Look out for the <>~

"We did it, Annalise!" Auggie said and gave me a kiss on the cheek.

I smiled at him. I liked this attention. "Cool! What did we do?" I asked as I stopped in my tracks, clueless as I looked around at the sunny park we were walking in. I looked up at the sun and smiled, summer was always my favorite.

"We brought down MIA, we did it, YOU did it."

He was so happy, it made me happy. "Oh yeah, I forgot." The scene around us changed to an old building that was damp and cold. It had a funny smell that made me wrinkle my nose. "Where are we?"

"Oh that's easy we're at the...."

But he was cut off by a man with gray hair and a bright smile who said, "Annalise, sweet heart, I missed you." And gave me a hug.

But I didn't hug him back. I froze stiff. I had no idea who this man was and why he was in my space. He smelt weird and he had to be the age of an grandfather. I pushed him away, waning nothing to do with him.

Disappointment was clear on his face for some reason. "Annalise, it me, your father," he said.

That was a lie. He was too old. "You're not my dad," I said, shaking my head as I took a step back from him. I racked my head with old memories of him. "I would have recognized you."

"But I am," he said and put his hand on my shoulder as his face started transforming.

I jumped back from him in fear as his skin melted off.

"Annalise, look at me when I'm talking to you."

By now, I was looking at a skeleton. I screamed and tried to run but the door was getting further from me. Suddenly I felt a pair of cold bony hands wrap around mine. "Get off of me!"

"That's not how you treat your dad," the bones responded.

I shook my head. "You're not my dad! My dad's alive!" I tried to push him away. I had to get away from him. The stranger in front of me was not related to me.

"No I'm not, and soon you'll be with me, forever, like this," he said his grip started to get tighter.

I was suffocating. "Auggie help me!" I yelled looking for him from across the room.

Auggie stayed still. "I'm sorry Annelise, your grave has already been dug," Auggie said coolly with the same hard and unwavering eyes that Toby had then walked out of the door, leaving me behind with this monster.

"No Auggie, Help!" I started crying. I thought I had a team, a family, but I was all alone. Deep down I knew Auggie would leave me. Suddenly the building started melting around us and quickly I found myself at a grave site.

In silence the skeleton drug me down a row of graves and stopped at a grave marker that read,

Annalise Phillips

May she rest in peace with her family.

"Time to join us, Annalise. We've been waiting." He pushed me into the empty grave and started burying me with dirt.

I screamed as loud as I could as I felt the ground shaking.

I opened my eyes and shot upright. I looked around my room as I wiped sweat from my forehead. I was covered in it. I took a deep breath as I tried to control my breathing. I looked at Auggie who was right beside me with concern written all over his face. It was a dream. My eyes started to well up with tears. He was still here with me.

He wrapped his arms around me and brought me into him. "Shhh, Annalise, it's just a dream," he coped softly.

I buried my head into his chest. It was just a dream, nothing more than that. It'll be ok. I was ok. I took another deep breath to try to clear my mind. "My dad was dead, Auggie, and he was going to drag me down with him. And you wouldn't help me."

Auggie pulled me out of the hug to look at me better. He looked hurt even though it was a dream. "Annalise, I will NEVER do that, I'll always be by your side."

"I know you won't, but I don't want my dad to be dead, Auggie," I said to him as my thoughts flooded my mind. These past months were too much of an emotional roller coaster. I wanted off of this ride.

I wished that B26 never talked to me. There was so much that I wished never happened. I didn't care if there were rumors about me, I wanted that old self.

"He won't be."

I was silent for a moment as I chewed on his words. He said it with such confidence as if he already knew the facts it made me want to believe him.

Auggie stretched then yawned then checked his phone. He ran his strong hands through his messy bedhead light brown hair and shook it, causing it to bounce slightly. "It's almost 10."

"Did I wake you?"

He paused in thought, not wanting to say the truth. "Yes, you screamed a couple times during the night."

I frowned. "Sorry."

He shrugged as if not minding it. "Don't be. I think now is a good time to wake up any how."

I nodded at him. I felt my stomach rumble. I was hungry. "Want to eat?"

He smiled slightly. Now I was speaking his language. I knew that as long as I kept him fed, he was a happy camper. "Ok," he said as he got up from the bed.

I followed his lead and went down the stairs and to the kitchen. I pulled out some cereal from the pantry and got 2 bowls and 2 spoons. "Here you go, food." I said and sat at the table next to him. Sadly, I couldn't provide him with anything better then this because my fridge was constantly empty.

<>

"Cereal, breakfast of champions," he said as he started to dish up his meal.

We ate in silence, letting the only noise be our chewing until finally I finished my bowl.

We sat there for a few more minutes in silence as we enjoyed this happy moment together. In this moment, all the drama that circled our lives didn't matter. The CIA, MIA , B26, none of it mattered. All that did was him and I, together, eating breakfast, like a normal couple would do on a weekend.

