Max held onto the small, chubby hands of Asra as he brought her inside Alpha’s, making sure no one saw them.

He quickly shut and locked the door behind him, turning off the neon sign to show they were closed. He didn’t want to be visited by anyone who could identify Asra, even as potential clients.

Hela quickly walked up to them with a friendly smile, she already knew they would be coming in. The broadcast on her monitor had since been turned off.

People skills were her forte, being why she worked as the receptionist. While Max could handle most people without issue, but the group of those he could, was not as broad. Children were something he wasn’t nearly as good with.

“Hey there, little one! I’m Hela! Nice to meet you!” Hela said, cheerfully, already crouched down to have her head on the same level as Asra’s.

The girl had still yet to fully calm down, hiding behind Max to protect herself. Hela had been watching both of them from her monitor, and she couldn’t wait to take the child off his hands, lest his antics make things worse.

Max placed his hand on the scared girl’s head, trying to console her. “Don’t worry, she’s my friend. Hela here can help you more than I could.”

“Yes, that’s right. Be sure to tell me if you need anything.” Their efforts to coax Asra out from behind him worked, as she had thankfully stopped hiding. Though, she still looked just as restless.

“You’re not hungry, are you? If you are then just tell me! I’ll get something nice prepared for you.” Hela did her best to make Asra trust her.

“You should ready the bath first, instead. She smells like shi- Uh, like she needs one.” Max didn’t want to swear in front of her, and bit his words back after his tongue slipped.

Hela noticed, though. She just eyed Max, her look trying to tell him that she could better take care of it herself, especially without his help.

She very much agreed, though. She could already tell they were coming back when they rounded the corner, even without Prime’s input. The poor girl reeked as if she had just been pulled out from a pile of rotten garbage and refuse.

Max and Hela looked towards the kid, as Asra tried smelling her hand, the disgust shown on her face overpowering what little fear she still held.

Even she knew she needed really a bath.

“I should take a bath…” Asra looked downcast as she said that.

Hela clapped her hands to take back the girl’s attention. “That’s right! Being clean is definitely important, and you’re such a big girl to know that! Come on, follow me, I’ll bring you to the bathroom.”

Hela took the hands of Asra, and dragged her out to the hallway, past Max’s sight. He would have to ask her to clean up the child’s footprints, once Asra herself was clean. The two of them had entered the bathroom and closed the door behind them, by the time he started going towards his office.

He wasn’t worried whether Hela could befriend the girl, they had already known each other for years. He knew that she would have no issues with this.

Once he entered his office, he groaned at the mess he had left on his table. Whenever Max had free time, he would spend some of it maintaining his various gadgets, keeping them in working order, in case he needed them. Many electronic bits and bobs covered his desk. However organized they once may have been, they were now scattered on the desk in a pile, kicked around when he was asleep.

He grabbed an empty cardboard box, and shoved all the parts, tools, and various gizmos inside it. He could not be bothered to sort them out at this time, simply placing the box next to his desk. Only his keyboard, mouse, monitor, and Prime herself remained on top.

He sat down in his chair.

“Prime, check if we have anything about Eric in our database, and see if you you can find any articles. Only check publicly available information, for now, we don’t want to be tracked.”

“Affirmative.”

Various pages, images, and text were soon displayed on his now-illuminated monitor.

Eric Vacnel, general at Bertha’s military. Just over fifty, but his images made him look twenty years older than fifty.

And, that was roughly all they got. The few articles that did come up, were largely irrelevant, with no useful information.

Looks like he isn’t that famous.

Max thought to himself, slightly surprised, before further instructing Prime. “Prime, can you check his personal profile? That should have more information.”

“I cannot.”

He did not expect her to refuse.

Prime, through the connection with his computer, had access to every one of Alpha’s many servers hidden under the building. Even if Eric’s system had no vulnerabilities to abuse, a fact Max doubted, she should have had more than enough to overwhelm Eric’s computer. Slipping in while it was frozen would be trivial. Even without that, she had more than enough processing power to brute force the password to his system, should all else fail.

So, why was a general too unimportant to even have any proper news mention him, beyond their capabilities? Max wanted to know.

“Explain.”

