Dedicated to: mccreanor
Thanks for the feedback and support! :) You rock.

Shoutout to: 0KeepDreamin0
OMG, so like, your comment about guys these days is totally true. To be completely honest, a lot of guys I know would say the exact same thing Pete did; it’s getting ridiculous the amount of respect I’ve lost for them. And I don’t know when people decided that that kind of behavior was okay for teenage boys . . . but apparently a lot of them got the memo I missed.
Although I would’ve missed it anyway, since I’m not a teenage boy . . .
Well, anyway. Dude, thanks for le comments and support! You are like. Really awesome. :)

                                     *                 *                 *

       September 14th
       Agents R. Harris and A. Peterson disable the jamming field that compromised their connection to Special Operations’ Headquarters.

       28. Room 416
       Date: September 14th

“Can you type any faster?” I mumble over Alex’s shoulder.

       Alex pauses to glance back at me. “Yes,” he says, “I could. But typing faster will only increase the amount of typos I’ll make, not help me attempt to find the signal.”

       I sigh, standing up so I can continue pacing. I avoid the small black square table in the center of the room and let my eyes wander around. The bed is king-sized and neatly made, and there are two one-seated couches on either side of the black table in the middle. The chandelier above us is massive and extremely bright, lighting up the tan walls that surround us.

      A new wave of thoughts enters my head.

      Alex and I are going to have to find a way to speed up the process. It’s taking too long. It is likely that we’ll either be discovered here, or that we’ll return to Smile way too late for Justin and Pete’s cover story to count as our alibi.

       “You guys are running out of time,” says Jez.

       I look over at her. Her highlighted curls shine brightly as they cascade down her back, and it reminds me of what my hair used to look like before I dyed it a dark brown for the mission. She stands at half her height, bent over, sticking her head into the mini-fridge in the hotel suite.

       “Really,” responds Alex, his eyes on the laptop screen. “Didn’t know that before. Thanks for pointing that out.”

       Jez ignores his sarcasm and continues scouring the fridge. “Next time, you guys should pick a hotel suite with chocolate in it.”

       I stop pacing. “Next time,” I tell her, “you should get your own hotel suite.” I glance over at Alex, and he tears his eyes away from the screen to smirk back at me, and then I realize how that sounded.

       Jez closes the fridge door, winking at me. “I plan on it.” She turns to Alex, who has already resumed typing. “Pinpoint the origin yet?”

       “I’m trying. Whoever’s trying to get rid of our connection to HQ has a lot of experience with this sort of thing. And some pretty heavy equipment.”

       “Equipment,” I repeat, turning to him. I stare at the back of Alex’s head as he nods. “That would include a main hard drive of some sort, right?”

       “Yeah,” he answers.

       I start to think fast, listening to the sounds of his fingers hitting the buttons on the keyboard. Even when we find the room all this equipment is in, we still don’t know what else we’ll find in there. Or who else.

       Suddenly Alex leans back, away from the laptop. “Found it,” he says. “Room 416.”

       I try to think faster. We might be walking into an ambush. Either way, that jamming field needs to be disabled.

       But how? There’s bound to be someone guarding all that technology.

       Then I remember the flash drive. “Alex, hand me that,” I order, pointing to the USB drive.

       “What are you thinking?” he asks, standing to give me the heel part of my shoe.

       I take it from him and plug it back into my right heel. Then I put on the red pumps and straighten out the red V-neck dress I’m wearing. “I think I might have a plan.”

      In search of a mirror, my feet take me to the bathroom. I watch myself in the mirror, fix my hair, and smile at my reflection. “Jez,” I call. “Do you happen to have any red lipstick on you?”

       She steps in behind me. “Yeah, here.”

       I apply the lipstick, then smile at myself again. After a few seconds, I drop the smile and follow Jez out of the bathroom.

       The smile could use some work, I decide.

       But it’ll have to do.

          .          .          .

“Alex,” I whisper, giggling girlishly as I stagger along with him towards room 416. “We're going to get caught.” I make sure to do everything extra loudly so that whoever is inside the room can hear.

      Alex grins. “Oh, I hope so.”

      We come to a stop in front of the room door, and I nod slightly at him, silently telling him to swipe the key card I tried to reprogram. I hold my breath and watch him do it. When he does, and it works, I barely get a chance to breathe again before the two of us purposely stumble inside.

      The lights are off.

      We don't turn them on when we get into the room. Instead, Alex closes the door behind us, and he turns us around so that my back is pressed against the door and his body is pressed against mine.

      Immediately I find it hard to breathe. Somehow my hands end up in the soft short locks of his hair, and my heart pounds quickly against my chest as he leans in closer to me. His lips reach my neck, gently and slowly, and I hold my breath.

       Time stops, and suddenly I can't remember what Alex and I are actually doing in the room.

      Two strong arms cage me in, placed on either side of me, one of his hands toying with a strand of my hair as the other rests flat against the door behind me. Alex lifts his face to look at me. Soon his face is not even an inch away from mine, his nose nudging mine as we breathe together in synch.

      I feel his warmth and the intensity of his gaze even though I can't see him clearly.

      And then the lights come on.

      Alex jumps away from me, and we both squint at the person standing next to the light switch. I take a second to adjust to the light, and then the real meaning of Alex's actions comes rushing back to me. I glance at Alex, remembering, and then I pretend to look embarrassed like he does.

