Somewhere near Limbo/Safe Dimension 001--------

Building 013,Residential Zone

He sat on a cream and black sofa, his eyes glazed, facing a clock on the wall. Behind him, two men sat at tables with serious looking desktop computers playing some sort of shooting game. Their backs faced his back and it looked like two different zone had been created inside the room, one for him staring off into space and the other in the virtual shooting world. As the clock did its job, the doorbell finally rang. The two gamers did not flinch or pay the sound any attention whatsoever while the man on the sofa suddenly got up and focused on the door. He opened the door and put on his usual smile.

"Delivery for Mr. Azisa?"

The courier looked quite bored. Presumably, he looked even more bored in other situations, but today he looked much less bored, possibly due to the fact that he was delivering such a large box. The box on the wheelbarrow was quite large and was marked fragile. It was at least 7 feet tall and 4 feet wide and looked very much like a bed was inside it.

"Ah yes, where do I need to sign?"

"Nowhere, just place your thumb on this screen. You opted for fingerprint verification."

Azisa smiled and did as the courier asked and opened the door further to allow the man to wheel the box inside. The courier looked around the sparsely furnished apartment and at the two gamers who still had not turned around to see who had come in.

Azisa left the door open and followed the courier and gestured towards the wall right next to the gamers. And then helped the courier move the box off the wheelbarrow move it flush against the wall. The courier looked expectantly towards Azisa hoping to see what was inside, but Azisa just smiled at him.

After waiting for about 10 seconds, he got the hint and began to make his way out the door. As he walked out the door with the wheelbarrow he turned to close the door behind him and saw Azisa still watching him and smiling. He reluctantly closed the door and began to exit the building.

Once back in his van, he looked into the rear-view mirror while adjusting it and said, "Nothing of note, failed to plant bug, advise new instructions." As he watched the mirror while stile holding it, he read the words that played over the mirror and simply nodded and then drove off.

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Back in the room, Azisa's eyes had glazed over once again and once the van downstairs drove away, he turned to appraise the box next to him. He placed his hand over the Fragile sticker and green lights began to play around near the edges of where his hand touched the sticker. The sticker was a portable biometric scanner of his own design and several extra features that even thee most advanced biometric scanners did not. Once his hand was verified, the cardboard like sides of the box fell away to reveal a dark blue mettalix box of the same proportions. It was utterly plain except for a small screen near one of the corners. It had a timer that was showing 10 minutes remaining.

Nodding at the sight of this, Azisa cleared away the cardboard sides into another room and sat down on the couch again.

A few minutes later he could hear sounds of arguing approaching the door. While this did not affect the lack of focus, one of the men behind him, got up from his place and began waddling towards the door. The computer he had been using powered down by itself just as he began his waddling. The man was immense and had already begun sweating even though he gone no further than 5 paces. He was about 7 feet tall and looked morbidly obese. He was wearing a punk rock tshirt that barely fit over his humongous torso and polka dot pajama bottoms. Add to that his messed up curly hair and his pitch black face which was covered in warts and acne, he could easily have won an award for person least prepared to be social. Just as the doorbell rang, he reached the door and opened it. The two people who had been arguing outside stopped their argument at the sight of him.

"Hi Gemma, glad to see you, your hair looks good. Ah Tut, Mel sends her regards, c'mon in you two."

As he maneuvered his body to the side, the two guests entered the apartment without a word.

"Have a seat on the couch, we're just waiting on one more person."

As they looked over at the couch where Azisa was sitting, a flash of recogntion went through Gemma's eyes as she recognized her mystery visitor from two months ago. Confusion was the next flash to enter her eyes as she recognized the huge man's voice to be her mystery visitor's voice. However Azisa paid no attention to the two newcomers.

"Oh, dont worry, that's also me, my names Azisa. Glad to have you both on the team. I'll explain the details in a few minutes."

Having said this, the large man closed the door as he left the apartment and waddled away.

Looking around in confusion, Gemma and Tut looked around and caught sight of the highlights of the room. The guy behind the couch playing some game and the dark green box nearby with the timer counting down on it.

"Is that a bomb?" Tut said as he eyed the box with the timer.

And they both promptly jumped as the Azisa on the couch suddenly stood up and said, "No.

That's one of our squad members, he'll wake up when the timer runs out. Small FYI, the massive guy who just left is the real me, this body is just one of my shells. You won't see more of my real body for practical purposes. The guy on the computer behind me is also part of the team though I don't know what his role is."

As they listened to this 'shell', their expressions looked just like a dog looking at a suspicious new food. They turned around in their seats to get a better look at the gamer who had still not acknowledged anybody else till now. The gamer had large solid frame glasses and messy short black hair. He looked pretty tall at about 6 feet or so and was a bit hefty. He looked to be south-Asian or possibly middle eastern with his brown skin and had a 4 day stubble going while wearing a simple Yellow T-shirt with a tribal African mask on it with shiny black basketball shorts. Apart from a significant tire at his waist his arms and legs looked considerably fit.

