Spy School Goes Rogue

Chapter 18: a life of pain

Before I start this chapter off, there are a couple of notes that I would want all of you to read:

If I'm correct, this is the longest chapter yet. Why? I wanted to talk about all of the things that has been going on in the 2 years since Ben disappeared. There were a lot of unanswered questions, and I wanted to make sure that I got all of them, of most of them at least. There's a good bit of detail, so you can understand what had happened.

This chapter also talks about some dark topics. Violence, self-harm, suicide, and sex trafficking, (not explicit because I don't write stuff like that). I'll try to put warnings around all of the heavier content, but reading around wouldn't provide you with the whole story about what happened in the 2 years. Anyways, I feel like there's going to be something that I could slap a warning on that I didn't, and I don't cater to every person.

If you can't handle this, PLEASE SKIP IT! I can't say this enough. Reader discretion is advised.

**Updated Chapters 11, 15, 16. I'll talk about it more at the end of the chapter.**

Washington

District of Columbia

May 3

1300 Hours

Erica POV:

"We have 5 hours to go around and do whatever. Let's have some fun," I said, with a smirk. Ben was just eyeing me down, presumably wondering when I had changed. And I was too, quite honestly. I don't know, but I just seem to be softer when Ben is around. Sure, I was chill around the rest of the "gang", as Ben liked to call it, but this seemed different.

"Alright, where to, Ice Queen?", Ben said, breaking the silence. I thought for a second, before I said "National Mall". So, Ben hopped in the driver's seat, and I, in the passenger seat, and we went off. For some reason, I never knew that Ben loved cars. I suppose all of the spy work he had to do with identifying cars led him down a rabbit hole of many different cars, because when he asked for the Caddy that we were driving, I said "What?". I had no clue that I knew virtually nothing about cars, until Ben brought it up on the drive to Washington, and said that my skills were "slipping". I quickly punched him in his shoulder, and told him to focus on driving. This brings us to now, where he was going a solid 55 in a 25, earning him honks and mean glares. I told him to ease up on the gas, and he obliged.

In about 10 minutes, surprisingly, we had arrived. We had somehow found metered parking on the side of the road, so we quickly pulled in. The meter said we had a max of 5 hours, so I told Ben to make a move on, because I didn't want to get towed. First stop, we went to the Lincoln memorial. I decided that we could do a little bit of spying, and told Ben to watch out for any unusual activity, as we could use that as a lead.

As we went into the memorial, I saw someone that had black greasy hair. I quickly blinked and focused on the person, though he had disappeared. I left Ben behind, and pushed past the massive crowds of people holding up a penny to the memorial. I'm sure that wherever that person went, it couldn't have been far. I ran up to someone with a black t-shirt and the same greasy mop, though when I looked closer, he had looked nothing like who I though it was. "I must be seeing things," I thought, and sat down on the steps leading to the memorial.

A minute passed, and Ben limped up to me, and sat down next to me. "What happened?", he asked. "Why'd you start running?" I looked up to him and said "Nothing. I must've been seeing things or something. It's - nothing." "Well-," Ben started, but I quickly shut him down. "Drop it." He just looked away and said, "Well, do you wanna hold up a penny?", he said, quickly whipping out a penny from his pocket. "Where-? You know what? Never mind. Let's keep walking. You can hold up your penny too," I responded. Ben had silently cheered.