Chapter 62

Who was Agent Ingram?

A spy?

No…not really. Maybe a little. He did have some experience in the field, but he never really saw any serious action. He was fully trained to be a field agent, but his greater strengths lie elsewhere.

Was he a counsellor?

Not entirely…he did have a PhD in psychology, which he put to use while working for the FBI, but he never ran his own practice.

Was he an engineer?

Technically yes, but…no, not officially. Even though he had his masters in chemical, electrical and structural engineering, he never really put his skills to use, other than reading schematics to formulate plans to infiltrate enemy buildings while planning missions and occasionally building some device to burn through a specific lock, or decode a security key; something that someone in the field would put to use.

Let’s not forget his other degrees, like in thermodynamic engineering, history, physiology, philosophy…but what was he?

And why was this super-secret organisation so interested in hiring him?

These are the things he wondered as he rode in the helicopter over the Pacific Ocean, which was the only way to this mysterious place. The obvious answer was: he is everything. A jack-of-all-trades, so to speak. And the obvious fact was that this agency wanted him for his extreme level of education, after all, he was a very useful person to have around, but for what? What did they have in mind for him?

After being hounded by a scout for several months to join the organisation, Ingram finally decided to take the plunge and see what it was all about. The perks seemed to be well worth it, although it took him some time to get over the fact that he would no longer be a member of society, which, at the end of the day, was really no big deal since he’d lost his wife to cancer two years earlier. His career hadn’t allowed them the chance to have children, plus he himself was an only child. Add that to the fact that his parents had both passed on, and it was easy to see why he finally chose to join the organisation. He had no one else in his life to care about, nor was there anyone to care about him.

All he could do now was hope this move was the right one for him, since they had been explicitly clear that once he joined and saw their facility, there was no going back to regular society. It was an all or nothing kind of deal. Once you’re in, it’s for life.

The helicopter finally touched down on a dirty old oil rig, and Ingram was quickly met by two men in unusual security uniforms, who escorted him to the lower levels of the rig, and eventually to an elevator that looked vastly out of place due to its clean, and obviously far more advanced design.

He rode down in the elevator in silence with the two men, wondering what was waiting for him down there, and how far into the ocean depths it went. It must have been significant, given how long it was taking for the elevator to make the voyage to the bottom.

Finally, the elevator stopped and the doors slid open to reveal a very friendly looking blonde man in a suit.

“Mr. Ingram?” the blonde greeted. “Come on in.” He held his hands out to present the place as Ingram stepped into the room and turned to look back as the elevator doors closed behind him. “Welcome to ‘Us’. My name is Stevenson, I’ll be taking you around for a quick tour of the facility, then I’ll be passing you along to the person you’ll be shadowing for the remainder of your orientation, after which you will be sent out to view the new home you have selected…” Stevenson paused for a moment. “I’m sorry, where was it you said you chose to have your home purchased?”

“Uh, Australia…in Queensland,” he replied. “Nice to meet you, by the way, Stevenson.” He held out his hand for a shake.

“Ah!” Stevenson said, “Where are my manners?” As he shook Ingram’s hand, he continued talking. “But, yeah…Australia. Great choice! The last new recruit we got just recently chose a place in southern France. Absolutely gorgeous countryside there.”

Ingram tilted his head. “So, that is all paid for…by the organisation?”

“Yes,” Stevenson replied before putting his hands up. “Any questions you have that are more detailed however, you’ll have to save for the finance department. I don’t know all the ins and outs of that process,” he chuckled.

Ingram nodded. “Of course,” he said, looking down at himself to check his appearance.

He wasn’t a tall man, about five foot, seven inches with an average build. This was one reason he never went far with being a field agent, his lack of size put him at somewhat of a disadvantage to most opponents in a hand-to-hand combat situation. Although, what he lacked in size, he certainly made up for in brain power. He wore glasses over his blue eyes, had a small moustache and dark, thinning hair; a symptom of his age, being in his early forties hadn’t exactly treated him splendidly.

He followed Stevenson down a long hall with red carpet and dark wooden walls, where there were rows of doors along each side that looked quite out-of-place compared to the rich colour scheme everywhere else. Each door was made of heavy-looking stainless steel and had a keypad lock as well as a slot for swiping a key card.

