The Bishop
1.
'Bring me her heart.' The queen purred to the huntsman. 'Bring me the heart of Snow White and you will be rewarded.'
The huntsman stood trembling before the terrible beauty of the queen.
Her cold eyes, fair skin and rich lips belied her cruelty.
'My queen,' the huntsman stammered 'She had gone into the dark forest. She is surely dead. Nothing can survive in that place.'
The queen narrowed her eyes at the huntsman. He caught his breath as his blood turned to ice.
'Bring me the heart of Snow White, Huntsman. Or it is you who will surely die.' She hissed.
~ "Her name is Ariadne. Her code name is 'The Bishop'." Mal said as she walked lazily around the large table.
Arthur pretended only the vaguest of interest. He glanced at her file, catching her age, and her value to her team.
"She's an Architect? How come this is the first I'm hearing about her?" Arthur asked.
"Because her so called Team recruited her before she finished school. She is supposedly highly gifted." Mal said angrily. "My ex husband had snapped her off of some campus in Paris two years ago and has been teaching her dream extractions ever since.
The pretty woman looked annoyed at the simple question the Point Man asked.
Arthur worked for Mal and her secretive organization know only as Shade. It was his job to find targets, extract information from them by way of dreams, and in many cases, eliminate the targets.
"The good news is, we found where they were hiding. It wasn't easy, the four of them move around a lot." Mal said maliciously.
Arthur looked over the file. In black and white, were the pictures of Cobb, Mal's ex husbandand, the others. Cobb was a man who knew how to extract secrets, but refused to do so under any government alliance. He worked as a rouge. For whatever agency or private individual paid him the most.
This was unacceptable to Mal.
"I see our people have already found their Forger." Arthur sighed.
Mal chuckled.
"Yes, a little man named Hays. He was barely under in the dreams before he gave them all up. Our extractors gained everything you could ever want to know about the Bishop." Mal said
Arthur looked over Ariadne's file. An orphaned girl at sixteen. Attending a prestigious school of design in Paris on a full scholarship. He sucked in his breath at reaching her black and white photograph.
Her face was singularly beautiful. Like something from the story books his mother read to him as a child.
"So what is it you need?" Arthur asked.
"The Bishop escaped before our men could locate her. Most likely Cobb helped her before they separated. She speaks English and French. She had traveled most of Europe, but never improvised. She'll most likely try to pass herself off as a student back packer." Mal told him.
"Mal, no bull shit." Arthur said curtly.
She turned lazily to him and smiled a Cheshire cat grin.
"What is it you need me to do?" Arthur asked.
"Find her. Extract all information you can on her, and kill her." Mal told him.
"You don't want to try and bring her in? She's young. Apparently very talented. Might be worth it to recruit her." Arthur offered.
"I thought about that." Mal said carelessly. "But I could never trust her. She's most likely been fucking my husband and I cant have that."
Arthur winced at the profanity. He didn't like it when women swore.
"Her last known location was in Finland?" Arthur asked in shock. "Awful cold this time of year."
"Then you better get going, Arthur." Mal told him with an acid tone.
~ Arthur kept his so called home effortlessly clean. He prided himself on how clean everything was. His stainless steel counter tops gleamed and his bathrooms looked like they had never been used.
Such behavior was engrained into him. His clean apartment, his minimalist decorating style. It was almost sterile and barren.
Arthur didn't think too much about his cold taste in décor as he cleaned his weapons. His two side arms, the small 22. cal he kept in the ankle holster.
He was as meticulous about cleaning his weapons as he was about his apartment.
He had Ariadne's file spread out on the coffee table. Newspapers under the different pieces of his disassembled gun. He didn't need to study the case file any more. He had it memorized.
Ariadne Lynn Harper, age 24
Birth Place: Florence, Oregon.
She was a good student till her parents died in a car crash when she was sixteen. She lived with an Aunt until she went off to college. She had a fair amount of student loan debt. Most likely how Cobb was able to recruit her into dream extraction work.
The Extraction from their Forger had told Arthur all the details about her. She liked espresso over normal coffee. She listened to jazz music and read historical fiction. She didn't own a car and didn't even have a license to drive anymore.
She wasn't afraid to speak her mind. A fact that annoyed everyone on the team except Cobb, who seemed to trust her.
Arthur realized it was Cobb's liking of this girl that most likely enraged Mal.
Ariadne had worked with the team for over year and had proven herself invaluable to them. She built worlds and paradoxes so amazing, it baffled even Cobb. A man who had been working in dream extractions for years.
Arthur was drawn back to that face.
She hardly looked dangerous. She looked barely out of her teen years. How dangerous could she be? It almost seemed like over kill to bring the extra weapons.
This was a part of the job he hated. He didn't mind the kidnapping and dream extractions. He didn't even mind killing people. Most of them deserved it. They were traitors to their country.
Ariadne was different. She was just a young girl who trusted the wrong people. All to have it blow up in her face.