Listen, I'm not one for intense pessimism. I'm not so stuck in a depressed mental state that I over-exaggerate depictions of pain and sadness and remorse like I'm some middle schooler discovering poetry for the first time. I'm not that guy. I may be struggling a little, but I don't make that shit known.

But this girl was really making maintaining that mindset difficult.

She was leaning her back against the concrete wall and with her eyes shut. Her limp hands lay encaged in her lap, sucked to the ground by heavy bonds. She had filthy, scrapy hair varying in lengths, dark in this light, encrusted in blood in various places, and shielding most of her facial features from view. Raggedy jeans and a hopelessly ripped t-shirt hung off her frame in shreds.

My fingers strayed to my front pockets, and I straightened up as I shoved them deep into the fabric. I continued to train my eyes past my own reflection and through the small glass window into her prison cell.

The girl brought her head back to normal level with a shake of her shoulders. The movement slightly brushed her hair back from her face. She drew her knees to her chest, causing the metal restraints to echo in the emptiness of the cement containment. Her right eye eased open, a shocking icy blue. It locked onto the wall across from her, gleaming with simple, wistful melancholy.

As my eyes drank in her appearance I aligned her physical characters with the statistics the agency had gathered about her that I read this morning in the debrief before coming to watch her.

She was an assassin. A successful one. Calculated, tricky, strategic. She probably thought like I did. So in order to get to her, I had to act like I didn't.

I'm a spy --calculated, tricky, and strategic is my job.

I released the cumbersome bolt that slid across the only entrance to the cell and stepped into the confining space. I kept the door open a crack behind me, letting some light trickle in and illuminate the closest portion of her face. The one eye she had open shifted between sadness and fear, but also a glimpse of alarming curiosity. Her blue iris twisted like a kaleidoscope as her head swiveled to let her eye run from my boots up to my eyes. Her blue one locked on to my brown ones, and we stared at each other.

"Hey," I said.

I was truly a master of social interaction.

I leafed my thumbs through my belt loops and raked my tongue over my lips. "Do you know where you are?" I asked her.

She closed her eye and moved her head away slowly. We were about the same age, 20 years old about. She looked maybe even younger.

I shifted my weight, letting the small beam of light from the open door shine on three vicious scars that sliced the flesh around her left eye. They cut deep valleys into her skin —gnarled, deliberate and rustic. The sight of them made me stiffen and now I realized why she was only using her right eye. She winced at the sudden exposure but still didn't react to my question.

"Why did you let us bring you here?" I asked. "Why didn't you try to hide from us, or fight back?" More silence. I curled my toes inside my boots. "You could have, but you didn't. You're here, not looking to escape, being infuriatingly uncooperative." Her right eye stayed shut, and her head remained tuned towards the small window fitted into the back wall.

"All I want is answers," I said.

Silence.

"It's not that hard."

Another minute of silence.

"Just one word?" I asked hopefully.

Still nothing.

"Please?" I tried.

I heard her snort quietly. Wow.

"Fine," I sighed, uncrossing my arms and placing my feet even again, "if you don't have anything to say that could potentially get you out of this," I glanced around her confinement, "bad situation, then I suggest getting comfortable," I turned on my heel to leave.

"Good," I heard her say. Her voice was hoarse and crackly from disuse. I turned back around and saw her struggling to her feet and opening both of her eyes this time. Together they pulsed an electric blue.

Well.

Shit.

"Believe me, if I didn't want to be here, I wouldn't be," she promised me with an icy look. "I let you take me because I'm guilty." She started slowly advancing toward me. "I let you bring me here and I didn't fight back because I deserve to be here," she let out a loose laugh, "I could strip you apart agent, vein by vein. Test me. I dare you."

She stopped walking towards me when she had stepped into the light.

I was so stunned by her that I took a step back.

According to our files, she was the victim of some twisted experiment, but I had no idea that her kidnappers had sliced her up this badly. Some wounds were recent, others looked like they'd been ingrained for years. She made no effort to change her situation at all, feeding her neglected wounds to the air.

