"Sit. Now." The Handler angrily points to the same chair I sat on when she gave me the mission from the start.
Without saying a word, I quickly sit down and she walks over and sits in her desk chair.
"You do realise I'm very disappointed in you, Red." The Handler picks up a thick cigarette and begins lighting it.
"Mother, I know I messed up— and I— I'm so sorry. I promise, I will make it up to you." I let out a shaky sigh.
"However, that case is now dropped considering Five has agreed to work back here. But, I do have a new mission for you." She opens her drawer and gets out a small piece of paper and hands it to me.
"Protect Harold Jenkins?" I read out loud. "Who the hell is he?"
"You see, Five has been trying to stop this 'apocalypse' ever since he has time traveled back. Harold Jenkins is the cause. I need you to protect him so nothing happens to him, the apocalypse must go on.. like I said earlier; whats meant to be, is meant to be." She explains.
"Right, so.. let me get this straight. I protect Harold Jenkins so Five or nobody else kills him and stops the apocalypse?" I explain, sitting up in my seat.
"Exactly. Now, you must need a lot of rest after the past couple of days." The Handler nods towards her door, and I walk out.
The truth was, I didn't need rest. I needed to tell Five, EVERYTHING. I speed walk to his work room and see him silently typing something up.
"Five!" I yell in a whisper and he quickly looks up at me. "Come here, quick!"
"What do you want?" Five moans.
"Harold Jenkins." I sigh.
"I'm sorry, who?" He frowns.
"Harold Jenkins. He's the cause for the apocalypse. My Mother just gave me a mission to PROTECT him from any sort of harm." I quickly explain, holding my breath.
"Right.. so Harold Jenkins is the cause for the apocalypse?" Five asks.
"Yes!" I exclaim.
Five turns around to go back into his work room but I quickly grab his wrist.
"What now?" He moans once again and turns back to me.
"Five, I— I'm really sorry. For everything really, about lying and attempting to kill you. But— I— the truth is, I never was gonna kill you. From the first time I met you, I never wanted to since you are the nicest person I have ever met. Besides if I didn't.. compete the mission she would.." I pause and look down.
"She would— she would what, Y/N?" Five asks, seeming more serious than he did before.
".. She would kill me." I finish with a sigh.
"Shit, I— Y/N, I'm really sorry." Five runs his hand through his hair.
Before we could speak anymore, the bell alarmed off, telling us that it was lunch break.
"One second." Five walks back in the room and takes out a red folder from Dot's desk.
"Five? What are you doing with that? If my Mother sees you, she'll kill you!" I whisper.
"Which is why I'm doing it sneakily." Five stuffs the folder up his jumper. "Come on."
"Ok.. what now?" I ask, Five takes the folder open and was about to open it but we both hear the familiar clicking sound.
"Shit." Five sighs.
"We need to hide." I anxiously grab his hand.
"What? Whe—" I ignore him and pull him into a random toilet stall.
I lock the door and turn around, only realising how close we both are to each other.
"So how's your first day going?" The Handler walks in and asks.
"Couldn't be better." Five sarcastically replies.
"Glad to hear it." She walks into the bathroom stall next to us. "So sorry about Y/N, by the way."
"Uh- no., it's fine." Five looks up at me and smirks.
Me and Five stood there in an awkward until The Handler started hissing and wincing in pain whilst peeing.
"That's disgusting." I mouth and cover my nose.
"I burnt my rugae. Have you ever burnt you rugae? The ridges on the hard palate that help pass food to the oesophagus. Anyway, I'm on a liquid diet for two days, hence the marathon of urination. One faulty cog, and nothing works as it should." She rambles on. "You know we value, integrity at the office about all else. Trust is essential, and that trust is.. built over time. But then in the event of a breach, the commission will act swiftly and without mercy. An efficiency I'm sure you above all people can appreciate, Number Five."
The Handler flushes the toilet and we hear her unlocking the door and walking out the stall and I shift in my position a bit.
"I'm feeling peckish.. have you had your lunch?" She asks whilst washing her hands.
"Not yet." Five rolls his eyes.
"Great. How would you and Y/N like to have lunch with me, in my office?" She offers. "You can have solid foods, and I can love my vicariously.. through you." She peeks over the gap of the toilet stall then looks down and smirks at me.
"Sounds great." Five forces a smile.
-
".. and that's how Phil determined that the archduke just had to go." The Handler slurps her drink out of a straw. "Care for dessert?"
"I had a bad twinkie in the apocalypse once. It kind of put me off desserts." Five declines.
"I'm okay, thanks." I also decline but The Handler looks at me and frowns.
"Red, I expect you haven't drank or ate anything since the last time you were here." The Handler leans back in her chair.
"Yeah— I'm just.. not really hungry, that's all." I anxiously bite my nails.
"Do we have to go through this again, Red?" You need liquids and solids in your body to live." She reasons as she lights her fifth cigarette of the day.
"A day is not going to hurt." I sigh.
"If you say so.." The Handler breathes in the drug. "Please, indulge me." She points to the candies that were sat in a bowl, on her desk.
I slowly slide down my chair as Five takes one and eats it.
"What does that taste like to you?" The Handler asks.
"The 1950s...?" Five slowly answers.
"Precisely right." She sits up. "Our clever metaphysics division concocted a way to perfectly distill an entire decade into a single candy. This ones modelled after 'The Fudge Mutt', America's favourite in 1955."
