20. Clark
TWENTY
CLARK
Olly had just entered Jeff’s office, and I had been debating whether to wait for her here in the hall or down in document storage when I felt the prick of the needle in my neck and tried to fight both my assailant and near-instant paralysis.
I made an effort to dig into the floor with my feet because this fucker was pulling me.
I elbowed them in the ribs to no avail, and I even tried smacking my head back into their nose to break it, but I had all the strength of a baby bird as I was dragged backward into a utility closet, the door quietly and quickly closed.
It wasn’t until the darkness fell over me, and I put together that whatever asshole was responsible had obviously done this before, that I went from survival mode to full-on panic.
The drug had done its work. I no longer had control of my body to fight, my last hope being that I could make some noise by grunting and groaning, and perhaps someone in the hall might hear.
I was trying to figure out who the hell this was.
They were quick, efficient, and almost silent, even as they made a creepy hushing whisper directly into my ear.
“You want to keep that throat? You shut up. I have no problem with slitting it open any time.”
I didn’t doubt it, and fought against lethargy to stay awake and not succumb to the darkness that beckoned me through whatever drug I had been injected with.
My breathing was coming in short pants now, and I wanted to at least see the face of my assailant before I would probably black out or, in the worst case, die.
But all I could really see in the dim utility closet was that I had been placed on the floor by someone wearing expensive men’s shoes.
The gap under the door let in enough light that, though I couldn’t turn my head, as they leaned down to check my pulse, I saw glimmer in the near-dark.
Cufflinks with a shiny gold “B” on them.
I’d seen them before, considering I’d met the man several times now.
“B” for Barkhouse. I knew I recognized those damn shoes.
That snake. Why would he want me dead, or at least thinking I was about to be cut from neck to navel?
“Don’t worry about a thing, kiddo. We’re bringing you back into the fold, to your real home.
Welcome back to The Organization. Your grandfather will be thrilled, even more so when he knows how close you’ve become with the McLeod Assets.
Our perfect mole, all poised and ready to go.
” I should have fucking known that The Organization was involved in this, but what was this codswallop about a grandfather?
All of my relatives were dead, if you were a pessimist at times like me and considered “lost at sea” to equal “death.” But even when I did have parents, they never talked about grandparents with any sort of favour.
I had a grandfather and grandmother when I was a child, and they were painted as cruel, unfeeling people, and that was why we were kept away from them, right up until they died, and we were never so much as taken to their burial plot to give a hello and farewell.
I tried to protest, but got nowhere. I couldn’t speak.
I wanted to tell them that I was not their “perfect mole,” that I would never betray Olly or myself.
My last thoughts before sinking into the inky black were of secret evil relatives, and Olly’s wild red hair, full of curls and beautiful like fire.
The Organization For The Advanced Mind. Gods, what a stupid name.
That was who I had been working for as an adult when I had spent a good chunk of my childhood with my parents moving from place to place, from one far-flung region of the world to another, hoping to stay a few steps ahead of these same bastards.
From what little my parents had told me, they were a cult-like group with a charismatic leader and a strong belief in harnessing psychic powers to gain a greater understanding of the multiverse.
They sought to take the theory of the multiverse and make it make sense mathematically, provable using scientific techniques—even hoping to one day open passages from our reality to other universes, universes where we hadn’t screwed up our planet and could learn how to clean up what we’d done, or even universes which had achieved that lofty goal of world peace.
When my parents sat me down and explained all this, I thought that the people running The Organization were full of bunk, even more so when Mom and Dad sat me down at seven years old and explained that Organization “Assets” were chasing our family because my baby sister had, in their opinion, strong psychic potential.
She really was the smartest little thing with better than normal intuition, though I was no slouch in that department myself.
We all knew that she could move things with her mind whenever her emotions were running high, which as a baby was pretty much all the time, so we mostly stayed in rural communities, keeping to ourselves as much as possible as we globetrotted.
As the older brother, I felt like it was my duty to protect Rosie, and I swear I did, and by the time she was seven or so, Mom and Dad grew comfortable with us, under tight supervision, to go romping through the forest or jungle, me always making up games for us to play.
I kept her safe from wild animals, from strangers, and from storms, either on land or at sea.
But despite precautions like inoculations and mosquito netting, I couldn’t protect her from the invisible danger of disease.
In Kenya, dengue fever found us. Our Rosie caught the disease, and our family would never be intact again.
She was buried in a beautiful place where long grasses blew in passing breezes and the baking hot soil and gentle landscape were home to the elephants she had loved so much in her short ten years.
After Rosie had died, my lust for travel ceased, and I wanted to settle somewhere.
My parents, lost in their grief, gave me both Rosie’s and my inheritance at seventeen, and I took it and traveled on my own to Canada, where I had been born and held citizenship.