“His profile is behind the military’s firewall, and communication with his system itself seems heavily past that, but I can’t tell why. The security on his computer itself is laughable, but even if I just breached the firewall, they would still be knocking on our door within two minutes. and it wouldn’t be the military. It would still be possible to hack, but not here, and not without destroying the device used. Be that me, or something else.”

Max was deep in thought, and decided to just stop trying to get information for now, asking Prime to delete the articles and clean their tracks. Asra was already with them, anyway. Risking calling the entire military just because of Eric would be stupid, especially because they already had his daughter here, she could answer all their questions anyhow.

Fortunately, Max already figured out how to get her to talk about basically anything.

He stood up, walked to his dresser, and opened it.

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

“No, Max. You cannot.”

From his stash of hidden-away goodies, he pulled out a cotton candy machine, his jar of sugar, and some strawberry flavoring. Artificial strawberry was easy enough to make that it was still sold, though it had gotten far more expensive, like everything else. He decided to splurge a bit.

“It’s not for me.”

“Okay Max, that’s it. Mission ‘Max’s secret fetish’ has been added to the database.”

Max glared at his PDA. Prime just stuck her tongue out, as much as she could with her emojis. “You made this into a mission? And change the name! I’m not into children!”

“Acknowledged. Changing Mission’s name in to ‘Conjoining with a child’.”

“That still sounds terrible, but at least it’s not got my name in it.”

“Want to know what the original name was? ‘Coaxing a child’.”

Max just sighed at Prime’s improper naming sense. “Just name it Aerial Extraction, after the girl’s initials.”

“Done. I still think mine were better, though. Harder to figure out, if a data breach happens. Who could claim to know what your secret fetish is?”

Max had to agree with her reasoning. The names were still unquestionably terrible, but she was right, they would indeed make it harder to guess what the missions entailed.

Data breaches weren’t common, but they would still happen occasionally. Even if the data was stolen, the assailant would still find little use in it if it was unintelligible in the first place. Once they got past encryption, at least.

Prime’s security was as good as it could get, but there were always more vulnerabilities to exploit. Prime was generally supposed to choose the best option, but she thought a little mischief wouldn’t hurt. Max hoped that Prime would stop doing that at some point.

Max went back to his plans, and plugged the cotton candy machine into the wall.

It was a simple machine. All it did was melt the sugar into extremely thin threads, spinning all the while, forcing the strands to catch air as they collected into a featherweight ball of sweet fluff.

He took a large spoonful of sugar, and added just the smallest tiniest drop of strawberry flavouring from the bottle he stored it in. It originally came on just a small vial, him having since diluted it. The original was so concentrated that simply opening and closing it would make the room smell like strawberry for half an hour.

He opened a small compartment on the machine, and poured the sugar in, turning the machine on shortly after. It soon whirred to life, the machine spinning up, the silky strands of sugar slowly piling up in the middle.

The whole office soon smelled of caramel, a fact that told him he would need to clean the machine soon. “Prime, tell Hela to buy some time, at least ten minutes. Tell her to come up here once she’s done.”

“Done.”

The sugar soon collected up to a ball, slightly smaller than his head. He took two ceramic plates out of the drawer, and placed them on his desk, filling one with yet more candy from his dresser.

The machine was also soon done, and the fluffy ball of cloud was placed onto the other plate.

“Max, Hela said it would take at least thirty minutes. She decided to wash Asra’s dirty clothes, as buying new children’s clothes would be too suspicious for Alpha to do.”

Max nodded, managing to produce five more balls of cotton candy before the sweet smell of caramel slowly turned to that of charcoal. He left the machine on the desk, just pushing it to the side, so he would not forget to clean it once he had time.

He tried to look more into Eric, but without hacking the military, the search remained fruitless.

Max couldn’t find anyone else related either, so he decided to shelve it for now.

“Should I contact Mr. Joker about this?” Prime chimed in, trying to give options to Max.

Mr. Joker was an expert hacker, second to none, but that was all anyone knew. Nobody knew if he was a single person, or a group. Some people speculated that it wasn’t even a proper group, just a code-name shared by several people and organizations dealing in the trade, all tying them together being their invariable skill. His or her or their skill in getting information was only rivaled by hiding his own.

Mr. Joker had contacted Max years ago, after the Alphas had gained a bit of popularity. Since then, both Max and joker would commission each other for help sometimes.

