Episode 93
(Washington D.C., August 7, 2019)
It took Rin longer than anticipated to make her way home. While some of the delay could be ascribed to an abundance of caution, the majority was associated with the interrogation. Normally, this could have been conducted at her leisure over the course of weeks or even months. It would be fun and effective and allow careful exploration of the subject’s weaknesses. Rin had a great deal of experience with such things.
Unfortunately, the circumstances did not afford her weeks for fun or leisure. In fact, they left very little room to maneuver at all. Besides the impending pursuit and the need to rendezvous with Katrina before hysteria drove her to one or another piece of stupidity, there was the matter of the man’s wounds.
Death was a terrible nuisance to Rin, always intruding at the most inopportune moment. It was why she had such trouble procuring a serviceable specimen and why she now was forced to operate with undesirable haste. Of course, haste in such a situation wasn’t entirely inadvisable. She was aware of the distinct possibility that the agent had a tracker hidden somewhere on — or perhaps in — his person. Even if given the latitude to do so, Rin doubted she would locate it in time. The man’s employers had access to police and military resources. In the chaos and bloodshed, his absence could go unnoticed — but only briefly. A search would start soon enough.
Rin had dragged the man into a nearby metal culvert. Whether this would offer some shielding from a tracker depended on the technology involved and many other factors. Ultimately, it didn’t matter. Time was time, and when it ran out it ran out. If Rin needed fresh meat, the search party would furnish it. Nonetheless, a man in the hand was worth two in the armored SUV. Rin set to work.
As it turned out, the interrogation went surprisingly well despite her constraints. Rin had overestimated the need for haste, and neither death nor the man’s comrades intruded. The wound had appeared worse than it actually was, and Rin was slightly embarrassed by her misdiagnosis. She blamed it on being rushed and was tempted to rectify the mistake by aggravating the man’s injury. When something like this happened, either she was wrong or the world was — and Rin didn’t like being wrong. The world simply would have to be adjusted. However, she refrained from doing so. The need for information took priority.
Whatever fine qualities this particular agent may have had, enduring pain apparently was not one of them. Especially, the old kind of pain. They’d probably trained him on waterboarding and sleep deprivation and some of the other rubbish which passed for torture these days.
Everybody wanted to take a shortcut, but there were no shortcuts when it came to inflicting pain. Rin saw electricity and psychology and pharmaceuticals as nothing more than modern gimmicks. They were shameless attempts by the medical guilds to encroach upon a far more venerable calling, one at which they were mere dilettantes. As with most newcomers that have something to prove, they tried too hard.
Rin had seen the same thing with toys. An old-fashioned wooden horse was a better playmate than all the beeping, ringing, wobbling gadgets that technology could conjure. Innovation didn’t mean improvement, and new didn’t mean better. There was no need for all this nonsense.
With a simple knife and hook, Rin could accomplish marvels. The whimpering mess in front of her attested to this. It had blabbed after only four minutes. This had stopped the torment, but there would be no return to normal for the man. The only thing the new methods were better at was leaving the victim intact. After their little heart-to-heart, he never would be the same.
Ordinarily, Rin would have killed her victim when done — the reward for reconfirming the superiority of her art. This time she wanted to send a message, so she spent another two hours working on him. By that point, all the man could do was blubber her name. She gave him credit for being able to do that much, but not a lot of credit. After all, her name was monosyllabic.
For all the work Rin put in, she learned surprisingly little. This wasn’t due to any flaw in her technique. The man simply did not know much. He worked for the U.S. government as some sort of contractor, his unit was managed by a Major Kurtwell, and they had been ordered to extract a woman. Not a woman and kids? Rin asked. Nope. Just a woman. Apparently, they really were after Rin — or whomever they imagined her to be. She did not ask what they had been instructed to do with Katrina and the kids, mainly because she did not care. These people clearly were idiots. It made little difference whether they were just plain old idiots or idiots too stupid to realize the family’s value as hostages. The outcome would be the same.
