Hush Hush & Deception: Stolen

Chapter 8

After a long night, the agents each went to their seperate rooms to recover. Their jetliner wasn’t supposed to arrive until the next day, so they took the time to explore the pleasures of Atlantic City undercover. The following morning, they hopped into their van and got on the road again. Sonya was driving, with Scarlet sitting shotgun, both cheerily talking to each other. Joey was talking to Veronica, trying to show her a possible bright side of the injury in her arm,
    “Hey, at least we have a break for once, so now you get to heal.”
    Veronica glared, angrily, “How is that a positive?”
    “I don’t know, I was just trying. . .” Joey muttered off, suddenly becoming shy.
    Alexis, Finn, and Phil were all sitting in the back quietly. Alexis looked at Finn, trying to spark a conversation.
    “So, how are you doing after all this?”
    “What do you mean?” Finn asked.
    “Well, let’s see,” Alexis began, “There's been the issues with Magnus and Ebony, the splinter group, an assassin that’s on our tail, and that’s all on top of your brother. You haven’t been given any time to recover.”
    Finn looked down at the mention of his brother. Alexis was right, he never had time to think about his sudden death. That was something they always warned you when becoming an agent: never get too attached. But how could he not become attached to his brother?
    “I guess it’s been alright so far,” Finn replied, “It’s been nice avoiding it, but I know at one point, when everything calms down, I’ll have to come to face the terms.” Alexis nodded, smiling and understanding.
    “Ahem!” Phil grunted, grabbing everybody’s attention, “So, I have some good news, and some bad news. Which one do we wanna hear first?” The van went into complete silence, nobody wanting to hear the bad news.
    “Ok,” Phil said, “we’ll start with the good news.”
    “I reported back our situation to the Agency and they’ve called us back in. Both Lennie Kloshinini and Ebony Klern have been put in captivity. The Agency has also followed up on the splinter group, and due to their loss of Magnus and Tanya, they tried to escape quietly by ditching their helicopter. Luckily, we found them hiding in a warehouse outside of Scranton, Pennsylvania. Both Nicholas Bartholomew and Barry O’Neill have been captured and are on a flight back to Miami.”
    “What’s the bad news?”
    “The bad news,” Phil responded, “is that the Agency has run out of private jets to fly us home.” The group looked at each other, confused. They began to murmur between each other, before Scarlet asked the question they all wanted answered.
    “How is that possible? I thought we had plenty at our disposal?”
    “We used to,” Phil corrected, “The president has shut down a few of our airports and terminals  for a period of time due to the destruction we’ve caused in multiple cities across the country. She has also taken a number of our planes and jets out until this all clears over. She didn’t remove a ton, but due to the many messes we’ve created, and the multiple people we’ve taken prisoner, it was just enough for us to run out. Due to this issue, we’ll have to go to a public airport and take a private jet owned by a company rather than the government.”
    The group moaned. At one of their privates airports, they would have been able to flash the badge, hop on a plane and leave, but because they were going to a public airport they had to travel through all the security and wait for a jet to land if there wasn’t one already available
“Which airport are we going to?” Veronica asked.
“Sonya’s taking us to Philadelphia International as we speak. Otherwise, that would be it for the news. We should arrive at the airport in about an hour.”

