Reconnaissance

Here's a standalone story completely unrelated to all the other ones I've promised sequels for 👀 hope y'all enjoy

* * *

I'm purely a recon agent. I was only sent out to follow through on a lead on my target's location, not even planning on entering the facility, but the agency found out last minute that the suspect was possibly in the process of remotely launching another strike that same day. I was halfway to the site already, and so I was ordered to skulk around and find out what I could until backup came.

It's suspected to be a one-man operation in an old warehouse. Makes sense - not many people would accept any sum of money to become an enemy of the Unified Nation of the Americas, not since the last treatise. So, no guards. No security system. Just a condemned old building, and apparently one very angry techie.

I move almost silently, careful to listen for a sound. A breath, a shuffle. But I'm not careful enough, because halfway through my little tour I lean into a doorway and spot him. He's folded up against the wall next to a decrepit old door, cross-legged, on the dusty cement with a laptop in his lap and a gun by his left knee. And looking at me.

"Uh...." I wave the joint I'm clutching in my hand for this very scenario. "Occupied? I'll leave." Something tells me he wouldn't buy the story of a kid travelling five miles outside the city just to get high, but I stand awkwardly in the doorway, playing my part. He raises an eyebrow and places his computer down.

"You kids are travelling further and further just to light one up," he chuckles. And stands. Tall, thin, and intimidating, but the gun remains on the floor next to him. I crack a smile and pretend I don't see it.

"Yeah, well, they stay increasing regulations downtown," I huff. I shift on my feet idly. "I'd offer to split, but it's pretty shitty weed," I muse.

"I bet," he says, sitting back on his heels with his eyes becoming harder and harder. Next to his gun.

I finally let myself overtly see the weapon next to him, and open my eyes wide. I clutch the blunt in my hand and slip it back into my pocket. "But uh, I'll go man, my bad. Thought this place was empty."

"No."

I look back into his grim face, set like he's accepting my imminent death. I chuckle nervously. And I take off. As fast as I can in my "inconspicuous college stoner" outfit: hoodie, tights, and socks that keep slipping down into my knock-off Converses. I round a sharp corner into the almost pitch-black hallway I'd come in through. I feel something pelt my leg hard and bounce off, but I can only grunt and keep moving, wondering how long the adrenaline is gonna mask the pain.

But then the wide, heavy door slams shut ahead of me, shutting out the holy glimpse of my abandoned bike and the rolling hill beyond it, leaving me in darkness. I can't stop, and I slam full force into the closed door, forehead ruthlessly torn open against what might be a nail sticking out of the wood.

I hear dashing footsteps behind me and I barely whip around before I'm kicked in the chest, this time the nail in the door slightly nicking the base of my neck as I'm thrown back into it.

"I'd've believed you but five miles from town, uphill, and without a vehicle is a little too much effort for a lone 'kid' going for a smoke," the man pants, and a chill races down my spine. My eyes begin to adjust in the darkness in the tense breaths between us, and dim light from a high window bounces against his steely eyes. I'm not trained for this.

I duck away from the door before he aims his fist at my head, feeling his knuckles just glance off of the side of my face, smearing blood across it. I take off again, back down the way I came. I don't hear feet pounding after me, but I do feel the next shot, off to the side of my lower back. This pain is immediate and racks my body. I gasp and stumble, but continue running. I think he's using bean bag bullets, but boy, that ride back downhill is gonna be rough if I ever make it out.

Long minutes of stumbling blindly through the building, sometimes hearing footsteps distant behind me, until I duck as quickly as I can into a stairwell and race down to the basement level, my limping and the blooming pressure in my abdomen beginning to slow me down. I swipe blood from my forehead cut out of my eye, wiping it across my aching chest. He'll have a trail of blood to follow soon, I think to myself comedically. I catch the palm of my hand against the exposed grate of a vent on the wall as I push off of it and curse. And I'll need a tetanus shot.

I open the door at the bottom of the staircase and start to slip into the darkness, but I pause by blinking lights and a huge, metallic contraption. Did I just stumble upon his whole fucking doomsday device?

I huff and hurry around the side of the machine, looking for an exit door, or extra staircase; something. But instead, light-headed, I trip over a little gray box nestled in next to the mess of wires at the base of it, with one round black button and one square red one. And I know exactly what it is, with wires trailing to a mechanism in the hollow beneath the machine.

