The apartment was too quiet.

Not a single sound was to be heard in here. No floorboards creaking. No ticking clock. No human voice.

She was alone.

She had never been this alone in her life.

Always before, she had had either Sophia or her guides to care for, to talk to, to turn to for solace and comfort.

Now, she had nobody.

By some incredible stroke of bad luck he had found her and she had nobody.

Her mind kept running in circles. Had he followed her on purpose, or had it been sheer coincidence? Did he know what she had been doing there? Had he reported her to the police to prove that he would play nice? Had he followed her before without her noticing? Had he found Sophia? Had he followed her home? Had he bugged her phone or her apartment – or both?

Not knowing if her daughter was safe, and not daring to call to make sure because she was afraid that this very action would give Sophia's location away, was hell on earth.

And there was nobody she could talk to.

She stared at the wall, dry-eyed.

So alone.

.-.

Glenn and Rick remained linked after their briefing was over. They customarily discussed the information they had been provided among themselves, trying to identify in advance all the potential pitfalls of any new mission. This one seemed rather straightforward, but it had obviously led to such serious problems that it had to be reassigned, which was never a good sign. They wanted to be aware of any danger they might be walking into, and their system had proved its worth in the ten months they had been working together as a team.

"So", Rick began, "what do you make of this? Will you be comfortable sneaking around their headquarters to complete their rotation schedule? We know that they tend to notice minority ethnicity members, I'd understand –" He trailed off, mentally prompting Glenn to let him know he had finished. Rick knew that he wasn't easy to read in a meld because he found it hard to open himself to the extent that would be needed to be the perfect intuitive guide.

"The schedule looks more than halfway complete to me", Glenn mused. "We shouldn't need to do much more on location. What's got me worried is that they haven't received an answer to the proposal – the contract isn't signed yet. I'd be uncomfortable actually walking in there to do that. I stand out too much." He went through the information he had been sent. "Do we know anything about the first agent here?"

Rick frowned as he accessed the information package he had received in advance, searching through it. Finally, he found something – the same rough description that Daryl had received prior to the mission. "A middle-aged Caucasian woman", he answered. "She did all the on site recon and met with the local head honcho, one –" More paging through the package and their briefing material. "Guardian of the Peace Esnik. Strange title." He received a curious nudge from Glenn and elaborated. "People who are out for peace don't usually need to push that in your face. This looks like a lot of pushing to me."

"You're just being paranoid again", Glenn scolded him. "When will you learn to trust them? We're like assets to them – they won't destroy their assets." He hesitated. „Or would they?" Glenn looked up at the sky as he anxously asked this last question. He never attended these sessions from his home as he didn't trust the integrity of his apartment. If anything, he was even more paranoid than Rick, and it suited him just fine that his part in any given mission usually took place outside his personal living space. He couldn't imagine doing this from home, especially once he had taken official steps with Maggie, his girlfriend. The idea of endangering her in any way made him feel sick and he had considered retiring from TE before she moved into his apartment. Of course, he never let on to Rick, Ty or anybody else about this. No personal information.

No attachment.

„A little paranoia might be in order here", Rick pointed out. „I mean, reassigning this is quite a big deal, and with that much of it already done. Honestly, I don't know if I'm comfortable taking this on. How 'bout you?"

With a sigh Glenn looked out over the neglected yard behind Hershel's house. A few birds were fighting over some crumbs that they'd found on the ground, their vicious cawing creating a constant background noise for his mental conversation with Rick. He just hoped that neither Maggie nor her sister or her dad would look out the window to find the source of the commotion; the only bench, the one he was sitting on, was right under their apartment window and he had no real reason for loitering here half an hour before their date. „Well, I can't say that I'm all happy with it -", he muttered.

This was really all the opening Rick needed. „What says we ask them to come back and do it together with us?" he asked, his „voice" betraying his excitement. „Having someone there with you makes you much less conspicuous, and you'd be more relaxed as well, not having to do it alone. And she could do the contract bit." He waited for an answer from Glenn, but his partner was still considering their options.

