Dress Off 06: Butt Naked in Brisbane

The first guard coughed again. "Not at all, ma'am. Good luck."

Mercifully for him, the lift door finally opened behind the woman as her icy stare started to penetrate into his skull. After a few further seconds of causing discomfort, she turned around again and marched into the empty lift, seemingly dragging the other man along with her on an invisible chain.

"Good," She answered curtly, "make sure we're not interrupted." She faced the guards one last time as the lift doors began to close, and the thin smile became practically razor-sharp. "... Or else."

*************

The lift doors opened on the sixteenth floor as the blonde-haired vice-president and the nervous technician arrived at the data centre. Stepping out, the woman made her way directly to an access panel that controlled access through a set of heavy security doors.

As she stood in front of the panel, she threw a quick glance at the man, and managed to get a whisper out without seemingly moving her lips.

"If these contact lenses don't fool the iris scanner, we need that lift back in a hurry. If those guards pick up a failed access attempt, they'll eventually work up the courage to check us out again."

The man's weak and worried smile was momentarily replaced by a far more cocky and confident version, and he whispered back.

"Relax. We'll be in and out before anyone notices."

The woman arched an eyebrow ever so slightly. "Well, here goes." She walked up to the access panel, tapped her card against it, and then placed her eye against the built-in iris scanner. The system seemed to detect her presence and a thin red line indicated that it was running a quick scan.

"Password." the system demanded, in a clear, computer-generated male voice.

"Lima Sierra Hotel" Stacey said. They'd picked up the phrase off a hidden microphone that Mitchelson had planted on their target several days earlier. Now was the time to hope that the passwords hadn't been changed since then.

The system fell silent again as it seemed to consider this. Seconds that seemed like hours slowly passed by, as the security system seemed to consider the merits of letting them through. The two agents both tensed their bodies, ready to react should things not go as planned, holding their breath even without realising it as the moment of truth hovered on the horizon.

Stacey was wearing contacts that made her eyes look similar to the vice-president that Mitchelson had done a surprisingly good job at romancing into a one-night stand. However, if the system was sophisticated enough, or if the contacts weren't perfect enough, or if the password was out of date, then they were both about to be in a world of trouble.

It could almost be considered an anti-climax when the security doors suddenly and silently slid open. Stacey audibly breathed out, and let out an involuntary low whistle as she stared through to the computer servers that represented their final destination. Sharing another quick glance, Stacey and Mitchelson entered the secured room, and surveyed their options. Stacey nodded at a terminal at the far end of the room, and also — almost imperceptibly — indicated to Mitchelson that there was a security camera built into the ceiling.

"Let's make this look good." She whispered, before raising her voice to a normal volume. "Well, what are you waiting for? How about you show me that my gut instinct to just fire you on the spot was the wrong one."

Mitchelson played his part well, visibly shrinking back from Stacey at the perceived threat, before hurrying over to the terminal and settling in to the task at hand. Stacey gathered her poise, and confidently strode after him, positioning herself in another seat so that she could see everything come up on the screen. Okay, she thought to herself, let's see what secrets are worth all this security...

***********

They'd been at it for twenty minutes now, Stacey thought. If anyone's watching that security camera feed, their suspicion is going to be building up to breaking point. If anyone was actually bothering to monitor what files they were accessing, that suspicion would be spilling over into outright fatal-to-this-mission curiosity around about now.

"Anything else?" She said to Mitchelson, as the two wove their way through the file system on the server.

"Yeah," Mitchelson replied, "there's something here about a special project..." his voice tailed off as he momentarily lost himself reading a large sequence of filenames. "I don't get it." He said, genuinely confused.

Stacey knew how he felt. It had taken them all of three minutes to ascertain that these people at least thought the encryption keys were genuine, but that then just raised a whole slew of questions as to their ultimate motivation.

"They believe the keys are genuine, and yet their own internal memos suggest they're actually willing to give them away in this contest." Mitchelson sucked in his cheeks, leaned back in the chair, and rubbed the back of his head as if to urge his brain into a higher gear.

"You mentioned a special project." Stacey prompted.

