“OK, Emile Alix Simpson, if you complete this last task, you will officially be an agent for the Rogue,” I said into a microphone. I could hear my voice reverberating through the large room below me just a second off, and thought how ridiculous this was. Why my little brother needs to go through all of the other training and challenges that the other agents go through when I’ve already taught him all of this, I don’t know. But what I do know is that he- he needs some work if he’s going to actually take up all that this job requires. 

“ Emile, to complete your training, you must investigate a person that we will provide, and find whether or not they are innocent, are you ready to begin?” 

“Mr.River Lafayette Simpson, I am ready to begin,” he finally answered, trembling, even though he’s done this with me several times before.

“Begin,” my voice boomed through the large room, much more ominous than it needed to be, than it sounds in real life, but I needed to sound in charge, because otherwise no one’s going to respect the 17 year old leader of the Rogue mafia. Yes. Well, I’m not the sole leader. My best friend, Shamous, who is also 17 is my second in command. Yeah. Cause everyone’s going to respect a 17 year old boy if his second in command is super cocky and people think he’s only second because he’s “boss’s” best friend. Yeah, that’s not true, the “ he’s only second cause he’s my friend” part. He actually is amazing with the investigations and is great with getting people to listen to me, or he was until I became important. Now people would have to listen to me if…… they knew that I was their leader. In reality, my parents act as though they lead the Rogue so that if anything were to happen, like we get caught, they would be able to protect their children by no one knowing anything different than them leading.

As I refocused my attention to what my 14-year-old brother was doing, I was impressed by how well he was doing. Usually he hates doing anything controversial, but he has always talked about wanting to join the Rogue as an investigator, which is exactly what he’s practicing now, just way easier. In training, we make everything 10x more difficult than it is in real life, and very stressful, so that we know who to keep and who to let go.

 Emile was finally getting to where the “normal” person he was investigating had stashed all of her…what should I call them…plans. Emile would have to decide whether to let this person be, take them out, persuade them to join the Rogue, or watch them for a while longer before making any rash decisions. I looked over at how much time he had left and…he’s only taken one minute to get this far, while usually it takes trainees 10 minutes to get this far. Impressive, if you don’t take into account the rest of our family. Everyone in our family has taken different variations of this test multiple times as soon as they could talk. Our parents, Jacque Lee Simpson and Jonetta Paolina Simpson, took the test in 2 minutes total, our oldest little sister, Brentley Jayma (in this account I will call her Jayma), is 8now but  finished in 3 minutes at the age of five, and our youngest sister, Arcadia Ursula, is 5 now and finished her first test last week in 5 minutes. These are the fastest times ever, besides mine. I was the first child under 5 to take the test because at that time my parents were still leading, and I finished in exactly 2 minutes. My times have kept getting shorter and shor-

“GASP!” I hadn’t heard Em gasp like that since he learned that all the people that work for me kill people for a job. I knew he had gotten to the part. The part where he saw that this person was actually our mother, and he didn’t know that this was fake, because all of our participants are told that all of their examinations are real and if they make a mistake, it could hurt our organization forever. So, now Emile had to make what would be the first of the soon to be daily hard decisions for that would go on for the rest of his life. Would he choose to leave “our mother” alone, expel her from the Rogue, leave her alone for a while longer, or-

“I choose to put her in the custody of the Rogue for further examination, Mr.River Lafayette Simpson,” Emile finally decided.

“ Good decision, Emile Alix Simpson. It took you 2 ½ minutes to complete this task making you the second fastest person in your age group, the fastest with 45 seconds,” I said with a smirk. He sighed just loud enough for me to hear as I walked out of the room and descended the stairs that appeared with a touch of my hand.

“ You’ll have to do better than that if you want to beat me. You know, my latest time was 20 seconds,” all formality from the examination gone from my voice.

“ Seem to be slowing down, huh River?” He snapped back, never allowing himself to be beaten down by anyone. I could see in his big brown eyes how much he admired me, even though he would never say it. He had the same soft brown hair, freckled nose, and general face shape as me, but his eyes couldn’t be more different. While mine were a watercolor mix of browns and greens with jabs of gold, his were a deep, steady brown that he got from our mother. Speaking of that actually…

“ OH yeah this examination isn’t actually real. Mom isn’t going to be interrogated for anything because she didn’t do anything wrong. But she was watching that examination so she may be a little upset or a lot, but she will also 100% be proud of you for being able to make that hard decision,” his face was hilarious, and I couldn’t help but crack a smug grin.

“ So, moms not going to jail? She’s just going to be “ a little” mad at me?” I could clearly see the fear plastered on his face.

“ Yep! Isn’t that just great?” I could practically feel the thick sarcasm that diluted my usually care-free tone. His face was pale as he whispered a response that I couldn’t quite hear.

