I woke up on a hospital bed. Mom held my hand with an insincere smile plastered on her face. Dad sat at the foot of the bed along, Annie and Cameron, two of my coworkers. They all looked at me with relieved faces.

"She lost a lot of blood. She might be a little lightheaded for a few days," The doctor said, as if I weren't even in the room, "but she'll be fine."

I lay on the bed completely baffled. What happened? Had I blacked out? My mind swirled with possibilities. Had something happened on the job yesterday? Had I even worked yesterday? Had the agency called me in during the day due to an emergency?

"Katie, honey, how- how do you feel? Are you-" I interrupted her. I know that my mom thinks of me as a baby but I'm much tougher than she thinks. It was sweet sometimes how she always knew the right thing to say, but I really didn't need sympathy at the moment. I needed answers.

"Mom, I'm not two anymore!" I yelled. In hindsight, I was probably being a little tough on her, but she shouldn't have started with the baby talk. It really wasn't the time for that, "w-what happened?" I demanded.

I sat up in frustration and felt a sharp pain in my left shoulder. I winced and yanked my hand away from my mom's and placed it on the tightly wrapped bandage. I looked over at my shoulder. I saw blood…lots and lots of blood.

I looked away, as I usually do when I see blood, gashes, or cuts… anything wound related, really. It always made my stomach hurt whenever I look….which really doesn't come in handy on work days.

"You took a good one to the shoulder," Cameron said. He was always the one to get injuries because he is a bit of a risk-taker.

"What he means to say," Annie started, shooting a glare at Cameron who was obviously proud of his choice of words. He kept the smirk on his face even when Annie gave him one of her classic shut-up-it's-not-the-time-for-that faces, "Is that you got a bullet to the shoulder during work. You fell down and blacked out afterwards. You hit your head pretty hard when you collapsed, so I would be surprised if you remember anything," she said, the whole time carefully studying my face to gage my reaction.

"I-I don't remember any of that," I said. All of the color was drained from my face. Was I really stupid enough to make a big enough mistake to have almost cost me my life? "I was really shot?" I asked. There must be an explanation but Cameron was the type to joke around instead of being straight with me. Then again, Annie had always been a sort of serious person, and she was insisting I got shot as well.

"Well, what do you expect," Annie asked sarcastically. Her voice dropped to a soft whisper. She looked around to see if the doctor was still in the room, which he wasn't. "You are a spy, remember?"

"How long was I out?" I asked.

Annie looked to Cameron as if to say, 'go ahead, you tell her.' He sat up in his chair and sighed. "Four days."

"Four days!?" I yelled, eyes wide. How could I have blacked out for four whole days?

"Shhh," My mom and Annie said simultaneously.

I rolled my eyes. Did they really think that a doctor would be listening though the door or something? Gosh, they are paranoid. "Four days?" I whispered.

"Well, you see," Annie said with a serious face, "Cameron had fractured his ankle," he lifted his right leg and shook it. He had on a green cast. I looked over and saw the crutches leaning against the left side of the hospital bed. How had I not noticed them before?

"Typical, Cameron," I said with a grin, "are you okay?"

"Yea, I'm cool," he said, leaned over with his forearms on his knees. His sandy brown hair fell down in front of his face. He picked up one of the crutches and waved it around in the air like a nunchuck. "These crutches are fun to beat people up with. I should break my ankle more often," he joked.

"Anyway," Annie said slowly, trying to get off of the topic of Cameron's broken ankle. "Cameron fractured his ankle and we had to get him to the hospital, but those goons took our… well our stolen car, and there was still a three mile walk to the hospital. We started running but Cameron was limping and you were slowing down to make sure he wouldn't get hurt again so I turned around and ran back to you guys."

I nodded.

"And it turns out that one of the guys was following me. And then, when I turned back, he followed me back to you guys. When I got back, the man took out his gun and shot you from behind one of the bushes. He ran away and we couldn't find him. At this point, we really needed to get to the hospital. We kept running and started to get tired so we started walking. Then Cameron-"

"Being the amazing person I am," Cameron interrupted,

"No, being the idiot he is," she corrected, "the broken-ankled boy carried you the rest of the way."

"Awe, thanks, Cam," I said, smiling.

