Connected (Bureau #12)

Chapter 8

CHAPTER 8

“ Y ou can call me Miller,” said the reedy voice.

Owen fought through the fog, which was so thick that he was drowning in it. But that didn’t make any sense. There was a thunderstorm, not fog. Although now that he thought of it, the rain and wind had stopped, leaving him in silence except for his own struggling breaths and the irritating voice.

“It’s an apt name. A miller takes raw, hard material, and through the use of pressure and friction creates something much more useful. Suits me much better than Clark suits you, seeing as you are neither a cleric nor a scribe. You should consider something new. Once you’ve settled into your new role, perhaps.”

A bit more consciousness returned, and Owen was able to open his eyes.

He was in that strange room in the tipple, the one with the clean shiny surfaces. Overhead lights shone brightly, but flickering shadows lurked in the corners. The shadows resembled… something. An animal? He couldn’t quite identify the shape, and besides, staring gave him gooseflesh. Something was wrong with those shadows.

Better, perhaps, to stare at the man. He seemed to be an entirely ordinary man with a bland smile and moderately priced suit. Those deep-set eyes, though, were terrifying. Owen had seen corpses with more warmth in their eyes.

“Who…?” Owen croaked through a dry throat.

And that was when he became aware of his own situation: bound firmly to a thick metal St. Andrew’s cross, the soles of his feet resting on the cold concrete floor. And he was naked.

“Let me go,” he growled. Not because he expected to be obeyed but because he had to at least try. He couldn’t just stand here and do nothing.

The man—Miller, apparently—didn’t bother to reply. His body language implied that he could wait all day.

“Who are you? What do you want?” Owen tried to not sound frantic.

“I told you—call me Miller. And what I want is you.”

“I don’t?—”

“I’m sure you understand from your Bureau training why I’ve placed you like this. The helpless position with mild religious connotations. The nudity. The isolation in the unsettling physical space. The mental confusion.” Miller shrugged. “All intended to make you feel more vulnerable and therefore more amenable to influence. Physical pain is also helpful, of course.” Miller raised a hand and made a small motion with his fingers.

Agony blazed through Owen’s body, the pain everywhere at once. He screamed and writhed, blind with agony. Had he been able, he would have flung himself off a cliff to escape this.

And then it stopped.

Owen hung in his bonds, sweaty yet chilled, heart thundering and throat raw.

“In case you didn’t notice,” Miller said pleasantly, “you pissed just now. I mention it because humiliation is also a helpful tool. As you know. I believe you’ve used all of these tactics yourself during your years with the Bureau.”

Panic was going to get Owen nowhere, so he fought it into submission. Then he took several deep breaths. “Will you tell me who you are and what you want?”

“Eventually. In fact, who I am doesn’t particularly matter. I’m just a very boring man. My goals do matter, however, and I’ll share them with you in a bit. But first I’ll let you marinate for a while. We have time.”

The room went completely dark.

Owen strained to hear anything aside from his own breathing and rushing blood, but couldn’t. He wasn’t absolutely sure he was still in the tipple. He didn’t know whether anyone was here besides Miller, he hadn’t identified those creeping shadow-things, and he was clueless about what was going to happen to him. And how the hell had Miller triggered such horrible pain?

Stop it . Concentrate on what you do know. Use your resources to learn more .

Fine. He was attached to the cross with thick metal fetters, tight enough to dig in even when he remained still. Tugging and straining got him nowhere. The cross itself seemed solidly fixed. No matter how much he tried to move, it remained still. He couldn’t tell whether it was attached directly to the floor or whether it was anchored to the wall or ceiling, but the specifics likely didn’t matter.

He couldn’t see a damned thing. Even as he waited, his eyes never adjusted to the dark. As he recalled, all the sections of the tipple had windows of some sort, so either they’d been covered up here or he was no longer in the tipple. If he inhaled, however, he caught the faintest whiff of coal and old oil.

How about the temperature? Now that he’d calmed down, he was a little chilly. He’d been warm when he entered the tipple, but the storm could have lowered temperatures. Also, he’d been wearing clothing then and moving around. He might also be somewhat shocky right now, which would lower his body temperature.

This wasn’t much to go on. He couldn’t plan any sort of defense if he had no understanding of what was happening. But Jesus, he’d spent over two decades with the Bureau. Surely his training and experience should tell him something .

It was hard to judge the passage of time, but he spent what felt like a long while trying to amass explanations. He came up with a long list of things that almost certainly were not threatening him right now, but unfortunately that didn’t tell him what was.

Sometimes he heard the faintest whisper of movement around the edges of room. The shadows, maybe. He didn’t like that at all, but he preferred them to Miller. He tried not to imagine them creeping nearer to him, reaching out….

