Remember Me?

14

A week after the lab break in, Howard had an intruder in his house. It was hard to know for sure that they were after the serum, but really no one had tried to break in his house until after the serum experiment. Erskine was killed for this formula. People were willing to kill for this, and Howard is kept it in his house. The day of the lab break in, I rushed over to his house after him. He quickly handed me the file folder asking me to hold it for him.

"Howard! I told you, you need to hide this! I'm a target too! This isn't a good idea." I warned.

"It's only for tonight, tomorrow I'll deal with it, but just hold it for tonight. It has to get out of my house." Howard pleaded. I sighed, the tan folder seemed to weigh a million tons. It felt like a cursed object, no one wanted to keep it. Howard had Jarvis drive me back to the New York Penthouse, where I kept the folder. I placed in the oven, a place I hoped no one would think off.

The next day Howard dealt with the folder, and for awhile we had confidence that the problem was over. A couple days later, Patricia said she had to call the police because someone had broken into my house in Vermont. I quickly told her that it wasn't an average bugler. Someone knew about my house in Vermont, and that was definitely suspicious. I didn't think anyone really knew about my house there, or where it was. It was on my file of course. There are bank statements, and home ownership papers that have the house listed under my name, but I didn't talk about it much. Not many people knew about it. Interestingly enough, the house was also listed in my SSR file. I had no doubt that someone could have gotten into my bank statements, or found some kind of paper on me, but this still felt like an inside job.

After a couple quiet weeks, I had stashed the thought of a double agent away in my mind. It wasn't the most important thing right now. Right now, I had to keep up my field work. I was jumping the ranks rather quickly. Mr. Colins, the Director of the SSR was having me go on missions he appointed himself. It was a pretty big deal, and I was enthusiastic to prove my worth. He had me all over the country, and sometimes the world working. It was mission after mission, and people were really starting to be impressed with me. It felt good to finally feel the respect I thought I deserved.

I was going deep under cover these next few weeks on an intelligence opt. I was supposed to gain trust working as a secretary for a company the SSR assumed was linked to a potential threat. Of course I was supposed to figure out the truth. This mission was lazily thrown on my desk without a single care. Mr. Colins never even looked at the mission, it wasn't his. It was written years ago, and no one had the time to look into it. It was a mission that kept being pushed down because we were spread so thin sometimes. I finally had the time and opened the file and got to work.

The next week, I was headed to a new job. It was all the way down in Maryland. I knew that pictures were going to be taken of me, for things like ID's so I made sure to change my appearance. My once chestnut brown hair was bleached blond, and given a Hollywood curl to them. I had kept it's length at my shoulders. I added some thick framed classes too. It wasn't anything too spectacular but it was enough to not to be recognized by anyone.

My first day, I put on a skirt, something I hadn't had on in a while. I wore a blue skirt that flared out as it went to my knees and a white button up skirt. I wore heels of course, and added some gold jewelry to make myself look more girly. If a woman was hired back then, they were supposed to look like a stereotypical woman, nothing threatening nor powerful.

Within the first week I easily made friends, I tried on a different persona, one much more open. I enjoyed going undercover to some degree, it was nice to be someone different for awhile. The issue with being undercover was the constant paranoia, I was always scared someone knew about me or saw through my façade. Sometimes people would ask a question innocently that made my heart thump out of my chest. The more undercover work, I did the easier it is to lie, and to improvise. But those first few missions are terrifying.