Skye listened to the chatter coming from her right earring after they had split up.
"Join the IMF... see the world... on a monitor. In a closet," Benji mumbled. "Okay, I have eyes. Searching."
She paced at the back of the auditorium, scanning the audience from behind, bathed in half-light from the stage. Dressed in red she seemed to blend into the elegant carpet and the seats. Her gaze travelled upwards along the boxes, half in shadow.
"Talk to me, Benji..."
"Nothing yet, stand by."
"I know you're here... Where are you..." Ethan whispered to himself.
"Ethan, I worry about the chancellor," Skye said, eyeing the box he and his wife were in. Very visible places with only one exit - the nightmare of every protection job. "I'll keep an eye on him."
"Copy," Hunt said.
Skye left the auditorium and made her way upstairs. She could still hear the singers on stage, just muffled now.
"Uh, Ethan, I might have something for you. Can't confirm."
"Where?"
"Backstage, I'll direct you." There was a pause. "Take the door on your left. He should be right in front of you."
Skye made her way around the curving corridor that provided access to the boxes.
"Benji, did you see that?"
"See what?"
"The woman."
"What woman? Where are you, I can't see you."
Skye hesitated at the door. She couldn't go in without explanation. And she would almost certainly be noticed. Should she just stay here, ready to act once she heard something? She felt cool metal on her thigh, underneath her dress, slightly warmed due to the proximity to her skin.
The radio crackled. Skye thought it would break up, but then Benji's voice came through in short bursts. "...than, come in... the lighting booth... copy?"
Lighting booth. "I'm coming," she said, hoping they received, and headed for the nearest staircase.
/\/\/\/\/\/\
Skye ripped the door open. Two operators were in the corner, a man and a woman, one on the ground, one still in his seat, possibly dead, hopefully just unconscious. A man stood with his back to her, tall, in a dark blue police uniform, holding a rifle aimed at the stage, ready to pull the trigger. The shot went off, muffled to a hiss of air by the silencer. Skye didn't waste a second. Silent as a cat she paced towards the man and had her arm across his throat before he could shoot again. He dropped the weapon in surprise, but immediately started putting up a fight, holding on to the woman's arm, trying to throw her off. Skye's feet left the ground.
On stage, the Nessun Dorma went on undisturbed. It felt surreal.
Holt tried to land a punch, but instead of fighting like a man he just crossed the distance between them and the wall and pinned the agent against it with all of his body weight. It knocked the breath out of her.
The door flew open again. In a flurry of black and white, Benji threw himself against the gunman, successfully knocking him away from Skye. She fell to the floor and tried to breathe while Benji landed another punch. The gunman seemed unimpressed, pushed Benji against the wall much like Skye before him and swung his fist at him again. Benji dodged it, so that the punch connected with the wall instead.
Skye was back on her feet. She had retrieved her knife and did not hesitate to ram it into the man's side. For the first time during the fight he cried out when she pulled the blade back out. Skye backed away, anticipating his next move. He turned on the spot, trying to reach the injury, standing in the middle of the room between the window and Benji.
Suddenly he sagged down. Benji flinched when the bullet hit the wall right next to his own head. He looked at the stage, where the shot must have originated and saw a flicker of bright yellow dress. Having no time to think, he scrambled over the dead body and pushed up the switches controlling the stage lights, effectively blinding any shooter out there. The next second Skye grabbed his arm and pulled him out of the booth, out of the shooter's line of sight, into the corridor – into safety. In the same motion Benji felt her turn him and next thing he knew his back was against the wall again. He was about to ask what the hell was wrong now, when he suddenly felt Skye's lips on his. His eyes fluttered shut in surprise when she tugged his collar to get him closer. The fabric of her dress felt heavenly smooth under his hands when they went over her body until settling somewhere on her back. The kiss didn't last long enough, and he bent down further when she drew away, reflexively attempting to keep their faces close.
"Let's get out of here," she said, and he could feel her breath hot on his skin. Still, it got him back to reality, which he had temporarily left.
"Yeah," he breathed. His heart was beating insanely fast, but it didn't have anything to do with the fact that someone had just tried to shoot him anymore.
She hadn't kissed him like that in months.
"He was aiming at the chancellor, I saw it on the video feed," he updated her between panted breaths as Skye led him down staircases and along corridors. "Where are we going?"
"I'm hoping for an access point to the parking garage," she answered quickly. "But first of all, out. If he hit him, they're gonna lock this place down."
"Ethan," Benji said concerned.
Skye nodded. "We're gonna need a car."
Benji pushed her into a door when he heard people running close behind them. It wasn't locked. He trusted his instinct and shoved both of them inside. They peeked through the crack he left open, heard rushed voices, German.
"That's the chancellor," Benji whispered flustered.
Skye's eyes widened. "That's our chance."
"Wait, wha-" But Skye already dragged him out of their momentary hiding place. They followed the security detail, straight down to the parking garage.
