#dark contract

Tyler contemplated the tiny stick in his hand that had caused so much trouble. "One Wish Willow". Break the stick, and you get one wish, whatever you want. "Amaze your friends," said a quote in the corner of the box. Tyler almost scoffed. He remembered when his boss gave him the debriefing on the item. The first words out of Tyler's mouth were "how the fuck did you let this slip by you???"

The old man was typically not one to let shit like this just end up on store shelves, no matter how remote. That kind of oversight, especially for items this powerful, were like holes in the side of a ship. Doesn't matter how big or small, it's always a problem. Naturally, Tyler and his team were dispatched to cover the whole thing up.

He looked back up at Bear, who hadn't said a word since he was tied down. His eyes just stayed locked on Tyler the whole time, silently pouring tears like a slightly open faucet. Another bang on the door. Nikki barely sounded human now. The doors in this house were cheap, and even if they weren't (and even if they didn't have several pieces of furniture acting as barricades), the spell cast on the poor girl clearly didn't make allowances for her own self-preservation. "Are you going to kill me...?" Bear finally asked. His voice warbled like a steel cable at high altitudes during a storm.

"Why would you do this?" Tyler asked.

"I-I didn't know it would actually happen!" he shouted. "I just wanted her to like me, that's all! And now she's being, well, this, and then Sarah and..."

Tyler replied with a simple "Mhm."

"But like, well, I mean, everything was fine at first."

Tyler looked around the broken, tattered remains of the house. There was a stain on the rug near the door that smelled faintly of piss. "Fine, huh?"

"Look, I got tricked, okay! By that, that thing! Why would someone make that?! It's not my fault - NONE of this is my fault!"

Tyler's eye twitched. But he swallowed it for now. Full story first. "Okay. Is the original personality still in there? Has she tried to reach out to you at all?"

"Well, I...I mean..."

"Sir." Tyler pulled back on his suit jacket, revealing his gun. "It is time to be honest."

Bear jumped in the chair as high as the restraints would let him, and Tyler picked up a fresh new scent of piss. Ah, what a sanitary life I lead. Thank god Simon isn't here.

"Okay!" said Bear. "Okay, okay okay, just put that away, okay!? There was this, this one time. She was asleep, but like, she also wasn't, you know?"

"What did she say?"

"She..." Bear muttered the rest. Tyler growled, and began to draw the gun. "She asked me to kill her! I-I thought, maybe it was another freak out, so-"

"Another?"

"It happens sometimes, but she always apologizes afterward."

A crash. Tyler's eyes darted to the door. Nikki's hand, broken, purple, and dripping with blood, had punched through the door, and was now scrambling to move aside the furniture barricade. "She's gonna get through, we need to get out of here!!!" Bear shouted. He thrashed and yanked at his restraints.

Tyler went to a pocket in his suit jacket and pulled out a dart gun. He shot a dart into the thrashing arm coming from the hole, and moments later, it fell slack. Nikki was asleep. Tyler holstered the dart gun. "Anyway."

"Why the fuck didn't you do that before?!" Bear asked.

"I didn't know if putting her to sleep would just make something worse come out. Turns out, all that happens is the poor girl begs for death. I can't imagine why. But back to our little tête-à-tête, when was the first freakout."

Bear took several deep breaths as the adrenaline subsided, and he answered. "It wasn't long after I made the wish. A day or so. We were actually about to, ya know..."

Tyler felt his blood go hot with rage. While he kept the full fury of it below the well-trained facade of his profession, he did allow a dangerous narrowing of the eyes. "And did you?" His hand went back to the gun. Time to be honest.

"Well, yeah?" Bear replied. He phrased it as a question, without a hint of shame. He likely didn't understand why Tyler was reaching for the gun at all.

Tyler's hand was tightening around the handle, when his phone went off. It was Simon. He answered. "Hey," said his best friend on the other end. "I found the magic shop, and I've confiscated all the willows they had. Amazing what a forged FBI badge lets you do."

Tyler kept his eyes on Bear. "Whatcha got?"

"Clark and I ran some tests on them. This isn't a curse; it isn't even a genie scenario. The wishes are 100% clean. It's exactly as it says on the box."

"So it's all on the guy doing the wishing," Tyler finished.

"Indeed. You have one with you, yes? Another wish should undo this whole thing."

Tyler looked down at the willow. The words the wishes are 100% clean echoed in his mind. No catch. No monkey's paw. But first thing's first. "What'd happen should something...befall the wisher?"

"Classic Galatea paradox," said Simon. "The spell is directly tied to him and Nikki, removing one undoes the whole thing. But I mean, you have a willow, so it's unnecessary. Look, Tyler, I'm five minutes out, just don't do anythin-"

"Simon," said Tyler. He wasn't looking at Bear anymore. He wasn't looking at anything anymore. He was staring a million miles away. "Don't worry about it."

Their organization doesn't like its members to have any ties to the normal world. Makes things complicated. So when you join, The Old Man scrubs every trace of you from the normal world. Social security number, internet presence, public records, everything. But that's an expensive endeavor, and the agent is made to pay it all off. This debt must be cleared before an agent is allowed to leave. Simon and Clark never liked this job, and Tyler had resolved himself to free them, whatever the cost. Whatever the cost.

