I stood in my viewing area above the training floor with the usual group of curious Freelancers. Bama had decided to join us this time, and I waved her over as I saw her enter.

"Nice to see you up here," I commented as she came up next to me.

"Yeah, I couldn't pass it up. I really like the sound of Utah's armor enhancement."

"I bet that's not the only enhancement of his you're interested in," smirked Delaware, who had just joined us as well. Bama gave him a death glare. "I'm just sayin,' Bama! You two spend an awful lot of time with his—"

She threw a smack at him and he ducked, laughing.

I left my bickering friends to approach the windows and saw Utah in the middle of the floor. He faced me, his back to a few of the staff members.

"What do you think?" I said to Wash, who had come up beside me.

"Don't know," he replied, his arms crossed as he stared down at Utah. "These energy shield things sound great. He just needs to get past the testing and he'll pretty much be invincible."

The Freelancers were excited to see Utah's domed energy shield. Who wouldn't want around-the-clock protection from enemies in battle? True, Utah had been given shit for receiving a defensive enhancement rather than a powerful offensive tool, but everyone knew secretly that this enhancement was extraordinarily valuable; no one would have been disappointed with it.

I watched the staff members as they prepared for Utah's first test.

"Are you ready, Agent Utah?" called Barbara.

"Affirmative."

"All right. You may begin."

Utah adjusted a bit of his armor and glanced up at the viewing area.

"Okay, bubble shield on my mark. In three, two, one…"

He activated the energy shield, and… we were a little underwhelmed. A pale sphere had formed around his head, but it had stopped around his helmet. The rest of his body was completely unprotected.

The Freelancers began muttering, confused.

"What's wrong with it?"

"Why does it look like that?"

"I don't think that's the way it works…"

"Mark?" Utah repeated, looking around a bit confusedly. I saw the staff members waiting patiently for the bubble shield to grow, but nothing seemed to be happening.

"Is it working?" he asked. "Seems kinda… small…"

"Partly," Barbara replied. We could hear their conversation through their radios, which were hooked up to speakers in the viewing area. This made it much easier for me to know what was going on and take notes on the action.

Utah didn't seem to be paying attention to her. He looked a little confused. "Can anyone else not breathe?"

I frowned, glancing at the staff members. They were still watching him, waiting for the energy shield to expand to its normal diameter.

"Something…" Bama said softly, staring at the soldier. "Something's not right…"

We watched, glancing at each other worriedly, as Utah took a labored breath. Shouldn't the staff members call off the training? Was this supposed to be happening?

Utah shuddered a bit. "So dark…"

Then, with a small moan, he collapsed to the ground.

"Oh… oh, my God…" Bama squeaked, her eyes wide. "No…!"

The staff members instantaneously sprang into action. A medical team entered the training room immediately, approaching the fallen soldier. They began working at his armor right there on the floor—they couldn't afford to wait and cart him to the med bay.

My viewing area was silent as we watched. We heard the medical team speaking urgently under their breaths, but their radios weren't connected to our speaker system so we could only hear what the training room microphones picked up. We could only trace scattered pieces of sound.

"Remove… hancement… suffocate…"

Bama wobbled dangerously and Wash and I rushed to hold her up.

"Come on, man…" York said under his breath.

"They have to get that thing off of him!" Bama breathed. I couldn't tell if she had started panicking or if she was just in danger of passing out. "Why's it taking so long?"

A medical technician was still working on the enhancement, trying to turn it off. How long had Utah been without air? Why wouldn't the enhancement come off?

"Just don't worry," I said to Bama amid the silent Freelancers. She was shaking. "He'll be okay. Just calm down. We can't have two soldiers in the med bay, Bama. They'll… they'll need to focus on him."

My voice seemed to reverberate across the viewing area, and I even sounded foreboding to myself. Bama took a few deep breaths and attempted to calm down, but as I glanced at the others, they knew that my words had been empty of confidence.

Finally, just as Bama began breathing normally again, the medical team was able to shut off the armor enhancement. The opaque bubble around Utah's head flickered and disappeared, but his body remained motionless. We all hoped he might stir and cough and stand up again, but he didn't wake; the medical crew immediately lifted the Freelancer onto a stretcher and headed toward the med bay.

Utah had failed his training.

