Mr. Undisclosed Starring in....
A strange thing I wrote based around a leading character from stories I've written on another site, in his first starring role...kind of. Outside of that one short story I wrote. I attempted to introduce a number of ideas and such on the organization he works for without being TOO heavy handed, lord only knows how well it worked.
There’s a particular sound a rail car makes when it glides across the rails in the middle of the night, I’m now wholly aware of that sound. It’s sort of like ice skates but angry, I admit that’s perhaps not the most eloquent way to describe it, but that’s what it sounds like. It’s a quiet slicing sound, sans the quiet. It’s like thunder in my ears, my whole head is shaking from the sheer force of it, it hardly helps that some horrid sort is seeking to end my life.
My name is not important, but if you need to call me anything, you can call me Sir-Secret, my current non de plume, or Hermes, the name I let those I work with call me for simplicities sake- saying something like “Would you like tea, Sir-Secret?” would be mindboggling and I won’t have it. None of these names are who I really am, I am a man in a mask and because of that I can’t tell you who I am, defeats the purpose of the mask you see.
I can tell you what I do though, no point in hiding my profession and hobby from you; I am a thief, professionally. I’d never call myself a “master thief” because you can’t master being a thief. To master something is to know it inside and out, be crystal clear on all the facets of that which you have mastered. You can’t master being a thief, it’s not done, you can know everything there is to know about picking locks, cracking safes, dodging trip wires, picking pockets, forging papers, stashing loot, playing the long game and whatever else but I guarantee you as soon as you rip someone off one way they’ll never be ripped off that way ever again. They’ll line their pockets with razor blades- knew a man in Singapore who did this-to keep your hands out, they’ll fill a corridor with trips wires rather than just have them in strange positions that can be avoided by a concentric dance number.
You can’t master being a thief, it’s mercurial, you need to be like water, I think someone famous said something about that. You need to adapt with them to stay in the game.
Take my current situation. I heard that someone had loaded a train with jewels and priceless works of art. Normally you’d break in before the train left and make off with the profits, no that doesn’t work here as the carriage containing the goods was slapped onto a passenger transport at the last second, rich eccentrics request or some nonsense, palms were greased and eyes turned away. Then, you say to me why not unhook that carriage while the train is moving? You’re smart and this is a grand suggestion, but again moot, as there is no singular carriage without treasure, the back two carriages, those added at the last minute, are in fact loaded with explosives, lots of explosives.
So, where is the treasure you ask? That is a great question with a great answer. The treasure is all over the train, it’s brilliant really, some rich eccentric bought the train years ago and over time he’s been stashing bits and pieces of some vast fortune onto the train, hiding it in the woodwork, fake compartments all over the train, stuff like that. All the passengers currently on the train are militia of some sort, people with few qualms about killing to keep the treasure safe. Someone went through a great deal of trouble to guard a few very pricey trinkets.
This crops up a lot in my job, I’m a rather spectacular thief from a rather spectacular place. I think a friend of a friend has dubbed it the Hyper-Real. It’s kind of like living in a comic book or a film, that’s how best to describe it. I was born in this reality, though I hear not everyone is- though according to that friend of a friend it’s upsettingly easy to wind up in the Hyper-Real- which is a shame, it’s a smashing place.
Anyway, I was in a troublesome spot and I think my life’s flashing before my eyes and that’s why I’m thinking like this, I think. My head doesn’t run conventionally, I think, I’ve had some work done upstairs and it’s affected my thinking, I think.
Enough about what I think, here’s what I know. I’m being held outside of a train by my long time nemesis, Argyll Garriet, and I’m fairly certain my brain is about to be scrapped across the rail and my career will end quite summarily.
It’s a pity, I brought my closest friend Nathan, he has little issue with me using his real name, along to prevent just such an occasion. He’s something of a monster, I mean this in the kindest way, and something of a bodyguard. Sadly he’s three cars over fighting an army of people with guns and I can hardly call him away from that, it’s like someone threw a surprise birthday for him. So that leaves me with Argyll and his witty repartee.
