With a little cackle of glee, Chase leveled the scope of her sniper rifle at the back of the pedestrian’s head. Although the ground around her was littered with dismembered bodies and the walls were caked with the blood of innocents, the young woman seemed completely unaware of the imminent danger as she continued her ambling gait down the street in a skirt so short it barely descended to her upper thighs.
“Clueless, utterly clueless,” Chase muttered from her position on the 10th floor, as she prepared to squeeze the trigger.
Creaky-creak went the office door. Alt-Tab, went Chase, bringing up a glowing spreadsheet filled with complex numbers that hurt her brain. Gordon poked his head around the door. “Are those numbers ready yet?”
“Not quite yet, Mr Black,” Chase replied primly. It was no wonder they were not ready yet. 6 hours after loading Grievous Bodily Harm: Freedom City onto her work machine, Chase’s productivity had never been lower.
Gordon, a middle aged, slightly balding man with a new baby at home that was making him tense and irritable during the day, frowned. “They were due in yesterday.”
“Were they? I wasn’t informed,” Chase lied, making a mental note to clear the memos regarding the numbers from her in-box. “I can just make them up if you like.”
Gordon shook his head. “What are we paying you for if you don’t do your job?” he muttered.
Chase ignored him. They were all government workers, and none of them were so silly as to imagine that they actually earned their salaries.
“I’m saving lives,” Chase informed him smugly.
Gordon snorted cynically. “The day we save a life will be a red letter day.”
“If by red letter, you mean severance package,” Chase replied. “I’ll send an email to the Head letting her know the numbers will be late because they appeared to have been tampered with.”
Again, Gordon shook his head, shaking a few wispy lengths of hair free. “She won’t buy that. This department is behind.”
“This is National Security. It’s our job to be behind,” Chase grinned.
A low moan of despair and a closing office door was all the reply she received and indeed, all the reply she needed. With a few swift clicks, she opened her email account, deleted all mention of numbers needing to go in and sent an email to the Head’s secretary with a vague suggestion that the numbers had been tampered with and she was sending them for analysis. One more email, one quick attachment of the numbers and they were officially out of her in-box and lurking about some poor unfortunate in intelligence’s. No doubt intelligence would boomerang them out to a satellite branch almost immediately and if Chase was lucky, she wouldn’t see any sign of them until next week, when somebody became tired of procrastinating over them and sent them back to her, entirely unchanged.
Perhaps it was technically unethical, but Chase didn’t have time to ponder that. A glance at the lower right hand side of her screen made the time 16.00 hours, or as Chase liked to call it, Hot Agent time. Lifting her sensible shoes to the side of her desk she kicked her chair sideways and propelled herself to the little barred window of her office that looked out over the back of the building. The agents always came in the back way. They liked to be stealthy. They also liked to be punctual and sure enough, as Chase peeked through the bars that had been installed after her predecessor had given into tedium’s grip and thrown himself out of the window, she saw them pulling up in their unmarked, yet oh so conspicuous government issued vehicles and beginning the ant trail line into the building.
Most of them were standard ex-military meat-head types, the kind who wouldn’t consider a haircut where the top wasn’t noticeably longer than the sides and yet was still no more than 5 millimeters high. They marched in, full of stiff pride and enough machismo to power the sun. Chase wasn’t interested in them. She had her eyes out for another agent, ah, and there she was, sauntering towards the building, her neatly bobbed dark hair swinging with enough sleek shine to qualify her for a shampoo commercial.
Chase grabbed for her binoculars, she’d invested in them after it had become all too apparent that leering at women from the 10th floor was not as satisfying as it could be. They were already focused at the proper distance and it only took Chase a moment to sight the woman and sigh with soft pleasure as she laid eyes on what Chase considered to be perfect features. The agent wasn’t pretty, not in the traditional sense, she wouldn’t have made a news anchor, especially with the slight burn scarring that ran across her lower jaw line, but Chase didn’t care. There was something about her proud, strong features, her full lips, her keen eyes that were not wide and covered with mascara as society said they should be, but which were tantalizingly cat like. For the nth time, Chase wondered what color the woman’s eyes were. She had slightly tanned skin, so perhaps they were brown?
