Excerpt: Agents of Metal Pt. 2

Ian was not actually aware of the time passing: it could have been minutes, or then hours. But at last the van stopped. He was violently jolted out of his dreamlike state, and suddenly he felt terrified: this was the end of the road and beyond, a prison gulag or something equally unpleasant waited.

Absurdity! He came to his senses and understood that they had arrived at the Agent HQ.

Blackhand opened the rear doors.

"It's best you get some rest now. The debriefing can wait until tomorrow," he said.

"But the hard disk can't," Blowfish said. "Where is it?"

Wearily, Ian reached for his pocket, and for a second, he felt absolute horror. It was gone! He patted all over his coat violently, until he understood it was in the other pocket. He handed the small drive over to Blowfish and hoped the Agent BOFH would now be satisfied.

"I'll get to work on it immediately," she said.

Ian had wondered it before, but the thought crossed his mind again that maybe she actually was on speed. Then again, she had not been running for her life, or attending a festival with the worst service practices ever.

"And by the way, I'm sorry for you that Mayhem got cancelled. It's already developing into a meme of its own. And supposedly it's not even the first time that something like that happened."

Ian was now truly puzzled. Since when was Blowfish sorry for anything? It seemed that everyone around him was turning unusual in some way. Blackhand was too nice, and Jo was tired and apathetic. Perhaps not Sarge. He was pretty much his usual self.

But now, there was not much for Ian and Jo to do except to find their quarters, while their legs still could carry. Ian helped Jo up, and they headed through the garage and the lobby.

***

In Ian's dream, the hard disk haunted him. He was with Blowfish in a particle-free room: they both were wearing surgeon's clothes, and he drive lay on an operating table. Ian handed Blowfish very miniature tools according to her precise instructions. Meanwhile they kept monitoring the pulse and blood pressure of the hard disk: as soon as Blowfish did something wrong, they spiked, going wildly either too high or too low.

He woke up with a start, and found himself in the server room. He had no idea of he had ended up there, but was pretty sure that Jo was now sleeping soundly in their room. Blowfish looked up from behind a soldering iron.

"The power connector had broken," she said. "Quite an easy fix. I'll hook this up right away and try to pull data off it, but you should really be going to bed."

Ian saw it fit to comply: his head felt very heavy. It would possibly be an early wake-up with the debriefing waiting, and somehow Ian knew that Blackhand would not show much understanding if Ian told that he had been operating a hard disk. In reality, Blowfish had done everything.