by Cole, Jason
Tomorrow morning, payment would be in the bank, and life would be good. That is, assuming she was able to deliver with time left to spare.
Chapter 9
Enter password here.
She rapidly entered the password on the tablet and waited to see the balance in her account. It was the only way to figure out if the mission was a success or not.
New payment received.
Just what she liked to see. It wasn't a large sum, definitely not the biggest she's ever received, but it was more than she needed. The balance on her account reached well into six figures but no one would ever know by looking at her apartment. She had adopted a minimalistic lifestyle, and money carried very little weight in her world.
What did spark her interest was why the payments varied so much. Sometimes the amounts made her look twice at the number of digits, and others made it seem like she did it all for peanuts.
Did that indicate something about the people she was stealing these genes for? Were the smaller sums of money indicative of everyday people dealing with some sort of crisis?
Who knows?
Add it to the list of never-to-be-answered questions.
She walked over to one of the bare walls and took out a magic marker. She added an X next to the others. Each one representing its own mission. She didn't feel the need to differentiate the missions because at the end of the day, they were all the same. A different gene, different targets, but the same outcome.
She was yet to fail at any single mission and, by the grace of that vine, she was able to continue that streak. She walked away from the wall and went back into her living room. She turned on the small box TV, and sat on the old, worn out couch. She could feel her butt hit the springs inside of the couch, and she chuckled as it happened. There was something inside of her that could never understand the appeal of acquiring material possessions, even when there was comfort and luxury to be gained.
Flipping through the channels on her small box TV, there was nothing good on as usual. After flying all over the world and stealing the rarest genes made, the average daily news seem pretty lame.
She figured she would flip through the rest of the channels before she turned it off and did some sort of yoga or meditation. Then the national news came on and it was a breaking news report. Intrigued by this, she left it on and turned the volume up.
On the screen was a picture of a father with his pregnant wife in the hospital bed, and their daughter standing next to them. Kira’s mind began to flicker, flashes of images appeared before her eyes.
She relaxed, taking a few deep breaths, trying to ground herself. The images repeated themselves until they were a constant stream. Conceding, she opened her eyes and saw a mother and father. Similar to the ones on the TV, but different. There was no girl standing by them, instead she was lying in a bed. She looked frail and debilitated. Kira felt a tsunami of emotions crash inside of her, tears streamed. The sight of that little girl, the needles coming out of her arm, the plethora of monitors on thin metal stands behind her did something inside of her. Something she couldn’t explain and didn’t care to explore.
The images stopped and she was back in her apartment, the cheap springs from the couch shooting into her ass helped her snap back to reality. She ran over to the kitchen table, opened up a marble notebook, and scribbled down what she saw. The entries were sporadic, no correlation between the images, but it seemed to be the same people. Was this her family?
She threw the pen down on the table, slammed the notebook shut, and walked back over to the couch. No room for weakness. Emotions can be lethal if not kept in check. She wiped her face and looked back at what was being reported.
"This just in, breaking news. A child with one of the rarest genetic mutations in the recorded history of medicine has just been found cured. They are calling it a modern-day miracle, and no doctor has been able to speculate or present a reasonable explanation. Claiming they found no signs of errors or false positives in their initial genetic screening they are amazed that this unborn fetus is no longer testing positive for what they are calling a de novo mutation. All of the other reported cases led to infantile death, and they are now looking into what may have caused this sudden change. More to follow later this evening."
Mouth completely open, jaw practically on the floor. Could it be? Did that shaman have some sort of gene that could save this unborn child's life? There was no way she could find out definitively, but it made sense. Her heart began to race. This was the happiest she had felt in who knows how long. There was one other case where she was able to figure the outcome of a mission, and it was five years ago. The day after she delivered the gene there was some massive press conference by a biotech company claiming they found a gene to cure obesity. It turned out to have massive side effects, lead to deaths and law suits and made Kira sick to her stomach. She felt nauseous even thinking about that incident.
This was different, though. Her eyes were fixated on the screen. The news had now moved on, but it didn't seem to register. She sat there staring at the screen as if they were still reporting on this medical breakthrough. This was the kind of news that kept her going. The possibility that she saved a life or two along her journeys helped her wake up in the morning. Make sense of this nonsensical world she lives in. No memories, sense of identity, nothing. That was worth not having if it meant saving this child she saw on the news.
Locating and copying genes was all she knew how to do in life and all she wanted to do. Ever since Kira woke up in that apartment as a confused and naïve teenager, just five years ago, this was her entire world. Besides, who else gets to travel the world and make copies of other people's genes? When she put it that way, she figured she had it pretty good. Working a 9-5 sounded much scarier than what she did.
Her mind escaped this good news for a second and thought back to that shaman. His eyes continued to haunt her. The way he failed to react, and the look of expectation on his face. Never before had she snuck up so elegantly and perfectly, and yet had the feeling that the element of surprise was nowhere to be found. Maybe he had started that incense of hallucinogens on purpose. As she went over the sequence of events and how they took place, that vine began to stand out as more and more of a lifesaver. They probably would've tied her up and sacrificed her to the merciless gods of the rainforest. It never sat well with her that she had to steal these genes. One of the only rules had to follow was the one found on a note left in the apartment. It was there when she woke up in the room and stated very clearly that if she questioned the process, her life would take an unpleasant turn. Ever since that note Kira toed the line, but deep down she knew that her thirst for answers would become so insatiable, that it would take over.
For now, she was back in her apartment, home again.
Ready for the next mission.
For Book 2 follow this link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00XMCRMYU
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