(A/N) Hey guys, NicKenny here, bringing you the next chapter in Phase Two: Betrayal, this time written by LanaLlama, and I think you'll all enjoy it! I'm sorry about the recent slight delay, but must warn you all that there might be a bit of a delay between this chapter and the next one, but after that things will pick right up again! Our other fics, however, will continue to be updated regularly!

Enjoy!

Chapter Fifty-Nine – Idiots

Agent Connecticut

Written by LanaLlama

"The longer I live, the more I observe that carrying around anger is the most debilitating to the person who bears it." - Katherine Graham

Things had certainly picked up lately in Project Freelancer, and the exhaustion could be seen on the faces of the Freelancers, who had gathered around a small table in one of the mess halls, with cards in their hands. Some had their legs splayed out; others were cross legged, and the odd one (York) lay on their chest, propped up by their elbows.

A simple card game where arguments and cheating couldn't occur was just what they needed to relax, or so Florida had claimed, and York had seconded. Connie plucked a card from Nevada's hand, which her roommate had fanned out in front of her, and she gave a small smile, noting the number two, as she dropped the pair into the centre with the others.

"I'm still not sure why you think playing this game's going to help with our 'team-work', York," Cal muttered, as he proceeded to pull a card from Connie's hand.

The brunette half pouted before responding. "Well, we've got to work together to make sure our buddy Wyoming here loses." A tut came from the moustached man, accompanied by an exaggerated eye roll. York just grinned and nudged him with his shoulder. "It's all about subtle communications."

"Well, it's working," Georgia offered, smiling warmly from across the room. "I feel relaxed and we're all getting along."

"For now." Connie didn't quite catch who murmured the words, but, like the rest of the group, chose to ignore them. A couple of seconds passed before she realised, with a slight shock, that she had been the one to say them.

"We should all be training, especially after the way our last mission ended." This was the first time that Alaska had chosen to speak since the cards had been pulled out, and that meant that all eyes were drawn to him, some Freelancers evidently agreeing with his statement while others, Connie among them, felt that they deserved this break. However, some small part of her sneered at her complacency, agreeing wholeheartedly with Alaska's criticism.

Where exactly are you on the leaderboard, that you think you 'deserve' a break?

The small, brown haired woman had, of course, been doing more than her teammates realized, writing up notes after each mission to send back to Charon, disguising them and hiding the documents away so that only she knew how to pull them up. She had once thought to disguise it as a diary, but that was quickly quashed as, were it found, it would only encourage readers. York, for example, certainly wouldn't have the maturity to respect her privacy.

It gave her a strange sense of confidence to know that, right now, she was fooling an entire military project all on her own. She absentmindedly snagged her fingers in her hair and twirled a strand about her finger, while around her the conversation and game flowed on. She began to think about how much effort she should be putting into her training sessions if she truly wanted to stay out of the spotlight. Then again, what she had been doing up to now seemed to be working. To her surprise, a very small part of her felt ashamed by that, because she hadn't exactly been throwing her matches up to this point.

She was snapped out of this train of thought when someone's fingers snapped in front of her face, making her jump and glance up, blushing guiltily.

"What?" she said, looking over to Virginia who had been the one to lean over and disturb her, and Connie blinked at her once before getting it. "Oh." It was her turn to pluck a card out again. "Sorry," she murmured in reply, hair falling to once again hide her face as she deliberated over the cards in front of her for a moment.

Something about her behaviour must have prompted a certain train of thought, because Georgia's voice broke the silence a few seconds later. "I don't think I've ever seen anything stranger, you know that?" He glanced around the circle, his eyes sparkling mischievously, a hint of a smile on his lips, until his gaze finally settled on Connie.

"What do you mean?" California asked, sounding vaguely insulted by the words, but also puzzled, suspecting that they had been directed at him, yet not quite sure.

"We've all killed people by now, right? I mean, we're soldiers, that's what we do. That's why we're here." Connie nodded with all the rest – it might be true that Charon had planted her into Project Freelancer, and she was, perhaps, less deserving of the rank than he teammates who had earned their place on their own merit. Her hands where probably a lot cleaner than most of the others, but that didn't make them spotless. It came with the job – there would be little point to this project if they didn't know how to kill, and if they weren't experienced in doing so.

"I guess." The game moved on, and so did the conversation. Cal found himself throwing another pair into the centre, before smirking as his last card was plucked from his hand. He had won. Now they were merely racing for second place.

"But let's be real, some of us look like trained killers and then you have the 'adorable girls' section, like Connie here, and Virginia and Nevada." And then the connection to the train of thought popped into place.

