by Pema Donyo
He nodded at me, and I walked into the alley.
What kind of city didn't have street lights? I could barely see. In fact, I had no idea where the target was. My gun was loaded, but my vision sucked.
There was no tell-tale whimpering or panicked rush past me. I pressed my lips together, desperate to hear a sound and use my inner sonar to hit the target. The police sirens made it worse. I wasn't afraid of cops, but with the sirens so loud I couldn't detect where my target was.
There. Footsteps. I raised my gun, the sonar in my head working within moments to pinpoint the location. The pad of my finger leaned against the trigger, ready to close the contract…
I gasped. Cold metal sliced through my flesh. Pain. Blinding, brilliant, all-consuming pain. My hands flew to the wound, as if the pressure from my palms was enough to stop the bleeding.
There was a scurry past me, but I still made the shot. The body fell; the contract was closed. Searing pain. My hands traced the outline of a knife lodged into my abdomen. Why did the sirens sound so close? I staggered forward.
The world in front of me felt covered in film. Everything was hazier; the sounds were jumbled. I thought I heard Adrian cry my name, but was it him? I couldn't be sure. Sirens filled my eardrums, drowning out the yells trying to get my attention.
The night combined with blue and red neon lights, and there was the sound of footsteps, hard hitting footsteps. Colors jumbled in front of my vision, blending together like some rainbow covered by dark shadows.
I collapsed to the ground.
CHAPTER TWO
Mission statement of Covert Operatives: We are the world's first line of private justice. We accomplish what others cannot accomplish and do what others cannot do. We carry out our mission by:
Employing only assassins to carry out contract killings. All assassins are under the age of eighteen to decrease the odds of either assassin or client being caught by the federal government. Assassins will be persecuted and face consequences should anyone die who is not a member(s) of the targeted party the client has singled out.
Producing timely information from adult executives which provides insight, warning, and opportunity to Covert Operatives assassins on how best to complete their mission(s) and advance the client's interests.
Conducting covert action at the direction of the Covert Operatives Chief Executive Officer to preempt threats on private clients or achieve CO policy objectives.
Beep… beep… beep… beep.
"Tristan, get over here. She's coming around."
My eyelids fluttered. Bright light. So much light. I shut my eyes, returning to the reassurance of darkness.
"Can you hear me? If you can hear me, open your eyes. Respond."
I tried to flutter my eyes open again. I couldn't keep them open for longer than a second. The light was too much. Why was there so much light?
"Yep, she's definitely awake boss. How much longer should we wait?"
Boss? Why was someone—
Oh great.
I shut my eyes tighter. This was a bad dream. This was all a bad, bad dream. I tried to lift my hand up in an attempt to...
Cold metal held me back. The tell-tale circular shape surrounding my wrist filled my stomach with terror. I tried to lift up the other hand, but another handcuff held me down. This was no dream. This was a nightmare.
"We know you can hear us." The voice was deep, masculine. Not old enough to be Marty's age, but definitely older than Adrian and I. Late twenties? Slight Italian accent. Gruff. Harsh.
Federal.
There was no use now. I opened my eyes, forcing them to brave the light and focus on getting myself out of here. Under half closed lids I made a quick assessment of the sealed glass door, the gun in the man's hand, and the three policemen standing outside. And, I realized with dread, a whole hospital full of people and policemen, ready to catch me and send me behind bars should I try to escape.
Panic filled my gut. I tried to lift my hands again, forgetting the shackles. A wave of nausea rushed over me, and three words echoed in my mind: No way out.
"It's no use. The cuffs are state-of-the-art." The man folded his arms over his chest, the finger still rested on the trigger. At least I wasn't dealing with a fool, even if he was from the government. "But you, little girl, can be of some use."
I gritted my teeth at the "little girl" part. Goodness gracious, I was nearly eighteen, not six. Little girls weren't highly trained killing machines working for private companies to fulfill conditions of million-dollar assassination contracts. Wait. The mission.
"Where's..." My demanding tone of voice slowed before I could reveal his name. They would never catch Adrian. I wouldn't let them. "Where's the other guy I was with?"
"Your little friend? Ran off before we could stun him. Abandoned you. You might've died if we hadn't saved your ass and brought you back here." He leaned so close to me I could smell the coffee on his breath. "We know about Covert Operatives. You, kid, are in big trouble."
So Adrian had made it back to CO. I breathed a sigh of relief and tried to ignore the twang of pain I felt knowing he'd left me. He'd had no choice. I would've slowed him down.
"We're going to let you heal up." The man pointed to my injury, which I hadn't noticed until right then. I must have been doped up on drugs, because when I stared down at where he was pointing I didn't feel a thing. No blood, so obviously I'd had stitches. "Then you're going to come back for some questioning. We need to know more about your little children's killing game."
"You know nothing." I snarled. "I will tell you nothing.”
The man smirked. "We'll see," was all he said before he pressed a black button on the machine next to me. The fluid from the machine entered the tubes connected to my veins, and the drug pushed closer and closer to my system.
