The mental check list ran through her head automatically as it always had. Bag, wire cutters, tape, etc. She was good like that... her mind just worked ahead of everyone else. She could keep lists, numbers, mindless facts, and more stored in her head indefinitely, and what's more is she could use it. Every piece of information in her head went to use at least once in a month, or she pushed it to the back. the only things that didn't get pushed were the names. Hundreds of them, all alphabetized and categorized by usefulness to her. And tonight, she was going to get more.
The cell phone on her leg vibrated, and she picked it up before it had a change to ring twice. "We ready?" she asked before the other side could say so much as a breath. To say she was expecting this call was an understatement, she was freaking out inside.
"Yeah. Meet's in 10 two blocks north. See you then." She closed the phone without saying good bye, and picked up her bag. It looked like it had seen hell, held together with nothing more then duct tape and prayers, but she wouldn't bring anything else to this kind of thing. Good luck or something. She locked the door behind her, her house key tingling against a steel "anti-government" key-chain her friends had gotten her. She threw them into the smallest pocket of the bag, and started off at a jog. She was fit enough, she had to be, and she would make it to the rally point before the rest of her team had.
"You ready for this Bryce?" A tall dark skinned boy, around 6'3", glanced to the blue eyed, blond haired girl who was fiddling with a pair of wire cutters. She nodded, not even looking up from her tool. The boy turned to the other three kids standing around. That's all they really were, just kids. Jessica Bryce was the oldest of the bunch, but had only just turned 19 the past month in December. Then came Dan Jordan, the dark skinned boy, then Gina Brinin, a red head with a temper as fiery as her hair, Timmon Rigner, a redneck with a knack for electronics, Ryana Yellu, a skinny Asian girl who really didn't want to be there anyway, and Katya, the silent goth girl who could get through just about any lock with a bobby pin. It was an unusual group by society standards, but they had one key point that joined them together on that windy, cold, January evening. They all wanted to bring the man down. Two blocks to the south lay the UNSC recruiting office, the prime target. In a matter of minutes this group of teenagers would do the one thing that they had been planing for months to do.
On silent padded feet, Jessica Bryce slipped into the main office of the recruiting center, her face in shadow and dressed head to toe in straight black. The electricity to the lights and the alarm system had been cut, the cameras put on loop, and the officer was asleep in the chair beside the desk. Jessica slowed her breathing to the point that anyone watching would have said she stopped altogether. She started to read the covers of the folders on the desk, committing the names to memory along with the thousands of others already there. She crept around the officer, took a magnet out of her bag and swiped it around the computer. Any info the UNSC kept there would be on paper documents, a huge pile of which sat on the desk. she slid back to the other side and grabbed as many files as she could. The normal procedure would be for her so just leave now, but the danger of this time drew her in. Normally the officer was out of the building, but he was right there now, and she wanted to see how far she could push it. She slowly started to page through the files, reading the names, dates, and other vital information within the manila folders. She became so absorbed in the files, she never heard the office chair creaking, or the boot steps behind her. She did however, notice the heavy hand as it landed on her shoulder. She twisted away, dropping the files into a mess on the floor, but the man had caught a bit of her hood, and her whole face was now exposed in the dim emergency lights. She bolted, but the officer followed as she tried to weave in and out of hallways and not get herself confused. Finally, with the officer not three feet from her back, she turned down a hallway with an exit sign eliminated over a door. She put a final burst into her step, and felt arms slide around her waist. She was falling then, and the side of her head collided with the linoleum flooring, and everything went black.
Over the next couple of hours her vision faded in and out, and only a few moments were retained...
A big man, taller then any Jessica had ever seen, leaned over her and examined her face."Shit son, that's her." He whispered just loud enough to have the other officer hear. "You're sure, Hedan?" the man who had chased her earlier asked from the background. Hedan nodded. "She's the one. Responsible for over 25 Recruiting Office break-ins over the past three years. Aren't you hun?" He said hun like it was venom in his mouth, and he was trying his best to spit it out. Jessica glared into his eyes, her icy blues meeting his golden eyes. She recognized his face from somewhere, but where? Then in a flash the image of the file came to her. He was one of the older ones, from one of the first raids... "Thomas Villan Hedan. 19 when enlisted, 6'7", 150 lb. That you?" She spit back, just as venomously. Hedan took a step back, visibly shocked. He knew his file had been taken and had never been recovered, and he was forced to redo basic training because he had no file. This was the girl who had taken it, but how on God's green earth did she know that much? Did she memorize all the files or just his? Hedan looked back to Jessica, her closing eyes gave no answers to his questions, only sprouted more. Who was this girl?
There was screaming, and Jessica came too again. She realized she was being carried in the arms of someone, and as her eyes opened she saw it was Hedan, the big man from before. They were moving rather fast, and as Jessica looked around she noticed he was faster then any of the other people on the streets. He also had a destination, unlike the mobs of people just screaming and running. "Where are we going?" She asked weakly, her brain still rattled from her fall, "Why is everyone running?" Hedan shifted Jessica slightly in his arms and shoved past a woman looking for her dog. "Yelliton is being glassed, kid. I'm getting you out of here with the army." He wasn't really sure why he had decided to save this girl, this criminal, from the quick death that came from the enemies way of destroying a planet. There was just something about her though, that has forced him against his better judgment, and had made him scoop her up and run to the base. He had gone through years of training so he wouldn't do exactly this, and yet he couldn't just leave her. Jessica had heard of other planets being glassed, but they were far off in history, in her opinion just a bad hiccup in the history of man. Yet here was this man telling her that her home was going to be melted down to nothing. Her vision turned to the sky, and she noticed huge purple things hovering above the clouds. They looked like the pictures she had seen of old Covenant war ships, but hadn't the war ended? What were they doing here? Her thoughts and questions carried her off into sleep again.