Annie POV
Somewhere on a country road in York, England
It was about four in the afternoon, an abnormally sunny day in York, and incredibly cold outside. There were still icy patches on the road from the last snow which made me feel uneasy as the car trudged over them. But this was a crunchy country road, not in the main city; we were moving north out of it.
'How long have we been driving now?', Felix asked me, turning his head from the road to me and raising his voice to talk over the radio. We'd spent another night in the London hotel room I woke up handcuffed in yesterday morning. After that, Felix wanted us to head north to Aberdeen.
I checked the GPS map that had been guiding us so far. Our little bubble representing our car crept along the squiggly line steadily.
'A little over four hours now.', I answered him, taking a sip of the energy drink I was depending on to give me life. I sighed as I looked at the estimated arrival time. 10 PM. Six more hours to go. 'You'd better hope you're right about that outpost. If we drive all this way for nothing, it won't be funny.'
'I think it'd be atrociously funny.' he replied, smirking. 'And anyway, mom was talking about it just a month ago. I doubt everyone working there is gone, or they've shut it down in that short of a time period.'
I raised my eyebrows. I'd seen how the Temps Commission worked. Off a board member here, shoot an assassin there. I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest to show up at the outpost to find ten bodies in the same stages of decomposition. Felix had told me about this outpost last night, and we'd agreed to head towards it. He said that since Aberdeen was one of the most populated cities in Scotland, there was a lot of commission activity there. Because of that, they had placed a single, very incognito outpost to replenish assassins needs there. New briefcases to trade in for faulty ones, food, ammunition, new partners...
We needed a briefcase to get back to the Temps Commission itself. I wasn't sure how we'd left without one in the first place. Felix probably commandeered one while I was drugged in a wedding dress.
'Why'd your mom bring it up?', I asked, curious. His face slumped just a bit.
He paused for a moment, and then tried to mask, his expression perking up. 'One of her assassins murdered their partner, and she had to direct them to the outpost. Wasn't too happy.'
I laughed. 'I can imagine.', I nodded. I looked down at my hands, and then back up at Felix silently. His face had drooped again. Twiddling the tarnished ring on my finger, I contemplated probing him. I took a drink of my energy drink and decided I should.
'Felix?', I mumbled uncertainly.
'Annie?', he shot back, raising his eyebrows but not removing his gaze from the winding road in front of him.
'Are you... are you like... o-'
'Am I okay?', he interrupted, knowing what I was trying to get out. He nodded his head, but not with the usual amount of confidence he usually displayed. The suave visage was cracking a bit. He was hurting.
'I'm okay.', he said, nodding again.
I swallowed any desire to push back at him for that one. If he needed to get anything out, I hoped he would do it organically, because I sucked at this sort of thing.
He swallowed so hard I could hear it. Shifted his posture, tensed his shoulders and released. Popped his neck. Stress.
'You know my mom was never supposed to be the Handler anyway?', he said, his voice slightly breaking. There it was. He needed to be the one to mention his mom first, not me. The concept wasn't foreign to me. In my mind throughout my entire childhood, Lila had been dead. She had been dead since the day Quinn, Joan, and Roman were all born. She'd tried to take them. I believed that she was dead, and rightfully so. I swallowed just as hard as he did.
'Yeah, I gathered that.', I said very quietly. I didn't want to say anything wrong.
'Your family and my mom were still in Dallas when Herb was put in the position of board director by popular vote.', he said, trying to distract himself by telling the story. 'Of course the handler position was left wide open because your uncle killed her.'
I was taken back by this assertion, scrunching my face up and turning to him. 'That's never how I've heard that story.', I put forward. 'Everyone in my family has always told me the Handler got shot by a Swedish commission assassin.'
He paused for a moment and shrugged his shoulders. 'I don't have any reason not to believe you.', he almost laughed. 'Wouldn't be the first thing my mom made up.'
I shuddered and fell silent for a moment. Lila had also told him that Diego had been dead his whole life. Another thing for him to process right now, other than killing his own mom.
'Anyway.', he continued. He cleared his throat. 'My mom got out of Dallas with a briefcase and came right back to the commission, which was in utter shambles and raging chaos at that time, as you can imagine.'
I nodded, just letting him continue with the story.
'Everyone had been so afraid of the Handler that when Lila showed up, they were so afraid of her, that they collectively acquiesced as she put herself into the position. Herb tried to stop her, and had a small following with him, but she squashed that pretty quickly.', he explained. 'Herb and my mom were never on good terms after that. She treated him pretty bad.'
