Carter was munching on a bagel as she worked to find the room she was supposed to be in in fifteen minutes. She was walking up and down the same corridor but couldn't find the place. Eventually, she found a small nook in the corner. Looking around it, she found a small hallway. Walking down this, she found the room she was looking for. After stuffing the bagel into her mouth, she stepped inside.
The room was full of computers. There were tables lined up with computers of all kinds with chairs directly in front of them. Along the back wall was a variety of computer parts. She turned around as she heard the door open. She tensed up, thinking it was Lawson, which thankfully it wasn't. Bryce came strolling into the core without any cares. He saw Carter and stopped in his tracks.
"You're here early," he told her.
"I figured I would get lost, which I did. I barely saw this room. What is this room, by the way?"
"The computer repair area, I'm pretty sure. As you can guess, I don't spend much time here."
"Well, I think I've figured out today's test," she told him.
"Yeah. It's probably exactly what you think. There's not much that happens in this room."
Carter was about to ask Bryce another question when the door opened again, and this time, Lawson did, in fact, walk in. He saw the two of them standing and gave them a suspicious look. "What are you two doing here so early?"
"I thought I would get lost trying to find this room," Carter explained.
"I'm always early," Bryce bluntly said.
Lawson continued to stare at the two of them, think they were up to something. Carter noticed that he was carrying a large stack of clipboards. He walked over to the line of desks, put the clipboards down, pulled out a chair, and turned toward the two agents already in the room. The tension was quickly felt.
"So, seen any new shows lately," Bryce asked her.
"Not really; I spent the last couple of weeks re-watching Sailor Moon. You know, girl power and whatnot."
"Subbed or Dubbed?"
"Subbed. The dub doesn't even have all the episodes. And they made Uranus and Neptune cousins when they have one of the cutest relationships."
"So, you've been relieving some 90's cheese."
"It's not cheesy." Bryce gave her a look before she continued. "Alright, it is a bit cheesy, but I love it anyway. You can't make me change my mind."
Bryce held up his hands in surrender. "I won't try to. I don't genre shame."
"Alrighty, then, what have you been watching, Mr. I-don't-genre-shame?"
Bryce took a minute to think about it. "I've been mainly watching Ranma 1/2."
"Wow, dude. And you're judging me for watching cheesy shows. That's older than Sailor Moon."
"Well, it's my first time watching it, so I don't think it counts."
Carter spends a minute blinking at him. "I... suppose... that could be taken into consideration. I need to talk to my people first."
"Please talk to your people and get back to me."
As they were having this conversation, more people were meandering into the room. Soon, all of the teams were in the room having their own discussions amongst themselves or solely with their partner. Chattering filled the room until Lawson stood and cleared his throat. The room instantly went silent.
"This morning, I'm going to see your competency with computers. I know I test your hacking abilities, but I learned that it has nothing to do with how well you can fix them. Along this table are ten computers that we have set up with a multitude of problems. You will look at each one for five minutes, note down the problems, and what you would do to fix it. I have clipboards. At the end of this hour, I will collect them back and score you. I'll have results by the start of our next testing exercises."
The group lined up to grab a clipboard and sat down at a computer each as Lawson continued going over the rules. "You will be doing this alone, without any help. If I see you cheating... Just don't let me see you. You may click around the computer to your heart's content. Just don't change any setting or press any buttons. At the end of every period, you will move to the right. You may begin... now."
Carter turned toward the computer. She was sitting directly next to Lawson. The only good news was that she would continuously get farther away from him. She shook the mouse, waking up the screen. She was first brought to the desktop with icons in no particular order. She tried to move the mouse, but it moved slower than she was moving, or it would teleport across the screen. Initially, she moved to restart the computer but remembered that that would be breaking the rules. Thinking about what she should do, she decided to look at the hard drive. The insane number of files might have been a clue. Sure enough, there was only a megabyte of space left. Taking the pen off of the clipboard, she wrote her name. Inside the corresponding area, she reported that the files would need to be compressed, a larger hard drive would need to be acquired, or that the unneeded files required to be transferred. She finished that and tried to find any other problems with the slow computer before time was up. Lawson called for time, and she exited out of everything and shot over to the chair beside her. For the next hour, Carter went through the same process, trying to find all the problems she could in the time limit. If you asked her, this was too easy, but kind of understood that people need to show that they had this kind of skill.
