Despite my initial objections, I learned a valuable thing about myself on that day: the only thing I hated more than flying and riding in canoes was doing both at the same time at night.  Especially when there was no visible means of slowing our descent, and the only other person in the canoe was Shannon Anderson.

I clung to a mattress rolled up and tied to the inside of the canoe, screaming uncontrollably at both our imminent doom and the nauseating spinning motion of the boat, while Shannon straddled the whole thing with his abnormally-long legs.  By the looks of it, he was mildly annoyed.
“You know, Egbert,” he mused, somehow audible over the whistling wind, “I don’t think those people on the plane liked us very much…”
I caught my breath long enough to say, “Forget what they thought of us!  We’re falling out of the sky in a wooden boat with no parachute!  Do something!”
Instead of doing something, Shannon merely continued to stand over me and stroke his chin, deep in irrational thought.
Then he lifted me up with one arm and raised me over his head with his superhuman strength.  I naively looked down and felt my eyes go wide when I saw the night-black Indian Ocean swirling beneath me; the moonlight softly glinting off it did not help.
“I’ll throw you upward right before we hit the surface!” he said.  “Since that’ll be a force opposite to the direction we’re travelling, I think, that’ll decrease your memento!”
“It’s momentum, Shannon!  Now hurry up and get ready to toss me or I’ll die from the impact!”
I closed my eyes, horrified that I’d actually told Shannon Anderson of all people to toss me.  I wondered if getting my ribcage shattered by water or by an abnormally-strong throw would hurt more.  My thoughts were interrupted when Shannon poked me with his pointy umbrella.
“Take my umbrella!  It’s a titanium reinforced expandable survival combat anti-projectile parasol!  TRESCAP for short!  It’ll act as a parachute if you expand it to full width!”
I grabbed the umbrella out of Shannon’s hand, and that same hand went under me.
“I’m going to throw you now!” shouted Shannon.
After bracing myself, I felt the whistling of the wind lessen as I was thrown high into the air.  Shannon had thrown me faster than any normal human being ever would be able to; I feared that the force of acceleration alone had damaged something.
A mere second later a loud splash thumped from under me.
When I opened my eyes I saw only the dark sky, the sea below me, and the bright orange umbrella - or, as Shannon liked to call it, the “titanium reinforced expandable survival combat anti-projectile parasol” - grasped tightly in my hands.  I could feel my ascent slowing so I frantically fumbled around for the catch that would open it, and the secondary catch behind it that would cause it to expand to full size, and I hit both with my thumb.  The umbrella jerked open and became an enormous shadow over my head, at least fifteen feet wide.  I clung to that umbrella for dear life.  The wind wasn’t quite as loud anymore.
Directly beneath me I saw the foam from the canoe’s splashdown subsiding in the moonlight’s reflection.  The heavenly spotlight also highlighted the appearance of several shattered canoe fragments, the opened mattress, and no Shannon to be seen.  But I had no time to worry about what he was up to; I needed to land on the mattress!

I leaned forward and backward and to the sides in such a way that I would land directly on top of the mattress, and when I was about six feet above it, I reached upward into the canopy and pulled the umbrella back into its resting state.  I dropped on to the lumpy mattress beneath me with a slight bounce as I landed.  A bit of water crept on to the mattress, but I paid it no mind, for I had survived.

The plane we were pushed out of disappeared into the western sky - and hopefully out of my life forever.  It faded into the fabric of the vast black canvas of stars, becoming one with the moon, which loomed over the edge of the world.  I knew that the sky didn’t work that way, as any educated man would, but I imagined it crashing into the moon, instead of arriving safely at its destination in Persia.
It was usually at this time that Shannon would pop above the water and interrupt my thoughts with some sort of stupid conjecture, but nothing interrupted my thoughts except for my growing suspicion that something must have prevented him from surfacing.  Maybe this time the fall proved too much even for him.  He’d been able to bounce back from any injury in no time flat and walk off blows that would debilitate a normal person, so I had just begun to take his continued presence for granted.  What if his legendary vitality had finally given out?  What if he had died down there?  What if Shannon Anderson was at last… gone forever…?  If this were a year ago, I would have been positively ecstatic, but then… then I had just begun to warm up to him.  He meant well, his heart was always in the right place, and whether I would admit it or not even then, he helped me, and he had saved my life several times, including that day.  He was a friend.  I…
But sure enough those thoughts were interrupted by the sloshing noise of Shannon lumbering out of the water.  He let out a groan of effort as he pushed his side of the floating mattress down under him while climbing on.
“We made it, Egbert!” he said.  I was speechless.

