"I'm in." A young woman spoke into the receiver of an early 50's model telephone before slowly removing it from the side of her face. Suddenly, an operator's voice replied, hastefully trying to get her attention.
"Hey...Eh, you sure you don't need anything else? This place isn't exactly safe for us anymore."
She moved the receiver back to her face to reply. "I know it isn't. The only reason we're still alive is because someone decided it was feasible to let us live. Now, we can sit here and b1tch about how we don't have anyone to help us, or we can do something about the situation and get home, if we even have a home to go to anymore."
"Traice... just don't do anything stupid. The commander already wants to throw us in the stockade."
"We'll deal with the commander if we can get this piece of $#!T back down there." She hung the phone up and walked towards the door of the old, condemned pawn shop. As she approached the exit, the audible footsteps of three men could be heard, reaching the door from the other side. The men began to speak as she listened from inside the room.
"She's here..."
"The target..."
"Yes."
"That means the strike failed"
"...then we proceed as planned."
Traice stepped away from the door, looking around the room for another exit and fixed her eyes on a small window that was on the same level with the street outside. She reached under the counter the phone was sitting on and picked up an MP5K sub-machine gun, pointing it towards the door while sidestepping to the window.
As the Agents began to pound on the door, she leapt through the window, rolling across the sidewalk onto the street. As the driver of an oncoming taxi cab slammed his brakes, violently swerving to avoid her, she jumped again, rolling on top of the roof of the car and opened fire at one of the Agents that emerged from the building. The pedestrians in the otherwise quiet Mannsdale neighborhood scattered or fell to the ground, trembling. The Agent's form became a blur, dodging round after round of ammunition as the others joined him.
Fleeing the scene, she ripped through another oncoming taxi as it hit a parked car and jackknifed into the air in the direction of the suited men. Taking the distraction and moving out of the way of the projectile, the Agents had given her just enough time to leap out of sight.
Treading from rooftop to rooftop, she jumped into an alleyway, discarding her coat as she made her way towards the hardline in the middle of the neighborhood. "$#!T..." She whispered to herself, surveying the open area around the phone booth. Between the pedestrians and commuters already in the area and the emergency and military teams speeding towards the "crime scene", someone in the vicinity would surely become an Agent and take her out right away.
"C'mon, Traice. This isn't the time for this... You can make it." She muttered to herself quietly. She took a deep breath and took off, sprinting towards the green "CITY" sign through a sea of bluepills. She collided with a woman walking on the sidewalk, quickly taking the cell phone she was carrying out of her hand and continued. The woman flailed for a moment, then after a short spasm, was in the form of another Agent.
"Downtown! Anywhere downtown! I'm right at the hardline. Make the call now!" She shouted into the phone after dialing her operator. As she reached the phone booth, the Agent pulled out his polished black FM-1500 and aimed it at her with mechanical accuracy, pulling the trigger. Traice's residual self-image had disappeared, and the bullet shattered the glass.
Trace was now somewhere in the downtown area of the city, anonymous. The police department was alerted, but there were no leads to her exact location.
))
