She took a deep breath and looked at the contact that was sitting on the tip of her finger. She had never needed to put her finger that close to her eye before, and the thought of it made her cringe a bit. It was for her job, though, and she had to keep reminding herself of that.
“I don’t understand why I have to be the first one to test this out in the field,” she said in an attempt to put this off just a bit longer.
There was a laugh in her earpiece as her chief of operations was listening to it all unfold, “Because you’re our most trustworthy agent. You should be honored.”
She rolled her eyes, “I think it’s just because if something goes terribly wrong you c-”
“Could count on you to be able to handle the situation,” he finished her sentence for her.
She laughed, “All this technology and you can’t make something that will put the contact in for me?”
“I suppose we should’ve gotten someone who has used contacts before. The next prototype of this we’ll remember to do that.”
“If I was Bond I wouldn’t have to deal with this,” she looked around the bathroom of the upscale hotel. Her stay would’ve been much more enjoyable under practically any other circumstances. It was quite the beautiful place, and luckily that meant the bathroom was equipped with great lighting for her first contact lens endeavor.
“If you were Bond we probably wouldn’t have chosen you for this. You’re far more reliable.”
She stared at her reflection, then down at the contact, then back up at the mirror, and back down again. Putting it off wasn’t going to make it any less terrible. She took a deep breath, and held her eye open with her other hand and gently tried to place the lens on her eye. Every fiber of her being was telling her to clamp her eyelids shut but somehow she managed to fight through the urge. She felt her eyes start to water and shut her eyes tight, relieved that when she opened them again that she was still able to see, and that nothing looked remarkably different.
“One down,” she said quietly to herself, “one to go.”
The second contact wasn’t going in as easily as the first. After a few choice curse words and fighting the urge to throw the lens into the trashcan underneath the sink. She took a deep breath, making sure that her eyes were done tearing for the moment, and then she, slowly and smoothly as she could, popped the lens into her right eye.
She blinked a couple times and once she was sure that it wasn’t going to break or shift or whatever else contact lenses do, she let out a sigh of relief. “Yes!” she beamed at herself in the mirror, “Will, you’re seeing this, right?” she walked out into the main area of her hotel room and looked at the security camera that they had installed. She pointed excitedly to her own face.
“Like a pro, Roxanne.”
“So, she walked back into the bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror, “How do these work, exactly?”
“They won’t work without your glasses.”
She chuckled, “Seems a bit redundant, doesn’t it?”
He sighed, and she could practically see him rolling his eyes at her, “We both know that your glasses don’t actually improve your vision that’s nearly perfect to begin with. But regardless, you have to make sure you’re wearing them. Wink with your right eye, and the lens will zoom in. Wink with your left, and it will return to normal.”
She put her glasses on and practiced a couple times in the mirror, laughing as she took in how clear everything was even when it was magnified. She laughed, “These mirrors are disgusting.”
Will chuckled, “Alright, well, stay zoomed out until you get into the office, then.”
“Where did you guys even come up with these?”
He sighed, “Unfortunately I can’t take the credit for them. They were designed by a team in Lausanne, Switzerland at their Federal Institute of Technology. I just adapted it so we could use the lenses that our organization already has created. I had the easy part.”
“This is just,” she winked a couple more times, “too amazing.”
“Alright, well, before you manage to wear them out or something else along those lines, it’s time to get going. You think you can handle this?”
“Of course I can!” she sounded a little indignant, “Only problem is going to be that all the old men there are going to think I’m winking at them. Which means you owe me a drink when all of this is over.”
“If you were Bond that prospect wouldn’t bother you.”
“If I was Bond it wouldn’t be creepy old men hitting on me. If I was getting the same kind of attention that he was-”
“You’d be out of the job. I don’t know how that franchise has lasted when their main character is the worst agent I’ve ever seen. What happened to the art of discretion?”
“Hollywood,” Roxanne laughed.
That was the last that they spoke for a while as she finished getting ready. Luckily she wasn’t getting sent in to some gala, because those were always the worst. But having to maneuver through a corporate building filled with stuffy old men didn’t seem like the most enticing idea either.
She stepped in front of the full-length mirror across from her bed in the hotel room and looked at her outfit. She adjusted her tie and put her glasses back on. She knew that the feed from her lenses streamed straight to her handler’s computer. She pulled her hair back into a ponytail and asked, “So, do I look like I know what I’m doing?”
“You always do.”
She smiled, “Damn right.”
She grabbed her briefcase and headed out of the room. There was a taxi waiting for her outside to take her to the investment headquarters. They’d caught wind that the CEO’s were investing in things that were a little less than legal, and so that’s why she had to step in. She took a file out of her briefcase and was skimming through it one more time so she could know exactly who and what she was looking for.
As the taxi came to a stop, Will started coaching Roxanne on the information that she had to get before she left. It was going to be a multi-leg operation so she was in charge of getting as much as she could before they sent the next person in, because it was too much to get done by one person over the span of a couple days.
“If you can, try and grab a photo of a security badge for me. Gary is going to need that when we send him out next week.”
She walked up the stairs to the main doors of the firm, heels clicking authoritatively on the concrete, “On it,” she said under her breath as she looked around for anything that she could use.
When she walked into the building, she couldn’t even get past the second set of doors before going through a security scan. They took her briefcase and sent it through an x-ray, and she had to get checked by one of the security guards with his metal detector. She spotted his ID badge and tried her hardest to make her smile and wink seem flirtatious as she zoomed in and grabbed a snapshot of his card before slipping away and disappearing with her briefcase.
