Summary: Doesn't mean they're not after you.

Disclaimer: I'm just a fanfiction writer. All hail the rightful owners.

Notes: Based on a challenge from my roommate.


I'm watching you.

I monitor your actions when my heists lie in abeyance and you think I've withdrawn. Few things reveal character quite so well as a judiciously planned disappearance. When you lie in jail, I hesitate, oh so briefly, to see if any of you can keep faith. Few can.

Most of all, I watch you when I feel joyful or content, for it is then that I am at my most vulnerable.

You're disloyal, driven only by self-interest. I know that. Carmen Sandiego is nowhere near as naive as my fools of employees seem to think.

I learned from far crueler teachers than you.

Why then, you might ask, was I so easily blindsided? Did first Sara and then Mason not so cunningly betray me? If, in fact, I saw that coming, why did I allow it to occur?

Oh, I saw it. However, consider my options. What might I do to a lackey, such as you, with perfidy in her heart?

I could fire you, but what good does that do me? VILE doesn't have such a surplus of employees that I can afford to demand paltry things like loyalty. Besides, such an action only draws you enmity out into the open, makes treachery a public matter. I do like to keep that particular humiliation to myself, where possible.

I could kill you or punish you cruelly, perhaps. I might make an example, but such action would be the height of hypocrisy. Carmen Sandiego wrote the book on betrayal, did she not? How dare I spill your blood when my own name is synonymous with Benedict Arnold's?

I'd always fancied myself more of a Nathan Hale. What tangled webs we weave.

No, far better to watch from afar, planning and discouraging such mistakes. Wiser to trust that those few cases I misjudge, Zack and Ivy will catch.

Yes, I said trust.

I may not trust any of you a nanometer, but I'd give those two my life if they needed it. On their word alone, if it came to a choice...

Why? They've earned it and you haven't.

Therefore, I wait and watch for you to make a mistake. It rarely takes long.

It's a fine balancing act, true. The line to outright paranoia is a fine one. I've heard of one Roman Emperor who had all his halls lined with mirrors, so he could always see behind him. Maybe I'll steal a bust of him next crime. That'd give my detectives fits.

Relax, I'm no Caligula.

However, I can see where that temptation comes from.

Sara, for example, subdued me over a turned back. I simply leaned over to look at one of the assays and the next thing I knew… well I found out that one can, if fact, be knocked unconscious with an 800 mL beaker.

What am I supposed to do? Shall I watch every movement, drain all joy from my life, simply to protect myself from you?

No. I shall let you continue unhindered, for my own sanity's sake.

I realize that, barring some accident on the wires, I will probably die at the hands of one of my employees. Eventually, I will make a mistake, and I will fall to someone less hesitant or less merciful than Sara or Mason. My recoveries have taught you that I will only be finished when I'm in the ground. I've trained you to kill me.

So be it.

However, before you decide the time is ripe… before you rush in, all hot for my blood…

Consider this.

I am not blind. I scan this place periodically with my eyes, and I can always tell when you are lying to me.