Disclaimer: I wish I owned Now You See Me. I really do. So... Any thing you don't recognize is mine. Usually. I hope so... :D Enjoy!

Prologue

Anastasia

oOo

They gave me an "A" name because I was the youngest they had ever recruited. They told me the story of my young, innocent childhood (that I did not remember, I might add) as if it was a fairy tale from a child's book. I think some of my bored caretakers even took delight in making a picture book of it for me once. I think I burned it with a lighter that night.

They told me the story of how my parents couldn't keep me anymore. They told me that they had left me, a small bundle only ten months old, wrapped in a white blanket, on the doorstep of The Caste. Nobody knew how my parents had found it. They told me that Diablo (nobody knew his real name, only that he was the father of James Black), the founder or whatever his title was, had taken me to his house maid, Delilah, and she had taken care of me until I was five years old—enough to begin training.

They told me my name was Anastasia, and I don't know why I believed them. I had a locket, though. A gold locket, in the shape of a heart. It had been around my neck when I was left at that doorstep, and it had remained there every day since.

Everyone has a secret. We will always love you.

I never let the words leave my head or the locket leave my watchful eye. I had to, had to know and had to believe that somewhere out there were two people who had given me up to protect me (however well that worked out) and that they would always love me.

At least that's what they told me. And that's all I'd ever know about that, because my parents hadn't even been able to name me. The only other thing I knew was that I had a brother, and that he knew who I was, what I was, where I was. But he could never come to get me.

I kept this in mind when I was ten and they beat me after I had messed up a training session. I kept this in mind when I was twelve and they assigned me to a Unit. I kept this in mind when I was fourteen and they gave me my first mission. I kept this in mind every one after that, successful or not.

And I still kept thinking it, over and over and over again, when I was fifteen and I learned that this weird thing I could do (magic, some might call it) was a gift, not a curse, because I knew that my brother, whoever he was, somehow had still cared about me-he'd said so, not anybody else-even if he'd stopped writing me.

I could still remember the day clearly, when I went from cursed assassin to gifted assassin. Still an assassin and one who couldn't tell anybody about either thing, but gifted nonetheless.

On my sixteenth birthday, my Unit leader had given me a lengthy vacation—three days off. Of course I still had to stay in the city, but I was okay with that as long as I had a break.

Delilah drove me to a high-end thrift store (if there is such a thing), handing me a few bills.

"Here's my present to you, Staci. Now, spend it well." I counted it out at lighting speed—two-hundred dollars. I reached over and hugged her.

"Thank you, Delilah! Thank you so much!"

"You're welcome, kiddo. And wander around a bit after. It's New York City—you can always find something to do! Be sure to be back at your dorm before it gets too dark tonight—they're throwing you a party. So try to look surprised when you find everyone in your room at nine o' clock, kay?"

I hugged her one last time and jumped out of the car, waving after her as she drove off.

oOo

It was an hour later that the day found me standing outside the doors, holding two bags sporting a variety of clothes, hats, scarves and others of the like. I had also found myself a new duffel bag from the man at the street corner who was trying to sell it to any random passerby to pay for either an unhealthy McDonald's lunch or a pack of cigarettes. By the smell on the bag, I was guessing the latter. The bag was, however, the perfect size and in good shape, and I knew it would last me a long time. And I was fairly certain that once it was shuffling around guns, knives and sweaty, dirty clothes, the smoke smell would be gone within the year.

I managed to make all my new things fit into into the duffel, only slightly surprising me. Delilah'd taught me a lot about packing over the years-it was a necessity for the far-out jobs. I pulled one of my new fedoras, placing it on my head and wrapping a scarf around my neck and yanked the tags off each. I picked up the bag and began to walk, seemingly aimlessly to anybody who cared to actually see me in amongst all the other busy New Yorkers and tourists, but I had a destination in mind.

The gas station looked old and run down to pedestrians, but I knew better than to judge a book by its cover. I snapped my jangling key ring from my belt loop, placing the selected one in the locked door and turning the knob, hearing a soft click. Light shone through the bulletproof glass of the windows, and I smirked at the simplicity.

Could you be any more obvious, guys?

I made my way to the back, by the one-holer bathroom, and shoved aside the small rug there with my foot, revealing a trap door. I took a copper key from my clip and turned the lock, lifting the door and dropping my bag inside, then following it down into the darkness.

I landed in a blackened hallway and reached up to close the door above me. As soon as it shut, dim lights lit up one by one down the corridor, like a scene from a bad horror movie. I lifted my bag once again and began to walk.