“You stupid fuck,” wit just leaks from the man’s pores, “you couldn’t leave well enough alone, could you?” I have no idea what he’s talking about, probably won’t until some dramatic moment and then it’ll turn out I was in the wrong the whole time…that’s how this usually works.
“No, I’m a greedy man,” I’ve always thought honesty was the best policy, “I have a real problem, I love my job,” I have to shout to be heard over the whistling of the wind and the clamorous scream of the train. I like to think I sound smug because I really don’t look it right now, not that he can tell I’m wearing a mask. I always wear a mask.
“Your greed is going to be the death of you,” he snarls as he forces my head toward the tracks, face first mind you, “in fact I predict it’s going to kill you quite soon,” I hate Argyll. We’ve been doing this for so long it’s grown tiresome, I really wish one of the times he falls off into the darkness or off a cliff that he’d stay vanished or presumed dead. Sadly he probably thinks the same for me.
I hear a peculiar sound, above the howling of the wheels and snarl of the wind as it rushes by, I turn to see what’s going on further up the train, no doubt Nathan getting himself into a mischief. Someone tumbles out from one of the windows further up the train, arms windmilling to grab onto something only to grab air. He hits the rails and bounces down the track toward me. I spot my salvation attached to his breast and decide if I don’t want to have my face scraped off I best get to it.
I pull back as much as I can against Argyll’s attempts to smear me across the rail, I release my hold on one of the trains’ open doors and almost at once he’s overpowered me. I throw a few heatless kicks back at him to buy me the time I need, working the elbow of my free hand into one of his eye sockets with a quick jerk, another fine reason to wear a mask, nobody can get at your eyes.
The poor fellow slaps down on the tracks again, he’s spinning in mid air at this point, and I make my move. He’s a mangled mess, though most that run into Nathan are, but thankfully he still has his side arm on him. A small shoulder holster, as is all the rage these days, glints neatly against the stark mess of the rest of him, the pearl handled snub nosed weapon that sits nestled in its bosom looks more valuable than all the gold in the world right about now.
I won’t bother saying it was hard, doing something like swiping a gun from a dead man’s chest while he goes past at roughly fifty miles per hour, spinning wildly as he goes mind you, while someone is trying to grind your face across rail tracks is hardly difficult.
For me.
I lower my head as much as possible without clipping my mask against the rails as I hope to time things correctly. If I time it wrong the man might shoot over me or even crash into me and I’d lose my weapon. So I’m hoping to catch him just as he goes over my head.
He slaps down nearby and as I’d hoped the extra speed carries him over me with little difficulty. I breathe in. My hand snaps out for his chest, mid spin, I get a hand on the holster and pop out the safety latch with the edge of my index finger, arcing my hand along with his body, I need to get the gun out before he twists too far and the gun falls loose.
My grip on the gun is made somewhat tenuous due to the slick gore coating the handle but I remind myself that if I cock up here I will most likely die and I think that gets my hand to lock up. I whip the gun from its holster and with a rather uncomfortable contortion I aim into the carriage behind me. I break into a smile when I hear Argyll mutter “Fuck” under his breath then I open fire.
The pressure vanishes from my back and I drag myself to my feet, I’m still a bit shaky from the last half hour of high speed espionage and the festivities beforehand. In all honesty I’d rather enjoy a bath around now, but I’ve a train to steal first. I turn to find Argyll, the green eyed lout, nursing a rather nasty looking hole in his shoulder. I meander my way over to him, gun in hand, he looks up at me and the colour drains from his already pale face as he realises once again the tables have been turned.
“Argyll, I’ve quite enjoyed our time these last few years but I doubt I want to see your mug again in this coming century,” I shrug, “it’s not that I don’t like you, no anything but, I just hate you keep trying to kill me.” He smiles at me, a queasy little look the kind I assume trademarked by Dennis the Menace.
“What can you do? I have my job, you have yours,” I can’t say he’s wrong my job is to steal and his job is to kill people who steal things; he’s not a do-gooder he just dislikes thieves. The polarization of our world is something with which I’ve always had an issue. We’re slotted into good guys or bad guys, capes or cowls. I’ve never liked it, it’s simple which I can respect, but that’s how it works. Some pioneering sort, a pair of old heroes with whom I crossed swords, are trying to explain how the world works.
