The Company

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

I walked out of the building briskly with the girl running to keep up with my long strides, secretly I was hoping to lose her but that didn’t happen as she was hot on my trail. “Hey my name is Amelia Potts but you can call me Lilly, what’s your name?” was the first question she asked, I ignored her and continued to walk away from the building. “So where are we going? What do I call you? When are we going to start? When did you start? How did you start? How long did it take you? What is-“

“Shut up!” I exclaimed facing her, I hailed a cab quickly and held the door open for her but before she entered I stopped her and lowered myself to her level “enough with the questions and the talking” she began to open her mouth again but I waved my hand in her face “nope! From now on the only time you talk is when you are spoken to or if you’re on the verge of death. Understand?” she gave a meek nod “good. Now get in.”

She got in quickly and with a sigh of frustration I followed suit, the hotel they had put us in wasn’t too far from HQ so we arrived in a matter of minutes. The room was of decent size with twin beds beside each other, I dropped my bag to the ground and sat at the desk while Amelia hopped onto the bed and switched the TV on.

I ripped open the envelope they had given me and began to read and learn what my new life was; there were 2 passports and a driver’s licence inside along with a piece of paper with our new life. It was kind of depressing to see that my new ‘life’ had been reduced to nothing but a slide of A4 but I quickly shrugged it off. They gave us the bones of our new life so we could flesh out the rest ourselves.

“Ok what have they told you about your new life?”

“Umm…” she hesitated at first but cleared her throat and carried on “they told me that I would be given a new identity and I would have to become this new person. They said someone was going to train me for the next few years to become an agent at The Company and once I’ve been initiated I will have to do everything they tell me to do and that I would never be homeless again, that I wouldn’t have to be afraid anymore and I’d never be hungry.” She chewed on her lip as she thought of her past life, reminding me of myself at the same age, of course I’d been a lot younger when I was recruited but it wasn’t until my teens when I stopped feeling sad about my past or at least got better at hiding it.

“Ok so they didn’t tell you about our cover?” I asked ignoring everything else she said, she shook her head “ok here it is.” I turned the TV off and paced in front of her as I read out what the sheet of paper said “listen carefully I’ll be testing you on all of this later.”

“Ok” she replied as she sat up and listened attentively.

“First off your name is Amelia Parker and I am Daniel Parker, your father. Your mother Annabelle Parker, previously known as Annabelle Mathews, died when you were only 2 years old in a car accident, a drunk driver hit her in the dark. You are 12 years old and I am 28, your mother and I had you when were still in high school, at 16. I am a business man that works mostly from home, I own and buy hotels all over the world, which sometimes means we have to travel. We moved from the city to the suburbs because we needed a change in scenery, we moved from New York but we moved around a lot and finally your home schooled because we move around so much. Got it?”

“Got it.”

“Ok let’s go, we have to get a few things for the ceremony tonight.” Without another word I turned and left the room, I didn’t have to look back to make sure she was following behind me because I could hear her small feet scurrying behind me.

First stop was the hair dressers where I got a quick trim and shave, Amelia got her hair done so that it was less unruly and damaged making it look as if she had always lived in a loving home rather than on the street. Then we went to the mall, where we picked up clothes, boxes, markers and other bits and bobs before heading back to the hotel. Once there we assembled the boxes, labelling them and filling them neatly with the items we had just acquired.