The grim strip lighting of the loading bay dazzled Christian Rabellino as he stepped inside. All around him, rebel fighters frenzied with activity as they prepared to launch their most audacious attack yet against the regime. They planned to strike right at it's heart - the presidential palace. He had long since informed the agency of the plan, when it was in its infancy. In response, a significant proportion of security forces had been removed from the capital - baiting La Gente into a rushed execution. The official line fed to state media was that they were needed to put down an insurgency to the East.

Though he had always emphasised to himself the need for professional detachment, he could not help but feel some personal connection with his would-be comrades. After all, he had spent two years ingratiating himself with them, earning their trust. He would be gone, extracted covertly in the night as he kept watch outside, before the compound was raided at dawn. That was the plan as communicated to him by dead drop. As he watched grenade launchers and rifles be passed hurriedly from fighter to fighter, before being stuffed into the beds of trucks, he felt a new kind of solemn adulation for the dedication and true belief he had come to begrudgingly respect. The feeling took him by surprise.

Perhaps this was some kind of cosmic foreshadowing of what was about to come. In rushed little Javier, young son of Alejandro Busquets. Busquets was right hand man to the legendary Escorpión.

"Javier! I've told you not to come in here!"

Javier was not dissuaded, making a b-line for his father, who dutifully lifted him into his arms despite his unhappiness.

"Papa, papa... When will you be home again?" asked the boy, wide eyes pleading.

"I hope soon my boy. I hope soon. And then we will go into the city again, for it will be ours once more. No more exile, no more hiding. You can go back to school!"

The boy cried out in comic sadness at the suggestion.

Suddenly, Christian felt dizzy. The world spun around him. Because of him - his actions - this boy would watch his father die at next sunrise. The boy himself would not be safe, either. President Peñarol's forces were not known for mercy, or for discretion.

He had to do something. He had to tell them that he had received intelligence that a raid was being planned. He would think of an explanation. He had to do something.

He cared not to join a band of terrorists. But he cared not to live as a man responsible for the nightmare that had confronted him. After years of service to his nation, he had made the decision to betray it in an instant.

"Alejandro! I need to speak to you and the boss. Now."

I wrote this quickly with little to no proofreading due to being very short on time, so apologies for any mistakes!

They are savage and brutal, I know this. I’ve spent months joining them on their hits, bombing, flooding, and causing as much damage as possible. They are the enemy of the state. They have been planning for months to assassinate the king. While I have helped I have relayed information back home.

Home. Maybe it’s been too long but that word doesn’t seem right anymore. I have spent months living in perpetual disgust with them and myself for what I had to do to protect the realm, but now… I’m not sure about anything anymore.

“Don’t just stand there!”

I am pushed and jostled towards the inferno. My ears are numb to the screams but the acrid smell of burning flesh chokes me with every breath. Not something I could ever get used to.

I avert my eyes, swallowing bile as a group carry a limp body past me. This was not supposed to happen. It was supposed to be a simple extraction. Raid the base and take a small number of them including me. A few unlucky ones would die but not this kind of destruction. This needless death.

I am moving before I fully know what I’m doing. I join the chain passing water to the burning building I should be going to the extraction point but I need to help. All I had been told about them crossed through my mind again. They were vermin, a disease. They needed to be beaten into submission but I had not expected this extermination. Or had I? Had I been naive, or wilfully ignored the worrying messaging?

I thought I couldn’t hear the screams anymore but the sound of agony, panic and fury made my blood run cold as burned and bloody Mrs Kepler was dragged away from the blaze.

“I have to help, Let me help!” she screeched, fighting the two men who carried her away. She had been kind, and caring. She could have been useful to us. I wasn’t supposed to think of them like that but she had the softest touch I had ever encountered. She wasn’t like them. Neither were the others burning in that building. Why had they, we, done this? Why target the school? The tiny bodies of three children were carried past. I recognised the wild shock of red curls on one of them, Mary. She was a curious one. Always rooting through my things for treats but never malicious. Innocent. All the children were. The plan had been to take the adults not burn the children.

“They’ve broken through the gate!”

I leave my place in the chain. Where am I going? I don’t know if I want to join them, my people, or kill them all. I yearn for home, the one I’d known before. Where I was safe and believed in the power of the realm but I know I can never go back there.

I am moving to the breached gate but turn before I reach it. There’s a hole in the fence which I used to sneak in and out of the base camp. He’ll be here. The knights are murdering their way through the base. They know the layout, where they keep the weapons, the food. I told them.

I cannot stay but will not leave. I will die here. But I will take him with me. I will kill the king.

Davik was little when he was taken into the custody of the state. He couldn't remember his parents. Sometimes he would have dreams about a woman in a pretty dress hanging from a tree, and wake up screaming, in a cold sweat.

Very early in his education, Davik showed an aptitude for modifying his personality to suit any social situation. Fitting in meant survival, and he was a survivor. This did draw attention from scouts, however, and by the time he was 12, he was receiving lessons that the other students were not.

Poison crafting, languages, bomb making. The tools of espionage. His tutor was Nav Pogin, a short man with short cropped hair who was aggressively average looking, presumably by design.

"If you survive my trials, Davik, you will join the Eyes of the Emperor."

Survive he did, and on his 16th birthday, Davik officially joined the Eyes in a secret ceremony in the catacombs beneath the Holy Temple of the Divine Emperor. Shortly thereafter, he was given his first assignment; to infiltrate the peoples resistance and provide intel on their activities.

Davik was excited to contribute. Excited to start a new life in a role he knew he could adapt to. Getting recruited was easier than Davik anticipated. He slashed a tire on an imperial supply truck, and stole food from the back while the driver changed it. Then he distributed it to the hungry children prowling the alleyways, before settling into a box himself and going to sleep. When he awoke, three armed men with the band of the resistance on their arms were towering over him.

He was questioned relentlessly, but his cover story held up. He certainly looked the part of a down on his luck young man with no prospects. It wasn't hard to summon a venom in his speech when speaking of the Emperors hands.

For two years he walked among them. Worked, ate and slept among them. For two years he left intel packets at the designated dead drop. The previous packets were always gone each time he visited, but there was never any response. Not until now.

Davik carefully opened the letter, since it was made of flashpaper and would combust with little agitation.

"Codename Chameleon, Assignment Complete. Extraction on hill outside rebel base tomorrow at midnight, sharp. All persons inside will be liquidated. Do not be late."

Davik crumpled the paper and it flashed alight and turned to cinders in an instant. That night he dreamt of the tree. He could see the womans face clearly for the first time, and she had his eyes.

Was this personality he had cultivated to infiltrate the rebels just another one of his forgeries? Is the spy really who he is, or can he choose? Never before had he considered the concept of choice in who he would be. Chameleon, they called him. Shifting who he was but never being just one person. Never finding a sense of self.

Davik chose. He chose to set his colors, permanently. Chose who he was, and it was treason. Davik knew he risked the hanging tree. Something deep within his heart told him, though, that it was a family tradition.

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