The King of City

14 THE COMPANY

"Who do you say sent you?" asked the person in charge of receiving new applicants to belong to the Grey Umbrella Safety Company, this company was in charge of training the agents dedicated to protecting the most influential and important people in Lucien, those who infiltrated the lives of their protected in order to safeguard their integrity from any eventual danger, reason why their applicants had to go through a series of physical and mental tests to be able to enter and be trained by the best members of Grey Umbrella Safety.

"Agent Huny," Said Lionel very seriously, who in the midst of his investigations was able to find the name of a former company agent retired a few years ago and who had an excellent track record there.

"You are a lucky guy, Huny almost never recommends any applicant," the woman told Lionel. "Go ahead, first we will do some medical evaluations and then pass it with the agents in charge of each of the tests”.

"As you say, miss," said Lionel, who was willing to pass these tests in order to find new clues to Elizabeth's whereabouts.

"Last name and name!" the doctor exclaimed as he examined Lionel. "Well boys, you are in good physical condition, you are apt to present the evidence.

“Good luck, this company is only entered by 1 out of twenty applicants” sentenced the doctor as he left, Lionel wasn’t frightened by the man's comment because he was unaware of the thousands of missions he had attended as Frederic's agent and in no way could they be compared to tests to be an escort.

The applicants were called by an agent who didn’t look so young because some grey hair appeared, he looked about 45 years old, he had pants with the logo of a dark grey umbrella and wore a white shirt with the same logo. The man was tall and intimidating.

"Welcome recruits, I’m Mark and I’ll be in charge of guiding you in this first phase of testing, there will be five days of very demanding tests, for each test five of you will be eliminated and, in the end, only five will advance to the other phase". Mark told the thirty applicants, who then proceeded to order them to form in order to continue their explanation.

"I’m going to give each one a uniform, you must give me all your belongings you will understand that we don’t want any kind of distraction" Mark continued as he passed delivering each uniform.

"CHANGE HERE, I SEE YOU! YOU HAVE A MINUTE!”. Mark yelled, pressing the men who immediately proceeded to obey his order.

"Well princesses, the first test is to swim 100 meters until you reach that blue mesh that is on the lake, then they must climb on it and reach the platforms that are floating in the water, those platforms will take you to the mainland, once on land they must run towards the second structure, there they will cross the handrail, but be careful some bars are loose and if you take one of those it will be the end, so to sharpen the view! Once you finish with the handrail, you must go up that black wall that can be seen at the bottom which is two meters long, advance a bit and find the final structure. There you will take a metal pole and with the help of it they will ascend to the flag with the umbrella”.

"Oh, and I forgot you will have a maximum time of 5 minutes, if in that time you can't make it through, you leave " Mark finished.

All the recruits looked at each other with an astonishing face because the test was really long to finish in such a short time.

" What did princesses think, that you were going to invite you to have tea?" Mark laughed. The first boy who tried to perform the test in 5 minutes only managed to reach the mesh, the second ran with a little more luck as he could finish the test at 4:56, the third was Lionel, who before leaving analyzed the test well, in the swim it took only 54 seconds, the mesh went through it with great ease, the handrail skillfully crossed it even seemed to be supported by a harness from the sky, he always did honor to his alias Cheetah, in total it took 3:30, the other recruits couldn't believe the way he had crossed all obstacles in such a short time.

"You really surprise me! What's your name?" said amazed Mark.

"Larson," Lionel replied, visibly proud to pass that test.

"Okay Larson, you advance to the other test".

The other tests were even more complicated, the recruits had to wear weights and heavy vests to cross the different structures. However, Lionel was always the first to arrive or the one with the shortest execution time, which gave him an impressive advantage over the other applicants.

The fifth test was the most complicated of all, the last 10 applicants had to row to the other side of the lake, and find a kind of medium anchor, once they had it, they had to go through a small mesh until they anchored it to a circular figure, which they had to pull in order to attract a large metal box that was tied by many meters of rope and thus remove the rope to get a small ball inside, once they had the ball they had to row back to land, and there climb a wall 10 meters high to take the ball to a hanging maze that they had to move agilely in such a way that the ball managed to pass through the exit hole, for which they would only have 6 minutes.

The most complicated thing for most of them was getting the ball to go through the exit hole because the labyrinth was made of wood and weighed about 80 kgs which had to be mounted behind them, therefore, the only way for the ball to exit the labyrinth was by making small and delicate movements and somehow connecting the mind with the location of the ball since men couldn’t see where it was located.

4 minutes went by without Lionel having been able to finish the test.

"Pieces of trash, I’ve good and bad news for you" Mark was shouting "Which one do you want to hear first?"

Seeing that none of the men answered him Mark was enraged:

"I said which one did you want to hear first?".

"The good one" Shouted Lionel desperately

"The good news is that you will go home to rest and the bad news is that you only have one minute left," said Mark mocking.

Lionel was very angry at that situation, he couldn’t afford to lose that test because he couldn’t find clues about his sister, so he decided to concentrate a little, forget the tiredness and connect with the noise made by the ball passing through the maze. Soon, he managed to locate the place where the ball was and the exit hole, so he decided to make gentle movements with his back in order to find the hole that would end that challenge.

"TIME!" Mark yelled.

Before the timer stopped, Lionel threw the ball in Mark's face.

"There you have your toy," said Lionel, he had managed to pass the test that would take him to the next phase, in which he decided whether or not to enter the Grey Umbrella Safety Company.