Father of Fear Read Online Free PDF Page A

thinking of shutting down the Shepherd Organization, and that man is the one who gets to decide our fate. So, for once, please try to play nice.”
    “What does that look like?”
    “When it comes to Fagan, whatever your instincts tell you to do, just do the opposite.”

Chapter Five

    The apprentice no longer thought of itself as a person. It was a thing. A monster. An inanimate object on a mission, like a bullet pointed toward an intended target. No remorse. No guilt. No second-guessing. It had been told what to think and do, and it knew nothing else but to obey.
    It wasn’t even sure if it was truly alive or if this was hell. It couldn’t be sure that it had ever been alive. Although there were vague pictures that floated through its mind on occasion, they seemed like memories of a life that it couldn’t remember living.
    It would eat when its stomach ached. Not because it understood hunger, but because that was what it had been told to do. It defecated into a bucket when it felt the urge. But if the master’s instructions hadn’t been specific on that point, it would have just released the waste onto itself. It registered the smell of the feces swimming in the bucket to its right, but it didn’t feel anything about the smell one way or another. It felt nothing. It wasn’t alive.
    It sat in front of the picture window, staring at the house across the street and taking meticulous notes about the family’s comings and goings. As it jotted down the time of the light being turned off in the living room, it had an odd thought. It could read and write and tell time and understand concepts like deception and fear and death. It could drive a car and fire a gun and respond when spoken to. But it didn’t remember learning of such things, as if it had simply been programmed upon its creation with a default set of knowledge.
    The house around it was devoid of furniture or pictures. The space only held the chair in which it sat, the bucket to its right, and the binoculars and notebook on the window ledge. It raised the binoculars and watched as Julie Dunham shut off the light in the hallway and joined her husband, Brad Dunham, in the bedroom. That room was lit with a bluish tinge indicating that the television was still on. It knew that Julie would soon join her husband in slumber. Then it would start the timer as the master had instructed.
    It sat in place for the next two hours, unmoving, unthinking, just a swirling of the fuzzy and strange images and sensations. Then the timer beeped, and it stood up from the chair, covered its face with a black balaclava, and made its way over to the Dunham home. It kept to the shadows to remain unseen, as the master had instructed.
    The security system in the home would be armed, but the master had prepared for that fact. The apprentice removed a small rectangular device from its pocket and pressed the gray button at the center. With a mechanical whir and a protest of hinges, the garage door slid up.
    The apprentice then moved inside and slid beneath Julie’s car before closing the garage door with another press of the button. Now it would wait for Brad to leave for work, and once he was gone, it would take the family, just as the master had instructed. It didn’t want to hurt the people inside the house, and it had a hazy sense that what it was doing was wrong. But it also knew that to disobey would bring great pain, and that was the one thing it could still feel.

Chapter Six

    Marcus had been resting on the air mattress and trying in vain to fall asleep for two hours when Andrew called to him from the adjacent room. The Director had taken the night shift and then Andrew had relieved him at eight in the morning. Marcus wasn’t supposed to take over until one o’clock that afternoon. Something must have been happening. He leaped to his feet and hurried to Andrew’s side. The CIA operators also came to life, preparing their equipment and readying themselves to move out. The room