Chapter 1

If I had known how my life was going to turn out, I would have fast forwarded past the bad parts and paused on the good parts.  But that’s the thing about life, I’ve learned.  You can’t predict anything.  Prime example: at the age of seventeen, at a hockey game, I never could have foreseen a little black rubber disc careening straight into my nose, shattering the bones in my face, keeping me bedridden and home schooled for the rest of my high school career.  I missed out on my proms, footballs games, concerts, drugs, sex, friends, everything.  That one little puck changed my teenage life in more ways than anyone could have predicted.  It just so happened during my time as an example of poor attentiveness at sporting events, I picked up an exceptional talent with video games.  My parents, feeling bad about what had befallen me, doused me in electronic amusement.  I had every gaming system you could sneeze at and just about every game.  After those six months of physical healing and emotional stasis, I gained uncanny hand-eye coordination.  

My abilities showed themselves outside of video games for the first time when I was in my first year of college.  Half drunk, I sat in the common room of a huge house a bunch of us rented just off campus.  I spun around in a swivel chair, nauseating myself immensely.  One of my drunken friends who was standing around “mistook” a baseball for a tennis ball.  Nevertheless, whatever he thought he had picked up, he threw right at me.  Without stopping or screaming or ducking, I snapped my hand up and snatched the ball right out of the air before it got three inches from my face.  In the mode of wasted collegiates, everyone hooted and hollered and we continued through the night playing a game called “What can we throw at Ben’s face?”  After that, I was a celebrity.  

Reality set in once college ended and I needed a serious job.  I entered the business field with a few buddies from high school.  Our business closed down before it even got on its feet.  None of us had enough credit to buy a Kia.  Withoutr lease and a loan for a car.  It was when I just got settled into my apartment that the credit card letters started pouring in.  In no time at all, I was swimming in the kind of dept Oprah does shows about:

“Young men and women trapped under tens of thousands of dollars of debt.  Some find a way out.  Some don’t.  Today we have the parents of Martain Swizel, a young man whose fifty thousand dollar credit card debt sent his life spiraling downward and eventually drove him to suicide.”  

Well, if you know me, you know I’d never kill myself.  I could have the entire government trying to suck my wallet dry and I wouldn’t consider suicide.  That’s not me.  I’m a little too down-to-earth to ever think about it.  My debt, however, was piling up, and with interest I couldn’t see any kind of light at the end of the tunnel.  Watching TV on a daily basis gave me a lot of exposure to the business of debt consolidation.  One day I decided it was time to wrap all of this crap up and straighten myself out.  

I opened the phone book and picked a random debt consolidator.  “Hello?”  

“Hi,” I said.  “Is this ‘Don’t Look Back Debt Consolidation?’”  

The person on the other end, a woman, sounded surprised.  “Yes.  Yes it is.  What can we do for you?”  

“Well I have a lot of debt and I need to get rid of it.”  

“Of course you do, sir,” she said with an edge to her voice that made my stomach nervous.  “What is your social security number?”  

I hesitated for a moment.  I know you shouldn’t give out your social security number willy-nilly, but what could these people possibly steal from me?  So, I gave it to her.  

“Okay, Benjamin Jenkins,” she said, her voice becoming exponentially more irritated.  “We’ll contact you tomorrow.  Thank you for calling.”  And she hung up.  

Now remember how I was talking about not being able to predict what happens?  I still believe it, even to this day.  After all I’ve been through.  I still believe it.  

Next day, I got a huge mail delivery.  I opened the letters in this order ( I’ll summarize the contents for you):  

• Car loan statement – Thank you for your payment of $15,766  
• Credit card statement – Thank you for your payment of $7,994  
• Second credit card statement – Thank you for your payment of $11,879  
• Third credit card statement – Thank you for your payment of $5,939  
• Student loan statement – Thank you for your payment of $44,230  
• Dear Benjamin Jenkins,

Thank you for choosing Don’t Look Back Debt Consolidators.  We have discussed your debt with your creditors and have taken care of your debt.  With careful consideration we will assign you with a payment plan in ten to fifteen business days.

