And The Lies Continue to Crumble
An AcceleRacers Fanfiction
By: Wings of Speed
Disclaimer: I'm only going to say this once and once only: I am in no way associated with AcceleRacers or any of the characters there in. Trinity Wheeler and the rest of the Atomic Winds belong to moi and Kara Tezla and her crew belong to Kara Tezla. No profits of any sort are being made off of this story or its prequel. There, now that should make all the lawyer types happy!
Summary: It's hard to tell the truth from the lies when you're in so thick you can't remember one from the other or what was a lie and what was truth. Vert discovers in a rather dramatic fashion that those he considered his closest relatives are in all actuality: the enemy.
And The Lies Continue to Crumble
Chapter 1: The Basics of the Imperative
Serena Wheeler glared at the screen within Octainium, her steel blue eyes clashing with the beady rodent like eyes of Admiral Graymond. "Admiral," she sneered, her upper lip actually curling in an unruly fashion, "I believe that our mission has been compromised."
"And what brings on this assumption Corporal Wheeler?" the admiral retorted, his beady eyes actually narrowing in malcontent.
"Gee, I wonder if it would be the fact that I saw Trinity kissing one of the Teku members?" She responded, waving a hand in the air. "I really don't think that that was part of the plan or incorporated at any point in any part of the mission, now was it?"
A look of deep displeasure crossed the admiral's face.
"I didn't think so," Serena commented snidely. "Looks like our well laid plan is falling apart at the seams, now doesn't it?"
"Things will progress as planned," the admiral responded, the tone of his voice indicated that he believed completely that things would go as planned. This was just a minor set back that would soon enough resolve itself. This did not impede the plan in the slightest.
"How do you figure on that?" Serena asked, leaning closer to the screen with interest. "Whereas I have no problem with following my commands or meting out the destruction and mayhem that ensue, Trinity will follow her heart and if she's developed feelings for this Teku, she won't be so obliged to hurt him in any way." She leaned back in her seat, a smile of pure evil crossing her face. "Which also means she won't be so overly enthusiastic to hand Vert over to us either, she's going to go against everything she's been trained to do."
The admiral gave a knowing smile. "You're familiar with the conditioning of some of our agents, as well as the imperative?" There was a strange gleam in his eyes, something that actually caused a shiver of dread to run up Serena's spine.
Yes, she was familiar with the conditioning but not so much with the imperative. She'd heard horror stories about the conditioning. Heard stories about how some agents weren't able to cope with the atrocities that had been forced on them during the conditioning; she'd heard rumors about some of the deaths that had occurred from the intensity of the conditioning. She'd also heard about agents taking their own lives, not being able to deal with the physical degradation, the humiliation.
She'd long suspected that Trinity had been forced into the conditioning and wondered if Courtney had been forced to endure it as well. Serena shook her head, she highly doubted that Courtney had been forced into the conditioning; her cousin wasn't as valuable to the Silencerz as Trinity and Serena. She had never understood why though, they all shared the Wheeler genes. There was just something about Courtney that didn't make her as important to the Silencerz as the other two Wheeler relatives.
"What of it?" she finally asked.
The strange gleam hadn't left the admiral's eyes, in fact it seemed to have developed into something purely evil, like the look in a lion's eyes just before it pounced on it's intended prey. "Are you familiar with what makes up the conditioning?" He grinned then, his teeth gleaming in the bright light of his office, giving the aging admiral a rather vampiric look. "Are you familiar with how we condition those agents that prove to be difficult, just as Trinity so often proved to be?"
"I've…heard stories," she answered.
"I'm sure you have," he chuckled. "Let me give you some details," he paused as he pulled a folder from somewhere out of view. He opened the folder and sifted through a few of the pages held within. "Ah, here we go. This is taken from the details of your sister's conditioning."
Serena gulped as she suddenly felt bile rising in her throat. She wasn't so sure if she really wanted to hear about what Trinity had been forced to endure. She vividly recalled some of the stories she had heard, some of the stories of severe physical abuse…whippings…beatings with drilled wooden planks.
