"Axel, w-we have a n-n-new mission for you..." the boss stammered, I sighed, putting aside the pen I'd been fumbling with for the past 30 minutes. "Desk work is fine and all, but when you get this good, you can't stay off the field for weeks, let alone months," I thought to myself. The boss stood there nervously, fidgeting with his suit with one hand, a folder in the other, and trying to avoid eye-contact at any cost.

"So, what is it, then?" I asked, trying desperately to avoid showing how bored and frustrated I was. The last thing the boss could handle is an on-edge agent like myself.

"We need you to take down a we-w-web s-site..."

I was stunned. Taking down a website? I wasn't even a tech guy, how does that even work? Why me?

"I know what you're thinking," the boss said, trying to be brave, "it's not like that."

He glanced around nervously, eyes darting from door to window. I can't blame him for being paranoid, with a guy this important it's probably necessary. That said, it's not exactly something that's normal, but a quirk like that is completely fine by me when you consider the kind of work this guy does.

With great effort, he managed to gingerly move the folder into my hands before retreating to the comfort of my office. Still, it's an... improvement? When I first arrived here, he wouldn't even leave the room. There was a slot people would put food/drink into, then he would take it out. He rang people up to his office and gave them folders with the slot, never once did he leave. Makes me wonder how they found him in the first place.

Looking over my folder, it seemed like a relatively ridiculous job. I'd fought robots in the past, interrupted tourist destinations, but this was on a whole new level. Even on the plane to the server's relatively remote location in Sweden, the ramifications of this mission did not fail to impress me, not even once.

The website was hosted in the future and contained the details of this mission's entirety. Including me getting killed. In red marker, underneath this detail, the boss had written(in rather beautiful, eloquent writing) "try to change the future." Good advice.

Moreover, it also contained floor layouts of HQ, detailed reports on every agent there, and there was no way to shut it down through ISPs because, well, the site wouldn't be up until 30 years from now. There are no records of it ever coming into existence, because it didn't come into existence.

Arriving there, I saw a heavily locked house. While there were no lights on, the decrepit appearance and general lack of valuables seen within made it look like a place unfit for thieves, and the traps and padlocks made it look unfit for squatters, too. Well, everybody except the one guy trying to get in.

"You looking for a way in?" I asked him.

"What? No, some guy pays me lots of money to guard this place!" he said, before blushing as he realized he probably shouldn't have said that.

"Guard it from what?" The guy paused for a moment, reflecting if he should tell me anything. I stamped my foot impatiently, a simple trick I learned to make gullible people reveal more than they should.

"Squatters, thieves, the works. Not a lot of people come through here. You've been hired too?"

"Do you know what's in here?" I asked.

"No, not at all. Just that if anyone gets in, I don't get paid," he answered honestly.

"You can kind of see it through that window, look!" I said, gripping a tranquillizer applicator in a hand behind my back. As he looked to try to see it, I applied it. The man gave me the most heart-wrenching look ever. How much was he getting paid?

Breaking in was incredibly easy, the security on that place was so lax it was baffling. A cursory glance of the interior showed there was nothing of value, so I decided to head downstairs. I wasn't a guy for real estate, but it was obvious this place was in shambles. The only thing noteworthy about it was the pulsating purple orb floating in the centre, with a wire hanging out of it.

I called Tex from the lab.

"There's a floating purple orb thingy that's from the future. How do I stop it?" Tex laughed.

"Blunt as always, aren't you?"

A brief pause as Tex scrambled through various documents occurred, and he came back to me in about a minute.

"Put something alive in there."

He hung up, in some oddly-planned attempt to be as blunt as me. I know I couldn't go in there, I wouldn't fit. The guy I knocked out wouldn't fit either, and besides, it would be mean to knock him out and send him to the future, or wherever this thing goes. As I contemplated whether or not I could find a pet store in this small town, a small stray dog walked up to me.

Now, if PETA is reading this, please don't get mad, but I did what I had to do. I placed the dog in the orb. The thing started to shoot out some of the same, translucent purple material in odd rays coming off of the main body, before it collapsed on itself. I wasn't sure what happened to the puppy, but the wire seemed cleanly cut from where the orb was. I checked the website on my phone to make sure if the site was down - it was.

The moral of the story? Every dog has his day.