by Erik Hyrkas
Chapter 29. Max
We walked for nearly five minutes in silence. Wendy led the way through different doors without hesitation. I was lost. I couldn’t have gotten back to the entrance if I wanted to, but Wendy seemed confident in her choices. I hoped that confidence had some grounding in fact. We passed through a room filled with metal crates. I looked inside one, and it was empty, but the outside described the contents as an Autoforce 200i sentry robot, military grade hardware. Apparently Tyler had stolen his robot guards from Stellar Command. Maybe they were on the Phoenix he stole, I thought. We also passed through a room full of dark monitors, which reminded me vaguely of Captain Johnson’s office. Wendy apparently found it all uninteresting and kept on moving. She finally stopped when we came to an elevator. She pushed the down button and the door slid open.
“Is that safe?” I asked. I imagined that the elevator was a trap where you step in and it incinerates you rather than going up or down.
“I think so,” she said. She pointed at the control panel. “It looks like somebody got peanut butter on that button, and it probably wasn’t an intruder.”
She had a point. The doors closed when I stepped in and we descended, which felt a lot like leaving your stomach a few hundred yards behind the drop was so quick. There was a ding and the doors opened. I stepped out into a large bright room that looked like a hotel lobby.
There were couches surrounding a low table with a pot of coffee and creamer on it. Wendy walked over to it and sniffed it.
“Let’s have a cup of coffee,” she said.
“Why not?” I said.
She handed me a cup of cold coffee and we each drank it down. Then she sniffed the creamer and drank it straight from the container.
I noted that paintings hung on every wall. “I didn’t know Tyler had class.”
“He didn’t,” Wendy said. She put her hand on my shoulder and I turned to face her. “I did.” I went out as approximately one point twenty-one gigawatts coursed through my body.
I came to lying in a bed with my hands tied to the bed frame and my clothes on a chair across the room. I had a gag in my mouth that was tied much too tight.
“Ah, you’re awake. I worried that I might have overdone that jolt a little.”
The best I could manage was, “Mmph urg ah mmph!”
“You used to be so big and strong, but look at you now. Tsk-tsk. Now you look like a withered shadow of your old self.” She pulled out her molecular destabilizer. “You’ve managed to ruin everything, not that I should be surprised, I suppose. You always come through missions and, well, you always get the people around you killed. You might just be the luckiest bastard on the planet. I plan to change that, though.”
“Uhm mmph hmph ur,” I spat back venomously at her.
“Yes, well, this time you got the wrong person killed and now you are going to pay. I plan to make this as painful as I can.” She aimed her weapon toward my lower abdomen. I squirmed.
“Max? Wendy?” a female voice called from another room. It was Miranda.
“Damn! They’re supposed to be dead, killed by the spiders. None of you can do anything right,” Wendy whispered.
I shouted, “Mmph mmph mmph ugh!”
Wendy sighed. “One for the road, then. This isn’t finished. You’ll have to watch your back for the rest of your short life. I’m only letting you live now so that I can kill you slowly later. You don’t deserve to be let off easily with a quick shot to each of your four hearts.”
She pulled the trigger and shot me in the hip. Flesh and bone vaporized, and I moaned with the pain of it. The wound wasn’t large, and in fact she had barely grazed me, but it was very painful. I would heal in a few minutes, but my eyes rolled back in my head as I coped with the immediate agony.
When Miranda sprinted into the room, Wendy was already gone. When she saw me tied to the bed without clothes on, she looked livid. “You can’t keep your pants on for a minute, can you?” she asked. “I have your things.”
She threw my graviton bars, three pens, and my ring at me. They hit me in the face. Apparently she didn’t notice I was tied up, gagged, and bleeding from a gaping wound on my hip because she stalked out of the room. I wondered if she knew the pens were disguised stun grenades when she threw them right at my head. They weren’t designed to kill, but at that close range, my cranium wouldn’t have felt good if they went off.
I called after her, “Mmph mmph eer!”
Two holograms appeared. My ring must have activated when it hit me in the face.
“Maximus!” my mother’s hologram said.
“Mmph mmph,” I replied.
“Son, you should put on some clothes,” my father’s hologram said.
“Mmph mmph mmph,” I said.
“Yeah, I remember that time, too. But you’re not six anymore,” my dad said.
I rolled my eyes. “Mmmmmph!”
“I think he wants us to call for help,” my mother said.
“It sounded like he wanted a sandwich to me,” my father said.
“Is there anybody that can untie my son?” my mother called out.
“And bring him a sandwich if you have one!” my father called.
John came in a moment later and removed my gag.
“Thank you,” I said.
“I don’t have a sandwich,” he said.
I sighed. “Please, untie me.”
Shortly after John untied me, Miranda walked back into the room. “There’s no sign of Wendy. What happened?”
