ATLAS // Five Hargreeves

[#26] Va Te Faire Foutre

BEING NICE IN THE COMMISSION got you nowhere.

It had taken many of the Commission agents a few tries to get this right, to get it correct and they learnt it the hard way. Atlas, however, realized this pretty quickly. That, and the fact that it required much less energy to just mind your own business and tell anyone who needed to fuck off, to do so immediately.

The popular statement that it takes more muscles to frown was a not a scientifically proven fact, but instead scientifically proven bullshit. Frowning actually requires the use of eleven muscles, whereas smiling requires twelve, and although the difference isn't all that extraordinary, Atlas wanted to save all the energy she could.

She wanted to save energy for things that were necessary. Like breaking out of solitary confinement.

Prior to the stunt that Atlas and Five had pulled earlier – you know, trying to blow up the Commission and everything – Atlas had been put into a white box that they called Secure Unit #1. Within her first week of solitary confinement, however, Atlas decided that the room was somewhat nauseating and broke out by stabbing one of the Commissioners with a pencil that he always kept in his back packet. He was alright in the end, but Atlas was not.

She was then placed into Secure Unit #2.

Secure Unit #2 was much more spacious, with the white paint much crispier and fresher than the box she had been placed in before. There was a small vent at the top of the ceiling which pumped out air from the canteen, and sometimes she would be able to smell the strong scent of blueberry porridge of hot chocolate that they were preparing for dinner. She was really starting to like it, but a box was a box, and you couldn't keep a lion in one for very long.

And so, she broke out of that one, too. A little less violently, of course, but broke out nethertheless.

When The Handler arrived to take her to Secure Unit #3 – Atlas was unsure why the Commission had so many Secure Units – Atlas was greeted with a simple question.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?"

Atlas responded in The Handler's favourite language. 

"Je m'amuse."

The French could always make everything much nicer.

But in all honesty, Atlas didn't really lie. She was having fun. It wasn't like she could just break out of the Commission and meet up with Five in wherever-he-was. They had blown up the briefcases and there was really nowhere else to go. And so, to amuse herself, she found salvation in the knowledge that The Handler was slowly going insane each time Atlas broke out of a cozy, white box and arrived sitting in her office, her feet up on the desk and her hand reaching into a bowl of taffy.

The last time – third time lucky – Atlas was finally given another mission other than her own entertainment. When she waltzed into the office, she took a few minutes to spin in The Handler's chair and move her pens around a little before she reached into the forever-full taffy bowl. She dug right to the bottom.

The metal came as a surprise. After all, the taffy's weren't known for their metallic flavouring, and were usually nice and gooey in the middle. Trackers, however, were not.

A red blinking light encased in a black coating, just small enough to fit inside one of the taffy sweets, was wrapped innocently in the 1950's casing. She nearly bit into it – a large health hazard, by the way – and it was so small that it could almost slip down her throat undetected.

When she pulled it out, slipping it over her tongue and into the palm of her mouth, she examined it with a curious interest, before popping it open to reveal intricate wiring that was all too familiar.