Unseen

Chapter 4

After Yvette left, Delta-Nine-308 waited five minutes to make sure the woman wasn't coming back. She counted the seconds, timing them to her breaths.

It was difficult. Her breath kept wanting to speed up to match her heart. Her body was locked in a prey-state of panic, screaming at her to run, run, run.

The room was so bright. Every time she looked up from her arms, the colors stabbed at her anew, thick reds and golds like a malevolent sunset.

Not that she had seen many sunsets in her life. She had treasured every one. She hadn't thought it was possible for the colors of the sunset to make her feel anything but wonder.

But this room made her want to hide. It made her want to tear through the walls with her bare hands, so long as she found PERI headquarters on the other side.

Why had she ever looked forward to mission nights? Why had she longed for the vastness of the world outside headquarters? Why had she never realized how good she had it, in her little room with its four white walls, with Joss outside the door to handle everything for her?

When her five minutes were up, she forced her head up from the cocoon of her arms. The rich colors swam in front of her eyes. She wanted to curl up all over again, like a snail retreating into its shell. Instead, she swung her feet over the side of the bed and stood on shaky legs.

It was just a house. She had been in many like it on her various missions. This was just another mission, that was all.

A mission she had never gotten a briefing for. A mission without Joss waiting for her in the van when she was done.

She could think about that later. One step at a time. She wasn't intimidated by strange houses. Missions were simple. Get in. Kill the target. Get out.

Get out.

The room had a window. Outside, the gray light of dawn illuminated a garden of trimmed hedges and exotic flowers laid out in unforgiving rows. She was four stories up, by her estimation. She had trained at heights taller than that.

The window had some kind of safety lock on it, a low-tech metal contraption that hooked into the regular lock. It looked like it was meant to unlock with a four-digit combination. She didn't bother trying to guess the number. It took her less than five minutes to find the contraption's weak points and bend them out of alignment.

The window opened.

Beyond the garden, an ocean of trees stretched before her in all directions. She could almost believe they stretched to the end of the world. Their leaves were tipped with orange, just starting to turn. Those orange tips were the colors of the sunset. They didn't hurt her eyes like the room did, but there were so many of them...

No. She couldn't think about that. All that mattered was the window in front of her, and the ground below her, and the wall between. The world might have been impossibly big, but the only part that was relevant to her right now was as small as her room back home.

She stretched the window open as far as it would go. Then she ducked her head out the opening, her short hair hanging into her eyes as the smell of morning hit her nose. She drew a long breath.

It was a new smell for her. Thick and wet and rich, with the loamy sweetness of flowers. She never had missions in the morning. Late at night, usually. Occasionally the evening, or the middle of the day. People didn't call on assassins in the morning.

She shook her head, sending wisps of hair flying into her eyes. She couldn't afford to be distracted. Yvette had said she was coming back.

The walls were weathered brick, mostly smooth but with ornamental protrusions jutting out for texture. That was all she needed. The protrusions were spaced about ten feet or so. She didn't need more than that. She had been training at this kind of thing since she was four years old.