She waited until the people who had led them here were through and gave them an extra five seconds, then pushed the heavy door open and the two agents were presented with a large array of cars, parked more or less neatly in their spaces. The black van holding the chancellor, his wife, and their security was just speeding away.
Benji went ahead with long strides and stopped before a sleek black BMW. He looked at Skye, asking a silent question. She just nodded, went to the driver's door while simultaneously gathering her skirt to reach the knife strapped to her thigh. Benji saw blood on the blade when she pulled it out of the sheath. He watched her ram it down between door and window. She had it open in a matter of seconds, reached in and cut the alarm just as quickly. "Drive or navigate?"
"Drive," Benji chose and they took their seats.
Their car left the garage up the winding ramp just seconds after the chancellor's van. Out on the street, they could already see it again, tinted windows and all, nicely bullet-proof. Police cars were everywhere. Skye exhaled in relief as they overtook them. This car was solid, he was safe for tonight.
"Do you see Ethan?" Benji asked and turned – probably illegally so – onto the pavement between Kärntner Straße and Vienna State Opera.
An explosion to their right swallowed any answer. The black van that Skye had just deemed so solid was torn apart in a cloud of fire that threw it almost a metre into the air. People streaming out of the opera screamed, others just stood there in shock as burning car parts rained down all around.
Benji tore his gaze loose first from the inferno. He had spotted Ethan, and there was so much police around that, no matter how horrific this was, first of all they had to leave. The Brit floored it just to come to a stop again a few seconds later.
"Get in!" he shouted through the open window, then stepped on the gas once he heard the rear door closing. "What the-?! She tried to shoot us!" he exclaimed when a glance into the rearview mirror revealed his third passenger, dressed in bright yellow.
"That doesn't make her a bad person."
"Excuse me?!" Skye half turned in the front passenger seat to shoot a frosty glance first at Hunt, then at the dark-haired woman who accompanied him.
"I did not," she said calmly. "As matter of fact I saved your lives."
"That looked slightly different from where I was standing," Skye replied coldly.
Ethan ignored them and crossed over to the other half of the back seat. "I am gonna have to search you."
"You need to let me go," the woman replied matter-of-factly.
Benji chuckled sarcastically. "Not a chance!"
"I assume you were deep cover in London," Hunt continued unfazed by the remark. "But isn't this taking the role a little far?"
"Wait a minute, do you know her?" Benji asked disbelievingly.
"Who is she?" Skye wanted to know.
"We've never been formally introduced," Ethan said while patting down the yellow dress. "But I'm pretty sure she's British Intelligence?"
"Ilsa Faust," the woman replied drily as he extracted a lipstick from underneath her dress. "You're Ethan Hunt. And that shade is very hard to find."
Promptly he pocketed the lipstick. "What were you doing at the opera tonight?"
"What, aside from killing the chancellor," Benji chimed in.
"Saving your life in London put me in a tight spot with some very dangerous people," Faust explained, following the motion of Ethan's hands. "I was sent to kill the chancellor to regain their trust."
"Ha, so you admit that you killed him!" Benji exclaimed.
"I went through the motions," Ilsa stressed. "That's not the same thing."
"Same outcome at any rate," Skye gave to consider.
Ethan meanwhile pulled the hairpin out of her bun and looked wearily at the sharpened end for a moment. "Put him in the hospital – take him out of harm's way."
"Same thing you tried to do," Faust agreed.
Benji snorted sarcastically. "You're not gonna believe that, are you? What about the rest of her team?"
"You mean those other two idiots?" Faust now addressed Benji directly. "I can only assume they were redundancies."
"Redundancies that were authorised to kill?" Skye asked.
Ilsa frowned. "What do you mean?"
"In case you didn't follow through: one man to kill the chancellor, the other one to kill you," Hunt clarified. "A test."
"Second one I failed, thanks to you," she shot back.
Ethan continued his train of thought. "And the car bomb was insurance."
Skye suddenly patted Benji's shoulder lightly.
He followed her glance via the rear-view mirror. "Uh, we have a tail," he announced.
Ethan held his phone up to Ilsa's face. It showed the drawing he made. "Who is he?"
Ilsa looked at it for a split second, then back at Ethan. "We're after the same thing. If you want to bring down the Syndicate, you have to let me out."
"Uh, they're closing," Benji said.
"This," Ilsa said, "needs to look like an escape, so you just throw me out anywhere."
"You're staying with us until you explained yourself," Skye said.
"Tell me who he is," Ethan repeated.
That was when the first bullets hit the car.
"Change of plan, throw her out!" Benji shouted and ducked.
"You have everything you need to find me!" Ilsa called out, and none of them could react fast enough to prevent her from opening the car's door and throwing herself onto the cobblestone despite the speed they were going at. Ethan had the sense to drag the door shut again and looked through the rear window at Faust, slowly getting up from the ground in the blinding headlights of their pursuers' car. Then Benji rounded a corner, and his line of sight was broken.
