Chapter. 21 – Family Reunion

Cammie twisted and pulled every move she knew to get out of the hold Martin had her in until she broke free, falling forward and skidding down opposite Townsend instead of attacking her old friend for reasons her adrenaline filled state couldn't bring herself to understand. Stripping from her coat and making sure the protection from the air of her scarf didn't break loose she balled it almost unprofessionally over where she guessed the bullet had hit her ally; it was hard to tell considering the amount of blood and the rush she was in.

"Is he conscious?" She demanded of Townsend quickly, his eyes were pink and his once impressive reactions and movements were sluggish from the drug and he had to furrow his eyebrows to grasp hold of what she'd just said long enough to understand it.

"No...I-um...No." Cammie was familiar with this drug, she'd worked with it in the test rooms when she'd lived with the circle and Townsend was a prime example of a subject that had suffered enough to pass out and she was fairly certain he wouldn't be kneeling here if he wasn't reduced to primal instincts, all of which didn't put much faith into the state of the Morgan's, Solomon's and Gallagher Girls but it would be the same for the Circle agents soon after considering they hadn't had a dose in their system previously – not that they would be collect enough to use the time they had as an advantage. Cammie really needed to think of a plan around about now.

"Then hold this to him and he'll be fine, remember? I've got the rest of this covered." She lied, right before a force far too heavy for those of someone drugged as everyone in the room should have been blew her away from the people she had been planning on dashing from in that moment any way and slammed her harshly against a wall, intent hands trying to keep her there as she tried to push up and kick at the attacker who had covered their mouth the same way she had. Previously Cam had been grateful for the winter months they were currently travelling towards, now she cursed them.

"Cameron, calm down..." Calm down? He wasn't holding her like she could easily calm down; this jerk should take an extra lesson or two in espionage.

"Bastard, bastard, bastard..." Cammie couldn't stop the anger streaming through her teeth as she fought against his hold, she didn't understand why she was finding it so hard, and she'd always been able to win against Martin.

"Cammie stop fighting so I can explain this to you, we can make this work." For some reason that was enough to snap her complete lividness at him and fuel the head-butt Cam slammed in his direction, disorientating her old friend and would be partner enough for him to let her go. She could have tried to stay and take out all the rage from the grief raging inside her out on Martin, but the confrontation with him had kicked in the prioritization of dealing with Catherine before Martin so she turned to run from him instead. Or at least that's what Cam tried to do because she had barely sprinted two paces before she was tackled completely unprofessionally even for a rugby player down to the ground by the waist. A practice that could be successful if you didn't fall to it too often – although Cammie wasn't a complete novice and how effective it was, was quickly squandered as she maneuvered her way over and around to pin down the attacker. Cam looked down at Martin again, not at all surprised but trying to contain her emotions enough to remain professional.

"Are you stupid?" Cammie spat, managing to keep her voice from breaking but only with the hisses of her fury. "You know better than anyone how easily I could kill you, we trained together, why won't you just let me go?" It was completely unnecessary, a waste of time if she was ever going to get a living out of what she'd learned from her manipulated life but she couldn't particularly bring herself to care.

"I know how easily you could kill me right now," Martin confirmed like it had been an insult on his intelligence. "But you haven't, because you're right we trained together. Deep down you know you can trust me Cammie please!"

"You'd do anything to get what you want! You frickin' kissed me!" Her voice did crack then, but she still didn't kill him. Martin's expression softened but Cammie was more unnerved by how stationary he was in fighting back even if she didn't let that be an excuse to letting her guard down.

"I never faked anything with you." He affirmed but what cut at Cammie's stomach more was the fact that he did so completely without emotion.

"You kissed me and then you drugged me! But I guess you're just a Circle boy, through and through." Martin did shuffle a little now, violently slamming him down at the opportunity, even if he had looked more like he was trying to get more comfortable, remaining in a reasonably hidden awkward feeling.

"In my defense you were trying to follow me back to the people who really wanted you dead, but c'mon Cammie if I'm a full fledged Circle boy, you're just a circle girl through and through." Mrs. Cavan. Her memories did nothing but agree, she wanted to tell herself she couldn't trust her memories anymore but no matter what had put Cam where she was now, it didn't change what she herself had done to get there. The agony inside was all consuming and if Cammie had been any less advanced than what was called for in a fight she could have been surprised she wasn't shaking, although it was intense to the point that maybe Cam was a little baffled at how she was holding herself together strong enough to hold Martin down without yelling or ripping at him.

She felt pain for the love she'd had for his and Catherine's fictions, pain for her real family around her that were being battered to the point where they were more smudged injuries than people, as was the Circles plan – even if they'd started to go down with it; she felt pain for the boy who was lying in a pool of his own blood who had understood her perfectly and had been disgusted accordingly. This conversation with Martin however was forming something of a safety rail that somehow meant Cammie didn't care about any of that for the frustration on the person beneath her. That's why she told herself she hadn't killed him.

