Story of the Year
(Meta note: I think this is the last of Agent K. If you are not familiar with his arc, those stories are here, here, and here.)
Story of the Year
Agent K slowly came into consciousness in his favorite place: a hospital bed, attached to an IV. In fact, it was less consciousness and more a drug-induced haze, and it was that feeling he recognized.
"Agent?" he heard. But the voice was more stern, much more soldier than the psychiatrists he usually talked to.
"What's the mission now," he murmured, wishing he could lay here in peace.
"No mission, I'm here to debrief you," insisted the voice, as if it were trying to break through the haze that surrounded K's closed eyes.
"What mission?" K murmured drowsily. "Or is my cryogenic amnesia worse than usual?"
"This is for mission 32," the voice answered.
That was indeed the last mission he remembered. "I was debriefed already. Besides," he added with as much of a smirk as he could muster, "you're not a Doc. You don't have authorization."
"I gave it to him," stated a gruff female voice. Hers was familiar.
That was what finally got him to slowly open his eyes and see the unusual entourage across the room from him. The Doc was there as required by procedure, and the obligatory soldier was there to take his notes, but his previous mission director was nowhere to be found.
Instead, there was a black cat -- who he could tell was a civilian by his posture -- and even more strangely, the shih-tzu who was the target of his last mission. That special forces officer was now cleaned up, wearing three medals on the dressy variant of the standard grey uniform, and his face aged by several years. The Doc, by contrast, didn't seem a day older than when he last saw her.
"Let me guess," snarked the bobcat lazily, "you're all here to watch me get put down at last. So, who's going to do the honors and turn up my morphine? You?"
"I wish," snarled his previous target.
"Then ask your silly questions," he yawned, as he re-closed his eyes. "I already gave my summary to the last crew, and I'd much rather take a nap."
There was silence for a moment -- a long enough pause that he re-opened his eyes to find the shih-tzu staring daggers at him.
"C'mon, dog... Speak!" Agent K commanded with as much of his playful grin as he could muster through the morphine.
"After thinking about it," the dog finally stated, voice cold as ice, "I have nothing to say to you. I'd just like to see you put back into your cage where you can't hurt anyone else... the way you hurt me."
Agent K didn't know what that was, but it certainly wasn't a question. He could play along.
"'Hurt you'?" snarked Agent K, "did getting stabbed in the shoulder really upset you that much? You picked the wrong line of work, doggy."
"I'm not talking about that!" he snapped. "I'm talking about the part where you trapped me in an abandoned building and tried to kill me a hundred times!"
Such an inflammatory statement got Agent K significantly more awake. "Objection, your honor!" he said as loudly as he could. "Let the record show that I did not actually -- "
His acting job as a lawyer was undermined by a yawn, before he could continue.
"-- actually try to kill him. It was onl--"
"Absurd!" the dog yelled. "What would you call repeatedly setting traps on every doorway and stairwell!?"
"Oh that," Agent K replied, smile widening as he remembered how much of a rise he got out of his target; especially that one on the bathroom door. "I would call that teaching you a lesson."
No one spoke for another several seconds, so K continued.
"I knew you'd been trained to disarm them; or at the very least, dodge them before they went off. In fact, I was very careful not to lay before you any challenge I didn't think you could overcome. I knew you'd survive, and by living, learn the key lesson that you forgot when you went AWOL on your 'soul-searching'."
"And what lesson was that?" coldly growled the dog -- though if K wasn't mistaken, he could hear his voice shake.
K was now as awake as he could stay, since he was ready to deliver a lecture on this subject. "The lesson that your entire training should have taught you: don't disobey a superior. Do whatever your written orders say. Sit, speak, roll over, whatever they are. One day, you didn't, so they sent me -- your superior in force and wits -- after you, to deliver your obedience training."
"Call me a dog all you want, you filthy ape, because I know that the shoe fits you better. You may have gotten the best of me that day... but you're the monster who lives on a short leash, and is put back into a cage when they don't need you."
Agent K was completely unfazed by this clear attempt to obscure the point. "Nonsense," he insisted blithely. "I am purely a mercenary. I give my services in return for the best compensation ever devised..."
He held up the IV needle on his arm. "Pure pleasure, in liquid form. They keep giving it to me, I keep working for them. If I felt they were letting me down, I could break out of here tomorrow, and they know it. That's why they always keep me happy, and never break a promise."
Agent K now decided to make his culminating point -- a point which his current regimen was interfering with. With a bit more jitter than he expected, he reached over to the IV pump and turned down his morphine four notches.
