by Sara Schoen
“You look so much like Hess,” she said as a hint of a smile curled onto her lips. She must have fond memories of her mentor, and it must kill her to see that they are already trying to replace her. “Now, they are trying to force her skill into you. It's sickening,” she said, before she turned and looked away from me for a moment.
“I thought it was because I had a skill they needed,” I said curiously, causing her shoulders to relax. The anger and annoyance seemed to fade slightly before she turned to look at me again.
“You do, or you wouldn't have even been considered. At the agency, we take your natural talent and teach you how to improve it so that you can be the best in your field. You have managed to somehow become lean, agile, quick-thinking, and fast. You need those traits to be a good thief,” she said as she sat on the floor, and then motioned for me to join her.
“Is that why they brought me to you? Are you a thief since Hess trained you?”
“No, I'm sure Demon told you that I'm a mixed martial arts specialist,” she waited for me to nod before continuing. “Well I had to get better to beat a few people that were here with me training. I convinced Hess that it would be worthwhile to assist me. She took me under her wing and used the same training she did to become a thief to help me become a better fighter.”
“Where did you learn to fight?”
“I trained at a Tibetan Monastery for ten years. The monks had become a family to me until Demon came to request my help for a mission. The monks said that it was what they had been training me for all along and that I should go,” she said with a subtle lift of her eyebrows as if she was wondering how I was processing the information.
All she saw was the curiosity gleaming in my eyes. I wanted to know more, I needed to. There was something special about other’s stories for how they came here and I wanted to know them all as the people they were before and the people they had become.
“What was the mission?”
“I was needed to go undercover at a female boxing competition so they could gain access to the arena. The girl I was fighting was a Russian drug dealer whose trade lines were starting to push across the country due to her success in the fighting matches. I beat her in the fight, they arrested her after finding a stash we had placed in her locker, and she's currently sitting in a Russian prison in Moscow I believe.”
“What have you done since then?” I asked again feeling a smile curl onto my lips as she looked at me again, but this time her eyes weren’t filled with hatred or anger.
“Demon's right, you do have a nasty habit of asking questions. You have less than two hours to impress me, how would you like to do that?”
“You're letting me choose?” I asked, thrown back by the opportunity.
“Yes, there are very few choices that you can make once you're here and an agent, if you choose to stay you'll learn that. You do as you're told and do it well,” she said as her steely grey eyes landed on me. She lifted one of her eyebrows in annoyance. “I'm waiting.”
“I don't know,” I said honestly. I had always had difficulty making choices, I would ask others to choose because I didn’t want to make the larger group unhappy with my choice. I had an even harder time deciding on important things like my training and joining the agency. It had been a rash choice, but I couldn’t get by on just that. I would have to start thinking them through and making the best choice in a bad situation.
“What do you do really well? Impress me,” she ordered.
“I escaped from Sharp Shooter, Damon, and Mark when I first got here,” I said proudly. Mark hadn’t been pleased, but Sharp Shooter had said that he enjoyed it because it showed my potential. I hadn’t done much else that would be considered impressive since coming here, everything else was just petty pick pocketing and sneaking around. Any teenager could do that, and as long as they did it without malice then they could have an offer from the agency as well.
“I heard about that, it's impressive, but that's not what I'm looking for. I will be back soon, maybe by then you'll think of something worth showing me,” she said as she swiftly got up from her position on the ground and proceeded to walk out of the room.
“Where are you going?” I asked, but she slammed the door shut behind her without even acknowledging me as she left me alone with my thoughts.
Chapter 10
What could I do to impress her if she didn't want to see the skills that I could do? Wasn't that what brought me here? She said that if I hadn’t had the skills then they wouldn’t have recruited me. Although, she didn’t want to see those skills. She already knew that I was able to evade, hide, and out run anyone in pursuit of me. I was sure she knew about the exploits I had done just today, maybe Damon even told her the smaller things that he pushed me to do so I could practice. So why wouldn't she train me if I was good enough to be recruited? What else was there besides skill, what else mattered?
She said that she was looking for something other than what I had done and could do, but what would that be? Skill was what kept you alive, it was second nature. If I couldn’t show her what I could do, then if I tried something and I couldn’t then I would fail. I asked myself what else an agent would need to survive as I glanced around her training room. There were punching bags and pads for her training, but in the far corner of the room there was a training device that I had only seen in television shows growing up. There were boards that would rotate with the slightest breeze and you were supposed to be in complete harmony and balance within yourself in order to make it through without getting hit. The only problem is that the equipment in the room would only show skill, and Rum had told me that wasn't how I should impress her, but for the life of me I couldn't figure out what other skills a thief would need.
I heard a door open behind me, and my body tensed. I wasn’t ready to show Rum what I had come up with to impress her, because I hadn’t come up with anything. The footsteps were heavy as they made their way towards me. I gulped and took a deep breath to relax myself before I turned around. I had been expecting Rum to be the one approaching me since she made it clear she didn’t like others in her training room, but when I turned around I found Mark instead. He raised an eyebrow at me curiously as he glanced around the room. When his gaze returned to me I could see confusion in his eyes.
