SSAS

by Zan23

Summary:

When Brooklyn pushes the SSAS button on page 43 of Golden Gate, it transports her to page 43 of Spy School At Sea (SSAS).

Chapter 1: Brooklyn

. . . and she slyly pressed the SSAS button.

It should have been a good moment, with Brooklyn knowing that help was now on the way, but instead all it did was confuse her. Because Brooklyn was suddenly on a different boat.

Instead of the Sylvia Earle, Brooklyn was now on a small boat moving people onto a cruise ship, the Emperor of the Seas written in large print on the side. And she was listening to someone talk about a pirate party. Which might have been slightly preferable to facing actual pirates if she actually knew what was going on. But she didn’t know what was going on, and so she decided to focus on figuring out where in the world she actually was.

Brooklyn didn’t get very far in this, though, because she quickly got distracted by the guy throwing up into the water right next to her, his wife muttering under her breath about how he always gets like this on boats.

Brooklyn tried to take a step away from the man so that he didn’t wind up puking on her, but then she noticed that there was a boy staring at her.

Brooklyn stared back at him, unsure of what to do. She should have been able to think on her feet, but suddenly teleporting to a different boat with no warning had screwed with her a little.

“Where did you come from?” he asked her.

“Uh. . .” Brooklyn tried to think of something to say, but she still couldn’t think of anything.

“Jack?” the woman whose husband was puking asked the boy. “What’s going on?”

The boy took just a second too long to respond to this before seemingly realizing she was talking to him. He then pointed at Brooklyn and said, “She just appeared out of nowhere.”

The woman turned to Brooklyn, a look of faint recognition on her face.

“Are you Sara?” she asked.

Brooklyn was hesitant to answer this because she still had absolutely no idea who these people were, but the look on her face must have revealed something because the woman turned to Jack and the other two kids standing with him and said, “Go with your father.”

While the kids and the puking man stepped onto the cruise ship, the woman asked Brooklyn, “How did you get here?”

“I don’t know,” Brooklyn said. She was going through everything she could think of trying to place this woman. She was British while the other people with her were definitely American, but Brooklyn couldn’t think of anywhere she had run into this woman before.

The woman glanced around at the emptying boat, then asked quietly, “Do Mother and Monty know where you are right now?”

“How do you-“

“That’s not important. Did either of them send you here?”

“No. I don’t know how I got here.”

The rest of the boat had emptied out by then, and Brooklyn was forced to board the cruise ship with the woman.

“What do you mean by that?”

“I was. . .” Brooklyn trailed off, realizing that even though this woman seemed to know who she was, that wasn’t necessarily a reason to trust her. For all Brooklyn knew, the woman could have known who she was because she had been talking to Clementine.

The woman somehow seemed to know that Brooklyn didn’t trust her, so she took out her phone. “Follow me,” she said, walking down so they were in an area that was slightly more out of the way.

Brooklyn followed her, making sure to keep her guard up.

The woman dialed a number on her phone. Whoever was on the other end picked up right away, and the woman said, “I think I have one of your kids.”

There was a pause while the other person said something, then the woman said, “No, I’m on a different boat. The Emperor of the Seas . I’m down in Nicaragua with Erica, a couple of her friends, and, well, you know Alexander and I-“

There was another pause before she said, “She just appeared.”

The woman finally gave Brooklyn the phone.

“Brooklyn?” Monty asked her.

“What’s happening?” Brooklyn asked.

“We don’t know,” Monty said. “But Mother’s on his way up to check on the Sylvia Earle, so you don’t have to worry about them. But we’re going to get this all sorted out.”

“Who am I with?” Brooklyn asked. “How does she know you?”

“It’s a long story,” Monty said. “But we’ve known each other for a long time. Her name’s Catherine, but she might not want you to know that. She’s MI6. You can trust her. Just do what she says.”

Brooklyn looked back at Catherine. “Ok,” Brooklyn said finally.

“We’ll get this straightened out,” Monty said. “You just hang on.”

“I will,” Brooklyn said, the potential seriousness of the situation beginning to set in. She could tell even through the phone that Monty was trying not to panic. She handed the phone back to Catherine, not wanting to have to hear Monty’s worrying get any worse.

Catherine said a few more things to Monty, turned so Brooklyn couldn’t hear what she was saying very well.

