Kai sighed as he readjusted his safe glasses. The things had a tendency to look dirty, though half the time it was just cereal dust in the air. Sometimes there would be a fine mist of sugar that clung to everything. Kai could almost feel himself gaining weight as he inhaled the sweetness. Still, undercover in a cereal factory was pretty cool, thought tiring.
This facility had twelve hour shifts, and Agent Moto was able to get a position through a temp agency. The pay was barely above minimum wage, not counting his government salary, and it was a lot of physical labor. Most of the time, the work was not that bad. Kai now knew how to clean up the lines, add ingredients, and build boxes for bulk shipping.
The bulk shipping was what Kai was working on right at the moment and it was one of the more difficult jobs. It was not so much that taping together the bulk boxes was too physically intensive. The problem was that the boxes were five feet tall and he was only five inches taller. He used to say that he was five-foot-six if he wore the right shoes, but someone had teased him for sounding like a girl with that comment.
That was one thing Kai was grateful for: not having to go under cover in drag. It was a part of the rumor that had made the crazy agency so undesirable to other agents. The agency actually took more undercover assignments than any other agency. There was a story about how several of the male agents had to go undercover as drag queens. Agent Moto had asked Driver and some of the other senior agents if that rumor was true, but all they did was laugh, neither confirming nor denying the rumor.
Now, if they ever had to go undercover for drag racing, Kai would be the first to volunteer Brad. Agent James had gotten a position as a forklift driver through another temp agency. Kai had never known that Brad drove forklifts in high school, but it was now very clear that Agent James was good. It had only taken two weeks, but Brad was already one of the lead forklift drivers back in shipping.
A blaring alarm was heard clearly through his earplugs and Kai tried to keep from sighing in relief. It was not good that the machine was acting up, but Kai was glad for a break. He took the opportunity to wind his way to the nearest drinking fountain. The whole facility was various shades of white, grey and brown as tubes, chutes, and machines intertwined with each other. Occasionally yellow and red stood out as posts and warnings while the only other color was the company’s logo.
“Slacking on the job, I see.” The voice was shouted nearly into Kai’s ear and he jumped, whirling around to face Agent Driver.
“Look who’s talking,” Kai shouted over the noise and earplugs. “All you do is walk around with a clipboard, Mister Inspector.”
“Seen anything?” Dev asked, quickly skipping all forms of small talk.
“This place would be a great place to have a paintball match,” Kai observed. “There are more hiding places every time I turn around. Did you there is a closet inside a closet, inside another closet, that leads to a basketball court?”
Somewhere, in the factory maze of mixers, ovens and packagers, was their target. The person had spliced into the company’s internet and was using it to hack. Unfortunately, they only hacked when the factory was in operation. The agency could not risk alerting the hacker to their presence, and so they now searched through the facility as employees. It was definitely a long search. Even getting blue prints of the place had not been useful.
A flurry of cereal dust blew their way and turned Kai’s blue jeans to a powdered tan. He glared at the female agent who had gotten herself onto the cleaning crew. She did not even try to look innocent as she shot the compressed air straight at her fellow agents, ridding them of some of their cereal snowman look. Kai would have never pegged her as mischievous, but working undercover certainly revealed interesting facts about his co-workers.
“Keep looking,” Dev yelled as he shook off his clipboard.
“I’ll try, but we’re kind of busy today,” Kai explained. “If I were you, though, I’d check out the view from the roof. I haven’t had a chance yet, but apparently you can reach it if you take the elevator that’s somewhere in the middle of this place.”
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