Hey, everybody! It's almost been a whole month since I've updated which is insane. I feel almost guilty, really. But hey, life… it's stolen me. I snuck away and sat down, determined to type up something worthwhile. Thanks to everyone once again. And an extra hello to reviewers and the people that keep coming back. Nice to see you again!

Bourne, Landy, and Parsons… they're not mine. But if they were, I might've gotten this chapter up sooner! They could have covered my work shifts.


Nicky was stuck in hell. It was a pretty hell with room service and a mini-bar included, but it was hell all the same. It had been two days and she hadn't gotten word from Ghada nor had she seen Bourne. As she sat facing the hotel room door, compulsively stirring her mud-thick coffee, a section of her brain sprang into life. It was a stopwatch. Two days had passed and she knew it wouldn't be safe for her to stay much longer. At the moment, there were twenty-two hours, forty-seven minutes and approximately twelve seconds before she should leave. Her bags were already packed and on the bed. For all intents and purposes, that bed was just another table. Nicky didn't dare lay down on it for fear of falling asleep. The lack of sleep had wrecked havoc on her appearance. Her eyes were an irritated red and her hair hung limply around her face. Worry had caused her to pick at her nails and now those ruined nails clutched desperately to her convenient Styrofoam cup.

She wasn't just worried anymore. She was scared. Her mind and body were in a constant adrenaline peak. Nicky couldn't shake the idea that she'd made a grave mistake. She had depended on Jason being timely and she had depended on Ghada passing along the right message. There weren't many links in the chain to safety, but anything could happen to them. In her mind, she visualized them as rusty and weather-worn, chipped at by the elements and prone to breakage at the slightest yank. How well had she really known the Tunisian woman? She'd known her for a while, but what exactly did she know? At the time, Nejem seemed trustworthy and kind. Violence of any kind was far beyond her capabilities. She had once forced Nicky to corner and catch a spider in the shop- but not kill it. No, she had released it out the front door. However, a voice in Parsons' head chimed in, betrayal wasn't a violent act. It could lead to violent acts, but betrayal in itself was just the expression of an unwanted truth.

Caught in a web of self-doubt, Nicky rose and began to pace, lifting the bitter, acrid coffee to her lips and chugging it down like a fraternity girlfriend determined to get drunk for the very first time. The coffee burned on its way down and warmed her stomach almost as if it were alcohol. She coughed, smacking her lips and peering down at the sludgy film that remained, clinging to the sides of the stark white cup like vines. She shook the cup to gather the thick liquid back at the bottom, trying to draw a breath deep enough to be calming. It was time for some assurance. Ghada had never lied to her before except for normal human matters- little white lies. In fact, Nicky watched her lie on her behalf on the phone. Parsons couldn't afford to be wrong in her judgment of the woman at this point. And as for Bourne… he should have been there by now. She was certain of it. Something terrible must have happened. Where ever he was, he must have gotten caught in the airport or train station. Maybe he was seen at a bus stop or a passing motorist called him in.

Nicky had to have faith that he was on his way, though. She didn't have a choice. She hadn't made plans beyond hiding out in the hotel for a trio of sunrises. She choked down the last of the syrupy black coffee and flung herself back into a chair, eyes fixing once again on the door as if willing it to make a noise. A tendril of self-loathing began to take rise. How could she depend so entirely on someone else once again? She'd been on her own for a while. She could do it again. Why hadn't she made a Plan B? And just how much was that mistake going to cost her? Cringing, Parsons rose and scurried to her duffel bag, yanking the zipper open and digging through her stash of clothes to find her laptop. She slid it onto the little side table and flipped it open, pressing the power button. In the anxiety-filled minutes it took for the contraption to start up, she made a return trip to the coffee maker. She grabbed out the carafe, tipping it down to funnel the liquid into her cup. How she had managed to concentrate the coffee so much was a mystery only a higher power could solve, but her hope was that with the thicker consistency came a higher caffeine content. For that, she prayed.

Shortly thereafter, she prayed that with the thicker consistency came a less likelihood of staining. That prayer was significantly more off-hand though, and it made less sense. The telephone in her room had burst into trills, startling her and causing her hand to jerk. The front of her body had a waist to toe streak of muddy brown. Nicky had no idea whether the coffee had come from her cup or from the pot, but it didn't matter. Both cup and pot were cast aside with a squeak and a clatter as she propelled her body across the space. Her hand froze above the phone, though. Fear came surging back, wiping out the primary wave of hope. If she'd had time to flip a coin, she would have. She didn't, though. Paranoia sent her flying to peek out the peephole and upon seeing nothing but the door across the hall, her hand returned to the phone. She picked it up, nearly panting from the excitement and exertion.

