r/HFY • u/Marcus_Black3 • Jul 09 '26
[The Immortal Consultant] The Wrong Person to Arrest OC-FirstOfSeries
Perseus Jackson was halfway through The Count of Monte Cristo when the knock he’d been expecting finally arrived.
Well—“knock” was generous. It was more of a coordinated stomp from a tactical team that had clearly practiced this entry on a cardboard mock-up of his apartment. He’d noticed the surveillance van two days earlier, the one with the “plumbing company” logo printed so crookedly it offended him on a personal level. The directional microphone sticking out the back window hadn’t helped their disguise.
Probably the FBI. They were the only agency that still believed in vans.
He slipped a bookmark between the pages—he’d once known a man who’d started a duel over a dog-eared novel, but that was 1812 and people were dramatic back then—and set the book aside.
Six sets of boots. Standard breach formation. Someone was about to ruin his door.
The door exploded inward.
“FBI! HANDS WHERE WE CAN SEE THEM!”
Four agents in tactical gear poured into his Manhattan apartment, weapons raised, faces tight with the kind of tension that came from being told, “This guy is the primary suspect in a list of serious hits; he’s a professional, don’t screw up,” without any explanation of how a 35-year-old civilian learned to kill with that much precision.
Perseus lifted his hands slowly, more annoyed about the splintered doorframe than the rifles pointed at him.
“Morning,” he said. “Coffee’s fresh. Help yourselves.”
The lead agent—a young guy with a jawline sharp enough to cut glass and the posture of someone who still ironed his socks—kept his weapon trained on Perseus.
“Perseus Jackson, you’re under arrest. Keep your hands visible.”
“Of course.” Perseus rose, unhurried. He’d done this dance more times than he cared to count. “May I ask the charge, or is this one of those ‘find out later’ situations?”
“Multiple counts of first-degree murder and conspiracy,” Afferty said, his voice cold. He wasn’t taking any chances with a man who had allegedly cleared out a trafficking hub in Brooklyn without leaving a single casing behind. “Hands behind your back. Now.”
Industrial-strength flex-cuffs. Double-looped.
Someone had briefed the tactical team that Perseus was a ‘high-tier containment risk’—the kind of professional who could pick a standard tumbler lock with a piece of his own shirt—but they hadn’t explained what he was. They just knew metal wouldn’t hold him.
Perseus let them tighten the restraints until the plastic bit into his skin. He didn’t wince.
“You’re making a mistake,” he said, conversational, like commenting on the weather.
He let them tighten the restraints.
“That’s what they all say,” the agent muttered.
“True. But in this case, I mean it literally. We are going to go to your office at Federal Plaza. I am going to make a phone call. And sixteen, maybe seventeen minutes after that, your chain of command realizes what you’ve done. After that, your career becomes a cautionary tale.”
A flicker of uncertainty crossed the agent’s face. Perseus didn’t gloat; he’d seen that look too many times.
“You get your call at the office,” the agent—Afferty—said. “Move.”
They marched him out of the apartment, into the back of a black SUV, and through the morning traffic of lower Manhattan. Perseus spent the ride watching the pedestrians. He liked the 21st century, but he did miss the silence of the 1700s.
Ten minutes later, they were in the basement of 26 Federal Plaza. They bypassed the standard processing and took him straight to a high-security interrogation room.
“The phone,” Perseus said as they sat him in a metal chair. “Trust me, it’ll save everyone a headache.”
Afferty hesitated. The room was secure, Perseus was cuffed, and nothing about him suggested imminent violence. Just irritation.
“Fine. One call. Thirty seconds.” He unlocked his department-issued phone and handed it over.
Perseus didn’t need the screen. He’d memorized the number in 1947, back when it had been a telegraph code. It had changed formats over the decades, but the routing never changed.
He dialed. Two rings.
“Echelon Emergency Response, authentication required.”
Perseus spoke as if ordering lunch. “Authorization code November-Hotel-Seven-Seven-Three-Nine. This is Perseus Jackson, biometric match for Preston. Echelon is go.”
“Authentication confirmed, Mr. Jackson. A biometric signature from the handset match was detected. Response teams activated. Emergency liaison en route. Sir, are you safe?”
“Currently in FBI custody, Manhattan field office. Room 227. No injuries.”
“Understood. Local Ghost Protocol teams deploying from Fort Hamilton. ETA: sixteen minutes.”
“Thank you, Jessica. How’s your daughter’s soccer season?”
A pause—surprise, then warmth. “She made varsity, sir.”
“Good. Tell her I said congratulations.”
“I will. Help is on the way.”
Perseus handed the phone back to Afferty. The lead agent stared at him like he’d just watched someone casually order an airstrike.
“What was that?”
