Mission 3 Part 7

The woman gave a wicked grin. “We meet again IMF agents, for the last time.” She laughed evilly and added, somewhat anti-climactically, “Actually it’s M, not Q.”
“Wow,” Laz said, scowling. “That was cheesy, ‘we meet again IMF agents, for the last time, ha, ha, ha.” I mean wasn’t that in a cartoon movie or something? Surely you can do better than that.”
M scowled back. “How about this? Shut up or you die.”
Laz gulped. “Works for me.”
M tapped her foot on the floor. “So, what exactly did you do with my sister?”
Ryan shrugged. “I don’t know; what did we do with her?”
“We have her on the helicopter,” Emmy explained.
“Good, bring her to me,” M said in an evil voice. “So I can shoot her.”
“Ah, sisterly love,” Ryan replied sarcastically.
“Shut up, Cruise,” M snapped. “I’ve got something special planned for you.”
Kayla’s mouth was still wide open. She was the only one who was aware enough to be fully amazed. “Wait, how did you get here?”
M laughed, eager to tell her story. “I escaped from that pitiful jail by faking my own death.”
Ryan gave a knowing look. “I did that once,” he reminisced. “It was pretty cool, except for the fact that the other guy they put in the coffin with me was actually dead.” He shuddered.
M frowned. “Don’t interrupt! I’m trying to bask in my own self-imagined glory here!” She sighed and continued, despite the funny looks all the agents gave her after that last out burst. “So when I heard about my little twin sister’s plan to blow up the empire with the TNW’s, I knew I had to intervene… and take credit for the plan myself. I was just in the middle of doing that when you guys showed up.”
Ryan appeared to be thinking hard about something underneath the net.
M growled. “What is it, Cruise? You have a question?”
Ryan nodded. “Yeah, how much older are you than your sister? Like five minutes?”
M rolled her eyes and was about to comment about Ryan’s knack for saying all the wrong, and stupid, things and the wrong time when…
Pat burst through the door that the IMF agents had entered from.
“Hello there, Pat,” M said. “You’re just in time to see the whole IMF squad beg for their lives.”
“Pat, you traitor!” Ryan barked. “I knew it.” He glared at Timothius, who hung his head.
“I must say,” Pat laughed. “You all look ridiculous underneath that net.” He paused, reaching ever so slowly for his trusty Colt .45. “But not as ridiculous as you’ll look, M.” He drew his weapon and tried to get a shot off at M, but M was too quick. She shot Pat’s gun out of his hands before he could even shoot.
“Ow!” Pat groaned. The bullet had missed his hand, but the impact of it hitting the gun out of his hands still hurt him.
“I’m disappointed in you,” M clucked her tongue. “Taking sides with these pitiful agents. Too bad you guys won’t live to see what I’m going to do with these TNW’s,” she patted the suitcases next to her. “It would make your skin crawl off, literally.” She laughed her evil laugh again.
Just as all hope seemed to be lost and IMF appeared to be doomed, the two forgotten agents, Chris and Zach burst through the door that M had come through. They charged into M and sent her sprawling.
“Let’s see your skin crawl off, M,” Chris said, keeping his automatic rifle trained on her as Michelle freed the other IMF agents.
“We took care of the conductor,” Zach informed them. “The train should be coming to a halt any time now.”
“Good,” Kayla said, crawling out from underneath the net with Zach’s help. “We need to get these TNW’s out of here.” She spoke into a radio clipped to her flak vest, “Jordan, Joy, get ready to land; we’re stopping the train.”
“Roger that,” said Jordan’s voice.
“Oh crap,” Ryan exclaimed.
“What?” everyone asked.
“One of these nukes has a timer on it,” he told them.
“How much time?” Laz asked.
“Five minutes.”
“I don’t think I can disable it that fast.”
“We’ve got to get it out of here,” Kayla urged. “It will destroy everything within a one mile radius! Including us!”
Ryan grabbed the suitcase with the timer on it and started to run back the way they had come.
“What’re you doing?” Cathy asked.
“Getting rid of it,” Ryan replied. “Five minutes should be plenty of time for the Porsche to get one mile from here.”
“Don’t do it, Ryan!” Laz called. “You’ll never make it back in time!”
“Just stop whining and tell me where the closest unpopulated area is,” Ryan said, continuing to ran to the back of the train.
“Go east about two miles and you’ll reach a completely unpopulated area,” Laz informed him while trying to keep up. “Let me go with you,” he pleaded.
“Not this time,” Ryan shook his head.
“What happened to dopey sidekick?”
Ryan had reached the Porsche now and he unhooked it from the ramp and hopped in. “Not this time, Laz.”
Laz stubbornly opened the door and climbed inside. “You’re not leaving without me.”
Ryan smiled. “You’re a very stubborn, dopey sidekick.” He backed off the train, which had come to a complete stop by now, and turned east.
“Wait,” Emmy called, running up to the ramp as he backed off. “Don’t go!”
But Ryan and Laz were already off, racing to the spot where there was the least population.
“I never got to say goodbye,” Emmy sniffed.
“Its okay,” Kayla comforted her. “They’ll be back, trust me.” She watched them earnestly as they drove off. “I hope,” she added quietly
Timothius shook his head sadly. “I don’t think they can make it back in time.”
Kayla glared at him. “You’re not helping.”
“Sorry, I was just saying.”
“Try saying something encouraging then, bro,” Christophear advised, coming up from behind them with a handcuffed M in front of him.
Michelle nodded. “They’ll be okay, Emmy, you’ll see.”

