"I need to make you mine," I half-whispered, half-sang, my lavender-colored hair brush gripped tightly in my palm underneath my chin.
I looked my expression over in the mirror in front of myself and smiled.
"Jenny don't change your number," I decided to go on, now throwing my index finger of my free hand up to my ear and tilting my head to the side a little.
Then, suddenly, three loud knocks came from the other side of the bathroom door beside me.
I let out a miniature scream and dropped my hairbrush in the sink.
"Mae!" Mel's voice shouted from the other side of the door. "You ready yet?"
I took a heavy breath and placed one hand on top of my pounding heart.
"Y-Yeah," I shakily yelled back.
"Well, get out here, then," she replied.
Soon after her words left her mouth, I heard a pair of footsteps, presumably hers, begin to pace away from the closed doorway.
"Oh, o-okay," I mumbled as I picked my hairbrush out of the sink and placed it onto the countertop beside it. I then glanced back up to the mirror, nodded at myself, and spoke up once more. "Right, yeah."
After that, I turned to the door, swung it open, stepped into the hallway, turned left, and strode my way to the door at the very end. Then, I opened that one, slipped past it, made my way into the large office area, and walked over to the side of a small table that Mel currently sat at.
I pulled up a semi-cushioned metal folding chair and took a seat across from her.
"You did a great job last week, Mae," Mel complimented as she tapped a thin stack of papers onto the desktop between us.
"Oh... yeah, I... I know," I responded, watching her set the pages down and lean forward some more.
"But," she picked back up, snatching my gaze back to her face. "This is the mission that really counts."
I nodded in understanding while she looked down to sift through the information set before her.
"No pressure, though," Katie commented from her swivel chair, in front of her usual desktop computer, right behind Mel's backside. After she had spoken, she turned herself around to face me and wheeled herself swiftly up to Mel's side.
"Well, yeah," Mel went on, glancing upward once more. "But... know that we only have limited time here, and... we may not get another chance to even get a chance like this for another few weeks, which might be too late..." Her eyes trickled down to the tabletop in between us. "For Ace, at least."
I followed her gaze and fell quiet for a moment.
"But," Katie perked up. "That's more reason to just give it your all!"
I looked up and smiled at her smile.
"Yeah, okay, little miss sunshine," Mel laughed out. "Now, Mae, pay attention."
I switched my focus back over to her as she continued.
"This evening, you will be paying a nice little visit to the basement of Mr. Antonio's pawn shop and be retrieving the official information on the whereabouts of section twenty-two. Why they chose a pawn shop to store it, I haven't got a clue, but I do imagine the whole store will be heavily secured and on video surveillance, so please be careful when you're trying to get in. I'll walk you through the steps you need to take when you get there but, before that, I want you to really pay attention to where the security cameras are and stay away from them as much as possible, okay?"
"Okay," I softly answered.
"Okay, good," she went on, her eyes looking back down to her papers. "So, after you get in, which I'll help you do, you'll have to carefully make your way to basement, since I'm not sure if they'll be any security measures taken inside or not, too. After that, you'll make your way downstairs, where absolutely no one should be, since you already deterred everyone that was supposed to be there to someplace else, and you'll have to search everywhere to find the information. If there's a safe or something, which I would think is where it would be, I'll help you get into that, too. Other than that, you should be okay."
"I'll get you a little hand gun, too, just in case," Katie added, placing one hand, palm-down, on the table as she talked, and then standing herself up to make her way around to somewhere in the room behind me.
"Don't worry, though, Mae, you won't need it," Mel reassured.
"But," I started to object. "Won't someone who was supposed to meet... those guys be there?"
Mel shook her head.
"Not as far as I know," she replied. "They were supposed to come get it for themselves if they wanted it; everyone else is already on their way to wherever section twenty-two actually is."
Whoever everyone else was, I didn't really know, but I also didn't really want to know, either.
I looked from Mel down to the hand-written papers in front of her and studied them until she spoke once again.
"So, you ready?"
I shot my head back up to her and took a deep breath.
"Sure," I answered.
Mel smiled.
"Good," she commented, leaning back in her chair. "Now... go get your boyfriend back."
