Excerpt: The Agent

Chapter 1

Friday brought the single most breathtaking dawn I'd ever witnessed.

They say that our perceptions color our experiences. Just as the starving man being finds that hunger really is the best sauce, from my view, that perfect morning was my last helping of anything that might be called peace.

After, everything went straight to hell. It was the last day of my life. It was the first day of a new, more interesting one. In the Chinese sense.

I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised. After all, as I later found out, I've done this before. It was just that I didn't know that at the time.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's stick with Friday, and go from there.

My name is Nathan Jarvik. At least, it was. I was a Social Studies teacher at Croghan Consolidated's High School.

Never heard of it? I'm not surprised. It's a small town in the Adirondacks, deep in Upstate New York.

This particular Friday happened to fall in the middle of September, and the view of the landscape was that much more spectacular for the firestorm of color burning through the foliage on the hills all around. It was what made living way up there worth it.

Once I'd finished my requisite cup of coffee, I felt like I was starting to resemble something close to alive, so I got my things together and headed out. If you thought school started early when you were a kid, just imagine how early it is for a teacher. Hence the need for coffee.

It was a 22 minute drive to the school, as always. It was a pleasant trip, with little traffic, listening to NPR's Morning Edition on WRVO's Watertown station. The nice thing about that was I could do all my research on current events during my travel time. Multi-tasking: the way of the future.

I arrived at my desk, an ancient wooden affair, leftover from the days before budget-cutbacks had forced public schools to make due with antique equipment. The classroom itself was as up-to-date as anything in these parts: florescent lights scattered their dead-white radiance across a floor where no shadows fell. The walls were covered with faded posters that read, "Everything I need to know..." and sported glamour shots of New York's best-recognized fruit export. Not a single seat was without some form of custom engraving.

I was sitting at my desk, grading papers and waiting for the first class of the day to make their way into their seats, when the trouble started. The typical cacophony of voices coming from the hallway had changed dramatically: a general silence had fallen, save for two that had escalated to something considerably louder than was necessary.

Now, for all of you who are drama fanatics of the Jerry Springer variety, you should consider a career in teaching. You'll see more action in those five minutes between classes than in a full day televised marathon.

The incident this morning involved two boys. This actually was something of a surprise, as it's usually the girls screaming bloody murder at each other. The boys don't usually bother; they go straight to throwing punches.

Tommy, a Sophomore, was hollering at Jim, a Senior, about something to do with Homecoming. This struck me as odd, since it was still a little premature to be bickering over escortship arrangements for an event still a month away. I didn't bother to investigate what the issue was; I just broke them up and sent them on their respective ways, then returned to my class.

That, as it turned out, was a mistake.

Since it was September, we were early into the coursework, and still going over the basic principles of government. I was just finishing the first class's lesson when, as Roger Zelazny so eloquently put it, the fecal matter struck the rotating blades.

"Each of us has a duty to the nation, through cooperation with the government and the law," I said. Lecturing teenagers - what fun!

"However, the government, in turn, reciprocates through its own duty to the people. Remember, the founders felt that government should serve only two purposes: mutual defense against outside aggression, and, more importantly, protecting the liberty of all its citizens.

"Now, we'll get into the issues of slavery and women's rights in a few months. For now, the important part I want you to take away from this is that this fundamental aspect of government remains, if somewhat improved from those days." That got a chuckle out of the smart kids.

"Ben Franklin once said 'Those who are willing to give up a necessary liberty in exchange for a temporary security deserve neither liberty nor security.' The Bill of Rights puts this attitude in stone, as it were, by placing behavioral limits, not on the people, but on the government itself. Freedom of speech, freedom to bear arms, freedom from unfair prosecution - we'll go into greater detail on these next week. For now, the point is that our government - our Constitutional government - takes the rights of its citizens very seriously. The protected rights of the people are almost sacred. They are a part of the Constitution itself."

Then the bell rang, and everything changed. As the students rose to file out, I started to remind them of the weekend's assignment, when I heard a very loud bang out in the hallway.

