It was amazing how a nice hot shower could make you feel more human.

As soon as the boys were gone, I ambled my way up the stairs to the little bathroom next to Daniel's bedroom. I stripped off my clothes and stepped into the steaming hot spray of water. I let the steady pressure work into the knots in my back and neck, loosening them and relaxing me. I scrubbed gingerly at the dried blood that had escaped the bandage covering my gunshot wound.

I stepped out of the shower twenty minutes later feeling much better. Once out, I unwound the bandage, removed the gauze, and stared at the wound. Getting shot in real life wasn't like in the movies. Hollywood had a way of dressing down the effects of a bullet wound. In their version, there was little afterthought to the wound as if someone could get shot and come out of it miraculously fine. No limp or pain. They could get hounded by bullets in the first ten minutes of the film and, not five minutes later, be running around like an Olympian on steroids set to break a gold-medal record.

In all reality, getting shot hurt like a bitch. I was sore and a large portion of the side of my body was covered in purple, blue, and black bruises. The entry point where the bullet had gone in was little more than a few centimeters in diameter and was simply a small dark hole in the mass of bruising. There was some dried blood around the wound, which I cleaned off.

I'd been lucky. If I'd been shot in the leg or the arm, it would have severely impacted my ability to do anything. As it were, I would still be in quite a bit of pain as I tried to navigate my way through this tricky game I'd been unwillingly forced to play. But, this wasn't my first time getting shot and I knew what to expect so I wasn't too worried about my ability to function with such an injury.

I repackaged the wound, covering it with fresh gauze I found in the medicine cabinet, and wrapped it in a white bandage, before dressing in the spare set of clothes I'd brought with me from the motel I'd been staying at. A dark t-shirt, navy blue jeans, sneakers. They were items of clothing that were easily forgettable. I'd be able to slip through crowds with ease.

Once dressed, I went back downstairs. I packed and re-packed my bag, checking that I had everything. Fake identifications, credit cards, cash, my burner phone and untraceable laptop, my knives which in no way would be detected by the airport security thanks to Tasha. Everything appeared to be ready to go. Which meant that there was very little for me to do. It was a quarter after noon. My flight wasn't until eight tonight which meant that I didn't have to be at the airport until around five-thirty or six to check in. That left me with lots of time.

I watched the news for information on my dad's homicide and Wes's disappearance. Thus far, they had no leads. Search crews had been dispatched throughout the area to attempt to locate my brother. An amber alert had even been issued. Little did they know he was long gone, disappearing up to Canada where I hoped and prayed he would be safe.

Then, I searched the web, doing a little digging into my past to try and find just who my parents were and if they were the people I'd grown up with or someone else entirely. It was a hard field to navigate and I hit so many brick walls that, after a while, I had to power down the computer in frustration.

Finally, I slept. I felt as if I'd have very little time for sleeping in the foreseeable future and knew that it was better to be well-rested for as long as possible. I drifted in and out of consciousness for a few hours and when I woke, I felt more aware and ready to face this head on.

The first step: getting to Europe.

I arrived at the airport at six o'clock and had made it to my terminal, fighting through customs and security and baggage checks over the course of the next hour. I got through without issues, my disguised weaponry causing no commotion. I killed the second hour waiting for my flight and then I was gone, up in the air and heading for France. While it would have been faster, and easier, to fly directly to England, I wasn't taking any chances of getting apprehended by MI6. They would surely be monitoring all of the airports in England and, while France would still be on their radar, it would buy me some time without putting me too far away from where I needed to be.

Step two: contacting Wes and Daniel to ensure that they were safe.

I arrived in Paris, France fourteen hours after my flight departed from Redmond, Oregon. With the nine-hour time difference, I landed at just after six in the morning. The moment I landed in Paris, I had the burner phone turned on and ready to use. Already, I'd racked up a missed call and so I locked myself away in a small single-stalled washroom in a café a few hundred feet away from the airport as I hit the redial button.

