 |
Shooting the Moon
|
|
All chapters are within this file. This story contains characters from and references to "Protections," its much-shorter prequel. However, everything you need to know is in here somewhere. Most of the characters portrayed herein belong to Warner Bros. and the USA Network in fact, and to us only in fantasy. No copyright violations are intended, and no money will be made from this work. by Claire Gabriel "Your passion for life is very strong, Nikita. It enables you to accomplish things that no one else can. It can also destroy you." - Madeline, in "Off Profile" Two weeks after her father's death, Nikita moved back to her apartment. The room in Section where she had lived for a month and loved for an afternoon now haunted and stifled her. Her apartment, at least, held neutral memories too, years of the familiar to balance the hazardous newness and devastating loneliness of the life she had allowed to be held hostage--payment in kind for the life of a little boy with bright, black-button eyes and a shy, tentative smile. In her despairing moments, she wished she could hate Adam Samuelle. Her choice-that-was-no-choice had not been made for him. It had been made for Michael, whose love for her could not have survived had she sacrificed his son for her freedom. Michael would have tried. Preserving what they had together was worth any amount of effort, and they both knew it now. But he would have failed; Adam dead would have lain between them for the rest of their lives--not Michael's doing, but his undoing. She had perceived that instantly as her father spoke the words, "I can't go if you don't say yes." And she had given the only answer possible. But hate Adam for that? "You're a sucker for little kids," she told herself. But it wasn't just that. Adam was part of Michael, and there was nothing of Michael that she could keep from loving. And nothing of her in this cold, dreary room where she now did what passed for living. So she packed the few personal possessions she had brought with her to Section while, during Paul Wolfe's final days, she'd only had time to fight the fires he refused to fight. She did not ask permission from the men her father had referred to as his colleagues--her immediate supervisors while Oversight remained in administrative chaos following George's demise. She simply moved out, realizing that if she began by asking permission for everything she did, she would establish a precedent as intolerable as it was untenable. Let them cancel her. It was probably going to happen anyway. "Your predecessor found it more efficient to maintain residence in the Tower penthouse," the man she had privately nicknamed The Chair of Peter reminded her when she informed AlphaGroup of her move after the fact. She had little knowledge of the Pope of Rome and even less interest in him. But the idea of one individual issuing infallible decrees because of where he happened to be sitting when he issued them had always annoyed her, and the analogy was clear. This man had taken her father's place, elected by the Cardinals of Center from among their number for who knew what reason. Her father's "I'm not a king" came back to her now, and she thought, Neither are you, smartass. But moderation in all things might just be the key to keeping her alive. "I'm not my predecessor," she said with a quiet smile, in a tone both firm and unchallenging. "If after a time you gentlemen feel it's imperative that I live on site, that option continues to exist." It occurred to her that she sounded a bit like her father, and she suppressed the grimace that thought brought with it. A man who had displayed almost no interpersonal skills in his interactions with her, he had nevertheless risen to the top of this Old Boy Network--against his will if his own words were to be believed. Given that, she could do worse than to selectively emulate some of his methods. Besides, That'd be like living on top of a snake pit did not seem to be a viable alternative response in the circumstances. Chair made as though to answer her, but Paddy Perfect spoke before he could. His given name was indeed Patrick; white-haired, slim, and lethal, he was immaculately groomed and deceptively soft-spoken. Examining his manicured, faintly lustrous nails, he murmured, "An appearance of compliance is no substitute for the real thing, Nikita. If we give you some leeway here, are you prepared to accept the judgment of the Group should your lifestyle interfere with your function?" "Yes," she answered without caring whether it was true or not. It occurred to her that now she sounded like Michael, and the impulse to grimace was replaced by an impulse to laugh. That, too, she suppressed. "Excellent." It was the Hyena, who smiled constantly and had already tacitly given her notice that he had no confidence in her ability to make hard decisions regarding who would live and who would die in Section during her watch. "Shall we say a month's probation, followed by a review? "Of course." Michael again. Where the hell am I in all this? Chair frowned, eyebrows drawing together like black caterpillars converging. "Christopher, your thoughts?" She turned her gaze to the most junior member of the panel, a cold op for fifteen years who had filled the vacancy left by her father's death. This man's name had been one of three gifts her father had given her over dinner in a very good Hungarian restaurant--the name, he had said, of the one man at Center she could trust. In his early fifties, sandy-haired and freckled, Christopher McKenzie looked earnest and ordinary and out of his element. He doesn't want his job either. "I'm just the new kid on the block," he said with a wry smile that Nikita found herself returning. Chair snorted, Perfect frowned a bit while polishing his nails against his coat sleeve, and Hyena's grin became slightly feral. Be careful, Nikita thought. You were my father's protege. They're probably gunning for you, too. But she needn't have worried. His smile expanding, Christopher continued. "But I say give her some rope and see if she hangs herself." Broad, innocent grin, and yet she knew that what he was really verbalizing--to her--was almost exactly what she had thought to him only a few seconds before. The fifth member of the Group said nothing, which was what he almost always said. Stare Bear was gray all over today--his vast, expensive suit and shirt, his tie, his hair and short beard, his eyes, even his skin--slack in places, bulging in others. She suspected that the man might not be in good health, but nothing in his manner suggested anything but the strength of steel. Experience had taught her well that a man who said little most of the time was to be reckoned with when he chose to say more. The Bear was as obese as Michael was trim, but there was nothing soft about him. Quite the contrary. "Very well," said Chair. "Consider that topic on hold. I believe we have one other administrative matter to discuss this afternoon. As head of Section One, you have the right to make a recommendation regarding the disposition of the two individuals we discussed at our last meeting. Are you prepared to make that recommendation at this time?" "Yes." Horror at what she was about to do rose in her like bile. This was her first test. If she could have believed that fighting them on this was in anyone's best interests, she would have fought to her own death if necessary. But it was not. You do what you have to do. "I recommend cancellation for both." She realized immediately that Hyena was disappointed; he had wanted to catch her on this one. Chair's eyebrows rose, and Perfect stopped rubbing his nails and looked directly at her for perhaps the first time in their association. Bear stared, but intently rather than blankly. Christopher lowered his gaze, and she tried not to guess what he was thinking. It didn't matter. The two under discussion were Karyn to the power of ten. This had to be done before Section could even begin to turn around and head in the right direction. "You were ambivalent about this matter the last time we met." "I've studied their psyche profiles, and observed them at their work. Torture is how they..." Get off. "They get pleasure from torturing other human beings, and they're both beyond cure. Containing them would serve no purpose, and releasing them outside would be unthinkable even if it were possible. They're both too sick." "And maintaining the status quo?" "The status quo is part of what brought Section to its present state." "And what do you propose to substitute for the current methods of interrogation of reluctant hostiles?" "Drugs. I've had the head of Medlab research it, and she and I have discussed her findings extensively. There are alternatives to torture that could get us the same intel." "And previously these alternative procedures haven't been implemented because...?" Because Madeline liked doing it her way. "Previously I wasn't in charge." Her tone was unaggressively confident, her gaze direct. "Now I am." The week after her move was more hectic than usual. Developing new routines to compensate for the fact that she didn't live in Section any more consumed as much attention as she had to give. Then too, there was something else nagging at her that she could not identify, and she did not have time or energy to try. Some kind of threat or anxiety hung on the fringe of her consciousness, barely out of sight but palpably present. She had been back in her apartment for several days before she could identify it, and when she did, she stopped dead in the middle of the first half of a push-up, staring at the open patio doors where the first balmy spring breeze wafted the curtains into the darkening room. Frozen in place for almost ten seconds, she finally lowered herself slowly to prone position, hands flat between her belly and the floor. She was four days late, and she was never late. Her universe toppled, crumbled, and fell in on her--smothering her beneath debris that seemed to be all that was left of a dream she'd not dared to dream, but that seemed to have been hiding somewhere anyway. Rolling onto her side, she curled into fetal position, ironically the only way her mind, wailing in despair, could think to protect yet another part of Michael now fused with a part of herself. "Oh, God." She had not believed in God for years, and even now a very small, very clear part of her mind stood back and wondered whose voice she was hearing. "Oh, God. Oh, God." The voice kept whispering it over and over as she rocked back and forth, her bare shoulder scraping against the carpet. Two alternatives: the impossible and the unthinkable. How big? she wondered. Rosebud size? No, not even that. "Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God." Bottoming out.... "Not gonna happen," Crazy Ellie, who was not as crazy as she thought she was, had said long ago. "Your mom's never gonna stop drinking 'til she bottoms out, and maybe not even then. Could end up just like me, kid. Face it." "Bottoms out?" she had asked, terrified of the image the words brought to mind and yet unable to stifle the question. "Like the bottom of a pit, kind of. Can't go no lower. Nothing can happen that's worse'n what's happening. Either you get up and claw your way out the top or you just lay there and go nuts like me." Third alternative. Go nuts like Crazy Ellie the bag lady. Just think outside the box and who knows what else you might-- She stopped rocking and lay still, taken by yet another memory. It had been early in her training, one of the few tests Michael had given her that did not involve a sim or the conquering of a physical obstacle. Dumb test, she'd thought, popping her gum as she contemplated the neat rectangle he'd drawn on the computer screen. Bor-ring. But even then she'd known she had to be wrong: Michael never gave dumb tests. So. Connect the four corners of the box in every possible way. "Can I use the same line to connect more than two points?" she had asked. "If you want to." Pop. "Extra credit for creativity?" Smiling ever so faintly: "Of course." "Different colors?" Shadow of a frown. "Just do it, Nikita." She had soon created a snarl of straight and looping lines within the rectangle, in an array of primary and pastel colors. Michael simply watched. She knew he was waiting for something, but what the hell was there to wait for? The stylus moved faster and faster. Think I'm going to mess up, huh, Michael? First thing I learned in school was to always color inside the... Lines? Her stylus hovered for a moment. Then, switching to a stroke that was actually an explosion of neon-like shades and tints, she swept it outside the box at one of the corner points, made a huge, exultant, fan-like image that began at the upper right corner of the box and ended at the lower right--a cross between a lumpy butterfly wing and a rainbow of tornadoes. She went on, enjoying herself immensely, until the screen was covered, each