A/N: Alright, without further ado, here's the next chapter!
Helena and Leon awoke the next morning, briefly forgetting about the events of the night before until they saw that they were now in Leon's apartment and Aliya was asleep between the two of them. Leon smiled sadly as he saw Aliya pressed up against Helena. It was moments like this that he wished their pretend family was real and he only hoped that Helena would come around.
The two agents quietly got out of bed, going into the kitchen, and leaving the kid to sleep.
"Think she's going to be okay?" Helena asks, looking over at her partner as she started making coffee.
"Yeah. It'll take time so maybe she won't be okay today, but with time she will be." He says, leaning against the counter.
"I hope so. She's only a kid and shouldn't even have to go through this."
Leon nodded as he sat across from her at the table, taking his cup of coffee from her.
"You know, last night was fun hanging out. Just the two of us; until we got that call from Aliya anyway."
Helena chuckled and rolled her eyes at him, kicking the older agent under the table gently, Leon kicking back.
"Trying to flirt, Harper?"
"Oh, you wish, Kennedy."
Leon laughed before getting up when there was a knock on his door, and he got up to answer it. He opened the door to reveal Hunnigan standing there, her hands folded behind her back. Leon stepped out to speak with her to avoid Aliya overhearing from the bedroom.
"Hey how are you all doing?" She asks, stepping back as he stepped into the hallway.
"Me and Helena are fine but it's Aliya we're worried about. We don't know how she's doing just yet."
Hunnigan nodded, "well, I have agents setting up another safe house for you guys. You and Helena can get everything settled tomorrow while Aliya is at school. I will send you the address."
"Okay, thanks."
"One more thing though," She starts, pulling the pair of sneakers out from behind her back, "Aliya had someone with her last night."
Leon let out a heavy sigh, running a hand through his blond hair.
This fucking kid.
"Okay, me and Helena will speak with her when she wakes up. We will also see what he knows if anything."
Hunnigan nodded as Leon took the shoes from her, the two bidding each other goodbye as Leon went back into the apartment. Leon closed the door behind him and went back into the kitchen where Helena was.
"Hey, who was at the door?"
"Hunnigan." He says curtly, trying not to let his annoyance show.
"Oh? What did she want?" She asks, looking at him and raising an eyebrow, not seeing the pair of shoes Leon held just yet.
Leon just held up the shoes for her to see, not saying anything else.
Helena looked in disapproval, "no."
Leon shrugged, taking the shoes, and placing them on the table as Helena got up and went out of the kitchen, looking towards the bedroom.
"Hey Aliya? Can you come out here?"
Helena waited for a moment.
"Aliya!" She called again, more aggressively this time. It wasn't long before they heard Aliya come out of the bedroom, rubbing sleep from her eyes as she entered the kitchen.
"What_" She starts, cutting herself off when she saw the sneakers on the table.
"Do you care to explain?"
Aliya swallowed thickly, looking from the sneakers to the two agents staring at her in disappointment.
"Well?"
"Okay, I wasn't alone in the house last night."
Helena scoffed, "no, really?"
"Trevor came by, and he had all my missing assignments from the week since I wasn't in school. What was I supposed to do?"
"Not let him in for starters!" Leon snaps, raising his voice and making Aliya jump. This would be the first time she had heard him so much as raise his voice at her.
"Do you understand what position this puts him in? He could be in trouble now too!" Helena says, also raising her voice. Aliya just looked down at her feet, having not thought about that.
"We thought we could trust you_"
"You can trust me!" Aliya says finally, looking at the two who now stood with their arms crossed.
"Well clearly not if you keep letting people into the house!" Leon says, about to say something else when Aliya just ran to the bedroom, slamming and locking the door, "great. Now she locked us out of the bedroom."
Helena sighed, "fucking kids. We need to find out what Trevor may or may not know."
Leon sighed as he heard his phone ring, "why is Hunnigan calling me? She literally just left." He says as he saw the caller ID, "hello?"
"Is this a bad time?" Hunnigan asks, hearing the stress in his tone.
"No, it's not. What's up?" He asks, putting his phone on speaker and setting it on the table.
"So, I gave the file that Ada gave you to one of our other hackers because the file was encrypted. I just got off the phone with her and she cracked it."
"Okay, what did it say?"
"Well, it said stuff that we already know, they're experimenting with the viruses and at the time that this file was written, around a month ago, they hadn't succeeded yet."
