The Trick to Borrowing Someone Else's Body is...
Episode One:Breakout
T Minus: 052 Days 17 Hours 46 Minutes 11 Seconds
The trick to borrowing someone else's body is not getting caught.
This is not the same as being seen. You can be seen all day. You just have to give people a single, plausible reason why the man in the hat and sunglasses is not their old friend Jeff who's been in a coma for six months--Jeff had dark hair and no mustache and that guy's mustache is blond--and people will assume it's just someone who looks like Jeff and go right on texting. Or whatever.
The trick to busting a drug deal on the other hand is not getting shot.
On a warm Saturday in April, John Regent failed at both.
According to the Army, the trick to surviving a gunshot wound is to stop the bleeding and get immediate medical attention. This means keeping still and putting pressure on the wound. That's what they teach in Basic training, and it's true.
But then, people who are scared and angry enough to shoot at other people tend to keep shooting, which means you need to keep moving, so the real trick to surviving a gunshot wound is not going into shock. And the best way to avoid shock is prior inoculation: being shot before, preferably multiple times. Like homeopathy for soldiers.
Of course, any normal person would have listened to the armed and screaming drug dealers and simply left. Any normal person wouldn't have gone there in the first place. But John Regent had a job to do, and he had been trained to do not nice things by not nice people. In fact, it was in training that Regent had been shot the first time. Not Basic training. Not Ranger training. Not even Special Forces training, although they feigned it.
It was after that, at the training that had no name for a unit that had no insignia, the training that had no manual and that never, ever took place. Officially. It was the training where John had been drugged, blindfolded, shot in the arm, and dumped out of a helicopter into a swamp by his own instructors and told to find his way back without a map or compass or anything. Oh, and there are guys on the ground hunting you. With dogs. It wasn't until the clouds parted a few hours after the drop that John could see the stars and realized he wasn't even on the same hemisphere anymore, let alone the same continent.
That was Day One of the training that didn't exist. Things got progressively harder from there. But it worked. John Regent was a master of clinical violence.
The trick to hostage rescue is to get inside without the hostage-takers killing anyone. Standing there, bleeding against the door of some asshole's second floor apartment, John was already inside.
See? He told himself. Stop complaining. Hard part is already over.
Of course, it helped that when he wandered, when he was in someone else's body, Regent could control the pain. And the fear. And all the responses--all the shit--your genes saddle you with in their vain effort to keep themselves alive. Riding someone else's bones, John was in total control like he never was, like no one ever was, in their own skin. Even with a gunshot wound, he had total clarity.
The trick to disarming someone is making them to want to drop the weapon, even when they don't want to. There are a variety of ways to do this, but if you're reasonably sure your target hasn't seen combat--this kid looks like a tool, John thought--then a firm strike to the top of the forearm usually does the trick, preferably with something hard. You know the place: where the skin runs thin over the bone and good whack sends a shock of pain to the hand.
The thing about combat is that you do and see shit normal people just don't ever experience in life: throw grenades at strangers, stab someone before they stab you, see your buddy's head explode in a burst of red smoke. That kind of thing. It's a shock some people never shake, people like John's friend Mario. Mario had just finished a tour. Mario was in bad. He was a hostage.
The drug dealers in the room hadn't seen combat. They were barely literate punks. Mean, but undisciplined. They all stood still as the handgun bounced on the floor with a thud. No one expected "Jeff" to fight back, not after being shot, not without a pause for breath.
To Regent's right, asshole number two stood at the end of a couch where a young mother sat clutching her baby. Fuck. No shooting to that side.
To Regent's left, asshole number three already had a hand on his gun. He was twitchy, not afraid to shoot, but he had his pants around his knees, which meant he wasn't mobile.
Three seconds. Tops.
In a single, fluid movement from that which had knocked the gun free, Regent popped Number One in the throat. That disorients. People who aren't used to getting hurt, people who aren't trained to stay focused, think about the pain and--for a second at least--worry about whether or not they're able to breathe. That distracts, makes their limbs pliable.
Regent clutched the kid close, using him as a shield as he walked forward along the couch, pushing Number One toward Number Two while Number Three, the dangerous one, went for his weapon.
Two seconds.
John was an athlete, or he had been once, and he didn't take his eyes off his target. He pushed Number One to the left without turning. The young man, still clutching his throat, stumbled into Number Three's line-of-fire.
