June 2nd, 2014 - Zürich, Switzerland.

Sabine was propped up in bed scrolling through her cellphone as she browsed the morning news. There had been no mentions of a shooting in Milan, and there were no public alerts out about her or the child. Both were good news, but it only served to confirm what she already suspected: that the Agency was keeping this entire mess under tight control until it cleaned house.

That aside, it was positive, because it meant that it was far less likely that a random stranger would recognise a photograph on the television. On the other hand, it was equally bad as it meant that the Agency would be coming for her a lot harder the next time she crossed paths with them.

Regardless, as things stood, she had a relatively clean break. As long as they left Zürich that day, they were reasonably sure of some breathing room from pursuit. If she were alone, she could move far faster, but with a child in tow, she needed all the extra time she could get.

Sabine was startled when a small body wriggled over under the duvet and snaked a pair of arms around her thigh. Lifting the bedding, she found Amélie gazing up at her with wide innocent eyes, “Bonjour!”

“Morning, bed bug,” Sabine smiled, putting down her cellphone. “Did you sleep ok?”

Amélie yawned and nodded, “I like the big bed, it’s snuggly.”

Sabine stroked the girl’s hair and gazed at the room around them. It was a good hotel; not the Oriental, admittedly, but it was more than comfortable enough for their present needs. With cash not being on their list of current problems, it allowed her another deviation from their expected behavior. Protocol would dictate that she stay somewhere cheap and anonymous, a place where they would be invisible; somewhere that would not ask for cards or ID. The Zürich City Plaza was none of those things, but then, she had a clean identity to use and the image of a casual tourist to maintain.

“When we find somewhere more long-term, you’ll have your own bed.”

“Will I go to school there?”

“Sure,” Sabine nodded. Internally, she cursed herself; there she was, making more permanent plans. It felt easier and easier to say, but it was so very hard to swallow.

“What will it be like?” Amélie asked, leaning against Sabine.

“I don’t really know,” she admitted. “We have a lot to do first, before we get there. I hate dragging you around everywhere. This can’t be easy for you, huh?”

“It’s ok,” Amélie admitted sadly. “I miss my brother, and I miss Mama.”

“I know you do, Chérie,” Sabine sighed, a lump in her throat.  “I would give anything to bring them back to you. Maybe one day, when you’re older, I can explain this in a way that will make sense to you. Hell, I wish it made sense to me.”

“Bad men want to hurt us?”

“How did you?”

“I’m four, I’m not stupid,” Amélie pouted.

“I guess not,” Sabine shook her head. “Yeah, bad men. But I’ll keep you safe, you understand that, right? Nobody is ever going to hurt you as long as I’m here.”

“So you won’t leave me?” The girl asked quietly. “You said to Nonna Francesca that you wanted to find me a real home.”

“I uh…” Sabine balked, sitting up straighter in the bed. “I didn’t mean that quite that way.”

“I don’t want to find a new home,” Amélie answered earnestly. “I want to stay with you.”

Sabine wasn’t sure what to say. She had so little experience with children and being a parent. For a four-year-old, Amélie seemed startlingly certain about her opinions and seemed far more aware than Sabine had given her credit for. Changing her approach, Sabine decided to treat her more like an adult.

“I don’t know if I can keep you,” Sabine offered softly. “Wouldn’t you want a nice home with a mother, a father, and maybe some brothers and sisters? Somewhere safe to grow up and learn? Somewhere normal?”

Amélie shook her head, “I want you, I like you.”

Sabine sighed, “You won’t be safe with me, Chérie. You would be better off somewhere where people aren’t trying to look for us. On top of that…” Sabine hesitated. “You know that I’m not really a girl, right?”

Amélie furrowed her brow, “Yes, you are.”

“I’m not,” Sabine repeated gently. “This is just so we can move around easier. People were looking for Ryan, but they were not looking for a girl. To everyone, they see a mother and a daughter, which means we can be safer.”

“You’re a much better girl than you were a boy.”

Sabine almost choked, “I uh, I’m just pretending. You know what pretending is, right?”

“Like make-believe?”

“Yeah,” Sabine nodded, “Pretending is where you act like you’re something else, but it’s just make-believe for a reason.”

Amélie sat up and scrunched up her face, “Non.”

“Non?” Sabine raised an eyebrow, “I can promise you, I am.”

