Alice's Story

Alice tossed another chunk of bread out to the ducks that were ushering their babies around the lake. "Ducks," she shouted repeatedly as she giggled uncontrollably. "I wish I could keep a baby duck. But I think it would miss you to much Mama Duck." A baby duck wandered from it's mother to the chunk of bread resting at Alice's side. "Hi little duckie." Alice picked up the willing duckling and held it in the palm of her hand. She gently pet the little animal with her finger, giggling as it quacked happily to her.

Not to much longer after, the rest of the babies family made their way to her. "You guys are so cute! So pure ..." The ducklings were fuzzy and soft still new to the world. Some of them probably wouldn't make it, but they were looking at the world like nothing was wrong. "I wish I could be like you guys. Besides the feathers," Alice giggled. "Oh well. I'm here now."

The bread was soon gone and the duck family headed back to the pond. Alice herself put in her headphones, blasted her music and laid back in the grass, watching the clouds pass. She got fed, had people to take care of her, she had a room, what was missing? Nothing as far as she was concerned. Maybe she was the only cyborg who thought so, but Alice knew that what they did wasn't right. She wasn't sure what the difference between right and wrong were anymore. But if she told that to the shrinks, she might have to be completely reconditioned.

Alice yawn and stretched, a nap sounded amazing. So when her eyes drifted shut to the beat of her music, she didn't try and stop it from happening.

Walter woke up from his sleep, with the realization that he was still at his computer, the browser flickering to indicate he had received a new message. Clicking it open revealed it to be work, sending him a mission. An odd one.bartached to the message was a video clip of a child killing man using a handgun. Walter's sleepiness evaporated. The child had yellow hair. Closer examination of the blurry picture led Walter to realize it was Daniel Westfield, one of the cyborg field operatives of the SWA. The mission was to apprehend him to be brought back to the SWA. This mission probably was sent to other handlers and cyborgs. That, however, Walter did not know. Locking the computer, Walter got up and grabbed the briefcase at the side of his chair, containing his equipment, and took his coat from the coatrack nearby. In his haste, he decided he could skip the hat. With that, he began to look for Alice.

A quick look at Walter's phone gave him the position if Alice. She was outside, near the lake. Walter began to walk towards her position. When he finally got to her, he noticed she was nearly asleep. Or maybe she was fully asleep. And listening to music. Walter moved closer, sat down next to her, and then lightly tapped on her shoulder, just enough to wake her.

"Alice, wake up. We have work to do."

Alice was reaming sweetly of riding a giant duck when a tapping on her shoulder awakened her. Her stretching was most feline-like and her yawn was like a roar of a howler monkey ... well ... sort of. The young girl looked up to see her handler, Walter, sitting next to her. Alice smiled at him.

"We have work to do." She heard and nodded.

"What is the job now," Alice said, trying not to whine. It had seemed like they had just gotten back from one mission, why would another one come up so soon? Because the world couldn't handle it's own problems and shoved it on little assassin girls. "Recon, protection, capture, siege and destroy, silence, tell me if I'm getting warm." Alice took out her music and paused it as she stuffed it into her pocket. "Is it gonna be more than one day? When are we leaving? Am I allowed to bring a pop tart with me?" The last questions wasn't truly random, Alice's stomach grumbled due to her feeding her lunch to the ducks and fish.

The flood of questions caught Walter off guard. Luckily, he could satisfy most of them with a single answer.

"Well, you see, we have to locate an agent, a cyborg, and detain him to bring back here. Or to kill them, depending on if your orders change or not. For now, we need to get him back. As for who it is and what happened, it looked like Daniel Westfield, and it looked like he killed somebody that maybe he wasn't supposed to. We will probably leave soon, unless you have something urgent you need to do. I use the term, "urgent," loosely. It will possibly be more than one day, but I doubt any more than 2. Or it could go very badly, and then it might take a while, or make more missions to do in the future. Also, you can definitely bring a poptart. I'll be in the car, planning our route. Come by when you're ready. Also, I expect other agents to be there, but we can't rely on support until we know for sure. I haven't gotten a call yet from other agents, so I don't know if others are on the same mission or not. Anywho, I'll be waiting."

Walter smiled as he turned to leave. He walked through the headquarters building until he reached the car they were to take, a black SUV. Walter placed his large suitcase into the trunk, and climbed into the driver's seat. Within the next few moments, Walter brought a laptop from under the seat out, and began to plan their route, consulting information of where Daniel was seen last, or rather, where his mission sent him to.

