CAMMIE/CARRIE
"And sign your names here." Chris pointed towards a dotted line at the bottom of the employment contract.

I signed mine Carrie, and wondered if that was what my handwriting actually looked like. "Erm, first and last names." Chris reminded me. Me and Zane looked at eachother, just as two guys at the back of the bar started fighting. "Hey, hey, hey! Sorry, I'll be right back." Chris excused himself to go tend to his arguing customers.

"What are our names going to be?" Zane murmered.

"I don't know, just make them up, I guess." I whispered back.
"Isn't that illegal, or something?"

"Yeah, and shooting after people without reason isn't?" I reminded him of what Sara had done an hour earlier- or, what she tried to do.
Zane sighed. "Fine. I'll be Zach... Thorne." He made up. "You?"
"Mmm... Gallagher." I decided.

"Gallagher? Is that irish or something?" He wondered.

"I don't know. It just feels right." I told him while I signed my name- Carrie Gallagher- alongside his, Zane Thorne. I wondered if we did get married what it would be like to be Carrie Thorne.

Don't go there, I warned myself. The chances of us fully getting our memories back- unlikely. Chance that me and Zane will fall in love all over again- Very unlikely. Chance that me and Zane are going to get married- Unlikely to ever happen, ever.
"So what do we do now?" I asked.

"Now, we sleep." He said tiredly, taking the room key from Chris and tugging me up the weathered stairs that creaked with every step, to the Chrysanthemum Room. I had a feeling of déja vu as I saw the word chrysanthemum, and it hit me so unexpectedly I didn't pay attention to where I was going.

"Oopsy daisy!" I exclaimed as I tripped up the stairs. Zane caught me neatly and carried me the rest of the way to our room.
"Can't have you breaking yourself." He told me. I bit back a smile. Zane was so lovely, it was hard to imagine not being in love with him.
"Look." I said softly, my fingers tracing over the letters m u m. Mum, as in mom. "I wonder if we have parents out there somewhere."
"A mom and dad who are waiting for us? Probably." Zane told me, walking into the room. He put me down on the bed and looked around- there was no sofa.

"Zane, relax. I'm guessing this isn't the first time you and me have shared a bed." I raised an eyebrow. I didn't have any other clothes- I would just take off my sweaters and sleep in my shirt and jeans.

"Fair point." Zane said awkwardly, taking off his shoes- sleeping in his sweater and jeans like me.
"Do you think they're worried?" I asked.

"I don't know." Zane told me. "Go to sleep Carrie."

"Are we going to be Ok?"

"Go to sleep, Carrie." Zane repeated, though I could hear the smile in his voice. "Good night."

SAM

"Go to sleep, Bex." I told Bex tiredly, stuffing a pillow in my face to block out the light.
"Nope. You keep me in here, you live with the consequences." Bex told me grimly. She was doing a one-handed handstand on the back of the sofa where I was trying to sleep. "Besides, I have to keep in shape." She told me this even if she was perfectly balanced. Her baggy crop top slid down her belly to reveal a studded bellybutton.

Bex put her right hand down onto the back of the sofa, and leaned forward until she gracefully tumbled into my lap. "You mind?" I asked her, lifting a corner of the pillow up so I could see her better.

"Not even a little bit." She said simply, fiddling with her nails.

"What d'you think Cammie and Zach are doing?" She wondered.

"I don't know. Maybe they've escaped- Zach did look like he was taking on some of the information you gave him." I reassured her. She at least seemed to like me more than she had last year, now that she knew I was never her enemy.

"Yeah, but he's kind of kookoo for cocoa puffs now, isn't he?" She reminded me. I raised an eyebrow in confusion. Bex sighed. "He's a bit whacko- got it?"

"Hey, my brother is not whacko, he's just confused!" I defended Zach. "And the same goes for Cammie."
Bex looked taken aback. "You think that she was given the brainwashing thing too?"
"I know it. I heard Sara and somebody else talking about what to do with her, and they decided on giving her the serum." I told her.
"When did you hear that?" She asked curiously.

"After you and Macey ran away- guess who was there to stop the guards from catching you?"
Bex looked at me weirdly for a moment. "Huh. Thanks... I guess."

"You're welcome." I told her, surprised. Bex wasn't the thanking type. A phone on the table started vibrating. The Caller ID said UNKNOWN.
"It's for you." I told Bex, handing it to her.

"What? No it isn't! You answer it." Bex shoved the phone away from her.
"Rock paper scissors?" I suggested. Bex got scissors, I got rock. "Ha!"

"Oh shut up." She sneered sarcastically. "Yello? Oh, hey Mrs Morgan. Jeez, don't you know what time it is?" Bex slapped a hand over her mouth and I laughed silently at her bluntness.

Bex gave me a look that could kill, and put the phone on speaker so I could hear what was being said. "...-becca, it's 6pm. Why, where are you?"

