Copy That

Chapter 1

                 Where Seven is a bit carried away with her bottled temper.

                                                               xxx

"Styles, do you copy?" 

No response. 

"Styles, I said, do you copy?" 

One. Two. Three. The eerie silence was so deafening that it causes my heart to pump blood faster than its usual rate. I've never been so afraid of such silences. If luck hadn't gotten in my way a lot of times, I'm pretty sure I would've hired my own cardiologist. This job's more stressful than other high-profile professions. 

My hands fumbled surely in the keyboard like Beethoven playing his grand toy piano, the letters gliding smoothly on the touch of my fingers. Entering some command in the system, I always like the sound of the force of my finger in the Enter key, knowing that I've already accomplished and finished the given task. But this time, it's different. I can't track his location. I don't know where he is right now. 

I pinched the bridge of my nose, a habit as it seems when it comes to dire situations, and breathed heavily and with effort. Most of the time, I worry a lot. So the job I've landed on was not the cream of the cup in my list. I panick, I overreact, then things get worse. 

Harry, on the other hand, was the clumsiest and worst (somehow) spy I've ever been assigned to. All of the spies and trackers from Exana are inherited from their parents and there were no other options than to accept it and there's no way out. We were all allowed to camouflage to the world we are living in but it was said that we should dedicate a part of our lives to this secret organization, Exana, in order to retain world peace and whatnot in our society. 

My parents are still working for Exana but they are only given less strenuous tasks nowadays because of their less capability to exert more physically. My mother inherited her work from my grandparents, and my father was sworn to secrecy and devotion to work at Exana as well, which he accepted wholly for the sake of marrying my mother. Exana is very strict when it comes to keeping the organization secluded and secure. You won't like it when they meddle with your own private matters but you pretty much don't have any choice. It is said that we're supposed to "spend our life with" people who's familiar with Exana but considerations were given too, like only one out of the three siblings in a family line could "spend their life with" an outsider. After a heated argument between my mother and my uncle, Uncle Logan defeatedly decided to let my Mom have the opportunity of marrying my Dad, an outsider. My uncle still despised my father after wasting an opportunity that he and my Mom's older sister, Aunt Layla could have. 

Me? I usually avoid the topic of commitment. With my life dedicated to scolding Harry in every fucking mission he was assigned to and arranging the card catalogs in the library repeatedly, I don't think I'll ever have the time. I work in the library because it was the place where I was closest to technological devices: computers, telephones, internet connection. Plus, books give me this sort of attraction with their unique textures and leafy pages, ancient or dusty, clean or the smell when it's newly produced. I really don't know but I guess it stabilizes the balance of order in my life. 

Harry's the opposite. He's a fun-filled lad, keeping up with being an infiltrator and an international sensation around the globe, which was Exana's really proud of because he'll end up with assignments that are suitable in the place where he is in. Like in Italy, he met world-class gamblers and interacted with them, and in Australia, where he mostly dealed with business men. Yes. All of those without being recognized. Exana's got plentiful of stuff and disguises. Harry doesn't take things seriously at first because he's a jackass like that but when the situation's becoming out of handle, he acts his all into it no matter what. With his procastinating-style personality, Exana is always not impressed, and they're also afraid that his big image might someday reveal the organization so they're always warning him to be careful all the time. But alas, those were the days.