Skin Deep III - Chapter 2 - The Spiders In The Eves Are Listening free porn video

Chapter 2 The Spiders In The Eves Are Listening The Duck Blind The Duck Blind, as it was known to those that lived sequestered within its walls, hummed with life. For the first time since its inception the purpose for its being, the reason the office had been formed seemed close to an opportunity to complete its mission. As duck blinds go, this one had seemed to be the most promising of those set up by the government, if you considered the decoys being used. Its purpose, as with all duck blinds, was to hide the hunter until an occasion presented itself to spring the trap on the unsuspecting prey. These shelters are usually camouflaged, hidden among the natural elements of the surrounding landscape. While the fifteen story building wasn't what most duck hunters of the past would consider a typical duck blind, its purpose was no different than that of its predecessors in history. The only major difference was that no one inside had ever intended to hunt water fowl as the name suggested. There were no swamps or ponds near by. Instead, the setting for this blind were the sidewalks and roads where the disenfranchised of human society had retreated as a last bastion for survival in a hostile sprawling urban environment. Its cover was perfect amid the unused condemned hulks that surrounded it. It stood with broken windows like empty eye sockets that looked out on a littered and beaten landscape that had once been the downtown district of Mike and Gary's childhood. It was unique among all others in as much as this was merely a fa?ade. Beneath this fa?ade was a modern technological wonder of surveillance and automated data collection. It housed twenty-two administrative staff and fifteen agents comfortably on six of its upper floors, the 15th floor had been converted into a holding pen of sorts with specially constructed walls of transparent 'Concrete', which was not really concrete at all but a polymer with eight times the tensile strength of its name sake at only a tenth of the weight. The streets surrounding the building were sparsely populated by day by the ragged, homeless souls that could not or would not compete for a place in society's bright yellow sun. This was what had once been known as 'The Fringe'. A nebulous place that had no permanent location, but was rather, a place where the money wasn't! It moved from location to location, attracting the unwanted with the vacuum created by the fleeing masses that had constructed it and now no longer wanted it. Conveniently, the duck blind was also six blocks from the former Shipley building what had once been Roth Park. Money had kept the creep of The Fringe from encroaching on that small section of Old Town. No one knew how much the daughters of the Shipley's were worth. There wasn't even an accurate idea within the Revenue Department. One thing was clear however, it had been enough to ensure that the decay that spread through other major metropolitan areas wouldn't advance into the sacred home of the once world famous Shipleys. While most people were living longer, up to an average of about 100 years now, the Shipley's eldest daughter, Erin, was now pushing over 180 years. The daughters of two very prominent citizens in the Federals States had been marked for ELS evaluation early on. Erin, who now lay dying in the home she had been born in so long ago and her sister Shelly, the only two surviving members of the immediate Shipley family, should have died years ago. Even with the best health, the most liberal longevity models had them both dead over sixty years ago. While the two women had been monitored for quite some time, they were only the bait in a much larger game, the objectives of which, initially at least had been the parents of the two women. The wheels of the future of the SCIN program and its ultimate demise had begun with a clandestine operation to recover a shipment of stolen SKINs from a warehouse in the city in which they were destine for destruction. This operation was interrupted by the unexpected arrival of a group of six college kids a night before the seizure was to take place. Before anyone knew what was going on, the kids had put on six SKINs and disappeared into the Rouston night. VIDs were tapped, surveillance was made and plans were laid out to capture the teens when it was discovered they would all meet back at the warehouse to shed their SKINs. Complication after inexplicable complication threatened to bring the operation into the light. This could not be allowed to happen, least public suspicions that SKINs actually existed be revealed. But a screaming evening chase that ended in a spectacular crash in the bay, the public disappearance of a popular local entertainer and the media spectacle that surrounded it made it impossible to act without raising public suspicions. More problems arose, while those in power at the time took measures to remove this threat from the public arena, the targets of the planned removal of Gary Shipley and the girl Mike Vello had become, managed to achieve great public notoriety and wealth. This complicated any measures the government might take to protect their interests and preserve the veil of secrecy that surrounded their most prized project. Any accident the Shipleys might have befallen would have drawn a great deal of public attention. Once fame had come to them, eliminating them would have been questioned at all levels of societal life. This bump in the road to a successful recovery of the government's plans was further complicated by the removal of the stolen SKINs by those that currently controlled them. The whereabouts of the SKINs became a mystery while the Shipley's fame grew and grew. Rather than apprehending them and thereby putting the government's arm in the hornet's nest up to the arm pit, the Shipleys were watched. It's a fact that it's harder to squelch rumors, debunk wild claims and prove accusations false when a bright, white light of truth is shining on what other wise could be deemed as a small, mostly uninteresting problem when anyone has information to the contrary. Spark public interest in a mystery surrounding a public figure and salt it with a conspiracy that already has its foot in the doorway of the public mind, and you have a recipe for hysteria that everyone points to as confirmation that the conspiracy is real. Soon, credible witnesses begin to step forward to feed on the public frenzy. The lessons of 1947, 1963, and 2080 were still famous incidents of agency faults and still painful reminders of how destructive information could be if not carefully monitored and controlled. So far, SKINs lived only in the minds of Roswellian historians, Grassy Knoll junkies and those that claimed to have once lived in the Ruins of Mars in a lifetime before its destruction. They were legend, myth and nothing more. Most who knew of their existence felt the sacrifice of the Shipleys continued freedom was a fair price to pay to prevent SKINs from being elevated beyond myth to reality, that is, for the time being. The Shipley's were allowed to believe that no one, outside of their circle of friends, knew what had happened to Michael Vello. Police Services were certainly not included in any information sharing and the Vello incident was allowed to fall quietly into legend. During the watch, those with that responsibility found that the Shipley's and those in the Shipley circle of trust remained silent. They avoided the truth as much as those watching avoided it. The level of threat was reduced and the watch was ordered to continue until everyone involved had passed away, thereby allowing closure of the case via attrition. There was a problem however. It became clear very early on that the person Vello had become was not going to die. Not in the foreseeable future anyway. This threat forced The Agency to reinstated plans for