The Junior Intelligence Agency: Book 2

By Alyssa Lesho

Special Agent Alex has been preparing since the age of six to deal with the unexpected. Six languages, piloting, and weapons training are only a few of the skills she’s learned at the Junior Intelligence Agency, a top secret organization where kids go to become the next generation of covert operatives. She’s been on missions before, but never one like this.
DIRECTOR is out of her control. What began as simple reconnaissance has become a multi-agency concern, and Alex and her pilot, Blake, are right in the middle of it, surrounded by secret agendas, conflicted superiors, and a tangled mess of deception. Can Alex trust the people calling the shots, and can she accept the consequences of finishing the mission? Or will her doubts and principles corrupt her judgment?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jun 8, 2013
• ISBN: 9781304117762

Alyssa Lesho

I am eighteen years old and live in Maryland with my parents and two sisters. Follow me on Twitter @alyssalesho or Tumblr (thejiaseries.tumblr.com) or email me at [e-mail].

Book preview

The Junior Intelligence Agency: Book 2

The Junior Intelligence

Agency: Book 2

By Alyssa Lesho

Copyright

© 2013 Alyssa Lesho. All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-304-11776-2

For the people we believe in

Prologue

Hello, again.  Welcome back.  Thank you for not telling the agency about me yet.  I’ll know if you do.  I would like our relationship to be amicable, and your revealing my agenda would ruin that.

I cannot tell you what I’m doing right now, or where I am.  I move around a lot.  I meet a lot of people.  My brain automatically sorts them into categories: good and bad, right and wrong.  I never lost that ability to see my life dichotomously.

After releasing my first book, I received many questions from readers.  I don't have answers to most of them.  I can't tell you what happened if I wasn't there.  This mission is from my perspective, and you will only ever know what I knew at the time.

There is now one exception.  After the first book was finished, Skylar became very interested in my project.  She didn't have a big part in the beginning of this mission, but she told me later about what happens when a JIA agent is placed into the real world, without a mission.  After listening to her talk, I convinced her to write it all down and divide it into chapters, which I've inserted into my own story.

The first book began at the end of May and covered the events of the first four days of this mission.  Much happened between when I said goodbye to Blake and when I saw him again, none of it relevant to this mission.  I went on a few missions, mostly humanitarian aid, got very sick, and was forced back to the JIA D.C. Base to recover.  It is near the end of that recovery that I will begin, in late October.

One more thing.

These books are a comment on the Junior Intelligence Agency and this mission, DIRECTOR.  However, my relationship with Blake is an important part of my story, and it says a lot about the impact being in the JIA has on children.

Before this mission, before Blake, I’d had no reason to complain about the life I was living.  For the agents in the JIA, it is the coolest thing that could have happened to them.  They’re foster kids, and then suddenly they’re training in combat, flying planes, using gadgets, and bringing down bad people.  There are 150 kids in the agency, and 60 Special Agents, and we know we’re special.

I still had four years and a few months to work as a Special Agent, until I turned twenty-one and graduated to a job as a JIA councilor, or left the JIA for college, or got a job at the CIA.  I was the best Special Agent in my age group, and my opportunities were pretty good.

Until this mission, this was all fine with me.

Chapter 1

The whir of the treadmill and the pounding of my shoes were just loud enough to drown out my thoughts.  The sweat poured down my face, my legs burned, and my feet protested with every step.  I was recovering from a disease I'd picked up on an island in the Caribbean.  A JIA doctor had told me to take it easy, that it would be at least another month before I was completely back to normal.  I intended to prove her wrong.

A few minutes later I could hardly breathe.  I jammed my thumb onto the slow down button on the treadmill, reducing my speed to a fast walk, then to a stop.  The blood pounded in my head, and the sunlight coming through the windows of the gym seemed very bright.  I recorded my time (one hour) and my distance (9.5 miles) on a piece of paper, left it in a box next to the sign-in sheet, then went back to my room for a shower.

It was eight-thirty.  In half an hour I needed to be on the runway for a lesson in aircraft mechanics.  After that, I’d join the rest of the agents on the base in the Current Events room, where a dozen monitors, TVs, and economists would explain the state of the world.  We would break for lunch, and then I had my usual three classes: Problem Solving, War History, and General Combat Training.  General Combat would transition into Aikido, a type of Martial Arts, after an hour, and then I could break for dinner.  After dinner, I was expected to join my fellow agents in the lecture hall for a talk from an ex-CIA spy about lying persuasively.

