Porcelain

Prologue

A child is tossed aside as she is shoved into the arms of the radicals. Age worn hands grasp the maternal figure, flinging the feeble female across the room; she is no more than a mangled heap.

But the child is taken. The faint radiating innocence has long gone, bundled up and hidden. Because she was more precious than the woman that preceded.

"Your mother would've wanted this" A grave voice rumbled.

The waif of a girl shuddered, clinging to her all too foreign shawl as her pinned up curls began loosening from the shuddering of the vehicle.

Uncrossing her ankles, a delicate reached out to touch the shoulder of the elderly gentleman, "Do you truly believe your words?"

An unsettling smile fell upon his face; the result was far better than he had hoped. She had far exceeded expectations. Out of habit, he roughly shoved her hand away from him.

"We all do"

"We?"

"Everyone"

Silence covered what was left of the exchange, and before long they had already boarded the aircraft, leading them straight to the destined battlefield.

"I will do you the courtesy of explaining to you what will become of you, for I know that you will have no more idle time after we touchdown"

She nods, already too involved to just jump out of the metal doors and fall to her death.

"A pretty face and a brilliant mind. The perfect distraction and weapon, that none of those power hungry monkeys will every suspect. You are our ticket to victory"

"I am not inclined to speak in metaphors"

"You should learn then. This is life or death for you, however rest be assured that if anything befalls upon you, it will be for the sake of the country"

"My task?" She queried, her curiosity peaked, followed closely by the constant lingering dread she had ever since she had left the comfort of home.

"You look like us, yet your ears are tuned to them. They need you for trivial physical matters, yet you are so much more than that. You are lethal, and will feed back to us everything that you will hear."

"I am to prostitute myself for information?"

"I am glad your mother raised no idiot"

"My mother raised no whore" She spat, her features scrunching together as more and more dread flooded her senses.

"Who she raised does not matter, it is who you will become that is all we're concerned about now."

"Will you promise me immunity after this? Protection and complete exclusion from anything else of the same nature?"

"Inherently"

Her nod signed her doom, and as her mind realised truly what she had become, the wheels of her chariot had touched down in the battlefield.

Busy and hushed hands guided her quickly away from her commander, and lead her to a woman.

A quick glance at her told her everything she needed to know.

She was poised and almost elegant - almost being key - a beautiful impostor, as the age that she tried to cover up with powder glared blazingly at the young lady. Her hair slicked back, and draped in silk, she was a sight.

"Nine?" She stated, the old tongue raspy, yet somehow seductive.

A confused look clouded the younger's face, before the superior glared at her and extended her finger to gesture to the girl, "Names are not permitted here. It's too intimate for places such as this. Remember the number whenever you are summoned. The lower the number, the higher you are on the hierarchy."

She nodded quickly, no longer feeling as empowered as she had when her task had been explained.

"Now, you must be dressed down, we have a month to get you ready for your debut"

"My debut?"

"As one of us of course"

The comfort of her clothing was stripped away before silks enveloped her lithe figure, and a lace shawl drawn over her shoulders.

"This is dressed down?"

She was forced into some simple heeled platforms as the woman stared at her face closely.

"First lesson starts now. You can't rest, for I have only a month to make you perfect"

She gestured down to the plush seats in the office that she had been shoved into, grasping her new useless shawl, she seated herself, ankles crossed and shoulders back, a poised lady in waiting.

"You're too regal for this, get rid of all those mannerisms. You're not even slightly seductive, too condescending"

"I'm sorry?"

"Cross your legs at your knees, let your dress ride up a bit, and lean back slightly, make yourself a view to be admired and worshiped, not avoided."

Following the instructions carefully, she declined slightly letting her shoulders hit the backrest of the leather chair.

"That'll do."

She then gestured to the wall behind her, "I need you to study all of this, I need you to be able to recite backwards at will. This is the only lifeline you're given"

The wall was certainly not just some brainstormed ideas, it was a mural. Decorated with facts, newspapers, maps, notes, it was the in depth version of an explanation to the war. It was knowledge that was hard to come by.

"This is all we know, and it's certainly not enough to win," Moving silently to a slightly further part of it, her hand traced a particularly sparse area, "You will need to fill this, the information that you will gather will complete the majority of this puzzle"

"How?"

"Just listen"