A/N: To start, for whoever's reading this ('tis much appreciated) I've realised that I have some unanswered questions and things from previous chapters, but I'm feeding small amounts of information into each chapter and by the end everything will be woven together and should make sense. I am sorry I have not been updating regularly but I am working on other things that have been on my mind. I do enjoy this story and its one that I have some sort of connection with, therefore I know, despite the (seemingly) small amount of traffic to this, I will continue to write because I know that I won't settle until I've come to a decent conclusion, and I'm looking forward to the rest of this journey that the characters are taking, although I know it may take a little while for me to accomplish that.

I thought that I owed some sort of explanation… :)

Thanks to those loyal readers who I may have that are interested in this story and have been reading from the start, I appreciate it.

An unfamiliar sound led the young girl into pausing from her activity and getting up to look out of her vast bedroom window. She gasped at what she could see; people she clearly had never seen before, many men, similar to the guards that she was used to seeing, but dressed differently, and they were armed. Her curiosity; if not slight fear, got the better of her (it was something that tended to happen more often than not), and so she threw on her coat and sped out of the room and down the corridor, rushing to her mother's chamber. She wondered who these people were, and wanted to get her mother's outlook; she had a keen sense of premise, she had always known exactly what to think of people and things that they had not come across before. But her mother had to know them, right?

"Mother! Mama!" She knocked on the door and yelled, wanting to make sure that she was heard; that she didn't get mistaken for someone she was not. When she received no answer, she ran down the hall, dodging an unaware maid, who just smiled at the girl's antics.

"Mother!" she yelled as she ran. She was usually in her chamber around this time of day; it must be after about four o' clock almost every day she resigned to her room and had a few hours of peace in her own company. She was usually shooed out of her mother's way for most of that time; told to go and tell anyone else about what she had on her mind, or go play with someone else around the palace. She'd grown accustomed to her mother's ways by now, and hardly ever bothered her when she was alone in her chamber, but this was something she had a slight wavering of feelings about. Something in the back of her mind nagged at her that something may be wrong, although that had happened before, and it had turned out that she was just 'letting her imagination run away with her'. Words of her mother, not her own.

But this time she was right to be concerned.

"No, don't do this!" the girl was approached by voices as she neared the gateway to the courtyard. She recognised the voice of her mother instantly; her voice was pained and unhappy.

"Shut up, or you'll be hurt," said a man's voice. The girl, as silently as she could, opened the gate and stepped into the courtyard, creeping behind a pillar to hide herself in the shadows.

"What do you want from me?" her mother shrieked.

"The princess," he said. "Tell me where she is," the girl gasped.

"No,"

"Tell me where she is," the guard repeated. At this, the girl felt herself freeze on the spot.

"I refuse!"

"Do I have to ask you again?" The Queen said nothing. The guard dragged her away, and it was not until they were facing the opposite direction that the girl noticed that her mother's hands were bound.

"Jonas," Hunter came and sat on her friend's bed, a little while after her talk with agent Mason.

"Hey," said Jonas, softly, setting down the games console he was using. "How did it go?"

"I don't know," said Hunter. "I'm still trying to process it all." She felt a little surreal, like it had never really happened; the finding out her father was killed, the warning of all the terrorists; Ms. Mason's arrival; everything. The only feeling of familiarity, of comfort she felt was when she was sat next to Jonas, talking like they had always done, ever since they were little. They could always open up to each other and were content with each other's presence, which was something that always calmed Hunter down.

"She's a stranger, is what I don't understand," said Jonas. "Should you trust someone you've never met?"
"I don't know," said Hunter, "I feel like I should, I don't know whether that is because she looks like me or because Eli trusts her, but I feel like I should. I feel as if there is something missing that I've never been told before; something that I need to do to enable me to know the answers to all of this."

"Eli trusts her?" asked Jonas. "I mean, I know he lets her in and all, but I've never seen her before, and I know what he's always said to me about never talking to people I don't know,"

"He told me he trusts her; that he'd worked with her father," Hunter replied. "But I am scared. I told her that I would trust her,"

"Why did you tell her if you said you were unsure?"
"Because she told me what was happening,"

"And that is…?"

"I have to leave the city."

"What?"

"I have to hide. Even more so than I am doing right now."

"You can't go; you'll be killed!" Hunter shot him a look.

"Thanks, that helped with my nerves,"

"Sorry. But did Mason convince you to do this?"
"Jonas, this is no time for your incompetence."

"Incompetence? You're saying that to me?"

"Jonas," Hunter pleaded. "I need you right now. You're the only one who understands. Please help me."

