Dangerous Memory {ONC 2021}

Chapter 6

The wooden chair was left in the bathroom, all the lights were turned on, and she was a mess of emotions sitting in a corner.

After finding the notebook, she had dressed in the usual black clothing and forgot that the rest of the world existed.

She flipped through the pages, impressed by her mind. Everything was written in code. Not just any code. The one she and Kayla had invented when they were nine in an attempt to share messages in the middle of the class without the teachers or the other classmates understanding them.

They had created an entire alphabet, words, numbers; everything the two girls needed to communicate. Alba had used the same code to write in her notebook.

If someone happened to find it, they could never translate it.

The first phrase had been imprinted in her mind, and she, drunk with surprise and full of questions, was trying to find an answer. Old Alba believed that her parents' plane crash was something more. Someone had intentionally caused it, and being in PROTEA would bring her closer to the truth.

But why did I believe it? The experts said that it was a mechanical malfunction. How and why would I believe something else?

There was some info about the base, some routes she had designed, a couple of agents' names, but they weren't useful.

Until she found a dozen pages full of numbers. The number 23 was on the top of each page. There were some percentages, some numbers mixed with letters, some coding, but everything was too confusing for her.

I understood what I had written. I must figure it out. Those numbers might be part of the truth.

She flipped through the pages a little bit more and was ready to close the notebook and rest when she noticed the last written page. A name was written in the middle of the almost empty page: Axel. Underneath that name was a question: "Why did you betray me, Agent 40-S?"

She stopped breathing for a second, and her vision blurred. She muffled a cry and tried to calm herself.

It could be something irrelevant, right? That doesn't mean he betrayed me about something important. But what do I know? PROTEA literally means hiding and giving a fake image. How do I know that there is a single person that I can trust in this hellish place?

"Inhale, exhale, Rivet," she said to herself.

Slowly her breathing returned to normal, and she wiped a tear the moment it was about to fall.

You won't drive me crazy. I'll figure it out, and then I'll get out of here.

She put the notebook on the table and lay on the messy bed. Remembering Dr. Smith's techniques, she tried to put everything aside, and soon, she fell asleep.

Everything around her was green. A few rays of light appeared through the trees, but they weren't enough to warm the chilly air. Her black boots were covered in mud, and the empty gun on her waist was feeling heavy. Her back was resting on the trunk of a tree, and she was trying to be quiet, waiting for the enemy to make a mistake.

She tried to remember every detail from her training.

Be quiet and listen. You got this, girl. If I win this, I can go on field missions. Just focus.

She peeked to see if she could spot the enemy. Nothing. Two meters away was a tree with a wide trunk. It would hide her better.

One, two, three.

She sprinted toward the tree, the gun in her hands, ready to shoot.

She heard someone moving, the branches breaking under his feet.