Gordon wants to head into Sector Nine for drinks again.
“C’mon, man,” he cajoles. “Our wives are on afternoon shift. What’ve you got to do that’s better, huh?”
Dean suspects that Carmen has put him up to this. He suddenly imagines the conversation; Kirsten telling Gordon that Carmen told her that Dean is questioning his sexuality. He goes hot, then cold, and rubs a hand across the back of his neck. Dean remembers how he and Gordon would cruelly insult and torment the boys they thought might be gay, back when they were in high school. The memories make him flush with shame while his stomach flops with queasiness. Hanging out with Gordon is the last thing he wants to do right now, but he feels like he doesn’t have a choice. Gordon is watching him intently and Dean isn’t sure whether Gordon is looking for signs that he’s queer, signs that he’s cheating on his wife or signs that he’s a rebel sympathizer. So he gives Gordon a big, wide, meaningless smile and says, “Sure. Let’s go.”
They go to The Bleachers again and Dean buys the first round. His hand is aching, the way it always does when it’s going to rain and as Dean massages it he finds himself recalling the dream he’d had a few nights back, the one where he’d been shot in the hand. In reality it had been a nail gun that had shot him in the hand; it’d still hurt like fuck, though, and he’d been laid up for months while the damn thing healed.
He’s still waiting for the bartender’s attention when the holo and all the flatscreens flash with the words ‘breaking news’. A grim-faced newscaster tells the room solemnly that Governor Morgan has halted production at the Pyramid Mine after yet another episode of sabotage by the MRA.
“Goddamn Mars Resistance Army,” a man at the bar growls.
Dean frowns. That doesn’t sound right. He’s sure MRA doesn’t stand for Mars Resistance Army, but he can’t remember what it does stand for. He finally gets the bartender’s attention and orders a couple of Coors. Around him, people curse the rebels and speculate about brownouts, blackouts and who’s likely to be laid off when Earth runs out of its turbinium ore stockpile.
“There’s your Goddamn rebels for you,” Gordon says when Dean hands him his beer. He raises the bottle to the holo in derisive salute. “Fuckers,” he says.
“What does MRA stand for?” Dean asks.
Gordon’s brow furrows. “Martian Resistance Army, I think. Why?”
Dean shrugs. “What did they do? I couldn’t hear from back there,” he waves at the bar.
“Destroyed part of the mine’s ventilation system,” Gordon says. “Made it unsafe for the workers down there. Assholes.”
It all feels wrong. Off. Unsettling. Dean’s gut is telling him that the MRA would never put the lives of mine workers in jeopardy, but he has no idea why he suddenly feels so strongly about this. He’d never even given the Rebellion on Mars a second thought until a few weeks ago.
“So this Rebellion,” he says to Gordon. “It’s gotta have a leader, right?”
“I guess,” Gordon picks at the label on his beer bottle, “but no-one knows who it is.”
A big bald guy with colorful tattooed sleeves leans across from the next table and says, “You hear names sometimes: The Jackal; the Angel; the Boyking. But no-one knows who they are or why they’re important.”
Dean’s scalp begins to prickle and his eyeballs throb. He runs a hand across his face and then joins in with Tattoo-Guy and Gordon as they laugh and joke about the stupid names that the Rebels are apparently using. His headache gets worse.
“Hey Gordon,” he says, “I’m gonna go home. My damn head’s killing me.”
Gordon’s face clouds with suspicion, but Dean must look every bit as shit as he feels, because the look softens immediately and Gordon pats him on the shoulder. “Don’t go gettin’ sick on me Winchester; we gotta make sure we get this apartment block up before the electricity around here gets cut off.”
Dean nods and smiles and weaves his way through the crowd in the bar and out into the crowd in the street. At least outside the air is fresher, and the breeze might bring the stink of the fish market across from Chinatown, but it also blows away the cobwebs in his mind and the pounding in his head recedes a little.
Sector Nine is a business district. Markets, shops, offices, bars, schools, the hospital; they’re all located in Sector nine. Steel-and-shatterproof-glass skyscrapers, one hundred floors tall, are interspersed with smaller, pre-Storm brick and concrete buildings that had been sturdy enough to survive fifty years of near-constant battering by hurricanes, tornadoes and miscellaneous super-storms. The older buildings are weather-worn and crumbling, but Dean likes them. They’ve got character; personality; unlike the modern buildings where the focus is on cheap, fast, simple construction and functionality.
