Codename: April

“Hold her upright,” said Kelly.

The blonde felt the arms hooked under her armpits constrict. She felt her legs straighten up and her feet settle flat on the ground. Her knees had given out three times in this position and each time Julie Friedlander re-positioned her into a more accessible to fists position. Kelly landed another punch. The blonde’s knees buckled again.

“Man, she’s going down after every punch now,” said Julie, who repositioned the woman again.

Kelly landed another punch. The blonde’s legs gave out again. Julie repositioned her. Kelly landed another punch. The blonde’s legs gave out again. Julie repositioned her. And on and on it went. Eventually the blonde had taken so much of a beating that she went completely slack in Julie’s arms. The younger sister dragged the limp woman across the warehouse floor to a table. Kelly cleared it of all the tools and pieces of scrap that sat on it and together they hoisted the woman up onto the table.

Agent April let out a groan.

“She’s still awake!” said Julie.

“Yeah well, not for long,” replied Kelly, pinching April’s nose while also covering her mouth.

The agent began to convulse. Her eyes rolled into the back of her head. Julie held her hands down. April felt the life leaving her body, even if she didn’t quite know where she was. Eventually, her body went limp. Her breath stopped. The top TYME Agent lay dead on the table.

“Okay, now be ready,” said Kelly. “She might come up swinging…”

Julie readied her guard. She watched as her sister rummaged through a worn knapsack and retrieved a vial from its front pocket. Then she produced a needle from the larger pocket. Kelly injected the needle into the top of the vile and withdrew a bright yellow liquid. Then, she plunged the tip of the needle into the dead agent’s neck. The serum emptied into April’s body. For a few seconds nothing happened. Then all of a sudden April’s eyes shot open. She sat up and grabbed her neck.

“What the…?” she said.

“YES!” Kelly squealed. “It worked, it worked. It really f*cking worked! God, Haxgar is going to pay us a sh*tton for this!”

“Did you just…” April started, but soon she saw a fist flashing towards her curtesy for Julie Friedlander.

“Now we get to kill you again!” exclaimed a delighted Julie.

The younger Friedlander sister grabbed April by her blonde tipped hair and pulled her along to a large metal sheet wall. She threw the agent against it and began to slam punches into her gut. April let out gasps of pain. She fell to her knee, which allowed Julie to nail her with a knee of her own. April fell to her side. Her mouth was leaking blood. Her nose was probably broken. She crawled away from Julie, but then a stiletto clad foot stepped in front of her. She looked up and saw a smirking Kelly, who brought her foot back and soccer kicked April square in the jaw.

The TYME agent flopped over to her back. She saw a hundred stars and each one of them was blurrier than the next. Soon she found her body lifted off of the floor. The Friedlander sisters sandwiched her between their bodies. They grabbed each other by the elbow and smooshed their bodies tightly together, squeezing every last bit of air out of April’s body. Then they both took a step back, gave April enough time to catch her breath, and then did it again. The sisters did this five more times until finally letting April fall to the floor. Julie grabbed her by the chin and gave her a backhanded slap. Kelly sat on the agent’s back, took a handful of hair, and slammed her face-first into the floor. April’s nose crunched even more.

Kelly flipped her over and scooted down to the agent’s legs. Julie straddled her and brought her hands behind April’s neck. She pulled the agent’s face into her cleavage. April weakly pushed at the woman’s shoulders but it was no use. She couldn’t breathe. And soon she couldn’t move. And then eventually Agent April dropped lifeless onto the floor.

“Simulation terminated,” a calming female voice echoed out.

The world around Agent April deteriorated. Kelly and Julie Friedlander dissolved into pixels. And all of a sudden Agent April was sitting in the middle of a blindingly bright white room with a helmet being removed from her head.

“How are you feeling?” asked Dr. Z.

“Head hurts,” replied April, pushing herself up out of the chair. “The resurrection was a nice addition. Give agents the chance to try to learn from their mistakes. But Kelly and Julie were too tough.”

“I tried to follow them based on your recommendation,” said Dr. Z.

The women were now walking down a hallway. Dr. Z clutched her clipboard and was furiously writing down notes. April marched ahead of her.

“They’re tough,” said April. “Especially together. But they were impossible in there. I’d tone them down a bit. It felt like I was fighting two Angela Rossis and not the Friedlander sisters. If you threw June in there she’d be toast in seconds.”

“I’ll make the proper adjustments,” said Dr. Z.

“Also, the blonde hair?” April asked as she ran her hands throw her long brown locks. “And it was shorter.”

“Not sure why that happened,” admitted Dr. Z. “I’ll try to work out the kinks.”

The two women split off. Dr. Z presumably returned to her office, while April made her way to the elevator. She had to go down to the third floor to meet with a prospective client. It had been a few weeks since she had gotten out into the field, so she was hoping for something interesting. Her last few missions included retrieving a stolen piece of tech, negotiating a peace treaty between two rival gangs, and doing private eye work on a congresswoman’s cheating husband. Not exactly riveting stuff for someone like April, who absolutely craved competition at every level.

April entered the conference room to see a pale woman with big puffy bags under her bloodshot eyes. She clutched a tissue with one hand and stared at the desk.

“Hello?” April said. “Mrs. Gould, correct?”

Mrs. Gould looked up at her and forced a smile.

“Oh, Elizabeth please,” she said as she rose to shake April’s hand.

The two women sat next to each other. April moved her chair so that she could face Elizabeth.

“So, tell me what’s going on,” April said.

“Well…” Elizabeth began, her voice trembling. “I was told that you could help me. You see my… my daughter she… she’s disappeared. And I just, I don’t know what to do. She’s been gone for three months and the police aren’t doing anything! They have no leads. I tried to tell them everything I knew, but they said she’s most likely…”

April grabbed Elizabeth’s hands. She rubbed her shoulder, and offered her a water or a cup of tea. She did her best to try to calm the woman down, but it became clear she wasn’t going to break through this wall of distraught.

“It’s okay,” said April. “Just give me any information you have and I’ll do my best to find her.”

“I’ll pay anything,” said the now sobbing Elizabeth. “I know you’re expensive, but anything! Anything to get my little girl back!”

April assured her that no payment would be necessary until the girl was found, and even then she’d see what she could do about getting a discounted rate considering the circumstances. Over the next hour April extracted every little bit of information she could about Elizabeth’s daughter. She eventually found out that her name was Lisa, she was 19-years-old, she was short around 5’1”, and had long black hair. April tried to get a list of Lisa’s friends, but Elizabeth told her she didn’t know any. They had just moved into the area a month before Lisa’s disappearance. April figured she may have run back to her old town, but Elizabeth informed her the cops already searched it up and down.

“There is one thing,” Elizabeth said. She dabbed her eyes with what seemed like the thousandth tissue of the interview. “There was this thing she kept talking about, some sort of fight club? I don’t know, she mentioned it in passing once. A girl named Karly Canton or Cantwell or Cartwell… something like that. She brought it up about a week before she left. But the cops couldn’t find any trace of anything like that.”

“A fight club?” April asked. “I might know someone who can help with that…”