Okay, I've had to think how to make this worth, and this is what I've come up with. Since there are still some people in the middle of reading the older version, I'm going to repost it here and continue the next one on a different story on my fanfiction. I'll change the name, but this will stay here. If you have any ideas for either new title or new story, please feel free to write it in a review or a private message :)
Chapter One
Sam vs. The Hot Chocolate
It's never good to have someone knock on your door in the middle of the night.
On the off chance it was a burglar, one could easily handle the situation. Call 9-1-1, get out the fire extinguisher and hit him in the groin, take out the frying pan and use it to bash his head in. Burglars are stupid and easy solve.
Handling the death of your father, not so much.
I was lying in bed when I heard the quiet engine of a car pass by. Only it didn't go away. It stayed outside, near my house, and for a while I listened to it. I realized I was irritated, because the car was distracting me from my sleep.
And then I got worried. Why was it here? Was it a burglar? If it was, they were sure taking their time. What was going on?
Then came the three knocks. Not two, not four, but three. Then two more. In a sort of pattern.
There was the sound of feet pounding rapidly down the stairs. I was surprised; I was thoroughly convinced my mother was sleeping only two minutes before. Had she heard the car engine, too?
It didn't matter. I heard the door open and muffled voices through my pillow. In that moment, I was terrified. My life was hanging in the moment – I didn't know what was going to happen, or what was going on right now. It could've been a serial killer, like Rebecca Oswald was talking about in school the other day. Rebecca was so stupid – what does she know?
I froze in my musings, not daring to breathe, not to make a sound. I wanted to know what was going on. I just didn't want Mom to know.
There came the sound of Mom weeping and then I couldn't take it anymore. Something was going on, and I had to see it.
I jumped from my bed, oddly awake, and burst from my room, almost tripping head-over-heels on my way down the stairs.
The door was still open, letting in cold night air. A man in a dark suit stood there, looking somber and grim, watched me with a hint of surprise as I graced the landing of the stairs with my butt.
He opened his mouth as if to say something, perhaps a word of interest to Mom, but she got to it before he did. "Go back to bed, Sammy."
Sammy. Ugh. Stupid baby names. Why did she have to treat me like I was still a five-year-old? I was in the sixth grade, for Pete's sake!
"Why?" I demanded, not caring how rude I sounded. "What's going on?"
The light from the street shone on my mom, and I saw she had dark circles under her eyes. That's weird. I didn't think she'd have trouble sleeping. Why would she have trouble sleeping?
Mom seemed too tired to tell me to go away. The man in the doorway still looked a little bewildered, but she said to him, "Are you sure? Is that was the report said?"
"Sorry, Clarry." The man sighed. I was a little confused, because I didn't know a lot of people besides Dad who called my mom by her first name. Did she know this man? Who was he? "Regan was the only one who made it out. She did her best, but it was too late."
"What was too late?" I blurted, my heart skipping a beat. The look on my mother's face – horror, grief, love, and a little bit of something else – made me feel queasy inside. Something wasn't right. Not right at all.
"Thank you, Jim," Mom brushed her face with her hands, and I saw on her face tears. "I'll handle it from here."
"Whatever you say, Clarry," he smiled sympathetically and started to back away from the door. "Just doing my duty."
The door closed.
The room suddenly got dark. I stood there stiffly, cold, looking at Mom, waiting for her to start talking.
"Come on, sweetie. Let's go into the kitchen and sit down. I'll make you some hot chocolate."
I was stunned. Mom never made me hot chocolate. She said I was just too lazy to do it myself. This was how I knew things had gotten from bad to worse. Mom only made me hot chocolate when something horrible had happened.
But I would be at that same table when the cold, pink light of morning rose, the hot chocolate untouched, in a different home, in a different state, almost four years later. Instead of street lights outside, there were white-capped mountains.
It was on that night that had changed my entire life. My dad, off on a trip to Russia, was sent for medical work. He went with a team of co-workers, which was probably why I didn't go with him. He had gone to Africa before that with them, and he was only meant to be in Moscow for six weeks.
He never came back.
Even now, it was still a hard thing to wrap my mind around. Dad and I – we had been tight. He had taught me everything I knew, and even said that out loud. Dad told me that whatever they taught me in school could never prepare me for what was really out there. School softened the truth, made it nice and G-rated. The world was tough, and it didn't give Get-Out-of-Jail-Free cards to just anyone.
You had to work, he'd tell me often. You had to earn what you get.
It was a moral I lived by, really. I wanted to excel at everything, be the best I could be. I wanted to make him proud.
But I guess it was all for nothing.
Montana was beautiful, though. Despite my lack of paternal guidance, I learned a lot of things. Snowboarding, for instance, which I can proudly say I managed to learn on my own. Dad – ahem – taught me how to ski, so it took me almost a winter and a half to get good on a board.
And I still had Mom, which was saying a lot. She was there for me, although I can't say she was like Dad. She was distant, and wasn't very good at moral support. Then again, neither was I.
I guess you could say I took after my mom. She was a Bartowski, through and through. Dark hair, shining eyes, tall (for a woman). I had her nose, her mouth, her jawline. Even her hips, if that doesn't sound weird. But that's where the resemblance stopped. I had dark hair, too, but it was much more curlier and unruly. I was short.
And I had my dad's blue eyes.
I looked at the cup of hot chocolate, gone cold. I should really drink this, I said to myself. Mom doesn't like it when I waste food.
I got up and stuck the mug into the microwave. As the mug rotated and the machine hummed, I crossed my arms and tried to think. What to do, what to do…
I picked up the remote and turned on the TV. It was too early for anything good to come one – half of the channels were still playing infomercials for insomniacs. I chose the news channel, figuring this week's weather was more important than how efficient my toaster was.