„Could we … maybe … just, like, refuse?" Glenn asked after a few moments. Everything about the way he asked this question betrayed how deeply uncomfortable he was with this mission. For some reason, he and Rick had only ever been put on missions that didn't involve any direct contact with the Feina. Even the possibility of maybe encountering one of them made Glenn nervous, and Rick, on whom he would have to rely in that situation, seemed to have some serious issues with that as well, although he had no idea why that might be.

Tilting his head to one side in deep thought, Rick found a more comfortable position on the sofa. He had taken the day off, fully expecting to go on a first scouting run with Glenn. Lori and Carl thought him asleep in the living room, so Lori was cleaning their bathroom and doing laundry while Carl was playing in his room. The victorious pirates of the day before were now at the mercy of the law, from the introduction he had been served with breakfast.

„I don't really think that refusing the job is a realistic option", he said dejectedly. „Taking over something that someone else has started is always a mess, but there can't be that many free teams to do it - and just at the right moment between missions, too." He closed his eyes. Staying awake while he was lying down had always been hard for him. „Here's what I'll do. I'll get back to Tyreese with this and ask him if there's any way he can find out who that first team was and get them to complete it with us. It would just save us a load of time, we wouldn't have to explore and learn the layout ourselves - you could just rely on the woman who was on it before."

Cautious affirmation came from Glenn, and Rick sat up as he wanted to be fully alert for his discussion with Tyreese. This was not going to be easy - Ty had agreed with someone else that they were going to do this, and now they were not. He'd be pissed as hell, but he'd have to deal with it. Agents always had the last call on whether or not they were going to take on a mission, and Glenn's reasons here were perfectly valid. He intended to be at his most efficient when entering the ring for him. „I'll let you know what he says. Talk to you later, I'll contact you."

.-.

He had seen this coming, especially because the agent would be all but stepping on the Feina's toes during all of this, so he wasn't truly surprised when Rick contacted him through their link. It was well known that the Feina tended not to recognize individual members of any one population group as long as it was prevalent enough – Carol, as a Caucasian woman in a predominantly Caucasian area, would not attract their attention and had obviously not even been recognized when she had accidentally bumped into that one Feina she had met personally.

Glenn, however, already stood out because of his Korean heritage, and would stand out for the Feina like a sore thumb because they very rarely interacted with people of any Asian descent in this part of the world. Glenn would run a far greater risk of being uncovered than Carol had, and both he and his guide had very understandable misgivings because of that. It was why he had kept them doing only missions with low direct exposure to the Feina, mainly obtaining intelligence or scouting locations for missions.

"I see your point, and I can't say that this is unexpected", Tyreese allowed, settling at his desk with a stack of papers to grade. On the outside, he looked completely unconcerned, as if he weren't doing anything else but thinking about his students' papers. Over the years, he had learned to do a first rough run-through while linked with a guide or a team, and go over them with a fine comb immediately afterward – a system which had served him well.

"But of course, as my contact needed someone who could take over at once because this mission is already underway, I agreed to do this with you. I'll need to get back to him and ask if his team would be willing to cooperate with you on this – but don't expect too much!" he warned his guide. "They won't have bailed out for nothing, so I wouldn't expect him to agree right away without having to go back to discuss it with them." He put aside the first paper and picked up the next one, beginning to read. "I'll get back to you as soon as I have his answer. Until then, you just rest as before. I won't accept a new mission before this is settled."

