Now

London

Emma Peel stood leaning against the bureau, and looking at the television screen on the wall. She was a sophisticated woman, beautiful and radiant even at seventy.

"How was al-Kherish killed?" said Emma Peel, reiterating Leiter's question that he said on the screen a moment ago, "Well, he was shot in the chest as he was about to get into his jet."

"You're kidding me. How?"

"Our Cairo branch is working on that, but it happened in our private airstrip outside the city. You've been to it, you know that anyone trying to infiltrate it would instantly be spotted, and there's nothing around it for kilometers in any direction, except for a pylon five kilometers due west. In the sand under it, Agents found a single casing, and footprints leading to tire tracks."

"Five kilometers… Must have been one hell of a sniper, and one hell of a gun."

"Yes, definitely. By the end of the week, baring James' recovery, which I have to say seems unlikely; you'll have to find a successor to your post."

"Yes, ma'am. Now, about al-Kherish, surely its not-"

"-A coincidence that he was assassinated as soon as Bond fell ill? That much is obvious. That's why I'm about to place the League on high alert, and initiate a purge order, to attack any individuals we expect are associated with the opposition."

"Excellent call, ma'am. But that's not what I'm asking, do you think the opposition made James sick?"

" If you think they've contributed to Bond's condition, you can rule it out, every scientists, physician and magician we've got has ruled out any possibility that Bond's condition is externally induced."

"My office will be in touch with yours soon. Goodbye."

The screen blinked shut. Peel took her seat at the leather chair, and reclined back with an exhausted sigh. She heard a knock on the door.

"Come in, Veruca."

A young woman of her twenties entered the room.

"What is it?"

"Harmony Kendall, ma'am." Said Verucca, "Bond's secretary. We've been trying to find her for debriefing, but she's disappeared."

"Disappeared? Wait, wasn't Bond picked up from her flat?"

"Yes."

"Then why hasn't she been taken into custody then."

"I don't know."

"Good god, perhaps the opposition were involved…." Muttered Peel, "She's of little consequence now, just alert R department to monitor all airports here and in the states. Have our station in Los Angeles dispatch two men to LAX to keep an eye out for her."

Gotham City

"Do you know who I am?"

Priest didn't have to think too long to recall who the well dressed elderly Englishman was dragging a chair across his cell's concrete floor was.

"Yeah. Your picture was everywhere fifteen years ago, you're that serial killer; Lecter."

"Doctor Hannibal Lecter, actually." Said Lecter as he placed the chair five feet away from the one to which Priest was chained and then sat.

"Huh. When they told me a shrink was coming to visit me I thought that was just torture humor."

"I imagine you did. Tell me, Mr. Priest…"

"What happened to your hand?"

Lecter glanced at his left hand, a perfect prosthetic covered by a brown suede glove.

"Perceptive. I lost it years ago, I hacked it off with a cleaver."

"Hardcore. Did it hurt?"

"Do you think it mightn't?"

Priest shrugged.

"Do you ever get phantom limb?"

"Mr. Priest, I don't wish to talk about my hand. I was wondering if we could talk about you."

"I've stuck it out here for two months and change; I'm not going to start talking because a celebrity asked nicely."

"I'm not here about the opposition."

Priest shifted in his seat, and looked at Lecter with squint eyes. Lecter took an envelope out of his bag and pulled out a stack of cards.

"I assume you know how this goes." Said Lecter, raising a Rorschach card.

Priest sniggered and tossed his head back.

"Well? Neither of us is going anywhere."

"….A butterfly."

Moscow

The gunfire stopped for a moment, to be replaced by whimpers of one man as he crawled among the bodies, hearing the jingle of spent shells as they hit the ground and fresh bullets being loaded into an antique revolver.

"Please…" pleaded the man, raising his hands in a desperate attempt to protect himself, "Please… I have a fiancée; we're supposed to get married next month! I beg you, spare me! I've just started working here this week, whatever quarrel you have with these people; I had no part in it!"

"I don't care." Growled Ocelot as he aimed the colt in his left hand and pulled the trigger.

----------------------------------------

Vigilant, armed to the teeth and filled with fortitude, the guards came bursting through the doors that lead between the lobby of the League's Moscow station and the stairs that lead to the upper floor.

"Where is he?" asked a guard, scanning the lobby wall to wall looking for a trace of the gunman.

"The doors have been sealed. Chekov, fan left." The unit's commander ordered, "Simonov, right. Kosynski, take point. In country rules. Secure and advance."

The unit took to the commander's orders and spread all over, searching every nook and cranny, their fingers trained on their AK47's triggers. Seconds passed, and then a minute. Chekov started to grow anxious; he turned around, having looked in the utilities closet.

"He's not .."

Chekov's eyes widened as he saw Ocelot snap the commander's neck from behind with one hand, while with the other he seized the commander's AK and pulled the trigger, using the commander's limp body as a shield. Chekov's eyes went dead as the bullets struck him, mostly in his armor, but a few finding their way to his head.

