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disclaimer : NBC owns (some of) the characters, I own the words
note : for Andrea. First in trilogy. Timeline up to “The World Is Changing”. Translations given only where needed.


SECRET AGENT MAN TRILOGY
I.  WHO DOTH WATCH O’ER US NOW?
by Schuyler


‘Hey Parker, let’s play twenty questions.’

Miss Parker glared at her brother, then turned to look out the window of the light plane. She held a glass of Vodka to her forehead, hoping to ease away the tingles of an oncoming migraine but to no avail. Sighing, she withdrew her hand and swallowed the remaining liquor. Mr Lyle merely raised an eyebrow and, having received no objections, began the game.

‘Do you think I have our father’s good looks?’ His reply was a slight snort and look of disgust.

‘Well, that is purely your opinion,’ said Lyle, picking off invisible lint from his shoulder, ‘as you are entitled to have them. I, however, do believe I’ve inherited some of his best qualities.’

Like the uncanny ability to kiss Triumvirate ass , Miss Parker thought, but kept the remark to herself. She nervously stomached the mountainous terrain below; they were flying over the Brei?dalur area in Eastern Iceland, against all weather warnings that had been issued by the locals prior to takeoff.

Broots had been implementing the new data security system when a yellow flag went up on his computer. In the search for Jarod, someone had identified a situation that sounded very much like those which attracted the pretender’s attention. An anonymous response to one of his many ads posted online outlined how a mysterious American had helped out a small village outside of Egilssta?ir, past the eastfjörds. The man, known only as “Jarod”, exposed a European company who, posing as governmental officials doing agricultural research, forced several farmers to sell their land and then used the area as a chemical waste dump. Several toxins from the site made their way into surrounding mountain streams - streams plentiful in salmon and trout, and in which livestock drank from - the poisoning wrecking havoc on local farming and fishing industries. He assisted environmental groups in the massive cleanup, forced the company to compensate affected villagers, yet refused any credit for his actions.

She was impressed; Jarod’s interests were turning global. Unfortunately for Miss Parker, Broots had come down with the flu, Sydney was under annual review by the Tower, and all Centre sweepers – Sam included – were on a weekend retreat designed to improve communications and teamwork after a recent mishap took three lives. That left only her and Lyle to make the intercontinental trip.

But, upon arriving in the capital Reykjavík, more bad news awaited them: they were informed that a cross-country fight in the Centre jet would be too dangerous and simply out of the question. Parker and Lyle were forced to navigate the icy dirt roads in a 4WD, rugged up in double layers of coats and scarves to combat the 10 below temperatures. In what could have been a cleverly executed setup by Jarod, both adults soon decided they could take no more “bonding time” being shacked up together in the suffocating car. So when they arrived in Núpssta?ur down southward, they provided one of the locals with enough incentive to fly them to their destination in his tiny plane. Half a day in the rickety craft was a lot more preferable to four more days in the car with just each other.

Closing her eyes, she rested her head against the window, the vibrations from the low humming of the engine almost lulling her into slumber. She would have fallen asleep too, had it not been for the irritable voice of her brother.

‘The object of the game is to ask each other questions and receive answers in return. It won’t work if you don’t take part, Parker. Come on, don’t you want a turn?’ he inquired innocently, and yet mischief shined brightly in his cool, blue eyes.

‘No.’

‘You can ask me anything, anything you want.’

Realizing he would not drop the subject until she participated at least once, Miss Parker paused briefly, then shifted her body to face in Lyle’s direction. ‘When you were ten, what did you want to grow up to be?’

Lyle’s eyes widened as he sat up a little straighter in his seat. That had been unexpected, and he wasn’t sure he knew how to address his childhood fantasies. His past had been painful to say the least, and brought back all kinds of unwanted emotions he had tried to quell. Memory was pain trying to resurrect itself; best to remove himself from it, put distance between his transition from Robert Bowman to Mr Lyle. He glanced over at his sister, who was still awaiting an answer to her query.

‘I wanted to do what every other kid in Nebraska did,’ he said in a non-committal manner, waving his hand as though to dismiss the question, ‘this and that. Nothing too exciting.’

‘Oh? Please do elaborate.’

Blushing slightly he averted his eyes to the floor before saying, ‘I wanted to run away and join the circus. Become a performer.’

The foreign sounds of laughter rang through the plane, Miss Parker’s fit of giggles strangely contagious as Lyle involuntarily joined in. As the chorus died, both adults tightly clutched their sides at the stitches that were beginning to emerge, Lyle echoing the question that had started it all.

‘I can’t remember,’ she quickly replied, but the expression on her twin’s face claimed he was unconvinced. ‘Okay, okay, I wanted to be a ..’

Straining to hear what she had said, Lyle frowned at his sister when he couldn’t make sense of her mumbling. ‘Say it again, I think I missed it.’

‘I said, I wanted to be a ballerina,’ she repeated, her voice barely above a whisper. The grin on her brother’s face grew immeasurably at the confession, and suddenly, she felt rather embarrassed and stupid for revealing something so personal.