Sincerely,

James Fredericks

Needless to say, I was quite shocked.  Is that what debt consolidators really did?  Was this some kind of a joke?  A hoax that would leave me in the laundry room in some horrifying prison?  I hoped desperately it wasn’t.  But there was no way for me to be sure.  And the next day, not ten to fifteen business days mind you, I received a reply.  

A rather large man in a black suit knocked on my door.  I answered politely and was subsequently thrown very impolitely into a black unremarkable car.  I sat in the middle of the back seat with the man.  The drive took me in circles and I had no idea where I was.  It didn’t help either that I’m terrible with directions.  I should have just told them before they went through the trouble of throwing me off course, then they might not have wasted so much gas.  We pulled up to a regular office building in one of the many suburbs of Philadelphia.  The man escorted me into the building, into a small medical room where he took my finger prints and a blood sample.  Then he left the room and my heart finally had a chance to beat, which it did quite rapidly.  My chest felt like it would rattle right out of my skin.  The room looked like it had been transplanted into this building from a proper hospital.  It even had posters on the walls: “What causes emphysema?”  “The symptoms of osteoporosis”  “What is high blood pressure?”  I read the posters patiently, word for word.  

It still boggles my mind that I stayed so calm there.  I could have been shot by a firing squad in a few moments, but for some reason, I stayed calm.  My heart raced, sure, but I wasn’t freaking out.  I’d always imagined myself in these sorts of situations, fighting through a slew of highly trained agents to reclaim my freedom.  Inside, though, I knew my best bet was to do exactly what I was told.  

After twenty minutes, two more men in suits came in, but these men were considerably smaller than the first.  They didn’t smile.  They didn’t shake my hand.  They put a silver briefcase onto my lap.  “The address is an old warehouse on the Chester waterfront.  You’ll meet a contact there.”  

I looked at them plaintively, but it didn’t help.  “Why?  What am I doing?”  

One of them said, “You have to pay for your debt being erased.”  

“This is your payment,” said the other.  

“You have to kill a target of ours.”  

“Good bye.”  And they left me in the room with a silver briefcase.  

I was returned home safe and sound by the first big man.  It was when I got home that I was shaken for the first time.  Instinctively, I opened a beer and fell asleep on the couch.  Hours later, moonlight filling my living room, I realized I was in some serious trouble.  Stupid me for not researching the debt consolidation business.  Suddenly hungry and curious as to whether or not my life was about to come to an end, I went to the kitchen and made myself a turkey and cheese sandwich.  My cat Spanks rubbed my leg and looked up at me with big green eyes.  

“Maybe I should take a look in the briefcase,” I said to Spanks, who replied with a disinterested “mew.”  “Yeah, I know.”  So I took my sandwich and a diet Coke and went to the living room where I proceeded to open the silver briefcase.  I pursed my lips in confusion because I had never seen such a device.  Surrounded by very sturdy yet very soft foam was a silvery contraption that could have been a gun from a thousand years in the future.  It had three parts to it, which were explained in the instructions.  I fitted the pieces together and held the thing as the picture said.  In my hand it looked like a hand gun.  The piece on the back end looked like an armguard from a crutch, to protect my forearm I figured.  The front end, on the end of the barrel, was what looked to me like a James Bond-like silencer.  

“This has got to be a gun,” I said to Spanks while he cleaned himself next to me on the couch.  “Oh, look at this.”  Out of the case I took a sheet of paper informing me of the time and place I was expected at the warehouse on the Chester waterfront.  “Oh, look.”  I also found a little card with a diagram of the thing I held in my hand.  I noticed before I read the card that my sandwich was being infiltrated by a furry black and white cat.  

“This is weird,” I muttered.  “What the hell is a sonic muffler?  And…um…sonic shock absorber?  What the hell?”  I looked at my watch, thoroughly confused.  I had only thirty minutes to get to the warehouse.  A car pulled up in front of my house.  I wasn’t expecting a ride.  I pulled on my coat and went to the window.  It was the same black car as before.  

