

SpyCam:

The Final Fight

# By Zoe Wynns
Stop right here! This book is the fifth and last in a series. If you haven't read the other books, check them out by searching the name "Zoe Wynns SpyCam" on Smashwords, Google, or iBooks. This book will make more senses and be a satisfying conclusion to the series if you've read the other four.

Thank you!

### Praise for Zoe Wynns

"Zoe Wynns is a talented young writer who is off to a terrific start with SpyCam: The President Plot. This is an entertaining and well-paced read, driven by spirited 14-year-old Cam and her plucky BFF, Stella. Zoe's novel has suspense, adventure and a lot of heart — a combination that will leave readers eager to take more fictional journeys with Cam and crew!"

—Tracie Fellers (fiction and nonfiction author with work in Long Story Short: Flash Fiction by Sixty-Five of North Carolina's Finest Writers, and 27 Views of Raleigh)

"Zoe Wynns is an amazing author. Her first two books were well written and interesting. I have read Journey to the End five times. Her book, Flicker, Fade, Soar, that I recently just finished, was awesome. This new book is obviously another masterpiece. Keep going Zoe!"

-Caleb McLamb (CEO of M-Tech)

"Zoe Wynns has done it again. Her SpyCam books are the sort of chair-gripping page-turners that grab you at the prologue and continue to hold on after the final page has been read. But it's not only the 394 unexpected plot twists that make her writing impossible to put down; her characters, too, are unforgettable. Whether it's selfless Cam, spunky Stella, or power-crazed Shardstorm, Zoe's characters don't just come alive off the page -- they jump out at you with every witty remark or infamous almost-kiss, throwing confetti into the air (or in Shardstorm's case, bombs). In short? Zoe's novels are the rare, wonderful kind that will touch your heart and stay there forever."

-Luna Hou (winner of Wake County's annual Teen Poetry Contest)

"If you are into spies, youth fiction, and adventure, Zoe Wynns is an up-and-coming author you should definitely check out. Her SpyCam series features a strong, bright female protagonist who faces a world of conquering the bad guys with ingenuity, humor and a minimum of blood and gore. Wholesome excitement that will keep you turning pages until the end... and then you start the next book!"

-Kathryn Tinsley, former college psychology instructor
I am sixteen years old. SpyCam: The Final Fight is my eighth self-published book. Feel free to send me feedback if you find a mistake in the book, but know that I tried my best, worked very hard on the book, and I am very proud of the final novel. Thank you for downloading or purchasing this book.

If you enjoy this book, feel free to download my seven other self-published books. Journey to the End is available on iBooks and Smashwords. Flicker, Fade, Soar is available on iBooks and Smashwords. SpyCam: The President Plot, SpyCam: The Android Attack, SpyCam: The School Secret and SpyCam: The Time Team are available on iBooks and Smashwords. Awaken Illusionia is also available on iBooks and Smashwords.

Please rate this book or write a quick review if you enjoy it! Thanks in advance!

I hope you enjoy SpyCam: The Final Fight!
This is a work of fiction. While some businesses and places do exist that I've mentioned, any interactions inside those places or any descriptions of those places are purely fictional. All persons are fictional, and any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

This book is published by Smashwords. No part of this book may be copied or reproduced without the consent of Zoe Wynns. All questions to thewynnsfamily@gmail.com.

Summary: Everything comes to a head at the villain Shardstorm's headquarters for the Final Fight in the spy world.

Smashwords Edition License Notes:

Thank you for downloading this eBook. This book remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy from their favorite authorized retailer. Thank you for your support.

Copyright © 2019 Zoe Wynns.

### Prologue

Beautiful was not often a word used to describe her.

Cold. Strong. Powerful. Calculating. Those were the words more often used when a bystander would get a glimpse of her, and she could hear their nervous whispers to their friends.

"Who is she?" "Why is she here?" "Why does she look like that?"

She would then pierce them with a glare from her harsh brown eyes and they would shut up immediately.

Still, perhaps if they weren't so terrified of her they would see the beauty in her features. Her cheekbones were sharp, and her eyes had a depth in them that only a few of high intelligence could match.

That's probably why Dash Tempest, who had sworn to keep to his path alone, fell for her.

She had big plans, just like he did. She had her eyes on power, just like he did. And when they came together, Dash just knew they could accomplish what he had before found impossible.

They never married, but she was his partner, his lover, for almost two years. At some time during those two years, Dash Tempest made the transition from a young man who simply yearned for power to a supervillain named Shardstorm.

And his lover made the transition from a young, powerful woman called Raven who knew what she wanted for herself, to a nameless sidekick swallowed up by a supervillains' plans.

And on the days she wasn't nameless, it was worse.

"You call this a program?" snarled Shardstorm into Raven's face.

"D-Dash, it is a program. Exactly the one that you asked—"

She was cut off as Shardstorm slapped her in the face. She stumbled backwards, crashing into a wheeled filing cabinet and sending papers spiraling everywhere.

"You almost revealed us! This does not have the proper web security and an agent from that @#$&ing organization almost found us." He reared up to hit her again, but she backed up more quickly than his hand could move.

"No," Raven said quietly. "I did it exactly as you said to."

"I said to make sure it was properly encrypted," Shardstorm growled with terrifying softness in his voice. "Fix it now... or else."

Raven looked like she was going to say something else, but she didn't. She turned and went back to her laptop, stumbling a little and trying to hide it.

The bruise on her face wouldn't blossom until tomorrow, and it would fade in time, but the scarring pain on the inside that she felt would never leave her. And she knew it would only get worse.

That night, she packed her bags and left only when the entire headquarters were silent.

Except for the guards, but they knew her. They were loyal to Shardstorm, but they had a special place in their hearts for Raven. So as they saw her shadowed form approaching as the sun started to rise over the horizon, they simply gave her a sad nod and watched her leave the place forever.

Shardstorm barely noticed she was gone. He was too caught up in his most recent plan, building his empire, hiring his scientists and agents and slowly inducting them into the world of the supervillain. It was slow progress, and he had few breakthroughs.

And he swept his children up right along with him.

By the time they were ten, Jai and Asher were as loyal to Shardstorm as any other agent, though not entirely of their own free will.

Jai lay huddled in a corner, with a welt on his arm and another one blossoming on his face. "Dad, stop it!" he cried out, his voice not yet deepened and his mind not quite fully adjusted to the idea of being a supervillain forever.

"You brought this on yourself," Shardstorm spat. "You tried to go out."

"I just wanted to see the sun, I hadn't seen it in ages—" Jai was cut off as Shardstorm slapped him again, this time so hard that he was knocked silent for a moment.

And then Jai was older, but he still had the same bruises, but in slightly different places. He was standing on his own two feet, though swaying slightly. And Shardstorm had the long, stretched scar across his face and twice the anger in his eyes, a snarl marring his once-handsome features.

"She got away," Shardstorm snarled, with cold, hard fury in his voice. "You let Cam get away when she was right in front of you."

"Shardstorm, there was nothing I could have done," Jai answered with a calm but slightly shaking voice.

"You could have done something other than let her walk away," Shardstorm roared, raising his hand. But Jai caught it in midair before it was about to hit him, both of their arms shaking from the strain. Eventually Shardstorm broke free, but he didn't finish the blow. He simply gave Jai one last piercing glare, and stormed out of the room. As soon as he was gone, Jai sank to the ground, his legs giving out, all his willpower gone.

Meanwhile, Asher was two levels underground in a cold, dark prison, half unconscious from the blows suffered from his father.

"I'm not a traitor," Asher whispered, his words slurred with pain.

A few moments passed, and then Asher heaved a long sigh and spoke again, this time his voice perfectly clear.

"If somebody doesn't stop him soon, he's going to win."

### Chapter One

"Do you, Alen James, take Elena Abercrombie to be your lawfully wedded wife?"

Agent Semaj— or rather, the man I knew as Agent Semaj, gave his soon-to-be-wife a loving look. "I do."

"When are they gonna kiss?" whined Zoey, drawing out the last word, bouncing beside me. This young soon to be Agent-in-training was always full of energy, and it showed.

"Shhh," I hushed her with a grin. "Soon."

I turned back and looked exasperatedly at my boyfriend, Lukas. His light brown hair fell endearingly over his eyes, swept around by the wind. "I knew it was a bad idea to take them," I murmured with a smile, brushing his hair out of his eyes.

Lukas took my hand and gave a stern but loving glare to Zoey, who immediately stopped bouncing and gave him a sheepish grin.

The day of the wedding had dawned beautiful and clear, with no more than a few clouds in the sky. This November was unusually warm, and it seemed the whole city was vying to be outside as much as possible.

The wedding venue was a gorgeous choice. It was about an hour's drive to reach it, but the beauty was worth it. We were surrounded by gentle green rolling hills covered with soft, green grass. A rainbow of wildflowers burst forth from the moist ground, coloring the landscape, and a light smattering of thin trees was just visible in the distance.

"Do you, Elena Abercrombie, take Alen James to be your lawfully wedded husband?"

The beautiful bride, known to me as Agent Rivers, gave Agent Semaj a cheeky grin, her wavy chestnut hair bouncing in her high, loose bun. "You bet I do."

"That's not what she's supposed to sa-ay," Angie said with a small pout.

This older soon-to-be Agent-in-training was definitely calmer than her younger counterpart, but she still had a tendency to want things to be done exactly the way they were supposed to be.

"It's okay, she's making it her own," my fellow Agent, Marlee, told Angie with a big smile, her bright purple lipstick and bubblegum-pink hair making her stand out among the crowd.

"This wedding thing is really weird," Emmi, my android friend, muttered from beside Marlee. She looked stunning as always, her dark skin contrasting beautifully with the luscious white dress she was wearing. Her shyness made her dislike large crowds, so I was proud of her for coming here today.

"I think it's kinda funny," my best friend Stella responded, looking interestedly at the pastor, who was about to speak again.

"Then, I hereby pronounce you husband and wife," the pastor said with a smile.

Stella put her face right up to mine and made a kissy face less than an inch away from my cheek.

"Sto-OP it!" I laugh-whispered, shoving her face away from mine. "Ew, now my hand is covered in your Stella spit."

"That's why all the boys love me," Stella said jauntily, giving her light blonde hair a toss over her shoulder.

"You may kiss the bride," the pastor finished.

Agent Semaj planted a kiss on his wife's lips as the crowd hooted and hollered.

"WHOO-HOO!" Stella bellowed.

All the rest of my friends sitting around me cheered as well. Lukas gave me a happy smile and looked a bit tempted to kiss me as well, but I put a finger on his lips and said with a grin, "Later, babe."

Stella elbowed me in the ribs, hard. "OUCH," I shouted, elbowing her back.

"Romance time later," she shouted above the chattering of the dispersing crowd. "Time to get some food!"

"You always say it's romance time later," I answered teasingly, reluctantly rising from my soft chair, "but when you finally get a boyfriend, you're going to be smooching all the time!"

"Yeah, well, I teeeechnically have more experience in that field than you do," Stella said with raised eyebrows, joining me in the flow of people walking down the aisle. We were jostled by a few attendees making their way towards the large white canopy tent that held the snacks inside.

"Your experience doesn't count, because—" I started to tease back.

Then I stopped.

I couldn't joke about that. Not ever.

Because there was one dark mark marring this wedding, one dark mark looming over the heads of every spy there.

And it all began with the boy who was the reason Stella had more kissing experience than I did, and his father, who was the greatest supervillain in America.

Jai.

Towards the end of my eighth grade year, I received a message from the STPOW asking me to go on an urgent mission. I was taken into a secret room where Agents Semaj, Rivers, and Wolf debriefed me. The supervillain Shardstorm was planning to kidnap my class and take them to the White House under the pretense that he was a teacher bringing kids on a field trip. He planned to plant a bomb that would kill the President... and us. The Agents sent us on an undercover mission to disarm the bomb and stop the crisis from ever happening. We even thought we succeeded, but then all heck broke loose.

It turned out that Jai and Agent Wolf were traitors working for Shardstorm, and they managed to capture my classmate Taylor and I. They then trapped us in a room with a live bomb. We had just enough time to disable the bomb, warn the rest of the White House, and begin to escape before it went off. I only made it out alive because Taylor sacrificed her life for me. We thought Agent Wolf was killed too.

After this occurred, a few weeks later, an attack was launched by Shardstorm on the STPOW headquarters where I had been staying to train. After fighting the enemy agents off, we discovered Shardstorm had captured a young trainee, Zoey, and he threatened to kill her if I didn't come to train at his headquarters to become an agent for his supervillain organization. He also wanted my friend Emmi for reasons we couldn't guess. But while trying to save Zoey and escape from Shardstorm's headquarters, I discovered that Emmi was an android created by Shardstorm. Emmi had a code in her that allowed her to take over all the androids in the world, and Shardstorm wanted to use Emmi to take over vital organizations from the inside. Luckily, the STPOW and I stopped him before he could. Shardstorm revealed that Agent Wolf, now called Agent Survivor, had actually survived the bomb, and we learned that Asher, one of our current STPOW trainees, was actually Shardstorm's son and Jai's brother. Asher left training with our organization to go work for Shardstorm, leaving behind a heartbroken Stella (she liked Asher) who also confessed that she'd dated Jai secretly for a while and had such bad experience with guys.

Not long after, summer was over and school was starting. The STPOW had been planning to spend the school year training me at their headquarters, but that was before they discovered intel that Shardstorm was sending Jai and Asher to the same high school that I was assigned to go to. The STPOW sent me there with a mission: find out what big thing Shardstorm was building. One of my close non-spy friends from school, Violet, had turned out to be a traitor, and we followed her to Shardstorm's headquarters. Stella was killed by Shardstorm in the ensuing fight. But then I learned what Shardstorm had been building: a time machine.

So once we were prepared, we had gone back in time to the day Stella was killed and rescued her (Asher helped by punching Shardstorm in the face... we still weren't sure where his loyalties lay). But things got pretty messy back in time. We found out that Charles, a boy Marlee liked from school, was actually from 1972. To avoid ruining time, we took him along with us. But before we could leave 1972, Shardstorm found us and completely destroyed our group, stunning every last one of us. While I was out, a vision of Taylor told me that I'd been killed in another time and I had to immediately go back to the time of the President Plot to save myself. The time machine was on its last legs, and I was scared I wouldn't make it out alive. So I sent my friends home so they wouldn't have to sacrifice themselves for me. I managed to succeed, getting away from Jai, Violet, Agent Wolf (now known as Survivor), and Asher. I barely made it out alive, and had my first kiss with Lukas when I arrived back safely at home.

My parents also revealed I was adopted when I returned home. It was a difficult and still unreal reality to live with, but I was slowly coming to terms with it. My adopted parents who I'd lived with my whole life had been nothing but supportive, helping me through every step of the way.

For the past month, things had been pretty calm. Agent Rivers and Semaj had announced their wedding to a close few and we'd helped them get prepared. The STPOW had kept training its younger trainees (and Charles!) and helping its newer Agents, like my friends and me, to go further with our spy training. I was getting to be a pretty good shot with a stun gun, and starting to work on using a regular gun too.

I jolted back to the present as Stella waved her hand in front of my face. "Yoohoo... Cam... look at all this freakin' food!"

There was, in fact, a lot of food. Plates were stacked high with little finger sandwiches, complemented by platters full of fresh fruit. The wedding cake sat, beautifully white and decorated with stars, on the center table near the bride and groom. Agent Rivers' usually stoic face was alight with happiness, but there was still seriousness behind the gaze.

How could there not be, when we knew that our organization was the only thing standing between Shardstorm and world domination and that all of us held a piece of the puzzle. If one of us made one wrong choice, there could be lasting— and deadly— impacts.

Well, that was too serious a thought for a joyous wedding. I snagged a finger sandwich and shoved it in my mouth, giving Stella a goofy smile. "Delicious. Try some!"

Stella took my advice and grabbed a plate. She started filling it high with snacks. As she popped a little brownie into her mouth and struck up a conversation with Marlee, Lukas strolled over to me with a relaxed gait.

"Pretty exciting, huh?" he asked with a smile. There was some unspoken emotion in his words I couldn't place.

"Yeah," I answered quietly, looking at the newly married couple. Agent Semaj fed his bride a bite of cake, and the crowd laughed good-naturedly as he spilled some on the ground. "But it feels a bit like the calm before the storm, you know?"

"I do know," Lukas responded with a sigh. "It seems like whenever we're finally happy, Shardstorm comes and ruins it all."

Agent Rivers gave a mischievous smile to the crowd and shoved a piece of cake at Agent Semaj's face, getting icing everywhere. The guests roared with laughter.

"At least we have these little sparks of hope," I said quietly. "It's better than all doom and gloom. Without hope our organization would just be a dull, lifeless..." I trailed off, playing with a loose thread on my dress.

Lukas put an arm around me and led us to a table where the guests were slowly seating themselves. "That's why we're going to win, in the end. Because everyone at the STPOW is totally committed and believes in the cause," he said quietly. "Shardstorm recruits using fear and bribery."

"Some believe in Shardstorm's cause," I countered as I sank into a cushy chair. I started to continue, but an older couple slid into the seats across from us at the table and I sighed. "I'm going to get some food, want to come?"

"Nah, but can you bring me a brownie?" Lukas asked cheekily with a grin, giving me a kiss on the cheek before getting into a more comfortable position in the chair and checking the time on his phone.

"You don't need more brownies, you had like six before the ceremony," I scolded him, swatting his arm playfully and standing up to walk over to the snack area.

I brushed into a young man on my way over, the hem of my short lacy dress scooting up my thigh momentarily. I shoved it down, mumbling "Sorry," as I hurried towards Stella and Marlee.

But I still felt eyes on my back as I moved forward again. I turned around and saw the man watching me, his acne-scarred face angled towards mine, his dull green eyes boring into my chocolate brown ones.

I shuddered and gave him a weird look before rushing over to Stella and Marlee, stepping into their little circle. They both paused their conversation, looking up at my face expectantly and creasing their brows with worry when they caught my expression. "What's wrong?" Marlee asked nervously, swiping her bubblegum-pink hair out of her face.

"That creep over there is either checking me out or working for Shard... working for you-know-who," I answered in a low voice, cutting my eyes over again. The man was now pretending not to notice me as he ate a large bite of a sandwich.

"He's ugly," Stella said with a grin, grabbing another finger brownie and popping it into her mouth. "Lukas is cuter than at least him, I'll give him that."

"You don't think Lukas is handsome?" I said with a mock pout, grabbing a plate and filling it with two sandwiches, looking back over my shoulder to hear Stella's answer.

"Not my type, but I can see how he would be yours," Stella responded, a bit of unexpected seriousness lacing her tone as our minds both immediately jumped to the one boy we'd ever both liked.

I shoved the thought away, along with the anchovy finger sandwich Marlee offered me. Perhaps she'd offered it to ease the tension. "Yeah. Lukas is definitely my type." I grabbed two brownies, and considering for a moment, grabbed a third. "Come sit down with me and Lukas?"

Stella and Marlee followed me back to our table, where Charles, Aury, and Emmi had filled in some of the empty seats. Along with the older couple at the table, there was one young Asian woman with dark brown, bluntly cut hair, tanned skin, and wide glasses and— I sucked in a breath— the man who'd been staring at me.

Aury turned to me as I reluctantly sat back down beside Lukas, Stella on my other side and Marlee sitting next to Charles. She pulled distractedly at her dirty-blonde hair with dyed-green tips. "What's up with that weird face, Cam?"

I leaned into her, talking softly. The table was large enough where I knew the man couldn't hear me from the other side, especially with all the chatter in the reception area. "He keeps staring at me."

Indeed, he was gazing at me again, his eyes fixed intently on my face.

"So weird," Aury murmured, pulling out her teal notebook I'd gifted her after she'd become an Agent and scribbling some notes. This wasn't unusual for the math and science-obsessed girl who'd saved my life weeks ago by reprogramming the time machine to spit me out back in the present.

Lukas turned to me after finishing up a conversation with Marlee. "Having fun, babe?" He reached for a brownie on my plate and I smacked his hand, lacing my fingers through his before he could pull his hand away entirely.

"Lots of fun," I said with a grin, grabbing a brownie and shoving it in his mouth.

Stella doubled over with laughter as Lukas sputtered, "Noh fayur! Weh aren't tha mawried cawple eyet," with his mouth full.

My friend's raised eyebrows told me that they too had caught the "yet" in the words.

"Um..." I started.

Before anyone could speak up and make my face turn any redder, the woman with the blunt hair and wide glasses cleared her throat. "Hi, everyone. I'm Ms. Kim. It's a pleasure to meet you." She looked around the table through her almond-shaped eyes. "I see some familiar faces here. I've heard about you from Ag- I mean, from Mr. and Ms. James."

I gave Stella a quick but meaningful glace. Ag? Agent?

"Nice to meet you, Ms. Kim," I chorused with Stella, Lukas, and Marlee. Aury madly scribbled notes in her notebook. Emmi continued to chew her sandwich, hiding her face with her black braids. Charles, the intelligent dreamer but slightly nervous boy we'd rescued from the past, stared anxiously at her.

The older couple gave a good-natured chuckle. "Oh, I love polite kids," the woman said with a wide smile. "I'm Ms. Abercrombie, the new Ms. James's mother."

"I'm Mr. Abercrombie," said the man beside her, his wide blue eyes twinkling in the midday sunlight, then turning to look expectantly at the acne-scarred staring man.

He hesitated a beat, eyes sweeping the table, then said in a gruff but certain voice, "Leon."

"And your relation to the James's..." prompted Ms. Kim. Or, as I was starting to put together, Agent Kim.

"Family friend," he said vaguely.

Suddenly, a clinking drew all of our attention to the main, largest table where Agent Rivers and Semaj sat. A man sitting next to Agent Semaj was clinking his spoon on his cup, getting everyone's attention. "I'd like to make a toast," he announced.

As he began telling a story about young Alen getting in trouble, Stella and Lukas leaned over to me. "Are we legitimately sitting at a table right now with an STPOW Agent we didn't know about and one of Shardstorm's Leaguers?" Lukas murmured. Leaguers were what Shardstorm sometimes called his organization or the Agents that made it up.

"Glad you caught that too, because I think so," I said with a sharp laugh. "Can't even have a wedding in peace."

"It's so odd," said Stella thoughtfully. "If the man really is from Shardstorm, how did he get in? Where do the James's know him from to let him in and not comment on his presence? Something isn't adding up here."

Another clinking brought our attention as Agent Semaj tapped his glass. "I'd like to make a toast," he said cheerfully. "To the most intelligent, kind, and beautiful bride I could ask for." The crowd awwwed.

"She's been with me through life's hardest trials thus far," Agent Semaj continued. He paused, taking a deep breath. Agent Rivers took his hand and held it tight, leaning into him with an encouraging smile.

I could only wonder what Agent Semaj was thinking. Was he remembering Agents long ago lost on the battlefield? Was he pondering our neverending struggle against Shardstorm and how it so frustratingly seemed it would never end?

Or maybe, was he thinking of Taylor— a young life snuffed out for the STPOW on her very first mission? All the possibilities that could have been?

"She's been with me through life's happiest moments too," Agent Semaj continued. "But most importantly, she's never left my side when I needed her." His voice rose louder, more passionately. "She's my inspiration, my motivation. She encourages me to push myself better and better."

My heart swelled with joy for them, but also a twinge of nervousness. Was I a good enough girlfriend to Lukas? I wondered if he would say those same things about me if the chance arose.

Lukas leaned over to me and murmured in my ear, "I know you well enough to know exactly what you're thinking right now, Cam-girl. You're all that for me and more."

I blushed bright red and leaned into him. "I'm so lucky to have you."

And I needed to stop doubting myself. I closed my eyes and tried to refocus on the present.

After a few more toasts of kind but meaningless, surface-level words, everyone rose from their seats and began to mingle around, saying their goodbyes. "We need to go talk to them! Ag— Mr. and Ms. James," Marlee corrected herself with a grin.

Everyone agreed, so we shuffled through the crowd in our little pack to reach the newly married couple.

Agent Semaj noticed us first and his face broke out into a wide grin. "KIDDOS! You're here!" He made his way through the crowd, "'scuse me, sorry, coming through—" and reached us, managing to envelop all seven of us at once in a hug. "How are you?"

"Holy heck, how are you?" Stella asked with a laugh, "you're the one who just got married!"

"Amazing. It's absolutely amazing," Agent Semaj said breathlessly. "Unbelievable."

"Now, don't monopolize my favorite students, now, Alen," Agent Rivers said with a smile, one of her rare and precious true ones. Hugging was not her type, but a glimpse of her smile was enough for me.

"I'm so happy for you guys!" Marlee said with a giant grin.

"Is it weird, being married?" Charles asked tentatively.

"Little bit," Agent Semaj said thoughtfully. "But in the best way possible." He pulled Agent Rivers close to his side with a loving smile.

"Awwww," we all chorused, then laughed.

"You guys are so perfect for each other," Stella commented. "You've got Ms. James with her sometimes fiery temper and seriousness—"

"STELLA!" Lukas, Marlee, and I all said at once.

Stella gave an unabashed grin. "What? It's true!"

Agent Rivers shook her head in playful exasperation. "Go on, Stella," she said with a fake stern glare.

"—and Mr. James with his calm headedness and silliness. You balance out the worst and best in each other," Stella finished with a proud and mischievous smile.