“These are the offices of the top dogs of ‘Us’,” Stevenson explained, turning around to look back at the new recruit. “They aren’t actually here very often. Most of them are very wealthy and live in secret elsewhere while they run their other operations, but they do regularly check in to inspect the facility and read through the data logs, things like that.”

“Hm,” Ingram mumbled, seemingly not too impressed.

They left that hall and entered a large room that resembled an office building floor, save for the bizarre red carpet that continued throughout the place, as well as the wooden walls around the outside of the room. There were dividing walls and cubicles everywhere, with walkways heading between them, where workers were walking to and from their work stations, carrying papers and electronic tablets with them.

“These folks are the brains of the operation,” Stevenson explained, continuing the tour. “They look after expenses, maintenance schedules, payroll, data collection and allocation…all the fun stuff,” he said with a chuckle, causing Ingram to roll his eyes slightly at the overly friendly and slightly Magoo tour guide.

They continued following along the left wall of the large room, passing a hall on their left that lead away from the office space, then they rounded a corner to the right and headed along that wall until they encountered a second hallway entrance. Ingram followed the guide when he turned to head down the hall, which had sections of glass walls with blinds built into them, along with glass doors and intercoms at the right end of each set of windows.

Stevenson stopped at one of the offices and pressed the button on the intercom at the door. “This is our other new guy. I think he just started about two weeks ago?”

Ingram nodded, then looked at the door, reading the short, simple name adorning the black rectangular plate mounted in the glass.

They waited for a response on the intercom. Stevenson fidgeted awkwardly, tapping on his hips with his hands as he listened for an answer from the speaker.

He finally gave up and started heading back the way they came, back to the big office room. “He must be in the control room. Let’s head on down there…that was going to be our next stop anyway.”

Ingram and Stevenson turned right from the hallway and headed back to the first hall that they had passed on the way to Cody’s office. They turned down that hall, which had the same glass offices along both sides, and finally, at the end to the right, there was a fairly large lobby with a single elevator on the opposite wall. The lobby was about thirty feet deep, and aside from the elevator, the only way out was down the hall they just came through. The only things residing in the lobby were a pair of vending machines along the left wall, as well as a couple of small plants.

After riding down in the elevator, in which they made innocent small talk back and forth, Stevenson and Ingram stepped out of the doors once they slid open. They entered a huge room full of long tables lined with computers and chairs, arranged in rows that were built onto the downward slope from left to right, all facing an enormous monitor on the right side of the room.

It was easily the size of a movie theatre screen. There were multiple panels within it, showing a digital map of the world in the background, with many of the smaller windows showing camera footage of random street corners or parking lots, while others were displaying a profile with a photo of someone’s face above it. The entire screen seemed to move constantly, almost like staring at an anthill, and it could be quite nauseating to a person if they were not used to it watching it for very long.

As they entered deeper into the room, they passed two security guards and came out of the little hall that surrounded the elevator doors. Ingram was surprised to see how high the ceiling in this room was; he would have to guess it was close to eighty feet to the ceiling, which was lined with lights that were dimmed so the computer screens were easier on to read. Between the rows of lights, there were large exhaust fans, which were presumably used to remove smoke if there was a fire or other similar emergency happening in the room.

At the far end of the room was a metal staircase that ascended to the right, with a guard standing next to the bottom step. Ingram followed the stairs with his eyes up to a metal catwalk with simple metal bar railings that ran from the top of the stairs at the far end of the room towards their position near the elevator, disappearing from sight to the left above the elevator door. The catwalk itself appeared to be about thirty-five to forty feet up in the air.

Beyond the catwalk, along the top of the wall on the left of the room was a row of large windows that peered into another wide room with a row computers in it with people sitting behind them, looking out over the massive control room as they worked.

“Ah!” Stevenson said, pointing up to a man on the catwalk who was leaning on the railing as he watched the large screen. “There’s the other new guy.”

They walked across the room, saying a few quick hellos to the people at the computers as they made their way down the long walkway between the tables. They eventually reached the stairs and made their ascent, the metal steps clanging as their feet came down over and over until they reached the top, where they passed another guard.

Ingram and Stevenson made their way to the middle of the catwalk, where the other man was standing with his eyes still glued to the screen.

“Agent Cody!” Stevenson said cheerfully as he and Ingram stopped next to him. “How are you today?”

“Just peachy,” Cody replied without looking away from the screen.

Stevenson awkwardly cleared his throat. “Uh, this is the latest new recruit, Mr. Ingram.”

