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XIII

"So," said Burris. "How are you progressing?"

"The wand?"

"Indeed, the wand symbolizes magic and transformation; maybe it will even lead to the cure for your condition."

"I already found it." I said bluntly and put the drinking flask on the desk. The sun reflected in the metal where the paint had flaked off. The light made it look as if the face of Mickey Mouse was winking at us.

"Congratulations, you're getting close," Burris said. The veins in his neck had begun to throb. He was excited to be this near his goal. But that goal was not my well-being. "This calls for a drink, don't you think?"

Burris opened a cabinet that contained several bottles of booze. He took out a bottle of Farvale Bourbon and two tumblers. The bottle was two-thirds full, and the label slightly moistened from a recent splash of bourbon.

He's drinking to calm his nerves. I accepted the tumbler with some hesitation. I recognized the smell from Dr. Burris' breath.

"Don't worry," he said when he noticed my hesitation. "It's not poisoned." His laugh was unconvincing.

"Of course not. You need me around until you have the schematics."

"The schematics?" Burris took a sip from his drink. Then he opened the canteen. His hands trembled from anticipation, but he hesitated when he saw me smiling and put the flask down again.

"They're not in there, are they?" He said. "You've taken them."

"Does it really matter?" I asked. "You know I'm unreliable. I might just have hallucinated them. Go look for yourself."

Burris reached into the flask and pried out a strip of film inside with two fingers. He held it to the sunlight pouring in from the window. It was a beautiful day outside, but not as beautiful as the look of frustration on Burris' face. Then he clipped the film onto a light-box, intended for viewing X-rays. From my position I couldn't see the pictures, but I knew that right now, he was trying to make sense of a series of photos showing smiling people with cyan colored faces playing beach ball against an alien landscape of black sand and a magenta sky. He looked at me, dumbfounded.

"What IS this shit?" he cried.

"Holiday snapshots. I bought a handful of negatives at the flea market before I came here."

Burris coughed and his voice turned strained. "When did you find out?"

"I've seen so many psychiatrists over the last seven years, I know to spot a fake one." I nodded at my tumbler, still with its contents untouched.

"Any real psychiatrist knows that alcohol is a strong trigger for psychotic breaks. You would never serve it to a patient, if you'd been legit."

Burris smile turned bitter. "Alright, Mr Kent. Where are the real schematics?"

"In a secret place. Call it my life policy."

"I expect you wish to be compensated for your troubles."

"I only want the truth" I said. "I want to know who you are, and why Kendall Duran had to bite a bullet."

Burris shrugged and finished his drink. "It's no secret, MI-16 is a vital unit of our National intelligence," he said, his voice was back to normal. He was relaxing, finding himself back on familiar ground. "We keep the nation safe from outside threats, but like any other field, we have to move forward. Invent new technology, new weaponry, new means of securing the interests of our country... and yours.

"And Duran had an upgrade you wanted?"

For the first time, Burris' laugh was genuine. Short, hateful and bursting with spite.

"Duran had nothing. But Bill Holman had an invention."

"The fmw technology in the Future Battalion game?"

"A microwave lens to be precise. The invention focuses the microwave into a singularity, much like a laser concentrates a light beam. We believe Holman invented the accelerator when he worked for the DGSI."

"Holman was a Frenchie?"

"Holman was a double agent. We trusted him... as did the French."

With every mentioning of Holman's name, Burris eyes grew colder, and now and then the tip of a forked tongue flicked from his mouth. He was only happy to vent his disgust for the inventor. Holman knew his invention was worth thousandfold more than the monthly paycheck issued by the French intelligence, so he kept his progress hidden, and made himself impossible to work with. Eventually, the French DGSI grew tired of him and laid him off. Holman took his schematics and ran all the way to Kendall Duran, who needed money to pay off his gambling debts. The two men struck a Faustian deal: they knew every army in the world would buy Future Battalion as per routine for training purposes, so Burris and Holman used the game to promote the schematics on the black market. The high price-tag turned off the casual gamer, but spy networks across the world lapped it up, regardless of it costing one hundred or a hundred-thousand bucks. The FBI, MI5, KGB, the Houthis, Al-Hajjaj, North Korea; everybody wants the latest in weapons technology, and Holman was running the market.

"You guys won the bid?" I asked.

"The Russians came close, but we have a better reputation."

"Why the shooting?"

"Duran was always a liability. He panicked during the trade and wanted to destroy the blueprints - said the world was not ready for a global_Havana syndrome._ We did not have the time to disagree with him.

"So, you killed him?"

"There is more at stake than the life of a single civilian"

"-or two?"

"Mr. Kent; civilians disappear every day for the sake of national security."

