New Story: The Adjusters #61

(I refuse to accept it's already mid-August. So I shan't. Therefore, this is not late. There.)

Here is August's installment of The Adjusters and the beginning of Book VI, “A Warning for Daniel Malcolm", wherein a new ADCorp assignment calls our hero.

As usual, comments welcome.

I'll also remind you that we have a Speculation Thread available for general discussion. (A thread which I read but do not comment on.)


The Adjusters #61 - A Warning for Daniel Malcolm

“So tell me, Mister Malcolm—Daniel—how are you adjusting?”

Daniel Malcolm gave Elizabeth Parkinson—Please, call me Betty—a long look, wondering how exactly to answer that question.

He could answer it at face value, given that he was speaking to his main HR contact at ADCorp, his employer: I’m doing okay, I guess. I mean, there’s a lot to learn, and I’m spending most of my time continuing my training and learning the ropes, but I’ve been on a couple of assignments already where we went and nabbed a bad guy and I guess I feel pretty good about it, even though I’ve still got a lot of questions about what we do but I’ve come to understand that it’s a bad idea to ask such questions out loud. I did have a few questions about the benefits package and about floating holidays, though.

Or he could perhaps try to be more frank about what he was feeling: Well, to be entirely honest, Betty, I’m not doing so good. In fact, one might argue with some validity that I’m sinking slowly but surely into a depression. And I don’t care. You’ve got to understand, and I don’t know how much that file you have on your desk tells you about these things, but I’m going through a pretty rough patch.

Maybe he should go into the actual details, just so that he could see her face change, see that arguably beautiful smile fade away slowly. Do you want to hear about my last year at Darnell, where I found out that a bunch of dicks from a frat were messing with girls’ heads to turn them into sex dolls? Do you want to hear about that asshole from said frat who snatched Jenn, my fiancée, and turned her into a fucking slut and sent her out into the world, desperate for cock? Do you want to hear how I got this job, with Agent Shawbank offering it to me after I’m pretty sure she got rid of the man that had given the mind-fuck tech to those frat boys, Thaddeus Cargyle, the one man that might have had the key to undoing what had been done to Jenn? Do you want to hear about how I met up with this guy Sam O’Neill who’s a private investigator and told me that he would look for Jenn in exchange for me accepting ADCorp’s job offer and spying on this company for him? Do you want to hear why I accepted—because he told me that Cargyle had worked for ADCorp, and I believed him, and nothing I’ve seen until now makes me doubt his word? Is that what you would like to hear, Betty?

Continue reading...

Next month: Title TBD....