by CY Jones
After taking our bags to our rooms, we all met up in the computer room on the bottom floor. When we are all seated around the conference table, Caleb, in his no nonsense manner, got straight to the point.
“Two years ago we were contacted by an informant within O'Donnell's crime syndicate.”
Cody and I wore matching expressions of disbelief. No one from O’Donnell’s agency talks. No one. Fuck stitches. Snitches were killed in the worse ways imaginable, and it didn’t end quickly. They’re tortured for days before finally meeting their maker. The only poor soul ever known to cross O’Donnell was brutally tortured and then burned alive afterwards. The whole thing was filmed and released on the dark web as a warning. That in itself was enough to guarantee no one would ever rat out Patrick O’Donnell. He was a sick son of a bitch that didn’t give a shit about humanity.
“How reliable is this source?” I asked, half curious and half suspicious. I didn’t want to doubt them, but I still couldn’t quite believe they found someone willing to talk, or that damn suicidal.
“Very,” Conner answered from his seat.
Well damn, I thought to myself.
“Over the last two years he’s fed us information about O’Donnell’s movements. He’s sent us financials, clientele list, and anything else valuable he could get his hands on. It’s always bits and pieces of information here and there. Several of our missions over the last year owe their success to information we received from him,” Caleb explained, eliminating any of my doubts about this informant’s reliability.
“How has he fed you information for so long without getting caught?” Cody asked, amazed by all this as I am.
“He’s a brilliant hacker and coder,” Caleb answered in his thick English accent with an actual smile on his usually stern face. This had to be the first time I’d ever seen him smile. It made his face softer, more like his brother’s, but there was something else about it too, like he was proud. The way a father would be proud of a child.
“Ok. Is he the one who told you this building was compromised?” I asked.
Both twins answer at the same time. “Yes.”
“How did it become compromised? I asked.
“The informant disclosed the location to O’Donnell,” Caleb answered, giving his brother a strange look.
“Ok, now I’m confused. If he compromised us, then why are we still trusting him? What’s the mission? I’m not going to lie, I’m confused as fuck right now,” I asked, rapidly firing off questions and looking between the twins for answers.
“It’s an extraction mission,” Conner answered. “Our informant may be good, but he’s not looking out for just himself. You know the consequences if he gets caught, and those same consequences will also apply to his sister. He thinks they’re beginning to suspect him, so he needs to get himself and his sister out of there immediately. Once we free them, we’ll flip them, and they’ll both start working for us.”
“And we trust them, because as of now they need us more than we need them,” Caleb said nonchalantly.
“Here’s the question of the day, mates. Who’s the informant?” Cody asked.
The twins gave each other another odd look. “The informant is code name Phantom and his sister Shadow,” Caleb finally responded.
“What? No way,” Cody said, looking between the twins.
“No fucking way. This must be a set up,” I yelled, finally snapping out of my stupor. I’m pissed as hell, not believing what I’m hearing. No way would those two monsters ever switch sides. They were born with evil running through their veins, and it ran deep.
“I mean no disrespect, sirs, but a couple of successful missions is no reason to trust those two psychopaths,” I spat out hatefully. My anger was insurmountable. I didn’t care how many missions Phantom helped pull off. There was no way in hell he would genuinely help the good guys. This had to be a trick. Maybe some sick way to gain our trust and infiltrate our agency.
“And yet you’re being very disrespectful, agent,” Caleb sneered.
Lowering my eyes I looked away from Caleb. Dude was crazy scary, and just then his anger was aimed at me, but I still felt the need to speak my mind.
Breaking the tense silence, Conner gave me a look of understanding. “I know how you feel. Their reputation does precede them. As part of O’Donnell’s food chain, there’s no one higher than those two, or deadlier. They are his best assassins, so I get why you would find it hard to believe they would turn, and we’re well aware of the history you two have with them, but Phantom has more than proved his loyalty.”
“How could you even trust him?” I asked in a small defeated voice.
“We trust him,” Caleb starts off, “because he’s our son, and Shadow’s our daughter,” they both whispered together.
Well damn. I must say, out of everything they might have said, I didn’t see that coming. I just insulted the bosses’ lost twins, the ones they’ve spent almost two decades looking for. Foot in mouth, and all that, but regardless of whether they’re actually their kids or not, I maintained the validity of my reasons to distrust them. Those reasons ran deep, steeped in blood that never should have been spilled.
“Okay, mates, what’s the plan?” Cody asked, interrupting my thoughts. Unlike me, he doesn’t carry extra baggage that weighs down his decisions. We all have a backstory. Something that sent us down this path we chose, something that made us become an agent, and mine might just be one of the worst.
“Phantom fed O’Donnell information we gave him on this building. He plans on convincing O’Donnell to let him and his sister go on a mission under the guise of killing us. If all goes well, we will leave here with the twins before O’Donnell discovers Phantom’s betrayal,” Conner explained.
It all sounded easy enough. I just wonder why the Daniel twins seemed so unsure about the mission. There was a hint of worry in their voices, and I wanted to know why.
“That’s the way we expect the mission to go,” Caleb hedged, looking over at his twin, “but every good agent knows that things don’t always go according to plan.”
