I was a spy.
Yeah, I know — everybody thinks that sounds real cool. James Bond, tuxedos, martinis, some French woman named Chantal who only wears silk. Sometimes it is, but if it was a categorical question?
No. It's not like that. It's a lot of waiting in shitty cars, cold coffee, staring at your own reflection in windows while pretending you're not about to throw up from the sheer amount of blood you've spilled that day.
But I was good. One of the best. I'm not saying that like some drunk vet at a bar trying to impress you. I had the numbers. I was a good soldier, through and through. I had an A-lister track record. And still — looking back — Jeez, I could've done this job in my sleep if I'd just shut up and done it.
I can see it now, every wrong turn, every wasted hour. Like reading those texts you sent your high school crush at two in the morning. "Hey… just thinking about you…" Yeah. That's how I feel when I think about this op.
The plan was simple: take down U.S. Marshal Derreck Sheriddan. The guy wasn't dangerous. He was a skirt-chasing divorce statistic with a badge. He hadn't discharged his gun in his 30 yrs or so of service. But he had a promotion coming — big one — and with it, control over a unit that could step outside U.S. jurisdiction (exaggerating, it's only really geopolitically. They can't just make their own missions).
My bosses didn't like that. Well, not exactly that — they didn't like who'd be whispering in his ear after the promotion.
And somewhere in the middle of all this, there's this private research outfit that had gone full Frankenstein. They'd been U.S.-run at one point but decided rules and ethics were for people who couldn't afford good lawyers. Ended up making some virus they said could move human consciousness from one body to another. Sounded like bullshit. Still does. But bullshit's dangerous when people believe it.
Give it some attention from all round the world, and it could snowball into becoming the fall of US society. Good riddance, I'd say. The highest grossing industry based online there is porn, which is sad, considering it's the most powerful country in the world in the information age.
Then there's Stephen Curry — not the one you're thinking of. This guy's a washed-out CIA analyst who got tired of people's faces falling when they realized he wasn't the basketball player. He quits, starts writing a memoir. His wife, doing that distracted-wife routine, unknowingly tosses his thumb drive into her gym bag. It falls out in the locker room.
A couple of gym employees find it. They think they've stumbled on the Pentagon Papers. Try to blackmail Curry, fail spectacularly. Pass it to a Soviet cultural front, who take one look and realize it's garbage. End of story, right? Should've been.
But that's when Hyacinth shows up.
Hyacinth — my rival. She's just plain merciless. Bet you a hundred bucks her first word was uppercut. She would give you a drink then get you deported before the ice melted. If I'd been smart, I'd have kept my eyes on Sheriddan and ignored her.
But she got in my head. She starts playing games. Swapping my briefcases, feeding me wrong coordinates, leaking my own fake intel back to me just to make me scramble. And I scrambled. I took the bait every time. Big mistake, in all honesty.
Then there's Chad. One of the gym clowns. Somehow he gets Curry's files and decides he's holding the nuclear codes. I find him behind a strip mall, leaning into my car window with the confidence of a guy who's never been hit square in the face.
"Fifty grand, and the files are yours,"
he says, like we're talking about a used Honda.
I was about to, really. I was considering it. He had the attention span of mayfly, but the balls of someone who climbs K2 for breakfast. I should've just got him entangled with Sherridan, plant him as a spook. Instead, I'm leaning in, negotiating, playing his little game — and then Hyacinth blows in, cherry-red convertible, clips my door, smoothie everywhere.
After that? Circus. She replaces my bugs with those stupid singing fishes. Chad follows me with a GoPro like he's filming A Young Girl's Guide to Murder: Fitness Edition. Sheriddan's off in the Bahamas with his mistress. I'm running in circles like an idiot.
If I'd cut all that crap and just gone for Sheriddan, it would've been done. But no, I let it spin. And the CIA doesn't like spinning.
We're in a safehouse when they hit us. The door goes. Three guys, black gear, silencers. Hyacinth goes first — two in the head, one in the chest. Chad's next, still shouting about how he "just works at a gym."
I don't even get my gun up before they put me down.
Lying there, bleeding out, everything goes quiet except for the smell of luminol proof bleach and gunpowder. And it hits me — every single choice I made in this op was the wrong one. Every damn move, every distraction, every ego trip. I could've wrapped this up weeks ago. Hell, days. But I didn't.
If I had something to say to the past me who made those decisions, I'd probably say, come on, man. Fuck you doing?
And somewhere in there, I feel it — the virus. That thing I'd brushed off. Crawling around in my head like it's moving in. I was already infected from the start.
Sheriddan, Hyacinth, the promotion — none of it matters anymore.
All I can think is… God, I wish I had one more chance.
A repeating voice rings out from the deep.
The king of broken swords has chosen you.
Fabulous towers and numberless domes rise mighty toward a single red star in a firmament alien to your earth and to all matter.
Now, with the passing of you, you wish for loftier things. You would not flee like a child from a scene disliked to a dream beloved, but would plunge like a man into that last and inmost of secrets which lies behind all scenes and dreams.
What you wish, I have found good, my envoy; and I am ready to grant that which I have granted eleven times only to beings of your planet - five times only to those you call men, or those resembling them. You will be the first human to receive this gift aware and conscious.
I am ready to show you the Ultimate Mystery, to look on which is to blast a feeble spirit. Yet before you gaze full at that last and first of secrets you may still wield a free choice, and die all the same.
To my later regret, I said yes.
_____
I referenced Burn After Reading (great movie) and Through the Gates of the Silver Key ( I did not read, just got the excerpt from the Lovecraft wiki).
Please give stones. I hate people who shamelessly use AI to write their fanfics. Back in my day, webnovel fanfics were either trashy or good. There was no space for AI slop. Nearly all the good models are written the same. There's no creativity in a world where everyone is apparently creative.