Guiltless

Chapter 7

13 September 2006*Simon*

"Wake up assassin, it's time for a test." Cathy wasn't the least bit gentle in waking me up from my sleep. Though, since I had been trained to always sleep so lightly that I could wake up at the smallest of sounds, I had already been awake since she stepped into my door alarm. I give her a second to back up, since she never can get away fast enough from the disgust she held for me, and move out of the bed.

"Get to the strategy room, it's time for you to lead a team." I nod but she's already moving away. There's no door to my room but that doesn't mean I am free to roam. A very strong electric force field exists in this room that will keep the occupant inside either from dusk to dawn or until the correct code is entered. It's 7-3-4-7-5-8. I mentally comment as I see her fumble with the codes. The way Mark taught me to study the movement of the body has made me able to get through such loopholes easily. Still, I pay attention to her to make sure the pattern hasn't changed.

They keep every passcode valid for exactly seventeen days and then change it with a combination that will never be repeated. Cathy enters those six letters and I feel the hum of the field die down. "Come on, assassin. There's lives at stake here." I don't bother answering this time and walk beyond her and through the door.

The electric field hits me like a shock and despite my conditioning, I let out a gasp in surprise at this manoeuvre. "Next time, remember to avert your eyes when I type the code, assassin." A part of me hears Cathy speak calmly as I fall back from the shock. I look to her, while resisting the urge to pant or groan, and see the hatred in her eyes once again. That was a mistake, I hear a voice resembling Mark tell me within my mind. She is a fool to remind you of her power when she could have let you keep getting comfortable and weak but you are no better for underestimating her just because she didn't act her power. She didn't get where she is now by being soft.

I don't even get to try to respond before Cathy punches a new code, and I'm still distracted to notice it. Or at least I make it appear so as I note the new code down. 2-1-0-4-9-4. Really? My birthday? Without a pause, she walks in front of me through the now-deactivated field and I quickly get back up and follow her. While on the outside, I appear calm, I am debating the validity of the code I just spied.

Based on Cathy's behaviour, to believe the code to be reliable would be a mistake. Something has to have changed. But what?

We get to the strategy room in the basement soon enough before I can reason and I immediately focus all my attention on observing the entire place in one sweep without looking obvious. "Don't bother taking it in, everything you see here will be disposed of once we're done here." Lie. That would be a waste of funds. At most, it would be relocated. Still, nothing here is anything of worth. Yet.

We move to the huge screen that covers the entire wall, roughly about 15 x 10 square feet wide. And on the screen, I see ten video feeds on the screen circling the three-dimensional map of the entire complex the mission seems to be carried out at. I note how the video has been scrubbed off of any geographical tags that I may use to identify the place. In the lower left corner of the screens, I can see the statistics of the people: their heart rate, their breathing rate, their blood pressure and their present posture. They're all normal as they lie down on the ground in preparation.

I hear a loud thud and turn around to see Cathy throwing some folders on a table she must have summoned electronically from below the floor. Dispose all the things you want, you can't dispose that. "There's the profiles of the entire team, the mission and the map of the entire complex. Study it well in the one hour you have before the mission properly begins. And remember," The distaste in her mouth grows stronger as she finishes, "if any one of them dies, you die as well."