I'd rather be a sparrow than a snail

Yes I would, if I could

I surely would

I'd rather be a hammer than a nail

Yes I would, if I only could

I surely would

"El Condor Pasa"

Simon and Garfunkel

October 1, 2021

Carmichael Industries, Los Angeles, California

"Ok, I sent everybody home. Nothing life or death in the works. Justin said he had a report but he can let you know once the system is back up and running," Morgan rambled nervously as he opened the door.

Chuck, Casey, Cole and Sarah were milling around inside the IT closet. At closer inspection, Morgan realized the scene was more like Casey, Cole, and Sarah were standing there watching Chuck dismantle the largest processor. Everyone looked worried, but Chuck was at least focused on his task. Morgan could tell by the way Chuck kept biting on the inside of his cheek that he was overwhelmed–he knew what to do, but had more to do than he was capable of by himself. Morgan had already argued with him about sending the rest of the team home, making the point that everyone who could have helped him was being sent out.

Chuck had been adamant, first and foremost being his desire to keep his people safe, particularly his people who had no idea what he had agreed to do for the NSA. After everything had gone dark, Chuck had given the report, as best he could, to Casey, who had to tell Chuck more than once to use English and not computer gibberish. Morgan had more patience than Casey, but the factual argument remained accurate.

"You can fix this, right, Chuck?" Morgan asked apprehensively, fielding the glares from everyone in the room who had the wherewithal not to ask Chuck a question like that.

"Not by myself," Chuck grumbled, elbow deep in the dismantled processor. He threw down his hands in frustration, pounding his fists against his knees. "Casey, that breach used a kind of hack I've never seen. It shouldn't have been possible to circumvent that many security measures that quickly, without tripping an internal alarm somewhere."

"Was pulling the plug sufficient? Or is everything compromised?" Casey asked, bracing himself for the worst.

"I don't know," Chuck mumbled absently, like his focus was on something else. "It was erasing data. Like what the Omen was supposed to do, the way Decker described it to us. Not on that level, though. It would have wiped out our whole system if that had been the rate. But with the same methodology. I would estimate the level of gigabytes per second. It's the security breach that has me baffled."

"But it's in the system, right? Shutting it down didn't remove it," Sarah said out loud, remembering that virus he had referenced, from ten years ago, and how he had explained it to her back then.

"No, it didn't," Chuck answered her. "Shutting it down protected whatever data it hadn't reached yet. But I have to purge the whole mainframe and reboot it cold. If any of the processing memory was damaged, I may have lost access to whatever data was left."

"CI took down the entire Collective in 2013," Sarah said, stating the fact but saying it out loud to remind everyone in the room about the origin of the Omen. "But didn't the NSA tell us a few of their hackers skipped the country?"

"Beckman has the specifics on that, but you're right, Walker," Casey said stiffly.

"What's most important right now is I can't purge it by myself. It'll take days and we don't have days. The team in England is on their own without that intel. If there are operatives in the U.S. we will never be able to track them down," Chuck almost shouted. The skin on his neck was flushed red, and he couldn't quite hold his hands still.

"What about Skip, Chuck?" Morgan asked.

Chuck sighed, spinning away, not wanting to accept that he would have to read Skip into all of this.

"What about Hannah?" Cole asked, breaking his silence. Cole watched Chuck's brow furrow, at the same time he saw Sarah's face fall.

"Hannah?" Chuck managed to ask, befuddled, his eyes wide.

"She can help you, can't she? She was a high level IT Operations Manager in France. And a supervising technician here in Santa Barbara," Cole debated.

"She did thwart that attack at the museum by herself while you were grabbing the mask with Walker," Casey argued.

"Yeah, and she almost got killed because of that," Chuck snapped. "She's here now, a widow with two kids, because of that. I'm not putting her in any more danger. It isn't fair," he finished, his voice weakening as the words had progressed.

"Look, Chuck, I understand that. It's admirable of you, not that it surprises me all that much," Cole grumbled the last part under his breath. "But she's here in L.A. because she's not safe. And neither is your family or your friends and if the only way to protect them is to get that data secured and you can't do it alone, then you need her help," Cole disputed.

Chuck growled, low in his throat, shaking his head back and forth. He breathed out hard. "Ok. But ask her, don't tell her. If she agrees, then fine," he relented. Cole nodded once and quickly vacated the room. Casey followed.

Sarah had done an excellent job of hiding her discomfiture, but Chuck could still tell she was uneasy. "Are you ok?" he asked her quietly, shifting aside loose computer components with his foot.

