Excerpt of Agents Adam and Eve and Another Free Book

Welcome back, agents. Get ready for Chapter One of Agents Adam and Eve!

“Please, have mercy!”

I stare across the room to where the desperate woman stares at me with wide eyes. Eyes full of fear. Fear of me.

And with good reason.

“I know they’ve done horrible things to you,” she gasps, backing herself against the wall, her hair hanging limply over her face. “But somewhere deep down, the Kristian Clark I once knew is still in there. I know it!”

They warned me she would do that. Entreat me by a name I don’t have. Try to make me think I’m other than the thing I am.

America’s defender. Protector of liberty. The government’s secret soldier.

I step closer.

“Kristian, please!” the woman wails, holding her hands out in front of her like that will somehow stop me.

Pausing, I take a moment to analyze her. Dirty blonde hair is falling out of her ponytail around gray eyes, imprints circling them from a missing pair of goggles. Her face is otherwise plain, her scent is predominantly of oil, and her petite stature is almost hidden in baggy clothes.

The woman is right—I do know her.

Name: Jillian Crown. Age: 26. Occupation: Freelance inventor and ESE consultant.

But the ESE agency is no longer legal. It is a dangerous hindrance to democracy. She is a dangerous hindrance to democracy.

And that’s how I know her. As the target my own agency instructed me to take care of.

“Kristian, please!” the Crown begs, grabbing the nearest item—a hand mirror—and holding it between us as a shield.

But it does nothing to keep me from taking another step forward.

A reflection appears in the mirror: a tall, well-muscled stature wearing my standard uniform of a black shirt, dark jeans, and well-shined boots. My hair is just as black and cut short, out of the way of blue eyes set in a strong face.

It always startles me to see my reflection. Maybe because there are no mirrors in my quarters at the base.

Or maybe because the voice in the back of my mind whispers, You know something’s wrong. The person they say you are on the inside doesn’t match who you are on the outside.

I reach out and grasp the mirror before tearing it out of the Crown’s hand and tossing it to the side of the room. The glass shatters a reply.

The Target tries to curl into herself, but I grab her by her collar and tug her up to her feet.

She panics and starts flailing her limbs, hitting me in various places, but I neither loosen my grip, nor suffer an expression on my face.

“If it is any condolence to you,” I say as she continues to flail, “You are too important to kill.”

The Target hits me in the face. “Let me go!”

In reply, I push her against the wall and pin her down with my forearm just under her rib cage. My other hand reaches for the portable Mind Prepper in my back pocket.

“So you don’t remember me,” she whispers, now completely still except for her trembling. “But what about my brother—your best friend.”

I push her farther up the wall for a better grip before turning on the boomerang-shaped device that should connect with the mainframe at HQ to prepare for a more effective brain-wiping when I take her in.

“Don’t you remember Jack!?” she screams. “You were in the Academy together. You defected together. Founded your own agency together. We thought he was dead, but he wasn’t—”

Something about that name is so oddly familiar. Like an old thought pattern that I forgot to think about.

A smiling blond boy laughs and punches my shoulder lightly. “Try not to ruin your marriage again while I’m gone.”

I blink, my grip loosening. The Crown takes that moment to pull away from me and take off toward the door.

Just like that, I’m back to myself. I teleport in front of her.

She screams and stumbles backwards, making it easy to trip her.

The rickety ground shakes when she hits it, and I bend down beside her.

“For the love of Jack!” she screams.

I position the Memory Prepper over her eyes before shining its light into them. And just like that, she stops fighting and slumps backward as consciousness deserts her.

Who knows what they’ll let her remember when she wakes?

I shake away my own strange memory of the blond boy before lifting the target over my shoulder. Then I cross the room to the other side and open the chest that’s not as dusty as the rest of the room.

Sure enough, various technological prototypes are piled inside. The target’s latest inventions.

With the hand not holding the target, I remove a Detonator Orb from my pocket and toss it to the side before picking up the chest by its handle with my spare arm.

Then I teleport us outside and onto the road, where I start walking away from the building.

Just as the sound of a controlled explosion and the demise of an old house screams behind me.

Tendrils of heat warm my shoulders, but I don’t bother looking back.