"So when I went back to the convention center, you sent the tall guy to make me disappear?"

Dr Burris' spat out an unpleasant laugh that sounded like a dry cough. "Agent Bruckner wasn't there to kill you. Why kill the golden goose who could lay a microfilm? No. Bruckner was there to protect you, and he almost lost you to the Russians.

"The kebab cook?"

And Burris nodded. "Boris Sokurov, Russian KGB. He spiked your food and your drink with sodium pentothal... with a ricin chaser."

That would explain the kebab and blood I'd seen on the sign. And the metallic off-taste.

"And the book vendor, who gave me the stink-eye when I fingered his magazines?"

"Leopold Deniaud, also DGSI. They were at the con to get Holman. You didn't think they would let him get away with stealing their investment?"

"If you believe the French will let you get away with buying it up from under their noses, you're just as naive," I said.

"Once we implement the microwave technology, the French won't matter anymore... Nor the Russians...or anyone else. You've played Future Battalion. You of all people should know that he who controls the microwaves, controls the future. You win the game. You win it every time. Focused microwaves penetrate armor, flesh bone and brain. Oh, Holman's such a bright inventor, but too greedy for his own good."

"So he's still alive."

"Deniaud? No. "

"I was referring to Bill Holman?"

"We've taken him to a safe place -in the pleasant company of an attractive young woman."

"I suppose pleasant is to be taken as a sarcastic remark?"

"Not at all, Mr Kent. In fact, I believe you are familiar with his fellow guest.

Burris took out a rugged military mobile phone, and showed me a photo of a middle aged man with a round face and a short salt-and-pepper beard. Even though the person was unfamiliar to me, I vaguely recognized him as the one who gave me the blueprints in the fire-escape. By then, he had realized he and Duran played a dangerous game of their own design, and they had just lost by their own rules. So, in his finishing move, I was introduced as a joker. The voices in my head had been concerned for me, and rightfully so.

It was too dangerous, and I shouldn't have been there.

The snapshot on the mobile phone showed Holman standing next to a woman, in what seemed to be a hotel lobby. A woman who was all too familiar to me.

"That's my sister, Kat!"

Burris nodded. "The MI-16 also knows how to take out a life policy."

He scribbled an address on the back of his business card.

"This is where we meet," he said "Bring the schematics, and we'll make a trade. Your sister for the schematics."

I accepted the card. Burris had written an address in the industrial district of Oakfort.

"Come alone," he said. "Don't tell the police. And don't bring them with you. This is much bigger than you realize, and we'll pop inspector Quinn in a second if we need to."

I nodded. Even if I wanted someone there with me, I didn't know who to bring. The MI-16 held Kat hostage, and I couldn't call on the police for backup.

"Don't worry," I replied. I'll be there. Just me, and my voices."

---

XIV

During the cold war, agents from the Eastern and Western intelligence routinely met to exchange high ranking spies at Glienicke Bridge in Berlin; at least, that's what I've seen on TV. Today those old TV shows had come true, and I was on my way to a meeting point in the industrial part of Oakfort with a pocketful of microfilm -six thin slivers of silver-laminated plastic that had already cost a life, and now my sister and Bill Holman were in danger.

I inched the rental KIA past sleepy concrete warehouses until I passed Würtz Cargo, then I drove on for another three hundred yards, before I parked the car and walked back.

What am I to do? I'm no spy.

I expected reality to slip from me like sand through neurons any moment, and for the voices in my head to burst out and comment on the situation. But today they were silent, and for the first time in seven years, I was alone.

Hello? I whispered. Expecting Karen or the General to reply. But they kept quiet. My mind was clear, I was focused. I couldn't even feel the presence of my two companions. It was as they had left the planet This was all new to me, and for once in those cursed seven years I felt exposed, vulnerable and alone. Right now I wanted the voices to be there with me, to tell me something

... anything.

Burris was waiting for me behind a wooden counter in the reception of Wurtz Cargo. The tabletop was covered with dust, and only a seventies rotary dial telephone remained -a gaudy orange memory of past times. He greeted me with a smile, like a receptionist forgotten by time.

"Welcome to Hotel Wurtz," he joked. "Do you have a reservation?"

"Funny," I grumbled.

"Let me check the hotel registrations, Sir." Burris pulled out the red binder from Duran's house, from under the hotel counter. He opened it to a random page and traced the lines with a finger as if searching for something.

"You beat us to it." Burris looked up and half-smiled. "Didn't you?"

"Your people didn't look in the right place," I replied. "The photos were never in that binder. So why take it?"

