Ready for the next installment? I hope so because here it is!
Chapter 9- Totally Mental
So the next morning at exactly 8.30am there was a knock on the door and the same bulky guards escorted us to a car. We went into the warehouse and were greeted by Geoff with a cheerful "Sup Dudes!" We were hustled into the crate in the corner of the room and sent down to the lab.
Like yesterday there was seemingly no one in the lab as we bounced to a stop at the bottom of the tube. I wasn't tired despite all the strenuous activity, I guess I had Izzy's pill to thank for that. Duncan didn't wince with pain every time he moved so I assumed that Noah had given him the same pill I received.
"Do you think there's any other way of getting down here, or do you think we'll have to travel down a tunnel every time?" I mused looking up at the dark tube we had just tumbled out of.
"I'm not sure," Duncan looked up as well, "although I don't mind it, it's kinda fun."
I snorted in disbelief and turned my questioning gaze to Duncan who was still staring up at the tube.
"Yeah right," he looked at me, "Duncan, you found the Giant Happy Fun Slide 'tedious' when we were 7, have you suddenly developed a sense of enjoyment from novelty slides?"
"Maybe the agony of adult life has suddenly gotten to me and I need a sense of wonderment back in it in order to emerge from this ever swirling dark abyss." Duncan dramatically fell backwards with a heavy sigh and an arm draped over his face.
"That sounds like my poetry from junior year," I glared at him.
"It was, you should really hide those books better, I found them in one of the boxes I was unpacking," Duncan sniggered and sat back up as I tried to shove him back down.
He grabbed at my arm and tugged me forward until I was horizontal up against his chest. Then he rolled us so I was pinned underneath him with my arm trapped firmly under his grasp.
"Shall I quote some more of your marvellous words?" He teased as I struggled under him.
"You better not," I hissed doubling my efforts to get out from under him.
"Too late, 'The pitch black of night, the strong gust of wind, my bleeding heart; the endless searching for more than this wasteland of hopelessness and-' oof!" Duncan let go of my arm as my knee connected with his stomach.
I used the distraction to slip out from underneath him and crawl away.
"Focus on the task at hand Duncan, otherwise there can be consequences," I laughed as I kept crawling.
"You're gonna pay for that sweetheart," I felt hands on my waist tug me backwards. Still laughing, I swatted at his hands and I heard him chuckle in reply.
He began to tickle me and my laughter grew louder and my hitting less coordinated until tears of mirth formed and rolled down my cheeks.
I tried twisting and managed to face his grinning face, I pushed my hand into his face to try and get him to stop. In response he licked my palm and I let out an undignified squeak of disgust. Just as I was about to bring out the big guns and pull on his Mohawk I heard a cough behind us.
We froze in our tangled position and turned our heads to see Izzy grinning at us and Noah standing beside her with a small smirk on his face.
"Interrupting something, are we?" He said.
We didn't move from our position and just kept looking at the two scientists awkwardly. Slowly, ever so slowly we lowered our hands.
"No," Duncan said after a while, "not at all."
I couldn't help myself, I burst into laughter that in turn caused Duncan to follow suit. Soon enough we calmed ourselves down and could act like normal people again.
Izzy pushed the button on the side of the tube and it opened. We slid out in silence and I expect we looked like two punk/goth messes with flushed cheeks and ruffled hair. We actually probably looked like we were doing something much less innocent than tickling.
Izzy seemed to ignore our appearances, while Noah still had a small pleased smirk on his face as he stood slightly behind her with his arms crossed.
"Now," Izzy's concentration seemed to be solely on the clipboard in front of her, "we have you results from yesterday for the physical aspect of the job, congratulations you don't get desk jobs. However, we still need to do some mental exercises before we can get you properly started with training."
"Duncan will be with me today," Izzy glanced up briefly to make eye contact with Duncan before focussing back on the clipboard, "because Noah is a big fussy baby and refused to do it."
I saw the smirk on Noah's face replaced with a frown and I heard Duncan snicker beside me. I barely restrained from rolling my eyes.
"Ok!" Izzy clapped her hand on the clipboard, "let's go Duncan! Time to see how you tick."
Izzy skipped forward and linked arms with Duncan, tugging him towards a door. Duncan threw a panicked look over his shoulder at me, but all I did was waggle my fingers in a little smug goodbye wave.
I turned to Noah and crossed my arms. I couldn't tell whether this would be a painful or an ok experience.
"Come on," he sighed turning away from me, "let's get this over with."
I followed him in silence to the far end of the lab where there was a small desk with two chairs sitting opposite each other. We each took our respected seats and I folded my hands awkwardly in my lap. I cleared my throat and looked at Noah scribbling on his piece of paper.
"Before, we weren't-" I began.
"Uh-huh, sure," That smirk was back on Noah's face.
"No really-"
"Yep," he didn't even look up from his paper.
"Ugh," I clenched my fists in frustration but decided to leave the matter alone.
"Ok let's get this over and done with," he finally looked up and set the paper down on the table. "I'm going to give you a series of small mental tests, just to see where your strengths lie and how we can coordinate it with your physical strengths in order to make you the best agent possible."
I nodded and he continued.
"So, we've got some simple stuff like photo recognition, memory tests, problem solving puzzles and all the stuff that was boring at school."
He produced a folder from a satchel bag underneath the table. He took several photos from it and we started the first activity.