Mitchelson grunted. "Yeah, something about a 'Project Troy'."

"Troy?" Stacey said, the first inklings of a gnawing doubt surfacing in her stomach.

"Yeah, 'Troy'. And whatever it is, they've sunk a lot of time and money into it!"

"Any clues as to what it could possibly be about?" she replied, pushing her chair over to where Mitchelson was sitting and impatiently peering over his shoulder.

"Absolutely none whatsoever. Just a lot of acquisition orders for some fairly pricey communication and AV gear. I don't know everything there is to know about surveillance, but I do know O would kill to get some of the gear these guys have apparently ordered."

"If they've got the Helsinki Archive encryption keys though, why do..." Stacey started to say, before trailing off. Pausing for a moment, her mouth went dry.

"Mitchelson," she said quietly, "do you remember the story of what happened to Troy?"

Mitchelson turned and looked at her. "What, you mean the stuff about the horse?" he grunted, "Surely they can't be pinning everything on some giant contraption that the Director just ships into HQ?"

Stacey rolled her eyes. "Well, no, not _literally_!" She paused again, as if various ideas and possibilities were jostling for attention. "But what if..." she continued, hesitantly, "what if — like the Greeks - they made something, some kind of offering, and then used that offering to ship some of their people into our midst?"

"Pretty small people to fit onto digital encryption keys!" Mitchelson said, half-jokingly. His expression was serious though, and even he was beginning to look worried.

"Yeah," Stacey replied, mostly ignoring Mitchelson's unhelpful remarks, "but with all that gear... I mean... what if... well. What if they need that to keep in touch with... or even, well, _control_ their 'people'. The Greeks used their own soldiers, maybe these guys have put a more modern touch on it. I mean, _we_ use hypnosis a fair bit, even if our tech means it doesn't last for long. You saw the stuff O was developing. What if she wasn't the only one experimenting along those lines?"

Mitchelson looked up at her. His expression told her that he was beginning to think the same thing she'd envisioned. He turned back to the screen, and spoke slowly, as if testing out each word in his mind before uttering it.

"And so we have an organisation that has invited top female agents from a variety of spy agencies, dangling in front of them a prize that they'd be mad to give away. Unless the ultimate prize wasn't just the keys, but access to those agents. And what if the whole contest was just a way to brainwash those women? You'd suddenly have sleeper agents in a raft of spy agencies across the world. Unwitting, undetectable sleeper agents. Including two in the very agency that would go through the tricky work on decrypting and actually understanding what's stored in the Helsinki Archives."

Mitchelson kept quiet for a few moments as he considered this. "Bit of stretch, isn't it?"

"Yeah, sure, but it does sort of explain why they'd actually hand over the encryption keys, and why they'd do it this way. Maybe they don't even actually have the archives themselves. This outsources the difficulty in actually understanding whatever is decrypted, and gives them someone inside of all the major organisations in this particular field."

Mitchelson pushed his chair away from the terminal and stood up. "Well, it wins by being the only theory we currently have. And if you're right, then Bree and Tess have walked into a trap."

Stacey nodded grimly. "And if this organisation is as good as their setup suggests they are, then right now we may be the only hope they have..."

******

Stacey and Mitchelson waited, nervous tension mixed with a steely determination to ensure the Agency and their friends were warned as quickly as possible. Hopefully that meant a short walk through the lobby to freedom outside, and then an event-free car ride back to their hotel room. Not that life was ever that generous with good luck.

The lift slowly descended, and they were only two floors away from the ground when the alarms started blaring. Stacey and Mitchelson looked at each other, neither saying a word. One more floor passed by and then they felt the lift come to a halt. A second later, there was a light ring and the doors began to pull back. They were less than half open by the time Stacey had leaned forward and taken in the scene in front of them.

Guards positioned near the main desk were staring at a computer screen, pointing and talking in urgent loud tones. Then, one looked towards them and pointed towards the lift in an agitated manner.

Stacey's finger roughly pressed the "close doors" button several times, cursing as the doors seemed to take an eternity to stop, and then reverse. They seem to slide close with an agonising slowness.

