DISCLAIMER: I do not own anything that you recognise. All rights go to the CW, and the amazing L. J. Smith, and all others who contributed to the creation of this brilliant saga. Please, oh please, do not sue me.

Nb: 'Tara' is pronounced 'Tera.'

xXxXx

Emma's POV.

"Alpha team, do you copy? Hooter, this is Nightbird—come in, Hooter?"

There was a crackle of electricity as the message burst to life in the receiver in my back pocket. Lowering the weapon I was holding, I reached a stoic hand into my pocket and pulled it out.

"Connor, if you ever call me Hooter again, I will shoot you in the face." I threatened into the talkie.

There was a moment's pause.

"Right you are, Em. That's a negatory on the code names. What's your sitch?"

I caught the eye of the woman next to me, who was shaking her head but hadn't quite managed to conceal the smile on her face. If there was anyone who could lighten a situation like this, it was Connor—and despite his absolutely unprofessional and childlike approach to the job we had to do, he made it a little more bearable.

Sides, we loved him, so who are we to judge.

"Just outside the front entrance, Con," my companion, Tara, said into the mouth piece. Her curly brown hair was tied back out of her face (an idea I really should have picked up after the years). My own blonde locks fell unceremoniously into my face, and while Tara spoke, I brushed them away for the thousandth time. "What's up with Lachie and Alex?"

"Checking in right now, Tarezza, hold on a sec. Don't do anything til I've spoken to the boss man."

The com line went silent, and for a moment, Tara and I relaxed. "God, he's a tosser." I laughed quietly. Tara grinned at me, nodding her head. While we waited for a response, Tara looked to her gun in her hands. Rechecking the locking mechanism, she pulled back on the top of the gun and let it slide back into place. "Locked and loaded, Ems." She verified with a smile.

I did the same with my own gun and looked back to her. "Clichéd and plagiarised, Tars," I grinned. "I live with the foremost movie dork on the entire planet," I continued. "You can't be slipping movie quotes by me."

She rolled her eyes.

"Speaking of your lovely little roommate," she said with a smile. "What's the plan this evening? You and Lachie hanging out, or are you going to hang with Cam?"

I frowned, sighing slightly. Given the option, I would probably end up hanging with Lachie tonight, if everything this afternoon went to plan. I never minded hanging with Cam, ever. He was still my best friend, even after everything that had happened last year.

"Cam wants to watch Supernatural with me tonight." I said with a laugh, idly checking the com to make sure it was still ready to go. It would do no one any good if we'd messed up the line of communication.

Tara let out a breezy, yet quiet laugh. "Oh, because you don't get enough hunting done in the day?"

I rolled my eyes. "Have you ever seen that show? It's hilarious."

Tara shrugged. "Hey, don't even think about lying, Hamilton," she warned me. "I know that if you had the chance, you'd get your hunt on with Sam and Dean."

I frowned. "Don't call it hunting," I said quickly. "We're not hunters. We're just..."

"Mercenaries?"

"Working." I said quickly. "We're protecting people."

"Back online, Hooter. You're good to go."

Tara let out a soft laugh, moving forward to hover on the other side of the door. I held back a growl as I lifted the com to my mouth. "Connor, I swear to god—"

"Sorry, Ems, can't hear you." Connor interrupted. "Must be a malfunction with the coms."

"Connor! Don't you dare."

"You two," we heard another voice on the com, one that made both Connor and I quiet instantly. "Stop being stupid and focus."

I swallowed and nodded, knowing that getting Alex upset would be the only way to make me certainly miss Supernatural tonight. Or hanging out with Lachie. And that would make this entire thing stupid.

"Are we kicking it in or creeping in, Lexi?" Tara asked the com, when Connor and I fell silent. I could practically see Alex's angry glare at the feminine nickname Tara'd given him.

"Creeping in," Alex ordered over the com. "We're taking this bastards by surprise."

.:.

TO: Me! ()

FROM: LACREEP ()

SUBJECT: Re: re: ?

Emma.

I thought you trusted me. Whatever, I'm done with you. I've spent too long of my life trying to clean your messes and I'm done with it. Don't come back from wherever you've run, because I will kill you.

Don't attempt to contact me again.

D. S

.:.

The Fourth Initiative was created by my granddad.

His name was Roger Hamilton, and he met my grandmother in 1948. My dad, Peter, was born soon afterwards, but only a few years before my grandma, Bela, was murdered by a vampire.

