Altered Fates: Agent Zulo free porn video

ALTERED FATES: AGENT ZULO by BobH (c) 2011 "Yes, baby, oh yes!!" I moaned, bending over the motel room desk as my partner took me from behind, grasping my hips and snorting as he rammed himself into me. Red-faced and breathing heavily, the effort seemed to be taking a lot out of him. Giving one last thrust that almost pushed me into the wall, he came with a final labored grunt. Having shot his load he pulled out of me and sat down heavily on the bed, sweating profusely. Salvatore 'Big Sal' Buscemi looked deeply tired, probably tireder than he usually did after banging a broad. "You OK?" I asked, concern in my voice. Sal could do with losing a few pounds and maybe exercising more regularly - well, *at all*, actually - but I suspected feeling this beat after sex was still a new experience for him. "Yeah, yeah, just gimme a minute," said Sal. "I just need to lie down for a few minutes, just need to catch my breath." He lay down on the bed, closed his eyes, and within minutes was asleep and snoring. And about time, too. I watched him for a few minutes, then went over and lifted one of his eyelids. Sal was unconscious. Nodding in satisfaction, I retrieved my purse and took out the disposible syringe I'd hidden in the lining. Removing the needle guard, I squirted a small amount out to clear any air- I didn't want to give Sal an embolism - then carefully injected it into a vein in his right bicep. It should keep him unconscious for at least fourteen hours, which would give me the time I needed to complete my task. The drug I'd put in his drink had put Sal to sleep as planned, but it required the sedative I'd injected to keep him out of the picture that long. Of course, the drug in his drink should have knocked him out before things got as far as sex. Having to fake an orgasm with a mobster had not been part of the plan. Still, I'd endured worse in the past, and would undoubtedly endure worse in the future. Stepping into the bathroom, I washed my face in the small wash basin, pausing to examine my reflection in the cracked mirror on the wall above it. The face that stared back at me was young and pretty, the skin chocolate brown, eyes large, lips full and sensuous. Yes, Naomi had definitely been the right choice, I mused. With Sal's well-known taste in hookers, a taste that had earned him the mocking nickname 'the coal- miner' among his associates - though it was one few would dare to utter in his hearing - Naomi had been irresistable to him. I absently stroked one of my full, round breasts, frowning as I tried to remember where I'd 'acquired' Naomi. Had it been in that clothes store in London, or the one in Paris? There had been so many 'acquisitions' down the years it was difficult to keep track. I didn't know who the real Naomi was, what her actual name might be, what she did for a living, or even how old she would be by now, but I hoped she was happy. And I was certainly glad the real Naomi had gotten her tubes tied. The last thing, the very last thing I needed was to get knocked up by Sal Buscemi. As I thought this, so the small wristwatch I was wearing began to vibrate. "Right on time," I murmured, resetting the alarm. It was the five minute warning, the margin I gave myself to prepare every twelve hours. Ordinarily I'd have needed Sal's clothes to trigger the change, whatever spoor they carried being something my strange, inexplicable ability could somehow key into, but they wouldn't be necessary now. No, I still had his semen inside me, a genetic sample that would work just as well. When the five minutes were up, I felt the familiar tingle as my power activated, latching on to the ejaculate within me, beginning its slow, steady reshaping of my very body. I smiled as my hands slowly changed, the slender fingers getting thicker and coarser, my dark flesh growing paler and weightier with each passing minute. Glancing at my reflection, I could see Sal's features slowly emerging from Naomi's as my hair grew shorter, thinner, and softer. Gaining and losing mass was always the weirdest part of these transformations, far weirder than simply shifting genders. Where did that mass come from or go to? As I grew in height so I also got heavier, my slender waist thickening until it had developed a distinct paunch. Also weird was seeing the change in my left pinky finger. Sal had lost most of his at some point, so I saw my full finger gradually become the mutilated stump that he had on that hand. The changes took the better part of thirty minutes, but when they were complete I was a dead ringer for Salvatore Buscemi, who still lay unconscious on the bed, completely oblivious to the doppelganger who now walked the Earth in his place. Dressing quickly in the other man's discarded clothes, I checked out my reflection, nodding approvingly before gathering up Naomi's things, opening the motel door and heading for a room three doors down. This was the one I'd checked into as Naomi, but it held more than just her effects. Entering the room, I locked the door behind me then pulled a sports bag from under the bed. From this I removed a transparent plastic ziplock pouch. Inside was a photo of Naomi, and on the back of it was written: 'Naomi: non-smoker, lactose-intolerant' I thrust Naomi's things into this pouch and placed it in the sports bag next to two identical pouches, each bearing a photo of someone else with its own information scrawled on the rear. This done, I pulled out three items: a man's wristwatch, a wallet, and a .45. Putting the gun and the wallet on the bedside table, I synchronized the watch with the woman's watch I was still wearing, set the alarm, then dropped the female watch into the bag and donned the male one. I could not afford to lose track of the time. Not ever. Opening the wallet, I riffled the stack of fresh bills in the back, then smiled at the ID in the front. Next to the photo of a blond, good- looking guy in his mid-twenties was a name: Adam Jones. It was the name I used most often when I was male. If everything went according to plan I wouldn't need to be him again within the next few days, but it never hurt to have a back-up plan. I still had ten hours to kill so I did what I usually did in these situations: I took a nap, my mind drifting back to yesterday and to the client meeting that had resulted in me being where I was now, and doing what I was about to do.... "Do you believe in objective morality, Mr Jones?" asked the man seated before me, fixing me with a gaze that was still