Jill kept to herself for the first few days, watched television and listened to the radio. Pored over her notes, read books, pored over her notes some more. The seclusion didn't bother her; left to her own devices, she preferred to be at home. But these devices were not hers.

For want of something to do, to help the passage of time, Jill decided to clean the apartment.

The apartment didn't need the attention. Not really. Carlos was tidy in the way that bachelors often were, fastidious about trash and food and things that could smell up the place, but she'd never seen him wipe down a counter or mop a floor unless something got spilled. So, she cleaned, as much as her newfound levels of energy would allow her.

By the third day the place was in pretty good shape. Orderly and picked up, no dishes in the sink, no laundry unwashed. By the fourth, everything was polished and scrubbed, and previously dull surfaces reflected the late May sunlight with proud ostentation. There was one chore left, and it was Carlos' to handle — a ratty cardboard box of unpacked items, shoved into the corner of his bedroom. He always mumbled about getting around to unpacking it, but never made the time. It was an eyesore against the cheerful show room glimmers and pathological tidiness.

Jill considered it, but it wasn't hers to unpack. She left the box, the tiny thorn in the side of her brain, and tried to forget about it.

As the days crawled and bled into one another, Jill went back over the surfaces multiple times. Always found a spot to fixate on, a smudge she had missed. Something to keep her mind occupied. She realized sometime on the sixth day (or was it the fifth?) with a thunderbolt of panic that she'd cleaned Carlos' scent of out the house — now all she could smell was lemon and fresh air. It was like he hadn't existed at all.

It was a silly thing, something that if he'd caught her doing it red-handed she'd deny and deny and deny it until the day she died. But he was not here to witness. With a sensible resolve Jill went to the bathroom, took the cardinal red bottle of his body wash out of the metal wire caddy that hung from the shower head, and used the soap inside to clean what surfaces remained. The soap was thicker and harder to rinse off than cleaning solution, but Jill didn't care. The comfort was immediate, like being able to breathe again.

A thump of footsteps up the wooden staircase outside seized Jill's breath in her chest. After a long moment, they departed for another door, down the adjoined balconies and away. The tension in her lungs melted into disappointment.

The sound outside died, and there was silence again. Just a little too heavy, a little too still, to be comfortable. No movement, or jokes, or conversation, and without them Jill was aware of her solitude in a way that was both sudden and acute. Jill turned the plastic dial on the side of her boom box, one of the nice models with the CD player built into the top, increased the volume. A disc jockey with a strange, projected voice spoke fast and clipped at her like an auctioneer, described some sort of contest or another that she ignored.

Jill moved to the dining room table and shifted the chess set from where it sat, prim and stiff-lipped and collecting dust, to wipe under its unfolded board. The black Queen tumbled and knocked over a line of pieces. The rook rolled in a crescent on the wood of the table and toppled onto the floor, plinked off of a chair on the way down.

"Shit," Jill cursed, and kneeled to retrieve it.

Over the crackle of the radio's grated honeycomb speakers, Stop by the Spice Girls began to play.

Jill's box of belongings was rote and predictable. Clothes. Makeup and toiletries in pastel packaging. Manila file folders that sandwiched reams of white paper. Stray wires — chargers for electronics she might need.

Jill dug into the box on the counter, looked for something that seemed important at the time. She tipped onto her toes, sunk down until the cardboard nipped at the skin of her underarms. Beside her, Carlos whistled to himself, high and warbling, like a bird. He noticed a brown wooden checkerboard Jill had displaced on the counter-top and forgotten. The board was small, about the size of a VHS tape, folded in half with hinges on one side. Carlos picked it up and shook it.

"Checkers?" He asked at the rattling inside.

"Chess." She said. Jill stopped, satisfied for now, and lowered back down. "Do you play?"

"Nah," Carlos said, passed it back. "More of a Connect Four guy."

"I can teach you how," she said, excited, "here, let me set it up."

Jill didn't wait for a response — she unfolded the board, emptied the pieces, flipped it and began to arrange them on the squares. It looked good in the middle of his kitchen table. Sort of sophisticated. "Wait. Connect Four, like the kid's game?"

"Yeah, you heard me. I will rock you at some Connect Four."