The man also kept babbling about how “specials” were coming to rescue him. From what Rin gleaned, these were some sort of elite soldiers that were hard to kill. She laughed when he first threatened her with this. Large ants still were ants, she explained, and he should not put much stock in the prowess of ants. But the man kept bringing it up.
Rin didn’t fault him for clinging to hope, but too much hope would discourage loquacity. She pointed out that it didn’t matter how great the specials were. Even if the grandest of heroes rescued him, they would not be able to restore the things she had taken. Then she took some more.
By the time Rin had changed clothes, swapped cars twice, and driven out of the city and back, a few more hours had passed. Washington D.C. wouldn’t have been her first choice for such an escapade. The seat of federal government was a great place to hide misdeeds but not people.
When she had satisfied herself that she wasn’t being followed, Rin relaxed a bit. There was always the chance that her face was on the news, but she doubted it. In fact, she was willing to bet there would be no mention of any of this.
As Rin soon learned, she would have lost that bet — though she was half-right. In fact, they spun the story in a way that proved rather convenient for her. Apparently, Daryl, a delusional ex-soldier, had kidnapped his estranged wife and kids. A manhunt was under way to rescue them. No mention was made of a female accomplice.
This gave Rin the clue she needed. So it was all about her, after all. Why else would they have omitted any mention of her? She now had a pretty good idea what was going on. The little pieces added up, and she could take a guess who those much-vaunted “specials” were.
In several thousand years, Rin had never encountered anybody “special” other than Proteges. There had been plenty of cults and self-proclaimed magicians and witches, and even one weirdo who claimed to be a vampire. They all were phonies. Outside of fiction, there weren’t any superheroes or monsters. Frankly, Rin didn’t understand the American obsession with them.
Although it was conceivable that the man’s specials were technologically enhanced humans, this was exceedingly improbable. Rin kept a close eye on emerging technologies and had seen nothing even close. As far as she could tell, humans were a long way from meaningful enhancement. That wouldn’t stop the military from billing soldiers as “special” in a bid to inspire awe or secure funding, but the man had seemed to truly believe in them. It felt like more than just marketing — which left one possibility.
This wouldn’t be the first time she had seen people try to use Proteges as weapons. It usually backfired horribly, but with modern technology perhaps they could maintain better control. Rin couldn’t imagine anybody above a Four being vulnerable to physical coercion, but perhaps some of the higher numbers could be manipulated in other ways. If they made the mistake of caring about someone fragile, it could be used against them — at least for a time. A government would be in a good position to do so, since it could exert economic, legal, and social pressure.
Was that what they were trying to use Daryl for — some sort of leverage against her? Rin laughed at the idea. They really were stupid if they thought that would work. Something told her this wasn’t it, though. She wasn’t even certain they knew about her. Maybe they just were hoping to snare another low number.
The presence of government-owned Proteges didn’t matter. If anything, it was a boon. If the government had bagged, tagged, and cataloged a bunch for her, that would save her the trouble of tracking them down one by one.
On the other hand, would low-numbered Proteges really be of much value to a government? If they were vulnerable enough to be collared, they could easily be destroyed by an enemy.
Rin supposed that they could be helpful with certain specific dangerous or otherwise impossible tasks, but even there a Two or Four would be too weak to be of much use. Most likely it was just a P.R. stunt. The government could claim to have invulnerable soldiers without ever deploying them.
There was another possibility, less foolhardy and more sinister. Maybe humanity finally had wised up. Perhaps the government wanted to study Proteges, discover their secrets, and either destroy or replicate them.
If so — and if they actually knew enough about her — it would make sense to lure Rin in. Perhaps they wanted to force her to bestow immortality on a few chosen billionaires and politicians. More likely, they would try to discover the secret of crafting for themselves. Being the arbiter of immortality would undoubtedly hold great allure for those who did not know better.
This assumed a very specific level of knowledge on their part. They would have to know some of the story, but not enough. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be reckless enough to try. The whole thing seemed implausible, unless they had been intentionally led to this precise degree of understanding by somebody. But who would bother to pull that sort of stunt? Rin could think of at least one candidate.
