3

3

My Lyft driver drops me off at the T.H.E.M. headquarters—a warehouse in Chatsworth that fronts as a porn distribution warehouse. As I get out of the car and walk towards the warehouse, I can feel the driver’s eyes on my ass, no doubt imagining me performing in one of the movies stored within the building. Pig. He’s lucky I’m still—at the moment, at least—under contract with T.H.E.M., otherwise, I very likely would have killed him then and there just to work off some of my stress from mother’s funeral. Maybe if Zeke fires me, I’ll get lucky on my return home and get the same driver . . .  A girl can dream.

I flash my I.D. badge at the desk security guard, who no doubt believes he actually works for a porn warehouse, and make my way to the back of the building, past aisles and aisles of storage boxes of smut. At the very back of the warehouse is a standard bookshelf lined with DVD’s. I look for the current secret video—Jurassic Puss, tagline: ‘Life finds a way . . . to cum’—and pull it from the shelf, triggering the mechanism which opens up the secret door leading down to the subterranean building which is the true heart of T.H.E.M.’s operations.

As I walk through the disgustingly white and pristine underground halls of T.H.E.M. H.Q., it seems like there is more activity than usual. Normally when walking these halls, I might pass a handful of people going about their business, whereas today the halls feel almost crowded. I admit it might just be that I don’t normally pay much mind to anyone but myself, and I might just be more aware today than usual due to my heightened stress levels.

I make my way to Zeke’s office in the far-back corner of the underground complex and knock at his door.

“Enter,” his weaselly voice calls from behind the door.

I enter Zeke’s office, and he nods for me to take the seat across from him.

Whatever you’re imagining the office of a secret organization’s evil mastermind to be, let me spare you the effort and just tell you the disappointingly boring news: it’s nothing special. You wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between this office and your average CEO’s office. Desk, filing cabinets, papers littered about. Not even a stuffed raven perched menacingly on the desk. Snore.

“First off, I want to tell you how genuinely sorry I am about what happened to your mother,” Zeke says, once I have situated myself.

Yeah, sorry you’ve lost that particular bargaining chip you had with me is the first instinctive thought that comes to my mind. Though I feel a tad guilty about that reaction, as he seems to be genuinely sincere in his condolence for once. By this point, though, I’m so sick of hearing the words, ‘I’m sorry’, all I can muster is a weak nod of acknowledgment.

He seems to detect that’s all he’s going to get from me, so he continues, “Between what happened in Tennessee, and then your mother, I understand you need to take the time to get yourself together, so please do not rush yourself in coming back to work. Whenever you’re ready to come back, we will put you back on assignment, but until then, take your time to sort out what you need to sort out. If you need a ‘one-off’ in that time, to blow off steam, I will always be willing to oblige.”

It takes me several moments to process this—and not just because Zeke has now uttered a total of four sentences without managing to come off as a condescending, creepy, cricket-rapist.

“Wait . . . so I’m not . . . disavowed?” I ask, certain I must have surely missed something.

In different circumstances, I would take pride in seeing Zeke’s usually stoic poker face marred with confusion. “Why would you be?” he asks.

“Well . . . Tennessee . . . I killed Clark Grobe, Sr. after you expressly told me to let him live . . . ”

I could practically hear the sound of Zeke’s eye roll.

“Don’t get me wrong, honey,” he slithers—and I’m relieved that he’s finally back into his usual uncomfortable and creepy mode of conversation. “You down-right pissed me off with that move, and if you ever disobey me like that again, you will wish I had disavowed you when I’m done. I may be an old, fat bastard now, but I still remember how to make a woman . . . suffer, and would love nothing more than to revisit some of my old memories from before I ‘retired’ and founded this little organization. Are we clear?”

It takes a lot to unnerve me—being a sociopathic bitch has its perks, after all. But Zeke somehow always manages to creep under my skin. I do not doubt for a second his sincerity at this moment.

“Yes, we’re clear,” I manage to croak out, furious at myself for how weak I know my voice sounds, knowing I am just feeding into his sick hunger mind games.

“That said, I was far more pissed off about what happened to Agent Misk—” ‘Misk’ was Mary Sue’s code name, “—and, therefore, I understand why you disobeyed me and am willing to overlook this particular instance of insubordination. If I were to be perfectly honest, I can’t say I wouldn’t have done the same thing had I been in Tennessee myself.”

