3

The ambience of the office, the incessant phone calls, the shouting of imperceptible words, the sound of fax machines printing out pages upon pages of documents never to be read in full, did little to bring him comfort as he drifted off into his nap. Yet now, as in his youth, he had grown used to the miasma of perpetual rush as it had given him a real reason to wake up, lest he sleep forever. But this time it was the sound of a slamming door and the heavy footed clicking of shoes that woke him up.

Kramer entered Byer's office and found him laying the couch with a blanket of papers keeping him warm and comfortable. He had not gone home yet, partly because he was a habitual workaholic, partly because he feared a hitman would be waiting for him there.

"Jesus…" Byer said as his eyes opened slightly to look at the intruder. "Don't you have your own office?"

"I'm having it renovated," Kramer said with a slight chuckle as he sat down on Byer's chair.

"I'm glad you find all of this so amusing," Byer replied in his usual dry wit.

"Cheer up, Outcome is gone," Kramer said.

"Seriously? You're here to gloat?" Byer said as he sat up displacing the pages that had covered him.

"I'm here to thank you for your support," Kramer said.

"Don't thank me yet," Byer said as he rubbed his eyes with his left hand while propping himself up with the other. "You think this new round of massacres in Manila is gonna play well for you?"

"Outcome wasn't my project," Kramer said glee in his voice.

"Well that's not how it's gonna play, and LARX? You can forget about LARX," Byer replied.

"Let's not jump the gun quite yet. Investigations on LARX-03 are still ongoing," Kramer said in a faux-professional voice, as if to mock the gravity of the events that had just unfolded.

Byer smiled, his face wore an expression of simultaneous disdain and amusement.

"You think this is gonna distract the Intelligence Committee's heat on you guys?" Byer asked. "Fuck, Treadstone was the beginning of all of this. You know how this is gonna go down? Six years ago, the CIA presented the Department of Defense with a miracle solution all of our post-911 ills, they promised us a magic bullet, they provided us with all of the science, raw data, and field test reports and they told us to build ourselves a super-soldier. But most importantly, they told us nothing could go wrong. We were as stunned as you guys. Project Outcome was well underway before Jason Bourne ever became an issue."

Byer adjusted himself to the edge of the couch. Although Kramer may have felt that he was in a superior position at the moment, Byer held out his hands in gestures accenting his confrontational tone, as was his way when making a point, and explained to Kramer if the CIA fell, how Special Operations would not follow.

"See what you seem to think is that we're in the same boat here," Byer continued. "And sure, we might even be. But that's not how it's gonna look, that's not how I'm present it. I'm as shocked as you are, Senator. We had no idea about the inconsistencies with Treadstone; as soon as we found out, we terminated Operation Outcome. It was the only legitimate thing to do. What's that? I have no idea what happened in Manila, maybe another Treadstone asset that Director Kramer failed to mention. I have reports in detail, explaining the immediate and swift termination of our operation after we found out that the first generation data was unreliable. Evidently, the army takes this a lot more seriously than the CIA."

"You're full of shit, you know that Ric?" Kramer spat back at him.

"Welcome to the intelligence game…" Byer retorted as he threw the remainder of the papers into the air accenting his inherent deceitfulness of their chosen careers. "Now get the fuck out of my office."

The trek had been arduous. Or at least it had been for Marta. She couldn't understand why Aaron had decided to take this route. It wasn't a route at all. He had just decided to cut through the thickest part of the jungle. She followed behind him a good several feet as he tried to navigate through the impossibly dense foliage. She had no idea why he didn't want to stay in the village and if this were two days ago, she would have thought him to be crazy. But much had happened in those two days and while this, she could still objectively surmise, was in fact crazy; she trusted him. He had saved her so many times before without hesitation, as if it were no choice at all, even after he had been successfully viralled off, she couldn't imagine Aaron doing her any harm. And even when she wasn't; she felt safe with him.

