The World We Once Knew

Chapter Eight

Akoni

Finn and I enter the Monitoring Room and are greeted with silence. Nobody gets up to salute us. They give us weird looks and go back to their assignments. Someone walks over to us; "Colonel Kale. Please follow me." Finn and I exchange looks. We follow this slender man to the office in the back of the main room. We have to climb a flight of stairs and that's when I notice that the man has been favoring his right leg. He opens the door and I go in followed by Finn. The slender man comes in and shuts the door. "Colonel Kale, Major Ushiro. I am Lieutenant Milel Za. I was Major Cameron Rye's second in command here. I was ordered to show you what you need to do. So this is where yourself and Major Ushiro work and watch over the rest of them." At that moment he walked over to the wall and pressed a button and the wall became a window. "This is a one way window they have no idea when you are watching them. Now you only get to handle the most important cases. Dr. O'Connell assigns them to you. Now when you aren't working on a case you will both be monitoring everything else going on. When they ask for help on the floor, Major, you are the one who needs to go down. Our main priority here Major is to make sure the Colonel doesn't get bothered with petty interruptions and he can work. Do you understand? Yes, Good. Now the goal of the Monitoring Room is to get the people of the former United States to do what we want them to do. But they can't know that we are responsible. Make sure that nobody gets out. They can never know that the rest of the world is out there and are trying to help. They have to be kept in the dark, for their own safety and ours. This whole thing, our whole lives could be ruined if you two don't do your jobs. Do you understand? Yes, Good. Now here's your first assignment from Dr. O'Connell. All the details are in the file. Good luck." He salutes us and walks out the door. 

Finn looks at me: "What the fuck! We, are higher ranking! He should not have talked down to us!" 

"Finn just forget about it. We are in charge of the most important operations in the entire military force and we are only seventeen. Now I have to look at this assignment. Do as you wish my dear friend." I say.

I carry the folder to my new desk and sit down. I open the folder and the document says 'Operation: No Hope'; strange name, my mission is to get this girl safely to New Orleans and up here, should be easy enough I say to myself, then I read on: 'kill everyone in her family. She must be totally alone with no hope left. ~ Dr. O'Connell'. I drop the folder and Finn looks at me. I look back at him. "What is it?" he asks. 

I shake my head trying not to cry; "We have to kill a girls entire family and get her up here safely." I say. 

Finn looks at me, "Shit. I was just starting to like this job too." Just then an alarm sounds and Finn and I run down to the main room. Finn stops someone and asks what was going on. It was the end of the day alarm. They have one for the start of the day, lunch, and the end of the day, she said. 

"Go, eat, do whatever I'll meet you back at the quarters. I have to finish reading the file." I turn around and head back to the office. I sit down and pick up the file again. I read through the entire document. The targets are the Tylerson family. The girl's name is Logan Ash Tylerson. There is a picture attached. Wow she's beautiful. She has dark brown hair, deep blue eyes, a medium complexion, she's five foot four inches and beautiful. She's the perfect mix of her parents. I look at the other targets, two of them are already dead, the mother: Lori Aisha Tylerson and the grandmother on the father's side: Reagan Cherry Tylerson. So I still have four other targets to neutralize. The father: Benedict Slade Tylerson, his father: Mason Reese Tylerson, the mother's mother: Ginny Lola Stone, and the mother's father: Shane Jay Stone. How am I going to bring myself to annihilate some girl's family? I don't think I could bring myself to carry on if my entire family was killed. I have to stop. It's just a job. Think like a soldier damn it! I take another look at her photograph. She is beautiful. I stand up and lock the folder into my safe. I slip her photograph into my pocket on the way to the mess hall. Will I be able to carry out my assignment?