(Apologies for the delay; several uninteresting and otherwise minor health issues slowed me down. There may be another small delay coming up, due to moving house. Meanwhile, on with the story.)

14.

What Married People Discuss – Revenge – I'm On A Boat – How to Break In and Influence People – A Plague of Information

Los Angeles – Our Mutual Friend

Standing in the soft light of the cabin, Desmond Hume jingled the little mobile above his son's bed. The toddler grinned up at him, sleepily, reaching up an arm now and again to paw reflexively at the squat forms of Piglet, Tigger, and Eeyore. Desmond smiled back, caught in the child's innocent joy found in the small and simple. The smile faded just a little at the shadow of his wife in the low doorway, a baby blanket folded along her arms acting as security more for herself than for the dozy child. Her face was tense and thoughtful; it had been since the afternoon she came back, rattled, to tell her tale to a far more rattled Desmond.

Someone tried to kill my Penny. It twisted his insides in sickness and ineffective anger. He believed her; the honest request for help from Richard Alpert, the murder at Hanso, the miraculous timing of a phone call from the island, her conviction that it had been an act from someone beyond any of them. Paik, or whoever is behind them. Damn them. He flicked up his gaze to catch her looking at him. She smiled back, still a touch pale, the forehead drawn in heavy contemplation. She mouthed words to him – I need to talk to you – and he nodded. He reached down to plant a soft kiss on the forehead of now-dreaming Charlie, and followed her out the corridor and to the little kitchen.

. . .

"I made a mistake, Des. I want to explain it, and I want your opinion." Penelope broke her own silence after long minutes busying herself with brewing coffee for them both. "I have bits of a solution, but I don't dare press against it without your support. We don't play that anymore. We work as a team, and I won't go any further forward without you. But I need you to hear me out, think, and not react until you've done so."

Desmond sat himself at the table, tongue caught in a light bite between his lips before nodding. "All right, love. You've got my full attention. This is about this whole thing with Alpert, right?"

"Yes and no and now hush." She softened the words with a brush of a kiss against his temple as she set a mug in front of him. She took a seat by his side, cupping her own mug in both hands. "I shouldn't have sold my father's stocks. I shouldn't have given in to that pressure."

She held up a hand as Desmond opened his mouth to interject. "I know. How could I have known what would happen? What if I hadn't sold to that Mr. Hicks and these Paik fools had come to me instead? Would I have been treated like Hicks? Those questions don't matter, I think. The outcome would come to this point eventually; my father and his company, for all its faults and cruelties, is being used in a larger game. What I lost, Des, what I sold, was a proper defense or even an assault back." She knitted her brow and dropped her gaze to her coffee, taking a long sip.

"You owe no one anything in this fight, Pen."

"Perhaps I do." She looked up again. "You and I, in living on this boat, on pulling away from all of them, all of the past – it doesn't change that it happened. You were used by my father and that place. I am my father's daughter. We can't change that. But we could change what that means." She dropped her head again. "My father did horrible things. Things that were beyond redemption. Is it so wrong to think I might have taken what he did and regrow something else from that ash? That it was weak of me to try and set it aside, to forget?"

Desmond sat for a while, watching his wife. "It can't be wrong to believe something good can come from something bad, Pen. I found you in it, didn't I? There's no weakness in any of that."

That brought her face up to his with a bright smile, eyes caught with the barest gleam of dampness. "I can't take back what I sold. But my father's friends know me, and we're not poorly off, Desmond. I want to go there, my dear. I want to go to my old home, and build my own little alliance, buy a little stock back through them, and piss off Paik's little watchdogs because they made me mad, Des. Not enough stock to take it back. Enough to meddle. Enough for pain. They tried to hurt me, and I'm not up for giving more forgiveness right now. I'm sold out."

Desmond didn't interrupt and didn't inquire. He had his suspicions, disagreed with the probable outcome – throwing the little bastard into the drink had been one of the finest moments of the last few years, leaving forgiveness off the table as far as he was concerned - but let it alone for the moment. He had given his wife that much trust and more.

"I want to give some hurt back. Right in their pocketbooks, and maybe in the process help Mr. Alpert flush out what rotten mess is hiding behind those skirts. They wanted to use my death to strike at the island? I want to see them hit the wall." There was steel behind her soft voice. It was a tone Desmond was long familiar with; no retreat and no surrender. It was the resolute will of Charles Widmore, distilled and purified and given to a woman of wider awareness and morality. Desmond had lost more arguments to it than he cared to admit to before a few drinks and lied about after more. He pitied her opponents in the most casual of circumstances, and in this?

