Tom grabbed a beer from my fridge and dropped onto the couch across from me. He took a swig, studied the can for a moment, then asked,

“So, how’s Simon these days?”

“What?”

“Well, I know you aren’t keeping beer in the fridge for you,” he nodded at my glass of whisky.

That was fair. As far as I was concerned, beer mostly tasted like a waste of time. I shrugged,

“Haven’t seen him since the night of the shooting.”

“Really? He hasn’t even come by to check on you? That’s a bit surprising,” Tom raised an eyebrow.

“Yeah, well. I am sure his girlfriend was very upset by the whole situation. I can’t really compete with that, can I?” I scoffed, taking a swig of my drink. “I’m sure he’ll come by when he needs something. Or when he starts feeling guilty, again.”

“Guilty?”

“Come on, Tom. I’m not stupid. I know why he hangs around me all the time.”

“And why is that?”

“He carries a lot of guilt for what he did with the Domini. He likes being reminded of it. A bit of… self-flagellation, I suppose. So, he’ll probably be back once he starts feeling bad about how happy he is, now,” I laughed, letting a bit of bitterness bleed in.

Tom considered that, then shook his head,

“If you know that, why let him use you?”

“It’s nice to have company sometimes.”

“What about Gail?”

“Ha. She only comes by to try and convince me to go back to work for her. Kind of like you, that way,” I gave him a pointed look.

“Is that what you think this is?” Tom looked a bit hurt. “I told you before, I want to help you.”

“Right, right,” I waved it off. “Anyway, I don’t expect to see Gail for a while. She is probably keeping her distance until the police investigation into my shoot is done. Wouldn’t want to appear biased, or too tied to me, if I end up being arrested for murder, or attempted murder, depending on if the incubus pulls through.”

“That’s bullshit!”

“Yeah, well, we’ll see what the cops say about it. Until then, I seem to be a bit of a pariah. No one wants to be tainted by association. Something you should probably consider, by the way.”

“No chance. You didn’t do anything wrong, and I’m sorry more people aren’t standing by you, Ray.”

“What did I expect, right?” I sighed. “But you didn’t come here to listen to me whine. What did you want to talk about, Tom?”

“There is no rush on that, really,” he smiled. “Mostly, I just wanted to see how you were doing.”

“Peachy.”

He sipped his beer in silence for a moment, as if considering what to say next.

“You ever miss the old days?”

“The old days weren’t that long ago.”

“Sometimes it feels like forever. But that isn’t what I meant. I meant the real old days, when we had just started training. Remember what that was like, learning all of this for the first time?”

I chuckled,

“You’ve been thinking about that time too, I take it?”

“Yeah, it has been on my mind a lot, lately, I suppose,” Tom reflected. “For obvious reasons. Do you remember Sammy?”

“I remember that he didn’t handle training very well.”

“That is putting it mildly. He was very close to his family. When he learned the truth, it terrified him. Not for himself, but for them. Sammy got obsessive, paranoid; he saw ubarae everywhere. Eventually, he convinced himself that someone was hunting his teenage sister. He started following her, watching her whenever he was off work. But, of course, since he was Immune, like me, he couldn’t tell if someone was an ubarae or not. So, he just saw threats everywhere. It broke him, mentally.”

“What happened to him?”

“He ended up in an institution, after he attacked his sister’s boyfriend. Kept screaming that he wasn’t human, that he was dangerous.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah. No one believed him at the time, of course. I wonder if he is still locked up? Now that they know he was right all along.”

“About the boyfriend?”

“No, I am pretty sure he was actually human. But in general.”

“Honestly? I am surprised that sort of thing didn’t happen more often. It was a tough secret to have to keep, sometimes.”

“Yeah. Well, usually the Organization was pretty good at screening people, psychologically, for things like that. Sammy was the exception, not the rule,” Tom bit the end of his thumb, thinking. “You ever wonder how many Sammys there must be out there, now? Scared, paranoid, unable to even detect the monsters in their midst, so they just lash out at everyone?”

