Never As It Seems

Mission Number One

The sun blinded him. 

He swears that was it. No wrong action done on his part, no. He did not forget the procedure, he did not step out of line, he didn't do any sort of selfish act to protect himself and himself only from the pains of field work - it was the sun. 

It got in his eyes, the brightly lit menace it is. 

And it messed everything up. It was not his fault. 

Of course, nobody believed him. 

-

"We're here," said Charles. 

They squinted at their surroundings. Something seemed off...

"Here?" said Annmarie. 

"Here," said Charles. 

"This can't be it."

"I can assure you this is the exact spot we had planned for our mission to take place."

"Why?" said Flames, who was peering out the window like there was a zombie apocalypse going on outside. 

"Because we did the research and we figured this would be the most likely place for our assassins to congregate -"

"No, no, I know that. The question is, why the heck is there nobody in sight?"

And indeed, there was not a soul to be found. No people, no civilization, no straggling lost tourists. Not even a ghost keeping out of sight. Maybe a tumbleweed or two, but that was it. And there certainly weren't six armed people waiting to shoot them down or otherwise injure the group. 

"Maybe they went to take a coffee break," said Flames. 

"Or maybe we're here too early," said Annmarie. "It's only 9:06 in the morning... why would they be here this early? They could come at any time they wanted; I mean, they could be here ten hours from now and we wouldn't know."

"That's very true. There's nowhere for them to hide, anyway. Do you see any sort of building structure here? Nope. Maybe they've decided to go out of town."

"Or maybe they're here in disguise," said Charles. 

"Yeah, I'm sure that one foot in diameter tumbleweed is our friend Mr. Machete," said Flames. "Get a grip, Charles. They're not here."

There was silence for a few moments as Charles fully digested this. 

"They will be here," he said finally. "They sent so many messages... so many clandestine implications that they would be right here, today..."

"Yeah, key word there, today," said Flames. "Not necessarily nine in the morning. We'll be tired from waiting once they finally show up, whenever that may be. What say you, Annmarie?"

Annmarie had been lying back in her seat with her eyes closed. She opened them and looked at the two men. "I think we're at a dead end. There's no way of knowing when they'll pop up, and we'll be unprepared in every scenario. We can't win, can we?"

"Don't say that," said Charles. "Of course we'll win. And we are prepared."

"We were prepared for them to already be here. For their to be chaos, at the very least. Not a stereotypical desert scene." She sat up. "I bet that's what they wanted all along, wasn't it? To get us all prepared for an attack and then throw in a minor detail that messes the whole thing up. So we'll be caught by surprise no matter what and there's nothing we can do."

"We can watch," offered Flames. 

"Yeah, but if they come, say, twelve hours from now we'll be bored of that. We'll slack off."