Flagg's eyes were boiling. His face was more terrifying than I'd ever seen it. All 11 of us were lined up in front of him in one of the debriefing offices with our hands behind our backs and an even stance apart.

Harrison, Zach, Cal, me, James, Quinn, Lucky, Adira, Blitz, Lautaro, Owen.

We got back from New York not even an hour ago and Flagg had called us all into his office before we could independently be debriefed. He knew about everything that happened before we even got here. How the hell was that possible?

He stared down at the line of us once more, before looking down at his where his fists were smashed onto the table. "Okay then," he said, calmly raising his head. "Since all of you are apparently too damn stubborn to talk on your own, let's bring up Andrew's mistake first." 

"Every. Damn. Time," Flagg started, looking at my best friend. "Every damn time something goes wrong on a mission, you always have something to do with it. Why I even bother anymore, I don't know. So, say, two to three years suspension? Will that be enough for you to get it into your head that you need to live up to your potential? Will that be enough for you to get it in your goddamn mind that I own you?"

Harrison shifted his stance, and I could see him biting his tongue in half from where I was. Harrison knew how to be a good soldier —don't speak unless spoken to, follow orders with a perfect execution. It was in his blood. Whether or not he followed that instinct was always up for debate. Because Harrison, like me, had something else bubbling inside him. Hate, rebellion, a barely caged beast. Flagg had agents drag him here minutes after Harrison found out his parents died. He was trembling now, trying to keep from exploding since he knew Flagg could do so much worse to him. But three years? He'd gone nuts after just eight months of being locked inside.

"What was that?" Flagg asked him innocently, putting a hand behind his ear. Harrison squeezed his hands into fists and continued to look at the ground.

"Oh, that's right —nothing." He looked over at Owen next, but the blond boy kept his eyes fixed on the opposite wall. "Hoffmann."

Owen took a breath, "Sir—"

"Shut it!" The Flagg yelled. The sound echoed in the room and everyone flinched. He jammed a finger in the German's direction. "You are the last person who should be speaking right now. You're the one I'm furious with the most. And you know what I am capable of when I am furious." Owen's already fair skin turned paler as Flagg started around the desk. "You should be thankful for everything I've done for you, but instead you're throwing it all away to chase after some dick." James' eyes darkened and behind him his hands clenched tighter together. "You put your amazing talents to fucking waste!" Flagg continued, his voice rising. He suddenly swept his hands over the desk, knocking the computer and pencil cup and keyboard off of it and sending it all crashing to the floor. Everyone jumped.

Flagg approached Owen and got directly in his face and the German's blue eyes began to glint with fear. "I spent so long shaping you into the perfect agent! Someone worthy enough to be my successor!" He screamed. "And you have to go and fucking waste it toying with a psychotic slut not worth shit!"

Flagg shoved him backwards, so hard Owen fell onto his back, then started to kick him, over and over, in the face, stomach, head, everywhere. James broke forwards and tried to help but two of the Director's guards rushed towards him from their station at the door and held him back, and wrapped a hand over his mouth. The redhead was quickly overpowered but that didn't stop him from trying to scream under the grips of the guards.

Finally Flagg did stop, leaving Owen in a crumpled ball on the floor. His eye was red and bleeding from kicked there and scraps of skin from the ridges on the bottom of Flagg's boots were all over his arms. The cut across his torso had reopened and we could see it was already starting to bleed through his black shirt.

"Get up," Flagg snarled down at him. Owen slowly rolled over and Flagg reached down and grabbed his shirt and yanked him to his feet. "I said; get up."

The guards released James at the flick of Flagg's hand and then shoved him back in line. Flagg went back over to the desk and leaned against the front of it.

"Next up." He turned his dead eyes to Adira and my heart plummeted. "I knew bringing in a girl would be risky, I just didn't think you would fall pathetically into someone's arms for at least six months." He paused to laugh, "Damn. I thought you would have been the perfect agent. But alas, someone fucked it up."

He turned his eyes on me. "So lastly, we have Lawrence." 

