It was just past three in the morning and
there she was in the mud and muck. She lay without moving and barely
breathing, hoping that they wouldn’t find her. Luck had been on her
side. No moon, and it was raining, but luck wasn’t all she had relied
on. She tried not to think of the thing that was slithering across
her legs at this very moment. How she wished for her ocean and all the
simple pleasures of floating and gliding through the water that was so foreign
to this area. Her mind snapped back to the task at hand when she felt
more than heard the man in front of her move. One twitch, one stray
breath and she would be dead. Game over, and it was far from over.
Her target may be inside that shed, but her motives lay just outside of
it. This one was close, too close. She had to focus on her
goal. She was almost to the shed, and once in she would have her prize,
but until she could get around the last two men, she wouldn’t be any closer to
winning than she was now. And this was all about winning.
She
had already killed one of the three tonight. Clean shot, almost too
easy. He hadn’t even seen her. The click had given her away though
and she had to leave the area making more noise than she had planned.
That was why she was now wallowing in the mud as one of them walked past her
with only inches to spare. He had been able to trail her this far, but
not much longer. She had the upper hand on these guys, all except for
one.
A
swamp creature she was not. In fact she hated dirt, too many stints in
the desert and too little time in the water. She loved the water and
wondered how these three would have done in an element she was more at home
in. A snap brought her instantly back to reality. Not meaning to,
her hunter had stepped on the twig right above her head. Even though he
thought it hadn’t been heard, he couldn’t have been more wrong. One, two, three steps past her, she rolled and
without even putting the sight up to her eye she shot again taking out the second
target with the click sounding too late for him to do anything about it, thus
leaving her only one man to deal with. On that thought she smiled as she
stood up and revealed herself to the man cussing up a blue streak.
“Son
of a …” she didn’t listen to the rest of his tirade as he sat down on the
ground and she held out her hand. Unwillingly he shook it.
“Now,
now,” she gave him a pat on the head, “Nobody likes a sore loser.”
Putting out her hand he placed his now useless weapon in her hands. She
knew that all of his communication equipment had been shut off, but the problem
was that didn’t keep him from communicating with the others. They all
worked for a little known governmental department known as the Paranormal
Enforcement Department, or ‘PED’ for short. In the department it was their job
to provide protection, detection, and deception. Jan, as well as the others
here, were part of a grand experiment discovered through bogus psychology
experiments in college used to identify those whom they, the government,
thought might have what it took to read minds. Once confirmed and their
skills developed, they were drafted into a lifetime of service for the
department. They no longer existed to family and long time friends.
They had become the secret weapon, and they had given their lives to being just
that.
“One
more to go,” she all but whispered to the man on the ground as she slipped
away. The training mission may have been what she was supposed to put her
efforts toward, but it was the man who had set up the mission that intrigued
her. Jan would win; she would get the fake documents and make it to the
drop point but it wasn't the mission she was really on. Jan planned on
the mission she had in mind. The one that had peaked her interest too
many months ago and still held something unspoken and unnamed for her to
discover. Jan's mission was the one man she hadn't yet caught. But
she wasn't sure what the outcome of that mission would be.
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