It's a double chapter day! They are getting so close!
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Twilight made his excuses to the director of the hospital, and he raced to his car. He hadn't even taken off his lab coat when he turned the ignition and sped off in the direction of his home.

He would have gone straight there, but Twilight realised very quickly that he had kept his mission pack in his room at the Forger residence, even the disguises and the spare ammunition.

Shit! He thumped the steering wheel in frustration. The one time he hadn't yet refilled his mission pack, and this is when he gets the information on Anya?

His route home was so familiar that when he parked in his usual spot, his senses came back to him, and he realised that he had no memory of the drive home.

He raced up the stairs, threw open the door to the house, and nearly jumped when he saw Yor standing at the door holding a frying pan like a weapon.

"Loid!" she breathed, and lowered the frying pan. "I thought you were an intruder!"

Twilight looked at his wife in disbelief. She could hear him from all the way inside and got her weapon ready in time? He shook off the surprise, and closed the door behind him.

"I just received word from the police," he felt the words smoothly flow out of him. "They might have a location."

Yor gasped, and Loid quickly added: "But that's all we know, so they've said we just have to wait here until they-"

"Wait here?" Yor interrupted. "Then where are you going?"

"I'm, er," Loid stammered, "heading out."

Yor carefully watched Loid as he rushed to his room, and she heard the rustling sound of him very quickly packing a bag. She bit her lip, and set down the frying pan in the kitchen. Then, she sneaked closer to his door, and pressed her ear against the thick wood.

An assassin's hearing was second-to-none.

"No - Franky, I've found it. I've found it for real. So I've already told the Handler-"

A pause.

"You think I'm just going to sit back and wait for the police to fail? Obviously I'm going to go after her!"

Another pause, and Yor concentrated further as she heard the rattling of various equipment.

"I'm packing the usual kit. No, I am not bringing Yor! I am not putting her in danger, too."

Some murmuring on the other end, and a few protests.

"Just get the other agents ready, I've got the location. I'll need backup."

Yor stepped away from the door hurriedly before it opened, and Loid stood there staring at her.

His eyes narrowed on her. "What are you doing?"

"Uh," said Yor, and scrambled quickly for an excuse in her brain. "I was just going to ask what you want for dinner!"

"I'm sorry, Yor," said Loid, and he seemed genuinely apologetic. "I have to go back to the hospital, er, for a night shift. You know how it is."

Yor nodded, a smile frozen on her face. "Of course."

She stood in the kitchen as she watched him leave with his briefcase, and his suit jacket swinging over his shoulders.

Yor kept the smile on her face until the last second, and then let it fall. Her eyes immediately darkened, even without the shadows cutting her face in half.

There was no way in hell that Yor - the Thorn Princess - was just going to sit back and play housewife while her husband went and rescued their daughter without her.

She gritted her teeth. If he planned to go and get her by himself, he was an idiot.

She rushed into her own room to grab her bag, and some spare clothes. She needed to wear something black.

As Damian walked up to the Forger's house from his private car, he stopped in his tracks when he saw Loid run out in a hurry towards the row of parked cars on the street. Damian shook away his curiosity and raised his fist to knock on the door.

Damian didn't even get a chance to knock before the door flew open and Yor's serious face greeted him, then immediately transformed into one of surprise.

"Damian-kun!" She gasped, shock evident in her face. "What are you doing here?

"I -" Damian started, and gulped. She had clearly forgotten that they'd invited him over. Was this a bad time? Was he interrupting something private?

Her gaze landed on the chauffeur car behind him, and her eyes lit up immediately. "Perfect! Damian, quickly, we have to follow Loid!"

"Huh?" said Damian. He wasn't sure what was going on. "Why? Where are we going?"

Yor grabbed his arm and dragged him before her. "There's no time, Damian! We have to get to Anya! Quickly!"

Yor's hand slipped from Damian's shoulder and she accidentally grabbed the leather strap of his satchel. Yor hesitated briefly while she weighed it in her hands. "Do you have a weapon in this?"

"Er-" said Damian, who couldn't believe he had just been caught red-handed.

"Bring it," said Yor, and tossed it back to him. "We're going to need it to get Anya back."

Damian felt his heart begin to race. "Has she been found? Are we going to go and get her?"

As an answer, she dragged him into the car.

