AMNESIAC
Chapter Fifteen — What Kate Did
She dropped into her desk chair with an audible thump, and sighed loudly in the hopes of attracting at least a little sympathy from her coworkers. Phil, a cube away, looked up at the sound of her arrival but ignored the attention-seeking noises the followed. No one else dropped by with questions, or comments, or cookies, and with more than a little resentment, she powered up her computer and returned to work.
Stupid Monday meetings are so worthless, she thought, as she rushed through the multiple log-in screens and pulled up her spreadsheets. She hated the hours wasted at meetings that were usually so boring, she could hardly remember anything about them. It took precious hours away from her regular work schedule at a time when the Furman reports were due. A quick glance at her office phone revealed that there were three messages on her voicemail, almost certainly all coming from the New York office and demanding reports she’d been unable to compile thanks to a meeting about… something or another. She decided to ignore the phone calls- they wouldn’t accept any of her excuses, anyway- and plowed through the first of many financial worksheets.
Another e-mail notification popped up on the screen. She groaned. It was getting late in the day, and the Furman reports still needed to be edited one last time. She opened her mail screen, ready to fire back a withering “I’m busy!” response to the sender, but it was a junk e-mail. From Alice, Please Open!
Deeee-lete, she thought, but her hand was too fast, and before she knew it, she’d clicked on the message to open it. No no no wait!
No porn, no Nigerian scams, just a string of characters. “X7W!QyYxfg%75gp9#xiFze$3.” That was all.
That’s weird, she thought. Why would… why would… would… what’s… what’s…
Everything went black. Her glassy green orbs stared straight at the screen as her hands quickly dashed through a series of screens and protocols. “KThomas.” “2-22-88.” “SeaLion!11.” “Ford Fiesta.” “RedH3ad88.” Click, type, click. Finally, she arrived at a black screen with a single line of text: “Secured. Enter Password.”
Her fingers danced again. “X7W!QyYxfg%75gp9#xiFze$3.”
“Security control access granted.”
She continued to tap away. In her mind, the colored lines danced and swirled.
Decker stood at the foot of the stairs. He pointed the gun at James and smirked, as if he were party to a huge practical joke that James had, quite literally, fallen for. “Don’t worry, James, I’m not here to kill you,” he said, keeping the pistol trained on the other man’s chest. “This is just in case you decide to be… stupid.”
James began to slowly crab-walk his way up the stairs, and Decker waved the gun again. “Nuh uh. Stand up and walk into the living room. Slowly. I’m just here to have a nice chat, that’s all.”
“A nice chat with a gun in my face? Gee, thanks,” said James. He followed Decker’s orders and took a seat on the sofa, nervously staring at the weapon the entire time. “Most people bring wine or food when they come over to visit us.”
“Still a funny man!” Decker smiled broadly, as if he and James were old friends. “That’s what I liked about you, Pendleton. You were funny and a little slow on the uptake. Perfect husband material for my Kate. I see you haven’t changed one bit. Now shut up.”
“People know what you’re up to,” said James. He took his eyes off the gun and stared defiantly at Decker’s face. “We have tapes and photos. If we disappear, those go live to the world.”
Decker shook his head. “I think we both know that’s not really true, don’t we? Look. Tell you what.” He clicked the safety on his pistol, and tucked it into a shoulder holster under his trench coat. “Let’s get that out of the way for now, shall we? Now we’re just two old friends having a chat. Although that will rapidly change if you start to act like a moron, so my advice to you is to calm the fuck down and listen to what I have to offer you.”
“Okay, fine.” James threw up his hands in frustration. “What do you want?”
“At the risk of sounding cliche? You have something of mine, James, and I want her back. And I’m here to take her back. How that happens depends entirely on what you say in the next ten minutes.”
“Something of yours? Something of… you’re talking about my WIFE, you asshole! You’re never getting your hands on her! Never again. She’s not your little puppet.” He spat out the word puppet, and glared.
Decker held his hand over the holster and wiggled his finger. He raised an eyebrow. “Remember our deal? No moron moves.” He leaned against the wall, and after a moment, began to laugh. “Your wife. That’s so cute. That really is. You’re a real romantic.”
He could feel her nipples through her sheer silk dress, and she moaned with approval as he cupped her breasts with his hands.
“Alan, I’m going to fuck your brains out,” she cooed, as her hand snaked into his pants. “I’ve never wanted anyone so bad as I want you right now.” She placed her free hand on his chest and stared into his eyes. “You’re exactly what I want. And I get what I want.”
