Chapter twelve

           We went down a ladder that led down from the hole in the ground to a hatch that reminded me of those on the submarines I have seen in movies and pictures. Kazimir twisted the giant wheel at the center and opened the hatch. We then went further down some stairs in complete darkness with only Kazimir's flashlight to guide us until we reached a wall and by Kazimir's flashlight I could see that there were at least five large switches on it. Kazimir then walked up to the wall and flipped all the switches.

          There was a flickering of light and then sudden brightness flooded the space around us as florescent lights turned on above our heads and illuminated an unbelievable scene. We were standing in a giant room that would have been the wet dream of any secret agent. On one side was a long shooting range set up with paper targets placed at different distances, and right next to that was a shelf of assorted guns , knives and enough ammo to outfit a small militia all arranged neatly. On the other side was a bank of monitors connected to what appeared to be big boxes with lots of blinking lights, now I am no computer expert but I was pretty sure that those were servers and the whole thing was a mainframe computer. When I looked closer at the monitors some of them seemed to be showing live feeds from cameras inside the house, some of which I didn't even know existed.

          On the third and final side(we came from one side so that makes four) it was almost empty, the only things there were some chairs and a table, although I did notice some rolled up mats that they use for judo and other martial arts.

          I just stood there gawking and turned to Kazimir with an incredulous expression on my face," I thought you said you were Ex-KGB ?"

         He huffed and said," There is no such thing as Ex-KGB. Once you are KGB you don't quit or retire unless you die."

          He then led us to the table and offered us seats which we gladly accepted. He didn't sit down but instead started to pace back and forth, finally he cleared his throat and started to speak,"Alright now that I'm sure we won't be overheard let's talk about what we need to do about the Atelli."

        Sergei cut in," What are we supposed to do about enemies that we can't even tell apart from our friends? Hell even if we could tell them apart somehow, according to Sophia they are all different shapes and their body structure varies from one to the other so we can't even know how to properly kill them."

        Kazimir turned to me and put on a grim smile before continuing,"You are absolutely right, the two of us can do almost nothing against these creatures so we aren't going to do anything but supply support, our main operative is going to be Sophia."

        "Wait  , did you just conscript me into service? Are you really still KGB?"

        "It's not that cut and dry, do you know who Andrei's father is?"

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        "No, it is one of the things he refuses to tell me. Whenever I ask him he gets really quiet and secretive."

          "Well his father is one of Russia's richest people ,the oil oligarch Victor Usmanov. When Andrei decided to cut his ties with Victor and become a doctor I was 'retired' from the KGB as a personal favor from the director to Victor since they were close friends. Naturally Andrei hired me because all the other candidates for butler were unable to make it to the interview due to mysterious circumstances. So now I am not officially part of the KGB but as you can see I still have access to their resources and I still maintain my connections with them. What I am suggesting is not for you to join the KGB but for you to fight the Atelli while I take care of law enforcement for you like I did earlier today and supply you with information that you may need, I would also like to train you a little in combat, I would at least like to show you how to properly shoot a gun."

         I thought about it a little but it was a no brainer , I wanted to fight the plague that is the Atelli before they spread anymore. From what I have seen so far they have been moving in a coordinated manner to achieve some goal, and I had a feeling that if they succeeded the Atelli problem would get much worse . Here I was being offered a chance to fight them in a way that was meaningful and would make a difference. In the end there was only one decision I could make,

        "Alright fine. But I get to pick what missions I go on, you can't force me to do anything without my consent."

        "That's fine with me , I wasn't going to force you to do anything anyway."

          Sergei once again cut in," So she is the operative and you are going to be the source of her training and Intel. Why am I here?"

           "You are going to be supplying us with any information you can get on the mob, we need a way to make a connection to them so we can monitor the situation closely and find out what is going on."

            I was a little alarmed by where this was going," Why would we need to make a connection the mob? Can't we monitor things from afar?"

            "Because the Atelli are gunning for the mob. Right now our one and only goal is to deny them anything that they want and right now they want to crush the mob and take the docks. In the end it boils down to the old saying ' the enemy of my enemy might not be my friend but I'll help him out to hurt my enemy' I might have taken a few liberties with that saying so excuse me."

             Did he just tell me that he was going to make me team up with the mob for my first mission?     

             I guess they were the lesser of two evils when compared to the Atelli.

A.n. sorry for the late chapters, exams are approaching so expect more sporadic releases.