I wondered for a moment if they considered what would happen if I used this gun on the suits who were pushing me around.  I could kill them and take the car and then drive off to the office building, mow down everyone in there.  I’d take their credit cards and money and I’d raid the safe and break room fridge and then run off to Mexico or Sweden.  

“Oh, who am I kidding,” I said aloud.  “I wouldn’t stand a chance.”  It didn’t matter anyway.  In the trudging routine of life, I’d fallen right into the drudgery, and the hell if anyone even noticed me anymore.  I didn’t make much of an impact on the world each day so why not just do what these guys want.  I might as well take a chance.  

I skipped down the steps and jumped in the car, a smile across my face.  “Hello, big guy,” I said, expecting the brute who had retrieved me before.  Surprisingly, and much to my ephemeral pleasure, it was a woman.  She had on dark blue jeans and a nice vertically striped button-up-the-front shirt of blues.  Satisfyingly, the shirt was a little too small to contain her and the top three buttons were not buttoned.  

She fixed me with intense hazel eyes that swam somewhere between green and yellow.  She didn’t speak.  I stared at her, a little frightened.  Her dark brown hair framed her face and stopped at her shoulders just perfectly.  She was the epitome of manicured.  

“Sorry about the mix up there,” I said.  “Obviously you’re not a big guy.”  I spoke with a smoothness she didn’t seem to grasp, as if every other man who talked to her cowered under her glare and her striking beauty.  I didn’t cower, however, and I think it took her off guard.  

“Th-this is a job that we send idiots like you on because our real agents are far too valuable,” she said.  I thought for a moment about commenting on her nervously irate tone, but I let it go.  

I smirked, determined not to let her break me.  “How do you know I’m an idiot?”  

“You called our phone number,” she said matter-of-factly.  “We have no information in the phonebook, just a phone number.  We asked for your social security number and you gave it to us.  You’ve proven yourself as an idiot.”  

“Yeah, but all of my debt is gone.  If I pay you guys back with this little date we’re on, then I’m in the clear.”  I smiled inwardly at the way her eyes flared when I referred to the job as a date.  “What makes you guys so sure that I can’t do what you want me to do?”  

She looked at me like a head cheerleader looks at a band nerd.  “You don’t know a thing about what you are getting into.  You see, we put that phone number in the phonebook for the men and women that we want to recruit.  Once in a while an idiot like yourself will stumble upon it and call.  We send those buffoons into impossible missions that even our best agents can’t accomplish.  That way, we don’t waste an agent and we can report up to the top and say that we tried but failed.”  

I was a band nerd.  And I hated the way she was talking to me.  I frowned and curled my upper lip and stared forward.  “Don’t be so sure of yourself, tight-ass,” I said angrily, my voice dour and resentful.  “Just because I needed help with my credit and I called the wrong number doesn’t mean that I’m going to let some prude little inferiority complex tell me that I’m going to die.”  I think she might have begun to squirm in her seat.  She’d never been talked to like that before, I can tell you.  We stopped at the warehouse.  “When I get back, you better be waiting,” I said frigidly as I climbed out of the car.  I turned and looked her right in the eye.  “How many people have you thrown at this target?” I asked seriously.  

She looked me up and down, making sure I understood that I was one hundred percent expendable, and said, “Fifteen.”  

“Well when I get done with this guy, and I get back in this car, you better give me a job.  ’Cause I’m the best shot there is.  The hell if I’m dying today.”  Then I slammed the door shut and the car took off.  

I was pissed.  I mean, I was so angry that I probably would have hurt that woman if she had come back and tried to smart-talk me again.  I’ve never liked condescension.  In my mind, nobody deserved that kind of treatment.  I stalked onto the grounds of the warehouse and there was my contact, waiting patiently.  He was a withered old man, very inconspicuous.  He looked at me with young blue eyes.  I decided then this was a young man expertly disguised as an old man.  

“The mark is in the main storage room,” he told me quietly.  “He’s got four henchmen with him.  They are all armed.  They are waiting for a buyer to show up.”  