Yor slammed the car door behind her and said to the driver: "Quickly, but not too closely! Otherwise he'll realise that we're following him!"

She hadn't missed when he said 'bring the other agents', but she didn't have time to unpack that. Only to know that her husband was far more capable than she thought, and try to keep out of his range of detection.

They drove for a while through Berlint, until it was only trees and all the buildings disappeared. Damian looked in awe as the landscape quickly changed.

Finally, less than a week after her disappearance and abduction, they were on their way to get Anya.

At the thought of being trapped in a car with the most terrifying woman in the world, Damian's mouth had gone completely dry. Suddenly, he understood how Anya had become so strong with this woman's training.

He also remembered when she specifically said that she didn't want to call her mama to come and rescue him from the kidnapper because she would "just beat everyone up". Even before then, Damian had found himself wondering what kind of person Mrs Forger was if she had made such a violent impression on both her husband and daughter.

Damian swallowed, and he realised that he was trapped in very close quarters with a living weapon.

Weapons! Damian realised. If there was any chance that they could get some additional backup, then he had to call Becky.

No sooner than Damian flipped open his phone, fully intending to call Becky, did Yor's manicured hand snap it shut.

"What do you think you're doing?" Damian said authoritatively, before he belatedly realised who he was talking to. The 'Desmond' personality could be too prominent sometimes. He tried again. "We need the Blackbells if we're going to-"

"No."

Mrs Forger said it so emphatically that it gave him pause. "Excuse me?"

She released his grip with an apologetic grimace. "You can't call your friends for help. Think about it. We're heading to a lab for human experimentation. Do you really want them knowing that about Anya?"

Her face softened a fraction. "Trust me on this. Once you let a secret out, you can never take it back."

Damian stared at her, stunned. He got the distinct sense from Mrs Forger that she meant business, and had some idea of what they were up against. As much as he was thrilled at the thought of rescuing Anya, he also hadn't forgotten about the promise he had made with his friends. He had only come so far with their help - but, seeing her serious expression gave him pause.

And, worst of all, she was right. He knew she was right.

What was he thinking - trying to drag Becky and the rest of their friends into this? There was no telling how any of them would react, or how it would affect Anya for the rest of her life.

Damian leaned down to put his phone away, and the gun slipped out from the bag. Damian froze in horror as he tried to see how Mrs Forger would react to this new complication. She looked impassive, with a stony expression.

"That's a good make," she said eventually. "They have decent accuracy. Do you know how to use it?"

Damian, gulped and shook his head. That was her response? Who was this woman?

Yor's face softened. From her perspective, she had brought her knives, it was only fair that Damian had something to defend himself with, too. "Here, let me show you…"

She showed Damian how to cock the gun and hold it, and gave him a few extra tips while she was at it. "If you're standing, you need to keep your feet shoulders width apart, and if you're kneeling, it will help you to keep the stability. Don't forget to be mindful of the recoil."

"Recoil?" Damian wondered aloud.

"When you push the trigger, you have to hold it very steady so that it doesn't blow back and bludgeon you. We wouldn't want you to have your nose broken for a second time, would we?" Yor exhaled in a hollow laugh.

Damian vaguely hoped that wasn't a threat.

Twilight killed the engine, and then made some way on the foot to the facility. He used his binoculars to check ahead and see what he was dealing with.

The facility looked modest, but Twilight silently thought to himself that he wouldn't be surprised if there were some secret underground parts that made up the facility as a whole. He also noticed several groups of highly armed guards in riot gear patrolling the grounds.

He thought back to his chat with Erik Zacharis.

Zacharis seemed hesitant to tell him what the human experiments were for, but he gave Twilight a vague idea of what he was up against.

"Your daughter, Anya, was it? I knew her as Subject 007."

Twilight sat up in his chair. "What are you saying?"

"She was very young at the time, she may not remember me but it was my job to infiltrate the place, find out their purpose of human experimentation, and give it to the government and the intelligence agencies so that we could shut it down. I was only meant to be in and out and not actually engage in any combat or anything of the sort, but I realised that many of the human experiments were actually children, so I secretly worked on an escape plan for them.

