Chapter 5

I took another step into the room, the silence making the situation feel very awkward.

“Uhhmmm…” I cleared my throat. “I, um…. I was told to come here?” I asked.

They immediately snapped out of their daze and stood up, Carter- I mean, my father - approached me.

“Melissa, you’re looking much better.” He said. “Let me formally introduce you to everyone: This is Drew, as you already know. And this is Jolene, your mother. Now I’m sorry to be in such a rush, but Jolene and I have business to attend to so if you don’t mind, we better be on our way. We will be back by tomorrow but in the meantime we’re leaving Drew in charge of getting you settled in. Dinner’s ready so you better grab some food.”

I glanced around the room to see the women from earlier, obviously Jolene, standing slightly behind Carter and Drew expressionlessly just staring back at me.

“Umm… okay. But why are we eating so early?” I asked. “It’s only 6 o’clock.”

Carter looked at me with the same duh look I had given my dad just yesterday before saying, “You have to let your food settle before you can train.” And with that he turned and left, Jolene right behind him. The door slid closed and it was down to just Drew and me in the room. I turned to Drew, confused.

“Why did he say that?” I asked.

“Say what?” Drew asked.

“That my food needs to settle before I train,” I mimicked in a deep gruff voice. “It’s got the whole night to settle so what’s the big rush? It’s not like we’re going to train tonight now are we?” I laughed which slowly faded when Drew didn't join in. “Wait, are we?”

He simply raised an eyebrow, “Yes, we are.”

I slumped down onto a chair and grumbled.

“Great, first of all they have to put heat sensors on all the doors to keep my hotness out but now they had to go ahead and put a limit on my sacred time with my beloved friend, food.”

There was a moments silence as Drew just stared at me before he burst out laughing. “You definitely bring a breath of fresh air to this place,” he laughed.

“Well it doesn’t seem like anyone here really has any sense of humour at all. Is everyone here like that?”

“Well the only people that have ever been here are Carter, Jolene, me and now you,” he stated. “Carter and Jolene are all business so there’s no joking around with them. The life of an agent isn’t one you can take lightly,” he sighed.

There was a little while of silence as he just stood where he hadn’t moved since I had entered the room.

“Yo, bro,” I said, trying to pull off my attempt at an accent. “Where’s da grub?”

“We’ll definitely need to work on your accents,” he stated, humour flittering across his features, before leaving to another room and returning with two plates of food.

He set one plate in front of me and I took in a deep breath. The food smelt heavenly so I dove straight in and abolished my huge meal in record time, leaning back with a satisfied grin. Food always had a way of putting me in a good mood, even after a day as crazy as today.

“So about this training…” I started. “You know right now is not such a good time for me.” I said, trying to quickly to rack my brains for a legit sounding excuse.

Drew raised an eyebrow, “Yeah, and why’s that?”

“I uhhh…. Well you see, I’ve already had such a hectic day you know, being drugged and pretend killed and finding out my whole life was a lie and so on…” I said, searching for any sign of understanding on his emotionless face as he stared blankly at me.

“You know, stressful stuff like waking up in an unknown place, finding out a have a whole another family… anything?” I asked, narrowing my eyes, determined to find any giveaway in his blank stare.

“Gosh, do you have like no compassion at all!” I eventually shouted, waiting for any change from his blank stare.

I sighed. Maybe his face was always stuck like that? I wondered. Slowly I leaned in glaring at him, waiting for him to give in and move a tiny bit. No movement.

I narrowed my eyes once more, damn he was good. Unable to resist the urge I slowly lifted my finger and poked him on the cheek. Still no movement.

I sighed and leaned back, suddenly getting a possible idea.

“Pwetty pweese big bwother?” nailing the baby accent and pulling out the puppy-dog face.

After a moment Drew’s face softened slightly. “You know, I’m not the one who makes up the rules around here…”

My shoulders slumped.

“But I’ll come up with an excuse for this time,” he said. “And I’ll have teach you about everything that’s going on so that Carter can’t get mad that we haven’t started anything yet.”

I smiled, “Hit it, brother.”

He stood up and turned towards the screen. “G-X-3, bring up Agent Zero’s information.”

A picture of me appeared on the screen as the rest of it filled up with writing.

“Agent Zero?” I asked. “Oh my word, that’s so cool, am I Agent Zero?”

