Christen fidgeted with her watch and hated having it back on her arm, but at least all her wounds had healed, and this version wasn't quite as debilitating.

"Let's recap. The incident at the base has been covered up as a terrorist attack by an infiltrator, the mice higher up in the food chain that backed Sergeant Driscoll and his team scurried back into the woodwork, but their movements left a trail of breadcrumbs.

"One such path fingered PT Sergeant Mills as the prescription medication supplier. She volunteered at the VA hospital two nights a week, and an audit of the drugs revealed that someone filled several orders for strong sedatives and painkillers after patients had died," Dana said over the comms while Christen demolished her breakfast.

"Closer inspection of the autopsies also revealed inconsistencies. The major and I have spotted tiny needle marks on two of the photos and light bruising around the wrists, which led us to conclude the victims had been drugged and tied to a chair with great care. We thus concluded someone made them drink the pills.

"We followed your GPS readings back to where Driscoll beat you and discovered a building near the water with at least thirty different sets of DNA on the floor and inside a cellar underneath. There were files, too, meticulous records on each private targeted by the team, and fingerprints and DNA gave us a list of suspects.

"Cross-referencing this list gave us a list of people the suspects interacted with. No one could have found this building without your chip."

*They should have destroyed the evidence instead of coming after me.*

"Their arrogance led them to believe they were safe, even after the shootout. They thought if they kept a low profile, they could just continue when the dust settled. Wait a moment; a report just came in." Dana said, and after a moment, the files uploaded to her HUD.

Every suspect on their list was dead. Each with a single shot to the back of the head with a silenced weapon.

Christen frowned.

*We have had the base locked down since last night. Whoever killed these people is still on the grounds.*

"I am already on it."

***

A quick search of the base revealed one Sergeant Chris Morris MIA, but he turned up in a dumpster outside the base an hour later.

"He's been dead for twenty hours. Whoever killed these suspects planned on doing it, whether or not they silenced you and hired an assassin." Dana said, wearing a camera with the feed directed toward Christen's HUD as she inspected the body.

*That someone got onto the base with a stolen identity and left in the middle of a lockdown. How was that possible?* Christen asked, bored to death in her new hospital room.

"Good question. I'll get the techs on that."

***

The techs checked every available piece of footage and found only that their intruder knew the position of every camera and had a device that temporarily looped the feed. We're dealing with a tech-savvy assassin, but it only proved what you already told me, the base's security isn't up to scratch," Dana said some time later, no longer wearing her camera.

"Covering up the death of nine more army personnel won't be easy after the incident at the hospital. Especially since the news leaked to the entire base within an hour, but that isn't our problem. Moore's covert unit will continue the investigation, and our superiors have decided to return Moore and the Major to their unit. They will take you along as a new trainee."

"What? Why?" she asked before remembering she wasn't alone and smiled at the guard at the door as if she were messing with her phone, which actually shielded their transmissions.

"They would not be read in on anything regarding you. The way you revealed yourself to Moore and the Major nearly got you terminated. Only the fact that we succeeded in uncovering the conspiracy by forcing the participants to react earned us a second chance."

*What do you mean by us? I am the one that almost got put out of my misery.*

"No, Christen. You are my responsibility; if you mess up, we both pay. They have had enough of this experiment, and the data can keep them busy for fifty years. Neither of us is on solid ground. The brass used the words sloppy and dangerous, but I countered that accusation with untrained, very young, and unprepared. So now, you will receive the training you need, but with your watch on and your human guise in place."

*That will make everything twice as hard on me. Look at what happened."

"No one expected the situation would devolve in such a fashion, and the investigation into our actions reflects that sentiment. While looking into us, the brass discovered that somewhere in Moore's organization, there's a leak. Only eight people had the names on our list and knew the connection."

"This is a loaded situation, and I won't be myself. What chance do I have? At least they trust you."

"I would not have a chip in my head if they did. And mine can't do cool things; it just monitors me and can shut me down like a toy. Even now, they are following every word we say. The chips cleared us of wrongdoing, and the techs proved that there was no tampering. "

"Moore works for a unit called Internal Security Services, which tells you exactly nothing because they don't exist on paper, but A23 knows of it and how to interact with them. Moore's actual rank is Specialist Moore, and his very special agent buddy is on loan from the FBI. Since our new investigation is actually into the ISS itself and only Moore has clearance to know the truth about the assignment, they assigned the Major to him as his new partner."

Christen got out of bed and gathered her things to take a shower. She suspected things would move quickly once they finished speaking.

"Moore and the Major will pretend nothing happened and report to me. They will receive their real orders from A23 until ISS has their house in order. A23 got exactly what we wanted: access to the ISS, its training facilities, and its toys. "

"For this to look authentic to all but the three directors of ISS and the two A23 directors, as few people as possible can know anything about the mission. The Director of ISS has only been briefed about the implants in your head that would provide them access to the ISS from your point of view, but he will only get footage pertaining to his mission.

"We only granted him this much information to get the codes that would allow your chip to send footage even inside the ISS with the understanding that anything you learned is classified.

"Convincing him to send in an untrained agent with no explanation of your abilities was a hard sell until we showed him a demonstration of the rate at which you obtain, absorb, and retain information like a computer. We asked him to send over three files, one with codes, one with personnel details, and a training video. This information will be uploaded directly to you in about an hour, and all you have to do is answer questions about any section of the information for him to sign off on our endeavor."

"You sound cockily confident that I will not fail," Christen said, alone in the bathroom.

"Of course I am. You can do this in your sleep. Moore will oversee your training inside the ISS and outside of it. Your cover story will be that he's training you to be a field analyst, a geek with actual field training, since it would give us broader access to the ISS. We will even provide a fake classified file on you, courtesy of Director Weiss, to make it look like he recruited you for the mission at the base."

"Copy that," she said, unprepared for any of this.

***

When she accepted the first mission, she had no idea what they were heading into, and now she feared this may be worse.

Christen occupied her mind with all this information to avoid the fact that she shot and killed three people she knew after slitting the throat of another.

It haunted her in her nightmares, making her edgy and uneasy despite the understanding that they would not have hesitated to kill her. And it bothered her that eleven other people died because of her actions. They were murderers and terrorists in her eyes, but they were still people.

The only thing that worried her more than what happened at the base was what she learned while recovering from her gunshot wounds.

Dana had used the story to distract her from the physical discomfort, but it also caused her emotional distress. It changed the narrative of her life and her view of Anna. How could she be mad at her twin knowing what she knew? Not that she ever really was angry at Anna, just disappointed, confused, and hurt.

How would she have reacted if she found out the truth and couldn't share it with Anna? What prompted her to do a DNA test? Did she think their parents lied and that one of them was adopted, switched at birth, or something? Such things never even occurred to her until she woke from her coma.