His eyes drifted, once again, to the pale band of skin on her ring finger. “Okay… tell me… the truth…” he said between passionate kisses, “is your… husband gone or… is this… just a fling?”
She gave him a practiced, sexy, lustful gaze. “Does it matter? He’s not here right now, either way.”
He smiled.
She worked him to full hardness as he slid out of his pants and boxers. Her dress joined them on the floor as she pushed him onto the bed and climbed onto him, greedily drinking in his toned, athletic body. “This is going to be the best night of our entire lives,” she declared as she lowered herself onto his slick, stiff rod and began to ride him.
“Your wife… I mean come on, James! Haven’t you ever wondered why a gorgeous woman like that would just show up out of the blue and be all hot for your cock? Or why she was ready to marry you just as soon as you worked up the courage to ask her? I bet you stood there and thought to yourself ‘golly gee, how did I guy like me get a gal like her,’ didn’t you?”
James glared. It was a thought that had passed through his head a thousand times or more. Every time we make love, every time I kiss her in the morning, every time she smiles at me when I get home from work. Every single day. “Feeling jealous? Is that it? Maybe I can have Kate set you up with one of her older friends.”
Decker returned the glare tenfold. “You? Make Kate do anything? Ah, James, I doubt that’s the case. I, on the other hand, can make Kate do literally anything. An. Nee. Thing. Including making her fall in love with a suburban schlub with a house and an empty space in his bed. You’re not married to Kare Thomas, James, you’re married to a robot that I created to give the real Kate a nice little cover story. Keep her out of boyfriend trouble while she was out doing work for me. You, my schlubby friend, only got to borrow her for a while. That time is now over.”
“Bullshit,” said James. “The only robot you made was the one that left the house to do whatever the hell you were making her do, against her will. You had to hypnotize her to get her away from me, not the other way around! We have a real relationship, Trenchy. We joke, we kiss, we argue, we fight, we make up again. You can’t tell me that you programmed her to do all of that. You can’t even make her do the things you want her to do anymore! She’s broken free, for good.”
“She’ll never be free, James. She’ll always be someone’s slave. Yours, mine, someone else’s… her mind is hard-wired to be controlled. For the rest of her life, every thought she thinks, every word she says… it’ll all be programmed into her. I should know. It was my idea.”
“Gentlemen, welcome,” he said eagerly, shaking each of their hands like a gregarious host at a dinner party. “Please, gather round. I’ve been waiting for this moment for a long time.” He ignored their stern, skeptical glances, and directed them to a row of plush chairs set up in the otherwise empty room. “Have a seat. Our subjects will be out shortly. Here, see for yourself.”
He reached for a remote and turned on a large monitor, which displayed a camera feed from another room. Six young women sat in what appeared to be a waiting area, flipping through magazines and chatting with each other. “They all believe that they’re here for a job interview,” he explained, “which is technically not a lie. We’ve already arranged for space in a tech firm on the coast, and they’ll all work there in their cover jobs. It’s perfect. Thank you, Goodwin, for making that happen.”
“The thanks are all yours, Decker, if you’re about to show us what you’ve been talking about all of these months.” Goodwin gave Decker a cautious half-smile, and motioned for him to continue.
“You’re going to enjoy this,” said Decker. He pushed a button on the wall behind the monitor. On screen, the six women looked up. “Welcome, all of you. We’ll be conducting the interviews shortly. In the meantime, are you tired of the Weltschmerz?”
He smiled as he watched the emotion drain from their faces. A magazine slid, forgotten, to the floor. Six pairs of lips silently mouthed yes. “You will exit the room and turn right, then walk to the end of the hallway and through the double doors. Obey.” The women stood as he switched off the monitor.
Decker rubbed his hands together. “Gentlemen, let’s begin.”
The grandfather clock chimed, and Decker, startled, turned to look at it. James tensed his muscles. He could cover the distance between himself and Trenchy in a matter of seconds, long before his opponent could reach for his gun. Then it would just be a matter of holding him down until… maybe I could tie him up somehow? I’ll have to knock him out. His eyes darted around the room, looking for anything large enough to bring down on Trenchy’s head. There was nothing close enough. He’d have to get Trenchy down and either punch him out or make a run for the door. Either method carried some risks of-
“Oh, is it daydream time?” Decker tapped his foot against the wall. “Pay attention, James. And it’s Decker, by the way. Trenchy is… never mind. I don’t care. My point is, Kate’s quite the little firecracker, isn’t she? She’s the best thing I’ve ever created. She’s a born killer, and I have to tell you, those don’t come easy. I can kidnap a hundred girls and brainwash them all, and none of them will be willing to kill like our little Kate does, over and over again. She’s really quite special. Can you see why I want her back? Do you know what she’s done for her country?”
