( tw : n/a )
CHAPTER EIGHT
DISOBEDIENCE
"It looks wrong, James."
The father-daughter duo was trying to wrestle a wig onto her head atop her mess of natural hair. It would need to stay on for weeks to come, not budging or moving no matter what. Her hair couldn't survive being bleached and chopped for the mission and then dyed back to brown and laced with extensions when she got back. There could be no indication the twin sisters were actually one person.
"You're the one that bought it." He positioned it on her head, pulling on the lace to make sure it covered her cap and hairline. "It's not like Stellenbosch knows the exact shade of Lilith's hair You're fine."
Bella rolled her eyes, holding the wig down against her head as James carefully started to glue the lace down, smoothing it down with the end of a comb until her entire hairline was glued down. It looked fine, maybe it was a few shades paler then Lilith's actual hair but no one would notice. As he cut off the excess, Bella got to work smoothing down the hair with a hot brush, flattening it to her head.
Lilith Devin, Bella's supposed twin sister, looked nothing like Bella. She actively bleached her hair, leaving her dark brown roots to grow in after every dye. She had brown eyes, not green. Lilith also had plenty of piercings, which is why Bella had to get all of those redone the day before, including Lilith's newest septum piercing. She flipped it up when she went to see Alex, not wanting to make up an excuse why both her and Lilith have septum piercings.
Lilith wasn't a romantic like Bella either. She was a hardened, punk-rocker girl who wound laugh herself to exhaustion if she could see what her "twin" sister enjoyed. Lilith would call Bella lame and Bella would call her a bitch.
She specifically hunted down a blonde wig with brown roots yesterday because at Lilith's last institution, they wouldn't have let her dye her hair, so the brown would've grown back in. Everything had to fit together perfectly so Stellenbosch didn't get too curious and investigate past the surface.
For their whole mission, they were lucky James used to be quite famous in America, still relishing in his popularity and wealth all these years later. Point Blanc only took troubled rich kids from well-known families. Since James had done so well in MMA, Lilith fell into that specific category.
"Stellenbosch will be here any moment now." James said, quickly putting all their wig supplies back into the large bag they lugged around everywhere they went. He slid it into the closet, piling towels on top of it. "Go get dressed."
Bella nodded and left the bathroom, purposefully passing her own bedroom and going into the one James spent the morning staging to look like Lilith had been responsible for decorating it. When going through her files, it was always noted Lilith would sometimes be allowed to visit home if she was on good behavior, meaning they would and should have a room for her.
It was covered top to bottom in black wallpaper, decorated in chains, skulls, posters of bands like SOAD, Korn, Slayer, and Pierce the Veil, and one big tapestry covered the overhead light to keep the room dark. There was a pack of cigarettes on her bedside table, half gone and half untouched. She used a black zippo lighter with a skull printed on both sides. She kept her room slightly messy but organized, a trait she learned from all the wards she spent her time in.
If Lilith were real, Bella might actually feel bad for her.
Bella reluctantly changed into Lilith-type clothes, pulling on a pair of dark washed jean that hung off her legs like loose bags, a black t-shirt covered in bleach stains overtop another black long sleeve, and she messed with her hair a little bit to make it look like she just got up.
Lilith would be jet lagged, still tired from her flight, and would've slept in till Stellenbosch showed up. She didn't wake up early like Bella did to make her own breakfast, she'd survive off a cigarette and an apple. Her clothes were the ones she wore the day before, having fell asleep in them when she got in.
As for Bella, James "sent" her out of the house to a friends so she wouldn't have to deal with the interview. As much as Stellenbosch knew, the twins did not get along.
Bella was adjusting the ring stabbed through her nose when she heard the front door open.
It's go time.
"Lily!" James yelled in such a sweet voice she almost felt like gagging. "Come down! Madame Stellenbosch is here!"
That's right. Lilith refers to people as Madame because she just spent 2 years in an institution in France. Bella and Lilith speak French. They both took ballet but only one continued. It made sense for her to say Madame over miss.
