Chapter 41

The next day started far too earlier for Samantha. Their bathhouse visit had been relaxing, but Yolanda still woke them bright and early in the morning. Despite the timing, Samantha felt decently rested; it had been the first legit bed she had slept in since before encountering Furno, and even if she had to share it with Vicki and Erez, it was still miles better than the military cots or uncomfortable plane seats.

Yolanda and Adam dragged Erez out quickly to begin their scouting mission. They wanted to have a rough idea of what the building was like before they started infiltrating it. However, even Yolanda recognized that they would have to improvise once they got inside and saw what they were really up against. In an effort to minimize that, she wanted to prepare as much as possible first.

The task David had assigned Samantha and Vicki was much easier; they needed to buy new outfits for the upcoming banquet. David had a whole list of supplies to pick up, but he prioritized getting the two girls into some nice dresses. "It will actually be better if you two are eye candy," he said. "If people are paying attention to you, they won't notice the rest of us sneaking around."

"But wouldn't that cause people to start asking too many questions?" Vicki asked. "It might bring unwanted attention."

"Trust me, at these kind of parties, everybody will dress like that," David said. "It would actually look more suspicious if you don't go all out for it."

But as lively as David was for their shopping trip, he was not prepared for Vicki. She wanted to tour Tokyo at top speed to visit all the places she could. This forced David to rein her in, since they had a packed schedule and couldn't afford time for all of Vicki's requests. If he turned his back on her for a moment, she would already be wandering half a block away to look into some new shop.

"This must be what Yolanda feels like when she's dealing with me and my brother," David grumbled to himself, as he dragged Vicki out of a cat themed café. "We do not have time for this!"

It was so fast paced that Samantha was exhausted by the end of it. She collapsed in the back of the cab on their ride back to the hotel, even as Vicki nearly crawled over her to look out the window at the passing skyline. "I'm going to need to come here for real on my own when this is all over," she said excitedly. "There's so much that I want to do, but I just can't get to it!"

When they arrived back at the hotel, the rest of their team was waiting for them, and Yolanda started sharing what they had discovered, with occasional input from Adam or Dr. Snowden. They had already identified a bunch of security checkpoints that they would need to pass, and they started brainstorming ideas on how to get through. Once they did that, they had pinpointed a server room which would give them full network access. But part of the problem was that the entire area was monitored via security cameras. The twins had some software they could use to hack into the security system, but that itself would require a second espionage trip, adding to their lists of tasks.

"Our timeline is quite short," Yolanda said, pulling up a chart. "The guests will start arriving by six. There will be the usual mingling period for the next two hours, where we can't make our move because there will still be too many eyes looking around. But Mr. Duter will start his presentation around eight, and that's when the full attention of the press and the guests will all be on him. That's when we make our move. However, the presentation is only slated to last half an hour, more or less depending on the nature of their big reveal. That means we need to infiltrate the facility, get our connection into the servers, and then sneak back out in thirty minutes. It'll be a tight turnaround."

"Of course, once we're in, the real work will begin," Adam said. "We'll need to start searching the records for what they're up to, and see if we can get some definitive proof. There won't be a big time crunch on this, but we can't wait too long either. If we can get a proper physical connection, we likely won't have to worry about the software detecting us unless we start copying excessive amounts of data over. But eventually somebody will notice the device or some blip on the server, so it would be best if we have what we need by then."

"And what do we do after we get that?" Erez asked.

David shrugged. "It depends on the intel. If Duter is clean, then we cross him off the list and move on. If the evidence is incriminating enough, we could bring it to the higher powers and maybe see if we can get them to approve Ricardo's big raid idea again."

"But in actuality, there will probably need to be a precision extraction," Yolanda said. "We find whatever Hero is here and whoever is controlling them. We break in, get them under control, and then leave. Similar to how we handled Marcello and Bulk in Sao Paulo, but hopefully less messy."

"We can only advance one step at a time," Adam said. "At the very least, if all goes according to plan, Duter will never know we were there, and we'll still have the element of surprise on our side."

"Well, I mean he'll know that we were there, at the party," David pointed out. "Guest books and all."

Their next task was to get ready for the party, and this involved more dress up than Samantha was used to. They needed to wash up again, put on their new fancy outfits, and lather on copious amounts of makeup. The process was one that Vicki was familiar with, as would many other girls from Samantha's school. But she herself had never been into dressing up, much less using makeup.

They split up into groups, because they only had so much space in the hotel room, so only a few people could get ready at once. Yolanda started by sneaking onto the roof where she and the kids summoned the Heroes. The majority of their mission would be done without the help of the Heroes, but Furno, Breez, and Evo would be on hand for emergency support in case something went wrong. Nex, meanwhile, would be monitoring the situation from afar. Of course, since the hotel room was too small to summon the Heroes in, Yolanda decided to find an inconspicuous spot on the roof where she could fill them all in on the plan. Once the Heroes knew what to expect, they returned to their cores, and Samantha and Vicki started getting ready for the party.

Half an hour later, Samantha stood alone in the bathroom, looking over herself in the mirror. She had selected a sleek red dress to wear, but although she had her measurements taken, she had not properly tried it on before. She frowned as she looked over her reflection; her arms, shoulders, and legs were more exposed than she was used to, and it made her slightly uncomfortable. The dress was also pinching her waist, creating a slight bulge at her hips which looked unattractive to her. She knew she had a healthy body, with an average amount of fat and muscle, but the dress only seemed to highlight the aspects she'd rather keep hidden. Even worse, some of her bruises and skin burns were visible, standing out on her bronze skin. Meanwhile, the shoulder straps were positioned oddly and the bottom of the dress restricted her leg movement. Briefly, she wondered how she'd be able to fight in such a dress, but conceded that it was probably not a concern for her on this mission.