But it wasn't fun, she sweated through her shirt, necessarily kept on to keep the mosquitos and branches from eating her alive. Just a day ago, she had been running through the city with her sneakers, which had been perfectly adequate then, so woefully lacking now. She had no sense of time as the sun appeared and disappeared by the whims of the tree tops. Often she would think that night had come only to realize it had only been half an hour when the sun remerged when they reached a clearing. Aaron had never trekked too far from her, always backtracking once in a while to make sure that she had enough water to drink or that she hadn't been eaten by a snake. She wasn't even aware that there were snakes around.

Little did she know that it would all be worth it. Five hours after they had left the village, Aaron had led her to a brook in the middle of the jungle. The sun pierced through the fractal pattern of leaves, cascading over the gentle waters that sat below. The water was clear and gently sang its tune as it travelled downstream over the smooth rocks underneath.

"Go ahead, it's clean." Aaron said with heavy breaths, revealing his fatigue. She had so often wondered if he even understood the concept.

Marta leaned over and dunked her face into the water, feeling the coolness remove the sweat and internal heat that had been built up by the day's long journey. She drank in the water, which felt much better than the bottled stuff that she and Aaron necessarily had to carry on their backs.

"Look," Aaron said in his simple way.

Marta turned her head his way. Aaron pulled back the thick foliage to reveal a beach paradise. Marta was stunned; she wondered how she had missed the obvious sound of ocean crashing against the sands. The sea was the colour of that impossible blue she had seen on those vacation brochures she had got in the mail every so often. The sand, as she realized upon her approach, was golden to behold and smooth to the touch. The ocean winds caressed her face as she closed her eyes to give her other senses a chance to enjoy.

"I figured you needed some time to rest." Aaron said as he joined her on the sands. "I got the feeling that you were hoping for a break after I turned your life upside down."

"Thanks." She said as she looked back at him with her hair caught in the tropical wind and an uncontrollable smile upon her face.

Marta dropped her bag onto the sand and started to unbutton her shirt. At first Aaron didn't take much notice, after all he himself had been sweating buckets after their long trek. But as she dropped her white blouse to the ground, it was not the grey undershirt she had on the day before, rather it was a black bikini with gold trim that clung to her.

He had always known of her beauty. He even made a half-hearted pass at her a year ago when she viralled him off the greens. But that was just in jest, and while confidence was one of the side effects of the chems, he was perfectly aware that whatever attraction, company policy dictated that however he had felt should be, and was, prudently removed from his mind. Plus, she was a doctor and he, at best was an isolated maladjusted killer, but more likely, just a thug.

But this, this was different. He watched as she shimmied out of her jeans reveal a bikini bottom that was most definitely meant to tease. He could see half of butt and while he had seen her legs before, he had never seen them in quite that combination before. She looked back at him once again and caught him staring.

He snapped out of it as her eyes caught his. They seemed to be anxious, teasing, and chastising him all at the same time.

"Where'd you get that," Aaron asked, trying to fill the silence.

"You did your shopping…" Marta replied stoic. "I did mine."

"Alfred Hennessey…" The older operations officer looked at his computer terminal and then back at the young buck standing in front of him. "You're little green for this, aren't you?"

"That's what my peewee coach told me, I've been proving them wrong ever since," the analyst said flashing his signature smile of confidence.

"Making the jump from analyst to operations officer…" The man across the terminal said as he continued to read his file. "Well… congratulations. Welcome to the game, don't strike out."

"Don't worry sir, I don't intend to." He said as received his new badge and key card.

Alfred clipped it to his sport coat and stepped into his new "temporary" office. It faced out towards the grandeur of the New York City skyline, grey and smog filled as it was, he saw an empire, a great American civilization built on the foundations of freedom and opportunity; words that had once inspired him, but that was a long time ago. He sat down in his new comfy leather chair that still smelled of the Mexican factory that it had no doubt been sitting in just a week ago. He thought, I could get used to this.

