Outskirts of Sainte-Marie-du-Mont, Normandy, France. 

June 5th, 1944

There was a point in training where familiar faces disappeared. Reassignments and missions given, friends were mourned and grief turned to warnings. Leaving Madrid had meant entering a war that had previously felt so distant. My time to cross those golden gates into the occupied land beyond had crept up on me. Now before I knew it, I was huddled in the woods of Normandy, a snake in the grass. I escaped the compound by some miracle

I had slipped back to the outskirts of town but dared not enter its boundaries to speak to Simone. I couldn't risk it. I hid in the woods for five days before the planes started to buzz above me. Knowing that dogs could be used to track me, I had found a water barrel and washed my face and hands, trying to rid myself of the salty stench of blood. If I allied myself with the forest and its damp, earthy scent, maybe I could buy myself a little more time. In the light of the moon, I saw my reflection on the water's surface.

"This is what you wanted, isn't it?" My voice cracked, a sliver of glass in the pale pink light of dawn. I almost didn't recognize it.

Had this been what I wanted? I had told myself that I wanted to fight in my own war. I had told myself that I liked to be alone. It seemed I had told myself many lies over the two years I'd been active as an agent.

This war, this life was nothing like I had expected, nothing like I had planned. I had been ready for death. I had been ready for so much of it, a cold finger or a hot blow. Whatever the feeling of death, this war wasn't what I had prepared for. It wasn't death, it was elimination. Like this was a game of tag. The breathless panic of a playground game but the thing chasing you wasn't a fellow child and their hand outstretched didn't promise "better luck next time".

If I was captured again, I would have to take my L pill. I'd have to. I had promised myself, racing from the compound, that I would not be taken alive again. The pill was quick. Forty-five seconds.

Forty-five seconds and I'd never see this war play out. I'd never win this game of cat and mouse. I didn't like to lose.

Looking at my reflection in the mirror of the water, I didn't recognize it. I knew it must be mine, how many people were in the woods of Normandy studying their face in the looking glass of a barrel? It had to be mine.

When I was in the flurry and false hope of receiving my assignment, Felix had told me I might be able to send a letter to my family. A letter that gave nothing away of my work in the war, nothing away of my location, status, or possible mission. A letter that removed any personality that might have remained after Virginia had been put to death. I never wrote that letter but I had sat on the roof of the Madrid safe house, waiting for the words to come before it was too late.

I wrote a thousand messages in my head that night, but they never made it to ink-born life on the page, never marked with a stamp. I wrote a thousand messages in my head as I dashed through my reflection in the water, letting the dirt furl in the shattered moon that remained.

Dear Miriam, I don't know if I can do this.

Dear Dad, I don't know how to stop.

Those messages had remained a constant thought in my mind. A prayer, or maybe a promise, that I tried to throw over the edge of that roof.

Felix, I don't know if you remember where you left me.

Dear Virginia, is this what you wanted?

I took every precaution, walking through puddles, avoiding soft earth. I climbed up trees to doze for a few hours in the daylight. I didn't know how long it would be before the Germans sent hounds and men after the girl who had killed three of their officers. Those five days were like I was back at Camp-X. Fearful to sleep but afraid to wake. Waiting in the sickening anticipation for the shooting to start. I barely slept, barely ate. The only contact I had was through my mailbox. The small metal cylinder, cleverly disguised as a fence bolt in an abandoned pasture, provided me the only contact with the world outside of Normandy. Through it, my papers, film, and intel were picked up by an OSS Courier. It's where I had been leaving notes for Madrid, checking it at dawn and at dusk. The information that I received regarding my extraction was limited.

"Easy Company. Overlord. Sending an extraction team. A."

A. Adonis. Adonis had found me before I had been anyone else. Before I had the chance to be someone else. I was moldable and malleable, an agent waiting to be formed and waiting for an assignment.

The wind on that rooftop was brutal, claws against my skin. The Madrid days were hot but the nights were cool, pinpricks of city lights around me. The paper threatened to be ripped from my lap, where I tried to find the words to say but they too were stolen by the wind. Adonis found me there. Adonis's figure sat on the ledge of the roof, his cigarette lit between his fingers.

"Sir?" I brushed away the tear from my cheek. I hadn't been crying. Agents didn't cry. The wind was brutal.

"Agent," His voice was soft. I had heard so much about him, the mystery that shrouded him was as intimidating as it was unknown.

"I was just trying to write a letter to my, uh, my mother," I had said.

"You are being transferred?"

"I-," I wasn't sure if I was supposed to say. "I don't know what I'm doing."

