"I'm Mila, by the way."

Zayn looked at her, studying the way her hands shook and her chest heaved with every ragged breath. She's scared, he realized. With a curt nod, he gently pushed past her to pick up his gun, placing it into his weapons belt next to the one he had picked up only minutes earlier.

He took a deep breath. "Malik," was all that he said, giving her a brief smile. Truthfully, he felt embarrassed that an awkward, little woman had been the one to save his life. No one had saved his life in years - it was usually he who saved others.

He looked down at his belt and then back up at her. She wore a confused expression. "Could I at least get your first name?"

"Zayn," he corrected and she smiled at him. He glanced down at the shoe she held in her hand and grinned. "Why didn't you just kick him?"

She gave him yet another confused glance but smiled when she saw his eyes on the item in her hands. "I'm not a big fan of heels to be honest. Besides, these ones were bought in a sale - they're not the best."

He stared at her. He'd never been able to understand the love women had for shoes. To him, they were just things you wore to protect your feet, nothing more. He looked down at her bare feet and frowned.

"You'll have to put something on your feet."

She nodded in agreement, wiggling her toes. "I have some flats in my suitcase - back in the compartment."

Zayn let out a sigh. "Well, you better run back and get them. Be quick or I'll leave without you," he warned, watching as she took off. His eyes lingered on her backside for a moment too long and he shook his head to avert his gaze.

He knelt down beside the man that Mila had knocked out. His pockets were empty, and so was his weapons belt. Already, Zayn had managed to take someone's gun and knife. Inspecting the wound on the back of the man's head made him cringe. How the fuck can a shoe do that? he wondered, looking at the faint dent that was started to bruise.

"She complained about me nearly killing someone," he heard himself muttering. Footsteps sounded behind him and he turned to find Mila making her way back towards him, no longer holding a shoe. Wearing flat shoes made her look smaller than ever, and Zayn grinned at her shortness.

"Let's go, then," Mila said, her voice quiet. He nodded to her and stepped over the unconscious man before heaving open the door of the carriage. The temperature dropped as the outside air made its way into the train and Mila shuddered. Zayn looked over his shoulder to make sure she was OK, but the slight green tinge to her face made him frown.

"You OK?" he asked.

"I didn't kill him, did I?" she asked, looking over her shoulder at the man.

Zayn shook his head. "Just bashed his head in a little. He's fine."

"Are you sure?-"

"Yes, now c'mon," Zayn snapped, cutting her off.

Mila had never knocked someone out before, and she wondered just how strong her tiny limbs were. I could have hurt him badly, she feared as she followed Zayn.

"What are we doing now?" she wondered as Zayn stepped outside of the carriage. She slowly followed after him, shaking like a leaf as she realized they were about to step outside the train. The coupler connecting the carriages together was made from thick, tough metal, but the passing scenery still made Mila feel woozy as she stepped out of the safety of the carriage.

Zayn leaned across her and pulled the door shut after them. Mila's hair blew wildly around her face and she had to spit a few strands out every now and again. She didn't dare look to the left or right, knowing that all she would see was the outside world whizzing past her.

"You look very work-a-day," Zayn shouted to her over the wind.

Mila took a look over herself; white blouse with a black skirt that fell just below the knees and a matching black blazer to finish. She looked ordinary compared to the spy standing in all black and weapons beside her.

"I was at the hospital for a few hours before I left this morning," she shouted back, wondering why they weren't moving into the other carriage. "My dad works with medicine too."

"Nice," was all he said before he suddenly jumped forward, across the gap between the carriages. Mila watched him moving lithely, almost gracefully. He expects me to jump that, she panicked. Zayn made it safely to the opposite part of the train, holding onto the railings to stop himself from falling. "C'mon, jump!"

"We're on a moving train!" she shrieked, grabbing out for the rails beside her. "I could die!"

"I didn't."

"You're trained to do shit like this!"

He just rolled his eyes at her and reached out a hand across the jump. Realizing there was nowhere else for her to go, Mila held her breath as she leaned forward and took his hand before leaping across the space. The feeling of ground beneath her feet was magical, and Mila looked up into Zayn's eyes, noticing the way his arms were securely wrapped around her smaller figure.

"Good one, Karate Kid," he commented before sliding open the door ever so slightly. Mila peered over his shoulder, just able to make out the empty carriage before them. "Keep quiet, Mila. There's spies everywhere on this train."

She felt her cheeks redden as he said her name. The sickness she felt at the back of her throat hadn't yet passed and she took two deep breaths before pressing her back flat against the side of the door.

"I feel ill," she announced. "Is this honestly what you do every day of your life?"

Zayn shrugged. "Pretty much."

Mila smiled at him, wondering how someone so young could have gotten himself caught in a life like the one he lived. Mila knew just from watching movies that a spy life was a hard life.

"God, you put yourself in danger a lot, don't you?" she asked.

"Yeah. It's my job," he said, still peering through the door. "Oh... I never said thank you for before."

Mila knew he was talking about the accident with the shoe. "It was nothing. I've saved hundreds of lives before in the hospital, even though I'm not actually a proper nurse yet. Just in training."

Zayn looked away from the door and at her, a small smirk on his face. "So you're good at saving people but also skilled in hurting them. I like it."

He gestured for her to move closer to him and she did. He slowly pulled open the carriage door and nudged her inside, a hand on her shoulder. Mila remained quiet, like she had been told. She scanned the inside of the carriage; the compartments on the left and windows on the right. Everything seemed quiet. Too quiet.

A small shriek escaped her lips when Zayn pulled open the first compartment door and flung her inside. Not a second later, a gun shot was fired and she looked up in alarm. Zayn had crawled in after her, leaning around the side of the door to fire at the shooter.