Ryan drove as fast as he could to the spot where Laz told him to go. They reached it with about one minute left on the timer. Ryan tossed the TNW out of the window and turned around.
“We’re not going to make it, Ryan,” said Laz, seeming somewhat stunned.
“Well, it’s been fun Laz,” Ryan said. “And hey, we at least know what to expect. I mean, we’ve been through this before. I wonder if we’ll see any flowers this time?”
Laz nodded slowly.
Ryan raced as fast as he could back the way they’d come, but he knew it was all for nothing.
“Laz,” Ryan said.
“What?” Laz asked.
“We’re gonna die again, aren’t we?”
“Yep.”
“This could get old after awhile, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, probably.” And suddenly the nuke exploded, and their world was engulfed in darkness.

To be continued next week...

Mission 3 Part 6

Emmy followed him as close as possible in the limo while relaying directions to Ryan via their ear buds.
“You’ll never catch it,” Q taunted. “It’s scheduled to depart right about now. You’re too late.”
“Shut up,” Chris growled.
“You think you’re so tough, boy?” Q laughed.
Chris growled again and reached towards his belt, he pulled out a Tazer gun and promptly tazed her. Q slumped against the window, unconscious.
“Thank you,” Michelle said.
“No problem,” Chris replied.
“Have him turn left here,” Pat ordered. Emmy did as she was told. Soon they arrived at a train station, where the train that was loaded with TNW’s was ready to depart.
“Hurry, catch that train before it leaves!” Kayla urged, hopping out of the limo and running towards the train. Ryan and Laz were already ahead of her. The whole team charged towards the train. The ticket holder held them up, however.
“Hold on a minute!” the ticket holder exclaimed, not allowing them to pass through the gate in order to board the train. “You can’t board that train until I see some tickets.”
“But, we don’t have time!” Kayla nearly screamed. “We’re from IMF, just let us through!”
“Ha,” the ticket holder laughed. “You think that by making up some government name that you can talk me into letting you in here? Why didn’t you at least use the F.B.I. or something?”
“I hate it when this happens,” Ryan groaned. He turned to Kayla. “We don’t have time for this, I’m going after that train.”
“How? We can’t just kill the ticket holder, he’s just doing his job.”
The train was starting to leave the station now and time was running out.
Ryan grinned. “You take care of the ticket holder, nicely. I’ll see how this baby goes on the open road.” He jerked his thumb towards the Porsche.
Ryan ran over to the Porsche and hopped in.
“Wait!” Laz called. “Let me come!”
“No way,” Ryan shouted. “It’s too dangerous.”
“How’s it any dangerous than what we were going to do in the first place?”
Ryan started to answer and then stopped. “You know, I’m sure there’s a great response to that, but I can’t think of one right now.”
“So I can come?”
Ryan shook his head. “No,” and then he was off.

