Level 38, SIS Building, Lambeth, London.
Pete Wisdom exhaled a cloud of smoke as he paced around the white room that was bereft of furniture and features.
"Take a seat!" said a disembodied voice as the room went completely dark except for a peak of light at the other end of the room which highlighted a chair. Pete groaned and walked up to it, kicked it around the other way and sat, slumping his head into his arms.
"There's no smoking in here."
Pete looked up, took a drag and smiled. "Must've missed the sign."
"Do you know why you're here, Mr. Wisdom?"
He nodded and returned to his slump.
"Would you care to elaborate?"
He sighed. "This is a psychological test to see if I'm a suitable candidate for MI-13. You leave me in a featureless room to see how I react, you see how I respond to orders when you turned out the lights. You're gauging my reactions and personality by my unwillingness to sit on a chair properly and continuing to smoke..." He took another puff and tossed the butt on the floor. "And soon you'll send in a team of thugs to assault to determine if my fighting skills are up to snuff."
The lights came on and lining the walls were a dozen men in full tactical assault outfits pointing machine guns at the chair. Pete looked up before slumping again.
"That'd be really scary if they weren't holograms," Pete groaned and pointed. "One up the back isn't touching the floor, none of them cast shadows, and you made up the unit. Black Air pfft. Sounds like something those clowns at SHIELD would invent."
"Oh Black Air is quite real," said a woman striding into the room with a silver attache case. She was stunning. "My name is Michelle Scicluna."
"Wow!" Pete gasped.
"So far you've passed with flying colours," she said. "Two more to go."
"Please tell me you're going to give me a physical?" Pete flirted as he stood up, puffing up and flexing.
"Cheeky," she replied with a wink as she stepped in close. "Improvisation under extreme circumstances."
"Don't listen to BritPop but hum a few bars..." Pete leant in, the two were dangerously close. Michelle bit her bottom lip.
Click-Click.
Pete paused as he saw he was now handcuffed to the case. "What the..?"
Michelle raised her knee, smashing it into his groin with such force that Pete folded. She then grabbed the sides of his head and rammed her other knee into his throat. Pete collapsed on the ground writhing in pain from top to bottom.
"You are now attached via a carbonadium tether to a bomb that will explode in three minutes," Michelle said. "Which you will have to work out how to defuse before you hit the ground."
Pete gasped. "Before I what?"
Suddenly the floor opened and Pete fell. As he tumbled through the sky he remembered that the lift did sound funny which would explain why he was falling out of a helicarrier towards London.
"Bollocks!"
Pete tumbled towards London. The easiest solution was using his mutant power and blowing his arm off, but he kinda liked his arm. Also, it didn't solve the bomb problem. Or the falling. Or his aching groin.
"Think Wisdom think!" He chastised himself. "Hang on, the tether is that Russian adamantium knock off, not the case!"
Pete held the case tight as he aimed his finger at the seam. His power of hot knives were not exactly delicate; they were a blast weapon with the heat of them being on par with the Sun! A volley of knives shot out and the case flew open. As he spun he looked at the device; several lumps of C4 attached via white wires to a black box similar to a modem.
