Agent John Smith

I watch through the mindspy link as the man walks over and opens the door to see my proxy… and then I see him properly: An agent John Smith, another one of those identical meat mountain things the Adam in my head refers to as a modified flesh golem.

He pauses when he sees my proxy, “Your dossier says you do tulpas, and has a picture of this one at this point.”

I answer verbally from beside Decoy, “Yeah. That’s because I’m hard to see if I don’t do such things. Would you prefer to be speaking to thin air, and be on the tapes as opening a door for nobody?”

“Hmm. I see your point, Dan…” he looks around, and settles his eyes on my minion, “Better for the cameras if I look like I’m fooled,” curiously, I don’t hear dice in my head… odd, why isn’t my Sense Motive tingling? “Why do I only hear you in one ear?”

Ah, that’s how the ring reconciles ‘can’t be located’ with deliberate noise, “It stops you from telling where I am by the sound of my voice. I can’t shut it off.” I hear dice in my head at that… right, I could remove the ring… the copy of the ring, rather. Hmm… I went with Flexible Bond so I could keep friends and family from staying dead easily, but if copies work… well… that’s for later.

“I see. Well, we don’t need to know where you are to kill you. Come in, buddy.” He steps aside, showing me the room I saw earlier - basically a small meeting room and a few offices attached to the warehouse, with a big window into the warehouse proper.

I briefly wonder why the glass exists, then notice the room is warm, and there aren't any vents in the main warehouse… ah, temperature control. I step in, and have my proxy follow, pulling out a chair for myself (which I don’t sit in…) and have Decoy sit in another one. I then take a breath, “You invited me here,” very violently, but still, “it’s your show.”

“Yeah… and I’m out a hundred bucks in the office pool,” the mobile slab of meat shakes his head, “Looks like Sally wins with ‘five minutes early’. Ah well.” The meat mountain breathes in, still expressionless, “I’m sure she’ll enjoy her spa day.” The mobile meat slab sits down, “OK, so… here’s the thing: We can’t have Mythics become known. Which means we need you to quit it with the healing, and any other uses of magic on regular folks. We know you’re well intentioned - the healing is the only reason you got this meeting rather than an immediate execution, you’re not a bad guy - but we still need you to stop it. Hide all evidence of your powers, and stop using your magic on folks, even for healing.”

So glad I Charmed the pilot, “Mind if I ask why? It seems senseless… I mean, you’re stopping me from healing sick kids.”

“It’s contagious,” he answers bluntly, “every time you magic someone up, there’s a chance they’ll develop magic themselves; usually of a similar stripe, but occasionally they’ll get their own Myth… and quite frankly, society isn’t set up to deal with things like, oh, invisible people who can spawn limitless disposable monsters and task them with attacking someone,” he looks straight at the chair I am absolutely NOT sitting in. “Consider what would happen if, say, someone else with your power decided to threaten a bunch of our elected leaders. They’re all out for themselves, first and foremost, which means any law could get passed or repealed: We’d have a dictator answerable to no one. Now, we do have SOME countermeasures in place…” the man taps his glasses, still looking at the chair I’m not sitting in, “but these things are EXPENSIVE. We can cover the president with a couple passed around between secret service agents, but can’t cover Congress or the Senate, much less the state, county, parish, and city level reps, and still have enough to do our jobs in the field… and now we have like five hundred kids we need to keep tabs on for the rest of their lives to see if they develop powers. You want to carry the burden of knowing that some kid went all Carrie and turned her teacher and a few dozen classmates into birdfood because you saved her from needing some perfectly mundane surgery?”

That brings me up short, “No, I do not. But I also don’t want to know kids are dying of cancer when I can fix them up easily.”

The man nods, his face still utterly blank, “I get that. I really do. This is a ‘needs of the many’ situation, though. There’s a LOT more in the way of violent and lethal Myths than there are benign ones. You heal, yes, but you can also kill. What happens if your power falls into the hands of someone who’s a bit less gregarious?”

Oh, about the nightmare you think… “I see what you mean… ugh.” I consider a bit, “So what’s the official offer?”

He pulls a choker out of his pocket, and sets it on the table, “You put that on. It’s a… well, a **** collar. We’ll be able to give you orders that you won’t be able to disobey. It will inform us of where you are at all times. It’ll prevent you from using your juju on civilians or anyone in the BMM. It will prevent you from taking it off, and it will **** you to try your hardest to prevent others from doing so. It will kill you if we tell it to.” He pauses, “Can't say I recommend it.”

