Supersymmetry, a series of Dead or Alive short stories by RelentlessRecusant
About the Author: The author was a former undergraduate at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, where he researched pluripotent stem cells and reprogramming.
About the Story: In the most disparate of foes, startling symmetries emerge. From an encounter between a Central Intelligence Agency operator and a forlorn, particular silver-haired assassin in Africa, we learn of the textured past of one Christie Allen. Work in progress.
"[This] postulates a more extensive symmetry ... which is manifest in this world."
-Wilczek, F. "In Search of Symmetry Lost". Nature (433): 239-247.
Dramatis Personae
Christie Allen: Female, 24 years old. British national. Currently residing in the African continent.
"Noble-Six": Male, 33 years old. American national. Central Intelligence Agency, Special Activities Division. Formerly 1st SFOD-D, U.S. Army.
Johannesburg, South Africa
March 2017, eight years in the future
He moved with the deliberate purpose of murder—every movement exacting, each stride purposeful. As the first liveried man moved to knock his knife from his fingers, his forearm scissored again his windpipe, crushing his larynx and sweeping him aside into the wall, his fingers clawing at his collapsed throat in his death paroxysms. Behind him, his compatriot leveled a handgun—and in a sinuous blur, the black-edged carbide knife struck his right shoulderblade. As the man staggered, blood and marrow leaking from his lacerated arm, he moved behind him in a single motion, and wrenched his arm across his throat and applied torque. The man fell instantaneously, his body torpid and vertebrae broken.
Extracting himself from the broken bodies, he moved forward, undaunted; his steps clipped and precise—the two languish corpses in his wake, rich arterial blood still leaking from their shattered selves.
The air was laden and morose, the countenance bleak and despairing—he strode along a hallway saturated with detritus: the oily slick of dried blood, fractures betraying disrepair, and the necrotic corpses of smaller creatures. Faded color adorned the walls: evidence at a feeble attempt at aestheticism that had too gone into ruin as the decades had come and left. The hall served to mirror the turpitude of its contiguous African civilization: human endeavor and enterprise, subsumed by avarice, malice, and time.
The once-amber numbering of the suite doors had long since faded, but it was of no consideration to him: he had memorized the exact number of gaits from the building's entrance to the room which he was seeking. The tradescraft of land navigation and orienteering had been a fundamental tenet of training in the U.S. Army Special Forces—although it had required some ingenuity to translate from outdoors orienteering to the indoors talent he was practicing now.
He moved deftly, counting his steps, the phallic barrel of his black-tinted sidearm raised in attention as he eyes curtly dashed from dimly-lit corner to corner—alert for the contrast in shades of grey or black that would betray more would-be-attackers.
At last, he stopped his ceaseless pacing: three hundred and fourteen paces from the entrance, and one hundred and six paces since he had deprived his last two assailants of their lives. He found himself staring at an oblique rectangular door with a peeling teal finish. Yet, glancing from left to right, he could discern no difference between this particular door and dozens of identical, adjacent doors: the entire building was a decadent slum, with thousands of the same, identical teal door standing guard before thousands of individual suites.
And in one of those thousand suites—in one, there was something he sought.
Glancing back and forth again, he became certain that once the numbering had faded from the doors, there was nothing to tell them apart: they were all of the same construction, of fibrous and sagging wood and parched lips of paint adorning them.
He steadied the handgun in his right hand, and his left hand slid to the recessed shape of his combat knife. He inhaled once deeply, and then kicked in the door with a sure conviction.
His eyesight immediately discerned between the dreary and morose shades of black in the darkened hallway and the interior of this apartment suite: the latter definitely carried signs of habitation. Particular effort had been made to awash the walls with a nice tint of white, and small, frivolous pictures had been attached to—
The blow was of such power that his world wheeled: he staggered catatonically to the side, hands of over his head, a rill of blood running from his pierced lip. His vision trembled and whirled. His prying fingers instinctively sought his knife.