"Yes," she told him quickly. "It's just weird. But I'm ok." She wasn't jealous. Long ago she had had some vague insecurities about Chuck, but even now the ridiculousness of those thoughts seemed facetious in the face of their life and their history. Aside from losing her memory, the time while Chuck had been with Hannah had been the hardest part of her life after she'd met Chuck. She recognized Hannah knew who she was, and had known back then as well. But unlike the other two women Chuck had dated while Sarah and he were cover dating, she had never been introduced to Hannah, or ever had a conversation with her. It would be awkward, but Sarah had to keep reminding herself that it was 11 years ago. That was a very long time.

Sarah was also not without sympathy. Hannah had lost her husband. She let her mind scroll backward over the multiple times she thought she had lost Chuck, or had come so very close to losing Chuck. The memory was never far, as she closed her eyes, the blood spraying on the wall as the bullet went through Chuck's shoulder, the pink froth bubbling out of the corner of his mouth after the bullet lodged in his lung, the feel of Casey's hands around her as reality had faded away because it had overwhelmed her. Despite all that, he was here with her. But to lose Chuck forever like that…The thought became unfathomable, like trying to contemplate the edge of the universe, or the magnitude of infinity.

It was like holding a mirror up to her emotions for Chuck, seeing an endless tunnel of sorrow if he were suddenly lost to her. Hannah had made her feel jealous and bereft. Now, she felt only sympathy and compassion. Things she had learned from Chuck.

October 1, 2021

London, England, United Kingdom

Carina Miller and Zondra Rizzo waited on the dark London street, inside a nondescript vehicle parked on the street below where the trace placed on Kovacs' phone had led them. A light drizzle had created a swirling fog, scattering the light from the streetlamps, clouding the windows in the car and making it difficult to see their surroundings.

"Cole said to just track and confirm the location," Zondra reminded her sharply.

"And now what? We just wait? What if he's here to retrieve something? Something we need to intercept. We already lost Conklin. We need to move now," Carina argued.

"With no back up? Are you crazy?" Zondra shot back.

"We sneak in and search. They can go after Kovacs afterward," she told Zondra. Carina sat forward, stowing away her gun in her waistband, then securing her knives into one of her tall boots.

Zondra had more words, but Carina's actions shut them down. She was already out of the car and moving. Zondra hurriedly secured her weapons, then hustled to catch up to her partner. They were outside an apartment building–all the windows visible from the street were dark. Each standing on a side of the door, they scoped the street and the alley behind. Zondra nodded, as Carina pulled out the lock decoder and attached it to the bolted handle on the door. Seconds scrolled by, but the correct code appeared, and Carina opened the handle and snuck inside, letting Zondra in after her before they shut the door again.

Carina led the way, Zondra close behind as they climbed the stairs in near darkness. The hallway smelled musty, damp, like the rain outside had crept in through cracks in the wall or the floor. The dirt and gravel on the stairs crunched under their feet as they slowly stepped. Winding their way around, close to the wall, they reached the third floor. Carina reached for the handle, twisting it, as it was open, pushing the door open with splayed fingers.

First Carina, then Zondra entered the room, and moved quickly through the darkness. They each had a pen light, and began searching. It was a time consuming process, requiring a painstaking methodicalness, as they had no specific intel about what it was they were looking for. Carina opened drawers, moved stacks of papers, at the same time she scanned the walls with her infrared glasses, looking for any hidden places where something could be stashed. She slinked down the hallway, seeing the blue square along the wall. She pulled on the edge of the painting on the wall, gratified as she felt it give way, like it was a door. She reached in, feeling along the bottom. She felt cold metal and rough plastic, some type of data drive. Hidden in a wall safe, she believed it to be of significance. It was completely in her hand, with her fingers wrapped around it, when she heard Zondra scream.

XXX

The eerie feeling, like the hair on her arms and the back of her neck had been statically charged, would not leave her. Zondra should have known better after all these years than to have tried to change Carina's mind. Carina acted first, thought second, and then the almighty third–relied on someone else to bail her out when things got hairy. Something about all of this didn't make sense. The Hungarian had been tracked here, but the flat was rented by someone with a French name.

Zondra could hear Carina as she moved down the hallway, trained as she was to hear the slightest of sounds. She moved to the window, sliding the curtain to the side to gaze down to the street below. She heard Carina, but not the approach of the dark figure that grabbed her from behind.

