I’m back again with a new C-21 chapter! Some of you asked if C-21 was human, and had a bunch of other questions. I deal with some of that here.
You can find the other C-21 stories here –
I sincerely hope you like these, and share it with someone who’ll appreciate the satire!
Until next time 🙂
C-21’s phone was ringing off the hook, since morning. He’d just sat down with Z-56 in Starbucks to grab a bite when it rang again.
Once.
Twice.
A third time.
“Man, just pick it up,” Z-56 grumbled, his mouth full of food. He was decimating his turkey sandwich. It had been a tough day for both of them, and when Z-56 had a tough day, he faced it with his mouth full.
“I think we deserve a small break. We’ve been working non stop since last night, man,
C-21 rolled his eyes and silenced his phone. “They’ll just deploy someone else.”
“I don’t think they have too many people,” Z- 56 swallowed and shrugged. He was right. Ever since COVID-19 had hit, the Control Room and Harvesting agents had taken a huge hit.
Agents like C-21 were the one link between humans and the Otherworlds- they were neither human, nor Otherworldly. They were something in between. The people of Otherworld had a rather ironic label for them- Associates. They’d snicker about it at tea parties- poor associates, always running around, doing as ordered by the Control Room, always saving face, always on duty, always serving.
C-21 was tired of serving. They’d recently found out the hard way that while Associates were more robust than humans and immune to most diseases, they could not enter COVID areas without a PPE. Now they had been reduced to almost half their manpower, and the Otherworld had to pull a lot of strings to set up medical services for Associates. Thankfully, they recovered sooner than humans. But till they did, C-21 and Z-56 were part of the squad on COVID duty.
He sighed, thinking of getting into a PPE again. In some ways, it was easier to harvest souls while inside a PPE kit- no one recognised you or asked any questions. You didn’t have to use your cards and then refill them, which was a relief. But, PPE’s were horrendous things. C-21 had once been deployed to a fire emergency. He remembered having to harvest souls in that thick smoke. Being in a PPE felt just as uncomfortable. He shuddered as he took the last bite of his bagel.
“Come on,” he motioned to Z-56. “Let’s get back.”
The Control Room looked like a tornado had passed through it. Various people ran back and forth, those at their computers typed furiously at manic speed, taking a break only to crack their necks. Operators switched between calls, requesting four people to hold one after the other.
“Dude, this is a disaster,” Z-56 looked about in horror.
“Welcome to the pandemic. Let’s find Dubey.”
Control room agents, or Otherworldly Minions (or OM’s or Minis) as they were fondly referred to, did not have codenames. They only had last names. Minis handled operations on Earth. They were the communicators between the Otherworld and the agents.
Dubey was in charge of COVID squad this week, and he was a hard man to find. They finally found him addressing a new cohort of agents, all set to be put on COVID duty.
“And remember, I know you have been told we are immune to TB, pneumonia, chickenpox and a variety of human diseases but we are not immune to this. Please wear your PPE.”
The younglings nodded earnestly.
“Do you have any questions?”
One brave kid raised his hand.
“Yes?”
“Do we have to wear our PPE even if it’s the suspect ward?”
“YES PLEASE.” Dubey was exasperated. “There’s always one kid in every group who asks that. What are y’all, dense? YOU WILL WEAR YOUR PPE IN ANY KIND OF COVID WARD.”
“And our masks everywhere else?”
“AND YOUR MASKS EVERYWHERE ELSE.”
They nodded again.
“Are there any more doubts?”
They shook their heads.
“Good. Please collect your phones and instructions from Aziz in the Onboarding area.”
They dispersed, whispering excitedly to themselves. C-21 heard one of them happily declare that he was so lucky to get COVID duty immediately- he heard that everyone deployed got a bonus. C-21 chuckled to himself. Naive boy. He hadn’t gotten his bonus for 2 months.
“Hi boys!” Dubey greeted them, surprisingly chirpy for a man handling the COVID Squad.
“We’re back from our break. Where do we get to next?”
“Why don’t you go to Onboarding and meet Mantri? He’ll assign you a newbie. You can train them. God knows they need it.”
C-21 groaned, “Please, anything but that!”
“They’ll kill themselves unless they’re supervised. You heard their questions, right?”
“Yeah,” he rolled his eyes.
“I’ll have to call Training and tell them to cut out the part where they tell them they’re immune. These kids think it’s all a joke.”
“You do that. We’re off,” C-21 grumbled.
The two agents dragged their feet to Onboarding.
“I really don’t want a sloth,” Z-56 muttered. “They’re slow, and they’re daft.”
C-21 shrugged. “We’ll each have to train one. Let’s just get on with it. Try having fun.”
“Oh I’m going to have fun.”
Mantri gave them two newly inducted, fresh faced kids- J-14 and J-15. They were excited.
“J-14, you’re with me, J-15, you’ll stay with Z-56. After one mission, we switch.”
“I don’t have my driver’s license yet, sir,” J-14 ventured.
“Who said you’d drive?”
J-14 said nothing more. His sparkle seemed to dim a little.
Their first harvest was at the City Hospital’s COVID ward.
“Now, when you get into the ward, you have to try to slip in unnoticed. We are very visible, much like humans.”
“What if we get caught?”
“Then you use The Card.”
They stared at him blankly.
“You’ve not got your cards yet?”
