Two weeks later:

"So is it what we thought?"

I sighed heavily and shook my head even though he couldn't see it. "Yeah. They've rebooted the program like we suspected. The file doesn't contain much—just some of what we already know and some small new pieces of information."

"Like the change in their acronym." He spoke through the phone.

"Yeah." I kept typing away on my laptop and frowned heavily when the encryption kept locking me out. The supercomputer was not fucking child's play. "So what's next? Do we keep digging?"

"Yes. We find the person who put the information into the supercomputer and figure out just how deeply C.E.N.T.U.R.I.E.S runs within the CIA."

"That could take a while. Plus, we've got other problems to worry about," I reminded him, gritting my teeth.

I heard him sigh heavily on the other end. "I know. They've so very kindly contacted me and made me very aware of the situation. The Russians know we're up to something."

"And they want in on it."

"And that's why they tried hacking the CIA."

"Cheap fucking trick." I scoffed, shaking my head again.

A few days after Agent Santino had managed to break in and steal the information from the CIA, the word somehow traveled to the Russians, a leak we were still trying to find. According to him, they had been aware of the facility for years, but never gotten any direct intel. At least not anything worth something. Now, though, it seemed they had had enough and were going to extreme measures to get it; they had set up a perfect trap.

"They're still set on sending in agents to try and eliminate the threat?" He asked with a tired voice, sounding about as exhausted and sick of this as I was. Lives were at risk and it was all in our hands to save them because these idiots insisted on being... well, idiots.

"They shipped them off this morning," I replied, sadly.

The hacking had been a trap. I had caught their trace easily and blocked them off, but the second I had reported the attack back to my superiors at the CIA, they had practically gone to DEFCON 1 and pulled a team out of their asses to go to Russia to find and eliminate the threat.

– Doing exactly as the Russians wanted.

"They're walking straight into a trap," He sighed deeply. I heard papers rustling in the background, then the squeak of a chair. "I suspect it won't be long till the Bratva contacts me with demands. They know I won't let those agents die."

"So what do we do?" I asked, waiting a moment while listening to the sound of what had to be a printer printing in the background of his call.

"We stay one step ahead. When they contact me, I need you to trace the call so we know where to act. In the meanwhile, I'm going to talk to AISE and see if I can't convince them to stand ready with a rescue team in case we need it. We need to try and attempt to keep this as civil as possible and not land with an international crisis on our hands. If AISE breaks into a Russian base, we give AISE a target on their back. So far we've managed to keep their name out of it, but if there's no other way..."

"Alright," I blew out a breath and scratched my chin. I needed to shave. "You do that, and I'll keep working on decrypting these files and digging into the CIA's employees. It might take a while, though. If we're looking all the way back to when your dad started the company to the point where the government seized his assets—"

"Just do your best," He replied. "Thanks, Caleb. Give my love to Zoe as well."

"Any time, boss."

"And remember; if anything goes wrong, use our codeword."

"Roger that."

Ending the call, I finally took off my headset and leaned back in my seat, cupping my face.

Every time it seemed like we had a break in the case, fifty new shitloads of catastrophes followed. The break-in at the CIA had, against all odds, gone great, but then the collateral had followed.

Somehow the Russians got word that C.E.N.T.U.R.I.E.S were up to something new and somehow they knew there had been a break-in at the CIA headquarters, despite their effort to cover it up. That had led to their deliberately poor attempt to break into our servers to provoke the CIA to seek them out – make it easier and have them come to Russia, right? Playing on their turf. So then, even after trying to assure them it wasn't needed, the big bosses had, as per usual, ignored the actual tech-genius's advice (me) and gathered up a team, which had been deployed early this morning. It was afternoon now, which meant they would soon be landing and getting briefed and ready for the takedown.

– The takedown that would be leading them into a trap.

Groaning, I rubbed my face and then stood up, stretching. I was hungry, but at the same time my stomach felt too tense to eat.

The plan had been so simple. Before the Russians interfered, it had been so straight forward; steal the information, decrypt it and then go through it before taking it all over to AISE and letting them in on what we had discovered. Since moles obviously hid everywhere, we had decided we didn't trust the precious information in the hands of just anyone, even AISE, before having gone through it ourselves first. Just in case there was any information that didn't need to see the daylight of any country or person, except me, Zoe and him.