Meanwhile, Timothius was trying to persuade the ticket holder to let them through.
“Say,” Timothius said with a sly grin. “Do you want some gum?” he held up a piece of red and green gum.
“Sure,” the ticket holder said.
“Tim!” Kayla yelled. “Don’t!”
Tim threw up his hands. “I was just kidding!”

Ryan raced towards the train in his Porsche and hopped the tracks until he was right up next to it. The train was gathering speed now and he was having difficulty keeping up. He managed to keep pace with it though and get right up next to the back end.
“Okay,” Ryan said to himself. “Now what?” He sighed. “I should think these things through more.”
Suddenly, Ryan could hear the sound of a helicopter flying above him. No, scratch that, two helicopters. He looked up to see who they were. To Ryan’s great relief, they were both bearing the IMF insignia on the side.
“Yeah Jordan, I love you man!” Ryan exclaimed. Ryan couldn’t see who was piloting the second helicopter, but he had a hunch that it might be Joy.
The helicopter flew right above the train and someone dropped from a cable onto the top of the train, he or she instantly grabbed onto to any handhold that he or she could find so he or she would not be blown off.
Ryan squinted as hard as he could to see who it was, but he could not see who he or she was, as it was too dark. Thus we will have to continue to refer to the mystery person as he or she, as we do not yet know the gender of the person and would not want to be partial towards either side and possibly cause an unintentional and ugly battle of the sexes on our blog.
The person crawled carefully to the very back of the train and he or she motioned for Ryan to pull up behind the train.
“Hop onto the tracks, is he crazy?” Ryan cried. “Or she,” he added. Ryan shrugged. “Well, I’ve never met anyone more crazy than me, so what the heck?”
He hopped onto the track and traveled bumpily towards the train. The person, who had still not been designated male or female yet, appeared to unhook something. All of the sudden, a ramp fell down from the train, right in front of the Porsche. Sparks flew up in the air from where the ramp was rubbing against the tracks and there was a loud screeching noise.
“What’s a ramp doing on a train?” Ryan wondered aloud. He shrugged; he’d seen weirder things before. Ryan pulled up onto the ramp and the person, who was now recognizable enough to be classified as a woman, hooked the Porsche onto the back of the train so it would not fall off.
Ryan jumped out of the car and onto the very back end of the train. “Hey, thanks for the lift,” he thanked the girl standing there.
The girl looked up, revealing her face, it was Cathy. “No problem, the others are already boarding the train now, let’s go.”
They busted open the back door of the train and stepped inside. Two guards quickly met them; Ryan pistol-whipped the first one with his Glock and Cathy shot the second one.
“Nice,” Ryan commented.
“Thank you,” Cathy replied. “Come on, we need to find those TNW’s, they could be anywhere on this train.”
They went from car to car, searching for any sign of the TNW’s, but all they found were vicious guards. They quickly took care of these and continued searching. The next door they came to was already open.
“Careful,” Ryan warned. “Don’t just charge in there; they could be waiting for us.”
They snuck in carefully and ran straight into Emmy and Kayla.
“Emmy! Kayla! Am I glad to see you!” Cathy exclaimed. Ryan agreed wholeheartedly.
“Have you found the TNW’s yet?” Cathy asked.
Emmy shook her head. “Not yet, we’ve searched all the cars except this last one ahead of us,” she pointed towards the next doorway. “Timothius is setting a charge on that one right now.”
The followed her finger and saw that Timothius was planting explosives on the door in front of them. The reason they were blowing the door open, as they could now see, was because the door was made out of steel and wouldn’t budge otherwise.
Laz and Michelle were standing beside Timothius, helping him set the charges. “This has to be it,” Laz said excitedly. “All the other doors are wooden. Why else would this one be made of steel?”
“And it’s the only car we haven’t searched,” Michelle added.
Ryan counted all of them over and over again; he frowned. “Are we missing someone?”
“Chris and Zach were dropped off at the very front so they could deal with the conductor and stop the train,” Kayla explained. “I’m not sure where Pat is.”
“I knew he would run off the first chance he got,” Ryan glared at Timothius.
“Don’t worry, he’ll be back,” Timothius assured him, trying to sound more confident than he felt.
Timothius stepped back and motioned for them to do the same. They all gathered in the car behind them and shut the door. Ryan noticed that Timothius was wearing a shiny, new Rolex watch.
Ryan grinned. “I’ve been wanting to use that one.”
“All right everyone shield your ears!” Timothius commanded. He turned the dial on his watch and a couple seconds later there was a loud explosion and the door burst open.
Timothius opened the door of the car that they were in and walked slowly into the next car with his assault rifle ready. They rest of the team followed close behind him. They crept quietly through what was left of the steel door and looked around. There in front of them were five… suitcases.
“Wait,” Zach said. “These aren’t TNW’s, these are suitcases!”
“They’re small nukes,” Ryan said, with a knowing look. “That’s what the T stands for, Transportable Nuclear Weapons.”
“No,” Timothius shook his head. “It stands for Tactical Nuclear Weapons.”
Ryan folded his arms defiantly. “Well I think transportable makes more sense.”
“Well,” Emmy said. “Let’s go get them.”
“Wait,” Kayla warned, but it was too late. Emmy stepped forward towards the TNW’s and suddenly they heard a clicking sound. A net with heavy weights on the ends fell from the ceiling and trapped everyone in the room underneath it.
“She booby-trapped it!” Emmy cried.
“That’s what I was trying to tell you,” Kayla said.
Emmy pushed out her bottom lip and gave an apologetic look. “I’m sorry.”
Suddenly the door in front of them burst open and a woman stepped forward.
“Q!” they exclaimed.

