Operation 007 (SpyxFamily)

Ch. 21: Part Three

 Crap.

'Crap, crap, crap, crap, crap crap.' Anya thought, staring blankly at her textbook.

This was the worst place for her to have a nightmare. Where Becky and Sy-on boy could witness her weird behaviour. Where anyone could start believing something was wrong with her. Different about her. She couldn't have them thinking that way. It was bad enough as it was. There was already the gossip she wanted to disappear, the rumours and the attention. The current situation, certainly not helping.

It was too easy a connection to make to the kidnapping and she wished she could brush it off. Would've leveraged it to her advantage if anyone else had taken her. Would've told stories of her extraordinary willpower and strength. Her cunning and ability to outsmart the bad guys.

But not this.

This had to pass by. This had to be forgotten. It had to. She needed it to, but if she made a scene here, how was that going to happen? How could she pass it off as nothing if she had nightmares in class? Nightmares in the daytime? Nightmares that had only come in the evenings until now?

It scared her to think they would only get worse. That they'd never stop haunting her. That they'd continue to wake her up in a screaming fit that her Papa had to quell. She knew he wanted to talk to her about it, be a psychiatrist and work through it, but she refused. Then he'd suggest she stay home for a while longer, and she still refused.

If she acted normal, then eventually, everything had to go back to being normal, right?

"Are you okay?" Becky whispered, holding tight to her hand. The seeds of worry, rooting deeper and deeper in her mind.

Anya nodded, glad that she had Becky to ground her, even if at the same time, she wished she hadn't been here to see it.

At the lab, Anya hadn't had anyone to hold her hand or hug her close when she had nightmares like she did now. Her parents would stay with her until she felt better, and now Becky was also comforting her. It was something Anya didn't know she needed until she had it. The lack of compassion at the lab made it a foreign concept. It made her feel bad to accept Becky's support when she never planned on telling her why she needed it. When Becky was feeling hurt by Anya's unwillingness to divulge any sort of information to her.

Becky had tried to hide it, ignore it, but Anya knew it was there and didn't know how to put her at ease. She couldn't tell her. She never would. Even if it eventually made Becky bitter, it would forever be sealed away.

Anya flipped through the textbook with her left hand, the other preoccupied with Becky's.

No. She could never tell her.

Anya did her best to ignore the unsaid pressure Becky unknowingly passed her way. To ignore Sy-on boy in the back. He wasn't looking at her anymore, but thoughts of her trailed not far behind the words he read on his page.

This was definitely the worst place for her to have a nightmare, she thought.

It was very hard to concentrate on the lesson that morning.

-———————-

Damian had never put much stock in rumours.

They were frivolous and usually untrue. Sometimes vicious and cruel, sometimes harmless. It was an occupation that, more often than not, was a waste of time. And he knew how much his father hated wasted time. Damian wasn't one to argue with his father's good senses. But he'd been listening for them all the same when they concerned Forger.

He was running out of ideas and it was the best he had so far. He'd heard the one that Forger was runaway royalty from another country. The one that she was an alien and was captured for experimentation. And the one that she was an escaped patient from a mental institution.

There were a few others, and they were all ridiculous.

Though he wouldn't be surprised if she was crazy. No, at this point, he knew she was crazy.

But he'd kept an ear out and half-expected it to never pay off. They were stupid rumours after all, what useful information could he possibly get from them? But he did it, anyway.

Damian stepped away from the counter and waited for Emile and Ewen to get their food. He'd been zoning out more and more lately, withdrawing into his mind, and he did that now. He'd been going back to the basics and retraced his steps. He listed the things he was sure he knew. One: Forger knew someone was after her and he suspected she'd been involved with the kidnapper before. Two: She'd told no one about it, protecting her secrets at the risk of her own safety. How they were connected to the kidnapping, he had no idea. Three: Someone wanted her badly enough to expend a lot of effort to get her. Four: It wasn't for any obvious or "regular" reason. And five: He was absolutely positive he was missing a piece about her identity. Something of her status even her parents didn't seem to know. How her parents were unaware of it, he couldn't fathom. Unless she had been kidnapped before and something happened during that time that her parents weren't privy to. He guessed her parents would've taken action sooner if they did know.

Ewen and Emile got their food and he turned to walk with them to find a table. Emile mentioned something about emergency buttons being installed in the school buses and Damian put Forger out of his head to listen. He wasn't expecting to be drawn into the subject again so quickly when he heard a student speak her name.

"Wait, that's Anya Forger?" The boy spoke, making Damian pause in his steps. The boy, pointing to the girl a ways away.

The student sat with his friends at a nearby table, a kid Damian didn't know. He was from another hall the Cecil kids didn't really have interaction with. They weren't being loud and he only noticed because he said her name.

"Yeah? Why?" One of his friends responded. An invested Damian, wanting to know the same thing.

"Wasn't she found about two weeks ago?"

Yes, Damian nodded slightly to himself. That is when she was found. Could he actually know something?

"I think so?" The second friend said.

"That's when I sprained my foot and went to the hospital, remember?"

His friends nodded.

"I'm pretty sure she was there. A bunch of kids were rushed into the emergency room and went straight inside for treatment. I think she was one of them."

Damian had to have the gods on his side if he was lucky enough to stumble onto this conversation.

"What? How would you know that?" The first friend asked, taking a spoonful of rice.

"They were all wearing the same pyjamas."

"What?" The second friend laughed.

"Boss man? You coming?" Ewen asked from a couple steps ahead and Damian snapped his attention back to him and Emile.

"Uh. . ." He glanced quickly at the boys who were ignorant of his eavesdropping. "Yeah." He started forward again at a swift pace.

Forger at the hospital with a bunch of kids wearing the same pyjamas. They hadn't given him a pointless rumour, but solid information.

He didn't know what to make of it.