After the final time was called, Carter sighed in relief. Even though she knew that she could do this, it wasn't the best feeling to be tested in such a way. She stood up and got into the line of people waiting to hand back their clipboards. After she handed back her clipboard, Lawson spoke up again.
"Now that this is finished, I'll see you for our next test. I will "grade these" and tell you how you did. Dismissed," he said and went to look at the assignment.
Carter noticed that he moved hers to the bottom of the pile as if expecting that she wouldn't do well. She rolled her eyes since there was no way he could see her and walked over to Bryce.
"It's way too early to have lunch, she told him. "What should we do?"
"I wasn't given anything to do for the week, so I was just going to play some games."
"Oooh, which ones?"
"No clue yet. Probably whichever ones happen to be on my personal computer."
"Cool, I brought mine as well," Carter mentioned, notional toward the bag she brought along with her.
"Mine's at my desk. We can hang out there until lunch."
"Lead the way, good sir," she told him with a flourish.
Bryce chuckled as he led her out of the room. Luckily this room was on the same floor as the offices they were in the previous day. It was less ominous without the gigantic timer flashing in the middle. Instead of the time, there were multiple types of maps shown on the screens: ones showing traffic density, population densities of different countries, electricity use, and weather patterns, to name a few.
"This is more like I was expecting from this room," Carter informed Bryce.
"Yeah, Lawson likes scaring people. I wouldn't be surprised if later on that gigantic timer is back."
Carter and Bryce continued to walk through the room until they got to their desks. Carter quickly set up her laptop on the desk, turning it on; Bryce pulled his out of one of the drawers and turned it on as well. Both put in their passwords and chose a game to play.
"You know, you were right," Carter started.
"What was I right about?"
"That this place is pretty much high school. I think my roommates already hate me."
"What did you do?" he asked with intrigue.
"Apparently, by saying that we all were asked to be here, I was saying that I was better than them."
"Huh?"
"I had the same reaction."
"Were they field agents?"
"I think so. They kept alluding to it."
"That makes sense then. For whatever reason, the newer ones think they're the shit. Just wait until they get their first mission or are paired off against the older agents. They get more tolerable after that, usually."
"Usually?"
"There's always an exception.
"Great," Carter groaned. "I'm hoping that I won't have to fight them."
"Are you scared they might beat you up?"
"As if. I know how to defend myself."
"If you ever get into a fight, I'll be sure to put money on you."
The two continued to talk about absolute nonsense while they continued to play games. After a while, Carter froze. She started looking around the room.
"Are you okay?" Bryce asked her.
"By any chance, is Nadia still watching us today?"
"I don't think so. I saw that she was pretty busy earlier. She's probably still working. Why?"
"I feel like we're being watched; maybe I'm just paranoid."
"Nah, this place kinda does that to you. You get used to it after a while. It's not like we're doing anything wrong, so no reason to be especially jumpy about it. There are probably cameras everywhere, some that Nadia might not have access to. You never know."
"Well, I'm an angel, so I have nothing to worry about."
"You have a devious streak in you. I can tell.
"Who? Me?" Carter said with a chuckle. There was no denying that she was slightly devious when she wanted to be.
They continued to talk about nothing in particular until Bryce's stomach started to grumble.
"Really, dude?"
"Sorry, I woke up late and didn't have time to grab anything."
"Why did you get there so early? You had plenty of time to grab something."
"I started to show up early after some of my work got destroyed when I left it on my desk at the end of the workday. Don't know who did it, but it hasn't happened again since, even though the first person here is always Lawson."
"That's so weird. You would think that would put more work onto him."
