Cohost writing prompt: @spy-thief-assassin-who — Assassin who can't remember why they're doing this job, they won't let them
In the game of draughts, or checkers, there are two types of playing piece. It varies, depending which of the many variations of the game you play, what exactly they're called; but in languages whose country did not receive the game via British colonisation, they are frequently pawns or stones, and — in the more powerful and deadly form — share a name with the likewise most powerful and deadly piece in chess, the queen.
They say the oldest profession is sex work. Perhaps, likewise, the oldest power move is violence; and the oldest game is getting what you want by hiding what you want.
There is a Unit.
The tech was surely military-funded, but no ruler averse to coups would let a general have this tool; the Unit is not attached to an army. An intelligence agency? Or something stranger and edgier, for these uncertain times.
Within the Unit, they take people, and they turn them into...other people. Parts of people. Partitions. Everything harmless and humane and genuine in one box; every sharp and sleek and remorseless thing in the other. And there is a switch, you see: some deep psychotechnical toggle that flips you from Stone to Queen — or vice versa.
There is something wrong.
You have always been able to leave suggestions for your Stone to unwittingly follow: wouldn't it be nice if I went to the beach near the airport tomorrow—? I can take a camera, get some snaps of seabirds. But now, you suspect, it is leaving them for you. It should not be able to do that. It should never be able to suspect it is not alone.
You have always been set to periodically Queen to check in. But your drops in the dead letter box remain uncollected. The phone number that never picks up, just rings and disconnects and thereby signals someone — claims, now, to be an invalid number. You think people may be surveilling your Stone.
Have you been burned? Has the Unit? Have you — and you are clearly malfunctioning — have you gone somehow rogue?
Every time you Stone, you become something with the social instincts of a human being, the ability to make friends and pair-bond and tell jokes and pick out matching clothes and go hiking at the weekend. Perhaps they lack the depth of an actual person, but it's so easy to pass that you rather discredit the notion.
You have a range of toggles: some you can set yourself — if I see the Cessna while at the beach, I will Queen and observe who disembarks and who meets them. Some are periodic: check in. Leave a progress report at the dead drop. Some are automatic: Positive contact! Enemy agent! Kill! Run!
You do not know what else. People do not read the VCR its own manual.
Every time you Queen, you become something with the social instincts of — well, let us be precise. You become a generic asocial autonomous espionage and combat asset. You are very efficient.
You have access to your Stone's memories, though not always perfectly or legibly; the brain is not a flash drive. Its storage is contextual, leaky, lossy. You often cannot parse the emotional content, and often the recall does not properly function without that. It does not have access to yours.
...Does it?
Operational parameters are to stay put and follow procedure.
Procedure isn't working as expected.
Your Stone is being watched.
Are you safe? Is your cover blown? Is the Unit compromised? You cannot know.
...You cannot know while you stay put and follow procedure.
You are not sure who, exactly, you are. You know you are holding a sniper rifle, and that you have it trained on the primary target; whoever that is. You know that you have compensated for wind, and that when you squeeze the trigger, he is going to die, and that — there is procedure to follow, for bugging out—
Eliminating the primary target is a key mission outcome—
You are malfunctioning—
What are you doing—