line or arc beginning at one corner of the box and ending at another. Then, smirking, she challenged, "That's it, right? Gotta go outside the box to pass the test?" Michael didn't answer, but she would always remember that day as the first time he'd looked at her with pride. "Save the file," was all he said. Pop. "What'll I call it?" "Thinking Outside the Box." "Pretty long name for a stupid little--" "Just do it." Thinking outside the box. She had no idea what those words might mean under these circumstances, and suddenly she was exhausted beyond caring. Weeks of sleep deprivation and unremitting stress augmented the after-effects of her plunge into despair. But the image of those exultant neon swirls flooding the screen glowed behind her eyelids as soon as they fluttered closed. It was a light, restless sleep, but still she dreamed--of a swirl of colors unbound, and a memory of Michael's hand on hers as he loved her with his voice. "We could even have children of our own.... It's no dream. We'll make it work." It was dark when she woke, and she was shivering with cold. The balmy mid-March evening had become a chilly early-spring night while she slept, and the patio doors were still open, the curtains now billowing into the room like sails above a wind-driven sea. Rising, she drew on a heavy sweater over her workout clothes, realized that her abruptly churning stomach didn't know she'd had nothing to eat since noon, and bolted for the bathroom to offer gut-wrenching proof. Her stomach was unexpectedly difficult to convince, but once she accomplished that feat, the nausea passed with reassuring speed. Turning on a single lamp, she moved toward the kitchen. Crackers? Toast, maybe. But she paused before the still-open patio doors and then moved through them, crossed to the railing and leaned on it, hands flat, her hair falling forward as she bowed her head. Then she lifted her face and spoke softly into the wind. "Make it work." Make it happen. The surge of adrenaline dismayed her; profound mood swings would not help her survive this. But at the moment, it didn't matter. Hugging herself against the chill, she threw back her head and sighed. I can do this. The words had no objective meaning, and yet somehow they were the deepest truth she had ever known. I can do this. She did not sleep again that night. The second half of her piece of toast went over the railing for the birds, and the cup of coffee she brewed with anticipation was dumped in the sink when she remembered that she was no longer alone in her body. Tea, then. No caffeine, though. Chamomile? Yeah. Something to bring her back down so she could get some sleep. But she did not want to sleep. At first she paced--not urgently but slowly, arms folded across her chest, head bent and forehead furrowed. Think it through. Just think it all through, and don't worry about staying in the lines. Take nothing for granted. Assume no boundaries. Think outside the box. And it occurred to her that it was incomparably valuable to her that she had worn three hats in Section: skilled operative, undercover agent for Center, and now--for the past three weeks--Operations, spending virtually every waking moment learning her new job. I can do this. And yet another memory. Until now, she had not thought of Jurgen in months, but for a moment he was with her once more. "They told me I'd died. I don't remember any tunnels or white light, but I was different." She hadn't died. She'd bottomed out, like Crazy Ellie said. But the result was the same. "Everything was clear. I realized it didn't matter where I was. It was a state of mind." Jurgen had lost his state of mind when its props were removed. But unlike him, she had no props to lose. By morning, she was thinking almost completely outside the box. At dawn, she sat cross-legged in the middle of her bed, holding in her hands a PDA with but one highly-encrypted i/o channel. She knew that any message she sent would not end up on the laptop in Michael's office; he would have deleted all reference to it there before he left on what he thought at the time was a suicide mission to which she had assigned him--to save his life and to set him free. Now her message would go elsewhere. She thought she knew where, but just now where didn't matter. All that mattered was that she knew that Michael would have arranged to be the only one to receive it. And yet.... She envisioned her signal speeding on its way, and then being intercepted by accident. Encrypted? Fine. But she was not about to take any chances. She typed slowly, "After November, SV's grandson won't go solo any more." Could he possibly misunderstand? She sat staring at the words for a few moments, and then looked up into the dawn creeping in at the windows. Sunrise. Good omen. Had to be. Her finger hovered over Send, but instead she pressed Enter twice and sighed. In memory, lies swarmed like flies. Michael's lies, manipulations, rejections. Time and time and time again. Well, I've lied to him, too. Did she believe everything was different between them now? Could she trust him to be there for her? Yes. The shadow of a doubt hung over that answer like thin smoke. But it would clear with time, and the keeper of her heart and soul deserved more than a lie of omission. "I'll need you sometimes. Don't know when or where yet." I'll need you. Scariest thing she had ever said to him. And then she remembered that it was Michael, not she, who had first used that word between them. She hit Send and felt her heart skip with apprehension. Can't take it back. It was done. Her hand shook a little as she returned the PDA to her bureau drawer. Part of her wanted to keep it with her all day, to know his answer as soon as he sent it. But that way lay disaster. The success of this most important mission ever depended on her ability to focus on what she was doing every moment she was in Section. The PDA would have to remain at home today and every day. | ||
|
|
Shooting the Moon
|
|
Kelly Glass, M.D. had shot her husband and her best friend to death in the bed where she'd come upon them together a moment before. Found guilty of second-degree murder, she had received the maximum sentence from a judge who could not forgive her for referring to her dead husband as "that son-of-a-bitch" in open court. After several months as a model inmate and voluntary assistant to the head of the prison hospital, she had been taken one night from her cell to a place called Section One. There she was also a model prisoner and assistant to the head of Medlab--until that unfortunate soul had fallen dead of a heart attack seven months after Kelly came to Section. "This is a helluva place to spend the rest of your life," she had conceded to Nikita after they had somehow managed to become friends during Paul Wolfe's chaotic final weeks as Operations. "But who'd've thought a lifer like me would ever get to be top doc of a world-class setup like this? Life sucks, okay? But here I can at least be myself without everybody wondering when I'm going to kill somebody else. Like, they don't sweat the small stuff here, you know?" It was half true and half an act. Nikita knew that Kelly hated being held prisoner in Section, and that she lived in fear of the day when she would be called upon to break her oath to do no harm. But that had not happened yet, and if Nikita had her way, it never would. As long as she was doing the work she was born for, Kelly could live with what she called "the rest of this shit." Their usual greeting was a high five; they often exercised together, occasionally dined together outside the Section, and met regularly two mornings a week to discuss Kelly's research and other matters of common concern. This morning, though, there was something in the air and it was not a good thing. Kelly's jaunty what-the-hell manner was noticeably subdued, her normally smooth, coffee-colored forehead creased with tension, and her eyes even larger and darker than usual. Seconds after Nikita entered her office she rose from her desk and shut the door. "Sit," she said bluntly, running a hand though her closely-cropped black curls--a nervous gesture that Nikita had never seen her use before. "This is real bad." Nikita sat, and waited. "It's Jasmine." Is she pregnant? The question almost slipped out, and Nikita caught her breath, realizing how close she had come saying something that the ever-alert Kelly might have picked up on. "What's wrong with her?" "She has MS." Shock obliterated every other concern. Jasmine, her protege, whom Operations might once have called "the future of the Section," had an incurable disease that would gradually drain her ability to function as a Section operative. Six months ago, even six weeks ago, she would have been put in abeyance before her next mission. Her illness, over which she had no control, would have been her death warrant years before it would have taken her life. "Are you sure?" "You think I'd be telling you about this if I wasn't?" The wicked glint that normally lit Kelly's dark eyes had been replaced by anger, even rage. "She's as good as dead right now, isn't she? You're going to have to cancel her, aren't you?" "That's not gonna happen." Now it starts. Oddly enough, she was not afraid--even though she was realizing for the first time that she would not only have to change Section. She would have to re-invent it if she were going to be able to live with herself in it. "How long does she have?" "Before what?" "Before she's impaired." "She's slightly impaired already. What do you think she came to see me about?" Still the anger, the rage. As though she had not heard the vow. "I'm not going to have her canceled, Kelly." Before the other could voice her incredulity: "Does she know what she's got?" "Yes." "Then I have to go see her right away. Was there anything else?" "The rest can wait." Kelly stared, beginning to believe. "You mean it." "Yeah, I do." "Nikita, what can you possibly do?" "Later, okay? I have to talk to her before she gets any wrong ideas." The young woman sitting at the computer in Systems looked calm and in control. But when she turned to look at Nikita, there was a slight gray tinge to her golden skin. "I won't let it happen, Jasmine." Nikita rolled a chair over and sat beside her, resisting the impulse to take her hand. Their voices remained low enough so as not to attract the attention of the others working nearby. "You're not God." It was only a whisper. "Do me a favor and don't talk miracles." "It won't take a miracle. Just some thinking outside the box." "What box?" "Accepted boundaries. The way everything's always done. It's not going to be that way any more." "Yeah. Well." But "Well" was slightly interrogatory. At least she was listening, and her eyes held some expression besides dumb terror. "What's outside the box?" "I'm not sure yet." Jasmine slumped a little in her chair. "Look. At. Me." Jasmine obeyed. "I'm not God, remember? I can't make this awful thing go away, and there are no easy solutions to this. But I have an idea. Half an idea, actually. I'll get back to you in a day, two at the most. Can you wait that long?" Before what? But the picture that would not leave her mind was of her younger self with a gun in her hand and Michael knocking insistently at her door. They gazed at each other in silence, understanding one another all too well. Finally Jasmine said softly, "Yes." "Do I have your word?" "Yes. But Niki--um--ah--" "That's still my name." "I know. But--" "Madeline was always just Madeline, and even George was always just George. Nobody messed with either of them except Operations, and he's not here to mess with me." A faint smile. Good. Good. Good. "What we called him was his choice. What you call me is mine. And your question was?" Silence, but still the faint smile. Finally: "I think maybe you just answered it." One of the perks of her new position was that she could sit and converse with anyone without someone else coming up to interrupt. She and Walter had been talking at his counter for almost half an hour--she brainstorming and he alternately grimacing with apprehension and grinning in appreciation. No one had approached them in all that time. "Is there a precedent?" she asked. "Matter of fact, there is. Adrian called it the CTTF--Covert Training Task Force. Next step up after the two-year mentoring period. Operations discontinued it. He wanted 'em in the field as target practice asap, ready or not." He frowned. "Sugar, don't start rocking the boat so soon. Wait 'til the honeymoon's over." "Honeymoon never started. It's been real since day one." Tossing her hair back, she scanned the area with a glance, not looking for anything special, just looking. She had seen Michael do it a thousand times, and often wondered why. Now she knew. If you wanted to survive in Section, you watched even when there was nothing to watch. Walter was watching her. "Nikita?" Startled at his calling her by her given name, she