"You'll recall Trinity's old boyfriend…now what was his name?" the admiral chuckled as he glanced down at the papers in his hands.
"Rocky," Serena supplied.
"Yes, Rocky Santos. If I recall correctly he died when his truck went over a cliff." The admiral met her eyes then. "An unfortunate accident," the rodent chuckled. "Trinity was deciding to assert her individualism at the time and we needed to make certain she understood that such behavior would not be tolerated. It was an unfortunate act of fate that his steering went out just as he was coming up on that turn, and unfortunate act indeed."
"It wasn't an accident?" Serena asked softly. She had always assumed it had been a pure accident, that there had been no meddling involved. She had to wonder if Trinity knew the truth behind the whole thing. She had to if it was part of her conditioning; which also meant she was living with the guilt of knowing that Rocky's death was all her fault.
The admiral cleared his throat, "Should I go on?" he asked but didn't give her the chance to answer. "In another incident she was stripped of all her cloths save for her undergarments and endured two hours of whipping, with a nice little leather horse whip. I'm sure you've seen the type that was used." There was humor in his voice, as if he was enjoying this all immensely. He perused over the documents before him, his eyes landing on something else that brought a slight chuckle to his lips. "This was probably the grandest of all," he paused as he met her eyes, the mirth apparent in his beady rodent like eyes. "We fed images directly into her brain, for all purposes she believed what she was seeing to be real. She then had to choose between you and Courtney. One of you would die, the other would live. She held the gun in her very own hands and had to decide which of you she would kill and which she would save. Do you know who she chose?"
Serena just stared at him; she couldn't believe what she was hearing! She may have had her differences and skirmishes with her sister, but she'd never wish anything like this on her.
"Well, do you?" he asked again.
Serena shook her head, she really hadn't a clue. How could they have forced Trinity to choose between her sister and cousin? How could they have forced her to make such a decision?
The admiral chuckled, "Well, it really doesn't matter. That's not important. What is important is the fact that she's a conditioned agent and once her mind decides to go against her orders the imperative will take over. She'll have no control over her actions and will eventually complete her mission. In the end, she'll deliver Vert to us just as planned and there won't be a thing she can do to stop it."
Serena stared at him dumbfounded. "The imperative?" she said softly. She really didn't have a clue what it was, she'd heard bits and pieces here and there about it, but she'd never had to go through the conditioning so therefore the imperative had never been instilled in her.
Admiral Graymond chuckled again. "Yes, the imperative."
She stared blankly at him.
"The imperative," he said, his voice condescending as if he were talking to a mere child instead of one of his agents. "The imperative is a pych manipulator, it shuts down portions of the brain that inhibit the completion of the mission. It takes over full control of the brain and sensory systems and the person becomes the perfect little Silencerz Agent, listening to every and all commands and performs every task with 100 efficiency. We have total and complete control over the person until the mission is completed, then the imperative shuts down until it is needed once more.
"If Trinity is in danger of not completing her mission or becoming compromised, the imperative will assert itself and make certain that she completes her mission with 100 compliance. She will destroy everything and anyone that gets in her way, including this Teku she may have taken a fancy to. She will not fail us!"
Well, there's the first chapter of The Lies Continue to Crumble
The Silencerz are painted in a very harsh light and one has to highly disagree with their actions when it comes to the training of their agents. The Silencerz boarder on the verge of being Satanic in my book, they're evil to the core with only their own needs and agendas on the tops of their minds. They don't care much for who they hurt in their rise to the top, even if that hurting includes the deaths of their own agents. It is after all, just another means to the end.
The imperative is something sinister and many have lost their lives to this thing when it has decided to make its presence known. In the grip of the imperative, the agents' only focus is the completion of the mission and to hell with those that get in the way of the completion of the mission. But it is almost impossible to tell when an agent is in the grip of the imperative for they act no different, their mind just is not their own, but their personality and mannerisms remain the same.