The phone was answered on the third ring. "Melanie?"

"You guys are safe, then?" I asked Daniel. I pitched my voice low. Even though I was perfectly alone and secluded, my training refused to leave me.

"Yeah," he answered. "We got to Vancouver a couple of hours ago. We're in a little motel just off the highway."

I nodded to myself. "Okay. Stay there only a few days maximum before moving to a new one. Stay under the radar and don't do anything to attract unwanted attention."

"All right."

"How's Wes?"

"Sleeping. He crashed the moment we got in."

"He's exhausted."

"And worried about you. You okay?"

I leaned against the wall, eyes roaming the small little washroom I was tucked away in. "I've been better. I've also been much worse. This is kind of a happy medium, I'd say."

A pause. "You're safe, though. Right?"

"For the time being.

"Where are you?"

"Classified." I trusted Daniel, I did. But if, somehow, his parents got ahold of him, which would be difficult considering I'd taken his phone with me in case Lia happened to call with further information on my parentage, I figured that he may not be able to hold off answering their questions about my whereabouts.

"You're going to a safe house, right?"

"Correct."

"Will you contact us when you're there?"

I frowned in surprise. My brows furrowed above my eyes. "Do you want me to contact you?"

"Yes." No hesitation. "Wes will want to know that you're safe somewhere. I'll want to know."

"Fine."

"Okay."

For a moment, I listened only to the sound of his breathing on the other line. Then, without preamble, I hung up the phone.

Step three: arriving in England.

It was a six-hour shot to Cambridge where I knew Lia's family had an empty safe house. It would be easy enough to hide out there, lie low for a bit, until I could sort out my next move. At the very least, it was good to be out of Oregon for quite a few people knew I was there. Coming to Europe would provide me with easier access to a greater variety of places to hide out in.

From Paris, I took the Eurostar to England. It got me to London in a little over two and a half hours. It was so very tempting to stay there, in London, where I had spent all of my school breaks with Lia and her family since coming to Oaks. But, no matter how badly I'd wanted to stay, I knew that I couldn't, and so I caught a bus from London to Cambridge where I removed myself to the Grimes' family safe house.

The house was a small little red brick two-story with a white door. It was located on the edge of the city, just far enough away from the hustle and bustle to be quiet but not quite removed enough to have prying neighbors. As such, it meant that I was able to sneak into the backyard and locate they kept hidden in an alcove above the door to the backdoor and enter the house without being spotted. Once inside, I made a quick call to my brother and Daniel, telling them I was safe, and then I went on a run of the house.

I checked everything booting up the numerous cameras located on the premises and making sire the motion-censored alarms were up and running without fail. As soon as I was certain that all of the tech was functioning properly, I allowed myself to sleep for a few hours. I'd been going for almost an entire day straight, what with the fourteen-hour flight, two-and-a-half-hour Eurostar ride, and an hour-and-a-half bus trip to Manchester, without sleeping. Considering the time change, though, between England and Oregon, it was only a little after eleven in the morning when I finally arrived at the safe house.

I slept for five hours and then I was up and moving around again, unloading my equipment, which consisted of my laptop and weaponry, stocking up on additional weapons I hadn't been able to smuggle across the border, like some handguns that the Grimes' had in the house, and starting on some research. I began with my parents, looking into their early lives but found nothing out of the ordinary. Like Lia had told me, I'd been unable to pinpoint the specific moment that I had come into my parents' lives. It was as if I were simply thrust upon them, out of the blue. But, no matter how much I dug, I couldn't find any further information.

I knew that, if any place would have information like that, it would be Oaks. It was almost a guarantee to me, since they were the ones who had done my recruiting, it only made sense that they would have looked into my background heavily before approaching me, but I had no way to garner access to their records without leaving a trail leading directly to myself.

I stared at the computer for a minute, staring at the search tab. Then, I typed in a search for the top international news stories in 1999. That would put me at one-year of age, the same time that records of me as a Clarke had appeared.

