"Axel Lawrence?" She repeated to me with an eyebrow arched. "Axel like the car part?"

"Like the singer," I replied. "But with an 'e.'"

"Seriously?"

"How the hell should I know? Parents ditched," I said, barely fidgeting. It was true, my name really was Axel, and I didn't actually know why my parents had named me that. The few times that I had seen them, it was them who asked me questions (where's the money, the food, the booze, you know, typical things a 9 year-old should know), for all I knew, it was the first thing my mom tripped over in our house after I was born. But it wasn't as if she was around for me to ask anyway, so for now my potential relation to Guns N' Roses will remain a mystery.

"Oh." Her face fell a bit, like she was actually pitying me.

I uncrossed my legs from where I was sitting on the floor of her cell. "Shit, don't worry about it. Really. I don't give a fuck about my parents. Never did. And I think I turned out reasonably fine all on my own anyway."

She didn't said anything for a while.

"My name's Adira. Adira Bowman."

-

My military combat boots barely made a sound as I headed down the hallway to Adira's cell for what I was hoping would be the last time.

She had been put on observation for four days after she had agreed to our compromise. The Director had sent me in with a notebook and pencil everyday since then with strict instructions to study her behavior, analyze her personality, complete a report on her experiment, and make an assessment as to how she would perform as an agent based on all of those facts. We had been locked together for 10 hours for the past four days.

Two doctors were the only other people to have entered her cell since the decision. They dressed her wounds and mobilized some of the brain equipment from our medical wing and brought it down with them to her cell, to find out how to remove whatever she had inside her that enabled her to be mind controlled.

She had looked terrified by all the new people in the small cell, like an abused dog or something, backed up into a corner and trying to look everyone in the eye at the same time. She didn't place anyone in a choke hold though, which was progress, and seemingly a gesture solely reserved for me.

I was honored.

Director Flagg had also decided that Adira would be given a "supervising agent," someone to oversee her for her first few weeks and be her guide. He would explain layouts to her and watch her training and report to the Director.

I'd suggested James Strider for the job. James was smart, reserved and quiet, and I think when Adira saw him she might calm down a bit. She was frightened of people, men especially, but I'd never seen James be frightening in my life. He has this quietly rebellious thing going on that I think Adira might like. James was... different. And based off of what I'd seen from Adira's reactions to men, someone like James might ease her fears.

-

"How did all this happen to you?" I asked her.

She swiveled her head from its position of absentmindedly staring out the tiny window. Today she was slightly more... perky, for lack of a better word. She wasn't curled up like a dried-out cinnamon roll at least. "You sound like a rich kid's therapist," she retorted. "Couldn't possibly give a single fuck about how I actually feel. Just bearing through it for the money."

Ah but the smartassery is still there.

"I'm pretty sure I'm not getting paid to do this." I flipped my pencil around my ring finger. A small notebook sat on the ground next to my thigh, an open blank page taunting me with its potential.

She eyed the paper. "Are you a journalist now?"

"The Director here likes to demoralize people. So, yes, I'm a journalist."

"How much do you want to know?"

"Enough."

"Define 'enough.'"

"Enough not to get me punched in the face by my boss."

She smirked. "But that would be fun."

I gave her a look verging on desperation.

She flicked her blue eyes around my face. "You really care what he thinks of you, don't you?"

I drew my legs into myself and crossed them. "Thinks of me --not in the slightest. Does to me --very much so. And, I'm being honest here, if you don't cooperate, he'll punish you too."

"I'm betting I could handle it."

I bit my tongue. I'm not a violent person. Even though she was a bitch to me earlier, I wouldn't wish any harm on her. Which is why I didn't reply with a promise that Flagg should not be underestimated in terms of ability to torture.

Instead I took a careful inhale. "Please?"

The right side of her face was dark since the window was on her left. "I love it when you're desperate," she mused.

"Adira, for the sake of both of us--"

"Fine, fine. Get your pencil ready Woodward."

