A/N Playtime's over. The Ring means business and they've got at least one paying customer.
"Anybody get him yet?"
"A missing child?"
"Can Jubilee can find her?"
"Clean the primary site."
The day had started out well, it had that going for it.
Alexei had greeted them all jovially at the breakfast table, inquiring politely after their health. Rebecca cursed his guards roundly, blaming their clumsiness for her poor sleep. Frost offered to send the louts to Volkoff's distant Siberian facility. Rebecca requested their services as sparring partners. Practice dummies. Frost sent them to Siberia. A kindness, she said. Alexei laughed.
After that the day had gone downhill.
Alexei put his hand on the scanner at his office door and entered the code. The door beeped at him but failed to unlock. He tried again, entering the code key slowly and carefully but to no better effect. With a growl, he entered a different code and the door opened. From the doorway Alexei gave the room a once-over, but nothing seemed out of place.
"Scan the room," he snapped at his entourage. Frost summoned a team for the purpose, as they all waited outside, with Rebecca glowering ferociously at everyone.
Echo Park...
"Home sweet home," said Devon, opening the door to their apartment at last. "Operation Eagle successfully concluded." Tonight had been a good night.
"Finally," said Ellie. She made a beeline for the bedroom.
Devon followed, unbuttoning his shirt. After shorting out the electrical panel he'd seen no point in retying his tie and just draped it around his neck so it wouldn't wrinkle. "That debriefing did run a little long." He couldn't wait to dump the whole kit and kaboo–heyo!
Ellie grabbed the tie and pulled his lips down to hers. "And now it's time for the de-boxering."
"Babe?"
"I have another mission for you, Agent Blond." Ellie ran her fingers through his hair. "If you'd care to accept it. Or are you feeling too...shaken?"
"Nope," said Devon instantly. "Not shaken. Not shaken at all."
"Good," said Ellie, "Because I am feeling a bit...stirred."
Blond took his partner in his arms as he felt her kick the door shut.
Somewhere...
The sweepers had moved in, and almost immediately began calling out to each other as their equipment found traces of a presence more recent than Alexei's last known use of the space. "This will take some time, Alexei," said Frost, watching as they sprinkled powder on the rugs. It reacted violently and brightly to shifts in the fibers, showing where people had stood and for how long. "Once they finish I'll still have to map out possible patterns of movement." And call in the cleaning crew. Again. "Why don't you take Ms. Franco to see the sights. Tour the morgue or something."
"No need for that, Frost," said Alexei, with a grin. "Mother Russia has a long and bloody past. I'm sure I can impart some of the lessons of that history, without the smell." Rebecca had few outside interests that didn't involve homicide, and Volkoff, while he could understand that, had taken it upon himself to broaden her horizons.
"Take her to the KGB Murder Museum."
Rebecca looked interested.
"Now, Frost," Alexei shook his head with a chuckle. "You and I both know that museum doesn't exist. I have other resources in mind." Courteously he escorted Rebecca back into the elevator.
"If that museum doesn't exist it should," she said, once they were alone.
Alexei smiled slightly. "Shhh."
California, in transit...
The day started off so well, really just a continuation of the previous night's war game, except with real guns and live targets. Watching as Gertrude's people had all the fun hadn't sat very well with Casey, so when the call came down (from Chuck, so maybe 'down' wasn't the right word for it), Casey's fingers were more than itching for a little action.
Gertrude offered him one of her own teams, and Casey reluctantly let time pressure force his hand and accepted. The good thing about the Intersect is that one computer looks a lot like another, and Gertrude didn't do cyber. Yet. Yellow Squad would be good for controlling and containing whatever there was to control and contain, until people with the appropriate clearances could come down and figure what that was.
Casey expected to be locking a lot of doors behind him until Bartowski showed up. That would be long after any action had been completed, if he knew what was good for him. With him covering this business, he'd had to assign Grimes and Alex to return Ellie and Devon home, and pick up Chuck and bring him here. They'd do for a security detail, and they'd keep Bartowski offsite until he told them otherwise.
Like any experienced soldier he was able to get a bit of sleep on the way over. Not much planning they could do when they didn't know anything about the target except the location. Verbanski had incursion plans for all sorts of environments. His team, newly roused, needed only a little prep time and he left them to it.
A different part of California, also in transit...
"Blond and Curls?" said Chuck. "Really?"
"Could've been worse," said Morgan, at the wheel. Alex was asleep in the back seat, until they switched. The location Chuck had found wasn't near LA at all. "Imagine the spy names Devon would have come up with if they'd been planning to stay in." Playing spy games.
"So the exercise went well, I take it?" asked Chuck, desperate to not think of any such thing.
Morgan grinned. "Gertrude wanted to hire them on the spot. Since they said no, I'm pretty sure she's happy that they're not in the game at all."
"She's not upset that you won?"
"It's what she hired me for, Chuck." Morgan took pride in his work. Now. "And she did get me, with Alex. Got lucky there."
"No raise for you," snapped Chuck in a bad German accent.
"For just doing my job, not likely," said Morgan. "Blue Four and Red Five will get something, I'm pretty sure. My plan wasn't 100%, but they plugged the gaps pretty well on their own."
Chuck nodded. "I'm sure the Buy More misses such managerial expertise."
"What's all this?" asked Volkoff, glaring at the little runner that went from the door to his desk.
"The cleaners had to give the carpeting a wash, to all that glowy crap out," said Frost, sitting at his desk. "It's still a bit damp. On the upside the office will smell pleasantly of Spring for several hours."
Volkoff stepped onto the strip of carpet. "We all know how much I love the smell of a Russian spring." As he approached she stood up and cleared his space for him. "So, The intruder came in through the front door. What else do we know?"