The first couple of links I clicked on yielded nothing concrete. I got hits that stated the entire sequence of protein-coding for the human chromosome number 22 had been deciphered and that the euro had been officially born as the primary currency in Europe. Turkey had been shaken up by an Earthquake and the United States was pushing ahead with a missile defense system.

And then I found something promising.

On February 17, NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, launched military strikes against the Republic of Chad without authorization from the United Nations Security Council. During the 86-day attack, NATO fighter jets sent down over thirty-thousand tons of bombs into the country, killing many and leaving over nearly four thousand wounded. The bombings destroyed civil infrastructures in urban and rural communities.

While it could have passed for a singular event without much else strange about it, there was a second unexplainable attack on April 24, against the Russian embassy in Sarajevo, Bosnia. Six Russian correspondents were killed and more than thirty diplomats were injured. The embassy building was left in devastating disarray.

I dug my search a little deeper, heading into the darkest corners of the internet. I rerouted my searches, using the hacking techniques I'd learned in school and the even better ones I'd been taught by Tasha, making sure to trace my router through different servers across the area. If I was more skilled, I could have sent the signal across the continent but that was something better left toe the professionals, or my roommate.

My searches led me to encrypted files which provided little more information. For the most part, I was given only a brief report of what had transpired with no reasoning behind the attacks. The rest of the files were redacted, useless.

The information I garnered didn't necessarily mean anything. It could have all been a mix of unexplainable circumstances, mere coincidences, but I was starting to get a feeling in my gut, one that told me that none of this was accidental. My gut had never led me awry before and I wasn't about to distrust it now. Most significantly, I had an inkling that my ending up at Oaks wasn't by chance. It wasn't because of a test score, as I had been led to believe. Something else was going on here and, while I wasn't quite sure what it was, I was certain that I'd find out sooner or later.

I closed the laptop and rubbed at my eyes. It'd been a long day, even with my brief nap respite. My stomach grumbled and so I wandered into the kitchen and grabbed a can of soup. That was one of the good things about the Grimes' safe houses. They were all stocked with non-perishable food items which meant that I wouldn't have to go out in public much unless absolutely necessary.

I ate my dinner in front of the television and traversed the news for anything that seemed out of place. Finding nothing, I finished my meal and did one last sweep on the computer, searching quickly through the news articles in Oregon to see if anything else had been reported on my father's passing. When nothing appeared, I powered down the laptop and wandered up the stairs to the bedrooms.

I was woken up a few hours later by the shrill sound of a ringtone. The room I opened my eyes to was dark, the only light coming from the burner phone lying on a desk halfway across the room. For a second, I was disoriented. In the next second, I lurched to my feet and was reaching for the phone in the same fluid movement. The only people who had the number to this phone were Wes and Daniel. Something was wrong.

"Talk to me."

"Melanie." Daniel's voice was a hushed whisper on the other line. He was breathing heavily, pants coming through the static air. It sounded as if he'd been running.

"What's going on? Are you all right? Is Wes?"

Dear god, let Wes be all right.

"It's just me," Daniel said.

My heart crashed through my chest, straight into my stomach. I felt like throwing up. "What happened, Daniel? Where is my brother?"

"I-I don't know. It all happened so fast. We were sitting in the motel and then the door just flew open. People stormed in. They were SWAT or CIA or something like that. I don't know exactly. We tried to run. I jumped out of the bathroom window and was a block away before I realized that Wes was gone. I think they took him. I never heard any gunshots or anything." His voice was abundantly smaller when he asked, "Mel, what do I do?"

I swallowed the lump in my throat, feeling sick. Every instinct I had wanted to rush off to Vancouver, forget subtlety and being careful and just go to my brother. But I knew that by the time I would get there, he would be long gone. I needed a new plan of action but first I had to get Daniel out of this.

"Did they see your face?"

"I don't know. I-I think so. Yeah. Yes."

Shit. There was no chance now that he could just slip back into his quiet suburban life and forget the past few days.