As his head cleared, everyone else seemed to get more nervous; perhaps as his muscles tensed, his usual look had returned without him realizing it.
"You have a gift for obscuring the point, doggy," he stated as he sat up and looked at the dog with a confident smile that seemed to unnerve others. "My cage is far less real than yours. I live in something that looks like a cage for their peace of mind. But I could break out any time I wanted to, and they could do nothing."
K's voice continued to rise, as he built up to his point. "But you. You show up, for what? Money? No, I can tell by your face, something less tangible. Prestige? Titles? Pats on the head from your superiors? Those silly pins that are supposed to means something!? Or better yet: a Sense of Honor!
"Ah yes, honor. I've watched them push that shit for a hundred years before you were born. They collect it from the human latrines, and find dogs like you who will eagerly chow down. You follow orders. You feel good about yourself. You tell yourself it's enough, and it makes you a hero, and never stop to look at what you're doing!
"In human times, Honor was when one tribe fought another tribe of humans who took their stuff -- or really, the peasants fought for the stuff of their Anarcho-Capitalist masters. But now, in this far more unified and benevolent world, it sounds better, doesn't it? 'The greater good', right? Or have they changed their marketing again!?"
Agent K paused. He was not interrupted. So, he took this moment to stare into the dog's eyes. And in spite of his stoic expression, he flinched.
"Now you tell me: who's REALLY in the cage... doggy!?" he snarled.
The dog stood up, looked him right in the eye, and suddenly smiled.
"You," he spat. And then, he walked out.
If Agent K had been suited up and not attached to his IV, he would have not let such childish logic stand, and would delivered the only comeback equitable to it: a playfully thrown dagger right to the shoulder. In the exact same spot as the last time he got the dog to shut up.
But, alas, he couldn't. So, he needed to forget about it, and calm his frustration . Fortunately, that was easy: he reached over and turned the Morphine back up to where it was before -- plus two extra notches to speed the effect.
Once he relaxed back into it over the next minute or so, he looked around the room again, which remained unusually quiet. No whispering about him, the note-taker not moving the stylus on his screen at all, and the civilian still just sitting there. Soon, K's eyes rested upon him: what was he doing here?
"He's wrong, you know," the bobcat stated, as if answering a question. "You're not GDF, you should see that. I can tell, just by looking at your face, you don't take orders from anyone, do you?"
"You're right," answered the black cat, his face completely flat.
"So you know what I mean. You're like me: a free mercenary, working for people who benefit you, not some greater good. But these military types? They're all rubes. All of 'em. They will do what their told, no matter how absurd. They can make those big computing machines look efficient and accurate by comparison."
The black cat said nothing.
"Why're you here, anyway? Is my existence no longer classified?"
"Not anymore," he replied, face remaining completely emotionless.
"Well maybe they'll finally get around to shutting us all off then."
The black cat suddenly stood up. "Maybe so," he replied coldly as he walked out of the room.
Agent K just laid back down in bed. "If that was all, you can freeze me again, Doc," he sighed, "if you'll just give me 15 more minutes of bliss."
Sure enough, after hearing an adjustment to his IV, and feeling good for quite some time, he felt the ever-growing desire to sleep, suggesting they added the extra cocktail. He did not resist; he simply let himself drift off, certain that another mission would come... or if it didn't, he would never know.
***
"Thanks for staying with me," George sighed as he arrived at his couch.
The bulky white tiger sat down on the couch in a very familiar and inviting pose. "I never stopped caring, hon," he replied, "I just... couldn't deal with your change."
"Yeah, I know," sighed the black cat. "But I'm still surprised you're here. Tyrone's okay with this?"
"Well, I hold him about your change, too, so he knows nothing will happen," his ex replied with a smile.
"Good," answered George, feeling himself starting to shake a little. "Because I really need comforting right now. Though I might not look it, I've just had the worst series of interviews in history... and I wonder if publishing my piece will end me."
"And you want me to protect you?" purred the tiger.
"Something like that," replied the black cat with a weak smile.
"Do you want to talk about it?"
George took a deep breath. "I take it you've read through my draft by now."
"Most of it, yeah... and I'm having trouble believing the GDF would run a program like that."
"Well, I've been more cynical than you for a while now, haven't I?" snarked George. "But you haven't read the interviews I'm still putting in."
George paused and swallowed, curling up tighter to his ex on the couch. He felt as if he wanted to watch his words, as if he feared the bobcat might be listening somehow.
"Remember that headhunting mission I wrote up? I talked to the victim, and he wanted closure. So I arranged something with my contact, and I got a chance to see the Agent assigned to hunt him down face to face. And he was... alien.