Chinatown comprises six four-story squat, square concrete buildings, three on either side of the road, with a road-spanning gold-and-red Dragon Gate leading into the area and red Chinese lanterns strung across the street. There are brightly-colored signs in Mandarin everywhere and at night the whole place is dazzling-lit by an array of neon signs and digital billboards.
The rain that’s been threatening finally starts to fall, a soft, barely-there drizzle that hardly manages to wet the sidewalk, but dampens Dean’s hair and face just fine. He ducks under the awning of Chen’s Noodle Bar and then figures that a bowl of Chow Mein wouldn’t go astray. Once he’s been served, he finds himself a spot by the wall and leans back against it with his feet crossed at the ankles and the duffle bag with his work stuff in it on the ground beside him. He eats quickly, working the chopsticks like a pro, and watches the people hurrying past. A guy in a suit slows down as he approaches Dean. He raises an eyebrow and inclines his head toward the alley in between the buildings. Dean flushes red and glares at him until he passes. As if he would cheat on Ja- … Carmen. As if he would cheat on Carmen. What the actual fuck? Dean tosses his noodle bowl in a nearby trash can. He really must be losing his mind if he’s being loyal to a guy from a dream rather than his wife.
The sky above him lights up with a Déjà Vu commercial. It’s the one about the guy who’s too old to climb Olympus Mons again. There’s an address, a flashing neon arrow and a barcode at the end of the commercial, and Dean figures what the hell? He holds his i-band up to the barcode until it gives its download complete beep, and then he follows the GPS instructions to the front door of Déjà Vu’s Middle District office.
The salesperson is dressed like a nurse. She’s blonde and pretty and wearing a lot of make-up, and Dean flirts with her as a matter of course, but his heart’s not really in it. He should want to bang her; she’s exactly his type; but he doesn’t want to. At all.
“I’m thinking about a holiday memory,” he glances at her nametag. “Tiffany. Maybe a trip to Mars?”
Tiffany wrinkles her nose. “Mars. Right. To be honest, if outer space is your thing, I’d recommend a Saturn cruise,” she flicks her hair. “Everybody raves about ‘em!”
Dean licks his lips and considers it. “No,” he says. “I think I’d really like to go to Mars.”
Tiffany sighs and wiggles to the brochure rack on her very high heels. She pulls off a brochure.
“Let's see...the basic Mars package will cost you just nine hundred and ninety-nine credits. That's for two full weeks of memories, complete in every detail. A longer trip'll cost you just a wee bit more, because you’ll need a deeper implant.”
Dean asks her what’s in the two week package and she thumbs through the brochure before smiling and saying: “First of all, Sir, when you go Déjà Vu, you get nothing but first class memories: a private cabin on the shuttle; a deluxe suite at the Hilton; plus all the major sights: Mount Pyramid, the Grand Canals, and of course...” she blushes, “Venusville.”
Dean raises an eyebrow. “And how real does it seem?”
“As real as any memory in your head,” Tiffany says earnestly. “I mean, what are memories but the ability to recall stored information? Your memory doesn’t care how the information got into your brain.”
She shakes her head at Dean’s skeptical look. “Honestly, Sir, your brain won't know the difference. Guaranteed, or your money back.
“Uh huh,” Dean runs a hand across the back of his neck. “And what about the guy you lobotomized. Did he get a refund?”
Tiffany rolls her eyes. “That’s an urban legend,” she says. “Propaganda spread by the Spacelines because they’re losing market share. The reality is that traveling with Déjà Vu is safer than getting on a rocket,” she hands the brochure to Dean. “There are some statistics on that in the brochure. Besides,” she runs her fingertips up his arm, “a real holiday's a pain in the ass: lost luggage, lousy weather, crooked taxi drivers, a nagging wife.” There’s a hint of a question there at the end and Dean nods. Tiffany sighs. “When you go with Déjà Vu, everything's perfect. You don’t even have to take the nagging wife. So whaddaya say? Shall we book you in for a Mars escape?”
Dean thinks about it; about his general restlessness and dissatisfaction with life.
“Sure,” he says. “Why not?”
Tiffany beams and scuttles about getting paperwork ready for him to read and sign. He walks out of the office half an hour later with a booking for a virtual trip to Mars, which he’ll take in two days’ time.
