Penny can't remember a time before The Agency. A time when she wasn't a weapon, when she didn't follow orders mindlessly. More of a robot than Sheldon had ever been, with her gun pointed at the only person she had ever truly considered a friend, having been ordered to shoot him, she wishes she did. Sheldon doesn't deserve to die.
But she's been ordered to shoot him, and so she will. Her handler's words echo in her head. Grey was the closest thing to a father she'd ever had, the closest thing to family. He was the only person she had ever known who knew exactly what she was. The person who had kept her sane for the last six years, who reminded her who she really was, Agent 13. All agents belonged to the Agency.
"Penny,"Sheldon whispers, eyes wide and terrified.
She pulls the trigger.
x
Sheldon notices because he's vigilant. That is the word for it, vigilant-not paranoid. Although he is aware that paranoid is what his friends consider him. It's not much to go on at first. Sheldon is meticulous when it comes to his electronics. Rigorous in his use and perfectly at home among the lines of code that make up his preferred programs.
He notices when junk code starts appearing more and more often. Notices the similarity. He has his own spiders, code spies in places where they technically shouldn't be. But he always wants to know. There always seems to be more to know, and so long as no one else knows about it, he's perfectly safe. He recognizes espionage, careful though it is.
x
The Agency had been disbanded.
She had been warned, it happened every decade or so for a few years at a time. Some new Senator was let in the know, the idea of specialized assassins raised from birth to kill and gather Intel bothered them. They raised a stink in front of precisely the wrong people, and The Agency was quietly and officially disbanded, despite the fact that it technically didn't exist. Her orders were to go to ground. Create a new identity, and wait for her handler to contact her once the agency was re-established.
Simple.
She'd done it before.
She had been younger then-it had been trickier as a child. Runaways with no one looking for them weren't very common in rural areas, and that was exactly the kind of place she'd been when she'd gotten the memo. Omaha, Nebraska. She had created a new persona. Called herself Amanda Gables, falsified some documents, and walked into the waiting area of a hospital. Someone from child protective services had been sent to look for a newly orphaned girl matching her description. She'd tearfully listened to condolences about her imaginary parents tragic car accident, and been entered into the foster care system. Playing preteen had been annoying, but no one who was supposed to watch her cared about anything she did, so it was easy to sneak out and keep up her training. If she got too soft, someone might take her out on her next mission. That was unacceptable-The Agency did not tolerate failure.
x
Sheldon considers his findings. He thinks about how much evidence he has, and those who would take him seriously. It's not the right people. Not people who would back up his findings, not when they are considered just as paranoid as he is. None of them are in positions power either. They would not be able to help him, or provide any useful resources.
If the conclusions he'd reached based on such little data became public knowledge he would be mocked. Behind his back and to his face. He'd long since lost the respect of his colleagues, if he'd ever had it in the first place. Unless he was speaking strictly of physics, no one took him seriously. If it reached the Universities gossip chain, he might find himself with less funding, or the target of pranks more mean spirited than usual. He would be inviting trouble for nothing.
He decides to keep it to himself.
x
It had taken two years for Grey, the name she'd thought up for her handler (though she would never call him that to his face; agents were only numbers), to find her a new assignment. The Agency had once again been up and running. Most people that knew about it did not agree with the methods it employed, but they also couldn't argue with results. Agents trained by the Agency were assigned a number in their infancy, and raised to be stone cold killers and spies. Their life expectancy wasn't very long, unlike their more official counterparts in the intelligence community. No one bargained if they were caught. Agents were loyal, and saw themselves as the dispensable assets they were. For an agent, nothing was more important than The Agency. They knew to take their own lives before they were tortured for information, knew that no one could know of the agencies existence, knew that they weren't people-merely weapons.
She was number thirteen, it was the only designation she had ever known. Names were aliases and charades, to be pulled on and discarded as needed. She hated the thought of being useless. She was used to moving, her anonymity was one of the most important things about her job. As an agent, her job was her life. It felt wrong not to be out there completing ops, just because her lifestyle had offended some high ranking government stooge. What she did was necessary, just as The Agency's existence was necessary. She saved lives-certainly more than she'd ended anyway.
