American Ultra -

Phoebe found him behind the snack bar, hyperventilating, clutching his head. "Mike. Mike!"

He shuffled to the register. His girlfriend, Phoebe, was waiting in the rusted Toyota Corolla outside, sketching a comic strip about a depressed sloth on her thigh with a ballpoint pen. She was the anchor. The only thing that stopped Mike’s brain from spiraling into a fractal terror about things like "taxes" and "the eventual heat death of the universe."

A quietly anxious convenience store clerk and his artistic girlfriend discover their sleepy West Virginia town is a CIA testing ground when a dormant government program activates the clerk as a sleeper agent with extraordinary, hallucinogen-induced combat skills. Part One: The Static on the Frequency American Ultra

Mike looked at Phoebe. She was terrified. But she wasn't running.

"I'm here," he whispered.

He broke a man's arm with a copy of Moby-Dick from the lost-and-found bin. He disarmed a second using only a tangled cassette tape and the centrifugal force of spinning it around his finger. He kicked a flashbang back through a doorway using a roller skate, timing the rebound to the millisecond.

Mike picked up her $4,000 tactical tablet. He snapped it in half over his knee like a dry branch. "Then I'll remember yours. And I'll come visit. Not Agent Ultra. Not the asset. Mike . The guy who has nothing left to lose." Phoebe found him behind the snack bar, hyperventilating,

He laughed. It was a wet, broken sound. "Deal."

She made the call.

The man in the visor left. As the door chimed, he spoke into his collar: "He's green. Phase two in ninety minutes."