It's actually quite practical to have a self-destruct button. Bad guys don't want to get caught; they destroy the evidence after they've done what they came to do. Usually in throwaway husks of buildings like this one, not in fancy labs like in the movies. What kind of sick luck do I have?

I'm ripped away from the subtle glow of the self-destruct button with a hard grip on my shoulder, fingers digging into my flesh with a bruising force. I yelp and he grimaces, tossing me down to the ground and crouching menacingly over me.

"I don't think it's quite time for that, dear," he whispers, the revolver held loosely but meaningfully in his hand. The safety is on, I think, and they're not real bullets, but with the state I'm in, he doesn't necessarily need to fire a third round to put me down for good. A marshmallow could come out of the end of that barrel and take me out. I can tell I'm close to losing consciousness.

"Oh?" I huff. "Can we revisit the matter in an hour or so, then?" I let my head fall back against the concrete and feel blood from the cut in my forehead run into my hair. At the rate my bodily warmth is leaving me, I don't know if I'll ever get the chance to wash it out.

My enemy, pensive, taps the butt of the gun against his thigh and I shudder. "Actually, yes," he muses grimly. "I'm fairly sure I messed up the coordinates for the launch anyway. It might hit several kilometers off of its mark, and I can't afford that, not when I'm this close."

"I'd actually love for the localized destruction to occur harmlessly in a sandy wasteland instead of an unsuspecting government compound, but different strokes for different folks, I guess," I mumble. A haze of darkness teases the corners of my vision while I try to gaze stonily up at him over his denim-bound knees. He's wearing a cloth balaclava now, and his eyes shift to look around the room. He doesn't know if someone else is here already. I could use that, I think, I can survive this. But I feel my eyelids droop over my already shadowy vision.

"Hey. Hey hey hey." He slaps my cheek softly, with a gloved hand instead of his gun, and my eyes crack open wide enough to meet the cold gray of his. "You bleeding out on my basement floor?" He sounds slightly alarmed, and the gun is dangling loosely from his left hand.

"Shit, I might be," I say blearily. I close my eyes against another wave of darkness.

I hear him stand. I hear a click. Is the safety off now?

. . .

I wake up flat on my back and unable to move. I can't feel anything, but I know I'm not dead. I don't think I'd be seeing bedposts and a draping canopy hanging above me if I were.

"Mmm," I start to mumble, but even my lips are sluggish and reluctant to move. I would try not to panic, but I soon find that I couldn't panic if I wanted to. I can't control my breathing, which continues steadily and evenly, as if I were sleeping. I can't even move my eyes.

I lay there, breathing, for a while, thinking about what's going to happen next. After counting 700 of my own breaths, I hear a door open and steps approaching me. Is that who I think it is?

The gray eyes of my villain, framed by doll-like lashes in a face as pale as I am brown. He looks exhausted; he could do with a good night's sleep. But I'm pretty sure he doesn't deserve it.

"Finally up?" he sighs, pushing blonde, riotous curls off of his forehead. I didn't notice those before. It makes him look drastically less threatening.

"Mmm," I vocalize, and he chuckles humorlessly before disappearing from my sight. He's back a moment later, with a stupidly long needle in one hand and an alcohol swab in the other. If I'm not dying, am I a test subject? This man's orchestrated the disabling of seven armed bases in near-inaccessible locations with technology that HQ is still trying to figure out. Terrible thoughts of what could be in that syringe flood my mind.

I feel tears threatening to gather in my eyes as he empties it into my shoulder. "Mmm," I grunt.

"I know, I had to keep you still for the last couple of days. I'm gonna let you up now though," he soothes. He massages the injection spot and the first thing I start to feel is the leftover pinching sensation of the needle before the antiparalytic flows sluggishly throughout my body.

"Owww," I finally breathe, voice raspy and weak.

"Ribs?" he says, placing the needle into a little tray by the side of the bed that I can now move my head to see.

"Ribs," I confirm, carefully assessing the rest of my body without moving too much.

"Sorry about that," he mutters. Apologizing? He's not trying to get rid of me, but I don't know what he wants. And I've seen what he can do. I'm feeling the majority of it right now.