Shannon heaved himself on to the makeshift raft.  His bright orange coat and black pants were heavy with seawater, and his precious hat was missing.  Some patches of his attire had a deep red hue.
“Shannon,” I said, pointing to the large wooden shard sticking out of his abdomen, “you’re bleeding.”  He looked at the shard, which prevented his skin from sealing, and reacted with what could only be described as mild surprise.
“Oh.  So I am.”
He tore the fist-sized wooden spike out of his stomach with his bare hands, barely even flinching, and a brief squirt of blood escaped before the wound completely disappeared like it had never been there.
“I thought I got the last one out.  Ah, well, they’re all out now.”
He collapsed on the mattress as if it were a featherbed in his own room back home.  Home, I thought.  When will we ever go back?  How long has it been since I last set foot in my St. Louis house, or taught a lecture in Washington University like I’m supposed to be doing now?  How long since we’ve been anywhere in the United States at all?  I hope that this adventure ends soon.  I’ll have a good story to tell the kids, and I’ll die peacefully of old age instead of by beheading or falling off a plane.  People like those Shadow-World smugglers only serve to make me more homesick.
“Note to self,” I muttered, “never trust a smuggler in an unmarked plane.  It’s people like that who make me never want to return to the Empire of Siberia ever again.  We should have known that those people were cheapskates and scoundrels when their leader tipped his hat to us…”
Schlock catapulted up with saucer-wide eyes.
“EgberohmyGodIdon’thavemyhat!” he said.
He swiped the TRESCAP from my hands and opened it up so that its hidden compartments were visible, opened one and pulled out a folded-up shovelhead, unfolded the shovel, unscrewed the spear tip, put the shovel on the top of the umbrella, and used it as an oar to row us to the shore with surprising speed.  The sun was faintly rising over the island in front of us.  The dark waves lapped at a rocky coast by a small forest.
Shannon rowed our little raft right into a rock, on which it became stuck.  He leapt out of the raft and began to frantically search for his hat.  He overturned several rocks and looked behind plants while I sat on a rock compliantly.  I had almost fallen asleep when he announced that he had found his hat.

The sun did not quite shine on us yet as we stumbled through the forest.  We encountered many rocks, small wildlife, and leaves.  My already-torn and blemished coat was littered with leaves, which I quickly brushed off, but Shannon seemed to wear the fallen foliage with pride.  The sun rose over the forest behind us.  The sunlight crept along the ground and illuminated a town in the distance.  Smoke rose from chimneys, indicating that some form of civilization existed here.  I stopped to take a good look at our destination, and Shannon stepped forward with a huge grin on his face and spread his arms wide as if to embrace the whole island.

“Egbert,” he said, “Welcome to the Commonwealth!”

I began walking towards the city of Jaffna along with Shannon.
“I wouldn’t quite call this ‘the Commonwealth’...”
“Professor, buddy old pal, you university types of all people should know that the Commonwealth is more than just Britain and Canada.  It’s a confederation of all of the former British territories, and it includes places like Singapore, the Malay States, India, South Africa, and right here in Ceylon!  You need to get out more, Egbert; the world extends much further than the city limits of Saint Louis, New York and London.”
“In those places, people don’t toss you out of planes over the ocean…”
Shannon punched me in the shoulder.
“You need to lighten up too!  We’re on vacation; have a little fun!”  He marched ahead towards Jaffna with the gait of a soldier in a gaudy marching band, despite being in a torn, bloodied orange coat (and a somehow intact orange stovepipe hat).  I elbowed him to get his attention.
“Shannon… we didn’t board a plane owned by Shadow operatives, get tossed out of said plane, trudge through the forest, and walk several miles to town on foot in ruined clothing for a vacation.  We’re here to meet up with Melissa by the Muneeswaran Temple, and then make our way to the hotel where we’ll find that informant that Cottonmouth told us about.  Then we can find out what to do, perhaps sabotage some more Shadow World technology, perhaps neutralize another blazing Augment, and then perhaps we can go home and get back to our lives.”
I adjusted my gray fedora, which was not as intact as Shannon’s ridiculous hat.  Schlock pouted and crossed his arms.
“Always the killjoy, you are.”  He threw up his lanky arms.  “Fine.  We’ll find Melissa and then meet this informant.  I wish that Copperhead were more specific as to where she is other than just ‘the hotel’.  If we were on a vacation, then we wouldn’t need to know the specifics, we’d just roll with it, you know…?”

