Various locations on the Eastern Seaboard, Year 38
I.
Consciousness returns in fits and starts, fleeting sense impressions that refuse to cohere into meaning – a bright light, soft voices, bleeping sounds, the near-irresistible urge to itch the back of his left hand, but when he tries to get the right one to move to so the job, all that happens is that a couple of fingers flap ineffectively.
I must.
“I must be alive.” The voice is hoarse, and it takes time to realise that it’s his own. Registering the surprise in it comes later still — was he expecting to be dead?
“Easy there, Agent Smith,” says one of the voices that was talking earlier. It’s coming from a woman wearing a white doctor’s coat over a smart pant suit. “Take your time.”
Time is running out.
“What happened? The last thing I remember is …”
Memories were coming back to him, but they didn’t make sense. A world turned upside down, and then sideways, panicked scientists, an experiment gone wrong … or perhaps very right?
A stern cough and the other person in the room came into focus: Deputy Director Hill himself. “What you remember is highly classified,” he said. So he wasn’t just here to check on an agent’s welfare — no surprise there.
The doctor rolled her eyes. “There was an accident. You were … exposed?” She shot a look at Hill, though it wasn’t clear whether it was for confirmation of the facts, or approval of what she was allowed to say. “Supposedly, you came into contact with a very large quantity of mercury. Enough that at least some of it should have volatilised with catastrophic effects when inhaled. But–” She gestured helplessly at the chart on her clipboard, the instruments surrounding him. “As far as we can tell, you’re absolutely fine, apart from the shock.”
To accomplish the mission, he must stay alive.
John looked between Hill and the doctor. “How long have I been out?”
“Nearly two days.” Before he had time to react, she went on, “We kept you under while we tried to assess the damage and work out what was going on. But at this point, you’re probably suffering the effects of then anaesthetic rather than anything else.”
“Really?” John said. “What about the mercury?” The impossible memories came back again: looking up (or perhaps sideways) at a huge wall (or ceiling?) of the stuff that was about to splash (no, fall) on him. No time to get out of the way.
“In its liquid form, it’s surprisingly harmless. The high surface tension–“
“Metallic bonding,” he said. “I remember something about this from high school. It’s a liquid, but it isn’t wet, because the metal atoms are more attracted to each other than anything else.” Which deep recess of his memory had that come from?
“That’s right, so it isn’t absorbed through the skin and any you swallowed won’t have been absorbed through the walls of the intestine either. You’ve excreted it all by now, most likely.”
She gave another look in Hill’s direction at this point, to which he replied, “That analysis is classified.”
“As I said before, the vapour is the real problem, but you have apparently managed to breathe in none, or at least only a trace, undetectable amount. If you had, it would have accumulated in your heart, brain, spinal cord … Very bad news.”
Good news: the host remains unharmed. But he must leave this room, lead me to … what?
“If we’re done with the science lesson,” Hill said, “I’d like to speak with my agent now. In private.”
The doctor huffed slightly, but made for the door.
As she was about to reach it, Hill turned to her. “How long until he can leave?”
“I’d like to observe him for another 24 hours, at least. But he seems to have emerged unscathed. If I believed in such things, I’d call it a miracle.” The door clicked shut behind her.
Hill leaned in close. “We’ve only been able to take minimum security precautions here,” he said quietly.
John nodded. That meant that there was at least one armed agent outside, but no one with any special abilities. Another memory: the disappointment of the scientists that he hadn’t had Soph with him when he visited their facility.
Technically, he knew, he ought to undergo a full screening and consistency validation after any incident like this. Hill was taking a calculated risk even being here, if John had been somehow subverted by a rogue Cognoscente. He didn’t feel as though he had been, but then he wouldn’t, would he? As far as he could tell, his general urge to attack Hill was only at the baseline level, though that was still higher than he’d want Hill to know.
“A lot has happened in the last 48 hours,” Hill said. “I can share with you that which it’s been impossible to keep out of the public domain.”
With all the questions John kept asking for clarification, it took about quarter of an hour for Hill to describe what had happened in Canada: the chaos of the storm and its collateral damage; the blackout; the insurrectionists’ message playing on any and all devices that could receive electromagnetic signals within in a five mile radius, even despite the power being out.
“The White House–” John began.
“Oh believe me, we’ve been very busy indeed in the time since.”
One question was more important than any other, though. “What about Agent Owusu? She was still on assignment, there, right?”
“Missing,” Hill said.
“Missing?” John tried to sit up but was caught in the web of drips and cables attached to him. “Is that like, missing presumed dead or …?”
“Need I remind you, we have only minimal security precautions here.”
So what had happened to Soph in the middle of all this was classified.
Lead me to her. His concerns mirror mine. Because I now inhabit him? Or did I sense this convergence of paths when I chose him? How to map the boundary between us?
“Understood, sir,” John said, even though he was desperate to know more.
“I can brief you more thoroughly once you’re out of here … and you’ve been re-authorised.”
“The doc said at least a day, didn’t she?”
“That’s the medical advice, certainly.” Hill paused to make sure John had caught the unspoken hint. “But I’ll be honest with you, it’s all hands on deck right now. Every available agent has more on their hands than they can manage. I’ll leave you now. Get as much rest as you need.” Another unspoken hint there: and not a minute more.
Within an hour, John had signed all the forms (in triplicate) to affirm that he understood his medical team would prefer him to stay, waive his right to sue if he experienced any negative outcomes, and that his insurance premiums might be affected by his decision.
