I spent my first night in North Korea in a cell. It wasn't for anything that I had done, believe me. I hadn't been illegally shipping Bibles and newspapers from Europe or America to the wretched citizens. I was a perfectly normal teenage girl struggling to make my way in the world. Most people reveled in the olden times and their Glory Days. A few years before, everyone was jealous of the children of the twenty-first century with all of their cool gadgets and stuff. Now all they felt was sympathy.

I was a fairly standard child. I went to school, hung out with my books and imaginary friends in my spare time, and even had a decent job working at a small sugar maple farm in New Hampshire where I had grown up. The forests and the open skies seemed so far away now as I sat crisscross applesauce on my cold buttocks that were being crushed against the empty concrete pad designated as the floor for my cell.

There was hardly anything in the cell-including me. I wanted out, but my boss would never allow a break in the procedure that we had all agreed on. Not my sugar maple farm boss, but my other boss. The one that I'm not allowed to talk about, especially here, especially now. The last time that a procedure had been broken, which was in Russia, things almost ended very badly. Some of my coworkers nearly went out with a bang that day. Literally. You know Russia's obsession with nukes. Boom. Three hundred dead and nearly twice that many wounded. All in about five minutes, from the time that the bomb was dropped to the time that it detonated. Yay.

My name is highly confidential, but I suppose you can know. I trust you. My name is Adah Camielle Keeney. My coworkers called me by my other names: Luna, Owl, or Eclipse, depending on the day of the week and how close to me they were. The only other name that I was called was Astrid. Only one person called me that. No one else had the right to call me that. You could say that it was their special little nickname for me. Theirs and theirs alone.

I was American, with quite a bit of blood coming from Ireland, Italy, England, and Germany. By those simple facts, you might be able to gather that I could be quite...passionate at times, whether about my work or about the tempest of flames that I thrust at the people in my division who had no respect for me. I made sure that I got respect. It was a given part of me that I wouldn't stand for injustice and ignorance. Ingrained in my mind, body, and soul. Irreplaceable.

The cell was paneled metal. Cold, hard, grey steel that burned my hands at a touch, the door made out of the same material. It was quite ingenious, really, on the government's part, to make their prisons of high quality, like they actually cared enough about who they were containing to make sure that they were properly restrained. Clever, clever fools. Almost too clever for their own good. They forgot to seal the cell door properly.

"Well shoot me dead and call me a stuffed pig," I muttered. The cell was only a holding cell, really. I had pretty much knocked on the front door of the prison, demanding to their supreme officer to be arrested immediately. Not many people beg the North Korean government to arrest them. Especially a teenage American girl that appeared as if out of nowhere. They wanted to know who I was. I did laugh then. Oh, the poor fools. What would they do when they found nothing? Smiling coyly, I leaned back against the cold cell wall facing the door. I heard footsteps, and my lips curled upwards into a full-fledged smirk. I could hear everything that those men said through six inches of solid steel. I'll get to that in a bit.

A bolt turned. Something deep in the lock's machinery clanked and clunked. I cast my eyes upwards, taking in the sight of five Korean men in spiffy prison uniforms, one of them wearing a uniform a bit nicer than the others. You just had to love that beige color. It coordinated quite nicely with the bland grayness of the walls. All of them had black hair shorn close to their skulls, and all of them seemed to give off something foul. Like gamma radiation mixed with old socks full of fermented garlic. The one in the nicer uniform stepped forwards.

"So, we finally meet face to face, little girl," he said in his thickly accented voice. "Too bad one so young and so pretty is hidden in her cage like an owl hides from the light of day."

My smirk grew. His little comment on the owl amused me. How ironic. "Well boys, it looks like you got me," I said, eyes scanning the room for possible exits. It wasn't my job to escape. It was my job to provide cover for the rest of my coworkers to get their jobs done. I had been through this routine more times than I could count. "And, as your reward for doing such a fantastic job, I feel inclined to share a little bit about myself with you."

"Share what things?" one of the men on my left questioned, almost like a bark. His voice was so harsh, like he had been singing opera in a dark closet for weeks. The corner of my mouth lifted upwards and I stared at him long and hard. He had a mole on his neck shaped like a scoop of melting Double Dutch Chocolate ice cream. Well, almost like a scoop of ice cream. There were three thick greasy hairs sprouting like signal towers out of the disfigured flesh. I felt that it was not in my place to inform him of it.

"My dear captor, I have connections and information that you would love to kill to get. And here I am, your willing servant, prepared to offer up this knowledge at no cost. How does that sound?"