“Where's Rue?” he asked nervously as he continued to scan the room. It was as if he was expecting her to jump out at him or that he was going to be attacked. He seemed edgy and angry, his shoulders were tense and his body was hunched over as if he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. Mark rarely made me feel uneasy, but he terrified me in this moment.
“She left,” I said hesitantly, unsure of why he was here and acting like this. He was normally so calm, and patient, while he could be demanding and pushy, his better qualities normally shone through.
“Shut up,” he said bluntly, as he turned to glare at me.
There was a deep seated anger in his eyes that told me if I knew what was good for myself I would follow his orders without question, but that wasn’t going to happen. I always had to know why. I had to know why I was doing it, why I was the one ordered for it and why it was being ordered. That was going to get me in more trouble than I could imagine.
“Why? I'm just trying to help. You asked me where she was, and I answered. There's no reason to be upset,” I said confidently. He had been having mood swings since I came here, but I had brushed them off due to Sharp Shooter’s harsh words to him and the high amount of praise I got in return. It was unlike Mark to be so angry though, and I was growing more and more uncomfortable around him because of it. There had to be some reason for it besides Sharp Shooter’s motivation methods, but I wasn’t sure that I wanted to figure it out in case it was my fault.
“Because your voice irritates me,” Mark said with an icy sting in his words that sent shivers down my spine.
“Aren't you nice,” I muttered as I turned to walk out of the room. If Rum wasn't here, and he wouldn't leave, I was going t
o. I could see where this conversation was going to head and I didn't like it. I grew uncomfortable with angry conversations, because it mostly turned into personal attacks. I wasn't ready for that, not with Mark. He knew too much about me and I felt as if I didn’t know enough about him to protect myself.
“Where are you going? It's not like you have anywhere to go,” Mark yelled.
And so it begins, I thought to myself as I continued to walk toward the door.
“You going to run back to mommy and daddy?” he asked as I attempted to pull open the door, but it didn't seem to budge. “Oh wait, you can't go back to them can you?”
I took a deep breath to try to calm myself down as I pulled on the door, but it just wouldn't open.
“Because they are dead!” He was taunting me, but I pushed past it as I continued to try opening the door. It was locked, trapping me in a room with someone who knew just what buttons to push. “They died because you were driving.”
I tensed; he had said exactly what he knew would give him a reaction. I knew I shouldn’t have answered him, it was only going to fuel the fire. I couldn’t help myself.
“Yeah they are. Trust me, I know, but the great thing is that I was adopted. I still have a family. It's not perfect, but it works,” I said calmly. I was used to people throwing my parents in my face when they were angry. They always blamed me, and while I defended my family to the end, I knew when to pick my fights. Mark wasn’t mad at me. He was just taking his anger out on me because he knew I would give in. A few years earlier, Mark would have his back against the wall and blood dripping from his mouth after I punched him, but not now. I had learned to better control my anger.
“I bet your new family doesn't know you killed them,” Mark said in a suddenly calm and even tone.
I felt a surge of anger pulse through me, but I took another deep breath to relax myself. My hands had formed into tight fists, my fingernails would leave marks on my palms for sure, and my body had tensed making it hard to move. “Like you, when you aren't pissed off about something, they tell me it wasn't my fault, but that doesn't mean I believe them.”
“Because you know it is true,” he yelled back at me.
I took a deep breath again, taking in as much air as I could and letting the breath out to ease into a relaxed position, “Mark, what's wrong? Seriously, because this isn't you. I don't think I've heard you raise your voice a day in your life while talking to me, and I've for sure never heard you yell at me before—”
“You don't know everything, Sara,” Mark yelled, interrupting me.
“I didn't say I did, but something is clearly upsetting you. You've never yelled at me before and I've known you since elementary school—we grew up together. I knew Damon and you for years, and right now you're acting like you haven't known me at all or that I've upset you in some way—”
“Because you have!”
“What have I done, Mark? Please tell me, because I'm at a total loss. You brought me here, you sedated me and threw all of this on me, and now you're acting as if,” I paused for a moment as I finally made the connection to why he was upset with me. “I either upset you because I'm not good enough, or like you said, you didn't want me here!”
“Of course I don't want you here! You are a danger to this team!” he yelled at me.
I was taken aback by his statement, I had heard it before, but not as I was hearing it now. His jabs at my past, my insecurities and the guilt I carried around, suddenly made sense. He was trying to force me out, and he was angry that it wasn’t working.
“I don't understand, I know I'm untrained and new, but I don't know what you want me to do—”
“I don't want you to do anything, don't you see? You're damaged and fragile already. This mission could tear you apart, but you act as if it's your saving grace! You don't know what you're getting yourself into. I know it was hard for you when your parents died,” Mark said, heading down a road I wasn't ready to deal with.