“Buyer?” I said.  “What do they sell?  Cocaine?  Weed?”  

The old man shook his head.  “Nothing you’ve ever heard of before.”  

“Well tell me about it,” I snapped.  My face still showed how irritated I was.  

The old man hesitated, but then shrugged.  “Oh well, you’re not living through this anyway.”  I think I might have let out a growl at that comment.  It didn’t help my mood.  “He’s selling Omicron Cells.”  

“What the hell is that?”  

“Omicron Cells are cells found in the spinal cord of beings from Omicron in the second closest solar system from Earth’s.”  

I stared at him blankly.  I felt my eyes burning with anticipation.  “Okay.  What do they do?”  

“Why?”  

“I want to know!  Tell me damn it!”  

“Fine, fine.  Omicron Cells act as what we call a radical hallucinogen when imbibed.  However, if one were to inject the cells into one’s spinal cord, an advanced growth process known as Hyper-pituitary Arrest would occur.  This process causes the Omicron Cells to fuse with the human cells which causes evolutionary steps of the Omicrons to show themselves in the human.  It is not desirable.  We’d rather not have the government freak out at us for letting a foreign cell into the human race.  We would have to find and kill all of the humans infected with the Omicron Cells.”  

“What do Omicrons have that is so great?” I asked, curious through my fury.  This man, though cooperative, still spoke as if I were a moron.  

“Mild telekinetic abilities such as pyrokinesis, hydrokinesis, terrakinesis, and aerokinesis.  These are forms of telekinesis that affect certain elements.  It is very, very dangerous.”  

“Has anyone ever actually used the Omicron Cells?” I asked.  

“There was one batch injected into the spinal cords of fifteen humans as an experiment.  We killed twelve of them and the other three died trying to escape us in a helicopter.  We shot them down into the Hudson River.”  

I nodded.  Unable to truly process all of this information, and staying with my new motto “I’m young, so live it up and take chances,” I looked and listened through the cracks of the old warehouse.  I was pissed, as you know.  And this was all pretty weird.  I didn’t have time to ask anymore useless questions.  I could hear the targets inside.  It was time for me to do something.  

“So when do you want me to go in?”  I asked.  

“Well, the buyer should be here in about fifteen minutes.”  

“Do you think the buyer is a guy my age?”  I asked.  

“I don’t know.  Usually a buyer is between twenty and forty years old.”  

“Okay, good.”  I stood up straight and slid my gun inside my coat.  “I look twenty-five don’t I?”  

“Um…yes.”  

“Good because I’m about that age.”  I turned away from him and walked toward the warehouse’s main storage area.  

“Wait!  What are you doing?  Wait for the buyer!”  

I shook my head but didn’t look back.  “Screw that,” I said.  “I’m the buyer now.”  

Nobody can predict the future.  I’ve said that a couple of times already, right?  Well, here life unpredictability rears its ugly head yet again.  I climbed over some wooden beams when an unusually strong gust of wind came through, and I nearly executed a flawless, Olympic-grade somersault.  Luckily, I kept my footing and just sort of skipped into the room.  My mind told my body to vomit right then and there.  I’ll tell you why.  Standing in the middle of the room, moonlight from the hole in the roof basking them in pale blue, stood five things.  I can’t really describe them.  The sight of them was so close to make-believe that I lost control of myself.  In so many words, they were human-sized Minotaurs wearing puffy coats and camouflage cargo pants.  

I pictured these bull-headed beasts farming the sweet little Omicrons, whipping them and yelling at them and when they were old enough, chopping their heads off and taking the cells out of their spinal cords.  It made me shiver.  

The biggest one, the one in the middle, the target I figured, growled and steam issued from his massive bull nostrils.  “Are you the buyer?” he asked.  

I was on autopilot at that point.  Had I let myself stay fully conscious, I would have had a breakdown.  And I was using the active part of my brain to meditate on the skills I had honed over all those hours of video game shooters.  “Yes,” I heard myself say.  “I’m the buyer.”  My voice shook.  I think they expected it to shake.  