Leon sighed, "anything else?"
"Yes. I found something on Aliya."
"Okay, go on." Leon says, trying to hide his impatience.
"There's a woman who runs C.A.T. Co. Her name is Natalia, and she's also Aliya's mother."
Helena and Leon looked at each other and then back at the phone, wondering if they had heard correctly. Both agents had several questions, such as why Aliya didn't know about her parentage or why Natalia wanted to experiment on her own daughter.
"So, you're telling us that Natalia is her mom. Why doesn't Aliya know that she's her mom?"
"And what kind of mother experiments on her own child?" Helena adds, also speaking her mind.
"Those are questions that we don't quite know the answers to yet. I do not know why Natalia has no relationship with Aliya, why she didn't even give her a name, or why she chose to experiment on her. To find out more, we need to try and find the labs location and get in there to grab intel."
Leon hung his head down, "okay thanks for the information then."
Leon hung up the phone and the two agents snapped their heads over to the entry way of the small kitchen where they heard sniffling to see Aliya standing there with tears running down her pale cheeks. They hadn't even heard her come out of the bedroom.
"My own mother did this to me?"
"Aliya_"
"Why did she make me a freak? Why couldn't she love me?"
Leon and Helena both approached her slowly, the kid wiping the tears from her face. She could have lived her whole life not knowing this information and this was something she'd have been fine being lied to about because finding out that the only reason her mother even wanted her was to use her as a science experiment, hurt.
"We don't have the answers to these questions, but we'll find them out, alright? But you are not a freak." Leon says, kneeling to her height, wiping the new tears away that started to fall.
"If I'm not a freak then what am I?"
"You," Helena starts, also kneeling in front of her, next to Leon, "are Aliya, and you are a normal twelve-year-old girl. As normal as you can be. Do you see random eyes growing all over your body? Or wanting to eat people? Because I don't see that."
Aliya giggled. "no."
"So, you're not a freak." Leon says, poking her in the belly and making her laugh.
"Thanks guys. And I'm sorry that I had Trevor over last night. I'll bring his shoes to him at school, and I'll come up with something to tell him." She says, grabbing the sneakers from the table and going back to the bedroom to put them with her school bag.
"I'm glad we could do damage control."
Helena let out a dry laugh, "yeah no kidding."
At C.A.T. Co, Natalia stood in the lab, the body of the dead soldier that Aliya had killed on the exam table. The woman was livid. Not only did this dumb ass get himself killed by a twelve-year-old girl who had absolutely no firearm experience, but James was supposed to go into the house with him to prevent this from happening in the first place.
"How could you fail? I told you that you both needed to go inside. Daniel wouldn't have been killed if you had gone in with him!" She snaps, going over to James.
"Yes, or it could have very well been me who got killed and then left my wife and son without a father and husband," James starts, "and speaking of which, my son was there too, by the way. Daniel shot at both, and you brought my son into this! You promised he wouldn't be brought into this!" He adds, starting to yell at his boss.
"I promised no such thing. All I said was do as I say and neither your wife or son would be harmed. I didn't say anything about neither of them being in the crossfire!" She snaps, "and watch your tone with me because I have people watching your house too. I know exactly where you and your family live, and I will send people there if you don't be careful how you speak to me." She adds, lowering her tone as she spoke threateningly to him.
"I'm sorry ma'am. I lost my temper, but it won't happen again." He says, lowering his gaze to the ground.
"It better not and if you keep failing me, I will send people after your wife and son too!"
"I'm sorry ma'am but even when the two agents aren't there, she's guarded. Even if she didn't have a gun and Daniel had succeeded, the two BSAA agents arrived within seconds of him getting to her. I worry that there's not much we can do."
Natalia turned away from him and started pacing around the room, her hands clasped behind her back. She knew that he was right, with someone always having Aliya in their sights, it would be nearly impossible to get her.
Natalia thought for a moment, perking up as she got an idea.
"Send an anonymous tip to the D.S.O and share our location with them. We're going to make them come to us."
"But ma'am, then they know the location and then everything you have worked hard for is compromised."
"I know, but if for some reason this plan fails, we can move to our other location. This is just to ensure that we get the agents out of the way and get the girl."
"But ma'am_"
Natalia held up her hand to silence him.
"Just do it."
A/N: Let me know what y'all think. Please review