The scars ran up her arms and down her neck, they littered her feet and ankles and more still were visible beneath the ragged rips in her jeans. Bruises clotted her collarbone, dark blue and sickly green, with scarily yellow ones making intricate patterns on her upper forearms. I fought the urge to self-consciously touch my own wrists. The most brutal injuries seemed to be on her hands and face. There was a fresh nick on the bridge of her nose that was bleeding down her cheek and made her look like she was crying blood.

"I deserve to be here," she repeated simply. "I should die for what I've done, because this time nobody told me to do it. It was me, all my own."

She was referring to the experiment that had happened on her. My mind raced miles in seconds. That was weird, since her experiment was kept a secret. That meant she must know about us and about what we do, which should also be a secret.

Well.

Shit.

Again.

After several minutes of intense staring between us I took a deep breath. "What the hell happened to you?" I let my shoulders slack, coming out of interrogation mode. After all, I was closer to her age, and being the leanest agent she'd seen since being here, could in this case work to an advantage.

But for once it wasn't the advantage that I was focused on. This time I wasn't lying about my feelings. I was genuinely concerned for her.

It felt weird. It was like something inside me just... switched.

Maybe it was because she looked scared, despite the aura of anger that she was trying to demonstrate to me as she spoke of herself deserving a cursed fate, and the threat that she could peel me apart by my veins, which made my heart beat three times as quick. She was right, I already knew what had happened to her. Basic details really, but the whole reason she's not in a US federal prison for terrorists right now is because the government wants to know more about her, and has instructed the spy agency I work for to do so.

She killed 13 people and brought down a seven story apartment complex in around four minutes, then sat on top of the rubble waiting to turn herself in. And since that could be classified as pretty fucking weird, an explanation was imperative. And that was what I was here to get.

The girl sighed, trying not to wince and failing miserably, but otherwise didn't respond to my question.

"Is that how you got those scars?" I prompted.

"I would think one of this agency's finest would be able to tell the difference between battle wounds and specific incisions," she replied. Her tone was so dull it was almost teasing. Oh great, she was a smartass.

The playing field just got a little more even.

"If you're in pain then we can get something to help," I offered. Something told me that the government wouldn't be very happy about her dying on our watch. At least until we got some information out of her.

"No thank you," she declined matter-of-factly. She remained her position of sitting down with her back against the wall to my left and her knees drawn up tight to her chest. "I intend on dying in here, and the sooner the better."

I took my hands out from my belt loops and started to run them over each other. If I was just looming over her the entire time she wouldn't find me any different than the other dozen agents who had been in before me. She had completely annihilated those men, and they were some of the oldest and strongest at the agency. I was an inside agent, not an interrogator, but it wasn't as if I couldn't handle myself. Probably not against her, but hopefully it wouldn't come to that. Director Flagg was aware that she was an assassin, but he sent me to her anyway. He knew I had one thing that those massive brutes didn't have: character. Or rather, characters.

"You intend on dying here, huh?" I asked. "That's cheery."

"Why am I here?" She asked me harshly, opening her eyes once more. The pure iridescence of her blue irises took me by surprise again. "Why am I not scheduled for life imprisonment in some remote facility in Greenland?"

"How do you know you're not in Greenland?"

She scowled at me.

"You're in here because you've murdered people," I reminded her.

"Funny, don't remember doing that."

"You said yourself you deserve to be locked up. Here's as good a place as any."

"I haven't been fed in 31 hours."

"You have a death wish, right? Starvation will kill you."

"Then execute me."

"That would get it over with quickly..."

"But you need me."

I met her eyes. She looked directly into me, as opposed to at me, both of her eyes scanning and assessing and calculating, twisting and locking, just like telescopes. She was trying to read me. I would know. I kept my face blank.

"You wouldn't use up space in a prison this size waiting for me to die." She finally wiped at the blood that was trickling out from the cut over her nose.

