Thirty-eight: Have a nice day

"Looks like everything is all good," the emergency doctor smiled, having finished removing all the glass and checking my vision. "We're all done here. You can go now. Have a nice day."

"Day?"

It felt like it was still the middle of the night.

"Yep. The sun'll be coming up any moment now. Take care."

The agents escorted me to the car and I noticed how tired and disheveled they had started to look while we had been waiting for a doctor to see me. Bending down to shake a stone out of my shoe - which was actually a piece of glass, I heard a door slam, something whine past my ear and then crash into the pavement. Both agents pushed me to one side and threw me to the ground, covering me with their bodies. My chin hit the concrete. I smelled the dust on the ground. When nothing else happened and there was no further sound beyond the ordinary, they hurried me to the car.

That door slam was a gunshot, wasn't it? Someone had just shot at me. Tried to kill me. Why did they want to kill me? Who wanted me dead? What benefit would my death bring?

From what the Bosky soldier had said, at least one Bosky faction was trying to capture me in order to control him and make me do what they wanted. I was already in my own government's hands and my life or death was firmly within their grasp. So it couldn't be my own government wanting me dead either. They would be wanting to use me as a way to control the Bosky soldier as well.

The only thing I could think of was that if my Bosky soldier was indeed their leader and they thought my government had sent me to be a beauty trap or something. Not that I was a beauty or anything. Maybe they thought I was a danger, a distraction or something like that. Anyway, now we knew. There were three groups involved. Those that wanted to keep me alive without strings attached, those that wanted me dead, and those that wanted me within their control so that I could be used to change the direction of the war.

The agents wouldn't talk about it with me. All I could do was wipe my eyes and try not to let them know how much it scared me. I had to be brave. There was no one I could rely on to keep me safe. No one to rely on full stop. There was no one I could trust in this world - or at least, on this side of the border that really cared whether I lived or died. I was just a pawn on a chessboard. A tool to be used. A puppet to manipulate. Bait in a trap.

No matter how I tried to comfort myself, I couldn't stop shaking.

A bird twittered in a tree and there was a pale line of light on the horizon. Was I going to be able to get any proper sleep before work today? Was I even going to be able to work today? I felt all jittery and my hands were trembling. I wished I could go home and hide under my blankets. There I could hide at least for a time from the horrors of the night.

The car drove through the city, twisting and turning such that I almost lost my bearings. I had no idea where we were going or why we would be turning so often. Sometimes fast. Sometimes slow. The agents didn't talk loud enough that I could hear.

"Wake up, Jean," Mr Cooper shook my shoulder and I was surprised that I had managed to fall asleep. Surprised too that I hadn't woken up when the car stopped. That was the second time in these past few hours. I'd have thought my nerves would have kept me up. Maybe the shock of nearly dying so many times in one night had gotten to me.

"Where are we?" I stretched and stumbled out the car on unsteady legs. Mr Raring caught me and held me by the elbow until my legs had woken up enough to take their own weight properly. I shivered in the cold air.

"Back at your workplace. I'm sorry you didn't get a good night's rest last night, but you'll be safest here for the moment. By the time you finish work at the end of the day, we'll have organised that extra security for you. You should be able to come and go between the Compound and office like before."

"Oh," I said, suddenly fed up with the two inscrutable faces that I never wanted to see again. It was a sudden decision. I had decided that I didn't like them. Not at all. It was their fault last night. Why hadn't they just taken me back to the Compound? I was about to rub my eyes, but then felt little twinges on my face and around my eyes from the small injuries there and thought the better of it. Better not to touch my face for now. "See you."