“Yes, and I’m Agent One. There are a total of ten junior agents in our agency and we are all given numbers such as Agent three, Agent seven and so on. We also have around twenty or so senior agents, although the numbering is different depending on the level clearance of the person you’re speaking to. Senior agents are given letters such as Agent C and Agent K.”

“So am I one of the ten junior agents?” I asked.

“Not technically…” he replied.

“What do you mean not technically?”

“Well yours is a special case. You were brought in to be unknown to even the spy world. It’s like our spy to spy on double agents. You were assigned the name Zero so that you can still be registered but not seen.”

“What? I don’t get that?” I said, feeling thouroughly confused.

“Okay, I’m guessing you’re not that great with computers?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“Well, I’ll explain in basic terms then. Start counting.”

“What?” I said.

“Start counting,” he repeated.

“Oh-kay… One, two-”

“Exactly!" he pointed to me. "You started counting from one! In computer programming a computer always starts counting from position naught. So basically if I fiddle a little with the way they call up information and change it so they could from 1 instead of 0, they will never find out that you even exist even though you are on their system. It will look like everything works like normal because their computers are designed to display ten agents so yours is technically hidden. No-one will notice beacuse everyong starts counting at one anyway.”

“Why go through all of this to make me on their database? Can’t we just like, keep quiet and never tell anyone and then we can be a hundred percent sure no one will know about me?” I question as if it was so obvious.

“The things you do in missions aren’t exactly… legal… and without you being a registered agent there could be some serious consequences. Just knowing about us alone is worth the death penalty.”

“What?! I have to kill people! No sorry, this is not what I signed up for,” I started ranting. “Actually, technically I never signed up for any of-”

“Whoa, calm down there," he quickly interupted me. "That’s actually one of the agency’s biggest rules: no killing. We’ll teach you many different ways to knock a man unconscious, but only ever under one condition are you ever allowed to kill.”

“When’s that?” I asked.

“When you’re cover’s been blown. And that’s only in undercover operations of vital importance. In any other type of mission you will have to work with the circumstances,” he said before quickly adding. “You’re training will start tomorrow.”

“When’s my first mission?” I eagerly asked.

Drew just laughed, “Calm down there, let’s first see if you even survive training.” He smirked at me with a knowing look in his eyes.

I gulped.

“Meet back here at 4am sharp, and don’t be late.”

***

Later on that night I was sitting on my bed thinking over everything that had happened today. Drew had sent me to bed early to get some sleep for tomorrow’s training, but my mind was way too busy thinking about everything he had told me that it was near impossible to fall asleep.

Before Drew had sent me to bed I had asked him a couple questions about where we are and what Agents Carter and Jolene were doing, but he had masterfully dodged them all and I was left an hour later with still no answers.

“Nikky,” I called.

“Yes, Agent Zero?” she responded.

“Where are we?”

“On your base, Agent Zero.”

“No, like… where is this base?” I asked.

“This base is located on the east side of a secluded forested island. The island is approximately twenty kilometres wide and is surrounded by open waters.”

“Okay, so what continent?”

“That’s classified.”

The same answer I'd been receiving from Drew all evening.

“What’s the island called?”

“That’s classified.”

“Okay, how about where are Agents Carter and Jolene?”

“That’s classified.”

“Well what are they doing?”

“That’s classified.”

“Ahh!” I moaned loadly. “Fine! Bring up Drew’s file.”

“That’s classified.”

“The Agency’s file?”

“That’s classified.”

Okay, now I was getting frustrated.

“Fine, fine…. Bring up my file.”

“That’s classified.”

My own damn file?!

“Classified my ass,” I groaned.

“Was that more sarcasm?” Nikky asked.

I couldn’t help but smile at her. “Yes.”

I took a deep breath and thought a little bit.

“Okay, how do I get access to classified files? And don’t you dare say that’s classified!” I quickly added.

“Your level clearance indicates whether you are allowed access to a file or not.”

“So what’s my clearance?”

“Level 0.”

“What?! Why?” I asked.

“You have not been activated as an agent yet which follows that you have level 0 clea-”

“But Drew said I’d been registered… he even brought up my file!” I interrupted.

“Registered, yes. Activated, no.”

“Oh,” I sighed again. “Fine.”

Feeling slightly defeated I climbed into bed.

“Wake me up at 3:30am,” I told Nikky. “No make it 3:50…. I need my sleep.”

“Yes, Agent Zero.”

And with that I managed to fall into a deep much needed sleep.



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