“What does that mean?” I questioned, my concern over this mission bleeding through my voice.
“Yeah, what’s with the dodgy twin looks?” Cody added.
“Phantom may be on board, but Shadow isn’t,” Conner explained. “She knows nothing about our true connection, or that her brother has been contacting and feeding us information for the last two years, so getting her to come with us may prove problematic at best. She’s also under the assumption that we killed her mother and believes Patrick is their father, as that’s the story he’s fed them their entire lives.”
“Why won’t her brother just tell her the truth beforehand then? That would make things a whole lot simpler.”
“He doesn’t want her to know anything that would put her in danger if they were to get caught,” Conner said with a determined look crossing his normally carefree face. ”Once they enter this building they will have already split up, so there's no time in between to explain without prying ears. Plus, they need to run this like a legitimate mission, so that they don’t alert O’Donnell about anything until it’s too late. Phantom will not risk his sister, and it goes without saying that we won’t either.”
By the time night came we’d gone over plans A-Z, and had contingencies set for everything that could possibly go wrong, but seeing that the mission was rescuing the Daniel twins long lost children they planned the fuck out of this mission. I still bore my reservations about Phantoms and Shadow’s loyalty, but I knew better than to voice my opinion again. I could only hope that everything worked out the way it was supposed to.
Three
Present Day
Hunter
“Must you keep looking at my daughter like you want to stab her in her sleep?” Caleb asks, walking into the room and taking a seat next to Shadow’s bed.
“I’m sorry, sir.” In truth, I’m not really sorry at all as I tear my gaze away from Shadow’s prone for
m. I don’t understand why this girl has such a hold on me. I can’t forget that despite her beauty she’s still a cold-blooded murderer. But something about her pulls me in, some unrelenting force dragging my focus towards her. Just sitting here by her bedside, keeping a watchful eye on her, has my mind spinning with way too many fantasies about what her full lips taste like or how much I want to pound my big cock in her pussy until she cries out my name. I just don’t understand it. Thoughts of the many ways I could kill her and do society a favor should be running through my mind instead.
“How’s your brother?” I ask, forcing my mind away from how much I want to hate fuck his daughter.
“The same,” Caleb answers sadly. “They removed the bullet, and luckily, it missed any vital organs. Unfortunately, it was made from pure silver, the only reason why it impacted him so much in the first place. He’s fighting, but still in a coma.”
This must be so difficult for him. His twin is hurt, and he’s helpless to do anything about it, forced to wait for his brother to pull himself through. Who would have thought with all the preparations we made that this would happen? Out of all the plans we made, we never predicted this outcome. Phantom was compromised, probably for some time now. He was a mouse in a trap, and O’Donnell just waited for the right time to spring it.
O’Donnell revealed himself as the true mastermind here. When we thought we were pulling one over him, he was playing all of us, and we made it all too easy for him. Since O’Donnell knew of Phantom and Shadow’s plans, all he had to do was send his people to lay in wait until Phantom disabled the security system, and since all the guards were sent away days before, we never even knew they were there until it was far too late.
O'Donnell’s people placed two bombs around the compound, and after the building exploded, he had a couple of snipers in place to pick us off. We barely made it out alive when we escaped the blast, crashing through the windows. We didn’t realize that a sniper shot at Shadow as Conner freefell with her held close in his arms. The bullet ended up grazing her arm and hitting Conner in his chest near his heart, since he was using his body to shield hers from the broken glass. The freezing temperature of the water assisted in saving Connor's life, slowing down the bleeding. Through the whole ordeal he never lost his grip on Shadow’s unconscious body, holding her tight all the way to the boat we had waiting out of sight.
This whole mission turned into an epic disaster, exacerbated by the fact that in the midst of the mayhem, Caleb lost track of Phantom. He spoke with him for only a couple of minutes before they figured out O’Donnell set us all up. Phantom located the bombs O’Donnell’s men hid around the compound, but he ran out of time to disarm them all.
“What now?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” Caleb growls harshly. “So much went wrong with this fucking mission. I’m still trying to wrap my head around it all, but out of everything, I hate that I lost Phantom during the chaos. After learning of the bombs, he handed me some flash drive and ran off, saying he was going to do what he could to disarm them. I caught up to him as he disabled one, but got sidetracked fighting a couple of O’Donnell’s men. By the time I dispatched them, the damn building exploded. I had no choice but to jump into the water for cover. I lost sight of Phantom after that. If he hadn’t successfully disabled that first bomb, we would all be dead right now.” Each word from Caleb was like a punch to the gut.
I would be lying if I said I wasn’t a little ashamed right now. I had my doubts about Phantom, but in the end he wound up saving my life, maybe even at the cost of his own if O’Donnell’s people caught him. I hope he got away for all our sakes, because I hate to see what Shadow is going to do when she wakes up and finds out he’s not here. Looking over at Caleb, I can tell he’s thinking the same thing.
Through the tense silence Doc Samson walks in the room looking like he hasn’t slept in days, and knowing him, he probably hasn't. After performing emergency surgery on his boss who is now currently in a coma, and now caring for his boss’s daughter, the man standing before me is more than a little stressed.
