Disclaimer: I own neither Glee nor any part thereof. No money is being made off of this story and is intended only for entertainment purposes; therefore it falls within the parameters of "Fair Use"

A/N: I know, I know, I suck. Almost three months since I last updated. I offer my most profuse apologies, but I just had too many stories going all at once and opted to start finishing them one at a time. There are probably going to be two more chapters after this one. Thanks to everyone who has stuck with this story.

Chapter 4

Exfiltration

The girls vacated Brittany's apartment with Sam's promise that he wouldn't touch more than he had to. Santana didn't have high hopes for Brittany ever being able to come back to it but it seemed important for Brittany to believe that she could so Sam promised. Santana punched the contact information for this Puck character into her phone and they were on their way. After a bit of convincing Santana finally managed to talk Brittany into letting her carry the big bag.

Santana said that she needed to collect her gear before they went anywhere else. Brittany understood, but when they crossed the street into the neighboring building and the doorman greeted her as Miss Vargas, Brittany started looking a little freaked out once again. Santana saw this and quickly led her into the elevator. "I know this is all really weird for you, Brittany. It's entirely unfair for me to expect you to just roll with all of this and I'm sorry for that. If I could make your life go back to what it was a month ago, I would do it in a heartbeat."

"A month?" Brittany asked.

"That's when I got assigned to you," Santana said, "Minus a couple days to travel and set up, that's how long I've been watching you, following you. I know, I just keep upping the creepiness quotient with you, again I'm sorry, and once we're clear of this if you never want to see me ever again then I'll understand."

Brittany seemed to consider this for a while before she said, "Why so long?"

"Do what?" Santana said.

"Do you always follow people for that long before you… before…?"

"Usually not, no," Santana said.

"Then why me?"

Santana debated whether or not she should let Brittany follow this line of thought, but ultimately decided that she'd lied to her enough for one lifetime. If she stood any chance of re-earning Brittany's trust and love which she desperately wanted, then she'd have to be brutally honest about every horrible thing she wanted to know. "We're… we assassins are trained to find the patterns in peoples' lives. Learn where they go and what they do and when. We figure out where we know they will be and where they feel safe, where they'll let their guard down. You don't have a pattern to your life. You are utterly unpredictable. To be terribly honest, it was more than a little frustrating at the time."

"I'm sorry," Brittany said.

"Fuck! Don't be sorry, honey," Santana said, "If you were easier to track, I might have…" The very thought of the end of that sentence made Santana's heart hurt, "I might not have figured out that you were a clean target."

"Clean target is a codeword for something isn't it?" Brittany said. Technically it was a question but she really already knew the answer.

"Yeah," Santana said, "It means you aren't an agent of The Templars. It… it means you're an innocent, not a valid target of The Brotherhood."

"San," Brittany sighed out her name, "if you ever want there to ever be a chance of anything happening between us ever again, then the first thing I need is for you to deprogram or whatever. Stop using code words to distance yourself from what you do. You're a professional killer. That's what you are, that's what you do. You kill people for money. I am not a target. I am a person with a name and a job and friends and a family who would be very, very hurt if I turned up mysteriously dead. Don't say 'dispatch' or 'eliminate'. Don't say 'target'. Accept yourself for what you are, Santana."

The doors opened onto the sixteenth floor of the building. Santana's building was significantly older than Brittany's and was build decades ago when silly superstitious people thought it was bad luck to have a thirteenth floor, so the sixteenth floor of her building lined up with the fifteenth floor of Brittany's building. Santana led them out of the lift and into the hall towards her apartment. Santana keyed their way in and as soon as the door was shut Santana looked at Brittany and said, "You're right. I know you're right, and I promise you that I'm trying to work on it, but I'm fighting twenty years of training, okay?"

"Okay," Brittany said as she began to move across the room. Santana did likewise quickly starting to stow her gear. "How did you get the assignment to kill me?"

"Intel dead drop," Santana said, "A courier, probably someone with no connection to The Brotherhood whatsoever, was paid handsomely to take a sealed envelope and leave it in a pre-arranged location, in this case in a locker in a marina in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Five minutes after he made the drop, that is after he put the envelope in the locker, our intel guys, intelligence gatherers that look in on everything, some of the best computer hackers in the world, they told my boss and I got a text message that to anyone else would look like a bunch of gibberish, but since I knew the code, I knew it was telling me to go to that locker."

"Where were you when the text came in?" Brittany interrupted.