The second blow connected directly with his sternum—it sent him flying backwards, and he slid and slammed against a table, the impact bringing a sharp pain to his spinal cord: and that fresh pain fueled him, and opened his eyes—
He finally saw his attacker. He felt a small thrill run through him as he took in her features: she was svelte and lovely, with dangerous deep viridian eyes and pale skin that accentuated her lush and dark carmine lips. Underneath her face, she was utterly captivating, a seamless meld of muscle and feminine grace.
He hesitated for a moment, but his anger was renewed when he recognized the facial features of his quarry in her face—his prey had ambushed him. Somehow he had committed a fatal mistake upon entrance of this room: and she had turned the tables on him, attacked him from behind. Frustration welled within him: he would correct his error shortly enough.
He leapt for his handgun, still on the floor—
Her lovely lips curled in a derisive sneer, and in a single kick, she sent the handgun, spinning, across the room. Enraged, he raised himself, and drew his knife—and from half the room away, she drew her own sidearm.
Her voice was cutting and strident, but in it, it carried a sonorous heritage of command: the peals over her voice washed over him, multiple layers of power and authority—too much to comprehend.
"It's over."
His eyes flitted from his handgun—now on the floor, behind her—his knife, which was in hand, and her own handgun—leveled at his chest, his center of mass. In the brief lull, his eyes flickered over the design of her weapon: an ambidextrous .45-caliber M1911 handgun, in professional black finish, and appended with an underbarrel unlit flashlight, in the tradition of Special Forces units across the world. Drawing his eyes from her weapon to her body, he was struck by professionalism and skill—her weapon was of professional choice, her close-quarters technique was certainly extraordinary, and from her visage—her elegant platinum hair was astray, and her white babydoll dress was rumpled—it looked like until recently, she had been asleep, and she had just woken and managed to defeat him.
Her chest rised and waned as she breathed hard from the martial exertions she had just practiced, but in her ardent, fiery eyes, he spied an emotion: victory. Despite her hard breathing, her face was flush with victory, and he found that delicious.
Despite the handgun aimed at his chest.
Her lips curled with confidence as she cocked the pistol, a half-second away from ending his life—
—And he realized how dire his situation was.
He injected confidence and a dozen year's worth of experience into his voice: "Pull that trigger, and in five seconds, a dozen Delta Force operators will be crawling over this building and up your ass."
Her beautiful, dark lips curled upwards in an impetuous smile.
"Ah, really? I was expecting some kind of ultimatum with more dramatic aplomb."
He took in her confident stance and the weapon leveled at him, and sickeningly, realized that he was about to die. A life spent in the service of the U.S. Armed Forces and then the Central Intelligence Agency—a life of talent, skill, memories, expectations, and emotions—was about to be ended with a pull of a trigger in the remote hinterlands of Africa.
He was about to die.
That realization injected shock into him: he had never felt that dire emotion before. Always, he had been in control: when he toured with the U.S. Army 1st SFOD-D, and then in the CIA's Special Activities Division. Always, he had been victorious, carried the laurels of complete domination and a scepter that had killed hundreds of anti-American insurgents across the world.
And now, this woman was in control. In his last moments, the tables of power had been reversed. And the cruel trick was on him.
He tried to forestall the inevitable.
"Kill me, and you will make enemies you will have never wished to make."
Her voice was truculent and mocking. "I think I'm finding your petty attempts at scaring me amusing me. You walked into the goddamn room, sir. When I'm done with you, your body will be floating in Lake Tanganyika, a thousand miles away, and soon thereafter, in the Atlantic Ocean. Your comrades will never know what happen to you."
A cold fear inserted itself into him: a dagger of despair slit his heart as he realized how ignomious his death was going to be. And as she spoke her cruel worlds, he somehow knew that she was about to translate them into reality.
He knew he was already running on borrowed time: he was supposed to be dead thirty seconds ago. He didn't know why she was keeping him alive, but he had a final, trump card to play. The fundamental tenet was always OPSEC—Operational Security. It was the single, and only rule of American clandestine operations: to never betray that the U.S.A. had dirty hands frisking throughout South America, Africa, and the Middle East.
Yet, he knew he was about to die. There was no other recourse.
"I'm from Langley."
Her laughter was choral music, and he found it delightful. She didn't even bother to reply, so he decided to raise his stakes.
