Assassination

Mimi woke up with a crick in her neck. Why was her bed damp and hard and cold? Why was she aching all over? Her fingers were sticky as she rubbed her eyes open. Her hands were covered in red, as were her arms. Her ribs radiated sharp pain when she tried to move. A few feet from her, another body was lying on the floor, unmoving, battered, in a puddle of blood. OMG, what is going on? Mimi wanted to throw up, to scream. She passed out again.

* * *

A pulse of current seared Mimi's brain. A memory came into focus, then faded: She was driving to a motel in the middle of the night. Another burst of energy to her brain, another memory: a fire extinguisher being swung at her head. Then that image was gone too.

"Good, you're finally awake." The voice came from a man in a lab coat. He was aiming something that looked like an oversized supermarket barcode scanner at her head. "Hold still." He pulled the trigger. Mimi convulsed once, she felt the electricity through her brain, and suddenly she was Agent Mimi again.

She recognized the operating room, in the secret underground medical center. She noticed that she was strapped down to an operating table. The man in the lab coat was the Director of Neural Reprogramming: "You woke up as a civilian while you were on your mission. Now we have to get inside your head and tidy things up."

Mimi tried to inventory her injuries while the doctor worked. "Someone tipped Nikolas off. He was waiting for me when I got to his motel room."

The doctor nodded. "We're looking into that. But need to send you home for now. You're going to remember that you spent all weekend grading papers. And your scratches and bruises -- hmm ... those are going to come from your run-in with some comically misarranged furniture."

* * *

(Earlier that day) André hated desk duty. If Mimi had been a TA for an explosives class, or class on biological weapons, or even a foreign language class, they could have found plenty of agents to grade her papers for her. But André was their only available agent on the East Coast with an MBA, and Mimi needed to remember that she spent all weekend grading ...

A Scene of No Consequence

3:59:58 AM ... 3:59:59 ... 4:00:00 ... Mimi bolted upright in her bed. Her room felt a quarter of a degree too warm -- someone else was in here. She reflexively reached for her weapon under her pillow ... until she remembered that she had a guest staying over.

Agent Mimi listened in the dark. Amy was breathing slowly, asleep. Mimi wondered if she could check in without waking her friend. Mimi tiptoed across the room.

Unfortunately, Amy chose that exact moment to turn over, rousing slightly. "What are you doing, Mimi?" she mumbled half awake.

"I'm uh ... I just wanted to get some water. See?" Mimi unscrewed the bottle of water. Glug glug glug glug glug ... glug glug glug. "Go back to sleep."