“Get down and shut up.”
Red’s heart skipped a beat. He was ready to drop the floppy in the toilet and flush, even if it cos him his life.
“And don’t think about dropping that floppy into the toilet and flushing it. It’ll cost you your life.”
Red gulped and got down from the seat. He stood up and held out the portable drive.
The leather-clad female in front of him guffawed. “We aren’t gonna just take it. You’ve seen something. Yer coming with us.”
After seeing Red’s hesitation, the female said, “Don’t worry, we’re not going to hurt you. We’re the good guys.”
“Wouldn’t the bad guys say that too?” Red asked.
The female flashed a grin and replied, “Shut up.” She grabbed Red and shoved the floppy into his coat pocket. “You’ll be holding on to that. Now come on, we gotta go before the feds show up. My name’s Alice, by the way. It’s time to go down rabbit hole, Red. Stick close.”
***
The door burst open.
Damn. Empty.
The fluorescent lights flickered. Doty gestured for the strike troopers around him to hold back and return to the surface. Nothing in that restroom except a few unflushed remnants.
That means those snobby-assed Eurotrash pricks got the hacker first, thought Doty. The special operative felt like crushing a baby kitten, an urge that had plagued him on a regular basis. He knew he’d find the hacker.
Doty had been dropped in the late afternoon, and was picked up by a mobile command center. He was debriefed, armed, and given an elite strike team. Telepaths were at his disposal, and the hacker had been spotted.
It would have been a simple mission, Doty was sure, if it weren’t for the Illuminati. Doty had encountered them enough to know that they could be more than minor thorns in the side. IT was likely that if the Bavarian operatives escaped with the files, the MJ12 would be wiped out in months.
That didn’t bode well for Doty’s pocketbook.
As Doty walked out of the terminal into the electric air of the night, he resolved to take a vacation after this mission and blow up the Illuminati’s headquarters. He didn’t know exactly where they were, so he’d probably just plant bombs throughout Europe. Doty liked to hedge his bets.
“Sir, we have traced a call to the enemy operatives,” informed a technician from the mobile command vehicle, “They’re on the move.”
Doty cracked his neck, drawing the frightened gaze of a nearby vagrant. “Let’s roll.”
***
“So what’d this guy do again?” Bionic asked stupidly.
Frink threw his head back. “Oh, for the love of God . . . ”
Bionic sneered; “I’m just messin’. In fact, I’ve been doing a lot of thinkin’, and I got a few questions.” Bionic spoke in his old Bostonian accent as he polished the stock of his shotgun.
“Can you, like, not ask them?” Andy implored while he tapped a touchscreen GPS navigator.
Agent Bionic ignored the smaller agent. “I been wonderin’ why we’re going after this hack, when he’s already got two or three superpowers hot on his ass. It sure ain’t because of orders.”
Johnson lifted his head from his laptop. “I believe I have the relative location of the target.” The screen in front of him showed street-level activity of several conspicuous government vehicles racing in amongst nighttime traffic.
“I think it’s because we want this guy as a sorta bargaining chip,” Bionic continued unhindered after Johnson spoke. “If we get him first, then we get get to decide who to give him to.” Bionic leaned in toward the front seats with his next bit. “And ya know what? I’m guessin’ that we’re gonna hand this guy over to the highest payer . . . ”
Agent Andy shoved his keys into the ignition and sighed, “‘Payer’ isn’t even a real word. Frink, you took a pit stop already, right? I’m not stopping this car again.” Andy glanced into the grimy rearview mirror. He needed to get a carwash.
Frink nodded and the car sped off, swerving around the light traffic of the night.
***
Red look around at the red leather interior of the car he was in. It was an antique, and very valuable. The speeding driver didn’t seem to take note of that fact and hit every pothole and crack without slowing, even daring to run a few red lights.
“So, who are you guys? Or, um, who do you work for?”
“That doesn’t matter,” said a Jamaican woman who had identified herself as Poca.
“What matters is that we get you to where you’ll be safe, which is hard,” the man who identified himself as Garcia continued. “We have a sort of safehouse coming up here, but It won’t be much defense against them.”
Red looked at Alice, knowing the answer to the question he was about to ask. “Who’s them?”
The driver, a gruff blond male called Thomson, answered mockingly, “The frackin’ MJ12, stupid. That file you got in yer hands there ain’t BS, you know.”
Alice was on her cell with a someone she occasionally referred to as Trophy. Most of her dialogue was in French and spurts of Italian.
“We’re tryin’ to help you,” Poca said charmingly next to him in the crowded back seat. “Once we get the file and you back to our base, we’re going to wipe your memory and give you a fresh new start in Athens.”
Upon seeing Red’s contorted face of fear, Poca laughed heartily and said, “I’m only screwing with you. Don’t worry. We’re the best bet you got right now.”
Red looked drearily out his window at the rows of postmodern condos giving way to not-quite-remodeled old factories and hotels.
“Where exactly is your base, and how will I get there?” Red asked.
Poca grinned, but Red didn’t see it. “Oh, you have no idea . . . ”
Thomson spoke up from the driver’s seat as the car slowed to a stop in an alley. “We’re here.”
Red looked up at the weathered brick buildings that sandwiched the small street. Not quite the living conditions he expected of a group that could afford such nice cars. Red got out of the car, his head still sticking up towards the top of the historic structures, adorned with malfunctioning plasma billboards and neon advertisements.
Then he felt a hand on his shoulder and recoiled. It was Alice.
“Look,” she said, her bright red lips contrasting the delicate paleness of her skin, “You have the floppy. You have the power right now to do something great, something that will benefit a lot of people. But we need you with us. You have to choose to follow me and do the right thing. Once you’ve seen what you’re going to see, there’s no going back. And it’s harsh world when you’re on the other side. Just remember that you can do something wonderful if you want to. But you have to want to.”
Alice cocked her head as if to say “With me?”
Red didn’t refuse. He strolled right toward the back door of an old weathered building, right before Thomson shouted to him “Wrong one!” Feeling foolish, Red walked to the other side and followed Garcia into Evergreen Terraces.
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