"Hey, I'm Gemma, this idiot next to me is Tut"

Gemma decided to take the initiative and introduce herself to the gamer but just stood there getting no response as Mr. gamer did nothing except continue to play his game and blink and breathe. As she looked questioningly towards Azisa, he shrugged and said, "I dunno he did talk to me in-game but only regarding the game. He did say his name was Ron."

And then Azisa sat down again and faced the clock again. Silence reigned for a few minutes before Tut finally erupted,

"OKAY, I'M GETTING WEIRDED OUT!!! IT'S TOO WEiRD FOR E........" his voice petered out as he saw the woman who entered the apartment. She was short but looked at everything around her like it was beneath her. She was definitely a knockout though Tut felt that she was lacking a decent cup size. Her petite figure was smaller than Gemma's and looked very close to a child's figure if not for her legs and the air she possessed. Her entire atmosphere said 'A woman has entered the building!'

"Why is this getting weird for you?" Rashida asked seductively as she approached him slowly.

"I'm sorry I was late but I had some trouble finding a good spot to park. Could you fill me in on what's happening here?" she continued to talk as she reached Tut batting her eyelashes demurely all the way.

To his credit, Tut got through two sentences before starting up his feeble flirting engine and another two sentences before he made his first colossally bad idea of the day.

"Well, I'm Tut and this is Gemma and this guy staring off into space is Azisa and he's like drone or something and that guy is Ron, I think. Nothing's happened yet and we were w-waiting on you and the timer on this box."

He made it up to here mainly on routine before he decided in his mind to express his affection by saying, "You have no idea how glad I am to meet you. Maybe we could grab coffee sometime and discuss how glad I am to meet you."

It was at this point he tried to remember the popular flirting techniques he had read about online. The only two things he could remember at this point were to buy a girl something and 'negging' which was to use a negative compliment to bring down the girl's self esteem. Thus he said, " I would love to take you shopping, maybe some jewelry and some fancy lingerie and clothes? Though you really wouldn't need the br--UHH----assssssssssshhhh!!!"

There were two loud sounds as Rashida sank her fist into his gut while Gemma round-housed his jaw from behind and he crashed into the dark green box. Almost as if on cue, the box made a noise like a microwave oven when the dish is ready and the lid popped open with smoke emerging from the inside. As the smoke cleared, a balding middle-aged guy sat up from inside the box and started looking around at the room and it's occupants. As he focused on the two females and their raised arms and the unconscious Tut, he seemed to reach a conclusion and he regained his usual dead-eyed clarity.

To the two women, the man in the box moved incredibly quickly or almost like a how a video is edited. Just as they blinked their surprise away, he was suddenly holding a lit lighter and a very bulky revolver with several strange attachments on it.

As he shut off the lighter, he slowly got off the box to stand on the ground making sure not to step on the fallen Tut. All the while keeping his gun pointed at the two women. He looked around once more and asked, "Where's my bag?"

As Gemma was about to reply, two things happened, Tut groaned and began to clamber onto all fours and at the same time a compartment on the side of the box jumped open. These two incidents coincided at Tut's head which the compartment door smashed. The door had swung open to reveal a backpack. The middle-aged man stepped forward quickly to check on the bag.

As he finished checking the bag, Rashida relaxed her guard, gave a wide smile and said, "Hey relax , we're all friends here, the gun is useless anyways." Seeing her smile, the middle aged man felt a small chill and immediately flicked the lighter on. Once again, the two women to felt as though the picture had changed slightly as if few frames had been edited out.

"No it's not." the middle aged man said and squeezed the trigger. Rashida's fluttering insides abruptly shut down as the the gun quietly spat fire and grazed her neck. She froze stared dumbly at the gun. Gemma tensed up as she she heard the suppressed round punch into the wall behind her.

The room fell silent once more. The middle aged man didn't move, the two women didn't move, the man sitting on the couch didn't move, the dizzy Tut sat with his back against the box and the gamer sat there playing his game.

After about twenty seconds, Azisa finally stood up again, causing 4 people to look at him.

"Excellent, we're all here, Mr. Bink you won't need that gun for this meeting, why don't you come and sit next to me? Ms. Gemma, Ms. Rashida come and sit down, you look so tense and Tut, let me give you hand, there we go, OK? Just sit on this chair here. Drink some water, there you go."

As he organized the seating for the four people, he finally sat down at his earlier spot and looked at them all approvingly and sighed in contentment. He took a breath and smiled happily and said,

"Welcome all, to the Counter-Intelligence division. As the founding members, let have our first Best team meeting ever!!!"

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I'm not completely back, real life continues to beat me up but I'll try my best. Expect any further chapters to be released irregularly.

Do point out any mistakes you find and review/comment please.