Renegade

Chapter 7

     The Black Dragon had been kind enough to supply Ben with the crappiest hotel to sleep in for the night. He ended up in a mopey-looking motel, outside of the city, that he reached by taxi.

     "Home, sweet home," Ben sighed, tossing his gear onto the bedspread and beginning to undress.

     The motel felt damp, and as Ben brushed his teeth for the night he felt disgusting. A shower didn't seem to help, nor did a new set of clothes. He felt like he had a wretched grime all over him, inhibiting him from feeling clean.

     While Ben lay in bed, trying to doze off to sleep, he thought about Mr. Chase and the mission at hand. Something about it didn't seem right at all, and Ben had the overwhelming feeling that he was being played. He didn't trust the Black Dragon with an ounce of his being; all they were to him were a bunch of liars.

     But he was just going to have to do it. Ben was going to put all other thoughts out of his head and just do the mission. After it was done, when he was hopefully reunited with his family, only then could he think about justice. The thought of being with his wife and daughter again blinded Ben like a bright light. Nothing else mattered, and some part of him actually believed that it could be possible. As Ben drifted into the blissful realm of sleep, he thought of his wife. It would be the most extraordinary feeling in the world if he could just hold her in his arms again. The feeling would be like an old wound finally healing, and he could once again experience the sensation of peace that he'd continuously longed for since her disappearance.

     He would be with her again.

**

     Starlight Laboratories was a sprawling mass of complexes, enforced with the highest security possible, located at the heart of San Diego. Using his identification card that was supplied to him by the Black Dragon, Ben was able to easily bypass the security measures and enter the interior complex at precisely seven o'clock in the evening.

     "Have a good evening, Dr. Johnson," the security guard nodded to Ben as he entered the facility and was handed back the fake identity card.

     The complex appeared to be several geometric cubes stacked on top of each other like blocks. There were groves of trees, but very little windows allowing views of the outside world. It somewhat reminded Ben of a top-secret military base, which it essentially was. Automatic sliding doors opened up to him as he cleared the security checkpoint. Inside, there was a sprawling lobby with dozens of scientists and people bustling around inside.

     "Whoa," Ben whispered, amazed, while he looked up at a giant, turning metal globe of the Earth that was somehow suspended in mid-air.

     He remembered the layout and where he was supposed to go. Ben was to meet up with the man on the inside, whom the packet of instructions simply referred to as "Agent 72".

     He walked past scientists, dressed in white lab coats, eagerly discussing their latest discoveries. That morning, Ben had been delivered a pack of clothes with various pockets on the inside to hold the weapons he was assigned. It had arrived on his motel doorstep, with a note explaining that it was to be his disguise. There was a lab coat, along with a suit and bow-tie that he was supposed to wear (Which was a little awkward because Ben didn't find bow-ties particularly fashionable). Other than that, the other gear did its part and didn't pick up on any metal detectors or x-rays that Ben passed through.

     He made his way to the interior of the complex, passing security checkpoints with ease. No alarms were set off, nobody questioned his suit-case as it was put through x-rays, and nobody found the guns expertly padded inside of the lab coat.