The rest of the day was horrible. After Utah left for the med bay, Bama locked herself in her room and refused to emerge for the rest of the evening. She skipped dinner, where the Director made an alarmingly short speech about the accident, assuring us that plans would continue as usual.

The Freelancers were now torn. They wanted the armor enhancements to mimic North's success, but they were now extremely aware just how dangerous the technology was.

That night, I was making my way back to my room after collecting further paperwork from Burns. After what happened to Utah, I needed to fill out even more forms describing the incident. As if I didn't have enough to do.

Unfortunately, in the chaos surrounding Utah's accident, I had completely abandoned my notes. I had written practically nothing down while we were waiting for the medical team to disable the bubble shield, and I was now paying dearly for that. The stress of the amount of work I now had to do was getting to me.

I strode back toward my room through the now-darkened hallways, struggling not to dissolve into a panic. On top of the pages of the accident report I now had to complete, the Director was demanding even more detailed analyses of the rest of the Freelancers. He didn't want another mistake like Utah's incident to happen again.

I looked down at my stack of papers and tried to straighten them up as I walked. I brought a crooked piece of paper from the bottom of the pile to the top to make it neater, but my heart throbbed when I saw it.

It was a copy of Utah's training report; I hadn't looked at it since the accident. It followed the action up until I had stopped writing, where a jagged pen line of shock scratched at the page and cut me off mid-sentence.

At seeing that, I couldn't hold it in anymore. I let out a small, choked sob. All of my worries seemed to come crashing down on me at once, forcing tears to form at my eyes.

This was a professional military project. The real fighting hadn't even started yet. This was training. People weren't supposed to get injured here. My friends weren't supposed to get hurt.

A single tear dropped from my cheek onto the paper as everything I had been worried about clouded my mind. I was failing. Falling behind on my work. The Director kept giving me more and more, expecting me to be able to handle it. Expecting me to be on his side. He probably knew I was a mole. He knew I was trying to rat him out. I was failing at this mission and I couldn't do this anymore and I was going to get kicked out and—

"Eleven?"

I looked up quickly and saw Wash just down the hall. I had reached the corridor lined with our bedrooms without even knowing it, but he was alone. Mortified, I swallowed back my sobs and sniffed loudly.

"Hi, Wash." My voice sounded husky.

"Are you all right?" he asked, approaching me as I walked toward him. I didn't stop walking though and bent my head down so he couldn't see me.

"Yep. Fine."

"Eleven, stop."

Wash grasped my shoulder and I halted, slowly spinning around to face him. However, I still didn't look at him. I didn't want him to see the tears on my face.

"You're crying."

"I'm stressed."

"About Utah?"

"Yes. Utah. My work. What the Director expects. Feel like I can't keep up."

I was staring down at the floor, my eyes closed.

"You're doing fine," he insisted. His hand was still resting on my shoulder. "This has been a shock for all of us. You shouldn't feel like you're in this alone."

I said nothing, but a small tear plopped onto Utah's paper again.

You have no idea how alone I am.

"Eleven, look at me."

After hesitating a moment, I lifted my chin up to gaze at him and gasped a little. His face was not five inches from mine. He inhaled sharply too, surprised at the sudden closeness. We stood there for a moment, bewildered… but not pulling away.

"Eleven…" he said softly. "You… you're fine…"

His voice trailed off and we stared at each other for a moment. We didn't pull our faces away from each other. In fact… Wash's seemed to be approaching mine. I parted my lips slightly, unable for some reason to form any sort of coherent thought and saw his eyes flicker downward…

…And he sprang away from me.

A repetitive tapping sound was echoing toward us. Footsteps. Someone was coming.

Wash staggered back, his face completely red. He whispered an urgent and utterly mortified "good night" before disappearing down the hallway. I didn't stop to see who was coming—I careened to my own bedroom and slammed the door shut, panting as I locked it behind me and almost dropping all my paperwork.

Oh. My. God.

No.

No, no, no.

This was not good.

I could not let this happen. I was on a mission. I was working. I was not to be gallivanting around with the employers of my enemy. They were utterly off-limits. I was not going to get kicked out of this program for some guy.

Hale's warning echoed dangerously in my mind, and I swallowed hard.

"Do not let your emotions get in the way of your job."