piercing despite his current infirmity. Thomas Lucan was in his early-seventies, his hair silver-grey, his eyes steely blue. A big man brought low by emphysema, the tube running from his nose to the nearby oxygen tank did not detract from the aura of controlled menace he radiated. This was someone comfortable with violence and who gave every sign of having been very good at delivering it in his prime. "If you want to debate philosophy," I said, "there are cheaper ways to go than paying my rates. I'm a private investigator, not a philosopher." "Humor me," said Lucan, smiling the smile of a shark. "I like to take the measure of a man before I employ his services." "OK, why not?" I said, shrugging. "If you're asking me whether I believe in right and wrong then, yeah, I guess I do." "Really? And you think you can tell them apart, can tell who the good guys and the bad guys are in a given situation." "If I have all the facts then yeah, I guess I do," I said. "All the facts," smiled Lucan, "ah, there's the rub! Sometimes we have to form a view based on such facts as we do have, however incomplete. Often, we have to act on that view. Tell me, what is your view of slavery?" "Like most people, I think it was a bad thing," I said, wondering where he was going with this. "Interesting use of the past tense," smiled Lucan. "And how would you describe the African slave trade?" "As a period of several centuries during which European slavers took captured blacks from Africa to the Americas, mostly to work on plantations," I said. "And what about the King of Dahomey?" he asked. "What about him?" I replied. "I don't even know where Dahomey is." "West Africa," said Lucan. "These days it's known as Benin. Back then it was one of the major centers of the slave trade. If you wanted to join in that trade you first had to present your credentials to the King. If he took against you for any reason, you didn't get in. And given the way that Europeans dropped like flies from all manner of tropical diseases when they ventured into the African interior, diseases the locals were mainly immune to, the only people capable of acquiring others for sale on raids into the interior were the Dahomeyans and people like them. At its height, Dahomey was as prosperous as many contemporary European states, it's economy built almost entirely on the slave trade. So, it looks like black Africans were both slavers and slaves." "Yeah, but the trade was all one way," I said. "Millions of white Europeans weren't sold into slavery in Africa." "Wrong again," laughed Lucan, his laugh giving way to a wheezing cough. He sipped a glass of water before continuing. "It's been estimated that between 1520 and 1780 about one and a quarter million Europeans were sold into slavery in the slave markets of North Africa. They were captured by the Barbary pirates, who operated out of North Africa, during raids on European coastal villages. They usually took the whole population and left the villages deserted. We tend to think of Elizabethan England as the contemporary naval superpower, but that wasn't the case in the early years of Good Queen Bess' reign. No, back then the Barbary pirates were able to raid the coasts of England and Ireland pretty much with impunity, though it was Spain and Italy that bore the brunt of their depradations. It's kind of surprising this story isn't more widely known, but there you go." "So you're arguing that there's plenty of blame to go around?" "I would never argue such a thing," said Lucan, looking serious now. "Blame doesn't enter into it. The strong prey on the weak. It's been that way for millions of years. Applying abstract concepts of good and evil to such a situation is absurd. You're either predator or prey, and in the end which you are is all that counts. Anyone who imagines the slave trade has gone away, or ever will is an idiot. Women from Eastern Europe and the Far East are being trafficked into the West everyday and forced into slavery in the sex trade in almost every major city. The trade in slaves from West Africa never stopped either. These days it's West African children who are being bought and sold and made to work on chocolate plantations. If you eat chocolate, you're almost certainly helping support their continued subjugation. Me, I love chocolate." "Have you ever trafficked in people?" I asked, eyes narrowing. I had decided I did not like this man. "No," he said, "but not because of any moral qualms. The situation just never arose. I can see that you're shocked, though you hide it well. Which tells me what I wanted to know. I'm disappointed. I would have expected a more realistic attitude from someone who has killed in cold blood." "W..what?" I said. "There's little point you denying it," he smiled. "I was there. With my own eyes, I've seen you kill." It was no good. I couldn't sleep. Sighing, I swung my legs over the side of the bed and stared at the walls of the motel room. Allowing my encounter with Lucan to run over and over again in my head was not conducive to sleep. And now, thanks to his next revelation - the real bombshell - I was about to kill a man for him. Taking the .45 from the bedside table, I quickly disassembled it and then pulled out the maintenance kit from my sports bag. There was something soothing about cleaning and oiling a firearm, something calmly satisfying about breaking it down and then reassembling it. Keeping your hands busy, losing yourself in simple but necessary mechanical action had much to commend it. I took my time over the task, but there was a limit to how slow I could be, and to how much time it could eat up. Once the task was complete, I lay back down on the bed and stared at the ceiling, my mind drifting back to Lucan's big revelation. "I know what you are and what you can do," he said, looking at me appraisingly. "I don't know what you mean," I said, deeply uneasy at where the conversation was going. "Let's not play that game," he sighed. "You have the rather astonishing ability to take on another's form, either by touching clothes worn by them, in which case you become their twin, or by touching their flesh, in which case you and they swap forms. These transformations take about thirty minutes and, once changed, it's twelve hours before you can use your power again. Being either knocked up or on the rag blocks your power. Having once witnessed one of these transformations, I know how impressive it is. Which means I have something you want." "And what would that be?" I asked, heart racing, my voice