Spy-in-Training (15 page)

O
h my God, I overslept. I'm going to be late for the algebra test I didn't study for. Once again, I'm letting everybody down. But it's not all my fault. I didn't hear Katy Perry. I didn't hear Dad blow his nose. I didn't hear Ryan breaking things. Why do my eyes feel so heavy? I never usually find it this hard to wake up. I stretch and yawn. Why is my bed so hard? My head is pounding. There's a nasty taste in my mouth. I keep swallowing but I can't get rid of it. With an effort, I push open my eyes. Everything's watery and out of focus. I feel like there's a memory lying just outside my reach that I can't quite get
at. Something that will explain what happened to make me feel like this.

I hear a loud snore followed by a grunt. Am I not alone? Did Ryan sleep here last night? Did he tumble in and roll onto the floor like a dog?

“Ryan?” I try to say, but my mouth feels muddy and swollen.

“Bridget?” I hear a voice say my name. I'm
not
alone, but that is not Ryan. I try to turn onto my side to focus on the source of the voice but I can't move. I feel myself start to panic. I kick and struggle.

“Don't fight it,” says the voice to my left.

I turn my head.

“Who are you? How did you get in my room?”

“We're not in your room, Bridget. I need you to try and stay calm. Concentrate on my voice. I want you to breathe slow, regular breaths. Relax. No one hurt you, and no one's
going
to hurt you.”

The voice is calm and reassuring. I feel my panic subside. I squint my eyes a couple of times.

What was blurred starts to come into focus.

I can see the person to my left.

It's the substitute teacher, Mr. B-or-D. He's lying on a long metal table. His wrists and ankles are tied down with thick leather straps. The table that holds him is in
the middle of an empty room with gleaming stainless steel walls and a big rectangular blacked-out window.

“What happened to you?” I ask. “What are you doing in here?”

As soon as I ask him those questions, it occurs to me that I'm in here, too. I'm lying on a metal table. My wrists and ankles are tied.

“Bridget, don't scream,” says the sub.

I scream. I scream and thrash and pull at the straps. I keep screaming until my throat is raw. I struggle till the skin breaks on my wrists and ankles. I give up and let myself go limp.

“I'm sorry,” says the substitute.

I fight for breath. “What are you talking about?”

“They wanted me and they went through you to get me.”

“What did you do? What do I have to do with you? Why am I here?”

“I went so deep they couldn't find me, so they used the one thing they knew would bring me back on the grid.”

I don't know what's worse, being tied to this table or being stuck with a substitute teacher who talks nonsense.

“Okay,” I say. “Let me ask you something simple and you try to respond in a way that I can understand. Who are you?”

The sub says nothing for a second. “I'm your father,” he suddenly blurts out. “Your real father.”

I let out a laugh of disbelief. Even under the direst circumstances, Bridget Wilder still hangs on to her sense of humor.

“It's true,” he insists.

“It's not true,” I counter. “My real father is Carter Strike.”

“I'm Carter Strike,” he says.

“Right,” I say. “So that other guy, the big tall guy in the leather jacket who calls himself Carter Strike, who's he? 'Cause it's not a common name. . . .”

“He was there to make you believe.”

“Believe in what?”

“Believe you had a secret father who looked like a spy from the movies and wanted you to be a spy just like him.”

My head is pounding worse than before. It's the sub's voice. He's so whiny and irritating.

“You're making this up,” I say.

“But no real father would willingly put his child in danger. He'd want to protect her. And they knew that . . .”

“Who's
they
?”

“Section 23.”

“Section 23, the famous government agency, the one that saves the world on a regular basis? They sent a guy
to pretend to be Carter Strike so they could recruit me? Listen to what you're saying. Why would they do that?”

“Because they're the bad guys,” he says without hesitation. “And I was a bad guy, too. Until I got out.”

Everything I thought I knew starts slipping away.

“I don't believe you,” I say. But the truth is, I don't know what I believe.

“They want what's in my head. All the secrets I took with me when I ran. They thought I was going to sell what I know to the highest bidder or use it against them. When they couldn't find me, they found . . .” He stops talking.

“Found who?”

“I knew they'd track her down. I knew they were going to go after everyone I'd ever known. I didn't know she'd had a daughter.”

I want to be dreaming. I want to be dead asleep right now. I want to be anywhere other than in this steel room hearing what I'm hearing.

“Who had a daughter? Say it.”

“Your mother,” he says. “She was an agent with the Chechen secret service.”

I try to sit up as much as I can given my restraints. Then I let myself fall and, as I do, I bang the back of my head as hard as I can on the metal table.