"As luck would have it I was enjoying some downtime in Cabo San Lucas," Santana said, "Other times I've had to fly halfway around the world to pick up my assignments… my… to find out who I am supposed to kill. So I catch a plane and pick up the envelope and inside…" Santana trailed off stopped packing up her gear and got into a nearby table drawer. She pulled out a manila file folder with Brittany's name on the tab, walked back to Brittany, and handed it to her. "Inside the envelope was this dossier on you."

Brittany flipped the folder open and began looking through it and found a half dozen pictures of her, a brief list of facts about her, height, weight, hair color, eye color, date of birth, Social Security Number, address, an out-of-date phone number, and a code. "What does 'Status: Delta Six' mean?" Brittany asked.

Santana said, "That's the code that told me that I was supposed to kill you. If it had said 'Tango Fourteen' instead, then it would have meant that I should have tracked you and reported my findings and then my bosses would have told me whether or not you should be eli… whether or not they wanted me to kill you." Brittany just nodded and pointedly didn't say anything before getting up and walking from the living room to the bathroom.

It took every last bit of resolve she had not to follow her in there and try to comfort her, Santana knew that all of this was rough on Brittany, knew that she was in the process of turning Brittany's life upside down. She figured that the best thing she could do was give her some space so that Brittany could wrap her head around everything that had been dumped on her in the last hour. Santana went to her bedroom and began packing everything in the closet and the surveillance gear that she had in there. After five minutes, she was almost done when she realized she was still wearing the clothes that she'd worn last night on her date with Brittany, so she quickly pulled out something a little more flexible than skin tight jeans and a sweater.

She was in the process of stripping off her dirty clothes when Brittany walked in and quickly said, "Oh, I'm sorry. I should have knocked."

She turned to leave the room, but Santana said, "It's okay. Come in. I'm not terribly shy and you've seen it all before anyway." Brittany turned back to face Santana again and slowly drifted through the room, past Santana to the window and stared out at her apartment across the street. She just looked for a little while, watching the shape that she knew to be Sam moving around her apartment. "Why not just shoot me from here?"

"Is the glass in your window bulletproof?" Santana asked having finished dressing while Brittany was looking out across the street.

"I have no idea," Brittany said.

"I don't either," Santana said, "and even if it's not I don't know how thick it is. There's not much between the buildings to gauge wind speed or direction. Sharpshooting is extremely complicated and while I have been trained to do it, I'm not exceptionally good at it. Beyond that, I don't really like guns all that much. They're loud, they're messy, and they're unreliable. We were trained to make clean kills. No witnesses, no evidence, and no collateral damage. Even if our clean-up guys like Sam could get the bullet itself out of a body, bullet holes can be evidence. Some assassins use guns but I don't. The only one I own is an antique that doesn't work."

"How many…" Brittany trailed off her question and was silent for a couple more minutes. Santana was pretty sure she knew which question was coming next and she wasn't really looking forward to answering it. "How many people have you killed?" Yep, that was the question that Santana wasn't eager to answer, mostly because of the can of worms that would follow it, but she owed Brittany the truth.

"Thirty one," she said softly.

She expected Brittany to wince or to walk out of the room or to call her a horrible monster or all of the above but she didn't. All she did was just ask the next question Santana was expecting, "How many of them were like me? How many innocent people have you killed?"

Santana took in and released a long, slow deep breath and said, "I honestly don't know, honey. It's something that's been on my mind all morning, ever since I put things together about you and Il Maestro. I wish I could honestly tell you that you were the only innocent person I've ever been sent after but you're the fourth consecutive person that was connected to Project: Morningstar. I know one of them was an agent for Abstergo but the other two..." Santana shook her head sadly, "There's every real possibility that I've murderer two innocent men, maybe more, if anyone not connected to Morningstar was innocent as well. I know it's not the answer you want to hear. It's not the one I want to give, because… and I want to make a distinction here. It may not mean anything to you and I get that, but it means something to me."

"Okay," Brittany said.

"I've never, ever killed anyone for money. I'm not some evil soulless hit man that just takes contracts and kills whomever as long as the money is good. I mean, yeah, I'm extremely well compensated by The Brotherhood for what I do, but it was never about the money. The people I killed, I genuinely believed that I was making the world a better place by taking them out of it." The volume of her voice was slowly rising so she took another long breath to try to steady herself out. It didn't work. "The things that Abstergo, The Templars, and their agents stand for and do to people, Brittany they're fucking monsters!"

"Okay," Brittany said quickly, "Santana, calm down, all right? You're scaring me."

