I’m asleep when the door to my cage opens.
“Miss Keller. Follow me, please.”
A woman stands in the doorway. I can’t see her face. She’s just a dark figure backlit by light so bright, it makes me wince.
Sitting up on the thin mattress on the cold steel floor that passes for my bed, I raise a hand to shade my eyes against the glare. “Follow you where?”
My voice is a rasp. Dry and cracked, like my lips and throat. These bastards haven’t given me any water.
“You’re being discharged.” She steps away, leaving the door open.
Discharged? Maybe that’s a government term for executed.
I debate with myself for a minute about whether or not to just go back to sleep. If they’re going to kill me, they should have to come in here to do it. Why should I make it easier for them?
But nobody rushes in with a gun. No evil doctor with a syringe full of poison creeps in, leering. So curiosity eventually wins. I stand, holding my hands out for balance when the room starts to spin.
I haven’t been without food this long since fat camp. I’m weak and dizzy. My stomach is gnawing on itself. I have a new empathy for supermodels, who probably feel like this all the time.
I shuffle out of the shipping container, past the big plastic bucket I’ve been using as a toilet because otherwise I’d have to pee on the floor. Aside from the mattress, bucket, and the black eye of a camera on the ceiling, the space is empty. There are no mirrors, no lights, no television, no furniture, no shower, no sink. They didn’t even give me a pillow.
I knew guys in college dorms who lived like this, but I like things a little more luxurious.
The soldier who told me I’m being discharged waits patiently for me a few yards away, standing in the narrow opening between two tall rows of identical shipping containers. She’s dressed in fatigues and combat boots. Her brown hair is wound into a tidy bun at her nape. She’s holding a clipboard.
“Are you the welcome committee? Because, boy, do I have some complaints to lodge with you. This place is a dump.”
“Compared to my last assignment, it’s a palace.”
I scoff. “Really? Where were you, Guantanamo?”
“Yes. Follow me, please.” She turns and walks away.
Some people have no sense of humor.
I follow her past dozens of containers identical to the one I was thrown in. Most are eerily silent, but from within maybe five or six comes the sound of music. Though the walls of the containers are made of thick steel, the music isn’t muffled. It’s so loud, it thumps.
It’s the Meow Mix commercial theme song, a mind-numbing chorus of meow-meow-MEOW-meow performed by a singing cat set to a ragtime piano score.
I’m glad they didn’t subject me to that. I definitely would’ve cracked.
The woman stops in front of a metal door. She enters an impossibly long code into a keypad on the wall, and the door unlocks. She pushes it open, stands back, and gestures for me to go inside.
“Is this where you keep the gas showers and the ovens?”
Without a trace of emotion, she says, “This is the United States. There are no gas showers. We kill people in civilized ways.”
When I arch my brows, she says, “By raising them on high fructose corn syrup and fast food.”
I think I’m starting to like this lady.
“Amen, sister.” I walk past her into a long, narrow passageway lined on both sides with closed doors.
“We’ll be going into number six. It’s just down here, on the right.”
She passes me, walking briskly to the door numbered six. Without waiting for me, she opens the door and disappears inside.
Okay. I’m game. I walk into the room and am hit with the mouthwatering scent of bacon.
I knew it. Now the real torture starts.
But I could be wrong. This room is very different from the one I left. It has comfy-looking chairs and a sofa on one side, and a long table draped in linens on the other. It’s a mini buffet, with platters of food, both cold and hot.
There’s also a first aid station with a blood pressure machine, a glass cabinet full of medical supplies, and—ominously—a defibrillator, one of those electrical devices that give jolts of electricity to restart a stopped heart.
The soldier indicates a chair in front of the first aid station that she wants me to sit in. I oblige her, fighting my instinct to lunge for the bacon. She takes my blood pressure, then my temperature, then opens a small fridge and hands me a bottle of cold water.
I’m too weak to twist off the plastic cap, so she does it for me.
“Small sips, or you’ll throw it right back up because you’re dehydrated. Your electrolytes are imbalanced enough as it is. I don’t want you passing out on me.”