I wondered if I was a good enough liar to convince Sara that I still wasn’t feeling well enough for class.  I felt like going straight to bed and sleeping for the rest of the week.  Instead, I climbed into the shower, let the hot water run over my sore muscles for a few minutes, then turned the tap to cold and let the suddenly freezing water zap me awake.

I pulled on a pair of jeans and a JIA military-standard jacket.  I skipped the knee-high brown boots I normally wore and opted for black tennis shoes instead, and put my phone in my back pocket.  I locked the door to my room.  I heard my neighbor, Reilly, having a heated debate on the phone through the walls.

"The President could change his mind any moment…That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be ready or shouldn’t have a back-up plan…Of course, I’m not talking about going behind his back…"

I rolled my eyes and put my key in my pocket.  Reilly specialized in domestic affairs.  She spent a lot of time in D.C. tracking down politicians, and she was quickly becoming one, judging by what I could hear through the thin walls.

I was walking down the hallway to the elevator when my phone started ringing.

Alex, I said, when I managed to get it out of my pocket.

You have a visitor in the lobby, Sara replied.

A…visitor?

Yes.  I think you’ll be happy to see him.

Coming.

I hung up and started running.  I went past the elevator and took the stairs, leaping down three at a time, and slammed open the door to the lobby.

Standing by the front door next to Sara, his leather jacket draped over his arm and his black bag hanging on his shoulder, was Blake.

I hadn't seen Blake in months.  After he went back to L.A. I went on a few humanitarian aid missions, including one in the Caribbean, helping out the survivors of a freak storm whose resources were tied up in government conflicts.  It wasn’t my kind of thing, but the JIA was making a whole lot of exceptions recently, and agents were all over the place and out of their element.  When I got sick after only six weeks, I came back to the JIA center to recover.  I’d barely had any contact with Blake, who, unsurprisingly, had been unable to transfer to D.C.  I’d heard he was busy running cold case missions (older missions deemed impossible because of the technology needed) in the Stalker, his plane, but he hadn’t told me about any of them.

I stood, frozen, one hand still on the door.  He had gotten more muscular in those four months.  He’d also cut his hair, which made his cheekbones more prominent, and even from ten feet away I could see the circles under his eyes.

Alex.

He smiled just a little bit, enough to say to he was happy to see me, but not enough to shake my feeling that he’d had a rough four months.  I suppose I didn’t look exceptional either.  Part of the job description.

Blake, I replied, moving forward and letting the door swing shut behind me.

He reached forward, like he was going to pull me into a hug, stopped at the last moment, and settled for squeezing my hand.  I let out the breath I'd been holding and crossed my arms.

Let’s go to my office, Sara said as she observed the awkward exchange.  We have a lot to discuss.

The Director, Matthew Wiltshire, is still at his castle in Sweden.  The castle was deemed least threatening for the time being, so we’ve been focusing our limited resources elsewhere.  The CIA was able to invade the French villa without much effort because it wasn't as well protected, but it didn’t contain the information we were hoping for.  We were able to cut off the supply of test subjects to the islands, but they are still running experiments on the subjects they have left.  The factory in Germany is the biggest problem, though.  We can't request much more help without drawing some serious attention to this mission, which has been dubbed DIRECTOR.

The JIA tries to avoid outsourcing assistance for its missions, but when situations were as widespread and corrupt organizations as large as this, they didn't have a choice.  There just isn't enough manpower in the JIA.  It sounded like we’d teamed up with the CIA on this one.

Sara flipped through the papers on the desk in front of her.  Blake shifted in his chair next to me.  We were both a bit nervous.  I was pretty sure I knew what Sara was asking.

The CIA's people are very good, and it's strange that it's taking them so long to overthrow this guy.  They’ve decided they want to run point on this one, and we’re willing to let them, but they aren’t having much luck.  If this stalemate lasts much longer, they’ve agreed to let us send you two back in, undercover.

Why? I asked.

The Director is very interested in JIA agents.  We think he’ll respond to you two.

"Because he wants to clone us, I said.  We told you everything we know.  Why can’t someone else do it?"

On the last leg of this mission, the Director had told me about his plans for JIA agents.  We were perfect models, apparently, for building clones for an army.  He had staged an attack on U.S. submarines to get the JIA’s attention.  It was clear he was interested in us, but the general us, not Blake and me, specifically.