She mulled it over on the drive home. This didn’t feel like Karkov, and she couldn’t imagine what motive anybody else would have. Maybe it was meant to distract her from hunting Proteges? This seemed farfetched.
Rin decided that the explanation was much simpler. They didn’t want her secrets, and they probably didn’t even know what she truly was. They weren’t even trying to coerce her into servitude, though they likely would try if given the opportunity. What the enemy did know was simple: somebody was destroying Proteges.
They could have come by this knowledge many ways. One of those in servitude could have told them the rumors. Or maybe Rin had eliminated some of them directly. In that case, their masters wouldn’t write it off as coincidence or bad luck. If they were advertising invulnerable soldiers, they couldn’t afford to have somebody debunk that. They would find and eliminate the threat. This made perfect sense and had to be the answer. Rin wondered why it had taken her so long to arrive at it.
They must have been stupid enough to think that Daryl was the key to finding her. But how had they connected her with Daryl? The only answer she could think of was Karkov, but that didn’t make much sense. He had saved Daryl from her, so why would he do this to him now?
None of it mattered at the moment, though. The relevant questions were whether Daryl was being used as bait and whether they were interrogating him. Either way, he probably wasn’t too happy.
Rin decided she must do three things. She would hide Daryl’s family. She would try to rescue Daryl. She would kill everybody involved. She would do this last thing not because they were guilty or had taken Daryl or were becoming a threat, but because they had challenged her. A queen could never decline a challenge, even if it came from a confused, prideful child. The duel had to be brought to completion. This was part of the reason she eventually would have to kill Daryl as well. He had challenged her. If she did not accept the duel — if she treated it as anything less than life and death — that would be an insult to her opponent. As much as she disdained mortals, she would not begrudge them this.
Humans had only their life to give. It was their most precious possession and their only true one. To spurn such an offering would be an unforgivable rudeness. It would diminish her. When another challenged Rin, she had to accept it and she had to kill them — for their sake and hers.
There was no doubt in her mind that she had been challenged. This government hadn’t mistaken her for one of its subjects. It hadn’t acted from ignorance or spite or madness. With knowledge — if incomplete — of what she must be, it had called her out. For too long she had restrained herself because others did not know, could not know. But this government — it did know. At least, it knew enough. It used Proteges. It knew them, and it knew of her.
Yes, she would kill them all. It would be long and arduous, but necessary. For the first time in centuries, Rin felt alive. Her blood quickened, but she restrained herself.
That would come later. First, she had to attend to Daryl’s family. Rin could disappear easily enough. A month or two out of sight would render her unrecognizable to the world. Katrina and the kids were a different matter. They were quite recognizable, and the myriad eyes of the swarm were watching for them.
In the old days, hiding a family was easy — not that Rin did it often. They just had to travel a few hundred or thousand miles and could start fresh. Modern surveillance made things considerably more difficult, even as the nature of modern America amplified the importance of evading it. The slightest infraction could quickly escalate into a nationwide manhunt, incurring countless casualties.
Rin had a tendency to do as she pleased, and this manner of escalation had occurred on several occasions. For all its professions of freedom, America invariably made doing what she pleased a crime. The drag of this toxic current could grow wearisome, even for Rin. As a minor point, she also preferred to avoid the regular need for countless casualties — however anxious society was to incur them.
Frequent reinvention had become a necessity, and Rin wondered how ordinary people survived without it in such a stifling environment. As long as there was a place to break the steady gaze of the species, she would be a stranger when she returned. But now, her protections proved a hindrance. Because she had them, she never had been forced to develop certain practical skills. When it came to protecting a helpless family against a surveillance state, Rin had an inconvenient dearth of experience. She would have to extrapolate from general principles. And stuff she saw on TV. Well, she would just do her best. After all, she hadn’t really promised anybody anything.
Rin smiled and knocked on the door of her apartment.