The Motley Crew

The new safe house hotel room was nicer than it should’ve been. One of those boutique places that tried to look modest but screamed silent wealth—exposed brick, Edison bulbs, espresso machine that probably cost more than Mango’s car. If she still had a car.

John tossed his duffel to the side without a word. Laz made a beeline for the bar cart in the corner. No one had spoken since they left the crater.

John grabbed the remote, flicked on the TV, and muted it. A Japanese news anchor was talking a mile a minute with flames and twisted metal behind her. Headlines scrolled in bright red kanji. The words “terrorist attack” and “unprecedented destruction” flashed in English below.

Laz sat, a glass of vodka in his hand. Mango walked straight into the bedroom. She didn’t even close the door all the way.

John pulled his laptop from his bag and hooked it up to the hotel TV.

“What are you doing?” asked Laz.

“There’s a feed that we use for underground news,” he said under his breath. “He killed a lot of people he shouldn’t have. There’s no way they aren’t talking about it.”

“The dark web?”

“No. A different internet entirely.”

Then, a video loaded on the screen. No fanfare. Just static. Then a dimly lit room appeared—wood paneling, a massive globe behind the desk. Peter. Front and center. Red suit. Gold chain. That cocky grin that always looked one second away from exploding into violence.

“Good evening,” Peter said, “To the families of the fallen... I don’t care. Wrong place, wrong time. You were never part of the plan, but you were guilty of being in the way. To the people who think they're untouchable watching this—I hope you’re paying attention.”

He leaned forward.

“What I did tonight wasn’t a mistake. It wasn’t an accident. It was a message. Though in all seriousness, I am pissed that I had to get rid of that arena. I fucking loved that place...”

Mango came out of her room, her ear perked to his words.

“But I won’t let anything stand in the way of new management. Not even my brother,” he said with a smug shake of his head. “Who is, well, let’s just say… Now he’s just a bloodstain. Although, I’m not too sure how much of him is dust or blood.”

The video ended. The screen flickered to black.

Laz was already halfway through his drink. “Jesus Christ.”

John didn’t say anything. He just stared.

That was his brother. That was Peter. Saying he killed him like it meant nothing. Saying the world was better off without him. Like they hadn’t grown up in the same house. Like they hadn’t shared a room, a family, a father.

Mango just stood and shivered. “I’m going to wash this dirt off,” she said plainly, and went into her room. The bathroom door clicked shut. The sound of running water filled the silence.

“Yeah,” said John, “I’ve got to make a call.” John then walked into his bedroom.

Laz’s phone buzzed on the table. He groaned before even looking at it. “It’s her.”

He answered. “This is Hawk.”

The screen on his phone lit up with a video feed. Deputy Director Kate Stein. Her signature short blonde hair, square jaw, and a permanent scowl filled the frame.

“Laz,” she snapped, “you’ve got thirty seconds before I say something I regret.”

“Deputy, if you’d just let me explain—”

“Explain what? That there’s a mile wide crater outside of Tokyo?! That half the international arms dealing community just got vaporized on Japanese soil?! You understand the diplomatic nightmare you’ve caused? I have to somehow explain to the Japanese government, the UN AND Director Hoffman that I knew you were on a mission that might fail and now has literally backfired in the most egregious way imaginable.”

“I didn’t fire the damn laser, Peter did! We didn’t even get the codes. He took them before we could—”

“I don’t care! You were supposed to stop this. And now the CIA has to explain how a Nero family drama turned into Hiroshima 2.0!”

“We’re working on fixing it—”

“You’re not working on anything,” she snapped. “You’re done. You’re pulled. Effective immediately. I’m sending in Agent One. When he gets there, you hand everything over. The notes, files, digital logs, your teeth if he asks.”

Laz looked like he just swallowed a bullet. “Kate, come on. John—”

“Don’t ‘Kate’ me. This is the biggest international incident of the decade, and it’s on our backs. You were supposed to keep John out of the loop and the mission beyond his duty!”

Laz swallowed hard.

“You knew John wasn’t ready. He didn’t want to be there. Now we’ve got a corpse count that is record breaking and a satellite in the hands of a lunatic.” Her voice lowered. “I hope you know that the only place you’ll be working is in a black site prison cafeteria, so help me God.”

The screen went black.

Laz stared at his reflection in the glass of his phone. The last few minutes playing back in his head. Every wrong call. Every time he told himself it’d work out. Behind him, the shower turned off.

