Opposites attract in normal situations but not in situations where lives could potentially be in danger. Two spies. Cases upon cases. Life or death situations daily.
Calliope "Callie" Andino never had it easy. Between proving herself to her family...
"Guess who's back," I say, walking into the office with my arms outstretched.
"Callie!" my good friend, Gaia, yells, jumps off her desk, starts running towards me and goes for one of her welcoming hugs. "How was France? Tell me everything."
"It's fine, I guess. It's France," I lied, easily. She has always been gullible, to me at least.
For three months, I was stationed in France for an 'annual briefing and training' for our federal agency, the International Criminal Investigative Service (I.C.I.S). There, I learn and relearn protocols, and to be updated on international issues and how they are to be dealt with. With the continuous advancement in technology, certain protocols needed to be updated.
The branch of international security services that I work at, located in the United Kingdom, is a department from the Secret Investigation Service (S.I.S). The organization has 3 departments, all located in secret locations all over the UK. There is the National State Security (N.S.S) and the Case Analysis Unit (C.A.U.). Then, there is us. As a unit, we investigate international problems such as terrorism, political disputes, and technology crises. Cases can last from days to months, years even.
"Well, you still got to tell me everything," she says, walking back to her desk. "Nice outfit by the way," she turns slightly to wink at me.
"I thought I might dress up for my first day back," I say with a smile.
I wore a long-sleeved fitted top with a ruffles at the shoulder. I paired it with a cream-coloured skirt and jacket, and matching accessories - earrings, necklace and bracelet. My shoes were high heels that matched my purple blouse and matching handbag.
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"We really missed you here. A lot has happen." She exclaims the last part excitedly.
"Really," I say, shocked. Nothing really gets her excited. This must truly be good. "Like what?"
"I'll tell you my exciting news later," she smiles, waving her hand. Also unlike the Gaia I left behind a couple months ago. After a few seconds of her smiling and blushing, she gets serious, "There are more important things that happened here that you need to know about."
"Okay......who died?" I joked.
"Nobody......hopefully. So I have good news and bad news. Which do you want first?" she said cheerily.
"First of all, what is the matter with you? Secondly, give me the bad news first. The good news will hopefully put me in a happy cheery mood like yours after all of this," I answered.
Sitting down at my desk, conveniently next to hers, she started, "Okay. Fine. But you are definitely going to hate this."
"Ummm...okay. Spill," I prompted.
She took a deep breath before she started, "Our Higher Ups dictated a couple weeks ago that every agent must have a partner. I know-"
"WHAT?!?!" I shout, cutting her off. "Who the hell mandated this?"
"How should I know? Anyways, I have been asking for months and nobody want to give me a straight answer," she shrugs.
"Uggghhh. You know how I feel about working with people. I thought I wrote about this-"
"Hey Callie," someone walks up to us and says.
"Oh. Hey Desi," I smile, standing up to give him a hug.
"Welcome back," he says, hugging me back. He then takes a few steps back, immediately noticing . "Oh. Good morning, Gaia," he smiles, secretly.
"Good morning, Mr. Williams," she replies with the same weird tone and smile.
They both just stared at each other for a few seconds before Desi said he had to go back to work. He said his goodbyes, gave a small smile to Gaia and walked to his office.
Gaia watched him walk away until he was out of sight, smiling like a creep to herself and sighing dreamily. I snapped my fingers in front of her face to pull her back to our conversation.
"What?" she says suspiciously.
"Our convo," I remind her, smirking.
"Oh yeah." she perks up and then blushes when she notices my smirk. "The good news is-"
Just when she was about to say the good news, my desk phone rings. I jump to answer it. "Hello, good morning."
"Calliope Andino?" the disembodied voice asks.
"Speaking," I say, sitting down again.
"Good morning. This is Ms Johnson, Mr Matthias' new assistant. Can you kindly report to his office immediately."
"Ok. I'll be there in a few," I reply. She replies and then hangs up.
I make a face and then hang up on my end. Gaia looks at me, smiles and asks who was it. I had not even seen her sit down in her chair until now.
"Mr Matthias' new assistant."
"Ugghhh. That bitch, Nyx. What does she want?" she expresses, all the joy from earlier disappearing from her face.
"From those words and your mood change, I really don't want to know. But thanks for the heads up. I'll see you in a few if you're still here" I say, getting up to go.
"Yeah yeah. No worries. We'll meet up later," she replies before getting a phone call herself.
I agree as I make my way to the elevator to go to my boss' office.
As I make my way there I say hi and wave to my fellow agents and friends. There were many new faces from my view but I did not know whether they were new people, ones I never noticed before or colleagues that made slight but noticeable changes to their appearance.
While in the elevator I fiddled with my phone a bit as I awaited the inevitable. When it dinged and opened its doors, I proceeded to my boss' office. As I was about to knock on his door, he had stepped out of the adjoining assistant's office and greeted me.
"Ms Andino. Good morning and welcome back," said Mr Matthias. Behind him was a leggy blonde, beautiful but I sensed a negative vibe. She held files in her arms and dressed quite formally. I guess this is Nyx, I thought.
"Good morning sir. Glad to be back," I replied. I heard a scoff from the blonde. "Problem?" I said, looking at her. She ignored me and looked at her files.
"We can talk in my office," he said, walking past me to his door. The blonde followed, giving me a weird look before entering with me far behind her.