Dean’s earpiece chimes as he’s walking to the train station and he swipes a finger over his i-band to answer it. It’s Carmen, wanting to know when he’ll be home because she managed to get off work early.
Dean and Carmen live in Sector Twelve, a residential district. Because his construction job requires Dean to move around to different job sites, he has a Seven Sector Pass which means he can swipe out at any train or tram stop from Sector Nine to Sector Fifteen without triggering a security alert. Carmen only has a Two Sector Pass; she can only swipe out at Sectors Nine and Twelve. Dean relishes the relative freedom that his pass gives him, but he still misses the Impala and the way things used to be before cars were banned in the Middle and Lower Districts because they caused too much pollution. Nowadays, people get around by walking or by electric trams and trains. If the power goes out, pretty much everything grinds to a halt. Dean frowns as he picks his way through the crowded street; why can’t his work buddies see how much power Governor Morgan wields, not only on Mars, but also on the Homeworld?
He takes the train home and spends the evening watching HV with Carmen. She snuggles against him and he feels uncomfortable. She kisses him and he tries, he does, but eventually he has to push her away.
“I’m sorry,” he says, “I just can’t.”
Carmen pouts. “Don’t you love me any more, baby?”
Dean can’t answer her and she gets up with a sob and flounces into their bedroom, slamming the door shut.
Dean goes and gets a beer. He stops by their bedroom on the way back to the living room, planning, maybe, to knock, to go in and offer her… he’s not really sure what. He pauses, though, when he hears her talking on the phone in a low, urgent tone. He can’t hear every word she’s saying, just snatches: “…not what I signed up for… fucking gay… can’t connect… do…if he wants us to split up?”
She’s probably talking to Kirsten. Dean lets his head thunk quietly against the door. Gordon is going to make his life a living Hell tomorrow.
“Did you know?” Dean hears Carmen say. “Did you think it would be funny?”
And that? Makes no sense. He didn’t even know, so how could Kirsten have known?
He goes back to the living room and sits down on the sofa.
Does he want them to split up? He’s not happy, that’s for damn sure. Dean sits and thinks for a good long while. Eventually Carmen comes and stands awkwardly in the living room door way. “Are you coming to bed?” she asks.
Dean scratches at his eyebrow. “Maybe I should take the couch?”
“You don’t have to.”
He doesn’t really want to; the couch is far too short for him; but he’s going to feel awkward lying next to his wife, with both of them knowing that, suddenly, he can’t stand the thought of touching her.
“I just want to keep an eye on you,” she says, her tone and expression earnest, “make sure you’re okay.”
His surprise must show on his face, because her expression morphs into one of sadness. “We’ve been together a long time, Dean. Surely our relationship’s about more than just sex?”
Dean doesn’t have it in him to argue with that so he follows her wordlessly into their bedroom.
Between Carmen’s caring concern and Gordon keeping a firm eye on him, at the obvious behest of his wife, Dean doesn’t get a moment to himself for the next two days. He actually has to sneak away from Gordon to make his Déjà Vu appointment.
Tiffany shows him through to Dr Curtis Armstrong, and Dean takes one look at the smug-looking bearded man sitting behind the desk and dislikes him on the spot.
“So, Dean,” Dr Armstrong says as Dean sits opposite him. “You’ve booked a standard trip to Mars.”
“Yeah,” Dean does his best to smile, but it just feels like he’s baring his teeth.
“Let me ask you a question, Dean,” Armstrong leans forward and lowers his voice conspiratorially. “What is exactly the same about every single vacation you have ever taken?”
Dean has no clue where Armstrong is going with this, so he produces another insincere smile. “I give up.”
Armstrong’s smile is sickeningly smarmy. “You!” he crows, “You're the same. No matter where you go, it's always you.”
Dean finds that he really wants to reach across the desk and rip the man’s lungs out.
“Okay,” he says, slow and fake-friendly, “so how do I go about not being me?”
Armstrong’s smile brightens. “You take a vacation from yourself. It’s the latest thing in travel. We call it the ‘Ego Trip’.”
Ego trip? Seriously? Dean isn’t interested and he says as much.
Armstrong steeples his hands on the desk in front of him and looks down at Dean with a doe-eyed benign expression.
“Don’t be so quick to dismiss this, Dean. We can offer you a choice of alternative identities for the duration of your trip,” Armstrong hands him a brochure and Dean begins to flip through it, curious despite himself. “That’s it,” Armstrong encourages. “Take a look and see if anything tickles your fancy. Think about it, Dean. Why go to Mars as a tourist when you can go as a playboy or a famous jock or-”
“Secret agent. How much is that?”