John hadn’t moved from the couch. His eyes were still locked on the black screen. Peter’s words echoing in his mind like a bruise pressed too hard.

Mango stepped out wrapped in a towel. Her hair was wet. Eyes red, but not from the water.

No one said a word.

For a second, the three of them just sat there. Each nursing their own personal version of defeat.

Peter had won.

***

John sat on the edge of the bed, one hand gripping his phone, the other rubbing the back of his neck like he was still trying to wring out the shock of everything that had happened. The call connected. A moment later, Lea’s face appeared on screen.

“John!” she gasped. “You’re alive!”

“For now...”

Behind her, the screen jostled a bit and a head popped into frame. It was KJ, glasses askew and a smudge of something blue across his cheek.

“Did it work?” KJ asked.

“What?”

“The grapple belt, man! Did it work?”

John exhaled, chuckling. “Yeah. It worked. Saved my life once already.”

“Boom!” KJ fist-pumped out of frame. “Told you it wasn’t a toy! On a scale of one to 10 would you use it again? It’s way better than those faulty watches. Oh and the decoy?”

“I haven’t used the decoy yet, though,” John added. “Didn’t really have time to toss a fake version of myself into an exploding building.”

Lea leaned closer to the camera. “Where are you now?”

“Another hotel. Different city. Different crater.”

“You look tired.”

John smiled without humor. “I am tired. I think I should–”

The door creaked open behind him and Laz stepped in. “Mind if I interrupt?”

“Not at all.” John turned back to his phone, “I’ll call you back in a sec.”

Then the screen went dark as John ended the call. Laz walked over, dropped into the chair by the desk, and didn’t say anything for a second.

“I need a favor,” he finally said.

“Yeah?”

“I want you to show me where in the Tyrrhenian Sea your brother might be.”

John narrowed his eyes and scratched his neck. “We’re supposed to go home.”

Laz raised an eyebrow. “And since when do good agents only do what they’re told?”

John scoffed. “Since they blow up Tokyo.”

“Look, I know you didn’t sign up for this. And yeah, maybe the CIA pulled us. But being an agent… being a good one… it’s about knowing when to follow orders and when to follow your gut.”

Laz leaned forward.

“There are about 200 of us in the entire agency with full-field access and operational clearance. I’m number 21 on the list.”

John shrugged. “Is that supposed to impress me?”

“It’s supposed to tell you I don’t plan on staying 21 forever. And letting the guy who vaporized half of Tokyo get away? That’s not how I move up. That’s not how I sleep at night.”

“You’re not the only one who can’t sleep.”

“You want to stop him too.”

“Yeah, I do.”

“You feel responsible.”

“I am responsible! He’s my brother. I don’t know how it got this bad… but it did. If I don’t help stop him, I might as well have fired it myself.”

Laz nodded. “Then we go rogue.”

John raised an eyebrow. “We already broke protocol once.”

“No, I mean really rogue.”

Laz stood, walked to the entertainment system, and pulled open the cabinet under the TV. He yanked out the hotel’s built-in speaker, popped the back off, and tossed it onto the bed beside John.

“What are you doing?” John asked.

“Every FOCUS user has a backup signal embedded in their skull. Low power. Short range. Usually harmless. But if the agency wants to find you—”

“They can because of a planted tracker. Perfect another thing they neglected to tell me. I bet that’s the real way KJ and Lea found me..”

“Exactly. So we get rid of it.”

He pulled a handful of batteries from the minibar flashlight and started fiddling with them like he’d done this a dozen times. A few clips, a makeshift coil, and ten seconds later, he had a DIY magnet.

“Hold still.”

John backed up. “Whoa. What are you—”

Laz pressed the magnet to the back of his neck. The moment it made contact, a sharp buzz exploded in John’s ears, like radio static and tinnitus all at once.

The FOCUS system flashed. The screen appeared in front of him in a haze.

<<<>>>

[Warning. Tracking Hardware Compromised]

[GPS Unit: Disabled]

[Signal Loss: Permanent]

<<<>>>

John staggered back. “Jesus! You couldn’t have warned me?”

“You wanted to be free or not?”

“Free, yeah. Half-paralyzed, no. That thing is attached to my brain stem! Does that cause damage to my brain?”

Laz shrugged. “It’s safe. Probably. You know. Mostly.”

John rubbed the back of his neck again, wincing. “Such confidence, why would I doubt you?”

