Falling Star by Philip Chen

other girls, but was out practically every day perfecting her hunting skills.  They encouraged and supported this aspect of Mildred's childhood development.
    Now, in the twilight of her career, Mildred had become an elder statesman of CSAC.  Legend had it that she was the most prolific assassin in the agency's history.  With her milk-fed complexion, shapely figure, attractive features, innocent blue eyes, and golden locks, the younger Mildred had been able to get into places more hardened agents could not.  Once in, Mildred accomplished her assignment with deadly accuracy.  Mildred's knowledge of anatomy, especially human anatomy, made her surgically efficient.
    Investment bankers like Mike Liu may have their brass, Lucite and wooden souvenirs, but people with Mildred's particular bent of mind also kept souvenirs.  Souvenirs meant to bring back the rush and to symbolize the thrill of the moment.  Mildred was no different.  However, her strict Lutheran upbringing limited those souvenirs to objects found on or near her achievements.  The more grisly totems would be kept by others.  The only biological souvenir she kept was a broken fragment of antler from her first kill.  Her souvenirs were kept in a cardboard shoe box hidden on her closet shelf.  During quiet moments, she would bring the treasures down and relive the excitement and rush that her assignments had brought her.
    Mildred enjoyed her semi-retirement, taking only occasional courier assignments, which allowed her more time with her long-suffering husband, their four daughters, and many grandchildren.  Her family never knew the extent of Mildred's secret life and dismissed her grisly treasures, because of their seemingly ordinariness, as mementos of their wife/mother's travels abroad as a State Department researcher.  Despite her secret career, Mildred was a devoted wife, mother, and grandmother.  Upon her retirement as a State Department researcher, Mildred and her family had returned to the rich black dirt of her beloved Red River of the North valley and established a life of rural stability.  Her husband farmed sunflower or sorghum wheat or corn or sugar beet, whatever was profitable.  Mildred ran a Scandinavian hobby shop in Crookston.  Mildred's shop was a popular place in Crookston, particularly during the long, cold Minnesota winter.
    The debriefing room was, in actuality, a small operating room.  After examining the superficial wounds to her left hand and neck, the duty nurse asked Mildred to put on a hospital gown and to lie on the operating table.  The surgeon had already scrubbed and was standing beside the table.  In a corner, two armed Marines in battle fatigues stood quietly with an iron container, its top open.
    Exposing Mildred's remarkably well developed and still physically firm body, especially given her outwardly older appearance, the board-certified plastic surgeon made a small incision directly below Mildred's left armpit.  With a surgical nurse helping with the spreaders, the surgeon retrieved a small plastic and gold cylinder from the subcutaneous layer of Mildred's skin using a retractor that fully enclosed the small thin cylinder.  The surgeon then placed the retractor containing the cylinder gently into a lead-lined cylinder, closed the cover of the lead lined container, and handed the cylinder to a Marine Lieutenant, who was dressed in a green surgical gown, as was everyone in the operating room except the two guards.
    The Lieutenant placed the cylinder into the lock box held by the Marine guards, evacuated the container with a portable pump, and injected nitrogen gas into the apparatus.  The surgeon then opened a plastic bag and retrieved a small plastic and gold cylinder, which he placed into the open wound below Mildred's left armpit.  He closed the wound, taking great care to close tissue layer by layer to minimize any scarring of Mildred's skin.  When completed, the scar over the cylinder would be barely