Deep in the heart of EVIL, Inc., a secret agent contorted his body to get past the red laser tripwires. If he'd even so much as breathed on them he would have been immediately vaporized. He somersaulted beneath the crotch of an RDU—robot defence unit—that was in sleep mode. He cooed to the crying kittens, thus destroying the security's CARE Protocol.

He wasn't worried. As the best agent in GOOD Corp.'s intergalactic ranks, this mission was a cakewalk.

Beat EVIL's ancient—albeit extensive—security system, hack into the data vault, steal the cipher, assassinate the head of EVIL, get out, and be home in time to catch the new episode of Lunar Coronation Street...

That was when he found himself locked in the gas-spectrometer room. His stomach trembled. Rule one, he thought to himself. Never eat Venusian tacos before a mission. Should've known better.

He plugged up and forced himself not to breathe as he manoeuvered through the room and out the door. His years of training put to good use. Unfortunately things went tits up right then and there. He turned to see fifteen RDUs aiming their .50-cal cannons at all his tender places. How the hell had this gone wrong?

And then it dawned on him.

No!

Moving slower than a space slug, he lowered his hand to his waist and tapped his comms unit. And seconds before the RDUs blew him to pieces, he screamed out the coded message to the boys and girls back home in High Command: "Fuck you, MadMikeMarsbergen!"

G.O.O.D. vs E.V.I.L.

Light years away, in the High Command of Galactic Overlords, Operational Division, Anika, the agent on duty in the Secret Communications centre, was taking advantage of a dull shift to have a peaceful snooze.

This was supposed to have been her day off. She'd been looking forward to immersing herself in the latest holovid episode of Survivor Mesoplanet and to be honest, she'd been a little pissed when Merrick, her boss, had told her the day off was cancelled. He needed Dorilys, the scheduled operator, to go out on a live mission. Dorilys was young and edgy. She'd recently adopted the latest trend of attaching her tech implants to the outside of her face instead of placing them discreetly under the skin. It made Anika wince every time she saw her.

Anika hid her resentment behind a fixed smile. Sure, she was getting on a bit—leaping over tall buildings and running down mountains was no longer an option—but she could still use her brain with the best of them. She might not have the muscles any more but she had the experience. Years of it.

Her head was resting on the console unit and a small puddle of drool was forming on the surface, when her right ear was blasted by a high pitched scream.

Confused, she sprang to her feet and drew her laser gun, staring wildly around the small cubicle, searching for the intruder.

What the fuck was that?

Then she realised the sound had come from the console unit, which proceeded to blow itself up in an evil-smelling puff of smoke. Coughing and spluttering, Anika backed quickly away from the remains of the unit—where her head had been resting only a moment before—and took a deep breath. Slowly, she replaced her weapon inside its slot in her jacket. Despite the alarms now screaming through the tiny space station, triggered by the exploding console unit, it was evident to Anika that the threat had originated elsewhere.

A self-destructing message was the ultimate in secret communications. Whatever had just happened, she knew it wasn't going to be good.

Fortunately her augmented memory had recorded the entire event, including the screamed message. Anika played it back once inside her head and then a second time as she tried to make sense of the garbled message.

"Fuck you, MadMikeMarsbegen!"

The message was obviously in code, though one she admitted to herself that she hadn't heard before. Assuming that the introductory expletive was just that, she ran the rest of the message through her internal decoder, but it didn't make sense. Frowning, she added the expletive and scanned the new version. Unfortunately, it now made horrible sense.

"Mayday! I've been fucked over!"

Osten Powys, their top intergalactic agent with the shaggy hair and endearing smile, had been betrayed and despite the "Mayday" call, he was almost certainly dead.

Damn! This could only mean one thing. G.O.O.D. had been infiltrated. They had a double agent in their midst. Anika swallowed.

She had to report this immediately! She turned toward the door, then paused, tapping her front teeth with a fingernail. But to whom? Who could she trust? This had been a top secret mission and only a handful of people had known the details.

