"Rise and shine agent." The calm and almost monotone voice almost startled Claire, causing her to look around and re-check her surroundings. She had already been up for several hours, beating both the sun and majority of what counted as the population. She had been picking through what little remained of a number of local shops, looking for anything that she could use one way or another. She had almost begun to doubt that anyone was still in charge, still in the position to wake her sleeper unit and call them to duty. After the blackout information about the rest of the world had been extremely limited. Rumours about all kinds of things, involving the collapse of distant governments, the rise of barbaric rulers and even all out war amongst other things had reached her, and she had no way of knowing what was true and what wasn’t. At least now she knew – there was still someone in charge, and with any luck they would know what the hell was happening in the world. 

It didn’t take her long to get from where she was to the church, even having time to return to her now heavily reinforced apartment to gather what gear she might need. As she made her way in she made sure to carefully disable the numerous little traps she had set up, several of them being tied to improvised explosive devices, after all it never failed to amaze her how people quickly descended into their baser instincts without the rules and laws of society to keep them in line. It took her only a few moments to retrieve her weapons, her ‘illegal’ P90 fitting snugly into her rucksack with the majority of her other supplies. Her pistol she loaded before slipping it into the holster which hung at her waist, having not used it up until this moment. She only had a pair of clips for each, the ammunition actually having been much harder to acquire than the weapons themselves – it seemed now that acquiring more may be literally impossible. Lastly she cautiously packed in a pair of pipe bombs she had constructed from makeshift chemicals and other supplies, a little crude but they would do the job. 

Leaving she made sure to carefully re-arm each of her little surprises, caring little for anyone foolish enough to try to break in and trigger them. It had almost surprised her how quickly she had returned to the way she had been before, only hours after she had realised that this damned blackout was global. She spent the first few hours cowering, worrying about the people she had gotten to know and formed relationships with and other foolish things. But after listening to the chaos and destruction in the streets she had quickly remembered and felt what she had many times before. She was no longer in a safe and protective environment, no longer somewhere that people could sleep safely without the fear of being killed as they did. She had killed three men that night, another the following day. All in all it had been only been six days since everything had gone black, and she’d killed enough men for one for each day. Today was the seventh day and she wondered if it would mark her seventh kill, after all countless thousands had undoubtedly been killed since this all started. Now that it seemed there was an extreme cold snap on top of everything people had to endure, which without modern heating would surely lead to countless more deaths. Pushing the dark thoughts from her mind she began the short journey to St Mary’s Church, her feet crunching in the fresh snow as she did so. 

Less than ten minutes later she stood before the solid stone building, the sun just slowly begging to peak behind its solitary tower, barely managing to pierce the thin icy fog that hung in the air. It almost made her laugh that the contact had chosen a place such as this to meet, a place that could supposedly offer some level of protection to the weakened masses. She had long ago learnt that religion could offer no such protection, and often actually endangered those that flocked into its open arms. She hoped that today things would be different, that just maybe by meeting there they could say that some good had been done opposed to harm. 

It was easy enough for her to gain entry to the church unseen, the doors apparently left open for weary travellers at any hour. The single man who waited just inside was half asleep, poor protection in any meaning of the word and she slipped past without even a word. From there it was easy enough to find a way above the sanctuary where the service would be held, a small wooden spiral staircase leading up into the rafters and relative darkness. From there all she had to do was wait.

Over the next hour she watched as more and more people entered the church and seated themselves, quite the number eventually gathering for the sermon. She idly watched the crowd, trying to pick out any that may be her comrades – a few individuals that possibly caught her eye, but it was impossible to tell which of them truly were here for the same reason she was. Once the sermon was over she waited for a few additional moments as several people moved towards the alter, each of them glancing around at the others as she imagined they also trying to identify each other. She stood from her place crouched high above them and made her way back down to between the rows of pew before she finally walked forwards and towards the others. 

“Here we go again...” she thought to herself as she approached the alter...