My wounds are patched up, though I can see the edges of a nasty purple bruise around the bandage at my calf. I can feel another bandage on my forehead. I wonder what my hair looks like. Better not to think about it.

"They're only bruised, from what I was told, and I'm not supposed to wrap them, but you're not supposed to move around too much. I've got ice downstairs, it helps with the pain, and you can join us for dinner if you want. Celebrate my success." I stop assessing my chances of escaping in my current condition and give him a wary look.

Us? He has an accomplice? My mind races at the implications and how I can get the information to HQ, but then I register what else he said. "Success?"

"I fixed my coordinates and took out the GF-23 center," he says somewhat cheerily, taking up the tray.

"Shit."

"Right?! Nation's largest drone-production facility, blasted off the face of the earth," he enthuses. His gray eyes are dancing with satisfaction, and his mouth splits into a smile so wide I can see a space where one of his molars is missing.

I shudder. So this is what's so important that the agency would mobilize a reconnaissance agent for. "Casualties?"

He pauses and stares at me, and I drop my eyes. Maybe don't provoke the lunatic madman who has considerable sway over whether I live or die.

"Five, all injuries treated on site of the bombing." he says. "One critical." He turns to go. "Dinner in an hour."

. . .

Getting up is a struggle, but the warm shower is worth it. I discover I'm in a guest room of sorts, with the lofty bed I woke up in staged at the far wall from the door and a neat little adjoining bathroom attached. It makes my skin crawl to think that a man like him could have a normal guest room in his house; that friends and family come over regularly enough to keep bathroom amenities at the ready.

And I feel clean after. Even though I'm banged up from the beating I took, he at some point cleaned me up a little and got the blood out of my braids, which is a feat in itself. They're in a loose ponytail on the top of my head, and I let it down and bundle them at the nape of my neck, groaning through the pain in my ribs.

I should feel weird about being saved and cared for by the man I was assigned to thwart, but I'm just happy to be alive. He may be arguably incapable of valuing human life, but I don't think he's completely irrational. Maybe I can get out of here with a little negotiating.

I put on a cotton pajama set I find folded neatly on the countertop and limp barefoot out of the bathroom, spotting and looking at the clock to see how much time I have left. It takes me a second to read the analog hands - I've only seen analog clocks in pictures from the beginning of the Digital Age. He must have some money to have an antique like that. There's a window in the room with some kind of mechanism on it, but I doubt I could make use of one in my current condition anyway. I hear no cars, no people, no other signs of life. I spend the next twenty minutes using the little energy I have to gingerly scour the room for anything I could hold onto as a weapon, but soon time is up and I have to face the music. I wander out the door and follow the sounds and smells down the stairs.

The last thing I expect to see is a baby peering across the table, about a year old or so, with a curly-top head of hair identical to the man stirring spaghetti at the stove. He's one of the cutest things I've ever seen, reminding me of my nieces and nephews. He stares at me in childish wonder for several seconds before cooing, eyes big and brown, and it pulls at my heart, but then I think: nieces, nephews, sisters. How long before somebody notices I'm gone?

"Howdy." The man grins at the kid, rapping his wooden spoon against the pot. "This is Noah." Noah babbles again, and I hesitate, but I wiggle my fingers and smile. A baby's a baby. I take my place at the table across from him, watching him make a mess of the chopped up noodles already in a suction-cup bowl secured to the tray of his high chair.

The man plates two big piles of pasta and spins around to place them on the table, one before me. "Thanks," I say, watching him dig in and mop up Noah's face at the same time.

"No problem. Figured you'd wanna eat after the week you've had."

"A week? I thought I was only out a couple of days?"

"The physician gave me sedatives for the last couple of days because you kept rolling yourself off the bed. But it's been a week," he shrugs. "You can stand and walk, right?"

"Ah." I nip at my food, scared to say anything else. Do you thank your would-be murderer after they change their mind and save your life? I watch him juggle eating his own dinner with catching Noah's bowl each time he succeeds in popping it off of the table, and I wonder how and why this man has a one-year-old. And why am I unrestrained and walking around with him here?

"I plan to keep you for a while, you know," he says casually as I empty my plate, and I choke trying to swallow a mouthful of noodles, hissing at the pain in my ribs as I cough violently.