But she would not be receiving missions while the Agency was disbanded.
x
He considers for a time that it's some rival, but none of the bait he manufactures is taken, logically the two remaining suspects are the Government, or some less than benevolent hackers. He hacks into the university server and deletes the spiders. They seem to be everywhere-even Leonard's laptop has them. He's a very big believer in being safe over being sorry.
He comes home to find a very polite letter disparaging his actions and asking him to cease and desist on his home laptop written on a word document. He spends the next six hours scouring his computers for the code that had let them through his firewalls. He never finds it. He re-installs all the programs running his laptops and takes another look at the Caltech servers. There are already new spiders.
Pure stubbornness ensures that he deletes them all again.
The next day there is a man in a suit waiting at his office. He hands him an envelope and Sheldon, after running every test he can think of on the envelope to insure that it is merely paper, discovers an exact replica of the previous letter.
x
She knew to stay in the state she'd last been contacted, to make it easier for Grey to find her. She spotted a piece of copper on the ground and decided that her new name would be simple, Penny. Her hair was naturally blonde, and her future exposure to the Californian sun meant it'd get blonder still. In her heels, short skirt, and tube top, she could have been any of the regular struggling actresses that were famous for immigrating to LA. Cover decided, she stepped into a sports bar, the Nebraska Huskers were playing on screen. She smiled and accepted when a tall, ruggedly handsome man offered to buy her a drink. He was cute, and as he struck up a conversation and told her he was from Nebraska, she giggled and exclaimed at the coincidence, so was she! She'd just dropped out of college, and she wanted to give acting a try. Kurt, the guy, told her all about how he wanted to be a stuntman, but was playing bouncer for now. She asked him if he knew where they were hiring. She'd just moved to California and was crashing on her friends couch. She let him think he convinced her to go home with him that night-and never left.
Kurt's Nebraska friends became her Nebraska friends and he never noticed. A quick Google search and a good memory gave her everything she needed to pass muster. Whenever she met people from Omaha, she merely smiled, convinced them they'd seen her around. It was easy-she knew how to talk circles around people, how to let their expectations of her be the disguise. She was pretty and blonde, super friendly and outgoing-of course she'd been a cheerleader. She'd even done junior rodeo a few times, maybe that's why she looked familiar. It was easy, people filled in most of the details themselves, she barely had to do any major lying.
It was just playing expectations. People had so many pre-conceived notions of one another. Maybe it was because of their secret faces they were so busy concealing, but they never seemed to take a really good look at anyone else. She'd been trained to read the signs and act the part, reflect back what they would think of her at a glance. Blondes, pretty girls, social butterfly, all established stereotypes-it was easy to pretend to be an open book. Just a pretty smile was sometimes enough for people to decide they knew exactly the kind of person she was. So long as she kept her back story straight no one would ever know any better, and that was only when they were actually listening and not too busy trying to impress her or be her friend.
x
Some government agency, he decides eventually. Not foreign, or the reaction to discovery would not have been so mild. The American Government was monitoring his university. As if the NSA weren't bad enough. He wonders who's data they are so interested in. Who's findings they are making use of, or planning to use.
He can't help but be curious. Of course he keeps looking into it. He's had dealings with the government before. It wasn't like it was dangerous...right?
x
It was three very long years before Grey found her again. She'd looked forward to finally leaving California before she was informed that her next assignment was in Pasadena. She'd done a very good job of establishing herself. Grey had ordered her to keep the guise, she'd been playing Penny longer than she had ever played anyone else before, and he'd decided she'd done a good enough job to be placed on a long term assignment.
A week later she'd 'caught' Kurt cheating on her and stormed out dramatically. She'd never needed those acting classes she religiously paid for. Grey had told her her target was Caltech University, all she needed to do was keep an eye out and ensure that none of their more sensitive materials were leaked. They'd had a few close calls with North Korea.
She rents an apartment next to some scientists that work there and hopes they will be quick to reassign her. She was tired of playing Penny.
x
First order of business, many thanks to crazyshay77 for taking on the herculean task of being my beta, any mistakes are sneaky and mine.
I know I should be working on other stuff, and I have been trying-but it was really bugging me that Penny didn't have a last name and somehow this happened. It'll just be three chapters but I'm really digging the concept. I hope you guys like it-please let me know what you think!