Editing DbS (section)

== ONE ==
⚇乂⚇

'''HOW MANY BASEMENTS DOES ONE PLACE NEED?'''

I LEGITIMATELY DID NOT THINK that I’d be sitting down today and writing a whole narrative about something weird that’s happened to me. Book. Whatever. If you had told me this information, maybe a week ago, I would’ve laughed. Instead, I am now in this grim reality, writing a novel. Anyway, this is some vital information, I don’t know how you’ve found this, it might explode, blah, blah, blah, normal spy stuff, you’ve most likely heard it before, what with all these spy stories circulating the internet (yes, I did research how to write a book, leave me alone). If you randomly find this stashed in your new flatscreen TV’s box instead of a TV guide, have fun trying to figure out how to work the remote.

I don’t know how you’ve found this but if you have—you’re at a high risk of danger and are probably going to be chased by an angry llama sooner or later (long story). Basically, your only job is to keep it out of the bad guys’ hands. Easy enough once you’ve spent most of your life training to, right?  

My name is Agent Nate Foster. I work for the ILKS (pronounced ill-ks, as in, the word elk but with an “ih” sound), or the International Law-Keeping Society. I’m fifteen, and I’m going on dangerous missions most every day. (The off days are spent not doing dangerous missions and instead doing the normal missions or hanging out with the few friends I’ve accumulated that don’t try to kill me with every waking breath.) 

Anyway, if I come off as bragging, I’m really not trying to, it’s just that that’s the type of thing I do. I mean, when the most boring thing you do is go to London to fight bad guys, you don’t have the type of normal life that other people do, and you can’t help but sound as if you’re bragging, even if it’s normal for yourself.

Not that I don’t like living with the agency—it’s great. We’re the top of the top and most people don’t even know I exist (it comes in handy sometimes). They’re more interested in video games and the best ways to plant turnips and tomatoes. But you obviously aren’t since you’re reading this, so I’ll start whatever this is.

Although I trust you, dear reader, I don’t exactly enjoy my work being rewritten for an “acceptable” audience, so just don’t share this with anyone, sound good? Not your brother, not your friend, not even your pet llama. ''They'' are everywhere (no, not emus and llamas, although I expect they could very well create their own government). But first, I should probably back up before throwing you into all of this without a clue, shouldn’t I? It started when a very important piece of information was stolen from one of the ILKS vaults.

It just so happened to be the sixteenth of July, so it was about as hot as a furnace in London. Strangely enough, there was a clear sky, the sun shining down on the city for once—in other words, it wasn’t normal.

I stood, looking up at this huge glass-covered building which was mostly windows, trying not to be blinded by the glare it cast at anyone who wasn’t paying attention. It really was a nice building, a nice hotel to be exact, but unfortunately, I wasn’t going to be going up.

My mission was to figure out what the trio of bad guys, which consisted of Murray, French Fries, and Fish and Chips, at least, that was how the agency people knew them, were doing and to stop them as quickly as possible.

I knew three things about the mission, and that was pretty much it. 

First: there were three bad guys, one crime lord who wasn’t tough enough to accomplish his own schemes himself, and his two henchmen. The theory was that this guy had hired these two specifically for this reason, and they just hadn’t gotten the memo, but it was just a theory. A leading theory, but a theory, nonetheless. 

Second: they absolutely had to be stopped, because a) whatever it was that they’d been doing was successfully kept off the radar for an extended period of time and only someone experienced in hiding things from people would know how to do that and b) they had already committed some major offenses that the government wouldn’t acknowledge because the officials were either being bribed or because they just didn’t think it was true (that’s where their keeping off the radar came into play).

Third: the location of where they were at. My sources (that is, a vanilla folder with minimal information) said they were to be in one of the basements of the hotel. 

I walked into the building, the doorman tipping his hat, and looked around. The lobby was decked out: flatscreens, plush leather chairs, fancy carpets, and shiny tile floors stretched out, and two staircases that led to nowhere stretched up on either sides of a singular elevator. The receptionists’ desk was pretty barren, and a bored-looking teenager sat behind it, filing her nails, glasses drooping down and barely hanging onto her nose. I watched for a second as a lock of frizzy red hair fell into her eyes, and with a huff, she brushed it away, then continued to file her nails, not once looking up. 

