Purpose

Chad Freedom had lost his debut match over 120 hours ago. He still wasn’t answering his phone.

U.S. Marshal Richard “Deputy Dick” Mercer coordinated with the FBI and local precincts to locate his client. His client’s credit card – emblazoned with an American flag – was last swiped at a shit-box motel not far from the Ohio-Pennsylvania state line.

Local police stated no one had entered or exited the room since they began monitoring it. The shades were drawn shut, but there was definitely activity in the room. Every few minutes, the right side of the curtains peeled back slightly for a beat, then dropped again.

They were looking at Chad Freedom, and he was looking back at them.

Richard Mercer thanked the sheriff for the information as he got into his car. The call blipped briefly as it connected to the SUV’s Bluetooth. Despite a few dropped words, the Marshal’s message was loud and clear –

“Call me if anything changes. I’ll be there in a few hours.”

Mercer drove on autopilot. He was moving well above the speed limit, and his thoughts were racing faster.

Chad Freedom took his own life, accidentally or otherwise. Mercer had heard horror stories about clients unable to withstand the psychological strain of the Witness Protection Program.

Chad Freedom’s enemies had found him. Plausible, unfortunately. Thanks to PRIME, Freedom’s travel schedule was now publicly available.

Chad Freedom had been found by someone else – an unknown entity. A bad actor inserting themselves between Freedom’s enemies and the U.S. Government, trying to cash in on an opportunity. Worst-case scenario.

Other scenarios existed. Almost all the outcomes were negative.

Siding with statistics – after all, math could always be trusted – Mercer expected the worst. His client had invested all of their emotional stock in wrestling and, so far, it wasn’t going well. The disastrous interview with Satan Jones. Losing their first match.

He was getting ahead of himself.

Mercer slowed his breathing. Cleared his mind.

ETA: 75 minutes.

Mercer flashed his badge a few times and established himself as the senior authority on site.

Once he ordered the local boys to stand by, the U.S. Marshal strode to the door of his client’s hotel room. He knocked politely a few times. There was a commotion from inside the room, like something had frozen mid-motion, and then the room went quiet.

Mercer knocked again, longer.

Nothing.

Mercer beat on the door with a balled fist.

Silence.

Mercer barked authoritatively, “Chad! This is Richard Mercer. Open the door!”

Silence.

Mercer took a different approach. His tone softened.

“Chad. We just want to make sure you’re okay.”

For a few seconds, nothing happened.

Then the security chain slid free. The door swung open on loud, creaking hinges.

Mercer glanced back at the local lawmen behind him, gave them a nod, and entered the hotel room.

His client quickly shut the door, and the Marshal took a good look at the star-spangled wrestler in front of him.

Chad Freedom was alive.

Mercer exhaled quietly through his nose. He resisted the instinct to hug his client and then punch them hard in the face.

Emotions processed. Mercer assessed his surroundings.

A little round table with two chairs pushed into it.  Two bedside tables, lamps shining on each one, straddling a King bed. A short dresser that also served as a TV stand. The television had a bath towel draped over it.

A vanity mounted outside the toilet and shower room. There was a red, white, and blue basketball propped in one of it's corners.

The only noise in the room came from the wall-mounted air-conditioning unit. It rattled too loudly for how little it cooled.

Like most, this hotel room was unremarkable.

Except for the papers.

There were drifts of paper on almost every flat surface, and even more taped to the walls.

Mercer reviewed the documents immediately to his left.

An illustration of a man wearing a cowboy hat, sunglasses, tights, knee pads, and boots. The man had sprouted comically large eagle wings from his shoulders.

The next paper – a monster truck with an American flag mounted to the back. The body of the truck was white, with red and blue flames reaching from the headlights to the back end of the chassis.

The next paper – a giant, round cake. Cursive writing across the top read, "Happy 251st birthday, America!” An annotation off to the side read, "Next year?"

The next paper – an elongated barrel mounted atop what looked like a miniature propane tank. The elements were connected by black tubing.

It was a fucking flamethrower.

“A flamethrower?”

Freedom shrugged.

“It was just an idea.”

The Marshal's eyes settled on the short dresser pulling double-duty as a TV stand. There were several items sitting along the base of the television.

A ruler. A TI-83 graphing calculator. A box of flash cards. Multiplication and division, specifically. A protractor. A fun-sized abacus. A book with a familiar yellow cover – Basic Math & Pre-Algebra for Dummies.

“Chad… What the hell is all this?”

Freedom puffed out his chest.

“Preparations,” he said, with a firm nod.

The wrestler sat down on the bed, crumpling the hand-scribbled notes beneath him.

“I’m not going to lose my next match, Mercer. This time, it’s going to go exactly how I want it to.”

After a moment:

“It has to.”

