The Field - Part 27
Richard stepped into sunlight for the first time in seven weeks.
The drone passed overhead—a familiar whir, its daily patrol route unchanged. He stood in full view on the back deck, looking directly at its cameras.
No alert. No course correction. No response.
It continued on, blind to his existence.
"Technically," River had said an hour earlier, their voice crackling through the speakers in his black room sanctuary, "you no longer exist. Teve's systems don't register you."
They'd run the tests. Security footage from the backyard showed empty space where Richard stood. Traffic cameras captured Zin walking alone when they'd ventured out together the night before. Even live feeds deleted his presence in real-time.
"But that doesn't mean they're blind," River had warned. "Just that they think they are. Might be safer. Might be more dangerous."
Richard didn't care about safe anymore. He was starved for light, for movement, for proof that he was still alive rather than just a ghost haunting his own house.
The sun felt foreign on his skin—too bright, too warm, too real after weeks of artificial illumination. But he stood there anyway, letting the heat remind him that he had a body, that he existed beyond data streams and holographic interfaces.
"You're taking risks," River said when he returned to the black room.
"I'm taking my life back," Richard replied, already planning to cook dinner in his own kitchen, to shower in his own bathroom, to sleep in his own bed for the first time since the raid.
He wasn't the only one testing boundaries.
Zin had been spiraling.
Since the failed hit, she'd barely slept—pacing the hallways like a caged animal, snapping at David, blasting music at odd hours, obsessing over whether the assassin had been underprepared or betrayed. Whether she had gotten someone killed. Again.
David had offered to take her north—the Canada house was quiet, safe, secure. But Zin wasn't allowed to leave the country. Not anymore.
"I'll go," David had said, grabbing his bag. "You stay here. Keep the signals clean. And don't do anything stupid."
She'd nodded, but her hands were shaking. When he left, the house felt colder. Wider. Like it was waiting to punish her with silence.
River's digital form flickered with what might have been concern. "Just remember—invisible doesn't mean invincible."
Three states away, the assassin was good. Professional. But the headshots missed by inches in the dim parking garage lighting, and the follow-up body shots hit Walsh's concealed kevlar vest and ceramic plate.
Two rounds center mass—the impact staggered Walsh but didn't drop him. He drew his concealed weapon and returned fire before the assassin could adjust aim for an unprotected target.
The shootout lasted thirty seconds. In a downtown parking garage at 6 PM, with witnesses and cell phone cameras capturing everything.
Walsh stood over the body, checking for vitals he knew he wouldn't find. No identification. No phone. No way to trace the contract back to its source.
His latex gloves snapped tight around his wrists, the material creaking. For half a second, his thumb rubbed over a scar on his palm—an old burn, shiny and deliberate. Then he looked down at the assassin's body and smiled.
But he had suspects. The consciousness research team had been his primary focus for months, and Zin Williamson had made her hatred clear. Still, Walsh had made enemies over two decades in federal service. Corporate whistleblowers. Environmental activists. Congressional targets who'd survived his investigations.
It could have been anyone.
The news coverage was immediate and predictable: "FEDERAL OFFICIAL SURVIVES ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT" with breathless speculation about connections to the missing consciousness terrorist and his alleged drug kingpin partner.
So when Christine messaged again, Zin didn't hesitate.
She opened the wine before the knock even came. Put on eyeliner with reckless hands. Chose a blouse she hadn't worn since the last time she felt in control.
Christine arrived at sunset with wine and nervous energy, clearly hoping for a repeat of their previous encounter. She'd dressed carefully—silk blouse, expensive jeans, the kind of deliberately casual outfit that suggested she'd thought about this visit for days.
"I'm so glad you called me back," she said, following Zin into the living room. "I wasn't sure... after the other night, I thought maybe you'd decided it was a mistake."
"Why would it be a mistake?" Zin poured wine, her movements controlled and purposeful.
"Because it was impulsive. We'd both been drinking. And your situation..." Christine glanced around the house uncertainly. "I know you said your partner was out of the country, but this feels like his space."
Zin handed her a glass.
"Richard's been gone for weeks. I don't know when he's coming back." She paused, a glint in her voice as she sipped. "Maybe my little fugitive will fight his way over just to come see us. How would you like that?"
Christine smiled—then winked.
"I'm game. But it sounds dangerous."
They settled on the couch, close enough that their knees touched. Christine's hand found Zin's, fingers intertwining with familiar ease.
"I've been thinking about you," Christine said. "About what you showed me. The consciousness connection. It was extraordinary."