Five shakes his head and raises his eyebrows.
"Remarkable." He comments.
"You'll be happy to know it's the very division that's building your new body. Oh, that remind me. I have something for you. Carla?" She speaks into a intercom.
"Yes?"
"Would you bring the box in, please?" The Handler smirks over at Five.
"Certainly."
In a matter of seconds, a woman in a blue suit walks in with a box in her hands then places it down on the desk. All three of us get up to see what's inside when Five removes the lid revealing some clothes.
"Clothes do make the man, Five. Won't it be nice when you can actually wear it? Very soon, I assure you." The Handler leans on the edge of her desk, next to Five. "They're perfecting your body as we speak."
"Thank you. It's a very kind gift." Five smiles and puts the lid back on.
"Is that a Chinese flamethrower?" I turn around and point to it.
"Good eye." The Handler claps her hands together.
Me and Five walk up to it, to get a closer look.
"War. Such a fascinating concept. A temporary salve for a permanent human flaw. Course, it's a bit easier to see from 30,000 feet." She chuckles. "These are just some of the things I've collected in my travels. M26 grenades from the Vietman War. And this, the most noteworthy, perhaps. 'My Walter Pistol'." She picks the gun up and aims it at the wall, pretending to shoot it. "The very one Hitler used to kill himself. We're not supposed to take these kind of things, but.. he wasn't gonna use it anymore. Feel.. how perfectly balanced that is. Hm?" She hands the gun to Five.
"I had some thoughts I wanted to run by you. Some.. suggestions to maybe improve the commission protocol." Five says as he checks out the gun.
"Mm! Shaking things up already. I admire that." She runs the back of her hand down his face then boops his nose. "Go on."
"Gloria. The tuber operator. Wouldn't it be simpler if case managers were able to send there own messages?" Five suggests.
"I appreciate the thought, I really do." The Handler says as she walks back over to her desk and sits in her chair. "But everyone loves Gloria. I- I would never hear the end of it. She's been with the commission family for years, and she's this close to making pension."
Just as she says that, a woman knocks on the door and peeks her head through the crack.
"Sorry to interrupt. May I have a moment alone?" A woman asks.
"Of course." The Handler burns her cigarette out. "Duty calls. We'll continue this discussion later."
"Sure. May I?" Five points to the candies on the table.
"Please." She smiles as Five takes and handful and stuffs them in his trouser pocket.
"I have a bad feeling about Gloria.." I mumble to Five.
"Why?" Five asks with a frown.
"I don't know.. I'm going to go to the tube operator room." I let go of his hand but he quickly grabs it again and teleports us there.
"Fucking hell, could've told me you were gonna do that." I groan, annoyed.
"Round here." Five whispers and drags me to hide behind a wall.
"Gloria, The Handler knows that Five and Red are up to something. Get this message sent to Hazel and Chat-Cha immediately." A woman demands and hands Gloria a message in a tube.
"Get her, Five." I grit through my teeth, handing him a stapler I took off a desk.
Five teleports behind Gloria before she could do anything and hits her in the back of the head with the stapler I gave him, knocking her unconscious. He bends down and picks up the tube that rolled out of her hand and opened it quickly.
Assignment: Protect Harold Jenkins.
"Aw, shit. That's the exact mission I got sent on." I tell him after reading it in my head, along with him.
Five throws it in the bin and begins writing a new one, quickly putting it in the same tube and sending it off now to Hazel and Cha-Cha.
"You know, that's not how we do things here." We hear a disappointment voice tell us, "Where's Gloria?"
We both turn around to see the Handler stood there, hands behind her back and a frown on her face.
"Don't know. Couldn't find her anywhere." I shrug and stand next to Five.
Just as they said that, Gloria groans from behind me and The Handler seemed to notice that.
"Your a great disappointment to me, both of you. You can't change what's to come, I truly find it so odd that you can't shed this fantasy. Your a first-rate pragmatism. You belong here with us." The Handler reasons.
"We don't belong anywhere, thanks to you." I spit at her.
"You made us a killer!" Five adds on, tone sounding so serious as mine.
"You were always killers. I just pointed you both in a direction." She bends down on picks up a gun that was hiding in her shoe and points it at us. Before any bullets could hit us, Five grabbed my hand and teleports us behind a wall.
I push a cart that was next to me as The Handler comes but she stops it with her foot and shot where we were, but I had moved in my position and Five had teleported off.
"What's the rush? Red, Five?" She sarcastically asks. "We're just getting started."
I then felt a hand grab mine and a blue flash surround me, I reappear behind The Handler and see Five next to me holding and a grenade picking out of his pocket.
"When I'm done, I'm done. I guess." Five says as he reaches into his pocket.
"You cannot keep this up, Five. We both know you have a limit. I saved you from a lifetime of being alone. You owe me." The Handler grits through her teeth and pulls down the trigger, but the gun clicks and no bullets come out.
"I do owe a debt." Five reaches into his pocket and pulls out the grenade. "But it's not to you." He rolls the grenade down on the floor and it stops by The Handlers foot.
"Let's go." Five quickly says and grabs my hand and we run out the room and behind a wall, covering ourselves from the explosion. He then teleports us to the briefcase room, grabbing one then placing another grenade on the shelf where the other briefcases sat.
He runs with me, not letting go of my hand and opens the briefcase just as the explosion happens and we both get sucked in.
Ha! Take that, Handler!!
Word count: 2233:)