"Are you sure you're ready for this?" Sazh asked, a worried wrinkle forming between his eyebrows. "I don't know what they're thinking. It's your first mission. They should at least have given you a partner."

"I'll be fine," Lightning said. "I'm just collecting information. I can do this, Sazh. Trust me."

They were sharing a booth at the Starbucks on Chain Bridge Road, having their weekly afternoon coffee. Usually, they'd sit and talk for hours, but this day they were going to have to cut it short. Lightning was finally done with her yearlong Clandestine Service Trainee program and was about to go out on her very first mission as an agent for the CIA.

Sazh frowned, clearly not convinced. "It's just weird, that's all. I've never even heard of a subdivision that gives out orders via text messages. You haven't even met your handler! You know, when I asked my superiors about a job for you, my highest hope was that they'd give you a desk job somewhere. I have no idea why they decided to put you through training and make you an actual field operative. You do have experience from being a soldier, but they usually demand that their applicants have at least a bachelor degree in something." He sighed, running his fingers through his thick, black hair. "You don't fit the criteria, but they still took you in. Don't you think that's strange? Claire, I—"

"Don't call me that," Lightning snapped, knocking back the last of her coffee. "Maybe they took me in because I'm really damn good? I was a good soldier, and I'm going to be a great agent. Just because you can't see me as anything other than the fuck-up I used to be doesn't mean others have to."

He shook his head. "I've never seen you as a fuck-up. I always knew you'd find your way. I'm just worried about you, that's all."

"Don't be." She stood up and picked up her backpack from the floor. "I'm not going to mess things up this time. I know I can do this."

Sazh sighed again. "Just be careful, alright? I promised your mother I'd look after you and Serah, and I've already broken that promise once. Please, don't make me break it again."

She gave him a small smile. "I won't."

Lightning left the café, heading towards a big, ugly van parked a couple of blocks away. The day she'd finished her training, she'd received an envelope with an old Nokia cellphone and a car key in the mail. She'd found the white van on the parking lot right beneath the balcony of her apartment. It was indiscreet and had a weird smell, but she liked it anyway. The trunk was full of gadgets and weapons, and she'd begun to think of it as her office. A small, smelly office, but still. It was hers.

She checked the cellphone again. According to the text message, her mission was to collect information about a fusion bomb. The target was a man named Hope Estheim, a genius scientist and inventor who usually spent his nights at the Ritz-Carlton hotel on Old Dominion Drive. The mission was simple—all she had to do was to make him talk.

She unlocked the van and climbed into the trunk. Her mobile office wasn't exactly roomy, but it was big enough to serve as a dressing room. After taking off her tank top and jeans, she put on a short, black dress. She covered her pink hair with a blond wig and applied some deep red lipstick. Hope Estheim's preferences weren't covered in his file, but the mysterious blonde was usually a safe bet. She strapped a small blade to the inside of her thigh and hid her SIG M11 in a small, black purse. It was just an information collection mission, but she liked to be prepared for anything.

She hid a small microphone in the plunging neckline of her dress. Her handler would be listening in on her conversation with the target, and when she'd collected enough information, her handler would send her a text message with further instructions. It would have been nice to at least know who my handler is, she thought as she got out of the trunk and into the driver seat. Sazh was right—it was kind of strange that she'd never even met her employer. But it's a job. A good job. Her working conditions weren't optimal, but they were still a lot better than they'd been at most of her previous jobs.

She opened the glove compartment and pulled out her target's file. I wonder how he lives with himself, she thought, eying the facts one final time. He's a scientist. He has to know how many innocents a bomb like that would kill. Her target was working as a consult for one of the shadiest corporations in the Virginia. She didn't know what plans Valhalla Corporation had for that fusion bomb, but she was sure they weren't good.

The clock had just struck seven when Lightning stepped inside the hotel lounge. Soft jazz was playing through the speakers on the wall. She walked up to the bar, hoping she looked more confident than she actually felt. The CST program had covered situations like this, but it was still her first real mission. I'm not going to mess this up, she thought to herself. Ever since she returned from her second tour in Afghanistan, she'd lost more jobs than she could count. If Sazh hadn't gotten her into the CST program, she would probably have been living on the street by now. She clenched her fists. I'm not going to mess this up.

She ordered a martini and looked around the room. The lounge was almost empty except for two women conversing quietly in the corner of the room and a handsome man with a laptop sitting at a table close to the door. The man had medium-length, silvery hair and was wearing a white shirt and slacks. His green eyes were fixed on the computer screen. Lightning nodded to herself. The man she was looking at was without a doubt Hope Estheim.

She picked up her cocktail glass and approached him. He glanced up at her, and then quickly returned to his work. Damn it. A revealing dress and some lipstick wouldn't be enough to make this target talk. She walked up to him and placed her drink on the table. He looked up from the computer screen again, raising his eyebrows in annoyance.