To be continued next week... which means it will be posted next week... as in on Tuesday... at whatever time.

Mission 3 Part 5

Ryan frowned as if in disbelief. “M, how did you get here?” Ryan asked. “And why aren’t you dead?”
Laz, who was listening from above, gasped. “M! How did she escape?”
“I am not M,” said the woman that looked exactly like M.
Ryan looked confused. “Then, who are you?”
“Q,” the woman replied. “ M’s identical twin.”
Ryan frowned. “No kidding?”
The woman, who was Q, shook her head.
“So, you’re like M’s eviler twin?”
“Something like that,” Q nodded. “And smarter as well.”
“Humble too, eh?” Ryan quipped.
Q proved herself to be quite a bit nastier too, as she reached up and slapped Ryan across the face.
“First time you’ve been slapped by a girl?” Q taunted.
“Actually,” Ryan replied, not in the least bit flustered. “It’s not. I have to say though,” Ryan continued. “That you are the better looking twin. I mean your sister was definitely something to behold but you, girl. You have got it going on, if you know what I mean.”
Surprisingly, Q seemed somewhat flattered by this. “It seems that even nasty little secret agents like you, Cruise, have some sense of chivalry. And for that, I think I’ll keep you alive.”
“Why thank you, I really appreciate that,” Ryan said somewhat sarcastically.
Just then Laz jumped out from hiding and shot the guards standing by Ryan’s shoulders. He grabbed onto the ceiling and hung there, picking off the guards by the doorway. Ryan grabbed his Glock from his waist and trained it on Q. “Don’t move,” he warned.
Q put her hands in the air, but did not seem afraid. “You’ll never get out of here alive. There are too many guards for you two alone to overcome.”
“Oh yeah?” said a voice. “Not anymore.” Two girls came charging in, each brandishing assault rifles.
“Emmy? Kayla?” Ryan exclaimed in wonderment. “How?”
“We knew you guys couldn’t do this by yourself,” Kayla said.
“Gee, thanks for the vote of confidence,” Laz mumbled.
“It was simply impossible, even for you,” Kayla continued. “So we, or Cathy actually, convinced the emperor to send some backup. We’ve already taken out most of the guards. I’ll never know how Cathy did it, though. The emperor was so set on leaving you guys to do it by yourself.”
Ryan cuffed Q and then looked up at them questioningly. “But, how’d you get here so fast?”
They opened their mouths as if to explain and then stopped. They looked at each other and just shrugged. “We don’t know,” Emmy said.
“In all reality it doesn’t make any sense,” Kayla finished in a mocking voice.
“Ha, ha, very funny,” Ryan fake laughed.
They walked out of the room with Q in tow. Laz, who had been quietly watching the whole scene, suddenly remembered something. He was still hanging from the ceiling.
“Uh, guys,” he called. “Guys a little help, please?” The three of them just continued walking. Laz sighed. “I hate you guys.” He braced himself and then let go of the ceiling. He hit the floor with a thud. “Ow,” he groaned.
Just then Ryan poked his head in the room. “Come on, Laz. Hurry up.”
Laz just glared.