“Stop, just stop talking, Mark,” I said.
“I know you felt awful, and that you thought you caused it, but Sara—”
“No, stop talking about this! You don't know anything about what I went through. You only know from what you say, you didn't experience it. You gave up your family, I lost mine. You don't know what that feels like.”
“Yes I do. Do you think it was easy for me to leave my family? I left them because I knew I could do more good here than I ever could with a normal life, but they can't know. They think I spend the weekends with Damon at a lake house, but in a few months I will be dead to them, and they can't ever see me again.”
“That's not the same thing! You have no idea what you're talking about!”
“I do, because you're about to do the same thing to the Rickers. They let you in, and if you accept this you will destroy them! Don't you see that? You'll do exactly the same damage to them that happened to you when your parents died.”
“You have no idea what you're talking about. You don't know them and you don't know what I went through. They won't go through it because they have each other! They have people to support them and love them, they have their family, and I didn't!”
“But they were there for you, and you’re just going to leave them. You have no idea what that will do to them—”
“I hate when people talk about things like they know how it feels when they’ve never experienced it! If you haven't lived through it then you don't know what it's like, you have no idea how it feels, how it changes your life and how it changes you as a person! You don't know about the bottomless abyss that can come from the loss of your entire family, but you sit here and lie to me as an attempt to make me feel better about myself some days and then moments like right now you try to make me feel worse! You’re trying to talk me out of this. Make me feel bad by bringing up the past. I'm so sick of people saying that they know how it feels to lose a family member, because it doesn't compare to losing your entire family in one night. You don't know, you don't have any idea,” I screamed then took in a ragged breath to calm myself down. It didn’t work though. As Mark opened his mouth to speak again, I felt my arm being pulled back ready to punch him if he said another thing about my family.
“Tell me how you really feel, Sara,” he said with a smirk as the doors opened behind me to reveal a smiling Rum. I turned around, bewildered at why she was so thrilled.
“There's exactly what I was looking for, Sara,” Rum said proudly from behind me.
I could see her beaming with pride as she looked me over quickly. Her expression shocked me since I couldn't remember seeing her smile so widely in our previous meeting. I also couldn’t think of anything I had done that would make her so happy. I was upset, I was angry. There was nothing that was going to make that better. He had gone after my family, and he knew what I would do for them. I had almost died for my family the night of the crash to pull them from the burning car, burned my feet and broken a few more bones in the process, and I would do the same for the Rickers, but they seemed to be too pleased with that. That made me anxious.
“What do you mean?” I asked curiously as I glanced between both of them.
“I wanted to see what you were passionate about. I wanted to see what made you tick to see if you could handle the stress of training and the agency. There’s one thing that each agent would protect to the ends of the Earth, and yours is family. It took him a long time to provoke you into screaming when he was discussing such a sensitive topic, and that shows potential to me. I train those that can handle whatever I throw at them, and that can handle the stress of working in this agency. You have some self-control, we’ll have to work on it more, but I know that when it comes to the agents you work with, when you see them like family you’ll protect them with everything in you. I will train you. You start tomorrow. For now go find Demon. You need a briefing on the mission. This goes off in two days; you're in for one hell of a weekend, and you'll need all the information you can have.”
“I need
ed all the information when I showed up to school today, then maybe I would have just stayed home,” I said with a sigh as I walked out of the room to find Demon.
Chapter 11
I forced my eyes to stay shut as sunlight poured through the openings in my curtains and shone through my slightly opened eyelids. Pulling the blanket over my head, I was whisked back into a comfortable darkness, until I suddenly remembered everything that happened yesterday. Leaving school early, getting tossed into the back of a car, and agreeing to be a part of some mission for an agency that I didn't even know the name of. My eyes popped open as I pushed the blanket away from me, expecting to see a random room I had never seen before, but what I saw was the exact opposite.
As I glanced around the room, I caught myself thinking about how it all must have been a dream, because I was looking at my room from the Ricker's home. My vision was greeted to the familiar sight of my cell phone charging on my black bedside table and the purple color that Ms. Ricker and I had painted my walls a few months ago. I glanced around to see my stuffed animals piled into a corner where Mrs. Ricker liked to put them so they were out of the way, the paper cranes I made my junior year of high school and then made into a lamp when Mrs. Ricker threatened to throw them out.
I let out a small chuckle, I must have just slept through the entire day at school, and dreamed up the agency and everything. I hadn't left my room at all that day, and the Rickers had decided to let me skip today in fear of the anniversary of my suicide attempt. I was pleased to know that I wouldn't be in a life altering mission, but I also felt a pang of sadness in my heart knowing that I had dreamed up the whole day. As I had done to get through my depression, I tried to focus on the good points. I wouldn't have to face a cartel, and probably not die at a young age now.
