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  SpoilerDeath of a major character

  [colpse]twenty-one

  [25 august 2024]=-=[sunday]=-=(0002)

  The middle-aged woman awakens upright, tied to a wall. Her head throbs. The light is bright, casting many shadows in the rge room. She has been through a lot of hell in her life. Stress has aged her early. She has endured so much. She was one of Jason Levin’s first victims, back when she was only eight years of age.

  However, at that early stage of his career, Jason’s process was rudimentary compared to what it became. She was transformed into the girl next door, only prepubescent, and sold to a younger Roderick Javier. While in transit through Central America, the van carrying her was attacked by a militarized drug cartel. Were she a teenager, she would have been taken to be a sexual sve for the officers of the cartel. Luckily, she was still a child, and thus she was adopted by the cartel boss.

  Fortunately for her, this man she learned to call “father” was old-fashioned, believing drug running to be no profession for a woman, especially his daughter. It didn’t matter to him that his adoptive daughter was actually physically male. She was married off to a businessman in Mexico after receiving gender confirming surgery. She had no enemies – her connection to the cartel kept away most minor criminals, while the fact that she was not a part of the drug trade in any way made her not worth targeting by the other cartels. There were no vendettas against her waiting to be settled.

  Since that day, she had lived a mostly comfortable, quiet life... until two days ago. She was abducted off of the street while making a grocery trip.

  “You’ve led such a quiet, peaceful life, Roberta,” a distorted voice says, emanating from a person lurking in the shadows.

  “Who are you?” Roberta responds, panicked. She understands and speaks English, but her time in Mexico has left her English saddled with a very heavy Mexican accent.

  “Just someone who would kill for the chances you got in life,” the voice says. “You’re a lucky woman. You got away.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I know about you, Roberta Vasquez Cazares. Or should I say… Martin Lambert? That was your name before Levin got hold of you, wasn’t it?”

  Roberta’s eyes open wide. She hasn’t heard that name since she was eight. That was a lifetime ago. “How…?”

  “Levin is dead,” the voice says. There is a glint of metal in the shadows. “Javier is dead.” A figure walks out of the shadows. It’s a woman wearing a long cloak, covering her body and obscuring her face in shadow. She is holding a rge kitchen knife. “You got to live a free life. You got to enjoy all the privileges of being the daughter of a drug kingpin and the wife of a successful businessman. You haven’t known suffering in years.”

  “Please, no…” Roberta says, starting to panic. “I don’t know what you want, but...”

  “I think it’s time I reacquaint you with it,” the woman says as she starts to cut at Roberta’s extremities.

  --={@~~~@}=--

  [26 august 2024]=-=[monday]=-=(1135)

  Pns are being made for Bke and Tiffany to fly to Maine to go live with their parents. It still feels odd to Tiffany that she now has parents who love her for her, despite what all has happened to her. Bke has had to reassure her at least 25 times that what happened on Saturday morning was real.

  The two are walking to the small office that Kelly keeps in the basement during the workday – what was formerly Joy’s room. The extensive locking mechanisms have been removed.

  Kelly sits at a desk, looking over Jason Levin’s files. There are still so many people left to rescue. Right now, she only has two assets she could send in undercover, and neither can be sent in right now. Morgan is known by too many of her enemies by now, and Delih is still being trained. If she is going to keep this going, she will need more assets.

  Which means she will have to break more men into feminized killers. She may have to ensure Morgan and Delih take their next couple of targets alive if they’re otherwise in the target demographic for these freaks.

  The two knock on the door. “Hm? Come in,” Kelly says. “Sit down.” Upon the desk is a ptop computer, a phone dock, and a small sign that says, in script, “But did you document it?”

  The two girls are dressed identically again. They both sit in side-by-side chairs. “You wanted to see us?” Tiffany asks.

  “Yeah, Bke…” Kelly says, her attention still on the list.

  “I’m Tiffany,” she says.

  “Oh,” Kelly says as she sets the tablet with the list down. “I really can’t tell you two apart when you’re doing this,” she adds. “Anyway. I’ve set up trust funds for each of you. They’re each worth 250,000, and between that and the money your parents have, you two should pretty much be set for life.”