"I befriended a few of the children there, and with the help of some of the more sympathetic staff I helped them to escape. I had hoped that they were out into the world, leading lovely and fulfilling lives, making new connections, and building their families. I was very saddened to hear from your colleague last week that your daughter had been abducted, and I believe that the same organisation may have tried to retrieve her."

In Twilight's stunned silence, Zacharis had continued: "They will very likely see her as government property, so if she has been taken, it's probably because they were finally able to. She was so young when she managed to escape, so I would guess that she really had no idea that they would be out there looking for her.

"We need to… no, I'm too old now to be involved in the action, but you need to make sure that this gets passed to the police so that they can find her."

Twilight nodded, and privately knew that there was no way he would pass it onto the police. This case needed to be handled delicately, skilfully, and personally.

Twilight took the piece of paper from Zacharis. "How did you know that it was my daughter? How do you know that it was Anya?"

Zacharis' knuckles went white from clutching his walking stick. "007 is a very singular person, she is a lovely bright spark, and I would recognise her hair and her face anywhere. Rescuing her was one of the things that I was the most proud of in my life. There were some other children there, and I had hoped that we would be able to get them out as well, but we never knew what happened to them."

Twilight looked down sullenly. He could guess.

It was lucky that Anya got out when she did, then.

Twilight nodded to himself resolutely. "I'm going to need some more information about the facility."

Twilight stared at the wall of the facility and tried to piece together what Zacharis had told him. Sure enough, the walls were of an odd symmetrical design, that Zacharis had mentioned was meant to trick people thinking that the building was smaller than it was, but in fact the entire inside of the laboratory was like a maze.

"She'll be in the special projects unit," said Zacharis, and didn't elaborate.

A sinking feeling started to form in Twilight's stomach. Whatever Anya had been involved in before he found and adopted her - it had come back to haunt her in full force, and stole her from him. Twilight got the same prickling feeling that he had when a bomb was about to fall.

Something in his life was about to explode.

And he needed it to not be his family.

Twilight checked the binoculars, and carefully made his way to the East side of the building. Zacharis had mentioned that there was a secondary entrance that he may be able to hack into, since their main entrance was likely heavily guarded.

He cocked his gun and ran over to the entrance, thinking the whole time that he needed to hide himself and make sure that no one could see him

From the intel that Zacharis gave him, he needed to get in with a code. Of course, Zacharis had been there decades ago, so anything could have happened in the time in-between. Maybe they didn't even use codes anymore. If it was biometrics then he was absolutely fucked.

Twilight grunted to himself. It would be just like Fate to deal him a shit card.

Twilight hid behind a parked car as he saw another car pull up to the main driveway, and a person wearing a lab coat behind the wheel. He made his way over behind the cars, careful to keep himself out of sight.

When they stepped out, Twilight was ready. He tapped them on the shoulder.

"Excuse me," said Twilight casually, and he injected them with a small tranquiliser. It knocked them out instantly. He analysed their face quickly and was able to programme a silicone mask to look exactly like the mysterious doctor: He had a shock of white hair, and a small crooked nose, and it looked like he wore glasses as well.

He looked at the man's ID badge. Dr Allen Atkinson, Human Abilities Specialist.

Twilight sucked in his teeth. Anything with the word 'human' would probably get him on the right track to finding Anya. He tied up the real Dr Allen Atkinson, and left him in the trunk of his own car. Hopefully Dr Atkinson would not wake up until Twilight had finished the mission.

Anyone who saw him would have assumed that he was the Dr Atkinson, although he hoped that nobody would ask him too many questions. He couldn't afford to get found out before he had even reached Anya…

Then, Twilight (now disguised as Dr Atkinson), walked up to the building and looked at the security system there.

He breathed out a sigh of relief. No biometric systems were installed, but he immediately identified the lock as a 1966 model that used a four digit code. Twilight could feel his smile turning up. How ancient could these guys be?

Twilight dusted the keypad, and analysed the powder fragments further on the keypad, noting not only which keys were pressed the most, but also the direction of the grease that showed up from the powder. When he traced the direction of movement with his own fingers, he figured out the final code easily.

The light on the keypad flashed green when he entered the code, and Twilight let the satisfaction show on his face.

"Back from your break so soon, Dr Atkinson?" drawled a voice behind him, and Twilight spun to see another man there. He wore light slacks and a shirt covered by a white lab coat, and had an exceedingly bald head with a sharp nose. It reminded Twilight vaguely of an eagle.