Then Catherine hung up the phone and put it back in her pocket.

“Let’s see if we can go find the others,” Catherine said.

“Who are the others?” Brooklyn asked.

Catherine sighed, then casually glanced around, making sure no one was listening to them. “I’m here with my ex-husband, our daughter, her boyfriend, and his friend. But as far as everyone else is concerned, Alexander and I are still married and all of the kids are our children. Erica is Sasha, Ben is Quincy, and Mike is Jack.”

“Ok,” Brooklyn said, trying to keep all that straight.

“How long have you been at the FARM?” Catherine asked.

“A couple months, maybe,” Brooklyn said.

Catherine took a moment to think about this as they stepped onto an elevator. Once the doors had closed and they had a brief moment of privacy, Catherine said, “I don’t think Monty and Mother would like it if I left you alone in our room, but I don’t really want to get you involved with what we’re doing here, so I’m afraid I’m going to have to leave you.”

“That’s ok,” Brooklyn said.

Catherine gave Brooklyn a room key, and Brooklyn got off the elevator, going off to find the room listed on the key card.

Chapter 2: Catherine

Catherine went up to the activity deck where everyone else was. She wasn’t sure what was going on, and that worried her. Catherine didn’t know how Brooklyn had gotten there, and Catherine didn’t know all that much about Brooklyn either. Just the very basics that Monty and Mother had told her.

Catherine had met Mother through Clementine, actually. She and Clementine had both been at Oxford at the same time, and while they weren’t particularly close, they had still certainly known each other. And the three of them had been funneled into training at MI6 at the same time, even though Catherine had passed through some of her courses quicker than everyone else, seeing as her grandfather had given her a bit of a head start.

Catherine had met Monty later, around the time she and Alexander were in the middle of getting divorced, or maybe a little before that. Whenever it was exactly, it had been pretty clear to Monty when she met Catherine that her relationship with Alexander wasn’t going to last that much longer. Monty was still a student at Oxford then, and Catherine was, too, at least some of the time. She’d gotten busy with spy work and Alexander after undergrad, but she’d gone back for a more advanced degree in art history to have an excuse not to have to be in the US while things were so awkward with Alexander. Monty had wound up baby-sitting for Erica and Trixie a few times. Erica had been more willing to share her family’s information back then, since she didn’t really know any better about the extent of what she maybe shouldn’t reveal, so Monty had learned a whole bunch of stuff about the Hales, some of which was really just too much information.

All of that aside, Catherine had been pretty busy lately with her freelance work for the CIA that Erica needed her to do. She hadn’t really been thinking that much about MI6 at all. Heck, here she was right now on a mission for the CIA. No one at the CIA was supposed to know she was a spy. But Catherine wasn’t going to let Erica get involved in any more things without Catherine knowing what was going on. It wasn’t that Catherine didn’t trust Erica. It was just that Catherine didn’t trust other people not to hurt her daughter. Or any of the other kids, for that matter.

The way the CIA had planned out this mission did make Catherine a little bit uncomfortable, since she did realize that the plan could put the kids, especially Ben, in danger. And, well, she would have really rather not put the kids in danger. She knew there was some element of hypocrisy in that, seeing as she had let one of her daughters train to be a spy and seeing as she was a spy herself, but she still wanted to do the best she could to keep the kids safe.

When Catherine caught up to everyone else, Alexander was throwing up again. Catherine knew this was inevitable, but she hadn’t wanted to embarrass him in front of anyone at the CIA by bringing up his tendency to get sea sick before they left for the mission. She figured he was an adult who could theoretically manage himself.

“What’s going on?” Erica whispered to Catherine as they grabbed what was needed to rappel down to the Emperor Suite. “Who was that?”

“Mother and Monty’s new kid,” Catherine said. “She just appeared. She doesn’t know how she got here. I sent her to our rooms for now.”

“What do you mean by that?” Erica asked.

“I don’t know what’s going on either,” Catherine said, finishing setting them up to rappel. “But I don’t know that there’s anything to do about it except to send her back to Scotland.”

Mike, who, along with Ben, had been listening to this conversation, asked, “Why are you treating this like it’s just normal?”

“What else do you propose I do?” Catherine asked. “We still have a mission to take care of here.”