The little girl shook her head, “You behave more like a girl.”

“Oh, well, I guess you’re the expert,” Sabine chuckled. “I guess, for now, it helps. But it won’t be forever.”

“You should,” Amélie declared defiantly, “Girls are much better.”

Sabine swiveled her legs out of the bed before looking back at the child, “Oh, I should, should I? I’ll make sure I take note of that. For now, though, I’ve gotta pee.”

“Big girls sit and wipe front to back,” Amélie chorused.

Sabine rolled her eyes as she headed for the bathroom. She was not expecting to be ambushed about her identity by a preschooler first thing in the morning, nor was she quite ready to consider it herself. This parenting gig was almost as much trouble as taking on the Central Intelligence Agency.

Shutting the bathroom door behind herself, Sabine approached the sink and leaned against the counter. Staring into the mirror, she squinted at her reflection in the glass. Even like this, she still looked concerningly female, despite her lack of makeup or feminine clothing. Her blonde hair was up in a ponytail and was sticking out at odd angles from a restless night of sleep.

Stripping out of the T-shirt and Panties that she had worn to bed, Sabine looked away from the traitorous glass and turned on the shower. Waiting a moment for the water to warm, she stepped under the jets and allowed them to pound into her tired muscles. She wanted to dive under the shower fully and immerse herself in the steaming hot water, but Francesca had been insistent; she was not to get her extensions wet for the first 48 hours. Reluctantly, she soaped up and washed herself down.

As she showered, she thought about the child sitting outside in the bedroom. She had grown unusually close to her over the last several days, closer than she would ever have imagined she might become with another human being. Whether it was the trauma they shared from their flight from danger or their shared status as orphans, something had bonded them at a primal level. Sabine felt more than simply responsible for the girl’s safety; she wanted her around. She yearned to make the child happy.

Whenever Amélie asked her about something, or Sabine took the time to teach her or explain something, she felt a moment of deep pride as the girl understood and grew. Was this what parents felt? Did they take an active joy in their child’s development and progress?

The idea of keeping the girl was a pipedream, one that she knew she could never allow herself to entertain. The sensible thing to do was to keep her safe until she was able to find her somewhere permanently, somewhere safe. She had to keep her job focused on getting them to safety and finding the girl a real family, as she had promised.

The seed of a feeling was beginning to grow within Sabine that made her feel decidedly uncertain about that plan. At a primal level, she was starting to realize that she wanted to stay with Béatrice. Somewhere deep down, she was beginning to imagine a life together, and she was excited about the idea. It was a feeling that surged every time she helped the girl learn, whenever she held her hand or earned one of her beautiful little smiles.

What if she wanted to be the girl’s… parent for real?

As it stood, on paper, she was in fact Amélie Garnier’s mother, but that could not last. Would she one day become Ryan Knight’s daughter? Was it possible, in the unlikely event that she managed to clear her name, that the Agency would allow this to continue? Allowing herself to hope could only end in tears for both of them, she knew that. The truth was, however, that the more she told herself it was never going to last, the more she began to want it.

Tom Spencer would have had an answer for her, she realized. He would have understood her predicament and known exactly the right thing to tell her. So would Francesca, but the truth was that neither of them could help at the moment. Here, they were entirely on their own. They had nobody else to turn to and only their wits to keep them alive.

Sabine’s mind flashed back to her escape and evasion training during her time at the Farm. Alone in the woods in the middle of the night, no compass, food, or map, but… Sabine frowned and stopped washing in the middle of soaping her leg. She had not been alone during that exercise; she had been with a friend. A woman that she had met during her induction into the Agency, a woman she had leaned on as much as she had her. A woman that at this moment, was in Paris.

It was an insane idea, but somehow, the idea of returning to Paris felt like exactly the thing that Tom Spencer would have laughed at and called a fantastic idea. It was so insanely stupid that it was probably one of his top suggestions. By returning to Paris, their base of operations, she would be in the one place that they would never look for her. Nobody in their right mind would do such a stupid thing.

Most importantly, Paris was where they all lived. That meant that not only would she be able to potentially access her own apartment, but she could gain access to Edwards' residence, too. The man would be halfway across Europe tracking her down, while she would be breaking into his apartment to search for evidence. She was right, it was an incredibly dangerous idea, but it was potentially the best one she had to date. She was going to need help if she was to pull this off, and she knew exactly who she would need.