"Er, haha," Twilight laughed nervously, and inwardly cursed when he saw the keypad light switch back from green to red. He quickly thought back to the faint smell of cigarette smoke on Dr Atkinson's clothes. "I thought I'd better skip the smoke today, trying to improve my health and all that…" He glanced at the man's ID badge.

Dr Jeremy Parker…

Dr Parker walked up to the keypad, and swiped his own ID card first then quickly typed the code. Twilight frowned at the thought that he would have to act like Dr Atkinson with zero intel.

Twilight followed Dr Parker into the facility.

"So that 007," Dr Parker chuckled. "What a handful."

Twilight's attention piqued immediately. Were they talking about Anya? As he recalled, that was how Mr Zacharis had referred to her as well.

"Yeah," he agreed. "She is."

Dr Parker knitted his brows together. "What's up with you? You're awfully quiet today."

Twilight pressed his lips together. Shit. This was exactly why he hated rushing a mission. "Just didn't sleep very well. What's the detail for today?"

Dr Parker shrugged his shoulders noncommittally. "The usual. More tests. See how much she can take."

Twilight's blood started to boil, but he tried not to show any of it on his face. He had to rely on his training as a spy more than ever to keep his emotions hidden.

I'm coming for you, Anya.

Outside the facility, Damian and Yor emerged from the car.

She quickly scanned the premises. "Okay," she said to Damian. "I think I can get to the roof. I can see a few vents, so if we get to them we might be able to get inside and see if we can reach Anya, and maybe see where Loid went."

Damian peered head. "There's two scientists there. We can follow them in."

Yor looked ahead of him, and nodded. "Hm. You're right. And there doesn't seem to be any CCTV or guards at this particular entrance."

He followed Yor as she moved ahead. He held the gun in his hands, while she brought out a series of stiletto knives. Damian eyed them suspiciously. "What are those for?"

She shrugged. "I did say we might need weapons. These are some lovely knives Loid got for me for Christmas."

"Right," said Damian, not convinced. First of all, the knife that she carried looked nothing like the normal knives that would be in the kitchen. They were… pointier, for sure.

Ahead of them, two scientists entered the building, and the door secured behind them.

Yor scanned the area ahead, before running up to the door. "I know this lock!" she exclaimed with stars in her eyes. "It's a 1966 model, fairly reliable tech-wise, but structurally it is very easy to disable." And she smashed it with her elbow.

The light faded from the keypad, and the door creaked open on its own hinges.

"Perfect," smiled Yor, and Damian gaped after her.

How the hell did she do that? What the fuck is this woman?

He followed Yor into the facility, but both started to hear the sound of footsteps coming from around the corner.

"Quickly," whispered Yor. "Through here!"

She dragged him into an open office, and locked the door behind her.

Damian took a moment to glance around the room. Papers were strewn across the desk, and every inch of the walls were hidden behind bookshelves laden with stacks of videotapes. A golden plate labelled 'The Director' sat facing the door, and Damian quietly wondered what kind of person would call themselves such a hubristic name as 'The Director'.

Damian peered quizzically at the labelled videotapes. They seemed to be in some order of progressing numbers. His gaze caught on a series of videotapes labelled '007', and he held his breath.

Didn't he hear Adrian call her '007'?

Yor swiped at some of the papers on the desk. "I wonder what some of these mean," she said.

"We don't have time to find out," Damian said with his eye pressed against the peephole. "I think there's something going on outside. There seem to be people running in the corridors."

"In that case," said Yor, and she pocketed the papers. "We'll make our way through the vents, so we'll avoid any confrontation," She offered her palms for him to step into, and she lifted him into the vents.

She boosted Damian into the ceiling, and he only had time to shuffle forward a few steps before Yor leaped into the vents after him, which groaned dangerously under the density of Yor's athletic body.

He was almost surprised at her swift agility, before he reminded himself that he had literally seen her scale the sides of a building. Was this normal for her?

He shook it off. "Lets try going this way," he whispered, and they both made their way through.

Damian's heart beat loud in his ears as they shuffled forward as quickly as they could, but every hideous groan of the vent made his heart leap into his mouth. With each tentative step, the metal shuddered hazardously beneath him, and he worried that they would fall through before they would even be able to find her.

