Forever Fighting | ✔️ | [previously Espionage: double-cross]

Chapter 35

Every screen around her was covered in information about her mother: pictures she had never seen, news articles she had never come across. She looked around her at the person she never knew because the woman in front of her was not the one who had made her hot chocolate after she had a nightmare.

The pounding of what could only be a battering ram behind her faded into the loud frothing of her thoughts, getting caught up in the disbelief and annoyance.

No one had told her about this. Her mother wasn't some lowly agent. Julie had said she was one of the best but this? This was James Bond level stuff and she had been kept in the dark. If Potentia hadn't followed her, if she hadn't been brought in by Auxilium for her own protection, would she have ever found out? This was her legacy, part of her mother's ghost that hung over her head and it would have remained a mystery if it wasn't for external forces involving themselves in her life. 

Everything was starting to make sense now. No one had thought much of her from the start, probably regarding her fast induction to the agency as nepotism. How everyone just stared at her when she mentioned her last name. Everything her mother had done was legendary, nothing Alex could even hope of living up to. All of her achievements, her repertoire paled in comparison to all of this. 

She scanned the articles; bomb defused at the white house (the white house!); 25 people saved from slave trafficking; serial killer brought to justice - everything had her mother's mark and even though the world wouldn't know, Aliza Pierce would forever live on forever through her exploits.

None of this, though, linked to Potentia, nothing here was controversial enough to justify hiding it from her. At least, that was what she thought before finding the next folder.

This one was marked differently from all of the others, just a simple 'Z'. If Alex wasn't as well versed in complicated ways of presenting a simple thing, she wouldn't have realised that this folder, this was the end.

All it contained was an audio recording and an unnamed file. 

Alex clicked on the audio file first, startling when her mother's voice played through the low-quality speakers.

"Final day. I have the cure, courtesy of Potentia and enough information to burn down the world," Alex smiled at the overly light tone, the bad attempt at humour sending a familiar pang through her chest. "J, as soon as I get back I'm stopping, I can't do this anymore."

Another familiar voice echoed through the speakers in reply. "I'd expect nothing else." This one sounded lighter than it did now, happier. "It's almost over."

Aliza's voice was dark, unbelieving. "If only."

The call cut out then and Alex resisted the urge to replay it, if only to hear her mother's voice again. She wouldn't go as far as to say her ears missed the 'dulcet tones' but more so the full voice with a slight rasping quality that she had almost forgotten. It reminded her of the lullabies she used to listen to, squealing in laughter as she begged her mother to stop butchering the nursery rhymes.

She had heard the voice that had become faded to her mind's ear, latching onto it like a drug addict in need of another fix. There hadn't been much left of her mother, neither parents good with a video camera. The camcorder they did attempt to use was full of blurry videos and the microphone overwhelmed by the constant shaking. 

This was one of the last calls with her mother, if the date was correct the day before her murder. Alex wasn't even sure if she had gotten the information back to Auxilium or if it had died with her. 

But Julie had been right, it had almost been over, just not in the way her mother had expected.

Alex clicked out of the recording and instead clicked on the unnamed file beside it. Nothing she had been thinking it would be could have prepared her for what it was.

Alex cringed away from the title of the report, the word 'death' in regards to her mother still evoking dark emotions nine years later. 

She did force herself to read on, however. She forced herself to read every word that marked the page with a deadening finality Alex had thought she had become immune to years ago.

Everything was here, from the post-mortem report, the possessions found on the body - not even her, just a body, a corpse - information about the place of death and finally, her revised agent report.

Name: Aliza Pierce

Age: 37 years

Agent Number: 1A-0P2

Code: Determinari, dux, animosus

Status: Deceased

Cause of death: Kill order - Signed off by Agent 1J-0M1

Alex froze when she finished reading, every muscle stiffening and every blood vessel turning to ice.

Why?

Because she knew that Agent number, extremely well. It was the code that adorned all of her mission slips, that marked every permission slip to leave. It's the code that sat on her recruitment file, a code she had seen alongside hers so many times it was embedded in her mind. 

A loud slam unfroze her and sent her rushing into action. That sound was a lot closer than what she would have hoped and sounded close enough to make her forget the incapacitating information. 

She closed all open windows, making sure there would be no evidence she had made it onto the database. When Alex was sure she had been thorough enough, she logged out, checking every screen that surrounded her was in the condition she had found it.

She pressed the standby button on an offending screen, hand dropping to her side just as the wall burst open in a flurry of activity and rubble. 

Julie was the first person to walk in, surveying the room analytically before letting her gaze fall on a distressed Alex and a login page with lots of red. 

"You, need to come with me, now."

If Alex had found Julie intimidating before she was like Godzilla right now. She could add another mark to her very low 'flight response won out' tally chart, fighting the urge to run and never look back. She looked at the destruction behind her, the rocky dust that covered the floor and agents still dressed in suits. 

"Was all of that really necessary? Would it have been so bad to see what was on that database?"

They both knew what she was implying and neither decided to address it further. 

"Yes, some things are not meant for everyone to know."

Alex couldn't help but feel she was right. Ignorance was bliss but she was in control with the knowledge she had. But what she knew told her she had to run and never enter Auxilium again, not if she wanted to die a similar death to her mother.

She was standing in the building that housed her mother's killer. Even worse, she was walking behind them right now.