(Author's Note: REMEMBER - Cammie and Zach have not met before. Blackthorne students were never sent to Gallagher. Cammie doesn't know Blackthorne even exists.)


Cameron Ann Morgan, 23 years old, walked down the hallway of an accounting building in New York City. She had a black leather briefcase in one hand, and a wrinkled business card in the other. Pinching the business card between two fingers, she reaches out and twists the doorknob of her office door in the other. The heavy door slams shut behind her and she walks across the cramped office in the dark; she has had this job for so long that she knew her office by heart.

Cammie sets her briefcase in one of the chairs that sat in front of her gray metal desk. The chair was usually reserved for clients who came in to see her, but it was about an hour after closing time. She reaches over the plush swivel-chair behind her desk and snaps on the desk lamp. Cammie pulls out a drawer of her desk that was full of highlighters, pencils, pens, tape, and other normal office supplies. But she wasn't interested in any of that.

Her hand reaches under the drawer and wraps around a cold metallic key that she had taped to the bottom of the drawer. She rips it free and walks over to a filing cabinet in the corner, unlocking the drawer and opening it. She removes several files of background checks of important clients and tucks them into her briefcase to work on during the weekend. She locks the drawer again and returns the key to its amateur hiding place.

Cammie's hand hovers over the handle of her briefcase as a wide-mouthed yawn overtakes her. Her other hand floats over her mouth, covering it up. Sometimes this job bored her so much, she wished the CIA had more use for her. But the fact was… everything had been so slow lately. She wasn't technically fired, but her position was on hold until they needed her for a mission.

"You basically have a group of spies who are chosen for a mission
they feel for the fact of how competent they are and their expertise and they're the right one for the job.
But ultimately they find out they've been actually chosen for their incompetence."
-
Matt LeBlanc

And now, Cammie was stuck being an accountant. A boring job for a boring person… err, chameleon. It was the perfect alibi for a spy. Nobody would suspect anything… if anybody even had a reason to suspect anything. Like it was said before, she hadn't been on a mission in a while. It had been at least a year.

Suddenly, the phone rang. It was harsh and loud and rang out in the dark, empty office. Any normal person would have flinched at the abruptness of it. But Cammie Ann Morgan wasn't normal. No, she was far from it. She snatches up the phone and holds the receiver to her ear. Her voice immediately shifts to sound like the perky, lively accountant she was supposed to be. "Hello, this is Cameron Morgan at Gaucherie Accounting. How may I help you?"

"Hey, Gallagher Girl, it's great to hear your voice again," says a man's voice from the other end. Cammie's body froze. Whoever this person was, he knew she came from the Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women. How he knew that, she didn't know. But did it matter? For all she knew, he only thought it was the preppy, gifted boarding school everybody else thought it was. Not the spy school that it actually is.

"I'm sorry, I think you have the wrong number," Cammie replies good-naturedly, even though her mind was reeling. She firmly hangs up on whoever was on the phone and snaps off her desk lamp. She turns to the large bay window that took up the whole wall behind her desk. It provided a perfect view of a bustling New York City street. The sidewalks were packed with people walking home from work, and a long stream of sunshine-yellow taxi cabs were backed up in rush-hour traffic. It was sunset, and the city was bathed in orange light. She pulls on the strings of the blinds, and the blinds slide across the window, making her office even darker than it was before.

Cammie picks up her briefcase and walks into the empty hallway. Her fellow co-workers had all left for home about an hour ago, but she had stayed behind to finish up a few papers in the conference room. She locks her office door and slips the key into the pocket of her dark-wash skinny jeans. As she walks down the fluorescent-lit hallway, her black stiletto heels clicked loudly on the linoleum.

Cammie pressed her finger against the down button for the elevator. She sees her reflection in the shiny metal elevator doors and tucks a stray strand of mousy brown hair behind her ear. The rest of her hair was up in a messy bun. She wore a crisp white blouse with a few buttons undone in the front and the sleeves rolled up to her forearms. She had on plain pearl-drop earrings. Her boss, Mr. Thomas, didn't care if his employees wore whatever they wanted to work. He thought that their casual, non-uniform style would "connect with their clients."

Finally, a loud humming wells up from within the elevator shaft, which meant the elevator was finally coming. It took a while to rise up from the lobby all the way to the fifteenth floor, where Cammie's office was. The doors slowly opened, and she pressed the button for the lobby. The doors slowly closed, and the elevator began the decent towards the lobby.

Once the elevator got to the library, Cammie waved politely to the secretary at the front desk and walked through the exit turnstiles. Then she pushed the revolving door and stepped out into the crowd of people on the sidewalk. When she had first moved from calm Roseville, Pennsylvania, to busy New York City, Cammie had rejoiced the vast amount of people. It meant her job as a chameleon had just gotten easier to blend in with the crowd. The only problem was that, since nobody noticed her, she was always being shoved and bumped into when she walked down the sidewalk. But now that was over. Cammie had grown to enjoy the aggressiveness of a New Yorker. She walked with purpose and went with the flow.

As the mob of people stood still and waited for the street light to change so they could commence walking again, Cammie's mind went to the man on the phone in her office. How had he known she was from Gallagher? She hadn't told anybody she was moving to New York besides her mother, Mr. Solomon, and her friends: Bex, Liz, and Macey.

