8

The training room was the second biggest room in The Compound aside from the screening room. It was tall enough that it had its own wing on the farthest end of the building. The room had four concrete pillars to help with structure. There were no windows, only extremely bright lights from the ceiling. On the farthest end of the room was where the punching bags hung, towards the center was the boxing ring, and then where Colton stood now is where a mildly soft mat lay on the floor. It was where he and Carmen would train today. Eventually he would take the mat away, after all, you wouldn't have padding beneath you if you were stuck in hand to hand combat in the field.

Carmen came stumbling into the training room at 8:07. Unlucky for her, Colton had already been in the room waiting. When she came in, panting from the run, she saw him leaning against one of the pillars in the huge room. His phone was in his hand and his other hand was shoved in his shorts pocket. He glanced at her. "You're late."

She approached him and placed her hands on her hips, catching her breath. "I know. I got lost, Alexa had to tell me where to go. This place is huge."

"You'll figure it out eventually." Colton shrugged and shoved his phone back into his pockets.

He motioned to the mat and they both walked over to stand on top of it, Carmen's feet somewhat sinking into the padding.

"Today," Colton began. "We are gonna focus on stretching and basic warm ups. I'm not gonna throw you into fighting on the first day, we might not even get to the basics of that until next week."

Carmen nodded.

"Alright." He cracked his knuckles. "First up is lunges."

"Wait." Carmen held up her hand, earning a surprised look from Colton. "I'll start after you answer my questions."

"Your questions?"

She nodded and folded her arms over her chest. "You said that if I had any questions then you would answer them today, I'm not doing anything until my questions are answered."

Colton scratched the back of his head and twisted his mouth in contemplation. After a moment he shrugged. "Alright, what do you want to know?"

"How do you know about me? How did you guys even know that I sold stuff on the black market?"

He cleared his throat before speaking, "A few months ago, my mom got word that some people who run weapons for the cartel planned on making a move on a military convoy to steal the shipment they were transporting. They were gonna use this fancy little signal jammer to block any way of signaling for help. It could block anything coming in within a twenty mile radius. It was nothing like any of us had ever seen before." Colton's eyes locked on Carmen's and she swallowed hard.

Carmen's most popular tech, that she had sold countless times over the years, was an intense signal jammer. Colton was right about the radius, 20 miles. Carmen had actually planned on modifying it and trying for 30 recently. It was always in high demand and she never understood why.

Colton noticed the look on her face and continued on, "When it's something that even takes the government by surprise, we can't help but let our curiosity get the best of us. So my mom sent us to stop the attack, and figure out how and where they got something like that. So luckily we got there just in time to capture the group going after the soldiers. Clay and I interrogated them individually but none of them spoke up. Not until we got to the last one, he was tough to crack but he broke eventually. He said that he was the one who bought it, and that he got it from some black market dealer. That's when he dropped your name."

He pressed his lips into a hard line, "Ainsley didn't talk about her family much. But we always knew your names. So when he said 'Carmen Faber' Clayton and I decided to bring in Ainsley. At that point, it was personal. You should have seen the look on his face when she walked in that room. He started swearing up and down right away that she was you, but with pink hair. Ainsley started freaking out, she said that he was lying and that she didn't believe him. We didn't get a chance to get much info out of him after that because Ainsley got angry and... took care of him."

It didn't take Carmen more than a second to know what he meant by took care of him.

"Clayton wasn't taking any chances though." Colton crossed his arms. "He told Luke to do any research on you, on anything we had on attacks related to a signal jammer like that. We found... a lot." When he trained his eyes on the floor, fear rippled through Carmen's body. Whatever it was that they'd discovered, it was enough that Colton couldn't maintain eye contact with her. It was enough that his eyes danced with shadows as he recalled the horrid memory of all that they had uncovered.

"Define a lot," Carmen spoke softly.

Colton shook his head. "Trust me, Carmen. You really don't want to know."

Silence hung between them. Colton was trying to gather the courage to speak again, some of the things they found that had happened due to Carmen's inventions had been so dark that it kept him awake that first night of finding it.