I nod weakly. They say there’s no honor among thieves, but there does appear to be a code of honor amongst serial killers.

“Not that I’m not grateful for the second chance,” I hesitantly begin, “but you’ve never particularly struck me as the type of person to grant second chances . . . so . . . ”

“So, why am I giving you one?” Zeke finishes for me, his voice confirming my statement that this is, indeed, an out-of-character move for him.

I don’t know what reaction I was expecting from him, but tired resignation was definitely not on the list. Zeke wearily rubs the bridge of his eyebrow, then asks, “Sarah, have I ever told you about how I started this organization?”

Taken aback, not sure where this is going, I respond, “No. You haven’t.”

“Back when I was younger and first started my life as a serial killer, I didn’t work alone. I had a partner—a friend. We’d grown up together, best friends since middle school. We managed to avoid getting caught by the authorities by pretending to be one solitary killer, and we took turns with each kill so we would always have an alibi.

“I’m sure you’re probably thinking we just stole this idea from the Scream movies, but this was even before Kevin Williamson spawned that particular franchise. In truth, we stole the idea from my partner’s father. He claimed, privately to us, that he and a friend had committed the Zodiac killings in the sixties and early seventies. I have no idea if his claim was true—I suspect he just made it up in an attempt to frighten and intimidate us. The bastard was an abusive cock-monger who beat my friend senseless several times a week, but I gotta give him credit for that little bit of inspiration if nothing else.

“After a few years of killing and getting away with it, my partner and I started discussing the idea of expanding our operation . . . formalizing it . . . and thus T.H.E.M. was born. We began a network on the Dark Web, searching out other serial killers who, like us, might want to collaborate and work together.

“My father had been a prominent California politician in the early nineties, which afforded me special connections. Through those connections, I was able to obtain some pretty nasty dirt on several Sacramento lawmakers. One thing you can always count on a dirty politician to do is to throw other dirty politicians under the bus, so it wasn’t long before I had built up enough leverage all the way up to D.C. to ensure T.H.E.M.’s diplomatic immunity from the government.

“Not being an unreasonable man, though, I was willing to give the government something back in exchange and offered T.H.E.M.’s official, no-questions-asked services. Which, of course, also served to continue a constant stream of leverage I could use against them. Every once in a while, a politician with morals—and yes, such a mysterious beast does exist—would find out what was going on and try to expose their corrupt colleagues and T.H.E.M.’s operations, but those beacons of morality quickly found themselves meeting unfortunate accidents, and soon enough it was well-established among the political elite to put your head in the sand, so to speak. My partner and I had built ourselves quite an underground empire.”

“What happened to him—your partner?” I ask, unable to ignore the complete absence of this partner in the years I had been with T.H.E.M.

“He was killed . . . many years ago,” Zeke responds, a coldness in his voice completely separate from the usual slithery tones I usually associate with him.

I honestly would not be surprised to find out that Zeke killed his partner, just to wrest sole power of T.H.E.M. for himself. I suspect voicing this suspicion aloud, however, would not be the wisest of moves.

In all the years I’ve worked for Zeke, this is the only time he’s ever opened up, even a little, about anything regarding his personal life, or his time as a serial killer before T.H.E.M. To say this confession has caught me off guard would be a major understatement.

“I’m sorry, Zeke, but . . . I don’t quite see . . . ”

“What this has to do with me giving you a second chance?”

I nod.

Zeke sighs. “I honestly don’t know. I guess I’m just turning sentimental in my old age.”

I never thought I’d say this, but Zeke is creeping me out far more in his current state of mind than he ever did actually acting like a creep.

I know I’m on thin ice, but the surprising turn of the conversation thus far emboldens me to test that ice a bit more than I might have otherwise.

“Sir, as long as we’re talking honestly . . . I have some questions about what happened in Tennessee . . . ”

I take Zeke’s silence as permission to proceed.

“Before I killed him, Nick told me he had been the subject of an experiment T.H.E.M. was working on . . . mind control, to try and turn random people into temporary killers. Is that true?”

