Sunday, August 28, 2005

'Ahh! My 11th and 12th ribs are floating!'
Ah, examinations. They just love to test your knowledge, don't they? [Let's not forget that they like trying your patience]. Despite several weekends spent studying Biology, I had a few questions where I was confused as to which answer should have been chosen.

I am concerned about my results, but not overly so. I believe I will receive the mark I worked so very hard for.

If it's a failure, then I need to review where I went wrong.

Physics examination tomorrow, but I believe that I may be okay. The formulae are provided, and while we have studied a lot in these past few weeks, they are relatively simple subjects and I should be fine.

[Not an excuse to avoid studying the lecture PPT's and doing questions, however]

It's surprising though, this time last year I would have been quite content to say 'PHYSICS 5|_|Xx0r5!!' or nothing at all. It's quite amazing what changes a good lecture can wrought in a man.

I'm currently reading 'Demons of the Air,' by an author I cannot remember the name of. It's an Aztec fictional thriller, and quite entertaining. I'm currently halfway through, and I'm enjoying the history and effort the author has put in.

Quite good.

Also, I received a burst of inspiration, so here's an extra SYF bit. What perils doth the devil tempt in the hearts of man?


Liam shifted slightly in the leather seat, overcoming and inexplicable urge to start moving for cover. He adjusted his sunglasses and self-consciously adjusted his suit coat. He looked carefully around the five seater black Mercedes and out each of the windows, as though he was looking for something.

Nothing, just the rest of the Mercedes that held the other members of the team. They had picked them up at the international airport and were now driving directly to the University of Brunei Darussalam for a brief luncheon with the Dean. The plan was that the Dean would invite them to the graduation ceremony as his esteemed guests, giving a cover for their presence there if nothing extraordinary happened. The Dean knew exactly who they were and what they were doing and was apparently more than happy to have them there.

‘You alright?’ Rae asked, leaning towards him slightly.

‘Yeah…it’s just…’ He sighed, ‘I honestly think I’m going insane. I was just about dozing off there, and then I had a sudden attack of agoraphobia. Something’s going wrong somewhere…’

Rae scooted across to him, ‘from the way you’ve been frowning since Singapore, my guess is that it wasn’t just a sudden attack that makes you feel that way. You started frowning after we left the briefing, what’s wrong?’

‘You’re not going to believe me, but you know Natasha?’

Rae stiffened slightly at the name and pursed her lips, but nodded slowly, ‘yes Liam. That was about two hours ago.’

‘Yeah-well, I saw her.’ He removed his sunglasses and turned to her, voice serious. ‘During the briefing, Natasha’s photo flashed up at the end. Matt switched off the screen before I could read the file. Natasha is going to be there, I’m sure of it.

‘Rae, if she’s there when we walk in, I’m completely screwed. Utterly, and you know it.’

Rae sucked air in through her teeth. ‘You’re right,’ she said, sitting back and folding his arms. ‘You are insane. There’s no way she could be there, I did an extensive background check on her and it turned up nothing.’

Liam smiled slightly, ‘nice to know you do care, Rae. But tell me, when you did this check…did you actually look in the SYF database or did you go straight to an outside source?’

Rae was thinking hard now, she was certain she checked everywhere. ‘Yes I did. There was nothing, anywhere.’

Liam groaned and put his head in his hands. ‘You do realise what this means, don’t you? CIA job. There aren’t any records because none were taken.

‘I’m going to have to sneak around, and so are you. We’re going to have to get the others to take the reins on this one, at least until we verify if she’s there or not.’

Rae already had her phone in her hands, while it rung she looked pointedly at him and said, ‘Liam, we love you so I’ll let that one slide. We’re meant to work as a team. Technically we all hold the reins.’

‘Fine. Ryan and Eve though. They’ll suss it out while we wait-
-yes Ryan. Right, Liam feels that Natasha may be one of the students…right…so you reckon you saw her too? Ahuh…okay. Yes, we both feel that’s best. We’ll wait right here-…we can’t? That doesn’t make any-…oh…I see. Fine. We’ll wait in the Dean’s office.’

Rae hung up and put her phone away. ‘Ryan says that the cars won’t be able to park there, security reasons…and apparently the media is going to be there. With us donating a technological services…well, lets just say that no good deed goes unpunished. We’ll have to wait inside.’

‘Rae?’

