PROLOGUE

Jade crouched in the shadows.

Not that she had much of a choice; the entire building was dark, hiding her every movement. She silently motioned to her partner to move up. In the hazy world of her Nightvisor lenses, she saw Agent 40 stride in front of her to the next green file cabinet. He paused, watching the doorway of their destination; the War Room. He motioned back, and Jade made her way toward the door.

It was larger than it looked from the distance across the room. A foggy reflection of her masked face stared back at her from the smooth, cold surface of the door. Evan appeared next to her.

“Schematics said this is the only lock,” he said, reaching for a keypad near the handle.

Though he stood right next to her, she heard the voice only as a whisper through her earpiece. She nodded, motioning him to get them through. He knelt next to her and attached a similar keypad to the one on the door.

Jade looked back across the room. At the far end were the welcoming double doors they had just passed, followed by the open rows of wooden desks and filing cabinets that were perpendicular to the windows overlooking the city. She thought it odd that the material they had come here for would be “hidden” in a place so…friendly.

“Half way there,” said the whisper.

She thought of John, imagined where he was at that moment…probably eating lunch in the cool cafeteria back home, or perhaps jogging in the gym. Lucky dog. Not that she wouldn’t rather be working; this job was her passion. She just wished he was with her. Unfortunately, the safety of her home, her country, her life was at stake, and she was the first to volunteer her team. America first. Happiness second. What was taking so long?

“Got it.” Evan stood, pressed a button on his keypad, and the door unlocked with a click.

“Nice work,” Jade whispered back, and reached for the handle. On any other mission, she would have expected an alarm to go off. But not tonight. Up to this point, things had been too easy. She pulled the door open without hesitation, and walked inside.

“Easy 39,” came the voice in her ear, “This is the only room we don’t have intel. on.”

They had reached their destination. It was just as dark as the rest of the building, except for the small red and green lights blinking along the walls. Her lenses adjusted slightly for the change of ambiance, and she approached the computers that lined the edge of the room. “Which one?” she asked her partner.

“One of them has to be a master. Building plans said this room is completely sealed except for the doors, so the systems must only be linked in here.”

Jade found it immediately. “There,” she said, pointing toward the corner. A single monitor was larger than the rest, and sat upon a separate table. They made their way to it.

“Alright, let’s get these documents and get out of here. I don’t like being dead-ended.” Evan always preferred fighting to be outside, should there be any, so the 30th- story, single-door room hardly appealed to him. Not that she could blame him. Now that they were inside, she began getting nervous.

“Almost too easy, 39.”

She heard his smile. “We’re not out of here yet, 40.”

“John would be proud.”

“John would be jealous.” She reveled in that for a moment. John was five years ahead of her in the Bureau, but she never missed a chance to gloat. Besides, she outranked him by default.

Evan pulled his mask and Nightvisor off, so the monitor light wouldn’t hurt his eyes. Jade did the same, her straight, dark hair falling perfectly into place like it always did. She watched her partner pull out another electronic device as he reached for the terminal.

Evan turned on the monitor.

Game over.

Blinding lights illuminated the room, outdone only by the alarms that filled the air. The agents jumped, finding themselves caught off guard at first, but before their next heartbeat, they were already half way back across the room. Jade sprinted back through the doors first, heading straight for the exit on the opposite end. She clenched her mask, careful not to drop it- the Nightvisor included American technology. Most of their equipment did, and they had specific instructions not to leave anything behind on missions. File cabinets blurred by, and they barely made it through the doors when they heard footsteps and orders being commanded from an adjacent hall.

The stairwell was through the door just beyond that hall. As they raced by, Jade turned her head slightly to see what was coming- no less than thirty feet down that corridor was a team of soldiers, or what she assumed were soldiers due to their uniforms and weapons, running straight for them. She looked farther back, saw Evan right behind her, and looked forward again in time to see the stairwell door directly in front of her face. They both jumped the entire first case, turned on the landing, and continued. Jade heard the many footsteps thundering too closely behind her.

What went wrong? They had followed protocol to the letter. How could they have known why were there soldiers in the building already they must have known we were coming oh God I’ve failed a mission whose lives have I lost-

Jade plunged into the first floor lobby. She never stopped running, but immediately saw the problem that lay ahead. They had come in through a delivery entrance that led them directly onto the second floor in the back of the building- they hadn’t gotten a chance to go back that way because of their pursuers. A hundred feet away from her were the glass front doors. They were no doubt locked. She could attempt to shoot them out, but this was a high-security building. They were probably shatter-proof. Another exit where is it where do we go they’re right behind us thirty more feet to decide-

An echoing crack filled her ears, the reverberation of a bullet fired from behind her. She leaped over a security desk and hit the floor. Without Evan. She looked toward the doors- she saw her crouched reflection, and above that, four ghostly soldiers, guns raised. No Evan. Had they shot him?

“Stand!”

A delicate but overpowering voice echoed throughout the lobby. A woman’s voice that sounded too pure to ever be tainted with violence. Jade didn’t move. She looked again toward her exit, just as a dozen more soldiers ran to the doors and stopped, guns raised. One of them had a key.

She swallowed.

“Stand!”

The agent slowly raised herself up as the enemy poured through the doors and spread out around her. The cyanide pill was in her chest pocket- she could reach for it, but she supposed it wouldn't matter. Not with this many guns pointed at her. She turned to face the voice that hurts what is it was I shot- her eyes moved to the high-windowed ceiling. It seemed darker than it should have been.