Mike shrugged. “You could at least act a little more confused.”

“Sorry, Michael,” Catherine said. “I’ve been trained for too many years not to.”

Catherine dropped down to the deck below, and Erica followed half a second behind her.

“It’s clear!” Erica yelled, and Ben and Mike dropped down after them.

“Don’t you think we ought to have someone back at the room keeping an eye on her?” Erica asked while Catherine picked the lock on the door to the suite.

Catherine shook her head. “Nothing’s there,” she said. “We’re already down Alexander. I don’t need any more of you missing from this.”

Chapter 3: Sydney

When Sydney got off the boat, she was freaking out and blaming herself for Brooklyn’s disappearance. If only she hadn’t gone in the water, maybe none of this would have happened. Except, Sydney didn’t know what had actually happened. She was operating off the assumption that Brooklyn was kidnapped because that was what made sense. She was there, and then she wasn’t.

She was taken in for questioning at a school with the rest of the girls from the boat, and Sydney had no choice but to lie about having been in the water, even though she really wanted to be able to tell the truth, to do anything that would help them figure out where Brooklyn had been taken. But Sydney knew she couldn’t admit to breaking the rules, not now. She knew she had screwed up massively and now things were an awful mess, and she couldn’t do anything to fix it.

Despite everything telling her not to do it, Sydney was just about to start ignoring the oath MI6 made her take when Mother burst into the room, quickly making his way over to Sydney while trying his best to act casual about it. His best wasn’t very good, but everyone else in the room was too busy to notice.

Mother tried to pull himself together as he motioned for Sydney to get up and follow him. His normal composure had disappeared sometime that morning around the time he heard about the hijacking, and the early morning start had made him feel like he was still dreaming when Monty had gotten the call from Catherine.

Mother and Sydney went down the hall and found an empty classroom where they could talk without anyone else hearing. Mother flipped on the lights and closed the door while Sydney sat down at one of the front desks.

“What do we know?” Sydney asked, looking down at the stray pencil marks on the desk as she tried not to cry.

“Brooklyn’s ok,” Mother said.

“Where is she?” Sydney asked.

“Nicaragua,” Mother said.

“What?” Sydney asked, sure he had misspoken.

“That’s the issue,” Mother said. “We have no idea how she got there. She’s on a cruise ship right now, and the next time it docks she’ll get on a flight back to Edinburgh.”

“How is that even possible?” Sydney asked.

“We don’t know,” Mother said. “But it’s what’s happened. Did you see Brooklyn when she disappeared?”

“No,” Sydney said quietly. “I wasn’t there.”

“Were you with Judy and Alice?”

“No,” Sydney said.

“Then where were you?” Mother asked, trying not to sound like he was accusing Sydney of anything.

“I was in the water,” Sydney admitted. She would have been more ashamed of being caught like this if she hadn’t still been focused on trying to make sense of what Mother had just said about where Brooklyn was.

“Setting off those explosions,” Mother said, sounding proud of her.

“Yeah, breaking the rules while Brooklyn did all the work. While she ended up. . .” Sydney trailed off. She just didn’t know how to rationalize the idea that Brooklyn had somehow ended up on a cruise ship thousands of miles away. Despite the fact that she trusted Mother, she didn’t know how to trust him on this.

“I know it’s a lot to process,” Mother said. “I’m just glad you’re ok.”

Sydney wasn’t processing anything. And she certainly wasn’t willing to accept that things were ok. Not when she suddenly wasn’t sure if she could believe anything.

Chapter 4: Brooklyn

Notes:

Warning that this one does go into a little bit of Erica and Catherine’s side of Ben and Mike being presumed dead.

Brooklyn was pretty sure that this day was going to make her forever hate everything associated with pirates. First there was whatever had happened in the morning, and now there was. . . Well, at least there weren’t any actual pirates now. But Ben and Mike had been thrown overboard, and Catherine and Erica were acting like there was a pretty good chance they were dead, so maybe this was worse.

Catherine was busy crying and failing to get work done, Erica was somewhat getting work done, and Alexander was puking and trying to be optimistic. Brooklyn was still confused, but now she was also tired after such a long day. She wasn’t getting any sleep, though. There wasn’t a ton of privacy in the cramped suite, and the crying and puking could get quite loud at times.

