It was nightfall. Charlie parked the car in an alley, about two blocks down from the Varnie Tech building itself. We all stepped out of the car and Charlie began to put on a disguise. He put on a long blonde hair wig and some hippie glasses. He quickly changes his clothing and Jordan and I are confused.
“Why are you changing your clothes Charlie?” I ask.
“Varnie has seen me. If he sees me or my car, he’ll know immediately that this is an AGENT mission and try to hide everything away from us.” he says.
“So then why don’t we get costumes?” Jordan asks.
“He’s never seen us, so he doesn’t know we are with AGENT.” I said. Jordan and I took our backpacks with us and we stepped out of the car and walked down the sidewalk that was beige brown and passed a few people as he turned to a parking lot. We walked across and entered through the doors of the massive building that said VARNIE TECH at the top. As we entered, the doors instantly opened when we approached the building and we walked in. The company silenced us when we walked in and the man at the front desk was straightening his posture as we came in.
“Hello.” I said. “I am Eric Yun. My parents used to work here 16 years ago. I would like to speak with the CEO of this facility and company. Dr. George Varnie.”
“Uh.” says the man. “I don’t know if he would come for a regular request, but I can do my best.”
The man turned around and took out a phone hanging on the wall behind his reception desk and dialled for Varnie. He was on the call for a few minutes and then he hung up the phone.
“Dr. Varnie will see you.” he says. “He will be here in just a moment.”
We went to the back of the room and sat down at the benches and waited for another few minutes when suddenly another man walked inside to talk to the man from earlier. He had short black hair with white marks and had blue eyes in one eye and the other was dull brown. The dull brown was behind a scouter looking eyewear. He wore a black vest and shirt and cargo pants under. I noticed his blue eye and realised it looked really similar to the eye my mom and dad were making. No. It looked identical. The man came to us.
“You must be Eric,” he says. “Welcome. I am Doctor George Varnie of Varnie Tech. It is an honour to have the son of some of the biggest brains in this facility.”
“Yeah.” I said. “I am Eric Yun. This is Hippy Jake and Jordan Glaciov.”
We got up from our seats. Charlie and Jordan were behind me as I followed Varnie inside of the facility.
“How can I help you today?” he asks. I know he was one of the leads of Phantom and I didn’t want to lower my guard, but it was off that he was greeting us nicely. It’s not what I would expect. I had a feeling that he knew stuff that I didn't know about my parents.
“What happened to my parents?” I asked.
“Your parents. Ari and Kim Yun were the smartest geniuses here at Varnie Tech. They made many of the designs that I’ve been using in my tech today. Your parents were fantastic. I suppose you're the same?”
I nod.
“I’ve always been invested in technology and have been able to make androids and other robots at the age of 10 or so.” I said.
“Great. Great. Maybe I should hire you.” he says. My happy expression changed and went back to my serious expression.
“You ignored my question. What happened to my parents?” I asked.
“Your parents suffered from an illness out of work. They passed away shortly after your birth.” he said.
“Okay.” I said. “That’s bad.”
“It’s a shame,” he says.
“That eye you have?” I asked. “Where did it come from?”
“My mom,” he says.
“No. The blue one.”
“The blue one?” he asks. He thinks for a bit and then answers.
“I suppose it was a design that I had come up with the help of your parents,” he says.
“What does it do?” I ask.
“It increases my fighting ability and can shoot charged blasts out of the eye,” he says. “We are very lucky to live in a world where conflict is not very common, so my eye never gets any use.”
I start thinking about that green eye. My hand initially phased through it, like a ghost. I can guess that is one of its abilities, but it seems like Varnie’s eye doesn’t have that quirk. As we walked through some of the factory lines, Charlie and Jordan noticed the massive amount of conveyors and products on the conveyor lines. We started to walk through a room that was a bridge over a void of conveyors. The bridge was automatically expanding as we walked. The bridge was a metal white and the conveyors were a dark grey. I think Jordan got fed up with my questions and then he dropped a bombshell of a question.
“What is Phantom?” he asks.
“Phantom?” he asks. “As in a ghost?”
“No. Like an organisation.” he says.
“Never heard of it.” he says. “Why do you ask?”
“Oh.” he says. “I thought you’d know because you're part of it.”
“Part of what?” he asks. We continue walking through a hallway inside of the facility where we start to approach an intersection of hallways inside of the facility.
“Phantom.” says Jordan.
“It sounds like you’ve gotten the wrong guy. I don’t know any phantoms.” Varnie says. Suddenly a girl with black hair and nerdy circular glasses walks up to Varnie. She is wearing a lab coat, jeans and a blouse. She comes and whispers in Varnie’s ear. I didn’t know what she said and then she turned to Charlie and Jordan.
“You two. Come with me, I want to take you guys on a special tour.” she says.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Okay.” Jordan says. He and Charlie follow her and then she takes a left and Varnie and I take a right. The girl leads Jordan and Charlie in a long tunnel.
“Where are we going?” asks Jordan. “Who are you?”
