Chapter 14

ZACH, Age 22

18 minutes after Zach knocks out the occupants of a vehicle leaving the Circle headquarters…

"Any sign of the command center yet?" I asked through my comms unit, hurriedly jumping out of view of passing Circle agents as I ran toward the heart of the building. None of them noticed me in their haste to track down the source of the blaring alarms.

"Nope," Grant answered, running through a different part of the building to the command center. "But there sure are a lot of agents around here."

"No doubt about that," Bex said irritably, also making her way toward the same location by another route. "How did we even set off the alarms in the first place? I thought our techies disabled all of them."

"Not sure," I replied earnestly. I'd come up with the same question myself when the alarms suddenly sounded as we broke in. "Care to enlighten us, techies?" I asked, using the same title for Jonas and Liz as Bex had. After all, we couldn't call them by their real names as long as the possibility of someone hacking into our comms system remained.

"It seems that we may have… overlooked a well-masked security component," Jonas said, a nervous edge to his voice. I could hear lots of typing on the other end. "I believe it was an invisible trigger that went off when you guys passed through the door."

I let out a sigh without slowing down to ponder the new information. I always knew this mission couldn't be as easy as I'd hoped.

"Maybe you guys should turn around now," Liz suggested worriedly. "There are swarms of agents trying to find you guys as we speak, and if‒"

"No," I interrupted with a hard tone, not caring that a series of annoying alarms had given away our element of surprise. "We're not about to turn around now. We've already come this far. Plus, the Circle headquarters is expecting a shipment of new weapons sometime this week. This is our only chance to break in and learn all that we can about the Circle's motives for wanting to capture The Subject."

"He's right," Grant said, backing me up. "I'm closing in fast on the command center, and I don't want to have to come back here on another day."

"Me neither," Bex admitted. "This place gives me the creeps. I'd like to get this job done now rather than later. Plus, they'll probably increase their security after today to avoid another breach. If they do that, we'll probably never find another way in."

"Then, I guess it's settled," I announced, relieved that at least some of my comrades weren't ready to give up anytime soon. "We're not going to leave this building until we absolutely have to. Agreed?"

"Agreed," Bex and Grant said in unison.

Liz sighed. "Just, please be careful while you're in there. I don't know what I'd do if something bad happened to…" she trailed off, unable to finish her sentence. But she didn't need to. We all understood what she was trying to get at. It was something that we had to understand before adopting the life of a spy‒that there is always a chance of one of us not making it out of a mission totally unscathed.

"Don't worry about us," Bex said in an attempt to reassure Liz. I hoped it was working. Liz had become like a little sister to me during the short time I'd known her. Hearing her worry about us like that was only more proof that we were family now. "We'll be fine. We're spies after all. This is the kind of thing we've been trained to do since we were little kids."

"Exactly," I decided to add. "We have to do this. Not for our sake, but for Cammie's."

I could sense that Liz wanted to protest further, but Grant spoke up before she got the chance to.

"Hey guys!" Grant called suddenly. He sounded a little overenthusiastic about something. "I think I've found the command center!"

"Great. Do some recon until I get there," I suggested, quickening my pace to catch up with Grant. I had chosen to take the longest route, knowing that it would be riskier than the others. This was meant to be my mission, after all, so it only seemed right that I take the more potentially dangerous path.

"Got it," Grant replied curtly. "I'll report anything unusual."

I nodded and kept up my fast pace, passing by a section of the building with hostile prison cells. I was glad that I didn't have to stay in any of those.

"I think I'm almost‒" I was cut off as I slammed into something solid. Or rather, someone.

Immediately thinking that it was a Circle agent, I reached for one of the weapons attached to my belt only to find that my belt wasn't there anymore.

"What the‒"

"Don't move," a feminine voice ordered. I snapped my head up and finally saw exactly who I had run into, quite literally.

It was a young woman with light brown hair pulled up into a loose ponytail, my belt slung casually over her left shoulder. She looked oddly familiar to me, though I couldn't pinpoint how I knew her. But despite her obvious exhaustion, her eyes were alert and intense, focused on me alone, though they did have dark lines under them.

I would've been flattered if she wasn't aiming a gun at my head.

"Hey there," I said gently, holding my hands up in surrender. "No need to be like that. Just put the gun down and hand over my weapons belt, and I'll leave you alone. I promise."

The woman got a thoughtful look in her eyes, giving me a small sense of hope, and said, "Oh sure."

Needless to say, I was surprised by her response. "Really?"

Well-trained agents normally wouldn't just return weapons that they'd stolen from an enemy agent when asked to by said enemy agent. This girl must've had horrible spy training.

She raised an eyebrow at me. "How stupid do you think I am?"

Well then. Never mind what I just thought. This girl knew what she was doing.

The small motion of her eyebrows seemed to draw me back to the spectacle of her eyes‒eyes that weren't settled on one color…

Then the realization hit me like a ton of bricks. I didn't know why I didn't come to the conclusion sooner. I had spent hours studying her picture, hoping to get it etched into my memory so that I would recognize her when I saw her. But the picture didn't do her justice.

With only the thought of self-preservation on my mind, I blurted out, "You're Cam‒"

A loud gunshot went off, the bullet whizzing right by my ear. I froze and touched the side of my face where the bullet had nearly settled. No traces of blood.

"Do something I don't like again and I won't miss next time," Cammie‒at least, I was pretty sure it was her‒threatened, a glare plastered on her face.

I didn't question her. I knew just how capable she was of shooting targets from her mini-demonstration. I didn't need another one.

"Fine, I won't say your name," I agreed. "But listen, you shouldn't be here. It's‒"

"Believe me, I know what this place is," Cammie cut in. "But how do you know? Are you one of them?"