thick. "Information," he said, eyeing me shrewdly. "Since you came to my attention, and I realized you had to be the same man I had worked with all those years ago, I've been watching you closely. That's how I figured out that you don't remember your past, that somewhere along the line you lost your memory, probably as the result of another aspect of your power. A touch is enough to trigger a physical transformation, but longer contact also causes you to take on some of the personality and memories of the original. Presumably, a long enough contact could overwrite your personality and memories entirely. It could leave you believing you were that other person." Reluctantly, I told him the story. "There was an accident. The car I was driving went off the road, down an embankment, and crashed in among the trees at the bottom. No one saw the crash, and the car lay there undiscovered for hours. For the first nine to ten hours of that time the other person and I were unconscious, our flesh in contact. I woke first, puzzled as to how I was now in the passenger seat and why we were wearing each others clothes. I remembered driving and offering a ride to a hitcher. At that point I had no idea that I had been the driver and he the hitcher that my powers had switched us, or even that I had those powers. That came later. I had to figure out all those things about my powers that you just told me. There was no relationship of any sort between driver and hitcher, and I was unable to question him later, so I lost the connection to my past." "Interesting," said Lucan. "I can fill in some of the gaps for you, and even give you some pointers as to where you must have got that power of yours, but first you have to do a couple of things for me, of course." "Of course," I replied coldly, "and just what might those things be?" Lucan picked up a cigar tube, opened it, and let the cigar slide out into his hand. "One of life's supreme pleasures," he said, rolling it under his nose appreciatively, "but, on doctor's orders, this is all the enjoyment I'm allowed to get from a cigar. At least for now." He stared at me significantly. "I understand," I said. "What's the second thing?" The second thing, I smiled to myself as I finally drifted off to sleep in the chair of my motel room back in the present, was what I was doing now, of course. It was early the morning of the next day, almost ten-and-a-half hours after I'd assumed Sal Buscemi's form that I entered Luigi's Deli in Brooklyn. 'Junior' Grazini, heir-apparent of the Grazini crime family, was eating breakfast at a rear table as he did almost every morning. That sort of routine wasn't a good idea for a man with enemies, but there hadn't been a gang war in New York in years and Carmine Junior probably thought all his father's enemies were dead. He was wrong. "Ah, Salvatore!" smiled Junior as I entered, beckoning me over to his table. "Come join me." I nodded to a goon sitting at a nearby table, who returned my nod, assuming me to be the real Sal, just as his boss had. Only one bodyguard? Young Junior was being dangerously complacent. As I walked over to his table I reached into my jacket. In one swift movement I pulled out the .45, shot the goon before he could react, and levelled the gun at Junior. His face just had time to register his shock before I plugged him too. A single shot, between the eyes. Pausing only to confirm both men were dead, I placed the gun on the floor and stepped out of the Deli, heading calmly for the nearby subway station. Wisely, the staff at Luigi's had all dived for cover when the shooting started. None of them made any attempt to stop me. I boarded the A-train and took a seat, marvelling at how unperturbed I was at what I'd just done. Maybe Lucan was right. Maybe I was someone born to kill. Or maybe this was just long-buried instincts returning, an ability to stay calm and clear-headed whatever the situation. I got off the subway at Washington Heights, picked Sal's car up from where I'd parked it, crossed University Heights Bridge into the Bronx, then headed north to the motel. I stopped at gas stations and ATMs on the way that I knew had good security camera coverage and made sure I was was noticed. I wanted to make it easy for the cops to find Sal Buscemi. Back at the motel, I retrieved the sports bag from Naomi's room, took out some newspaper clippings, which I placed on the bedside table, then went over to the window. I was hoping one of the other guests would walk by. As luck would have it, the owner himself chose that moment to come out of his office. Perfect. "'Morning!" I said, waving cheerily to him as I exited the room. He waved back uncertainly - he knew who Sal Buscemi was and probably wasn't used to mobsters greeting him - and, as intended, he watched as I went to Sal's room. Sal was where I'd left him, still slumbering on the bed. As I was checking his pulse, my wristwatch started to vibrate. The five-minute alarm. I'd timed this to perfection. Quickly getting out of Sal's clothes, I opened the sports bag and took out another of the ziplock bags within. I unzipped it and thrust my hand into the clothing it contained. A few seconds later I felt the familiar tingling. The twelve hours were up. My power was active again and locking onto the spoor on the garments. On top of the clothes was a photo of a well-built, dark- haired, intense looking man in his early thirties. He was a handsome guy and, my body now shifting and changing, I watched in the bathroom mirror as his features slowly emerged from Sal Buscemi's. I never tired of seeing my face alter like this during these bodily transformations. It was an inherently wondrous and fascinating process. Once it was done, I quickly dressed, then went to the bathroom and poured myself a glass of water. I drank half, then placed it on Sal's bedside table, my fingerprints clearly visible on the glass. Going over to the window, I slightly parted the curtains, and took in the scene outside. When I left the room this time I did not want to be observed. I watched for a while, saw the owner go around the back of one of the buildings on his daily round, then quickly slipped out. I crossed the highway to the diner on the opposite side, where I had parked my own hire car earlier. Throwing my sports bag in the trunk, I then went in the diner. I settled down at a table giving a good view of the motel and ordered a late breakfast. Doing this stuff always made me hungry. Two hours later, as I was lingering over my second pot of coffee, the cops arrived. There