One second.
John smacked Number Two in the teeth, grabbed the kid's gun, then swung and went down on one knee--lowering his profile made him a moving target despite that his feet were planted--and shot Number Three in the shoulder. The man's torso turned from the impact and swung the barrel of his gun toward the door and away from the mother and child. He screamed and went down. His Glock slide across the hardwood.
Regent stood and popped Number Two in the gut with his fist. When the kid doubled over, Regent rammed his knee into the young man's nose.
Crack.
That hurts.
Number One, still coughing from the pop to the throat, regained his balance and put his hands in the air. Everyone froze. Regent held Number Two's gun loosely and stood in the middle of the room.
Three seconds. No fatalities. One casualty.
It was clear Number Three hadn't been shot before, let alone seven times.
John looked down at "Jeff's" leg. Make that eight.
Numbers One and Two looked down at the twitchy kid rocking back and forth on the floor. They were waiting to see what he would do. He must be the leader. He was moaning and holding his shoulder.
That's good, Regent thought. Just what they teach in Basic. Stay down, keep pressure on the wound.
John knelt and put his gun to the boy's shaved head. "Hurts, doesn't it?" White people don't look good with shaved heads. Except Captain Picard. John always liked Captain Picard.
The kid grimaced. He nodded.
"You been shot before?"
The kid shook his head.
"Don't worry. It's easier the second time. You know Mario Gonzales?"
The kid scowled. "Man, there's five hundred guys with that name just on this block." He was cocky.
Regent popped the kid in the skull with the butt of his gun then put the barrel back to his temple.
The boy yelped.
"Heavy set. About your age. Was a soldier. Just got back. Buys pills. You know the guy now?"
The kid nodded. "I don't know where he is, man. He just shows up. I don't keep track."
"I'm not asking where he is. I know where he is. The problem is where he should be. Do you know where that is?"
The kid shook his head.
"Back at the VA. In therapy. He needs help. He's got a wife workin' two jobs and kid on the way. But he's not gonna get help when he's hiding inside your pills. So that means you're gonna stop selling to him."
Number Three raised his watering eyes to John.
"I don't care what else you do. I don't care whose life you fuck to make bank. But you and all your buddies are gonna stop selling to him. Corporal Gonzales is off limits. Do you understand?"
The kid nodded, but he didn't mean it.
John moved the gun and shot the sleaze in the knee. Point blank. The bullet ran clean through baggy jeans and flesh and impacted the hardwood with a crack, throwing up little splinters.
The kid screamed. He grabbed his leg with his good hand and rocked back and forth again, yelling and cursing at the top of his lungs.
John put the barrel to the young man's head again. "See? Hurts less than the first one, right?"
The kid was shaking. He didn't know the tricks. He was going into shock. He didn't have long. But there were sirens in the distance.
John pressed the gun barrel hard to the kid's temple. "Convince me, asshole."
"I'll stop! Fuck, you crazy muthafucker! Fuck! I'll stop. He's off limits, man. I'll tell everybody. He ain't fuckin' worth it."
John nodded. "You think you're some kind of soldier, huh? Street war or something? If I have to come back here, I'll show you what war's really like. Am I perfectly clear?"
The kid nodded in pain.
John looked at the other two. They didn't move. The mother--she must be somebody's girlfriend--clutched her baby and looked at the floor.
Regent stood. "What are you doing? Bringing a baby to a place like this."
She was silent. Her eyes stayed down, didn't make contact.
John shook his head and walked out. "Jeff's" leg was soaked red, and Regent stumbled down the stairs and out the back as he rubbed the gun clean of prints. He dropped it and the fake mustache in a storm drain and walked onto the street as the police and ambulances arrived. He laid down on the sidewalk and slowed his breathing. "Jeff" wasn't in the best shape either. He'd lost a lot of blood.
When the medics leaned over him, John said he didn't know who he was or how he'd gotten there. And when it was clear they had everything in hand and "Jeff" was going to live, Captain John Regent took a deep breath and left the man's body.
T Minus: 052 Days 17 Hours 09 Minutes 24 Seconds
That wasn't how it was supposed to go.
Regent took a gasping breath. He was always groggy after coming back, and he shook his head to clear the fog.
And then he felt it. Like a skin-shriek, an agony-wail from his skull to his shins.
Pain.
Every time he wandered, he could almost forget.
Almost.
