My Classified Life

Chapter Forty-Four: Stand Tall, Stand Strong

A circle. That's what I was going in.

Hallway after hallway, curve after curve, turn after turn, I found myself going in a giant circle.

It was safe to say that the mansion was successful in driving me insane. The blueprints Dylan and I had, they were accurate for the first two levels, after that all hell broke loose. There was questionable doors, hallways that I didn't know existed, walls where something should have been. It was a disaster for us.

Things were looking pretty bleak for me, wandering the halls while Dylan toiled away in a room deep within the mansion. I heard bits and pieces of his mumblings, something about video cameras and protecting me. I tried to tune him out, telling myself he was going to be just fine. The worry was killing me.

I needed something, anything. I was dying out there, in the field. All alone. When I really shouldn't have been alone, it was standard protocol to have backup, multiple operatives. But I have never been one to stick to the beaten path. Which was why when I found a house maid, I knocked her out and put on her outfit. I'm a spontaneous person. Don't worry though, she wasn't seriously injured or anything.

Her outfit was an ugly blue color, skirt at the knee and a button down blouse. The clothes felt stiff with too much starch. I pulled my cherry brown hair into a bun at the very top of my head and fit the matching cap tightly over it. Her shoes were too small, crushing my feet with every footfall. I stashed my other black tennis shoes in my cleaning cart which I found in a storage closet. I checked myself in the reflection of a window overlooking the view from the front of the mansion. My hair was sticking to my face, I pushed it back to be flat against my head.

I still looked too much like Amanda, the outfit just wasn't enough. I added a mole using a stick of eyeliner in the pocket of the blazer I wore over the blouse, thickened my eyebrows, and tried on her glasses. The woman had horrible sight for here younger age, just looking through the lenses intensified my headache. I put them into my blouse breast pocket along with the matches from downstairs.

When I emerged back into the hallway I was a different person, not Amanda, not Avery. I was Shanon. Another day, another name. Such is the life of a spy.

One of the wheels on the cart squeaked like a mouse when I rolled it down the hall. When paired with the sirens and alarms, it just made me want earplugs even more. It was one in the morning yet the mansion wasn't sleeping. The halls were alive with lights and people searching for the 'ghost' intruder. They spoke of it in hushed voices as they ran past me, oblivious to the fact that I was the one they were searching for. The security guards were searching for someone they called a ghost, roaming the halls unseen by any roaming eyes, plowing through security systems and setting them off without a care. Either they were too stupid to realize it or they already knew there was a sitting duck waiting to be captured in the control room, but no one mentioned it.

It was nice to be just a measly maid with a mole, pushing her dilapidated cart around the halls. I continued in circles, pausing to pretend to clean something with one of my spray bottles filled with sploshy blue liquid. I a noticed a trend in those passing by, they were all headed in the same direction, each one giving me a strange looks as if they were wondering why I wasn't following them. One particularly frantic maid started to pass by me, with her eyebrows raised and screeched, worried voice, she called out to me, “What are still doing here?” She reached out and grabbed me fiercely by the wrist. I resisted the urge to use her momentum and flip her onto her butt. “Mr. Hamilton has called us all to the courtyard!” She pulled and I snapped my hand away.

She looked offended and angry, clearly I was acting against the tide. I wished I could've undid that. “Courtyard?” I questioned, making her scrunch her forehead and glare rudely at me.