Before we did anything, though, we needed to find a place in the city where we could get our clothes repaired.  Given the somewhat rigid class system that was common in Hindu societies, this was easier said than done; numerous store owners turned us down because they didn’t think we had enough money to pay for repairs, judging from our attire.  We finally located a tailor who owned the garish neon orange fabric that composed Shannon’s only clothing after two hours of wandering around.

On our way to Muneeswaran Temple, we had a brief discussion.
“What I will never understand,” rambled Shannon, “is why not one but several tailors would turn down two foreign travellers, one of whom understands Tamil with near-native fluency, with fancy suits in need of repairs.  If anything, they should have been positively overjoyed to have our business.”
I shrugged.
“Look on the bright side, Egbert; we managed to make up a bit of the money we spent on repairs; with our awful clothing, we looked so poor that at least a dozen random passerby gave us alms!  We should try walking around town in ruined clothing more often!”

On our walk to the Muneeswaran Temple, I decided to take in our surroundings.  The sun that was once barely shining was now high up in the sky, practically boiling me in my heavy gray coat, and the humidity was nearly unbearable.  That being said, the city itself looked quite nice, very Commonwealth indeed.  It looked somewhat like a small city in Europe in terms of architecture (it was, after all, originally a Portuguese colony), save for a few older buildings that closer reflected this country’s medieval Asian past, though all the signs were written in Tamil.  I could not speak Tamil, but Shannon appeared to be able to read and speak the language with surprising fluency, and was fascinated with all of the signs.  Some colorful festival decorations had been set up in the houses and stores, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on just what was being celebrated.  The people all around seemed festive, though, despite their drab clothing.
The clothes of the people of Jaffna were not quite as extravagant as our own, or anything worn by a typical Washington University professor.  Maybe it was because of the tropical heat, or the lesser economic condition of this little island, or a combination of both.  I would have expected a Commonwealth country to have better living conditions.  What’s more, sanitation seemed to be a concern here as well, and a number of other amenities.  Ceylon likely wasn’t exactly a favorite of Commonwealth central leadership.

At the Muneeswaran Temple, a golden-looking Hindu-revival place of worship with a courtyard surrounded by lofty golden arches, Melissa was leaning against one of the pillars.  She wore a light blue and gray dress, very lightweight and loose-fitting to protect from the heat, and her eyes wandered around the temple, admiring the architecture not commonly seen back in Missouri.  Several people attempted to approach her and talk to her, but she didn’t pay them any attention; she didn’t speak a lick of Tamil.
“Miss Melissa!” I said as I approached to shake her hand.  Expression returned to her face as she reciprocated the handshake.
“Professor Egbert, it does my heart glad to see that you and Mr. Anderson survived.  I saw your ordeal with the canoe from my window.  I thought that you two would have either drowned or been shattered by the fall into the ocean!”
She smiled and turned to Schlock.
“Mr. Anderson, I…”
Shannon cut her off and leaned in close to her ear.
“Those people are trying to tell you that you’re littering on temple grounds,” he whispered.
Melissa looked down at the multiple cardboard boxes filled with half-eaten food at her feet and the two empty milk cartons that weren’t being carried away by squirrels.  All around us there were onlookers gawking at the mess Melissa had made.  I too wondered just how she managed to carry all of that outside.
“I don’t have a garbage can at my hotel room,” she said.  “I was going to haul all of this to the garbage dump, but I saw a clock; it was at seven, when you were supposed to be here, two hours ago!”
Schlock grabbed us both by the wrists, almost tripping Melissa on one of the milk cartons, walking us away from the temple at an almost-running speed.
“Shannon,” I said, “would you please tell those kind people the reason there’s garbage at the temple, since you alone can speak Tamil?”
“I’m afraid not, Egbert,” he said without even looking me in the eye, “for we need to find our contact!  No time to waste on pleasantries!”
Both Melissa and I grumbled as we looked back at all of the people being disgusted at the garbage.  We decided it was pointless and followed our favorite madman down the road.