He bit down hard. It fucking hurt.
He looked at himself in the mirror of his dark hospital room. Someone must have thought he was asleep and wheeled him back. The shades were drawn. Sunlight peered in from a crack in the curtains and made a long triangle on the floor. Everything else was gray.
John sighed. He was a wreck. He wasn't human. Not anymore. He was the shattered remains of a once-potent man, a soldier. But that man was gone.
The taut-skinned burns that covered a third of his body, including half his head, didn't just give him a slight speech impediment and pull his limbs into odd gestures when he slept. They gnawed. They stabbed. They writhed. They gave him phantom limbs he'd never had. Inhuman limbs. Grasping, angular, insect-like appendages that came and went and were never the same again.
He looked down at his left hand, shriveled from the burns and atrophied from the nerve damage. The skin looked like demon flesh, mottled and stretched, lighter than the rest. It was destroying him.
John reached for the bracing bar that hung from the ceiling and pulled his six-foot-four frame out of his chair with one arm. He crawled into bed with a grunt, dragging lifeless legs.
He was left-handed. Before. Now it was his right or nothing. In fact, his right arm was just about the only thing in his body that worked the way it was supposed to. It fed him. It operated his motorized chair. It dressed him. It flipped the cap to the morphine button up and down. Up and down.
John laid his head back and tried to sleep. Wandering wore him out. Wrangling the heavy bull of the unconscious required a strong grip, an all-consuming concentration.
Regent's doctors urged him to use the medication. He could have as much as he wanted, they said. They always had sad eyes. Except Dr. Zebro. She knew. But the drugs blunted his mind, made it just like the rest of his body. He couldn't focus, couldn't meditate, couldn't wander. He was helpless on the drugs, trapped in a hazy prison where pain poked through the fog like a searchlight and half-forgotten memories of caves and torture bubbled up from the ground.
It was the same place that Mario was hiding. You can't stay there. No one can.
Half an hour later John had done little more than doze. His fingers twitched from the pain. His skin crawled like it was trying to get off him. Noises echoed from down the hall. Doctors and nurses argued about the strange return of a coma patient no one knew was gone. Apparently the man had been shot. Apparently he'd busted a drug house. Saved a baby. Or some made-up shit.
Somebody used the word hero.
Regent snorted. Heroes don't take other people's bodies for a joyride. They don't implicate them in an assault. They don't almost get them killed.
As he laid listening to the increasingly fanciful tales of the afternoon, John's conviction only grew. He couldn't stay, couldn't take the constant temptation of working legs and no pain.
John didn't know what "Jeff's" real name was. He didn't want to. He didn't want to think about how he'd just changed the man's life forever.
He grit his teeth under a tingling wave of needle-jabs that made his arm twitch.
There was no getting around it. He had to leave. But the only place John Regent could go was the last place in the world he wanted to be.
He liked to think he wasn't afraid of anything, but it wasn't always true. He had made the call that morning. It was a condition of the deal he made with himself. He could have one more trip. If he called first.
Happy to have him at the house, his dad said. They'd pick him up tomorrow. Be there around 2:00. After that, whatever freedom John had left would be gone.
There was a soft knock on the door. Nurse Brand poked his head in and saw Regent was awake.
"I hear you were looking for me."
John grabbed the bracing bar and pulled himself up as a ruckus broke out at the end of the hall. "What's going on out there?"
"News crew." Ethan Brand stepped into the room. He was thin with neat blonde hair laced in a barely noticeable gray and a gathering set of crow's feet. His fingernails were manicured. He wore light blue scrubs.
"News?" Regent did his best to pretend he didn't know why.
Ethan walked across the room to check John's morphine drip. Unused. He wasn't surprised. "You didn't hear? There was big a commotion today."
"I made the call." John wanted to change the subject.
Nurse Brand stopped, then turned to open the shades and let in the sun. "Time to take your stats."
"Again?"
Ethan stood by the window as light poured in. "I suppose you want me to put in a discharge request."
John nodded.
Brand stepped to the wall near the bed and removed the blood pressure cuff from its holster. He wrapped it around John's good arm. "I wish you weren't going."
"It's time."
Ethan held Regent's hand as the cuff inflated. It wasn't necessary, but he held it firm.
John nodded. He was going to miss his friend. He thought he better say that. Out loud. He liked to think he wasn't afraid of anything, but it wasn't always true.
