Ethan walked into the CIA, flashed Greer’s badge and waltzed through the corridors and into the highest restricted sections. He wasn’t surprised that this ‘Machine’ had contacted him, explained in detail what needed to be done and how. The siblings at first were hesitant, but Ethan pointed out they were already trusting the ‘voice on the phone’ as they were calling it. He had no doubt it was working in Harold’s favor, which at the moment was in their favor.
Besides it had been a while since he broke into the CIA, his skills needed some work. Brandt rolled his eyes, but set up a backup plan, while Julia went to get a Firetruck just in case. Benji, stared at the computer for a long while, then back at Ethan.
‘He did it, didn’t he. The one thing us computer geeks and hackers never thought possible. He built an AI.’
‘Yes and no.’ Ethan shrugged adjusting his look, making sure he was a perfect match from Greer. At this moment he wasn’t sure where the Rogue CIA Agent was located, but he was trusting the info they were given.
‘I can’t hack into it, and I’m good Ethan.’
Hunt turned towards his youngest sibling, giving him a soft smile. He was right, Benji was damn good at his job. IMF wouldn’t threaten to remove him to the Cyber Espionage division on a daily basis if he wasn’t. He had saved their hides more than once, with his fast skills and ability to retask satellites.
‘But you trust it. Trust Harold?’
‘Yes, I do.’
He nodded, frowning slightly. ‘Then let him know I’ll do what it says, but if it goes after my siblings or turns on us…’
He left the threat hanging, always loyal to family.
They all were.
If someone went after one of them, the other three were downright vicious.
They all remember Julia kicking the assassin out a 100 story building, or the time Benji blacked out St. Petersburg. Let alone the fact Brandt had blackmailed a Senator, and Ethan’s rampage through Beijing was still notorious.
‘As long as we don’t try to kill Harold or John, I think we’re fine.’
‘Yeah like going after either of them is a good idea!’ He snorted, then started typing away at the computer. ‘There’s construction on floor twelve, that you can use to get up to the fifteenth level. Also word has it Westen was working for IMF, and is now on a special assignment in New York.’ Benji smirked up at him. ‘I kinda feel sorry for him.’
‘He’ll have the time of his life.’
Benji guided him through the floors, until he was standing in front of the inner, inner server room. They would’ve never found it on their own.
Benji was sitting in the employee lunch room, on the sixth floor, eating a tunafish sandwich, along with chips and a soda. His glasses recorded everything he was seeing, and his computer running diagnostics.
Brandt was up two floors, in the analyst rooms, making sure the new cover for Westen was solid. While Julia was in the training stalls, kicking recruit’s asses.
Everyone was wired in, and prepared for anything. The comms were still working as they moved through the CIA, which surprised him, yet not. Brandt had a least three ways out, Julia another two, and Benji had ran every scenario and given them a 82.3% chance of not being seen.
He put his palm on the platform, then looked into the retina scanner. The door opened with no problem.
Ethan stepped into the room with a sense of dread and awe, then snorted … it looked like every other server room he had broken into. The moment the door closed behind him, he lost communication with the team, but they had suspected that would be a problem, so they would wait with bated breath until Ethan emerged or the alarms started going off.
Whichever happened first.
Following the directions on his phone, Ethan went to the fifth row, second bank, and third terminal.
Typed in a string of codes. Then watched as it started going through the system.
‘Samaritan Files Deleted’
‘Dragon Files Deleted’
He watched as more files just disappeared. “Not sure if you can hear me, but you couldn’t get into this system before because it’s closed? You needed someone to walk you in.”
‘Confirm.’ Typed along the terminal window.
Shit! Ethan stared at the terminal. “So I just unleased you onto the CIA?”
‘Confirm.’
He laughed out loud. “Your welcome.”
‘Job done. Terminal secure.’
“Does Harold know what you’re up to?” He asked, walking out back towards the door.
‘Irrelevant information.’ It popped up as a text message on his phone, then disappeared as quickly.
“Oh naughty.” Hunt looked up at one of the camera’s. “So this means we’re friends?”
‘Asset. Team Asset.’
He paused at the door, and asked. “What does that mean?”