"Oh, you kids are ridiculous," Agent Rivers scoffed, biting back a smile.

I elbowed Stella. "Way to be blunt!"

She elbowed me back. "Way to be a party pooper!"

"Sorry to be rude, but we've got a honeymoon to go on! We're keeping it short because of our important... business... here," Agent Semaj said with a wink, "just three days. If you need something before we get back, especially related to the important business, just call this number."

He reached over a couple— "sorry, sorry!"— to grab a little piece of paper off of a table and hand it to me. "Cam, I'm putting you in charge of this, but make sure to share it with everyone," he continued quietly. "It goes directly to a phone line at the main headquarters, all right?"

"Sounds good," I responded with a nod. Hopefully I'd manage to keep up with the tiny piece of paper long enough to text the number in our friends/Agents group chat.

"Well, we must be off! Places to go, things to see," Agent Semaj said with excitement. "Have fun and be good while we're gone, kiddos!"

They headed off towards the front where we were to send them off on their honeymoon.

After we'd given them a sparkler sendoff in the fading daylight and they'd gotten into their car and peeled away, headed for who-knows-where, everything began to die down. People packed up their belongings and started to head out.

I checked my watch. "Lukas, your mom was taking me home, right?"

"Yep, she can," Lukas answered, "I told her I thought you'd need a ride."

"I do," I said a bit apologetically, "my dad isn't off work yet and my mom texted me a bit ago that she was at the dry cleaners at the other side of town."

"No problem, Cammy," Lukas said with a smile, "the longer I can spend with you, the better."

I hugged my other friends goodbye. "See you tomorrow, Cam! You're going to be a big fat fifteen-year-old," Stella said with mock sadness. "Leaving us little ones behind!"

It was my birthday tomorrow. I was so excited about the wedding, I'd almost forgotten. I was going to spend the afternoon with all my STPOW friends at the mall after getting presents from my family, and eat dinner with them afterwards.

I laughed. "You'll be fifteen soon enough! Plus, I had to catch up to this man," I said with a grin, elbowing Lukas. "He's a young sophomore, and I'm an old freshman. Perfect for each other!"

Lukas elbowed me gently back. "Absolutely perfect," he said with a mischievous smile.

I waved goodbye one last time, and walked hand in hand with Lukas to the parking lot.

Shardstorm didn't ruin this. This wedding was perfect, and whatever happened next, this piece of hope would always stay with us throughout the hard times to come.

### Chapter Two

I unlocked my front door and slid inside my house, waving to Lukas's mother through the slit in the door and closing it with a bone-rattling thud. My socked feet pattered on the hardwood floor as I made my way to the living room.

The wedding had got me thinking about the day, hopefully, in my future, when I would be married and have a house and family of my own. My mind jumped to Lukas and I closed my eyes for a moment to imagine us, together forever. What would our kids look like? Would they inherit my chestnut hair or Lukas's light brown? Would they be shy but with a beautiful heart under the surface like Lukas? Or would they be more like me, with my friendly nature towards almost everyone immediately?

What would our house be like? For the first time in a little while, I really looked at my house. Dark hardwood floors swept across each room, their shining surfaces making a family member slip occasionally. A dark gray, iron railing stretched up beside the stairs, with little curled poles attaching it to the steps.

Our kitchen was fairly small. We had a little island in the center that my mother and father used when they cooked for cutting ingredients and storing all kinds of random junk. It was generally only cleaned when we had company. Currently it held a lovely assortment of four cups, an old plate, a dirty cutting board, and an old water filter that we used since our fridge water dispenser broke. The counters around the outside were less full but still held a few random potholders, spoon rests, and more.

In between the kitchen and the living room, there was a little foyer area which held our table where we ate. Upstairs, there was my room, Valorie's room, and my parent's room, along with two bathrooms.

It was a nice house, I thought. Especially considering both of my parents grew up without much to their name. They'd managed to build a life for me and my sister that they could have only dreamed of as kids. Sure, we didn't have all the luxuries in the world. Vacations— other than day trips to the beach— were few and far between. I had to babysit to earn my own money because generally my parents couldn't spare much for fun extras that they deemed unimportant, such as a phone upgrade, a new bike, or designer clothes.

But we had enough. And a lump swelled in my throat again as I remembered that my parents did all this— they sacrificed all this— for a child that wasn't even born to them. I wasn't really theirs.

And that's when I knew what my kids would look like someday if I did end up with Lukas—like neither of us, me or him.

Because I was going to adopt. I was going to give kids the same chance that my parents gave me—a chance to have a life. A real life.

I smiled to myself as I sank into our soft, maroon sofa that we'd had as long as I could remember and pulled out my phone. My mom had texted me three minutes ago- Leaving the dry cleaners now! Back in ten minutes.

Great. I needed to talk to her. A question had been building in my mind the whole day, and I'd tried to push it back, but it was stubbornly lodged there.

I scrolled through my Instagram feed on my phone, my feet propped up on our mahogany coffee table. I liked one of Marlee's pictures, a cute photo of her and Charles outside the local theater yesterday titled, "Movie date!" I grinned, imagining how excited Charles would be to see how far movies had come in special effects and filming since the 1970s when he'd last seen one. In fact, Charles' face in the photo did look pretty thrilled and shocked.

I scrolled past a few friends from school's posts. Then I got to one of Lukas's, posted just two minutes ago. It was a picture Stella had taken of Lukas and I at the wedding. The caption simply said, "My girl <3". My hair was pulled up into a loose bun, wavy strands of brown framing my face and my brown-and-blue dress bringing out my chocolate eyes. Lukas's light brown hair was as wavy as ever, and his green eyes sparkled along with his shiny jacket over his dress shirt. He had his arm around me and was smiling at me as I beamed at the camera.

We looked pretty cute together, if I did say so myself.

I smiled to myself and commented, "You clean up nice ;)," continuing to scroll.

The next post was Aury's. It had taken some work to convince her to get Instagram, but she was fascinated with it now that she had it. The video was captioned, "Omg!! Look at this weird bug!" The video attached was in fact of a weird bug. It was slightly blurry and you could hear Aury's cackle in the background as she filmed its journey across the floor.

I laughed out loud. "Aury, you're too much!" I commented with a laughing and crying face.

I scrolled past a friend from church's post and two more from school, finding one from Stella. She'd posted two cute selfies, one with a filter and emojis around her head in a crown pattern, her light-green painted nails on her lips in a sexy pose. The next selfie was a mirror selfie from further back. "Love yourself first," the caption simply said. I liked it and commented two heart-eyes emojis, finding myself alongside comments from Marlee, Emmi (who never posted but liked all of ours), and a few admiring girls and boys from school.

I smiled and put my phone down, walking to the kitchen to grab myself a glass of water. Before I made it all the way, I heard the garage door rumble, signaling my mom's arrival. I grabbed a glass a little clumsily and started filling it up with ice as my mothers' keys jangled in the door and she burst in.

"Hi, Mom," I said.

My mother's dark brown hair with red streaks hung in light waves around her face. She hadn't bothered to put on makeup for her run out in town, but she looked pretty all the same. "Hi, girlie," my mom said with a smile, heading back out to the garage to grab what she'd picked up from the dry cleaners. "How was the wedding?"

"It was really nice," I answered with a smile of my own, taking my glass to the kitchen counter and pouring in water from our pitcher. "Kind of cold towards the end."

"I bet!" Mom said with a laugh, coming back inside with hangers swinging from her arms and kicking the garage door shut. "I told you to wear a jacket over that dress!"

"It was warm when I left the house," I protested playfully, taking a sip of my water. "Get everything done at the dry cleaners?"

"Yep, my dress is all ready for our big date next week," my mom answered excitedly. "20 years married and going strong!" She walked to the living room and took a seat on the couch, sighing with happiness. "Oh, that feels so good."

I took a deep breath, carefully setting my water on the counter and walking over to where my mother sat. "Speaking of, I wanted to talk to you about something."

Mom looked at me and cocked her head. "Hmmm, does it relate to a certain someone turning a certain age tomorrow?"

I smiled sheepishly. "No. Uh, a little... heavier than that."

I took a nervous breath. "Well, here goes." I looked my mom in her eyes. "Who were my birth parents, mom?"

My mother raised her eyebrows. "You're right, I wouldn't have guessed that."

She heaved a deep sigh and thought for a moment. "I wish we knew," she answered seriously, taking my hand in hers. "I would have told you if I did. But when we adopted you when you were two years old, they told us the birth parents wished to remain nameless and have no contact information linked to them for the adopted parents." My mom looked sadly at me. "We aren't even sure if they're alive."

"Oh." I had kind of expected that. A non-answer. I wondered for what might have been the millionth time why my birth parents had given me up. Maybe they couldn't feed me anymore and wanted me to have a better life. Maybe I'd been an accidental birth, a mistake. Unwanted and unneeded.

Maybe my parents were dead.

My mom motioned for me to come sit down next to her. I obliged, sinking into the couch as she pulled me close. "You know, it doesn't matter," my mother murmured. "Your father and I love you just the same as we would have if you weren't adopted, do you know that?"

I nodded- she'd said it before but it felt good and reassuring to hear it again. "I love you too. So much. Thank you," I whispered sadly. "Thanks for choosing me."

My mother held me close for a while. An unwanted tear trickled down my cheek just as it usually did when I thought of being adopted. It was so foreign, so unexpected, that it still felt like a bad dream sometimes.

But it wasn't. It was my life, for better and for worse. Now I was even more grateful for my parents than ever- who knew where I would have been if they'd passed me by and chosen another little girl or boy? Maybe I'd be in a different city— a different state. I could have even been in a different country. And I knew for sure I wouldn't have been part of the STPOW— all the variables collided so perfectly that if a single thing in my life that fateful day in eighth grade had been different, odds are I wouldn't know about the STPOW at all.

I was so glad I did, though. So glad. There had been so many hard parts, but I hadn't regretted it for a moment.

After a moment, we pulled away. "You're not angry at us for waiting to tell you, are you?" Mom asked carefully.

This was something I'd also pondered a bit, so I considered before I answered. I was a little frustrated that they didn't think I could handle it earlier, or just didn't simply raise me knowing I was adopted. It would have been easier if I'd known it from the beginning.

But I also understood. I knew that if I did have kids of my own someday, I would do everything I could to spare them from the pain and hard truths of the world until they were ready.

In a way, I suppose being a spy made me grow up faster than a usual teen. I'd watched my best friend have her life snuffed out in my arms. A girl my own age had willingly sacrificed her life for me and I had to deal with survivor's guilt. I'd already had mild anxiety before my life as a spy- but it had increased exponentially since I'd joined the STPOW. It was an everyday struggle to battle through it and just to live my life without worry.

I'd learned how to deal with pain too. Physical, from the poisoned and normal gunshot wounds, being knocked unconscious multiple times, nearly getting killed by a bomb, and much more. And emotional, from the pain of losing those I cared about, fear and anxiety about missions, and constant stress of juggling my double life.

Maybe that's why I was frustrated about not being told earlier. I had matured so much in the past seven months of being part of the STPOW that it seemed like the rest of the world needed to catch up.

Of course, my parents didn't know this. It was only natural they'd want to shield hard truths still from their "innocent" fourteen-year-old girl.

So, with that, I took a deep breath and answered my mother. "No, momma. I'm not angry."

She was visibly relieved. "I'm glad. We thought a lot about the decision, and I hope we made the right one."

My mom smiled, pulling up her hair into a loose ponytail. "Well, that's not was I was expecting to talk about when I got home. I was expecting to talk about the fact that you're almost a fifteen-year-old!"

I laughed and sank back into the clutches of the sofa, running my hand through my hair absentmindedly. "It snuck up on me! I'm excited, though."

"Me too," my mom responded, crossing her legs and reaching for her phone. "In fact, I better make sure something special didn't get delayed in the mail, it was supposed to come in by 8:15 pm today!"

"I think my birthday snuck up on you too, if you're cutting my gift so last-minute," I teased.

My mom playfully swatted me. "Of course it didn't," she said, not very convincingly.

I pulled out my phone with a smile, and suddenly remembered the number in my pocket. I pulled the piece of paper out and quickly opened my text messages. My first new message was from a girl in my Creative Writing class, Sophie. She knew about the world of the spy after helping to rescue us from Shardstorm's headquarters, but she opted not to train to become one. She was popular and preppy and not my favorite person, but I couldn't disregard the help she'd given us.

What was the homework? Lol, the text read.

I rolled my eyes. The vocab worksheet is due on Monday and we have the short story project due Wednesday, I texted back, flipping back to the main screen.

The next text was from Lukas. Hey, what time are we meeting at the mall tomorrow again? The group chat is so spammy the details got buried somewhere above, the text read, with a laughing emoji at the end.

I smiled, and texted, 3:00pm! Be there or be square :P

The last unread text was from the aforementioned group chat. Someone had retitled it "THE JAMES ADOPTED CHILDREN" with a tongue-sticking-out and sunglasses emoji. I laughed out loud.

"What's so funny?" my mom asked lightly.

"My friends are being weird," I answered with a slight laugh, opening the group chat. There were three unread texts that had just popped up a minute ago.

GUYSSS THIS CUTE GUY IN MY CHEM CLASS JUST TEXTED ME, from Stella.

Oooh Stella... things are heating up! Marlee said with a tongue emoji.

Bring him to lunch on Monday! I want to meet... and study him, Aury's text read.

I debating for a moment silently before typing, Ooh Stells! I'm so proud! But if you go out with this dude, you're leaving Aury and Emmi as the only unmatched ones, I typed. Time to find you two a date!

I hit send and waited.

Or, you know, we could do the logical thing. Two of us left, let's go out with each other! Aury typed with a laughing and kissy face.

I cocked my head to the side, trying to determine if she was being serious.

Emmi, who was probably extremely confused (she had the hardest time picking up on our humor and underlying emotions) typed, I cannot go out with anyone, because I am an android and that would be very strange. Sorry, Aury.

I was just processing that when Stella's number dinged at the top of the screen with a personal text. Uh, does Aury have a crush on Emmi that we didn't know about!?!

"Well, let me make you some dinner, Cammy-girl. I'm sure you ate nothing but junk food at that wedding," my mom spoke up suddenly with a grin.

I pressed the power off button on my phone. Stella and Aury would have to wait a while. "Sure, mom. Want me to help you?"

____

My eyes popped open at exactly 7:58am the next morning. Sunlight streamed in through my thin curtains as the wind rustled quietly from outside.

I smiled to myself for a moment. Fifteen. I was fifteen. I tried to determine if I felt any different, but I couldn't tell. The only thing I felt for sure was excitement about the presents I was about to be given and the mall trip later that day.

My mom cracked open the door of my room as I turned on my light.

"Happy birthday, Cam."

Seven hours later, I was strolling down the slippery tile floor of the mall, brand-new boots on my feet, a new phone in my back pocket (I'd had my old one for over five years, it was high time!), and my hand in Lukas's. Stella flanked me on the other side, jabbering away in her cheerful way about all the homework she had that weekend. Charles, with his arm around Marlee, sauntered along beside Lukas. Emmi and Aury talked animatedly on Stella's other side.

"Mr. James isn't even a real teacher, so I don't know what gives him the right to give us so much homework," Stella moaned, tucking a loose strand of her long, light blonde hair behind her ear. Her pearl earrings shimmered in the harsh mall lights.

"If you think he's bad, try having Ms. Abercrombie—oh yeah, Ms. James now—for social studies! I had two projects and an essay due this week alone," Lukas said, rolling his eyes. "You'd think we'd get a little special treatment, but nooo."

"I mean, they've gotta do what they've gotta do to keep up their pretense as the strict teachers, I guess," I said with a shrug.

Then I looked to my right and stopped. "Ooh, Aeropostale! Let's go!"

Marlee, Stella, and I strode towards the colorful sale rack as Aury got sidetracked by a very cropped-off jean jacket and Emmi grabbed a pair of sweatpants and headed straight for the changing room. Lukas and Charles rolled their eyes and sat on a bench, talking and watching us shop.

"Guys, does this make me look fat?" Stella asked in a fake nasally voice as she held up a hot pink size XXXL plush jacket with the words "HOT STUFF," written in gold sequins on the front.

I shoved her playfully. "Nope, it's gorgeous. Absolutely stunning," I answered with mock seriousness.

"Ooh, look!" Marlee said, showing us a black long-sleeved shirt with little pink flowers embroidered onto it. "It's only $7!"

"Ah, it's so cute! Is that a small?"

Thirty minutes later, we triumphantly exited the store. I was $40 poorer but one shirt, two pairs of leggings, and one bra richer. Marlee had only gotten the flower embroidered shirt and a headband.

But Stella had absolutely loaded up with five shirts ("They were having a sale!" she defended herself,) three pairs of leggings, a pair of jeans, two bras, and two necklaces. "Worth it!" she declared as she showed me her empty wallet.

I laughed and said, "Where to next?"

Aury vouched for Barnes and Noble, so we headed outside to where it was located.

For being the middle of November, it was surprisingly warm outside. The wind playfully swept my hair to the side as I ran my hands through it in a desperate attempt to keep it styled. A beautiful fountain sprayed turquoise blue water up into their air. Everyone passing by looked happy and carefree, couples, families, and friend groups alike.

"Ahhh, weather like this makes me want to stay outside forever," I sighed.

"The world knew you needed a perfect birthday forecast," Lukas said with a laugh, putting his arm around me.

As we chatted, I noticed Stella was quieter than usual. "What's up, Stells? Lost in thought?"

She startled, blushing and blinking her beautiful green eyes. "Oh, yeah, yeah. Sorry, I've been doing that a lot lately."

"What are you thinking about?" I asked more quietly. Laughter and the chatter of carefree conversation floated in the air around us as I waited for her answer.

"Um, just, you know." She ran her hand through her hair and tucked it behind her ear again.

"No, I don't, Stells," I said gently. "Cmon, I want to help."

"Fine, I'll tell you," she sighed. "I've been thinking a lot about Asher."

Charles, Marlee, Aury, and Emmi turned from their conversations as we kept walking and listened to Stella continue. "He's got to be in trouble. He punched Shardstorm in the face when you guys came to rescue me, didn't he? Giving us time to escape?"

She sighed again. "I think... Shardstorm wouldn't let him get away with that. Asher's being hurt, or worse.

"And I want to go get him out of there."

Stella crossed her arms defiantly as she looked at our surprised faces. "There, I said it."

"Stella, you know that's a bad idea," I said, reaching down to adjust my bags on my arms. "You know it could lead to... to what happened last time we were in Shardstorm's headquarters."

"Yeah, well, I'm the one who died and I'm not stressed about going back there," Stella retorted. "He's basically on our side, and we're just leaving him to whatever cruel fate Shardstorm creates for him."

"You're not the one who held your dead body in my arms and sobbed because I failed and because you were gone," I said quietly.

Silence for a moment. The heel of my boots clicking against the concrete was the only noise in our little bubble.

Then the moment was gone. Lukas, Aury, and Marlee all started talking at once— Marlee to chide me for bringing a sensitive topic up again, Aury to tell Stella why it was such a bad idea to go back into Shardstorm's headquarters, and Lukas to say that maybe Stella was right.

Wait, what?

"How do you agree with her?" I turned to Lukas, stopping in my tracks, anger and confusion on my face that I desperately tried to wipe away to regain my composure.

Lukas held up his hands defensively. "I didn't say I agreed. I just said that maybe she had a point, about Asher."

I snorted.

"What do you mean?" Charles asked as we all resumed walking again.

"Well, I think Asher only joined the other side because he was scared and just wanted to have a feeling of family again, right?" Lukas continued carefully. "He never really was like Shardstorm... or Jai. He just wanted the feeling of being loved." He paused. "And I know that the STPOW can give that to him. If we rescue him, we have one new member. That's never a bad thing, right?"

"One new member that might betray us again," Marlee pointed out, raising her eyebrows and pulling her bubblegum hair into a loose ponytail. "Then we're back to square one."

"Guys, we shouldn't be talking about this here," Emmi said quietly.

"You're right." I closed my eyes for a moment and sighed. "Stella, please say you won't do anything stupid. Let us at least ask Agent—er, Mr. and Ms. James about it. Okay?"

Stella was silent, but after a moment she looked at me, reproach in her eyes. "I don't know what you've done with the kind, compassionate Cam that jumped in front of a bullet to save a five year old from being harmed, but I want her back. I'm going to use the restroom."

Stella stomped off back towards the mall building, her hair swinging and her bags shaking on her arm.

I gave a deep groan-sigh and turned to the rest of the crew, stopping in our tracks. "What a great birthday."

"She'll come around," Lukas said kindly, putting a hand on my arm. "She always does. Come on, let's go to Barnes and Noble."

____

As I lay in my bed later that night, I knew that Lukas was right. Stella always came around, in the end, to see what was logical. It just took a little convincing.

So why did I have such a nagging feeling that this time was going to be different, and we were on the brink of something disastrous because Stella wasn't going to listen?

And then, suddenly, I knew. All that talk about the chem boy she liked, that was just that. Talk. Stella really had feelings still for one other boy, who was currently a hundred feet underground in the lair of the greatest supervillain in America.

Stella still had feelings for Asher. And I knew that if things had gone differently and Lukas was the one who was trapped underground, caught between two sides, then I'd be in Stella's exact position.

Stella was passionate, just like I was. Stella was impulsive, just like I was.

And that scared me.

Because if she did something stupid, at this point in the war, it might just spark the end of the world as we knew it.
Chapter Three

The next two school days sped by in a blur. I was distracted in all my classes, keenly aware of the Agents' absences and on high alert.

My friends all seemed to be feeling the same way. Stella didn't mention Asher again, but she seemed more distant from me than usual. Lukas seemed to be trying extra-hard to be the glue holding us together, but more often than not he made things worse by adding to the tension. Marlee and Charles stuck to themselves more than usual too, trying to find comfort in each other. Emmi and Aury hung out more than they'd used to as well, reminding me of Stella's question about Aury feeling something more than friendship for Emmi.

Everyone was tense and on edge and feeling like something had to pop to release the pressure. And I wasn't sure what it was going to be, but I did know it wasn't going to be good.

Tuesday afternoon was when it happened.

I was sitting in my final class of the day, with five minutes left until the bell. My head was propped up on my hand and I blinked slowly as the teacher announced the homework for the night and told us we could begin working on it if we wanted to. I knew I was too tired to comprehend any of it right then, so I packed up my stuff for the day, clipping my crumpled papers into my small white binder and shoving it into my aqua bookbag.

I pulled out my phone just as the girl beside me leaned over. Her name was Annie, and we talked sometimes in class, mostly to complain about how strict the teacher was (Agent Rivers usually, but today we had a sub because of her honeymoon) and how hard the concepts were.

"I hate this sub," Annie muttered to me. "Ms. Abercrombie might be strict, but at least she's semi-interesting."

"I know, right?" I said with a groan, leaning back in my chair. "Hey, I think she got married this weekend or something, if I heard right," I continued casually.

"Oh yeah, I heard that too. Wonder who would want to marry her," Annie said with a laugh. "They'd have their hands full."

"I bet they do," I said, smiling to myself as the bell rang and we rose from our seats.

"Seeya tomorrow!" Annie waved goodbye as we parted ways at the classroom door.

"Bye!"

My phone dinged with the sound of a new text. I saw the number texting and squinted, making sure I'd read it right. Why would Stella's mother be texting me?

I opened my texts, and dread filled me as I read the message.

Cam. Stella was marked absent in fourth period, but we didn't check her out of school. She won't answer our calls and nobody knows where she is. Do you have any clue where she might be?

I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to quell the racing surge of fear that shot through my veins.

Stella wouldn't do what I was thinking, in the deepest, darkest, most terrified corner of my mind. Would she? She was probably just sneaking out of class to meet her cute chemistry boy or something.

My phone vibrated in my hand with an incoming call. I opened my eyes to check it and crashed into a massive boy who looked like he was a senior. "Sorry, sorry," I stammered as I slipped into the crowd and raced towards a bench and sat down, quickly registering the code-named profile "James" on the screen before swiping the "accept" button.

"Cam," a familiar voice said, and I could hear Agent Semaj's relief over the tinny speakers. He started to speak again, but the chatter of conversation from carefree students around me drowned out his words.

"What?" I said, getting up from my bench and striding towards the nearby door. "Hold on."

I reached the door and pushed the cool metal handlebar. A blast of chilly November air greeted me and I shivered, burying my arms further into my hoodie. The conversations faded into the background as I walked further away from the school, the soles of my converse slapping the cold concrete. "Okay, go on. Sorry."

"Where's Stella?" Agent Semaj asked. He tried to conceal the worry in his voice but I knew him too well not to notice.

"How would I know?" I said, frustrated. "She didn't say a word to me!"

"Alright. Wait a minute, we're going to try to see if we can track the location of her phone to get ahold of her. We have a bad feeling that... " He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't need to.

As the silence over the phone stretched, I spoke again. "Are you guys back from your honeymoon yet?"

"Just back an hour ago," he said. "I heard of this problem less than two minutes ago, though. Stella's mom texted every friend of Stella's she knew, and Marlee immediately called me." Guilt rushed through me, I knew I should have dialed his number as soon as I saw the text.

"How was your—" I was cut off as Agent Semaj gave a sharp intake of breath from the other side of the phone.

"What? What is it?" I asked frantically.

