Nolan watched her through the mirror. This woman wasn't stupid, he was sure she was perfectly aware that she was being watched, but now there was no immediate reason for her to keep up her facade. She was shaking her head, over and over again. He couldn't tell if she was aware of her motion, but he grinned again when she reached for the bottle. Satisfied he saw how she drank, swallow after swallow, until it was empty, and she was taking a deep breath.

"I just hope it works this time," he said without bothering to turn to the man who was now moving to stand next to him. The unspoken 'For your sake'was hovering in the air.

"She's already had more in her system than I thought, thanks to the cut on her arm. No wonder the injection immediately after that knocked her out all night, it was too much too soon. At least that's what that doctor said." Christensen's voice was too calm and unimpressed for Nolan's liking. "But this is gonna do the trick."

"We'll see about that."

In the room, the woman was suddenly holding on to the edge of the table, caught by a sudden fit of trembling. Eventually she slid down and remained lying on the floor.

Nolan sighed impatiently while Christensen's face paled a little. Without another attempt of an explanation, he went back into the interrogation-room. Nolan left, disgusted.

/\/\/\/\

"What did you get yourself into this time, Agent Hunt?" Everyone turned around to the door. The voice belonged to a tall, dark-skinned woman with long black hair. When she saw Benji's sunken figure she wondered if she'd rather should have asked him instead.

"Hi, Jane," Hunt greeted her as best as he could.

"Good to see you," Brandt said.

Benji simply waved briefly.

"What's wrong?" Jane asked, scanning Ethan's injuries, Brandt's exhausted expression, and Benji's uncharacteristic obvious melancholy.

"You tell her," Brandt said to Ethan. "I believe you left out a few details anyway."

/\/\/\/\

One week earlier, Agent Hunt had been stopped just outside the infirmary.

"Ethan, can I talk to you for a minute?" Skye asked.

"Sure," Hunt said.

The woman looked around, slightly uncomfortable, which was why he motioned across the hallway to an unoccupied small conference room. Holt nodded.

"It's about what happened in Sweden. About Christensen," she began, after closing the glass door behind her and taking a deep breath.

Ethan raised his eyebrows and leaned against the table, half sitting down on the desktop.

"You were wondering how I noticed the connection so fast, remember?" She sighed. "You were right to be suspicious," she continued with the ghost of a smile. "It was more than just Hamburg, or the grip of the mission. You never believed that anyway. I know I should have told you sooner, but I needed to be sure."

Ethan waited patiently.

"I believe that Marcus Atwood and Moritz Christensen are the same person."

Ethan straightened, about to ask her if she was sure, when she already continued, stating her suspicion in that sober way that reminded him that she could be a pretty good team leader herself.

"In fact, I am very sure of it. They're using masks, and that's what makes Nolan's network so good. This must still be Musgrave's doing, only Nolan – contrary to Davian – is now actively using all that stuff."

Davian is a weed, Ethan heard John Musgrave's voice in his head. You cut him out, two more spring up just like him the next day. Bastard.

"In the papers he was carrying with him I found a passport. I can't guarantee it one hundred percent, but I think the name was Christensen, and the nationality was definitely Swedish. I'm the only one of the Randers operation who was actually face to face with Atwood. I first realised when I had to dance with him, and when Luther said they had mask machines things were starting to make sense." She shrugged slightly, expectant of an answer.

"I knew there was more to it," Ethan couldn't help saying. "Did he notice? Christensen?"

Skye shook her head. "I doubt it. He made some remark, but in Denmark he saw me for about ten seconds as a mousy chambermaid. I don't think he ultimately made the connection."

"But if he did, that would make you a person of interest," Hunt noticed. "After everything that's happened with you and Nolan already. You could be in serious danger."

"Person of interest?" she smiled. "You're exaggerating, I'm not in danger. But we have to do something."

"It's certainly a theory worth checking out." He paused before his next question. "Does Benji know?"

She shook her head again. "I thought it's better to keep him out of all this. After the explosion they probably think he's dead, so at the moment he's safe."

Ethan found himself nodding.

"But I need to tell you something else first, and you have to tell me if it makes sense. We might have more intel than we thought."

"What are you saying?"

"I might know where Nolan is. But I'm gonna need your help."

"What do you have in mind?"

"I was told something by an insider in Toronto. For a long time I thought it was code, but it's much simpler. Does the name Mot Clé mean anything to you?" she asked.

/\/\/\/\

"Skye worked it out," Ethan said, getting clearer by the sentence. "She was the only one who actually could. We spent the past week comparing what little footage we had of Atwood and Christensen, and went over the documents again – she was right, it added up. Believe it or not, but Nolan was closing in on us. He's right here in D.C., in front of us. We've done some investigating and found his hideout. It's the same deal as Hamburg, they bought real estate under a clean name and are setting up their network now. It's in an old motel, now called the Mot Clé."

