"Hey Axel?"

"Hmm?" I picked the cigarette out from between my lips and turned around.

Adira ducked her head and pushed her feet through the small window and onto the fire escape with me. She kneaded the heels of her palms against one another as she crossed the black steel grate beneath us and towards where I was looking over the railing. "So about tonight," she started.

I stuck the smoldering white stick back in my mouth and smirked. "You know I got protection Deera, you don't need to worry."

She lashed a hand out and plucked the cigarette from my mouth.

"Hey!" I pawed at it but she extended her arm out past the railing of the fire escape.

"I'll drop it," she threatened.

"You wouldn't."

"Try me."

I groaned and savored the taste from my last drag that still dusted my tongue. "You want to sleep next to me tonight, because of what's happened the past two nights?"

Adira kept her arm straight and watched the white smoke get whisked away from the tip of the ashy stick and blur into the wind.

Last night she had another severe night terror. Like last time, I'd woken up to help her, and she only calmed down once I held her hand. Whenever I let go she'd get worked up again, so I stayed with her, and we woke up together. The two of us hadn't talked about it since we both woke up before everyone else and we had to go meet Harrison, Quinn and Zach anyway.

"I hate this," she whispered.

"Hate me?"

"No. God, no. I hate this feeling, I hate being in someone else's power, having to rely on someone." She looked at me with angry blue eyes. "I should be the one to keep myself in check."

She handed me my cigarette back but I snuffed the embers out on the metal railing and then tossed it down over the edge. "There's nothing wrong with letting others help you."

"I don't deserve your kindness Axel."

"Hey," I said firmly. "We talked about this, down in the prisons, remember? You need to learn how to forgive yourself, how to let go."

"But—"

She ran her blue eyes around my face and then looked down at her wrists balanced on the black railing. The wind picked up and she shivered.

"Oh shit my sweater is back at the hotel isn't it?"

She nodded and looked sad.

"I would give you the shirt I'm wearing right now, since you apparently find my scent alluring, but unfortunately this is literally all I have."

The corner of her mouth twitched up in a smile and she nudged me playfully in the shoulder. "Well since I'm cold all the time and for some reason you're like a human heater, it would be only fair if you gave me your shirt anyways."

"You just wanna see me shirtless, I see how it is." I smirked at her.

She rolled her eyes. "Feel free to jump on down and fetch your lung poison while you're at becoming Hot Head 2.0." She turned to go back through the window.

"Wait, honestly though," I twisted around and grabbed her hand. She was right about her body temperature; her fingers shot ice through me as soon as we touched. She noticed my shock and snatched her hand back. "Sleep next to me if it makes you feel better, really, I don't mind." She looked to say something else but I hurried on. "You're not a monster, no one believes that but you. You can go around thinking that you were one, but right now, you're not. You helped try and stop a bombing today, and even though we failed, you were still there risking your life for the safety of others. That doesn't sound like a monster to me, that sounds more like a hero."

A redness crept to her cheeks when I finished talking. "Thanks Axel," she said.

"Always happy to tell the truth."

"You literally lie for a living."

I shrugged one shoulder. "Well, that just makes it so much more special when I tell the truth then." She broke into a genuine smile. "Oh, and another piece of truth, you only want my shirt so you can see my sculpted abs." I bolted back through the open window before she could punch me.

"Hey, you fucking wish Lawrence!" She clambered back into the living room after me.

"They're chiseled!" I called back.

"Yeah right!"

"Wanna bet?"

-

Owen was sitting up, miraculously. He was still pale and the skin beneath his eyes was streaked in sleep deprivation.

I wasn't a massive fan of Owen and his whole...person. He was a good mission leader, and he inspired me to be a better agent because of it. My admiration definitely didn't mean I wanted to be like him though --chained to Flagg's right hand like a little bitch. I liked being given orders and going out and executing them, it gave me a job and a purpose, but Owen reported back to Flagg like Flagg was pack leader, all "hey dad were you watching! I shot the bad guy! Throw me a bone!"