“She’s not a killer. You’re a fucking liar, Trenchy, Decker, whatever the hell your name is. That’s a lie too, isn’t it? Tell me why I should believe a single word out of your mouth, guy holding me at gunpoint? Guy who came into my house and pointed a gun at me? Guy who’s been tormenting my WIFE for weeks, maybe months?”
“Because you’ve seen it first hand, idiot,” said Decker. “And so have I.”
They walked into the room, one by one, six women facing six men in six chairs, with Decker circling all of them. “The blonde and the redhead on your left came to us from California,” he began. “The two brunettes in the center are from upstate New York, and the brunette and the blonde on your right are the only survivors of that Michigan doomsday cult. Not that you’ve read about any of them, of course. Thanks to our special little deal wth Uncle Sam, all of their records have been quietly erased. They’ve got no family or friends waiting for them at home. No ties, nothing to weigh down their empty little heads.”
“How well did they respond to their programming?” Goodwin prompted. Decker grinned. The chubby man was a consummate salesman. He knew how to keep the other investors on the edge of their seats.
“As we predicted,” said Decker, “the indoctrination they received in their respective cults trained their minds to accept our programming effortlessly. As you can see, they’re perfectly primed to go under when they hear their trigger words, and they will obey any command I give them without the slightest hesitation. They’ve all spent the past few months getting a crash course in seduction, espionage, linguistic programming, and basic hypnosis techniques. They’ll remember anything and everything they see and hear, and they’ll forget every last minute of it the moment I order them to do so. ”
He turned to the pretty blonde at the end of the row. “Alicia, remove your clothes and go sit in Mr. Ault’s lap. He’s the man sitting in front of you.”
“Yes sir,” she said. She unzipped her pencil skirt and began to pull it to her feet.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “we’ve gone far beyond anything the Russians or the CIA ever came up with on their own. Our agents aren’t doing their work for love of country or fear of blackmail, but because they aren’t even aware that they are doing it. They cannot be dissuaded or bought out. They are useless if they are caught by the authorities, because they know nothing. This is the future of espionage, science-fiction turned into reality, and we’re at the forefront of it.”
Alicia, now fully naked, settled into Ault’s lap. She began gently nuzzling the old man’s neck, sighing softly as she did so.
Decker walked over to the auburn-haired woman. Her green eyes stared past him into nothingness. “Now this one,” he said, “is extra special. Kate here has responded exceptionally well to the Paladin training programming, much more so than any of the other girls.” He stroked her cheek lovingly, admiring her. “She’s also quite good at recruiting new talent, if you will. Her hypnosis skills are very impressive. The girls just can’t say no to her. At least, not for long.”
“The Paladin programming is nothing by spy movie garbage, Decker.” Mr. Ault was clearly unimpressed, in spite of the beautiful woman he was currently cradling in his arms. “You can’t turn innocents into killers. They don’t hold their orders without someone administering some serious psychotropic drugs. It burns out their minds and makes them zombies in a week. Don’t try to hype up what you’ve done here. It’s good enough, if barely.”
Decker clenched his teeth. He pulled a switchblade from his suit jacket. “Kate, kill Mr. Ault for me.”
“Yes, sir.” She snatched the knife from Decker’s hand and rushed forward.
“Ever heard of Dmitri Rosalov, James? What a rotten bastard he was! Holy shit, he was the absolute worst, and that’s coming from me, the guy holding you at gunpoint. Which I most emphatically am not James.” He held up his empty hands. “As I said, we’re just chatting.”
“You’re a real hero. Does this train have a caboose?”
Decker looked annoyed, and hurt. “Yes it does, James. Thank you. Where was I? Oh, Rosalov. Arms dealer. The kind of guy who would sell you whatever you wanted, and then go right over and sell your enemy the exact same thing for a little less, just for fun. Just for the carnage it would create. He’s dead now, wanna know why? Because Kate went to Novosibirsk and shot him in the face. Dead mobsters, slavers, Yakuza, drug dealers… I could go on, James, but you won’t believe me. After all, I’m a fucking liar.”
“If she’s a killer, it’s because made her into a killer. You literally programmed her to be a killer! She’s not out there doing this of her own free will. That’s not the real Kate.”
