CHAPTER THREE
AGENT SETA:
My cell phone, a brand new gift from K, rang in the movie theater. Maygan turned to stare at me. "When did you get a cell phone?" she asked as I scrambled to shut it up.
I hurriedly pressed the button and raised it to my ear. "Hello?" I whispered.
"K wants you at HQ," J answered coldly. "Now."
"How am I supposed to...?"
But the phone was dead. He'd hung up on me. I clenched my teeth in anger and put the phone back in my pocket. "I have to go," I told her as I stood up.
"Where?"
"Family emergency. I'll see you tomorrow, okay?"
"But..." she protested as I walked away.
I walked out of the theater, the bright light glaring in my eyes. I was sure I could remember how to get to headquarters, it was just a matter of getting there. I walked over to the bike rack, where my bike was chained, and unlocked it. It was only about three miles away. I wasn't about to call J and beg him to come pick me up. I'd get there myself.
I pedaled fast, and it only took me a few minutes to get to the store. I left my bike in front of it and walked through the front doors. The woman at the front desk smiled at me. "Hey Seta," she greeted. "You remember how to get down?"
"1689, right?" I checked.
"Yep, 1689 and your personal identification number."
I nodded and walked past the desk to the back of what appeared to be no more than a dry cleaners. A tiny keypad was on the wall. I pressed the four numbers and entered my social security number. The elevator opened and I stepped inside. There was a blank pad on the inside of the elevator, and I pressed my thumb to it, proving that yes, I was who I said I was and I did have permission to go down.
I was still kind of in shock at how James Bond this whole thing was. It was like something out of a movie. They had nothing to worry about as far as security went. Nobody would believe me if I tried to prove this. Except maybe for Maygan. But I wasn't about to share this with her. Especially since she was moving in a few days and I would probably never see her again anyway.
When I walked into K's office, the first thing I saw was J. He glared at me and I smiled back, taking the opportunity to mock him. Next I saw K, and noticed a figure in a chair. I felt my eyes grow wide as I studied... it. I guessed it was female because it had breasts. And in most respects, she looked almost human. Her eyes were slightly bigger, but I suppose that her whole face looked rather disproportional because she had no hair. And her skin was a dark gray. She was wearing an outfit that looked like little more than a tight sheet wrapped around her breasts that was tied more loosely around her waist. It was all one piece, no visible seams, and was made out of a sheer, glittering gold material unlike anything I'd ever seen. It was very see-through, and she wore nothing underneath it.
"Seta, I want you to meet Zuri," K introduced, leaning back against his desk. Zuri rose to her feet and bowed low. A simple handshake would've worked for me. "Zuri is going to be staying with us for a while," he continued. "She's from one of the moons around the planet Caara."
"Where's that?" I asked.
"About four hundred light years away," J answered.
"Was I asking you?" I snapped at him.
K sighed loudly and shot me a warning look. I shut up. "Zuri is the heir to the throne on her home base," he informed me. I raised my eyebrows. A princess? What was she doing here? "And I think both of you could learn a lot from her. I want you to teach her about our culture, too. Seta, I'm going to leave it to you to get her some less noticeable clothing. And I want both of you to work together to help her fit in. She's likely to be here for a while, and I want her life to be as normal as possible."
"Is she going to be staying here?" I questioned. "Or getting her own place?"
Zuri laughed. I turned to look at her, shocked. "Sure, you could get me my own place. I would not mind." Her voice was beautiful. She reminded me of Mariah Carey, but she wasn't singing, she was just talking.
K smiled. "By the way we measure time, Zuri is about fifteen years old. Luckily, her planet holds about the same technological advancement, and the same value systems as we do here. Most of them, anyway. She's had what we would consider to be a traditional, public schooling education, although she may be a little behind. She should fit into ninth grade, and that's where we intend to place her."
I glanced at J and saw him watching K. He looked as if he wanted to say something, but was waiting for me to leave. K reached into his pocket and pulled out a card. He handed it to me. "Take this and take her to the mall," he instructed. I glanced at it. It was a credit card. With my name on it!
"Is this...?" I questioned.
"It's real," he assured me. "And we'll pay whatever you spend."
There was a knock on the open door and I turned to see a woman in a black skirt with a white shirt and tie step into the room. K nodded at her as she hung a pair of black slacks and a white, man's dress shirt on a hook on the wall. "Thanks D."
She nodded and turned away, catching J's eye. She smiled and winked, then left the room. I glanced back at J, curious. A romantic interest? But he turned the other way, hiding his face from me. "You can change into that," K directed Zuri, nodding at the clothes. "It'll work for right now at least." He turned his attention to me and J. "And as for you two, I want you to be really careful. Her civilization was like ours in a lot of ways but there's still a lot she needs to learn about what we consider appropriate and the way we..."
