The Revelator Read online

  Boudreaux smiled to himself as he recognized the buying signs his customer was displaying but pretended to furrow his brow in confusion as he retrieved the contract, spinning the document around for his view and drawing it closer to his side of the desk. “I sincerely apologize for the misunderstanding, doctor. I was led to believe you were a man of discerning taste, and this document outlines our simplest arrangement without any of the custom touches that make our work truly stand out. But, no harm done, I’ve enjoyed our chat and would be more than happy to refer you to a less prestigious organization which may align more comfortably with your budgetary restraints.” Boudreaux looked disappointed as he carefully shamed his client.

  “Aside from that, I’ve heard Mara Salvutrucha is quite affordable though not as amicable to dicker with. Of course, when dealing with MS-13, one must consider one’s tolerance for collateral damage and general unpleasantness, but they seem to strike the intended target nearly half the time, so there’s that option as well.” The doctor physically cringed as if struck by the left-handed advice and Boudreaux, the consummate salesman, locked eyes with him and waited with a helpful smile.

  “Custom touches you say?” The doc had broken; he reached across the desk and shifted the proposal perpendicular between them, donned his glasses, and halfheartedly perused the terms of his surrender.

  “Yes, sir. It’s our claim to fame if you will.” Boudreaux calmly but quickly rose from his chair and retrieved the decanter of Lagavulin from the bar and topped off both their glasses, the doctor first. “I tell you what, Doc, I do enjoy your company and the driver won’t be returning for a little while yet, why don’t we brainstorm together on your wants and needs and see if I can offer some custom touches that will make the package more agreeable for you. Besides, this fine, medicinal Islay won’t drink itself.” He patted his prey on the slumped, defeated shoulder and returned to his perch behind the desk, grinning triumphantly as they drank together.

  Chapter 9

  He could smell her. Twenty racks across the squad bay and he could still smell her. Perhaps a bit more animalistic as a side effect of his training, he was now a slave to the aching erection that had risen unbidden as he caught her scent wafting on the stale, recycled air currents of the hermetically sealed underground space. Although he was still in agony from the persistent chest bruise and inscrutably damaged lungs he had sustained in Hong Kong, the squirming and ragged breathing with which he was currently afflicted while awaiting the sedated oblivion of lights-out had nothing to do with pain. Freya was in heat and he had to have her.

  “Ooooh, man. Looks like we might have a live one tonight!” the control room supervisor clapped his hands with glee and motioned to his partner who was leaning in for a look at the bank of screens, “Hold the gas for a second or two and see if he goes for it!” The night supervisor rapidly tapped out a few keystrokes switching the cameras to manual control and used the joystick to zoom in on the tortured and twisting John. Practically licking his lips in anticipation, he spoke softly to the image on the screen, “C’mon, buddy. Show us what you got.”

  With his assistant standing ready by the valve controls that would flood the squad bay in seconds with the medicated knock-out gas, they waited.

  “So, what’s the bet? Distance from collapse to target as usual? Oh, and this time you must specify the target prior to feet hitting the deck. I’m not letting you get over on a technicality now that we have a few extra girls around.”

  “Nah, I wager this boy goes the distance,” he sat back in his swivel chair and stared intently at the screen.

  “Contact before collapse? Ha! You’re crazy, boss, I’m gonna flood that place so fast he won’t make three steps, but I’m happy to take your money.” His assistant pantomimed spitting on his hands, rubbing them together, and feathered his fingers over the holsters of an imaginary gun belt, “Fastest gas in the West.”

  The supervisor creaked forward in his chair resting his elbows on the desk and his chin on his fists as he strove to judge the racing heart of the writhing John, like a degenerate once great gambler down to his last buck desperately searching the paddock for a hot tip with long odds at the horse track, “Penetration.”

  “Holy shit! No fucking way! Really?!” The gas man guffawed with good reason, in these rare races most subjects only made it a few steps before the chemicals took hold, a very few had collapsed still yards from contact, none of the assets had come anywhere near achieving ass.