“I am Abigail Varnie. Dr. Varnie’s daughter.” she says. “And you?”
“Jordan Glaciov. This is Hippy Jake.”
“Yo.” says Charlie in a muffled voice. Abigail led the two down to a room that looked similar to the factory and had the same bridge over something but this time it was just a grid pattern on the floor. The grid pattern was blue. Abigail clicked a button and the bridge appeared as they walked. Abigail quickly ran to the end and hit the button, which shut the bridge. It was too late for Jordan and Charlie as they fell onto the grid floor at the bottom. They noticed a gate and an arch entryway in front of them that wasn’t visible from the bridge. It was white and had laser bars. Jordan and Charlie turned to Abigail.
“Hey!” says Jordan. “What did you-”
“You know too much about my father. He told me to dispose of you two.”
“How!” says Jordan.
“Stop.” says Charlie, putting his hand on Jordan’s shoulder. “Don’t make her and her father mad.”
“So that was all an act,” he says.
“Yeah.” she said. “It was.”
She turned to a button and clicked it and the laser gates opened up and two red eyes appeared out the entryway.
….
I followed Varnie into his experiment room and he sat down at a desk in the room.
“Where should I sit?” I ask.
“Next to me.” he says. I came over to sit and he put out a chair for me to sit in. I sat down and it immediately tied me and I was stuck to the chair. He got up from his chair and noticed the barbs around me, tying me to the chair. He took my backpack.
“It was a trap.” I said.
“Yeah,” he says. “It was.”
“What do you want, megalomaniac?” I said. “I know you want to resurrect someone to conquer the world.”
He began to search through my bag and found the bloody trenchcoat and journal of my parents science and tech notes. He held the trenchcoat in his hand.
“You still have this bloody mess?”
“Shut up!” I said. “It’s the last thing I have of my parents!”
He tosses it on the floor and steps on it. He takes out the journal and then finds the page he was looking for. It seems that he had lured me here simply to get that journal. I didn’t think it was that important but he went to the page and showed it to me. It was page 54.
“Do you see this?” he asks.
“What is that?” I ask.
“It’s a formula for creating urisnium. The strongest element in existence.”
“It wasn’t on the periodic table.” I said.
“It doesn’t have to be. Your parents discovered this substance, which has allowed me to make tech such as my eye that wouldn’t be imaginable.”
“You work for Phantom. You obviously need this.” I said.
“I do,” he says. “But I will need your cooperation to make this substance occur.”
“I’m not helping you. I am not helping Phantom.” I say.
“Annoying brat,” he says. He then activates a TV in the room which shows Charlie and Jordan in a ditch in the factory. Something with beading red eyes starts to come out of some entryway. It was a giant bloodthirsty, half robot dog. It had blood in its jaws and it was 3 metres tall. It started to walk towards Jordan and Charlie as they both moved back.
“I can call off Bernard if you help me make the urisnium.'' he says.
“That’s ridiculous. I would never help you!” I said. Bernard starts to head closer to them and Jordan shoots ice and it just bites through it. Charlie takes out his gun and tries to shoot it and the dog absorbs the bullets. The dog then punches Charlie into the wall and Jordan runs to see if he is okay. His mouth starts to drip of blood.
“Okay. STOP!” I said. “I will help you.”
He calls off the dog. The dog goes back into hiding and the lasers appear again. He turns off the TV. I helped him. He tells me what to do and I help him with the experiment which creates a new sample set of 100 grams of uranium for him to use. Jordan creates an ice staircase out of the hole and Charlie and Jordan get up on their feet as they escape. Charlie whips off his disguise and gets his guns out.
Eight guards start to surround the two. They have rifles and pistols aimed at Charlie and Jordan’s heads.
“This is not good.” says Jordan.
“Just take down before they shoot you,” he says. He takes his guns out and starts to shoot four of the guards that prevent the two from passing. One guard runs up to Jordan as he smashes the ground and ice shards come out of the ground. The guard drops his gun and Jordan puts his hand on his face and freezes him. The other five started to fire and Charlie shot them down as well and Jordan shot ice at them to freeze them in place. Charlie and Jordan ran through the facility to look for me.
Varnie watched me as I looked at the journal and performed the experiment just as the book said. It involved heat rays, uranium and a special goo, which he had provided. The scouter eyewear piece was glowing and he was focusing on it with his brown eye.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“I have x-ray. Your friends are here to save you.” he says. “They should be here any minute.”
I immediately stopped working.
“That doesn’t mean you stop working, Yun.” he says. “Bernard will get them.”
Suddenly, Jordan and Charlie busted the door down and surrounded Varnie and saw me helping him.
“Eric.” Jordan says.
“Why are you helping him?”
“He said he would let the dog eat you if I didn’t help him.”
“Why did you take Eric?” asks Charlie, he is aiming a gun at his head.
“Easy. Easy.” he says. “I just need him to help me finish a device that can help me get the locations of some relics.”
“Hand us the device!” says Jordan, charging his ice powers. I grab my backpack and trenchcoat and journal and join them. The three of us face Dr. Varnie together.
