Disclaimers: Anything that belongs in Max Steel belongs to the people who made it. All other things belong to me.

            A/N: Before you start flaming me, I'm aware that this story has hardly anything to do with Max Steel or N-Tek. This is my view of what might happen if the max probes were made available to all secret agents.

            "You've got five minutes to get in, disarm the bomb, and rescue the hostages." The voice over the bio-link commanded.

            "Yeah, yeah," muttered the blonde agent, hiding next to a heavily-guarded entrance. "Going Turbo!" She yelled, and knocked out four of the agents. The fifth one raised his gun, ready to fire, when she knocked him out as well. She turned off Turbo mode.

            "Nice, but a little sloppy. Take the first staircase on your right, follow the corridor down, turn right into the fourth turning, and they should be in there." Following the instructions as they came, she found herself in front of a large steel door.

            "They knew we were coming, then." She remarked, and went Turbo again. After three or four punches and kicks, the door was ripped off its hinges. "Come on! Everybody out!" The blonde agent yelled, still in Turbo mode. Sending them in the right direction, she headed for the bomb. Using her sensitive hearing, she heard it ticking two floors above.

            "Two minutes." Her bio-link warned. Running up the stairs, she encountered a few more guards which were easily taken out. Reaching the bomb, she started to say what was there. The visual link was disabled.

            "OK, I've got a green, blue, blue-green, red, red-yellow, black, black-white and a white-black. Which one?" She asked, panicking. Looking down at her watch, she realized that she only had a minute left. The answer came immediately.

            "Listen carefully. Cut the wires in this order: black, white-black, green, black-white, blue and finally red." Pulling out her pair of wire cutters from her belt, and cut the wires in that order.

            "Done." She informed, looking at the read-out on the bomb. Thirty seconds left. She hurried down, following the trail the hostages took. She managed to get down to ground level before the bomb went off. She looked back. "Let me guess. Delayed tamper-proof bomb?" The only part of the building that had been damaged was the floor the bomb had been on. "At least we managed to reduce the power to one level." The blonde agent walked out of the door, turning Turbo mode off as she left.

            "Next time, you might want to concentrate a bit more on where the hostages were. There were three on the same floor as the bomb."

            "Great. First mission, and I mess it up. Simulation end." She said to the computer. The hologram of the building, the hostages and the area surrounding it disappeared, leaving her in a blank white room.

            "Still, you did do a pretty good job, considering it was your first time, and, of course, in real life, you would've had a partner to help you out." The voice commented. The Voice. That's all any of the Steels knew about him. He was always there, giving out information, but no one ever saw him in real life. The female agent stretched, and walked out of the training room, turning her bio-link off.

            "This just gets weirder and weirder," she said quietly to herself. "One day, I'm a normal kid, going to school and everything, the next thing I know, I get a lump of green stuff injected into me, and I end up like this." Entering her quarters, she switched back to normal mode, went to the bathroom, and looked in the mirror.

            "Rachel," she said to herself, looking at her face. She had brown hair and dark brown eyes. She swept a hand over her face, and changed immediately. "Helen," she said again, looking at her closely, as if she was another person. 'Helen' looked nothing like Rachel, with blonde hair and bright green eyes. Rachel changed back to herself, and collapsed on the bed, face up. She rolled over to her table, and picked up a simple photo frame. In it was a picture of her family; her mum, dad, herself, and even her little brother, Jon. Jon was waving like mad at the camera, trying to run towards it. Her mum was holding him back, both hands on his shoulders. She was standing in front of her dad, both of them smiling. It was a younger version of herself, taken when she was twelve. She was eighteen now. She sighed, and put the photo back down.

            Six months ago, she'd been 'recruited' by a secret agent company. She was given an explanation for all of this: she'd been chosen to be a spy. They asked her about the green stuff, if she wanted it or not and, stupidly, she thought, accepted it. Since that moment, she'd become a full member. Her training had started almost immediately, and was now being moved on to simulations. Soon, they told her, she'd be ready to go out onto the field. Rolling onto her stomach, she thought about what her parents had done. They'd organized a search party but, after a month, it was called off. Because she was an agent, especially a super-powered one, no one outside of the company was allowed to know her real identity. And, if someone disappeared, it was less likely that they would be suspected and captured.

            The training, more than the missions, were exhausting. All of the people who had max powers were being pushed to their own limits, to see the extent of their strength.

            "I just want to go home, and be normal. I don't want to have to be in hiding all of my life, I want to be free."