Later on, there we were, in the middle of town - Shannon Anderson, the youthful “Master Detective”; Melissa O’Dean, the slightly older globetrotting historian; and I, the eldest, Philip R. Egbert, professor of chemistry at Washington University - completely clueless as to where to go next.

“Melissa,” said I, “do you have sufficient historical knowledge of this city to find our informant?”
Melissa shook her head.
“I don’t suppose you’d be able to determine our guy’s chemical composition and ask around for someone who matches it?”
I shrugged.
“Mr. Anderson,” said Melissa, “can you figure out anything?”
Shannon shrugged as well.
“For once in my life, I’ve got nothing.  There aren’t any clues, not even here in the center of town.”  He gestured towards the entire city with his arms.
He shouted something in Tamil, and then in some sort of broken Sinhala, something about Agent Viper.  He got no response.
We waited in that same place for several minutes in silence.

“Do you still have the note that Copperhead gave us?” I asked Shannon.
He perked up and fished into his seemingly-bottomless left pocket.
“Of course I do!”
He held up the note, sealed in the waterproof envelope it came in, with Agent Copperhead’s emblem stamped on the cover.  Melissa looked at the note with curiosity.
“I knew Copperhead was obsessed with being prepared, but I had no clue that he would go so far as to waterproof his coded letters.”  She chuckled.  “I guess his paranoia paid off, considering the events of this morning.”
I took the letter and opened it.  The familiar message was written there once I opened it.  It was written in a sort of code, completely unreadable to one without the proper equipment, but we had written down on separate notes what it said:

Dear Messrs Anderson and Egbert,

I am afraid what Hendricks Junior has said is very much true; there is a great disturbance in the Shadow World, one that threatens to grow and bring chaos to the whole world as we know it.  Several Shadow-factions have gone militant, launching a secret war behind the curtain of the current era of peace.  Though you may not immediately feel its effects and echoes, to say that the Shadow World is on fire would not be too much of an overstatement.  Leaders of Shadow-factions have been assassinated at thrice the normal rate this year alone.  It is even starting to leak into surface-world politics, and the integrity of the League of Nations is beginning to crumble.  This all is true, and it is happening as I type this, because one Shadow-faction has discovered a technology that could end our current era of civilization.

A scientist from the Serbia, a man named Nikola Tesla, a somewhat secretive individual in the surface world just beginning to dip his toes in the Shadow, has formed an alliance with former business rival Thomas Edison and teamed up with prominent Siberian cyberneticist Igor Kurchatov, and German physicist Albert Einstein, to create a small, homebrew Shadow-faction.  Their Shadow-faction, the Long Island Project, has been conducting some experiments in both cybernetics and Augmentation, two extremely different fields of expertise, likely in order to fuse the disciplines together.  And if my informants are correct, then this theoretical union of Augmentation, the most tangible of supernatural powers, and cybernetics, the next step in human evolution, is almost complete.

I don’t quite know what this entails, but my informants are calling it “Y”.  Its name may have some sort of mathematical or philosophical significance, but its Shadow and surface world effects I can clearly see all around me.  The Long Island Project has ties to the United States Dark Ops and the Soviet Union’s Shadow Commissariat, but when “Y” started to seem like a realistic possibility, some less-polite Shadow-factions caught notice, such as the Knights Templar, the National Socialist Faction of the German Confederacy, and even the Illuminati Council.  All of the big players want their hands on “Y”, or at least a stake in its production, and they are slaughtering each other for that chance.  I’ll admit, we at the Agency are not without blood on our hands, as we have engaged in some proxy scuffles with some satellite factions of the Illuminati and the Invisible Empire of the South for information.  Let it never be said that the Agency doesn’t fight tooth and nail to be the best information brokers in either World!