‘Yes?’

‘Why are you smiling like that?’

Rae looked out the window as she spoke. ‘No reason, just thinking about Natasha-oh look, we’re here.’

Liam frowned at the back of her head and put his sunglasses back on as the car turned into the campus. He could see the cluster of photographers and a man with a microphone. As the car pulled to a stop he prayed that the man would be only able to speak Malay so that he could be brushed off with a plastic smile. The car stopped and Liam got out, walked around, and helped Rae out. She took his hand and they both walked past the throng of media people, careful to keep their faces angled so that the cameras wouldn’t have a full profile.

‘Keep walking, quickly now…’ Liam muttered to himself.

He waved at the cameras in such a way that, when the photographer developed his film, he would have a lovely shot of a waving hand, and his nondescript features. They passed the man speaking rapidly at the camera, and then they were in the doors and into the building.

Behind them, the others were getting out of the cars and pretty much taking the same approach to the photographers, and blatantly ignored the man with the camera. It didn’t matter; the reporter was too enraptured by the camera. As the last of the agents were inside, he looked at the building carefully and told his cameraman to pack up.

Liam approached the security desk and removed his sunglasses, placing his bag with exaggerated care onto the table.

‘Could you guys be careful with this? I’ve got a lot of hardware in here for my presentation, it’s pretty delicate and I don’t want it thrown through an X-ray machine and vaporised, okay?’

The man behind the counter stared blankly at Liam and opened the bag, rifling through its contents and having a good feel around. He pulled out a pen-light and lit the interior, searching carefully.

Liam’s heart was almost leapt out of this mouth when the security guard pulled out a U.V. flashlight and repeated the process. It would be easy for him now to see a hidden zipper through simply noting the build-up of grease from Liam’s fingers brushing the material as it was pulled open.

‘All in order sir.’ The guard said as he passed it through the barrier. ‘Next please.’

Liam thanked his lucky stars that it was a new bag, that he’d only opened the hidden pocket once, and that it wasn’t a trained professional sitting behind the desk. He walked through the metal detector and feigned surprise as it went off.

‘Please remove any loose metal items, such as your keys or loose change, and place them in the baskets.’ The security guard spat out the words in one breath, and eyed Liam with an incredibly unimpressed look as he indicated the baskets on opposite sides of the detector.

Liam grinned apologetically as he went back through the detector and began searching for his pockets. He pulled out his keys and wallet and put them in one basket, while placing his phone in the other. As he just finished unbuckling and removing his belt, his phone started playing the true tone version 007 theme song.

‘Sorry about that.’ He said, stepping through the barrier and picking up his phone. ‘Hello? Yes, we’re here. Okay…what? What’re you saying? Hold on, I can’t hear you…wait…’ As he spoke, Liam began walking further and further away from the barrier, one finger in his ear.

The others went through the barrier, each removing various metal items. As Bradley finally stepped through, Liam returned and claimed the rest of his items, apologising profusely for forgetting them in the first place.

He set his phone down, pressing the ‘call’ button as he reached for his belt. Just as he finished buckling it, the phone began to ring again. He quickly grabbed his keys and wallet, thanking the security guard that handed him his phone as he passed.

‘What? You just rang me? What is it now? …Ahuh…okay…’

Unbeknownst to the security detachment on duty, their fundamental key to security protection had just been reprogrammed, and then reprogrammed again. As Liam placed his keys down in one basket, and his phone in the other, a wireless interference began to be broadcasted by both the phone and the mini-maglite torch on his keychain. As soon as the metal detector’s programming had been reversed, that it would go off when metal wasn’t detected, Liam’s phone began to ring. As Liam answered it and walked away, the keychain continued to broadcast a signal, allowing him to more fully monitor the situation from his mobile phone. After the initial overwriting, it was a piece of cake to simply through the switch back to normal when the others had finished going through.

Had the security guards been blind as well, Liam could have walked through that barrier with any amount of armament he wanted.

Liam returned his phone to his pocket as he caught up with the others at the top of the stairs.

‘Don’t you just love the buzz this job gives you?’ He grinned, rubbing his hands together.

‘You could have chosen a more subtle ring tone,’ Zharra commented drily, ‘or do you like flirting with danger?’

‘Flirting with danger is fine. I mean, Bradley does it all the time.’ He looked pointedly at both of them as he spoke, ‘…and more, from what I’ve heard.’ He grinned cheekily at both of them as Zharra smirked back.

