• Aaron
    I’ve been friends with Robert and Lisa for a long time. I love them like they were my brother or sister, but they are starting to slow me down. They’ve always been my backup, but I’m starting to wonder if I need them anymore. I nearly failed my last two missions because of their mistakes.
    “Good morning, Chief.” I said as I walked into his large cluttered office.
    “Agent 32, good morning. You barely scraped by on that last mission of yours. I’m doubting my sanity to give you this one. But all our other agents are on missions elsewhere. I expect you will want Agents 34 and 47 as backup.” Said the Agency Chief; no one knows his real name.
    “Not this time, sir. I will do this alone.” I replied coolly, although underneath I was nervous about my decision. But, I had made it so I would stand by it. It was by far the worst decision of my life, although I didn’t know it then.
    “You’ve got to be kidding, Agent. You would be a fool to run this mission alone. This is more dangerous than anything you’ve done before,” gasped the Chief. “You have to stop an unknown Russian spy from infiltrating the American Defense Computers. We have his approximate location, but not only would there be lots of guess work, but there would be little chance of survival. To our knowledge he has billions of dollars of equipment at his disposal, and he won’t hesitate to kill you.”
    “Then call me a fool, Chief. I’m running this mission alone.” Boy, I was an idiot.
    “Aaron, you’re fifteen-years-old and…” I cut him off.
    “I have two things to tell you sir: one, I am the best spy this agency has ever seen, and you know it. Two, don’t EVER use my real name here. My age has never been issue for me or any other agent. I know what I’m doing and I am doing this mission alone. When am I leaving?” I was irritated; he should never have used my name.
    “Tomorrow.” He said briskly; I had almost insulted the head of one of the most powerful agencies in the world. Did I mention that I was an idiot?
    “Yes, sir.”
    “You’re dismissed.” I could tell he was ticked off.
    “Yes, sir.” I left his office and headed towards my high school. I checked my watch as I walked to the school a few blocks away, 7:33, it said. I still had an hour and a half until I had to be there, and I wasn’t that psyched about telling my best friends that I was going on a mission without them.
    In case you haven’t figured it out yet, I am an international super spy, and I wasn’t being vain when I said I was the best, I could beat James Bond and Jason Bourne put together. But none of the other Agents seem to think so except for Agents 34 and 47, aka Robert and Lisa.
    I stopped at a Starbucks on my way to James Brecken High School, where my life as an actual 15-year-old took place. I got a White Chocolate Mocha and took a sip; it cleared my head as I walked down the street to school. Man, I wish I really was as good as I thought I was, because then I would have noticed the shadow in my peripheral vision, I would have noticed the dart and caught it before it jabbed into the soft flesh at the base of my neck.
    Robert
    “Lisa! You’ve got to run for it! You can’t jog!” I yelled as Lisa stopped and walked the last few yards of the school track. “Come on, Lisa! You’re a spy! You’ve got to be able to run a mile in less than ten minutes!”
    “Robby, you know I’m a tech girl, not field agent. I stay in the van while you and Aaron go shoot bad guys. I don’t need to run a mile!” she said as she bent over and breathed hard. God, she was beautiful, even with her hair a mess, her glasses lopsided, and in smelly gym clothes. I have had a crush on Lisa since the sixth grade but I’ve never been able to tell her. She’s my best friend and she probably thought of me as a brother.
    “Lisa, you know that even tech people have to pass agent exams. And speaking of Aaron, where is he? I haven’t seen him in today; he was supposed to get a mission from the Chief.” I asked her as I stared at the beautiful features of her face, deep blue eyes were looking tired as she stood up and grabbed her water bottle off of a nearby bench.
    “Maybe it was urgent and he had to leave today,” said Lisa in between sips of water.
    “He would never go on a mission without us. He needs our backup.” I said, although I wasn’t as confident as I sounded.
    “He might, I mean we did screw up the France mission pretty bad.” Lisa said, glumly.
    “I was trying to tell the Ambassador that the ballroom decorations were beautiful, not that his wife was a cow’s udder. I didn’t mean to cause an international uproar.” I said. “French has never been my best language, and you know it, Lisa.”
