After that incident everybody went back to work, but
Judgment and Nakamura seemed to have ended their talk. I accelerated my gait to
catch up to him and follow him into his office.
“Good,” I said jovially. “So I’m right on time for the daily
briefing.”
He did not smile.
A few minutes later my handler and my partner arrived and
Nakamura sat at his desk. He handed the day’s file to our handler who looked it
over as Nakamura spoke to me and my partner.
“I know your first two missions could have gone a bit
better, but you have shown competence both in your training and in your preliminary
work. Today, once again, you have two targets. Your handler will give you the
details as necessary.”
We learned of our first target, a middle aged woman who was
an ex-agent of STAB, like that Torrance guy I met briefly with Omar and them.
She was hiding in the mountains of Tibet, apparently using stolen STAB
resources to set up a solitary, makeshift camp for herself, free from
observation. That’s why it took so long for us to find her, a few years. She
was good, left no trace.
Soon we had suited up in thick coats and breathing masks to
keep us from fainting in the high altitude and were stepping through to just
outside her camp.
The first thing I saw was a fire glowing with the backdrop
of a dark sky. We used nightvision, but she wasn’t there.
Suddenly there was the slightest of noises behind us;
somehow she had learned of our arrival or happened to be behind us when we came
through; either way, she rushed at us with a big, serrated knife.
More out of shock and a self-preservation instinct, I jerked
my gun up and shot her.
I was told I would get a reward for such good, swift work.
One shot, no hesitation. This was just my 3rd mission, and the
second where I’d shot someone. I was confused, but it turned out she had been
really high up in STAB and still had some connections there. But her philosophy
had changed; she and her cohorts were working against STAB’s interests. Which
are the same as the Panopticon’s interests: chaos.
STAB isn’t under the umbrella of the Illumined’s influence,
but what they do often times turns out to help us with “our” goals.
Turns out my bonus was an extra hour of down
time. Apparently the next hit isn’t so urgent.
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