It was dramatic and lame and sounded like a bad sci fi plot line (like those stupid Twilight books and all the vampire television shows that made me want to stick my thumbs in my eyes). But I wasn't all that interested in the Fourth.

Lachie had taken me away from Mystic falls almost nineteen months ago, now. I'd kicked and screamed and protested for the first three months, and moved into an apartment with Cameron and Lily in the fourth month. For the rest, I'd taken it as it came. Lachlan finally explained everything, introducing me to Alex, and Tara and Connor. I met Lachie's dad the in my fifth month, and by the sixth, I was a fully fledged member of the Fourth Initiative.

Whatever that meant with me, or with Lachie, or with anyone else, the most important thing was that it had been nineteen months since I'd heard anything to do with Damon Salvatore.

Except for that cuttingly painful email that he'd sent me three days after I'd gone.

A day didn't go by that I didn't think about him.

And yeah, it was lame, and cliché and beyond super embarrassing, but it was true. I missed him like a crazy person.

I got home grumpy and covered in blood. I'd been thinking about Damon again, and the email that I still hadn't deleted from my inbox. I didn't try to talk to him again, but in all honesty, did I deserve it? In his opinion, I'd deserved him.

Because of the stupid guardian focused thoughts, I'd ended up turning Lachie down on the offer to hang out. Lily, seeing me arrive home, lifted her eyebrows.

"Tell me where you work?"

Because of the secrecy clause that Alex and Lachlan had finally gotten around to discussing with me, after they thought I was calmed about the whole kidnapping thing, I was entirely sure of what I could and couldn't say to my roommates.

Unfortunately, I'd already told her that I was already involved with the government cause of Damon, so I had to fabricate a story from there.

"It's a temping job," I said to her casually, as I snatched the spaghetti she'd clearly already cooked. "Can I have some of this?"

Lily ignored the question.

"Temping?" She instead echoed, her face scrunching up in disbelief. "You can barely even hen peck at the keyboard without looking."

I frowned, and pushed a third of the leftover spaghetti onto my plate, even though I knew I wouldn't east most of it.

I returned to the kitchen, leaving some food on the pan for Cam when he finally decided to make an appearance, and walking back to the kitchen. I looked around the kitchen sink—at a bunch of pots and pans that hadn't been cleaned—with blackened bottoms. They smelt fairly ripe as well. I hadn't noticed them until that point because I had been on the other side of the kitchen fry the bacon.

"Hey Lils," I called, turning and walking towards her. As I exited the kitchen, I took note of her flour-covered apron hanging from a hook on the wall. "Please tell me you didn't attempt to cook again…" I began.

Lily's expression proved that that was exactly what she had been doing. "Well," She explained indignantly, "Spence came over yesterday and she showed me this wonderful recipe for her cupcakes. And you used to love those cupcakes when you were little and I figured I could surprise you and Cam, if I can work it properly."

It was the same every time. Whenever Spence (Lily's posh boyfriend who lived in a penthouse and cooked like a legend) came over, or any other friend of hers, Lily would once again attempt to cook. Her attempts in the past varied from messy to disastrous. The worst problem we had was when she set fire to the microwave, about three weeks after I dropped out of school.

The Firemen that called, telling me that my home was on fire very nearly gave me a heart attack, and by the time I had arrived, it had spread through the kitchen.

The result was a blackened and charred grill that left our kitchen in pieces. No one was hurt though, and Lily evacuating as soon as she saw smoke, with her recipe in one hand, and the half created mess in the other.

We got the kitchen refurbished, however. Now it was one of those modern kitchens. The ones that every single person in the room says they love, but secretly thinks, 'this is a ridiculously cold kitchen.'

Personally, I missed the old room.

Still, my roommate didn't learn, and her flour covered state seemed to be the result of this battle between Lily and the Spatula.

"It's kind of fun,"

I looked up to see Cam entering the room.

As usual, he was clothed in his Soccer uniform. He was in Twelfth grade now, (where I would have been if I hadn't dropped out) but that didn't seem to stop him wanting to beat every single other rugby player in the United States. He walked in, the uniform clean, which meant that he was probably about to head out to a practice or a game. His hair was the same colour as mine had been, a brown, dark red, but his was wet—assuredly from a shower he'd just had

"Hi, Cam…" I said, with emphasis on the 'hi,' that he skipped.

