The moment I got back to my room, I collapsed face-down onto my bed. I had a lot to process.

First of all, the girl I once knew as Annie was Eileen, the Octoling that planned and carried out the attack on Inkopolis with her father and two brothers. That alone was quite a huge revelation in itself. It was, like, the fifth time I'd thought that exact sentence that night, but it didn't make it any less jarring.

Every single moment we'd spent together, I had to look at in a new light.

Eileen took all that data from the Octarian forest base. Eileen gave me that drive. Eileen broke down in Deepsea.

But why?

Did she really know? Before I told her about my memory of her, did she know that she and I knew each other underground? Did that play a part in any of this?

Eileen freed Deepsea's other residents. Eileen knew Jacob—

Oh.

Come to think of it, Jacob had told me he was looking for a relative. And I didn't see him anywhere else in my apartment.

Jacob was one of Eileen's brothers, wasn't he?

I groaned. Why did everyone I know have some weird secret identity? Including me?

I pressed my face further into the pillow. This was irritating.

So Jacob was one of her siblings. That was two out of the three of them accounted for, then. I didn't know where her other brother was, but as far as I knew, neither did she.

But did Jacob know me, then?

From what I could tell, everything I'd seen him do was… pretty normal. Actually, I didn't know him all too well.

I slowed down my thoughts and flipped myself around. Sunlight seeped in through a crack in the curtains and landed right on my eye. I turned my head to the wall.

Sometime after Sharktown, Eileen moved to Inkopolis. Octavio killed her father with his own hands—an event I had the misfortune to be an eyewitness to—and in the chaos, she was separated from her brothers.

Then about two weeks after she moved, I met her in Deca Tower under the name of Annie. And later that night, I found her in the tunnel the spider mech dug with a drive full of all of the files in that outpost. And, for some reason, she gave it to me and let me see her profile. And that was why I knew that I knew her.

After I told her about the memory wipe, we went to Deepsea. And there, she locked herself in a room with a group of sanitized Octolings, won, and let everyone out.

The NSS had to see that as a good sign for her, right?

The next night, she all but told me she knew Jacob. And then she asked if we could come back to Deepsea for my memories. We made it halfway, then Rose showed up.

Whew. Okay. That was Eileen. It had been half a week. I… To put it simply, I wasn't used to this. I'd kind of thrown myself into the deep end, showing up at Deca Tower at that exact time.

I relaxed my eyelids and gripped the end of my hair. Well, that was the bulk of it. Now, the other half.

Rose, one of the four Inklings I knew in any capacity, happened to be Agent 4 of the NSS. I didn't even know they had four members. And, since she was up there with Agent 3, fighting Octrope in Sharktown—those other two must have been NSS too, right?

If that was the case, their gripes with Eileen must have gone a lot deeper than the average Inkopolitan.

Rose, at least, was willing to give Eileen a chance. I wasn't so sure that the other NSS members would agree, but one was better than zero.

And after I went to talk to Eileen, Rose told me that they had shut down Tartar again, or at least a clone. I hadn't seen a single sanitized Octoling on the surface since meeting Jacob, so the whole system, I hoped, was shut down forever.

My thoughts were a mess.

I knew that Rose was Agent 4, but she didn't know that I used to be Agent 8. She knew that there was an Agent 8, though, because of the message I'd accidentally sent to her.

The communicator was within arm's reach, in the drawer. Now that I had time to think about it, I wasn't really opposed to telling her of my former title. She was a person I trusted, at least with that much. And I didn't want the concept of Agent 8 to nag her for the next… however long it would have been.

I pulled the drawer open from the bed, then fumbled my hand around inside. When I felt the communicator in my hand, I pulled it out and brushed it against my head. There was the old log with Agent 3.

I blinked at it. I didn't know how to work this thing.

There was an icon of a microphone in the top corner. That must have been the audio… thing.

Apprehensive, I tapped it, and numbers from one to four slid into frame. And a C in place of a zero. That must've been Cuttlefish. Or did it stand for Captain?

At least this part was intuitive enough.