"It's literally just counting to four over and over again."

Carlos was... he was making something for lunch, that was right. He had leaned down to look in the fridge and danced to the song on the radio as he did so: "Stop" by the Spice Girls. A little two-step shuffle of his shoulders that was surprisingly on-beat and fluid. He was always moving, bouncing on his heels or dancing or walking or gesticulating with his hands. Always following some sort of rhythm, even if he had to imagine it. "Yeah. And?" He challenged, returned with some kind of leftover in a take-away container. "I count to four better than anyone else. Don't be jealous."

"Well, I can see why you're so proud of it." Jill took a step away while he was distracted. "Pretty high for a Marine."

Carlos stopped dancing. He turned to her, slowly, his face astonished. "Oh. Oh, so that's what we're doing today? We're gonna fight?"

Jill bit back a laugh. "What? I didn't say anything. Must have imagined it."

Carlos groaned a playful noise like he was mad but was holding it back for her sake. Hmm-hm-hmmmm.

"…or gotten poisoned from all those crayons you've been eating…"

Carlos was silent. Then, in a rush of movement, he pushed off the counter and stalked towards her. "Okay. Alright, smart-ass, that's it. C'mere."

Jill danced away from his heavy footsteps, but he eventually won; wrangled her up and hoisted her under his arm, like he was carrying a kicking, laughing sack of potatoes. "Put me down! Stop, okay, I'll stop!" She cried, laughing.

"Nope," Carlos said, "you had your shot, now you're gonna learn." He threw her onto the couch, wrestled her down while she giggled and squealed.

"Ugh, it's really hot in here," he said, "you feel… tired?" Then he collapsed on top of her, dramatic, pinned her to the couch under his oppressive weight. At first she struggled and pushed to no avail, but Jill eventually fell still, save for the feather-light touch of a finger she ran up and down his arm. Carlos lifted his head to look at her.

"Supposed to beg me to let you up and promise not to call me a crayon eater ever again," he said, "in case you ain't sure how torture works."

"Oh, I'm sorry. Is you putting your body on top of me supposed to make me stop doing that?" She asked.

Carlos squinted at her. "Tryin' to use your feminine wiles against me. Not gonna work, 'specially when the honor of Connect Four is on the line. Unhand me, woman." He swatted at her fingers.

"It's not… that game, of course…" Jill said, "but when you're done torturing me, offer's still open for chess. I mean… it's okay if you feel like Army can beat you. I get it. I totally do. Nothing to be ashamed of."

Carlos' body became rigid and still. He stared at her with a cool detachment so unlike him it made her laugh.

"…alright, fucker. You're on."

They stayed huddled around that board until late in the evening. Best of 3 became best of 5 became "no, no, I got close that time, now I got you", which then became the insistent mocking clucks of a chicken when Jill suggested she'd embarrassed him enough. Carlos leaned over with his hand on his chin, Jill with her elbows folded politely on the table while she waited for him to move his pieces.

Over the little marble infantries, between bouts of good-natured shit talking, multiple conversations melted into one long, meandering train of thought that hopped from topic to topic. They could talk about nearly anything. She didn't need to have her guard up, didn't need to worry about buffing down the sparkle of her intelligence to a dull glow so he wouldn't be intimidated. Something she wasn't used to, but thought she could come to like very much. Had already started to like very much.

Carlos rubbed his chin and moved his rook. It was a piece he used to great success, favoring the simplicity and effectiveness of barreling in straight lines and smashing against his enemy's important flanks.

"Well, I don't really follow politics," he replied to Jill's question, "I vote, of course, but I'm not… into it, into it."

"I can fill you in," Jill said, and took one of his bishops from around the corner of her line of pawns. "Can't pretend to be unbiased, of course, but…"

"We might just not talk about it."

"Oh, we can. Come on. It's interesting, it's topical, and we're both mature enough to handle it, I think." The parts she didn't know about him were more interesting than the ones she did — the forbidden, the knowledge kept away from her officer's brain more tantalizing than that proffered willingly.

"Oh? Okay. Well…" Carlos looked up at her. "Reagan was a tough-guy poser fuckstick who never did a day of work in his life. Anyone who voted for him is a fuckstick, too."