He hung up the phone. He looked back down at Bear, and pulled out the willow. "yes, thank you," said Bear. "Just make the wish and make this all go away, okay?"

Tyler almost chuckled. "I wish that Simon Duling and Clark Alba were free of their debts." he broke the willow as Bear screamed at him to stop. Tyler closed his eyes and let out a breath. Basking in the satisfaction of helping his friends.

"Why would you do that?! Why?!"

"Your confusion at someone thinking of others before himself is... unsurprising. But don't worry, I'm gonna fix all this."

He drew his gun. Bear screamed. He shot him in the mouth. The bullet tore through the back of his mouth and impacted the wall behind him. Bear and the chair he was tied to fell back from the impact. He choked and gurgled for a few moments, just enough to know he was going to die, that hell was coming next, before he finally went still.

Tyler turned back to the door, to the hole that Nikki's beaten-up arm was hanging from. He pulled his phone back out and hit 4 on the speed dial. "Hey Scarlet," he said. "Need a clean up and a mind wipe at my location. I also...need you to set someone up in a new town, make a recent murder record go away, the usual jacket. Yeah, yeah, I know, put it on my debt. Yes, I know it's getting high. Simon and Clark? Don't worry about them. I took care of it." He hung up the phone before she could question him further. He put his hands in his pockets and walked out the door.

Simon and Clark were 5 minutes out, no use trying to escape them. He'd get to have one last talk with his best friends. They'd no doubt have questions, they'd no doubt have some stuff they wanna yell. But they'd also probably wanna know why he didn't wish himself free along with them.

Sophia was a fresh faced college grad, with a love of the outdoors. So to celebrate her graduation, she, her sister, and a few of her friends, went on a road trip across the country. While they were on the road, her sister went behind a bush to pee, and chose the wrong patch of ground on which to squat. Asterion had dug just a bit too close to the surface, and the added weight caused a cave in. Sophia and her friends went down to find her sister, and one by one, Asterion killed them for intruding on his territory. Only Sophia managed to get away, but instead of waiting for the Contractors to alter her memory, as per the agreement between them and the minotaurs, Asterion gave chase, all the way to Sophia’s hometown of Nafplio. 

Fortunately, they were able to subdue him before he was seen by anyone. Now it was just a matter of cleaning up the mess. 

Scarlet stepped out of her all black 1998 Buick Skylark and stared down the pier at the captured minotaur. Three agents were off to the side, busily tending to the wounds of the minotaur agent they had to call in to subdue Asterion. They had Asterion hanging over the side of the pier, tied to a ship’s anchor that was itself hanging from a crane. “Ours is not a difficult organization to work with, Mr. Minos,” said Scarlet. Her electric blue hair hung over half of her face, leaving only one of her eyes to glow a deep red as she studied her prey. The eye was the only thing Asterion could make out from the dead of night. Her clothes were the usual black, and combined with her dark umber skin, Scarlet would all but fade into the night without it. The glow wasn’t particularly bright, but it painted her face in red like a darkroom. She crossed her arms in displeasure as she continued. “You don’t come up to the surface, and we cover up the disappearance of anyone who wanders into your labyrinths. That was the deal. I don’t recall any part of that contract saying 'oh by the way, after about 500 years, ya’ll can do whatever'. So, care to explain?”

Asterion huffed indignantly at her, which came as no surprise. Asterion Minos remembered a time before her. Before her father. Before The Contractors. Such memories had a tendency to produce ill-placed pride. Then, he spoke, his voice like a great brass bell, “The agreement remains intact,” he said. “But my territory is my territory. That woman and her friends trespassed. So I had the right to kill them. That was also in the agreement.”

“Yeah,” Scarlet interrupted. “Except for the part where, if a trespasser escapes, their containment becomes our responsibility.” Scarlet’s luminescent eye scanned Asterion until she found that one of his eyes had been gouged out. She looked back at her agents. “Any of you do that?” They shook their heads. Scarlet turned back around and chuckled. “So she took out your eye on the way out, huh? Well, I mean, you did kill her sister, her boyfriend, and two of her best friends, so maybe we call that a fair trade?” 

Asterion thrashed against the chains binding him to the anchor, snarling. “It is my right to kill her! She trespassed in my home, took my eye! The humans have taken everything else from us, and now we cannot even have our peace?!”

Scarlet fixed him with an even stare. “Tough shit. You should’ve killed her when you had the chance. Now she’s out of your reach, and she doesn’t even remember you. As far as Sophia knows, she’s the lone survivor of a car accident.” Scarlet chuckled again, but this time it carried a frustration beneath it. “You were almost seen by three eyewitnesses, four cameras, and a Google Maps Car! A fucking Google Maps Car! You were almost on every computer and phone in the world! You put every minotaur in Greece at risk as a salve for your own ego!” 

Asterion met her stare with one of his own, and said quietly. “You do not scare me, little girl. I remember a time before you, before your father. And do you know what those memories tell me?”

“What?” Scarlet dared.