"Hello?" she breathed, making a weak attempt to disguise her agitation. She was answered by the dead hum of a dial tone and she could barely force herself to make the next inhalation. Suddenly, Nicky wanted to cry. She settled herself down beside a cast aside blouse on the bed and hung her head, feeling the sting in her eyes and the twitch in her chin. "Shit," she mumbled, bending forward at the waist in hopes to fend off the light-headed sensation of panic. "Shit, shit, shit—SHIT!" She jumped, once again caught off guard by the phone's ring. This time, she didn't hesitate to pick it up, pressing the receiver to her ear. "Hi, hey. Hello?"

"What took you so long? You should be used to answering phones," the voice on the other end quipped breezily, laced with a touch of relief. It was Bourne. Nicky, once again, was moments away from crying. This time, however, it was for an entirely opposite reason. She felt compelled to both strangle and hug him at once.

"Sorry. I couldn't hear the phone over the music from the party I've got going on up here," they both knew it was a lie, but it was a comforting lie. If jokes were made, then nothing could be terribly wrong. Nicky was lost, though, only taking cues from Jason's tone. His tone said her earlier panic was mostly unfounded.

"Put down your beer and get out of there. Go a block north, right along the sidewalks. There's a vendor in front of the grocery store. Get something to eat," Bourne said. It was less of an order and more of a suggestion… as much as Jason could manage to make orders sound friendly enough to be a suggestion. He walked a fine line with that statement, but Nicky detected very little stress in his voice. Again, she was reassured. She didn't have time to respond, though. As her mouth was opening, the connection was closing and she placed the phone down gently. That was the last calm thing she did for a while. As soon as the telephone clicked into its rightful place, Nicky was nothing but a flurry of hair and limbs.


"You actually think this shit is actually going to work?" Toro grumbled from his current station just on the outside of the door leading into chaos. It was controlled chaos, but chaos all the same, and- truth be told- in his opinion the only thing that came from controlled chaos was a tidy mess. His world and mind were currently full of oxymorons.

"You just have to give it some time," Landy countered, the picture of calm against Greg's tousled and grouchy countenance. "We're trying to comb the globe here, sir. We can't do that in one stroke. If they saw it, we'll know soon. If they didn't, we'll-" she didn't have time to voice her simple secondary plan to simply air the messages again with a wider audience, because from the bowels of the Agency intercom system she heard a name. Toro was being paged to the mail room. A look of annoyance passed across her face and she reached for the door in order to yank one of the agents off of computer duty but she was stopped by a defeated-looking Toro.

"I've got it. I need a break," he sighed and disappeared down the corridor for the set of security doors and eventually the elevator. Pamela frowned. She hated to see that expression on his face… defeat. It wasn't something she was used to. She didn't fail. It was not part of her life, job, or upbringing. She was surprised to find herself a bit disappointed but it only took half an instance of thought to realize its source. She'd come to consider Greg her political equal. He drove a hard argument and he was bright, but at the moment he was beaten and she wondered if she overestimated herself.

Young Agent Waynesboro was her savior from a good five minutes of introspection. The woman's upper body popped out from behind a suddenly opened door, her eyes alight with something in the excitement category. Pam felt her eyebrows lift upward, but spoke nothing. "One of the Blackbriar ops just coded in," Kelly spilled in a breath.

"Who?" Landy asked, though her tone indicated more of a demand. She demanded to know who.

"Victor Travis," the agent replied with a slight impatient bounce. "Paz. Hurry up. He says you've got twenty seconds to get on the line or he's hanging up."

Pamela pushed her way past the girl perhaps a touch too forcefully and strolled to the telephone in the furthest corner. She didn't need to silence the room. They had already ground to a dead halt, all eyes on her. Landy waved the attention away and pick up the handheld, taking the phone off of speaker. She knew Paz could tell the difference and she hoped he would appreciate it. "Landy here. I just need to do a quick identity check. You know the drill." Pam pointed toward someone to the left and as expected, the man's profile and information popped up on the giant monitor behind her.

