Labyrinth of White - The Moon Trilogy - Book #1

Chapter twelve:

77432 crouched on the grass behind the house. There was only one light on, and it was on the first floor, not a problem. Her targets were going to be on the second floor, if they were there at all. She made a spiral motion with her hand.

There was a hardly noticeable scuffling behind her and one of her agents was soon crouched to her left. She made several more motions with her hands, silently communicating everything that the agent needed to know.

She had made her whole team learn an adjusted form of sign language for missions that required silence. She finished with her signing and the agent beside her nodded to show that he had understood. The order was relayed. They would move in two minutes.

She had been trained her whole life. This was her twenty-second mission leading a team, and it was just one among the numberless. So far, at least with her in charge, they had all been easy successes. She never failed.

She was wearing an outfit straight out of some assassin movie, but despite the apparent theatrics of it, it was still the most effective. The loose-fitting black fabric not only allowed for the greatest range of motion, but it was also best for work in the shadows. The dark color allowed her to simply melt away when in darkness.

The rest of her team, not trained in martial arts like she was, and with no need for such pliable material, were dressed in standard camo uniforms. All of their faces were covered completely by masks, so it almost seemed as if each of their faces had been swallowed by shadow.

Her mission this time was to bring back the trainee whose disk was failing and always did fail. As a side task, she was also supposed to find the target that the trainee had failed to apprehend. This was easy compared to her other missions. She would be back at headquarters in no time.

The two minutes passed. Her men started to move out. She looked at her watch. The face of it glowing ever-so-slightly in the dark.

Just in time. She silently congratulated herself for training her troops so well. Two minutes on the dot.

They set a long, low, rectangular box on the ground under the attic window. She pushed a red button on her watch- which was more than just a watch- and the box let out an almost-silent hiss. A rubbery ladder rose up out of the box, all the way up to the window. It stopped and tipped toward the house. It hit the wall with a very faint click. As soon as it was in place, it hardened up to a climbable material, which would disintegrate after a couple of hours passed.

She signed a few more things to her second-in-command. He nodded his understanding. Her men started climbing the ladder, perfectly synchronized so that the one man's hand grabbed the rung that the first man's foot had just left.

In a moment the first man reached the window. He attached a little red box to the lower window pane and clicked a button on the box. It let out a puff of air.

A second later, the window was open.

One after the other, the men climbed through the window. Not one of them made a noise. Her second-in-command went last. He was hardly any different than any of the others, and he couldn't actually give out any orders without her authorization. She was the sole leader because her superiors knew that she could be trusted to make split-second decisions should something fail to work, but so far, nothing and no one had malfunctioned. The other agents, hampered by the tech that was implanted into their skulls, were unable to make such complicated thought connections. Some were smart, sure, and some might even be called intelligent. But not like she was.

As soon as she saw the last boot disappear through the open window, she started to climb. She was up the ladder and through the window in seconds. There wasn't even a whisper of a sound except for the gentle swish of her clothes brushing against the ladder.