"Anyway," Colton finally found the words to continue. "When we saw everything my mom decided that we needed to make you a target and take care of it."

"You mean kill me?"

He looked up to her, hesitation in his expression and then slowly nodded. Carmen took a deep breath and squeezed her hands into fists.

"When we told Ainsley, she lost it. She threatened to hunt down and kill every last one of us if we even touched you." Colton scoffed. "Usually Ainsley doesn't scare me but I believed her."

So Ainsley had stuck up for Carmen? She was the reason that Carmen wasn't six feet under in a box right now? Carmen waited to see if that knowledge would ease any of the animosity she had towards her sister, but it didn't. She remained angry beyond words.

"She gave my mom an idea. She said that instead of putting a hit on you, we could recruit you and have you build your tech for us. At least that way it would be supervised and everything would have to be approved through my mom first. We'd know exactly what you're making, when you're making it and what it's for. So we went with that instead and decided to keep you under surveillance for a few months until we knew that we had what we needed in order to get you here. Now you're here and you know the rest."

Carmen nodded slowly. "So I'm stuck here? I can't leave?"

Colton shrugged. "For right now you can only leave if you have one of us with you and if my mom says that you can go. You'll have to earn her trust and everyone else's here before you start getting those kinds of privileges."

"Privileges?" Carmen said louder than she meant to as shock laced her tone. "You mean my basic rights and freedoms?"

Colton looked at her with a blank expression. "We may not have technically arrested you, Carmen, but you're damn lucky that we didn't. I'd be thankful that we'd let you leave at all."

"So now I'm your little prisoner?" Carmen crossed her arms and Colton did the same.

"You're not a prisoner." Colton pursed his lips. "But you do have to earn our trust. You have to prove to us that we have no reason to doubt you in any circumstance."

She narrowed her eyes as he took a step closer to her, the scent of his cologne filled her nose and his expression softened. "Carmen, I'm your partner. I have no doubt in my mind that you'll earn that trust. So prove me right."

Carmen stared at him, his green eyes burning holes into her own. She wanted to believe him, she knew that Kendra told her she should trust her partner. But what did that even mean? A partner in this place meant nothing to her. To her, he was just another one of them. Another one of the people who spent the last 5 years getting to know her sister in ways that maybe she never could.

"Why did Ainsley come here? How old was she?" Carmen asked.

Colton sighed and took a step back, although the smell of his cologne lingered in Carmen's airways.

"Ainsley was sixteen when she came here. I'm not sure I could tell you all of Ainsley's story, I know how she got here but I don't know the whole thing. You'd have to ask her."

Not gonna happen.

Carmen took in his words, Ainsley had run away at 15 but was recruited at 16. There's almost a whole year unaccounted for. Judging by the look on Colton's face, he had no idea what happened in that year.

"How was she able to start here at just sixteen? She wasn't even an adult yet."

"People who train here are allowed to begin missions at sixteen. For example, I've lived here my entire life. I started training in martial arts from a very young age and was ten when I started with weapons. I could train at any age, but I wasn't allowed to actively participate in missions until I turned sixteen. Past that point, I wasn't able to complete the testing process until I turned eighteen. If you pass, then that's when they give you your skill titles and you officially become an agent," Colton explained.

Carmen was taking all of this information in. It seemed way too complicated and she still had more questions to ask but as she looked Colton up and down, only one more bubbled to the surface. "So does that mean that Clayton is your twin?"

They did look alike, to some degree. The eye color, skin tone, facial structure. Maybe they were fraternal?

Colton shook his head.

She tilted her head in response. "I thought that this was for twin spies."

"It is, but I'm the only one here without a twin."

The only one.

"So who is Clayton's twin?" Carmen asked.

Something in Colton's face shifted and he instantly pulled out his phone. "You have twenty minutes to go through all the stretching with me, after that we will start on workouts."

Carmen pressed her lips into a line and nodded. She wasn't stupid. She could take a hint in when someone wanted to be done talking about something.