    “That doesn’t change the fact that…” she was cut off as the first bell rang and we had to head to class.
    “I’ll see you in home room, Lisa. Go get showered and changed.” I said as I dialed Aaron’s phone number. It rang five times and then the answering machine picked up.
    “Hey this is Aaron, I’m not here right now, I’m probably off fighting Chuck Norris and winning. Leave a message and I’ll try to call you back.” Aaron was such a dork, his one fantasy has always been to kick Chuck Norris’s butt. He probably could do it, too.
    “Aaron, it’s Robert, where are you?” I closed my phone and headed for home room.
    The rest of the day was just another boring school day, seven periods of things that I already knew. Aaron never showed up. I was starting to think that Lisa might have been right as I headed home after school. Would Aaron really have gone on a mission without us?
    The next day was the same. Aaron never called or showed up for school. As l waved at Lisa from across the football field an obnoxious beeping noise came from my watch.
    “Dang!” I said as I sprinted the last fifty yards to where Lisa was standing, the same noise issuing from her watch.
    “No school for us today!” Lisa said, happily, as we both sprinted down the block to the Agency building. I beat her there by a minute and waited for her on the front stairs, I probably shouldn’t have, but I waited. She came, huffing and puffing, up the stairs and I followed her into the building. We went down the long, brightly lit hallway as quickly as possible without running.
    “Chief, what’s the problem?” I asked as we walked into his office together.
    “It’s Agent 32. He’s gone missing, his tracker was last located on a plane heading for Svalbard, Russia. This is where his mission was supposed to go but he’s not on one of our planes.” The Chief said, I could tell he was worried. Aaron was almost a son to him.
    “Why weren’t we informed of his mission?” I asked, almost rudely. “He always takes us as backup.”
    “He said something about running this mission alone and not needing backup,” the Chief said as Lisa stomped on my foot.
    “I told you so!” she said.
    Aaron
    I have no idea where I am. The last thing I remember is Starbucks and how I didn’t want backup. I would have hit myself in the head for my stupidity if I could move my arms, but I was tied up tightly in a gritty rope that was extremely uncomfortable. I was also upside down and cold. I tried to speak, but all that came out was,
    “Owww…”
    “Ahh, I see that our young spy has awoken.” The voice spit out the word ‘spy’ like it was a cuss word.
    “Where am I?” I finally managed to work out the words as my head started to clear.
    “You are in the magnificent city of Svalbard, Russia. You are completely at my dominion.” The voice said, I could now recognize the smallest hint of a Russian accent.
    “Who are you? And why the HELL am I hanging upside down?” I said, although I probably should have been a little kinder with my words.
    The accent was more obvious now that he was angry. “I am the greatest computer hacker alive! I am Rackheid Bobofit!” He was yelling it like he wanted the world to know. He took a deep breath and continued. “I made sure to remove anything from your pockets, so don’t get any ideas. Now, I want to know all the secrets of your agency and you will tell me, or you vill hang zere until you rot!” His accent was extremely obvious that time.
    “I will never talk!”
    “Wrong choice.” He said as a door opened, “Oh, and I hope you are made of rubber or this will hurt.” The door closed. I was wondering what he meant as the ropes that bound me flashed momentarily and I was hit with an electric shock so powerful that I think I peed my pants, but then I blacked out again.

    Lisa
    “I didn’t expect to be in Russia today.” I said as I stepped off an Agency plane into a flurry of snow and wind.
    “I know what you mean; I just hope Aaron is alright.” Robby said.
    “Ya.” I said. We stepped into a car without saying anything else for the next hour.
    “Ve are here.” Our driver, a man with thick Russian accent, said as he stopped the car two miles outside of Svalbard.
    “You can’t take us any farther?” I ask him.
    “No, miss. If I go much I farther ve vill be shot at. You must go ze rest of ze way on foot.” He said gruffly.
    “But it’s a blizzard out there, we can’t…” Robby cut me off.
    “We have to walk, Lisa.” Robby said. “Thank you for taking us this far, sir.”
