The Suppressor by Erik Carter (best free novels .txt) 📗

fingers. “Snip-snip! You’re shooting blanks from here on out, dummy.”

His reaction was confusion, not a shred of disappointment. He really was that committed to the dead chick. Crazy fool.

“A right of passage, like our GPS dot,” she said and held up her right arm, twisting it. “Anyway, I digress. My point is, you’re such a good guy, I’m wondering if you really have what it takes to get down-’n-dirty as an assassin.”

She paused.

“Hit me.”

Suppressor cocked his head.

“Hit me,” she repeated.

“Why?”

“Because you need to learn to hit anyone, to be prepared for anything. You were always such a gentleman to Cecilia. I know you don’t want to hit a woman. Find a way.”

Suppressor hesitated.

“You have to be able to do this. Go.” She patted her cheek, turned her face, gave him a nice, open target.

Suppressor grimaced, raised his hand.

And lightly slapped her.

Nakiri laughed. “Whew! I’m lucky I’m still standing, Rocky.” She laughed louder. “We’ll work on that. Come on.”

Three days later.

Back in the hospital room. 9 p.m. Another day of physical training in the books.

Suppressor collapsed onto the small bed, gasping. The bandages on his right shoulder were gone. Now there was just a large Band-Aid. Like Nakiri, the medical staff was working every day, feverishly, to get the guy ready in time.

“You’ll have to work on your stamina, Silence Jones,” she said. “I don’t give a shit if you’ve been in a hospital bed for weeks on end. We need you trained. Fast.”

She dug in her backpack and pulled out a stack of magazines, tossed them onto his lap.

“Have fun,” she said.

Suppressor lifted one of the magazines, opened it. After a moment he glanced up at her, arched an eyebrow.

“Logic puzzles,” she said. “We’re not just training your body. Gotta work that mind too. I want five complete and correct puzzles by the time I get back tomorrow morning. Find a way.”

Suppressor pointed at a red circle in the graphics on the front cover. In white letters it said, ANSWERS IN BACK. He grinned at her.

Well, now.

A little sass out of the new Asset.

Nakiri reached into her bag again, pulled out the stack of torn-out pages she’d removed from the backs of the magazines.

“Nice try.”

Two days later.

A private boxing gym. A crummy old place worthy of a 1970s-era film, filled with dust-covered equipment that looked unused since the ’70s, fittingly enough. It was one of many such Watchers facilities that had been carefully chosen and utilized.

They were in the ring. Nakiri wore a pair of punch mitts, and Suppressor wore a pair of boxing gloves.

He also wore a tank top, and she noticed that his arms were more toned than she’d have thought after so much time in the bed. He was firming up quickly, which was probably a benefit of all those hours he’d spent in the gym in his former life. Through the years, Nakiri had noticed that despite the fact that muscle goes away when not utilized—use it, or lose it, as they say—some hard-earned mass becomes permanent.

This was good news for Suppressor. He had to not only get back into shape in a brief period of time, but she was going to get him into the best shape of his life.

At the moment, though, the guy was breathing hard. He gave another punch, halfheartedly. She barely felt it through the padding.

“Harder!” she shouted. “Harder, damn you!”

Suppressor punched again, feebly, and then stopped, panting. He put his hands on his knees and gasped.

“Too weak,” he said and grimaced, swallowed, took another couple deep breaths. “Almost two months.”

“Oh, so that’s it?” she said. “You’ve been in a hospital bed for almost two month, so that makes you too weak to throw a few punches?”

Suppressor nodded.

And with his head hanging the way it was, she whacked the back of it with her punch mitt.

“Stand up, you lazy shit! You’ve had people bringing you back to life, working around the clock on you for those ‘almost two months.’ Doctors, nurses. Meals handed to you literally on a platter. What are you going to do when you’re in the middle of a desert? What are you gonna do when your target finds you, captures you, beats you, electrifies you? Come on, you sack of shit!”

Suppressor took one more breath and extended to his full height, towering over her, chest heaving.

She scowled at him, wriggled out of the punch mitts, and threw them to the mat. A step closer, a few inches away from him, looking straight up so he could see the rage in her eyes.

His gloved hands hung like lifeless pendulums off his long, feeble body. She tore open the laces, ripped the gloves from his hands, and threw them onto the mat like she had with the punch mitts.

She took a step back, placed her arms at her sides.

“Hit me!”

Silence raised a fist.

“Hit me, pussy! Close your fist and punch a woman. Find a damn way!”

Suppressor’s fist hovered for a moment. Then he lowered it.

She moved back into his space, looked up at him.

“This is why we train your mind more than your body. With enough pressure, anyone can learn to kick and punch and stab a knife and shoot a gun. But an Asset’s mind keeps them alive in the field, Suppressor. Right now, you’re a dead man walking, a man so bloated with ideals that he’ll trip and die. You’re not prepared. There’s no time left. And I’d be a fool to pass you.”

She stormed off.

Chapter Fifty-Six

Several days later.

Silence was back outside the building. Except this time he wasn’t with Nakiri; he was with Falcon.

Crumbling asphalt surrounded them. It was colder now, too. And wetter. In the mornings there had been light snows, and in the afternoons, it had turned to rain, which now trickled down the rotting brick of the building across the street. Everything around them was empty and quiet. They were the only living things aside from a pair of birds and a squirrel doing a tightrope act on