Agent Han's ears popped as the elevator climbed, the way they always did. The door opened with a ding, and she stepped out.

The familiar hallway to Director Abraham's private office was bare of any artificial light, but it was far from dark. One of the hallway's walls was completely comprised of floor-to-ceiling windows, giving the enormous full moon ample latitude to paint it with its soft, hazy light. Agent Han stopped a moment to admire the D.C. skyline, before being distracted by her reflection. She had toweled off as best she could, but her face still looked a bit sweaty from her workout. She wondered if she was in some kind of trouble. It struck her as odd that Director Abraham was even working at this hour. Maybe he'd been working late? Just her luck.

She moved on down the hall. Director Abraham's office came into view. It occurred to her that she had never spoken with the man anywhere else. Like her, he had a predatory nature...but he was not a hunting predator. He preferred to make his lair, and wait for prey to walk into it.

She stopped at the door, and knocked on it.

“Come in, Agent Han,” said Director Abraham's voice.

Agent Han opened the door. Director Abraham was sitting at his desk. The moonlight on his back rendered him in silhouette, and glinted off his shaved head.

“Good evening, Director,” was Agent Han's greeting.

“Good evening to you as well, Agent Han,” Director Abraham replied. “I apologize for calling you here at this late hour, but while I was wrapping up for the night I received a notification that you were out of bed. Is everything alright?”

By Abraham's design, it was easy to parse the focus of his statement through all the formalities: Agent Han was going to Sunnycrest tomorrow, and she needed rest if she was going to perform her duties to his satisfaction. Agent Han nodded, and said, “Yes, Director. I simply had difficulty sleeping.”

“Ah. And so you went to your training room to unwind?”

“Fighting helps to clear my thoughts, sir.”

Director Abraham leaned back in his chair. He swiveled it to look out the window, hands steepled. The moonlight illuminated the rack of billiard balls on Abraham's desk, while washing out their colors. None were missing.

“A lot on your mind, eh?” asked Director Abraham complacently. His voice sounded more relaxed now, more genuinely warm. “Are you worried about your mission?”

Han was insulted. “Worried? No, absolutely not.”

Her insult must have shown in her voice, because Abraham chuckled. “No, no, of course not indeed. Why would you be? Then perhaps you're disappointed because you're not permitted to kill the target?”

This annoyed Agent Han. Perhaps when she was a child she would pout and complain when Director Abraham didn't allow her to kill someone, but she was older now. Nearly an adult, in her opinion. Even though she had been raised since birth with to appreciate how pleasurable it is to follow orders and how pleasurable it is to kill, she was mature enough at this point to know that sometimes the pleasure of following orders would have to suffice.

“Director, if you asked me here only to tease me, then I shall take my leave,” she said sternly.

“That isn't my intent, Agent Han. I truly am concerned,” said Director Abraham. He swiveled his chair back towards her. “If it's something that could reduce your efficiency in the field, putting you or others in danger, I need to know.”

“It's nothing.”

“Would you feel more comfortable speaking with your mother about it?”

Agent Han frowned. “That woman is not my mother.”

Director Abraham smiled to himself. Precocious though she was, Agent Han could still act like a teenager at times. He stood up, and walked around his desk toward her. “Come now, C-13.” Subject C-13 was what Han was referred to for many years. She was only assigned a “birth” name later in life. Abraham knew that calling her by this nostalgic name, her true name, would bring down some of her walls. “I don't want you to think of me as just 'the boss,' or 'the guy who gives the orders.' I want you to know you can trust me. You know you can trust me, don't you?” he prodded.

Agent Han hesitated. Then, she reluctantly answered, “Well...since you ask, there is something about tomorrow's mission that bothers me.” Abraham said nothing. Han considered her words. “I am...concerned that you may be ordering me to scout my replacement.”

Director Abraham looked shocked. “The cannibal girl? Your replacement? Don't be ridiculous, C-13.” He put a comforting hand on her shoulder. Han looked at the hand in surprise, then up at Abraham's face.

She was not touched frequently, and when she was, it was usually some form of medical poking or scientific prodding. It kind of left her with a sour taste in her mouth about being touched in general, so she pushed his hand off her without saying anything. He went on, “You're irreplaceable, C-13. You represent decades of hard work and research. You're the greatest military breakthrough since the automatic rifle. The stuff of science fiction, the perfect super soldier. You've carried out missions for your country alone that would be impossible for even a full, elite squad of Nave SEALs. These kinds of things are not easily forgotten.”

If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

“Not easily, perhaps,” said Agent Han. “But potentially. Why do you want the cannibal girl, if you've already invested so much in me?”

“The cannibal girl is a...” Director Abraham took a moment to select the right word, “...curio. Her capabilities are interesting. As a rational woman, you cannot deny this.” Agent Han neither did nor didn't, so he went on. “By studying her, we can learn more about killing. Killing, and the people who do it. We need her hunter's body. We need her murderer's mind. When I have those, when I learn everything there is to know about them, the knowledge I gain will be a tool. A tool that I will use to help you reach your full potential.”

Agent Han thought about this. It did make sense. With the kind of time and money they put into her, it made sense they wouldn't throw her away. The cannibal girl was just meat. She was the next creature to find its way into Abraham's lair.