Bella wasn't excited to be trapped as Lilith for the on coming weeks but she was prepared. She spent a lot of her childhood learning how to perfect the art of disguise. She was so good at it, in fact, she often found herself completely becoming her disguise.
"I told you to stop calling me that." Lilith growled as she stomped down the stairs. "I'm not like Bella, you can't just shorten my name because you want to."
Madame Stellenbosch was an interesting individual. She was tall and lanky, dressed in a black jacket and pencil skirt. She carried herself in a way that was meant to intimidate, but to Bella it didn't make her bat an eye. Her hair was dark and cut short. She held onto her purse tightly. She must've read that Lilith was a bit of a kleptomaniac.
"Lilith." The woman addressed her and Bella looked to her with an extremely unimpressed look. "May we sit?"
"Sure. I'm not stopping you." She collapsed onto one of their couches, kicking her feet up on the coffee table in front of her. Bella tended to rest her feet on the edge of the table but never on top of it, Lilith though, wouldn't care for respecting James' things. "So, you're here to take me to your rehabilitation school, thinking you're gonna fix me better than any institution I've ever been to in my entire life?"
"Not think, I know we will."
Bella scoffed. "I'm sure you read about all the places I've been. I've seen over 20 different psychologist, been on every med possible, and it hasn't changed me." She leaned forward, staring the woman down. Unlike a major of the kids she interviewed, her front wasn't fake, she truly was angry, she was telling the truth. "Your stupid school isn't going to do anything. I can't be changed."
"Don't have such little faith, Lilith." Stellenbosch watched her diligently, searching for any sign of fear or intimidation. It seemed she didn't fear anything. "Your father tells me he finally took us up on our offer to let you stay with us because you attacked your sister."
"I choked her out, yes."
"Why? Why do you hate your own twin so much, Lilith?"
It was at this point that Bella couldn't help but speak her mind. She was as jealous of Lilith as Lilith was supposed to be of her.
"Because she's so perfect. She was born perfect. She's got all the freedom in the world. She doesn't have to worry about anything, the bitch." Whether it was Lilith speaking or Bella, James didn't know. He never knew Bella to be someone who expressed herself through words, it wasn't in her nature. "I just want her freedom for a day. One day and I might be happy. She's barely that special and she gets saddled up with a better life than me."
"So, you think that by physically abusing her any chance you can, will make you feel better?"
"Yes. Maybe it'll teach her to stop being so pretentious."
James couldn't help but tense up. Bella always got so into her roles it was almost frightening. Everything came second nature. Most would call her a great actress but James only saw her as a horrifying assassin. She fooled Stellenbosch, a woman who would see right through the deception if it were anyone else.
He knew what he was doing when he accepted the role as her handler seven years prior. NERVE didn't just take in kids to groom into child soldiers. In all truthfulness, if they didn't see Bella's potential early, they would've slaughtered her and Helena without hesitation. Operatives sit through thousands of potential recruits day in and day out. They didn't need Bella, but they knew her potential.
NERVE was familiar with the benefit of taking in a child. Bella was like clay, easily molded and sculpted to fit the exact role they wanted for her. She could disassemble a gun in record time by the time she was four because of their training. She was top of her class surrounded by ex-militants in their twenties at nine. She completed her first mission as an active agent at eleven. She was exactly what NERVE needed.
James had joined young, only twenty-one when he got recruited after a messy departure from the United Stares government. He would've been eighteen when Bella was born, still working his way through the government while Helena was working for NERVE already. He was an active agent, twenty-seven and already high in the ranks after only six years, when they asked him to be the handler for one of their underaged prodigies. He wasn't too concerned with her care until they mentioned she was orphaned. He knew what that meant for her if they couldn't get someone to fill in as her guardian. Even if she was a little prodigy, they'd have no choice but to kill her if she couldn't be passed on to someone. That's how they worked.
He knew they wanted him to be her handler because they planned for her to be his replacement. James was one of their best, even for someone new to the organization. They started calling him James Bond before he even got out of training because the officers saw how promising he was—which is where his nickname of 007 came from (he never liked it). Bella was promising for just nine years old and still in training, meaning she could be at his level someday, if not more. It only made sense to put the two of them together.
