Off-Label Uses for the Gelman Process
(Do Not Try This at Home)
Part Three: The-People-Who-Want-to-Kill-George Club
The "sex police nonsense" profile, as Paul has taken to calling it, is put into motion almost immediately—a few key conversations in places where Gordon assures her Center has placed cameras do the job of keeping the higher-ups in the loop without causing them to interfere—but then just as quickly, it's all pushed aside.
Paul slips Madeline a note that George has added the Tower to his surveillance routine, and together they finally deal with George… in that way where, in the end, they don't actually deal with him at all. Fueled with the frustration of wasting two years to come out with nothing but a few dozen bruises and a mildly guilt-ridden Paul, she turns her energy toward the Nikita problem, which is, at least, a situation she can do something to change.
The only problem is that with the George mission over, Oversight's turned off or fried most of their cameras, and most of those were the ones that Center was watching through as well.
A phone call and a hastily scheduled flight later, Madeline finds herself back in the restaurant that seems to exist only to annoy her.
The waitress glares at her from the moment she walks in the door. Madeline ignores her, which only seems to make the girl glare harder.
Gordon, never one for ignoring anything, winks at the girl as he snatches a menu from the counter. The waitress makes a show of being utterly scandalized, then turns away to start complaining about it to one of her coworkers.
"I was in Spain, you know," Gordon says pointedly as he sinks into his seat, though he's not really upset about being called away, Madeline's quite sure. He'll usually take any excuse to break rules and get into trouble. She suspects the 'easy life' he'd been expecting at Center has turned out to be more dull—and less easy—than he'd anticipated, but she doesn't mention it; after all, his boredom gives him reason to cause problems for his superiors, and if those problems just happen to work to her benefit most of the time, she isn't going to complain.
She offers him an apologetic smile—a peace offering, of sorts, and his expression says that he takes it as such. "I need a favor," she says, the words feeling vaguely foreign on her tongue.
Gordon idly flips through the menu, quirking one eyebrow without actually looking up at her. Pursing her lips in irritation, Madeline lets this go on for exactly ten seconds—about the limit of her patience on a good day—before reaching out and pulling it out of his hand.
"I'm hungry," he grumbles, not moving to take it back from her. "I was in meetings all morning, and I've got another scheduled for tonight. I'm basically on a lunch break here."
She shoots him a critical look as she puts the menu on the seat beside her.
"Well, a seven hour lunch break," he concedes. "Still, you drag me all the way out here, the least you could do is buy me lunch."
"I need a favor," she repeats, refusing to follow Gordon off on one of his tangents. "I need Oversight to begin monitoring the Perch again."
Gordon winces in what she thinks is probably meant to look like sympathy, but ends up looking more like confusion. "Operations already spends his day on display in a fishbowl; he really wants cameras in there again?"
"Not particularly," she answers without elaborating, and when it becomes apparent that she's not going to explain, Gordon shrugs.
"Consider it done." He thinks about that for a moment, then amends, "Well, consider it done by Thursday, anyway. I won't be back until then, and I'll need to write up the statistics report that will cause them to think monitoring the 'bowl again is for the best, so…" His words drift off, then he shakes his head. "Make that Friday." Another pause. "Saturday for sure."
Madeline purses her lips in irritation, but really, it's sooner than she was hoping for, so she doesn't push the issue.
"So I hear there was a bit of a showdown with George last week…" he says conversationally, standing up and leaning over to pluck the menu up off the seat beside her before resettling into his own side of the booth. "Things not go as planned?"
When she only glares at him, he sighs. "Hey, I kept it all out of the Center reports, didn't I? I was just hoping something was going to come of it, is all. George is a dick," he mutters. "I'd thought maybe this would all result in him… I don't know." He waves his hand toward the door dismissively. "Going away," he finishes. "Or being dead. Whichever."
That very nearly causes her laugh, but she quickly smothers it into an amused smile.
"We should start a club or something," Gordon rambles on. "You know, the people-who-want-to-kill-George club. We'll let Operations run it, 'cause Lord knows what sort of fit he'd throw if he didn't get to be in charge. You can—"
He stops abruptly as she stands up and shoulders her bag.
"Hey! I thought you were buying me lunch?"
"I can't tolerate this conversation for long enough to eat lunch," she answers, which is probably the most truthful thing she's said all day. Gordon just smirks. "You'll have to just take it out of my budget."
"Right," he cheerfully calls after her as she walks away, "as if you lot ever come in under budget anyway!"