Part 3: Betrayer or Betrayed?
Sam and Alex had been waiting for hours now for Clover to return. The clock that hung over the TV said 11:37, and both Lord of the Rings movies had long since begun and ended. They'd expected her back long before now, but the last time they'd gone to look for Clover when she didn't show up they'd caught her in a somewhat compromising position with her boyfriend at the time.
"That's it, I'm calling her." Alex grabbed the phone off the nightstand by the couch, dialing Clover's number. Both girls blinked when a muffled ring floated out from the couch cushion between them. "Great... she dropped her cell phone."
"I'll try her compowder." Sam pulled out her compowder and patched into Clover's frequency. She blinked when the screen showed nothing but static. "Okay... now I'm getting worried." She closed the compowder, looking over at Alex.
"Maybe we should go look for her." Alex pushed herself to her feet.
"Yeah, it's not like her to vanish like this. Come on." Sam pushed herself to her feet and marched toward the door with Alex behind her. Suddenly the floor opened underneath them, sucking down into a long tube. They both screamed in surprise until they fell out of it, slamming into the cold steel of Jerry's old office, now occupied of course by Richard.
"Ugh... can this wait?" Alex asked, pushing herself up to her hands and knees. "We have to go find Clover right now."
"Yes, you do. That's why you're here." Richard replied. Alex and Sam pushed themselves up to sitting positions as their new director moved behind his desk, pressing a remote that turned on the screen behind him. "It seems as if your partner, Clover, has been acting as a double agent for quite some time now."
"A double agent?" Alex asked confusedly. "What do you mean? She's James Bond?"
"Not quite." Richard replied, turning back to them. "I mean she's been leaking sensitive information to outside sources. Information that could jeopardize WOOHP's very existence, and possibly the foundation of America itself, if it were ever to become public."
"No." Sam pushed herself to her feet vehemently. "Clover wouldn't betray this country, and she wouldn't betray me and Alex. What proof do you have of all this?" Sam demanded.
"She was very good about covering her tracks. But she made a few fatal mistakes during her assassination of the previous WOOHP director." Richard replied.
"What...?" Alex's eyes went wide. "You're saying Clover killed Jerry!?"
"You better have footage of her in the act or something." Sam crossed her arms over her chest.
"In a sense. We've spliced this together from WOOHP security camera footage that we've discovered in our investigation of Jerry's death." He stepped aside as the screen behind him began to roll.
The footage showed Jerry sitting behind his desk, with the time stamp of 11:24 AM displayed on the bottom. Jerry yawned and stood from his desk, but seemed to be interrupted when Clover walked into the room wearing a normal outfit, carrying a tray in front of her. She walked up to the desk and placed the tray of cookies on the desk, stepping back.
"Hey, those are the cookies we made Jerry for the anniversary of our joining WOOHP." Alex exclaimed in surprise. Sam nodded, remembering. They had had a pleasant surprise when Brittany turned up in the middle of their all-day baking session to say hi. "We let her give them to him because me and Sam had a track meet that day." Clover and Jerry seemed to talk for a few moments before Clover waved and turned to leave. Jerry took a bite of one of the cookies, then gagged and dumped the rest of the tray in a trashcan.
"Yep... those were our cookies alright." Sam blushed. The camera jumped suddenly, with the time stamp displaying the time 6:47 PM. Both girls gasped when Jerry suddenly clutched as his throat, leaning against his desk. He reached for the intercom built into it, but he couldn't reach before he collapsed to the floor, clutching his throat. The girls put their hands over their mouths, staring in shock.
"After analyzing the cookies... we found that they were laced with cyanide. Even the little bit he ingested was enough to kill him, but it took time." Richard turned off the screen and walked in front of the girls, looking down at the two of them. "The only person with access to both your cookies, and WOOHP's cyanide supply that day, was Clover."
"I... I can't believe it..." Sam muttered, staring at the screen blankly. "Clover... she... she actually did it..."
