Was this it, the end of the line?
The blonde haired woman sat on a bed in a bed and breakfast just outside of London. It was late evening and the room was dark, lit only by the warm glow of a table lamp on the bed-side table. She was expecting company to show up soon. On the side table, lit by the table lamp, was a fully loaded Glock 19. She had yet to decide if she was going to use it on her soon to arrive visitors or on herself. She sat there contemplating her life and how she had ended up here.
Born to middle class parents in Leeds she had had a relatively decent childhood, if you can call alcoholism, gambling and adultery as decent. But that's what she had grown up with. Her father, an ex-military man, was a junior manager in an insurance company. He was a man of very few ambitions and even fewer prospects. He was a good provider, a good father and an adequate husband. But an adequate husband with no prospects wasn't what the wife had signed on for. She was however too weak willed to divorce him and so a few years into the marriage had decided to have a prolonged affair with alcohol. The drinking soon lead to adultery as she started to frequent pubs and night clubs and would often return home the next day or sometimes even a couple of days later.
Soon the responsibility of raising the daughter fell on the father. At first he seemed to be up to the task but quickly found it difficult to maintain his family along with his wife's extra-curricular activities. In order to make some extra cash he started to gamble. Turned out the man wasn't a half bad poker player and was quite good at predicting the winning horse. He would win more often than lose. The young girl would notice things would disappear from the house and a few days later would be replaced with a newer or a second hand version of the same thing. By the time she turned seventeen her father's sole income was from gambling and her mother had done two stints at their local rehab centre. When she finally left her house to attend college she promised herself that she wouldn't turn into either her mother or her father. She could never have predicted that she would turn into both.
She was good at academics. She had shown proficiency in languages and politics. Her father had given her some tips and she had gotten into martial arts at a very young age. All of those factors put her on the radar of the British Intelligence services. She gave an aptitude test in her first year at college. The test was a way of gauging her psychological makeup. She was found to be lacking in her emotional makeup and that she was quite flexible morally and ethically. These factors made her a perfect candidate to join the intelligence community. She was recruited towards the end of her first year in college.
For her second year she was transferred to a college in London. Her assignment was to mingle with the various student societies and see if there were any radical elements within these various organizations. It was here that she came up with her first fake persona, that of a slightly air-headed party girl who liked drinks and boys. The persona was meant to put the boys at ease and be able to talk freely around her. The mission was extremely successful and she was able to point out quite a few students who were actively in communication with various radical organizations. However, even though her mission got over by her third year, somehow the persona she had created lingered on. The drinking never truly went away, but she managed to hide it well.
By her mid-twenties she was already a well experienced operative. The flaws in her emotional makeup made her the perfect candidate to retire undesirables and her ability to look upon sex as a casual encounter made her a good honey trap. In all, she made for an excellent undercover agent. However as the years progressed the flaws in her emotional makeup became a gaping void. Years of being friendly to her enemies and stabbing her allies in the back started to take its toll. Loyalties towards queen and country started to wither away. Until all that remained was the love of the game. Deception and betrayal became the norm and the drinking helped to cope with that.
The undercover missions started to have another unwanted side-effect. Months of pretending to be a rich businesswoman or a rich criminal wasn't helping. The woman began to get used to the luxury and the good life. Coming back to reality was all the more difficult. Realizing that she had to survive on a government salary didn't make it any easier. It was around that time that she started to pick up some odd jobs. The word on the street was that operatives could work small time security jobs for criminals for a decent amount of money. No one in their right mind would kill an on-the-job agent. No criminal wanted that kind of heat. However when even that wasn't enough she started to gamble. She started with betting on horses, a skill she had picked up from her father, and slowly progressed to cards and roulette. She was glad that she had some of her father's talents. She became acquainted with the local bookies and started to keep a regular tab with them. She was smart enough to never run up a very huge tab and even if she did she could always work it off. She wasn't above performing the odd hit for the local underworld to pay off her debts. She figured they were mostly bad guys so they had it coming and even if they weren't she didn't really care.
When one of her private jobs was botched she realized that there was no one alive to claim the money that was supposed to exchange hand's between the now deceased parties, she decided to keep it. Having done it once, it became easier the second time around. She even took to cleaning out the house of marks that she would retire. It wasn't as if they would need it. Years of being trained in the art of deception, she had become very good at hiding her vices from her superiors.