Jill was taken aback. Offended, like he had reached out with one of his big hands and clapped it across her face. "Uh… I'm sorry? How was Reagan—wait. What?"

Carlos just stared at her. His mouth twitched; his hard look collapsed on itself like how a building imploded from an explosive charge. He laughed. "I'm fuckin' with you. I'll never care that much. But… that tells me we're on opposite sides of this one. We should leave it like that."

"You're a Democrat? Really?" The surprise was plain in her voice. She didn't try to hide it.

"I said…" Carlos moved his rook beside her king from the other side of the board. "Well, first, I said checkmate. But I said we need to quit before we end up hating each other. And you need to focus on your opponent and not get so pissed about shit that doesn't matter."

"Wow. I actually fell for that."

Carlos stretched and made a noise that sounded like he was satisfied with himself. "And that's why I don't talk about politics. Makes smart people get stupid."

"So I guess we found the one topic we can't talk about, huh?" She said, with a touch of apprehension.

To that, Carlos quirked an eyebrow, and something on his face was considering. "Nah," he said, after a moment, "if something's important to you, I want to know about it. Maybe we can talk about it and figure out why you're wrong."

"Seriously?"

Carlos laughed again. "Way too easy. You're gonna have to lighten up a little."

Jill lifted herself back to her feet. She placed the rook back on his perch, where he watched and protected from the corner of the grid.

Every time Jill heard a thump of feet up the stairs, her chest would stop moving of its own accord. Eventually they all creaked and banged away for another door. By day seven Jill started to resent the footsteps, an ever-present reminder that would drag her mind back from its distractions, no matter how deep she'd sunk herself into them.

On the tenth day Jill awoke to human silence and stillness. The wind outside howled and swooped, scraped nearby tree limbs against the window-glass like asking for an invitation. She rolled over and checked her pager and her phone — her new routine before her feet hit the floor. The last text message sent was from her to him, before he had left. Something about dinner plans. Nothing. Dry as a bone.

He told you that there was no way to know, she reminded herself, it could take anywhere from days to weeks. This is normal. Perfectly fine.

Jill got up, went to the kitchen. A strange gray darkness too deep for nine-thirty in the morning hung through the window. Jill hit the light-switch for the overhead fixture that flooded the entire front end of the unit. Something sputtered and popped with a sound of breaking glass. Jill peered up to the ceiling, flicked the switch back and forth. The darkness persisted.

"Well, that's great." She said, to nobody in particular.

There was enough light to cook by, at least. Jill pulled out a carton of eggs from the fridge to make breakfast. Her hands shook so hard she dropped it to the floor. The eggs smashed across the gray tile in a splatter of clear white and chalky yellow, ribboned with a trail of red blood. One of the eggs held an embryo that had almost become a chick. It curled in a dead pink conch, its tiny beak visible beneath the shining membrane that had once connected it to the protection of its shell. Jill swallowed, hard, and apologized to it when she threw it in the trash, her hands still shaking.

Jill ordered food instead, under a fake name and a real address. Her appetite was starting to come back — she was nauseous less often and had started craving things. Red meat (increased hunger for protein?) and dairy products and oranges, of all things. But as she sat picking at her food, the condensation rolling down its white Styrofoam container in fat, clear drops, nothing sounded good. Not even this. Especially not this. Her stomach fluttered, locked up like a safe.

She put the food in the fridge, and paced. Wanted to take a nap. Rolled in bed and closed her eyes and came away hot and frustrated. Jill sat up, with a sigh, deeply unhappy, only her restless mind and aching body for company in this tiny white square of the world.

Against the corner of the bedroom like a taunt sat the cardboard box of Carlos' things, worn and torn at the flaps. Jill stared at it for a long time. Convinced herself she was helping him — it would be one less thing he had to do when he returned, tired and beat up. It looked ugly against the rest of the apartment. She wasn't being nosy, she was just helping. It had nothing to do with wanting proof that he had existed, which could be twisted by a hopeful, anxious mind to prove that he still existed.

She was just helping.

Jill convinced herself for long enough that she picked up the box, surprisingly light, and set it on the bed. She opened the flaps.