Point was, in my eyes, Owen's personality could use some... sprucing up. But that didn't mean I wanted him to get sliced open like a pig and then have a corrosive gas bomb set on him.

Our mission leader had called us all around the couch where he was sitting. On his right Cal was laying out bandages that he was gonna wrap the German in like a mummy. Owen himself had his elbows balanced on his knees and his hands were laced tightly together. His thin blond hair was tousled all around his head, probably because he couldn't physically move his arms enough to fix it. I have never seen an expression that so desperately displayed 'I need a fucking drink.'

"I called Flagg," he said simply.

We all held in breaths.

Our mission leader's crystal eyes flicked past all of us. "I told him everything that happened...minus a few things."

Zach narrowed his eyes in suspicion. "Minus what things?"

"I also added a few things."

"What things?" James demanded.

"I told him that our tracker signals malfunctioned in the blast from the bombs, that Strider checked our coordinates and that they say we are in places that we're not."

"Your what?" Jinx suddenly picked up her head from her computer. She was off in a corner of her living room typing on her laptop. Although obviously she could hear us. So much for Zach's Big Bad interrogation speech earlier today where he warned her not to meddle in our business.

Owen turned to James. The redhead was perched on the arm of the couch right next to him. "Can you actually do that?"

James squinted into space and I swear I saw the corner of Owen's mouth twitch into a smile for the smallest second before vanishing. Hmm. Don't know what that's about. But then again the only reason Owen is even alive right now is because all that's in his system is adrenaline and penicillin, so maybe his brain was so out of it that he thinks smiling at James in front of everyone is a good idea.

"I can mask the signals," James finally said. "I'll have to develop a program that can disrupt the satellite that the signals are wired to. I won't need anything special since it doesn't have to be super powerful because I'm not shutting the signals off completely, just changing them to come from different sources. And I'll have to keep a computer running the program 24/7 since the signals are continuous with our heartbeats. They don't just emit a signal every few minutes like most trackers do. They pulse with our literal pulse."

"How even--"

"How far do you want us away from here?" James cut off Jinx's bewildered tone.

"The hotel four blocks away?" Owen asked back.

James bit his lip. "Yeah. Yeah, I can do that."

"Good. Flagg can't know that we're staying in some random girl's apartment, or he'll send in a SWAT team to investigate Jinx."

"Low key, that sounds pretty bomb," Jinx piped up.

"You watch too many movies," Lucky mentioned monotonously.

"And why can't he know that you're staying here?" Jinx adjusted the bracelets that cluttered her left arm. "It's not like I'm an imminent threat or anything."

"Not even close," Harrison grinned.

Jinx glared at him. "Test me Hot Head, I dare you."

"You are now aware of one of the biggest military secrets the US government has," Blitz reminded her. "And that's saying a lot."

"One of the biggest secrets?" A small smile crept up Jinx's tan face. "As in... there's more?" She raised her eyebrows hopefully.

Blitz clapped his hands together once. "And that's exactly why we can't tell Flagg."

"Or," Jinx leaned forward, "or--"

"Or you could shut up and let us do this," Zach snapped.

"Or you could shove your tone up your ass," Jinx quipped back.

Harrison snorted but choked it back when Zach pulled his knife on him.

"Put it away Patterson," Owen glared at the dark haired man. "I'm not done yet."

Zach grudgingly slid the silver blade back into the strap over his thigh, but not before poking Harrison in the chest with it.

Owen sighed and rubbed his forehead like a stressed out dad. "I also told Flagg that Cal said I can't be moved."

"Oh good," Cal tilted his head. "So you didn't completely blatantly lie to one of the most dangerous men in America."

"I also said that while we're here we may as well do recon on the library that Basilone is targeting next. He said good idea--"

"He praised you?" Harrison's brown eyes went wide.

"Teacher's pet," Lautaro coughed into his fist.

"He said affirmative for recon," Owen glared at both of them, "but negative on an actual operation and to get back to the agency by the 23rd."

"But in the warehouse in Tunis we heard Basilone say that he wants the library bomb to go off on the 23rd," Blitz recalled.

"Yeah..." Owen dragged out. "I told Flagg that the bombing is set for the 25th."

