Fast-forward a few days to the middle of the Atlantic.
Once he got his sea legs, the constant rocking of the ocean became just an annoyance for Medic. Early on he noticed that The Handler also got a little green in the face a few times. In fact, the more he observed her the more she descended down to his own level of physical ineptitude.
She’d tripped gracelessly a few times over the bulkheads. She’d spilled food and drinks a couple of times. She’d once worn a shirt inside-out. And there was that bright orange discount price sticker stuck in her hair for a whole day. It made him comfortable enough to start calling her Handy in private. She took it with a sarcastic smile.
Then again, there was one time when Lukas the leisure-suited, gold-chained, slick-haired Lithuanian burst into their cabin with a rifle in one hand, near-empty bottle of liquor in the other, demanding to know in muddled English how she’d convinced him to take his ship to some island off Africa.
She approached him slowly but steadily until she locked eyes with him and muttered an odd rhyme. She placed her hand on Lukas’ shoulder and the Lithuanian immediately dropped into a somnolescent state. Then she instructed him on what to remember and how to feel about it. Satisfied and smiling, he retired woozily to his own quarters.
Medic was still standing there paralyzed when she spun around and walked past him with agitation, mumbling about needing a drink herself. He didn’t call her Handy after that for a while.
But this incident also demonstrated the vulnerability of The Handler’s skill; at some point the effect wears off. Also, as she’d mentioned, some people just aren’t susceptible at all. And she has to be able to speak their language. She claimed that over time she’d gotten better at picking people out but it wasn’t perfect.
In private, between her demonstrations and his own attempts to replicate them, Medic is told stories of when The Handler first started training in “the eye thing”. In one memory she relates how she put animals to sleep through eye contact.
“I managed to get a bird to fall off its branch once,” she says with a subdued chipperness. “It was kinda cool but also kind of fucked up. The bird hit the ground pretty hard and then stumbled around. Like, it was really dazed.”
He also spends time getting acquainted with some of the equipment, like The Handler’s workstation. An internet connection for the laptop is provided via the attached silver box which is linked to a satellite dish above deck.
“We’re not going to be pirating any movies with this,” she notes with a smirk, “but it can handle voice chat. And we have the web. Dom and Dmitri will be able to use it to signal us once they’re secure. We’re taking the slowest route so that they can get there first. Plus it gives us some time to work on some things.”
There’s no cell service but they carry their phones around everywhere they go. Through wireless earbuds the devices produce deep, slowly shifting tones. The audio is just loud enough to be heard over ambient sounds and Medic finds the wobbly background bass relaxing.
Sometimes the sound intertwines with the cycles of the ship’s engine, sometimes it mixes with the crashing of waves against the hull. The effect invites an attentive but silent focus, a sort of mindless observation. The audio must be doing something to him, concludes Medic, since every time he pulls out the earbuds his hearing is noticeably distorted.
It wears off quickly and The Handler assures Medic that this is normal. In fact, it’s a necessary preparation for the next step. “Is that for the badass hand-to-hand combat training you’re gonna give me?” he asks, half joking.
“Nope,” she replies with direct sincerity. “Dom handles that kind of stuff. I couldn’t fight my way out of a wet paper bag. Besides, the first part of being a secret agent is to remain secret. Violence and secret don’t mix well.”
In fact, there doesn’t seem to be much violence to the training at all. It doesn’t even seem to be training. There’s no schedule, no curfew, no early mornings. He starts when he feels like it and ends when he gets bored. It’s all very leisurely.
One activity involves trying to move a needle on the screen of the laptop by focusing his attention inside a small black device about the size of a fat memory stick. Another activity has him just looking at random pictures while wearing a brainwave monitor cap. For the most part, the pictures are benign and often boring.
Most of Medic’s and The Handler’s time is spent leisurely above deck, in their quarters, or exploring the ship. Sometimes they’re together, sometimes alone.
The boat isn’t very large or very pretty, basically just a converted cargo vessel that probably shouldn’t be out in the middle of an ocean. Inside there are numerous casino-like refurbishments matching Lukas’ aesthetic. Medic and The Handler agree it’s all pretty tacky and tasteless.
However, the discovery of two small, secret chambers containing the docked mini-subs “Second” and “Chance” appeals to The Handler when she accidentally stumbles onto them one day. She chooses to keep the discovery to herself.
The skeleton crew, a trio of Malaysians, take turns individually manning the bridge while the other two are maintaining the boat, eating, drinking, or gambling, sometimes simultaneously.
Mostly the Malaysians keep to themselves but one evening they invite Medic and The Handler for some food, drink, and a friendly game of poker. Their English is good enough to carry on a basic conversation, much of it laced with obscenities.
In between hands and bites of extremely spicy chicken and coconut rice Medic takes gulps of their harsh colourless hooch while trying to absorb the Malaysian pop music playing loudly in the background. It’s not long before he’s stricken with hiccups.
About twenty minutes into his bout, The Handler flops her cards on the table in exasperation and looks directly at him. “Put your mind into your solar plexus,” she tells him. “Focus on it. Relax it.”
“I don’t know how,” responds Medic.
She looks him dead in the eye, raises her knee, and stomps down on his foot. The Malaysians laugh raucously.
“Sorry I had to do that,” she explains, “but that’s focus. When you stop focusing on that, focus inside in the same way.”
As the pain in his foot subsides, Medic does as she suggests and moves his attention into his solar plexus, blocking out all else, feeling every hiccup in detail. Now fully focused on the spasms in his rib cage, he breathes deeply while doing his best to ignore the fluttering sensations, like trying to suppress a sneeze. A couple of hiccups manage to get through but in short order the contractions have ceased.
“Neat trick,” says Medic after a hiccup-free minute.
“Oh, it’s no trick,” responds The Handler. “You can have a surprising amount of control over your body if you practice. Here, feel this,” she says, grabbing his hand and placing it on her neck.
Medic can feel himself getting flush. It doesn’t help that the Malaysians are leering. He looks down at the table, trying in earnest to focus on her pulse. To his untrained judgment it seems normal.
“Okay, now pay attention,” she instructs.
Her pulse slows suddenly and significantly, beating at a sluggish fraction of its previous rate.
She speaks normally when she asks, “Feel the difference?”
He looks up to see that the expression on her face hasn’t changed. There’s nothing about her outward appearance that indicates a barely beating heart except for the proof at his fingertips.
After about twenty seconds her pulse returns to normal. “Body still wants that oxygen,” she remarks and takes a deep breath. “If I did more practice I could probably improve.”
“Why don’t you?” he asks.
“Don’t wanna,” she responds with a shrug, picks up her cards, and signals the resumption of the game. The evening continues in high spirits through two duty rotations, virtually guaranteeing that whoever is at the helm of the ship is drunk.
The Handler takes note of this as she begins to form a disembarkation plan.