Dammit, this was his own fault. He’d been careless, preoccupied by thoughts of his family and, more pleasantly, of Keaton. He shouldn’t have assumed that he alone could handle whatever thing Keaton had sensed. He should have insisted on backup, returned in the morning when the storm had passed. He should have been paying better attention.

Then he remembered something Townsend had told him over twenty years ago, when Owen was fresh to the Bureau and had messed up during an assignment. Owen and a more senior partner had been sent to the outskirts of Sacramento in search of a reported chupacabra. When a local caught the two agents stalking around the edges of a goat pasture, Owen had earnestly told the guy what they were up to. The man thought he was crazy or possibly a thief, and he’d called the local cops. The end result was a shouting match. The chupacabra, if it had originally been there, got away.

When Owen and his partner returned to HQ, the chief had called him up to his office. Owen had been positive he was going to get fired. But Townsend had given him an avuncular smile. “Son, next time come up with a plausible lie. In fact, you’ll find it easiest if you have some stories prepared, just in case. We can nearly always do our jobs better if the local authorities remain blissfully unaware of us.”

“I’m sorry, sir. It was really stupid of me. I just wasn’t thinking, darn it, and?—”

“And you made a mistake. We all do. Even me, now and then.” Townsend had chuckled. “In this case, it’s not especially important. Nobody will die because of what you did. However, there may very likely come a day when your error will result in a death. Maybe many.”

“Oh God, sir, I promise I won’t?—”

“Boy, don’t make promises you can’t keep. You are human. Humans are imperfect. But here’s the key.” Townsend had paused to drink some whiskey and light a cigarette. “When you discover your mistake and you’re still dealing with the consequences, don’t waste energy kicking yourself. Doing so only detracts from your problem-solving. Later you can analyze what went wrong and take steps to avoid a repeat. Your mistakes should be an opportunity for improvement—not an excuse to give up.”

Owen had taken that lecture to heart. And it had probably been one of the earliest steps toward killing his idealism and building his shell, both of which had helped to keep him alive over the years. So he needed to heed Townsend’s words now as well.

You fucked up , he told himself. What are you going to do about it?

At the moment, it seemed, all he could do was wait.

The lights turned on without warning, blinding him. When he managed to open his eyes again, Miller stood in front of him, looking like a stern teacher about to call on a particularly dull student.

“It’s not an especially comfortable position, is it?” Miller asked. “Have the cramps started yet?”

“No.” That wasn’t the absolute truth. Owen’s joints, which tended to ache with ordinary activity, were beginning to protest in earnest.

“They will. You won’t die of asphyxiation like this, by the way. For one thing, you’re not truly being crucified in that your arms aren’t supporting your weight. We could switch to that later. We’ll see. But in any case, modern science has determined that crucifixion doesn’t actually cause death by asphyxiation. They did experiments to test this. Isn’t science lovely?”

“I’m not in the mood for a lecture. Or banter. Can you just tell me what you want?”

“What you ’re in the mood for is irrelevant.”

Miller did that hand gesture again, and before Owen could brace himself, the agony hit. It might have been worse than the first time. He wasn’t sure.

When the pain subsided, Miller smiled. “I enjoy watching others in pain, but my little bit of fun isn’t the primary point. I’m milling you, remember? Reshaping you into something useful.”

“I don’t know what you mean.” That came out almost as a sob, so Owen swallowed hard and embraced his anger instead. “You’re as bad as the chief—talking in circles and never fucking spitting it out. Why can’t you just be fucking clear?”

Miller tilted his head as if this were interesting. “ Like the chief . Do you mean your former one or the current? It’s an apt comparison either way, I think. I don’t know why they are obscure, but in my case it’s because I can be, and because it’s entertaining. But… I suppose I can give you a little straight exposition.”

Owen wanted to scream and hurl invectives, but that would be a waste of energy. Let him monologue. It’s information, and information is power .

“Tell me,” said Owen as evenly as he could.

“The gist of it, Agent Clark, is that I wish to recruit you.”

That was so unexpected that Owen almost forgot his misery. “For what?”

Miller sighed as if Owen was tedious in his ignorance. “Put bluntly, I wish you to join the opposition.” Before Owen could ask what the hell that meant, Miller continued. “Tell me, what did your chief—your former chief especially—claim was the primary mission of your Bureau? Was it to conquer evil?”

“That’s impossible.”

“Then what?”

Owen, not in the best frame of mind for being quizzed, concentrated as well as he was able. Luckily, this was a theme Townsend had visited often, it being one of his favorite office lecture topics. “Balance. We try to maintain the balance.”

Miller slowly clapped his hands. “Oh, very good. I see you learned your lessons like a good little agent. But tell me—do you believe in this mission?”

