As if the older agent was reading his mind, Street turned to Smith and asked, “So we gonna go get Penny or what?”
“Excuse me?” Smith knew what the man had said, but couldn’t quite believe he’d said it. Almost no preamble. No pretext. Just right out there.
“Come on. We both know how this is going down. We’re all here except one person. Penny. Doc’s girl,” Street said, motioning across the room to the elderly Dr. Bridges. “You know he went to see her last night, but she’s already been moved again. Doc’s pretty sure he knows where she’s headed, though. Isn’t going to be easy.”
Smith let out a sharp laugh. “Is it ever?”
Street and Smith produced identical grins. “Nope.”
_____
In one of the rooms that comprised most of Bridges and Street’s basement apartment over the past fifteen years, Smith and Street stood at one end, with Hoppy and Marie on one side of them, and Bridges and Davidson on the other. Thankfully, Smith could put the teens out of his mind for a while as they were more than happy to watch Davidson’s two kids in the next room. Braden was especially psyched to watch the DVD of Harry Potter and the Count of the Slytherins. Smith didn’t recall that book, but Jodi mentioned something about an “eighth book” or something.
“What’s up?” Hoppy asked, gazing around at the various people in their triangle.
“We’ve got a couple more things to do. First up, somebody needs to get Penny back,” Smith said. “I’m more than willing to go, but she doesn’t know me. Presumably, at least one of those that goes should be one of you, Doc or Nik, or both. What do we think?”
Dr. Bridges opened his mouth as if he was about to say something, but shut it just as quickly. Nik gave Smith a deadly look.
“You think I’m going to come all this way and not be on the team that goes out to get Penny? I’m going. End of discussion. I don’t care who else goes. Heck, I’ll go by myself if I have to—the kids are great here with you guys right now, but I need to find my wife.”
Agent Street laughed. He threw his head back and roared, then turned back to the group. “I like this guy’s moxie. Tell you what—I’ll go too. It’ll be good to have an agent out with him. And who better than me?”
Smith had to grin. He could see why Director Wall loved this guy—why he still talked about him after all these years. If he wasn’t the best agent ever, he at least thought he was.
“Okay. Nik and Street. Anyone else? I think we need some manpower here, just in case Penelope and her team try to come through. What do you think, Doc?”
Bridges looked up with a strange look in his eyes. “Yeah. I don’t need to go out. I’ll stay put and work on getting the system online. You guys did a number on it out in Arizona. Before any of you try to go back to your own reality, it needs some work.”
Smith looked over at Hoppy and Marie. “Yeah. What he said. With the intricacies of the portal system, Doc may need a few extra hands. We’ll be here for him,” Marie said. “Besides, I’ll help supervise the kids. No good coming back with a wife in tow if your kids aren’t safe, right Nik?”
Davidson looked towards the analyst and mouthed a quick “thank you” to Marie.
“Okay Nik, looks like you’ve got a go on your mission. You and Street are authorized to go find Penny,” Smith said.
“Umm...okay…” Nik looked around furtively. “So where do we go? Anybody have any idea where she actually is?”
Bridges spoke up. “Yeah. I visited her last night. Penelope thought I was stupid. That I wouldn’t know my own daughter was in the city. I found her hotel and we talked.”
Nik exploded. “You did WHAT? Why isn’t she here now? Why aren’t we all here together?”
Bridges looked at Street. The men exchanged some unspoken words, and Bridges looked back at Nik. “Because it wouldn’t have solved anything. Penelope is unpredictable at this point. She’s like an undetonated bomb with a timer at zero. We don’t have much idea what she’s going to do, but her actions get a lot more predictable once we let her ‘control’ the situation.”
Nik ground his teeth, his anger still simmering.
“Besides, Nik, we didn’t know about you. If I’d known for sure you would be coming, I would’ve busted her out before Penelope had a chance to get her claws into her. As it is, I still have some skills and I helped this Dr. Bridges and the IT department put together the computer network here. I got back from the hotel and eventually tapped into Penelope’s email.”
He paused, long enough for Hoppy to chime in.
“And? Where is she?”
“Here’s the kicker. She’ll be a few feet away from the President all day. After years of denying its existence, President Hanson will be holding a press conference in an hour confirming the portal network.”
“You’re kidding. Today? That can’t be coincidence.” Smith said, flabbergasted.
“Nope. Sure isn’t,” Street said. He grinned a toothy smile, confident and sure of himself. “Somebody might’ve leaked that Penelope had something up her sleeve.”
Everyone turned to look at Street.
“What?”
“Why?” Nik asked, his expression bewildered. “Why would you do such a thing? You two said Penelope was unpredictable. Why would you do that?”
“She’s unpredictable when she’s involved in her own machinations. But if there is someone else that’s helping to pull the puppet strings behind the curtain, maybe that unpredictability can be used in our favor. Maybe we can actually be the unseen force behind her actions.”
Smith shook his head. Street’s attitude was certainly cocky and self-assured, but this bordered on reckless. What was done was done, though.
“Okay. Who’d you tell? Who was your source?” Smith asked.