I picked the 4, and the screen went dark. There wasn't any ringing. I hadn't expected any, considering this was from Cuttlefish, but had I done something wrong? It hadn't run out of power, so what…?

Just as I was about to try to turn it off, I heard the sound of a deep breath coming from it.

"Alright, so she… this was six months ago, right?" That was Rose.

The dark screen meant it was working, it seemed.

"Yes, six months," said someone else, quieter than Rose. Agent 3. Simon. "When we escaped…"

Oh. They didn't know I could hear them.

This… This didn't feel right. With this little device, I had an avenue to eavesdrop on any of their conversations. I almost turned it off right then but decided against it. If that six-month figure meant anything, they were talking about me.

I silently set the communicator on the nightstand and lay back down. I didn't know how much of this I'd missed, or how much I was going to hear, but I wanted to get at least a part of it.

Simon continued, and I strained to hear him. He must've been a fair distance from Rose. "It was awkward sitting next to her on the ride to shore. The last two times we had met, we fought. And I wasn't even conscious for one of them."

Ah, yes, that. That was uncomfortable, for what I assumed was both of us. The thing on his head—I didn't like how it… moved.

"You told me about that…" Rose said. "Wait, you're telling me you've been brainwashed three times?" Three? I only knew of the one. "Huh. I always thought you were tied at two with your… uh… girlfriend."

Well. I wasn't supposed to hear that part.

"That isn't a badge of honor…" he mumbled.

"Uh… yeah. Sorry. A— Anyway." The squeaking of a couch came from their end. "Why's she good at, like, everything?"

Everything, huh? Is that what she thought? She gave me too much credit, but I couldn't stop myself from smiling.

"Right, you weren't there when the captain gave us that drive."

Oh? The one I had given him? The one Eileen had given to me?

"A lot of what was in there was soldier profiles. Most of them didn't have any names, but I spotted one I think might be her."

Wait, I didn't know about this. To think, I was that close to a profile on myself—

"It was hard to tell, though. They don't have much in them."

Oh, come on.

"But to summarize what I saw," he said, "she's been trained. A lot."

No surprise there. I wouldn't have gotten out of Deepsea otherwise.

"She finished development at age nine."

I sat up. What? That was—

"And she was never in the army," he continued.

"Hold up, slow down!" Rose shouted. "Nine?" I had to agree. That was incredibly early, even for an Octoling.

"Mm. Nine. Practically unheard of."

"Jeez, who is she? Nine… What the…" she trailed off, and they grew quiet.

Nine… So that was why I— Well, to put it as Rose had, "good at everything." I'd had the time to get there. But… nine. Nine!

I heard someone sigh, and judging by the volume, it was Simon this time. "Keep this between us, but she… I almost quit the team because of her."

"Wh… What?" Rose shouted. "You, of all people?"

"Stop. Never mind. Ignore that, please."

"What's this I heard about you quitting?" said a voice from somewhere else. It wasn't Rose or Simon, so I guessed it had to be one of the other two. Whoever it was, she was also loud. Was being loud a prerequisite to getting into the NSS?

I reached over to the communicator and shut it off. I didn't need to hear any more.

I brushed the device back into the nightstand and pushed the drawer shut after hearing it clatter against the lid of the Mem Cake box. It seemed I wasn't telling Rose that I was Agent 8. For the time being, at least. I was going to see her again at midnight, anyway. I still didn't know why she wanted me back at that bench.

And Agent 3. Simon. I'd almost made him quit. That would've been a huge loss if he had gone through with that. If he hadn't been up there with Octrope…

But what had I ever done? Was it that I beat Tartar off of his head? No, that didn't make sense.

I racked my mind for some interaction we had, but I couldn't think of any that could have meant anything to him. Or maybe it wasn't me. Maybe it was just Deepsea as a whole, and that I happened to be his introduction to it.

I sighed, fell onto my bed, and faced the wall. It was brighter then.

Or was it… from before Deepsea…

So guys, summer is ending, so there is a possibility that updates end up slowing, for this and the rewriting. I'll try to not let that happen, but still. It might.