He wondered what the origami bird on her desk meant. It had appeared there a few weeks ago, on the edge of her pen cup, and she only took notice of it the first time she saw it. After that, it sat next to her pens as if it had always belonged there. He wanted to ask about it, but every time he tried, his efforts were foiled by one interruption or another.

He remembered the bird today, even though they were driving to talk to family of the victim, because he'd been thinking idly about hawks and falcons. "What's the bird on your desk for?" he asked her abruptly.

"What bird?"

"The origami thing next to your pens."

"Oh, that? An anonymous thank-you note."

Castle arched an eyebrow. "You get anonymous thank-you notes folded up into—what is that, a hawk?"

"It's supposed to be Onisius," she said. "The Greek god of retribution." She laughed.

He wasn't up to scratch on his Greek mythology, but he couldn't recall the name. "Is it funny?"

Kate shrugged. "Onisius isn't a Greek god," she explained.

Castle wondered just how anonymous the note really was. Kate was hiding something; even if he had no clue what that something was, she couldn't hide the fact that she there was something she wasn't telling him.

It was a dangerous idea, giving Castle a copy of Jarod's somewhat-stylized autobiography. The book was being published as fiction, a mix of sci-fi and dystopia, but Kate had read it and it felt both uncomfortably real and comfortably fictional at the same time.

He seemed intrigued by the idea, but she didn't expect him to devour it overnight and come to her the next morning asking question after question about her thoughts on the book. She was careful in her answers, deliberately refusing to give any indication that she knew it wasn't entirely fiction. She preferred to listen to his analysis of the story, and was surprised that, while he knew it couldn't be true, he thought it felt plausible. Jarod had intended the story to feel plausible. He'd wanted everyone who read it to doubt its fictionality, so that when the time came to reveal the truth of it, it would come as a shock, but it would be well-received.

Jarod updated Kate periodically on the book's statistics. Its release was unpublicized and unannounced, but it appeared on bookstore shelves anyway. Its readership was small, but copies of the book passed from hand to hand, following the plea of the emperiled main character. Unique to this book was the absence of summaries, reviews, and 'filler' material. It had a plain cover, a title page, a short dedication (To my Nemesis), and five hundred pages of gut-wrenching, heart-racing 'fiction'. There were no blank pages, except for the very last page of the book, which was printed with origami fold markings and was meant to be torn out and folded into the image of Onisius. Kate had torn hers out before giving her copy to Castle.

She did not expect Castle to adore the book as much as he did. He came to the precinct after returning her copy with a grin on his face, proudly showing off his own copy. He said he'd bought it because he never would have given Kate's back otherwise. Kate snuck a look in the back of it later, when Castle was busy concocting elaborate theories about the current case. The final page was missing.

Kate spent as much extra time with her trainer as she could possibly manage. She'd looked over the blueprints and the plans, and she was going to have to be in top shape if she was going to make it through intact.

"Kate, girl, you gonna wear me out," said Quentin.

"Again," she said breathlessly. "One more."

"You said that three rounds ago." Quentin raised his gloves. "But if you say so."

Kate raised her fists, bouncing on the balls of her feet, trying to stay as light as possible. She didn't care about landing any punches; she was more concerned with keeping herself alive, so to speak. Quentin knew it, and he took the offensive, throwing more jabs and going for more tackles. Kate dodged and wove and occasionally gave him a tap on the ribs or a swipe near his feet. She eventually got him down after he threw a wide punch and Kate took his legs out from under him.

"Nicely done," he said. "Why the sudden enthusiasm?"

"Challenge," she said.

"Your boyfriend?"

Kate grinned and rolled her eyes. She hadn't said anything about why she spent so much time at the gym, but Quentin had gotten the idea into his head that she was in some kind of fitness competition with her boyfriend, as if Richard Castle ever did any real exercise.

Castle had expressed concern about her well-being so many times that she'd decided it was probably better to cave to his pleas. They were going to dinner tonight, and he'd let slip something about a surprise back at the loft. Kate checked the clock and decided she had time for a few laps in the pool. She didn't have a suit with her, so she stripped off her gloves and dove in in her sports bra and spandex shorts. She managed to swim three hundred meters before she figured it was time to hit the shower. She rinsed off, dried her hair a bit under the hand dryer, and threw on jeans, a t-shirt, and her coat and scarf. She put her wet stuff in a plastic bag and hoisted the whole thing over her shoulder.

