"No," Annika said. "A proper lady."

The understanding had been sudden and complete then. The cascade of dueling infidelities between her mother and father had reached its breaking point. Chace knew they were separating, and understood that divorce would follow, that it would be ugly, that it would be brutal, and that her mother would never, ever change. She saw in her mother a vision of herself as she might be, selfish and spoiled and utterly oblivious to the pain she inflicted upon others, a woman-child who would never grow up.

Which meant Chace was going to have to, and quickly. The second of such moments occurred when Chace was twenty-two, in her last year at Cambridge but down to London for a long weekend with a group of her peers, amongst them the only one she called a friend, Rachel Beck. This was in the days on the cusp, after the Cold War but before the Global War on Terror, before the Firm had been reduced to advertising openly for new recruits. For two years, Chace had been vetted with deliberation by SIS's talent-spotters at the university until, finally, assured of her loyalties, intelligence, and potential, she had been invited the night before to a discreet-read: secret-meeting in a cramped office situated in the basement of one of London's finer hotels. Chace, who had long since developed a strong suspicion of what was really going on, had attended the meeting, in part to assure herself she'd been correct, but mostly because the secrecy and deception involved had appealed to her.

Arriving for the interview precisely at twenty minutes past three in the afternoon, Chace had found an empty room, two chairs, a table, and a tea set on the sideboard. Touching the pot with the back of her hand, she'd found it scalding hot. She'd ignored the refreshment, taken a seat, smoked a cigarette, and had begun contemplating smoking another when a small and rather sad-looking man entered the room. He made no apology for keeping her waiting, and Chace had liked that, because, of course, she'd understood the delay as intentional. She was certain she'd been followed to the meeting, and would've been surprised if she hadn't been under surveillance within the room itself.