"So tell me," John wrapped a piece of meat in a piece of naan to dip it in his sauce. "What brought your ancestor to Mumbai back during the British Raj?"

"His mother." Anna gave John a smirk as he rolled his eyes. "In all seriousness, his mother took a job here as a schoolteacher and he came with her."

"His mother came here for a job?"

Anna nodded, "She'd had some… drama, back in her village in England and a perfect concurrence of events allowed her to leave all that behind, get herself on a ship, and find her way to Mumbai."

"Sounds like a brave woman."

"She was." Anna shrugged,, stirring her vindaloo. "I did a report on her, in school, and the overall decision was that I definitely lucked out because my great-great-something-grandfather didn't get enough money as an inheritance because he was a bastard so I've no title and almost nothing to say about it except that I've got a good story."

"That's not a bad thing to have."

"No?"

John shook his head, "In the words of The Doctor, 'we're all just stories in the end' so having a few good ones is to our benefit."

"Even if they're not yours?"

"We're the result of stories people tell." John pointed at himself, "I'm the product of a series of badly-worded love letters."

"You've read them?"

"A few of them." John paused, sucking the inside of his cheek a moment. "My mother showed them to me after my father died. It was… A lovely thought that didn't quite work well on execution."

"Given the content?"

"That was part of it." John sat back slightly, "The other part of it was… My father and I weren't ever close."

"That's a shame." Anna pursed her lips, shrugging up a shoulder. "Or not. I don't know. Forget I said that."

"No, you're right, it was a shame." John sighed. "My father was a military man and a blue-collar worker. He was a master with large machinery and could fix a broken washer or dryer in less time than some people run a hundred meters."

"But?"

"But me…" John played with his spoon for a moment before putting it back down. "I'm an English literature professor. What I knew about machinery came down to replacing lightbulbs or screwing in a light switch plate. I enjoyed reading and discussing film and being in my school's theater program."

"Is this the moment when you tell me that your blue-collar father thought you were gay when you were young?"

"That was going to be my next statement, yes." John shrugged, "But I think that was more of a performative response from him. His knee-jerk reaction to the reality that I wasn't interested in what he was and that empty feeling he had in the lack of a relationship between us."

"That is a struggle." Anna traced her finger down her spoon. "My mother and I were the same way. We didn't share any interests and whenever she wanted to have 'girl time' I vacillated between nauseated and bored."

"The worst part being that you hope you can find a common ground and yet it doesn't exist." John sighed and started tearing his naan into smaller pieces. "When I got to secondary school I did get lucky because, due to a bit of a fluke, I was on the football team so finally I had something to talk about with my father."

"I'm sensing another 'but' coming."

"But," John gave Anna another eyeroll. "My last year I took a cleat to my shin and it broke my tibia."

"Ouch."

"Yeah." John shivered, "And, during my recovery and physical therapy, something went wrong and ripped some muscle near my knee so I've got a permanent limp."

"I didn't notice it."

"The heat here is a bit better on my muscles and joints so my limp is slightly better here." John knocked his knuckles against his knee. "I've also got a permanent brace there so it's a bit better for my walk."

"But having the injury wrecked your relationship with your father?"

"It made it harder because…" John gesticulated to the air for a moment before dropping them. "It was like having a golden moment where there was a bridge between us and then, with a wrecking ball, it was gone."

"It's like Flowers for Algernon."

"A bit." John bit the inside of his cheek. "My father and I never quite connected the same way again. Every success I had after that, or at least I thought was a success, he only shrugged at and so I eventually stopped sharing anything with him and it… It made our relationship cold."

"Cold enough to not miss him when he died?"

"Cold enough to make it hard for me to mourn him because I was mourning the relationship we didn't have more than I was mourning the actual man in a casket."

"Hence your mother sharing letters with you." Anna nodded slowly, "She wanted you to see him the way she saw him."

"I think she was tired of trying to pull us together." John gave a mirthless laugh. "Like someone with two friends who don't like one another."

"I've had some friendships like that." Anna grunted, "Most of those ended anyway so there's not really a worry with any of those relationships anymore."

"They didn't like that you moved to the other side of the world?"

"They didn't like that I stopped calling them back, stopped hanging out with them, and made a bit of an ass of myself at a pub in a very…" Anna shifted her jaw, "Let's just say, the police were called and someone made a trip to the hospital."