I opened my mouth to cry out for help, but the muscles in my jaw were already relaxing... and the world became dark once again.
****
I woke up with my hands tied behind my back, my legs tied with crude rope in front of the metal chair, and a sense of panic in my heart.
Calm down, Jane. You've been through worse. You're going to get out of here. You're going to be fine and you're not going to betray CO...
The door at the end of the long gray room opened and closed with an echoing slam. A woman in a pinstripe suit who was around sixty sauntered toward me on short heels and a look of calm on her face. It was unnerving.
I struggled against the ropes, searching for a loop. All I needed was one tiny opening – one tiny break in the grip for me to stick a finger through – and I was free from the bindings.
"Please, Jane Lu, we're trying to make this easier for you." Surprise stopped my thoughts of escape. For someone who worked for the government, her voice was kind. I trained myself for cops, FBI members, Navy SEALs... but never compassionate old ladies with nice teeth and pinstriped suits.
I snorted. "I know what's going to happen to me. I'm going to be sent to prison.”
The woman pressed her lips together and clasped her hands in front of her. She was as harmless as a mouse. I was almost offended. Did the FBI think I wouldn't be able to handle her? I deserved at least a thirty-year-old muscular man trained in the martial arts of Japanese Judo and Russian Sambo.
"To be perfectly frank, the CIA doesn't intend for either to occur."
"The CIA? I thought the police and FBI had me under custody."
"This matter is for the Central Intelligence Agency. We are the ones who have been tracking Covert Operatives. We know you, Jane Lu, are one of Covert Operatives’ assassins. And we know we plan to set you free."
My blood ran cold. "How?"
"I must admit you will not be completely free." The woman stepped closer to me. Her promises hypnotized me and held me captive. "Your freedom comes with terms.”
“Terms?”
“There are conditions, Miss Lu.”
"How do you know my name?"
"We know more about Covert Op
eratives than you or your executives would like to believe." The woman waved her hand, as if my name was beside the point. "But we don't know enough. We want you to go undercover as a CO agent again. This time, you will report back to the CIA and tell us everything you know. If your espionage proves satisfactory and loyal, we will release you as a civilian member of society free of consequence. The CIA is prepared to protect you from CO agents, should the need arise and your duty to us is complete."
I felt a strange whirring in the back of my mind, as if my brain was on auto-pilot. I couldn't think; I couldn't react. Words from her speech repeated in my mind without my command, phrases like "civilian member," "release you," and "protect you."
I shook my head as if I could shake away the surreal feeling. I swallowed down a lump in my throat. Even if I wasn’t planning on working as an executive, I hadn’t planned on betraying them either. "What makes you think I would agree to betray my family?"
The woman quirked an eyebrow at the use of my last word. Yes, I wanted to scream back at her, CO is my family. It’s all I’ve ever known.
"Because CO killed your family."
"What?"
The woman snapped her fingers, and an old-school projector from the back of the room began displaying a series of images on the wall behind her. The bright light from the projector shone on her face, contrasting with the dark tone of her voice.
"Covert Operatives. Founded in 1830 as a private corporation which fulfilled a desire for justice. Famous early agents of Covert Operatives." The projector clicked through vintage photographs yellowed with age. "Agent: John Wilkes Booth, target: Abraham Lincoln, successful. Agent: Harry Norwich, target: Charles Lindbergh's son, successful. Agent: Annie Jordan, target: Amelia Earhart, successful. Problem." The projector stilled on an image of Covert Operatives’ logo, the torch of justice superimposed on a badge of courage. "Assassins are caught, organization discovered by CIA. Covert Operatives changes tactics. Decides to use assassins under the age of eighteen to avoid being caught. Takes select children from foster parents, brothels, street corners. Pays for their prep school education, which they attend when not completing missions. Promises monetary rewards for the rest of their life. Trains them to be human drones, removed from knowing any information about their targets. All are detached from any emotional connection outside of Covert Operatives."
The story was familiar to me, of course. The history classes we took at CO went through the organization's nearly two-hundred-year history. We were eight when the classes started. Lucy and Emma and I would pass notes and talk about how hot Adrian was. It seemed like a lifetime ago.
Questions of my own slipped through my lips. "Why do you say CO killed our families? We had no families before entering CO."
"No." Her answer was simple. The implications were not. "Fifty recruits a year. Fifty students, fifty fresh faces and ultimately nine hundred assassins under CO's wing at one time. How could CO guarantee the families would never look for their sons or daughters? What if a family whose daughter was left on a street corner decided to look for answers about her disappearance?" Warmth flooded into her eyes. "I'm sorry, dear. After the initial selection process, CO does a background check on every child they take in, and every child's family is killed. Including yours."
The blood rushed through my ears. All I heard was the sound of everything I knew crashing down around me. "No..." Words tumbled out of my mouth faster than I could control them. "How could you know this information? You don't know anything. I was in the foster care system for as long as I can remember. No one wanted me. I was left there on my own until CO adopted me."