snapped her gaze back to meet his. "Have you seen Michael?" This is Walter. No threat here. No need for a fight-or-flight response. Her spiking pulse eased back toward normal. "In my dreams. Why'd you ask?" "I dunno. You seem...different today. More..." He made a vague, expansive gesture. "Happier, I guess is what I mean." Purely on instinct, she teased instead of fabricating a denial. "It's a secret. Need-to-know only." "Aw, c'mon, Sugar! Tell Walter all about it." "Soon." "Promise?" Whatever had caused him to pick up on her mood so accurately was apparently placated. "Promise. Thanks for the sounding board." "When do you tell them? About your idea." "They have a meeting tomorrow about something else, and I asked to speak to them then. But tomorrow's good. Gives me more time to think it through." And more time to think through how much Christopher needed to know. This day was her longest so far. When she reached her apartment it was after midnight, and she was exhausted. But her psyche refused to accept that, and by the time she unlocked her door, her heart was pounding and she was alert beyond exhaustion. Eat something, she thought. It's been almost ten hours. But when she tried to swallow, she couldn't. There were two lines on the screen of her PDA, but at this moment she only saw the first one. "I love you both." The tension that had been building all day was swept away in a flood of tears. Her legs gave way beneath her, and she collapsed on the edge of her bed, weeping onto the PDA and the hand that held it in her lap. Her other hand covered her mouth, receiving its own baptism. By the time the tears stopped she was lying on her back, holding the PDA to her breast. The next thing she knew, another dawn was breaking. She had slept without stirring for a little over eight hours, and only some inner alarm system set to Section time had awakened her to the knowledge that she had a mission briefing to give in two. Calm now, even serene, she showered, applied her makeup with a steady hand, dressed, and took Michael's message with her to the kitchen. Ravenous, she forced herself to eat slowly, hoping to forestall a trip to the bathroom. That hope was in vain. Returning to the table, she read the second line of the message again, sighed, and began to mix herself a small serving of cream of wheat made with water. Cold cereal with milk? Must have been out of her mind. When the microwave chimed 75 seconds later, she was leaning over the table, reading the second line yet again. "When is now. You choose where or I will." Well, hell. But she was grinning. What else had she expected? The warm gruel she'd prepared was almost thin enough to drink, but she spooned it slowly into her mouth until it was gone. So far, so good. Now. Balance. As with Jasmine, she must balance the time she needed to do what needed doing against the other's capacity for patience in context. Judgment call.... "Give me three days," she typed. "I'm all right. Please please don't come here. There's so much more at stake now." After a bit more thought, she deleted "I'm" and substituted "Everything's." Enter. Enter. The tears came to her eyes again. "We love you, too." Now think. Think. Fetching a tissue, she wiped her eyes and blew her nose, again staring down at her words on the screen as she ran over in her mind the plans she had made the night before last. Three days? Christopher. And then-- Rising, she went back to her bureau and retrieved the two things other than Christopher's name that her father had given her the only time they'd dined together: an obituary for one Evelyn Wallace of Cheyenne, WY, and the London address of the Helen Collingwood Clinic for Women and Children. His two sisters, both much older than he. One dead ten years, the other in her mid-eighties but very much alive. Only two possible answers from Auntie Helen: yes, or no. Three days should do it. Her finger hovered over Send, a half smile on her lips. Best case scenario: seventy-two hours and ten seconds from...now. "It would be a pilot program, but there is a precedent. At the time it was called the Covert Training Task Force--CTTF." She went on, elaborating, using her extensive knowledge of Section operations and what little she already knew of these men to try to reach them in the high, virtually airless place where they sat in judgment on her and Jasmine and nearly everyone else she cared about. Matter-of-fact, she reminded herself. Confident but non-threatening. Bastards. At their ages, you'd think they'd be over their testosterone highs by now. "I know these four. They've worked together before, and were forming a cohesive team when they were separated. On their last mission together, they'd only been in training a short time and yet they saved my life and the life of their other mentor." "Michael Samuelle." It was the Bear--the first time she had ever heard him speak aloud. "Yes." She met his gaze, knowing that if she were going to lie to this man, she would have to do it very carefully indeed. The truth, then. Couldn't hurt. "I can't help but wonder how you know the specifics of that particular mission," she said, and smiled. Madeline's smile? The hell with it. If she had to smile like Madeline to keep the bud safe and flowering for the next eight months, then she would do it in a heartbeat. "Well, Missy," said the man who suddenly no longer reminded her of Michael at all, "do you imagine you got this job without a very thorough vetting?" He had a slight eastern European accent, but now he drawled his words lazily, dropping the lids partially over his eyes as he leaned back in his creaking chair. His tone was both condescending and patronizing, and it came to her in a rush that she was not only being tested, but deliberately taunted. "Nothing personal, you understand." Pick your battles, Missy. She could almost hear him thinking it. Their gaze held, and she knew that her smile was now genuine. The guy was awesome. This was the first openly lethal thrust of the match, and if she'd fallen into the trap he'd set by calling her 'Missy,' it would have been the end of her. "Yes," she said quietly. "I understand." He inclined his head slightly toward her. "Very good...Nikita." She wondered whether the others present were aware of the subtext, but she dared not look away from the Bear just now. "Now tell us a bit more about this task force of yours." She told them again about keeping the same Level 1 team together for a sequence of low-risk missions where they could operate on their own, stretching their wings without a mentor in constant supervision. "Having experienced operatives right beside you gives you a sense of security, but it doesn't give you confidence. To get that, you have to know you can make it on your own." Now she forced herself to look around the table, knowing that if she kept on talking only to the Bear she might irritate the others beyond the point where she could reach them again. But far from being irritated, Chair, Hyena, and Paddy Perfect appeared to be bored to death. Only Christopher was watching her, and when she looked toward him, he gave her a thumbs-up, hidden by his other hand. Sweet man. Too bad she was going to have to weird him out in just a few minutes. She got her task force, with Jasmine on permanent Tactical--because she was the only one qualified due to her experience in Com and Systems at Section One. Patrick "Darwin" Donoghue, Nikita had learned, had been getting experience in demolition and in demolition containment--the former with elegance and flair, the latter with resignation that spoke of maturity gained since their last meeting. Trent Hammett was a happy hacker who also did well in the field. Claire Brooks, to Nikita's disgust, was being groomed as a Valentine operative at Section 5. Each of them, including Jasmine, had managed to survive several no-contest missions and been promoted to Level 1 status. So they were perfect for the "task force" that would keep Jasmine on Tactical, free from the stresses and dangers of field operations, for as long as possible. | ||
|
|
Shooting the Moon
|
|
As she and Christopher walked together after the meeting through Center's glassy hive of hallways, he said gently, "I know you don't know me very well, but your father was my friend for years. If there's anything I can do to help you now, just ask." She stopped walking and faced him, the two of them standing close to the wall in order to keep out of the way of anyone who might walk by. "Even with a personal matter?" "What do you need?" Realizing she was in danger of babbling, she forced herself to speak calmly and slowly, hoping to give him time to process what she was saying as she said it. "I need you to come to dinner and spend the night at my apartment. Tonight if you can. There's no quid pro quo, and that's not negotiable. I'm three weeks pregnant, and what I really need is to keep your colleagues from trying to find out who the father is. If they do, they'll probably think I'm gonna take the baby and run to him, and if they think that I'm dead. Or they'll lock me up and throw away the key. I know I must be under surveillance right now. My apartment's clean, but they must be having me watched. They'll know you spent the night, and it's still early enough for them to think you're the father. Are you with me so far?" He seemed to be having trouble finding his voice. When he found it, he whispered, "Jesus Christ, Nikita." "Yeah." She glanced away and smiled briefly at a Center employee passing by. "I know." "Why are you trusting me with this?" "Because my father told me I could trust you with anything, and the last thing he asked of me was to trust him." She watched him turn sad, and thought I envy you. I wish I could grieve for him too. After a moment, he asked, "Will you?" "Will I what?" "Take the baby and run?" "And keep running from cancellation with a child for the rest of our lives?" Her voice choked up. "I might as well have an abortion or eat my Glock right now." "What about the father? If I--if everybody thinks--" "He won't think that. He knows." She paused, her gaze holding Christopher's, and saw no question in his. "You know who we're talking about?" "I can guess." "You probably shouldn't." He nodded, and she went on with the rest of it. "If you're not there by eight o'clock...." She laid her hand on his sleeve. "Just don't risk your life to do this for my father. Find a reason to do it because you want to. Do I have your word on that?" "Yes." "By eight o'clock, then. Or not." She pressed his arm briefly and walked away, not greatly worried about what his answer would be. When she got home that evening, she went immediately to look at her PDA, hoping that the display would be empty. Three days wasn't a lot to ask for, was it? It was not empty. "Dammit, Michael...." But her disappointment was momentary. The message read: "Need a cover on the inside." This time she laughed aloud and blew the screen a kiss. "...I love it when I'm right about you." Still smiling, she went to start dinner. After all, she would have to eat anyway, whether she had company or not. Just after seven-thirty, there was a knock at the door. Christopher was standing beneath her spy eye, wearing jeans, a turtleneck, and a corduroy jacket. One hand was in his jeans pocket and the other held a small bunch of flowers. His body language was relaxed, and she thought she could hear him whistling between his teeth as he waited. Anyone watching would have been sure he was on his way to a first date. Perfect. She opened the door and smiled at the flowers. "For me?" "For you." He moved into the apartment, and as soon as she closed the door, he took her hand and shoved the bouquet into it. "This is crazy." "Just crazy enough to work." Still holding the flowers, she leaned against the door as he walked across her living room to the patio doors and looked out, making sure anyone outside could see him. "Nice view." "Why are you here?" "Because I owe you one." He turned, smiling a little. "I'm starved, lady, and I'm not going to say any more 'til I get fed. Deal with it." "Okay." She moved toward the kitchen, knowing that he deserved not to be pressed for answers, but controlling her curiosity with difficulty. "Drink?" He nodded. "Tell me--what's a guy like you doing in a place like Center?" She could tell that he was relieved to change the subject by how quickly he answered, and the conversation about his past lasted through dinner. When he was conscripted, he had been an American photojournalist in his late thirties, on track to win a Pulitzer due to several in-depth stories based on sources whom no one else could persuade to talk. After he was framed for murder and "died" in prison, he had undergone extensive training as an operative whose specialty was gathering intel. Her father had told her little more, only that it was said of Christopher that he could get good intel from a parrot. Over dinner, Christopher himself told her that