were regular cops in kevlar vests, SWAT teams, and even a helicoptor buzzing overhead. It was all very impressive. Sal came out, hands on his head as ordered by the officer with the bullhorn, looking completely bewildered. He was pushed to his knees, his hands cuffed behind him, then led away to a paddy wagon, red-faced with suppressed fury. He offered no resistence as they pushed him inside. When the show was over and the forensics guys moved in, I folded my newspaper away, paid my tab, and headed out. It was time to finish this. * Lucan opened the door to his hotel room, oxygen tank on what looked like a golf-bag trolley, the tube still snaking up his nose. He looked me up and down approvingly. "Nice," he said, "very nice. Looks even better than the photos you showed me. And good work on the hit. "I've been following the news reports on TV." "So why'd you want Junior whacked and Big Sal framed for it?" I asked. "I didn't," he chuckled. "I could care less about either of those goombahs." "Then why...?" "It was a favour for some powerful people. And no, I don't know why they wanted it done. I didn't ask and I don't care. What matters is that they now owe me, and having people that powerful owing you can be very useful. It's the best currency there is." I shrugged. "OK, I guess. It's not as if Junior and Big Sal didn't deserve worse." "There you go with that 'deserve' crap again," sighed Lucan. "'Deserve' doesn't enter into it. They were predators who got eaten by bigger predators. That's just nature at work." He poured himself a glass of water and eyed me appraisingly as I sat down in an armchair. "How long 'til we can do it?" he asked. "About two hours," I said. "Plenty of time for you to tell me what you know." "Fair enough." With some effort, he sat back down on his bed. When his wheezing was under control he began his tale. "It was 1961, a secret camp down in the Florida keys, one financed by Sam Giancana and the mob, who were mightily pissed at being kicked out of Cuba by Castro when he overthrew Batista. Me and my buddy Mario were training groups of exiles and equipping them for the invasion to retake Cuba, which eventually became that clusterfuck at the Bay of Pigs. The CIA knew all about it, of course, but what with the mob connection they had to keep their involvement at arms length, give themselves 'plausible deniability' in case the whole thing ever went public. That's where me and Mario came in. we were 'independent contractors', professionals who weren't 'on the books' and who were often called in when the government wanted something shady done." "Did that heppen often?" "All the time. We were hardly ever out of work, no matter who was in power. Governments always need people like us. The Democrats usually fretted about it more, but they still used us and people like us to do their dirty work. So, anyway, this one time we found out we had a spy in the camp, a guy named Humberto Ramos. Not surprising, really. Castro was a smart cookie, so of course he was going to have spies among the exiles. We got word to the CIA, and they told us to get the name of his handler out of him without physically damaging him and to await further instructions." "Without physically damaging him? Were they squemish about torture back then?" "No. They weren't as open about it as they are today when hardly anyone seems to care what they do, but they had no problem with it. The thing is, torture is actually really stupid. People will tell you anything you want to hear to make the torture stop, so what you get out of them usually isn't worth shit. Good cop/bad cop, with the implied threat of torture is usually much more effective. Set their own imagination running and they'll do your work for you. Long story short, we had the name of his handler within hours of starting in on him. Two days later, three spooks showed up: two standard issue intelligence types with their regulation grey flannel suits and Marine hair-cuts, and this really hot Latina chick. That was you." "So you're saying that's who I really am?" "Hardly!" he snorted. "Y'know, I'm still not entirely sure why were allowed to watch when we took you all to the room where we were holding Ramos prisoner." "Why - what happened in there?" "You touched his cheek. It was real gentle, but he jerked back like he'd been struck. You and the spooks then just stood back against the wall, watching him and smiling these knowing little smiles. Ramos was in his chair, hands hancuffed behind him, dressed only in his boxers as ordered, starting to freak. Mario and I were completely bewildered, wondering what the fuck was going on. Then we saw it. You're not sure you're seeing what you are at first, but after a few minutes you can't deny the evidence of your own eyes. Ramos was slowly turning into the hot chick, and the chick was slowly turning into him. Weirdest damn thing I ever saw. It takes about half an hour for the change to run its course, and when it was done Ramos was now the chick and sitting there in just a pair of boxers. We forced him...forced *her* into the Latina's bra, panties, dress and heels - not that it took much force, actually. She was sitting there with her newly acquired and frankly magnificent rack on display and being ogled by the guys, so she couldn't get covered up fast enough. While that was happening, you'd put on the clothes we took off Ramos before you got there." "So what was it all about?" "I'm getting to that. So anyway, you and the spooks lead the chick out to your car and the spook in charge tells us to follow in our car, which we do. We drive out to the Everglades and down one of the minor roads. We stop near a road marker and the spooks get out, open the trunk of their car, and take out a cine-camera. They tell us to stand back and one of them points the camera at their car and yells "Action!". You then drag the chick out of the car and right over to the camera so that camera-spook can get a close-up of your faces. You then drag her back over to the car, take out a gun, and shoot her in the head. Her body falls into the open trunk, whereupon you slam it shut and push the car off the road and into the swamp. Camera-spook keeps filming until the car is sucked under. After that we drive you all back to town - our car was why you needed us to follow you. On the way, camera-spook removes the film, puts it in a cannister and hands it to me along with a piece of paper. "Get this developed," he says. "Then drop copies off anonymously to the police and to the address on the