Ethan was cold. At the same time, sweat stood on his forehead, and despite several blankets around him he couldn't stop shaking. At least the pain had stopped.

Ethan, can I talk to you for a minute?

There was this voice in his head from time to time. A woman's voice, but he couldn't place it, nor did he know what she was talking about, or if it was even real.

The woman with the black ponytail and the lab coat came back. She was real, and she had barely left him alone ever since he'd woken up. Now she had brought even more people.

Two men entered his room along with her. One was wearing a crumpled grey suit and a tie that demanded straightening, and had a paper cup in his hand that held coffee so strong that Ethan could smell it the second he entered. His brown hair was ruffled.

The other one was blond, dressed in jeans and a faded Jurassic Park t-shirt. His hands were in his pockets. Both of them looked like they could use a shower, a shave and a couple more hours of sleep. When they caught sight of him, their expressions changed from exhausted to worried.

"Hey, buddy," the blond guy said, and came closer.

British, Ethan thought.

"How are you?"

The woman answered in his place. "He hasn't said anything since he woke up. In fact he's been mostly passive, he just sits there. He is reacting to outside stimuli, but those are reflex actions."

The guy in the suit flinched slightly at these words, not taking his eyes off Ethan.

"That's why I thought I'd get you," Lab Coat continued. "You are his friends. I think he needs some familiar faces right now."

It's about what happened in Sweden. About Christensen.

"He hasn't talked?"

Definitely British, Ethan thought. English, to be precise.

The blond guy looked from him to the others and back again. "Ethan." The sound of that word surprised him. For a second, their eyes locked, before the older agent looked away again.

"Ethan." Now the other guy joined in, taking a sip from his coffee, before placing it on some available surface, stepping closer from the other side.

Now he understood what was going on here. They were surrounding him, blocking possible escape routes. The two men were back-up. Poor back-up, but still.

I know I should have told you sooner. But I needed to be sure.

"The first results of the blood test show that he has been drugged, and in abundance." The woman again. "We just don't know yet what it was. Or if it's the cause of his condition."

"What do you mean, if it's the cause?" the Brit said. "What else could be the cause?"

"Trauma," the woman said simply.

The guy in the suit looked incredulous. "Him and trauma?"

"Well, the two of you were my last resort. But he shows neither recognition nor understanding."

Recognition? Was he supposed to know them? He noticed how the men's faces fell to some degree at the lab coat woman's words. Even she noticed.

Person of interest? You're exaggerating, I'm not in danger.

"Sorry," she added. "I suppose it just takes time. Who knows what he's been through. His symptoms are often attributed to brain trauma. We haven't found any physical signs yet, but cerebral haemorrhaging can take time to show up in scans. And temporary amnesia is nothing unusual in certain cases."

"Temporary amnesia, this is nonsense," the suit guy suddenly said, accentuating his words with an abrupt movement towards Ethan that made him wince slightly. The guy in the suit didn't care. "You do recognise us, Ethan, right? Right?"

"Agent Brandt, maybe you should-"

"You know me, and Benji, we are friends. More than that," he chuckled sarcastically, "funnily enough, right now I am your boss, and you owe me an explanation, because you're supposed to be in Canada, Ethan."

The woman cut in again. "Agent Brandt, please keep your voice down, you-"

But he didn't stop, raising his voice even more. "It just takes time? Maybe we don't have time. Just what the hell do you think you're doing, turning up half dead at Benji's place in the middle of the night?"

"Brandt," the English guy said, his voice soothing, but something warning in his eyes.

"No, Benji, this is serious, just look at him, and what about Luther, huh? Is he all alone out there now?"

Ethan's eyes lit up. He was still shaking, but his features had suddenly regained something boyish and attentive.

The man to his right – Benji – noticed the change contrary to the other one, who was now turning back to his coffee, ruffling his hair and mumbling an apology in answer of the evil stare the lab coat woman was giving him.