‘Can help Relevant and Irrelevants. Reese – Primary Asset. Helps Irrelevants.’
He read the text messages as they appeared and disappeared as quickly. “So we work for you now.”
‘Confirm.’
Well fuck. Ethan slipped the phone into his pocket, and exited the server room. The moment he got the team on comms, he realized they had a problem. Of course they did, why wouldn’t they.
Greer was in the building.
Ethan slipped into a bathroom, shifted into his normal look, and then headed to meet Brandt, while Julia grabbed Benji. They were close to the exit, when two guards stopped them, stating The Director wanted to see them.
Ethan loved his siblings.
Each of them, looked around, assessed the situation, calculated the odds, then looked at him for confirmation. He had done the exact same thing, but the only difference was that he had a text message saying ‘hold’.
“Sure.” Ethan shrugged. “Not like I have important save the world stuff to-do today. Though I was hoping for some lunch.”
Brandt handed him a candy bar.
They all knew transforming took a lot out him, especially when he flipped disguises. He chowed down on the candy bar through the elevator ride, then licked his fingers as they moved down the corridor to the Director’s Office.
The new Director was more cautious than Weeks, considering he had died a horrible death a few years ago. No one in the CIA was quite sure what had happened, but he was honored with a star and everyone moved on.
“Agent Hunt.” The Director stood and moved around his desk to shake his hand. “I heard about many of exploits.”
“I’m sure half of them are real.” Ethan smiled, then motioned towards his team. “I wouldn’t be able to do half the stuff I do, without my backup.”
Benji waved.
Julia rolled her eyes at him.
While Brandt looked bored.
“Is there a reason you called us to your office like school children?” Julia asked, eyes shifting towards Greer, who was standing in the corner.
“Agent Greer has brought up some charges against your team…” Director frowned at the Agent, before moving back to his desk. “Agent Hunt and his team have exemplary careers …”
“They stole vitale assets from my mission…”
“You mean the mission, where you used a rogue hacker, that is rumoured to have tortured and killed Director Weeks, to hack into the US Navy Missile Guidance System and unleash a missile at your bidding. Which subsequently destroyed your base of operations?” Benji spoke as he grabbed his laptop out of his bag, and walked it over to the director. “Let alone how do you explain, your entrance to the CIA’s private servers.” He opened it and showed The Director video of ‘Greer’ using his clearance to enter said highly classified servers.
“I haven’t been in any servers!”
“Notice he didn’t comment about having Director Weeks killed.” Brandt pointed out, pulling pictures out of his satchel adding them to the Director’s desk. “We’ve been watching him for a while, it would seem IMF was worried about a Rogue Agent inside the CIA trying to solidify power by taking out it’s leadership.”
“The woman you in the photos is Samantha Groves, aka Root. She was ordered to kidnap Weeks, torture him for information about a project he hired Nathan Ingram to design.” Julia added to the tale, pointing out the woman in the picture. “She was arrested, declared insane and put into an institution, when she started threatening former employees of IFT.”
“Greer had her released into his custody, where they started to work together to unleash the program Ingram had developed … Ingram thought he was doing what was good for the country, but come to find out, in the wrong hands, it was dangerous.” Ethan used Harold’s own words, to make the story perfectly believable.
“What was the program?” The Director looked through the images, files, and the video of Greer’s moving through the CIA Headquarters with no hesitation, going into restricted ‘restricted’ areas.
“A computer program, that will get the user into any system. It’s Cyber Terrorism at the highest.” Benji moved closer to the desk, pulling up more footage of Greer’s talking with Root in areas around New York. “The only problem you have to plant it, where you want it. So, for example, if you wanted to hack into the CIA mainframe and get into their secured servers, you would need to get into the server room and upload it.”
“We were given the case, as the CIA wanted an outside influence.” Brandt glanced over at Greer, then back at the director. “We recruited one of your Agents, Michael Westen and put him undercover with Greer, he was the one who gave us the information we needed.”
“Westen was Burned for selling information…” Greer tried to interrupt, but the Director cut him off with one hand gesture.
“Westen is working for IMF.” Hunt ignored the fuming Agent, and focused on his team. “Benji show him the footage of the missile Root released onto US soil.”
