When I got to the stump, I could easily see the disturbed dirt. He'd been in America with me for a long time, though. When had he gotten back here?

Then again, I'd been with Castiel for a while, and he hadn't always been him. He had time.

I put a hand out, feeling for the metal briefcase within it. I couldn't, though. It was… It was warded against, well, everything. Against any and all magic I could use against it. Against being tracked.

Damn.

I shoved whatever the fake T.J. had pressed in to my palm in to my pocket, and dug for the briefcase with my hands, throwing a small spell up around me to keep any random passersby from seeing what I was doing. Once I had it out, I looked at the runework. It almost physically hurt to hold, but at the same time I knew that if I wasn't the one holding it, it would almost burn anyone else.

Then my hand closed around the object again, and I pulled it out. It was a small key.

He was always the thinker.

I unlocked the briefcase, and saw it was almost filled with different files and DVDs, along with a small portable DVD player. I pulled out each file individually, reading the names on them.

D. Winchester – Hun

S. Winchester – Hun

M. Winchester – Hun

J. Winchester – Hun.

Castiel – An

R. MacLeod – Wit

Crowley – De

K. Dillinger – Wit

L. Tran – Hum

T. Jones – Hun

L. Abernathy – SS

A. Ketch – MoL

M. Davies – MoL

K. Kline – Hum

B. Kline – Neph.

Drive Files

Proj. V.

Proj. Humanity

Proj. Assm.

Proj. Assm. – Wit (Files)

Proj. Assm. – Wit (Aud./Vid. Trans.)

Proj. W.

Proj. WW.

Proj. SS.

Proj. De.

Proj. An.

I felt dread as I looked at each file's name. There was information on all of us, all of the major players. There were only two names on files that I didn't know, not including any of the Project files. J. Winchester and L. Abernathy. I knew who J was, though. John Winchester, Mary's dead husband and Sam and Dean's dad. Abernathy, though…

I opened that one first, and read through the small file. Louis Abernathy, Shapeshifter, captured while I was gone in America. Offered a deal.

Impersonate one of their own, and follow orders, or die.

T. Jones' insubordination led to his immediate dismissal from the Men of Letters, however his position was still vital to Proj. Assm. – Wit, so we had to resort to less-than-desirable. Mr. Abernathy, a recently acquired Shapeshifter, was offered the option to continue on in Mr. Jones' place or be put down with the rest of his kind.

He will be monitored to the most rigorous extent and, if needed, put down.

Next to that was a picture of who Louis had looked like when they picked him up – dark skin, short dark hair, but bright green eyes. He looked terrified, though. Absolutely terrified. The file put him as being 6'4" when they picked him up.

They'd found him thanks to the improved wardings I'd done.

His medical information was next under it, along with tags at the bottom, referencing to four other files. Proj. Assm. – Wit (Files)/(Aud/Vid Trans.), T. Jones – Hun, and my file. I took a deep breath before pulling out a slightly thicker one, the one for my friend that I thought had sent me here. It had a large stamp over the front of it, same as the one for Davies and John and Mrs. Tran, with three letters printed on it in big, red print.

DEC

Deceased.

I opened it gingerly, afraid of what the first thing I would see was. It was a picture of T.J., his…

His head cut off.

Subject's modified machete was examined and tested for usage. After turning the subject in to a Vampire, we had his replacement train until he could mimic said subject perfectly and, subsequently, decapitate a vampire like a proper Hunter.

Louis, the T.J. I'd been around for Project V, he had been made to kill T.J. But why? What insubordination had he done? He was always the one trying to keep me from bending the rules, and shit, I'd done it tons of times. Why was I alive?

Then again, they were now trying to kill me.

I looked back at other pages in T.J.'s file, and sat in abject horror as I read through them. He was a plant. A spy. He was only supposed to imitate being my friend, so that they could keep tabs on me. My phone and his, they had both been tapped and listened to.

For audio/video notes and recordings, please see D-T-J 1-7.

I rifled through the DVDs until I found the first one, and put it in to the small player. I saw T.J.'s face, bright and shining, but at the same time nervous. He sat in what I came to learn as his apartment, the poster of Elton John offering an interesting backdrop

"Hello," he said, looking in to the camera. "For the records, my name is Agent Thomason Jones. I am here for Project Assimilation, Witch." He pulled out a file of his own, a copy of one of the ones I saw here; the one with my name on it. "I'm supposed to monitor her movements from afar until I am noticed by her. From their my cover story is that I was hired by Lady Bevell to stalk her against my will, and afterwards use that to befriend her." He rolled his eyes, offering a small scoff. "Befriending a witch will be absolutely atrocious. Whatever possessed the Old Men to take on this vile thing and make her an 'ally' has me questioning their reasons." He sighed. "At the same time, orders are orders, and they most definitely have a higher plan in order. I can only be grateful that I've been given such an important assignment." Another scoff. "Even though it's with befriending vermin."

