“Because,” she blurted out, “if you erase us, you’ll never learn the truth.”
“Can we just do this?” Cee implored his boss, still waving the neuralyzer. “They’re obviously stalling.”
“Hold on a minute,” High T raised a palm to Cee. He looked at Em, and she could feel him sizing her up. “Go ahead, Em. Explain yourself.”
“Well, sir, you see… if you think about it… really think about it,” Em was tap dancing in a minefield. She didn’t want to give up Vungus’s final words or the box, not until she knew who she could actually trust in MiB. Wait, that was it! Finally, with some firm footing under her again, Em declared, “Vungus! How many people really knew he was here, on Earth?”
“The people in this room,” High T said, “perhaps a dozen high-level agents, and Vungus himself.”
“Right.” Em nodded. “Exactly.”
An awkward silence followed. H, of course, decided to fill it. “Keep going, Em,” H said, “don’t hold back. Tell him.”
“I really think you should take it from here.” Em gave H a significant glance to show that she needed some backup. “You have seniority.”
“No, please,” H said, completely oblivious to her silent plea. “You’ve got the ball; run with it.” Em gave H a glare for an instant that fully articulated how much she wanted to knock the wits out of his head in that moment using his very own Series-7 De-Atomizer.
Em took a deep breath and continued. “Well, sir,” she tried, “if those were the only people who knew where Vungus would be, and we assume it wasn’t Vungus who leaked his own location to the killers, then… doesn’t that mean it was, you know, someone… inside MiB?”
Cee, lost in neuralyzer revenge fantasies, suddenly looked up sharply. Em saw the lights come on in H’s eyes as he finally realized the brilliance of what she had proposed. As per her previous experiences with H, his mouth went into gear scant seconds after his brain.
“Exactly,” H began, “I put it to you, there is a mole, sir. Inside these very walls.”
“Ridiculous.” Cee was glaring at H again. “In all these years, we’ve never had so much as a leak.”
“Sounds like something a mole would say,” H said, nodding to High T.
“Don’t be absurd,” Cee said, appealing to High T.
“Classic mole talk.”
“Mole 101,” Em joined in.
“Enough,” High T rumbled. He seemed to notice Cee’s neuralyzer for the first time. “Put that away.” Deflated, Cee holstered the memory-wiping tool.
High T walked over to the glass wall of his office, gazing down on all his agents and staff and the constant stream of aliens coming to and leaving Earth. Em thought she saw the senior agent slump a bit, but only for a moment, and then his impeccable posture returned. He spoke to the three agents at his back, still watching the bustling floor of MiB HQ. “If we’ve been compromised, it puts every citizen of this planet, both human and alien, at risk.
“Cee, track down these killers. Find the killers, we find the mole.” High T paused for a moment, still facing the window. “Em, it appears you are as sharp as advertised. Work the case with Cee.”
Relief flooded through her—she’d avoided the neuralyzer for the third time in her life. H was still standing before High T’s desk, looking a lot like a lost puppy. Cee gestured impatiently for her to follow him, and he strode from the office. Em gave H a brief glance and then followed Cee out.
* * *
High T turned from the window and resumed his seat at his desk, ignoring H.
H stood silently for a few moments. Finally, he spoke. “Good move, sir. I assume you’ll want me overseeing the case. A sort of supervisory role—senior management, as it were, right?” H said, fishing for any response.
High T sighed and lowered his pen, looking up at H. “I’m finished covering for you, H.”
“But… you need me on this,” H said. “I’ve dealt with the Hive before, sir, remember? With nothing but my wits and my Series-7—”
“No.” High T’s voice was cold. He pointed to the painting of their battle in Paris on the wall. “He dealt with the Hive before, and I don’t know where the hell he’s gone.” High T walked around his desk to face his old partner. “I actually used to think you could lead this place. I was wrong about you. We’re done here. That’s an order.”