Zondra screamed, grunting as she threw her weight against her assailant, using her body weight to throw him off balance, twisting his arm and throwing him over her shoulder, going down herself from the effort. Her side throbbed, her wrist ached, as she struggled to get back on her feet. She heard Carina running, squinting hard as the lights turned on. She dove to the side as she saw Carina raise her gun to fire. Her own gun had gone flying in the initial attack. Her attacker was all dressed in black, but as he turned and lunged for her, she saw his face. It was Kovacs, the Hungarian.

"Positive ID," she yelled to Carina, just in case her partner hadn't seen his face as he'd spun. She dived down again, scrambling along the floor for her gun, hearing Carina fire again in rapid succession, the bullets connecting to the wall and the doorframe. The flimsy kitchen table tipped, crashing down beside her head as she dove to the other side. She saw Kovacs go down, scraping himself across the floor. He reached for Zondra's gun, his arms longer than hers. She saw his hand close around the butt on the gun, as he curled his index finger into the trigger. Carina was running towards them–Zondra could hear but not see, from her vantage point on the floor.

Zondra watched the gun raise, pointed at her partner. "No!" Zondra screamed, diving on top of Kovacs.

The scream died in her throat as a gunshot exploded in the silence, her right side burning as if she had been run through with a hot poker. Kovacs pushed her up and off, and she slid painfully, seeing the splattered smear of blood she made across the dingy and gritty floor. Zondra had just enough strength to kick the gun out of Kovacs hand before she blacked out.

Disarmed, Kovacs reacted to the sight of Carina's gun trained on him, kicking up with his foot, sending Carina's gun flying across the room. He dove at her on his way up, but she kicked his side, twisting as she did so. He dragged her down on the floor, banging her head against the floor as it smashed down, making the edges of her vision darken. Disoriented, she looked for where her gun had fallen.

Her vision swam again, making all the edges in the room blur. When she looked again, her own gun was in Kovacs' hand, and it was pointed down at her. She couldn't get her arms or legs to obey her wishes, struggling to turn on her side. She heard the gun go off, holding her breath, suddenly confused why she didn't feel anything.

She saw the blood spray from Kovacs' shoulder as the gun fell from his hand. Carina tilted her head back, seeing the gun in Zondra's hand slide out as she lost consciousness again. Kovacs was on his knees, spinning, howling in pain, when a second figure suddenly appeared. It hurt Carina's head as she tried to focus, but she saw the second man, in a gray suit, a silver gun in his hand. In an instant, Kovacs was up on his feet, blowing into the second man, pushing him hard against the doorframe as he ran.

Carina watched the man in the gray suit, his attention shifting. He was making a split decision, give chase, or help them. Carina saw his eyes widen as he obviously took in the blood, and Zondra's injury. He seemed torn, but then shook his head once, and ran into the room.

"Who are you?" the man asked, a thick French accent evident in his voice. "MI6? CIA?" He leaned down, stepping over Carina as he reached for Zondra's wound.

"CIA," Carina gasped, rolling to her side, telling herself she had to be concussed. She actually thought about the fact that she was DEA, and Zondra was CIA, then wondered why that mattered at all. "Who…are you?" she gasped again.

"DGSE," he responded. "I'm calling a truck," he said intensely. "An ambulance," he clarified.

"What…who…" Carina tried, but couldn't seem to pull the words out of the air to form them into a sentence.

"You're safe right now. Let's get you help, then we'll talk. I'm Jean-Pierre," he said. His voice was soothing, sincere. Carina had no idea why, but she trusted him. She let her guard down, letting the blackness at the edge of her vision swallow everything in her line of sight.

October 1, 2021

Carmichael Industries, Los Angeles, California

Cole walked Hannah into the area where Chuck was working in the IT closet. Chuck looked up and smiled, seeing instantly how uncomfortable she was. Her arms were crossed hard across her body, her elbows pinched hard in white-knucked hands. She didn't make eye contact with anyone, instead choosing to look at the floor. "Cole said a lot of the…uh…people who used to work at Buy More work here with you," she almost whispered.

"They do, but I sent everyone home. Most of my team doesn't know exactly what this is all about," he told her, his true concentration on the guts of the computer spread out next to him on the floor.

"Seeing you was one thing, but everyone else…it's making me nervous," she admitted.

He stopped, looking up at her. "Please don't feel that way. Everyone here is trying to help."

"I know that," she said softly.