There was a static break, then on to the next one. "Hello, my name is Agent Thomason, and it has been one week since I started trailing the witch known as Kylie Dillinger." He smirked, rolling his eyes. "Some Hunter she used to be. Bloody American hasn't even noticed me tailing her yet. This may take longer than expected. If it goes in to three or four weeks without her notice, I will make more obvious attempts and even approach her outright."

More static. Then he returned, his face slightly sheepish. "The witch made contact with me today," he said. "She actually trapped me in to it, and revealed that she had known my following her from the beginning." They went on like that, him doing these videos once a week and telling everything, including recordings of conversations and phone calls that I didn't even know had been recorded in the first place.

I skipped ahead until I saw something new. T.J. in an interrogation room, chained to the table. "Let me go!" He demanded. "I've done nothing wrong!"

"You haven't?" Ketch entered the screen, pacing in his normal calm manner. This one was different, though. It was more feral. More controlled. More…. Emotionless. He nodded to someone offscreen, and an audio recording was played.

"GODDAMMIT KYLIE!" T.J.'s own voice, shouting. "WHAT IN THE HELL?!"

"Is this going to be how you greet me every time now? With shouting?"

"I'm on the corner of where your apartment was. Come here, right now, so I can… Bloody hell, I don't know! Hug you or beat the living shit out of you or something!" T.J.'s face fell as Ketch paused the recording.

"You were under strict orders to not suggest her leaving America, first off," Ketch stated. "What do you have to say for that?"

"I was reacting as to how she would expect me to." T.J. argued, composing himself once more. "She would expect me to be overtly worried, and I knew she wouldn't return. It was a tactical response so I could continue playing the role set for me."

"Yet within the short conversation you didn't ask about what she was up to right then with what she called 'prior commitments.'" Ketch nodded to the same person off-screen again, and I heard my own voice from the recording.

"Look, I can't. I've got… Prior commitments as of right now. But I promise, the second I can drop by to see you I will."

"You bet your ass you're going to." Ketch paused the recording again, looking at T.J. expectantly.

"What do you have to say for yourself?"

"I was playing the role set for me." He repeated. "The one she was used to."

"Oh really?" Ketch asked. "And yet, as stated before you both broke protocol in attempting to convince her to return to London, and furthermore didn't bother gaining information as to her whereabouts and aforementioned commitments that she didn't once mention to myself earlier." Ketch raised an eyebrow at him.

"It was a mistake." T.J. said. "I'm sorry."

"Just a mistake?" Ketch asked. He nodded to the person off-screen once more, and they got to work.

"Look, just be careful, OK?"

"When am I ever?"

"I'm serious."

"Is something wrong?"

"I'm fine. I promise, I'm fine. I was just… worried about you. You got me here, and I would hate to have you die on me in another country."

"How's this. If I'm not allowed to die in America, you're not allowed to die in Europe. We'll both meet up in Australia or something instead. How's that sound?"

"Just… Promise me you'll be careful. And that you'll call or come right here if something happens."

"I promise. T.J., relax. We're Men of Letters. We're Hunters. This is the life for us. It's nothing new."

"Just be careful." The recording ended, and Ketch looked at T.J. expectantly.

"What are you waiting for?" T.J. asked. "Me to lie and tell you whatever moronic thing you've been led to believe?"

"No, I was waiting to see if you would take pity on yourself." He answered, throwing a file on the table. I couldn't see the name to check if I had it in my own stacks. "You're getting much too close to your charge, and it's unacceptable."

"I'm undercover!" T.J. protested. "Things like this happen!"

"Then why do I see that you've recently accessed your own files, as well as hers, and created copies of them?" He pulled out a flash drive from the file, and T.J.'s face paled. "We had our top analysts take a look at this. I will admit, your skills with computers and technology is definitely impressive," he turned it around in the air before putting the flash drive back on the table. "But it wasn't anything three days of work couldn't get through. Let's read some of the files you have on this, shall we?"

"Don't." T.J. begged, any sense of calm or confidence gone from him. Ketch didn't care. He picked up a piece of paper from his file and began reading.

