Layer – The Disguise

How could someone ever pull that off?

Such a difficult paradoxical step,

Thousands of tries,

No one mastered this skill as she did in the hindsight,

This time it had to be tough,

She received the call as soon as she logged off,

Her pager kept on beeping,

The SAT-Phone wouldn’t stop ringing,

It was her call, the over-time call for the day,

Hesitantly she picked up the call,

Just to realize that it was a Priority: “High” & Fatality Rate: “High”

Wasn’t her first time on this negotiation desk,

The walls spoke her story,

1992, 2001, 2003, and 2005 were a history in themselves,

Unlike the cliché Police negotiators, she was a different person altogether,

Grew up in a barn, just to realize how she averted a suicide bombing in her teens,

Just with her words,

A dead man’s switch was no more a “dead man’s” ,

Growing up in a violent household did test her patience & taught her empathy,

It never comes with a Behavioral Psychology degree,

As she stood next to the Chief of Police & Several Heads of Intelligence Agency,

She was calm as a sea,

While they watched the proceedings in anguish,

Little did she know who was held at gunpoint that day,

It was her son!

“That bastard can never touch a Seal” The deputy screamed out of agony,

She couldn’t resist her tears, Neither could she trade her professionalism,

She promised herself that this would be her last time,

To ever step into an office that drops lives as a pack of cards on multiple 65-inch screens,

This wasn’t something that she signed up for,

This was something that she did to give back the world a ray of hope,

It wasn’t easy for her to empathize with her own blood,

One who fought wars and returned home safe brought her memoirs,

Now was bleeding through his ankle,

While she watched her son getting butchered slowly,

How could she accept a deal with the Devil,

To release highly trained mafia’s against a single soldier’s life,

No one would agree to that,

For what human-element was left in her,

Which landed her in this profession,

Was murdered in the broad daylight,

The scene never came to an end,

As she watched officials watch it loop by loop, pausing it,

To get clues on the Assassination,

She wasn’t just heart-broken,

She was able to sense emptiness,

While getting back to her home,

She saw the world in a new way,

A world without her loved ones,

It was not quite different, people never stopped their chores,

The world was just the same, with a loved one out of it,

Little she was able to accept things,

She took a plunge to meet her son,

This time, she did negotiate,

Not with the hostiles, Rather with her own duty,

The best Negotiator, Now laid in a coffin,

With a smile. Probably, she did meet him!

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