"We've had a satellite tagged on you and your organization since December 13th of last year, when you were still in Angola. We tracked you here to South Africa, and have had you under UAV surveillance every other day for the past two days."
He found himself pleased by the sound of the sharp uptake of her breath.
"You moved into this apartment complex five days and fourteen hours ago. In that amount of time, you have left it eight times. Four times to meet your contact within the rebels, two times to meet the same arms dealer in Freetown. The two other times you traveled beyond the endurance of the UAV, and we couldn't keep track of you after you left the city."
He felt himself nauseated by the tawdriness of his ploy: how many other CIA agents, at gunpoint, hadn't betrayed operational security? How many American agents had died, rather than divulge American secrets? How many had rather to take the bullet than to betray one's country?
But within him, he found a justification.
Because soon she will be dead—and she'll take the secrets I just told her to the grave.
He focused his eyes on her face: her beautiful, argent deep green eyes, melding perfectly with the lush curves of her dark, thrilling lips. In staring at her, he realized that he had an unexpected hunger within him, a feral lust—she was compellingly lovely, silhouetted against the window frame. Her body was sensuous: provocative and mesmerizing, yet as he traced the flow of muscles in her neck, he realized that her body was athletic and perfectly-tuned: despite her overflowing sensuality, this was the muscular body of a predator, built and rarefied to kill. Her scent was of acid roses.
Her face, however, had momentarily lost its previous countenance of sure victory—although her features had quickly resumed their original fate after their relapse, he knew his words had shocked her: anyone would be astounded to learn that they were a target of the Central Intelligence Agency—that American intelligence had been watching them with multibillion dollar contraptions for weeks.
When her focus turned back to him, he could tell that she was obviously askance, her hard-won focus dissolved: the fact that she had a death warrant signed by the Americans on her was undoubtedly attributable for this.
"Then you're my hostage", she said evenly.
Now, it was his turn to laugh. "If I don't report back, soon, you'll be having a shootout with an armed platoon of U.S. Special Forces. You tell me whether or not you think those are winning odds."
"There are no U.S. Special Forces in Africa", she said—but there was no conviction in her voice. The glamour and command had been lost from her tone.
"Well, you thought that you weren't a person of interest to the CIA, until I showed up on your doorstep", he answered evenly. "The Special Operations Command maintains a high interest on Africa. People like you are part of that interest. Either you'll die by my hand, or you'll die when this entire block is vaporized by a Predator missile from eight thousand feet."
He felt himself regaining confidence—his words of patriotism, dedication, and the sure advantage of American technology were revitalizing him—and weakening her. From her eyes, he could tell that a sudden fear was setting into her: like the eyes of dozens of others he'd killed. The fear that the world's largest superpower was hunting after them, and that the CIA and the U.S. Special Forces were about to go to any lengths to kill them. And no one escapes the reach of a superpower that controls the world.
Her words were quieter now. "Well, I know one thing for certain—I'm not dying at your hands."
"Really?"
There was the nearby report of automatic gunfire: the urgent thunder of a machine gun. For the fraction of a second, her head turned towards the window—
And he acted with lethal force.
He closed the distance between them in a moment, and her eyes lost all composure of victory as they widened in surprise: she straightened her handgun, and he knew he only had a moment to act—his forefinger and thumb jammed against her wrist, and suddenly, it turned flaccid and vised open.
The handgun dropped from her hand.
His knife hand closed to her throat, and a fatal dread filled her eyes.
There was no need for words on his behalf. He felt himself fill with the adroit sense of purpose that always preceded murder.
When he looked into her face, he saw a sudden sadness—her lovely eyes and beautiful lips were now twisted in a pained, sad little moue, pathetic. He did not understand the circumlocutions that were going through her, but words emerged from her last—pained and sad.
"Is this how it's going to end?"
"Yes."
They stared in each other's eyes for an eternity—the cold metal of his knife against the cartilage of her throat, its bleak edge spattered with the dark blood of the assassins he'd killed in the hallway.
He looked into her eyes, one last time, taking in her features a final time—and as he looked, he saw something terrible in her beautiful eyes: a painstaking sadness, such a loss of hope that it was dehumanizing: he had his knife to the throat of a woman who had nothing left to lose. All her posturing earlier had merely been a shallow façade.