She surprisingly maintained eye contact with me as she started her story. I thought sharing a painful experience would bring out more choke holds. Or at least a change in facial expression.

"I was kidnapped," she began in monotone. "Three years ago, by these scientists. It was a group of four men, in their 50's maybe, all foreign. I don't know from where. They never spoke much. They wanted to create a weapon, something to rent out to people. Like a rental car, except driving is killing and I'm the car." She raised her shoulders up to her ears to further converse around herself. "I guess they realized that they could never just ask somebody do that, so they started experimenting. They implemented this pellet of electrical shit around my eye right here." She pointed to the area of mangled skin around her left eye. "The buyers on the other end could talk to me through it, and they could hear what I said and what other people around me were saying. It let out this electrical shock every few minutes, to keep me on track when I was doing a job, to let me know that they were still in control of me and I couldn't run anywhere." Her face was pinned as she spoke, but her hands were twitching like jumping beans in her lap. "Whenever I finished a job, they'd let out this massive electrical shock that would knock me out, and then the scientists would come get me after they got paid. Over time they'd electrocute me less as I adapted to it and mapped the general routine. And eventually they stopped with it all together. And I still did it."

I tightened my grip on the wooden pencil that was shaking with tension from my right hand. She continued like she didn't notice that I was having a worse time listening to this than she was. "There were other test subjects besides me in this basement, where we were 'trained' and kept when we hadn't been bought. At least I," she swallowed, "thought there were others. I thought I had a conversation with a man who had been experimented on like me, who was dying in the next cell over from mine. In his last words he told me I had to just own it. I couldn't lie in a cell pathetically for the rest of my life, however short the rest of my life may be. He convinced me to rise up, to make the world pay for instilling cruelty and madness into people like the scientists who inflicted such trauma and pain on us. And that's what I did." Her voice sounded like she was crying, but no tears escaped her eyes, which suddenly seemed so much older to me. Like they were wildly out of place in the body of a teenage girl. "I thought that since this was the life I was living, I should make the most of it. Only, there weren't any other test subjects. I was the only one."

I lifted my pencil up off the page I was scribbling down her story in. "What was that last part?"

"It was my brain, it was me who convinced me, that killing people was okay." She turned to look at me straight on. "I wasn't mind controlled or brainwashed," she said, "It was just me. I was weak and damaged enough to somehow get it in my head that ending other people's lives was okay."

I balked for a few seconds before writing a few more notes again, including her reactions.

"I went all over the world. The scientists made millions."

That part I did know. Spy agents belonging to this very agency had been assigned to try and find out more about these odd-ball suggestive deaths that happened across the globe, but of course never caught her until recently. Or when she let herself get caught I guess.

"How did you actually escape?"

"It was about two months ago, after I had been on a mission in Las Vegas," she said. "I finished the job quicker than the buyers thought, so I used a knife to cut the tracker out before they could emit the shock."

I blinked. Most of the color probably drained from my face.

"Well shit, he's finally speechless," she noted.

And for once, yeah, I was.

-

The rest of the four days had gone smoother than that. I had come in to ask her questions everyday, and little by little she started acting more like a human and less like an exploited lab rat. We discussed both of our childhoods, which was unexpected. She told me about her life before her kidnapping, what her passions were and her outlook on the world.

I told her about my train wreck of a childhood, how I pretty much spent my whole live providing for myself on the streets of Chicago. Stealing food, coats, wallets, and things to trade for money, like drugs for buyers or license plates for criminals. I told her how I became an agent --when I was 12 and hiding out on rooftops, I had stumbled into a couple 20-something year-old boys who were chasing a lead on an underground drug ring. I ended up helping them catch the bad guys. They found out how I was living and why. They contacted the Director and the next thing I knew I was here, dressed in a uniform and learning how to speak Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese, how to identify different kinds of handguns and bombs, how to work electronic lock picks, how to get rid of rashes from wrist sheaths, and how to get over the uncomfortable feeling of having an earpiece wedged in your ear for hours on end.