"Clover killed Jerry...?" Alex muttered, tears stinging her eyes.
"I know this is hard girls, but you have a mission to perform. Clover is on the run as we speak, and we need you two to find her and bring her to justice for her crimes." Richard reminded them, pressing the button that brought up a small group of gadgets from his desk. The two girls tried to compose themselves enough to pay attention to his presentation of their gadgets.
"You'll be given access to any gadgets you think you'll need to get the job done. Almost every gadget you've ever used is in these backpacks, except of course for the larger ones." He gathered up the long list of objects into the backpacks and handed them to the girls. "I know this will be tough for you girls, but she must be brought to justice, and you're still the best agents we have."
"We'll find Clover..." Sam replied softly, slipping her backpack on. "And we'll get the truth of this whole situation out of her. We promise."
"That's what I wanted to hear. You should start your investigation at the last place she was seen. Good luck spies." Richard pressed a button, sending Sam and Alex hurtling down through another tube. They plunged through it until they emerged from the ground with enough force to send them hurtling ten feet into the air before hitting the street.
They pushed themselves to their feet under the bright, pale moonlight that filtered through the gray storm clouds that still lingered overhead. Looking up, they saw Mandy's mansion looming before them, looking like it had been used as a battlefield very recently.
"It looks like a warzone..." Alex muttered wondrously.
"Come on. We should check this place for clues." Sam walked up the huge driveway to the mansion, where WOOHP agents were still swarming in and out like ants. They stepped aside as a small group of paramedics carried a pair of bodybags out of the mansion on stretchers.
"D... did Clover do that to them?" Alex asked. Sam didn't reply as they moved inside the main hall. The floor in front of the door was covered with glass, and a spent smoke bomb sat on the floor in front of a winding staircase that led up to the second floor. They made their way up the stairs to a long hallway along the side of the building. Glass littered the floor and the furniture looked like it had been grilled with more lead than a pencil factory. There was a pool of blood against the wall near the further staircase that led up toward the attic.
Sam grabbed the arm of one of the agents who was passing by her. "Where is Mandy? Is she still here? Is she okay?" Sam demanded.
"Our last reports were that she left the building with Clover." The agent replied. Sam nodded and let him go about his business, walking further down the hall. Alex followed her with her hands clasped nervously behind her back, trying not to think about the anarchy around her.
"What are we supposed to do now Sam?" Alex asked softly. "Are we supposed to hunt her down or something?"
"That's exactly what we're supposed to do." Sam walked to a broken section of window, looking down to see a pool of blood on the grass where one of the agents had probably laid before.
"She couldn't have really done it... could she?" Alex asked softly. "I mean, she's our best friend. She has been for years, and she's been part of our team all this time without anything strange happening..." Alex trailed off when Sam turned her emerald green eyes on her in a stern gaze. Sam sighed and walked over to her, putting her hands on her shoulders.
"I know this is hard Alex." Sam told her seriously. "But all of the evidence so far points this way... besides, we're just looking for her to ask her questions. We're not going to hurt her. I promise." Alex nodded slowly, biting her lip and looking down at the glass-covered floor. Sam turned and walked back to the window, activating her Jetpack Backpack.
"Come on Alex. If she's on the run, she might still have her compowder with her. Maybe we can use it to find her." Sam slipped a pair of Signal Detecting Sunglasses on and took to the sky above Beverly Hills. Alex followed her quickly, flying up behind her as she hovered high into the sky. The sunglasses made vision in the dark night complete zero except for a small blip from a nearby side street.
Sam gestured for Alex to follow her as she floated down to the sidewalk, turning off her Jetpack Backpack and following the small blip to a spot on the ground. She pulled off her sunglasses to see the compowder sitting on the ground in front of her, chipped and slightly broken.
"She ditched it..." Alex muttered as Sam knelt down to pick it up. "Do you think she's still around here somewhere?"
