APEX, developed during the Vietnam war, was an extraction initiative. APEX: Advanced Priority Extraction. It sounded more like an operating system than a living program, but it was fed by the life blood of those selected to captain its vessels. Wartime was a perfect opportunity to develop such a program. As the Vietnam war wound down, people couldn't seem to get off the wagon in regard to the negative spin the world gave it. This was a perfect opportunity for development. People were distracted, they eventually stopped caring about the war, and government agencies collaborated closely with military leaders to develop a homebound initiative that could handle the cases quietly, efficiently, and out of the media. There were units all over the world now. The initiative had been developed to isolate events and it had done just that. Consultants, they decided to name them. They decided on the name as a political effort to professionalize what they did. If you sounded professional enough, people wouldn't ask as many questions. It allowed a level of secrecy that kept them out of camp fire stories. Funding was also easier to come by and quite honestly it's what those who were selected, did. They consulted the outer layers of morality. They did not follow any rules of engagement. They extracted. That could mean a few different things. They extracted information from you, they extracted any trace of the target, they extracted you from this life and placed you in the next. The criteria to be selected for the APEX program is vast and can be applied across a broad spectrum depending on the target. In some ways the target almost seemed to select a custom made team of consultants. Consultants were often placed in teams of two and the process they went through as they were assigned was comparable to match.com it seemed like. A teams compatibility would assessed throughout a consultants career. Whether they were in the military, law enforcement, information technology, psychology, it didn't matter. However, it was rare for two of the same "species" to be classed together. You rarely found two IT guys assigned to the same target. There's no point in assigning a good cop good cop to a case. However, Frank and Don had been matched almost perfectly. Despite the fact that they both came from military backgrounds, they had found each other. In fact, the APEX program found them for each other. They were eerily similar candidates and their scoring, based on everything from compatibility to cognition, placed them closer than any other two consultants. Nearly 10 years ago, Frank and Don found themselves unknowingly bound together before they'd even met.
--------------------------------------------
The Meeting
July 2005
"Come on in Frank". The mid sixtyish, balding man said. Frank entered what he could best describe as a glorified file room. To his right he recognized the same Calvin Klein looking pussy he had seen in the waiting room. "You might be wondering why you're here with Don over here. "So it wasn't Calvin Klein looking pussy afterall", "It had a name and its name was Don". Frank entered, offered his hand as most would do in an interview and the no named interviewer regarded his gesture but dismissed it. "Asshole" Frank thought to himself. "I don't understand" Don said in an attempt to break the silence. "I thought this interview was for ME? I've been in here for 20 minutes and you've barely said a word to me." "Listen buddy" Don gestured to Frank "it hasn't gone all that well for me so if you had something else to do today I'd go ahead and do it." "And lastly" Don redirected his attention back to the balding fatty, "And to be honest with you, I shouldn't have even come in after the letter I got. It was vague, shit, I read through it and was about to trash it until I got to the salary." Don liked to talk Frank thought as he began to drown him out like a Charlie brown character wah wah wahing in the background. In that moment, Frank pulled out his own letter that he'd received and began to see the issues Don was bringing up. He read it again. It never did fit right. He got an interview for a job he didn't even apply for. He didn't really care much he remembered, he needed the money.