The director stared in shock as a missile was launched from USS Ironside and hit an abandoned airfield in upstate New York. “Tell me no one was killed?”
“Just Greer’s men.” Brandt shrugged, as if not caring that some thugs were killed. “Ms. Groves was also killed.”
“Well no loss there,” the Director shook his head. He read over the reports from the Admiral, who was livid at being used as a tool for the CIA. “Someone get Admiral Reinhardt in here, so we can explain the CIA didn’t hijack his ship.” He then looked up at Greer. “Well what do you have to say for yourself?”
“I didn’t do any of this.” He waved his arms at the evidence. “This is them, setting me up. Hunt is a Chameleon Dragon, he could look just like me.”
Ethan blinked a few times. “Okay, I know I’m good, no really I am. But really a chameleon? I worked hard on my disguises, Benji and Brandt here work just has hard to make sure I walk and talk like the mark.”
“Wait?” Benji looked at Brandt, Julia, then at Greer. “Did you say Dragon? As in fire breathing Dragon? I’m from Scotland so yeah I believe in Dragons, but haven’t seen any roaming Langley, well not recently.”
The Director stood, staring down Greer. “So you weren’t working with this Ms. Groves?”
“She was helping me get The Machine, the program that will help us catch terrorists.” Greer tossed his own folder onto the desk. “She said she knew who truly built it, Ingram was just the front man, and that she could control it.”
The Director looked at the folder, reading through the reports. “Who is this Harold Wren?”
“No one.” Brandt shrugged. “We looked him up, couldn’t find him anywhere. We think it was an alias for Mr. Ingram.”
“Who the hell is this ‘Man in the Suit’?” The more he read the more he felt as if he was reading a John le Carre, novel with hints of Tolkien. “You’re telling me that you hired a psychopath who killed the Director of the CIA and at least one Agent, maybe more, to find a ghost.”
“He’s alive, protected by Agent John Reese, the Man in the Suit.”
“Who was declared dead in China, three years ago.” Julia handed him another folder. “Mission gone bad, his partner turned on him. She was later recruited by Greer, looks like Agent Snow, their handler took her out, in the process he was killed. I’m not sure what type of ship you’re running here Director, but a lot of agents are dying. No wonder we were called in.”
The Director dropped the file, and picked up his phone. “Janet get me security.” A few moments later, a group of men and women wearing dark suits walked in. “Greer, you’re under arrest until we can figure out what’s going on.”
“It’s all lies!” He yelled, pulling his arm out of the security officers hand. “They work for Wren, protecting their Dragon.”
Benji’s eyes went wide, as he grabbed his laptop. “Wow, that isn’t awkward or anything.”
“Look in the servers: Operation Samaritan…”
The Director frowned, but he was a man who looked at all angles, that is what CIA Agents did. And if sounded unbelievable it probably was true, though sometimes fantasy was just fantasy. He grabbed his own laptop, and pulled up the operation. He sat down with a thump into his chair, as the lines in his forehead got deeper. “You were working to set up a cyber terrorist attack on our own soil? Steal information from Congress, the White House, and all our Agencies including this one? Let alone our allies, the only ones you weren’t going after was our actually enemies!”
“Wait no … that’s not.” He turned the laptop around to see a detailed report of what he actually wanted to do with The Machine, not the bullshit report he designed. There were no mentions of Harold Wren, Reese or the Dragons.
All his photos of Samaritan, the Dragon, were gone, along with the footage of Reese in the hanger bay. The drug that was designed to keep the dragons controlled, was gone. Everything was gone. Except for incriminating evidence against him.
He had been out played.
Greer stood and looked at Ethan Hunt and his team, who passively stared back. They knew. They knew about the Machine and helped. They set him up.
He didn’t say a word as they dragged him out of the office.
He vowed vengeance.
He wasn’t sure how, but he would destroy Mr. Wren and his Dragons.
The Director blinked a few times, then looked at the IMF team. “I don’t like that IMF was working against the CIA, but for this I understand. Though he has a point, Mr. Hunt I’ve seen your work and you are a chameleon.”
“Thank you.” Ethan bowed his head. “I’m hungry, can we now go and get some food?”
Brandt rolled his eyes and pulled out another candy bar.