I-Sight

When the agency optician is injured in a hit-and-run car accident, a new eye doctor is brought in to fit agent Brigit Hastings with cutting-edge new eye tech. But does I-Sight give her insight—not just to her dire present situation but to questions she’ll need to ask herself in future?

“I’m putting the drops in,” says Marla, the agency Optician, 50s, cheerful and Mum-like, unlike the rest of the never-see-daylight tech developers in the lab. “They might sting a bit.”

Sting “a bit” is an understatement. It feels like they’re burning layers off my eyeball. The world blurs into a rainbow swirl of colours.

Pain is just a part of the job when you’re an agent for PONE—Protect Our Natural Environment—an international agency seeking to protect the planet against forces who, through greed or evil schemes, oppose it.

“I find if you picture yourself in a beautiful place, like Waikiki or the Swiss Alps,” says Marla, “and really visualize it—the sand between your toes, the ice on the tip of your nose— the pain’s less noticeable.”

I try Hawaii and Switzerland and Manly beach at sunset with silhouetted surfers paddling towards the horizon. Nothing dulls the acid burn in my brain.

“This contact lens, or I-Sight as it’s called, sends information through the optic nerve to the neural chip in your cortex,” she explains, “which is linked with the worldwide web. It should give you up-to-date information about whatever you’re thinking of within seconds.”

“If it works.”

“I guess we’ll find out soon enough,” says Marla. “You know, when I saw your name on the list, Brigit—the youngest recipient of this experimental tech at 32—my heart sank.”

Here it comes.

“You’ve done amazing work. Risked your life more than once and survived with relatively few scars.”

And a pinky finger with no feeling.

“But how long can your luck last?” Through blurry vision, I see her shaking her head. “Things could end badly. Or, worse. You could spend all the years when you might have found some personal happiness—love, a partner, children—chasing danger. Male agents can go till their 50s or 60s and still have a family. It’s different for us. We women have to—”

“Don’t worry about me,” I shut this down as politely as I can. “I appreciate you looking out for me. But I’m okay. And I do have some personal happiness.”

Or at least the odd night or weekend of passion with a PONE colleague. I am extremely well-organised and controlled in my work activities. But my personal life is…messy.

The eyedrops are still burning. Now there’s a sour sensation at the back of my throat.

“How long does the process take?” I ask.

“A while. It has to create the pathways. Try to relax.”

I hear the door opening and a tall shadow enters the room. A male voice I don’t recognise greets Marla. She briefs him on what she’s done.

“Brigit, I’m handing you over to Raffie, our new optician,” Marla explains. “He’ll monitor the procedure and make any adjustments necessary.”

Light flares as the door opens and she exits, going dark again as it clicks shut.

“Brigit Hastings. How are you doing today?” Raffie’s voice is deep and velvety with an American accent? Or is it Canadian? For some reason, I think he’d be a good singer.

“I’m fine, except for the bonfire in my head.”

He moves closer to adjust knobs and dials on the ocular refractor. Click, click, click. He smells like cappuccino. I try to make out details of his face but it’s like I’m looking from underwater.

“I heard you were tough,” he says. “Even so, it’s my job to keep you as comfortable as possible.”

His shadow moves across the room. I see him lift something thin and bright pink up to the light. A test tube? I hear the snk snk of metal in glass as he mixes something.

“What happened to Dirk, the other optician?” I ask.

“A car accident, I believe. Hit and run.”

“Poor guy.”

Something squeezes my brain. For a few seconds, I feel seasick. The I-Sight process is beginning.

“I’m here until he recuperates,” he goes on. “I was midway through the initiation training when the call came.”

So, Raffie had done some of PONE’s agent training? Six weeks of hilly runs and gruelling mental tests with a trainer that makes the Terminator look like a quitter.

“How did you find it?”

“Put it this way. I’m sorry the other optician had an accident. But not that sorry.”

I chuckle. Raffie has a sense of humour and not too much of a tough guy ego. I’m starting to make out his shape and like what I see.

“How long have you been with PONE, Ms Hastings?”

“Call me Brigit. About nine years now. I joined about a year out of uni.”

“Nine years? I heard most agents only last five. Respect. You must be one tough lady.”

