Agent on the Run (The Agents for Good) (8 page)

This trip would be somewhat colder so I outfitted myself accordingly and this time I made sure to pack more armament, but how I was going to get to the remote Russian held island without raising suspicion was a real problem. Planes were worth their weight in gold right now and while I had the funds to get one if I needed to I hated to waste so much money on something that would likely only have a one time use. I didn’t like flying planes anyway.

I could fly a plane if I needed to, but I didn’t care for it. They should have picked Flint for this mission. He was far more well-rounded and experienced with these sort of missions.

Well they hadn’t picked him; they’d picked me instead, a relative newcomer to the Agency. I would do my best, but in terms of managing the mission I felt like I was winging it by the seat of my pants.

My thoughts turned to Flicker and almost immediately I felt her thoughts come to me, “Need a lift?”

I stopped dead on the street and quickly thought responded, “Yeah that would be great!”

“Get a car and drive south out of town.” Came the response.

I got a car and five minutes later I was outside of town headed south.

“Take a right and then a left.”

I followed the instructions.

“Park the car.”

I did and got out pulling my duffel bag along with me. I felt the brush of air on me, even though there was no breeze. Like a phantom out of some kind of sci-fi show the form of an entirely alien looking aircraft materialized out of nowhere to hover overtop the dirt road ahead of me.

It wasn’t a plane so much as it was an air mobile of sorts. Kind of a mixture between a jet ski, with an F-14 front and two small projecting side wings reminiscent of a World War II fighter plane. It looked as lethal and sleek as its rider, who turned the craft to the side and dipped the one wing down until it almost touched the gravel of the road.

Flicker turned her blonde head to me and flashed her white teeth, “Ready for your next near-death experience?”

It was the second time that old movie line had been said today, but this time I had to admit I was scared. I could feel Flicker laughing at me in my mind, even as she only continued to stare at me in the physical with a smile.

I walked up the lowered wing gingerly, only to see that there wasn’t much room left on the seat that Flicker straddled. This was going to be uncomfortable.

The idea of crossing an ocean and invading another country’s sovereign airspace with a vessel out of a sci-fi drama was daunting to say the least.

I swung my duffel bag behind my shoulder, as I swung my leg over and sat down in full contact with Flicker on the seat that she straddled. I don’t think these things were made to seat two. What was perhaps worst of all was that she was fully aware of everything I was going through in this moment.

“I want these stupid discs off my head now!” I said in an angry tone.

She peered over her shoulder at me and there was nothing shy about the look she gave me, “No, I think we’ll leave them on for now. After all I am learning so much about you through them!”

Before I could hotly respond to her insistence for continued torture she distracted me by handing something to me. It was a small rope.

“Would you mind tying my hair up for me please?” She asked sweetly.

I swallowed down my angry words and focused on doing just that. I loved her hair, but I didn’t want it smacking me in the face for the next several hours. Her thoughtfulness helped take away some of the anger I was feeling at her continued invasion of my thoughts. I tucked her now bound hair down between us.

“Hold on Utah.” She said husky voiced.

I let my hands settle loosely on her waist.

“You’ll need to hold on tighter than that Utah.”

I gritted my teeth and let my hands slide all the way around her and clasp together.

“How about this?” I said now being fully connected with her, even as I tried to keep my brain a neutral plain that she couldn’t read.

“That feels about right partner.” She said softly.

One moment we’d been hovering still and in the next we were screaming across the sky at a velocity that I wouldn’t have believed possible for such an open aired vessel. We were well shielded from the wind, but it was loud.

We seemed to come onto course and I focused on relaxing my death grip on Flicker and I felt her breathe easier as a direct result of my loss of tension about her. She looked back at me smiling. It was a beautiful smile and before I knew it she gave me a quick kiss on the lips.

I blinked in surprise at the back of her head as the wind whipped by overtop of us.

It was too loud to talk so I thought projected into her mind, “Enjoying yourself Flicker?”