“How is my brother doing, Doc?” Caleb asks, staring the doctor down.
After rubbing his blood shot eyes, Doc says, “He’s recovering well. I’m sure if we give him another couple of days, he’ll wake up just fine. We need to give his body time to heal itself after going into shock from so much blood loss, as well as give the transfusion time to work its way through his system. Falling into a coma is not unusual under such circumstances,” Doc explains while he checks over Shadow’s chart.
“And my daughter?” Caleb growls. “It's been three days. Why hasn’t she woken up yet?”
“There's no medical reason behind it. Just like her father, she needs time,” Doc answers, unfazed by Caleb’s anger. I guess by now he’s grown used to it, considering Caleb has stayed on his ass since we got back. After checking Shadow’s vitals, Doc quickly steps out the room leaving us to our own thoughts.
Two Days Later - Hunter
It’s been five days since the explosion, and Shadow still hasn’t woken up yet, nor has Conner. Caleb’s on the verge of losing his shit, and if neither of them wakes soon he’ll probably raze this whole infirmary to the ground. A petty part of me feels like she’s doing this on purpose. That she’s fine and just biding her time waiting for the perfect opportunity to escape, but I know that’s just crazy talk. Since Cody and I are the only agents here that know of her existence, we’ve been assigned to guard her room in twelve hour shifts. We only take breaks when Doc or one of the nursing staff comes in to check up her vitals, and not once has she moved on her own.
I'm on my usual break when I hear yelling coming from Shadow’s room.
“This is crazy, Doc,” I hear Caleb shout. “We need to wake her.”
“I don’t recommend forcing her to awaken, Caleb. She experienced significant trauma, and her body is keeping her in this state in order to heal. Waking her before she’s ready could do more harm than good. Think about what you’re asking.”
The silence lasted so long I thought they were done, but as I turn the handle to the door, I hear Caleb say in a clear voice full of determination, “I have thought about it. Wake her now, Doc.”
When I enter the room, I take in Doc’s grave face as he nods and walks out the door. Seconds later his nurse returns to remove Shadow’s catheter, and she squeezes a needle filled with some murky looking substance through her IV.
“It should take about fifteen minutes for the medicine to work its way through her system, and another five for her to wake,” the nurse murmurs before leaving, the door closing behind her with a gentle snick..
Four
Remy
I was having the most wonderful dream. In my dream Patrick O’Donnell isn’t my biological father, and instead, my brother and I were born from good people, not that sick son of a bitch we work for. Maybe we aren’t as tainted as I thought, and maybe we stand a chance, we can become something other than pure evil. I realize I need to wake up, but I don’t want to. Here I’m not evil, and I can pretend that all the bad moments in my life never happened. In here I never killed anyone. In here HE never touched me. I’m no longer a ghost, but subconsciously I know this isn’t reality. Only some drawn out figment of my imagination.
“Rowen,” I whisper, feeling uneasy. Something isn’t right. I can feel it in my bones. My gut screams at me, telling me that something is very, very wrong. Our connection feels weak, and suddenly, all I want is my brother.
“Rowen,” I scream waking myself.
Jolting upright in my bed, my foggy vision clears, but instead of seeing a pair of familiar turquoise blue eyes that belong to my brother, the ones staring at me belong to my father.
“Where is my brother?” I ask, shifting as far away from him as I can get without falling off the bed.
“It’s OK, Remy. I won’t hurt you,” he answers instead, throwing his hands up in the air in a placating gesture to show me he’s not a threat.
I
narrow my eyes. “Then why won’t you tell me where my brother is?” I ask, jumping off the bed and landing on shaky feet. My balance feels a bit off from lying in bed for so long.
I don’t trust anyone but my brother, and this asshole won’t tell me where he is. A throat clearing behind me distracts me, and I quickly spin around, stumbling on unsteady feet from the sudden motion. Normally I’m never this clumsy, but right now I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck.
“Whoa there, princess,” he says, reaching out a hand to stabilize me. I immediately recognize him as the boy at the compound, Hunter. I believe that’s his name. Glancing down, I’m horrified to see that I’m in nothing but my bra and panties, flashing a little too much skin in front of Hunter and my father. What the fuck? Shouldn’t I be in a hospital gown or something? Yanking my arm free, I grab the sheet from the bed to cover myself.
“Where the hell are we?” I question.
Looking around I can tell we’re in some kind of medical room, but I still don’t know where. I hate unknowns. Too many variables point in their favor right now.
My new dad frowns. “Do you always ask this many questions when you wake up?”
“I’ve only asked two, neither of which you arseholes have answered,” I retort in a perfect imitation of his English accent. I’m practically naked in what looks likes a hospital room with two men I just met today, one of them identifying himself as my father. This felt like a bad soap opera, or some kind of deranged porno in the making.
“Do you remember what happened before you blacked out?,” New Dad asks.
Narrowing my eyes, I give him my best death stare. So it’s okay for him to ask me questions, but he ignores all mine. Weighing my options it's clear I will not get any answers from him unless I answer, so I give in for now. Concentrating, I playback what I remember in my head. To be a smart ass I keep using the English accent.