"Take a wild guess," Agent Semaj said tiredly.

"I don't want to," I whispered, closing my eyes and leaning against a rough tree in the bus lot where my feet had automatically carried me.

"Stella is nearing the entrance to Shardstorm's headquarters, Cam."

Nausea. That was the first thing I felt as I slipped down the trunk of the tree and sat down hard on the damp, mossy ground. Unwanted pictures of Stella's limp body and Shardstorm's cruel laugh as he raised the stun gun for the finishing blow raced through my mind as I tried to clear my head.

"Cam? Are you still there?"

"Still there," I said, making an effort to calm my shaking voice. "Okay. What do we do?" I ran my hand through my hair and blinked, trying to remain focused on what needed to happen next.

"We have to stop her. We can't let her get inside," Agent Semaj answered quickly. I had texted him after Stella's confession of wanting to rescue Asher, just to make him aware, so he knew exactly what was at stake.

I heard rapid typing from his end of the phone and a voice from the background call, "Babe, what did you find?"

"Not good," Agent Semaj responded. "Not good. We have to go right now." His voice got a bit louder as he turned his head back towards the phone. "Cam, to have any chance of reaching her in time Agent Rivers and I have to take the Stormrider and go right now. But I'm not sure if we'll be able to convince her to stay away for good." A Stormrider was a cool spy vehicle that could fly and reach speeds of up to 300 miles per hour. "I'll send our backup Stormrider with Agent Swan, and you'll just be about five minutes behind us. Alright?"

"Alright," I said, forcing the words out from around the lump in my throat. "Please be careful and get to her in time... okay?"

"Of course we will. You know you can trust us," he said kindly. "Gather your friends, the rest of the Agents, if you can. I think they will be of help as well. Meet us at the extra soccer field behind the school, where nobody should be." I heard the sound of a chair scraping as he rose.

I took a deep, shuddering breath, waiting for his next words. His voice softened. "Cam? You okay?"

"I—I'm good." I forced back the crack in my voice and the tears in my eyes. Stella was going to be fine. Just fine. I had no reason to worry. "I'm good."

Agent Semaj sighed. "I know, Cam. I'm worried too. But we're going to do everything we can to stop her from going in there alone. Who knows, she might even come to her senses on her own when she's about to go in."

"I seriously doubt that," I said with a sigh. "All right. Text me or message my watch as soon as you have any updates, okay?"

"Of course, Cam. See you soon."

"Bye," I said heavily as the call ended.

I knew I needed to get up and find my friends, but nervousness and nausea made my limbs heavy. The breeze rustled my hair as I dropped my head to my knees, looking up when I heard a shout of, "Hey!"

A girl from my third period waved to me. You okay? she mouthed.

I gave a weak smile and a thumbs up, grabbing my bookbag and saying loudly, "Just not feeling all that well."

"Feel better!" she yelled from across the bus lot, her long, dark brown hair getting caught in her shiny purple lip gloss as she spoke.

I gave another attempt at a smile and raced towards the school, punching the call button for my friends group chat.

Marlee, Lukas, and Emmi immediately picked up. "Where are you guys?" I said breathlessly, tucking my hair behind my ear as I reached the door of the building again, then on second thought, decided to take the longer way outside of the school. "We have to go outside the school to the secondary soccer field for the Stormrider to pick us up and take us to the headquarters entrance."

"Yes. I'm on my way there now." Marlee's usually cheerful voice sounded so unnatural when it was subdued.

"I'm going there too, I just got a message from Semaj to head there." Lukas sounded breathless too.

In fact, my spy watch had lit up as well without me noticing with a text from Agent Semaj. Agents, Stella is in grave danger. Head to the extra soccer field behind the school now.

"On my way," Emmi's quiet but strong voice came.

Aury joined the call. "Oh, hey guys. What's going on?"

"Aury! How did you miss everything that's happening?" Marlee groaned. I could hear our feet thumping in unison on the grass outside of the school. The wind picked up as I ran towards the back of the school, adrenaline pumping through my veins.

Silence for a moment, then Charles joined the call. "Just got the text. I'm not a full Agent yet, so do you think he wants me to—"

"YES," we all chorused in unison. A pause, and then we laughed a little at each other, giving the mood a much-needed lightening.

"You're coming," Marlee concluded definitively. "Is that everyone?"

I did a quick headcount in my mind, faltering when I reached where I usually counted Stella. "Yeah. Yes. That should be all of us."

I felt myself going into Cam Spy Mission Leader mode—shoving my emotions aside for the good of the group. I was nearing the back of the building, and I gave my friend on the track team an awkward wave as she walked by with her spike shoes in her hand. "Alright, guys. We need a game plan. How do we appeal to Stella and convince her not to go in or ever try to get into Shardstorm's headquarters to rescue Asher again?"

"Tell her she's being stupid," Aury said helpfully.

"Remind her that the last time we went into Shardstorm's headquarters, she died. And that was with our entire group together," Lukas added.

"Promise her that soon, when we have a game plan, we'll go in and get Asher," Emmi suggested. "If the Agents agree to it."

"Tell her that we can't lose her again. We'll all fall apart," Marlee said quietly.

Silence over the phone. All I could hear was the slight crackle of speakers and the pounding of feet on grass and concrete as we all made a mad dash for the field.

"Yeah. Those are all good," I said, coming to a sudden halt as I reached the main soccer field. I forced myself to saunter casually past the soccer players practicing, but as soon as I was out of sight I broke into a full sprint.

"Hey, I'm here. Where are you guys?" Marlee asked over the phone, her voice crackling.

I burst through the short row of trees separating the two fields and immediately saw Marlee's pink hair contrasting with the lime green grass. I waved wildly. "I'm here too. I see you!"

I hung up the call and raced towards her. Marlee ran towards me as well, and we met towards the edge of the soccer field in a tight and fierce hug. I let my wall down next to my good friend for a moment and let myself relax into her with deep, shuddering breaths.

"Shhh, shh," Marlee said softly, swaying us back and forth gently. "It's okay, Cam. It's going to be okay."

I finally released her just as Lukas burst from the trees, striding the few steps towards me and wrapping me in the tightest hug of all time. I buried my face in his chest, and he let me hide for a second. Then he lifted my face up and stared into my eyes for a moment before softly kissing my lips.

We broke apart and Lukas held me in a tight hug. "I'm so sorry, babe. I'm so sorry. We're going to stop her and it's all going to be okay. I promise."

He reached over and gave Marlee a quick hug too. "Hey, Marlee."

"Hey, Lukas," she said with a sincere smile.

Emmi, Aury, and Charles burst through the trees and jogged over to us. I hugged them all three tightly, even Charles, who looked a little surprised. Just as I pulled apart from him, I heard a whirring above our heads. I glanced up into the sky and saw a dark gray and ice blue striped car-like vehicle descending.

The Stormrider had arrived.

I looked at my friends—my dream team, as named by Stella—and as one we all strode across the field, hand in hand with friends and significant others alike, ready to face whatever was to come our way.

We reached the Stormrider just as it was landing. I turned to Stella to make a joke how it would be more comfortable riding inside of it than outside like we'd done on a previous mission—then a lump rose in my throat as I remembered she wasn't there.

Agent Swan, an Agent I knew a bit less well and Marlee's mother, poked her head outside of the door as it screeched open. "Come on in!"

"Thanks for picking us up, Agent Swan," I said with a smile, walking to somewhere in front of the door and trying to aim for where the invisible stairs were from the Stormrider.

I took a tentative step forward. Then another. Then— "OW!" I slammed my foot right into the first stair and shook it around with pain. Lukas covered his mouth to stifle a laugh, and Marlee let out a snort.

I glared playfully at them. "Like you would have done any better if you went first."

We climbed the stairs slowly, ascending to the Stormrider. After our brief moment of lightness, butterflies of fear again began to swarm in my stomach. I hated feeling so helpless and useless- terrible things could be happening to Stella right this moment and I'd be none the wiser.

I entered the Stormrider and sunk into a cushy seat. I pulled out my phone and dialed Stella's number, holding my phone to my ear with false hope.

Marlee slid into the seat beside me, started to say something, and noticed the phone to my ear. "No, you can talk, I'm just trying to call Stella but I don't think she's going to pick up," I said to her.

But as soon as the words left my lips, I heard the slight click that meant the line had connected.

I frantically held up a finger and put my phone on speaker mode. "Stells? You there?"

Silence and crackling static on the line for a moment. The whole vehicle slowly turned silent as everyone realized what was going on.

"Yeah, I'm there," Stella's voice came from the other side of the phone and my heart gave a huge rush of relief. "Please don't come for me. I know you're going to try to talk me out of this, but I'm not changing my mind. I'm going in, and it's going to go better if I'm on my own anyway, so please just let me do it and I'll be out in less than an hour and everything will be fine."

Keep her talking, Agent Swan mouthed to me, putting her key into the engine and starting up the Stormrider. I gave a nod.

"Stella, just listen for a minute and think of something other than your own feelings," I said, maybe a bit harshly. "I know. I know you still feel something for Asher. But you can't let that make you do something this... stupid."

"It's not stupid. I have a plan," Stella said hotly, her voice crackling and the line going silent for a second before resuming its noise. "I'm going to go inside his headquarters, sneak through the halls, find the prison, break Asher out, and then leave. Easy-peasy!"

I groaned and put my hand on my forehead. Marlee looked at me anxiously, Emmi and Aury were whispering nervously. The Stormrider had risen slowly from the ground, we were now cruising quickly in cloaked mode at about twenty feet above the ground. So far Agent Swan had only taken down two trees and one lamppost.

"Stella, that's a mission that even an Agent trained for years would struggle with. Let us come and take you back home and we can properly make a plan for what to do about Asher," I said coaxingly.

"But don't you see?" Stella answered, her voice barely a whisper. I heard the wind whistling on her side of the phone and I willed the Stormrider to go faster. "Nothing's ever going to get done. We're going to talk about it and talk about it and whoops, months have passed and suddenly we get word that it's too late, Asher is dead. Dead because of us."

She took a shuddering breath. "Let's be honest with each other, Cam. We both know that's the way things are going to go if I don't go into his headquarters right now."

I closed my eyes briefly and tried to think of something else to say. The fact of the matter is, she was right. That was what was going to happen, though I wasn't sure Asher would die. The STPOW got things done when they were urgent, but I doubted they'd classify Asher as anything less than a minor thought, a mission to plan if they were bored one day.

I took a deep breath. "Stella..."

Before I could continue, I heard the wind pick up on the other side of the phone. Stella swore softly. "Okay, well, that's either you guys or some other Agents. That's my cue to go inside the headquarters, see you in a few."

"Stella, wait—"

The phone clicked. She had hung up.

I let out a frustrated groan-sigh and threw my head in my lap. "That went well."

Lukas put a hand on my shoulder from the seat behind me. "You did great. You just might have delayed her enough where the Agents can reach her now before she enters."

"Speaking of, we're here," Agent Swan piped up from the front of the Stormrider.

I looked out the window at a sickeningly familiar grass field. It looked so innocent, like nothing was hidden here. I bet I could still find the spot near the entrance where my blood stained the grasses from when Darkblaze nearly shot Zoey with a poisoned bullet and I jumped in front of it.

And of course, the memories from inside the headquarters were even more strong. The Android attack where we nearly lost Emmi and Agent Rivers... our capture... Stella's death...

Then I realized something. "Wait, what? Already? It took like an hour when we traveled last time," I said, confused.

"The Stormriders got a little upgrade," Agent Swan said with a smile. "Their top speed increased from three hundred miles per hour to five hundred, and we tweaked the wings to help our open-air flying speed. We get a lot less wind drag now."

"They're over three times as effective now," Emmi said in awe, obviously doing some quick calculations.

"That should be helpful for missions," Aury spoke up. "Especially considering the direct relationship between the velocity of spy vehicles, the raw time necessary to arrive at the mission scene, and the success of the mission. But we also need to consider—"

"Aury," hissed Marlee. "Not now."

Aury rolled her eyes and shut her mouth as the Stormrider touched the dry, dusty ground. The grass swayed menacingly as we all rose from our seats and prepared ourselves for what was to come.

"Listen up, Agents! Time is of the essence. Agents Semaj and Rivers are already here, but we don't know how their progress has been. I'll check in as we walk," Agent Swan said. She gave us a reassuring smile.

"Okay," I said with a sigh as we all rose from our chairs and filed towards the door.

Lukas gently took my hand as the door opened and we stepped down slowly onto the first invisible stair. "Everything's going to be fine."

"I hope so."

As we all set foot on the grass, I immediately looked around. I vaguely saw a large object in the distance, next to three small dots that could be humans. "There!" I exclaimed, pointing to it.

Agent Swan had already seen. She nodded and set off at a brisk walk towards it, motioning for us to follow.

I walked at first in tense silence with the rest of my crew, Lukas's hand in mine. But as we got closer and I could make out my best friend's telltale light blonde hair and her signature hands-on-her-hips pose that she took when she was trying to defend herself, I dropped Lukas's hand and broke into a dead run. After a moment, Marlee, Aury, Lukas, Emmi, and Charles followed. Agent Swan, who was trying to talk on her walkie-talkie to the Agents, jogged after us.

In no time, I had reached Stella, Agent Rivers, Agent Semaj, and the Stormrider. Stella turned to look at my approaching figure just as I crashed into her and threw my arms around her, relief making me giddy. Stella gave a sigh and after a moment hugged me back, her skinny arms wrapped around my torso.

I pulled away and looked into her defiant green eyes for a moment, then slugged her arm. "Ow!" Stella screeched, rubbing the spot and giving me a death glare, resuming her sassy hands-on-the-hips stance. "Nice greeting."

"That is for running off and making us all think something horrible had happened to you!" I exploded, giving her a death glare of my own. "Do you know how absolutely terrifying it is to think your best friend, who has already died once, has just run off and gotten herself killed again, this time for good?!"

Stella began to speak, but before she could utter a word, Lukas, Marlee, Aury, Emmi, and Charles reached us and all hug-tackled Stella at once, taking her to the ground. "Agh!" Stella groaned loudly, shoving them off of her and wiping the grass off of her light blue skinny jeans. "You're all acting like I have been missing for seven years! I'm fine."

I shook my head and offered her a hand. She accepted it and slowly stood. "You should have at least told us where you were going."

Then I noticed Agent Semaj and Rivers, standing at the edge of the scene and trying not to laugh at Stella's skinny jean plight. "Hey! I've missed you guys!" I said happily, running over and throwing my arms around Agent Semaj.

He hugged me back with a crushingly tight hold. "Missed you too. I wish we didn't have to be reunited like this, though."

"Me too," I groaned with a glance at Stella, who was now in a heated debate with Marlee.

I caught the words "...and I am going inside of Shardstorm's headquarters to rescue Asher."

I looked back over her, frustrated. "No, you're not, Stells. We can't do this today." Exasperation wormed its way into my voice. "Now let's get on the Stormriders and go home."

Stella looked at us all for a moment, her piercing green eyes burning into me. "Give me one good reason we shouldn't, with our team of Agents right here, go inside of Shardstorm's headquarters and rescue Asher."

"We aren't ready, Stella," Agent Semaj spoke up with his signature calming tone, putting a hand on her shoulder. "We don't have a plan. We can go back to the headquarters and regroup and plan a mission if the senior Agents see fit."

"They're not going to see fit!" Stella snarled, twisting away from his hand. Agent Semaj calmly retracted it and listened to her. "They're going to talk and talk and talk and never do anything. They don't classify it as urgent and so it's not going to get done."

I noticed Agents Rivers, Semaj, and Swan all stood together close to Stella, ready to grab her if she made any sudden moves trying to escape. She glared at them. "Don't think I don't see what you're trying to do. I'm not stupid, I'm not going to try to escape now from you guys and go in. But as soon as I get the chance, I'm going to come back here and rescue Asher and this time nobody is going to stop me."

Her frenzied tone made my heart clench with fear and frustration. How could we convince her?

"Stella, you're not being rational. A one-Agent mission is almost never the best option. At least help us figure out a plan," Agent Semaj answered, this time not adding the hand-on-the-shoulder.

"I'll give you a plan," Stella hissed, swiping her hair out of her eyes and tucking it behind her ears, as if preparing for something. "We sneak in. We get Asher. We leave. Not everything has to perfectly debated for months and tweaked and finessed. Sometimes the best plan is no plan."

Agent Semaj looked at her closely for a moment. "Stella, I need you to promise me you're not going to try to come here again and rescue Asher on your own."

Stella laughed sharply. "I can one hundred percent assure you that I will."

Agent Semaj closed his eyes for a moment as I nervously picked at a thread in my jeans.

Then he gave a long, heaving sigh and pulled out a walkie talkie.

"Agent Semaj to Agent. Put backup on standby. We're going in."

### Chapter Four

"Wait, we're what?" I spluttered as Agent Semaj pulled out a stun gun and one of the STPOW's signature equipment bags.

"Going in. Of course, if you all are up for it," Agent Semaj added, flipping a switch on the side of the stun gun.

Everyone started talking at once, with varying expressions of fear, happiness, annoyance, and anger. Stella looked thrilled.

"QUIET!" bellowed Agent Rivers, holding up her hands and sweeping us all with her famous stony glare. "Agent Semaj and I are the senior Agents here and we currently are not taking suggestions on how best to run this mission."

"Wait, wait, wait. Why were you all gung-ho about not going in a minute ago and now we are literally about to walk inside of Shardstorm's headquarters?"

Agent Semaj started to say something, then Agent Swan softly cursed, her British accent momentarily stronger. "Guys, we've got company!"

A seemingly normal block of grass slowly was shifted from its spot in the ground about a hundred feet away as one of Shardstorm's Leaguers climbed out, then one more. They immediately noticed us, then started to quickly go back inside the cover.

Agent Rivers without hesitating pulled out a stun gun and fired off three shots. The first and second shot bounced wild, but the third hit its target of one of the men. He fell on top of his comrade, who started to shove him off. "Come on, let's try to catch the conscious one to question him!" Agent Rivers barked, taking off at a full sprint towards the other Leaguer.

We all followed her, and as we ran Agent Semaj handed out stun guns to me, Marlee, and Emmi. "We didn't have time to grab any more, so we're going to be working in partners. Cam with Lukas, Marlee with Charles, Aury with Agent Swan, Emmi with Stella."

"Why don't I get a stun gun?" Stella said with a breathless pout as she pumped her arms in a full sprint. Agent Rivers fired another three shots at the conscious Leaguer, intentionally missing but firing them near the entrance to the headquarters so he wouldn't be able to get in for a precious moment.

"Your recent actions have made you a little less trustworthy," Agent Semaj said honestly but kindly, not seeming out of breath at all as we reached Agent Rivers. "Don't worry, Emmi will protect you."

Stella rolled her eyes.

The Leaguer looked terrified, firing off a wild stun gun shot and hitting a tree. "Hands up!" Agent Rivers barked as we all slowly surrounded and aimed our stun guns at him.

The Leaguer slowly raised his hands, but then he bent his head a bit oddly. I had no idea what he was doing, but Agent Semaj and Rivers both fired at him with their stun guns at once, sending him crashing backwards with a thud onto the ground.

"Well, wanted to keep him conscious, but trying to sneak and talk into walkie-talkies won't do," Agent Rivers muttered, striding to his limp form and grabbing a small walkie-talkie chip out of his jacket where he'd tried to quietly talk into it. "We'll just have to figure out a discreet way in ourselves."

"Why did they start to go back inside the headquarters instead of trying to capture us?" wondered Marlee.

"They were scouts sent to check the motion-triggered alarm that we set off by touching down with the Stormrider and trampling all over their aboveground turf," Agent Semaj answered, bending down to the man. "They couldn't take us down on their own so they were going back inside for backup. At least, that's my assumption."

"Pretty safe assumption," I muttered with a small laugh, always amazed by Agent Semaj's deducing ability.

Stella nudged one of the unconscious guys with her foot. "Hey, he kinda looks like Charles!"

"Stella!" Marlee, Lukas and I scolded at once.

Agent Semaj looked at Stella thoughtfully. "And the other one is fairly short and skinny, like another certain Agent here," he said with a grin at Agent Swan.

"Oh, I see exactly where this is going," Aury sighed.

"Please don't say you're planning what I think you're planning," Charles groaned.

Agent Rivers gave a wicked grin.

____

"I hate this, I hate this, I hate this."

Charles' poofy blonde hair stuck out from under the black Leaguer cap and his chubby build showed through the tight uniform. The fluorescent lights illuminated the sweat on his face, making him look more nervous than he probably was. The black walls gave us ample place to hide as we spun and snuck through the hallway alongside our two undercover Agents.

Agent Swan strode confidently beside him, her short black punk-rock style hair looking great under her cap and her slim build making her fit a bit better in her borrowed uniform. "Shhh," she said quietly, nodding to another Leaguer she passed. He gave a bit of a confused nod back, probably not recognizing her.

"Remind me again why I had to be the one to wear the Leaguer uniform out of all of the more qualified Agents here?" Charles asked with an eye roll, sending Marlee's form in the shadows a pleading look.

"Shardstorm and his crew don't know you or me," Agent Swan answered softly, "but that anonymity will likely be broken after today."

Charles and Agent Swan had donned the uniforms of the unconscious Leaguers, and they'd given the Leaguers a bit of memory serum so the encounter they'd had with us wouldn't stick. Then they'd carried them both back inside the headquarters, finding an empty room and shoving them in it. They might be confused, but at least their first thought upon waking would likely not be "intruders!"

Agent Semaj suddenly typed something on his watch as we moved. Prison up ahead, be prepared to jump any guards inside, the message read.

We were, in fact, nearing the prison. I recognized the way the hallway slanted, the way the rooms grew further apart, the training lab on the right. The familiarity of Shardstorm's headquarters was a little odd, seeing as I'd only really been in it three times.

I supposed it was hard to forget a place as terrible yet as important as this.

My heart started to pound and adrenaline coursed through my veins. The temporary happiness of finding Stella safely had worn off. Now, fear and confusion replaced it. Why had Agent Semaj relented so quickly to Stella on the idea of going in to rescue Asher? Was there some important piece of this puzzle that the senior Agents were keeping from us?

We reached the prison. The all-too-familiar scene of three doors greeted us. I read each plaque beside the door carefully.

The first one stated, "Enter this room to find where those who have betrayed us are betrayed."

The next announced, "Enter this room to find those who may or may not have done wrong, yet still lie in our clutches for one reason or another."

The third door told us, "Enter this room to find those who have done such egregious crimes, they are left to the darkness of death, sooner or later... odds are, sooner."

"Oh, brother," I muttered, ducking behind a doorframe. I remembered the debate Aury, Emmi and I had had when trying to decide the best room to go into to find the captured Zoey. It was a sphinxlike puzzle. But this time, I doubted there would be much of a debate as everyone's minds seemed to come to the same conclusion.

Agent Swan nodded to Charles and strode towards the third door.

There were no Leaguers in sight (many had quit after Shardstorm's defeat in the Android Attack so there was just a skeleton crew left). Remembering the electric doorknob used as a defensive mechanism, I emerged from my hiding spot and reached behind the plaque, hoping to find a shockproof glove like we had rescuing Zoey. But no such luck.

"Not to worry," Agent Swan said with a smile, pulling out a black metal box. She hit a small button, then attached it to the doorknob with a small sticky pad in the back. "This will temporarily neutralize the charge coming from the doorknob. But we have to be quick inside so it will still be in effect when we exit the prison."

We nodded as Agent Rivers carefully placed her hand on the door and twisted the knob.

Looming darkness greeted us inside as we all carefully entered the room. Agent Semaj brought up the rear, leaving the door cracked a little behind us. A low groan came from somewhere deep within the depths of the prison.

"Who's there?" a male voice barked from inside the room.

Suddenly the room was flooded with light as the guard flipped a switch. More light came a moment later as the well-trained guards began to shoot their stun guns at us. "Spread out, surround them, shoot to stun," Agent Rivers barked as she ducked a bolt. She fired off a quick round and hit a guard.

Within thirty seconds it was over. The three prison guards were simply outnumbered, and the last shuddered as an electric pulse traveled through her body. She collapsed to the ground silently.

"That wasn't too difficult," Agent Rivers said cheerfully, stepping over the unconscious bodies to look deeper into the now-illuminated prison.

"She can be a little bit cold-hearted, eh?" Charles muttered to Marlee a little too loudly.

"She can be much more cold-hearted than this, especially to young agents talking behind her back," Agent Rivers said calmly without turning around.

"Case in point," Stella whispered to me, holding her stun gun high (grabbed from me as we entered the prison without my consent).

"Come on," Agent Semaj said, motioning onward into the prison.

The prison might have been unnerving in the darkness, but it was even more so now. Prisoners were chained up to metal poles every few feet, and some were even in cages like they were animals. Many looked unconscious or severely wounded. Those who were awake gave us pleading glances as we passed, but we had no idea who we could trust to release.

The harsh lighting and lingering smell of blood made the whole place seem like some messed-up hospital. "This is so weird," murmured Stella. Of course— she'd never been in one of Shardstorm's prisons before.

"Yeah," I sighed.

Suddenly, I saw a familiar face out of the corner of my eye. Deep blue eyes locked onto mine with surprise. "Uh, guys? I found him."

"What? You did? Where?" Stella frantically asked, following my gaze and gasping. "Oh my god. Asher..." she whispered, racing towards him.