Santana took a deep breath and quickly apologized, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry," she said, "I just…"

Brittany closed the distance between them and put hand on Santana's shoulder and brought Santana down to sit on the bed. Brittany slid her hand across Santana's back and pulled her into a side hug. It was the first physical contact they'd had since Brittany had woken up that morning. Santana had been determined to let Brittany re-initialize contact between them, but as soon as she had Santana reached up to cover Brittany's hand with her own. "It's something personal between you and them," Brittany said, "isn't it? You don't get that upset at someone because you were trained to. They did something to you, didn't they or someone you care about?" Santana nodded. "You want to tell me about it?"

"It's pretty gruesome," Santana said.

"I'd like to know," Brittany said, "because right now I still don't know where I stand on the whole Assassins/Templars thing. If you explained to me what they did to make you hate them so much, maybe I'd understand why you're so sure they're so evil."

"Okay," Santana said. She took another deep calming breath before continuing, "In my line of work, you don't have a lot of friends. I was born into this life, not all of us are, but I was. My father is a member of The Brotherhood and I grew up in it. I mean, becoming an assassin myself was a choice that I made, but growing up in it there's not a lot of opportunities to make friends. I had a few when I was little but we all kind of drifted apart as we got older… all except for one. I have one honest to fuck friend in this miserable stinking world and… and they fucking crippled him... on purpose."

"On purpose? Are you sure?"

Santana nodded determinedly, "Yeah, this sadistic fucker name Smythe found his safe house… I have no fucking clue how but he found him. He slipped in while Abe was sleeping and stabbed him the goddamn back, right at the base of his spine, right here," Santana pointed at the same spot on her own back. "Then… then the son of a bitch grabs towels and shit to staunch the bleeding and calls an ambulance before he runs out. The sick fucker wanted Ar…Abe to live through it, and he did, paralyzed from the waist down. Everyone I've ever killed, I killed as quickly and painlessly as possible, even when they deserved worse. Unlike them I don't like hurting people." Santana sighed deeply. "He wasn't even an assassin. He's in intelligence."

"You said he lived," Brittany said, "Is he still alive?"

"Yeah," Santana said off handedly, "He's not with The Brotherhood anymore but…"

Santana stared at Brittany for a minute before Brittany said, "What?"

"He's not with The Brotherhood anymore," she repeated excitedly, "Brittany, you are a genius! Abe's the best computer hacker I've ever met. He can help us figure out what the hell Morningstar is." Santana sprung back to her feet then bent over to kiss Brittany on the top of the head. She immediately realized what she did and quickly mumbled, "Sorry. I-I wasn't thinking."

"It's okay," Brittany said. Santana quickly retrieved her laptop and booted it up. Brittany watched as Santana brought up a website that seemed to be for a medical supply company. Santana scrolled to the bottom of the site and brought up the Contact Page and again scrolled all the way to the bottom and clicked on the very last email address. This prompted a command box that said My Old Password is Out of Date. In the reply box Santana replied The New One is Different, and then a blank e-mail field appeared on screen. Santana quickly filled in a reply e-mail address and in the subject line she typed Sic Semper Tyrannis. She quickly filled in the message box with idle chitchat about going to the grocery store and to the gym and signed it, "Hope to hear from you soon, Mac." Followed by the phone number of her burner phone.

"Okay, so I'm really lost now," Brittany said, "What did any of that mean?"

"The body of the message was just filler," she said, "The only important parts were the subject line which is a call and response that he'll find and the name Mac, because Mac is what he calls me in front of other people."

"In front of other people? So in private he calls you Santana? Is he one of the six people who know your real name?"

"Yeah," Santana said, "You, him, my dad, my sister, and couple of other childhood friends."

"Your mom?"

"Died a long time ago," Santana said.

"Was she…"

"Ovarian cancer," Santana answered before she could really be asked, "and I'll answer anything else you want to know but we need to get out of here. We've stayed too long already. Sam's going to be done over there soon and then The Brotherhood's going to be looking for us. We need to get in touch with this Puck person and get you a new identity and then we need to get to my safe house." The girls took their bags and piled them by the front door. "Stay right here," Santana said as she pulled a hair band and a pair of latex gloves out of one of her bags. She pulled the gloves on and quickly tied her hair up. Next she pulled a cloth out of the bag and started meticulously wiping down everything in the apartment that either of them had touched. When she was done, Santana stuck the cloth and the gloves back in her bag as Brittany just watched perplexed. "Wiping down the room, trying to cover our tracks," Santana said, "The longer we stay off their radar the better. If I had time to vacuum, I would, but I don't."

