So let's start with who I am, or who I was. As a kid, I was a military brat, moving town every couple of weeks. No big deal. When I was old enough, I joined the army too, and I served my time. I even got a couple of medals out of it and a promotion to Sergeant. I was good. I was respected. I was feared. Needless to say my dad was proud, and my mother scared for my safety. Then there was some ugliness; I killed a fellow NCO for doing something to a civilian in a particularly torn up place. I'll never forget that moment, the second I snapped his neck between my fingers. It's the only part of my life before the Company that I can remember now. So I was dishonourably discharged. A few months later, I was walking down a busy street in New York in the rain. I walked up the stairs into my dingy little apartment, and as I turned the light on, I was grabbed by three guys with masks over their faces. At first I thought I was gonna get robbed. I was wrong.
It turns out they worked for the Company. I guessed you're supprised right? I now know that they're members of "The Committee", a group of elite Intelligence ops. They told me about the Company. The told me how in 1944 a group of military leaders, scientists and politicians from all around the world were called to a secret meeting in a luxury yacht off the coast of Massachusetts. Among the people were a General named Carrington, and Colonel Steele, Vice President Truman, Albert Einstein, Robert Oppenheimer, Howard Hughes, two biologists, two astronomers, a psychologist and a psychic who called herself Madame Z. They were given hard evidence of paranormal activity, evidence that no one could ignore. Carrington dubbed the team Argus and Truman dubbed the movement "a conspiracy of protection". They decided that they were going to give the things that went bump in the night a bump back. And so the Company was created.
At the beginning of it's history, The Company was part of STRIKE, but we've long since cut our ties and left any Government knowledge. Technically we're still a branch of STRIKE, but they've forgotten we even exist, and we're better off for it. There are rumours that Security Ops were sent into the STRIKE HQ, and destroyed all the files and any people who knew of the Company or of Argus, and they may be right. The Company is divided into 5 different departments; Combat, Security, Science, Technology and Intelligence. The departments are set up so they can operate seperately, but none can operate alone. They're competative, and everyone has their own agenda.
We're secret and we're silent, but it inevitably happens from time to time that some innocent, or not-so-innocent, civilian pokes his nose into Company business. A janitor stumbles onto some Grey ship schematics, or a CIA sting exposes a demon-hunting squad. Company policiy for these incidents is unwavering - the conspiracy must be maintained at all costs. Killing the perpetrator outright is frowned upon. While it solves one problem, it opens up several others. The preferred method of dealing with prying eyes is what some Black Ops call "the Cocktail" (or sometimes the Mickey). A Science department innovation, the Cocktail is a potent micture of barbiturates, amino-acid chains, neurotransmitters and the extract of a rare African lily. The solution can be given orally (I understand it tastes like dog crap) or injected. The recipient sleeps for about 30 hours, then wakes up with a week's memories wiped from his brain. He then enjoys another 30 hours of barely functioning consciousness, allowing the rudimentary elements of living, like drinking and using the bathroom. This is usually mistaken for severe flu. About 1 in 20 victims has a bad reaction to the Cocktail and loses a month to several years of memories. A rare few suffer permaneny amnesia.
Some die-hard Security ops oppose the Cocktail becuase the memories have been shown to be reachable through deep hypnosis, and sometimes show up in dreams and nightmares. Plus, administering the drug before the snooper can reveal the information to someone can be tricky. Given the moral and practical problems with outright killing, however, it seems a reasonable compromise. Still...sometimes time constraints or situational circumstances make a knife across the throat the only way to keep the Company secret.
There are two more big company secrets, apart from the obvious monsters and ghoulies. One is Blacknet. Blacknet is like an underground vault on the Internet. Its networked servers contain the entire amassed knowledge of the Company: black-op personnel files, Science department technical journals, zoological and xeno-biological reports, technical specifications on emergent technologies, security department mission logs and Intelligence dossiers. Pretty much any information that relates to the Compan or would be useful to black ops in the filed, can be found on Blacknet.
The network is given the ".xxx" domain, but it isn't accessible through normal Internet channels. Each server has a false front, usually a high-traffic chat room or something like that. Access requires the proper multi-level passwords and a custom decryption chip on your computer. Every black op, certain Company administrators and each Argus member has an account and access to the Blacknet information. Only high-level Technology department members, who administrate Blacknet, have the ability to change the content (with the exception of each user's personal folder).
While Blacknet is highly secure, it still represents the biggest potential infromation leak for the Company. Users must change their passwords monthly. These must be at least 15 characters long, include numbers and capital letters, and cannot contain any recognisable words. In addition, the techie sysadmins have set up a worm virus that would, within five minutes, destroy all the data in Blacknet...just in case. Backups are made daily and kept in a special vault, protected by the Security department.
Finally Omicron. As soon as a recruit enters the Academy, he is fitted with the Omicron Device. This small transceiver is tuned to a specific, scrambled frequency. It vibrates softly when activated, and can transmit messages through skull conduction. The Company uses the device to tracl the worldwide location of operatives, and to page them.