outside, he had been married with four young sons. He had the look, she thought, wondering what hell this man night have gone through being separated from his family while his children were growing up. But he seemed resigned, as though he had come to terms with his past and his present and could live with both. Why? she wondered. What could a man like this possibly find in his current life to fill that void? "I haven't thanked you," she said as they lingered at the table over wine. "Don't thank me yet. There's a quid pro quo after all, and it's not negotiable either." Holding his wine goblet by the stem, he twirled the liquid. "We have to tell Kelly asap." "Christopher, I'm going to tell her just as soon as I need her as a doctor. But right now the fewer people in Section who know...." Her voice trailed off; he was looking away, waiting for her to finish talking. What she was saying, she realized, had no relevance to the conversation. Not You have to tell. But We have to tell. "You mean you have to tell her." "Nikita, my wife is remarried. My kids are grown. I love 'em all, and I always will. I still have nightmares where they're in terrible danger--all the kids canceled, actually. But I'm what my grandpa used to call 'no spring chicken anymore.' I need something besides cruising, and Kelly needs a guy she can trust. What we have--it's called serendipity." "You think she'd kill you for cheating, too?" "Hell, no. She has enough nightmares for five women as it is. She'd just...hurt a lot." Kelly. Nightmares. Wow. "How long have you been together?" "Not long enough to weather a storm as big as this would be if she thought I was sleeping around." "Do you love each other?" "I dunno. But we're havin' a helluva good time deciding." He finished his wine, set the goblet down, and pointed to the door. "If you can't agree to my terms, I'm outta here. I'd never tell anyone what you've told me, not even Kelly. But you wouldn't have your cover story either. So what'll it be?" "It must be nice," she heard herself say, "to be top brass and get to have something you can call a life." They stared at each other for a moment, and then he asked softly, "Now where did that come from? Not all that far below the surface, I bet." "I'm sorry." Leaning back in her chair, she let her head fall farther backwards, wound her hair into a semblance of a knot, and then let it fall free again. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry." He nodded, watching her with a frown. "I need to know why you're here at all before I answer you. You said you'd tell me when you were fed, and you're fed. So why are you here?" He rose, paced to the patio doors again and closed the curtains. With his back still toward her, he said very low, "I deprived you of your father, so I owe you big time." She shot straight up in her chair. "WHAT?" "He could have cared. I took that away from both of you." "You WHAT?" Held out his hand. "Come and sit down. I'll tell you, but it'll take a while." "Philip pointed at you on the computer screen with his cane, and he said, 'That's my sister Evelyn. They could be twins.' His cane was shaking, and his voice was shaking." Even in the midst of her incredulous anger, she was aware that Christopher was in pain. "I said 'You have to stop this,' and he said 'I think I may have just begun.' But I made him stop." "Why?" "To save your life. At the time I was convinced that the Group would eliminate you if you distracted him from his work on Veytoss." "At the time?" she whispered. "I was obsessed with keeping my kids safe. I had a recurring nightmare about finding them canceled in their beds. I still have it sometimes. I thought--I played God, was what I did. He cared, and I convinced him to turn it off in order to keep you alive." "Turn it...like a faucet ?" "I told you. That was how he survived emotionally in the safe house his sisters sent him to when he was a little kid during World War II--by turning off his feelings. Abandonment. Isolation. Those kids went through hell for five or six years because their families wanted to keep them safe from the bombs. The conditions in those places were beyond belief. Like a concentration camp for little ones. Horribly understaffed. Benign neglect, but neglect just the same. Babies died from Failure to Thrive syndrome. A lot of the older ones never recovered emotionally. Your father never recovered emotionally." "You want me to thank you," she rasped, "for saving my life? Or what? Or WHAT?" "I want you to let me help you--now, when you probably need it more than you ever needed help before." Elbows on her knees, she hid her face in her hands. There was a silence, and then she asked brokenly, "You're telling me that my father condemned me to hell as a substitute for loving me?" "Something like that. He twisted what he really felt for you into an obsession with having you succeed him." When she spoke again, there was as much wonder as anger in her voice. "Evelyn was his favorite person, but as soon as he'd earned unmonitored clearance, it was my mother he tried to find out about?" "Yes. That's how he found out you existed. Seven years ago." "It doesn't make sense. If Evelyn was the closest thing he ever had to family, to a parent, why...?" "I don't know. I don't think he did. All I know is that's what happened." "I asked him why he left my mother on the street, and he said it was for security reasons." "He was afraid she'd be canceled if he tried to contact her." "But he was in the Group!" "Nikita, we're talking twenty-six, twenty-seven years ago. He wasn't in the Group then. He was a new recruit, scared shitless just like we all were. You can remember that, can't you?" "He said it was painful, and I threw it back in his face." Finally, the tears came. "Why couldn't he tell me? Why couldn't he tell me?" "I've been telling you why for the last half hour." He took her hand. "When Evelyn left for the States with her husband back in 1945, Philip was twelve. He told me he wanted to kiss her good-bye, but he couldn't. He didn't want the physical contact. Not even with her. It's not your fault, Nikita. He was just too screwed up to respond normally to anyone." She raised her free hand to stroke her cheek, the tears falling freely now. "Except my mother." "Maybe. I think so. When he talked about her--there was something there. They were friends." "And except you. I think you might have been the only other friend he ever had. After all, he listened when you shut him down." "Can you forgive me--" "Don't." She tried to wipe away her tears with the back of her hand. "Just...don't push it, okay?" "Okay." She rose, feeling stiff even though she had only been sitting still for a little over half an hour, and with her back still toward him asked, "Did he ever even think about trying to protect me?" After a slight hesitation, Christopher answered, "He had one rule. No interference." "So he told me." She faced him again. "So it's me you think you owe." "Wouldn't you?" "I don't know." Clasping her hands together, she shut her eyes and let her head fall back, hair hanging free. "I don't know anything--except you're right." She returned to the couch and sat down next to him again. "I need your help to survive more than I ever needed anyb--almost anybody's." She held out her hand. "Deal?" "Deal." "And now, Christopher, I'm so tired I can hardly see." Rising again with some difficulty, she retrieved pillow and blanket for the couch and pointed toward the bedroom. "I changed the sheets on the bed. Have a good night." "No way." "I fall asleep on the couch all the time. Just--" "No way, m'dear." He took the couch bedding from her and pointed her toward the bedroom. "See you in the morning." She kept going in that direction, fell across her bed and into blackness. Five hours later, she was wide awake and staring at the ceiling. The light in the living room was on--still or again, she had no idea. Chilled, she rose and put on a heavy terry robe over the clothes she had slept in, smoothed her hair with her hands, folded her arms across her chest and went to lean against the wall opposite where he still sat on the couch, reading a paperback book, blanket and pillow piled where she had left them. Looking up, he smiled. "I always bring something to read." "The man I call Stare Bear--he's the de facto leader of the Group, isn't he?" Startled, he lost the smile. Then it came back, spreading into a grin. "If you mean Alex Cornu--yes, he is." "Then why isn't he my father's successor?" "He didn't want the job." "Should've joined the club. Place is lousy with people who don't want their jobs." "Alex never does anything he doesn't want to do. Patrick and Steven would have voted him in, but he wouldn't vote with them. I don't have a vote yet, and Charles wanted the job so bad he could taste it. He finessed, bargained, and he got it. What do you call Patrick?" "Paddy Perfect." He nodded, still grinning. "Steven?" "It's not very nice." He shrugged. "He's Hyena." A grunt. "And Charles?" "The Chair of Peter." He burst out laughing, so loudly that she was glad all the windows were closed. When he could speak again, he said unsteadily, "Watch yourself. You could slip." "I won't slip." He gestured toward the place next to him on the couch. "You should know by now that I won't bite." "I know." She sat next to him, drew her knees up under the robe and clasped her arms round them. "When are you going to tell them?" he asked. "Never. They'll have to figure it out for themselves." "You're kidding, right?" "I'm in as good shape as I've ever been. Gradual change of wardrobe and I've got three more months before I start showing. With lotsa luck, maybe even four." "To do what?" "To prove I can do the job. That has to happen before I tell them or I'm contained or canceled before I can prove anything." He was silent for a time, just looking at her. Finally, he nodded. "And after you give birth--what will you do then?" A pit blacker and deeper than the first one opened in her soul--the abyss she would live in for the foreseeable future, unable to crawl out, once the bud was in full flower. But one thing at a time. Things had to go one thing at a time or she was going to lose it. "As far as they know, adoption." "As far as they know?" She nodded. "Have you discussed this with...." "Michael. No, but he knows." "He...knows....?" "He knows that there's only one person on this planet that I could g--" Her throat closed, the pit yawning. "That I could give this baby to." "And he'll agree to this?" "He already has." "But I thought you said you haven't...." Silence. Finally he shook his head in wonder, but with eyes slightly narrowed. "You sure the two of you are on the same page?" "He's outside. I'm inside. There is no other page. He always does what has to be done." "Can you do what has to be done?" "I'll have no choice." Clasping her knees to her chest, she hid her face against them. They were silent for a time, and then he said, "What you're doing is called Shooting the Moon." She raised her head to look at him. "It's from a card game called Hearts. The idea is to stay alive by making sure that you have no hearts." He wasn't smiling. She nodded, understanding only too well. "Or--if you have the Queen of Spades and all the hearts, then you win big. But if you think you can Shoot the Moon and you miss the black Queen or even one heart, your losses are doubled." "Thanks. I've been wondering what to call whatever it is I'm doing." After two more hours of sleep, she woke to the smell of meat frying. The tin in the cupboard, she thought, and bolted for the bathroom. A few moments later, she eased herself to a sitting position on the bathroom floor, her back against wall, sweat pouring down her face and throat. Letting her head fall back against the wall, she said aloud, "Bud, you and I are gonna have to call a truce." "Who're you talking to?" Christopher called from the kitchen, and she almost answered with the truth. Then it came to her in a flash what her greatest temptation would be: to share with the man near her things that only the man far away should share. "Myself," she called back. "Gimme a few minutes, okay?" Now sitting cross-legged on the floor, head up and back straight, she closed her eyes and put to use the Zen disciplines that were yet another part of Jurgen's legacy. | ||
|
|
Shooting the Moon
|
|
