Revenge

By Sammie Spitz

Chapter 2

The digital alarm clock on the night stand buzzed, alerting to the owner that it was time to get up. Velvet slugishly rolled over and hit the off button. She sat up, pulled off the covers and looked around her dorm room. The Carrington Institute had several dorm builings near the property, where some of the agents stayed. The dorm rooms were small and simple. Each had a bed, closet, drawers, and desk. There were a couple of bathrooms on each floor of the building.

Velvet quickly got dressed. Then, something dawned on her. Usually, Joanna had to come in and wake her up. She always had trouble getting up in the morning. Today, however, she got up herself.

'Joanna didn't oversleep today, did she?' Velvet wondered, 'No, that's impossible. She never oversleeps.' Just for the heck of it, she decided to check and see. She went to Joanna's dorm, which was right next to her's. She knocked on the door, but got no answer.

"Joanna, are you awake?" She called. She finally just went in. Much to her surprise, Joanna was still in bed. Velvet went over and shook her, "Joanna, wake up."

"Huh?" She groaned, sleepily. She sat up and said, "So, you got up on your own?"

"You overslept a little."

"Really?" She looked over at her clock, which read six o' clock. "Not that much, though, at least."

Velvet then noticed something else. Joanna didn't look too good. She seemed a little sick and a little more tired than she usually was.

"Are you alright?" Velvet asked.

"Sure, I'm fine. Why would you ask such a thing?" Joanna was also notorious for almost never being sick. However, Velvet figured it wouldn't hurt to check. She put her hand against Joanna's forehead.

"You have a fever. Are you sure everything's alright?"

"I'm fine. It's probably just a cold. It won't affect me at all."



Elvis walked towards the Carrington Institute, trying his best to cover himself in a trenchcoat. Luckily, when he was walking through the city, people seemed too busy with whatever they were doing to notice someone who was less than five feet tall, dragging his trench coat behind him. He got near the Carrington Institute building and then looked around for the dorm buildings.

"They're around here somewhere." He said to himself. He then noticed the small cluster of buildings. He ran over and looked at the doors, "Here it is. Dorm Two."

He opened the door and stepped in. He then muttered to himself, "Now, how am I supposed to find it? I guess I'll have to ask someone."

He noticed a woman walking by, looking at a magazine. He cleared his throat and asked polietly, "Excuse me, do you know where Joanna Dark is, by any chance?"

The woman started to look down as she asked, "I'm not sure. Why do you...AAAAHHHHHHH!!!" She then rushed out the door, screaming.

Elvis put his hands over his face and shook his head, saying, "I HATE it when this happens. It makes everything more difficult than it has to be."



Johnathon happened to be walking by the dorms when he noticed the woman rushing by screaming. He asked, "Sid, what's wrong?"

"ALIENS!!!" She shreiked. Johnathon stopped her and asked her where she saw it. Trying to calm down, she replied, "It's in Dorm Two. It was awful! It had a huge head and big, black eyes and -"

"Calm down, Sid. If it's who I think it is, he's harmless. I'll show you." Sid was very skiddish about actually meeting the creature, but gave up when Johnathon insited she come. When they went back, Elvis was still there. Deciding it was too hot to be wearing the trench coat, he took it off. He was wearing his US flag vest and tennis shoes.

"Hello." Elvis greeted, handing Sid the magazine she dropped on her way out, "The next time you decide to scream like that, could you use a lower pitch. My hearing's a little more sensitive and something like that can be a headache."

"Uhhh...ehehehe." She just took the magazine and left.

"What's wrong with her?" Elvis asked.

"She doesn't get out too much." Johnathon answered. Then, he laughed a little and said, "Every time you come for a visit, you always manage to cause a scene."

"All I did was ask her if she knew where Joanna was. She took one look at me, let out that horrible shreik, and went rushing out the door. Well, do you have any idea where she is?"



"Joanna, are you sure your alright?" Velvet asked, as they practiced on the firing range.

"Relax, Velvet. I'm fine." Joanna told her. Suddenly, she put her hand against her face and started breathing a little harder as a headache came on.

"What's wrong?"

She finally started to get the upper hand on the pain and replied, "It's just a headache. Nothing to worry about." She put the gun back and said, "I'm going to quit on the firing range for a while. Are you coming?"

