Average Secret Organisation

"I think we need to tell her," whispered Henry. James was leaning towards him, having a quiet conversation that was hopefully private.

"I agree, her goons are giving me that same feeling from last night," James responded nervously. He glanced at the guard sitting next to Miss Kalieta. He was sitting as still as humanly possible with the motion of the van, his gun on his lap pointed towards the doors. Miss Kalieta looked completely calm, perfectly fine with James and Henry having a chat. James looked back at Henry, "How much should we tell them?"

"Everything," Henry said instantly.

"Even about who hired us?" James asked, a bit of the loyalty he held for Tom leaking through.

"Especially that. With everything that happened, I'm pretty sure he set us up." James frowned at that, even if the information gained from him was bull, he didn't think that Tom would do something that deliberately fucked James over.

James turned back towards Miss Kalieta, "Alright we'll tell you everything, where do you want us to start?"

"The very start if you could," she replied.

"Ok so, about a month ago my main contact, a guy named Tom Johnston, asked me to do a job for him," James started, but Miss Kalieta cut him off.

"Tom Johnston, he local?" she asked.

"No, originally from Sydney but was transferred here after fucking up some deal. He might still be here, if he heard of our arrest though he would of bounced," James replied. Miss Kalieta gestured to the guard next to her and he pulled out a phone and started talking to someone in a rushed but quiet tone. She turned back to James and nodded for him to continue.

"He approached me to break into a low security warehouse. He told us it would just have some cameras and a few guards. We had a layout of the warehouse and the grounds surrounding it. Our target was a safe that was supposedly in a secret underground room.

We staked the place out for a week. We noted comings and goings, where people move, number of people, passcodes for entrances. It was all pretty simple stuff, passwords didn't change, people came in on a consistent rotation. While I was doing that, Henry got into the main camera system."

"There was something weird with the camera system as well," Henry interjected, "I couldn't gain access to the power of the cameras, which is something I should be able to do with these types of cameras. The visual clarity was also way above what it should of been."

"So instead of doing the normal of shutting down the camera system, we did it the hard way. Noted blind spots in the camera rotation and personnel rotation. There was about a 15 second gap every 3 and a half minutes between 11 and midnight from the north-eastern corner. We expected to find a small storage room, instead we got the entrance to a large underground complex.. I got this strange feeling that something was wrong, so we bounced. Obviously we messed up the extraction, probably because we were in such a rush to get out."

Miss Kalieta leant back, head resting on the side of the van. James looked at her thinking. He was still confused on what exactly she had to do with this. It was obvious she was working for whoever owned the warehouse, but who was that and why did they have a high school teacher in their pay books.

James and Henry waited with baited breath as she sat there silently thinking. Eventually she sat up and pulled a phone out of her jacket, in doing so revealing a pistol in a shoulder holster. The phone rang for a second before someone picked up, "Bring Sofia to my office as soon as possible, I'll be in base in five," she said quickly before putting the phone back and turning towards James.

She looked James directly in the eye, holding his gaze. James didn't know what she was doing but kept his eyes steady. After a couple of seconds, James could feel the same feeling that the guards gave of start to build more aggressively. He flinched slightly as it abruptly changed into a short burst of...fear maybe, but he held Miss Kalieta's stare. She abruptly dropped the stare and James let out a small gasp as he realised he'd been holding his breath.

"That feeling that you described," she said, careful to not meet James' eyes again, "Was it the same as what you just felt?" she asked.

"At the start yeah, it was pretty similar. It's the same feeling I get from your goon here," he gestured at the stoic guard.

"At the start?" she asked. He tone shifted, instead of the commanding tone of the questions until now, this was more quizzical, closer to what James recognized from school.

"Yeah, it started as a more general feeling of uneasiness, like something was off in the air, then there was an abrupt shift into something, sharper?" responded James, feeling unsure even with that response. He wasn't sure he could accurately describe the feeling. He looked down at his hands and tried to focus on the feeling that was still there, attempting to describe it seemed impossible.