Ingram held his hand out to the Agent for a shake.

After a few seconds, Cody slowly turned his head to look at Ingram. “OK…?” was the only thing he said as he gave the two men an annoyed look.

Ingram finally retracted his hand, closing his fingers into a ball as he awkwardly put his hand back to his side, feeling quite unimpressed by this Cody fellow.

Cody finally turned back to the screen and shouted at the people working at the computers below. “Come on, People! Get a clue! We need some leads!”

“You still keeping tabs on that guy you’ve been watching?” Stevenson asked Cody.

This question seemed to arouse Cody’s interest, and he turned to answer the perky tour guide. “He’s been making some bizarre moves in the past 24 hours…we’re keeping an eye on him and his lady-friend, but we’re really not sure what would have made them head towards Florida now, nor do I understand why he would bring that red-headed bimbo with him in the first place. There must be more to her than I thought.”

“Hey,” Stevenson chucked. “As long as he’s moving away from us, am I right?”

Cody stared blankly at him for a moment, then turned back to the screen.

Ingram glanced at Stevenson with an eyebrow raised, hoping they would move on with the tour soon. Stevenson cleared his throat, then gestured past Cody to continue walking along the catwalk to the other end, which Ingram could now see lead to another elevator that had two armed guards standing on each side of it.

“We’ll be going down to the lower levels next, and we’ll be meeting the man who you’ll be shadowing for the next couple of days until you get on your feet around here,” Stevenson explained.

Ingram pointed at the elevator ahead of them. “Does that take us down there?” he asked.

“You are correct, sir,” Stevenson replied. “If you’re wondering why we don’t have one elevator that goes from top to bottom, that’s because-“

“Water pressure.” Ingram cut him off.

Stevenson paused. “Uh, yes that’s right,” he replied. “That engineering degree serves you well. So as you know, we are underwater. And since this facility spans so far vertically, the water pressure on the top floor is vastly different than at the bottom. This elevator shaft, as well as the rest of the structure had to be significantly beefed up below this point in order to ensure ample resistance to collapse under the weight of the ocean.”

“Yes, I understand,” Ingram muttered, sounding bored of the engineering in the place.

“They figured this control room was the best place to have the two elevators converge, since it is the heart of the facility and our operations,” Stevenson concluded.

“What’s with the guards?” Ingram asked.

The tour guide looked at the two armed men at the elevator door. “Oh…well, the lower levels are a bit more restricted. There are some items down there that require the hands of experts only…as well as the occasional live subject, which sometimes require special care.”

Ingram quickly looked with interest at Stevenson. “Live subject?”

Stevenson nodded. “Yes, we’ve had a number of live subjects with special abilities in this facility over the past twenty years…genetically modified and/or bionic soldiers, previously undiscovered species, extra terrestrials…”

Ingram put his finger up. “Ah, see I’ve heard rumours that Area 51 wasn’t the only place holding E.T.s…will I have a chance to see it sometime?”

Stevenson looked sheepish suddenly, rubbing the back of his neck. “Well, unfortunately…” he began. “It died just a few months ago. They discovered that it needed a certain type of nutrition that this planet cannot provide, and it eventually got very sick…”

Ingram look surprised. “So…they just held it here, knowing it was dying? Couldn’t they let it go?”

Stevenson shook his head. “No, sir. The big people upstairs wouldn’t authorise it.”

Ingram scowled a bit. “That hardly seems…ethical,” he said, with a small shake of his head.

The tour guide shrugged. “Sometimes, in this line of work, there just isn’t room for ethics. Fortunately, we were able to keep the alien’s weapons, and some of its technology…some of which we have managed to back-engineer our own technology from.”

Ingram sighed. “Fortunately, eh…maybe for YOU people.” After a moment, he spoke again. “What other subjects do you have here?”

Stevenson turned to answer Ingram as they reached the elevator door. “Actually, we only have one live subject on hand right now…but from what I’ve heard, it’s been quite a doozy. We just picked it up barely two weeks ago. No one’s seen anything quite like it before.”

“Oh?” Ingram replied. “Why is that?”

“All in good time, my friend,” Stevenson replied rather cryptically. “You’ll be meeting the man you’ll be shadowing here in a minute. I’m sure he’ll tell you all about FS1.”

“FS1?” Ingram repeated.