"In a bit." Velvet replied, practicing with the Devestator, "I'm starting to like this."

Joanna smiled. Velvet was a mechanical genius and loved trying out new machines and weapons. She added, "I'll be up in Hacker's Central if you need me."

On her way out, Joanna passed by Foster. He was at a table, tinkering with a gun. She decided not to bother him. He was usually nice, but hated being bothered while he was fooling with something. Before she could leave, she suddenly started getting a stomach cramp. She bent over and started groaning. Foster put the gun down and turned to her.

"You alright?" He asked.

"Yes, I'm fine." She responded, recovering.

He noticed she was grabbing her stomach and commented, "I know how you feel. In order to eat in this country, you need a cast-iron stomach."

Joanna tried to smile, then rushed out the door. Foster shrugged a bit before continuing his work. He sighed, "How can people live like this here. Lunch is a matter of life or death."



Joanna leaned against a wall outside the door. Beleiving she'd recovered from whatever happened, she got back to her feet and started for an elevator. She went to one, pressed the button and waited for it to come back down to ground level.

"What in bloody hell is going on?" She muttered to herself. The elevator came down. She stepped in and continued, "I've barely even had a cold before. Much less anything like this."

When the elevator stopped at the second floor, she concluded, "Maybe Foster's right. It must have been something I ate."



"Hmmmm. No, I guess that wasn't a C after all." A hacker said.

"Guess not. Damn it, it's like some of these symbols stand for two or three different letters!"

"Things aren't going so well, I take it?" Joanna asked.

"You said it."Grimshaw muttered, "It's driving me crazy!"

Then, Velvet came in, with Elvis close behind. She greeted, "Hi. How's it going?"

Knowing she was refering to the decoding, Grimshaw gave her a sour look. Joanna told her, "Wrong subject."

"I must have been typing at this for over an hour." Grimshaw told her, "I've barely even seen some of these symbols. At this point, I could really use one solid clue right about now."

Suddenly, the screen of the VidCom blinked to life. Static started to cover the screen. The hacker sitting next to it took immediate notice.

"What the hell?! I think you might want to take a look at this!" He called. Everyone crowded around the VidCom. The screen cleared to reveal a desk with a chair behind it, it's back turned to the camera. The chair turned around to reveal the same woman Joanna and Velvet saw when they took the files from dataDyne.

"Hello, Carrington Institute." She began, "I am Helen de Vries, new CEO for dataDyne. I'm taking up the role in my late sister, Cassandra's, place. I want to let you know that, as long as I'm around, you shouldn't try pulling anymore stunts around here. Security has been tightened. Plus, I am a genius of revenge. And, you wouldn't want anything unfortunate to happen to any of you, right?"

Joanna, outraged by Helen's boldness, shouted, "Was that a threat, you lousy bitch?!"

"Temper, temper, Miss Dark." Helen commented.

"How in bloody hell do you know my name?!"

"I know you indirectly, through my late sister. And, frankly, I don't see why she had so much trouble with you."

"And just WHAT do you mean by that?!"

'Uh-oh.' Velvet though, worried, 'She's losing her temper again.'

"Well, we used to talk on the phone a lot. She had quite a few choice words about you and said you were the trickest agent she had to deal with in years. But you don't really look all that great if you ask me."

"And I suppose you consider yourself any better? Because Cassandra sure couldn't fight worth a damn!"

"I'd watch my mouth if I were you. You wouldn't want little Velvet getting hurt, right?"

Joanna was being pushed to her limit. Doing her best to stay calm, she responded, "Listen, you. Threatening the Institute is bad enough. But, when you threaten my family, that is the last straw. I have a good mind to go over there and shoot the crap out of you!"

"Then...why don't you?"

Joanna was surprised by the comment and asked, "Is that a challenge?"

"Yes. I want to see you at the abandoned Fort Morgan military base tonight. If you don't come, I'll hunt you down."

Just before Helen signed off, Joanna added, "You're going to be sorry you ever made any bloody threats like that."



"Joanna, are you sure you really want to do this?" Velvet asked, as she watched Joanna practice in the Combat Simulator. Joanna wasn't quite as sharp as she usually was.