Down the hallway, Richard emerged from his black room like a ghost learning to haunt. He'd heard voices, recognized Christine's laugh, felt something twist in his stomach that wasn't quite jealousy but wasn't comfortable either.
He moved barefoot across hardwood, shadow silent, until he could see them through the partially open bedroom door.
Zin had blindfolded Christine with a silk scarf, her movements deliberate and commanding. The toy Richard had bought weeks ago—back when he'd still thought about their physical relationship—buzzed softly in Zin's hand.
The air smelled like citrus oil and arousal. Christine's breathing was quick, breathy, punctuated by unfamiliar moans that sent heat through Richard's body despite himself.
"Tell me what you're feeling," Zin whispered, her voice low and instructional. "Describe the patterns."
"It's like... colors behind my eyes," Christine gasped. "Networks forming and dissolving. I can feel my neurons firing."
Richard stood frozen in the doorway, hard and stunned, watching his partner create intimacy with someone else while he'd been disappearing into digital abstraction. Christine's moans blurred with an old memory—Zin's nails digging into his back, sunlight through their first apartment's curtains, her voice whispering his name like prayer. Now he was a ghost in his own home, touching nothing, seen by no one. Even pleasure was a surveillance feed he couldn't access.
Christine pulled off the blindfold and their eyes met across the room.
She started, covering herself with a pillow. "Oh god, I'm sorry, I didn't—"
"It's okay," Zin said calmly. She looked at Richard without surprise, as if she'd known he was there. "You want to know what he's like? Stay."
Christine looked between them, processing the invitation and the revelation that Richard hadn't fled the country after all. "Are you sure?"
Zin held out her hand to Richard. "Come here."
He entered the room slowly, uncertain. Zin guided his hands to Christine's shoulders, showing him how to touch her, how to contribute to the connection they'd started building.
"She's a neuroscientist," Zin said. "She understands what you see in consciousness. Show her."
Richard's hands were gentle, mapping Christine's responses with the same attention he brought to analyzing neural pathways. Three bodies, three minds, finding rhythms that felt both inevitable and impossible.
He saw it.
Not just the movement.
Not just the bodies.
The networks.
Even without BeeVision, Christine's orgasm wasn't private—it was planetary.
Her neurons lit up like constellations firing across the sky of her mind.
Richard could see the synchronization—the way Zin's breath matched hers,
the way his own pulse fell into rhythm,
the way Christine surrendered fully under the care of four deliberate, skilled hands and two attentive mouths working in quiet coordination.
She wasn't overwhelmed.
She was held.
A single moan became a signal.
An ambient, sacred code.
And as her back arched, hands gripping the sheets, her body shaking with release—
Zin whispered:
"Now—show her my favorite part."
And just as Richard leaned in—
The front door exploded inward.
Christine screamed, lunging not for cover but for the dress Zin wore yesterday by the window. "Where are my clothes? Oh god, where are my clothes?"
A red laser dot appeared on her chest.
Her eyes locked onto Richard's, wide not with fear but with mortification. She was naked, exposed, vulnerable in every possible way.
"My dress," she gasped, reaching desperately toward the fabric pooled by the bed. "I need my—"
The bullet took her before she could finish.
Christine dropped to the hardwood floor, wine spreading from the overturned glass like blood. Her hand still stretched toward her silk blouse, fingers grasping at nothing.
SWAT agents poured into the room—black gear, assault rifles, the same overwhelming force from weeks before. But this time there was no hidden room to provide sanctuary.
Zin fought anyway, kicking and clawing until they zip-tied her wrists. Richard simply crumbled, staring at Christine's motionless form.
Walsh entered last, calm and unhurried, wearing fresh latex gloves like he was conducting a medical examination.
He looked at Christine's body, then at Richard and Zin.
"If you tried to kill me," he said to Zin, his voice conversational, "now we're even."
He turned to Richard. "BeeVision can erase you from technology. But not from me."
SWAT dragged them through their own home, past overturned furniture and scattered papers, past the bookshelf that had hidden Richard's sanctuary, past the kitchen where they'd once cooked together in easier times.
Behind them, Christine's body lay uncovered on the bedroom floor. The nearby screen glitched—not random static, but a looping fragment of River's voice: "—run—" cut off mid-syllable. The SWAT team's radios fizzed with the same distortion, just for a second.
The house fell silent except for the echo of boots and the distant hum of surveillance drones that could no longer see the man they'd been hunting.
Richard Smith had finally become invisible. As the door slammed shut behind him, the last thing he saw was a sliver of sunset through the broken window—golden, indifferent, and utterly out of reach.