Brooklyn had a lot on her mind anyway. The cell reception where they were wasn’t nonexistent, but it wasn’t very good either, so she hadn’t managed to be able to call her family again yet. She really wished she could talk to them.

After a few hours, Alexander managed to stop puking long enough to fall asleep on the bathroom floor. Brooklyn had to admit that she envied his ability to fall asleep even in such an uncomfortable situation.

Catherine seemed to feel bad for Brooklyn, but she was already feeling incredibly guilty for what had happened to Ben and Mike, and sometimes there’s only so much guilt someone can feel before everything just becomes a mush of tangled emotions, nothing rising to the surface while guilt overwhelms everything.

Erica was stoic despite everything, almost like she had expected this. And maybe she had. Maybe it wasn’t this particular situation, but Erica had always known that someday something terrible like this might happen.

Brooklyn didn’t know if Erica was just always like this or if it was just the apparent deaths of the two boys that had shut down her emotions. The few minutes when she had seen Erica as Sasha earlier that day made her think it might be the second option.

“Mom,” Erica said finally. “Get it together.”

Brooklyn sat up when Erica said this and looked at the clock. It was one in the morning.

Catherine took a shaky breath. “I’m trying, dear.” She glanced over at Brooklyn, which made Brooklyn feel a little like she was eavesdropping, even though there wasn’t really anywhere else for her to be, especially not with the same people who threw Mike and Ben overboard probably still on the ship.

“Just try harder,” Erica said. “We can’t just let them die for nothing. Come on. You’ve seen people die before.”

“That doesn’t mean it gets easier,” Catherine said.

“Yes, it does,” Erica said somewhat bitterly.

“This isn’t like it was with Joshua,” Catherine said.

Brooklyn tried to hide underneath a blanket to pretend she wasn’t there. She really didn’t want to be overhearing this conversation, but since she wasn’t really getting a choice about it, she at least wanted to make it a little less awkward for herself. It was a mostly futile effort, but it was all she could do.

“I know that,” Erica said. “But. . .”

Brooklyn couldn’t tell if Erica had maybe whispered something after that, but it didn’t really matter. Everything that had been going on just fine before Brooklyn got there was forever changed and screwed up. And even if it wasn’t her fault, she knew that by being there, things were a little bit worse and a lot more awkward for the other people in that tiny room.

Chapter 5: Erica

The call from Ben and Mike that they were not dead came before the cruise ship docked the next morning, which meant that Brooklyn got to share in the good news. Catherine was overjoyed, and Erica was too, briefly.

And then Erica went right back to being the Erica she always seemed to be, all-knowing but stoic. She had already let Brooklyn see far too much of her life since she had arrived and accidentally crashed their mission.

Erica knew who Brooklyn was. She knew who her parents were. She could remember.  It had been years since Erica had really seen them more than just in passing, but when she was little she had known them. Monty, especially knew Erica, or at least the version of Erica that had existed about a decade earlier. Erica really wasn’t like that very much anymore, for better and for worse.

Erica had been more outgoing back then, willing to tell on Catherine to Tru whenever Tru asked her about something. Erica had also done a whole lot of highly embarrassing things then, mostly related to, uh, well, certain things that she would rather not have made public knowledge (like, for example, her Princess Buttercup phase). Erica really didn’t need those coming up again, and now that she wasn’t worried that her boyfriend and his friend were dead, she could worry about stuff like this coming to light. Which was a real concern given the current mood of her mother.

Brooklyn was set to get right on a plane back to Scotland just as soon as the cruise ship docked for the day, but that wasn’t for another hour, so for now she was following Catherine and Erica around as they went down to breakfast. (Alexander had gone to the infirmary to try to get some better medication for his seasickness.)

Catherine had managed to get good enough cell service after Ben and Mike called that she was able to call the FARM, and Brooklyn had been on the phone with them for several minutes. Once she hung up, Catherine had started asking her the kind of small talk questions that are expected in situations like this.

“How have things been over there?” Catherine asked Brooklyn once they had all sat down to eat breakfast. They were out in the open, but there was enough noise around them that the odds of any of their conversation being overheard were low.

“Fine,” Brooklyn said. “But I haven’t been there very long.”

Catherine nodded. “It’s been a couple years since I’ve made it over there. Erica, when did we last go?”