"Probably. With the other agents searching the streets she couldn't go far." Sam hummed to herself and looked around as she pulled Clover's compowder open. Its screen flared to life as usual, displaying all of the usual information. She poked around in its files for a few moments, but found nothing that wasn't normal... for Clover at least.
"I think I saw something move!" Alex exclaimed. Sam looked up at her, then followed her gaze to a small hole in the side of a shed behind one of the many expensive buildings that littered Beverly Hills. She closed the compowder and stuffed it into her belt as she shuffled up to the small hole in the wooden boards, peeking inside.
The inside was too dark to see much, but she did think she detected a trace of movement. She moved to get inside, but suddenly a small brown bundle of fur flew against her chest, squeaking madly.
"AGH!" Sam yelled and threw herself backward, slamming into the brick wall on the other side of the small alley as the rat scampered away. She panted heavily, holding her beating heart as Alex walked up to her.
"Um... sorry..." Alex said sheepishly. Sam shook her head and pushed herself up the wall to climb to her feet.
"We need to find Clover, she has to be close by." She stepped away from the wall, trying to pretend that her heart wasn't racing like a hummingbird's wings. "If we only knew what she was thinking..."
"If we knew that, we'd know whether she actually killed Jerry or not." Alex pointed out. "And we wouldn't be looking for her in the first place, because she didn't!" She panted deeply, clenching her fists at her sides. Sam smiled slightly and reached up to rub her eyes, yawning. She hadn't slept all that well last night, and it was getting late in the evening.
"Well, come on. I doubt we're finding her in the dark like this with no leads. The WOOHP agents have this entire area blocked off, if she tries to leave they'll spot her. We can get some rest and comb the area in the morning." Sam turned to leave the alley, with Alex following behind her. Suddenly Alex stopped and whirled, spotting more movement in the shadows between the shed's wooden planks.
She froze for a moment, staring into the darkness. She knew she'd seen a flash of blonde hair in the pale moonlight that shone through the dark clouds. She stood for a moment, then shrugged to herself in an overly dramatic fashion. "Must've been my imagination." She turned to follow Sam out of the alley, turning on her Jetpack Backpack to follow her to her house. Clover wouldn't hide in a rickety old shed like that... and even if she was, she would only do it until she could prove her innocence and everything could return to the way it had been before.
They landed in front of Sam's house and went inside. "You can stay the night here. We're going to have to start searching early in the morning tomorrow." Sam said as they walked through the living room to the bedroom.
"What do we do if we find her Sammy?" Alex asked as she plopped down on the side of the bed, pulling her black shirt off. She watched Sam get undressed to pull her light pink nightgown on. "Do we hand her over to Richard and say 'Happy Birthday' or something?"
"We take her to WOOHP for questioning, and then there'll be a quiet federal trial to determine whether or not she committed the crime." Sam replied as she sat down on the edge of the bed beside Alex. The Latino girl sighed and pulled the rest of her clothes off to slide on one of Sam's spare nightgowns.
"I don't know, I'm still uneasy about all of this." Alex pulled her legs up against her chest, curling up into a little ball. "What if she gets punished for it, but she didn't do it?"
"That's what trials are there to prevent." Sam replied, slipping one arm around the slightly smaller girl's shoulders. "Don't worry Alex, the truth will come out one way or another. And hopefully the truth will be that Clover didn't do anything, and we'll all come back to Beverly Hills just like before."
"Yeah... you're right." Alex sniffled and smiled slightly.
"Now come on, we have to be up early tomorrow. Let's get some sleep." Sam pulled Alex up the bed to rest her head on the pillow, pushing the blanket up over her body. "Goodnight." Sam patted her shoulder with a smile before turning to slide the covers over herself, pulling them up to her neck and turning away from Alex. Alex sighed and closed her eyes, trying to drift off to sleep. Her heart never rested even as her body finally drifted off into sleep.
