Shadows of the Mind
Prologue
The night had always had held a kind of fascination for Miriam. The cool shadows of twilight had held her safe from the evils of her childhood, wrapping her in their long, dark embrace. The moon had been her only friend on nights when her parents had forgotten her existence, wrapped up in their liquor and their disappointments. The fascination had held even to her adult life, taking her and her "brother" to places no sane person would willingly go. The night could still cover her in a cocoon of silence and peace like nothing else. It had taken her into the Section, where most of the work could ill afford to be scrutinized in the light of day. It had taken her to dark alleys in distant countries and moonless rendezvous at deserted airfields. It had given her the name she went by in the Section - "Nightbird".
Tonight, it took her to a high iron fence and a lonely house that smelled of fear. She quietly cut the last wire to the elaborate security system then carefully let herself onto the grounds, moving confidently in the darkness toward the back door. Her infrared goggles cast a queer glow only she could see on the grounds in front of her. She kept to the shadows, moving in and out of their darkness as she slowly tracked her prey back to its lair. The mansion loomed up suddenly before her, looking for all the world like the house from "Psycho". She would not have been surprised to see Norman Bates looking down at her from the second story window. Not surprising since the person she was here to find made Bates look like an amateur.
The back door to the mansion was not locked, a fact that set alarm bells ringing in her head. "So we're expecting company tonight, are we?" She thought, allowing the door to open slowly in front of her. "You didn't mention he might be on to us Michael." A quick look into the darkened kitchen confirmed there was no other living soul in the room except for her. A briefcase and pair of keys on the table were the only signs that anyone might be in the house at all. She moved quickly through the room into the main house, following the blueprint in her head of the layout of the first floor. The safe, according to those plans, was in the subject's bedroom, at the top of the house. She was almost past the basement door before she heard it. A sound like an animal in pain, coming from the bowels of the house. She stopped, debating whether she should go on. Her job was to find the package and eliminate the person responsible for its disappearance. Her Operations officer would accept no excuse for not coming back with her objective. She reached out and tentatively touched the door. Her hand came away wet and sticky. Even with her goggles on, she knew by the smell that the substance was blood. Every instinct screamed "GET OUT" yet she knew she would have to look, to know if she was right. She slowly removed her goggles, and opened the door. A blast of cold air greeted her, carrying the scent of death with it. Miriam could see a small light at the bottom of the stairs, a light that seemed to beckon her. She followed it, her hunting knife clutched firmly in her hand. Once at the bottom of the stairs she could see that the light was coming from under a door just a few feet away. She crept up to it and opened it slowly to a scene from Hell.