My mind was drawing a blank. Merida, gone? My thoughts turned into words before I could stop them. "What? How?!" Hiccup seemed even more distraught than I was.

"What do you mean?! She can't just be gone!"

Jack raised his hands, silencing our protests and questions. "The last communication from her was transmitted from somewhere near New York."

I blinked, then asked, "New York? How'd she get there? I mean, she was driving down here like us, so . . ?"

Jack gave me a look, so I shut up, albeit grumpily. "Anyway," he continued, "one of the incidents" -I liked how he stressed "incidents" - "was in New York, so we'll check that out while we're there."

I wanted to ask about the one here in D.C., but Jack's tone and the thought of my missing comrade silenced me.

Then Hiccup broke in. "We'll need the special tracking equipment." I looked at him, surprised. What "special tracking equipment"? After all, our vehicles were already jazzed up with all the fancy FBI gear, plus some standard issue from the S.B. What else did we need? Then I recalled my near-death experience earlier, and regained my composure.

"Sure," Jack replied, apparently not having noticed my momentary lapse of conduct, "but that stuff's down below, and we need to get to New York ASAP."

Hiccup shrugged and said, "We'll just have to take the elevator." Right. An elevator. Could this get any more cliche? Then, as if in response to my thoughts, Jack rose, walked to the wall opposite to the door, and laid his hand on a spot on the Celtic relief mural which adorned it. Of course, a cleverly hidden doorway appeared practically out of nowhere, leading to an elevator.

Hiccup, not the least disturbed, followed our . . fellow agent to the hidden elevator.

"Great," I mumble under my breath, "more cliches." I almost didn't see Jack grin.

Boys.

---

It took a few minutes to reach the floor we were heading for. I was almost nervous. Another S.B. hideout that I'd had no clue about before. I felt cheated. But, I didn't have much time to be, because a moment later the elevator doors slid open and we walked out into a big room, not very tall, but wide and long, with three hallways leading off in different directions, one straight ahead and the other two to the left and right from the middle of the room. Other agents were hurrying this way and that along them to get wherever they were going. We went down the right one.

'Relax, Punz,' I told myself, 'It'll be fine.'

I missed no chance to observe my surroundings, and, no surprise, they were not too unusual. The hallway and it's bare white walls were pleasantly lit by lights placed on the ceiling above us. Doors lined the walls on both sides, set a little apart from each other. They were designed to look like wood, but I knew they were not. In fact, the whole setup reminded me almost of a really fancy hotel. Except, you couldn't rent a room here. The doors had white plaques on them, which I didn't bother to read as we walked by. Finally, we reached our destination. Jack turned to a large door on our left and pulled out his agent ID card, swiped it, then placed his thumb on the scanner next to it.

Done.

We walked in. The room was big, huge, in fact. It dwarfed the first room. This one had rows of shelves packed with various weapons and other stuff I sort of recognized, and there were special devices along one wall. I couldn't help myself.

"Whoa," I said, and the other two glanced at me. "Cool." They both grinned and Hiccup said,

"Wait till you see how it works." Slightly miffed, I followed Jack's lead to the things on the wall and watched as he again slid his ID into a slot on the first one.

"Agent Jackson Overland, 101," he said, calmly. The machine answered,

"How can I help you?" which might have been creepy had I not been used to it from my car.

Jack replied, "S.B. tracking equipment, one-zero-two-seven-nine, three issues."

'Okay,' I thought, 'Let's be all fancy about it,' even though I guessed this was standard procedure.

A moment later, we were all holding fancy briefcases, complete with cool locking tech, a scanner, and an alarm system. Yup. 

We headed back to the elevator and up to the main floor. But this time, instead of coming out the front way, Jack took a back exit. I caught on quickly, though I realized I hadn't asked either of them if they had had any trouble on the way over from HQ.

When we got outside, I looked around for Jack's and Hiccup's cars, but couldn't find them anywhere nearby.

"Where . . ?" I asked and both boys suddenly looked a little awkward. I stood there dumbfounded for a moment, then almost started laughing. But they both gave me the "shut up" looks, so I managed to contain my abounding mirth.

"We're . . just going to use your's," said Jack and headed toward it, but I stopped him before he got there. He looked back at me.

"Uh uh. Its my car. I'll drive."

* * *

Hello everyone, and I'm really sorry for not updating in like forever (yes, I meant to say "like"). So I really hoped you enjoyed this chapter, and I hope I will be updating more frequently in the future. Thanks everyone!

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