liquidation to protect the program. As the execution of the mission was being set up, their son became the unwilling prisoner of the same technology that held his mother. The layers of years of hard work began to peel away exposing flaw after flaw, security breech after security breech. The Agency now had to refocus their efforts on putting out one security fire after another. At the end of it, the local authorities and News Services were crawling all over the place after evidence that the Vello kid had returned and somehow blown up their primary production lab. The SCIN project was classified black and was shut down. Most of the personnel were removed from the area and a period of 'quiet' was imposed to allow the dust to settle. A liquidation now, especially after the hysteria that had followed and the untimely news that Michelle Shipley was indeed Vello's half-sister (a fabricated claim that only served to draw attention to the Shipley's at a time when the Agency could ill afford it), forced The Agency to withdraw all field specialists and cancel the liquidation. Further complications were discovered when it was learned that Gary Shipley had experienced a miraculous recovery after losing his life to a gunshot wound from a deranged police officer. Everyone knew that government's goat and head of the project had supplied the Shipleys with the means to remain together. All hopes for another attempt had to be reassessed. It was determined that the new dynamic and to attempt to recover a program that seemed hopelessly dead was probably just that. The watch continued... Until, that is, the Shipleys managed to slip from sight. Some couldn't help but wonder what had transpired to let the Shipleys escape sanctioning again. Throughout the history of their activities, it seemed at times that the hand of God, if such a creature really existed, must be at work. No one actually came out and said it, but many within the ranks of the Shop began to hope the Shipleys would elude capture forever. They managed to remain out of sight for sometime. There was some thought to the idea that perhaps the accident that was said to have claimed their lives and the life of their one time son turned adopted daughter and her husband, had in fact, actually ended their existence. The idea was dismissed quickly when images of a young couple living in New Orleans were forwarded anonymously to The Duck Blind, which was still in operation to watch the remainder of the family, after a brief visit from the widow of Frank Newberg, one of the Shipley's trusted few. Amanda Newberg had met with the young couple on few and brief occasions but it always seemed to be for meals at the young couple's restaurant, which was another striking but obvious coincidence. A watch wing was set up in New Orleans and the couple was put under surveillance. No other action was taken for several reasons. No contact with the surviving children of the Shipley's could be established, and the Benton's remained missing. There was no choice but to wait. If they liquidated the Shipleys here, the Benton's would know. They would loose the advantage and two targets. The surveillance could continue for centuries to keep the secret. The Agency was certain that the Shipleys would never go public without a reason. They needed to be taken together, quickly. To have them reappear publicly would be a catastrophe. Their true identities could be easily established. Their ages and youth could not be explained without some technological explanation. The Agency was over a barrel of boiling oil this time and everyone within its ranks knew it. The visual chase continued for years and then the Shipleys slipped away again, out west this time where surveillance was difficult and resources were scarce. The western Safe Zones were autonomous and suspicious of cooperation with the Feds. For the time being, they were safe from aggressive pursuit. The last of the remaining physical SCIN units were either MIA or had been destroyed, leaving nothing to rebuild the program from. The Shipleys had unwittingly become the key to saving face and saving the program. Much hinged on their capture. In short, the entire debacle had been mishandled on a tremendous level or as some were suggesting, by divine intervention. The great fear now was that evidence would leak out and provide proof to neighboring countries or other foreign authorities that the Federal States had broken thousands of peace treaties with countless countries and that global war would ensue. Back home, the task at hand became the elimination of all the sources of evidence to ensure that no word or proof was provided to anyone that might use it to subjugate the Federal States. The government began a sterilization program that would take all known individuals that had fallen victim to this technology and destroy them. It was given the code name Operation Ground Beef, because of the method of sterilization. The Shipley family was deliberately exempt from sterilization for obvious reasons. Because of the flaws in the original matrix, normal means of human termination were impossible. The people that were trapped by the SCIN units simply healed too quickly to affect any conventional means of death. A facility was set up to hold and eliminate known contraband that in the past had either been protected because of affiliations with the government, such as field agents, and those people that had purchased through black market connections and had become trapped. The facility was called The Meat Packing House. It contained a holding unit with 800 cells that could hold up to 6 people at a time. The process of sterilization began for most, only after months of study of each detainee in attempts to reverse engineer the technology to reestablish Rocov's program. Where this process failed, and it failed on a grand scale, individuals were then taken to and fed into what was known as 'the grinder' which was an enormous meat processing unit that ground those fed into it into scraps of processed meat. It was the only way to ensure that those slated for execution remained executed. To the surprise of those that ran the program there were no shortages of detainees. The holding facilities were exploding with inmates, with most cells holding upwards of 15 people or more with 7 to 10 units arriving every month. This of course included the Halfling children of SKINNED units. This was where the Shipleys were slated to end up. There was a special program enacted to process this family once captured. It was believed that since all were benefactors of Ziven Rocov's original attempt to preserve his family through his SCIN Technology, they would provide a greater chance of successfully reproducing SCIN technology in the lab. The push to find them and catch them had taken on new meaning. The responsibility fell to the Rouston Duck Blind to lure them back home for capture. The bait would be their dying daughter Erin. The trap would be ensuring that the daughters, Erin Claxton and Shelly Banks were left alone and forgotten by the world in hopes of giving the missing family members a false sense of security thereby flushing them out of hiding. Stories of their advanced age and relative youthfulness were squashed in the press. It helped that both Erin and Shelly shied away from publicity, wanting instead to cast the light away from anything that might draw attention to themselves and thereby drawing attention to their family secret. This was the latest in a long string of strategies to apprehend the family together. Accomplishing this would finally eliminate the greatest risk that their world wide notoriety posed. Anything less could change the existence of SKINs from an unsubstantiated urban legend and elevate them to the status of confirmed fact in the public opinion. The staff of the Rouston Duck Blind, had been in a state of constant flux as a result of the extended duration of their