"Well, you see, we have to locate an agent, a cyborg, and detain him to bring back here. Or to kill them, depending on if your orders change or not. For now, we need to get him back. As for who it is and what happened, it looked like Daniel Westfield, and it looked like he killed somebody that maybe he wasn't supposed to. We will probably leave soon, unless you have something urgent you need to do. I use the term, 'urgent,' loosely. It will possibly be more than one day, but I doubt any more than 2. Or it could go very badly, and then it might take a while, or make more missions to do in the future. Also, you can definitely bring a poptart. I'll be in the car, planning our route. Come by when you're ready. Also, I expect other agents to be there, but we can't rely on support until we know for sure. I haven't gotten a call yet from other agents, so I don't know if others are on the same mission or not. Anywho, I'll be waiting."

Alice jumped up happily, nodding to her Handler. "I'll be out soon! I'll go grab my stuff." With that, Alice was off into the nearest building, where her dorm room was located. Once she arrived to the room, she looked around. She had tons of stuffed animals, toys and whatnot. It looked like a little girls room, but a look outside the window showed something like a military base. Alice grabbed her shoulder bag and threw some cloths, her music player and many poptarts from her secret stash under her bed. She felt ready enough.

After a search for the giant SUV, she found it sitting idle with Walter in the front seat. She opened the passenger door and struggled in her attempt to enter, but made it after a finally leap. Alice held onto the armrest as she closed the door and kicked off her shoes. It was a habit of hers to sit in cars cross legged. She thought she may have forgotten her weapons, but a quick check revealed she had them already in her shoulder bag. Good thing too, it would have been terrible if they had gotten there and she had left her instruments at home.

"Ready Captain," Alice saluted Walter. She placed her shoes on the floor neatly and her bag on top of them, then buckling herself in.

It hadn't taken Walter very long to plan a route. The specifications of Daniel's position and mission, last he was seen, were clear, and available. The rest of the time Walter had stayed alone in the van was spent quietly. Walter had lost his train of thought, and, in his wait for Alice, a dark look returned to Walter's face. He could already remember the horrors of war. Fighting wa not something Ealter enjoyed. If possible, he would avoid it. Well, that was probably why Walter was working with the SWA, to prevent more war. However, here Walter was, working with another child soldier.



"Ready Captain," Alice said as she saluted Walter. She placed her shoes on the floor neatly and her bag on top of them, then buckling herself in.

Walter snapped out of it. Alice had stepped in. He enjoyed her presence, watching as she sat down in the passenger's seat with her legs crossed. Walter had seen the moment where a child becomes a soldier, and to Walter, it was horrifying. Walter ad never seen the moment in himself, but maybe for him it happened too early to remember. Or maybe it had never happened. Maybe that was why Walter was so eager to become a scientist, rather than work as an agent, or assassin. Whatever the case, the fact that Alice was so much unlike most of the other cyborgs here really made him wonder if, even with conditioning, she hadn't lost who she was to war. Walter smiled, as he set the car on it's course for the apartment where Daniel was to fid his mark.

Alice may have felt like a dog sometimes with the urges to stick her head out of the window, but she couldn't be too wild. It always cause trouble for Walter when she was. So she simply pressed her face to the window and stared at the clouds.

"Oh!" Alice reached into her bag and handed Walter a pop tart package. "Just incase you get hungry, okay?"

It didn't take Alice long to distract herself with clouds and moving around in her seat like a monkey. Cars were just so much fun when no one was yelling at you. After she got comfy, she continued to stare at the sky. Alice remembered when she thought she was growing wings. She had been having dreams about growing wings and flying. So when her back hurt, she thought that she was going to sprout wings at anytime.

It only turned out to be faulty joints causing her distress. Of course she was disappointed, but she was also happy. Where would Alice go? She would probably have been hunted down and killed. That or experiments. The white coats would have way to much fun.

Flying seemed to nice to Alice. If she had they chance, one thing she would do before she retired was fly.

(So, is this still alive then?)

Daniel got off a block from his stop. The warehouse was close. But, he needed to re-supply first.

He still felt shaken, and it wasn't something he was used to feeling. For the first time, he felt targeted and hunted. It was not something he was used to. He worked solo perfectly fine, but even then, he had intel, ops, and supplies. And the one man he actually knew that he trusted more then anyone else was dead.

