Zero.

Chapter Nineteen

Agent One
TODAY WOULD have been the 45th day of the mission and Agent Zero and I should have been finalizing everything we needed to complete it. Instead, I was in a debriefing room with Chief, explaining everything that had happened from the start of the mission until this point.
After I escaped the crumbling building, I immediately called him, and he’d sent an extraction team to me. Zero couldn’t have been too far gone, but despite what had happened, I wasn’t in any condition to go after her. Even now I still found it hard to believe that she’d betrayed Headquarters.
“And you’re sure about this?” Chief asked for the hundredth time, interrupting my reverie.
He refused to believe that Zero had been lying to me and him and that she now had possession of the documents after killing Benjamin Lee.
“Yes sir." I repeated through narrowed eyes.
“And she just left you and took off?”
“Do you see her with me, sir?”
His glare matched mine.
He analyzed me for a moment before nodding and abruptly standing up. Running a frantic hand through his hair, he grabbed his chair and tossed it across the room.
Despite his frustration, I smirked. Call it bad manners, but I secretly enjoyed his distress. After we Woke, we retained only important information about our past and general feelings about people and Chief and I were never really on great terms. I could never put my finger on why that was exactly, but whatever the case, he barely tolerated me at most and the feelings were mutual. So to see him all bent out of shape, his perfect hair disheveled, had me fighting a smile.
“How!” he yelled, uttering a few curse words.
“How what, sir?”
“How did you let this happen?”
“Excuse me?” I retorted.
“Don’t be dense, you heard me. You two are team. How. Did. You. Let. This. Happen?”
“You’ve got to be kidding me. I didn’t let anything happen. We were a team. She betrayed that. On her own. I’ve told you all I know. She betrayed Headquarters.” I said through gritted teeth.
I left out that she also betrayed me. We were more than a team, she was like my sister, but Chief didn’t need to know that. No one needed to know how deep her betrayal had truly cut me.
“This is a shared blow to Headquarters and just as much your fault. Had you would have informed me of her behavior sooner this could have been avoided.” He said
I kept my mouth shut. As much as I hated agreeing with him, he had me there. I didn’t want to believe that Zero was going to betray us, but if sentiment hadn’t clouded my judgement, maybe this would have been avoided and she would be here with me instead of God knows where.  
“No smart remark?” he mocked.
“I could think of one if you’d like me too?” I responded.
“One of these days, that mouth of yours is going to get you hurt.” He threatened
I smirked, “If it was Agent Zero’s mouth you’d probably respond differently to it.”
Surprise flittered across his, but he quickly replaced it with a scowl.
“I won’t waste any more time indulging your childish comebacks. You will find Agent Zero and you will bring her back to me.”
It didn’t escape my notice that he said me and not headquarters. Like she was his personally and not an Agent in the system he ran.
I  slowly lifted my hand to my face, examining my nails before smiling up at him.
“No.” I replied camly.
“That was an order, you don’t have a choice.” he replied through gritted teeth.

If looks could kill I'd be at the pearly gates by now.

I smiled sweetly at him. Placing my hands in front of me so I could focus on his enraged expression.

“It’s not a matter of choice, sir. It’s rule. Set by you. ‘Agents are not allowed to embark on missions they have personal attachment too. Doing so could jeopardize the success of the operation and yield catastrophic results.’ Section 12 paragraph 3 in the Handbook.”
When he didn’t respond I continued “it’s actually right after the rule that prohibits agents from having romantic relationship with each other and civilians, sir.” I finished, grinning.
From the pure look of distain he gave me, I could tell that I had him.
“Very well, you are free to go.”

I smiled at him and got up to leave. Since Chief picked me up from Pembroke’s Vault, I had barely had time to myself to process everything that had happened. I’d been back and forth in debriefing and hooked up to lie detector machines to confirm and reconfirm my story. I told Chief everything I could remember from the start of the mission to what happened in the vault.  Okay, so I told him most of what I knew. Certain parts I had omitted because I had yet to make sense of them yet.
In the beginning I would have jumped at the chance to go after Zee myself, but after retelling the story so many times, I wasn’t sure. Some things still hadn’t added up.
Why would she kill Lee after going out her way to defend him?
What happened the day I saw her and Chief together?
Why had she called me Cynthia?
That last part stood out more than the rest. Once I got to my room I did what I had been meaning to do since I got back to Headquarters. After securing my connection to make sure Chief hadn’t bugged my computer, I looked up the name Cynthia in the system. Of course, nothing popped up.
Groaning, I typed in “Agent One”. All that showed was the general information about me. Under partners, it still listed Agent Zero’s name.
On a whim, I clicked her name and it routed to her profile.  Hers was like mine, the only difference being that under birthplace she was Sacramento, California. Intrigued, I went back to my profile and checked where I was born. The space that should have shown my birthplace said “undefined.” I searched a few other agents and they all had a city and state where they were born, mine was the only one that said undefined.
Frowning, I switched tactics and hacked into Chief’s computer. It was risky but I was the best hacker they had, I was legit the only person who could pull this off and not get caught.
After disabling the firewalls I had put up, I found a file marked “The Program” on a completely different server within his computer. The origin of the file bounced off hundreds of different I.P. address. Whatever was in it was something he wanted to keep hidden.  After what felt like hours, I finally gained access to the files.
Immediately, I looked up “Cynthia” and I got one hit.
It was an autopsy report of a young women. My heart dropped when the image of the cadaver came into view.
The women looked almost exactly like me.