"I wasn't born into this either Cam. I could have been a bakers son for all I know! " Martin continued, his tone sent her blood boiling, as if he was capable of understanding and that she believed that at all. Pharmacists, his file had confirmed that was his true heritage and yet Cammie was uncertain of where the thought had come from at all, so what if he could have followed a family business, found someplace to be happy, he wasn't that – he was just another Circle monster, even if Cammie was a fairly more mutated one but that itself was enough to distinguish the difference that meant he damn well didn't understand.

"You might as well have been, Martin! You've been brainwashed for eleven years more than I was! You're just another one of them and unfortunately I don't have time to feel sorry for that." Cam dismissed and was about to go ahead and knock him to the point that he stayed down on the floor for long enough that she'd have a chance at trying to find a way to deal with the situation around her, that or find Catherine and remove all her teeth. Martin's body tensed in a way that showed he knew what she was planning and left it harder for her to do so.

"They robbed me of my chance of normality and I think I deserve something back – just as much as you do Cam, just as much of all of us -"

"All of us Romanov Operation Agents?" Cammie questioned before he could finish and the look that crossed Martin's face was that of pure horror and didn't enlist faith that he would want her to know that for the benefit of their apparently shared interests. "Yeah, I know a lot more, for instance you are not my friend, I was just another mission for you to stalk and report on every month wasn't I - Goode?" Cammie hissed the last word they'd fought about and yet for some reason he just looked all the more heartbroken beneath her.

"Abrams." He breathed out as if Goode had been as much as insult as Cam had used it to be in that moment but she was beginning to feel sick and confused, the name didn't deserve to be used as such a strong curse, it wasn't the names fault - it felt especially wrong with its youngest surviving heir bleeding to death a few feet away.

"You don't deserve a name." Cam said in the calmest tone she had in what felt like years without having to try, it was too pure of a truth to her after what he'd done.

"I asked to train you so I could make sure you didn't go too far into what they'd made you believe! I couldn't let you go over the edge! Not after - " Martin tried desperately to defend himself but Cammie didn't let him finish, one final time.

"What a charming thing to do from the guy who volunteered just as eagerly to help get me here." Her hand near his throat might have been getting a little too tight because when he next spoke it was a little raspy, not that Cam had much time to take note.

"We're on the same side of this war Cameron but I know you don't trust me, unfortunately I don't have time to feel sorry for that." The moment Martin had strengthened his voice over the last retort he kicked up and slammed his arms together at Cam's head, rolling them over and promptly winding her stomach while she was down, tearing away from her as if he was done with explaining himself and was ready to leave. Cam span up and dived an attack while his back was turned but Martin was ready to flick a few course blows her way before Cammie found her head hitting the nearby wall and her body slumping back to the floor again. She would have pushed herself through the haze and back to face him again if he hadn't caught hold of her ankle and have been keeping hold of it like she was a doll he was dragging on the ground. Cammie looked up at him, unable to comprehend any of it; she had always been the one to beat him in any form of training.

"I was being taught this stuff for eleven years before you Cammie, c'mon of course I was faking my capability." His voice was much stronger now and it evoked a fear that it shouldn't have done, he had been her friend and even though she'd found out it was a lie that didn't wipe away all those years, even when he took the ankle he had a grip on in both hands and broke it with one quick snap. Cammie cried out at the unsuspected agony racketed around every angle of her ankle as the bones snapped and cracked, Martin let her foot drop harshly to the floor and Cam tried to suppress to the groan of extra pain that it rattled her with.

"Martin." Cam gasped, rolling the top half of her body around as not to move her foot as he backed swiftly away from her.

"I can't let you follow us Cam," He dismissed sounding slightly more like himself in how his voice was strong but for a moment Cammie hadn't a clue what he was talking about until she realised the dispersed and drugged operatives fleeing through one of the compressed doors in the rock of this place. It was a door Cam new well but right then she wished it didn't exist – a stupid thought considering that if she closed them all in everyone she was newly protective of in place of the love and care or much emotion at all she still couldn't feel would be doomed.

"They need to think I'm as on their side as they've always thought I've been," Cam wasn't beaten with anger or frustration or the grief of losing what she'd thought she'd had at that remark, it was something between them all. How could Martin possibly tell himself who he was just a perception for the Circle when he had never been anything else? Cammie stayed quiet, her scarf had fallen down and although the poisoned room was considerably less intense she told herself it was a mixture of that and the beating she'd rather not admit she'd just gotten that left her so rocked by what was happening. "You could use someone on the inside Cam, especially now Solomon is busted, I'll always be here for you Cammie." Martin took another step back and turned to run towards where the stream of the Circle folded out.

