“She shouldn’t have put you in that position.”
“Not all six-almost-seven-year-old kids are clueless. My IQ was actually off the charts for my age.”
He muttered. “Should have known you were a genius.”
She grinned. She wasn’t ‘teen doctor’ genius, but she was pretty fucking smart.
“So they recruited you then?”
“Not exactly. I was still pretty young for that, but Luna did take me under her wing, so to speak. I was put with a specific foster family—two married-in-real-life agents, Emma and Jake—who raised me and kept me safe and my name changed to Anda. The VIA put in a paper trail that I moved to another country with distant relatives and eventually, according to Luna, Envision seemed to give up trying to get me back, though she was punished—she was pushed further down the hierarchy, among other things—for her failure to execute Envision’s orders. Luna worked both sides—agent and Envision accomplice—for years and became my mentor. She taught me a lot about self-defense, thinking quickly, relying on myself and when to rely on others. Even lockpicking.”
They both smiled at that, likely thinking of those moments in his office long ago.
His smile faded. “The VIA shouldn’t have begun training you that young. You didn’t really have a choice. They had other agents undercover; why would they need you?”
She sighed. “Because the other agents failed, including Luna. Every other agent who went under was either removed when their cover was threatened, or killed like my parents. I wanted to avenge their deaths, bring down the people who killed them.”
She took another drink of water, but her throat was still dry from talking and the threat of tears. “I was in the car with them when the accident happened, but I walked away with only minor injuries. I saw them die before my eyes.”
Her eyes stared straight ahead, past Ethan, past everything. She didn’t see the present, only the past. She saw that day in blazing color, heard the screeching of tires and grinding of metal, smelled the smoke and fire and blood, and remembered the silence when she’d screamed for her parents.
“Anda?”
She could still see it…sometimes, when she closed her eyes, it was all she saw and she rarely slept on those nights. Yet, she slept better with him, didn’t she?
“Anda? Look at me. Anda?”
His touch, his scent, his voice…it washed that day away, every time, and she slept easy.
She blinked and the past dissolved, and she was back in the med bay, back with Ethan.
He was frowning. He looked so goddamn cute when he frowned.
“I’m all right.”
He didn’t seem to believe her, so he checked her pulse and did a quick exam. After he was satisfied, the tension left him.
“We don’t need to go any further. This is clearly upsetting you, and with good reason.”
“It’s easier to finish once I’ve started. I’ve never really said the whole story before, not to anyone. Those who know in the VIA have read my file, so I never had to really explain it to anyone. It feels…good to talk about it.”
He brushed her cheek with his knuckles, then linked hands with her again. “You didn’t see a therapist?”
“When I was younger, right after it all happened, I saw a VIA-approved therapist. She helped me a lot, but what helped the most was acting. The therapist encouraged me to try an extracurricular activity, and I liked the idea of acting, that I could pretend to be someone else. I mean, I was already pretending to be ‘Anda’ but there was so much pressure to remember the back story and the memories I should have had as Anda. I was still struggling to become her, if that makes sense, so I thought, why not pretend to be someone else without the pressure.”
She took another drink of water. “So, I started acting around nine years old. I learned everything I could, and continued to grow as an actress, eventually being discovered. Luna knew I wanted to help take Envision down when I grew up, and we both—along with the VIA—thought that becoming an actress was the best and fastest way to gain their attention, so that was another reason I really went for it, and I ended up loving acting in a way I didn’t expect. It sounds strange, but acting—pretending to be someone else—helped me grow into Anda.”
“A name can’t change who you are. You can still be you with another name.”
“I know that now, but back then I just thought I couldn’t be myself anymore. My therapist helped me with that, and I also accepted that changing my name wouldn’t change the love I have for my parents, and that I didn’t need to feel guilty for not using their surname anymore. I became Anda. IamAnda.”
And she was. It had taken a long time to get there, but she had. She was still herself, just a grown-up, more badass version.
“When did you become an agent?”
“I’d just come of age at seventeen when Luna disappeared. That’s when I officially joined.”
He cursed under his breath.