"Okay look," I weaved a hand through my hair, "you're an assassin. The government has been tracking you for years and you know it." She gave me a small smirk and I tried not to glare at her and instead look desperate. "You were experimented on, we know that. But we want to know more so that we can find who did it and stop them. I have been watching you for hours. You have to give me something I can tell my boss."

She tore her eyes away from mine once more and crossed her arms on top of her folded knees. "Sorry, can't help you."

"Yes you can."

"Just leave me alone."

"No."

"Fuck off."

"You have terrible people skills."

"I don't care, I don't like people anyway."

"You don't like them or you don't trust them?" I questioned. She blanked. "I wouldn't trust anyone either if I'd been experimented on," I rocked back on my heels and glanced around innocently. "You must hate the people who did it..."

Her blue eyes narrowed their glint. "Tell your boss he can go fuck himself. And you can leave, and watch me rot in here for the rest of my life, alone."Anger suddenly started to radiate off her in scathing waves.

"Damn okay, I'll get out of your room," I raised my hands in a surrender. "Clearly this anger thing isn't a phase, I'll leave you alone."

"You think your sarcasm is charming but it's really not," she deadpanned.

"Bitch, I am Prince Charming."

"Then you can kiss my ass your royal highness."

"You can't use language like that," I widened my eyes. "Prince Charming is a kid's character!"

She swept her blood-greased hair out her face and turned away. "Just get out."

I rolled my eyes and turned to leave the room. "Like I insisted," I said over my shoulder, "get comfortable."

That probably wasn't the smoothest thing to say, but she'd gotten under my skin with her stubborn refuse to cooperate with me. I had asked simple questions, and she had given me simple a simple answer to all of them: fuck off.

Director Flagg was going to just love that.

The massive cell door clanked shut behind me and I didn't look back as I started away down the hallway that connected the elevator and the prison cells.

How could someone voluntarily let themselves be, according to our files, unfairly imprisoned for life? She had been experimented on, what people did to her forced her to do things against her will. She had legit been mind-controlled. I thought that didn't happened outside of movies. It's not her fault that she's killed people, because she did it without her own consent. But she let herself take the blame, she thinks what she did was all her fault, and she's trying to make us think that too. Why?

Also, why would we be keeping her if she was no use?

I reached the elevator at the end of the hallway I was walking down. My sudden intrigue in the echoes of a past her scars told was definitely unanticipated. I didn't think our interaction would be all batting eyelashes and sarcastic flirting, but I also didn't think it would be...whatever the hell that just was. The sarcasm was definitely there. But nothing else.

I hit the 'up' button and rubbed my head again. I leaned against the inside railing as the doors to the elevator shut, and it lifted me back up to the ground floor. I could have gone up another level to where the dorms were, but I needed more time to clear my head before going to bed. Besides, I'd missed training because I'd been observing the girl all day, and a day without seeing those familiar rooms and smelling that salty stink of sweat and blood felt kinda empty. I'd been smelling these rooms since I was 12 years old, it felt like school —you hate it with a burning passion, but it's a big part of who you are and is in a way, yours. I'd walk down the hallway where the training rooms were, and up the stairs at the end to the second floor and the dorm rooms.

The elevator pulled to a stop and I got out. The corridor was quiet and pretty much dark. The training rooms for younger agents were empty, locked and also dark, but a couple of the bigger rooms farther down the hallway for the older and more experienced agents were still lit. The faint sound of someone hitting a punching bag echoed, and various lights could be seen reflected on the polished floors as I got farther away from the elevator. The older boys, including me, take their emotions out on anything spontaneously, punching bags usually being the least common thing to pummel. So I guess today must had been a good day since the sound of flesh against the hide of a bag was the only thing to be heard and not bones snapping or the shouts of boys as their hair was torn out.

I stopped at the second-to-last doorway on the right side. I peered in at the boy expertly aiming punches on a stained rust-colored punching bag hanging from the ceiling. Of course he'd still be here. I folded my arms and leaned against the door frame with one foot tucked behind the other.

