A/N: It's 7 April and it's spitting snow in Middle Tennessee. I find this totally unacceptable.

---

It was true, she'd only been to the Rippner house for two days nearly a month before, but that didn't stop Melissa Bayley from immediately being able to break in the front door without alerting the doorman, fool the elevator into thinking the keycard that she had actually matched the one in its system and make it to the sixth floor of the place before anyone was the wiser. The doors slid open and she held the thick stack of papers in her hands against her chest, taking a strong stride out and turning to walk toward Lisa Rippner, whose head she could see sticking up from the couch. She was about to open her mouth when she noticed two other women who were also in the living room.

'And then last week, during the full moon, I had a guest utterly spazzing at me because his phone didn't work and he was convinced that he was going to have a heart attack and not be able to call for help,' said another redhead, her eyes wide as she spoke in a tone that seemed almost stream-of-conscious. 'I swear, there is a sign outside the hotel that only crazy people can see, and it says "hey crazy people, come stay here!"'

By the time Melissa made it to where the other redhead could see her, Lisa was just smiling uncomfortably. 'That's why I don't work at a hotel anymore.'

'Not all of us can marry an insanely rich gu—' she started before putting her hand over her mouth.

The woman sitting next to her gave her a very dirty look before looking at Lisa. 'I'm sorry, Mrs Rippner. You know how my little sister is—flighty.'

'Hello, Merit.'

The older redheaded sister looked from Lisa to Melissa. 'Melissa-motherfucking-Bayley! How are you?'

Merit walked over to her, her arms held open wide. The two women hugged as Melissa spoke. 'What are you doing here?'

'Word's gotten around about Jackson,' she said, stepping back and raising her eyebrows. 'My sister was coming up here for a convention, so I thought I'd just tag along and see what was up.'

'Liar,' said Melissa with a laugh. 'Lyna told me that you saw Jackson on the subway before he disappeared.'

Merit smiled at her. 'I didn't realise you were still speaking to Lyna.'

A long moment passed, the two women smiling awkwardly at each other before Melissa broke their impromptu staring contest and turned to hold out her stack of papers toward Lisa. 'I looked up all of Jackson's aliases and all of them have been out of use since right before the two of you got married except for one of them.'

Lisa reached out and took the stack of papers, flipping through them. 'Christian Poulain? Why does that name sound familiar?'

'Poulain, like the head of the World Society,' Merit butted in. 'When he was first working in the Society, he was given the alias to command respect, and when he quit, Poulain made him keep the passport and other files for the identity.'

Lisa made a scoffing noise. 'Why?'

'Well,' Merit started. 'He's kind of like the heir apparent in a monarchy. Poulain legally adopted him back in, what, 2003?'

'2004,' said Melissa, her arms crossed over her chest.

There was a period of silence as Lisa scanned the pages. 'These go back for the last few months.'

'He's been living a double life!' said Cynthia, slapping her hands on her knees.

The two older redheads openly stared at her, Merit shaking her head. 'Cynthia...'

'Train tickets to Geneva from Zürich,' Lisa muttered. 'That was for the funeral.'

'Some of the charges were made here in New York,' Melissa said, walking over and leaning to run her finger down one of the pages. 'There, there, and there. Just little insignificant purchases, but all made late at night. Didn't you say that his interns would come tell you that he wasn't coming home until late?'

'What does that have to do with anything?'

'I think you need to talk to his interns,' replied Melissa. 'It wouldn't surprise me if Jackson's been just disappearing from work in little spurts and regressing a few years. I don't know why he'd have the Poulain passport and cards on him, and I think that's something we really need to look into.'

'When I saw him leaving the Miami headquarters after his resignation, he put the folder with the Poulain identity in the back seat of his Audi, the one he totalled not too long after on the day of your wedding.'

There was something odd about a woman she'd never met rattling off details of her husband's life, but by this time, Lisa was basically used to things like this. 'So do you think he didn't retrieve the folder from the car?'

'It was actually returned to the Miami office by a tow truck operator who knew the crest of the company. It sat in my desk for awhile, but when Anaïs started being phased out, I changed desks and that's the last time I saw it.'

'You mean when Eleni started getting all up...?' began Melissa.

'Yeah,' said Merit, nodding.

'Who was the woman on the subway with Jackson the day he disappeared?' asked Lisa, staring directly at Merit.