“And of course, going and fetching her would be a very obedient thing to do,” Director Abraham persuaded. “You'd be doing your country a great service, Agent Han.”

These were things she had been raised from birth to ascribe a positive connotation to. Just hearing them triggered a reaction in her. Director Abraham knew that if her brain chemistry was being analyzed at that moment, a spike of serotonin levels would be very visible.

“Well...” said Agent Han. Her exterior was as icy as ever. “I suppose you make some strong points, Director.”

“Do you think you can go to sleep, now?”

“I think so, yes. Thank you, Director.”

…............

“And here we can hang some spoooky spider webs!” uttered Alicia, a haunting tremor in her voice and big, sunny grin on her face. She pulled some synthetic webbing out of one of the bags they got from the seasonal decorations place and began tacking it up on the cardboard wall.

It was the day before Halloween, but the cheerleaders of Sunnycrest High had nothing to fear, at least as far as their fundraiser was concerned. They were well on pace to finish their haunted maze. The walls were completely erected, and all that was left was the best part: The decorating. Plus, early projections indicated they'd rake in some big bucks. They had been spreading the word around the school and the town for weeks now, and it sounded like all of Sunnycrest was coming. Spring break was starting to look more and more realistic.

“In fact, we should have a LOT of webs here!” Alicia suggested to herself, stringing big gobs of them up and having way too much fun doing it. She grabbed a rubber spider out of a box of random Halloween props. “And a big creepy spider!”

Sitting nearby on the football turf, Chase looked up from the pumpkin she was scooping out. “Oh! Look much spook!”

When Alicia got the spider to stay, she stepped back and looked at her handiwork. “I know, right? This is going to be the best haunted maze ever!”

Caitlin was nearby, humming while she worked, using silver paint on a prop that was going in the mad scientist's laboratory. She looked over at Chase, and the big pile of hollowed out pumpkins next to her, ready to be made into jack-o-lanterns. “Wow, Chase, you're really making quick work of those!”

Dredging up another scoop of pumpkin guts, Chase said cheerfully, “Yes! Do much times back home. Plus, cut and scoop from orange pear much less hard than cut and scoop from skull.”

Caitlin turned pale. “Oh. I'm...I'm sure it would be.”

“I don't know how you get 'orange pear' from a pumpkin. They don't look like pears at all,” commented Lindsey, her roll of duct tape squealing as she reinforced the joint between two of the walls.

“Do you want to carve the faces too, Chase?” asked Alicia cheerfully.

“Carve face?” asked Chase, confused.

“Yeah! Take the knife and make little triangle eyes, a big creepy mouth...Here,” Alicia showed her an example on her phone. “It's a Halloween tradition!”

Halloween. Chase had heard them use that word a lot lately. “Oh, okay! Leash, what is Hal?”

Nobody had ever asked Alicia to describe Halloween before, so she didn't have an answer ready. “Well...hmm. It's a night that happens every year on October thirty-first. All the kids dress up as monsters and go around from door to door. They say 'trick-or-treat' and you give them candy.”

“Also it gives everyone else has an excuse to dress up in costumes too,” added Lindsey. “And there's usually horror movie marathons on TV, and people decorate their yards with creepy stuff...”

“That's why my parents put that plastic skeleton in our yard,” said Alicia. She started pulling apart some more webbing. “That probably seemed kind of strange to you, if you didn't know what Halloween was until just now. But I guess you just rolled with it, huh?”

“Thought fake bones were there to scare off foes,” said Chase, scratching her head.

She was clearly just getting more confused, so Caitlin tied it all together with, “Basically it's just a day where people have fun with creepy stuff. It's a celebration of all things scary!”

“Oh, I see!” Chase thought about this, as they resumed work. To be honest, she still didn't quite see. Celebrate scary things? What was there to celebrate? She had been scared a lot lately, mostly scared for the lives of her friends and herself. She definitely didn't feel like celebrating afterward. She supposed it was emblematic of the peaceful, happy lives these girls led. For them, being scared was something so unusual that it was an event.

As she thought this, she felt a wave of appreciation. That peaceful, happy life wasn't just theirs. It was hers, too, now. They had invited her into it. She felt determined to find that peace, to make good on this amazing opportunity. Even if she couldn't yet understand the appeal of Halloween, she wanted to. She wanted fear to become alien, abstract, to her the way it was to them. She didn't want 'scary' to mean grappling with death, keeping a semblance of normalcy alive only through violence and bloodshed. She wanted it to mean plastic skeletons, stringy spiderwebs from a plastic bag, and orange pears with crooked teeth.

Just as Chase was finishing off her first jack-o-lantern, a tall mysterious figure stepped out around a bend in the maze. It wore a dark, hooded cloak, and a plain white mask. In its hand was a nasty-looking box cutter.

The figure stood there, staring at the girls. The box cutter was raised, held in a stabbing grip. The figure breathed heavily, manically, but said nothing.

“Hilarious,” said Caitlin. “Very funny, Victoria.”

“What's funny?” came Victoria's voice from the opposite direction. They looked. There Victoria was, down a separate corridor, looking annoyed as she stretched to string up some orange lights.

The cheerleaders looked back at the figure. It let out a roar and ran at them. “RAAAAHHH!”