Chase strained her eyes, hoping to catch a glance, but as always, it was over too soon. The Agent disappeared into the building and wouldn’t be emerging until long after Chase left. The final hour at work always seemed bleak as Chase was consumed with the hopeless feeling of unrequited love. Well, perhaps love was too strong a word, perhaps unrequited crush was better.
She could barely be bothered shooting the hooker when she tabbed back to her game, but protocol rather demanded that she finish her killing streak of innocent digital civilians and attract the attention of wailing police cars which would inevitably drive into the building and burst into flames. Sighing, Chase changed weapons to the rocket launcher in preparation for the next round of carnage. Unlike her fellow workers who merely killed time until 5 o’clock, Chase hunted it, mangled it and set it ablaze.
At some point on the bus ride home, Chase decided to distract herself from the faint smell of stale pee by feeling slightly guilty about having played video games all day. ‘What would hot agent say about that?” she giggled to herself. That thought was enough to sustain her through being packed into the rickety bus and then trudging the mile back to her little flat between the woman with five children to different fathers and the students who hadn’t learned to live life in depressed, yet refined near silence.
Instant noodles were on the menu at home. Tonight was beef night. Last night had been chicken, tomorrow night would be the new Asian Curry brand. Chase tried to look forward to that as she scrubbed the noodle pan out and took herself to the bathroom to brush her teeth in the old mirror.
By rights a sweet government job should have been enough for her to have a nice place, but Chase had loans. Lots of loans. She was lucky that she had enough for rent at this place and that work paid a clothing allowance, otherwise she’d never have been able to afford the desperately plain skirts and blouses she wore every day.
She peeled off her blouse, wriggled out of her skirt and discarded both items on her patented horizontal floor storage system, which was vibrating gently with the volume of next door’s music.
“It’s fortunate that I enjoy muffled thug rap,” Chase lied to herself, turning the shower on and then turning back quickly towards the mirror to see if she might perhaps have grown any more attractive since she’d last looked in the mirror. No luck, her nose was still too big, her hair was still mousy brown and slightly frizzy and hormonal acne was launching a pre-emptive strike around her lower chin area. “Is 15 years not a long enough puberty for you, body?” Chase demanded before taking refuge in the steamy hot drizzle that was her shower.
It was a day like any other, Chase mused as she scrubbed at her face. A day that would surely be repeated over and over until she became too old, mentally feeble or outright unstable to continue. The future stretched ahead, a beige manila folder of tedium.
Pajamas, then sitcoms and bed. Reassuring canned laughter half ignored as she scanned the Internet for stories that would ignite her sense of outrage and remind her that she really was alive after all. Oh good, reports of some innocent Afghanis having been brutally tortured whilst the rest of the world failed to give even the slightest bit of anything resembling a damn.
“What a fucking twisted place,” Chase sighed, raising her eyes to the hope giving sight of a celebrity just past her use-by date selling gym equipment with Chuck Norris.
A knock at the door was unexpected, unexpected enough to set her heart pounding. For a moment she simply sat and stared at the door. The knock came again, reassuring her that it had really happened. With a sense of curious trepidation she approached the door and peeked through the peeky hole that distorted the world into a fish eye. A dark suit was all that was discernible, but with the in-built conditioning of a life time, Chase figured that anyone wearing a dark suit couldn’t possibly be up to no good and opened the door to a dour looking agent with silver hair and dark eyebrows.
“Chase Goodman?”
“Yeah?” Chase didn’t sound terribly convinced about the fact, but her assent was enough for the agent.
“I’m going to have to ask you to accompany me back to HQ.”
“Really? My shift was done at 5.00,” Chase replied.
The agent looked through her, as if he were consumed by matters far too important for him to acknowledge her as a human being.
“I’m going to have to ask you to accompany me back to HQ,” he repeated.
“Okay, give me a second to get dressed,” Chase muttered. The agent did not reply, so she took his silence as assent and scurried off to pull on a pair of tight black jeans and a hooded jersey, the most comfortable pieces of clothing she owned. She was dammed if she was going to dress up for this, this had all the hallmarks of being something that was going to take a while. She was alarmed when she returned to the front door that the agent had her laptop under his arm.
“What are you doing with that?”
