Sorry I haven't updated in ages. I'm not trying to drag the cliffhanger on for ages; I'm just really busy and haven't had a chance to write. Here's the last chapter, though. And I might not update the epilogue for a while, just so you know. J

Zach's POV

"We're heading to where the car is parked," I said into my communications device, running alongside Cammie and Solomon. "Do you copy?"

"Hearing you, loud and clear," Bex answered, as did the members of the other units. "What about Cavan?"

I sighed, trying to hold back the distress. "Cavan escaped, along with Morgan. We must save her as soon as the mission is complete."

"Morgan?" Grant asked, surprised.

"Yeah," Cammie said, "apparently she didn't take it well that she had to be left behind."

"You think?" Macey said sarcastically. "Now he's taken her and he's got someone to hold for ransom. I swear, when I see that girl…"

Solomon interrupted, "Threats later. Right now, we need to know if you are coming to the car location and the success of the unit."

"Dabney was shot," Grant said sadly. "And Moscowitz has a chest wound. I'm working on it, and Jonas is copying the computer files. He's also contacting the CIA for back-up, because by now it would be too late for any moles in the CIA to do any harm. We won't be meeting you."

Usually, we would have stopped for a moment of silence to remember Dabney and Moscowitz, but we were so short in time that I had to report immediately, "Alpha Unit is heading towards the car, but we were unsuccessful in taking Cavan. No matter. We can still use the car bomb without anyone inside it; there's only a smaller chance of success, because the Circle may not open the door."

Cammie was strangely silent as we ran, but I didn't look into it too much. I was too preoccupied with Macey saying, "We were successful in our task of freeing the prisoners, but Townsend had bullet wounds which forced him to stay behind. We must assume that he is dead, or will be soon."

"He is not dead," Abby insisted, her voice breaking at the last word. "I swear, Macey, I got a signal from his comms unit. I heard something, I'm sure of it."

"Abby," Macey said slowly, "I know we all heard something, but it sounded more like a gun than speaking. Then the line went dead. He must have been shot." When she next spoke, it wasn't to Abby. "Look, just know that we'll be with you to see the car bomb."

"We were also successful," Rachel said. "We took hold of the armoury, disabled all the weapons, took all the ammo and got out safely."

"Not all of us!" Bex blurted.

"Bex, we were going to tell her in person," Rachel hissed.

Bex sounded like she wasn't sorry at all when she said, "Sorry. But she deserves to know. Macey, Nick died from a chest wound."

"No!" Macey choked. "No, he isn't dead. He can't be!"

"I saw him die in front of me."

Macey hadn't given up hope yet. "Did you check his pulse?"

"There wasn't enough time" –

"Then there's still hope!" Macey exclaimed fiercely.

Bex sighed. "Macey, you're in denial. Even if he was still alive, the Circle would have worked their way into the armoury by now. He's dead."

"I'm sorry to break this up," I interrupted. "And I feel the loss of my good friend, but we have to keep moving. Beta Unit, are you coming to the location?"

"Yes," Dr Fibbs said. "We'll be there."

"Good," I replied as we began climbing up a ladder. It was grimy and hard to hold onto, but somehow we managed. Sunlight exploded into my eyes as we emerged out of the ground. We were surrounded by tall corn crops. We could get lost in here, especially because of the similarity between each of the corn stalks. Cammie brought out a compass and pointed north-west.

"This way," she said, slashing the corn in front of her as she walked. We were creating a path that could easily be followed, but seeing as no one from the Circle knew where we had hidden the car, we figured that we were reasonable safe.

Soon enough, we found the car, beneath a layer of corn – just where we had hidden it earlier. We stopped a few metres away from it. When Cammie first laid eyes on it, she smiled widely and pecked me on the lips. She whispered, "I love you, no matter what."

She ran towards the car, leaving me staring after her in puzzlement. I expected her to inspect it, but instead, she opened the door and sat down in the driver's seat. I figured that it was okay. After all, she was always curious, and the bombs hadn't been activated yet, so we were good.

But then she slammed the door shut and spoke to Liz through her comms unit. "Liz, we're ready, activate the bombs."

"I've activated them," Liz said unknowingly and I choked back a sob. "What's wrong, Zach?"

"Cammie's inside the car." My voice turned desperate. "Liz, please! You have to deactivate the bombs. We can't let Cammie go on this suicide mission!"

