It was the end of another long therapy session, one piecing together things in his past to pinpoint the exact time that his alternate personalities were developed. It came to light that they'd actually come in over a number of years, years fostered by Dr Greene mostly, and Jackson was actually able to begin piecing together important events like his parents' deaths. He and his therapist were about to bid each other adieu when the other man spoke.

'Your wife went into labour yesterday,' said Jackson's therapist, an older man named Richard Masterson who spent his time between Bellevue and Manhattan Psychiatric.

Jackson stared into the distance, trying to do the math in his head. 'It's late December still, isn't it? She's not due until February.'

Dr Masterson smiled at him. 'I'm glad you remember that.'

'I've been making a good effort to cancel out the other voices and focus on the familiar,' he replied calmly. 'Are the babies all right?'

'They were able to stop the labour from progressing, but I have a feeling your Lisa is going to be in the hospital until after the babies are born.'

Jackson leaned forward in his chair, his hands clasped in his lap as he looked past them before glancing back up at Dr Masterson. 'Is there any chance at all that I can see her?'

The man tipped his head sympathetically. 'I don't feel safe yet letting you near her.'

The way he put the phase nearly broke Jackson's heart. For a fleeting moment, he felt his first alter try to come to the surface, but this time he actively suppressed it, trying to keep in mind what he had read about neutralisation in the papers he'd been assigned by the doctor. A sharp headache quickly found its way from his left temple to across his entire head, and when he finally managed to get himself together, he spoke in a hoarse, tired voice.

'When can I see her?' he asked, his tone quickly changing to begging. 'I need to see my wife. I need to make sure she's okay.'

There was a moment of conflicted silence before Dr Masterson spoke again. 'I'll talk to your wife and her doctors and see how they feel about it. You'll need to be chaperoned, but if they feel it's all right for you to visit her, you can. As soon as I get back to Bellevue, I'll make a point of speaking with them.'

---

Hediyeh had never been to Paris before, but she'd always heard stories about it from her father. He told her about sitting on top of a roof in the city smoking a cigarette as he looked over toward the Eiffel Tower, about standing inside the open cube of a monument called the Arche de la Défense when it rained, about chasing pigeons across the courtyard in front of the Sacré Coeur when no one was looking. Landing in de Gaulle airport brought all of these memories to the front as she walked through the delicate glass-topped terminal that he described in stories about flying to Africa. He always had breakfast at this one café in the centre of the terminal and talked about how the security guards always got snappy with American citizens when they tried to go through security at the checkpoint there.

She smiled as she watched an American man trying to go through the checkpoint, his shoes held in his hands and his laptop out for the scanner. Both of the security guards gave him odd looks before telling him to put his shoes on.

One good thing that Jackson had taught her was reading French. She wasn't the best at speaking it, but reading was no problem at all. Armed with a little Langenscheidt French-English dictionary that she got from Jackson for Christmas the year before, she looked at directional signs, trying to find her way to the RER station at the airport. According to a couple of maps she consulted on the flight, it was the B line she needed to find, and that line would take her to the centre of town, a station called Châtelet les Halles, where she could change to another line to get to the Gare de Lyon in the 12e arrondissement, or more specifically a hotel on the rue d'Austerlitz called the Relais de Paris.

Riding on the RER was absolutely no problem for the New York City-savvy girl. In fact, she realised with a smile, it was a billion times easier than the MTA system—the lines actually made sense rather than just seeming to be a huge network that was added on piece by piece over the years. She didn't seem out of place, didn't have a camera around her neck, wasn't looking around with wide eyes at each stop—in short, she looked like she was just a normal Parisian girl, a banlieuse, going from her house in the suburbs to go shopping downtown at Les Galleries Lafayette.

Once she got to the Gare de Lyon, she bought a ticket on the train to Geneva the next afternoon. When she started making the plans to go abroad, she laid out a very careful timetable to assure that she wouldn't move too quickly. She knew what she had to do, but she didn't want to jump on the fact. If she picked up speed, she might find herself suddenly on someone's radar.

---

'She is not on any of the flight manifests from any of the local airports, and none of the tickets issued at Penn Station match her either,' said Lyna, looking across the table at Augustine, who was basically working as the agent for the Rippner family.

'She's not stupid,' Augustine said, pressing her fingers harder to the sides of her warm cup as someone opened the door and let cold air into the café. 'There's no way she actually used her own name.'

'She is eleven years old,' Lyna replied with a disbelieving look on her face. 'There is no way an eleven year old was able to have the connections to establish a new identity, and it is doubtful that she was able to pass through an airport or train station without being noticed by someone.'

'She's an eleven year old who has already started her period and has the figure of a sixteen year old,' returned Augustine. 'I bet no one even batted an eye when she was travelling alone.'

'Fine,' Lyna said, leaning against the table. 'If you know Hediyeh so well, where would she be going?'

'If she's anything like her father, probably going out to get some revenge,' said Augustine as she set her mug down.

'Eleni is dead. For the love of God, if you are not going to drink this, I will,' replied Lyna, reaching over to take Augustine's mug and drink a large swig of tea. 'Revenge is finished.'

'Revenge is not finished,' Augustine countered, putting a finger up. 'The big kahuna is still out there somewhere.'

Lyna paused. 'You said that the child is not an idiot.'

'She isn't.'

'What you just insinuated tells me that she is, in fact, an idiot.'

Augustine gave her a dry look. 'He's one old man. He's alienated most of his network, his main protector is dead after basically killing the only person close enough to the man to be considered his partner... I mean, he doesn't have much support, and she's a pretty pissed-off eleven year old.'

Lyna gave her the same dry look before draining her cup of tea.

'Hey, her adoptive father was kicking ass at eleven,' Augustine justified. 'And she grew up with a bunch of terrorists. Who knows what she's capable of.'