Better With Age || Viktor Brandt

[Euca]

1. Whispering through water.

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One moment, you're in your fake apartment, with a fake named terrorist, acting like a fake man to save your fake life. The next? She shoves you into the garage, arms bound and cuffed until she returns. Then the witch does, and you tosses you onto the frozen surface of Hamburg, all alone, with a week's rations. As you fall onto your final moments, your eye sight turns dark, then pulses into blurring white. Back and fourth, in a perpetual cycle, until finally the light mellows into the yellowish torchlight your familiar to. You hear them calling your name, cooing through the filters of your mind, with that muted quality that makes everything sound like you're whispering through water.

"Brandt, Brandt!"

And suddenly, I'm awake.

There's one of them shaking me by the shoulders, another one in front of me, shining a bright light into my eyes, another one sits at a table, taking notes. I'm back at the Counter-Terrorism Initiative Headquarters, my body flimsy and weak. I try to speak, but only gurgle a few, incomprehensible words out. They tell me to take it easy, I try to respond, with little to no success. The man holds my shoulders steady for longer while I readjust my position. I shut eyes briefly while I feel my body kick back into action. I open them again with a response, finely loud and clear.

"I'm fine."

"Clearly not, Brandt." A grunting voice replies. "We found you bound in a garage like an animal. One of the contacts we sent you to investigate was shot, and the one we sent you to arrest vanished into thin air. Stunning effort on your behalf."

My mind raced for a moment while I revisited the mission I was on. The memory emerged from the clout of the darkness and into the forefronts of my mind. I was sent to Harburg City to quell the HVEB's actions. In the process of being undercover, I was hunted down by a mysterious woman, who held me hostage in my own apartment. Her name momentarily sat on my lips, only to be lost in a heartbeat. She locked me up, left me for dead.

"As such, we're terminating our contract with you until further notice. Maybe if something petty, like a bread thief, pops up, we'll give you a call." Then they sent me on my way.

It wasn't until later when I had made it back home to Heisenberg that I started think about it. About Harburg, about the HVEB, about the CTI. I leaned on my desk, coffee on the table, papers spread everywhere, with their meticulous details about missing persons, suspected criminals and robberies. You can take the boy out of the investigation, I thought, but you can't take the investigation out of the boy.

Suddenly, the name was before me, as clear as day. I wrote it down in thick black marker. Jane, that was the name.

And just like that, the case reopened for me.