Alex's Point of View
Alice wasn't sleeping well, and that meant he wasn't sleeping well. Offing that blackmailer had been quick and clean, well, minus the blood. The clothes she was wearing that day were pretty much a lost cause. When she'd first told him, Alex dared to hope that his girlfriend could get used to killing without the, er, other stuff.
They'd talked about it, what she got out of fucking her targets. It wasn't sexual, she'd assured him. Alice was a lot of things but she wasn't a liar, not to him. If she didn't want to tell him something she made that clear. Her particular process wasn't one of those forbidden topics.
"It's about ups and downs," she explained to him, back when their relationship was fresh. Alex dated their beginning as a couple from the time she confessed to being his government-assigned girlfriend. The lie they lived before that didn't count.
"I hate every man but you, Alex. Their lust for my body offends me."
"But what about me? I want you too," he told her.
She shook her head. "You wanted my heart before you wanted my body. It's different with you, Alex. It always was. Making love with you is a joy."
"What about them? The targets?" He was almost afraid to ask .
"Justice. Punishment." Her eyes looked far away.
Even now the memory of this conversation was burned into Alex's mind. He could remember it word for word.
"Other men want my body. They want to use me. Fine. But they have to pay the price. Only you are allowed to touch me that way and live. Building a man up like that, letting him think he's won, that's when the kill is the sweetest. It's how I take my power back."
Alex could read between the lines. His girlfriend had been violated before, breaking something inside her. This was revenge, but also a way to assert her independence, to be in control again. He didn't like it. In fact, he hated it, but he could deal with it. Like Alice said, he had to pay the price. Her love was worth it.
The price to be paid tonight was holding her through the shakes and the sweats, scaring away the monsters that only she could see.
"You're okay, babe. You're, safe," Alex repeated like a mantra. It was a long night.
***
*BEEP *BEEP *BEEP
Shit...
Alex had been watching the alarm for over an hour. He tried to shut his eyes after Alice settled down into a fitful, uneasy repose. No dice. Every five minutes, sometimes every thirty seconds, he checked how much time he had left, how much sleep he could still have. Turned out the number was zero.
And it's a big day, too.
There were times like this in the Marines. He'd show up to the morning PT formation still somewhat drunk from last night. Running on no sleep was a lot easier at nineteen, he found.
After bagging a target his girlfriend would usually get a few days off, so he left her in bed and hoped she could still sleep without him beside her.
Putting on his clothes robotically, Alex decided to skip brushing his teeth and hobbled into his Toyama Cascade. The old familiar truck he bought as a present to himself for a successful deployment embraced him like an old friend.
Not daring to do much more, Alex forced his bleary eyes to remain open as he drove to the corner gas station. He bought two energy drinks, one for now, and one for later. He forced the first energy drink down his throat and sat there in the parking lot until he felt the caffeine kick in.
When he walked into the Lockhole-Merlin office he studiously avoided other people's eyes. His eyes were red and bloodshot and Alex was not in the mood to discuss it.
How the fuck am I gonna be able to work like this?
But the work had to be done. Alex opened up the k++ project on his work terminal.
"These memory constraints are impossible," he muttered darkly.
Moving bits around, using every low level trick he knew, barely made a difference. A comprehensive spatial reasoning model that accounted for everything the enemy could do was huge. No way was that going to fit on a single missile.
He spent the next fifteen minutes going over yesterday's code, hoping inspiration would strike. Realizing how ineffectual he was being, Alex changed gears and opened up the simulator.
It was a bit like designing the car and the track at the same time. They'd found an open source flight simulator that could be reworked as a war game engine. It was his job to program the anticipated Chinese electronic countermeasures their missile was designed to go up against. That was at least straightforward.
"Okay," he said to himself. "This is something productive I can do until lunch."
Not five minutes later, just as Alex had something of a workflow going, Chip interrupted him!
"Late night?" he teased.
Fuck you too, Chip. "Something like that," he said noncommittally.
"Listen, dude, you can't be partying right now. We need a prototype or a test or something, and we need it quick! Our lobbyist missed several key meetings and the congressmen are pissed. We need those votes! The dude didn't give a two weeks notice or anything, just skipped town and left the company looking like we don't give a fuck whether we get this contract or not."
Chip dressed sharp with his Antimony blazer and perfectly coiffed hair. The guy looked the part, Alex had to give him that. The worry even sounded genuine.
"I'm working as fast as I can, man," Alex said.
Chip sighed. "I know, dude. I'm sorry about being the manager from hell, but things really aren't looking great. Hopefully, Hacker will win and straighten this shit out. Sixteen straight years of Democrats have really fucked us."
Alex raised an eyebrow. Chip's dad was a Republican Senator but he didn't think they were outright Team Hacker. That guy was a psycho extremist, just as evil as that clown Blimp that nearly won in 2016, but actually smart enough to be effectively evil. He kept his opinion to himself, though. Chip wasn't alone in his thinking and Alex didn't need any more drama at work.
"Don't worry about it. I'm making good progress on the simulator. We should be able to start testing the spatial reasoning model soon."
Yeah, the unusable model that didn't fit on the fucking missile, but Chip didn't need to know that.
His manager clapped him on the back. "That's all I ask, Devil Dog. Semper fi!"
"Semper fi," Alex repeated to Chip's retreating form.
What a douche...
***
By lunchtime Alex was flagging.
Time for that second energy drink, he decided.
