Cecil cleans up

Cecil had a bad feeling as he walked in the front door at work. He knew he’d left no trace, but there was always a chance, just the barest chance, that he’d forgotten something.

A spot of blood. A cracked mirror. A security camera faithfully recording the last moments of his latest conquest.

Cecil had been doing this for a long time. At a company this large, this corrupt, it took time for people to notice disappearances.

Some people likened these corrupt multi-national corporations to Hydra. Cut off the head, and a new one grows back angrier than ever. Then, it’s back to business exploiting the poor, sucking at the swollen teat of the government, and destroying the environment.

Cecil knew this wasn’t quite true. When a company offered its head to the court of public opinion, it wasn’t capitulation. The head was already severed, presented on a silver platter, and a new one was growing in its place before people could react. Status quo.

True disruption took much more than that. Disappear the head, but keep things going just enough that they can fall apart further down the road. Let the rot set in.

As he strode to his office, Cecil reviewed his plan. Harry was on vacation this week, and nobody would expect him back until Monday. That gave him plenty of time to make alternative working arrangements and excuses.

Cecil began scrolling through flight plans on his phone, but stopped short of his office when he bumped into someone standing in front of Harry’s office.

He stumbled, then he realized just who it was.

“H..Harry!”

Harry dropped his coffee. “Shit! Watch where you’re going Tom! You owe me a coffee.”

Cecil stared dumbly at him for a second, then snapped out of it. “Harry, I thought you were on vacation! Isn’t your flight out-of-town today?”

Harry was bending over to pick up his cup and looked up at Cecil.

“Vacation? That’s next week. Please tell me you have the quarterly financials ready. I want to review them before I leave.”

Cecil had given him the report last Monday and Harry had approved them on Thursday. “Um, yea. Check your email, should be there.”

He stumbled over to his office and closed the door behind him. He wasn’t imagining things, was he?

The computer verified: He’d sent over the report last Monday. Harry’s calendar showed him as “OOO”. Harry’s email password, which he’d found on a post-it note in Harry’s home office, was valid.

Something was very wrong indeed.

The Office

Cecil wasn’t one to panic. You don’t decide to take down the largest, most corrupt human organizations, then panic at the first sign of trouble. You don’t succeed, anyway, and Cecil’s work had already damaged 3 of them to the point of obscurity. One of them was no longer even listed on the stock market.

After shuffling papers around and looking busy on his terminal for a few hours, Cecil left his office. Harry’s office was on the way to the break room, which gave him a convenient excuse.

“Hey Harry, I’m grabbing a coffee and snack. Want the one I owe you?”

Harry was sitting at his desk with his head in his hands. He looked up with a start. “Uh, sure. Wait. Can you come in for a quick word? Close the door.”

Cecil closed the door while keeping his eyes on Harry. Figured he might as well play dumb.

“Hey, what happened to your vacation? Weren’t you supposed to leave yesterday? You’ve been talking it up for months.”

Harry’s brow creased. “That’s the thing. I can’t remember what happened. I can’t remember anything from the last week. Zip. Zilch. This isn’t some prank you’re all playing on me, is it?”

Cecil raised his eyebrow. “A prank where everyone does an extra week’s work to screw with their boss?”

“Shit. I’d hoped… shit. Look, did anything happen last week I need to know about? I didn’t see any company announcements in my email, but you never know.”

“Nothing work related. You mentioned you were going to celebrate with something special when your promotion came through, though. I’m not one to judge… but maybe that special something was a bit too special?”

Harry’s face fell. “I… I’m going to take the rest of the day off. You mind filling in for me if anything important comes up?”

“No problem, it’s your vacation, remember?”

Harry obviously did not recall their activities last night. To all appearances, he was unaware that the last week had occurred at all. Maybe he could still pull this off after all, and he hadn’t blown his cover as “Tom”, the uninspired accountant. He’d spent months putting that identity together, and no small amount of cash. Sure, the company accounts leaked like a sieve and he was all too happy to catch everything in untraceable offshore accounts, but it was the principle of the thing.

Cecil had to check on his cleanup. He normally did a very thorough job, but with everything else going on, it paid to be sure. Then, he’d pay Harry a second visit at home to make things stick and send Harry on his… vacation. With a bit of luck, his plan would still work.

The woods, after work

Cecil took the scenic road into the woods outside the city. 3 times, he took an unmarked exit, turned off his headlights, and waited for 10 minutes to watch for any signs of pursuit. 3 times, he let out an unconsciously held breath when his timer went off.

After the last turnout, he took a fire road exit and drove 2 miles in before walking a couple hundred feet off the path. There was a clearing, well-hidden by underbrush and low hanging tree branches. At a glance, there was nothing unusual about this clearing. Slight undulations disturbed the soil, with little to set them apart, except for one.

Green sprouts marked where freshly seeded native flora were taking root. Cecil took a shovel from the back of his car and started digging, undoing his careful work.

20 minutes later, Cecil hit something which did not yield. He quickly cleared the loose dirt out of the hole, revealing the top of a large canvas sack. One quick swipe with his knife opened a hole in the sack, and Cecil was staring down at Harry’s pale, unmoving face.

Cecil sat on the edge of the hole for a minute, catching his breath.

“Well, if you’re still here, then who was that at work? You don’t look like you’ve come back from the dead.”