"You do remember Luther, right?" Benji asked, his voice somehow thin, as if he was hurt by something.

There was something. Ethan's thoughts were racing, but everything in his head was chaos.

Brandt had taken a big gulp of coffee and was now staring at Hunt's contemplating features.

"You know, a big black guy, kind of intimidating if you don't know him. Quite good with computers," Benji tried to help.

"You gotta be kidding me," Brandt murmured, turning away again in order to hide his frustration. This was ridiculous.

But that moment something in Ethan's head snapped, as if the centre piece of a jigsaw puzzle had finally been found and only now the whole picture was making sense.

Despite sitting relatively steady on the bed, he felt like he was losing his balance at the weight of the memories rushing back. The room tilted a bit and came back into focus, and Ethan felt a steadying hand on his shoulder. He looked to his right.

"Benji," he said, a question without sounding like one. The technician's face brightened considerably. Dr. Lee looked up from her notes. Ethan turned to his left, where Brandt was expectantly clasping his paper cup, eyebrows raised. "Brandt!" He swallowed. "I need your help."

/\/\/\/\

There was a sound in Skye's head that she couldn't place. As if someone was hitting something with an icepick, something that was too solid to be pierced. Her vision started out as a small black-framed slit, but grew steadily until she saw a pair of bright blue high heels inches from her face. Only now she realised she was lying on the floor. She tried to get up, but her right arm wouldn't support her weight. Her throat felt parched. Skye turned her head instead.

"You crashed my E-type." Kirsten Caulfield stood right in front of her, hands on her hips and a condescending look in her eyes.

Within a second, Agent Holt's head was clear. She sat up. To her slight surprise she wasn't restrained in any way, but she didn't let it show. The cut on her right arm had been bandaged. She got up on her feet. "It was a horrible colour, anyway."

Caulfield looked away for a second, smiling to herself as if she couldn't quite believe Holt. Then, not particularly hard but astonishingly fast, her right hand curled into a fist. Caulfield's right hook came as a surprise, to say the least. Skye gasped briefly, and felt for her nose. Her fingers came away bloody. Disbelievingly the agent looked at the other woman.

"It was Jacob's favourite," Caulfield spat. With that she turned around and left the room through a door at the far wall.

"What, that's it?" Skye called after her.

"No, Miss Holt, that's not it."

The agent turned back around. Through a second door, a man had entered. He was lean and tall, about six foot, maybe more. His dark hair was short-cropped and started greying at the temples. His small eyes were almost black. He was wearing thin round spectacles. His upright posture and his weirdly sand-coloured shirt gave him the air of an alert meercat. With a touch of Hannibal Lecter - but with the mask. Skye shivered involuntarily.

"About time we get to meet again," Philipp Nolan said, after carefully closing the door. Skye noticed neither he nor Caulfield had bothered to lock it. They must be awfully sure about their game. "Would you like a drink?"

/\/\/\/\

"I never left D.C.," Ethan began once Dr. Lee had finished asking him questions about his current state. She had left the room. "They got me before I could do anything."

"So are you saying Luther is sitting alone in Canada now?" Brandt asked.

Ethan looked confused, then he seemed to recall something. He shook his head. "Forget about Canada. Also, Luther was never part of this op. That was all cover because what we were planning to do was unsanctioned."

"So that message about radio silence..."

"Pre-installed. All fake."

Accolade briefly flashed over Benji's face. "So where is Luther?"

"I don't know. Like I said, he wasn't part of this. We assumed if we got busted he would cover us despite everything."

"Then who is we?" Brandt asked.

"Me and Skye."

"Skye?" they said in unison.

Ethan nodded. "She came to me after we'd come back from Germany. She told me about her suspicion, about the evidence she had found. She said she wasn't sure if it made sense, but it did. I believe she was right."

"Right about what?" Brandt asked before Benji could say anything.

