•Night Angel•

CHAPTER X - HAVE YOU SEEN MY CHILDHOOD?

Sophia's POV - 30th January 1997 - 1 year later

Today makes two years since I've been in Daylight. It's been exactly 730 days, 5 hours, 30 minutes and 45 seconds. No, I haven't been counting. I just did the math.

I woke up earlier than usual, I don't know why. Maybe I'm just surprised at how much time has gone by. Two years since I was almost kidnapped, two years since I became a different person. Don't get wrong though, I'm okay with it. I haven't gone completely insane or paranoid like Louise (she is crazy, really). I haven't gone full on assassin mode, which is good. Also considering I'm only ten, almost eleven, I'd say it's going pretty well. I'm doing great in all my classes, according to uncle Pierre. Can't say that my teachers tell me that as well, because they don't, they shouldn't, they can't.

The whole point of making us tough, smart, cold, serious, unbreakable spies, is not to congratulate us on everything we do, that's not how it works. They say it's our job, our duty and responsibility to do it perfectly. We don't need cheers and a "good job", everytime we do something. We're not kids anymore.

I mean, biologically and physically, we are. But mentally, we're not. We act like adults, speak like adults, behave like adults. We've been ripped from our childhood since the moment we stepped foot in the compound. I don't mean it in a bad way. Instructors and trainers are tough and strict, but not mean to a point where they mistreat us. We all know that this is the way for things to work. And so far, they have.

I'm not gonna lie, I'm forgetting how it felt to play with toys. I miss the feeling of just running in the fields with my mum, or Juliette or my dad. I miss the feeling of fresh grass in contact with my bare feet. The feeling of excitement when I played hide and seek with the house management or my old school friends. I miss movie nights with my family, going to a toy shop, or a candy store. I miss going to the fair, or the beach. We haven't touched a toy in two years.

Instead of holding dolls, we now hold guns in our hands. Instead of magic wands, we hold knives. Instead of learning how to throw balls, we learn how to throw knives as well, how to handle them and maneuver them, and do tricks, basically. Instead of hiding to play hide and seek, we learn how to hide in plain sight so we don't get killed. We practice ballet, not because it's a nice art, but because it helps us with being delicate and as Denis says, and I've said it a million times, but it makes us unbreakable. It makes us resistant. It gives us the ability to take down or kill someone for that matter, without being detected. They never need to see us coming.

We were supposed to have a couple or more years of childhood, but we don't. Not anymore. And by the looks of it, no one seems to care at all. Not even me. We have learned that this is the only way.

I stood up from my bed and decided to get ready. Today, after 5 months was day 2 of visits. That's also something that makes Daylight different from the Red Room. We can have visitors, (which maybe sounds like we're in jail) and the sole purpose of that is that we still have humanity left in us. We are not just "killing machines''. We still are allowed to behave like humans, but only with family. Once visits are done, we all go back to being serious and stone cold spies in training. And once we get to go on the field, we'll get rid of that humanity and do what we were trained to do. I know it sounds messed up coming from a 10 year old's mouth, but it is true.

Once I had taken a shower and got dressed and my roommates were ready too, we left our room at 7:30am sharp and went to have breakfast.

All of us were supposed to be punctual in everything we did, there was no tolerance for unpunctuality. We all learned that the first time Francois came and reprehended us and gave us a talk of how it was also something we needed to learn in order to have successful missions.