Sunnyside Up with Red Ketchup

by Andrews, Ashley

  ~ Sunnyside Up With Red Ketchup ~

  Ashley Andrews

  Prologue • Red • Yellow • Blue • Green • Brown • Silver • Orange • Peach • White • Crimson • Navy • Gray • Purple • Amber • Fuchsia • Cream • Burgundy • Lilac • Turquoise • Lime • Pink • Scarlet • Beige • Mauve • Rainbow • More

  All Rights Reserved © 2012 Ashley Andrews

  Prologue: Extraordinary Life

  Ordinary. She bet half of the Earth's population considered that they were ordinary. Believing that they're just another measly speck on a planet, getting by alright, having an alright time, having an alright life. Having an ordinary life. While half of those ordinary people wished they weren't ordinary, but were something more.

  She was one of the five percent who were gifted with a different life.

  What's more fun than being shot at? Living your life on the line for a cause? Experiencing fear, seeing things you wish you'd never seen, losing loved ones, meeting all kinds of new people.

  To those with ordinary lives it might sound like a lot of fun, like going on a roller coaster ride without the bars to hold on to. There are many who believe that they would want that kind of life. The excitement and nail biting fear. Isn’t that the glory of being human? They can experience all the adrenaline laden emotions pain, terror, exhilaration, glory, and heartbreak, and believe that they need those things to evolve, to really live. To not be ordinary.

  Yeah, right. Did she want that kind of life? No. Had she worked to get that kind of life? No. Just by the fact of her birth, she was made instantly unique. She was born, so much more than ordinary.

  Want to know why?

  Her parents were special agents for a secret task force assembled solely for finding criminals within the underground world. These were criminals that remained unknown to even the highest of ranks of crime fighters throughout the world. These were the terrorists, the top echelon of evil doers. They had met, fell in love, had her, and continued to work undercover, fighting these horrific criminals.

  Now do you know any kids who were brought up in that kind of environment? She thought not. For the first years of her life, she traveled with them, how many undercover secret agents do you know that have a child?

  But that didn’t last long. Her parents had infiltrated the home base of one of the worst criminals on earth when she was eight years old. They had been searching for this man since before she was born, and when they had a chance to gain access to his secret hideout and find all the information that would put him away for life, they took it. Unfortunately before they had all the information that they needed, he discovered what they were up to. Her parents were murdered by their nemesis a year into their undercover mission.

  She didn’t remember much about that time in her life. At the age of nine she was literally moved underground, away from the bad guys, and anything that could be termed ordinary life. From that time on she was brought up by seven special agents— all men.

  It had been decided that having females on the force meant that the men and women who made up this elite terrorist crime-fighting agency could create problems, problems like her.

  So, it was just her and the boys. She was eighteen-years-old and she had lived underground in the secret headquarters for half her life. The boys didn’t really know what to do with her, so they had taught her what they knew. She had been schooled to perfection on hand-to-hand combat, and weapons.

  Well…sort of. No matter how hard they tried, she just couldn't get over her phobias. She didn’t like guns, and she didn’t want to hurt anyone. She was very shy, kind of backwards. A lot of her training ended up being of the book sort. Good in theory, but not so good in practice. You can’t shoot a gun if you want to throw up every time you touch one.

  She would never be the agent her parents had been. She wasn't cracked up to be an agent, but since she never planned on leaving her little underground home—well, it was kind of a mute point, wasn’t it?

  Chapter 1: Red

  A picture of a boy with windswept black hair and harsh, gray eyes appeared on the screen.

  Agent Dexter tapped at the screen with his index finger and placed his hands on the table, curling them around the metal edge. The five who were seated at that table, stared at him.

  "Zane Noble, the future president of Plasma, a major player in the electronic industry." The man leaned backwards and tapped the screen again. "He's Blaine's target."

  The table was silent, analyzing the information. They waited for Dexter to explain further, and when he just sat there, brooding silently, one of them encouraged him to share more. "Go on."

  He smiled slightly. "We've received information that the young man will be leaving to attend Sunnyside Summer Camp, just as he has for every year of his life." He hesitated for a couple of breaths before snarling, "In order to continue to develop his singing talent."

  One of the men pulled a face. "The future leader of Plasma is pursuing a singing career?"

  Dexter's lips turned up at the edges. "Supposedly so. Our men inside the company state that he is rebelling. The singing career is what he intends to do with his life, as opposed to taking over a multi—billion dollar company that makes products critical to not only our organization, but to keeping the entire world secure."

  A quiet murmur went around the table that began to get louder, so Dexter held up a hand to halt their private discussions.

  "There's no way to persuade him to skip camp this year. That has already fallen flat. It has also been decided by the higher ups that any move we make to dissuade Mr. Noble, could alert Blaine that he is being watched. Furthermore, it seems that Mr. Noble has already arranged his departure date."

  The five agents sitting around the table were silent for a moment, wondering where exactly the conference was leading them.

  One head snapped up and Joseph stared at Dexter. "We're going undercover?"