H stood silently. The words, from this man—one of the finest men H had ever known—cut him deeply. He took a deep breath and stood his ground. “You weren’t wrong about me, sir. You saw something in me once. It’s still there. Give me a chance. I will fix this, T, I promise you.”
High T saw a gleam of something in H’s eye, something he hadn’t seen in years, something he recalled always being able to count on. The guy in the painting? Maybe.
16
“It’s not just a blade,” Em said, examining the assassination weapon a bit closer on the computer monitor. The tiny weapon was on an elevated stage under the brightly lit ring of a magnification lens mounted on a rolling cart beside Cee’s desk. The cart had been delivered and hooked up to Cee’s computer by the two MiB forensic techs, who now stood by for orders from the senior agent and the probationary agent. “It looks like it carried some sort of poison.”
On Cee’s monitor there was a high-resolution magnified image of an intricate and wickedly curved and serrated blade. There did seem to be a tiny trace of a pale green substance on the tip of the blade.
Cee turned to the two MiB techs. “I want you to—”
The image on the screen blurred and was gone, leaving only the white light of the illuminated microscope stage.
H held the tiny weapon between his thumb and forefinger. “Sorry, mate, change of plans. High T decided he wants me to run point on this.”
“Wait, what?” Cee spluttered. “I don’t believe you!”
H was already making his way around the lab, and back toward the doors.
“Listen, I don’t like it any better than you, but he kept saying something about ‘relying on me,’ ‘needing our top agent,’ that sort of thing. I don’t make the rules, I just apply them. Take it up with him.”
Cee’s face grew purple, his lips, white. Before he could speak or explode, H turned to Em. She was watching him with an amused look on her face and her arms crossed. “And Em, he’s keen for you to shadow me on this. ‘Learn from the best,’ he said,” H parroted, trying to do his best High T impersonation.
H walked out the door, the tiny dagger in hand and a spring in his step. Cee was speechless. Em gave him a “What can you do?” shrug and darted out after H.
The two techs were silent in the wake of H and Em’s departure. They looked at each other and then as quietly as possible shuffled away from Cee, who was sitting at his desk, speechless. Cee looked at the blank magnification screen and felt a familiar ice pick of pain sink into his skull.
* * *
Em fell into step beside H, as they navigated the bustling corridor. “Okay,” she began, “and what’s the actual truth?”
“You tell me,” H said, “because for someone who hates lying, that was incredible. God, it was electric, wasn’t it? The way we played off each other up there. Did you feel it? ‘A mole inside MiB…’ Genius.”
“I wasn’t lying,” Em said. “Think about it. It would explain a lot.”
“The only mole around here is Hank in HR.” H slowed as they passed a cubicle. Em glanced over to see an alien man-mole in a suit and tie reviewing a pile of paperwork at his desk.
The corridor opened into the busy mezzanine. H strode through the crowd confidently. Agents and aliens made way for him. “What do you have so far?” H asked her, holding up the tiny knife.
“I was about to run a molecular deconstruction on the substance,” Em said, “and cross-reference it with all known toxins.”
“Good idea.” H put the tiny murder weapon to his nose and sniffed it. Em lunged at H to stop him. H’s eyes popped open wide. “Holy fu—” He pulled the knife back
away from his face. “I know what that is!”
“What are you doing?” Em hissed. “That killed a 300-pound Jababian!”
H handed the tiny dagger to Em, shook his head to clear it, and headed toward the stairs that led to the MiB subway station. “It’s Zephos, pure grade. The wrong amount will kill you instantly, the right amount will keep you dancing, shirtless, on a nightclub table in Monaco for seventeen hours.” He saw the expression on her face and quickly added, “Apparently. There’s only one place in the world where they know how to mix it.”
H descended the stairs while Em stood there looking at him, shaking her head. Was he an ignorant lunk-head? All muscle and charm, no brains? He could work a room, work people, the way Em could juggle calculations in her head. It was almost as if something in H had been put to sleep, but now it seemed like maybe it was starting to wake up.
“Well, come on,” H’s voice echoed. The top of his head vanished from sight as he descended the staircase. “The world’s not going to save itself.”