While all this was going on, Timothius was following Pat’s escort. As he went he was careful to stay out of sight and jam all the cameras before they could see him. The guards halted when they came to a steel door and one of them started to unlock it.
Timothius decided that it was time for action. He pulled out his silenced rifle and took out the guards. Thankfully, none of them ever thought to glance behind them and they were all disposed of rather easily.
“Finally,” Pat said. “I was wondering how long you would wait before taking them out.”
Timothius frowned. “Wait, you knew that I was following you?
“Of course, I’m not as stupid as these guards. Now help me out of these handcuffs.” He held up his hands.
“Why are you Q’s prisoner?” Tim asked. “You’re the bad guy.”
“I was, but I’ve had some time to think while I was in that jail. I still hate the empire, but I don’t want to blow up all those innocent people. I may have tried to kill the emperor, but never innocent citizens. When I told Q that, though, she wasn’t very happy. So she had me locked up.”
Timothius stared at him, searching for the truth. Pat met his gaze, never blinking. “Okay,” Timothius finally said. “I believe you.” He freed Pat from his chains.
“Thanks, Chris,” Pat said.
“It’s Tim, actually.”
“I mean Tim, of course,” Pat apologized.
“Don’t worry about it, come on, let’s find…” he trailed off. There in front of him was Cathy.
“Cathy?” Timothius exclaimed.
“Hey Tim,” Cathy greeted him. Then she frowned. “What’s he doing here?” she pointed at Pat.
“He’s our friend now. What’re you doing here?”
Cathy smiled. “Saving you guys, come on.” She ran off, motioning for Tim to follow.
“Wait,” Tim called. “Who said we needed saving?”
“I did,” Cathy called back.
Tim ran to catch up with her, with Pat close on his heels. “What’s going on?”
Cathy explained on the run. “I convinced the emperor to send us girls to help you out. Don’t worry; we’ve taken out most of the guards. You have the location of the TNW’s, right?”
Timothius shrugged. “I don’t know, is Ryan with you?”
Cathy shook her head. “I don’t know, the others are waiting by the car, let’s go see.”
“I know where the TNW’s are going,” Pat spoke up.
“You do?” Tim and Cathy exclaimed in unison.
“Yeah, Q told me about it before she had me imprisoned.”
They went outside and there was the whole team waiting for them. Chris and Zach were sitting there with the car still, Kayla and Emmy were talking with Ryan and Laz, and Michelle was sitting in the back of the car. Q was there too, chained to the door and glaring at them with all her might.
“I know where the TNW’s are going!” Ryan exclaimed. Then he saw Pat. “What’s he doing here?” he growled.
“Pat’s our friend now, and he knows where the TNW’s are too.”
“Our friend?” Ryan protested. “Since when?”
“Ryan’s right,” Emmy agreed. “He tried to kill us.”
“Just trust me, he’s changed,” Tim pleaded.
Ryan folded his arms and looked like he wasn’t going to give in. Then he sighed. “Oh, what the heck. If does anything dumb we’ll just shoot him.”
Pat cringed. “You better not, I know where the TNW’s are going.”
“So do I,” Ryan shot back.
“Not if you got the information from the computer, it’s wrong. Q even told me herself.”
“You’re lying!” Q spat.
“No he isn’t,” Michelle spoke up.
Everyone turned to face Michelle; she only spoke up when it was something important.
“How do you know?” Ryan asked.
“Because, I can feel it,” Michelle said, somewhat sheepishly.
“I believe her,” Chris offered. Everyone else nodded in agreement.
Ryan looked at Pat. “So you mean to tell me, that all that Laz and I went through was for nothing?”
Pat thought about it for a while. “Pretty much, yeah.”
Ryan scowled. “So where are they headed?”
“Same place, just a different route,” Pat replied. “They’re going to the airport by train. That’s our best chance to catch them. Once they’re airborne, it’ll be tough.”
Ryan nodded. “All right, everyone in,” he ordered. He jumped into the driver’s seat and everyone piled into the limo.
“I hate to leave our car behind though,” Emmy lamented.
“What car?” Ryan asked.
“The Porsche that we brought here, it was such a nice car.”
Ryan’s eyes lit up. “Emmy, you wanna take the wheel?”
“Sure, why?”
“I’m going to get that Porsche.” He turned to Laz. “Wanna come with me?”
“You want me to go with you?” Laz asked in surprise.
“Sure, I owe you one for shooting those guards. Besides, you’re my dopey sidekick, remember?”
Laz grinned. “Oh yeah.”
Moments later, Ryan and Laz pulled up alongside the limo in their Porsche, Ryan rolled down the window. “You guys ready to roll?” Ryan asked, lowering his incredibly cool-looking sunglasses.
Emmy giggled. “Ready when you are.”
“All right, let’s go, we’ve got ourselves a train to catch.” Ryan rolled up his window and peeled out of the parking garage.

