A New Ally

Chapter Five | Lies

Salzburg, Austria 

The two girlfriends ran into the hotel lobby with hands intertwined, laughing their heads off. Why they were laughing was a question that could be answered by no one. And they didn't stop laughing until a familiar voice surprised them.

"Ah, Carm? Where were you guys?" Zack asked.

Before they could answer, Ivy interjected with her own statement, "Yeah, we were expecting you two more than an hour ago!".

"You gave us a heart attack!" Zack added.

Carmen laughed nervously, letting go of Julia's hand before anyone noticed how their hands were laced together. They slowly put some space between each other and tried to remain as neutral as possible, Carmen was doing way better than Julia by far.

"I'm so sorry guys, we didn't mean to worry you! We ran into some VILE operatives and we got a little caught up," Carmen tried explaining.

Ivy didn't seem to buy Carmen's excuse, but Zack seemed to at least. In fact, Ivy was getting more and more suspicious of Carmen and Julia. Carmen treated her way differently than she did Zack and herself. It wasn't that she hated them, no Julia was her friend, and Carmen was like her sister. She just didn't like being lied to, and she knew they were lying, she just knew it.

Julia didn't like lying either, she saw the look on Ivy's face when Carmen had told her a half-truth. It was the look of someone being lied to, she knew it all too well. Ivy was her friend, someone who had been kind, loyal, and honest throughout all her time here. It ate up her insides to keep such a big secret from her. But, if they told Ivy then they would need to tell Zack and Shadowsan and Player. If any of them slipped up while being questioned or captured, they could expose their secret to ACME or VILE.

There was no way she could avoid this, it was just the way it had to be.

The elevator ride to their hotel room was silent. Ivy and Julia were lost in thought, tired of the repetitive track of thoughts repeating in their minds. Zack was oblivious to this, as he usually was. He wasn't an airhead like most people who didn't know him took him as, he was just not very good at observing people.

And Carmen. She was conflicted, not because of the lying, though that ate at her too. But of something Devineaux had told her when she ran into him.

"I see Miss Argent with you now, femme rouge,"

Carmen had rolled her eyes, "That's none of your business, Devineaux,"

"She'll get bored of you, she always does. She just jumps around from job to job, she doesn't care about you. She'll leave eventually,"

She knew it couldn't be true, Devineaux had no idea what he was talking about. He didn't know her like she did. Julia wasn't like that, she would never toy with people's emotions like that.

But still, he was right. This wouldn't last forever, it couldn't. Julia might get hurt one day, and she'd decide she didn't want this after all.

STOP, STOP, STOP it Carmen! Julia would never do that!

She just didn't know if that would change soon.

The elevator dinged at the fourth floor and the four of them stepped off. Shadowsan was sitting on a couch in the lobby for the floor. Julia still found it unreal that she was staying in a fancy hotel that had couches on every floor near the elevators to create a lobby of some sort. The four teammates approached Shadowsan, who had three hotel room cards with him. He gave one of them to Ivy and the other to Julia.