The head man glared at me as though I were some scum on the bottoms of his ridiculously shiny black boots. If it were up to me, I would steal those boots right off of his feet without his noticing. But, I had to stick to the plan. "I do not make deals with the devil!" he snarled at me. "You are coming with us for interrogation, little girl!"

I raised an eyebrow, still resting against the back cell wall. Such an unwelcoming man. Something bleeped mechanically against my arm, just softly enough that the guards with their average human hearing wouldn't be able to detect a thing. I had a small tracking device sewn into the lining of my shirt, and my coworkers were signaling me. I grinned. Mission accomplished. In a way, I was proud of myself. I hadn't done anything more than being an annoying diversion for a couple of stupid guards. But it had most likely saved hundreds of lives. If our little break in was discovered, there could have very likely have been war. Nuclear war. Big bad boom war. The United States wouldn't give in. Nor would our allies. We would blow each other up until all that remained of Earth was a cluster of burning coals and tumbled rubble. There was a fraction of change in one of the shadows outside the cell door. I took that as my cue to leave. Rising to my feet, blood rushed down the veins of my legs, racing and tingling. My eyes flashed.

"No, I'm not," I said as the two guards on the wings each stepped forward to grab my arms. "Today is not your lucky day, gentlemen." I glanced around them and. "You know, any time you're ready," I mocked my coworkers. "I'm not going to make a big elaborate speech this time, you know. These sorry excuses for vermin aren't nearly as poetically understanding as those Russians, if you get my meaning."

The guards looked so confused that it was humorous enough to laugh.

They died with that look on their faces.

Four simultaneous gunshots rang out through the metal compound. The tell-tale whistle-thunk sound of an arrow told me that someone else had joined the party. Five bodies dropped at my feet. I twisted my lips up into a grimace of disgust. Instead of the five guards, I was now facing my coworkers, all of them dressed in black and holding small hand guns. Except for one, but he was carrying a bow and arrow that could probably make even Chuck Norris run for Mummy.

"We were thinking about going out for some dinner after all of this was over," the man with the giant intimidating bow said, shouldering the weapon in one fluid motion. He had a quiver of fearsome-looking arrows slung over his opposite shoulder, and he had a pair of shiny biker's shades hanging on the neckline of his dark shirt. He raised an eyebrow at me, light blue eyes piercing me like one of his arrows.

"Yes, Clint, victory McDonald's doesn't sound half that bad. I could use a Bic Mac drowning in ketchup right about now." I shifted my weight onto my back hip. "Kirsty, did we get what we came for?"

Kirsty was only about three years older than me, but I still outranked her in terms of military status if you will. She had dark shoulder length hair that was tied up into a low ponytail, messy from what had probably included some fisticuffs. I was the shortest, but pretty close in height to the young woman who spoke next. She stood next to Clint, hands rested in an almost relaxed manner on the holster of her gun, looking perfectly at home in this dangerous environment. At least that was a common trait that we shared, all of us alive in this little compound. Short dark red hair that brushed her chin in waves, hazel eyes that calculated my every move, and a curved hourglass figure outlined quite nicely in her black fitted clothing. Natasha Romanov. Spy, master assassin, female confident, and good friend.

"Of course we got what we came here for, Luna." I was tossed something small, the color of whatever it was flashing through the air. Catching it swiftly in my palm, I opened my fingers, and nestled in the flesh between my fingers like the stamen between the petals of a lily was a small flash drive. It was nothing more than what a kid in elementary school would use to save a paper on. I grinned again, delicately sidestepping the fallen bodies at my feet.

"What's on it?" Kirsty asked me. "I mean, we just infiltrated North Korea for a little flash drive. Please tell me that whatever is in the files that it contains is going to be good."

"Oh, it's going to be good all right," Natasha remarked.

"Well then," I said, "let's go. We don't want to keep the director waiting now, do we?" Natasha quirked her lips up into a sinister grin. I had learned it from her. Good things to know.

"I think that the director will be most pleased with your work today, Luna," she commented.

"If we survive, I'm taking all of us out for some McDonald's," Clint promised.

"Sounds good, Clint," said the remaining man in the room, some orange-haired guy with freckles that made the Milky Way look sparse. "Now shut up and let's go."

"I still want that Big Mac," I quipped as we all walked out of the holding cell room. "And a large fry."

Let it be known that Clint bought all of us fries and Big Macs that day. Kirsty and the redhead man along with the fifth party member that I didn't know all that well-if memory serves me right, his name was Indigo-were mildly civilized when they ate fast food on the go. I got ketchup all over my face. Natasha and I had tried eating neatly, attempting to be the dainty ladies. We failed. I think that it was the only mission that we couldn't accomplish.