He was going to send me away. Adira was far more valuable to him than me, and where would she go? He would kill her before sending her back out on the streets. No, it was me who was going to have to leave. Away from Adira. Away from Harrison. Away from everyone.

"Oh, what did you think was going to happen?" I sneered in his face. God it felt good to give no shits for once.

Flagg banged his hands on the desk. "I'm not the one you should be wasting your words on Lawrence!" He yelled. "Bringing you here was a mistake," he jammed a finger at Adira, his voice trembling with rage. "You've turned my boys into revolutionaries!"

"Revolutionaries?" She scoffed. She actually scoffed. "Sir, you seriously need to get with the program."

Quinn coughed over what was probably a laugh.

"Ex—excuse me?" Flagg stammered.

"You're excused," Adira smiled. "But it's the program, sir," she repeated. "Yeah, your whole thing with torturing agents, then making them your slaves. It's amazing that you don't see the long term consequences of that."

"The-the program?" Flagg blinked a couple times.

"Yeah," she said. "You're a terrible Director."

I legitimately cracked up.

Flagg stood up, and my heart dropped at his gaze. It was murderous. He stepped forward and got in her face. "I could have left you for dead. I could have used you as bait for the scientists who created you. I could have given you to an army prison, I could have done so much worse to you."

She tisked. "But no, instead you imprisoned me here, blackmailed me, and then used the leftover terrorist technology in my head to invent advanced trackers for all your agents, the starting model of which, is right here." She dipped her head and pointed the the back of her neck.

Holy shit. So that was how he knew about everything. 

The tech the Syntego's put around Adira's eye had speech readings and a speaker, so whoever controlled it could hear what she said and what others around her said too. I remember looking at the x-rays of it before she was released from the prison cells. Flagg had seemed very interested in it, come to think of it. So during her surgery to remove it, he must have somehow made it into a tracker and put it into the back of her neck. Every agent had a tracker injected into the back of his neck, but Adira's special one must have been how he picked up on all the conversations we'd had about James and Owen, about how they kissed, and about her and I sleeping together.

"Wait, so that's why you brought her here? So you could steal the technology used to imprison and brainwash her?" I asked.

"Indeed," Flagg agreed. "You see, I was very intrigued at how someone was able to control a person to carry out instructions with that much precision. Once we heard that it was her who destroyed that apartment complex and she was just lying the rubble, it took a lot of convincing to allow her to be admitted to this division." 

"She came here for a new life!" I said.

Flagg grinned like a creep at Adira. "You are smart though, I'll give you that." Then he slithered out a hand and yanked her hair downwards and twisted so she ended up under the heel of his shoe.

I immediately darted forward, but Flagg slid out his electric baton and held it in front of my face. "Don't. Move."

I stopped short as he touched the end of the weapon to my forehead. He didn't turn it on, just left it there with his finger on the button while smashing Adira's neck with his shoe.

From Adira's left side Blitz's mohawk hair zipped forwards and nailed Flagg in the head with the handle of his knife. Flagg stumbled backwards and the forces suspending Adira and I released. We were checked for weapons before we came in to his office, but luckily Blitz came from a family of drug smugglers.

Adira took both of our hands and got to her feet. "Thanks guys."

"He's gonna hurt us all anyway right, so what the hell right?" Blitz mused to Flagg.

The man's upper lip turned up. "You're damn right." He picked up his baton from the floor and held it lightly between his hands, then proceeded to pace up and down in front of us all. "There is one agent here who I am especially disappointed in though." His dark eyes dragged past all of us until they stopped at Zach.

"Patterson?"

This was it. Zach said he actually wanted to be the next Director, unlike Owen. 

But then Zach did something none of us expected. "For the record sir, I could never make Lawrence or Andrews do anything," he said, laughing to himself. Harrison snuffed a breath out his nose before quickly regaining composure. I raised my eyebrows in surprise. Next to me James' knees stopped shaking as bad. Zach, Flagg's new Owen, his new puppet to toy with, was cutting his threads.

"Oh, so you're just as much to blame then?" Flagg asked.

