"See," he said quietly. "I knew you were smart. They're wrong about us blondes." He gave an indicatory tug upon his forelock, the only part of his hair that was not closely shaved, flashing a boyish smile. Physically he was attractive. His face was proportionate, body strong and fit, hair an unusually pale shade of blonde, eyes a paler gray. It was the eyes that made him ugly, Harley thought, eyes like mirrors. There was nothing inside those eyes… nothing human, anyway. Even Jack at his worst had always been human. "I know what he's capable of, so I'm prepared not to let this whole little incident be held against you."

She shook her head.

"It's like a giant pissing contest. See who can out think who, out manipulate who. Aren't you afraid he'll recognize you and ruin your game?"

He was the one to shake his head this time, closing his eyes briefly. Harley felt a start as though he had slapped her. He'd made it clear he didn't find her a threat in one single gesture.

"This is no game, Doctor. He won't recognize me, because he's never met me. You… you don't think I was the one who did that to him? Oh, no, no, see… if it had been me they sent, neither one of us would having this conversation."

She stared at him silently.

"When you want to amputate a busted leg, you don't call an accountant. When you want the truth forced out of someone, you don't call in a hostage negotiator. No, you should pick someone with a real love… a real talent… a real appreciation for the art. Someone who's got experience."

"Someone like you?" she spat, lip curling in disgust.

"Precisely. I was otherwise detained at the time. He failed in his task, failed to break him… but I won't Miss Quinzel, I can assure you of that."

Some small part of her bristled at his arrogance. This was the only part of her that was clear. The rest of her was a muddled mess of terror and frustration and rage and she had no idea where most of the emotions were directed. She was finding it increasingly difficult to focus. God, had she taken her medication this morning? She couldn't remember… she'd been so tired.

"You think… that he doesn't know you people are coming for him?"

"I don't care what he knows," he tilted his head slightly. "You forget, Lieutenant, you are one of us people, and the sooner you remember that, the better for you. You are a soldier in the US Army, Doctor, you are a part of something much larger. The world is changing, Miss Quinzel, and there will be no room for dissenters in that new world, no room for people like him. He's developed quite a reputation over the years. He never was particularly good at following orders, and do you know what would happen if we all stopped following our orders? The world would dissolve into anarchy and chaos… and that will never happen, Doctor. Not while I'm here."

He stared at her very plainly, eyebrows raised.

"He's fighting a losing battle. He's raising his colors even as his ship is sinking, and he's going to drag you down with him. And why? For what reason? Your career has been stellar from the very beginning, Quinzel, you could go on to great things. Why, there's an opening in Psy-Op's, I hear, and I have it for fact you've already applied to the division once before. It would be straight to Washington with you… the fifth ring of the Pentagon… The perfect place for someone with your sort of expertise, don't you think?"

"Trying to bribe me with a pay raise?" she sneered. If only her hands would stop shaking, maybe she could actually look threatening…

"Oh, bribe is such an ugly word. I'm only pointing out your potential. Don't forget it. I could send you straight to the top, Lieutenant, or I could bury you so deep the worms won't even find you. Don't forget that either. The Elite is making history, Doctor. We're gaining power like never before. Soon, you will be faced with a choice. You will have to choose where your alliances lie. You will have to make a decision. You can be a part of history, or you can simply… be history. The choice is entirely yours. You could have such a bright future ahead of you, Miss Quinzel. Don't make me waste that."

She remained silent for a long time.

"What are you going to do with him?

"That particular order was given long ago, and not by me: TEP, Lieutenant."

"Terminate with Extreme Prejudice," she whispered. They were going to kill him. They were going to use her to do it along the way.

God… she really was in over her head.

"You think about what I've said, Doctor. I'm glad we could have this little talk, you know. I'm in a better mood already."

The soles of his hospital slippers slapped against the off-white tile of her floor as he pulled his feet off of her desk. She shrank into the corner as he passed. Thirty seconds later, the door latched shut and she found herself alone again; the room was silent beyond the patter of raindrops against the glass. As she listened, the speed increased to a drumming, her head filling with white noise, her eyes stinging. She sank slowly to the floor and pulled her knees tight to her chest.

The world disappeared beneath a wall of water.

