A Particular Conversation

In the darkness, someone had been calling to him. Jonathan could not tell if it was a phantom of his past, a warning of what was to come, or the background noise of his own brain trying to fill the emptiness of his sleep. The words were warbled like they came through a heavy film before they reached his mind. Nothing came through right, nothing made sense. All Jonathan knew was that in the darkness he was at peace.

The peace shattered as searing pain tore through his body. It was electric and it started at his shoulder before it tore through his chest and splintered off into a hundred different directions. Jonathan woke with a screen in a terrifying blank room. The gray walls held no windows or art, the bed sheets covering him were the same dull tone. The only other thing in the room except the bed was a chair immediately to his right where a woman sat waiting for him to stop screaming.

Jonathan got a hold of himself, the woman looked relieved as if she half-expected him to do something other than lay back down in the bed. It was not until his head was back on the pillow that he realized she was holding a taser and that she was the actually the girl with the laptop that drugged him at the gym. By then, his heavy head was back on the pillow and lashing out would get him nowhere. Instead, Jonathan accused her, "You tased me."

She nodded and when she opened her mouth, Jonathan realized it had been her talking to him through the darkness. "Took the full battery to wake you up too."

"What?"

"It took the whole charge on the taser to wake you up." She tossed the spent device to the side and sighed, "You should notice some discomfort on the left side of your jaw soon in addition."

The tingling sensation was already fading in his arm, Jonathan reached a hand up and felt his jaw. It stung to his touch, "A taser wouldn't make my jaw hurt…"

"No, it wouldn't." She smiled and shook her right hand, "That was from where I hit you."

Jonathan cleared his throat, "You hit me?"

She nodded, "Yeah, I started with a poke and scaled up to a full on punch. You still wouldn't wake up."

"Did you try anything else before you tased me?"

She shook her head, "Nope, skipped right to the heavy stuff from there. Look, this might not be exactly how you wanted to wake up, but we need to talk."

"Miss, you drugged me and kidnapped me from Bleak Barrow. If all you wanted to do was talk, we could've done that from the comfort of the gym."

Blink tried to smile, Jonathan appreciated the effort, but as soon as he noticed how strained the attempt was he knew how she must be feeling. He might be in bed now, he might have been out for a few hours or so on that drug, but when they had found him, he had just killed four men in the dark within a few moments. That was after he jumped out of the second story window into the street. Jonathan cleared his throat, "What do we need to talk about?"

"Those On High." Blink pulled her laptop open and began typing away at the keyboard. As she did, a hologram appeared in the air between them, it was Jonathan's service record. It was complete with name, picture, entry date and termination date. There were no infractions, no citations, and no accolades. It was all that the Security Force kept on file for most of their members.

Jonathan whistled and relaxed back in the bed, "Sorry, can't talk about it. If you didn't know, we all sign non-disclosure agreements before going into service. Well we sign a lot of things, but I heard an NDA was in there."

Blink typed again, the hologram shifted to a news article with pictures of four corpses on the floor of a gym. "That is true, you did sign an NDA, but that was before those men were sent to kill you."

Jonathan thought about dragging it out, thought about jerking around with Console Ghost's chosen representative, but in the end he realized how futile it is. He settled for a pessimistic explanation of what was really going on.

"Look, the fact that I'm here, the fact that you have my service record, it is all proof of what I'm about to tell you. Golden Lion Enterprises wanted me to infiltrate your organization months ago. Moira Singh herself terminated me so that I would have nowhere else to go. She wanted me to be a pawn in some game she was playing against opponents anonymous."

Blink frowned, "So you're a spy?"

Jonathan shook his head, "Where did you find me?"

"Living in a gym in Bleak Barrow."

Jonathan sat up in the bed, swung his legs out over the side from under the sheets and rested his elbows on his knees, "If I was Moira Singh's spy, why would I be living above a gym and working part time as a cleaner when I could exploit her connections to get whatever I wanted. How long had you been looking for me or someone like me before you found me?"

Blink shrugged, "We've always been trying to crack into the vault and get access to the service records. Your's came as payment for a contract. We moved as soon as we learned your name. We weren't looking for you, specifically, just someone with intelligence and access."

"There is no digital vault, despite what Security Force wants you to believe. It is all on actual paper, no digital footprint, no way to hack in. Bring my record back up." Jonathan waited for Blink's clacking keys to slow and for his service record to reappear in the hologram, "Look at this, the edges are frayed. This is a digitized document, not a true file. Whoever you got this from, it was a plant. Moira wanted you to get this document, my service record, so that you could find me."

"So you are a spy."

Jonathan sighed, "To them, we're all pawns. I left Golden Lion Enterprises that day and went to ground so that I wouldn't have to deal with all the strings, all the pressure. Despite my involvement, Golden Lion records have made their way into your possession, luring you to me despite everything. If you cannot feel the noose being tightened, you should take a step back. Console Ghost has been trying to hack the vault since the rumor of the vault got out, now one particular document has been leaked, and that document just happened to lead you to a former member of the Security Force who was blacklisted by Moira Singh personally. Someone is manipulating you."

"So you're a pawn just like me." Blink nodded slowly and then a smile crept along her face. It was a calming, beautiful smile. It reminded Jonathan of the dreams he used to have about his mother. "Do you know the problem with being a pawn?"

Jonathan shook his head.

Blink leaned back in her chair, still smiling. "There's no way to tell who is pulling the strings. Maybe you're right, maybe Her Majesty On High herself orchestrated all of these events to get you perfectly poised for us to take. Maybe she foresaw our plans and decided to dangle you in front of us as a distraction, a chance at getting ahead of Those On High. Maybe Console Ghost is the one behind the curtain, making you think that you're being manipulated by Those On High to double cross us and leave us out to dry."

Jonathan cut in, "Or maybe there is a third party that you're not aware of, maybe it's that party that has Golden Lion truly worried and Console Ghost as a whole is just a pawn. You've got an eloquent way of saying that there's no way to know anything for certain, but that's the problem… You don't have all the information."

"That's where you come in." Blink smiled and stood up, "Would you like to change into something else or are the scrubs comfortable enough?"

Jonathan stood up, the gray medical scrubs that they had changed him into were a little loose. They would get in the way if anything came to blows. He had half a mind to ask for a change of clothes, but the rest of his mind was caught up in something that Blink had said. Console Ghost had something planned, something big enough that his appearance could be a simple distraction to slow them down. "I'm comfortable enough. Where are we going?"

Blink did her best to suppress her discomfort the thought of their destination went through her mind. All she said was, "To see some of your acquaintances.