Entry 1: CAS

My name is Amber Hoover. I started this journal to practice my writing skills, not for it to be open to the world. By the time this is finished, it should be burned. Secrets like this shouldn't be accessible by just anybody.

This is my story.

When I turned twelve, men from the CIA came to my house and told me they wanted me in their new American Intelligence division called CAS, which is an acronym for Crime Annihilation Society. They were searching for young people to be trained as spies. Not to brag (I'm just stating the facts), I'm a born genius. I'm also a professional hacker. I'd get in trouble a lot for logging onto people's social media pages just to show them I could, not to post vulgar posts or anything like that.

My parents didn't want me to go, but I did. I didn't have many friends and I was really excited about getting a government job, which had been my dream for the longest time. I was scared at first, but I decided to do it.

Believe it or not, I'm a genius as well. I may not use my brain half the time, but I'm smarter than all the kids in my grade. People made fun of me for being so smart, so I purposely got questions wrong and tried not to be better than anyone else.

I was also twelve when CAS recruited me. My older brother, Neil, had been in the CIA. He told me stories and said, "I'll have a spot just for you, Dylan, when you get older. Right at my side." Unfortunately, when I was ten, Neil was killed on a mission. Since then, I've been determined to find Neil's murderer and get revenge. Several people tell me it was just an accident, a trigger-happy amature who shot him, but I had a feeling that wouldn't go away that there was something more.

My parents forbade me from joining the CIA, so I ran away. Ever since Neil was killed, they tried to keep me well out of harm's way, but trouble always seemed to find me. One time, when I was about eight or nine, I got lost in the woods. Neil had given me survival tips that I tried to follow, but I didn't remember them. Long story short, I stumbled upon a pack of wolves and my screams of terror was the only way I was found. My dad shot the leader of the wolf pack and it had scarred me for life. It had been the first time that I had seen anything killed in real life. Sure, I'd seen it on tv, but this was different. My mom held me tight and told me not to look, but I did. I hated blood after that. Kinda ironic that I'm now CAS' top weapons specialist.

After I had ran away, I ran to the airport and had caught the CIA men just before they were going through airport security. They almost took me home, but decided my skill was better than anything and that I was old enough to make my own decisions, although I wasn't. My parents reluctantly let me go over a phone call on the condition that I couldn't go out on the field until I was at least sixteen and I had to come home every break I got. I agreed to these terms and flew in a private jet to Washington D.C.. I loved every minute of it. I'd lived in Chicago all my life and had only ridden in a plane once before when we went on a family trip to Florida and when to Disney World when I was five. This was totally different, and not the fact that I was traveling better than first class either. This was a path to my future. There was no turning back.

Entry 2: CAS (cont.)

CAS was nothing like I thought it would be. It was more like a boarding school than a high class military branch operation. We were all assigned sleeping quarters and a roommate. My roommate is a Chinese girl named Tai Ching Pearson. She was adopted and has three siblings. She really nice and we get along well. She's an excellent fighter, but she's even better with medicines. She's training to be a field doctor. 

The first time that I met Dylan was in the cafeteria about a week after I came to CAS. He had been walking past me when he tripped and his glass of juice had spilled all over me. His face turned bright red and he apologized to me about a dozen times and helped me clean it up before rushing to an empty table and burying his head in his arms. He looked so lonely and embarrassed that I decided to go and sit with him and strike up a conversation. His eyes did seem to drift to the purple juice stains on my white cardigan, but I ignored it, trying to show him that I didn't care. 

Dylan always found  a way to make me laugh. I didn't know how or when, but we soon became best friends. It probably had something to do with both our roommates having crushes on each other but never wanting to admit it and dragging each of us along since they didn't want to be left alone in a room with one another. 

I'm not exactly sure when I first noticed the beautiful blue of Dylan's eyes, or the floating feeling I got when I heard his laugh, or how his dirty blonde hair reflected the sunlight so perfectly. I denied my feelings for him a thousand times, at least before the accident.

I had been training when I got the news that there had been a 'mishap' with the unit Dylan trained with. They had been learning how to avoid landmines and how to dismantle them. Dylan had triggered one on accident and had made sure everyone had gotten out of the way before it went off. It wasn't enough to kill him, but apparently it was a standard training mine either. Someone had placed it there on accident and Dylan had payed the price.

I rushed to his hospital room to find it blocked off. They were performing a surgery  and I wasn't allowed inside. It wasn't until around one in the morning until I could see him and it was still another hour until he woke up. "Amber? What happened? Why am I in the hospital? And why does my left leg hurt?" He had asked me, piling one question after another. I've never been one to sugarcoat things, so I told him straight out, "You stepped on a landmine. They had to amputate your leg." I will always remember the horrified look on his face as he tore back the covers to look at his leg that now ended at the knee. "A-Amber...will they send me home?" I couldn't help but laugh at his question. Most thirteen year olds would want to know if they could still walk after they lose a leg, but he was more worried about leaving CAS. It took me longer than I would like to admit that I realized that he didn't want to leave CAS because he didn't want to leave me.

Losing that leg was the hardest thing that had ever happened to me, but it would have been a lot harder without Amber by my side through it all. I came to love the way her white smile looked in contrast to her chocolate brown skin. She always smelled like vanilla. I love that smell.

In those first few years, neither of us admitted feelings for each other. We just become closer, so close that Chief, aka Brandon Hearthing, head of CAS, decided to make us partners. We trained together and, eventually, go on missions together. My parents had been happy that I'd made a friend at CAS and they knew that I liked her before I did. They didn't try to push us together, but the way they treated her, she could've been their daughter.

After I lost part of my leg, I was taken off training for two months and given the opportunity to go home. I told them that I could still be a spy, even with half a leg missing, and they went through with Rehab. It was the worst thing I'd ever done in my life, but it brought me a whole lot closer to Amber. It lead to me, red faced and scared, admitting my feelings when we were just getting done with Rehab. I still remember exactly what I said. "Amber, I wouldn't have gotten through this without you. I know we're partners and all, and you're one of my closest friends, and I don't want this to ruin our friendship or anything, but I've just been dying to tell you that...I-I kinda like you. Like, more than a friend." She just laughed lightly and hugged me tightly and said, "I've noticed, stupid! I kinda like you too."

We didn't start dating right away, which was good since we were so young. CAS made us grow up fast, but as thirteen year olds, we would've broken up over something really stupid. And to be honest, after we both admitted our feelings, all the awkwardness went away in our friendship. We become really close and I knew that I would marry her someday.

"Hey, Amber," I asked her one day when we were lying in the grass during one of our breaks. "When we're older, are we still going to be friends?"

"Nope," Amber said. "We'll be married, idiot. We're gonna be way more than friends." I liked the thought of being married to Amber and we had in depth conversations about what we wanted in the future, even before we officially started dating at age fourteen. We both decided we'd stop being spies when we have our first kid, since it would be too dangerous when we had so much to lose. Amber wanted to become a doctor and I wanted to be a pilot. We'd live in a large town, have our kids go to the local school, and make friends with our neighbors. It was the perfect future in my mind. Sadly, life rarely goes the way you want it to.