I wasn’t much before I became a D-MISE agent. Perhaps that was the point. As agents, our lives are built on a foundation of unknown factors that manipulated our reality every day. We had to be flexible, and trusting. I was neither of those things – at least not to start. I would be biased to say I’ve adapted.

I don’t know if this is divine intuition, or utter paranoia at this point, but I wouldn’t put it past the upper rungs of the hierarchy to have had something to do with my wrongly convicted status, and my subsequent “sentence” that led me into the grips of D-MISE. I was a nobody that wouldn’t be missed, and I have a feeling that a bulk of their population was made up of people just like me in that regard. That requirement could lead to a steady stream of new agents.

Some turned out to be good agents. Some were terminated to minimize their liability. I’m surprised I made it this far, but whatever I’m doing, despite the snark and backtalk, someone must like it. I’ve gotten too lucky too many times to not have a friend in the shadows, and I quietly thank them.

Some of you might think that odd, that I could suspect something of that magnitude, and not search out who it is. Especially how lonely the life of an agent is – how isolated, and how desolate. If my experiences had been different, I might have reacted differently to the realization, and not with serenity and grace.

I would have been driven to find out all the little secrets that worked like glue in our infrastructure. It would have driven me mad to not know who my ethereal champion was – if I hadn’t just done the exact same thing. Now I can appreciate the distance.

I didn’t particularly know much about Prism City’s Justice Department before my incarceration – I hadn’t needed to do so. From my own experience, I would say it’s a mess. Perhaps that’s why my case had been so flimsily supported, and poorly notated. Maybe it was all set up at that point, and my court-appointed lawyers were just screaming into the void for all the good my defense did. I remember the powerless feeling I had in the defendant’s chair, a feeling I no longer contend with, for I am enlightened among the rabble in the city now. It’s nice to be nostalgic though.

I also remember when the judge told me my date for surrendering, and I would have only forty-eight hours to tell my loved ones goodbye. I remember the hollow feeling that echoed inside me at the realization that I had no one to tell. I could surrender that afternoon and no one would miss me.

If only it had been a week earlier.