ESPIONAGE

Written for the Open Your Dictionaries Merlin Challenge.

Desperately need someone to beta read for me! :(

The halls of the government facility were scant and bare, shiny and gleaming with fortified metal. Merlin's rugged trainers rang like church bells along the smooth, sturdy floor, so he deigned to remove the useless clothing, ignoring the scent of two days of hard work and labour seeping through the fraying, patchy pair of socks.

It had been difficult, but surprisingly easier than expected, to reach this far. For someone so opposed to magic, Uther's defenses against such attacks were rather dismal. The small blinking sensors, like glaring red eyes, could be easily overridden with little more than reliatory stare, and the guards had been no hassle whatsoever. It was pitiful, although rather amusing, to think Uther considered this a viable defense. Even a meagre hedgewitch could deftly sweep the halls without a single bead of sweat.

Merlin traced his muddy, calloused finger along his crumpled map, little beads of encrusted red stains gracing the page. He couldn't decide whether these were due to the feast of spaghetti drowning in thick, creamy tomato sauce yesterday night, or something else entirely. His mouth watered with the daydream of fine dishes at his disposal. He turned a sharp left.

There had been days when spaghetti had just been the stringy hair above the face of a sausage smile, potato nose and eggy, beaming yellow eyes his mother would lovingly prepare. Food could be conveniently bought from huge, looming shops with cold shelves and rolling metal baskets. In this day and age, where his grinning face remained plastered on every street corner and seedy news channel, he could barely manage to pinch a box of cigs from the village corner shop.

He could barely remember his mother. She'd had chubby cheeks and sad blue eyes, which used to twinkle with unshed tears. The rest was a distant memory, swept under the carpet by the whirlwind of struggles to immediately follow.

The tapping of confident strides caused Merlin to halt abruptly, then proceed to hurriedly shove his shoes onto his toes. He shifted his backpack around his shoes uncomfortably, straightening his greasy, faded red shirt and muddy khaki jacket.

Merlin nervously peaked around the corner. The man on the opposite end of the hallway had paused, tiresomely attempting to ram his rusty copper key into the lock. Merlin took a deep, shaky breath and squeezed his eyes shut, pulling his hands before him. The air felt as thick as water, rippling and resisting his limbs as he scrawled patterns into the air with his hands. Reality shifted, accomodating his adjustments like an impatient friend granting one last favour. Merlin rounded the corner with confidence, the blond man barely twitching at his presence.

He unfurled the map from his clumped fingertips, tracing the numerous clumsy lines with exasperation. Mordred, a tiny Druid boy with huge, hungry eyes and an Oliver Twist-esque facade, had envisioned the layout in his foretelling slumber a few weeks ago, and his childishly scribbled map was almost impossible to decipher. A doorway, almost unrecognisable from the next, lay before him, marked on the map by a huge yellow blob...or was it a flower? Perhaps a star?

The locks were also ridiculously easy. Merlin could understand why the man had had such difficulty with his key, there was a complex system to how many degrees the lock should be twisted in each direction, one that would be almost unfathomable to the casual observer, who'd assume that it was just an extremely difficult lock. Merlin could also indentify unique technology as he stretched the pulsating waves of his magic further into every nook and cranny. Chips must be implanted into each little key, and a single fingerprint imprinted along the bottom expanse of copper. Impressive, but not impressive enough. Merlin poked the keyhole, sending surges of power crashing through the device, until the door opened with a defeated click.

He pushed the cold metal door further, the hinges screaming desperately as he glimpsed into the scant, bare room. It was clearly an office, with minimal furnishing and sheaves of paper stacked neatly on the desk, and presumably many more in the filing cabinet. Merlin couldn't care less about alerting others to his presence, as he shamelessly left prints of his fingertips along almost every corner as he practically tore the room apart in his search.

The door once again squealed, and Merlin whipped around, remaining passively calm as he eyed every aspect of the stranger. He recognized the man from before, with tidy blond locks and a trim buisness suit.

"Who are you?" the man snarled, baring his crooked white teeth, although to Merlin's oversized ears he sounded more like a purring kitten.

"No one," Merlin smiled reassuringly. "I'm not really here, you're in the wrong room. You need to go to the other side of the building."

The man blinked, scowling in confusion. "What?" he shortly demanded. "What on earth are you on about?"

Merlin openly gawked, his eyes bulging uncomfortably in their homely sockets. "Um, I'm not really here?" he repeated, urgently mentally reciting archaic runes.

"Yes, you are," the blondie scoffed, gesturing with his arm. "You're right there."

'Well shit,' Merlin thought. "Ha ha, I guess I am," he giggled, eyes darting like fireflies on water as he hitched his backpack from where it slipped from his bony shoulders. "I'm looking for the file on Experiment 238."

"Right..." blondie drawled. "What's your name?"

"Ah...um...Mister..." lamp, lampshade, cabinet, drawer, paper, cabinet, files, cabinet, cabinet, cabinet..."Mr. Cabinet. What's your name?"

"Okay then, Mr. Cabinet," blondie said, crossing his arms over one another. "Why do you wish to aquire such information?"

"Ah...umm...there's...there's an urgent misprint that needs to be rectified. Yeah...that's why."

"Right then, Mr. Cabinet," he dubiously smirked. "Why did you not speak to the authority for the aquisition of these important documents?"

"I...didn't want to bother anyone?" Merlin cringed.

"Mr. Cabinet, your reasoning is highly suspicious-"

"Hey, I have reason to be suspicious too!" Merlin yelled defensively. "You haven't even told me your name!"

Blondie looked at him like he was an idiot. "Arthur," he deadpanned. "Arthur bloody Pendragon, you moron."

"Well then, Arthur Bloody-Pendragon," Merlin replied in a poor imitation of Arthur's authoritive tones, "I don't understand why you feel the need to mock my own name when yours is equally as implausible."

Arthur opened his mouth in a retort that was never voiced, for the alarm began to whirr, grinding into his eardrums with the volume of a rocket shooting into space. Merlin grabbed Arthur and made a run for it, uncaring if he made far too much noise in the process. Dozens of guards, garbed in black and pointing sleek, powerful guns poured from every corner.

"Stay back!" Merlin yelled, squeezing his hand around Arthur's neck as he garbled uselessly. "Stay back or he's dead!"

A moment of hesitation, lasting only scant more than a second, rung through the air. Then the penny dropped. Bullets were fired in every direction, whizzing past his nose, the smell gunpowder tasting bitter on his tongue. A gape in Merlin's head was apparently worth more than the life of Arthur Bloody-Pendragon, although many were clearly misfiring in an attempt to save the handsome boy's neck.

Merlin whirled on the spot, a bullet planted at his skull, except he was no longer there. Hauling Arthur along, Merlin disappeared into thin air.