Instead, I press forward, toward the completion of my mission.

~~~

No one so much as bats an eye when I step into HQ smelling of smoke and carrying an unconscious woman over one shoulder.

In fact, my handler doesn’t seem to see me at all as she maneuvers through the large lobby full of agents coming in from missions or preparing to move back out.

Maybe this time I can escape—

“Oh, Agent Valentino!”

I wince as her saccharine voice grates my ears and I dread the imminent conversation.

Revulsion. The urge to flee. The need to escape.

Without turning, I know the fake blonde—wearing makeup that must cost half her salary and a freakishly-long French manicure smoothing down her blue pantsuit—is coming toward me, heels clicking on the ground.

At least with her choice of footwear, I know I’ll always be able to hear her coming. I try not to think about the bets going around in the break room about exactly which toxin she stores in the spikes of her heels.

The dreaded Miss Smith smooths down the back of my shirt, narrowly missing puncturing me with one of her nails. “I’ve been wanting to speak with you.”

I say nothing and try not to notice how strong her perfume is today. I can trust it to be my secondary warning whenever she tries to stealth attack me, at least. As well as it being her secondary form of torture.

“Oh, Valentino, turn your handsome face around.”

And her voice is definitely her tertiary torture method.

Bracing myself, I turn to face her.

My handler beams at this. Miss Smith derives pleasure every time I appear to submit to her.

“I’ve been waiting eagerly for your return,” she gushes, running her deadly nails across the front of my shirt now.

“I need to check in with General Thompson first.” I will her to notice the two dead weights in my arms.

Not that it matters. I know from experience that even if she does notice, she won’t care.

Miss Smith sighs heavily, as though parting with me is a great sorrow. Then she leans forward and slides her hand down my face.

More revulsion fills me, but there’s nothing I can do about. Because she did notice my hands were full. So she’s using it against me.

“I’ll receive you in my suite when you’re done talking to that gruff, old man,” she whispers before sashaying away from me.

Until she pauses halfway through the lobby to blow me a kiss.

Defiler.

One of the younger agents gives me a sympathetic look. My instinct feelings aren’t so strong with him, and I can never remember his name. He’s a junior member on the Council and somebody’s assistant, I believe.

He’s also kind, but other than that, not worth noting.

As for the other agents who pass me, they don’t even acknowledge my existence. They never do.

Insignificance. Unimportance. And with some—flashes of feelings that no longer compute with what my mind remembers. Especially with some of the females who work in my base, but are so unconnected to me. They are bound by codes and rules and laws that I am not.

Clenching my teeth, I make my way out of the lobby, through the utility room, and to the corridor of offices.

Then I drop the chest before pounding on the door that belongs to the general’s office.

The door swings open just as a cold breeze walks by behind me. I know the name of the cold breeze in question.

But even more so, I know the feelings he gives me.

Pain. Shame. Submission.

Doing my best to ignore the emotions that wash over me with the presence of evil, I turn to face the man I came to see, not the one I sense creeping up behind me.

Across the room, General Thompson, a tall, broad man with silver hair belying his otherwise young, fit appearance, looks up from his desk.

And I feel. The need to obey. The hope of protection from cruelties. The wonder at how long this arrangement will work before I am handed over to the Other One.

My military commander looks past me and frowns at the man behind me.

I have no choice but to turn to the evil creature—my complete opposite in appearance. The man in charge of my punishments is a lithe, rather pointedly unremarkable man who either has a diet entirely consisting of lemons or is in a perpetual state of distaste, because his face is always pinched. Now he scrunches it together more as he narrows his eyes at me.

Marksman.

“General Thompson,” Agent Marksman says, turning from me to the lieutenant general. “I thought it was decided that Agent Zero was supposed to debrief before the Council, and only before the Council.”

The general catches Agent Marksman’s eye problem and narrows his own to slits. “Agent Warp-speed was just informing me of the need to call the Council.”

I stand at attention and remain silent. But one of these days, I really hope the cursedly inefficient Council would come to a decision on what my legal title should be. I’d almost prefer the numbers that make up my name. Except I always get the six and the nine transposed. That’s always awkward when introducing myself at work parties. If I attended work parties. And if everyone didn’t already know my serial number. Or talked to me . . .

Behind me, I can almost hear Agent Marksman somehow defy what is anatomically possible and narrow his eyes even further.

General Thompson beats him at his own game before turning back to me. “Drop the girl off with Dr. Neber and then report to the Council Room for a debriefing.”

