Everybody was gathered around the bulletin board since the first employee clocked in this morning. Some said their prayers, some snorted and told themselves it'd all be a happy ending.
"I know those two, they'll be just fine," the constant murmur of the crowd says. "They're up in age, I hope they're okay."
I walked into the Ispio office, delighted to be back on my first day after my suspension. My smile quickly faded when I saw the huge gathering. To my surprise, Clyde was among the people staring at the board. He was quiet, keeping his words to himself until I got there.
"Look," he simply said to me, pointing at the poster tacked on the corkboard.
It was a Missing Unit poster. I've never seen or heard of Ispio agents going missing for my entire spy career. Sure, some turn up dead and are retrieved to keep our secrets hidden, but going missing was an entirely different set of consequences.
The poster had a picture of two agents; a male cheetah and a female bunny. Both looked to be around their 50s in age, veteran agents I assumed. The bunny had a slim build while the cheetah throbbed in hulking muscle mass, kind of reminding me of a smaller version of Clyde.
Ispio Unit SEQ4 (Jack Frohling/Abby Larocca) Missing.
Volunteer Rescue Unit Needed.
Report to your HQ to accept the mission.
"We're taking the job, aren't we?" I asked him. Believe me when I say that I'm all up for saving a fellow agent, but the suspension left me broke, and volunteering means no payment.
He nodded, no words uttered, just a stone-cold face and an attitude to get things done. I didn't realize he was such a mercy angel.
"Okay," I muttered. I knew any other response wouldn't matter because his mind was already set. Now excuse me while I fast-forward us to the present time.
*** *** ***
I hold a ticket in my hand, well, more like a scrap of paper with Adams' handwriting on it. I nervously fidget with its flimsy corners in the backseat of a company car.
"It's unbelievable," Clyde tells me, "that nobody in that quadrant wanted to pick up the rescue mission. Do they lack home-team pride?"
I glance at him. "You can't really say that. Sure, you know that other units are in your quadrant, but you never get to meet them. We've been in Hartford for years and never made contact with another unit, and they use the same building as us."
Not too long ago, I ran into another unit who were after the Archer Fury bounty. That must have been the only time I snapped out of my isolated fantasy and remembered it's not just us out here, but hundreds of agents just like Clyde and I. Ispio has a strong foundation of teamwork, trusting your partner, but at the same time, you forget about your fellow man around you.
He shrugs his shoulders. "I suppose so. I guess it's no surprise to not develop a bond with someone other than your partner." He smiles, reaching for my hand to hold.
I look at our driver, his eyes concentrating on the road. Maybe just a little bit of hand-holding won't get us in trouble. I let him grab my hand, his masculine fingers engulfing my tiny, slender ones.
"I've got a question," I say, "why do you think whoever has Jack and Abby chose to keep them alive?"
"Firstly, we don't know if they were captured or not, currently they're just missing. Secondly, and this is a long shot, if they were captured, the kidnappers might've found out that when an agent dies, the nanobots will sense a lack of brain activity, and all the bio-linked gadgets they were assigned would self-destruct."
"And you can't study technology when it's in a million pieces."
"Exactly." He looks out his window, a smirk present. "It's kinda nice to see this place again, isn't it?"
I look back at the scrap of paper. SE Quadrant, McAllen, Texas, SEQ4, HQ Marston is what it says.
"Yeah," I tell him, "welcome back to Texas."
The driver enters the Ispio Loan Star parking lot, unlocks the doors, sits silently, and waits for us to leave. We get off and enter the lobby, seeing a pair of familiar faces at the desk. A young female human and a male horse, their name tags reading Bethany and Kenneth respectively.
Kenneth looks up first, a smile replacing his bored expression. "Mr. Hearth, Mr. Barker. Hello once again."
I wave. "Hi, Kenneth. How've you been?"
"It's been paradise here. Ever since you guys thinned out the case file stacks, people have been feeling much less pressure here."
Bethany chimes in. "It's true! We've been keeping a steady average for four months already."
Clyde steps forward. "If you guys don't mind, we really need to see Marston."
Bethany and Kenneth shoot each other a quick glance, and both utter "Of course," in unison, then Bethany ducks under the desk to mess with the hidden keypad. She comes back up, giving us a thumbs up.
"You remember how?" Kenneth asks.
I nod, and Clyde and I head for the employees-only bathroom. The door closes behind us, and we stand in front of the sink. I stare at us in the mirror, admiring our forms, our physique, our youth, and how he's right by my side both physically and emotionally.
"Aww. Look, babe," I coo, pointing at the mirror, "don't we look so good together?"
At long last, he drops his serious face, sets his loving eyes on mine in the mirror, and smiles. "We do," he simply says, wrapping an arm around my waist and placing his muzzle on my head.
I break the pose so I can face him for real. "It's been hard. I mean, to be affectionate with each other. I feel like we don't get the chance."
He holds my tiny hand in his not-so-tiny hand. "I know. I feel the same way. But let's not lose our heads, we have to stay focused on this rescue mission. It's important."
I nod. "Yes. It is. Can you do the spitting?"