Sweet Penny, those men are fucked. He was frightened for her, frightened for what could happen to all of them, their son, their friends. He could be just as frightened of her. The best he could do would be all he could offer – his support.

He gave her his best smile, swallowed the rest. "I've heard you out, love, and believe it or not, I've been thinking as you spoke. I've but one question for you."

"Yes?"

"When do you want to cast off?"

She rose and came to hug him, that girlish bell-laugh ringing in his ears for the first time in days.

. . .

London, later

Her name was no longer Kyra, her voice no longer that adopted Soho street or her native broad Midwestern dialect. In the mirror was a plain-faced woman, long, dingy blond hair tied back in a tight braid. The makeup seemed minimal, hiding truth underneath layers of lie. Liquid foundation over a faint freckling of acne pockmarks, a cheap touch of lipstick, some mascara. In her ears was a pair of bland metal earrings, those ubiquitous small silver spheres. She wore a brown sweater underneath a bulky dress jacket, a long plaited skirt in another neutral tone. The woman in the mirror was forgettable, basic, even a little sad looking to the shallow and unobservant. An expertly forged but incomplete Paik ID was clipped to the jacket – Moira Jameson, it said, though reversed in the unblinking glass – and she felt a sense of unease and unreality reading this new name. She was less concerned with the nonfunctional strip along the ID's back.

A basic background check would find a real Moira, with a real resume of tech support and business administration. She could parrot facts from it. In her mind was a stream of backstory, a father, a brother, an aunt in Scotland. On her lips, the faintest touch of brogue. She reached out and touched the mirror – touched Moira – and fought the urge to vomit in a sudden rush of anxiety.

Who's Kyra? wailed a distant voice. Fuck you, get a grip, came another, almost identical to the first but harsher.

"See, this shit is why I quit this job to begin with," that ghost of Kyra whispered to Moira's reflection. "I knew this was a mistake." She clenched her fists and tried to keep a grip on the core of her identity, tried to forget that the worst of the day's work was yet to come.

She grabbed her brown leather satchel and flung herself out the door for a day's work at Paik Bioscience.

. . .

Getting in the front door was easy. The richly landscaped lobby of Paik Bioscience was manned by two bored-looking guards. They looked at 'Moira,' disregarded her as the hired tech-wonk peon she was, and paid no attention as she slipped into the elevator close behind the last person to actually swipe their genuine ID tag. Why should they? She wasn't the only one to do so; a hurried and late executive barreled his way into the elevator, causing only a brief glance from security. It was the only real hurdle she had, surpassed within seconds. Now the building was open to her, just so long as she could keep her own act together.

She kept her head down and her demeanor mousy and subservient, getting off the elevator on one of the lower floors. Signs helpfully guided her towards IT, its coding guardians barely sparing her visiting figure the honor of a blink. Moira stopped at an empty desk, set a brown manila folder on it – its contents loaded with meaningless TPS reports and system check spreadsheets – and then rooted around for a pen. The man at the next desk watched her activity and she caught his eye. "Franklin in?" she asked. Franklin was the senior sysadmin; the man with all the digital keys to the building's intranet. He also had a taste for Glenfiddich and European football. She knew the answer, but waited expectantly for the man's response.

"Naw, dumb son of a bitch called in sick." The man rolled his eyes. "Probably still drunk and hungover, if you ask me."

She snorted. He was right. "Of course. On the one day I need to talk to him. 'Kay, I'm going to go in and leave this for him. Will you tell him someone came by?"

"Aight." The man turned back to his computer, her existence probably already forgotten. She straightened up, taking the folder with her, then hooked around the corner into the admin's unlocked office.

. . .

There was a bathroom right by the tech floor elevator. Moira was gone, her job done. Armed with probable passcodes gleaned from last night's drunken conversation, she'd run a crack against Franklin's system and found herself with full access. She'd set up a buried e-mail path; copies of memos sent between the executive and scientific offices would get blind-forwarded to a new, blandly named account, which itself was automatically set to then connect to Google and its mail services – like idiots, there was a corporate intranet, but then there were services connected to the outer internet itself - and would then forward all those internal documents to a bin that she could check in on from anywhere in the world. It was likely that the intranet email would get found and shut down in a matter of days to weeks, but by that point, the damage would be done. Meanwhile, she also had the backdoor passwords to the CEO's own office computer. Now she just had to get to it.