After killing it as his desk, Alex saved his work and headed for the company cafeteria. Say what you want about Lockhole-Merlin: war profiteers? Yes. Evil? Certainly. Employees eat good? Hell yeah!
There was no way Alex was gonna bother eating clean after the night he had so the tired engineer loaded up his tray with greasy pizza and scanned the tables for cool people.
Oh, the twins!
"The twins" were Terrence and Teresa Tsai, better known as Terry and Teri. Terry was Alex's old frat brother at MIT, EECS just like himself. Teri had a degree in aerospace engineering from Barkley. She'd actually shown up at a few of his football games back in the day when she was visiting her brother.
"What's good, Tsai guys?" he greeted.
"You look like shit, dude," Terry stated directly. That guy was never one for the bullshit.
"Yeah, I know," he agreed.
Teri looked concerned. "Is something wrong? Do you want to talk about it?"
Not really. "It's nothing, Teri, just the usual ups and downs. This project is killing me."
"On god," Terry agreed as he shoved fries into his mouth. Seriously, that dude could eat all day. He was never not eating. How was he so skinny? Lucky bastard.
Alex had to kill it in the gym to make up for his shit diet and shit sleep. He'd gained thirty pounds since he'd left the military five years ago and was determined not to make it thirty one. His abs weren't visible anymore and he was getting nervous. What made it worse was he genuinely knew Alice wouldn't care if he got fat. If Alex was going to keep his body looking right he had to be entirely self-motivated.
"You sure you're okay?" Teri asked kindly.
Teri was nice to worry but there was nothing she could do. "Politics," Alex said, and that really said it all.
The motherly look Teri had on immediately soured. "You've heard? The Republicans are seriously going to nominate Aaron Hacker. He's leading in the polls! How did this happen?"
"Dems have had the ball too long," Terry speculated. "Harriet Clayton could've lost in 2016 if a few close states had flipped to Blimp. She barely squeaked by in 2020. The economy hasn't really recovered from the pandemic and people are blaming the party that's been in charge since 2008."
Alex nodded along. "And there is no clear successor to Clayton. Who are they gonna poll Hacker against? It's like the Democrats hate each other more than him."
"But he's a podcaster! A debate bro on Tweak! How is somebody like that running for president?" Teri said helplessly.
"It's where the eyeballs are, sis," Terry said.
Teri picked at her salad without eating it. She was skinny too, but had nowhere near the appetite of her brother. Even with the lack of nutrition she somehow managed to grow taller than Terry. Back in their fraternity days Terry had bragged to him that his sister was a model. Teri definitely had the build for it. Personally, he preferred curvier women but Teri was cool. She'd find a decent guy one of these days.
"He's a misogynist and a racist!" Teri complained. She lowered her voice. "We've actually been investigated twice. They think we're Chinese spies. Work is hard enough without...scrutiny like that."
"I tried to explain that we're Malaysian Chinese," Terry added. "But they don't know the difference. Our ancestors literally left mainland China hundreds of years ago. Plus our name is 'Tsai' and not 'C-A-I', which is how it would be spelled in Chinese pinyin. We're more American than we are Chinese. Try telling that to the FBI. It sucks."
Alex swallowed a bite of pizza. It did suck. The Tsai twins were the coolest people here, and they didn't need super smarts from getting their brain rearranged by a rocket, either. All natural. "Hacker being president would be crazy. Hell, ANIS might actually get used. You two looking forward to world war three?"
"Don't even joke about that!" Teri scolded. "And the way Hacker weaponizes his military record is disgraceful. You never talk about your time in the service, Alex. You're humble, honorable." She looked at him funny.
Alex never talked about it because there was nothing to talk about. It was just something he did for four years. Did people talk about working at WacArnold's in high school?
"Hey man, maybe you can tell me, is what they say about Hacker legit?" Terry asked.
Alex tilted his head. "What do they say?"
"Some bullshit about Hacker being a war hero. It's all lies. All he ever does is lie!" ranted Teri.
Alex sipped on his soda to wash down another bite of pizza. "Sorry to disappoint you, Teri. As a general rule, the Marine Corps is stingy with medals. They're especially stingy with giving junior enlisted medals. If they gave a Lance Corporal a Navy Cross, you can trust and believe gangster activities went down."
Terry burst out laughing. "Gangster activities?"
Alex nodded gravely. "Operation Phantom Fury in Fallujah in 2004 was the heaviest fighting the USMC has seen since Vietnam. Hacker was there, doing gangster shit, verifiably. I'm sorry, but he's one hundred percent legit when it comes to this. Dude is so salty he gives fish high blood pressure."
Teri's face fell. "But he's lying about everything else, right?"
"Sure," Alex agreed. He didn't actually know. Internet political talk shows were not really his thing. With Alice's issues and work there just wasn't enough left in him to care about anything else. The dude read as a scumbag to him but he didn't have much of an opinion beyond that.
I'm gonna crash bad when I get home, he thought. Two energy drinks in such a short time were not fucking healthy.
"Alex, are you listening?" Teri asked.
"Uh, yeah. Sorry. Just didn't get a lot of sleep last night. Alice was working late."
She frowned at the mention of his girlfriend. They never did get along. "I see," Teri said tightly, then her expression softened. "You know you can talk to me about anything, right?"
What's her deal? How was it any business of hers? He pushed away from the table angrily. "I'm going back to work."