We let each other go. Clyde turns on the faucet, the water comes gently pouring out and swirls down the drain. He spits in the sink, his saliva mixing in with the water and joining it down the drain. The entire sink lowers into the floor, and the wall behind it lifts up. A simple fireman's pole is all there is to get to the South East Quadrant's headquarters.
*** *** ***
One folder, a few pages worth inside, pretty standard for an Ispio case file. Carl Marston sits in his chair, the case file on his desk, and his assistant, Theodore, stands in the corner of his office. The room smells like cigar smoke, just like many times before.
Marston's gruff voice breaks the ice. "Sorry to have to drag you boys back down here for a file exchange. I'm old and paranoid, can't be doin' these things over the phone."
"You're right to be paranoid," I say, "caution is our lineage."
"Spoken like a true agent," Theodore says.
"Thanks, Teddy."
"Anyway..." Clyde says.
Marston pushes the case file towards us, "All yours." His calming gesture suddenly became much more desperate. Not so much his body language, but his eyes. "Please get them home safely."
I grab the file. "Yes sir. They've been with you for quite some time, huh?"
He regains his composure. "Yes. They're the oldest unit I have. Tons of fun to drink with. You'll see when you meet 'em, I'm sure y'all will be the best o' friends."
Wow, he's so sure that they'll be okay. He's either delusional about our skill or holds a lot of hope for his unit. We can't fail now, I don't want to think about a downer ending.
"Is it okay if we also take their agent dossiers? A glimpse into their mindset might help us track them down faster."
"Good thinkin'!" He presses a button on his desk phone. "Bring me agents, Jack Frohling, and Abigail Larocca's profiles."
A female voice responds back, "Yes sir."
Shortly after, a woman knocks on the door and enters the office. A familiar woman, but I can't seem to place her face. She holds two files in her hands. She steps around our seats and stops at the side of Marston's desk, placing the files down.
"Here you go, sir. Jack Frohling and Abby Larocca."
"Thank you, Alisa," he says.
Alisa? Who do I know that's named Alisa? We've met, I'm sure of it.
She glances at us. "Hello, agents. I'm glad we could meet again under better circumstances."
"So this is what happened to you," Clyde says. "I'm surprised to see you've joined up."
She laughs. "Well, it was either join up or have my brain scrambled. The former seemed like the best choice at the time."
"Oh, I remember you," I exclaim, "you were with that crazy jackal."
"Close," she says, "his name is Jackal, but he's a coyote."
"Right, right, of course. Do you still keep in contact with him?"
Her eyes wander to the floor as despair takes away her formalities. "I write to him. Ispio put him back in the institute he broke out of. It's not hard to cover up his tracks in public with his history, so passing off any story we wanted was a given. The staff tells me he still rambles on about Ispio."
"Yikes, that's dangerous," I turn to Marston. "Is it safe for her to talk to the guy that almost exposed us?"
Marston nods. "Entirely. His personal handlers are aligned with Ispio. We can keep an eye on him for as long as we need to."
"Slowly we are becoming the conspiracy," Clyde whispers.
"I'm sorry about your friend," I tell Alisa.
"Don't be. He's fine and well taken care of. Perhaps one day he'll abandon his agenda and be released."
"You miss him, don't you?"
She nods.
Sometimes a bad guy is just a bad guy, and other times they have families and loved ones that are fed lies to cover up the disappearances or arrests of folks. As the appointed good guy it's easy to forget about these people after their case has been wrapped up, but not so easy for their friends.
"We never know what the future looks like. People can surprise you," I say.
Clyde stands up to cue our exit. "We should get started. The quicker the better, right?"
I stand up too. "Quite so! We'll do our absolute best, Mr. Marston."
"I know you boys will," he says, fishing out a cigar from his box, "I couldn't ask for a better unit's help even if one existed."
I'm glad to hear Marston still believes that we're number one. Statistically sure, but I haven't felt like a winner in a while. Clyde and I head to this HQ's briefing room to start studying the case file and the dossiers. Clyde insists to read the dossiers while I read the case.
"Check it," I say, "their mission was based in Massachusetts."
"What? Why?" Clyde asks, putting down the profiles, "That makes no sense."
"I know. Massachusetts is right above Connecticut. If there is a mission there, that would've been our quadrant's job to take. Instead, they sent a unit much further away into a different quadrant. Why would they do that?"
"Maybe we should ask Marston."
"Maybe not. Is it really that important to know? It's not going to give us additional information."
"The devil is in the details, but I guess you're right. What was the case they were working on?"
I keep reading, my eyes stripping every detail of the report down to its root meaning. "Magic."
"Magic?"
"Yep. A conspiracy of magic."
"Kinda like the angel we found in Iowa?"
"Possibly. Maybe like us, they probably went chasing after some crook with advanced technology. People who witness our gadgets think it's magic because it's something they've never seen before."
"True. Science has come a long way. Is that all the information from the file?"
"That's all we need, I think. Most of it is just context and filler. Not our job to solve the case for them, we're only trying to recover the unit."
He rolls his eyes. "Fair enough. Should I get Barry to pick up and drop off?"
I close the file. "Yes, please. Tell him we're going to Salem."