For the first time since they met, Em saw the agent who had saved the world emerge, and she followed him down into the underground.
17
Beneath the azure crystal waters of the Mediterranean, a blur shot along inside a nearly invisible tube. Inside the MiB hyperloop car, Em studied the puzzle box Vungus had given her. So far it had defeated all her attempts to open it. H was across from her and soundly asleep, out like a light, the sports pages of The Times resting on his chest. The other passengers in the car were agents like them and a few others, including an alien in blue-and-yellow plaid PJs that looked a little like a clown fish with curled horns, who was sitting beside her, and an alien in a bright yellow sports coat with an elongated head crowned with sharp barbs and jutting eyes like a chameleon, who was a few seats over from H.
She felt bad for lying to H again, especially as he’d rumbled her so easily over the whole “claiming to be a Jababian wonk” thing, but Vungus’s last words had been emphatic—Trust no one, Agent Em. With what she had seen at MiB London so far, the war between H and Cee, the willingness of High T to let H slide on so many potentially dangerous and compromising procedural gaffs, she was starting to see why O had sent her… Unless O’s plan had been just to shuffle her off from the New York office and make her another station’s problem. That was the problem with not trusting anyone: you could come up with sinister motives for everyone.
Em slid the flat panels of the box back and forth, looking for patterns in the geometric designs or in the sequences of the moving pieces. She had beat the Rubik’s Cube in eight seconds when she was eleven. She had done mathematical puzzles in her head to help her sleep at night for as long as she could remember. But with the alien box, so far, no luck.
She put the alien puzzle back in her pocket and regarded the sleeping H for a moment. After all the action, she could do with some company. She slid her foot forward and kicked H, “accidentally.” He started. “I’m up.”
“So I’m curious,” she said, leaning forward in her chair. “How’d you do it?”
“Save the world?” H said as he yawned and stretched. “Easy. With nothing but my wits and my—”
“Your Series-7 De-Atomizer.” Em finished the phrase for him. “No, how did you get in? How did they ‘recruit’ you?”
“I’d like to think it was my sheer, unadulterated, God-given talent.”
“I’d really like to think so too.” She didn’t bother to hide the skepticism in her voice. “But what was it really?”
H looked from side to side, making sure no one was listening in. He leaned closer to her with a smile. “I stole the wrong car.”
Em was speechless. It wasn’t what she had expected to hear.
H continued, “Vintage Jag—kind you didn’t see much where I’m from. Mate of mine says, ‘Bet you can’t hotwire it.’ So I do. Then I realize that there in the back seat, in handcuffs, is a Class-4 Gormorite.”
“Class-4?” Em said, grimacing. “Reticulated or inverted?”
“Both, I think.”
“Oh man. What did it do?”
“Ripped the roof off the car and ran straight for the guy I stole the car from. I see this big, chrome pistol on the seat, leveled my sights, and… boom.”
“Purple guts everywhere?” Em shook her head, picturing the aftermath.
“All over him, all over me. So this guy—back then he was just ‘T’…”
“Wait… you tried to steal High T’s car?”
“Didn’t try.” H didn’t attempt to hide his pride. “I did steal High T’s car. So, T takes out his neuralyzer, about to wipe me. I tell him, ‘Mate, around here, when someone does you a solid, you buy that man a pint.’ One thing leads to another, and by the end of the night, he’s offering me a job.”
“So, you got the job because you committed a felony.”
H was silent for a beat then retorted, “And hacking the Hubble telescope—the most secure closed system network in the world—what do you call that?”
Em smiled in surprise. He’d read her file. “Somebody did their homework.”
“Now arriving,” the automated voice of the hyperloop announcer boomed, “Marrakech Station.”
* * *
H and Em made their way through the narrow, winding streets off the mercantile chaos of the Jamaa el Fna, the city’s main square.
