Let the night come, before the fight's won
Some might run against the test
But those that triumph, embrace the fight cause
Their fears then prove that courage exists  

Macklemore- Can't Hold Us

***

"So why'd you guys pick me?" I asked as I lifted a box and shifted it so I could see the other boxes in front of it. Aiden turned but kept his eyes on the file he was skimming before he looked up at me and threw it behind him, the folder finding the table easily.

He shrugged and lifted another box in my way as I carried one effortlessly to the table where he dug inside. "I dunno. That's Zack's job. To find and recruit people who would be good for the job," He said, finally answering me. I lifted the cover off one of the boxes marked 'Agents B-F' and skimming the papers with my hand. "I think we were supposed to recruit you as a teen but something happened with the system. You killing your step-dad brought a lot of attention back to you. We have technology that listens for keywords like that over whatever communication tech the police force has." He pauses, ripping a paper off from the stapled pile and placing it on the table before shaking his head at me. "You're good at hiding it."

"Hiding what?"

He nodded at an agent as she drifted into the room and carried a box away before answering. "Your personal life. I'm not gonna lie, I didn't know you were abused at all until you confronted me about the not-so-standard FBI uniform. I was gonna flash you the Secret Service badge before I realized that you had to be drugged."

I let out a unfeminine snort. "Yeah, thanks for that."

So maybe I was slipping around Aiden. My facade slowly melted every time I spent time with him. But deep down, my instincts were battling whether or not to trust him. I still let my cold tone slip and a normal one replace it despite half of me screaming not to, but I still kept my mask up so he couldn't read me. And I knew it killed him.

"Where are we exactly?" I asked, realizing I didn't know a thing about where we actually were.

Sure, I knew we were in 553's base. And I knew we were somewhere on the surface of Earth although the secret base stereotypes were underground. The window on the base center showed a clear view of a fenced garden and that was it. I hadn't been at the lower levels yet.

He turned and winked at me. "That's classified." He snapped the file in his hands shuts and tossed it on the table and grinned "I've always wanted to say that."

"Uh huh," I said absentmindedly, focusing more on him right now. "What's it like leading a double life?"

"All an act," He confirmed, nodding. He looked me in the eye as he chose his next words carefully. "Acting isn't hard when you literally go on hundreds of undercover missions. Don't tell Zack I told you that. Changing personas isn't hard for me either. I had to keep a cover. I stayed away to maintain a reputation as the person who can't manage to get anything more then a C+, becoming the person least likely to be leading a double life as a super secret teen spy. You know?"

I let go of the box cover and turned so I was facing him. Leaning against them, I crossed my arms and nodded. "Yeah, I guess it is easy to change personas when you have the practice. Playing the scared nerd was easy."

"I'll be honest. I didn't realize you were fit to be an actress," Aiden quipped, sticking his hand around the box, still not finding whatever he was looking for. He suddenly stuck his hand into the air as jolts of what looked like an electricity field surrounded the box, giving it a whitish glow. I couldn't resist smiling at the absurdity of the notion that a cardboard box had to be protected by an electrical shield.

I laughed when Aiden stuck his hand inside, ignoring my snickering. Just as I expected, the electricity jolted him. The smell of smoke wafted through the air as Aiden stayed perfectly still like the shock hadn't affected him, but his face scrunched up nonetheless.  "Ow," He muttered, a few freckles I hadn't noticed before dotting his nose before he released his expression and they disappeared.

He must have done something inside the box because the field blurred and shattered into pieces like glass, sliding across the floor to my 553 boots. I kneeled down, taking a piece of the glass like substance, thinking about how just a week ago I was kneeling down to help Luna with broken glass.

Aiden brought my attention back to him when he peeked into the box and said, "Yup, this is definitely the box with the missions Dale went on."

"Since when does he let you call him Dale?" I asked, finally getting mentally frustrated with his antics and calmly taking the box, dumping it on the round table before taking a seat on one of the chairs around it. I picked out a random, buried file and flipped through it, placing my feet on the table

Aiden mocked me by doing the same thing, his lips curled up at the corners in amusement. "He doesn't. I have no respect for my elders whatsoever."

A laugh bubbled at the bottom of my throat as I busied myself with making mental notes of his mission reports so I could pinpoint Dale's strengths and weaknesses. "Yeah, I can see that," I said flatly, raising an eyebrow.

"So do you have a plan?"

"Today, we're going to find out who Dale's working for."

****

"Hi Dale."

He raised an eyebrow at my greeting but said nothing, making me do a mental fist bump.

"Stop being an anti Mary-Sue," Leah whispered in my comm. I gritted my teeth but said nothing. Scientists really had to point everything out.

