Summary: that plot gun that's been hanging over the mantle since Part 4? Kaboom. Also, a certain trap is sprung.

The entry foyer had been remodeled from a seedy temp agency to the equally seedy Jolly Fats Wehawkin Payday Loan Co. A swinging door with a lock next to the counter was a token nod to security. The new 'company name' in garish neon was the only decoration in sight. Ida, without visible wires, was dressed in jeans and a biker t-shirt. She looked like exactly the sort of person who'd run a barely-legal moneylending dive.

Adam waited just inside the control room, ready to charge into the foyer on a second's notice. A two-edged sword, palm-wide at the base tapering to a narrow triangular point, rested between his hands. "Quiet night," he reported. "A drunk came in around five a.m. wanting to pawn something; your Ida got rid of him without actual bodily harm. Not a flicker of another Immortal in my range."

"We'll keep trying." The Middleman was back to his professional self this morning, clean-shaven in a crisp uniform. The man she'd known last night wasn't gone, Wendy knew, but set aside. She could live with that.

"Let's clear the air a bit, though. While we have the time," the Middleman continued. Hairs stood up on the back of Wendy's neck. That wasn't just his on-the-job voice but his combat one. "For a start, I'm very much against the defacement of books. Methos."

What? That was the five-thousand-year-old guy, Adam said. Wendy's disbelief didn't last long enough for her to voice it. Adam Pierson had shifted his weight, his grip on the sword. The face was still a bookish grad student younger than the boss, but…

Wendy would have sworn that she had no idea what a five-thousand-year-old man's eyes would look like. She knew now. She took a half step backward.

"You're very clever," said Methos. "That takes most people years to guess, if ever."

The Middleman shrugged. "I can't take credit. Last night I watched the surveillance tapes from our archive. I'd been wondering why you were so anxious to see it, when those records had nothing to do with the case. You destroyed, page 80, volume 15, from the Spanish Mission era records. But as it happens, Ida has scanned a considerable proportion of the older archives into HEYDAR." He rapped one key on the controls. A page appeared on the screen, a pen-and-ink sketch with a one-word label.

"Good likeness," said Wendy, the artist.

Methos smiled Adam's smile; it was chilling in context. "Well then, you do have me. Internal surveillance. I'd flattered myself I was adapted to modern technology."

The Middleman's hands were conspicuously far from the gun on his hip. They were weapons themselves, though; Wendy wondered if Methos had guessed it. "Did the Watchers send you at all?" her boss asked.

"Oh yes," he said easily. "That part was true. Adam Pierson has been a Watcher quite some time now. A disguise as a hound is the very best kind for a hunted fox, if it can be arranged. I think Adam will have to die soon, though; he's getting a bit long in the tooth." Methos slowly, gently laid his sword on a table. "What do you want?"

"You said you can sense which people will become Immortal," the Middleman said. "At different times, you've quizzed both of us on the warning signs, such as being a foundling. We… I… that has to stop. Please."

We? But Wendy was less irritated than confused. "You don't want to know? Comic book superpowers, never grow old, never die? Sounds good to me."

Her Middleman gave her a second's look of agony that rocked Wendy back on her heels. Methos seemed to have caught it too; he nodded thoughtfully. "Leaving it unsaid won't change the outcome."

"Nevertheless…"

Ida's voice came over the intercom, half-formed words followed by a screech of overstressed metal. "Shit." Methos swept up his sword and charged for the entrance. The Middleman hit the double doors at the same instant he did.

Ida lay in one corner of the foyer, neck twisted at a killing angle. A man in a dark sweater was on the far side of the counter, emptying the new cash register with practiced speed. The Middleman, with the advantage of longer legs, hit the top of the counter first.

The killer was dark-haired and -eyed, about the Middleman's height but heavier in build. Veins stood out in his hands and forearms, like a weight lifter's. The Middleman tried some Sensei-Ping-inspired complexity on the other man's upper arm. It only held an instant. The killer replied with five or six straightforward boxer' punches to the Middleman's chest and stomach, horribly fast, resounding like gunshots.

Methos came in at a trickier angle, sword swinging wide. Kaspar-Willis-Parker picked up a handy large object, the Middleman, and threw him. Methos got the sword down in time not to skewer his ally, but they fell in a tangle of arms and legs.

A second of mid-combat stillness. Wendy was crouched in the corner checking Ida. An older terror than comic book evil froze her blood. I'm a girl, he's a big violent man, he'll do whatever he wants… She shook it off, at least enough to draw her gun. He turned, landing one last kick on the pile of her friends, and was gone.

Wendy was pretty fast on foot, she had a gun; she summoned her courage to run after the killer. Her name, in a pained gasp, stopped her.

Methos was sitting up, wincing, his left arm clamped tightly to his side. Her Middleman still lay on the floor, white-faced and moving feebly. Wendy sank to her knees. "I'm a doctor," Methos said calmly. "I even trained once in the twentieth century. Don't let him get up. Talk to him. This will hurt."

Wendy cradled the Middleman's face in her hands. He was white-faced and sweating but his eyes tracked her, lips forming her name. She stroked his hair desperately. "Oh, God. Don't… you can't …"

Methos pressed down on his torso; he made a thin sound. "Ribs," Methos said. "At least three cracked on the right side. One's close to snapping right through. I don't think he ruptured your spleen, you'd be bleeding out. But he had a good try."

"Trying to break his arm," the Middleman got out.

"You did," Methos said. "He just didn't stop for it. Pain is easier to ignore when you know it won't last. Utter insanity helps as well. I think you can walk, if I strap the ribs and you don't do anything more heroic for a few weeks."

Wendy was able to breathe, hearing that. She noticed that Methos was still working one-handed. "How about you?"

"That would be a broken collarbone." Methos touched his own chest clinically. "Another ten minutes." He saw Wendy flinch. "We aren't human. Don't ever think of us as human," Methos said. "Your true-love isn't all wrong, wanting to avoid this fate." He glanced at the corner. "I'm sorry about your Ida."

A metallic scrabbling noise, like a broken insect. "Tougher than you, you lying little weasel." Ida's voice was muffled against the wall. "Make yourself useful, stoner queen. I can't reroute motor functions until I get my neck straight." Wendy grinned, and pulled her up by both hands.

Ida made a noise like a bad manual transmission and wrenched her head into a normal position. Her arms and legs came to life. "Don't worry about the boss, toots, he's had worse. Our infirmary is rigged to handle anything but a brain tumor. I'll get him." Ida scooped the Middleman up in her arms, a bizarre sight when he was twice her size. "The amount of time I spend cleaning up after you meat bags, and then what? You let the guy get away."

Wendy put 'torture Ida' back on her to-do list. "We were a little busy."

"She's right," the Middleman breathed out. "He won't fall for another trap."

"You're so lucky to have me," said Ida. "Data match came through while I was offline. Secondary information, but not a hundred miles away. We've got a Charles Willis listed as next-of-kin to a nursing home patient, Claire Willis. He's marked down as her son; I wouldn't bet on it."

"Then he can't run far," Methos said. "We have him."