"I'll miss you guys."
"We'll miss you, too."
The pair had met John's first day at the hospital. That was three months ago. John was mean back then, but Brand met the anger with compassion. Everyone always wanted to rush in and help. They were just trying to be nice, helpful, but it pissed Regent off.
Ethan was different. Ethan always let John try it himself first. After his shifts were over, Nurse Brand would often sit and listen with the other patients as John told stories from his time in Special Forces. Only a lot of the soldiers were dealing with serious trauma, so all the tales were politely devoid of any conflict. They were stories about Army mix-ups and raucous post-mission shenanigans.
John realized he might not see his friend again. He didn't know Ethan's work schedule. If he was off tomorrow, that meant it was now or never. "Can I ask you something?"
"You can ask me anything." Ethan ripped the Velcro and replaced the cuff on the wall.
"Why here?"
"What do you mean?" Nurse Brand reached down to check John's colostomy bag. It was a testament to the men's trust that he didn't need to ask.
"Why soldiers? You're good. You could work lots of places. Why here?"
It was a special hospital, a joint program between the Veteran's Administration and the U.S. Department of Health, a halfway house for returning soldiers with major psychological trauma or anyone having real difficulty adjusting to civilian life. Attendance was voluntary, but for some strongly encouraged.
"Ohhh . . ." Brand nodded.
John shrugged with his good arm as Ethan checked his pulse. "I don't want to pry."
"So now it's finally my turn to tell a story."
"Hey, you don't hav--"
"No, it's okay." Ethan walked around the bed to the wall-mounted computer near the door. "When I was a kid--twelve I think--I got beat up by some neighbor boys for carrying dolls."
"Carrying?"
"Yeah. I was bringing them to my sisters. From a family friend's house. I think I was looking at them or whatever, probably imagining too. I suppose that was playing, but I didn't think of it that way. I didn't like dolls any more than any other boy my age. I played video games. Soccer. I just didn't think dolls had cooties. Little tween me didn't think there was anything wrong with them." He entered John's stats into the machine.
John understood. They'd never spoken about it, but he understood. "Were you hurt bad?"
Ethan shook his head. "It was the shock and embarrassment more than anything."
"I'm guessing that wasn't the last time something like that happened."
"Oh sure. But I know people who had it way worse than me. In nursing school I dated a boy who hadn't come out yet. He got beat up pretty bad one night. He wouldn't tell me why. He was always so angry." He sighed. "Anyway, I'm rambling."
"It's alright." Talking took John's mind off the pain. A little. That's why he told stories.
"It wasn't like it was my life's goal to work with soldiers or anything, but I did jump at the chance. And I've stuck with it for . . . Oh wow, fourteen years. I guess--and this might sound crazy--but I guess I felt bad for those boys."
"The ones who hit you?"
"Yeah. And the ones in high school. And the ones who say things now. They're all so worried. All the time. Worried about looks. Worried about what people will think."
John knew the type. "They wouldn't call it that."
"Oh, of course not." Ethan snorted. "They think they're standing up for . . . whatever." Brand waved his hand.
"But?"
Ethan stopped. He leaned against the wall. "You'll think it's corny."
"No, I won't."
"Yes. You will. But that's okay. That's kinda the point."
"What is?"
"Well, I asked myself, if I was serious about helping people, if that's really why I'm doing this, then why not go straight to the top?"
Regent nodded.
"Gay people can be patriots, too."
It was the first time Ethan used the word. With John, anyway. Regent thought he should have asked sooner, should have had the courage. "Well, on behalf of all the fucked up soldiers who come through here . . . Thanks."
Ethan snorted and rolled his eyes in jest.
"I'm serious." John thought about all the times Nurse Brand had helped him bathe. He suspected. Everyone did. John realized that knowing bothered him a little. Not that it was a problem for Ethan. Ethan was a professional. It was John's problem, he knew, and so he kept it to himself. "You take good care of us."
"Your turn." Ethan looked at his watch and then sat down in the chair under the TV. "One more story. For old time's sake."
"Alright." John nodded. He thought for a moment. He wanted it to be a good one, something special for his friend. "Did I ever tell you about the time I went to see my granddad in Atlanta?"
"I don't think so."