I do not know much myself, as small-scale, “deep-Shadow” factions are not my beat, and by Agency protocol Agents are not allowed to share information unless approved by a superior, but I know of someone who can be of help: in a hotel in Jaffna there is a person I will refer to as Agent Viper.  From what I understand, the whole “Y” conflict has been her specialty for several years now, so she should have some information for you.  Her exact location I cannot reveal, but if you read between the lines and without your eyes, then you will practically be able to taste her location.  I wish you the best of luck, and hope that this truly doesn’t spell the end of the world.

Warm regards, Copperhead.

“‘Read between the lines’...” I mused, “...’you will’... ‘be able to taste her location’...”
I was about to put the letter back in its case when the riddle finally clicked in my mind.  While I had no clue how I could miss something so obvious, I did have a clue as to where to find Agent Sidewinder.
I had to lick the note.

As I opened my mouth I remembered just how much I loathed the texture of this particular kind of paper, but I ignored it as I ran my tongue across the surface of the letter, being careful enough to taste it in the spaces between the paragraphs as the note implied.  I started with the first space, right under “Dear Messrs Anderson and Egregius”.
It was silver.  I couldn’t see it, but the paper (which thankfully did not become soggy when I licked it) tasted exactly like silver.  Element 47, Ag, the best electrical conductor on Earth.  I knew what it was, for I had memorized the identifiable characteristics of every element in the periodic table so I could dispense information at a student’s request and not pause a lecture to look it up.  Silver tasted a very distinct metallic sweet and sour, and this was it!
But “silver” didn’t give me any information, not yet.  I needed to lick the rest of the letter to decipher the hidden meaning!  I licked the second space (“... era of civilization”), and it was some sort of fish.  I couldn’t tell what kind of fish it was.
“My word!” said Melissa.  “Why on Earth are you licking the letter?  It’s not going to make hidden information appear if you lick it!”
I showed her the slightly moist piece of unreadable paper.
“As a matter of fact, it will make hidden information appear.  ‘Read between the lines’... ‘taste her location’... it was all so obvious!”
I pointed to the moist sections of the letter, with the silver and the fish.
“Different tastes are embedded into the paper itself, like some sort of perfume!  The first one tastes like silver, I know that much.  But the second one is some kind of fish.  My mind keeps going to ‘silverfish’, but that tells me nothing.”
“Hmmm…” hmmm’d Melissa.  “Before I was a historian, when I was in high school, I worked with my parents at a fishery.  I tasted all kinds of fish, and I still eat a wide variety of seafood, so I should be able to figure out what this particular fish tastes like.”
She grabbed the letter and cautiously licked it.
“This is definitely salmon,” she said, nodding.
Shannon turned around towards us and stopped pouting.
“‘Silver salmon’...?” he said.  “Isn’t that the name of the hotel that we were planning on staying in, Egregius?”
I practically jumped how excited I was; we had found out how to find Viper!  But there were still spaces below it, which might have held more valuable information.  I licked all of the spaces from top to bottom, taking time to figure out the chemical composition of each.
The third space tasted of a moderate amount of potassium (it tends to change in taste the larger quantity it is in).  It was element 19, so it could mean that Sidewinder was staying in room 19 of the Silver Salmon hotel.  The fourth, well, it didn’t have a taste, but it turned yellow and immediately smelt of gladiolus, which I could recognize as it is the flower Shannon sticks in his hat for dramatic flair.  That likely had some significance of some sort.  On the fifth and final row, it was two different tastes; one was the distinct blood-like tang of iron, and the second was the signature sweet taste of lead.  Element 26, then element 82; Fe and Pb.  Strange… I wondered why those were there.  Perhaps iron implied strength, and “lead” was used in the other sense of the word as well, asking me to provide “strong leadership”?  I’d find out when I got to Viper; she would be able to tell me what this means.

I pointed north, in the direction of the Silver Salmon hotel.
“Let us make haste!  We know the way there, and the sooner we find Viper, then the more likely we will be to prevent catastrophe in time!  We will make the journey in the quick and efficient way: on foot.”
I walked a good one-hundred feet ahead when I noticed the pair were not following me.
“Let’s get a cab instead, Egbert,” yawned Schlock.
As I was about to object, Melissa nodded in agreement.
“A taxi will take us there faster than we’d ever hope to walk.  What’s a little wait and a few pounds sterling to hasten the prevention of a global cataclysm?”
I grumbled and stood with them as they attempted to hail a cab.  A few minutes later a taxi pulled up and we boarded.  We told the driver to take us to the Silver Salmon hotel, and we were there in a matter of minutes.  Though I was relieved at the surprising brevity of our journey, under no circumstances would I admit that Shannon was right.