paper." When we got back to town we dropped them off and that was the last we saw of them." "What happened with the film?" I asked. "Film of a murder isn't the kind of thing you can just take into your local drugstore to get developed, so that took a bit of setting up. When we had two prints we dropped them off as instructed, to the police and to the offices of Miami's leading anti-Castro newspaper. What followed after that was an interesting lesson in how power works. In Miami at that time lived a respected and powerful member of the Cuban-American community named Elian Ramirez. He was in favor of negotiating with Castro and trying to achieve some sort of peaceful accord, and though it seems incredible now he was not without influence. This was only a few years after the Cuban revolution and attitudes hadn't yet hardened into the fixed positions of today. Needless to say, there were powerful interests who wanted him out of the way, but they also didn't want to make a martyr of him. Though he and his wife had seemed very happy together, it turned out she had recently gone to the police to say that he was beating her and that she was afraid if she tried to leave him he would have her killed. She insisted they film her statement in fact, just in case anything should happen to her. Guess what?" "That was me," I said, realization dawning. "I took her place and filed that complaint." "That's what I figure, too." "And the film you delivered apparently showed her being murdered by someone who, I assume, was quickly revealed to be an agent of Castro." "Exactly. The road marker on the film showed where the murder had taken place so the police soon found the body. With everything that came out in the press after that, everyone assumed that Ramirez was in bed with Castro and that he had turned to Fidel for someone to get rid of his wife for him. Nothing could be proved, of course, but it was enough to ruin his reputation. A few months after that Ramirez died in a car crash. And, no, I don't think it was an accident. Not that any one cared by then, of course." "What do you think happened to the real Mrs Ramirez?" I asked. "Given how your power works you probably pulled a switch with her leaving her looking like whoever you did going in. What happened to her after that is anyone's guess." "And you and your partner Mario? Where's he now?" "Dead," said Lucan, looking wistful. "He was shanked by a prostitute in a Saigon whorehouse a few years later. The two of us had a great gog disposing of people for the Thieu regime in South Vietnam. It was a CIA referral, of course, and it was a sweet number. We had our own chopper right there in Saigon Airport. An army truck would deliver whoever that day's undesirables were and we'd fly them out over the South China Sea. They were delivered to us with their hands tied behind them, of course, so while I flew the chopper, Mario would tie a lump of stone to their feet and we'd push them out from a coupla hundred feet up. They'd usually scream all the way down. Great times!" He actually sounded nostalgic. For the next two hours Lucan regaled me with similarly repellant tales from his past. It was a relief when my wristwatch finally started vibrating. "It's time," I said. "First the transfer, then the information." "OK," I sighed, "let's get this done." I held out my hand, he clasped it, and as we touched there was an instant jolt, like a static shock. It had begun. "So that's what it feels like," said Lucan, staring at his hand in wonder. "Not to be rude, or anything, but I'm soon going to need the same equipment you have here to breathe so I can't hang around." "Of course," he said, fishing a flash drive from his pocket and handing it to me. Taking it from him, I immediately turned on my heel and headed for the door. "Enjoy your new life," I told him, then I was gone. I had prepared everything in advance, of course. The storage center was an eight minute drive from Lucan's hotel. By minute ten, I was closing the up-and-over door of the hired unit behind me before flopping down in the chair. Next to the chair was an overnight bag and the oxygen bottle and mask I'd soon need, while on the picnic table in front of it was a phone, a ziplock bag, and a laptop. The first thing I needed to do, before I got too short of breath, was make a very important anonymous phone call. "Hello," I said, "is that the police...? Good. I'm calling about the arrest of Salvatore Buscemi and the fingerprints your CSIs will have found on a glass in his room. By now you will have identified it as the same prints found last year at the scenes of the murders of several prositutes. No, I won't give my name, nor will I tell you how I knew about the glass, but I will tell you where that man is now. If you move fast enough you'll find him in room fourteen of the Peacock Motel, just north of...." As soon as I'd given the address, I cut the call off and smiled. The clippings I'd left in Naomi's room would have helped them make the connection to the murdered prostitutes. As for Lucan, he probably thought his revelation I had killed someone would come as a surprise to me, but it didn't. I already knew I was a killer. I had killed the man whose form I had given Lucan. Not that I'd intended to kill him. I had been investigating another case entirely, but the two had intersected I stumbled upon the creep in the act of trying to kill another prostitute. I startled him enough that his would-be victim was able to flee. Then he attacked me. It was self-defense, but I killed him. At first, I was going to drop a dime to the cops, then it occurred to me that if I disposed of the body his identity could come in useful in future. And now it had. My breathing was getting extremely labored and I was feeling the weight of Lucan's years, so I slid the oxygen tube up my nose, taped it in place, and settled back into my chair. I hated being old and infirm, but it would only be for twelve hours. I needed to stay calm and not leave the chair until it was time to change again. Having made myself comfortable, I plugged the flash drive into the laptop and opened its only contents, a video file. It showed Lucan sitting in the same motel room we'd met in. It had presumably been recorded while I was carrying out my hit on Junior. "OK, let's do this," said Lucan. "I've only got a couple of things to tell you, but they should start you on your way. The first is that in New York back in 1993 I carried out a robbery for a woman named Loretta Stark. She paid me to steal some cheap-looking