"My dad was born down there. He moved up here to Philly after mom graduated. She was going to school down at Spelman when they met. After she died, dad remarried, and we didn't get to see granddad much, but when I was a kid, I got to stay with him in Atlanta for a few days. He was real excited about it. He never liked that dad left. He took me to this packing house one day, all brick and everything. It had been remodeled. It's an office building now. Urban gentrification and everything, right?"
"Right."
"Before we went, he talked about it for days. Not all the time, but enough that I could tell it was important to him. He said it was an important part of my past. Couldn't miss it. Had to see. I thought he was gonna show me where he met grandma or something like that.
"But when we got there, the nice folks let us in and he took me to this brick wall in a hallway that ran between the old loading dock--which is walled off now and full of conference rooms--and the old offices. He pointed to the wall next to a drinking fountain and said, 'look there.' I looked. I didn't see nothing.
"But he urged me. 'Go on.' I didn't want to disappoint him, so I stepped up and looked real hard. But it was just a bunch of old brick. Some of it looked like it had been patched up a long time ago.
"'I worked here for twenty years,' he said. 'I'd haul in produce or paper or all kinds of stuff and here they would pack it up and ship it all over the state. We carried a lot of heavy boxes, loading and unloading. We didn't have those big lifting machines, and no workplace safety either. So we'd get tired. I'd come up here to get a drink. And right there, that's where the Colored fountain was, all dirty and cracked, next to the one for the white folks.'"
Regent looked at his bed covers and smiled.
"How old were you?"
"Maybe eight or nine. I had no idea what the old man was talking about. I mean, I knew the history. We learned about that stuff in school. But it didn't really mean anything to me, just stuff in books. Still, I could tell it was real important to him that I see it. So I nodded and all.
"It wasn't until I got older that I understood what he was trying to show me. He was a good man, my granddad."
"I don't suppose he's still with us."
"Oh, naw. He died a long time ago. Heart attack, I think. I wanted to go to his funeral down in Atlanta. I could tell my dad did, too."
"Why didn't you?"
Regent thought about his stepmother. He would be living with her again. Tomorrow. For the first time in nearly a quarter century. He could already see the rage behind her eyes. He'd be stuck in his chair, dependent on her and his aging father for help bathing and with his colostomy and all the rest. He shut his eyes and then opened them. "Just didn't work out, I guess."
"Well, I'm going to miss your stories, Captain. Especially the one about the cat."
"Oh, you liked that one?" They both smiled. It was a dirty story. "Truth is, I'll miss you all, too. Talking really helps."
"With the pain?"
John nodded.
"Will you have anyone there, where you're going? To talk to?" Ethan had a hunch.
Regent turned the corners of his mouth down. His burnt half barely moved. "Naw. Not really."
Brand didn't say anything for a moment. "You could stay."
John just shook his head. No. He couldn't. There was a man in another room with a bullet in his leg that proved it.
Ethan stood. "I'll put in the discharge request. BUT . . . I won't like it." He walked to the door.
John smirked.
"Try to get some rest."
Regent nodded in agreement. But he knew he wouldn't. Tomorrow, he was no longer free.
T Minus: 051 Days 19 Hours 03 Minutes 25 Seconds
That was odd.
The door was already open.
Dr. Amṛta Zebro removed the key to her office and pushed the door with her knee. It was heavy, designed to keep the voices inside from being heard in the hallway, and she lost her balance for a moment. It didn't help that she had a purse hanging from one arm and a stack of files in the other.
A woman was sitting behind the desk, her desk, reading her computer screen. Amṛta stood in the door, shocked. The woman was African-American, 30-ish, with short, straightened hair pinned to her scalp and a simple striped jacket and slacks. She didn't even look up.
"Excuse me." Dr. Zebro objected. Her hair wasn't nearly as well-kept as the intruder's. "Who the hell are you?"
"Relax, Doctor." The woman clicked the mouse. She didn't turn. "I'm one of the good guys."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Amṛta dropped her purse and files on the floor of her office and stepped forward. Everything scattered. "You're not supposed to be in here." She looked at the half-turned screen. "Those files are confidential!"
"Calm down, Doctor. Please. Have a seat."
Amṛta crossed her arms. It bunched her white coat. She stared. She was a head shorter than the interloper, with a round face and hips and the dark complexion of her ancestors. She kept staring. She couldn't sit. Her seat was taken.
The intruder smiled and stood. "My name is Ayn." She extended a hand across the pristine desk.