There were exercises where I had to remember what I had just seen, draw what I had just seen, even mimic sounds and repeat things I had just heard. Then there were logic puzzles, bomb diffusing simulations, math problems and seemingly random little activities that I'm sure meant something to the SCRABBLE organisation but just seemed completely loony to me.
Although yesterday the exercises left me physically exhausted (sort of thanks to Izzy's pills), this day left me very mentally fatigued. If I had to look at another stupid little puzzle I was going to flip.
So what after seemed like a year of my life was over, but in reality was only about 3 hours, we were done. As Noah took down some notes and shuffled paper and pens back into folders I sat back in my chair and sighed. I could really go for a coffee.
I glanced around the room, not really taking anything new in. My leg bounced up and down and I tapped my fingers agitatedly on the table. Knowing Duncan, and what little I know of Izzy, I might be in for a bit of a wait before I got to see either of them again.
Chewing on my bottom lip I focused my attention on Noah, still scribbling down notes and with that frown marring his face. His fringe began to fall over his eyes, but he didn't seem to notice. Which really, really began to bother me.
My finger tapping grew louder and quicker and finally Noah looked up, dislodging the piece of brown hair from his face. My fingers halted immediately and he rolled his eyes.
"There's a pot of coffee over there," he gestured with his head to a small kitchenette around the corner. I looked eagerly, perhaps too eagerly.
"For God's sake go have some coffee, you're getting all," his face wrinkled in disgust, "jittery."
Ignoring his sneer and comment, I got up and went with as much dignity as I could to the kitchenette. Once there, I poured myself a cup of black coffee and stood for a moment and just inhaled its rich scent and breathed out a sigh. I couldn't live without coffee. Sure, stretch me and torture me just fine, but take away my precious caffeine and I'm in trouble.
I'm not sure how long I stood there before I had my first sip, and when that hot liquid touched my tongue I may or may not have let out a small moan of content. I slumped back against the counter and closed my eyes, savouring its strong, intoxicating flavour in my mouth. A quiet grunt broke me out of my daze and I opened my eyes to see Noah looking at me in disapproval.
"What?" I stood up straighter, "I can't enjoy a drink?"
Noah seemed to ponder this point before shrugging and reaching past me to put on the kettle. I watched as he opened the cupboards and brought out a mug that said "#1 Lab Assistant!"
"I prefer tea personally," he told me placing a tea bag in the mug, adding in afterthought, "or vodka."
"Vodka tastes awful," it was my turn to look disapproving.
"I'm not gonna argue that," Noah poured boiling water into his mug, "but working with Izzy has driven me to near alcoholism. I don't drink it so much now that I'm used to it, but there are always occasions where I need to lower my inhibitions in order to go along with some of her schemes. Like that time with the bears."
I opened my mouth to ask what her meant by the bears comment, but he silenced me with a look that clearly said please don't make me bring up that hideously painful memory. So I decided maybe it's best if I didn't know.
For a while we stood in comfortable silence sipping our respective beverages. I didn't think that Duncan and Izzy could possibly take that long with only mental tasks, but then I thought about who they were as people and quickly reassessed the previous thought.
Noah broke the silence with a soft cough.
"Sooooo," his eyes flickered up from his mug as he took a long gulp of his tea, "you and Duncan a thing or something?"
I was lucky I wasn't drinking my coffee; otherwise I would have spat half of it out and choked on the other half. Not that I hadn't heard this question before, for a great deal of my life I had people insinuating that Duncan and I had been banging for years. It's just I hadn't been asked in a few months because everyone I knew tended to know we were just friends.
Just friends.
Totally platonic buddies.
I hadn't thought about making it more, no sir, never.
Ok maybe a little, but those thoughts never were put into action.
I realised I had been silent for a while now and Noah was looking at me expectantly. I shook my head and chugged some coffee down, only flinching slightly as it burned my throat.
"No," I rasped, "not a thing."
"Huh," Noah kept sipping his tea, "could have fooled me."
I frowned and stood up straighter. He was probably just thinking about the tickling scene he had witnessed before.
"And you and Izzy?" I smirked as his face formed an annoyed expression.
"We keep it professional in the lab." He took a rather forceful slurp of his tea.
"And not in the lab?" I couldn't help it, a grin spread over my face as I watched Noah turn pink.
"None of your business." He snapped and I burst out laughing, clutching my side, careful not to spill the coffee.
Before I could tease him more, the door at the far end of the lab burst open and out sprang Izzy, followed by Duncan. Izzy pranced towards us, twirling every now and then, Duncan somewhat less enthusiastically trudged behind.
"Coffee?" I asked when he reached the small kitchenette.
"Yes please," he slumped next to me while Izzy pulled Noah over to him and whispered furiously, waving her clipboard every so often.
"How did it go?" I poured him black coffee and dumped a heaped teaspoon of sugar in.
"My brain hurts," he moaned. I laughed and pressed the cup into his hand.
When we were done with our coffee we were informed that we could have the rest of the day off and that tomorrow we'd find out what our results meant for us. Upon hearing this news, Duncan threw his hands in the air and yelled "yes thank god I'm gonna have a nap!" Then grabbed my arm and pulled me towards the glass cylinder.
"C'mon sweetheart, the bed calls for us," Duncan tugged me up into the tube.
"Totally a thing," I heard Noah mutter, and I glared at him as we got sucked right back up.
Totally not a thing.
So I tried to add some more Gwuncan in there, because after all thats the whole story! I hope you enjoyed, please review and favourite and follow and all that jazz I really appreciate the feedback and love 3