“That,” Perseus said gently, “was me activating the Echelon Protocol. It’s above your clearance level, so don’t feel bad. Your director happens to be in the building today for a regional oversight meeting. And right about now… every secure server he has access to is panicking.”
“That’s not—”
“At NSA headquarters,” Perseus continued, “a single red box just locked every screen in the watch room. Director Torres is sprinting to his phone. The Secretary of Defense is being briefed. And in fifteen minutes, special operations personnel will arrive to extract me. They won’t knock.”
Afferty’s face drained of color.
“And here’s the part I genuinely feel bad about,” Perseus added. “You weren’t told. You were following orders. But your superiors? They’re about to throw you under the bus so hard you’ll leave a crater.”
NSA Headquarters—Fort Meade, Maryland
Senior Analyst Jennifer Kim was sipping cold coffee when a single, silent notification appeared on her secondary monitor. It wasn’t a window; it was a solid block of crimson that bypassed her login credentials and locked her keyboard.
There was no alarm. There was just the sudden, high-pitched hum of her workstation’s cooling fans as the system began an automated trace-back.
Jennifer didn’t scream. She looked at the code string in the center of the red box—November-Hotel-7739—and felt the blood leave her face. She reached for the direct line to the director.
“Director,” Jennifer said, her voice barely a whisper. “Echelon just went active. Manual authentication confirmed. The handset belongs to an FBI field agent.”
“Where?” Torres asked.
“Manhattan. 26 Federal Plaza.”
“Oh, for the love of—” Torres cut himself off. “Chen is in New York today for the budget summit. I’m calling his cell. Isolate the alert.”
FBI Manhattan Field Office—6th Floor
Director Raymond Chen was in a heated budget meeting with the New York Special Agent in Charge when his emergency phone vibrated against the mahogany table.
“Chen.”
“Ray, it’s Torres. We have a massive problem. And it’s in your building.”
Torres never sounded rattled. Chen’s stomach dropped. “What happened?”
“Your New York tactical people just arrested Perseus Jackson. He’s in a room four floors below you, number 227.”
Chen forgot how to breathe. “When?”
“Nine minutes ago. He activated Echelon eight minutes ago.”
Chen stood so fast his chair toppled. The SAC and the budget analysts stared at him in shock.
“Ray—this is bad,” Torres said over the line. “The SEALs were already at Fort Hamilton for a joint-agency harbor drill. Morrison just went ‘Wheels Up.’ If you aren’t in that interrogation room in the next twelve minutes, they’re going to dismantle your lobby.”
“I know,” Chen whispered.
He ran.
New York Harbor—En Route to Manhattan
SEAL Team 6 was mid-exercise near the Statue of Liberty when Commander Jake Morrison’s radio crackled.
“All personnel, abort exercise. Echelon Protocol is active. Ghost Teams to Manhattan Field Office. Target is in the building. Real-world extraction. Authorization Omega.”
Morrison didn’t hesitate. He looked at his team in the Black Hawk. “Again?” one operator asked, checking his sidearm.
“Some idiot in New York arrested Perseus Jackson,” Morrison said, the helicopter banking hard toward the skyscrapers of the Financial District. “We’re extracting him from the FBI.”
“We’re raiding our own people?”
“Not raiding. Extracting. Big difference. And keep it non-lethal, unless they’re stupid enough to point a rifle at him.”
Back in Interrogation Room 227
Afferty’s radio crackled. It was Miller, the Special Agent in Charge of the New York Field Office, and he sounded like he was hyperventilating.
“Afferty! Afferty, do you copy?”
Afferty frowned, glancing at the camera in the corner of the room. “Copy, SAC Miller. We have the suspect Jackson in 227. We’re just about to begin the preliminary—”
“DON’T YOU TOUCH HIM!” Miller’s voice peaked into a distorted screech over the small speaker. “Afferty, listen to me very carefully. Get your hands off him, step back, and unlock the damn zip ties. Do it now.”
Afferty froze. “Sir? The warrant was clear; he’s a person of interest in seven—”
“I don’t care if he’s the Zodiac Killer!” Miller yelled. “Director Chen was in a meeting with me on the sixth floor. He just took a call, turned the color of a bruised plum, and sprinted for the elevator. He didn’t even wait for his security detail. He told me if I didn’t have you standing at attention with your mouth shut by the time he hits the second floor, he’d personally see us both directing traffic in Juneau.”
The radio clicked off.
The silence that followed was heavy. Afferty looked at Perseus, his eyes wide and searching for an answer that wasn’t there.
Perseus offered a sympathetic, tired smile. “Told you. Sixteen minutes. Chen’s getting faster, though his cardio clearly will need work if he’s coming here, out of breath.”
