"Mori"

"Jeez if my family wasn't in tremendous debt I don't know if I could do this, even with the Rei's" Leon said.

Rei's were almost perfect emotion suppressors imported from Japan as Rei is Japanese for Zero. The company ran with the slogan with marketing campaigns that went, "Take a Rei and you'll be A-OK". Side effects of taking Rei's for too long could be a permanent loss of emotions and a number of Sociopaths HAD been created because of this. Rei's were popular in most Intelligence agencies around the world including the CIA, MOSSAD, MI6 and China's international spy branch.

I was an employee at "Tours", a none too glamorous title but then it didn't wish to gain too much attention. We served under contract for those Intelligence agencies and various rich individuals. Tours is a truly International corp. with no loyalty to any government though they can be bought for 1 year or multi-year contracts.

Well a tour was about ready to start. I had popped a Rei an hour ago that was starting to take effect.

"Oy!!! Time to go!!" Akira said. Akira's facial expression was not one of excitement or resignation rather anticipation for the next check. You see we're paid immediately after every job as we may never come back from any of them. Akira was excited for the check as he purely did this for the money as he WAS a Sociopath. Despite this we were friends as much as one can be on a job like this. Akira was a professional which I respect.

Looking forward a door had been opened so we walked through it with our client who was wearing a green badge. What awaited us were miles upon miles of open forest. A few minutes later a girl would likely show up lost. This forest, along with a few infamous others, has a way of doing that.

Suddenly she showed up right on time and our client proceeded to butcher her; blood was splattered everywhere and her limbs had been chopped off. After this he buried her in a shallow grave while wearing gloves.

"God I hate these sick Triad enforcers, so unprofessional" Akira muttered. "But then they live for the thrill of the kill".

The Enforcer then proceeded to try running off. "Hey knock it off!!! That area's restricted right now, no running off!!!" I yelled and pressed the remote.

It stopped him in his tracks for a moment then he looked at me, smiled and pressed a button on his phone. This resulted in releasing him and he continued.

We had to write this off as a loss, that path was too unstable, even for workers like us. We returned immediately where we were immediately chewed out by our boss in front of the China representative. Akira then stepped in and defended me.

"Sir he followed company protocol. What I want to know is how our "CLIENT" cracked our lock codes," Akira responded. Left unspoken was our belief that some of our Chinese clients were a little TOO inquisitive about our security.

It was known where we traveled we had the most accurate bead on the Wild Zone, within' a meter or two at worst, a few at best. Everyone else was off by a few kilometers even. Tours should be the best as many lives could be lost or altered otherwise if the number were off and matched our counterparts.

Most governments decided to hire us as they didn't think the risk was worth the gain. The Chinese government was looking to compete with us and loved to "take" shortcuts. If you made a regular product and took shortcuts you'd end up with a shoddy product that would fall apart; however, here this would look like Fukushima or Chernobyl multiplied 100 or 1000 fold. They could end up on top or we could all have a fully loaded gun in our mouths, no Russian Roulette.

At best we do a tour a day but usually it's once a week. They had plans to do one every 8 hours. The "Made In China" initiative was still in full swing.

The Representative then loudly complained about the "lost" man then the boss roundly turned to him. "My employee's wear body cams so their conduct is recorded and they are checked before they leave so the devices don't show tampering. Also they are checked automatically when they return for irregularities as well as we have anti-tampering measures. I'll check the videos myself. Make sure he doesn't leave the premises!"

He watched the video then came back red in the face..."Guards, search him with full gloves!"

This response meant a full body cavity search. The guards found nothing as expected but his humiliation was quite enough. After this he blustered about contacting the Embassy or Consulate. He was escorted out with the message that the Chinese government would be getting a year ban, maybe longer.

Taiwanese and those foreign born of Chinese descent were exempt from this ban and still welcome; however because of this incident they would receive bank, stock, board checks as well as government positions. In case you ask general background checks were standard but this was an even deeper dig.

Our company was not mucking around and it goes without saying the room was swept for bugs as soon as he left. Nothing was found except a few nano-casings. Do any of you remember the NASA story about bugs implanted in flies? Yeah like that but smaller and they could self-destruct with a low grade corrosive so as to obscure the time of their placement. Our tech was good enough to place it within' a few months.

Our boss told us about a cleaning, this meant all computers would be switched out. We couldn't risk them matching us in Quantum Entanglement and snagging some of our records. While we keep our intelligence and mission related information on a leash in a box, it never hurt to be careful.

You may wonder why we let these people kill and what exactly these doors are...well Tours operates a Time Machine.

The Machine goes back to low impact zones. These are forests where people mysteriously disappear throughout history. The suspicion now is most of these disappearances and deaths are due to the company. This does not mean there aren't real Supernatural areas, that's where our idiotic client fled.

Time finds a way to mend, time lives and thrives, it IS a living entity. We don't understand and may never understand it.

Thanks to Patricia Marie Allen for the editing.

Copyright Sarang from BigCloset 2020. All rights reserved. Ask for my permission to repost, no modification as well.

Author's note: Comments appreciated.