2:10 A.M. Thursday

          The door to the apartment slammed against the kitchen counter and ricocheted back as I threw it open and went bolting through the deserted living room. Behind me, Detective Smith caught the door with rapid-fire reflexes, closed and locked it behind himself, and just tried to keep up. In order to make it there faster, I'd jumped the couch and I was now on my way up the stairs in double-time. My heart was threatening to break my ribcage as all the lies of calmness fell away from me, replaced by fear and failure.

          I ran into the ops room to find Leticia at Chloe's workstation, set up to take over the position that Chloe normally filled as the spark plug and the connector. As she saw the two of us burst in, she joined us at the main table, perhaps noting the rampant emotions in my eyes that told her I had lost my control. She didn't waste any time, instead explained to me that the squad was engaged in a showdown at a downtown business plaza that would likely decide the outcome of the invasion.

          My brain was racing with a million different possibilities and a whirlwind of mental voices. I hit the table with a sound, trying to get them to shut the hell up. They didn't. I couldn't believe how I had just left them on their own. Duty was one thing in a world at war, but I had as many responsibilities, if not more, to the people out there dying as to the people back at the office filling out paperwork and keeping names straight. Which was the graver concern? I had made a blind mistake. And I would pay for it.

It's easier to run
Replacing this pain with something numb
It's so much easier to go
Than face all this pain here all alone

          I turned to the main monitor, on which was displayed the current battle feed, which would be coming off of Jason's camera rig's radar outfit and everybody's earpiece tracers. The amount of red dots was startling. It looked like garish Christmas lights out there. On the right-hand side of the screen I could see everybody's heart rates, using software we had co-opted from the main CIA's internal operations mainframe. They were pushing it to the limit. I knew Derek often spiked when he got into a heated battle, but he was really going now. The others weren't that far behind him, and they just kept going forward, never looking back. I stared at that wall screen for what seemed like eternity.


Something has been taken
From deep inside of me
A secret I've kept locked away
No one can ever see
Wounds so deep they never show
They never go away
Like moving pictures in my head
For years and years they've played

There were moments, fleeting now, suppressed by an undying sense of duty, where I wished I'd never accepted the London mission. I wished I'd never picked up a gun and shot a man, though I'd fired my weapon a lot more times now. I wished I'd never interrogated Nina Myers and unleashed the beast inside of me. I'd been stepping closer and closer to its liberation since I fell from grace following John's death, but I had always thought I could outrun the darkness. The problem wasn't with the darkness, it was with the light, when you came around again. In the time since I had come back to the States, my life had been a chasm of love and loss, pain and exploration, and the weight was getting too much to bear.

I bit my lip and tasted blood again.

"Get me audio," I said in a quiet voice. "And a direct line."

Leticia moved to comply, and when Frank tried to put a hand on my shoulder, I shrugged him off. I needed to be alone.

If I could change I would
Take back the pain I would
Retrace every wrong move that I made I would
If I could stand up and take the blame I would
If I could take all the shame to the grave I would

In another moment or two, Leticia walked over to me with a clip microphone, and I clipped it to my jacket collar. She wanted to give me the headset, too, but I waved her off.

"I want it through the main speakers."

She nodded and hit a couple of keys on Chloe's keyboard. The immediate sounds of battle poured into the room as I began clearing off the main table with a fury burning in my heart. Bringing up the battle ROM on the table as well as the screen, I leaned over the virtual battlefield, trying to make sense of the voices and sounds that were resonating in my ears. I felt responsible for all of it. I was their leader, and even if I wasn't, I was still the one that had asked them to brave the night.


If I could change I would
Take back the pain I would
Retrace every wrong move that I made I would
If I could stand up and take the blame I would
I would take all my shame to the grave

"I'm online," I said, briefly, into the mic. My speech was still clipped. It's a force of habit from giving orders in the fastest time possible. Somebody joked once that I was starting to sound like Batman.

"Brittany, thank God." The voice belonged to Weiss. "We need you, man."

"I know." I tried to hide the infinite sadness in my voice. "What can I do?"

"We need some tactical down here," he told me. "They're everywhere…"

"I can see them." I nodded to myself, as if he were there in front of me. "I'll do what I can."

On the surface of the table, I saw the battlefield's size shrinking. They were pressing down on the enemy, or the enemy was pressing down on them. In close quarters, it was hard to tell which.

It's easier to run
Replacing this pain with something numb
It's so much easier to go
Than face all this pain here all alone

"Weiss, I need a status check," I told him. Heart rates could only tell you so much. Adrenaline can be generated because you're worked up about the situation, or because you're about to die.

"We're okay," he said, quick and succinct, as I heard a gunshot probably from his own weapon. "We're beaten up, but we're okay. For now. I don't know how much longer."

"Do what you can," I said, echoing Jack. Those seemed the most apt words for the moment.