I told her about James Strider and what he would do for her, and Owen Hoffmann, who the agents called the "Inspector." He was in charge of agent affairs, checking in on trainings, taking note of promising agents or troublesome ones, seeing who was friends with who, allies and such, and then he reported it all to Director Flagg, hence the "inspection" part. Owen was the most popular agent in this place, the pride and joy of Flagg's eyes, his prized pupil. But most importantly he was Flagg's eyes and ears --his spy, ironically. It was very important Adira knew who he was.

Adira and I even went so far as to share deep dark secrets like our favorite colors, foods, places and animals. And I think it worked. I mean, she smiled which made both of us feel good. A teenage experiment technically mind-controlled assassin and an ex-street rat professional spy reverting back to kindergarten introductions for making friends and asking each other whether we would prefer a tiger or a lion as a pet. She would want a tiger, if it was any consolation to the Director.

By the end of her quarantine period, I could tell that we had both benefited from speaking about the diversity of our pasts. Every agent at the agency had come from some kind of a tragic background, and we were all trained never to talk about ourselves. "Swallow your feelings and get the job done" was practically the agency motto. It'd been yelled at me everyday for the past eight years. Crying into your pillow at night wasn't an option, because we had all been through tough shit. I wasn't aware how simply talking would bring so much back up my throat.

-

I hardly recognized her after our medical staff had cleaned her up.

She had blonde hair, which I had seen tints of when we met in the mornings and the low sun shone through the window in her cell, but it was a much different color now that we were both engulfed in the fluorescent lights of the upstairs agency floors. It hung around her face, washed and brushed, dripped a few inches off of her shoulders, and was a golden beige. The skin around her left eye was very delicately stitched. The cuts on her arms were less pronounced now that they'd been sterilized and bandaged. She had a few hazel freckles sprinkled around her nose, and her eyes were the color of sapphires in the sky.

I must have been staring because she jammed her knuckles into my shoulder and I was launched sideways. "Earth to asshole. You look like a fucking predator."

I shook out of my trance. "Shit, I'm not drooling am I?" I wiped at my chin.

She rolled her eyes with a small smirk on her face.

The two of us started walking side by side down the hallway from her cell to the elevator, me trying all the while not to stare at her.

As we neared the elevator I saw her whole body tense up. Her eyes flew wildly around the hallway and she was taking quicker breaths than normal.

Why didn't I realize this sooner? When she was in the cell she had her own space. When I came in she made it clear that I was an outsider, she could snark and attack me all she wanted. But now that we were upstairs, she had to get used to a whole new area. And after being treated like an animal, it was going to take her a long time to trust again.

"What are you anxious about most?" I asked her quietly.

"Meeting people," she said, obsessively delving her thumb into her opposite palm.

"It'll be fine," I assured her. "Boys are dicks but you dealt with me, so I'd say you're pretty prepped."

"You were hardly any trouble Lawrence."

"I am genuinely offended," I put a hand to my chest.

She smiled.

We stepped into the elevator and it took us up to the first floor. The doors opened and we continued down the hallway where all of the training rooms branched out of.

At the other end by the stairs James Strider, Adira's guide, and Owen Hoffmann, the Inspector, stood leaning their backs against opposite walls and awkwardly trying to avoid eye contact with one another. The two agents couldn't be more different. Owen was strong, tough, serious, and everyone knew him as so. James was nerdy and barely talked to anybody.

James was running his hands through his vibrant red hair, and Owen's white blond hair sloped over his forehead as he studied the lace-up combat boots on his feet. His head snapped up when he heard Adira and I approaching. His pastel blue eyes contrasted with his dark pupils as they sparked with judgement. James pushed his back off the wall and, very wary of Owen, stood about five inches shorter than him and avoided looking at the older agent altogether.

Adira slowed her pace when she saw them recognize us.