"Chuck, Ellie just called. Clara and Molly are hanging out at my Mom's and Molly left her inhaler at our house the other night. I've had it in my purse all week. I need to swing by your sister's house before I go straight home," Sarah told him as she stood in the doorway.

Chuck rose to his feet, dusting off the knees of his pants. "Sarah, meet Hannah. Hannah, this is my wife, Sarah," he said, flashing a crooked smile.

Sarah stepped forward, offering her hand, a genuine smile on her face. "It's so nice to officially meet you, Hannah," she said sincerely.

"Likewise," Hannah said, a soft hesitant smile on her face.

"Hannah, are your kids alone right now? While you're helping us?" Sarah asked as she released her hand.

"No, I mean, sort of. They can stay alone, under normal circumstances. The CIA has people there with them, inside the house and outside, using my work as a cover," she told Sarah, as she reached over to hand Chuck a tool on the floor next to her foot.

"If you'd like, Cole can bring them to our house. Chuck and I have a nine year old son and six year old twin girls. They might like some company. We have NSA as well as 24 hour protective custody. They'll be just as safe with us, I promise you," Sarah said.

"I don't want to impose, really," Hannah said hesitantly.

"It's no imposition. This is incredibly disruptive and upsetting. Let us help, if we can," Sarah said graciously. Chuck had a relieved smile on his face. Hannah smiled warmly in reply.

"My ears are burning," Cole said with a smirk as he peaked in the door. "How much longer is this going to take, Chuck? Do I have time to retrieve the Robert children?"

"A few more hours at least," Chuck told him, looking as Hannah nodded along with him.

"Alright then," he said tersely. "Stay in touch," he said as he tapped the doorframe and departed.

Once Chuck and Hannah were alone again in the IT room, Hannah spoke first. "That was very sweet of your wife, Chuck. This must be so…weird…for her."

"I think for all of us. I think that's safe to say," he chuckled.

"So you said this hack you shut down on, worked like the Omen virus? That was just a hoax, wasn't it?" she quizzed him as she screwed one of the plates back onto the panel in front of her.

"Hoax? No. It wasn't really what it was explained as. It was supposed to erase data, but it actually was siphoning information to reroute it," he explained.

"You said this hack was only erasing data. Right? How sure of that are you?" she asked.

"What do you mean?" he asked, suddenly curious.

"I'm assuming you actually…you know, worked with the Omen virus, or at least were more aware of it than people like me who just saw it on the news," she said. He nodded silently. "It was supposed to relocate information. Could that have been what you saw? Someone stealing your data, instead of erasing it?"

"Ok. But I hacked that data. Why steal it back from us?" he asked. "Anyone with the tech savvy to steal it from us could have hacked it themselves from the same source."

"The people who Cole was protecting me from, the people who the NSA is protecting you from," she said, spacing out each word as she thought and spoke at the same time. "You're assuming this is them, right?"

"Of course," he told her, pulling his hands away from the work he was doing.

"What if it isn't? What if it's not related to what you're doing? Not directly anyway," she asked him. She watched his eyes shifting as his mind started working. "You've had firewalls, communication shutdowns in place before, right? I would imagine frequently, with the work you do that's government contracted. Dismantling your security–the level you have here, now–takes extremely sophisticated hacking."

"That's at least correct. I have never seen anything like what they used to break in," he told her, his words blending together at the speed of his speech. "I need to get up and running again, though, regardless of how or why they hacked in. There are people in the field relying on what we're doing. The NSA entrusted that to us."

"Of course, Chuck. But what if this is only a distraction? What if the data wasn't the target? What if you are?" she asked, stretching out her hand to emphasize her words.

"Me? Like CI? Or me, like, me?" he asked her. The magnet? he thought, realizing he was out of practice in the spy world, as now this seemed rather obvious. That had been one of their classic moves in the past.

"What if the goal was shutting you down," she said pointedly. She watched the words register on his face, his eyes wide and his jaw slack. "Going completely dark, for however long it takes you to do this. So they could do whatever they were trying to do without you seeing it."

He felt sick, certain she was closer to the truth than he had ever contemplated. "The longer we're down, the worse it is, then," he said urgently, bending down and reaching for his tools. "We need to fix this now. Right now," he ordered, transferring the sense of urgency to her.

She picked up her tools and dropped next to him. They worked in tandem, like a surgical team, putting the fractured server back together piece by piece.