Armstrong scrunches up his face and giggles in a way that’s really disconcerting.
“Ooh,” he says. “That’s a good one. Let me tantalize you. You are a top operative under deep cover on your most important mission yet. People are trying to kill you. You meet this beautiful, exotic woman and, well, no spoilers, but by the time the trip is over, you get the girl, kill the bad guys and save the entire planet. Now, you tell me. Isn't that worth a measly two hundred credits extra?”
Dean thinks about how bored and restless he’s been feeling lately and figures what the hell? Maybe he does need to spend some time away from himself. He signs on the dotted line and swipes his i-band over the payscan.
“Alrighty,” Armstrong rubs his hands together gleefully. “Let’s go and get you strapped in.”
The room where they do the procedures is reassuringly sterile and efficient looking and Dean may not like Armstrong much, but he feels confident that he won’t be lobotomized.
Armstrong has Dean lie down on something that looks like an operating table, and then puts a sort of helmet thing on his head. It has a bunch of wires coming out of it, which are attached to a computer that Armstrong is typing away at. Dean swallows and tries to figure out why the helmet makes him feel so uneasy.
“Just a few questions to fine-tune the program,” Armstrong says. “You answer honestly, and you’ll enjoy your trip a lot more. Firstly, what’s your sexual orientation?”
It’s on the tip of Dean’s tongue to answer ‘hetero’, but he’s been starting to think that’s not really true, and besides, what’s the point of taking an ego trip if he can’t be the person he actually wants to be?
Armstrong clears his throat. “There’s no judgement here,” he says.
When Dean still doesn’t respond he adds, “Remember, Dean, you’ll enjoy yourself a lot more if you answer honestly. Besides, sexual orientation is hard-wired; if you try to force someone into a persona that goes against the core personality’s inherent orientation, it can cause the implanted memories to break down.”
Dean bites at his bottom lip. “I think I might be gay,” he says. “So yeah, I guess we’ll go with that.”
“And how do you like your men?” Armstrong asks.
Dean flushes at the question and can’t even begin to think how to answer it.
“Tall? Short? Muscular? Slender?” Armstrong prompts.
Dean closes his eyes. “Uh, tall. Definitely tall. And, um. Slender. But muscular.”
“Blond? Brunet? Redhead? Clean shaven? Bearded?”
“Brunet. Clean shaven.”
“And do you want your man to top or bottom?”
Dean feels his face redden even more. “I’m, uh, not sure. I think…maybe…bottom?”
“And do you want him to be a demure, submissive bottom or a pushy, aggressive bottom?”
Dean covers his face with his hands. “I really don’t know. A bit of both, maybe?”
Armstrong snickers slightly and then he removes Dean’s hands from his face and places them by his side. A flash of memory hits Dean like a tsunami; his arms are pinned to his side as he is strapped, struggling and shouting, to a gurney, and a helmet like the one he’s wearing now is attached roughly to his head. The memory flash is gone just as quickly as it arrived and before he can tell Armstrong that he’s changed his mind, that this is a bad idea, he feels a needle prick his arm.
“Ready for Dreamland?” Armstrong’s voice is already becoming distant. “You’re gonna have a wild time, Dean. You’re not gonna want to come back.”
Dean wakes up slumped among the trash cans outside the fish market in Chinatown. It’s dark and he has no memory whatsoever of a trip to Mars. He frowns and staggers to his feet. What the hell? Twelve hundred credits for nothing? No way he’s letting that stand. He brushes himself off; notes the bruising on his arms with another frown and then sets off resolutely to the Déjà Vu offices.
Tiffany looks frightened when he walks through the front door.
“Look,” she says, hands held out placatingly. “We don’t want any trouble. I’ve already put through a full credit for the Mars trip to your bank account.”
Dean huffs and logs into his account via his i-band. Sure enough, the money has been refunded.
“What about my trip to Mars, though?” Because damn it, he’d been looking forward to it.
Dr Armstrong ventures out of his office and approaches Dean much like you’d approach a machete-wielding mutant. “I’m sorry,” he says, “But we couldn’t get the memory implant to take. At first we thought it was a schizoid embolism. But then we realized that we’d hit a memory cap.”