***

It was sunny in Philadelphia, and with its comfortable temperature it instantly lightened the moods of the agents. Once they had gotten to the airport, they each hopped out of the van and walked into the terminal. Sonya tossed the keys to the valet, telling him which flight they were taking before catching up with the others. After walking through the maze of security checkpoints, concourses, and separate terminal bays, they finally found their gate with half an hour to spare.
They talked for a little while before the women all traveled to the restrooms together. Joey pulled out his phone and began playing a bubble-shooter game--a favorite of the agent. Phil and Finn both picked up different magazines and began to read. From the corner of Finn’s eye, he watched as a young, short woman approached from behind him. She walked past quietly, her ladybug-floral dress flowing softly behind her. She took a seat a few yards away from them at the next gate, placing what looked to be a violin case next to her seat. Finn looked back at his magazine before turning to Phil.
“Does she look familiar at all to you?” Finn asked, barely peeking over his edition of Time Magazine.
“I didn’t spot anything out of the ordinary’” Phil replied, not looking up from his edition of Vogue.
Finn shrugged his shoulders, thinking it was nothing, and returned back to what he was reading. Quite a while later, the other agents came back to join the men, giggling about a bird they had seen outside from the window.
Once it started to get close to the boarding time, the pilot and a flight attendant checked in ready to board the plane. Finn looked over his magazine to observe the two quietly. The pilot looked to be a middle-aged woman with fiery red hair. She smiled as the gate agent let her in. The steward was a larger man with curly blond hair and a small pair of glasses. He was younger than the pilot, and his face was more serious and professional. He was also approved by the agent, and let in right away.
Once the two were onboard, the gate agent requested all the passengers to board. The agents all got up and checked through. They walked through the tunnel and were greeted by the steward Finn had seen before.
“Welcome Aboard! Thanks for flying Sparta International Airlines. Enjoy your flight.” The flight attendant’s tone was mellow; he wasn’t as bubbly as the pilot had seemed before. Once all the agents had become situated, they began to talk amongst each other as the plane began to move. They buckled in right as the intercoms above them came on.
“Good afternoon, everybody! This is your pilot, Ava Stinson. This is Flight 024, a direct flight from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Miami, Florida. The flight is a little under three hours long, but due to a developing tropical depression near Georgia, it might be a little longer. If you need any help, please contact the flight attendant onboard today, Isaac. From all of us at Sparta International, we hope that you have a great flight.”
The intercom shut off, and the plan began to ascend into the air. The chatter between the agents began to spur on. Alexis, who was tired after a long drive, dozed off in her chair, happy to have a break from all the excitement as the others kept talking quietly.

***

Alexis awoke slowly; the sunlight from her window helping her eyes open up. She looked around the small space of the jet. Veronica and Joey had both fallen asleep in each of their seats, while Phil had laid his head in Scarlet’s lap. Sonya and Finn had both laid on each other, sleeping soundly. Alexis positioned herself up, confused as to how all the agents were asleep. It was strange that nobody had kept guard, but she pushed the thought away, remembering how chaotic the last week had become. She pulled out her phone and clicked on the Sparta App to check how their flight was doing. When it pulled up, it had shown that the flight had renavigated from Miami,  to Topeka. She rubbed her eyes quickly, thinking she was seeing things, but when she looked at the screen again, it still showed they were enroute to Kansas.
Alexis was now getting extremely confused, so she scrolled through the app to see what might have been wrong. After a minute or two of searching she found a small tab labeled “Plane Information” and clicked on it. She looked over the page, but after finding nothing she went back to the home page. When she clicked back, a small notification at the bottom appeared. She clicked the button and read the message.
“Oh, it’s on autopilot,” Alexis said aloud to nobody, “something must be wrong with the internal computer.”
Alexis unbuckled her seat belt and looked down the aisle. Isaac, the flight attendant, seemed to be missing. Alexis got up slowly and walked towards the front of the plane. As she walked into the steward’s bay, she noticed multiple papers strewn across the floor in a mess along with a few mini liquor bottles. She picked up one of the papers reading it to herself quietly. It seemed to be information of the flight attendant himself, who Alexis learned his full name was Isaac Peppersauce.
Suddenly, a small shattering noise came from behind the cockpit entrance. Alexis placed the paper on the small counter space before walking to the door. Alexis slowly opened the door, too curious to notice the “Employees Only” sign. She walked in and slowly closed the door behind her before stepping on a small piece of glass. She looked on the bottom of her shoe, seeing that she was crushing what had used to be a small, glass pendant, which had fallen a few moments earlier from where it was hanging above.
Alexis carefully walked over to the pilot, ready to tell the pilot.
“Miss Stinson?” Alexis began, “Miss Stinson? Ava?” When the pilot didn’t respond, Alexis turned the pilot’s chair to face her and gasped in shock. The pilot sat there, her head leaning to the side with a small stream of blood trickling out. A plastic butter knife was shoved through her throat harshly, with blood spilling slowly onto the pilot’s suit.
Alexis took a step back, getting closer to the co-pilot's chair. She looked around the chair to find any evidence, before seeing a small piece of cloth hanging from the armrest. Alexis grabbed it slowly and looked it. The ripped piece of fabric had a small blossom on it with a ladybug sitting on top. As soon as Alexis got a good look, she felt a sharp pain hit the top of her head. The last thing she saw was the world turning sideways as she hit the ground, landing atop the shattered glass.