Max sulked all the way up to her floor and through the door to the apartment she shared with her roommate, Kendra.
She hadn't required a roommate as part of mission parameters, but she had posited that it might draw less attention if she had friends. She'd found a posting at Jam Pony for roommate needed and figured a nice, normal roommate was in order.
But of course, life was unpredictable and gave her a busty platinum blonde with an effervescent personality and insatiable libido. Kendra constantly brought men home. She loved men, and men loved her. Max kind of admired Kendra's carefree attitude, since she herself didn't have the luxury of falling in love. She was a soldier.
Kendra was spooning ice cream into a bowl when she heard Max open the door. She looked up to Max's sullen face, smiling. "Hey, stranger," she began.
Max's grin grew quickly, ready for another of Kendra's stories. "Hey," she greeted back, eying the ice cream. Looked like Rocky Road. It wasn't her favorite, but who could begrudge a little cold, sweet comfort? "Got a bite for me?"
Kendra nodded, grabbing a second bowl from the cupboard, and dug into the tub. "Where were you today? This totally gorgeous Swede brought his son in for lessons and paid with coffee and mint leaves."
As the blond pushed ice cream off the spoon into the bowl, Max slipped her jacket off and hung it on the chair back. "Blue eyes?"
Kendra smiled knowingly.
"Did you tell him you accept other forms of payment?" Max joked, sitting at the kitchen island.
Kendra pushed the bowl to Max. She'd offered Japanese language lessons for children for over a year and understood the struggles of the modern family in the broken world, often bartering instead of asking for cash specifically. It's how she acquired various hard-to-get items like toothpaste, coffee and gas.
"Very funny. Just saying mint leaves are rare, plus, he stayed after a few minutes to tell me how hard it is being a single father these days."
Eyes widening in mirth, Max's lips split in a suggestive smile. "Oh, he's totally hitting on you. Did you invite him over for a mocha-jito? Little coffee, little mint, little bit of extra payment?"
Kendra nearly threw the spoon at Max. "Hey, I'm not a slut."
"You know what they say… if the fuzzy handcuffs fit..."
EQ8 Technologies, 2:38 AM
Max waited impatiently for the hard drive to finish copying onto Zack's clean one. "Can't this thing go any faster?" she asked.
Zack's lips formed a thin line. "You're being irrational."
"You're being robotic," she countered, not bothering to reign in the more acerbically human aspects of her personality.
He gave her a scornful tilt of the head, but didn't speak. When the drive finally finished, he disconnected the cable and handed the original drive to Max, whom shoved the drive into a black sack. "I'll wait ten minutes for you to exfil."
"Won't take me more than five."
"Still. I don't want to compromise you."
"Any more than I've already had to, anyway."
He grit his teeth nearly imperceptibly, save for the bulges of his jaw. "Your sarcasm is unnecessary, soldier. Also, that's not the point."
"Have I ever been off my mission parameters? Ever?"
"No." Zack put his copy of the drive into a briefcase made specifically for it, refusing to look at her.
"So what makes you think I'm gonna start now?"
Fed up, Zack clasped the case shut. "You are nearing insubordination, soldier. Are you prepared to take it further?"
Get your shit together, she self-talked. "No, sir. Sorry, sir." She fucking hated when he pulled rank on her. Hated it.
"Meet you at the rendezvous point in one hour," he barked.
Max nodded curtly and took off toward the exit. She reached Logan's car in four minutes and thirty-nine seconds, feeling superior satisfaction that Zack could eat his words later. Flinging the passenger's side door open, she climbed in, settling the sack on the floorboard between her feet.
Logan smiled triumphantly at their acquisition, put the car in gear, and pulled a squarish plastic box from his jacket pocket. A box with one red button top center. Max had no doubts in her mind for what this box had been designed.
She looked back at the building, trying to school her features. She hoped Zack had already made it out of the building. He could have gone out the opposite side of the building for all she cared – he just had to have made it out already.
"Now for the last part of the mission," Logan said.
Stall. Stall like you've never fucking stalled before, she screamed mentally. Turning back to Logan, Max looked at the detonator. "Wait, what's that?"
He took a small breath. "You don't need me to explain it to you, Max. It's the last part of the mission."
"You never told me about this," she reasoned. Mission parameters were to get the drive and get the hell out. And she'd done that.
Logan looked into her eyes. "I couldn't," he started. "I've been thinking I might have a mole. For a couple of weeks now."
Worried he would push the button, Max's features moved from worried to infuriated. Inciting a fight might distract him long enough for Zack to get out. "And you thought it was me?"
His brows turned up defensively, as if he was truly sorry, but the look on his face conveyed otherwise. "I'm sorry, but I needed to rule you out. What I do… what we do… it's very sensitive."
His whole stupid fucking face made her sick. "I can't believe this."
Logan's thumb hovered over the button.
"Why do we have to blow the building?"
"Just in case," he said heartlessly, and depressed the button.
She snapped back to the building as the explosion rocked the ground. The windows shattered outward, followed by plumes of flames. She felt the tears building, the realization hitting that Zack worked only by the book – followed orders to a 'T,' and he would never adjust the operation unless he saw that his life was in imminent danger. And he would have had to see it with his own two eyes. She'd stalled Logan for only two minutes. It wasn't enough time.
She sniffed quietly, just once. Sliding her emotions into a neat little box, a box already filled with the guilty shreds of her humanity and regretted inactions, and pushed that box under the current of her façade.
