Agent Jones & Sun

Agent Jones and Sun's stories

The tired man looked up from the weathered dirt road. Although it was well past sunset, Agent Jones still wore his sunglasses. Looking up at the moon, he shivered. Back home, before the last great war, his mother had warned him against the full moon’s magic. Now, he tried to dismiss it as just another old superstition. But, try as he might, he had to admit that something felt off about tonight. When clouds moved over the moon, he was glad, even though that meant he had less light to see by.

He thought of his own daughter, Inga. He hadn’t wanted to do this. He knew that his daughter was special as well. But, she meant everything to him and the Agency had threatened to take her away. This was not what Agent Jones had signed up for.

Where was she?, Jones wondered. It didn’t make much sense. Why would she leave the ocean for such a dry place? The bone dry desert would be her only weakness. And, yet, the Agency had said she’d be there. The twenty-first of March, they’d said. 1:16 A.M. precisely, they’d declared. They were never wrong.

He brushed the dust off his government regulation suit and settled in to wait. Glancing at his watch, he knew it wouldn’t be much longer.

At 1:16, he saw a tall thin figure appear out of the misty night. Swallowing nervously, the agent tightened his grip on his gun. She was dangerous, he knew. The Agency’s reports showed undeniable proof of her massive power. As the figure approached, he remembered his training. This girl might have had power elsewhere, but here in the dust land, he held the upper hand. A bullet in the head always evened the playing field, in Jones’ experience.

He wished he could shoot her straight out, just to get it over with, but he had his orders and he knew better than to disobey the Agency.

As the figure neared, he glanced at the faded black and white photograph they’d given him. She looked different now: although she still seemed to be wearing the same old fashioned clothes, her long dark hair had been chopped off in an almost punk way. Kids these days, he sneered, no respect for anyone. He didn’t care at all for the new styles. The short hair made her almost unrecognizable, but the same strange eyes shined out in both the old photograph, and in the desert night. It was defiantly her.

When the girl was about twenty paces away, she stopped. She seemed to be waiting for something. She tilted her head, as though listening to the wind. Jones scoffed, everyone knew the old spirits had gone silent long ago.

Jones cleared his throat.

“Miss Sun?” he called.

“Yes,” the shadowy girl replied in an infuriatingly calm tone.

Jones swallowed. So it was true, he thought, they had said that you could hear the crashing waves in her voice.

“How did you know"?”

“To come here?” Sun grinned darkly. “Simple, the winds told me.”

Impossible, Jones told himself, the old gods were dead.

Sun bent over, nonchalantly adjusting the lacing of her scuffed boots. “Say, Jones, what brings you here tonight? If you were hoping for a chat, you could’ve just rung me, you know.”

Jones steadied his handgun to point at her heart. “We just have some questions for you, Miss Sun.”

Sun gave a mockingly stunned laugh, as though a gun was not pointed at her heart, “Well, we certainly didn’t have to meet all the way out here for that.”

“Miss Sun, you have been acting in violation of the Erie Code, as I’m sure you are well aware of. Due to your, ah, talents we have been forced to".”

“To what? Hunt me down?” The agent flinched against his will at pain in her cutting voice. “Well, if you were hoping to take me back to the Agency as your little specimen for some more testing, then I’m sorry to say that you are damned mistaken. I am never going back to that place.”

“I’m sorry, Miss Sun,” he meant what he said; “I have my orders.”

Sun again cocked her head to the whispering wind; she appeared to be conferring with it. After a moment, she seemed to have made a decision with it. “Then your fate is sealed, Agent Jones. I’m sorry, too. But I will not be returning with you.” Lifting her bruised face to the night sky, she whispered the right words in the old forgotten language to the sky.

Jones felt the turn in the air too late.

Sun held her closed fist under the restless night sky, gathering the power of the water all around them in the clouded night. When she opened her hand, all hell was unleashed as the sky exploded into pouring rain and thunder with a crack. Lightning flashed in the sky and her strange eyes. She thrust her palm towards Jones, with a wild look on her face, and a bolt of lightning struck Jones squarely in the heart.

Jones’ last thought was of his own daughter. He was glad that his little Inga was far away, somewhere safe. He hoped that she would be safe now. He wondered if he had made the right choice. A second later, he had no more thoughts.

As the dead man laid, clothes smoking in the sand; Sun calmly lit a cigarette. She had taken off her worn coat; her fair scared skin glistened in the moonlight, odd bruises encircling her wrists and cryptic seals tattooed on her arms.

Having gone through Jones’ pockets, she found a folded photograph of a young grinning girl with dark skin and wild hair, the name Inga scrawled on the back in fading ink; an old black and white photograph of herself; and a sealed folder with the Agency’s crest on the front. Opening the folder, she read the top secret government documents with growing dread. Lying on her back, she searched the lightening sky for a clue as to her next move. The wind did not answer.

Pulling herself to her feet, Sun gathered her things together along with Jones’ gun and the folder of reports. Before leaving, she laid a small battered eye charm over the dead agent’s still heart. She made sure to give him the old burial rites, so that his spirit would rest; the world didn’t need any more ghosts.

Turning west, she bowed to the moon before leaving to find the way back to her ocean. If what she had read in the reports were true, then a war was coming and Sun knew that she must prepare for battle.

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