A/N: OMG, the angst was so awesome in the last episode XD! But my head's getting all explody from keeping the fic and the show straight. So I'm going to wrap this up before the next new episode. It's not going to be a WIP, so tell your friends! It's going to be a bumpy ride! :D

Part XIV

There was a knock at Amanda's office. The door cracked open and Birkhoff surveyed the room warily before entering. "You wanted to see me, Amanda?"

"Birkhoff," she acknowledged as he shuffled in, "Have a seat."

"I'd rather not," he answered smartly.

A sideways glance from Amanda had him sitting down anyway.

Amanda sat down cross from him and placed a piece of a mangled earbud on the pristine coffee table. She idly observed as the color drained from Birkhoff's face.

"What…what is that?"

She didn't appreciate his dismal attempt to obfuscate. "You know what that is, Birkhoff."

"Well, yeah, of course, it's a shitty looking earbud-"

"It was in Nikita's cell. We cleared her for devices before taking her into custody. According to the surveillance logs, you were the last person to see her."

The tech squirmed in his seat, his heart pounding with dread as cold sweat began to prickle down the back of his neck. He should have seen this coming, why didn't he see this coming?

"I can explain," he croaked.

"I don't need your explanation, Birkhoff. I know why you did it." Her soft tone was almost comforting, understanding.

Birkhoff stared at the ground, shoulders hunched in. "I was just…they told me Michael was dying. It seemed like a bro thing to do."

If Birkhoff had chosen to look up at that moment, he would have seen an enigmatic smile grace Amanda's face, as if he said something remarkably amusing or incredibly apropos.

"Michael has always been appreciative of your initiatives."

Birkhoff snorted, taking refuge in the familiarity of empty accolades, "Yeah right. I'm just a nerd to him. He has no idea the amount of work I put into Shadownet just so he can get his satellite images faster than he can ask for them. That one time, when I cracked a closed security feed and added real time subtitles, did he say 'thank you', nooooo."

Amanda held at ready a water glass as he rambled, but just as Birkhoff distractedly took the water from her, he came to an abrupt stop, right before his lips touched the drink. His palms were clammy, fingers twitchy as he carefully set the glass down. His arm snapped back immediately, away from the table.

Birkhoff stared at Amanda, the whites of his eyes laced with red. He swallowed tightly and asked, "Are you canceling me?"

Amanda didn't answer his question, instead she stood and retrieved a flash drive from the top of her desk, moving at a deliberate pace so he could easily track her movements. All very non-threatening and yet Birkhoff couldn't keep his pulse from thundering as she sat back down and placed the drive in front of him. It was a generic, black, unlabeled flash drive, but he regarded it like a snake pit.

"I think you should continue to take the initiative until Michael realizes what you can truly accomplish."

His faced twisted with confusion, but under Amanda's directed gaze, he hesitantly reached for the drive, breathing an inner sigh of relief when she finally cracked a smile. When Amanda remained silent, Birkhoff knew he was being dismissed. He couldn't quite believe his good fortune and some part of him still thought a cleaner was going to jump out and snap his neck. Nervously, he stood up, willing his legs not to wobble as he headed for the exit.

Almost there.

"Birkhoff."

He squeezed his eyes shut and took a deep breath before turning around.

"Yes, Amanda?" he replied, forcing a smile through his clenched teeth.

Amanda was clearing the table, not giving him a second glance, but her words were clear and concise. "Sometimes it's best to keep your personal projects under wraps until the time is right. Premature exposure can be…" she paused and appeared to consider her word choice, "…hazardous. Then where would you be?"

Dead. He would be canceled and dead. She didn't say it but he heard it. He didn't need to understand her psychobabble to know that she was warning him. Whatever was on the drive it had to be so mind blowing that she was basically blackmailing him to…he wasn't sure what she wanted him to do. But it had something to do with Michael and the sooner he got on it, the sooner he'd get her off his back.

He skedaddled out of her office and went back to Operations. Within five minutes, he came up with a lame excuse about a wonky server, and headed to the server rooms, with no one the wiser. Without an active operation, it wasn't unlike him to spend hours with the servers.

Birkhoff powered up his favorite terminal, situated in a blind spot from the surveillance cameras, and settled in. Amanda's flash drive had two files in it. A personnel file and a strike team report. The man in the personnel file seemed familiar, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it, ditto the report. Nothing was amiss at first glance, except for some minor discrepancies in the standard protocol. The metadata on the files were also strange and sometimes just completely absent, something that Birkhoff picked up immediately while others might have ignored it. They were like digital breadcrumbs, leading him to one seemingly unrelated report after another, but for the electronic threads that stitched them together.

It was sometime around midnight, the witching hour, after cracking his own security protocols and covering his tracks whilst cross referencing data from the Division's fortified networks and restricted archives, that Birkhoff found the final thread in the tapestry. He had barely gotten off his high of seamlessly hacking into the highest of classified Division files when the smoke settled before his eyes. The eerie blue computer light bounced off Birkhoff's glasses as he gazed with opened mouth shock at the data before him.

"Holy shit."