A/N This chapter is a weird one. Very hard to write, and it diverges pretty sharply from canon.
"Have a good night."
"You've never seen a naked spy before?"
"Drop it or she dies."
"Reboot."
"Has it been four hours yet?" asked Chuck.
"More like four minutes," said Sarah, with a giggle. "Not even. And I don't think one of those Cialis-doctors would be any help in this situation. Don't worry. I handled it before, I can handle it now."
"Oh," Chuck gasped, "Ah." He had kept it up for what felt like hours. Sarah had been trying to help him with his little…problem, but there was only so much even she could do.
"How's that, Chuck?" she asked, a little breathless. The kissing had been wonderful, that is, had worked wonders. The reboot had been successful, and successfully resisted, but for some reason his arm had remained fully extended, aimed at nothing.
"I think…yes, I think that's got it," Chuck gasped, the gun and the hand holding beginning at last to give in to the relentless call of gravity.
"Good," said Sarah, stepping back reluctantly. She looked around. "Where's Jones?"
"No idea," said Chuck, massaging his elbow, trying to get it to bend. "She gave me a five-minute warning about this guy and vamoosed."
"She has to still be around, monitoring the test from somewhere," said Sarah. "I have to go. I'm not supposed to be here." She took a cloth from her purse and swiped at his mouth, removing lipstick traces. "Good luck."
Chuck smiled at her. "You're my good luck."
She smiled back before turning to go, picking her way with midnight silence between the cars, alert for any sounds. Hearing footsteps to the left she immediately turned right and merged with shadows, vanishing.
Sam Jones moved among the train cars, not entirely sure of her location, following the scuff marks in the stones. She stepped between two cars and saw him, Carmichael, gun in hand and his target on the ground. At least she hoped that was his target. His arm was still out, he must have just taken Perry down. Strange she hadn't heard it. She lifted her phone to her mouth. "I see him," she said softly. "Looks like he took care of Perry. He's moving around, cleaning up."
"Excellent," said Shaw, as if this was somehow especially good news. "I'll send a crew. Continue with the exercise."
She moved out from between the cars, wondering what kind of loser agent Carmichael must be, if Shaw thought he'd forget even the basics of after-action site maintenance. The air, channeled by the trains, brought the smells of blood and death to her nose, and she retched. "Yeah," said Chuck, looking her way, "You never quite get used to it, do you?"
He didn't seem terribly affected by it. She wasn't sure if she was jealous or not. "Good job," she said. "I guess."
"No," said Chuck. "In a good job he never would have seen me coming, and thank you for that, by the way, although I suppose that was more Shaw's doing than yours."
She raised her hands defensively. "Just the messenger."
Chuck stepped forward and picked up a gun, not anywhere near the victim's hand. "See if you can find his knife, would you?" He put the gun in his pocket and brought out his phone, on flashlight mode, and started scanning the ground around him. He flashed it briefly up a little past the body. "It should be over there somewhere. Big black thing. Probably got blood all over it, too, so don't just pick it up."
Ah, a knife. That explained why she didn't hear a shot. "Thanks for the warning," said Jones, actually sounding grateful. She took Perry's handkerchief from his pocket, since he wouldn't be using it any time soon.
"You're welcome," said Chuck. As she walked over to the spot he'd indicated, he said, "I gave him every chance to surrender."
"Of course you did," said Jones. "Better to just step out of the bathroom and pop 'em, you know?"
Chuck flashed his light at her. "Bathroom?" In the middle of a train station?
"You know what I mean," she said harshly. "Just do it. Do it and be done."
"You wouldn't let them turn around, let them see what's coming?"
"No," said Jones, looking down. "Not any more. Here's your damned knife." It looked sticky. She picked it up with the cloth.
"Stick it in his pocket, I don't want it." Chuck bent down, picking up something shiny from the stones, his spent cartridge. "Crew coming?"
She stuck a marker in the pocket with the knife, something for the cleaners to trace. "Yes."
"Good," said Chuck, putting the cartridge in his pocket, along with the phone. They'd taken care of the details, let someone else do the heavy lifting. The body was a lot easier to see in the dark. "Let's get out of here."
At Casey's apartment…
Sarah listened to the sound of her phone ringing. Come on, Chuck, pick up. "Are you sure it was Jones?" asked Sarah, looking at the photo of Anatoli on Casey's phone. He had left the mess to be discovered by that poor maid. He didn't want to but cleaning the scene would have told Jones someone was on to her. When the poor lady had run out screaming he'd slipped in to vet the scene and get some shots.
"Yes," said Casey, pouring himself a couple of fingers of his favorite. "But I can't prove it. No evidence, just like she was trained to do. She took the stairs, they didn't have any cameras in the one I took. She knows enough to keep her head down. That backward glance was a rookie mistake, but she's a rookie. Or she was."