"Don't worry about describing it," Miss Kalieta said, breaking James out of his introspection to look at her. "People who have similar reactions have the same problem of describing it to others."

"When you say reaction, reaction to what?" James asked.

"Ah, best to keep that for later," she said, smiling at him before moving her gaze to Henry. "How did you manage to access the cameras, you shouldn't have been able to do that."

Henry smiled sheepishly, his gaze moving to the floor, "I'm not sure actually."

"You're not sure? How does that work?" asked James.

"My usual means of getting in weren't working and I got a little frustrated. So I just typed what I wanted to happen into the computer and boom, I got in," Henry said.

"Now that's interesting," Miss Kalieta commented.

"We're approaching the entrance now ma'am," a voice echoed through the small gap between the back and the front cabin.

"Alright boys look sharp," Miss Kalieta announced. "We'll be leaving the van in about a minute. We'll go directly to my office from there, I'll give you a debriefing there," she gave them a beeming smile. "Welcome to Area 51."

There was a brief pause as James and Henry digested the information before the both spoke at once,

"What's Area 51?" asked Henry.

"Your groups called Area 51," James laughed.

"I'll answer your questions in more detail when we get in, but for now, just know that we deal in unknown forces that threaten humanity as a whole," the sound of a large garage door opening filled the van as it slowed down. Before it even stopped the guard in the back stood up and opened the door, that same feeling briefly picking up as he unlocked the door. The guard stepped out and Miss Kalieta ushered the boys out after him.

They stepped out into a large open warehouse, similar to the one they broke into, but while that one was mostly empty, this one was filled with different vehicles, large storage crates, and dozens of people.

Miss Kalieta stepped out behind them and walked towards a large metal door in one of the walls. Not seeing any other option, the boys followed after her, the guard from the van on their heels. She approached a key pad on the wall, the metal door sliding open after a few seconds. On the other side was a large elevator.

"After you," said Miss Kalieta, gesturing with her arms for the two boys to get onto the elevator. They tentatively stepped into the elevator. The feeling that James had been getting more comfortable with became more noticeable, making his uneasiness heighten.

After the guard and Miss Kalieta stepped on, the elevator closed and started dropping. The movement was unbelievably smooth, James couldn't tell how fast or how far they went down.

after 15 seconds the elevator stopped and the doors opened. A long, concrete corridor stretched out before them. Bright lights shone from above and brightly covered lines at shoulder height on the walls were the only colour in the mostly grey corridor.

Miss Kalieta started down the corridor, turning down the first corridor on their right. The boys and the guard followed closely behind.

The wall in this corridor only had a red strip flowing through it, seemingly indicating the purpose of the area, though the boys didn't know what that purpose was.

They passed a couple dozen people who seemed to fit into two categories. The first was obviously the guards. They were dressed differently to the guard with their group, in what would be considered more traditional military gear, but still in that deep black colour. They were even more heavily armed than the guard with them. The same rifle type strapped across their chests, with multiple other weapons clearly on display.

The second group were dressed more simple with more variety than the guards, but even they had atleast one weapon visible.

After a minute or so and two more turns, they entered a large office that was littered with books and papers. In the centre of the room was a simple metal desk, with a double screen computer and multiple stacks of folders and paper. There were three chairs on the side closest to the door and on one of them sat a woman.

The woman stood up as soon as the group entered the room. She was shorter than Miss Kalieta, but much more muscular. She had well tanned skin and dark black hair that was cut short. She was wearing a black tank top, her bulging arms glistening with sweat. She looked like she had just been working out and had been unceremoniously interrupted.

She gave a quick salute to Miss Kalieta before passing an assessing gaze over James and Henry.

Miss Kalieta returned the salute to the woman before walking around the other end of the table and sitting in the simple office chair.

"Have a seat," she said, gesturing at the empty chairs. James and Henry sat in the chairs, the other woman spending another couple seconds observing the boys before taking a seat.

"Welcome to Site 1 of Area 51 and more importantly," Miss Kalieta paused and gave a wide smile, "Welcome to the secret world of magic."