Watch Your Tongue

Few people in the world were even aware of what the Spy Partnership Institute was. Though they might be able to take a guess based on the name.

Each time a new three-letter agency was formed, it lingered in the shadows behind the most recently acknowledged three-letter agency. From FBI to CIA to NSA... the Spy Partnership Institute had avoided being exposed in such a way. (The TSA and DHS emerging at roughly the same time at the start of the millennium undoubtedly took some of the heat away from them.)

Maybe it was because they were not directly controlled by any one government, and could not be enlisted at the caprice of whatever wannabe god-king currently drooled atop the Oval Office's place mats. Even MI6 operated as an arm of the monarchy. The Queen was definitely smarter and more patient than some of those who had found their way into the driver's seat of America... and that would hopefully continue in her absence.

The Spy Partnership Institute tried to coax world events in a way to avoid uncontrolled conflagration and preventable loss of life. While nations rattled their sabers, they were the scalpel, delicately slicing away at just what needed to be cut to keep those sabers right where they were.

Management at the Institute often found resistance from those forces that benefited from the grinding machine of war... but even they were shocked to see the forces that seemed to attempt to profit from sowing earnest chaos. These fools didn't know what they were messing with, like a gorilla finding a Zippo lighter in his enclosure. The Institute was happy to be a road block to those efforts, as much as they could.

Joining the Institute was difficult. Those who wished to join the ranks of an organization that perpetrated unaccountable assassination often were the worst candidates for such positions. Jingoists, sociopathic ex-authority figures who wanted to continue their application of violence against the disempowered, aspiring warriors who desperately overestimated their own prowess, and seeming acres of the rank incompetent. They would have to find their fulfillment oppressing their fellow man as local police.

The Institute had a special department nicknamed Casting that searched the world for more suitable candidates. This wasn't like the selection process for the Marines, where many people who tried out wouldn't make the cut. The Institute simply didn't extend the invitation until they were almost certain the candidate would be a benefit somewhere within their campus.

When they were brought in, there was no dehumanizing training that one might expect in the military. The Institute enlisted many different modalities for training agents, the same way an agent could become proficient in whatever fighting style that they favored or were best suited towards. Complete uniformity was the goal of the enemies of the Institute, not the Institute itself.

Of course, not everyone who was brought in to the Institute became an agent. There were analysts, strategists, engineers, pilots, chemists, doctors, dentists, surgeons, trainers, guards, programmers, armorers, drivers, tailors, chefs, barbers, document forgers, SCUBA instructors... and even a few janitors who kept the halls of the Institute looking as buffed and classy as an Apple store.

The main reason given for people who wanted to join the Institute (other than bedding exotic and dangerous women) was the opportunity to use the cool gadgets. One thought that maybe a world of consumer-level drones could satisfy this without entering a line of work that could have you fed to a drug kingpin's crocodiles, but that was the part of the job that the general public understood. The flashy, exciting part that got made into Hollywood movies. Go somewhere, kill a bad guy with something hidden inside your watch, and do someone in the bed on a private jet on the way home.

But before all that... someone had to design that watch.

Alba Rousseau was the person in charge of that. An excellent engineer formerly in a PHD program in California, she somehow came on the Institute's radar and was offered a job designing gadgets for the Institute rather than completing her program. She accepted, and her previous life ended when the Institute created an incident where Alba was 'killed' by a drunk driver.

Thinking of herself as something of a pacifist, Alba didn't initially want to design anything that could kill someone. More senior engineers had assured her that she could avoid that if she had personal objections. Her own interest in miniatures and clockmaking brought her to the watch department. The only two things that could kill someone in a watch was a hidden garrote wire under the crown, which was essentially standard issue, and a watch that contained an explosive, in which case, nothing else fun could fit within it.

It wasn't about designing a watch from scratch. All the agents that wore watches would not be caught dead without an expensive and recognizable brand attached to their wrist. The Institute would purchase them and bring them to Props, where Alba would deconstruct them and add the new special functionality, often without removing any of the watch's original features.