mission. Then the idea to install someone who would have the capacity to follow the case with unbroken dedication was advanced somewhere in the halls of government. This seemed to breathe new life into the operation and give hope that the Shipley's would finally be brought in for research and ultimately, destruction. The footfalls of Bradley Loudon's polished black leather shoes echoed off the bare sterile walls of the eighth floor west all way where the listening equipment for The Duck Blind was housed. He was a tall, gaunt man with pale skin and dark black hair swept to the right over his high forehead. He had strong, sharp angular features and a drawn face that made him look perpetually unpleasantly angry. He appeared to be much too young to be a supervisor of the watch. He had been supervisor however for over 45 years, placed here specifically for his expertise in this field of surveillance. Loudon's family had been in this sort of business for the last 217 years, starting with his mother. Loudon himself had been in the ranks of The Agency for some 50 of those years. If anyone within the walls of The Duck Blind had known, they would have been shocked to the point of disbelief. Brad Loudon was, in fact, one of the very creatures he hunted, he was himself a halfling. Loudon's mother, an agent incognito had fallen victim to Rocov Ziven's SCIN technology. Loudon's mother, born Walter Learner, had been stationed in Europe and had been given the assignment of replacing the wife of the Minister of Foreign Affairs for the Ukrainian Republic, Romano Ublanski. Mrs. Ublanski had been apprehended carrying a diplomatic pouch from the Federal States without proper diplomatic identification as a representative of her country. The package contained a number of 'eyes only' electronic files that had been stolen from the Pentagon some weeks earlier. While inadvertently left alone in an interrogation room for just a few moments, she had committed suicide by poison. Her death was an embarrassment the government could ill afford. Even in possession of state secrets, allowing the Minister's wife to die while in the hands of a foreign power could not be explained as easily as one might believe at first. Even her death in the face of the man's grief could be and probably would be used a tool of propaganda against the Federal States. Learner had taken the assignment and was fitted with a SCIN that was found to be defective after it was far too late. Water had spent six agonizing years as the wife of the Foreign Minister. Unable to leave his post until Romano had died of a heart attack one sunny Ukrainian summer afternoon while fucking his wife. Walter spent six additional months in false mourning and then, under the pretence of depression, left the country for the south of Spain. From there, he was collected and returned to the Federal States for decompression. Decompression included release and deprogramming from his assumed identity, debriefing and retraining as well as a complete report of any useful information that could be used to benefit the government. When authorities tried to deactivate the SKIN however, they soon found that Mariov Ublanski was not ready to die a second time. The SKIN stubbornly refused to deactivate and Walter was faced with the horrific reality that he was going to spend the rest of his life as the young woman whose life he had volunteered to assume seven years before. Walter went perfectly insane almost at once. He spent fifty years in an institution where authorities discovered he was not aging. This was not so much of a surprise as there were some 900 known guised agents suffering the same fate as Walter by that time. There were almost as many still in the field that had not yet been informed of the flaw nor would they be until such time as their assignment could be terminated productively. Mariov, now named Mary, was eventually 'cured' as they called it of her state of mental "depression". It had taken twenty-two years of therapy and a Hell of a lot of acting on Mary's part to convince doctors she was ready and able to function in the world as a female from then on. She was released with grave reservations from those monitoring her progress to a state provided home under the watchful supervision of The Shop. Along with her home, she was provided a respectable pension, mental health care and round the clock surveillance, for her protection. She was cared for very well by her former employers. But she was not trusted. In the course of supervision, one of the agents of the watch became close with her. Joseph Loudon did not love her nor did Mary love him, but she felt safe with him and Joseph was never harsh or demanding. Eventually, Mary succumbed to the passions of her needs and she slept with the man. Most theorized because she was lonely. She became a case study in SCIN inter-transgender relationships and manipulation. This man offered comfort where there had been none in years. He offered security and understanding in his protective nature and gentle way of persuasion. The result of his union with her had been a child. The Agency could have easily terminated the pregnancy. Mary was after all, not truly a free citizen, though she was led to believe she was. The Agency however, known then as The Shop, saw an opportunity to foster a champion. One that would live and remember protocol, procedure and vendetta as long as there were Skinners that hid from capture. Mary was allowed to carry the baby to term. They encouraged the pregnancy, and while Mary protested at first, uncertain about carrying a child to term, she finally relented as a result of the onslaught of propaganda she was faced with. Part of the argument used to convince her to cooperate had nothing to do with being a loyal solider to the government. They were simply plain old scare tactics used to give Mary no other choice but to comply or forever lose her options at freedom. From that point on, she was shown only falsified documentation and lies to foster the sort of resentment she would eventually pass to her child. She was also given drugs to control the gender of the child. The Agency wanted a male child with the potential for hate only a male could harbor. She carried the child unwillingly, being told that if she did anything to cause harm to their experiment, any technology the government developed later for successful removal of damaged SCINs would be withheld from her forever. While the baby grew inside her, she was given hints and hopes of a cure to her condition. Agents mentally molded her character and gave her briefs, building her hopes up for release and keeping her dependent on the idea that she would be free once the pregnancy was finish. False but official looking status reports along with experiment results gave the phantom impression that the threshold of trans-configuration had been achieved and all Mary need do was give birth and she could return to a normal life in her former identity. She was told that procedures were underway to try to free her and many other agents that had become entombed in their alter-egos had been successfully changed back. Great emphasis was placed on the patriarch of the program, Ziven Rocov, even though the shop knew he was a trouble maker and had had to be made to comply by trapping him in a device of his own design. Three years dead at the time, but still well hid from all but the highest ranking officials within The Shops organizational structure, Mary believed that her fellows within were doing there best to free her from her feminine persona. Eight months into her pregnancy, the head of her former department arrived at her protected home in the White Mountain region of Central Massachusetts. The visit, seen as unorthodox by Mary worried her, exactly the effect The Agency was looking for. Mary was given a sedative, which was in reality, potaptsin, a cousin of the drug pitocin, with the intent of