The Silver Salmon hotel was nothing special.  It looked like it had been built in the early thirties, so it was reasonably modern, only a decade or so old, but it wasn’t exactly my idea of luxurious.  The basics were there, and a little carpeting, some paintings and floral wallpaper, but that was all of note.
While the other two in the team went to look for room 19, I asked the hotel clerk about the occupant of room 19, and he told me that said room was not, and had never been, occupied by a person who looked like Viper (as depicted in a photograph sent with the letter from Copperhead), but I reasoned that it must have been an Agency trick.  For all I knew, Agents could shapeshift or become invisible or something.  This made me grateful I had deciphered the letter’s hidden message; if it weren’t there, then we’d never find Viper.  It was a long shot, and the chances were I hadn’t figured it out correctly, but it was the only hope we had.

We came to room 19 on the bottom floor (there were only two floors).  The doorknob had been replaced with a four-digit combination lock, much like those that Cottonmouth put on all of his belongings at his compound.
“Well,” said Melissa, “what’ll we do now?”
I pushed both of the others aside and stood at the door.
“I’ll need to display that ‘strong leadership’ that Copperhead told me to possess.”
I knocked very firmly on the door five times.
“Excuse me, madam?” I said as loud as I could without shouting.  “We have been sent by an associate and colleague of yours, who has informed us that you could be of assistance in ascertaining the intentions of an international multidisciplinary scientific conspiracy!”
No response.
“Wait a minute…” said Shannon.  “Egbert, what was the last taste-thing on the letter?”
“It was split between iron and lead.  I assume that Copperhead is asking for my strong leadership in the coming days.”
Melissa chuckled.
“Do you really think that Agent Copperhead of all people would ask for your ‘strong leadership’?!  Because if you do, then we know two very different snake-themed information brokers!”
She laughed more, but was cut off by Shannon’s thoughts.
“Hold on a minute… Egbert… what are the aethetic numbers for iron and lead?”
I sighed.
“The atomic numbers for iron and lead are twenty-three and eighty-two respectively.”
“Since together those have four digits in total… and the lock has four digits…”
He pointed his finger in the air with a dopey smile, and then entered the combination “2382” into the lock.
“ … that must mean that the last row… “
He pushed the button.  A mechanism inside it clicked, and the door opened.
“ … is the combination to the door!”

We gawked as the door fell open.  The whole room was dark and in a state of decay, and the bed had been replaced with a work station, a sleeping bag in the corner taking its place.  Several stacks of room service trays stretched from the floor to the ceiling.  How somebody could live like this for several years was beyond me.  Nobody appeared to be inside.
We took great caution as we entered, making sure our steps made no sound.  We soon found our way into the bedroom.  Shannon was in front, Melissa in the middle, and I last.  Shannon poked his arm around the corner to check for anyone there.  A normal person would consider that a forfeit of subtlety and of their lives, but Shannon’s hand was in no danger.
Once he was confident that nothing was waiting around the corner, he withdrew his hand to give us the thumbs up.
Or at least he would if he weren’t missing his entire hand.

It did not go missing for long, for what looked like Shannon’s disembodied hand was tossed around the corner at his face.  While he was distracted, a hand attached to an arm grabbed him by the collar and nailed him to the floor.  Melissa and I stood back in terror.  Now in view was Shannon’s attacker.  She was of husky build and wore beige pyjamas.  The strange pyjama-clad recluse brandished a bloody cleaver knife, but on her back was some sort of large sword in a big, blocky sheath.  It was Agent Viper.

