"Step one: learn how to work with our disabilities. I'll learn how to work with seven fingers. Quinn has to learn how to see with only one eye, Lautaro with his ear and Lucky with your hip. Blitz you have to let your ribs chill, and same with Owen and your ankle, and don't stretch your top too much because that cut is still healing. And Axel, just... don't move. Like at all.

"Step two: utilize our skills. And I don't mean physical skills. I mean our smarts. Our wit. Harrison is the smoothest talker any of us have ever met, and you also don't mind taking a hit, so in my mind that equals the distraction. Axel, you've got the quickest fingers in this whole place, so you're gonna steal weapons, tech to get past the cameras, keys for one of the cars outside, a security badge, various bomb constructing materials, and a laptop. I'll disguise planning out the materials in my lab. Blitz and Quinn, we're gonna need a chemical detonator of some sort and several smoke bombs. Owen and Zach, the younger agents are terrified of you guys, and even though it's a little twisted, I'm thinking a little blackmail might be in order. Once Axel gets the keys, Lautaro you're going to get one of the vans up and running.

And once again, we have to work together. That's the only way we're gonna pull this off."

-

It's weird how plotting a rebellion puts a new spring in your step. It made my heart beat not just to keep me alive, but so I could live to get the hell out of this shithole.

There had been some close calls in terms of getting caught, including me having to shove a USB in my mouth before Hunter could see it. Harrison had done his job perfectly —talking back, sarcastic comments, just being himself really, and then taking hits from Flagg while I pocketed all the amo, guns, and knives I could from our training room. At night Quinn and Blitz combined their knowledge of what went boom and constructed the perfect smoke bombs for knocking out the guards that stood in front of Flagg's office so Owen could get in and check where Adira and James were.

It took about two weeks, but we did it. Our beds were checked every night so most of the time whatever I stole we had to keep on us the entire day. Every time I stole something we'd keep it passed around between the nine of us, quick switches in the hallways, cutting holes in our mattresses and pillows, taping them around our limbs beneath our clothes so no one could see them. What Flagg taught us was now being used against him.

Karma is one stone-cold bitch.

-

I looked up and into the mirror. So being a hairdresser when I leave the agency was definitely a no. But it didn't look awful. An improvement, that's for sure. I'd needed a haircut before we even went to Taranto, now it was about a month and a half later and it had grown close to curbing on shaggy. Same with Harrison, so after me, I passed him the scissors and we filled the shitty motel bathroom sink with our hair.

As for everyone else.. well.... we were all alive. That was the main thing.

"Isn't he going to find us?" Lucky's dark brown eyes were scared.

Cal licked his lips and sat down on the creaky bed. He placed his elbows on his knees and leaned forward. "Not if we cut the trackers out."

"Come on!"

"Dude, no way."

"би тэгэхгүй."

"Fuck nah fam!"

"De ninguna manera."

"Mate, that's ridiculous—"

"No it's not," Cal shook his head slowly. "You all know I'm right. He and his whole crew could come barging through that door and drag us back to the agency if we don't get them out right now."

Zach sighed. "I'll go first."

There was silence.

"That's ballsy, Patterson," Quinn murmured.

"I just want my uncle off my ass before he hurts any of us ever again," he said quickly. He walked over to Cal and held his hand out for the scalpel. "I hope you bought pain meds, seriously," he said as Cal handed him the thin stainless steel blade.

"And whiskey," Owen added.

"I didn't even bring any money."

"There's other ways to get alcohol guys," I ruffled my new hair.

"Well get it now, 'cause I am not cutting through a burn to fish out a grain of rice-sized piece of tech without drunk outta my goddamn mind," Quinn said.

I rolled my neck. "Fine. What do we want —rum, whiskey, vodka, scotch, beer?"

"All of it?"

I gave Blitz a look. "Then you're gonna have to give me a good half hour."

"We can't wait that long," Zach shook his head.

"Fine. Whiskey it is then."