inducing labor. Before the drug had a chance to do its dirty work, Mary was given the news that Rocov had been killed and his lab destroyed by fire. She was informed that The Agency had suspects but, unfortunately, the suspects had slipped away before they could be apprehended. Soon, Mary was in full blown labor. She was told by doctors that her early labor was related to stress; of this Mary had no doubt and had never questioned. Bradley Loudon had been born 3 pounds underweight but otherwise healthy. In the days that followed, Mary was shown more fabricated documents that showed the detail of The Agency's investigation. They were careful to cover-up their failures unless there was strategic or emotionally advantage to letting her know. They told her only what they wanted her to know, of course. They were also able to point to news stories of actual incidents that couldn't be covered completely in news history. These events led credence to the doctored information they had given her. The Agency's web of half truths set Mary's mind whirling against the kids that had stolen the SKIN's, risen to great fortune. Then, in an instant, those same kids, now grown, brought her only hope of escape crashing down around her like a glass house in a hail storm. This ensured forever the focus Bradley's purposeful rage on one family and more specifically, on Gary and Michelle. At the time, Mary, who appeared to be no older than 21, was in reality, closer to seventy years old. The Gary and Michelle had just turned forty a year or two before. No one could have understood the significance that the propaganda campaign would have in later years. Everyone in power that knew about the Shipleys believed their program of surveillance would eventually pan out in a victory for The Shop. No one knew they were setting the stage for the final game that would be played out one hundred and sixty years later. How could they? Raised with the propaganda his mother had been spoon fed through the years, seeing the exhausting disappointment she had experienced from the knowledge that her imprisonment had become absolute, combined with the knowledge that the Shipleys were responsible for the destruction of any hope of rescue. It was Bradley, as planned, who came forward and asked to be indoctrinated into the Agency to help track down every Skinner in the secret hope of locating the Shipleys. The Shipleys had by then escaped into the western Safe Zones and were by in large, untouchable. While his ascension to power had been marked by failure after failure in capturing the embarrassment that were the Shipleys, Agency officials were pleased with the progress he had been making. He had located them very effectively to Seattle, San Francisco, and also In Los Angeles. He had also been effective in rounding up some 20,000 Halflings and some 1,000 Skinners and brought them to the Meat Packing House for disposal. Loudon had also launched an aggressive system for identifying some 28,000 other Skinners and their offspring that experts felt may number in at this point somewhere in the low millions with the eventual goal to bring them to Langley for destruction. No one had done so much so quickly. It was Loudon that exposed several holes in the CitReg system that had allowed many Skinners time to establish new identities, start new lives and begin to reproduce within the 'normal' population, mutating the gene pool. He had also taken the first real accounting of all SCINs or SKINs produced whose whereabouts were known versus unknown. He estimated that some 127,000 SKINs were out there in the world. Only a fraction of those were 'official use' SKINs. The vast majority, including a lot of ten thousand hijacked in Tennessee had been leaked to the black market. An amazing number considering The Agency felt they still had a firm lid on information control. The fact was they didn't. Bradley Loudon knew it. Most people were just too plain scared to do anything about it. The agency had liquidated enough people to put the fucking fear of God into them over this. Those connected to SKINs in the past or the present were just as happy now to live another day locked in their homes and avoid contact with anyone. It was exactly the mentality the Agency wanted to foster. The longer these... things kept quiet, the easier their job was. After all, no one could hide forever. Now, as the sun came up on the last day of Erin Shipley Claxton's life the Duck Blind had become a beehive of activity. Not everyone understood the exact implications, most however, were aware that the people they had been waiting to be lured in would be acting soon or never at all. The Bait was dying and that was the nature of this particularly piece of bait wasn't it? Yes Sir indeedy do. You bet your bippy! Whatever that was? Loudon's normally sour demeanor was almost airy this morning. He sported a smile for the first time in anyone's memory. Seeing him this morning in his grey suit and red tie, you might think he would break into song at any second. There was a snap to his step that was reminiscent of the once great and long dead Gene Kelly. As he his shoes clicked softly down the tiled surface of the hallway, it was his mother that drove his purpose and gave him single minded focus that the Agency had happily spun for him. In Brad's stilted view of the world, the Shipleys had taken on the weight of responsibility for the problems that now plagued the world. The rampant uncontrolled explosion of Halflings and Skinners as The Agency and now the world had come to refer to these... freaks was due in no small part to their meddling. And even though The Agency were the only ones with definitive proof that Halflings and Skinners actually existed, it was only a matter of time before the entire world knew. Pandemonium would reign as the new supreme order after that, wouldn't it? Oh yes, that was the inescapable truth of it. But this was not why the Shipleys had taken on such a larger than life presence in Loudon's mind. They symbolized the gold ring on the merry- go-round because it had been they who had sent the entire process spinning out of control in the first place. Without them there might have been a cure. Rocov had been working on just such a cure. The evidence shows that he was... just look at the fact that Vello's fingerprints had been found at the scene of the lab fire that had killed two agents and Ziven himself. He had cured Vello for a time anyway, but something had happened. The picture was hazy here. But anyone with half a brain could see that Rocov had seen through the Shipleys little charade. He had found out that they had been thieves instead of innocent victims. He had probably become enraged at finding out that he had been duped and most likely had refused to help them any further. His reward? They burned down his facility with him in it, forever sealing the fates of everyone trapped in his technology. There actions had also condemned the offspring of all these people to an unnatural life of pain and persecution. Not once did Loudon believe that The Agency had lied to him. Not once did he try to construct the evidence, which had been preserved and was available to him at any time, into a more logical and truthful picture of the past. He had been included on so many spins of the truth by Agency officials that he understood very well that truth was only as good as the evidence you manipulated. Understanding that, one might be surprised at how willingly he latched on to this spun theory of the Shipley's involvement of the programs demise. In truth, it felt good to Loudon to hate the Shipleys. It carried with it a nostalgic feel that he wouldn't have traded for all the truth within The Agencies walls. Loudon fed off this nostalgia as Superman, of comic book lore, had used the rays Earth's yellow sun to power his incredible strength. If for some reason Loudon's truth turned out to be a fabrication, then