Spy School - The Truth (DISCONTINUED)

Chapter 7

Somewhere in SPYDER headquarters

September 7

1245 hours

I ran, in a desperate attempt to keep distance with Mr. E, who would soon destroy the tunnel entrance and would commit various actions, some that would be even dangerous to capture me or possibly, kill me. This was rather normal as I had been locked in a room with a ticking bomb once and another time, a gun pressed to my head.

As I rushed by, I noticed Joshua stirring, waking up from his slumber. I bit my lip, considering the situation of whether I should knock Joshua unconscious which in exchange would cost me precious time to get away from Mr. E, or I should just continue running, allowing Joshua to wake up and realize that I was missing and join the chase with Mr. E.

I decided it was best to keep the chase down to one person so I ran over to Joshua and gave him a good whack on the head and he slumped over his chair, unconscious. I looked back at the tunnel entrance and cracks were already starting to form, threatening to break the fragile entrance that kept me safe from Mr. E.

I spotted a sedation dart lying on the table, almost as if waiting for me to take and grabbed it, thinking that it might come in handy sometime later. I pushed open the door that read: EMPLOYEES ONLY and ran down the spiral staircase, occasionally even jumping over steps.

When I reached the end of the staircase, I saw Murray rubbing his head, waking up from the effects of the sedation dart I had shot at him earlier. He was standing up and as I was in a rush, I hastily knocked him aside and continued running, trying to get farther away from Mr. E.

As I turned a corner, I found two SPYDER agents standing guard, presumably for the exit. Desperate for an escape, I pushed them aside and they, too surprised to react, fell to the ground, dropping their guns. I pushed open the doors and rushed outside, only to find myself in a barren desert, with no one in sight. Dead branches rolled around in the hot sand and the sand blew in my face, partially blinding me. I looked around and it seemed like an endless desert, the hot sun gleaming in the middle of the sky. Why is it all desert now?, I thought, last time I attempted to jump out of the window it was still a lush green forest. And we also couldn't have traveled so far either.

At that moment, I was extremely confused at the fact of the sudden landscape change that I didn't even realize that the two SPYDER agents had recovered from their state and grabbed me by my arms and hauled me inside and threw me into a bag, darkness soon enveloping me but not before I saw the hot desert change into a taiga with countless pine trees dotted across the seemingly never ending terrain.

~

As I regained consciousness, I heard faint talking although it seemed distant in my ears. I forced myself to open my eyes and when my vision cleared, I saw that I was sitting in a chair, this time not bound up in rope and Mr. E was sitting behind a desk, tapping his fingers on the wooden desk.

Hello Ben," Mr. E remarked, "another failed attempt to escape." He seemed rather calm for someone who had just been furious at the tunnel. Being so relaxed and nonchalant must have meant that he had something prepared for me, which presumably wasn't good. I swallowed a lump in my throat and my eyes darted around, looking for any potential dangers.

"I assume you've already figured out our plans, or at least part of it," Mr. E continued, "if you haven't, then, you must be wondering why I'm being so calm after you snuck in and revealed confidential information. But thwarting our plans is not going to be easy and this time, our plans actually have moral unlike the previous schemes. And based on your actions, I can already say that you are almost certainly not on the right track and following that will lead to your own demise."

I shuddered at imagining what my own demise would be but focused on the part where Mr. E claimed that I was thinking this all wrong. Another thought popped into my head. Why would Mr. E even tell me this? Didn't the old SYDER tie us up before and press blades to our necks?

Nevertheless, I took his advice and strangely, I had a feeling that Mr. E was actually trying to help me, not mislead me in any sort. But what could I be thinking wrong? I looked back at Mr. E and he was waiting patiently and when I looked as if I was done gathering my thoughts, he gestured toward the door and I slowly got up, wondering if there were any traps and seeing there were none, I strode toward the door.

There was a flight of stairs to the right and an elevator to the left but seeing that I was still suspicious of SPYDER's real intentions, I took the stairs. There were a total of 352 steps until I got to my room where it was marked in large letters: Ben Ripley.

I pushed open the door and everything was in place, as if I had never left. I walked in and plopped down on an empty chair, pondering about what Mr. E had just told me. I should've been able to solve this already, I thought, what am I missing? I gathered all my clues that I had: first, Murrray had accidentally spilled that SPYDER was building a time machine to travel back in time to prevent the CIA from ever existing.

That sounded normal as SPYDER always had a grudge against the CIA as I always thwarted their plans and they in turn, got arrested. Then, on the computer where Mr. E was typing, I had noticed that the numbers 75 and 1943 were on the screen. Figuring that 1943 plus 74 equaled 2018, this year, I assumed that this was the number of years SPYDER was planning to travel back in time. But again, what was the significance of 1943? I scanned through all my background knowledge I had but still, I couldn't even find one idea that had some connection with the CIA.

And then there was the landscape change, a forest a moment then a desert. As far as I knew, we weren't on some large plane of some sort and the only way we could have traveled that far was teleportation was extremely science fiction by all means. Time travel also would have worked but it would be nearly impossible to have traveled the whole headquarters as that would take an immense amount of energy and there seemed to be no large energy source near.

The more I thought about it, the more confused I got and after a few minutes of debating, considering all the pros and cons, I decided that it was time to gather more information and evidence before I could alert the CIA in some way about SPYDER's intentions. But where? I thought about sneaking into the tunnel again but Mr. E had already seen me. But didn't he just sort of help me?

I shook off the thought and repeated the thought in my head: I will sneak into the tunnel and investigate the room that Mr. E was in and if I find any useful information, I will memorize it as I am good with long strings of numbers or write it down and then, hurry back to my room and try to cover up as much evidence that I was not in my room during the night.