medallion for her but warned me not to let it get in contact with my bare skin. The money was good, so I did as she asked. Afterwards, however, I got to wondering about that medallion. I'd taken a photo of it of course, so I took that with me to the library - this was in the days before the web - and spent a few hours researching to see if I could find out more about it. And I did. It's called Medallion of Zulo. Google it. That's the first thing. As for the second.... When you get here I'm going to tell you about our first encounter down in Florida in 1961. What I'm not going to tell you is that I heard one of the spooks you were with refer to you as Agent Z. And that's it; that's all I got." With that Lucan reached forward and switched off his videocamera, and the screen went blank. What he had given would prove to be plenty. Opening my browser, I typed in "Medallion of Zulo". What I found sent a chill down my spine: THE MEDALLION OF ZULO According to legend, the Medallion of Zulo was created in West Africa by a small tribe who used it to transform every one of its members into doppelgangers of their strongest warrior when going into battle against larger and more powerful tribes. The medallion eventually found its way to the Americas, probably aboard a slave ship, and encounters with it have been reported from almost every part of the country in the years since then. Physically, the medallion is a bronze disk -sometimes mistaken for gold - with an image of some sort of angel or fairy on the face (it has been suggested this is a depiction of Zulo himself, who is assumed to be some sort of local deity of the tribe that forged the medallion), and marks that have often been taken for writing on the rear side (see drawings below). It hangs from a chain, one which may have been repaired or even replaced many times over the centuries. Two people touching the Medallion at the same time will cause them to switch bodies. Touching a garment worn by someone else to the medallion will cause the wearer to transform into a physical copy of that person. Transformations typically take in the order of thirty minutes to complete. Once transformed, the medallion will not work on that person again until twelve hours have elapsed. It will also not work on anyone who is either pregnant or menstruating. The Medallion of Zulo is a powerful instrument of fate, and as such it cannot be held by anyone indefinitely. Sooner or later, fate intervenes to make sure it gets back into circulation, altering fates and changing lives, often irrevocably. That was an exact description of my abilities, the same ones apparently possessed by a mystic medallion alleged to be centuries old. How was that possible? The implications were staggering. I sat there for a while, letting the full impact of this revelation sink in, then I came to a decision. Whatever the truth of the matter, finding that medallion - if, as seemed likely to me, it existed - was now my number one priority. Somehow or other, it held the key to who I was and how I got to be this way. Then there was Lucan's other revelation, which was no revelation at all I've always known I was once Agent Z. Lucan wasn't the only one who had kept something back. What I'd told him about the car crash was only partially true. I thought back to it now, but because of what had happened my memories of those events were not my own but those of the driver who had given me a lift.... He'd gone rogue, they had told the half-dozen of us carefully chosen for the FBI briefing, a fellow agent who was now on his way to commit a terrorist act. He was extremely dangerous and should only be approached with the utmost caution. What was worse, he had the ability to steal another person's shape and even their memories just by touching them. Later, in my car, reviewing everything we'd been told about this 'Agent Z', that seemed the most incredible of all. I had to believe the briefing was deadly serious, of course, but such a thing sounded ludicrous, impossible, like some of that old X-files shit I'd heard about. Of course, the X-files had been closed down several years ago . Rumor was that something called Fringe Division had taken its place, but if so why hadn't they been put on this case? Probably some b.s. interdepartmental turf war. I was driving south along the main highway in the area where Agent Z had last been sighted, when I saw the hitcher, his thumb out. My stomach lurched. It was him! If he had the abilities we'd been told it was really careless of him to still look the same as he did in the briefing photo, but I wasn't complaining. I phoned in my location, told my superiors what I was about to do and that they needed to be waiting for me at junction 17, then broke the connection before they could order me to lay back and wait for back-up. An arrest like this would make my career. My car rolled to a stop next to him. "Where are you headed?" I asked, lowering my passenger-side window. "South," he said, leaning in and giving me a small smile, "I'm heading south." "Then you're in luck," I said, "because that's where I'm going. Stow your rucksack in the back and get in." He did as I'd suggested, placing the rucksack carefully on the rear seat then climbing into the seat next to mine. He looked to be in his early twenties, was taller than me, slim and had sandy brown hair. He also had the oldest eyes I've ever seen on anyone. "Thanks," he said as we pulled away from the curb. I checked in both directions but for some reason there were very few cars about this morning. "Had your thumb out for long?" I asked, making small talk to keep him from noticing how nervous I was. I'd never had a terrorist in my car before. "Only about twenty minutes," he said, shrugging. "My last ride turned off at the previous junction so I walked down to what seemed like a better pick-up point. Not that there are a lot of cars around today." "Mind if I turn the radio on?" I asked. "It's your car, though I hope you're not going to make me listen to rap." "Hardly," I chuckled leaning down to hit the on button, "I'm more of a country music fan." I saw him suddenly stiffen, and I instantly knew why. My badge. When I leaned down he had seen my fucking badge! I straightened up, already drawing my weapon as I did so. I was fast, but he was faster. He grabbed my wrist before I could get my gun out. Our struggle only lasted a few seconds, but that was long enough. Long enough for me to lose control of the car, long enough to change both our lives forever. Unfortunately