I almost bailed out at five years, too. A man I was seeing was targeted by the criminal I was chasing. It made me realise this work put people I loved at risk. I vowed not to go out with anyone outside the agency until I’d got out clean. Until the world had got out clean.

But, it should be okay to date someone from a different department. Like an optician, maybe?

“I suppose, I could ask about your missions for PONE,” says Raffie, “and you might share some details with me.” He leans real close to my ear to whisper: “But then you’d have to kill me.”

We laugh, like that isn’t the lamest spy joke ever.

“Now open your eyes wide.” He pushes my hair off my face, making my whole head tingle and squeezes more drops into each eye, dabbing away the excess with a paper towel. “This should help with the pain.”

I hear a tap turn on and the rat-squeak of the bin lid opening.

“You volunteered for I-Sight, an experimental procedure?” I hear him ease his weight onto the stool and slide across the lab floor until he’s right before me. “Bravery in the field’s one thing. But in science? I’m impressed. Or is it possible you have a death wish? Isn’t that what they say about spies? That they’re thrill-seekers who can’t stop until someone makes them.”

“No-one has so far,” I say. “I’d like to see them try.” The last bit’s just showing off.

“Oooh.”

But is there something in what he says. Perhaps I should give myself an end date. A few more years, maybe? “And some of us actually achieve good things. You know, saving the world and so forth?”

“Don’t you think it’s already too late for that?” he asks.

“Sometimes, it does feel like a lost cause. But if you stop fighting, they definitely win.”

 The pain eases. Shapes begin to appear in the blur.

“I think those drops have helped,” I say. “Thanks.”

“My pleasure, Brigit.”

My breath hitches.

“Ty govorish’ po-russki?” I say.

I sense him go still.

“Sorry. Didn’t catch that.”

“I asked if you spoke Russian.” I thought I detected the trace of accent.

“Not a word,” he says. “Though, I’d love to learn. Do they have language classes here?”

But I know he’s lying.

And I know something else too. Who he really is.

****

 

Boris Lobachevsky, son of Oleg, a Russian criminal, was my assignment six years ago, in Siberia. I was charged with getting up close and personal to him to find out what Oleg and his cronies were up to.

I’d studied Russian language and literature at university and had two months accent correction with PONE. Meanwhile, our agents surveilled the Lobachevskys and learnt about Boris’s taste in women. To mould me into irresistible bait.

Tight, short dresses, push-up bras, barely-there underwear. Nothing particularly imaginative. Boris thought he was different to the others as he read literature by Russian writers: Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Pushkin. He called me his little zayka, or bunny (somehow I managed to stop myself killing him for that) and was quite charming. But when he thought I was looking at another man, he broke my pinky finger.

 ****

“Ready for the next round?” Raffie—aka Boris—asks.

With the lightest touch, he tilts my chin back and drops more liquid in. So many drops. My eyeballs feel like olives in someone’s martini.

“And what do these do?” I keep my voice even, though terror tightens my throat.  

“They scour the neural connections for better connectivity,” he says. “We don’t want any dirty connections for you, Brigit.”

****

 

During my three weeks in Siberia, I discovered Oleg’s plan to drop chemicals into rivers around the world, expanding the hole in the ozone layer and hastening global warming so he and his criminal colleagues could cash in on investments they’d made in properties predicted to be prime waterfront or farmland after sea levels rise. I found their chemical stash and swapped it for coloured water.

****

 

“Is clarity returning?” Raffie asks.

“Yes,” I squeak.

Blood chilling clarity.

I watch him cleaning lab equipment—it’s like looking through a window on a rainy day—and hope flares that he hasn’t recognised me. I looked different back then—different hair, eye colour. I dressed and moved like Valentina, gangster’s girl. Perhaps he hasn’t realised…?

But, no.

He’s come for me.

For revenge.

I observe the strong jaw, the chlorine blue eyes. For the first time, I wonder what happened to him and Oleg when their partners found out what I’d done.

An image emerges in my head, overlaying my view of the lab.

-A gruesome photo in a Siberian police homicide report of a dead body, barely recognisable as human. Labelled: Oleg Lobachevsky. Cause of death. Blood loss and shock from animal mauling.

The I-Sight internet-link is scraping content even from remote, protected sites like Siberian police. It seems Oleg, Boris’s father, was thrown to the dogs. Literally. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.

