Chapter 16

ZACH, Age 22

4 hours after Zach leaves the Circle headquarters in a stolen weapons vehicle…

I was worried about Cammie, and it wasn't just because of her emotional breakdown earlier, though that did give me plenty of reason to be concerned.

It was because of her memory lapse.

Through another round of questioning, careful not to provoke her into a second episode of tears, I had learned several things about her whereabouts prior to being captured by the Circle.

After she ran away ten years ago, Cammie met a few people on the streets and formed a group of four friends. Renee, the clumsy inventor. Zachariah, the literary genius. Adrian, the reckless daredevil. And Spencer, the cunning leader of the pack. The five of them had been through thick and thin together, barely scraping by for most of their street lives. It wasn't until Spencer turned sixteen that things started looking up for them.

Spencer was able to get a job, albeit a low-paying one, as a bus boy at an old diner they used to sleep near. He would smuggle them food from the diner when he could without raising suspicion, and they gradually became more and more dependent on Spencer's ability to feed them. However, when Cammie turned sixteen a few years later, she decided to set out on her own to pursue a different way of life.

"I was sick of worrying about how I was going to survive each day," Cammie had said, clenching her fists. "I wanted a way out."

She was not proud of what she did in the years following her leave. While Spencer had given her what money he could spare, Cammie had spent most of it traveling away from the familiar streets she had once called home, hoping to get as far away as she could. She didn't realize how much bus and taxi fares would cost and had used up all of her money faster than she had anticipated. In her desperation, she had learned to pickpocket.

"I've always been a natural at blending into my surroundings," she told me, her eyes going distant. "It was almost too easy to slip my fingers into the purses and pockets of people without them noticing."

She always felt terrible about it afterwards. She wanted to pay them back, but she could find no other means of getting money. No one would hire a dirty teenage girl from the streets.

But then Cammie found out about a street fighting ring, held behind a rundown bar every weeknight, where people would place bets on fighters, giving the winner a cut of their money. From the rumors she heard, the winners often got a pretty hefty sum.

She knew she was no fighter at the time. At an average five feet four inches, Cammie looked small and awfully skinny next to the typical street fighters. But she didn't want to keep stealing money from people on the streets just to survive. So Cammie went to the street fights and stood on the sidelines, careful not to draw attention to herself, and watched. She studied the way the fighters moved, noticed how they deflected blows and delivered kicks and punches. During the day, she would practice what she learned the night before, using whatever materials she could find as her punching bag. Usually it was a big garbage bag she pulled out of a trash can, but sometimes, if she was lucky, she would find dirty pillows and stuffed animals people didn't want anymore.

Every day for months and months, she did this. No one bothered her at the street fights, and if anyone saw her punching trash bags during the day, they never said anything to her.

It took her almost a year to work up the courage to step up into the ring. Every time she thought about it, she would come up with another reason not to, telling herself that her balance still needed work, that she needed to fix her fighting stance, that her punch wasn't strong enough. Finally, on her seventeenth birthday, she jumped into the ring.

Cammie had been working on her figure in the months leading to her first street fight. She was still small in comparison to many of the street fighters, but she had more muscle to her than she did before. However, it was nothing in comparison to her first opponent.

He was called Bongo. She suspected it was because he banged on his chest like it was a drum before every fight. Bongo was a usual fighter there. She had seen him fight multiple times before and knew his strengths and weaknesses. He was massive and clumsy but delivered a nasty right punch. His left punch was more awkward and unsure, and his kicking was just unimpressive, but he was confident in his fighting stance.

Cammie, on the other hand, was a nervous wreck before the fight. She had to take several calming breaths before she was able to relax her composure. When prompted about her name, she said, "Call me the Chameleon."

It was what Spencer had sometimes called her when they were younger, after a long game of hide-and-seek in which he and their other friends had struggled to locate her. Cammie was always the last one to be found. Spencer had told her that she really had a gift for blending in, like a Chameleon. The nickname stuck.