"Okay. You need to get out of there. Get on the first flight you can to London. I'll meet you there and will get you to a safe location. Don't talk to anyone and avoid detection as well as you can. If the people who attacked you don't know your identity then you should be able to get out of the country okay."

"And if they know who I am?"

My tone was grim. "Then you better hope that your plane takes off before they get a chance to stop you from leaving." There was a brief hesitation on the other line. "Daniel?"

"What about Wes? I can't just leave him!"

As much as I hated to say this, I knew that I had to. "You don't have a choice. Get your ass out of there and get to me. I'm going to get my brother back. You can count on that. I won't let them hurt him."

"How?"

"I have a plan. I'll explain when you get here." That would give me time to actually come up with something because right now I could only think about the fact that my brother was gone. And not just gone but taken by people I didn't know which meant that I didn't have the slightest idea on how to get him back. "You call me when you get to an airport and are about to get on a flight, understood?"

"Yes. Melanie?"

"What?"

"I'm so sorry."

And he was. I could hear the anguish in his voice. Knew that he was probably pissed with himself and ignoring every instinct he had that shouted at him to go back to Wes. "It wasn't your fault, Daniel. And I know that you want to go back for him but right now I need you to be safe and to get here to me. Okay?"

"Okay."

"Call me."

"I promise."

I hung up and ran a hand over my face. I threw the phone onto the bed and yelled in anger. I kicked the desk chair, sent it flying a few feet away. This was my fault. I should have never left them. And now my brother was paying the price for my mistake.

There was only one clear path for me. I couldn't do this alone. There was no chance. I wouldn't be able to get to my brother and take care of Daniel all by myself which meant that I needed backup. Except, the only backup I had I couldn't use because, even though I knew that all of them would be there for me in a heartbeat, I couldn't let them jeopardize their futures for me.

I headed downstairs to where I'd left my laptop and Daniel's cell phone sitting at the kitchen table. I powered the phone on, disabled all GPS systems on the device so that it was completely untraceable, and scrolled through his contacts. I found the one I wanted and dialed.

"Hey, sweetheart."

"Agent Ortiz."

There was a pause on the other end of the line. Then, Daniel's mother asked, "Who is this? Where's my son?"

"This is Melanie Clarke. I want you to listen very carefully to what I have to say. If you don't, I will personally make sure that you never see Daniel again."

There was only worry in her voice when she said, "What is it that you have to say, Melanie?"

"I want to meet."

"When?"

"Tomorrow. Seven p.m." That would give Daniel enough time to get to England. Enough time for me to figure out my next move.

"Where?"

"Aldwych Chambers, Temple, WC2R. The penthouse. It belongs to Brent Grimes and his wife."

"I know the place," she replied to me. "Do you have any other demands?"

"I want Brent and Lydia there." I knew that Lia's parents would be on my side. They were family. "Along with you and your husband. No one else. And I want to make sure that you leave Lia Grimes, Max Bennett, and Natasha Fischer left out of this. They have no place in this affair, do you understand me?"

"Yes. My son...have you hurt him?

"Not yet."

Let her interpret that in her own way.

I listened as her breath hitched in her throat. "Is there anything else you want, Melanie?"

"Don't come armed. I'll know if you do and I will also know if you bring anyone else other than those I have outlined to you. Understood?"

"I understand your dema—"

"Good," I cut in. "I'll see you tomorrow."

I hung up the call before she could reply and set the phone down on the table. There wasn't really much else I could do to prepare for this meeting. I would arm myself before I left because I knew that, even with my demand, Daniel and Lia's parents would all be coming with firearms. I'd get there early, to the meeting spot, with Daniel in tow. That would ensure that his parents would be less willing to start a fire fight lest their child get caught in the crossfire. Before they arrived, I'd hack into the security cameras and sensory systems to make sure that no one else appeared unannounced.

But that still left the entire day. The only thing I had left to do now was wait for Daniel's call. And then I would