I was a spy.
Yeah, I know — everybody thinks that sounds real cool. The colloquial idea of a spy is Bond, it's a woman in silk, it's a life of womanizing, espionage and thrill-seeking. 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, coffee gone cold, 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. Best in my specialization. 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. It's an embarrassment. My whole working experience is a true indictment of my education as a spy. 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 even on the threat tiers. 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. geopolitical jurisdiction. I'm talking countries out of extradition, places charities and overbearing travel influencers won't show.
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 highly classified shit. Stuff that could give them a life of luxury. A life where they will never want for nothing.
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. She did anything just to make me scramble. And I scrambled.
I took the bait every time. Embarrassing stuff, in all honesty.
Then there's Chad. One of the gym clowns. Somehow he gets Curry's files and decides he's holding the gun with a silver bullet. I tail 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, playing his little game.
The next moment, Hyacinth blows in, cherry-red Kimera Automobili EVO37, 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 none the wiser. 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 don't like spinning.
October 14, 2037. 10:56 PM.
We're in a safehouse when they hit us. The door goes. Three guys, night gear, silencers. Hyacinth goes first — one in the head, two in the chest. Standard Mozambique protocol. My instincts flare and I throw out a blackpowder mist. One spark and we all go boomboom.
Chad's next, still shouting about how he "just works at a gym." He chokes to death on his own blood and my blackpowder.
The two guys don't notice my wires and get themselves killed.
The third noticed. Combat veteran. 5'10. Heavy. He kept his distance. Made sure I couldn't use my gun.
I was behind a wooden crate then.
I had to disarm him. Distraction, prep, then finisher.
I threw a knife and it darted across the distance between me and him. Blocked it with his gun. In that opportune moment, I tightened a wire, cutting off the barrel of his gun and the skin on his cheeks.
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.
None of it matter anymore.
None of it.
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.