Miguel runs to catch me up. "Wait, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you."

"It's fine. I know you didn't mean to, and I know I need to move on." We have a lapse of silence and I'm sure we're both gathering our emotions before I speak again. "It was six years ago. The last time I said that. It was to a friend, a close friend, who was dying. He wanted to hear it one last time. It's the last thing he ever heard."

He just nods, and looks at me concerned. "I'll be fine, I promise. I have been for the past six years."

He steps in front of me, and turns to look directly at me. "Just surviving and getting by isn't 'being fine'. Besides, you shouldn't settle for being fine and surviving, when you could thrive."

I try not to smile at the teasing memory. "Someone once told me that before. Let's hope you don't follow in their footsteps."

By now, the others have caught up, and Ruben offers to grab Miguel's bag for him. Apparently I was the only one who actually slept. That's nice.

"So, did you guys make that 'you have to sleep thing' to keep me out of your hair?" I ask once we're alone again.

"No. We made it because everyone can see the black eye looking formation you have under your eyes from lack of sleep, and we kind of need you alive and functioning at full percent so we just assumed you needed more sleep."

I shot Miguel a half-hearted glare. "I will have you know that I have went five days without sleep before. Sure, I crashed as soon as the mission was over, but I was perfectly fine while it was going on. The key is caffeine and something spicy."

"I feel like I should ask more, even though I don't want to know. I also feel like I should be very concerned." He responds.

I put my head in my hand and pretend to think. "You probably should, but where's the fun in that?"

All he does is sigh.

"So, what's the plan?" He asks, and I close my eyes. I don't want to see his reaction, because I know it's not going to be the best.

"If what I think is going on actually is, time is of the essence. There's a certain spot that we will need to hurry to. All you guys have to do is sit back, let me do all the talking all the time, sail the stupid boat, comfort Luna, be witnesses to get rid of Dirk, and if I need help for taking down whoever is guarding Luna, obviously help me with that. Besides these things, I have everything covered."

"Very funny," Ruben says sarcastically, because apparently he can sneak up on people without them hearing. I'm wondering if he had spy training in the past; it would explain some things.

"You won't be laughing when that's what happens." I fire back.

"That won't happen. I'm not getting into a boat with you until I know exactly where we're going." He demands.

"Love's Grotto," I answer, and their faces are funnier than they should be. I start shaking like crazy to not burst out laughing.

"We are not going there," Maartje says, surprisingly calm.

"Um, yes we are. It's where Luna's at."

"No, we're not. The place is dangerous and said to be haunted. No one goes there. Besides, you haven't done any work. How would you know who took her?"

I give her a withering look. "It's obvious to me, but if you need more evidence, I can provide it. We only have a couple of hours though; then the tide will be ready for us to leave." I then walk right off the ship, leaving the others to run after me. Oh, how good it feels to be back in charge again. Sure, they can still say I'm a prisoner, but they need me, and since they need me, in my territory, I'm dictating the mission. If they don't like it, they can do whatever; I don't care.

"So, where are we going?" Miguel asks, suddenly making me flinch. Okay, maybe I do care if one person out of the entire group doesn't like it. And considering the group is only three right now, and I care about the three that will be joining us, I highly hope no one realizes this. It would be a perfect way to ruin my reputation.

"To a back alley, so the rest of our group can meet up with us," I say as I directly turn into the most concerning alley I can find.

"Rest of our team? I did not sign up for other people, nor do we need them." Ruben protests. Of course he would be the one to give me a problem; something tells me he will be a new old Zeev for me. A pain in my side trying to undermine my authority.

"You can't seriously expect me to run this mission alone, with three other people who have no spy training whatsoever, and actually use their presence as a fear tactic instead of staying into the shadows. I'm going to need help, especially for a rescue mission with no casualties on either side, and essentially three rookies. You guys have been lightly trained, but don't know anything about what we're going to be doing.

"Therefore, my team will be meeting us. Right about now, which is your cue to come out of the shadows, Katherine. Zeev, get off the roof before you break your neck; I can't be a man down on this mission. Goodness Amelia, I left you incharge, you could at least make sure the idiots don't get themselves killed before I can take over this mission and then my agency again. I need my inner circle for when that happens, and it would be far too tedious to recruit and retrain two more people to take their places." I say seemingly into thin air, until the other three show up.