Castle was waiting for her in the lobby. "Have a good workout?" he asked.

Kate grinned. "You know, you and I should work out together," she said.

"Mm… you mean at the gym?" he jibed, giving her a sly grin.

Kate rolled her eyes. They both knew it would never happen. Castle took her bag from her and tossed it in the back seat of the car. He refused to hand over the keys, even though they both knew Kate was a better driver by necessity. She sat in the passenger seat while Castle shot her sultry looks and didn't look at the road nearly enough for Kate's comfort.

Kate's phone buzzed as she dropped her bag next to the door of the loft. Castle heard the phone vibrate and turned around. Jarod's message was so short, she didn't even need to unlock her phone: Tonight.

All the giddiness she'd been feeling from the workout endorphins vanished.

"Kate?"

She pulled herself back to Now. "Yeah?"

"What's going on?"

"What do you mean?" she asked, trying to sound neither guilty nor falsely innocent.

Castle picked up a small paper Onisius from the coffee table in the living room. Kate could see the lines and text of the folding instructions "Who wrote that book?"

Kate searched for words, but they evaded her like guilty suspects.

"You have one of these on your desk."

"It's just an origami bird, Castle," she said. "You're reading way too much into this."

"Am I?" he asked. His face was showing the beginning stages of anger, but Kate couldn't tell him. Not now; there wasn't time. "Something's going on. I can see it. I don't know what it is, but it's not good."

"Justice," she said firmly. "I'm just doing my job."

"Your job? What part of your job has you speaking Russian over the phone and sneaking off to secret meetings?"

"Castle…"

"Damn it, Kate!"

"Let's just forget about it for now, okay?" she pleaded. She wanted to spend the evening with him to take her mind off of what sure to be an intense night.

He must have heard something in her tone, or seen something in her eyes, because his stance shifted dramatically. "Okay, now you're scaring me. What's going on?"

"It's nothing," she said. "Really."

"No." He threw the Onisius to the floor. "Tell me what's going on."

She saw the determination in his eyes. He wasn't going to give up on this for a single moment. She had no choice.

"Let me eat something," she compromised. "Dinner, and then—" She took a deep breath. "Then I'll talk."

Jarod would be at the door any minute. Kate had everything she'd need, all packed up in a duffel bag by the door. They'd gone to her apartment at her request—insistence, really—and picked up takeout on the way.

"I'll be back by noon," she promised, her words muffled by Castle's shirt. It had taken an extraordinarily long time for her to pack the small duffel, what with Castle's constant hovering and their seemingly overwhelming need to touch each other and hold each other. Now that she was finally packed, Castle was stretched out on the sofa, and Kate lay half on top of him, half against the back of the couch, clinging to him as long as she could before Jarod arrived.

"You better come back," he said, kissing her hair.

"Did it twice before," she said.

"You better come back whole and intact and not shot, okay?" he amended. "I want to be able to hold you in my arms and lay in bed with you when you come back and I want it to be inmy bed and not a hospital bed."

Kate knew how it would go when she got back. "I know what you have in mind, Richard Castle, and it would be rather difficult to do if I ended up in a hospital bed." She kissed his jaw. "So I won't."

"Good," Castle said. The rap-tap-tap of Jarod's sharp knock sounded against the door. Castle squeezed Kate tighter for a fraction of a second before letting her get up and answer the door.

Jarod stepped inside and the door swung most of the way shut behind him. Kate picked up her duffel bag and tugged on her shoes. Jarod seemed surprised to see someone else in the apartment, but a short nonverbal exchange with Kate pacified him momentarily. Castle padded over, giving Jarod a nod. Kate reached up on tiptoe to kiss him briefly. "I'll see you tomorrow," she told him. She moved out of his reach before he could draw out their goodbye any longer. Castle opened the door and saluted Jarod and Kate on their way out. He'd agreed to wait for her at her apartment; she would call when she needed to be picked up.

"He loves you, doesn't he?" Jarod asked, as if he'd made a scientific discovery and needed to confirm his findings.

Kate nodded, blushing a little. "Yeah. I kinda like him, too," she joked.

Jarod didn't say anything, but Kate was pretty familiar with the look on his face. "How's… your nemesis?" she asked as they stepped out onto the street.

