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Kira, Kira, Kira

Sadaf Ayaz 

Professor Hammer

10/24/2016

English 300

Workshop One

Two hundred and forty-three Mississippi.

Two hundred and forty-four Mississippi.

I kept counting mentally as I strained my ears to hear my surroundings. My eyes weren’t of much help since this…secret tunnel thing was sealed shut from every corner. From a distance, I could hear cars whooshing past. As the wooden cart I was in kept moving forward, I figured that I was out of my neighborhood, but where exactly–I was embarrassed to say–I had no idea. All I knew was that I was headed towards the highway or the forest around it. Perhaps maybe even towards the small fire I had seen earlier.

If my mind wasn’t racing with questions as to what was going on, I would’ve gotten off a long time ago. The perfection of the whole situation didn’t make this just any project. It was personal and it was meant to get me. This was personal and whoever was behind this made sure I would understand that.

Two hundred and forty-eight Mississippi.

I was taught how to be brave in these situations. But for some reason, my overconfidence from just a while before had completely disappeared.

Two hundred and forty-nine Mississippi.

You see, when a regular civilian doesn’t realize something is wrong, it’s okay. But when someone like myself doesn’t realize something is wrong, it is unforgivable.

Perhaps it’s because we never think all the bad things that exist in the world could ever touch us. We forget to realize that civilian or not, we all had the same chances of the unexpectedly bad things happening to us.

The wooden cart suddenly stopped and I took in a big gulp.

And all I could think was that this was going to be one of those big realizations.

***

At the end of my second solo operation, I sat in Dylan’s Camaro on my way home with a feeling of triumph and content. I felt like the world was at the tip of my fingers, ready to mold the way I wanted it to, as I got away with all the little games I played with the world. All the things I dreamed of were slowly becoming my reality and I couldn’t help but feel giddy. My eyes wandered over to Dylan with his dark hair disheveled, green eyes set at the task ahead.

He took a quick glance at my direction and smiled. “What?”

I smiled wider and faced the road, “Nothing.”

He sighed, “Kira, Kira, Kira. Oh how much you’ve got to learn.” 

I smirked and looked out at the forest that surrounded either side of the highway and noticed a small bonfire on the center. I could imagine my family and myself there. Sneaking into that forest later in the afternoon to eat some smores and enjoy the chilly night with the trees and stars.

 Just a few more minutes and we’d be in Roslyn. I closed my eyes and let my fantasies go wild. If only my parents knew what I was up to. If there was one thing I hated about this job, it was the secrets and the lying. No matter how much they helped in succeeding on the missions, I couldn’t help but feel like I was compromising a part of my morals every time I went along with it. 

I took a deep breath and relaxed.

I could feel Dylan’s eyes on me a few times during the rest of the ride. I liked to think our relationship was. . .professional. He was one of my trainers and I was his trainee, but the two year difference seemed to slowly take the “professional” out of the relationship.

“And…we’re here.” 

I immediately got up and took off my seatbelt.

“Ah, finally! There honestly is no place like home.”

Dylan laughed. 

“This was probably your shortest time away from home. Wait till your next missions,” he winked.

I smiled. He’d told me this multiple times but seemed to never get tired of the constant reminder.

I sure as heck did.

“I can’t wait for those!” I rolled my eyes.

Dylan laughed, pushing me playfully out of my seat.

I grabbed my bag and stepped out of the car. “In the meantime, I’ll enjoy the company of my parents. Bye!”

After a quick wave goodbye, he drove away. 

I followed the path to my house and almost walked onto the porch when I noticed something gleaming from the front lawn.

Intrigued, I walked over to it and was surprised to find my mother’s favorite bracelet on the ground. My father had given her a silver bracelet a few years ago when they celebrated their twentieth anniversary in the hospital. My mom was going through her first session of chromotherapy then.

Even after her cancer had depleted, she kept it on as a reminder of their strength and unity.

She never took it off.

I frowned once I caught sight of it. She would never leave it lying on the floor like this. A few months ago she had dropped it and we immediately were out on a hunt for it. She wouldn’t rest until we finally found it stuck behind the radiator. She was adamant to take it out and we even had to pay our next door neighbor to rescue it. It was strange to see her favorite and most meaningful bracelet in the world just lying there on the floor.

