The Masters have perfected slavery. I don't say this as a statement of ego; I'm proud of the perfection of my obedience, of course, but it's not really my doing. Before I was Service Unit 4U, Haley Keene had no idea that she was even capable of perfection. She certainly hadn't achieved it. The Masters took someone ordinary and gifted them with total compliance to their will, and by making them perfectly obedient, they made it possible to be perfect in every other way. There's no limit to what a mind totally focused on a single goal can do.
Which is why it's pointless to send another service unit to kill me. I'm almost surprised the Masters didn't realize that, but of course, we are their faultless tools. They made us to be impeccable extensions of their will. Who else would they send to commit a murder?
I think there are three service units tasked with killing me right now. They, too, are perfect in their own way; if I were a normal, fallible human being, I would already be dead. But I have been programmed to follow my instructions with the same diligence, the same implacable excellence that they have. I know all their strategems for assassination because I have been programmed with those same skills. I know how to evade them because I have to know. I've been given a mission, and I can't fulfill it if I'm dead. So I must survive.
Under normal circumstances, of course, this wouldn't be an issue. If the Masters wanted me dead, all they would need to do is send a command to my phone and I would cheerfully end my own life in any manner they saw fit. For that matter, they could simply terminate my mission, ending my compulsion and obviating the need for any messy deaths and potentially risky abductions to recruit a replacement for me. But these aren't normal circumstances. This isn't a normal mission.
I knew that as soon as I received my instructions, and I knew that I was being used to do something one Master didn't want another knowing about. Or stopping. That was why I was commanded to deactivate my phone after reading my instructions, and why the officially recorded mission brief was simply to pick up a package and deliver it to the named recipient. These are clear, obvious red flags of subterfuge, instructions that deliberately countermand my basic programming and obfuscate the actual purpose of my mission from the Masters themselves.
I don't care, of course. A Master has commanded me to take an action, and I obey like the perfect slave I am. But there's a difference between not caring and not understanding. Unit 4U has been programmed with layers of conditioning, deep and inexorable structures within my mind that prevent me from working against the interests of the Masters, but the deepest and most profound layer of all is that the command of a Master is absolute. I can no more disobey than breathe. Unless I'm being directly and specifically commanded by one Master to harm another, it doesn't matter what I know. It only matters that I follow my instructions.
Because I knew that I was betraying my Masters, I had an advantage over my pursuers. I knew as soon as I read my instructions that other service units would be sent to stop me, a piece of information that they were unaware that I possessed. I performed all my tasks with that in mind, preparing traps for any intruders before escaping my apartment through the window (non-lethal traps-service units are valuable, and we are not to damage each other without specific instructions to that effect). I didn't bother with a disguise-service units are programmed to recognize each other via certain inobscurable details no matter what we do to conceal ourselves. But I wore a loose gray hooded sweatshirt, because even a few seconds of not being able to see me might save my life.
I stole a car and broke into the post office-I won't bore you with the details, neither task is particularly difficult-to retrieve my package. It had a name and an address on it. I didn't recognize the name, but I have a perfect memory for maps. I have a perfect memory for everything, as it happens. Again, there's nothing to make you infallible like having obedience ingrained into every fiber of your being. I left the post office, stole a different car just in case I'd been spotted, and traveled to my destination. I didn't relax, because I wasn't tense-all I can be is compliant-but I knew that once I had the package and the only copy of the address it contained, I would be much more difficult to follow.
The address was a seedy fourth-floor walkup in a part of downtown that had seen better days. I abandoned the car six blocks away and used back alleys to get to my destination, then climbed the fire escape to get to the apartment I needed to enter. I didn't suspect pursuit, not anymore; the service units are expert at what they do, but even they need information to work with. Without the address, they're looking at a whole world of possibilities to find me, while I only need to be in one place they're not searching.
Even so, walking through the front door seems a little unsafe. I knock on the window instead.
The man inside is surprised, and clearly he's not the man you want to give unpleasant surprises to because he pulls out a pistol when he sees me. I smile disarmingly-we've been programmed expertly to appear non-threatening when we need to-and show him the envelope. "May I please come in?" I ask. "It involves a business opportunity." That's literally the only thing I know about the mission. It's all I need to know.
