Cupboards and Cryogenics

Chapter 9

"Why'd we leave the car?" The mini-handler asks, confused, when waking up 19 minutes after they left it in the road and started walking. As usual, he tenses after asking the question.

"The family has most likely reported that it was stolen." Which means the police have most likely been notified and have perhaps even barricaded the road by now.

POLICE DETECTION IS MISSION-NONCOMPLIANT. The usual voice in his head says.

It is a rule for every mission- do not alert the authorities to his presence. It would have been almost impossible to continue driving and avoid them on an empty rural road.

They'd take him away. The newer voice adds and points out, unnecessarily, that if taken into police custody, the Asset would be charged with eight first-degree murders, two instances of vehicular theft, kidnapping a child, and his burglary of the Tesco store.

And that is just in the past 25.2 hours.

"We stealed it?" Harry the Handler asks, horrified.

"Affirmative, Harry." The Asset is still not used to addressing his superior as just "Harry" and cannot fathom his new handler's request. But he must do as his handler wishes and refer to him as requested, as illogical as the wish seems. The name makes Harry the Handler smile, anyways. "We stole it."

"But stealing's bad!" Harry the Handler protests, seeming more bold when the Asset had not gotten annoyed at him for talking. "Dudley told Aunt Tuna I stealed his cookie. I didn't, really, but I still got in big twouble!" He shudders and sniffles.

"Is stealing disallowed for the mission?"

Despite his protests, Harry the Handler does not actually forbid the Soldier from stealing in the future. Which is good, because the Soldier has no money, so theft is the only way to obtain anything at the moment.

"Assassinating the family after they passed us on the road would have stopped them from reporting the theft." The Asset informs him. Then, they could have kept the car, without worrying about police.

"Asassassanat...?" Harry the Handler asks. "Is dat your other name? Like how Aunt Tuna calls Dudley 'Diddikins'?" The boy snickers slightly.

"Negative. Assassinate means to kill." He is not sure Harry the Handler really understands what that means, but the boy does not reply.

The mini-handler had been scared of the agents' corpses in the lodge. It is odd that Harry the Handler would take control of a very highly skilled assassin and then not make use of that branch of the Asset's skills.

Harry the Handler switches topics and starts debating dog names aloud again. The Soldier offers no input. He should not have opinions, after all, and the dog's name does not affect him. At one point, Harry the Handler asks the Soldier for his opinion, but the Soldier just tells the boy that it is entirely his choice.

Eventually, Harry the Handler decides to call the black dog 'Nighty' rather than 'Blackie', adding that Batman is the Dark Knight. The Asset wonders if the Dark Knight will replace his Winter Soldier designation, but so far, his handler has not changed any previous codenames, merely assigned him a new one. Or two, possibly, if Dark Knight is to be a codename.

The boy's green eyes seem more lively when he talks about Batman to his Batman. The Asset/Batman suspects that Batman is somebody else, in addition to his new codename, but the boy has said that the Asset is Batman. It is confusing.

Nighty continues to follow them, most likely because Harry the Handler had fed the dog peanut butter in the shed.

After 33.4 minutes of walking, the Asset finds train tracks that he had not explicitly been searching for, despite thinking about taking trains or trucks instead of cars.