It is about the size of a quarter, implanted in the back of the neck, just above the last cervical vertebra. The state-of-the-art batteries have an average service life of five years. The device's locator system uses global positioning satellites to proveide the agent's location, accurate to within 10 feet.
After activation, the device provides the phone n umber the operative is to call for his orders. It can also transmit short vocal messages, called "the Voice of God" by black ops. The phone number - or any message being sent - cycles every 10 minutes util the op checks in. Lengthier messages can be sent, but rapidly run down the batteries much more than normal operation. Given the complexity of the operation to replace them, policy is to avoid long communiques except in emergencies.
The device can be removed by a competent surgeon, but any tampering sends an immediate alarm to the Technology department's monitoring station. The device self destructs within two minutes of removal, and the previous owner becomes a renegade, with a very short life expectancy.
Though the devices' batteries are replaced religiously, sometimes one malfunctions and the Company loses track of an operative. A hunter squad is sent to the agent's last known position to track him down. If the agent is there, the needed repairs are made. If the agent cannot be found, he is tracked down. If he had gone renegade, his is killed.
Rumour has it that the Company can listen in on an operative's surroundings without his knowledge, and some more cynical souls have taken to calling Omicron "the other Chip" (The Chip is the monitoring device installed by the Greys. You know, the aliens...try to keep up).
The Company can remotely destroy a funtioning Omicron Device should the need arise. More importantly from my perspective it can be used to release poisin into the brain. The death looks like coronary failure.
Of course the Intelligence agents that picked me up didn't tell me all that. No, I learnt it the hard way, through years of slaving for the Company. So I eagerly agreed to join, after they gave me hard evidence of the existence of aliens. So I was taken to the Academy, in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo mountains at the tail end of the rockies, the Company's training ground. That was the first time I met General Davis Francis Steele, the Academy Commander.
I was held in a small room with five other cadets. A small weaselly guy with greasy black hair; a cute girl, not a day over twenty five; a big black guy, about my size and build; a tiny black girl, with eyes that followed you round the room...or maybe that was only me; and a thin guy with short hair and glasses on for "comfort". These people became the closest thing I had to family over the years I spent with the company, but right then I didn't know them, so I'll talk about them later. We were all called out of our tiny rooms and lead to the big parade ground outside, where there was General Steele on a platform and about 200 other cadets. Then he gave me the first speech.
"Okay. You're good. That's a given. You're good at a lot of things or you wouldn't be here. You're killers and healers, hunters and hiders, builders and destroyers. Some of you seek knowledge and some of you seek to conceal it. You are good because there is no alternative. For the next five years, you will live in a plave where there is nothing an no one who is not, at the very least, good.
You're good or you would have been dead a long time ago. You're good or you would right now be fish food in the bottom of the Canadian with a bullet in the back of your head, put there by my operative, on moy order, because I wanted it to happen. Lots of others who would have liked to be here aren't because they weren't good enough. And they're dead now.
So let's just get past that. Let's forget that you're good, because it doesn't matter. You might as well just say you're breathing, because it has that same amount of importance. Being good only gets you here. You are going to have to get much better than good. It doesn't matter how 'good' a firefighter you are once you've been sent to hell.
I see some of you out there. Cocky. Rolling your eyes like you've heard it all before. You're all such badasses, aren't you? There's nothing you can't handle. Well, cherish that confidence tropps. Hold on to it like the gunwale of the ferryman's boat. You will need it. Starting tomorrow, everything you've learned will be wrong.
I'm not going to sugar-coat it. There's no way to pretty it up. This is hell. You're going to be taught and trained, humiliated and beaten to a broken, bloody mess. You will feast and you will starrve. We will test the limits of your body, exceed your endurance, teach you the purest pleasures and the severest pain. We will put unbearable strain on your mind and force you to question your motives, your faith and your own will to live. You will face death and some of you will die.
And if you survive, you will wake up late on certain nights, sweating and cold, wondering whether it was worth it.
But it is.
When you leave here, you will be among the 800 most competent, all around bad mother****ers on the planet. You will be better than six billion people, the whole remainder of humanity. No one you meet, for the rest of your life, will be able to outdo you in anything, unless it's another one of your own. You will kick ass and take names. In effect, you will have complete freedom and unlimited resources to do whatever it takes to get your job done. You will be gods among men.
Which isn't to say we won't own you. We will. Forever. But with that ownership comes a great boon. You will exist outside of society. You'll walk between the raindrops. Nothing will touch you except for us. And ever that won't matter to you. By then you will have been incorporated. You will be us.
So you live in hell for five years, you do your time and when you get ouy, you'll be handed a life that's richer and more exciting than anything you can imagine. You will do things that everyone knows are impossible. You'll experience things that live only in the minds of lunatics and visionaries, things you thought were made up to scare children. Trust me; it's a whole 'nuther level. It's the bargain of a lifetime.
And if you don't like the bargain, you can have what's behind Door No. 2. A bullet.
Dismissed."
My name is Jack Mason. I was cocky, full of myself, but right then I knew something. The **** was about to hit the fan. Welcome to the worst five years of my life.
