It had been three days. Three days since I woke up in Ghost. Three days since I read Smith’s note and found the hidden word “white” and wondered what that backstabber was trying to tell me. Three days of sitting alone with my thoughts, only interrupted by the delivery of my meals. During my time in isolation, my mind raced with what had happened to me in the past few weeks. I estimated that I had probably been here for a few weeks by the looks of my back. Before I was taken, the contours of my back were freshly blistered and enflamed from the explosion. Now there were angry, red marks all along my skin. When I was bored, I would stare at them for hours and wonder what went wrong.
I was safe before, or as safe as someone like me could get. Sure I didn’t have much money or know exactly who I was, but I was choosing what I wanted to be. Despite the fact that it had only been a few weeks, maybe a few months, since that day I meet John Smith, it felt like a lifetime. It had been less than a year since I had escaped Company and now I was in the camp of their biggest competitor. Now, I was a killer. I was finally brought out of my brooding when Sarah returned to my room on the third day. This time she held a small pile of folded clothes in her hands. Her condescending smirk, however, remained the same. It left me wondering if that grin was part of basic Ghost training.
“We have a special field trip planned for you today, Janie,” she said.
“And?”
Her smirk morphed into a glare. “You should be excited,” she stated, her voice low, almost threatening. “It’s an honor rarely given to prisoners.”
“Yippee,” I murmured with false enthusiasm. “And what makes me such a special guest?”
“Believe me,” she said, her smirk returning with more venom. “I haven’t the faintest idea.”
She tossed the clothes onto the bed and commanded that I change before retreating back outside. I snorted in amusement. She tried to make me feel like an insecure little girl. She didn’t seem to realize that it was a feeling that had been taken from me a long time ago. I began to pull on the clothes, taking my time in hopes of annoying Miss Sarah even more.
I stared at my reflection in the mirror that was provided for me in the room and took note of my reflection. My dark red hair fell over my shoulders in a wild, tangled mess and stood bold against the white washed jeans and light grey T-shirt that I had been given. Small scars dotted my face from my disastrous mission. “Are you done yet?” Sarah called. I grinned at my mirrored self and quickly went to exit the room. Sarah was tapping her foot impatiently.
Two guards flanked her on either side. “Wouldn’t want to keep your hosts waiting,” she huffed before turning on her heel and starting on her way down narrow hall. One of the guards followed her while the other nudged me forward. I glared at him for a moment before following the rest of our party, my bare feet slapping on the tile floor. I observed the sterile hall cautiously and noted the different cells. They all seemed eerily quiet. It wasn’t promising for how my future could end up. This lasted for several feet before we reached a final door at the end.
Just as we stopped, I felt my arms tugged back painfully. Rope was twisted around my wrists and secured above the opposite elbows. My back was arched and I could barely move arms. Sarah turned and smiled at me, chuckling lightly. “Now, we wouldn’t want to take our chances now would we? We’re about to pass through the main training facility. You getting your hands on one of our weapons isn’t something that we want happening.” She patted the top of my head and turned to lay her hand on what appeared to be a finger print scanner. I closed my eyes and took a deep calming breath. Patience, I thought to myself.
There was a click of the door and I was suddenly making my way into the very core of my personal nightmare. It was as if I had been taken back in time half a year. I was surrounded by the familiar sounds and sights of young trainees learning the tricks of the trade. Martial art training was mixed with meditation groups.
Classes of students learning how to survive in the wild while others were taking apart and rebuilding anything from a cell phone to a full car. Somewhere deeper in the facility, the familiar ring of gunfire echoed through the open area.
“Impressed?” she asked, almost smug. I raised an eyebrow and grinned. “Not yet.” As our party walked further, the hanger grew hushed. Trainers and trainees turned their attention toward us or, more specifically, me. Whispers could be heard and I could only grasp a few of them.
“I heard she was top of her class at Company…”
“She just ran out. Jumped out a window…”
“She refused to kill…”
“She was trained to kill. There was no escape…”
“I wonder what the higher ups could want from her…”
“Torture…”
“Convert…”
“A weapon with a conscience…”
My face twisted in to a grimace, but I quickly covered it with a prideful smile. “Well, it seems that my reputation precedes me,” I laughed.
“Yeah, how about that,” I heard her whisper under her breath. This helped make my smile much more realistic. We continued to travel across the main training floor. I could feel the gazes of our newly gained spectators tracking us, hunters keeping an eye on their chosen prey. After all, I was a Company agent. Not just any agent either. I was the assassin who refused to take a life and lived to tell about it. I was an anomaly. They weren’t sure what to expect from me.
Finally, we came to an elevator and the heat of the gazes diminished when the doors slid shut. I let go of a breath I wasn’t even aware that I had been holding. I shook my head and tried to regain my focus. The ding of the elevator counted off the floors.
Three…five…nine. At the 12th floor, we stopped. I was pushed into another long sterile hallway much like the one downstairs only there was only one door here placed at the very end. The walls and floors were white, like everything else, and the color was beginning to give me a headache. The two guards moved to stand on either side of the door and Sarah gave me a large smirk over her shoulder. It didn’t give me a comforting feeling.
She twisted the door handle and stepped inside, dragging me behind her. “Jane Doe,” she announced. I felt her nails dig into my shoulder and was pulled harshly in front of her. I stumbled and began to take note of the various faces that sat around a long conference table.
However, it only took a second for my eyes to be glued to one face in particular. A face that annoyed and infuriated me to no end. The lips that smirked in a way that I was all too familiar with and that I had felt on my own.
John Smith sat up in his chair placed closest to the door.
“Hello, Janie.”