MILA INSTINCTIVELY JUMPED away from the spy, her eyes wide and glued to the small pistol in his left hand. She had never seen a gun at such close proximity before, and it had rendered her momentarily speechless. A gun, she thought to herself in alarm. A bloody gun!

She opened her mouth to scream - her first instinct upon seeing the weapon - but nothing managed to escape from her lips. A hand was instantly clapped across her face, silencing her before she could even begin. With her eyes still locked on the weapon in his other hand, a thought crossed her mind: was it the man before her who had fired the gun earlier?

She tried to yell out as he took a final step towards her, pressing her body up against the opposite wall of the compartment. She could feel the cold metal of his weapons belt touch her skin through the thin white shirt she wore. With his hand still covering her mouth, the only sound she managed to make was a muffled protest.

"Shut up if you want to live," the spy hissed and she obeyed instantly. Mila had never been in a situation quite as dangerous as the one she was currently in, and it was no secret that her life was in danger just from being on the train. She gasped as his other hand - the hand clutching the pistol - snaked behind her waist and brought her hips forward, against his, away from the wall. They were now standing against each other, no space between their bodies; Mila's shaking and the spy's steady.

She shuddered as the metal of the gun touched against her lower back, just over the skin that had appeared as her shirt had ridden up ever so slightly.

"Keep quiet," he said gently, pleading her with his dark orbs. For some bizarre reason, Mila trusted those warm eyes and his steady features. She nodded slowly, promising to follow his instructions as he let his hands fall back to his sides. Once they were standing in front of each other, not touching and not looking, Mila saw him move out of the corner of her eye. He had bent down to retrieve a small metal object from the floor. At first, Mila thought it was her mobile but then she remembered him handing it to her. It was the small knife he had kept under his watch.

"What are you...?" Mila began quietly but trailed off as she watched him tuck it into the side of his boot. He straightened up and took one more look at her before glancing at the window. He noticed the hole where the bullet had soared through.

"God, you're one lucky woman," he muttered as he examined the clean exit.

Mila said nothing. Instead, she tucked her mobile into her breast pocket and took a small, shy step towards him. "I need to get off this train," she said, hoping he would give some sort of reaction. He didn't and she glared at the back of his head. "Look, I know you're bound by a stupid contract thing like all cliché spies are, but I really need your help! I need to get off of this train. There's been a mistake-"

"Yes there has," he said suddenly, cutting her off. "Your ticket is wrong. And it's not a 'cliché spy thing'. It's a necessary part of the initiation and alliance."

She stared at him incredulously. "My ticket-?"

"Give me it," he said, turning to face her with his hand held out. She wanted to tell him off for his rudeness, but she would only feel silly. If he were a child and not roughly her age, she would have been bold enough to follow through with giving him a row. She let out a sigh in defeat and stuck her thumb and forefinger into her blazer pocket to retract the ticket.

"There," she muttered.

He nodded as he held it up to the light and gazed at it. "Hm... Yep, it must have been a typo." When Mila gave him another confused look he just rolled his eyes. "The Association changed the train and tickets." Another lost glance.

Once he handed her the ticket back, he made his way over to the door, the gun still held tightly in his grasp. Mila gulped down her fear as the weapon made her stomach churn. A very deadly weapon, oh so deadly.

"I... I need you to help me get off of this train," Mila eventually found herself saying. As the transport continued to thunder down the tracks towards England, Mila only realized just how blind she had been. No one else had gotten on the train when she had. Everyone had stared at it as if it were a ghost; there but not quite.

"I already have a job to do, Lady," he muttered, not bothering to face her.

Mila's fists curled and she marched over to the ignorant man, mustering up the strength and courage to haul him back by the collar of his jacket and up against the door to face her. He looked genuinely shocked.

"And were casualties part of the task?" she demanded, a brow raised as if challenging him to say 'yes'. He looked down at her with an amused smile, his nose crinkling ever so slightly.

"You're strong for a small one," he commented, tugging her hand off of his coat and pushing her away gently. She ignored his comment and so he continued. "I'm sworn under an oath to uphold and protect the corporation. It's in the laws."

