I told them to give me two minutes. Not knowing exactly what I was getting myself into, I threw on a little blue dress I had thankfully decided to bring and met them in the hallway. We followed the pack of quietly excited Freelancers as they headed to a different—and, I guessed, completely restricted—area of the facility.

We snuck to the right level without incident, and the Freelancers crept in groups of four or five down the dark hallway toward a window at the end. It was open, and the Freelancers were escaping from the building through the now-open glass.

"Aren't all the windows locked with passwords and stuff?" I asked quietly, still rather perplexed. "I thought that—"

"Shh!" Wes hissed as we made our way to the window. "We'll explain everything later. Just go!"

We reached the window, and, though I hesitated, Georgia leaned toward me. "Come on, Eleven," she said, tugging at my arm. "This is the best part of being a Freelancer!"

One after one, the Freelancers snuck out of the building and tumbled down into the grass outside.

For some reason, no alarms went off. No sirens. We were escaping the Freelancer facility much more easily than we should have been.

I followed the large group to the back parking lot of the facility. There stood multiple white vans, completely unmarked.

I didn't ask questions and followed Del inside one of the cars. Soon, all forty-something of us had piled into the scattered vehicles. York took the wheel of ours and pulled quickly out of the parking lot, screeching the tires a bit as he did so. I laughed, squished beside Wyoming and Georgia.

"Okay, seriously," I said as we left the Freelancer facility behind. "Am I going to get fired for this?"

York shrugged from the drivers' seat. "Well, none of us has yet."

"Yeah, I mean, we do this like every month. If we were going to get in trouble, we would have already," Wes added.

"You pull this off every month?" I yelped. "But… how? Getting past security, the vans…"

"It's one of the advantages to being a super-solder," York smirked. Carolina sat in the passenger seat and hadn't said a word; she glared at York every time he spoke to me.

"It's certainly a plus having a professional lock-picker on this team," Wyoming commented. "York gets past all the facility's security. He disables the security system and the windows' locks, so it's bloody easy for us to get out."

York laughed. "All in a day's work, Wyoming."

"And the vans?" I asked them. "They don't belong to you, obviously."

Wes smirked. "Well, Maine is quite good at the whole 'intimidating-a-staff-member-and-getting-what-he-wants' thing. They're all scared shitless of him. He just needs to lift a finger and they'll do whatever he says. So we get to use their vans."

I admitted it. I was impressed. I hadn't been on a night out in far too long.

Inside the club, Wes, Georgia, Del, Bama and I occupied a table and ordered a round of drinks. I was still in shock that we hadn't gotten beaten to death for sneaking out.

"I can't believe you guys do this all the time," I said, shaking my head as I took my drink from the waiter.

"Oh, I'm sure the Director knows we sneak off every once in a while," Bama said casually, sipping a martini. "But what's he gonna do?"

"He could kick us all out, of course," Del cut in, swigging a beer.

"What, and start all over again?" Bama laughed. "I doubt it. He's worked too hard on us to begin again now."

I shrugged. "Yeah, well, lucky you. I, unfortunately, could get fired for this."

"Aw, come on, Eleven," Del sniggered. "Isn't this what being a recon agent is all about? Sneaking around and shit?"

I raised an eyebrow and smirked. "I guess you could say that. But, damn, Carolina definitely looked like she wanted to rat me out on the way here."

"That was hilarious!" Bama said. "She doesn't like you already, and to top it off, you were chatting it up with York!"

"What does York have to do with it?" I asked, frowning.

The others all laughed loudly. "They're together, Eleven."

"Seriously?" I stuttered. "Wait, wait, wait… how does that even work here? I thought relationships were against the rules."

Bama shrugged. "It happens often enough. York and Carolina, Penn and Jersey, Kansas and Kentucky…"

Delaware made a quick glance at Georgia.

"Relationships come and go, just like normal," Bama continued. "They're pretty secret, I think, except to the Freelancers. Which is a pretty damn big group… But it doesn't work like that most of the time." She grinned. "Most of us like to just fool around."

"Still!" I said, gaping at her. "How do you pull it off? You can't be allowed. There's just no way."

"As long as we're not stupid about it, it's pretty easy," she shrugged. "I mean, we all live in the same hall. Sneaking around at night isn't hard."

"Does the Director know about this? Or about the other relationships?"

"Hell no!" Wes cut in. "At least… if he does, he isn't showing it…"

I had a feeling the Director knew more or less everything that happened around here. I had no doubt that he was aware of these little outings. If he turned a blind eye to the partying, I was sure he wouldn't say anything about the relationships. They weren't allowed, to be sure, but he didn't want to get rid of his Project members.

However, this did explain why I heard people sneaking around the halls at night. Or why rhythmic rocking sometimes sounded from the bedrooms.

"Come on, let's dance," Georgia giggled, gazing at the now-full dance floor. The music was blasting loudly and, from here, I could hardly make out one person from another.

I shook my head. "Uh… I don't think so," I said, but she dragged me to the throng of people.

"Don't worry about anything right now!" Georgia squealed. She was definitely tipsy. "Just let yourself go!"

We all entered the dance floor. In the darkness, each person melded with the next. Within moments, I had lost Georgia and Del in the crowd. The black lights soon began to mesh with the flashing LEDs. The dry ice permeated the air and settled on our skin as a mix of condensation and sweat, and I was soon jumping up and down wildly with the rest of the crowd and alongside Bama.

What the hell. I could screw professionalism just this once.

The Freelancers all had had enough to drink not to care how they looked dancing. I danced as well, the mess of people up against each other everywhere. I laughed as a random clubber sneakily came up behind Bama and began "dancing" with her.

We continued for a while until I felt a sudden presence behind me. Someone had come up from behind—much like Bama's partner—and attempted to dance with me. As I craned my head around to look, I almost laughed out loud at the man's identity. It was Wyoming, of all people. I chuckled, allowing him to place his hands on my hips.

"Enjoying yourself, love?" he asked in my ear, very suave. I laughed, not falling for it. His breath reeked of whiskey.

"Yeah, I suppose," I replied, shrugging.

"Well, if you're tired, you and I could always steal a van and head back to my room…" he said. I gasped. His hands started creeping upwards, and I suddenly had a very bad feeling they weren't planning on stopping anytime soon. "Or, I suppose," he continued. "We needn't even go that far. Vans can be rather cozy as well…"