we were on a bend and there were no other cars around us. Even more unfortunately, we left the road at a point where a section of crash barrier was missing, sailing out into the air then crashing down the slope, totally out of control. I cried out as I saw the trees at the bottom rushing towards us. Then we smashed into them and I knew no more. We'd come off the road late-morning. When I came to, it was getting dark. I groaned, and went to put my left hand to my throbbing head but it was stuck to something. Looking down I could see it was held to my passenger's arm by congealed blood that had pooled and joined us at the wrists. Only as I peeled it away did I finally register something was wrong. Somehow, the hitcher was now in the driving seat and wearing my clothes, while I was in the passenger seat wearing his. What the fuck? Why would he do that? But no, that made no sense. I touched his neck, feeling a pulse. He was alive but still out cold. Then had someone else come by, taken us from the car swapped our clothes, put us back each other's seats, then wandered off and left us? It was ludicrous, but it was the only explanation. Or was it? A tree branch had come in through the windshield and into the floor between us. It had grazed his arm, hence the blood that had pooled around our wrists, but we were both lucky it had otherwise missed us and we were still alive. However, it had gone in between my him and the clasp of his seatbelt. Examining it carefully I could see it would be physically impossible to remove him from the driver's seat without first cutting the belt. The belt was intact. The only way that was possible was if he had been in the driving seat when we went off the road. Only he hadn't been; I had. Then I remembered how his ability was supposed to work, and my stomach lurched as the penny finally dropped. We had been unconscious for hours and our flesh had been in contact all that time. If his power was active it could have physically altered us, made each of us a copy of the other, and that long a contact could mean he had taken far more than just surface attributes from my mind. His mind could in fact have been entirely overwritten by mine. Which would mean that despite what I felt or believed, I was in fact him, the terrorist shapeshifter. How long I sat their in stunned silence, absorbing the full enormous implications of what this meant for me, for my future, I do not know, but eventually I came to a decision. Whoever I had been before my mind was now that of that FBI agent and the right thing to do was to turn myself in. Having made up my mind, I clambered out of the car, steadying myself momentarily against the side, and tugging up my trousers, which like all the clothes I was now wearing were way too big for me. I then opened the rear passenger door and pulled out the rucksack. Inside was a bomb. It was primed and ready to go off. I examined it gingerly, before very carefully closing the rucksack and opening its side pocket. In here was the radio detonator device. I slipped this in my own jacket pocket then started making my way up the embankment to the road where I hoped to flag down a car. I ewas still too steady to climb up that steep a slope in a straight line so I took off at an angle. That, and the fact that the twilight had by now become almost full darkness are what saved my life. I heard the car stop on the road above where we'd crashed, heard two men get out, and was close enough to overhear their conversation. "Over here! It looks like we finally found it!" said one. "About fucking time," said his companion. "And it looks like we found it before those FBI fucks." I had been about to call out to them, but not after those words. Who were these guys? With flashlights, they made their way down the embankment and over to the car. "Only one passenger," said first guy, "still alive, but look at the clothes he's wearing." "Fuck that means our boy has pulled a switch and is in the wind," said second guy, sounding really pissed. "Yeah, but there's an FBI photo ID here shows what he looks like now, says this here is Agent Horvik." "Then since we were ordered to eliminate anyone who had direct contact with Agent Z I guess it's goodbye Agent Horvik," said second guy, pulling out his gun and firing two shots through the shattered windshield. "I don't know what the brass were thinking involving the FBI in this in the first place," said first guy, sounding entirely unconcerned about the cold-blooded murder he had just witnessed. The brass. So whoever they worked for they were official. There are moments in everyone's life when they realise with absolute clarity what they have to do next, regardless of the consequences. This was one of those moments. Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out the radio detonator control and turned it on. Without a moment's hesitation, I then flipped open the safety cover and pressed the button beneath. The explosion was much bigger than I'd expected. It blew the car - and the killers - to pieces, setting fire to the trees around over a large radius. Fortunately, I was far enough away and shielded by the curve of the embankment not to be caught in the blast. Also fortunate was that by the light of the flames I was able to find the keys to the killers' car and get away before anyone else showed up. Back in the present, sitting in that storage unit and wheezing through each painful breath, I wondered again at who I really was and what I'd been intending to do that fateful day. I had been carrying a bomb, one primed and ready to set off. That meant I had a target and was intending to set it off, but *what* target? Was I the terrorist the feds were told I was, or was something else going on? I had no way of knowing, and the not-knowing was maddening. Rather than go around in circles with it again as I had so many times in the past, I put it from my mind and turned my attention to other matters. I had over eleven hours to kill before I could switch again, but this time I didn't spend any of it sleeping. No, as well as hunting down every scrap of information there was on the web about the Medallion of Zulo, I also kept an eye on the various news feeds and, eventually, news of the arrest of Thomas Lucan came in. I couldn't help chuckling as I imagined the look on his face when he was charged with the murder of those prostitutes, as he would be. Take *that*, you bastard! If he truly believed all that predator/prey stuff he'd spouted then I'd just proven to him which one he was and