  Melinda Sylvester comes from a family that grew wealthy due to creating a much-beloved dessert item back in the 1930s. Though her family sold the recipe and the rights to it to a multi-national food conglomerate in the 1980s, careful investing has ensured that while the family is not ultra-wealthy, they are set up well enough that Tiffany and Bke’s grandchildren will never have to worry about money unless an event like a catastrophic complete economic colpse occurs.

  “We were going to set the flight up for ter this week, but… there is credible intel floating around the svery ring that is making me move it back for now,” Kelly says.

  “What is it?” Bke asks.

  “There’s a new pyer making waves in the ring, and they’re specifically going after freed targets of the other people who were abducting and transforming people into physically and mentally altered sex sves,” Kelly says. “Ours isn’t the first operation that set out to free these people. Some also managed to escape their captors on their own over the years. I’ve been keeping tabs on some of these individuals, but several have gone missing in the st week or so. The bodies of a few of those people were found.”

  “You think they might try to take us?” Tiffany asks.

  “Possibly,” Kelly says. “We’re going to send out Morgan as bait. Since she’s actually known to have escaped two major pyers in this cabal, the thing that makes her a liability for most missions is actually a benefit for this one. She’d be a very high value target.”

  “How is this going to work, then?” Bke asks.

  “I’m sending her and two military contractors to Maine,” Kelly says as she goes through the pn. “The contractors will be body doubles for you two. That way, if they’re abducted, they can use their training to be okay while Morgan does her thing.”

  “Do you think there’s another mole?” Bke asks. “We’ve heard about Delih.”

  “I hope not,” Kelly says.

  “Are our parents in danger?” Tiffany asks, concerned.

  “Most likely not. In any case, assuming they’re not taken with Morgan, the two contractors will be with them,” Kelly says. “As soon as this new pyer is neutralized, we’ll get you two with your parents.”

  “I understand…” Bke says, sounding a little disappointed.

  “Bke, it’s okay. We’re going to see them,” Tiffany says. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to get taken by another one of these sick fucks.”

  “Me neither…” Bke says. “It’s just that it’s been so long since I’ve been around Mom and Nana…”

  “I understand your frustration,” Kelly says. “But Tiffany’s right. You don’t want to get taken by this guy. His victims don’t escape. They don’t survive.”

  “Oh, fuck…” Bke says, suddenly scared out of her mind.

  --={@~~~@}=--

  [27 august 2024]=-=[tuesday]=-=(0814)

  Morgan fires away at the target, trying to calm herself. She just got the word st night about the mission. Someone is killing freed victims of those like Levin and Roderick, and she’s going to be dangled out there as bait.

  Two body doubles will be flying with her to Maine on Friday. It will look on the surface like she is pying bodyguard to Bke and Tiffany as they are returned to their parents. And on some level, it makes sense. Too many people in the cabal know she’s out there, waiting to make them disappear and die like Jason Levin and Roderick Javier. Her transitioning from asset to bodyguard makes logical sense. She will then drive back to Colorado in a rental, giving the killer plenty of opportunities to snap her up.

  Somehow, this person is getting intelligence on those who are freed, or who escape their captors. Had Kelly not found out about this new threat from her contacts inside the cabal itself, they would have been sending Bke and Tiffany to their deaths only days after re-establishing the connections needed to get back to their old lives – and form new ones.

  Morgan reloads the weapon. She’s being issued a standard pistol for this operation, she won’t be able to use her 1911 replica, so she’s learning the new gun.

  “Having fun?” Danni asks as she walks in. She walks over to the lockers and pulls out her own personal pistol.

  “I’m actually a little nervous about this,” Morgan says. “I only barely escaped the st couple of times, and those times they weren’t trying to kill me.”

  “It’s going to be fine,” Danni says as she walks back and sets up a target. “You’re trained for this, and we’re taking the usual precautions. You’re going to have another GPS tracker impnted, and the car you’ll be using for the return trip also has GPS, as well as cameras at all angles. If something happens, we will find you.”

  “But what if this person’s caught on to the trackers and finds a way to obscure it like Callis and Levin did?” Morgan asks.

  “Then I trust you to be crafty enough to find a way out of the situation. You always do,” Danni says as she fires at the target a few times. “I get that you’re having doubts, but you were literally made for scenarios like this.”