I drew my hunting rifle, which I had cleverly concealed in my pants the whole time, and pointed it at Viper.
“Agent Viper,” said I, “stand down.  We are friends of the Agency…”
“ … sent to assassinate me, right?” interrupted Viper in her vaguely-Australian accent.  “I left the Agency after that little incident during the last Illuminati Council meeting in Paris.  ‘Best Information Brokers in Either World’, huh?  ‘Best’ at throwing away civilian lives to get little tidbits of information!  ‘Best’ at selling out the Protectors Syndicate to the National Socialists and the scumbag Invisible Empire!  I work alone now, and you can tell all that to your superior officer.”
We all looked at Shannon’s bleeding wrist - which wasn’t bleeding, for a new hand was quickly growing back.  The quiet chirping of the microorganisms repairing Shannon’s hand made the pale face of the former Agent crouching over him change from stoicism to an expression of fear.  Melissa and I just watched, because we had become used to Shannon being able to do this.
“An Augment!” she gasped.
Shannon used his inhuman strength to throw Viper into a wall in one fluid motion.  He whipped out his umbrella and activated a catch on the side, causing the blade tip to extend to full length.
“En freaking garde!”
Viper discarded the knife and unsheathed her sword.  It made a somewhat lower chirping sound, but very similar to the soft noise of Shannon’s symbiotic microorganisms.  Shannon raised his umbrella to guard himself, for this was the one weapon that could harm him: an anti-symbiotic blade.
Viper slashed at Shannon, but he raised his umbrella to defend himself.  The blade didn’t cut the umbrella, for it was not good at cutting much but skin, though when it cut through Augment skin, the flesh beneath does not regenerate.
I tried to aim my hunting rifle, but Shannon moved around a great deal to strike at Viper from the side, though his umbrella was parried by the flat side of the ASB, and I didn’t want to risk merely distracting Shannon, for that could have been his undoing.
The ASB chirped louder as Viper slashed at Shannon again.  He parried again, but the impact was enough to throw him to the wall.  An instant later he charged back at her and thrusted only to be deflected.  Shannon swung away from her and used the blunt shaft of the umbrella as a bludgeoning tool to launch Viper sideways at the other wall.  They were moving far too fast for me to land a shot.  It wouldn’t have mattered anyway, because Viper had an ASB, which meant that she was either a cyborg or an Augment (and if she were a cyborg, it would be very obvious), and a bullet would not harm an Augment.  It would only distract her, though that would not help Shannon, for he did not have an ASB in his TRESCAP.
The fight continued much like this, as a stalemate of lightning-quick blows so hard both fighters were knocked back, only to charge forth and collide again.  Melissa and I could only watch as spectators.
About a minute after we had entered the room, the two collided in the middle of the room, their blades locked, their strength matched.  But then Viper punched Shannon in the shoulder, sending him careening into me.  He knocked me over and sat up on my lap.  Viper charged, and my immediate thought was this is the end!
But then Viper stopped.  Shannon was no longer on my lap.  He was simply… gone.
Of course, nothing truly disappears, for he appeared behind Viper a second later.  Before she could react, he shoved her aside with the blunt end of his umbrella, slamming her against a wall.  Viper, taken totally by surprise, collapsed on the floor.