With a signal by the referee, the fight began. Cammie immediately leaped for Bongo's left side and delivered a solid kick, sending him stumbling and groaning onto his left knee. Before he could get up again, she aimed a second kick at his face. He tried to punch her with his left fist, but she easily blocked it with one of her own. Finally, she jumped onto his back, punched him in the back of the head, and forced him face first onto the ground with a loud thud and another groan from Bongo.

Silence followed. After a minute, the referee slowly got over his shock and declared Cammie the winner. An enormous pile of bills and coins was pushed her way. No one had bet on her, so she took all of the money and ran.

Cammie could barely hold it all. She was sure that this was the very most money any street fighter had ever won, and she was incredibly proud of herself. She held her head high all the way back to the street alley she had been sleeping in.

The next morning, she took a bus back to her friends and told them about her victory. Their eyes went wide when she showed them the money she had won, and they all celebrated by going out to eat for the first time in their street lives, Cammie's treat. It was the happiest she had been in a long time.

Cammie had smiled wistfully at the memory. "That had been a good day," she told me.

The street fighting brought in large sums of money, especially since so many people underestimated her. A few months after her debut in the fighting ring, Cammie was able to bring her and her friends out of poverty. Renee could finally afford real parts for the little trinkets she liked to build, and Zachariah was no longer restricted to the public library for books. Adrian could quench his thirst for adventure, and Spencer could pursue his dream job: to become a secret agent.

They were rarely all in the same place at the same time again after that. Spencer and Adrian traveled a lot, no doubt causing trouble everywhere they went, and Renee repaired and invented little gadgets, which forced her to go out of town often for parts. Zachariah was the only one that really stuck around, having plenty of books to keep him in one place for a while, unless Adrian dragged him along on an adventure.

Cammie continued street fighting until she turned twenty-one, when she had saved up enough money to get out of the state. She had gone to visit her friends one last time, leaving them a small fortune and promising Spencer that she would write, though I suspected she didn't mean through the postal service, and then she was off, driving away in a high-tech car courtesy of Renee.

Then she had gone to a little city called Good Hope, found an apartment for cheap, and gotten a decent job at a bookstore. She adopted the name Melissa List and forgot all about Cammie Morgan until she was taken by the Circle. She hadn't seen any of her friends since she moved out of the state, except for Spencer, who she had visited once four months ago.

The last thing she remembered was going to work and being asked out by her co-worker.

That was three days ago.

I thought that she must remember something else, but she was certain that that was all that happened that day.

I didn't try to tell her otherwise because I didn't want to push her over the edge, but there was something about her story that bothered me. The fact that Cammie was unaccounted for for three days did not sit well with me. Anything could've happened during those three days.

While I was pondering over all of this, Bex and Grant were playing with the weapons in the basement and Liz and Jonas were giving Cammie an impromptu medical examination. Cammie tried to protest, but we didn't give her much of a choice.

None of us had any medical knowledge, other than basic first aid, but Liz and Jonas said they'd be able to operate the technology well enough. I entrusted them with the task.

I really hoped they didn't break anything. The medical equipment in the clinic belonged to the owner of the safe house we were in, and I didn't want to have to explain to them how it got broken.

After almost an hour of waiting to hear from Liz and Jonas, I saw Liz's head pop out from behind the clinic door. She had a solemn look on her face. "Zach, you might want to see this," she said, opening the door wider to wave me in.

I got up off the couch in the living room and hurried in after her.

Inside the clinic, I saw Jonas seated by a small cot in the middle of the room, Cammie lying on it, talking to Jonas. She sat up when she saw me enter.

"What is it?" she asked, her eyebrows raised.

Liz reached for an electronic tablet on a small counter and pulled an image up onto a nearby monitor. It was an x-ray scan of Cammie's back. But there was something lodged in the back of her neck. It looked almost like…

"A chip," Liz said, gesturing to the point on Cammie's neck.

Cammie squinted at the image, her hand coming up to cover her mouth. "How did that get there?" she asked, turning to Liz.

Jonas shook his head. "We have no idea. But we think the Circle might've… implanted it in your neck."

My eyes widened. "We have to get it out," I said.

Liz bit her lip. "Unfortunately, Jonas and I aren't qualified to perform a surgery like that… And even if we could, we aren't sure of the… consequences of it."