___
I hopped away from the seat of my motorcycle, and then threw my side into... well, the side of the brick building on my left. I reached my right hand up to my right ear and prepared to open my mouth.
"I'm..." I started, but then paused. "This is... Agent Amnesia... and I believe I have reached... um... my destination."
I could hear Mel giggle a tad.
"Okay, Agent Amnesia, do you see any cameras anywhere?" she went on to ask.
I turned toward the wall on my side, stepped forward until I reached the corner ahead, and then peeked out from behind it. I took in the view of the building in front of me, which was some kind of an old-fashioned dress store with mannequins dressed in Victorian-style skirts and corsets in the wide display window that the sun currently reflected off of in front of me. Beyond that, another building sat with a burgundy-colored awning coming off of its front, the word 'pawn' printed in yellow over and over again on the bottom boarder of it. I then glanced down to the display windows underneath that, but I couldn't really see anything in it from my current angle.
"Um... maybe?" I responded, now leaning back behind the building corner once more.
"Come on, Mae," Mel began. "Either you do or you don't."
"Well..." I started to protest as I poked my head forward, again. I looked over to the little shop yet again, studied the entire front side of it, including the underside of the awning, but didn't see any kind of camera in sight. "Could they possibly be hidden, or... something?"
I heard Mel sigh.
"Just be careful and go up to door. If you see a camera, stop and let me know," she ordered.
"Well, okay," I mumbled.
I took a few steps forward and pushed both of my hands down by my sides. I glanced over at the first store as I walked past it, taking in the sight of a long-sleeved, light pink gown with extravagant lace in the window as I did so. After that, I made my way up to the store window of the pawn shop, noticed that it was completely covered with a blue tarp from the other side, and then stepped up to the closed front door, the phrase "Buy, Sell, and Pawn at Mr. Antonio!' printed on the thin, clear window in front of me... which was grammatically incorrect, seeing how the apostrophe 's' was missing from the equation. I looked past the words, though, and saw that the inside of the store was entirely dark, the only real light seen inside peeking through the window that I was currently blocking from the sun's rays.
"I'm at the door, I think," I proclaimed.
"Still don't see any cameras around?" Mel questioned.
I looked up to the top of the door in front of me, over to the window on the right side of the store, which I hadn't walked past and was also covered by tarp from the inside, and up to the underside of the awning above my head.
"Not really," I answered.
"Okay, well," Mel went on. "They're probably all inside, then... Okay, now, let's get you in and out as fast as possible. So, listen to me, okay?"
"Understood," I responded.
"There should be a code pad on the door handle. You see it?"
I guided my eyes down to the rubberized set of numbers that rested above the door knob.
"Yeah," I muttered.
"Okay, now, enter these numbers," Mel continued. "And don't mess it up!"
I couldn't help but smile.
"Not like last time?" I remarked.
Mel took a few seconds to reply, trying to remember the very first time she had been the good ol' guide in my ear.
"Yeah, definitely not like that, this time. Can't believe you actually remembered that, though..."
"Me neither," I whispered.
"But, anyway," Mel picked back up. "Here's the code... one, two, five, eight, zero, five, nine, two, zero, seven."
I entered each number as she listed it, and then punched the green 'enter' button underneath all of them once I was finished.
I crossed my fingers in my opposite hand.
I waited for a click to sound out, but none came.
"Um... M-Mel..."
I reached down to the handle and tried to twist it.
"What?" Mel asked.
I nervously turned the door knob and pushed the door successfully forward.
"Oh, n-nothing..." I muttered as I stepped through the doorway. "It's just that... I'm..." I looked around at my dimly lit surroundings of long tables piled high with a number of random possessions, and then went on before I studied one of the piles in particular. "I'm in."
I stared at the nearest mess to where I stood and saw an opened box of macaroni and cheese, an unopened package of toilet paper, a purple, five-subject notebook with yellowing pages at its core, an oversized teddy bear that was missing one of its button eyes, and a tiny, clear plastic container with... a deceased blue fish floating at the top of the dirty water inside of it.
"Did this place go out of business?" I quietly asked, now turning to shut the door behind me.
"Yeah, about a month ago," Mel answered.
