The gem worth fighting for

"Uh, Moriah?" I say looking at the large black doors to the manor in front of me, "This is my first mission." 

"Your first mission? Seriously? I thought you said you were experienced! That’s one of the only reasons to let you come!” Moriah exclaims, her dark brown curls bouncing as she shakes her head in disbelief at me. 

I frown, then retort back by saying, “At least I’ve practiced before. I could be completely inexperienced without any practice at all.” 

Moriah rolls her eyes, “There’s no going back now.” She hands me a navy blue hat, the word DeliVre stitched in white cursive, then rings the doorbell with her free hand, the other arm balancing a decent-sized cardboard package. 

I stumble to shove the hat on my head before the door swings open, revealing a short middle-aged man dressed in a white bathrobe. 

“What are you doing- oh, hello,” he says, his tone fluctuating when he sees two delivery girls at his front door. “Ah, I see I have a package. Let me take that off of your hands.” 

He reaches for the package, and Moriah yanks it back. “No, no, it’s quite okay, I can place it where you would like.” 

He sighs, and then replies, annoyed, “I think I can do it myself.” He reaches for the package again, but Moriah reaches up to his neck and hits it, causing the man to fall unconscious and fall to the tiled floor. 

Moriah rips open the package, revealing a pile of gear. She snatches a grappling hook gun, a few small circular buttons, and a square device that appears to have been opened. I pocket an identical grappling hook, and a utility belt that has a variety of different buttons and patches on them. 

Moriah hops over the man and into the large cluttered room. It’s filled with boxes, chip bags, outdated magazines, empty soda cans, greasy pizza boxes, and just about every trash item you could imagine. Buried underneath the junk rest a coffee table and a couch covered in spills and crumbs. 

“This place is disgusting! Does he ever clean?” I hiss.

“Chloe, be quiet! Look!” She points towards the top-right corner of the room. A black security camera rests there, the green light blinking, proving the device is on. Moriah quickly pulls out her grappling hook gun, grasps it in both hands, and pulls the blue trigger. 

A thick rope attached to a hook spits out of the gun and shoots towards the camera at lightning speed. It hits the lens and causes the black device to shatter instantly. 

“Follow me,” Moriah says as she walks past the broken glass and into the dimly lit hallway. I follow her, carefully stepping over the sharp glass deposited over the floor, into the dark hallway.

"Okay, where is it?" I ask Moriah quietly as she reaches into her pack and pulls out a small black cylinder, almost the size of a hockey puck, and sets it on the floor. She grabs another device, a miniature gray rectangle, and holds it up to the ceiling. It blinks constantly for a few seconds before speeding up and producing a beeping sound. 

“It’s this way.” She says as she walks towards the closed door at the end of the hall. I run to catch up with her before quickly skidding to a stop. 

"Moriah?" I whisper, looking around frantically, "There's someone else here." She stops in her tracks and looks back at me, "What do you mean?" 

I hold up the small pale orange device strapped to my waist, one that can detect nearby body heat. It’s glowing. A sign of somebody else’s - for it not programmed to detect Moriah’s and my body heat’s - presence. 

She stares at me for a moment before quickly hissing, “Give it to me.” I carefully toss her the small chunk of metal and she peers into it intensely. In a swift movement, she kicks behind her, causing something transparent to give a groan and fall to the floor. The person appears. It’s a woman, in her young twenties, her brown hair spread out around her. 

Moriah inspects the woman before yanking off a chain around her neck. Domin8, the other spy organization. They must have gotten to the house first. 

Domin8 was the spy company that Moriah and I used to work for, but when their intentions turned out to be evil, we had to sneak away. They wouldn’t let us quit - they were going to brainwash us. 

After we left Domin8, we joined another spy agency, called DODAC or Department of Defence And Crime. DODAC and Domin8 used to work together on missions, but when Domin8 turned malicious, DODAC made a decision to stop working with them and cut off all communication. 

When we transferred to DODAC, we had to take a test in order to be placed in a certain department, like the Missions department - the people that actually go out and do the missions - or the Device department - the section that makes and hands out all the fancy gadgets we use. 

Moriah passed the test with flying colors, but I flunked. I got stuck in the Suits department, where we made suits for people that actually got to do the interesting things.

