Unseen

Chapter 2

The back of the unmarked van was unlit. But that didn't matter. The blindfold around Delta-Nine-308's eyes, made of military-grade fabric and custom-fitted to her exact measurements, wouldn't have let any light through anyway.

Her world was darkness. Her world was the jolts and bounces of the van underneath her. Her world was the tight straps digging into her skin as they held her in place. One around her waist, another around her chest, two more locking her wrists hard against the bench. The final two wrapped around her ankles and kept her feet pressed tightly to the vibrating floor.

The air smelled like outside, even though she hadn't set foot outdoors yet. It smelled like not-headquarters. Like car exhaust, and sweat, and the dirt from the boots of whoever had sat in this van before her. It smelled like nighttime. She didn't know why night smelled different from day, even inside the van, but it did.

Those smells never failed to send her heart into a butterfly flutter in her chest, the heady drumbeat of excitement. She smiled until her dimpled cheeks pressed painfully into the sharp bottom edge of the blindfold. Tonight, she would see something besides the four white walls of her room. Tonight, she would get to do what she was trained for.

The van jerked to a stop. The vibrations under her feet ceased. Her grin widened until she thought her face might split.

The squeal of the back doors opening. A rush of cool air. Heavy boots on the metal floor.

The straps released, one by one. Her skin prickled as blood flowed back into her extremities. The blindfold came off.

Joss, her handler, flashed her a disapproving look. He didn't like it when she looked too happy about a mission. It was a sign of potential instability. He didn't want her to get an instability warning in her file. He liked her. He didn't want to see her recycled. That was what he had told her, when he had warned her to stop looking so excited about her missions.

She forced her the grin off her face.

"Do you remember your briefing?" he asked.

She nodded. After years of memory training, hers was near-perfect.

"Be out in fifteen minutes," he said.

She nodded. She fought to keep the grin off her face. Fifteen minutes. Fifteen glorious minutes of night and movement and freedom.

Mission nights were her favorite nights.

She stepped out of the van, ignoring the hand he offered her. She didn't need help. This was her element. This was what she had been trained for.

Outside, the moon was faint, hidden behind a cloud. The shadows were dark enough to hide her, not that she needed their help. Even in the murky shadows, the street looked just like the pictures her hander had given her to study. It looked like a storybook street, a row of houses all sitting there small and cheerful, with their two squat stories and their lacy curtains in the windows and their picket fences out front. Sometimes it made her dizzy to imagine people really living in houses like that.

She breathed in the crisp night air. It smelled dark and rich, like growing things. She smelled the exhaust of the van, too, but that was the best smell of all, because the van meant a mission.

She twirled, once, in the shadows. She stared at her hands as she held her arms outstretched to either side, marveling at the way her the outlines of her fingers grew indistinct in the dim light. In PERI headquarters, either the lights were brighter than sunlight, too harsh for anything to hide, or the darkness was absolute.

She only spun once, because she didn't want that instability mark on her file any more than Joss did. And because she only had fifteen minutes. It was a generous time allotment; she could do it in ten. Still, she had been trained never to waste a valuable minute.