"Dear Kylie, I'm sorry to tell you this but everything you thought you knew about me was a lie." He started, his voice almost mocking. "I didn't want you to learn this way, but I have no other choice. Once you took this drive from me I left, and destroyed everything I could that could lead the Men of Letters to me. I'll be in hiding. If all goes well, then in six months' time I will attempt to contact you. If you are still alive and still wish to see me so we may talk in person, then we will meet. If either of the above end up being negative, then I'm sorry for putting you at risk, but I had to do something to save your life." Ketch paused, looking up from the page at T.J. and raising an eyebrow. "Shall I continue?"

"You're a monster." T.J. spat. "You want to KILL HER!"

"She's not human." Ketch responded. "For the sake of a better, safer world, it's for the best. However, at the moment she is proving entirely useful, so we may just see about rehabilitating her instead."

"That's bullshit and you know it." T.J. argued. "You'll put a bullet in her eyes and call it a safekeeping clause or some bloody shit like that."

"Actually, we won't have to." Ketch stated, walking out of view. When he walked back in he set something down in front of T.J. that I couldn't quite make out. It looked familiar though.

"No." T.J. said, his voice slightly shaky. "She told me about how awful that thing is. You HEARD her talk about what Lucifer made her do, what anybody could make her do with it. It's cruel. It's inhumane. It's," Ketch interrupted with ease.

"Easy to use, and if the time comes, entirely necessary." He held it up, inspecting the object closely, and I felt my stomach drop when I saw the leash attached to the collar. They had a witchcatcher.

They were willing to use it, too.

"There is, of course, the option of Lady Bevell's reprogramming techniques as well." Ketch reminded him. "Which, out of the three, is preferred. Nothing is better than an operative that is willing and cooperative," he walked out of view, depositing the witchcatcher somewhere I couldn't see. "Unlike you, who decided to disobey your orders and break the Code."

"The Code is bullshit!" T.J. shouted. "This whole mission and ideology is bullshit! Not all creatures are bad!"

"They're dangerous." Ketch stated. "Or have you forgotten what happened to your own family?"

"Kylie's not like that." T.J. argued. "The angel she loves, Castiel, he's not like that! The demon she learned from, Crowley, he's not completely bad! The Reaper that saved her isn't bad! The witch that she learned the rest from isn't all bad! Not all monsters are bad!" He shook his head. "That black and white world you teach doesn't exist. There is grey area. There is room for good in what you would consider bad."

"You truly have fallen far from your teachings if that's what you believe now." Ketch said. He stopped, thinking. "Maybe I should make a demonstration out of you," he thought. "Prove that it doesn't matter who or what a monster was, what matters is what they became."

"What do you mean?" T.J. asked. When Ketch didn't answer, he started jerking against his binds. "Ketch, what the bloody hell do you mean!"

"You forget, T.J.," Ketch said, walking off screen. "Everyone can be replaced, and all monsters are killers, no matter what."

"Ketch!" T.J. shouted, struggling furiously now. "KETCH!"

There was static in the video, and someone else walked in. Louis Abernathy, or at least how he looked in his picture. T.J. looked up at him, confused. "Who are you?"

"Louis," he answered, sitting across from T.J. He had a slight southern drawl to his voice. "For now, anyways."

"You're a shapeshifter." T.J. deduced. "And they let you in here? Why?"

"I'm buying my freedom." Louis answered. "But I wanted to talk with you first, see what you would tell me off the bat."

"I'm not telling you anything."

"You see, that's where you're wrong." Louis said. "No matter what, you're talking. It's just a question of what I have to do first."

"And no matter what, you're dead." T.J. argued. "Whatever deal they offered you, they're lying."

"You think so?" Louis asked. "You really do? Because I would've thought the same, except that I'm here right now and not dead in a gutter."

"They're going to kill you." T.J. repeated. "They don't care. They're just using you."

"You know, I don't think that talking is really getting me anywhere," Louis decided, shaking his head. "I think I'll just grab the information myself." He stood up, reached across to struggling T.J., and gripped his hand tightly.

In a matter of minutes, I watched as Louis transformed in to T.J., his skin peeling off in to a gross, slimy pile beneath him. Once he was done, he kicked the remains across the room and sat back down. "There we go. Much better, don't you think?" Louis sat, thinking for a while. "Wow. I mean WOW. You got a lot of messed up in here, don't you?" It was T.J.'s voice, T.J.'s mouth, T.J.'s face, but… It was like when Lucifer was possessing Cas. Same voice. Same look. Different expressions, different accents. Louis still had that southern drawl.