'Blonde woman, but it was definitely dyed,' she said, trying to picture the woman in her head. 'Wore a tailored suit, had a leather bag with her. When he first saw her, he was really happy, thanked her for something, they chatted about your son, but then their voices got lower and they talked seriously. She had him basically pressed against one of the doors, and he tried to get away every now and then, but she wouldn't let him past. There was a little scuffle between them right before the train got into the station, and I think she might have injected him with something.'

'What, like a psychedelic?' asked Melissa.

'Why did you immediately pull for that one?' replied Lisa defensively.

'Did you not see how crazy he was?' gaped Melissa. 'That was not Jackson Rippner in any way, shape or form.'

'Seemed normal to me,' muttered Lisa half-heartedly.

Yet another uncomfortable silence fell over the room as Lisa looked down at the papers in front of her.

'No, these can't be right,' Lisa said softly. 'I know for a fact that Jackson was with me when this purchase was made, but it says he was in Italy.'

Melissa knit her brow, crossing to Lisa and pulling the papers from her hands. She raised an eyebrow. 'You're sure he was with you?'

'It was the day we found out we were having twins,' she said quietly and surely. 'He came to the appointment with me, then we spent the rest of the day with each other.'

Merit walked over to Melissa and looked over her shoulder at the credit card records. 'Maybe none of these were transactions done by him. I mean, it's not that hard to pretend to be someone else, especially because no one checks IDs anymore.'

'Maybe someone was doing it so that he'd have something to look at as proof of his existence as that person,' said Cynthia with a shrug. 'I mean, if he forgot who he was, and then someone printed off those to show to him, he'd probably be more willing to believe that he'd been that person before losing his memory.'

'Did she just say something... viable?' asked Merit incredulously.

'You're mean,' murmured Cynthia, crossing her arms over her chest.

There was a long moment of silence before Melissa gasped and put her hands up to her mouth. 'Oh God, do you think it's...?'

Merit turned and looked at her. 'No way, Pe—'

'Shh,' said Melissa.

'What?' asked Lisa, sitting up on the edge of her seat.

'The name won't mean anything to you,' Melissa responded, shaking her head. 'Don't worry, we'll take care of it. Your job now is just to take care of those babies.'

The saccharine smile Melissa gave her just boiled her blood, but the anger was cooled immediately as the doors open and Hediyeh bounced in with a cell phone pressed to her ear, throwing down her bag before looking at the women in the room. Her mouth dropped open.

She paused, sliding the phone down the side of her face and slowly snapping it shut. Looking at the four women silently, she slinked up the stairs leaving an awkward, questioning silence in her wake.

---

Lisa Rippner had lived in New York City long enough to know to avoid getting anywhere near Midtown. Murray Hill was fine, SoHo was all right, Chinatown was okay as long as one stayed off the main drag, so on and so forth. Midtown, however, was the home of such things as Times Square, and no real New Yorker wanted to get caught up in that shit. However, today, Lisa found herself going straight into the heart of Midtown, only a couple of blocks up from Times Square and one block from Central Park. As she got off at the subway station and walked up the stairs, she remembered that when they were looking for an apartment in the City, she and Jackson had gone up these exact stairs and he had pointed at one, announcing to her that Dr Elisabeth Millwood had been shot in that exact spot.

She would have avoided that station even if she weren't consciously avoiding Midtown.

It turned out that Lyna Melinyshyn was listed in the thick Manhattan phone book, but she was listed as L. Ruzicka. The entry in Jackson's black book was outdated, listing an address in Prague, but it offered her the woman's alternate name, so after checking the spelling, she just looked in the phone book they'd received a few weeks earlier. Lyna lived in an apartment at the posh Trump Parc, a gold façaded building right on Central Park South.

As she walked down the sidewalk under scaffolding for a building under renovation, she had to push past map-holding tourists and listen over the wet woosh of taxis. This part of town always looked dingy to her despite the extraneous lighting, and she was much more than happy when she was able to duck into the marble entry of the building. She unbuttoned her coat and shrugged it off, putting it over her arm before walking up to the doorman.

'Hello,' she said in a quiet voice. 'I'm here to see Lyna Ruzicka.'

'Is Miss Ruzicka expecting you?' he asked in an equally quiet voice.

'No,' Lisa responded. 'She's a work associate of my husband's, and I need to talk to her desperately. Is there any way you could call her?'

'May I tell her who is calling?'

'Lisa Rippner,' she responded as he picked up the phone and quickly dialled a number.