The two agents pushed themselves back against the walls of the lift, and quickly cataloged their options. It was a depressing short exercise, and as they heard footsteps approach the lift shaft, Stacey reached a decision.

Fishing through a pocket, she produced two silver globes and looked at Mitchelson. Tossing one over, she hovered her hand over the lift's control panel.

Mitchelson nodded. It was their only plan. There were at least four guards — probably armed — between them and the exit. Since there had been only two guards earlier in the evening, they'd already received reinforcements and undoubtedly more were on the way.

They'd have to distract and disarm with lightening speed if they were to have any chance of fighting their way to freedom. Flipping the catch on her Stripper Mist grenade to reveal the trigger button, she pressed it down and started to mouth a count down.

There was shouting on the other side of the lift doors, and the guards were now trying to gain access. They momentarily waged a war between the door controls on each side, but with only a few seconds to go, Stacey finally conceded that little battle and pressed herself back against the side as the doors finally began to slide open again.

"Let's go kick some ass." Stacey said, with a wink at Mitchelson.

In their hands, the first tendrils of mist began to escape the shiny silver spheres. Dropping them gently forward, they let them roll out of the half-open lift and into the midst of the guards beyond.

It was shouts of concern that now erupted from the huddle of four guards awaiting them, and as — too late — they tried to back away from the grenades, Stacey and Mitchelson erupted from the lift, hurtling through the mist and screaming like demented banshees as the agents rolled the dice on one desperate head-long charge.

Even as Stacey reached the first guard — who looked like he was in his forties and more used to wandering along corridors with a torch than genuine hand-to-hand combat — she could feel the mist begin to have an effect. Clothing that had previously hugged tightly to her athletic body now began to loosen. She could see a similar effect on the guard's uniform, and she at least had the benefit of knowing what to expect.

The four guards arrayed against them formed a single line between the two agents and the exit. An exit that would — in theory — afford them the ability to fade into the night. Although as Stacey felt her business suit begin the slide gracefully off her shoulders, she wondered just how easy it would be to fade into the night without a single stitch of clothing left on her body. Naked women tended to attract attention in the city even at night, doubly so when they were as hot as Stacey Shackleton. She had to make this retreat quick for a host of reasons, and as the first guard coughed and spluttered in his surprise at his disintegrating uniform, Stacey pivoted perfectly on one foot and spun her other heel around.

This has two immediate effects. The first effect was that her heel connected with laser-like precision with the guard's jaw, and sent him sprawling to the floor. The second effect was that her sudden spin sent one pants leg, stitches now well and truely destroyed by the mist, flying off into the middle of the floor, leaving one well-toned leg completely exposed.

Stacey grunted, but as the other pants leg also begin to shimmy down her body, she took the opportunity to flick it up with one graceful kick, aiming towards a second oncoming guard. The leg sailed forward, hitting the man in the face and causing him to come to a sudden halt. He yelled in surprise as the pants leg hung over his face, completely obscuring his view for a few precious seconds.

He must have been further back when the grenade released its mist, as his outfit was still mostly intact. Taking advantage of the distraction she'd caused, Stacey leapt forward and planted one foot firmly on the ground. Her business suit was falling apart on her, and was making it difficult for her to move her arms freely. Her legs were completely free though, and with one swift movement she brought one leg back, and then swung through with the graceful arc of a practised NFL kicker. While she was aiming for a different kind of ball, her contact and follow through would have made a coach proud.

The guard pulled the pants leg off his face with only just enough time left to see what was coming, but not enough to be able to do anything about it. Microseconds before impact, Stacey winked and the guard groaned even before the agent's foot made perfect contact with his groin.

The man collapsed, and Stacey spun on the spot to see how Mitchelson was faring against the other two agents. His clothing was also falling apart, and unlike the man and woman he was fighting, he wasn't even trying to keep his clothes on. With that huge advantage on his side, he'd already managed to flatten the male guard, who it seemed had tried to weakly block a punch while one hand had also been protectively holding up the remnants of his underwear.

