Bogotá, Colombia, December, 2077, Monday…

Anna Rivera jumped down from the trolley. She swung the backpack over her shoulders and headed for the church, stepping jauntily around the piles of garbage and puddles left from the midday rain. It was nearly 6 pm but there was enough daylight to avoid it all.

The southern part of the Distrito Especial had been the poor part for over one hundred years. Through it ran along the main route to Ibague, a winding highway that went down from Bogotá's high elevation to the warmer climates containing the fincas of the rich with their luxurious residences and swimming pools. It was her curious pastime to often be in that section of the capital as she watched the fancy cars speed by the poverty and filth generated by the uncontrolled desire for profits obtained at the expense of human suffering. They would speed by, their passengers oblivious to their surroundings.

Although Anna identified with these poor people, she was not from there. She considered most of them to be dumb and ignorant about how they were exploited. No, she had grown up in the more well-to-do north, in a large, comfortable house not far from the old Unicentro, the first major American-style shopping center ever built in Bogotá, which by now had seen much better days in spite of repeated refurbishing. Even the old exclusive neighborhoods were looking run down now, so much so that her father had been able to buy three houses, tear them down, and construct his mansion. Her father was a Colombian Senator and she considered him to be part of the problem.

But she also considered the Catholic Church to be the main problem. Oh, she still went to mass with her family, but secretly she had become a Pentecostal.

The Pentecostal movement had started to take hold in South America at the end of the twentieth century. It seemed a viable alternative for the poor and downtrodden who seemed to find little relief in the stifling hierarchies of the Catholics. It offered a love and brotherhood that seemed much more personal and fulfilling to many. Unfortunately, it developed a radical offshoot, just as fanatical and radical as any Islamic terrorist group. And just as deadly.

Anna had become one of that radical group's most successful agents. Through her father and family connections, she was privy to all sorts of information that the common twenty year old would not have. She usually just passed the information on to her handlers and later would hear about what happened in the news. But not all the time. She had killed before. She was good at it. Her handlers knew it. So this time the handler had given her an order to kill again.