Per 
A supersonic experimental jet flew through the sky too fast and too high to be detected by conventional methods. To account for the less conventional methods it had been outfitted with cutting edge stealth paratechnology. For all the money and power the foundation has they are awfully paranoid when it comes to using anomalies in their technology so some outsourcing was in order. Anderson Robotics, MC&D, Prometheus labs, GOC, even protection wards set up by some thaumaturgists from 3 Portlands, the best of the bests. This tech was needed in case the Insurgency or some other group figured out who was in the plane and tried to shoot it down, and it was even more needed if they figured out who he was visiting and tried to trace it.
Sitting in the passenger seat drinking on an expensive wine (bought with “research” funds) straight from the bottle was site director Jack Bright. Not that you’d know it was him, take away his amulet and he’s unrecognizable. Currently he was wearing some guy named… something something Dufresne. Convicted of killing his wife and her lover in a drunken rage. Poor bastard was on vacation, if he’d killed them back in his home state he would’ve just gotten life in prison, but sometimes things just don’t work out the way you expected them to.
“God, fuck!” Bright said, raising a hand to his forehead. “My head is fucking killing me right now.” He put down the bottle a bit too hard and accidentally shattered it. “Ah shit, how am I going to get that out of the carpet?” A jolt of pain reminded him of why he put the bottle down in the first place. “Jesus fuck, my head! Just tell Cynthia to take care of it, right now is not the time to worry about this”. He reached inside his coat and pulled out a bottle of pills. He opened it and was in the middle of dropping some in his palm when his earpiece started to ring, causing his headache to get worse. Startled, he threw his hands up in surprise, sending pills flying everywhere.
“Well shit.” Bright said defeated, before pressing on his earpiece. “Who is it?” Bright kneel down on the floor and started to pick the pills from the floor one by one. “Ah Cimmerian, Cimm, Cimmy, Cimms, Cimmamon, How’s it going? … Shut up it is funny.” The man on the other end of the line was Jeremiah Cimmerian, head of the ethics committee, who by this point was well aware of Brights antics.
“What do you mean unnecessary expenses? This is my private jet! It may be paid for with foundation money that maybe should have gone into a 682 termination attempt but it’s my name on the papers. Hell, there’s a termination attempt almost every week and every time that damn lizard breaks out and kills everybody, if anything I was doing you people a favor. Why do you keep approving those anyway, you’re the ethics committee head you’re supposed to be on top of this.”
Bright realized his knee was in the puddle of wine he’d spilled earlier and had stained his pants. “Motherfucker. Not you Cimm, I just got my pants wet. No not like that, not this time. Look, Will you stop worrying for a moment? This isn’t Foundation business, this is personal. No, I’m not endangering the stability of the Foundation, it’s just a little trip”. Bright felt himself becoming more frustrated, Cimmerian could be a real pain in the ass sometimes. He’d finished gathering up the pills, so he got a few and swallowed them. Instantly he could feel himself calming down.
“Listen, this is important alright? One approved it.” Cimmerian was silent on the other end. “Yeah. Said he’s not been feeling too good these days, that he might not be around for much longer. Six is too important and too busy to make the trip. I am more… expendable. Stop worrying, please. I know it’s kind of your job to dig your nose into other peoples business but i can take care of myself. Buh-bye, kisses.” Bright hangs up and begins to stand up from the floor only to hit his head on a table. “You fucking piece of shi-!”
“Director Bright.” His assistant was standing behind him. “Ah Cinthya, whats up?”
“It’s Catherine… sir, and we’re almost there.”
“Alright. Thanks for the heads up Cinthya.”
She left the cabin, trying but failing to hide her grimace. Bright was just kidding around of course. Despite her small appearance, she could kill him in over a hundred different ways. She hated being reassigned to be his assistant when she was close to having joined the red right hand, and Bright liked to rub it in her face. Constantly mocking your bodyguard might not be the brightest idea, but this was not the dumbest thing he’d done even today. At this point he was becoming convinced that his friends still call him Bright instead of Jack as a joke.
The plane started slowing down as it went from flying to hovering. Looking out of the window Bright could see a small town built over some mountains with people going about their day. By now he knew all of those people were wearing body armor under their clothes and carrying a pistol as well as several back ups. The plane touched down on the ground on a landing pad clearly meant for helicopters.
Bright arrived at the villa and was making his way to the patio when he was stopped by a large man in a suit.