So now she’s Mother Teresa.
“When do I get my lollipop?”
A hint of a smile lifts her lips. Her voice low, she says, “I thought you’d do well. The guys had their money on Gray getting you to crack in under two minutes, but you struck me as someone who digs in her heels.”
“Really? How could you tell?”
“I saw them bring you aboard. What a shit show. You managed to make eight trained Marines look like circus clowns.”
I say drily, “Apparently, I do my best fighting when I’m under the influence of mind-altering drugs. I don’t remember a thing about getting here. Which isn’t exactly reassuring considering I had a brain bleed recently.”
“I don’t know about your brain, but there’s nothing wrong with your fine motor skills, that’s for sure.”
She sounds like she’s proud of me.
I’m curious about her until she says, “Let’s get you some food,” and she’s instantly dead to me. All I can think about is stuffing my face.
She makes me a plate, sets it on the coffee table by the sofa, then exits the room. I wobble over to the food and fall on it like a farm animal at the trough.
When I’m finished, I collapse back onto the sofa and close my eyes. I lie there listening to my disgruntled stomach grumble and groan as it tries to digest the first food it’s had in days, and wonder what’s happening. Wonder why I’ve been let out of the cage.
Wonder what they’re really going to do with me.
Because I know it won’t be as simple as letting me walk away scot-free. Everything involving the government comes with a catch and miles of red tape.
“Declan O’Donnell is one of our finest espionage agents.”
I open my eyes to see a middle-aged man with shoe-polish-black hair in a navy blue pin stripe suit sitting across from me in one of the chairs. I didn’t hear him come in. Did I fall asleep? Or did he simply appear from thin air, like Dracula?
And what the hell did he just say about Declan?
Confused, I repeat, “Espionage?”
“It’s another word for spy.”
“No shit. I don’t like you already.”
“I was trying to be concise, not condescending.”
“You failed.”
He purses his lips and frowns at me. “Perhaps you’d like to sit up so we can talk more comfortably.”
Talk. Here comes that catch. “I’m perfectly comfortable where I am, thank you.”
He crosses his legs, plucking at a piece of nonexistent lint on his suit jacket.
I’m annoying him. Good.
As if I hadn’t interrupted him at all, he continues from the beginning.
“Declan has been an invaluable asset to us for more than twenty years. One of our longest serving. I know him as a man of impeccable integrity, unfailing loyalty, and,” he chuckles, “though his methods are sometimes crude, exceptional abilities.”
Declan is a spy? Is that what he’s saying? That can’t be right. My brain isn’t working.
Just go with it. He’s waiting for you to say something.
“Meaning this Declan kills people well.”
“Indeed. He’s the Leonardo da Vinci of killers. Utterly efficient, utterly ruthless. As evolved to kill without remorse as a crocodile.” Behind his wire-rimmed glasses and practiced demeanor of a friendly advertising executive, his gaze is a vulture’s. “So imagine my surprise when I found out about you.”
“I already told you guys. I don’t know a Declan. Thanks for the food, though. Will I be going back to my cage now?”
He waves a hand like I’m being ridiculous. “You’ve passed the test. No need to continue the charade.”
Sitting up is a struggle, but I eventually get there. “Test?”
“Did you think we’d let one of our most valued agents get romantically entangled without a vetting process?”
“Is that a rhetorical question? Because I have some feelings to share with you if it is.”
“The answer is no. We would not. We don’t take those kind of risks. So you were brought here for evaluation.”
I say nothing. I’m still dizzy and nauseated, and I might smell like pee. It’s hard to concentrate on what this suit is saying, or what he wants from me, because a disbelieving chorus of Declan is a spy? is running through my head like a song on repeat.
Gazing at me with an odd expression, the suit says, “I didn’t expect you to perform so well.”
I realize that his weird expression is admiration and get a bad feeling about where he’s going with this. “Um…thanks?”
“We’d like you to work for us.”
I have to take a moment to let that ridiculous statement sink through my throbbing skull. “I already have a job, but I appreciate the offer.”
He chuckles. “Not as a yoga instructor. In intelligence gathering.”
