Super Secret | Half Hero Book 2 [ON HOLD]

Chapter 5: Frenemies

Varun did his best to walk me through the equipment, but if I asked questions, I got overly complicated explanations using incongruous vowels and downright silly conjunctions that sounded partially made up. After about three minutes, my eyes would glaze over and I'd nod like a drinking bird on a desk while someone took another vial of blood. 

They tapped my veins for plasma six times in one day, taking large tubes to experiment on. Any more and the doctors would have to start looking between my toes for a bleeder. About sixty percent of the time I was inside a mind-numbingly boring tube in the middle of the room, having my body scanned. It required hours of lying on a white plastic table padded with squeaky material that made awkward quiff noises whenever dared moved. I finally had to interrupt their progress to ask for a book, just to dull the crushing monotony.

The doctors offered smiles and encouraging nods while Galen supervised with a puckered expression from a squat metal desk. He looked about as excited as I felt, but at least he was willing to make silly faces at me whenever our eyes met.

"Psst, Agent Smith!" I hissed, spinning on my plastic seat.

He stood in one fluid motion to cross the room, a look of harsh concern mired his handsome features. A few of the scientists turned to watch his manly gate, but opted not to interfere, or care.

"What's up?" Galen asked, keeping his voice low.

I'd been removed from the iron-lung-looking contraption and asked to wait while a bunch of Varun's scientists recalibrated the device. From five feet away, the huge metal cylinder appeared way more sinister than I wanted to admit out loud.  

"Who's the Banksy?" I asked, gesturing toward the floor-to-ceiling panels of glass marked up with squiggles and symbols like drunken hieroglyphics.

"It's part of his brother's original research," Galen answered, his eyes flickering to the opposite wall. "A lot of the data got destroyed in that underground lab you demolished in Nevada, so they're working with what's left."

"You guys don't back up to the cloud or something?" I scoffed, frowning at the complicated chicken scratch.

"You think the government keeps information like that on a hackable server?" Galen snorted as if that should've been obvious. "C'mon now."

"Well excuse me, James Bond," I sneered jokingly. "So, where is Francis?"

Galen chuckled at my sudden change of subject and subtly pointed a finger at his waist toward one of the white coats. The shorn back of Francis's dishwater blonde hair looked tidy and his pasty skin matched the color of his lab coat, but he had the profile of a classic movie actor.

"Go James," I remarked, nodding my approval. "They'll make a pretty cute couple, right?

He wasn't necessarily someone I'd go for. Francis seemed like one of those squeaky-clean types that wanted to project normalcy at all costs. Secretly, he probably had a bird named 'mother' or he still lived in his parent's basement or both. Then again, I had a history of dating lying jizz-trumpets who were never going to live up to their full potential, so who was I to judge?

"Francis asked me when James would be working again," Galen divulged under his breath.

"Ooh, sounds like somebody wants to take their work home with them," my voice rose playfully with my childish comment.

Francis must have felt our eyes on him because he turned around with a curious expression on his thin, raspberry lips.

"A couple of those threes look like butts," I said flippantly, gesturing toward the glass board of squiggles to pretend that I was talking about something else. "Should I draw little fart clouds behind them?"