Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 88119 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 441(@200wpm)___ 352(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88119 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 441(@200wpm)___ 352(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)
I grabbed the first folder. Taking a deep breath, I swung it open and stared at a photo of my mother and me. The same photo that I thought I’d lost more than three years ago. How had it gotten into the file? Anger bubbled up inside me. The laundry lady must have found it and taken it to Major—who had decided to keep it. Or maybe he’d stolen it from my room in the first place. But why?
I was standing in a room containing every single reason behind his actions. He wanted to make me forget about my parents, about where I came from, so I never figured out the truth. I traced a finger over my mother’s face in the photo. Her contours were softer than I remembered them and she gazed at me with a kind smile. In the picture, I was a toddler, maybe one year old, grinning widely with chocolate all over my face. My mother held a spoon in her hand. I didn’t remember that particular moment or any other moment where my mother had taken care of me. But I wished I could. Who had taken the photo? My father? At that time they could still have been together. I lifted the photo and saw what was below it and time seemed to grind to a halt. There were more photos. In the first was a family—a woman glancing down at a small baby in her arms, a man with his arm around her, and a tiny boy with brown hair and turquoise eyes sitting on the man’s shoulders, grinning a toothy smile. My family. My mother. My father. My brother.
For a moment I couldn’t breathe. We looked happy. We looked like a normal family. We looked like everything I’d always longed for. I gingerly pushed the photo aside to look at the third photo. It was a close up of a young Abel, turquoise eyes—my eyes—sparkling in the photo as he cradled a tiny baby against his chest. With trembling fingers, I turned the photo over. “My little princess” was written on the back in an unfamiliar handwriting. Had my father had Abel written those words? Had he called me his little princess?
I closed my eyes. This was too much. How could a man who called me his little princess have done all the horrible things Major had told me about? How could he have left me?
I bent the three photos carefully and slid them into the pocket of Major’s trousers. I’d just have to remember to take them out before I returned his clothes to the laundry. I didn’t care if Major found out I’d taken them. He’d had no right to keep this part of my life from me, to make me believe I’d never been loved.
I browsed the file for any snippet of information that might tell me where I could find him. Apparently, Abel’s Army was headquartered in Alaska for a while before they moved south. Their whereabouts weren’t known but the file said hints pointed at a headquarters somewhere in the American southwest. Abel had been seen near Las Vegas a few times, but there was nothing conclusive known about the current headquarters. Eventually I came across a handwritten note at the top of one page saying it was rumored that Heather Crane had established contact with Abel Crane multiple times over the course of the last year.
My mother was in contact with Abel? How was that possible? Maybe she knew something that could lead us to Holly. The sound of the elevator came again and I hastily put Abel’s file back in the drawer where it belonged. Before time ran out, I did what I wasn’t sure I was strong enough to do: I picked up my own file.
My eyes landed on a red stamp at the top of the first page—just like the one from my mother’s file. It said “Volatile.” I glanced again at the cover of the file to make sure that it was really my own. It was. Why did it say “Volatile?” I wasn’t unstable. I’d always thought I was the trophy Variant, the ultimate weapon. My eyes flew down the page and stopped at the section I was looking for. My fingers shook so much that the words kept blurring before my eyes.
Status: Volatile (not confirmed).
Risk factor: Parents - Abel Cane (Volatile), Heather Cane (Volatile). Brother - Zachery Cane (suspected Volatile - not confirmed)
Comments: No signs of insubordination. In control of Variation. No contact to risk factors.
Course of Action: Surveillance of emotional and mental stability (Internal mission 010).
Prognosis: Positive.
Promotion to Agent status: Possible (awaiting final results – I.M. 010)
A dizzy sickness overcame me and I held on to the filing cabinet for support. They were monitoring me. Someone had kept watch over my emotional stability. Dread settled in the pit of my stomach. I could hear the whir of the returning elevator getting louder. But I couldn’t move. I didn’t care if I got caught. I needed confirmation. I needed to see the file about mission 010.