As he waited and spoke to Lyna, Lisa wandered around the foyer a bit, looking around the mirrored walls at her reflection. Not surprisingly, she looked absolutely exhausted. Her hair was a mess, her skin was splotchy, and the blouse she wore under her tweed jumper was all wrinkled. With a sigh, she ran her fingers through her hair, trying to tame the curls. After tucking her hair behind her ears, she smoothed out the dress over her stomach, thinking about how immaculate Lyna looked whenever she saw her. Her hair was always perfect; even without makeup, she had flawless skin; and above all, she was tall with an hourglass figure.

Her last few days had been a mess. Since talking with Merit and Melissa, she was absolutely convinced that there was another woman involved with Jackson. Whether it was the woman on the subway or someone else, it gave her a very sudden inferiority complex. Had Jackson run away to be with this other woman rather than staying with her because of something she'd done? Did he not want to have any more children, or was he no longer attracted to her because of her pregnancy? This track of thought tormented her and without even realising it, she started crying.

'No, no, come on now,' said a voice behind her, and she felt thin arms slip around her shoulders and lead her towards the elevator. 'Let us go upstairs.'

Once they were in the elevator, Lisa turned to look at Lyna and was relaxed by what she saw. Lyna was dressed in flannel pyjama pants, her feet in fuzzy house shoes, and wore a hoodie from the bookstore Strand over a man's undershirt. Her long black hair was in an elastic, the front held taut but the length in messy loops and falling down. No makeup was on her face, making her freckles stand out under her glasses, which had one arm held on to the frames with a safety pin. She stood with a hand on one hip, watching the lights signalling the passing of floors. When the door opened again, she reached back and took Lisa's hand, leading her to an apartment that had the door propped open by the lock. She pulled her in, closing the door behind her.

As Lyna locked the door, Lisa looked at the incredibly messy apartment. Three computers sat on a table, each with the screen full of open windows, and there were papers on the desk, on the window seat, all over the tables, everywhere. There was very little lighting anywhere but at the desk.

'I have been working a little to find your husband,' she said, walking by Lisa and rubbing her eyes. She made her way to the kitchen, pouring a cup of coffee from the pot on the counter. 'Would you care for a cuppa?'

Lisa put her hand atop her stomach. 'I'm not supposed to have any caffeine.'

'Is that so?' Lyna asked, taking a long sip of her coffee before walking past Lisa again.

Lisa took a few steps into the main living area of the small apartment as Lyna went over to the couch and pushed some of the papers to one side to clear a space.

'Please, sit,' Lyna said, gesturing to the empty square as she walked over and dragged her computer chair over near the couch.

Putting her coat over the arm of the couch, Lisa sat down and looked at the Ukrainian woman who seemed so incredibly different in her own environment. Gone was the cold assassin who fit so well with her husband, who her husband was always complaining about because of her stand-offish personality, and instead it was like she was sitting with an old friend or some random graduate student she'd run into on the street.

'You are wondering who Eleni is,' said Lyna suddenly before taking another sip of her coffee.

Lisa looked shocked. 'How did you—'

'You know that she is the secretary for the head of the World Society,' interrupted Lyna. 'You found her business card that she gave Jackson when they met after the funeral.'

'Had they met before the funeral?'

'Not that I know of, at least not face to face,' the other woman replied. 'She has only been in the Society full-time for a few years. Before that, she was an understudy with Dr Greene, and she wrote her doctoral thesis on your husband.'

She paused to take another sip.

'Not using his name, of course,' she added. 'She was trying to show ties between childhood abuse, alexithymia and intelligence. In her conclusion, she claimed that overly intelligent alexithymics are more likely to experience dissociative experiences because they are better at constructing believable alternate identities. In her test subject, your husband, she found that there were three completely separate personalities: the host, alter one and alter two. The host, as I am sure you know, is the core personality. He is the intelligent, articulate, manipulative man who is so organised and can think on his feet. Alter one is very violent, has very little emotional capability, and tends to result to physical violence rather than emotional manipulation. Alter two is very childish, a complete opposite to alter one, and is very clingy and dependent. In some situations, he can cycle from one personality to the other without even realising it. I am sure you have seen this?'

'A lot,' Lisa admitted with resignation. 'But I didn't realise it was a problem. I mean, we all have our ups and downs.'

'She determined that if unmedicated and untreated, he would eventually experience a lapse called a dissociative fugue,' Lyna continued. 'She presented her thesis not long after he quit the Society, and she told the patron that if Jackson's disease were not properly diagnosed, when the fugue finally came, if they were keeping a careful eye on him, there was a chance that his fugue could be guided.'

'How would you guide something like that?'

