This is a story based on the Switcher Universe by Melanie Brown but not connected to any others I have read. It does follow the premise that the Switcher has no control over his actions and that the switch is like the Midas Touch that had been postulated in another recent story.

Jacked Up Part 1

My mother insisted on my name as she was an avid reader of action novels. So Mr and Mrs Ryan named their son Jack. I suppose I was lucky I was not born female as they told me that I would have been called Meg. The bullet I had dodged did not come home to me until I watched a certain scene in a certain movie that entrenched the original Meg Ryan as a legend.

Oddly enough, I grew to resemble the fictional character in many ways. I was an avid student of history, especially political history, and was a competent athlete at college. No, I was not interviewed to join the CIA but I did end up in the Army. After a good career in the military that included several overseas placements, with three tours in Afghanistan, I started to consider my future. It was then that the F.B.I. contacted me.

What they were looking for were guys like me who had a natural awareness of their surroundings, along with a survival skill and a depth of understanding that ended up with a good investigator. I was given the outline of the pay and conditions and told that my placement would be revealed only after I had gone through my induction period. Intrigued, I signed on and, after a couple of weeks at home with my, now aged, parents, I reported for my new duties.

After six weeks of training and studying the F.B.I. manuals, I realised that the organisation was not just a single entity but a many headed hydra with each group working in different areas of keeping the country on the straight and narrow, legally. I wondered if I would be put into a group concentrating on organised criminal gangs, or even trying to infiltrate radical red-neck or biker gangs. It was only at the end of my training and evaluation when I found out about an arm that was dubbed ‘The off switch’.

Like everyone with an ear to the news I had heard of various events that some reporters had referred to as Switcher events. Normally, these included people running through the streets and various policemen firing guns. It often ended in a news blackout with the members of the public that had appeared on the screen disappearing from the public gaze. My first assignment was to be to the ‘Off Switch’ office, where I would be given all of the available intelligence on this wraith who could take over someone’s body with just a touch.

My first day in my new office was different, to say the least. Everyone wore gloves and made sure that they did not get within touching range. However, this was to make sure that we did not get caught should we run across the Switcher ourselves. Not that there was any evidence that his ability was hindered by a couple of layers of cloth, but it did give everyone a sense of purpose as well as safety.

My new CO, or to use the jargon of my new employer, AIC, gave me the files of the most recent events and sightings, which had stopped some six months before. Either the switches were taking place outside our country or he had gone to ground. This was a distinct possibility as the new delivery methods for food and merchandise that sprouted in the Covid era were still firmly in place and it was increasingly hard to track a felon who never needed to leave their hide-out.

With the files in hand I went to my own office to look at them. After two days I reported my findings to the AIC. I had decided that the most recent events had created a line that led towards the Canadian border. I outlined my feelings and intuition that there was a clear sign that the Switcher was somewhere around Detroit. I said that there had been no cases actually in Detroit but, by the same token, there had been none in Canada either. I suggested that the next move would be to quietly look at the home delivery company records to pin-point those places where there were unbroken records of deliveries, especially food, which may point towards the hide-out.

He questioned me on my processes and finally said that I had mounted a compelling case. He then called for a meeting for an hour later and told me that I should present it to the rest of the team. So it was an hour later, I stood in front of around fifty experienced agents, a complete rookie, to outline my thoughts and suggest a new avenue of investigation. I did not expect to be shot down in flames as the fact that I was in the office showed that I had the skills and experience myself to be there. They listened to what I had outlined to the AIC and then started asking intelligent questions, to which, I hoped, I gave intelligent answers.

I was starting to sweat when the discussion wound up and was able to sit down. The AIC then asked the various leaders of the different investigations what they thought. They all said that my ideas had merit and that it was an avenue that definitely needed looking at. Back in his office, the AIC sat me down and called in one of the other agents. He then told us that I was to be given access to the last half a dozen known victims of the Switcher to see if there were any threads we could follow. The other agent was nominated as my carer during this time as the locations and identities of the victims were carefully hidden from scrutiny.

Over the next couple of weeks we criss-crossed the country talking to the victims. I asked each of them where they had been touched when the switch took place and it was generally agreed that a thin layer of clothing was no barrier but that the Switcher never wore gloves. The last known victim that we had was a middle-aged lady and I asked her who she had been prior. She said that she had been a company representative who worked for a car company out of Detroit and the switch had occurred in Toledo.

Back in the office we hunkered down with the agent who was tracking her previous body and we already knew, from CCTV feeds, that he had been seen in Toledo after the switch, heading for the railway station. His employer had already been contacted and said that he had not been seen since the switch but, when we spoke to him again, said that he had remembered being asked for a list of the major outlets of the prestige vehicles they sold.

When we showed this to the AIC he sent a large group of us to the F.B.I. offices in Detroit to concentrate our resources there. We went and saw the marketing manager of the car company and, armed with a photo of the representative, we canvassed the outlets, coming up lucky with one that sold into the wealthier parts of Detroit and their sales manager did remember the person in the photo coming in and saying that the company wanted to target some of the better customers with a free use of a new model, in order to create a set of ‘influencers’ who could be used to promote the new car when it was released. He said that he, himself, had not heard of a new release coming up.

He also said that the person was very firm on not being touched as he said that he had recovered from Covid and had grown to not want contact with any strangers. We got the same list that had been passed over then and took it back to the office. When we got together, one of the older agents suggested that, if the Switcher had targeted someone who bought this type of car, then that person must live somewhere where these cars were commonplace. Another suggested that after the next switch had taken place, our representative would have likely been killed and the body just had not been discovered yet.

We sent a query to the Detroit PD to see if there had been any ‘John Does’ found recently and, after a couple of days, we received a list. The ones found in the poorer neighbourhoods could be discounted as they were generally the wrong colour but one stood out as a possible. A male, middle-aged, white body had been through the system and cremated after all of the tests had come up negative for any cause of death. The fact that the body was missing both hands and his head did not help much. We requested the DNA profile and sent it to the agents who looked after the victims’ relatives and it came back as a positive. We could put a name to the John Doe and requested the files on the body. He had been pulled out of Lake Saint Clair, which fitted nicely as the Grosse Point area that jutted into that lake was also one of the better areas and there were a lot of isolated houses on big blocks.

Everyone was now feeling that we may be closing in and our AIC increased our numbers so we could canvass the hundreds of delivery firms who made deliveries into the Grosse Point suburb. We could trim the results by only looking at the customer base for the cars. It was surmised that the Switcher had been able to get close to one of the customers, made the switch and then, in the new body, had killed his previous victim and disposed of the body. I envisioned him taking a gun with him and the new host retrieving it to shoot the old host, who, at this time, would be clearly unco-ordinated by the shock of seeing themselves standing in front of them. Without the rush of pursuing police firing guns, this could be a realistic scenario.

We ended up with fifty customers who matched the cars and the delivery history and now our real work would begin.

Marianne G 2021