"To be fair, I've not killed anyone since joining Project Freelancer," she piped up, cutting in. "I'm just here for recon and hacking."

"I know, Connie, and I don't mean any offence, you guys just look like you should be in college, studying poetry or something," Georgia replied, laughing, but he paused when she glared at him, something that she had no doubt Virginia and Nevada were also doing.

"You might want to stop there while you're ahead, mate," Wyoming muttered, swooping in with his attempt to end this topic of conversation before it turned into an argument. Of course, he should have known better. They were all Freelancers, and what did they do better than anyone else? Get their fuses lit.

Connie pressed her back firmly against the sofa that she was sitting on, and wished that she could simply recede into it before things got too bad. Or rather, she wished that she wasn't here, that she was back at home with her bed covers and books and the sound of her father's typewriter. Or even that she just wasn't who she was, feeling that she couldn't be a part of this.

Now there was a new thought – that she couldn't be part of this. Georgia had a point, as much as she was loath to admit it. She didn't look like they did, and even they were beginning to pick up on it…

Maybe she should start putting her all into training. Strangely enough, that actually might be the best way to avoid attention.

"No, Wyoming, I wanna hear this."

Leave it up to South to push on when it could have stopped there.

"South." Right on cue, North's warning tone and his disapproving glance appeared, directed, as always, firmly in his sister's direction.

"He does have a point though, North," she continued, shifting away from him ever so slightly. "You don't look like a killer, but you've got blood on your hands, same as the rest of us."

It was at this point that Connie realised that she knew so little about how things had been run before she had arrived. She'd been so focused on keeping up with everyone that she hadn't thought to go looking back into the past. She had failed to learn where most of her team-mates had come from, or who they had been, before they had joined the project. It wasn't the job that she had been sent to do, she knew, but she was curious. After all, it wouldn't hurt to have a few odd pieces of information that might be useful later on; if it ever came to blackmail, or anything like it.

The job that she had been sent to do was to find information on any illicit dealings that the Director had been involved in, and now her schedule for the evening was filled with trying to find recordings of previous mission debriefings, and running through previous communication logs. She wasn't here for the other agents, she was here for one man and his actions, as Moore, her superior, was kind enough to remind her at every chance that came up.

"South, that's enough," Carolina snapped – her first words since the game had begun.

Connie dropped her final pair of cards and secured herself a "prized" second place, before Cal uttered a handful of dangerous words, stoking the fire that the conversation was quickly becoming. "They've got a point though, it's not like Ark looked like much of a traitor."

Georgia blinked, clearly not sure of how to react, but before he could utter a reply, North seized his opportunity to diffuse the situation, setting down his final pair and taking a neat third place.

Of course Connie recognised the name Ark – everyone on the ship did; he was a significant part of the reason that she has been planted in Project Freelancer, after all. Why Georgia, specifically, seemed to have taken offense at that comment, was beyond her knowledge and left the brown haired woman feeling a tad left out, though she knew that the others who had arrived to the project with her were in the same boat.

"Cal, drop the subject," York said, breaking in as he attempted to usher them all away from the fire.

"No, York, I don't think I will," the other Freelancer replied, his voice rising slightly. "He really should have noticed something. They were room-mates, for fuck's sake!" The penny dropped. "He should have noticed that something was off the second we came back from that fucking mission." This was an argument that clearly had been held in for quite some time, and Connie was half thankful, and half worried, that she was around to witness it take place. What she didn't like was the fact that she was sitting right next to this now-ticking bomb.

She could hear it counting down slowly, inside her head, nearing a set of specific words that she didn't yet know, but had no doubt that they would soon be uttered.

Tick, tick, tick.

It seemed like the rest of the Freelancers were waiting for something to pop up, too.

"What, like the rest of you did any better at seeing it coming? Like you didn't all know him, didn't all talk to him every day? Am I supposed be psychic, now, Cal? Don't blame me for something that wasn't my fault."

Tick, tick, tick.

Georgia was clearly only just warming to his side of the argument, and certainly wasn't prepared to let Cal start talking again anytime soon. "Hell, you're the leader Carolina, responsible for us all, so why didn't you see it coming? You're everyone's buddy York, why didn't you see it coming?"

Tick, tick, tick.

"Georgia, stop it!" Carolina tone here was forceful, her body tensing, clearly ready to move at a moment's notice to stop anything that may result from how pent up both Georgia and Cal were swiftly becoming.

Tick, tick.

"But you spent the most time with him!" Cal yelled, standing up, discarding his cards and clenching his shaking fists in deep set anger.

Tick.

"You're the reason why she's dead!"

Boom!