-

Zach cut his tracker out first, then Owen. Quinn and his sensitive stomach bailed to the bathroom since Owen's took around 14 slices and a lot of digging around to actually get it out. The poor Iraqi couldn't even handle looking at bruises for too long, far less the nine of us peeling the scabs off the brands on our ankles and then having to scrape through the blood to find the small trackers Flagg had put into us. And then after that cut out the old ones that were at the back of our necks.

Once there were 18 bits of tiny black metal out of our systems, we promptly poured the whiskey on them and set them alight. Then we quickly moved in pairs to the next motel we could find.

As Cal pulled the laptop out his backpack the rest of us bit our nails in anticipation. With the keys I had stolen Owen had gotten into Flagg's office and wrote down the coordinates of James and Adira's signals. Now we were entering them to find out where they were.

"They were definitely blinking, right?" Lautaro asked.

Owen nodded. "They're alive."

"But where is the question," Cal opened the lid of the laptop and started entering the coordinates. "Adira first."

There was dead silence as his fingers hit the keys, during which I think most of the boys were staring at me.

"Lubbock," Cal said. The Irishman looked up at me. "Texas."

I didn't know whether to sigh with relief or punch something. Texas wasn't too far from here, and Lubbock was northern Texas at least.

Owen cleared his throat. "What about James?"

Cal went back to typing. And then he smiled. "Oh boy."

"What?" Owen demanded.

"Why are you smiling... is he in the next shitty motel over or something?" Quinn asked.

"Nah," Cal said. He shut the laptop lid and looked up, still smiling. "He's in Boston."

"Why is that a good thing?" Owen asked. "Boston is like 2000 miles from here."

"Oh I dunno..." Cal shrugged his shoulders. "Boston is a pretty educated city.... lots of universities around there..."

Harrison suddenly rubbed his face down with a long groan. "You've got to be kidding me."

"I don't understand," Lucky tilted his head. "What's in Boston?"

Harrison took his hands off his face. "Our old journalist friend. You know —short, opinionated, likes cats, wears a bandana."

Lucky broke out into a grin. "Jinx."

"Hell yeah."

-

When we got to Adira's coordinates, we found out that Flagg had sent her to a government prison. So that was fun to weasel our way into, especially without James as tech support, or Adira herself to stealthily sneak in. But we did our best, rolling with the distraction plan like we'd executed back at the agency to get Adira out. Cal and Harrison were the only ones in the group who could actually run, so they were the main visible distractors at the entrance of the prison, while Quinn, Lautaro and Zach wreaked havoc inside and I got to Adira's cell and got her out onto the roof.

The plan after that was for the two of us to use the grappling strings to get back down to the ground, regroup with everyone at a motel farther in the city, and then transfer from trucks to trains to get to Boston and find James.

Only, a minor predicament has arisen. I thought that out of everything that could go wrong during this scrap of a mission, it would be one of our injuries slowing us down or a tech malfunction, definitely not a moral disagreement. Who wouldn't want to escape a prison?

Apparently Adira.

"We only risked our fucking lives to come rescue you, but NO, now you're yelling at me on the rooftop of the prison you've been in for the past month, that you want to fucking stay here?!" I yelled at her.

"You said that you'd never give up on me, I trusted you Axel! You know how much trust means to me and you fucking threw it out the window!" Adira punched me in the arm. "You lied to me you asshole!"

"What?" I rubbed where she hit me. "I never lied to you about a fucking thing!"

"Stop it!" She screamed at me. Her voice ripped through the cold nighttime air and me, it sent shivers down my spine and cracked my heart even more. He blue eyes were wild and her fists were hard rocks down at her sides. "You've always thought that I'm just some pity project that you can tape back together!" She glared at me, her swirling eyes intensifying the look so much that I almost had to look away. "Quit stringing me along and pretending to care!"

I clenched my jaw and my temper bubbled. "Why do you just presume that everyone thinks that?" She continued glaring at me. "Why do you always think of yourself as some broken...thing that nobody could ever care about because you're too far gone? Well guess what?" I pointed a thumb at myself. "I care!" Her glare softened just the slightest bit. "I never thought of you as something other than what you are —a survivor. And whether you believe it or not, I do care. A lot."