As I got closer, I could see why she was worried. Asher's wrists were cuffed and he hung loosely from the handcuffs, his legs crumpled against the ground. His sandy-blonde hair was covered in dirt and blood from a long scrape along his scalp. His face was a patchwork quilt of black and blue and his body was marred from countless methodical cuts.

It was a mystery to me how he was alive, let alone conscious.

Asher managed a weak smile as Stella went to work on his handcuffs with her lock-picker, ironically very similar to the one she'd gotten me before the President Plot. "Hi," he whispered, his voice scratchy.

"Hello, Asher. I will admit to you, we were not originally planning on rescuing you," Agent Semaj said bluntly but gently. "Your loyalty is still in question. You have this one here to thank for convincing us to come get you." He motioned at Stella, who was at that moment pulling off his handcuffs and gently embracing him.

"Thank you," he said softly, wincing a little. "I know I have been back and forth, but I think I know where I truly belong now."

"Let's hope so, for your sake," Agent Rivers growled, not as ready to forgive and forget.

"Agent Rivers," Agent Swan said softly. "Look at the kid. He's obviously lucky to be alive—and because he betrayed Shardstorm, no less! Give him a break."

Agent Rivers rolled her eyes, not particularly convinced.

Stella finished up with the handcuffs. Asher planted his feet on the ground and tried to stand. As he straightened up, his legs gave way and he collapsed to the ground with a wince, falling on his stomach. He quickly got to his knees, planting his hands on the ground on an attempt to stay somewhat upright. Blood trickled from a reopened cut in his arm.

"Oh, Asher," Stella said sadly, bending down to him and taking his hand. "We have to get out of here—can you walk?"

"Yes, of course," Asher said stubbornly, a bit of his old swagger shining through. He tried again, taking Stella's hand for balance and heaving himself up from the ground. "Let's go."

"No time like the present—if we didn't already trigger Shardstorm's alarms by being in here then we're bound to soon," Agent Rivers said briskly. "Come on."

Asher hooked his arm around Stella's shoulder and slowly took a few steps. After seeing that he was able to walk, Agent Semaj turned towards the door. The enthralled teen Agents turned from Asher reluctantly and started walking towards the door.

Except Charles.

"Wait."

His face was as white as the paper I'd just noticed he was holding in his hands. "You— you guys need to see this. Right now."

Agent Swan cocked her head as Agent Semaj strode over to Charles. "Where did you find that?"

"I-in the pocket of this uniform," Charles said nervously, tugging at the fabric as Agent Semaj snatched the paper from his hands.

"This is it," Agent Semaj said quietly, scanning the paper. "The plan we've been looking for."

"The plan you've been looking for," Stella repeated slowly.

Lukas turned to me, surprised. "Did you know about this?"

"I don't even know what's going on! What plan? Why has this been kept from us?" Frustration filled my voice.

Agent Swan jumped in. "We had heard rumors from inside sources of a top-secret plan that Shardstorm was devising. Called Mission Terminal. We heard... we heard that it had something to do with you, Cam."

"Why—" I shook my head. "Why, may I ask, did you think this was something you didn't need to share with me?"

A chorus of agreement rang out from my friends.

"We weren't even sure that it was certain yet and we didn't want to worry you. You already had enough on your plate," Agent Semaj told me. "That's why we relented to coming inside the headquarters to rescue Asher- for hope of finding some word about this plan."

"Let me see that," Stella snapped, annoyed, grabbing the paper from Agent Semaj's hands and reading it. Her face also turned white as a sheet.

"What is on that freaking paper? Let me see it," I said exasperatedly and loudly, terror and anticipation making my heart beat the fastest I'd ever felt.

Stella wordlessly handed me the paper and I immediately began to read.

Plan overview- Mission Terminal

Cam's address- 283 Ellington Road

On Tuesday November 18th, Capture Cam and her mother, sister, and father.

Torture Cam and her family (kill specific members if necessary) (Cam's weakness- empathy and care for others) to discover STPOW headquarters location, secrets, weaknesses, etc.

After extracting information, kill Cam Grace Noble. Bring down the STPOW for good.

My brain struggled to process the information for a moment, but one important fact rose to the top.

Today was Tuesday.

There were more details afterwards, but I didn't even look at them. I let the paper flutter from my hand onto the floor as I slowly looked up at the terrified and concerned faces of my friends and fellow Agents. "How could you keep this from me?" I whispered.

"We didn't know it was going to be like this, Cam," Agent Semaj said sadly. "We didn't know it was going to be this bad."

"How do we STOP it? I think that's the main thing!" Stella screeched.

"There's only one way to be sure that Shardstorm doesn't send out any of his Leaguers to complete this horrific mission," Agent Semaj said carefully, and my stomach dropped. "We have to surround his headquarters with all of our available Agents. And that could be deadly. But one way or another, we have to finish this... this war... right now."

So this was it, I thought, as I closed my eyes. This was how the war ended, one way or another. I knew that there was an excellent chance that on this day, November 18th, my life and the life of many of my loved ones would end. And I vowed to myself in that moment that I would do whatever it took to make sure that the only major causality from the battle to come was myself. It was my fault that this plan was made, so it would be me who would have to take the blow for it.

Agent Semaj talked quietly into his walkie-talkie as I motioned all my friends—and Asher—together a little further away. We all made a football-team-like huddle.

"Listen," I said, my brown eyes hard. "This is it. I'm not going to let Shardstorm get away from this alive if I can help it. But if I... if I don't make it, I need you all to promise me that you'll finish the job and let my family know I love them and I died protecting them."

"You're being ridiculous, Cam. You're going to be fine," Marlee said, wringing her hands nervously.

"Yeah, don't talk like that, babe," Lukas said with a worried edge to his voice. "As long as you don't do anything stupid, I'm sure you're going to be okay."

"I do stupid crap all the time, and look at me!" Stella scoffed, turning around in a circle like a model. "I'm COMPLETELY healthy. So even if you do stupid stuff I'm sure you'll be okay. But I agree. Let's kill Shardstorm for good, okay?"

"Also Jai, if possible," Asher added softly.

"And my mother needs to go," Aury said sadly.

"I'd like to say goodbye to our fake friend Violet," Emmi said coldly.

"Agent Survivor has outstayed his welcome too," Lukas snarled, likely remembering the shock and horror of his sudden 'resurrection'.

And in that moment I knew that the code of the STPOW, of not killing except for when necessary, was out the window.

We were furious. Furious about what Shardstorm and his agents had done. What they'd taken from us. How they'd changed our lives from those of normal teenagers to those of warriors and fighters.

I loved being a spy. But in my heart bubbled up a burning hatred for Shardstorm, fierce and unlike anything I'd ever felt before. I hated him for what he'd done to our lives. To our friends. To our carefree hearts.

The prisoners around us were looking anxiously at us as we conversed. Agent Swan shrugged as she looked at them. "Ah, what the heck." She started cutting chains free. "More for the fight against Shardstorm, eh?"

Each prisoner thanked her profusely as they rose from their crumpled positions and stretched cramped muscles.

Agent Semaj put away his walkie-talkie. "All the available agents from the STPOW are on their way. They will arrive in about seven minutes."

"Seven minutes," I repeated. "Let's just avoid getting caught until then."

"Yeah, that might be a little bit of a problem," Aury said with a gasp as she turned around.

One of the male prison guards had woken up, a few feet away from us, and was slowly standing up. He braced himself on the cool wall and locked eyes with me.

A slow, malicious smile spread across his face.

"Looks like Shardstorm won't need to go looking for the little pawn at all. She's walked right into the snake's nest."

He lifted a walkie talkie. All the Agents with stun guns raised them and fired, almost instantaneously, but before they hit the prison guard he pressed down the button on his walkie talkie and said two words.

"She's here."

Four bolts of electricity slammed into his chest and he crumpled, convulsing, to the ground.

After he fell still, Agent Rivers grunted, bending down to check his pulse. "Well, there's the first causality."

I gasped. "He's dead?" I said, eyes wide.

"Kiddo, I don't think he'll be the last one today," Agent Semaj said sadly. "We better go. They know we're here now."

Stella looped her arm through Asher's. I took Lukas's hand and we slammed the door of the prison open, blinking in the comparative brightness of the harshly lit hallway. An alarm was ringing faintly in the distance, and Leaguers began making their way out of doors alongside the hallway. A few noticed us immediately, and yelled.

Agent Rivers let out a stream of curse words and motioned us forward. "Reinforcements are nearly here! We just have to get to the surface of the headquarters!"

With that, we sprinted towards the door we'd entered from.

Almost immediately, bullets and stun gun pulses began to fly all around us. Lukas grabbed my hand and started to run faster, shielding me from behind. I heard a whizzing above my head and ducked, narrowly avoiding a bolt.

I heard a cry of surprise and looked over to see Marlee clutching her arm as she stumbled forward. Redness oozed from near her wrist.

I cursed, letting go of Lukas's hand and helping Marlee run towards the exit.

Finally, mercifully, we reached the exit. Agent Rivers kicked the door and it popped open. "COME ON!" she screamed and we all raced outside into the daylight.

Bullets and bolts followed us out until Agent Rivers slammed the door closed and bolted it. Almost immediately it was dented by a spray of bullets.

"Okay, team huddle. We don't have much time before they get out," Agent Semaj said quickly. "We asked the STPOW agents to bring extra stun guns so you all could have one, but always still stick with a partner in case one of you is injured."

Stella glanced at me and I nodded at her.

"Speaking of, Marlee, you okay?" Agent Swan asked.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Just surprised me," Marlee said with a sad smile, clutching her wrist. "Maybe a bandage would be nice?"

Agent Swan ruffled through her gear bag and began to wrap Marlee's bullet wound as Agent Semaj continued talking.

"I just wanted to say... I love you guys," Agent Semaj said quietly. A lump rose in my throat as he kept talking. "I don't know what I would do without each and every one of you. You're all so special and mean so much to me. I just wish that we could have a normal life, with normal relationships, and a normal marriage..." he looked sadly at his wife.

"But after today, if we can destroy Shardstorm once and for all, there is hope. There's hope that I can live with Elena, happily ever after. There's hope that you all can go back to being normal teenagers, at least for a while. So, let's just make it through today, okay? And after the battle, I'm going to give every single one of you the biggest hug you've ever had," Agent Semaj said with a grin. "Let's do this."

A tear trickled from my eye. "Agent Semaj, you're the best."

"Hey, favoritism!" Agent Rivers said with mock anger. We all laughed.

"This calls for a team cheer!" Stella said cheerfully. "Hands in, everybody!"

I rolled my eyes. "Stells!" But I dutifully put my hand in the middle, along with the rest of my true family.

"SPIES THAT PROTECT OUR WORLD ON THREE!"

A bullet broke through the metal door and flew out into the distance.

"ONE!"

I heard the telltale whirring of the Stormriders arriving, and two of them burst through the tree line.

"TWO!"

At least ten Stormriders landed on the grass as bullets began to come more freely through the chipped metal door.

"THREE!"

The door to Shardstorm's headquarters burst open and his Leaguers flowed through the open door, noticing us instantly. At the same time, the doors to the Stormriders opened and at least a hundred STPOW Agents began a battle charge towards where we stood, spreading out in a wide circle to cover all possible entrances.

"SPIES THAT PROTECT OUR WORLD!" We all screamed, throwing our hands into the air and immediately sprinting from the flow of bullets that followed us.

The final battle had begun.
Chapter Five

"CAM! OVER HERE!" Stella screamed, motioning to me with the stun gun that she'd taken.

A Leaguer jumped in front of me as I started to run towards Stella. "Hi!" I said cheerfully, grabbing his wrist and twisting it behind his back, then slamming a hard kick into the back of his knees. He crumpled to the ground as I waved sarcastically at him and sprinted towards Stella, avoiding the bolts shooting from the Leaguers rapidly spreading out across the field, evidently trying to find a chink in the armor of the STPOW.

I reached Stella. She tucked a light blonde strand of hair behind her ear and said breathlessly, "Rivers got extra stun guns! You need to get one. Let's go!"

A bullet whizzed past a couple feet from my arm. "Frick that! I need a real gun. We've got to meet the Leaguers at their level or we're going to get destroyed!" I screeched.

Stella looked at me closely for a moment, then nodded. "You've changed," she said softly as we ran towards the telltale figure of Agent Rivers a few yards away.

I didn't answer, my thoughts buzzing as I sprinted after my best friend. I had changed. What Stella had said at the mall a few days ago had stuck with me. What had happened to the kind, compassionate Cam who wouldn't kill someone no matter what? My innocence, my hope for peace with little violence, where had it gone?

Maybe I'd find it again today. Or maybe today would be the day that would shatter my hopeful spirit buried deep inside once and for all.

We reached Agent Rivers, who was shooting at a Leaguer hiding behind the base of a Stormrider. Agent Rivers nodded to us briefly and gestured to a pile of guns that were at her feet. I picked a simple one that I'd worked with during training sessions and offered its twin to Stella.

"Nah, I'll stick with my stun gun for now," Stella said, before looking momentarily surprised and then falling forward, clattering face-first into the pile of guns. Her pale arms splayed out in front of her and her stun gun fell out of her limp hand.

"STELLS!" I screamed, looking desperately for the Leaguer who had shot her. The battlefield was already a disaster. Agents were falling practically every second, but Leaguers were too. The peaceful coating underfoot of waving grasses was slowly but surely being trampled and covered in blood.

I carefully lifted Stella up and off of the guns, gently placing her on the grass next to the pile. "What happened?" yelled Agent Rivers, ducking to dodge a bolt shot at her from across the field.

"I think just a stun gun," I answered nervously as I checked every part of Stella's body for a telltale bullet wound, fear souring my throat.

"Yep, that's probably it. She fell too quickly for it to have been likely caused by a bullet wound," Agent Rivers said calmly. "Keep her out of harm's way until she wakes up."

Stella stirred. "Until who wakes up?" she said groggily.

"You!" I said happily and gave her a hug. "Stells, you lasted all of thirty seconds on the battlefield! You've got to be more careful."

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" Stella said defensively, rubbing her head and sitting up. "What happened since I was out?"

"I think the stun gun resistance training actually helped, because you were only out for like a minute and a half," I told her. "Pretty much nothing happened."

"Neat," Stella responded with a grin, standing up and bracing herself on my shoulder. I handed her the stun gun and she took it gratefully. "Let's go kick some Shardstorm a—" Agent Rivers turned around and gave her a death glare. "Butt. Some Shardstorm's butt," Stella revised quickly.

With that, we raced across the battlefield, looking for Agents in need.

It sucked, because, if it wasn't the day of a terrible battle over which the fate of the earth might be hinged on, it would have been a gorgeous day. The sun was high in the sky with only a few clouds drifting past. The uncharacteristic warmth of the past summer was still lingering in the air and I felt a light sheen of sweat build on my arms as we ran around, shooting all the Leaguers we could see and nodding to STPOW Agents we recognized.

"Hey, Stella and Cam, over here!" I heard a familiar yell from across the field. I turned and saw two faces I knew very well—that of my boyfriend, and that of one of my worst enemies. They were engaged in a heated stun gun battle, dodging and twisting. Lukas was a little slower than the other, and I could tell that soon he would be beat.

"When in the heck did Jai get out here?" Stella groaned.

We changed course immediately and sprinted towards Lukas and Jai.

"Hey, Jai! Over here, you—" Stella completed the word Rivers had cut her off from saying earlier.

Jai turned his head towards the sound. His deep, dark blue eyes locked onto mine and a slow, chilling smile spread across his face. "Hello, girls." He fired off three quick bolts and we managed to quickly duck and avoid them. "How's the battle going?"

"Lovely, thank you for asking," I said cheerfully, cocking my gun and firing at him, the recoil throwing me a bit backwards.

The bullet barely whizzed by Jai's shoulder, ruffling his light brown hair. Jai slowly looked at me. "Ah. We're using the big girl guns now, aren't we?" he said softly, dropping his stun gun and pulling out a similar compact one to my own.

The fear and anxiety cramping up my stomach started building. I'd been practicing a lot, but I was pretty sure Jai could still take me down almost instantly with a gun.

But hand-to-hand combat? I wasn't so sure. I'd been working so hard over the past month that it was a miracle I didn't explode from sleep deprivation and overworking.

I dropped my gun. "Fine," I said with a slight smile. "If you're so scared, I'll take you hand-to-hand. For old times' sake."

A look of relief so fast I might have imagined it flitted across Jai's face and I found my hope that his feelings for me were gone disappear in an instant.

Stella groaned. "That's suicide, C!" she whispered in my ear. "Just put a bullet in him and we can go on to help other Agents."

"No," I said quietly. "I have... a theory."

"Fine," Jai answered calmly. "But we have to eliminate... other variables." Jai shot a stun gun bolt at Stella, then one at Lukas, too quick for them to dodge. They both fell silently to the warm ground, shaking the grass among them.

I attempted to quell the anger making my arms physically shake and shot a desperate glance at my unconscious best friend and boyfriend. I walked up to Jai as he dropped his own gun. Lighting fast, Jai reached out with a hand in hopes of scoring a close blow to the face. I threw my arm up and blocked it, reaching down his own to grab his wrist.

I quickly tried to execute the same maneuver that I had done earlier on the Leaguer who'd stopped me, but as I spun around Jai landed a hard kick to my stomach, making me gasp and stagger backwards.

Jai looked at me, bent over, for a moment and raised his eyebrows. "You're better now."

As the pain from the blow wore off I continued to clutch my stomach in hopes of gaining an advantage. And sure enough, as Jai approached me, he let his guard down. I sprung forwards and punched him as hard as I could. The blow landed on his shoulder and he was off-balance for a moment, a chance I used to whirl around and hit his stomach full force with a back kick, my strongest one.

Jai staggered for a second then straightened up almost immediately. "Yes, definitely better now."

He looked me in the eyes and gave his signature smirk. "But I still don't believe you're as good as me."

A volley of blows and kicks suddenly rained down upon me. He was moving as fast as lightning, as fast as the sun. I blocked them as best I could but suddenly it was too much, too fast, and he landed one to my head. Stars exploded in my mind and I crumpled to the ground, landing on my hands and knees, and fought to remain conscious.

Stella, who had just woken up, got to her feet and at full force, ran at Jai. "I HATE you!" she screamed, shooting a bolt at him.

Jai easily sidestepped and grabbed Stella's arm, picking her whole body up with just the grip on her arm and slamming her into the ground. Stella lay where she fell with a groan.

Jai gave me a silky smile. "Too bad better doesn't mean best."

He approached my weakened but still defiant form and I thought to myself, this is where I figure out if my theory is correct. If I was wrong, it might cost me my life.

Jai stood over me for a moment, looking down upon me. I closed my eyes and planted a foot on the ground, trying to stand up again.

"Defiant until the bitter end," Jai scoffed.

And then, just like a switch had been flipped, he picked up his guns and walked away across the field.

I watched him go as Stella got to her feet and ran over to me. "Cam! Are you okay?! Oh my god! What the heck just happened?"

"I was right," I said quietly, accepting her offer of a hand up. "Jai refuses to kill or injure me. And I'm almost certain it's because he still loves me and he's hiding it quite badly."

"You're joking," Stella groaned. "What a creep."

It was so weird, I thought. Jai had really only known me well for about seven months. But in that time, we'd gone from being acquaintances, to friends, to more than friends, to mortal enemies. But Jai had never really, in his mind, worked past the "more than friends" part. It was like he was stuck back in April, when our biggest problem was solving the President Plot, but at least then (I believed) we had each other.

Now things were a million times more complicated. Jai was Shardstorm's son. Yes, he had tried to kill me before, but it was only under extreme pressure from Shardstorm. I still hated him with a burning passion. He had killed Taylor, and nothing he ever, ever did, would make up for that. "Love" for me did not even begin to fix his actions.

Stella seemed deep in thought. "Hey, now that we know this, it's to our advantage. If he's about to kill Lukas or something, just throw yourself in front of him and—"

"AHH! I forgot about Lukas!" I screeched suddenly, turning around in a circle, looking for the place where he'd fallen after Jai shot him.

Suddenly, I felt two warm arms wrap around my waist. "You forgot about who?" A quiet and reassuring voice whispered in my ear, lighting up tiny goosebumps on my skin and melting the fear in my stomach, at least for a moment.

I tried to turn my head around to see my beautiful boyfriend's face. "I'm not an owl, my darling," I said with a small smile. "Reveal yourself!"

Lukas leaned his head around to meet mine. "Hello!"

"You weirdo," I said with a laugh, then I kissed him.

We broke apart and Stella, who was covering her eyes, said loudly, "Can I come out now?"

"It's all clear," I said with a grin.

Stella slowly peeked out between her fingers, then removed her hands from her eyes. "Phew," she said with a smile.

"So. Game plan, all?"

"Kill Shardstorm," Stella said helpfully. "Also Jai."

"Where is Shardstorm?" Lukas asked thoughtfully.

"Probably hiding inside his little rabbit hole like a coward until all his Leaguers do his dirty work and die for him," snarled Stella.

A beat of silence passed over our little circle. I grabbed my gun from the floor, put it on my shoulder, and motioned for Lukas and Stella to keep walking beside me, looking for people to help.

"I'm worried he's going to try to still carry out his plan," I confessed. "I don't think it would be hard for a Leaguer to slip away towards my house in all this chaos. I want to ask Agent Semaj if he can deploy an Agent just to keep watch over my family."

"Yeah, you should definitely ask that," Lukas said with a nod. "Can never be too safe."

"Let's try to find him," Stella concluded. "He can't be that hard to find. He's a super tall dude and he's got absolutely blazing hair."

"Blazing hair." I shook my head and a smile crept onto my face. "I'm sure he'll love that descriptor."

"I'm not wrong, am I?" Stella protested playfully.

"What's wrong with the word 'red'?" Lukas teased.

"Blazing just sounds cooler!" Stella spluttered back.

"Blazin' James, the coolest in the East." I struck a pose and pretended to put on sunglasses as Stella doubled over with laughter beside me.

"C'mon, c'mon, we've got to focus," Lukas said, shoving me gently. "Gotta find that Blazin' James."

We jogged around the battlefield. From what I could see, the tide was slowly turning in favor of the STPOW Agents. Many Leaguers were unconscious or wounded on the ground, and there were a few other STPOW Agents wandering around, looking for people to help, as well.

"Hey, the battle is looking good!" I said with a smile. "By the way, Lukas, why were you alone fighting Jai in the first place?"

"I forgot to tell you!" Lukas said, smacking his forehead. "I was partnered up with Marlee, because they needed Charles for something else. But we were ambushed by this terrifying looking Leaguer. She was probably seven feet tall and her hair looked like..." he snapped his fingers as if trying to remember something. "Like that creepy lady from Harry Potter! What's her name? Something that ends with the word strange?"

"Darkblaze," Stella and I said together, looking at each other with fear.

"It wasn't Darkblaze," Lukas said, oblivious. "Lestrange, maybe?"

I rolled my eyes. "No, genius! The lady who attacked you was Darkblaze. Aury's mom? Shardstorm's second in command and general? Ring any bells?"

"I hate that lady," Stella muttered.

"Well, she shot Marlee!" Lukas told us.

"Shot Marlee?" I shouted and an STPOW Agent turned to look at me. I waved awkwardly to her and then turned back to Lukas. "Is Marlee okay?"

"I hope. She was shot in the shoulder and an STPOW medic took her away, so I was left without a partner."

"Where did Darkblaze go? I have something I'd like to show her if she'd just put her eye up reeeeally closely into the barrel of my gun and look inside," Stella said cheerfully.

"Don't be violent!" I shoved Stella lightly.

"This whole freaking day is violent!" Stella shoved me back.

Lukas suddenly stopped walking and looked to his left. He cursed loudly then started running that way. "Lukas, what—" I started to say, then saw why he was running.

Darkblaze had Emmi pinned to the ground, her gun to Emmi's head. I wasn't sure if Emmi's android model was bulletproof, but I wasn't going to wait to find out. "Come on!" I screeched to Stella as I ran towards Darkblaze.

I sprinted like I'd never sprinted before, my gun bouncing and jostling me on my shoulder, my heart pounding. We were so close—just a few feet—"we were going to make it...

and then Darkblaze pulled out a different gun. This one was large and had a different attachment on the end. It didn't look good.

As we raced towards the scene, Darkblaze saw us. "Hey, little kiddies," she said with a cruel smile. "Come to play? Well, I'm afraid you're rather too late to save your little friend here," she said, her eyes cold as ice. "This gun is specifically made with an electromagnetic pulse harnessed to destroy an android."

I reached Darkblaze and jumped, leaping for the gun in her hand, but Darkblaze yanked it away as my hand closed over it and slammed it into my shoulder. Sharp and sudden pain shot through my bones as I crashed back onto the ground on the other side of Emmi.

I struggled to get back to my feet as Lukas slammed into Darkblaze with a kick. She stumbled a couple steps and Stella kicked her in the stomach.

She doubled over momentarily but recovered extremely quickly, standing up and looking at us with hatred. Darkblaze lashed out with a low kick and Lukas, caught by surprise, fell to his knees.

I managed to stand up and lift my stun gun. I aimed at Darkblaze and fired, but she saw it a second before it hit her and managed to duck at the speed of light. Stella tried to attack from behind, but Darkblaze kicked her without even turning around. Stella doubled over, gasping.