"What?!" Zach spat.

"Yeah Hoffmann what the hell!" Quinn protested. "He's gonna notice if the bomb goes off two days before it's supposed to! He'll know you lied and then beat your ass."

"No, he'll beat all of our asses," I glared at Owen.

Owen raised his hands submissively. "I understand--"

"No you don't," James said firmly. "He likes you. He hates everyone else. You won't get in trouble, we will." The redhead rubbed his bad knee at the thought. I almost touched my own kneecap, as if to cherish its natural form before Flagg took a sledgehammer to it.

"You didn't let me finish," Owen said loudly to all of us. "When I told him about how we failed to stop the hospital bombing, he wasn't mad exactly. More...in awe."

"In awe of a terrorist attack?" Jinx raised an eyebrow. "The fuck is this guy?"

"He wants the library bomb to go off to see just how powerful Basilone's bombs are," Owen said. "He wants to assess the amount of damage they can do and then steal them for America to use."

I expected everyone to throw hands. I expected Quinn's dramatic ass to flip a table or something but honestly, we weren't that surprised.

Flagg has done shit like this before, putting the country above most moral principles. It took me a long time to realize this. When I was younger I thought that we were spies that helped the whole world with threats, not just the US. But after a few years of getting missions that only involved investigating threats to America, I stopped believing in the illusion that high government officials actually cared about other people. And it still took some time after that for me to realize that Flagg wasn't the one who invented the missions, he just assigned them to us. It was the US government that decided what missions would be, and they only ever want us to gather intel on buyers who were looking into American nuclear weapons, or shoot down terrorists who had plans against America, or for us to follow a potential political American traitor. Considering all the resources that the agency had, far less the ones that the US had as a massive global powerhouse, I think we should be helping all countries, not just our own. I don't know that much about national debt or international funding or electoral college majority or any of that shit, but to me it seems more important that the people on the planet feel more secure than the money.

"But I'm not letting that happen," Owen redirected my focus. "My plan is that we do reconnaissance like Flagg said. But we use that information to plan our own mission and stop the bombing on the 23rd, and get back to Denver by the end of the day. Once we get back and Flagg wants my debrief, I'll tell him that we ended up stopping the bombing, that I lied, and that you guys had no idea that I told him the bombing was set for the 25th. I'll take the fall. You guys don't get punished whether we succeed or not."

No one spoke after that. We all just sort of stared at our mission leader in shock that Owen was willing to risk himself not just for the sake of the people who might die in the library bombing, but also us. He was all up for getting punished by Flagg, sacrificing his favorable placement as Flagg's favorite, so the rest of us don't get punished.

"So," Zach started. All of our gazes snapped to him. "You want us to plan a mission in five days, to a place that we have never been to, with bombs that brought down a whole fucking hospital, while most of us are wanted by police, while you yourself can't move, not get killed in the process, all while lying to the man who basically owns all of us and will kill you when he inevitably finds out that you were lying."

"When you lay it all out like that, it's obviously going to sound crazy," Owen gave him a dull look.

"Some of us have done crazier," Lucky shrugged a shoulder. He turned excitedly to Quinn. "Remember Poland?"

"Oh hell yeah, the Warsaw job!" The Iraqi high fived him. "That was fucking sick!"

Cal uncrossed his arms. "Wait, was that the mission when Lavro Petrovich and Grover Branson went grave digging?"

All three agents nodded with grins on their faces.

"It's not a party until someone digs up a corpse," Lautaro muttered under his breath.

"Agenten, hör zu," Owen began again. "I've been watching the injury toll for the Bellevue get higher every hour as they go through the wreckage. 1,787 dead. Triple that injured. Mostly patients. All because of us. 9/11 --2,997 dead, the biggest modern terrorist attack in US history by a lot. But not anymore."

We lowered our heads. This wasn't my first time failing a mission, but it was the biggest I'd ever failed. I glanced over at Adira beside me. Sadness and disappointment was pooling in the blue ocean of her eyes. Same with Quinn and Lautaro and even Zach. We had failed as a group, and we all hated that not just because Flagg hated it, but because people died. And we could have stopped it.