A motion sensor went off when I'd finally reached another pristine, white metal door, two video monitors swiveled towards me (I smiled at them), and a voice could be heard coming from a small radio box overhead.

"State your name, Unit and business," the man's voice commanded.

"Hey, Jake. It's Staci, Unit 4—I'm dropping a bag at my dorm."

"Enter," he sighed. I'm sure he was bored and had been hoping for someone that was most definitely not me to walk come along. I teased and flirted with him (only a little bit) just to see him blush, which he did not appreciate. At all.

The door slid open and I winked at the cameras one last time before entering the very large space I'd learned to call 'home'. It was built like the inside of a giant mansion—there was a kitchen, a living room, even an enormous dining room with the biggest table you had ever seen.

If you looked up, you would see the walk paths for each floor running around the edges of the walls, but it was a a clear-shot view up to the ceiling above the fourth floor. It looked very much like a hotel with room after room after numbered room zipping along the walls-and these were our dorms.

In fact, it was pretty much exactly like a hotel. The whole building had been built above ground to look like apartment complex, but the only way to get in was to come up from below. The exits and entrances were changed every day so that only the people with the codes and access to the new coordinates could get in.

This is HQ.

Every floor is occupied by people from different Units when they're not out doing their jobs. As I've said-exactly like a hotel. Floor one are the international spies; floor two, the undercover agents; floor three, the scientists, doctors and specialized planners (we can't go to hospitals or any public services because technically we don't exist-it tends to raise questions when unidentified people that aren't recorded of their very being anywhere within any records except our own show up needing medical attention); floor four, the assassins. My floor..

I hiked up the spiral staircase... One floor... Two... Three... Four, all the way up to my room. It was small, crammed with a bed, dresser, full-length mirror and a small desk-type thing with a lamp and an alarm clock/intercom set upon it, but I'd been living here since five years of age and I'd grown accustom. I plopped the bag on my bed, then headed back out of my room and down, down, down the stairs once again, exiting the building a different way, greeting people I passed on my way out.

I found myself underneath a road in a concrete sewer tunnel covered in graffiti. Most of it was the symbols and faces of the people from The Caste. I crouched down so that I wouldn't hit my head on the low ceiling and darted out, back up onto the street.

I checked to make sure the remainder of the money Delilah had given me was still in my zipped pocket (it was) and began to wander the streets, grateful for not having to haul around the duffel anymore. What to do... what to do with seven hours to kill.?

I'd gone all the way to Central Park when I saw him. He was fairly young, but still older than me. Maybe nineteen or so? He had a small crowd gathered around him, and I went over to see what all the fuss was about.

His hands moved quickly, almost so quickly that I couldn't follow them. The cards seemed to be moving on their own accord as he shuffled them, splitting up and stacking back together again, flying out of the deck only to be snatched up by his long, swift fingers.

He turned to a woman in the front, fanning out the pack. "Pick a card... any card... not that card! Ha ha, just kidding... there you go..."

She picked up a card and showed it to the rest of us, smiling at everybody, but didn't appear to notice me at all. I'd been trained to not draw attention to myself, to stay near invisible. I saw the card anyways... it was the eight of spades.

"There, now put it back in the deck... good, right there..." He began shuffling it again, and suddenly he had tossed all the cards in the air. They fluttered to the ground around him, all except the one he was still holding between two fingers. "Was this your card?" He showed it to her, and indeed, it was the eight of spades.

Not that impressive, if you had to ask me.

He did several more similar tricks, none of which really amazed me, but seemed to catch all the other people's attention. I had been standing here watching him for 45 minutes, though I didn't really know why. He finally announced that he was done for the day, putting his cards back in his pocket and holding out a black hat. Most everybody placed a few dollars in, then began to float away until only I remained, and he held out the hat to me.

I smirked and reached into my pocket to pull out what I had left-fifty bucks.

"Show me some real magic, you can have this."

He squinted at me and eyed me up and down (raven hair framing a tired face, a nice enough leather jacket, low-cut turquoise tank and almost-black pants faded and worn with age) before he hesitantly met my gaze.

"How old are you, kid?"

"Sixteen," I responded, telling no lies.

"May I inquire your name?"

"No."

"No?"

"No," I clarified. He looked very confused, so I stepped closer. I pulled back the heavy sleeve and turned my hand over so that he could see my wrist. Thin tattoo lines ran up and down, words or pictures or a combination of the two, but he obviously had seen enough of the very same stuff that he didn't think twice about it. "You see this band?" He nodded. "There's a combination to take it off, which I don't have, so it's permanent unless I get it. The chip here has spikes around the edges with wires running through them and into my arm."

