The Rasner Effect Read Online Free Page A

well used, and abused. Six mismatched, and scarred, chairs surrounded a wooden table. The four lamps against the wall were not a matching set. Two antiquated, brown upholstered couches, set catty-corner to one another, faced the only thing in the room not old or battered—a large big-screen television and stereo, complete with video game system hookup.
    The front door opened and four of the young occupants, wearing bathing suits and towels, strode into the room. They beelined for the television and couches. They left behind a trail of sand across the carpet. The smallest of the four boys, a bleached blonde, stopped beside Jake and patted him on the back. “Sorry about that, Charlie. You probably just cleaned in here, didn’t you?”
    “That’s fine, Glen, I’ll just vacuum again before I go,” Jake assured him, trying not to swing the vacuum hose at his head.
    “All right, cool.” Glen ran to the couch and grabbed one of the controllers to the game system. “Charlie says he’ll vacuum again, so it’s all good,” he told the others.
    Jake immersed himself in his own memories, drowning out the noise from the fraternity brothers playing their video game and screaming.
    Charlie Wright. The name had taken Jake a long time to become comfortable with, almost seven years to be exact. He detailed in his mind the timeline of his life that resulted in his occupational change from high-priced mercenary to cleaning off-campus fraternity houses in sunny Tampa Beach, Florida.
    It felt like a lifetime ago, when he was part of the Special Forces unit in the United States Army. Jake and a select, talented few were part of the Black Ops squad—the crew that took on “special missions.” These were the missions nobody recorded, acknowledged, or even discussed afterward. The missions were necessary; the soldiers chosen because they were skilled and crazy enough to succeed.
    When the unit finally disbanded, some of the members remained in service while others chose to conform back into society. A few others chose to continue the thrill of working outside society doing jobs no one else wanted. Jake was one of those few; he became a gun-for-hire, working for various employers. In time, he became a high-priced merc, and a successful one at that—always business and never personal, whether it was a transport or a clean kill.
    Jake prided himself on his style, which was opposite of Colonel Richard Duke, his former CEO. Duke became a mercenary as well, also working within the United States. A different type, Duke enjoyed the “game” as he called it. He got as much of a thrill out of the assassinations as when he led their unit. Where Jake preferred to work alone, Richard Duke loved to train, lead, and be followed. If only he was in a business that allowed for loyalty. With this in mind, who could the Colonel trust? He did have his young daughter, Jennifer. In fact, he had raised her to follow in his footsteps. He taught her to become comfortable with murder, even at a young age, and have an impassive outlook toward human life. The problem, however, was she was still just a child. Even if she were older, a good organization cannot consist of only two members.
    One of Richard Duke’s greatest assets was his patience and his ability to think outside the box. Duke wanted an army he could train himself, and soon he formed one. He took in children as recruits for his organization. Duke enlisted these children from orphanages, psychiatric institutions, and sometimes off the streets.
    Colonel Duke took in those young unwanteds and invested many years teaching these angry, yet impressionable, young children. He focused their concentration on the arts of hand-to-hand combat, firearms, and strategy. Duke took them forward into young adulthood. He made them ruthless, so ruthless, in fact, The Colonel was later assassinated by his most aggressive student who would take over as leader, along with Duke’s own daughter. Rumors suggested she had set