"The source of Nolan's network. She has seen through the double-crossing. She's the only one who knew about all of it, by coincidence. She didn't even know that she knew about so much, but she's made the connections. All of it led right back to D.C. She had found a code, and she wanted to check it out."

Brandt wasn't sure he understood. He was used to Ethan's crisp and clear descriptions of the situation, not this gibberish. "What code?"

But Benji interrupted, sounding somewhat exasperated. "Are you telling me that right now Skye is going after Nolan – alone?"

Hunt looked uncomfortable, but there was no way around it. "I don't know," he admitted. "I don't know what happened after they got me. I don't even know what day it is to be honest."

Benji stared at his friend, open-mouthed.

"When I saw that she was right I agreed to help her, but we knew we would never get it authorised. So she told me about her plan and-"

"And you let her do it?!" Benji suddenly shouted.

Everyone was shocked. Benji Dunn was usually the calmest person in the room, always a joke ready at hand, a somewhat stabilising factor. None of them had ever seen him angry.

"You just said yes?!"

It took Ethan a second to get out of his surprise. "Benji, she had a point in saying-"

"She always has a point, but that's no reason to let her go kill herself!"

"I never planned to let her go on her own," Hunt tried to reason. "None of this should have happened."

"You're bloody right none of this should have happened," Benji shouted.

"Calm down, Benji."

"Calm...!" he continued to shout, but just as without warning as he had started, he stopped. He let himself fall onto the daybed and rubbed his face. It seemed as if all his strength had suddenly deserted him.

"Benji," Ethan said in a hushed voice. "We're going to find her. I'm sure she's somewhere safe, I made it out as well. And then we're going to get Nolan."

Benji nodded slowly. "Why did I have to introduce the only two people nuts enough to do something like that?"

/\/\/\/\

Two doors, unlocked, but almost certainly holding back-up. A mirror, interrogation-room style. Definitely they were being watched. Two cameras, in opposite corners. A small black monitor on the wall. The narrow table appeared to be fixed to the ground, but it had nice sharp edges. Possible weapon. Same went for the two chairs. They seemed solid, their silvery surface gleaming in the neon light. No windows.

This assessment went through Holt's mind within a second as she forced herself to keep her head. Something was wrong with her, but she couldn't pin-point it. Maybe it was still the after-effect of having been knocked out and some blood-loss. She knew that was not it, but there was no time for that now.

"I'm sorry, I can only offer you some water. Though I hear your drink is Vodka Tonic." Nolan placed a small plastic bottle on the table, and sat down, motioning her to do the same.

Skye's gaze stuck to the bottle for one endless second. It was completely normal, as if he'd just bought it at the airport or the next supermarket, but it looked delicious. She could see it had been cooled, the fogged blue-tinted surface suggested it. And now that one perfect drop of water slowly gathered and rolled down alongside it, leaving a stripe of clear plastic. Holt realised she had never been so thirsty in her life. What was wrong with her? She need to get a grip on herself. This was important. She needed to listen. Energetically she broke loose.

Nolan just shrugged when she was still standing, and continued. "Are you aware that you killed the two highest members of a particular mafia family that's quite close to my heart?" He sounded honestly interested. "Do you even comprehend how many people currently want to slit your throat? Fortunately I still have some say in this, and I don't like slitting throats. Too... bloody. Though sometimes necessary. So you're welcome."

He looked at her, expectant of some reaction, but he was disappointed. He sighed, like an adult would sigh about today's youth's non-existent manners, and took up his monologue again. "Of course you're right. You're agency does quite a good job of protecting your identities, and your location. I admit, I couldn't find you, even though D.C. was a good guess as it turns out. I thought it was a bit too on the nose, you know. Well. When you started resurfacing all by yourself, I just couldn't help myself. Watching you and your little friend was just too much fun, so I couldn't just have you killed." He scrutinised her. She held his gaze. These small black eyes like polished buttons. "I actually like your style, Miss Holt. One single shot, and it's done with. Quick and cold-blooded. You look disbelieving. Don't you remember your own crimes?"

