What Divides Us

My breathing is slowly becoming labored with each swift stride that I take.  My legs scream in protest, but I push myself forward; I am way too close to give up now.  The shouts of fury echoing behind me cause a small smirk to grow on my face.  They shouldn’t get too upset about losing to a girl. After all, I have been training my whole life for this.  It’s all that I know how to do.  An exasperated male voice snaps me out of my victorious moment.

            “You’ve got to get out of there!” he practically screeches in my ear. I pull out the earpiece until I hear silence on the other end, meaning he is done ranting. 

            I roll my eyes.  “You don’t think I know that?” I manage to retort sassily between pants.  Lately, he’s been getting on my nerves.  I’m the professional here; all he does is navigate my actions, I do the dirty work.

            I hear him utter a sigh of irritation.  “Keep sprinting down the hall.  There should be a door to your right.”

            I dig my heels into ground in order to stop right at said door.  I pull at the handle and much to my surprise (not really) I find that it is locked.  Thrust kicking the door, I step inside.  I pause momentarily while I ponder the most painful way to kill that computer nerd.  “There’s nothing in here Caleb!  It’s just an empty room,” I fume.  How the hell am I supposed to get out of this place?

            His chuckling infuriates me even more, “There’s an air-conditioning vent right in front of you.  It leads right outside.  Then you’re home free.”

            I pull the pocketknife from my pocket and begin to unscrew the air vent.  However, I am rudely interrupted by a shower of swift metal bullets that thankfully miss me.   In one fluid motion, I jump in a different direction, while pulling my .25 cal hand gun that had been concealed in my combat boots.  My hands mold to the gun, as if it were made for me.  Oh wait, it was.  It’s my favorite compact gun.  Despite its mere 5 inch long size, it can be enough to kill someone, which is exactly what I intend to do.  My first shot hits the burly guy right in the heart.  I’ve learned that with smaller bullets, it is extremely important to hit a person in a vital organ.  I tend to aim for the heart, less messy that way. 

            I nudge his motionless body with my foot, just to confirm that he is indeed, lifeless.  Slowly, I creep toward the door to check if there are anymore guards.  A movement around the corner catches my eyes and my breath hitches, but not in fear.  The boy, around my age or maybe older, smirks and walks in the opposite direction.  I don’t shoot or call out because I can’t, I’m frozen.  I swear I’m going crazy.  For the last few years, I’ve been seeing him everywhere.  When I’m staking out a house, he’s walking a dog; when Caleb drives us away, I see him selling candy bars; when I’m stealing top secret information, he happens to be in the same building.  It’s not a coincidence and it’s not mistaken identity.  His eyes, those eyes, I’d know anywhere.  They’re a beautiful vibrant green mixed with amber, the most striking eyes I’ve ever seen.  I’ve never told anyone about him, not even Caleb.  They’ll think I’m crazy…even though there’s a high probability of that being true.

            Once the initial shock wears off, I sprint back into the room and go back to unscrewing the air vent which falls with an audible thud. 

            “Hurry!!  They’ve got more security coming,” Caleb reminds me.  Right, stay focused.

            My five-foot, six inch frame fits awkwardly inside the shaft.  After reinstalling the metal air vent, I begin to crawl blindly in the dark.  Soon enough, I see a small light in the midst of the dark tunnel and I crawl towards in a frenzy.  Free at last.

By now, you might be wondering who I am.  Well, that makes two of us because I don’t know who hell I am either.  Okay, that probably confused you.  Basically, I don’t know anything about my family or why the intelligence agency took me under its wing.  All I can tell you is that my entire life I've been trained to be a killing machine.  I've mastered just about every martial art there is out there, from karate to tae kwon do.  Running a mile in less than four minutes, hacking computers, learning how to kill a grown man with just my thumb, and wielding weapons are all part of my daily regimen.  My name is Alex Pennington and I am a 16 year old kickass secret agent, working for an intelligence agency.