Seven Demons by Aidan Truhen (best motivational books for students TXT) 📕

And Doc’s plan for the Kircheisen Festung…it is good. She has the necessary elephant tranquilizer and she has a vector for it. She has the physical body of Elena Riccardi the programmer, last seen passing out in FischFisch from a high dose of whatever, and soon she will have answers.

All security systems have dirty secrets. It just depends how dirty you are prepared to get yourself to uncover them. We went to FischFisch and I got clitorally assaulted so we are already quite dirty and I think my suffering should entirely count for something.

And it does because Elena Riccardi is waking up.

Charlie says: “Good morning sleepyhead YAWN.”

Elena Riccardi says: “VASS?”

“Oooo Tiger steady it’s a little bit early for shouting although I do like it when you yell—”

“VASS—WHAT WHAT O SHIIIIT—”

Fisahypnozerasol plus some high-grade opiates to trigger it will leave you with a sense memory of fairly humungous physical pleasure and no idea what happened to cause it. That is fine if you wake up next to your acknowledged sexual partner and less good if you walk into the breakfast room of a log cabin full of weirdo strangers wearing nothing but a borrowed XXXL tour shirt for a Euroskiffle PMV band called the Dover Bends.

If you do not know what PMV is do not Google it.

“Owwwww loud loud loud Elena fercrissakes not cool—”

“Oh hey Rita you here too?”

“Yes Banjo,” Doc says, “me and Lulu and even Bad Man Adams from the band.”

(That’s Charlie and Lucille she’s pointing at and of course I have a hole in my neck that has recently been superglued but even without that the idea that one might have done sex with Lucille is a troubling sort of a thing. Lucille looks like a hair puller.) “Aaacccch ne ne ne ne—where are we? Where is my husband—”

Charlie says: “Well this is our house and Oscar well he bailed after you guys got into it a little that guy cannot take his hooch I am afraid he was way grouchy and you told him to—well you were clear about who wears the pants in your house sexually speaking—but wow lady—you! You are THE dirtiest hunter in the ocean sweetheart that I gotta give you I have not been speared and flensed like that in—”

“…o SHIT du meine Gute shit shit shit…”

Elena Riccardi is having a really bad morning right now and Charlie is just grinning at her and bringing her coffee and that is making it worse because she cannot remember anything at all except being really really you know—

—satisfied—

—by person or persons unknown but if you’re lucky maybe you can piece it together and find them again and pin them to a wall and—and she does not feel good about that but at the same time she really does and—

And that is why you go to FischFisch in the first place.

—

This is the key to a professional drug amnesia play. In the aftermath the subject should feel incredibly uncomfortable with the idea of asking questions about what they don’t remember, but not so uncomfortable that they want to call the police or alert their employer to a potential security breach. You definitely do not want a software engineer specializing in security wondering whether she might have given up the details of a massively secret project she worked on as an associate a dozen years ago. You would not want her thinking that she had for example given you back doors and exploits and vulnerabilities and the Internet Protocol address of the system’s only contact with the regular interwebs or any of that shit. If she thought that she might call in to work and tell them what has happened and that would put a massive crimp in your robbery and you would need to take steps but Mr. Friday was real clear about the rules of engagement here so those steps would be problematic. No long-term harm he said and there will be none. Just a few days of mild ethical discomfort and emotional woe because she inexplicably forgot her husband somewhere along the road to orgytown and that is not part of their Deal.

No sirreebob. That is a big fat no-no it is on their list of no-nos that they keep on the fridge door beside the little bright colored alphabet magnets and the school calendar. In truth probably her husband would be okay about it he is not a bad guy and he loves her. That slightly makes it worse and so now she has to deal with that fuckup and it is in the forefront of her mind and she wants it gone from there—

“(SCHEIßEREI!)”

—and she is definitely not asking awkward questions about whether she compromised Hans Eiger’s impregnable fortress.

There is no such thing as ethical fair trade kidnapping but if there were it would be this and I am mostly fine with it. We have done a crime to her and a mean one which preys upon her emotional vulnerability and her lifestyle and that is a shitty thing to do. But on the other hand Elena Riccardi will eventually work out what really happened and she will be pissed as hell and she will be right, but in the long and even the medium and actually the short term Elena will be as okay as anyone ever is and unlike let us say Sharkey or Volodya she is alive. In this world you have to wake up every morning grateful about that or you will just blink and miss it.

—

Doc days: “Well that went well.”

“It did?”

“It absolutely did. Charlie has everything she needs.”

“Well that is good.”

“You do not think that is good.”

“I just think we are the bad guys.”

“Well we are the bad guys. It’s just we are against the guys who are also the bad guys.”

“Yeah that’s true.”

“Do you have everything you need?”

“I am working out the kinks I am plotting I—”

“You aren’t ready yet.”

“Are you?”

“Charlie says some of the locks are isolated from the main