There it sat, perched precariously on the edge of the bathtub, glittering in the cold flourescent lights of the bathroom. An expression of an eternal affection. Little Platinum Circlet, who would have guessed your significance? It was such a small thing, finely crafted, inset not with a diamond, which would have been traditional, but with an emerald. He'd told her it matched her eyes perfectly, and gave it to her on bended knee.

"I love you, I want to spend the rest of my life with you." To him, this ring had been a promise of happy ever after.

To her it meant the exorcism of old ghosts, the purging of a past life. The ring meant letting go of all that she'd cherished, all that she'd held close to her heart. The pain, yes, but the pleasure to, the old love... was she ready to do that? She'd whispered 'yes,' and at the time, she'd really believed it, and she'd tried, but...

Poor John... no, Poor Faye, who wouldn't allow herself to be loved.

She hated the sight of that ring, and for a moment she was tempted to just give it a push into the empty bathtub. She imagined it arching from it's resting place, bouncing off the porcelain once, twice, three times with an amplified tink, then rolling around the drain, hopping every so often, as it rolled over the emerald... tighter... tighter... tighter... then *poof* gone. No more reminders of Faye's failures in love.

Except one very big, poofy haired reminder with an attitude.

She growled and snatched it up, cradling it in the palm of her hand momentarily before deciding to shove it into her pocket.

She wondered if everyone's love life was such a mess.

"C'mon," came a voice to accompany the pounding on the door. "Jet went to get you 15 minutes ago, we gotta get going."

The reminder himself, she thought bitterly. The reminder, but not the memory, she told herself sternly.

"I'm coming!" snappish reply.



The trio waited in the appropriately named waiting room, in front of a desk where a receptionist was filing her nails in between glances at Corbin. Faye grit her teeth, and tried to ignore the prickle that the attention was causing her. What was that feeling? Anger, annoyance... 'jealousy' sprang un-bidden to her mind, but she shoved that thought into the deepest recesses of her mind, stomped on it, and burnt it to a crisp. Not jealousy... it couldn't be that. But her eyes flashed fire as the receptionist caught Corbin's eye and gave him an enticing smile, which he returned.

Faye looked away, staring instead out the window, into the clear blue air, 113 floors above the ground. She did a good job of not noticing Corbin rise to talk more intimately with the girl behind the desk, but when she asked for his number, her high pitched, bimbo voice echoing off the walls, the muscle below Faye's eye twitched.

"Mrg..." she growled, nearly inaudibly.

"What's that?" Jet asked.

"Nothing..."

But Faye had given up not noticing, and had moved on to anger. She just couldn't stand the way that annoying woman giggled in response to the low, gritty voice of the man before her, or the way she was always flipping her hair. Faye could feel her trigger finger begin to twitch, and shook her head impatiently. She was moments away from pulling out her gun, and filling the girl full of lead when the intercom beeped.

"Send them in," the doctor said, cheerily.



"Everything seems fine... I don't see any abnormalities at all." The doctor held up the CT scan and hoped they couldn't read it... or make heads or tails of the data collected on the nerve samples, which he'd laid out on the table.

I'm doing the right thing, saving their lives and mine... I'm doing the right thing... the thought repeated itself over and over again in his head.

"You're sure?" Faye asked, "nothing at all?"

"Nope," he fidgeted with his pencil... he always fidgeted with his pencil when he lied, "Everything seems fine..." he echoed.

Faye shrugged, and Jet gave her a weak smile. "Hey, it was worth a shot."

"Yeah, oh well, now I guess it's back to square one," she said with a deep sigh.

Corbin said nothing at all. He had hardly spoken since they got to the office, and he was more alert than he'd ever been, straining his senses to their limits. Something was wrong, something was off. He wasn't sure how he knew it, it was instinct. Maybe he smelled it.