"What do the wires do?" He sounded genuinely curious, like he thought it was some sick joke. Most people did, so I wasn't expecting him to believe me. Neither were the security folks on the line most likely listening in worried, else I would be out cold on the concrete.

I grinned like a mental patient. "If I say or do something out of line, I get about the equivalent shock of a low-dose electric chair." His mouth fell open and snapped shut like a fish. He shook his head again, seeingly computing all this before it quickly turned to a nod with a wide smile. Ah, my favorite part of this conversation that I'd had so many, many times before. Like any other street-smart person would do with any other insane person, he played along.

"I see. Who would do that to somebody?" Albeit a bad play-along (his acting skills were crap), but this was going to be the highlight of my day.

"A person, the head of an agency, you should pray you never meet. But if they want you, they will stop at nothing to find you."

He stepped away from me a little. "How do you know them?"

I answered hesitantly and quietly. "I'm a part of them."

That really got his attention-and, much to my surprise, he seemed to be changing his mind. He actually looked like he was going to start believing me pretty soon. "But... why?"

"Ah. Now there, magician, is the question. Why do I stay?" I sighed, forgetting that I was still holding up my sleeve. I turned away and looked out at Central Park. "It's beautiful, you know? But if I ran, I couldn't stay here, or ever come back here again. They'd come after me—I'd be number one on the Black List. Meaning they'd want me dead for what I know." I shrugged as though it were no big deal and turned back to him, yanking my sleeve back down and said, "And it's not like the list isn't long enough as it is."

The magician was still staring at me with a mixture of confusion, wonder, pity and respect spread across his face. I slowly turned my head this way and that, squinting my eyes, trying to see if his acting had just suddenly improved one hundred percent in the last thirty seconds. It dawned-he actually thought I was telling the truth. I mean, everybody knows that the best way to lie is to tell the truth, however impossible.

Nobody ever, ever believed me. Why was he different? And why so quickly? Was it something I'd said, something really and truly convincing? He cleared his throat. "You still want real magic?" And it was gone.

"Eh. I was just kidding. I would give you the money anyways. I'm probably the nicest person from this damned society that anyone will ever meet." I didn't really know whether I was talking about the Big Apple or The Caste.

He smiled, and reached into his pocket and came back up not with his deck of cards, but a scarf, holding it between two fingers and looked at me.

"Favorite animal, color, and, if you can, first letter of your name."

"Yeah, I can tell you all that. Animal: dolphin. Color: blue. First letter of my name... A."

He smiled and held the scarf out to me. "No I'm just gonna... Wrap this around your hand here...?" I nodded and smirked slightly at his natural magician's dramatics as he did so. "And... Presto!" He said it so cheesily that I almost didn't notice the cool feeling of metal in my palm. I spread my hand to see that in place of the scarf was a necklace.

The chain was silver, attaching to the pendant on either end that spelled out one word—MAGIC—in a beautiful, sweeping cursive font. The letters were baby blue, and beneath the word was a dolphin leaping from a squiggly line of water.

I laughed lightly. "What do you know? You really are magic."

He adapted a look of mock hurt. "Of course! Why else do you think I'm out here all the time, performing for small crowds, hoping that some day I can do better? Be bigger..."

"You could 'do better' by picking up some new card tricks. Those were awful, you know."

"I know. Here, I'll put it on."

I handed it to him and turned around, pulling my hair over my shoulder. He flipped the necklace in front of me, pulled it up and fastened it.

I faced him one more, looking down at the word and the animal, then back up at him. "Thank you..." I searched for a name.

"Daniel. Daniel Atlas," he informed me. "Pleasure to make your acquaintance, A."

"Please, pleasure's all mine," I replied sarcastically, but turned serious again in a second. "Oh, almost forgot..." I held up the small bill with the largest amount he'd probably get all day at once. Maybe all week. You know, now that I think about it, probably ever.

"Keep it. Buy yourself an ice cream or something. You deserve it..."

I shrugged, knowing that I pretty much had people showering me with paychecks that I'd never use while I was with The Caste. A mere fifty would not be missed. "A promise is a promise, so it's yours." I tucked the fifty into his hand and closed his fist around it again. A train of thoughts barreled through my head in a matter of seconds, and in a rash act of boldness, I glanced around to check for nosey people. "Magic, hmm?" He nodded. "That was this is?"