Liz sounded frantic in my ear. "Zach, I would, but once activated, there's no going back! There's no way to switch the bombs off."

Cammie was looking at me apologetically. "I'm sorry, Zach. If we had Cavan or if we had any other way, I wouldn't be in here. You and I both know that the Circle will realise that this is a trap if the car has no driver. The plan will fail. That's why I'm sitting in here."

"Cammie, please don't," I pleaded.

"It's too late now anyway. You heard Liz. There's no going back."

By now, the Beta and Gamma Unit had joined Solomon and me. They all gasped once they realised how Cammie was inside the car.

"Don't do anything to the car, Liz," I instructed our friend in New York. "We have to get her out somehow."

Cammie's POV

"Zach, I can still control the car manually," I said softly. Breathing deeply to keep control over my screaming mind, I squeezed my eyes shut tightly and slammed my foot down on the accelerator before I could think twice. Nothing happened. I blinked in surprise and tried again. And again. And again. Still nothing. I was half relieved and half despaired to say, "It isn't working."

"That's because I disabled the engine," a voice said from behind our operatives. Everyone turned around to face him, but being in the car meant I could see him without needing to do that.

Nick.

Macey rushed towards Nick and flew into his arms, sobbing with joy, but he tossed her to the muddy ground easily. She gazed up at him with confusion, hurt and, even after he'd cast her aside, adoration. However, he wasn't paying her any attention in return; he was staring at me and his eyes were filled with hate. Somehow, this new side of Nick seemed familiar to me…

"You're dead," Bex declared. "I saw you die, right in front of me."

Nick smiled. "You must have forgotten to check my pulse. Knifing a few blood bags under my shirt did the trick."

"Why would you fake your own death?" Macey's voice was shaky. "Why would you do that to me?"

"Poor Macey," he laughed. "You must have been so upset when I 'died'. That's just too bad, because I wouldn't give a crap if you died."

"You played me?" her voice broke, but she couldn't seem to tear her eyes away from his. The rest of us couldn't believe it. Macey, the Macey McHenry, got played? But even worse, Nick had been the one to play her?

Nick shrugged. "How else was I supposed to infiltrate your little group?"

Grant gaped, "So you're… you're a mole?"

"Of course I am, but I'd advise you all not to shoot me. We have you surrounded." Then Nick raked a finger in my direction, and it suddenly occurred to me that I had worked with that hand so many times before… but who did it belong to? "Really, I thought the glorious Killer Chameleonwould have worked out who I am by now. It's rather shameful to think that you still haven't figured out my identity yet because" –

"You're Hunter," I gasped. The Hunter was someone I had considered to be my closest field agent colleague. We had spent years going on jobs together – there were so many of them that we were practically partners.

He grinned and clapped his hands. "Well done, Cameron. My codename is Hunter. Now does anyone want to try my real name?" No one answered, so he continued, "My first name really is Nicholas, Nick for short. And my surname? That's Solomon, his son." He pointed at Solomon, our Solomon.

The colour drained out of Solomon's face as he sucked in a hard breath. "You. Impossible. No… you can't be. Cavan killed you."

Nick smiled. "No. Cavan needed an heir to take over the Circle. Preferably of Cavan blood. And he didn't want to have his own children, because children make people go soft. Just look at Cameron and her daughter for example. So he kept me and paid Catherine to oversee my childhood. Whenever she was doing jobs (which was most days), she left me to do training courses with her son." He pointed at Zach. "Of course, you didn't know who I was. I was known to you as 'a friend' – nothing more. You had no idea what my name was or why I was training with you, but you learnt to accept that you would never know. It came as quite a shock when you ran away. I was really quite disappointed.

"Then years later, Cameron arrived at the Circle with a baby – strangely under Catherine's protection." Now he was talking to me. "You changed everything. Suddenly, I wasn't the best agent out there. I was second at everything. Catherine's attention wasn't fixed on me anymore. Cavan didn't even notice me. Even though you aren't Cavan blood, he wanted you to be the heir. Even after you turned the job offer down, he had it written in his will. Even when you formed Operation Crushed Circle, he was reluctant to believe it. He's soft when it comes to you, just like parents are to their kids." Nick's voice became louder, more angry. "I was supposed to be heir! I was supposed to be the best out there! I was supposed to be Cavan's favourite!"

