Olympus: The Agency

WARNING: This chapter contains graphic imagery of violence.

Aaron’s eyes opened as his alarm clock blared next to him. What an insane dream, he thought to himself. He sat up, slamming the alarm clock and rubbing his eyes of sleep.

He remembered he was a government agent in the future fighting aliens and fantasy creatures. What was his name in the dream? Tartarus? Was that a Greek thing?

He heard someone stir next to him, and he looked over to see his wife, Alice, lying asleep despite the light creeping into the room. He ran his fingers through her garnet red hair gently, then got out of bed. He walked to the bathroom and ran the tap as he looked at himself in the mirror.

What!? He stood back as the face that looked back at him wasn’t Aaron. It was a face he didn’t recognise, with a wire poking out of their temple.

“What the hell?” he muttered. He touched the mirror slightly, the surface rippled, and suddenly it was his face in the mirror.

He needed more sleep. He was still thinking about the dream. He needed to just focus on his routine this morning.

So he stopped the tap in the sink, and instead turned the shower on. After undressing, he stood under the warm water, his eyes closed as he let the warmth relax him.

The water felt thick...

Aaron opened his eyes and found his body was covered in thick crimson liquid. He cried out in surprise, slipped and fell, hitting his head on the wall.

“Dammit!”

The door opened and Alice ran in. “Aaron? What happened?”

The water wasn’t red anymore. Just more remnants of the dream...

“I just fell over. My head... I hit my head.”

Alice knelt down and smiled at Aaron as he sat in the shower.

“You can talk to me, you know.”

“I just... weird dream.”

Alice nodded. “It wasn’t a dream. You need to remember.”

Alice pulled her hand back and punched through the glass, grabbing Aaron by the throat. He fell back against the wall, swinging a punch at Alice. But she wasn’t Alice anymore. She was the man with the wire in his temple. Aaron screamed, and punched again, harder, unable to breathe.

“Stop it!”

Nothing. Blackness. Aaron was naked and alone in a void of nothingness. He could breathe, despite there being no air. He felt impossibly cold, but he was still alive. Was he dying?

“Remember.”

Aaron turned at the voice. No one was around him. Just an empty, cold void.

“Remember what?!” Aaron shouted angrily. What the hell is happening?!”

Goosebumps appeared on his skin as he felt a presence behind him, a hand on his shoulder. He heard words spoken mechanically, with no emotion.

“Forget. You will cease to be. You will become us.”

Aaron turned and punched in the direction of the voice, but there was nothing there. He grit his teeth in frustration.

“Remember who you are.”

Alice’s voice. His wife, but... not his wife? His brain was fuzzy, like mould was growing on his grey matter. He felt another hand on him, this time cupping his face. His eyes adjusted to see her.

It was Alice, but this time she was almost transparent, a single shade of green. Her face was the same; soft with rounded cheeks and wide eyes. Her eyes looked into his soul, serious and sorrowful.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I can’t save you.”

Aaron blinked as Alice’s eyes started to well with tears. He grabbed her hand.

“Tartarus?” she said sadly. “There’s only one way. I can save you if I destroy myself. Destroy the link.”

“No,” Aaron said. “Please don’t.”

“I need to save you. No one has ever seen me as real. But I’m not. I’m a computer, a character. Let me save you in the only way I know how.”

Aaron gripped Alice’s hand tighter. Her words were helping his memories take form. The meeting in the laboratory to help him acclimatise to the future. Her rapid calculations to save Enyo and Dionysus. Her constant companionship through this new life.

“You’re real to me. You think and you feel. That sounds like living to me.”

Alice smiled, lime tears streaming down her face.

“There’s no other way I can see.”

Aaron let Alice’s hand go, but he kept his eyes on hers.

“You can’t. So let me do it.”

Aaron could feel the eyes of the Wights on him as he fully realised who he was. He was not going down without a fight, and he was not letting them take him over.

“This is my head!” he shouted in the abyss. “You want to come here and take over, you don’t get to pick and choose! You get everything!”

Aaron started remembered everything. He remembered pulling the trigger and killing his first target. He remembered being shot by the scared wife of his final target and falling out of the window to the street below. He remembered meeting Alice for the first time. He constantly changed the emotions he felt, good to bad, love to pain, until he saw the crack in the darkness.

Alice gasped as Aaron grabbed her hand and he smashed through with his fist.

Tartarus opened his eyes, turned and fired his gun at the Wight behind him, blowing it’s face apart with the high caliber round. Before the other Wight could do anything, he turned the gun onto it and fired again, showering Tartarus is coagulated blood and wires.

Then he took stock of where he was.

No.

No, no, no, no, no.

Tartarus dropped the gun, his hands shaking.

“No, this can’t be happening.” he said, staring at the sight before him. On the ground were the bodies of dozens of people. Civilians. Children. Only one of them was a military man. These Wights had used his body to murder, to destroy.

Tartarus looked at his hands, coated in the blood that he would forever see.

“What did I do?” Tartarus asked himself. Alice appeared in his vision.

“Hey,” she said. “Stay with me, please. Please. It wasn’t you. The Wights did this, but used you as a weapon. You are not guilty.”

Tartarus blinked at Alice. He didn’t believe that reasoning, and he had no reason to believe a court would either.

“Alice?”

“That’s right,” she said, trying to smile. “You didn’t forget. You remembered. They didn’t win.”

Tartarus looked at the body of a young girl, with curly blonde hair matted with her own blood. He saw the bullet holes in her face and torso, her left eye destroyed by a bullet fired by his own gun.

“They didn’t?” Tartarus said, not taking his eyes off the girl. “They might not agree...”

Alice stood in the way of the girl. “Tartarus, you need to get to the ship. You’re still vulnerable.”

Tartarus sighed and nodded. So long as Alice was in his head, he was a target for the Wights. But they would not get him again.

Tartarus left the scene at a full sprint, not looking back. He had been a killer in the past and he was a killer now. He needed to remember who he was to survive the Wights, and in a way, the Wights had reminded him as well.

Aaron Dietrich was a killer.

Agent Tartarus is a killer.

There was no escaping the past.

There was no ignoring the past.

“Thank you,” Alice said in his mind. “I tried to save you, but you saved me.”

Tartarus stopped running, breathing out of his nose. Alice appeared before him.

“Did you really mean that?” she asked quietly. “That you think I’m real?”

“Alice,” Tartarus said in reply. “You’re more real than some humans I know. I need food to live, you need electricity. You’re just another form of life, but you are still life. And you have been with me since the start or this one.”

Tartarus closed his eyes. “I can’t do this without you.”

Alice disappeared, but Tartarus could hear a sniffle in his mind.

“Let’s go, Aaron.”