Thank you all for reviewing! Kind of a short chapter, but it's more transitional than anything. I wanted to introduce a few other characters for a change. The next chapter should be longer. Enjoy!

000

Chapter 3

A knock at the door brought Seymour's eyes up from his paperwork. His assistant – he could never remember the man's name – inched his way into the office, an unusual apprehensive look on his face. Normally the guy could never stop smiling. Seymour knew what he was going to say before the words came out of the young man's mouth.

"He failed?"

The assistant nodded. Seymour sighed. This was certainly a first.

"Where is he now?"

"Unfortunately, sir, we lost contact. Something interfered with his transmission."

"And Braska?"

"Landed in Paris two hours ago."

Gritting his teeth, Seymour stood up and made his way out into the hall, flanked by the assistant. "I don't understand," the young man was saying, half jogging to keep up, "why he wouldn't have checked in. They always check in after a mission, don't they?"

Seymour thrust an empty mug towards him, cutting him short. "I need coffee. Find me in the surveillance room."

His tone left little room for complaint. Resignedly the assistant trotted off, mug in hand. He couldn't be older than twenty-five, Seymour figured.

The surveillance room was abuzz with activity. Phones were ringing, computers were humming, printers were spitting out sheet after sheet of paper, fingers clacked away on keyboards, and all the while men and women were scurrying about, completing the chaotic scene. There were maps, charts, flight plans, credit card histories, and passport and driver's license photos posted on every available wall space. A few people were listening to intercepted phone and radio conversations, searching for a familiar voice. There were no windows; this boxed off world was lit only by pale fluorescent lights. Seymour entered like a general walking onto a battlefield. He was completely in his element. He spent more time hovering in this room than he spent in his own house.

"Where are we at, boys and girls?" he asked, addressing the question to everyone within hearing range. There was a momentary lull in activity as heads turned to recognize their chief, the hand that guided them. Then there was a rush as people began shouting out the status of things.

"He last checked in twenty four hours ago, sir!"

"Off the coast of Marseille!"

" – hasn't made any phone calls – "

"His transmission failed at around seven o'clock last night –"

"Impossible," an old, quavering voice said from the doorway. Seymour grit his teeth and looked skyward as if praying for patience. Slowly he turned and plastered a fake smile on his thin, taut lips.

"Mika," he said in a practiced voice. "I thought you were in Belize."

Mika Weber, an elderly man who clearly did not know the meaning of retirement, stretched his mouth in what appeared to be a smile. "We cut the trip short. Charlene missed the grandkids too much."

"What's impossible, sir?" a woman asked from the back of the room.

"The transmission failing," Mika replied, brushing past Seymour with surprising grace for a man his age. "Our technology does not simply stop working or malfunction. The only way for you to lose contact with our man is if his radio is manually destroyed or shut off."

"He wouldn't just turn it off," Seymour said bluntly, no longer trying to sugar coat his voice. It was no real secret anyway that there was no love between the two men. "He understands that we must never cancel contact on each other. All our men know that."

"Probably destroyed, then."

"What if he was captured? Kidnappers could have –"

"He would have committed suicide if caught. Which would never happen anyway."

Arguments broke out, and Seymour rubbed at his temples in agitation. Sometimes he wished he were not quite so surrounded by young people.

"Shut it, all of you!" he barked, startling them into silence. Slightly more relaxed, Seymour turned back to Mika. "He's too good to get caught, and even if he did, he's been trained to take his life before betraying any information. And like I said, he wouldn't voluntarily shut off his transmission."

Mika gave him a somewhat condescending smile. "Well, I'm sure you would know better than I."

"The tracker is still active," a man offered, looking at a map of France on the computer screen. A neon blue dot was pulsing softly on the city of Marseille. "It appears he hasn't left the city yet."

"Good," Seymour pointed at him. "See if you can tap into any cameras and get the satellite over there. I want all eyes on the streets of Marseille. Every move he makes, we'll be watching. If he so much as scratches his ass, I want to know about it."

"This raises a lot of questions," Mika said with a shrug. "None of this seems to fit. Why would our man be alive and not answer our signal? Why would he not check in? Why would he fail in the first place, when he has been trained most diligently not to make mistakes?"

People exchanged uncertain glances, puzzling over this new situation they had become so unaccustomed to.

Then, quietly, a young woman spoke up. "A moment of conscience."

All eyes turned to her, a skinny blonde with green eyes. "Maybe," she continued softly, "he decided to just . . . not do it."

Seymour snorted, breaking the tension. "That is even more impossible than his radio malfunctioning. Young lady, I don't think you realize how thoroughly these men are trained to –"

"Actually," she cut him off, "with all do respect, sir, I was part of the training. I was in charge of analyzing their psychological responses to the conditioning we put them through."

"What is your name?"

"Rikku Welsh."