Rick gave a mental nod and the two men took their leave from each other. Once Tyreese was alone in his head once more, he sighed deeply, leaning back in his chair for a moment. He felt bad about more or less reneging on his agreement with Hershel, but every agent had the right to refuse any mission at any stage of preparation or execution – and they didn't even need to give their reasons for doing so. In every single mission, the agent was the one person running the greatest risk, and their risk increased if they felt bad or insecure about a job because nervousness and insecurity made them more noticeable, more visible, to the authorities. Glenn wasn't asking for anything unusual here – and neither was Carol, the agent who had first worked on this one. The trick now would be to reconcile their needs and balance them out within the parameters of the mission so everyone would get almost everything that they wanted – but not quite all.

Leaning over his paper again, his red pen ready in his hand, he set out to look for Hershel Greene.

.-.

Daryl was pissed when he felt Hershel brushing up against him. He had spent the past two days in his room, or, to be more exact, in his bed, fuelling his rage at himself and telling Merle to go fuck himself the two times he had tried to come in. He couldn't remember any occasion when he had messed up this badly and felt that he deserved everything that was coming to him. Of course, having the mission taken away from him and being told that his link with Carol would be severed had been a blow, but he had expected nothing less. When Hershel touched his mind now he automatically assumed that he was calling him in to sever their link – and maybe even retire him. Abandoning his agent like that would certainly go a long way toward getting him kicked out of TE for good. Grumpily, he opened himself up to Hershel's touch and was surprised to find him apprehensive, even anxious.

„Has Carol contacted you?" was Hershel's first question, asked in a concerned tone of voice.

Daryl was instantly on alert. „Ya mean ya haven't spoken to her?" he retorted, sitting up in his bed and throwing back the covers. He was only wearing a T-shirt and carefully kept looking off to the side as he swung his legs over the edge of his bed. Having Carol pick up on visual input from him during their mission had reminded him of what a strong transmitter he was, so he was careful to control his output. Also, there was no need for Hershel to know that he was suffering from a killer headache which came as a package deal with an epic hangover caused by three cans of Merle's atrocious beer the night before.

None of this, however, kept his concern for Carol manageable as he made his way over to the wardrobe to get fresh clothes and get dressed. There were procedures to follow after abandoning a mission. She should have either contacted Hershel herself, the way he himself had that same night, or at least responded to his attempts to contact her. The fact that she had refused to do either had him on edge the entire time he was preparing himself to meet Hershel.

As he was getting dressed and washed up - something he had sadly neglected as well -, Hershel updated him on his efforts to contact Carol either by phone, or personally by banging on her door, or through her link with him. They had all failed and he was worried enough by now to accept Daryl's help in looking for her. „You ain't gonna give me her address, are you?" Daryl asked sourly as he was tying the laces of his battered old boots.

He was mildly surprised that Hershel even answered him. „Of course not!" the older man scoffed. „You think that just because you have been wallowing in self-pity for two days now I will change my mind and risk your lives over this?" Daryl sensed his seething anger and resolved not to ask him ever again, not even after his link with Carol had been severed. As he sealed the maglock of their apartment door with his thumbprint, he briefly wondered at what time Merle would be back and how he was going to explain himself - Merle never took telling off well, and he had yelled at him quite a bit without any apparent reason.

Still concerned about Carol's lack of contact in two days, he distractedly asked Hershel to give him a minute alone. The older man, assuming that Daryl wanted to attend to some sort of personal business before leaving his apartment, instantly left their meld which left Daryl feeling strangely isolated. Ever since he had started working with Carol, first establishing and strengthening their link and then pursuing their mission goals, he had been linked either with her or Hershel for a total of at least ten hours per day. Spending the last two days without getting into a meld with anyone had driven home again how much he enjoyed this work - and how much he would miss it if Hershel had decided to cut him off.

Linking with Hershel, while it was not the wonderfully intuitive meld that he had shared with Carol, had felt like a drink of cold water after spending three weeks in a desert, and he found himself longing for his meld with Carol now. Knowing that him doing this would probably be one outcome of his meeting with Hershel anyway, he cautiously reached out through his link, closing his eyes and leaning against the grimy wall of the hallway leading to the staircase.

He just had to find her.

No attachment.