  Dexter slammed the table and grinned. "We're going undercover."

  With this announcement, discussion around the table focused on how that could be accomplished. These men were not teenagers. Their faces were etched with the tough, hard life that they’d led. Blending in at a teenage summer camp would not be easy.

  The conversation increased in tone and volume. Dexter allowed them to debate different scenarios, to try and come up with a solution to this problem. It wouldn’t be easy.

  Their Task Force was made up of seven people and only seven people. Well, seven people, plus Red. Homeland Security knew nothing about their group. In fact, the only one who knew they existed was the President. Knowledge was passed from one American President to the next, funding came from rerouting the funds for all those obscure agencies that no one could keep track of. To say they were a secret agency was like labeling coal, black. Duh.

  The undeniable problem in front of this group was that none of them could even remotely pass for eighteen. He’d surveyed the campus and personnel and found a family run business that had been passed down through generations. And there hadn’t been a new teacher or counselor, or medic, or gardener, for years.

  Unless the President decided to assign this team someone younger, there would be no way they could get on campus. They were going to be restricted to running surveillance from outside the gates. Running night ops and following Zane Noble every time he left campus. It wasn’t a great solution.

  This exact same question was raised several times in varying levels of frustration over the next few minutes. Dexter looked around at all the questioning glances and ran a hand through his disheveled, curly brown hair.

  He finally threw his hands up in the air. "I don't know what we are going to do. That's the only part I hav
en't figured out yet. Yes, we need some one on the inside while we patrol and manage the perimeter. But I haven’t worked out who and how."

  "Since we don’t have an operative for the inside, maybe we should figure something else out. Figure the odds if we apprehend and hold Zane until Blaine either turns his efforts somewhere else, or until we can use it to our advantage by laying a false trail. If Mr. Nobel doesn’t want to come willingly, we’ll take away his choice." Joseph shrugged.

  "Hey, he has a point. With Zane in our hands, we won't have to worry about Blaine. He'll come to us!" Paul pointed out.

  Michael turned to glare at him. "Are you two crazy? Having Zane so open and easily available has to be one of the reasons Blaine would go for him. You know that the crime lord is too savvy and interested in protecting himself, that he only picks low hanging fruit. If the kid isn’t where he has been every year since practically his birth, Blaine is going to pull back and disappear again. It’s been years since we had such a good shot at him.”

  Six voices rose in a pitched battle to declare which side of the coin they were on. Dexter lifted his hands up, attempting to calm everyone. Instead, it riled them up more and they got to their feet, jabbing accusing fingers and arguing. The agent slung himself into the leather chair behind him and rubbed at his face with both hands. His agents were uncharacteristically emotional about the subject of Blaine, No Last Name. There were reasons for that. The man had killed several of their best agents

  When he moved his hands away from his face, a familiar figure appeared outside the glass door, her hands filled with a tray holding cups of tea and coffee for the group. Dexter sighed. And here was the real reason they all hated Blaine. He’d made this child an orphan.

  * * * * *

  Red tapped lightly on the door. She didn’t know why she bothered because no one heard anyway, nor did they pay any attention to her. She was just part of them. She allowed the door to slide open automatically and entered the conference room, mugs of tea and coffee filling the air with a rich aroma.

  As she took a step forward, she stumbled over her own feet, just managing to regain her composure AND save the hot beverages from spilling. Nothing unusual, her “uncles” all told her she had two left feet, which meant she was woefully clumsy. It never bothered her. She just picked herself up and went on.

  Today this action interrupted the heated discussion. Suddenly all the attention in the room was on her.

  Dexter slowly rose to his feet, a bright, sudden flash of insight bringing a huge smile to his face. He glanced around the room and discovered that great minds really did think alike, as every other agent in the room had exactly the same expression.

  She narrowed her eyes at the seven, eerily similar looks. They wanted something. From her. "No," she refused bluntly. In tandem they all took one step forward, causing her to take another step back. “Whatever you want, she can’t do it!”

  They tried to explain, all of them, together. She wasn’t really confused by the eruption of voices and comments. She was used to this, her seven uncles often tried to outshout, outmuscle, and out intimidate each other. She rolled her eyes. She got the drift of what they were trying to talk her into. It was ridiculous.

  She held up both hands and smiled at them humorlessly. "I can't. I'm not cut out to be an agent." She turned to leave the room, thinking that would be the end of it. But someone caught her wrist. She looked over her shoulder at Agent Dexter, whose expression resembled a dog begging for food. She lightly tugged her arm out of his hold and shook her head.

  "I can’t do this, Dexter. I haven’t been above ground since I was nine, and that was an abject failure. I can’t leave Headquarters, let alone go to a Summer Camp. Out there, in the real world, undercover." She shuddered and turned to leave.

  Dexter's hand landed on her shoulder this time and she turned back around fully to face him. Although she was surrounded by agents that towered over her, her confidence didn't waver. They were her family—she’d learned long ago not to be intimidated by them.