"I just wanted to be able to tell my story," Cameron said, "'Me, crippled and dying of thirst-'"

"You with a broken ankle, next to a girl holding two full water bottles in her backpack," Annie corrected.

"Whatever, anyway; 'with two crippled legs alone trudging through the desert-'"

"With one broken ankle, next to me, on the streets of California," Annie said matter-of-factly.

"Shut up, let me finish! 'Carried a dying, 1000 pound old woman for 7 miles," Cameron finished.

"Okay, Cameron, I am 17 and not even remotely close to 1000 pounds," I said.

"And it was barely two miles," Annie snapped.

"potato potahto," Cameron said, waving his hand in the air.

"What's your point?" Dad asked.

"Well it took a while to get to the hospital," Annie said, "and Katie lost a lot of blood. So that's why she was out cold for four days."

"But at least my little angel's okay," Mom said with a smile.

"So-so what exactly happened?" I stammered.

"Code 8.9963," Cameron said. I was surprised he memorized the codes; even though he was required to, memorizing things wasn't really his forte. He just liked to 'get into the action' as he often put it.

"A stolen artifact?" I asked.

"Yep. Some old painting," Cameron started, "the government guy-"

"Keith," Annie corrected him, "you know he hates you not calling him by his real name."

"Whatever. Fine, 'Keith' showed us a picture of it and it's kinda really ugly," Cameron said, "I don't know why someone would want to steal that thing."

"-anyway, the agency called us early in the morning to go to the goon's hideout to steal the painting back,"

"I was sooo tired," Cameron said, "I don't get up before one p.m., nonetheless one a.m.

"Little did we know that the people who had stolen the painting also had took the time to set up booby-traps," Annie explained, "We dodged lasers, avoided several trip wires-"

"Beat up some brainless frauds," Cameron interrupted.

Annie ignored him. "And avoided several other traps on the way to retrieving the artifact," Annie said.

"Then what was the problem, why didn't we recover the painting?" I questioned.

"Well… We finally found the room containing the artifact," Annie said, "it had open access, no traps, just the beautiful painting alone on a pedestal, illuminated by a single light cutting through the darkness, along with several windows that could be used for an easy escape route. It all seemed so easy, so- so straightforward; simply walk in undetected and obtain the artifact before slipping through the window and returning the painting to the museum. Simple!"

"Mhmm, and?" I asked.

"And Cameron was walking in front of me. In the entrance to the room was one final tripwire. He didn't see it and neither did I. It set off a loud alarm and we made a run for it. We tried to run in fast to grab the artifact and run out before the guards came. But we were too late, there was a window next to the entry to the room and we couldn't see it previously because of the angle we were at. Behind the window was a small room, about the size of a coat closet, with a single desk and chair. A man, presumably a guard, was sitting in the chair with his feet up on the desk drinking a cup of coffee. As soon as he saw us come in, he panicked and pressed a big red button on his desk and the guards started coming towards us. We heard footsteps coming from the hallway next to the widow. The windows had metal bars dropping from above and blocking all paths to escape. But then I remembered- there was still the door we had come in. So we ran back and as we went through the doors, metal bars started dropping, closing up the only possible escape route. We got through, first me, then you, slid underneath them. Cameron was the last one through, barely sliding under on his back – and he almost made it but his ankle got stuck. The metal door crushed it and he screamed. It was so scary… we pulled and pulled but it was no use. There was no way we could get him out. We looked around for something to jimmy the metal bar and somehow you noticed a loose brick in the wall, pulled it out, and we used that to jam the bar. I can't believe it worked and Cameron was able to pull his injured leg out. We ran and fought off several armed guards on the way out. We finally got out of the building but the guards were chasing us. After a few minutes of running, we were tiring and you were shot and we were both so worried…then we walked to the hospital."

"And now…" Cameron started.

"Yes?" I asked.

"Now…we need to complete the mission."

"Huh? But I'm injured- you're injured! How are…"

"Look, you can come along, we will be in front of you the whole time, we already know all of the traps… no biggie, right?"

"Huge biggie," I shouted, "you have a broken ankle! And- and you had to carry an '1000 pound old lady 7 miles' so your ankle is even worse!"

"I told you, these weird crutchie thingies are fun too beat up bad dudes with!"

"Well, if you're sure, then we'd better get going," I said.