His Last Test

“You think you have what it takes to be a field handler?” The Colonel asked.

John inclined his head deferentially. “Yes sir.”

The Colonel shoved a manila folder at him. “Then prove it. Go get yourself a field agent.”

John opened the file and scanned the specs - an orphanage in Iran. No one would notice a girl go missing; girls were second-class commodities there. He closed the file and nodded, saluted once, then waited till he was dismissed.

John was never one to procrastinate, so he booked a flight as soon as he got back to his bunk in the barracks. He spent the entire flight over finagling out the details - forging passports and birth certificates, drafting an entire history for a non-existent child. As soon as John had made it out of basic and been shuttled into officer training, he’d learned about what was keeping the brass on its toes, the mysterious conundrum of The Carrier. He hadn’t wanted anything to do with it.

Apparently, his last test to prove his fitness as a field officer, was to throw himself in the middle of it.

The orphanage was on the poorer side of town. He’d considered trying to blend in as a local, but the sad truth was that no one would think twice of a foreign man purchasing a local child.

John spent seventy-two hours observing the children who shuffled in and out of the ramshackle building before he found a suitable one. The orphanage matrons called her Kalila. She couldn’t have been more than three years old, but John saw fierce intelligence in her bright green eyes. None of the matrons thought it at all significant that little Kalila could read.

John took another two hours to finish forging out his documents for his new daughter - Carolyn - and then he made his move.

Two days later he was a ranked field officer, and he was a father.

(323 words)