"And not because they were drunk?"

"Them being drunk was the reason I sent them to the hospital." Anna sucked on her tongue a moment. "It was a breaking point for a number of relationships. And then I moved here and that ended the rest of them."

"Moving to the other side of the world was a solution to a few of my ended relationships, if it's any consolation."

"Then you came here to get away from things?"

"Running away from home always looked so attractive in the movies and I thought I should see if it's as cool in real life."

"It would seem we're in the same boat there." Anna snorted, "Except my move here proved a bit tactical too."

"Because you've got a job here?"

"Because moving here was the last hope for me to keep my job." Anna shrugged, "The person I wrecked at the pub was a co-worker and this here is my 'last chance' at keeping my job."

"That's a little generous."

"It's the benefit of rubbing elbows with nepotism." Anna looked at her food. "Literally it was a Hail Mary to get the job…"

She paused, making a face before smiling to herself. "Which is made even more interesting by the fact that the person who basically saved my job is named 'Mary' but I'll leave that one alone."

"As you mentioned before the meeting tonight," John took his glass and finished the contents. "I too, technically speaking, benefited from whatever form of nepotism you call being a white professor in India."

"I think it's just called 'being white' but I'll let it pass."

"After your vociferous defense earlier?" John almost grinned at Anna and she snorted out her laugh.

'Don't take any of that more seriously than you want to."

"And why not?"

"Because I'm just a Devil's advocate." Anna pointed at herself. "I think I like making conversation difficult for people and myself."

"Because it makes it easier to push them away?"

"You sound like you know a bit about that." Anna took her glass and sipped at it.

"We did meet at a bar so what do you think?"

Anna rotated her glass, her fingers holding to the lip of it as her wrist worked in a clockwise motion. "I think we're both pretty fecked up."

"That we are." John extended his glass to clink against Anna's. "But I think we're a bit more even-footed now."

"Only now?" Anna gave a little laugh and finished her glass. "Not when we were getting shit-faced at a hotel bar?"

"That's a different kind of even footing." John put his glass down and pointed at Anna. "You're the one with old, formerly wealthy ancestors."

"The formerly wealthy part of that sentence is the most important part." Anna pushed her plate to the side. "But yeah. He lived here with his mother and her husband until their other children got a little older. They moved back to England, after some other dramatic events in their family occurred, and then settled. The money moved through the oldest sons as it was supposed to and my family line split away from the money."

"Maybe that was better for you."

"At least I never had to worry about falling out of money the way other people have." Anna shook her head, "Not that I've ever been good with money because I'm broke now and I've been pretty shit about keeping to a budget so I probably would've blown that kind of inheritance."

"Don't give yourself so little credit."

"I err on the side of trying not to give myself too much credit." Anna checked her phone, "And my nanny does the same, it seems."

"You've got a nanny?"

"The Hail Mary who brought me here and saved my job." Anna texted a reply and tucked her phone away. "Not the kind of dinner I think you were expecting."

"We're eating at a restaurant named Wuthering Eats so the more melancholy the merrier I think." John stood and took out his wallet. Anna reached out, as if to stop him, but John shook his head. "You're broke, remember?"

"Every day." Anna stood and tucked her hands into her pockets. "But it's still very kind of you all the same."

"What are friends for?"

Anna raised her eyebrows. "Are we friends?"

"We got absolutely pissed, had a hotel room, and went to AA together before sharing dinner." John shrugged and took out the bills to leave on the table. "At least I hope that's the definition of friends."

"It can be for me." Anna waited for John and they walked out of the restaurant together. "I could use a few more friends."

"Me too." John pointed toward the end of the street and its waiting taxi rank. "Although I feel we've not really been honest with each other."

"We've known each other all of twenty-four hours." Anna shook her head, "I don't think we're ready to not have a few untruths between us."

"Fair." John matched Anna's pace and she noted the slight hitch in his gait. "It leaves an air of mystery to be solved."

"No thanks to that." Anna hissed air through her teeth for a pfft sound. "I've got enough of that through work."

"Import-Export proving as seedy and detestable as you suggested earlier?"

"Only when you find the good stuff. Otherwise it's a basic slog that is, unfortunately, pretty boring as far as mysteries go."

"So you're not mysterious?"

"I'm mysterious in the way noir writers used to cast femme fatales."

"As women with motivations that misogynistic men can't comprehend?"