everything he had modeled his life for would have become an instant lie, but this goes without saying. That lie however was something that Loudon could not allow to filter into his brain. At some subconscious level, he fought against the real truth. He had walled it out, refusing to acknowledge it. Choosing instead to shove it into the black pit The Agency had helped him dig to bury it in. He wasn't interested in truth. That's not what was useful to The Agency or himself. He wanted revenge. He wanted to taste the bitter-sweet flavor of blood mixed with bile. It was his right to have the glory of this kill. It didn't matter that the deaths of these people served no public service. He knew the fucking truth alright. If he chose to close the book here and now and simply walk away, would the Shipleys cause some global catastrophe? Bring down the world financial markets by withdrawing the incredible fortune they had amassed? Would they go public with their story or send everyone to hell while they took over the world with their youth and immortality? Fuck no they wouldn't. They would continue to live quietly wherever they were, out of sight and long out of mind except for those that listened to the vintage music or old VID format segments of Gary's short lived cooking show. None of that mattered. He had spent too much time hating them to give up now. He would have them, take them, and give them over to the scientists for their freakish experiments to see if they could jump start the whole blood mess again. Then he would kill them. This is what he'd been trained to do you see. Kill them. It was really that simple. If he could not do that, then his entire life was a waste. No man can live with the idea that he had burned all the time he had to give on something pointless, in the end only to find out he had served no useful purpose at all. For a moment, the smile on his face faltered only the slightest bit. His step hitched out of rhythm from his thoughts and Brad paused in mid stride to think about this. In short order however, he had washed the moment of doubt from his brain as he might wash the taste of something nasty from his mouth. The smile returned to his face, bright and large as ever. He would kill them, he thought and the thought made him happy beyond description. Yep, that's what I'm gonna do! He would eliminate the males first. They were of no use to the program. The women must be kept alive. He would take their lives himself. Once, when he had been a child, he had happened upon a text, a book his mother had called it. It was a curious thing, bound in stiff board with flimsy pages of paper sandwiched in between, it had smelled musty and he hadn't liked it. But his mother had told him how not that long ago this is how people would read. That almost everything you would want to know was kept in books of some sort or another. He decided to read this... book. The name of the book had been Firestarter, by a man he had never heard of, someone called Stephen King. He didn't know about anything else this King person had ever written but Bradley had liked this Firestarter. He had particularly liked a man named John Rainbird. He could commune with this character, commiserate with this man's motivations in a way. John wanted the doorway to a greater spiritual power. He believed that by taking life and watching it fade away through the windows of the eyes, he could assume that person's strength and life force. Then Charlie came into his life. Charlie was a young girl maybe 10 or 11 years old, but she possessed a great power. She was a pyrotechnic, a true Firestarter. With a thought she could set almost anything to burn. There was something very primal about fire for Bradley and he felt as if he had been almost forced to read on. Rainbird had tried to kill the little girl more than once, you see, he had to be close enough to see into her eyes when she died. That's how it worked; he had to see the life drain away. That is what Bradley wanted. He would be close enough to watch Michelle and her daughter die at his hands. He would take their life force as his own and carry them, imprisoned forever within his soul. When he thought of that long ago book, he now placed the face of Michelle Shipley over that of little Charlie McGee. He was now the large stoic Indian with the cloudy eye and the badly scarred face. The thought of it only served to make his smile more radiant. He burst into the Watch Room, the technological operations center where the listening equipment buzzed and recorded even the faintest breathing of the dying woman's last breaths. It was here where Brad finally felt the first joy he had ever truly experienced in his life. He would come, put on filtering phones and turn the sound up and listen to the woman as she wheezed in an uncomfortable degrading state. When he listened to her, a smile would spread across his face, a black and evil thing full of malice. It would send a chill down the spine of anyone who was unfortunate enough to witness it. They would not be able to resist coming. They would not let their monster die alone, not after all she had done to hide the rest of them. This withered old thing that lay in its deathbed would be their undoing just as it had saved them from the hand of ultimate justice for all these years. Harris, the monitoring tech, would listen only when no one else was there to listen. They had been careful that outside of Loudon and his chief flunky and muscle, Charles Dunlap, only one other person was designated access to the watch room. Harris was instructed only to notify Loudon and remain in the watch room if outside contact was made. The data gathering devices would do the rest. No one knew the identities of the people Loudon was looking for. The fact that he was stationed here, at this facility spoke volumes. They, The Agency that is, insisted this was purely because he had to be somewhere. Since Rouston had been the manufacturing center, it had also become the first point of contact for smugglers and black market traders. As with any contraband, it would also be the first point of distribution. Like a funnel in reverse, the highest concentration of product, whatever illegal product that might be for a given area, always started at the initial point of distribution. This process then fanned out to less dense concentrations as the product was broken up, liquidated and consumed. They were here because it was believed that since this was the area of highest product density, then it would also be the point of highest consumption. As with any black market item, a large portion would be siphoned off for personal use or profit. Loudon was here to capture as many residual Halflings from that consumption of defective SKINs as possible. At least that was the The Agency spin. Harris suspected that there was probably something more to it than anyone was letting on. He was happy to leave the truth to those who wanted to hide it. Too much truth, like too much vitamin E, was fatal. Harris was more than happy to dilute his truth with his fair share of Agency rhetoric if it kept the countenance of Agency paranoia from looking his way. Now, as the sun rose that day and Shelly and Erin made their final emotional preparation for the inevitable, Bradley Loudon sat and watched the vast array of display screens that displayed the massive amounts of worthless data as it was dumped into the room. He watched and waited impatiently as the two foolish old women prattled endlessly about nothing, making mindless small talk about nothing, taking long breaks while the Claxton woman fell into periods of frequent sleep. There was a scowl etched deeply into the features of Loudon's face. To Brad, the scowl felt perfectly natural. There was little he hated more than these two old bats. They had come down to the wire now and still there had been no communication with other members of their 'family'. His carrot was