"How did you know we were here?" Katherine asks.

"Because I know all." I answer simply, and make sure a rock gets kicked into Zeev's shin when he mouths that I don't.

"Meet the people you will be working with. Katherine is the crazy blonde. Oh crud, wait, they're both blonde. She's the younger looking one, Amelia is the one who's about our age, and Amelia stop that. You know it's the truth, deal with it. The idiotic man over there is Zeev, her boyfriend. You three, this is Miguel, Ruben, and Maartje, and you two girls, we will talk later, do not say a word of what you're thinking in their presence." I order, and barely get through the introductions alive.

"You shouldn't have boosted Katherine's ego like that. She's already bragging about being your favorite." Zeev mutters.

"I know. Why do you think I said that. It's a test, one which she will most likely fail and learn some humility the hard way. I honestly can't wait to see it happen; she's been getting too insufferable. Yes, most of the age group isn't the brightest or the best, but she's going to have to learn how to work with them, espeicallly if I'm going to have her be a trainer, so she had better learn it now before it's too late." I whisper back. He gives a half smile.

We were lucky. I had Zeev to compete with and semi keep me humble in athletics, Amelia in smarts, and Brady was to keep me human. Katherine has no one, making her extremely susseptable for feeling that she is superior to everyone. Having an overcofident agent helps no one unless you know they're a mole; then the problem solves itself.

"So, they need more evidence. I was thinking we could use the tunnels to go to the archives?" I propose.

Katherine makes a face. "The tunnels are dump and gross. Why can't we walk in the streets like normal people?"

"Because the streets are far too crowded for my liking. And if you are going to ask why, you have obviously not been paying attention enough in your lessons and lectures, and I will be forced to assign more of them, and make sure you get more homework so you understand the tasks better, and if you don't, someone knows." I answer in an orderly fashion, causing Katherine to wrinkle her face. She didn't need to know I was only partially bluffing and don't have that much control; being the director is nice though. No one questions how far your control is, nor do they call your bluffs.

I catch the pirates' weird looks to each other, and realize they must be surprised by my sudden mood swing. Of course; they're used to the prisoner LB, not the director one. They don't know what just happened, how to handle it, nor some of the inside jokes. "The joke is that I'm a bit of an antisocial walker because I don't like being around so many people. There are many speculations from this ranging from paranoia of an attack, which isn't really paranoia by the way, to social anxiety, especially in large crowds."

I see Maartje open her mouth, probably to ask which one it really is. "And if you ask me the people who speculate so have too much free time on their hands, and I will not devulge who is correct or close to being it."

She closes her mouth, and gives me a strange look, almost as if I read her mind. "She does that a lot. You get used to it," Amelia reassures her, sending her a half smile.

"What I want to talk about is the anti-social walker part. You're anti-social, period. Nothing needs to go after it," Zeev comments.

"Actually, two words do; personality disorder." I fire back.

"No, you just have worse social anxiety than most people; this is all perfectly normal." Katherine argues, causing the three of us to throw her looks ranging from glares, to wonder, to exasperation with a tinge of please shut up.

"I can think of a few others that need to be added. Free mandatory therapy for all of you when I get rich. You two obviously need it to process a lot of childhood trauma and your humor that's so out of the box, you can't even see it. You need it for hanging around us and thinking any of this is normal." Amelia says, and the three of us give her our yeah-right-in-a-million-years-am-I-talking-to-a-therapist-especially-since-it-will-be-a-IEA-one' look.

"Is it always like this?" Miguel asks, to whom I'm not quite sure.

"Always," The four of us chorus.

Ruben lifts his eyes heavenward and mutters something that sounds suspiciously like a prayer under his breath. Miguel and Maartje just smile, and give each other similar looks.

"We reach the tunnel entrance and drop down, some with a bit more grace than others. I take the lead, with Miguel right behind me. The others are all scrambled up behind us, though Zeev takes the rear and Ruben is right in front of him.