"Excuse me," she said, faking a shy smile. "You're Hope Estheim, aren't you? I read an article about you last week. You're the scientist who's almost figured out how to use inertial confinement fusion as an energy source, right?"

"Yeah, that's me." He looked at her with a spark of genuine curiosity in his eyes. "You read Fusion Science and Technology?"

"Of course. I've been a subscriber for years." Lightning sat down at the table and took a sip from her martini. "I don't understand why people still research about nuclear fission. Fusion is so much cleaner and has an almost unlimited supply of fuel. Sure, creating the right circumstances for it to work is a lot trickier than simple nuclear fission, but it would definitely be worth it. You just have to compare the half-life of the radioactive waste to see how idiotic it is to keep using fission instead of fusion."

She kept a wary eye on Hope as she talked. His initial suspicion and annoyance quickly turned into childish enthusiasm. She had no idea what she was talking about, but her target definitely did.

He grinned widely. "That's what I always say. You have no idea for how long I had to search for a sponsor that would actually fund my ICF research. They all ask me about the potential profit. Like the idea of a clean, infinite power source isn't enough." He closed his laptop, shifting his full attention to her. "I'm glad someone shares my view on this. I never expected to find someone like you in a place like this."

"Technically, I'm the one who found you," she said, smiling sweetly. "Tell me, how far have you gotten in your research? Have you come up with a way to reach ignition yet?"

Hope tilted his head to the side, looking at her carefully. After a few seconds of consideration, he leaned forward, his eyes darting left and right before meeting hers again.

"I'm not supposed to talk about this, but I've actually managed to design a driver and a target chamber that actually works," he said in a low voice. "My miniature reactor gives off more energy than you apply to it. Valhalla Corporation is going to make a full-sized version of it. In a year or two, everyone will know what fusion is." He grinned. "I made the impossible possible."

Lightning's eyes widened. He's already finished? She swallowed hard. "That's fantastic, but . . . aren't you concerned about the possibility of a nuclear war? Inertial confinement fusion can be used to create atomic bombs, right?"

He blinked. "I guess. I don't know why anyone would do that, though. I mean, it's fusion. I think most people would pick an infinite power source over a nuclear war."

She analyzed his face as he talked. All her instincts told her that he truly believed what he was saying. He has no idea that he's a terrorist, she realized. His research could destroy the world and he isn't even aware of it. It amazed her how someone so smart could be so clueless.

A soft vibration in her purse told her that her mission had just been updated. She excused herself and headed over to the ladies' room to read the message.

Update: Collect blueprints. Eliminate evidence. Terminate target.

Lightning's hands began to shake. They want me to kill him. Her heart skipped a beat and then started racing. I'm going to have to kill again. For a moment, she was no longer in the ladies' room of a fancy hotel. She was standing on a sandy field under the hot desert sun. In the distance, she could hear the sound of gunshots and screaming children. She took a breath, and immediately regretted it. The air smelled of burning bodies.

Stop it, she scolded herself, closing her eyes. I'm not there anymore. I'm home. I'm safe. She opened her eyes again and found herself on the bathroom floor. When she took a breath, all she could sense was the smell of urine and disinfectants. No more desert sun. No more burning bodies. She stood up and straightened out some wrinkles in the skirt of her dress. I can do this, she thought, trying to repress the nauseating feeling in her gut. It's for the safety of the country. The greater good. It's nothing personal. She accidentally caught her own reflection in the bathroom mirror. The woman staring back at her looked haunted.

"He doesn't even know he's a terrorist," she muttered out loud, "but orders are orders. I'll handle it."

When she exited the bathroom, her target was no longer in the lounge. She left the hotel and walked back to her van. According to the file, Hope Estheim had a big laboratory in the basement of his house. To erase all the evidence of his world-changing invention, she was going to have to blow up the whole lab. She climbed into the trunk and started to rummage through its many drawers. The people who'd stocked her van had been pretty generous when it came to explosives. She decided to leave the more volatile ones and picked out some blocks of C4 and put them in her backpack. C4 could destroy almost everything. If she detonated a couple of blocks in Hope Estheim's basement, there would no longer be a laboratory in there. But I need to find the blueprints first, she thought as she changed out of her dress. I can't risk blowing them up.

She put on a tank top and a pair of khaki-colored pants with more pockets than anyone could possibly have use for. After removing the blond wig, she put her messy, pink locks up in a ponytail. She fished out her M11 from her purse and put it in a shoulder holster instead. The holster wasn't the most comfortable of contraptions, but under her leather jacket it was close to invisible. With her pockets full of extra ammo and the microphone attached to the collar of her jacket, she was finally ready to go. She got out of the trunk and into the driver seat, once again pulling out Hope Estheim's file from the glove compartment. I'm going to kill this man tonight, she thought, feeling slightly nauseous. Yes, she'd killed people before, but that had been in life-or-death situations. Kill or be killed. This, on the other hand, was an assassination. Murder in cold blood. A part of her wondered if she'd ever be able to look at herself in the mirror again if she pulled this off. For the safety of the country, she tried to convince herself. For the greater good.