Dad had always been there for me. We did almost everything together. He took me wherever he went, and taught me things that schools could only dream of. Dad went with me to the movies, held my hand as I got shots, made sure I was always on time for school or dinner or bedtime. Although I wasn't the greatest fan of sports, he taught me how to throw a baseball, how to swing a back, how to kick a soccer ball. It was almost unreal that he was no longer sleeping in our home, eating our food, driving the car. I'd never hear his laughter again, or tie his shoes together, or guilt him into helping me with my math homework.
The microwave dinged and I retrieved my drink, now piping hot again.
The anchorman was giving reports on clear skies and warm days.
Mom came down the stairs.
"Good morning," I said between sips as she yawned. Her hair was a mess, but it was nothing I wasn't already used to.
Mom squinted at me, as if I was an illusion, something that wasn't quite there. "What're you doing up so early?"
"Couldn't sleep."
"We do have NyQuil."
"Then I'll oversleep."
Mom sighed in exasperation. "How your father dealed with you, I will never know."
For one, he had a sense of humor, I thought to myself sourly.
Mom shuffled over to a cabinet and took out her favorite coffee mix and turned herself on autopilot. This is something I liked to witness every morning – I could talk about anything I wanted, but Mom would be so out of it, she wouldn't even realize I had been talking until she finished her coffee.
I decided not to talk this time – instead, I turned the TV on louder. It had changed from the weather to national news. Something about an old kidnapping in Los Angeles. Something about a trail gone sour. Something that had nothing to do with me.
Mom sighed and sat at the table, blinking blearily at the TV screen. Contrary to her sleepy composure, Mom drank her coffee in giant gulps. It wouldn't be long until she could understand the words the anchorman was spewing.
"…abducted on the waterfront in California only a year ago today…"
Mom blinked once, twice, three times in quick succession. "California?"
Why she picked up that word in particular, I didn't know. What was so important about California?
I said that question out loud, and it took Mom a little while longer to collect her thoughts. I waited for her patiently. Mom always took a while to think before she said anything. It was just something she did. I guess I could see why – Mom was always a careful person. She didn't like taking risks, and was a bit of a loner. She hung around in the garage a lot, building stuff.
That's the thing about my mom. She didn't exactly do what normal women did. My grade school friends had moms who baked pies and decided whether or not plaid curtains were in or out this year. Mine wondered if the engine of our could take 75 miles to the gallon instead of just 29, and then worked all night just so it could.
Mom, also, knew how to fix just about anything that revolved around tools, electricity, and dirt. Once, my bike got ran over, but she fixed it to such a new state that for the first couple weeks I thought she had bought an entirely new one. Another time, my laptop went kaput and she managed to get it up and going again with a state-of-the-art technology that I was pretty sure wasn't even out yet. And when I was struggling to come up with a project for the school Science Fair, she didn't help me build a volcano - no, she helped me build a scaled map of the world set up on a table the size of a my bed, with a real pump system that led to every volcano on Earth, that magically created glowing red liquid that melted the plastic trees I glues to the wood.
But my mom's gift at technology and science was not on my mind just then, because the look emerging on her face was concerning me: what was on her mind?
"Sam," she turned to me, a curious look on her face. "Do you remember your cousins?"
OoOoO
Several states away, a woman in a general's uniform was sitting at her desk, going through a particularly heavy load of paperwork.
The woman was small and short. Her brown hair was pulled back in a smooth and shiny bun at the base of her neck. This was the style she had lived with for many, many years, and she had no intention of changing it any time soon.
But despite her small stature, the woman was a fierce soldier and an expert strategist. She knew every code, maneuver, and trick in the rulebook, and it was those very things that got her where she was now.
Signing paperwork.
She had to admit, this wasn't what she had been expecting she'd do in the later years of her life. The paperwork in her career was horrifyingly tedious, and at times she wished she had chosen an occupation a little less complicated. Then again, her retirement plan was definitely something she was looking forward to.
But no thoughts of retirement were on her mind just then. She was too busy concentrating on the list in front of her. It was an old list, written and typed up a long time ago – so long that the paper had turn yellow with age, and the font was stubbornly wide-spaced.
The list was a collection of all possible candidates for the Operation Gemini. They were pairings of different spies, set on making on goal come true. After all, that was what Operation Gemini was all about. Four names were high-lighted. Things were in motion already. These people had one goal, and one goal only.
Create the perfect spy duo.
The woman picked up another stack of piles, this one a little fresher than the rest. It had been updated recently with the photo of a girl with dark curly hair and blue eyes. There was a big, silly grin on the girl's face. The woman was vaguely startled – the girl resembled one of the woman's own operatives. It was no question they were related.
The girl was fifteen years old. She was small for her age, especially for her family genetics, but was otherwise physically tip-top shape. Expert in Karate. Didn't know how to drive yet, but that could be taken care of soon enough.
The next stack was centered on the other half of Operation Gemini. The woman frowned at the stack, unhappy. It was a boy this time – of the same age, not unattractive, with blond hair and brown eyes that were too serious for a boy his age.
This wasn't good, but there was nothing she could do about it.
He, too, was physically fit . Knew karate. Also knew how to drive. A little young, but a good skill nonetheless.
They were ready, the woman thought to herself. They just needed to prove it. But how?
Her mind trailed back to recent news. A kidnapping of a photographer, only a year ago. Local policemen had picked up the trail again, albeit it was rather weak. It wasn't a high-class mission, or a very important one for that matter, since it revolved around the murder of a celebrity.
The woman scowled. She had no love for celebrities, but this would have to do.
She reached for the phone on her desk. She pressed a button.
"Begin the integration." was all she said.
General Beckman sat back in her seat. She smiled to herself.
Finally.
