Coming home from work, Carol slipped out of her shoes and jacket and turned her head to face her only window, eager to catch the last slanting rays of the sun as it continued its descent toward the horizon. She had found relatively fresh potatoes on her way home, and as far as she remembered she still had some canned tomatoes, so she would have a delicious dinner before going on her second trial run with her guide.
She stepped into her kitchenette after changing into her comfortable pants and sweater, prepared her dinner and a pot of fresh tea, and then once again sat at her table looking out over the city while enjoying her meal and waiting for him to contact her.
He was late, which surprised her as he'd been very much on time the day before.
„Had to wait ‚til I was alone", his voice growled inside her head, and she wondered if he truly sounded like that when he talked out loud. It sounded way too grumpy for her taste - but he could make his voice sound however he chose to while they were linked up. This didn't have to be the least bit similar to his actual voice - and it probably wasn't, if only to further disguise him in case they ever met in real life. She imagined recognizing his voice in a shop or on the bus and knew that she wouldn't be able to curb her excitement.
This time he took her on a walk.
While they had to be careful, this wasn't nearly as dangerous as it sounded. The Feina had no interest in either randomly killing their slaves - for that was what humanity had essentially become - or allowing them to kill each other, so the streets were relatively safe even at night. They did have to avoid police and military patrols, however, to avoid attention on Carol while they were linked.
Although there was no way of detecting the link by any technical means known either to them or the Feina, they could never be quite certain whether or not the agent was too obviously „remote controlled" in this early stage. The danger of attracting unwanted attention was just too great, and the link implant did show up in scans. Therefore, Daryl steered her clear of highly frequented areas such as shops or buses and instead took her through a series of deserted, out of the way alleys and up and down stairs, not only strengthening their link but also getting used to her way of seeing the world and moving in it.
Just like all the times before, he was amazed at what he saw as the typically female way of taking in what there was to see, smell, hear and feel - and even taste. He had her buy a paper bag of fried protein cubes with a gooey, tasteless dip to perfect his motor control not just while she was making the purchase but also by having her eat the cubes as they continued their walk.
He marveled at her delicate way of handling her purse, the money she handed out as payment, the cubes themselves as she dipped them in the terrible sauce and then nibbled them instead of just shoving them into her mouth the way he would have eaten them. Women were creatures that never ceased to amaze him. They seemed so fragile, yet were able to take far more serious blows than he would ever have believed possible - and probably more serious than he could. The most no-nonsense badasses he had worked with during his time on TE had definitely been women, and he was looking forward to working with this one now.
Carol.
Her name had a nice ring to it.
She had already asked him about his favorite food and about his cover job during their walk, and he had brushed her off unceremoniously. From what she had told him, she found it very hard to not establish a close relationship with her guides because of the special and intimate connection an agent shared with the guide they were paired with - the agent's life and sanity depended on the guide, after all.
„Take it from me me, ya don't wanna know me in person", he had assured her, but of course she had brushed him off then, laughing it away.
She was intriguing.
He'd have to be careful.
.-.
She was far more curious about this one than all the others who had guided her before. For one thing, he took the contact rule far more seriously than anyone else in TE she had known, never letting anything about himself or his past or his life slip past his guard. Unlike all the others, he seemed to just be hiding behind and perfecting walls around himself that he'd set up so long ago that nothing at all got through.
Of course, this only served to make him all the more interesting. But he kept avoiding all her questions and never reacted to the hints about herself that she kept dropping, which frustrated her no end. He never followed up with any questions, either straightforward or roundabout.
It almost made her fall back into her old pattern of believing that she wasn't good or interesting enough that Ed, her former husband, had beaten into her. In a way, the Feina occupation had liberated her because they had arrested Ed after a drunken bar fight four years ago, and she had taken that opportunity to disappear from his life. She had left Sophia, her then eight year old daughter, in the care of her mother whose address Ed didn't have because he had never really given a shit about her or her family, and had left him, finding a new place to live and call „home", if only in name.
Her true home was with her mother and daughter, but she was careful to avoid any contact with them for the time being. Ed would be out of jail in three months' time and she first wanted to be certain that he wasn't hot on her tail before she found a larger apartment so her mother and daughter could live with her.
And there was, of course, the matter of her being a member of an underground insurgency organization.
Whenever her life slowed down enough to give her time to think, she wondered if it was wise to drag her family into this. Individual agents, guides, and entire cells had been uncovered in the past, and their punishment had always been the same. It went without saying that a death sentence waited for everyone caught conspiring against the Feina, and she had no idea if punishment exteded to the families of the convicted.
She couldn't truly risk the lives or even the freedom of the last two people that meant anything to her, and so leaving them where they were until the Feina were a thing of the past seemed like a wise course of action to her.
Of course, accepting her own better judgement hurt, and not just once but every day, every hour, every minute. Sophia had been the only good thing to come from her abusive marriage - she had brightened her darkest hours, she had been what had kept her fighting on when she had been on the verge of giving in.
But every day she returned to her empty apartment after work or after missions, telling herself to be strong and hold out until they had reached their goal of freeing Earth of the oppression of the Feina. Once this had been achieved, she would have two reasons for rejoicing - ultimate freedom not just from Ed but from alien occupation as well, and seeing her family again.
Until then, her guides were all she had to keep her company.
.-.
A week passed, another one.
They linked almost every day, working on their fine tuning, and by the end of the first week they were confident enough to go on the bus, ride it for two stations and then shop for what groceries there were to be had. He withdrew while she was returning home - he couldn't know where she lived - but came back as she was preparing her meal and stayed until she had finished it. He knew all the ingredients, he knew what drink she was having with it, and he paid careful attention to her sensory input as she was cutting and stirring and measuring out seasoning and then eating.
He kept being intrigued.
She was constantly testing the limits of the contact rule, telling him more about herself with her comments on the things going on around them than he wanted to know - more than he had ever known about any other person, in fact. He had always been a loner, mostly because of how he'd grown up as a kid. Bringing home friends from school - if you could call them that - had been out of the question, so he had never learned to establish and maintain long-term friendships or relationships of any kind. He had nobody but Merle, and letting her know about him was completely off limits.
Of course his supervisor, Hershel Greene, was there for him to talk to, and he had found that he trusted the older man. Even though he wasn't supposed to contact him again before the week was up to give a report on their linking progress, he decided to meet him after he had finished his current session with Carol - maybe he'd have some good advice for him.