He still remembered the day he picked her up at the airport, the little Australian girl escorted by two bodyguards with messy, dirt-blonde hair and ginormous green eyes. She held a raggedy little teddy bear in her arms and had a Hello Kitty backpack full of her things strapped to her back. One guard produced an animal carrier, inside was an overweight, nine-year old tabby cat that she hadn't even named yet. Her mother adopted it for her and died days after, Bella had no time to think of a name. He offered the name 'Fatso' as a joke and she cried—for three hours straight. She made it clear that she didn't like him and that only made his disgust for the little thing worse. He hated kids, especially ones that cried.
Though his paycheck was quite large at the time, he was still living in a dirty apartment in NYC near their operating building. He only had one bedroom and no desire to move, so he let little Bella have his room and set up shop in the living room. She was rarely around though, still keeping up with her training and often sleeping in a bunk at work. It wasn't until she graduated and they started getting along that she was around the house, seeming more like an annoying roommate than his daughter.
She didn't like him that much now but he still felt responsible for her and her happiness. No matter how he looked at it, she was still just a kid, his kid no less.
Eva Stellenbosch sat back, observing Bella. She seemed intrigued. They needed her to be intrigued. They needed her to see Lilith as the charity case she was. It was amusing how easy it all was. They could only imagine the lengths MI6 went through to secure Alex's place at Point Blanc. They definitely had to put a lot of effort into getting him in with David Friend's family.
"Just yesterday you were in an institution in France?" Stellenbosch asked, though she knew each and every place Lilith had spent her time in. She needed to hear things straight from the girl herself, not her files. "Did you like France?"
"I never saw it." Bella spoke. "They boarded our windows and never let us see where we were going when they transferred us. They refused any taste of freedom."
Stellenbosch only spoke to her two more times before she declared the interview over. Perhaps Lilith wasn't as terrible as she thought she'd be, but she'd learn in time.
"You will be refused any communication with Lilith. Unlike her former stays, there will be no visitation, no calls, and no weekend trips home."
"I completely understand." James was not too fond of Bella being away for so long. She was usually never allowed on missions without at least one operative in the near area. Didn't matter that she is a child soldier, they couldn't risk losing their million dollar project because of negligence. "But when she is let out, whenever that is, she'll be better?"
"Much better, Mr. Devin." Stellenbosch looked around, her ears picking up on Bella's footsteps as she gathered her things upstairs. "Your other daughter, Belladonna, is it? How is she?"
"Lilith only caused minimal injury, mostly just bruising, some swelling, and slight damage to her windpipe. It'll all heal with time as long as she's careful." He sighed. "I sent her out so she didn't have to witness any of this. She gets weird about anything having to do with her sister nowadays. They—They used to be extremely close but one day Lilith just turned on her and it's never been the same. I hate to say it but sometimes it feels like dealing with a reactive dog."
"Trust me, Mr. Devin, Point Blanc will have her back to the way she used to be, no matter what it takes."
Bella knew what she could and couldn't have inside Point Blanc. No phones, drugs, anything that could keep her on her downward spiral. Still, Bella shoved the remaining pack of Lilith's cigarettes in her bag. It was already full. James bought brand new shampoo and conditioner just for this since Lilith wouldn't have had her own and would've requested purple shampoo and conditioner. Bella normally used blue shampoo, but anyone with minimal knowledge on colored shampoos would know a girl with platinum blonde hair would not be using blue shampoo. Even James knew that.
She packed a clip for her hair, as well as at least 20 hair ties that she wrapped around the handle of the plastic comb she normally used. She packed a thing of cologne in a glass skull—Lilith wouldn't wear perfume, let alone anything remotely girly. She packed a thing of black nail polish, a toothbrush, charcoal toothpaste, and two things of contact solution, one of actual contact solution, and one of piercing spray.
She had another bag full of the basic clothing necessities James had been instructed to have her pack. She packed it before she went to bed last night, after she got back from seeing Alex, so everything was just thrown and shoved in their haphazardly.