Forcing herself up, Cammie managed to make it forwards more than the two and half paces she should have naturally progressed by diving forward as she did so before she fell down on her battered foot beneath her. The world shook and blurred slightly as Cammie tried to push herself onto her knees again, a blur of red where her eyes had been tracking Martin caught her eye and she saw Catherine stagger as one of the lost towards escape. Cammie coughed violently and the world swirled again as the horrific, wicked anger at that red haired bitch. Her fingers slipped in something sticky and her vision cleared again to see more red but under her fingers, not that it mattered until she realised she'd landed on somebody's knife.

When Cammie tried to force herself up she was more successful this time, the knife she held dripping with the blood of her hand. Her eyes were fixed with dead fury on Catherine who had admittedly broken form her stagger, overcome with a need for breath and locked eyes with Cammie's for a moment - if Catherine had ever cared Cammie was certain she stopped then. It was a split second of course, neither of them were as unprofessional as that – which is exactly how Cameron found herself lifting the knife and throwing it to the fleeing Catherine, it lodged in her side and although it was deep and a good shot part of Cammie cursed herself for not hitting a more definitely fatal area. The other part, however, was satisfied enough with a Catherine whose eyes went wide and mouth slightly open, a Catherine who held a hand over the blood wound as she collapsed out of sight to wherever the circle members were fleeing, where she couldn't see the long term effects of that through just yet. Cammie breathed deep and tried not to collapse as the emotional exhaustion and emptiness of the room without any Circle members flailing in it suppressed her, and a pit of loneliness rose without any other option at the fact that she wasn't running with them anymore, she was never going to be a part of them again if she ever had been in the first place and her emotions couldn't decide to settle on relief or grief.

No, it was the people around her now who were her real family and that was just something that she had to make do with. Rachel lay with Abby kneeling over her, whom missed her balance every now and then as she tended to a gaping cut in her sisters leg as Rachel slipped in and out of consciousness – trying to help herself even as she did so. Her mother lay with her Aunt kneeling over her Cammie had to dictate it to her brain and not feel sickened by the concept, she wasn't anymore attached to them, she still didn't know them – she might have used to, but that was in a time that had been taken from her memory but she hated Catherine too much for the hate she'd had for these people to have any long lasting effects, now they were just the people she knew would have to be in her future.

The drug had done whatever it would do to them by now and was leaving the room like Cammie had known it had done so many times as she'd tested it but everyone was still in the drones of the phases it left their system in. With the exception of Zach that was, who lay completely motionless on the floor as Townsend knelt above him with hands covered in his sons blood which he held between the two of them, his eyes were closed, as if letting him impatiently wait for his fully capable consciousness to come back to him.

Joe Solomon had joined them, battered and bruised almost past comprehension as he tried to make his dozy brain assess Zach. Despite his injury Solomon looked like one of the best of them excluding the Gallagher Girls where they huddled, helping each other with every fifth glance going out to those who were bumbling in the worst of it. One of the best of them, it would seem, except Matthew Morgan, except her dad, Cammie amended but Matt was kneeling as he stared in numb horror at his wife and sister in law. Cammie stumbled towards him, a strange agony racking her brain as Circus music built into a horrific crescendo as she realised he was grunting out the same thing.

Cammie didn't think he'd known she was edging towards him any more than she'd known why she was doing it at all until she had gotten impressively close for a teenager approaching one of the world's best spies (even if she'd always been something of a Chameleon) before his eyes flicked towards her. Matthew Morgan didn't look like one of the greatest spies Cammie had ever spent too much time hating for his skill when she met his eyes because they were childlike and scared as the music faltered only from his lips so he could speak in a voice that conveyed more terror than his eyes did, making Cammie's heart stop from the fact that those eyes had made her believe more terror wasn't possible.

"Do you hear the music, Cammie?" She didn't reply, stumbling a little more forward as if the music was propelling her too. "I hear it too." He reassured with a voice that went too strangled for it to sound reassuring, especially considering it seemed like it was fuller with denial than reassurance. "Please Cammie, tell me you hear the music." For the last plead he sounded more sane, even if that was something Cammie simply couldn't believe, not when this music that hammered in her head took away so much of hers as she broke down in steps and fell level to her father.

"I hear it." Was all Matt needed to hear from Cammie's mumbles to slump down even further, to fall almost completely with his elbows as his only fight as god knows how many CIA agents broke down from every angle.

Oh God I'm so sorry, I actually did write most of this chapter in the week I promised it would be up but then it kind of just didn't happen. Oh hot damn, I'm sorry. I've started the last two chapters so they should be up quickly. Please stick with me, I have every intention of finishing this story this year and it's sequel in the next which I really promise will be worth it. Really sorry, please review so I feel guilty for not updating and consequently...y'know...do that. Theories? Opinions? The usual, I want to hear it all!