“Well, she asked me if I wanted a cup of coffee and then she drank the cream. That’s the last thing I remember,” I said.
Miranda stared at me. “You had a…” She made air quotes. “‘Cup of coffee’ with the bunny and she ‘drank the cream’? Do men always think with the wrong head?”
“Yes,” my mother and father said in unison.
When I stood up, my half-vaporized boxers fell down. My mother shielded her eyes and turned away. I quickly covered myself with a hand.
“Two hands, Maximus,” my father suggested. He turned to my mother, “Now, aren’t you glad we didn’t name him Paul?”
“Thanks Dad,” I answered. I turned to Miranda before she could shoot me or hit me with something. “Wendy’s in this with Tyler. She was trying to kill me before you showed up.”
“Get some pants on, Pooh Bear,” she said as she walked out of the room. At least she didn’t hit me or shoot me, I thought. That was a plus.
“Mom and Dad, I’ll talk to you later. Right now, things are a little…”
“Complicated?” my dad offered.
“You’re always too busy to talk,” my mother said. She sniffled. “We wait and wait to talk to you, and you never have time for us.”
I groaned. “Mother!”
“He’ll talk when he can talk,” my father said.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t have time for this right now. I’ll talk to you soon.” I grabbed my ring and shut off the holograms.
John looked at me disapprovingly. “No guns. No pants. You’re not much of an agent.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I do things my own way.”
“Yes, you do,” he muttered. “Without weapons and without pants. Not much of a strategy for success.” John walked out of the room.
I put on my shorts, shirt, and shoes. As I was dressing, I saw myself in the mirror and noticed a little bit of lipstick on my cheek. I wiped it off. I had no idea how it got there.
When I walked into the next room, Miranda was sitting in an arm chair with her arms folded and John was sitting on a couch. The room reminded me of a sitcom living room. The floor had short tan carpet with matching furniture, widescreen television on one wall, and a fireplace on another. Framed digital panels on the walls gave the illusion of windows looking out into a peaceful garden.
“When Wendy heard you coming, she said the spiders should have killed you,” I said.
Miranda didn’t look at me. “She was wrong.”
; “I knew about those pesky spiders from my last visit, and so I brought the right tools,” John said. He pulled a pair of short weapons from under his shirt that resembled sawed-off shotguns, but I could see they were much more technologically advanced.
“Are those Ultra Mag Two RPGs?” I asked.
He nodded. “With depleted uranium shrapnel.”
“Isn’t that bad for the environment?” I asked.
“Not as bad as it is for the poor bastard that gets blown up by it,” he replied.
“Now that you have your pants back on, are you ready to continue the mission?” Miranda asked. She didn’t look at me, and I could see that her eyes were a little red.
I had no idea what her problem was. “Ready as I always am.”
Miranda pulled a com link out and set it on the table. “We need to check in with the Captain.”
She hit a few intangible buttons in the air, and in a moment the hologram of Captain Johnson appeared.
“Agent Maximus and Agent Miranda. How nice of you to check in after being AWOL for fourteen days,” he said coolly.
“Fourteen days?” I asked.
“Sir, we were captured and have only recently returned from Zeta-Terra. We were unable to report until now because we didn’t have a com link,” Miranda said politely.
The captain rubbed his chin. “There and back through a wormhole would at least partially explain your extended absence. I sent Agent Wendy to look for you, and all she has reported thus far is a ship falling out of the sky with no survivors.”
“Sir, we survived,” I said.
“I liked Agent Wendy’s version of the story better,” he said. “He looked around. Where is she?”
“Agent Tyler and Agent Wendy had a plot to sell Agent Maximus for Tritium on Zeta-Terra, but Agent Tyler was eaten by a Wendigo there and now Wendy is evading us,” Miranda said.
The captain rubbed his chin for a few moments and then looked at the ceiling. “Was Agent Maximus worth a lot of Tritium?”
“Sir?” Miranda asked.
He frowned. “Never mind. Have you found the cause of the ping in Minnesota?” he asked.
“Yes, sir. Agent Tyler brought a Wendigo from Zeta-Terra as part of the arrangement. We are currently trying to track it down.”
Captain Johnson sighed. “Well, as you’ve let it roam free for fourteen days, it’s probably gained too much strength to be contained. As you know, Wendigo grow with each meal, and by now it’ll be nearly unstoppable. I’d send my best agents, but they’re busy with a more important world-ending assignment. You will have to stop the Wendigo using lethal force, if you can stop it at all. If you find Agent Wendy, feel free to bring her in for questioning, but don’t harm her. I’m curious how much Tritium they were offered for Agent Maximus.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Yes, sir,” Miranda said. Then she added under her breath, “I’m sure it was more than he was worth.”
“Dismissed,” the captain said, and the com link displayed a blank blue interface and then stopped emitting.