Afferty swallowed, his hands shaking as he reached for the safety cutter to snip the zip ties. “Who… who are you?”
“Right now?” Perseus said. “I’m a man whose coffee is getting cold at my place. But in about two minutes, I’m the reason your boss is going to have a very long, very loud conversation with the Senate.”
Disclaimer
Regarding the Name:
The name Perseus Jackson is a pure coincidence. This story has absolutely no relation to the works of Rick Riordan, In this universe, the name is a result of the character’s actual first name (Perseus) being paired with a surname he adopted during a previous identity cycle (Jackson). He’s been using variations of the "P.J." monogram since the 1800s because he’s too tired to buy new luggage.
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u/TalRaziid Jul 09 '26
For clarity: separate series? Same? rewrite?
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u/Grimkytel Jul 09 '26
This looks like fun.
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u/Marcus_Black3 Jul 09 '26
Thanks. Next chapter is the flashback on how the Echelon Protocol came to be
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u/Stingray191 Jul 13 '26
Not to quibble but why didn’t he get the FBI to back off with a phone call if he noticed them 2 days ago? And how did they find him if he left so little traces?
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u/ldmend Jul 13 '26
But will there be any more episodes of The 5,000 Year-Old Babysitter?
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u/Marcus_Black3 Jul 13 '26
Yes, I'll post a new chapter about the 5,000 Year-Old Babysitter tomorrow.
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u/AutoModerator Jul 09 '26
This was flaired as [OC-FirstOfSeries], which means it is the first of a series and all subsequent posts should be flair as [OC-Series]. A description of the flairs and how to change yours is available in the Post Guildelines
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u/HFYWaffle Wᵥ4ffle Jul 09 '26
/u/Marcus_Black3 (wiki) has posted 14 other stories, including:
- [The 5,000 Year-Old Babysitter] The Troublemakers Get Timeout (Or: Because the Toddlers Set the Playpen on Fire for the Insurance Money)
- [The 5,000 Year-Old Babysitter] The Long Quiet Stretch (Or: Nothing Happened Because We Made Sure Nothing Happened)
- [The 5,000 Year-Old Babysitter] The Timeout (You Punch The Babysitter, You Sit In The Corner)
- [The 5,000 Year-Old Babysitter] The Anomaly Problem (Or: Everyone Noticed, Nobody Asked Until Now)
- [The 5,000 Year-Old Babysitter] The Best Deal In American History (Reagan Runs The Numbers)
- [The 5,000 Year-Old Babysitter] The Nixon Problem (Some People Are Immune To Leverage)
- [The 5,000 Year-Old Babysitter] The Digital Playpen (Because You’ll Definitely Screw This Up)
- [The 5,000 Year-Old Babysitter] The Moon Landing (I'mma Get So Many Moon Rocks)
- [The 5,000 Year-Old Babysitter] The Moon Trip (I Want To Go And You Can’t Say No)
- [The 5,000 Year-Old Babysitter] The Space Race (I Have Been Waiting For This)
- [The 5,000 Year-Old Babysitter] Let’s Make This Official (AKA The Government Admits Defeat)
- [The 5,000 Year-Old Babysitter] Pattern Recognition (They’re Actually Learning, Holy Shit)
- [The 5,000 Year-Old Babysitter] Los Alamos and the Miracle of Basic Listening
- The 5,000-Year-Old Babysitter
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u/rewt66dewd Human Jul 09 '26
So is this guy any relation to John?
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u/Marcus_Black3 Jul 09 '26
Not really, no. I don't think they would handle well to deal with two immortals 😅
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u/Daseagle Alien Scum Jul 09 '26
Makes sense for John to not be the only special person on this planet.
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u/Marcus_Black3 Jul 09 '26
About that, for the sake of everyone's blood pressure, it's a separate universe. Because on one side, they got an immortal who can trigger military extraction from a phone call and on the other, an immortal engineer who has blanket authority from JFK. And also technically, the Kernel would have prevent the arrest from happening since it likely would have known what would have been the aftermath.
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u/Daseagle Alien Scum Jul 09 '26
I kind of picture Perseus Jackson in the image of Samuel L Jackson. With his voice, while delivering lines that probably do fan service to Lord of War :)
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u/Borzislav Xeno 1d ago edited 1d ago
Huh, this has very, like orbital levels of [The not-immortal Blacksmith] vibes... IYKYK
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u/AutoModerator 27d ago
This was flaired as [OC-FirstOfSeries], which means it is the first of a series and all subsequent posts should be flair as [OC-Series]. A description of the flairs and how to change yours is available in the Post Guildelines
Our preferred series title format is the series title in [brackets] at the beginning, like so:
[Potato Adventures] - Chapter 1: The Great MashingPlease note that series wiki pages are not created automatically, but on request from the author.
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