~~~

Confusion. Healing. No positive or negative feelings. Usually.

I drop the chest again and watch Dr. Neber startle from his work, his scrawny limbs flailing every which way. Then he repositions his glasses with one hand while smoothing back his thick head of hair with the other, standing straighter so that his white lab coat appears to hang more loosely from his shoulders.

There are sometimes other feelings, too. Flashes of fear. The need to fight. And then forgetting. Yet this is only at certain times. And never at the same time as the more neutral feelings, leaving me to always wonder which instincts will rise when I visit him.

Dr. Neber turns to me, trying to make it seem as if he’s expected me this whole time.

Today, the feelings are neither positive or negative. Only an interaction with no consequences. “The inventions you requested for study.” I nod toward the chest.

He hurries toward the chest and stares down at it before glancing up at me. “And the inventor?”

I step toward Regenerating Table, which I have so often been placed on for accelerated healing, and lay the girl on it instead. Then I step back, not taking my eyes off her. I wait for a moment for the feeling.

It’s there for a moment. A pang. Guilt, I think.

The guilt gives me a strange rush. My emotions have been shaped and trained to what each individual here wants them to be for them. Guilt is the closest I get to having my own emotion, just mine. A private rebellion.

“That will be all, Agent,” Dr. Neber calls.

And a short-lived one at that. Everything always returns to neutral too soon.

Leaving the Crown in the care of the man who has so often pieced my body back together again, I walk away.

~~~

I stand before the large, round table that is surrounded by all the distinguished Amerio Council Members: Miss Smith, General Thompson, Agent Marksman, the young agent, and six others. The cabinet of the cabinet. The secret government. The true leaders of America.

And I am their right arm. Their arm of justice. Arm of vengeance. As is right. After all, they created me.

Yet . . . yet if they created me, why did the Crown call me by another name? A normal name? And why is she and the brother I never met bringing back memories I never experienced. . . .?

Never experienced, yet still remember.

“The mission was simple,” I tell the leaders before me, keeping my tone and face devoid of anything but loyalty to the organization they made me to serve.

Because if I fail in my facade, there will be consequences.

Is it a facade, though? If they didn’t make me, why do I have these powers they prize so much? Who else would have given them to me?

“I went to the location Marksman had discovered and rooted out the hiding place of a sympathizer.”

“Mark,” mutters the evil man that horrifies even more than Miss Smith. “My name is Mark.”

“From there,” I continue, choosing to embrace the hiccup in my programming that makes it so easy to mix up names. After all, he gets mine so terribly wrong. “It was a simple matter of isolating the Target and capturing her.”

“And that was all?” Miss Smith asks. “There were no complications?”

“None whatsoever.”

General Thompson nods. “Very well, then. You are excused.”

Miss Smith gives me a look as if to say but not from me.

But I ignore her and turn away before leaving the room of opposing ambitions, free at last to explore the slight flame of something akin to my own ambition. That is, the strange nagging in the back of my mind that there is somewhere I need to search and something I need to find.

Something I cannot remember yet cannot seem to forget.

Something . . .

Preview More Now!

High school sophomore, Charisa O’Dell, has enough to do between homework, karate, and an upcoming school dance. However, when she is accidentally endowed with superhuman powers, she adds one more thing to the list: crime fighting. Crime is a lot more complicated than her comics make it seem, and she finds herself relying on the mysterious Villain Hunter, who somehow shares several of her superhuman powers. Even so, the more she infiltrates the world of crime, the more she attracts the attention of the criminals. Will she survive her attempt to save the day?

A clean young adult blockbuster adventure with a Hispanic superhuman full of sass and her mysterious crime-fighting partner full of flirt- and a few explosions and bad guys for good measure. 

Praise for The Time I Saved the Day:

"“I love the story! It felt so real and very intense! I felt like I was in the story with the characters!” - Shine, author and blogger of https://hauntingghosttown.wordpress.com/

“One of the BEST Christian YA books I've read in a speculative way, you know, with the superpowers and all:)” - Kara, proofreader and reviewer.

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That's all for now, agents. Have a good Passover, and a Happy Easter celebrating the fulfillment of the Passover.

What are your Easter traditions? Did you ever believe in the Easter Bunny? Did the Easter Bunny ever sneak up on you in the break room and scare you half the death? Comment below!

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