To be continued next week...

Mission 3 Part 4

“Glad you’re so happy to see me,” Emmy replied sarcastically.
“No, no, it’s not that it’s just, wow did you ever scare me. What, how, why, I mean, when?”
“Don’t ask how, or why, or what, or anything else, just listen,” Emmy said.
“Okay, I’m listening,” said Tim, still in shock.
“The emperor assigned us to watch you, and give you help if you needed it, remember?” Emmy reminded him. “So he sent you with this handy dandy little device.”
“Oh yeah,” Tim said, remembering. “Why didn’t he tell me about the little device?”
“You mean he didn’t tell you? That’s funny.” Emmy shrugged. “Oh well, he just wanted to make sure everything was going according to plan.”
“Like the emperor’s plan?” Tim asked.
“Yeah, what else?”
“Well, not exactly.”
“What do you mean, ‘not exactly’?”
“We kind of changed the plan around, or Ryan did.”
“You mean we did,” Kayla suddenly came on screen.
“Kayla?” Timothius said, amazed.
“Yeah, it’s me. When the emperor laid out his plan, we all knew it was impossible, so me, Emmy, Cathy, and Shelly cooked up a plan to get you guys in there safely.”
Timothius nodded thoughtfully. “So, does Ryan get all his good ideas from you guys?”
Kayla thought about it for a while and then replied, “Pretty much, except for those stupidly brilliant ones.”
“Ah, I see.” Tim paused. “So why are you contacting me now?”
“Oh yeah,” Emmy smacked her forehead and laughed. “I almost forgot.”
“Now you’re starting to sound like Ryan,” Timothius interrupted.
“Yeah, I know. Anyways, we came to warn you that Q is moving the TNW’s tonight, which means—”
“That we better get going and find out where they are,” Timothius finsished.
“Exactly,” Emmy clapped her hands together. “I love it when people finish my sentences before I even say them!”
“Thanks for the information,” Tim thanked them. “Anything else?”
“Nope, by now, and good luck,” Emmy waved at Timothius through the screen. Kayla waved goodbye too, and then they disappeared and the screen became black.

Meanwhile, Ryan and Laz were crawling through the air ducts as quietly as possible, making their way to the secret room. Suddenly they bumped into a wall; there was no longer any room to go forward but there were two “tunnels” so to speak, to the left and to the right.
“Which way?” Laz asked.
“Left,” Ryan replied confidently.
“How do you know?”
“Because,” Ryan answered as they turned to their left. “I’ve got GPS.”
“Really?”
“No actually I was joking.”
“Oh,” Laz said. “I knew that.”