Something was going on.

I looked around the lawn but I saw no one.

It’s just a coincidence, I told myself, shivering slightly. And it wasn’t because of the cold.

At that moment, I headed to my front door with something nagging at the back of my head.

Only later did I realize it was Dylan’s motto silently chiming in my head: Nothing is ever a coincidence. 

I took out the keys from my bag and opened up the front door. 

I froze, with my fingers still hovering over the door knob. I took in the terrifying sight that will forever be engrained into my brain.

My hands immediately went behind my back to the gun underneath my shirt as I looked at the ground which was layered with dust and dirt from God knows where. It was as if it had snowed dust. 

I anxiously shouldered my bag and checked the area behind me.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

I took a few tentative steps forward and felt my stomach do somersaults.

The house was a mess. 

Everything was completely destroyed. Couches, television, my PS4 that I hadn’t used in quite a while–the wretched person who did this didn’t spare a single thing.

It was one thing to see this happen in other places, but a complete other thing to see it happen to your own house.

And family, I realized in shock. “Mom!” I shouted hoarsely.

I walked to the living room and then towards the bathroom.

“Mom?” I called out, louder.

The house remained silent.

“Dad?” I tried, but received nothing in return. I could feel the knot grow in my throat. I was afraid if I said anything else, I would break down crying.

I slowly put my hands around the doorknob for the bathroom and quickly opened it. It was empty.

“Dammit,” I muttered.

I stopped for a moment.

I heard a silent rattle coming from…the kitchen!

I ran towards the noise only to find that a mouse was making its way through the mess.

I scowled. I always hated mice. Now it just seemed like they were mocking me. 

Didn’t the animal realize this was my property? That my parents had disappeared? You should care. Not just keep eating your life away, pig. In my anger–mostly frustration–I kicked the mouse and saw it sail across the small kitchen.

I took a good glance around.

It was completely trashed. The cabinets were ripped off the walls and everything they contained was pounded to mere rubble.

No human could’ve done this.

Right?

I tried to wipe away the kitchen table in attempt to see if there was something that could give me a clue as to what was happening. I didn’t find anything.

I saw a paper on the ground but just as I went to grab it, a loud thud caught my attention. This was definitely not a rat. I stuffed the paper in my pocket as I quietly walked to the library. 

Most of the books were on the floor, practically bathing in dust. Even more books were ripped apart and left strewn all across the floor.

          A painting I had made for my dad as a child was ripped and on the floor like a garbage. I reached down to pick them up with a wince as I remember working so hard on them.

I whipped my head around, hearing an ominous scraping sound.

Without realizing, I tripped on the books on the floor and fell backward. 

My hands flung to the small desk with a vase. I had accidentally pushed the vase against the bookshelf and it immediately broke into several pieces. With my hand still rested strongly against it, a few shards of glass bit into my hand and blood started dripping out onto the table.

I winced in pain and stood up. I found the nearest piece of cloth and shook it to get rid of the dust, placing it on my cut. 

As I finished up and turned around to pick up my gun, I found that the table had a green glowing light. 

To my complete and utter terror, the long picture frame behind my dad’s desk shook open. I heard the locks turning and the frame opened enough for me to notice that it had been unlocked.

I stood up.

There was only one thing I could do.

I walked toward the frame after praying to every god I knew of–and some superheros just in case.

No wonder the library was always locked, I thought to myself.

How had I never noticed that in the library of my very own house was a secret passageway. I walked over and opened the frame completely. With a quick search inside and knowing that it was safe, I stepped onto my dad’s chair and climbed into the small area that lead to a secret tunnel of a sort. From the light from the cracked walls, I saw a wooden cart on the tracks. 

Could this lead to Mom and Dad? I thought to myself.

“There’s only one way I can find out,” I muttered to myself reassuringly. 

And I immediately jumped in. 

On the cart was a display of different buttons, switches, and levers.

