The Recruit

Chapter 1-2

Albert straightened abruptly in his seat. His chin raised as he turned toward the open window and sniffed the air. It was a male scent, of that he was certain. Not too young, but not too old, either. If he were a betting man, he would peg the age of the owner of those intriguing pheromones to be somewhere in his thirties. Close to his own age. Or…not.

His lip curled self-depreciatingly as it was wont to do. After his thirty-fourth birthday, he’d lost track of his precise age. He’d spent too many decades over the first few hundred years after he’d been turned despondent and distracted, struggling to survive. He needed to add about two thousand years to get his true age.

He drew in a deep breath and shivered as that enticing aroma swirled, beckoning him to the window. The man behind the scent approached from the west. He walked slowly, his head down and shoulders slumped as if they carried the weight of the world—or more likely, the burden of his own imminently pending mortality.

Albert tapped his phone screen and dialed a number from memory as he strode out of his apartment.

Eunice answered immediately. “Yes, boss man.”

He sighed, but let the nickname go. Not letting inconsequential matters aggravate him was one of the reasons he made a well-liked and effective faction-leader. His associates respected him in the true sense of the word, rather than the fear-based perversion of it.

“Got a potential for you to check out. Hold on.” He hustled down the narrow staircase and exited the building.

The man, mere yards away when Albert pushed out the door, looked up as if startled. Albert nodded and gave a reassuring, light, and friendly smile. The man’s eyes lit for a fraction of a second before gloom reclaimed them. He returned the nod, and Albert paused on the stoop and fiddled with his phone’s screen to give his target a chance to put some distance between them.

Target. It was imperative he allow himself to think of the man only dispassionately. Against all common sense, Albert drew in another whiff of the man’s scent and shivered. He closed his eyes as the pheromones permeated throughout his body. Finally, after all these years, he’d found someone who affected him this way. That brief glimmer in the man’s eyes didn’t help Albert’s resolve to remain impartial. Did the man feel it, too?

Throughout this, Eunice remained silent—other than sounds of breathing. Of course, they didn’t need to breathe, but movement that had been involuntary in life was now cultivated habit, crucial to maintain the appearance of life so as not to attract undesirable attention. Besides, airflow over the larynx was required for talking, and they used their elevated sense of smell to their advantage.

Albert held back. With the slight breeze, he should be able to track the man by his scent even if he lost sight of him, but to be safe, he strove to keep the stranger in view. He plugged the wired earbud into the audio jack and fitted it into his ear.

“Okay,” he said. “Early to mid-thirties, or possibly a bit younger since the disease isn’t doing his appearance any favors.”

“Cancer?” Eunice asked. A reasonable educated guess since it was both the most likely fatal disease to affect a human of that age, and the one Albert was best able to pick up.

“Yes. I don’t recognize the type, so something uncommon, but it’s advanced.” Part of him felt sorry for the man, but his self-preservation instincts overpowered that emotion. It wasn’t as if there was anything he could do to save the guy’s life anyway. “You’ll need to work quickly.”

They pulled in one or two new recruits each year. Sometimes more, sometimes none. Finding willing converts in the right age range was by far the most efficient and least dangerous path. People whose lives were about to be tragically cut short were often cooperative.

Of course, age and potential willingness weren’t the only considerations. People unlikely to cut off all ties with current loved ones and upend the lives they’d built didn’t get approached. Large supportive families that might push to view the body of the “deceased” usually eliminated individuals from consideration. It was too risky. Raw intelligence was a requirement, and while a good education was helpful, it was less important in the long run.

They needed people capable of cross-training to fill a variety of positions over the years—centuries—millennia. In these modern times with social security and identification cards, none of them could keep the same identity for more than fifteen to twenty years—twenty-five max—without their lack of apparent aging becoming problematic. Since many of the specialties they needed to infiltrate networked across the country, one person couldn’t necessarily assume the same position in a different state when they took on a new identity. Fact was, most prospective recruits never made it past the early assessment stages.

“Anything else you can tell me yet?” she asked. Eunice would coordinate the evaluation.

“Only that he’s out walking alone, and he seems depressed.”

“Good…good…”

The average person with functioning empathy would likely back away in horror from someone expressing what appeared to be such an extraordinarily cold-blooded response, but Albert absently bobbed his head, agreeing with Eunice’s assessment. It wasn’t from lack of compassion, though. If the man fit their guidelines for recruitment, he would be offered a chance for…well, not precisely everlasting life, but at least he wouldn’t die quite so soon.

“Current location?” she asked.

He gave her their position and heading, and the sounds changed, indicating her movement. She would join him now, and if she caught up with him before their target arrived at his destination, she could get a preliminary impression before initiating a thorough background check on the man. Her instincts were good, so hopefully she’d make it in time.

The man passed a couple opportunities to get on the subway as he continued his slow walk. The turns he took indicated he had a certain location in mind rather than aimless walking. Albert wouldn’t say the man was enjoying the warm spring day so much as that he seemed to be taking it in as if trying to impress the memory of it on his soul.

Albert lost his connection to Eunice while she hopped on the subway, but she called back before the man got where he was going.

When Eunice stepped into place beside him, she got right to the point. “That him in the navy windbreaker?” It was a rhetorical question, considering his appearance relative to the healthy people around them. Everything from the sluggishness of his stroll compared to the hardy strides of the others, to the way he turned up his peaked face to gaze at every blossoming tree they passed, not taking their beauty for granted, gave him away.

At a mere five-hundred-and-change years old, Eunice’s sense of smell wasn’t as fine-tuned as his, so at this distance, and with other people distorting the trail, she probably couldn’t use it to pick him out, but she could read people like a well-worn favorite novel.

They strolled in silence for a few more blocks, then stepped into a coffee shop across from the brownstone the man entered.

Albert bought them a couple coffees—to fit in while they pretended to drink—while Eunice reserved a small table at the front window and kept an eye on the man’s building.

“This’ll be easy,” she said when he rejoined her. “He opened a window, so I can identify precisely which apartment is his.”

“Great. Even better.” The fact the man was in a small building like that had already made the job of identifying him relatively simple. “What was your impression?”

“I like him. Just by his body language, it’s clear he’s disheartened, but that’s to be expected. But he’s a ‘stop and smell the roses’ kind of guy. He’s accepted his fate, doesn’t like it, of course, but he’s trying not to wallow in it. I didn’t detect anyone else in his apartment, and his opening the window as soon as he got home is consistent with the possibility that he lives alone.”

“Okay,” Albert replied. That confirmed his own instinct about the guy, and her observations regarding his living arrangement were—while not definitive—a solid plus. “Get the teams right on it. I don’t want to risk losing him if he’s a good match.” He didn’t have to explain about the risk that the man might decide his quality of life didn’t justify pushing for every possible remaining day and elect to go out on his own terms. They’d lost a number of good potential recruits that way.

“Of course.”

They sat for a few minutes, feigning drinks from their cups, before tossing them in the trash and moving on with their responsibilities.