Almost midnight, Grant Academy Hospital, inside of a semi-quarantine room, a man was lying in his bed, reading a book, and on the book cover, was the figure of a woman in skimpy clothing in a seductive pose. The title of the book: “Feverish Night Streaks”.
“Assistant Professor Vyn.” just this moment, two individuals wearing hospital nurse uniforms came into the room: “Sorry for dropping by unannounced, but we needed to talk to you about something - about why we’re here.”
“Oh, two nurses, but one male nurse, how disappointing.” Assistant Professor Vyn laid down his book: “No offense, but I would rather take another load of Kekugora powder than have you serve me.”
“I am NOT going to serve you. But I can give you a sponge bath if you’re so inclined.” the male agent sat down and said: “If I hadn’t known better I’d be fooled. That’s a pretty good pervert act.”
“Well, nowadays if you want people to intentionally ignore you and not ask many questions, if any at all, this would be a good cover. One of the better ones at least, as opposed to stern no-nonsense investigative agents willing to take a side job.” Assistant Professor Vyn handed his book to the male agent: “You want this? Fresh off the black market before the lockdown, one of the better entertainment options since we’re still in lockdown. Unless you got access to one of those board member channels.”
“No - no, thank you, I am not interested in porn - for now.”
“You see?” Assistant Professor Vyn smiled and flipped open the book, showing pages of array designs and maps inside the book: “Technically I shouldn’t even have this. The perv cover works for almost everything on almost all occasions. Now, what do you wanna talk about?”
“Some of our contacts in the academy contacted us. We’re afraid our covers are close to being made, or even worse, already made.” the female agent said: “We had to pull an inpromptu murder and frame our targets with it.”
“What happened to the original plan?”
“We are trying to plant things that would aid us in the upcoming hearing - and with the successful establishment of guilt we can get access to our targets’ personal effects and retrieve the item we were sent here for. The owner of the place we were trying to set our targets showed up unexpectedly.” the male agent said: “We saw her leave, but she somehow returned by just showing up inside of her office.”
“Short distance recall portal - that would be Professor Kapur, right? You killed her and framed it on your targets?” Assistant Professor Vyn started rubbing the bridge of his nose: “Are you certain you set everything up correctly?”
“We are certain, the condensed compound Kandera Wyvern toxin would become incurable after just a few minutes.” the female agent said: “Not even the best healer could help it.”
“You have to be extra certain.” Assistant Professor Vyn sighed: “Do you even know who she is?”
The male agent stammered: “We - we know we should've looked into it first - we sorta found out AFTER the fact - ”
“Okay, so you’d better wrap up early and leave as soon as possible, I can try to help you set those up.” Assistant Professor Vyn said: “And you better REALLY hurry up - the passageway is getting more and more unstable by the minute, and there’s only that many energy stones we can get our hands on.”
“What passageway?” the female agent asked.
“Think of it as a secret tunnel through which you can get in and out of the academy.” Assistant Professor Vyn said: “Not many people know about it, even few know how to pass safely, I happen to be one of them. Whatever that hearing is for, whenever it’s supposed to happen - you better do it well and do it soon.”
“I’m gonna ask them to move the hearing up, preferably tomorrow.” the male agent said: “They’re not gonna like this, but it’s gotta do.”
“You also have to deal with all those who are potentially aware of your identities.” Assistant Professor Vyn said: “Who knows? Who’s suspected you? Who may have suspected you?”
“Aside from those who are in the administration?” the female agent said: “Our targets - they are students, we’ve engaged them previously, quite tough and well-trained for audit students - too well trained actually, for us to be sneaky. We couldn’t really seriously lay our hands on them. And they seemed to have two friends who are also from the civilian world. Our contacts told us they have been doing some kind of investigation on their own, so I would imagine they shared their concerns with each other.”
“So deal with the other two civilian students, use them as leverage.” Assistant Professor Vyn said: “You should know what to do.”
“Yes, and all we need your help on is our extraction, and a little bit of information.” the female agent said.
“Shoot, what information do you need?”
“We want to know who the other players were - it seemed like they’ve messed with one of our contacts and she’s completely offline now.” the male agent took a deep breath and said: “They are compromising our mission here - I know it’s against the agreement, the protocol or whatever, but we need to find them, they must know where my contact is, she’s a core piece to our plan, and if they messed with her it puts the whole plan in jeopardy - ”
“Will do.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“I’ll draw up a list of other players in the academy.” Assistant Professor Vyn said: “But you’d better complete the mission. My sister - she wanted this for so long, if I could, I would probably do it myself. And if you couldn’t, I happen to know what fresh, juicy carcases of mages and wizards could stabilize and satiate the beast more than energy stones ever could. It was just way too addicting so we had to put it on rehab. So DON’T disappoint my sister, the magic world’s disappointed her enough. The man-hunts, the endless investigation, the secret inquiries and even assassinations - ”
“... understood.”