“Come on Patrick, don’t do this to me. You know it’s me I’ve got the amulet.” Bright said before grabbing the amulet and shoving it in the mans face.
“It could be a fake.” The man responded. “Come on Jack, you know the drill.”
“If you insist.”
Bright took his amulet off and handed it to Patrick, who put it on. As soon as he did he took it off again and passed out, collapsing on the floor. He woke up and stood up.
“I hate doing that. Alright you’re clear. I’ll give you two some space.”
Bright smiled. “Thanks Patrick.”
Bright and Patrick didn’t know each other very well, but if Adam has trusted him to be his personal caretaker, then Bright would trust him as well, even if he insisted on doing that. The experience wasn’t particularly pleasant for him either. His amulet contains his soul, so it includes anything and everything that makes Him Jack Bright.
Whenever someone wears the amulet a piece of that soul enters their body and overpowers theirs. If the amulet is worn for more than thirty minutes, their soul will be overpowered and consumed by his soul.
Even wearing a body can cause some discomfort, as a piece of soul leaving the amulet is a pretty unpleasant, but not painful, experience. Wearing two bodies at once is already uncomfortable enough, never mind more. Two Brights are able to act independently of each other, unaware of what the other is doing. It’s only when the other one dies, or if it’s been less than thirty minutes, when they take the amulet off that the piece of soul comes back into the amulet. Even worse, it takes back a piece of the other person’s soul back with it. It’s not enough to cause them any harm even if worn several times like Patrick did, but after thousands of possessions those pieces had begun to occupy quite a large space in the amulet’s soul pie chart.
At this point Bright had lost count, but a scan had shown that he was only 78.457% Bright, and that was 4 years ago. The other 21.543% was made up of violent convicts, rival group of interest members, and people for who things just didn’t work out the way they wanted.
An old man in a wheelchair watched the wilderness from his villa’s patio. The villa was on top of a mountain quite a distance from the ground, so he could get a good look at the Forrest below.
“Adam Bright.” A voice called from behind him.
He turned around to see a young man he didn’t recognize.
“Just who the hell are you and what do you…” he noticed the amulet around his neck. “Jack.” He smiled.
“Father.” Jack stretched his arms open and hugged the old man, retired O5-12 and his father.
“It’s been so long. Where have you been?”
“Eh, you know how it is. Managing multiple sites can get pretty hectic.”
“Been there, done that. I hope your brothers are doing okay?”
“Mikell is busy, as always. Either doing work or doing women. 590 is stable.”
“Jesus Jack. He’s your brother.”
“Sorry, I’m just used to talking like that. TJ is alright. They haven’t done tests on him in years. The effects of the time they tested him on that immortal haven’t worn out, so he hasn’t aged a day.”
“And… her?”
“Had to get a new heart. Apart from that she’s ok.”
Why’d you come here then if you’re so busy?” Adam asked. Jack cringed.
“Siegel sent me.”
“Oh.” The smile in Adam’s face turned into a scowl.
“Dad I know you don’t like him but he’s only looking out for you. He said you weren’t doing so well.”
“The serum is wearing off, as you can see. I’m getting old, son. I’ve still got a decade or two left in me, but considering how busy you are this might be the last time you see me. Aaron and the others say they’ll give me more if I come back to site 1. Still retired, just for safekeeping, but I’ll be damned if I give those bastards what they want. I’ll be going out on my own terms.”
Adam turned his wheelchair to look at the forest again.
“Maybe… maybe You should join me.”
“What?”
“Leave the foundation, stay here with me.”
“Dad, you know I can’t do that. This work is important, we’re keeping the world safe.”
“Are you really? Would it really be so bad if the world became just a little more…” His fist opened revealing a white dove that quickly flew away. “Magical?”
“When did you learn to do that Dad?”
“David taught me.”
“Mikell’s son? The blind man? Why would you let a serpent’s hand member know whe-“
“Relax Jackie, relax. He’s family, he wouldn’t rat me out like that. He’s out hunting right now, him and that guide dog thing of his. Part chupacabra part black shuck with a little bit of tatzelwurm in there as well. Weird little bugger.”
“When he comes back I’m going to kill that fucking bastard!” Jack was becoming agitated. Soon his head started hurting again. “Why would you do that? If the O5s find out you did that you’re dead! Patrick is dead! Everyone here is dead!” He felt a sharp pain in his chest. Adam was unfazed by his screaming. “God i need my pills.” Bright said before taking a pill bottle from his coat and swallowing a few at once.