Leah was the scientist who did daily check ups on me and treated me like a daughter. She also had a secret obsession with One Direction and Blake, in that order, and made me promise to keep those secrets. To say I laughed is an understatement.  

"Do you think I'm an anti Mary-Sue?" I wondered out loud, letting my inner thoughts out so I'd be more convincing. I didn't wait to see his reaction to my comment. "Never mind. Anyways you must have really missed me for me to back."

"I didn't miss you." 

Blake was discreetly watching us from his seat near Dale's desk, his unresponsive and professional expression wiped away with a smile. He was in on Dale's I'm-An-Undercover-Mole-In-The-Who-Knows-Where-533-Agency, and was mainly here because I apparently amused him. He was doing work at the moment, which was code for sticking a file near his nose and pretend to be reading while not so secretly watching us interact.

"Really? Then there must be another reason I'm back here!"

Dale moved his crossed arms away from his chest and placed his hands on his hips, seemingly fed up with me already. I didn't expect for Dale to find me sneaking chocolate into my room. I was supposed to find him an hour later, which is why I was now currently stalling.

"What other reason is there?" This time it wasn't Dale speaking. The rough voice alerted me to Blake, whose dark skin was being attacked with the window on the roof of the room. That was the only view of the outside room from his office. With this big of a space, he could've afforded to put a window or two in the walls. The glass of the roof window was too tinted for me to see the sky, unfortunately, which put me in a semi sour mood.

I looked back to Dale and leaned in. "You sure you want me to say it out loud?" 

If anything, Dale looked even more furious. The redness rushing up to his face alerted me to his temper point. "Just say it!"

"Okay, okay. You should really do yoga, or sign up for some anger management classes. Hey, you know, there are these stress balls you can squee-"

"Tell me!" Dale shouted, throwing his hands up in exasperation. 

"You want to take me up on the offer of dating Leah."

Silence.

For a long while, no one said a thing. It was just the sound of the low hum of the computers and the two helicopter-like devices floating around the room. And I was sort of grateful to those two helicopters.

I hated silence. 

It was a bit of a phobia that ate at me. It's apparently called sedatephobia. I know because I searched it up. That's why I guess I remained so childish. It revolved around my parents dying I guess. The house was never the same without them to make it lively.

That's probably why I had trouble sleeping at night.

"Amber Zoey Ryder, I- For the love of Harry Styles, did you actually say that?" Leah stammered in my ear, flustered. 

I rubbed my ear and took out the earpiece, pretending I was just itching it. Dale didn't seem to notice, in fact he had tuned out the moment the silence started.

Blake suddenly guffawed at my remark and let out uncontrollable chuckles as I giggled silently at Dale's furious expression. He muttered a few words under his breath that were too rough for me to hear, although I did hear some curses slip in here and there.

After Dale got fed up with me, Blake escorted me out of his office. He began to babble about how he had to take a personal leave for a day, but he'd still be in contact via comm for the mission. I shooed him away against his protests and made him make sure no other agent entered the hallway. I pressed my ear piece onto my ear so it hooked and latched on before making a whizzing noise, telling me it had turned invisible. Another useful invention.

It hummed to life, letting a few voices jump on me at once. They all quieted, probably finding my comm device online and silence run through the line. 

They're waiting for me. They want me to make the next call.

I cleared my throat, getting ready for this before letting my impassive tone swirl around my words. "I need Agent Thompson and Agent Blake to lead a team of three agents skilled in aid and with good aim to wherever I am. Track me using the GPS chip you planted in my coffee last night."

"You noticed that?" Aiden muttered. "Where did you find this one Arch-"

"Stay a couple blocks behind me each time," I spoke over him. "If you lose my signal stop and wait wherever you lost it at. When it blinks back online, that's going to be the signal for the two teams of five waiting by HQ to move in and meet Thompson. When they arrive, everyone will move into wherever I am. If you can't pinpoint my location in a few hours retreat, and wait for my tracker to blink back online. Got it?"

My voice was so hushed it was barely recognizable but they all seemed to pickup on it. The agents at the end of the comm gave me their conformation while Aiden settled for a sarcastic, "Thompson? We're on the last name basis now? Yay." 

Blake and Archer gave me a few words of how extraction was going to work -I would be pulled out with whatever information I had as soon as they had secured me- and then told everyone to be on comm silence for the time being. I sighed, staring at the feeds from the camera I planted in Dale's office on my tablet.

I melted into the shadows of the hallway and waited for Dale to make his move.

****

A/N: I delayed this too long I'm sorry. Also my rank is going up. I don't know how to thank you without being really weird. And I guess that was my thanks. Don't mind me.  Just being awkward.