Christos Notaras sighed and rubbed his temples. The situation was getting increasingly dire by the minute, yet he had been thinking of a solution for the past six hours in vain. If he didn’t think of something fast, the human population wouldn’t survive much longer.

With another loud sigh, he picked up his mug of coffee, took a sip of it and stared at the room around him. The room was elaborate and finely decorated. Anyone walking into this room would never guess that this was the headquarters for an agency. No, not a modeling agency, those were rare and few in between these days, instead, this was an agency which recruited spies and fighters all around the world, trying to maintain some semblance of what Earth was like less than a century ago. This time, even Christos was worried if his agency was capable of fixing this problem in time.

“Sir, we have important news to report. May we enter?”

Suddenly alert, Christos quickly gave an affirmative reply, and pressed the button which opened the door for his two messengers.

“Sir, um…” stuttered the first messenger. The second one looked equally as stricken, but glared at the former for being such a coward.

“Well? Don’t stall. Quick. What is it?” Christos demanded. Breathe, don’t shoot the messenger, he reminded himself. It was obviously bad news, since neither of the two messengers were willing to say anything as of yet.

Changing his tone, Christos tried again, “I apologise for my temper, but what have you to report?” Alright, maybe that wasn’t that much better, but hey, he was in a bad mood.

The second messenger obviously decided that his partner wasn’t going to be capable of any talking soon, and so he stepped forward and cleared his throat.

“Sir, our scientists have analysed the overall impact of the destruction, and have come to a unanimous conclusion that planet Earth will be inhabitable within 126 years. The damage will be most prominent in the oceans, and will soon render our water supplies unusable. Some of the effects have started to show in third-world countries, such as unstoppable diarrhea, leading to death in a space of 7 days.”

With that, the messenger stepped back again, suddenly feeling rather sorry for Mr. Notaras. Whilst the rest had panicked and started to loot supplies in fear of death, Mr. Notaras was expected to stay calm and secretive about his every move.

The disaster had been sudden, like an alarm clock on a Monday morning. Everything had been normal, or as normal life could be, when some mindless country decided to spice it up by messing with nuclear bombs. The final result? No one really knew. It had been an experiment, so the content of the actual bombs were unclear. The only thing that was clear was the fact that the water was contaminated, and nothing could be done to stop the contamination, since no one knew exactly what was causing the contamination in the first place.

“Thank you, men. I’ll…I’ll figure out something.” And with that, the two messengers left Christos to his coffee and files.

For the third time in twenty minutes, Christos sighed. What was he to do? Now that the scientists had come to a unanimous conclusion that everyone was going to die in a hundred or so years, it made everything so……final.

A knock echoed from the door.

Now what? Christos swore quietly under his breath. This was definitely not a good day.

Taking a deep breath, he pressed the button and called out, “Come in.”

This time, it was another messenger, Christos noticed. One who usually resided in the other wing of the underground headquarters, where the laboratories and research rooms were. Christos knew from experience that whatever was going to be said was not going to be good news. Okay, fine, it wasn’t a Eureka! moment, considering that there was any good news these days, and the messenger looked like he was about to hyperventilate. But still, the point was good news would not be given to him anytime soon.

And he was right. Again.

Without any prompting from Christos, the messenger gasped out, “Mr. Notaras! Professor Wickins was found unconscious on the floor of room LAB022. He’s in the infirmary now. He said he needed to see you right away…”

Christos stood up sharply, startling the messenger. He started to head in the direction of the infirmary.