“That’s the code name for the subject. Agent Stubz has been handling it since it arrived,” Stevenson explained.

Ingram raised an eyebrow just as the elevator doors opened unexpectedly. Both of the men turned their heads to see a slightly larger man in a sweater-vest, with dark hair and a mole on the left side of his face. Ingram looked to down at the man’s side, noticing he was holding a file folder inside a binder.

Stevenson put his hand out. “Ah, speak of the devil!” he said brightly. “Mr. Ingram, this is Agent Stubz.”

Stubz stepped off of the elevator, giving Ingram a quick handshake along with a small, half-hearted smile. “Good to meet you,” he said quickly.

“Likewise,” Ingram replied, clearing his throat.

“Agent Stubz will be your mentor until you get on your feet, which should only take a few days. He’ll finish your tour from this point on as well, so unfortunately, that concludes your time with me,” Stevenson explained.

“Yes…unfortunately,” Ingram replied, holding his hand out for a final shake.

Stevenson responded with an enthusiastic handshake. “It was very nice to meet you, Mr. Ingram. If you need anything or have any questions, my call number is one-hundred. Very easy to remember.”

Ingram nodded. “OK. Thanks,” he said with a nod.

With that, Stevenson turned and walked away, leaving Ingram awkwardly standing with Agent Stubz, who had turned around and stepped back onto the elevator.

“Let’s go,” Stubz said flatly, prompting Ingram to step onto the elevator with him.

As they rode down into the lower depths of the facility, Stubz finally broke the uneasy silence in the elevator. “Um, so…” he started, then cleared his throat. “You’ll be shadowing me for the next couple days, I guess. I’ll be honest, there’s not much going on down here these days, so it should be pretty easy to get used to things.”

Ingram nodded. “What kind of things do we do down here?”

Stubz sighed. “Well, we deal with weapons development and testing…I don’t know if Stevenson mentioned anything to you about the live subjects?”

Ingram nodded. “Yeah, he said there’s one here…what do we do with them?”

Stubz yawned loudly as he rubbed his forehead. “Sorry about that…we uh, deal with training and conditioning them, things like that.”

“Training them for what?” Ingram asked.

“Field missions,” Stubz replied. “They essentially are meant to be super-soldiers, although…”

“Although what?” Ingram asked, after Stubz trailed off.

“This one that we have right now…” Stubz said, shaking his head. “It’s just been an utter failure.”

“You’re referring to FS1?” Ingram asked.

Stubz glanced at him. “Oh, Stevenson told you about her, eh?”

“Her?” Ingram asked, raising an eyebrow.

Stubz nodded. “She’s been nothing but a hassle ever since she got here…and, of course, I’m the one who got stuck with her.” He turned to Ingram with a grin. “But once you’re done your orientation, she’ll be your problem from now on.”

Ingram had a surprised look on his face while staring at Stubz after the blunt remark.

“Don’t worry, with your credentials, I’m sure you’ll handle it just fine.”

Ingram looked back at the wall of the elevator. “So why is she such a failure? Not training very well?”

Stubz shook his head. “Oh no, she would be a very effective weapon as is, the problem is her attitude. She hasn’t taken to the conditioning at all so far and I guarantee she would never obey commands in her current state.”

“What type of conditioning?” Ingram asked.

Stubz took a deep breath, rubbing his neck as he spoke. “Back in the 1960s, they developed a program were they would create D.I.D. in subjects, by putting them through traumatic events, such as multiple different forms of torture, sleep deprivation, making them eat their own feces and so on…”

Ingram nodded. “Yes, I’ve heard of this…the trauma will be shut away by the brain, to protect the person from stress brought on by the memory of the event, and in some cases this creates a second personality within the person’s mind.”

“That’s right,” Stubz agreed before continuing. “What they’ve done is create spies and assassins who don’t actually know what they are, which is done by using the second personality created by the traumatic event. You’ve seen cases where people occasionally switch back and forth between the personalities, right?”

Ingram nodded. “Yeah, multiple personalities. A fairly common condition.”

“Well, they’ve developed a method where they train one of the personalities, while keeping the other one unaware of what is going on,” Stubz explained. “Once ready, they can be sent out, completely unaware of their mission, and be programmed with the objective in their hidden personality. Once ready, we can use a certain code word, sound, or even a colour to trigger the other personality to come out and fulfill the mission.”