Now Mitchelson was turning his attention to the woman, who Stacey recognised as being the guard from behind the desk when they'd arrived. Mitchelson's pants and underwear were now piled at his feet and seemed to be temporarily restricting his footwork. Thankfully, the woman seemed too distracted to take advantage of that, and was looking on in horror as her own top parted to reveal a large pair of breasts that once had been supported by a bra, and were now hanging free for all to see.

Draping one arm across her chest, the woman looked with shocked anger at Mitchelson, and at least had the presence of mind to take a swipe at him with her other fist. Mitchelson just managed to dodge and — stealing a move from Stacey's playbook — dropped to his knees, picked up his now useless pants and underwear, and flung them at the woman's face.

The guard recoiled in shock and embarrassment, and unsuccessfully tried to deflect them away with her free hand. With Mitchelson's old clothes adorning her face, she forgot all about protecting her naked chest, and clawed at the thrown clothes to try and free herself. Her breasts bounced free, and two dark red nipples swayed as her arms dragged bits of men's clothing off her head. She succeeded in pulling away the tattered remains of Mitchelson's clothes, but in doing so her movements caused the entire top half of her outfit to peal away and drop to the ground, causing her to shriek once more.

Stacey took a couple of steps towards the two in an effort to aid Mitchelson, but he already had the situation under control. The now naked agent, already on his knees, swept out with one leg and managed to take out the guard's feet from underneath her. Toppling back, the helpless woman both fell to the ground and fell out of what was left of her clothing. For a couple of seconds, she lay there in shock, legs splayed open, her naked crotch entirely exposed to Mitchelson. A patch of tawny brown hair peeked invitingly out between two thighs, before she finally recovered her senses after the fall and brought her legs shut with a loud thwack of thigh on thigh. Now entirely naked, the guard try to shuffle back on her elbows, wriggling on the floor as she both tried to protect her modesty while putting some distance between herself and the two agents.

Stacey looked at Mitchelson, who was entirely naked and now standing with his manhood proudly exposed. The tattered remains of her own business blouse were the only shreds of clothing left on her own body, her panties having completely fallen off as she'd moved to help Mitchelson.

The two agents exchanged a wordless glance. To his credit, Mitchelson chose this moment to break his long standing tradition of bating Stacey with innuendo. He simply looked at the door and said, "We've got to get out of here!"

Stacey was about to nod when the chime of a lift interrupted the temporary silence that had settled overly the lobby at the end of the fight. They both turned to look, rooted to the spot for a moment. As the lift door opened, four more guards peered out, took in the shocking scene in the lobby, and then looked directly at Stacey and Mitchelson.

"Come on!" Stacey said, turning to run. As she took the first few steps towards the exit, she sensed that Mitchelson was not by her side. Twisting to see what on Earth he was doing, she was about to curse him out for being too slow when she saw that he was in fact sprinting in entirely the wrong direction.

"Mitchelson!" Stacey shouted, as her partner ignored the call to run for the exit, and instead made a head long charge at the lift.

"Go! Only one of us needs to get out to warn the others!" Mitchelson yelled in reply.

The guards, momentarily stunned by the nudity on display, had not fully stepped out into the lobby yet, and as Stacey looked on helplessly, Mitchelson threw himself at the two closed guards, sending them barrelling back into the lift along with the rest of the squad.

Stacey took two steps to go and help him, before stopping herself and clenching her naked, glistening body. He was right, one of them had to escape. As she watched, hesitating between her instincts to fight and the need for flight, she saw Mitchelson regain his feet and turn to the lift control panel. One of the guards, grabbed his legs and stopped him from escaping, but couldn't stop him from slamming his fist into the controls and starting the slow process of closing the lift doors.

Stacey agonised about what to do, and for a split second she made eye contact with her naked male colleague as half a dozen arms began to grab at him.

"TOM!" Stacey called out, helplessly.

"STACEY, RUN!" was the only reply she got, as the doors slid slowly shut on the chaotic scene in the lift. Then, with a sickening whoosh that left a knot in her stomach, the doors were finally closed and the lobby returned to a disquieting silence.