The Secret

Four

“That was crap!” Sven cries, evidently frustrated.

“I’ve just thrown the knife square in the middle of the bullseye, and you’re telling me that’s crap!?” I contest, hands on my hips. They were once sharp, lifeless, bony hips. Now they are slowly beginning to fill out and round thanks to the incredibly rich food they serve here at the headquarters.

He takes five knives from the weapon shelf and angles his body in line with the wooden dummy I have just assaulted perfectly with my knife. Well, perfect to me anyway. He flexes his arms and stiffens, and then the five knives go flying from his hand in a perfect silver arc across the training room. They land around my knife in a flawless circle.

I groan in exasperation. “Who will care anyway?” I huff. “Once the suspect is dead, he’s dead. It doesn’t make any difference.”

“It will increase your chances of hitting a moving target,” Sven says sheepishly.

“Moving target my ass.”

He walks over, this time serious. He looks at me sternly, a look I have received many times before. He takes my shoulders, and says “Nadia, you need these skills. They’re going to be essential for you to take down those filthy criminals,” he shakes my shoulder with every syllable, as if sending long-lasting shockwaves through my body.

“Cr-criminals?” I blurt out.

He nods solemnly. “We hate them, we the Corporation. Criminals downplay the economy, wreak havoc in communities and, most of all, are the number one reason our spies get murdered.”

Immediately a sheet of ice glazes over me. I remember my time in the complex. The tattooed barcode on my left upper arm. The faded bruises around my wrists from the electric-current handcuffs they used on me. Then my memory fizzles back again to the winter night my grandparents farewelled me.

“What’s happening?” I remember asking, bewildered. “What’s going on?”

Grandma’s eyes grew heavy with thought, and a shadow cast over them. Grandpa remained silent. “Ah, it’s complicated. Now, go to sleep my darling.”

I grew irritated. Why were they saying goodbye to me? As if I wasn’t going to see them anymore? As if they were to vanish? As if it was the end of everything?

Well, you know what? That’s exactly what happened.

“Tell me,” I insisted. “Grandma, I want to know. Now.”

“If you insist,” she began, and took a deep breath. “So…..”

“Nadia?” Sven’s masculine voice conjures me away from my flashback.

“Nothing,” I brush away; edgy and evasive. “Let’s get back to training.”

He teaches me some new throwing skills, assault drills and various deadly combinations of combat skills, including headlocks, basic wrestling and self defence moves.

I slam a white fist into the cheek of a training dummy, and the force of the blow is so much the wood buckles and breaks. The head falls to the floor, eventually rolling to a stop.

“Not bad, there’s a bit of an improvement,” Sven comments. “But I definitely think you have more ability than that. That’s nothing.”

This is outrageous. Here I am, kidnapped into an international corporation of spies and I am being forced to learn fatal fighting moves against criminals?

I turn to the next training dummy, first snapping the thin stand with my foot and grappling its body. I stamp on its foot with my own and spin it around, slinging it over my shoulder as the leg breaks off. Then I take one step towards the assembly of remaining dummies waiting to be attacked and throw it with an angry force. It collides into the first, knocking it over, then the second, and then the whole row crashes down onto the floor into a catastrophic heap. Sven’s eyes widen with surprise, but I show no remorse as I stamp out of the room, rage squeezing its bony fingers up my spine.

I am a criminal, and I am learning how to assail my own race.

This, I must keep a secret.