Cloak and Dagger

These are some excerpts I changed to fit the prompt, from the novel I'm currently writing, Silver Silence. If you enjoy this let me know; most of Silver Silence can be found on Wattpad through the account Thunderjax3! :)

Rain fell steadily on the man in black, dripping off of his clothes and broad shoulders in large drops, onto the dark pavement or down his legs into his boots, making for a soggy and irritating way of walking. 

The night, despite the rain, was illuminated by glowing hues of orange street lights and its haze in the air, accompanying the dim glow of open windows with lamp silhouettes showcasing moving images of each resident’s shadows. Reading a book, watching t.v, dancing. 

This man, a tall man, hid in the shadows, standing in front of Village Hill Motel. His dark clothing hiding not just the features of his face but billowing out like a cloak, concealing his awkward long legs and small torso. Everyone he worked with wore dark clothing. They were called Cloak and Dagger for a reason. 

Behind the hood covering all but his crooked, thin lips in a grim line, thin eyes carefully darting around the street, watching the motel, searching, checking, always prepared, always ready to act and react. 

A scar reaching from his right temple across his eye to the bridge of his nose ruined his complexion further, and the man, though he would rather die than admit it, preferred the coverage and mystery of the cloaks for this reason among others. 

The tall man, trained in martial arts and knife throwing among discrete and silent movements and other things, was a rising member of this unknown group- Cloak and Dagger. 

Very fitting, he would think often. 

For this group, he had a job. An employer had paid, so he was to finish the job. His instructions were simple: go to room 102 and make sure the resident of that room was not to escape, though alive. Their employer needed her alive. He didn’t ask questions, they never did, just do the job and get paid. 

Another glance around the street and the man left the shadows for the split second he needed to enter the motel and make his way silently to room 102.

Up a single flight to room 102, Diane Summers woke suddenly. Unaware of her time or her location for a split second, she panicked internally until she came to my senses and realized where she was. Room 102. California.

Outside of the bunker. Breathing real air. Staying in a hotel room.

She took a deep breath before realizing something else was wrong. She didn't know how she caught the slight creak of the floor. The slight breath of a person behind her. 

Maybe it was because of her whole like listening to the sounds of silence in the bunker. Anything else was unnatural to her.

She rolled off of the bed a second before their hand came down.

Cursing in Russian, just a single one of the hobbies she'd picked up in isolation, she rolled to the side as her attacker landed on the spot where she was just laying. 

A strong kick from a long leg knocked her down, ramming Diane into the t.v with its force. As the air whooshed! out of her with an “umph”, Diane fell against the wall as the television crashed to the ground with a crack. As the cloaked man got closer, the cloth in his hand- most certainly covered in some type of anesthetic or chloroform- told her all she needed to know. 

Diane kicked out, making contact with his right knee, knocking the man down as she managed to scramble across the room.

 “I assumed that you all thought I was dead,” she said, swinging out with a strong punch, which he easily blocked, grabbing her forearm and pulling her forward. 

“Someone wants you alive, though, regrettably,” he growled. 

“Hired help, then? You weren’t good enough to get a real job?” 

Diane spun the opposite way where he had grabbed her arm and wrenched it out from his grasp, facing him and kicking his stomach. He stumbled back.

Diane tilted her head and pulled up her bottom lip, mockingly. She had thought all of the craziness of escaping the bunker had been over with. “You had to get stuck with kidnapping a little girl?” 

Predictably angry, the man left open his guard again, giving her room to strike hard into his solar plexus. 

She was done with being attacked- a mysterious group still trying to get her back. Put her back in the bunker, isolation.

Into the horrible life which she'd been forced to grow up in.

Gasping, the man fell backward, his hood falling, revealing a gaunt, pale face with dark, thin eyes and lips and high cheekbones. The man’s high widow’s peak far atop his forehead did nothing to hide the ugly pink scar reaching from the right temple to his nose, giving him a sort of diagonal, sideways, sort of uneven look. 

“You are certainly more difficult than I was told you would be.”

She sneered at the man. “I try. Do you?” 

Growling, his eyes squinting at an unnatural angle for his face and scar, he lunged for her, yelling in fury. “You little brat!” 

Not accounting for his speed, Diane fell hard to the floor as he pinned her by the hips with his knee, so she was unable to move, his leg painfully digging into her side.

Smacking her head hard and feeling her vision go sideways for a moment, she felt her arms being pinned down, kicking out with her legs doing nothing as he raised the cloth. 

Diane grunted, trying again to thrust her hips up to alter his balance but the man was well trained and strong enough to keep her down. 

“Cloak and Dagger always wins,” he said in a low voice. 