Bella grabbed a coat, slinging it over her elbow before grabbing her bags. She didn't want to walk down those stairs and get shipped off to the French Alps, but she knew it had to happen.
"Ready to go?" James greeted her at the bottom of the stairs but she just pushed past him, approaching Stellenbosch at the door. "Alright..."
"Bye." She said over her shoulder, not looking back at him. She knew she'd find herself crying if she looked James in the eyes. It felt like she was being taken away and adopted out all over again. "See you when I'm normal."
"Bye, Lily."
Bella rolled up her nose and stormed out of the house, feeling the warm air smack her in the face as she left James and Stellenbosch behind. She kicked throughout the front gate and walked to the other side of the car parked out front, throwing her bags in when the driver opened the door for her, crawling in afterwards.
She said nothing when Stellenbosch got in the car, crossing her arms and leaning against the car door, staring through the window aimlessly. She wasn't excited to be locked away, acting like sociopathic Lilith Devin, being enticed to kill Alex in his sleep by the little voice in her head. She knew Point Blanc couldn't be good. People went in one way and came out completely different—almost horrifyingly different. That meant if Bella and Alex weren't careful, they'd be incredibly fucked.
Stellenbosch didn't seem too interested in talking to her either, the polite cover-up she used in front of parents disappearing as soon as James was out of view. She seemed to pick up on Lilith's unwillingness to speak to anyone.
If she read into her history enough, Stellenbosch would've found that Lilith was diagnosed with Conduct disorder at eleven and many of her psychologists noted that she was likely to be diagnosed with ASPD when she was of age. Lilith was created to be text-book sociopath. No empathy, an instinct for immediate violence, lying, stealing, no effort to learn from her mistakes, and her inclination to be in control. If she was old enough, she'd be one.
Bella was most afraid of the isolation concept.
When she was in training, officers often threw her into isolation for acting out or doing what she did best: hitting. Isolation consisted of being grabbed and dragged to a washroom, dowsed head to toe in cold water with her clothes on, and thrown into a dark room with nothing but a toilet in the corner. Her time spent in isolation depended on the severity of her offense. They refused her food in isolation, only giving her water in a dog bowl. The floors were heated, but the stone walls were so cold it didn't really help. She froze in her clothes.
She liked being alone but she hated loneliness.
Once, she was in isolation for 109 hours, just over 4 1/2 days, and was only pulled because she went into shock from the cold and her body temperature dropped enough to raise alarm. An officer told her she should've been in there for at least ten days. She was in there because she stole extra food at work.
You can only imagine what hitting or talking would get you.
Though nothing could be as bad as isolation, something about Point Blanc rubbed her the wrong way. Absolutely no contact with the outside world? Even if that was to help their rehabilitation process, it meant more than just that. Bella was seasoned, she understood how things worked deep down. Complete isolation meant you didn't want people to be in contact, either with you, or you with them. She could only assume that Point Blanc didn't want them contacting their parents because whatever they had to say, wouldn't be good.
There was sketchy shit going on Point Blanc and while Alex was bush figuring that out, she'd be figuring out how to kill him off.
Stellenbosch explained to her when they got to their helicopter at the airport, that she'd be traveling to Paris on her own and intercepted at the Charles de Gaulle airport by a few unfamiliar faces. She vaguely explained how she had another student to pick up outside of London and that it would be irrelevant to take her all the way to the school and then travel back for the other. They'd pick her up in the afternoon after the other student's interview.
She had a lot of faith in her not trying to escape.
"See you tomorrow, Lilith." Stellenbosch said as she climbed into the helicopter, ignoring the helpful hand of the pilot.
"Yeah." She mumbled, sitting down in the back corner and looping her backpack around her legs. She placed her other bag on the floor and crossed her arms.
Stellenbosch's lip twitched when she responded, obviously not to impressed by her stellar lack of respect. She hadn't spoken a direct word to her in hours, why should she be expected to respond politely.
Je m'en fous.
You aching bitch.
🗝️
*PROOFREAD AND EDITED N/A*
LILITH
i am very swiftly running out of pre-written chapters but school is kicking my ass and i have no time to write 😭
:D