"Well, I‒no. I'm on your side," I said, hoping that she'd put the gun away now. It was making me feel vulnerable, something professional spies shouldn't get used to feeling. Not that I would let her know that.

But she didn't put the gun away like I'd hoped she would‒more evidence that she wasn't as stupid as I'd initially thought. Instead, she continued to stare at me with her bright, intense eyes, waiting for a better explanation that I couldn't give her with the small risk of an outsider listening to our conversation through my comms unit.

Then I realized something‒it was too quiet in my ear. There wasn't even the sound of static coming from my comms unit. It was just… nothing.

As if reading my mind, Cammie smiled innocently at me. My heart almost stopped at the sight. "Don't worry about your friends eavesdropping. It's safe to talk here. No one else is listening but me," she encouraged, still waiting for details I wasn't prepared to give.

"How‒"

"I disabled your comms unit right before I grabbed your weapons stash," she informed. "So are you going to tell me about what you're doing here? Because I know it isn't because you thought this place was the ideal vacation spot."

"I‒I was trying to find you," I said, running a nervous hand through my hair. "I thought the Circle headquarters would be a good place to start looking."

Cammie rolled her eyes, her finger still hovering over the trigger. "And why would you want to find me? What use am I to the CIA?"

My eyebrows shot up. "How do you know I'm in the CIA?" I asked, suddenly worried about how much knowledge she had on me.

A thin smile spread across Cammie's face. "I didn't, actually. But I do now."

I mentally sighed in relief. Having information about her and her not having any information about me, besides the agency that I work for, was one small advantage I had over her. But she still carried the gun pointed at my skull. So it'd be difficult to use my one and only advantage.

"So now that you know I'm one of the good guys, will you give me back my weapons belt?" I tried.

Cammie shook her head. "Not a chance," she said, the smile dropping from her face.

I expected as much from her. But it was worth a shot. "So how about we make a trade?" I suggested. "You give me back my belt, and I give you information about myself."

Again, she shook her head. "You're not in a position to be negotiating with me," she said, a statement that I, unfortunately, had to agree with. "Besides, how do I know that you won't just take back your weapons, shoot me, and leave me to die?"

"I wouldn't do that," I said honestly.

Cammie gave me a brief once-over, trying to determine if I was lying or not. Then she said, "Let's make a different deal. If you show me the way out of here, I'll return your weapons belt. I won't negotiate about anything else."

"Deal," I said, grabbing her hand. "We have to hurry though. The Circle agents are trying to find me and my team right now."

She nodded. Then she leaned toward me. The thought that she might kiss me came to mind, but I was disappointed when she simply brushed her hand over my ear.

I suddenly understood why.

"Did you hear that? We're finished doing bloody recon. There's nothing to report," Bex stated. "Where are you?"

"Why can't we hear you, man?" Grant asked. "Answer your comms unit already! We're kind of on a time limit."

"Yeah, this isn't‒"

"Wait guys!" Jonas exclaimed, cutting off whatever Bex was about to say. "Guess whose comms unit just turned back on?"

There was a pause while my team took in this piece of information and I struggled for words to explain what happened during the time I lost communication. It didn't help my train of thought when I saw Cammie watching me intently.

"Then why can't we hear him?" Liz asked, breaking the silence. The concerned voice was back.

"Uh, hi guys," I started. Before I could explain what happened, I was bombarded with a stream of questions‒and, of course, curses from Bex.

"Guys, I'll tell you later, but right now, we need to abort the mission," I said in a rush.

Another bombardment of questions‒and curses‒later, I answered, "Just trust me on this, guys. We're wasting time. Go back the way you came as fast as you can without getting caught. Now!"

Bex and Grant grumbled but said nothing.

I nodded to Cammie when I was done giving out the order, and she made quick work of my comms unit, disabling it again in a flash to prevent Circle agents from hacking into it and learning about her escape. I'd have to ask her how she learned that later.

As soon as her hand left my comms unit, I caught her fingers with mine and said, "Follow me." Then, with a smirk, I added, "If you can keep up."

Cammie rolled her eyes, pulling her hand back. "Right now, it looks like you're going zero miles an hour, so I think I'll be okay."

Then she took off like a shot.

"Hey, wait up!" I called, chasing after her. Cammie didn't even so much as glance back in my direction, so I picked up speed, hoping to at least meet her pace for pace. But no matter how fast I ran, I couldn't catch up to her.

"How are so fast?" I asked, starting to lose my breath.

I saw her shrug. "I've had a lot of practice."

I wanted to ask her to explain, but then a bullet went soaring right by my cheek, narrowly missing my head.

My head snapped up. To my horror, Circle agents were converging on us from all sides, leaving us no place to run or hide.

We were surrounded.

Wow guys. I'm really sorry. It's been much too long since I last updated. More than a year ago.

I know you guys don't want to hear my excuses because they're no good anyways. But I'm so glad that I still have supporters out there, reading my work. It means a lot to me. You guys know who you are.

I know I can't make it up to you guys for having been gone for so long. But I hope at the very least that you like this chapter. It has the beginnings of Zammie, which I know a lot of you guys were waiting for. And it'll only go uphill from here.

What can you guys expect next? Well, I can't really tell you guys about my writing schedule. It's kind of messed up, but I'm trying to get back into writing. I owe you guys that much. However, I can tell you guys that next chapter will basically be this chapter in Cammie's point of view. It'll also have the rest of her conversation with Tina.

That's all for now. I'll be back with a new chapter as soon as possible. Until then, you guys better be enjoying your summer!

-Sky