He ignored her. “This way please, Miss Goodman.”
As if she had a choice. Chase followed the agent out to his sleek dark agent car with a growing sense of foreboding. This was not good at all. She was put in the back, where she was separated from the agent in the front by a metal grille.
“Am I in trouble?”
Again, there was no reply as they swept into the night.
“Fucking jerk,” she muttered to herself, noting that the agent’s jaw tightened slightly at the insult.
“It’s up to you if you want to be a jerk, you know,” she said conversationally. “All it takes is a little courtesy when you pick people up in the middle of the night.”
“It’s 8pm,” the agent replied stiffly.
“Well, whatever,” Chase replied lamely.
The journey to HQ was much quicker by car than by bus. Chase never thought she’d be so relieved to see the place, but it was something familiar to cling to as she climbed out of the back seat under the now glowering gaze of the agent.
“This way.”
This way turned out to be part of the building Chase had never been allowed in before. Specifically, it was the bit she wouldn’t want to go in anyway, as it was underground. But she was ushered into the elevator and her protests were ignored as they descended into what felt like the bowels of the earth.
“In here.”
Chase’s eyes widened as she discovered that ‘here’ was an interrogation room, complete with one of those creepy two way mirrors, a metal desk and a couple of chairs.
“What’s going on?” she asked again, only to be ignored once more. At least she wasn’t wearing handcuffs, she thought to herself as she sat in the chair and avoided looking at the mirror. The agent left her alone in the room, she heard the door lock behind him, and then there was silence for a time. Silence. That was quite unfamiliar. Unfortunately it was broken by the steady fast pounding of her heartbeat. She found her mind drifting back to the story about the Afganis and felt a tremor run through her. She could cease to exist if they wanted her to. This evening might have been her last evening on the planet, and she’d spent it eating noodles and hating her neighbors.
Just as Chase was on the brink of panic, the door swung open and she heard the efficient click clack of heels on linoleum.
“Holy shit,” she muttered as she laid eyes on the Hot Agent herself. In person she was even hotter, her gaze more piercing, her eyes more keen, her arms well shaped and muscular in her sleeveless tank top tucked into pants with barely a lump around her neat waist. Did the woman have any body fat at all?
“Chase,” she said coolly in a voice that was surprisingly cultured. “We have a few questions for you.”
“Ten percent at the most,” Chase blurted, guessing Hot Agent’s body fat percentage out loud.
Hot Agent raised a thin brow. “Excuse me?”
“Er, nothing,” Chase giggled nervously as she clamped her mouth shut. Must not say anything silly. Saying silly things could get her in trouble.
“I’m glad you’re in such a good mood. Sometimes people in your situation get nervous,” Hot Agent said coolly. She had green flecked hazel eyes, Chase discovered, eyes Chase was quickly becoming lost in.
“People.” Chase repeated the word. She’d intended to say more, but her tongue wasn’t co-operating.
“I’m Agent Darby,” Hot Agent said, ignoring Chases’ babbling for the moment.
“I’m Agent Chase,” Chase babbled. “Oh wait, no I’m not,” she amended quickly as that quizzical eyebrow rose again.
“This is going to be a long interview,” Hot Agent Darby noted, probably more for the benefit of the people behind the two way mirror than Chase.
“I hope not, it is past my bed time,” Chase giggled. Talking calmed her somewhat, even if it seemed to mystify and perhaps even somewhat annoy Agent Darby.
“I’ll let you know when your bed time is tonight,” Agent Darby said firmly, putting her leg up on the seat of the chair opposite Chase and leaning her arm on it in a fairly masculine manner that seemed to oddly suit her.
“Yes Ma’am,” Chase said, doing her best to compose her features long enough to find out what was going on.
“You flagged some numbers as a potential threat today. Why?”
It was a simple question, but it hit Chase between the eyes.
“Er.. uh…” she stammered, trying to think of a way to answer the question that wouldn’t get her in trouble. The truth was clearly out of the question.
“It looked suspicious,” she said finally.
Agent Darby did not look convinced. Her eyes narrowed slightly and she rubbed her hands together as she followed up the first question with a second one. “In what way?”
Chase frowned. “Well, some of the numbers… just didn’t add up,” she said seriously, doing her best to make the vague reply sound concrete.