The double agent had to be someone at the highest level; either that, or someone in Powys's own team.

Anika ran through the possibilities in her head. Pitt Bradley, Powys's fellow agent and fierce rival? Maybe. She supposed it was just feasible Powys might have let something slip. Dorilys Jul? Anika shook her head. Dorilys might be young and hungry to prove herself, but she was unlikely to have known anything about the mission in advance. Reluctantly, Anika allowed herself to dwell on the most likely suspect.

Jed Merrick, her boss and the current Operational Division Sub-Commander. And what were the odds of that? She could have sworn Merrick was totally loyal to G.O.O.D. Employed straight out of Military College, he'd been decorated numerous times for bravery and actions beyond the call of duty. On the other hand, Merrick was certainly the person best placed to know the exact details of Powys's mission.

If the double-agent was Merrick, Anika had no choice but to report the incident directly to one of the Overlords, in person.

Which was going to be bloody difficult, considering that the section containing the Overlord on duty—whoever that was—would now be in lockdown; the Overlord's person protected by impenetrable titanium walls until the threat was investigated and eliminated.

Anika's fevered brain sorted through her options.

"Hello? Agent Nilson? Please respond." The urgent voice came through the comms unit attached to her waist. It was Jed Merrick.

Anika hesitated, silent. If she went out through the cubicle door, what would she be walking in to? Would Merrick be suspicious, and attempt to cover his tracks? She would be certain to be held up while techs investigated the reasons for the console unit exploding, at the very least. She looked at the emergency hatch in the side of the cubicle. It led into a tiny airlock and then straight out into open space. Dared she?

"Are you injured? Can you open the door?" This time the voice came through the unit on the wall. There was a tiny pause before the voice continued. "All right. Break it down!"

There was no time to be lost. Anika flipped her flexible helmet out from the back of the suit she was wearing and pulled it down firmly over her face. She checked that the air supply was working effectively, even as she opened the emergency hatch and crawled awkwardly into the airlock. Damn, she wasn't as agile as she used to be. Either that or they were making these things smaller.

Grunting slightly, she tethered herself to the ring provided, waited an impatient second for the air pressure to reduce, then opened the exterior hatch. Instantly, the remaining air blew out, leaving Anika floating on the end of the tether. Bracing herself as best she could, Anika pressed the button to reopen the inside hatch. Air gushed forth, along with pieces of the console unit and everything else from the cubicle which wasn't fused down. Anika shot out into space along with the debris, banging her knee painfully on the side of the hatch as she went.

Before she could start to panic, the tether halted her flight. She spun dizzily for a moment until she got her right hand on the tether and was able to pull herself in close against the station. She hoped the sudden loss of air pressure in the cubicle would keep her pursuers busy for some time and with any luck, when they eventually broke in, they'd assume she had been blown out into space.

She took a minute to steady her racing heart. Gripping the tether firmly, Anika gently rotated her body until her feet were pointing toward the station hull, then activated her space boots. They stuck to the hull with a satisfying authority.

Even so, it was surprisingly hard to let go of the tether. Anika took a deep breath and focussed on the silver surface of the hull, avoiding letting her eyes drift to the vast blackness around her. She let go. She stayed motionless, and then slowly, step by careful step, she made her way over the surface toward the section where her internal guide told her the Overlord was sheltering.

~~~

Inside the space station, just as the two techs were about to break through to the Communications cubicle next door, Merrick heard a strange whooshing sound from inside which froze his blood.

"Stop!" he shouted. "Everyone out and seal off this corridor immediately! There's been a breach of the hull."

The techs didn't wait to be told twice. In seconds everyone was standing on the other side of a sealed door, staring back in the direction they had come.

"What the fuck is happening?" exclaimed Merrick.

"Are we under attack?" asked one of the techs, her eyes wide.

Merrick was still for a second, his eyes turning inward slightly as he accessed his link to the station's command centre.

Then he shook his head. "No. There's nothing to indicate an external assault, but I can confirm both hatches are open in the Communication room. It's a vacuum."

He frowned. "I just don't understand what could have happened. In any case, we have to fix that breach. Send a couple of droids out to close the hatches would you?" he asked the nearest tech.

"Yes, sir. What about Agent Nilson?"

Merrick was grim. "I'll order a retrieval pod to search outside, but... I fear we'll be searching for her body. I can't see how anyone could have survived."