‘Why didn’t you? You certainly have the legs for it,’ he smirked. Miss Parker’s eyes narrowed, and she shot him a look that said don’t even go there while he filed the snippet of information away in his mind for future use. They sat in silence for the next ten minutes, each deep in thought when they were both suddenly knocked from their seats. The plane bobbed in the air for a few moments before taking a sharp nosedive, setting off a shrill beeping noise that registered in both their minds.

‘What the hell is going on?’ she shouted above the noise as they attempted to make their way towards the pilot. Crashing to the ground again, they slid and hit the underside of the control panels, the pilot’s frantic arm movements hovering above their heads. ‘What’s happening?’ she repeated, with more urgency.

‘…g veit ekki! …g ættir a? vita betur, ?a? lítur illa út ..’

Picking himself up, Lyle began waving his hands in a crisscrossing motion. ‘No, no, speak English! English! What is going on?’

‘Hvernig segir ma?ur óve?ur .. storm. Storm bad. Skilur ?ú ?etta? Plane no strong enough.’ They watched as he pulled at the steering wheel with all his might, just managing to pull the plane out of its spiraling descent to level out and barely glide over the top of a mountain.

Miss Parker let out a deep breath she hadn’t known she was holding, chest heaving in and out with each gasp of air. ‘You can get us to safety, right? Out of this storm? Why the hell did you take us if you knew there was going to be a storm? You idiot!’

The pilot glared back, and spat out in furious Icelandic, ‘far?u til fjandanns! …g setti mig í hættu fyrir ?ig, og vi? rétt sluppum! ?etta er tilgangslaust –’ He got no further as another wave of turbulence hit the aircraft, and just like the grown twins, was knocked from his seat, banging the side of his head on a corner of the console.

‘Shit!’ they cried in unison. Miss Parker fumbled over the fallen pilot as she tried to obtain a pulse, Lyle taking over the controls.

‘Damnit, he’s unconscious,’ she yelled as her arms tugged wildly at the body, moving him to another place on the floor to give her brother more room. He nodded, eyes focused somewhere on the scenery that was rushing by the windows. ‘Can you even fly a plane?’

I’ll be damned if I let something like that stop me , thought Lyle. ‘No, do you?’

She shook her head, swallowing the large lump in her throat as panic took hold of her insides and knotted them up.

‘Then I suggest you grab hold of something solid because this is going to be one hell of a ride!’ Lyle shouted, knuckles turning white from the force he was gripping the steering wheel with. He stole a glance at his sister, flashing her a quick smile and joking, ‘guess we missed this in the brochure, huh? We’ll have to demand a refund when we return to that travel agency.’ Normally he loved the aroma of fear and sense of danger – in ways it even aroused him to a degree – but right now it was unnerving, a cruel reminder of the fragility of life.

Even though he wasn’t a pilot, Lyle knew they were still far too low, going too fast, and it was clear their luck would run out soon. Miss Parker watched as the snow-filled clouds were building up rapidly over the mountains, and knew they hadn’t a chance of outrunning them. She could see no place for Lyle to land, and there was no protection from the snow which was to come. If only they hadn’t demanded being taken on the flight and listened to the villagers instead.

The narrow valley down which they were flying now veered East. Before them lay a vast stretch of winter-bare trees, and just beyond them, what seemed to be a barely visible outline of a small town came into view. A ghostly cloud, forerunner of the threatening body that massed behind it, caused the aircraft to buck from its invisible embrace once more.

‘We’re going to have to go around,’ Lyle claimed, pointing at the forest that lay before them.

‘Can’t we just fly through it?’

‘It’s too thick; we’d never make it.’ He grinned at the irony. Just mere seconds ago they had been praying for protection, and now there were literally hundreds of trees, now standing between them and safety.

‘Then hurry up and save our asses from this storm,’ she replied, wide-eyed as the first snowflakes touched the outside of the small plane.

Coming to the end of the forest, Lyle now had to cut across the path of the snowstorm, the aforementioned town now within clear sight. It was mostly made up of small houses lined up in rows, surrounded by the large timber fence that encircled them like a fortress. They were already flying dangerously low; there was no chance of getting past the wooden barrier without breaking through it first.

It’ll be safe , thought Lyle, squinting through the whiteness that was masking the town, nobody in their right mind would be out in this kind of weather .

Ten feet from impact, Lyle let go of the steering wheel and Miss Parker took hold of him, the two ducking down with the pilot’s limp body, away from the control panel as the earsplitting sound of the crash tore through the craft. Shards of glass, metal and lumber flew everywhere. The first cold gust of air ripped through the debris, lashing at their vulnerable bodies.

Eventually they skidded to a halt, whatever that was left of the plane now acting as a temporary windbreak as it lay at a horizontal angle against the storm. Lyle managed to pull himself and his sister out from beneath the twisted metal, and she clung onto him for dear life. He strained to see through the falling snow, trying to find a line of sight, a house they could go to for shelter, but could see nothing. It was madness to try and stand upright: they stumbled aimlessly for a couple yards, but were continually beat down, screams drowning in the howling wind.

With arms still entwined, Lyle collapsed onto the ground, his body a fireball of pain, unable to endure the elements anymore. We’re both going to die here in the snow together . Miss Parker followed suit, her frame falling over Lyle’s, unconscious.


TBC









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