“Control said we’d get it in a few days, but the last batch hasn’t got theirs yet, so….”
C-21 sighed. Now he understood why these kids needed training. At his time, they were trained so well that they could harvest fresh out of school.
“You’ll just have to do it the hard way then, eh? Don;t get caught, messes up your street cred.”
J-14 and 15 gulped together. C-21 was enjoying himself.
They entered the hospital and made their way to the COVID ward, the older agent in the lead.n J-14 looked around, trying to take it all in. The hospital was one of the busiest in the city. A crowd of people stood at the gate to the building, some relative of theirs was inside.
C-21 didn’t flinch, and didn’t look left or right. He walked straight through the crowd, into the hospital. The guard didn’t even stop him. He recognised ‘Dr. Amit’. J-14 followed.
They went straight into the COVID ward, and put on their PPE. C-21 checked his phone before zipping his up.
“Hey kid, remember this- Purnima Pandit- bed number 8, Gayatri Surve- bed 14, Geeta Mehta- bed 23. All in the female COVID ward.”
J-14 nodded. Together, they walked into the ward. C-21 could feel J-14’s shock. He’d never been inside a COVID ward.
“Doctor, doctor!” a patient called. C-21 blocked him out.
“What was the first bed number?”
“8.”
They found bed 8, and C-21 read off the file put on the table. “Purnima Pandit. Yep. Got her.”
He took out a small glass box, which sparkled as it caught the light. As he opened it, the box seemed to unfold on itself. He opened it halfway and then placed it on the lady’s forehead, pressing down lightly. The young lady on the next bed peered over J-14’s shoulder.
“Can I help you?” J-14, true to his training which taught him to keep a human at bay, frowned at her.
“Are you a doctor?”
C-21 looked up and met eyes with J-14, subtly shaking his head.
“No.”
Oh god.
“Who are you? What are you doing?”
J-14 looked at C-21 in panic. C-21 didn’t respond. He needed to pay every ounce of attention to the harvesting. From the forehead, he unfolded the box further and moved it to her chest, where her heart lay underneath. There, he pressed down again, and the box drew out her life force. As it drew, the box changed colour to a beautiful pale blue.
C-21 smiled.
“Hello! Why are you touching her breast? Who are you?”
He kept mum, staring strictly at J-14 to do the same.
“Listen, I’ll call someone. You can’t just come in here and inappropriately touch women!”
Now he’d had it. C-21 calmly wrapped up the box and put it in a bag he had. Then he strode over to the young lady.
“Call out.”
She immediately shrunk back into her bed.
“What? Call out,” he threatened.
Her eyes shifted between C-21, J-14, and the lady on the bed.
“We are the on duty doctors, we’re just checking her chest for any signs and symptoms.
“The morning doctor does that with a stethoscope,” she raised an eyebrow.
“Are you a doctor?”
“No.”
“Then I suggest you calm down. Unless of course, you want to irritate the Nurse In Charge.”
C-21 knew the Nurse wouldn’t come even if called. She was a hefty, lazy woman who slept during her shift.
C-21 walked on to Bed 14, passing the bag to J-14. As he unfolded the next box, he looked at J-14.
“Next time someone questions you, don’t answer, and don’t flinch. No one here knows who you are. You could be anybody.”
“Yes, sir.”
They collected all three souls and walked out of the ward to doff their kits after sanitizing the bags that held the souls.
As they doffed, J-14 meekly asked why he was so rude to the young lady.
“I’m merely acting like someone in charge. If I would have been nice to her, she would have made a ruckus.”
“Couldn’t we have explained it to her kindly at first when she asked who we were?”
“You are on a mission, kid. Your first responsibility is to the soul. Whenever you’re harvesting, your full attention has to be on that soul. Treat it with kindness, and respect. Humans aren’t the nicest species to harvest, I know. But souls are beautiful things, and must be treated with respect. No one shifts your attention when you’re harvesting, unless the human you’re taking from wakes up.”
“You mean they’re not always dead?!”
C-21 smirked. “Sometimes, they are almost dead, but not quite. You also might end up harvesting the wrong soul. It’s happened, don’t be so surprised.”
J-14 visibly shuddered.
Maybe now I’ll stop freaking him out, C-21 inwardly laughed.
Once they had loaded the Chariot, C-21 climbed in the front with Z-56 while J-14 stayed behind watching the souls with J-15.
“How was it?” he asked Z-56.
“That kid really asks a lot of questions. I all but kicked him out. He wants to know what every button does!” Z-56 motioned to the many controls on his dashboard.
C-21 laughed. “Kids.”
“How was yours?”
“I think I freaked him out a bit.”
“What did you do?”
“I ignored a woman who thought I was molesting the soul’s body. She was going to call for help.”
“You idiot.”
“Oh, and I also told him sometimes the humans aren’t completely dead. They might wake up while you’re harvesting.”
Z-56’s eyes widened before he burst out laughing. “You’re going straight to Hell!”
“Maybe I’ll make a deal with my Harvester.”
“If you don’t have a soul, you won’t have a Harvester, dude.”
Both the agents laughed as they sped off toward their next assignment. He might go to Hell, but he’d finally found a way to make COVID duty bearable- simple companionship. He looked back and flashed J-14 a smile as the two younger agents gossipped and exchanged stories.
The Wind Girl 