Revamped!

[Also, don't expect weekly updates since school and two other stories are a lot]. [2020: *laughs at being in university summer school with five stories in progress on this site, three and soon-to-be four of those having weekly updates, two being revamped, and five new works-in-progress*]

Copyright - Totally Spies (Marathon)


Chapter 74: Escaping SHIELD Island Part One

Somewhere Over the Pacific Ocean - 21:17 PM

Iqadi sits in the pilot's seat of the jet, looking ahead at the horizon. Once her jet is steady, she takes a relieving breath as she relaxes. From this point forwards, it should be an easy flight to America.

"I'm now putting the jet on autopilot. How are you doing?" She asks Imanu whom she's keeping in contact with through an audio system on the jet.

Imanu: What do you mean? I'm fine.

Iqadi smirks to herself. "My parents have left for South Africa and since I'm not in Wakanda either, you're in charge of the country on your own which you feared the moment I met you."

Imanu: That was seven years ago.

"And has anything changed?"

No response. Iqadi smiles to herself again for getting her husband and leaving him speechless. Her father once told her that the key to a happy marriage is balancing each other out (although he argues that her mother was and still is all-things perfection). Within the seven years, Iqadi and Imanu have been happy with the occasional sadness appearing.

There's still no answer from him.

At this point, it isn't silent because of a marital lack of communication or because Imanu is much too proud to admit his flaws (which he isn't. He's too modest). Iqadi doesn't know why it's silent which scares her.

"Imanu?" She calls.

Nothing.

Her heart stops a little since her first thought is that something dangerous is happening to him on his end. A flash blinds her eyes. Something could be happening to him now and she's here flying away from Wakanda. Iqadi's first instinct is to turn the jet around and return to her country but that's when she realizes that the problem is on her end since her altitude level is dropping. Unsure of the problem, Iqadi attempts to reprogram her jet but nothing is working for some reason.

"Imanu!" Iqadi exclaims, pressing all the communication buttons. "Do you copy?!"

No response.

As a last-minute plan to steady her jet, Iqadi turns her eyes white and fills the sky with the strongest winds to carry herself. Her lightning fills the sky to take out anyone that might be following her as she looks ahead and sees an island in the middle of the ocean. Iqadi takes a breath and can only hope for the best.

-o-

Wakanda's Militaristic Aerial Base - 19:19 PM

"Iqadi?!" Imanu exclaims from Wakanda's control centre.

Nothing is coming back but static.

Imanu curses under his breath in his dialect as he paces around the room, remaining as calm as he can. He quickly goes on the computer he was using to keep in contact with Iqadi and opens the jet's flight path. He follows the screen's dotted line from Wakanda up to where it suddenly stops which is where he assumes Iqadi's jet went out. He clicks and the screen zooms in on an aerial view of an island.

Imanu sits back and thinks for a minute. He knows that if Iqadi's jet was going down, she would have to have crashed-landed it somewhere, especially is someone was following her given the circumstances, and that's the only place she could've done so. Imanu clicks, deciding to use satellite footage to view the island in hopes of seeing Iqadi's jet and hopefully her alive.

As he continues zooming in, he eventually gets blocked out. Imanu looks at the screen and sees a SHIELD logo in his way.

Imanu sits back and takes a deep breath. This makes everything harder than it should be. He knows Iqadi wouldn't want to get them involved or her parents, so he's tugging at straws.

He's the only royal in Wakanda at the moment. It's his decision.

-o-

SHIELD Headquarters - 9:33 AM

The team all sits in the lounge, waiting for their next assignment. The agents and Daniel are reading reports on their laptops while Emily is answering emails on her phone, and Apollo is giving her shoulders a massage. (Apollo was so bored that he actually offered the massage and Emily wouldn't let this possibly rare opportunity go to waste. That, and his massages were so relaxing since his muscles were so strong). They look up at the entrance as an escort agent walks in. It's a new graduate from the Academy. They only know that because they were in that newbie position not so long ago.

"Sorry for interrupting," the newbie agent says, "but you have an important visitor who urgently needs to see you."

"Thank you," Xavier responds. "Send them in."

The agent nods and opens an arm outwards as they open the door. Imanu enters gives thanks as the agent bows his head for possibly the fiftieth time, even after Imanu said they didn't have to do that fifty times. Everyone rises in shock to see him here since they weren't expecting him at all, especially without Iqadi. As they greet him, Apollo looks at Emily and she already knows why he's confused.

"That's Imanu," Emily says, enunciating every syllable in his name. "Iqadi's husband, Prince Consort of Wakanda."

Apollo says nothing mostly because the name "Iqadi" doesn't even ring any bells in his head. Emily sympathetically pats his shoulder.

"It'll come to you someday," Emily reassures as she closes the door. "Hopefully."

She and Apollo greet Imanu in a series of hugs and handshakes.

"Apollo!" Imanu exclaims. "Wow. How have you been?"

"Better," Apollo responds, "Prince Imanu."

Imanu pauses, glancing at Emily. He knew something's up the moment Apollo used his title. That's the moment they inform him about Apollo's unknown amnesia which he didn't ask more. If they didn't know why he has no memories, what could he possibly ask?

"Where's Iqadi?" Angela asks Imanu.

Imanu takes a shaky breath. "Are we off the record?"

"We're not on it."

Imanu nods. "Emily, are any of your devices being monitored by SHIELD?"

Emily laughs a little. "Of course not. They think they're monitoring me but nope."

"Are any of yours?" He looks at everyone else. They shake their heads.

Imanu nods as he borrows one of their laptops. As he inserts a USB and starts typing, the others are silent, a little suspicious about this, especially since he still didn't properly answer the question about Iqadi. It had to be something too classified if Imanu has a USB. They didn't think Wakanda had those since they're too advanced.