She lifted her head from the sink. The braid was gone, leaving a high ponytail of softly waved hair. A touch of mousse and the dingy blond had a little bit of elegant shine to it. Silver spheres were gone in favor of tasteful crystal dangles that accented a slender neck. Rather than remove the illusion of bad skin, she'd covered everything further with a careful layer of powder foundation. The effect was that cool, almost waxy look of model perfection. A little extra eye makeup, and the brown sweater had been pulled away to reveal an expensively tailored white silk blouse. The skirt remained the same, but a set of heels and a little readjustment of the jacket transformed the look into extravagant corporate style.

She put her shoulders back and affected that air of casual know-everything competence. There was a new ID in place – Helena Galatas, an aristocratic name of Grecian Europe and a touch too close to her own mauled sense of identity, but there she was – and the nausea and sense of drowning grew stronger as she approached the elevator that would take her up to the corporation's executive heights.

. . .

William Flood's office would have been sumptuous, if it hadn't been for the eyesore of several dozen bloated and smelling boxes along the back wall. 'Helena' took pictures of them with a small camera, making sure to capture the different Dharma logos and lot numbers. The boxes along the top were open, and she examined their contents while being careful to leave everything exactly as she found it. More high quality photos were snapped as she worked quickly – let the guys on the island see what Flood was getting into. Behind her, the computer hummed softly, copying all of its digital guts to a series of small, portable USB drives. It took time, but she had time – Flood's itinerary indicated a two hour business lunch. As those things went, it would probably be at least three, but she planned to be out within ninety minutes or less. The secretary had gone to lunch as well, leaving the sole hurdle if she came back as Helena/Kyra exited, but again, by that point, she would be done.

A soft ping came, indicating that she needed to swap out another drive. She did so, then let her curiosity get the better of her. She pulled open the Recent Documents folder, eyeing text files large and small, many headlined in impenetrable Korean – the kid was going to have something to do back at the ranch – and many that were not. She noted file authors; the obvious Paiks, additional Woos, Jeongs, and Shons. Flood himself ran a couple docs for himself, including a useless saved .pdf for a local restaurant. Western names. And then one Germanic name that caught her eye, a document that by its title indicated corporate marching orders.

Mittelwerk.

Kyra had built her reputation as an information broker on her skills, her talent for noting corporate security holes, and a very honed and trusted instinct. The name tickled that instinct, some sublimated recognition or just flat out hunch. While the wholesale copying continued unabated, she dug into Flood's document files proper, finding more files marked by that name. She examined file titles, unwilling to open them and place them into recent history where her intrusion would be noticed. Files like Chenchey, Genomex1, Chiral, and one, ominously named Septicemic.

There was one other file mixed in with the rest, a .gif image with no author but titled 'Mittelwerk.' Using the preview feature, she could safely load it, and did so.

. . .

The Copenhagen Post, September 28th, 2006

Police and Interpol engaged in search for high-profile outlaw scientist

The Hanso Foundation and its returning president, Alvar Hanso, have issued a brief statement regarding the expulsion of top scientist and former Foundation president, Dr. Thomas Werner Mittelwerk.

"It is with great shame and regret that we must take responsibility for one of our own. Dr. Mittelwerk served our foundation with a fervor and loyalty that had gone unsurpassed, but is now forever soiled by these allegations. While the truth of these matters can only be known when the authorities apprehend our fallen son, we put forward now a new promise to you and to all mankind – that each sin that sets us back must be eclipsed by a stronger will to do good. We redouble our efforts to serve you. Namaste."

Police have not come forward with any further information about the disappearance of Dr. Mittelwerk, but have repeated their increasing reward for any information leading to an arrest. Last week, unidentified forces within Interpol have reached out to Denmark's law enforcement to widen the net. Reports that a man matching Dr. Mittelwerk's description had been found boarding a Shenzhen Airlines flight bound for Jakarta remain unconfirmed.

Dr. Mittelwerk is being sought for hostile corporate practices and allegations of scientific wrongdoing, including rumors of viral and bacterial design work. Called 'The New Mad Scientist' by the UK's Daily Mail, Mittelwerk is confirmed to have studied within the United States at CalTech, in the fields of biology and genetics.

. . .

The article was accompanied by a picture of a severe, hatchet-faced man in a white lab coat. She looked at it for a long while, marking the face in her mind. Her only outward response to the discovery was a hissed "Oh, fuck," as the last file was backed up to her drives.

Having found more than she could have dreamt for, and understanding on some instinctual level that she had discovered some crucial fact for her new bosses on the island, Kyra began to reassert the tattered core of her central identity and packed up her gear to get out of the building.

With a sense of anticlimax, Kyra encountered no problems as she left quickly through the front door.