They are also trying to set up a newspaper, which I hope goes well for them, T.H.E.M have made finding the history or our world a serious chore…but I hardly have time to worry about T.H.E.M I’m not some paper pusher after all, thank god for that. I don’t have to worry about their bureaucratic swamp and permission forms, I make sure to send Geoffrey, head of the Historian department, a nice big bottle of wine every year for being such a good sport.
“That’s true, but I fear I’m going to have to be a bit cheeky,” I confess squatting down before Argyll, his eyes flicking constantly from my mask to the gun in my hand, “I often say I’m not much for killing, I leave that to Nathan whom I think we can concede is an artist of it,” he nodded begrudgingly at that, Nathan had cost Argyll a solid chunk of man power over the years we’d been crossing swords. “But I think I’m going to have to put you out of my misery, despite how little I like to wet my hands. In all honesty, in the villainous line of work I can say with pride in my entire ten year career you will be my….second on purpose kill.”
“I’m not even your first?” he asked with feigned regret, letting out one more ragged sigh, “alright get it over with you great queen.” I point the gun at his forehead and he stares me right in the eye, brave man Argyll.
“Any last requests?” I ask and he seems to break out into sweats, eyes darting around the cabin as if someone had just broken in. I don’t bother to look it could be a last ditch effort to get away, some desperate technique to break my concentration.
All semblances of panics and dread leave his face as he yells out “Line?” Line? A loud siren breaks my concentration and I spin around to see the world outside stop in its tracks, the snow stops falling, the trees hold stock still and the carriage stops jostling with movement. A small man walks over and looks for all the world quite cross with myself or Argyll.
“Everybody take a minute,” he bellows and all at once everything peels away, the back ground is wheeled away as though it were never there by a pair of young men. The short man, a pale sweaty little man with chestnut brown hair and murky green eyes like pond scum pushes me to one side gently and squats down with Argyll.
“You did great man, fantastic,” he points at me, “you take a minute, get a breather out of that mask, take a drink I know how much you hate being stuck in that thing all day,” he roughly pats me on the arm and shoos me off the carriage and onto a Hollywood set. The man who rolled down the tracks is lying on a crash mat a few feet away and throws me a quick thumbs up as I stumble past him.
Was…is this a show?
“Hey, man,” I see Louis standing with Sophie by a machine, sipping on coffee in foam cups and beckoning me over with a quick wave. I approach entirely trying to sort out why my protégé is here despite me not meeting him for another fifteen years, or how I even know I’m going to meet him in fifteen years.
“Cracking scene, surprised you can still do all the stunts in that get-up,” he knocks on the side of my helmet and I swat away his hand, he gives me a hangdog look before rolling his eyes to his partner, “yeah yeah don’t touch the prosthetics I know.” The pair titters about something and I decide that something is thoroughly wrong here.
“Louis what’s going on?” His face falls and he breathes a tremendous sigh, he places his coffee down on the machine aside him, which I now notice is some kind of elaborate prop of a small island…Narvika?
“My name isn’t Louis,” he tells me as he places a hand on my shoulder, his features soften as he gently squeezes my shoulder, “it’s Travis man, come on, don’t do this too in character bullshit. Breaks only ten minutes and I got time for level of crazy,” he picks up his coffee again and takes a sip, “not without ten more of these at least.”
I didn’t quite know what to say to that so I decide to say nothing at all, I’d normally yell or berate someone but right now I had the feeling that’d only condemn me as the crazy person they seem to think I am. Louis, or Travis apparently, goes for my helmet again and I take a lunge backward, almost spilling into some fellow swallowed up in wires and sound equipment as he does his rounds.
“Let’s get that helmet off of you, help you breathe some saner air instead of whatever they got you inhaling in there,” he goes for me again, mirthful and smiling, but I can’t shrug off the feeling that something is very, very wrong here. I dip out of the way with ease but he comes around again and manages to get a grip on one of my lapels. I’m shocked that my built in safety measures don’t go off, I’ve a small smattering of electric shockers in the lining of my coat to discourage anyone with grabby hands.