Erica shrugged, even though she knew exactly when they had last gone. It had been three years, and Trixie had been there, which meant they didn’t actually do much of anything. They never could do anything besides go to museums and tourist attractions when Trixie was around. It was always strange for Erica to go on vacations with her sister because they were really just strangers who happened to have the same parents. But Trixie didn’t even know her own parents in the way Erica did. Erica didn’t even really go on vacations without her, though. Every trip was spy-related somehow, regardless of whether she went with Catherine or Cyrus. And Scotland was not high on the priority list for spy training. At least, not for Erica.

“We used to be over there all the time,” Catherine told Brooklyn. “Of course, that was before anyone was at the FARM. Everyone was in London then.”

“How’d you meet Monty and Mother?” Brooklyn asked Catherine.

“I went to uni with Clementine,” Catherine said. “We were both at Oxford at the same time. Then a few years later I went back for a doctorate that I’d been working towards on and off for a while, and that was when Monty was there.”

Erica remembered the later parts of all of that, all the parts that she was alive for. She could remember much farther back in her life than most people could. The childhood amnesia that everyone else seemed to have had never really been a thing for her.

“So you knew Mother because of Clementine,” Brooklyn said, unsure of what this could mean.

“Yes,” Catherine said. “Of course, that was long before everything happened with her leaving. So, tell me about how it’s been at the FARM lately.”

Erica and Brooklyn could both see right through this change of topic, but Erica was fine to get back towards the present, and Brooklyn was willing to settle with asking Monty and Mother any further questions when she got home.

“It’s been fine,” Brooklyn said. “It’s a little exciting, and it’s been a lot to adjust to, but I’ve been enjoying it.”

Catherine nodded. “That’s good to hear.”

Erica was starting to get sick of this level of small talk going absolutely nowhere, so she pushed back her chair and got up. “We should be docking soon,” she said.

“Right,” Catherine said, looking down at her watch before turning to Brooklyn. “Let’s get you to the airport.”

Chapter 6: Monty

Notes:

It’s been a couple months, but I finally got around to writing the last little bit of this, so here it is.

Monty sat down on a bench next to a fake potted plant at the airport while she waited for Brooklyn’s plane to arrive to Edinburgh’s airport. The rest of the kids were at home at the FARM, and Mother had to be at his jobs as a curator for another couple of hours before he could go home.

Monty checked her watch and saw that the plane wasn’t supposed to land for another few minutes. She had tried to get there early just in case so Brooklyn wouldn’t be stuck waiting if the plane was ahead of schedule. She knew it had been about twenty hours since Brooklyn had first arrived at the airport to board the plane, and she figured Brooklyn would be exhausted.

Monty’s phone vibrated in her pocket, and when she took it out to check it, there was a text from Catherine asking if Brooklyn was at the airport yet. Monty responded that she hadn’t arrived yet.

After a few more minutes, Brooklyn’s plane did finally come in, and Brooklyn found Monty down near baggage claim.

“How are you doing?” Monty asked Brooklyn, hugging her.

“I’m ok,” Brooklyn said. “Tired, though.”

“I’ll bet,” Monty said. “Did you get any sleep on the plane?”

“A little,” Brooklyn said. “But not enough.”

“Let’s get you home, then,” Monty said.

Since Brooklyn hadn’t had any luggage with her when she’d arrived on the cruise ship, they didn’t have to worry about picking up any checked bags, so they started walking towards the exit. She did have a small drawstring bag with her now, though, which Monty asked about.

“Where’d you get this?”

“Catherine picked it up at a store by the airport,” Brooklyn said. “She thought it would look suspicious for me to be going on a plane with nothing with me.”

“What do you have in it?”

“Snacks, mostly. Also the pen and the little note pad that were in the room on the cruise ship, so I could draw on the plane if I got bored.”

“That’s nice,” Monty said.

“So have you made any progress on the mission?” Brooklyn asked once they were out in the parking lot and no one else was within earshot.

“Some,” Monty said. “But not a lot. We’ll catch you up once you’ve had a chance to get some proper sleep. You’ve certainly had a lot happen these last couple days.”

“Yeah,” Brooklyn said as she got in the car. “It was really strange.”

“I’ll bet,” Monty said.