 

 

March 12th, 2006,  Camp Peary, Virginia.

Ryan crept forward and settled down into the shadows beneath a tall oak tree. He rubbed his eyes, trying to encourage them to focus better, but his exhaustion was beginning to get the better of him. They were in the middle of a night exercise to locate and penetrate an enemy compound, but he was starting to get turned around in the endless woodland of Camp Peary. They had been up since four that morning, and now, it was a little after midnight. He was cold, tired, and he wanted it all to be over.

Better known as the Farm within the intelligence community, Camp Peary, Virginia, was formally referred to as Armed Forces Experimental Training Activity Center. The facility played host to the Clandestine Service Trainee Program, where recruits from the CIA and other US Intelligence agencies underwent their training.

At the moment, Ryan was just about hanging on by the skin of his teeth. He had been recruited out of college by one of his professors, and somehow, to his very great surprise, he had made it through the vetting and recruitment process to join the Central Intelligence Agency. Once there, he was filtered by his skills and psychological profile before being sent off to join the Directorate of Operations.

“Knight, is that you?” a voice whispered sharply through the darkness.

Ryan’s head snapped around and spotted a dark shape hunched a few yards away. Squinting, he was able to make out a shock of dark hair and a pale face. “Patterson?”

The shape moved forward at a hunch, followed by two other figures in the darkness. “Thought that was you,” Claire Patterson, one of the other trainees, grinned. “Real cold out tonight, huh?”

“Yeah, just a little,” Ryan agreed as the others drew close enough for him to make out their faces. Patterson was accompanied by two other women. He recognized them from lectures and training, but he had never spoken to them outside of general platitudes. “Uh, hi.”

“Hi,” A short blonde smiled back, her breath misting in the air before her. The other woman, a stocky brunette, just nodded a greeting and kept her jaw firmly set.

“This is Sarah Harding and Monica Scott. They’re both DIA.”

“Defense Intelligence Agency, huh? Cool.” Ryan nodded.

While they had not been told to segregate into groups based on their parent agencies, it had happened somewhat organically. While staying at Camp Peary, the candidates were split into two dorms, one for the men and one for the women. They had communal showers for each dorm and otherwise spent all of their time together. When not sleeping or washing, they ate together in the mess, and they worked together during training and classwork. With cliques forming between the various parent agencies, along with those with military backgrounds and civilian, it was starting to feel a little like high school at times for Ryan. Admittedly, there were just a few more guns than at his last school.

“So what’s the plan?” Patterson asked, raising an eyebrow.

“I’m pretty sure I’m going in the right direction,” Ryan admitted. “The assholes I was grouped up with ditched me and took off east; they were convinced it was the right direction.”

“They’re going to be a bit damp then,” Monica piped up. “That’s the York River.”

“I tried to tell them that,” Ryan sighed. “The big one, Davis? He’s convinced he’s a Navy Seal, and he claimed he was following the moss and the moon, or some shit.”

“Men,” Monica muttered under her breath, just loud enough to make Ryan’s cheeks color slightly.

“Nah, we’re not far, if my math is right,” Claire offered. “We came from the north, which means if we keep the Beaverdam Pond on our left, then we’re going to be a couple of hundred yards away. The compound should be dead ahead.”

“Want to work together?” Ryan offered hopefully. “I’m a little turned around, and my idiots decided they preferred washing out, literally.”

“Yeah, sure,” Claire nodded. “I saw you on the range, you’re pretty good with a pistol, might come in handy if we bodge this thing.”

“Fair enough,” Ryan agreed. “Lead on then.”

The small group moved through the woodland with renewed confidence. While they had been split into groups by their instructors, the real objective had been mission success. Wildly different personality types had been grouped together to cause division and sow conflict between the candidates, a psychological game to increase the difficulty of what was potentially a relatively straightforward objective. One made far more potent by the exhaustion stripping away normal civil behavior.

Patterson had been right; they had been little more than a few hundred yards from the target compound, a fortress built from shipping containers and plywood that looked surprisingly Middle-Eastern for the Virginia woodland. Stopping the group just inside the woodline, they settled down to observe their target.

“What do you think?” Harding asked, her eyes scanning the compound. “I don’t see any cameras.”

