"Be Careful What You Wish For..., Part 4" "All right Ivy, Zack, let’s try this one more time...," Carmen reasoned. It had been at least two hours and she was still trying to explain. "Sara was attempting to create a robot for a heist behind my back. Through some freak accident the Chief is trapped in the robot. No, you can’t talk to him because he’s sleeping off the pain, No I didn’t know about all of this when it happened and Yes I am seriously thinking about firing Sara." "You had no idea this was happening?" Zack asked. "Yes." "Then why didn’t you look in to all those blackouts?" "I was going to! I’ve just been busy lately and I didn’t have the time to look in to them personally." "How do we know you’re telling the truth?" asked a cynical Ivy. Carmen sighed exasperated. Here they went again. It had taken a while but the Chief had finally figured out how to work his new body. It had been pretty dangerous for a while. When he was trying to shrug his shoulders his arms flew out and knocked over a tray of surgical instruments. When he had tried to sit down he had miscalculated and fallen on the floor. When he tried to stand up he tripped on his own feet. But now he had some control over himself, and he was pacing the lab floor thinking what he should do. It had been an hour since he woke up and Carmen still hadn’t come back. He was starting to get this strange tingling in his stomach. It had been getting worse in the past half hour, and even though it wasn’t painful, there was a rumbling in his stomach that had gotten too loud to ignore. "I’m going to have go exploring, there isn’t a way around that, " he reasoned. "But I should probably wait for Carmen right?" His stomach growled angrily. "All right, I guess I’ll go exploring now." He looked around for something to camouflage himself. He found the mask and cap of a VILE agent and, using a mirror, slipped them on. He opened the door and carefully looked both ways. Everything looked clear, so he headed to the end of the hallway that was flooded with light. At the end of the hallway there was a impatient looking guy dressed like he was. ‘Time to hit reverse’ thought the Chief as he backed up. Unfortunately the guy spied him "Hey! Are you the next shift?" The Chief’s mind sped. "Actually ....I was just done with my.... shift and I was trying to leave......You wouldn’t know how to do that would you?" Thankfully the guard laughed. "Don’t worry. This place is a maze. Sometimes even I have trouble getting around. This your first day?" "You could say that..." "Well listen," he pointed down the left corridor, "go down that way take a left and two rights and that’ll bring you to the garage. You can get your car from there." "Thanks...thanks a lot..." "Don’t mention it. Just tell Em Ploie to send another shift down here. I’m late and my wife is going to kill me!" "No problem." The Chief assured him as he got out of there as fast as he could. "Sooo.. the Chief is in Sarah’s robot?" asked Zack. "Yes." "And you ARE thinking about firing Sara?" "Yes." "How can we trust you?" The Chief had followed the guards instructions exactly, and had found himself in one of the biggest garages he had ever seen. It had to be at least twenty stories tall and every parking space was filled. It held everything from normal street cars to a variety of strange red vehicles. The overwhelmed Chief stripped off the mask and cap. Carmen must be very successful to have so many people working for her. Where did he fit into it all? "Hey You!" a voice shouted. The Chief whirled around and saw a youngish man yelling at him from a nearby opened door. "What are you doing here?" "I...I was just looking for someone..." "Well you’ve found someone and that someone wants to know what you’re doing here!" "I...I...I was looking for my ride." "Well there hasn’t been anyone in here for an hour, so you’re either an hour off or you’re early." "If they aren’t here then I guess I’ve missed them. I’ll be going," the Chief told him hastily. He began to back out of the door. "Hey wait a minute....I don’t remember you...and I never forget a face....who are you?" "I’m kinda new..." "I figured that, I meant what’s your name?" "Um...Rodger." "When did you start?" "Yesterday," The Chief said. It sounded more like a question that an answer." "Uh huh. So Rodger, what brings you into VILE’s employee roster?" ‘Vile? She calls her company VILE?’ thought the Chief. "It just seemed like the next step in my life....." he trailed off uncomfortably. The young guy nodded. "Yeah, It’s was kinda like that for everyone. So who were you looking for?" "Well someone...in the company....was able to get me into this...and when I was supposed to get out today...she left unexpectedly...I waited for her but I have some stuff I need to figure out soon.....so I went searching for her....and I ended up here. She’s probably already left." "And this ride of yours ...do you need to talk to her real soon?" "No, ....she was just going to show me around the city...nothing really important." "Yeah, Paris is pretty nice for sightseeing this time of the year. It’s a bit of a drive from here, but it’s pretty nice." ‘So, I’m near Paris..’ the Chief considered. "Does the company offer any kind of a taxi service....I want to get out of here soon." The young guy thought about it. "Well... my shift is almost over so if you really need a ride that badly I could drive you." "That would be great! If it’s not too much trouble..." "Forgetaboutit. Just let me lock up." The Detectives weren’t going away until they talked to the Chief. Carmen had argued with them for nearly three hours and they still wouldn’t log off and wait for her to call them back. VILE’s lines had been tied up for almost three hours creating God knows what havoc and all they had been doing was asking her how they could trust her! "Look just let me show him to you. Then will you let him sleep it off?" Carmen asked. The Chief had to be awake by now, and maybe even remember who he was but she had to risk it. "All right. But we have to talk to him," insisted Ivy. "Of course. I’ll put you on hold for just a second, while I transfer you downstairs," she told them as she typed in the command. She got up from the chair she had spent the past three hours in and made her way downstairs. She went past the garage and stopped. She really needed to talk to Charlie about the damage to her hovercraft before her next heist or things could uglier than her last one. And she had a little time right? She reached for the doorknob. No. If she didn’t get this cleared up now it would get worse. She had to show the detectives the Chief, she could always talk to Charlie later. She walked on for a few feet when suddenly the door opened a few inches then shut quickly behind her. She looked back confused. "It was probably just the wind," she told herself as she kept walking. "You don’t have to go out that door, the car’s in the back," the young man told the Chief who had already opened the door a cautious few inches. The Chief closed it quickly. He didn’t want to go advertising that he was out. This place was starting to unnerve him and he had a sneaking suspicion that he shouldn’t let Carmen catch him. ‘Intuition is a strange thing, It knows even when you don’t’ he thought. ‘But why does it know this is the right thing? She seemed very nice, and she knew who I was, she might not have the nicest sounding company but I’m sure whatever she does for a living is legal.’ He tried to convince himself. His intuition started going the other way. ‘But what would she do that wasn’t legal? She doesn’t seem like the outlaw type...’ "Hey Rodger! Ready to go?" shouted the young man. The Chief snapped out of his own thoughts. "Yeah! Hold on I’m coming!" To be continued...