KIDNAPPED BY THE AGENT | Project Callister Book One

v. how to be an agent

v. HOW TO BE AN AGENT

The building was thirty stories tall. Staring at it from the ground floor, the skyscraper above us seemed impossibly daunting. Ace, and the rest of the CIA for that matter expected us to climb up back into our penthouse on the top floor.

Ropes were set up for us, a courtesy for such an inconvertible task. Sun glared off the glassy sides of the skyscraper, making the apex absolutely blinding—doing nothing to help our apprehension.

Ace set the timer for thirty minutes. One minute for each floor.

"This is insane, Blackwell," Skye spits. There was a dark intensity in her eyes that was only justified by a fear of death.

Ace responds with a half-hearted shrug. "As a member of this special ops team, you have to be willing to be prepared for anything. Now start climbing. You have thirty minutes."

The others reluctantly wrap harnesses around themselves and begin climbing, leaving only Ace and me on the ground, in a stalemate.

"Do you really expect for me to climb a building?" I fume. There were things that I simply refused to do. Climbing 300 feet into the air and risk plummeting to my death was one of those said things, and I'd like to think that was a pretty reasonable line to draw.

Ace says in earnest, "You're on this team for a reason."

"I'm a teenager, I'm a programmer, I'm just a regular person. You can't expect me to complete all these feats like a trained agent." Dread rips away at me. I turn around from him, denying him the opportunity to see my weakness.

Ace's voice becomes gentle. "I know you can do this, I picked you for this team, and I'm never wrong."

I find myself creaking an annoyed but small smile. Even in life and death situations, Ace's incessant narcissism shined through.

Then he starts to scale the building like a hyperactive spiderman on shrooms. Seriously, this man could climb.

All the others are already a third of the way up the skyscraper, with Xavier in the lead. From this distance, they looked like little jelly beans. I make a mental note to not tell the dangerous criminals that I thought they looked like adorable jelly beans.

The beeping of my stopwatch shakes me from my mental tangent. Now the question is, how do I scale this thing, and fast? Time was my worst enemy. There were only twenty-five minutes left on the clock.

With my weak arms and bare minimum training, there would be no way for me to successfully pull myself up even one floor. (I found that out during gym class.)

And that's when I saw the answer—an empty, dirty, and rusty window washing carriage.

Technically, it wasn't empty. There were some supplies on the carriage and people putting on harnesses, so it was clear they were getting ready use it. Promptly, I sneak into the carriage and start to pull myself up as fast as possible.