‘…you don’t know the half of it, boy.’ She said, running her tongue carefully over her teeth and stroking the side of Bradley’s face.

Bradley’s eyes had glazed over as he seemed to recall some special memory.

Liam grimaced, ‘whoa, okay. Stop there. You win, too much information-

Rae cleared her throat. ‘Are we quite finished? Or do I need to box your ears, Liam?’

‘She’s got you wrapped around your little finger, doesn’t she Liam?’ Natasha said loudly as she stalked closer, ‘how often does she let you off your leash now?’

Liam resisted the urge to stiffen. The others, under the quick-thinking Ryan’s direction, scurried through the door into the main reception hall under the pretence of getting drinks. Rae remained, appraising Natasha through slitted eyes.

‘Fancy meeting you here,’ Rae said viciously at Natasha, before looking up at Liam.

Natasha stopped in front of her, folding her arms carefully. ‘I’m as surprised as you are…I’m guessing you’re here for the thankyou ceremony for all the ‘amazing’ things you’ve done for the Sultan and his people?’ Natasha shifted her weight delicately from one foot to the other. ‘Funny, I didn’t know that ice queens could stand the heat of Brunei. Got Liam carrying a bucket for you in case you melt?’

Liam’s fixed grin slid off his face as he said limply, ‘if you’ll excuse me I think I’ll just go and kill myself quietly.’

As he turned to leave, Natasha caught his arm, ‘no wait, don’t go. I need to talk to you…privately.’ She said pointedly, giving Rae a dirty look.

Rae smiled sweetly and put her arms around Liam, eyes shooting daggers at Natasha as she kissed him on the cheek.

‘Five minutes, darling. Then I’ll have to come and have a chat with this charming woman myself.’ With a final dirty look at Natasha, Rae went through the doors and into the hall.

Liam was secretly wondering how much of Rae’s actions was actually acting. There was some definite hate shooting out of that mouth, almost perfectly covering her genuine alarm. Liam was suddenly very grateful that they had resolved their issues. If Rae kept shooting those dirty looks at him, he was certain that he’d simply wither away. If Chernobyl’s fallout and Rae’s expression had met, Chernobyl would apologise politely and ask which was the easiest way to take to Northern England and Wales thank-you-very-much.

‘What are you doing here?’ Liam asked in a semi-hushed tone.

‘It’s the final year of my business course, the Brunei government extends opportunities to students at the International University in Singapore.’ She shrugged as though it was unimportant. ‘If you’d had stayed overnight you’d have known that and you’d be here with me.’ She smiled, and Liam’s heart fluttered. ‘The night scene can be pretty wild here…a girl needs someone to watch her back in some of these nightclubs…’

Liam coughed and adjusted his bag strap.

‘So how long have you been engaged?’

Natasha’s question was out and hanging in the air so quickly that Liam’s mind clashed gears as it tried to come up with an answer. He had expected questions, but not this! He cursed Rae for letting her nursed anger at Natasha get in the way of the mission.

‘About a month.’ He said slowly. ‘I was getting cold feet and then the accident happened. We’re young, but it was a whirlwind romance…the fun had already started to bleed away for me and then that…accident completely severed the connection between us.’

Natasha nodded quietly to herself, looking at the ground.

Excellent, Liam thought, pay attention to your sorrow and the anger, ignore the blatantly suspicious happenings. Just focus on those emotions and resist the urge to kill Rae. Please.

‘What made you go back to her then?’ Natasha mumbled, still not looking up.

‘After she showed up, we had a row. The biggest and only we’ve ever really had.’ He sighed and fidgeted with the strap again. ‘We sorted it out and I realised how much I really do love her. We’ve had our problems before, but now we’ve sorted it out.’

Natasha looked up at him, eyes tearing. ‘Well then, I’m really glad I helped you rebuild your relationship, but you should know that that little whore is sleeping with a guy behind your back! I could smell his cheap cologne all over her, and it certainly wasn’t yours!’

With that, she turned and half ran down the corridor, pushing into the ladies restroom.

Liam’s heart was racing again, all of this was tearing him up inside.

He pushed open the door and shuffled through, calling out, ‘oh Rae! Darling? Where are you?’

Surprised? Comments? Criticism? Not enough Bismarck for you?
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