"This is your moment, agent," Adonis said. "Don't you want this?"

You weren't supposed to admit weakness to a man who could have been the future of your success in the OSS. You weren't supposed to admit weakness. Miriam had taught me to keep a front, a facade that would keep the weakness at bay. She had never let hers slip. My facade wasn't stone or the steel of hers but glass. I was made of glass and glass wasn't bulletproof.

Didn't I want this? Fighting in an impossible war didn't seem to

"In the great war we didn't have all of this," Adonis gestured at the sky as if the atmosphere had changed since his last war. "We were men and women with something to prove, something to fight. This is your moment, Agent. You have immense potential,"

"Keres said you want to establish a network again," I let my words hang in the air for a brief moment before the wind whipped them away. I made no move to reach for them.

"Men and women died all across Europe," Adonis said. "And now, twenty years later, I find myself putting new men and women atop their graves."

Dear Miriam, I don't know if I can do this.

Dear Dad, I don't know how to stop.

I couldn't slam on the brakes at this moment, I couldn't beg the universe to stop turning so I could get off and out of a choice that I made willingly. Men were dying, men had died. There were no successfully planted OSS agents in Occupied France. The SOE was a saboteur's playground. There was no order, which is something the OSS strove to establish but I wasn't the best choice for that task.

"I'm not exactly the OSS agent type," I admitted. "I'm not very good at following orders,"

Miriam be damned, I knew I wouldn't follow orders to my death. If that was a weakness, then I would wear my weakness like a badge of honor.

"The best spies don't," Adonis said, lifting his cigarette to his lips. "There is a goddess in the Greek mythos, I'm not sure if you are familiar. The patron of strife and discord."

"I am not familiar," I had said, looking out at the city lights around me. This artifact of war spoke of the gods of mythology like they were old friends. He stepped towards the door, moving to leave me on this roof with my paper and my doubts.

"I see potential in you," Adonis repeated, throwing the cigarette over the ledge. "You don't know what you are doing?"

I shook my head. "Not a clue,"

"Then show us what you can do." The man said. He turned, the outline of his face illuminated in the square of light from the open door that led back down to the safehouse.

"Sir?" I called, standing up quickly. My paper flying away into the Madrid skyline, taking with it the unwritten lines I had started but never finished. "That goddess. What was her name?"

There was no emotion on his face but the sound of a smile in his voice as Adonis had said. "Eris. The goddess of strife was Eris."

Dear Virginia, I don't know who you are.

Virginia had been left in the grave outside of Camp X but I had an opportunity, I had a chance, to be greater. To be like the women and men that Adonis spoke of. A good agent. A good agent didn't heal or worry themselves over the family and parts of themselves they had left behind.

As I left Madrid, I summoned Clara into existence, pushing her further than I had dared to go. Clara was a firebrand, a tight-dressed, red-lipped swallow who charmed all of Lisieux and didn't blink when the first shot of her pistol had been fired, or the second. Clara didn't shed a tear over the parting of familiar faces. Keres was gone and Felix left but Clara pushed on.

When my saddle shoes pedaled my bicycle into Normandy, I had allowed Irene to take control. She was sweet and charming, a flutter of lashes here and a twinkling laugh there. The children were swayed and the officers were infatuated. Irene had been the delicate flower who had blossomed under the French sun but under her petals, a viper lay in wait.

Clara had been forgotten and Irene was starting to shrivel after five days in the dark of the forest. Five days of crouching in trees, sleeping on a branch, in brief, stolen bursts. Five days of anticipation, stomach-rolling nerves. Five days of sneaking into outlying farmhouses that had long since been cleared and gathering crude supplies. One remnant of Virginia was the childhood days of mixing explosive potions in the company of my closest friend and the knowledge didn't evade me now. Five glass bottles were my only defense. Five days of fear and bated breath. Being told, soon, soon, soon with each message.

Clara, Virginia, and Irene may not see the war to the end but this creature that stirred inside me, the face I saw in the looking glass, was everything I had to be. Eris was the one whose mind was wired for sabotage and espionage. Eris would see me through the war. Eris was what Miriam, Felix, and Adonis had wanted me to become and Eris was what I had to become.

Whether it was forty-five seconds or five days, I didn't have a second chance. There was no better luck next time in the game of cat and mouse. I didn't have anything but an empty promise of extraction and no final words to my family. They would never know I had died and I'd be yet another woman for Adonis to replace, the new operative would land on my grave.

Five days of breathless waiting and presumptive mourning. Five days before I heard the first engine rattling above my head