I’ve always been told that in the third dimension only upright people were recruited. Good people, people skilled enough to capture other people who would do anything in order not to come back here.
Okay, I also know that it is likely that those who pass on the other side don’t come back here and, of course, most of them do not complete more than one or two missions. Nevertheless, the first thing I felt when I was told that I was assigned to the third dimension, was pride. At the age of sixteen I was already positioned in the Northern Area, can you believe it?
I’m cool.
Ok, my mother did not take it this well, but fortunately – for her – she did not have much time to see me grow up.
And luckily – for me – she didn’t manage to lay a hand on me after I was caught…
The trip to Akrem, better known as the Southern Area, was pretty much like the one a cow undergoes on its way to the slaughter house: a wooden box with four crooked wheels and two tiny windows with rusty bars.
My claustrophobia was very thankful for that.
Why didn’t they just tie me behind the wagon?
The sealing cuffs on my wrists blocked my magical powers, so what was the need to squish me up into that box?
During the trip I pondered on the reasons why I had been condemned to such a severe penalty, in the end it was just theft, and most of the stolen goods had already been recovered. The only one who died was a friend of mine (even if they didn’t find the body and therefore they can not prove it) and I repeated over and over again that it was not my fault.
After all, I didn’t steal from the Gods.
I understood everything during the trial.
That is to say right now.
The Lord Chamberlain’s voice shouting all my faults at my face (since we are less than a foot away), chills my blood.
Probably, if I hadn’t been skilled enough to be shipped to the Northern Area, I would have been sentenced to death, and they would have organized a dance competition on my dead body.
****
It is in these moments that a good leader stays calm.
Mental clarity is everything.
You can not face a problem if you fear it, if your mind is clouded by the catastrophic consequences that this might entail.
No.
Mental clarity is the first step to the solution to the problem.
There were practically no chances that the Iantor could be subtracted, but ‘practically’ is different than just ‘no chances’. Panic, now, is the only thing that nobody can afford.
I calmly reassemble the pages of the botched report that I was presented with as a consequence of the above mentioned issue. In the meantime, my mind explores the various possibilities so as to avoid disaster. Random ones. Chances for success.
Losses.
There are always casualties in the missions that they give me. My job is not to avoid them. My job is to have as few losses as possible.
You have to be rational, and cold minded enough to understand that if you want to save one hundred people, someone must be sacrified. At least in my job.
Human loss is always included.
After putting the fountain pen back in my leather bag, I set my attention on those present at the special meeting. While they still argue terrified about the consequences of this theft, I fold my hands and talk, bringing silence to the room.
I never need to raise my voice to be listened to.
They know that if I speak, I do not blabber: I provide the solution to their problems.
****
Six months later
Since I got here I have understood three things very well.
I jump to the right, I throw myself on the ground and roll on my side until I shield myself behind the public park boundary wall. Shards of brick scatter on the ground close to my face. I reload my Glock and wait a couple of seconds.
The first thing is to never be out of ammo.
I take a deep breath and I jump to the left. I roll on the lawn, aim and shoot. I hit the target again, this time his leg.
The second thing is that we are on our own.
The Confederation considers us like pawns to be used, soulless and easily replaceable. It treats us for what we are: scums of society.
He staggers. The multiple empty ‘clicks’ make me realize that I have won. I jump up on the wall and throw myself against the target, now wounded and unarmed.
The third is that I am not a murderer.
I hit him with my pistol grip and the guy I was fighting against falls to the ground, unconscious.
I lean down and handcuff him.
I sigh, I stand up again, I twist the wrist watch that I was provided with (that only looks like a watch) and call the cleanup crew.
I light a cigarette and look at the dark evening sky. The weather is still warm, it’s mid-September.
I patiently wait for them to arrive, to assess that my mission has been successful and for them to give me my damned points. Once this is done, my work can be considered finished and they will take care of hiding all the possible traces of the struggle that I left in the surrounding area.
-I might say that this time it was an easy job-I whisper to the dark sky.
Maybe there’s a fourth thing I have understood.
I’m losing my mind. Honestly. Now it often happens that I talk to myself.
And when I talk to myself, it means that I’m tired of not having anyone to talk to.
Well, of course, I have made some friends, I’m an outgoing person, but I can not talk about who I am, where I come from, or what I do.
The friends I have here do not know who I am, they are ‘cover’ friends. People with whom one talks about the weather, rise in prices… stuff like that.
Allies can not communicate with other Allies.
They place us in such a way that we do not meet one another. The targets that the Confederation assigns us are always in different places and we rarely manage to cross paths.
Sometimes on the news I can guess that close to where I was there was a similar fight, but only because it is my field. Human beings of this world know nothing about us and continue to live peacefully thanks to the Confederacy’s clean up and coverage work.
