Disclaimer in Chapter One.

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The Compass is bathed in pale orange, bright fire intensity bleached by fragile layers of clean clouds and falling rain. Beads of water slap soundlessly at the window, the shadow of their impact visible through thin curtain cloth. She sits on the edge of the bed, hands folded in her lap, noticing only peripherally the dampness of her clothing. She is preparing for an assassination, she thinks, and as she doesn't have a CO to brief her, she will have to do it herself. She'll begin now, she thinks.

And sits, then, waiting for inspiration, for a kind of revelation from deep within herself, searching for threads of memory long since buried. She wonders if Valerie will offer her tea, ask her how she's been, be the former society wife, the good hostess. The good hostess pre-whatever-the-hell-this-is, actually, because these days good hostesses are the ones who don't try to shove the barrel of a gun in her face after stepping back to let her enter. She wonders if anyone else will be there, if she will consequently be given more targets. She wonders why this line of thought doesn't bother her more, if it's because her conscience went missing in a haze of broken glass and armored vehicles or if it's because this is really what she's meant to be doing, what she is designed to do. Certainly she expressed more emotion in that now-strange other's real life. But for that to be true, for her current state to be a product of design and a kind of destiny, she would have to believe that emotions aren't right, and so that idea, Manticore curriculum, relies on circular logic, a spiral. An ouroboros consuming itself.

And, she thinks, a long time ago, he told her that it wasn't true.

She wonders if somewhere deep inside, in some distant, walled-off part of self, she is screaming.

But she is not making progress, not going anywhere, and she's only got so much time. There is much to be done before morning, before her life is fulfilled and begins anew.

Footsteps in the hallway. Soft. Running shoes. Kitty, she thinks, and then there's a knock on the door. She doesn't answer, listens to the other woman's breathing. She can't talk now, can't wait, can't risk Kitty finding out. Not because she thinks Kitty will call some version of the police, but because she knows Kitty won't, and she doesn't want Kitty to be involved, doesn't want her to ask. She falls back on the bed and pretends she's sleeping with eyes open. White noise takes the place of Kitty's presence as she retreats. Max stares at the ceiling and sees suddenly, in the cracks and stains of age, the exact relation of pawn to queen in the last game they played before he was taken. She scarcely dares breathe, as if that would disturb the image or make it more real, and she is surprised that she remembered this of all things. It hadn't been a remarkable game; its only significance came from its finality.

She wonders if it's a sign and dismisses the thought. There is no room for signs, especially now, and she doesn't know what it would mean, anyway. She knows what she is going to do, what she has to do, and nothing can change that.

She will wait until dark, she realizes, until what's technically night, because there's less of a chance of Valerie having visitors then, at least of the type that might be prepared for something like this, for someone like her. And because then she'll have to hide the body for a few less hours. Her hands itch, skin crawling with the desire to do something, to move, now, and at one time, she would have run, moved through the city in that fast-paced dance of close-collision and let that action calm her. Now, she thinks, she could run, but nowhere would be far enough. She could sprint to the border, sprint south, but who knows what lies beyond? Mexico, once, Baja and the ocean, and she thinks they're probably still there, but there's no way to be sure.

She imagines running that far and discovering that the world ends at the California border. Would she stop or would she keep going?

She's not surprised to find that the answer, as always, is that she doesn't know.

She wonders what he's doing now. What they're doing to him. If he's conscious. Does he know - will they have told him?

Will he understand, when she does?

But she's getting ahead of herself. There's no guarantee. There never is. There are so many degrees of life; "he's alive" really tells her nothing.

Something shatters outside. A window. A woman screams. The rain is tapering off, ash rising to take its place. The temperature is rising with it, she thinks, as heavy clouds keep the heat from dissipating, keep it hovering around them. Soon the air will vibrate with it and once summer comes, it will be worse. The ones who make it that long will choke on flames when the storm breaks. She wonders if she will be one of them. If he will. All or nothing, she thinks, but really it depends on how he's returned. How he's changed. What's happened to him.

This waiting, she realizes, is making it worse. Too much time, too many questions. All will be answered, but not now. She stands, arcing her back as she stretches, and goes to see if Kitty's home, the need for distraction worth the risk.

She sits, sometime later, on floor of Kitty's unit, her back against the wall and her eyes on the computer screen, broken code flashing within a scratched plastic frame. Kitty works in the dark and Max's eyes adjust automatically, the knowledge that the shadows will obscure her face welcome. There are no nuances here, only darkness, Kitty's face an alien landscape in the monitor's artificial glow. Kitty isn't saying much; she's working with a deadline, but Max is content just to be here, to be nearby. The presence of another gives her something to focus on, an image to maintain, keeps the vast emptiness of her thoughts restricted to a dull roar at the back of her mind.

