Necroscope: Invaders

'Oh no, this is everyone's nightmare/ Trask told him, and then pressed on: 'But which part do you think is a dream, Jake? The strange work we do, or the fantastic thing that you do?'

'I don't do anything!' Jake turned on him, and for a moment looked like he might hit him. 'It just… it just happens.' He clenched his fists, unclenched them, stood lost for words.

Trask shook his head. 'But things don't "just happen", Jake,' he said. 'They happen for reasons. And we've got to figure out why they're happening to you.' He turned to lan Goodly. 'Do we have his file?'

The precog nodded, swung his chair to a filing cabinet set in a section of the oval desk, took out a slim folder and handed it over.

There were chairs that folded into the walls. Trask let one down, sat in it, and invited the others to do the same. Then he opened the file. And:

'Jake Cutter…' he began. But Jake's voice was harsh as he interrupted:

'Do you intend to to read it all? Even the nasty bits? With a woman present?' The others had taken chairs, but he was still standing.

'Brief details,' Trask said, staring up at him. 'Why do you ask? Is there something you're ashamed of?'

'What has that got to do with it?' Jake blurted. 'That's my life you're holding in your hands. It's private — or it used to be.'

'The newspapers didn't think so.' Trask didn't even blink.

'Hell, no, they didn't!' Jake said. 'They held me one hundred per cent responsible for my "crimes!" And do you intend to detail those, too? Is this how you're going to keep me in line, working for you, for E-Branch: by holding a bloody axe over my head every time I voice an opinion or refuse to cooperate?'

Trask shook his head. 'That has nothing to do with it. The object of the exercise is to get to the root of your talent. As for your so-called "crimes"… it's the opinion of this Branch that you don't have too much to be ashamed of.'

For a moment Jake was taken aback, but then he said, 'What if I don't much care about the opinion of this Branch?'

'But you do,' said Trask. 'You believe in justice, and you couldn't get any. So you provided your own rough justice, which was just a little too rough for our modern society. In E-Branch, Jake, we understand rough justice. It's sometimes the only kind that will fit. And we were taught by an expert, someone who believed in an eye for an eye almost as much as you do. Well, now we wonder if that's all you have in common with him, or if this talent of yours is something else. And what's more, there might even be other talents. We want to explore that possibility, too — indeed, every possibility — and you can help us or hinder us. In which case… eventually we'd be obliged to give up on you. And there's still an empty cell waiting for you, remember?'

Jake's hard-frozen shell was coming apart now. Not his resolve but the icy sheath that covered it, without which he wouldn't have been able to face his own atrocities. For that was how he secretly viewed some of his past deeds, as atrocities. Everyone else had seemed to think so, anyway. Yet in his heart, still Jake believed that what Ben Trask had said was right: sometimes an eye for an eye was the only way. And suddenly Jake found himself believing everything else that Trask was telling him, that E-Branch really did care and was on his side. It was just that it had been such a long time since anyone was on his side.

And now Trask was saying, 'So can we get on?'

Jake drew a chair out from the wall, sat down heavily and said, 'Why do I get this feeling this isn't a con? You're what they call a human lie-detector, right? Well, Mr Trask, if you ask me, I'd say your talent works both ways! I get the impression that you really do want to help me, even if it's only so I can help you…'

Trask actually smiled then, and said, 'Jake, you're exactly right. I hate all lies and liars, and I instinctively know when something isn't true, isn't right. Don't ask me how, I just do.

But it's equally hard for me to tell a lie as to listen to one. I just thought you might like to know that.'

Jake nodded and, feeling a little more in control now, said, 'Okay, so if you think there's… something wrong with me and you can maybe fix it, I suppose I'd be a fool to object.'

Trask sat back and issued an audible sigh. 'Very well. But you have to understand. It's not that we think there's anything wrong with you, but that something may be right. From our point of view, anyway.'

And then he returned to the file…

'Your father was a USAF pilot,' Trask began. 'As a rookie, Joe Cutter served at an American airbase in southern England. That was where he met your mother, an English girl from a well-to-do family. Janet Carson's folks objected; they got married anyway; for a while Janet was a camp follower, living wherever Joe was based. Then you came along, doing your bit to stabilize a frequently stormy relationship… well, for a little while, anyway.

But the marriage didn't last. Your father was too often away, and your mother… took lovers.' Trask lifted his gaze from the file, looked at Jake. 'If this is too personal I can skip forward…?'

'You're doing okay/ Jake shrugged. 'Since my parents left me nothing in the way of great memories, what does it matter?'

And so Trask continued. 'Your mother had friends in what's called "high society." Eventually she married a French businessman, with whom she lived in St Tropez, until… well, until she died five years ago.'

Again Jake's shrug, though not as careless as he might have tried to make it seem. 'It's nice in Nice,' he said.

'So as a baby you went to your British grandparents,' Trask went on, 'who were maybe a little on the wrong side of fifty to take on your upringing. As for your father: Joe Cutter died on aerial manoeuvres in Germany in 1995, piloting a way beyond its sell-by-date airplane known "affectionately" to its pilots as a "Flying Coffin." Joe was coming to the end of his service when it happened, and you were just fifteen years old…

'You were an unruly kid, Jake. Too much money, courtesy of your then aging and indeed doting grandparents, too many opportunities to smoke "funny" cigarettes, and probably to try other "controlled" pharmaceuticals? Too much time on your hands, and nothing much to look forward to, not to your way of thinking at least. So you dropped out of school, spent some time with your mother in France; but she had quite a few bad habits of her own and wasn't a very good influence. And anyway, you didn't get on with her. You said you might join the Army and your grandfather was delighted. He said, "Excellent! The Brigade of Guards! The old school tie and all that, wot? Wot?" So you joined the Parachute Regiment because you wanted to jump out of airplanes! And in just two years you transferred to the SAS. Well, so much for parental guidance.

'When they kicked you out of the SAS your final report said you were incapable of taking orders. Also, and this is a damned strange thing for the SAS, the report said you were too much of a loner! This from an outfit that prides itself on self-dependence, or total independence! So there you were, five years ago: back to the good life, a life of luxury in the South of France, where you lived off your Ma's money.'

Jake shrugged, but he looked more than a little uncomfortable. 'Her second husband left her a packet,' he said. 'And her third was even richer. So why should I break my back working?'

'I'm not criticizing you, Jake,' Trask told him. Tm just pointing out what you were then, in order to find a comparison with what you later became in the eyes of society. Which is to say a criminal. More than that, a brutal murderer.'

'Now just you wait a minute!' Jake started to say, 'Didn't you tell me that you—' until Trask cut him off with: