XXXI

"Alex," Yassen's face is expressionless as always, but in his voice Alex can hear faint exasperation and something else that he cannot quite identify. "Why do you keep endangering your life like this? What possible justification can you have for the risks you take with yourself?"

"I risked nothing important; all of the parameters of the mission were fulfilled precisely."

"That is not the question I asked."

"I risked nothing important."

"Alex, you are mine –your life and body, if not your heart – your life is important; if you are dead or maimed, you are of no use to me. Do you understand? From now on, on every mission, your first priority is to ensure that you come out alive."

"Understood," Alex acknowledges, and while both of them realize he has not agreed, Yassen forebears commenting, but the odd look of something does not quite disappear from his face.

XXXII

Cub runs, keeping pace with the other four members of his team, but the exertion of doing so shows clearly on his face. He is a child still, barely 16 years old, and these are grown men; if his situation were any different he would never be expected to keep up with them, never feel the need to push himself to surpass them. But his situation is not different and he forces his focus back to reality. He needs all of his concentration to keep up with the men around him because the consequences of falling behind… He will not fall behind, he will never give them any excuse to send him back, especially not on his first day here.

By the time Wolf calls for them to stop, Cub's breathing is ragged and he feels slightly light-headed, although he does his best not to let his team catch onto his weakness. It is best, he has learned, to make sure they don't find any vulnerabilities, because when they do, they are merciless. Today, however, there is no hiding, and although he is rapidly regaining control of his breathing, he is not fast enough, not good enough for them.

"What's wrong Double-O-Nothing?" Wolf taunts. Of all the men in his unit, Wolf is by the far the most confrontational and it is no surprise when he continues, "Poor, little boy can't keep up with the real soldiers? You're pathetic, drop down and give me twenty!"

"Sir, yes, sir!" Cub shouts, although his tired body resents the punishment, Cub cannot actually resent the man who ordered it. After all, he is an unwanted addition, slowing the team down and Wolf has his own men to put first. Cub is too slow, too weak, too useless to be one of Wolf's soldiers and until that changes he is nothing. But unlike Before, there is something he can do, a way he can change to make himself good enough and that knowledge gives him hope and makes it easy to ignore the protests of his body and the pettiness of his team's behavior.

XXXIII

The child is back in his dreams again, frowning, with a look too serious for its young age. "We have a new mask," the disapproval is so blatant in the young child's voice that for a moment Alex almost feels compelled to defend himself. "I thought we spoke about this," he says, "I thought you understood. These masks are destroying you, suffocating you, every new one takes a little bit more and someday soon, that one last mask will take just that one little bit more than you can give and there will be nothing of you left!"

"Why do my affairs hold such a great concern for you?" Alex asks as the child pauses for breath, genuinely curious, but also trying to distance himself from the unsettling child, careful to keep his eyes from straying to the mirror behind it.

"Why I care isn't important. What is important is that they have broken you, and forced you to break yourself and you don't even seem to care. What is important is that beneath all of your masks, you don't even know who you are anymore, that maybe you disappeared a long time ago and what you are now is just another mask."

Something in the boy's words connects with Alex, and he's not sure why, there are just words after all, but something in the other's accusations hurts him and suddenly he doesn't want to hear any more. "Stop. Please, Stop!" He doesn't actually expect his plea to affect the apparition in front of him and yet he is still somewhat surprised when it does not.

"Do my words hurt, Cub? Would they have that sort of power if they were merely lies? Wake up and at least acknowledge the truth. Your eyes are shut together so tightly right now that you can't see the cliff you're walking toward and I'm yelling as loudly as I can to slow down, but you won't listen, you just keep walking closer and closer to the edge of the bluff and one day soon we're going to go over. You're going to kill us and you don't care!"

Alex turns to face the child, eyes narrowed in anger, because of all the things it could have said- "You're wrong! They did not break me, merely made me into something useful. I am a tool, nothing more, and if there is nothing when you pull all of the masks off of me, then there is nothing left to kill!"

"You don't mean that, you were never meant to be only a tool-"

"Stop pretending that you care, you don't understand anything! I am nothing and there isn't anything you, or anyone, can do to change that so stop trying to help me!"

"You don't mean this, your father is using you-"

"Of course my father uses me; I am his son, that is my purpose."