The Russian let go of the corpse, and grasped the rifle with practiced proficiency and turned it on the other guards, giving the trigger a quick squeeze between switching targets, sending small bursts of gunfire, each hitting pay dirt.

------------------------------

"It took you all of eleven minutes to get here…" said the commander, nursing a bottle of Dom in his hand. Ocelot reloaded his guns as he sauntered through the open office doors.

"…You've lost your touch, old man. You know… I knew when I heard that Bond was in a coma that I'd be the first to get it. Stands to reason, really; the Moscow station is almost a branch in itself…"

Ocelot cocked his gun and aimed it between the commander's eyes.

"You talk too much."

"What do you want?" said the commander, "You work for the opposition, I guess, they're not averse to making deals. So tell me what you need and I'll get it to you, and you let me walk away. Could you do me that?"

Ocelot pulled the trigger; the commander promptly lost plenty of weight from the top of his head and slumped back in his chair.

"I think I'll help myself, thank you." Said Ocelot as he reached for the man's keys.

Gotham City

"…So then Captain America bitch slaps the SS Major and points at his own forehead, and says, 'Surrender? You think this here letter stands for France?'"

Lecter chuckled.

"Now, don't get me wrong, I'm rather fond of the French, and during my service I met some brave men in the French resistance, but still…"

"I'm afraid we're out of time." Said Lecter and stood up, picking up his notepad and Rorschach cards.

"Oh, really? Shame, that." said Priest with mock disappointment, "Oh well, don't be a stranger. Sometime I'll tell you how I killed Hitler in Fifty-Four."

"Have a good evening." Said Lecter as he knocked on the metal door, a guard on the other side unlocked it and allowed the psychiatrist out.

"Ta."

"I must say, Dr. Lecter, I didn't see the point in any of that that." Said Dr. Szell as he stood behind the pane of one-way bulletproof glass, watching Priest as he struggled to loose his restraints, a habit had never outgrown during his months of incarceration.

"He was not going to respond to any of the usual tricks, he's simply too old, too foul and too cunning to react desirably to any of them. I had to resort to other methods."

"Other methods, by that you mean an incomplete Rorschach test and forty minutes of inane banter and concocted anecdotes of the war?"

"This is what I do, Doctor Szell, you'd be advised not to question me on it. He's not going to talk." Said Lecter.

"Everyone talks eventually. Once they reach their breaking point, they abandon what they believe in."

"Not this one. And it's not a matter of belief. It is my belief that deep down, beyond what the subject will admit to himself, he has no genuine concern for the opposition's cause."

"Then why suffer? If it's not a matter of conviction, what is it?"

"Ego, mostly. Everyday he goes on without giving you anything is a day from your life you won't get back, and you hate him for it, and that is what sustains him. He quite simply lives to see you frustrated."

"Impossible. It can't be that."

"Of course it isn't. There's a tinge of masochism, he believes himself deserving to be punished, over genuine guilt over something or another."

"All that is well and good, bit it doesn't do me any good. How do we make him tell us what he knows? What can we do?"

"Nothing. Nothing at all. As the previous torturers explained, torture has no impact on him because nothing you do can't be undone with just a bit of time to heal. Have you considered taking measures to nullify that, even temporarily?

"First thing we thought off, he built up a tolerance to the drug by the third time we administered it."

"Well then, you can't get him to give you what you want, so you'll have to take it from him."

Los Angeles

LAX

"Blondie bear, please…" Harmony pleaded, holding the payphone's receiver to her ear.

"Look, I'm sorry I…. Well, betrayed you. I'm sorry about everything you and Angel and everybody else went through."

"You're sorry? Oh, that's a relief, pet."

"Really?"

"NO!"

"Please, I'm in over my head. Come on, Spike, for old time's sake."

"Old time's…Christ. Alright. Sod it, alright! I'm coming, just stay put."

"Thanks."

"*groan*."

Harmony hung up the phone. She picked up her bag and made her way through the terminal to the rest rooms, quickening her pace when she noticed two suspicious men moving around, asking passengers if they say the woman n the picture they held, that looked a lot like her at the distance she stood from.

She placed her purse at the side and turned on the faucet, she gathered some water in her hand and splashed it onto her face. The door opened and a woman walking in, she wore a leather jacket and a baseball cap and had a ponytail. Harmony took two seconds to admire the jacket before her worries returned.

She couldn't stay in Los Angeles for long, but she didn't know what to do next. She hoped that Angel and Spike could think of something, arrange for her to hide somewhere in San Andreas, she had an old friend from school who'd found a measure of success in San Fierro, perhaps she could help her.

Harmony was too deep in her thoughts to sense it, she might have heard the air split as the stake pierced the air on its way to her back. She never knew it'd happened, merely felt an awful, ashen taste in her mounts as her blood turned to dust. The rest of her followed, and the being known as Harmony Kendall was reduced to a shapeless heap of dust on the floor of a restroom in LAX.

Kennedy took off her baseball cap and let her hair flow down as she dialed a number on her cell phone.

"Diana?"

"Yes?"

"Job's done."

R&R.

Next Chapter

Szell takes new measures to extract valuable information out of Priest, while Nemo springs into action.