Graham blinked his eyes open, squinting at the bright light streaming in through the window. He felt awful. Every inch of his body was sore, and his fingers were trembling for no apparent reason.

"Where am I?" he wondered aloud, struggling to sit up. His voice sounded raspy and exhausted. "What happened?"

A kind voice stopped him. "Mr. Calloway, it would be best if you did not attempt to move."

Graham opened his eyes just enough to see a woman in a nurse's uniform looking down at him.

"You are at the Gateway Private Hospital in Sydney, Australia, recovering from your life-threatening shock," the nurse said. She pushed him gently back down onto his pillow. "You are not yet strong enough to awaken. Try to go back to sleep."

Graham tried to resist the drowsiness, struggling to figure out what he was doing in a hospital. But when he closed his eyes, he slipped back into a deep, dreamless sleep.

The next time Graham woke up, it was dark outside, and stars glittered in the sky. He pulled himself to a sitting position, feeling much better than the first time he had regained consciousness. He glanced at the clock to see what time it was. 4:37 a.m. Oh well, he thought. I'm not going to be able to fall back asleep. He now remembered what had sent him to this hospital.

Carmen. Graham's heart twisted as he remembered the coldness in her eyes. She would have killed him if he hadn't adjusted the settings on his crackle rod. But it wasn't his own wellbeing he cared about, it was hers. He wondered desperately if Carmen was alright and if she had finally remembered who she truly was.

All the memories from the time they had spent together surfaced in his mind. There was the day they had first met, when he had accidentally made fun of her name. He smiled as he recalled how she had yanked him backwards out of his chair and set him straight. He would never make the mistake of insulting her again.

Despite their rocky start, their friendship had grown after he defended her from Tigress, who had been hostile towards her from the very beginning of their time at V.I.L.E. Academy. Black Sheep became almost like a sister to him, and they spent nearly all of their time together.

But everything came crashing down at graduation. Black Sheep failed, and Crackle hadn't known what to do when he saw her devastated expression. She told him to go, and even though he tried to protest, Tigress dragged him away to stand with the rest of the graduates.

It was then Crackle learned the true meaning of V.I.L.E., and it had changed his life forever. It had sent him down a path of darkness that he could never turn away from. That is, until Carmen came along.

But that was later. He remembered wishing Black Sheep was with the rest of them as they boarded the helicopter to their first caper. Then, appearing out of nowhere, she had jumped out of the helicopter with him, gasping, "Whatever you do, don't let go!"

He could never forget the look on her face when he had almost killed the archeologist at the dig site. The expression of shock, betrayal, and heartbreak etched on her face was burned into his memory forever.

As Black Sheep redid her training at V.I.L.E. Academy, she had avoided Crackle at all costs. He was rarely at the island anyway, but when he was there, Black Sheep made special care not to cross paths with him. He had tried to seek her out on several occasions, but he would have never known what to say even if he did catch up with her.

Eventually, she escaped V.I.L.E. island, and he hadn't seen Black Sheep again until the train in Poitiers. He had baited her with her Russian nesting dolls, but she easily found the tracking device and chose to let him find her.

She had changed a lot since when Crackle had last seen her. She had taken on a new name, first of all. Carmen Sandiego. She had let her short auburn hair grow out into a flowing mane, though on the train it had been pulled into a messy bun. She had also gotten taller, but the most drastic change he noticed was in the way she acted.

To put it simply, Carmen had grown up. She wasn't the young Black Sheep he had once known. She had learned much and experienced much. She had chosen a brave new path, and made other friends along the way. She told him her story from her point of view in hopes they would end up on the same side again, but he refused to give up his life of crime.

A wave of anguish flooded him as he remembered how he had tried to kill her. Thankfully, she had only gotten better since her escape from the Isle of V.I.L.E., and she left him unconscious in her coat for Interpol to find. That led to his subsequent capture by the police, then release by the Cleaners, and finally Dr. Bellum had wiped his memories of V.I.L.E.

The next time he had seen Carmen, he hadn't even known it was her. But there was something about the mysterious red-clad stranger that drew him in. It intrigued him that she insisted on calling him Gray. He had asked Carmen out to a cafe, but she ended up not showing. Graham hadn't understood why being stood up by someone he didn't even know had hurt so much, so he tried to forget about her.

But when Carmen suddenly contacted him again, he couldn't resist the invitation. Little did he know he had gotten himself into something much more dangerous than lighting a performance of Swan Lake. It was that night he had found out that there was more to Carmen than it had seemed, after he had sabotaged an EMP device and jumped off of the roof with her. He could still remember her concerned face looking down at him after they had crash-landed.

"I have to know. Are you part of some... secret service or something?" Graham had asked her at the cafe afterwards.

"I do provide a service, and it is secret, so yes, something like that," Carmen mused.

Graham furrowed his eyebrows. "But we are the good guys, right?"

Carmen smiled in a way that made Graham feel like the most special person in the world. "Absolutely."

Then she had disappeared again.

He had been offered a job with a travel theatre group from Sydney, so he decided to take it. They were scheduled to travel to locations all around the world, and although it was silly, Graham hoped he might run into Carmen somewhere along the way.

Instead, he had been kidnapped by some sort of secret agency that grilled him on everything he knew about Carmen. He hadn't been sure what their connection was to her, but the agents did tell him they might be able to bring his missing memories back. Graham had hesitantly accepted, and the device slowly began to unlock all of his memories from his time at V.I.L.E.

At first it had made him go a little crazy, because he only remembered fragments. He ended up in an Icelandic jail cell, which was where he next saw Carmen. Graham was ashamed that she had to find him locked up in prison for breaking into somebody else's house, something he didn't even remember doing. Still, he was grateful to see her again.

Unfortunately, their reunion didn't last long. He was kidnapped by a robot, locked in a room at Dr. Bellum's research facility, and soon reintroduced to Professor Maelstrom, who told him about his past. At first, Graham could hardly believe that he had chosen to train as a thief. But his memories soon came flooding back to him, and he knew with certainty that V.I.L.E. was where he belonged. There was only one thing that made him hesitate.