"Sup, Spaz?"

…Well, it is a greeting, I guess.

I quickly fetched the saucepan again, rolling my eyes at him, but not giving him any more of a response. "Pasta?" I offered him.

He grinned as he sat at the table.

"Forget the food, darling," Lily said, after stuffing her own food into her mouth. "What are you doing, temping for the government?"

"They happen to think that I am particularly skilled." I said indignantly, moving around the table to serve Cameron.

"They'd be the only ones," he snorted, as he took his pasta and began to smother it with cheese.

I rolled my eyes again.

"Nah," Cam continued, now with a full mouth. "You know what I reckon it is, Lil?" he said. "I reckon the government brainwashed her—it's keeping an eye on her because she's getting close to exposing their covered up secrets."

Instead of hinting that Cam was closer than any other guess so far, I glowered at him. Lils, too, waved her hand, brushing the comment away.

"Don't be stupid, Cameron." She scolded him. "And don't talk with your mouth full."

"I'm just saying!" Cam said, swallowing his mouthful. "With all the conspiracy stuff she's got in her head, the only way she'd work for the government is if she's been brainwashed—or she's doing some sort of top secret experiment for them."

I flinched.

"No." Lils said, shaking her head. "She wouldn't lie to us, would you Ems?"

The phone call couldn't have come at a better time. Without looking at either of them I shook my head and muttered: "Course not," before pulling the phone from my pocket and answering it.

It was Connor.

"Hey, Em? We've got the results of your blood test—" the latest of thousands "—and the vervain's reappeared. It looks like you're parents didn't just give it to you as an injection; they wired it into your molecular sequence. If you could come back in just for a couple of hours..."

He didn't have to say any more.

Other than the fact that my insane crazy roommates were well on their way to already figuring out my huge secret, this was a window that I was being told to look at. I was practically already there.

"Got it. See you in fifteen." I said.

I hung up the phone.

"That was work," I explained to my family. "I have to go now."

Lily frowned. "Now? What about breakfast?"

Twisting my spaghetti into a hasty mess on my fork, I shoved it into my mouth while standing and reaching for my jacket. I grabbed a roll from the bread basket in the middle of the table. "I'll eat on the way," I told them, walking back into the kitchen and placing the pan with all the other dirty dishes. "When I get home those dishes better be cleaned," I warned them.

Lily didn't seem to want to give up without a fight. "You're going to work, dressed like that?"

I looked down at my black denim jeans and form-fitting t-shirt. It was one of my anti-government slogan ones. I grinned up at her. "You can take a government protest out of the need to protest, but you can't take the need to protest out of the protester." I said to her with a smirk. "They can't change all of me. See you tonight."

"She's off to investigate government secrets—maybe's she'll be abducted and we'll never see her again." Cam laughed.

I shuddered slightly as I headed out the door. He really didn't have any idea how close to the truth he was.

.:.

I entered the room relatively quickly, my laptop swung over my shoulder casually—but long enough that the joint was beginning to ache. The lights were off and the room was colder than it was supposed to be so I frowned. Rubbing my arm to warm myself from the sudden chills I peered into the unfamiliar darkness.

"Connor?" I frowned, my voice echoing across the desks and computers that didn't look nearly as ominous in the daylight. "Connor, where are you?"

"Oh, god. Emma I'm so sorry—she—I don't—"

I spun around to see Connor, node bloodied and bleeding from the neck held by the back of his neck by—

"Elena Gilbert?" I screeched incredulously, recognising her soft features and long hair—although, I never remembered her wearing it curled (in the grand few weeks I spent in her town.)

"Guess again, Emma." Elena—or not?—said. "My name is Katherine."

.:.

Obviously, Katherine was always going to be a big thing in this fic. She was the first chapter of the ANOMALY as well, wasn't she?

Now, as to Emma. I hope you guys have understood the transition she's gone through. She's trying to resent Damon because of the email 'he' sent her, and she's trying to fit into the life she now knows her parents want for her. (Also, did you catch the few seconds of attention I gave the vervain? We'll definitely be expanding on that soon. We'll also be seeing Damon soon—coming into part two of season 2, therefore catching me up and getting everything right as rain.

I know this isn't the path some of you wanted to see this story take, and I'm sorry for that. But I promise, I'm a sucker for happy endings and all I want to see is Damon get one.

Please review and give me your thoughts.

G.