The Unbinding Read Online Free

then. She overexplained. This man, this Colonel Geoff, was well into his sixties, Sabrina said; he could barely get up off his mattress, and his illness had Swiss-cheesed his brain. Colonel Geoff was delusional, racked with fears and theories. The main one involved some event called “the Unbinding,” which he’d hinted to Sabrina might take place soon but had refused to discuss with her in detail because people her age, he felt, had “faulty mind seals.”
    “Work on him till he coughs up,” I said. “Sounds chilling. Or tell me more over dinner sometime next week.”
    “Only if you watch
Aguirre
first.”
    “I’ll put it straight in when you leave. I’ll watch it twice. Your silver earring there, with the blue stone?”
    “My AidSat Angel what’s-it?”
    “I work for them. You ever get the willies in a dark parking lot, just ask for Operator Seven-S. I’ll call in the SWAT team. Or I’ll swoop down myself.”
    Sabrina didn’t laugh or even grin, which is rare when I reveal my occupation and follow with that line. Instead she said, “Don’t be grandiose.”
    “Why not? Why not, when I can back it up?”
    We confirmed our dinner plans (when I asked her what sort of food she liked, she answered, “I want you to use your ESP there”), and while she was swishing away across the courtyard, I spotted her peeking back over her shoulder as though trying to catch me staring at her butt. And I was, but not in the way she probably hoped. I was thinking that if she ever became my girlfriend, I’d lay down the law about modesty in dress. I’ve done it before with other women I’ve dated, and though they’ve grouched at first and acted ticked, I think they respected my judgment underneath. They knew as well as I, the AidSat operator who’s been privy to rapes in progress and heard the screaming (and the silence when the screaming stops), that it’s a rugged world out there. The more of yourself you show off to the wrong people, the more they’ll eventually demand to see .

5.
    [By courier]
    Mag/Print/Lib—Ref 467398AD—Subject ID: Sabrina Matilda Grant

    O
    InTouch
    Us Weekly
    Star
    A Is for Asphyxiate
    Trace Evidence
    D Is for Dismember

    Activity: Subnorm
    Educ/Soc Cult Index: Low

    Agent’s Notes: More soul-sucking trash and lurid smut from the subject whom I once heard refer to her old college as an “extremely prestigious mini-Ivy” but who currently makes her living extracting blackheads and applying so-called “Dead Sea salt glows.” Not that you give a flip, if you’re still up there, and lately you’ve shown no evidence you are. But what if I told you a man our girl’s been flirting with is a former associate of Karl OverGaard of Chisago City, Minnesota, a twice-convicted user of hard narcotics and an unindicted dealer of stolen firearms? Would that rouse you out of your bureaucratic slumber? And what if I told you further that our subject has been paying regular visits to a Lt. Col. Geoffrey Lark, a retired Marine Corps media liaison who, according to his service records, suffered three “pronounced factitious breakdowns” in the eighteen months preceding his discharge?
    Would that perhaps move you to pick up the damn phone and explain why the hell I’m dogging these sorry dunces? These drab no-account middle-income paintball warriors ?
    Probably not. You’ve decided to let me drift here, subsisting on energy drinks and toasted subs, with half a million dollars’ worth of gear irradiating my apartment with cancer particles that I can actually feel behind my eyeballs every night when I lie down in bed.
    I’m at my wit’s end, boys. I’m serious. I know things. I know how we do what we do. I know our methods. Don’t you understand the risk you’re running? Didn’t you test my personality annually? Didn’t you interview my fifth-grade teacher? Didn’t she tell you I’m irritable when patronized and positively flammable when ignored? But either you’re not there or you don’t