I wasn’t in much shape to resist when the two guards pulled me from the concrete shower. They dragged me across the floor through a number of rooms. I was honestly beyond caring about what happened next. I didn’t want to die but was at the point where fighting required more emotional strength than I had left in me.

Our destination was a long wooden room with windows overlooking a meat processing center of some kind. The room was almost empty of furnishings, possessing only a single chair, a desk, and some computer equipment on said desk. One of the guards dumped me in the chair and one gave me a hard punch across the face. Apparently, he didn’t trust Caesar’s torture to have softened me up enough for whatever came next.

Or he was just a dick.

The Caesar came in behind them, looking me over with an appraising eye. “Are you sure this will work?”

The Caesar was addressing Marissa, who was three steps to his left.

Marissa nodded. “Everything he knows, everything the Society has stored in his mind, everything he’s linked to, and everything they know through his link to them should be accessible.”

“That sounds overly optimistic to me.”

“I know what I’m doing.”

“How long will it take?”

“Twenty minutes to an hour,” Marissa said, looking at me with a neutral expression. “After that, everything should be yours.”

“I suppose that’s not too much to ask in terms of how much longer we have to keep him alive.” The Caesar turned to the guard who punched me. “Mario, put a bullet in his head when he’s done.”

“Of course,” Mario replied.

Marissa walked over to the computers. “What are you going to be doing during this?”

“Dealing with my daughter.” The Caesar gave me a quick look. “It’s a pity, really. I rather liked the man. He could have gone far in the Carnevale. Mario, punch him again.”

Mario gave me another sock across the jaw for good measure.

Yeah, he was just a dick.

The Caesar paused to give Marissa a kiss on both cheeks before walking to the door on the opposite end of the room. Pausing at the door, he said, “Oh, Marissa, one more thing. If you try and help G—”

Marissa interrupted. “He was just a mark.”

“Of course,” the Caesar said. “Mario observe and clean up the mess.”

Mario chuckled.

I wondered if the Caesar’s orders were code and that he was to finish her off once the information in my head, whatever it was, was retrieved. There were a lot of loose ends to finish cleaning up and we were two of them. Marissa was too smart to not know this and I wondered if she had a plan for getting out.

Not that it helped me.

The Caesar left seconds later and Marissa gestured for one of the guards to walk over to me. I was held down as she took a device attached to a visor, and some wires that looked like a prototype for the Occulus Rift. The sight of the object triggered a flash of jumbled incoherent memories of laboratories, needles, and war.

Marissa affixed it to my head. “Don’t struggle.”

“Why?” I asked, finally deciding I needed to figure a way out of this.

“It will hurt. Besides, this is going to be painful enough as it is.”

I wondered what she meant by that. I found out soon enough.

The machine began flashing a series of hypnotic lights, numbers, and colors while a dozen jumbled voices intermingled in my ears. I remembered, in that moment, this was called a Memorize and it was crucial to the process of both erasing as well as implanting information.

No sooner had had I put it on did I want to leap from my chair and assault one of the guards. I couldn’t, though, because of the one holding me down, but soon I didn’t want to. My mind was overwhelmed with triggered memories.

Ones belonging to Daniel Gordon.

The air around me was hot. I could smell a combination of sand, sweat, and oil. The noise of the helicopter’s blades and engine came next. Only after these things implanted themselves into my mind did I find myself in the back of a modified V-22 Osprey moving across the scrub-filled deserts of Iraq. There were five other people inside the back, waiting for deployment. We were all dressed in helmets, body armor, and camo, wearing parachutes on our back.

Desert Rangers one and all.

Or were we?

There were slight discrepancies in our equipment. Each of our helmets was mounted with a pair of golden tinged optics which displayed holographic information on the interior of their sights. I could see readouts of the other men, their vital statistics, as well as pertinent facts to the mission. There was also an old-style red light at the bottom of my vision next to a trio of letters saying REC.

The assault rifles in our hands were Karma Corp-designed Blazer-91s. They were guns capable of tearing through tank armor or not penetrating walls, depending on which mode they were set. Implants inside our bodies would regulate our heartbeats, adrenaline, and even endorphins to maximize combat performance.