The three of them, the doctor, Jet, and Faye, were still talking, and he breathed an uneasy sigh. Dr. Slag seemed to be trying to find every different way to say that he was completely normal, and it just didn't feel right. After a moment, he took Faye by the arm, and pulled her over to the side.

"Hey! What's the deal!" she growled.

His actions earned him a puzzled look from both Jet and the good doctor. He gave them a wan smile, then turned to Faye. "Listen, something's not right here, I can't put my finger on it, but considering the warning Ed gave us... I get the feeling that Eve's somewhere around, and I don't know if it's some kind of ESP, or paranoia, but I'd say we should get the hell out of here."

He spoke with the gravest of expressions, and he could tell by Faye's reaction that he was letting the cool mask slip, because suddenly, she seemed to really listen to him. He wondered how much she'd seen. Had she seen the anger, the frustration, the puzzlement... had she seen the fear? Had he let his mask of cool confidence slip so far as to show her that he was afraid of what would happen to him if he should fall into Eve and Father's greedy hands?

He quickly smoothed over a layer of sarcastic amusement... damage control, maybe she hadn't seen.

But when she answered him, it was with a simple, "okay." No bite. No cruelty. No snap.

He watched as she wen t over two Jet and the Dr., the two having started the conversation back up after Corbin's interruption. "Thanks anyway, Doctor." she said, giving him a smile, " I suppose that will be everything."

He nodded and shook each of their hands as they left.

As he took Corbin's hand, he tensed visibly, giving it a stiff pump, and glancing nervously out the corner of his eye at the surveillance camera on the inside of the door. Corbin bit the inside of his cheek, and raised an eyebrow, but didn't comment.

The doctor swallowed hard, and released his hand, taking a step backward.

He coughed, "I'll send the bill..."



The doctor shut the door behind them and leaned on it heavily.

*Clap... Clap... Clap*

He turned to see the lithe figure standing behind him. He'd taken the scans, as Faye had asked, but when he went to his office to examine them, she'd been there, waiting for him.

"Bravo, Doctor." she said with a smile. "You just saved their lives, and your own." she gave him a dangerous smile. "Nice to be in the business of saving lives... I wouldn't know of course."

He swallowed the lump in his throat. "I didn't tell them anything... you were watching, you know."

Eve paced over to him, slowly, leisurely, with her hair dancing like flame. She looked like a cat with a twitching tail. The hand she placed on his shoulder was not reassuring.

"Now," her purr sent a shiver down his spine, "tell me about those scans."

"Er... well, it's quite astonishing, really." He stepped forward to the table, shaking her unwelcome touch away. This made her laugh out loud, and if she hadn't been so threatening, he would have thought the sound musical. As it was, it set him shaking, and he nearly dropped the chart he'd held up to show her. He took a moment to collect himself before continuing with his explanation of them.

"I'm not really sure where to begin... his senses... the area of the brain used for processing sensual data is larger than normal... not overly so, I might not have even noticed, had it not been for the... other abnormalities."

Eve, raised an eyebrow, quizzically, and he continued.

"Well, his neurological activity is through the roof... and check out the density of these nerve cells," he held up a second visual aid, an enlarged picture taken from a cell sample he'd gathered, "I've never seen anything like this, his reflexes must be phenomenal!" He was talking faster now, more excitedly. He'd almost forgot he was in the room with a cold killer. "More strength, more endurance, faster reaction time, better senses... it looks like someone's been making improvements."

The smile she gave him showed a little too much tooth for comfort, it put him in mind of a vampire. She leaned in. "It gets better, Doc."

"Oh?" he couldn't help but ask, he was bound to be curious.

"Yeah, it's progressive."

"You mean he's still changing?"

She nodded, "his body responds to stress... the more he uses it, the better it will become." She stepped forward, and with one clean easy movement, snapped his neck. "Oh, and he's not the only one," she told the twitching corpse.

She tossed her hair, and calmly walked from the office, not even bothering to dispose of the body. She was untouchable.