    “You are velcome, good luck.” The driver said as we got out of the car and he drove off. It was a very long, slow, cold walk as we neared Svalbard. The city was supposed to be controlled by one man, Rackheid Bobofit. He claimed to be the best computer hacker in the world. None of us know if he really is.
    I was off in my thought as Robby grabbed me from behind and yelled, “Duck!” He threw both of us on the ground just as a military truck drove by us.
    “Good ear, Robby!” I yelled over the howling winds.
    “Are you OK?” He asked me as if he was going to die if I wasn’t alright.
    “I’m fine!” I replied, still yelling.
    “We’re almost to Svalbard! I want you to dig a hole in the snow just outside of the city and take cover in it. Set up whatever equipment that you need to keep contact with the Agency and me. I’m the munitions expert, so I will place charges all along the Bobofit’s compound and when we get Aaron out, I will blow the place sky high!” Robby said it like he knew what he was doing. I liked it. He usually just let Aaron lead and make the plans but now he was taking charge.
    “OK! But Robby, what will you do if I lose contact with you or the Agency?”
    “I don’t know, I’ll have to play it by ear! Good luck!” He said. Then, we split up.
    Robert
    Run. That’s all I could think as I sprinted through a city that probably wanted me dead. I knew that the compound was in the center of the city, so that’s where I ran.
    “Robby? Can you hear me?” Good. We had a com link now. Her job was going just as planned.
    “Ya! I can hear you!” I still had to yell to be heard over the static that the wind was causing. I reached a huge cement wall and stopped, this was it, the compound. I had at least fifty itty-bitty bombs. I reached in my army satchel and put one on the wall.
    I slunk along the wall, placing a bomb every fifty paces or so until I found a service door and luckily, it was unlocked. I went inside and pulled out my stun gun. On all my missions, I always do my best not to kill anyone, but this time I set the small electric gun on ‘incinerate’. I was ticked off; no one can kidnap my best friend and get away with it.
    “You just set your weapon on degree ten. Are you ok?” I forgot that Lisa could see my weapon stats.
    “Ya, I’m fine. I just don’t want any of these Russians to live to tell about how they kidnapped my best friend.”
    “OK, Robby. But be careful!”
    Aaron
    I woke up again, I was still tied in the electric ropes but I wasn’t upside down.
    “What happened?” I managed to whisper.
    “Well, your ropes are intertwined with metal wires that carried an electric shock…” It was Bobofit, again. “But I think you figured that out.”
    “Yes, actually, I did. However, I still refuse to talk.” I replied. My voice was steeled.
    “That’s exactly what I expected you to say.” He said this as though he knew something that I didn’t. “Even after I gave you some warm clothes and I let your friends in so easily.”
    “What? Robert and Lisa are here?” Oh! I was an idiot! How could I say their names?
    “What, do you not want them to be here, because if not I can snuff them out like a candle flame. In fact, I think I will.”
    “NO!” I screamed.
    “THEN TELL ME VAT I VANT TO KNOW!” He yelled at me.
    “NEVER!”
    “Then your dear Robert and Lisa die!” He whispered it in my ear.
    Then door burst off its hinges and Robert stepped in with his little stun gun leveled at Bobofit.
    “Untie my friend, NOW!” he said.
    “And if I refuse?” Bobofit asked as he reached in his pocket.
    “ROBERT! FIRE!” I screamed.
    ZEEEEAPPPP!
    His little electric gun blasted Bobofit across the small room. A small remote fell out of Bobofit’s hand. It landed at my feet and I crushed it with the heel of my boot.
    “We did it, Lisa!” He yelled.
    “Yes!” I could hear her through his com link.
    “Aaron, now do you see why you need friends?” He asked me as he cut the ropes.
    “Ya, Robert. I see it.” We didn’t run into anyone on our way out of Svalbard. We found Lisa in a little heat tent outside of town. She immediately jumped out of the tent and ran to Robert and kissed him. Robert was surprised but didn’t reject her. Well, at least they’re happy.
    “Guys, will you forgive me for being an idiot?” They stopped hugging and Robert said,
    “Of course we can. What are friends for?” As he said the last words, he pressed a button on his watch and Bobofit’s compound blew up and we all started laughing.
    “Let’s go home, guys” I said.