A meticulous girl slid a hand down the curtains of a hospital, a bouquet of anemone flowers in the other. She poked her head in between the curtains, nearly bumping into a boy in front of her. The girl remained passive at the younger boy, doing nothing other than cocking her eyebrow up. The young boy did nothing else but copy the older girl's actions, choosing to remain in an awkward silence.
At last, the boy glanced to the side and stepped back. A loud wooden creak broke out from his leg, the frail supporter breaking under his simple movement. Jocelyn went forward on instinct, catching the little boy in her arms. She led him back to the bed, her eyes lingering on the boy's leg for a few seconds before picking up the broken piece of his supporter and setting it to the side.
"They said there were visitors," the boy whispered raspily, "There were supposed to be two of you."
The meticulous girl gently pulled the curtains shut, closing off the sight of others. However, the curtains didn't stay shut for long. Seconds after she had shut them, it opened up yet again, revealing a red-faced boy holding up three dripping cups in his abnormally large hands. The younger boy in bed laughed slightly, but his hurt throat did not permit anything else.
"Well, there you go," Jocelyn spoke, angrily reprimanding the wanton boy with her eyes. They had caught quite some attention with Lancelot's grand entrance.
The wanton spy walked straight up to the younger boy, handing him a half-spilled drink. "Honeyed ginger tea. They say it's good for your throat," he then said, watching the younger boy take a sip. Jocelyn reached over herself to pluck a cup out of the wanton boy's other hand. She laid the anemones on the table beside the bed gingerly.
As they stood, they couldn't help but notice how happy the youngest boy had looked. It was as though having people visit him was a luxury, even though his scientist of a brother claimed to have done it so many times.
---
It was strangely peaceful for the two spies. The streets, devoid of their usual traffic and bustle, seemed to reflect the screechings of the car as it turned around the corner. They stopped upon arriving at a simple complex, just in time to see a frantic girl slam the front doors open and leap into a car parked right across the streets.
The girl was easily identified. Her black hair was a telltale sign of a certain charming girl that she knew that someone. Alexa and Tristan stared at the driving car as it spun on screaming tires, speeding off and passing them on the way. They simultaneously jumped in their seats when the car skidded, nearly crashing into a pole as it sped across the edge of the street.
Blinking, the charming girl sat startled, her heart beating from the sudden surprise. She was really starting to wonder if she had drastically underestimated Rosalind.
---
When the meticulous girl and the wanton boy begrudgingly accepted the order to visit a ten-year-old, they certainly didn't expect an attack to happen exactly half an hour later.
The youngest boy was hiding under his hospital bed; the floor, four feet, and curtains the only things currently in his sight. Two spies were desperately retreating to the corner of the curtains. Both of them were curious as to why no bullets had hit them yet, with the fact that it only took thirty seconds for the curtains and the windows beside them to be smoking with bullet holes.
Heart pounding and head spinning, Lancelot ducked under the bed as well, putting a comforting arm around the trembling kid. He put a finger to his lips and grinned, silently conveying the message that they were going to be fine. The boy nodded vigorously as Lancelot whipped out his own gun. The currently serious spy faultlessly fired two rounds in succession, striking the feet of an attacker, who yelped as red seeped through his shoes.
In the small vicinity of curtain-blocked ground that wasn't under the bed, a meticulous girl was hastily trying to break the glass of a stationed window. Surprisingly enough, the glass hasn't shattered from the force of what looked like dozens of bullets. She jutted her pistol at the corners of the glass to no prevail.
Since they were only on the second floor, Jocelyn surmised they'd do just fine jumping out the window and tucking into a roll before the attackers reached them. It was only then that she had remembered there was a kid with a disability still alive, right under the bed she was facing.
An icy throb spread from her ears down to her neck. The girl faintly saw a bullet fly past her eyes into the dark streets. Like trickling water, her blood trailed down to her collarbone and soaked into her shirt. The glass finally buckled under the pressure of the bullet, shattering into crystalline pieces.
Down below, a screaming tire and a vicious honk blared over the bangs of the bullets. The two boys' heads stuck out from under the bed, the younger one wriggling in discomfort. Jocelyn pulled Lancelot out, crouching to avoid bullets. She whispered, pointing out the window. Lancelot nodded, telling the boy to grab onto him, and slid him out from under the bed as well. The wanton spy climbed out the window with the younger boy on his back. The girl followed after, her ear stinging from its primordial ache.
---
The ends of a flintlock pistol smoked. In a dark and abandoned graveyard, a French scientist laid dead at the feet of two Frenchmen. Tomorrow, France would find that it lost an important spy.
A hand reached down to pull out a piece of paper jutting out from the dead man's pocket. Analyzing eyes skimmed over the scrawny handwriting. The tiny piece of paper was tossed to the ground carelessly, though the way that it flew around before landing was as though it spat right back at the spies.
"Don't you ever think that this-" said the first Frenchman, a slight tremble in his tone as he broke off and hesitated, "That we ought to feel at least a tad bit guilty?"
A solemn gaze was set upon the first by the second. "Do you?"
The first waited for the breeze that picked up to stop before opening his mouth to talk. "I do."
"Then you should know that makes us two."
---
A man watched as the tail of a cab drove off in the distance. His shirt flapped in the wind, the dark blue and black sigil hardly visible in the night.
The man turned his back on the cab, striding into the graveyard. Near the dead scientist's foot, a palm length piece of paper rested, and the man approached it. He did not pick it up, but simply bent down and read it in the moonlight.
"May loyal betrayals never be condemned."
YOU ARE READING
Operation Reconnaissance
ActionPrior to war was a serene time of peace, and peace was hallow. In the course of the war was a tumultuous time of chaos, and chaos was a tornado that whirled in innocents into the eye of the storm. War was a curse put upon the two quarrellin...