      "Excuse me," says a large, burly man in a suit. His dark eyes look at Alex, then at me, and then they find their way down to the slit in my dress before they go back up to our faces. Alex narrows his eyes at the man. "I'm afraid you have the wrong room."

      I quickly survey the room. There's equipment everywhere. Just from peeking I see a desktop computer is set up on the table in the room. I spot two laptops on the bed, numerable routers positioned here and there, and wires covering the floors.

      I plaster the practiced smile on my face and glance over at the key card in Alex's hand. "Room 416?"

      The man's face twists into one of confusion. He walks over to us to see the card in Alex's hand for himself.

      I slowly inch away from the two as the man reads the card.

      "This says room 418," the man says, "not 416."

      Alex grins at the man. "Whoops."

      And then the first punch is thrown.

      I move over to the table as quickly as I can and pull off my right shoe again. Glancing back at the fight behind me, I shove the flash drive into the hard drive of the desktop computer and then make my way over to the two laptops.

       Both systems are running, and since I don’t have time to figure things out I assume one of the laptops is controlled by the hard drive through Bluetooth. I begin typing on the first laptop.

       “Rachel! On your right!”

       At Alex’s warning I throw myself to the left, just in time to miss the man hurling himself at me. The man crashes headfirst into the bed and knocks the laptop I wasn’t working on to the floor, and the laptop’s screen breaks into tiny glass pieces.

       Before I can think, he's on his feet again, heading directly to me. I try to calculate my chances of evading him as I back away from the figure stalking towards me, but my back smacks into a wall, and my brain seems to be completely blank.

       The man in front of me pulls me forward by my dress, ripping the fabric in the process. He brings me close, long enough to see that there's a smug look on his face.

       His leg moves, and I feel a stab of pain in my side as my body lurches to the right. The kick startles me. My ribcage throbs and adrenaline pumps rapidly through me as my hands clench into fists.

       He shoves his fist at my face but my hand shoots out to block his. I catch the man by surprise, and while I have the chance I knee him in the groin. He doubles over, and my fist swings up to punch him in the jaw. As the man’s head shoots backwards, Alex comes up behind him and loops both his arms around the man’s neck tightly.

       The man claws at Alex's choking arms, and I have a chance to let out a breath. But I know this won’t hold him off for long, so I run back to the remaining laptop on the bed and activate the computer virus I installed on the USB drive.

       As I continue typing, behind me the man manages to throw Alex off him. Alex is flung onto the hard wood floor. I flinch at his landing, watching over my shoulder. The man grabs Alex by the front of his shirt and lifts him off the ground.

       My heart beating unnaturally fast, I grab the first thing I see and run over to the man, and I hit him over the back of his head with the broken laptop from before.

       Instantly the man falls to the floor.

       Seconds later I drop the remaining pieces of the laptop. Alex stands up straight, his chest rising and falling as he breathes heavily.

       "Are you okay?" I ask, letting my eyes look over him. Alex winces slightly but nods his head.

       I drop to my knees and check if the man has a pulse.

       “He’s alive,” I say after a moment. I look up at Alex, who stands across from me, towering over both me and the large man lying on the floor.

       "Oh great, yay!" Alex exclaims sarcastically, attempting to pump his first in the air.

       I sit back to catch my breath. "We're probably going to have to clean this up."

       I look over at the broken glass on the floor, the table that was knocked over somehow, the mattress that was pushed sideways when the man crashed into it, and sigh at the body lying between Alex and I.

       Then I look down at my ripped dress. I should have picked an uglier dress to wear.

       “Well,” Alex says after a few seconds, trying to adjust his shirt and dusting off his dress pants. “That’s the worst prom I’ve ever been to.”

          .          .          .

When Alex and I return to Smile Academy, we assume we’ve made it back in time to corroborate with Justin and Pete’s cover story.

       But it appears we’re not.

       We’re early.

       We meet the boys in Alex’s dorm. Alex glares at the two boys, and they exchange glances. “You told everyone we went on a romantic date?”

       “It was the most believable excuse we could think of,” Justin defends.

       “Plus, it’s not entirely wrong,” Pete says, eyeing my outfit.

       I pull my coat tighter around my shoulders. “Right,” I say, “but that’s not going to help them understand why we skipped school and left the premises, especially when there’s a kidnapper out there.”

       Pete stares at me. “Here’s an idea. How about you help us understand that first before you tell us to lie for you?”

       I don’t respond.

       Alex steps forward, positioning himself between us. He looks directly at Pete. “Okay, you’re right. We’re sorry. You covered for us. Thanks.”

       Something in my pocket starts ringing. Alex turns to me, his gaze following mine to my coat pocket. Without saying anything else to the two boys we move away from them as I pull out the burner phone I stole from the man at the hotel.

       “Is someone calling?” Alex asks.

       The phone stops ringing, and I shake my head. “It’s a text.”

       I open the text, and Alex reads the words silently over my shoulder.

       New intel. We missed two other undercover agents at Smile. Tell the girl to find them and kill them. Both of you have until Model Mayhem @ 7pm. Get it done.

                                     *                 *                 *

Wooo!

Was that cool or what?

Hehe, thanks for reading!

COMMENT CHALLENGE: Answer le question, what did you think of my first ever fight scene? One lucky commenter will receive a dedication. And try not to make it too short. :3

'AwesomelyBlaze