“Show me the payment first,” said the leader.  The other four took out the oddest weapons I could have possibly imagined, long pikes with broad, flat, elliptical heads.  

I nodded in reply and reached into my coat.  The four henchmen readied their weapons to do whatever those particular weapons did.  I firmly grasped the gun inside my coat, but acted like I was trying to get all of the payment out, whatever the payment was.  I paused, staring in awe at the minotaurs, these creatures of myth.  

“Let’s see it!” growled one of the henchmen.  

I nodded and pulled out my gun.  Three shots went off before I realized that I’d even pulled the trigger.  Three of the henchmen went down.  The fourth one hesitated from shock, and he was dead before he blinked twice.  I slowed down for just a moment.  The leader growled and said, “Where’s Mart…” before one last bullet drilled a hole through his skull.  Five massive bodies lay bleeding on the floor of the warehouse and I couldn’t believe it.  

I told her I could do it though.  

The shock might have set in, but I didn’t pay any attention to it.  I was more than a little elated from this experience.  It was quite a rush.  The old man came rushing in, tearing off his disguise to reveal himself as a tall young man about the same age as me.  

“You did it!” he cried.  “I’ve been trailing this guy for two years and you killed him!  Three of our greatest agents couldn’t take this guy down and you did it!  How!”  

I shrugged.  “I just shot him.  I’m a pretty good shot.”  

The young man was on the verge of tears.  “You can go out to the street.  I’ll call Miss Vranch to pick you up.  Don’t worry about this, I’ll clean it up.”  

I watched him for a moment and then turned to leave.  Calmly satisfied and mildly proud, I stopped on the curb and the car pulled up.  I climbed in and put my hand on Miss Vranch’s leg.  She jumped a little.  I looked her right in the eyes.  “So, Miss Vranch,” I said.  I paused.  Then I blurted, “These bullets go the speed of light!  Jesus!”  

She curled her upper lip, a sign that I might get off her, but I didn’t.  “They go the speed of sound actually.  That’s why the gun needs a sonic shock absorber and a sonic muffler.  If the muffler weren’t on it, you’d have heard a very loud sonic boom.”  She spoke through clenched teeth.  

I smiled wide, teeth and all.  “Surprised?  Happy?  Satisfied?  No?  None of the above?”  

She growled in the manner that I had earlier.  “I’ve trained for four years to get to where I am today.  I pick the agents and you, an idiot from the suburbs, a businessman, a nobody, did what fifteen agents couldn’t do.  And now I look incompetent.”  

I took my hand from her leg.  “Hey, now,” I said diplomatically.  “I’m a reasonable man.  I’m sure we can make some sort of deal here.  No need to split hairs.  Look, let’s go to dinner and talk about it.  You can tell the higher-ups that you killed the minotaurs yourself.  I don’t care who gets the credit.  But I could do it again if you wanted me to.  If that’s the case, then we’ll have to figure out some sort of payment plan.  But, hey, like I said, ‘I’m a reasonable man.’”  I looked out the window.  “Oh, looks like my stop.  Give me a call some time.  We’ll talk.”  With that, I climbed out of the car and strolled up the walk into the house.  

My apartment was one of four units in an old house in the neighborhood where I spent my childhood.  Nobody called me.  I didn’t associate with many people during those years of my life.  I didn’t attempt to stay in touch with my family, my parents, my sister or brother.  What I did do was work and build a life for myself.  It was the credit card debt which really threw a wrench into the gears.  And it all comes back to the unpredictability of life.  Who would have known even with that wrench screwing up all of my gears that I would have a few spare cogs hiding in the back of my closet?  The idea to consolidate my debt couldn’t have come at a better time.  

My foray into the world of extraterrestrial lawmen helped me cut my debt and gave me much less to worry about each day.  A week had passed before I heard anything else about the secret police force and Miss Vranch.  The first sound since that day came in the form of an old radio beer commercial.  I switched on my IPod to take a run.  I didn’t hear my music.  

