Story Wormholes: My Sister the Spy, Part 6
I know that I’ll be useless without Olivia, so I creep around to the back of the house. I peep over the window sill into what looks like an old fashioned parlor.
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Join us as we help Mitchell save his sister, Olivia, from the dreaded Tejuristan embassy. She might be the spy, but this barber is going to have to step up and save the day. Mitchell has followed the Olivia’s captors to where she is being held and has learned that a bomb is going to planted in Central City Park during the Freedom Fair tomorrow. Can the two of them save the day? Need to catch up? Find your part here.
I know that I’ll be useless without Olivia, so I creep around to the back of the house. I peep over the window sill into what looks like an old fashioned parlor. She seems to be alone, tied once again to a chair. I tap on the window and my heart leaps into my throat as she looks my way: her eye is now badly blackened to match the cut lip and bruise on her cheek. More than that, she’s starting to look defeated. She seems to have lost the joking spark that usually plays across her face.
“You’ve got to come with me,” I hiss, unable to keep the fear out of my voice.
“Mitchell, we’ve been through this. This is my job,” Olivia says resignedly.
“No, seriously,” I say, “you have to come with me. I know what they’re planning.”
Olivia brightens. “Are you serious? You’re amazing. Do you have your tie pin?”
I blink at this crazy question. Why in the world would she care about the tie pin that she gave me for Christmas last year? “Yes…” I say, wondering if she has some kind of head injury.
“Great,” she says, checking over her shoulder to make sure the coast is still clear. “It’s actually a laser that you can use to cut through the window. You just push down on the onyx in the front and the beam comes out the side.”
I look at her aghast. “You’re telling me I’ve been walking around with a high powered laser on my chest, and you didn’t tell me?! I could have died!”
“Don’t be silly – it won’t go off unless it’s unpinned. Now hurry. Make a circle big enough for you hand above the window latch.”
I take off the pin and examine the side to find the laser. Sure enough, there is a tiny hole. I push down on the onyx and start making a circle on the window.
“Nothing is happening,” I say.
“You just can’t see the laser – it’s infrared light, otherwise it wouldn’t work on the glass. Careful, it’s going to get hot.”
She’s right; even as she says it, the glass under my circle starts to glow white hot. Suddenly, the circle falls towards me out of the window, and I reach out to catch it to keep it from making a noise. Bad decision – almost as soon as I grab it, I drop it on the ground anyway from the heat. Fortunately, the grass under the window is soft, so no shattering sound gives us away.
“I told you it was going to hot,” Olivia says with the joking glint back in her eyes.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let’s get you out of here,” I say, sucking on my sore fingers.
Within minutes, we’re making our escape, having climbed through the window and freed Olivia. We leave the bike behind and head back to her apartment on foot. We go slowly – we’re both beyond exhausted, and Olivia is limping from several broken toes. I try to help her, but it’s difficult to hold her arm because her wrists and hands are badly cut from the ropes. I worry about what other injuries she has that I can’t see.
We get back to her apartment, and she bandages her toes and hands. She comes back from the medicine cabinet with a fistful of pills. “Here, take these,” she says, handing me two clear capsules.
I raise my eyebrow. “And these would be…?”
“Think of them as wakey-wakey pills. You look even more exhausted than I feel, these slow-release caffeine pills will help you stay awake,” she says, popping down half a dozen other pills herself. Seeing my continued skeptical look, she says, “It’s only for emergencies, and I would say a bomb going off in the park is an emergency. We are going to have to go to the park and stay awake all night to keep watch. Do you think you can do that without help?”
I see her point, so I take the pills, scrounge some more food from her fridge, and we head out to the park with Olivia’s bomb defusing kit in hand. The bandaging seems to have helped Olivia’s feet but hasn’t done much for her hands.
The watch tonight is not nearly as boring as the previous night, not with Olivia to keep me company, but fortunately is about as uneventful. As morning dawns, organizers of the Freedom Fair start to arrive to make preparations for the festivities.
Soon, crowds of families, elderly couples, other people I’d rather not see blown up start to fill the park. My anxiety rises – is Katerina coming? Did they call it off after Olivia’s escape? Could we even find a bomb in this crowd?
Suddenly, Olivia grabs my arm. “There,” she says, pointing to a little old lady pushing a baby carriage, “that’s her.”
I examine the figure dressed in a frumpy housecoat with a scarf over her head. Her stooped shoulders certainly didn’t seem like the tall, slender Katerina. But even as I am watching, I realize that Olivia is right. More than that, Katerina is tossing the bomb under a bush! She then putters away towards the edge of the park like nothing had happened.
“Olivia! The bomb! Did you see?” I cry.
“One of us going to have to chase her and one of us is going to have to deal with the bomb,” Olivia says way more calmly that I could ever imagine in this situation. “Which do you think you can do?”
I look at her wide eyed. What should I do? I can’t possibly chase down a world-class spy. Then again, I definitely don’t know how to defuse a bomb.
What should I do?