“Yes, very much so!”

“What is it that you enjoy most? Tormenting me, flying this craft or something else?”

She laughed and responded with, “Something else.”

That aroused my curiosity so I pressed for what that something might be.

“I’m enjoying the feeling of being human and not just a machine-like freak. I’m enjoying the fact that I’m desired, even appreciated for who and what I still am. It’s more than I ever thought I would experience with someone in life.”

Her thoughts filled me and I couldn’t deny the truth of anything that I felt for her and much more. Her head came back and her blue eyes were sparkling, which I realized was likely because she saw all the truths of her own thoughts mirrored by my own. Talk about a truth serum. These discs had to come off!

Her eyes sparkled at me, “Why?”

I gave her a look that said what I was thinking and she giggled. She was quite overwhelming and I found myself asking, “Does this thing have autopilot?”

“Yes it’s already on it.” She said curiosity alive in her eyes as to what I was up to.

My hand left her waist to reach over her shoulder to secure the front of her jaw to receive my kiss, which she responded to eagerly, but she soon grew restless with the difficulty of the angle of the kiss. I was about to force myself to stop because I feared that I was hurting her neck, when she abruptly broke contact and lifted up off the seat. What was she doing?

Her body twisted then and before I knew it she was facing me with her thighs to either side of me. My head was the one seized this time in a metallic grasp that was firm without being painful, as flicker poured out all the depths of her yearning and desire in an open mouthed kiss that was beyond uninhibited. The kiss was great, but something occurred to me. God had said for me to be kind to her, but what about me? I felt completely powerless against her.

She was suddenly laughing into my mouth, “Hmm what’s this? Afraid that I’ll take advantage of you?”

“You spend more time in my head than you do in your own!” I groused out in response.

Oh drat it! If she’d read that than she knew about what I’d asked God about her! I peeked an eye open to see hers open and she winked at me in full acknowledgment that she knew all. Couldn’t a guy have any secrets?

She laughed again into my mouth. That really was a curious sensation, one that I rather liked.

Her grasp of my head left and I opened my eyes to see her arms folded behind her back. Her eyes met mine and our lips were still sealed together as her thoughts invaded my mind, “It is not within me to ever hurt the man I love.”

Her blue eyes reflected the truth of her words and I felt a surge of triumph course through me at her declaration. My hands found hers and my fingers intertwined with her metallic ones trustingly, as I experienced the most engrossing and highly pleasurable experience I had ever had while flying.

Chapter Eight

Twisted Minds

The craft disappeared as we stepped away from it. I reached out to make sure it was still there. It was.

“Guess you have to be careful where you leave this thing. Let’s see, we’re in Lot C row 4.”

Flicker just rolled her eyes and I chuckled.

I followed after her, as she approached the deserted looking building that lay ahead of us. It really was cold and I was looking forward to getting inside, even if I wasn’t looking forward to what I might find.

It hadn’t been so cold on the flight here, which had been heated in more than one way. I already missed the feel of Flicker’s soft lips, even though I’d been kissing her for hours. She looked back at me and gave me a rich smile.

I shook my head, so help me I was going to pry these discs off my head with a knife if I had to!

Flicker’s disposition changed the closer we got to the buildings and I began to feel the anxiety levels of her thoughts rise sharply. I couldn’t decipher what she thought like she could me, but I could tell how she was feeling and it wasn’t good.

“I love you.” I said softly.

She stopped and gave me a tremulous smile that had heartfelt gratitude in it.

“Hey, if this place is bothering you so much how about we stop and pray about it?” I volunteered.

Flicker gave the buildings a long look and then nodded her head. I pulled her head down to my shoulder and I spoke into her glorious hair near her ear. “Lord please make our mission a success. Whatever fears or threats this place may yet hold I pray that you would release us from them and strengthen us to do the task at hand in Jesus’s name amen.”

Flicker pulled back crying from me, but she was smiling. She kissed me sweetly and then said, “You just saved me!”

