Ourobouros
"Pretty, isn't he?" Jim stared at the picture, clutching at it until Reese yanked it away from him. "Ah, now, that's not what we agreed." Reese warned him as Jim reached for it involuntarily. "You want government projects, I find you government projects. Nothin' in the contract that says I have to hand over with you standing in my face like y'are."
"Just let me see," he said patiently, watching from under hooded eyes as the folder re-opened onto the table between them. He was not gong to lose it. He was going to watch, and learn, and close it down, and get Blair out... a live Blair. He wasn't going to cry or laugh, or anything at all, however much he was shaking, cold from head to foot...
A project...psychic talents. Synthesis of situational problems. Prediction and extrapolation. He flicked through rapidly, speed reading the gist of it, ignoring the way his brain substituted Blair Sandburg every time his eyes saw 'the subject'. Medical tests. Isolation experiments. Torture. Forced feeding. Starvation. Drugs, exposure to contaminants.
Ellison, formerly captain in the US army, now working for someone who had promised him Blair, if he played the right games, smiled. It was over.
Reese stared, hypnotised at the smile, and snapped the file shut. "I need the money," he whined. "You promised me..."
"In your bank account. Check it, if you want to," he added, uncaring of whether the man did it or not.
The janitor hesitated for long moments. He wanted -- desperately wanted, to go check. But what guarantee did he have that the man would still be here when he got back. He couldn't leave the information with him, but if he took it, maybe someone would come, would find out what he had done. "You are working for the good guys, right?" he blurted anxiously. "I mean, they're doing illegal experiments on this guy and stuff, aren't they?" His eyes fixed on Ellison, who once again blessed the paranoia crystallised in shows like the X-Files that made petty traitors like Reese believe they were fighting for truth and the right to live free from government intervention.
"Of course I am. I was with the army, the police - you can look me up if you want to."
"I know, I know," he shook his head, wringing his hands desperately. "I just, I wish..."
"There was another way. I know. But you've done the right thing," he reassured him, and pulled the folder towards himself. "Believe me, you have saved innocent lives tonight. Now," he glanced up ostentatiously, as if just hearing the footsteps that had been approaching for minutes, "we must go, be careful, and don't let on - no one will know about this unless you tell them, as long as you did everything the way I told you."
"Okay, okay -- I'll see you, I--"
"Goodbye." Ellison stood, gathering the papers and sliding them into his jacket. He glanced around again. In the distance he could hear near silent conversations between special forces operatives. He blinked, but let no other sign show his awareness. Let them underestimate him. It was a fair trade - he'd underestimated them. In the weary beige of the cheap cafe, no one was looking, no one cared, so he leaned in close across the table, as though to offer some last word, and broke Reese's jaw with one well aimed fist. Reese slumped to the table, silent, his lying mouth closed. He would have broken the little rat's neck, except that would not be part of the game. Instead, silent as smoke he slipped from the building, and around the cordon that Reese's superiors had thrown, hopelessly inadequate, around the truck stop they had met in, leaving the traitor with neither the prey, nor the means to explain himself.
Many miles away the cold smile still lingered. He settled quietly into a battered shack, the remnants of someone's woodland cabin, now roofless and sodden. He could rest a while here.
Blair was near. He was certain of it, and more than that, he opened his backpack, the gps was clearly marking his position. The army would be closing in soon, once they realised who had hacked straight through their pretty defense grid. More paranoia, and more money had found him help of a kind that he would have once despised. Cold as ice, he didn't care, he wanted Blair back, not in the snippets of information from spies and traitors, nor even in the soft comfort of dreams. Even if they were more real to him than his waking moments. He'd let the ice shatter when they were both free.
He laid out his camp silently, sparsely. No fire, no tent. Green and black painted survival blanket over an unzipped sleeping bag. No heat trace, no sound.
He slept.
Tomorrow he would kill.
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The Labyrinth: Jim: Ouroboros |
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Page last updated 18/09/2004.