I laughed dryly, which I wasn't sure was such a good idea. "You think I'm Cavan's favourite? Hunter, you and I both know that's not true. He doesn't trust me, and he never has."

"That's what you think," Nick muttered, but then raised his voice. "Now, it's time for my revenge. I am going to kill each and every operative in your little mission while you watch, and don't even think about opening that door. My agents will kill you before your hands even touch it."

Morgan's POV

"Now it's time for my revenge," Nick declared. "I am going to kill each and every operative in your little mission while you watch, and don't even think about opening that door. My agents will kill you before your hands even touch it."

"What agents, Uncle Nick?" Arianne asked stepping forward. I followed her into the small clearing that everyone had made in the corn crops.

Jonas, Mom and Dad all shot us murderous looks, like they wanted to say, Get back – right NOW. But we both ignored them. I feigned an innocent look, "Yes, Uncle Nick. Pray, do tell us what agents you think will kill Mom if she moves. Because, I don't seem to see any of them."

We both held up our guns. Nick gaped. "You killed my agents? But… you're only children! You can't kill people!"

"No, we knocked them out with our tranquiliser darts, one by one," Arianne started and I finished, "because we're not murderers. After all, we're only children. We can't do anything, like saving Operation Crushed Circle's sorry butt. With a little help."

*Flashback*

"Okay, kids," Kat shouted over the whirring of the helicopter's engine. "Where is the car exactly?"

"It should be camouflaged," I yelled back. "But just look for a break in the corn field. They've only covered the car with corn stalks, which means that they won't be upright and they won't be affected by the wind."

We all scanned the fields below us. It took some time, but with all four of us looking, we found it soon enough. It was a miracle that we had convinced them to help us in the first place. Without them, we wouldn't have the Sikorsky S-64 Skycrane at all (obviously they stole it), let alone the fact that the plane needed a pilot and a co-pilot (and a rear-facing observer – though we could deal without that one) and Arianne can't fly a plane. Catherine taught me how to last year. At the time, I thought it was only because she rebelliously hated laws and rules. Turns out, it was a life requirement for the daughter of the Killer Chameleon.

"So I take it that I have to go down the rope?" Hale peered down and gulped.

I laughed. "We're ten and we'll have to do it too!"

Kat shook her head, amused, and directed the helicopter to descend slowly. "Why did we ever agree to this?"

No one answered; we were all looking at Hale expectantly. When we were low enough, he fumbled for the latch on the helicopter's door and climbed out onto the rope. I clambered into his now empty seat, taking over the role of co-pilot. Then we watched as Hale edged along, his hands gripping onto the copter literally with his life in them. A few seconds after he went out of sight, we could see him descending down a rope hanging under the plane. He landed gracefully on top of the real car bomb.

Kat was staring at her husband, sick with relief that he had got down successfully. I felt kind of guilty for bringing the couple into this mess, but it was too late to do anything now. Hale brought out five hooks and attached each of them to the car. Then he signalled at us with thumbs up to bring the car up. It took a hazardously long time; it didn't help when the copter would occasionally shudder like the rope was too weak or when the rope swung from side to side with the car's weight. But finally we felt the steady click vibrate through the plane as the car was successfully fastened to the plane.

By now, Hale was right underneath, so we couldn't see him. Kat was breathing in shallow breaths, trying to push away any bad thoughts away from her mind. Glancing at me as though she only just realised I was there, she said, "Sorry. I'm usually okay with risks. But with our second child on the way… I just don't want them to grow up without their dad."

"That's understandable," I nodded with a comforting smile. At least I hoped it was comforting. I wasn't really an expert.

Arianne seemed to miss the point of what Kat was saying. "You have a kid?!" she exploded with excitement. From that one day of school we shared, I gathered that anything to do with DNA and genetics could have her transfixed for hours.

"Yes," Kat replied with a faint smile, "our little boy."

"He," a voice came from the doorway, "is as dashing as I am which is almost impossible. But then, he is a mini me after all."

Hale was grinning as he hauled himself inside. "Your turn, kids. Have fun."

Chewing on my lower lip, I gave the seat back to him and got ready to leave the safety of the helicopter's interior. While Kat and Hale would lower the bomb to another location, our job was to lower a fake car to the old location, cover the car in corn and find our way into the Circle's base.