  “I… I guess, Mistress,” Morgan says as she fires her own weapon at the target, before reeling it back. Her shots are all over the pce, and it isn’t entirely the fault of the new gun. “I just have a sinking feeling that this is going to be the time that my luck runs out.”

  Danni walks over and puts a hand on the smaller girl’s shoulder. “Little girl, we all go into this expecting that today could be our st. We can’t let that affect how we perform our jobs. What’s important isn’t succeeding; it’s doing everything we can to accomplish the mission. We can take every precaution, receive every bit of training, and it still might not be enough.”

  “...I’ve been meaning to ask, Mistress… were you a soldier before too?” Morgan asks.

  “I was, until my knee got blown out in a firefight in Kandahar,” Danni says. “I healed up good, but not good enough for the Army doctors. I got a medical discharge and joined up with the Jourgensens as a bodyguard. And now I’m also doing this for them.”

  “I can’t even remember if I ever saw combat…” Morgan says.

  “You didn’t see live combat, but you were trained for it,” Danni expins. “You’re good at what you do, and you’re trained to survive.”

  “I hope you’re right…” Morgan says.

  “Enough doubts, little girl, am I clear?” Danni commands.

  “Yes, Mistress,” Morgan says as she puts the gun away. Sadly, it’s not that easy for her to let go of those damned nagging doubts.

  --={@~~~@}=--

  [30 august 2024]=-=[friday]=-=(0853)

  Morgan looks over her new identification. According to this, she’s 25, her birthday was in May. Also, according to this, her full name is now Morgan Isabel Rivera, and her birthpce is Puerto Rico – same as Danni. Come to think of it, isn’t Rivera Danni’s st name? She figures that it would make more sense for her to be reted to Danni than to the Jourgensens. Whatever the case, it beats the hell out of having Joshua’s family name as her own, like Levin tried to do to her. It just means she’ll have to start peppering her speech with gratuitous Spanish.

  So far, things are quiet. She and the two contractors that are pretending to be Bke and Tiffany have arrived at the smaller, private airfield on the ft side of town, and a chartered flight is ready to take them all to Bangor. The fun part starts after they all nd.

  The flight is completely uneventful, as it should be. Morgan ends up taking a nap. Ever since the pne ride to Levin’s Russian operation site, it’s been unusually easy for her to sleep on pnes.

  A few hours ter, the three arrive in Bangor. An electric pickup truck awaits them. Woodside and Simmons, the two contractors chosen to be the body doubles, pile into the rear of the cab while Morgan drives. Their destination is about an hour away, in a tiny little town that barely registers on the map.

  Both Carol and Melinda know that their twin daughters aren’t arriving yet. Hansen called ahead and let them know about the pn, except that some details were changed. The two body doubles were going to be there for security purposes, to ensure the girls would be safe at their home. The drive there and the drop both go off without incident, and Morgan leaves to start the long drive back to Colorado.

  Around the time Morgan reaches New Hampshire, she starts to notice something very unusual. An older bck Caprice with New Brunswick ptes is following her, keeping some distance, but it’s always close enough to be seen intermingling with traffic. She makes a call.

  “Yeah,” Hansen says on the other end of the line.

  “I think I have a tail,” Morgan says as she peeks at the mirror. It’s two nes over, hanging back but keeping visual contact with her. “Early 90s Caprice, bck, New Brunswick ptes.” She recites the pte number.

  “Give me a few minutes to run a trace,” Hansen says. “In the meantime, get off of the interstate and find a charging station for the truck. See if they follow you off.”

  “Yeah, got you,” Morgan says as she gets out of the passing ne and moves over to exit.

  The Caprice follows, still keeping its distance.

  “I’ve got no good info for you,” Hansen says. “It’s a rental, which is odd. Most companies don’t rent out cars that old. I checked the records of the rental company, but the identity used to rent it is false.”

  “It’s about five cars behind me. I found a pce to charge,” Morgan says as she pulls the truck into the charging station, which is attached to a gas station. She grabs her pistol with her free hand as she maneuvers the pickup into a parking spot.

  The Caprice drives past the station but remains close enough to see as it pulls into a fast-food restaurant parking lot across the street.