She had to vacate the bathroom in order to let Yolanda get ready. Vicki clapped her hands as she saw Samantha in her dress. "Oh, you look so good in that!"

"I don't think so," Samantha grumbled. Vicki herself was wearing a frilly yellow dress, but it seemed to easily fit around her form, and she wore it with confidence. She looked good in her dress, and in Samantha's opinion, she pulled it off better.

But Vicki wasn't done with Samantha, and started applying makeup to her. Samantha tried to protest, but quickly realized that she should just stay still and allow her friend to do her thing. In addition to beautifying up her face, Vicki applied additional cover to hide some of Samantha's bruises, although she had to avoid the skin burns for fear of irritating them further.

"About ready?" Adam and David said, entering the hotel room dressed in snazzy suits, as they had gone to the bathhouse during men's hours to change.

"I think the two of us are about ready," Vicki said, stashing away the makeup. "Although Yolanda's still in the bathroom. How do we look?"

"You look like two lovely young women who will attract a lot of attention," Adam said with a wink.

"Now, you two will be posing as our nieces," David reminded them. "So remember your covers. You can keep your first names, but you're pretending to be Jocosus now."

"Although I guess they could still be considered family with different last names," Adam mused. "Which would also explain the racial diversity."

"Yeah, we've figured that out," Samantha said. "But are you sure you two should be going under your own names? I thought you had a history with Duter?"

"Well, the donation was in our name, so we want to stay consistent," David said. "Besides, if we are recognized, it'll be better if we're also not under a pseudonym."

"And if they catch us sneaking around, we already have a well-established cover story," Adam added. "But it's probably best if that doesn't happen. And in general we'd like to avoid any direct contact with Duter, just in case he does remember the incident with the fishing line."

"It seemed like a great way to hang a camera to get some exclusive footage, at the time, anyway," David said. "We didn't know it was going to get tangled with his drone demonstration."

"But if they know who you are, won't they find it funny that government agents are attending?" Vicki asked.

"Maybe if they knew we were government agents," David said. "But publically, the best connection they're going to get is that we were in the military at some point. We don't have a lot of public records about our employment out there. I mean, a few criminal records from various misunderstandings, but Ricardo and the other bureaucrats made sure to distance themselves from all those."

"As far at Duter Institute is concerned, we're just a couple of trust fund fanboys who are sometimes a little overeager," Adam said.

"Are you trust fund kids?" Samantha asked.

"Hell no," David said. "We grew up in a working class family, strictly middle class. Even our current salaries aren't much to scoff at, but we're talented enough that they can't can us, so we continue to collect paychecks from Uncle Sam."

"Of course, we did have a separate savings account," Adam added. "But that just got drained to get you tickets to this party. So you're welcome."

"What's Yolanda's cover?" Samantha asked. "She's not going to stand in as one of your nieces."

"Possibly a significant other?" Vicki asked.

David laughed out loud. "She'd object to that one for sure."

"Yolanda will be posing as our secretary," Adam explained. "Clearly us two goofballs needed somebody else to help tie things together and set us on the right path, thus explaining why we are honored guests instead of gate crashers this time around."

The bathroom door opened, and Yolanda stepped out. "I really don't like the idea of being an assistant to you two," she said darkly. "Unfortunately, it does look like the best cover to use." She paused, aware that everybody in the room was staring at her. "What, do I have something in my teeth?"

"You're wearing a dress," Adam stammered.

"You look like an actual lady," David clarified. "Heck, you actually look kind of hot."

Yolanda scowled. She was indeed wearing a black gown that gracefully slid down her form. Her uncovered arm muscles were apparent, but the rest of her features formed a smooth curve, making her look almost like a model out of a magazine. Samantha felt a ping of jealousy; why couldn't her dress look that good on her?

"I don't think we've ever seen you in formal wear before," David said. "You're always wearing some sort of military uniform.

"I've worn dresses before," Yolanda said. "I've actually worn this gown before, at a friend's wedding. But when I dress up for an event, you two generally aren't invited." She paused, taking in the twins. "You two cleaned up well too, but where the heck did you get those suits last minute?"

Adam and David grinned. They were both wearing smart builds, but the cuts and colors had mild highlights in their respective colors, red for Adam and blue for David. "We're also prepared for formal parties," Adam said. "We had these suits custom tailored years ago, and occasionally get them refitted. Just in case we ever need them."

"You have no idea how long we've been waiting to break these out," David said. "We got really close to using them at that one summit in Sydney a few years ago, but then Ricardo pulled us out."

"I mean, we did get to dress up in Dubai that one time," Adam said. "But we had to be careful not to outshine the various oil barons, so our suits were toned down."

"Well, for a while anyway," David said with a grin. "Some of us didn't stay in suit for the whole night."

Yolanda rubbed her forehead. "Enough reminiscing, you two; keep focused on the mission at hand. Do you have everything ready?"

"Already got the tech on us," Adam said. "We're ready to get this thing started."

Yolanda eyed the two girls and noted that they were finished dressing up. "If that's the case, then it's time," she said. "The banquet should be opening about now, so we need to head over. This mission is about to go live."