“Doesn’t mean that they’re not there,” the other DIA candidate, Scott, opined dryly.

Patterson withdrew her pistol from its holster and checked that the weapon was loaded with the simulation rounds that they were using for the exercise, “One way to find out. Anyway, if we find anything in there, I can take care of it. Better that they didn’t find out who hit the place than not see us coming.”

“She has a point,” Ryan nodded. “If we’re fast, we can be in before it matters, solve it on the fly, and clean up afterwards. This whole thing is about getting us to improvise under stress, right?”

“Sounds good to me,” Harding shrugged.

The group took a moment to prepare themselves and check over their equipment. Once they were satisfied, they set off down the slope and out of the treeline. The compound itself was only fifty feet from the edge of the trees, and they covered the distance quickly and quietly. No alarms sounded, and no guards were spotted.

Once they were against the white painted walls of the containers, they started moving along the edge until they reached the corner. Patterson, leading the way, took a moment to peek briefly around the edge before darting back into cover.

“Two guards at the entrance, about sixty feet away. They’re not looking this way, but they’re going to be a problem.”

“No other ways in?” Scott asked.

“Solid wall,” Patterson shook her head.

Ryan glanced up. “The walls are only single container height, we could go over?”

“Not bad,” Patterson agreed. “Scott, Knight, you guys boost me up, and I can give us a hand, ok?”

The two candidates got themselves into position and created a stable platform to lift Patterson up. Carefully climbing up them, she reached up and grasped the top edge of the container before pulling herself up and over the top. Vanishing from sight, she reappeared moments later, her head and shoulders silhouetted by the moonlight. One by one, with the help of Patterson, the remaining three silently climbed up to join her atop the container wall. Remaining prone on top of the metalwork, they observed the inner spaces of the compound.

The space was roughly the size of a football field and was laid out with containers, portacabins, and old junk cars to resemble a small town in some far-off desert nation. There were several fires burning in oil drums, and shadowy figures could be seen patrolling within the walls.

“Where do you think the briefcase is?”

Ryan shook his head, “Not sure, what about you two?” he asked, glancing over at the two DIA candidates.

Harding bit her lip and squinted out into the darkness, “Most of the guards are making repeated passes by the prefab on the far left, the one with the barrel fire. If it were me, I’d put it in there.”

“That’s a fair bet,” Scott agreed.

“Ok,” Patterson nodded. “Let’s move. Stay quiet as long as we can, and we might have the element of surprise if we need it. I still don’t see any cameras, but play it safe. Scott, Harding, drop down and work over there low, I’ll go with Knight up here, and we can make a pincer.”

The two DIA candidates nodded and slipped down into the compound and vanished into the darkness. Claire Patterson rolled over to face Ryan and offered him a hand up. “You good?”

“Yeah,” Ryan nodded, accepting the hand up. The two stayed hunched low as they moved along the top of the containers. “Those two seem to listen to you. I thought the DIA guys were super standoffish.”

“The guys, maybe,” Patterson whispered back. “The women? We’re already at a disadvantage with the instructors by virtue of being female. It makes us a bit more practical than you guys running around waving your dicks around trying to be the alpha.”

“Fair point,” Ryan conceded, cautiously stepping between two containers. “Stop, guard ahead.”

The two hunched down and stayed motionless as a guard in black fatigues strolled past beneath them, a rifle slung over his shoulder. After he had moved on, the pair resumed their progress. “You seemed to be getting ok with the guys before, what changed?”

Ryan made a face that was unseen in the darkness. “Nothing really changed; most of them were always massive a-holes. I just wasn’t willing to stomp around Chesapeake Bay all night until they realized that they were wrong.”

“The staff wants to weed out those who can’t play well with others,” Claire whispered. “That’s why they always force different cliques and groups together during these exercises; it forces us to overcome and complete the mission regardless.”

Ryan held up a hand to indicate stop, and the pair fell silent. A quick hand signal indicated two guards below them. Claire gestured over the side of the container and hesitated for a moment before miming sleep.

Ryan nodded his understanding and followed Patterson’s lead as she slipped silently off the edge of the container and crept closer to the pair of guards. The two men were standing on the edge of the pool of light cast by a barrel fire outside the target building. Both men were talking at a low volume and seemed to be relatively relaxed. From what Ryan could hear, it was about a recent football game that the pair had bet money on.

