Spy School Out West

Chapter 20

The way I write, I like to pretend I have a certain number of idk, mangoes. Every time I feel unmotivated, I eat a motivation mango, and when I run out I usually have to take a break till the next mango harvest (man, I didn't know I was capable of this level of bad metaphors.) and I'll never have the amount I had when I started. If I started this story with 25 mangoes, I'm probably down to 20 just because of this chapter. I got really unmotivated every sentence or so for the first 1k words and was seriously considering cutting the chapter. It got so bad I had to take YouTube Shorts breaks. And I had to revisit Spy School Reunion about 50 times. That story is great, it's my recommendation nobody asked for.

I promised you at the beginning I wouldn't quit. And I won't. Plus, I still have a good amount of (I need to calm down with this metaphor) mangoes, so you don't have to worry about me. Enjoy!

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Ben's POV
--
In a VC-173 aircraft
Somewhere above the Pacific Ocean
August 4
0015 hours
--

"What's a kid like you doing in military transport, anyway?" Major Hernandez asked me.

Major Hernandez was a soldier in the US Army Corps of Engineers as a hypersonic capabilities liaison, whatever that was. He was headed to the Eurosatory, the world's largest military conference, to serve on the US pavilion, as were most of the other soldiers with us. We'd ended up on the same cargo plane by coincidence. He could best be described as square: square jaw, square shoulders, square everything. Even his fingers were square.

"I'm afraid that's classified," I said with as much confidence as I could muster. Erica was much better at this type of thing than me, but she was across the plane, discussing strategics with Catherine and Cyrus.

"Really," Major Hernandez said, sounding amused. "Is there anything you can tell me?"

I mulled that over for a minute. It was a unique question to ask, and one I wouldn't expect to come from anyone unfamiliar with the US government. "No," I said finally.

"I guess I'll just have to wonder," Major Hernandez replied, smiling. 

"I guess so," I quipped, then stood to join my friends.

The cargo plane was set up with an extremely wide interior. Jump seats lined two walls and there was a twenty-foot gap between both walls. The result was so wide and spacious, it took me a good minute to get from one corner to the other. The plane was so stable I could barely tell we were flying. Once I reached my friends, I could tell they were employing a technique we were taught in school of deflecting suspicion called "Fitzgerald's First Law of Deflecting Suspicion - Not Talking About Classified Information." Given that our mission, school, and homes were all classified, this left very little to talk about. 

"-and because of that, Nate was going to fail his, um," Zoe was stuttering.

"Test," Jawa said helpfully. "He was going to fail his test."

"Yeah," Zoe agreed. "His test."

"Hey," I said awkwardly as I approached. The general feel in that corner of the plane was like we were all navigating the edge of the Grand Canyon blindfolded - tense, awkward, and paranoid.

"Hi Ben!" Zoe answered, seeming pleased to pull the ripcord of social tension. "How's it going?"

"Pretty well," I replied, fishing around in my utility belt to look productive. I really only had a few things in there - things like Tic-Tacs, mace, a flashlight, dental floss. I even refused to carry cyanide capsules for fear of getting them confused with the Tic-Tacs - but Zoe didn't know that.

I eventually pulled out the Tic-Tacs because Zoe was waiting for me to find whatever I was looking for. I offered them around our little huddle, tucked them back into my utility belt, and asked, "so what are we doing?"