"Jesus fuck I can't believe you lied to Flagg," Lautaro let out a shakey laugh. He rubbed his face down. "I just--I can't believe it."

"If we don't do it seamlessly, and I mean damn perfect, then he will cut your balls off Hoffmann," Blitz said. He widened his eyes and leaned forward to add, "and shred them."

"Yeah," Owen said simply and with a light shrug. "He will. But people are dead because of us and if he kills me so what. At least other people will be alive."

"Awe. You're willing to quit your job as secretary so we all can live," James gave him a smirk. "So he does have a heart."

Owen gave him a look that was the embodiment of 'I'd say fuck off, but right now I'm tired and sick and in pain.'

I knew the look well.

Quinn extended a hand between the circle of agents. "YOLO?"

I put my hand on top of his. "YOLO."

Everyone else did the same. Except for Zach, who just looked at us all in disgust.

We all stared at him for a long time, until with a massive sigh he thrust his hand on top of the pile of hands. "Fuck it," he grumbled.

"Fuck it!" Quinn cheered.

-

I tugged the earbud out from my left ear. "Who says they even had a car?"

"Who says Basilone was even there?" Adira asked in the same tone.

Zach rubbed his forehead. "That footage is one of the only things we've got to go on right now, just keep looking."

Adira took the other earbud in the headphone set we were sharing out of her ear and shut the laptop that was balanced between our knees. "It's been hours Patterson, come on."

Quinn was splayed out on his stomach on the carpet below us. "I need more coffee." He flipped onto his back and got to his feet.

"He said his next two targets were a rescue mission and some library on Lafayette," Blitz sighed with his head down, "there are Lafayette boulevards in like every east coast city—"

"Give it up for America's favorite fighting Frenchman!" Jinx cheered from her corner. She had a silver laptop on her knees and a pencil sticking out the side of her mouth and had been happily chiming in on our discussion about where Basilone might target next from the corner of the living room.

Adira and I were going through the camera footage James' drone had captured when he flew it around the Bellevue before everything went down. The footage was on a laptop and the two of us each had an earbud in trying to pick up any hushed words of a bombing attack but so far there'd been jack shit to see or hear. We were also sharing the armchair since Cal was making sure Owen stayed stretched out on the long couch.

The German didn't look any better. James and Cal were starting to set out thick bandages they were going to wrap his entire top with, and he was ready for it with half the whiskey already gone from the bottle Jinx had somehow managed to get last night. He gripped the neck of it so hard it looked like it was about to crack. The only reason he wasn't kicking and screaming anymore was because of all the sedatives and pain meds he'd swallowed down with the hard liquor.

"Hey Strider," Harrison called over from the kitchen counter. He weighed Francis the drone in his hands. "If I throw this like a paper airplane when it's deactivated, will it fly on its own?"

"Try it and I'll tase you."

"Alright Hoffmann, sit up for us," Cal sighed. James took Owen's hands and Cal pushed his back to carefully help Owen sit up without snapping any of the thick stitches that were basically keeping his guts inside him.

"Okay, plaster time mission leader," Cal said with fake enthusiasm as if Owen was a little kid about to get dressed in the morning.

Owen groaned and tipped the end of the whiskey bottle up to the ceiling.

"Have you asked yourselves why this Basil guy is doing all of this?" Jinx asked.

Zach had his elbows on his knees and was sitting on the long coffee table. "We don't care about why, we care about when, where and how."

"And do you know the answers to any of those questions?" Jinx asked.

Zach clenched his jaw.

"Exactly," Jinx said, taking her laptop off her crossed legs and rolling out her wrists. "Maybe if you find out why, then you could find a pattern between what you do know and need to know, and maybe find out where he's gonna set the bombs off next."

Lautaro clicked his tongue. He was sitting next to Blitz on the floor under the window. "She has a point."

Harrison hopped off the kitchen counter top as Quinn started to pour more coffee into a mug. "We don't have time for why," he said, walking over to the rest of us clustered in the living room.