Full Circle: 1980 - A Gallagher Girls Story

Chapter Four

"Matt." His name sounds new on her lips, floating across the distance between them. He looks up—can't help himself—away from his current conversation, because when Abigail Cameron calls his name, he is all but destined to answer. She draws him in with a single finger, beckoning him closer. "You're with us."

The sisters share a certain intensity, but they do so in opposite directions. They are careless versus careful, impulse versus consideration, and heart versus mind. So it only makes sense that if Abby has come to adore Matt, then Rachel has come to detest him. "Abigail, you had one job."

When he does reach them, Abby wraps her arm around Matt's shoulders, her other hand landing firm on her hip. "He's with us."

Rachel cuts her a look, but then her gaze catches on Matt and she bites at her lower lip. Without another word on the matter, she simply leans back over her table, arms wide and expression settled as she considers a set of blueprints laid out before her. "Yeah," she says, eyes dancing across paper. "Alright, Nebraska—what is your experience with tactical evasion?"

The light falls stark over the blueprints, and the faintness of the reflection falls along the sharpest parts of her face. Chin, cheeks, brows. "Uh," he sputters. "Minimal, I would say."

"You don't know what tactical evasion is," she says, "do you?"

"I'm more of a SIGINT guy. Interception, and the like."

Another look at Abby. It doesn't take a cryptologist to decipher their silent codes, but if it did, at least Matt would be in more familiar territory. "Have you ever encountered a trap," Rachel says, simply. "And if you have, how good were you at getting around it?"

"Well I've been locked in a cattle truck more times than once, and I'd say I was pretty quick about getting out of it."

"I don't want you to get out of a trap," Rachel says. "I want you to avoid it in the first place—"

"Ladies." It's another voice, this time Lincoln, and it sends a shockwave through their unofficial trio. Rachel rolls her shoulders back. Matt holds his chin up. Even Abby lets her arms fall back down to her side. "You've assembled your team?"

Rachel's hesitancy evaporates by the time she says, "Yes, sir."

"Good thing." Then it's his turn to cut a glance at Matt. It's a short, studied sort of look that quickly finds its way to Abby. "Because you're up."

Camp Peary is full of secrets, some of which Matt has discovered during his training and some of which will remain a secret to him, even long after he is gone. If Peary has a worst-kept secret, it's the Bug House—a three-story training simulation made up of plywood, windows, trip wires, and the most technologically advanced bugs that the Office of Technical Service has to offer.

He's heard rumor of its difficulties, its weaknesses, and the recent failures of his classmates. There's talk of hidden alarms and secret corridors. It's the type of spying that Matt ain't too keen on, if only because his closest comparable experience is the Stuarts' annual corn maze—and he's just not sure the two are made equal. He's going to stand out. He's going to get noticed.

His thoughts seem to echo through the corridor as Lincoln leads them toward their latest test. Matt gets to thinking, then hoping, then praying that this won't be his last. He's almost made it through the first week, but Lincoln's statistics are always lingering at the back of his mind, and he's got no interest in disappointing the people who got him here.

"You're a liability." Rachel comes up from behind, her words landing on his shoulder. It's eerie, the way she can reach through him and just know. Know what he's thinking. Know how he got here. Know him. His mind wanders toward X-Men and empaths, but the far more likely scenario is that she is deeply and assuredly skilled at what she does. "So while we're in there, you're either with me, or you're with Abby—got it?"