The weight of Cal's words hit them all, and there was a halt to the flow of time for the shortest of moments, in which Connie glanced over at York. He looked on, stunned, as he clearly hadn't seen his little card game going this way.

Georgia levelled his height with Cal's, as much as he could, shoulders rising and falling with each heavy breath.

"NO! Ark was the one who killed her, he fired the shot, and I certainly didn't place that damn gun in his hand!"

She was hyperaware of how close she was to Cal at this moment, and selfishly wished for him to step towards the other Freelancer involved in the argument, just to get him a few inches further away from her. She had never been more aware of the fact that each and every one of her teammates were professional killers – if a fight started here, who knows where it would end.

There wasn't a single doubt in her mind as to who they were referring to, as the events that had led to the brief shutdown of the project, and the deaths of two Freelancers – that had left all the seniors a little more broken than they had any right to be – had been mentioned before by the older Freelancers, and Charon had sent her a copy of the report. They were all good people, with the odd exception, and certainly didn't deserve what had happened to them, and what probably would happen to them in the future.

Connie hadn't been at this game long, but it didn't take a genius to work out that the Director was dirty, one way or another. She just hoped that when he went down, he wouldn't take the Freelancers with him.

If this is what a traitor left behind Connie just had to wonder what would happen when she inevitably betrayed them all too – it was inevitable, she would have to leave once she found what she was looking for. Would she be leaving behind a similar trail in her wake, or could she perhaps just slip into the darkness of space and not cause more than a small crack?

Now Carolina was on her feet, moving to stand between them. "Both of you stop it! Ark and Penn were the cause of this problem, not anyone else. There's no good arguing about it now, what's done is done!"

"NO!" Cal yelled back in reply, his face flushed with anger. "Someone could have stopped him; someone else could have found Ark first or stayed with her! Mich is dead because you," California pushed past his leader to poke Georgia directly in the chest, "didn't fucking ask him what was wrong!"

"I tried!" Georgia spat, trying to push Cal away from him, and out of his personal space bubble. "I let him mope around long enough and God knows I tried to talk to him, but he wouldn't listen, he refused to say a fucking word!" He gave the man a push when he didn't back away and Cal stumbled backwards for a second, before righting his balance.

This was all the invitation that he needed to dive forward, and take out all his pent up anger and pain on the smaller Freelancer, a target that, unlike Ark and Penn, he could get his hands on right this minute. Cal charged forward and swung for Georgia, his eyes shining, reflecting the inner flame that burned on inside him. He ignored Carolina's hands that were trying, so desperately, to keep the two of them apart, and the yelling of their teammates, asking them to stop.

"Don't try and interfere, Carolina!" Cal could just about be heard over the noise of the others, and Connecticut slunk back away from the group, making sure she was a decent distance away from the action.

Connie, like the rest of her party, was on her feet, but she merely watched as a few of the others moved towards Carolina, to help her separate the two men, who were now trading blows and grappling, their anger completely taking over. New Jersey was the first to get to Carolina, being one of the closest, and between them the two women managed to get a firm hold of each of Cal's arms, while York and Florida restrained the other fighter.

"Let go! If he wants to be immature and fight about it, we can! We'll have a match." York's strength was clearly being tested just trying to restrain one man; and Connie took a few more uneasy steps away from the group, keeping her distance.

"What is going on here, agents?" The unmistakable voice caused the entire group to turn, finding the Director surveying the scene before him, taking in the rather odd group of Freelancers grappling one another, still doing all they could to hold Cal and Georgia back. Immediately Carolina's grip loosened and she was left barely touching Cal's forearm, her attention locked onto the Director and her mind scuttling for the best way to explain the situation that he had found them in.

Connie almost pitied her, right at that moment.

However, in less than a second, York stepped up to the plate. "We thought it might be a fun idea to work on communication skills with an acting exercise." His teeth flashed in an abashed smile – the kind of smile that probably had girls swooning over him in his youth. "It's just a uh… an improv game." The lie fell apart right at the end.

There was no way the Director bought the lie, yet he looked the group over, his head cocked slightly to the side, and nodded to Georgia, speaking as softly as one could with a voice like the Director's. "Very well, then, York. I would suggest sticking to less violent games in the future – charades, perhaps. However, you will have your match, Agent Georgia. At ease, soldiers."

The older man turned on his heel without another word, his arms held neatly behind his back as he marched away, leaving all of the Freelancers to marvel at the series of events that had just occurred.

When he had left, Carolina raised a hand and gave York a small whack on the back of the head with her palm, before stalking off after the Director. Connie was almost certain she had caught a glimpse of her smiling, and her mouth then forming the word "Idiot", but she couldn't be positive.

However, she wouldn't have been surprised.