“Hm,” Ingram thought to himself.

Stubz grinned a bit. “There’s one case of a man who was sent out, and he remained in his dominant personality for almost fifteen years. He even got a job, got married and had kids…then one day, he was triggered and his programmed side came out, and he completed a successful assassination. Fifteen years after he was sent out. It’s just amazing, the things we can do these days.”

“Impressive,” Ingram replied, rubbing his chin. “But what about this FS1? What’s the problem with her?”

“It’s not working,” Stubz replied. “We don’t know why, but none of the trauma we’ve exposed her to seems to work. We also integrated her training into the trauma to kill two birds with one stone, and so she wouldn’t realize what we were doing, but none of it has worked yet. We think it may have to do with her indestructibility.”

The elevator stopped suddenly and the doors slid open. Stubz stepped out and headed down the hall as Ingram stood in the elevator for a moment, stunned at what he’d just heard.

He finally jogged out of the elevator to catch up to Stubz. “Sorry, I didn’t hear you…it sounded like you said she’s indestructible?”

“You heard me right,” Stubs replied, as he stopped walking to face Ingram. “We have tried everything we can get access to, trying to cause damage to her body, but nothing has worked as of yet.”

“She can’t be hurt? At all?” Ingram asked incredulously.

Stubz shook his head. “I personally put her between three oxy-acetylene burners for over a minute straight…over three-thousand degrees directly on her bare skin. Absolutely zero damage.”

Ingram blinked a few times as the stared at Stubz in disbelief.

“So anyway,” Stubz continued. “I’m beginning to think her mind is the same way. It can’t be broken, which means she is pretty much worthless to us. All the trauma we put her through really only succeeded in pissing her off immensely…and now she fucking hates us all.”

“So that’s why you want to stick her with me,” Ingram said with a chuckle. “What was the plan for her after she was ready?”

Stubz continued to walk down the dark hall, which was lined with steel doors. “They think there are more beings like her in that town we found her in, but generally speaking, it’s dangerous work for our field agents to try to capture them. I mean, it’s do-able…we got her in here after all, but it would be nice to be able to send out someone who can’t be killed.” Stubz paused for a moment to scratch the side of his nose. “So…we were going to program her, and send her home. When she was in the right position, we would trigger her, and get her to capture one or more of the others.”

“What makes you think there are others?” Ingram asked.

“We know there’s at least one,” Stubz replied. “After Cody captured FS1, he got a phone call from a certain indestructible man who said he was coming to get her out. And there might be even more of them yet.”

“Cody?” Ingram repeated. “You mean that textbook sociopath upstairs in the control room?”

Stubz chuckled. “That’s the one.”

“He captured her?”

“Yup,” Stubz answered. “He got her handcuffed before she managed to kill him. He was lucky…he was part of a team of seven and he was the only one who survived.”

“Jesus…” Ingram mumbled.

Stubz laughed. “Well, that might be who called Cody on the phone…supposedly he’s been around for centuries. Cody’s been hunting him for years…and so were we, until we found FS1. She isn’t nearly as dangerous as he is, and if there are more out there like her, we’ll be able to bring them in and forget about him rather than lose more lives trying to capture him.”

Ingram frowned as he thought. “Wait, I’ve heard of that. The immortal man…I thought that was just a story?”

“Not according to Agent Cody,” Stubz replied.

“Is FS1 just as old?” ingram asked.

Ingram’s mentor shook his head. “She claims she was born in 1996. But there’s no way to prove it. Why don’t you ask her yourself? We’re here.”

Ingram paused, looking at Stubz as he stopped and gestured to the door in front of them with a little tag next to it, which simply read:

Ingram pointed at the door as the hair stood up on the back of his neck.”She’s in there?”

Stubz nodded. “Yup. You might as well meet her if you’re gonna be her handler,” he said as he swiped his card in the door, drawing a beep from it before he pushed it open and walked into the dimly lit room. Ingram followed Stubz inside, fascinated to see this fearsome creature, wondering what it was going to be like.

There was a steel table in the small, square room. Other than that, it was empty, save for the mass of scraggly, dirty pink hair piled up at the far end of the table with two dirty yellow hands, which were handcuffed, sticking out from under it.

“Look alive, FS1!” Stubz said sternly as he sat in the chair at the closer end of the table, leaving Ingram to stand to the side of him.

