"Whoa, stop," Cross interrupts, blocking Nicky from approaching Marta. "What do you mean 'Bourne'?"

"I fucked up," Nicky tells him baldly.

"What did you do?" Cross stiffens.

"I thought he'd understand you were running, same as us. But Treadstone, Blackbriar, Outcome, Larx – to him, it's all the same machine. He might think you're a threat to me." She pauses, looks apologetic. "He might try to kill you."

Cross has his hand wrapped around Nicky's throat before she can react. She chokes, but quickly cups and slams both hands over his ears. On a lesser man the balance disturbance caused by the pressure should have sent him on his knees. Cross doesn't flinch from the compression blow.

"Aaron!" shouts Marta, surging from the bed, grabbing at his arm for all the good it does.

Nicky doesn't struggle, doesn't waste her strength. She recognizes that he's a superior adversary, but that while the hand around her neck is bruising, he's not tightening around her windpipe. Even so, her hands remain tight and punishing around his wrist.

"Did you bring him here?" Cross demands, his blue eyes ferocious.

Up close the differences between his and Bourne's eyes are so noticeable: Bourne's eyes are a pure, pale blue; Cross' eyes are slate blue, marked with shards of black, grey and green.

She holds his gaze and whatever he sees in her eyes must convince him she didn't double cross them; he lets go. Nicky shoves at him, her hand going to her throat. Marta wraps her arms around Cross' side.

Nicky inhales sharply and deeply a few times. "Bourne's conditioned to protect me. He doesn't believe you're not a threat to me."

"And how the fuck are you going to fix that?" Cross exclaims, furious.

"You came to me," Nicky shoots back, getting in his face. "I wasn't planning on getting mixed up with you, but your dying because of my own stupidity didn't sit right with me."

"Well that's mighty grand of you," Cross says sarcastically.

"You said he was 'conditioned' to protect you," Marta interrupts softly, who releases her hold on Aaron as if recognizing that he's not going to lunge for Nicky again; but she does not stray from his side. "What does that mean?"

Nicky counters: "Tell me about the Beta I drugs that were administered."

"I wasn't part of the program then so anything I tell you is derivative at best," Marta offers. "But from the notes we were given, the initial impetus for the first generation drugs was to address the physical and psychological problems they were experiencing. Paranoia, anxiety attacks, severe PTSD-related symptoms."

"Headaches? Sensitivity to light?"

Marta nods. "Fatigue, insomnia, lack of appetite, hallucinations."

"Nightmares?"

"Sure. But any of those things could have been the result of the PTSD or the insomnia and not necessarily the drugs."

"Were there notes on any outliers in terms of physical or psych results?"

"One subject suffered from amnesia."

Nicky inhales sharply. "But none of the others?"

Marta shook her head. "But there were two suicides. Beta I participants were…the way they were conditioned – they were tortured, brainwashed, broken down and then rebuilt. That kind of trauma eventually rebounds. Emotional injury is harder to heal than physical injury." She glances briefly at Aaron. "No drugs can correct trauma like that. Beta II focused less on brute strength, more on fine tuning chemistry to get results. They weren't crippled physically and emotionally during their training."

Marta gestures at Aaron. "Remember earlier I said that we made minor alterations to two chromosomes? On the physical side we increased the mitochondrial protein uptake by one and a half percent. It was enough to see physiological recovery, cellular and muscular upticks, rapid oxygenation. We were building Captain Americas. Their bodies recovered, healed at astonishing rates. But we also looked at the psychology, ways to help them use their brains. We wanted them to work through scenarios and talk themselves out of negative outcomes rather than to expend themselves fighting. Instead of triggering their para-sympathetic nervous systems so they'd go into fight or flight mode, the chems we created were designed to control and calm their pre-frontal cortex activity, initiate problem solving, extreme focus. Like taking a super-powerful version of Adderall."

Nicky eyes her. Marta takes a breath, then says softly, a little brokenly. "I really thought what I was doing would make a difference to my country."

Nicky can't summon up scorn; it was the same impetus that had convinced her to accept the offer from the CIA when they'd come to talk to her at UVa. It was the same thing they'd said to convince her.

Your country needs you.

"Let's get back to how we're gonna convince your boyfriend not to kill us," Cross growls.

"You're presuming a lot about him and me."

"Am I wrong?"

Nicky ignores the question. "How did you know Bourne's been keeping tabs on me?"

Cross glances briefly at Marta. "It's what I would have done."

Nicky purses her lips, shakes her head slowly. "He knows me only as the logistics and psych person at Treadstone…"

"He can't be that stupid?" Cross exclaims in disbelief.

"No," Nicky agrees. "But..." She trails off, swallows, tries to get past the sudden knot in her throat. Blames it on tenderness from Cross' chokehold. "He…the woman he loved died last year. Marie Kreutz. They were together for two years. Blackbriar killed her a few weeks before he gave Pam Landy the documents about Treadstone."

Cross' breath quickens. Marta makes a soft noise.

Nicky continues grimly: "I didn't consider…his brain is full of holes. I don't even know to what extent he's been damaged. He doesn't know what's real from his life and what's not; what he was made to do and what he actually wants to do. He doesn't know where Jason Bourne begins and ends. I should have told him that his need to protect me is a conditioned response. I…didn't."

"Why the fuck not?" Cross demands.

Because it makes her like them. The people who killed Marie Kreutz. The people who tormented, brainwashed, destroyed him to make him their creature. It doesn't matter if her methods were kinder; or even that it was at his behest. As far as this Jason Bourne will see and understand, she fucked with his brain, too. And it's entirely possible that everything in the last few years, his breakdown, his amnesia and the attendant fubar – is her fault. Because her re-conditioning led to a complete break.

"Who re-conditioned him to protect you?" wonders Marta.

Fucking Cross is too perceptive. He sizes her up, figures out the answer. "That's why you wanted know about the Beta I chems. You're hoping it's not because you screwed up."

Nicky's jaw begins to hurt and she forces herself to relax, unclench her teeth. "We wait for him. He sees you're no threat to me, everyone goes on their merry way."

"You're presuming a lot about him," Marta warns. Nicky turns her attention to the other woman. Marta shook her head. "The way you've described this, he's a loose cannon with no real knowledge of who he is; only that there are shadow conspiracies everywhere and one of them murdered someone he loved. Now he feels compelled to protect you and you think him seeing us sitting here together and holding hands is enough to break that compulsion?"

Cross looks at Marta as though debating what to say. It sets Nicky's back up, the way he's always so careful with her.

"For fuck's sake, Cross," she snaps sharply. "Stop babying her. It makes her a liability." Cross shoots her a hostile glare. Nicky doesn't back down.

"Shut the fuck up," Cross growls. "You don't know – "

"She's deadweight."

Marta reads the tension, the increasing hostility, the escalating emotions. She moves to withdraw from Aaron, to distract his attention and ramp down the situation, but he puts his arm around her, pulls her close to him.

"Stop making her dependent on you to survive," Nicky grounds out, clearing her throat once, rubbing her sore neck. "Arm her, teach her, do something to make her useful or she's going to die."

Aaron is pissed, steps toward Nicky aggressively. Whatever he's about to say or do is moot when the window behind them smashes in, glass shards barely contained by the silk curtains. A lean figure lands on his feet in the room amidst shattered glass, springs from the ground, gun drawn into shooting position.

Cross shoves Marta to a side, spins and kicks the Sig Sauer P229 out of Bourne's hand before the other man can get a shot off. Bourne lunges forward, and Cross manages to only just step to a side, narrowly missing a vicious punch.

The Beta operatives face one another, squaring off, ready to fight.