There was precious little inside. A black uniform jacket with red piping and gold buttons. She picked up the jacket to look at it, and two other articles fell out of it, wrapped in its heavy fabric for safekeeping — a long, twisted golden chain with a charm the size of a quarter dangling on the end which thumped to the floor, and a small framed photo.

Jill lifted the photo from the bed to get a better look. It was washed out in shades of salmon-pink and tan, eaten around the edges with wear and age, seams in the middle of its thick photographic paper as if it had been folded, stored, and retrieved many times. It didn't fit the frame, too small, but lovingly centered just the same. The photo's subject, a woman with dark skin and a thick, braided tumble of black hair laid over one shoulder, sat in a high-backed wicker chair, talking to someone Jill couldn't see. Her thin arms were wrapped loose around a boy in her lap, maybe one or two years old, still not free of the rolls and roundness of very young children. He looked at the camera with the trademark accusatory distrust of those who had not yet learned what a camera was. The child shared many of her features; the burnished tan color of his skin, the spill of dark curls, his tiny eyes tilted down at the edges. That small face grasped at something in Jill's chest, pulled on it. Jill placed the photo face-down on the bed. She felt like an interloper, like she had just looked at the most private of someone's memories, uninvited.

Jill stooped and picked up the necklace in her palm, turned the charm over. She was not religious — a fact that would have broken her father's heart — but she recognized the Saint on the necklace immediately by his cudgel and her own childhood Sunday School experiences. It was Saint Jude, the Saint of the unwinnable fights and underdogs. He was one of the more popular, the namesake of hospitals and churches and schools for the lost. It brought a baked-in sense of nostalgic warmth, worn almost smooth in the way much-touched and much-cared for things were.

Jill wondered why he wasn't wearing it.

Without her knowledge, Jill had gotten very close to this necklace, once upon a time. Even touched it once or twice with her forehead, left streaks of her dying fever sweat against its twinkling rope. In its way, life had wound around in a circle, and while she had no way to know it, had placed her exactly where she needed to be, when she needed to be there.

Jill didn't want to let the necklace go, quieted by its comfort, but did all the same. Tucked the photo and the coil of the chain back into the uniform, placed them in the box. It was then her mind was struck with the sudden image of this uniform, these articles, being presented to someone — perhaps her — as his last. All boxed up for safekeeping. Jill started away from the box, afraid to touch it, then pushed it into the corner where Carlos had left it. Jill was not superstitious and did not believe in omens, but nonetheless was suddenly uncomfortable with the idea of having touched the effects without him present.

A storm rolled through on that tenth day, rattled the trees and beat the ground with drumline torrents of rain. Some sort of remnant of a tropical depression, the news said. Jill lit an emergency candle, placed it on the coffee table where it wouldn't get tipped, and lounged against the arm of the sofa, pulled into a sleep that had no preamble or reason for its depth, her phone within reach and its ringer at max volume. No calls came. What awoke her was a heavy thump on the porch outside. It sounded like someone had dropped something. She blinked. Waited for further alerts to strangeness, or perhaps danger. When none came, she checked her phone, then nuzzled her head back down.

Another heavy thump and a rattle, and a familiar voice. "Fuck. Son of a…" Thump. Jill started onto her elbow in a surprised, excited jerk. She looked to the door.

A woman's voice, muffled. "You need some help?"

"Nah. Nah, I'm okay. Thanks though." Pause. "Actually, you mind, uh…" a silvery jingle. "Thanks."

The lock on the front door jiggled and clicked, and the knob turned. A spill of pale yellow porch light sliced against the darkness of the room, fell in an angle. Jill was off of the couch in a bound and almost crashed into the coffee table knees-first. Carlos appeared, pushed the door open with his shoulder, balanced both his own weight on a pair of chrome crutches under his arms, and the weight of the gunny sack over his shoulder. One of his legs was cocooned in a thick white plaster cast. As she approached, he smiled a smile that was wide and easy, but tired around the edges.

"Hey, you come here often?"

Jill hugged him around his torso, under his arms. His shirt was warm and damp where it had been pinned between his skin and the foam arm-pieces of his machinery. He set his crutches aside, against the door frame. Hopped a bit on one foot to catch his balance, and crushed her close.