Which puts the three girls together. Goodness helps us; who knows what they might be planning as we navigate the tunnels. This thoughts might have influenced my decision to constantly call back warning of an obstacle in front of us that didn't always need warning about. Just to interrupt the conversation, making it slightly harder to plot something.

"Are you sure you know where you're going?" Miguel asks me. I get the feeling he doesn't like being in the tunnel; I can't really blame him. I prefer the open air too, though not quite as open as the sea. The mountains are more my tempo; forests to hide in and run around, springs of water, cliffs to climb, rivers to swim in and cross, fields to run through, the crisp air, the beautiful sunrises and sunsets, good shelter from the storms, caves, safety, familiarity.

"Of course I do. I used to explore these tunnels at all hours of the day, usually at night. I know them front and back, and we should be getting to the archives right about now." I say, and as I say now, push the panel on the side.

The security features light up; fingerprint id, face id, and then, voice id with a secret code. "I'm always up to no good; I don't need to solemnly swear by it."

"What was all of that?" Ruben asks.

"Security. The archives hold everything important to the IEA in them, most people don't know they exist, and even fewer know where they're located. Therefore, we have state-of-the-art security here, most of which isn't available to anyone else, and most people can't even dream of it being invented." I say, a small hint of pride seeping into my voice. The IEA has some of the best inventors in the world.

"I'll say," Ruben says as he lets out a little whistle. It's then that I look around and realize we entered through the armory side, and so we're surrounded by all of our weapons. Possibly not the best place for pirates.

"Of course, come this way. I have a couple of files that you can look over and hopefully then you will see that I am in fact not lying." I say as I expertly navigate the archives, and hopefully steer the pirates out of here before they see too much of the weapons. If they see enough of them they might try to recreate them, and if they do that, the government will demand we give them our plans of the weapons. That's always something I put off for as long as I can; it's so tedious and I lose my faith in humanity every time it happens.

We reach a crossroads and I give Amelia a nod. She takes over the lead, and brings everyone to the meeting room, where I go to the place in the archives only I or the next leader can enter; the file room. While it sounds boring, this is in fact the most important and powerful room in possibly the entire room; it has information on each and every spy operation, spy, and a bunch of other stuff we're not supposed to know about but do.

This one has a lot more security. It requires everything from earlier, plus a blood sample. Like I said; high security and good inventors are the key to every agency. I just happen to have the best.

I fetch the files I'm looking for, but hesitate. The files won't make sense without my file, but I don't want them to see it. I don't want them to see what I am, what I've been through, who I really am. No one knows this, no one knows my personal thoughts and feelings, no one has seen my personal file.

Are you finally ready for someone to see who you really are? For the world? Ailstar's voice echoes in my head, as I hear when I threatened to tell everyone in the world what happened.

No, you don't get to rule my life anymore. It doesn't matter if I'm ready or not, what matters is if you are Ailstar. Because I haven't forgotten my mission, and I won't ever.

I grab my file too, and stop by the bathroom. If I'm going to do this, I'm going to need some part of my power outfit. I find some gloves, and some red lipstick. Not complete, but it'll have to do.

I continue my path to the meeting room, slightly upset I don't have heels. While they're a pain to fight in, they do make a nice clicking noise as I walk, alerting everyone to my presence.

I'm quickly glad I don't, when I hear a loud squeal of excitement, and then someone quickly hushing someone else. I stop to the left of a room, and put my hear against the wall. "They're so perfect with each other. With a little nudge, they'll get together!" I hear Katherine exclaim.

"I know. Captain wants them together, so we've been forcing them to hang around each other. Though I believe it'll take a bit more of a nudge; Eva and I have been trying for ages and they haven't made any progress." Maartje joins in.

There's only two people they can be talking about; Miguel and I. They want us to get together.

This is usually the time I make my brilliant appearance and ruin they're plans, but instead I don't. Some information is best kept a secret. And besides, it wouldn't hurt to know Miguel a bit better would it? And if it further unites them, how bad could it be?

Little did I know, when I was thinking those thoughts, I was compromising with the devil.