beginning to wither and rot on the stick it dangled from. The files had been wrong. The Shipley's had finally turned their backs on their children and it seemed they were interested only in saving their freakish, selfish skins. The younger of the two finally left the room during one of the dying woman's frequent naps and began making WR transmissions. The first was to the old woman's son, William Claxton. That conversation was as predictable as the weather. "It's getting close William..." "... be there before sun set." "Don't wait too long Honey..." Blah, blah, blah, yada, yada, yada. The next was to Bethesda, Maryland and her own children. Again, there had been more of the same. Blah, blah, blah, yada, yada, yada. The third one made Bradley Loudon sit bold upright in his seat, "Oh holy shit! Turn this up Harris," Loudon barked! The balding, middle aged man quickly reached over and slid the volume control on the digital recording devise up to two thirds maximum volume. He blissfully busied himself grateful that Loudon had come in when he did and filtered out what was obviously turning into a classified transmission. Loudon's display was split screen and tapped into the countless plasma wave frequencies, much like radio waves circling the globe. Unlike radio waves, plasma waves were not linier in nature. They carry sound but also stored energy. They didn't require 'Line Of Sight' transmission and therefore didn't rely on satellites to carry a digital signal around the world. They could be conducted from point of transmission to anywhere around the world, real time, without loss or degradation of data integrity. Once written to the wave, data could be tapped anywhere in the world simultaneously as it was being written. Loudon's jaw dropped at the sight of the young blonde headed man on the right of the screen. He had studied Gary Shipley's image thousands of times. He had personally run thousands of genetic modification scenarios on both Gary and his freak wife. It had been Loudon's call to publish those possible likenesses to other Duck Blinds for identification reference, just in case. The image he was looking at was the mirror image of the younger Shipley as he had existed back before they had stolen the SCINs from the warehouse in Rouston, before Vello's disappearance. "Shelly?" There was obvious distress in Gary's voice. "What's wrong?" "Oh Daddy," the woman cried miserably. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry for calling, but Erin's really sick this time. I don't think she's going to be able to fight this one." The emotion in her voice was escaping. Shelly was breaking down in the sight of the one person she felt safe with, her father. "Bingo mother fucker," Loudon whispered and grinned that horrible grin to himself once more. The suspect tried to soothe his daughter, "Shush, it's OK." "No Daddy, it's not. Erin's dying. You need to come home. You need to come home right now." "We can be there in an hour Honey, Okay. We'll be there as soon as we can get there," Gary assured his daughter as soothingly as he could. He could not, however, completely hide the anguish in his voice. "I'm scared Daddy. I know the rules but I didn't know what else to do. Erin's always been the one... I just didn't... "Shush, you did the right thing Muffin. You did just the right thing. I'll get your mother and we'll leave right away." Gary gestured as if the close the transmission and then added, "Don't tell Erin we're coming, she won't like it." "No Daddy, I won't tell her. I don't think I'll have to..." There was a brief pause, then Gary seemed to pray, "God please. We're coming, just hang in there. I love you Shell." The transmission ended and there was silence in the room between the two men. Suddenly, Loudon leapt to his feet and shouted "God DANM! That sneaky fucker. I wouldn't have believed that he'd be walking around with no modifications what-so- ever." All the celebration made Harris nervous. He wished that Loudon would observe the better part of discretion, and keep quiet. Harris didn't want to find himself on the dangerous side of knowing too much. "Did you see that Harris? He's one smart mother fucker." "No Sir, the filters were on. Did you find another Halfling? Someone connected to the Claxton woman? Maybe your plan worked better than you thought." Loudon understood that Harris was trying to deny his observation of the moment. Now Loudon became more reserved, stoic as before. "Hum..." Brad grunted, regarding Harris, evaluating his body language, trying to determine how much he had heard and seen. Harris was a good man, but no one without express clearance for this information would be allowed to take it out of the building. Loudon knew that both watch supervisors would be liquidated at the end of this, if Harris was thinking of taking a sudden vacation, he would have to be eliminated now." "There's a new transmission going out Sir," Harris alerted Loudon. Loudon turned his attention back to the screen where only seconds ago, Gary Shipley's face had been so prominently displayed. The call targeted a WR in Paris. Loudon quickly added the six hour difference to the current EST and determined it was just after 7:00 p.m. there. As he sat and listened he understood that he would be rewarded for his patience. The weight of a huge stone was lifted from him. Miscalculation would have ended in disaster. He had not miscalculated after all however. The files had not lied. In the end, the Shipleys had been weak. After all this time, they were no better, no smarter than anyone else on this miserable shitty little rock. Loudon closed his eyes and whispered a private thank you to whatever God might be listening. Standard protocol Sir?" Harris asked. "No Harris, no," Loudon said casually waiving his hand to dismiss the idea. Standard protocol would have meant that Harris would be relieved to write a report. Harris didn't know it yet, but he had written his last report three days ago. "I'll have Dunlap come in and sit with you for some support and perhaps a chance for a ten minute break." "Yes Sir." Harris said obediently, inside he was screaming, Dunlap! Oh shit! Oh shit! The Prodigal Daughter Katharine shoved the door open with one foot and wobbled into the Paris apartment, her arms laden with packages. Once in, she felt around for the open door with the heel of her shoe. When she found it she swung the door in the opposite direction, closing it again. For now the twilight streets of Paris were filled with people, some shopping, others (tourists) seeking the sights, sounds, smells and tastes of the City Of Light. Outside the birds were chirping and flying about preparing to roost for the evening. Scores of pigeons, drawn by the prospect of discarded food, wandered the stones of the sidewalks and streets, cooing and looking for scraps so often left by people eating on the run. The sounds of vintage boats cruising up and down the Seine River could be heard upstairs in their second story flat. Cool breezes caused the curtains to waft up and dance on the walls sending the fresh scent of newly blooming flowers and fresh clean air into the open living room. "Whew," she breathed. It was 7:09 p.m. She dumped the packages on the sofa in the living room and began sorting them. "Lights please" she asked sweetly in English but nothing happened. "Oooooooo" she groused. "Les lumi?res s'il vous pla?t." She asked again, this time in French and the overhead canned lights came on softly. She stopped to wonder briefly how her mother and father were doing in Florida, surprised a little and feeling ambushed with sentimental nostalgia. She was homesick. Shopping took her mind off her distress most days. Today however, shopping couldn't keep her mind from wandering back to her parents over and over. She missed them terribly and wanted this endless exile to France to end. She wanted to have one of her father's sloppy hamburgers. She simply