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November 2002
"Her record as a FBI Agent was well under way when she took an appointment at the FBI Academy at Quantico. She was supposed to take an instructor's assistant position, but she's since blown various training assignments and landed herself back out in the field on restriction. She can't operate without a partner by order of superiors and she can't keep partners. Cage has the skilled precision of a surgeon in addition to her attitude and demeanor. I can't say she doesn't make mistakes, every rookie does. But she's not a rookie. Most of her mistakes come from her self-doubt."
"What kind of self-doubt Monica?"
"The kind that wound her up in intensive care instead of Rio de Janeiro on her vacation. The plan was for Aja Cage to spend two weeks in Rio before taking the Academy teaching position. Strangely enough she disappeared for days only to be found in a New York hospital under Jane Doe. What exactly happened isn't in her files, it's locked to surface requests. But, I can tell you that she spent two weeks under a doctor's care, the next 6 months under a shrink's care and returned to the Academy a year to the date later than she'd planned. Also, she changed mentally and emotionally." Monica stopped long enough to give Frank a look that spoke volumes of what she meant. She also chanced a look at Jake, Alex and Cody.
Cody immediately began clicking away at his keyboard. Three things happened at once behind Monica. A profile photograph of Agent Aja Cage popped up next to her public dossier on one screen while her department files began running on the next screen in slow motion. The third thing was Cody's laptop. As Aja's information ran for the rest of the team to see, he began hacking into the DoJ files to find whatever he could on Agent Cage.
Jake whistled softly as he watched the photo and the profile tick off slowly. "She's almost like ice. Reminds me of you Frank." What he didn't say was she was beautiful, in a rather dark and gothic sort of way. "She has this look about her, like she's not someone you want to mess with… that she'll make life miserable for you if you do."
"I suppose I should take that as a compliment Jake," Frank deadpanned. "Continue Monica, please?"
"Of course… What you won't see here in these profiles is her hard work and extra dedication before the incident. Aja Cage was a model FBI Undercover Agent on paper. In her early education she mastered different language, including Arabic, Spanish, Italian, Gaelic and Latin. Gaelic and Latin are almost dead languages. The only place Gaelic is spoken is in remote parts of Ireland and the Outer Islands of Scotland and the Highlands. In high school she also took various self-defense and hand to hand combat instructions. The problem came from her intelligence. She's intelligent and her mind works like a steel trap. If there was an alternative solution, chances are she had it already worked out in her mind before needing it. She landed herself a few solo assignments prior to going MIA. During those she earned herself a reputation for being clinical, cold, near ruthless. She developed what the psychologists labeled a 'Machine Mode'. No thought, no emotion, just black and white - get the mission done. However, something happened around the same time as her landing in the hospital, destroyed her confidence. As a result, we have all the transgressions listed behind me."
"She actually took a shot at one of her superiors?" Cody paused, both eyebrows raised curiously as he read the incident report detailing the left hook that landed her on suspension for 6 weeks, another psychiatric evaluation and her superior in the emergency room for a broken nose.
"Unfortunately yes. The witnesses to that particular incident are tightlipped, they won't break the code of silence. Despite everything we're seeing in her files, her co-workers like her enough to stick up for her."
"And it all began after whatever it was that sent her MIA and then landed her into the hospital?" Alex asked as she turned around from the screens.
"Yes. I have the medical reports here. She was admitted to the emergency room at 3 in the morning with severe physical trauma, facial lacerations, a broken jaw and orbital bone and several broken ribs… most of them as a matter of fact."
"Someone beat the shit out of her then." Jake said as he looked over his own copy of the briefing.
"There's more to it than that Jake. She bore signs of torture. Add to that her non-willingness to speak for the few days she was known as a Jane Doe. The only way she was identified was by a random search from the police. I managed to get a copy of the police reports. They say that they were sweeping the hospital in a search for a missing child and one of the beat cops, John Sullivan, recognized her through all the bruises and bandages.
"Get to the point Monica. Why are we being briefed on her?" Frank asked, a little piqued and irritated at the same time.
"We're getting her. Think of it as her last chance."
"Uh huh. So why do I get the feeling there's more to the story?" Alex asked as she closed her file.
Monica chewed her lower lip for a moment and then shrugged. "You'd be right Alex. Agent Cage is putting up a rather loud and public fight to keep from being assigned here with us. Seems she is violently opposed to going back undercover in any sort of form or fashion."
"Why do I get the idea that I'm going to have to go convince this woman that this is the best thing to do?" Frank sighed and threw his pen down onto the desk. "OK, what cases do we have coming up? Is there anything easy enough that we can break her in on while getting her back into the game?"
"The only thing we have that's relatively easy enough is a local prostitution ring that's a front for drug trafficking and arms dealing."
"You call that easy Monica? Why not ask her to crack the Rosetta Stone?" Jake laughed. "Well, I doubt she'll be under her first day out. Frank, are you thinking of putting her with Monica and Cody for the first run?"
"I'm not sure yet." Frank sighed as he closed his copy of the dossier on Cage. There was something that wasn't sitting well with him about this woman. "I want to meet her myself, get a feel for her attitude and temperament before I decide where to put her. She might be totally unsuited for undercover work now. Then again, she might be hiding behind her anger and the psychological scars of what ever happened. Monica, you're sure that it doesn't say anywhere exactly what happened to her to put her into such intensive medical and psychological care for a year?"
"No, nowhere that I could get to. However, I'm sure that Cody's working on that issue and we'll have some answers for you by the time you get back."
"Back? Where is Frank going?"
Monica chuckled. "While I get you two ready to work on this case, Frank is getting a round trip to Quantico to evaluate Agent Cage and bring her back here. Briefing over ladies and gentlemen. Jake, Alex, come with me and I'll get started on your profiles."
Frank nodded to Monica, Jake and Alex, then stood up and returned to his office while deep in thought. Jake had likened this scarred agent to him – cold, clinical, ruthless, not to be messed with. In some small way that bothered him to know that one of his agents thought of him like that. But in another way, he knew that was the way things had to be. As he sat down at his laptop and punched up the files for Agent Cage, he frowned in thought. What could have happened to her to turn her into ice? What was it that she wasn't telling anyone, that no one else was allowed to know about?
He looked into the pair of cognac colored eyes that stared back at him from the laptop screen under heavy black eye makeup. She had short black hair that was cut about chin length, pale skin and those strangely colored eyes. She had a sort of tragic look to her. Did she always look like that or was it from this trauma Monica had spoken of? More importantly, could she get over her haunted past and do her damned job? Frank scanned quickly over her more recent assignment profiles and shook his head. Rookie mistakes as Monica had said, but there was more to it than that. It appeared that she lacked the confidence or fortitude to complete the assignments.
Tough, cold, clinical… frightened. These descriptions did not fit the angry eyes that stared back at Frank from the monitor his laptop. She was fighting some demon, some nightmare. "Damn it this isn't a nursery or a rehab clinic…" he muttered to himself. "She's got to want to get past this and go on with her life and her work." If Aja Cage didn't get past this, she was officially out of the FBI. It was literally her last chance. Frank wasn't sure if he wanted such a wild card on his team. Too many risky things happened with wild cards.
i can hear the voice but i don't want to listen
strap me down and tell me i'll be all right
i can feel the subliminal need to be one with the voice
and make everything all right
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Excerpt from the lyrics to "Voices" by Disturbed. CD titled "The Sickness" all rights reserved.
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