"My daughter's friends are such weaklings, just like she is," snarled Darkblaze, raising the gun to my sweet, beautiful android friend's heart.

And right before my eyes, Darkblaze looked at Emmi, smiled cruelly, and pulled the trigger.

It was like it was in slow motion. I locked eyes with Emmi, lunging and desperately trying to swipe at Darkblaze (though I knew it was too late) just as the giant bolt fired from the gun slammed into her heart. Emmi's body jerked a few times, then she fell still.

I crashed to the ground.

"NO!" I screamed, the pain in my shoulder from Darkblaze's blow reverberating through my body and making it hard to think as I crawled over to Emmi. Her eyes were fluttering and she was struggling to lift her head from the ground.

"Good thing you're not too late for the rest of the fun to begin!" Darkblaze said. She laughed maniacally, her gray eyes wild. She raised her other gun and pointed it right at me.

I closed my eyes.

Two shots rang out, the sound resounding across the field.

I opened my eyes.

Darkblaze looked surprised for a moment, then she fell to her knees, her gun falling from her hand with a soft thump onto the moist ground. She slipped forward onto her face, barely making a sound. A circle of red slowly spread outwards on her chest, and on her shoulder.

Aury stood behind her, gun raised, looking stunned at what she had just done.

"Mom..."

She knelt down to her mother's level, dropped her gun in the grass, and put her face in her hands, sobs wracking her body.

"Aury, babe, come here," I said softly, holding out my arms. Aury collapsed into them, sobbing, wiping her eyes angrily.

Stella and Lukas looked shell-shocked, kneeling down to Emmi's body. Suddenly, with a cough, Emmi opened her eyes. "Oh, hi guys," she said, a sad smile playing across her lips.

"Emmi!" I said, taking Emmi's cool, smooth hand that I had only ever really thought of as human. "Are you okay?"

Emmi slowly shook her head. "I feel the damage from the pulse spreading quickly. I don't have much time."

"That's okay! You're going to be okay," Aury said frantically, reaching out desperately for Emmi. "We'll just take out your brain chip, with all your memories and personality, and have Shardstorm build you a new body. It's going to be okay." Aury repeated this to herself as she tucked her blonde hair with dyed-green tips behind her ear and started feeling along Emmi's hair, uncharacteristically clumsily, for the opening to reach her brain chip.

"No," Emmi said simply, blinking her beautiful chocolate-brown eyes. "You can't keep him alive just for me. If you don't kill him now, today, you're never going to get the chance."

And I knew in my heart that Emmi was right, that it had to be today. But my mind refused to believe it. "There has to be a way to rebuild your body. We'll ask all the best scientists."

"Only Shardstorm could do it," Emmi answered quietly. Then she closed her eyes for a second, then opened them. "The self-destruct sequence is initiated for one minute. It will wipe out my brain chip, my body, everything."

"No! Stop it! Don't do this! There's still hope," sobbed Aury, clutching to Emmi's hand like a lifeline. "There's still hope."

Emmi shook her head sadly. "No. The hope for me has run out. But you..."

She closed her eyes and a tear trickled down her cheek. "There's hope left for you. Please, please kill Shardstorm for me. For my sacrifice."

A tear leaked from my eye as I took Emmi's hand in my own. "We will," I promised. "We will."

Emmi sighed and looked at Aury. "It's better off this way, anyway," she said softly.

Aury buried her face in Emmi's chest. "No, it's not," Aury sobbed, lifting Emmi's head into her arms so tenderly. "It's not better this way." She took a deep, shuddering breath. "Please don't leave me. You're my best friend and I can't imagine life without you. I love you."

Surprise raced through my system as Emmi answered sadly, "I know you do. And I thought I was incapable of really feeling, really loving, because I'm not human," Emmi told her, tears welling in both of their eyes.

"But I was wrong. I... I love..."

Emmi suddenly fell limp in Aury's arms, her eyes falling closed, her hand holding mine going slack and slipping out of my grasp to the ground.

"No."

I didn't even know who had said it. Me, Aury, Stella, Lukas, it didn't matter. Emmi was gone. Sweet, kind, soft-spoken, beautiful Emmi was dead.

It didn't matter that she was an android. She had always been human to me. And now one of my closest friends, from the very beginning of my spy career, had been killed in front of me.

I had failed.

### Chapter Six

I felt gentle hands under my arms, lifting me up from where I stared at Emmi's body and held tightly to Aury's weeping form. The tear on my cheek fell into the grass below.

I hated that grass.

"Cam. We have to keep fighting. The Spies That Protect Our World need us," Stella said quietly to me, her voice coming from beside me.

I looked over at her, bleary-eyed. Stella had tears on her cheeks too. So did Lukas, who walked to stand beside me after he got me to my feet.

I shook my head. I was Agent Hope. I needed to get my act together. My friends were hurting too, and they didn't fall apart like I had. "You're right. I'm sorry."

"Oh, don't be sorry, babe," Lukas said sadly. "You don't need to be sorry."

I closed my eyes and tried to keep myself from breaking down right there, sobbing and melting into a puddle of Jell-O in my boyfriend's arms. "We need to take Aury somewhere she can be safe. She's not fit to fight right now," I told them.

Stella gently bent down to Aury's level. "Hey, Aurs. Let's go get you some water and some shade, okay?" Stella said kindly, taking Aury's hand. Aury stood up slowly and Stella guided her to a first-aid station like she was a lost little toddler looking for her parents.

I watched them go.

"Do you think you need some water and a break too?" Lukas asked softly. "No shame in it. Something so terrible..." his voice cracked.

"No. I have to fight... to avenge her," I responded with certainty.

Lukas nodded, something like pride in his eyes.

And I did. I fought like I'd never fought before.

Lukas and I were a dream team, working together like our minds were one. We would spin and twist, knocking out and injuring Leaguers left and right. My taekwondo was the strongest it had ever been and I used it to my full advantage, spinning my gun like a baton and using it as an extra weapon.

As we fought, I kept glancing around, looking for Shardstorm. But I couldn't get a glimpse of his telltale scar stretching across his face, his deep blue eyes, his muscular body.

As the battle wore on, everyone began to tire. More Leaguers began to go down and not get back up again, but so did more STPOW Agents. Stella rejoined us after dropping off Aury, and said that Marlee's wound had been cared for and that she was doing much better and would be able to keep fighting very soon.

Charles, who was a quite good shot because of his former obsession with video games, had apparently been doing very well on the battlefield. He found us after a while and after a brief period of all fighting together, we split up with Stella and I on one team and Lukas and Charles on the other.

There was a short moment where I was doing a headcount of all my friends in my mind and I forgot that Emmi was gone. So when I reached her name in my head, my train of thought shuddered to a halt. Right in the middle of a heated stun gun battle with a Leaguer, tears began to roll down my face again.

Stella finally managed to get in a shot at the Leaguer. The Leaguer fell to the ground and Stella noticed why I'd slowed down fighting. She enveloped me in a hug, her soft hair tickling my face. "Oh, Cam. I wish it didn't have to go this way," she whispered.

I hugged her tighter, tears falling from my cheeks. "She was so good. She never did anything wrong to anybody and now she's gone. It's not fair."

"I know," Stella said soothingly, "I know."

I closed my eyes for a moment. "More people can't die. We have to do something that gives us an edge."

The air stilled for a moment.

The calm before the storm.

"We need to find Shardstorm," Stella whispered, like she had read my mind.

Shardstorm. The one responsible for this. The one whose goal to take over the world had led to so many innocent lives being lost.

"He must be in his headquarters," I reasoned, picking a string on my jacket absentmindedly and fiddling with my stun gun. "We need to flush him out and into the battle where we can get a chance at killing him."

"Are you saying what I think you're saying?" Stella asked me, looking at me closely.

"We go into his headquarters. One last time."

A light breeze whistled through the grass, sweeping it against my legs and tickling my ankles.

"You're right. But if we're going to do this, we need our team."

"Our dream team," I whispered sadly, "minus one member."

"We do this for Emmi," Stella growled, "for her sacrifice. She made us promise we were going to kill Shardstorm, and it will be over my dead body that we don't complete that goal."

"Whoah, don't get dramatic." I raised my eyebrows. "The whole point of doing this is so nobody else dies."

"Well, we better kill Shardstorm then so we don't find out if I was telling the truth, ey?"

"You're ridiculous." I rolled my eyes and smiled a little, elbowing her.

She linked her arm through mine and gave me one of her sassy and beautiful smiles, and for a moment it was like we weren't standing on a grass field, in the middle of a terrible battle, where one of our closest friends had died and the fate of the world hinged on what we did next.

It was like we were back to the summer, just a couple months ago, where things were still hard because of Taylor's loss, but we had hope for the future, hope that her sacrifice would be the last one.

It was like it was the day we'd decided to go to the park, just the two of us, and act like little kids again. We'd skipped along the rocky trail, ignoring the judging glances, singing loudly and off-key. We hung upside down from the monkey bars and let the wind play with our hair in the mid-morning sun. We had lain down on grass not unlike this grass, with a light breeze not unlike this breeze, and linked our arms not unlike now.

But it wasn't summer. It was nearing winter and the breeze was heavier, stronger. And we were in the middle of a terrible battle where the fate of the world might hinge on our next decision.

The seasons weren't the only things that had changed, though. We had changed. We were tougher, more powerful. And we were ready.

Ready to save the world.

"Let's find our team."

We walked across the battlefield, looking for the rest of our friends and occasionally shooting a stun gun pulse at random Leaguers we saw.

"I think I see Charles and Lukas fighting a couple Leaguers over there," Stella said, pointing four fighting figures out a few yards away.

I squinted and could make out Lukas's slender form and light brown hair and the shorter and chubbier Charles beside him.

"Yep, that's them," I confirmed with a smile.

We jogged up, trying not to make too much noise and distract them. Lukas and Charles were shooting bolt after bolt at a young male and female Leaguer and dodging everything they shot back.

"Hey guys!" Stella said loudly as we approached.

"Well, there goes our stealth plan," I muttered.

Lukas and Charles looked our way, but so did the Leaguers. In the moment of distraction, I shot three bolts, and Stella shot two. One hit the man and he collapsed. One skimmed the woman, who looked surprised and started to say something, but before she got the chance Lukas and Charles fired at once, hitting her straight in the chest with two bolts.

As she quietly slipped to the ground, I grinned. "What's up, y'all?"

"Cam and Stella! Where did you come from?" Charles said happily.

"They just magically appeared out of nowhere," Lukas said with a smile, "like from a fairy tale."

I rolled my eyes with a small smile. "This isn't any fairy tale, Lukas. Or else the ending would be happy."

"It might still be happy yet," Lukas said with raised eyebrows, wrapping his hands around mine. "It isn't over."

"Seems unlikely," I murmured.

"Well, speaking of, we found you to ask if you wanted to come investigate inside the headquarters and find Shardstorm. He needs to die for this to end," Stella piped up.

"Of course!" Lukas said, and Charles gave an excited nod of agreement.

"Yay!" Stella clapped her hands.

"Awesome," I said with a smile. "Now it's time to find Marlee and Aury and see if they are up for fighting again."

We made our way across the field, slowly walking through the grass.

"I can't believe Emmi's gone," said Charles sadly as we walked.

My stomach clenched and Charles looked at me. "Oh, I-I'm sorry, if you don't want to talk about it--"

"No, we need to talk about it," Stella said, a little angrily. "And how it's not going to happen again to anyone else here."

We nodded agreement, but she continued, "And those aren't just empty words. We are going to do everything in our power to stop something like that from happening again. I know sometimes there's no way," she said to Lukas, who was opening his mouth in protest. "But if there's anything, anything you can do to stop it, even if it might be dangerous, please do."

"Of course, Stells," I said softly, putting a hand on her arm.

She softened a bit. "Sorry if that sounded rude. But... I feel like I could have done more to keep Emmi safe, and I want to make sure none of you feel the same guilt that I do right now."

"Stella, listen to me," I said. "It was not your fault."

"Okay, okay." Stella sighed. "Just wanted to say that."

"Aury was such a hero," Lukas said softly.

"I can't imagine killing your own mother," I said with a shudder.

Silence for a moment, then...

"Speak of the devil," Stella exclaimed, spotting a familiar face among the chaos. "AURY!" she bellowed.

A figure a few feet away turned to look at us, her dyed-green tips swishing. She saw us and a small smile appeared on her face as she hoisted her stun gun on her shoulder and jogged towards us.

"Aury, you stubborn little thing!" Stella said proudly, giving Aury a punch on the shoulder. "You were supposed to be resting!"

"I wanted to fight," Aury told us, pushing her glasses up. "Also, I was in the middle of a study about the best stun gun techniques on the battlefield, and I couldn't just quit that after all the work I'd put into it."

We all laughed, glad to see Aury's face and hear her sounding a little more like her old self.

"Are you okay? Really?" I asked her, looking at her closely.

"It's... it's not easy," Aury said, her voice shaking. "She was so important to me, and I feel so confused and lost now."

"I know what you mean," I said, putting an arm around her. "Stella being gone was the worst month and a half of my life. It's so hard to lose someone so close."

"I'm right here," Stella said with a mock huff, flipping her hair over her shoulder.

"Shut up!" Lukas hissed, elbowing her. "They're trying to have a moment."

"I can still hear you," I deadpanned, looking into my boyfriend's eyes. "I may be slightly in pain from getting my butt handed to me by Jai and Darkblaze, but that doesn't mean my ears don't work!"

He shrugged sheepishly. "I won't try to help anymore, then!" He put his hands on his hips with fake anger and pretended to flip nonexistent hair over his shoulder.

"Are you mocking me!?" bellowed Stella, smacking his arm.

We all chuckled. Aury giggled a little through her tears, wiping her eyes. "You guys know how to make a girl feel better, you know that?"

I looked at Aury and was struck with such a fierce love and protection for her, my friend. She'd had such a terrible, difficult life so far— growing up in Shardstorm's headquarters with a ruthless, unloving mother and no true friends.

And now, she'd lost her best friend, practically with a snap of the fingers. And her positivity and intelligence had helped her to make it through that time— but a girl couldn't survive on positivity and intelligence alone. She needed friends.

I was going to be that friend.

"I'm glad we can," I told Aury with a smile, linking my tanned arm through her pale one. "C'mon. Let's find Marlee."

We headed towards the hospital area where our medic friend resided, hoping to catch Marlee there.

"There's the doctor lady," Lukas said, pointing to the woman with the red cross on her back.

"Doctor lady." I shook my head and tried to bite back a smile.

We approached, our feet softly thudding on the moist ground. The medic looked up as we got close.

"Hey, you all. What can I--"

"GUYS!" A familiar voice screeched, and then a blur of pink hair and purple lipstick and gorgeous hazel eyes slammed into me and tackled me to the ground.

"Marlee!" we chorused happily, as I laughed and hugged her, my sneakered feet squishing in the dirt as water from the ground soaked into my gray t-shirt.

"Girl, you just about killed me!" I chuckled and slowly stood up. "I'm just a little sore, ya know."

"Yep, that was definitely a mistake," Marlee admitted with a groan as I offered her a hand up, "the old shoulder doesn't feel the best right now."

"Oh my gosh, I can't believe you got shot twice in the course of like thirty minutes! Are you okay?" Stella gushed.

"Don't recommend it, wouldn't do it again, but hey, I'm alive!" Marlee said enthusiastically.

Aury's face fell.

"Frick, Aury, I didn't mean it like that," Marlee said quickly, playing with her hair nervously. "I'm sorry, I didn't... I didn't mean it like that."

"No, it's okay," Aury said, looking at the ground, then up at Marlee. "For one, I'm extremely glad you're alive."

Marlee looked relieved. "Well, I'm glad I'm alive too."

"I think we're all glad you're alive," I concluded, speaking for everyone as I gave her another hug, "and feeling well enough to absolutely tackle me to the ground!"

"Sorry," she said sheepishly, gently hugging me back.

"No problemo," I said with a grin as I pulled away. "So. Marlee, are you up for a little spy mission?"

"Am I an Agent or not?" Marlee asked with raised eyebrows, and pumped her fist. "Of course! What's the plan?"

"No real plan," I told her truthfully, "we just want to sneak into Shardstorm's headquarters and see if we can find him, and maybe any info that can give us an edge in this battle. It's gone on too long."

"We should probably ask Rivers and Semaj," Lukas pointed out.

"You goody-two-shoes, where's the fun in that?" Stella pouted, shaking her head at him.

"No, we should," Marlee interjected, "because what if they look for us on the battlefield and they can't find any of us and they assume the worst? I don't want to put them through that pain."

"Smart cookie," Aury said.

"Where are Agent Semaj and Rivers?" Charles asked, squinting as he peered around the battlefield.

"And also, should we ask Asher if he wants to come with us?" Stella put in.

"No," I said. "He was injured pretty badly. I don't think he would be able to keep up and it would be hard to protect him if we ran into danger."

Stella nodded, uncharacteristically quiet.

"Are you okay?" I asked softly.

"Our team feels so weird and incomplete," Stella said sadly and quietly to me as the others looked around for the Agents. "It feels wrong without Emmi."

"I know," I answered, feeling a stinging in my eyes. "She always tied us all together without even realizing it. I have such a strong feeling of missing someone now that we're all together, and that feeling is never going to go away because she's dead, gone forever."

"Maybe she's still here, though," Stella said softly.

"Don't go all cheesy crap about her being in our hearts on me—"

"We spent so, so much time together as a friend group, that now I feel like little mannerisms she did are ingrained in all of us. Like look," Stella said, pointing at my hand which was currently playing with a string on my jeans. "You never used to do that before you hung out with Emmi and she did it."

"And look at Lukas," Stella gestured to him. "His isn't physical, but you know how he used to make quick, impulsive decisions when he was angry?"

"I haven't seen him do that in forever," I marveled, "because Emmi, whenever she started to feel any hint of anger, calmed herself down so easily that he knew he had to try it."

"Marlee saw how good white looked on our android friend and started wearing a lot more of it," Stella said with a smile, gesturing to Marlee's white t-shirt flowing in the wind.

"Charles didn't know her well, but still started to say the word 'strange,' and 'weird' more, just like she did," I added.

"And Aury..." Stella breathed in deeply. "Oh, Aury. Aury was stuck to her like glue. They laughed the same, they could almost finish each other's sentences. Aury started speaking more quietly after being friends with Emmi, started walking faster to keep up with her android pace. There's too many to list!" Stella finished triumphantly.

"You're right. She's not gone, not really. She's in all of us, whether we realize it or not," I said softly.

And Emmi wasn't just in us, I thought as the breeze tangled my hair playfully. She was in the earth now, too, the nature that she loved. I felt her in the breeze, in the warm rays of sun that she would lie down in and jokingly try to "tan". I felt her in the leaves slowly falling from branches and spiraling to the ground.

I felt her everywhere, and I just wished she was here with us so I could feel her physical presence too.

"We don't know where the Agents are!" Charles shouted, turning to us from where he was scanning the field.

"Yeah, well, it's a big battlefield," Lukas admitted. "We need someone like 8 feet tall to see it all!"

"If you say so, Lukas! Cam, time for some fun! Bend down on the ground," Stella said gleefully.

"I'm scared," I muttered, but obeyed.

Stella slung one skinny leg and then another onto my shoulders. "Up!" she commanded.

I slowly rose from the ground with Stella on my shoulders. She clutched my neck for dear life. "You're—gonna—choke—me!" I gasped, swatting her legs.

Stella loosened her grip a little. "Okay, Cam dear, now turn in a circle!"

I dutifully obeyed, slowly spinning, as Stella scanned the battlefield. "There!" she shouted after I'd turned a few steps, pointing at a spot somewhat to our right.

"Wow, that worked well," Marlee said as I lowered Stella to the ground. "We should use that strategy more often!"

"Thanks but no thanks," I said with a laugh, rubbing my neck. "One more minute and I think Stella would have taken out my windpipe!"

We slung our weapons back over our shoulders, grateful for the quick break, and jogged towards where Stella had spotted Agent Semaj and Agent Rivers.

As we approached, I noticed they were fighting a Leaguer each. They were going at each other with both hand-to-hand combat and stun guns.

"Let's help them out! On three, Stella, Aury and I will shoot the one Agent Semaj is fighting and Charles, Lukas, and Marlee will shoot Agent Rivers' Leaguer," I told everyone, cocking my gun.

"One, two, three!"

Six bolts of electricity flew through the air. Mine and Aury's hit the Leaguer, and Lukas's hit the other Leaguer. Both of them crumpled as the other bolts sizzled into the ground.

Agent Semaj and Rivers looked surprised, then turned to look at where the bolts had come from. Agent Semaj's face broke out in a wide smile when he saw us. "Kiddos!" he yelled, holding out his arms.

We all grinned and yelled, "Agent Semaj!" (though Stella quietly said, "Blazin' James!")

I ran into his arms, surrounded by my friends, and threw my arms around him. He smelled of sweat and grass and pine and I didn't care one bit.

"Whoah, whoah! Don't destroy old Semaj," Agent Semaj said with a laugh, wrapping us all in his arms and managing to make all five of us fit. "How are you all doing?"

"Okay," I said truthfully, as the rest of my friends mumbled, "Fine," "Decent," or something of the sort.

"I'm so, so sorry about Emmi," Agent Semaj said as he released us and took a step back, his eyes glistening with sympathy. "She was such a good Agent and a good friend and I know I'll definitely miss her."

"Thanks," we chorused sadly. Aury looked at the ground and Stella gave her a sympathetic squeeze on the arm.

"Elena, you're not being very welcoming!" Agent Semaj said with a grin, turning to his wife and giving her a quick kiss. Her chestnut hair waved wildly in the breeze. "What do you say to the kiddos?"

"Hello," Agent Rivers said with a scoff and a small smile she tried to bite back. "Alen, really! It's like you haven't seen the children in a year."

"Hey, it's felt like this battle has lasted about a year," Agent Semaj protested. "I missed the kids already, what can I say?"

"Speaking of the battle lasting too long," Stella butted in, "we were wondering if we could get your permission for something."

"I'm not going to like this, am I?" sighed Agent Semaj, his eyes sparkling with laughter. "What is it?"

"We want to go inside Shardstorm's headquarters and see if we can find him and any info that will give us an edge in this battle," Marlee spoke up, wringing her hands nervously. "We don't want anyone else to die."

"No, I definitely agree with you there," Agent Semaj said thoughtfully, "but are you sure it's the best idea to lead Cam unprotected right into the place where Shardstorm likely wants her?"

"She's not unprotected!" Stella said sassily. "She's got US!"

She hopped into a dramatic pose like she was on a movie cover with her stun gun held high, and motioned for the rest of our gang to do the same. Charles cocked his head confusedly. Lukas halfheartedly raised his stun gun— "Whoo-hoo," he said weakly. Aury pushed her glasses up and stared at Stella. Marlee grinned and put her hands on her hips, throwing her stun gun in the air.

It crashed down on Stella's foot.

"Ow! Ow!" she yelped, jumping in the air and waving her foot around.

"Well, Cam, with this crew, I can see how you'll be completely safe," Agent Rivers said sarcastically.

Agent Semaj shook his head with mock disappointment at the scene in front of him, then turned to me with a chuckle. "Cam, you're a full Agent too. You can make your own decisions and go where you want to go."

He looked at me closely. "Just be careful, okay? I don't want to lose anyone else today."

"I will be," I said softly, looking at him. "You too."

"Of course we'll be careful!" Stella shouted, breaking the moment. "Careful is my middle name!" she added as she took off her shoe and examined her reddened foot from the stun gun.

"Uh-huh," Lukas snorted.

"Bye, kiddos!" Agent Semaj smiled at us and waved as we turned to leave.

"Bye, Blazin' James!" Stella grinned.

Agent Semaj looked at her incredulously and gave her a light smack on the arm as we walked away.

"Did you perhaps drink something you were not supposed to before coming to this battle?" Aury asked curiously as we made our way towards the trapdoor the two Leaguers had originally come out of at the start of the battle, which now seemed so very long ago.

"Nah, that's just Stella's normal personality," I said, elbowing her, "though she's kicking it up several notches today for reasons I cannot guess."

"Just the adrenaline, m'dear," Stella said excitedly, walking so quickly the rest of us nearly had to jog to keep up.

"Seems sketchy to me," Charles muttered.

We reached the trapdoor, finally. It had been blown to bits by the smashing the Leaguers had originally given it when we'd escaped from the headquarters. A dark, gaping chasm opening in the earth was all that remained. It was vaguely circular, with perhaps an eight foot diameter.

"Well. This looks fun. Ladies first," Charles said, gesturing to the four of us girls.

"Lukas, are you going to be a gentleman?" I asked, looking at him with raised eyebrows.

"If you want, my darling," Lukas answered, sweeping his hair out of his face but not making any move to jump in the hole.

"Us girls have to do everything around here," Stella muttered, striding towards the hole and putting her feet in. "If I die, it's been nice knowing y'all!"

"Stella, don't say that!" I said.

"Whee!" Stella screeched as she slid into the hole. We waited a second and heard a thump as she hit the ground.

Silence for a moment. "I'M OKAY!" Stella's voice drifted back up. "ONLY HURT A LITTLE!"

"Who's next?" Marlee asked cheerfully.

### Chapter Seven

We all, luckily, managed to survive the drop into the darkness of Shardstorm's headquarters.