Spy watches had come a long way from a single hidden compartment under the face with a poison capsule hidden inside. Sometimes depressing the crown would send a radio signal to set off plastic explosives. Sometimes the bezel could be turned like a dial to magnetically turn a safe's tumblers without touching it. Sometimes the case would spin and a jagged edge would cut handcuffs or other restraints, if the agent had their hands behind their back. (Served them right for not taking away his watch! Everyone knows there's always a trick hidden in there. This is what inspired Alba to make a watch that shrieked an intolerably high-pitched alarm if it was removed improperly. It could just be enough to give an agent the upper hand.)

Every new feature Alba put in the watch... it was encircled with sixty centimeters of carbon fiber wire that every agent could summon in an instant to crush someone's throat. All her designs being surrounded by something unambiguously fatal... it felt like a metaphor for her work. She liked to think she didn't make weapons, but tools. Then again, what were weapons but tools made for a very particular purpose?

Most of Alba's time at her desk wasn't spent assembling or disassembling watches. Once the pieces were scanned, she spend most of her time at her desk, tinkering with her CAD program and seeing what she could accomplish in increasingly tiny spaces. It was challenging and satisfying work that Alba loved...

So long as nobody asked her to add a grappling hook to a watch. Now THAT was impossible! Even if the hook was hidden somewhere else and was attached later, did any of these agents consider how much force they'd be putting on their wrist? Talk to the guy who makes belts. If they can bear the weight of your martini gut, they can support your weight as you're pulled up an air conditioning duct.

But right now, Alba was hunched over her desk, picking up itty-bitty screws with tweezers and setting them into the appropriate holes in the body of a very expensive watch. She had a jeweler's loupe on a metal head band over her left eye, and a custom impact goggle over her right. That eye was always closed so she could see out the loupe, but she knew the immense forces these springs could hold, enough to launch poison darts 30 yards. Her eyelid was not sufficient shielding when working with something so dangerous.

Ironically, Alba acquired the head band for her loupe because she noticed crow's feet forming on her left temple from constantly holding it in place between her eyebrow and cheek. She wasn't even yet thirty. Now, she was noticing her right eye catching up from constantly being squeezed shut. Maybe she should just get a bulletproof eyepatch and not have to worry about it.

Alba certainly didn't care about looking ridiculous. Looking good was part of the agent's job. Her job was to make certain everything they took out into the field worked perfectly. Sometimes, they didn't come back in perfect condition. Unlike her counterparts at Q branch, Alba could give a crap. She could fix it, or her team could, or she'd make a new one. It didn't come out of her paycheck. It was only when one of the agents lost secret tech in a public place that she wasn't happy. God forbid someone finds the watch, presses the wrong button and releases knock-out gas at a zoo or wherever.

So absorbed in her work, Alba didn't notice someone approach her work station. To avoid sudden sounds startling her and causing her to damage delicate pieces, Alba had the electrical engineering team design a green light with corresponding switch. If someone flipped the switch, a gentle green light would alert her that someone needed her attention.

Eschewing this technical solution, someone gently cleared their throat.

Alba looked up from her desk. "Hey, Taylor." She piped, setting her tools down and looking up.

Taylor was a brilliant chemist who mostly helped formulate powerful yet stable explosives, something every agent would need towards the end of a mission so they can run away from something without looking at it. If someone caught a look at Taylor, they might mistake her for an agent herself. Tall and well-built, though not muscular, with a nice mouth and thick brown hair, she made the lab coat look like a stylish blazer. As someone naturally gifted with chemistry ought to be, she was the desire of most of the males who worked in Props... and the envy of the women.

Alba found herself in between those two schools of thought. She always respected intelligence, and Alba's personal understanding of chemistry stopped at the Bohr model of the atom. Taylor may as well fashion lead into gold. Maybe Taylor had the same respect for Alba's work of hiding tiny ultrasound glass-breakers into watches... but probably not.

"What can I do for you?" Alba moved her loupe away and retrieved her glasses from the plastic cord that kept them around her neck.

Taylor held up a test tube filled with a transparent amber liquid. To Alba's eyes, it looked like ginger ale. "Could you monitor this reaction for me? I would do it myself, but Management needs me in a meeting. If I can just set this up on your desk and you keep your eye on it, that would be very helpful."