"Are we going to do something illegal?" Merida asks, a little excited if the answer is the one she wants.

"Depends on your clearance level," Imanu responds.

"I have no clearance level," Emily admits, showing him the parole bracelet which she only leaves activated just so SHIELD won't question her laptop (which she already bypassed their security).

"Neither do I," Apollo admits which was a given.

"Technically, I lost a lot of mine," Daniel says.

Imanu nods a little as he turns the screen around and shows them Iqadi's flight path.

"Iqadi was on her way here to see you," Imanu says. "She had a dream with Sigyn and didn't know what to make of it. We were in full communication before her jet malfunctioned and she was possibly forced to crash it down on this island."

"Why come to us when you could've sent Wakandan officials to check?" Xavier asks him.

"Lots of reasons. Iqadi wanted this trip off the record and she left now because her parents are out of town. I can't pinpoint her location because the jet's systems are down. I could've gotten our forces to search and rescue but we'd face an international conflict."

Before anyone can ask what Imanu meant, he continues typing until the SHIELD logo that he got in Wakanda shows on the screen. James overrides the logo so they could all see and the jaws of only the agents of the group drop in pure horror.

"Why are your faces like that?" Imanu asks.

"Because she landed on the worst island possible," James replies.

"What do you mean?"

"SHIELD has multiple islands all over the world," Merida explains. "Military bases, training facilities, research labs, storage units, whatever. Iqadi didn't land on any of those islands. She landed on the island that SHIELD uses as a prison."

"I fail to see the problem in that," Emily comments.

"That SHIELD prison isn't like the standard SHIELD prisons here or a standard jail county. It's an island surrounded by a dome, like a snow globe, that criminals are allowed to roam around on since the ones there can't be contained in a simple cell for whatever reason, or failed mutated and sentient experiments linger there. It's worse than the Raft or the Sandbox, which is ironic because the island is literally a sandbox. The prison was made for people to come in and not out. The agents assigned to that post stay for a month to a year, only rotating when supplies come in. It's morbid but it's all a part of the job."

Hearing that makes Imanu all tense as if he wasn't already. He shakes his head a little, noticing flaws in those statements given by his friends.

"But if it's so heavily secured then you should have been notified when Iqadi crashed there, right?" Imanu questions.

"That's not how the island works," Angela says. "Once there's a breach in security and all agents assigned are compromised or dead, the island is set to blow and that's when we notice. If they were able or alive, they would've cancelled the alarm."

Xavier checks the island's status and his face drops. "The timer's going down."

"What does that mean?" Imanu asks.

"We have about seven hours until the island blows. By the time we all get in the air and arrive at the island, there would be about four hours left."

"That's not the worse part," Daniel adds. "The island had a security breach and the problem isn't fixed since the clock is still ticking down. Any agents on the clock there would've fixed it if they just saw that Iqadi crashed landed there. That means the SHIELD agents there are either disloyal or dead, probably the latter. And not to mention that since the security systems are down, the island is a free-for-all in terms of criminals escaping."

"And the ones there are probably some that even our parents had difficulty putting away," James says.

"There's the chance that these criminals are unaware of the security breach," an optimistic Apollo says. "I mean, the clock's already been going for three hours so why didn't they just leave?"

Merida raises an eyebrow in consideration to that. "In another case, that could work but a freaking jet crashed onto their island. Not only do they know that they can escape but they have a way out."

"That is only under the assumption that the jet Iqadi used survived the crash without any damages."

"They could easily fix it up," Emily says.

"I say that we quit wasting time and just get prepared to leave," James says.

"Agreed," Xavier states.

"And my wife?" Imanu questions.

Everyone else is quiet. Nobody wants to bring up the possibility of Iqadi being dead although it's a possibility and Imanu already knows said possibility. It's just one of those facts that should be left unsaid.

"She's Iqadi," Angela reassures to them. "She'll be fine."

If only everyone else fully believed her. Lucky for Angela, she didn't say that statement with complete confidence in herself.

"Besides," Apollo says, putting his arm over Imanu's shoulders, "maybe the prisoners left her alone if they assumed she's doing diplomacy and they don't know the clock's ticking."

-o-

SHIELD Island - 7:27 AM

Iqadi wakes up after finally being aware that she's currently baking in the sun. She makes her hands into a fist and feels wet sand forming into a shape just as the low tide hits her feet before returning to the sea. Iqadi opens her eyes and is instantly hit with the light, causing her to squint. Once her eyes adjust, all she sees is the greenery that almost reminds her of Wakanda. Iqadi stands up slowly, trembling as a cold breeze blows against her. Once she's on her feet, she looks around her and brushes off the sand that stuck to her face.

She's on an island - a forest of some type with a bordering beach and the ocean.

Iqadi begins walking through the moss-covered forest. The sky is clear and the sun hits down at an alarmingly hot rate, even the trees that seem to grow up to the sky provides humid shade and non-efficient protection. She starts sweating but sees a river up ahead. Iqadi runs over to it and kneels on the ground to cup some refreshing water to splash on her face. The rocks littered in the river are smooth and wet, covered in reeds and dew.

She walks through the forest and notes how peaceful it is. It's so quiet, almost spiritual. She can feel the tranquil energy and felt it from the shoreline. The island made a pretty impression from the distance. Chalky cliffs stand out against the skyline and deep blue ocean, making the sand look like fine coconut sugar and the canopy of thick trees like barbed jade.

The further Iqadi walks in the shade of the greenery, the less she notices the growing shadow behind her. When she stops, wondering why it suddenly got so dark, she holds out her hands and makes them into claws.

Lucky for her, she's dressed in her Panther suit and ready for battle.


Stay Tuned - Will the team be able to rescue Iqadi? Will Iqadi be able to protect herself?