Week 3: Mission Redo

He had never been knocked out before, or even punched before, so all the sensations he was feeling were for the first time. He woke up in a chair, his head full of cartoon stars accompanied with a pulsing at his temple. He had been hit with something hard and compact. There was a crick in his neck that told him his head had been bowed down for a while, and his arms ached from being in one position for too long.

And not a good position at that.

He pulled at the ropes that bound his hands together and behind the chair, but they wouldn’t give. Not that he had much energy to pull at them in the first place.

“Don’t bother,” a voice said.

He looked left to discover a thin girl bound in the same way with the same rope. She had light hair that I supposed used to shine. All the brightness seemed to be taken away from it. Although it was dark in their small room, he could see her bruised eyes, bloody wrists, and overall dirty clothes.

“I already tried.” She seemed to sigh with her whole body.

“What’s going on? Who are you?” He didn’t have to talk loud. The room was small enough that his voice carried. It didn’t help his headache.

“I don’t know.”

“How do you not know?”

“Do you know?”

The question caught him off guard not from how odd it was, but how relevant it was to how he was feeling. The more he searched his brain, the more he realized that his memory didn’t go further back than when he woke up. He didn’t know his name, where he was from, or how old he was. It was only mildly alarming.

“Finally, your awake.” A different voice carried over to them from the shadows of the room. He turned his head forward, trying to follow the direction of the voice.

“Who are you?” The girl questioned.

“Let’s say I’m an investor. Who’s also his boss. It doesn’t matter what I tell you though. You’re actually receiving more information than you were supposed to.” His entire demeanor was casual, not just his tone. He was a tall, lanky man, and his posture indicated that he was used to having to duck under doorways.

“What does that mean? I don’t understand.” I was getting frantic at this point. Everything was too ominous and mysterious.

“I’m disappointed in you, Damien. This was supposed to be simple, but the two of you just had to pry. You couldn’t leave it alone, even when we gave you an opportunity to look away.” There was a long pause as the trickles of information he let us have sank into our brain.

I was supposed to do something. Clearly, I didn’t do it to how this man wanted it to be done. I didn’t think brain-wiped me would want to know. But maybe brain-wiped Damien should be the one in charge right now if old me got us into this trouble.

The man continued, “The big man wanted me to terminate the mission and you, but he wanted to be thorough with it. That’s why your memories have been erased.” He stepped even further out from the shadows, enough so I could see his gray coat layered over a dark sweater and an even darker pair of slim jeans.

“Why didn’t you kill us when we were under then?”

He shrugged. The collar of his coat rose with him and touched his cheeks. “I wanted to make sure the brain wipe worked. I wanted to see your confused faces. See the powerful Damien scramble. I don’t know. Take your pick.” The man whipped out a gun from his waistband and pointed it at my face in a manner of milliseconds.

Instinct and fear made me scream. “Wait! No, please, please, just… wait.” I didn’t want to die. I didn’t know much about myself, but I knew I didn’t want to die. “What if you gave me another chance. I don’t know, like, put me back in and put the mission back in my head?”

The gun stayed trained on me. “What makes you think I’ll do that?”

“Because from the sound of it, I was damn good agent, spy, employee, whatever I was. You made it sound like people respected me. Why don’t you make a wager to the boss that if I mess up again, you can take my old job?”

He seemed to weigh the option in his head. By the looks of it I guessed right. I was his superior. I didn’t know what would happen to the girl, but she wasn’t important right now. His life was in this man’s hands, and he wasn’t going to take that lightly.

The man finally sighed and dropped his gun. “Fine,” he said, clearly irritated. “But I’m making you forget all of this.”

“What? No, that’s not fa-“ The last thing I saw was his cruel smile before the butt of his gun connected harshly with my head.

***

            It was a beautiful morning to have a beautiful woman in my bed. My head slumped over to the sleeping figure next to me. An alarm on her phone rang signaling an hour before opening hours. She groaned and flopped a pillow over her head, messing up her bright hair even more.

            “Make it stop. I don’t want to go to work today,” she complained.

            It was also a beautiful day to rob her safety deposit box.