The Elites

Chapter Six

 My first thought was this Ezra guy. For years there’d been talk of my ‘replacement.’ There was no denying that I was good at my job. In my entire history as an Elite, I’d never once failed to reach a conclusion on a case. The problem was that I was never around to flaunt my success; I’d return from America on a way too posh flight set up by the Agency and leg it back home without anyone seeing me. It was extremely rare for paparazzi to ever get a picture of me, and even if they did it would be from the top of a six storey building or from behind a bush. I hadn’t had direct contact with a pap since before my bad period. It was a wonder how they managed to get so many ‘exposes’ without ever hearing me utter a single word. That was the turning point for my relationship with the media.

As a rule, I never read the newspapers for myself. If I saw my name, or Will’s, or Lara’s or anything to do with the Agency, I’d flip the page faster than if a tarantula had crawled out from beneath the papers. Of course, the more prestigious newspapers were more interested in our work than in our personal lives, but I’d bet it was rare to find a piece written about me without the names Lara Kloss or Ashton James popping up. Tabloids and gossip sites were by far the worst. I didn’t read them before, and I definitely wasn’t going to start.

The main debate was whether it was worth me being part of the Elites Agency at all. Out of the few hundred Agents there, only sixteen had Elite status. The question was always the same: if he only works in America, why does he work for a British Agency? My answer had two parts. One was that the British Agency was the only Agency (unless I wanted to join the CIA or MI6, which I had been offered several times each.) The other – and possibly the most important to everyone else – was that I brought in attention. For someone who was hardly ever seen, I stirred a great amount of media ‘storms.’ America didn’t care about me like Britain did. British media covered my American cases just as much as they covered Will’s home ones. During my bad period – especially after the Ashton thing – the Agency probably earned a fortune off of my name.

But maybe they had decided it was time for me to go. Maybe this Ezra wasn’t a dumbass at all – maybe he was brilliant. It’d be easy to hide it from me – it wasn’t like I paid attention to anything going on around here.

Or maybe I was just overanalysing. I did that a lot.

I ignored the red ribbon in my pocket as I started in a different direction to where Mr Hetley and Blair had gone off to. The large stage area on the far end of the hall had been empty for the start of the evening, but now Will stood alone in the centre. He was fidgeting uncomfortably on the spot, fiddling with his hands an alternating which one foot he decided to stand on. A microphone was perched on a way too low pedestal in front of him, and he bent down awkwardly to speak into it.

“So, you all know that we know about that thing outside,” he was rambling on. “And you know that… well, we all know that nothing like this has happened before. Currently, um… Currently we are wanting to… trying to find out the cause of the, uh, hole in the wall, but… Yeah….”

Will was a bumbling idiot sometimes. Sometimes.

He took a deep breath and composed himself as the people in the crowd watched in silence. He straightened his back and unhooked the microphone from its small stand, a short static thump echoing throughout the hall.

“I know it’s confusing and we would all rather be in a friendly environment right now,” he said, much calmer. “But the important thing is to stick together and help each other through this. No, the situation is not ideal. But with our combined brainpower and abilities, I’m sure we can figure this out. Then we can get back to the way it was.”