Armstrong rubs at his throat and Dean’s eyes widen when he sees the handprints around the man’s throat. “What happened?” he asks. “Did I do that?”
Armstrong’s eyes narrow. “You kind of went nuclear; total foaming at the mouth, balls out maniac, yelling about Mars and your cover being blown. You tried to strangle me. It was a complete psychotic break. We had to sedate you.”
Mars? His cover? That was the goddamn ego trip he’d booked. Maybe Gordon was right about these guys after all; maybe he was lucky he hadn’t been lobotomized.
“Psychotic break, my ass,” he says. “Sounds like I started acting on the implanted memories before you’d fully finished implanting them.”
Armstrong glowers at him. “I’m afraid that’s not possible,” he draws himself up and adopts a haughty tone.
“And why’s that?” Dean matches the doctor’s tone.
“Because,” Armstrong says smugly, “we didn’t get a chance to implant anything at all before you flipped out. Now, if you don’t mind?” and he gestures toward the door.
Dean stares at him for a moment and then figures he may as well take the money and run. He’s disappointed that he didn’t get his trip to Mars, but he got his money back, and he didn’t end up a drooling vegetable, so he’ll just chalk this one up to experience.
He’s barely out the building when Gordon appears from a side street.
“Dean!” he says.
“Hey, Gordon.”
Gordon slings an arm around Dean’s shoulders. “How was your trip to Mars?” he asks.
Dean frowns. He didn’t tell anyone that he was planning on taking one. Then again, he did just come out of the Déjà Vu building, so maybe Gordon just put two and two together. Doesn’t mean he’s going to admit to the man that he was right about the Déjà Vu people being incompetent butchers.
“Didn’t happen,” he says gruffly. “I was going to do it, but I kept remembering what you said about your buddy who got lobotomized, so I didn’t go through with it.”
Gordon nods and smiles tightly. “C’mon,” he says, trying to guide Dean down the side street he’d just appeared from. “Let me buy you a drink.”
Something about his demeanour seems off to Dean, so he shakes his head. “No thanks, man,” he says. “It’s getting late. I should probably get home to my wife.”
He tries to head toward the train station, but Gordon is insistently propelling him toward the alley. Dwayne and Brad step out of the shadows and Gordon pulls a gun, and suddenly Dean is bailed up against a wall in a dark, dirty alley, with a gun under his chin.
“What the hell, Gordon?” he says, voice shaky.
“You blabbed, Dean,” Gordon says. “You blabbed about Mars.”
“Are you insane?” Dean says, eyes widening. “I don’t know anything about Mars!”
But even as he says it, he knows it isn’t true.
Gordon doesn’t seem to believe him either, because he backhands Dean across the face. Hard. Dean spits out blood and runs his tongue across his bottom lip which he just bit through. “What the fuck?” he says.
“You shoulda listened to me, Dean. I was put here to keep you outta trouble.”
Dean frowns. “You were put here? Gordon… we’ve been buddies since High School. Whoever you think I am, I’m not, man. I’m me.”
Gordon laughs and shakes his head. “No,” he says. “You’re really not.”
His trigger finger moves and Dean reacts without thinking: he knees Gordon in the groin and throws himself sideways in a complex move that he somehow knows will get him clear of a bullet fired at close range. The gun discharges harmlessly into the sky and Dean sweeps Gordon’s legs out from under him and then smashes his booted heel into his best friend’s face before whirling to confront Dwayne and letting fly with a round house kick that knocks the man’s drawn gun from his hand. Dean takes advantage of Dwayne’s surprise to spin around and grab him from behind, using him as a shield when Brad shoots at him and then pushing his body into Brad hard enough to knock him down. He turns and runs then, zigging and zagging and listening for bullets or footsteps, but there’s only the sound of his own footfalls, his own ragged breathing and he doesn’t stop running until he’s on the train.
It’s not rush hour, so the commuters aren’t packed cheek to jowl, but it’s still crowded. Dean grips the overhead hand-strap with one white knuckled hand and bites at the thumbnail on his other hand.
What just… what just happened? He shifts his feet for better balance and notices that a woman in a blue coat is looking at him askance. He glances down at himself and sees the blood. He offers the woman a self-deprecating smile. “Construction,” he says. “Work accident.” She looks away.