"Human?"
"Not even human. He was like... an alien who studied human culture and history, and was sent down to impersonate one of their strong men. He had this... look, that I can't even think about without getting creeped out. It was like... dead. An empty shell for a personality.
"He doesn't care about anything but himself. He threatens people as part of casual conversation. He doesn't seem to think other people have emotions at all. According to the mission report, which I was allowed to read but not quote, he thinks setting life-threatening traps qualifies as a joke or a way to 'teach a lesson' to someone.
"I insisted on staying in the restaurant all that time with you like a weirdo, because... I didn't want to catch the train until I could get confirmation from my contact that he was back in cryogenic stasis."
"Because he might follow you home," reassured his ex, stroking his arms.
George nodded, as a chill went down his spine, and his eyes threatened to tear up. "They kept him on morphine the entire time we talked... because otherwise, he would be capable of ANYTHING. The victim of his last mission can testify to that: he'd slice you up with the razor knives he carries as easily as he'd say hello."
As George's voice raised, he felt a hand along his chest. A very soothing hand. He paused, and took a breath, and held back the tears.
"I'm still deciding what to do with that interview," he stated, trying to bring himself back down with more mundane concerns. "I wonder if it's too chilling to put in. I thought the worst interview would be his handlers.
"I inferred it from the documents, but did you know they are training about a dozen soldiers a year, all with psychology degrees, just to stay in constant radio contact with Special Agents while they're awake? That's the only way they can control them.
"They need that furson there to catch lies, to curb bad behavior, to keep focus on the mission, and most important of all, to maintain the illusion that he's in control. They have to get inside the mind of this monster, and keep one step ahead of him. Think about that!"
"I'm glad I'm an editor," mumbled the tiger, increasing the frequency of his gentle pets.
But George barely heard him. He was on a roll. "What they said about him. What they wrote in his files. What his long-dead mother wrote in her diary about him, which became public record in the original hearing... it was heartbreaking. This thing called Psychopathy is apparently a rare mental disorder that just 'appears' in some number of young kits.
"His handlers, going back a full century, believe they're saving him. He would have cost us millions, and possibly dozens of lives, if he were allowed to try and live in society and turned to a life of crime. It's a real puzzle: what do you do with those who are incapable of any empathy whatsoever?"
"But is turning them into killing machines really the best idea?" asked the tiger cautiously. "Doesn't sound like a good idea to me."
"Not killing machines," insisted George. "Specially-trained agents that can do 'dirty work'. In fact, if they kill anyone, they're supposedly euthanized."
That got the first eyebrow raise from the tiger.
"I'm not saying I like it," insisted George, "I'm saying: what else can motivate someone who feels... nothing at all? On paper, it's a violation of his natural rights, but his disorder means he will not take up the responsibilities that go with those rights. The criminal record that brought him to the GDF's attention is proof of that.
"And so, in some twisted sense, is this not... the fullest life he can live without causing tremendous harm to society?"
There was a long pause before the tiger said, "maybe I shouldn't say this, but... I think you've been talking to those shrinks too long. You're starting to sound like Council Member Terria: 'the GDF's job is to do what is necessary, but no state has the political will to do.'"
"Don't remind me," George snarled... with a smile he couldn't hide. The tiger was the only one who he would not start an argument about politics with in response to such a comment.
"I'm reminding you for a good reason," insisted the tiger, becoming stern for a moment. "As your editor, I need to know what the takeaway is going to be of this story. And it sounds like you're less certain about that now, compared to when you were looking at this program through the lens of documents."
"I guess now you know why I spend so much time with those, huh?"
"Hon, I always knew it was easier for you... but it's why I'm always the most interested in stories like this."
"Well, I'm thinking about doing something I don't often do," George said wryly. "I'm going to just lay it all out, and let my readers make up their minds."
"And let the inevitable hearing before the Defense Committee let them decide to continue the program without a hitch?"
"I don't think it will play out that way," George retorted, "because of who my contact is. Did you happen to catch who wrote the boilerplate statement at the top of my story?"
"Major Martin Nidir."
"And did you read my notes? My contact is always referred to as M. Or perhaps MN."
"Oh!" exclaimed the tiger joyfully. "In that case, this is definitely going to be the story of the year."
That, finally, got George to smile. "That's the idea. Speaking of, you can watch whatever movies you want while I'm in my office finishing that story. Be back in an hour with another draft... for your editor's revisions."
"Sure thing, hon," he replied, as George got up.
Just like he did on the phone after the same promise, thought the cat. It was nice having him here.
The End.