Mila was completely and utterly lost. She groaned in frustration. "Stop being a secret agent for a second and speak to me like a normal human being!"

The spy looked at her for a second, noticing the way her eyes darted down towards the gun he held. Mila gulped as he lifted it up and for a second, she was terrified that he was going to aim it at her. However, she released a relieved sigh when he placed it into his weapons belt, securing it in place. He crossed his arms across his chest and leaned against the wall, just beside the window. His eyes bored into Mila's.

"Thank you," she managed to sigh, and he just chuckled quietly. "I want to know what's going on."

He looked torn for a moment, as if his life were at risk. It probably is and always has been, Mila realized, given his label. He sighed deeply and looked her dead in the eye. Mila sensed that a long conversation was soon to come up and she braced herself as he opened his mouth to speak.

More gunshots were fired. Mila's knees buckled and she let herself fall to the floor once again, a feeling of ease surrounding her at being curled into a secure little ball. The spy looked down at her with a frown. Mila could feel herself shaking as the guns were fired again and again. She felt herself ready to scream. She was going to scream-

"Shh," he whispered to her, crouching down beside her to cover her mouth once again. "Listen carefully, OK?" She nodded urgently. "Someone broke into the Association Headquarters and stole something important from the vaults. It's someone on this train, hence the reason we made sure to keep this train clear. Obviously not as clear as we'd hoped..." he trailed off and glanced down at her. "The thief is someone on board and we plan to steal back what is ours."

Mila noticed his use of the word 'we' and she felt a lump in her throat. There's more of them, she heard a voice say in the back of her head. Were they all in disguise too? Mila allowed the man to pull her up and she limped against him for a moment. Weakly she nodded to him, struggling to accept the entire situation she had been caught up in all too unexpectedly.

"You're not alone, are you?" she managed to ask.

He shook his head. "We work in groups."

Before Mila had the chance to ask how many more spies were on board, he was moving over to the door. She rolled her eyes, wondering if he possessed some sort of super hearing as he pressed his ear up against the wood. Not a second later, he pulled the blinds (that covered the small square-shaped window in the door) apart. Mila glanced over his shoulder out into the carriage. No one was there.

Hugging her arms around herself was the closest thing Mila could get to feeling comfort. There was no chance she could get the spy to do such a thing. She was trembling where she stood, her eyes on the man's back.

"What's the plan, then?" she heard herself say.

He laughed loudly. "Why on earth would I tell you something like that?"

Mila was dumbfounded for a moment, her tongue tied. He has a point, she realized. You're just a stupid little woman who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

"Well, I can't stay in here all alone!" she managed to say.

"Well, you'll have to," said the spy, looking over his shoulder at her. His eyes raked her up and down. "Unless you're good at defending yourself."

Mila held her head up high. "I'm a karate black belt," she said proudly, smiling to herself as her childhood lessons with Eddie came back to mind. Her father had always told her that saving people was important when heading down the path of medicine, but he had also been very firm about being able to save ones self if any harm should ever come. Mila could remember the day her father had taken her to her first karate lesson with Eddie - who had insisted on tagging along - and she had enjoyed it straight away. Eddie hadn't been too enthusiastic but still went with her every Monday night.

The spy raised a brow. "I'd say prove it, but now's not the time."

Footsteps thundered down the train and Mila bit her tongue to keep quiet. The spy reached for his gun and extracted it from his weapons belt, Mila's eyes on his every movement.

"Check down there! The next carriage! We'll stay here," said a man's voice from outside the compartment door. Mila felt herself shiver and she let herself fall down onto the cushioned bench, mentally running through the list of things she never had the chance to do with her life. Paris, New York, Fiji, seeing The 1975 in concert, meeting George Clooney-

"Don't make a sound," he whispered all of a sudden. She listened carefully as someone walked past the door. The sudden silence of the steps concluded that the man had stopped walking. The spy peered through the blinds once again and then slowly slid the door open.

"What are you doing?!" shrieked Mila.