"Scotland... and it's one in the morning." Bex winced.
"Scotland? I thought you were supposed to be in Italy." Rachel said.

"Oh yeah, but you know... stuff happens..." Bex improvised. My body shook with silent laughter.
"Oh, I heard." Rachel Morgan took Bex's uncertainty to mean that she was upset. "I am sorry about Abe and Grace." Bex's expression changed at the mention of their names.

"It's fine. We'll get them back. Just like we're going to get Zach and Cammie back."
"YOU'RE GOING TO DO WHAT?!" Rachel shrieked down the phone. Bex winced.

"Cammie and Zach are... undercover! Yeah, but we're going to get them back. Real soon, I promise." Bex said quickly. "But we can't right now we're sort of stuck in a cabin in Scotland."

"What? How? Why?" The agent in Headmistress Morgan started to show as she interrogated Bex.

"Well, me, Macey and Cammie went round to the Alliance headquarters, and someone triggered the alarm, and Cammie said she was going to stay behind, and since there was no time to argue, we trusted Cammie." That wasn't true- they were found out, Cammie got lost and now she was brainwashed. "And then I went back the next day, undercover, to get Cammie and Zach out, but I was found out and somebody threw a sleeping gas bomb after me, and Sam got me out but made it look as if I had kidnapped him. Now we're just waiting for the opportune moment to get back." That part was true. "By the way, why did you call? And how's Mr Solomon?"

"I called because Gallagher Academy is temporarily closed down. The professional spy communuty world is not the only thing under attack from this Alliance, as you call it." Rachel began uncertainly. "And I was wondering if you could help hide my one or two of my sophomore classes. The freshmen don't really know a lot yet, so they're not under attack, but anybody from sophomore year and older are considered threats and I'm running out of places in Virginia and Virginia-adjacent to keep students safe."

"Gee, Mrs Morgan, you want us to babysit?" Bex wrinkled her nose. "Can't help you there, being in Scotland and all."

"Bex you know very well that we have planes." I practically see Rachel Morgan rolling her eyes on the other end of the line.
"Yeah, but after what happened to Cammie and Zach, you wouldn't really want to ris-"
"What happened to Cammie and Zach?!" Rachel yelled. Bex held the phone away from her.

"I blame you for this!" She hissed at me. My leg started going numb- Bex was still sitting on my legs and she was cutting off my circluation. "No, nothing happened. I mean, something did happen, Sara poisoned them and put a bomb on the plane, but they're fine. Wow, I never realised just how much you looked into every single thing Cammie did."

"Rebecca Baxter you tell me everything that has happened to my daughter since she graduated- right now!"

Bex bit her lip. "Well, Cammie and Zach are private agents, mine and Macey's parents were taken, Liz's super-smart little sister was taken, Zach got kidnapped, Cammie got shot- oh, and Zach and Cammie are engaged. OK, gotta go now- bye bye!" Bex said in a rush. She hung up the phone and in two moves opened the back and took the battery out.
"Are you sure that's a clever thing to do?" I raised an eyebrow at her.

"Yup. And next time the phone rings- you answer it!" She told me. "And on that note, I'm going to bed." Bex hopped off my legs and walked into the bedroom.

"Finally!" I exhaled, wiggling my toes to get feeling back into my legs.

"Good night." Bex called to me sweetly. I rolled my eyes and turned over, falling asleep in minutes.

I woke up three hours later at 4:19am. I wondered why I woke up until I heard a suspicious noise coming from Bex's bedroom. Crying. I was torn for a moment- do I stay here, or do I go to her? What would Cammie do?
I crept to Bex's room silently, still unsure of what to do. Do I knock, or not?

I knocked quietly twice. Bex's sobbing stopped for a few seconds, then carried on. I opened the door gently. Bex was just a dark shadow huddled near the headboard of the bed, shaking.
"Bex?" I asked softly. "What's wrong."

"Nothing. Bad dream."
"It's obviously not a bad dream." I sounded more sure of myself.

"My parents." She said simply. I knew what she was talking about. I had seen the CCTV footage. Bex's parents were the closest to her when she was found out. They tried to stab her, tried to choke her. They didn't even realise she was their daughter.
"I know. I'm sorry." I sat down on the bed and wrapped my arm awkwardly around her shoulders.
"Yeah, me too." She said, crying harder.

"Liz'll find a cure, I promise. Then everybody's going to be okay and life's going to go back to normal and it's all just going to be fine." I tried to soothe her, but honestly, emotions weren't my forte.

"It just seems like everybody's changing all of a sudden. And everybody's leaving"

"Well, I'm not going anywhere."

Bex said nothing, but cried in my arms all night.

AN- When Bex said 'yello', it wasn't a typo, it's like "Yeah, hello" but put together, just in case you didn't realise ;)