'Well,' Lyna said, leaning forward a bit. 'Dr Millwood tried Ativan, and when that did not work, the patron gave her the command to kill him.'

'What?' Lisa reacted, tipping her head. 'Did you know this?'

'I learned it,' replied Lyna, toeing at some of the papers on the floor. 'Merit was able to provide me with some files I did not have access to. The request came into the Miami office and was forwarded to Dr Greene, who then passed it to Dr Millwood. They left a very messy paper trail.'

'So why didn't they just give up after they didn't kill him?'

'There is no idea of let and let live in our community, Lisa,' Lyna said, reaching out to put her hand on Lisa's knee. 'We have all or nothing, which is why I have found that not only did Poulain approve sending me to aid Keefe, he also approved the plan that Eleni had submitted to Hezbollah.'

'The World Society planned the attack by Hezbollah?' asked Lisa, incredulous. 'Isn't there something in the rules of your society that disallows conflicting assignments?'

'The Society is one huge power struggle,' explained Lyna. 'Poulain is at the top giving everyone commands, and everything depends on his voice being spread to the masses. For many years, he had Anaïs run everything for him, but when the Jackson situation came up, he split his loyalties in half. My team was headed by Anaïs and the Hezbollah team by Dr Eleni Petalas. In the end, my team won, so Eleni was demoted and spent a few years in research. Then, one night, she had a breakthrough and announced it to Poulain. Within a week, Anaïs had killed herself.'

'What kind of breakthrough?'

'Some sort of way to kill you or Jackson, some way to incapacitate you, or perhaps even just a way to set off Jackson's impending dissociative fugue,' Lyna rattled off. 'We have not found much outside of footage from Jackson fighting the blonde woman in the subway station. I have identified her as Major Phoebe Couturier of the United States Air Force. Are you familiar with her?'

'I've heard the name before,' Lisa said, looking pensively. 'She was in Syria with Jackson.'

'Yes, she was part of my team. Upon seeing her in the video, I tried to get in touch with her, but she did not answer. Her friend Dorothy said that Phoebe came home one day, packed all of her things and left without a word. She is now being investigated for desertion.'

'How is she tied to Poulain?'

Lyna shifted in her seat. 'His granddaughter, but I am not completely certain he knows that. Matthias' son participated in a love suicide with his lover and assassin, a Turkish woman named Meryem. What a good number of people didn't know what that Meryem was also the mother of Lucien's only daughter, Phoebe. She was raised all around the Middle East by her mother's family and was actually drafted into the Society because of her skills, not because of family connections.'

'Okay, so you know that Phoebe and Eleni are involved in Jackson's disappearance,' said Lisa slowly. 'So why not go after them to find him?'

Lyna laughed lightly. 'I have been put on the no-fly list.'

Lisa raised her eyebrows. 'The no-fly list. All right, then send someone else.'

'All of us are on the no-fly list,' replied Lyna. 'Me, Merit, all of the people laid off by the Society. Eleni knew what she was doing.'

'You have to be kidding me,' said Lisa with resignation.

'I wish,' Lyna said in a half voice, and for the first time, Lisa saw that her husband's Ukrainian nemesis was fallible. 'I have been doing everything I can, Lisa. I have the places he has been, the places he is most likely going, but unless I can find someone trained to go after them, there is nothing I can do. I am trying to keep track of him, trying to make sure that he is all right, but other than just observation...'

Silence fell over the room, only ambient sounds and the whirring of Lyna's computers passing between the two women. A few moments later, Lyna stood up and walked to Lisa, shoving the papers over some more so she could sit down beside her. She set her hands on her knees as Lisa stared at the wall opposite from them, and Lisa nearly jumped when Lyna's arms went over her shoulders and across her chest to pull her into a hug. It wasn't overly cold, but not like a hug her children or parents would give her, and yet it meant more coming from Lyna than from anyone else.

'I am so sorry,' Lyna said from beside Lisa's head, her glasses pressing into Lisa's hair. 'I wish I could do more for you.'

'Do you...' Lisa started before choking up and putting the back of her hand to her mouth. She closed her eyes for a moment before continuing. 'Do you know if he went with her by choice?'

Again, the silence as Lyna collected her thoughts. 'I do not believe he did. I think your husband is just very unhealthy; his mind is in a bad place.'

Lisa's face crushed and she leaned into Lyna. 'Is there anything I could have done to stop this from happening?'

Lyna's head shook against Lisa's. 'No—Eleni was right, it was inevitable. She may come across as an idiot, but she is one of those secretive geniuses that no one expects. It is her best and worst attribute.'