Quantico (Junior Agent Program)

Chapter 16

Ryan's POV:

"ALEX!" I yelled.
Both Shelby and Alex stared at me as if I was crazy.
"You okay, Ryan? Why are you yelling my name?" Alex asked.
I point at something. That something ended up being a photograph of me kissing Alex's cheek. I remembered that the photo was from right after Alex and I moved to Oakland after Grand Central. I wondered why I thought that this was a big deal.
"Where in the world did she get that?" Shelby asks.
Alex slaps her forehead.
"Ugh! I was going through old photos before we left. I must have missed it and she took it." Alex says.
"Nice work!" I say to her saying sarcastically.
"Hey!" she yells.
"It was your idea on not to tell the kids anything! Now because of you, they will know!" I yell back.
"Ohh, so this is all my fault! How about you who is always staring at her making it more suspicious!" she screams.
For the next 5 minutes, we kept on yelling at each other.
"Okay! Enough!" Shelby says, putting her hands between the two of us. It was obvious that she was annoyed.
"Look, just say to her that the 2 of you were undercover. She is only day 3 into her training. How will she even be able to tell?" Shelby says.
"I guess that solves our problem." I murmur.
"You guys don't know Mia. You saw what happened today. If she finds out of something, she won't say stop till she finds definitive answers." Alex replies.
"Just try it out!" I exclaim.
2 minutes later, Mia enters her room.
"Oh hi!" she says cheerfully.
"Hey, congrats for winning." I say.
I am guessing she could tell that it wasn't that genuine since she replies back with, "You are only saying that since you want to be a good sport."
"So Mia......... about the photo" I say.
She stares at me, clueless.
I point at it.
"Ohhh that. What about it? You guys were undercover in that photo, right?" she asks.
"Yeah!" Shelby says. She is way better at lying then me.
"Well we should be heading out. Bye!" Alex says, ushering us out of her room.
"See wasn't so bad." I say.
"I guess you were right." Alex replies back.

Mia's POV:
The three of them left my room.
"How did they even become agents?" I wonder, rolling my eyes. I head to my blanket and put my hand underneath it. I felt something and smiled.

Few hours ago: right before the game:

"Uhhh.... I forgot something. I need to go grab it. Be back in 10." I say to Anja. She nods. I leave and head towards the teachers dorms. I hear talking and hide behind the wall.
"Can we grab a drink and snack before we head out?" asks Caleb.
"Ugh fine!" says Shelby.
I smile. That gave me more time to pull of my plan. I head into Owen's room. What kind of agent doesn't lock their room? As soon as I enter, I grab a pair of gloves. I put them on and turned on the lights.
"If you wanted to hide a key, where would you do so?" I asked myself. Then I noticed an empty coffee cup on his nightstand.
I walked towards it and picked it up, only to find a flap underneath. I opened the flap and found a key.
"Thank you, Owen!" I said to myself. I quickly put it in my pocket and went to the FBI's data room. It said "Only employees are allowed".
"How come they don't keep security cameras in the ONE important place?" I questioned. Anyways, it just made my work easier. I used the key and unlocked the door very quietly. There were so many files! I head on towards the A section.
"Ab, Ae, Ah, Aj, Ak, Al!" I whisper. I take out the bin labeled Al. Then I dig through it till I find my mom's name. I grab it and put it in my bag. I do the same with Shelby and Ryan's file. I decide to go get my fathers as well. I quickly close the door and head on back to my room. I take the files and put them under blanket since no one really looks there. Then I grab a soap bar and push the key into it to leave an imprint of it on the bar. I leave it in for 30 seconds and then remove it. It left an identical print so I put the soap in my secret box. It had unicorns on it so everyone just thinks it's stuff from when I was 5 in there. I head back to Owen's room and put the key exactly where I found it. I walked out of his room and threw the gloves in the trash. When I am walking back I see Owen and the rest of the instructors heading back. Caleb was telling them facts about cheese and annoyance was quite evident on their faces. I silently laughed at that and took the short cut back to the court. 15 minutes and I did all of that.
"Nice work, Mia!" I thought to myself. I continued stretching with Anja to make it seem like I was with them the whole time.

