Prologue

Somewhere in the city of Sydney, a small child in a ridiculously expensive-looking designer suit contemplated her sunglasses.
According to them, it would take 18 more minutes and 29 more seconds until they reached the hotel, where they would be spending the night.
The girl was frowning. Normally, travelling in an armoured car in the depths of the night gave her a nice, safe feeling.
But now, her skin prickled with anticipation, and she had learned from experience that her intuition was never wrong.
“Harvey?” She barked at the driver.
“Y-yes, mistress?”
The girl’s face soured. Which was difficult to imagine, because her face was already very sour.
“How many times have I ordered you NOT to call me that?” She hissed.
The driver gulped. Was this a rhetorical question, or was he meant to give an honest answer?
“Answer me!” Growled his passenger.
An honest answer then.
“Uh…about ten times now, mistre- I mean, doyenne.”
“SHUT UP! That was a rhetorical question.”
The man rested his head on the horn. The short, sharp HONK! it made sounded rather like a fart, and it jolted the man out of his momentary misery.

The girl sighed.
Nobody had heard from any of the other agents since… it happened.
Terrorist attacks were getting worse and worse, and the government began to suspect there was something else behind all of it, until a few weeks ago, when almost every agent in was drawn to a specific area and then disappeared. They were declared missing, presumed dead.
Suddenly, the girl’s ears pricked up.
A whistling noise, like the noise something makes while travelling at great speed in the air, was getting louder and louder.
Oh no, thought the girl. Oh, no, no, no, no, no!
Panicking, she opened the door and jumped out of the moving vehicle.
Before she even touched the ground, the missile slammed into the car and exploded, catapulting the girl up into the air.
She landed with an audible THUMP on a patch of grass several metres away.
She looked around in dismay.
Her car was a pile of charred, burning metal and she could see a number of men in pinstripe suits closing in.
She scanned the surrounding area, looking for something, anything that could help her.
She found one.
There was a carpark just up ahead, and if she could reach it, she could use her keys (Which could be used to unlock any vehicle) and escape.
She gave a short, bitter smile to the nearest man, and bolted.

There wasn’t much space between her and the enemy, but there was a lot of space between her and the car park, and, according to the sunglasses, at the rate that the chaser was gaining and she was running, she wouldn’t make it.
So she decided to remove one of the factors.
Fumbling in her pockets, she drew out her laser pointer.
It was an innocent-looking little device, and at first glance it could be a toy for cats.
But it was far from innocent.
The child wiped the blood off the pointy bit at the end, spun it around and pointed it straight at her pursuer.
A red bolt of pure energy flashed out of the pointer and exploded.
The girl was thrown forward by the blast, flames licking her coat-tails.
That’s one down, who knows how many more to go, thought the girl.
And with that, she picked herself up, ducked under the boom gate, and ran towards the nearest car.
I’ll make it, she thought. I’m actually going to make it.
Suddenly, a skinny, spidery looking man in an all-black suit leapt in front of the car, blocking her way.
The child, without skipping a beat, turned to run towards the next nearest car and shot another laser at the spindly man.
But then he did the worst thing imaginable.
He pulled out a jewel encrusted, handheld mirror.
The laser bounced off the mirror with an audible, high-pitched thoing!
and exploded into the ground less than 3 metres away from the girl.
The girl was picked up and flung into the air.
She landed with a winding THUMP several metres away.
No… she thought. The meeting…
The skinny man strolled casually towards the girl and, as her consciousness faded away, the man said harshly, as if he had waited for this moment his entire life:
“Gotcha!”