X

A brand new silver 2012 Audi A8 pulled to a stop in front of Brittany. She opened the back door and started loading their bags into it as Santana came around to help. "This is a really nice car," she said staring at it, "I never really had much interest in cars because I don't know how to drive, but this one is really awesome looking."

"Come on, get in," Santana said opening the front passenger side door, "Let's go for a spin."

The girls loaded in and Santana slowly made her way out into traffic and began navigating them uptown which Brittany quickly took note. "Aren't we supposed to be headed to Jersey? Why are we going uptown?"

"I've got a safe house up here," Santana said, "We need to drop off our stuff and pick up some cash I've got squirreled away. Puck didn't say what the paper was going to cost."

"Paper?"

"Oh right," Santana said shaking her head slightly, "He's going to make you a new identity. The Brotherhood is going to be looking for Brittany Susan Pierce so we have to give you a new ID and a new name."

"Oh, yeah," Brittany said, "I guess that makes sense." She stared out the window as Santana drove looking at nothing in particular apparently lost in thought. Santana was determined to give her all the emotional space she needed since she couldn't give her physical space. "It's strange," Brittany said after about fifteen minutes, "I've walked and ridden all over this city for years so I recognize landmarks but it seems entirely different now, like something's changed."

"I'm gonna venture a guess and say that me throwing Sam around this morning was the first time someone has ever done anything like that in your presence before," Santana said as she pulled into a pay parking lot. She quickly gave the attendant some money and went in search of a spot.

"Sort of, how did you know?"

"What you were saying about the world being different, it's a common reaction for people who have never been near violence before and are suddenly exposed to it." Brittany nodded slowly in understanding but Santana was sure she really did. "It scared you this morning when I fought with Sam, didn't it?"

"Yes," Brittany said.

"Because you've never seen anything like that before?"

"Not exactly," Brittany said, "I mean I've never watched two people fight before but mostly it scared me because of what happened to my friend Kurt from high school."

"What happened to Kurt?" Santana asked.

"You know I grew up in a city called Lima, Ohio, right?" Santana nodded. "Well, Lima wasn't a very good place to be a gay teenager and Kurt was really gay, like couldn't hide it if he wanted to kind of gay. There was this meathead football player named Dave," Santana knew where this was headed. "He... hurt him really bad."

"Is Kurt okay? He didn't...?"

"He's still alive and out in San Francisco," Brittany said.

"Good," Santana said, "That's good. I'm sorry that that happened to your friend. No one deserves that, but there's a difference in what that football player did and what I do and I want to make sure you know what that is."

"Anger?"

"Rage, actually," Santana said, "Uncontrolled, uncontrollable anger. Almost all gay bashers have rage issues. I don't. I may feel anger when I'm fighting someone but it's never in control of me. I always control it. It's something I've been trained to do since I was very young. If something happens and I get into a fight with someone, you don't have to be afraid of me. I will never hurt you, Brittany, not ever."

"I believe you," Brittany said, "I'm not sure why, but I do."

Santana smiled slightly at what she thought was great news. She wasn't exactly sure what she should say to that so she didn't respond to it. "Are you hungry?" she asked instead. "We should probably eat since we missed breakfast."

"I don't have much of an appetite," Brittany replied.

"I understand," Santana said, "After everything I've put you through this morning, I get it, but you should still try to eat something. If we have to start running, you'll need to keep your strength up."

"We aren't running now?" Brittany asked.

"No," Santana said, "Right now we've just gone to ground. If we start running we'll get out of the city and as far away from anywhere as we can get." Brittany didn't reply. "C'mon, let's get some food. It'll make you feel better. There's a Chinese place just up the block. I think you'll like." She still didn't respond but she attempted a smile which Santana took as an okay.

X

Santana hated New Jersey. Everything there felt dirty and gross and this was from a woman who had spent a considerable amount of time in underworld of Singapore. They were standing outside the apartment they'd been instructed to come to. "Look I don't know this guy," she said to Brittany, "I don't know if we can trust him or what, so please do me a favor and don't talk to him unless he asks you a question directly, and even then don't tell him anything about yourself, okay?"

"Okay," Brittany said softly.

Santana knocked gently. A voice from inside said, "Just a second." A moment later they heard locks being unlocked and the door came open as far as the chain would allow. "You Alexa?" He asked. He had tan skin and dark hair. His lack of a shirt showed toned muscles and a couple of shitty looking tattoos.

"You The Puck?"

"It's just Puck," he said, "no 'the'. You got the green?" Santana produced a roll of hundreds from her pocket. Puck smiled, closed the door long enough to release the chain before opening it wide and ushering the girls in. "Offer you ladies a drink? I got everything."