“Well,” Laz said, tossing the magnet to the side, “welcome to being rogue. When you return, they’ll try to fix the tracking device.”

Laz leaned against the window, arms crossed, watching the city lights flicker through a soft drizzle that clung to the glass. John sat on the edge of the bed, eyes still red from fatigue.

“Let me give you a piece of advice,” Laz said. “One they don’t teach at Langley.”

“I’m listening.”

“You ever noticed how the most distracted people are hard to manipulate? They’re nose-deep in their phones, eyes glazed, heads somewhere else.”

John shrugged. “Because they’re not paying attention?”

“In an interesting way, people who pay too much attention are easy. They’re so confident in what they’re locked in at. Tunnel vision. You see, when someone locks in on a goal, especially under pressure, they stop seeing anything else. That’s when you misdirect. That’s when you guide their focus right where you want it.”

“Like a magic trick.”

“Exactly,” Laz said. “People think being a good spy is about firepower. It’s not. It’s about being in the right place… and knowing how to get the other guy in the wrong one.”

“What does this have to do with anything?”

“I’m saying that your brother is laser focused on his goal. He’ll be so focused on his next step that he won’t even be looking for us. We can use this. He won’t see us coming for the next few days but we have to move now. More importantly, we might be able to manipulate him into handing over the satellite if he believes it helps his goals.”

“You think he’s gonna sell it then? We can search auctions and… wait, what about our jobs? What happens after this?”

“If you want to move up, you need to be more than just a pawn in somebody else’s game. You finish the mission. No matter what. I know this whole thing wasn’t your call. You didn’t want to be here. But the moment you stepped into that arena, it became your job. That crater back in Tokyo? That’s not on you. But what happens next is.”

“I guess you're right...”

“Good. Because power like what your brother has… it should never belong to one man. It’s meant to be managed. Contained. Used by institutions smart enough to handle it. Governments. Agencies. People with restraint.”

John stood, scratching his head. “No offense, Laz. But that’s fucking stupid.”

Laz was bewildered by his response.

“I don’t believe power should belong to governments.” John continued. “I’ve seen what they do with it. I’ve seen how they pick and choose who gets saved and who gets left behind. Hell, the underground wouldn’t even be as powerful if they actually would do the right things to their people.

I believe power should belong to people. All people. That way, it’s not just the ones at the top who get to survive when things go bad. Power like that should be used to protect the people.”

“You think that because you’re green. There is no point in protecting “all” people. Half the time, you don’t even know if they’re worth protecting. Everyone has grievances with their own country, John, but how do you know what side to choose when it’s time to start fighting? It’s pretty simple, we’re Americans and they’re not. The only way power like this should be used is to control people.

It prevents them from hurting themselves, prevents them from doing something stupid and prevents them from joining the wrong team. There are no good or bad people, just the people on our team and since the people on our team are for us, we need to make sure they stay that way. Jesus, if we don't do that much, then the other guy could win and take everything from us! That’s a gamble I’m not willing to take.”

“... You don’t get it because you’ve never sat down at the table and won a bet.”

For a second, Laz didn’t say anything.

“You sound like your father,” he said eventually.

John grunted. “Maybe… But I won’t end up like him.”

After another long pause, Laz nodded.

“Regardless of our “beliefs” … we agree on one thing, Peter has to be stopped.”

“He will be. We can use the codes to enact a self-destruct sequence and keep it out of the hands of everyone for good.”

“Let’s just focus on getting the codes first.”

John turned back to the laptop on the table. He pulled up a map. The satellite imagery flickered for a second before locking in on a red dot just off the coast of the Tyrrhenian Sea.

“There,” he said. “That’s the most likely spot. I know the way he works. He’ll want open water for movement, hidden docks, minimal surveillance. All of that points here where it’s far enough away for privacy, but close enough for a quick escape.”

Laz studied the screen, his eyes scanning the coordinates.

“I can get us a plane, but it’s one-way.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning if we fail… we don’t come back.”

“Then we don’t fail. Simple as that”

“It always seems that way.”

Then something struck John. An idea came like lighting. “Your talent is ‘Total Recall’. This means you can remember everything right?”

“Yeah,” said Laz, “It allows me to recall anything I see perfectly.”

“Can you use that information too? Like instantly?”

“What’s your point?”

“I think I have a crazy idea, that I’m almost certain will work. I know a way to increase your combat skill level significantly overnight.”

Laz raises his eyebrow.