October 1, 2021

Burbank, California

Sarah was still worried about Chuck and how he was progressing, but after her errand to bring Molly's inhaler to Ellie's house, a quick chat with both Chuck's sister and mother to bring them up to speed on how work was progressing, she was back in her own house. Thinking about what Stephen wanted on his pizza. It was Friday night at the Bartowski's. Pizza and movies.

The strangeness of the situation came sharply into focus. Such frivolous little things placed against the backdrop of what loomed. She tried to tell herself it was just the newness of all of this. My God, had it only been less than one week? she asked herself. Stephen's flash at his party was a week ago tomorrow. Six days. Their lives had gone from happy and normal to upside down in six days. Pizza toppings were irritatingly unimportant as she thought of dead Liam, NSA security detail, Corrine Winterbottom in her house with weapons.

But she had young children. Children she was sheltering from all of that horror. So she had to care about pizza toppings, karate lessons, violin lessons, soccer practice, carpool duties, and PTO fundraisers. Abby's attitude and Ally's sensitivity. Keeping Abby out of her makeup, keeping Ally's mood up because she hadn't gotten to spend as much time as she would have liked with Max, Morgan's oldest boy.

And then there was Stephen. Stuck in between, she thought sadly. He knew more than he should have to, at his age. Part of what had so upset Chuck had affected her as well, thinking about how all of this had changed him, just in the short six days they had known. Her son was afraid, because he understood the situation they were in. Not the full scope, not the fact that Aunt Corrine was actually here to shoot and kill intruders should there be any. At least, she believed he was unaware. What he knew and what he told them could be very different things.

She and Chuck had encouraged complete honesty, always. That was how their family functioned. Even white lies, legitimate secrets about presents or surprises, had made her son uncomfortable when he was little. He'd grown to understand, eventually. Although Sarah truly worried he had seen too much of either Chuck or her forcing something to not start doing so himself. It wasn't a recent occurrence, with the imminent danger, she thought sadly. She and Chuck had been doing that almost since day one. They had improved their communication, the state of it now probably the best it had ever been, after so long together.

But this new danger had inadvertently unearthed an old issue, one still in the back of her mind after what her son had said on Monday when he had been talking about what he remembered from so long ago. She and Chuck had different scars from that time, she had always known that, by the nature of what had happened. The mistake had been in thinking that they were scars–healed. Nothing was healed. They were wounds, perpetually bandaged, never allowed to mend in the light of day. Too much was happening now, yet again, for her to just address it. But she knew now, soon, she would have to.

She stood in the kitchen, writing down the order on a notepad before she called in the order for dinner. She almost texted Chuck to ask him if he wanted meat on his pizza, or if vegetarian was fine, when she realized how crazy that was. Stop rebuilding your secure server to tell me about pepperoni. But still, the decision couldn't wait. Vegetarian it was, she said to herself.

The phone was in her hand, cradled between her ear and her shoulder, when Stephen approached her from behind. She smiled, but she noticed quickly, his face was pale, his eyes so wide the whites showed all around both sea blue irises. Her heart was already pounding when he asked her, "Mom, who is Anna Szabo?"

The phone crashed down on the counter, the notepad and pen in Sarah's other hand clamoring to the floor. Sarah heard the loud gasp, several seconds passing before she realized she was the one who had made the sound. She rushed up to him, grabbing his shoulders painfully tight and pulling him towards her. "Where did you hear that?" Sarah asked shrilly.

Corrine had moved towards the kitchen, leaving both girls playing on the floor and blissfully oblivious. Sarah was positively panicked, Corrine thought. She had never seen it, didn't know it was even possible for Sarah to behave outwardly like this. "Sarah?" she asked, though she was ignored as Sarah held onto her son.

"Where?" Sarah demanded, close to hysterical, not realizing her demeanor had closed up her son's throat, making it impossible for him to answer. Sarah shook him, not forcefully, but enough to cause Corrine to step forward, place her hands on top of Sarah's death grip.

"Stephen, it's all right. Just tell us," Corrine coached, forcing eye contact with Sarah, pleading with the younger woman to release him.

Snapping out of her frantic fugue, Sarah let go, pulling her hands back and covering her mouth, using all the strength she had to put her emotions back under control. Corrine could see it, a palpable struggle, as Sarah transformed herself. "Where, Stephen?" Sarah asked, more calmly.

"I…I…zapped…while I was watching the news," he told his mother, still visibly trembling as Corrine watched him.

"A bit on the international news about overcrowding in Hungarian prisons," Corrine mumbled softly to Sarah, thinking that fact might be important.