OOO

At 2:10 there was a knock at the door. The tears stopped long ago, and her eyes now felt swollen and dry. She wiped carefully at her eyes with the heel of each hand after she pushed her glasses onto her head: her skin felt taut and gritty. A faint headache throbbed behind her eyes, and her hips were beginning to tingle where the circulation had slowed in her legs. She raised herself slowly to her feet, teetering for a moment on her heels, ankles bowing before she regained her balance. She felt ancient, exhausted, and she limped slowly to the door. 2 PM on a Tuesday, who could it be? If only she hadn't snapped at that nurse, maybe she wouldn't feel so embarrassed about checking her schedule more often. She tried to imagine today's page from her day planner, but was shocked to find she could not find a memory corresponding to the copying of this week's schedule at all. Had she… really forgotten? But… she was always so meticulous, so careful… certainly she had been focused on other things but… No, only one thing. Only him. Had he really consumed her so much?

Her makeup was smeared again, she imagined, but she didn't have time to adjust it, just pulled her glasses from her head and pushed them onto her nose before she opened the door and peered around it. It was a familiar face. She had warm brown eyes, friendly, if a bit weary. Her hair didn't have quite the same hue as her eyes, it was a typical mousey brown, cropped short but grown long recently, falling midway down her forehead. She had an olive complexion, and a slender, fit body. Her arms, what showed beneath the cap sleeves of the smock, were sharply-defined, muscular, but within the wide legs of her hospital pants, her legs seemed shapeless, disproportionately small. All of her weight was balanced on the right side, a cane in that same hand.

"Down to a cane already?"

"Physical therapist says I'm making real progress," the young woman answered, in return. "I'll be able to go home soon…"

There was a long silence between them.

"Y'alright, doc?"

"It's been a bad day, Charlotte." Harley stepped out of the way and opened the door, waiting behind it until her patient had hobbled over to the patient's chair and taken a seat, still heavily she noticed. She shut it, mentally cursing herself for taking a paranoid glance down either end of her hall before doing so.

"I know all about those, doc." Charlotte said, when Harley finally took her seat. She had been a medi-vac helicopter pilot in Iraq for only one day. Through no fault of her own, the bird had gone down. Catastrophic engine failure. A one in a million accident. She'd lost both her legs from just above the knee in the crash, and suffered third degree burns over thirty-seven percent of what remained of them, and her torso. ("Spared me my face," she quipped. "Never had to use the damn thing 'till now.")

"How are the dream's coming?"

Turner bit her lips together for a moment, before she sighed and shrugged, resigned to being honest, it seemed.

"I still wake up on fire once in a while… and sometimes, my calves will cramp up. It'll wake me up out of a dead sleep, and I'll try to grab them, try and rub the cramp out, yanno? And then… it takes me a while to remember why there's nothing there. I'm all panicked for a long time, just… lost in the dark, and hurting." She shook her head for a long moment "Never thought it was gonna be like this for me. Logically, I knew it could happen, I had taken that into account, figured the odds were good enough I could pull it out, make it home safe… I've always been lucky… Just not this time. This time, I was right in the other direction, unlucky to the nth degree."

"The war affects us all. Even those of us at home know the changes it's made. We're not the ones who are broken, but we're trying to pick up the pieces. It's hard in a way. There is a certain amount of separation between those who have actively served, and those who have not, a disdain if you will. It makes our job just as hard as yours."

Turner nodded slowly, lips quirking somewhere between blank and frowning.

"I guess so… if you put it like that. Everybody's got a stick shoved up their ass, one way or the other. Dorado, he thinks he's such a damned saint just cause he hit an IED. Tells me they shouldn't be spending so much money on accidents, should be focused on people who actually did the fighting. I tell him if he was so fucking smart, he would have seen the damn thing before he drove over top of it."

"I'm not sure… that's the way to look at it. One injury does not surpass another, regardless of how it happened."

"Everybody's got pride, Doc… we prided ourselves on our bodies, our strength, and now that's been taken away from us. Can't help if we're a little illogical about the whole thing, right?"

"Yes, but the stresses of injury should not be a free pass to bad behavior."

"Yeah, like that long due crack-down on J-Boy, right? That pass seems pretty free these days."

For the second time today, she felt as though she'd been slapped across the face. She jerked back. "Excuse me?"

"Don't nobody gotta say nothing, I know what's going on. Nunez and Nubby, they chatter amongst themselves, and you get snatches of that side of the equation. Seems Jack's real… frustrated, these days, real high-strung, they say. And you, you've been a little distraught yourself. Seems to me there's a little something going on there. Seems like your sleeves are real long, collars real high lately. Not covering up any marks, are we?" Her head pressed forward impudently.