"The uh, answer I was looking for was 'here? Every night!'." He joked. "But…"

"I'm so glad you're back," she said, muffled against the fabric of his shirt. "I know you said you'd be gone for a while, sometimes, but this was longer than the other ones, and—"

Carlos pulled back, probably to say something reassuring. His smile flagged. His gaze traced up and down her face between her cheek and her eyes, and he looked like a man who was searching for the punchline to a joke he wasn't in on. "What happened to your…" Carlos touched her cheek. The color drained from his face, left a gray pall in its wake, visible even under the shadows of the dim candlelight. He didn't move his eyes away from her neck until she spoke.

"A long story," Jill said, "let's get you sat down."

Jill lead him to the couch. Carlos followed her on his crutches, swooping and bobbing like a large heron, his leg cocked back. She turned and waited for him to sit, and the distance of the past week exposed something different about her profile that took him a moment to parse. From the front from her ribs to her hip bones was a solid, flat line. No outward protrusion, not yet, but the lack of a subtle, familiar inward curve.

"What?" Jill laughed, and looked at herself. There was a difference in her smile, a trick of his mind; there was no difference in the divots of her dimples, of her skin or the point of her chin, but in the eyes that perceived them. "Is there ketchup on my shirt? I had this really good hamburger earlier but it fell apart, and… I should have changed it, but I didn't, and—"

"Nothing like that," Carlos said, his interruption gentle. "You look beautiful."

It was true. Jill ducked her chin, bashful.

Carlos put his crutches aside, hopped on one foot and lowered himself down onto the couch, hands held out for balance.

"You're a pro already," she said. Carlos' hand drifted to her face, touched the bruise on the sharp edge of her cheek bone.

"What happened?" He asked.

Jill told him the story. She spoke about the man with the sweater — Reynolds, they'd called him — about how they'd tried to buy her, first. About how she'd kept the evidence. The rough skin of Carlos' fingertips rubbed against the back of her neck while she spoke. When she finished he leaned in and kissed her on the bruised meridian around her throat where the sweater had cinched shut.

"Where's this guy now?" Carlos asked. That softness in his voice could have been care or malice. Jill couldn't tell.

"Dead," Jill said, "both he and his partner." Jill paused, hesitated. "They were being ordered by someone in the FBC. I know that for sure."

Jill anticipated having to convince him. When she went over this conversation in her head, plotted out what she'd say, she had heard Carlos' voice, clear as a bell: Nah, that can't be right. I know them. There's gotta be something else going on.

She didn't have to. Carlos nodded, slow, like something he'd expected had been confirmed to his worst cynical estimation, his lips flattened together and his eyes searching the ceiling.

"You knew about this." Jill said.

"Not this. But I had my suspicions. They played both of us."

"They tried," Jill pointed out, "If Umbrella's fingers are in this thing... this is how they operate. But… you've been so happy. I thought you liked it there. On the level. You know?"

"Give him a way to feel useful and a man could be happy in Riker's if he tried. That ain't a measure if something's good or not."

"I spoke to Captain Harris, and he mentioned that you two had a conversation about my safety," Jill continued. "Do you know what he's talking about?"

Carlos' smile faded and his thousand-yard stare burrowed against the far wall, the rest of his expression unreadable, blank. Jill touched his arm, and he started back to the present time. He took a breath in to speak. Stopped himself. He looked like he was arguing with himself on how to answer — or if he'd answer at all.

"You're gonna think I'm a psycho. Some kind of stalker, or… or a coward. But the truth is it wasn't my idea. It wasn't some noble mission. I didn't have a choice. I didn't want to work for them, but..." a note of hardness curdled his words, "they made me."

"Made you?" Jill laughed, unsure. "I have a hard time imagining someone making you do anything. How did they pull that off?"

Carlos didn't laugh.

"They threatened you," he said, "that's how."

Jill recoiled.

"I... I wasn't gonna tell you." Carlos said, in a sudden rush, "I didn't want you to think I felt like you… like you owed me, or nothing. It wasn't like that. But I couldn't just leave."

"You did this… for me?" She said, distant, like she didn't understand. "The vaccine I've come to understand. But you changed the entire direction of your life. Why, for someone you just met?"

