Connor signaled from his post in the tree at the top of the valley. Two soldiers, two civilians, one driver. Bass relayed message to Miles on the other side of the pass. Before the blackout they'd used Morse Code to play spies. Since they'd used it more times than they cared to remember and too often in situations like this one. Once more into the fray.

Bass whispered to Charlie beside him. "They'll come around the bend in thirty seconds. On my signal you get the soldier on the left. Miles has the right. I'll get the driver. We want the civilians alive, and we need to be down there and on them before they grab the reins and take off."

Charlie stared back at him stonefaced. Bass still tended to assume she wasn't good at this sort of thing. It was annoying but calling him on it wouldn't do any good.

Thirty seconds later Bass and Miles took out their targets cleanly. Connor launched from the lower branches of the tree where he'd waited after descending from his lookout point and landed on the male civilian in the back of the wagon, knocking him off the back platform and to the ground, dazed, before grabbing the reins of the wagon and pulling it to a stop. Charlie hadn't fired.

"Dammit, Charlie," Bass grumbled as he lined up the shot himself.

"It's Jason," she said, her voice pitched higher than usual.

"Who the hell is Jason?" Bass asked.

Charlie stood up and screamed, "It's Jason!" She'd seen Miles kill a lot of people, had killed plenty herself, but this wasn't a body she wanted on their count. They'd thrown him into danger or left him behind to face it alone too often. He was a survivor, but it gnawed at her that he'd protected her so often while when she'd last seen him she'd left him to his fate. She'd accused him of being untrustworthy, but she'd turned on him as often as he'd changed sides.

Bass and Charlie slid down the hill as Miles approached from the other side. Jason was already stalking towards Connor. He looked wrong. His body was too stiff, his expression too blank. Charlie had seen him attack before. He was able to shut down his emotions and do the job without judgement, but he usually moved like a wolf, fluid as he moved in for the kill and secure in his skills. This was more robotic.

Connor whipped him with the reins and Jason didn't flinch, didn't give any indication he noticed the hit. He reached up to the driver's bench and grabbed Connor's ankle, dragging him to the ground and wrapping his strong hands around Connor's throat. She'd never seen Jason strangle anyone. He'd admitted to her privately that he hated close kills; he preferred the distance of a bow or a gun for something that ended in death instead of capture.

Connor's eyes were beginning to close as he gasped for air. Bass and Miles both levelled their weapons at Jason's head, far enough away that he couldn't strike but close enough to be noticed, to be deadly.

"Let go of him now or die," Bass ordered.

"Alto!" screamed the woman in the wagon. "Alto, Jason! Alto!" She was in her mid-twenties, overdressed for anything practical and underdressed for anything respectable. More importantly, her cries were getting through to Jason who had loosened his grip on Connor.

"How the hell do you know how to command him?" the Patriot asked from his position on the ground. He was in his fifties, balding and soft.

"Do you really think I've spent five years around the drones without picking up a few basics?" she asked. Her tone was laced with disgust.

"How do you know his name?" the man demanded.

"His mother asked me to come get him," she said. She jumped down from the wagon and moved towards Jason. His hands were still around Connor's throat, holding him down but no longer squeezing. "Descansar, Jason. Descansar."

At her order, he took two steps away from Connor and moved into parade rest position, his feet shoulder width apart and his hands behind his back.

"His mother asked you to come get him?" Charlie asked.

"Yeah. Julia's hooked up with the Patriots. Everyone who's surprised raise your hand." She quickly glanced around the group before continuing in a bored tone, "Oh look. No hands. So are we hostages or what?"

Once they were back in the cellar of the cabin they tied the Patriot man to a chair and left him to stew. Adequate fear of what was to come was a fast way to cut down on what had to be done to get to the good information. The woman was cooperative, ordering Jason around as they requested. He became agitated when she was cuffed, so they left her hands free. She settled on a chair radiating uncertainty, boredom, and disgust, a blend Charlie had never before seen in a prisoner. Jason stood behind her in in the same vaguely military position he'd assumed when he'd stopped strangling Connor. Occasionally he would blink rapidly and Charlie would see a flicker of him behind the stiff mask his face had become. Most of the time he seemed like a hollow copy of himself.

"Alright," Bass said, stalking the room like a caged animal before he turned to the woman. "Who the hell are you?"

She nodded towards Miles and answered, "Since you two have made up does that mean you aren't going to hold my father's actions against me? He was part of General Matheson's stupid assassination plot against President Monroe."

Both men stared at her, running through who she could possibly be. Miles placed her first. "You're Kate Walton, Major Walton's daughter."

"Yep. When you chickened out, Daddy ran home, grabbed Mom and me, and headed straight to a Patriot stronghold."