TO BE CONTINUED
Sam and Alex had been waiting for hours now for Clover to return. The clock that hung over the TV said 11:37, and both Lord of the Rings movies had long since begun and ended. They'd expected her back long before now, but the last time they'd gone to look for Clover when she didn't show up they'd caught her in a somewhat compromising position with her boyfriend at the time.
"That's it, I'm calling her." Alex grabbed the phone off the nightstand by the couch, dialing Clover's number. Both girls blinked when a muffled ring floated out from the couch cushion between them. "Great... she dropped her cell phone."
"I'll try her compowder." Sam pulled out her compowder and patched into Clover's frequency. She blinked when the screen showed nothing but static. "Okay... now I'm getting worried." She closed the compowder, looking over at Alex.
"Maybe we should go look for her." Alex pushed herself to her feet.
"Yeah, it's not like her to vanish like this. Come on." Sam pushed herself to her feet and marched toward the door with Alex behind her. Suddenly the floor opened underneath them, sucking down into a long tube. They both screamed in surprise until they fell out of it, slamming into the cold steel of Jerry's old office, now occupied of course by Richard.
"Ugh... can this wait?" Alex asked, pushing herself up to her hands and knees. "We have to go find Clover right now."
"Yes, you do. That's why you're here." Richard replied. Alex and Sam pushed themselves up to sitting positions as their new director moved behind his desk, pressing a remote that turned on the screen behind him. "It seems as if your partner, Clover, has been acting as a double agent for quite some time now."
"A double agent?" Alex asked confusedly. "What do you mean? She's James Bond?"
"Not quite." Richard replied, turning back to them. "I mean she's been leaking sensitive information to outside sources. Information that could jeopardize WOOHP's very existence, and possibly the foundation of America itself, if it were ever to become public."
"No." Sam pushed herself to her feet vehemently. "Clover wouldn't betray this country, and she wouldn't betray me and Alex. What proof do you have of all this?" Sam demanded.
"She was very good about covering her tracks. But she made a few fatal mistakes during her assassination of the previous WOOHP director." Richard replied.
"What...?" Alex's eyes went wide. "You're saying Clover killed Jerry!?"
"You better have footage of her in the act or something." Sam crossed her arms over her chest.
"In a sense. We've spliced this together from WOOHP security camera footage that we've discovered in our investigation of Jerry's death." He stepped aside as the screen behind him began to roll.
The footage showed Jerry sitting behind his desk, with the time stamp of 11:24 AM displayed on the bottom. Jerry yawned and stood from his desk, but seemed to be interrupted when Clover walked into the room wearing a normal outfit, carrying a tray in front of her. She walked up to the desk and placed the tray of cookies on the desk, stepping back.
"Hey, those are the cookies we made Jerry for the anniversary of our joining WOOHP." Alex exclaimed in surprise. Sam nodded, remembering. They had had a pleasant surprise when Brittany turned up in the middle of their all-day baking session to say hi. "We let her give them to him because me and Sam had a track meet that day." Clover and Jerry seemed to talk for a few moments before Clover waved and turned to leave. Jerry took a bite of one of the cookies, then gagged and dumped the rest of the tray in a trashcan.
"Yep... those were our cookies alright." Sam blushed. The camera jumped suddenly, with the time stamp displaying the time 6:47 PM. Both girls gasped when Jerry suddenly clutched as his throat, leaning against his desk. He reached for the intercom built into it, but he couldn't reach before he collapsed to the floor, clutching his throat. The girls put their hands over their mouths, staring in shock.
"After analyzing the cookies... we found that they were laced with cyanide. Even the little bit he ingested was enough to kill him, but it took time." Richard turned off the screen and walked in front of the girls, looking down at the two of them. "The only person with access to both your cookies, and WOOHP's cyanide supply that day, was Clover."
"I... I can't believe it..." Sam muttered, staring at the screen blankly. "Clover... she... she actually did it..."