which one I was. Five minutes before my time was up the silent alarm went off and my wristwatch started to vibrate. Every twelve hours, regardless of where I was or who I was with, my power turned itself on. Whatever garment or person I then touched would trigger a transformation. I opened the ziploc bag on the table. Inside were two plastic tubes with different colored stoppers, each containing a strip of fabric from garments I had worn several days apart and each slightly wider and shorter than an average adult finger. Using these I could stay the same person, the person I had chosen to be the 'real' me, by alternating between them every twelve hours and thus transforming myself into a slightly older or slightly younger version of myself. No one noticed the difference and it enabled me to live a normal life. Well, when I wasn't working as a private investigator in my 'Adam Jones' identity, that is. The familiar slight tingle rippled through my body. It was time. I opened the red-capped tube and slid my finger inside, feeling the expected static-like jolt travel up my arm and spread through the rest of me. It had begun. Over the next thirty minutes or so I watched in satisfaction as my flesh grew younger, firmer, sighed in relief as my breathing grew easy and I was able to remove the oxygen tube from my nose. I was being reborn and I felt a new vigour as my DNA rewrote itself and the energy of youth surged through my being. Lucan' grey buzz-cut grew longer, darker, and cascaded down over my shoulders as they gre narrower and my hips widened. With my now slender fingers I caressed the breasts growing from my chest and sighed in satisfaction. After too many days away I was finally back! I had missed me. I might not know who I had been originally, even whether I'd been male or female, but I was a woman now. My base identity was that of the person whose mind had overwritten my own, of Sandra Horvik. I could convincingly pass as male, but I preffered being female. Opening the overnight bag, I took out the clothes within. I quickly donned the simple bra and panties, slipped on the blouse and skirt-suit, and studied my face in my make-up kit mirror. I was beautiful, of course, and young. When you can choose to look like anyone, naturally you're going to choose to be young, healthy, and gorgeous. My name was Eve Rogers, and I had acquired this form on a trip to London. I had no idea what the name of the woman who used the same Chelsea gymnasium as me was, but as soon as I saw her I knew that she was who I wanted to look like. It was a simple matter to steal an item of clothing from her locker and, when I got back to the States, to set up my Eve Rogers identity. I loved make-up, but applying it properly took time and I needed to get away from here. Reluctantly, I packed my cosmetics away in the overnight bag along with my laptop and my male clothing. I would leave the oxygen tank, chair and table for whoever came to clear out the unit when my hire fee on it expired. I then made three phone calls. The first was to the car hire company. I'd parked their car several streets away, put the key under the seat, and walked the rest of the way to the storage unit. I told them where the car was and to send someone to collect it. Yes, I would lose my deposit, but the car would have shown up on some of the security footage the police would be reviewing and I didn't want it traced back to me. My second call was for a cab to come and get me. My third was to my boyfriend, John Melman. He worked some kind of government job that took him out of town for long periods so we couldn't hook up as often as we'd both like to. I hoped he was in town now. To my joy he was, and we arranged to meet up at his place as soon as he got off work. As a woman I had certain...needs, and what I needed now, what I was almost aching for was to have him making love to me. John was getting lucky tonight, very lucky. And he did. The End. ************************ Note: When I finished my first arc of Altered Fates stories with Altered Fates: Project Zulo, I used that story to set up a whole slew of things I was going to pick up in later stories. Here, after many a month, is the first of those stories, begun about four years ago and now completed as part of my New Year's resolution to get out some of the unfinished tales on my hard drive. You don't need to have read my earlier tales to appreciate this one, but you'll get more from it, realise the deeper significance of some of the stuff in it, if you have. For those of you who haven't read 'Altered Fates: Project Zulo' or have no interest in doing so, here's a reprint of Thomas Lucan's brief appearance therein: ************************* INTERLUDE: New York City - 1993 "It's a long time since I last held the Medallion of Zulo in my hands," said Loretta Stark, holding it by the chain and at arm's length. "I assume you followed my instructions about not letting it come into contact with your bare skin?" "Of course," said the grizzled fiftysomething man sitting across the table from her, sounding affronted. "I'm a professional." "I'm didn't mean to suggest you weren't, Mr Lucan," said Loretta. "Did you encounter any problems?" "None at all. Getting into Damon Kelly's penthouse apartment on top of that fancy clinic of his was a piece of cake, and I was so quiet blowing his safe open he slept through the whole thing in the next room." "Excellent!" said Loretta, sliding a thick envelope across the table to him. Lucan picked up the envelope, riffled through the wads of non-sequential hundred dollar bills it contained, then got to his feet. "A pleasure doing business with you," he grinned. "Any time you need any other extra-legal jobs done, up to and including wetwork, you know how to reach me." "I do," said Loretta, "but I can't imagine ever needing any 'wetwork' done. Good day, Mr Lucan." When Lucan had left, Loretta picked up the medallion again and looked at it thoughtfully. ************************* To those of you interested in reading my first Altered Fates sequence, a set of mostly standalone stories that come together to form a sprawling, multi-generational epic - seriously - here is their correct reading order: 1) I Was a Stranger at My Own Wedding 2) A Quick Study 3) The Experiment 4) X-Files: The Scam 5) G.I. Blues 6) The X-File 7) Tempest 8) The Bitter Bridegroom 9) The X-File Reopened 10) Triptych 11) Return to Kennet Cove 12) The Cult 13) Project Zulo 14) Postscript This is not the order in which they were either written or posted.