“How did I do that?” I asked puzzled.

“Your walk with God. All your memories are available to me and I confess that I’ve been pillaging through them. Over and over I’ve seen how much God means to you and how your specialness and confidence is a direct result of your faith. I want that. So I asked your Jesus to do that for me and now I’m His too! It’s wonderful!”

I hugged her to me, “Yes it is!”

We stayed like that for a long moment, until I knew we had to get going, but I hated to end this special time. “Alright my dear, time to invade hell.”

Flicker mumbled something.

“What was that?” I asked.

“I said you don’t appreciate how much this place means exactly that to me.”

“You have Jesus now honey. You’re not going down there alone.”

Flicker nodded, but I could still feel her reservations about the task at hand.

The buildings on the surface were ghostly still and devoid of any life. It was as if everything had been left in a hurry. They hadn’t even bothered to conceal the entrance to the underground laboratories. The blast doors to it were clearly visible from behind an opened false fronted wall.

The blast doors themselves were slightly ajar. Flicker and I glanced at each other and then together we approached the doors.

The scene within the laboratory was still lit by emergency lighting running off some backup power supply, even after a year and a half had gone by. It was eerie to say the least with the blue and yellow lights and the red flashing ones here and there going off and on repeatedly.

Whatever power the lights were on must’ve been separate from the rest of the facility, because all the equipment and the many screens and displays were all dead. The only sound was that of the tick tick of the lights, as they flicked from one color to the next. Perhaps the ticking wasn’t the lights, but instead a bomb. The place was supposedly rigged to explode. So why hadn’t it?

We didn’t talk into the silence, but we kept our conversation confined to our thoughts, as we sought to remain as quiet as the space around us was.

“So what do you suppose happened?” I asked.

Flicker shook her head, “The Code had fallen, but that would’ve been no reason to leave this place so suddenly.”

I followed her through a maze like array of corridors, until we came to a closed door.

“What’s behind here?”

“Where I was made.” Flicker said bitterly.

I touched her shoulder, “Correction, the place where someone messed around with someone who was simply already perfect and still is.”

She gave me a look and I could feel her in my mind seeing whether I was sincere or not. “You still doubt me?” I said somewhat hurt.

Her gaze fell and she said, “I’m sorry.”

I shrugged it aside and asked, “What we need, do you think it could be behind these doors?”

“Yes, if not in this room beyond, than in some of the chambers further on for sure.”

The door was a bulkhead of sorts and it was locked from our side. I started to undo the lock mechanism, when I noticed the dents in the door. A little frisson of alarm went through me at the finding of such dents in a door of such sturdy construction.

I heard a slight sizzling noise and I turned to see Flicker transforming. The metal parts of her hands and forearms seemed to melt out of form, only to reemerge into the form of wickedly sharp serrated blades that stretched out further than her arms had in a lethal display of hidden capability. At times I forgot just how lethal Flicker could really be.

“You’ve got to tell me how you do that?” I exclaimed in awe.

She shrugged, “It is very complex, but suffice it to say that I control the metal much the same as I do my armor suit.”

“Okay, that really doesn’t explain it at all.”

“I know.” She said, as she positioned herself in preparation to hack anything apart that came through the door.

I clutched one machine pistol in my hand, as with a loud protesting creak I pulled the hatch door open.

It was an utter scene of chaos inside the other room. Most of the alarm lights looked as if they’d been smashed. Only a few still glowed or flashed weakly.

I started to move forward, but one of Flicker’s bladed arms tapped me slightly, “Sorry for the hit to your pride, but I go first.”

I glanced back inside and said, “Ladies first.” It was with reluctance that I followed her inside the room, as there was little I could do to offset whatever Flicker got it in her mind to do, which rankled me deeply.

Flicker stopped and turned to me, “I know Utah. I promise to work on that, when this is all done.”

“Respect is an important thing for a man.” I acknowledged in response.

She nodded quickly.