8:45 pm. I had taken to the streets, going nowhere in particular. I needed to walk, to try to clear my head. In truth, the familiar walls of my house were driving me absolutely insane, probably because I had never ceased to exhale all my troubled thoughts into that same atmosphere day by day. It was eight pm when I had gotten off the bed, eight-thirty by the time I had showered and dressed, pulled on my blue hooded sweater over the T-shirt and jeans, still eight-thirty when, after locking the front doors with my keys, I had retrieved the cellphone from my back pocket to look at the screen. 7 missed calls, all of them from Tristan, who might have heard about the incident at the hospital and wanted to know if I was dead or alive. Knowing him, he must have been worried sick. I kept a thumb on the shut off button until the screen went blank. I pulled the hood over my head, and left.

Half the time I didn’t know or care where I was or where I was heading. All the motorists and pedestrians who passed were identical smudges; there was nothing special about them, nothing worthy enough to make me turn my head. I might as well have been a ghost floating through the world. I was in an ocean of loneliness, and feeling alone made me think of Tristan. I could have told him all I knew, but he could have done nothing, as he would have been just as clueless as I was. And surely, I could not tell Tristan my innermost feelings—they were more complicated than the events that were helping to turn my life upside down. Betraying my partner’s trust was a shallow factor, because he was the one who wasn’t telling me the truth. If I felt any amount of anger, it was divided between Orion and myself. Orion deserved some of it because he was keeping secrets from me, his partner and supposed best friend, issues involving his identity and the preservation of his life. Most of my anger and extreme annoyance was aimed at myself, because I was not Orion Night, therefore there was no need for me to be this concerned about something that had nothing to do with me. There was no need to be hurt that he was not involving me. There was no need, actually, for most of the things I was thinking and feeling. If he wanted to handle his troubles by himself, it shouldn’t be my problem—less stress for me. And if he was killed trying to solve his problems, I would learn to cope, and the Captain would assign a new agent to me before the month was out. This was a cold way of looking at things, but it was with this cold approach to life that many agents were allowed to live as long as they did. Some pairs cared little for each other after the overhead clocks at work said 5pm. Perhaps it would be smart to take on that behavior.

Easier said than done. If I had been successful in becoming a cold hearted woman, then I would have been back home by nine o’clock sitting in my comfortable bed and watching a sitcom on the newly-purchased television with a tub of caramel-fudge ice-cream in my lap and a wooden ladle in my hand. Instead I was trudging down an unrecognized sidewalk staring through lowered eyes at nothing and no one.

I passed men and women leaving a well-noted restaurant. The bright lights somewhat dimmed under elegant flower-shaped lamps pulled me into the reality of my environment. The sight made me assume I was in the more expensive part of town, on one of a series of streets which catered to the business class. It was there that I found Captain White walking out of the restaurant with no one as his companion. I had never seen him outside of the workplace before, and up until then the thought of him behaving like the Humans had never crossed my mind. Yet there he was, heading for the parking lot, his hand holding an unseen cellphone to his ear while he spoke into it, his large collar up so high that from my vantage point only half of his snow white hair was visible. With quick strides he was already about to turn the corner. I stood still. Only my eyes moved, rolling left, following him.

I wanted to go after him. That desire by itself was a clear indicator of how crazy I’d gone, thinking of following the Captain. I wondered why he had left the restaurant by himself. Everyone knows no one goes to a restaurant by himself, because that would be pathetic, a lonely person’s attempt at showing that he was fine with being lonely when every other patron in the room knew very well that he wasn’t. He could have met someone there, then left without her…I hadn’t though of our captain ever having a wife or a family either. He didn’t seem to have time for that, what with all six of his selves working in the office everyday. He could be going home, to them, to his family. But I still wanted to follow him. I wanted, at that moment, to latch on to someone. It was only after making the decision to do this that I stopped worrying my fingertips with my teeth.

I sprinted towards the parking lot.