“Are you dense, James?” He kicked the wall this time, hard, leaving a dent. “There is no ‘real Kate’! Whatever she really was got erased by those Golden Dawn nutjobs, and it got erased again when I got my hands on her, and it got erased again when I made her into Suzy Homemaker. The real Kate? As far as I can tell, she’s a fucking basket case.”
James thought about the shower incident. Lying on the floor of the tub, the shower stinging his eyes, his arm curled painfully around the towel bar. Christ! You could have killed me! What the hell was that all about?”
“James…” Her body shrank away from him. Her eyes were wide with terror and bewilderment. “James… I…”
“Just get out of the tub. Just… go.”
“…so sorry, James, I…”
“GO!”
“See? You know.” Decker pulled away from the wall and began pacing back and forth. “I see the look in your eyes. You’ve seen the little psycho that lurks behind sweet little Kate. Did she ever tell you about her old boyfriends? The one she put into the hospital? The one with the restraining order? The whole reason I had her marry you was to try to control those wild impulses. She’s only sweet and kind and loving to you because she’s literally being forced to act that way.”
”Did you date a lot in college?”
She raised an eyebrow. “I fucked a lot in college. Dating was a lot harder. I wasn’t the commitment girl I am now back in those days.”
“I like that you’re Commitment Girl now,” he said, kissing her gently on the cheek.
She tilted her head to kiss him on the lips. “I am, too. Look at us, with our excellent timing!” She admired the engagement ring on her finger. “You wouldn’t have liked me back then, though. I was a jerk to guys. I was your standard crazy psycho girlfriend.”
“So what, did you burn a guy’s house down with him inside of it or something?”
“NO. No no no. No, James Pendleton, and if you still want -me- to become a Pendleton you’ll think twice before you go all ‘j’accuse’ on me like that.”
“Okay,” he said, laughing. He pulled her to her feet and wrapped his arms around her, swaying her back and forth and touching her nose with his own. “So how did such a little hellion become the sweet, beautiful, amazing woman I’m holding in my arms right now?”
“I’m sorry you had to find that out the hard way, James, but it’s for the best, because I’m going to take her from you now. Here’s the deal. You’re going to let me take Kate away, forever. I’m going to reprogram that little brain of hers until she’s nothing but a mindless robot, ready to do my bidding whenever and however I want, and she’s going to forget that you ever existed.”
“Or?”
“Or I kill her, and frame you for the crime. Or maybe I’ll kill you, and program her to take the fall for it. I can’t decide which one I like better. Either way, it ends badly, James. And it doesn’t have to. This is why we’re talking right now, and why I didn’t kill you outright when you stupidly ran into this house without thinking about ambushes. Because I feel sorry for you, James. Call me old-fashioned. So what’s going to happen is that I’m going to leave with Kate, and in a few weeks, Claire Jenkins will show up on your doorstep, madly in love with you. She’ll be just as much of a robot, but she’ll be all yours. No missions, no absences, no blackouts, just a perfect wife living the dream. You trade a redhead for a blonde. I know you have the hots for her. My little Kate tells me all about it.”
“Fuck you. You stay away from Claire!”
Decker laughed again, louder this time. “I had nothing to do with it. Your so-called wife, on the other hand…”
”I KNOW! Can you believe it? Kate went off on the guy, and told him to shove those paintbrushes up his ass. It was amazing! RIGHT? I mean Kate, of all people!”
She placed the lacy blue slip on the sales counter, pointing to the phone and smiling. “It’s for him,” she said to the clerk, pointing at her phone. “Wait, what was that? Well duh, Steve. I don’t know why James didn’t go instead. Kate said he had to run some errands. Hang on, I have to pay for something. Call you back.”
She tapped the ‘call end’ button and reached for her purse, only to feel the phone buzz in her hand. Almost instinctively she held it up to her face, feeling ashamed for putting off the sales clerk like a rude jerk. “Sorry, I just need to—“
Claire
ZANZIBAR MOONCARVER
Remember my words, and obey them now
“…need to… obey.”
The clerk leaned over the counter, concerned. “Miss?”
She turned and waked out of the store without saying a word.
“So that’s my story, James. And my offer. You walk out of here with a gorgeous, funny, sexy new wife, who will always love you, and I walk out of here with my best agent, a woman who has never really loved you and who never will. A wife who has cheated on you a dozen times, who has killed more than a dozen people in cold blood. Or, you say no, people end up dead, and you end up with nothing. It’s your choice.”