couldn't stomach the European version of that uniquely American delight. Boycotts of Federal States products made it very hard to find some of the comforts she was accustom to. And it didn't help that a good deal of her 'comforts' were simply no longer available in any form anywhere on the planet, having vanished from shelves long ago from companies that had simply gone out of business over time. It made her sad to think that she would never have another Coca Cola again. There were substitutes, but nothing had the same sweet bite to it when it was properly iced down. Once, a long time ago, her mother had sent her a case of Cokes in their neat collapsible poly-cell packages just before they went out of business in 2157. Those had been gone for years now and oh how badly she wanted just to taste their sweet, sharp, syrupy goodness again. Worse at times was the idea that she live so much longer than the cherished soft-drink she longed for so much. How long would they all live with the memory of pleasures and people they had lost to time? She felt she understood why people had never been intended to live so long. Nostalgia, that comforting feeling one gets when you taste or smell something that triggers a memory so soothing that it breaks down all the stress into small drops of something easily brushed away, like newly fallen snow on someone's shoulders. Nostalgia should not out live all the things that bring to mind that comforting feeling. That would only mean an eternity of unsatisfied longing, and what good is that? The fact was that most things now made her homesick. She swore that if she ever got out of Paris she would never come back again. She felt trapped here. Her sister, Shelly, had left years ago to care for their oldest sister, who was becoming ill with the passage of time. Before leaving, Shelly had convinced Randy to stay here and look after the family interests. They had both agreed to stay. Aaron, their son, at that time fifty-five years old but still looking not much older than eighteen, had gone with Shelly. He now jumped back and forth between Paris and New "New York" and Rouston visiting often under several assumed aliases state side. Her other children lived here in a low key existence. They didn't put themselves forward for comment and no one here seemed to mind that they minded their own business. She knew that if she left, she would be leaving most of her family here, where they felt comfortable. She hated to think about it and it usually only made her miserable when she did. She waved a hand absently in the air trying to dispel the notion as if it were a whiff of smoke or an unpleasant odor she was trying to evict. It didn't matter anyway, they weren't leaving. She was stuck here and that at least meant she wouldn't be faced with making a choice of who she felt she wanted to have with her more, adult children or her teenage like parents. Kate, as she was known to her friends, looked down at the small pile of boxes before her on the couch. She sighed with deep resignation and started opening them. With each box came only disappointment. She knew just what she had purchased. At the time she felt she had needed these things, a black patent belt with inlaid white dolphins on it, a pair of bright red 'Surnaolv' designer original heels, five inch heels that looked painful to wear. A white cotton peasant dress with lace off the shoulder bodice. There was a black and white cocktail dress, short above the knee, very flashy... and very dull at the same time. She hated everything. She knew that she probably even had some of this stuff in her closet already. It would all have to be returned. A deeper part of her was grateful; she would at least have that distraction tomorrow to look forward to. She held up the peasant dress and the red heels, stared at them in disbelief for a moment and then flopped down on the sofa still holding her purchases. "I hate this," she breathed. "I've become a department store bimbo," she laughed. She covered her face with her hands and laughed at herself until she was light in the head. She was just catching her breath when the WR chimed its peaceful soft tone. She checked the time and saw it was now 7:14 p.m. That would be her husband Dennis calling to see why she was late. "Uh oh!" she said. She voiced clearly "Oui?" to activate the RW and the screen flickered into life. "Denny, I'm sorry. I had a hard time..." "Pardon?" asked a woman in French. She had black hair and dark skin, tanned from many weekends out in the sun, perhaps the Rivera. Kate was surprised and corrected herself folding over to French: "Oh, je suis d?sol?, j'ai pens? vous ?tiez quelqu'un d'autre," She apologized to the woman and asked what she could do to help her with, "Comment peux-je vous aider?" Kate's voice was soft and sweet when she spoke French. She didn't have the vocal cords to pronounce the French language any other way. Her husband loved it when she was in social circles where she had but little choice to speak it. He told her often that when she spoke French in her gentle way of doing so, he often thought that she might just melt away like hot butter. The woman smiled and said: "L'Op?rateur de Internation, avec un WR direct via Rouston, Pennsylvania de Shelly Banks pour Katharine Simon," She paused, "Vous sont Katharine Simon?" "Ah. Oui! Oui, je suis Katharine Simon," Kate said excitedly at the mention of her little sister's name, "s'il vous pla?t, vous pouvez mettre l'appel par." The operator said: "Merci, je connecte votre appel maintenant." "Merci. Merci." Kate was saying when the image of her sister filled the screen. The image there said more than any string of words my tell her. Shelly was crying "Shell? What's wrong?" It was a question Kate didn't need to ask but couldn't contain. At first she didn't think Shelly would be able to speak, but soon she lifted her head and looked right into Kate's eyes. "Beth," Shelly said, once more ignoring any regard to safety protocols Erin had protected for so long, "She doesn't have long. She doesn't know I'm calling, but I thought you had a right to know before ... just in case you could get here." The image of her sister, her lower lip tucked into her mouth, the pained look of distress in her eyes was almost more than Shelly could bear. Shell could see the desperation in her older sister's eyes and knew there was no way she would stay away. She could almost hear Beth's thoughts, No, not like this. She can't die with me stuck here so far away. "Bet... Kate, Oh Hell," Shelly stuttered confused on which name to use. "I hate this mess," Shelly admitted, "Look Beth, it's probably not safe. I know how much she means to you, she means a lot to all of us. She wouldn't want you to..." "How long?" she croaked trying to strangle back tears. Shelly seemed glanced down at something on the floor. "Shell, please." "Hours, maybe not that long. I didn't mean to upset you. I just felt..." Beth held up her hand for a moment while she covered her face with the other. Shelly watched as her sister tried and failed to compose herself. "We used to fight like cats and dogs. You wouldn't remember it, you were just a kid. All that changed... She was always there for me afterward. Now I can't even be there to say goodbye." "Perhaps it's..." Shelly began. "Don't Shell, don't tell me that this is best, please." There was a moment of silence from both women then Beth asked, "Are Mom and Dad coming?" Shelly only nodded. "How did Mom take the news?" Beth asked, concerned. "I didn't speak to her. I couldn't," Shelly said. Beth nodded. There was baggage there and Shelly didn't have to explain how hard a decision that must have been. "Shell, I have to call Randy," Shelly gasped for a moment at the use of Randy's real name. "No one cares Shell. If they did, they would have taken us down years ago. Everyone's forgotten... if they ever cared at all." Shelly was silent, it was a belief she