There were no Humans around, only cars, all resting in the allotted spaces marked by white lines. He took out his key, unlocked the car alarm. My heart skipped a beat at the abrupt noise the vehicle made. He was opening the car door.

“Mr. White,” I said. I repeated it, suddenly wishing I had spoken more quietly. “Mr. White.”

He looked at me. He was not pleased. He appeared so alien behaving like a Human in the parking lot of a restaurant.

“Why did you follow me, Bright?”

“I need to—I need to thank you for saving our lives.”

“Yes, you’re welcome. Go home.” Most of him disappeared inside the diver’s seat.

“And I want to ask you something else, because…”

He stopped, expecting me to finish my sentence, coldly impatient. What did I think I was doing, talking to him? I could probably be punished for this. I should have rehearsed what I was going to say so that I didn’t feel as much of a fool as I did then.

“Because there are things that I don’t understand and I don’t have anyone else to turn to. I don’t understand anything of what’s happening, and my partner won’t talk to me about it. I know that you and him are closer than how you are with me, with everyone else, but…” To my chagrin and horror, there were tears on my face. Embarrassed, I hurriedly removed them. “I apologize for coming to you like this…” Whatever I had planned to say next flew out the window. I had royally humiliated myself.

“Why do you think I could help you? Why would you think I would want to help you?”

“I didn’t think any of that. I only hoped you would.”

Eons of teetering on the brink of uncertainty elapsed before he went into his car. “Get in,” he said, then shut the door.

Captain White kept me silent as he drove us far out of town, to a place that I was not familiar with. The theoretical location of our destination assumed the guises of a thousand possible and even impossible places, and none of them made much sense. After almost an hour he parked the vehicle somewhere in the countryside. It was almost ten o’clock and streetlights didn’t reach that far off the main. I looked through the windshield at the overhanging willow-like branches, their leaves and vines so dense I couldn’t see through them. Trees were mute sentinels on either side of us, and when the car lights went off they disappeared and everything past the windows was black. He did not want us to be seen by anyone, be they gifted or human. Had it not been for the night creatures that were making themselves known now that the car had gone quiet, we would have been sitting there in sheer silence.

“You should not have come to me,” he said. “There are always people watching. People who you know, people you might not know. It was a foolish thing you did.”

“I know you know something about what is happening to my partner.” I folded my arms, not liking that his face was hidden from me or the fact that I couldn’t see past my own nose. “Maybe you know why he won’t tell me.”

“There is a reason for that.”

“The reason is that I shouldn’t know. It’s none of my business, I know. But I—it’s as if I should.”

“Ask your question.”

“Let me start at the beginning. Why was I exchanged? I know agencies don’t normally do this because they are, in a sense, all enemies. What reason could Taurus have for wanting me?” Not to mention how it was that Taurus and Athena were making transactions when their agents continuously fought each other.

He sighed, and for a while all I heard were crickets screeching. “Do you remember the process that you were put through when you first came here?”

“I filled out forms. They needed my personal information. There was the usual medical checkup, familiarizing myself with my colleagues—”

“The medical examination. I got a call soon after they searched your blood for any types of sickness; this is protocol. If they see something wrong, they have to tell the agent’s Captain first. I was told that you had something foreign in your blood, but whatever had been introduced into your blood stream had been there long enough to become accepted by the red and white blood cells. The doctor told me that it was able to multiply much faster than your blood cells divided, and that its chemicals were very much involved in your respiratory processes, just as much as your blood’s oxygen. In fact, I was told that every time you inhaled, the oxygen would travel into your lungs and into your blood, and while the oxygen was being transformed into carbon dioxide, the unfamiliar chemicals would each latch itself on to each carbon dioxide compound so that when you exhaled it would travel with it into the atmosphere. He said your body conducted this process with such ease that it was as if these chemicals had been injected into you a few years ago, two, at the most. I wondered about that. I asked him if he thought this was deliberate, a subtle attack on Athena’s part. He said the chemicals you breathed around us were not harmful in the least. But he said that they must have harmed you somewhat when they were first introduced into your blood. Was there ever a time when you suffered from an injection in Athena?”