From her own personal laptop at home, she sent email to Helen Collingwood in London. "I'm your niece. Philip's daughter. You won't believe that, but please let me come see you sometime on Saturday." She gave thought to whether she should sign her given name, but decided against it. She was using an anonymous, virtually untraceable screen name; better to err on the side of caution. The reply came back within half a day. "I jolly well don't, but you've got nerve and I'm curious. Half past seven on Saturday. I dare say you know where I'm to be found of an evening. Keep an eye on the dog. He bites." There was no signature. And if I didn't know where you're to be found of an evening? But Nikita couldn't help smiling even as she frowned. On Saturday afternoon, she took a commercial airliner to London, wearing a backpack, a sky-blue sweat suit purchased that morning, running shoes, and her light-weight, hoodless white jacket; the sooner she got used to the idea of a less-than-skin-tight wardrobe, the better. Knowing that she was probably under surveillance, she nevertheless felt barely a qualm about putting her aunt in danger. The days of Operations and Madeline were over, and she'd recently discovered that high-level operatives in other Sections were permitted closely-monitored Relationship Privileges with selected blood relatives on a case-by-case basis. A widow for a quarter of a century, Helen was eighty-six years old with no family of her own. According to Section's database, she had few close friends and no apparent interests outside of the profession she still practiced almost full time. Even if the Group resented Nikita's leaving the country to visit a relative who was neither parent nor sibling, she was certain they would not believe she would risk her aunt's life by telling her anything classified. The Helen Collingwood Clinic was on the first floor of the owner's home--a tall, elderly, well-kept house on a quiet, residential street. The entry door was unlocked, the hallway just inside it mellow with dark wood and a tile floor buffed to a low shine. One light shown from an open door--the "surgery," Nikita guessed. It turned out to be the surgery's waiting room, also mellow and dark; the source of light was an office through a door on the right. Her hand on the tiny, one-dart dog tranquilizer gun in her jacket pocket, Nikita heard a low, rumbling growl as she approached the office door, followed by a few words from a barely-audible human voice. The dog stopped growling, and she entered the office, hoping that her father had been right that once Helen saw her, she would need no words to know that Nikita was who she claimed to be: the niece of Evelyn Jones Wallace. The woman who sat behind the large oak desk, her back straight and her penetrating dark eyes fixed on Nikita as she entered, wore her snow-white hair in a long braid coiled at the back of her head. Even sitting down, she looked tall, elderly, and well-kept like her house. She wore a plain tailored blouse under a dark green cardigan and, Nikita guessed, probably a tweed skirt beneath the desk on which her hands were folded. A cane was hooked over the back of her chair. Her expression was neutral as Nikita entered the room and approached the circle of light thrown by the desk lamp and the burning logs in the fireplace. But even after what her father had told her, she was unprepared for the widening of those dark eyes and the sudden pallor of the woman's sallow face as her own face and figure became visible to her aunt. The older woman drew in her breath sharply, and the black Lab at her feet barked once--a sound like a cannon in the small room. Helen silenced him with a touch on his head. But she seemed almost unaware of his presence as she whispered, "Dear God" with a mixture of disbelief and awe. Silently, Nikita handed across the desk the paper on which her father had written the name and address of the clinic -- and then, below it, a single, brief line: "Helen, just look at her." Nikita glanced at the chair next to her and then, questioningly, at her aunt, who nodded, eyes again fixed on her niece's face. Finally she said, "Her own daughters don't look half as much like her as you do." The voice was strong but hushed, as though the speaker were in church, or beside an open grave. "Do you believe me now?" Nikita asked quietly. "It's his handwriting." A frown, but the dark gaze did not return to the paper in hand. "Is he dead?" "Yes. About a month ago." Her aunt's expression didn't change. ("They weren't especially fond of each other," Christopher had told her. "She and her husband were his guardians after Evelyn moved to the States, but I think there was no love lost. After the third sister was killed in the blitz, Evelyn was the only one left who everybody loved.") "I only knew him for about a month before that," Nikita went on. "He didn't know I existed until a few years ago. He and my mother weren't married. They never even lived together." The snowy brows rose slightly. "Philip?" The first emotion to become evident in her tone was mild incredulity. "The hell you say." Feeling an impulse toward a nervous laugh, Nikita pressed her lips together and nodded. "Poor soul. One would've thought he didn't have it in him." "I--I don't--" "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to embarrass you." But those eyes would not leave hers. "What's your name?" "Nikita." "Beg pardon?" "It's Nikita. And I don't know why my mother named me that. She never told me much about anything important." "Was she gone a great deal?" "She was drunk a great deal." They stared one another, Nikita with no idea why she had said such a thing to a stranger. For a moment she wanted to run away. But she had come here to avoid running away. "I need your help--as a private medical consultant for the next few months. I can pay you. That's not the problem." "What is the problem then? Why come to me if you can afford a doctor?" "I can't tell you that," Nikita answered, her voice firm but without defiance--similar, in fact, to the voice she used when talking to the Group. That thought disturbed her, but now was not the time to wonder why. "I can tell you why I'm here, but not where I live or what I do. Can you live with that?" "Well, we'll have to see, won't we? Are you pregnant?" "Yes." "Married?" "No." "You want an abortion." "No. That option would be available elsewhere. I told you, I need you as a professional consultant for a time--until I have to tell my employers about the pregnancy." "Do you know who the father is?" "Yes." "Did you intend to have a child?" "No. I--got a little bit careless." "Quite. And now you're a little bit pregnant." "Is this kind of personal interrogation part of the arrangement?" "As of this moment, my girl, no arrangement exists. Are we clear on that? Now. I don't want some irate chap stomping about in here demanding to know what you're up to with regard to his potential progeny." "That won't happen." "The pregnancy happened." "He was gone." Nikita tried to keep her annoyance in check. "I didn't expect to see him again. I was very busy--" "Oh, come now. You and I both know that's no excuse for this kind of nonsense. Did he leave you or what?" "No. I sent him away." "And he just happened to turn up again while you were in mid-cycle, and you did nothing to protect yourself." "We get an annual shot," Nikita said, trying not to shout. "We're supposed to have thirty days' grace after our record gets flagged in the computer. I'd only used up twelve days when he came back. We should have been safe." As the pace of the dialogue increased with the tension level, the dog had raised his head to look at Nikita. Now he shouted another bark, and she jumped involuntarily. "Shut up, Chauncey." But Helen's voice was mild when she spoke to the dog. She stroked his head again, and he lowered it once more to his paws. Frowning, she returned to the business at hand. "What annual shot? An anti-ovulant?" "No. It's a slow-release spermicide." "There is no such thing." "There is where I come from. Can't you understand? I didn't expect to see him again. And then--so many things happened at once. I was promoted. My life was chaos, I wasn't getting any sleep, and I got careless. Then my father died. How the hell many details do you need, anyway? A faint smile. "You sound like Evelyn too." "That's great. I think." Flinging herself back in the chair, Nikita slid down on her spine, head bent, knees akimbo, and glowered. "Are we done with this yet?" "Have you had the shot?" "No. I thought it might somehow be dangerous for the bu--baby, so I hacked my record in the computer. Flag's gone." "You've got some nerve, all right." Helen rose, took up her cane, and limped across the room. She was indeed tall, and her skirt was tweed. Her limp was virtually identical to her brother's, and like him, she apparently had a penchant for walking away from the person she was talking to. "Come along. Come along. I don't do consultations unless I've examined the patient first." They sat facing one another in the surgery, Nikita back in her sweats and her aunt now wearing a white coat instead of the cardigan. Nikita perched on the edge of the examination table, her stockinged feet hanging, her elbows on her knees, chin on her clasped hands. Helen faced her in a straight chair, her cane hooked over the back of it, a clipboard in one hand and a pen in the other. The clipboard, Nikita had noticed, held a plain sheet of paper, not a pre-printed form. Taking careful notes, but off the record. Proceed to second mark. Helen's expression was thoughtful; the pen tapped lightly on the clipboard's metal clasp. She had turned off the lights in the room, and the fire in the office fireplace threw moving shadows into the room next door where the two women sat. "Is the father in as fit condition as you are?" "Yes." "Do the two of you work together?" Silence. "Very well. Alcohol? Drugs?" Nikita shook her head. "Any genetic disorders in his family?" "Not that I know of." "How well do you know him?" "Better than anybody else does." "How long?" "Seven years." Helen had been writing on the clipboard; now she glanced up sharply but did not comment. The pen scratched. Shadows danced across the walls. "Other than her drinking, was your mother in good health?" "That's how she used to justify the drinking. 'Healthy as a horse and happy as a clam.'" "And your father?" Helen did not look up as she asked the question. "He used a cane like you do. He never mentioned anything else. Is it--was it arthritis?" "The family curse, one might say. His father was limping by age forty. You have no symptoms?" "No." "How did Philip die?" The pen had stopped scratching, and the dark eyes met hers directly once more. "It was job-related. He died saving someone's life." "Fancy that. Whose life?" Silence. "Quite." "You didn't like him very much, did you?" "He was an agreeable child." Helen's forehead furrowed, and it seemed as though a fine mesh of pain settled over her face. "Evvie got the looks, you see, and Connie got the charm. 'Til Philip, I thought I'd got the brains. Cleverest of the lot. Everybody said so. And after all, fair's fair." Her gaze had fallen to the clipboard, and her voice was low. "It didn't matter, though. I didn't matter. Evelyn was the only one he loved." "He sent me to you, Helen." "And why did he do that, Nikita?" He said he wanted us to know each other. The easy lie was on its way to her mouth before she stopped it. "He said Evelyn would have wanted us to know each other." "You couldn't know that," Helen whispered, "unless he'd told it to you." Oh, but I could. I could have had her daughters grabbed and tortured until they spilled everything they knew about her and some things they didn't know they knew. "Well, he did." Helen sat looking down at her clipboard, the tapping pen silent. Then, finally: "Family members can't be patients." Elbows still on her knees, Nikita covered her face with her hands. When she thought she had her voice under control, she ran her hands back through her hair and said, "I wouldn't be your patient. I just need you to consult with me about once a month until I can go to my own doctor." "I do not understand why you can't do that now." "I know you don't. But I can't tell you." "Now look here--" In the waiting room, the dog burst into a frenzy of barking, filling both rooms with menacing noise. Nikita's pulse raced as she slid off table; her jacket was in the other room, and the dog trank was in her jacket. Oh, god-DAMN! But instead of going to investigate the source of his agitation, Chauncey scrambled to a stop in the doorway between the hall and the surgery and stood there shaking the rafters with his cannon-like bellowing, eyes entreating his mistress to give him permission to plunge on down the hallway to what Nikita was sure must be the back door--a back door that both Helen and Chauncey no doubt believed was completely secure. "Please don't let him!" Nikita too entreated her. "I know who it is. We're not in danger. Please!" "Chauncey!" Moving surprisingly fast, Helen went to the dog, who waited in the doorway; the surgery was obviously forbidden territory, and even now, Chauncey knew where limits were set and obeyed them. "Ease up, old boy. Ease up." Turning, she demanded, "Young woman, what the hell are you up to? This is my home--" And then she stopped. Michael was standing in the doorway to the waiting room. Little more than his silhouette was visible--a silhouette with shining eyes even though the lamplight and the firelight were behind him. Nikita forgot her aunt. She even forgot the dog. She was barely aware of crossing the distance between them before they were holding each other, her face hidden against his shoulder and his face buried in her hair. Chauncey gave a low growl, but stayed put. "Shut up, Chauncey." Again the order was given in a subdued voice that belied its abruptness. There was a silence, and then Helen said mildly, "Hair o' the dog, is it?" Answer her. She deserves to be answered. But all Nikita could manage was a muffled, "What?" "It's an old wives' tale. The best remedy for the morning after is the hair o' the dog that bit you." There was no answer to that one. She heard Helen move across the surgery toward where they still stood in the doorway, the dog preceding her to snuffle suspiciously around their feet. Michael raised his head to look over her shoulder at her aunt. Face still hidden, Nikita tried to imagine what might be passing silently between the other two, and failed. Then Michael shifted her gently until she was leaning into his side, his left arm tight around her shoulders, and holding out his right hand, he did something she had never heard him do before. "Dr. Collingwood--Michael Samuelle." They shook hands, Helen peering at him in the dim light. Nikita had the impression she liked what she saw, but all she said was, "There's a guestroom at the top of the stairs. I dare say you won't need two?" As one, they silently shook their heads. "Quite. Good night, then." To Nikita: "We'll talk again in the morning. Chauncey, come help me lock up." And she left the room, closing the door behind her. | ||
