About four weeks after Rose and Lila turned 18, they were carrying out an assignment in Colombia when it occurred to Rose that she didn't have to be there. She was legally an adult. The Handler had said it herself, years ago: Once you're 18, you can simply leave!

Rose felt curiously hollow inside. As a girl, she had assumed that she'd have her life figured out by this time, and she technically did, but somehow it was anticlimactic. Her childish dreams of being a dancer or an actor were dashed, and she was doing something very morally questionable instead.

18 years old and already disappointed in herself. What a shame.

There was a kink in this particular mission: Rose and Lila couldn't find their mark. They easily located his girlfriend, Paula, but she refused to spill the beans on where he was. However, when Rose grew impatient and Rumored the woman, it turned out that she really didn't know where Samuel Salcedo was. The woman was harmless, but it wouldn't do to leave her alive, so Lila took care of that.

It was so, so, so morbid that Rose could watch Lila shoot someone in between the eyes as unflinchingly as though she were opening a soda or lighting a candle, or some other mundane task. Rose was immune to violence, now, and she hated it. She could walk away from it all, yet she couldn't bring herself to do so.

Eventually, Rose and Lila tracked down Salcedo (he'd turned out to be with a secret girlfriend that was not Paula), and the rest of the assignment was simple.

Then, the 18 year olds retired for the evening at a shabby motel. In the morning, they'd receive a new assignment and would move on as though they'd never been here, but for now it was time for a smoke outside and probably some dinner.

"What would you do with yourself, if you weren't working for the Commission?"" Rose asked Lila as nonchalantly as possible.

"Dunno, become a vampire or something. What kind of question is that, anyway?"

"What kind of answer is that?" Rose laughed in spite of herself. Leave it to Lila to distract her from her worries with stupid, eyebrow-raising comments. The knot of concern in her stomach undid itself ever so slightly.

"You're not thinking about quitting, are you?" Lila narrowed her eyes suspiciously.

"Of course not," Rose assured her. Somehow, the only thing that made her feel worse than the feeling that she was wasting her life was the idea of betraying the Handler and leaving for something better.

So, she stayed. It wasn't as if Rose had anywhere else to be. She understood that the people who she had spent the first 12 years of her life with had only been place-holders. The Hargreeves hadn't been a real family.

Yet, why did the terrible feeling that Rose was spending every day incorrectly linger?

It was like having a cold in the head for ten years. As dangerous as her work was, Rose's biggest liability was herself. Nevertheless, she remained Lila's partner throughout their twenties. It seemed as though Lila was getting her wish for fame— They were becoming a very powerful set of temporal assassins.

The girls were mostly based in the early 20th century. Rose guessed that the Handler didn't want her to ever be in the same time period as her old family, which Rose resented. She wasn't stupid. She surely would be able to handle herself.