Chappie Three
AN: I would like to announce that I am offering to beta for people :) Check out my beta profile.
Also, to all those putting this story on their alerts and not reviewing… some written appreciation would be very much appreciated by me :)
I know it's cliché, but I like to know what people think… and remember the competition ^_^
Alex stepped off the airport bus, grimacing at the protestations of his joints, turned arthritic in the penetrating cold. He rubbed at his frozen ears, hoping to eke out some measure of warmth.
He'd only seen the safe house as a picture in the list of safe houses provided by MI6, and the real thing looked a great deal smaller than he'd imagined. The cheery blue stood out glaringly from the grey-white tundra of the surrounding environment, and the wooden flowers decorating the eaves made for an interesting contrast to the rock and ice.
Walking carefully so as not to slip, Alex approached the front door and opened it with purple, shaking fingers. God, Greenland was cold. And the smell of fish was terrible, at least where he was. Why did MI6 feel the need to have a safe house here, anyway? Why not in a capital city?
It was lucky they did, though. What villain in their right mind would think to look for Alex in Greenland's country? Hopefully, Alex could set up a plan of action here, then move off – somewhere warmer would be good – to implement it.
Stepping inside the delightfully insulated cabin, Alex closed the door quickly. First things first: find a heater.
After much frenzied searching, he found a console for the entire cabin, and set the temperature to a comfortable 24°C. Neatly tucked into a nook just below the console, Alex also found a stash of money and a charged laptop. Lucky; he would have been helpless without it. Once again, he cursed his hasty escape from his flat and wished he'd brought a more useful bag along.
Settling down to business, Alex booted it up. To his surprise, it flashed a message.
PASSWORD REQUIRED! Not case sensitive. ;)
"No!"
Why would they put a password on a computer where people needed to use it? How was he supposed to know what it was?
Honestly, he sometimes thought MI6 were too paranoid. What was the world coming to, he bemoaned mentally. Passwords in a lonely safehouse in Greenland? What next? Koala bears weren't bears?* Greenland wasn't… green?
He looked back down at the screen, still stubbornly flashing its message. At least there didn't seem to be a timer. There was still some sense in the world.
Now. What could the password be?
Cautiously, he typed in 'MI6'. Would it really be that obvious?
ACCESS DENIED! TWO ATTEMPTS REMAINING!
A pause, then,
PASSWORD REQUIRED! Not case sensitive. ;)
No, it wasn't that obvious. Drat.
The password had to be something that an agent could figure out quickly. It was staring in his face and laughing, he was sure of it. Sighing, he looked around the room. Sadly, no laughing clowns greeted his visual foray. Instead, he saw merely the mundane: kitchen bench, fireplace, table, chairs… Yawn. Briefly, he wondered what a visual representation of a yawn would be. Backwards grawlixes?
Back to the task at hand. An ordinary room, containing an extraordinary… password. Somewhere. Oh, where is the password that fits with this? he bemoaned internally. Where is it? Where? Where?
Then it hit him. The idea was so clichéd that he almost laughed out loud.
Quickly, he stood up and placed the laptop on the floor. Working briskly, he felt about the fireplace, in and around the logs. There it was – a tiny hook in one of the bricks.
With a feeling of triumph, he pulled the brick out and turned it over.
MADE YOU LOOK.
Outraged, Alex threw the brick on the floor and delivered a roundhouse kick to the wall above the fireplace. To his surprise, not only did his foot go straight through the wall, but the brick split open on the floor to reveal a laminated piece of paper.
Deciding to deal with the hole in the wall later, he bent down to pick it up.
DIRTY CHOOK.
What did 'chook' mean? Some kind of slang for a chux? Well, it didn't really matter. Gleefully, he swaggered back to the laptop. Holding his breath, he tried 'dirty chook'.
Nothing happened. Then,
ACCESS DENIED! ONE ATTEMPTS REMAINING!
They didn't even have the decency to alter their program so that it had correct grammar. Alex growled and hit the keyboard – lightly. After all, he didn't want to destroy it and have no laptop, and have to pay for the damage.
What could they mean, 'dirty chook'? Was it all part of a joke? At his expense, because now he only had 'one attempts remaining'! Perhaps it was time to look in that glorious hole in the wall.
When he saw what it contained, he had to restrain the scream of anguish that threatened. For inside the hole was a reasonably large roasted chicken, slightly decomposed and covered in dust. So 'chook' was 'chicken'?
"Dirty chook," he swore, and reached in to get it out.
Inside the chicken was a small, grey box. Inside that was yet another piece of laminated paper, this time with the words:
ON WHAT DO THEY HANG SUCH A CHOOK?
What did they hang it on? Some kind of cooking implement? Alex strode to the kitchen and began pulling out all the drawers, dumping their contents onto the floor. Working quickly, he also emptied all the cupboards. When all the kitchen implements lay in a pile in the middle of the kitchen, Alex sorted through them for all the possible chook-hanging tools. At last, he found it.
It was a long, curved, metal implement, and he wouldn't have recognised it as being a chook-hanging tool but for the laminated paper it skewered. With a feeling of great triumph, Alex read the message.
