Where on Earth, Spies Ch. 12

"...Soydyot li noch na zemlyu yasnaya,
Zvyozd mnogo bleshchet v nebesakh,
No ty odna, moya prekrasnaya,
Gorish v otradnykh mne luchakh..."

Alik hummed quietly while he worked, typing away at the keyboard, unaware that his microphone was on.

"You have such a nice voice. I never knew, Alik." Carmen mused. She was settled in a hotel, just getting ready to leave. Her things were still on the helicopter, she'd stayed the night in the hotel, and would be leaving by morning, if she even got back to the hotel room. She stepped outside and took a cab toward the ACME headquarters. She'd stop several blocks away and walk the rest.

"I-uh C-CARMEN! Heeeyyy. ...How much of that did you hear?" Alik chuckled sheepishly, sounding like he'd die of embarrassment.

"Enough to know you sound great when you don't know you're being listened to. Keep going, it's pretty."

"I don't think so."

"Please?"

"No."

"Maybe when I get back?" Carmen smirked.

"Only if you promise not to make me pass out again."

"Hm. No promises, I guess we'll just have to see when I get back." Carmen enjoyed toying with him a little too much.

"Ok, then promise you'll be back. Soon. Without injuries. ...Please?" Alik was scared for her. She'd made a lot of enemies, and now was going directly to the people she'd completely pissed off. Even with his best-laid plans, how could she get out of there alive? It was something only Carmen could get done.

"That I promise. Now since I promise I'm going to come back alive, another verse? Pretty please?"

"Zvezda nadezhdy blagodatnaya..." Alik continued on, sounding a little bit relieved, if only because he knew she'd come back if she promised she would.

It was a few hours before Carmen got to the Acme headquarters. Radio silence was maintained for the most part, as she carefully climbed up onto the second floor and slipped into the window. She had three targets: The Chrono-skimmer, the directions on how to pilot it, and Martin's file. Three things, two different buildings, in two different locations entirely.

She slipped into the second floor, knowing the Chronoskimmer was there. All she had to do was get in, learn it fast, and use that to get out of there.

"...This thing can travel through space, too, right?" She whispered to Alik.

"Pretty sure it can teleport a person, so yes. Come back here with it, but don't alter time, okay? I don't want to talk to two of you at once."

"Not back there. I have to go to the World Spies, for a file. A very important file."

"Are you going to tell me why this file is so important?"

"Not yet, moĭ krolik. Just give me time. You'll see then. Promise." She purred. She noticed some massive steel doors. Chances were, that was where it was. Steel doors hadn't stopped her mother, and they wouldn't stop her.

"Idi syuda, moya krasavitsa. Otkroi mamochke." She purred, leaning her ear against the door and closing her eyes. She gently tapped the doors, and felt like she could hear every part of its inner workings more and more each successive time she tapped. She thought about it.

"Not a tumbler, not a fingerprint keypad, a code key. Digital. What kind of a code would they use..." She thought about it.

"Alik, what is the original ACME chief's birthdate?"

"Twelve, twenty-two, nineteen-forty-eight. First one on record, anyway."

"Of course it is. Too long, though. Six digits. Multiply. No, too long. GXP... no, the numbers go to high, it's not a number code. ...Alik, what date did my mother leave?"

"March of 1973."

"031973." Carmen punched in the numbers and stood back as the doors opened.
"How sentimental." She mused, stepping into the room. There was a little space-shuttle-like device she walked over to, and managed to pry open with some equally careful deduction work. The passcode to the Chronoskimmer was just an ACME question, about who the original Chief was. Of course Carmen knew that, it was knowledge passed down from her mother.

Carmen stepped into the device and quickly flipped through the instruction manual (it was in the glovebox, of course.) to figure out how it ran. She recited the directions to Alik and trusted his judgement. Alik was a speed reader. She hoped it worked just as well with audio as it did visually.

Alik guided her through how to operate the thing, and with a deep breath and a stroke of luck, she made it underwater. Apparently the Chronoskimmer also functioned underwater quite well.

"...Did I do it? Did I travel through time? Where am I?"

"No time-travel, Carmen, you made it! You should be about ten yards underwater, and twenty yards from the spy boat. The Chronoskimmer is almost impossible to detect, since it'd get agents killed if they happened to show up in the water during the Cold War or something. You're going to have to swim upward, and you're kind of on your own in getting the files."

"So how do I get them back down here -dry-, Alik?"

"...Did -not- think of that. Uh... Mason jar and wax?" He suggested.

"Close enough. Wish me luck!" She took off her coat in a hurry, ditching her signature hat and the radio transceiver. She was on her own, now.  She opened up the top hatch and made her way to the surface, thanking the heavens that her blessed late mother made her take swimming lessons at such a young age.