As we stood on the car feeling the ground approach, I wondered what the sight would look like to an onlooker. Two identical black sports cars hanging from under a disfigured looking helicopter, one of them being lowered into a corn field with two ten year old girls sanding on its bonnet. But hopefully the only people around to see us were the Circle and they were too preoccupied with Operation Crushed Circle to notice. Hopefully they had no idea that there'd be another operation at work too.

*End of flashback*

"You see," I explained, "the car that Mom is sitting in right now is the fake. We took the real one somewhere else." Ignoring everyone's horrified looks, I opened the door. "See? As for Cavan, he's dealt with too. He's sitting in the car bomb, just as mom planned."

*Flashback*

They were talking about 'Grace' or someone – I wasn't really concentrating. I had to keep alert, ready for any opportunity at all to turn the tables. But it was no use. Cavan wasn't distracted at all.

The conversation was rudely interrupted when the door slammed open and the room got a lot more crowded. The exchanged glances between her parents and Joe Solomon clearly meant that they were not happy about it. Not me. This timing was perfect. While they were locked in hand-to-hand combat (which was impressive I was sure, though I wasn't fixed on it), I was watching Cavan for any openings. There! He had lowered the knife from my neck inattentively, too whipped up in the action to remember me. Now I had to be quick; if I was too slow, the knife would be against my neck before I could say "damn". He was smiling faintly at my mom, half proud and half sad, like he was gratified by her fighting but he knew she wasn't his to be proud of.

I surveyed everything that was within my reach, recalling one of Bex's clever combat tips: 'Anything can be your weapon.' Without hesitation, I grabbed a pen off the desk and stabbed it into an unaware Cavan's hand. He yelped, more in surprise than pain, but luckily it wasn't loud enough to capture my parents' attention. As the knife fell from his fingers, I caught it with my other hand and brought it up to his neck, which was pretty hard to reach.

"Move towards your emergency escape tunnel," I hissed, "and don't try anything funny. And keep quiet. And move quickly. Oh, and don't draw attention. Or else… or else, um, I'll use this knife."

Boy, I need to work on this threatening stuff, I thought.

Cavan said smugly, "I don't know if you know, little girl, but they disabled my fingerprint scanner."

"Not anymore." I pointed. He glanced at it and looked genuinely surprised to see it aglow and ready to scan. Savour this moment, I thought, because this is probably one of the very few times he has pulled that face.

He said, "Don't you want to give me over to your parents?"

"A) I'm not stupid," I said as we shuffled towards the escape hatch. "B) I know about your mole. C) As a result of B, I'm not working for my parents. D) I don't like you. Just so you know. And E) I'm not stupid. I thought I'd repeat it."

By the time I finished talking, we were successfully inside the escape tunnel, the door swinging shut behind us.

*End of flashback*

Nick's eyes darted around anxiously, realising that he no longer had the upper hand. There was nothing stopping anyone from attacking him now. And that is exactly what they did. Within seconds, they had removed all his weapons and were striking at him, like hyenas preying on a broken bird. It seemed like their intentions were to kill, but Macey and Solomon had thrown themselves over him.

"Knock him out, if you must," Solomon's voice was shaking. "But don't kill my son."

"Use this," I handed Macey my tranquiliser gun. She took it and squeezed her eyes tightly shut as she pulled the trigger.

Mom was smiling at me proudly as she put a protective arm around my shoulders. "I'm so proud of you, M."

"S'okay," I mumbled back. Needless to say, it was odd to have my mom not so strictly professional. But I liked it. It felt good.

Third Person's POV

A sleek black sports car sped towards an ordinary looking farmhouse with a man tied and gagged in the driver's seat, crushing a path of corn as it went. When it got to the farmhouse, the car didn't stop at the driveway though. It carried straight through the door, shattering the glass windows on either side with the impact. Strangely, the house was packed with people and many of them had to leap out of the way as the car smashed its way through like an indestructible army tank

An outsider might have thought the man in the sports car had been mugged and tied up and now his car was out of control, and that it had interrupted some sort of massive reunion of a serious-faced, black-clad family. They never would have guessed that those in black were a bunch of serial killers in a terrorist organization; or that board members of that organization were in the basement; or that the man in the car was the leader of them all. Neither would they have guessed that the car was being controlled by a woman in a hospital bed in New York; or that the car was filled with explosives; or that in under two minutes, the entire house and the people inside would be going down in flames.