~~~

Outside on the hull, Anika froze as one of the station's retrieval pods cruised by, heading in the direction of the Communications room. Programmed to search for and retrieve floating debris, it passed her stationary figure without pause.

As soon as the pod disappeared around the curve of the station, Anika hurried forward. She hoped the pod would take more than a few minutes to complete its mission, but as soon as it returned to the launch bay, they'd discover she was still missing. She was running out of time.

Ah, there it was. The emergency hatch leading to the Overlord's quarters. She opened the hatch and climbed awkwardly into the airlock.

~~~

Merrick's brain was working overtime, trying to make sense of what had happened, when an alarm went off inside his head. Someone had opened the emergency hatch to the Overlord's quarters. Adrenaline flooded through his body and he shot out down the corridor toward the sealed quarters.

Fuck! This whole incident had been a diversion. A plan to keep them occupied, while someone attempted to assassinate the Overlord. The whole thing smelt of E.V.I.L.

Heart pounding, he unsealed the door leading to the Overlord's quarters and deactivated the red-laser tripwires which were criss-crossing the outer room. Even as he raced inside, he had time to wonder that the assassin must have been a first-rate contortionist to navigate those. That must have taken some time. The assassin would still have to negotiate the defences in the office, the next room. Was it possible the Overlord was still alive? If the Overlord was following procedure, he should be in the third and last room.

Soundlessly, so as not to alert the assassin, Merrick crept toward the closed door leading to the office. He was halfway across the room when something—a change in air pressure perhaps—alerted him and he spun around. Just in time to see a gloved hand reach around from outside the room and enter the code to turn the lasers back on. His body was vaporised before he even had a chance to scream.

Inside the third room, The Overlord waited impatiently, wondering what the hell was going on.

~~~

Moving fast, Anika left the Overlord's quarters the same way she had entered, through the emergency hatch. Without giving herself time for second thoughts, she deactivated her space boots and launched herself out into space, with as strong a thrust as she could manage.

Eyes closed, she had time to evaluate the mission. She'd been recruited by an agent from Eternal Vengeance, Interstellar Liaisons, several years ago now. Sick of being passed over in favour of younger, perkier agents, Anika had seized the opportunity for payback. Over the years, she'd formed various plans to set someone else up as the double agent if suspicions were ever raised, and today, after that initial flash of fear when she saw Powys's message, she'd slotted Merrick into the role.

For someone who was supposedly a seasoned Sub-Commander, Merrick had been surprisingly easy to trick. As one of the only two people who could open the sealed door to the Overlord's quarters (the Overlord himself being the other one) he had been beyond foolish to open the door for her. Anika's lip curled. Not impressive, much.

For a split second, she'd toyed with the idea of taking out the Overlord as well, but there were too many chances for things to go horribly wrong. She'd stuck to her first plan.

Merrick was dead and unable to defend himself. A tragic accident? Or a failed attempt by an E.V.I.L. double agent to assassinate the Overlord?

The possibilities would send G.O.O.D. into turmoil for months.

Smiling to herself, Anika waited patiently to be picked up by a retrieval pod.

(Author's Note – Story word count 2099, not counting pre-amble.

Sub genre: Spy-Fy

Prompts: 1. use Shania Twain – That Don't Impress Me Much

2. Reference :TV show Survivor

3. Plus 2 of 4 images – I used #1 Austin Powers, and #3 Girl with piercings)