quietly shared with her sister but never dared say out loud, not while Erin was alive. "Do you want me to call you and tell you what Jump I'll be in on?" "You're coming?" "You just tell her to hold on." Beth was weeping openly now. "You tell her I'm not flying all the way out there for nothing. Piss her off; make her want to yell at me. That'll keep her around. If that old bitch thinks she can just jump off like that now, then she's crazy." "I'll tell her you're coming. She won't want to miss that. That other stuff, I'll leave for you to tell her, how's that?" Shelly said. "Call Randy, get the ball rolling. I don't know how long I can keep her here." Shelly started to deactivate the WR on her end when she said: "Oh and Beth?" "Yes Shell?" her eternally young sister replied. "I love you," Shelly said. Kate blew her sister a kiss and spoke to the WR. "Dennis Simon Au Poisson Rouge de Paris." In a second she was connected, "Le Poisson Rouge de Paris, le bureau de Dennis Simon, peux-je vous aider?" It was Marko, their maitre'd. He was not looking at the screen. He seemed distracted by something to the left. Beth asked quickly, "Marko, c'est Katie, j'aimerais parler avec mon mari s'il vous plait." Marko smiled genuinely pleased to see Kate and said: "Oh, Kate! Vous sont comment faire aujourd'hui. J'ai pens? que nous verrions..." Marko stopped short. He saw the distress in her eyes and asked, "Le tort de quelque chose est-il, Kate?" "My husband please," Kate asked politely in English as she fought back the tears. "Yes, of course Kate." Marko said switching to English for Kate's sake. "If you will please hold, I will find him for you." "Thank you Marko." She smiled a weak smile. It was the best she could manage under the circumstances. A moment later, Randy's face came into view in the deep background of the kitchen followed by Marko who was speaking excitedly in French. Randy stepped up to the screen, "What's wrong Babe?" "Oh Randy," she blurted out! Randy looked around nervously and smiled an uncomfortable smile and covered the speakers with both hands. The use of his birth name always made him nervous, "Kate?" he asked. "She... she..." it was all she could manage to say. "She who Hon?" Randy asked now deeply troubled, his eyes were shadowed by the concern reflected there. "Eri... Eri" "Erin?" Randy spit out and Beth nodded her head in swift short jerks that made her look so much like her mother it was sometimes confusing to the brain. Were it not for her bright blond hair, Randy could easily have thought he was speaking to Michelle. "I want to go home." She pleaded. "I want to see my sister." "I'll be there in fifteen minutes to get us to Charles De Gaulle." Randy declared. "Really?" Beth asked in almost stunned disbelief. "We can go?" "Of course," Randy assured her tenderly. "Pack a few things, not much. Don't get hung up packing things we can get there, just the basics and a one or two things to wear." Randy made his point clear. "I'll take care of the Jump from this end. Marko can take care of the restaurant until we get back." Beth nodded her agreement but said nothing. "Hon?" Beth tried to say, "Yes?" but it came out as a strangled gurgle. "I'll be right there. We'll be in Pennsylvania in a couple of hours. Please try to relax OK?" Beth nodded she would try. Then the flood of tears came. Randy knew this was as much out of relief as it was for grief. He understood what Beth thought of their "exile" here, as she so often put it. Beth also knew it had kept them safe for years, kept her and her children safe and that he was, in most cases, unwilling to risk is wife's safety over some of the more nostalgic things his wife might abandon this "exile" for. He told her gently, "Go pack and I'll be right home." As an after thought, he reminded her to pack their travel documents. They wouldn't want to forget those. She assured him everything would be waiting for him to take to the Jump Port and disconnected to pack. "Marko?" Randy called. "Oui?" Marko answered coming from across the kitchen to see what his boss needed. "The kitchen is yours until further notice. I have to take Kate back home for a little while." Randy paused, then added, "I don't know when or if we'll be back." "If?" Marko asked surprised. "Yes, that's right. Marko, you're a dear friend, but I know that Kate is getting terribly homesick." "Oui, I have seen how sad she has been of late." Marko said sympathetically. "To tell the truth, I'm a bit homesick myself. Marko, I'm not sure yet, but I believe we're going to stay home when we get there." "I will miss you both." The two men embraced for a moment then broke. "Nine years is too..." Marko struggled for the word and then found it, "queek," Marko said in is broken marginal English, "It is not enough time to get to know a person. You have been a good friend to me Denny. I hope that whatever is wrong is queekly remedied. " Marko admitted. "Thank you Marko. Somehow I don't feel like it will be as simple as that. I have a bad feeling about what's happening." "I hope that is not the case my friend. I pray that is not true." Marko assured gripping Randy's shoulder's tightly. Randy reached up and patted Marko on the forearm. "Me too my friend, me too," Randy paused and then asked, "If you don't mind, please book us on the earliest Jump to Philadelphia." "Yes, yes..." Marko said moving for the WR. "You and your wife... Oh, don't forget your identification and your electronic passports. It would not do well for you to arrive in America and not be able to get in." "Already taken care of my friend, thanks," Randy answered, turned and was gone. Randy and Beth would return, one day to France, by then however, like so many others, the friends they were leaving behind would be long in their graves and mostly forgotten by the world. Randy often felt it was now their responsibility to remember those who had meant so much in a world with terminal short-term memory. They, and those like them had become the keepers of the living history of the world. They were the only ones left that could remember it first hand. The hour had turned melancholy all too quickly. This morning he had woken with the large French doors of their master bedroom open wide to the fresh cool breezes of the Paris morning. He had eased himself out of bed to go to the loo. When he returned he had found Beth there, propped up on one elbow watching him, a good portion of night time erection still present in spite of his morning watering, "Good morning handsome," he watched as she glanced down, "Is that for me?" Her smile had been bright and inviting so he had come back to bed. "Good morning," he had returned, kissing her gently. She smelled of lilac and was warm against the morning air. Her skin had felt luxurious against his and he couldn't help drawing her to him. Oh God how he loved her, still there were times when he felt guilt when they were so tightly entwined. It was a feeling his father-in-law could have empathized with readily. He often wondered if she thought about what life might have been if she had never become a woman. Randy did not dwell on this as Gary had for so many years. He was more grateful than guilt-filled. After a bit of sensual petting, they had made love to each other. Afterward, they had remained in each others arms for a time as the sun rose over the city as it started to waken below them. Life was slow and easy here, not lazy, not at all as most American thought of it. Work was a pleasure here because time was taken to enjoy life. A friend once told him some ninety years ago, "What are we working for if not to enjoy life and make life enjoyable for others?" They had been simple words on such a rudimentary yet, complex concept. Randy had taken the words and had used them as a foundation for living ever since. Beth had never been completely satisfied here. She hated the way they had to leave the city every so often. They would stay wit