“You hear it everywhere, yes sir, finest beer served anywhere.  You hear it in hunting lodges way up in Maine, yes sir, finest beer served anywhere.  Splendid, splendid Pabst Blue Ribbon beer.  The beer that always tastes exactly the same.  Anywhere you go all over America you’ll find that Pabst Blue Ribbon is served in distinguished homes.  Yes…you hear it everywhere.  Pabst Blue Ribbon…finest beer served…anywhere.”

I looked down at the Mp3 player, confused.  “What the hell?”  

A knock on my door startled me.  I answered the door to find Miss Vranch standing there stiffly.  I arched an eyebrow.  “Well, what are you doing here?” I asked, looking her up and down.  She wore a shirt like the one she had on before, but striped with pinks not blues.  And her tight jeans were a light blue.  She held a manila folder in her hand and looked at me with a level of disgust situated somewhere between complete and nearly complete.  

“Let me in please,” she ordered.  It wasn’t much of a request.  I could feel her eyes burning into me.  

I noticed her shoes.  “You only wear sneakers, do you?” I asked nonchalantly.  “Do you plan to take off at any moment?”  

“Let me in please,” she repeated.  

“My pleasure,” I said with a smirk.  “Coffee?  Tea?  Wine?  I have a very comfortable bed.”  

As she sat down on my couch she shot a look at me that could have shattered a statue.  “I’m not here for games, Mr. Jenkins,” she said.  “I’m not even here of my own free will.  But sometimes, when you are not the top of the top brass, you get ordered around.  This time, it happens to be me being ordered around.  I assure you I don’t appreciate it.  What I would appreciate is you being quiet while we deal our business here.  Now, first things, that commercial you heard on your Mp3 player is a signal from our offices.  It’s like a pager.  If you hear it, you have to call your supervisor.”  

I looked around, acting surprised.  “What?  A call?  From…you?  Now, do tell Miss Vranch, why would you be calling little ol’ me?”  

She stared me down to my childhood.  I felt oddly vulnerable right then.  

“Are you allowed to wear jeans to the office?” I asked abruptly.  

A moment of tension passed before her glare softened.  She said, “What?  Why do you ask?”  

“Because nobody gets to wear jeans to the office.  It’s not dress code.”  She made another face which revealed her unbalance at that moment.  I had caught her off guard with my sudden politeness.  I hadn’t ever been one to drag things out.  I couldn’t win staring contests or play pranks on people.  I just didn’t have the tolerance or the patience.  

“Why does it matter to you whether or not I wear jeans to the office?” she asked, obviously uncomfortable.  I recognized again the glint in her eyes that no man stood a chance against her peremptory behavior or her rank.  She was a drill sergeant.  But I didn’t care what she was.  I didn’t work for her.  Not yet anyway.  

“Honestly, I was just wondering.  It would be nice if I could wear jeans to the office too.  I can’t though.  I work for a business and businessmen wear suits.”  

“I am aware of your occupation,” she said, bringing back her austere tone.  It didn’t do her any justice.  Nobody as gorgeous as her should be speaking like that.  

I looked at her a little disappointedly.  I think she noticed.  “Okay.  So what are you doing here?” I asked.  

“I am indeed here to offer you a career with us.  You will do just what you did at the warehouse in Chester.  You will call us when we contact you.  You will be paid a yearly salary as well as a signing bonus.  As well, all of your income will be filtered through our systems and you will continue to appear to be working for your current employer.”  

She stopped talking, but I thought she had more to say.  She didn’t.  “That’s all?” I asked.  

“What else do you want to know?”  

“How much will I get paid?  How much is the signing bonus?”  

She took a deep breath and sighed.  “Fifty thousand up front.  Five hundred thousand yearly.”  

I smiled, unable to hold it back.  “How much is that weekly?”  

“After our lenient taxes, it’s about nine thousand dollars a week.”  

“Wow.”  I stared at the ground.  

“Will you accept the contract, Mr. Jenkins?” she asked impatiently.  