But the supercomputer was tougher than it looked. The USB with the virus I had designed might've extracted the files from the computer, but each file was still encrypted and protected by about ten tons of firewalls and other protective software. It would take weeks to go through it all, even with my program, and with it now being a race against the Russians...

Well, finding a pot of luck wouldn't be too bad right now.

Or just some pot.

"Zoe!" I called into our apartment and scratched my chin again, the itch of my stubbles annoying me. "Smurf?"

"In the bedroom!"

I walked out of the living room and sauntered towards the bedroom, yawning quietly. I was in need of some cuddles. "What are you doing?"

Coming to the door of our bedroom, I found Smurf sitting on the bed in her underwear, doing her makeup. She had a mirror all the way up to her eyes and was running a black pencil along and around the rim of her eye.

"Whoa," I said, shaking my head and tsk'ing my lips when she looked up with a raised brow. "No snacks in bed."

She rolled her eyes when I grinned and crawled onto the bed, coming up behind her and wrapping my arms and legs around her. "Hey, no moving around. I don't wanna poke my eyeball out."

"Trust me, I don't plan on moving from this spot," I declared, letting my head fall into the crook of her neck, kissing her on her shoulder with a heavy sigh.

"How did the meeting go?" She murmured quietly, her tone suddenly changing when she sensed my exhaustion. "Is it that bad?"

"People could die," I whispered, closing my eyes and hugging her body into my chest. I felt her ease up and lean back into my embrace. "That agent I told you about—"

"Agent Rya Wilkins?"

"Yeah. She's amongst some of the agents they deployed. I really liked working with her. She actually had a funny bone, you know?"

Smurf slowly twisted around, laying down her makeup. "Hey. We'll fix this, okay? Remember who we got on our side."

"I know," I sighed, leaning down on the bed and taking her with me. She let go of a little yelp when I tugged her into my body like a therapeutic teddy bear and started petting her. "But even he is just human, smurf. He's getting tired of this shit, too. I mean... imagine having to do this every fucking day."

Smurf was silent for a moment, simply just letting me hug her and squeeze her until I slowly felt the stress ease inside me. It didn't all go away, but hugging my girlfriend surely helped. A lot.

"You know I love you," She then suddenly said. I looked at her with a 'duh!' expression. Of course she loved me. I was too lovable not to be loved. "So you know that when I say we're going to fix this, and we're going to fix this together, I mean it. We've faced harsher circumstances. I mean, we took down a whole governmental program!"

"That just started up again," I pointed out, flatly.

"And we will shut it down again. Just as we will save that agent and all the others and then get all the stuff we need from the USB to end it all permanently. The good guys always win, so pull your shit together and go wake up your sister so she can sleep tonight as well. She's already napped for two hours."

Smurf pecked my chest, but then unwrapped herself from my arms and sat up, grabbing her makeup again. I couldn't help but smile a little as she continued to blacken the shit out of her eyes and eyelids, smudging that all up in there. The eyes I really liked, but the black lipstick was really hard to scrub off my dick in the shower.

And that's why, sitting up, I gripped the back of her hair and yanked her mouth to mine before it got covered in it. Smurf let out a small gasp, but then relaxed into my mouth when I kissed her deeply, a little smile playing along my lips. That reminded me...

"Hey, could you sign this?" I dragged myself away and quickly pulled a paper free from my pants pocket and unfolded it for her. "No need to read it, just sign at the bottom."

Smurf managed to collect herself to give me a skeptical glance, before eying out the paper. "What is it?"

"Oh, this? It's nothing. Just a patent claiming that your smile belongs to me."

Smurf immediately rolled her eyes and pushed me away, going back to her makeup. "You seriously have way too much free time."

I grinned and pinched her ass, before taking her ring finger and giving it a quick peck. "Careful, or I'll claim this next."

And with that, I left her flabbergasted, before heading in to wake up my baby sister.

• • •

I know this was a shorter chapter, but the next one is a long one, promise. This was just a transition.