My heartbeat was wildly quick thinking about the mess that was a floor beneath me. I was beyond curious at this point —bewildered, inquisitive, remarkably and painfully stupefied. I replayed our conversation in my head, scanning every detail I committed to memory of her.

The red dirt (it was blood crusted so much it looked like dirt) engraved under her nails (had to have been there for weeks at least) the dent in her right ear (like how a cat is marked at an animal shelter), her hunched appearance (there must be cuts on her stomach too, or bruises on her back), the ringed bruises around her neck (strangled by rope based off the markings), how purple her right shoulder was (she must have fallen from a significant height), how the cuffs of her jeans were split unevenly apart, and straight down (she must have ripped away from something that was attached to her feet?), how the roots of her hair were too dark to be natural (the leftovers of a disguise, hair dye probably), how she held her head tilted slightly to her left (either an injury to the neck, or just a headache), how the last two toes on her left foot and the last three on her right were coiled and limp—

"Dude!" A voice startled me out of my analyzing, surprising me so much that I lost my balance and almost fell over.

"Fuck, what the shit?!" I shouted. I uncrossed my arms to rub my temples. Harrison's urban east coast accent seriously didn't help to slow my hastening heartbeat. When we first met we were 12, so I was used to the way he spoke now, but if you're not prepared for it or fully paying attention when he speaks it doesn't even sound like he's speaking English with his raised a's and e's and lack of r's and overall aggressive speech. Oh, and he interrupts me all the fucking time. He doesn't mean to (most of the time) but his ADHD doesn't help the brash New Yorker stereotype even though he's actually from New Jersey.

"What the shit yourself Laurie," he replied, rhythmically unwrapping boxing tape from his wrists and thumbs, "I've never seen you so distracted." He shoved the browned tape into the back pocket of his cargo pants while approaching me in the doorway. He stood a fifth (we measured) of an inch below me, and his brown hair, a shade darker than mine, was arranged in its typical way that said he either didn't give a single damn, or he gave so many damns that he made it look that way on purpose. Even though there were no girls at the agency, it was usually the latter that explained his unruly hair.

"So, how was she?" He asked eagerly, dark eyes lighting up. "Glad I caught you first so I get the real thing before rumors pick it up and it becomes like that time Rodriguez fought a lion on the Harare mission but it was really a small dog."

I massaged my temples. "Um...I dunno."

Harrison scoffed and ruffled the front of his sweaty hair. "What do you mean you don't know? Dude, didn't you talk to her, go all Sherlock Holmes like the Director asked?" He flicked the light switch, ushered me out into the hallway, and closed the door behind him. Then he faced me with his back to the door and his eyebrows raised in expectancy.

I scuffed my feet. "Well, yeah. But she wasn't... easy." I crossed my arms.

"Nice," he nodded with a smirk.

"No, not like that, you prick," I rolled my eyes. He shrugged with a smug look on his face.

Narrowing my eyes at the thought of her again, I began tapping the toe of my boot on the polished floor. "She was...sad. She was accepting of her fate. She tried to come off as angry to get me to leave towards the end. All day she didn't seem to have a problem being alone and locked in a cell without any food, water, light, or human contact. We only spoke for about six minutes, and the way she looked at me was like she didn't realize I was looking at her too? It's difficult to explain."

"Damn, that's heavy shit," my best friend replied, shoving both his hands in his pockets. He busied himself by watching my foot aggressively tapped the tiled ground. "Does the Director know?"

"Not from me." I brought my foot to a stop. "He was probably watching everything through the cameras, though. And he'll want a briefing, so Hoffmann will probably take me over to his office in the morning."

"Maybe he won't care," Harrison suggested. "I mean, what did he expect to happen? It's not like he was gonna let her go or something."

I rolled my neck. "Yeah, he just wanted info on her experimentation. Even though she escaped, the guys who were controlling her are still out there."

Harrison squinted into space.