A few days ago I found out that Moriah’s partner, Crystal Wodouski, caught the flu and was unable to do missions, including the one a few days out. Moriah recommended me, and I got gifted with the job. 

My goal is to prove to them that I can be in the Missions department and that I can be one of the best spies there, or at least closer to Moriah. Moriah is already one of the best spies in the department, she’s been a secret agent since she was thirteen years old. And after seven more years of hard work, passion, and perseverance she has become one of the best spies in the country.

“Chloe, come on!” Moriah exclaims as she quietly runs down the hallway. I follow her through the twists and turns of the long hallway until we get to a set of large double doors. Moriah pushes the door open with little effort and we walk over to the transparent glass case sitting on the dresser.

Inside the case, there is a miniature gem, not any ordinary gem though.  It's a gramedon, the rarest jewel ever to be known to exist on planet earth. It is so rare that there are only 7 of them in the entire world, and there are only two types of ways that someone can get one if your a billionaire or if you can find one in the wild. The last time one was found was over 150 years ago, although the changes are super slim, people go out digging every single day in order to find one, because if you found one it could change your entire life.

The CEO and boss of DODAC is a billionaire and is lucky enough to own one of the few gramedons.

Although gramedons are pretty to look at as well as super unique and rare, they also possess a special power. The power to transform all life on earth into thin air within a second. The power can only be used once and is only in need of an extreme emergency. Only a few people actually know the power the stones hold, many just assume they are precious stones, with no extra powers. 

Since our organization has one, it immediately makes us better and holds more power over Domin8. When they realized this, they figured that they had to hold possession of it, meaning they snuck past all the security to steal it from us. They delivered it to a random man, told that the gem was a gift from his wife overseas, and then figured they would sneak in later to retrieve it. Our hacking department figured all this out and therefore sent us to reclaim the gem. 

“Ugh! It needs a password. That is the only thing the team didn’t figure out.’ Moriah says as she spins around to looks at me, “Any ideas?”

“Password? Um, did the man set it or Domin8?”

“I think Domin8 set it, and they must have told him the password as well.”

“Okay, well what is a password they wouldn’t use, cause they wouldn’t use a super obvious password, or else it would be really easy for us to guess and we would easily get it back. 

Moriah thinks about this for a second before lightening up and responding back with, “Yeah, but what if they knew we were going to think that so they actually made it an obvious password to trick us. What if they were trying to outsmart us by doing that?”

My jaw drops open, “Oh my gosh yes! You are so smart, Moriah!”

She laughs, “Thanks, but what would the password be?”

“What about Joey Kerioan, the owner of Domin8? Or what about just Domin8, the most obvious thing?”

“Those are both good, I’ll try them.” She says as she pulls out a small keyboard and quickly types in a few words, “It’s not Joey Kerioan,  but lemme try Domin8.”

She pulls out the keyboard again and types even faster, causing her short plain-white acrylic nails to make little tapping noises on the keyboard. When she finishes typing she takes a small step back as the keyboard gets sucked into the case.

After a few more moments, a little ringing noise started, beginning quietly but soon blaring out loudly.

“What is that?” I yell over the loud ringing noise, pulling my hands up to my ears to stop the awful noise from making its way in, it was already starting to give me a horrible headache. 

“I don’t know!” She shouts back, as she looks at the case alarmingly, “Is that an alarm?”

“An alarm that is,” a deep voice calls from behind us, a voice that I remember so well, a voice that I used to hear all the time, one that still haunts my memories. 

I turn around slowly and gasp, “J- J- Joey?”

He steps forward and looks at us with a large smirk on his face, “Yes, it is I, Joey. You must have thought you outsmarted us didn’t you?”

“N-No,” Moriah whispers, as afraid as I am. 

He cackles again, cracking his fingers loudly, a horrifying sound I will never forget, “You liars, you left us to join another agency, one that is not smart enough to know not to mess with us. Why I would be so ashamed if I was associated with those puny little-”

I feel hands grip my body as a warm sickly liquid gets dumped in my throat. I thrash but steady hands hold me down. I try to spit out the foul-tasting liquid but hands cover my mouth.

“You will never win!” I hear as I slip off into total darkness.