"Clover killed Jerry...?" Alex muttered, tears stinging her eyes.
"I know this is hard girls, but you have a mission to perform. Clover is on the run as we speak, and we need you two to find her and bring her to justice for her crimes." Richard reminded them, pressing the button that brought up a small group of gadgets from his desk. The two girls tried to compose themselves enough to pay attention to his presentation of their gadgets.
"You'll be given access to any gadgets you think you'll need to get the job done. Almost every gadget you've ever used is in these backpacks, except of course for the larger ones." He gathered up the long list of objects into the backpacks and handed them to the girls. "I know this will be tough for you girls, but she must be brought to justice, and you're still the best agents we have."
"We'll find Clover..." Sam replied softly, slipping her backpack on. "And we'll get the truth of this whole situation out of her. We promise."
"That's what I wanted to hear. You should start your investigation at the last place she was seen. Good luck spies." Richard pressed a button, sending Sam and Alex hurtling down through another tube. They plunged through it until they emerged from the ground with enough force to send them hurtling ten feet into the air before hitting the street.
They pushed themselves to their feet under the bright, pale moonlight that filtered through the gray storm clouds that still lingered overhead. Looking up, they saw Mandy's mansion looming before them, looking like it had been used as a battlefield very recently.
"It looks like a warzone..." Alex muttered wondrously.
"Come on. We should check this place for clues." Sam walked up the huge driveway to the mansion, where WOOHP agents were still swarming in and out like ants. They stepped aside as a small group of paramedics carried a pair of bodybags out of the mansion on stretchers.
"D... did Clover do that to them?" Alex asked. Sam didn't reply as they moved inside the main hall. The floor in front of the door was covered with glass, and a spent smoke bomb sat on the floor in front of a winding staircase that led up to the second floor. They made their way up the stairs to a long hallway along the side of the building. Glass littered the floor and the furniture looked like it had been grilled with more lead than a pencil factory. There was a pool of blood against the wall near the further staircase that led up toward the attic.
Sam grabbed the arm of one of the agents who was passing by her. "Where is Mandy? Is she still here? Is she okay?" Sam demanded.
"Our last reports were that she left the building with Clover." The agent replied. Sam nodded and let him go about his business, walking further down the hall. Alex followed her with her hands clasped nervously behind her back, trying not to think about the anarchy around her.
"What are we supposed to do now Sam?" Alex asked softly. "Are we supposed to hunt her down or something?"
"That's exactly what we're supposed to do." Sam walked to a broken section of window, looking down to see a pool of blood on the grass where one of the agents had probably laid before.
"She couldn't have really done it... could she?" Alex asked softly. "I mean, she's our best friend. She has been for years, and she's been part of our team all this time without anything strange happening..." Alex trailed off when Sam turned her emerald green eyes on her in a stern gaze. Sam sighed and walked over to her, putting her hands on her shoulders.
"I know this is hard Alex." Sam told her seriously. "But all of the evidence so far points this way... besides, we're just looking for her to ask her questions. We're not going to hurt her. I promise." Alex nodded slowly, biting her lip and looking down at the glass-covered floor. Sam turned and walked back to the window, activating her Jetpack Backpack.
"Come on Alex. If she's on the run, she might still have her compowder with her. Maybe we can use it to find her." Sam slipped a pair of Signal Detecting Sunglasses on and took to the sky above Beverly Hills. Alex followed her quickly, flying up behind her as she hovered high into the sky. The sunglasses made vision in the dark night complete zero except for a small blip from a nearby side street.
Sam gestured for Alex to follow her as she floated down to the sidewalk, turning off her Jetpack Backpack and following the small blip to a spot on the ground. She pulled off her sunglasses to see the compowder sitting on the ground in front of her, chipped and slightly broken.
"She ditched it..." Alex muttered as Sam knelt down to pick it up. "Do you think she's still around here somewhere?"