“Bridget, stop,” he says.

I hear the concern in his voice, and I believe it is real. But I can't stop. I want to knock myself unconscious because I can't deal with what he's telling me. Could you? Could you handle being used and lied to on
this
scale? And then throw in a Eastern European spy mommy for good measure? I can't.

“Are you okay?” this man who claims he's my father asks.

I don't reply. I don't want to get into a conversation with him because the more he tells me, the more everything I think I know about myself is going to be stripped way. The more he tells me, the less special I'm going to be. I used to accept my invisibility. That was before Section 23. Before they made me feel like I was somebody. Before they used me. Now what am I? A moving part in someone else's plan. No superenhanced sneakers. No nanopowered black-and-gold tracksuit. No more Glasses of Truth. All the little accessories I loved so much. All gone. I must have been
so
hard to recruit. Spool must have had to fight the urge to laugh in my stupid gullible face. And what was the real Agent Carter Strike doing while I, his supposed daughter, was being puppeteered into betraying her friends and family?

“Why didn't you stop this?” I shout at him. “You saw me at school. You made a point of talking to me. Why didn't you protect me?”

Now it's Strike's turn to go quiet. “I don't trust anyone,” he finally says. “It comes with the job. The longer you lie for a living, the less you believe anything anyone says. You hear rumors you've got a daughter, your immediate response is you're being lured into a trap.”

I kick at the leather straps. “Good instinct. If only you'd acted on it, we might not be here.”

“I know. I should have . . .” He trails off. “This life. Caring about someone else is a weakness your enemies can exploit. The first time I saw you, I think I knew it was true. But I convinced myself you were a plant. My thinking was, if I didn't acknowledge it, Section 23 would doubt their own intel. They'd start to think I had manipulated them . . .” He sighs. “This is what an old burned-out spy sounds like. I'm sorry, Bridget. I had hoped my first real conversation with my daughter wouldn't have been about how I disappointed her.”

Something about the defeated way he talks is familiar to me.
He reminds me of me.
I'm not an old burned-out spy. I'm not any kind of spy. But I'm no stranger to disappointing others.

After a moment, I say, “So . . . how did you like being a substitute?”

He groans.

“What, worse than being a spy?”

“No one pays any attention and everyone's attached to their phones and no one knows anything and everyone speaks in those whiny, scratchy voices. And as for that kid Brendan Chew . . .”

“Lump, right?”

“Total lump,” says Carter Strike.

And we laugh. Strapped down to metal tables in the middle of a stainless steel room, not knowing where we are or what's going to happen to us, Carter Strike and I laugh.

“This family bond between you is a beautiful thing to see,” says the echoey voice suddenly filling the room.

“Here we go,” whispers Carter Strike.

I lift
my head as far as I can and see the big rectangular window is no longer black. It looks into a cramped little office with a small wooden desk dominated by a huge laptop. Behind the desk sits a pink-faced man.

“Spool,” I say.

“Spool,” says Strike, at exactly the same time.

Spool breaks into a wide grin. “You two are adorable.”

He gets up from the desk and walks to the window. I was hoping he might be a disembodied head that would float away like an untethered balloon. But no. The head is attached to an ordinary, mildly flabby body wearing a gray suit.

“Let her go, Spool,” says Strike. “You don't need her. You've got me. I'll cooperate
if
she walks free.”

Spool smiles. “That would be crazy. She's my leverage. I'm not letting her walk away.”

Clunk.
The final piece of the puzzle entitled
Let's Betray Bridget
falls into place.

Spool sees it. He sees that I get it. I get how he used me. I hope he sees the hate in my face.

“Come on, don't be mad,” he says. “I didn't tell the whole truth, but I made your life better.”

“Better?”
I yell. “I've alienated my family. My friends. Everyone at school. You've made me more of an outcast than I ever was.”

“Look at it this way,” he says. “If it hadn't been you, it would have been another girl. You saved someone's life. That's a good thing.”

“What? What other girl? I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Tell her, Dad,” says Spool.

I twist around on the table until I can see Strike. He
looks more uncomfortable than I've ever seen him.

“The reason I didn't believe you were my daughter is . . . you weren't the first.”

I'm confused. “First what?”

“The first daughter Spool used as bait.”

“You've got another daughter?”

“No,” says Strike. “You're the only one. They found you before I did.”

“What happened to the other girl?” I ask.

“Girls,” says Spool. “They couldn't fool Strike. They were no use to anyone.”

I want to ask again what happened to them. But I don't want to know the answer.