I thought hard, biting the inside of my bottom lip. “Only once, and that occurred outside of our hospital. Now that you mention it, I did get sick, but it was a Taurean that caused me to get the shot.

“Years back, we had crept into the Taurus Hospital. Our co-worker had been injected with a poison by one of your agents who wanted him to return something of theirs which he had stolen. If he didn’t return it within eighteen hours, he’d be dead. And we went against the rules to save him. We knew that the antidote was in the hospital, in one of the laboratories, thanks to a tip from someone who had been there. We never found it, the antidote. Taureans caught us, the three of us, and we got into a tussle. I was thrown around, and fell onto a tray of needles. One of them got under my skin. We escaped, and by the morning of the next day I was sick. But I took some pills and it went away after two days. I didn’t think anything of it after, and I didn’t have time to. The agent was dead because we failed to save him. That was the only time.”

“That must be it.”

“The tray was in the open, on a table. We should have taken that as a sign that someone would be there. If we weren’t so preoccupied with finding that antidote one of us would have wondered why the needle already had fluid in it. We would have jumped out of there.”

“Doctor Ulrich said you were given a poison. If you think about your past, you can come to your own conclusion.”

Three seconds passed, and I gasped inaudibly. “Dr. Evans said it had to get used to my blood. Once it did, it could have latched on to the chemical that had been leaving with the carbon dioxide that I exhaled.”

“Call it the glue that held the poison chemicals onto the carbon dioxide.”

I closed my eyes, opened them. “How did they know I was the one who got the shot?”

“Security cameras. Come now, Agent Bright. You should know this. And if that failed—”

“—they could always run a test on the needle and find my DNA all over it. But I thought no one outside of Athena would know I existed. The only way Taurus could know is if someone told them, and that person would have to have been Athenian.”

“The truth is that there are times when our records do get tampered with, as do theirs. Some spies actually succeed in stealing information from enemy agencies. How do you think that there are times when we know about things that they know? For instance, how did the other spies know about the disappearance and the possible location of Jin Tang?”

“So somehow they found a name to attach to the DNA they found. Then why go through all the trouble of getting me? Just so I could poison the boy? That’s a waste of time.”

“To you it is a waste of time. I was told he is a Mind Reader.”

“Ri told you.”

“He did. Jin Tang is very valuable to spy agencies, and dangerous as well. Although he can unlock the many secrets that are kept hidden in important minds, he will also read the minds of the people who are using him. Of course there are going to be secrets that they never intended for him to know. But at his age, he does not know how to block his mind from the things he does not want to know. He sees all and he knows all. He could have come in contact with a Seven and read his mind. You Fours tell each other every day that no one among you is to be trusted. You may be right. And if there are a certain group of people who you are better off not knowing or trusting, it is the Sevens. They aren’t Sevens for possessing wonderful personalities.”

“As soon as they found a possible location of Jin Tang, they sent one of us to kill him using a false story about him being taken away by his parents. He is just a boy.”

“Sevens aren’t known for having kind hearts, Bright.”

“I still don’t see why they couldn’t have injected someone else with the same chemicals that were inside me. They could have made more.”

“Could be that it was the only prototype. You never know.”

“They injected Ri with the same red fluid…” It was here that I caught myself, having just thought of an explanation even as I spoke. “For all I know they could have given him a shot of water and food coloring. Just to make it look like we were getting the same thing.”

“Now you’re thinking. We like to utilize our ability to deceive the Humans, now it’s time you realize we will deceive each other as well. Internal deception can’t be crossing the line; there wasn’t a line in the first place.”

“So I was used. But if Taurus got me, what did Athena get in exchange?”

I heard his bitter chuckle. “They were given the power of God.”

“What?”

“They exchanged you for the power of God.”

“There is no such thing. Is it an instrument that…what is its name?”