"Moclay," Benji muttered to himself.

"And why the hell didn't you tell anyone about this?" Brandt interrupted Ethan for the first time.

"Because we had not one piece of evidence to support Skye's theory. The camera hadn't caught the passport for some reason, and everything in Hamburg blew up. Besides, you're the one telling us every day how Hunley's watching everything you authorise."

"Oh, so this is my fault now?" Brandt said.

"No," Ethan replied. "We just didn't want you to get into trouble for what could have been nothing. You could never have sanctioned an unbacked theory of the World Heritage Bombers."

"So you went there by yourself?" Jane asked, starting to understand.

"We never planned to assassinate anyone, if that's what you're thinking. We just would have needed something to justify an actual mission. We had to be very careful with our stake-out at the Mot Clé. They have cameras everywhere. But there's a guy who we believe to be working for Nolan who's selling what he can get his hands on in the backyard to whoever wants it. Probably under the radar of his boss. That's how we tried to get close."

"We have to go there. Now." Benji's voice was so different, almost cold, that Jane involuntarily looked at him to make sure it was the same Benji that had helped them get through Ghost Protocol. The Brit was already standing, when Dr. Lee came back, wordlessly acknowledging the small assembly.

"You are not going to believe this," she started, slightly gesturing with her clipboard. "I got the results of your blood test, and it's not just some drug. This looks like what was supposed to become the finished version of the Rabbit's Foot."

The stunned silence was broken by Ethan asking, "The Rabbit's Foot is a drug?"

"How do you still not know about this?" Brandt asked back.

Hunt just shrugged. He had not particularly cared about it after returning from Shanghai, and even less after his honeymoon.

"What we codenamed the Rabbit's Foot is the basic ingredient for this," the doctor said. "You've been lucky, to say the least. You only had minimal amounts in your system, presumably administered into your bloodstream through the cuts and the puncture wound on your arm. Although I think actual ingestion would have been even worse. That's gonna keep the lab busy for some time, coming up with an antidote."

"If that," Brandt motioned at Ethan, "is the low dose..."

"It clashes with adrenaline, that's the problem," Dr. Lee interrupted. "If you had been calm the moment it got into your system, it wouldn't have got this bad."

Benji suddenly looked very pale. "Is it deadly?" he asked quietly.

"Possibly," Lee said with a sigh.

"Possibly?" Jane and Brandt repeated at the same time.

"At the moment we assume that it doesn't kill, or at least that's not what it's intended for," the doctor elaborated. "But it makes you think it does. You saw how it messed you up. I can't tell for sure yet, but what I've seen on you – and like I said, you had the low dose – you got everything from a racing heart to fever, and who knows how much of the memory loss was caused by it. It definitely impairs judgement, hallucinations are a possibility, leading all the way up to brain damage. But that's technically speculation, we're still running tests to see how much damage it can do, and if it's reversible."

Benji sat back down, making an exasperated sound. Lee frowned.

"Benji," Jane started soothingly, but was interrupted when the door flew open again.

/\/\/\/\

Waking up because the blood flowing from your nose starts dripping into your mouth is not a nice way, but it was effective enough for Agent Holt. The bittersweet metallic taste combined with a foul feeling in her mouth caused her to cough before she got a grip on herself. Why was her nose bleeding anyway?

She was leaning against the wall in a strange angle, half lying on the floor. Her head was ringing with what sounded suspiciously like the intro of Thunderstruck. Her back hurt. Cringing, she got into a more sitting position. The room lazily slid into focus with a couple of seconds delay. She attempted to breath calmly. It was dark around her, the only light was sneaking in from the narrow windows above the door. The actual window was blacked out by paint, she assumed. Her head hurt.

This room could have been used in any horror movie, she thought. It looked like a big living room, even a bit like a hotel lobby, with random armchairs out of velvety-looking red fabric. Only the poor lighting condition, the wallpaper that was peeling off, and the enormous amount of dust that had settled on the furniture and was hovering through the air, gave it a creepy air of neglect and decay. A mouse was caught dead in a trap in a corner, and apparently had been for some time.

Nothing was to be seen or heard, but Skye wasn't entirely sure if she could rely on her senses right now. The moment she tried to get up she started shaking so badly that she remained where she was. She just slid back down on the floor and tried to make herself as small as possible.

"Kiddo, can you hear me?" someone said.

A ghost. He wasn't real. Couldn't be.

Skye wanted to be somewhere else. As far away from here as possible. She started thinking about this, trying to occupy her mind to distract herself from the pain and the cold and the ghost.

Maybe Italy. She wondered if she would ever get around to see it now. She wondered if it was nice.