"And here I thought you'd defend them, as an English Literature professor."

"Absolutely not." John put a hand on his chest. "I may be a white man teaching in India but I'm letting that be the only part of character that's impeachable."

"Good for you." Anna stopped them just short of the collection of taxis and turned to face him. "But, in all honesty, I would like to keep you as a friend. Or, at least, someone I know at AA."

"You know Gouri now."

"But she's…" Anna shuffled in place, moving her hands from her front pockets to her back and hunching up her shoulders. "She's your friend, not mine."

"Not yet."

"Remember how we talked about being in the middle of two friendships where the friends can't get along with one another?" Anna see-sawed her shoulders. "I don't want to be someone you're pulled between."

"And you think you will be?"

"I'm not the kind of person very many people like."

"Hence your comment about burning all the bridges with former friends?"

"Think of it more as throwing napalm on bridges long-since abandoned but yeah, that about sums it up." Anna took a breath, "Whatever brought you here, whatever you ran from back home, it's… It's not the same on my side."

"I wouldn't think so." John shrugged, "I left the dregs of a messed-up marriage and a divorce process that lasted almost as long as the marriage did."

"Fair but…" Anna bit at her lip, "For as honest as I feel we can be, at this stage of our remarkably fledgling relationship, I'm here because I'm… I'm fecked. And not in any good ways. I'm bruised and battered and beaten-down to the point I don't think I should make friends or associate with people or date until I get my shit together because people would just end up slipping in it right now."

"Sounds like a…" John made a face, "An excruciatingly detailed metaphor but also a healthy perspective."

"Thank you." Anna swallowed, "But I'm serious. What I'm working through… It's not the kind of space where you invite people over, if you know what I mean."

"Having had to hold parties at more than a few pubs because I didn't want people in my house, I know exactly what you mean." John extended his hand to her. "Friends then, for now. And, maybe with time, you'll build a wider circle."

"Maybe."

"You will." John smiled and took his hand back as Anna finished shaking it. "And, if I'm lucky, I'll still be in it."

"We'll see if I can keep you that long." Anna gave John a two-fingered salute and walked over to one of the taxis. "I need a good rate and I don't want you to try and screw me over. What've you got to get me close to this address?"

Clearing another corridor led her to a door. She forced herself to breathe, jumping slightly at the sounds of gunfire outside the building, and wrapped her fingers around the doorknob. The metal alloy, no more or less ostentatious than any of the other knobs in the house, almost stung her hand with the cold. Withdrawing, her right hand tightening her grip on her rifle to keep it at her shoulder as her pointer fingers trembled above the trigger, she shook out her left hand. As if that would dispel the tingle.

Forcing another breath into her squeezing lungs, she put her hand back on the knob and counted to three before turning it. The door pushed forward and she immediately threw herself to the side to give potential cover. Sweeping the barrel into the room, and using the swing of the door as more cover, she cleared the room of any possible threats. A feat made easier by all the furniture being gathered before the fireplace large enough for three people to stand shoulder-to-shoulder and the rest of the room practically whistling with its barrenness.

The only other sounds came from outside the large windows. In the corner of her eye, almost beyond her perception, she noted the dark forms moving through the courtyard and gauged the sound of shots fired or taken in direct proportion to cries of pain and barked orders. But she ignored that and checked the other doors out of the room, confirming they were locked, and returned to inspect the furniture near the fireplace.

A man sat there, sipping at a glass of clear liquid. The bottle next to it, tall and frosted, bore Cyrillic words she made out as one of the more popular vodka brands. She approached slowly, her footing keeping her gun trained on him while shifting sideways.

He only sipped at his glass and stared into the fire as she stopped before him. Another sip had him raising the glass toward her and smiling. "Care for a drink, Anna?"

"Put your hands up."

"If I do that then I waste good vodka." He drained the glass and put it to the side of his chair, sighing as he relaxed back into the seat. "And you know how I hate waste."

"Put your hands up Ivan."

"I was wondering when you'd come." He put up a finger, the smile on his face refusing to dissipate. "I thought, 'Perhaps she will rescue me'."

"I'm here to bring you in."

"After all we've shared?" He pouted at her. "Anna, be reasonable."

"About?"

"About what you're sacrificing by handing me over to…" He paused, frowning a moment, and tapped his raised finger on his lips. "British Intelligence?"

