look into finding ways to help humans survive down there.

And that's why they've got soldiers testing frostbite conditions and pressure situations on Chinese and Russian prisoners, and why they're messing with the human body and seeing what kind of stress it can take and still survive. She wants to find out how much work they have to do in order to get men down as far as her ship is, and rescue her people.

At least, that's what she !@#$ing says.

There's more son. Lots more. But if you'll excuse me for a moment, I think I felt the atmosphere shift, and that means I might just be able to get my ears to pop, and get myself on the road to un!@#$ing my skull.

Help yourself to some Baijiu while you wait. Don't have more than a few sips, though. That !@#$ will !@#$ you up.

Doesn't it always, though.

(SPYGOD is listening to Cold (The Cure) and having some really strong, Chinese alcohol you should !@#$ing avoid)