He tensed for a second, perhaps at the thought of tempting fate, but nothing happened. Harry was still.

Something caught Cecil’s eye. His shovel had hit Harry next to the injury on his neck and opened it wider. Last night, blood and adrenaline had obscured things, and he rarely examined the wounds of his targets when he was cleaning up after himself. Now, he glimpsed something blue in the wound. Strange.

He bent over and stuck a finger in. Behind the gristle, he caught his finger on something angular and teased it out. A blue circuit, trailing a ribbon cable back into the wound. A hard yank at the cable loosened it, along with a short length of spinal cord.

“Harry, you hate tech. If you didn’t need to use it to launder funds for your bosses, you probably wouldn’t use it at all. Why would you have something like this shoved in your neck?”

Cecil bundled up the cable and chip in his fist and shoved it in his coat pocket. He needed to clean things back up, and he had plenty left to do tonight.

Harry's house

Harry’s house was in a suburb, and Cecil parked his car on a parallel street. It was just after midnight, and Cecil hopped the fence of Harry’s backyard for the second time in as many days. The lights were off in the house, and like last time, the back door opened under the persuasion of his lock pick.

Cecil thumbed the safety off his silenced pistol. He had his garrote, but if Harry was awake and he needed to close the distance quickly, he’d be ready.

Again, up the stairs to the master bedroom. Skip the 2nd step, it creaked last time.

Cecil carefully opened the bedroom door and saw Harry lying in bed, asleep. He carefully crept around the bed, monitoring the slowly breathing form under the blankets, then swiftly looped the piano wire around Harry’s neck and dragged his torso off the bed.

Harry struggled for a few seconds before falling limp, but Cecil kept his grip for a full 5 minutes. Finally, he removed the wire from around Harry’s neck and put it in his pocket. Time to clean up again.

Cecil left the house and fetched another canvas bag from his car. No blood this time to clean up, which would simplify things. Again, over the fence, then through the back door.

He’d just taken his first step on the stairs to the master bedroom when Cecil heard a soft sound from the basement stairs. Was someone else in the house?

He heard it again, a sound like someone had opened several cans of soda. After looking around for a few minutes, he found the basement door locked. This door had a blank keypad instead of a normal lock. Strange that Harry would use a normal lock for his front door, but an electronic lock for the basement.

Cecil was in a hurry, though. If someone else was in the house, they might escape and end this project before he really got started. He winced as his well-placed kick splintered the doorframe, but no other sounds broke the silence of the night as the door swung open.

He drew his pistol, pointing it down the stairs, then when nothing moved in the concrete slab stairwell, walked down to a second door.

As he opened the door, Cecil’s eyes went wide.

A series of icy pods lined one side of the room, and banks of servers filled the rest of the space. His breath puffed in the chilled air, and he shivered.

Cecil walked over to the first pod and wiped his hand over its glass surface to clear off some of the frost. Empty, but with a pillow and enough space for a grown man to lie inside.

He heard the sound again, this time accompanied by a thump. One pod rotated upright, and several metal hoses had detached. Another hiss, and the final hose fell to the floor.

Cecil gripped his pistol in front of him, then moved into the shadows under the nearest pod.

The upright pod cracked open with a shudder, then slowly eased its way open. A cough shattered the silence from inside.

“WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON!”

Harry stepped out of the pod, completely naked, then turned to punch the pod as hard as he could.

“FUCK. Ok. That hurt.”

He strode over to the server bank, dragged out a keyboard, then began tapping furiously at it.

“Ok, think Harry. Remotes don’t just disconnect and disappear. Something’s up. This is worth bothering the council for.“

Cecil looked around the room. He’d missed it when he first walked in, but there was a breaker panel next to the door. Maybe…

With Harry occupied by the server bank, Cecil crept over to the door and threw all the switches.

Every light in the basement went out, including those on the servers.

Cecil backed away from the panel and readied his gun.

The soft slap of bare feet on concrete, accompanied by swearing, made its way over to the door. Harry flipped the first switch, turning the overhead lights back on. At the same moment, Cecil placed his pistol against the back of his head.

Masking his voice, Cecil said, “Don’t move. Put your hands above your head.”

Harry raised his hands. “Whoever you are, you do not know who you’re messing with. If you kill me, I’ll be back tomorrow. Those pods are virtually indestructible.“

“And the servers?” Cecil asked.

Harry paused, then began lowering his hands. Cecil pulled the trigger before they had moved an inch. A hollow thump echoed in the basement, and Harry keeled over. Clear fluid leaked from the hole in his head, and Cecil could see more blue circuitry inside.

“I thought so.”

Cecil started with the cables. He ripped each of them from the panel, then cut where the cables entered the servers. Then, he found a crowbar in Harry’s garage and levered open each server, smashing the dark blue circuits beyond hope of repair.

It was almost light out when Cecil finished with the servers, and by that time, the pods had defrosted. Inside each was a Harry. Without power and support from the servers, their forms had lost their shape, visibly deteriorating at a rate far beyond natural.

With a last look at the pods, Cecil walked up the stairs. He opened the valves on the gas stove fully, then lit a candle on the fireplace mantle. That should leave them guessing what had happened.

As he drove away, Cecil chewed his lower lip. This was bigger than he’d expected. Harry was just the first step of many, and clearly not human. He’d need to call in some favors.