But he wasn't there yet. He could pretend, but he wasn't. Maybe one day he could play king maker, maybe one day he could truly look upon New York and be satisfied with his new position of mastery. But not yet, he had still to execute his plan. Byer had given him time and that's all he really needed. Some called him dishonest, in fact he could name each and every one of them, but he preferred to think of himself as an opportunist. Just like he did with student council in high school, just like he did during exams in undergrad, just like his arguably "stole" his thesis in grad school, he too would now make himself not only known, but formidable.

The sun cascaded its rays across the clouds scattering the light in countless directions, fracturing what once was a continuous flood of gold into pieces of pink, purple, and blue that fell upon their idyllic homestead. Aaron stood upon the rocks looking out onto the endless sea as it continually processed towards the shore, crashing against the beach and receding only to do it all over again with celestial regularity.

He played with his rifle aiming into the distance trying to figure out if the scope was functioning well enough to be useful. But there was nothing in the region to test its accuracy. The best he could do was peak at Marta when she enjoying the water. He wondered to himself how he got here. Just a few days ago, he was in the blistering cold of Alaska, fighting, voluntarily to be sure, for his life. Now he was here, in this private Eden, with a beautiful woman he had no right to. What was this new life he had been given? How long could he stay?

"Aaron!" That sweet voice came roaring out of the ocean, harmonious and beautiful.

Aaron lowered the rifle and looked over at her, standing as the waves crashed and dispersed upon her curves.

"Come into the water before it gets too cold," Marta yelled from a distance.

"It's never too cold," Aaron replied from his rock.

"Of course, Superman," Marta replied playfully. "Sometimes, I forget who I'm talking to."

Aaron let loose a genuine smile, that smile he had only first flashed to her the day before on the fishing trawler. It was different than the one he used to seduce stewardesses and charm his way into laboratories. This was the mark of true happiness, a vestige from his past that he thought he no longer had need of. Apparently he was wrong.

He jumped into the cooling water, still infinitely warmer than the lakes of Alaska and approached her. He could see the smile upon her face, accented by the warm glow of the tropical sun. She seemed happy, more than he had expected. He expected relief but he had also expected melancholy. But not this, not joy; he hadn't expected this smile. As he approached her, she lightly splashed him, no more so than the natural waves had been doing.

"I'm not Superman," Aaron said. "I'm only what you turned me into."

"And what's that?" Marta asked.

Every step he took towards her, she retreated in unison as if to give him an extra moment to admire her as the gold lining of her bikini attempted to blind him of that pleasure. She was Venus emerging from her shell. She giggled inexplicably. He had never heard that before, although he had definitely imagined it. Somehow it was sweeter to his ear than his mind could ever conjure.

"Soldier?"

"Spy?"

"Rogue?"

"Human," Aaron replied.

She stopped and as a force unknown had compelled him; he did the same. She stared at him unceasingly. He did the same. But this was not the first time he had looked into her eyes. The first time he did was to check if she was lying about the chems in her house. Now as then, he couldn't read her. He could only behold her immense beauty, natural, and perfect, as he had always known but was of little consequence to his life. Now it was the only thing that mattered.

Neither of them spoke but they understood each other perfectly.

I know you want to. She pleaded with her eyes. Do it.

Are you sure? He replied with no words at all.

Yes. A glimmer in her pupil answered.

He reached forward and taking a hold of her by her waist, brought her close to him. Their bodies now intertwined, skin upon skin, eyes upon eyes. His gaze pierced hers; they waited. He could feel her chest rise and fall with the exchange of every breath; he could feel her heart pump ever faster. She had expected him to kiss her, but he wasn't going to make it that easy for her. He had brought her close, it was her turn now. Slowly, her hands rose to cup his cheeks, she closed her eyes and felt every contour and crevice of his face. She listened to the sound of the waves crashing against their bodies, feeling the wetness of the water upon her thighs, the warmth of the fading sun, his battle worn chest, she crafted her perfect moment and committed it to memory before gently planting her lips on to his.