“You think, you three can stop me?” he asks.
Jordan shoots ice and Varnie brings out two sword handles from his waist and they extend into two long katanas with sharp, shiny metal blades. He blocks the ice and takes the grams of urisnium and places them inside of his plastic bag. Charlie shot his pistol and Varnie reacted almost instantly and flicked his head, the bullet grazing past his cheek. He puts out his swords.
“No way.” says Jordan.
“That was fast.” I said. “Those reflexes look unnatural. The eye is probably what is responsible.”
“Shoot the eye. Got it.” Charlie says. He takes his second pistol out and Varnie continues to block as he runs forward towards Charlie.
“Watch out!” says Jordan. He runs in front of Charlie and shoots ice as Varnie pushes his swords against Jordan. Varnie just smirked as his eyes started to glow again.
“He’s gonna shoot a laser.” I said. “Jordan back up.”
I stood there in panic. I had no powers, no skill in combat. I felt useless as I had just given the villain what he needed for his plans. Varnie shot the laser and Jordan put his hand on the eye and froze it as a massive ice block appeared over his eye. The laser broke the eye and Charlie ran behind and kicked Varnie into the wall. Shelves and equipment collapsed onto the ground as he got up.
“Enough of this,” he says. Charlie and Jordan look at each other and run forward towards Varnie as he clutches his swords and blocks a bullet from Charlie and a close range ice powered attack from Jordan. Jordan’s hand is touching the blade and Charlie runs closer. When he sees the blade coming, he jumps back and stands close to Varnie. Varnie shoots lasers at Jordan and Jordan gets shot back into the wall of the lab. He brings his two swords out for Charlie and Charlie dodges the slashes and swings his hand at Varnie’s and makes him drop one sword. Jordan, mouth dripping of blood , picks up the sword and places it at Varnie’s neck.
“I wouldn’t move if I were you!” Jordan says. I was watching the fight as I felt useless.
Varnie kicks Jordan away with his left foot and Jordan drops the sword as he is flung back into the wall. Charlie and him both grab each other’s hands and push at each other.
“Charlie of AGENT. We met earlier, right.” he says pushing against Charlie.
“I have nothing to say to you.” Charlie replies.
“Very well,” he says. He brings his sword out and slashes Charlie in his arm. He raises his legs and kicks Charlie in the face. He is thrown into the wall as a massive cut appears on his arm. He is knocked out. I drop my backpack on the ground and Varnie walks towards Jordan as Jordan gets up. Varnie picked his second blade up and walked towards him. The blades had blood on the tips. Jordan walks backwards as he runs into the wall.
“It’s time you die, Jordan Glaciov.”
“No!” I yelled. Jordan stood there as Varnie charged an attack and swung the sword as I ran in and grabbed and pushed him out of the way. The swords slash my left eye and my eye is destroyed. I lose vision in that eye and blood starts to leak out of it as I collapse onto the floor. Jordan and Charlie look at me in shock. My eye was in pain, but because of adrenaline, there wasn’t any pain for the eye. I stood there looking at the guy with tears in my right eye.
“Eric,” he says. “You sacrificed your eye for his life?”
“It’s because he is the first person who cared and became friends with me.” I said. “Something you’d probably not understand.”
“I understand that sacrificing your eye was a bold move and a terrible one at that. Then again-”
His arms suddenly extended to a long 3 metres with some robotics on his arm. He grabs Jordan and then shoots a laser at the top of the lab. The roof collapses and reveals the outside, where a helicopter with the Phantom logo is above and his daughter Abigail is inside, flying the copter. She was wearing the headphones that copter pilots usually wear. She couldn’t really hear everything.
“Father get in.” she yelled. Varnie grabbed Jordan and Abigail and some of the Phantom soldiers put a rope as Varnie climbed on and tied Jordan with another rope. Varnie got on and had Jordan tied up, facing us. Charlie began to shoot his weapon at the helicopter and inside of the helicopter was a minigun piloting at the side doors. One guy sat at the turret and fired bullets at Charlie as he stopped firing and dodged the bullets. The entire lab is dust and chunks of concrete. Charlie and I looked at him.
“I’m sorry Eric,” he says. “It was fun wasn’t it.”
I stared at him with my right eye and gave him a stern look. Charlie put out his weapons and I put his weapons down.
“One last thing.” I said.
“What is it?” he asks.
“My parents. You lied about what happened, didn’t you?”
“That 195 IQ is a lie detector?” he asks. “Yes. I lied. I disposed of your parents when I used them as test subjects for one of my new weapon designs. They were getting old and sick. Something I believe is that when a human has reached their end, you should put them out of their suffering.”
“You killed them.” I said. Dr. Varnie showed no expression on his face. The devil. The helicopter flew away and it started to rain. Charlie looked at me, broken and bruised and one of my eyes slashed off. I looked into the rain and started to cry as I smashed the ground. My tears dropped to the ground along with my blood. The blood even formed tears onto the ground.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA HHHHHHHH!”