When the train arrives at Sector 12, Dean exits in the center of a crowd, his eyes darting everywhere as he looks for unusual movement or unnatural stillness or the glint of metal that might mean someone has a gun on him. His brain is calculating angles and odds and muscle memory appears to have taken over his body, because he’s acting on instincts he wasn’t even aware that he had, using reflective surfaces to check for covert surveillance, while keeping his face angled away from the CCTV cameras.
A small part of Dean is wondering why he isn’t freaking out. His best friend since high school just tried to kill him and Dwayne is dead. Oh, and apparently he knows kung fu, which he can’t remember learning. Ever.
Carmen is playing tennis on the holo wii when Dean flings the front door open and then edges inside, sideways, his back to the wall and his steps cautious.
“Hi, Honey,” she calls out.
Dean doesn’t answer. He makes sure every room in the house is clear and then grabs a bag and starts throwing stuff inside it.
“What the hell, Dean?” Carmen’s leaning against the door frame with her arms folded.
“I’ve gotta get outta here,” he says. “Gordon’s gone nuts,” he frowns. “Maybe you should go and stay with your mom for a while, just in case he decides you’re in on this whole Mars conspiracy too.”
“What?’ Carmen’s face is a picture of horror. “Mars conspiracy? What are you talking about.”
Dean pauses in his packing and runs a hand across his jaw. “Okay, look. I went to Déjà Vu-”
“You did what?” Carmen screeches.
Dean holds his hands up in submission. “I just wanted to take a trip to Mars, that’s all. Get it out of my system. But I didn’t go through with it. And then Gordon showed up, started yelling at me that I’d blabbed about Mars, and he was supposed to be keeping me out of trouble, and then him and Dwayne and Brad tried to kill me! And Dwayne got killed in the crossfire and…Carmen… I don’t know what the fuck is going on, but Gordon told me that I’m not me!”
Carmen crosses the floor and grips Dean by his upper arms. “I can’t believe you went to Déjà Vu! Everybody knows they’re brain butchers! My poor baby,” she runs a hand down his face. “Can’t you see what’s happened? They’ve fucked your mind up!”
Dean shrugs her off. “Carmen, just listen. People. Are. Trying. To. Kill. Me.”
Carmen rolls her eyes. “Nobody’s trying to kill you, baby. You’re having a paranoid delusion.”
Dean grasps her hand and forces her to touch the blood on his shirt. “You feel that? That’s Dwayne’s blood. It’s still wet. Does that feel like a delusion to you?”
Carmen shrieks and pulls away, not stopping until her back hits the bedroom wall.
For a moment all she does is stare at him, and then she clears her throat and straightens up. “Are you physically hurt, Dean?”
He shakes his head.
“Okay,” she nods decisively. “You go and clean up. I’m gonna call the hospital, see if we can get you in to see one of the Psych residents on the down-low.”
“I’m not crazy!” he calls after her. “So you don’t need to call anyone.”
Cleaning up sounds like a good idea, though, so he picks himself out a clean black tee-shirt and a green and black plaid over-shirt and then heads into the bathroom. He strips off his blood-spattered clothes, washes his chest and stomach, towels himself dry and then puts on the clean clothes. Dean looks at himself in the mirror for a long moment and then twists the faucet again and splashes water on his face. He takes a deep breath, dries off, and steels himself to go out and face Carmen. He has his hand on the door knob when all the lights go out and when he opens the bathroom door, bullets rip into the dark bathroom, smashing the mirror, and embedding themselves in the walls. Dean hunches low, then hurls himself toward the living room where he dives behind the sofa. The wedding photograph on the wall behind him explodes, showering him in glass.
“Run, Carmen! Get out of here!” he shouts.
Bullets thud into the front of the sofa. They whiz overhead and shatter the table lamp. Dean sticks his head around the bottom corner of the sofa and is able to pick out his assailant in the far corner of the living room. He picks up a glass drink coaster and hurls it toward the kitchen. Taking advantage of his assailant’s momentary distraction, he hurtles out from behind the sofa and tackles the attacker, knocking them to the ground, his hand gripping their gun hand and bashing it against the floor until their hold on the gun loosens and the gun scatters across the floor.
“Dean?” Carmen says from where she’s pinned beneath him.
“Carmen?”
Dean sits back, his face twisted with disbelief and Carmen punches him in the balls. He groans and falls to the side, clutching at his groin. “Son of a bitch!”