First-Generation Black Technology.

“So,” a Southern-accented voice came from a blonde-haired man with green eyes next to me. “What are you going to do with your share of the money?”

I knew, instantly, that he was a man named Stanley Parker. He was an obnoxious asshole but someone I’d respected.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“College for my kids, a new house, and paying off all my relatives’ debt,” a tall black man with a goatee replied. That was Wallace Jones, perhaps the smartest soldier I’d ever met and someone I was surprised to realize I considered a good friend.

“Pfft,” Stanley said. “For me, it’s going to be two women and Vegas. The rest I’m going to spend foolishly.”

“Never change,” another Southern-accented person said. It was a woman with short brown hair and a scar on the right side of her cheek. “Oh wait, scratch that. Change, a lot.”

Jennifer Paige was another person I considered to be a good friend. She was bulkier than most women but that was the result of the genetic enhancements she’d received along with the rest of us.

“What about you, Captain?” a Korean American named David asked to my side. He was a very good-looking man, which is why we called him Handsome Dave. He was also possibly the best shot in the U.S. Army as far as I was concerned.

“I have a family, too,” I said, shrugging. “They come first.”

“Same here,” David said, smiling. “Not that I won’t spend some of it foolishly.”

The fifth member of our little group, a small redheaded woman with freckles, of mixed Asian and European descent, looked up. Mary Tammwood was the group’s medic and a quiet girl. She was having an affair with Handsome Dave despite having a husband back home. It was against regulations, but we weren’t exactly on-the-books.

I remembered, now, we were Task Force-22, which was some sort of taskforce that dealt with problems for the Center. The knowledge there was another covert organization of killers answering to a nebulously defined organization would have been infuriating if not for the fact that there were a hundred other more important things occupying my attention. We were officially nonexistent and paid extensively for our missions. Today, however, was a payday like no other, with a million dollars each promised to us for successful completion.

It was suspicious.

“All right, let’s go over our mission parameters just to be safe,” I said, looking between them. “We have an HVI in the location, Arabic male, mid-sixties, who has to be taken alive. Everyone else in the compound is expendable. Expect heavy resistance from his guards. Try to minimize civilian casualties, but we have the go-ahead to use whatever force is necessary to take this guy down.”

“Who is he, anyway?” Stanley asked.

“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “Just bag him and tag him for transport out.” I transferred a picture of the man to their holographic displays.

In truth, the man’s name was Ali Karim and he was an arms trafficker for the United States and several other parties. He had three children, two of which had been killed in the Iraq War, and a third who was presently selling guns in Africa. I had a separate mission from the others in that I was to get to his computers and download all of his data before destroying the hard drives. It was very likely the Center was covering their tracks before the United States military sent someone to look at Ali’s hideout, but that wasn’t my concern.

All I was concerned about was finishing my contract.

“All right,” Jennifer said, shrugging. “Whatever you say, Boss.”

“Trust me,” I said, smiling.

I didn’t like the smile I gave.

It felt… wrong.

I began twisting and thrashing in my chair, trying to reject the memories being downloaded into my mind. In a very real sense, I knew this was not who I was. Yet despite my best efforts, I could not help but remember the parachuting down onto the compound.

The gunfights.

The execution of surrendering soldiers and Karim’s staff.

Taking down Karim himself as he begged for mercy.

The order that came in to kill the other members of my team.

“No!” I shouted. “GET THIS FUCKING THING OFF ME!”

That was when things got genuinely surreal as the Memorize was removed from my head—not in the present, but the past. A frizzy-haired black woman about twice my age was standing over me. She was wearing a Doctor’s coat over a conservative pantsuit. She was pretty but past her prime. We were in a laboratory with the Karma Corp logo stamped on the side of the wall.

“It needs to be done, Daniel,” the woman said.

I took a deep breath, looking up at the woman. “I’m not him.”

The woman put her hand on my face. “They want to make you not him, but you’re as close to him as will ever exist.”