'I saw how she treated him at the wedding. Even heavily drugged, I noticed that.', I mumbled, uncomfortable. Felix's face also looked slightly uncomfortable after I said that too. Maybe he had been distracted and forgotten that we were married, and then remembered suddenly. I wouldn't blame him for being bummed. I felt just as sick about it, if not more.
Roman.
There was my moment of sudden memory. He had to be worried sick. How had I texted Joan and not him? He'd probably been up all night trying to figure that out.
I reached for Felix's phone and took it out of the cup holder. 'Just shooting another text.'
'Careful to not send too many. They'll pick up on our web traffic. Actually, maybe put the phone on airplane mode after you send it. We can turn it back off and check it again later.', he instructed.
'Just this one.', I said, nodding. I hadn't thought about them tracking us digitally. Thankfully, Roman's number was one of the only numbers I had memorized. Never had to anymore. I went to type the message, but my fingers froze. What was I supposed to say? 'Hey, I can't tell you where I am, but I am married, but you also shouldn't worry about me?'. No.The right words were hard to find here. In the end, I landed on something like,
'Ro, it's Annie. I'm safe. Please don't worry about me. I am on my way to somewhere where I will be able to communicate with you more. Try and keep the others calm, please. As soon as I can I'll be home to you to update you with what has been going on.'
I hit send on it and turned the phone to airplane mode after it finished delivering.
I gulped down the knot forming in my throat and breathed out, turning my head to Felix. 'Five hours and forty-five minutes to go.'
Roman POV
The Academy
Klaus poured himself another glass of eggnog and sat down on the couch beside me. The change in this man's entire essence after learning Annie was safe and alive was drastic in an indescribable way.
He was entirely happy and relieved, but I still felt a churning in my stomach about the whole situation. Number one, because that anonymous number could've been anyone, it wasn't necessarily Annie. It could've been someone entirely different trying to throw us off the trail of her brutal murder. I felt cynical, but I knew my thoughts were exactly the same as my Uncle Five's. But this wasn't the only reason I felt sick about the situation.
Number two, my girlfriend was apparently married. To Diego's son that we all thought didn't exist. And now his mom was here, powers removed, an unwilling house guest of the academy. Everyone in this house was processing something except for Klaus. Klaus didn't care about anything else. Annie was alive.
Diego was processing the fact that he had a son, and that Lila was still alive after all these years. My mom, dad, and Quinn were concerned for me and my feelings here. Ben, Viktor, Dolores, and the others were wary of Lila in the house and afraid of her every move. As for Five and I, we were just concerned with the ambiguity of the messages. Both of us, I knew, suspected something sinister. Annie and that boy might have gotten out of the Temps Commission, but the likelihood of them being completely free of their grasp was meager.
My phone buzzed in my pocket and I immediately reached for it. It was a text message. It came from a number that wasn't saved in my phone. I clicked on it, expecting spam like Joan had, but I was wrong.
'Ro, it's Annie. I'm safe. Please don't worry about me. I am on my way to somewhere where I will be able to communicate with you more. Try and keep the others calm, please. As soon as I can I'll be home to you to update you with what has been going on.'
I read it twice, maybe three times. I nudged Klaus, who was quickly finishing off his eggnog.
'I think it's another message from Annie.', I whispered. His face lit up, and he read it. I watched his eyes move along the lines. Before he jumped up and announced it to the whole house, I stopped him.
'I think we need to be more cautious and make sure this is really her.'
The enthusiasm in his face faded gradually as he realized the implications of what I was saying. He pursed his lips, took on a thousand-yard stare, and flopped himself back onto the couch before moving to the bar and pouring a cupful of liquor instead of eggnog this time.
Joan sat across the room from me, doing homework for finals on her laptop while Lila snooped behind her quietly and cringed. I had an idea.
'Joan, what phone number did that text you got from Annie last night come from?', I questioned, wanting to verify they were the same number.
'Hold up, lemme check.', she said, pulling her phone from her pocket.
She read the number off mechanically, and I checked each number with the one listed on my own phone. Lila, who had started to move away from Joan, stopped dead in her tracks at the end of the number.
'Wait, that's Felix's number.', she said, turning and raising her eyebrows. 'To be expected I guess.'. She shrugged her shoulders and moved on with her meandering about.
Klaus jumped up from the couch, chugged the rest of the liquor, stretched, smiled, and started to walk out of the room with a little jazz in his step.
'Told you my diva cup was fine.'
The rest of us looked at each other, sighing a collective sigh of relief and humor.