Carmen scrambles for the gun and Dean pulls himself together and lunges for her legs, dragging her backwards. She rolls and kicks out, but he manages to trap her, sitting on her hips and pinning her hands beside her head.
“Why are you doing this?” he asks.
Carmen licks her lips and then her legs are wrapping around his neck from behind.
It all becomes a little disjointed after that, he twists and rolls and then they’re trading wickedly fast blows, chopping at vulnerable points, and Dean doesn’t dare think about what he’s doing because he’s scared that if he does he’ll forget how to do it. Carmen manages to break away and she runs for the kitchen; for the knife block. He dodges two thrown knives and deflects a third, then a forth, and the fifth one he manages to catch. She comes forward then, feinting left, then right, the knife she’s holding changing hands, trying to confuse him, and then she lunges and he’s able to grip her knife hand and squeeze, hard enough that she drops the blade. He places his own knife against her throat and she tries to throw her head back and smash his face, but he’s ready for that and evades the manoeuvre, simultaneously increasing the pressure on her throat so that a few drops of blood bead against the blade. She stills.
“Talk,” he says.
Carmen swallows. “I’m not really your wife.”
Dean isn’t sure what he was expecting her to say, but that wasn’t even in the top ten.
“I got a lotta memories that say otherwise,” he says.
Carmen nods. “Yeah. You do. All implanted by the Agency.”
“The Agency?”
“The people I work for.”
“You know this sounds crazy, right?”
Carmen shrugs. “I don’t know what to tell you, Dean. The Agency supressed your identity and implanted a new one. I was written in as your wife so that I could watch you, make sure you didn’t start to get your real memory back.”
“Crazy,” Dean repeats.
Carmen shrugs one shoulder. “Your whole life, everything you think you know about yourself, it’s just a dream, baby. You and me, we only met six weeks ago.”
Dean stares at the messy dark brown hair in front of him and frowns. This is all completely insane. And yet… it kind of makes sense too. The sexual identity crisis he’s been having, that’s been happening for about the past six weeks; if Carmen is being truthful, it’s been happening ever since he was set up with his false life. And hadn’t Dr Armstrong down at Déjà Vu said something about how trying to force a false sexual orientation will cause an implant to break down? All those memory flashes; those things he knew but didn’t remember learning. Could they be his real memories pushing through? How did he know Kung Fu?
“Okay, then,” Dean says slowly. “If I’m not me, then who the hell am I?”
Carmen shrugs again. “Beats me, baby. I just work here.” She pushes her ass into his groin and grinds back against it. “You know, I was pretty excited when I got this assignment. It’s not often I get to monitor a hot, sexy guy like you. I couldn’t believe it when you weren’t interested. Of course, my asshole boss didn’t bother to mention that they’d implanted you against your orientation.”
“That was kind of stupid of them, wasn’t it?” he can’t help saying. Because it’s better to focus on the fact that they’d handed him a potential escape route than that they’d been cruel enough to try to make sure he was unhappy at the most fundamental of levels.
Whoever ‘they’ are.
“Yeah,” Carmen chuckles. “It really was. You’re a great guy, Dean. And if you’d been straight, you and me…we could’ve really had some fun together.”
Dean turns his head, feeling just a little self-conscious, and movement on the live feed security monitor catches his eye: half a dozen gun-toting, black-clad figures heading down the hallway toward their apartment.
He clutches Carmen even tighter, lets the knife bite in a little further. “Clever girl,” he says.
Carmen whimpers. “You’re not gonna hurt me are you?” she says, her voice breathless and high like a little girl. “Not after everything we’ve been through together the last few weeks.”
And the bitch of it is she’s right. Dean (he frowns...or whoever the hell he is) doesn’t have it in him to kill her. But-he slams the handle of the knife into her temple-he can see his way clear to knocking her out just fine.
He picks up Carmen’s gun as he runs past it and then goes and shuts himself in the linen closet. He pries the cover off the return air duct for the heating system and then shimmies inside, spider crawling upwards until he’s in the ducts in the roof. He’s always (hah…always…) had a good sense of direction and Dean crawls slowly and carefully until he’s over Mrs McCallum’s apartment, before finding her return air duct and lowering himself into her linen cupboard.
“Evening, Mrs McCallum,” he calls out cheerfully when she gasps at his sudden appearance in her living room, her wrinkled hands trembling up to her face. “Just doing some maintenance work for the super,” he winks and waltzes out her front door.
And then he runs.
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