I'm on my way, Anya.

We're coming to get you.

Twilight tried not to say anything more as he followed Dr Parker through the facility, and he could see the ground plan of it all in his mind's eyes. It was a little bigger than he suspected from the outside, but overall the twists and turns were quite easy to navigate. Dr Parker buzzed them both into a huge room, and Twilight looked around it in awe.

There were computer monitors everywhere, and giant machines that beeped and displayed heaps of graphs and scanning patterns. There were brain scans, wave forms (likely from the brain waves linking up to something), and various other health monitors that he had seen and recognised from working in a hospital. There was oxygen saturation of the blood, breathing rate, heart rate, and even blood glucose levels.

Then, a giant picture on a board of a spinning brain, with areas of it lighting up in various colours. Twilight couldn't even begin to interpret some of them, but he could guess by looking at the cerebrum on the board that they were trying to analyse patterns of brain activity in response to certain stimuli. To his trained eye, most of the light seemed to concentrate in the medial-temporal cortex.

He brought his gaze down, noting all the various scientists that were at their stations, and probably some nurses as well, but his breath caught when he saw what was in the middle of the room.

A gigantic tank of water.

And in the middle of it, his daughter. Anya floated peacefully, connected to a huge web of tubes and wires.

Her loose pink hair swirled around her like reeds in the wind. It looked ethereal, and in some way it almost looked beautiful, but never in his life had Twilight felt more sick to his stomach than he did at that moment in time.

She had her eyes closed, and Twilight wondered what they had drugged her with. Would she be able to hear them at all?

"It's only been a few hours since the last serum has been sent into her bloodstream," said Dr Parker casually, jolting Twilight out of his thoughts. "We have baseline scans from the EEG the other day, but the gamma and theta wave readings we have been getting since then are completely off the charts. She's been reacting strongly to the serums, so ahead of the third phase tomorrow, we need to make sure that we create a record of their effects, and to see what else we can do to strengthen her powers."

Her powers? Twilight wanted to say, but he knew that if he said it out loud then that might give him away as not the real Dr Atkinson.

He followed Dr Parker down to the tank, and flinched as the doctor rapped his knuckles sharply against the glass. "She's out cold," he said.

"I can see that," said Twilight through gritted teeth, and his heart dropped. It looked like trying to get Anya out might be harder than he originally thought. Not only that, but it was clear that he didn't have time to wait for WISE to get there - he had to get her out now, before they killed her with whatever vile things they were putting into her bloodstream.

Twilight looked up at Anya once again. She looked so peaceful, but that was no doubt due to the cocktail of drugs that coursed through her body.

He had a million questions. Why her? Why Anya? What was so special about her that they needed to re-abduct her as a teenager and conduct these kinds of tests on her? In all his years as a spy, he had never seen anything like it.

He became a spy so that children wouldn't have to suffer anymore, and even though Anya was a teenager, she was his child. She needed the adults in the world to protect her, and instead they had her trapped and sedated.

He gritted his teeth. How useless was he as a father, that she had ended up here under his watch?

Twilight also wanted to ask why it was just Anya that they had suspended in a tub of water, but once again, Twilight had the sense that the real Dr Atkinson knew this. If Twilight dared to ask any of the questions on his mind, he could blow his cover.

"Can I check over that?" said Twilight coolly, pointing at Dr Parker's clipboard. When he handed it over, Twilight tried to scan it quickly.

Twilight felt his throat tighten up.

They had filled her with sedatives, including fentanyl. It was a type of opiate that produced extremely strong sedative effects, but it worried him to see that they had also given her a whole host of other drugs as well. Tramadol, an intermediate painkiller, and diazepam, for a start, which was a type of mood stabiliser. They had their other uses of course, but in the psychiatric hospital back in Berlint, only patients who were in extreme distress were given medications with that level of severity.

Then there was a whole host of other substances that he had no idea what they meant, but they had a series of numbers and letters after them, which told Twilight that they were formulated on the premises. They must be the experimental serums that Dr Parker had mentioned.

Twilight made a mental note to get her tolerance for these checked once they got out of there, but he would find out what they were later. At that moment, his priority was to rescue his daughter.

He rested a hand on the cold glass.

I'm here, Anya. I'm getting you out.

Your Papa is getting you out of here.