“I hate this already,” she mumbled as she made her way to the front desk to ask where to go for her appointment.
“Just in and out, Roxanne. And you’ll be done.”
She made her way up to the ninth floor of the building and sat down in the waiting area outside the main office. She pulled out her phone and texted Will, telling him to give her ten minutes before he called to make the CEO leave so she could snoop around his office quickly before he got back.
A few minutes later two men walked out of the office. One of them looked to be in his forties, and the other wasn’t much older than Roxanne. His file said that he was only twenty-six. He shook the older gentleman’s hand and sent him on his way. After adjusting his suit-jacket he turned and looked, raising his eyebrows at the sight of Roxanne.
“Maxine?”
She walked up and extended her hand, “Just Max, is fine,” she gave him a firm handshake, “Arthur, correct?” and the man nodded with a smile.
Will piped into her ear, “You should recommend your tailor,” he chuckled, “because clearly his doesn’t know how to fit a suit.”
She tried not to laugh as the two of them walked into the man’s office. She undid the buttons on her suit-jacket before sitting down, cringing for a split second when Arthur didn’t do the same.
While she didn’t care much for investments or involve herself too much in the financial world, between the script Will had given her and the knowledge that she had picked up along the way, she was able to fake her way through ten minutes of a pitch until his phone started to ring.
He apologized before taking his phone into a separate room. Immediately Roxanne hopped out of her chair and walked over to his computer. She started typing away and taking snapshots of files on his computer and sent them to Will through her lenses. Her fingers flew across the keyboard and she tried to grab as much information as quickly as she could. She couldn't believe how little he had all of his illegal dealing protected. There were hardly any encrpytions and she couldn't figure out if Arthur was that cocky or that stupid and oblivious
“He’s on his way back,” Will piped into her ear. Roxanne shut out of the browsers she’d opened and all but jumped over the man’s desk to get back to her seat.
There were files on the small tables in his office that she hadn’t gotten the chance to look at. She closed her one eye for a moment and suddenly nearly every word on the papers scattered around the room were crystal clear to her. She started taking snapshots but before she was done scanning, Arthur came back into the room.
It was hard for her to focus given the fact that everything was nearly three times as large as it had been only moments before. But the only way to get things back to normal was to close her other eye and the last thing that she felt like doing was winking at this guy. She didn’t know him but she certainly didn’t trust him.
“Sorry about that. Business just gets out of hand sometimes.”
She forced a smile as he sat back down behind his desk, “I can only imagine.” The zoom was starting to make her dizzy but she pressed on regardless. She turned her head away, partially so she could grab a last couple of shots and also so she could reset the zoom.
“Are you alright, Max?”
She nodded, taking her glasses off to make her performance a little more convincing, “Yes, sorry, just something in my eye.” She blinked and then shut only one eye, fighting the urge to sigh with relief when her vision returned to normal.
Her relief went away when she saw the look on the young man’s face. He was smiling and all Roxanne could think was, “You’ve got to be kidding me.” Even when she told him there was something wrong with her eye he still thought she was flirting. Unbelievable.
“Well,” she rose from her seat, “I see that you’re very busy so I will let you get back to your job. Thank you for taking the time to meet with me.”
He stood up out of his seat, “I’ll be sure to follow up with you about your proposal. You’ve certainly, well, you’ve certainly caught my attention.”
She wanted to throw up in her mouth a little bit instead she smiled, “I’m very happy to hear that. It was a,” she paused for a moment as she noticed a peculiar pin on the lapel of his jacket, “it was a pleasure meeting you.” Despite how much she didn’t want to do it, she winked so that she could get a better image of the tiny pin attached to his jacket.
“The feeling is,” he grasped her hand for a handshake but held it a few seconds too long, “certainly mutual.”
She turned, picked up her briefcase, and walked out of his office as quickly as she could without attracting more unwanted attention. When she reached the elevator she let out a huge sigh of relief.
“Please tell me I didn’t have to suffer through that uncomfortably long handshake for nothing, Will. That pin means something, right?”
There was a pause and then his voice floated in through her ear, “It certainly wasn’t for nothing,” she could hear his fingers flying across his keyboard, “he’s definitely our guy. But I’m assuming you don’t want to stick around for a date?”
“Absolutely not,” she looked up at the ceiling as the elevator brought her back down to the ground floor.
She picked up the pace as she crossed the main lobby and walked towards the front doors. Before she walked out, the security guard that she had seen on her way in decided that anything was worth a shot and he called after her, “Have a nice day, Miss. Hope to see you back very soon.”
Roxanne rolled her eyes as she blew through the front doors and went back down to the taxi that had dropped her off. She collapsed in her seat and shut her eyes. “I love my job, Will, but it would be so much better if I didn’t have to deal with all these other men. Bond certainly didn’t have to deal with this many men.”
“You’re right, but if Bond had gone in there that building probably would have blown up and we would have lost our lead.”
“Aw, Will, are you saying that you like me?”
“I’m saying that you could be worse.”
She laughed, “I’ll take it. You’ll miss me next week when you’re handling someone else over here.”
“Don’t I know it. You’re sure you wouldn’t want to come back for round two?”
“Not until I get James Bond-level privileges.”
“Is that your polite way of saying you want to permission to fight that guy?”
She laughed, “Would you say yes?”
“You’ll have to come back next week to find out.”
She smiled and shook her head, “First things first, I want to get back and take these lenses out. They’re hurting my eyes. And then, assuming they don’t make me go blind, I’ll think about coming back next week.”
“What if I call you Jane Bond?”
“Now you’re talking.”