A few seconds passed by before the hair moved, then slowly lifted up off the table, revealing a young girl with a surprisingly pretty, but dirty face.

Ingram noticed right away that her wrists were bound to the table as she shifted back in her chair, scowling harshly at Stubz with her dark teal eyes. She was quite slender and weak looking, and Ingram was staring if they had the wrong room, or if this whole ‘live subject’ thing was a practical joke for the new guy.

Just then, she became aware of him, and her eyes shifted up to meet his. His body to tensed up with primal nervousness, the same feeling one gets in the woods when they realise there is a predator watching them. Then, to Ingram’s surprise, she looked back down at the table and slouched into herself a bit, and then...her cheeks reddened.

Ingram watched her curiously. She actually seemed to look nervous about his presence; a very unexpected trait for a prospective field agent. “She looks…shy?” he thought to himself as Stubz went about his business.

The agent sat at the table, setting his folder down and opening it up to make a few log entries while Ingram watched to see what he was writing.

The girl finally spoke, which caught Ingram’s attention, bringing his eyes back onto her. She was looking at Stubz now, glaring with those dark eyes at him again. It quickly became obvious to Ingram that there was a strong animosity between these two.

“Hello Mr. Stubz,” she said in a surprisingly soft, sweet voice which caught the new recruit off guard.

“Hey,” Stubz replied flatly as he wrote.

She tilted her head a bit, her hair falling away to one side, revealing more of her face to Ingram. She was indeed very pretty. “How’s your shoulder today?” she asked softly.

Stubz stopped writing for a moment to put his left hand on his right shoulder as he rotated his right arm around in the joint. “It’s uhh…kind of stiff,” he replied with a small nod.

The girl chewed her bottom lip for a second before she responded. “I bet it is…you were really wailing on me with that sledge hammer yesterday.”

Ingram's thoughts were shattered by the remark, and all he could do was stare at her in shock.

Stubz went back to his writing. “It’ll be fine.”

“It’s really not fair that they make you work so hard like that,” she continued softly. “You should complain to your supervisor.”

Stubz put his hand up to signal her to stop. “I said it’s fine, OK?” he said sternly before he looked back down at the notes in the folder. “OK…first order of business today,” he mumbled mindlessly. “Oh…uh, there will be no more sparring from now on, unless something else changes.”

Her shoulders dropped with disappointment. “Oh my…and I was just starting to have fun.”

Stubz started writing again. “Well, we feel you’ve reached a satisfactory level of skill in that regard, not to mention you’re being too hard on those three new guys we got in here.”

She scowled. “I was hard on them?”

“You killed one of them last time," Stubz raised his voice as he wrote, while Ingram looked on in shock at the bizarre exchange between the two.

She rolled her eyes, huffing like a spoiled teenager who just got grounded. “It was an accident.”

Stubz stopped writing suddenly to look up at her. “It was NOT an accident. You stabbed him in the throat with his own compound fracture.”

“He touched my boob,” she fired back flatly, glaring at Stubz with her eyes narrowed.

Ingram couldn’t believe his ears.

“It doesn’t matter,” Stubz insisted. “No more. We’re done with that.”

She sighed, staring down at the table with a defeated look on her face.

“Second order of business for today,” Stubz continued. “We have a new guy.” He gestured to Ingram. “Mr. Ingram here will be your handler from now on, after a couple days of training with me, of course.”

Ingram, who was admittedly a bit nervous, greeted her with a smile.

She stared at him for a moment, then, to Ingram’s and Stubz’ surprise, she gave a little smile back.

It was the first time she’d smiled in a very long time.

She held up one hand, and held it out to him for a handshake, albeit with a very short reach due to her cuffs.

Ingram took a step forward to reach for her hand.

“WHOA!” Stubz shouted, quickly reaching out to grab Ingram’s arm.

“What?” Ingram asked, confused.

“Are you nuts? Do you like having ten fingers?” Stubz scolded.

The girl let her hand drop to the table and huffed at Stubz. “I wasn’t going to hurt him!”

“I’ve seen your tricks before,” Stubz replied, looking once again at his notes.

“Oh fuck you!” she blurted out suddenly, then ducked her head in shame, looking back at Ingram. “Oh...I’m so sorry, Mr. Ingram…I didn’t mean to act like that,” she said softly.

Ingram nodded. “Oh, it’s uh…OK.”

