Operation: Windsock

My little eye spied something that was yellow. I’d been waiting among the Saturday night patrons of AlphaBet City Wave Park to see a glimpse of my target for a metric forever. The rhythmic sound of the waves crashing in the pool were starting to make my eyelids heavy. This whole operation seemed to be brought to us by the letter Zzzzzzz. 

I dragged my purple hand down my purple face and sighed my relief.

Even O, the disembodied voice in my ear, seemed to be suffering from restlessness. “E, do you have eyes on him yet?” was becoming a minute by minute question like we were on a road trip and she had to pee. 

“I spy him,” I told her when she asked for the nine hundredth time. 

Her keyboard clacked in response as she prepared for the next phase of the night. 

I focused my beady eyes on whom the file referred to as subject 6. He was hard to miss. Seven foot tall and yellow like the goddamn sun. The average height in ABC was a much more reasonable 3 foot five, and I wasn't likely to ever lose a tail on him. 

Subject 6 was, unsurprisingly, the 6th target of Operation: Windsock. A series of seek and destroy missions that to this moment had gone smoothly and by the book. 

Despite it’s birthday friendly veneer, this wave pool was the headquarters of the largest Fur mafia family inside ABC’s borders.

There had always been tension between the Felts and the Furs. Different peoples have always had a habit of forgetting we’re all fluff on the inside. Borders are just made up invisible lines, but when two large cities of two very different cultures sit on either side, there can be some real shenanigans.

Operation: Windsock was a direct result of the Felt government funding a number of top secret scientific experiments to eliminate moths. A global scourge, these monsters have been eating through everything since the first man was sewn. We keep the lights off at night. We fear for our children. They terrorize us. These experiments will change the world.

They also will push Feltdom into a whole new era of prosperity. A golden age. But the nation of Fur and their spies stole our secrets. They intended to beat us to the market. We won’t be standing for that.

“Alright E,” O said in my ear, “It’s show time.”

My cue to move. I watched the big yellow mass contort himself through the comically small door at the business end of the wave pool into what the blueprints for the building said was the machinery room and followed. 

The machinery was still as I passed through the door, the silence echoed in the cavernous room that housed it. There was a break for the machinery to cool and swimmers to rest their soggy waterlogged bodies before another round. 

The window to complete this phase of the mission was narrow and critical so i moved fast in the quiet. 6 had the golden goose. His infamous vault, rumored to be a good size for a man of his stature, could only be accessed from his office, would only open once a night, and required a scan of his eye. Inside was the motherload of secrets. Still encrypted thanks to my work on Subject 3 before he could get his hands on the data. 

A siren and the shrieks of excited wave poolers warned of the next round of waves. 

I only heard two footsteps before the machinery set to motion. The hydraulics that drive the wave panels churned in alternating patterns. Something deeper in the room rattled with the vibration and something beneath my feet sounded like it needed some oil. The cacophony hid my footsteps, but it hid someone else’s too. 

“Who’s in here with me?” I asked O, my voice was drowned out by the machines but still rang clear through the technology. 

“There’s too much concrete to tell, but I’d guess hired goons? I hear your frown, E. I only see two moving around in there.”

I pulled out my side arm. As I waited for her to provide something more useful.

“The first one is at two oclock,” she told me as I caught a shadow to my right and framed up to target one. The only indication I hit the target was the flurry of white stuffing that erupted out as he fell back.

“One’s down,” i reported.

“Target two is coming up from behind, 20 feet.”

I spun myself into a more protected position just as a bullet winged a fence surrounding some computer equipment, sending sparks within singeing distance of my face. I returned fire and watched as the impact to their shoulder spun them 360 degrees and then to the ground. 

“Two’s down.”

“Marked,” the keyboard clacked. “You have less than 2 minutes.”

I closed the distance to the door and toed it open. Big yellow and another Fur from the file stood, backs to me, in the process of opening the vault. 

“Just in time,” I said for O’s benefit before I stepped fully into the room, gun cocked and fingers twitching.

The vault door popped open.

I didn’t hesitate. I fired 4 shots dropping both men where they stood. 

Stepping over the fluff and thread coating the entrance to the safe, i used my entire body to attempt to pry the door open enough to squeeze inside. 

“Don’t forget the code,” O reminded.

I knelt down by the mass of lifeless yellow, snapped my blade open, and sliced down the seam of his chest. I didn’t have to dig around much to find the paper. I pulled it out and shook off the bits of fluff that came with it.

I felt like Jack in the giant’s house. But the code opened the safe. I pushed the contents off each shelf into a sack and then calmly and carefully extracted myself from the premises. 

The moth secrets were ours once again.