"The Hague, eventually, but we'll hold you for now." Anna came right up to the chair, putting the barrel of her gun on Ivan's sternum. "Keep you nice and warm for them so when they prosecute you for crimes against humanity, you can serve your sentence."

"You think they'll prosecute me?" He snorted, his chest expanding as if to push off the barrel of the gun. "After all of those who sit in high places hired me to do their dirty work and keep them happy with the people I provided for them? You think they'll prosecute me and risk those secrets being in the world?"

"I'll take that bet."

"But they won't." Ivan's face grew serious. "They'll kill me the moment you march me out of this building and you know that. You're here to provide a smokescreen for them."

"I guess we'll see about that." Anna maneuvered around her gun, still pressed to Ivan's chest, and used her other hand to grab at his shirt. It bunched in her grip and she yanked him to his feet. "For now, you, Ivan Molotov, are under arrest."

"If they don't kill me then I'll just disappear." Molotov tried to taunt Anna as she tugged him sideways, turning him around to march him in front of her with her gun now planted in the middle of his back. "They'll meet my demands in the hopes I keep quiet about them. You know how the upper echelons of society work. You saw what they did to my friend Jeffrey when it looked like he might betray them."

"I don't know anything about that."

"Of course you don't," His condescending tone grated at her. "You were here then, worming your way into my organization."

"It's called infiltration." Anna moved them into the corridor and shifted their positions to keep Molotov away from the windows and her gun free.

"I believe the short-hand is 'betrayal'." Molotov gasped out as Anna pulled them to a stop to investigate around a corner. "Does Irina know?"

"Know what?"

"That you used her to get to me?"

"I'm sure she'll forgive me once she realizes what you were doing here and the kind of business you run." Anna yanked on Molotov's shirt to bring him down the stairs with her.

"You think…" Molotov jerked Anna to a stop. His hands went to his knees and, for a second, Anna worried he was suffering a seizure by the way his body convulsed. But, a moment later, the cackle of his laughter echoed up the obnoxiously large staircase. He pointed at her, tried to speak, and then laughed harder.

"What's so funny?"

"You think… you think that…" He tried to breathe, gasping for air and wiping at his eyes as he straightened. "You think Irina didn't know."

"She doesn't."

"Oh my dear," Molotov grew serious again. "She was training to take over."

Before Anna could react, Molotov's two hands shoved out and pushed her backwards down the stairs.

Anna jerked awake, her hands flying out as if to catch herself. One hand hit the edge of her mattress while the other struck hard against her bedside table. The reverberating pain ran up her arm and she instinctively withdrew, holding her hand to her chest. After a moment she rotated her wrist to inspect the damage and sighed as the pain faded.

Taking a deep breath, Anna muttered a curse as she noted the destroyed nature of her sheets as they tangled around her legs to effectively trap her in the bed. She struggled free, forcing herself to stumble sideways out of bed. It sent her hip into the same bedside table that already left her hand forming the beginnings of a bruise. She hissed through her teeth at the pain and then almost kicked the bedside table when the motion of her hip hitting it sent the glass she left there tumbling sideways to hit the floor.

Water spilled over the tile and the glass cracked at the impact. Anna watched the water flow out for a moment before walking in a half-limp as the pain in her hip radiated outward with each step. But once the water soaked into a towel and the glass sat back up on the bedside, Anna could only sit on the edge of the bed.

Pounding in her brain had her glancing toward the clock before she took the glass to the kitchen of the flat. It went into the dish rack and she turned to the uncomfortable sofa. Laying on it, her feet pointing toward the glass doors showing her the dark sky, Anna tried to find a space that did not send all of her muscles complaining. But with a bar down the middle of the sofa there was no relief for her back or body.

It forced her back to her feet and she sighed before returning to her bedroom. She ignored the mess of her bed and walked to the wardrobe where the bare minimum of her belongings hung. The two bags that carried them across the room sat stuffed into the drawer at the bottom of the wardrobe and part of Anna wondered what would happen if she packed back up and simply vanished.

Left it all and trusted to herself to find some place she could live. A place away from it all. A place…

Anna shook her head and reached for her workout clothes, ignoring the chirping of her watch trying to tell her to sleep more. Instead she dragged herself back to the bathroom, hung up the half-damp towel, and put up her hair so it would not flop about her head as she moved. Then, taking her keys, Anna left the flat.