“I see.” Agent Darby took her foot off the chair and took to sauntering around the room, her hands clasped behind her back like some dark clad Martial Arts master. Each step rang around the room like a gunshot, making Chase wince even as she admired Agent Darby’s fine figure.
“Am I in some kind of trouble?” Chase asked timidly.
Agent Darby shot her a quick glance. “Do you think you’re in trouble?”
“Yes.”
A slight glimmer of a smile teased at the edges of Agent Darby’s ruby lips and Chase found herself wishing more than anything that Agent Darby would smile at her. Unfortunately, she had no such luck as the woman’s face became a serious mask once more.
“Why do you think you’re in trouble?
“I’m in an interrogation room, aren’t I?”
Agent Darby walked towards her slowly. “Not just that, but you’re lying to an Agent. That is grounds for quite serious trouble.”
Chase felt her eyes grow wide. “I am not lying,” she squeaked.
The Agent folded her arms over her chest, making her slim yet strong biceps ripple. “Would you care to rethink that response?”
Shaking her head, Chase stuck with her story. There was no way she could possibly tell the Agent the real reason she flagged those files. Doing so would mean losing her job. Losing her job would mean debtor’s prison, or something close to it.
“I will ask you once more Chase, why did you flag those numbers today?” Agent Darby placed her palm on the table in front of Chase and looked down at her with a piercing gaze, but Chase was far too busy looking at the long, strong, slightly callused fingers in front of her.
“I had to, they were suspicious,” Chase found her voice, and her courage. “It’s my job to flag suspicious numbers, so I did. Was I wrong?” she looked up into Agent Darby’s face determinedly, and held the woman’s gaze.
“No,” Agent Darby admitted after some time. “You were right. They had been tampered with.”
Where fear and girlish awe had reigned supreme, irritation now began to take hold.
“So I’m here after hours, being treated like a criminal because I did my job properly? There better be overtime in this. I’m going home.”
Chase stood up and turned towards the door to make good on her promise, but in spite of her good start, she never made it. She was gripped firmly by the shoulder and as she turned to protest, she saw Agent Darby’s hand descending through the air just moments before it landed against her backside with a loud cracking sound.
“Ow!” Chase yelped, grabbing her bottom as she leaped forward, then whirled to face Agent Darby with outrage written all over her face. “What the hell was that about?”
“Sit down.” The woman’s tone was calm, as well it may have been. She was not the one getting hit.
“Go screw yourself,” Chase snapped. She did not like pain, not in any form, and the pain in her bottom was unpleasant, not to mention embarrassing. The woman’s hands were harder than she’d imagined and she’d used them on her in a manner befitting a child.
Agent Darby’s gaze was like granite. “Sit. Down.”
“I’ll sit down when you suck my….” Chase didn’t finish the sentence. Not because Agent Darby stopped her, not because she was struck again, but because the severe expression on the woman’s face suddenly gave her a very strong feeling that she would regret it.
With an aggressive sigh, Chase threw herself into the metal chair, crossed her arms over her chest and kicked the table leg. This was too much.
“Tantrums won’t get you anywhere,” Agent Darby lectured. “I’m not done with you yet.”
“Yeah? Well I’m done with you, lady,” Chase snapped back. “Charge me with something or let me go.”
“Keep up the attitude and you won’t be going home for a very long time,” Agent Darby threatened.
Strangely, hearing the threat voiced actually gave it less weight in Chases’ mind. “Fine. Lock me away. That will save me many hours of tedious number crunching and danger detecting on your behalf. Good idea, bright spark. No wonder the world is a mess with people like you in charge.”
As she glowered up at her captor, Chase saw a muscle ticking in the Agent’s jaw, and for a moment she was afraid that Agent Darby might just lose it and beat the hell out of her. Agents had a reputation for brutality, they got away with it because they investigated themselves for it and very rarely ever found fault with themselves. Chase knew too well that if Agent Darby did decide to go all Agent Orange on her, there would be very little she could do.
“You’re pretty brave for a number cruncher,” Agent Darby noted after a time.
Chase shrugged. “We number crunchers have got less to live for than you think. Don’t underestimate the power of boredom. It’s practically our secret weapon.”