So I settle for the age old method of a head butt, another advantage to a mask/helmet, why everyone doesn’t go around like this is beyond me. I lean back and crack forward and I’m rewarded with a rather spectacular amount of pain as I tumble over what appears to be my desk in the SOA office…fifteen years from now.
Louis is on the floor, clutching what I think is a broken or at least very bruised nose, and Sophie’s standing above him looking at me with a mixture of confusion and hilarity, unsure how to react after seeing her boss assault her partner. I pull myself up from the floor, almost tripping atop the mess of files and papers all over the floor, fuck I do paperwork now…or…again…apparently. Somehow that worst of all.
“The fuck,” Louis groans, back arched in pain as he rolls about on the floor, “are you doing Undisclosed? The fuck?” He has this appalling swearing habit, I really have no idea how he can manage to pretend to be so civilised when he has the mouth of a Docks-man.
“You were trying to take off my mask,” I say simply, adjusting my sleeves, “I don’t like it when people do that,” I appear to, if my slightly laboured breathing and dull ache in my lower back are any indication, have aged considerably. I take a moment to notice I’m no longer in my old clunky helmet…but in my current, for lack of a better term, guise of using gauze to disguise my charming good looks.
“No you bizarre fuck,” he pulls himself up and that’s when I notice something rather troubling, he’s considerably older himself, his hair is no longer dyed blonde and he appears to have reverted to its natural black shade, with occasionally thin white streaks going to and fro. He’s wearing a pair of thin spectacles, which I appear to have caused to break, and has a small number of crow’s feet forming around his olive green eyes.
“I was trying to give you a bloody hug,” Sophie, who looks exactly the same as she always has, hands him a small set of tissues and he goes about dabbing at his split lip, “I was going to say how much I’d miss you when you’d left but after that I’m quite bloody certain I won’t.”
“Miss me,” I scoff, sitting at my desk, “where would I be going?” I adjust the various papers into monolithic piles and begin to decide which pile I should attempt to dissemble today and just how long it’ll take me to feel like I need to jump out of a plane. Louis looks to Sophie who only shrugs in confusion.
“You retired,” I sit still for a second, lean back in my chair and rather maturely kick over a pile of paper.
“I don’t think I did,” I rumble, “I hate this job, but I’d never leave this place with…” I decide to skip ahead in the plot, “You’re going to replace me aren’t you?” He nods slowly, clearly I’ve skipped a few scenes in this particular play and everyone else is up to speed.
“You feeling alright Undisclosed, Hermes?” I don’t quite like how he says that second name, that’s a private codename.
“Hmm quite,” I say, trying to measure the distance between my desk and the door, I think I might need to scarper, things are turning up strange and I need a minute to think. Louis rolls one shoulder and holds out his hand.
“Come on, hand it over, give me Epimetheus,” that perks me up, he knows about Epimetheus…something seriously wrong is going on, “it’s mine to carry now.” That much was certain, a select few knew about Epimetheus and even fewer got to hold it. The honour often fell to the lead Historian. I most certainly needed to get away now more than ever, find out what was happening. I’d narrowed it down to a time fissure or some sort of particularly bad dream I was having due to that late night cheese pizza I had…never again.
“Hmm I’m afraid I can’t do that,” he rubs at the bridge of his nose, letting out a soft hiss of pain as he rubs a particularly tender area, “I swore that the next person to get Epimetheus would gain it in the same way I did,”
“You took Epimetheus from the body of a dying man,”
“AS was his last request on this Earth,”
“So…you want us to kill you?” he asked gingerly and I could only scoff, he might be a good bit older but he’s still something of an idiot, ah well at least that’s still the same.
“No you tit, you’ll get it from me when I quit the job or die on the job,” I look at a few piles of papers, “which could very well happen sometime soon with all these stacks of papers piling up, some unfortunate literary avalanche would claim me,” I pry out a piece of paper from the pile and scan down the length of it. Now either in my apparent age I lost the ability to read or the entirety of this document is written in backward, Arabian with a mixture of hieroglyphics interbred with Norse runes.
