Fortune Cookie

Fortune Cookie
​ANONYMOUS MOVING IMAGES

​A man and a few friends are enjoying dinner at an upscale Chinese restaurant in Washington DC.

​A few drinks, a few laughs. Excellent food and service.
It was a night to remember.

Before the check, fortune cookies were placed at each diner's place.

​The man opens the first cookie. The fortune read: DON'T REACT STAY CALM AND I'LL GET YOU TO SAFETY.

​The man laughed and told the table he was going to meet a beautiful woman tonight.

​The second fortune read: JUST TO THE RIGHT OF THE MEN'S ROOM IS THE KITCHEN.

​The man once again laughed and said, and she will have plenty of money.

​The final cookie read: ONE OF THE MEN AT YOUR TABLE HAS BEEN SENT TO ASSASSINATE YOU. YOUR FAMILY IS SAFE. MOVE TO THE KITCHEN NOW.

​The man said he would come into a lot of money in the near future.

​They all had a good laugh. He excused himself and headed for the men's room.

Seeing he was not followed, he darted into the kitchen. Waiting just inside of the kitchen was a drop-dead gorgeous Asian woman. Quite voluptuous.

She guided him through the cellar and out to a waiting car. He had so many questions, but paramount was, "Is my family safe?" She answered yes, and that they were waiting at the safe house.

​It didn't take long for the assassin to read the discarded fortunes left behind at the table and give chase.

​He is now being hunted.
He has no idea why.

A man with an entry-level clearance at the Pentagon is now running for his life.

He doesn't know what he knows. He isn't a field agent; he doesn't know why he has to disappear.

He's not a hero with a weapon; he’s an ordinary guy who saw something he thought was a glitch or a minor bureaucratic error.

Upon their arrival to the safe house his wife and child were nowhere to be found.

A small communications error they said. There were two safe houses. It was assumed one for each.

His wife immediately called his cell. After a few minutes of reassuring each other.

EXPLOSION

The man's call dropped.

The dial tone buzzed in his ear like a hornet.

The silence following the explosion sucked the air right out of his lungs.

​He stared at his screen. Call Ended.

​He lunged toward the woman. "Where are they?!"

​Her flawless composure finally slipped. She drew a suppressed pistol, checking the window. "They found the first safe house. Our comms are compromised."

​"My family—"
​"Is gone," she said flatly. "And if we don't move in thirty seconds, we are too."

​They sprinted into the damp DC night. His mind fractured, trying to connect his mundane desk job at the Pentagon to this sudden, violent reality. He was just an ordinary guy who had noticed a minor discrepancy, a glitch in a routine file. He had flagged it and gone to dinner.

​"I don't understand!" he gasped, his chest burning. "I don't know anything!"

​"You don't have to," she said, cutting hard into a dark alley.

"They just need you gone."

The headlights of an unmarked transport van cut through the dark as they arrived at a secondary, heavily secured safe house.

Bursting through the door, the man felt a tidal wave of relief—his wife and child were there, shaken but entirely unharmed. They had escaped the blast radius just in time.

​The reunion was abruptly cut short as three FBI agents stepped out from the shadows of the living room.

​The senior agent in charge stepped forward, his expression grim. "Sit down," he said briefly, looking at the man. "We don't have much time."

​"What is happening?" the man demanded. "What did I do?"

​"It’s about the file you flagged forty-eight hours ago," the agent explained, keeping his tone direct and devoid of bureaucratic jargon. "That wasn't a computer glitch. You stumbled onto a highly classified, off-the-books logistics network operating inside the Pentagon. Black budget funding being diverted where it shouldn't be."

​The agent leaned in. "The people running that network don't know who you are, but they know someone ran an audit. They assume you're a whistleblower ready to go to the press or a foreign intelligence agency with the digital keys to expose them. To them, you are a catastrophic leak that needs to be permanently plugged."

​Seeing the terror on the faces of the man's wife and child, the senior agent softened his tone, trying to offer some reassurance.

​"You're safe now," the agent said, looking between them. "But we have to keep you moving. We’re going to relocate you, change your names, and shift you between safe locations until we can round up those responsible and bring them to justice."

​He gave a reassuring nod. "It shouldn't take long."

​The man looked at his wife, then back at the agent. The promise sounded hollow. The timeline felt doubtful. But looking at the cold reality of the room, they both knew they had absolutely no other options.

​They agreed.

​TO BE CONTINUED

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