Home is not a Place

27• In Your Head

FELIX

I had been training in the CIA for three years before I met Ethan, which seems crazy to me. Now, I can't imagine a life without him.

I was fifteen when we learned of each other's existence. He was, too. We were quite young, but by that time I was already inventing gadgets for the CIA. I had nothing better to do. Some of my top inventions were my watch that stored a flash drive, my ring that injected whoever came into contact with the diamond with anesthesia, and my cool stick-on tracker that was disguised as a scar.

I was proud of my inventions back then, so the day someone approached me about one of them not working, I was a little dumbfounded, to say the least. The guy marched right up to me at the gym one day after my afternoon jog. His face was red as he barked at me. "Aren't you the kid who made the scar tracker invention?"

I swallowed and took a step back. I was a little boy back then, and the wild look in his eyes was an anger I saw only in my father's eyes. I'm a lot better at confrontation now, but I wasn't good with it at 15.

I nodded uncomfortably. He immediately took another step toward me, my back pressing against a nearby wall. He yelled, then, and my hands trembled. "You are a goddamned idiot. The patch didn't work when I was out in the field, and I had to rush my partner to the hospital. If I had been two minutes late, she would've died."

I gulped. "The patch didn't work? I programmed it to-"

"Your programming was off, jackass." The guy groaned, his face almost purple. I thought he was going to explode in front of me. His hands were in fists and I wasn't prepared to get punched in the face. "Her blood was all over my hands, all over me. Imagine what it felt like to have the closest person to you's blood staining your skin."

I didn't want to imagine that. I didn't want to do anything but shrink into the floor. The walls were suffocating and the guy was making me sweat up a storm. I wanted him to stop screaming in my face. But, I didn't know how to communicate that.

"I'm sorry." My voice was quivering. Suddenly, I had wished my brother was nearby so that he could stand up for me, like he always did. "I really don't understand why my invention wouldn't work. Did it get damaged or something?"

"Damaged?" He growled at me, his eyes glowing with hatred. "No. No, it wasn't. You're about to be fucking damaged, though, when I kick the shit out of you."

"Wait..." My jaw dropped and then shut really quickly when he tilted his head. "Please don't. I'll fix it. I'll try to figure out what went wrong with it."

The guy obviously had displaced anger and hatred, but he was only getting worse. "Don't you see that you can't fix what has happened? My partner..."

"Hey!" The guy's head snapped when a new voice filled the air around us. I turned to look to the left as well, grateful to see the pinched face of a young Ethan Turner. His hair was a bit longer back then, wavy and a little in his face. His gray eyes were stormy with confusion, but even though he didn't understand what was going on, he still intervened. He must've seen that I was scared shitless. "What is going on?"

First off, the guy who had a problem with his tracker patch was at least 6'2". Ethan, not even close. The angry guy at least had 100 lbs on him as well, but Ethan didn't even look like he cared.

The man glared at Ethan as if he was a speck of dirt. "I wasn't talking to you, kid. Back off."

The guy turned back to me, and I raised my hands up to show him that I'm innocent. He still grabbed fistfuls of my shirt and looked as if he was going to seal my fate.