“The President of course,” a voice behind Smith answered. A voice that sounded remarkably like Agent Street.
Street/Other Street and The President
12 Years Earlier
Agent Street spun around and brought his padded arm up in a defiant motion. The intended blow was blocked and absorbed, but Street was still pushed back a few inches. The man opposite Street grabbed Street’s opposite wrist and twisted it back. The loss of forward momentum meant Street’s feet were behind him, taking those out as possible options for attack. His opponent pushed forward, inching in closer to his face. Street saw the overconfidence and reared his head back, snapping his neck forward and slamming his forehead into the other man’s face.
His opponent’s eyes went wide with the motion of Street’s head and pulled back slightly. The blow missed the man’s nose, as Street had hoped, but did clip the edge of his jaw, and the grip on the wrist loosened…just enough.
Street straightened up enough to get his legs underneath him. He briefly considered ending the fight, but knew his opponent wouldn’t quit in the same circumstances. Already he had a trickle of blood streaming over his left eye from where a punch earlier had landed and split his eyebrow, and at least a dozen bruises ready to bloom. The man across from him had a similar build, and Street knew his weakness.
Without another second of hesitation, he swung his right leg around and landed a kick on the inside of the other man’s left knee. The man crumpled and winced.
“Enough.”
Street knew it was the man’s weakness. It was his own weakness. A torn MCL he’d never really fully recuperated from in college. Since his twin from another world—this world, he had to remind himself—was his opponent, he knew that the knee probably still flared up from time to time like it did for him.
“You sure? Or do you want to test the wrist we broke playing kickball in sixth grade?”
The other Street looked up with a smirk. “You mean the wrist I just had a grip on?”
Street looked down at his own wrists. In the adrenaline-fueled sparring match, he hadn’t realized the ancient pains from the grade school broken bones had flared up.
“Oh. Right.”
&nbs
p; Street put an open hand down for the other, parallel-world agent. He never had siblings back in his version of reality, so having a “twin” brother of sorts was definitely taking some getting used to. Alternate Smith grabbed the hand and the two stood eye to eye for a brief moment. They were virtually identical when they first met, but in just the few years since, they’d developed separate and distinct personalities, at least in a few ways. At their core, though, the two Streets were the same.
Within the first few months, the two became ultra-competitive, trying to outdo each other every chance they got. Who was the better Street? Ultimately, the two came to the logical conclusion that they were both the best Street, but there still needed a way to distinguish between the two of them.
“How about you be ‘A. Street’ and I’ll be ‘E. Street,’” Agent Street—the one who came from another Earth—said. It was a play on their given name, Alfred Eugene. Neither wanted to be either Alfred or Eugene. It was only when they joined The Utility Company and became Agent Street that they fulfilled their destiny, and they each became the man they always felt they should be.
“A. Street, huh? I think that can work,” Earth 2 Street said.
“Really though, we only would need that designation for when we’re both together, or when Bridges needs us,” E. Street said.
And from then on, there was A. Street and there was E. Street, but both believed themselves to be the A+ Street.
E. Street wasn’t allowed out of the basement of The Utility Company, however. At first, the authorities on this Earth let him continue his duties as an agent, but soon Director Wall decided the chance of the public discovering the portal program was too great.
But even as E. Street was relegated to the basement, A. Street still visited. The two still fought and sparred, and each time a different Street came away victorious. In the end, though, one left and one stayed behind.
After helping A. Street up from the ground, E. Street reached over and handed his double a bottle of water. The two simultaneously lifted the clear bottles to their lips and took swigs.
“You know what stinks?” E. Street asked.
“You, now?” A. Street
“Ha. Funny.”
“Sorry, seriously, what stinks, man?”
“In a few minutes you are going to walk out of here. You’ll go back to your apartment and your dog, back to what you know and love and a sense of normalcy. You can forget about me and just go back to your regular, ordinary life.”
“Ordinary life? We investigated a case of food poisoning last week that turned people into mutant werewolves.”
E. Street sighed, wishing he was out investigating those cases instead of being stuck. Here. Just him and Dr. Bridges. He liked Bridges, but sometimes the conversation between the dual Bridges’ was about a thousand feet over his head.
“Exactly. Ordinary.”
The two backed up against the wall and slid down, each letting their bodies relax after the workout. Each recognizing each other’s exhausted state.
“So...what’dya have in mind?” A. Street asked.
“What makes you think I have something in mind?”
“I would.”
E. Street hesitated. His counterpart would’ve already thought about it. Probably.
“How about we up the ante?” E. Street offered up. “I like this. The sparring. But, let’s make it mean something. To both of us.”
At that A. Street turned to look at E. Street. “Oh? Go on.”
“How about whichever one of us wins at our occasional sparring sessions gets to be out in the field as an actual agent for the next mission The winner walks out, the loser stays behind,” E. Street tossed out. “What do you think?”
He turned his head and looked across the room, but eventually A. Street spoke up. He had a mischievous grin on that wide face of his. “Yeah. Awesome. Let’s do it.”
Beltway Vice
Penny was uncomfortable.
