Stevenson and McCartney

"Are you coming tonight?"

That question was a bomb waiting to be defused. One snip of the wrong wire and death and devastation followed.

The mission required two freshman volunteers. Whitney didn't hesitate to go on her first mission outside of the Academy. On the bus ride back from training, she kept poking Piper in the ribs waiting for her to announce she'd be alongside her as she was since first grade.

This time Piper didn't know if she should. There was the sinking feeling she had in her chest to think about. Whitney would say it was her being overly cautious and shy.

The two of them were piano keys. Whitney was pale, long, and out there for all to see, and she was shorter, black, and a little hidden. Older generations often referred to them as Ebony and Ivory, after the legendary song from Tug of War by Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder. It probably helped that she was Piper Stevenson, and Whitney was Whitney McCartney.

"Piper, hello, are you going on the mission with me or not?" Whitney added a slight whine to her voice to make Piper aggravated.

Growing up together gave Whitney an advantage. She knew if she whined enough, all of Piper's plans of taking a bath and reading a book after a long week of combat and weapons training would go up in smoke.

This time it wasn't the whining that changed Piper's mind. She couldn't shake this bad feeling. It was like water dripping and not knowing where the source came from; it crawled at her skull, driving her crazy. With this negative feeling floating around, someone had to watch Whitney's back.

What would she tell her family if something went wrong? The thought of Mr McCartney, broken after losing his only child so soon after his wife passed, left Piper with no choice.

"Yeah." Piper dragged herself from the comfort of the couch and headed for the closet, where she kept all the tech equipment.

The best part of training to be a covert agent was all the toys she got to build. At least with the Academy, she used her skills for good. She and Whitney used to hustle people looking for fake IDs, passports, and government documents to claim they weren't immigrants. They were in middle school when they ran their fake id scheme on high schoolers looking to buy drinks.

Whitney had taken their parents IDs and studied them until she perfected everything in photoshop. Piper learned everything else, the right chemicals for fingerprints, how the mechanics of the ID worked, what you couldn't see beyond the surface that'd get anyone caught.

Piper always thought they were careful enough not to get caught. She made sure they never did any of Whitney's grand schemes. But the only true way not to get caught in the life of crime was to stop.

Like all things, their fake id business bloomed and expanded into dangerous watch-list territory. She and Whitney learned to hack and wipe things clean. They considered themselves white-hats, only ever helping immigrant and poor families who needed a break. The law saw them as criminals. Seventeen and almost sent to juvie, until Agents Jacob and Marshall stepped in and offered them jobs as agents. Neither of them knew which government hired them. Agent Marshall had an English accent, and Agent Jacobs sounded like he were from the deep south. What mattered was juvie was off the table.

Piper placed the cloaked knives in her combat boots and up her sleeves. She packed a few more for Whitney. Her best friend was the kind of person who could turn a recon-only mission into a gunfight within seconds.

"Look who showed up." Whitney laid flat on her stomach on the rooftop, one eye looking out of her riffle, the other on Piper.

Piper cut her eyes at Whitney and got to work. She opened the case taking her drones out one after the other and turning all three on before releasing them into the night after their target.

"I'm glad you decided to come." Agent Jacobs smiled and patted her back. "Here's what we know Andrei is holding everyone in that restaurant hostage, including one of ours. She's been posing as his girlfriend for the last six months. We need to catch him tonight."

Piper couldn't believe this was happening to her. She was responsible for lives on her first mission outside of the tech lab. Throwing up sounded like a good idea. Lives couldn't be in her hands. She killed plants. When she noticed that their dorm floor had a place for a garden on the roof, she thought she'd plant her own mint, tomatoes, and other foods. They all died. She overwatered and feed them to their deaths.

No, no, she belonged in a lab behind a computer screen or working on making their cloaking technology work on clothes.

Piper paced the rooftop glancing into the windows of the fancy restaurant across the street. No one seemed to realise they were in danger. They laughed, talked, and eat as if their lives weren't in the hands of a madman. But she noticed the waitstaff were Andrei's men. They all had a flaming red skull neck tattoo.

Piper called for the drones to come back to give them any added information. "Andrei still doesn't know about Agent Marshall. That's good."

"Not good enough."

"I got it!" Whitney jumped up, attached equipment for ziplining to her waist and sailed off the roof, headed straight for the glass windows of the restaurant.

"Whit! Sorry" Piper didn't like to disobey Agent Jacobs after all he did for them. But she and Whitney were just as close if not closer to Agent Marshall. She'd been a mother figure to them, especially Whitney. Piper followed after her friend.

Piper unattached herself landing on piles of glass.

She knew it!

Whitney went into a mobster packed restaurant with only her fists as weapons. Not that she wasn't holding her own. Whitney knew how to fight before they became agents in training. Mr McCartney was a retired boxer with three champion belts. Gloves on and up was a popular phrase in the McCartney household.

Whitney wasn't bulletproof, though. Piper threw cloaked knives at two mobsters right when they reached for their guns. She hoped the nanites she cloaked the blades with did their secondary job and tasered the men until they could be arrested.

Whitney, intent on saving their friend, missed another attempt on her life until Piper stepped in front and got a bullet to the shoulder. Not once during training had any of the agents mentioned that getting shot was an odd sensation. Dull pain shot throughout her body.

"Piper, oh God!" Whitney held Piper.

"Knives, boots. I got extra for you. Getting shot sucks, and it really hurts. I knew tonight was going to be bad. I-" Piper passed out before she finished her sentence.

Whitney was staring at her with a smile when Piper woke up. "Agent Marshall sent flowers. Andrei is behind bars, and your nanites work. Yay!!" Whitney clapped her hands and shoved the boutique of daisies in Piper's hands.

"You got me shot."

"You love me."

"You suck." Piper smiled before her medication took over, and she fell back asleep.