Yeah this is getting too weird. I decide to engineer an escape at once, sadly the door to my office is barred by two people much younger, fitter and more energetic than myself, it’s a frightful shame I’m still so much better than them at this regardless. They might have youth and in Sophie’s case an alarmingly good ability at snapping necks but I am Mr. Undisclosed, the onetime number one thief in the entire world.
Seeing as my door is barred and I have no windows, one of the lamentable things about working in an underground facility, I’m going to have to try something I haven’t done in a long while. I look to the small glass section above my door which bares the mark of the Historians, an open book with a hand tearing out pages, and try to decide if I’m still thin enough to squeeze through there.
“Look this is gone on long enough,” Louis breathes as he marches over to my desk, posture rigid, teeth clamped down on his lower lip in annoyance, “give me the Epimetheus, get out of my office and head down stairs for your mind-wipe, don’t make me have you escorted out,” I’m troubled by part of that, mind-wipe’s are reserved for dishonourable discharges in our line of work, clearly I’m being forced into retirement…should have figured there’d be no other way to get me out of the Society of Acquisitions.
I lean over onto my desk and look up at him, a thin smile on my face behind the thick layer of gauze bandages I’m wearing, “I can certainly do one of those things,” I say calmly as I tip over a tower of papers in Louis’ direction. He’s caught off guard and goes to steady the pile giving me a few precious seconds to accomplish my goal.
I leap from my chair to my desk, all the remaining towers of paper spill out across the room, a faint hail of after action reports written in gibberish sprinkle down from the ceiling in an explosive hail, I leap from the desk, catching onto the hanging lights on the ceiling, placed there years ago by a previous Historian for the direct purpose of pulling off this very trick, and with a quick swing I shoot toward the glass.
Breaks easily enough, made of cheap soap glass designed to break in the simplest manner without casing much injury to the breakee, and apparently I’ve kept in solid enough shape so as not to get stuck half way through. I land in the corridor of the Historian’s with the sound of breaking glass and Louis screaming at my back. I decide to slow their chase by a small degree and give the door knob a swift kick, breaking the lock in place.
They’ll be through in a moment but a moment’s all I’ve ever needed to get away. I’m springing up the corridor and weaving through the thin corridor as door after door opens and the luckless saps who are stuck in this department with me poke their heads out to see what all the commotion is about, I shout at them; call them listless layabouts who do disgrace to paper pushers as I sprint past.
I reach the other end of the corridor and push into the elevator and key in a higher floor, escaping to the above ground world is priority one right now. The doors slide closed with a satisfying hiss and the elevator flows upward. I’m not sure what I’m doing anymore I’m reacting to these situations without making any actual effort to find out what’s going on.
Things aren’t as they should be, that much is for certain, I’m sort of praying when the elevator doors crack open I’m not somewhere else or somewhen else. If I make it top side I’ll make my way to my friend who deals in matters of time, he might have some basic understanding of how I’m quite so nonlinear all of a sudden, if this is a slip in time that is.
The doors glide open and all at once I wished they’d opened somewhere else. Standing before me is Nathan, my closest friend, the enforcer of the Society of Acquisitions. He’s large even by a large man’s standards. He has the most spectacular talent for killing people I’ve ever seen and right now I get the feeling he’s been siced on me. Before I can utter a word he’s dragged me out of the elevator by my lapels.
Thankfully this time the electrical stun goes off…sadly it’s being used on Nathan who just seems to roll his shoulders at the few thousand volts going through him. His golden eyes narrow on me as he tears the jacket from me in one swift motion, the flat of his hand sings like the edge of a knife as he swipes it through the air.
“Nathan, something is very wrong here, come on,” I dispense with saying ‘I know you’re in there, fight!’ because if I did I think I’d have earned a righteous pounding. He nods his head to one side but doesn’t put me down as I’d hoped he might, I was almost thinking he was putting on a show for anyone who might be watching us.