Adira sniffed, but she still didn't look like she believed me. "All of you shouldn't have risked your lives just to come here and break me out."

"You know what stubborn bastards we are Adira, we would never just leave you here. We need you on the mission to stop Basilone and his bombs. Don't tell me that this prison we're standing on top of has treated you like a queen."

She ran a hand through her lose blond hair distractedly. "Bastard isn't the word I'd use, but stubborn —you're damn fucking right you are."

"I am not leaving here without you."

"Then I'll push you off this fucking building. 20 stories straight down," her lip curled, "even Lucky couldn't make a smooth landing from this high up."

"And you say I'm stubborn?"

"Just get out of here Axel!"

"No!" I yelled back at her. "Did we not spend like two weeks sleeping next to each other, or am I getting confused with some other girl who I thought I helped get enough confidence in herself so she would smile and laugh and hug people and not be pitying herself all the damn time?"

She clenched her fists at her side. "You're gonna hold that over me? Are you serious?"

I groaned in frustration and ran my hands through the shorter hair on the sides of my head. "Do you remember that night we went clubbing in Taranto? After everyone had gone to bed and Owen hadn't come back yet? You told me how I had helped you more than I knew. And that you were thankful and amazed at how I'd been able to do that."

"I never said I wasn't grateful."

"But now you're gonna throw it all away to stay in a prison for the rest of your life?"

She sighed. "You don't know how hard it is to breathe and sleep and carry on knowing that you've destroyed people's lives and murdered people in horrible ways, tortured people, cut people, thrown them out of windows, cut fingers into pieces, killed parents in front of their children and killed children in front of their parents—"

"You were mind controlled for some of that—"

"Until I wasn't," she said simply.

I rolled my wrists. "That's doesn't mean you don't deserve to be free."

"Yes it does."

"But it doesn't!" I protested again, so desperately it almost sounded like a whine. "I am not giving up on you, I am not giving up on the idea that just because you've done terrible things, doesn't mean that you have to hate yourself for the rest of your life."

Her eyes turned fiery. "Stop lying!"

"It's not a fucking lie!" I yelled back. "I think you are amazing Adira. You are strong, intelligent, independent, compassionate, unique and beautiful." I took a step closer to her. I ran my thumbs under her eyes to sweep her tears away, extremely gentle to not touch the cuts that still lurked around her left eye. "You are not worthless," I whispered to her. "You deserve to live."

I took my hands off her face and flexed them down at my side.

"And there's something else," I breathed, the hairs on my arms starting to stand on end. My hands were starting to grow clammy and tremble.

She tilted her head at me. Except instead of curious she was angry, eyes blazing and her whole body tense. "What?" She growled.

My heart was beating so loud in my ears it was unreal, and the feeling spilling from my chest was starting to physically hurt. "I think I'm in love with you."

Her shoulders fell, like the anger from her face.

"I'm sorry," I murmured, tears swimming in the corners of my eyes. "I'm sorry that I feel this way, I can't control it. I—I've never felt any sort of affection before, and when we met I promised myself I wouldn't, but then I did and the way that you look at me sometimes just, shit, it—it drives me fucking nuts Adira and I can't just turn that off, it just...happens. Everyone says that love is a weakness and I thought that was bullshit but—" I took in a shakey breath, "it's not."

She sniffed while swiping at the tears coming down her face. "But I know that you don't mean it," she said. Despite all my exclamations, despite what I just said, she still didn't believe me. "I know that you're a spy. A boy who has been raised all his life to lie and to cheat. You're an undercover agent Axel. Your job is to lie."

I shook my head at the ground, smiling. "Alright then, riddle me this." I looked up and into her eyes.