“I don’t know,” I said, looking up at her.  She really was beautiful.  The more I looked at her, the more I saw it.  She had soft, slightly fair skin, a lean, toned body, and a thin, elfin face.  Her almond-shaped eyes set her gaze at a perfect mark, and her medium-full lips came together in a perfect purse.  

“Will you stop calling me Mr. Jenkins?” I asked exasperatedly.  

She sighed again and stood up.  “Come with me, Benjamin,” she said, going to the door.  “I have something to show you before we officially make you a member of our team.”  

“But I haven’t agreed to anything.”  

“Do you accept the job?” she asked, turning around slowly.  She fixed me with her eyes once more.  She smiled for the first time.  “You don’t know how much it pains me to bring you to the team, but I also would love to have you with us.  You are clearly going to be a very successful agent.”  

All the stress and confusion of the past weeks or so had been compounded into this single complimentary remark caved in, blissfully shocked.  “I accept,” I said.  

“Good.  Come then.”  

I met the young man who’d been dressed as an old man.  

Miss Vranch dropped me off at Penn’s landing where the guy was waiting.  He led me to the edge of the water and looked out over the river.  

“How are you, Ben,” he asked.  He didn’t wait for a reply.  “What you did however long ago it was – I can’t really keep track of days – was knock off one of four interplanetary dealers that have been trying to flood the Earth market with Omicron cells.  We haven’t seen the other three in a long time.  We’re not sure we’ll ever see them again.  Last time we tried to get one of them, the other three had been watching and they all fled.  It surprised me that Marat Wrek, the minotaur, and his goons tried dealing here again.”  

“Can I ask a question?”  He nodded.  “First of all, what is your role in all of this?”  

He looked at me with a serious face, though his blue eyes were soft.  “I am Miss Vranch’s informant agent.  I track everything about these criminals.  Miss Vranch and I head the team of agents that you have recently been accepted onto.”  

“How many agents do you two have?” I asked, curious.  I wanted to write this down.  I could have made millions with a movie deal.  

“There are five agents, now six with you added.”  

I nodded.  “So…where did that Marat Wrek come from?”  

“A planet far away from Earth called Bindi.”  

I nodded again.  I didn’t understand any of this.  But, money is money.  I had another question.  “How far away is Bindi?”  

“With Earth technology it would take probably about three hundred years to get there.”  

My curiosity exploded into a hailstorm of questions and assumptions.  “How do they get here then?”  

“Technology on Earth is far behind that of the rest of the universe.  Our agency intentionally keeps technology capped on Earth.  We do it for the sake of humanity.  We don’t have what it takes to explore space.”  

“What about the other planets?  Why don’t they come attack us?”  

The young man sighed as if he didn’t like talking about this topic.  “Humans are naturally resilient.  They endure just about anything.  No planet that we’ve dealt with ever wants to take Earth because they would need an entire civilization to be able to take out humanity.  It’s not worth it.  Plus, Earth money is worth so much that other planets love doing business with us.”  

I paused, soaking it in.  “That unbelievable.”  

The young man nodded.  “Okay, so listen.  Your mission as of this moment is to await contact from Miss Vranch.  If she contacts you, you will probably be going to take down one of these three remaining dealers.  I will be there most likely.  When you get home, you will have a package waiting for you.  The package is all of your agent gear.”  He paused.  “That’s it, Ben.  Any questions?”  

“Um…did that buyer ever show up down in Chester?”  

The young man hesitated, thinking.  “No,” he said absently, contemplatively.  “He never showed.  We figured he had been scared off when the clean up crew came in and took away the bodies.”  

“Ah…well…I guess that wraps things up for today.  Oh yeah, I didn’t get your name.”  I extended my hand to him.  “You know me, I’m Ben Jenkins.”  

The young man with sapphire eyes looked down at me – he was at least three inches taller than me – and took my hand.  “My name is classified I’m afraid.  You can call me Blue if you’d like though.”  

I held his gaze strongly while I squeezed his hand and shook it.  I smiled delightfully before realizing that I seemed to have instilled a level of discomfort in him.  “All right?” I asked.  