“Damn right something’s wrong you blabbed about the boss,” okay now that’s impossible. I’ve never met the boss, nobody has met the boss, the boss is almost a myth in the Society. I can’t think of anyone who’s ever seen the boss, so to talk about the boss in any capacity is pointless. As nobody would believe anything you said.
“What did I say?” I ask casually as I’m dangled precariously off the ground, I have a knife in the tip of my shoe and I’m desperate enough to try and use it, though I imagine the moment I do I’ll have my arms torn off. His face screws up as his brain chews out a reply, curious as to whether he should tell me or if he should just drag me off to the Mind-Wipe section.
I decide who dares lives and curl my big toe popping out the thin dagger which I then drive into Nathan’s spleen or thereabouts. His eyes bug out as I twist the blade sharply, snapping the barbed edge off somewhere inside him, he drops me rather quickly and I drive a fist into the wound causing him to collapse into a puddle of pain and general misery.
I beat feet down the….wait. No…fuck. That doesn’t happen, that doesn’t happen in reality. Nathan is an unbeatable sociopathic mess of a man and I’ve just caused him to bleed out on to the floor. I demand want my money back because right now I’m certain life is a lemon. This isn’t real, the weird text was a bit of a tip off because I think that happened in a Batman cartoon once but being able to beat Nathan, that’s fucking impossible outside of a dream.
Is that where I am? In some mental dream world conjured up by some idiot who knows next to nothing about my life and is what…trying to figure out who I am? Is that your end game shitty projectionist? Trying to find out who I am? You see you’ve buggered up now, as I’ve worked out that I’m in one of these projected mental worlds I have a way out.
I bet you’re shaking in your boots right now, I had some work done years back to prevent this kind of thing, the fact you were able to trap me in a mental world is a testament to how good you are, I had a small number of microscopic psychic white noise projectors placed into my skull. They project a small protective area around my mind to keep people out, but for the tougher folk. I have a little switch, sort of, that I can use to amp it up.
Let us
T
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T
it woh tuO
Wooooooooooooorrrrkrkrkkrkkkskrk skk
My eyes crack open at once and I find a small IV in my arm. I’m in some kind of hospital bed. Nathan’s at my bedside with a wide smile on his ugly face.
“Welcome back to the land of the living,” he mumbles, sounding like all he wants is a nice long lie down in a comfortable bed and not the too small- for him and only him- chairs in this establishment. “Don’t mind telling me you gave me a scare, there bud.” I feel for my face and he stops my hand, probably doesn’t want me ripping out this IV, “face is still bandaged up, think I’d let someone take that shit off without you knowing?” he scoffs, “Not a chance.”
“Where was I?” I ask, my voice comes out surprisingly breathlessly and it shocks me, clearly I might have been in worse shape than I imagined. He shakes his head and gets up to stretch his legs, a symphony of cracking bones accompanies his rise.
“Not important, some dopey island in the Pacific,” as ever Nathan is being slightly too vague, I think he picked it up from me; it’s kind of awful when you’re not the mysterious one. “What is important is you’re here now.”
“I think he was trying to work out who I was, kept trying to get the masks off, it was,” Nathan lays a large hand across my chest and just shakes his head; it’s a conversation for when I’m not in a hospital gown apparently.
I nod at once and look around the room for any signs I might still be in some weird fake reality, text seems to not be freaking out on the poster across the room so that’s encouraging. I decide I don’t have much to do right now except wait until I’m well enough to get out of here. I can’t exactly try anything major right now.
---
Its a few days before I’m able to hobble comfortably without aid but Nathan being the shining star he is sticks to me like glue. Things seem normal, I’ve yet to be put back to work for reasons of security; they think I might have some kind of mind probe in me and want me screened before I’m allowed near anything on paper.
Nobodies asking after Epimetheus or trying to take my masks off either so clearly that’s a bonus…and I’ve, much to my irritation, been checking for cameras around every corner, can never be too careful. That said I still can’t shake the theory I’m still in some hellacious dream spasm or some such nonsense. Call it being paranoid, I know enough people see me as paranoid anyway, but something doesn’t feel quite right yet.