When I finally picked a city, Montréal, and passed the equivalency tests I had to take, I wound up with a scholarship to McGill University and majored in astrophysics.
I never considered that I, boring and plain old me, would be a target for The Organization.
I wasn’t Rosie. I didn’t have psychic powers or whatever the fuck they were looking for.
For years after getting my master’s degree, I was left alone in rural Eastern Ontario to work in the public library system, which actually was a lot like how Olly had described it: story time followed by Sleeping Bunnies.
There was more to it, of course, but I was more than content.
However, Claire poisoned that well completely.
Now I wondered if she had been an Organization stooge. She had been unhinged enough.
Speaking of unhinged enough, what kind of workplace had the man in charge needling people in the neck like they are freakin’ Dexter?
That they were possibly keeping tabs on me hadn’t crossed my mind until I was abducted into a utility closet by my boss, and found myself tied to a chair with duct tape in the room with the supposed top secret briefcase, which I saw nowhere.
Nowhere, because I had a black bag tossed over my head.
These guys sure knew how to run a kidnapping, I’d give them that.
I heard the door open and close, and an older, slightly gruff voice said, “Take that ridiculous thing off his head. Now.” The bag was yanked off, and I blinked a little to acclimate to the harsh fluorescent lights in the room.
I saw how the door was flanked by Jeff and Robert, with a man who looked to be in his eighties crossing his arms and looking down at me with an intense expression.
As for the older man, he rubbed at his temples and said, “I’m too old for this shit. I could drop dead at any time. Release him from his bonds. He’s not going to attack an octogenarian, especially his own grandfather. He has too many questions that need answering.”
Grandfather? My parents had fallen off the map around thirteen years ago, leaving no trace in the wake of Rosie’s death.
At first I thought they were doing something ridiculous like sailing across the Pacific like they used to talk about doing, and flaked on letting me know in advance, becoming easy targets for the weather or pirates.
However, if this bullshit Organization were involved to the point where we had flesh-and-blood connections...
“What did you do to my parents?” I sputtered out once the large piece of duct tape was ripped off my mouth, feeling like it took a layer of skin with it.
My supposed grandfather took a wooden chair leaning up against the wall and put it in front of me, so that we were facing each other in the most awkward interview/interrogation ever.
“What did I do to them? Nothing but try to coax them back home instead of galivanting all over the planet with two small children, one of which caught a deadly disease she would have been perfectly safe from here in Canada.”
I turned that over in my head a few times, thinking of how best to respond.
He was probably hearing everything anyway, if he were psychic, too.
Olly always said my thoughts ran constantly like a leaky tap.
“Rosie was the best of us,” I said. “She didn’t deserve what happened to her, but it never would have happened to start with if my parents hadn’t felt pushed to keep us on the run from you asshats. ”
“All I wanted was to spend a bit of time with my grandchildren. You and Rosie. She meant a great deal to me, you know. That’s why I named the public front of our Organization after her. So I’d always have something to keep me grounded and connected to her.”
“Our Organization? Ours?” I seethed, watching as he nodded.
How dare he talk about Rosie! Rose Financial, indeed.
And how dare he imply that I had anything to do with his shit show.
There was just one thing I really needed, and I was done, completely done.
“Where’s Olly McLeod? And where the hell is my damn dog?
” I asked, in my most threatening tone. “Tell me, or so help me god, you will see what I’m willing to do to an octogenarian.
If you have hurt one hair on either of them, I swear I will go John Wick on your asses. ”
The man put a hand over his face, and then ran it back through his hair, in a gesture I often did when extremely upset.
“We’ve gotten off on the wrong foot here, Clark.
I’m sorry for it. I didn’t quite realize when I said to detain you because it was finally time to meet, that those in our ranks would go to such lengths.
I’m Edward Evans, Founder and Head of The Organization For The Advanced Mind. ”
What. The. Fuck.
He extended a slightly shaking hand covered in age spots out to me, but I feared what might happen if I touched it.
Would he somehow gain an entrance to my thoughts?
Was he really as frail as he was presenting himself to be?
I remembered the words from my father when I was a teenager, repeated almost verbatim when I left my parents for Canada.
“They have a charismatic leader, someone with few morals as we understand them, because he considers himself above most others due to his extreme intelligence. This makes him dangerous, Clark, very dangerous. Never seek him out, not even for revenge. Keep your head down and don’t draw attention to yourself.
You know how to run, to hide, to start over.
I’m sorry this is the path life has put before you.
But until their leader is dead, they will always take interest in you and this family. Do you understand?”
I nodded both times even though I didn’t understand. I understood nothing at all, back then or now.
I did know that in no damn way was I touching his hand. I leaned over and spit on the floor, instead.