Bab 15: The Numbers Program
Six was so good at this that Claire would say he had a lot of experience but that was impossible since he didn't know anything about smartphones before today. Which meant he was incredibly quick on the uptake.
She already knew he was fast from his rescue in the park the other day. But understanding the rules and strategy of the game with so little instruction made her realize he was actually rather brilliant.
He seemed dumb a lot of the time because he didn't know how things worked but that obviously wasn't the case. He simply lacked the opportunity to learn.
Had he ever gone to school or been tutored in the agency? He obviously knew how to read but that didn't necessarily mean he had a formal education. She wanted to ask but was afraid of breaking his concentration in case it pissed him off.
Pushing her curiosity aside, Claire decided to play a game herself. It had been a while since she tried knocking out any levels on Angry Birds. She might get lucky this time and actually pass one of the ones she had been stuck on.
The two of them sat on the couch in silence for a while but at least it was no longer awkward since they were both doing something. Showing him Bejeweled had been an excellent idea.
About an hour later Six looked over at her and announced that he had beaten all of the default high scores. She had given up on playing Angry Birds ages ago and had switched to reading manhwa on her phone.
"Do you want to play something else now?" Claire asked, not even surprised at this point.
"Yes. What should I play?"
She set her phone down. Angry Birds was a lot harder than Bejeweled and had hundreds of levels. That ought to keep him occupied for a while. She downloaded it for him and told him not to buy any of the offered boosters because they weren't worth it.
Six nodded very seriously and thanked her before becoming engrossed in his phone yet again. Claire returned to her comic and they resumed their companionable silence from before.
It seemed that he really liked phone games. Maybe that was all she had to do to keep him entertained for the rest of the time she was stuck with him without expending any real effort. That would be helpful since she frequently felt like she was walking on thin ice.
===
Jared Walker, also known as Raven, was not happy with the latest turn of events. Five agents—skilled hitmen with high kill counts—had gone missing after trying to go after Claire Conway.
It couldn't be a coincidence that Six went missing at the same time. A girl that frail wouldn't be able to protect herself without some sort of outside assistance and he was the most likely suspect.
He had been told to report in for retraining and never showed up. Weapons and false identity documents went missing and no one had seen him since. Or at least lived to tell the tale.
This didn't make sense. Six was their top agent; the most successful of the numbered children experiment. He had been the only one who never required any retraining until his disappearance.
The premise behind the program had been simple. Take in young children, condition them into perfect human weapons, and isolate them from the outside world so they would never question what they had been taught.
The Numbers grew up being indoctrinated with the idea that they were better than everyone else and that the outside world was meant for the weak. They were the strong with a noble mission to carry out.
It was basically brainwashing but so what? The Numbers were far more effective hitmen than the agents who were able to come and go as they pleased.
Jared had been involved in the program since the beginning. He was a young man when they found the baby that ended up being known as One. Unfortunately, the indoctrination didn't go as well as they had hoped and over time One grew rebellious.
This was before they had a retraining program so there wasn't much they could do. One ran away and never returned. No one in the Agency even knew if he was still alive.
Not wanting to make the same mistakes with Two when she became a rebellious teenager, she was used in the beta test of the retraining program. But there were certain mental side effects from the beta test, such as focus issues, and that resulted in her death on a mission.
That had been an unfortunate loss. But by the time Three was old enough to need retraining, the bugs had all been worked out. There hadn't been any problems with it since.
Jared knew at this point it would probably be better to kill Six than drag him back kicking and screaming for retraining but he didn't want to lose another Number. They were already short on agents because of the five he had most likely killed.
What was it about Claire Conway that caused him to abandon his training anyway? She might not have been their usual kind of target but it wasn't as if she was anything special.
He wondered if it was because they were around the same age. Six tended to be given targets that were much older than him. He may have gotten curious but that shouldn't have been possible due to his training.
The program trained the humanity out of the Numbers. They had sharper senses and higher endurance than people should be capable of. They did not experience regular emotions. They were stronger than that; better than that!
They were supposed to be the perfect super soldiers. Aside from a few issues over the years requiring retraining during adolescence as hormones ran rampant, and the problems with One and Two, the program had run smoothly over the past thirty-seven years.
Six was supposed to be the program's crowning achievement. He was stronger than most of the other Numbers combined. No one had ever beaten him in hand-to-hand combat. His kill count was higher than agents who had been with the organization decades longer.
So why had he gone rogue out of the blue? And what should their next move be?
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