“More than a few, I imagine,” I flashed back to what Gail had told me about victims being assaulted and murdered by people who thought they were ubarae. That was one of many problems with no clear solution.

“How is your family dealing with this? You were close to them, right?”

“When I was younger,” I shrugged. “We drifted apart when I joined up. It was hard, lying to them, even by omission. So, I talked to them less and less, until eventually we hardly spoke at all. I haven’t called in months.”

“Not even when you were in the hospital? They never knew?”

I shook my head.

“Why not tell them everything? It isn’t a secret anymore.”

“I know. But I am not a safe person to be close to, at the moment. It’s better I keep my distance.”

Tom nodded thoughtfully,

“You are probably right. Ubarae are dangerous, after all. The Domini, especially. But staying away might not be enough, Ray. They could still be in danger. Do you ever think about that? Like Sammy did?”

Often enough.

“I don’t know.”

“And do you think that will ever change? That they will ever be safe? That you will be?”

“I don’t know,” I repeated; in truth, I would have said ‘no’, but I was trying to leave a door open, here.

“Well, like I told you, we are going to change that. You could help, put things right.”

“Tom… I don’t think I can…”

“I know you don’t like the thought of all the killing. But that is just the nature of the world. Survival of the fittest. We are two species, competing for our place in the same niche, and we can’t both thrive here. One of us has to go, so the other can survive. It will either be us or them, eventually. And I know which I choose.”

“That doesn’t really make sense, Tom. They can’t survive without us. Why would they wipe us out?”

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

I saw a moment of hesitation in him, as if he was only parroting an argument he had heard a hundred times, one that he had never noticed the flaw in before. But he recovered quickly.

“It’s not that they will literally wipe us out, but they will end human society as we know it. We will be nothing but cattle, domesticated and farmed. A fate worse than death.”

It wasn’t a bad recovery. I was becoming more interested in meeting the person feeding him this bullshit. They had clearly put a lot of thought into their arguments. I considered pushing back again, trying to convince Tom that this was ridiculous, but I had to walk a fine line here. As much as I wanted to get Tom out of whatever he was involved in, if I was going to figure out how deep this went, first I needed to get in. I couldn’t resist too hard, not right now.

“Maybe. I…” I hesitated. “How are you planning to…”

“I can’t tell you that, not yet. You know that. But believe me when I say that it will be merciful, painless. We aren’t monsters, Ray, we don’t want them to suffer, either. You get that, right?”

I nodded slowly, as if really digesting what he was saying,

“I think so. But, Tom, I need to know more before I could ever agree to anything. There are some things that I am just not willing to do. And I am not yet fully convinced that you have properly considered alternatives to something this drastic.”

“I thought you might say that,” Tom looked a bit disappointed. “I am not the most eloquent person, I’m afraid. If I could bring you to see the person in charge, I think that they could explain it in a way you would understand. Would you be willing to meet with them?”

“Who are they?”

“All in good time, Ray. Will you meet with them?” Tom pressed.

“Alright, I guess it can’t hurt to listen. Just let me know when and where.”

“Good. I will set something up and let you know. For now,” he smiled and leaned back on the couch. “How about we get back to a less fraught topic, huh?”

“Sounds good.”

I hoped I wasn’t playing too hard to get, here. But coming on too strong would be suspicious, and it a bit of reticence could get me a meeting with the boss, all the better. Until then, I cast around for a safe topic of conversation. There was a time that would have been easy, but now I wasn’t sure what would trigger another rant. Current events seemed like the worst possible choice, but there were plenty of old stories to rehash, many of which didn’t directly involve the ubarae, at all. That would probably work.

“Do you remember the time that we all snuck out after curfew, stayed out all night at the clubs?”

Tom laughed,

“Barely, but yes, I remember. Do you think the instructors ever knew?”

“Come on, Tom, of course they knew.”

“Really?”

I rolled my eyes,

“Most of us were still drunk in class the next morning. I think they put it together.”