“Think, Spool,” I yell. “I've got a family. I matter to people. They're going to notice I'm missing.”

Spool leans back against his desk, looking smug. “That's where you're wrong. We've cloned you down to the last detail. The clone has moved into your home and your family already like it better than you.”

“No!” I shout. “They wouldn't fall for that. They'd know the difference.”

But even while I'm yelling at Spool, I'm thinking,
Would I know the difference? If someone replaced Ryan or Natalie with a clone, would I even notice? And they've got
big personalities. They're not halfway invisible, like I was. Oh my God.

“They didn't clone you,” says Strike. “Section 23 are notorious cheapskates and this operation has stretched their budget to its breaking point. They splurged on a whole Smart Car.”

“Our budget got a lot bigger since we sold Nick Deck's secrets to the highest bidder, and we're getting a lot of interest in these missile codes,” says Spool.

“You're going to start a war,” yells Strike.

“Couple of wars, probably,” says Spool. “Good for business.” He grins at me. “We could absolutely clone you if we wanted to. We haven't
yet.
But we're not going to let you go. You're a talented little spy, Bridget Wilder. . . .”

“No. No way,” barks Strike. “Don't do it.”

“Don't do what?” I ask.

“Yes, don't do what?” asks Spool. “Don't plant triggers into her subconscious that, when activated, turn her into the perfect Section 23 agent and then wipe what she just did from her memory? That the sort of thing you don't want us to do?”

“I'll come back to work for you,” says Strike. “I'll do anything you say, without question.”

I squirm around on the table to watch his face while
he's saying this. His eyes are wide. He nods his head as he speaks. He looks scared to death.

“Why would I want an old burned-out spy?” grins Spool. “When our new breed of agent has worked out so well?”

“What new breed?” says Strike.

A panel in the stainless steel wall slides open. Dale Tookey walks in.

“I'm the new breed,” he says. He flashes me a friendly smile. “How's the neck, Bridget? Sorry I had to jab you, but
now
we're even.”

O
f course. Of course he had to be a spy. If he wasn't, I might have had one thing left: the fantasy that a boy liked me. So, of course, they had to take that away from me, too.

Dale Tookey looks a little apologetic. “I know this is weird.”

“You don't talk to her,” snarls Strike. “You don't even look at her.”

“Sir, I get that you're upset and I completely understand where you're coming from, but I just want to say, Bridget, your daughter, she's really something. If you
could see her out in the field. She shows no fear.”

I liked him a whole lot better when he wasn't trying so hard.

“You heard the man,” I all but spit. “Don't talk to me.”

“I just want you to know that what's about to happen to you will be quick and painless.”

“Unlike having to listen to you,” I say.

Tookey nods. “The process of inserting the chip involves . . .”

“Boring me to death?” I interrupt.

“Ha!” snorts Strike. I like that I can make him laugh.

Tookey looks unimpressed. “Say your good-byes.”

“No,” says Strike. “We're not going anywhere.”

“Beg to differ,” says Tookey.

The stainless steel panel slides open again. The guy in the leather jacket walks in. The man who pretended to be my father.

“Rolf,” says Tookey to the fake Strike.

The guy, who I guess is called Rolf, walks to the head of my metal table and begins to roll me out of the room.

Strike struggles on his table. I feel our hands touch briefly as my table passes his. Or maybe I just want to think that we made contact.

“Don't be scared, Bridget,” he says, and his voice is
shaking. “I'm going to find you.”

“I know you will,” I say. “You're Carter Strike.”

The guy called Rolf pushes my table out through the panel in the wall. I squirm around to try and look back at my real father. It starts to hit me. We had no time together.

“I'd love to go to Brazil! São Paulo,” I shout back at him. “I like eating octopus—I like how rubbery it is. I hate horseflies.”

“The size of them!” he calls after me.

The panel slides shut.

“Find me,” I call. “Or I'll find you.”

“Awww,” says Rolf.

I lift my chin as high as I can to see his upside-down face. “I'm so glad you're not my father.”

“Mutual,” he says.

Rolf continues to push me and my metal table down a long brightly lit corridor. Dale Tookey walks beside me, studying his phone and shooting me sidelong looks.

“You okay?” he asks. “You doing okay?”

“Thank you so much for asking,” I say, as frostily as I can manage, which, under the circumstances, is
quite
frosty. “I'm having a lovely time. I'll remember it always. Oh wait, no I won't. 'Cause you're about to slice my brain open and shove a chip in it.”

“Can't wait till that happens. Maybe it'll shut her up,” says Rolf.

“You're perfect father material, Rolf,” I say. “No way your kids are going to be scarred for life.”