“It’s not a good idea to hire him for this. He always charges an exorbitant sum for basically anything. I can’t deny his skill, but it’s just not worth it for now.”

“I can always just claim that he can’t hack into the military. That always seems to work.”

“I’d rather keep a good relationship with him, than constantly piss him off whenever I need his services.”

“Got it.”

Max continued wasting his time, but nothing new came up. Asra and Hela entered the office soon enough.

Asra’s dirty visage was gone, looking like a rich person’s daughter, holding onto Hela’s hand. She had managed to earn the girl’s trust, fulfilling Max’s expectations.

Asra noticed the plates candy on Max’s desk, her sight completely captivated. Max was happy his idea worked, and held his hands out towards the sugary delights. He himself wanted to eat them just as much.

“Don’t be shy, have a bite.”

What should have been an interrogation, turned into hearty snack time of a family of three. Prime still complained about the sugar, occasionally.

Asra nibbled on a ball of cotton candy, the two adults looking at the girl that was almost crying half an hour ago, as they ate quietly.

Once their snack time was over, Max started with the important questions, Hela sitting beside the girl should she need consoling.

“Alright, then. Let’s introduce ourselves now, shall we?” Max said, as he smiled a bit.

Asra nodded, her previous sadness long dissolved in the piles of candy, her mind only in the present.

“I’m Asra. Asra Eric.”

Max immediately saw and took the opportunity to turn the conversation in his favor. “I’m Max, owner of the Alphas company. We work on various odd jobs, including helping you out. We’ve also worked with Bertha’s military a number of times, and I know a lot of people there. Including your father, Eric Vacnel.”

Asra felt like a hen in the foxhouse. She immediately panicked again. “A-Are you going to put me back there?”

Max quickly shook his head and Hela held Asra’s hand, both trying to calm her.

“Of course not, I promised I’d help you, didn’t I? But I can’t help you without knowing what the problem is, right?”

Asra hesitated, but the candy had won her over long ago. Her father made her stay away from sweets, though she knew he could afford them.

“I’ll tell you what happened few days ago…”

Asra started speaking, speech littered with lots of gibberish, tangents, and even tears near the end. She was only 8, and her speech was not quite ready for serious conversation, but they all tried their best to have one anyway. Prime continued recording, as she always would be.

Soon enough, Max understood why she chose to run away. Her and her brother -whose name they never got, always just replaced by tears and sobbing- were playing hide and seek, as they always did when alone. This time, she snuck inside her Father’s office, since there was no one there, and hid.

Unfortunately, she found some confidential documents, and happened to find them interesting enough to flaunt her knowledge to her brother and father. Neither she or her brother had been taught about the dangers of the world, a fact that both let Max’s plan help her work, and caused her trouble in the first place. They were supposed to be taught by their nanny, hired by Eric. Who, unfortunately for them, was not at all fit for the job, spending their day lazing about.

Both Asra and her brother were scolded harshly after they told their father about what they found, something they found strange, as Eric doted on them a lot.

Just a day later, Asra’s brother got sick. He eventually recovered from his sickness, but it left him with major memory loss and paralysis. Asra remembered her Father’s scolding, and ran away, fearing that she would be next.

By the end of her story, Asra was crying and Hela was hugging her as she tried to calm the girl.

Max started analyzing her story.

Eric’s office was obviously bugged, and not just by him, but by someone higher up in the military. Max chose to believe he would have saved his son, if he could have.

Asra’s brother was probably given a drug to wipe his memory, one of many developed by the military’s research team.

One thing they all shared, was that they were unsuited for children. The effectiveness varied widely, from just momentary forgetfulness to perpetual coma, even with the dose adjusted. The military was the obvious culprit.

Max guessed that their nanny probably belonged to the military, though he had no proof. It would explain how Asra’s brother was fed the drug, without either Asra or their father noticing. She probably mixed it in their food, and Asra was just coincidentally not hungry that day. Or maybe she just didn’t like the food and gave her brother her own portion. The doubled dose would explain the paralysis.

This whole situation annoyed Max. He was used to dealing with the horrors of the apocalypse, normally. But kids reminded him of his own past, watching as his friends disappeared one by one. Harm coming to them was one of the few things he would not tolerate.

There was but one missing piece.

Just what did they learn, that it would make the military risk killing the children of their own General?