Well, I wonder why...
"But, anyway, before you go too far inside, look around for any of the cameras," she went on to instruct.
I pushed the door until I heard a little 'tick' noise emit from it, and then turned around to look into the nearly complete darkness in front of me.
"Um," I began. "Am I allowed to turn on a light, or... something?"
"No!" Mel shot out, almost making me jump at the urgency laced in her voice. "Don't; they'll definitely pick that up on camera."
"Well," I objected, stepping up to the edge of the small shadow of sunlight a few feet ahead. "They could just... think it's a ghost, you know."
"I doubt it," Mel countered.
I gave a little sigh as I let my eyes adjust to lighting of the rest of the room. I slowly saw that the whole area I stood in was super skinny and really long, filled with about a billion tables crowded with a bunch of stuff similar to that of which I originally saw next to me. At the end of the extended path set in front of me sat a plain wooden door, and on either side of it was a number of empty bookshelves. I looked up to the ceiling as well the upper boarders of the walls all around me and searched for a recording device of some sort, but saw absolutely none.
"So," I started, again. "I don't see any cameras."
"You sure?"
"Yeah," I elaborated. "Could I maybe, like, just crawl around on floor, so if there are any, they won't be able to see me?"
I heard Mel resist a slight giggle.
"You know, Mae," she said. "You might as well."
"I..." I replied, raising my eyebrows a tad. "I... um, really?"
"Yeah, really. Go for it and get to the back door; it should lead you to the basement."
I stopped a moment and looked around, again.
"Uh, o-okay," I stuttered out.
I then proceeded to lower myself carefully to a kneel, and then brought my weight onto my knees. I leaned forward and put both of my hands on the floor, underneath my shoulder blades. After that, I... well, I crawled along the path to the door at the other end of the room.
"I guess even if a camera did see you," Mel went on as I moved. "You could probably get done and out of there before anyone could really do anything about it. So, you're probably fine... maybe..."
"You sound like Ace," I whispered, kind of accidentally out loud.
"No, actually," Mel replied, catching me off guard, since I didn't even realize what I had said until after I had said it. "Ace probably would have said, 'take a risk and have some damn fun with it.'"
I smiled a little at her comment.
That was true.
Eventually, I managed to drag myself all the way to the bottom edge of the door across the room, and then began to raise myself back up to a stand.
"Okay, I'm at the..." I started as I reached down to the door handle now placed in front of me. I twisted it, surprisingly without any resistance, and swung it forward. "The... I'm... I-I'm going to the basement."
"Okay," Mel said. "Tell me what you see when you get down there."
I glanced down at the trail of concrete stairs that led down into an abyss of darkness.
Oh, God.
I bit my bottom lip as I took the first step down. I then turned around a bit, grabbed at the door behind me, and pushed it shut. When I went to twist back around, though, my feet stumbled around quite a lot and I managed to trip down to the next step in front of me and fall harshly onto my knees, scratching both my hands on the uneven cement underneath me in the process.
"Ow," I whined, bringing myself up to a sitting position on the stairs.
"What did you do?" Mel asked.
"Oh... nothing," I answered, pushing myself back up to stand.
I mean, we all know stairs aren't exactly my best friend.
I continued to step lightly down the rest of the flight, and then landed myself gently on the concrete floor at the very end. I looked up and saw that the whole room was actually on my left but lit slightly more than the one upstairs by a few tiny slits of windows made in the tops of the walls all around. Straight ahead in the room, then, sat nothing but... um, nothing.
"Well, I'm... there," I began.
"What do you see?" Mel prompted.
I paused, and then responded.
"Nothing."
"Nothing?" Mel nearly yelled. "Well, look harder."
I blew out a puff of air and walked into the center of the large, empty area. I crossed my arms over my chest, gazed at each wall, one at a time, and then decided to step over to the one on the near right. I reached one hand out to run over it and proceeded to walk toward the far end of the room.
"Are you sure this is even the right... you know, place?" I interrogated as I strode along.
"I'm pretty sure," Mel opposed. "Are you sure there's nothing there?"