"What? What? Why?" He gets up to fill a glass with water from a Brita in his fridge. I flinch as he places it before me, but I drink it gratefully.

"Do you know why I'm taking down these military bases?" he asks me. I push the remnants of sauce around on my plate. I didn't even know they were military bases.

"A vendetta?" I suggest, teary-eyed from my struggle. "Death in the family?" I urge my eyes not to fall on Noah, who in my periphery is dragging his hands through the marinara sauce in his bowl. Where's his mother?

The man sits back in his chair, letting his fork clatter to his plate. "I designed the program for the drones that fly out of them," he tells me. "Every single one. And this country may have a new name and a new shape, but they're pulling some shady Old America-type shit. I figured I'd take back my contribution to the whole mess, once I figured out the intention. I can't be prosecuted if I'm caught on the international level because the UNA had me design and supervise the project without the approval of the International Council. On the IC's file, I'd be a hero, but the UNA is trying to quiet me before their infraction is noticed, before I blow the whistle."

I wouldn't put it past them. The UNA is, indeed, into some shady shit. They'd ship him somewhere dark and cold in shackles to mastermind more "self-defense" projects.

"Okay, but where do I come in?" I'd ask why I'm allowed to walk around free, but I don't think he's noticed how well he or whoever he hired patched me up, and I'm not trying to lose any freedoms.

"You're dead," he tells me. I set my glass down and blink. "On paper, according to the agency, you pretty much are. Either killed in the line of duty, or missing in action with the expectation of recovering a body, not a living person. Dead to your family," he adds.

"No the fuck I'm not," I spit in disbelief.

He nods and wrestles the little bowl from Noah's chubby hands. "There was a lot of your blood left at the scene," he tells me, as I run my hand over my head. I grimace when my fingers run over my bandage. "Enough to convince the agents who came after you."

It makes sense. I thought I was dead too; I'm still half-dead, slumped over and sitting across from a stranger. "So nobody's looking for me," I say, voice slightly wavering. My whole family, as young as it is: my sisters, my brother-in-laws, their kids. They're all mourning my death right now. I feel my eyes glass over with tears for them.

"No attachments," he emphasizes, not meeting my eyes as he leans over to grab my plate and his. He washes them at the sink and I try to compose myself as quickly as I can. He's moving around the kitchen like a suburban father but I'm clearly being held captive for some reason. I don't know what to do.

I find my voice again. "So what am I here for?"

He leans up against the counter. "One, murder is incredibly outdated- excessive violence. But they assume I did it. I need to find a way to get you back and clear my name, eventually, or I won't be eligible for pardon by the IC."

"Eventually?"

"I want to make an offer."

Please not sex. I sit and stare levelly at him. He nods toward Noah, who's kicking his fat legs and gnawing on his fingers with the four teeth in his mouth.

"I need a caretaker." Noah giggles.

I feel my drawn face morph into one of confusion. "For... Noah? Your son?"

"Yes, for Noah, my son." I look back to the man, but he doesn't seem deranged or amused. He's serious?

"You... are holding a UNA agent captive... as a nanny? To watch your son? Your one-year-old son?" I feel angry on the baby's behalf, as he slaps his wet fingers against the messy tabletop.

The man holds up a hand. "He'll be two in a few months." I suck my teeth at that. "I don't have many options, for one, it's not like he can tag along," he explains. "And all UNA agents are no-kill. We all are," he emphasizes.

"No-kill my ass," I hiss. "What am I? What's your casualty-in-critical-condition?"

He stares down at me, but this time I refuse to back down. This man is trying to keep me sequestered and forgotten for who knows how long with his actual child, banking on the fact that no harm will come to him in my care. Is it because I'm a woman? What if they'd sent a man?

"And you know nothing about me," I continue, voice rising. "You're putting the safety of your son in the hands of a stranger who already has plenty of motive to act against you. How fucking crazy are you?" I'm almost shouting, wheezing with the sharp pain of breathing in and out, and the man is visibly trembling in anger, but I can't stop. I take another pained breath, but I hear the damn child whimper. The man immediately goes to pick him up, and I watch Noah's arms reach up to him, tears threatening to spill down his round cheeks.

My breath leaves me like a sail, and I realize I have tears streaming from both eyes. I run my hand across my face and curse under my breath as my ribs creak against the movement. More tears fall anyway.