The calm ocean currents carried the small boat closer to shore, toward the large building that served at WOOHP Headquarters. Dozens of boats surrounded it, but the lone figure maneuvered around them with an ease that no human could match. Her movements were quick and precise, steering her even through the choppy waters with unmatchable precision and speed. Nobody paid her mind, and the guards at the entrance to WOOHP seemed happy to see her. It wasn't surprising; she was wearing a WOOHP uniform after all.
"Welcome back agent Brittany." One of the guards saluted her. Since the door was still submerged, they'd created a small elevator on the side of the building that could move up to the rooftop entrance. They kept lowering the elevator with the water level to make a makeshift door. "Has your mission been successful?"
Brittany searched through her memory banks for a response, pulling memories from the real WOOHP agent's DNA. Brittany had been on a mission to find Mandy Myers, and report back with her. But Mandy wasn't here, so she quickly thought up a suitable lie to get her inside.
"I failed in my mission I'm afraid. I need to report this to Jerry, at once." Brittany replied.
"We understand. Please, come aboard." The guards stepped aside. Brittany leapt from the raft and landed easily on the elevator, turning around to look out across the ocean as the elevator carried them up toward the rooftop entrance. The sun was sinking past the horizon, already half down. Brittany looked up in time to see a pink jet streaking away from the building, quickly vanishing beyond the horizon.
"It looks like the girls are gone again." One of the guards said.
"That's dedication. They just saved and united the planet, and they still want to do more." The other one smiled kindly. "And I always figured kids today were selfish and lazy."
"Most of 'em are, don't let those three fool you." Both guards laughed. Brittany ignored them, waiting for the elevator to reach the top so she could walk onto the roof. There were a few people standing around. Her memory banks couldn't identify most of them, except that they were WOOHP soldiers by their uniforms. There was a strange blonde boy wearing a pair of glasses, and a white-haired old man with his hands in his pockets. Her memory banks and sensors quickly went to work.
JERRY LEWIS TARGET ACQUIRED. INITIATE RECON MODE.
Brittany moved to walk toward him, her facial expression changing to one of sadness and remorse as she approached. "Jerry..." She constricted her throat, to emulate anxiety. The old man took the bait, whirling to look at her with wide, surprised eyes.
"Brittany? What happened? Are you alright?" He asked worriedly.
"I'm afraid I failed in my mission... I'm so sorry sir." Brittany shook her head in remorse. Constant body scans let her read his body like a map, letting her know through his blood pressure and synaptic responses what he was feeling. His feeling right now was one of disappointment, but that quickly turned to relief and concern.
"Don't worry about it Brittany, I'm sure you did your best." Jerry gripped her shoulder firmly. Brittany looked up at him obediently, as she knew humans enjoyed eye contact. "That's what really matters. I'm simply glad that you were able to survive this disaster."
"I barely survived. I had to endure many hardships, more than I believed I would be able to conquer." Brittany drew on her artificial log of language to its best effect, searching for strings of words that had been known to produce the greatest emotional effect on humans. "But I still fought, no matter how hard it became... many times I believed I was lost, but I never gave up hope. Hope of coming back to serve you again."
She could see that her words had the desired effect. A fatherly pride welled up within Jerry. "You did well... please, come in. I'll have one of my agents show you to a room to clean yourself up, okay?" Jerry told her.
"Yes sir... I would like that." Brittany nodded. Soon Jerry called his agents, and Brittany was herded through WOOHP headquarters, straight through the most sensitive areas. She had a blueprint of the place from Tim Scam's database, but it was obvious as she walked through that it was woefully out of date. The memories encoded into the real WOOHP agent's DNA wasn't much help either, as she worked outside the office through almost her entire employment here.
MISSION CHANGE. PRIMARY OBJECTIVE, OBTAIN UPDATED MAP.
"Please, feel free to use this room as long as you want." The WOOHP agent led her into a moderately sized bedroom with all the usual furnishings and steel walls.
"I will. Thank you." Brittany replied. The agent nodded and turned to leave, closing the door behind him. Immediately Brittany leapt to a grate on the ceiling, popping it open and moving through the vents with the grace of a waterfall thanks to her shape-shifting properties. Her body turned to liquid silver, streaming through the vents. She constantly scanned the bottom of the vent for signs of a computer, which she soon found.
The scientist working at it turned away, so Brittany shot one scamlar tendril into the console, linking with it and downloading the required data files. A map of WOOHP headquarters appeared in her vision. It was ten times more complicated than the one Scam had given her, with a plethora of rooms whose contents went unlisted. Parts of WOOHP were secret even from WOOHP personnel.