I stepped up to the corner of where two of the grey cement walls met and brought my hand back down. I turned to the left, then, and began to walk alongside the next wall, slowly bringing my hand back up to glide across it soon after.
"Well," I replied. "I—"
I halted and craned my head to look back at the wall beside me.
My fingertips had just run over an odd dip in the dark concrete.
I stepped back a bit, and then leaned back in to study the wall closely, both of my hands now feeling over the top of it in front of me. I rediscovered the dent I had first felt and found out that it was actually a long, vertical crack, after I let my fingers run over its tiny path. After that, I felt around some more and learned that two indented lines ran horizontally both above and below the first one I had found, all of them connecting at a couple of corners. I then discovered that another line ran along the left side of all of those, everything coming together to form a well-sized, box-shaped crack in the wall.
"Hang on a second," I commanded, now sinking my fingernails into the creases of both the vertical cracks. I yanked my arms inward a tad, and then felt the indentations widen up a little. I pulled back at the square a few more times and, on the fourth attempt I made, the whole cut out in the wall ripped itself out and I let it tumble to the floor by my feet.
It made a loud clash with the hard floor below, but I looked down as it fell to notice that it was actually nothing but a thin sheet of metal with its frontside designed to feel and look identical to the wall it had been placed in. I then glanced up to the square hole in the actual wall that I had just created and saw that a little metal safe with a keypad on its frontside was sitting inside on top of a cut section of the wall.
"Oh, wow," I commented. "I found it, Mel."
"Found what? A safe?"
"Yeah," I answered. "It was... hidden in the wall, I guess."
I reached out to gently touch it and look it over as Mel went on with her instructions.
"Okay, good. Now, there's a keypad on it, right?"
"Yeah."
"Okay," Mel went on. "So, I have a couple of codes for you to try... If none of them work, though, we're gonna have to come up with a quick plan B."
I ran one hand down the side of the safe, and then felt something... odd.
"Um..." I mumbled, now stepping to the side a little to look at what I felt. "Mel..."
The entire safe had somehow been cut in half, separating the front from the back with a small, rough crack all around its edges. I grabbed at the front section of the cut and pulled half of the safe forward, watching a tightly rolled white piece of paper fall out from inside of it.
"What now?" Mel nearly snapped.
"It... It's already..." I replied. "Kind of... opened."
"What?"
I reached down with one hand, snatched up the scroll that rolled in between the two pieces of the safe, and then pushed the safe back together. I afterward stepped back, unrolled the paper in my hands, and read the top few lines of it swiftly.
Alan-
Below are the official coordinates of Section Twenty-Two. Please be sure to inform your team immediately and book separate flights for each of your members as soon as possible.
"Mel, I got it!" I yelled out, jumping excitedly in place a bit. "I got it!"
"You did?" Mel enthused back. "Well, where is it?"
I glanced down to the middle of the page in front of me, and then read out the sequence of numbers I saw.
"Sixty-one-point-four-one-one-zero and negative one hundred and forty-nine-point-one-one-seven."
"I have no idea where that is," Mel said. "But you better be ready to pack your bags when you get back here!"
I smiled as I rolled the paper back up and crouched down to slide it into the side of my left boot. After that, I grabbed the slate of metal that once concealed the safe from the floor, stood back up, and proceeded to place it back in its place. I found it difficult to get it completely back in, though, so I started to kind of beat on it with the side of my fist in attempts to get it the way I had originally found it.
In between my soft thumps of labor, though, I heard a sort of shuffling noise pipe up from somewhere far behind my back.
I stopped and listened intently immediately after... but then all I heard was silence.
"Is this place haunted?" I whispered, intentionally to Mel, as I gradually turned myself to the left and brought my hands down from the semi-stable piece I had been beating into the wall.
Before I even had time to turn entirely around, though, a deep, crackly voice echoed out throughout the room.
"And what are you doing here?" it asked.
I physically jumped in place and twisted myself completely around so fast that the hair in my long ponytail actually whipped itself across my face. I scrunched up my expression as it did so but, instantly after that, I shot my eyes wide open and looked up to see the dark outline of a tall figure standing at the bottom of the stairs on the opposite end of the room.
Whether or not it actually was a ghost, I couldn't really tell but, either way, I was terrified.