He gave me yet another confused look. I was tempted to say his face might freeze that way, but then I'd sound too much like Delilah, and we couldn't have that. I held out my hand, palm facing up. I didn't need to close my eyes like I had to in the past—I felt that weird feeling in my arm, warm and fuzzy, like Hydrogen Peroxide bubbling on a cut, except it didn't hurt like a bitch.

I concentrated hard, willing my thoughts to travel. And they did. My hand lit up like a projector, glowing softly around the edges. Daniel's mouth fell open again, but this time didn't close. He kept staring at my hand as the image began to sharpen. Soon it was a smooth, moving picture floating at my fingertips.

It was the view from a street, looking up at an old church bell tower. The bell was ringing, even though you couldn't hear its tolls. Two doves flitted into view, gliding around the tower on angel's wings and finally settling down on the pointed top when the bell stopped moving.

I glanced up at Daniel, looking for his reaction. He was the first one I'd shown this to-anybody else I knew would have me killed on the spot had they seen. His mouth was still hanging open. He must have noticed me staring because he moved his gaze to search my face, looking for laughter or any sign that I was joking, that this wasn't real. He found none, because I really and truly had this… thing. A curse, as I often thought it to be.

"Do you have any idea how incredibly rare this gift is? Illusionism?"

"I call it Illustration, but yeah, I know that I'm special. I've always thought it a curse. I just don't like to show people... I never thought they would understand. But you still can't tell anyone."

He laughed, and his eyes positively sparkled. "A curse? Poverty and Sleeping Beauty are curses and cursed. This is... Nothing even near that."

"Not if somebody were going to kill you if they knew."

"No, no, don't say that, because then I'm going to be even more curious. Like... What your name might be, what you do, how you got mixed up in all th-"

I cut him off, holding my open hand up a little higher so he could clearly see it. Now instead of the bell tower, words began forming. The image widened and lengthened to make room for the sentence that I was pushing it to spell out. Each letter stitched itself together in the air, like invisible thread following an invisible needle through the thin air.

Anastasia Rhodes. People I don't know call me Anastasia; murderers and spies call me Staci. I cleared the message once it was clear he had read it. BTW, I know Daniel is a middle name. All of it was as translucent and in the smallest print I could manage but still read-there was no reason to go and get a message like this tattooed somewhere on me forever, magically and for no reason, it seemed, in dull colors of ink, as most all my other Illustrations are.

He smirked and I let the projection down, rubbing my tired hand and looking away from him.

"That's incredible, A." I was glad he had picked up on the face that I obviously couldn't have The Caste knowing that I'd told somebody who I was.

I nodded and smiled. "Glad you thought so," I said, winking. I stood from the bench we had made our way to at some point, and he copied me. "Listen, I have to go. I'll be missed. You know how it goes-Big Brother is always watching." He flashed me a trademark grin, understanding the George Orwell's 1984 reference.

"I'll see you again soon?" he asked hurriedly, looking a little lost, like everything was still cranking through. I could practically see the gears turning.

"I have these next two days off before I have to go back to... Training. That's your time frame."

"Tomorrow, we meet right back here? Say... noon? I'll take you to lunch."

I rolled my eyes and chuckled. "Sure thing, Atlas. Noon tomorrow, this bench. I'll see you then. Just keep in mind I'm sixteen, and you're not."

As I turned around to leave, he caught my arm. "You should practice that more often, A. You'd be promising in the trade."

I took my arm back from him, gently prying his fingers from it."Thanks, Atlas. I will. I'll see you tomorrow."

Of course, I didn't tell him that what The Caste really did was take out the real magicians in the world, one by one. Not the fake ones, but the ones who knew real magic. Like him.

Of course, when I walked to the bench in the middle of Central Park to meet him the next day, he wasn't there.

Of course, I sat there for a while, carefully practicing with my gift, keeping it small and out of sight of any Caste folks. I picked up many new tricks quickly.

Of course, after three hours of waiting and he didn't show, I gave him one final act of my kindness. I left him a note, because I knew that he was close by and was still watching me, but wasn't about to show himself. I figured I'd never know why. But I knew right where he was "hiding" (leaning against a tree with a hat over his face and pretending to read a paper). When I left my note, I turned to his spot and smiled at him, holding up the necklace. I winked at him, and I knew he saw me.

Of course, I turned and walked away.

I'll never forget it. I thought about what you said—I'm leaving The Caste (yes, that's who they are) and running away. Maybe we'll meet again soon, J. Daniel Atlas. I'll see you then.

AMR