The Murky Water Syndrome
Part 8: Val's Brush With Death
Agent Val waded over to the door and reached for the handle. Nothing irritated her more than sitting around and doing nothing while other people were out in the middle of all the action. She'd have no reason to complain today…
The tiger shark lunged up at her from the water causing her to scream and fall backwards. "VAL!" Jay shouted, without thinking he had leapt into the water and swam for the agent who'd been caught off guard and was now at the mercy of the nine ton killing machine.
"Has he lost his mind?" Elle asked.
"Probably," X muttered, "if he had one to lose."
Jay stroked over to Val who was lying on the floor beneath the shark. She tried to avoid it's teeth but it was obvious that she wouldn't be able to do that for long.
Jay pulled the dart out from the belt of his wetsuit and jabbed it into the shark's open mouth. "Just hold on!" he told her as she slipped on her mask.
"Are you crazy?!" she hissed, "That thing'll kill you!"
"At least you won't be able to call me a coward anymore huh?" he teased as he pushed a shelf between the thrashing shark and Val.
"No, from now on I'll just stick to idiot!"
Elle, X, and Yazmine watched as a small amount of the water above the shark turned red. "They've stabbed it with the dart!" Yazmine announced happily.
Jay and Val surfaced, "YEAH! NOW THAT'S WHAT I'M TALKIN' ABOUT!" Jay crowed as the shark stopped thrashing and turned over on its belly.
"DON'T MESS WITH THE BEST OF THE BEST!"
Val shook her head but couldn't restrain herself from laughing, "My hero," she smiled, removing her mask and planting a peck on Jay's cheek.
"Don't encourage him." Elle sighed, "He'll never stop gloating now."
"This is really quite an interesting breed of shark." Yazmine muttered, wading over to the dead tiger shark and pulling out a scanner.
Val reached over and shoved her against the fish, "AAHHH!!!
"Don't you dare turn all Zeeltor on us!" she warned.
"Someone mention my name?" a cheery voice came from the doorway.
"AAHHH!" Jay joked.
"Very amusing Agent Jay, sounds like you'd be perfect for testing out my latest experiment. It involves vocal enhancers and-"
"KIDDING ZEELTOR! CAN'T YOU TAKE A JOKE?!" Jay hastily exclaimed.
"I was wondering what happened to you." Yazmine laughed.
"We were a little preoccupied with a blue shark in the lab, ah, I see Agents Elle and X made it as well!" Zeeltor grinned as Kay and Yanei entered the room.
"Looks like we've got one less shark to worry about," Kay muttered then spotted the tiger sharks light underside sticking up out of the water. "Make that two."
"Three sharks down," Jay mumbled to himself as everyone filed out into the hallway. "That means we've got what? A Great White and a hammerhead to deal with?"
"Seems that way Slick." Kay replied from across the hall.
Suddenly there was a banging noise at the end of the hall. "What now?" Yanei moaned.
Bang!
The large grate at the end of the hall was being pounding on from behind from some unseen force.
"It's coming from the air vent."
Bang!!
"Could a shark fit in there?" Jay asked worriedly.
"I highly doubt it," Yazmine muttered, "But then again, something has to be making that noise…"
BANG!!!
The grate flew off and Agents R and Delia stumbled out into the flooded hall.
SPLASH!
Rapidly they resurfaced and closed the vent, gasping for breath as they ripped off their masks.
"I'm afraid to ask," Val sighed.
"SHARK!" they both yelled.
"Which one?"
"The Hammerhead." R replied.
"Well relax," Zeeltor chuckled, "it's not going to fit through there and we've only got two sharks to deal with now anyways."
"One shark can be enough to wipe out everyone here with how smart it is," Yazmine reminded him.
"Gee thanks for the cheerful thought Doc." Jay jeered.
"You mean that there are three dead sharks now?" Delia asked hopefully.
"Yep." Kay confirmed. A beeping noise came from the belt on his wetsuit and he pulled out his communicator, "Kay here."
"Kay?" Zed's voice came from the device. "How are you and the team of volunteers handling things down there?"
"We've moved up to the main level now and have two more sharks to go."
"Good work." Zed congratulated him, "our boys say that they can dry us out provided that they can get down there and install the new drainage system. That means I need those two sharks turned into sushi ASAP!"
"Understood." Kay nodded, "We just have to locate them first Zed."
"May I make a suggestion then?"
"We're all ears."
Zed turned his communicator to the flooded main floor below where the aliens that had been trapped from the shuttle landing where all climbing on top of desks and equipment trying to escape a hammerhead. "Call it a hunch, but why don't you check the main floor?"
"We're on it." Kay closed the communicator and turned to the volunteers, "Time to wrap up this fishing trip."
******
Screams and swearing in a variety of different languages could be heard as the volunteers drew closer to the main floor. "Sounds like a massacre up ahead." X noted gravely, holding Elle's waist with one arm and pushing floating objects out of the way with the other.
"Guess that means we've found our sharks," Kay muttered.
"Have your darts ready," Yazmine cautioned, "those things could spring out from anywhere."
"How does a 9,000 pound shark hide anyways?" Jay inquired sarcastically.
"Quite easily." Yazmine assured him.
Elle wasn't listening to all the bickering and warnings being issued around her. She had one thought in her mind. The hammerhead could easily be taken care of by the other volunteers, but somewhere up ahead lurked one of the oldest and most deadly predators known to man. An instinct in her knew it was there, the others wouldn't know what hit them. She was the only one who could take down the Great White. She glanced up at X who fortunately wasn't looking down at her. She slipped the dart out from beneath the sleeve of her wetsuit and fingered it like the trigger of a loaded gun. She'd slipped a little something extra into this dart, something worse than the alien poison. 'I'm ready for you…' she thought grimly as she stared out at the panicking aliens and agents that were scrambling on top of anything sticking out of the water to save their lives, '…I'll make sure there isn't enough of your DNA left for there to be a fourth time.'
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