Not anymore. "I never thought she'd be a good killer," said Sarah, looking at the almost invisible red stain on the red shirt. One shot, close range, and no mess. Chuck's phone went to voicemail. "Chuck, call me back the second you get this."
"I never thought she'd be a traitor," said Casey, as she put her own phone away. "Guess we were both wrong. She seems to be pretty good at both."
"Have you told Beckman yet?" Sarah slid the other phone back to Casey as if expecting him to take care of that right now.
"Told her what?" asked Casey, pocketing the device. "That an agent of the CIA killed a known Ring courier at the scene of a transaction? Even if Jones copped to being here, and there's no reason why she should, you know that's how she'd spin it."
"So you have told the General."
Grunt. "Of course. She wants us, and I guess that means you, to get the proof and bring her down if you have to."
Easy for him to say. Casey hated traitors. Sarah sighed. "If I have to."
"What the matter with you, Walker?" said Casey. "You used to be a killer."
"I was never a killer, Casey. I was just good at it." She looked down at…something. "Today I saw a machine use Chuck's body to kill, like it was carrying out a program, and I realized that's what I've been doing all this time. Graham, the Farm, my own father, everybody's been programming me my whole life." She laughed a little. "They wanted me to be a seducer, can you believe it?"
Casey had heard the rumors of Sarah Walker as an assassin even better than him. He'd come to know the reality of Sarah Walker on a long-term protective detail. Whatever 'honest' meant in the spy world, Sarah Walker was honest. Bullets don't lie. If there was one thing this woman was most ill-equipped to do it was to seduce, betray, or abandon anyone. "You're kidding, right?"
She shook her head. "They changed my lesson plan when they found out how much I hated working cons with my dad. Started doing more small-arms training instead." She smiled, grimly. "Then they gave me a red test."
Casey set his glass down. The booze was doing something to his hearing. "You got a red test?"
"Not just a red test. I got the Red Test," said Sarah. She put her finger to her lips.
"Paris?" asked Casey, not doubting, just confirming. "That was you?" Sarah nodded. "Christ, Walker, that thing's legendary."
Sarah leaned on the table. "That thing haunted my thoughts for days, my dreams for months. The worst day of my life. But I passed."
"The only one."
"No one passes. No one is expected to pass," said Sarah, pounding the table. "They prefer their red operatives to be broken, like cut diamonds. Leave that useless conscience behind. It made them more controllable, for as long as they lasted." She lifted her hand, studied it as it flexed. "I was bent–"
Casey saluted her with his glass. "But not broken."
"No, not broken, I know that now," said Sarah, standing upright. "I seemed a horror to myself, I can only imagine what kind of a horror I was to them." A self-driving killer. Only a person who still had their soul could suffer as she had. "My handlers were terrified of me, eventually only Graham had the nerve." She smiled, not grim at all. "I always wondered why they discontinued that program right after."
Sam Jones went back to her hotel room, opening the door onto darkness. No one was there, and she was glad for that. She didn't really want to deal with anybody right now. She flipped on the light, and stopped. On the table in the laughingly-so-called living area lay a package, wrapped in blue foil.
She opened the package, sliding papers and a small electronic recorder onto her table. The paper was a ticket. To nowhere, to anywhere, she couldn't manage to care, and tossed it onto the table. She didn't touch the recorder either, but that piece of business opened itself. Daniel Shaw's face appeared on the screen. "Congratulations, Agent Jones…"
She left it to play while she washed her hands. Again.
"Until now," asked Casey.
"Until now," said Sarah. She looked him in the eye. "Until Chuck."
"You think that was a Red Test?"
"It looked like one to me," said Sarah, the only agent alive who knew what a real red test would look like, from the inside. "Shaw doesn't care about Chuck, he just needs to make sure the Intersect works, something that can walk in, kill, and walk away again. Like me, but without the scary parts."
"Like Shaw himself, but with less personality." Casey considered the matter for a moment. "They think they have that now."
"They do, and I can't tell them otherwise." She pointed at Casey, so hard he could feel the touch on his chest. "Neither can you, or they'll just send us away completely and try again. I'm not going to let him be the person I was. Or me. They tried, but I'm not a killer. I'm never going to be a killer again."
"Pretty impressive body count for a non-killer." Casey poured a small amount into a second glass. One last shot. And they say I'm not funny.
"That was my tenant," said Sarah, getting it. "I'm the landlord, and I'm kicking her out and keeping her stuff. The parts I like, anyway." The parts Chuck likes. She drank the scotch in one gulp, and slammed the glass down on the table. "The rest is going out in the trash."
"So what are you going to do when you find Jones?" asked Casey, keeping his partner on mission. "Throw that gun at her?"
Sarah thumbed Chuck's contact again, and heard his voicemail message start. She killed the connection. "Let me answer that when I find her."
A/N2 This story is beginning to scare me. I don't know where it's going. I hope you'll drop me a line and tell me what you think of this rewrite so far.