CHAPTER 15

" Okay now Cy let's get serious, I will place this microphone on the inner side of your shirt. I got DC to install a waveform software that will act as a lie detector for me. This is just to make sure they are not lying to you. If anything is going to happen there's shove this earpiece in your ear which will not be seen with the holographic mask activated. I'll tell you if everything is going out well or if they are dangerous people. I will also record every conversation that will be around you since the microphone easily picks up even the softest disturbances of air ."

"Wow, you really thought a lot about this."

"Cy we are not playing here and I can be as tech-savvy as you guys."

"You asked DC didn't you ."

"Well if you going to have a supercomputer lying around I don't have to use my energy thinking about it ."

I quickly and gently placed the earpiece in my ear, shoving was is not what I would have wanted to do at all, and entered the DL which had the human transport tube prototype installed in it. It was meant to deconstruct my body into molecules which would be easier to transport and then fuse them back together without ruining the structure at which it was transported. It felt like being broken and then pieced back together but with the risk of absolute failure and possibly death. My life was filled too much with these 'I can die at any phase of my life because of my own doing' moments.

With my eyes closed and gut curled into a ball of fright. I locked in the coordinates and literally begged the science gods to protect me or at least leave me with limbs after it.

The feeling of transportation was the absolute worst. It felt like my insides were being ripped apart. . I checked if my body was intact with all my limbs together and thanked the science gods for being favorable to me.

The transport tube had dropped me off at the train station's bathroom which was a short distance away from our meeting place with Miranda. I could tell that it was not fully efficient yet but as long as I had everything in one place it was nothing to bother myself about.

After about five minutes I reached the location that Miranda had given me. Looking up it was a downtown pub. The stereotypical image of a biker gang was really running wild in my imagination now. As I was imagining that Miranda sent me a message that said,

"You were almost late, enter the pub and make sure to not stare at them."

I took a deep breath and tried to dissolve all the images of a biker gang from my mind to get into a serious state. I opened the door as casually as possible.I could not imagine what I saw, it was a biker gang. I knew most of the times when I would daydream of ridiculous situations they would never come to the past but this one was just weird.

The pub was lit with dim yellow lights that really set the mood of something bad is happening here. The guys sitting at the tables were dressed as a typical biker gang with their leather jackets, helmets on the table some of them with their arms open exposing their tattoos. I was the complete opposite of all of them wearing a God damn suit of all things. I looked like a fish out of water there. It was definitely uncomfortable but I did what Miranda said and kept my head low.

A medium height olive-skinned woman with purple lipstick walked over to me smiling and took my arm in hand.

"Let's sit over there."She said smiling directing me to the seats that faced the bar.

I took a double-take and I was a hundred percent sure that I had never seen her in my life. I stared at her and suddenly she hit my hand with her hand and smiled innocently. She suddenly grabbed my hand aggressively and started tapping it slowly as she asked me random questions like how was my day and my parents. I noticed the tapping pattern as morse code and realized that she was trying to spell out Miranda and I knew that it was her. She took so much trouble to communicate that but at least I could feel safer knowing it was not a random woman trying to poison me in a pub downtown.

After I figured it out I tapped her inner hand to show her I understood. She smiled and slowly put my hand down trying to keep the nonsensical conversation going. It seemed like everyone there was talking. I wondered if they did this because of The Executive's eavesdropping. I assumed that no one there even knew how Miranda looked like with that third disguise. Having information delivered to you was not the easier thing to do in the world.

The bartender looked at us and laughed to himself. He probably laughed at my out of character outfit. He gave us six shot glasses filled with a colorless liquid. I was nervous about them. Looking at Miranda she just continued to plaster a smile across her face.

"What is inside these glasses?"I asked whispering to her

"It's literally water. I already told him that you did not have the best alcohol tolerance so don't get your little boy shorts in a twist. Just pretend their alcohol for now and you will see soon enough why."She said taking two at a time.

I held up my shot and shake it a bit just out of habit. Once again I closed my eyes and hoped not to die. I had been doing that a lot that day. I took one shot and pinned the liquid inside my mouth to get the taste of the liquid. Sure enough, it was water at the worst state, room temperature. At the very least, I was glad that it was water. I proceeded to take the second, third, fourth, and fifth. I looked at the last one and was glad that I had made it through the water. The sixth one was definitely not water, I felt a burning sensation of down my throat it was vodka which I had just downed. It had been a while since I had drunk alcohol but I would never forget the burning sensation. I looked at Miranda laughing at me , it was really not the time for pranks or it was her idea of payment for begging her to meet her intel.

"That's what you get for forcing me to do this," She said still laughing at me.

After she was done laughing at her own prank she immediately stood up and walked to the door and I was confused as hell. We had barely been there.

"Let's go Drew." She said signaling for me to leave. I guess that was the name she decided to bestow on me. I wondered if the holographic mask made me look like a Drew.

I followed her confused about the meeting.

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We were back to the X-floor with Glenn still manning the computers , I was still confused about what had happened in the entire meeting of the Intel. Miranda literally barely talked to anyone, the only person who I had direct contact with was the bartender.

"Why do you look so confused you met everyone?"

"I did?"

"Yeah, you thought you were only going there to drink water with a splash of vodka."

"Okay so let's get this straight, in that span of about thirty minutes or less, I met your Inte? l asked in utter confusion.

"That's literally what I just said, Cy."

"Glenn?"

"Yeah, you did."He said casually.

"Okay since I am the one in the dark once again could someone please explain how that happened."

"Okay let's start with the dude at the corner who stood up when you entered, going to the two who were at the pool table and the ones who were in the middle of the bar. All of them are my intel including the bartender which I think you already caught on to ."

"I thought I would get to actually communicate with them."

"Check your pocket, Cy."

I checked my jacket pocket and found a small envelope placed inside it. I proceeded to open the envelope to find a letter that said,

"I go by Richard what's up, scrawny ."

"How did this even get here," I said looking at the letter and looking back at her.

"They are good at their job. His name is Freds, the second most important person you will ever meet in that room of people."

"Then who's the first? The bartender?"

"Of course, you had Direct contact with him. When you finished with your sixth shot glass did you even care to check to see what was at the bottom of all the glasses aligned together?

"No," I said

"Well, he wrote his contact details for you and those other three guys they liked you already. I could see it from their eyes. Maybe it was your ability to look and act cool in that situation. But from what I remember about Cyrus Mayday you were probably going crazy in your mind."

"Ok but let me get this straight, telling from how we both were in a disguise, you don't know how you exactly look?"

"no, of course not, they don't show you how exactly they look same goes to me we can't show how each other look, we just have to trust each other. it's always good to be safe."

From that so-called meeting with the Intel, I could already tell how Intel was amazing and that they had a full cover. I could tell that I could trust them at least twenty-five percent of my being.

Miranda decided to leave me and Glenn there saying that she still had some boxes to unpack. I noticed that Glenn was the quietest person of the room which was extremely rare for him.

"Your awfully quiet, what's up?"

"Cyrus the only person who lied to you today was Miranda."He said coldly.

"There were actually four people who are in there."

"What do you mean?"

"A fourth person was there, he was the one at the back corner of the room...."

Suddenly Glenn quickly rushed and covered my mouth, spinning me and throwing me onto the ground. What was up with everyone being suddenly violent at random moments? I struggled for a while as Glenn removed the microphone from my shirt and then pulled out two more. Which he put in a sound cancellation box, that is when I realized that Miranda had put microphones around me and was also tracking me.

Did she really not trust me even at that point?