I walked over to the elevator and pressed a button, its metallic surface cool to my fingers, air conditioning making it cold. About a minute of silence ensued, and then a ''ding!'' was heard and the elevator arrived.

Walking into the elevator, confident as always, when I looked down. Just below the huge panel of buttons, I found what I had hoped not to find: The elevator needed a hotel card. A hotel card that I did not have.

I dug in my pockets a minute before realizing that I had completely forgotten the device that could very easily hack the elevator’s systems. I sighed, and pressed the “open” button on the inside of the elevator, and the doors slowly slid open. 

So, I ended up trudging down the stairs, to the third basement. Why the hotel had three basements, I don’t know, as they couldn’t possibly have had that much to store, but for some reason, they did, meaning I got a good exercise in. 

Finally reaching the bottom-most basement, I walked out into a hall that went straight for a bit, but sharply turned to the right, like the architect who had planned the whole thing out was driving a car and trying to draw out plans, and that while he had swerved to get out of the way of that big, yellow bus, he had also moved his pencil, and now there was a big turn in the hallway (he had one job to do). 

So, I walked out into the hall, and quickly glancing over my shoulder, I hurried to where the hallway turned. The red-and-gold carpeting under my feet made no sound as I stepped on it, which I was rather thankful for. I heard the ding of the elevator arriving a mere six feet behind me, and I could hear the doors opening. Someone else was here. And I had a sneaking suspicion who it was.

I had seen these two guys following a couple of our agents lately. For the record, I wasn’t stalking them. My mission was to follow these particular agents, to make sure they didn’t do anything stupid, and to hop in to help if help was needed. Evidently, having gotten tired of stalking my friends, these guys had been sent to stalk me. 

And I was completely up for the challenge. Look, I’ve handled dogs with detonators, so I think I can handle a couple of creeps who’re stalking some kids. 

Unfortunately for me, I was not Spiderman. I couldn’t just hang to the ceiling and avoid them. I had to confront them straight on, which, two to one, even if I ''am'' a top-tier agent, is pretty hard to take out. So, I concluded until I got more intel, I’d try to avoid the two bodyguards, and I went the other way.

The guards I had seen, the same ones from earlier, were tall and bulky, with tattoos on their knotted and rippling muscular arms, and had menacingly bald heads. Identical, they were like the human versions of the Hulk. Unfortunately, I was not some sort of teen prodigy football star or wrestler, but merely a fifteen year old trying not to die. And I hadn’t so I’d say the day had gone pretty well so far (funny story about that, actually- for later, for later, hold your horses). 

I kept walking down the curved hall, trying to be as alert as possible, watching and listening for the guards. Then I heard it: the buzz of a radio, a voice speaking into it, and an answering voice, one voice staticy, the other not, the voices mirrored each other pretty much perfectly.  My suspicions were confirmed. The hall went in a sort of circuit. Either it was a full circuit, or the guards started at one end, passed each other, then turned around (highly inefficient, but it could work, theoretically). 

Formulating a plan, I started in the other direction, hoping that I was wrong, but like so many times, I wasn’t in fact wrong. They were getting closer and closer, their footsteps becoming louder with every step they took towards me, and the first guard came into view. He hadn’t seen me yet, so deciding to risk it, I charged at full speed straight at the one who hadn’t seen me, then ducked to try and get by him and run for the hills and get out of there so I wouldn’t be compromised. 

And then time was in slow motion- of course, not literally, although that would’ve been useful, but everything slowed. I was running and ducking, and I had almost made it when I felt a pain shoot through my upper arm, and when I looked down, I saw a silvery dart sticking out of the side of it. It hadn’t felt like I’d been shot, it felt more like a rock had hit me, and I went to pull it out as fast as possible, but never got the chance.

Time sped up, and I was tackled to the ground. Head hitting the ground, and a high-pitched ringing filled my ears. Colors dulled, things went blurry, and it got hard to hear….