That was an understatement, perhaps the biggest one of the year, as Penny sat between Penelope’s Chief of Staff, Jorge Ramos, and the man who only resembled her husband. He called himself Nicholas to her, but since they’d been in the limo with Ramos, he’d gone by the moniker Agent Green.
Ramos wasn’t as familiar with the agent as Penny would have thought, given the circumstances.
“I’m sorry...who are you again?” Ramos asked Nicholas.
“Agent Green. That’s really all you’re cleared for.”
“Cleared for? I’m the Chief of Staff for the Vice President of the United States. I think I have the clearance.”
“Sorry Jorge. You can take it up the line, if you want, but Vice President Bridges here will vouch for me. She knows my work,” Nicholas said.
Penny’s head jerked up and she realized she hadn’t even uttered a word since she’d stepped out of the elevator in the hotel lobby. The surprise of seeing Nicholas on the way out of the hotel stunned her into silence.
Even with both men looking at her, she still couldn’t muster a verbal response. All she could do, under the weight of all the thoughts swirling through her head, was to give Ramos a brief nod. She noticed Nicholas—Agent Green—relax just a bit, but perhaps that had been her imagination.
“Fine. Whatever. Just do your job, Agent Green, and we don’t have a problem,” Ramos said. He shifted and turned towards Penny. “Sorry about that. Good morning, I love what you’ve done with your hair, Madam Vice President.”
Penny glanced in the reflective window and noticed her hair for almost the first time that day. She hadn’t done anything special, but it was slightly different than what Penelope was doing with her hairstyle.
“Uh. Thanks, Jorge,” Penny managed to squeak out. “Where are we headed?”
Jorge tapped on a tablet in front of him, bringing up a calendar. He scrolled through, but her schedule was fairly blank for the day.
“We’ve got a breakfast with the NAACP this morning, and then after that, the President requested an open schedule for the rest of the day. Seems he’s got an event planned, but he didn’t clue any of us in on that. You got anything for me on what Hanson’s got planned?”
“I don’t. Where is the event?”
Ramos returned to his tablet and zoomed in on the block following the breakfast slot. “Looks like...hmmm...that’s weird. We’re supposed to go to the new residence and Marine Two will take us to the final destination. I guess we’ll find out then.”
“Guess so,” Penny replied. She looked out the window and saw the limo slowing down, presumably approaching the political breakfast she was booked to attend. Hopefully she could fend off any overtures for speeches. While she’d done her homework on Penelope, she hadn’t been that thorough.
When she glanced over at Nicholas, she realized he was also distracted. With all that she had on her mind, did he have something else going on behind those cold eyes? What was his role in all this? He looked like Nik, but he was different. Clearly. And he knew who she was. Meaning his role was deeper. More entrenched alongside Penelope.
Penny knew that whatever happened today, she couldn’t trust this man. He might look like Nik, but he wasn’t her husband. Not in the slightest.
_____
Nik Davidson felt ridiculously outclassed.
He’d already committed to leaving the safe confines of The Utility Company to save his wife alongside Agent Street. What he didn’t know was that there was a second Street.
E. Street. A. Street.
For some reason, Nik couldn’t help recalling a saying that noted, “Marriage is a two-way street,” or something like that. If that was the case, what was he? Where did he fit in with all of this?
The first place they went was back through the closet and into the portal there. This time, however, they did not emerge into an unused office upstairs. They were on a different floor completely.
As if reading his mind, A. Street turned to him and said, “We’re still in The Utility Company, but each f
loor beyond where Dr. Bridges resides is isolated and self-sufficient. You need a portal to get from one to the next. This one is mine. Literally no one knows about it except the two of us and Dr. Bridges. And now you, of course. Can we trust you?”
“I...I think so.”
“We’d better. Your double isn’t exactly known for his integrity, you know.”
Nik self-consciously rubbed his jaw. “Yeah. I kinda got that.”
Nik looked around and saw the room was sparse, save for a wall of mirrors. They’d just come through one, but the others were all equipped with the same portal technology he’d seen used elsewhere.
“So when do we go get my wife back?”
Both of the Streets turned their heads to look back at Nik, as if he’d asked a question he shouldn’t have. A. Street leaned against a wall and eyed the civilian.
“Let’s get one thing straight. I don’t care about your wife. If we save her, that’s gravy, but that’s not my job.”
“What’s your job then?” Nik felt his jaw clench.
“My job is to protect the President. And so is his, actually,” A. Street motioned to E. Street, who nodded. “We’ve been splitting field work for the past decade or more, even after I left The Utility Company to work for the Secret Service. I couldn’t leave myself behind, so here I am.”
“So we head to this press conference and the President’s going to be there along with Penny. You do your job and I’ll get Penny.”
Street—A. Street—shook his head. “One problem. You’re already going to be there.”
Nik narrowed his eyes. “I’m sorry. What?”
“Show him,” A. Street motioned to E. Street. The agent from his earth pressed a few buttons on the wall panel and a small projector turned on, showing the trio a group of people gathered on the surface of an aircraft carrier.
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