Alba looked about. "Sure. I'll be here for a while. I can watch it."

Taylor set up an adjustable height test tube stand and set it on a bare spot on Alba's workspace. As it got closer, the effervescent liquid seemed to have a sweet, almost invigorating smell.

"What's the experiment?" Alba asked. "It's not poison or anything, right?"

"The chemical exploration of poisons peaked with Socrates. Nothing new under the sun there. This..." She looked at the tube proudly. "is something I'm working on for the female agents. It's a compound that can be added to perfume. It uses pheromones to make them irresistible."

Based on her observations, none of the female agents needed any assistance in that department. They were all knockouts, ten out of tens, if not fourteen or fifteen. They were universally the most beautiful and staggeringly charming women you could meet. Most of them didn't seem to turn on the charm when not on a mission, which gave them the representation among the envious men that they were all lesbians. (They couldn't ALL be... right? The mission might literally require them to seduce a man... Alba would rather keep making watches and ruining her eyesight than seduce someone she didn't fancy.)

"I promise to keep my eye on it." Alba said.

"You don't need to watch it like a hawk." Taylor said. "Just glance at it every few minutes or so. It shouldn't do anything weird."

"Will do." Alba confirmed, glancing at the test tube.

"Thank you." Taylor tapped her shoulder and walked off.

Alba's head sunk into her shoulder, returning her gaze to her watch. She hoped Taylor had turned away before she'd seen Alba's cheeks turn red.

As she always did when she was distressed, Alba pushed herself back into her work.

---

Some minutes rolled by, and Alba got back in her groove, going between the 3D model on her computer and the prototype. She kept a row of tiny cups beneath her monitor, smaller than shot glasses. She used this to hold screws of different lengths to keep them from jumping away from anything as strong as even a sneeze. She was winding down the mainspring and about to pin it in place with a special latch. The watch wouldn't run on this spring, as the components had been replaced with a tiny battery. This spring would launch a single dart of the agent's choosing out of the watch.

Alba squealed as a fly flew by her ear. She obviously had no peripheral vision with her loupe in place, so she swung her hands around randomly, knocking stuff about her desk until she caught sight of the little bug and slammed down on her desk with the heel of her hand, making a loud thwack that everyone in the department heard. Work came to a stop. Heads appeared over dividing walls like curious meerkats, looking for the source of the sound.

She calmed herself with a few breaths, but she had noticed that the fly had not quite 'squished' the way a tiny speck of biological matter like an insect would. It had... 'crunched' when hit, like she had smashed a pistachio shell. Alba slowly lifted her hand to see her conquest. The 'fly' was one of those itty-bitty drones that looked like a fly as camouflage. An absolute marvel of the most incredible miniaturization, unthinkable only a few years before... and Alba has smashed it.

As she brushed the delicate shrapnel that once was a drone off her hand... Alba could hear smothered laughter from somewhere in the department. Some idiot had done this on purpose to tease her. Maybe they didn't expect her to nail the drone on her first swipe, but even nineteenth-century tradespeople had killed seven flies with one blow.

Alba felt the anger rising in her again. If she wanted to work at a place where her co-workers teased her, she could work literally anywhere else in the goddamn world. She brought her hand to her heart to take another deep breath...

But her hand fell into something moist on her chest.

In her panic, Alba had accidentally knocked the test tube containing the experimental pheromone compound onto her sweater. There was now a huge and slightly discolored wet spot on her chest.

Alba prided herself on never leaving a project half-assembled before leaving her desk, in case a tiny screw rolled into the carpet, never to be recovered. Not this time. Alba immediately stripped off her headband and ran out of Props, down the hall and towards the nearest lavatory. She held her coat shut, hiding the stain from the bystanders who were watching the small blonde woman dash down the hall to the toilets. People were even looking at her from upper floors on the concourse. Was this substance already drawing attention to her?

She should have been looking where she was going. Alba bumped into something hard like a statue, the force of the impact sending her flying backwards and to the floor. She looked up to what had entered her path.