It's hard to describe what happened then. Even though I'd never been near a gun in my life, I knew that it was a gunshot. Sure, I'd heard hunters in the woods before, at a distance, but this was different.

In that instant, my mind went foggy. Instinctively, I knew that I'd heard the report of a Beretta 87 Target. I also knew that it was a practice weapon, but that it also was just as lethal as any other .22 at close range, and that a full magazine held 10 rounds.

I had no idea where that knowledge sprang from; it was just there, as if it had been at the forefront of my mind all along.

Now, under normal circumstances, I'd try to calm down the aggressor in a violent confrontation. This time, though, with the threat of deadly violence in play, I reacted in a way that I still don't quite fully understand.

Before I knew what I was doing, I had shoved my way past the kids, pushing them back into the classroom, and was sprinting towards the gunman.

It was Tommy.

He stood in a rapidly widening circle of students with the blued steel weapon in his right hand. I remember paying exceptionally close attention to the weapon. It was pointed straight up.

I remember noticing that, and thinking to myself for now.

He was crying, standing there in the center of that ring. He was screaming something, but I couldn't hear him. Whether it was my strange mental state, or the ringing in my ears from the proximity to the gunshot, I don't know. I do know that I was reacting automatically, like a computer executing a program. Perhaps 'executing' is the wrong word.

I couldn't rub two thoughts together to save my life, which was probably a good thing just then. If I had, God knows what would have happened. If I'd hesitated for just one second...

The kids were all watching him, doe eyed. The fear was universal, and tangible. They were waiting to see where the gun would come down. In the recesses of my mind, Jim, the Senior from this morning, caught my notice. He was cowering on the floor beside Tommy. The scenario unfolding before me struck like lightening.

I couldn't get through fast enough. There were just too many people in the way, and every one of them paralyzed by the spectacle. I shouldered through them as best I could, but I just couldn't get any kind of speed.

The gun started to swing downward, and I knew I was still too far away. By all rights, I should have been panicking, but I felt completely calm, as if this were just a routine thing. A walk in the park. It was a feeling that scared the shit out of me. Some part of me was aware of the danger I was putting myself into, but that part was being out-voted by the majority element of unthinking gut reaction.

Unarmed, I was going to take on a gunman. I was going to stop him. And I knew I could do it.

To get Tommy's attention, I took action in a split-second, again without thinking about it. I threw my pen at him.

End over end it whirled. I knew exactly where it was going, and it was the most eerie experience of my life to watch it cross the distance. In utter disbelief, I looked on, an observer in my own mind, as the ball-point arced over the last row of heads, spanned the gap, and struck.

It hit Tommy point-first, just behind his right eye, where it embedded a fraction of an inch.

That area, between the cheekbone and forehead, is called the Temple. It is the area of the skull where the bone is the thinnest, the most vulnerable. The pen's tip punched through and stuck. The tactic worked: it got his attention.

The gun swung around toward me. As I pushed the last kid out of my way and sprinted full-tilt into the gap around Tommy, his blue eyes came around and locked with mine. It was a strange thing to see that kind of kind of hate flashing through the gaze of someone so young. I saw everything in that moment.

I saw Tommy's fear, in the slight tremble of the weapon. I saw his years of experience in using it in his iron grip, locked wrist, and braced stance. There was still a curl of blue smoke coming from the barrel from the last discharge. It was frozen in mid air.

I saw his finger twitch as he started to pull the trigger. The barrel was in perfect line with his own eyes, pointed directly between mine. Ten feet is all that separated us now. He couldn't miss.

I dropped.

The sound of the bullet striking the wall behind me was lost in the bang of its firing. All other sound vanished.

I knew that the weapon was a semi-automatic. Just point and shoot. I had less than a second. Much less.

I used my forward momentum to convert my fall into a roll, and I dove for him. Five feet closer, and my feet came around. I sprang like a gymnast.

I came up as his arm came down, and I effortlessly caught his wrist. Shock was visible in his eyes too, now.

His bones shattered like twigs in my grasp. The gun fell from limp fingers.

Then the world came crashing back.