The streets were never empty. No metropolitan city can ever claim complete silence and that, Anna wondered as she jogged steadily through the streets, was possibly part of the charm. Small towns and the suburbs enforced unspoken curfews to keep people quiet and content in their little lives. Places like that bred contempt and conflict as the veneer of civility faded under the constant assault of 'sophistication'. Lives lived there tended toward the secret and shadowy while they looked on the hopeless unwashed of the cities with their upturned noses.

People like her mother and stepfather thrived in those locales. In cities that never slept Anna felt more at home. Anyplace without the constant thrum of life made her nervous and she never slept soundly there. Not that she could claim to sleep soundly anymore but when she did… Cities were places the voices and screams in the mind would fade to the dull hum in the background as the sounds of the city assaulted your senses instead and left you on sensory overload.

Anna pulled to a stop, her hands on her hips, and took deep breaths of the pollution-laced air and almost sighed in satisfaction at it. Perhaps the five years air pollution was said to take off your life could manage to strike her early. She snorted at the thought and rolled her neck clockwise and then counterclockwise to work out the threat of a kink before starting out again.

The twists and turns of the city kept her alert and steady, teaching her the map with her muscles and feet in a way only learned by touch. An almost primal need to know her way around, to measure her surroundings by how she could manage them in a moment, had her breathing heavily but proud when she wound herself back to her apartment building. The guard at the desk took no notice of her, absorbed in some multi-player online game that flashed bright colors across his face. Anna moved to the lifts and did not give him another thought when the doors opened to reveal Mary standing there.

"Do you know what time it is?"

"Time for a shower?" Anna slipped past the gap of Mary's arms and the lift doors. "I just finished a run."

"It's three in the bloody morning."

"I couldn't sleep."

"Then you take some melatonin. You don't get yourself potentially killed on the streets of Mumbai."

"You say that like it could only happen here."

"I'd say the same thing if you pulled this stunt in any city, Anna." Mary followed Anna into her flat. "You're still on probation here."

"I'm aware of that." Anna tossed her keys on the counter and turned back to Mary. "I couldn't sleep and I thought it was a little early to use the punching bag in the corner or the practice striking block in my corner and since I can't really jump rope in the space here…"

"Don't try to play coy with this."

"I'm not." Anna pointed at herself. "I'm trying to find ways to keep fit."

"At three in the morning?"

"It was one when I left."

"Anna," Mary put her face in her hands and dragged her fingers down, almost resembling a bad horror movie with the movement. "You do realize that you're being tracked, yes?"

"I thought that was only for work."

"You're tagged, Anna." Mary reached over and tapped Anna's phone and watch. "We all are. It's what makes sure we're running our SDRs, not talking to enemy agents, and keeping on task."

"But you're keeping an extra close eye on me, aren't you?"

"Don't ask that like I didn't tell you exactly how this was going to work." Mary pointed at Anna. "You're here by the grace of God and the skin of your teeth. You leaving in the wee hours of the morning, even if it's for a run, doesn't bode well for you."

"Do you have someone tracing my route looking for any indications, at any location where I paused for more than six seconds, that I'm signaling another agent?" Mary held Anna's gaze and Anna nodded, "So they think I jumped that far off the deep end?"

"You broke Barrow's arm."

"Because he was being a dick not because I'm working against the British Government." Anna rubbed at her eyes, "Look, I'm tired and sweaty. I want to take a shower and maybe manage a few more hours of restless sleep before I go into work. If that's not good enough for you, then wait here and watch me to ensure I don't try to contact a foreign government or something."

"Don't joke about that."

"You're the one convinced I went on a run to set a meet."

"I'm not…" Mary huffed, "I want you to be safe, Anna. I also want you to keep your job and I want you to be well. Those are not mutually exclusive ideas."

"But they're tough lines for you to walk."

"You say that like it's hard to be your friend."

"Isn't it?"

Mary smiled and shrugged, "No more than it is to be mine, I expect."

"You're not always a peach."

"Good." Mary put out a hand and almost touched Anna's shoulder but drew back just short. "Just… Don't do that without warning someone next time yeah?"

"Sure thing Mary."

"Good." Mary nodded, "Now shower and try to sleep. Work's still at nine."

"Yes ma'am." Anna waited until Mary left before going back to her shower. "At least work's always there for me."