Finally I broke the silence as Auggie finished his bowl of cereal. "What do you want to do on this bright sunny day? It's not like anything can rain on our day today." I said, knowing all too well that our plans could change in a second. We were sitting on grenades', hoping that they were dead but knew they could explode at any moment.

He smiled, catching my joke. "I think you have been hanging out with me too long. You're starting to get my humor."

I smiled at him then chuckled. That wasn't bad at all. I envied his ability to laugh at any thing even if it was in a high pressure moment. "I'm not afraid of that."

He smiled at me then said, "I don't know, maybe you should be. My humor can get me into trouble sometimes."

I laughed because I knew all to well the trouble he has gotten into. Memories of my grandmother scolding him popped into my mind. What was frustrating was that she always continued on afterwards like nothing happened. If I was scolded by her, she would mark that in her book and hold it against me for longer then I could count for.

I was getting so tired of her holding me to this high level of expectations. It made me want to leave the CIA. Maybe I owed the CIA less then I thought I did. I was so tired of feeling worthless, I was tired of the CIA and their people adding extra stress to my life. I didn't need this. As I thought about it, I realized that maybe it was time to think about leaving. After I saw this MIA out, maybe it was my turn to find my own way. I had never tried to navigate life by myself and it was time to not rely on the CIA or my grandmother to guide me. I had grown a lot, and I am ready to find my own way.

"Annalise? Are you here?" Auggie asked as he waved a hand in front of me, calling my attention back to him.

I shook my head to clear it. "Yeah. I'm here."

"What where you thinking about?"

I smiled at him. I wasn't ready to speak my thoughts out loud. I had to sort through them myself before I stated them. Maybe the idea of leave the CIA was premature. After all, who was I without the CIA. It was the only thing I knew. "Nothing much, just remembered the time when my grandmother yelled at you for breaking your office chair."

Auggie smiled. "Which time?"

I chuckled. "The last time," I stated as I remembered him breaking his chair because he leaned too far back into it a few months ago.

He nodded. "That was a good time."

I laughed. He pushed scolding off like it wasn't a big deal. Auggie was one of the few people that was not afraid of my grandmother and I still didn't understand it.

Breaking me from my thoughts was when Auggie cupped my cheek. "You don't smile enough. I like seeing you smile more," he said then kissed my cheek. "We have all day, what are we going to do today?"

I looked around my messy and empty kitchen. It was clear that almost anything in my house has been neglected. I had no time to normally accomplish any of my daily tasks. As boring as it was, I needed to do house chores. "We can weed my flower bed." At least the outside of my house would look nice if anything else.

He nodded, taking the suggestion. "Ok." He got up from floor and held out his hand for me. I grabbed it and got pulled up into his arms. "I'm sorry..." he whispered into my ear, his words and breath tickling the side of my face. Before I had time to ask why he picked me up and carried me out the door.

"Hey stop! What are you doing?" I laughed out as he set me on the green grass. I looked at him and smiled. "What was that for?"

He shrugged then knelt down in front of the flower bed. "I couldn't help myself. Your smile is too perfect not to see it at any moment of the day."

I blushed at his complement.

"So where do we start?"

"Right here," I said as I started weeding the corner of the bed. I didn't care if I got dirt between my hands or under my nails. I got in there to do the job right the first time. I didn't want to let anything to grow back so soon and removing the whole plant, roots included was the only way to do this.

After a few minutes of weeding my hands were filthy but the flower bed was looking better. I smiled to myself then looked over at Auggie to see that he was not pulling up the roots of the weeds, just the tops off of them. I frowned, knowing that those plants would grow back quickly, making my job harder. My goodness, has he ever weeded before? "Auggie, stop. You need to pull the roots out to kill the plant from growing again."

He looked at me with a slight frown. "I knew that," he said then pulled the roots up from another plant.

I rolled my eyes at him. "Sure you did." I watched him for a minute as he pulled up a few more weeds. How did I let my flower bed get so bad? The weeds were over taking the small flowers I planted in the spring.

I knew it was because MIA was taking the rest of my free time. No matter what we do to MIA , bug the computers, mess around with their plans, they still continue to spread like these weeds. It'll still grow back but if we get the 'roots' we can kill it for sure. But who were the roots? The leaders. We needed to go straight towards them. We were wasting our time doing the small jobs. We needed to get in there, get our hands dirty and finish this off finally.

"I just got an idea, Auggie," I said then explained to him about the roots and how to attack them.

Auggie agree with all of my thoughts but he had on concern. "It's a good plan but who are the leaders?" Auggie asked after a minute of chewing on my words.

I nodded at him. I had no idea who they were but I had one guess. "General Smith has to be one of them."

"That makes a lot of sense. But how are we going to find him and prove that he's done something wrong?"

I frowned, now came the hard steps. "That's the next step on my list. Gram said that she was going to give us a list of board members. We can look through that and see if Smith's friends on the board and we can go from there. How about I call her now about it." I got up to get my phone in my pocket, not wanting to wait another minute.