He smiled suddenly, coming out of a trance.  “Yes, yes!  I’ve never been one for guns.  You used that gun pretty well.  Guns just kind of scare me.  Anyway, I’ll talk to you when I talk to you.”  

I nodded and walked back up to the street where the black car awaited me.  I climbed in to sit next to Miss Vranch.  I took a deliberately audible breath, as if I were about to throw some devastating news on her.  Then I said, with a serious grin, “Will you tell me your first name, please?  Miss Vranch is so formal.  You dress casual.  Let’s act casual.”  

She ignored my advances.  “How was your briefing?” she asked stiffly.  “Did you find it informative?”  

“I guess it was, since I was talking to the informant agent, huh?”  

“I would suspect as much.  So do you understand everything that he told you?”  

I nodded.  “There is one thing I don’t really understand,” I said.  “Are there cameras in this car, microphones?  Are you wearing a wire?”  

She looked startled, as if I knew things that I shouldn’t know.  “No.  This is a secure vehicle.”  

I looked her in the eyes.  I nodded slowly and flicked my head toward the driver.  Miss Vranch looked toward the front of the car and then back at me.  She furrowed her brow, unable to grasp my sudden secrecy.  

“Do you have a business card?” I asked.  She nodded and took one out of her pocket.  I used a pen from my pocket and wrote, “Meet me @ 8 @ Ruby Tuesday.”  I gave her the card back and climbed out of the car.  I ran up into my apartment, immediately closing all of the shades and blinds and locking everything.  I opened the package sitting on my coffee table.  I figured since this package had somehow found a way inside my apartment, then plenty of bugs had as well.  I didn’t talk.  I didn’t even speak to Spanks while I fed him.  With my cat eating happily, I went back to the package and examined the contents.  It was seven o’clock so I needed to get moving.  I took out the contents of the box and brought everything into the bathroom where I showered.  

I put on the skin-tight security layer that felt like I was donning someone else’s skin.  Then I put on the ultra-thin bullet shirt – able to protect against bullets up to half the speed of sound.  I hooked the same sort of gun I had the first time around my waist.  I put on my coat and a pair of jeans and spruced up before driving to the restaurant.  I arrived at eight-o-five and Miss Vranch was sitting at the bar patiently.  She wore a tiny little khaki skirt and an emerald blouse that fit her perfectly.  A long suede coat hung down over the back of her barstool.  She was stunning.  It almost looked like she wanted to be there.  

I sat down next to her and ordered orange vodka and cranberry juice – with a slice of lime please.  She had a provocative chocolate martini sitting in front of her making her look a thousand times sexier.  She glanced at me with verdant hazel eyes.  She smelled like vanilla and cinnamon.  I pictured an entire valley filled with flowers that smelled like her.  

“We have about thirty minutes before a track is put on us,” she said softly.  “It’s company procedure.  After that, someone will be here listening to us and watching us.”  

“How do you know?” I asked, hesitant.  

“I’ve been in this company for years, like I said.  I know what they’re doing right now.  They’re looking for us.”  She leaned in to me and said something that I couldn’t make out.  She was trying to be quiet.  When she sat up I shook my head at her.  Irritated, she leaned in again and laid a serious kiss on me, tongue and all.  Her lips were full and gentle.  She leaned further in for a hug after the kiss and whispered in my ear, “Did you bring your gun and protectives?”  

She sat back up and I nodded.  “It’s so nice to see you again,” she said loudly, playing up the part of a normal dater.  “So, what’s up with you these days?”  

I took a sip of my drink, mashed my face up, and then squeezed in the lime.  “Nothing much.  Will we be completely secure for another couple minutes?”  

She looked at her watch.  “We should be totally free of interference for another twenty-three minutes.”

I looked at her gravely.  I didn’t know how to go about telling her.  I wasn’t much for words.  I always believed that tearing the Band-Aid off in one fell swoop was the best technique.  

“The young blue-eyed man I talked to today…”  

“Yes?”  

“He’s working with the dealers.”