|
|
Shooting the Moon
|
|
Naked and basking in each other, they made love on the floor before the fire as though it were the first time or the last. But it had almost always been that way for them--the first time after something or the last time before something else. Beginnings and endings were nearly all they'd ever had, even when they didn't know it. So little time in between. Oh, Michael.... Her legs around his waist, his weight along her body making it sing, she drew him in and in, knowing that the time before this had been their last affirmation, and this their first celebration. Afterwards, the tile floor seemed much colder than it had been when he'd stripped them both, the firelight caressing his skin and dancing in his eyes. But there was a large, washed-to-softness comforter folded on the end of the waiting room couch. Spread on the polished tiles, it was large enough for them to lie close together on half of it and pull the other half over them. For a while they lay on their sides facing one another, mouths tasting mouths and hands caressing shoulders and backs and thighs. Then she lifted his chin with her finger and approached the question that had to be asked. "I love you for being there for me." "I'll always be there for you." "Do you think abortion is wrong?" "No. I think it was your decision. You'd made it. Fait accompli. Is that morality?" "And if I'd gone the other way?" "You didn't." "Michael, if the decision was yours, what would it be?" He drew her against him, his lips close to her ear as they had been when he told her for the first time that he loved her. "This could be the only chance we ever have," he whispered. She closed her eyes as she had then, and they held each other in silence. After a time he said with a smile in his voice, "We should call her Grace." "I'd only been flagged twelve days." "Then we should call her Fate." "Him." "No." "Yes. I couldn't care less. I just know." "We'll see." You sound like my father. But she was not about to say that out loud. "He should be Luc, after your father." "My father's name was Nicholas." "But you told me--" It took her a moment to see where this was leading. "Nice try, but no little Nickys in this family. He's Luc. It's in the profile." She shivered. Before she could do more than squeak in protest, he was up and bundling her back into her sweats, then dressing himself, but only in his jeans and shirt. Their underwear and socks he gathered into one neat pile and left it there, causing her to grin in appreciation of his foresight. They sat on the floor together, leaning against the couch and each other, and then she moved to lie with her head in his lap. But he stopped her wordlessly and lay down with his head in hers, pressing a quick kiss to her belly. "Now," he said, "tell me about you." "You have to get all the hearts and the Queen of Spades. If you can't, you lose everything." "I think you may already have the Queen in hand." "Good thought." She stroked his hair, wondering at the expression that had come into his eyes as she talked about her work and her plans for the Section, her interaction with the Group, and Christopher. Admiring? A little sad, maybe? Both? "I just hope I can stay like I've been this week. I feel so--so--" "Focused," he said softly, and broke eye contact, his gaze wondering to the fire and then around the room. "Do you realize how much you've changed?" "Changed? I haven't changed. It's just an adrenaline high." "No." His gaze returned to meet hers. "You don't need me any more." Admiring, and a little sad. "Oh, Michael!" "Shh." He sat up, laying his fingers on her mouth, and then ran the tip of one of them over her lips. "You don't need me in Section any more. You're on your own there, and you love it." "I hate it there! I always have!" "You love being in charge of yourself." She tried to speak the denial she wanted to be there, but could not find it. "I was going to make you come back with me." All other thoughts screamed to a halt. "You have no right." It had to be said, but it did not have to sound like a hurled accusation, and she was pleased to hear that it didn't. "This is my child, too. So I would have had the right. But now I don't. Not with you like this." "What did you expect? Another Terry?" "I expected, 'I fear I've lost the courage for our dream.' If I'd found you here like that, I would have risked all our lives to bring you home." Leaning her forehead against his, she whispered, "I fear that was me in a previous incarnation." "So it would seem." They were silent for a few moments, and then she raised her head to look at him again. "What does scare me is that it's all going too well. The Group, for instance." "You should keep working Cornu." "I'm not working him." "What do you call it?" "I don't call it anything. He's starting to respect my views, and he's starting to trust me. I'm just using--" Using? Hearing herself say the word, she stopped. "What do you call that?" "Not manipulation." "What, then?" When she simply looked at him, aghast, he went on: "We filter in and censor out, Kita. It's how relationships survive." "But...." Censored out: "Don't call me 'Missy'!" Filtered in: "He said Evelyn would have wanted us to know each other." Censored out: "You sound like my father." "So I should just go back and work Stare Bear like he's a hostile?" "Whether he's a hostile or a colleague is within your control." His hand had been lying on her shoulder. Now he lifted her hair and smoothed it behind her ear. "It doesn't matter what you call it, just that you do it." She raised her own hand, took his in it, pressed it to her lips, and laid it on his knee, still clasped in hers. "Don't Valentine me, Michael. Talk to me." Again he broke eye contact, but she had expected that. "I thought I was." "You were. Until just now." When he sat looking down at their hands, she shook his a little, and he slowly turned it to clasp hers. "That's better. Let's go check out the guest room. I get sleepy pretty early these days." "Have we taken this as far as we should?" "For now--yeah, I think we have. Don't you?" He rose with his usual grace, pulled her up, folded the quilt and returned it to the couch, rolled the pile of underclothes into a neat clump and grasped it one-handed. "A la vie." She was tempted to giggle as the two of them tiptoed up the stairs, shoes in hand, noting the location of the bathroom on their way past it. That temptation got the best of her when they fell onto the bed together, the springs creaking, the mattress sagging in the middle, and Michael grunting in mingled amusement and disgust. "Merde." "And you think I've changed?" The giggles were taking over now. "Shh. You'll wake her up." He eased them both parallel to the cave-in and then rolled them into it, holding her close. The giggles died away, and she found herself torn between desire and her need for sleep. She would just close her eyes for a moment.... In a moment, it was the middle of the night. Something about the muted quality of everything, she thought. The light from the window, the muffled clang-clang from the hot-air radiator beneath it. It all just seemed to say middle of the night...? She started awake, spooned against Michael, his arms enfolding her, both of them still in the clothes they'd lain down in. If he had been asleep, he'd waked as soon as she did. "It's okay. Go back to sleep." "It's not really fair, you know," she murmured. "What's not fair?" "You've been so much more patient with me than I ever was with you." "Tell me what you mean." "After two years, being undercover gets to be hell. It got so I didn't know what I was any more. No safe, warm place like this in the whole world. Couldn't find me any more. But you've never complained. You've been so good to me." "You were always here." His arms tightened. "Why couldn't you share it all with me?" "The danger, you mean? Wondering when Operations and Madeline were going to catch me at it and find some way to cancel me before Center could interfere? Like they almost did? No way was I going to share that with anybody, Michael, least of all with you." "How did Center recruit you?" She turned in his arms and moved a little away from him, lifting her head and resting her cheek on one palm. The room was not completely dark, and a wide shaft of light from the window fell across him at shoulder level, faintly illuminating his face. How could such light eyes sometimes look so dark? "After Jurgen, they said I could go anywhere in the world I wanted to. I went to a place in California where they have killer whales all penned up, close enough to the ocean to smell it, but they're never going to be let out of their pens. I think most of them are like Birkoff was. They've never even been in the ocean, and they have no idea what it's like to be free. But some of them are like us." He nodded--his gaze, intent and direct, never wandering from her face as she talked. "Whales are supposed to be so smart, maybe as smart as people. I wanted to watch them to see how they could stand it. See if I could learn by watching them. Couldn't, though. They all looked happy as clams." "How long did you watch them?" "Oh, about an hour, I guess. There was really nothing to see. Then I went shopping for a swimsuit and some books and a bottle of water and went to the beach. Great weather there. Not hot at all." "What books?" "Romance novels from a food market." At his questioning look, she grinned with satisfaction. "Don't tell me there's something I know more about than you do." "Tell me." "All the same story. She starts out kind of innocent, he's kind of mysterious, doesn't talk much, and they have all these misunderst-- No. Really. They have all these misunderstandings but they end up living happily ever after. Always the very same story. I only read about half of one of them, skimmed the rest, skimmed the other two. Between them and the penned-up whales, it didn't seem like much of a vacation, you know?" She lay down again, head on his shoulder, arm across his chest. "After I finished skimming, I fell asleep right there on the beach. When I woke up, this guy in a Hawaiian shirt was squatting on the sand next to me. He said, 'Smile. It should look like I'm hitting on you and you like it.' He wasn't pointing a gun at me, but he was carrying. It was like watching a replay of the worst movie I ever saw." "What did they offer you?" "Answers. About why I was brought in. Freedom eventually. All they were interested in was Operations and Madeline. How they treated the rest of us. How they treated hostiles. How they ran the Section. You were never mentioned. Nobody else either. The reason the Group is going along with me now is because of my intel on the two of them. I impressed the hell out of everybody, including my very own father it turns out, and now I'm paying the price for a job well done." "Mick was your contact?" She shook her head. "He was the watch Center put on me. Not that I ever knew that until he morphed into 'Mr. Jones' after they stopped Madeline from trying to electrocute me." "Who was your contact?" "Didn't have one. All dead drops. Had to be the fine hand of my father. He wasn't exactly into personal contacts." "You agreed the first time you were approached?" "Mostly because of us. It all just hurt too much." "Nikita--" "I was so in love with you, and I wanted you so much. I