“Find it out for yourself if you want to know.”

“Then Athena is more powerful than we are? More powerful than any other agency?”

“Yes, and no.”

“Tell me its name.”

“I cannot. It has nothing to do with you.”

“But it has something to do with Ri?” I was going out on a limb, trying to get him to let something slip.

“I know what you’re doing. You don’t want to go there.”

“Why don’t I want to go there, Captain? How do you know what I want?”

“I know.”

It would require me to make a leap of faith, albeit a blind and potentially stupid one that could end in the severance of my partnership with Ri. “You sent him to Athena one night, almost a week ago—don’t ask me how I know. What was he looking for there?”

“How do you—”

“I can’t tell you how I know, sir. But the fact of the matter is that I do know that you ordered two Taureans to sneak into another agency. An enemy agency at that. I want to know what for.”

“You are trying to blackmail me. You can’t be serious. Do you know who I am? I can have you killed before you find your way home tonight.”

“I never said it was blackmail. I never meant to threaten you. You have your secrets, Ri has his secrets, and I have mine. And I’m concerned about him.”

“Your concern seems to go far beyond the partnership.”

“Say what you want, sir. I seem to be the only one who cares.”

“Alright…the object that the Athenians have is the one that he wants to retrieve.”

“So it was for him, not for you. What are you to him? There were times when I saw the two of you talking when you normally wouldn’t be. You know him outside of the agency.”

“I’m a family friend.”

“Then you know about his family? I didn’t think there was anyone for miles who did. I don’t know anything about—”

He chuckled. “Don’t push it, Bright.”

“I won’t. They don’t concern me. I want to now something else, though: The Hidden Temple was where the boy was found. The Spirants—that’s what the people there call themselves—they were vampires.”

“You sound surprised. You didn’t know there were such creatures? Even the Humans like to believe in their existence.”

“They have different powers, just like we do. Had it not been for the fact that they have fangs, I wouldn’t have been able to tell them apart. And they were not hostile at all, not savage or barbaric as most of us believe. They helped to save Ri’s life. I thought about this after I got home. Why is it that we do not know much about them, the vampires? How could we be living with these people for thousands of years and not know who they really are?”

“This has been your first encounter with them?”

“No. We were saved by one in The Amazon. The Sixes we worked with will probably have mentioned him in their report.”

“I see.”

“Why don’t we know about them?”

“What do you think?”

“They don’t want to be known?”

“If we the Gifteds go through all this trouble to hide ourselves from Humans then it should be possible that a faction of us don’t want to be noticed by the rest of us either. Expect the unexpected, agent. We have taught you that time and time again.”

“Right. I’m beginning to accept that more and more. Ri knows them. He knows them very well, and they respect him, more highly than they did me. If he hadn’t shown them that ring, they would have killed me.”

“He showed them the ring, you said?”

“Yes—what do you know about it?”

“Then he must have had to.”

“They were very powerful, more powerful than any Gifted I have ever met. That ring saved my life.”

“You shouldn’t have seen it. It doesn’t concern you.”

“What is the ring’s significance?”

“It’s his—his leverage.”

“Is he a vampire?”

“Does he look like a—”

“You told me to expect the unexpected. You also taught us that nothing is impossible.”

“And right you are. Well, I don’t see him wearing the usual two pairs of fangs, neither is he as powerful as they are. What do you think?”

“Then what have they to do with him?”

“The same question might be asked about you.”

“They mentioned two sides being at war.”

“You want to know his part in all of it.”

“Yes.”

“And how is it that they allowed a portion of their secrets to be revealed to you?”

“They don’t know that I heard them.”

“You eavesdropped?”

“I’m a spy. It’s what I do.”

Another chuckle. “That you are. There are two sides.”

“And…”

“And you have nothing to do with them.”

“But they are warring here. The vampires said, and I quote, ‘both here and there’. Where is here and where is there? Is it in Egypt and here, in America? Or are we talking about something else on a much larger scale? I ask because it could involve the rest of us in the near future.”