"Oh God," she muttered, covering her ears. "I'm going to die."

Zayn fired his gun twice and Mila felt a light thump against the ground as if something had fallen. Her eyes widened when realizing it was the person Zayn had been shooting at. There was no mistaking the sound as that of a fallen body, and Mila's eyes widened.

"Are you alright?" he asked her, pulling her to her feet.

She nodded bravely, trying to ignore that she was now standing with a murderer. "Yeah... just swell. It's not as if you just killed someone, you know?" She laughed suddenly, hoping that it was all just a bad dream she was yet to wake up from. "Ha, this is all so bad."

"Get a grip, woman," Zayn told her. "I could have been killed earlier by those men and then who would be left on here to help you? Those lads would have shot you on sight."

Mila took a seat on the bench and looked around the compartment they had landed in - it looked identical to the one she had been in before, only everything was in one piece with no bullet holes.

"Tsk, tsk," she heard Zayn say. She looked over at him to find he was already staring at her, his eyes narrowed ever so slightly. His eyes scanned her over several times which made her feel slightly uncomfortable.

"I'm sorry if you disagree with the blouse, but I like it," she eventually snapped when his gaze lingered on her chest a little longer than what was necessary.

He shook his head frantically. "I wasn't going to say anything like that, it's just ... that skirt is so damn tight. How the hell can you move in that thing? C'mere."

"I'm sorry?" she asked as he took a step towards her.

"Stand up," he instructed. Mila felt herself rising, her heart racing as he reached for one of the two knives now tucked in his belt. Mila noticed he had dropped the gun on the bench where she had been sitting. "Trust me," he said to her.

"Trust you?" she asked, wondering where he was going with it. Only when he fell to his knees in front of her did she feel herself shaking. Mila had never thought of what it would be like to have a man on his knees before her, but there was no denying the sudden feeling of power she had as she looked down on the spy. "I-er, what are you doing down there?"

"Helping," he said before he pinched the material of her skirt between his fingers and slashed the knife through it. She jumped back suddenly.

"What the fuck?" she shrieked. The skirt Mila wore now had a strip of material hanging loosely before her legs, and Zayn hastily tore it away until the piece of clothing shortened and stopped just above the knee. However, he didn't stop there. He cut two slits up the sides of the skirt, showing off a little more flesh than Mila was comfortable with.

"There," he said, standing. He scanned her over again and nodded, a pleased grin spreading over his face. "Much better."

"Better?" Mila gasped. "How is stripping me better?"

"Being able to actually move helps when you're in a dangerous situation. That skirt was preventing you from being able to move properly. It made your arse look good though," he told her, before sliding the blazer off of her shoulders. He gently dropped it on the bench and pulled her mobile out of her breast pocket. He folded her blazer over it to keep it hidden. "You won't be needing any of that for a while."

"What if I get a call?" she asked.

He shrugged. "Call whoever it is back a little later. Right now we just need to worry about staying alive."

"Won't I need my ticket?" she asked, remembering stuffing it back into the blazer pocket.

Zayn shook his head. "The Association are meeting this train when it arrives in London, so no one will check it."

Mila replayed his words over and over again in her head and finally, her curiosity got the better of her."What exactly is the Association?"

He froze for a moment, and Mila counted ten seconds before he released a deep sigh and shrugged his leather-clad shoulders. "What harm could it do?" he muttered quietly. "The Association is a secret corporation of spies who do - as you would say - 'cliche spy things'. I'm part of the Association, and like I said before, I'm on a mission trying to find out who infiltrated the Headquarters and stole something important."

Mila tried her best to process the information Zayn was feeding her, but everything just seemed too surreal to her. If Eddie had been there, she knew he'd be having a fit - he was into spy movies and crime dramas. For a moment, she wondered if she was living inside of his head.

"What did they steal?" Mila asked.

"We don't know," he admitted, an annoyed expression passing over his features. "That's why we can't fail this mission. They were sneaky and stole our charts as well - that's where we list down all of our documents and weapons - so we have no idea what they took. If we still had the charts, we'd just look through the lists and mark off everything that was still there. Bastards."

"So, you're running after these guys to retrieve something, but you don't know what that something is?" Mila recalled, nodding to herself. "Christ, why didn't you make copies?"

Zayn was silent for a moment, as if her comment had made him think deeply. "Shut up," he eventually muttered. "I'm not in charge of the charts."

"Well, at least this teaches the lot of you a valuable lesson. You need to up your security."

"I'm not with security either," he snapped. "We've been following these guys all over the UK, and today they're returning to London, so that gives us the perfect opportunity to advance on them. We're gonna get these insolent sods this time."

Mila nodded again, finally able to understand some of the things he was saying. It was still difficult to believe that her supposed-to-be peaceful trip back home had been shattered by a spy dressed as a woman. What would Ed and Jo say about that? How was she supposed to tell them about her journey back home?

You don't, said a voice in the back of her head. You heard the lad - it's a secret agency he's part of. Secret.

She laughed quietly to herself. "Spies," she muttered, looking up at Zayn. His eyes were already locked on her's. "They really exist."

He gave her a boyish grin. "Oh, we certainly do."

#Zila

Meh, this chapter didn't go how I'd originally planned, but I still hope you enjoyed :)

I still don't have an updating schedule, but updates may not be that fast because I've missed a lot of school as I was off for the majority of last week with an awful cold -_- so I'll have a lot of catch up to do for that

Who else watched the livestream? The fan fiction discussion was a tad awkward and so was the part about the album leaking (it's amazing, oops)

But the lads are on The X Factor tonight! So excited, they'll be great :D

Cazza