"Some times we provide evidence that makes it easy for the cops to wrap up a case. Like this one." Burris closed the binder. "Duran had a gambling debt he couldn't pay off, and it cost him his life. It's all here in the books. All they need to close the case is a pink ribbon." He put the binder back under the counter and waited for me to make my next move. I turned around to look at the lobby behind me. The interior was dated and gathering dust. Even the Art Deco looked out of time and place with its chandeliers and mirrored walls. But the mirrors served a purpose. You couldn't sit or stand anywhere without being watched. From his position behind the counter, Burris could see my front, my back and my profile at all times. He could see if I reached for a piece or made gestures to backup waiting outside the window.

"Old habits never die" he said, gently wiping the dust off the desk with the palm of his hand. "I can also duck behind the counter if people show up with more friends than agreed upon."

"Plus, you can hide your own piece behind the desk" I added.

"You see a lot of things Mr. Kent - for a civilian."

"You pick some strange places to conduct business, Mr. Burris - for a professional."

Burris looked around, and a small smile formed around his mouth. He was at ease here, much more so than in the fake psychiatrist office. "This place belongs to the MI-16," he said. " We've used it so many times in the past for business just like this." Sometimes we make it look like a warehouse. At other times a nightclub or a hotel." His voice had taken on a tone of nostalgic longing "You should have seen this place back when Bush and Yeltsin met for their peace talks." He produced a half full bottle of Stolichnaya from behind the counter and poured us both a generous shot. The vodka was smooth and easy on the palate, and I guess it made us both unwind.

"To business!" Said Burris and poured us another shot. "We have a trade to make."

"So how does this work?" I asked. "You're the expert around here."

"Just like any other trade. You hand over the schematics, and we release your sister."

"That simple, huh?"

Burris stretched out a hand and wiggled his fingers with an impatient come here movement. I felt nauseous and took a mental step back from reality. The drinks had triggered something in my mind. A sensation of things not being what they seemed began to nag, but I was out of my league conducting business with spy networks to say exactly what. I cursed the now silent voices, that had been my faithful companions. I had rarely understood the images they had shown me, or their words of warning. But over the last days I had come to understand, they showed me the world, the way they saw it. They showed me true face of people, they told me of future events and warned me of danger - but all in their own labyrinthine ways.

Useless Parasites, I cursed. I_f you're really that all-knowing, why don't you take it from here?_ I closed my eyes and waited for anything, but when I looked back up, Burris was still there with his hand outstretched; only growing increasingly impatient. Then I noticed the skin on his hand turning gray and scaly, like that of a reptile.

Are you telling me not to trust him? I asked the silent voices.

"That's simple? I give you the blueprints and we walk our separate ways?"

"Sure", said Burris. "That's how people do businesses." The s'es hissed off a forked tongue like steam escaping a pipe and his lie was transparent. But they had Kat locked away somewhere, so I had to play along.

I took out the car-keys from my jeans. "Here you go, then." I threw them at Burris, who caught them in mid-air, visibly annoyed.

"First holiday snapshots, now a set of car-keys," he sneered. "Your games are growing tiresome, Mr Kent."

"Likewise," I replied. "The schedmatics are locked in the boot of a rental car parked outside. You release Kat, and I tell you which one."

Burris shrugged, and I followed him through a short corridor. He stopped outside a door and hesitated a few seconds before he touched the handle. "Before we go in, I must confess we've given your sister a mild sedative," he said. "Don't be alarmed if she's unresponsive."

I recognized Kat immediately. She was out cold, sleeping on a seventies style couch with her hands tied behind her back. I rushed to her and touched her neck to get a pulse. Her temperature was normal, but I got no response from her.

"Mild sedative, my ass. She's out cold."

Also present in the room was a tall army-looking male, armed with an AK-101 automatic, which he kept pointing at me. Now that I saw him with my own eyes, I recognized him as the tall man. His brown eyes were emotionless and his cheeks were hollow, almost to the point of being emaciated. So this was agent Bruckner?

Then I noticed another figure, across the room. It was Bill Holman. He was slumped in a chair, hands tied to the armrests. He was dead, and trails of coagulated blood ran from his ears and his closed eyes. The rope had cut deep grooves into his wrists during his death throes.

"You killed him!"

"If he were alive, he would have made another set of schematics," said Burris. "And sell them again, to God knows who. Holman was brilliant, but he was too greedy to keep around."

"So you tortured him with his own invention?"

"Not exactly. The schematics are for a microwave accelerator. Without it, practical field application of the Havana syndrome is inefficient, and there's a lot of screaming involved."

Burris nodded towards Holman's corpse.

"It took him seven minutes to die."

"Seven minutes and.... twenty-two seconds", corrected Bruckner, checking his watch. He tapped the dial with two fingers and then held the watch to his ear. To my surprise, It wasn't a military issue watch, but a fashion brand, with an octagonal brass casing and a green dial. I couldn't see the make from where I stood, but it sure wasn't a Rolex.