  Quickly checking the clipboard manifest against the bunk diagram the supervisor smugly retrieved his wallet and laid cash on the desk, “Put up or shut up, and mind you don’t start the gas until he has fully left the rack with both feet touching the ground.”

  “Done and done,” the assistant matched his boss’s pile of bills on the desk and returned to his post at the valves, hands hovering over the switches. In his best Doc Holiday impersonation, “Say when… God, I love this game!”

  The allure of her intoxicating aroma proved too much for John’s higher self to withstand, so body control was given over to the lower urges. Restraints of civilization broken, primal goal set, all hesitation and indecision left him. His eyes darted hungrily to the entrance of the chamber watching the guards who had just completed the final bed check step over the threshold and seal the airlock of the enormous pressure vessel. Like a nocturnal predator bursting from the underbrush John was out of the rack and charging before the overheads had faded to the red of nightlights and the seal had finished it’s hissing.

  “Gas on!” the tech quickly threw all the switches and rushed over to his supervisor’s side at the glowing screens. A demented OTB.

  “Switching Camera 2 to lowlight and Camera 3 to thermal,” after a few keystrokes the supervisor clasped his hands together and leaned close to observe the gleaming, high-definition wager as it unfolded.

  John heard the floor vents open, the fans start, and felt more than smelled the odorless, tasteless vapor begin to fill the room. It rolled amorphous from the base of the chamber, lapping at his ankles as it covered the floor and began to rise. His progress cut an undulating wake through the fog as he sprinted for his prize.

  “Woah! Wait! No fair!” The startled tech pointed wildly as another figure rose on the screen and tore a cloudy path, closing the distance with John, “She can’t play! They can’t work it from both ends!” Their bodies came together just as the passion-robbing gas had reached their waists. With a crushing embrace and a bruising kiss they disappeared beneath the opaque mist, tearing at each other’s garments as they fell. Camera 3, set to thermal, was the only witness as the two blazing heat signatures wriggled together and went still.

  “Ha, ha!” the supervisor sprung from his chair and danced suggestively around his defeated opponent thrusting his hips and even grinding his crotch against the back of the man’s chair while grunting with bestial delight, “I told you!”

  “No way, doesn’t count! You can’t tell from here. I want confirmation!” The younger tech retrieved the two respirators from their hooks and roughly tossed one to his gloating supervisor striking him in the chest. “C’mon, grandpa. Let’s go check out your little peepshow. Probably the only pussy you’ll see all year.”

  The two technicians donned their respirators, checked the helmet radios, and passed through the airlock. The fog hung heavy just four feet off the ground, it was all they needed to fully envelop the low beds of the assets, but it made for a very surreal landscape; like some shrouded alien planet. They found the aborted lovers beneath the thick mist using a hand-held thermal sensing device, much like those used on Navy warships to scan smoke-filled spaces.

  The vapor was so thick and viscous that the techs could momentarily push it back like a blanket before it came tumbling back into the void created, and it was through this method they confirmed the terms of the bet. The supervisor smiled behind the mask, gesturing to the ephemeral coital union as his assistant cursed into the radio:

  ing me! We shouldn’t even count that, the head’s not even all the way in!>

 

 

  The radio crackled with mocking laughter and taunts as they dragged both assets back to their respective bunks, stepped back through the airlock, and returned the breathing devices back to their assigned hooks in the control room. The supervisor plopped himself happily back down in his comfy chair, leaned back with a satisfied creak, and gleefully collected and began to count his winnings.

  “In the interest of keeping a good working relationship I’m gonna go on and let you keep all that, but you know that shit ain’t right. It ain’t never been that two subjects work together to get at each other like that, never! And if you think ‘just the tip’ is penetration I feel sorry for your wife. I’m balls deep or not at all,” the sulking junior tech gingerly sat on his worn out, hand-me-down office chair and leaned back against the wall to keep it from tumbling over.