"Lawson's a weird dude. I don't have proof, so it's not like I can say anything. Anyway, I want lunch. Care to join me?"
"Sure, I could eat."
Carter and Bryce saved their games and shut down their laptops. Bryce stored his away in his desk while Carter put hers back into her bag. They both stood up and walked out toward the cafeteria.
Carter and Bryce settled back into their desks when Lawson came in, with a look of disgust on his face. A couple of steps in, he hid the look with professionalism. Carter and Bryce gave each other a look, confirmed that the other had seen it as well. Upfront, the screens had blanked out again. Instead of a timer, there was a leaderboard that came up.
"The results of the last test were quite surprising," Lawson started. "I also had others check the results. The point system was as follows: five points for every correctly answered problem, one point for every correct possible option to fix the problem, and negative points for correct answers."
Behind Lawson, the leaderboard was filled in with last names, pictures, and points to the side. At the very top sat Carter's image, with "Williams" beside it, and 120 points.
"I would like to congratulate Agent Williams. She was the only one who found all the problems we set on the computers. She also found others that we didn't purposely put there. I was also like to point out that everyone got number four wrong. I don't know how that happened, but we will have to go with it. Very soon, I will hand you a flash drive. Don't put it in until I tell you to."
Lawson started walking around the room, passing around flash drives. Bryce turned toward her and held his fist out. "Nice going, Rookie."
"Thanks," Carter responded and answered his fist with her own. "I'm actually surprised by how badly everyone else did."
"By the way, what was the problem with four?"
Carter leaned in to whisper into Bryce's ear. "The computer wasn't on." Leaning back, Carter saw his shocked face before he burst out laughing, covering his mouth so he wouldn't be as loud.
"Really?" he asked, gasping for breath.
"Yeah. I'm actually surprised that no one else noticed."
"Well, that's one point against him. You guys are technically one-to-one."
"Hopefully, this next one is a piece of cake as well."
Lawson had gotten to them by this point, handing them a flash drive with the number ten printed on it. "Congratulations, Agent Williams. I was surprised by how well you did," he said sarcastically.
"Thank you, sir," Carter said, politeness dripping from her voice. "I've spent a lot of time diagnosing computer problems in the past."
"Well then, let's see how you do on the next test."
The man walked away, back toward the front of the room. Once there, he started talking once again. "On the flash drive I gave you, there is a series of files. They're not real, but you should treat them as such. In our day-to-day lives, we rely on being able to find information quickly and effectively. Because of this, I would like to see how you organize information. Like the last time you were in this room, you will have a time limit of four hours. I don't expect you to finish completely but make an effort. You time beings now."
Carter logged into her computer. As it was unlocking, she capped the flash drive. As soon as the computer showed the desktop, she plugged in the flash drive. Opening the folder, she was sit filled to the technological brim with files. Turned to Bryce, she said, "I have a bad feeling about this test."
"Why do you say that?"
"I don't know. But I just have a bad feeling."
"So, what are you going to do for this test?"
"Open a bunch of files and try to organize them, I guess. What else am I supposed to do?"
"I guess you're right. Have fun, I guess."
"What are you going to do while I go about organizing these files? It's really a one-person job."
"I'm going to play another game. You have fun with that. I'm going to forget all about it."
"You've been a great help," Carter told him dryly.
"You're very welcome," Bryce said cheekily.
He had already gone ahead and pulled out his laptop again. Instead of pretending to be annoyed at his antics, Carter went to work organizing her folder of random files. After the four hours were completed, Carter was not satisfied with her work, but that was expected given the number of files' absolute terror. Lawson went back around the room, collecting flash drives as he went around, leaving Bryce and Carter to be the last ones yet again.
"I hope you did better on this than the last time we were here, Agent Williams," he said as he walked toward them,
"I wished I had more time, to be honest, sir," she said as he handed the flash drive over. He ignored them as he walked away. Turning to Bryce, she asked, "So, want to get dinner?"
"I could eat," Bryce responded. "Let's get out of here."
The two walked out of the room, yet again, in search of food.