Now that she had that vital piece of information, it was time to resume her real duties.
PRIMARY MISSION CHANGE. HUNTER MODE.
She slid through the vents, using the updated map to snake her way through the building toward Jerry's office. She slid up to the top of the vent, peering down into the office. There were two figures sitting on steel chairs, one she had no information on anywhere in her database. The other was familiar, and she would have gotten excited if she were capable of such an emotion.
TARGET ACQUIRED, JERRY LEWIS. INITIATE INFORMATION GATHERING.
She hunkered down in the vent, watching the old man chat idly with the other man, who had both a long head of silver hair and a long silver beard that hung almost down to his waist, tied off at the end.
"The mission is done..." The man with the silver beard commented. "People will have a new respect for Mother Nature. It will remain safe."
"Yes, as will the race of humanity." Jerry stood up and walked to one of his monitors, staring at it deeply for several long minutes. "I thank you for your cooperation... but now I can't help but wonder if I did the wrong thing." He shook his head and heaved a sigh. "I never intended so many deaths... but I couldn't warn anybody it was coming."
"I understand your hesitation." The silver-bearded man approached Jerry from behind and put a hand on his shoulder. "But the most righteous revolutions in history did not happen without bloodshed. You have seen what I saw... that sometimes death is the only way to do the greatest good." Jerry looked back at him.
"I suppose you're right..." Jerry cleared his throat, straightening his tie. "About my part of the bargain, I'm afraid it may take some time. Complications have arisen that can jeopardize everything if I move too quickly."
"I have no desire to stay here Jerry, my children are waiting for me. I fulfilled my end of the bargain to the best of my abilities, are you going to turn your back on your side of the bargain?" The silver-bearded man exclaimed angrily. Jerry quickly raised his hands to calm him.
"Of course not. It may simply take longer for me to fulfill it is all." Jerry told the man. "Now please, I need your cooperation in this. If we don't tread carefully everything that we're on our way to building will collapse to the ground." The two old men stared at each other in a tense contest of wills that didn't really interest Brittany. Will meant nothing to her; she just observed the changes in their blood pressure.
"Very well... I'll be patient for now." The man said. "But my children will not last long without me. I will take matters into my own hands to protect them."
"I assure you, I'll do everything in my power to protect them as well." Jerry insisted.
"You'd better." The silver-haired man looked at the door as two WOOHP officers entered, approaching him. He gazed at Jerry and turned to follow the officers out of the room calmly. Jerry sighed and plopped down in his chair, lying back and staring at the ceiling idly. The machine behind him beeped idly, its camera focusing on Jerry like a mother watching her cub.
There wasn't much happening here now, but she'd gathered much information that hadn't been present before. So she figured it was time to report back to Tim Scam and reveal her findings. Which she did with a remote receiver embedded into her programming, able to communicate through it without making a single sound even in the hollow air vents.
"Report your findings." Tim Scam said. So Brittany transmitted a log of the conversation she'd just witnessed through the radio waves to Scam's communicator. The man looked genuinely stunned, watching the events unfold with wide eyes. "Well... what a tangled web that's forming here. I didn't know the old man had it in him."
"Engage final mission?" Brittany asked silently.
"No. I want to see how this plays out. Stick around and find out as much about the current situation as you can. You're authorized to access the full extent of your Artificial Intelligence programming for this." Tim Scam replied.
"Yes sir. Engaging permanent recon mode until further notice." Brittany replied.
"Good. And remember, it's essential that your true nature is NOT discovered under any circumstances. Am I clear?" He asked.
"Perfectly." Brittany said. Tim Scam's face faded from her vision, and she turned to slink back toward her assigned bedroom through the vents. She slipped through the holes in the vent in a silvery stream, landing on the floor in a puddle and rapidly reforming. She whirled when she heard a sharp gasp from the door. A woman in a black tuxedo was staring at her in shock.
"You're h-" The woman was cut off as a sharp spike broke through her neck, severing her windpipe. She twitched and writhed on Brittany's arm as she drew her back, walking to the window to open it. In a mere moment the body hurtled through the window, plummeting dozens of stories down to slam into the deck of a boat floating under her window. Brittany pulled the window shut and turned away from it.
She made her way through the WOOHP building the proper way, ignoring those who passed by her. She had a recon mission to accomplish, and nothing was about to stand in her way.
TO BE CONTINUED