Carlos had fallen in love with her like a pistol shot as the hot-blooded men from his lineage were inclined, just as his father before him had fallen in love with his mother. So too Carlos had leapt first and filled in the information later. Accepted it as true and bent the facts around it, not come to it gradually with time and careful consideration, like the woman who sat before him.

"Time's a bad judge of character." He said. "Right?"

"So you do listen to me when I talk," Jill mused. It was a cover; her body was coursing with nerves, nervous and cold all at the same time. "You didn't seem surprised when I mentioned the FBC. Why not?"

"They tried to kill us," he continued, "sent us straight into an Umbrella sweep-up team. Had a mass grave dug outside. Now Harris ain't responding."

"What?"

"It was a trap. I…" hesitantly at first and then faster, like the words were gaining momentum and weight as he let them fall, "I'm lucky I got out of there with just a bum leg… you should've seen it, Jill. It was like fucking hell on Earth. There were these… these bugs, and I almost lost a guy. They shot him—got him in his liver, and—and I didn't—it's… I couldn't stop any of it from happening, and…"

"Hey," Jill said, and placed her hand on his arm. "It's okay. You're safe now. Okay?"

Carlos shook his head, rapid and short, like that wasn't the point. Then he looked at her and even against the flickering orange shadows thrown by the candle light, she saw the unsure face of the child in the picture, his eyes looking for an explanation, for reassurance, even if he dared not ask for it in so many words.

"It ain't me I'm worried about."

"Hey, hey," Jill said, and sat up on her knees, beside him. She put her arms around him.

"It's hard," she said, "I know. I know it's hard. But you have to understand…" Jill paused and thought about how she wanted to phrase it. "It might be hard, but we're harder. And we can navigate it together."

"But—I'm no good to you," he said, "I'm no good to anybody. Not like this. Not when…"

"Your leg will get better."

"Not just that," Carlos said, with a vague sense of what sounded like anger. His breathing sped up, even though he sat still, and his face screwed up in a wince of deep emotional pain, what looked like the beginning of tears. He bit and willed and blinked it back, wrestled it and won, but his breath hitched just irregularly enough in the broad of his chest to expose him. Jill traced it down to its root like an infected tooth burrowed a path into bone, and found only pockets of powerlessness, deep and festering, instead. He looked at the bruise on her throat, past it, with an expression of regret. "All of it."

Something opened, then. Moved in her brain. The bright plaster-white of his cast was a Red Herring, a fool's distraction sucked up by her mind. His spirit, bright and indomitable enough to carry hers with it when it flagged, was the true injury. Just the latest casualty. An obituary in the newspaper.

Jill's mind reeled. The thought of something beautiful and rare being trampled by such vile senselessness triggered something deep and guttural. More primitive than anger or rage, more central to her brain than sadness. Something that supported them all. Enough, it said. Enough.

"I remember something you said once." Jill said.

Carlos waited, watching her. His chest rose and fell with catches in between, like he was forcing himself to breathe in and out.

"I know you're tough. But you have to let other people be tough for you sometimes, too." To his silence, she asked, "Do you remember that?"

Carlos' expression — the bitterness there that curdled his dark features into something hard — softened.

"Yeah," he said, almost too quiet to hear.

"You've done so much to protect other people. And now you need someone. Let me be that person for you."

He began to protest. "But you—"

Jill had always been The Brave One. As a girl, she was a fill-in-the-blank: "The First Girl To…". First girl to win a co-ed track meet at their high school. First among her high school class to join the military. She always went first. She didn't mind. Not when it was important. And this was important. Important enough to override her fear and her nervousness. He was important enough.

"I'm still me," Jill cut him off, "and I love you. We'll get through this — together. Okay?"

A long beat of silence. It was the first time she'd seen him look helpless.

"You mean that?" He asked, stripped of his normal effusive bravado. There was no lightness in his voice, no finesse, no escape routes.

Jill nodded.

"I'd tell you that I love you too," He said, and it sounded to Jill like nerves, like shaking. Outside, the wind howled at his indecision: oooooo. "But, I... but..."

