I’ve never told anyone this before, but for the first five years of my life-before the specialists could figure out what the hell was wrong with me-my parents considered the possibility that I might be mentally challenged. You know, “slow.” See, I kept doing all these things that seemed extraordinarily stupid, and my parents couldn’t figure out why. My mother had been at the top of her class at the university in Moscow. My father tested at the genius level. It wouldn’t make sense for their only child to be a moron.

Of course, certain signs pointed to the fact that I was smarter than I acted. I picked up languages really quickly; I was doing algebra when most girls are debating whether or not to give up playing with dolls. It was my behavior that baffled them. Like when I was four, they took me to this hotel in Los Angeles. There was an Olympic-size swimming pool. I took one look at it, and then I dove headfirst into the deep end. I didn’t have the faintest inkling how to swim.

Needless to say, I almost drowned. But that wasn’t the disturbing part. The problem was, I dove right back into the deep end the next day. And the next. I’ll never forget the look on my father’s face every time he fished me out of the warm turquoise water and wagged his long finger in my face with anxious fury. “What is the matter with you?” he kept yelling.

I couldn’t answer him. I didn’t know.

There were a lot of incidents like that: diving into giant swimming pools, running past the shark warnings into the ocean, walking into traffic, pedaling my tricycle for six miles with no idea how to get back home….

It wasn’t until the Agency ran some tests on me that we all discovered that I was missing that pesky little fear gene. Oh, happy day! My ludicrous behavior could finally be explained.

I wasn’t stupid. I was fearless.

They’d just confused the two, which, when you think about it, makes perfect sense. I understood what I was doing; I just didn’t care about the consequences. So I kept making bad decisions. My ability to reason hadn’t caught up with my instincts yet.

And that’s really the problem. When you’re fearless and you’re only acting on instinct…you can do some pretty stupid things. I mean, think about it. How can you make the right choice when you don't fear the consequences of the wrong one? How can you even tell the difference between right and wrong, between sensible and idiotic?

Yes, there is a point I'm getting to here.

Three minutes ago I had to make a choice. A choice based entirely on instinct. Josh Kendall and Loki’s thugs were coming at me. (How Josh could have been there, given that I’d just seen him shot in the head a few hours earlier, is another story entirely-one I have yet to figure out and one that is simply too twisted and inexplicable for me to deal with right now. so I will stick to what I understand.) I was basically cornered. And then a car pulled up to the curb and a man opened the back door, begging me to jump into the car with him, where I’d be safe.

I looked at his face, and I had two seconds to decide….Was that man my father or my uncle? There was no time for quizzes or close consideration. No time to reason. I looked deep in his eyes, and my gut told me that he was my father. So I got in the car, and we took off down the street.

But I just don't know.

I mean, someone actually capable of experiencing fear would know better than I would. Did I make the right choice or not? Have my instincts improved with age, or did I just dive into the deep end again? Here I was, sitting in the backseat of the car with my father, and the same thought kept running through my head over and over again:

I should be afraid. I really wish I were afraid right now.