"Your favorite animal is a wolf, because of the complexity of packs and loners and howling and hunting. You would rather have a tiger as a pet because they can swim and you could ride it and you've always been partial to the color orange but feel like it's underappreciated. You like taking pictures and use the process as a metaphor for life —you can still change them even after you press the shutter button. You're favorite smell is the deep forest. You said if you hadn't been kidnapped you would try and get a degree in marine biology. Your favorite subject was geography in school, because in third grade you made a paper maché model of the Rocky Mountains and got to draw in lakes and rivers and make divots in the ground as topography. You braid Celtic knots in your hair. You like the smell of cigarettes on me because no one else smells like them. I also smell like green apple according to you, green apple and not red apple because green apple is your favorite candy flavor and you'd recognize the scent anywhere. You've got four idiot best friends. James, who you encourage to follow his heart even when the whole world tells him not to. Blitz because he never thinks about himself. Harrison, who, despite being a thoughtless prick all the time, you stick with and believe that deep down he cares about everyone and everything too much. And you've got me. Whether you want me in your life or not, you'll always have me."

I turned away from her and walked back to my backpack that had the grappling strings we'd stolen to get us down the prison. I pulled one out and proceeded to fit it into the roof edge. "And for the record," I added over my shoulder, "you're the one person I've never lied to."

I didn't look back at her as I pulled the wire out the pulley and clipped it to my belt. I didn't look at her as I pulled it back and forth to test it. I didn't look back at her as I swung my legs over the edge and pushed myself off the top of the building, leaving her standing there in tears.

As I flew down on the wire my tears dried in the wind. If I really loved her I'd let her go right? That's how that stupid fucking cliché saying went. If I really thought of her the way I said I did, then I would respect her decision because deep down in her heart she thought it was true —no one wanted her and no one could save her because she didn't deserve it. I thought I could change her mind. I hoped I could help her see that she was worth saving. But she didn't want it. And even though it killed me to see her so faithless in herself, I would let her go.

My boots hit the ground of the alleyway, and I unclipped the string from my belt.

"Where is she?" Blitz hissed at me. I had to blink a couple times before I could see him and the rest of the agents cloaked in the shadows of the alley.

"She didn't want to come," I said simply.

Blitz blinked. "Pardon?"

"She said that we shouldn't have risked our lives to come save her because she doesn't deserve to be saved," I said.

"What the actual fu—"

"We don't have time. They're going to break through that firewall soon and then there will be a worldwide manhunt. She said she didn't want to come, too bad, we have to leave," Zach said simply.

For once I didn't think he was being heartless. I let go of the string and reached for my backpack that was hidden in the alleyway. "Then let's go."

"But—but," Blitz protested, "she'll be locked up for the rest of her life, why the hell would she want to stay?"

"Have you been crying?" Harrison suddenly asked me.

I licked my lips. "No."

"You look like a sad little strawberry," Quinn commented. For the first time in his life he looked kind of intimidating with his massive black eye and half shrouded in shadows.

"Yes, thank you for your observation Barnes," I said blandly.

"We can't just leave her!" Blitz cried, before he was defeated by a cacophony of shushing. "Axel why didn't you talk to her?"

I glared at him, shouldering my backpack. "Are we going or not?"

Cal blended in best to the alleyway with his darker skin, but I heard his voice threaded with sympathy say, "yes. Let's go."

So we did.

Until I heard another pair of boots hit the cement behind me. And then the sound of metal clinking and then before I could turn around I saw a flash of blonde hair go streaking past me and attack Blitz with a hug.

"Oh, changed your mind, have you?" Blitz chuckled as Adira buried her face in his shirt.

She unlaced herself from Blitz and moved to hug Cal next.

"I'm sorry," she said quietly.

"Hey, you're alive and you're here, which is the main thing," Cal wrapped his muscular arms around her too.

I wiped at the traces of tears still under my eyes silently and watched her clutch the fabric of Cal's thick sweatshirt.

"Are we getting out of here or not?" I asked shortly.

Adira let Cal go and stared at me expressionlessly. Her tears were gone too, like nothing ever happened. "Let's." Her tone was clipped and monotonous.

In my peripheral I saw Lautaro and Lucky exchange a look.

"I presume there's a safe spot somewhere?" She didn't blink at me.

"Of course," I replied in the same manner.

"Care to lead the way?"

"It'd be a pleasure," this time I coated my words with honey. I stepped around her and started walking towards the warehouse we'd planned to regroup in after we got Adira.

"Did something happen—"

"Nope," I said forcefully over Cal's question.

"You're sure?"