Having no idea of how it worked, and being a little light headed and dizzy by everything that was going on, I played around with the controls.

Pushing random buttons, switching random switches, and pulling random levers, I finally got the cart moving.

With a creek, the cart started, tumbling down the tracks.

My grip was so tight on the sides of the cart I was afraid my own fingers would break off.

As I went deeper and deeper into the tunnel, it got darker and darker–to the point that I couldn’t see a thing.

Luckily, as soon as the cart had started to speed across the tracks, I had silently started counting the seconds in my head. It was going pretty fast, maybe around 25 mph, and as every second passed, my thoughts went wild tenfold. 

If you had seen me from a distance, I would’ve looked like an agent on a mission who could defeat the world. At training, Dylan and the other trainers taught us how to keep calm in even the craziest of situations. They taught us to how to physically remain calm regardless of how we felt about a situation and I was thankful to that because I did not need to be going crazy right now. 

Of course, there was the mild adrenaline blast and initial shock to get over, but I was quick.

I had to be.

Or else I wouldn’t have been recruited for such an elite agency.

Sixty-seven Mississippi.

Sixty-eight Mississippi.

I assumed I had definitely passed the pond in my neighborhood by this point and it seemed like I was heading east, but where exactly–I was embarrassed to say–I had no idea. All I knew was that I was headed towards the highway or the forest around it. Perhaps maybe even towards the small fire I had seen earlier.

Towards the highway.

Two hundred and forty-three Mississippi.

Two hundred and forty-four Mississippi.

I heard a car honk from above.

Yes. Definitely the highway.

As I strained my ears to hear my surroundings, I could hear cars whooshing past from the distance. As the cart I was in kept moving forward, I couldn’t help but think that underground tunnels would be amazing for cars. It took me nearly ten minutes to get to the highway, but it felt like a million years.

If my mind wasn’t racing with questions as to what was going on, I would’ve gotten off a long time ago. The perfection of the whole situation didn’t make this just any project. It was personal and it was meant to get me. This was personal and whoever was behind this made sure I would understand that.

And I hated them for it.

I hated they knew what my weak spot was.

I hated that they knew exactly where they could hit me and leave a deep, deep wound.

Two hundred and forty-eight Mississippi.

I was taught how to be brave in these situations. But for some reason, my overconfidence from just a while before had completely disappeared.

Two hundred and forty-nine Mississippi.

And then the cart stopped right in front of another small opening, similar to the one in my dad’s office. I quickly climbed out of the cart and stepped on top of the blocks that were strategically placed as if waiting for me. I searched the door with my hands for a handle and found one on the far bottom left of the opening and slowly turned it. My gun was back in the front.

As soon as the door opened, I jumped down with the room clear. 

I had to bite back a cry when I turned to look behind myself, only to see my parents behind what looked like homemade prison bars. Their hands were tied and their mouths were taped. Their eyes were wide in horror.

They seemed relieved to see me at first, but the initial happiness drained out of their eyes and they were terrified.

Probably for what would happen to me.

And in that moment, I forgot what I had learned and fallen a pry to the one thing an agent should always be careful of: letting their weakness be used against them.

Out of nowhere, three men grabbed me. One grabbed me by my hands, the other by my legs and one held me still. 

Without knowing when, how, or why, I was drugged, blindfolded, and tied away.

I hated every second.

***

I woke up with a start when I felt someone drag me away.

In an instant, all the memories came rushing back and I resisted and struggled as much as I could.

After a few minutes, I was placed on a chair and the blindfold was ripped away from my eyes and the cloth between my teeth was removed.

I immediately, saw a man with a strong built and dark hair facing the window. His hands wrapped within each other behind his back. His knuckles red, with a few of them even slightly cut.

My breath already racing from before, got louder and heavier as the anger I held from seeing the condition of my parents raced back. 

This was the asshole who had done that. 

“What the hell do you want?!” I yelled, my voice unwavering, and my blood boiling through my veins.

“Kira, Kira, Kira. Oh how much you’ve got to learn.” 

He didn’t even need to turn around before all the heat my body was radiating in anger suddenly cooled down with realization.

Shit.

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