It's Peggy's voice that Dottie hears first as she regains consciousness. "—in the bloody hell you were thinking, Chief Sousa, coming out here without backup, I swear—"
"You can scold me later, Peggy," Sousa says.
Dottie blinks as the world comes back into focus. The explosion knocked her onto her back and when she sits up, her vision fills with black spots and she nearly passes out. She looks down at the ground and breathes in slowly. The black spots disappear, except for one on the ground close to her left hand. She leans in for a closer look and then snatches her hand away, forcing back a sudden wave of panic.
As she looks around, she sees more zero matter splattered on the floor, the walls, everywhere. Dottie almost stops breathing, focusing on the speck on the floor closest to her, rippling, moving—
On the other side of the room, the other operative and Whitney Frost are still passed out, having taken the full force of the explosion. Over by the car, Sousa and Peggy are on the ground too. He's already removed the gag and he's working quickly to untie her hands. Dottie lurches to her feet and storms over to them, fighting back nausea and the sinking feeling in her stomach. She picks Sousa's crutch off the floor and gives him a couple very satisfying whacks with it.
"You absolute fool," she seethes, and manages to get in another blow before Peggy lunges for her. She dodges Peggy, but Sousa gets a hold on her ankle and yanks hard. Peggy is on top of her the moment she hits the ground, an elbow digging into her back.
"Look around you," Dottie hisses. "Look at what you've done." She feels Peggy stiffen as she sees the puddles of zero matter all over the floor.
"Peggy," Sousa says in an alarmed tone, and they both look up. On the other side of the room, the other operative is still slumped over unconscious over the file, having taken the full force of the explosion. But Whitney Frost is standing up straight with an ecstatic expression on her face. Dottie nearly stops breathing as the specks of zero matter slide across the floor towards Frost. She stretches out her hands as she absorbs the particles. Then she looks up at them and smiles, her eyes gone completely black.
Peggy lessens her grip on Dottie enough for Dottie to shove her off and snatch up the gun Sousa dropped. Her aim is perfect and the bullet passes through the middle of Frost's forehead. Sousa and Peggy both cry out as Frost drops to the ground.
Dottie actually does stop breathing when Frost stands up, watching in disbelief even as Peggy yanks her to her feet and shoves her into the backseat of the SSR car. As Sousa tears out of there, Dottie sees Frost kneel down beside the other operative and stroke her hair.
Dottie looks away.
Once again, Dottie finds herself in handcuffs, a gun to her head. Peggy's not looking too happy with her, and Dottie suspects she'll be seeing the inside of her old cell shortly. Fair enough.
"You've got some explaining to do," Peggy snaps.
"I laid it out for you from the beginning, Peggy. I offered you a deal. I gave up the identity of a Soviet spy and I told you what my government wanted from Whitney Frost."
"Right. And then you tried to strangle me. I don't think that was part of the agreement."
Dottie shrugs. "Let's not play around. You never had any intention of fulfilling your end of the deal, so I decided to take a chance."
"That worked out well for everyone," Sousa remarks sarcastically from the driver's seat, and Dottie regrets not whacking him harder when she had the opportunity. Or cracking his skull, for that matter.
"Was I the one who just exploded a zero matter bomb back there? Oh wait. That was you. Well done, Chief."
He winces. "That…was not what I intended to happen."
"No more deals, no more negotiation," Peggy cuts in. "We will handle Whitney Frost from this point forward, and you will go back to your cell and stay there. Permanently."
"Until you realize you need me again?" Dottie shoots back. "Let's see how long it takes. It's all for the greater good, yes? Just like the last time."
"Do you need to be gagged as well?" Peggy asks sharply. She turns to Sousa. "Frost's next target will most likely be the SSR. She'll be coming after the gamma cannon. We'll extract the zero matter from her like we did the last time, and then we have to figure how to stop the Russians and change the future back to…whatever it was supposed to be."
There's no reset button, Dottie thinks. "And what will you do with Frost? Supposing all goes according to plan."
Peggy raises an eyebrow. "Put her back in a mental facility where she belongs. With better security this time."
No, that won't do at all. When the time comes, Dottie will have to take matters into her own hands. "Same old, same old. You've really learned nothing."
Peggy is silent for a moment. "The way you were back there, after the bomb exploded—I've never seen you like that."
"Like what?"
"Scared."
Dottie watches her steadily. "Oh, Peggy. You're not nearly scared enough." There was something Dottie felt she was missing before, but the pieces are beginning to fall into place. "Out of curiosity, did you ever figure out who killed Jack Thompson?"
"What?" Peggy asks sharply. "What does that have to do with anything?"
"Poor Peggy. Almost a year gone by and you still can't see why the investigation never went anywhere." She notices Sousa stiffen in the front seat. "Ah. But you, Chief? Next in line after Thompson; you must have suspected."
Peggy reaches out and grabs Dottie by the collar. "Talk."
"There are so many ways to kill people and make it look like an accident. But when you go up to the chief of the SSR and shoot him in the chest at close range? That's making a statement. That's a warning. Tell me, what evidence did you recover?"
"Next to nothing," Sousa says, shaking his head. "We interviewed everyone in and around the hotel that day, and nobody even heard the gun go off. We went over every square inch of that room for fingerprints. Jack's luggage was lying on the bed where he left it. Leviathan, we thought at first. Maybe you. But we kept hitting dead ends."
"Leviathan had nothing to do with it, and it wasn't me. I must say, I'm a little sorry I missed my chance."
Peggy doesn't say anything. Her lips are pressed tightly together, eyes glinting.
"Now, let's picture an alternative timeline, shall we?" Dottie continues. "Think back to one year ago: maybe Jack Thompson is on the verge of discovering something important. Maybe he realizes it on the plane ride back to New York. Maybe when he arrives, he calls Chief Sousa here and sets a certain chain of events in motion that make certain powerful people unhappy."
"This is pure speculation," Sousa objects.
"Of course it is, Chief. I'm talking about an alternative timeline. It's speculative by nature."
"You said that Leviathan was not involved," he says slowly. "And you think they're not responsible for these anomalies, either?"
"The Russians found out about zero matter only recently; your people have been working on it for much longer. They're desperate to catch up—why else would they want Whitney Frost? But obviously Frost is here and not in Russia, and so it seems unlikely that they would have already developed the technology that can alter the past or the future."
Sousa's catching on. She can almost see the wheels turning in his head. "The anomalies are happening in the present. Somebody else is behind this."
Peggy's kept silent until now. Her voice is deadly. "Who killed Jack Thompson?"
"You already know, Peggy. Now, let me ask you again: is this a government you would die for? Is this a government you would kill for?"
She slaps Dottie hard. "Peggy!" Sousa exclaims, looking over his shoulder.
Peggy leans in close. "You wouldn't understand this, but our job is to protect people. Not the government, not crooked politicians and corporations, not the SSR. People."
"That's a nice little story, isn't it? No, it's not so simple. You're a part of this entire rotten system too, and that system will always protect the powerful. They'll kill you the minute you ask too many questions and become too inconvenient. It's a miracle the two of you are even alive."
"Who are you working for, Underwood?" Sousa asks. "Who are you?"
Dottie pauses, studying Peggy for a moment. Her brown eyes are bright with anger, her face drawn with tension. She looks exhausted. And now, Dottie thinks, she might be ready to listen. "I can be anybody I want," she answers Sousa, but she's not really talking to him. "What about you, my dear? What about you?"