“Why do you think they never said anything?”

“They knew a little rebellion was necessary. We were young, under a lot of stress, punishing us for blowing off steam wouldn’t have gotten them what they wanted.”

“Which was?”

“Functional agents, for the most part. They had a limited talent pool, even more so than usual, at the time, so they couldn’t risk pushing us too hard, burning us out before we even started. And they couldn’t very well kick us all out, could they? We had more power than we realized at the time, I think.”

“Maybe,” he chuckled. “We did pull a lot of shit, back then, didn’t we?”

“Yeah. We got away with more than we probably should have,” I chuckled.

“Perhaps you are right, maybe they did go easy on all of us. Even if none of us were as special as you.”

“Special?”

“You were the Partial in the group. The only one in our group. Don’t pretend you didn’t notice the special treatment.”

I snorted, irritated. This was an old argument.

“I know you imagine that to be true,” I waved away the complaint.

“I am imagining the extra time with instructors, extra time on the range, extra combat training?”

“I got extra training because I was going to do field work. You all got extra training in your specialties, too.”

“Yeah, sure,” Tom scoffed. “Office maintenance, typing, paperwork. Real exciting stuff.”

“Trust me, it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be on my end, either. Exciting isn’t always good.”

“No, of course not,” he rolled his eyes.

“Look, I am not having this argument, now. I get it, you would have preferred to be in the field. It wasn’t my decision; it was just how things worked.”

“Well, things have changed,” Tom smiled. “Now, all of us can be of use, finally. I can make a real difference, really be involved.”

His eyes sparked. I wondered how much of this new world order had been pitched to him this way. Telling him how important he would be to saving the world. How necessary his skills were. It wasn’t an uncommon recruiting technique. Everyone wanted to feel special, after all. I just nodded.

“That’s great, Tom. I know that is what you always wanted.”

“Who wouldn’t?”

Plenty of people, but I didn’t say that. He drained his can of beer and put it down on the coffee table.

“You mind grabbing me another?” he asked.

It was an odd request. My apartment was ‘cozy’ or if we weren’t using marketing speak, very small. The living room was basically part of the kitchen, we could both see the fridge from where we sat, and Tom didn’t have any trouble helping himself. In fact, he had grabbed a beer on his own when we first came in. I resisted my normal instinct to shoot him a questioning glance. Instead, I just got to my feet, as if nothing was out of the ordinary.

“Sure, same thing again?”

He nodded and I headed towards the kitchen. He wanted me out of the room, for some reason, so as I went, I watched his reflection in the side of the toaster, which sat on my counter facing the living room couch. From there, I watched as he pulled something from his pocket, cupped it in his hand, and quickly dumped it into the half-full glass of whisky I had left behind on the table. He looked up to make sure I wasn’t looking, then grabbed and swirled the glass, mixing whatever he had added into the liquid. So, that was how we were going to play this, huh, Tom? I opened the fridge and stuck my head inside, taking a moment to gather my thoughts. So, he had come here planning to drug me. That was… disheartening, to say the least. Still, he had seemed genuine when he asked if I would agree to meet his boss. I think he was being truthful about that. Which likely meant that the plan was to knock me out, so I could be moved to a secondary location, without my knowledge. He wanted to bring me in, but didn’t want me to know where we were going, or to have any agency in the matter. Fantastic. But, it could be worse. I did want in, after all. And it looked like he was planning to bring me in. In a way, this was a good thing. I grabbed a can of beer and headed back to the couch, plopping it down on the table before I sat, watching my own glass, thoughtfully. As far as I could tell, I had two options, here. I could pretend to drink it, then ‘black out’ and hope he didn’t notice the deception. We had pulled that off once before, after all, Tom and I. Of course, that time he had been on my side, and that made a significant difference. Faking this would be challenging, because I had no idea what he was even dosing me with. How long would it be before it took effect, what would the effects be, how long would it last? No, there was too much risk to that plan. Which left only one option. I was just going to have to take it for real. It wasn’t ideal, but I was pretty certain that he wasn’t trying to kill me, and if this was what it took to get myself on the inside, then it was worth the risk. That decided, I almost laughed. This was a truly terrible idea. Of course, that wasn’t going to stop me from doing it, was it? Maybe Gail and Liz were right about me.