“Yes. For a while, we explored the possibility of a mind control serum that would allow us to temporarily . . . ah, ‘program’ people to kill a specific target. Nick was one of several T.H.E.M. operatives who willingly volunteered for the experiment. He and all of the test subjects were made explicitly clear of the risks in volunteering. The experiment failed, to say the least, though it did yield some interesting results.”

“ ‘Interesting’ as in the ability to read other people’s minds?” I interject.

“That was Nick Jin’s particular reaction, yes,” Zeke concedes. “Though many of the other test subjects showed other mental side effects of the treatment.”

“Jesus titty-fucking Christ, Zeke, you make it sound like we’re in a fucking Marvel movie or something.”

Zeke just shrugs. “No one truly knows what the conceivable abilities of the human brain could be if we truly used it to its full potential. Our experiment simply unlocked some of that untapped potential. We disbanded the experiment immediately after Nick’s breakdown, and all samples of the serum and all copies of the formula were effectively destroyed. In retrospect, I suppose I should have foreseen that tampering with the brains of already mentally-imbalanced individuals probably was not the best course of action.”

I barely hold back a snort. “You could say that again.”

I remember Nick had a slightly different account of his breakdown—he claimed T.H.E.M. intentionally used the mind control serum to induce his breakdown because they feared the ramifications of having a mind reader working in their ranks. He claimed he had woken up in the padded cell after his breakdown with no recollection of how he’d gotten there.

I decide not to address this discrepancy with Zeke. I’m not overly interested in splitting hairs, and I don’t particularly care which version of this one detail is accurate. Nick is dead, and whether his mental breakdown all those years ago was real or staged doesn’t have any impact on the present, so no point in drudging it up.

This whole matter of mind control, however, has me very unsettled. I spent much of the last week trying to figure out why Nick’s claim of T.H.E.M.’s secret experiment bothered me so much—and Zeke’s confirmation of the claim only deepens my disquiet. After all, having a moral compass has never exactly been a defining character trait of mine.

Sitting here in Zeke’s yuppy-looking office and hearing the words straight from the horse’s mouth, I think the light bulb may have finally turned on, though. Just about the only thing I cherish about the miserable existence we call ‘life’ is my free will. One of the many reasons why I never could have made it out in ‘the real world’ working a ‘real job’. Zeke may be a controlling manipulative asshole but ultimately working for T.H.E.M. has been the freest I’ve ever felt in my entire life. I suppose that’s part of why I’ve always had such a violent opposition to any kind of religious ideology—the idea of some fat, old, bearded dude sitting on a cloud in the sky pulling the strings of my life without me having any say in the matter. No thanks.

So, the idea that T.H.E.M. would covertly look into ways of subverting free will really rankles me. I mean, yes, they weren’t specifically planning on subverting my free will, so I’ll give them credit for that, but if they were willing to mind control random individuals, what would have stopped them from controlling their operatives?

But I suppose there’s no point in stewing over something that is done and over with. T.H.E.M. abandoned the experiments, so it’s all in the past. Unfortunately, letting go of grudges is one of those qualities that does not fall into my ‘strong suits’ category.

Either way, for the moment, I’ll move on.

“I have one last question before I leave,” I say, hoping I haven’t already overstepped my limited boundaries.

“I suppose I owe you that much,” Zeke concedes.

“Nick alluded several times to a partner, someone who was helping him to expose T.H.E.M. and bring the organization down. Do you have any idea who that partner might be?”

Zeke remains impassively silent for several moments, then: “I have a few theories. Perhaps one of the other test subjects from the experiment. Nick was the only subject who had to be disavowed from T.H.E.M. due to his . . . extreme reaction to the treatment, though most of the operatives who remained within the organization had to be taken off-field and delegated to operations here at H.Q. And, as you know, Nick has succeeded at recruiting a number of our operatives to his cause. I would not be surprised if one of them was the partner he mentioned. But do I have any solid, concrete theories? No.”

I get the distinct sense that Zeke is not being entirely truthful, but considering how much truth he’s already let loose on me in the last fifteen minutes—more truth than he’s ever shared with me in the many years I’ve known him combined—I gather that if he’s not willing to be completely candid on this topic, nothing I say will change that.

“Well, I guess if that’s all . . . ” I start to rise from my chair.

