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

Falcon had his overcoat buttoned tight as he sucked on a Marlboro.

“Figured out who I am yet?” he said.

Silence raised an eyebrow.

“Assets aren’t technically permitted to know the identity of their Prefects, but if the Prefect is a public figure—which many of us are—it’s almost a moot point. I’ll just say it would be just peachy if you figure out who I am, but don’t be a sad sack if you can’t.”

He’d put a heavy emphasis on three of the word. Falcon was speaking in code.

“Tell me, Suppressor, what do you think of your trainer?”

“Bitch,” Silence said.

Falcon laughed, coughed on his smoke. “I can see why you’d say that. She tells me she’s been pretty hard on you.” He coughed again, cleared his throat. “Don’t forget, she gave you an emergency tracheotomy, got you to a Pensacola hospital, snuck you out the next morning, and drove you across the country. She has rough edges, maybe a few more than the average person, but her heart is where it should be. That’s why she’s a Watcher.”

He took another drag from his cigarette, held it for a long moment, then let the smoke drift out the corner of his mouth.

“Allow me to lend a little perspective. We got Nakiri when she was twenty-four. You remember that news story about the woman who chopped her cheating husband’s dick off?”

Silence nodded. Of course he did. The story became a media storm, a progressively common trait in the modern world, something that had concerned C.C. greatly. It concerned Silence, too.

“Well, our girl did something similar,” Laswell said. “Before the Watchers, she had been a middle-American homemaker and a part-time employee at a local bakery. Her husband—let’s call him Bob—was an insurance agent and a pillar in their small town. They’d had a perfect little life, and she was an old-fashioned, doting wife. Hard to picture, isn’t it?”

Silence nodded.

“There was three years of bliss, then she suspected Bob was cheating. He denied, but he couldn’t hide it, not with small-town gossip being what it is. The doting wife tolerated his behavior for a year or so until her niece came to her in tears one afternoon. The kid said Uncle Bob had been forcing her to do things. For months. That sent our girl over the edge. She went to the cops, worked with them for two weeks, in the afternoons while Bob was at work.”

Falcon stopped, blew out another cloud of smoke. He looked away, chuckled, and Silence saw thoughts and memories sparkling in his eyes.

“Do you know what a nakiri is?”

“Knife,” Silence said.

“Right. A big ol’ kitchen knife, for chopping vegetables. That’s what she used.” He took another drag, released. “The night before the warrant was to be served, our girl had a change of heart, didn’t think prison was a strong enough punishment for Bob. Her niece was only ten years old. Ten. So she slipped out of the bedroom while Bob was sleeping, went to the kitchen. She chopped his dick off, fed it to him, then tortured him for a while before she sliced his throat all the way through the jugular. The body was never found.  She fled, and we got to her right before the police.”

“Shit,” Silence said.

“Mmm-hmm.” Falcon looked at the end of his cigarette and saw that it still had a half inch left. “You know why she has such an axe to grind with you, right?”

“Took her assignment,” Silence said.

Falcon shook his head. “It’s not just that you took her assignment. You spoiled her debt.”

Silence raised an eyebrow.

“Each Asset has a debt to pay, your alternative to the prison sentence we saved you from. Fulfill the debt, and we pull that GPS dot out of your arm, give you a fat bank account, and send you somewhere peaceful—beaches, mountains, whatever you like. If you’ve survived, you’ve sure as hell earned the luxury.

“For most Assets, the debt is simply a number—a quantity of assignments to complete. Nakiri has been at this for twelve years. Her debt is twenty assignments. Before going undercover as Burton’s girlfriend, she’d completed nineteen.” He fixed a look on Silence. “See where I’m going with this?”

Silence nodded.

“Pensacola was to be her final assignment,” Falcon continued. “And she failed. She broke her cover, aborted her mission to rescue you. She deliberately defied me. I’d told her to let you die.”

“Thanks,” Silence said.

Falcon shrugged as he examined his cigarette again, saw that it had expended, and flicked it away. He blew into his hands, rubbed them together, and shoved them in his pockets.

“Nakiri had put months into the Pensacola job, by far her longest assignment. She was this close to being finished, and she gave up her freedom to save your life. And now I’ve given the assignment to you, and told her to train you.”

Nakiri’s hatred toward Silence had been a cloudy sphere of confusion for him. Now it was spotlight bright.

“What’s mine?” Silence said.

Falcon turned to him. “What’s your debt?”

Silence nodded.

The older man looked away again, down the deserted street. “I’m still working on that. But I’ll tell you this much: it’s not going to be a standard debt. It won’t be a number of assignments. Yours is going to be custom-tailored, more personal.”

Personal? Silence didn’t like the sound of that. Abstract notions didn’t play well with his overactive brain. A simple number would have suited him much better.

Falcon turned to him and grinned. “You look like you’re giving this a lot of thought. Don’t get ahead of yourself, Suppressor. You still have to complete the training.”

Chapter Fifty-Seven

It was Silence’s third week of training.

He and Nakiri were back in the gym, outside the ring.

And he was struggling to maintain his composure.

A twenty-pound kettlebell quivered before him in his right hand. It had been there for minutes, held straight-armed, elbow locked. His muscles burned fire.

Nakiri stood a few feet away, chomping gum, stopwatch in her left hand. She wasn’t looking at either the watch