“Everything ok?” Tom asked.

I knew him well enough to hear the nervous edge to his voice. Apparently, I had been silently staring at my glass for too long. Still, I needed to stall for a bit more time, make sure I had committed this event to my long-term memory, so that I had better odds of remembering what had happened when I, hopefully, woke up.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Just…” I hesitated for a moment. “All this talk about the past got me thinking about Sarah, that’s all.”

The tension around his eyes relaxed, slightly,

“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to dredge that up.”

“It’s not your fault,” I ran my finger around the edge of my glass, pensively. “It’s just hard to think about training, without remembering my early days in the field.”

“You’ve never really talked about it, much.”

“I know.”

Truthfully, I didn’t want to talk about it now. I wasn’t even sure why that was the first thing that came to mind when I was deciding on an excuse. I guess maybe I really had been thinking about it, a bit. Still, it felt wrong, to exploit the story this way, but it was a bit late to back out of it now.

“She was so young. Only 18, did you know that?”

“No,” he shook his head.

“I was out with a partner that night. I was always paired with a more experienced Partial for my early field work. This one I only worked with the one time; I think his name was Wesley. Anyway, we had spotted the Rogue at a club earlier in the evening, but they managed to slip out the back and we lost track of them. When we finally tracked him down again, he was with someone. Sarah. He’d clearly been feeding on her for some time. When Wesley demanded he stop, step away from her, he did and she just… fell. Wesley grabbed the Rogue, and I went to her. She was already dead. It was clear from the moment I turned her over. Her eyes were just staring through me, empty. More empty than even death usually leaves them. Like he had taken everything she had, everything she was. She was the first person I had ever seen killed by a Rogue. It was… terrible. She was just a kid who’d snuck into a club with a fake ID. She didn’t deserve to die like that. And if we hadn’t lost the Rogue earlier that night, she wouldn’t have. Wesley, I heard he retired not too long after that. Maybe it was related, maybe not. People didn’t usually stay in the job for long, anyway. Maybe things like that were part of the reason why.”

“How did you keep doing it?”

“I don’t know. I felt… responsible, for keeping things like that from happening again. How could I walk away?”

Speaking of which, I picked up the glass from the table and tossed back the remaining contents. For just an instant, Tom looked surprised, like he hadn’t really expected it to be that easy, then he looked relieved, a small smile appearing on his face. I think, for a moment, that he had thought I knew, that I wouldn’t drink it. Perhaps I shouldn’t have. Or perhaps I at least should have taken more precautions before I committed, but I couldn’t take the risk of hiding a message or a note, Tom could find it. And hiding anything on my person was similarly unwise, as I doubted he would bring me back to whatever hideout they were using without searching me, otherwise why bother with the drugging? They were being cautious, so I couldn’t take the risk of tipping them off. It had to look like they had caught me off guard. Which meant I was just going to have to improvise from here on out. And since there was nothing to prepare, I figured I might as well get it over with.

“Anyway,” I continued, wiping my mouth on my sleeve. “Can we talk about something else?”

“Of course.”

Tom happily carried the conversation from that point on, chatting about inconsequential things, like a movie he had seen the other day and his uncle’s 50th birthday party. I just let the words wash over me, nodding and ‘uh huhing’ when appropriate. Eventually, I felt the room start to spin around me, and I found I was having trouble focusing my eyes. I swallowed hard,

“Hey Tom,” I interrupted, my voice sounding thick and slurred. “I think I need some air, ok?”

“Of course, are you alright?” his voice sounded far away.

I tried to stand, pushing myself off the couch, but as I rose, the room pitched wildly, and I felt my knees buckle beneath me. Then, nothing.