I threw my hands up. "What are you saying? That we should just leave the chip in her?" I asked, balling my fists. "We have no idea what that chip does. For all we know, the Circle could be tracking Cammie with it as we speak."

Jonas cleared his throat. "I've already run a threat assessment on the chip. It doesn't have any tracking mechanisms that I can detect. But it does seem to have a more… unpleasant purpose."

I turned to look at Cammie. She was staring at Jonas with furrowed brows. Then realization seemed to dawn on her.

"It's supposed to shock me," she whispered, averting her eyes.

I waited for her to say more, but when she didn't, I looked to Jonas. "What does she mean shock her?" I asked, folding my arms across my chest.

Jonas gulped. "The chip is placed near the base of her skull. We can't say exactly if it's embedded in her spinal cord or some other part of her nervous system, but we're very certain that it's designed to give her system a—well, a shock —when activated."

"And that's why we're afraid to remove it," Liz said, putting her tablet down. "We don't want to cause any damage to her nervous system, and I don't think we even have the proper equipment to perform such a delicate surgery, even if we knew how to."

I ran a hand through my hair. "So… what can we do to help Cammie?"

"I've already disabled the chip," Jonas answered, looking down at his lap. "They won't be able to use it on Cammie unless they reactivate it, and they'd have to be fairly close to her to achieve that. About 50 meters, I'd guess. The chip won't function properly from a distance."

My shoulders slumped. I felt completely and utterly helpless for the first time in my spy career, and there was nothing I could do to change that.

Liz looked just as dejected as I felt. "I wish there was more we could do." Addressing Cammie, she said softly, "You only received minor injuries from the fight. They should be fine. You can go now, if you'd like."

Cammie nodded and thanked Liz and Jonas before quickly slipping out of the clinic. I watched her go sadly, the door shutting quietly behind her.

I sighed. "Maybe I should…"

"Let her go," Liz cut in gently. "I think she needs to be alone for a little while."

I hated seeing Cammie like that, but I nodded at Liz's suggestion and sat down on the small cot she just vacated.

"There's something else," Liz said quietly, pulling up a chair beside me. Jonas had already left with his laptop, probably looking into more information on the chip and possible procedures for getting it out.

I turned to her. "What is it?" I asked, already preparing myself for the worst.

She sighed. "I didn't want to say anything with Cammie in the room, but… she has a lot of old… scars. On her arms, legs, neck. It… worries me."

I frowned. "Where from?"

Liz shook her head. "It's hard to tell. Most of them are at least a few years old, so they can't be from the Circle. But I would guess that they're old knife wounds." She looked up at me with wide, inquiring eyes. "Why would Cammie have so many knife wounds? I thought street fights were only fists and feet."

I nodded slowly. "They are."

Cammie was hiding something from us. I wasn't sure what it was or why she wasn't telling us, but I knew that I had to find out. We needed to learn to trust each other if we were going to be able to accomplish anything.

I stood up. "Thanks for that, Liz. I'll go talk to her and see what I can find out."

This time, Liz didn't object. "Be gentle with her," was all she said as I made my way around the small cot to the door.

"I will," I told her. Then I went off in search of Cammie.

Hey everyone! I'm back with another chapter! Thanks so much for all of the reads, reviews, follows, and favorites! I hope this chapter answered some questions you guys had from previous chapters. I tried to delve more into Cammie's past in this chapter, but I still have to keep some secrets!

Thank you white tiger freak for your feedback on the fight scene last chapter! I'm trying really hard to update more frequently. Please let me know if you see anything else I can work on.

For the Guest wondering about what happened to Cammie's other friends, all I can say is that Cammie honestly doesn't remember them meeting her at Starbucks three days ago. To her knowledge, they are still safe, doing whatever it is they've been doing since she left and went to Good Hope. But no worries, you'll find out what happened to them... eventually.

Also, I am really sorry for just now seeing this question! But for the Guest that asked about Macey, I still haven't figured out how to incorporate her into this story yet. If you guys have any ideas, let me know! I would love to hear them. I'll even give you credit if you give me an idea I like.

Thanks again for all of the encouragement. I love hearing from you guys. Until next I write!

-Sky