"W-W-W-W," I stuttered out, unable to even utter one real word in that moment.
The figure stepped forward, into a ray of light, and I saw that it was a heavy-set man in a common black suit and blue tie with a mustache and a ratty mess of brown hair atop his head. It also should probably be noted that I caught the sight of a large pistol firmly gripped in one of his palms by his side.
Not again...
"You had better answer me," he grumbled out, taking another step into my direction.
"I-I-I," I went on.
"Mae? What's happening?" Mel questioned.
Honestly, though, I had no clue.
"Damn," the man remarked, now coming to a slow stop, still pretty far away from me. "Didn't wanna have to, but..."
He brought his gun up by his chest.
"W-W-Wait, I-I..." I stumbled out, raising my own hands up in front of myself.
"Mae?" I heard Mel speak in the background of my mind.
He continued to extend his weapon outward, ignoring my stutters.
Oh, no.
"Sorry, hun," he said. "This one's just business."
I felt a cry coming on.
And then, suddenly, a loud bang erupted out in the room.
And I felt the plate from the wall behind me crash both into the floor as well as the back of my ankles.
"The hell was that?" the man yelled out, spinning around in his place to investigate the sound.
Immediately, then, I dropped down to a kneel, shoved my right hand into the side of my right boot, ripped out the small hand gun from it that Katie had supplied to me earlier, threw my arm upward, and pulled the trigger to send a bullet flying directly into the man's direction.
I slowly stood back up as I watched him freeze up for a good moment or two, and then stared as he collapsed to the ground below.
"Mae!" Mel yelled at me. "What is happening?"
I froze up for a short second, and then responded to her.
"I'm getting out of here, that's what," I muttered, now lunging forward.
I rushed my way past the side of the fallen man, and then heard Mel faintly reply.
"Probably a good idea..."
Without even looking back into the room, I sprinted up to the end of the staircase on the far wall, reached out to grab the shaky metal railing beside it, spun myself around it, and continued to run up the stairs.
About halfway through tackling the feat, though, my front foot slipped, and I smacked both of my knees onto the corner of one of the concrete steps.
"Ugh," I grumbled as I picked myself back up.
Hurriedly after that, I went on pressing my way up the stairs, a little more slowly this time, though. Once I reached the end of the uphill battle, then, I grabbed at the door that led to the basement below, slammed it shut behind my back, and turned to rush toward the front door of the building. I made it there, surprisingly, without any problems, and proceeded afterward to push my way outside.
I looked around at the empty street ahead as well as the vacant store fronts on either side of me as I took a deep breath. I then turned around, pulled the door to the pawn shop shut behind me, and started to make my way past the old-fashioned dress store next to it. After rounding the corner of that building, I heard Mel pipe back up.
"Mae," she started. "What were the coordinates on the paper, again?"
"You think I remember?" I snapped back, now stepping up to the side of my resting moped.
"Well, I mean, could you read them off to me, again?"
"Well, I..." I began. "I could, I guess, but..." I scooped my motorcycle helmet from the seat of my scooter before going on. "Um... shouldn't I be going... before I-I get shot?"
I heard Mel utter a bit of a sigh.
"Katie just found out that we may be on a tighter schedule of time than we originally thought," she said. "So, either read it to me really fast before you get going or read it while you're driving. I don't care which you pick, but with the level of coordination I know that you have, I'd—"
"Okay, fine," I shot back, now placing my helmet back down on my vehicle's seat. I knelt down, reached into my boot, and pulled out the paper from inside of it. I unrolled it quickly, and then re-read the string of numbers I had announced earlier. "Sixty-one... point-four-one-one-zero... and negative one hundred... forty-nine... point-one-one-seven."
I waited for a moment after speaking but, when Mel didn't immediately speak back to me, I rolled the paper back up, bent forward, and slid it safely back into the leg of my footwear.
"Okay, well," she picked back up while I stood up straight and reached out for my helmet once more. "It looks like we're sending you straight to Anchorage, Alaska, as soon as you get back here... Agent Amnesia."
I froze, my hands hovering over the seat of my bike.
"I..." I replied. "I... am?”