Approaching silently, Ryan took the man on the left and Patterson took the right. On her nod, he leapt forward and wrapped an arm around the neck of the man while his other hand covered the man’s mouth. In less than 10 seconds, the man went limp in his arms. Easing the man down so he wasn’t hurt, Ryan took the man’s weapon and cleared the action before tossing it under one of the nearby cars. Glancing over to his right, Ryan saw that Patterson had done the same thing.

The darkness moved behind her left shoulder, and Ryan drew his pistol quickly, aiming for the target as it came forward into the light. Almost as quickly as he did so, he lowered his weapon as he recognized the shapes of Scott and Harding. Turning his attention back to the target building, he waited until he felt a tap on his shoulder before moving forward.

The interior of the cabin looked like a typical office on a construction site with several desks, filing cabinets, and a station holding a still-warm coffee pot. On a table in the center of the office, a silver metal briefcase was lying untouched, as if placed waiting for their attention.

Harding stepped forward towards the briefcase before her partner Scott held out an arm, blocking her path, “Wait,” she whispered. “Something’s not right about this.”

“Too easy,” Patterson agreed. “Where is everyone?”

“Nah, room’s too small,” Scott repeated, her eyes squinting as if measuring by sight alone. “Outside, it was forty feet; in here, it’s missing like ten.”

“You sure?”

The woman nodded, her eyes scanning the space warily.

Ryan glanced over at a bookcase set against the wall on the left side of the office. The floor in the office was old linoleum, its surface weathered by many feet over the years. There was mud tracked into the space that was smudged across large areas of the floor, except for an arc that traced back to the edge of the wall. “The bookcase, it’s a door,” Ryan muttered to Patterson under his breath. “Don’t look over.”

“Trap?”

Ryan nodded, “Probably. You see any power cables running in here?”

“Outside, on the left,” Scott offered.

“Head back outside, give me a ten count, then cut it. Then cover us.”

Scott nodded and casually made her exit from the office. Ryan withdrew the spare pistol magazine from his belt and emptied the bullets into his hand. Looking over at the others, he glanced at the briefcase and inclined his head towards the door. “As soon as the power goes out, it won’t affect us, but it will affect them. Grab the case and get out of here with Scott. We’ll cause a fuss and follow behind.”

Harding nodded, and after a few more seconds had passed, there was a fizz and the red light on the coffee pot went out. Harding ran for the case and snatched it off the table. As she did so, Ryan snatched a clipboard off one of the walls and jammed it under the foot of the bookcase.

Turning, he followed Harding and Patterson as they made their exit. Almost exactly at the same moment, Ryan heard a loud thumping and a yell from behind them. Without stopping to find out who it was, he raced outside to find the others waiting for him, briefcase in hand. Tossing the handful of bullets into the barrel fire beside the cabin, he gestured at the top of the containers. “Up there, let's go!”

The group hopped into a car and pulled themselves up onto the containers. As they did so, the rounds in the fire began to cook off with loud pops and cracks behind them. Ryan ran as hard as he could, following the others as they vaulted gaps between the containers and continued their run back the way they had come. Behind them, loud yells and barked orders could be heard from the startled guards as they struggled to comprehend what had just happened to them. Reaching the end of the row, they dropped down onto the grass.

As soon as Ryan’s feet touched the grass, huge floodlights exploded to life, bathing the entire area in white light, “Endex. All trainees, End Exercise."

Ryan stopped dead, protecting his eyes from the blinding lights. Beside him, the others were doing similarly. A few moments passed, and a group of figures stepped out of the darkness and into the pool of light. All of them were wearing the black fatigues of the training staff.

“Whose bright idea was that shit?” the Chief instructor, Barret, asked as he strode forward, a deep scowl on his face. The man was in his late fifties and held a passing resemblance to the actor Sam Elliot. At the moment, his moustache was twitching with irritation.

“I uh, it was kinda a team effort, Sir,” Claire offered, speaking for the group. “We didn’t really have a leader as such, we kinda made it up on the fly.”

“You made that stunt up? Really?”

“Yes, sir,” Claire nodded, glancing at the others. “We had to improvise, and when Trainee Scott spotted that the room was too small, we figured that it was part of the exercise.”