"And do you enjoy your purpose, little spy?"

Alex turns his back once more on the apparition, refusing to acknowledge its last point and slowly, as if acknowledging defeat, the world around him begins to fade.

XXXIV

Cub, Eagle will admit, is definitely not what he had been expecting when his team was informed that they would be playing glorified babysitters to a general's nephew. He had expected a whiny, incompetent, self-absorbed brat or some sort of super-hardcore, extra muscled, mini-general and he can now say with perfect certainty that Cub is neither of those. The kid is tiny to start out with, not wimpy small, but small, small. When he first saw the kid, Eagle would have sworn that Cub couldn't have been older than ten and even having trained with him for the past few days, Eagle still isn't sure he believes that the kid is actually 16.

Then there's also the fact that the kid seems incapable of getting angry. Before he actually arrived, Eagle had joked with the rest of the unit that the boy was being sent here was because he was actually a spy and somehow the idea had stuck. By the time the kid actually arrived, they'd already gotten used to calling him Double-O-Nothing and finding out he was supposed to be called Cub hasn't really changed anything, but the weird part is that no matter how often K-Unit mocks him or sabotages his efforts, Eagle has never seen Cub get angry. The kid just ignores it, like this sort of hazing is such a normal part of his life that he doesn't even notice it anymore. Not once in the four days that Eagle's been with the kid, has he heard a single complaint cross the boy's lips.

Then there's also the boy's incredible luck. From the day he arrived, it was pretty obvious, at least to Eagle, that the boy had had no previous training and in the following days it became obvious from the number of times he managed to get himself lost throughout the camp that he had no sense of direction, but somehow whenever K-Unit had played a nasty prank on him, that they were sure would make him late to Physical Training, he was able to miraculously guess the shortest path there. Then there was the time that he managed to piss off Puma, one of the brawnier men in the whole program, and through no martial skill, walk away with only a few bruises.

The strangest thing about the kid though, is that even though Eagle started out resenting him and hating how the boy's lack of skill slows their team down, after only four days with him, Eagle can't help but be impressed with the kid's effort and drive and attitude. In fact, Eagle, may actually like him. There's just something about the kid that draws people in, which is why, on the fifth night of knowing him, Eagle finds himself caring enough to walk over to the kid's cot and try to wake him from what is, by the sound of his sleep-talking, obviously a nightmare and why, on the fifth night of knowing him, Eagle begins to seriously question why the kid is here.

XXXV

By the time Cub wakes up on his sixth morning at Brecon Beacons, there is a dramatic change in the attitudes of the men in his unit. The first thing he notices upon waking at 4:30 am is that the rest of his unit is also awake, somewhat of a rarity and an inconvenient one as he had been hoping to take a shower before they woke up. The truly strange part, however, is that, for the first time since he began his training here, they acknowledge his presence, greeting him, as if they hadn't spent nearly a week trying to make him miserable enough to leave their unit.

The greatest oddity of the morning, though, comes on the way to the mess hall when Wolf casually walks over to him and says, "Hey, Dou-Cub, you remember on the first day when you asked if I'd be willing to help you learn a bit so you don't embarrass our unit too badly in combat training? Well I've given your request a bit of thought, and I decided that it seems like a good idea, I expect you to meet me behind the barracks every morning at 0330."

The whole morning seems somewhat surreal, the efforts to establish a camaraderie are such a stark contrast to the thinly veiled disdain the unit has been treating him for the past week, that Alex begins to wonder if this is not just another joke being played on him and if not, what has happened to so dramatically shift the K-Unit's perception of him and what the consequences of this shift will be. After a moment of thought, Cub smiles, "Yes, sir. Thank you Sir."

Wolf merely grunts, gaze on Cub as if searching for something and after a moment, Cub grows uncomfortable and looks away.

"Snake, Eagle, Fox, and I had a talk this morning and we decided perhaps we'd been a bit unfair to you kid, consider this your one chance to prove that you're worth our time."

Cub's smile grows, if possible wider and although he is somewhat suspicious of Wolf's story he merely replies, "Yes, sir!"

AN: So K-Unit has started to draw some conclusions about Alex and Alex is starting to crack even further… Hopefully you guys enjoyed the update and will review to let me know why, I know it sounds cheesy, but reading your reviews really inspires me to keep writing this story.