October 11, 1997

"You should count yourself lucky that no one was hurt. Did you hear me, boy?" the officer gripping Grant's shoulder shook him, and he nodded, scanning the crowd. His mother was being treated by the paramedics—no one was bothering to check on him.

"Yeah, I hear you." Grant shifted from foot to foot, running his tongue over his loose tooth. Self defense, she'd said.

"Ma'am," the deputy strode over to Mrs. Ward, who was being treated for a mild concussion. Grant had felt a swell of pride when he'd heard that. "I would suggest sending that one away for a while, just until he gets his head on straight."

"My husband and I already have everything worked out," she reassured him, offering him what appeared for all the world to be a kind, brave face. The look she shot her son a moment later was anything but.

"Your daughter is down at the police station," the man continued. "The Captain thought it best she stay out of the way until this is all over."

"I completely agree," she said, nodding vigorously and then wincing in pain.

"Son," a younger officer came up to Grant and steered the angry young boy away from the crowd. "I'm going to ask you something, and I want the truth. Understand?"

Grant nodded warily. "Now, I was the one to talk to your sister when she was in the station, all brown eyes and tremors. And I'll tell you something—she wouldn't let a single female officer come near her; the only ones who she let close were myself and the Captain. Now," he continued. "If you're the problem, that's fine. But if it's your mother that's the reason why that sweet little girl clammed up in a ball for a solid hour and wouldn't talk to anyone, I need to know. Do you understand me?"

The look in Grant's eyes shook the young officer to the core, and he knew in his gut that the kid was lying when he shook his head and said, "Yes sir. Mother isn't the problem. I am."

The officer lifted an eyebrow. "So you are the reason why your sister has bruises all over her body?"

Grant's eyes widened as the blood drained from his face, and the kid's lips pressed together to tightly they turned white. He looked furious—and he was staring past the officer at someone else. The officer turned to look. It was the eldest of the Wards, Christian. He was watching Grant with an expressionless face, as though he didn't care at all what was going on.

"Grant." The boy turned his attention on the officer. "If you're the one who's been protecting her, and you're going away, she's going to be left alone. If there's anything you want to tell me, do it now, before it's too late."

"There's not."

October 14, 2011

The next time I opened my eyes, it was dark, and my head hurt. The first flash of panic I felt made me think that I was locked in the basement again, but that fear passed as quickly as it had come. I tried to look around, but there was nothing to see—and as I thought, as memories returned, I figured something out: I was in a cell. A cell.

The last person I remembered talking to had been my brother. Grant. The one who'd abandoned me and then tried to kill me as a child.

I scrambled to my feet, reaching out my arms to blindly feet for the walls. I was in a room smaller than my dorm room—and that was saying a lot. It was about ten by ten feet, windowless, and, apparently, doorless.

Hysteria rose in my throat, and I moved to sit in the middle of the room where I couldn't feel any of the walls. I knew from being locked in closets and basements that when experiencing a panic attack caused by claustrophobia, the best thing to do—for me, anyway—was to go where I couldn't feel the walls. It made the space feel bigger.

"It's okay," I whispered to myself, holding my right hand in my left and twisting the ring that was mercifully still on my finger. "Everything's gonna be okay. Breathe. You're not in a basement, your parents aren't here—" my breathing hitched and grew labored. My parents might not be here, but my brother was, and I didn't know which was worse. "Your parents aren't here, they can't hurt you—"

Why had this happened? I haven't seen Grant in a decade, haven't spoken to him in longer—he went to prison when I was only seven years old, more than a decade before—so why was he here now? Why is he after me?

~8~8~

"Good work, Agent," the officer nodded in approval to the young man, who nodded jerkily in response. The superior officer glanced over the younger man, taking in his bloodied appearance. "She didn't come in easily?"

"No, sir," Grant Ward replied, glancing bitterly at the monitors. The girl was sitting cross-legged in the center of the room, muttering to her self. Not a good sign; was she planning on pleasing insanity is brought to court? "She jumped out a window when I first encountered her."

"Did she really?" The officer gave a small smile. "We've been looking for her for a long time."

"Sir, something odd happened when I first met her." This had been on his mind all day—when he'd asked for a Jennifer Guiles, she'd seemed genuinely confused—and until she'd noted that he looked familiar, she hadn't seemed threatened by his appearance at all. Once she noted his familiarity, she had panicked—she was good at hiding it, incredibly good—but not good enough. He'd seen the brief flicker of fear in her eyes as she closed the door, noted when she'd jumped at the sound of her phone ringing. All this on top of her locking the door and leaping out the window… and then she'd started talking about how she'd only done what he'd asked, and she didn't mean for him to be hurt—what had she been talking about? "She seemed… afraid of me."