Nolan reached into his pocket for something Holt couldn't see. The monitor came to life, showing footage from a security camera in the corner of some office. It took Skye a second because of the weird angle, but then she realised with a cold shiver down her spine what she was seeing. Two walls of the office were entirely glass. The floor was sparkling with fragments. Two men lay knocked out in different corners, a third one was on the floor, partially obscured by a blond woman who had her back to the camera.

It was that dreadful day in Toronto. Paralysed she watched Benji flinch when she pulled the trigger. There was no sound coming with the tape, but seeing Reinhardt's head sag to the side was already enough.

"See – bam, and gone. That was one," Nolan said calmly.

The picture changed to a wide nondescript hall. Skye didn't want to watch this. She couldn't concentrate anymore. Th agent realised she was trembling slightly. She knew she should do something, knock this man's head against the table until his skull cracked, but right now she couldn't even bring herself to move. Her eyes darted back to the water bottle and she moistened her lips.

"Don't you just love this," Nolan chuckled, "the way you used the handcuffs, I have to say." He was actually laughing.

Horrified, Skye looked at him. His glance was fixed to the monitor.

"...aaaand – bam. Two Reinhardts in one day. If you knew how many people have tried and failed before you."

Skye watched herself stand still for a second, clutching the gun while blood started pooling underneath Reinhardt's head. Again. Then she picked something up, and ran across the hall, almost out of the camera's frame. Skye swallowed when she saw herself kneeling down next to Benji's unconscious figure.

"That's the boring part now," Nolan said distractedly. "Wait... here comes the good bit."

The agent was wondering what he could possibly still have up his sleeve, and prepared herself for her shoot-out at Caulfield Manor, or maybe when Ethan and she had assaulted their guards and managed to – Ethan. Why hadn't she thought of him earlier? Where was he?

"There we go," Nolan said.

Holt looked back up at the screen. A small room. Another office. A huge desk, and something not quite discernible in front of that, the angle was to steep. The door was thrown open, and she saw herself again, pressing her back against it, holding it shut. Involuntarily, she stepped closer.

"No," she said quietly, while the monitor-version of herself was looking around in search of the source of the gunshot she had heard. From this perspective she saw Richard Ferner flinch at the sound of the door closing again. "No, I did not kill him," she said forcefully, and looked back at Nolan, who was grinning and visibly enjoying this. "That was you."

"Oh really? Because it really looks as if you shoot him, see, right there." He motioned back at the screen just in time to make her watch it.

Skye wanted to shout, no, to remain really calm and then surprise him with an assault, no, to... she sat down. She couldn't breath. This wasn't happening. Who was he to accuse her, of things she hadn't done at that?

"No," Skye said again, and suddenly she managed to break through that wall that had started to form in her head. From one moment to the next, she was perfectly clear. "You have no right to accuse me of anything."

"Oh?"

"You," she said, fury in her voice, "have made a business out of covering up crimes, of making things I don't even want to think about appear legal. And it was you who killed this man!" She stood up again and took a step towards him. Despite her small stature there was a strange sense of authority about her. He instinctively felt respect – and he didn't like it.

He smiled sardonically. "Is that what you call it?"

"What do you call it?"

He pronounced every word very carefully. "Online Marketing Management."

Skye huffed in disgust. "The only reason that Cedric and Lionel Reinhardt are dead is because you used them as bait. Because you were too much of a coward to face us yourself."

Nolan looked at her, tilting his head as if this was very interesting, then he stood up and made for the door next to the mirror. "Your friend, by the way," he said, and waited until she'd turned her head to face him. "The one who killed three of my men before you started running? I believe his name is Hunt."

Holt's face didn't show any reaction.

"If I were you I'd show a little more respect next time we talk. For the sake of his well-being."