"It's not safe out there, Hunter!"
"You think I do not know that?" she asked, incredulously. "I have seen the world news in the bigger countries. Of wars, genocides, people dying all around us; all the violence, all the terrible things- it is like people bring children into this world of fear, like they would send men into the armed forces, just praying that they would survive; that they would come back. Terrible, terrible things happen for no reason. I am not safe here, Jonas. They're coming soon, for me. They're holding my mother hostage," Hunter's voice was desperate, and she was in tears. "I have a chance to save her. But I cannot from here. I have to go, to take that chance that means I could save my mother; myself. Jonas, you are my family, you have to support my decision."

"You've thought about this," it wasn't a question. And it was all he could say.

"It has been tearing me up inside," she replied, quietly, her voice still strained. Jonas looked at Hunter. She looked so much younger than she was; a small child lost in this huge world. But she was by far the bravest person Jonas had ever known, especially since she was coping with all of this baggage that he didn't even realise was there, until she let it all out. He sat, just listening to everything she had to say, his steady demeanour keeping her calm, giving her something to hold on to. If he lost it, she'd take the blow, and he knew that. She didn't deserve any of that. She just didn't.

He hugged her tight after that, the only thing he could think to do to show that he was on her side, and that he was there for her.

She had to do this.

One night left. Carter lay in the bed of the small motel of which had decided to bunk in for the night, maybe the following night as well, but she knew she only had one real night to work out the plan and get Hunter ready to move. It was going to be tough, she knew that, but she had to find out as much information as she could while keeping the princess out of sight and away from any danger.

She had discovered earlier the real thing that she had to do to find and destroy all of the general's reasons to go after Hunter was to find out what the young girl was hiding. She knew that Hunter knew something, and that something was one step closer to victory for her and the Royal family of Costa Delatorre, one step closer to setting them free. Things were starting to fall into place, albeit slowly, but now Carter realised why this was a particularly tough case, and why she was given hardly any help or blueprints- plans, for this mission. It was because they had nothing on this.

It was a sudden call; the director had told Carter just before she had left the P.P.P. HQ. No one had been monitoring Costa Delatorre properly for years since the only heir to the throne was so young, and they kept everything in their country very low-key. There had not been anything shocking happening, no wars that they hadn't sorted out themselves already, and so it was a surprise when the head of security of the kingdom sent out a distress signal. Carter had never considered thinking about why the P.P.P. never thought to monitor the country as thoroughly as others, and why one of their reasons is that they had little concern because the princess was so young. Carter thought about it, and it made sense to her that with a princess being so young, they were under more threat than most because the princess is more vulnerable than older heirs who may have been taught forms of self-defence. So she wondered why the P.P.P. hadn't thought about that, especially since what happened with Rosie, everyone thought she was more vulnerable than she was because she was only sixteen at the time. This led Carter into more brainstorming, and she then came to the conclusion that the reason they might not have expected the attack on the kingdom is that the princess must have known a hell of a lot more about something crucial than anyone would have suspected. And that was when she knew that she needed Hunter with her on the road while she was figuring things out.

The first thing that struck Carter about Hunter was the resemblance she instantly saw between the two. That was what spiked her curiosity for the mission in the first place. She had Carter's eyes; the same eyes that Joe told her she had shared with her mother, and she'd seen pictures of her mother since she'd left all those years ago, so she remembered well enough what she looked like. Carter was fiercely stubborn, which she had also gotten from her mom, her dad told her that all the time. Joe barely managed to win arguments against her, the only thing that topped Carter's ability to get what she wanted was the fact that he was her dad, and he could ground her if things got too out of hand. She hated being grounded, but not because she couldn't do anything after school or at weekends (she didn't do much anyway), it was because she hated having power over her and knowing she had that restriction that she didn't set for herself. It seemed to her like Hunter was stubborn, and she couldn't stop the comparisons flowing through her head of Hunter and herself, and her mother.

She had never met the princess's mother, the Queen. Meeting the Queen, finding out who she was, what she looked like, what she was like, was the only thing Carter could think of which would settle the silly 'what if's' that were buzzing around in her brain like angry flies. 'What if she's related to me?' 'What if her mother is actually my mother who had disappeared and married some king and I had a long lost sister?' She knew it was stupid to think like that, but she had read stories like that, and seen television shows with similar plotlines and even though that definitely was not the explanation as to why Hunter looked like her, it kept plaguing her.

But she realised it also was the sole reason she swore to herself that she would never, ever let anything happen to Hunter while she was on this case.