Blown Cover

Rosellina paced back and forth across the length of her small living room. Thoughts swirled through her mind ranging from self-reproach to resignation over the situation. Here she was on her very first assignment and not two weeks into it her cover had already been blown. The fact that it was not really her fault did little to alleviate the feelings of guilt the thought brought with it.

"Of all the places that someone could have run into me, who would have thought it would be the orphanage?" Rosellina murmured to herself.

Indeed, her encounter with the undead woman calling herself Daera had been unfortunate. At first it had seemed like nothing; a chance encounter between two people with a certain shared history and nothing more. The pointed questions that Daera had asked made it clear to Rosellina that she was not as easily duped as would have been best under the circumstances. Rosellina had managed to stick to her cover story as much as possible, but the other woman seemed unconvinced.

"I wonder what Lord Warten would think if he knew that I called him my father?" Rosellina murmured to herself with a smirk. "He'd probably laugh. At least he's not an active field agent anymore where his cover can be blown. I need to handle this situation as delicately as possible."

There were really only a few ways to handle it, each with their pros or cons. Rosellina stopped pacing and sat down on her couch, going over each of them one by one as if reading down a list.

I can pretend it never happened and ignore the entire thing.

The option involved no work and might be successful, but was largely dependent upon the undead woman's actions. If she began to ask more questions or worse, began to follow Rosellina around, it could result in a complete ruination of her mission. That would be intolerable given the potential danger to Stormwind and the future good she could do in other assignments.

I can confess everything.

This option involved finding the woman again. Somehow Rosellina knew that she'd be able to locate her. It was unlikely that someone as observant as the Death Knight appeared to be would fail to see Rosellina walking about the city openly, especially if she stuck to the area around the orphanage. The strange undead woman would likely come to see what Rosellina was about and she could discuss it there. The only problem was that this was a major breach of security, and she knew next to nothing about the Death Knight.

I can eliminate her.

It was a bloody option indeed, but it would solve the problem most permanently. There were only two problems with the situation. The first was that Daera had committed no crime and was not worthy of death as far as Rosellina saw. Rosellina believed in her work, and executing innocents merely to protect a secret was not part of what she saw herself doing. She wasn't even sure that the situation was life or death anyway; she couldn't just go off on a murder spree because she was afraid. The second issue was that she had little training in relation to Death Knights, and was unsure whether or not the task could be carried out properly. Could she even be poisoned? Would a knife put her down? It was too risky to attempt and if Rosellina failed, she'd have given the undead woman a reason to try and betray her.

I can try to go over her head.

This option seemed less confrontational, and had the potential of gaining allies. It would be irresponsible for Rosellina to reveal her identity to Daera, but what about Daera's superiors? While the Ebon Blade was a neutral organization, individual military divisions worked for either the Horde or the Alliance. Given Daera's presence in Stormwind, it was obvious which side her company stood on. If Rosellina could contact her superiors and reveal the importance of her mission to them, she could then prevent Daera from potentially ruining the mission and may gain access to some resources in a pinch provided she could offer similar favors back. It seemed like a sound plan, and in a worst case scenario the Death Knights would betray her identity and make her have to get reassigned; a reassignment that would likely involve hunting them down given that they would have betrayed the Crown.

Rosellina nodded to herself, mind made up. She stood and walked to her writing desk, taking out two fresh pieces of parchment and a gnomish writing device before seating herself and beginning to write. The first thing she wrote was a quick status report to SI:7 command.

Working to identify ship's destination. Will await return of ship to question crew. Packages left on morning tide. More information in coming days. Cover potentially threatened. Will turn into opportunity to procure more information sources if possible. No action recommended at this time.

She nodded as she finished, beginning to fold the letter in preparation for its insertion into the delivery container. This particular note would be left in a dead drop that consisted of a pile of trash. An empty milk bottle with other crumpled paper would be the designated drop off method. With that out of the way, Rose paused, pen over the next blank sheet of paper.

She would need to word the next letter very, very carefully. It was never easy to convince someone to help you despite themselves.