"Heya, five-two-three."

"Yo," I replied as we did a lunchroom drive-by past each other.

After a mission, I often woke up hazy like a fever dream gone wrong, the remains of my last identity spiralling down like a toilet bowl as I grab for reality.

Then I'm famished. Shape-shifting, both in the mental and physical senses, was pretty exhausting.

"Agent five-two-three," the overhead speaker scratched out. I groaned. I hadn't even had a chance to get any lunch yet. "Agent five-two-three. Please report to briefing."

I sighed... so much for lunch.

Ahh, the hallowed halls of HQ. The soaring atria, the cushy sofas to take a break on, the floors and floors of offices and meeting rooms. The light from the two suns angled in from the blue sky above via skylights all over the building.

One might be tempted to look at this scene and think of a bank or some other wealthy business anywhere in Rajma, the capital city of the Carads. But it wasn't.

It was in that place that we were made into elite Agents, Carad scientists picking the cream, Relian Tear-mancers working their dark magic on the crop. In that place, our BPGs let us take on any form for a mission - lovers, colleagues, wives, husbands, enemies, even pets. Infiltrate, gain trust, and push buttons. Flip switches. Cull when necessary. And then... we disappear, never to be heard from again.

All to keep the peace of our world.

Of course, HQ wasn't always this pretty. It wasn't too long ago that we went through the "intimidating fortress of stone" phase, and before that I remember something that involved vaulting arches and stained glass. My memory gets a little fuzzy somewhere around then... I guess a thousand years will do that to anyone.

My intuition felt the fuzzy bokeh of time closing in, and I dragged myself back to the present. The now. New mission.

"Five-two-three, I have something for you," Jens started off as I walked into his office that day, my shoes making no sound on the wood floor. As I said, we had no identity of our own any more, none that we could remember. It was part of our training -- an identity of our own would interfere with our camouflage. Thus I am my ID number.

Five-two-three.

"We've been following a terrorist group for a while now, and we're very close to ending it."

Jens looked around nervously, the little sideburn braid in his black-purple hair swinging as he searched the room. Then he dropped a static generator on the desk.

Spies in HQ? We don't get spied upon, we are the spies!

I pointed at the static generator with shock on my face, and he shrugged apologetically but barrelled right on rather than explaining.

Jens slid a dossier folder toward me on the desk, and I leafed through. Not much to go on, there. Names... pseudonyms, obviously. Vague descriptions, photos of rugged mountains.

"Let me level with you, five-two-three," Jens continued. "We've already lost five Agents against this target."

"Five?" I replied, the shock evident on my face again, no doubt. "What's the target?"

He nodded back. "We've finished many of their leaders... bastards don't die easy. But this one individual somehow escapes every time. Four Agents didn't even return from trying."

"Four? I thought you said we'd lost five."

Jens grunted sourly as if his lunch hadn't gone down well. "I did. The fifth came back in the shape of a chair. Real wood."

Ugh... that's the sort of thing Agents do when they're done, if you know what I mean. Wood can't shape-shift. It didn't happen much, because we could only shape-shift inside HQ. That this one somehow managed it outside of HQ was an earthquake I had to keep inside for the time being.

"Someone is feeding them info from the inside," he continued on implacably, lip twitching slightly. "And this bitch knows some things of her own."

"You couldn't mean..."

"It's possible that she is even a runaway Agent," Jens replied with another nod. "I don't know why someone would d--" He looked down, sighing heavily and massaging the bridge of his nose, seeking composure again. "They're taking a caravan through Asterbré, something to do with Tear Stones. We could ambush them, but we need to get the head. Whack that, and the hydra falls apart. Which is why we need our best to infiltrate the group."

He nodded toward me, and I grimaced, though I couldn't help a little beam of pride at the compliment as I replied.

"Consider it done."

I waited until I left the room to grin and rub my hands in excitement. Finally, a real challenge! Should've sent me to begin with...

BPGs are powerless to change an Agent's form once they leave HQ; something housed deep in the bowels of HQ gave it the oomph, or so the rumours went. But either way, we have to choose our avatar carefully. "Avatar" is what we call the disguises we take on. We become that persona, to the outside world.

I stood in my dormitory, looking out over the lights of the city of Rajma, bright even in the daytime. The floor-to-ceiling windows gave me the sensation of perching in an eyrie. I suppose even most citizens of Rajma would consider this exquisite for a hotel room, but that's sort of what it was. It's not like most of our actual work was done in HQ.

Rajma. Rā jì mà, in the tonal Carad language. The capital city of the Carads, the heart and soul of the people. There's nothing else like it in the known world of Casilan. Innumerable spires, roads and walkways weaving in and out in 3D glory. Subways. Automated cars. Curving, shining glass in a thousand colours. After all this time living and working out of HQ, I guess I still never get tired of looking at it.

A wiggling worm of premonition was rummaging its way through my mind, but I had no room for doubt. I dragged my attention back to the task at hand.

Intel said the target was a woman, so that's what I held in my mind's eye. Maybe I could get closer this way.

Gender comes and goes at HQ.

We lived those lives vicariously, but we always remembered that there is a core of us that is Agent. That the avatar will eventually disappear, and I will become five-two-three again.

My normal androgynous form that I kept at HQ was a well-worn groove, a canal of stability carved through a shifting land. But inevitably, I had to let go of it and jump out of the flyer, hoping that wouldn't be the time my parachute failed me.

I willed the change, and I could feel myself becoming... soft. Pottery reverted to clay, ready to be reshaped. That was the dangerous moment, when anything could happen. I held my chosen avatar around me in my mind, feeling what she would feel, imagining what it would be, to be her. I'm not just becoming her, I am her. Always have been.

The ultimate in method acting.

I looked down at my hands as I flexed them, their slender forms harbouring plenty of calluses. I felt nimble on my feet. I'd chosen an average female form. 167cm tall, medium build, fast fighting reflexes. Standard Relian type, well-adjusted for the brutal desert: dark tan, hair somewhere between turquoise and sky blue, dark red eyes. Slightly pointed ears.

The Relian look might be exotic by Carad standards, but I suppose several thousand years of mutation from an unknown source, as the rumours go, can do that to you.

A few moments alone in my dorm suite, flowing and becoming, both mentally and physically, and for a time...

I shall be known as Keia.

"Let's get this done," I said out loud, testing out the voice as well.

It was fun to be cute on missions, once in a while. Everyone lets their guard down, and they never see me coming 'til I strike.