"You're making a mistake." T.J. said. "You're selling out to demons."

"No, I'm just doing what it takes to survive." Louis stated. "It's either me here, now, or they're going to kill me and replace me with someone else."

"You're a person, I know you are." T.J. tried. "This can't be right to you. You've got to see that this isn't fair."

"I ain't people, Brit." Louis reminded him. "Not to you."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm in your head as we speak!" Louis shouted. "I know what you think. You thought that witch was a thing, an it, a monster. You think I am too. You're disgusted by me, and by the fact that I look like you right now. I'm not people to you, much less to anyone.

"But the Men of Letters exterminated everything that was non-human from London." T.J. pointed out.

Louis paused for a second, then shook his head. "You're a good person, if more than a little messed up. I'm not the biggest fan of doing this. But right now, if I've got to choose between prolonging your life a little longer versus saving mine," He stood up, offering T.J. a last sad look. "I think you know what your decision would be, as well as mine now." With that, he walked off camera for a moment. When he came back, he had a machete and a red syringe. T.J. stared at them cautiously.

"What're those for?" He finally asked. "Do you think you can kill me?"

"Yes, actually." Louis said. "After all, I'm now you. And T.J.," he stopped, adjusting his clothes and fixing his voice so that it no longer bore the southern drawl. The facial expressions followed, and when he next spoke I couldn't have told the difference between them if I hadn't known. "I'm sorry, Kylie's good friend Thomason Jones is being requested In America to help her with her work. She'll be excited to see me there."

"You think you can kill a vampire?!" T.J. laughed. "Have you ever done that before?"

"No." Louis admitted, prepping the syringe. He wasn't facing T.J., so he couldn't see what I saw. For a moment, Louis looked… Sad. Hurt. He didn't want to do this, he just had to. Louis flicked the syringe twice, then turned sharply and jabbed it in to T.J.'s neck. T.J. howled in pain as Louis injected him with whatever had been in it, and once he was done threw the item in the corner.

"What did you do?!" T.J. asked. Louis looked over at someone off camera, picking up the machete as he nodded to them. The shackles around T.J. were released automatically, and I could just barely make out the sound of a door sliding shut.

"It's preferred that you stay in play, as an ally to the witch," Louis explained. "However if I can't complete the task of a Hunter, then we'll both die and they'll make up some fable about you dying on assignment. Now, I'm a desperate shapeshifter that's been offered a new lease on life," his accent slipped, for a moment, back in to that southern sound. "And you, you've been in here for weeks with the barest minimum offered to keep you alive. In that time I've been taught how to fight and win, especially against vampires. You're a newly turned vamp with no control over their abilities." T.J. stopped completely as he realized what had been done to him, what had been in that syringe.

Vampire blood.

They had turned T.J., but why?

"Who do you think will win?" Louis asked.

"I'll kill you!" T.J. shouted, lunging at the shifter. He moved quickly, though. Much quicker than I would've expected. A short duck and sidestep, followed by a swift upward slash with the machete.

T.J. was dead in seconds, his head rolling somewhere I couldn't see on the floor. But I could still see the picture in my mind. It made me want to vomit.

"Well done," I heard Ketch's voice over an intercom. He walked in, stepping over T.J.'s body to shake Louis' hand. "You're ready."

"Thank you, sir." Louis was back to speaking just like T.J., and I couldn't take it anymore at that point. I shut it all off, slamming the DVD player closed and looking at everything else in front of me.

T.J. was dead. He had been dead for a long time. He had been replaced. I hadn't even realized it. His replacement was dead.

Mick was dead. Ketch had killed him. He had been dead for a few weeks now.

And they were going to kill me next. There was so much more information in these files, information I hadn't even looked at or touched yet, but there was one more I had to look at.

Mrs. Tran's file. I had a sickening feeling as I opened it, and the first picture was the same one I'd seen in the police report, the one of the crash.

This file wasn't too big. It recapped my living with her, and her death. When I got to that part, though, I almost threw up.

Killed to incentivize Kylie to join Men of Letters in London. It was believed that the less ties she could consider familial in America, the higher the chances would be that she would join us.

Plan successfully lead by A. Ketch.

It hadn't been an accident.

It had been murder. They'd caused the wreck to kill her.

I put all the folders and everything back in the briefcase, and closed it up. I needed to be somewhere safer, somewhere I couldn't be found, as I went over all of this.