couldn't think about anything else, and I needed something new and important to focus or I was going to screw up and get myself killed. They only wanted to know about Operations and Madeline, and they said I'd be free. By the time Birkoff died I was starting to suspect it was all a lie, and I got--I got really down. Grenet's timing was perfect." "I wish you could have told me how you felt." "I tried." "I mean when I first brought you back in." "Told you? I told you over and over!" "No, Kita. You never told me how you felt. You just told me how you thought I felt. Over and over." She searched her memories for proof that he was wrong, and found none. "And I've been thinking that all you needed was patience." "Each of us needed more than the other could give." Something in his voice made her raise her head to look at him. In the half-light, his face was set, his eyes bleak. And it came to her that "There are things about me that must remain hidden" referred to more than Adam and Elena. "Tell me." "This isn't the time." "Michael--" "It happened when I was young, before L'Heure Sanguine. But this isn't the time." His eyes were like night. "Be patient with me." "I will." This time, I will. Stripping herself from the waist down, she moved to sit astride him, pulled her sweatshirt over her head, then his shirt over his. "Now let me love you." "Why not?" But she knew it was not to be. This was as far as she had ever gotten before, and so she was not surprised when her eager mouth got no farther down than his chest before he rolled her off and onto her side with her back to him. Once he was as naked as she, he pulled her against him, his hands gently kneading her breasts even as she laid hers over them, pressing herself into his palms. He began to enter her slowly, but when it became obvious that she was more than ready, he moved all the way into her, pressing forward steadily until a warm tide of pleasure surged upward through her body, making her cry out softly and press her head back against his shoulder. Now he was barely moving, pressing into her as one hand began to wander downward. "Don't wait," she whispered. "I want you." She got both, twisting in his arms even as they tightened convulsively around her and he groaned against her throat. When she could think again, she realized that their entire dance of love had taken only a few moments, asking nothing of her except that she love him back. And that was a good thing; she was now almost dizzy with fatigue, even though her sated body still exulted in the touch of his. "Sleep well." It was their ritual, and the lips that lightly touched her ear lobe were smiling. "I'm not sure I can." The first time she'd said it, he had started to move away and had to be coaxed back. "Try." He straightened his legs, rolling slightly onto his back so that she could rest more comfortably against him. She straightened too, sighed, closed her eyes, and was instantly asleep. | ||
|
|
Shooting the Moon
|
|
In the morning, she discovered how agile she could be at pulling on her sweats while she ran for the bathroom. Returning moments later, she closed the bedroom door and leaned against it, patted her tummy and sighed, "Michael, meet the bud. He and I differ on how I should start the day." She gestured toward Michael. "Bud, meet the man who made you what you are today." She crossed to the bed and collapsed on the edge of it next to her lover, who had pulled on his jeans in her absence. Now he tried to draw her head to his shoulder, but she pushed him gently away. "Ugh. Don't. Not 'til I brush my teeth." "Are you all right?" "What do you think? Come on. This isn't exactly virgin territory for you, is it?" "I wasn't there for her very much." Hand on her knee. Lashes brushing his cheeks. Voice all but inaudible. Excellent, Nikita. Just excellent. "I'm sorry." "It couldn't be helped." "That's not what I meant." Laying her hand on his bent head, she shook it gently. "Pit stop? You do not want to be in the way if I have to make another rapid egress." While he was gone, she remained slumped on the edge of the bed, elbows on her knees, head hanging dejectedly. When he returned, she beheld with awe Michael Samuelle, master spy, barefoot and shirtless, looking like a lost boy. "She doesn't have a shower." This time she did not giggle. She laughed, and then tried to smother it with her hand, fearing that Chauncey might shout again if he were startled. But as soon as she succeeded, laughter turned to tears. Keeping her hand over her mouth, she continued to weep even after Michael sat next to her and pulled her into his arms. Finally the storm passed. She raised her head, sure that her face must look ravaged, and saw in his eyes that she was beautiful. "Biscuits." They stood in the kitchen doorway, hand-in-hand, while Helen--wearing yet another tweed skirt and cardigan--puttered about a gas stove on legs, her back to them after wishing them a brisk good morning. Did the whole family have a thing about turning their backs on you? "You mean...crackers?" "On the bedside table. You eat one slowly before you sit up, and another before you stand. Will you have mush now?" Realizing what they'd been asked, Nikita felt her stomach lurch. "Uh, no thanks. Not for me." Michael shook his head. "Can we make ourselves some toast?" "It's here in the oven. No butter, mind. Smitch of jam won't hurt, though, if you fancy it." The toast felt like sandpaper on the outside but was inexplicably soft and crumbly within, hot enough but not too hot. The smitch of jam tasted like heaven, and Helen's tea smelled wonderful. When Michael told her as much, she gave him a speculative look but did not answer. His "Thank you for your hospitality" elicited an approving "Mmmmmm." Then she departed for the pantry, where she proceeded to putter some more. Chauncey lay with his head on his paws, favoring them with a mournful but alert stare. When it became clear that Helen did not plan to return any time soon, Nikita said, "Now tell me more about you. Not just the yes and no part." His expression became guarded. "There's not much to tell yet." "Okay, about Adam, then. How is he?" Michael sighed. "Confused. Conflicted. He doesn't understand why his mother can't come back from the dead too." "Poor little kid." Since Michael did not appear to be any more talkative than usual, she went on--again expecting him to look away as soon as she spoke. "You don't have a Mediterranean tan yet. But I bet he does." He did not look away, but his expression became even more guarded. "The couple you helped--are they still there?" "Stop now." "Oh, Michael. If you really didn't want me to know where you are, you wouldn't have gone there." Looking down now, he took her hand and began to stroke the back of it with one finger. "What are you doing?" "Valentining you." He looked up, his expression all but blank, but with a faint quirk at the corner of his mouth. "Was that a concession speech or a cheap shot?" "Cheap shot. What else?" Looking away again: "I have to go." She'd known this was coming, but hoped not this soon. Keeping her voice light: "So soon?" "I have contacts in M15 who owe me. That's how I entered the country undocumented and got past the watch Center has on you. But once I choose the time, it has to be on their schedule, not mine." She nodded, mute. "Nikita--keep a tight rein on Darwin and the others." "You wouldn't believe how much they've grown up." "Just do it." "We'll see." He rose, pulled her to her feet, and kissed her as though there were no tomorrow because there might not be. Then he kissed her forehead, her closed eyes, her open hands. And then he was gone. Chauncey looked after him, yawned, and relaxed. After a time Helen returned from the pantry, glanced toward the back door, poured herself a cup of tea and sat down at the table opposite her niece. "Doesn't hang about long, does he?" Unable to answer, Nikita shook her head. "I think you must do some sort of undercover work. Philip, too. That's why he disappeared without a trace, and why you won't tell me how he died. You're in it, but Michael's not. Is he on the run?" "Please stop." "Is he on the run from something?" "No. Helen, stop." "If this man and your child mean so much more to you than your job does, why can't you just resign and go to him?" "I can't ever resign, and I can't protect you and Chauncey if you won't stop this!" "Ch--? Why--who would want to hurt Chauncey?" "If I answer that, you're as good as dead. Chauncey, too, if he tries to protect you. Will you please just leave it alone?" Neither of them moved for a time. Then Helen asked, "What will you do with the child when it's born?" If in doubt, censor out. "I don't know yet." She hoped that the next lie would be easier. Even more, she hoped there need be only one more lie. "Have you decided to let me come back in a month?" "I thought perhaps I might, yes." "If you don't promise to stawp questioning me, I cahn't come back!" "Was your mother Australian? Or is that a forbidden subject too?" Lowering her head, Nikita ran her hands through her hair. This day had only just started, and already she was exhausted. "I was living with a foster mother while I was learning to talk." "Did she take good care of you?" "The best." "You loved her." "Yeah, I did." It felt like a betrayal even now. Tit for tat, Mom. See? You didn't love me enough to keep me, but I got you for it, didn't I? "And she loved you. Someone must have. You love so strongly." "Because of Katie?" The thought had never occurred to her. But before she could make it her own, Helen asked, "Why did your mother abandon you when you were what--less than a year old? "She had a new boyfriend, and she wanted to live alone with him for a while." "A while?" "I told you. Several years." "Same man all that time?" "No." "And when it suited her, she took you back. When you were what--three or four?" "Almost five." Helen made a small, disgusted noise. "What could Philip have been thinking of?" "They were friends. She wasn't with anyone else at the time." "How do you know that if she never told you anything important? Did Philip tell you?" "Helen, I can't do this now. Some other time. Please?" "How do you keep going under so much stress?" "I'm not under this much stress most of the time." What the hell was she saying? "I guess you can get used to just about anything if you have to." "You're good at what you do?" "Very." "That's what makes things bearable, you know." Without waiting for agreement or denial, Helen rose, took up her cane, and limped toward the door to the hallway. Over her shoulder: "Come along. We need to talk about vitamins." | ||
|
|
Shooting the Moon
|
|
It was three months before Michael could come to London again. Meanwhile, the sky fell several times in Section One, although mostly in small chunks. Walter became Nikita's Chicken Little. "You can't let everybody schedule their own down time, Sugar. You'll lose control." "They don't. They run it past me, and I schedule it." "That and everything Operations and Madeline used to do." "Not! We don't do torture any more, remember? And I haven't killed anybody since I got the job." "Just get yourself a second-in-command, will you please?" "I'm working on it." "You can't do it all. You gotta learn to delegate!" "That has to be the tenth time you've said that." "Okay. Okay. I'll say this, though. You sure do look great lately." He glanced right and left, leaned across the counter, and muttered sotto voce: "All things considered." Smirk. Almost a leer, but not really. Reputation to uphold or not, this man had wept, holding her tenderly, when she told him her secret. "Walter, sink the dirty-old-man routine, okay?" She glanced around and then, unobserved, smooched his cheek. "Guess what. I'm taken." "Sugar, you been taken since the day you hit this place." A few days after that conversation, three of her best young operatives had come to the Perch to inform her that her down time policy was too demanding. She had promptly put all three of them on close quarter standby for a week. When one of them had suggested that her response was approaching dictatorial, she had shot back, "Since when is this a democracy?" "But it's not fair!" "Spence, real life isn't fair, and this is Section." After that, her down time policy was no longer a topic of conversation. Missions came and went. The Casualty-to-Mission ratio spiked, filling her with dread, and then tapered off to what it had been when Operations was in charge. Other ratios and statistics flowed past her in an unending stream, all hissing for attention. The Group asked her for an annual budget proposal. She got behind in her administrative work, pulled an all-nighter, got behind again. What was left of the Collective descended rapidly from the high they were on after assassinating her father in broad daylight, fell on each other with tooth and claw and then self-destructed--producing three virtually leaderless splinter groups composed of thugs