“I have never had to be let out of my observation room on this exercise before,” Barret huffed. “Two of my men knocked out cold, improvised use of explosives, and damage to the training center… I should fail the lot of you.”

Barrat glared at the group for a moment before sighing, “That is what I would like to do; however, I am afraid that I cannot. Much to my irritation, you were the first and only group to actually make it out with the package during this rotation. On top of that, you managed to bamboozle the drill staff and put two former seals to bed.”

“What Mr Barrat means,” One of the other instructors offered, glancing at the Chief, “Is that you demonstrated the exact elements of flexibility, adaptation, and teamwork that we wanted to see from tonight. You might have caused a mess doing it, but we technically didn’t tell you not to. Plus, Anderson and Kent will get over their little nap.”

Claire’s worried expression shifted to one of mirth, “Yes, sir.”

“There’s a truck waiting on the main road,” Barrat waved a finger vaguely over his shoulder. “Get out of here and get some sleep before I decide to make you clean up your mess.”

Ryan’s heart began to settle as he realized that they were not actually in trouble. With Barrat, you never really knew. The old man was a hardcore veteran of the Company, and he did not tolerate any stupidity. Setting off after the others, he made his exit before they could blame him for his creative use of simmunitions.

“Man, you got yourself knocked out by a bunch of girls?” One of the drill staff joked. “You’re slipping, dude.”

“Man, they came up behind us out of nowhere, it was kinda hot though.” Another voice chuckled.

Ryan kept his head down and did not show any reaction. It was clearly a mistake; he had been working with a group of women, and he was not particularly tall. Correcting the man would cause more embarrassment than it was worth. Setting off at a Jog, Ryan caught up to the others before they had made it past the edge of the compound and fell in step. It did not matter to him that they were women; they had been equally capable in every way. Plus, it was the first time on the course that he had felt like an equal team member rather than an afterthought. He could do far worse.

 

 

June 2nd, 2014 - Near Basel, Switzerland.

Another train and another window. The countryside flashed past as they sped through the French countryside on their way north. They had changed trains at Basel in Switzerland before finally boarding a Paris-bound TGV.

It was true that flying would be faster, especially now that they had good, clean identity documents, but the increased level of scrutiny at airports made that an unattractive prospect. More importantly, if they flew, there was no way that Sabine could bring a weapon with her. Airlines tended to frown upon that sort of thing, especially without any paperwork.

Returning to Paris seemed like a foolhardy decision on the surface, but the more she had thought about it, the more it felt like her only realistic option. While the idea had come to her in the shower, it was one of only two possible angles of attack that were available to her. 

On one hand, she could infiltrate a terror cell in Lebanon and target the Ahmad angle directly. It was less valuable from an intelligence standpoint, given the likely power dynamic at play between Edwards and the now-dead terrorist. Secondly, and most importantly, it was going to be considerably more difficult and dangerous to do as a white woman with a child. Difficult to the point of impossible without the assets of the Agency behind her.

The other option, the one that had seemed so unlikely, was to go after Edwards directly. Edwards. Whichever way she cut it, he was the center of this entire mess, and it was the best place for her to find a real clue. While he was jetting around Europe chasing her tail, he would not be in the one place that she might find answers: his apartment in Paris. 

With French identity documents and her familiarity with the city, she had a good chance of moving around with relative freedom. While the Agency was likely keeping the search for Ryan and the child to themselves, there was every possibility that their images had been circulated to local law enforcement under any number of false pretenses. While it was far less likely to hit, given her current appearance, there was still the chance that little Amélie might be recognized.

“Are you excited to go back to France?” Sabine asked, tucking a lock of hair behind Amélie’s ear.

The little girl looked thoughtful, “I am, people speak funny in Italy and Swizzyland.”

“Do you know why that is?” Sabine asked.

“They speak Swizzyland?”

“They speak different languages, yes. They speak Italian in Italy, and in Switzerland, they speak Italian, German, and French.”

“That sounds confusing.”

“Yeah,  I don’t know about that one,” Sabine grinned. “But it works for them.”

“You’re American, do you speak American?”

“We speak English in America,” Sabine corrected.

“How do you speak French then?”

“I speak a lot of languages for my job,” Sabine pointed out. “English, French, German, Italian, some Arabic.”