With the flick of his wrist, the man sent the barrel of the gun flying into the stranger's face. With a gasp, Mila stood from her seat, trying to forget hearing the terrible crunch that sounded through the air as the man was hit in the nose.

"Don't worry, he's just unconscious," assured the spy.

"You could have killed him!" Mila hissed, peering around him at the man lying on his back with a bleeding nose. "That could have gone right up and damaged the brain!"

"Why do you care?" asked the spy.

"I'm a nurse."

"A short, black-belt nurse?" the spy pondered, frowning. "Now there's a combination you don't hear everyday."

Mila ignored his comment and stepped out of the compartment to crouch down by the man. She reached out and examined his face, her mouth falling open. "You broke his nose."

"I may have done him a favour - he was fuck ugly."

"And now you've made him even worse!"

"Not necessarily... His eyes don't look so close together now."

Mila threw her hands up in surrender and pushed her way back into the compartment. The spy watched her every move and eventually nodded when she sat herself back down with a huff.

"Good girl," she heard him say and she glared at him. "Stay in the compartment with the blinds drawn. Don't make any sounds and you may just survive through this trip."

"Excuse me-" she began, but she closed her mouth as she watched him duck out through the door and pick up the gun the man had been holding. Before she could call out for him, he was gone, running down the train.

Zayn shook his head as he made his way down the centre of the train. How had Louis forgotten to change all tickets but one? He rolled his eyes when thinking about his team. He had always preferred to work alone on dangerous missions, but by law, the Association had right to send back up in the form of groups.

"If I worked alone, everything would be done so much quicker..." he muttered to himself as he raised his gun in front of him. He loved his friends, he truly did, but when on a mission, his mind was sent on one thing only: success.

A fail would ruin his perfect reputation, and Zayn didn't want that; no spy wanted that. To succeed at every obstacle was what made him one of the greatest spies the Association had ever had the pleasure of training.

Silly, little foreign woman, Zayn thought to himself as he moved further down the carriage. He reached the end of the walk and was just about to reach for the handle when a man jumped from the left and tackled him to the ground.

Zayn grunted, taken completely off guard by the sudden attack. He raised his gun and fired, only to miss by a mile and blow a hole through the roof of the transport. The man was dressed like he: black clothing and a gleaming weapons belt. Only he was working for someone else entirely.

Zayn used his free hand to punch upwards, knocking the man off of him. He jumped to his feet, quick as a flash and raised the gun. With an unexpected kick from the man, the gun went flying from Zayn's hand and landed a couple of feet back.

"Who has it?!" Zayn demanded as the man lunged at him and knocked him to the floor. With the man being two times the size and weight of Zayn, it was easy to knock him down and pin him to the floor. The man appeared to have no gun on him, but Zayn was shocked to see him reached for a small dagger in his belt. He plunged the blade down towards Zayn who captured the man's wrists in his hands.

"Zayn Malik, the famous spy," laughed the man. His breath made Zayn gag. "Not gonna be famous fo' long after I gut ya, eh?"

He pressed harder, the knife lowering until it nicked the material of Zayn's black T-shirt. He pushed upwards as hard as he could, trying to move his legs which were pressed to the ground by the stranger's.

"Who ... has it?" Zayn managed to grunt, his eyes narrowed.

"As if I'd tell ya! You ain't gonna see another day as long as you're 'ere with me."

"Who invaded the Headquarters?!" Zayn shouted.

"You stupid-"

Whack!

He fell limp on top of Zayn. The spy lay frozen, the knife wedged flat between their bodies. His heart was racing and only when he looked over the man's unconscious body did he understand what had just happened.

The woman from the compartment stood with a shoe in her hand, eyes wide and mouth hanging open. Zayn wanted to roll his eyes at her, but he couldn't bring himself to. She just saved your life, a voice whispered in the back of his head.

He hauled the body off of him and picked up the knife that had cut a small hole in his shirt. He shoved it into his weapons belt and turned to face the nurse. She met his eyes and then looked down at the man she had injured.

"Y-you're not leaving me behind, alright?" she snapped. "I may have taken karate when I was twelve but that doesn't mean I've lost the ability to hurt someone."