The FBI knew; they knew, and they didn't care.
It was one thing to hear Jayden talk about it, but quite another to have the numbers in front of her, the statistics...
Agent efficiency had risen exponentially since the ARI passed its first stages of testing and was made available to selected field agents. Jayden had been involved almost since the very beginning. He was very well qualified for the program: dedicated to his job, no current or previous outstanding medical issues, and no family to speak of. That of course meant there was no one to ask questions if something went wrong.
Of course something did go wrong. It was right here, just a brief paragraph deep in one of the files Sam had emailed her, shorter than an obituary. Five agents dead in the last year due to ARI-related complications. Surely they must have had friends who suspected what was being allowed to take place, but most of those friends were co-workers as well, forced into silence by the fear of losing their jobs.
The files said that agents using ARI were able to solve cases twice as fast. Not even Madison could deny that it was a revolutionary technology. It would save countless lives, but what of the lives it destroyed? What of the sacrifices made by the agents it killed? If ARI could prevent five people from being murdered, only to cause another five to die in the process, was it worth it?
Triptocaine was another matter entirely. One could go on forever about the ethics and hypocrisy of cops hooked on drugs given to them by the fucking federal government.
At least Jayden had gotten out before it was too late. But it was too late to demand the FBI answer for what they had done. The waver he'd signed before starting the ARI program would see to that.
The whole thing left a bitter taste in her mouth.
)O(
When Jayden opened his eyes, the sky was dark. He could hear rush hour traffic outside. Someone had switched on a lamp, and the windows let in quite a bit of light as well from all those illuminated buildings and signs.
"Is it raining?" Jayden found himself asking.
"Yep." Madison answered from somewhere not so far away. "Just wait 'til winter comes along. Then you have to deal with snow."
"Anything is better than all this damn rain."
Madison nodded, giving him the ghost of a smile. "You need to eat." she declared. Jayden suddenly realized that she was right. He hadn't eaten anything all day. Luckily, she had taken the liberty of ordering Chinese takeout.
"Aren't you going to eat something?"
"I, uh, have plans with a friend." she said, though he could tell that Madison wasn't being entirely truthful.
Madison quickly performed the same ritual surrounding leaving her apartment. She made sure everything she needed was with her, and shut the door, therefore allowing to him to attend to his meal alone.
Like he always did, Jayden cracked open the fortune cookie first. He'd once heard that it was bad luck, but continued to do it anyway.
The small slip of paper read: 'If you want the rainbow, you have to tolerate the rain.'
What the fuck was that supposed to mean?
And then he remembered why he hated fortune cookies and their goddamn ambiguous messages.
)O(
Madison took a seat across from Sam in the dim light of the restaurant which also doubled as a bar after midnight. At least there was little chance of anyone recognizing her. Sam was smiling to himself.
"You know, I took Kathy here on our first date." he started, then laughed. "She said the chicken was dry and sent it back. You should have seen the look on that poor waiter's face! Anyway, that was when I knew she was the woman for me."
Sam was not a sentimentalist by any means, but when he spoke of her...
Kathy was his wife; they'd been married for five years so far. She was a bartender who worked nights. At the age of forty-one, Kathy was getting a bit old to still be a bartender, but she enjoyed her job and was good at it. As a result of their separate schedules, the two saw very little of each other these days. It was Madison's personal opinion, because she would never tell Sam this no matter what, that Kathy did not deserve him.
"So how is the book coming?" Sam wanted to know.
"Ugh, horribly," she admitted. "Whenever I go to write I just keep thinking...It's just so fresh in my mind, you know? I mean, I know people want the facts, but..."
Sam shook his head. "People want to know about Madison Paige. They want to know what it's like to single-handedly take down the Origami Killer. There will be other journalists to report the facts, but there is only one of you."
Madison picked at her dinner in silence while she thought this over. Maybe he was right.
Of course he's right. Has he every been wrong?
"Now I believe you promised to explain why you needed top-secret government information." Sam prompted.
"Remember that profiler Washington sent to help capture the Origami Killer?" she asked. He nodded. "Well, he's sort of...living on my couch."
When Madison dared to meet his eyes, she saw that the older man was looking at her like she had lost her fucking mind. "You're kidding." he stated. "Jesus, Mad, tell me this is a joke. He's not a stray cat or something. You got lucky last time; Ethan Mars is a good man, but—"
"Norman is a good man, too." Madison interrupted, suddenly defensive on the former agent's behalf.
"He is a drug addict!" Sam exclaimed while attempting to keep his voice down.
"I know that!" She hissed back, trying to calm herself. "But it isn't all his fault. The FBI never warned him. They didn't give a shit as long as he was doing good work. Norman is trying to give up triptocaine, but it's difficult for him. There are moments sometimes...when he seems a million miles away from reality. I think he feels guilty - maybe even responsible somehow - for what happened to Shaun."
"That's ridiculous. The kid's safe, isn't he?"
"Yeah, but Ethan came pretty close to losing him..." Madison remembered it vividly. "Shaun wasn't breathing when I got there."
"Jesus..." Sam sighed, rubbing his temples. "Just be careful, all right? We still don't really know who this guy is."
"You're always so protective of me." It was her turn to sigh.
"Yeah, well, someone has to be."
They split the bill at her insistence. Then Sam offered to drive her home, refusing to take 'no' for an answer. And as she sat in the passenger seat of his silver Toyota, absently counting the streetlights as they passed by, Madison felt her body sink down into the leather as she succumbed to exhaustion.
The ride was over all too soon.
"Hey, Mad, we're here." She decided not to respond and kept her eyes closed, hoping he would go away. "Madison, wake up. Come on, I'm not carrying you; my old knees can't take it."
"You're not old..." she muttered as a way of hopefully stalling the inevitable. Luckily, he took the bait.
"Well my knees would disagree with you on that." Sam scowled. "So would my doctor."
"I thought he was a prick." Madison said, remembering a rather irritable Sam returning from an appointment a few weeks ago. Apparently the doctor had taken great pleasure in reminding him of his own demise and explaining all the ways in which Sam's body could potentially screw him over as he aged. This was particularly rude because it remained a well know fact that Sam had minor hypochondriac tendencies.
"That's Dr. Prick to you." he quipped. "And he would just love the opportunity to gloat if I injured myself carrying you up all those stairs to your apartment."
"I'm surprised you would even seek medical attention." Madison observed, feeling significantly more awake by this point. "No one else I've met recently seems very willing to do so."
Then they parted ways. Madison thanked Sam for everything, kissed him on the cheek, and reluctantly climbed the endless stairs to her apartment. At least Jayden was conscious this time. In fact, she found him at the table with a newspaper. He was frowning.
"How was it?" Jayden asked without looking up.
"It was nice." she answered automatically.
And then he did look up, his pale eyes focused on her. But his face remained neutral, blank and altogether unreadable.
"You still want to know why I quit the Bureau, don't you?" he asked then, though it hardly seemed like a question to her. Nevertheless, she nodded wordlessly and he proceeded to tell it. "Like any great story, it all started when I fucked up . . ."