“Nathan,” I burble and he turns to me, we’ve been sitting around people watching in the Societies cafeteria all day, how he’s wrangled the day off is beyond me, “I have a suspicion something is wrong.” He starts looking about like a startled prairie dog for any form of assailant or perhaps ninjas.
“Nothing serious, my head still feels fuzzy, so listen, I have an experiment I want to try, let’s get to the elevator,” I hobble and he strides over to the elevator when the door opens everyone stands aside to make room for us, upon noticing us not getting in they realise some matter of grave importance is afoot and leave the elevator sullenly.
We step inside and the doors slide shut with a silent hiss. I reach into one pocket and draw out a thin steel spike which I insert into a pin prick hole in the bottom of the console. A small amount of the spike sticks remains outside the hole and I remove a tiny tuning fork from another pocket. I strike the spike and a small sound emits from the fork and the elevator moves into life, groaning like a beast in pain.
The standard white lights of the elevator flip to a red shade. We seem to be in there for longer than is sensible, the elevator screams, the lights go from red to yellow to green and everything bleeds together, my teeth are on edge and I swear I can taste blood in my mouth for some reason. Nothing’s right about right now. Then everything stops and the elevator cracks open into a blinding light.
The room, or whatever it is, we’re standing in is before the Vault. The Society of Acquisitions hidden vault secreted another dimension accessible only through frequency modulation and a small number of DNA scanners built into the transference sequence, unless you run one of the departments it’s impossible to come here. Years ago, back when I was young and spry, someone claimed to have robbed our vault, they were wrong. They stole from a vault but not THE vault.
But still we spread around the lie that our big secret had been breached and we had been robbed blind, you’d be amazed how few people want to rob a vault that’s already been plundered.
“So, why we here Hermes?” That’s all I needed to hear.
“You did better this time,” I say stepping out of the elevator, “you got words right, least the ones I saw, projected a world that made a lot more sense than the last ones. But you missed something, a dirty little secret you see,” Nathan’s face falls flat and he stares hard at me.
What did I miss?
A voice booms from all around me and I do my best not to look terrified. “Nathan doesn’t call me Hermes down here, he calls my real name.”
Why can’t I replicate your memories of who you are?
“Mental blocks like I said,”
No, no, it’s as…
He chuckles darkly and all at once I feel very alone and afraid inside my own head, it’s unfamiliar soil all of a sudden.
You don’t know. You don’t know who you are do you? You lost it. You lost your own name, you strange little man.
“I didn’t forget, you just can’t find it,” I’m sweating, “because of the blocks. Speaking of, I’m going to turn them up, I’ll be glad to get rid of you.” I feel an immense pressure on my chest and all at once everything feels more than impossible. I can’t breathe, it’s as though a great stones had been pressed onto my chest, my hands drop to my sides lifeless as a fresh corpse and my tongue falls numb.
All the lights go out, or I can’t see, one of the two, I think I’m being forced into some kind of hellish brain screwy thing…words not easy…
Hard to think. Need to use the dampener, need to use dampener, need to use dampener,
.mih llik dna kcalB yhpruM dnif ,nam siht dnif ,dnats t'nac tI
.enod reve ev'ew gnihtyreve dna era uoy ohw wonk yeht ,etihw dna kcalb ni ,semreH ereh thgir lla s'tI
.t'nac yeht ,nahtaN ma I ohw wonk t'nac yehT
I wake up again…this time on a grimy floor with a strange man lying over the top of me. He’s bleeding from the eyes and ears. I think the force he was putting into killing me might have caused him some harm. I take stock of my whereabouts and find a book case. I pull out a book and lo’ and behold text is fine. I pinch myself, trite I know but sometimes you have to, and wince. Clearly this is life, I crawl around looking for a phone, first things first; call Nathan, then have a long bath, then see a therapist for a bit, maybe get some extended leave and escape my desk for a month.
---
“Hmm, so it’s real?”
“Yeah, the vaults real, not an urban legend after all.”
“That’s sexy that.”
“Yeah, right, so about my payment,”
“It’s coming to you as soon as the man wakes up and is returned safely.”
“Right, got you.”