“That's right, keep talking,” Rolf replies.

“Leave her alone,” says Tookey.

“There's my knight in shining armor,” I say. “My backstabbing knight in shining garbage.”

“Bridget,” he starts to say. Then he stops. I feel his hand touch the strap around my left wrist.

“Rolf, wait.”

“They want her in there,” says Rolf. “The process.”

“Look at her wrists, man. They're raw. Same with her ankles.”

“Good. Hope it hurts,” says my phony dad.

“What if the pain keeps her alert through the process, helps her fight it?”

“That's not our call.”

“I'll tell Spool you said that.”

Rolf sucks his teeth in annoyance. He stops pushing the table.

“Untie her ankles. I'll get her wrists,” says Tookey.

“I don't think so,” grumbles Rolf. “What if she . . . ?”

“She's a scared little schoolgirl,” Tookey interrupts. “You're a brick wall.”

Rolf stomps down to the end of the table and starts tugging at the straps around my ankles.

Tookey goes to my left hand. He undoes the strap with one hand. With his other hand, he begins stroking my palm.

“Get your hands off me,” I snarl.

He keeps stroking it. Tracing his finger up and down and around my palm. I realize what he's doing. Tookey's not caressing my hand. He's spelling something. I concentrate on the movement of his finger on my palm.

D-I-E.

He's telling me he's going to kill me.

Tookey goes to my right side, undoes the strap.

Down at the bottom of the table, Rolf is taking his time freeing me, making sure he causes maximum pain.

Tookey looks at Rolf bent over my ankle. I see him pull something from inside his jacket pocket. It's a syringe.

He's going to do it now. I'm dead.

Unless . . .

Rolf frees my ankles. I spring up onto the table. I kick the syringe out of Tookey's hand and catch it. In one fluid motion, I hurl it straight back at him. It catches him in the shoulder. He gasps, claws at the syringe, and then folds up and slumps to the ground.

Rolf growls and makes a grab at me. I jump into the
air, high as I can. When I fall back to the table, I stamp my foot down hard on Rolf's outstretched hand. I imagine I hear bones crack. I like that sound. So much so that I spin around and kick out behind me. My heel catches Rolf square on his handsome nose. I
definitely
heard something crack that time.

Rolf has both hands covering his gushing nose. I use this opportunity to leap upward one more time. When I come down, I drive my knees into the back of Rolf's head, forcing it down onto the metal table.

“Mutual, Rolf!” I scream.

He hits the ground with a thud. I remain standing on the metal table, breathless, shaking, adrenaline coursing through my veins. I look down at the two motionless bodies on the ground. I did that.

Wait,
I
did that? No speedy shoes, no nano-tracksuit? But then it occurs to me. I've been running incredible distances at amazing speeds these past few weeks. Spool's gadgets may have transported me, but it was my legs and my body that were moving. I didn't anticipate this by-product, and I know Section 23 didn't, but . . .

I'm ripped.

I let out a low chuckle and savor my unexpected power.

Then Spool and a bunch of Section 23 agents burst
out of the far door at the end of the corridor. Another load of agents pour through a door at the opposite end.

I can take them
, I think for approximately one second.

I decide retreat is my best and only option. I squat down low and then spring up, pushing myself as high as I can. I punch two fists in the air and knock out a ceiling panel directly above me. I reach skyward, grab both ends of the panel, and pull myself up.

I feel a hand grab at my ankle. The fingernails dig in where the flesh is at its most tender. I grit my teeth and hold in my cry of pain. I grope around inside the exposed ceiling area for something, anything, to use as a weapon, to break the hold around my ankle, which is getting increasingly painful and harder to resist.

My hand touches something soft and hairy. Whatever's up there is gross enough to make me momentarily forget the grip on my ankle. I grab the fleshy thing and throw it at the owner of the hand on my leg. I glance downward. It's a rat. I had a dead rat in my hand.

Grooooooossssss!

I shudder in horror. But the hand lets go of my ankle.

Beneath me, I hear a loud male scream of horror.

“It's biting me!”

Oh my God! It wasn't a dead rat. I had a live rat in my hand. And that live rat just saved my life, so I instantly
resolve to be more caring toward all rats living and dead from now on. (I'm pretty sure I'm going to break that resolution.)

The agent beneath me keeps screaming. I haul myself up through the panel and find myself in a tight and constricted air vent.

I'm a little bit claustrophobic and, as I've just discovered, this particular confined space is a favored hangout for live rats. But there's no other way for me to go but forward, so I squeeze my elbows out and start crawling into the unknown.