well-trained by their predecessors in the mechanics of terrorism, but not in strategy or even tactics. The result was total chaos beyond that faced by her predecessor in his worst nightmares. "Relax, sugar," said Walter. "You're doing fine." "When in doubt, punt," said Christopher--who, as an armchair covert strategist, was one terrific journalist. "Get on top of it," said the Group. And she did--seeking advice from the leaders of the other sections (albeit largely to no avail), and even brainstorming with her own troops. By May, total chaos was reduced to mostly chaos, and mission success ratios began a slow climb back toward normal. "What's normal?" Kelly asked over their desktop lunch one day. "I'm not sure I remember. But our intel and Jason's numbers seem to be more and more accurately predictive, and my people are getting used to having me in charge even if they don't like it. It's a start." But administratively, she was in over her head. Operations' personal daily records consisted of brief, cryptic jottings on the computer equivalent of the backs of envelopes, all piled into one directory with filenames that looked to have been created on the fly; her only clue to what each might contain was its filing date. Madeline's psych profiles, on the other hand, were masterpieces of detail, the files named according to a consistent naming convention that Nikita was able to deduce without difficulty. With relief and gratitude, she gave access to Kelly, who had worked as a psychotherapist for years before starting medical school in her early thirties. But the administrative tangle continued to plague her. "Walter," she asked one day, "how can I access Adrian's daily records?" "Ahhhhhhh...." Fascinated by what he was working on, Walter went silent. "You were saying?" "The backfiles. Get Jase to assign you a password." As she started to leave, he looked up. "What do you want with records that old?" "A map. A compass. Perspective. A system. I don't really know." "Operations kept records, didn't he?" "It's a jungle in there." "He was never into desk work." Walter turned back to his latest toy, and she went to find Jason. Adrian's files were little better than her successor's; apparently he'd learned everything he cared to know about Section administrative record-keeping from her. Resting her forehead on her hand, Nikita went doggedly from file to file and then, about to give up, came upon a disproportionately large file that refused to open. Unadorned filename, no extension. Recognizing traces of Section's encryption scheme, Nikita returned to Jason. It took him almost ten minutes to decrypt the filename. "Man oh man, she fixed this so anybody who opened it really hadda wanna." And memory spoke: "It was important that you show me you had the ability and the desire to contact me." Eerie thought. Her father and Adrian probably didn't even know each other. The translated filename was Journal. The file content was not encrypted--freely available to any successor who wanted to read it badly enough to make the effort to open it. "Can you find out if the filename's ever been decrypted before?" Jason typed a series of characters. "Nope. It's clean." "Thanks, Jason. I'll need to access it from home." Brief additional keyboard activity. "Any time, ba--" He wore a lazy smile until his gaze met hers. "Yes, ma'am." He returned to his work, minus the smile. The journal was not what Nikita had been looking for, but she spent an entire evening skimming and reading it. On the surface, the entries revealed little of Adrian's personal life, being confined to comments on her interaction with coworkers during the hours she was in Section, at Oversight, or at Center. But knowing some of the people referred to in it, Nikita was able to deduce how Adrian felt about them from what she chose to record. Fond of George. Hated Madeline. Alternately attracted to and repelled by Paul. Nothing new there, but still fascinating reading. Then she drew in her breath as she came upon yet another name she recognized. "After the meeting, I dropped in on Philip to see how his work is coming along. He's even got a name for the thing. Calls it Veytoss. I told him that sounds like a pet peacock, and he actually chuckled. I'd just made the mistake of trying to discuss the compassionate exercise of authority with the Group and been all but sacked for it. So it was on my mind, and when he asked how the meeting had gone, I told him. I also told him how Paul had laughed in my face and George had scowled and lectured me when the subject came up with each of them. I was fed up, and Philip isn't the sort to carry tales. His comment was, 'What did you expect, old girl?' The man is surprisingly perceptive, all things considered. When I said as much, he smiled and gave that little shrug of his, then went on to say that it was well that I'd verbalized the concept with 'compassionate' as the adjective and 'authority' as the noun or I should probably have been tossed into the street. We argued a bit. He has little more idea of what I mean than the others do, but he's at least willing to listen. If he weren't so walled up, I might even call him friend." Sitting cross-legged in the middle of her bed, Nikita stared down at the laptop, fighting the irrational idea that Adrian had written the passage for her. The compassionate exercise of authority. She had the computer scan the entire journal for that phrase, and retrieved one other passage in a portion she had only skimmed before. "No one seems able to comprehend what I'm getting at, and it's such a simple thing. The compassionate exercise of authority. Paul laughed and said, "Catch more flies with honey? You can't be serious." George lectured me on how important it is for AlphaGroup to believe that I think like a man. One wonders what might become of Section if either of them were in charge of it." More. Please. But there was no more. And yet: As though it was written for me.... She searched on "Philip." Nothing but what she had already read. On "authority." Nothing more. On "compassion...." "Compassion is so seductive. One so easily comes to believe that there must be a magic bullet, an answer to everything. If not love, then compassion? But one has to keep reminding oneself that Section could not survive by compassion alone. Aquinas wrote of substance and accident, what one might call noun and adjective. Compassion is the leavening agent, the accident, not the substance. Authority is the substance. One must just keep kneading it until it's flexible enough to rise to all occasions." Nikita hit Find Again, and found only the end of the file. But it wasn't the end of the file. Following the last visible line, there were several more where only an ellipsis appeared at the left margin. Hidden text? She turned on hidden text. "I don't know who you are. Perhaps I never shall. If you're reading this, I am dead or banished. You are probably in charge of Section One. If so, I hope that something I've written here may be whatever it is you've overcome obstacles to read. If not, perhaps I never found it. Or perhaps it's waiting to be found within you." "I need your advice," she told Kelly at their regular meeting the next morning. "It's about the CTTF. They're not meshing, and I don't know why. Their missions have gone well, but when I meet with them, all they do is bicker. They even try to pick fights with me." "Giving Mommie a hard time when Daddy's not around?" "Oh, come on. They know better than that." "What is it they should know better than? You and Michael were their first mentor-trainers. Team teaching, right? I'm guessing here, but there's a good chance they imprinted on you as a couple." "They didn't know we were together." "Huh. Everybody knew you were together." "Well...okay. Let's say you're right. It kind of fits in with what I wanted to ask you about. I've been wondering if I'm going too easy on them. Sometimes it's hard to know when to...to exercise authority and when to be compassionate. Jasmine is sick, and they're all such kids." "Kids with guns." Animals with guns.... "Could you be giving them mixed signals? From what you tell me, your group debriefs sound more like group therapy sessions. You are not qualified to be doing that, Nikita, and it could blow up in your face. You're not their momma either. You're their boss. Act like it." "But they need--" "They need to know who's in charge." "Keep a tight rein...." "Okay. Let me think about it." "Think fast." Kelly's gaze moved restlessly around her office. "Let's get this done, okay? Running a cross between an ER and a research facility makes for a helluva lot of administrivia. I'm swamped." "Honeymoon over? "I'm bored out of my skull." Bravado. Guilt. And somewhere below all that, defiance and a whiff of fear. Oh, Kelly. "I'm thinking about making Rick head of Medlab. He's a good doctor. He thrives on adrenaline rushes and taking risks, and that makes him very good at emergency medicine. What makes him unique is that he also thrives on documenting his every move." Kelly's face had gone still. Then, quietly: "You'll have to watch him." Her assistant was an addicted day-trader who had robbed and killed, unable to wait even long enough to embezzle what he needed to support his habit. "No. You'll have to watch him. I want you to be my second." Expression totally blank: "You mean...what Madeline was?" "No way. That's the whole point." She had not known what to expect, and still Kelly surprised her. She simply gazed back, frowning faintly but eyes alight. "This is gonna be a whole other something, right? You and me--we do it our way, right?" "Right. So, do we have anything to negotiate?" "The plants have to go. I don't know why, but they really creep me out." "They're gone." Nikita shivered. "They were all dying, and I didn't have time to try and save them." "Save plants? Girl, you got a one-track mind." "So what else is new?" They both grinned as they high-fived each other, and then Kelly's gaze drifted over Nikita's shoulder, her smile softening. "Hey." "Hey." Nikita did not have to turn and look to know who stood in the office doorway. "I have to go." She rose, choking on envy, the longing for Michael's presence so strong that her throat ached with it. "Hi, Chris. Later, Kelly." Slipping past Christopher, she walked steadily toward the Perch, chin high. If any operatives noticed and remembered later, they would dismiss it as simple jealousy of a former boyfriend's new relationship. Cover story intact. More than intact: if her child's father were with someone else in Section, there would be no danger of the two of them going rogue together when their child was born. When she reached her sanctum, she turned it dark and sat down with her back against the wall, arms around her drawn-up knees. Luc had taken up residence immediately beneath her rib cage, and her expanding waistline was as yet the only part of her figure that truly revealed her condition. Duplicating half her wardrobe one size larger and gradually phasing out the other half was buying her time, and also making her clothing fit more comfortably; she hadn't been able to sit like this in trousers for seven years. Comfortable was also comforting, and the darkened room, the light filtering through the window and glowing from the readout screens, and her own thoughts eased her down into calm. Only two days until they were together again, and he'd promised this time. The other times he hadn't promised.... Five days before her April trip to London, he had sent: "I'm needed more here. SV's gr saw end of O plus numerous others. Assumed end of A next. Suppressed for weeks. Now all hell is loose. Research post-traumatic stress disorder. "I am there with you always." And in May: "Next time. I promise." Only a few more days until next time. If he wasn't coming, he would have said so by now. She rose, turned on the lights, and got back to work. "You always were a tight-ass bitch." As he spoke to Jasmine, Darwin's voice was light, languid, teasing, but with an undertone of something else far less pleasant. For a week after being informed of her illness, he had treated her like a fragile oriental princess, as had Trent and Claire. But within a month, the four of them were again sparring almost constantly when they were not on a mission together, and Jasmine's precipitous dive into the depths of self-pity had exacerbated the situation. Now Trent fired at holographic hostiles from a treadmill inside the geodesic globe where Jurgen had once retrained Nikita. Darwin, Jasmine, and Claire were taking a break, sprawled on the balcony floor behind Nikita as she watched Trent over the railing. "And you always were a slimeball," Jasmine responded tightly, making no attempt to disguise her pervasive unhappiness. Darwin was her favorite target, but no one was exempt from a tongue-lashing these days. Claire murmured impatiently, "Give it a rest, Jazz. It's not his fault, okay?" "I'm just so sick and |