A large family passed them at an intersection, and Em caught a glimpse of alien ears spilling out from under the cap of one of the little boys. Em gestured to him quickly, and the boy gave her a grateful smile as he tucked his ears back under his hat and hurried to catch up with his family. As he moved away, Em spotted something daubed on the side of the building behind him.
“Check it out,” Em said, nodding toward it.
A symbol about the size of a grapefruit was painted carefully on the wall. It was not an Arabic letter, nor part of any other terrestrial alphabet she’d seen.
H examined it, nodding. “A Cromulian tag. In their galaxy it’s the symbol for ‘balance’… or ‘annihilation.’ I can’t remember.”
“Actually it’s ‘harmony,’” Em corrected him. “On Earth it means we’re entering an MiB safe haven.” H regarded her oddly. “It’s in the handbook. Yeah, the one you’ve never read.”
Before he could retort, H caught sight of someone he recognized. “Great.” The agent’s voice dripped with weary familiarity. “Just who I wanted to see.”
The street dead-ended ahead into a garage specializing in motorbikes.
There were partly assembled bikes and tools scattered everywhere in front of the shop.
A skinny man in a pair of Qandrissi trousers, sandals, and a black T-shirt crouched beside an oil-stained tarp, working on a three-wheeled motorized taxi bike, a tuk-tuk. However, it was clear to both Em and H, the tuk-tuk was some type of alien motorcycle, casually disguised as an Earth transport. The mechanic’s back was to the street and the agents. He seemed to be having a hushed conversation with himself.
“You do not speak to the customers,” he muttered as he turned a socket wrench. “That is my job.”
A harsher voice came from the man. “And my job is what? Hang out here and shut up?”
“Yes, shut up,” said the mechanic. “That is your job.”
Em glanced over to H, but he seemed unconcerned by the voices.
“You know the rules, Nasr.” H’s eyes were on the tuk-tuk. “No visible alien tech. Don’t make me write you up.”
Startled, the man jumped to his feet and spun around, dropping his wrench in the process. His face was as narrow and gaunt as the rest of him. The most substantial part of him was his long, thick beard. He was covered in patches of grease, and the front of his T-shirt bore the logo for the rock band Motörhead. The bearded man quickly covered the alien bike with the dirty tarp at his feet.
“H!” Nasr said. “It’s really you?”
“Who else would it be? Hey, Bassam.” A small head popped out of Nasr’s beard near his cheek.
The tiny face smiled at H, and when it spoke, Em realized that this was the source of the gruff voice coming from Nasr.
“Hi, H,” Bassam called. “Nasr said you were dead.”
“What?” Nasr raised his eyebrows. “I never said that.”
“You did,” Bassam exclaimed. “You’re lying.”
Nasr grabbed his beard. He stumbled around the garage, twisting and wrestling with his facial hair. Bassam screeched in response.
“Why would I be dead?” H asked, putting a stop to the fight.
Nasr stopped attacking his beard and stepped back toward the agents. “Bassam misunderstood. We heard you and Riza had split up,” he explained.
“Who’s Riza?” Em asked.
H shrugged. “An… old friend of mine.”
“Who runs the biggest criminal syndicate in the galaxy,” Bassam added.
Nasr tried to cover for his beard. “We were so sad, H. What a lovely couple you were.”
“You said, ‘That psycho’s gonna slit his throat,’” Bassam went on. “Your words. Not mine,” the beard added.
“Wrong!” Nasr began smacking himself in the face. “Rude!” he bellowed. Bassam yelped and cursed as the two crashed around the garage.
Nasr punched his face with each word. “I… will… shave… you! I… will… shun… you!”
Bassam sneered in between grunts and cries, “You wouldn’t dare! You need me! You’re nothing without me. You have a weak chin!”
Em turned to H as the mechanic and his beard struggled. Whoever Riza was, she sounded like exactly the kind of person the average MiB agent would want to arrest rather than get into a relationship with. But then again, if Vungus the Ugly was anything to go by, Em had already found out that there was nothing straightforward about H or his friendships.
“You dated this person?” she asked.
Men in Black International Page 9