Harley stiffened. "You are completely out of line, Turner."

"But I ain't the one on the way to a meeting with the JAG officers, neither. That new guy, the rich boy, he seems to think he walked in on something the other day. I overheard him talking to somebody not too long ago."

She froze. "You overhear a lot. Who was he talking to?"

She shook her head. "Dunno. He was on a cell phone. Point is, you got no grounds talking to me about bad fucking behavior."

OOO

It was only with a tremendous amount of self control that Harley was able to finish the rest of the session with Turner civilly. At times, she was certain she was almost trembling with suppressed rage, and there was the fear still, in the back of her mind, and now a new emotion, one of hurry as the Captain's message came to final clear realization within her mind.

Our time is short. Even as she was thinking this, they were coming for her. She must act quickly and decisively. A strategic retreat, she could almost imagine her father's voice, imagine the map spread out before her, his strong hands rearranging the figurines: retreat, then recoup from your new position.

She wasn't safe. First step was to change that.

OOO

At 5 o'clock, she spread a newspaper over her head and shoulders and sloshed her way the 100 yards to the bus stop at the head of the west parking lot. The newspaper became sodden within seconds, it seemed, and her shoes were going to be ruined, she resigned herself to that fact. The rain bounced off the pavement, onto her legs, dripping into her shoes and soaking the insoles. She squelched with each step and she reached the bus shelter a soaking, miserable mess.

"Jesus, lady, didn't you watch the news this morning?" The New Jersey accent was very possible the most annoying thing she had ever heard and Harley had the disconcerting thought that if she had ever wanted to commit a random, unfounded murder, now was the moment. She stared at the stranger icily, and he got the point, shrugging deeper into the comfort of his flannel lined rain coat and shifting away from her. She tossed the pile of wet paper to the concrete in disgust. She dropped onto the bench in a shivering heap and tried to ball up as small as she could to conserve her body heat. At the moment, it didn't feel as though she had all that much to conserve. She waited for what seemed like hours.

She looked down at her watch. She had to wipe the fog off of the face to see it clearly.

"5:35," she said out-loud. The bus was late. The bus was never late. If anything, it almost always came a little early, Harley had missed it enough times to learn that. She looked out into the gray as far as she could, some ninety feet if she squinted her eyes, didn't see any approaching head lights big enough to be a bus. She didn't see any approaching headlights at all. Only exiting.

At 5:45, she knew something was wrong. There was no way the bus could be this late. At 5:46, a large diesel engine stopped and opened a door, but it wasn't the vehicle she was expecting. There was a brief snatch of an Allman Brothers song before the stereo was turned down.

"You're gonna be waiting a while," a familiar voice shouted from the interior. "Radio says downtown is flooded. They've canceled all bus service. You need a ride?"

"I guess so," Harley shouted back gloomily, gathered her things, and squelched her way to the truck. "Thank you," she said, when he took her things, freeing her hands to assist her somewhat ungraceful clamber into the truck's cab. Who needed a truck this big, anyway? He spoke as she climbed inside.

"You know, when I was five years old, we had a mill right beside our house. Used to grind our own grain. It'd been there for almost a hundred years, been making flour for our family for generations. Up above it, there was a pond that fed the water wheel, and it had some of the biggest, prettiest catfishes you ever saw, and that's really saying something, 'cause mainly catfishes are the ugliest things God ever created." He stopped mid-way through and turned the defrost and heat on high. "But one day, I was going fishing in that pond, and I found a bag floating in it, starting to sink. Bag was squirming. So I waded out, grabbed it, brought it back to shore, and opened it. Inside the bag were five kittens and they were the scrawniest, wettest, most miserable little things I ever saw… But you, my friend, are the second." He reached into the back, and then offered her a towel as she finished seating herself and adjusting her belongings between her feet.

"What about him?" He shoved a thumb in the direction of New Jersey, and Harley sneered out the door before she slammed it shut. The action was immensely childish… it also felt really, really good.

"He's got a ride," she said as she turned back, a sweet smile once again plastered across her rain-stained visage as she delicately squeezed the water from her hair with the proffered towel.

Knauer shrugged, put the truck into gear and pulled off.