On the one hand, engaging in this stupid discussion was better than being dead or in agony. But Owen was physically uncomfortable, and his patience had worn thin. “Why don’t you unchain me? We can sit down and discuss philosophy like civilized people.”

That made Miller chuckle. “But neither of us is civilized. Agent Cook, do you perform your duties in order to preserve the balance between good and evil?”

“No.”

“Then what do you hope to attain?”

“I want to help people.” It sounded idiotic, like something a first-grader might come up with. But it was also true—or at least it had been when he first joined the Bureau. “I want to protect sentient beings of all species from those who abuse their power.”

“How noble of you. And how’s that working out?”

Owen gritted his teeth.

After a moment Miller stepped closer, and then closer still, until he was very much in Owen’s personal space. He wasn’t as tall as Owen, but that hardly mattered when Miller was the one who was unfettered and fully dressed. When he spoke, it was just above a whisper. “Consider the state of our world. There is no balance . There is pain and misery. Hate and violence. Children starve, the poor die from diseases that could easily be treated if they had money, masses willingly grant power to despots who strip individuals of their basic humanity. The planet cooks while millions deny that science is valid.”

“There are good things too,” Owen insisted miserably.

“Like what? Love? Pretty sunsets? Cute puppies? Those mean nothing. They are distractions from the truth. And you . You take some moron away from a merman’s fangs or you throw a good werewolf a bone, and then you pat yourself on the back for being a hero. But you’ve accomplished nothing . The battle is lost. The balance has irrevocably shifted.”

Those terrifying eyes, now so close to Owen’s, were like a pair of ice-lined abysses, drawing him in. He felt himself teetering on the edge. “What does this have to do with me?”

“You are nothing. Your life has been a waste. If you die tonight it will make no difference to anyone. You might as well have never existed.”

On his darker days, Owen had felt all of this to be true—and as the years had gone by, those days came more often. Sometimes entire weeks went by where the only thing keeping him going was habit. “Fuck you,” he said. “If I’m so worthless—if you’ve already won—why are you trying to recruit me?”

Miller chuckled and moved a few steps back. “I was once worthless too. Meaningless work. Dysfunctional family. I tried to find meaning through religion, through bigger stacks of cash, through sex… and eventually I realized that none of those meant anything. A pretend father-figure in the sky? Some worthless pieces of paper. A short interlude of sweaty huffing and puffing that momentarily scratches an itch. Garbage. And I was garbage too.”

The ache was truly setting into Owen’s shoulders and knees. He was thirsty. And dammit, his nose itched. “So?”

“I had potential. It was noted, I was recruited, and I am no longer worthless. You’ve had a small taste of my power.” He started to make that hand signal.

“No! Please don’t.” Owen was not above begging.

Miller laughed but didn’t complete the motion. “You see? Power. And yes, the war is won, but there’s still cleaning up to do. You can help. You have potential, Agent Cook. I assume that’s why Townsend took you on.”

Owen shook his head in mute denial.

“There are two possibilities, Agent Cook. You can die tonight after experiencing a great deal more pain, so much pain that you’ll be grateful for death. Your corpse will rot here, unmourned. Or you can join us, help us bring matters to a close a bit sooner. And honestly, considering the state of the world, won’t that be a mercy to the vast majority of humanity? You could consider that your true heroic deed.”

And Owen… oh, Owen was tempted. Not just because he didn’t want to be tortured and murdered, although that played a part too. But also because much of what Miller was saying made sense to him. What was the point of scrabbling around, doing a few good deeds when the world was, as Owen’s mother used to say, going to hell in a handbasket? Why not just rip off the Band-aid and get the whole thing over with?

He very nearly said yes.

Then he remembered Keaton. Who’d been dealt a bad hand in both the parental and genetic lotteries and who’d had a long rough period. But he’d fought. He’d worked hard to combat his addictions. He’d done his best to piece together a life that worked for him, and even if that meant living in Armpit, Wyoming, well, he was going to restore his old house, room by room. And when a big, surly agent showed up on his doorstep, Keaton had fed him. Talked to him. Accepted his deepest, most embarrassing truths with grace and understanding.

Had kissed him and promised to go on a date.

And that was a good thing, wasn’t it? That Keaton had taken a shit situation and still found his humanity and a meaning in life. The world might be full of all the horrors that Miller had named, but it was also full of these small good things. Yes, sunsets and puppy dogs and even love.

Plus, he was pretty sure that Miller was lying. Sure, things were bad in the world. But hope hadn’t died. The war wasn’t lost. Good humans continued to strive.

Owen raised his head and looked at Miller. “No.”

Miller heaved a dramatic sigh. “I didn’t think you’d be easy. All right. We still have a few hours, so I’ll give you some time to consider. And a small taste of what might await you.” He made the hand gesture again.

This time, blessedly, Owen blacked out.