  “It’s still got a visual on me,” Morgan says as she steps out of the cab and goes to hook the charger to the truck. It’ll take about an hour to get back to a full charge.

  “Just act calm,” Hansen says. “Don’t act like you’ve noticed them. If this is who we’re after, you don’t want to spook them.”

  “I got it,” Morgan says with a nod, that of course, can’t be seen on the other end of an audio call. She decides that since she’s been driving for a few hours straight, she should go into the gas station to grab a little bit of food, something to drink, and hit the bathroom.

  The cameras on the truck are still rolling. A mysterious woman gets out of the Caprice. She crosses the highway and walks over to the truck. The camera doesn’t catch her face – she’s wearing a hoodie with the hood up, as well as a mask. She kneels down below where the camera can see and attaches a tiny device to the truck before standing up and walking away, back toward the Caprice.

  It didn’t help that Morgan took about twenty minutes in the bathroom. She gets called on the phone. “Joe’s Taxidermy, you snuff ‘em, we stuff ‘em,” she answers.

  “That joke’s older than you are,” Hansen replies. “While you were taking a shit, someone tampered with the truck. I’m thinking it might have an AirTag on it or something.”

  “Any idea who?” Morgan asks as she orders a bite to eat at a computerized kiosk in the store.

  “No dice,” Hansen says. “She was wearing a hoodie and a surgical mask. The only thing I could tell you is that she had blue eyes and a bad case of zy eye.

  “What do I do?” Morgan asks as she finishes her order and waits for her food.

  “Keep acting normal. We want this woman to be bold enough to try to strike,” Hansen says. “Get back on 95, take 495 once you get into Massachusetts, then take the MassPike west to 84. That’ll allow you to bypass the Boston metro. On your way through Connecticut, there will be a rest area near Willington. Stop there for the night. We’ll have people waiting there in case our ‘friend’ shows up.”

  “Alright. I’m trusting you on this, Signe,” Morgan says. “I don’t know the area.”

  “When you get home, I’m teaching you internet basics,” Hansen says. “I don’t know how you live without mapping sites.”

  “I barely ever leave the basement,” Morgan counters as her food is ready. She takes it and her green Monster and returns to the truck, hanging up the phone as she gets there.

  --={@~~~@}=--

  (1927)

  Morgan hasn’t seen the Caprice since making the pit stop in New Hampshire. If its driver really did put something like an AirTag on the pickup, then she doesn’t need to follow anywhere near as closely. “How far is it?” she asks through the open comm in the truck.

  “Fifteen miles, why?” Hansen asks.

  Morgan yawns. “I’m feeling really tired all of a sudden… I don’t know if I’ll make the rest stop…”

  “Open the windows,” Hansen replies. “I don’t think she had time to have tampered with the climate systems…”

  “Nah, I think it’s just the Monster wearing off…” Morgan says through a yawn as she opens the windows wide. “I’ll try to make it…” She starts to rock back and forth in her seat, then she turns on some music.

  Eventually, she gets to the rest stop. A conversion van and a Suburban are both parked nearby. As she parks the truck, she starts falling asleep. She made it just in time.

  A couple of hours pass, and there’s no sign of the woman or the Caprice. The contractors inside the van are remaining at the ready, however. There’s no way that woman put a device on the pickup without having some intention to follow up.

  The lights at the rest stop start to flicker. That’s not altogether unusual at this particur rest stop. American highway infrastructure just barely gets by a lot of the time, and this particur rest stop has been floated as one to shut down, in favor of the many, almost ubiquitous amount of truck stops and crappy motels nearby. But then the lights go out entirely, and that gets the contractors to worry. They start to arm themselves and get on the ready. They’re supposed to be reacting, so going proactive is taking them out of their game pn.

  It’s all for naught anyway, really. The truck explodes violently. There was no sign that Morgan got away.

  One of the contractors gets on the phone quickly. “Hansen?! This is Kirby, New Engnd branch. The VIP’s truck just exploded, I repeat, the VIP’s truck just exploded!”

  “What do you mean it exploded?! That’s the entire reason we chose an electric truck, and specifically not a Tes for this mission!” Hansen yells back.

  “I’m telling you; I’m looking at the truck, and it’s gone up in fmes…” Kirby says as he steps outside and takes video of it.