"Just what we came after," Santana said.

"Okay," he said, "Let's lift em up and we'll take some pictures then you can be on your way."

Brittany looked to Santana for clarification. "He wants us to lift our shirts up and turn around to show him that we aren't wearing wires. It's okay," Santana said looking deep into Brittany's eyes, "because he's going to put that camera back down until we're done." Brittany looked over to find Puck trying to palm a small camera. Santana looked at him and said, "I see everything, so don't try anything. Do you understand me?"

"Yeah," he said setting the camera down. Santana lifted her shirt to her armpits and quickly turned in a circle. Puck looked to Brittany and said, "You too, Blondie."

"San, I need your help," Brittany whispered.

"What's up?

"I didn't put a bra on this morning and I really don't want this creep to see my boobs," she said.

"Alright," Santana said walking to stand behind Brittany, "You cover them up. I'll lift the shirt." Brittany nodded and slipped her hands up under her loose blouse. Santana reached around Brittany's waist and gathered up the hem of her shirt and suddenly she was overwhelmed by the scent of Brittany once again. It took all of her emotional control to keep herself in check. "Ready?" Brittany nodded again and Santana lifted the shirt, her knuckles grazed lightly over Brittany's flawless skin, again testing her control.

"I love my job," Puck said.

Santana dropped the shirt and glared at him. "Can get what we came for now?"

"Yeah, sure thing," he said, "Are either of you cops?"

"That's a pointless question," Santana said, "because cops don't have to answer it honestly. What police officers can't do is ask you to commit a crime, so will you go forge government documents for us, please?" She once again produced the roll of money.

"It's 600 for the ID, a grand for the passport, all up front," he said.

"Not a fucking chance. I don't know if you think we're stupid, or if you're trying to impress us with how big a man you think you are, but whatever you're doing, stop because it's not going to work. We're not impressed," Santana said as she unrolled the bills, "Because we're in a hurry, here's 800, that's half. You'll get the rest when I'm sure that you've done quality work. If you haven't done quality work, then I'll be taking that half back and if you don't think I can do that then I would tell you to call you buddy Evan and ask him what I'm capable of."

Santana held out the offered cash which Puck grumbled about but ultimately took. "Okay, let's do photos," he said, "and I need a name."

"It should be something that you'll respond to reflexively. Usually, it's best to stick to things similar to your real name, or some version of your middle name. You could be Sue."

"No," Brittany responded quickly, "In high sc…" she glanced at Santana, remembering her earlier warning about personal details, "Not Sue," she said, "Make the name Miranda, Miranda Cooney."

"Okay," Puck said having retrieved his camera, "Let your hair down. Can't have your hair up in a passport photo."

Puck snapped a few pictures until he was sure he had one that would be acceptable and disappeared into one of the rooms in the back. "Miranda?" Santana questioned as they both took a seat on the couch to wait.

"It was my princess name when I was little," she said, "My best friend, Tina and me use to play princesses all the time. Her name was Mariposa and mine was Miranda. Cooney was my grandmother's last name."

"Will you tell me about the adventures of Miranda and Mariposa?"

"Maybe," Brittany said, "but first I want you to tell me something about you, something true."

"Okay, fair enough," Santana said, "I, uh, I speak five languages, I have a decent understanding of two more, I have three black belts, I'm proficient with most all sharp or blunt weapons…"

"Those are just facts," Brittany said, "Tell me something about you, like I did… something about how you grew up."

Santana sat back, took in and released a long slow breath, and said, "Okay, but not here. I don't trust this guy. There could be listening devices around here."

"Okay, well, just don't forget or you'll never know about all the magical times Mariposa and Miranda had together," Brittany said settling back on the couch as well. They sat in silence for a few minutes before Brittany spoke again. "Am I ever going to get to go back to my life?"

"Brittany, since you woke up this morning, I've been 100% honest with you on every single thing you've asked me. I'm not going to change that now," Santana said, "If it is within my power to put your life back together, I will, but I don't want you getting your hopes too far up. Even if I can get The Brotherhood off your back, it may be necessary for you to change your name, move, break off ties to your old life. I know that's not what you want to hear but I won't lie to you anymore."

As was quickly becoming commonplace, Brittany just nodded and they resumed sitting in silence. Finally after about twenty minutes, she leaned her head over to rest on Santana's shoulder and soon after her rhythmic breathing told Santana that Brittany had fallen asleep. Santana rested her cheek against the top of Brittany's head and said softly, "I love you."