Ugh. “So it’s slavery or ****, no trial? No representation? No due process?”

The man sighs, “Officially, we got this through the Supreme court by successfully arguing that folks like you aren’t human anymore. Unofficially? The reason we pushed so hard to find SOMETHING to let us do the job, and the reason the judges listened to and accepted those completely laughable arguments and then sealed all the records? It’s strictly necessary. There was a guy who could get anyone to do anything just by asking. He surrendered peacefully. Went to trial. Then ‘asked’ the jury to kill the judge, the attending officers to escort him home, and everyone to kill themselves painfully after completing the other ‘requests’. He’s far from unique. Society simply can’t deal with such things according to the rules for regular people.”

Yeah, I could probably pull off something very much like that… ugh, but I don’t want it to happen to me… “What kinds of orders would I be given?”

“First one? Don’t attempt to wiggle out with loopholes in what we say, keeping in mind the spirit of the order and not just the letter, but fulfilling both. Next one? Tell us all of the details of your Myth. After that?” He shrugs, “You’d probably be put to work until you die of old age or whatever, the exact nature depending on what you can do.”

So yes, slavery, a lifelong sentence. I suppose I could sacrifice a self-sim, but they’d still know all the details, which would let them get through the ‘puzzle monster’ nature of my existence. I shake my head, not that he can see, so I use an old quote, “‘Give me liberty or give me ****’.”

The meat puppet nods, “I can respect that… but liberty isn’t an option here, I’m not in a position where I can just let you go, much as I’d like to. So… do you want me to do it with a couple of bullets to the head and heart, quick and painless, or the voodoo witches?”

“I’m going to pull a runner, I think,” I inform him, “I wouldn’t want to **** a good friend to put me down.” He’s charmed, so he thinks of me as a good friend, “Do you mind giving me until the official deadline to make my peace, call my family to say goodbye, inform folks of where I want my stuff going, and such?”

“I can give you that much dignity.” He nods, “You have…” he checks the watch on his meat puppet, “...forty-five minutes until the controller hits deadline, confirms that choker isn’t on a Mythic, and flags the voodoo witches for the execution. Nothing can save you after that. It'll take about five minutes for the witches to start the ritual, and then you'll die painfully as they keep trying different things until something takes. And trust me, they always find something, and they'll know when you die.”

“I figured after the ‘invitation' I received, yes.” So I am going through with this. “No time to waste…”

I pull out my phone and proceed to call my family via the voice assistant, leaving messages, saying sorry for things, actually talking to a few of them and saying I love them, etc.

They already know about Adam, Brian, and Charles, so I set my phone down long enough to text them letting them know the situation:

“They hold all the cards. It's slavery or ****, and I for one will not be a ****. The Tree of Liberty is in need of watering. I hope to see you all on the other side of whatever comes after this life.”

Yeah, it's code from our gaming sessions. I'm telling them I know communications are compromised, that I'm faking my **** (although not with as much fakery as I'd like, but that's not part of the message) and that this is a ‘stay free at any cost' situation: **** is preferable to surrender.

When I'm done, I take a deep breath, “Okay. I've said what I needed to say. Please let your bosses know I refused to live as a ****.”

The meat puppet nods, “Okay…” and touches the side of his glasses, “He spoke calmly and rationally, and let me know he refuses to live as a ****. I let him make his peace with his family via phone.”

The meat puppet pauses, “Yeah. Those are the ones I hate to see get it, too. This kid does not deserve this. But yes, protocol is intact. Please ask them to make it quick, I don't want him to suffer.”

Then the puppet nods, “Okay, it's done. I'm sorry.”

“Not nearly so much as I am…” I grit my teeth, hoping the Delay Pain spell will work as an anesthetic.

The man nods slowly, “Yeah… you're probably right.”

The waiting is ****. I know I'm going to die, and soon, but not exactly how.

Then ‘Adam’ tells me: “It's the variant anatomy doll again. Twenty fire damage after resistance. Fifteen fire damage after resistance. Ten fire damage after resistance…” and on and

[on.

At](http://on.At) least the spell is working: I'm feeling the heat, but no pain. I stand there, calmly burning to ****, as some voodoo witches - probably with **** collars of their own - follow orders.

And soon, the world goes dark.