Sarah took a step back, swallowing down the urge to scream. Stop frightening him, she ordered herself. She felt deaf all of a sudden, like she had been standing next to a loud explosion and now her ears were ringing. The backs of her hands were mottled purple, cold and clammy, while her dry lips stuck to her teeth, all the saliva in her mouth gone.

Corrine was about to speak when the doorbell rang. It startled an already on edge Sarah, so that she jumped, her hand swinging to the side and sending two glasses on the counter next to the sink shattering to the floor. She watched the glass ricochet in every direction, watched her son take a step back as the flying glass pelted against his pant legs.

Sarah was mesmerized, lost, unable to focus at all. She dropped to her knees in front of the broken glass, feeling the pain as a sharp piece cut her knee. Corrine ran to the door, poised at the side as she asked who it was. Sarah paid no attention to anything, feeling her son touch her shoulders. "Mom, you're bleeding," he said worriedly, pointing to her wounded knee.

Not sweat, blood…soaking her legs now…lifting herself up and feeling the sensation of blood gushing out of her, the tight spasm in her abdomen now irrefutable….

"Mom!" Stephen shouted, breaking into her macabre reverie.

She shook her head vigorously, doing her best to clear the jumble. Her protective instinct kicked in as she saw her son reach for the glass. "No, you'll cut yourself. Don't touch it," she insisted, pulling his hands away.

Stephen looked up, curious at the scene at the door. A strange man he had never seen, accompanying a boy and girl who looked just a little older than him. Aunt Corrine was talking to them, calling his sisters to the door with a hand gesture. Stephen could see how divided his Aunt's attention was–talking lightly to the other kids, and whoever this man was that she seemed to know, while at the same time nearly twitching, wanting to go back to the kitchen, because she was obviously worried about his mother, as worried as he was.

"Sarah, Cole is here," Corrine called. Stephen thought it was strange, how her tone of voice didn't match her stance or her face. She was pretending to be calm, that was all. What was stranger was the way his mother reacted, bolting to standing and almost falling over her feet as she ran to the door. Stephen stood and watched what transpired.

Cole, as Aunt Corrine had called him, grabbed his mother by both shoulders, something that initially worried him, until he realized how gently the man was holding her. His face showed only concern. Whoever this man was, his mother knew him too. And she trusted him, as he watched her slowly unwind from her posture, like a rattlesnake putting down its tail once a threat had retreated. "What is it, Sarah?" he asked.

"I have to get out of here. Tell Chuck. I can't reach him, not by phone, not…" his mother stammered, her words almost slurred she said them so fast.

"What's going on?" he asked, more intently.

"I can't explain, not here," she added desperately, stepping around Cole to grab her keys.

"You're not driving like this," he insisted. "Chuck would never forgive me if something happened to you because I let you drive like this." He put his hand on hers, squeezing the keys against her palm until it was painful.

She sighed, looking up at him, her eyes pleading. She was desperate, frantic. Her need to run was tangible, like a compressed spring under his hand. "Come on," he said, reaching for the doorknob behind him. With one look he communicated everything to Corrine, who was confused, but trusted she would eventually know when the time was right. Right now, Sarah needed a baby-sitter with a gun, so that was what she'd do.

"Stephen flashed," Sarah whispered, low enough so her son didn't hear, but speaking to both Cole and Corrine.

They were out the door and gone, without another word. Whatever it was, it was bad. Catastrophically bad. Sarah knew that, and so now did her son, who stood alone in the kitchen, his bottom lip trembling. Corrine rushed to him, to offer whatever comfort she could.

October 1, 2021

London, England, United Kingdom

Kovacs' shoulder still stung, and his mobility was hindered by the tight bandage wrapped around him by the passable medic who had patched him up after the altercation with the CIA. The fog was thick around him as he stood on the bridge, so thick Big Ben wasn't visible, even though he knew it was so close. He waited for his phone to connect.

"Report," the disconnected voice demanded.

"The CIA has the device," he said gruffly.

"Incompetence!" the voice shouted in a rare outburst of emotion.

"I have more information. The courier is dead, and now they are moving on the other, as you instructed," he explained.

"If the CIA has the device, they need to move quickly. No more mistakes!" the voice demanded again, more emotional than before.

"We have larger problems." He waited, unsure of how this news would affect his contact, who seemed on the edge today. "Silver Shade is alive."

The chilling silence on the other end was worse than any outburst he could have imagined.