Chapter three:
Er... I might try to make the relationship aspects slightly clearer this chapter. I've not really thought out exactly what's going to happen in the next few thousand words, but I have a vague idea of what I want to happen in this chapter. Tell me what you think, and email me with opinions at trekster2@hotmail.com or trekkiead@yahoo.com. Thanks have to go out to Jeff, for being a great friend, for Seth. for putting up with me:) and for Tom, who proofed this chapter for me. Blame any remaining mistakes on him! Thanks to everyone who emailed me. I've not got the names on hand, so I can't mention any of you, but you all know who you are. It's greatly appreciated, and I look forwards to receiving further mails from you! Legal: this story is complete fiction and implies nothing about the sexualities of those involved. Do not read if it is not legal for you to do so. Well, on with the show!
The following morning, five sleepy young men were resting fast asleep in there beds, whatever dreams and thoughts running through their heads were evidently making some of their sleeps less than restful. Another man, not so old himself, was sitting in the floor above, watching them sleep on the five display screens in front of him. Owen found himself between a rock and a hard place in his current situation. He was trying to protect these people from the truth, and from the danger which faced them. On the other side of the wall, he felt his spying on them this way to be almost immoral. He was gay, he'd known for a while, and here he was watching five handsome young men, some more than others, in every activity of their day, and they had no idea. He was desperately trying to avoid looking at one screen in particular, where someone virtually his own age was sleeping in a pair of boxer shorts, his covers tossed off by his restless sleeping. He still kept up the occasional glance, and it was on the verge of resulting in certain 'consequences'. He turned in his chair to a clear work-desk and picked up the book he was reading, Michael Crichton's 'Timeline'. In his spare time, he did a lot of reading. As a result of being brought up in the agency, not attending ordinary schools, or even having much communication with people his own age, he'd felt isolated. It was only in his teenage years that he started to venture out slightly more and meet people his own age, when he had adequate understanding of his position. His father never left the compound unless on business. He'd not had a holiday ever as far as he knew, he worked every single day since the agency was formed. His co-director was in a similar situation. Owen had never met him yet, he was head of research and development at the Matthew's AFB facility in White Sands. Owen often wondered if his isolated life had been what resulted in him being gay, but put it aside. They'd probably found some gene or other responsible at medical research. He glanced back to the monitors after one of them made a slight beep. Lance had just woke up, and was now sitting on the edge of the bed. Glancing down at his watch, Owen noted it was only 7:15, he wasn't expecting them up for another half hour at least. He put the bookmark back in place, his interest in reading right now non-existent.
Looking back to Justin's screen, he noticed he had now started to stir slightly. "No, please don't do that, please!" Owen said quietly as Justin's hand slid beneath his boxers. He wasn't certain if he was even awake yet even. "Please stop Justin, I don't need this!" He reached forwards to turn off the monitor, but his mind lost out to his hormones, letting his hand back away. Subconsciously, Owen's own hand started to slip below his belt and trousers. As he thought about his actions though, he quickly flicked the monitor off and stood up, tucking his shirt back into his trousers and neatening up his appearance.
"Incoming transmission from the director on com channel 1." The computer chimed out.
"On screen."
"Transmission is encrypted. Please enter the clearance code."
"4 5 3 7 6 beta."
"Clearance excepted."
"Agent, some information for you. We have determined the mission of the 039 craft. It implanted a computer database into their minds basically, but far more than that. The computer logs show a whole neural net has been stored between them, the complete consciousness of one of the crew has been stored between them. No one has the whole piece of the puzzle, the data was split between all of them."
"I understand sir."
"They have become a very important project for us. Can you handle the situation, or do you wish for more assitance?"
"We'll see how the situation progresses. As yet, there is no major threat to them is there?"
"Not that we know of. Get back to me if you require anymore assistance here. I've been watching the situation, you handled it well yesterday. Also, don't turn the monitors off, regardless of what may be on them, and what ever states it may induce in you. End comm." Owen just stared at the screen, surprised and slightly shocked by what his Dad just said. He should give him more credit.
"Hey Joey." Lance said as he walked down the corridor from the lift. He'd just gone down to the lobby to check the security arrangements for the day. He was surprised to see their were already a few fans outside. "Where you off to?"
"Needed to stretch my legs. What's happening this morning?"
"Breakfast in the conference hall at the end of the corridor at 8am, we've pretty much got the day to ourselves until 4pm. Then we're all due back here. We're supposed to be arriving at the Grammies at around 7:30."
"What then, straight back to England?"
"Yep. We're spending the night here, and then we're on another Concorde flight back to England at 9:25am tomorrow. We arrive in London at 5:25pm, and we've got to be at the BBC studios for about 7:30."
"I only wanted to know about this morning!" Joey smiled before walking back into his room. Lance entered his, and picked up the phone. He dialled round each room, waking everyone up, some more reluctant to rise than others, before going down to the conference room to check all the tables were laid out correctly. The dumb waiter was on it's way up, a waiter standing near it opening the doors and pulling out a tray of breakfast cereals and juices.
"Morning!" Lance said to the waiter, who turned to give him a quick acknowledgement. He had no idea someone else was watching from above, with yet another camera hidden in the room. One can never be too careful. He walked back out into the corridor to let the waiter set everything up without being disturbed.
"Morning JC." Lance said as he looked into JC's room, the door open. He was sitting on the bed, having just got dressed, his hair still slightly disgruntled.
"Hey Lance."
"Bad night?"
"You could say that."
"Want to talk about it?"
"No, I'm fine, honestly. I'm still not happy about all this stuff though. I think we need to have another talk about it, and maybe call that FBI guy up again. I think I should apologise to him."