"Velvet, I'm fine." She said, "I don't really understand why you're so nervous about.." Suddenly, she started acting unsteady. She leaned against a wall in an attempt to try and recover. In a panic, Velvet turned off the simulator and rushed to her side to see if she was alright. By know, Joanna was starting to feel her energy drain away. Velvet rushed to her and knelt down beside her. Gradually, Joanna began to recover.

She staggered to her feet and breathed, "I suppose I was working myself a bit harder than I thought. I don't want to tire out before the big match."

"Joanna, you don't realize how sick you probabley are! You really shouldn't do this."

"Our honor is at stake. Besides, you heard what she said. She'll come after me anyway if I don't show up."

Velvet couldn't argue with that kind of reasoning. She just sighed, then wrapped her arms around Joanna in a tight hug. She said, almost in tears, "I just want you to be careful."

Joanna smiled, hugged her back and said, "I promise. Now, I'd better get ready."



"I can't beleive she's really going to go over there tonight." Velvet muttered as she and Elvis sat on a couch in the lobby.

"How hard can it be for an expert like Joanna to fight someone like Helen. She's fought people like this before."

"Not while she's sick."

"How sick can she be?"

"She's running a fever. She's exauhsted. She'd getting terrible headaches. At one point, she nearly fainted! And, that's only what I know about!"

"Oh...THAT sick."

"To top it all off, I heard a rumor that Helen trained her sister's body guards! Joanna means too much to me! Almost all of the rest of our family is back in England! I don't know if I can take losing her!"

Velvet then started remembering back during the Skedar incident. After the Institute was attacked, Joanna seemed to disappear. She was gone for a few days and she'd almost lost hope in ever seeing her again. So, needless to say, she thought it was a miracle when the Maians got her back to Earth, with nothing but the injury to the foot she got from the Skedar that grabbed her in the ruins. But, after that, she hated to see Joanna push her luck. She always dreaded the day when her stubborn attitude would finally get her in trouble and she'd end up coming back from a mission in a body bag.

To try and change the subject, Elvis said, "I heard you and Joanna got some files from them last night."

"Yes."

"Did you get any useful information from them?"

"Actually, no. Not yet, anyway. They were coded pretty heavily. I wonder if Grimshaw's figured it out yet."



"I just can't crack this damn code!" Grimshaw growled in frustration, "I've tried everything I can think of!"

"Let me have a peek at it." Velvet asked. She looked over his shoulder at the screen. The document was a mess of symbols, both familiar and strange. Velvet looked at it till her eyes began to ache, but didn't have much luck.

"I can't make heads or tails of it, myself." She said. Then, the symbols caught her eye again. Some of the symbols, though clearly not part of the English language, were familiar to her somehow. Then, she suddenly remembered seeing similar lettering on the Maian guns in the firing range. Maybe Elvis could figure this out.

"Elvis, why don't you have a look at it?" She asked. Elvis was, needless to say, surprised. He knew very little Earth codes.

"Alright, I'll give it a shot." He told her with a shrug. He went over to the computer and looked the symbols over. The more he read the file over, the more familiar the symbols began to look. Until it finally hit him.

"This is Ancient Maian." He explained. He sat down at the computer and started typing the code so the computer could translate. Most of the symbols were translated into Earth letters. But, not all of them. There was still the remaining symbols to worry about, which seemed to be random punctuation symbols, such as number signs, exclamation points and asterickses.

"At least, some of it is." Elvis corrected. Velvet and Grimshaw leaned in to have a look. Something soon caught Grimshaw's eye.

"Looks like they replaced all the vowels with symbols." He said. He sat back down and looked at it some more, "But, even then, it's still pretty messed up...unless."

"Unless what?" Velvet asked.

"THAT must be why we were getting thrown off! It was still in code!" He started typing on the keyboard madly, excited that he finally had a breakthrough in the code. It took another ten minutes of trial and error, but eventually, it was finally translated into a readable document.

"Boy, they left nothing to chance with coding this." Grimshaw said, "I've hardly ever seen anyone go through all this trouble. Three codes, one of which they invented themselves!"

"I guess after Joanna showed up, they tightened things." Velvet reasoned, "Plus, this is supposedly one of their biggest projects. You'd imagine they'd be desperate to hide it."

"Well," Grimshaw added. He was now coming to his favorite part of the job, snooping, "let's see what they were so desperate to hide."

To Be Continued...