I stared at her. “Why are you doing this?”

“We’ve all suffered losses. We’ve all suffered pain. Black Technology offers us the chance to regain what previously would have been impossible.”

“I’m supposed to be a killer.”

The woman put her hand on my shoulder. “You’re my son, no matter what.”

I was confused. “All right.”

“Now we’re going to put the helmet on again.”

Reluctantly, I let her slip the visor on my face again. It was a complete mind-screw and left me utterly confused as to what was going on or when this was all happening. That was when there was a gunshot and I threw my head to one side, throwing the Memorize off my head and revealing the room where Marissa had shot Mario in the throat. The figure was bleeding to death on the ground, a pool of blood appearing on his face.

The guard holding me down let me go and grabbed his pistol. I used the opportunity to wrap my handcuffs around his throat and throttle him. The guard struggled in my grip for several seconds, before I snapped his neck in one clean motion. The guard’s body crumbled before me and I was left with Marissa, who was holding her pistol in front of her. The weapon had a silencer on it, but as anyone who dealt with suppressors could say, they didn’t work nearly as well as Hollywood said.

At least non-Karma Corp ones.

Marissa aimed the gun at my chest. “Hi, G.”

I almost corrected her and asked to be called Daniel Gordon, but that name didn’t have any meaning for me. “Hi.” I paused. “How are you?”

In that moment, it was clear she was considering killing me. I was a loose end and someone who posed a significant security risk. Not only did I know about her treason, but also, knowing about her betrayal, I was disinclined to let her go. If I escaped—a big if—I would probably hunt her down and kill her. That wasn’t including what would happen if the Caesar knew she’d let me go. Indeed, there weren’t really that many reasons to keep me alive other than sentimentality, and for all I knew, she’d been disgusted with me the entirety of our relationship. I could see all of those wheels turning in her head

Marissa then reached down to Mario’s body, picked up the keys for the handcuffs, went to my back, and unlocked my wrists, then my feet. “Don’t say I never did anything for you, G-man.”

Rubbing my wrists, I turned to her. “Why?”

“That is a very good question.”

I gave a snort, then looked at her. “Who are you? Really?”

“You know I can’t tell you that.”

I stared at her. “Yeah, you can.”

Marissa and I locked eyes for several seconds. They weren’t the eyes of a brainwashed Pollyanna in the service of the group that enslaved her or the eyes of an anarchist hacker turned rebel. Instead, they were the clear and cold eyes of a soldier. “Amanda Garcia. I’m with the National Security Agency.”

“You’re working for the President.”

“Yes. The Society is a threat to national security.”

I snorted.

Marissa gave a half-smile. “You’d be surprised, but not all of our nation’s leaders are OK with a highly funded, technologically advanced secret death squad in the employ of the highest bidder.”

“I’d be very surprised, indeed. It’s also not my nation.”

“Isn’t it?”

“Do you know who I am?”

“Yes. Do you want to know?”

I took a deep breath. “Not from you.”

Marissa looked away for a second and I could have taken the gun in that moment. I decided not to.

Marissa then did something very stupid and turned the gun over to me, handle first. “You know how to use this better than I do. I also have a spare.”

I took it and debated shooting her before deciding no, I wasn’t that person. “Why are you doing this?”

“Keeping Black Technology from the open market is a bigger issue than the elimination of the Society. Getting close to the Caesar, executing him, and recovering Doctor Gordon before he does something stupid is my primary mission now. Can you fight?”

“For you?”

Marissa frowned. “Yes.”

I took a deep breath and made a choice. “Yes. I’m very good at recovering from beatings. It’s the way I was made.”

Marissa twitched before looking over her shoulder. “If you’ll help me, I’ll see you can get five minutes alone with Doctor Gordon to ask whatever questions you need. He knows the answers you seek. I wasn’t lying about that.”

“Just everything else.”

“Is this going to be a problem?”

I stood up and looked down at her before looking to the exits. “No, no it’s not. We have to do one thing first, though.”

“What’s that?”

“Get Lucita.”