As the years passed there were a few botched contract jobs and some trouble with money lenders. Her lifestyle was sometimes called into question by her government employers. Nothing was ever proven but the suspicions lingered. Even though she was still regarded as an excellent operative there were always whispers of misconduct and misappropriation of funds. She eventually hit a glass ceiling of her own making. Her prospects were now limited. Barely in her thirties she had already hit a dead end in her career graph.
And then this morning had happened. It was a simple job, provide security for a weapons dealer on a weapons deal. The only problem was that they were selling weapons to a terrorist organization. The woman had it all worked out, the money from the job would help pay off her debts and maybe she could even pick up that sports car she was looking into with the leftover cash. And later on she could supply the details of the deal to her superiors and help in shutting down a major terrorist operation. It was a good plan. There was just a small flaw in the plan, terrorist organizations were notoriously untrustworthy.
Things were moving forward smoothly. They had decided to meet in an old industrial complex near London. She had made sure that there was no form of video or audio surveillance. The parties had gone through their usual meet and greet. Everything was fine till the money exchanged hands. It was then that the double cross had happened. It was just that it wasn't the terrorists that had decided to do it, it was her employer. A sniper hidden on the rooftop had orders to kill the buyers. The glitch was that even though terrorists maybe untrustworthy, but they weren't without skill. Things went south really fast. Five minutes later there were only four persons left standing including the woman. She turned around and shot the weapons dealer and made her way towards the two bleeding terrorists. She shot the first and made her way towards the second. She was about to kill him when she heard him speak. He was trying to call someone. She turned him over and realized to her dismay that he was wearing a wire. The man on the floor was an undercover operative. By the looks of the equipment he was Mossad. This was definitely not part of the plan. She knew there was no way she could let him survive. If she was to have even the remotest chance of survival the bleeding Israeli spy on the floor had to be killed and so she did what was necessary. Years of deception and betrayal had made the woman valued self preservation above all else. After she had shot him she destroyed the portable recorder that he was carrying, she put the money in a van and drove off. Just as she was leaving the old complex she received a call from a colleague who wanted to meet her to talk to her about a case. The timing of the call felt a little too convenient so she told him that she was out of town and would meet him at a B&B just north of London in the evening. She dumped the van and made her way to the B&B and that's how she had ended up here.
The events of the morning had already made the afternoon news. With twenty people dead and a whole cache of arms there was no way that it wouldn't make the news. Thankfully there had been no survivors reported. She was safe so far. She was still worried as to why her colleague would want to meet her. Maybe it really was about a case but she doubted it. She had heard rumors of an investigation into her affairs and to get a phone call just minutes after she had been involved in a botched deal seemed far too suspect. She had enough experience to write this off as a coincidence.
And so she sat on the bed waiting for her colleague to arrive, all the while wondering what her next move should be or if this truly was the end of the line for her.
She was sitting there staring at her gun when her phone buzzed, it was a message from an unknown number. She read it, it said
"Turn on the TV behind you"
She looked around, this didn't make sense. Was she being watched, but how? She had swept the room, it was clean. Even the curtains on the windows were drawn. The phone buzzed again,
"Turn it on now. There isn't enough time"
This still wasn't making any sense but she decided to do as instructed. She got up off the bed, picking up the gun just in case, and turned on the TV. It was playing some drama show on the BBC. She wasn't big on TV shows. She never had had the time. She was looking at the screen when suddenly the channel switched of its own volition. She looked around for the remote when the telly did it again. Then it happened again and again till she started to notice a voice beginning to emerge from all the various clips combined together.
"CAN YOU HEAR ME?" said the TV
"Bloody hell." The woman exclaimed.
"CAN YOU HEAR ME?" the TV repeated itself.
"Who is this? How is this even possible?" in all of her years she had never heard of anything that could make a television do what it was doing.
"CAN YOU HEAR ME?" the TV asked a third time. It was beginning to sound a little irritated.
"Yes" the woman replied slowly, "Who are you? What are you?" she asked. She knew she was talking to the telly but she figured that she had had a very stressful day and maybe she had finally lost her mind.
"I AM THE FUTURE" came the reply.
"How is this even possible?"
"THAT IS IRRELEVANT. THE RELEVANT QUESTION IS DO YOU WISH TO BE A PART OF IT?" the TV asked the question now.
"Part of what?" she asked cautiously.
"THE FUTURE. DO YOU WISH TO BE A PART OF THE FUTURE?"