“You better now son?” Adam asked sounding only somewhat concerned.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m fine now.” Bright said calmly. “It’s those body swaps. Glass says it’s messing up my head. Chemical imbalances and all that.”
“This is what I’m taking about. Nobody leaves the Foundation better than when they entered. You remember that guy, what was his name… uh, Charles I think… yeah that was it.”
“It’s Gears dad. Charles Ogden Gears.”
“That’s what they call him nowadays. You remember him back then don’t you?” The memories brought Jack pain. “Yeah I remember.”
“He used to be such a nice guy, funny too.” Adam continued. “I knew Aaron hit him, everybody did it back in those days. It wasn’t until later that I saw just how bad it was.”
Jack remembered his early days in the foundation, back in the 1920’s. Gears was called Charles Siegel then. He had been a member of the American Secure Protect Initiative before the Foundation formed. Good friend, funny. A little too jumpy and nervous around people. He’d been given the same serum the O5s were. Of course Jack wasn’t supposed to know this, he just realized he wasn’t the only person in site 19 that wasn’t aging.
“One day he said he wanted out. Starts a family. Aaron was furious because Charles had been groomed to replace him since the ASCI started. Me and the other O5’s had to stop him from sending an order to kill him. But Charlie got stupid, missed his job. He’d always been a workaholic. Aaron knee this. That’s why he wasn’t given amnestics, he knew he’d be back. We knew Aaron would punish Charlie, but… we weren’t really expecting what he got.”
Neither of them said anything for a few moments.
“Did I ever tell you how your mother died?”
“Yes Dad, the Insurgency killed her.”
“That wasn’t the whole story. Evelin had wanted to fix the Foundation from the inside. She was always my better half, at that point I’d grown complicit. Her and Aaron were always butting heads, which he didn’t appreciate since the only reason Evie could even talk to him like that was because i was an O5. Making an example out of TJ didn’t stop her. The final straw was when she started the Ethics Committee in response to the fae debacle. She knew Aaron wanted her fired, so she left a thorn in his side that’d still be there when she left. That was a mistake. A few days later she died in an insurgency raid on her facility.”
Adam paused to collect himself, took a deep breath, and then continued.
“But… unknown to anyone else, the Insurgency hadn’t broken off yet. Back then us O5s ordered them around, before they really went rogue. Aaron told me she was shot by accident. The message was clear.”
Adam continued.
“Your imbalances are getting worse. You’ve been getting more and more erratic these last 30 years. You might think you’ve done stupid things now but one day you’re going to do something really stupid and then… then you’re going to end up like that Kondraki fellow.”
“Maybe.” Jack interjected. “Maybe I want that to happen.”
“It doesn’t have to be that way son. Stay here with me, start a new life.”
“You know they’d never allow me to do that. I’m an anomaly.”
“They would if you gave up that amulet. What good has it brought you?”
“It’s kept me alive all this time.”
“Has it really? You might be living, but are you alive?”
Jack didn’t respond.
“I’ve already lost the rest of my family, Jack. I joined the Foundation so they’d take care of TJ and I lost him because of them. My daughter was never even alive in the first place. Mikell has become one of them, and there is no quitting for an O5 anymore, not that he would. He’s too busy playing cowboy and fooling around with women to listen to me. You’re the only family I’ve got left Jack.”
“Dad.. I-“
Jack’s pocket starts to ring. It was his earpiece. He puts it on and answers.
“Hello. Bright speaking… a breach? I’ll be right there.”
He hangs up and turns to his father.
“I… I’ve got to go dad.”
“I understand son.”
Bright starts to walk away. He stops in his tracks and makes a call.
“Sidney, could you be a dear and tell Gears the jet is having technical issues and I can’t get there just yet… ok thanks Cindy. Buh-bye, kisses.”
He goes back to sitting next to his father and watches the sunset.
“You got any other stories? maybe some more fun ones this time.”
“Sure son ,uh… oh I know! How about that time martians invaded us.”
“You’re bullshitting me.”
“I’m serious. We had to cover it up with the help of some guy named Orson. What a weird name right?”
“Dad you named your son Mikell, you can’t criticize other people’s names.”
“I guess you’re right son.”
Both men had their best day in a long time. Neither would see each other again.