The image fades and I’m looking at Raffie, shaking a vial and smiling, with perfect teeth I’m sure he didn’t have in Russia.

“Last set, Brigit. We’re almost done.”

How did he end up here? Of all places

A series of images overlays my view of him.

-CCTV video of a man being violently beaten by half a dozen others. When he’s stopped moving, they pick him up and throw him onto a garbage skip nearby. As they walk away, he moves his head. It’s Boris.

-Him in a dirty hospital bed.

-Him stabbing someone and taking their wallet.

-A Canadian passport with his photo and the name Rafferty Henderson.

-Him on a running machine in a gym, arms pumping.

-An Optician’s Diploma for Rafferty Henderson from Vancouver Community College.

But how did he get here, into this office?

-Dash-cam footage of a car accelerating to hit a man crossing the street.

-CCTV of the driver getting out of the car, his hoodie pulled low over his face, running away. A frame by frame replay in my brain reveals it’s Raffie.

Of course! He went after Dirk, Marla’s assistant to get the job here. For me.

 

“Stay still, Brigit.”

When I jerk away, he knows…that I know. Grips my neck, forces my head back and squirts drops into each eye. Liquid pours down my cheek, burning my skin. It’s acid! I kick at his knees. As he staggers back, I wipe my eyes and face with my shirt. It burns like Hell and the world turns snow white.

Will I be blind after this?

“You looked better as a blonde, Valentina,” he says, his Russian accent pronounced now.

“You looked better on that garbage dump,” I throw back.

He gives a bitter laugh, which clues me in to his location in the room. I grab something metal—a container—and hurl it his way. Then bolt for the sink, tripping on the stool enroute.

Raffie grabs my arm and pulls me real close to him. “After you betrayed me, our business partners killed my father and put me in hospital for a long time, with broken ribs, punctured lungs, crushed trachea. I begged for death to release me. And, zayka, when those drops do their work, you too will beg for the end. If you’re a good girl, I may, generously, oblige.”

That’s when I stab him, with a decorative hair pin tipped with curare—a plant extract—I keep in my hair for emergencies.

He shrieks and releases me. I charge forward, searching for the sink, trying to get my bearings.

If only I could see the room!

-An image overlays the pure white vision, of Raffie holding his shoulder in the lab. It’s from the camera in the lab computer. I know where I am now and hurry over to the sink and splash water wildly in my eyes. Is it already too late to save my sight?  

“Oh no you don’t.”

Raffie grabs the back of my shirt and yanks. I fall back into his arms. He puts me in a headlock and drags me away. “Through all those months in the hospital, you were the only thing that kept me going. The idea of this moment, when I take my revenge.”

And he squeezes. “I lost my father, my hero. My country. You didn’t think you’d get away with this—that I’d let a stupid girl ruin everything for us, did you, zayka?”

Black spots speckle the white; I’ll pass out soon, I know. I claw at his arms with my nails but he keeps a tight grip.

“Your father was a bully. So are you!” I somehow—pointlessly—croak out.

The curare must kick in soon. By then, though, it might be too late.

How do I demobilise him?

-An image pops up of X-rays, from a Siberian hospital, showing which ribs he broke.

His weak point.

With my last breath, I jab him as hard as I can in the sore rib. He lets go, reaching for the table, trying to stay up on wobbly legs. The numbing agent is taking effect.

I rush to the sink, part fill the basin, submerging my open eyes in the water. Eventually, I glimpse some silver through the white—the bottom of the sink. Some vision has returned. Even with my face in the water, I-Sight summons up an image of the lab and Raffie clutching the desk, half his body numb, glaring at my back.

He limps over, grabs my hair, and bashes my head on the doorway. Over and over. Till I drop to the ground and black out.

When I come to, he’s clutching a knife in trembling hands and moving my way.

I flip my legs up, my body follows like a pendulum, as I’ve been trained to do.

His shocked expression at that gives me no small pleasure. Ha!

A kick to the ribs and he’s down, gasping.

“Seems like you underestimated this girl. Twice.”

A kick to the head and he’s out.

Raffie might be right. It might already be too late to save our environment. But I’ll fight on for as long as I can.

Because that’s what we do for people and things we love.