Timothius was peering underneath the door with another one of Ryan’s gadgets as he waited for Ryan and Laz to return. The gadget was a camera that was small enough to slip underneath the door so that Timothius could see what was happening on the other side without anyone seeing him. All of the sudden he saw a whole troop of guards marching by, and in their midst was a very familiar figure. “Pat?” Tim was of course surprised to see Pat here, but he was even more surprised to see him in chains. Being too curious to stay put, Tim decided to follow them and see where they were going.
He tapped on the handheld device, trying to turn it on. “Hello? Emmy, Kayla, where are you guys? How do turn this thing on?” He shrugged and put it back in his pocket. He went to the door and slowly pulled it open, quickly jamming all the cameras in the hallway. Then he crept out into the hall and started tailing the guards, forgetting all about the earpiece that Laz had given him, which was still sitting in the janitor’s closet.

While Tim was following Pat, Ryan and Laz were just arriving at the secret room, or rather, above it. So far they hadn’t run into any problems but now they were starting to run into some security. Laser beams blocked off the air duct leading to the grate above the secret room.
“Great,” Laz threw up his hands, or tried to, there wasn’t really enough room. “Now what?”
“Not to worry,” Ryan shook his finger. “I have a plan.” He pulled a strange-looking device out of his pack, which was still strapped to his back. “This will reroute the lasers,” he told Laz. He took the device and another one that looked just like it and clamped it onto the side where the lasers were projected. Almost instantly, they disappeared.
“Wow, that was cool,” Laz said in awe. “Great idea.”
“I know,” Ryan said, trying to be humble.
They continued until they came to the grate that was above the secret room. Laser beams blocked this to. Ryan simply repeated the process and removed the grate. He attached a cable to his flak vest and fed it through a pulley. “Here,” he handed Laz the end of the cable. “Lower me down.”
Laz obeyed and lowered Ryan down inside the room. There was a single computer in the room on top of a desk. Inside that computer was the information they needed to find the TNW’s; the only problem was that they didn’t know if they could get to it.
Laz slowly lowered Ryan down towards the computer. When he reached it, Ryan pulled himself over towards the computer and turned it on. Instantly, he was met with a prompt for a password.
“Dang,” he said, clamping a hand over his mouth as soon as the words were out of his mouth. He’d forgotten that the room had an alarm that was sound sensitive! The alarm did not go off, however, so much for state of the art. “It’s got a password lock,” Ryan whispered.
“What’d you expect?” Laz whispered back. Ryan couldn’t have heard him normally, but the earpiece enabled him to understand what Laz was saying.
“I don’t know, what do you think it is?”
“Let me have a hack at it,” Laz offered. “I was always pretty good at hacking into people’s accounts.”
“I know,” Ryan glared up at Laz. Ryan had caught Laz hacking into his computer many times before.
Laz whispered down several different passwords to try, but none of them were the right ones.
Suddenly, it hit him, literally. Deep in thought, Laz raised his head without thinking and banged it on the air duct. He shoved his hand up to his mouth to keep from crying out. Then Laz came up with a great idea. “Try this Ryan, ‘Emperor Q’”
Ryan typed in the password. “Access granted,” it read. “It worked,” he whispered excitedly. He quickly searched the computer until he found the file he was looking for. “‘Transportation of TNW’s’, here it is.” He read the file. “Uh-oh,” Ryan didn’t sound too thrilled.
“What?”
“They’re headed straight for the heart of the Touché Empire. Q’s going to blow up the whole empire!”
Laz gasped. “Come on, let’s get out of here.
“Hold on, let me copy all this information onto a disc so I don’t forget.” He inserted a disc and downloaded the file onto it.
Laz started to pull Ryan up as soon as he gave him the green light. When he was about halfway up, the rope started to fray. Laz was so intent on pulling Ryan up though, that he didn’t notice, until it was to late. The rope suddenly snapped and Ryan dropped heavily to the ground. Laz was thrown back and crashed against the side of the air duct. Not a second had passed before the alarms started to go off and guards could be heard making their way into the room. Two guards burst in and pulled Ryan, who was still dazed from his fall, to his feet.
“Well,” Ryan laughed nervously. “This is awkward. What do you say I just crawl back up there and we can forget this every happened.”
The guards didn’t respond but stared at him blankly. They stepped to either side of him as if waiting for someone. Before Ryan could ask whom they were waiting for, a woman stepped into the room, a terribly familiar looking woman. As she stepped inside, recognition flashed across Ryan’s face. It couldn’t be! It was M! ...