Cammie didn't even know that many guys. Of course, there was Josh, but she had pretty much forgotten all about him after he broke up with her. The man didn't sound like Josh, though, and the voice on the phone definitely didn't sound like Mr. Solomon. The red hand turned into a green stick figure, signaling that they could begin walking again. The crowd of strangers hustles across the street.

Before she knew it, she was in front of her apartment building. Cammie walks up the front steps and through the revolving doors into the spacious lobby. There was a massive chandelier dangling above her head from a thin cord, and the tile floors were a goldish-yellow color. She politely smiles at the lady behind the front counter and speed-walks toward the elevator, whose doors were just beginning to close. Her hand smacks the door, and the doors re-open for her. Cammie steps inside and crams in between an elderly lady and a buff, middle-aged man who looked like he was trying to re-live his twenties in a muscle tee. She presses the button for the eighth floor, and the elevator goes up in silence.

Luckily, her floor was the first stop, and she walks into the red-and-gold decorated hallway. Cammie digs her key from her briefcase and opens her apartment door. As she walks into her plain apartment, she hears the phone ringing from the living room. She half-jogs across the kitchen, dumping her briefcase on the counter, and into the living room. "Hello?" Cammie asks on her cordless telephone, after she snatched it up from the tan leather couch. She holds the phone to her ear with her shoulder while she walks back to the kitchen and begins making herself some mint tea, as she does every night after work.

"Cammie, Cammie, Cammie. Don't you know it's rude to hang up on somebody?" a man asks. "I would have thought Madame Dabney had taught you better in Culture & Assimilation at Gallagher Academy."

Cammie practically drops the glass of hot water she was taking out of the microwave. It was the same man from her office's telephone. She nervously puts the glass on the counter and shakily sits down in a barstool. Not much could jar her like this. She was a spy, after all. And here she was, talking to a guy who had said not more than four sentences to her, and she felt as if someone had yanked a rug out from under her feet.

There was no way this was some sort of coincidence now. He, whoever he was, knew she went to Gallagher Academy. He knew her name was Cammie, which was something only her friends called her. In New York, she went by Cameron. He knew her work number and her home number. And, more importantly, he knew about Culture & Assimilation, taught by Madame Dabney. C&A isn't a normal class; it's a spy class. Which could only mean one thing.

He knew she was a spy. He knew Gallagher was a spy school.

"Who are you?" Cammie croaks out. Her elbows were on the counter, and one hand was on her forehead. Whoever this person was, she had the right to know. She deserved the right to know.

"Zach. But that's all you need to know… for know," he says.

"What do you mean all I need to know?!" Cammie demands, "You know my phone number, my name…everything! Why can't I at least know your last name?"

"It doesn't take a genius to use the phone book," he replies cockily. His tone of voice was different somehow. It sounded almost as if he was… smirking. Or something.

"I can report you to the CIA. I happen to be a CIA agent," Cammie snaps, turning her voice to business-mode. There was no way he'd deny a threat of the CIA. Whoever he was. Oh, right. Zach.

"What if I work for the CIA, too?"

"That's doubtful."

Zach laughs. He had a nice laugh. "Like you hardly have a case against me, Gallagher Girl."

"You're stalking me."

"Not necessarily," Zach answers casually. There was a long silence after that. Cammie involuntarily sticks her finger in the water for her tea. It had grown cold.

"What do you want from me?" she asks finally.

"Meet me."

Cammie barks out a laugh. "Yeah, right. So you can stalk me from closer proximity, and eventually end up raping me in a dark alley?" she shoots back. She knew there was no way that could happen, though. She could take down this 'Zach' person… if that was actually his real name… one-handed and blindfolded. She had five years of P&E training to thank for that. Then again, it was better for your enemies to underestimate your strength than to overestimate it.

"I wouldn't do that. I work for the CIA, remember?" he reminds her. That tone was back… He was smirking. Cammie knew it. She just knew it.

"Yeah, of course you do."

"Meet me tomorrow. Central Park. The wooden bench by the Conservatory Pond. Six o'clock in the evening."

"Wait, what do you look like?" Cammie asks. "I mean, it's not like I will actually be there or anything… but I might."

"The only important thing is that I know what you look like," Zach retorts. Cammie lets out a loud sigh into the phone, and stands up. She walks over to the large bay window that was just like in her office. It took up one whole wall of her living room. She checks the time on her watch, 7: 32p.m. and holds the phone away from her mouth as she lets out a silent yawn. "Oh, and can you promise me one more thing?"

"I didn't promise to meet you, but what is it?"

"Get some sleep tonight. You look tired," he says. That was all the explanation he gave her, because a resounding 'click' echoed through the phone line and the dial tone began buzzing in her ear. Cammie's jaw was dropped open, and not because of the yawn.

He had seen her. Whether he saw her yawn in her office, or in her home, or both. Cammie puts one hand on the chilly glass of the bay window and looks out at the city below her. Zach was somewhere down there. Watching her. Suddenly, Cammie didn't feel like a chameleon anymore.

"It is not safe to know certain things."
- William Davenant