I aimed my rifle at her, but she looked at it and weakly chuckled.
“Go on, assassin,” she sneered, “shoot me in the head, if your aim is good enough.  But if that rifle and the dumb umbrella are the best weapons you clowns have, it won’t do much.”
Viper laughed and breathed heavily, until the laugh subsided into nothing and she just breathed in and out, looking down the barrel of the rifle.
Melissa broke the silence as she crouched down in front of Viper.
“Miss… Viper…?” said Melissa, unsure of Viper’s real name, if one existed.  “We’re not assassins.  We thought you were an Agent; the Agency sent us to you for information.”
“Of course they did,” said Viper.  “They just want me to come back to them and keep fishing for micro-conspiracies too deep in the Shadow to be significant.  And especially now since my area of expertise has suddenly become all-important now that the Long Island Project is the new Holy Grail of the Shadow World.  But they won’t have me back.  I’m staking my own claim; I’ll create my own Shadow faction and do my own research on my own.”
“Well… would you and your new Shadow faction like to be paid to provide us with some intel on the Long Island Project and ‘Y’?  Perhaps for… two thousand dollars…?”
Viper contemplated this, and then her eyes lit up like a pair of gold coins.
“I graciously accept your generous offer.  Now where’s my ‘two thousand dollars’?”
“In the treasury of the Saint Louis History Museum.  Now where’s my information?”
Viper hmphed and crossed her arms.  She tried her best to look angry, but with her giraffe pajamas, this was somewhat difficult.  She then shrugged and relented.
“Fine.  Keep me waiting, why don’t you?  I’ll tell you what I know about the Long Island Project.”
We all sat down, and Shannon nodded to urge her to continue.
“The Long Island Project is somewhat small for a Shadow-faction of its importance, but its few members are very distinguished scientists and Shadow-operatives.  For those with actual Shadow connections outside of the Project, those connections are far and wide.  Some American and European businessmen and politicians and even a former Knight Templar or two are among their ranks.  There’s also some Soviet scientists, occultists, and a few African colonial administrators for good measure.  Not only are they making big waves in the Shadow World, they’re actively pulling strings.  They aren’t recruiting new members, but rather recruiting entire factions.  Even the Priesthood of Horus and the House of Khan have sworn fealty to the goals of the Project.  In less than a decade, they’ve ascended to a level of secret power that rivals that of the Old Guard; the Illuminati Order are scrambling to rally their satellite factions and ancient connections to maintain the status quo, but even the High Council themselves are divided, since about half of them want the second most powerful Shadow faction on the planet to submit to the Long Island Project.  Knights Templar are abandoning the knightly order in record numbers, and it seems like the Templars may relinquish their crown to either the Knights’ various vassals, to the Illuminati, or even to Long Island.
“And this is all happening why?  Well, it’s happening exactly because of ‘Y’.  I have no clue about the exact details of Y, but from what I gather, it’s some sort of weapon involving Augmentation technology, and I’m sure you of all people know how dangerous Augmentation can be without being explicitly weaponized.  The very scant scientific information I’ve read was somewhat… gruesome, not to mention highly unethical, even for a Deep Shadow faction.  Some stuff about vivisection, shoving machines into a guy’s body… but the point is, it’s a weapon, and judging by how much the Project been promoting it, it’s really powerful.”
Melissa stood up, stroking her heroic chin in contemplation while I helped Viper get up.  She was much heavier than she looked, though I’m not sure if it was from muscle or some other thing.
“If it’s so sought-after,” pondered Melissa, “perhaps it’s a weapon that transcends tactical weaponry.  A weapon on the level of grand strategy… Until now, a mere weapon couldn’t be a factor in international policy, only the threat of warfare… but a weapon that strong?  It would change the political landscape of the whole world as we know it.
“We need to find more information,” she said to Viper, suddenly as stern as she was when she scolded Shannon for destroying a display when we first met.  “This really could be the end of the world.”
Viper let out a venomous chuckle.
“Do you think I didn’t know that?  I’m the one who told you this a minute ago, remember?  I knew that it was super-important; why else would the Agency be so desperate to have me back?  But I agree; I need to find more information.  If I can be the one to prevent the Shadow World from being torn inside out, I could recruit enough people to found a Shadow reporter faction to rival the Agency!”
And with that Viper began to walk out of the door, as if she were already a rich woman.
“And you can forget your payment; this adventure is going to pay for itself!”

Boom, we heard.  Boom.  Boom!  Bo-boom!  Something was exploding nearby.  A few people were screaming as well.  I simply paused, and made no noise, so I could hear it again and try to figure out what it was.
Shannon, whipping his head in the direction of the explosions like a hound that heard his master whistle, ran down the hallway, through the lobby, and out the doors faster than I’d ever seen him run before.  After looking at each other, we ran after him.

All around the hotel there was chaos.  People were scrambling out of the city, away from the coast.  Buildings were damaged, in ruins, or on fire.  Alarms sounded.  Commonwealth soldiers were fleeing like crazed civilians.
Shannon Anderson stood dumbfounded on a beach by the hotel.  His jaw was slack and his eyes were wide.  For once in seemingly his entire life, he was motionless.  I wondered what he was looking at that was so scary that he almost ceased to be himself.  I cautiously looked in the same direction, and I only saw the ocean and the horizon.

On that ocean was the biggest battleship I’d ever seen, and it had just fired a massive volley at us.  The flag of the Knights Templar flew high over the stern of the dreadnought as the fiery projectiles descended upon me.