He had established several safe houses in multiple cities, and only a little less then half were registered by the agency. He walked up the stairs, and entered one of them after he unlocked the door. He locked it after he entered, and re supplied ammo for his guns, and explosives for general use. Then it occurred to him that the ballistics wouldn't match. Each gun made its own marks on each bullet, so if they tested it the gun would not match the wounds. He left that gun in a secure case in the Safe house, got changed quickly, and left.

He left via the fire escape into the alley, and made his way to the warehouse by hiding in crowds or using back alleys. When he made it to the warehouse, he knew it wouldn't be long before they managed to follow him here. He set up a breaching explosive, enough to get in, but not to make a loud noise or big light. Once that was done, he went in. There were a lot of empty shelves, crates, and junk. But there was this room inside, with the light on. He went over there, to see if anyone was inside.

There wasn't, however. There was a computer though. Daniel moved the mouse, re activating it. A video file, with audio, started to play as he looked around. It was a variety of things. Financial reports, employment papers, approval of allocation of Government resources, transit records, flight plans, power company reports. He did not see it at first, but then he realized this was all related to the Agency. Because he found some files, on his handler, on the others, on the director. And then, he found his handler.

"Patient's name is listed as Daniel Westfield..." Daniel looked back at the video playing. It was him, after having been operated on it seems. "...we managed to stabilize him. He survived, though I am not sure if he should have. He was injured, well, not sure by who or with what. Neither of his parents are reachable, I fear whatever to him happened to them, possibly worse. Anyways, seeing as he hasn't fallen into a coma, I am calling the Social Welfare Agency. This case is just the thing they would handle, that is for sure..."

He could hear his own voice in the background, moaning. "He must be strong. He is awake already..."

Daniel wasn't sure what to think. This data was supposed to be scrubbed, it shouldn't exist. But here it was, a copy of it saved. Daniel felt like this was familiar, but there was this blank feeling combined with a migraine. Whoever was behind this had something big planned, and they were confident if they were showing their hand like this. However, Daniel got distracted again when another video started to play.

"Hey Danny, remember me?"

"Michael! Your back from college!"

The video camera was focused on Daniel, but Daniel ran towards this Michael. It appeared to be him holding the video. "Say Hello to mom. I plan to send this video to her".

"Hiiiii moooom!"

"Alright Daniel, let me make us both a snack. Is dad home?"

"Not yet. And nachos, please!"

The video ended. What was on the computer now was a certificate of death for Daniel Westfield. A voice was also playing from the computer now. "So tell me, what keeps you loyal to these people? The fact they saved your life? After all, you did mysteriously arrive at the hospital, with no witnesses how, and your injuries perfect for the SWA? Seems rather suspicious, I would say. And hiding you from your family. Tell me, why do you think they took your memories, as well? Why isolate you from the people you belong with? The answer is simple, to them you are a tool, nothing more. Now, they will see you as a liability. So they will discard you, end your life, and make it look like you died in that hospital room like they faked. You can't go to the media, not with what you have done. You can't return to the government, they will kill you to keep themselves safe. You have two options. Find your family, starting with your brother because he is closest, or work for us and let us protect you, and your family. The first option will almost certainly lead to us anyways, because they will see them just as much of a risk as you".

Daniel wasn't sure what to do. He was still processing everything. He looked back at the warehouse main room, then at the computer. "Why me?"

"You were sent on this mission".

"But why set me up if you wanted to help me?"

"Because..." The computer monitor switched to a traffic camera. He could make out a man and a girl in the vehicle. "The SWA has sent Alice after you. An assassin. If we had simply asked you, you might have not believed us. Your brother is currently in the city for a meeting. You see, after he was done with the army, he went to college, and after your death, strived to become great in your name. He is currently making massive amounts of money, and is planning to build the Danny Westfield Memorial Tower, just for you. He truly is a great brother, and you two were robbed of each other. So, are you going to let Alice kill you, or are you going to re-unite with your brother. They can't kill your brother in public, not with a government registered vehicle or with a government officer, even if his job isn't quite what people think. He is at Durrenbell Tower. You could wait for him in the lobby".

Daniel wasn't sure what to do. He knew he was being played like a piano. No way someone would do what they have done for the right reasons. But his brother had answers, and the truth would be a lot easy to find if they talked, he believed.

He just also knew this was quite obviously a trap. He was a mouse in a maze with a cat, and they controlled the walls.