Across the room, Kitty stands, interlocks her hands. "Finished," she says.

Max stands, too. "I should go."

"No, it's fine," Kitty says. "You don't have to leave."

"I've got somewhere to be." She knows immediately that this answer is wrong, a mistake; Kitty will either assume she's being rejected or she'll want to know where.

"Okay," Kitty says, sitting cross-legged on the air-mattress in the corner. Her eyes are dark, predatory, expressions incongruent in eyes like hers, like Logan's. Even with the closed door between them, Max doesn't feel entirely comfortable. She feels their pull out here, too, though it's fainter, easier to ignore. But he will be here soon, and he is all of Kitty's humanity and more. That, she thinks, is something they can't take from him. It's who he is. Who he's been. Who he will be. It's him, and she doesn't want to know what will happen if she's wrong. Because, quite simply, she can't be.

Standing in the hallway, she looks at her watch. Twilight time. Time to go. Valerie is waiting, though of course she doesn't know what she's waiting for, or maybe that she's waiting at all. Still, she's waiting for Max, waiting for death, and in the split-second before brain function stops completely, will she realize this?

Funny, Max thinks, she never used to think this much about murder. It was just what she was meant to do, and what she didn't. Now, it's been given significance by that for which she's trading, that which she will receive. Murder is the cost of Logan; thus, murder has meaning, should be considered.

The street air presses against her face, metal and ash riding the edge of the sun setting somewhere overhead. She shivers involuntarily and then takes a deep breath, forcing herself to be still, to move without attracting attention. She learned how to do this a long time ago and some part of her, surely, remembers. She will do this and be done, and then he will be hers and her life will as close to normal as possible; she will have all of the available pieces and all she will need to do is reassemble them.

She passes convoys, groups of soldiers, clusters of rag-clad figures hiding in the shadows of doorways and the devastated skeletons of once-strong buildings. Few people are out here by choice, especially now. No one wants to be out after dark, not just because the troops are locking down the city, but because it's so incredibly empty, that livewire sky over the hulks and shells of ruined cityscape. It's empty and frightening and overwhelmingly lonely; it would be easy to think that she's the only one left, that the world has ended and she walks alone amongst broken walls and camouflaged automatons. It would be easy, and if she didn't know where she was going, didn't have this reason for going there, she thinks that she really would believe it. It would be true.

Valerie lives in what used to be a suburb and technically still is, though its identity as a focus of opposition activity dwarfs that title. Max mentally traces the route from that small brick building to the waterfront. She will, of course, arrive before the meeting, but there are plenty of places to hide near the docks. Plenty of places to hide and to be hidden, and to watch. She walks along the sidewalk, past dead trees and barbed-wire, and glances around to make sure no one is watching before she leaps the fence. She can't afford to attract more attention, not now. But there's no one around, no one to see and to wonder at the feat, and soon she's knocking on Valerie's door, doing her best to pretend that she belongs here.

She hears Valerie approaching, steps back from the door so that the woman can see her through the peephole, since her security system is now malfunctioning, the cables torn from their connectors and left dangling like the legs of some hideous electrical spider. She hears the locks clicking open, chains rattling, and then the door is opening and this, this is really it.

xxxxx

The steadiness of his breathing, the soft rise and fall of his chest where he sleeps, where he finally collapsed, too weary to go further than the couch. His hands are folded, graceful bones like some ancient sculpture, the framework of some utterly human design, and the skin underneath his eyes is dark and lined. She dares not stand by the windows and so sits across from him, watching him sleep. Breathe in, breathe out. Life at its most basic, the simple process of maintenance, of balance.

Ash drying on her hands, a fine powder. She should be doing something, but there's nothing to do; the televisions are playing the same broadcast over and over again. Do not be alarmed. Do not be alarmed. She wonders if anyone actually listens, because what else is there to do but be alarmed, but wonder and worry and panic?

And then she thinks that maybe this is the point. If everyone worries now, if they panic, later they will have nothing left. They'll be spent, too tired to protest. So if they broadcast this now, let everyone run themselves ragged over nothing, over this lack of information, they will be able to move faster, move deeper, later. Is it really that simple? It can't be, but it is. She blinks at the epiphany and wants to tell him, but waking him to tell him not to bother seems pointless and he's just fallen asleep.

So she watches him, instead, his face shadowed by the dark plumes outside the window, and hopes that he's not dreaming, because this world will be a hell of a thing to wake up to as it is.

xxxxx