Chapter I

Clover padded silently through the crowd of people, picking pockets along the way.
Senior citizens, schoolchildren, soccer mums, prams — none were spared by the grumpy little girl.
She wore a battered, olive-green raincoat, jeans that had gaping holes in the knees and a black t-shirt polka-dotted with stains.
With her hood up, dark hair creating a veil over her face and remarkably short stature, she blended in perfectly with the crowd.
In her many years of stealing, she had come across a variety of odds and ends, like this laser pointer from the trouser pocket of a smartly-dressed and rather skinny businessman.
Her nose wrinkled in disgust at the man’s outfit. Highly polished shoes, carefully ironed coat, shiny briefcase.
Urgh, thought Clover. She hated people like that. Wealthy, conceited people who loved to wear posh clothes to tell everybody around them how much money they have. The mere thought of a man like that looking down his nose at her made her want to scream.
But then Clover was struck with a thought.
She had gotten a free glimpse at the News on TV last night by peeking through someone’s window.
Apparently there had been a big kerfuffle near a parking lot 2 nights ago. Security footage showed something big and metal slamming into a car and exploding it, and then a child about Clover’s size hopped out and got chased by a bunch of men in suits, just like the one Clover pickpocketed earlier.
His skinny frame matched one of the men she saw on TV.
Clover chuckled at the thought. He must’ve been some super spy or something, and I still managed to steal his laser pointer.
She sat down on a bench to have a go of her new toy.
Where’s the button? She thought.
Ah, here it is. Right, I think i’ll see if I can get that dog to chase it.
Come closer, closer…perfect. One, two thr- ,
She was just about to turn it on when a tall, rather pointy-looking lady with short, dark red hair (It must have been dyed) with a bulky black leather handbag stopped by Clover, who scowled. She hated it when strangers tried to talk to her. It never ended well.
Clover prepared herself for whatever annoying sentence might come out of the woman’s mouth.
Would it be “Hello, little darling, do you know where your Mummy is?”
Or “Excuse me, honey bunches, but do have parents around?” this time?
She hoped it was neither. Questions about her parents were difficult to answer because she really, honestly, didn’t know the answer.
She could vaguely remember living at an orphanage until she was 6 (She ran away) but could never remember anything before then.
However, what the woman said had nothing to do with anything Clover had ever even considered.
“A-a-agent Doyenne? We…I…we all thought you were dead!”
Clover stared at her as if she’d just told her that she was secretly an evil monkey mastermind who wanted to take over the world.
The pointy woman, seeing the girl’s disgusted look, spluttered,
“Oh of course…we were all wrong to underestimate you…of course…i’m sorry…”
Clover raised an eyebrow.
“What do you want?” She grumbled.
“Well, to take you back to headquarters, of course! The meeting is ever so soon -“ Here, she checked her watch, and then her OTHER watch,
“It’s in only 2 hours!”
Clover stared at her blankly and wrinkled her nose as if she smelled something disgusting.

After a few paces, she looked back at Clover.
“Aren’t you going to come…Agent Doyenne?”
Clover was intrigued. This woman obviously thought she was someone else, but nobody had ever treated her like she was in authority.

Clover got up and walked over to her.
“I’m coming.”

Chapter II

After a bit more walking and a brief helicopter ride, they arrived at a large, cylinder-shaped building.
Clover was gobsmacked as she stared around the place.
Velvet walking carpet, pedestals with posh vases on them.
Posh vases?
Posh.
Clover closed her mouth and pretended to look unimpressed.
Two burly, bald and identical-looking guards with sunglasses and earpieces stood beside a pair of elegant wooden double doors.
“Welcome” Said the one on the left in unbelievably deep brass tones.
“You’re…late…but we haven’t started without you.” Added the one on the right, slightly nervously.
Hmmm, thought Clover. Everyone here seems to afraid of me…or are they?
Clover hissed at the guard on the right as she walked past.
The guard yelped, somersaulted over Clover and began clinging to the other guard, who looked at him in horror.
He laughed even more nervously than before.
“Sorry…bad habit.”
Clover rolled her eyes at him. She had other things to worry about other than a bunch of scaredy cat guards.
What was this “meeting” for example? Was she supposed to say something important?
She glanced behind herself quickly. The guards and the woman were blocking her path completely. She was cornered.
Clover took a deep breath and opened the door…