With a Pull of a Trigger

Chapter Five

“I was only being difficult because you two were unclear. I was merely—ah—trying to speak in the same language as you two.”

“How were we unclear?” asked Eena, incredulous.

Gil raised an eyebrow. “Well, you two are here, aren’t you?”

Reini looked at Eena, confused.

Gil stood up from his wing chair and walked to his desk with the confidence of someone who had power. “How did you two think I learned of your names?” He walked back to them and threw two brown folders on the coffee table, right in front of Eena and Reini.

Reini took the brown folder in front of her gingerly, still looking at Gil.

“I know all about you two,” said Gil, sitting down in his wing chair and crossing his legs. “I know all about you, agent Reini Saunders; one of the CIA’s very dear darlings who was tasked to protect a Mister Milton and ended up fake dead instead, and I know all about you too, agent Eena Acker who is another agent from Cell Twelve.”

Reini and Eena opened their folders and found their faces staring back at them.

The folder had their information.

Reini looked up at Gil, shocked even though she knew it was standard protocol for agents to have information about fellow agents.

“I feel quite flattered, really,” said Gil, clasping his hands together and putting them on his knee. “I didn’t expect that the CIA’s going to bring me the cream of the crop. Crème de la crème, isn’t it called?”

Eena closed her brown folder and put it on the table. Never before was she sent on a mission where the target knew about her.

“You can see that I was slightly confused as to why the CIA would task their best agents to come here, hence the fact that I said you two were being unclear.”

Reini glanced at Eena, then looked back at Gil. “We were not assigned here to hurt you, we promise.”

“That’s what they all say,” said Gil breezily. “However, if there’s one important lesson that I learned at the first week I was an agent, it was that agents lie.”

Reini knew that fact. Everyone knew that agents were among the top people never to be trusted and believed, and of course Gil, being a former agent himself, knew that fact. It was among one of the first lessons told to them; to never show vulnerability to enemies and let themselves be fooled by the other side.

Reini knew that trust wasn’t something to be taken lightly. Agents knew that fact so very well, what with the numerous agents who have lost a lot of things because of their work.

Some lost family members. Some lost possessions. Some lost their lives.

Reini lost Samuel.

But then again, no one could lose something they never had, can they? Reini knew it was presumptuous of her to assume that Samuel had grown to care for her but it was something she couldn’t help. She was making a fantasy, a world where everything was right and Samuel loved her.

But fantasies were only things created to distract herself from the awful reality she was stuck in, and it was time for her to grow up and face reality. It was time for her to grow up and realize that Samuel might never forgive her, and that her job was the only thing she had left.

It was time for her to do her job, and do it well.

“Look, we swear we weren’t here to hurt you,” snapped Eena. “We were here to merely observe and find out if you were truly once a member of The Alliance.”