“It’s just…I have a hard time being nice in this place,” she continued as her dark stare found its mark on Stubz again. “Especially when I have to spend all my time dealing with block-headed fuck-heads.”

Stubz shook his head. “OK, I think we’re done here.” He closed the binder and stood from the table to turn and unlock the door, then left the room without saying another word.

Ingram paused for a moment before he left, looking back at the girl. She looked up at him innocently as she sat there, chained up at the table; her skin dirty, her pink hair scraggly and straw-like, her eyes like empty voids. Ingram couldn’t help but feel like something was wrong here. Like she didn’t belong in this place.

He gave her a little wave, to which she responded with a half-hearted wave in return, and a little smile.

“Bye…” she said softly as he stepped out of the room.

After he and Stubz were in the hall again, Stubz closed the door to her room and made sure it was locked securely.

They started walking back towards the elevator together as Ingram thought about what he’d just seen.

“I don’t get it,” Ingram mumbled.

“Neither do I,” Stubz responded quickly. “But they want to continue on with her even though I keep telling them she can’t be conditioned. It’s a waste of time. Complete bullshit. We’re basically stuck babysitting a psychopath now.”

“And they want to capture more of them? Why?” Ingram asked. “If you can’t even get them to do what you want, then what’s the point?”

“I told them that!” Stubz replied. “They actually said that the others might be different, and we won’t know unless we try.”

Ingram frowned with disagreement. “That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.”

“Well hey,” Stubz began in reply, “they’ve got their eyes on the prize. They’re like spoiled, rich wives; they see something they want, they have to have it, and they don’t care what it takes to get it. And what they want is invincible spies. Simple as that.”

Ingram shook his head. “Yeah but, again, if they don’t work, then what?”

“I know,” Stubz nodded. “We’ve already got one of them locked up in here for nothing, just taking up space. We certainly can’t turn her loose and send her out for duty they way she is right now, and the last thing we need is a second one.”

“Well…that, and she’s being held against her will,” Ingram replied. “Why don’t you just let her go?”

Stubz laughed, although it didn’t sound like a real laugh to Ingram. “We can’t let her go.”

Ingram shrugged. “Have you at least tried to talk to the big-wigs about freeing her?”

“No no, you don’t understand,” Stubz said, turning to face Ingram. “If we freed her, there’s no telling what kinds of shit she’ll do,” he said quietly, chewing his bottom lip. “Like I said, we can’t send her out for missions in her current state, so logically we can’t set her free either. She’s dangerous. The safest thing we can do is just keep her chained up and locked away.”

Ingram stood there in disbelief, staring blankly at Stubz. “But…that’s not right.”

“It’s the safest option, unfortunately.” Stubz shrugged.

"There has to be some other way-" Ingram insisted, but Stubz, with a frustrated look on his face, put both of his hands up to stop him.

“Listen, if that girl ever gets fucking loose in here, we’re dead. Every one of us. Do you understand me? She would go through this place like a wildfire, and there would be nothing we could do to stop her.”

“Why aren’t you nicer to her?” Ingram asked suddenly.

Stubz looked at the new recruit with an eyebrow raised. “Nice? Are you kidding me? It’s too late for that, after everything we’ve done to her…”

Ingram shook his head. “I offered a handshake to her, and she looked like she was pleased by the gesture-”

“Don’t fall for that,” Stubz cut in. “It’s a trick…I’ve seen guys get drawn into a false sense of security by her ‘kindness’,” he said, doing quote marks with his fingers.

“And were they being nice to her?” Ingram asked, shaking his head, clearly disagreeing with his mentor. He had a degree in psychology, and was well-versed in reading body language and facial expressions, and to him the girl looked genuinely pleased to shake his hand.

Stubz could see that Ingram didn’t agree with him. “Look, Mr. Ingram…you need to be very careful with her. One wrong move, or put a little too much trust in her…and she’ll end you, just like that. I know the sweet little innocent routine is very alluring, but trust me…when that girl is full-throttle pissed off, she is the stuff of nightmares.” Stubz paused, closing his eyes as he rubbed his forehead. “That one day when Cody came down here…man, she lost it. Bad. I didn’t sleep a wink that night after seeing that.”

Ingram paused to think for a moment, then a small smirk crept across his face. “Well maybe it’s time for a fresh approach.”

Author's Notes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6Dfo4zDduI