"Yeah, you did kinda blow your top, taking his gun and threatening him with it. Good job he was in a good mood!" Lance said half jokingly, half seriously.
"Yeah. I felt pretty stupid when he told me it wasn't loaded and I hadn't even taken the safety off though."
"Well, I'm just going to check my email before breakfast. 20 minutes time in the conference room."
"Ok then, see ya there." Lance walked off from the room, noticing the weirdness in the conversation. They definitely need to talk about the other day. It's far from sorted out he thought.
Twenty minutes later, all the guys had arrived in the hall, most of them looking tired as hell, not having much sleep. They were sitting around the large circular table, as the waiter came over to take their orders No one seemed drastically hungry, just having some toast and coffee mainly. Justin and Joey went back and had some cereal, but that was about as far as it went.
"Well, what are we going to do about this?" JC spoke up, breaking a rather uncomfortable silence.
"What'd ya mean?" Justin said, clearly knowing the reasons
"You know what I mean. We still need to sort all this stuff out. I don't know about you lot, but I couldn't sleep last night, I kept having nightmares and stuff."
"What about?"
"I can't really remember, but I couldn't sleep a wink. Something happened yesterday, and someone is trying to keep it from us!"
"I think we can all agree on that much. Why though?"
"I'm going to call that FBI guy up again, let's see if we can figure out what he's hiding from us. This time however JC, let's try not threatening to shoot him though?"
"I'll do my best" JC said sheepishly, causing Justin to laugh slightly.
"What do you think about all this Justin? You've been pretty quite, so have you Chris, well, so have I." Joey said.
"I don't know what to think, it's all pretty weird really. I'm just as worried as you however. Give him a call in a few minutes."
"Ok. You lot finish up here. I'll go get him on the phone. We want some free time today, so we'll see him as early as he can get, ok?" Lance got a few nods before he walked out and headed back to his room. He pulled the business card out of his wallet and dialled the number on it.
"Hello, this is Owen Coombs, how may I help you?" Owen said into the receiver.
"Oh, hello Mr Coombs. This is Lance Bass from 'N Sync."
"Good morning, how may I help you?"
"I was wondering if you would be able to stop by and see us today, or whether we could come by and see you?"
"Either is possible, whatever is best for you."
"Well, how about we come round to you?"
"That's fine. I'll be in my office in just under an hour, so you can stop by anytime after then."
"Ok, how can we find you?"
"I'll leave a message for you at the main entry. If you have a word with the receptionist, just tell her you're Mr. Coombs, she'll give you directions."
"Ok then, thank you for you for your trouble Mr Coombs. Also, Josh is sorry about yesterday."
"No worries about that, I don't hold grudges. He was agitated and needed to vent some anger. I've got to get off now I'm afraid. I look forwards to seeing you all."
"Bye." Lance said, putting the phone back into it's cradle, before walking back to the conference room. He informed the guys of what had happened on the phone.
"Well, if we get ready here, wait for Curly to get ready for an extra half an hour, and then head straight down?" Joey said.
"Ok then. We'll all drift back here when we're ready. I'll give the management a call, tell them what's happening. Mark said they would try and get someone down here today, but not till later. We'll get a car booked to drive us down."
"Yes sir!" Chris said, giving a mock salute before walking out the room.
Owen, having just hung up the phone sat up from his chair and checked his appearance in the mirror in the bathroom, smartening up his appearance, fastening the top button of his shirt and putting on a fresh tie, walked over to the monitor. "Computer, get me Assistant Director Ronson."
"Please hold." The dull monotonous reply came, as the familiar telephone ringing sound was heard. "Hello, this is Ronson, how may I help you?"
"If you could arrange for me to have an office available, and have the gentlemen from N Sync sent up there when they arrive at the FBI headquarters. I'll be arriving shortly."
"Of course Sir. I'll make the usual office available for you."
"Thank you. End com." Owen siad before slipping on his jacket and walking out his hotel room. He called the lift and waited a few seconds. Ronson was one of the people at the FBI who's job it was to work with the ISC, in matters such as this. He was in charge of a team of FBI agents who in essence worked for the ISC, without ever knowing it. They took orders from Ronson, who took orders from the ISC. The whole system worked quite nicely, they never knew of the ISC's existence, yet served it very effectively, with very few questions asked. Usually ISC agents were only involved where direct contact with 'sensitive information' was required, where FBI agents wouldn't be able to best serve the purpose. The NSA and CIA also helped out here in the US as much as possible, but even these agencies were kept in the dark on some of the information.
The lift doors opened and Owen stepped in, pressing the button for the underground carpark. The lift made it's decent and almost instantly Owen noticed the light come on for the 10th floor, the floor where non other than N Sync were staying.
Well, sorry this is a short one, but I really wanted to get a chapter out before the weekend. It was also a good place to stop. I had some really really encouraging comments after chapter 2, and I'd love to get some more, just to let me know what you think, good or bad, any ways I could improve it etc. As always, email me at trekster2@hotmail.com or trekkiead@yahoo.com . Chapter three should be out before April 8th, and hopefully it'll be a bit longer than this one (maybe 30 40k filesize again).
I'm off on holiday April 8th though, and won't be doing any writing for a couple of weeks, so chapter four won't be around until May. Then I'm into exams, so that's stop me from writing. The next few chapters will be a bit slow coming therefore, and I'm sorry about that. I'm doing my best! Not much happened this chapter, infact, nothing major happened really. The main reason for posting is to get something out, and the fact I won't be able to do anything more until the end of the month at very best, more like early April in all realism, so don't even hold me to April 8th for chapter 4!