A man, six-foot-four and as wide as a linebacker. He had a perfect coif of sandy blond hair, penetrating blue eyes and a square jaw. His nose was a touch crooked, perhaps from taking a hit somewhere in his youth, but it did not detract from his good looks one bit. His wide torso was poured into a tight workout shirt.

He wasn't in the tuxedo, but Alba recognized him right away. She had just stupidly run right into Hamilton Blancpain, one of the more decorated agents at the Institute. A man who was owed a debt of gratitude from nearly the whole world as he saved it repeatedly from the brink of tyranny and destruction.

Alba shuffled away from him on her rear. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" She said, but Hamilton just bent down and offered his huge hand.

"Allow me." He said in his soothing baritone. Despite his exotic surname, Hamilton was born and raised in America. (Determining which state he hailed from would be too much to ask. All agents went through vocal training to make their normal speaking voice as neutral and accent-free as possible.)

Alba stared at his offer for a moment before placing hers within his palm. His hand was the size of an oven mitt. Hamilton brought her to her feet with the same motion with which he would perform one curl, and with the same handsomely flexed bicep.

"You OK, sweetheart?" Hamilton looked around, bringing his giant hand to his sensibly-sized ear. "This isn't a fire drill, is it? I don't hear any alarms or anything..."

Alba realized she was still staring at that arm. Her hand felt warm from the momentary contact. She... was nearly swept off her feet... by Hamilton Blancpain. Sure, he was a coworker, but movie stars worked with the craft service, too...

"No, I'm sorry, I was just running to..."

She paused.

She was running to wash the experimental pheromones off her sweater... the stuff that was meant to make anyone who wore it irresistible...

Don't blow this, she thought. Should she take her glasses off? No way, then she can't see him in all his glory. Besides, men like glasses, right? It gives them something else to take off...

"I was just jogging around the concourse. As I do... a lot." Alba had never learned to lie convincingly. It wasn't part of her training.

"Really? You don't go to the outdoor track?" Hamilton seemed intrigued. "I didn't realize they'd let us jog in here, where it's climate controlled. Sounds nice."

Alba didn't even realize there was an outdoor running track. She had never exercised a day in her life, unless you counted wrist stretches and cracking her knuckles.

"No one's stopped me so far." She cleared her throat, definitely not a pro move there. "Except you, entirely by accident. I feel like I didn't introduce myself properly before running into you. I'm Alba."

"I'm Milton." He put his hand to his heart and tipped his head forward a bit.

Alba blinked dramatically. "Milton?" It clicked. "Oh, I get it. Short for Hamilton."

"It's better than getting called 'Ham' or 'Hammy.'"

"Some people tried making Ally stick for me. I didn't like it. It's the same amount of syllables."

Hamilton shrugged his wide shoulders. "Better than getting called 'Al,' I guess."

Alba nodded nervously. She could feel this conversation growing cold. She had to keep it going...

"You, uh... getting ready to work out?" She asked.

"Yeah, I was just stopping at the machine for a soda before I started." He pressed a button on the machine and an aluminum can went clunk-clunk-clunk until it appeared at the bottom. No money exchanged hands. "Some guys have cheat days. I just have cheat drinks."

"I don't drink soda myself." Alba said. "I have to carefully control my caffeine intake so my hands stay steady."

"Oh, are you on the bomb disposal squad?"

Crap. That sounded way cooler. Even when working with tiny munitions and other hazards, Alba never felt unsafe in her work. "No, I work in Props. I make the watches."

"Very cool." He nodded. "I've definitely used that garrote on almost every mission, so you have my gratitude and thanks for that."

Alba whimpered. That had been standard in those watches since before the Institute was established. This was like thanking her for 'inventing' the stick shift. Then again, she probably put the garrote there... or one of her subordinates.

"Happy to help out." She said meekly.

"Were you here when they switched from Pepsi to Coke?" Hamilton considered the soda can in his fist. In his giant hand, it looked like a prescription bottle in a normal-sized hand. "I'll bet some poor jerk at Pepsi lost their job over that. I wonder if someone at Coca-Cola knows how to get in touch with us and asks if we need to be restocked."