“My Papa used to talk Arabic when he was on the telephone,” Amélie offered sadly. “Was that why they took Mama and me? Was Papa a bad man?”

Sabine felt a lump in her throat as she watched the child grapple with what had happened to her. Reaching over, she hugged her into her side, “It’s complicated,” she admitted carefully. “He did some really bad things, and he was friends with very bad people. What happened to him and your Mama was wrong, though.”

“Does that make me bad, too?”

“God, no, Chérie, never,” Sabine gasped. “You’ve done nothing wrong at all, I promise. What happened was not your fault. I can’t bring them back, but I promise, I won’t let anyone ever hurt you. You know that, right?”

Amélie nodded uncertainly, “Does that mean I don’t have to go away?”

Sabine bit her lip and glanced out the window at the speeding scenery. She wanted to say no, she wanted to tell the girl that she would never have to worry ever again. She wanted to tell her that she would never feel scared or lonely, that she would always be there for her. 

Squeezing her eyes shut, Sabine tried to think of a valid reason to avoid what she wanted to say. She had known the girl for scarcely five days, yet in that time, she had become the child’s sole protector and guardian. She had saved her from certain death and crossed a continent to protect her.

“Mama Sabine?”

Sabine opened her eyes and saw an expectant little face looking up at her. “I uh, I don’t know what the future holds for us, Chérie,” she admitted quietly. “A lot of things could change, or they might not. I would very much like to stay with you, if I can. I don’t know if that’s right, or even sensible. Heck, I don’t even know if it’s even allowed. It all depends on what you want, and I need you to understand that it might not be our choice in the end.”

“Is it because of the bad people?”

“I hope not,” Sabine smiled. “Maybe the good people, the ones that don’t know we’re good too. When they do, and it’s all over, they might want you to live somewhere better.”

“I don’t want somewhere better, I want you.”

“You don’t even know where, hell, I don’t even know where that would be.”

“I don’t mind,” Amélie opined. “We could live anywhere.”

“Well, if I have a job still, maybe we’d have to live…” Sabine hesitated. She was letting herself get carried away. Maybe, she was starting to hope.  “We’ll see.”

“Ok,” Amélie grinned.

“Why don’t you do some coloring?” Sabine offered, nudging the book open on the table before them. “They’ll be serving lunch soon. I bet you could finish that picture before they do.”

The idea seemed to distract the girl. More importantly, it distracted her from a conversation that was proving extremely difficult for Sabine. Doing as she suggested, Amélie returned to her coloring book and continued reinterpreting a flower in her own vision. 

Sabine enjoyed watching the earnest concentration with which the girl worked. It reminded her of an earlier, easier time. A time when she had been so blissfully ignorant of the world around her. The child’s world was a small one and mercifully so. The world outside was cold and cruel. It was the least she could do to try to minimise the pain the poor girl had already suffered.

Sabine crossed her arms and hugged herself. She wished she had someone who could do the same for her. Here she was, alone in a terrifying world with people trying to kill her. Worse yet, she was prancing around in women’s clothes again. What confounded her the most was just how quickly it had all come back to her again. By that morning, being Sabine was already feeling like second nature for her again. It had been years since she had done it, and now, she was finding her groove so easily that it was becoming concerning.

She had dressed that morning in a blue floral maxi skirt and a white long-sleeved T-shirt. Her makeup was minimal but pretty, and her hair was twisted up into a bun behind her head. She looked casual and put together; a casual mom and her daughter traveling home to France. It shouldn’t be that easy, nor should she look the way she did. It all felt so strangely comfortable, which made it far worse. The way she moved, talked, and acted all told the world that she was a woman. Not a single person that she had interacted with seemed in any doubt of that fact.

At least nobody had tried to hit on her yet. That part of Alessandra’s more overt femininity was something that she did not miss. The first time around, Francesca had made her accept the behavior and use it as practice. She had begrudgingly flirted back and feigned interest in any men who approached her. After that, well, she had never wanted to be near one again in that regard.

Things were different this time; she was stronger, and she had a real purpose now. No matter what came, she would handle it because it was the only way that she could see a future for herself and Amélie. She would succeed this time because she wanted to… and that was a powerful feeling.

She wasn’t afraid of anything as trivial as men’s attention anymore. Plus, this time, she could shoot them if they bothered her.

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