  Hansen looks at the video feed from the truck. There’s no sign of anything amiss up until the feed itself goes dead. “No…” Hansen says. “She can’t be…”

  The fire created by the batteries in a typical modern-era electric vehicle exploding is so hot that nothing could be expected to survive.

  “...I have to report this to Miss Kelly and to Danni…” Hansen realizes. “...I…I don’t know what to say. We fucked up. We should have never let Morgan drive the truck after that woman tampered with it…”

  “What should we do, ma’am?” Kirby asks.

  “Wait for the fire to get put out. Then examine the remains… it’s all we can do, Kirby. We failed.” Crying is heard from the other end of the line. “We failed. We’ve lost Morgan.”

  --={@~~~@}=--

  (1735)

  Hansen emerges from the security office, her home away from home while she’s here. She’s positively distraught. This news is something she can’t deliver over email or the phone. She actually has to deliver this news in person. The walk to the elevators feels like the longest walk ever. Her makeup is ruined. Anyone who sees her will know she has been crying.

  Anyone who knows Signe Hansen knows that she does not cry.

  She walks into the elevator and enters the code on the keypad to enable the car to go above ground. At this point in the day, it’s likely that Danni is fulfilling her… other duties to Kelly. No one asks how Gary can be coping so well with the fact that his wife is fucking the bodyguard. It’s a taboo subject.

  But if he were to be asked, he would cim the answer is “coding and booze.” In truth the two haven’t been intimate at all since Joy was returned to them. Seeing his son transformed into an intellectually diminished sissified caricature of a girl broke him inside.

  But Kelly still has needs, and if Gary won’t fulfill them, Danni will. It’s what she pays her for, in part.

  Thus, when Signe walks up to Kelly’s bedroom door, she can be heard within in the throes of coital bliss, yelling at Danni to fuck her harder. “...God damn it,” she says quietly. She knocks. “Miss Kelly, Miss Danni, I have terrible news!” she shouts.

  The door opens after a moment. Danni is still in her uniform, while Kelly is wearing a robe, tied loosely around the waist. “Hansen, what do…” Kelly starts to say, before noticing her face. “...Signe… what happened?” she asks as her demeanor shifts.

  “Report,” Danni says, but in a soft tone. She’s not ordering. She’s asking.

  “Morgan… we… we lost her…” Signe says. “Her truck was sabotaged, and it exploded at a rest stop.”

  Danni walks over to hug her subordinate. “Take the rest of the day off. We’ll get things figured out.”

  “Danni, we fucked up and we lost her…” Signe says, crying loudly. “We fucked this up in the worst way…”

  “Go to your quarters. Get cleaned up. Eat some ice cream and watch trashy movies or something. Rest. That’s an order, Signe,” Danni says. “Miss Kelly and I are on it.”

  Signe sniffles and nods. She doesn’t know what she hates more right now, that she made a mistake that cost the entire outfit one of, if not their most valuable asset, or that she’s letting herself be so fucking vulnerable right now. “...Understood, Miss Danni,” she says, trying to recim some small scrap of her professionalism. She turns to walk back to the elevator to head back to her quarters.

  As Signe leaves, Danni turns to Kelly. “I want the head of whoever did this on a fucking pike, Miss Kelly,” she spits.

  “You’ll get it,” Kelly says in a dark tone. “I want the person who did this found, Danni. I want to know everything about them. Who they are, where they live, what their favorite breakfast cereal is. I want their parents’ names. I want to know the name of the doctor who spped their ass when they were born. I don’t care how many stones have to be overturned; I don’t care what resources you have to employ. I don’t care how much you have to spend. I literally do not care if you burn through my money so fast that I am applying for food stamps by this time next week. I want them found, and if they’re suitable, I want a repcement asset made from the tattered shreds of their mind and body. And if not, I want to disembowel them myself. Are we clear, Danie? Find them and make them fucking pay. Scorched. Fucking. Earth.”

  “Understood,” Danni says. “I’ll need Hansen, though. I don’t know how long she’ll be out of action over this.”

  “Whatever you have to do means whatever you have to do, Miss Rivera,” Kelly says. This is a new tier of serious from her. If using Danni’s full first name means shit just got real, then using her st name is hitting the Godzil Threshold.