Possible psychotic break. Psychiatric evaluation recommended.

The Marshal wished he'd brought his reading glasses as his eyes squinted at another cluster of documents affixed above the bed’s headboard.

MATH JOHNSON FACTS:

1. 1. MATH??????
   2. PIECE OF SHIT
   3. MATHLETE
   4. FRIENDS W/ A ZOMBIE?
   5. MATH STUFF ON TIGHTS
   6. MATH SUX LOL

“I know what you’re thinking, Mercer.”

“Do you?”

“You think I finally snapped.”

Mercer's silence was answer enough.

“I needed to focus. With no distractions. No TV, no cell phones, no WITSEC protocol. I needed to think about winning.”

Conviction. Freedom tapped an index finger to his left temple.

“For the first time since I've started this new life, I've got clarity.”

The Marshal let the moment breathe.

“I can understand that, Chad. It’s been a rough start.”

“Mercer, thank y –”

“But that doesn’t mean you can drop off the grid, Chad. You can’t go five days without getting back to me.  My responsibility is to keep you safe. I can’t do that if we’re not communicating. Do you understand that?”

The Marshal realized his scolding tone and pulled it back.

“Now, in the spirit of keeping you safe –“

The client interrupted, but Mercer persisted. One man raised his voice, and the other followed until they were both half-shouting. Neither stopped to listen to the other.

At the same time:

“I have to strongly recommend that you consider revising your touring schedule with PRIME.”

“Actually, Mercer, I’m glad you brought that up.”

“As you know, the next two ReVival shows take place in Detroit and Chicago, respectively."

“Because I've had some thoughts about my safety, too.”

“And as you know, both those cities are in close proximity to your life before WITSEC placement.”

“If your first priority is to keep me safe, then there is only one right way to do that.”

“I strongly recommend that you withdraw from those events.”

“I am formally requesting that I receive 24-hour protection.”

They both finished their thought and stared at each other in stunned silence.

Did you hear what I just said?

Did I really hear what I thought I just heard?

What the fuck is the matter with you?

Freedom spoke first. Of course he did.

“I have a match in Detroit, Mercer! I can’t just back out!”

Mercer, ever prepared:

“We have an easy alibi, Chad. Have you heard of the Cyclospora cayetanensis outbreak in the Midwest?”

The big words bounced off the brim of his client’s cowboy hat and floated off into the ether. Mercer tried again.

“The so-called ‘explosive diarrhea parasite.’”

“Oh. Yeah, of course. Bad lettuce.”

“It would be easy to say you’ve been impacted by that and –“

How he said the next thing with a straight face, only Chad Freedom will know.

“Mercer. I am not skipping my match with Math Johnson and telling people that I caught a poop parasite.”

That discussion was over. Mercer pivoted.

“Fine, that is your choice. But I must reiterate that the agency cannot guarantee your safety if you refuse to follow our recommendations.”

Freedom smirked.

“That’s why I’m formally requesting 24-hour protection.”

The Marshal’s reality briefly tilted, like he'd entered The Twilight Zone.

“That’s not possible, Chad.”

“Sure it is.”

Mercer's annoyance bubbled up like acid reflux, but he swallowed it down.

“The U.S. Marshals Service does not have the manpower to provide round-the-clock protection for every witness in the program. I wish we could, but it’s –”

“This is why I haven’t called you back in five days.”

Mercer stopped. Was his client blaming him for their lack of communication?

“Math Johnson may be a sniveling bastard, but he has a winning record and I don't..."

The wrestler's voice wavered a little on that last part.

“I needed to prepare for that match without worrying about you or your protocol, Mercer. Don't do this, don't do that – always looking over my shoulder. It's too much of a distraction."

Chad Freedom poked an index finger into his bare chest beneath his flag-waving jacket.

“Winning is the only thing that matters to me.”

Mercer's eyes drifted to another page on the wall.

It read ENTRANCE THEMES? across the top. Another list.

• The National Anthem
• God Bless the USA (Greenwood),
• Amerika (Rammstein) – this one was crossed out
• O.C.K. in the U.S.A. (Mellencamp).
• Party in the U.S.A. (Cyrus)
• Born in the USA (Springsteen)
• We’re an American Band” (Grand Funk Railroad) – the word “band” was crossed out and the word “man?” was written above it.

“Do you think a Miley Cyrus song would be a better entrance theme?”

Freedom shrugged.

“I’m keeping my options open.”

Stuck for the long-haul, the Marshal unfolded his arms and settled into one of the chairs at the little round table.

“Chad, what does all of this do for you?”

Freedom looked around the room, eyes beaming. His ideas – brought to life on paper – were among the few things he owned in his new life.