"I don't think she sleeps much," he said. "I had to wake her out of a nightmare a few nights ago. I think she has them more often than she admits." Jarod unlocked the car and Kate tossed her bag in the back seat. He shook his head. "She hates it there. I wish I could have taken her somewhere else, but it's the only safe place I know."

"It's not for much longer," Kate said.

Jarod pulled out into traffic. They were silent for a few blocks. After this mission, everything would start falling into place like a hundred thousand dominoes. They sat at a red light and Jarod launched into a rehash of their plan. Kate nodded along, adding in her parts when necessary so they made sure they were still on the same page for this mission. Tonight was the crucial step, the cornerstone of Jarod's master plan. They had one shot. If they failed, there was nowhere on earth they'd be safe. Kate, Parker, and Jarod—and now Castle—all knew it, but she was past the point of nervousness. The stakes just made her that much more determined to win.

The plane trip to the tiny airpark just outside Blue Cove was silent save for the noise of the plane's engine. Kate was focused on running the mission over and over in her mind, and she suspected that, if Jarod wasn't doing the same, he was probably concentrating on flying the plane.

The hardest part, Kate knew, would be getting past the first five sublevels of the building. After the fifth sublevel, security was sparse at best. Jarod had plotted a route to a series of ventilation shafts between the eleventh and twelfth sublevels, where they would crawl to the central data station. There were some switches on a huge wall that Kate would have to find and flip while Jarod did some quick computer magic, and then they would crawl to a different exit point and make their way back out of the building, to the plane, and fly back to New York shortly after dawn.

When they landed, a pilot—with whom Jarod was apparently good friends—taxied the plane to the fuelling station and Jarod and Kate got in a little beater car that was idling on the runway. Jarod drove to the beach, where Kate tugged on her wetsuit over her skin-tight track suit. The wetsuit wasn't as snug as it had been when she'd first gotten it and she allowed herself a smug smile. Jarod stripped off his jacket and pants to reveal his own wetsuit, already on and ready to go. Kate let him zip the back of her suit up and she tucked her braid into the hood, hoping it would stay mostly dry. They'd lose a lot of valuable time if Kate had to sit and squeeze water out of her hair. She gave Jarod a thumbs-up and they got into the water. Jarod had a small, watertight bag strapped to his back with their shoes and the few tools they'd need to do the mission, and Kate swam behind him around an outcropping of rock. Even with her wetsuit, the water was cold, and the five hundred meters felt more like five thousand. They got out behind a little trailer, and Kate peeked around it at the enormous building of the Centre.

Kate stripped off her wetsuit, pleased to find that her hair was pretty much dry. She and Jarod pulled on socks and thin sneakers that reminded Kate of thick-soled jazz shoes. Despite all the light emanating from the building, security at the Centre was relatively easy to bypass if you knew where to run and where to duck. Kate followed Jarod, and they ran, crawled, and ducked their way to a side door. Jarod scanned a security pass on the door, and let both of them into a small, poorly-lit hallway. Another door led into a sort of locker room for the security guards, where Jarod opened a trap door and they climbed down a ladder to the next level.

Their next door was across an infrared tripwire. Jarod took out a green pocket laser and pointed to the receiver, which was about a foot above the ground. He held the laser and Kate edged along the wall, stepping over the invisible trap. Jarod did the same without the aid of the laser, and slipped the laser back into his pocket. The door opened onto a stairwell which spiralled down to the ninth sublevel, but because of where they needed to go, and because of a few traps that weren't so easy to avoid, they'd only be able to take it down to the fourth level.

Jarod pressed his ear to the ground at the fourth-level landing. He waited half a minute and then gave Kate a signal. She picked the lock and the door swung open. They avoided another infrared tripwire and ducked down a trap door ladder. Kate heard the security guard walk over their heads half a minute later, and stop on top of the trap door. She and Jarod hurried down the ladder as fast as they could without making noise. They were hidden when the trapdoor opened and the security guard called to them.

"Hello?" he asked. "Who's there?"

Kate rolled her eyes for Jarod as if to say, "It's like he thinks we're going to tell him we're breaking in." Jarod smirked. The trap door clanged shut and Kate followed Jarod through a low passageway to the most dangerous section of their mission: getting to Sublevel Six.