A Stressful Situation

Mary isn’t alone. She’s accompanied by the breakfast trio and Ace — or rather, Cobalt.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a mole in Stella’s group. A lot of her goons look kind of shifty,” Cobalt says, deftly taking charge of the conversation.

“Yes, I agree. There’s this one young man that keeps giving me the evil eye…” It’s Silvia this time.

“Pretty sure he just has a lazy eye.” That one’s Brass.

“Everyone stop,” Goldie outreaches her arm, stopping Mary and the others from moving forward. “We’re not alone. Show yourselves.”

We don’t naturally. Instead, we put on our gear and each throw a smoke bomb. Mary’s group lets out shouts of surprise as they scramble around to find their assailants. In the commotion, I move to grab Cobalt’s hand and lead him out of there before returning back to the line of fire. He probably has some more new useful information and I'd rather not let him get hit by friendly fire.

Finally, we make it far enough that Mary and her cohorts should no longer be within earshot. I take off my gas mask and turn to face…It isn’t Cobalt.

“Altair?!”

“Vega?!”

I quickly let go of her hand. She looks me up and down.

“What are you doing here?!”

“I work here,” I say before I can stop myself.

“No way,” she says, and I expect her to get upset or yell or even accuse me of spying on her, but as usual she goes completely against all of my expectations. She laughs.

“Oh my gosh! Of all the bases we could have raided, we ended up in the one you’re stationed in! Imagine that!”

“What? Y-you’re not surprised?!”

“Surprised about what? You being a spy?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, yeah I already knew about that for a while now.”

What?! How?! I had been so careful. I never mentioned anything related to my work! How could she have figured it out already?!

“You know you’re saying your thoughts out loud, right? I can hear you.”

I can feel my whole body turning red in embarrassment. How could I be so careless?! She knows I’m a spy, I grabbed her hand instead of Cobalt’s, it’s a miracle I didn’t slip and call her Mary on top of all that!

Mary looks at me with thinly veiled amusement. “Well, since the cat’s out of the bag for both of us I guess we can just keep on dating!” She lets out a relieved sigh as she makes this puzzling statement. “It’s such a relief to finally get all that secrecy off my chest! So, we still up for our date this weekend?”

“…Are you seriously discussing our dating status right now?!”

“Why, is now not a good time?”

An alarm rings across the building and gunfire echoes across the halls. I stare at Mary blankly and gesture at our current situation without saying a word.

“Oh…Huh, yeah. I guess this isn’t the ideal place to talk about stuff like this.”

“There you are, Vargas!” It’s one of the guys in my group from earlier. Arthur Penn, I believe his name was. “Hurry up, we need back-up and—“

He notices Mary for the first time and his gaze darts between the two of us.

“Uh, what’s going on here?”

Mary waves her hands around in a carefree manner. “Oh, nothing to worry about! Just a typical lover’s spat!”

“We are not lovers and we are not having a spat!” How is this conversation happening right now?!

“Wait, Vargas are you dating Vega? Is this like a Batman dating Catwoman type of deal?”

“No, it’s not,” I say at the same time that Mary says, “Yes, that’s exactly it.”

“Hmmm,” Penn says, “the both of you are saying very different things. I’m not sure which one to believe.”

“Believe your colleague, not one of the people destroying your workplace!” I exclaim, and my voice may or may not have gone several octaves higher as I say this.

“I am not!” Mary exclaims, indignant. “I was just here for back-up, I wasn’t even planning to come! It was all very last minute. But if you had just communicated to me that you would be here, I would have let the others know not to come here.”

“Communication’s important in relationships,” Penn says, nodding along as if he understands what’s going on.

“For the last time, we are not in a relationship! And didn’t you say you needed help?! Can you really afford to just be meandering around here?!”

There’s a loud explosion coming from somewhere behind Penn. He smiles. “I’m sure the others can handle it. This is more important.”

“In what way?!”

“Let’s just settle down, okay?” Penn’s statement is very hard to take seriously as gun shots ring through the halls and people yell out profanities every which way.

“Are you seriously asking me that? In this situation?”

“You seem a little stressed—“

“You think?!”

“Listen, I know this situation isn’t ideal—“ I grab a piece of fallen debris and throw it at Penn’s head. He dodges. I can’t help it, I’m reaching my limit.

“Okay, rude.”

Mary comes up to me and places a hand on my shoulder. “Why don’t we get you away from all this noise? Will that help?”

I quickly shake her hand off and turn to look at her angrily. “What will help is getting back to work! And by work, I mean stopping you and you cohorts from taking over this base!”

“Babe, the base can wait.”

“It most certainly cannot wait and I am not your babe!”

“Oh, I get it. Pet names are reserved for the third date, right?”

“Nah, I think it’s safer to start doing that on the fifth date,” Penn says.

I put my head in my hands. I want to cry.

“How did it get to this?” I ask in a tone that comes embarrassingly close to coming out like a whine.

“I’m honestly just touched that you thought to get me out of that kerfuffle earlier,” Mary says.

“Yeah, no. I wasn’t aiming for you. I was aiming for someone else.”

They both gasp. “Was it one of the girls we were with earlier?” Penn asks.

“Altair! How could you?!”

“Why do you sound so scandalous?! But that’s beside the point because the one I was aiming for was a guy.”

Mary blinks and I belatedly realize what that statement must have sounded like. “Oh. Oh. Well, if you like—“

“Not like that. I was trying to get one of my male colleagues out of there because he was—“

And I stop myself before I can compromise Cobalt’s undercover operation. I scramble for words. “He had some issue with his gas mask so I was helping him out.”

“Oh, so that’s what it was,” Mary says, sounding way too relieved.

I pinch the bridge of my nose. “We’ve wasted enough time already. I don’t know about you guys, but I’m going back to defend what’s left of this base.”

“But don’t you want to know how I found out about you being a spy?” Mary asks.

“I do!” Penn says unhelpfully. I’m starting to wonder how a guy like him got hired in the first place.

The truth is, I really want to know too. But I don’t have the time for this. And I’m worried about Cobalt. Was he able to slip away amidst all that chaos? I can’t dilly dally here any more than I already have.

I look at Mary and Penn and shake my head. “I need to get going.”

“Oh, okay,” Mary says, “but not before I finish this flashback.”

“The what—“

“Flashback!”