  “I told you, man, never bet against Boudreaux’s teams. The other handlers dope their assets until they’re practically geldings, but not our man Boudreaux, he’s old school. He prefers his bucks in full rut and his does in heat, makes them meaner that way.” He quickly perused the thermal imaging to verify all his charges were still and in their appropriate stations, and that all body temps had fallen to sleep levels. Satisfied, the supervisor rose from his chair, “C’mon, young buck. Lunch is on me. I’ll tell you all about how your mama didn’t mind me giving her ‘just the tip’.”

  ―

  “At our most basic level of service, we offer bespoke solutions to complex challenges utilizing specialized individual assets, and curated teams thereof if required. Quite literally the best in the business. Depending on your needs and level of concern, I am able to provide solutions ranging from a single, barehanded beating to an entire, fully-equipped, active duty SEAL team to stomp a mud hole in the ass-end of any individual or group you deem deserving of it. Of course, the SEAL option requires some creative scheduling as they all have to put in for leave at the same time.”

  Boudreaux chuckled and drew two cigars from his desktop humidor, passed one to the doctor, and lit them both, “But truly, any organization with money can sponsor a collection of operators to go tearing ass all over creation righting wrongs, or wronging harder as the individual case may require. So why do business with us when our competitors offer services akin to ours for a comparatively nominal investment? Not to mention the comfort of the name recognition they have established in the media.” He smiled and waited.

  A little dulled by the scotch it took the doc a second before he caught it, but then he laughed, “Ha, well done. Discretion. Discretion is key. The answer you are nudging me to is that I wouldn’t want to enter into this sort of arrangement with a known company, or at least not with one that I could have heard of in polite society or my social circles.”

  “Precisely, very good. Every time the media links a client back to one of their scrubbed fiascos. Oops, sorry. I mean their series of unexecuted mission goals, it functions as a positive commercial for our firm. Difficulties will arise, it’s Murphy’s Law, how these challenges are addressed and surmounted makes all the difference. Above all, even if it necessitates the expenditure of high value assets, the privacy of the principal must be protected, which will be you in this case.”

  Both men puffed thoughtfully at their cigars, the doctor nodding in acknowledgement of the assumptive close. Boudreaux tightened the noose, “Well, I am sure you will agree having the very best tools available and the gentility to utilize them discretely is enough to make any organization the preeminent provider in the world, but even that isn’t really why you should appoint me to assist you in your endeavors. There are two factors that elevate us to stand alone above all others of our kind.”

  “Just two?” The doc jokingly scoffed at the idea and they both had a little shared snicker, Boudreaux’s strictly for appearances. God help him, after a couple scotches, the doctor was genuinely starting to like the little braggart and his roguish charm.

  “Quite. The first, if you will indulge me in shamelessly tooting my own horn, is service. I believe you to be of discerning enough taste to appreciate the rarefied flavor of my hospitality and attention to detail thus far.”

  Both men nodded and saluted each other with raised glasses, “Once we have hammered out all the who, what, where, when, and how’s of your particular mission to your utmost satisfaction (the why’s are immaterial unless you wish me to use them as inspiration for the solution); I will begin my role as your guide, contact, and general guy-Friday for the duration of the agreement. I will personally oversee the minutest of details throughout the process from planning to execution, and further focus on the debriefing and the oft overlooked but equally important post-operational planning once we have achieved your specified outcome.”

  “I have to say, Boudreaux, the sticker shock notwithstanding; you’ve made this whole dark business quite pleasant actually. I had no idea that negotiating the extermination of these pothead nuisances would be so civil and professional, which is quite a difference from how your criminal competitors would handle business I’m sure.”

  “Doc, gentleman such as us have no time for smoky barrooms and dark back alleys. Our services may require a sizable investment in comparison to other groups, but my momma always said, ‘if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.’”

  “Ha! She really say that?”

