Dropping the Ball
"Question," Carrie asked, pulling her long blond hair into a faultless French braid. “Y’all think this’ll make the end of 2016 worse or the beginning of 2017 worse?"
Micah put his head in his hands and groaned, taking care not to elbow his laptop off his crossed legs. "Now's not the time for questions, we have a mission to plan."
"Does it say who contracted us for the job?" Leon peeked over Micah's shoulder.
Micah shook his head, scrolling through a spreadsheet. "All I got from the Directive was a list of agents to consider for the trip and a single word where the benefactor's name is normally listed."
"...and the word is?" Kaz asked, fiddling with the release valve of one of the helium tanks.
"Gratitude," Micah said. “No name, no location, no anything. Just Gratitude.”
Adina frowned, parking the van three blocks away from One Times Square. "The Directive has some explaining to do when we get back."
"Looks like it," Miska answered, pale blue eyes bright. "All right, Micah, what's our game plan?"
Micah grinned. "It's simple, really..."
"This," Adina panted, "is not simple."
The tiny girl dug in her heels and held onto the side of One Times Square as she and the rest of her team scaled the side of the building through a blast of wind. On the other side of the building, a crowd began to gather in anticipation of Dick Clark’s Rockin’ New Year’s Eve.
The crackle of a long transmission echoed through Leon, Micah, and Adina's earpieces.
"Blame Micah, not the ones he dragged into this," Miska said, accent betraying her amusement. "Do you still have the hose?"
"Miska Vasiliev, you really are something, aren’t you?” Micah said, pulling himself across the roof towards their target.
She chuckled. “As are you, Micah Spurling. As are you. Are you close?”
“We’re here. There’s the port for the hose. We’ll start running the first three tanks off of our backpacks and radio in when we’re ready to send the hose down to you,” Leon opened his pack to reveal a full canister of helium, the makeshift backpack around it holding emergency rappelling supplies.
Adina pulled the hose off of her pack and attached it to the Times Square Ball, peeking inside the iconic sphere. “Is this thing really airtight?”
“Has to be, to protect the electronics,” Micah said, wiping sweat from his forehead and readjusting his festive beanie against the bitter wind. “Those LEDs aren’t weatherproof, especially on a night like this.”
“Guys, don’t forget the cameras,” Carrie radioed, “there’s only so much that Kaz can do from the van before national syndication realizes that something’s up and they can’t get close-ups of the ball.”
“It’s like she doesn’t trust me at all,” Kaz groaned. “Faster you work, faster we can get out of here and the less of a chance there is of their IT department figuring out that my IP address is an impostor.”
Micah nodded. “If it’s any consolation, I trust you, Kaz. Coverage doesn’t start until eight, it’s six-thirty now. It’ll take about five minutes per tank, ten minutes to run the hose down to where the rest of the team is, and another hour to empty out the tanks from the van.”
“It’ll be tight, but we’ll make it,” Adina said. “Pass another tank, will you?”
Ten minutes later, the crew slung their end of the hose over the edge of the building.
“Leon, it’s all up to you,” Micah said, clapping his friend on the shoulder. “Good luck.”
“Is now a bad time to mention I’m afraid of heights?” Leon asked, peering off the side of the roof.
He trailed off at the looks on Adina and Micah’s faces.
“... I’ll go now. If I splat on the way down, give my regards to Brooooadwaaaay,” he sang, attaching his harness and sliding down the side of the building, continuing the song as he picked up the rest of the hose from the team waiting on the fortieth floor and pulled his way back up.
Micah caught the hose as Leon tossed it up the rest of the distance, attaching it back to the Ball and flipping the switch.
“So now we wait?” Adina asked, crossing her arms.
“Yeah. At least we get a nice view,” Micah shrugged. “Carrie will handle swapping out the tanks, Leon will toss them out now that he’s down there. We’re up here solely for damage control, if something were to happen.”
Adina smirked. “If something went wrong, the Directive’d reassign us in a heartbeat. I rather like New York so I hope that doesn’t happen.”
“Happens to the best of us,” Micah sighed, looking over the assembling crowd. A one-hit wonder from the beginning of the year tested the mic, his band launching into a worn-out song considered overplayed by March. “My parents were reassigned from the Vatican to Los Angeles before I was born. Something about getting an archbishop a little too drunk…”
Adina raised a perfectly-filled-in eyebrow.
“They still haven’t given me the full story, and I’m not rifling through thirty-five years of Directive files to find it,” Micah said. “Ground team, what’s our status?”
“Prebroadcast is starting, but I’m feeding the major networks looped footage compiled of night shots from a few days before,” Kaz answered. “How many tanks do we have left?”
“Six,” Miska said. “We’ll be done soon. Until then, enjoy the view, take in the scenery, duck the helicopters doing flyov---”
Adina paled, her already porcelain skin losing all traces of color. “Flyovers?”
After a close call with a few NBC helicopters, the team reunited in their unmarked white van and sped away, Kaz streaming the celebration as they drove back to HQ, located in the deepwoods of Connecticut.
“You think it’ll work?” Leon asked.
Carrie nodded. “We triple-checked the calculations on how much helium we’d need, we only wasted about a sixth of our extra tank attempting to find out whose voice would go highest--”
Miska smirked triumphantly.
“--you were professionally trained as a soprano before you started working with us, that’s not fair!” Carrie said. “I don’t see how it wouldn’t work. Y’all closed the port when you were done, right?”
“We did,” Micah said. “The hoses are in the back, we didn’t leave anything.”
“Shh, shh, it’s almost time!” Adina said, swerving to avoid a grey Prius that refused to use its turn signal. “Dang New Yorkers, signals exist for a reason!”
Miska narrowed her eyes towards the driver. “Rosenburg’s in a mood.”
“We spent enough time in traffic to watch this from the back of a van instead of on our couch, I don’t blame her,” Kaz said. “Come on, show the building, show the building.”
All of New York City started counting backwards from ten.
“Two… One!” the emcee cried, pushing the button.
To his surprise, the ball went up instead of down, drifting between two helicopters and floating away into the cloud cover above the city.
The live feed went dead silent, filled with two-million streetgoers staring at the sky in confusion.
Meanwhile, somewhere on I95, a van filled with six teenagers started cheering at the tops of their lungs.
(cross-posted to the r/writingprompts subreddit. Happy New Year, y'all, and have a great 2017!)