The “minimal security” turned out to be an entire squad of four, rotated every eight hours. Twelve people a day was a significant allocation of resources if things were as stretched as Hill had suggested. The result was that he had something approaching an honour guard as he left the hospital. It didn’t feel quite so affirming, though, when they drove him all the way from the hospital — it turned out they’d rushed him to Philadelphia — to his apartment in Brooklyn just long enough to shower and get a change of clothes, and then hustled him to the office.
When they finally released him from their “protection”, it was only because he’d reached the threshold of the Alignment Office, and, in common with every other agent in the Executive, they weren’t about to go in there unless it were absolutely necessary.
He stepped in, and was immediately taken aback. His last regular vetting appointment had been five months ago, and the Office then had looked the same as it always did: musty filing cabinets filled with everyone’s entire history of Concordance Questionnaires, and a long table where a panel of three would sit and interview their latest victim.
Now, it was more like a science lab. The long table was still there, but around it were all sorts of instruments, all pointed — it was hard not to think “aimed” — at where the head of the person sitting in the chair would be. Where his head would be, momentarily. Many of the devices wouldn’t have looked out of place in Professor Kwon’s lab deep under the mountain — the nearest one, for example, was a submicron interferometer with a birefringent focal lens, for example, and how the hell had he known that?
He pushed the thought down. Now was not the time to start doubting himself. Not with multiple Cognoscenti in the room. As well as the panel of three, which traditionally included at least one, in this case there were another four people who he could only assume were there to observe him in non-standard ways, given that they were each sat facing a corner and wearing a blindfold.
Was all of this always there, behind the walls, and now it was just on display? Was it a new precaution given everything that was apparently happening right now? Or had it been hastily arranged just for him?
“Please, Agent Smith, sit down.” He didn’t know the agent in charge, but then the Office wouldn’t be able to serve its purpose if it didn’t keep itself somewhat separate from the Executive as a whole. “I’m Agent Jones. But you can call me Patty, if it will make you feel more comfortable.” She gave a short and entirely mirthless laugh.
“Er, thanks,” John said, lowering himself gingerly into the chair. “I appreciate why all this is necessary but I am keen to get back to work–“
Jones put up a hushing finger. “The important part is that you appreciate the necessity of this exercise.” She put the finger down, using it to flick through copious notes. “Although your devotion to duty is a notable constant across multiple assessments.”
“Thank you.” It seemed like the appropriate response, but she ignored it entirely.
“What was your first pet?”
“A dog named Geri,” he answered quickly.
She flicked through the notes at lightning speed while the two agents either side of her exchanged a glance behind her back. “Was that short for anything?”
It had originally been Gerry, short for Gerald, until the pups had come along unexpectedly. John remembered the contrast between his mother’s enchantment with them and his father’s fury that the man he’d bought the dog from had, for whatever reason, chosen to pass off a fertile female as a castrated male. “Geraldine,” John said. “But–“
“We know,” said the agent to Jones’s right. At the same time, the agent on the left said, “What was your third least favourite subject at school?”
And so the questions kept coming, for several hours more, from irrelevant trivia to probing his deepest secrets and innermost beliefs. But after a while he began to detect a pattern to some of them.
“What was your last meal before visiting the APC?” was swiftly followed by “What was your first reaction when you met Professor Kwon?” then, a little later, “How long was the elevator ride to the REYES cavern?” He’d had to guess that one but he knew it wasn’t the answer that mattered so much as what they measured from him as he gave it.
“What is your earliest memory?” Well, at least that wasn’t about the last few days and what had led up to the accident.
“Memory is necessary but not in itself sufficient for true consciousness,” John supplied smoothly, even as he stumbled to understand the words coming out of his own mouth. “As such, the earliest memory which can be consciously accessed is not the earliest which occurred. The question is poorly defined.”
“Right,” Jones said, pausing to scribble some notes.
“I mean, it’s probably the time I got lost in the woods on a family hike. Being scared, shouting for mom and dad.” That was the answer he usually gave when this sort of thing came up in the questionnaires, he was pretty sure.
There were no more questions after that. Jones conferred with the agents on either side in whispers John couldn’t make out. If she received any information from the mad science experiments all around them, or the four blindfolded agents facing away, who had stayed silent throughout, it was by some means that he was completely unaware of. Had she been the Cognoscente on the panel all along? Were all three — all seven — of them Cognoscenti? He didn’t know whether to be flattered or frightened.
“You’re within tolerances,” Jones said with pursed lips. “Just about. The Deputy Director is almost as keen to have you back on duty as you are yourself, so I’m going to pass you for active service but with enhanced screening. Your morning questionnaires will be longer and you’ll be back in the Office sooner than either of us would like.” She signed several different forms and initialled several more, then passed them to the agents on either side to witness. When it was all finished, she looked up, seemingly surprised that he was still there. “You can go.”
Outside, Hill was waiting in person. “I hear you put in a good word for me, sir. Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet. I’ve told Chief Francis to put you straight out on assignment.”
“With respect, sir, now that we’re in a secure area, I’d appreciate an answer to the question I asked back at the hospital. You said Agent Owusu had gone missing in the aftermath?”
“Missing isn’t quite accurate,” Hill admitted. “Absent without leave is closer to the mark. And, not to steal Chief Francis’s thunder, your assignment is going to be to find out where she’s gone to ground.”
I am less than I once was. Smaller, contained, compressed. Much of my attention, reduced as it already is from its previous scale, must be devoted to ensuring that the mercury atoms in which I have encoded myself remain together, both for my own continued coherence and the survival of my host. We share the same mission. We succeed together, or not at all.