As the cloth went over her mouth and nose, Diane's panic grew. She took her left hand, bringing it up to clock him in the side of his face. He let go of her in surprise, just long enough for the person behind him to level the playing field with a lamp to the head. 

The man from this group- Cloak and Dagger- laid out on the floor spread eagle, passed out cold. 

Diane looked up in relief. Then surprise. “Rachel?” 

Rachel grinned at her, still holding the lamp. “Surprise, little sis. They can't get rid of me that easily." She shrugged.

I was 16. I had been in the bunker since I was born. Rachel was 19, taken away from me when I was 11. I'd been alone in quarantine since.

"You," I started, shaking and getting up to hold onto her, "owe me an explanation."

I clung to her as we laughed, not caring we were both crying on each other.

Two days into my normal, bunker-less life I was just as awkward as you'd expect when you grow up learning social cues through nothing but books and a television three times as old as you that didn't play anything but static and the Discovery Channel.

The two agents- from some agency I'd never heard of- had found me. They explained that no, my life wasn't normal because apparently, it's not normal to be taken from birth for unknown reasons and put into isolation in an underground bunker.

When I was a born, occasional news of a spreading sickness affecting people was growing but everyone had assumed it would be gone in a few weeks.

When I was a year old, an intense pandemic I couldn't pronounce the name of had finally developed into an all-time high percentage of fatalities.

And there I was, an unknowing little toddler learning the basic art of war and unseen movement in a secret life in a secret bunker where people above me were dying.

That secret didn't hold well when I decided to go to school barely a week later.

“You didn’t have to release a kidnapper, you know! Just find some newspaper and tell them what happened to you."

I lowered my voice, a few heads turning around to hear us talk. “Now is not the best time to be talking about this, Noah. Just because you know my secret doesn't mean we need to say it for the whole world to hear."  

“When, then, Diane? You’re just going to push this problem aside and forget about it?”

“It’s not a problem, Noah. I did what I had to do. It’s not that big of a deal.” 

“It is!” he cried, rising from his seat. He immediately clamped his mouth shut and sat back down, multiple heads looking at us. 

Mr. Morrison, the strictest math teacher I’ve ever had, though he was the only math teacher besides myself I'd ever had, sat up straight and glared at us.

“You two.” He pointed a thick finger at us. “Silent work. Don’t they teach y’all that wherever it is you’re from?” 

I felt my face burning. No. "Yes Sir."

“Then stop talking! Another distraction from either one of you and it’s detention! Do you understand?” 

Noah nodded. “Yes sir.” 

Mr. Morrison sat down with a grunt. “Good.” 

“Idiot,” I hissed, glaring at Noah. 

He rolled his eyes, shaking his head angrily. “It is a problem, Diane. You literally grew up in a secret bunker because you were kidnapped at birth by a mysterious group who gave you nothing but food and books on... I don't know. Unseen movements. Chemistry and how to build a bomb. Knife throwing, karate, wilderness survival, languages, complicated classic and math and history!"

“And now I know how to do all of those things! And I'm out. I escaped and I evaded a deadly pandemic that only ended two years ago!” 

He looked down at his shoes, biting his lower lip. “I know,” he murmured. “I just don’t want to see you get hurt.” 

I felt my heart unthaw a bit, my anger being pushed aside. “Yeah. I know.” 

We both stared at the math problems on our pages that weren't worth trying to understand. I had probably read about it anyways in one of the books from the bunker.

Suddenly, I was decided. "I'm going after Cloak and Dagger. Figure out what they were doing sticking a baby in a bunker through years of isolation and teaching it how to throw knives and speak six languages. My sister disappeared from the bunker when I was 11. She'll be in this, too. I need to figure it all out. Stop them."

He grinned, whooping out loud. "I'm in!"

Before I could tell him the rest of the details, or tell him to quiet down, Mr. Morrison stood up, red in the face. 

“Detention!” he yelled. 

I grimaced, glancing at Noah. 

“Both of you!” 

A second later the bell rang, marking the end of the day. We were caught with a second left. 

“Oh man,” Noah muttered. 

“Couldn’t wait for the bell to ring?” Mr. Morrison held out two pink slips of paper with our names and ‘detention’ marked on them. “Down the hall, second door to the left. You have a minute to get there or it’s an extra hour, you hear?” 

I groaned, Noah and I hightailing it down the hall. 

Here I was, the nation's most guarded secret who was going to take her older sister and boy sidekick to defeat a super-secret evil group, running to detention.

I grinned, skidding to a stop at the detention door.

At least I wasn't stuck in a secluded bunker during a lethal pandemic with no knowledge of the world outside.

I would much rather go to detention.