“Only when and if that happens will it concern you. But it doesn’t for now. Therefore you don’t have a right to know.”

“People are searching for him, to kill him. It concerns me from that point onward. And it must be significant that these people could very well be vampires, because it was said that they are much more powerful than Ri. In fact, they repeatedly referred to a he, or a him, saying he is more than able to kill him if he ever finds him.”

“That is true.”

“And Ri said he would have left this to his father and his brothers if he didn’t have to find her. Who is this girl he has to find?”

“You had to have been camping out to have heard all of that.”

“Who is she, Captain?”

“Does he know?”

“No. He can’t find her.”

“Then I wouldn’t know. They have what you would call a bond.”

“A bond?”

“A bond.”

“What does that mean?”

“He would have to tell you that. I won’t betray his family’s trust for some girl who believes she is grown enough and mature enough to help her partner. This is more than you, Agent Bright. They say that ignorance is bliss. For you, it could be just that.”

“I could help him to find her. I could.”

“He can only find her through the bond. You don’t share that bond, therefore who knows how many times you’ve walked past her not knowing who she was. Leave it to him.”

“You say that this doesn’t concern me, that his problems don’t concern me, and you might be right. Yet at the same time what I know now you have told me of your own free will. You didn’t have to, because you aren’t a man who is moved by tears. You told me for a reason.”

“Everything comes with a price, Agent Bright. As a spy you understand that more than others. You knew this even before you received my first answer, and still you went along with it. Ignorance, agent, really is bliss.”

“Why did you tell me?”

“Do you know about the theory that everything happens for a reason?”

“Yes, I do.”

“ If you are so intent on helping your partner, then there might be a role, however insignificant, that you might have to play in all of this. You might never even know that you helped to push things along. You never know.”

Captain White believed that I didn’t have anything to do with Ri’s secrets, yet it was Ri who had promised that he would tell me everything when the time came for me to know. Which means that there is a possibility that I might be playing a significant role in the future. The Captain had not really yielded much. He had, if anything, run round in circles for the most part that I would find my own conclusions, all having the equal potential to be either true or false. I would, I had told myself then, have to start doing some private investigations of my own. Forget not caring about whether my partner lived or died after work hours. I wanted to know. I wanted to know everything. I wanted to know the identity of his family, the name of the object that Ri wants, the name of the girl (or woman) he needs so desperately to find, the purpose of the two rings he posseses, the identity of the people who want him dead. I didn’t know where to start, but people always said it was best to start at the beginning. I was not patient, I knew I was not patient, but that was one of my vices and no one is perfect. Would I get myself killed? I didn’t like that question, therefore I chose not to answer it.

“If anyone asks you how you survived the poison,” said Captain White, “tell them that you called someone you knew. Don’t mention me. And if they want to know why you returned empty-handed, tell them that you were overpowered. You never got into The Hidden Temple. Color in the spaces however you and your partner see fit.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And as far as you are concerned,” he reached for the key which rested in the ignition to start the car, “You never met me tonight, neither did we have this conversation. You tell no one of this. Not Agent Night, no one.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Keep the consequences in mind.”

“Yes, sir.”

“As far as I’m concerned, I never saw you tonight.”

He did not take me home. I was dropped off at the parking lot where he had picked me up. He did not say goodbye or take care of yourself. It was almost as if I had ceased to exist as soon as I had closed the car door shut. I watched him drive away and disappear round the corner, then started walking.

Was it a coincidence that, soon after I turned on my cellphone, it rang?

I wondered if it was Tristan. Now that I had finally chosen a path (albeit it a potentially self-destructive one) concerning my partner the haziness and torment were gone. My mind was clear again, although more darkly brooding than before. Even so, I wouldn’t have minded if Tristan wanted to buzz my phone. I needed his company.

But it wasn’t him.

“Hello?”

No response.

“Hello?”

Nothing.

“Hello?”

Silence.