Katpride
Story Collector
Sweden. 1980s.
The mission is a success. The Prime Minister is dead. The Hellhound leaves no trace of their presence as they vanish into the night, the smoking gun securely holstered against their thigh. It will leave an angry red welt where it burns them through the leather. They will fail to notice until it has long since healed.
They aren’t expecting congratulations when they return to base, and they aren’t given any. They’re disarmed and shuffled back into the waiting cold, deactivated until the next time someone finds a use for them. Their mind is a quietly buzzing blank, their memories all static and void. They close their eyes and fall into the sleep like death.
Chaos. Voices, raised in panic and fear. An alarm blaring. They open their eyes, faintly surprised that they remember having closed them. The face in front of them is familiar. (Too familiar. They’ve been here before. He’s been there before. (They remember. Interesting.))
“Hound,” the Handler says, and they stop surveying the room, lock their gaze on him. His shoulders go tense as he just barely manages not to flinch, and (their eyes flash with amusement, the red brightening as) they watch him attentively, expectantly. The lights are strobing, red and dark and red and dark. People are screaming. Shouting. Running around like bees in a kicked hive. The Handler’s voice rises above the noise to give The Hound their orders. Someone is attacking the base. That someone needs to be stopped. This is their mission. End the threat.
(They can taste the shape of the protocol he isn’t following. They feel its absence keenly. (Whatever kept them quiet and distant is burning up fast under the noise and flashing lights. (It feels like waking up.)) They listen, and say nothing.)
They take the weapons they’re given and sort them into holsters, allow themself to be led away by a technician when the Handler hastily dismisses them. They outpace the woman soon enough; they remember these hallways, and even if they didn’t they know how to follow the noise. She lets them, until she looks at them. Then her steps falter, and she stumbles, shoots them a wide-eyed look, turns and runs back towards the lab.
They let her go, breaking into a run of their own in the opposite direction, the serene smile they’d affected shading more vicious with every step.
They have an infiltrator to kill.