Man the Fort

Capital Security Systems Solutions

Pio handed Lucas a document in a clear blue folder. "Details from the international Olympic Committee mole, sir." 

Lucas only took a brief glance before he placed the folder down, mixed together with other irrelevant documents. 

"Anything else?" Lucas asked with a raised eyebrow to his right-hand man, yet his attention never left the documents on his desk as he stamped it with the word "CLEARED" in caps and with red ink. 

Why bother him with a minuscule detail, Lucas thought.

"Have you read the intel, sir?"

"Mmm." Lucas hummed while he continued to stamp.

"Sir…" Pio held his breath. 'I don't really want to break the news, sir. Please read it again, sir.' Pio's thoughts ran wild like a man on fire, then he pressed on, "Sunny…"

"Yes, I read the intel. 'Too sunny for groundhog day.' Now off you go. Back to work."

"No, sir. Sunny... I mean Jenny. Jenny Huang is on the same ship with Pirate." Pio held his breath. His balls clamped, his butthole too.

"Ok? Is that something that I should be worried about?"

'Wait? What?' Pio released his muscles from its contraction, 'I thought that girl was special?' 

The memory of his boss who almost annihilated the whole facility when the blabbermouth Pirate tattled on his precious code during their first meeting flashed before Pio like it only happened yesterday... 

*flashback*

It was a one cold winter night. One by one, the lighting on the dark and empty corridor of an underground facility illuminated. Echoes of heavy footsteps from the far end reverberated along the lifeless walls. The leader leisurely walked, his car keychain spun on his pointy finger; a stark contrast to the serious faces of the men that trailed behind. The leader abruptly stopped to look at a one-way mirror to his left.

He saw a girl who sat on the other side of the glass. He could see that the long wait was starting to bore her. She softly drummed her fingers on the metal table while her feet tapped on the polished floor in a rhythm.

The girl glanced at the mirror in front of her when she sensed a piercing stare pass through it. She snickered at the possibility that someone was really outside. She looked straight at the mirror again and wished her stare could bore a hole through it, but she saw her disheveled hair and decided for a last-minute hair fix instead.

"What's her name again??" the leader asked the man behind him in his signature monotonous voice, his stare frozen in place as he scrutinized the girl on the other side of the mirror. He tilted his head, scratched his temple, then asked one more question, "...and how much does she know?"

The subordinate behind him had a straight face on, unaffected by his boss's sudden mood swing from lazy to something dark and heavy.

Not everybody knows this side of him. He was always shy and quiet on the outside that people won't even give him a second glance. He was in layman's terms, harmless.

But not in this place. 

Not on his turf. 

In this place, he is the Emperor. The Emperor of Destruction.

"A little," the subordinate replied, a bead of sweat could be seen on his nose, yet his face remained stoic. The subordinate glanced at the one-way mirror too before he continued, "...a little. Enough to get her killed."

"Tch. I guess this is another reason for us to get our hands dirty," the Emperor of Destruction quipped, his hands extended to the pin pad to enter a code.

78669

The Emperor of Destruction smiled when the door beeped.

'Are we imagining things or big boss really smiled?'

The lackeys behind him looked at each other with questioning gazes. They talked with their eyes and sent telepathic signals, each left in wonder if their big boss had a fetish for beeping sounds or only excited at the thought of another crazy bloodbath. 

Why else would he smile every time the door beeped then? 

Of course, only he could tell.

The beep from the door sent the girl's senses into full combat mode. Even though she was the one who had delivered herself to the devil's lair, she knew not to let her guard down or else it would truly be the end of her. 

He stopped in his tracks and did a double-take on the cadet in the room. She was only in her freshman year in the academy, yet she unluckily uncovered incriminating evidence that would cost her life.

"I'm Chinshih, sir," she said right away without being asked.

"Ching Shih the pirate?" he accidentally mused out loud, enough for the other person to hear.

"No, sir. Chin-shih. And you need to change the soundproofing of your room. 78669. The code for the room? Did I get it right?" she said proudly, yet her face paled right away when a dagger suddenly flew across the table, and a scent of blood wafted in the room. 

Chinshih sat frozen on her seat.

"Next time, I would aim for an artery. Tenacity is good only up to a certain extent. You know this is why you are hiding here tonight, yet you made another grave mistake."

The chair screeched as he dragged it towards the door. His right-hand man quickly opened the door for him, and right away, a loud bang woke up the sleeping corridors from their hibernation.

Bang!

Bang!

Bang!

The alarm in the underground facility set off, and emergency red lights glowed endlessly along the corridor.

"I guess we need new keypad door locks in our facility." He dropped the chair from his shoulder's height that it made a clanging sound. The girl on the opposite side of the table tried her best to look cool as a cucumber.

She did not mean to poke the bear. She just wanted to show off a little and leave a good impression on her brother. Chinshih was about to reveal her true identity when...

His long fingers glided on a leather roll-up bag. He opened it, and it revealed varying sizes of syringes. He took a bottle that had a thick blue liquid in it, inserted the needle, and filled the syringe with the blue liquid.

Chinshih's eyes grew wide by the second. 'WHAT THE F*CK is this monster about to do? He was supposed to be the good guy, right?' Her mind was in a mess as she continued to talk to herself.  'Is this motherf***er going to kill me?'

She tried to utter a word, yet his murderous aura stupefied her.

He walked past behind her, syringe still in hand. She saw him as he gave it a push that the blue liquid squirted out.

He pulled her hair downwards and now she was looking up to the ceiling. He scratched her neck with the point of the needle as he whispered into her ear: "That was not the code for the room, but don't worry, this won't hurt. Tomorrow when you wake up, you won't remember a thing about tonight… or perhaps your name too. Let's see how potent this thing is."

His blank eyes stared straight at her now petrified eyes. He stabbed the side of her neck, and the girl let out a gasp. 

'Brother, it's me,' she thought as her eyes turned bloodshot red, her head immediately fell on the metal table with a thud. 

He turned around to face the rest of his minions in the room.

"Pio, shut the door." His right-hand man followed his order at once.

He ran his fingers across the syringes in the leather roll-up bag. The blinking red light doubled the terror of his menacing aura.

"I don't want to do this but… who else heard my code?" 

…..

Back to the present, Pio mentally shook his thoughts away and decided it was best for him to brush that incident under the rug.

"No, sir. I'll take my leave." Pio walked away from his boss's low-key cubicle towards his own on the opposite side. He hasn't warmed up his seat yet when he heard heavy footsteps tramp on the carpet.

"I forgot. I actually have a meeting."

"Do you need me?" Pio asked.

Lucas tilted his head to the side and scratched his temple, "Yes, I need you. I need you to man the fort."

Edited by Swaning