Her voice was quiet and still.
"Okay."
And then—"Make it fast, please."
As he thought about her words, he realized how ludicrous they were. Make it fast, please? How ridiculous was that? She was begging that she would die quickly—why? Did she think that he was about to torture her?
He realized that extreme interrogation might actually be justified. Although the station chief had not explicitly ordered it, torturing this woman for information might actually provide an aperture onto the workings of this African terrorist group.
He cocked his head, wondering if he should torture her. Under the Special Activities Division, torture and interrogation were all tacitly approved: for the people they went after were of such great threat to American society that all means were approved to prevent them from committing their heinous acts.
Such as this woman.
Yet, even as his eyes skirted the apartment for the material to fashion an electric chair, he found himself wondering a ludicrous question.
What has she done that I should interrogate her for?
His lips went into a grim slash, as he realized the stupidity of that question—and what it suggested.
Obviously she should be tortured. She's working for terrorists.
He shook his head of the notion that he was questioning why she was a despicable person. Obviously she was a person of great notoriety—why else would the CIA approve putting a geosynchronous satellite in orbit to specifically track her? Each adjustment to an electro-optical KH-13 reconnaissance satellite's sun-synchronous orbit forty two thousand kilometers above Earth was not a child's thing ordered by Langley. The U.S. had spent several million dollars worth of satellite and Predator UAV time to track – Q.E.D., this nameless terrorist was of great consequence.
Torturing her would be a necessary act to preserve national security.
Well, I have a knife—and there are pliers to pull off fingernails. There's an AC outlet in the corner to make an electric chair.
"What are you thinking about?" she whispered.
He shook himself of her singsong voice.
He knew what his answer would be. I'm thinking of how many of your fingernails I'll have to pull off before you start talking.
But as he visualized the interrogation technique, suddenly, a ball of vomit seemed to settle in his gut—he would be pulling off her fingernails, off of those delicate hands, while she would be screaming. And as he gazed at her breathtakingly beautiful body, he found himself inexplicably decelerating. He won't just be torturing a terrorist in some province in Iraq. He would be torturing this woman. Someone with a face, with fears of dying and pain—he knew that from her voice. She wasn't like the Arab terrorists, who screamed at the top of their lungs about how they relished 9/11 and such and such until he interrogated and murdered them.
This woman was scared of pain. He could not discern any hatred from her: so far, all her moves had been professional and economical, in self-defense.
She had not killed him when she had the chance.
And as he thought of torturing her, a sudden shame welled in him—and his face betrayed him.
"What's wrong?" she asked.
He found his knife trembling at her throat, and he was repulsed by his own sudden weakness. He remembered Langley's words—Extraordinary rendition will not be necessary. Prosecute the target in South Africa with necessary and available force.
But how could he kill her? How could he torture her?
He wavered, and his knife hand trembled as his face tensed to the density of chitin: as patriotism and something else battled in his mind. The deadly blade was centimeters from carving out his throat…
His eyelids fluttered as he fought down tears: tears at the murder he was about to commit.
His voice was choked with emotion. He needed to know something—know one thing that would comfort him as he reported to his handler that he had killed his mark.
"What did you do against America?"
Her voice was strangulated with terror, and he felt the shame within him again as he heard her melodious voice crack with fright. "What?"
His voice was hoarse and angry. "What did you against the U.S? Why are you here?"
His mind was desperate—he needed her to say something incriminating, something to know why she was dead—
Her voice was trembling. She had no composure left. "I don't know what you're—"
He roared in primal rage, and shoved her back into a long couch. He picked up his handgun from the floor in a single motion and aimed it at her.
"WHY ARE YOU HERE? WHAT DID YOU DO?"
"I—"
"I WANT TO KNOW EVERYTHING! WHO TRAINED YOU?" he bellowed, infuriated at her transparent attempts at deception.
Her voice was fibrillating. "The British."
He centered the gun at her forehead as she curled on the couch, her platinum hair stained with tears.
"What?" he demanded.
"The British: British intelligence."