"Probably. With the other agents searching the streets she couldn't go far." Sam hummed to herself and looked around as she pulled Clover's compowder open. Its screen flared to life as usual, displaying all of the usual information. She poked around in its files for a few moments, but found nothing that wasn't normal... for Clover at least.
"I think I saw something move!" Alex exclaimed. Sam looked up at her, then followed her gaze to a small hole in the side of a shed behind one of the many expensive buildings that littered Beverly Hills. She closed the compowder and stuffed it into her belt as she shuffled up to the small hole in the wooden boards, peeking inside.
The inside was too dark to see much, but she did think she detected a trace of movement. She moved to get inside, but suddenly a small brown bundle of fur flew against her chest, squeaking madly.
"AGH!" Sam yelled and threw herself backward, slamming into the brick wall on the other side of the small alley as the rat scampered away. She panted heavily, holding her beating heart as Alex walked up to her.
"Um... sorry..." Alex said sheepishly. Sam shook her head and pushed herself up the wall to climb to her feet.
"We need to find Clover, she has to be close by." She stepped away from the wall, trying to pretend that her heart wasn't racing like a hummingbird's wings. "If we only knew what she was thinking..."
"If we knew that, we'd know whether she actually killed Jerry or not." Alex pointed out. "And we wouldn't be looking for her in the first place, because she didn't!" She panted deeply, clenching her fists at her sides. Sam smiled slightly and reached up to rub her eyes, yawning. She hadn't slept all that well last night, and it was getting late in the evening.
"Well, come on. I doubt we're finding her in the dark like this with no leads. The WOOHP agents have this entire area blocked off, if she tries to leave they'll spot her. We can get some rest and comb the area in the morning." Sam turned to leave the alley, with Alex following behind her. Suddenly Alex stopped and whirled, spotting more movement in the shadows between the shed's wooden planks.
She froze for a moment, staring into the darkness. She knew she'd seen a flash of blonde hair in the pale moonlight that shone through the dark clouds. She stood for a moment, then shrugged to herself in an overly dramatic fashion. "Must've been my imagination." She turned to follow Sam out of the alley, turning on her Jetpack Backpack to follow her to her house. Clover wouldn't hide in a rickety old shed like that... and even if she was, she would only do it until she could prove her innocence and everything could return to the way it had been before.
They landed in front of Sam's house and went inside. "You can stay the night here. We're going to have to start searching early in the morning tomorrow." Sam said as they walked through the living room to the bedroom.
"What do we do if we find her Sammy?" Alex asked as she plopped down on the side of the bed, pulling her black shirt off. She watched Sam get undressed to pull her light pink nightgown on. "Do we hand her over to Richard and say 'Happy Birthday' or something?"
"We take her to WOOHP for questioning, and then there'll be a quiet federal trial to determine whether or not she committed the crime." Sam replied as she sat down on the edge of the bed beside Alex. The Latino girl sighed and pulled the rest of her clothes off to slide on one of Sam's spare nightgowns.
"I don't know, I'm still uneasy about all of this." Alex pulled her legs up against her chest, curling up into a little ball. "What if she gets punished for it, but she didn't do it?"
"That's what trials are there to prevent." Sam replied, slipping one arm around the slightly smaller girl's shoulders. "Don't worry Alex, the truth will come out one way or another. And hopefully the truth will be that Clover didn't do anything, and we'll all come back to Beverly Hills just like before."
"Yeah... you're right." Alex sniffled and smiled slightly.
"Now come on, we have to be up early tomorrow. Let's get some sleep." Sam pulled Alex up the bed to rest her head on the pillow, pushing the blanket up over her body. "Goodnight." Sam patted her shoulder with a smile before turning to slide the covers over herself, pulling them up to her neck and turning away from Alex. Alex sighed and closed her eyes, trying to drift off to sleep. Her heart never rested even as her body finally drifted off into sleep.
TO BE CONTINUED