"Yes, that tends to happen when one is being arrested," the older man commented, watching the girl's image on the screen.

Grant shook his head in frustration. "Yes, sir, but it was something more than that—"

"Son," Agent Garrett clapped his hand on the younger man's shoulder. "She's a fugitive. She would have done anything to get away from you, as is evident from your broken nose. Go question her, see what you can find out."

"Sir, I don't know if that's a good idea—" he wasn't too keen on being attacked again, especially if she was as crazy as she appeared.

"John!" Another agent strode down the hall and glanced between the two of them. "A word?"

"Phil!" Garrett clapped Coulson on the back and nodded in dismissal to Grant. "Go wait outside the interrogation room, we'll send her to you."

"You got her?" Phil Coulson asked, glancing after Ward as he strode off to the other side of the compound. "I don't normally get called in for little missions like these."

"Jennifer Guiles," Garrett glanced down at an embarrassingly short file. "Age twenty-three. Born in Richmond, Virginia, and was adopted by Stephen and Elizabeth Guiles as a baby."

"And?"

"And this isn't her." Garrett tossed the file onto the table between them, scattering its contents. A picture of the suspect was among the papers, and while the two girls shared a few similarities: caucasian, dark hair—it was clear that the girl in custody was not the girl in the file.

"So who is she?" Coulson gestured towards the cell to the girl who couldn't have been more than eighteen years old.

"We don't know." Garrett shook his head in frustration. "We have people working on it now, but she got rid of all identification before we captured her, including driver's license, phone, student ID, everything."

"Facial recognition?"

"We're trying. It looks like she wiped the system of herself. She's just… gone."

Coulson shook his head in disbelief. "There's no way she could do that from here. Unless she has friends?"

"We're checking on that. There was a kid in her room—a student. He was on the phone with her while our agents were in the room, but he disappeared soon after we captured her, and we haven't been able to track him down yet."

Coulson nodded. "And you think he could have erased her."

"Maybe. But that's not the problem—I want to know why."

"So why did you think that she and Jennifer are the same person?"

"Because Jennifer's fingerprints are the same as this girl's."

Coulson glanced at his friend. "Impossible. Unless she's on the Gifted Index?"

Garrett shrugged. "It's possible. Or, it's a possibility that this girl—" he pointed at the screen at Samantha, who was being led, blindfolded, into the hall by a pair of guards. "—created her."

~8~8~

I didn't struggle as I was led out of my suffocatingly small cell. I needed to get out, no matter what the cost was—and the instant I crossed the threshold into a hallway, my breathing became easier. I didn't bother asking where they were taking me; I knew they wouldn't answer.

It was several minutes later that I heard a door open and I was led into another room. My socked feet padded against the cool floor. I was sat down in a chair and, before I really knew what was happening, my arms were strapped down, my wrists tied to the arms of the chair. My heart rate spiked almost immediately, and I jerked against the bonds, terrified. I couldn't see, I was tied down—years of torture and abuse made me struggle for my life, and it wasn't until someone removed the blindfold that I was able to breathe.

"Stop fighting." I didn't recognize the man in front of me. He was older—maybe in his mid 40s. He was balding, but his eyes were sharp. "I'm here to ask you a few questions, I suggest you answer them honestly."

Another man was fiddling with something on the table, attaching things to my skin. "Why am I here?" I sat still but continued to fidget, twisting my wrists so that the velcro dug into my skin. It was a coping mechanism I'd discovered years ago—the discomfort kept me grounded. He hooked me up to the machine, which I recognized as a polygraph—a lie detector.

"I ask the questions, not you." The man opened a folder. Before he could say another word, he touched a small earpiece and nodded. "I understand. Yes, sir." He left, leaving the file on the desk.

I sat still for almost a minute, growing more and more panicked by the second. How many times had I been left alone—tied up or free—in a room where there were no windows, no doors—left to fear when might happen, what consequence or punishment I might face? How many times had I tried to run away, only to be found by the man and woman who called themselves my parents? I didn't know why they had treated me the way they had, and I had never received an answer—other than a slap—when I had questioned their motives, so I had given up. I did know that sitting and waiting for torture wasn't going to work for me, and I was about three seconds away from overturning my chair when the door slid open.

It was Grant.

~8~8~

"What are you doing here?"

It wasn't a question, not exactly—it was a growl, a demand. Frankly, it startled him—the girl looked so much like his baby sister—it was hard for him to set aside the frightened child he'd known from the angry, frightened young woman in front of him.

"I'm here to ask you a few questions."

~8~8~

He looked so much like our father, it was disconcerting. He looked so much like Christian, too—and Thomas, though Thomas's hair and bearing were lighter.