I untied Kat and massaged her wrists to get the blood flowing. She opened her eyes for a moment and smiled when she saw me. "Hiya bro'" she mumbled. "So sleepy", then she closed her eyes and went back to snoring. In her current state, I'd have to carry her to the car, but I needed the car keys back from Burris.

"It's the red KIA," I told Burris. "I parked it a couple of hundred yards down the road. The schematics are in the glove compartment."

"Wait here," ordered Burris and left the building.

The silence was uncomfortable in Burris' absence. Bruckner kept aiming at me with the AK-101, and I was stuck with three people; one unconscious, one dead, and one silent.

"What's keeping him?" I asked.

Bruckner checked his watch again. "He's been gone six minutes and twenty eight seconds."

"Nice time-piece," I bluffed, not knowing the first thing about fashion watches, but I could tell it meant something to him.

"It's a 1970 Larco," replied Bruckner. "Swiss automatic. It was a gift from a fellow agent the first day I joined the MI-16." He gently caressed the dial, and in that moment I realized that under the tough shell of military training, agent Bruckner was just another man on the job. Only his job was that of killing people. Precise, reliable and unemotional. Bruckner was very much like the watch he wore.

"Thanks for protecting me from the Russian agent, by the way." I tried to break the silence, but didn't want to bring up the fact that he had also put a bullet in my leg a few days earlier.

Bruckner shrugged. "Sometimes I save people, other times I silence them. I just follow orders. I knew Agent Sokurov. Had known him for years. It hurt me to kill him, but that was the order."

"You killed Sokurov?"

Bruckner nodded. "Sokurov and Deniaud both. The KGB and DGSI would have hunted you down for what you know."

Even though I'd never talked to the two spies, I still felt a pang of guilt, as if it was my fault they were dead. I had bought magazines from Deniaud and food from Sokurov only days ago. Now they were dead at the hands of the tall Bruckner, who was now polishing his watch in the sleeve of his uniform.

Burris returned a few minutes later with the envelope. He tore it open and held the schematics to the window. "It's beautiful!" he laughed. "So simple, and yet so efficient."

"Right," I said. "The deal's done, so if you hand over the car keys, Kat and I will get out of your way."

Burris reached into his coat, but when he pulled his hand back out, he wasn't flashing the keys to a KIA, but a P-32 semi-automatic.

"You must have known all along, that we couldn't let you go," he said.

"I had my concerns," I said. "But I had to save my sister."

Burris pointed the pistol downward and disengaged the thumb safety. "I hate to break this to you Mr. Kent, but..."

"We're both a liability to national safety?" I finished the sentence for him.

"Yeah, my apologies. But I want you to know that your efforts have been of great value to your country."

"Whatever happened to witness protection programmes and a new identity somewhere warm? Like in the Bahamas."

"That was back in the good old nineties." Burris slipped into his state of nostalgic reverie. "Back then, civilians were offered compensation: money, a new life or maybe a dacha outside St Petersburg. Today, everything is about balancing the budget and optimizing efficiency. Identity programmes cost millions, but a .32 ACP shell is less than a dollar."

"Those were the days, my friend." I quoted the only Mary Hopkin song I knew, in order to procrastinate the inevitable. As long as I could keep Burris daydreaming about his past, he probably wouldn't shoot me. I looked around to find any means of escape, but the small room was windowless, and Bruckner had his 101 firmly aimed at my midriff.

Say something, damn you! I cursed at the silent voices in my head.This is where we die. You, me and that demon thing.

The response was immediate and powerful. A jet of mental wind erupted from a rift in a bottomless void and cleared my mind. My mind's eye looked into a vacuous abyss and a newfound confidence swept over me.

"We would never let you die," said Karen. "We've always been your guardians."

"Guardians, my ass," I said. "What about all the remarks about them hating my guts, if they only knew?"

"Humans loathe and fear what they don't understand. If they knew that you are_other_, they will hate you."

"We've looked out for the humans on this side of the abyss for thousands of years," said the General. "Protected them from our kind - and from themselves."

"And what part do I play in this?"

"We three are one. You are our physical part."

"So, what do I do now?" I asked, but I already knew the answer:

The human world was not ready for destructive technology of this magnitude.

Kendall Duran realized the dangers of unleashing the microwave weaponry too late, and had tried to stop it. But he was only human, and he was killed by his fellow humans. I sighed, and nodded at Burris, who snapped out of his comfortable daydream. "I understand," I said. "And I'm not angry with you. But I can't allow you to kill Kat or myself."

Then I_became._