Movement I saw out of the corner of my eye caught my attention. I turned and stared in shock as the thin robe that had been covering Zuri fell to the floor and she stepped out of it. K stopped in mid-sentence and I saw him hide a smile behind his hand. She took the shirt off of the hanger and stared at it. Then she looked to us. "Oh, I'm sorry," she apologized. "I didn't mean to interrupt you. Please continue."
I knew my jaw was hanging open and I tried to close it. I turned to see J's reaction, but he was turned away, seemingly disinterested. I didn't know how he could do that. She had a body that any woman on Earth would be envious of. She turned the shirt over and looked at us again. I saw the skin over her whole body change color slightly, getting lighter and taking a gold tint to it. "I am not quite sure how you wear this," she confessed, obviously embarrassed more at her naiveté than the fact that she was standing in a room with two men, completely naked.
I glanced again at K and then proceeded over to her. I unfastened the buttons, trying to stand between her and the open door, and helped her put her arms through the sleeves. Then I buttoned the bottom and let her do the rest. I showed her how to put her legs into the pants and she complied. She looked at herself in the full-length mirror on the wall and then turned to look at me. "How do you breathe in such a thing?" she questioned.
I had to smile. She didn't even have the top button fastened. "We're used to it," I answered, not sure what else to say to her.
AGENT J:
Seta and Zuri left. K turned his attention to me. "I want you to go with them," he instructed.
I sighed. "And tell me that that's not babysitting."
"It is. But you're babysitting Zuri, not Seta."
"If Seta's an agent, shouldn't she be able to babysit Zuri?" I challenged.
He sighed. "I need to teach Seta how to drive before I hand her the keys to a car. That means you're going to be chaperoning her for a while. And I need to teach her how to use a gun before I give her one."
I studied him carefully. "I don't carry a gun, K."
"No, but you know how to use one. And I want you to start carrying one."
I raised my eyebrows. "Do you have any idea what's going to happen if I get pulled over or something and I have a concealed weapon from another planet in my jacket?"
"Don't get pulled over," he smiled.
There was a moment of silence as I contemplated what he was saying. I'd never needed to carry a weapon before. "Do you really think it's going to come to that?" I questioned.
"If it does, I don't want my agents to be unprepared."
"You didn't answer my question."
He stared at me, but didn't answer. "Go talk to D. She'll get you a weapon and show you how it works."
"I've used a gun before, K. I know how it works."
"Not like these you haven't."
***
Deanne was at her desk, typing on her computer. She looked up as I knocked on the door. "Hey, baby, how's it goin'?"
"It's going," I answered coldly.
She leaned back and put her long, bare legs up on the desk, her high heel black shoes hanging off her feet. "K told me to come get a weapon from you."
She smiled seductively, chewing on the top of her pen. "What kind of weapon?" she asked.
"A gun."
"What kind?"
"He didn't say. I'm assuming one that didn't originate from Earth by the way he was talking."
Sarcasm. She didn't catch it. She uncrossed her legs and dropped them to the floor. Then she stood up and walked over to me, her heels clicking on the white tile. She stopped inches away and smiled. "Follow me."
I trailed behind her as she walked down the long, white corridor. She turned and pressed her thumb to a panel on the wall and the door opened. I knew what the room was. It was where we kept all of the things both we and other civilizations had made by utilizing advanced technology. I didn't know what the majority of it was for. It wasn't my department, it was Deanne's.
Agent D was not easily categorized within MIB. The love/hate relationship that most people developed for each other, since we all worked pretty closely at some point or another, didn't apply to her. Nobody hated her, really. But nobody really loved her, either, except for presumably me. Rumors had circulated for months about our relationship. They were only half-true. Our "dating" was in no way exclusive. She was very social, even though she knew better, and was out frequently sleeping with whomever she could get her hands on. She'd slept with nearly every guy in the city between the ages of 16 and 27. Except for me. That was by my choosing, and not something she understood.
I didn't need her. And actually, physical relationships between agents were against the rules. But out in public, having her to hang on my arm or even being able to talk about her prevented me from getting into any other, perhaps more serious relationships. I kept her happy by buying her things and being the sweet, gentleman type. She kept me happy by just being alive, and allowing me to tell people I was with her. We both understood that that was how it worked, although she occasionally forgot that I wasn't looking for a sexual thrill.
She opened a cabinet and pulled out an almost normal-looking gun. It was a little smaller than anything I'd seen, but the shape was the same. "It's designed to look like a normal gun," Deanne explained. "But it's not. It fires an electric pulse. Invisible, of course, not like a bolt of lightning." She approached me and slipped the gun into my hand. "The electricity isn't what hurts, it's more the force of the blow." She draped her arm over my neck, running her fingers through my hair, her other hand still holding the gun in mine. "You think you can handle that?" she whispered.
"Yeah, I think so," I answered.