On of the first modifications Faye made to the Shadow Wolf was to put in the gym/firing range. 600 sq feet of space... mats in the corner for tumbling and acrobatics, free weights, targets, and of course, in the center of the room, a punching bag, which she was currently putting to good use.

She hated vulnerability, especially from those eyes. She was used to seeing mockery in them, or anger, or annoyance, and she could deal with all those things. She knew how to handle rejection from those eyes, but she didn't know how to handle what she'd seen, because she'd never seen fear in those eyes before.

Maybe she'd been mistaken, maybe that wasn't what she saw at all.

She attacked the bag with a ferocity that it didn't deserve, doing her best to break it, or herself, wanting to see blood, wanting to be destroyed.

She wanted to tell him that everything would be alright, she wanted to pull his head down onto her shoulder, and stroke his hair... She wanted to kill him and put him out of her misery. She wanted him out of her thoughts. No such luck.

She heard someone cough.

"I think the bag's had enough for one day," came the dry voice behind her, and she shuddered in recognition. Corbin.

"Yeah?" she didn't turn to face him, and she didn't slow her assault.

She heard his approaching footfalls, and when he was close enough she whirled without warning, and struck out at him. He dodged easily, the attempt never even cracking the smile on his face.

She raised an eyebrow, "if you're so intent on giving this thing a rest, how about you take its place?"

"I've never been one to walk away from a challenge," he said, peeling off his jacket, and tossing it into the corner.

Faye smiled, now this would be therapeutic.

She landed a punch to his jaw, and he shook his head, running his tongue along his teeth, and tasting blood.

"Don't tell me you've had enough already," she asked mockingly.

"Lady, I'm just getting started," he replied, grabbing her arm as she threw another punch at him, and spinning her around to hold it behind her back.

"Who said I was a Lady?" she asked, and illustrated the point by digging her heel into the toe of his boots. He let go of her arm with a yelp, and she spun around, kneeing him in the groin. He doubled over, but as she was about to kick him in the face, he grabbed hold of her foot and pulled her off balance.

She fell on her back with a dull thud, knocking the wind out of her. A moment later, he straddled her, took her dainty wrists into his hands, and pinned her to the floor.

"Give up?" he asked, bending his face close to hers.

Faye stared up into those eyes again, and now they held no fear. They sparkled with victory, they were feral eyes, wild with excitement. Her lips parted, but she found that she hadn't the breath to speak.

"Ahem..." Irma cleared her throat in the door way, politely. The two glanced in her direction, and Faye was suddenly aware of the picture they must have made. She squirmed a little, but Corbin still refused to let her up.

"Uh, you have a call, Corbin, it's a young lady named Candice."

The receptionist. Faye felt fury rising within her, with a painfully hard jerk, she freed her wrist, and punched her captor hard in the chin before throwing him off her.

"You'd better go get that," she said, springing to her feet, and returning to the bag.

Corbin hesitated for a minute, before he replied, "I guess I should."

With that he left the room, and Irma turned to follow, but Faye stopped her. "Wait," she said, and motioned her assistant over.

"You aren't going to ask me to spar with you, are you, Miss Valentine?"

Faye smiled, "no, but I have a bit of dirty work I'd like you to do for me."

"Oh?" Irma asked, intrigued.

Faye slipped the ring out of her pocket. "I know I'm being a real coward about this, but I can't seem to bring myself to face him... could you?" she asked, dropping the object into Irma's delicate hand.

Irma knew instantly what she'd been given, and she gave her boss an understanding smile. "No problem. I'll leave right away, and meet back up with you guys later."

Faye had the urge to hug her assistant, and didn't bother fighting it.

"You two don't kill each other while I'm gone, okay."

Faye gave her a pleading look, "pretty please?"

Corbin interrupted them as he came racing back into the gym. "He's dead... ah, hell, I knew there was something wrong back in his office..."

"What?" Faye asked, puzzled.

"Dr. Slagg is dead, and the records, my records, have been stolen."