****
-If things… had gone differently… –
He raises his head slightly, smiling in his weird way, insane, and melancholy. He stares me in the eyes. His hands, from my neck, slowly slide down onto my chest.
And I can not move. I am immobilized by something I can not see.
My SPAS 12 is lying on the ground near my feet, and I can not reach it. The air around me has thickened to a level that I can barely breathe, and my limbs do not answer to my commands.
There is a stabbing pain in my chest.
Gasping for breath, I lose my strength in a moment, my vision becomes blurry…
My mouth tastes like iron and a warm stream of blood flows down my chin, from my lips that can not scream.
Click!
I can barely see his hands folded on my chest, while they slowly move away. And I see the deep wound on my abdomen.
He suddenly frees me, and I instantly find myself on the ground, first sitting and then lying on my back, my hands clutching at my wound in a desperate attempt to repress an undescribable pain.
He looks at me. He looks at me on the ground, with those white eyes.
Then, slowly, he kneels by my side.
I feel my teeth gnash, gritting because of the pain. I’m lying on a side, my head down, in the dust of the unpaved parking lot.
As his hand brushes my hair from my forehead, I jerk my head up.
-DON’T TOUCH ME! – I scream with all the voice I have and with all the hatred that I feel.
He remains with his hand a few inches from my forehead, still looking at me.
-All this pains you as much as it pains me – he murmurs.
-Screw you! – is my answer.
He shakes his head-You do not understand me … you never have … – And then he disappears. And I remain here.
I remain in deep shit.
****
-Is it safe? Right here? – The guy seems to hesitate.
Yes, I want it right there, on my face, beneath my eye, is there something wrong with that? After all, once I go back to the other side the points I gained here will vanish, so what’s the problem if I decide to have one put right below my right eye? It matches the other one below my left eye. I look so good with them…
Every now and then I think and speak as if I were gay, but I can assure you that I’m not.
-As you like, it is your face -he tells me. And finally he puts the mark on my right cheek and gives me my point for this mission.
Points are nothing more than tattoos, you can not forge, delete or move them. You have them on your skin and they remain there, until you collect all of the points that you must earn. At that point they remove them and kick you back to the second dimension.
I heard that my Hero remained here, but I think he is the only one who asked for it and I suppose they made an exception for him.
Who is my Hero?
He’s the greatest Ally that the Confederation has ever had.
He had to earn a whole lot of points (I don’t know what he did to deserve them) he collected them all and then decided to live here.
He occasionally helps out the Confederation, but he is a free man, and he is paid as a mercenary.
If you find yourself before the Eirdar and you are a refugee, you have no way out.
I ignore the vague confabulation of the Confederation agents behind me as they clean up the whole area. I bend down to look at my face reflected in the window of a C3 car parked nearby. The small black crescent tattoo stands out clear under my right eye. It’s swell, I can assure you that.
This is my thirtieth point.
I have to collect eight hundred and twenty-three
A record.
Especially if you think that it is for a theft.
Taking into account that for murder they make you collect five hundred points.
Of course not just anybody could steal the Iantor and give it to the worst enemy of the Confederation. Only I could have done it. And without even knowing it, just think how smart I am.
****
The tapping of my leather shoes on the basement concrete is deafening.
A clear tapping, marked, regular and lonely in the deep night.
Someone’s breaks screech in the distance. Tapping of leather and clinking of car keys in my hands.
In an instant I feel it and I whirl around.
The edge of my hand stops an inch from his throat, faster than the time my leather bag takes to touch the ground. He smiles, hands in pockets, dirty and battered. Dried blood on his face, a huge bruise on his forehead. He’s biting the cigarette filter he’s clenching between his teeth.
-How on earth did you manage to pass the surveillance Eirdar? –
He grins.
-If I wanted to kill, you’d be dead, you know –
The instinct of any living thing would have been to grab him.
I shift.
And he falls onto the door of the Mercedes parked behind me. He slides to the ground, and sits.
-Has anybody ever told you that you are an asshole? – That’s the last thing he says before passing out.
I stare at him a moment, then I grab the cell phone in my pocket, I open the faceplate with a mechanical gesture and make the default call for medical emergencies.
****
This point has been under my eye for at least half an hour, but the team is still forbidding me to leave. And I am sleepy.
I’m lying on the grass in this public park and staring at the dark night sky.
The stars in this dimension are much more opaque. Veiled. Smog, or light pollution, I do not know.
One of the Confederation soldiers comes up to me, he’s talking to the control unit via the headset and that microphone which barely sticks out of his right ear. He just nods at me and says-Reach the Alpha section headquarters. Chief General SHELV wants to confer with you-
That name makes my new points look even darker.
That’s because I turn pale.
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