“In other words, spying.”
“Correct.”
To buy some time for my brain to recover from that newest shock, I say, “Who’s we?”
“The United States government.”
“You mean the CIA?”
“The particular branch is immaterial.”
“I’d like to know who I’d be working for.”
“You’d report to a handler who’d give you your assignments. That’s all you need to know at this point.”
“Would I still have to pay taxes?”
“Yes.”
“So what’s the upside?”
“You’d be serving your country.”
“I consider myself a citizen of the multiverse.”
“I’m not joking, Miss Keller.”
“Neither am I. I’d be a bad investment. When the aliens land, I’ll be the first one to volunteer to head off with them to Mars.”
He pauses to gather his fraying patience. “I’m not making myself clear. This isn’t an offer. It’s an order.”
I smile condescendingly at him. “Too bad you’re not the boss of me.”
His expression sours. “If you refuse, you’ll be administered an injection of potassium chloride that will induce cardiac arrest within seven minutes. It will be fatal. It will also be an excruciating seven minutes. Then we’ll wrap your body in a biodegradable shroud enhanced with shark attractant and dump you into the sea. No part of you will ever be found.”
“Wow. And here I thought we were getting along so well.”
“You’re exceptionally stubborn. I like that. I also like your spirit. In twenty-five years on this job, I’ve had thousands of enemy combatants pass through the various facilities I oversee. Ninety-one percent of them give us the information we’re looking for within one day of arrival. Another four percent make it two days before they give in. You can see why I’m impressed.”
“What about the other five percent?”
He smiles.
“Sleeping with the fishes, huh?”
“Such a quaint expression to describe something so unspeakably violent. Before you make your decision, there are two things I’d like you to keep in mind. First, refusal equals certain death.”
“You already mentioned that.”
“I thought it important enough to restate. Second, you’re not the only one that applies to.”
He lets that hang there for a moment, just to make sure I understand what he’s threatening.
“You said Declan was one of your finest agents.”
“And now he’s one of our finest agents with a weakness. You.”
I can tell he’s serious. If I don’t cooperate, both Declan and I will die.
Fucking bureaucrats.
“Oh, one other item. You’ll end things between the two of you.”
My pulse goes haywire. My hands turn clammy. My stomach clenches into a horrid little knot. We stare at each other for what feels like a long time in total silence interrupted only by the occasional rumble of my stomach.
Finally, I say, “The hell I will.”
“I can’t have one of my best agents distracted. Your relationship is a liability.”
My voice rises. “I won’t end it.”
“You will, and you’ll make up something that won’t make him suspect we had this conversation. Perhaps that you did a lot of thinking while you were locked up and realized he wasn’t the man for you.”
Panic grips me. I’m both hot and cold, frozen in place but shaking violently. My voice shakes too when I say, “He won’t believe it. He’s too smart for me to pull it off convincingly.”
“I have the utmost confidence in your ability to be convincing. After all, Declan’s life is at stake.” He smiles. “And it does seem as though you’re quite taken with him, considering you’d rather starve to death alone in a shipping container than admit you’d ever met. I so admire that kind of loyalty. I know you’ll do well for us.”
He rises. His footsteps are whisper quiet against the floor. At the door, he pauses. I feel him looking back at me, but I can’t tear my gaze away from the empty plate of food on the coffee table. I can’t focus. I can hardly breathe.
Declan is a spy. I’m going to be a spy. And I have to end it between us.
Convincingly.
Or he dies.
Maybe I’m still in the hospital with that brain clot, hallucinating everything.
“I’ll give you some time to get it sorted. Don’t take long, though. Best to rip off the Band-Aid quickly. I’ll be in touch once it’s done. And remember, we never spoke. Don’t try to get creative and tell him about this conversation in some silly way like writing him a note. I’ll know if you do.”
Feeling sick, I say, “How would you know?”
“The same way I know the name of the boy who pushed you down the steps of the quad in school when you were fourteen and made you miscarry. It’s my job. Welcome aboard, Miss Keller.”
The door swings open and closed.
He’s gone before he can see me vomit all over the floor.