The car slowed to a stop in the middle of the room and the unknowing killers began to crowd around it, all of them talking at once.

"It just came out of nowhere," one of them was exclaiming.

"Wow, nice ride," another whistled, running a hand along the bonnet. "Too bad we'll never get a car like this. The board members are cheap assholes."

"Wait a second, is that guy Cavan?" a man gasped. They all crowded even closer to see, pushing and shoving.

Someone was saying, "Oh my God, it is."

"I never meant what I said about cheap assholes!" the guy who wanted the car grovelled, sounding terrified. "I mean… it wasn't me!"

A woman frowned. "We should help him out of there. He looks delirious."

"Mmb," the man inside the car was trying to say something through his gag. "Mmmmb."

"I have no idea what he's saying. Let's open the door."

"I don't know…" One wise person said doubtfully. "Maybe this is a tr" –

She never got to finish the last word. 'Trap.'

A distance away, a cluster of twenty or so people stood and watched the explosion as a boom resounded in their ears. They could see a flash of orange, before smoke rose up in a huge cloud.

Two blonde girls, one with light blonde hair and the other with a brown streaks in it too, shared an excited glance, and high-fived, relishing in their shared victory. The one with green eyes grinned at the one with blue eyes and laughed, "We are so good."

A black-haired woman with fashionable clothes sat on the ground, the head of her unconscious boyfriend on her lap. Tears ran down her model-pretty face and splashed onto her boyfriend's cheeks as she realised this could be the last time she'd see him before he got put behind bars. Somehow, though, she managed to smile as she glanced at the burning farmhouse in the distance.

Kneeling beside the famous woman was another man, older than her by about twenty years. He was fingering the unconscious man's hand tenderly, his mouth curved into a small smile, like he was remembering some fond memory of his late girlfriend and their lost baby son. But his sad eyes showed that he knew he could never go back to those days, not when his son had was someone he didn't even know and his girlfriend would never come back – ever.

Another woman, this one the same age as the older man, sat next to him and laid a hand over his in a sign of comfort. As someone whose own husband had died too, she understood his pain. Plus, she had been the girlfriend's best friend so she had grieved with him.

Her sister, who had been staring at the explosion blankly like she was thinking of her ex-boyfriend's death rather than the actual explosion, jumped to her feet with her hand pressed to the device in her ear.

"Edward?" she breathed, disbelievingly. "Edward, is it really you? Where are you?" She heard an answer come through the comms unit and laughed. "The women's toilet? Really? You pervert."

She ran away from the rest of the group, towards the secret tunnel that led to the underground base, desperate to see her ex-boyfriend again.

Soon afterwards, two men emerged from the direction she came. One had Greek features and a very muscly body; the other had glasses and looked hotter than the average geek. An exotic looking woman saw the Greek god and ran into his arms. They grinned at each other, both knowing what would happen in the next moments. Their smashed their lips together, following their trend of getting hot and heavy whenever they could.

The two girls groaned simultaneously at the public display of affection. The man with glasses put an arm around the light blonde girl and said, "Come on, Arianne. We should get back to New York to see your mother."

"Do you think she'll be proud of me?" the girl stared up hopefully at her father.

He pulled out the unit in his ear and fixed it into the girl's one. "Ask her yourself."

The girl held her father's hand. As they walked away, she looked at her friend over her shoulder and mouthed, "See you at school!"

The other girl waved a hand and nodded, although she was unsure whether the first girl meant their school in New York or the school they were going to go to the next year, a certain special all-girls school in Virginia. With nothing to do now, the girl bounded towards her parents. She stopped mid-step, realising she was interrupting something special. Ordinarily she wouldn't care much for kissing, but she was intrigued. She had never seen her parents (her mother in particular) look so in love before.

The mother was leaning into the man's chest, and he had his arms wrapped around her waist. She had her chin tilted up so their eyes could lock on each other's. He leant down to touch her lips, a kiss so soft and tender that the kiss was barely there at all, but to them it meant the world. Then the woman nestled her head into the crook of his neck and noticing her daughter standing awkwardly beside them, she beckoned her over. The family turned to face the smoke and behind it, the sun setting into the beautiful horizon.

THE END