They hadn't worked together long but Artemis could already tell that Vanessa was as good as him, if not better. She had patents on various technologies that had been sold to Apple, written more books on phycology and science than he had read under various names and had an exceptional IQ of 304 where anyone over 200 would be called talented. Not only that, from the age of six she was fluent in more than five languages that included Spanish, Chinese and Latin and at that age was on GCSE level. At least that's what he had found on the internet. Artemis also found that she was an excellent musician; piano and guitar were her main instruments. But despite all of this he was still wary of her.
It wasn't that he disliked her (in fact she had actually been able to get him to smile more often with her good humour) it was more of a distrust, what if she one day packed up with all the research they had been doing? It would take him more than a year to get back all the results and by that time Vanessa would have sold it off to make millions. She also had the aura of someone who was always one step ahead, and in his experience they were always the more difficult ones to get rid of. It was then he decided to confront her, not to terminate the contract – in fact it was a lot easier to be working with someone that good- but to get some evidence that she wouldn't just betray him.
Artemis found Vanessa in his mother's room playing some soothing Mozart for her. 'What are you doing in here, you're not supposed to go in there!' he whispered loudly. 'Arty, dear, I haven't seen you for so long. I just wanted this young lady here to play me some music, that's all.' Came a sound from the four poster bed. 'Yes mother, of course.' He said before shooting Vanessa a look. It seemed that his mother had gotten better over the past week that Vanessa had come, her lapses of fatigue getting less and less frequent. He wondered if Vanessa had come to play piano for her before but he didn't think so. He was glad that she was helping her recover but part of him felt jealous that it wasn't him soothing his own mother.
'Artemis what's up?' Vanessa's gentle voice came from the doorway. As he turned to face her he realised that every time he looked at her face her eyes would hold such intensity it was almost hard to look into them , 'You've been here for a week but I still get the feeling that I can't trust you. You've also been anonymous for so long I've never even heard of you before, for all I know you could have been sent to gather information on me. I don't want to terminate the contract because it's so much easier to work with someone good than by myself. I just need some evidence that you won't be running off with all the research that we come up with.' She smiled painfully, 'I can't give you any evidence but I know you have been searching me up on the internet, I also really dislike working with people worse than me, you must know the feeling, apart from that I don't know what else I can tell you. All I can say is that as long as you prove yourself to be useful I won't be running away any time soon.'
Artemis wasn't exactly sure if he could exactly accept this answer and stood there thinking it through. It was true that she wouldn't need to run away as long as they worked together well, he also did get the feeling of the annoyance when you had to work with someone who had no idea what you were talking about, not to mention it being such a shame to let someone so good get away. However that would mean that she had the upper hand she knew he needed her, but before he could ponder the situation further Butler had come running up the steep stairs panting heavily. 'Trouble,' he gasped, 'LEP have come.'
Outside, in strict triangular formation, were a few LEP soldiers and Commander Julius Root at the front. As the trio came out the front, Root shot three shots from his Neutrino 3000 all aimed for the small girl on the end. Butler tried to push her out the way but it seemed that he wasn't quick enough. The force of the blows had thrown her into the brick building and from Artemis' angle it looked like she had been shot, but on closer inspection the three laser beams were floating in her palm, frozen by some unexplainable force, Vanessa then closed her hand and flung them away as if they were no more than sticks. Then she got up smiled lightly, shook Julius' hand, 'what a rude way to greet someone.' She told him, almost scolding him for his behavior. 'Well you still have your powers then.' He replied gruffly. 'And what if I didn't?' 'Then I guess you would be suffering a few minor bruises at the moment.' They waffled on for a bit before Artemis interfered, 'what do you mean "your powers"?' Vanessa turned to him eyes deadly serious just like the other time 'Artemis I'm a faeid.'
A/n: thx to kellycat77 for reviewing! So what do you think of this, can you guess what a faeid is? Please review below!