AUTHOR'S NOTE: Firstly, disclaimer: the world of Mission Impossible belongs to... well, I don't know who owns the rights, but I don't know who they are, but I'm not ripping them off.

Secondly, if you're new to my work, please read Another Name first. This collection won't really make sense unless you have. I apologise for this, but this is a follow-up to that story, and will contain spoilers to that story. All events contained in this collection occur at varying times during the 'canon' of Another Name, and heavily features Enma-O Meido, aka Agent Emma Hume, who I created in Another Name. It will also feature characters from the Mission Impossible film series, but as this is a work in progress I'm not yet sure who.

This collection is written at random, and so will take place at random times. The piece featured below starts more or less at the beginning, and whilst the next piece is in development, I'm not yet sure when it takes place. I don't even know how many of these scenes there will be, but there is no plot linking them. I'm merely writing this for my own pleasure and enjoyment, as the story I created for Another Name won't stop brewing in my mind.

So, I hope you enjoy it too.

ANOTHER DAY

I - Phase 1

Stroke. Kick. Breathe.

Six months ago, Agent William Brandt issued Emma Locke, formerly Enma-O Meido, her instructions to be followed to the letter. He had not stayed long at her aunt and uncle's house, and had shaken her hand before leaving, wishing her good luck. She didn't know it then, but he had meant entirely sincerely. She had watched him go, as though keeping him within her sights would make the whole thing feel real for just a while longer, and couldn't help but feel the buzz of flattery when he looked over his shoulder to stare at her one last time.

A week later Locke left her aunt and uncle as planned, having never breathed a word to them that anything had happened on their porch, and returned to her foster parent's home; her home. She told them that she'd made a decision about her future, and that she was joining a US secret intelligence agency. She told them she would not see them again for a long time once she left for training, and that they would not hear from her during that time, that they might not hear from her much at all after her training.

She told them how much she loved them, how glad she was that she had been too young to have any recollection of life before they adopted her, and that she hoped more than anything that they were proud of her, and proud of her decision, even if they couldn't understand it just yet.

Joanna Locke had trouble with it. She cried, because she knew that her daughter was signing up to wars fought in the shadows, wars potentially more dangerous than those fought in the light of day and scrutiny. Frederick Locke was shocked for a moment, and then realised that he wasn't all that surprised. Both he and his wife were civil servants, both working for different branches of government, and their daughter had been brought up knowing how proud her parents were to serve their country, to honour their duties. But unlike Mr and Mrs Locke, who helped write laws and see them implemented to change people's lives for the better, young Enma-O had grown up to believe in protecting people, any people. As a young teenager, her favourite quote was 'it's not about changing the world. It's about doing our best to leave the world the way it is'.

They had no idea that the quote came from a video game about a world of war.

Nevertheless, Emma's father hugged his daughter and told her that whatever she wanted to do, he would be proud of her. He merely hoped that doing this would make her proud of herself too. He asked when she would be going, and she told him honestly that she didn't know. Until then, she wanted to be with her family, but she warned him that the summons might be sudden, and at any time, and that they might not get to say goodbye.

Which is exactly what happened. Exactly as Brandt had told her, Locke received a message on her phone, a message that deleted itself after she'd read it. It was the middle of the night, but within five minutes Emma was up, dressed, and out of the window like a teenager sneaking off to escape being grounded. She took her passport with her, and left a note to her parents, telling them that she loved them again, and that she'd let them know she was okay one way or another, and to destroy the note the second they read it. She boarded a train heading towards Virginia, and disappeared without a trace.

What followed was the most nerve-wracking few months of her life, and she preferred not to remember them. Not so much because she'd been afraid, there would be plenty of times like that further ahead, but more because of how little she understood everything that happened in that time. For at least a couple of weeks she didn't see the outside world, and so had no awareness of where she was, and had only twenty-four hour clocks to tell her whether it was day and night, hoping the clocks were honest. In a room of nothing but walls she was asked to strip, shower, and dress in a medical jumpsuit, and a doctor took samples and measurements of everything about her body: saliva swabs, blood, urine, stool, hair, fingerprints, footprint, retinas, X-rays, MRIs, and had photographs taken of notable physical markings, like the tell-tale dots of old childhood vaccinations and a mole on her arm. She was taken to a gym and given physical fitness tests by an instructor who seemed unimpressed by her history of athletics. A psychiatrist measured her responses to various stimuli, recorded word associations for hours on end. Another examiner tested her IQ. Another interviewer grilled her for every detail of her life, particularly her MIT days, particularly the tutor who she'd always seen as a kept-at-arms-length mentor, and who she was fairly sure worked for the British Secret Intelligent Services once.

For longer that she had ever felt and would ever feel again, she'd had no secrets at all.

Then the real tests begain.

Stroke. Kick. Breathe.