“I kept thinking about everything that's been going wrong, so I started writing down ways to get better. I couldn't stop once I got going.”

Mercer noticed a small coffee pot on the vanity at the back of the room. There were several empty packets of cheap ground coffee lying strewn across it. The Marshal wondered when his client had last slept.

“I kept thinking about Math Johnson and how I was going to beat him. How I was going to win.”

The client was getting fired up.

“You know what Math Johnson doesn't have? A sense of what truly makes America great. Community. Freedom. Gratitude. Loyalty to something other than himself.”

Freedom located a specific document on the bed and held it up excitedly. It was a sketch of the Statue of Liberty holding a t-shirt cannon that’s shooting American flags into the sky.

"And that's when I realized -- if I want to beat Math Johnson, I need to be more patriotic!”

A new theme song. Giant eagle wings on the back of his jacket. A monster truck.

“A flamethrower, Chad? Really?”

“Can you help me get one of those?”

“No, Chad.”

The Marshal nodded toward the TV stand and the spread of math paraphernalia on top of it.

“Studying?”

For the first time, Freedom showed a hint of embarrassment. The wrestler got off the bed – papers crinkling beneath him as he rose – and crossed to the dresser. He grabbed the mini-abacus and began shuffling the beads back and forth.

“I thought that maybe if I could understand math better, I could understand Math Johnson. Maybe he’d start to make some sense.”

Freedom tilted the abacus sideways and all the beads skittered to one side.

“But, he’s just an asshole. There’s nothing special about him. He just thinks he’s smarter and better than everyone else. But if you take math away, he’s just a Johnson.”

Freedom sighed, then carelessly tossed the abacus back onto the TV stand.

“This country doesn’t need more selfish, egocentric jerks. In defense of America, and in defense of my home state –”

“That’s not –”

“My original home state, Mercer! I’m going to show Math Johnson how the Wolverine State deals with assholes.”

Freedom snatched a piece of paper from the nearest corner of the bed and held it up for Mercer to see. It showed a stickman riding a stars and stripes-covered rocket toward another defenseless stick man.

The wrestler grabbed another piece of paper. On this one, a large woodchuck wearing an American flag bandana chomped the leg off another stickman. Freedom insisted the animal was a wolverine. The stickman getting mauled had a speech bubble coming off its mouth. It read, “%+-x!”

“People need to know they can stand up to bullies like him.”

That’s something we can agree on, thought the U.S. Marshal.

Mercer paused to survey the room again.

Nothing had moved, but everything had changed.

The hotel wasn’t papered with delusion.

Every ridiculous drawing. Every empty coffee packet. Every multiplication card.

None of it was evidence that Chad Freedom had given up.

It was evidence that he refused to.

This wasn't fear.

This wasn’t mania.

This was purpose.

Mercer absentmindedly collected the pages strewn across the table and shuffled them into an organized pile.

Was it really so ludicrous for him to accompany his client to Detroit?

Ethically, yes.

Morally? Maybe not so ludicrous. After all, Mercer’s duty was to serve the American people. Chad Freedom – with or without eagle wings, a monster truck, or a fucking flamethrower – was an American.

Operationally? It was considered optimal to keep clients alive and put them in positions to start offsetting their costs with tax dollars. If the client dies, there's no return on the investment.

Math never lied, but it sometimes felt evil.

Two other thoughts to consider:

Richard Mercer had never been to a live wrestling show before. This thought tingled with excitement.

And, if Mercer didn’t accompany his client, what would Chad Freedom do if left to his own devices? This thought tingled with dread.

Would he drop off-the-grid again?

Would he accidentally light Little Caesars Arena on fire?

Oh, God. What would happen if he lost?

His client crossed to the sink area outside the bathroom door. There was a red, white, and blue basketball lodged in the far corner of the vanity.

Mercer blinked. He could’ve sworn Freedom was talking to it, but the Marshal didn’t dwell. He had something more important to say:

“I’ll see you in Detroit.”

The client had joined his handler at the table and was scribbling something on the back of another sheet. The pencil the client used was sharpened down to a nub. Mercer watched quietly.

Freedom drew a wrestling ring.

Then he sketched a large rectangle in one corner.

He added dozens of tiny buttons.

A little screen.

Across the screen he carefully printed:

ERROR

Two stick legs stuck out from underneath the object.

Mercer stared for several seconds.

"Is that a calculator?"

Freedom beamed.

"A graphing calculator."

A TI-83, to be exact.

“Why?”

The client didn’t answer right away. He was fervently drawing two more stick figures on the other side of the ring. The figures stood with their non-existent hands on their non-existent hips. One wore a cowboy hat. The other wore a badge.

Freedom finally replied when the drawing was done.

“Because it knows how to beat Math.”

He looked at Mercer.

“And so do we.”