“Sarah, before you go,” he says, holding up his hand to pause my departure, “we are nowhere near out of hot water yet. Nick may be dead and gone, but as you mentioned, he was not working alone. The operatives Nick recruited have not returned to us after his death—just as well, for I would have had them killed for turn-coating in the first place. I cannot say for sure if they are still working for Nick’s mysterious partner, but I think it would be wise to assume that they are. And considering Nick’s . . . ah, fixation on you, I think it would also be wise to assume that his partner and their associates will also continue to fixate on you.”

“So, you’re saying ‘be careful’.”

“I am.”

“Zeke, you should know by now that ‘Careful’ is my middle name.”

Zeke smiles a grim smile and rolls his eyes. “I swear, Killian, you constantly remind me of why I’m grateful I never had any children, especially not a daughter.”

“I think the entire world should be grateful for that fact. Is there anything else you need me for?”

“No. Take however long you need to get back in the game, but stay alert. Just because you’re taking R&R., don’t let your guard down.”

“Aye aye, Captain.”

I rise to leave, but at the door I turn back and ask, “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to give me another free pass to kill my Lyft driver when I get home?”

Zeke smiles, but says, “If T.H.E.M. doesn’t get paid, they don’t get dead. If I get any client requests for a hit on a Lyft driver in the area, though, you will be the first I let know.”

I hadn’t expected a better answer than that, so I nod my understanding and leave.

As I retrace my steps through the subterranean corridors of T.H.E.M.’s headquarters, I tune out of my surroundings, ruminating on everything that happened in that office. Something definitely is not right with Zeke, and I seriously doubt it’s just a case of ‘old age nostalgia’ as he claimed.

I’m so lost in my thoughts, I almost don’t notice the tremor of the earth under my feet as I start to make my way up the staircase that leads to the porn warehouse above. It’s subtle at first, and I assume it’s just another of SoCal’s infamous quakes, but then the entire complex shakes so violently that I’m thrown to the ground. Fortunately, I had only made a couple of steps up the staircase so I do not have too far to fall, but I bite my tongue nonetheless as my head makes contact with the floor.

The world spins. The sound of screams throughout the underground complex does nothing to ease the throbbing of my brain. I regain my wits just in time to sense the heat of the approaching wall of flame consuming the complex behind me and making its way toward me and the only exit out.

Not even daring to look back, I pull myself to my feet and leap up the staircase three steps at a time. Feeling the scorching heat behind me. I can just imagine the flames of the fireball licking at my heels as I fly for my life.

When I burst through the secret door into the warehouse, the upper level has already become engulfed with smoke and the entire building is shaking violently. I know I only have moments before the entire complex comes crashing down on me.

I try to make my way in the direction of the exit, but between the panic and the smoke, I quickly become disoriented.

Suddenly, out of the darkness, a hand reaches out and grabs mine—I assume it’s the desk guard I had passed on my way in, though the smoke is so thick that even in such close proximity I can’t make out his features. But beggars can’t be choosers, and I certainly ain’t gonna take this moment to nitpick over who exactly it is that has shown up to help me out of this mess.

My mysterious guide and I rush, hand-in-hand, through the apocalypse of the warehouse. Finally, after what feels like an eternity but couldn’t have been more than a minute, I see the literal light of the exit and we burst out of the smoke into the smothering, bright Southern California air, my lungs heaving as they try to replace the noxious, poisonous air of the warehouse with the fresh clean air of the outdoors. I never in my life thought I would describe the air of Los Angeles County as ‘clean’.

As my savior and I collapse, coughing, onto the pavement of the warehouse’s parking lot, the earth continues to shake as the building finally succumbs to the tremors racking its very foundations and collapses, leaving a massive crater as the warehouse descends into the labyrinth which had, until now, remained hidden, lurking underneath the surface.

I roll onto my back and watch the menacing black clouds of the fire contaminate the pristine blue sky above.

Then a voice beside me—a very familiar voice—calls out to me, “Sarah! Sarah, are you all right?”

I’m certain I must be hallucinating, either from the smoke or the concussion, but then a face blocks my view of the ever-darkening sky, and the last thing I see before I submit to unconsciousness is the worried countenance of Jason.

My motherfucking ex.