Studying the main monitor and the table holo, my mind's eye created the situation for me as the sound filled in the blanks. It was so close I could almost touch it, but it was a phantasm. I was able to see in seconds the nightmare unfolding in this small corner of Los Angeles, where no one would ever know how close we came. My rational mind was formulating a counter-attack. The rest of me was remembering a time when all I had done was come in to CTU and study patterns and go home at night to do my College Algebra homework. That time was lost, and so was that young woman.

Sometimes I remember
The darkness of my past
Bringing back these memories
I wish I didn't have
Sometimes I think of letting go
And never looking back
And never moving forward so
There would never be a past

I looked to Leticia again. "Get somebody from the London office on the phone. It's time they heard the truth, don't you think?"

She nodded, knowing well the story. No evidence to substantiate the possibility of a Los Angeles invasion, that's what my ex-boyfriend had told them when he'd gone back to England. His evidence was right here. His evidence could be bleeding out on the pavement. I didn't know. She dialed the number Chloe had in the system, and somebody should be there to pick it up.

Meanwhile, I kept talking to the team in the field. "You've got a dozen more at the least. What's your ammunition status?"

"We're stable. Firing conservatively helps." Weiss was out of breath. He'd probably been fighting for twenty, thirty minutes or more. He had to be close to the end. We all had to be.

If I could change I would
Take back the pain I would
Retrace every wrong move that I made I would
If I could stand up and take the blame I would
If I could take all the shame to the grave I would

Leticia tossed me the phone handset, and I caught it without really having to look. Vaughan Rice was on the other end of the line. He was our London contact and the man there that I trusted the most. He'd helped me in London, and unlike Michael, hadn't then stabbed me in the back. Twice. And he got down to business.

"What's your situation?"

"There's a full scale invasion going on, Agent Rice," I said. "Listen to the audio."

I let him hear the sounds of my team members yelling information to each other, of bullets firing so close together that they sounded like one single shot en masse. Then I stood there, cradling the phone. "I think you've got your evidence."

He was silent for a moment. "There's nothing we can do right now, you know that."

If I could change I would
Take back the pain I would
Retrace every wrong move that I made I would
If I could stand up and take the blame I would
I would take all my shame to the grave

I did. London is, after all, a day's flight away; any resources or backup manpower would never make it in time. "I know that," I replied, "but you know the truth now."

"We'll send you backup fortifications immediately." He was committed to the cause, and it showed in his willingness to work with me. "And we'll upgrade the threat status accordingly."

"Thank you." I paused. "I'll keep you informed."

We hung up on each other, and I resisted the urge to throw the phone across the room. Instead, I just tossed it back to Leticia. Something had to be done. My heart, my soul, demanded instant action. I was terrified, however, that the outcome had already been decided before I could make it to the situation. I refused to think like that, even as I did.

Just washing it aside
All of the helplessness inside
Pretending I don't feel misplaced
Is so much simpler than change

"Here's what you do," I told Weiss. "You need to retreat, immediately."

"You sure?" he asked. "We can't let them go."

"You're not letting them go," I reiterated. "You're buying yourself time. You're in too close, it's too dangerous. You need to draw the combat out into the nearest open area."

"That's going to be in the street again," he told me. He hated fighting in the streets. Too many possible innocent victims in passing cars or nearby buildings. Thankfully, this was Los Angeles at night and incidences of both so far had been minimal.

"I know, but we don't have a choice."

I heard Weiss yelling over the violence, giving my new standing orders. Hopefully not the last time I'd ever hear his voice.

It's easier to run
Replacing this pain with something numb
It's so much easier to go
Than face all this pain here all alone

On the battle ROM monitor, I saw the whole field begin to back up. Code Black was falling back, and after a moment or more, the Code Fives were following. They were beginning to peel out of the plaza in which they brawled, back toward the street they'd arrived on. Hopefully when the field opened up, their chances would improve.

Leticia had gone back to running op-serve. She kept looking at me every now and then to see if I needed anything, but I kept silent. There wasn't much more I could do from here.

The sentence reverberated in my head.

Not much more I can do from here.

It's easier to run
If I could change I would
Take back the pain I would
Retrace every wrong move that I made
It's easier to go
If I could change I would
Take back the pain I would
Retrace every wrong move that I made I would
If I could stand up and take the blame I would
I would take all my shame to the grave

          The decision between my head and my heart took about two seconds for my heart to win out. I unclipped the microphone, tossed it on the table, and started toward my weapons locker, grabbing my earpiece, two of my SigArms and another weapon, and holstering everything. When I turned round, I didn't spare any time for detailed explanations.

"I can make it out there and hold the line," I said, conviction pulsing through my voice. "I'm going out there and bringing them home."

          "You'll be killed!" Detective Smith blurted, then he read it in my eyes. "You're going to sacrifice yourself in their place." He was staring at me now. "At least let me come with you."

          I shook my head. "You're needed here with Leticia. We need cutting-edge information." And with that, I started toward the staircase that would lead me down. I hesitated just a moment, turned and looked back at my best friend and the detective that had come through for me when it mattered. I had very little to say, except my trademark phrase.

          "I tried."