It was going to be one of the biggest days of her life. Natalia Jones was getting promoted to a fully fledged field operative. She was also going to become the youngest agent, male or female, to become a field operative. Her father would be proud of her when she tells the news to him later on. The Agency is composed of the five most remarkable intelligence agencies in the world.
While The Agency required it’s agents to keep everything about their jobs a secret even to family members. Her father, Fred Jones was a living legend. He still held iconic status and The Agency regularly celebrated his accomplishments. Even though they were a secret organization that went to insane lengths to prevent evidence of its existence, The Agency wouldn’t mind if she told him the good news.
The burning pain in her head cut short her celebratory mood. This was the second time she felt a throbbing pain on the left side of her head this morning. Earlier on, she had successfully ignored it thinking it was due to a lack of sleep. She could not afford to wait for another half an hour since she was getting late. Natalia opened her medicine cabinet and took two pain relief pills. The effect was instantaneous, and in a blink of an eye, the pain was gone. She closed her eyes to enjoy the quiet environment. Her thoughts drifted back to her father.
She felt grateful to him. Even though Natalia did not have all the information, she knew that Fred had rescued and adopted her on one of his missions. Having raised her as his own, she felt thankful to him. When she was growing up she respected her father, but she hated him. He put her through hellish daily routines, forced her to learn how to shoot and enrolled her in one of The Agency’s training facilities. She was just short of the minimum age requirement to enter.
However, Fred pulled a few strings and got Natalia enrolled. The impressive performance on the track and the firing range also helped secure her enrolment request. Natalia hated school. All she had wanted to do then, was stay home and play with children at her own age. The mistreatment she endured at the hands of older students helped Natalia build character and develop a strong will. She never gave up, no matter what. While she possessed impressive abilities, it was her character that pushed her to the place she was set to become today.
The Agency’s headquarters were cleverly disguised as a small butchers shop in a old alleyway. The magnificent underground headquarters was the size of a small hospital. Natalia arrived at work to little welcome ceremony and collected her access key card. While she retained some contact with her coworkers, she never truly formed a bond with any of them. She checked in and headed to her desk.
The excruciating headache was back again. Every throb felt like her head was being torn in half. She made a mental note to visit the lab for a quick medical check-up later on in the day. Meanwhile, she took two more pills.
Just like it happened this morning, the pain died out. The perks to her new position were appealing. She would no longer be confined to collecting clues from the comfort of the HQ. Even though she was quite good at it, she felt she was better suited for field work. Natalia loved the thrill of being out there in the field. She would finally be where the action is. The company assigned safe-house and the increase in her salary were not as important to her. She was thinking about her future at The Agency when the pain appeared again.
This time it seemed even worse than before. She stood up to walk towards the lab area but she collapsed on all fours before she made it.Natalia felt that she had been unconscious for ages. She barely remembered anything other then the overwhelming pain in her head. She could not feel the pain anymore, and believed that she had been taken to the laboratory upon her collapsing.
She opened her eyes, slowly adjusting to the bright room. She counted five field agents. One of the five had a patched up hand while the other one was in worse shape. She tried to look around the room a bit more but she realized that she was heavily constrained. She also noticed that the agents in the room were fully armed, which was unusual and against the policy at the headquarters. She was handcuffed to the work station.
She demanded to know what was going on, but the gag in her mouth served to muffle her. “Shut up! You don’t get to talk, not after what you’ve done. We’ll make sure you pay for it. The only thing that can save you now is telling us who you work for,” said one of the agents, angrily. “She’s awake now. Do it. Do it until she tells us what we need to know!” the other urged the agents in the room. One agent held her down by the shoulder as another used a cloth to cover her face.
A third poured water over her mouth. Even though years of training had prepared her for such torture techniques, the experience at the hands of her own coworkers made it unbearable. She thought she had experienced the worst pain today in the form of the searing headaches, but that was not comparison to what she was about to endure today. She couldn’t concentrate with the continuous water being poured on her face. She resolved to pick the lock from her handcuffs very easily. As the agents took a quick break from torturing her, she took her chance.Natalia grabbed a pistol from the closest agent and launched herself to a standing position.
She put her arm around his neck and threatened to kill him and at least one of the other agents if the rest of the agents did not lower their weapons. While they listened to her demands, the room was locked from the outside. There was little to no chance of escape. She used her advantage of authority to find out what was going on. Surveillance footage showed Natalia making her way through a restricted hallway from the library to the conference room where she planted a device that looked nearly identical to a bomb.
The explosion that shook the room during a meeting claimed the lives of four chairmen from the six-person room. The two survivors received some injuries. While she was cuffed and passed out, a few agents visited her place and discovered bomb-making equipment, manuals and a layout of the plan.Natalia had no memory of doing this.
She was passed out in the laboratory. It could not have been her. She refuted all accusations. However, the video evidence was legitimate.
That was her in the hallway, in the conference room, leaving a suspicious device in a concealed location and heading back into the hallway. She still held the gun to the agent’s head as she thought about her next move. She could argue that the video was not real, but there were other cameras that could place her whereabouts. She would be lucky to make it out alive, let alone leave this room alive. Natalia realized she only had a short amount of time to solve the mystery. She would leave this room either as a free woman or in a body bag.
There were no other options. She tried to think of a reasonable explanation with no success. The video proof was solid. She contemplated the evidence found in her home. Only two people had access to her place. She tried to contact her father but he was unavailable. It was unusual that she could not contact him.
She did not think much of it since it was not the most weirdest thing to happen to her on that day.The trains of thought distracted her. She realized too late that she had let her guard down. The realization struck home when one of the agent shot her in the shoulder through her hostages own shoulder. She did not feel the pain. Another agent brutally shot her in one knee.
She remembered the unusual conversation she had with her father the previous night. “Hello. Dad?” she had said when she picked up the phone. All she got in response from him was “Activate Agent Six-Four-Three-Three-Nine Delta.” Fred Jones had installed sleeper cells in The Agency.
Her realization was interrupted by one bullet to the head.