"Like what?" I stared him down, trying to hide the growing panic I felt. I hated being tied down. I couldn't even wear scarves or necklaces or bracelets because they felt too constricting. Maybe if I played nice, they'd untie me. Then again, maybe not. The device that tracked my heart rate was going crazy, something Grant noticed immediately.

"Let's start with your name," he stated, sliding into his chair. He folded his hands over the file and glanced it over. "It's not Jennifer Guiles, that's for sure. This picture isn't even of you."

I blinked. "You don't know my name?" I was genuinely stunned. If he didn't know who I was, then he couldn't kill me. He wasn't after me, at least not as Samantha—but then, why had he called me Sammie?

"Obviously not."

This could work to my advantage. Maybe if I irritated him enough, got someone else in the room to talk to her, I could walk out of this alive. My heart rate began to slow. "You called me 'Sammie.' Who is she?"

A muscle in his jaw twitched. "What is your name?"

I had struck a nerve, that was obvious—and I wasn't sure that I had done the right thing, either. I kept my mouth shut, watching him closely. I couldn't give my middle name, he knew it already—and if they discovered I was lying to them, they'd hurt me.

He leaned back, wiping his face clean of emotion. "Fine. Let's start with something easier." He gestured to her, then crossed his arms. "Where'd you get those scars?"

My breath hitched, and one of the polygraph's needles jumped. "What?"

"The scars. On your face," he clarified. "They're faint, sure, but they're there—I saw them when I was outside your room, and again, now that your makeup's been rubbed off. They're not burns, and they're not deep enough to be from an animal. They're not new, either—a few years old, at least. So tell me, where did they come from?"

I couldn't breathe. I remembered being thrown across the room, hitting my head on the corner of the table—running through the woods and running headfirst into a jagged branch—

"I need an answer."

The only answer I could think of was the truth. "My parents." The words were barely audible.

Grant leaned forward, glancing at the polygraph. "Excuse me?"

"My parents," I repeated. My lips were numb. "They—" I swallowed—my mouth was dry. "They hurt me."

He frowned and shifted uncomfortably in his chair, able to see for himself that I was telling the truth. "I see."

"You seem uncomfortable."

The words came without my bidding, but I couldn't stop them. There were times—like now—when I knew exactly what to say to get a reaction out of someone, especially if I knew things about them—like the abuse he suffered at the hands of our parents. I knew how to play him, and others—but it always left a bad taste in my mouth. This was worse, somehow—it was my brother—but at the same time, I felt a sick feeling of satisfaction at seeing him squirm.

"Tell me about your parents," he glanced at the file again and made a note. I couldn't help but notice that the entire thing, for the most part, was blank. I looked at him, my face clear of emotion, waiting for him to speak again. After a few minutes, he obeyed.

"Answer me," he practically growled.

I had to hold back a smile. I was in my element. I loved being in control—after decades of not being able to do anything for myself, of being at the mercy of someone else, I relished having someone at my mercy—I shook my head. No, I didn't.

The thought made me sick, and I swallowed the taste of bile that rose in my throat. I hated when thoughts like those popped into my head, and I battled against them every day.

I didn't want to be like Christian.

"Well?"

I looked him in the eye. "They tortured me," I replied evenly, trying to hide the shudder that made the hairs on my arms and neck stand on end—my arms were still covered by my sweater. "They would lock me in the basement for days without any food. They would beat me and—and other things," I breathed, trying to keep from throwing up. Don't think about it. "During the school year I wasn't beaten as often because people at school would have noticed. Summers were worse."

Grant looked sick. As soon as he noticed I was looking, his face went blank. "And no siblings? No one helped you?"

There were a thousand answers to that question, a thousand ways I could have answered the question he had thrown at me and still have been telling the truth. I had a brother. I had a few brothers. They left me. You left me. They were worse that my parents—except for Thomas. But even he left me, though I didn't blame him.

I chose the simplest, the one that didn't hurt me quite as badly. "No."

The polygraph said I was telling the truth. Grant glanced down at his notes and added something in the margins. "How old are you?"

"Younger than you."

His empathy vanished, replaced by irritation. "Answer me."

I leaned forward as far as possible, glaring at him. I was done playing games, and I was done talking about myself. I didn't like being vulnerable, though at times I couldn't help it, and I was making up for it now by being angry instead. "How about you answer a question of mine. Why am I here?"

"Did you create Jennifer Guiles because of your parents?" he asked instead.

I tilted my head, watching him. Jennifer Guiles.

After a few minutes of silence, he leaned back, his frustration evident. "I have all day."

I smiled wryly. "I know."