If any of the police officers who passed her on the street had taken notice of her, they wouldn't have given her a second look, let alone suspect her of the shooting which had take place minutes before. To them she was just another local college student walking down the street. Short and lean in cargo shorts and tank top, her red hair cut short and spiky. A couple of piercing in her ears, and average facial features, nothing special. They might have noticed the long, rectangular, thin, black case she had slung across her back, but with its assortment of band stickers and graffiti doodles it would have been quickly passed off as a guitar case of sorts. After all, wasn't every college kid is a band nowadays. She certainly looked like the type as she sauntered along the sidewalk hands in her pockets and headphones on. She probably hadn't even heard the commotion two blocks away because of the headphones she was wearing, so there was no use asking her questions.

This is of course exactly the image she wanted people to see. Just an average girl. If she was questioned she was Celia Kane, 19 year old English major at Mary Washington, the local college. At least that's what the drivers license she was given for this file said. Next week she could be Gracie Freebush for all she knew, though she doubted that Command would ever give her such a ridiculous name. They needed their agents to be believable, invisible, and most of all morally ambiguous.

At 15 years old she'd been all of these things. Having bounced around the foster system for several years after her mother had been killed in an auto accident when she was six she had learned quickly how to be invisible. If you didn't make a fuss, no one noticed you. Of course, you never had a permanent place to call home either. No one wants children that are past the cute toddler stage, so she was passed from foster home to foster home until she finally ended up at a youth home in New Jersey when she was 10. When she was 13 she found out she was a mutant when while playing hide and seek she went undiscovered for 5 hours even though she was hiding in an obvious spot and the other children had looked directly at her several times. In her mind she said "don't find me" and her playmates hadn't. She taught herself to control her power over the next year, until she could be standing right next to someone without them realizing it. She ran away from the home on her 14th birthday, and never looked back. She wound up in Philadelphia living on the streets, using her gift to become a pick pocket and professional shoplifter. She lived in an abandoned apartment building for a year and a half stealing everything she could ever need. And then she met Marko.

Or rather, Marko caught her trying to pick his pocket one afternoon in front of the Liberty Bell. She liked to hunt the historical district, lots of tourists who were easily parted from their money. She never thought she'd get caught, but then she had never tried to rob another mutant before. Or at least one that was telepathic and saw her despite her powers. He had grabbed her wrist just as she had slid her fingers into his pocket, and she was so startled that she didn't even think to scream. Screaming would just get her arrested quicker, and if she was lucky she could sob story her way out of handcuffs. But before she could even open her mouth she heard a voice in her own head.

"I'm not going to turn you in."

Having never had anyone speak to her telepathically she did the only thing she could in the situation. She passed out.

--

When she next awoke she was in the back of a Taxi heading out of the city, and she wasn't alone. The man she had tried to pick pocket was sitting beside her looking intently out the window. Escape flashed through her mind, but as she reached for the door handle he had spoken softly to her.

"I wouldn't do that."

His eyes never left the window and yet he knew exactly what she was going to do. Then she remembered the voice in her head, and a million questions swirled in her mind. Who is he? What does he want? How does he know what I'm going to do before I do it? Am I going to get out of this alive?

The man beside her breathed an amused rush of air and turned to face her.

"Marko, help, telepathy, and yes."

"Um, what?" She had asked, dazed by the seemingly nonsensical sentence.

"The answers to your questions. My name is Marko, I want your help, I'm a telepath so I can hear your thoughts and know your actions, and finally yes, you will get out of this alive. And hopefully with a real job, a place to stay, and some security. Something I know you don't have living on the streets."

He had taken her to a white cinderblock building that resembled a cross between a factory and a prison some where in cow country, Pennsylvania and that's where she had met Command. They were recruiters, taking people with special abilities and less morals then the normal populace and training them. They taught her how to hone her abilities to the point where even Marko, an alpha level telepath, couldn't detect her presence without extreme concentration. They taught her to shoot, to fight, and to win. Most of all they taught her that she had a place in the world. She wasn't just another mutant runaway, and Marko became her teacher, friend, and surrogate big brother. They knew everything about her, except for her real name. And she had become so many people over the past three years, that sometimes she couldn't remember if she ever had a real name to begin with. But, that was all a part of the job. Travel the country and take out your marks. Everything is paid for by command, and when one mark is done, you get a new one. A big manilla envelope shows up by courier with photographs, new identifications, and any instructions. The old envelope and everything that was in it was burned until there was nothing left. That was the way the job was done, no deviation, or else someone might get a folder with your photograph in it. She didn't love her work, but it wasn't the worst job in the world, and she wouldn't give it up for anything.

As she entered the lobby in the hotel in which she had been living for the past two weeks she thought about where she might be next week, and what she wanted to have for dinner that night. In the elevator up to the 3rd floor she hummed along to her MP3 player. And as she entered her room she waved and smiled at the woman down the hall. Later that night Celia Kane would burn to cinders and someone new would walk out of the hotel room the next morning. But right now she was hungry and Thai food sounded really good to Celia.

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