There was someone in my room. I had always been a light sleeper, ready to run at the first sign of trouble. That hadn't changed when I moved to New York two years ago, and it certainly hadn't changed now. I didn't move, and kept my breathing as even as it had been before I had been jerked awake to the sound of my door creaking open.

I knew that it was not someone that had permission to be in there, and whoever it was clearly wasn't a part of the X-Men. If they had permission to be in there, they would have already announced their presence. If they were a member of my team, they would have woken me quickly to deal with whatever crisis was at hand. And since there were no alarms going of, be they electronic or telepathic, I was left to conclude that the person currently shutting the door was there for one reason only, namely, to kill me. I didn't like that thought.

The second the door was fully closed I reached for the sai that rested above my headboard, a gift from Logan that had been given upon his return from a trip to Japan a few months before. It left my fingertips, spinning towards the intruder as I leapt out of bed and darted quickly to my target. The blade had its intended effect, striking the person just below the arm and pinning them to the wall. I moved to punch them, but was stopped by their voice.

"Nice reflexes Pryde. The only ones I've seen react that quickly would be Black Widow or Hawk-eye. Maybe The Calvary on a good day."

"Dammit Fury!" I cursed, stepping back and removing my arm from its position across his neck. "Give a girl some warning next time!"

"Whatever you say, Pryde. Whatever you say."

I reached for the light switch and flipped it, for his benefit and not my own. "I'm serious, Nick. I could have seriously hurt you."

"No, you couldn't have."

I chose not to correct him. Pulling my desk chair out from under my table, I sat on my bed and gestured for him to also take a seat. He didn't bother to thank me, instead just plopping down without much ceremony.

"So," I began nonchalantly, "Whatcha need from the computer geek? A tune up? New spyware? Phil-hiding systems? A Hyrda bug removal? Your systems have been quite infected lately."

He started suddenly. "What the hell are you talking about, Pryde?"

"I think that you know exactly what I am talking about. Namely, the fact that Phil survived the Battle of New York. And ever since Cap went on ice, Hydra has been infiltrating SHIELD. Really, there is nothing that happens in the world that I don't know about."

"I should know that by now," he admitted a little ruefully, "You are probably the only person in the world outside of my circle with that knowledge. You gonna keep your mouth shut?"

I knew enough of the man to understand that his question was not in the least bit threatening, only curious. He genuinely wanted to know if I could keep this secret.

"I know how you brought Phil back. I don't agree with what you did, and if he knew and understood, neither would he. You nearly started a war by your actions, you realize that right?"

"I am fully aware of my actions, Pryde."

"Then you better be fully aware of the consequences Nick. What you did made you no better than what Hydra did to the Winter Soldier. Another secret that I am oh so happy to keep for you." My sarcasm toward the end of my dialogue was biting.

"Jesus Pryde, what the hell are you?"

"A person who is determined to know all the facts."

"But not share them."

My head jerked up. While we may have been discussing certain secrets at that moment, he wasn't referring to any of them.

"What are you talking about?"

"Oh, nothing important. Just the fact that Mystique has more than one child. In fact, she has four."

Damn it. I should have known that he knew. After all, he was the head of SHIELD. In the words of Tony Stark, he was The Spy. If there was anyone in the world who knew more about it then me, then it was him.

But still. I had been living with this secret for over a year. My brother and I were both reluctant to admit that Mystique had given birth to us, especially as her list of crimes grew. The imagined reactions of our team frightened us, and we were not sure how to go about it.

But, back to the present.

"Are you going to rat us out?"

"No. That's your business and not mine. What you tell your team is your choice, and it's not my place to open my mouth."

I knew where he was going for this.

"In other words, you don't say anything to my team if I don't say anything to yours."

"Exactly." He said with a tone of satisfaction evident in his voice.

I would have said something in that moment, but I was interrupted by the sound of an alarm coming from my computer. I leaped from the bed and didn't even bother pushing Nick out of the chair, plopping down into his lap and throwing my computer open. My fingers hit the keys furiously, typing in my password and entering into the mainframe.

Hydra was trying to access SHIELD again, and had managed to bring all my firewalls down. I cursed under my breath, feeling a drop of sweat coursing down my face.

Imagine, if you will, for one moment, a maze. Like any maze you find in a newspaper, there is only one entrance and one exit. The person traveling the maze has to enter from one and exit out the other, there is no other way to make it through. This concept is what I had used to keep Hydra out of the computers of the X-Mansion, the Fantastic Four tower in San Francisco, the SHIELD mainframe, and pretty much any other super hero team that associated with us. I would have bugged Tony Stark's mainframe as well, but JARVIS didn't like me for some reason. I stayed away from that computer. Far away.

But I'm rambling again. Back to the maze concept.

I controlled where Hydra went in the mainframe. They saw only what I wanted them to see. I could create a program that showed horror movies twenty-four seven, and directed the hackers to that program and only that program, keeping the secrets that needed to be kept.

But now, someone had taken a virtual wrecking ball to the maze, blowing it wide open and leaving a lot of exit points. They were getting through to the heart of SHIELD. I couldn't let that happen.

My muscles were tense as I accessed the program. I shoved all the Hydra drones out of my way and rebuilt the maze from the ground up. I really don't know how to describe it, but it was the most intense thirty seconds of my life as I pieced together the bits of the firewall. When I was done, I leaned back with a sigh.

A hand stroking my hair gently reminded me of where I was, and I shot up as soon as he stopped.

"Oh god, god, god, I am soooo freaking sorry..." I don't know how long I babbled for, but one second I was standing and the next I was sitting on the floor, having been overcome with dizziness.

"It's okay, Katherine." His voice was soft, and a part of me registered that this was the first time he had ever used my actual, given name. "I had no idea..." he trailed off. A few tense seconds passed.

"Thank you." He finally finished. "You've kept them from us for so long. They would have probably broken through already if it weren't for you."

"Yeah," I couldn't help but agree, "They would have."

"So thank you, for doing what others could not. You have no idea how many lives you have saved."

"I don't need to know." I told him. "Because, frankly, I could care less. Maybe that makes me sound like a bad person, but I have never been one to fight for the greater good. I fight for the here and the now and the people that I love. No one, and nothing else."

He didn't say anything. He didn't have to. I knew that he understood.

"So we have a deal then? I'll keep your secrets if you keep mine?"

"Done, Pryde."

We shook on it.