She let go of the gun and put both arms around my neck. I allowed her to kiss me and pulled away slowly. "Mmmm, I love that about you," she moaned.
"What?"
"The way you kiss."
I tensed and ducked out of her grasp. "I've gotta go," I informed her as I walked away.
"Be careful out there, Joshua," she called after me.
I sighed. I really wished she wouldn't call me by my real name here. But no matter how many times I told her, she reveled in the fact that she'd gotten me to tell her something I didn't tell other people. Of course, I was drunk at the time, but that didn't matter to her. I never would've told her while I was sober. The only people who knew that name were her and K. Not even Delta knew it. And I didn't want him to. I didn't want anyone to, really. I didn't cherish the thought of who I had been before I'd hired in with MIB.
SETA:
"So you live still with your parents?" Zuri questioned, seemingly shocked.
"Yes," I answered. "I'm only 13."
"Really? You do not act 13."
"Yeah, I get that a lot."
"How long does one live with their mother and father here?"
I shrugged. "I don't know. It depends, really. Usually at least until they're 18. But sometimes kids run away or they stay with their parents through college."
"How long is college?"
"It depends on what you want to do. Usually four years, though."
"And that is after school is finished?"
"Yeah. So until they're 22. But not everyone goes to college. And not every college student lives with their parents."
She nodded slowly. "Where I come from, all children live at their school when they are twelve. They stay there until they are... you would probably say 25 or so."
"Do they go to school all that time?"
"Oh, yes. It is a great privilege to go to schooling. Not all people can afford such a thing."
I nodded, interested by the differences in our cultures. "Here, kids have to go to school, like it or not."
She sighed. "I am glad that our cultures are similar, but I do not understand many things about your world. I am afraid that I will not fit in very well until I learn a great deal of things."
I smiled as I walked down the street, the sun absorbing through the black suit jacket on my shoulders. The air was cool and the sun was welcome. "Well, ask away," I invited.
She looked around her. "I know your language, but I still sound much different than you."
"What do you mean?" I questioned.
"The way that I was taught to say things is not the way you phrase them. You run words together and make new words."
"Is that hard for you to understand when I do that?" I asked. "Because I could try to not do that when I talk to you if it would help."
"Oh, no, I understand," she laughed. "I just cannot seem to run my words together, too."
"Don't worry about it," I smiled. "You'll catch on. It's just something you pick up from talking to people. The more people you talk to, the more you'll start to talk like them."
She touched her face gently, careful not to smear the thick, but natural-looking layer of makeup blended into her skin to make her less conspicuous. "I am just so fearful that I will be discovered here. I am not used to hiding. But they told me that I must hide my origin from people here, or else they would be afraid and cause many problems."
"Yeah," I agreed quietly. "I don't think the population of Earth would take too kindly to the idea of you visiting us."
She smiled. "I do not understand what their fear lies in."
"Well, humans fear the unknown," I shrugged. "They don't like what they don't understand."
"Did you used to be that way?"
I thought about it for a moment. "Yeah, I suppose at one point I was. But for the past few years, I've really been trying to find out the truth, no matter how scary it was. And I guess that's how I ended up with MIB."
She looked at me. Her steps were so graceful, she almost glided on air. "Do I scare you?" she questioned.
I smiled back at her. "No. Not yet."
"I do not wish to cause an uprising. Please help me to blend in."
"Well, first off," I grinned. "This strip show thing in front of guys is gonna have to stop."
She stared at me, confused. "Strip show?"
"I'm guessing that your people are not as modest as we are here," I grinned at her. "On Earth, we don't undress in front of other people. Especially people of the other sex."
"Why not? Is the human body something to hide?"
"Well…" I stammered, caught momentarily off-guard by her response. "Not exactly. It's just not something you share with everybody."
"Who is it shared with?"
I could tell I was confusing her. "Well, with one person that you love and trust."
"And then they return the gesture?"
I smiled. She wasn't stupid. Just unaware of the way we thought. I had a feeling that she would figure out more than I would actually flat-out tell her. "Yes."
She laughed. "If you are only to experience one such encounter, I suppose you would hope that the person is as beautiful as yourself."
I smiled. "You can experience it more than once, but with one person."
"Only one?"
"Well, not all people follow those rules, but it's a good rule of thumb until you figure out what you believe in these set of circumstances."
Suddenly, a black car pulled up beside us. I turned and saw J lean over the passenger seat and stare out the open window. "You two need a ride?" he questioned, his voice monotone.
Zuri looked at me and smiled. She climbed into the back seat of the Cadillac and I got in next to J. He pulled away as I slammed the door shut. "You know what?" she asked me.
I turned to face her. "What?"
"I think you and he should experience."
J glanced at me, eyebrows raised at the inside joke. I blushed involuntarily. This girl was certainly not shy about speaking her mind.