"It's okay," I said reassuringly. "We're only gonna to talk to them, and it'll be like five minutes."

She picked up her pace again.

"Adira, this is James," I pointed to the redhead and he smiled at her, "and that's Owen," I pointed to the older boy in front of her and he dipped his head.

Adira sheepishly continued to play with her hands and didn't make eye contact with either of the boys. I expected this, just because she was comfortable with me didn't mean she would be her sarcastic and assured self with everyone. She was still recovering from her tarnished trust issues. And I suppose James and Owen would seem intimidating to her. Hell, I was still a little afraid of Owen even after knowing him for years, with his reserved stature and inability to express much emotion.

But James acted like Adira sometimes —quiet and skittish, especially after his injury. He got his right knee completely bashed in about three years and a half ago, after a complicated scandal that nobody at the agency even knows the truth behind. He was 23 now, and has gotten used to the synthetic cap and steel encasings over the tips of his fibula and tibula that he has, but what happened to him was more horrific than his physical wounds entailed. I'm in the same dorm room as James and he wouldn't speak for weeks after coming back from the agency's medical wing. He limped now, but not as prominently as he had, and the agents his same age still gave him shit for no longer being a combat agent. He trained the level 3s, which were boys 13-14 years old, in combat, but whenever he went on missions now it was to run tech.

He was smaller in muscle than a lot of the combat agents, not scrawny exactly, and a little shorter than me at 5'9. with bright red hair and freckles on his paler skin. He had a slight southern accent from where he grew up somewhere in the American south.

Owen though, yeah he was generally pretty intimidating. He was older than me by six years at 26. That was usually the age most agents left the agency but Flagg broke all the rules for his protégé. Owen was from Germany, and had a hard life I'm sure because the only emotions he ever showed were anger or distaste, and because he's an agent here and we're all stained with some sort of tragedy. He had been at the agency longer than anyone else, and he was a legendary spy prodigy. Rumor was that he was in line to be the next Director. He was over 6 feet tall, white blond hair cut short like a soldier, and biceps filling the sleeves of his shirt. No one here was, like, beefed, we're not body builders, we do more running than intense physical confrontation. Or maybe that's just me. The German had an orange band around one arm signifying his position as Flagg's second-in-command. Level trainers like James had yellow, and Director Flagg had a red one.

I watched Adira size the two agents up. I didn't tell her much about either of them, on purpose to give her something to do in her head besides be afraid of them.

"I'm sure Lawrence told you about us," Owen started, "I report to Director Flagg everything that goes on in the agency. I watch the cameras, oversee training, add to agent profiles, patrol the hallways. Know that everything you do, I see."

Not creepy at all.

There was a pause before Adira responded. "Okay. I'll remember."

"Good," Owen said. Then he narrowed his light blue eyes at me.

I rolled my eyes. "Hoffmann, come on—"

"What'd you do?" Adira interrupted. She was smiling at me, and curiosity was bright in her eyes.

"I didn't do anything," I emphasized, turning back to the older boys.

James snorted.

"I didn't! It was all Harrison!" I protested. "I just... followed."

"Who's Harrison?" Adira asked.

"He's my friend," I explained, "he's usually a bit of a..." I licked my lips trying to find the right word to describe Harrison's rebellious personality, "a--"

"Mess?" James suggested.

"Player," Owen said dully.

"He's a lot of things," I said, scratching the back of my neck. Adira's tilted her head at me like a dog. For some reason I always found it compelling whenever she did that. She didn't really like to talk, I always had to ask her to. She just wasn't used to it. But when she tilted her head it was a subtle, quiet gesture to let me know that she was curious and that I should elaborate. It was her way of asking without physically having to ask me.

"Harrison is my friend," I repeated. "We're a lot alike. They," I pointed to James and Owen, "think we're two disrespectful assholes who reek trouble and rebellion."

James raised a shoulder. "That's a little far..."

"No it's not," Owen said.