Dr. Zebro kept her arms crossed. She was angry, livid, but not so much as to miss her guest's most distinguishing feature: that she didn't have any. Ayn was dressed like your average professional. She was moderately attractive but wouldn't turn any heads, and she seemed to keep it that way. Her make-up was plain. Her clothes were off the rack. There was nothing notable about her appearance. At all. Amṛta was a psychiatrist. She was trained to diagnose people. Most wear a wedding ring, or they have a cowlick or shoes scuffed from a slight pigeon toe. Or maybe their necklace dangles a cross or locket or grandma's old pearls. Something.
But not Ayn. She wore a simple gold chain. Her earrings were simple dots. Her shoes were clean, round, simple. She was a mean, a calculated average. Everywoman.
Ayn pulled a tri-fold from her jacket. "This is an order from the Judge Advocate General's office giving me access to all notes and files on one of your patients."
Amṛta didn't take it. She walked around the desk and waited for Ayn to move. Apparently they were having a battle of wills. It was too early for this, she thought. On a Sunday.
Ayn smiled again set the order down. She walked past the doctor slowly and settled into one of the two chairs in front of the desk, near the window.
Amṛta dropped into her high-backed and well-used office chair and sighed. It was still warm. She glanced at the screen and then picked up the tri-fold. "What's this about?" She opened the packet of papers.
Ayn waited for her to finish reading.
Amṛta flipped from one page to the next, then tossed the packet across the desk.
Ayn folded it and put it back in her jacket. "What do you know about Captain John Regent?"
"Not much. His service record has been heavily redacted." She said it like an accusation.
"Did he ever discuss the circumstances of his capture with you?"
Dr. Zebro shook her head. "John has been reluctant to talk about anything but his family."
"Is that unusual for these military types?"
Military types. Amṛta repeated it in her head. "Ayn" wasn't a soldier. And she hadn't dropped any credentials, which meant she probably wasn't a lawyer either. They're always quick to share. And if she wasn't a soldier and she wasn't a JAG prosecutor, that left only one thing.
Dr. Zebro sighed. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Oh come on, Doctor. You know how it is. All these big, tough boys keeping their feelings buried under a mountain of rage."
Ayn was baiting her. "Captain Regent isn't like that."
"No? That seems unlikely."
"He's a very genial man. Intelligent. Respectful. He's very well-liked by the staff."
"But?"
"What do you want, Ayn?"
"How long have you been here, Doctor? At this hospital?"
"Something tells me you already know the answer to that question."
"You've been a contractor with the DoD for fifteen years. Where were you stationed before?"
"I didn't see anything in your court order about me."
Ayn smiled again and sat back. "Doctor Zebro, can I call you Amṛta?
"Sure."
"Amṛta, let's be open with each other."
"That would be nice."
"You and I are never going to be friends. We're never going to exchange bundt cake recipes or share wedding pictures. I don't care if you like me or not. But I have a job to do, and it requires your assistance."
She stopped short of a threat.
Ayn went on. "You were stationed in San Diego before this, correct?"
Amṛta knew exactly where she was going.
"That's a long move, coming all the way here to Philly, especially with your whole family still in Southern California."
"Ayn? Can I call you Ayn? I assume so since you haven't bothered to give me your real name." Dr. Zebro sat forward and rested her hands on her desk. "I'm a board-certified psychiatrist specializing in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder. I also have a master's degree in cognitive psychology and nearly two decades' experience playing mind games, like this, with some of the smartest and most heavily damaged psyches in the world."
Ayn waited.
"Let's pretend that you artfully steered the conversation to Sergeant Wilkins and the shooting and I'll stipulate that he's the reason I was moved here and that it was a tragedy and that that whole episode continues to cast a shadow over everything I do. Yes, I think about him every day. Yes, I wonder if there was something I missed. No, I am not suffering a crisis of confidence because of it."
"Is that what you think I was going for?"
"Do you really want to know what I think?"
Ayn motioned for Amṛta to continue.
"I think it's very easy to manipulate people when you genuinely don't care about them. At all."
"Are you saying I'm a sociopath, Doctor?"
"Isn't that what the NSA looks for?"
Ayn crossed her arms.
Dr. Zebro continued. "You're not a soldier. You're not with JAG. The CIA doesn't work domestically. Shall I keep going?"
"Your intelligence was never in question, Doctor."
"Just my competence."
