MY IMMORTAL

Reckless

I went back to work but Bear was not happy with putting me back on the team until I had built up my strength again. So the rigorous routine began again and I was back at a decent fitness and strength level within a month.  I still had a few moments where I lapsed, a night or two on occasions where I sat in my flannel pajamas eating ice-cream and listening to my self-pity playlist but nothing ever as bad as my meltdown. I never allowed it to go that far again.

I threw myself into work and I relished how good I was getting at it.  My sixth sense was really kicking into hyper-drive.  The more I used it the better it developed. I pushed it daily to see how far it would go. The only downside was trying to explain to the crew after a job how I knew about things before they happened. It got tricky and I'm not sure they completely believed my 'female intuition' explanation but they did begin to trust it, and trust in me.

The synergy the crew had developed made us all very close friends.  The bond we built during this time made us all something of a family only closer somehow.  It is difficult to describe, we knew each other so well because of the situations we worked in. We knew the best and worst of each other.  We accepted the worst and relished the best and together with that intimate knowledge the team became a very tight unit. Very little could get the better of us. We went up against so much during this time and always came out on the other side. Sometimes we came out a little messed up but we got through it. Bear occasionally tried to introduce a new person into the mix but it was always difficult for them to integrate. Sooner or later they always moved on and it would go back to the eight of us, Bear, Darren, Zayne, Scotty, Liam, Scratch, Mat and myself.

Each of us bought our own specialised skill base to the mix. We all shared our knowledge with each other but in each area, one of us was the specialist, the guru and better than the rest. Darren was a super ninja as Scotty and Zayne called him. No one came close to him in hand to hand combat. He was an expert in mixed martial arts.  He could use blades, knives or basically anything to fight with.

Zayne was our weapons guru. He knew firearms like nobody else. In the forces, he was a sniper. He was also the best all-rounder on the team. He was the best with firearms but he was fairly good at everything from technology specialist to hand to hand combat. Zayne was the one of us that could fill in if any of us happened to be out of action for a job. His temper was the only thing that stopped him from being the perfect member of the team.

Scotty was our technology expert and medic. He could dismantle a bomb or hack through an encrypted firewall and stitch up a gaping wound with the precision of a surgeon. He was also unstoppable on an X-box. He was my age and had the best sense of humour in the team. He was the one that kept us all laughing.

Scratch was our gadget man, he was the man with the ideas a true visionary.  He understood gadgets and had a very lateral, creative way of thinking. He would come up with ideas and Scotty would bring them to life. Together Scratch and Scotty came up with some truly inspired inventions. Of course, they had limited applications usually for things that would get an ordinary person into legal trouble but perfect for the kind of work we had to do.

Liam was our chemistry expert and bomb specialist.  He could build precise explosive devices and dismantle them. He was phenomenal with chemicals. He had a few party tricks to entertain the ladies that never ceased to impress them.

Mat was our language master. He was fluent in over ten languages including English, French, Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, Lebanese, German, Spanish, Italian and Russian. There were more but these were his primary languages. He had a talent for learning new languages. It was like he cracked the code to how humans communicated and could learn new languages quite easily. It was truly a gift. Mat was also one of the eldest of our team members. He and Bear were very close friends.