"Walton was a Patriot?" Miles' tone tried to deny it, but his posture slumped.

"A lot of your coup was Patriots. DeVille, Myers, Stratton." She paused and waited for him to meet her eyes before asking, "Was it even your idea?"

Miles looked away.

She continued, "Anyhow, the Patriots aren't big on dead weight. Once Dad wasn't positioned to overthrow the Republic anymore he lost status fast. Lucky for him he had three pretty daughters who were close enough to old enough." A shadow crossed her expression but she quickly shoved it away. No one asked old enough for what.

"What's wrong with Jason?" Charlie demanded.

Kate sighed and stared back at Charlie as if the answer should be obvious. Bass and Miles avoided her glare as her eyes scoured the room for answers. Guilt was writ large on Miles' face. She'd spent less than a day on a Monroe Republic re-education ship and had still been beaten and branded. They knew the extremes of indoctrination but weren't volunteering the information.

Connor turned away from the mirror where he was studying the bruises on his neck to answer. "He's on something. Nunez sold a couple of different compounds for soldiers. Focus enhancement. Inhibition removal. A few other things. I didn't know they were going to the Patriots, but it doesn't surprise me."

"How long until he's not 'on something'?" Charlie demanded.

"A dose doesn't usually last more than 12 hours. There's no profit in it if you can only sell to a customer once."

"So what do we do until then?" Charlie asked.

"We hope she can keep him under control," Miles answered. He stared at Kate who shrugged in response.

"And if she can't?" Charlie asked.

No one answered.

Charlie didn't ask how the Patriot man died. She didn't help bury him either. He was a problem for Bass and Miles. Jason was her problem.

He'd been trained like a dog in a bastardized version of Spanish. Stop. Rest. Eat. Sit. Stay. Heel. There were attack commands too, but Kate claimed she didn't know those. When Kate had selected Jason from the compound as her guard she'd spent a few days with him and his trainer as Jason's loyalty was transferred to her, her own 200 pound human guard dog. Now she helped transfer it to Charlie. The drugs were supposed to have worn off two days ago, but there'd been no sign of Jason's personality. The only responses he provided were the occasional nods to acknowledge orders. He didn't smile. He didn't speak.

Jason sat on the floor beside her as Miles helped Bass and Connor pack for the trip. She didn't like treating him so much like a dog, but he was so big and so protective everyone felt more secure when he was in a more subservient position. She absentmindedly ran a hand through his hair, one of Kate's suggestions for bonding, as the men stomped back and forth through the house.

"You're sure this is what you want?" Miles asked Kate again. "We could really use a spy inside the Patriots."

"I've put up with them for five years. I just want out. I learned to not mind it, or at least not think about it, but I've got a real choice now."

"You really think you can make a living?" Connor asked. "You'll be starving and back on your back inside a month."

Charlie broke in, her tone as hard as her glare. "You're taking her to tend bar, right? You promise you're getting her a job as a bartender?" Jason tensed as she spoke and she laid her other hand on his shoulder, trying to soothe him. He'd always paid attention to her moods. Now it made him dangerous.

"Yeah," Bass said. "She'll be fine. Plenty of people owe me favors in New Vegas." He stared hard at Kate. "And now you're going to owe me a favor."

"I understand. I owe you one anyway because of what my dad did," Kate said.

"Your dad owes me that one. You'll owe me this one. Let's go."

Miles followed them out, leaving Charlie alone with Jason. He closed his eyes, exhaled deeply, and leaned toward her, resting his head against her leg. It was the first time they'd been alone since his rescue.

"Is it easier for you when it's just us?" she asked quietly.

He rubbed his head gently against her leg, the slight scruff of his beard making a rasping sound as it moved against her jeans. She wasn't sure if he was nodding in agreement or nuzzling. He'd always been more prone to silent stares, brushes of her hand, and eventually kisses than talking.

She ran her fingers through his hair, intentionally this time, using her nails to gently scratch down the back of his head and along the edge of his hairline. He used to like that. He made a sound and she struggled to classify it. Whether moan, purr, or sigh, it wasn't a growl and it was more sound than he'd made since he'd been rescued. Did he even know he'd been rescued? She moved her hand to his ear, running the outer edge of it between her thumb and forefinger, slowly stroking downward and massaging his earlobe. He'd liked that too.

He turned toward her without rising and rested his chin on her knees. He stared up at her, and his dark eyes seemed to try to find hers but his gaze still lacked a soul behind it. She caressed his cheek and promised, "We'll get through this."

He blinked twice quickly, and the muscles of his face twitched. For an instant she felt the contact, felt his presence, but then he was gone again, and she was left alone with an empty, Jason-shaped shell.

"We'll get through this," she repeated.