When we reached the bottom, it was hard to see for a moment as all the lights were out. Only dusty darkness was in my vision, and I was on high alert for enemies.

"This is creepy," Stella said, drawing out the word.

"It's weird, that's what it is," I said thoughtfully. "Anyone have a flashlight or something?"

"Time to see if my phone survived the battle thus far," Marlee's voice came cheerfully from a bit behind me.

I heard the rustle of fabric as she pulled it out of her pants pocket, and then a sigh. "Unfortunately, the answer is no."

"I don't have my phone," Lukas said, "I left it in my bookbag on the Stormrider.

"Yeah, me too," I said, and Charles nodded his agreement.

"Time to dive into the abyss that is my sweatshirt pocket," Stella said happily. She reached into the hot-pink pocket and felt around.

"I have a... tampon," she narrated, squinting and continuing to feel around. "Uh, another tampon."

"I have a flashlight," Aury mentioned casually.

"Why didn't you say that in the first place?" I groaned, shaking my head and smiling.

Suddenly a small burst of brightness illuminated the place we were standing as Aury turned on a keychain-like flashlight. I blinked as it hit my eyes.

"Okay," I said, looking around.

We were in the exact same place in the hallway as we were when we entered earlier that day. The whole mood of the place was much more dark and creepy with little to no light, and I was completely on edge.

"Shardstorm wouldn't happen to have a light switch lying around anywhere, would he?" Charles muttered nervously as we slowly walked forward, our sneakered feet thudding and squeaking softly on the ground.

"He probably turned off all the lights to conserve power because he knew it was likely he would lose the battle and would have to run off backup generators for a while. The stun guns use a lot of power," Aury continued, "and the nature of the composition means they have to connect directly to the mainframe—"

"Quiet!" Lukas suddenly hissed, "I just heard something."

Aury was silent, and we listened closely in the darkness for a second.

Then the sound came again, like a crunching of plastic. "Where is that coming from?" Marlee asked anxiously.

"I think from this room," I said softly, pointing to the second room on the right that I could vaguely make out the door of using the light of Aury's keychain flashlight.

We slowly walked over, stun guns raised, on high alert. "On three, let's open this door," Stella said, reaching for the knob.

"One. Two. Three!"

She turned the knob and very indiscreetly slammed open the door. It swung open and bounced against the inner wall with a thud.

The room was also covered in murky darkness. "Heeeeeello?" Stella said.

Suddenly four or five stun gun bolts flew out of the darkness. They traveled back and forth in a manner that made it look like there was just one person shooting them. Most everyone managed to avoid the bolts, but Charles got brushed by one and fell, crashing to the ground and lying still.

"Charles!" Marlee gasped, bending down to make sure he was just unconscious.

Aury shined her light in the room as we all returned fire and we gasped when the light fell upon the face of the person inside.

A pretty girl with almond eyes, medium skin, and smooth black hair. Her sickly sweet smile did not match the hatred in her eyes.

"Violet," I spat.

She'd almost killed me before and I was not giving her the chance again.

I advanced towards her. She shot bolt after bolt at me and I dodged every one. I reached her and grabbed her by the wrists.

Violet immediately twisted away. "Cam, you lost to me last time we fought, why would this time be any different?" she said softly, looking into my eyes with hatred.

I smiled at her coldly.

"Well, this time, I have friends."

Lukas, Stella, Aury, and Marlee jumped into the room and surrounded her, each shooting a stun gun bolt right at her chest. They missed but forced Violet to drop to the ground, vulnerable. I grabbed her wrist, Lukas grabbed her other one, and Aury finished her off by taking a pair of handcuffs from the floor behind her where they lay and snapping them on her wrists.

"Much better," I said with a smile, glaring at the furious Violet.

"What... do... you... want?" she snarled.

"Information, my dear," I said, pacing around her slowly like I was a detective in a crime movie. "Any and all information about Shardstorm you can give us. And how we can beat him."

"I'm never telling you anything," she growled, then gasped as all five of us pointed stun guns at her at once, at various body parts.

"Okay, okay. I'll tell you what I know, which isn't much," Violet said frantically, her mask of defiance gone. "Shardstorm was going to go to your house and torture you and your family for information and then kill you. Then this battle happened and I'm not sure if he was able to complete the plan."

"You're supremely unhelpful, thanks," I said cheerfully and shot her with a stun gun bolt in the head. Her eyes rolled back and she crumpled to the floor silently with a soft thud.

"Great. How about we cuff her feet too, for good measure?" suggested Lukas. "I don't want her sneaking up on us when we're looking through the rest of the headquarters.

"Good plan," I said with a nod.

Lukas and I found some more handcuffs and cuffed her ankles together. Marlee sat with Charles, waiting for him to wake up. Stella and Aury walked around the room, looking at random papers strewn about by the dim light of her flashlight.

"Okay, all good," I said breathlessly once we finished. Violet lay sprawled out on the floor with cuffed hands and feet, still completely unconscious. "Let's lock her in here once we leave."

Charles stirred from the floor, groaned, and placed a hand on his head. "Ugh," he mumbled. "That was not fun."

"Oh, yeah! You've never been bolted, as I call it, before," Stella said cheerily. "Your head hurts like a son-of-a-gun for like five minutes, then you're fine."

"I don't think I want to get bolted again," Charles said as Marlee helped him to his feet. He rubbed his blonde hair awkwardly.

"Let's all avoid that, okay?" I spoke up. "If possible. It's going to be hard to protect an unconscious person from further harm if we get into a battle again."

"Sorry," Charles muttered.

"It's okay, it obviously wasn't your fault," I told him with a smile. "Feeling okay?"

"You weren't wrong about the headache," he said to Stella sheepishly.

We chuckled and I felt a little better about everything.

For a moment.

"Hey, guys. I found something weird," Aury said quietly from the corner of the room.

I looked at her, along with everyone else, and my eyes were drawn to a container in her hands. It was large, with a skull-and-crossbones on it.

"Uh, maybe don't touch or open that?" Marlee suggested nervously.

"I read the chemical composition on the back and it seems like, from the combined power of the gases inside, it renders those who breathe it in unconscious for as long as a couple hours," Aury told us, playing with the bottle absentmindedly.

"Weird stuff." I raised my eyebrows as a thought occurred to me. "You think it's what Shardstorm used to knock our class out during the President Plot?"

"It could be!" Stella exclaimed. "Lord, I hate that stuff."

"So it's like a more powerful stun gun bolt in gas form?" Marlee asked skeptically, linking her arm through Charles' almost like an instinct to keep him safe from further harm.

"Except the chemical properties used to knock one out are completely different," Aury explained, looking at it with great interest.

"Is there any way we could use this?" Lukas asked, always the logical thinker.

"Not on the battlefield, I believe, it would end up just spreading around and knocking random people unconscious while mostly dispersing harmlessly into the atmosphere. Maybe we should take it with us for the STPOW scientists to study," Aury suggested, letting the large canister dangle from her arms.

"Or throw a large amount of it in Shardstorm's face as soon as we get near him and run as fast as we can," Stella suggested with a cheery smile.

"Great plan. Who gets to carry it?" Charles asked nervously, crossing his arms over his chest as to suggest that it would not be him.

I looked at Lukas.

"I guess it's my time to shine as a true gentleman," Lukas groaned, walking to Aury and heaving the container from her hands. "Aury, this stuff is heavy!"

"Not too bad," Aury said cheerfully. "Here, Lukas, I can hold it!"

She took the container back and hoisted it over her shoulder easily. "Where to now?"

Lukas's face turned bright red.

Stella snorted, then coughed in a terrible attempt to cover it up.

I cleared my throat, a little awkwardly. "Yes, well. Let's go in a few more rooms and see what we can find. We've already come upon one good find. Maybe we'll find some things that are actually useful for the battle."

"How about some grenades?" Charles muttered, unlinking his arm with his girlfriend.

Marlee smacked him as we all turned to leave the room. "Ow," he moaned pitifully.

"Grenades." Marlee shook her head with disappointed wonder at her boyfriend. "Remind me why I'm dating you again?"

"Because I'm a retro babe," Charles answered, running his hand through his hair, attempting to sound sexy.

She rolled her eyes but couldn't bite back a smile.

I reached the door first and turned the knob carefully, peering out into the darkness of the hallway. "Some light here please, Aury."

Aury came up beside me, winding through the rest of my friends, and shined the dim and not very helpful light into the hallway.

All I could see was the vague outlines of the dark walls, barely even two feet in front of me.

"I don't like this," I said softly. "We could be walking right into an ambush."

Silence for a moment, then Stella, who had come up beside me without my noticing, whispered, "It would have been really ironic if that's when a stun gun bolt flew out of the darkness or something and—"

A stun gun bolt flew out of the darkness and right into Stella's chest.

She looked at me, absolute shock and also a little bit of humor in her eyes, before falling to her knees and onto her face on the ground, completely out.

"Stella, you flipping jinxed it!" Marlee shouted from behind me, cocking her gun and firing into the darkness in front of us.

I raised my gun and returned the fire that was now shooting more rapidly towards us. "Who are we even fighting?" I groaned.

After firing a couple more shots, I bent down to check on Stella. She was sprawled out on the floor, breathing deeply. "Okay, she's fine," I said for the benefit of the whole crew. "Let's try to push forward and see who our mystery fighter is."

I heard general murmurs of assent from behind me so I slowly started to walk forward. The stun gun bolts had stopped, and that made me even more nervous, somehow, then when I was dodging them.

"He-LLO?" Marlee shouted.

A second of silence, save for our feet pattering softly on the ground, then...

"Guys?"

A familiar voice.

"Aury, give us some light!" I hissed.

Aury shined the light forward.

I only saw darkness for a second, then someone stepped out into the light.

"Asher," Lukas gasped.

"Whoops," Charles muttered, lowering his stun gun.

"What the heck are you guys doing here?" Asher asked, visibly relaxing and lowering his stun gun as well. "Where's Stella?"

"We could ask you the same question," I said, raising my eyebrows. "You were supposed to be getting medical care! And Stella's unconscious back there because you shot her!"

"I'm fine. Just a few scratches," Asher said dismissively, unconsciously running his hands up and down his marred arms. "I snuck inside Shardstorm's headquarters to kill him. I thought I was the best person to do it because I didn't care if I died or not in the process." Then he seemed to process the end of my sentence. "Wait, I shot Stella?"

Now I was stuck on something in his sentence. "What did you say about dying? Or, caring about dying?"

Asher avoided my eyes and clasped his hands together, wringing them. "Nothing."

"Uh-uh, you said something."

"I just want to know if Stella's okay," Asher said, suddenly defensive again, crossing his arms over his chest.

"God, you're hard to talk to. Stella's fine," I said with a sigh, "she's probably awake by now, actually. She has a pretty quick stun gun recovery time."

"She is, in fact, awake, and listening to every word you all are saying," a voice came from right behind me into my ear.

I whirled around and nearly screamed when I saw my best friend's face inches from my own, her green eyes very visible, her freckles dancing in front of my eyes. I jumped back, bending over and gasping for air.

Marlee, Lukas, Aury, and Charles were trying to contain their laughter. "Jeez, Stells, way to scare the crap out of me." I glared at the rest of my friends. "And none of you thought to tell me she was right behind me?"

"We assumed you'd figure it out sooner or later," Lukas said seriously, then doubled over laughing. "The look on your face was pretty priceless, though," he gasped.

"You're all bullies," I huffed with mock anger and turned back to Asher. "Well, how about you come along with us for a while? We're trying to find info and materials in here to help us end the battle. We're also looking for Shardstorm himself as well."

"Okay," Asher said uncertainly, walking over to us and standing next to Stella.

Stella looked at him closely, gently running a finger down his arm. "Why aren't you getting bandages for these cuts?"

Asher yanked his arm away. "Because they're not bad. I don't need them. I feel fine now," he said stubbornly.

"Yeah, right. Okay, you can come with us, but once we go back out into the battle you are going to see the medic," Stella said, putting her hands on her hips.

"Fine."

"We better move on, guys," Lukas said, looking at his watch. "We've already been here almost half an hour."

"Next, I choose... " Marlee closed her eyes and spun in a circle, her arms out wildly. "THIS room!" she pronounced, spinning to a stop with her hand pointing towards a door two down on the left and smacking Charles in the face with her hand as she stopped twirling.

Charles rubbed his face. "Of course it's okay, no need to apologize, babe," he said sarcastically, after waiting a moment.

"Oh, I'm sorry!" Marlee quickly amended, giving him her puppy eyes of apology then a winning grin, her purple lipstick visible even in the dim light.

We dutifully headed towards the door Marlee had chosen, trying not to trip in the dimness, Asher in tow. "That place isn't really going to give you any amazing insights into anything, it's just the room where..." Asher began, then he stopped. "Oh. I'm pretty sure it's the room you stayed in when you came to train here briefly, Cam."

"Really?" I asked. Looking at the door by the light of Aury's weak flashlight, it did look somewhat familiar. "Wow, weird. Hey, maybe Shardstorm's little diary relating to Emmi is still in there."

Then I remembered Emmi was gone. Grief welled once again in my throat as I gently turned the doorknob.

"Emmi the android? Oh, yeah. Where is she?" Asher asked as we slowly filed into the room.

I locked eyes with Aury, who was trying very hard to be brave but whose lips were trembling and eyes watering.

"She didn't make it, Asher," Stella said quietly, subconsciously stepping closer to Aury.

"Oh no. I'm so sorry," Asher said quickly, swiping a hand through his sandy hair.

"It's okay, you didn't know," Aury answered, her voice watery, sniffling a little.

There was an awkward silence in our little group for a moment.

I took in the room. It looked similar to how I'd left it—it seemed nobody was staying there currently. The bed still had dark bedsheets, from what I could see in the gloom. The walls were black too.

I tried to make out the closet in the darkness, but I couldn't see.

I heard a light switch flip from behind me, but the room stayed dark. "The lights don't work," Marlee announced unnecessarily.

"Why are all the lights out in this place?" I said, frustrated. "Aury, try to find the closet with your flashlight, please."

Aury panned the room with the light, giving me little flashes. Then a doorknob came into view. "Stop!" I said quickly, then strode to the now slightly-illuminated door.

The metal of the doorknob was cool on my hand as I slowly turned it, half-expecting to see Aury inside like she had been the first time I met her. But the closet was dark, cold, and empty.

I walked inside of it slowly, then my foot nudged something on the floor. I picked it up and gasped. "Oh, the journal thing isn't even in the secret compartment this time!" I said.

I flipped the cover open and shuffled a little forward into Aury's light. "Yep, this is it," I confirmed, seeing the telltale picture of the Miracle-Bot... of Emmi... as a baby on the first page.

"Can I see?" Aury asked quietly, handing her flashlight over to Lukas to hold and walking over to me.

I handed her the journal wordlessly and she began to look through it.

I stood close by.

By page three, tears were running down Aury's face.

After a few minutes, Aury closed the book silently. She was crying hard now, sniffling and wiping her eyes. I walked to her and quietly wrapped her in my arms. She clung onto me and put her head on my shoulder, sobbing into my shirt.

A couple minutes of this passed, and then she broke away from me. "I-I'm sorry," she hiccupped. "It's just so... so hard." She took a shuddering breath. "I know the girl I love... loved... was an android. But to be created by a terrible, a terrible monster, and to be neglected like that when he knows she has feelings, and now she's dead with barely a chance at a real life... it's just so hard!" Aury collapsed into crying again, angrily wiping her eyes as she desperately tried to stop.

"I know, babe," I said softly, holding her tight. "But you know she loved you too, and she was so happy when she was with you, and us. We were her true friends, no matter whether she was an android or not."

"Yeah, yeah, you're right," Aury admitted, hiccupping again. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to fall apart like that."

"Oh, it's okay, don't apologize," I told her, trying to quell the tears welling in my own eyes as I patted her back gently.

Then I remembered Marlee—remembered how uncomfortable intense sadness made her. I turned towards Marlee and saw her (hazel) eyes shining through the darkness, locked onto mine.

"Sorry, Marlee," I said, pulling away slowly from Aury but keeping a firm grasp on her hand.

Marlee closed her eyes and heaved a deep sigh. She ran a hand through her bubblegum hair. "It's okay," she said softly, looking at Aury. "I shouldn't control your emotions. You shouldn't have to control them, either."

Marlee slowly walked over and placed a hand on Aury's arm as she pushed her glasses up and wiped the last tear from her face. "Don't change your emotions for me. I'm going to be okay."

She smiled. "And you are too."

I was so proud of her.

The rest of the crew in the corner smiled, Lukas giving me a huge grin. I knew he didn't like that trait about Marlee, so maybe this would bring our friend group as a whole even closer.

"Hey, we've found something from my—and Cam's—first, second, and third missions," Stella, who had now somehow ended up with the canister of knockout gas, piped up as we walked out of the room. "We've got this weird stuff—" she knocked on the edge of the canister, "—Shardstorm's secret diary about the Android attack, and Violet!"

"Now we just need to find the freaking time machine," Charles muttered, fully aware of all our cahoots before we'd met him.

"And something relating to this battle, personally, my hardest mission yet," I said quietly.

We were silent for a moment as we filed out into the hallway and walked towards the next door on the right.

"We still haven't found a trace of Shardstorm, or anything that might be much help in the battle against him," sighed Marlee.

"And we should really get back up to the fight now," Lukas pointed out, checking his watch.

"Alright. We go into two more rooms, and whatever we find there, we leave afterwards," I said with certainty. "Sound good?"

Everyone muttered agreement, and I could see some nods from the darkness behind me. My eyes had adjusted somewhat, so I was able to make out vague shapes now in the gloom of his headquarters.

We reached the door. "Asher, do you know what this room and the one after it are?" I asked.

"This room has a bunch of old junk that Shardstorm doesn't know where else to keep, so he throws it all in here. The next room has a lot of notes and logs and things—mostly old plans and journals, not current ones."

"Maybe some of that will be helpful," Aury said. "His old plans could give us an insight into what he plans to do this battle."

"And some of this old junk could still have some use," Marlee said hopefully.

I turned the knob and pushed open the door with a slight creak.

Inside, it was unsurprisingly dark. I motioned for everyone to come inside as Aury came up beside me and shined her flashlight into the depths of the room.

I could still barely see anything, except for what seemed to be piles and piles of junk on the floor. "Oh, man, we don't have time to sift through all this," I groaned. "Aury, does your flashlight have a brighter setting?"

"No, it's been slowly getting dimmer," she told me, pushing her glasses up. "I think the battery is almost out."

"Well, the last thing we want is to be stuck in Shardstorm's headquarters with no light, so I think we should just leave now," I said, turning back around to the rest of my crew.

Stella shifted the container of gas to her other hand. "Fine with me. This stuff is not light."

"I think we should do one more room," Asher said, running his hand through his hair and peering into the room we'd just entered. "Sometimes Shardstorm will be inside there during the day, studying past plans and where they went wrong."

"Would he be in there during a battle?" Lukas asked skeptically.

"I don't know, but if we're going to check we need to go now," I told everyone.

Without my noticing, Marlee had gotten in front of me and was rifling through the stuff on the ground. She suddenly laughed. "You guys are never going to believe what I found!"

She held up a broken piece of a very familiar-looking frame.

"The time machine... but it's completely broken," Charles breathed.

"Too bad, I liked that time machine," Stella said with a grin.

"I had a love-hate relationship with it," I groaned, remembering getting stuck inside and almost dying—but also rescuing Stella and finding Charles.

"Anything else that seems useful, Marls?" I asked her.

She hopped down from the junk pile and steadied herself on my shoulder, wincing a little and touching her bullet wound. "Nope, that seems to be all."

"Let's go to the last room before this thing runs out," Aury said, smacking her dim flashlight, and turning to exit.

"You okay?" I asked Marlee quietly as we left the junkpile room.

"Yeah. Just hurting," she said honestly. "I'm going to be so sore tomorrow."

"Are you sure you shouldn't be resting?" I asked, touching her hand near her other bullet wound gently.

She smiled a little. "I probably should."

I shook my head as we left the room, smiling at her. "You are going to rest once we get back up to the battle, missy."

"Fine, fine," she said with a laugh.

We reached the next door on the right. It was wooden and all black, with a black painted knob. Stella, who was in front, reached for it, but Asher hissed, "Stop."

She stopped.

"The light's on."

"What?" breathed Marlee.

"Shardstorm?" asked Lukas softly.

"Can't tell." Asher peered through the door crack and shook his head. "We'll just have to be prepared."

We all cocked our stun guns expectantly as my heart pounded. "On three, slowly open the door," I told Stella.

"One."

"Two."

"Three."

She put her hand on the knob carefully, like it might shock her, and slowly turned it.

I looked inside the room and gasped at the scene I saw.

Shardstorm was there. His telltale scar, jet-black hair, and muscles made him an easy identifier.

He was sitting on a chair, reading what seemed like a journal.

And tears were running down his cheeks.

### Chapter Eight

I noticed that all in a split second because as soon as the door opened he slowly looked up. The anger in his eyes did not match at all the tears on his cheeks and he stared at us, unblinking.

"Father," Asher whispered, absolute terror in his voice.

"Son," Shardstorm said, with quiet fury in his calm voice. "Why are you here?"

"To k-kill you," Asher said, trying desperately to stop his voice from wavering.

"I'm afraid you might find that rather difficult," Shardstorm said softly, not reaching for a weapon.

His wet cheeks shone in the light.

"Why are you crying?" Stella asked, raising her eyebrows and putting her hands on her hips.

I groaned on the inside.

"Well, my dear, that would be a long story and one that, unfortunately, would be wasted, since I plan to kill you all," Shardstorm answered, looking at Stella and cocking his head a little. "Let's just say... a lost love... and something important, something I did not know before."

"So it is possible for you to love," I said slowly, stepping in front of the doorway, my heart racing.

Shardstorm's eyes narrowed, and an emotion I couldn't read passed over his face. "Hello, Cam."

He breathed in deeply, fingering the journal. "Perhaps it was. Not anymore. All those I loved left me long ago."

"It's because you're a villain," Marlee spoke up, quietly but with strength in her voice. "You could have been so much more. Cam told me your story. You had so, so much potential. You could have changed the world for the better, and had all the friends and family you wanted."

"I have no friends and no family, nor do I desire them," Shardstorm snarled, his muscles bulging as he rose from his seat and wiped his eyes slowly. "I only am disappointed they would not join me in my goal of world domination."

He looked seemingly off into the distance for a moment. "It would be a new world... a better world. Yes, I would rule supreme, but anyone who obeyed would live. I would not be unfair."

"You'd be a dictator and a murderer," I spat, "and I'll die before I let you carry out your plans."

"You will die," Shardstorm said softly, walking slowly to where we were gathered at the entrance to the room, "but it will be pointless and you will be alone."

We stood, frozen, as he looked at his watch, checking messages. "I know the battle may be lost. But I don't need those, weak, pitiful Leaguers anymore," he hissed. "I am growing stronger, and soon nothing will be able to stop me. Not what's left of the STPOW, not the government or police, and most certainly not you."

He walked up to me slowly and looked down at me, into my eyes, at my shivering form, at my shaking hands as I held my stun gun at his chest and tried to fire. "I know you tried, Cam," he said, with something like... pride in his voice? "You worked so hard and you learned so much."

"But now, none of it matters. It's quite a shame."

Shardstorm pulled out a gun. A real gun. And his face looked different than I'd expected it to look. I could tell he was trying as hard as he could to hide his emotions and I couldn't figure out for the life of me why.

"Goodbye, Cam."

"RUN!" I screamed, turning on my heels and firing a bolt wildly at Shardstorm even as I knew there was no hope.

But suddenly came the sweetest sound I'd ever heard.

"GET THE @#$% AWAY FROM THE KIDDOS!" Agent Semaj's voice bellowed from down the hall as my friends started sprinting away, Shardstorm calmly walking behind us and firing bullet after bullet.

I turned the corner of the room, narrowly being missed by a bullet that Shardstorm fired at my head. Agent Semaj, Rivers, Swan, and, surprisingly, the lady I saw at the wedding, Kim, were racing down the hall towards us, stun guns high.

"I knew she was an Agent," Stella muttered as we bolted down the hall towards them.

The light the Agents had made when they slammed through the trapdoor and left it open filtered through the hallway just enough where I could see Agent Semaj's absolutely furious face as he sprinted towards us, Agent River's stony face carved with anger, Agent Swan's determined face, and Agent Kim with a mix of all three emotions.

After a few terrifying seconds of sprinting towards each other and, miraculously, nobody getting shot, we reached the Agents. I slammed into Agent Semaj and he gave me a quick, tight hug. "Let's go!" he barked, motioning me and my friends in front of him, protecting us. I reluctantly allowed him to shield us with his body as we ran for the exit.

But Shardstorm was getting closer. He started running now, firing faster and more accurately and I knew that we weren't going to make it.

Well, I thought, this is how I go. Running.

I wished I could have done it more bravely. I just hoped my friends would be able to escape. I was not letting any of them die while I still breathed.

And suddenly, Agent Semaj stopped running and faced Shardstorm, blocking him from running forward, returning his fire.

I didn't even realize it for a second, I just kept mindlessly sprinting towards the door. But when I felt a light breeze sweep over my back from where Agent Semaj had been, I stopped.

My friends kept running towards the door, but I turned around and saw what was going on.