"...it's okay if you don't," Jill said. She was impressed by how still and how understanding her voice sounded, even though every soft part inside of her ribs was collapsing, sinking down, down to the ground. Still The Brave One. "I shouldn't have put you on the spot. I'm sorry. I got carried aw—"

"No." Forceful, maybe moreso than he intended. "No, I do love you. I do. But I need to tell you this. You need to hear it from me, not from some letter. I can't — I can't go into this lying about it like I'm some kind of hero, because I'm not. You need to know who I am."

"When you'd leave, I... it wasn't 'should I go get her?' it was 'how do I get there?' 'what do I have to do to get there?'. And I'd do it. You could have put a fuckin' ocean in my way, you could have lead me anywhere and I would have gone. I'd find a way. I lied when I told you I did what I did 'cause the world needed you - that's a part of it, but it's a small part. I used the vaccine and I hurt people and I fucked everything up because I'm selfish, and I needed to know you'd be okay. I worked with the FBC because I wouldn't have been able to live with myself if what I wanted was the reason you got hurt. Even if you were with someone else. There was no thought of even saving that vaccine, or that job, or any of it if it came down to it. So I made my choices. And I stand by 'em. Even if they're wrong, I still do."

"You need to know. You need to be able to decide for yourself. Because this isn't just some 'I love you' thing where I say it and that's it and then you change your mind later when you find out the truth and I pretend like my heart's not broken when you leave. Not because something took you, but because you wanted to go."

Carlos paused. He couldn't look at her.

"All I want is to deserve it. And if I can't fight for it, I don't know how to. But all I want is... is this. Here. That's it."

Carlos had said he was undeserving. He wanted to deserve it, like he hadn't before. Now, Jill felt the weight: the dragging heft of that question like an iron manacle, the wonder of being gifted something you weren't sure you had earned or knew how to honor. What had she done in her life to warrant such terrible devotion? What could she do to be worthy of it?

Could she?

"All this time?" She asked, voice as quiet as a whisper. She drew closer. "You've been carrying all of that around, all this time?"

"And I'd carry it again," he said, and sounded sad. "I'd do it, if you were on the other side."

Jill pulled him to her and he went, more than willingly; he gathered her up in his arms and they huddled close for a long, long time. Jill thought that if time could freeze like this, she could be happy. But life didn't work that way. So she drew it all up, the swooping of the wind and shimmering rattles of the trees outside; the flicker of the emergency candlelight; what words she could remember, dancing out of the grasp of her brain in favor of a massive bulwark of pure emotion, technical details replaced by the glowing coals of just feeling. The way he'd looked at her when he said it, like giving it away freed him from something heavy. She spun it all up into a memory and tried desperately to store it as deep as she could, the greedy collector's instinct of a heart parched for human closeness.

"Remember when I said you were braver than I was?" Carlos said, after a while.

Jill nodded against the base of his throat.

Carlos adjusted himself like if he could hug her into his body, he would — even this close proximity was not close enough.

"It's still true."

Jill wanted to laugh but couldn't find the breath to do so. "I don't think I am," she said, "not anymore."

Across town, some days later while everyone slept, a very different sort of emotional relief was taking place.

"Remember, twist your trunk and kick from your flexor. That's where the real power is." The trainer said, a bald man with tan skin, dressed in a skin-tight Lycra fight outfit. He held the bag steady. "Try it again."

Leon was not a man naturally given to anger. Annoyance, perhaps, born from the arrogant tendency of youth to overestimate their own influence and judgment.

Today, however, Leon was angry. Not at any one particular thing, but at life itself, a sorry and self-indulgent emotional response to too much pressure on a single brain, too much loss in too short a time. Leon's brain hungered for logic and patterns and order, but instead found senselessness at every turn. Leon was self-aware enough to realize the immaturity of such a state; it was the way teenagers acted. Not 22-year-old men. Leon seemed unable to escape it all the same, despite his insights.

Leon did as he was ordered: he smashed the instep of his shin into the side of the bag, knocked it out of the trainer's hands. It swung on its heavy iron chain like a pendulum. "Good!" The trainer said, cheerily. "Again. More glute, this time. Really get in there."