Seymour raised his eyebrows. "Miss Welsh, I was told that none of our boys had the mental capacity for disobedience or second-guessing after their conditioning. Have I been misinformed?"

The young woman bit her lip. "Umm . . . for about 99 percent of the men we trained, that is true. They obeyed instantly without question. But for the remaining percent, things were . . . slightly more complicated."

"What do you mean, dear?" Mika asked in a kindly voice.

"We found that there were a few men, really only a handful, who had potential to break away from protocol under certain circumstances. These men were removed from the program immediately to avoid complications. But . . ."

"What?" Seymour prompted impatiently. He was not so easily charmed by a pretty face as old Mika.

"This one . . . our guy . . . he showed so much skill that Kinoc ordered him to stay fixed on the team. We'd never seen anyone do the things he could do. Weapons, hand-to-hand, espionage, physical endurance . . . he was like a machine. During the psych tests he showed signs of uncertainty, and had a tendency to ask questions, but when we told him how much we'd be paying him he didn't seem to think too much on it. Kinoc didn't believe that there would be an issue."

"Are you telling me," Seymour interrupted in a deadly serious voice, "that Kinoc allowed this man to stay in training? To be used in actual missions? Even though he knew there was a chance that there could be a problem?"

Rikku looked distinctly uncomfortable. "Umm, yes?"

Mika sighed. "I suppose you'll be wanting a word with Kinoc, then," he said to Seymour, who looked as though the vein in his forehead would burst any second. The younger man ignored him and grabbed the assistant as he came back in with coffee, spilling dark roast everywhere.

"Send another of our boys to Marseille and have that agent taken out. Do you hear me? I want him in a body bag by sundown!"

000

Yuna stood rooted to the spot, unable to flinch when the car window shattered as the bullet passed through it. Had she been standing a bit closer, it would have gone right into her side. In the blink of an eye her companion launched himself forward and shoved her into the alley behind them as a volley of gunshots echoed up the street. People on the sidewalks were screaming as they ran for cover. Yuna's mind was still numb, her body unresponsive. Pieces of brick and stone exploded as the bullets narrowly missed them.

"Get behind that dumpster," he ordered, his eyes scanning their surroundings. Slowly she did as she was told, trembling uncontrollably. She watched as his eyes landed on a homeless man limping hurriedly by. He ran forward and grabbed the man's wine bottle, smashing it against the wall and giving himself a makeshift weapon. The man didn't even stop to protest.

"Quelle galère," Yuna whispered, eyeing the red drops of wine falling from the jagged green glass. "What is going on?"

"I don't know," he replied, gripping the bottleneck tightly as he leaned his head around the corner to look up the street. "But he's definitely aiming at me." He ducked back as another bullet whizzed by and took out a brick that would have been on level with his eye had he not moved.

Yuna felt the weight of the metal object in her jeans pocket with new acuteness, and wondered if it had anything to do with her strange friend being shot at. She was torn between telling him about it and keeping it a secret until she could begin questioning him. At first it had been so clear in her mind what she had to do, but after meeting him, speaking to him – seeing that he really had no idea who he was or what happened – things were not so simple anymore.

"He's coming down the street," she heard him say, his voice tight. "I don't see anyone else – I think it's just that one guy."

"With a gun," she whispered, looking down the alley to see if there was an escape. Her heart sank at the sight of a tall brick wall creating an unsympathetic dead end.

"True."

Yuna suddenly felt vulnerable as she heard footsteps approaching around the corner. Desperately she began searching around to find a weapon of her own. She was not very strong, but a few martial arts classes some years ago taught her where to find some of the important pressure points.

"Don't even think about it," he said suddenly, seeing her pick up a rusty pipe that had been sticking out of the gutter. "You stay here, and you stay down. I'll deal with this."

"You might need my help," she countered. It had no escaped her how ironic the situation was. He frowned at her for a moment.

"You could run, you know," he pointed out softly, his voice sounding as though he had forgotten the immediate danger. "I won't stop you."

Something moved over his shoulder. Her eyes flickered briefly to see their attacker take aim, having sidled around the corner silent as a ghost. She opened her mouth to scream, but her companion had already whirled around and thrown the bottle.

It happened so fast that Yuna almost didn't register it. One moment a man had been standing there, gun held at the ready, and the next he was twitching on the ground, a broken bottle sticking out of his neck.

And then reality hit, and a wave of nausea rolled in her stomach. She sagged against the wall. "Mon Dieu," she whispered. "He . . . you just . . ."

She didn't want to faint – she was a doctor, for God's sake - but she could feel that grey nothingness begin to swallow her. The man was saying her name, but she eventually just let herself sink into it. It would be a relief to just forget for a moment what she had gotten herself into. Just for a moment.

He must have caught her before she fell, because she didn't feel any pain when the darkness came.