IT IS A PLACE OF DIRT, YET OF CLEANING TOO.
What was this person's obsession with dirt?
Anyhow, it had to be somewhere in the house. It couldn't be the kitchen as he had already searched quite thoroughly and he doubted that the previous occupant would hide later messages in the same room twice. The only other rooms were the living room, with the fireplace, and there had already been clues there; the bedroom; the bathroom; and the dining rom.
Alex thought for a minute. The bedroom, the bathroom, or the dining room? He decided to check all three, just to be safe.
The carpeted bedroom was empty bar the wardrobe, which he emptied, and a single bed, covered with a quilt. Alex dove into the search, emptying the pillow from its case, rummaging into its filling, taking the quilt cover off from the quilt… To his disappointment, even the mattress was filled only with fluffy white cotton filling. The message-writer had made him cover the floor in fluff for no reason, Alex huffed angrily.
He began to clear up the cotton and shove it back into the various place whence it had come. It was then that he noticed something. Some of the fluff was… sticking. It was as if the carpeted floor with the cotton was acting like Velcro – but it wasn't the entire floor, only in some places, in lines, even. Almost like letters, perhaps.
Could the previous occupant have recarpeted the entire floor? For a mere password?
Alex spread the cotton onto the floor and carefully scraped away the cotton in the areas it wasn't sticking. Surveying his handiwork from the door, a smile grew on his face. The previous occupant had probably been slightly crazy, for the Velcro-like floor did indeed spell a message:
A MUNDANE AND FUNCTIONAL ITEM, WHAT IS THE BASIS OF OUR ENTIRE CULTURE?
How extraordinarily profound. Unfortunately, Alex had no idea what it could possibly be, and so he had indeed covered the floor in fluff for no good reason. He went to look in the bathroom.
Upon his arrival, Alex surveyed the depressingly bare room before he went in. There was one toilet, one shower, one basin, and one roll of toilet paper. There was, however, not one window in sight.
First, he checked the roll of toilet paper. It was an ordinary roll, white and soft. Probably lab tested. It contained no message for him, even when he unrolled the entire thing to look. Oh well, at least the floor wasn't so cold on his feet with the toilet paper covering it.
The basin, too, was – or so it seemed – an ordinary basin. There was one hot and one cold tap, although the hot one took an abominably long while to become so. The water looked clean. The drain seemed to work. No laminated paper appeared when he unscrewed the taps, or when he plunged a hand into the slimy drain.
Alex was supremely thankful his manbag had soap.
Then he decided to check the toilet. Almost able to smell the sweet smell of success – or at least, he hoped that was what he was smelled – he lifted the top off the toilet cistern. Hm, water. Pipes. And… could it be? Yet another piece of laminated paper greeted his frozen grin. So, the basis of the previous agent's culture was toilets?
To his delight, he didn't even have to take it out to read it:
YOU REALLY TOOK YOUR TIME. PASSWORD IS 'BLUNT'. DUH.
Rolling his eyes, Alex replaced the lid of the cistern and almost ran back to the laptop.
Slowly, and very carefully, he typed in 'BLUNT'.
ACCESS GRANTED!
"YES!" screeched Alex.
Now he just had to find an internet connection.
xxx
Much later that day, Alex was trawling through criminal databases, searching for whoever was after him, using a list of suggested sites (and the corresponding list of passwords) that he'd found already on the laptop. For some reason, Club Penguin had been at the very top. Alex decided not to think about that too much. He would be much happier still believing the protectors of his country were above such – he flicked his hair – childish pursuits.
There was also a list detailing preferred accommodation sites in various countries, Greenland included. This particular safehouse wasn't mentioned. Alex sighed.
The first site he went to was a forum, which called itself The Baritones. There was no wondering where they got their criminal inspiration.
Tony: u watch sopranos the other day? /icycold
JenMel69: yea. plannin on doin heist like dat sometime? woot woot eh
After the first few threads, Alex very quickly closed the site.
The next one was more promising. Titled 'The Omega Sector', the conversations didn't seem to be quite as inane, although Alex marvelled that potential criminals typed so … well, so un-criminal-ly. Even childishly.
icy: u guys wanna get 2gether friday?
fishhead: gonna do more on that kid eh? roflmao amirite?
icy: thinking about it… maybe u n yellowfang can help me out lololol
He wondered who 'fishhead' and 'icy' were, and whether they were important. Looking at most conversations, 'icy' seemed to be pretty ubiquitous, along with 'fishhead'. Perhaps one of the two was the boss, and the other possibly a valuable right-hand man. Either way, they were, at the very least, to his reasoning, reasonably high up.
Eventually Alex decided to create a persona himself, and join in on the conversations. Hopefully, if he could play his cards right, he would be able to figure out who had tried – and was still trying – to kill him.
After some consideration, he came up with the perfect nom de plume. Who better than Shakespeare's tragic hero?
McBeth: what u talking about? /interested
A moment went by.
icy: wtf who r u anyway?
Delighted, he replied.