He doesn’t have that technology perfected yet.  Not for humans, Sara told me.  And we’re trying to keep this from spreading.  It’s a top-secret mission.  We don’t want to bring in any more people, and why would we, when we’ve already got two of the best on the mission?  She waved her hands at us.

What would we be doing?  I’m useless on this mission.  I’m not in control at all.

You’ll do whatever we need you to do, for now, Sara said.  You’re not supposed to be in control this time around.  Anything you figure out, you report first to the person in command there, then to me.

How long until you send us in?

We want to give it another week.  Their agents are still trying to penetrate the technical wall surrounding the factory.  They’re hoping to plant a bug in their network and feed all the information into our network, then send in a virus to destroy everything.  It’s a good plan, but planting the bug is proving difficult.  They want to send undercover agents into the factory again, but the first round of them failed spectacularly.

I smirked.  Would that be a reference to our field trip?

No, actually there was another attempt after you.  But you were certainly spectacular.

Blake snorted.  I wondered why he was so quiet.  I’m pretty good at picking up whether people are in a bad mood or not, although with him it was often hard to tell.  His moods came and went quickly.

Should all of their strategies fail, however, you two need to be ready to step in.  You can manipulate the Director, simply by being who you are – something he wants.  You’ve both met with him, and now–

Well, I’ve met him, I corrected her.  Blake wasn’t in the library with us.

Sara paused.

You’re right.  You, Alex, have met him.  He knows you, and what you are to the agency.  He may try to turn you and get you to work with him.  And Blake understands the lab equipment in the factories.  You will make a good pair.

I leaned back in my seat.  I knew the real reason we were being sent back in.  This was an agency spitting war.  The Director posed a threat, and a challenge, to the agencies involved.  They all wanted to be the one credited with the fall of the Director.  Blake and I weren’t going in because we had something other agents didn’t.  We were simply the footmen of another agency trying to assert superiority.  The CIA had dumped this mission on the JIA when it didn’t look important enough for them.  Now they wanted in, and they wanted to be in charge.

I sighed.  I wondered if Blake had come to the same conclusion.

Sara tucked her notes back into their folder.  Alex, you are excused from class today.  Blake, you are excused from class for the rest of the week, seeing as we don’t offer any of your specialized classes in D.C.  You can help out in the hangar instead.  I’ll tell the head engineer to expect you tomorrow morning.  Your room is A314.  Alex will escort you there to unpack.  She slid a room key across the desk and Blake pocketed it.

She turned to her computer to make it clear we were being dismissed, but I had one more question.

Why is it taking so long to take out the islands?  They didn’t seem very protected.  We didn’t have too much trouble blowing up all their planes.

Well, they aren't using humans anymore, but those scientists have made huge, unprecedented leaps forward in cloning and other areas of research.  Some people…people high up…want to see what else they can accomplish.

So you're just letting those scientists…who tortured us…just-

Alex, it's not your decision, she said, cutting me off.

That was the first moment that I felt unsure about the people for whom I worked.  It would not be the last.

The walk to Blake's room was quiet.  I led the way back across the quad, up the stairs, and down the hall to his room.  I heard Parker and Ray arguing about South American politics at the end of the hall.  Ray specialized in Cuban ops and, whatever the argument was about, he would win.  Parker hadn’t been to South America since our vacation in Mexico two years ago, and that wasn’t a mission.  It was more like stress release.

They’re always arguing, and yet they never fight, Blake said, pulling out the key Sara had given him.

They would never fight.  They’re the perfect couple, I said.  I realized Blake probably knew them better than I did, since he was in their year.  This was strange to me, because they were some of my closest friends.

It’s nauseating, he replied, opening the door to one of the spare rooms in Building A.

All the rooms look the same, and we really don’t acquire a lot of objects.  There’s a double bed, a desk, an office chair, a closet, a dresser, and a private bathroom.  It’s very minimalist.  (I learned that word from Skylar.  I’m not sure what it means in terms of interior design, but maybe you do.)

Blake dropped his bag on the bed and pulled the blinds up.  Gray morning light filled the gray room.

They might not need us, I said, hoping this was what he wanted to hear.

I wouldn’t bet on it, he replied, turning to face me.  He leaned against the wall in the shadow next to the window and shoved his hands in his pocket.  The CIA might not need us there, but the JIA wants us there.  I’m pretty sure we’re going.

So he’d come to the same conclusion I had.

Is there somewhere we can talk? Blake asked.  He was looking around the room, and I knew how he felt.

Sure.  Come on.

It was nearly November, but the day was warming up.  I’d learned quickly that the weather here