"AGENT SEMAJ!" I screamed, trying to run back towards him, but Agent Swan grabbed my wrist and pulled me towards the exit. I struggled against her.

"Cam, GO!" bellowed Agent Semaj, not turning around, shooting and dodging and twisting and generally keeping Shardstorm from moving forward.

Agent Rivers turned around slowly and saw the scene in front of her. Her normally stony face lit up with anger and fear and she cocked her gun, starting to stride towards Shardstorm.

"LEAVE, ELENA!" yelled Agent Semaj, gasping as a bullet hit him in the leg.

Shardstorm laughed coldly.

Agent Rivers's eyes narrowed and she advanced towards Shardstorm faster.

"Elena, think of the baby!" Agent Semaj shouted, his voice cracking.

Agent Rivers stopped walking.

A bullet hit Agent Semaj's arm and he dropped his gun. It clattered to the ground, the sound magnified by the echoes inside the headquarters.

Silence. The rest of my friends and Agents had made it up the ladder and were exiting the headquarters. They hadn't heard.

"Wait, baby—"

"Come on, Cam," Agent Rivers said sternly but with a wavering voice, grabbing my arm as I struggled and pulling me to the ladder.

"No."

Shardstorm shot Agent Semaj in the shoulder and he fell to one knee.

Shardstorm locked eyes with me.

"Cam, go," Agent Rivers whispered, all the power in her voice gone.

"Okay," I whispered, giving Agent Semaj one last desperate glance and climbing the ladder, Agent Rivers inches behind me.

I made it to the top. Sunlight washed over me as I heaved myself out of the headquarters, around my terrified and silent friends, placing my feet slowly on the ground.

We were close to one of the Stormriders now, and as I got to my feet Agent Swan motioned us all towards it. "Shardstorm will be out in seconds."

I numbly jogged towards the Stormrider, barely feeling my feet thudding on the ground. My hair flew in my face and I made no move to swipe it away.

Stella ran beside me, her light blonde hair blowing in the wind. She looked at me, fear in her eyes, and mouthed, What happened?

I just shook my head and focused on putting one foot in front of the other.

We made it to the Stormrider and ducked behind its huge body just as Shardstorm emerged from the headquarters. He slowly turned in a circle, looking around, but didn't notice us. After a moment, he pulled out a stun gun and began to walk towards the main battle, a few feet away, still looking carefully around.

As soon as he was out of eyeshot, I didn't wait for Agents to give me directions. I scooted out from around the body of the Stormrider and took off at a full sprint back towards Shardstorm's headquarters, my feet pounding on the ground as I raced towards where I knew Agent Semaj was.

Agent Rivers was beside me in a moment, running. "I'm getting a medic!" she screamed at me over the wind in our ears, and took off as fast as she could for where the medic's red cross was visible in the distance.

My friends caught up with me as I reached the entrance to the tunnel. "What happened in there?" Aury, who had been the first one out, asked breathlessly.

"Agent Semaj sacrificed himself so we could get out." My voice shook as I placed trembling hands on the ladder rung and descended, my friends right behind me.

I reached the end of the ladder and slowly turned around, scared of what I would see.

"Oh my god," Stella whispered.

Agent Semaj lay on the ground a few feet ahead, barely moving, blood splattered on the floor around him. He tried to lift his head as we entered but I sprinted the few steps to him and bent to his level. He was still breathing, shallowly. His eyes were closed, but they fluttered open I moved to examine his wounds.

"Oh, Agent Semaj. Don't try to move." My voice cracked on the words.

Along with the three bullets we'd watched him take when he held off Shardstorm, there was a bullet wound pretty much directly over his heart, maybe a little to one side. Blood was seemingly everywhere, and it continued to pulse out of the wounds in his chest and shoulder as we watched. It looked very, very bad.

"Where's the medic? Is Agent Rivers back yet?" I said quickly, looking desperately at my friends.

Lukas and Stella had bent down next to me. Lukas didn't answer at all, simply looking at me. Stella shook her head slowly, like she was underwater.

I buried my face in my hands for a moment and took a deep breath, hoping I would wake up and it would be a dream.

But when I looked back out, the same scene was in front of me.

"Okay," I said to myself. "You're going to be okay."

I repeated that quietly to Agent Semaj as I brushed hair away from his face. I took off my shirt and wrapped it over the chest wound, pressing down like it was a bandage.

Agent Semaj looked at me tenderly and opened his mouth. "Shh, shh. Don't try to talk. It's going to be okay," I told him, my voice cracking in a sob.

"No, Cam. I want to say this. Listen to me," Agent Semaj rasped, closing his eyes for a moment.

I nodded, a tear rolling down my cheek.

"There's a reason Shardstorm was targeting you to take down the STPOW. You're the glue that holds this organization together. The kids idolize you, your friends adore you, the adults respect you."

"Thank you," I whispered softly. I noticed on the corner of my vision a foot start to come down the ladder.

"And Cam, when I'm gone—"

I interrupted him, angrily swiping a tear away. "Don't talk like that! You're going to be fine!" I sobbed.

Agent Rivers and the medic made it down the ladder and I waved frantically at them. "QUICKLY! PLEASE!"

The medic strode over, bent down to his level, and took out her first-aid kit with a real bandage. She wrapped it on top of the shirt I'd already placed there and began to take out bandages to wrap the other wounds.

"How does it look?" I asked, my voice shaking.

She looked at me sadly. "Not great, babe. Four bullet wounds—and one directly over the heart—isn't good. Not much chance for heart shots unless we had a fully equipped hospital less than a two or three minutes' drive away."

"Let me finish, Cam-girl," Agent Semaj said softly as I buried my face in my hands, wracked with sobs. "When I'm gone, the STPOW is going to need someone to take my place as a Senior Agent. I know you're young, but you're ready and capable for the task. I love you, Cam, and I'm so, so proud of you."

"I love you too," I whispered, holding his hand tightly, trying to look closely at him in the dim light so I'd never, ever forget him.

Agent Semaj turned to Agent Rivers, who I just noticed had knelt down next to him, tears running down her face. They looked so out of place on the usually stony mask she wore.

"My beautiful wife," Agent Semaj whispered. "I'm so sorry I have to leave you."

"Stop, babe. Please fight. Please don't leave me," Agent Rivers begged, clasping his hand like it was a lifeline to shore in the middle of the ocean.

"Please, my princess," Agent Semaj said softly, "Just one thing—tell my daughter, when she's born, that I love her."

Everyone gathered, except Agent Rivers and myself, sucked in a collective gasp of shock and horror.

"And that I'm sorry," Agent Semaj rasped, taking a long, rattling breath.

"Don't be sorry, baby. Don't be sorry," sobbed Agent Rivers, burying her face in his chest.

"I'm..."

We waited closely for Agent Semaj's next words.

But there were no more. Agent Semaj's eyes were forever closed.

The breath he had just taken would be his last.

I fell apart.

I wept like I'd never wept before, still holding Agent Semaj's hand, my tears falling without ceasing onto the ground. Stella clutched my waist with her skinny little arms, her head on my shoulder, her whole little body shaking with huge sobs.

Agent Rivers... oh, Agent Rivers.

Agent Rivers cradled Agent Semaj's body in her arms, so gently, brushing his hair away from his eyes like she was simply waiting for him to wake up in the morning. Her tears flowed onto his shirt and soaked the shoulder.

I'd never seen her cry before, let alone like that.

It wasn't fair. The love of her life had just died before her eyes, right after they were married and just starting to imagine a life together. I couldn't believe how cruel the world was.

I felt a warm hand on my shoulder. "Here, honey," the medic said softly and kindly, holding out a large, clean t-shirt to me. I took it gratefully and tried to say, "Thank you," but the words didn't come out.

I gently pried Stella away from me to pull on the shirt. I felt like a lost sheep. I didn't know what to do without Agent Semaj, without my mentor, my guide, my second father. What was life going to be like now, without him, without the kindest person I'd ever met?

No more missions with Agent Semaj. No more shouts of "Kiddos!" from the hallways of the STPOW headquarters when he needed to talk to us teen Agents.

He wouldn't ever get to meet his daughter. She'd grow up without a father—without the man who would have made one of the best fathers in the world.

But she would know the story—whether it was sooner or later in her life—of how her father died. She'd know that he was a hero and sacrificed his life to save many others.

He cared so much for us.

He cared so much for everyone.

It wasn't fair he was gone, when Shardstorm, Jai, Agent Survivor, and Violet still lived.

It wasn't fair.

### Chapter Nine

There was one thing very clear in my mind.

None of the villains that were on this battlefield were going to kill anyone else again. Not Jai, not Agent Survivor, not Violet, and definitely not Shardstorm.

If that meant they had to die, so be it.

I didn't care if I killed them or if some other Agent did.

But I'd had enough.

Enough of the fighting. Enough of the battle. Enough pain and heartbreak. Enough death. And it was going to end.

"We have to finish this war," I said simply, closing my eyes and standing up.

I was ready.

My friends navigated towards their partners at the beginning of the day as we prepared to fight once again.

Stella picked up her gun and motioned to me. We left Shardstorm's headquarters and we walked together through the battlefield.

We walked over bloodstained grass where those we loved had died.

We walked around Darkblaze's body, where Aury had killed her own mother to save our lives.

We walked past those who fought powerfully, not knowing anyone who had been struck down.

And we walked past those who fought with tears in their eyes, fighting all the more powerfully to avenge the loss of those they'd loved.

We walked past life and death and everything in between.

But we walked not for the journey but for the destination.

We were going to find Agent Survivor. Jai. Shardstorm.

They were going to pay.

"There's Agent Survivor," Stella spat, motioning to him. His face, marred from burns he should have died from, stuck out among the crowd.

"We take him on. We finish him and every villain here if we can," I snarled.

I raised my gun.

Agent Survivor noticed me approaching and smiled, his gun hanging loosely from his hand. "Oh, it's the battlefield celebrity," he said softly. "Hand-to-hand fight, darling? Like you lost against your little boyfriend earlier today?"

The word I used sweetly for Lukas was soured from his mouth.

"Cam..." Stella began.

"Be my guest, Agent Survivor," I spat mockingly, dropping my gun to the floor and putting up a fighting stance.

Agent Survivor's reddened hands reached out for mine, trying to take an early lead. I drew back in a defensive pose, then struck out with my hand lightning-fast. I didn't get in a hit, but it surprised him for a moment where I was able to kick his shoulder. He reeled a little backwards, but recovered with inhuman speed.

"It's been interesting watching you around the battlefield," Agent Survivor jeered as we fought. "You're quite terrible with a gun." He lashed out and elbowed my stomach and I doubled over momentarily.

I raised my eyebrows at him as I kicked his legs, making him stumble. "Good thing I don't need one to take you down."

"Mm, debatable," he said with mock thoughtfulness as he aimed a punch for my head.

I dodged to the side and grabbed his wrist, using a taekwondo technique to twist around and bend it backwards before he could react. He let out a cry of pain and I kicked his back, hard.

I knew that I couldn't keep up this back and forth forever. I didn't have to prove to him that I could beat him hand-to-hand. If I beat him, it wouldn't matter the technique I used.

"Well, it's been fun," I said, pulling out a stun gun as he hissed in pain, "but I'm getting bored now."

"Not so fast, little Cam," Agent Survivor said as he recovered, landing a glancing blow on my leg that made it crumple for a moment. "Ever heard the saying 'never bring a knife to a gunfight?'"

I didn't give him the satisfaction of answering, instead blocking a kick and retaliating with a side kick that landed on his arm.

"Well, in this case, it wasn't wise to bring your gun to a knife fight," Agent Survivor said slowly, pulling a dagger out.

"GET AWAY FROM HIM!" Stella screamed, like I hadn't already figured out that would be a good idea.

I turned on my feet just as Agent Survivor lashed out with the dagger. The blow was aimed for my heart, and I tried to dodge it entirely, but I wasn't fast enough.

The dagger cut a long, deep slice out of my arm.

I turned around and blindly aimed a kick for Agent Survivor's chest, stumbling a little as the sensation of what felt like a thousand ants biting me sprung forth on my arm.

I swayed a little on my feet, clutching my arm, gasping for breath, staring with still-defiant eyes into the grinning face of Agent Survivor. Stella rushed towards me and supported me with her body. She was shaking.

I was going to lose. We were going to die.

I prepared to go down to Agent Survivor fighting with my best friend beside me.

And then Agent Rivers was there, like an angel from the heavens. Her chestnut hair was completely wild in all directions, but her gray-green eyes were filled with more fury than I'd ever seen.

"YOU ARE NOT GOING TO HURT ANYONE ELSE I LOVE EVER AGAIN!" she bellowed, shooting three times at Agent Survivor's back as he attempted to run away.

All three shots hit. Once in his leg, once in his upper back, and the third in his head. He silently collapsed to the ground.

A beat of silence. My jaw dropped as I looked Agent Rivers in the eye.

She looked back at me with more love than I'd ever seen in her gaze, for one beautiful moment.

Then she was back to her old self again. "Stella. Go make sure he's dead. We don't need any more sudden resurrections from this one," Agent Rivers said sharply. Stella gave me a desperate glance, but obeyed.

Agent Rivers turned her attention to me. "Oh, Cam," she said, sadness in her eyes, "I can't believe he did that to you."

"It doesn't hurt," I said truthfully, sighing, sitting down heavily on the ground as I stared with morbid fascination at the chunk he'd taken out of my arm. "Am I going to be able to fight again?"

"Probably so," said the medic who I just noticed was standing there. She bent down to my level and examined my arm. "You got lucky, girlie. I saw what happened from afar and if you hadn't turned around right when you did, you likely wouldn't be alive right now."

"Lucky," I murmured, closing my eyes, feeling a little woozy. How ironic. One of my best friends and my mentor, my second father, had died, and I had just been stabbed. And I was lucky.

I supposed, for the world of the spy, things could have been worse.

I felt an ache on my arm for a moment, then a dull, consistent pressure. I grit my teeth in pain and tried to not think about it.

"Your wound has been wrapped, dear," the medic said, standing up again.

"How soon can I fight again?" I asked, my eyes still closed.

"I don't think it's a good idea if you—" Agent Rivers started.

"How soon can I fight again?" I repeated with certainty, opening my eyes and looking at Agent Rivers.

Agent Rivers sighed and shook her head. "Stubborn girl." She looked at the medic.

"Maybe twenty minutes, depending on how you feel then. But you're going to have to be careful not to mess with the bandages or else you might lose too much blood to fight at all today," the medic told me.

Stella quickly walked back over to us. Her feet squelching in the blood-soaked grass made my stomach turn.

She shuddered. "He's definitely dead."

"Thank you," I said, looking at Agent Rivers. "For killing him."

"He stabbed you! What else would I have done?" Agent Rivers said indignantly.

I smiled a little.

"Hey, Rivers, if I heard right, I think I heard you say you looooved us," Stella said teasingly.

"Well, that might be the only time you're going to hear it, so hopefully you paid attention," Agent Rivers said, a hint of a smile playing across her lips.

I smiled again, truly grateful in that moment for the people I still had in my life and seized with a fierce desire to keep them safe.

"Has it been twenty minutes yet?" I asked. The medic had left and was tending to other wounded agents.

"Not even close," Agent Rivers told me.

"Well, it feels close enough," I said, slowly sitting, then when I didn't feel a rush of dizziness, getting to my feet. My arm gave a sharp twinge of pain and I sucked in a breath but continued to stand.

"Hmm. I feel fine," I said with a grin at Stella. "Hope this doesn't leave a scar!"

"You're insane, girl." Stella shook her head and smiled at me.

"Just a little dagger wound. Nothing major." I shoved her gently, playfully, with my good arm, trying to ignore the pain.

"You're going to be extremely sore tomorrow, at the very least," Agent Rivers told me with raised eyebrows.

"I've dealt with worse," I told her cheerfully, then took a deep breath. "Okay. Let's finish this battle."

We fought like a dream team, my best friend and I. We'd been through so much together, in and out of the STPOW, and we could practically read each other's minds. It seemed we kept picking the exact same Leaguer to target, the exact same place to shoot, the exact same STOW Agent to aid.

We were together and we were one.

And we were going to win.

After a few minutes of fighting, we were both out of breath. I doubled over, gasping for air, my arm aching terribly. "Wow. That was intense."

"I know," Stella said, laughing a little. "The only real battle we've been in before was when Leaguers invaded our headquarters and took Zoey, and that one was like twenty minutes long, maybe. We've been out here all afternoon!"

I looked at her. "This needs to end before more people get hurt."

"It ends when we kill Shardstorm," Stella said somberly. "Where is he?"

And then, like he'd been summoned by our words, I saw him across the field. His scar was visible even from this far away.

"There."

I had such hate and loathing for that man in the pit of my stomach that I thought I might throw up from it.

"He's probably still looking for us, to kill us like he killed Agent Semaj," Stella spat, clenching her fists.

"Not if we kill him first," I said quietly. "Come on."

With each step I took, I felt, somehow, an overwhelming sense of calm. I knew the anxiety I faced was still somewhere deep inside me, but for now, it was buried. Maybe for good.

Whatever happened to me in the fight against Shardstorm, the true Final Fight, happened. The worst that could happen was that I died. I had accepted death a while ago, maybe even as long ago as the President Plot, when I got my very first mission. Death could not beat me at this point.

Stella's steps lined up perfectly with mine as we walked hand in hand towards the monster who had robbed us of our happiness and killed the man who was like a father to us both. We were the original team—with two missing. Taylor, her life snuffed out in a sacrifice for me. And Jai, who had turned to the darkness of his father's side, a choice that he couldn't turn back from.

We neared Shardstorm. He didn't seem to have noticed us yet- he was currently arrogantly strutting through the battlefield, firing shots at every STPOW Agent he saw, completely ignoring the fact that he was outnumbered and overwhelmed.

"Okay. Let's get him," I told Stella. "And Stells... if I don't survive the encounter with him... please. Please kill him for me. And keep yourself safe, okay? I won't feel so bad about dying if I know you're okay."

"Cam, you're going to be fine," Stella said stubbornly, raising her stun gun.

"On three we shoot," I said, lining up my vision with Shardstorm's head. We might only get one shot and I didn't want him to live long enough to figure out a way to survive for good.

"One. Two. Three!"

We shot. Stella shot twice. I shot twice. One of my bullets flew wild, scraping the grass beneath Shardstorm's feet. One bullet whizzed by his shoulder and I cursed.

One of Stella's bolts missed, but one hit Shardstorm right in the back. I mentally pumped my fist and waited for him to collapse, but he didn't. He stumbled a couple steps forward, but continued to stand.

Then Shardstorm slowly turned around and locked eyes with me.

A smile spread across his face that spread chills throughout my body, fear lighting in my stomach.

"Cam," Shardstorm said softly, but his words were perfectly clear from a few feet away.

"Shardstorm," I growled.

I raised my gun and fired over and over. Shardstorm dodged every bullet.

"You think you've won, Cam," Shardstorm spat as he grew nearer, his scar and muscles bulging, still dodging each bullet that came his way. Stella shot at him again, and Shardstorm retaliated by shooting two bolts, quicker than lightning, back at her. Before she could react, the two bolts slammed into her head. Stella's eyes rolled back and she collapsed into a heap on the floor, the gun falling from her hand with a soft thump.

I sucked in a breath and looked Shardstorm directly in the eyes and the world suddenly slowed down.

I was alone and about to fight Shardstorm.

I knew he was stronger than me.

And I wasn't saying that in an I'm-oh-so-humble way.

I knew he was stronger than me.

But I had to fight him. Kill him.

For Emmi. For Agent Semaj. For the other Agents who'd died who I barely knew but I could have known.

For all the memories that wouldn't be made because of him.

I knew that he had to die for this to end.

And for reasons I didn't know, it was me here right now, fighting him, finishing this. And I didn't understand why it was me but it seemed like the world had me here for a reason.

What the reason was, I didn't know. But I did know one thing. I felt something in the air that wasn't just the humidity from the fading autumn's sun. The tension in the air was so thick I could cut it with a knife; but at the same time there was an odd sort of understanding in the air too—between Shardstorm and I—an understanding based on power, on hatred.

We hated each other and wanted each other to die. And we had been working so hard to achieve that goal it was like we knew each other in a strange sort of way, and we felt familiar to each other.

I didn't like that feeling.

I wanted myself to be as separated from Shardstorm as possible. I wanted there to be an absolutely unbreakable wall between us and the only reason we had to peek over it was to have stiff, short interactions and attempt to kill each other.

But we weren't separated. We were similar.

Wanting attention. Love. Power.

No.

No, I told myself.

We were not similar.

I was not like him.

I was making up that weird understanding, that pull, that I could still swear that I felt in the air. We were enemies, mortal enemies, and I had to kill him.

And it would be easy.

"Cam, I've never understood you," Shardstorm said slowly as he looked into my eyes, cocking his head with what seemed like polite interest and languidly but deliberately approaching me. I cocked my stun gun, hands shaking, arm burning, mind spinning.

"You don't really have any special talent," he said, pulling out a real gun and shooting—but not aiming for my heart. Aiming for my stun gun. The bullets slammed into it and sent it flying into pieces. A piece of shrapnel embedded in my arm as the useless gun fell from my hands and I groaned with pain, sucking in a sharp breath.

"You're not particularly good at hand-to-hand fighting either," Shardstorm continued, lashing out a quick blow with his hand.

I blocked it, but Shardstorm was just so fast. As soon as I blocked he countered with a volley of quick hand blows, and I turned to my side on instinct to take less impact before remembering that I was injured. His hands bore into my wound and seemed to tear it open. I screamed in pain as I quickly backed away, my face beaded with sweat, my hands shaking uncontrollably, my heart pounding.

I gasped for breath, raggedly, but not quite able to catch it.

"You don't seem like you have that much charisma," Shardstorm said, looking around in mock surprise at the empty field for yards around him as if to point out that there was nobody here to help me now.

I tried not to cry.

"And yet..." he let the words linger as he stepped back a bit and looked at me.

"What?" I asked, almost a whisper, defiantly, wiping my shining forehead. I sucked in a quick, shallow breath.

"You're liked," he said softly, looking at me closely. His scar shone in the fading light.

"What?" This time it was a question, rather than encouraging him to keep talking.

"You're liked," he repeated, this time a little angrily. "And I can't figure out for the life of me why. We're so similar and yet you're liked and I'm feared."

"You're hated, not feared, first of all," I said quickly, stumbling over the words a little. "And secondly, try not murdering people and you might be more liked."

"Power is the most illustrious quality of all," Shardstorm said, narrowing his eyes.

"I... don't agree."

Suddenly, dimly, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Lukas—beautiful, brave Lukas—running up, fury in his gaze. I tried to catch his eye and shake my head at him, but he was completely set on his path towards Shardstorm.

Shardstorm looked at me and walked the few steps to reach me. He bent down to my level and placed his hand under my chin, lifting it up so that I looked him in the eye. His hands were cold against my skin and I felt my body rebel in revulsion to his touch.

"And yet, power is what keeps you here, unable to rebel, under my control, for fear of what will happen if you resist," Shardstorm whispered, looking me in my eye, his face completely calm compared to my angrily splotchy color, his cold hand still under my chin as I closed my eyes, refusing to look at him any longer.

"DON'T YOU TOUCH HER, YOU MONSTER!" Lukas screamed, flying into Shardstorm with a back kick. Shardstorm barely even moved from his position, picking up Lukas like he weighed nothing and throwing him several feet. Lukas landed on his shoulder and I heard a crunch of bone that made my stomach turn. He did not get up.

"No!" I screamed, my voice breaking, stumbling towards Lukas but falling to my knees, exhaustion and pain taking over my body. I struggled to stand up again.

"And you think that love, or kindness, or hope are the most valuable assets of all," Shardstorm snorted. "It seems all your friends do too, because they're as foolish as you."

"I hate you," I whispered, desperately looking at Lukas, my voice shaking, feeling fury so deep I thought I might pass out.

"I know," he said softly. "And I thought I hated you too."

"Thought?"

Suddenly I became aware of another figure walking towards us. His light brown hair, his deep blue eyes that matched the depth of my brown ones.

"Son," Shardstorm said with a malicious smile, turning towards the approaching Jai.

I gave Jai a desperate glance, even as I looked into his hardened eyes and knew there was nothing he was going to do for me.

Shardstorm turned back to me, looking at me closely. "And even after I've learned of a new... development... from a most interesting journal you saw me reading inside my headquarters, I still must kill you," Shardstorm said, almost sadly, kicking me suddenly in my side.

Pain shot through my side, my back, my head. My stomach turned with nausea. I fell again to one knee, struggling to keep the dignity of being somewhat upright as I gazed at Shardstorm with all the hatred I could possibly muster into my gaze.

I struggled to think of what new development Shardstorm had been talking about. What was the journal he had been reading?

What did it say about me?

"And it's too bad your mother took you away with her fifteen years ago, because otherwise I'm certain it would have been you standing beside me here today instead of Jai and you wouldn't have to die at all."

A cool wash of air suddenly seemed to come over me.

The air stilled.

"No," I whispered. I tried to breathe, but the air was caught in my throat. "No."

"Yes, Cam..."

"I'm your father."

He looked down upon me, his icy eyes staring into mine. A flicker of some emotion passed through his eyes that I couldn't read.

"So it's unfortunate that I have to be the one to kill you."