The projector clicked again. A couple appeared on the screen, and I saw myself in more than their smiles. The woman’s dark hair appeared similar to mine, pin straight and medium-length. Both were Asian, probably Chinese. My jaw slackened as the truth dawned on me.
"Lauren and George Lu. The CIA does not know all the details surrounding your birth. But we found your Covert Operatives name badge inside your jacket and ran a background check. We knew Covert Operatives' practices from another CO agent we caught." She grimaced. "Unfortunately, the CO agent committed suicide. The CIA has no desire for a repeat incident, and there's so much left about CO we need to know. You will be much more beneficial to us alive than dead.”
Shock paralyzed my body. I shut my eyes to block out the images, afraid that if I looked at them any longer I would lose the ability to speak. "What happened?"
The woman spoke to the photograph of Lauren and George Lu, not me, when she answered. "Assassinated by another CO agent several years ago. The e-mails the CIA intercepted found Lauren Lu was trying to find and adopt the baby daughter her parents made her give up when she was a teenager. Lu contacted the representative who picked you up for Covert Operatives. She was asking too many questions, and CO had to silence her and her husband."
A sob echoed in the room. I didn't know if it was mine or if it was someone else's. I didn't know anything anymore. I opened my eyes and watched her continue the presentation as a wet stream of salty tears trickled down my cheeks.
"Not all the targets are the searching parents of other CO agents. All the targets the CIA has been able to identify as victims of CO have been private citizens, devoid of any political connection.”
The projector switched to an image of a middle-aged man, balding and bearded. "Drake Stanton, writer of a scathing editorial on the business practices of John Barry. John Barry makes a direct deposit to an online account titled only ‘CO’ on July tenth. Stanton is found on his desk with a bullet in his brain on July twelfth. The jury decides the murderer is Stanton's wife. The real murderer was a CO agent. Stanton is guilty of no other crime than writing an angry article."
The projector switched to a young woman who looked fresh from college, eyes lit up with excitement and a beret on her head. "Anna Kingston, graduate student at New York University. Gerald Hopkins, millionaire and Kingston's ex-boyfriend, pays on September second to ‘CO.’ Kingston is found dead in an alley in Brooklyn on October first. Jury decides the murderer is Kingston's roommate. The real murderer was a CO agent. Kingston is guilty of no other crime than ending her relationship with Hopkins for another man—"
"Stop!"
The woman blinked at me without surprise, but expectation. "Are you positive?"
"I'm sure. Stop." The cold metal room had somehow started spinning. I actually vomited on the floor, evidence of my disgust at an organization I no longer knew. "I get it." I struggled to make sense of it all through heaving and ragged breathing. It was all a blur; pure emotions. I couldn't actually piece anything together into a coherent sentence to say to the woman. There was guilt mixed with pain and anger. Red, piercing anger.
"Then I trust you understand what you must do." The woman stood right in front of me. She sniffed out my vulnerability like a hound on a blood trail. "You are being given a second chance, Jane Lu." In spite of her hound-like senses, she still lifted the corners of her mouth in a warm expression. It was a genuine smile, one I wasn’t used to seeing on adults. She actually means well for me, I realized with trepidation. "If you successfully spy on CO activities and report back to the CIA with the information we require of you, we will release you as a free citizen without a criminal record. We want to work with you, not harm you."
My voice sounded foreign to me as a word left my throat. I couldn't recognize my own voice; I couldn't even recognize where my allegiance lay.
"Yes."
Strength gathered inside of me. Greater resolve powered my next sentence. "Yes, I will report back to the CIA with information on CO. Yes, I'll be a spy."
A voice within me screamed, "Betrayal!" A projector inside my head whirred to life. There was an image of a woman and a man, the woman with my hair. The slides inside my imagination switched to an image of body stained with blood. A final click, and a final image: A house on a hill, free of bloodshed, free from running from the police, with a husband and a wife and kids and peace. The ho
use was mine for the taking. My projector shut off, and my determination switched back on.
It was suddenly more than just about right or wrong. It was about getting the life I wanted.
CHAPTER THREE
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When every recruit enters CO, sometime between the ages of five and six, the recruit is given a lecture. It's not a collegiate, podium-and-microphone lecture—no, all those six-year-olds would be asleep or crying from boredom before any of the CO execs could get a word out.
The new recruits are split into different rooms. There are maybe ten kids in each room, and we all sit in a circle crisscross-apple-sauce, with one elder executive at the head of the gathering. We're told nothing can harm us. We’re told we’re safe.
Those are the first words I remember an executive saying to the six-year-old version of me: “You’re safe now.” Then we're told we are going to be trained to defend ourselves. Not only are we going to be trained, but we are going to do right in the world and give justice to those who deserve it.
All my life, I thought as I jogged on the treadmill, I thought I would never betray CO. But there I was, taking federal tests so they could induct me as a spy for the CIA. I panted into the plastic mask, the machines hooked up to my body buzzing with measurements about the beat of my heart and the endurance of my muscles slamming against the rubber of the treadmill.