On a helicopter ride across a sandy desert in a corner of the world that she would never be able to identify, Locke met five other 'prospectives', as they were referred to. They were all men, and none of them seemed to know what they were really applying for. They assumed when she mentioned 'IMF' that it was a specialised unit in the CIA, or she was talking out of her ass. She didn't correct them either way.

None of them were allowed to know each other's names, and were instead given codenames. Locke was Echo.

Alpha was a multi-martial arts expert, and had been recruited by an agent who he'd beaten in a drunken bar fight. The agent, they were told, was sober. Alpha definitely hadn't been.

Bravo was bi-lingual, and was fluent in every European Latin-based language and German, including several Creole variants, as well as Russian, Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, and spoke passable Thai, Korean, and Vietnamese, and before being recruited had been studying the linguistics of Hindi. Apparently English was his fourth fluent tongue.

Charlie had been given an ultimatum between this and serving back-to-back sentences for endless cases of identity fraud perpetuated in half a dozen different countries.

Delta was an engineer who disabled a live bomb left by protesters in his college's lab.

And the last, Foxtrot, was a hacker, like Locke, who had almost cracked IMF's secure network, unlike Locke, who had cracked the network. For Foxtrot like Charlie, it was either take this ambiguous offer or serve jail time after a trial where no one would be able to give any evidence without blacking it all out from the official record.

A mixed bunch, all in all.

Stroke. Kick. Breathe.

The desert was the first round. Until now, Locke thought of the first round as the worst round. The jungle where she'd been bitten in more places than she could actually find had been irritating but bearable. The tundra and its frosty, slippery surface had almost been almost fun in comparison to that, Locke finding it easier to warm up than to cool down. Navigating the transportation system of Tokyo without Google map or a translator had been mind-boggling but challenging in the best of ways. The desert however she would remember as the most faith-breaking days of her life.

They were told to walk, in any direction they chose, and just walk until they could walk no more. It was up to them to decide when 'no more' was. They all were given a GPS: if just one of them activated it, the test would end, and they'd all be picked up. After an hour, none of the group had the spare breath to chit-chat, even to get to know each other. When the sun went down it just got cold quickly; very cold and very quickly. The shock of the transition kept them quiet. It meant she had nothing but her thoughts for company, and in that heat and subsequent cold, her thoughts were traitorous, almost bipolar in their swing from optimistic to pessimistic, and more suffocating that the hot air.

They lasted three nights. Then Charlie twisted his ankle, and activated the GPS before anyone could stop him. It cost him his place in the group: after they were picked up and brought back to the base, none of them ever saw him again. He should have trusted, they were told, that his team would help him keep walking.

Foxtrot dropped out after the tundra, saying he couldn't bear any more tests, unaware that the next was the last one.

Stroke. Kick. Breathe.

But the next one, the last one, where she was now... this was pain. Absolute pain. The only blessing was that she couldn't think. Just stroke, kick, and breathe.

Stroke. Kick. Breathe.

She was wearing US Marines' combat gear, and the material was dragging through the water. She had no idea how long she had been swimming, she was just absolutely focussed on her only marker to stop: a blinking red light under the water. All she had to do, she'd been told, was swim as far up river until she got to the blinking red marker, dive down and turn it off, and get out of the water.

That last part, the bit where she would be able to get out of the water, Locke was keenly looking forward to that part. Because the river, though she didn't know exactly where it was, was very definitely in the Arctic circle.

She'd never felt so cold in her life.

Stroke. Kick. Breathe...

Red blinked in the water, and with a desperate pull of breath, Locke dived down, kicking hard at the surface. Her scalp burned with the sudden, total immersion, and her lungs constricted as the water seemed to thicken around her, threatening the worst claustrophobia she'd experienced in her life. But she focussed on her stroke, measuring it carefully to save on energy rather than flop and push at the water out of rhythm. Yet the light seemed to stay just as far from her as it had at the surface, winking cruelly. Then, wicked thing, it was right there, and she slammed her hand over the button she could see in the glare, righted herself at the bed of the river, and kicked up towards the surface.

The observers at the river bank would later think that the sight of her breaking the surface, gasping for air, would make them think of Ariel in the Little Mermaid, transformed against the pastel colours of Disnified dawn, hair wiping back, reaching up to the sky for salvation. To Emma Locke, such a romantic vision would ever occur to her. All would ever occur to her was just how much she wanted to be on the shore with the observers.

She practically clawed her way up the bank, not remotely aware that she was being half-carried up by the medical team, already wrapping her in foil to preserve her heat, preparing to strip her out of her wet clothes the moment they got her inside, out of the cold. Locke was aware of only one thing, and it made her smile the whole time.

There were three red lights still blinking down in the water. Three lights for three prospectives who hadn't got that far yet.

She'd finished first. Later, she'd learn that she wasn't the first; she was the only one to finish.

From this point on, there would be plenty of things Enma-O Meido, Emma Locke, Emma Hume, Emily Menneer, whichever name she took, would have no pride in. Being the only one to pass Phase I would always make her proud.

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