"Sure," Zach replied, rocking on his heels. "Cause someone to blame is what you're looking for here."

Flagg took one step forward and punched Zach right in the nose, so hard a painful crack was heard about the room. Zach took a step backwards, but then he straightened up, ignoring how his bone was clearly out of place.

"Other than yourself of course," he said. "Uncle."

On my other side I could see Cal widen his eyes. My eyes snapped back to Zach when Flagg set his electric baton on him until Zach was in a crumpled ball on the floor and screaming. 

Finally he stood back, leaving Zach paralyzed on the floor, and returned to standing behind his desk.

"Bowman," he continued, as if he hadn't just fried his nephew's brain, "I hope you know that Lawrence is nothing special. You're just a hole to him."

 "Bullshit, Flagg, all you care about is yourself!" I took a step forward.

Cal grabbed my shoulder, but I swatted him off.

"Oh, pipe down Lawrence." Flagg commanded as I straightened my shirt collar. "I am not getting rid of you," he said calmly.

Wait. What? Adira picked her head up from where she was looking at the ground. "I've told the U.S government about Adira. What she's done is...concerning to them," Flagg said, smiling. Smiling. That's how twisted he was. "Long story short, they want her. Come on in boys!" He called.

I lunged forward as 15 government officials, all in full body armor, barreled into the room.

Adira stumbled backwards, before locking eyes with me. She punched the first man in the face then flipped him over her shoulder. The rest swarmed around her. I went in too, twisting a guard's arm and nailing him in the ear with my elbow. Suddenly Owen was beside me, his bright blond hair flashing as he took a guard's feet out from under him and flipping him over. James' red hair caught my eyes too as he and Blitz started to fight the officials. Cal rammed a man twice his size into a metal cabinet on the far side of the room. Lautaro and Lucky were making quick work of another official with the small knives that must have been in their shoes. Harrison ripped a helmet off a man who had already slumped to the floor unconscious, using it to sock the man Quinn had in a headlock. Adira judo flipped one official then stumbled out the room and into the hallway.

Two soldier also ran out the door, having escaped the clutches of the boys behind me, and slid batons out from their belts. I tried to follow but someone pulled me backwards by my shirt collar. I didn't even hesitate and jammed my elbow backwards into Flagg's face, twisted around to kick him in the stomach, and then punched him twice in the face. 

"Laurie!" Harrison shouted, despite being pinned to the ground. He kicked a knife over towards me. I snatched it up and pointed it at Flagg's now bleeding face.

"You should have taken me!" I yelled, slashing him across the face. Then I sprinted down to the right, where Adira was surrounded by eight more guards. She was fear fighting, arms lashing out violently with no real target. But they had electric batons too, and for every one she punched she would get knocked to the ground by three hard hits to her back.

The seven guards from before suddenly tackled me from behind. I stubbed one in the gut, and another one in the thigh. I kicked, punched, slashed everything I saw, desperately trying to escape their grasp so I could help Adira, who was still getting beaten by the batons of the other men.

And then something hard hit me on the side of my head. My vision went slack. I collapsed against a wall. The dozen men dressed in black body armor at the end of the hallway became a blur. The sounds all around me became one painful buzz. I looked up at the dark swarm, and managed to make out Adira being pulled away. She was still trying to fight back, but there was a cloth over her mouth, and her hands were bound behind her. She was getting gradually pulled backwards and away from me, her heels getting ripped from their grip on the carpet. I found my footing only to be knocked aside by something hard smashing against my head again.

My vision swum and I collapsed to my knees. Flagg appeared before me with one of the government officials' batons. I turned my head sluggishly to look behind me. Each one of the agents were being held back by a government soldier. Well, Owen had three around him and Zach and Cal had two, but the infuriating point was that we'd lost. Flagg squatted down in front of me. His black eyes blazed triumphantly, but there was a massive cut across the bridge of his nose that was oozing blood down his face. I would have grinned at how beat up he was if I could feel my face.

"Nice try."

That was the last thing I remember before he slammed the baton against the side of my head and everything went black.