"Whoever it was, they came straight to the desk. You'll have to check your computer for any tampering." Volkoff made a dismissive gesture, so she continued. "Other than the activity around the desk, and there was a lot of that, they appear to have walked all over the office, but without touching anything."
"You asked Ingrid?"
"Of course. According to her the only things that had been moved were the chairs. The sweepers found marks over there." She pointed at a spot underneath the stains on the ceiling. "I suspect they were stacked."
"See, I told you we didn't need a ladder." Alexei walked back as close to the spot as he could get and stay on the runner, and looked up. "If only the cleaning crew had such initiative."
At the Burbank Buy More...
Big Mike straightened all the documents before him. He didn't read them, he never did. Anyone who was desperate enough to apply was good enough to fill a green shirt. The white shirts were trickier. It took a special kind of desperation to fill one of those.
This one didn't seem desperate. She didn't seem anything. It kind of creeped him out. Of course, that might be good for keeping Jeff and Lester from making any more lawsuits. "When can you start?"
Her voice was monotone, like some futuristic robot pretending to be a gir-woman. "I would like to start immediately."
A real go-getter. That was good, he could dump a lot of his workload on those. "That's fine, Miss...uh?" He looked down at the forms he never read, unsure where to even look for her last name.
She spared him the effort. "Call me Greta."
The Lofford School for Girls...
Interception is an art form.
It has to come off like clockwork, but at the same time look completely natural, unpracticed. You can always tell the novices by their clumsy intercept technique. The masters are invisible.
He set himself to his target's pace, a bit difficult to do considering the difference in their strides, but he feigned interest in the art on the walls of the school hallway they were walking in. He also feigned interest in everything the person behind was saying, about the academic excellence his imaginary child could hope to achieve in this school, should he be so wise as to enroll her here. He crossed the target's projected path, then turned as if to speak to the person behind them.
"Whoa!" he said in surprise, finding his target directly in front of him. "Sorry about that, little lady. I didn't see you there."
"I'm sorry, sir," she said, looking down with two adults looking at her.
"Nothing to be sorry about, miss, you didn't hurt me." He sank to one knee and smiled at her, to make sure she knew it was a joke. He held out a hand. "I'm Bob."
She seemed reluctant. "My mother says we're always supposed to show respect to our elders."
He smiled, easily. "Well, in that case you can call me Mister Bob. Your mother sounds like a wise lady, and a very good mother."
The target smiled. "Thank you, Mister Bob," she said, taking his hand gently. "My name is Molly."
He moved his hand a little, not really much more than tightening his grip. "I'm very pleased to meet you, Molly."
"I'm pleased to meet you," she said, squeezing his finger a little.
"I hope my daughter ends up in your class," he said, letting go. "Maybe some of those good manners will rub off." He stood, towering over both the women in front of him. "I'm sure you had someplace you were going, young lady, so please, don't let me keep you from it."
"Thanks, Mister Bob," said Molly, walking past him. She turned and waved. "Bye."
"Bye," he said, waving back.
"Molly's one of our newer students," said the lady escorting him. "If you were to enroll your daughter quickly, we can arrange to put her in the same class."
"That's certainly incentive," he said jovially. It was a wonderful day. He'd acquired the target and established himself in her mind as a friendly adult. That could be useful when it came time to do the snatch. "Why don't we go back to your office-" where the student personal information files were "-and talk it over."
"Reports, gentlemen."
Nobody said anything. No eyes looked in silent shock to other eyes, since none of the participants in the meeting were ever in the same place. A was being polite, which meant something was up.
A's disembodied voice stepped into the vacuum. "I'll begin."
Another shock. A almost never spoke first. He let others speak, consumed their contributions so that when he finally spoke it was with a firm assurance that they lacked.
"A great deal of progress occurred overnight, on a variety of fronts, but the night was not without its setbacks. First and most important, Jubilee is complete. The Intersect as it was meant to be, and it has already provided its first value target. Operations are already underway."
"Why wasn't I notified?" asked C, his tie suddenly tight around his throat.
"You are being notified now," said A. "The tests with Shaw's records were successful, so I sent up a trial balloon. I directed the technician I had left in charge of Jubilee's development to analyze Agent Walker's activities."
"You're taking action against Agent Walker-" and her team "-without our input?" growled C.
"That's unprofessional," said B, without his usual jovial tone.
"We are not taking action against Agent Walker at this time," said A. "The tech overstepped his authority, forcing us to take some...defensive measures. B?"
"Overstepped his authority how?" asked E.
"He accessed our historical records on Agent Walker."
"Those were in the Vault," said C.
"Yes. And during a security test of some sort, he was able to penetrate into the Vault and retrieve the records."
"Is he out of his mind?" Those things are always monitored in real time, every action logged.
"By now, yes," said A. "B?"
"The facility has been scrubbed," said B. "The apparatus-" which he would never call Jubilee "-was removed and shipped to our black site, along with all necessary support personnel. The rest of them were dealt with."
"Was that wise?" asked C.
"Probably not, but it was necessary," said A. "I wasn't informed of the breach until some hours after it occurred. I initiated operations immediately."
"Your action was timely, but only barely so," said B. "Federal agents were detected incoming as we were retiring the last of the staff. Physical destruction of the property, preferably with those agents inside, was not an option. We infected the remaining network with a ransomware virus and left unobserved."
"That won't stop Bartowski," said C.
"Stop, probably not," agreed A. "Delay, certainly. Soon enough we'll have operations in motion that will prove quite distracting."
"Am I supposed to say 'mwah-ha-ha'?" asked C.
"It wouldn't be professional," said B. "But it would be appropriate."
A/N2 There is no Lofford School for Girls that I know of. I hope you'll tell me what you think because this is really hard and it's nice to hear.