I didn't even feel the blow that knocked me unconscious.

### Chapter Ten

One heartbeat.

Father. Shardstorm was my father.

Another heartbeat.

My mind didn't want to comprehend it—didn't want it to be true.

A third heartbeat.

But I knew it was. Somehow I knew.

And I hated it.

The person who was responsible for my life had destroyed the lives of so many others.

I didn't know if I had the strength to kill him now.

I came to with a start, suddenly, bending upwards immediately like I'd been woken from a bad dream and vomiting. I felt a warm pressure on my wrist but couldn't see what it was.

I finished throwing up and let my head fall into my lap. A mass murderer was my father. One of my best friends and my mentor was dead because of the man who brought me into this world and was responsible for my life.

"Shh, shhh, it's okay," came a soothing voice from behind me.

"Agh!" I screamed, and tried to move, to get away from Jai, but my body did not obey. My strength was gone, now, entirely, and I was completely at the mercy of whatever my two worst enemies had in store for me.

I looked up, finally. Shardstorm was looking at me, a little bit of surprise in his gaze. Surprise that I was alive?

Jai was beside me and it registered that he had been checking my pulse as I woke up, which meant I likely hadn't been out for more than a few seconds.

"What... are you doing?" I said vaguely.

What I meant was, what was Jai doing seeming like he was protecting me?

"I wanted to say something to you, while I still had the chance," Jai said quietly, letting go of my wrist.

"I don't have anything I want to hear from you," I whispered.

"Son. Get up," Shardstorm snarled.

"Just... just hear me out. I wanted to say that I wish it could have gone differently."

I brought my arm, which felt like it was made of lead, to my throbbing head, rubbing my temples. "Please don't. Please don't do this."

"I wish that I knew I was your brother sooner, so I didn't fall in love with you and have my heart broken."

Brother. Jai, another murderer whom I hated almost as much as Shardstorm, was my brother.

And I'd almost kissed him.

"I wish I could have been the brother you needed, instead of the pawn in Shardstorm's game," Jai said sadly, looking at his shocked and furious father.

Shardstorm narrowed his eyes. "Jai. Stop this nonsense. Get. Up."

I closed my eyes as Jai continued, ignoring Shardstorm, "I wish that we had more time. I wish things had gone differently."

"But they didn't," Jai said, emotion in his words that somehow leaked into my soul. "The cruel fate of the world left us like this, broken, stranded, worlds apart, though only a few feet. I can't live now, knowing that I failed you... I failed the world... like everyone I loved failed me."

Jai looked into my eyes. "I just wanted to say I'm sorry."

Sorry.

And against my better judgement, I suddenly believed him. Up close I saw the bruises up and down his arms and somehow I knew exactly who they were from.

Shardstorm didn't give him any choice about the person that he was going to become.

But in the same way, Jai did have a choice. Asher had escaped from his father's clutches and tried to be good. Asher was good in the end. Asher had the bravery to change his destiny.

And I had a realization that Jai, the boy who thought he ruled the world, with all the swagger and confidence he gave off, had been scared. Scared to go against his father, to break free from the life that had been set before him before he was even born.

That didn't make what he had done right, and I still hated him. He could have easily not murdered anybody and still been safe from his father's wrath.

But at least now I understood a little more.

Jai put his hand on my arm, waiting for me to say something.

But I couldn't. I didn't know what to say. Except for maybe I was sorry too.

But I had nothing to be sorry for.

Except that his life was so much worse than mine when I very well could have been standing beside him, working for Shardstorm, miserable, if things had gone just a little differently.

"Thank you Jai. Very heartwarming. Tears in my eyes," Shardstorm snarled, trying to disguise the shock in his own. "Unfortunately, there will be tears in yours when I kill your little sister, your little love-of-your-life. Now step aside so I can finish this."

"No, I rather not," Jai answered softly.

He smiled. And it hit me that I hadn't seen a smile like that on his face since before I knew that he was evil.

It was a true smile.

"So, thanks, Dad. But I can't say I'll shed any tears when you're gone."

At the same time, Shardstorm and I realized the absolute depth Jai's heart had turned around.

But it was too late for Shardstorm because before he could react, Jai pulled out a gun and fired three shots.

One to Shardstorm's stomach.

One to his head.

And one directly over his heart.

Shardstorm was inhumanly strong, but there was no surviving that. There was a brief moment where his face showed shock, betrayal, and maybe a little regret.

Then he fell to his knees and onto his face and the expressions melted away to be replaced with the cold and emotionless veil of death.

It was over. We had won.

I turned to Jai, absolutely shocked, and gasped at what I saw.

He had pointed the gun at his own heart.

"Jai? What are you doing? You just... you just said all that, and now I have a brother, and--" My voice cracked. "And you were just starting to turn it around."

Jai gazed at me sadly. "I've done too much. I can't live with myself now, knowing I've destroyed so many lives."

"Wait—"

"I love you, sister. Please don't forget me."

"Jai, wait—"

The shot seemed very quiet. It was very quick.

There was absolute silence.

I closed my eyes and listened to my heart beat.

I did not cry, not yet. The tears would come later.

I did not scream in anger, not yet. That would come later too.

I simply crouched there, on my knees, in the silence of the battlefield that had taken everything away from me.

Silence wrapped its way around me, entwining itself in my veins. I dropped my head into my lap and let my hair fall forward like a veil of darkness covering me.

Pain wasn't now just contained to my arm, it was now in my entire body. My head was about to explode in agony, my limbs were burning with strain, my breath ragged and shallow. All that spy training, and I still would have died, with barely any effort from Shardstorm, if Jai hadn't intervened.

I owed my life to the very boy who had tried to take it seven months before.

He'd changed so quickly. But, I supposed, we all had.

Suddenly I felt a warmth come across both sides of my body. "What happened, Cam?" I heard Lukas murmur sadly.

"Are you okay?" Stella asked, rubbing my back.

I tried to lift my head.

"Shardstorm..." I couldn't force the words out from the lump in my throat. "He's my... my father."

A sharp intake of breath from both my best friend and my boyfriend, the two people closest to me in the entire world.

"J-jai killed him. Then... himself," I said, and then started to sob.

I cried out tears of absolute fury at Shardstorm, and tears of joy that he was finally unable to hurt anyone ever again.

I cried tears of frustration that I hadn't been able to save some of the people I valued most in my life.

I cried because I knew Shardstorm was right. I would never, ever be free of him now.

"Oh, baby girl," Lukas said so softly and tenderly as he ran his hands through my hair.

"Cam, I..." Stella said, not even able to choke out any words.

But it was enough that they were there.

Then. Suddenly. I heard a shout.

The sweetest sound in the whole world.

My mother's voice, screaming, "CAM!"

I stood up as quickly as I could, ignoring my burning arm and my raging headache. "MOM!" I yelled, scanning the battlefield for her.

Then I saw them. My mother, my father, and my sister. My true family, though not related by blood. "Oh my god! Cam!" My mom screamed from across an expanse of grass.

I tried to run towards them, taking a few solid steps, but then I fell to my knees, gasping in pain and coughing. I got back on my feet, ready to try again, but then Stella was there, beside me.

"Hey, don't try to do this alone! What are best friends for?" she said with a small smile.

Lukas looked at me lovingly from where he sat on the ground. "I can't walk right now, babe, but go see your family!"

I smiled at him with all the love in my heart, then I turned to Stella and wrapped my arm around her neck. Together, we walked across the battlefield, as quickly as we could.

An Agent was nearby, and as we headed towards my family I heard him say... "—got there just in time, this Leaguer named Leon was almost inside their door!"

And I knew that Agent Semaj's command to send an Agent to my house had come through for me and saved my family's lives as his final parting gift from this world.

I finally reached my family and slammed into them with a huge hug, crying tears of joy. My mother's beautiful arms, my father's strong grasp, and my sister's desperate clutch wrapped around me tightly as I was enveloped in their hug.

"Cam!" my mom said, desperately, "Are you okay? What happened?"

I broke away and looked at them with love and sadness in my eyes, for I knew the time to keep my secret had run out.

"Mom, Dad, Val?"

My voice cracked.

"There's something I need to tell you."
Chapter Eleven

"Come out, come out, wherever you are!" I called teasingly, peering into a dimly lit room in the halls of the STPOW headquarters, hoping to spot a little face in the darkness.

It was one month after the final battle and things had settled down. The STPOW hadn't been called on any major missions, just a few routine takedowns of criminal gangs— in the area and out.

It seemed that the surviving group of Shardstorm's Leaguers weren't going to make much trouble. Violet was found in the room we'd left her in, trying to get free from the handcuffs. Her and all the other stragglers who hadn't come to the battle were rounded up with the rest of the Leaguers and put in a maximum-security prison in the heart of the STPOW, guarded 24/7.

I heard a giggle from the darkness inside the room I was looking in. "Hmmm," I said loudly. "Looks like nobody is in here, but I should check, to be sure."

I made a big show of stomping my feet on the ground as I paraded into the room and slowly turned in a circle. "It's so dark, I can barely see!" I saw a little figure creeping along the floor, coming right towards me. "It would be a shame if something were to scare—"

"BOO!" yelled Angie and Vince from behind me.

I screamed and leapt about a foot in the air, crashing to my feet again and doubling over laughing.

"Holy—" I gasped for air, "crap! You guys really got me good. Zoey, were you the distraction?" I asked into the darkness. The shadow figure in front of me proudly nodded her little head.

The lights flickered on, making me squint. I turned around to face the person who'd just entered the room- Stella! "Wh-AT in the heck, may I ask, is going on in here?" Stella asked, raising her eyebrows.

"Oh, just a little game of spy hide-and-seek where three little ones..." I pat them each on the head as I still struggled to catch my breath, "may have scared Cam just a teensy bit."

"Ah, the classic sneak-up-from-behind trick. Never fails," Stella said with seriousness, then let the strict mask dissolve as she bent over laughing. "Cam, I've never heard a scream so high pitched in all my life! Never!"

"Oh, you shut it, you," I joked, elbowing her as I walked to the door. "This is coming from the one that nearly had a heart attack when I walked in on you and Asher making out in your room!"

"Well—" Stella spluttered, "apparently you've never heard of knocking!"

"I've never knocked before, how was I to know it would be the day you'd be all up in each other's faces—"

"Quit!" Stella yelped, looking at the children listening interestedly.

I giggled. "Now I have blackmail! Imagine the fun we'd have, though, if Aury got wind of this. She'd make it into a study about blossoming teen romances after tragedy."

Suddenly the mood turned more somber. I still couldn't think of the final battle without getting a pit in my stomach and a lump in my throat. I generally just tried to push away reminders of it so I didn't have to feel the wave of nausea and anxiety that came with it.

It was better that way.

Stella knew this, so she immediately tried to distract me, walking with me out into the hallway of the STPOW, the little kids trailing behind us. "Hey, I think Aury's coming back soon with all the official papers!"

I smiled weakly. "Oh, yeah?"

Like she'd been summoned by our words, Aury burst through the main entrance to the STPOW- the door at the end of our hallway, followed by Agent Rivers.

"WE GOT IT, WE GOT IT, IT'S ALL OFFICIAL!" Aury screeched, the green ends of her hair blowing wildly, waving the papers she was holding in the air. Agent Rivers looked fondly—well, as fondly as Agent Rivers ever looked—down at her as we jogged across the hallway to meet them.

"Oh my goodness, congrats, Aury and Agent Rivers!" Stella said breathlessly as we wrapped Aury in a hug. "You're going to make a great mom—for your little one inside and now Aury!"

Yes, Agent Rivers had decided she was going to adopt Aury. She'd apparently been thinking and talking about it before the final battle, but it was really just secured in her mind now.

"I'm so happy for you guys," I said excitedly, breaking apart from Aury.

Aury looked up at her new mom and beamed. Agent Rivers couldn't hide a smile back.

"I thought you had a baby inside your tummy!" Zoey said loudly from behind me, looking up at Agent Rivers. "She's too big to fit in your tummy!"

Agent Rivers looked at Zoey and smiled. (She did have a soft spot for the little ones.) "I still have the baby in my tummy! Now I just have another daughter too," Agent Rivers told them kindly.

She'd softened up some since the battle. I think her new philosophy was that you never knew when you might lose someone, so being kind was better. You really never knew when the words you said to someone would be your last...

And without my consent, I was violently hurled into a flashback of the final battle. Agent Semaj's face swam in my mind, his last words an apology. They shouldn't have needed to be an apology.

And Jai... Jai's last words, begging me not to forget him. How could I forget him even if I tried? My brother had killed himself before my eyes after finally ridding the world of one of the greatest evils it had ever known. His face was in front of my eyes, his deep blue eyes looking into mine.

"I love you... my sister..."

I felt a sharp, hot pain on my arm. "Cam!" a voice said.

I snapped out of it. Stella retracted her hand from my arm where she'd just slapped me. The lights suddenly seemed very bright in the hallway. "Sorry, sorry," I mumbled. The kids were looking at me worriedly and I forced a smile for them. "Just got... thinking."

"Let's walk," Stella said quickly. "We'll be back, you all."

Stella grabbed my arm, but gently, and led me down the hallway.

"So," she said, letting go of my arm. "They haven't stopped."

"Can't I even zone out anymore in peace!?" I snapped back, then sighed. "No. The flashbacks are still there."

"Still nightmares?" Stella asked. I reluctantly nodded.

"Startling easily?"

I remembered the game of hide-and-seek with a sour taste in my mouth. "A little."

"Avoiding the subject?"

"I guess," I said reluctantly. "But I'm getting better at talking about it without feeling like I'm going to throw up."

"That's... that's good," Stella said worriedly. "Cam, I beg of you. Go see the STPOW psychologist. No shame in it. Even I've gone to see them once or twice since the battle, just get stuff off my chest that I've been thinking about."

"I know you have, it's because I convinced you to after you had a nightmare too!" I told her.

"Yeah, but Cam, yours happen a lot more often and seem a lot worse," she said softly.

I closed my eyes and sighed. "Is it really going to help?"

"I think so," Stella told me. "I can't promise, but I think so."

"Fine. But will you go with me?" I sighed, giving in.

"Of course," Stella said, then wrapped me in a hug. "Cam, I love you so much and I just want what's best for you, okay? I wouldn't be telling you to do this if I didn't think it was important."

"Thank you," I murmured. "I'm so lucky to have you."

"Heck yeah, you are," Stella said, breaking away and punching my arm lightly. "Come on, let's go find the rest of the gang and hang out with them. We still have a couple hours until afternoon training starts."

___

"And that's the story of ever-the-romantic Asher asking me out by tripping and falling on his face!" Stella finished with a grin as we all doubled over laughing.

"Asher—" Marlee gasped, wiping a tear from her eye, "please say it isn't so!"

Asher's face had been bright red the entire time Stella was telling her story. "Um..."

"It is true!" Aury exclaimed.

"Asher, my dude, with all due respect... what?!?" Lukas said, sending us all into fits of laughter again.

"Well, he's never been the most romantic one in the world," Stella said, "but he's still mine and I'm proud of him! Aren't you, babe?"

Asher rolled his eyes playfully. "That I am."

Asher, who I hadn't liked all that much when he was training with us over the summer, had definitely grown on me. His swagger had been taken down several notches, likely by the humbling that Shardstorm had given him in the prison. His wounds had healed but scars still wrapped themselves around his arms, a forever reminder of what his father had done.

He was great for a heart-to-heart talk—of which we'd had quite a few since we found out that he was my only true sibling-by-blood left in all of the world. He was the only one out of my friends who'd experienced a similar level to me of what I believed was PTSD— from his from the abuse by his father for years and years.

I was secretly hoping his and Stella's relationship would go all the way and they'd get married, so our families could truly be combined. I told my parents about Asher, and how his birth father was the same as mine but had been killed in the battle, and they were thinking about adopting him.

I had tried to keep the extent of the horrors I'd experienced from my family, but it was difficult. Sometimes I'd wake up in the middle of the night screaming, or in a cold sweat, and my parents would run in. I'd say, "Just a nightmare," but I think they knew.

There was a knock on the door of the room we were all in. "Come in!" we chorused.

Agent Swan poked her head in. "Hey, kiddos!" she said. A lump rose in my throat at the use of Agent Semaj's favorite word. "I need to see Cam for a minute—the team going through Shardstorm's headquarters found something they think she will want to see."

I rose from my beanbag chair and looked at my friends. "I'll be back."

"Want me to come with?" Stella asked, but I shook my head. "Nah, I'm okay."

I followed Agent Swan out of the room as she motioned me down the hallway to the main conference room. "How's it going, Cam?"

"Not too bad," I said truthfully. "How are you?"

She smiled sadly. "I'm doing pretty well. It's so hard now, without so many of the Agents we tended to use to rely on."

"Yeah," I said sadly. "I heard that you were made a Senior Agent now, though! Congrats!"

They'd replaced the two senior Agents that had been killed in the battle. There was always a council of six.

"Thank you," Agent Swan said gratefully. "I heard you accepted your position as a Senior Agent too!"

"I couldn't very well deny it," I told her somberly. "It was Agent Semaj's dying request to me."

"No, of course you wouldn't deny that," she said. "How are you liking it?"

"It's a lot more work than just being a normal Agent," I told her with a laugh. "Those council meetings every week, and training sessions on the weekends from Saturday morning to late Sunday night! Plus, now I'm an Agent above a lot of the adults and I feel like some of them are bitter that Agent Semaj picked me to replace him, not them."

"He made the right choice," Agent Swan told me, placing a hand on my arm. "Oh, here we are!"

We entered the main conference room. It was mostly empty, with just a few Agents I didn't recognize well sitting at seats around the table. I pulled up a seat near them and gave them all nods.

"So, Cam, this investigative team of Shardstorm's headquarters found something they thought you'd like to know about," Agent Swan said, nodding to an Agent holding a large spiral notebook. He slid it over to me.

I gasped as I looked at the worn blue cover. "Raven's log," the cover read.

"This was what Shardstorm was reading when we confronted him in his headquarters during the battle!" I told the Agents, who looked interested.

I opened to the first page.

"Day one," read scrawling handwriting that looked a little bit like... my own?

Shardstorm wants us to keep these logs every day, to log what we're doing and how productive we're being. I don't think he's ever going to read them, though. Day one is a lie- I think this is more like day 300 I've been here.

It's gotten worse and worse since I arrived. Shardstorm, the man I loved for a brief time, is not the same anymore. He's not caring towards me and the little ones like he used to be, doesn't treat me specially any more. I feel like my own hopes and dreams and ambitions are rapidly getting crushed.

I flipped through more pages. Mostly they started to be technical logs of what she was doing each day. But a name on day 251 caught my eye.

My beautiful daughter was just born! I have named her Cam. Shardstorm barely noticed she was born. I showed her to him, nervously, carefully, and he looked at her beautiful face for a moment before saying, "Did you complete the encryption that I gave you yesterday yet?"

I think it's time to leave.

I flipped through a few more technical logs, then my eye caught on day 307, the last day written in the notebook before the rest of it was blank.

It's over. I'm leaving. Shardstorm, if you read this, I hate you. I hate you more than anyone I've ever hated before and I hope that you rot and die.

I'm bringing my daughter with me. It's too late for the boys- you've caught them in your web of lies already. But Cam, my beautiful, precious little girl, there is hope for her.

And I'm leaving this notebook hidden in his headquarters so if someday, somebody defeats you once and for all, they will find this. They will find this notebook, this remembrance, of how evil you were and how you ruined so many lives.

I know the chance is small. But Cam, if you somehow find this notebook or it makes its way into your hands, I want to say I'm sorry. I'm sorry I couldn't take care of you—I know I have to put you up for adoption once I leave. I'm sorry I had to bring you into this cruel world where your father is the worst person I've ever known. I'm sorry that your only siblings will grow up in a world of evil and you'll likely never get to meet them. (Ha, I thought, how wrong she was there.)

I'm sorry, baby.

But if you can forgive me, give this number a call. I'd love to see your face again before I die.

A number was listed below.

I stared at it. Could I forgive this woman? She knew that she was going to bring me into a terrible, terrible place to grow up, living with a terrible secret hanging over my head.

But she gave me a chance. She brought me away from Shardstorm's headquarters and into a new life.

I hadn't forgiven Jai yet in my mind, and it might be a long, long time until I could do that.

But maybe forgiving this woman, my mother, was a start on the path to forgiveness.

Forgiveness for good.

And breaking the cycle of the trauma that the final battle had left behind.

"What are you going to do?" Agent Swan asked me.

Which path was I going to choose?

I closed my eyes and let the silence wash over me for a moment.

Then I pulled out my phone and dialed.
Epilogue

I could tell you about a lot of things here.

I could tell you about how Lukas and I dated throughout the rest of high school and he just proposed to me.

I could tell you about how Aury went on to become a top scientist at the STPOW, and saved countless lives through her inventions.

I could tell you how Agent Rivers... Elena James's... daughter was born, and they decided to name her Hope.

I could tell you about how I met my birth mother, and while we decided we were better apart, she was so glad that Shardstorm couldn't hurt anyone ever again.

But instead, I'm going to take you way back to the one year anniversary of the President Plot, the anniversary of the day that Taylor died, when I decided the world needed to know the story of the Spies That Protect Our World...

___

I squinted at the paper in front of me and my tongue stuck out a little as I considered what to write. Who knew starting a story was so difficult?

I peeked again at Asher's notes in his difficult-to-read handwriting. I considered the flash drive sticking out of my laptop, made up of recordings of the going-ons in Shardstorm's headquarters. I had so, so much good material to use to write, but I still couldn't think of a starting line for my story? This was ridiculous.

I hit play on the recording again, taken a year ago today in Shardstorm's headquarters.

"They'll never suspect a thing until it's too late," Shardstorm's voice on the tape whispered with glee.

Even though my flashbacks and nightmares had improved since I started to see the STPOW's psychologist, Shardstorm's voice still made me feel sick to my stomach.

But I knew I had to listen to it, listen to it a lot, to piece together the story.

So I decided to just go for it. I scratched the first sentence of my story onto the paper with my new mechanical pencil,

"They'll never suspect a thing until it's too late," the villain whispered, glee in his voice.

___

So. I guess my secret is out. I'm the one actually writing these books.

But, did this all really happen to me? Or rather, to my secret second identity, Zoe Wynns?

Well. You'll have to figure that one out for yourself.

Because a spy never tells.

### Acknowledgments

It's the end of an era, my friends and readers!

When I started working on SpyCam a little under two years ago, I did not expect it would be this long of a project. I thought I might write two or three quick books and move on to other novels. But I'm so glad it turned out the way it did, with a five book series that I poured my heart and soul into!

There were some ups and downs, such as pretty much not writing for the whole year of 2018, which made it hard for me to dust off my laptop keys and start chugging away at book 4. I even joked with my AWESOME editor Luna that it was obvious how much my writing style had changed from the start of book 4 until the end!

And then, The Final Fight. Oh, the Final Fight. I had been planning that Epilogue since book TWO and when I finally wrote it, hit the last key on my keyboard (which was a period), so much emotion came over me that I literally cried! (My family thought I was slightly crazy, I'm sure.)

SpyCam has been such a great chance for me to grow my writing and I'm so glad I wrote it.

Now, to the acknowledgments!

First of all, THANK YOU FATHER! I'm so lucky to have a dad that's about a million times better than Shardstorm (oh, sorry about that plot twist, by the way). He helps and supports me through all I do and whenever I have a new idea, he's great to bounce it off of. He was the one that told me I should make Raven look a little bit more like Cam for some slight foreshadowing- great idea, father!

Thanks to my mom, who puts up with me piping up kind of often from random places around the house, "What does this word mean? I want to use it!" Or, in this book's case, I wasn't a hundred percent sure I was using "Case in point" correctly and she verified that for me.

Also, storytime. We were driving back home from the beach and my dad stopped for some gas. He filled up the tank and poke his head back in the car to talk to my mom. "Anyone got a pen? I don't want to have to go inside for the receipt."

My mom rifled through her purse. "I have a... tampon," she said. Then after a moment, "Uh, another tampon."

My father sighed. "I'll be right back."

Thanks for the inspo for that lovely Stella line, mom!

Big thank you to Logan, my awesome sister! She has to put up with me bursting into her room at random times of the day and saying "Logan, I don't know what to do!" I'll then go on to talk about some plot problem or dilemma, and she'll always help me work it out or at least be an ear I can rant to. She actually also came up with the idea of Jai killing Shardstorm- to keep Cam's innocence of having never killed another person and to give him a little bit of a redemption arc. We still can all agree that he's a terrible person, though, right? Right??

Finally, last but not least, LUNA HOU MY EDITOR FROM HEAVEN ITSELF. I KNOW I say this every time, but reading your edits feels like reading another novel, or novel commentary! It's so much fun and I look forward to it greatly. Your big overarching plot feedback definitely helped me reconsider some stuff in the novel and the nice little mistakes you catch are super helpful too. I also laugh so much when reading your comments and to be perfectly honest, I have so few people that have read through my whole series that it practically seems like I'm writing the books for you at this point, which is cool with me XD Love you, girl!

And thanks in advance to all my readers, I love you all to the moon and back!

If you'd like to read more books by me, you can search "Zoe Wynns" on Google, iBooks, or Smashwords to check out my other seven books! Thanks in advance for your support.

Thank you for coming on this journey with me and stay tuned for more Zoe Wynns writing!