Most people wouldn't even be walking after taking a gunshot to the gut like Leon did — but Leon wasn't most people. The FBC had been very clear about that from the outset in The Agreement. That the start of their relationship was the point where Leon stopped being like other people and started being what they needed. Whatever that entailed. The other guys hadn't said anything about the shots. The supplements. The surgeries or the training. Hadn't said anything about any of it. None of them questioned him, and he didn't tell. It was a good arrangement. Where before there was a hole in his liver, now there was a scar. Just a memory.

If something as important as his liver could grow back that fast, Leon wondered what else might be growing inside him. He decided he didn't want to know.

Leon kicked and kicked until his limbs were jelly and his clothes covered in sweat. Then they moved onto grappling, where a person ran at him full tilt and he grabbed them in his arms, threw them back onto the ground as hard as he could. Greco-Roman wrestling, they called it. Leon had done some in high school PE class, but nothing like this. Leon grabbed and hurled until he was exhausted and could barely move, his muscles stiff and twitching from overuse. The Agreement was for twelve hours of physical conditioning and combat lessons per week. The time in the NEST counted against it, but Leon was not most people. He did twelve over that.

The training was paying off. His kicks were getting stronger, much more accurate and deadly than his punches. He'd cracked the head clean off a practice dummy, once. Had felt proud after he got over feeling scared. The trainer didn't seem to care. Probably had seen guys do much worse to living targets, come to think of it.

Leon wondered what that would look like on a living target. It was yet another thing he didn't want to know, but what he wanted had stopped mattering a long time ago.

That night, Leon had Somewhere To Be. He took a long shower. Dressed in a t-shirt and a pair of a nice jeans, a pair of sneakers, his leather jacket. It was too warm for a jacket, but this particular piece always made him feel put-together, and he needed to feel put-together to go where he was going.

Leon hopped a subway car and headed down to the Capitol building.

The Congressman's office was barely lit, the sleepy glow of a desk lamp and not much else against tasteful mahogany furnishings and leatherbound tomes about law and justice and classical ethics. The Congressman was leaned over his desk, poring over documents in a sheaf so thick they may as well have been a book, a pair of rimless glasses perched on the end of his nose. Leon knocked on the open door, not a request for permission but a signal he was incoming, then shut it behind him.

"Oh," The Congressman said as he looked up. "Evening, Leon. You got down here fast."

Leon nodded. "I was nearby. You're busy, so I won't take much of your time. I uploaded it all to the server you gave me. There's at least a terabyte of data there. Maybe more." He paused. "It was bad. But I think we've got it. Finally."

"Huh," The Congressman crossed his arms, sat back in his chair. "Well, I'll be. Just in time, too. Any of your teammates see you?"

"No, sir."

"Good. Couldn't've been easy." The Congressman looked him up and down. "Think you're ready to testify?"

"I am," Leon said, earnest and serious.

The Congressman nodded. "They blocked them all. Your teammates — Umbrella did. Something about patent confidentiality or something of that nature. But you weren't an Umbrella employee or even technically on the police force, so we got you through."

"So it's just me." Leon said.

"You and a few others."

"Sounds like bullshit, sir." Leon said. "If you'll excuse my language."

The Congressman laughed. "Sure does. Same with all these business types, but… coming from a lawyer, that's a bit of a pot and kettle situation."

Leon had nothing to say to this particular bit of self-deprecating humor. He nodded with a distant smile, and looked down.

"You're doing a great service to your country," The Congressman said, "I want you to remember that. No matter what they throw at you, you're a god damned patriot. You've been through more shit in almost a third of my time than I could ever imagine."

"I just want it to be over," Leon said, "I'm no superhero. I just want everyone to be safe." Leon winced against how childish it sounded. Wished he could reel it back in, have a few more seconds to phrase it another way. Unknown to Leon, he would have many more attempts to sharpen up this particular expression of doubt: this wouldn't be the last time he'd have this conversation with this Congressman. Not for a great many years. Always the same words, the same intentions, batted back and forth like a tennis match into perpetuity.

The Congressman just smiled his sandy, paternal smile. "You're doing your best, Leon. Let me handle the rest. You go get some sleep, and just be ready for tomorrow. Eat a good breakfast. Okay?"

Leon nodded. "Goodnight, sir."

"Night, Leon. And thank you again."

Leon left and closed the door behind him, quiet as a whisper. He disappeared into the dark of the June evening, thankful to finally be done with his task.