McBeth: new to omega. not new to underworld tho :)
…
The user icy has blocked you from this thread.
Alex frowned. What had he done wrong? Was the smiley face too much? He'd thought he was smart, treating them like normal everyday people who enjoyed the occasional happy face, but maybe the clichés were right. Perhaps evil masterminds weren't like normal people.
Just as he was about to create another nom de plume to continue his sleuthing, a pop-up informed him of a new message. He opened his account's inbox. The message was from fishhead.
Prove your worth. We'll be in contact. ;)
-fishhead
Alex crowed in triumph, reaching for the 'reply' button. Maybe criminal masterminds were like normal people after all. However, as if predicting his next move, the phone rang. Without thinking, he picked it up.
"Hello?"
There was silence.
"Alex Rider," rasped a voice, deep and almost unintelligible.
Alex froze. How had they found him? "How do you know my name?" he responded nervously.
Silence greeted him. A muffled voice, not quite as deep but even more unintelligible, asked, "Did he say— Is it… him? icy?"
Cursing mentally, he kicked himself. Now they knew it was Alex Rider on the phone. It was more likely that it was just fishhead, thinking he was talking to 'McBeth'. Considering whom Alex was up against, it was probably child's play to trace an internet connection to a phone.
Then again, why had they said 'Alex Rider' if they had wanted McBeth?
He stopped. The kid they were talking about. It was him. That's why they'd said his name; to introduce the name to 'McBeth'. The evil mastermind behind fishhead was after him. He'd found them, and only on the second try. But who was fishhead?
As he tried not to choke or swear into the phone, the deep voice came again, with a calm and confident promise.
"Greenland, hmm? We will find you, Alex Rider."
Beep, beep, beep, beep, bee–
Alex slammed down the phone.
He had to leave. Immediately.
xxx
Before he left, however, Alex had a few things to do: (1) Find a better bag than his manbag and some more clothes, and (2) leave a message for Greenland's next visitor from MI6. These things were important.
The first task was easy; without much looking, Alex found a Samsonite and some clothes in the wardrobe of the bedroom. It was lucky that he was tall for his age, and that MI6 obviously had some smaller-than-average agents. Or he was taking girls' clothes. He firmly pushed the thought out of his mind. If only he'd taken a different bag from his flat.
As Alex was rummaging through the clothing, trying to pick the most flattering out of the ones that fitted, he came across a bundle wrapped in a polar fleece blanket. Upon unwrapping it, he found to his great chagrin, a laptop identical to the one in the other room. Somehow he'd missed it, thinking it was just more clothes, when he'd emptied the wardrobe earlier.
He switched it on and clicked the account called 'Circus'.
And that was it. He was in. No password, no flashing lights, no annoying quest.
It was only his want for a computer to bring with him that stayed Alex's urge to throw it against the wall.
He'd take it with him – it wasn't as if there wasn't another laptop for the next occupant to use. Of course, if he was to take this laptop, it had to be secure. He set it to require a few fingerprints from his left hand, in a specific order: index, middle, ring, middle. His pinky and thumb fingers wasn't important enough to warrant this important task, and the sequence seemed to somehow resonate in his soul.
And with that done, he wondered what to do for the other computer's code. It was demanding to be reset and there were so many choices to frustrate the next occupant of the safe house, just as he had been frustrated…
Alex looked around. What was there? A fireplace with a broken clock on the mantle, the kitchen with well-stocked cupboards, the bedroom... After a little deliberation, it came to him.
With hurried movements, Alex grabbed a pen and notepaper from the coffee table in front of the fireplace. Ripping off the first sheet of paper, he wrote.
The game is afoot! Look for a book in a nook where you cook.
This first note was placed on the keyboard of the laptop, under the lid. That was easier than thinking of the fireplace. Alex's next note was placed in the oven. It wasn't integral to the quest, but it would be handy. It read:
You know my method. It is founded upon the observation of trifles.
Reaching into one of the cupboards to retrieve one of the few recipe books (apparently MI6 agents were more fond of 2-minute noodles than home-based cooking), Alex found the section devoted to trifles. With his pen, he circled letters and words from each of the trifle recipes, eventually forming the message:
I cannot make bricks without clay.
And then, in an Inuit-made clay pot resting innocently on the fireplace's mantle, a fourth note was placed.
How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the what? – Five lowercase letters.
To complete his victim's quest, Alex changed the laptop's password to 'truth', and set it to reset after five minutes. Whoever had gone before, and allowed only three attempts ever, was cruel. He left Greenland with a sense of satisfaction only slightly marred by trepidation.
AN: You may not have noticed my author's note in chapter one, regarding my competition:
The person before February 13, 2016 to review with the highest number of pop culture/TV/movie/etc references that I have made (e.g. Staying Alive by The Bee Gees, prologue, "You can tell by the way I use my walk") will win a one-shot from me, of their choice. The prize is limited to fandoms I know (if I can't write it, I'll ask you to choose something else) and the rules of FFNET (nothing explicit, please) :) I reserve the right to ask you to choose a different story.
In this chapter, there are several references :)