 As we walked out of the examination room, Emile was met by a sound that he had never heard before. Several people were cheering for him , all clearly excited that yet another Simpson had joined the Rogue. Over the cheering, I could faintly hear a beeping sound in my office just down the hall, and I noticed that Shamous was missing from the celebration. I looked at my parents and saw in their expressions that they had noticed the same thing, so I quietly excused myself to go investigate what the beeping was about.

When I walked into my office, I saw that Shamous had taken off his usual confident, cocky demeanor like he usually did when he was with friends. He looked fairly shaken, which honestly scared me, because Shamous was one of the hardest people to shake.

“ Police have found evidence that all of the mysterious deaths going on around the world were all done by the same person or possibly people. All we know about the individual or individuals who have been committing these murders, is that they call themselves ‘The Rogue’. Police are currently trying to find why these murders are occurring. The murderer has given no indication as to the patterns of murder, because they have been committed on a random schedule, victims are both male and female, ages range from 17 to 84,  they come from all around the world, and there also doesn’t seem to be a correlation with-“

“Turn it off,” I say, startling Shamous,” oh sorry I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“No it’s ok. I just thought that we would have more time before they found out. And they know it’s us too. I just-“ He really sounded beat up about this.

“Hey chill out. It’s fine. We knew that they would find out about us anyway, it’s just sooner than we had planned for. At least they don’t know about-“

“Hi Riv and Shamous! I haven’t seen you guys all day! You should come play with me!” That’s Brentley, but, as I said earlier, we just call her Jayma. She… has a tiny crush on Shamous.

“Sorry Jay, we can’t right now. Work stuff. But I’m sure you and Arc could get Emile to let you do his hair. You know how much he just loves it when you do his hair,” Shamous replies.

“Yeah, good idea!” She giggles as she walks out the door.

“We knew that they would figure it out because we planted clues everywhere, yeah, but it’s still a shock. I was even the one to place the clues just right so that they wouldn’t find out until we allowed them. So either I just didn’t do my job well enough or someone on our side gave it away,” Shamous continued, running his fingers through his always ruffled hair.

“I’m sure it was our side. We will need to look into that, so I’ll tell Em what to look out for. But what we really need to worry about is that they find out about-“ it was at that exact moment that my parents walked in.

“Sorry we took that long. What was everything about?” My mom wondered.

“They know,” I replied, growing more and more anxious by the second.

“WHAT? HOW DO THEY KNOW ABOUT-“ my dad nearly exploded.

“ No no no. That’s not what he meant. They just know it was the Rogue.”

“Yeah ‘just’!” My mom seemed really upset. This was very unexpected, but we could work through it. If they found this, they soon find that we mean well, that we mean to create-

“Turn it back on,”  my mom says.

“-we know about the Rogue is that it is a little known mafia that has no definite leader. We ask anyone who knows anything about the deaths or the Rogue to please come forward to protect the future of not only our country, but our planet. President Daeva made a statement about this organization earlier today,” I switch the tv back on.

“I know that this is a scary time for everyone, but I assure you that teams around the world are working together to figure out exactly what the Rogue is and what they are trying to accomplish with what they are doing-“ the president would seem confident to the untrained eye, but everyone in this room could see that she was just as scared as I’m sure every other American was.

“Switch to France,” I say, because that was where one of the largest murders took place. We had to take out a whole janitorial team that was getting some ideas.

“ Le Premier Ministre a fait cette déclaration quelques minutes seulement après le meurtre,” the news lady said.

“Nous découvrirons qui a fait cela et vengerons tous ceux qui ont été affectés par les gens se disent Rogue,” Prime Minister Abreo said, always keeping his statements short.

“I don’t understand how they haven’t found it yet. For them, it was the most obvious,” Shamous thought aloud. I couldn’t either, but I’m sure they haven’t done much investigation yet. I then remembered that I had told Jayma and Arcadia to do Emile’s hair, and was soon rushing out of the room, sensing that the conversation was over, to see the sure to be spectacle.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Dad asked me.

“I told Jay and Arc to do Emile’s hair earlier, and I’m not going to miss it !” I explain. Soon we were all on our way to the girl’s room.

After a few days with no special accurances, it was a shock when I turned on the news to check up on the world. We had had to take out a few more people around the world but none of them had any family that they seemed extremely close to. I had just sat down in my office to check up on the new agents when I decided to turn on the news. 

“There has been an update that the Rogue aren’t all bad. After more investigation, police found that every victim had plans for mass murder, bioterrorism, etc. We can only be thankful for the Rogue now, and hope that there is no more need for them,” the story finally finished.

“What’s that ?” Dad walked in.

“They know, finally. It actually took them longer than I thought it would,” I replied, relieved.

“Emile found something new, by the way. A plan to turn America into a dictatorship.”

“Who ?”

“President Daeva.”