At midnight, she decided that she'd waited long enough. It didn't really matter if her target was asleep or not—she was going to have to kill him anyway. She parked the van a couple of blocks away from Hope Estheim's house and walked the rest of the way. Her target had installed security cameras with almost complete coverage of the garden and the street outside. If she wanted to get in without getting caught on tape, she was going to have to do it on foot.

She climbed over the seven-foot fence and jumped down on the other side. The file had shown her exactly where the security cameras were and where there were openings in their coverage. She sneaked closer to the house. The house was big—a lot bigger than she'd expected. The blueprints are somewhere in there, she thought. This is going to be a long night.

The security cameras covered all the doors, but according to the file, there was a window she could use to get in without being noticed. She carefully crossed the garden and stopped right beneath the window.

"Alright," she muttered to herself, placing the suction cup of her glass cutter on the window glass. "Here we go, then." She cut out a small, circular hole and stuck her hand through it. Her hand quickly found the window hatch. When she'd opened the window from the inside, all she had to do was to climb inside.

Lightning walked quietly through the dark rooms. She could barely see anything, but she'd studied the house layout on the map long enough to navigate the rooms in blindness. The door in the hallway that led to the basement was locked, so she fished out her lock picks from one of her many pockets. A couple of seconds later, the door was open. He really should have used a better lock, she thought smugly as she made her way down the stairs. Anyone with a hairpin or two could pick a lock like that.

The door to the laboratory was a thick, heavy blast door, but thankfully, her target had left it unlocked. She entered the room and turned on the lights.

"Shit," she muttered, taking it all in. The lab was big—a lot bigger than it had looked on the map. In the middle of the room was a gigantic machine. Lightning had never seen a fusion reactor before, but she was certain that that monstrosity had to be it. In the file, she'd read that her target usually worked alone in his basement. He's been doing tests on this thing all by himself? she thought, unexpectedly impressed. It's a wonder he hasn't accidentally blown himself up already.

She dumped her backpack on the floor and grabbed the blocks of C4. When she'd surrounded the machine with explosives, she began to look for the blueprints. She noticed a fax machine in the corner of the room that seemed to have a stack of papers in it. Please be the blueprints, she thought as she approached it. She picked the papers up and eyed them skeptically. She didn't really understand what she was looking at, but it did sort of resemble the monster machine.

"I've collected the blueprints," she said into her microphone, dumping the papers in her backpack. "I'm moving forward with the mission now."

She connected the C4 bombs to a timer and set it to activate the detonators in sixty seconds. It was more than enough time for her to get out of the basement. I hope the house won't collapse, she thought as she picked up her backpack and walked towards the exit. He wouldn't install a blast door if the rest of the room wasn't blast proof, right?

Lightning was just about to reach out and grab the handle of the heavy door when someone opened it from the other side. She took a step back and quickly pulled out her M11.

"Who are you and what are you doing in my lab?" Hope Estheim said, scowling at her. He took a second look at her and noticed the gun in her hands. "What's going on?"

"Back away," she said in a calm, steady voice. "Now."

He took a step back, but then he stepped forward again. "I don't know what you think you're doing, but I want an explanation. What's going on? Who are you?"

Lightning glanced at the timer. Thirty seconds.

"I'm going to shoot you if you don't get out of the way," she said, decocking the gun. "Don't be stupid. Just back away."

"Is that . . . is that a timer?" His eyes widened. "You're going to blow it all up. You're going to destroy my reactor!" He ran towards the machine with panic in his eyes. "No, no no no! Turn it off! Turn it off, damn you!"

Fifteen seconds. Before she could think it through, she'd grabbed Hope's arm and dragged him through the room by force. She gave him a hard push through the doorway, making him stumble and fall to the ground. Five seconds. She ran out of the laboratory and grabbed the heavy door in an attempt to close it, but before she could shut it completely, a deafening boom echoed through the basement. The shockwave hit her milliseconds later, sending her flying through the air. She crashed on the floor right next to Hope. Dark spots clouded her vision, and even though she tried to hold on to her consciousness with all her might, she could still feel it slipping away from her.

In the corner of her eye, she could see something moving. Hope was still alive. A part of her was annoyed by that fact. Another part was . . . No, she didn't even want to think about what that other part of her was feeling.

I should have killed him when I had the chance, she thought. I should have let him get blown to bits with his reactor. I should have let him die. I should have . . .

Her consciousness gave out before she could finish the thought.