It's a Spy vs. Spy World

Chapter Twenty Six

 I knew that the next day, free day, there was still the looming threat that me and Rick may get attacked again by whoever the hell was after us, but if you think I was going to let that ruin my plans then you've got me all wrong. I needed to get out into the city and not just the industrial part we were in last night, I mean the real city. Where everything happens and no one ever sleeps.

 For the most part free days are unsupervised so us AITs can do practically anything we want. However the teachers are still out there with us making sure we don't get into trouble and that day I had a feeling it would be harder than normal to ditch them.

 Me and Bridget had already planned what we wanted to do that day. First we would act normal and go shop at a few stores so that miss Hastings and Mr. Schmidt would not suspect us of anything. Then we'd ditch them and everybody else because we had to go see someone we knew. This someone was Ziggy. Obviously that's not his real name, which is actually Spencer, but he likes to go by it for some reason. I think he told me once that it was because Ziggy was a hybrid computer from quantum leap or something but I had no idea what he'd been talking about. Ziggy used to go to HQ until the middle of last year when he dropped out because he didn't really want to graduate and then have to be a techie for one of the organizations. He felt that it would restrict his abilities and constrain him, so with three weeks left before he graduated he ran away to go work for himself selling his inventions to a bunch of people secretly, I think he even sometimes supplies the CIA and stuff. Although they are probably not aware of this. He's the one who made my pocketknife. nobody really knows where he is except for me and Bridget because he told us. He was our really good friend and didn't want to lose touch when he left so we keep in touch secretly by sending coded messages and stuff. This time Bridget sent the message but it wasn't because we needed anything specific (rather Bridget didn't need anything, I did but I'll get to that later), it had just been a while since we'd seen Ziggy. All summer in fact. So as always he'd sent us back a message telling us in a super cryptic way that we could come as long as we didn't let anyone follow us or bring anyone new with us without telling him. Which was never a problem. But of course this time we were going to have to bring Rick. Bridget tried to get word to Ziggy but we hadn't heard back from him giving us the okay so I suspected he would be surprised when he saw wed brought a tag along. I didn't want to betray Ziggys trust but losing Rick would be harder than losing our teachers who are trained professionals, because at least I knew their technique and style while Rick basically had a built in honing device and can find me anywhere. Like a few nights ago, I'd left him with Hattie just because I enjoy how uncomfortable he is around her but he'd found me somehow and I was in a part of HQ I didn't even think I'd shown him! It was annoying to know that he could do that.

 Although I took comfort in the fact that this meant he would also have to pretend to like shopping with us and I could really make that torturous. I wondered if maybe I should go a little easier on him, after the previous night I'd realized just how much having people after him was getting to him. We had talked for quite a while the previous night and he hadn't been in the slightest bit annoying except for when he wouldn't let me leave. But what was I going to do anyway? Sleep? Yeah right, not after the night I'd had. I was too buzzed thinking of what to do about the people after us. That's when I'd came up with the plan, and that plan involved Ziggy. But first I'd have to get to his place.

 That proved to be harder than I'd thought. All the junior and senior AITs that were on my team gathered up in the warehouse after breakfast and as usual we took a short walk to another warehouse nearby that the school had bought to house our vehicles. the other team members would be stuck back at HQ since they only got to go out every alternate Saturday because they usually lost. Today I think they had to clean the classrooms and the central training area. Such a nice way to spend their Saturday as they stewed over their loss. They should be used to the defeat by now but for some reason they never stop getting all upset about it.