Back to present time:

I grabbed the files and decided to put them in my closet in the back of the room. According to Quantico's rules, no one is allowed to look in it without my permission. At that very moment, Anja enters the room.
"Where were you?" I asked her.
"I was checking up on Lola's injury." she replied.
"Oh right! Ugh, I forgot I was going to do that. I will meet her tomorrow since the nurse has probably given her painkillers and she's probably asleep."
"Yeah, probably. She was half asleep when I was talking to her." she said, smiling at that.
"What just happened today?" I asked.
She looked at me, clueless of what I was asking.
"I mean, it's only been 3 days and I have already challenged a group of teachers. If I was back in Oakland, I would have never gotten the guts to do that."
"Me too. I would have been a coward and asked you to pick someone else if I had been the old me." Anja said.
I was playing with my necklace when Anja asks me, "I don't mean to pry, but can I ask you about the necklace?"
"What about it?"
"Whenever I see you with it, most of the time you are playing with it. Any reason?"
I motion for her to sit right next to me on my bed.
"Okay. So when I was 5, I started dancing. I would do all these competitions and usually win. But whenever I lost, I would feel so bad and sad. So one day when I was 7, I had just lost a competition. It wasn't really big, but I still cared. My dad was watching me so he entered my room. He started talking to me and left saying he was going to get something. This necklace was something which I saw and wanted a few days ago but he had said no. When he returned, he had the necklace with him and gave it to me. Whenever I fidget with it, I feel like he is with me." I answer. I didn't look at her directly in her eyes.
"He sounds like an amazing person."
"He was. At least until he turned rogue. I didn't even know what had happened till a week after his disappearance. I was just told that he was stuck at work."
"Wow!"
"The way things looked, I thought my mom would never tell me. The only reason I found out was because he started sending me letters under fake aliases."
"How did you know it was him?" she asked.
"When I was small, we would come up with a secret letter combination he would write on every letter he sent to know it was him. Only he and I knew about it. It was on the letter." I replied, remembering the day I got the first letter from him after his disappearance.
"My mom doesn't know that I had contact with him. I just say that they are letters from friends. You won't tell her, will you?"
"I won't. Let's go to dinner."
"I'll meet you in there in 15."
She nods and leaves.

Flashback from 2 years ago:

"Mommy!!!! When is Daddy coming back? He was supposed to come back a week ago!" I question.
"He'll be back soon, sweetie. He's just stuck at work." Mom replies.
"Hey Princess, can you go check the mail?" she asks me. She knew that if she called me Princess, I would do anything. I rushed down to the mail box. I see a bunch of boring letters, but one of them catches my eye. It was pink and the stamp was one of a crown. I put it in my jean's pocket and give the rest of the letters to my mom. I head up to my room. The outside of the envelope said "To Mia McQuigg" and was from some random name.
————————————————————————
Dear my Darling princess,
I love you so much! I know you are wondering where I am. Your mother, Alex, will probably try to hide this from you but you Deserve to know. On my latest mission, I had to go undercover & try to stop a bombing in a preschool. A special agent, My boss, told me to give this group the blueprints to expedite the process. But things went wrong. This group was more Intelligent then we thought. As soon as we realized what had happened, the group found a way to make it seem like I came up with the plan myself. It's been on the news for a few days. The world now thinks I Am a terrorist and you probably think that too. But I just want you to know that I will always love you. I will keep on sending you these letters under random aliases. If you believe me, send a letter back to the address where this came from.
Love,
Dad
————————————————————————
I put the letter in my closet and hid it. I questioned my mom about what happened to dad and she said the same exact thing. Well almost the same thing. She wasn't entirely sure if he was actually the culprit or not. I wen to my room crying but I was also happy that I got his letter.
"I believe you Daddy. I will send one back as soon as I can!" I said to myself.

Back to the present:

I looked at the time and realized it had been ten minutes. I quickly rushed to meet Anja.

Finally, I had time to update! I made this long to try to make up for the 2 week gap. Try to guess what the secret letter combination was in the letter and write your guess in the comments. I know that the first part probably isn't what you are expecting but I won't tell the main reason why Alex and Ryan argue till later. What do you think will happen next?
                                                  - Niyati