“Why this deal, Decker? Why now? You seem like you’re running some big secret conspiracy. Lots of people under your control. You have other… agents, so you don’t really need Kate. Just let us all escape. Kate, me, Claire… you can just leave town and move on. We’ll even hand over the tapes and the photos. Please, Decker. She’s broken free from you. Why not just let her stay that way?”
The sandy-haired man’s gaze hardened. “Because she took everything from me, James. That’s why.”
No one took the fire alarm seriously until the first flash grenade went off. Then, everyone ran like hell. Everyone except for her.
She stayed behind, hopelessly lost in a trance, still sitting at her computer. The flashing fire alarm lights and blaring sirens vanished behind a calming, soothing veil of colored lines and swirling circles, and she let herself fall deeper into them. Even the gunfire, when it came, was not enough to rouse her from her oblivious, orgasmic slumber. Yes, Alice. I did as you commanded. Yes, Alice. I did as you commanded. Smoke began to fill the office, and she began to cough, but she remained where she was.
“Kate!” A voice behind her, grabbing her shoulder, shaking her awake. It was Doctor Yang. He stared at her, his fearful eyes a complete contrast to her placid face. “Kate! Listen to me, and obey!”
She looked at him, confused. “But… I’m already obeying?” Behind him, another man in a white lab coat was handing Lexi a gun. Even in trance, her mind registered how unusual it was that Lexi standing in the middle of a professional office while wearing a black bikini and nothing else. The pretty brunette nodded and marched down the hallway, gun raised in front of her like an action movie heroine.
Doctor Yang pushed his was into Kate’s cube. “Listen to me and obey, Kate. We are under attack. The security systems collapsed, and Alice’s people… Kate. Listen to me.” He shook her, but her blank expression remained unchanged.
Gunshots. A high-pitched, agonizing scream. Another gunshot. The man in the lab coat ducked into Kate’s cube as well, crowding against her. “Come on, Lin! We have to get out of here!”
“Kate,” said Doctor Yang, pleading with her. “KATE. You MUST obey me. Retrieve your weapon. Do it NOW.”
“I must obey,” she nodded. She opened the lowest drawer of her filing cabinet and pulled out a gun.
“You will get up and walk towards the gunfire. You will show no fear. You are bulletproof. You will distract the mercenaries and allow us to escape. Kate, listen to me! You will continue to attack them until you kill them. Obey.”
“I must obey my programming.”
He stood up. “I’m going to count to three, Kate, and then you’re going to sacrifice yourself for—“
She fired, hitting him point-blank in the back of the head, pushing him out of the cube and into the hallway. She spun in her chair and emptied two rounds into Lab Coat. He sank to his knees and died that way, propped up against the file cabinet, mouth hanging open in shock.
The sharp reports quickly drew the attention of the black-clad mercenaries, who arrived a minute later. Kate stared at them. The pistol lay discarded at her side. She was fully awake now, deathly white and frozen in fear. Her whole body was shaking and trembling, as if she were on the verge of freezing to death. One of the mercenaries raised his submachine gun and aimed it at her.
“No innocents,” said his companion. “Come on, let’s go.”
The mercenary lowered his gun and waved his hand in front of Kate’s face. She stared straight through him as he bent down and recovered the pistol. He could hear her breathing, ragged and terrified. The radio crackled, and he spoke into his headset microphone. “Sector Three cleared. Two targets eliminated. Lower level cleared. Prepare for extraction.”
The radio crackled again. “Alpha Two, target Decker at large. Repeat, target Decker still at large. Probably blended in with the crowds.”
“Fuck,” said the companion. “I knew they’d fuck it up. We’re out.” He clicked his headset. “Radio One, Radio One, Alpha Two headed for extraction. We’ll try to get a fix on Decker. Out.”
She paid no attention to them as they left, or to Doctor Yang’s prone body, or to Lab Coat’s lifeless eyes. She ignored the large pool of blood as it soaked into the carpet, into her clothes, into the cloth cube walls. She didn’t think about the blood, and the bits of Doctor Yang’s brain, that speckled her arms and her hair. The gunfire stopped, along with the fire alarm, and the office fell silent.
Finally, she rose to her unsteady, trembling feet and stepped out of the cubicle, ignoring the bodies, the blood, and the broken glass that pressed into her bare feet. The police and EMTs were already combing through the building, but she avoided them, stepping quietly through the fire door and onto the soft grass outside. It was a beautiful, sunny day, and the birds were singing.
Somehow, she found the strength to run.