Story #103 - Sleeper

Sleeper

“We might be able to make this work,” Mike Crashkey’s voice was quiet, but the dead man’s snapped neck put the lie to his words.

“Nope.” I said flatly. There was no way to make this look like a suicide now. Our best bet was to dispose of the body, report back, and hope that we had enough good karma with the organization that they didn’t decide to source us out as “assignments” ourselves.

“Get the legs,” I told Mike as I moved around to the head of the man – former ambassador, in fact – and lifted him off of his desk chair by his shoulders. He was heavier than he looked, which was actually a fairly impressive feat; the man was not svelte.

Mike grunted under the weight as we shuffled across the room to the door. The building was empty; that was part of the arrangement we had with the company. We would do our jobs only so long as no one interfered, and if an issue arose – in the form of a janitor or late worker – we could choose to abandon the task or kill them as time permitted.

I could see Mike eying me from the feet of the dead man as we moved. He knew something was “off” about me, knew something wasn’t the same as it had always been. I’d learned that Mike and I had worked together for over fifteen years, and he knew me fairly well. At least, he knew part of me fairly well.

It had been like waking up out of a dream, and then realizing that the “dream” was actually what was going on. I’d always slept poorly, and had visions of terrible violence, but I chalked it up to being a man with a wife, two kids, a house and a bunch of debt – who didn’t have these kinds of thoughts once in a while?

A month ago I’d “woken up” in the middle of a dream, only to discover that I was riding in a van driven by a man I’d never met. Foggy recollections pegged him as Mike, and the more I thought about it, the more I could remember.

Did I really have a wife and kids? I had no idea; the job didn’t allow any downtime for me to see them, so I wondered if sleep allowed me to transition between the two states. Sleeping these days didn’t bring any relief, though – I just passed out exhausted in the small apartment I rented and was up the next day when my biology forced it on me.

It took a few weeks, but I was able to remember most of what I needed to do the job, and discovered I had a head full of memories of being something akin to a super-spy, though will fewer gadgets and more killing. Mike was a part of those memories, a solid man with dark brown hair who never smiled, and who executed every job with a swift precision. He knew something was off - I should never have missed the kill on this one – but he couldn’t prove it.

Mike made mistakes as well, thankfully, which was what kept him from airing any suspicions he had about me - that, and the fact that our employer didn’t take kindly to any oddities in job performance. Problems were “terminated” quickly, so while we were given large sums of money for our efforts, mistakes needed to be covered up when they were made. The foggy memories I had of Mike had me helping him more than he’d helped me, so that put me at least two or three up on him.

Still, he was getting suspicious.

We got the ambassador’s body to the van without incident, and five minutes later we were on our way to one of Mike’s dumping spots. He had a few around the city; I didn’t want to think about how many bodies we’d dumped there over the years, or how he kept track of which ones to use and when.

I had no idea what had gone wrong with my programming, but something had obviously tripped a wire along the way. All of my skills remained intact; I nearly killed a convenience store clerk that tried to grab the change from my hand too quickly, but I lacked the motivation to perform my job, largely due to the fact that is was morally reprehensible.

Of course, my own desire for self-preservation took a higher priority than the rights of those targets I was assigned to kill, putting me in the common position of being an American who didn’t really like his job, and the very odd position of a change of careers being something that would kill me.

I was getting sloppy; worrying more about myself and my precious feelings than the work I’d been assigned, and if I didn’t tighten things up, worries would be the least of my problems.

A small prick at my elbow told me Mike had done something unexpected.

“Mike,” I started, “what the hell are you –“

“Truth serum,” he cut me off, “you’re the same guy, but you’re not. Something’s going on and I’m damn well going to know about it.”

“Look, Mike, I don’t know if I can even tell you what it is you want to know.” I didn’t have to try to sound sincere; I meant it.

“I don’t care, man. Whatever you’ve got going on is messing you up, and I want to know what it is. I see it in your eyes – you had something else, something better than this, but we’ve barely been apart for ten years. It’s something they did to you, something they gave you, and I want it too.”

I laughed weakly, my head swimming as whatever drug Mike had given me kicked in. Guys across the nation said they wanted what Mike and I had, but when it came right down to it, guys like Mike wanted what everybody else had – family, a house, something to live for.

“Mike,” I said, “buddy, I just woke up.”

- D