  “Hell if I know, she was some sweet-sixteen my father bought in from the old country for pureblood breeding stock. Nobody could understand that woman.”

  The inebriated doctor practically burst with misogynistic guffaws and gave an exaggerated conspiratorial wink, “Boudreaux, you’re alright.”

  Chapter 10

  What he was working on now was another addition to the growing library of natural cures for cancer, The Emperor of All Maladies as PBS had called it in a documentary he saw that was six fucking hours long. The motivation for his work was truly altruistic for the most part; he had turned down huge sums of money from major pharmaceutical players wanting to license and synthesize his research findings on other illnesses, but cancer was the big enchilada.

  Natural cures that anyone could grow in their backyard would wreck what Vine saw as the evils of corporate medicine, not with a single, monolithic cure that the industry could usurp, but with a swarm of thousands of regional treatments from which the industry could never stop the financial bleeding. It would also destroy that asshole who had fired him and endear him to his digital diva with daddy issues, so his motives were mostly humanitarian, but also wickedly human.

  Despite the muddy motivations for his project, he had developed one truly selfless technology as a byproduct of his research. While finished cures must still be tested on live animals to prove efficacy, Vine had devised and coded computer models of the most commonly used lab test animals, thereby greatly reducing the number of living subjects that must be expended in the development stages, perfectly simulating the creatures in a programmable environment, not unlike his beloved online games.

  Essentially, he could digitally inject the chemical composition of whatever herbal compound he was testing into a rat, rabbit, or other mammal of his choice and set them free in the cloud-based sandbox of his computer. His custom coding then predicted how the test animals would metabolize the compound and had their avatars act accordingly. It was quite brilliant, really, and something he did hope to make money on. He felt good giving away his natural cures free of charge to those in need, and he grew his own weed and lived rent free, but he wouldn’t mind a couple new computers for his work and a hardcore gaming system with huge dual-screens for his play.

  Vine was practically giddy with excitement about his latest discovery, so much so that he had completely lost himself in it. His neglected gaming computer had ceased its beeping notifications only to transfer them to his phone that he also ignored. The me
ssages ranged from his forlorn and horny girlfriend checking on his health to expletive filled rants from his guildmaster admonishing him for missing a raid (healers are always in short supply), but he didn’t care. This was truly epic! The plant, considered a nuisance weed by most, was EVERYWHERE! In some places, you could find it sprouting up through the cracks in the concrete, in others it clung to and grew up the face of brick walls. It was if Mother Nature herself laughed at toxic modernity with this budding warrior springing forth from the very cancerous corruption it would combat.

  It had it all; astonishingly pervasive, easy to care for indoors or out (technically it required no real care or human intervention at all), fast growing and nearly impossible to kill, and showed significant, aggressive anti-cancer properties of a type and scope never before recorded in the modern literature (it even periodically bloomed tiny, pretty flowers that smelled of slightly astringent jasmine). All the while, in preliminary digitized testing, proving to be no more toxic to mammalian systems than a shot of fresh wheatgrass from a juice bar. A groundbreaking game-changer.

  Vine had been working feverishly combining the newly important herb with others he cultivated in the attic to find the optimum compound that could be administered as a tea or pressed into pill-like dan with natural honey as a binder in the traditional Chinese method. Both permutations would be extraordinarily cheap to produce and easy to use. Like most of his remedies, he strove to make this one easy enough to be concocted in a home kitchen with foraged herbs and common kitchen spices. That was what truly excited him.

  This was the first viable option he had discovered that was commonly available within an urban environment. An afflicted person would be able to produce and use this cure without so much as watering a window box, without even tending an indoor pot filled with Miracle-Gro if Vine could get the blend right. Consulting the ancient texts regarding balance in the creation of the formula, he inched closer and closer to the perfect mixture. The old monks who originally authored the text may have thought only in the five elements of wood, fire, earth, metal, and water, but their predictions and interpretations of chemical interaction were spot on.