"Tango-tango-sierra, three-four-nine," the male voice on the other end responded. TTS-349. Landy turned her head, straining a muscle to check that it matched the identification code on his chart. Somehow Landy both tensed and relaxed at once.

"This phone line's secure. Listen to me. We need to know-"

She was cut off abruptly. "The phone line's secure? This phone line had better be secure or I am personally dragging you down with me. What in the hell are you people doing over there? Blackbriar was burned. Did you rebuild it? Are you ordering the hits?"

"I'm not ordering any hits," Landy managed to slip in, using her most calm and conversational tone available. "This conversation's going to be pointless if you don't give me a chance to talk."

"I'm on a prepaid," Paz cut in once again. Pam didn't let the trickle of annoyance in no matter how hard it clawed at her subconscious.

"I'm not tracing it." She allowed a beat of silence to pass and when the man didn't have anything to counter her comment, she plowed onward. "There's no new Blackbriar. No one rebuilt it, and I'm not ordering any hi-"

"Stop saying that. Black ops agents are dropping like flies. I'm off the goddamn grid, but I'm not blind. Half a damn dozen, right? All fucking 'suicides?'" The quotation marks were very clear in Paz's tone through a mix of sarcasm and aggression.

"I'll stop saying that when it stops being true. I'm not ordering any hits. And, I'm sorry, but there are more than six dead. It's seven now. We need to figure out how to keep you safe. The first thing I think we need to do is bring you in."

"I'm not coming in," Paz spat. Landy was experienced working with the cool and logical side of rogue agents, the side that responded to reason and shunned emotion. Paz, however, was clearly upset. The records of actual agent training were dusty and vague, but the only thing Pamela could deduce was that the conditioning was wearing off. Or perhaps the Blackbriar troops were trained differently than Treadstone. Landy made a mental note to set a duo of employees on an archaeological excavation of Albert Hirsch's personal belongings and all Agency archives.

"I don't know how to protect you if I don't even know where you are," Pam stated simply, holding back a sigh that desperately wanted to escape.

"You don't think I can protect myself?" he grumbled. She could hear the distinct sound of a forceful click in the background and she registered the noise as the sound of a gun being loaded. The last thing Landy needed was another number added to the current body count. She knew she had to handle the situation just the right way, say the right thing, and so she took the necessary moment to think.

"You don't think you can protect yourself," Pam finally said, quieting her voice and adding in a gentle and almost maternal aspect. "People you trained with are dead and now you're worried you can't protect yourself either." She paused again, this time for dramatic effect. She already knew the words she was going to speak next. "You don't have to come in, but you need to know that I'm on your side here. None of you need to die. There's no reason for it. I'm in the same boat you are. We both got left back when the shit hit the fan, and I'm not the type to leave a man behind. I just need to know where you are, so I can-"

"I lied. This isn't a prepaid. Do your thing," Paz interrupted. There was a short bout of silence and then a dial tone buzzed in Landy's ear. She set the phone down and peered out at the sea of eager faces.

"Run the number and get me the address. Then I need-" again, Pamela was spoken over. She was growing tired of it, but as she looked across to the source of the commotion she stood up very slowly. Greg Toro stood in the doorway, his cheeks ruddy and his breath quickened with either fear or exhilaration. He held a plain package in his hand, ripped open but clutched as though it was a map to the Holy Grail.

"You need to see this," Toro huffed, thrusting the envelope out at her. With an authoritative glance over the other employees, she sighed and then gestured for them to carry on as she crossed the room to Greg. She plucked the envelope from his hand and squeezed the edges to open it, peeking inside. Her brows furrowed as she tipped the thing, staring at the passport that fell into her hand. As if stricken with a temporary bout of psychic ability, Landy knew the face she was going to see when she opened it, but she opened it still. She only looked for a fraction of a second and then whispered to Greg.

"Not a word of this to anyone, and you'd better play along" she hissed and then lifted her tone. It morphed and shifted to irritation. "Christ, Greg! Jason Bourne's not going to write us a goddamn letter. Look, you moron: 'Bourne' isn't even spelled right. Stop bringing me every pathetic piece of tabloid trash that pours in, got it?"

Greg didn't have to do much acting to look stunned and humiliated. He nodded quickly and after nearly a minute of awkward tension, the sound of the agents working behind them slowly built to its normal cadence. With her back still turned to everyone but Toro, Landy gave a very satisfied smile. It was always the small victories that seemed to mean the most.