  "Red, we need to do this. By helping us out, you could save the life of a very important young man." he used his other hand to point at the picture on the large screen behind him. She couldn't see it from where she was standing, but he was obviously pointing to a picture of the person who was being targeted. She swallowed. He was young? And being targeted by Blaine?

  There wasn't much she didn’t know about Headquarters, or the men who worked here, the seven men that she referred to (at least in her own mind) as her uncles. She had lived underground in this bunker, since she was nine years old. Half her life.

  Everything that occurred in this secure facility was classified, meaning she wasn't supposed to know about as technically she was a civilian. She shrugged mentally. She’d never been a civilian. She had been born into this business, her parents had died for the cause, and she lived in an underground bunker…well, because quite honestly she didn’t have a choice. For so many reasons.

  So that meant that she accidentally heard classified information or one of the men would accidentally leave folders about their current cases lying around, in her quarters. Or she would just stumble upon someone’s password that had accidentally been left taped to her bathroom mirror, and look up anything she dang—well wanted to know.

  There were no secrets here. That was how she knew that the man who had killed her parents, Blaine, had appeared on the map again, and he wanted some young man.

  She sighed. It wasn’t that the Task Force thought she was the best person for the job. They’d have taken someone off the streets if they could get them. The agents were assigned to locate and neutralize the most lethal killers, terrorists, gangsters, drug dealers, and other international criminals. Leading that list, at least for this small group, was the person who murdered her parents. Especially since her parents had given up their lives to protect the Task Force.

  But seriously, she was not her parents. They had been two of the best secret agents every employed by the US. Their exploits were legendary. She, on the other hand, had two left feet.

  Oh, she had trained, and learned everything there was to know about self—defense, handling a gun, hostage situations, and piano. Yes, piano. But she didn’t train every day, not physically. Mostly that was due to everyone being so busy. No one had time these days to go over her hand—to—hand skills. The only training she’d done lately came from a book. She was learning how to prepare mentally for the life of an agent.

  Her parents were fully—trained, incredibly adapt, international fighting machines, with decades of field experience before they’d been killed. She'd been reading books. They'd happily given up their lives to protect the Force. She was having trouble gathering up enough courage to leave Headquarters and go above ground.

  But the thought of having someone her age targeted by the brutal Blaine, and then left to suffer at his hands, just didn’t sit right. Her knowledge of Blaine was shrouded in traumatizing clouds of forgetfulness, and what she’d read in the files. She had a feeling some of that file had been edited just for her. There were obvious holes. But she knew enough to know that she wouldn’t want her worst enemy to fall into Blaine’s hands. He was an angry, inventive, and cruel bastard who tortured for fun.

  She sighed. A horrible feeling of overwhelming dread and inevitability rose in her stomach. Excitement was jumbled up in there somewhere too. Wasn't it about time that she left Headquarters? How much longer could she stay locked up, underground with seven old men?

  She looked around at all of the agents. Some of them were frowning, and she knew they worried about her; other’s eyes were pleading and bright with hope. She clenched her fists in terror, took a deep breath and acquiesced, "All right."

  They room erupted. There were agents cheering and high—fiving each other, giving each other exaggerated hugs.

  Dexter shook his fists victoriously and held back a shout of joy. He grasped one of her hands with both of his, swallowing her tiny hand completely. He’d
known she could do this. "Thank you, Red. I know what this is costing you. Thank you so much," he said. He released his hold on her so she could leave the room.

  She left quietly, biting her lip in worry. What had she done?

  * * * * *

  "You ready?"

  She nodded. The elevator taking them out of the ground and into the light above was actually a circular disk, big enough to hold a car. Red took a deep breath, shook out her nerves and closed her eyes lightly for a moment. She'd had a phobia of the outside world since the age of nine.

  The agents told her that every time they had attempted to take her up, she would kick and scream. Once, when she was about ten, they had sedated her and brought her out that way. The thought was that she might be more afraid of the elevator than actually being in the world. The last resort hadn’t worked. She had tried to kill herself. At ten years old. That had been the last time she’d been taken above ground.

  She swallowed around the strange feeling in her throat and nodded at Dexter, who pressed the button. The lift went upwards at an intense speed. The metal trap door at the top began to open automatically and a rush of cold air blew across her face. Then the light hit her. She scrunched her eyes together as the lift finally reached the top and refused to open them.

  She was scared.

  Dexter took her hand, leading her out of some building. He didn't comment on her wanting to keep her eyes shut. The sound of automatic doors opening alerted her that She was about to go outside. Fresh oxygen hit her face. She slowly opened her eyes and peaked out at her surroundings.

  She was in the middle of a bustling city. There were so many people rushing around and ignoring her presence. No one paid attention to her. The cars zoomed by and bright natural light seemed to accent everything in stark detail. It was like plugging into the mainframe computer at Headquarters. The sunlight warmed her pale skin, but she shrugged off the sensation. Instead she focused on the tall, glistening buildings that surrounded her. She was speechless.