The Golgotha Initiative

Chapter 1: Maria

"Your name is Maria Glassier," says the woman in front of me, "and you work for Compass."
I exhale, blowing an annoying tendril of mousy brown hair out of my face. "Where are we?"
"My office, beneath a glacier in Greenland."
"It's a nice office."
"Isn't it? I got a promotion."
"Who are you?"
She smiles. It looks sort of patronizing. "Agent Jamari. Do you remember me?"
"No." I can't remember anything.
"You didn't know me for very long. I'm a hypnotist."
"I don't know what that is."
She nods, like she expected me to be stupid. "I help people. I talk to them for a while, and that calms them."
"I am calm."
Now the agent looks really patronizing. "I also help people remember things. Do you know who you are?"
"Maria Glassier. I work for Compass."
"Very good."
"Why can't I remember anything else?" It's really bothering me. I don't know my age or what I look like or where the bruises on my skin are from.
"Something called the Rose Cable. You got hit in the head with a powerful electric shock, and it caused amnesia."
"Are you going to help me remember?"
"Of course," she says. "Please, lean back in your chair."

"Maria. Maria, can you hear me?"
A woman is speaking, her brown face looming over mine. Beads clack as her black braids swing rhythmically together.
"Maria." This second voice is cooler, marble-like. "Report."
"What would you like me to report?" The words spring automatically from my mouth.
"Tell me who you are."
"I am Agent Maria Glassier, Division East. Designation: Assassin. Awaiting orders."
"Who do you take orders from?"
"An agent with the code word."
"Who gives you the code word?"
"Agent Jamari, Division North. I receive a new word every twenty four hours."
"Excellent, Maria," says the warmer voice. I hear a pair of heels click away, and then I'm back asleep.

"Abature. Your word of the day."
"Abature," I repeat.

When I sleep, it is without dreams. When I wake, it is without thought. I question nothing because there is nothing to ask. I follow the orders of whoever has the code word.

"How many?"
"Sixty. She's out of control."
"She's totally in control- that's the problem."
"We told her to scare them. Killing only if necessary."
"Apparently, she deemed it necessary."
"It was the Red Cross! For the love of-"
"Scare her."
"What?"
"Maria?" The warm voice. "Maria, what would you like?"
I blink, not understanding. "I would like to follow orders."
"Excellent. Peripeteia. Now sleep... Maria?"
I blink, waking up. I'm groggy, in a vague dreamstate, the world a shifting mass of lines and colors. It takes me several moments to decipher them all. "Yes?"
"What would you like?"
"Um. Can I go back to sleep?"
"No."
"Can I have food?"
"Yes. Do you remember your current code word?"
"Peripeteia."
"Excellent."

"The boy has been contacted. I think-"
"No, don't bring him in just yet. She's still following orders."
"And?"
"And it's working. Giving her more control- she killed the right people last time. Not children in hospital beds."
"It's working on the other end, too. Our rivals are terrified. I'm terrified. But Director Charles is thrilled. As long as the boy can keep her under control-"
"Careful. We shouldn't talk in front of her anymore."

There's a canteen, with agents milling about, soldiers clumping in heavy boots, laughter flung tinnily against the walls. I sit alone, at a metal table in the corner. Once I tried to eat with a group of people, but they got up and moved away and one said...
I concentrate, trying to remember. Except for the last week, my head is a filing cabinet with the drawers tipped onto the floor. All my papers are there, but they're too scattered to make sense of.
"Maria," Agent Jamari says, "nabocklish. You're going to China."
"Why?" I ask.
She frowns. "You're going to stop an animal rights activist group. They recently attacked one of South's experimental labs. Does it matter?"
I shake my head. Of course it doesn't matter, but I want to know.

There are backup soldiers, all trained by East, but they wait outside while I scale the wall of the office building in Beijing. Everyone who knows about Compass knows that they have soldiers with guns, and most people who know about Compass have soldiers and guns of their own. There are very few people who have me.
"I want eighteen of her," someone said, back when my brain was a chaotic filing cabinet.
"If she works," someone else replied, "you'll get them."
"Nabocklish," orders the voice through my earpiece. "Go."
I punch through the small office window. Shard of glass embed themselves into my fingerless gloves, the white leather guarding my knuckles. Clearing a path for the rest of my body, I hoist myself through the opening and into a room with the same average floor space as a coffin. No one is here, so I step into the hallway, boots made from the same leather as the gloves bending with my weight.
When she sees me, the woman shrieks. Doors open in time to see her fall to the ground, screams splitting the air as her severed neck parts in a spluttering trail of blood. I grip my katanas carefully, white gloves on white hilts, staring down the length of my twin swords at the people sprinting away from me.
I avoid my mirror. I have one, but I don't like looking in it because my hair is the wrong color. White, to match the rest of me.
Except for the blood. Red stands out against snowy leather, even when scarlet dims to dusky maroon. Normally, I'm streaked with the stuff, splattered with the liquid of the dead. But today I'm drenched. There were cubicles.
It's easy to kill people, when they're lined up politely in cubicles.
"Maria," Jamari calls, sounding from the corner of my room where the intercom is. "Nabocklish. Come here."
Jamari doesn't need to tell me that "here" is her office and "come" means now. I get up, off the bed that I was lying on, and ignore the mirror as I brush out of my room.
"Maria, there you- why are you covered in blood?"
"Cubicles," I explain. There's an agent here besides Jamari.
"You could have washed up," she snips, warm voice filtered with annoyance.
I shrug, staring at the other agent. He has pale skin too light for his coal black hair, and even though his back is to me something about his stance sends a chill through to my core. This man is dangerous, though he looks innocent. He scares me, though I don't know why.
"Maria," Jamari says, sounding pleasant again, "this is your new handler. His name is-"
"Trevòn," the man says.

"You're hair used to be yellow. It had a pink streak in it, last time I saw you."
"I know you?"
He throws his head back and laughs. "No, not anymore. Not ever, really. Many people think they know me, but few actually do."
I shrug. He's trying to sound mysterious and intriguing, but I have enough mystery inside my own head.
"That's it, then," I tell him. Jamari ordered me to wash up and give my new handler a tour of the base, which I did, as quickly as possible. "This is my room. Yours is just down the hall, by Jamari's office."
"Do you have any plans for the evening?"
"Yes. I'm going to do nothing, by myself in my room. If you'll excuse me-"
He laughs again. "I'd forgotten how funny you are, Maria. Would you like me to join you in doing nothing?"
I frown, hoping he'll get the hint and quickly remember some previous engagement. Instead, he looks at me expectantly, waiting. Our eyes dash against each other.
Another chill shoots through me.
"Maybe later," I mutter, spinning into my room and leaning against the door. Like I'm afraid he'll try to shove it open.
But he's just a handler, like Jamari. Just another agent.
So why does he scare me?