"It's a fair question given what happened." Ayn was serious.
Amṛta took a deep breath and looked out the window. It never ended. It would never end.
"Sergeant Wilkins killed three people. And himself."
Dr. Zebro looked back from the window. "Get to the point, please."
"Doctor, do you know what Captain Regent is?"
"Yes. He's a man in pain."
"No. He's a weapon. And it's my job to determine whether or not he poses a threat."
"That's funny." Dr. Zebro glowered. "I thought that was my job."
"See?" Ayn opened both her hands. "We're on the same side after all."
"Let me ask a different way. Why are you here?"
"We need time to complete our investigation."
"Yesterday he asked to be discharged."
Ayn nodded.
Amṛta wondered how long they'd been investigating him, reading her reports without her knowledge. Sometimes she really hated working for the military. Sometimes it was the most rewarding job in the world. "He has family coming to pick him up this afternoon."
"That's wonderful to hear. Family is important."
"He's not a prisoner."
"And we're not asking you to treat him like one. According to the United States Army, Captain Regent is a hero."
"The most I can do is hold him for 72 hours. IF I felt he was a threat to himself. Or others."
"We're not asking you to do anything you're not comfortable with."
Yes, you are, Amṛta thought.
Ayn sensed the hesitation. "I can't give you details, of course. But I can say this. After walking out of a very, very secret location, Captain Regent was captured by forces unknown and held for not less than six months and not more than eighteen. In that time, he was tortured and beaten and made to endure--"
Dr. Zebro interrupted. "The fracture patterns on his femur, tibia, and fibula indicate his legs were broken, repeatedly, with some kind of precision tool and then allowed to heal. The contact marks and burn pattern on his skin suggests he was hooked up to a generator or battery while being drenched in gasoline. His face was burned with acid--"
"We've read the same reports, Doctor."
"Really? How wonderful. Then you know he's suffered enough. He's in constant pain."
"And yet he refuses his medication."
Amṛta rubbed her cheeks in frustration. Give her a suicidal patient any day. Anything other than a spy.
Ayn didn't stop. "I'm not board-certified in anything. I didn't go to Berkeley. I just went to some plain ol' state college down south. But I read something recently. Maybe you can tell me if it's true."
Dr. Zebro waited.
"Patients engaging in masochistic behavior are often punishing themselves for something. Is that right?"
"It's not that straightforward."
"But it is a possibility."
Amṛta didn't answer.
"Doctor, whether you are or not, a lot of very smart people are bothered that Captain Regent refuses to state why he went AWOL or who his captors were."
Dr. Zebro looked down at her desk and waited for Ayn to finish her sales pitch.
"You probably don't know this but he was found dragging himself, one-armed, through a desert two hundred miles from his last known location. Barely alive."
Amṛta looked up. "I'm guessing that was in a part of the world we're not supposed to be in."
Ayn ignored the quip. "And no one has any idea why a highly decorated soldier with an impeccable service record suddenly walked off the reservation. We don't know where he was or who took him or why they let him go."
Amṛta snorted. "Or what he told them while he was gone."
Ayn paused. "That, too."
Dr. Zebro took a deep breath and exhaled. John's service record had more black line than text. It was obvious he had seen things, secret things, embarrassing things. The cynic in Amṛta wondered if that's why they let him come home. They needed him to relax, get comfortable, so they could uncover what he revealed. And to whom.
Otherwise they would have just eliminated him in-country.
And now the powers-that-be wanted Amṛta to declare him a risk to himself and hold him against his will. They would need a judge's ruling to keep him more than 72 hours, but she guessed that would be plenty of time for a well-connected agency to find one.
They didn't care about John, she knew, and they were holding Derek Wilkins over her head, giving her an "excuse." Better to be safe, right? Better not to risk another soldier with PTSD snapping and taking a service sidearm to his family. And then himself.
Ayn could see the conflict on Dr. Zebro's face. She stood. "I'm going to interview the staff. But I'll be around. Do let me know what you decide."
Dr. Zebro looked up at the dark woman. Ayn wasn't going to leave until Amṛta did what they wanted. For whatever reason, the NSA just declared war on John Regent.
Amṛta watched the spy step over the pile of spilled files and walk out the door. She took another deep breath and sighed. Poor John. After everything he'd been through, everything he did to survive, to escape, to get home, it still wasn't over.
Now his own country was after him.
