Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 83040 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 415(@200wpm)___ 332(@250wpm)___ 277(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83040 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 415(@200wpm)___ 332(@250wpm)___ 277(@300wpm)
He pauses here to smile at me, and I return that smile in exactly the way we planned before he continues. Everything about this meeting has been scripted and I’m not about to break character.
“In the past,” Brose continues, “Silent Intelligence Operatives were deemed a complete failure and that’s why the program was shut down twenty-five years ago. We had mental health issues with the agents, there were numerous ethical violations in our training methodology, and many operatives went rogue and had to be eliminated. But I assure you, all that has been fixed. We’ve spent the last twelve years redefining what it means to be SIO. We’ve spent countless hours poring over the latest research in mental development, incorporating the strictest operational controls, and implementing a partnership program that should ease all your fears about moving forward with CORE SIO projects using these agents in the future. If Olive here is SIO 2.0, then I am POD 2.0, her Personal Operations Director. We will never be out of contact. There is no more independent deep cover as far as SIO agents are concerned. We’re in it together, as we have been for the last two years, and I’m here to tell you that she is ready. We both are.”
Brose pauses here to read the room and finds all the men are thoughtfully considering his words. Because he’s only twenty-seven—at least twenty years junior to everyone else present, aside from me—there was a small chance that they would not take him seriously.
Of course, it was never more than a small chance. He’s Ambrose Sinclair. His great-great-grandfather was part of the initial CORE Directive back in the forties. His great-grandfather ran hundreds of operatives in the sixties and his grandfather did the same in the nineties, and then… well, the whole thing fell apart when his father was killed by the agent he was running just after the turn of the century.
Brose was just a toddler when that happened. But he was raised in it. That’s the important part. Because so was I. This is what makes us different from all the failures that came before. Even though I didn’t start my training until I was nearly nine, I come from these people just like he does.
When he continues, Brose is somber, his mood not dark in any way, just very serious. “Our problem was, and as a Sinclair,”—he puts a hand over his heart—“I take full responsibility for those past failures, but our problem was that we expected civilians to care about the program. We plucked them out of the ether and dropped them into our world with very little understanding of the situation. They had neither the fortitude, nor the compulsion, to—forgive my language—to give a fuck, gentlemen. They didn’t give a fuck about what we were doing or why we were doing it.”
Once again, he pans a hand to me, smiling. “All that has changed with Olive Creed. We brought her in young. She’s a veteran junior agent and she’s only twenty years old. Forty-three missions.” He holds up a hand, pressing it towards them as if to ward off any incoming objections. “And I know what you’re thinking—these missions were simulations. But the simulations are vital to the success of the Silent Intelligence Operative project. They’re not simply training exercises. And Olive rose to the top as the best of the best, I promise you. And with me by her side, she will be everything we’ve hoped for.”
Brose pauses once again to look at me. And as I look back, I believe him. I have zero doubts.
We’re a team.
It’s us against them.
I spend every moment of my day with this man. We work together, we live together, we sleep together. This is what it means to be handled.
My mission is you and your mission is me. These words tumble around in my head in his voice because he’s said them to me thousands of times.
I would never betray him. Not in a million years. And he will always be on my side.
I lose time, I think, because the next thing I know Brose is saying, “Please open the folders in front of you, gentlemen. This is our first operation and we’re not leaving this room until you know it inside and out.”
It takes fourteen hours to explain the mission and answer every possible question that the CORE Oversight Committee has about what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.
Lunch is served, dinner is served, coffee is served. More water pitchers come and go than I can count. Only Brose is still wearing his tie and suit coat by the time it’s all over and he opens the door to walk them out, but every single one of them is smiling.
And so are we.
Because he and I have done it.