The reviews are greatly appreciated! Thank you all. Man, it is getting so aggravating calling Tidus 'the man' or 'the blond man' all the time. Can't wait until we get past that.

000

Chapter 4

For a moment he could only stare in wonder at the body of the man he had just killed. He barely remembered doing it – he only knew how easy it had been, how effortlessly that bottle flew from his hand and into the man's throat. Such precision, such deadly control – where did it come from? How was he able to do that? When he saw Yuna's eyes flicker over his shoulder, the sudden change in her expression, his mind seemed to have shut down and his body reacted as if a separate entity had taken control. His hands weren't even shaking.

He turned around in time to see Yuna fall against the wall, seconds away from fainting. Before her knees could hit the ground he had already caught her, marveling at how light she was as he hefted her up into his arms. Gently he lay her down, keeping her clear of any offensive puddles. There would be time in a moment for him to decide what to do with her.

Turning around, he went to inspect the body. Nobody was out on the street, not after the gunshots had been fired, and fortunately the police sirens hadn't started up yet. He figured he might have two or three minutes to do some investigating before he had to run.

He crouched down by the man's head and wrenched the bottle out of his neck, tossing it aside and letting it shatter, before getting a closer look at the hitman. There was no familiarity. The man was completely ordinary in the face, with mouse brown hair, pale eyes and forgettable features. His baggy, plain clothes would help him blend in with any crowd, as well as conceal any weapons or instruments he packed along.

The blond man fished through the dead man's pockets and jacket, coming up with nothing. No wallet, no ID, no piece of information that would give away his name or address . . . he didn't even have a set of keys on him. The only thing he had was a gun, which was decidedly a good thing to have at this point.

He picked it up and inspected it. A simple glock, nothing fancy or terribly sophisticated about it. He checked the magazine, grimacing at the fact that there were only six bullets left. Nevertheless, he tucked the gun into the back of his jeans, easily within reach.

Kneeling down, he reached under the man's head to turn him over and stopped, frowning as his hand felt something alien. He rolled the dead man onto his stomach and parted the hair to get a better look at the back of the neck. A tiny, metallic object was imbedded in the skin as if it had been inserted surgically. He tried to pull it out, but it was in so tight that he couldn't get his fingers around it. There was nothing he could use, no tweezers or needles lying around with which to dig it out.

This was beyond maddening. He kept finding bits and pieces of clues, yet nothing added up. Nothing made sense. There were countless questions, and not a single answer. He felt like he was being chased through a maze, encountering dead end after dead end, without knowing what he was looking for or why he was running.

By now the police sirens were gathering in the distance. He grabbed the man's gun and tucked it in his slacks, not knowing exactly if or when he would need it but suspecting that he would later. Standing up, he went to grab Yuna, still not entirely sure what to do with her. All he knew was that he didn't want to leave her alone with a dead body, later to be interrogated by the French police. He owed her more than that. Besides that, she hadn't seemed to eager to part ways with him when they were being shot at. He couldn't shake the feeling that she knew more than she was letting on.

He propped her up in the passenger seat of the Buick, buckling her up before hotwiring the car and bringing the engine to life. Like everything else, instinct guided him. He knew which wires to expose, which ones to pull apart, which ones to connect. He felt at home behind the wheel, the way a sailor feels connected to a ship.

The police pulled up to the alleyway as he disappeared around the corner.

000

Not long ago, someone had hacked into the security cameras just outside the hospital's front entrance. Nearly half of the entire team gathered to see the images being processed on the computer screen, looking for any familiar face. Seymour felt another headache coming on. They were so frequent and so closely tied to the stresses of his job that he scarcely paid any attention to it. But it was going to be a big one. All around him, people had gathered to see if the agent had been found.

"There! That's him," Rikku Welsh said suddenly, pausing the screen and pointing to the image of a good-looking blond man leaving a hospital. "He looks a little beaten up, but it's definitely him."

"Who's the girl?" someone else asked, referring to the brunette walking arm in arm with the agent. "Is she one of ours?"

Seymour shook his head. "I know every face on staff, and she isn't one of them. Lynwood, do some digging on her. I want to know everything there is to know about this girl in the next hour."

A seasoned staff member nodded, having already pulled up the search program on another computer.

Seymour chewed his lip thoughtfully. None of this fit in his mind. After hours of speculating, he was still unable to figure out why an agent of theirs would abandon an unfinished mission, fail to call in and touch base, and then suddenly fall into company with an unknown woman who had no connections to the Network.

The Security and Intelligence Network. SIN. A multi-billion dollar corporation that had been operating in secret along with the United States government since the beginning of the Cold War. It was the only life Seymour knew, the very air he breathed. He had given everything to this company and he still had to deal with screw-ups like Kinoc who could never get the simplest of instruction right. He couldn't wait to get his hands around that fat neck. There would be no satisfying him until Kinoc was fired and shipped off into anonymity, replaced by someone competent. Somebody who understood rules. Somebody with a grain of sense.

Well, it didn't matter. In another day, perhaps two, the stray agent would be dead and forgotten. That was the beauty of this job. It was easy to make nuisances disappear.

"Whoa, what's with the gathering?"

Well, most nuisances. Seymour turned and gave Kinoc one of his most unpleasant scowls. The large man took a step back, hands held up as if to repel an attack.

"Steady, pal," he chuckled, his fat stomach wobbling with the action. His squinty eyes nearly disappeared in his smile. "What bug got up your ass today?"

"Tell me, Kinoc," Seymour ground out, gesturing to the screen. "What the hell you were thinking, keeping a faulty agent in the program?"

Incomprehension flashed across Kinoc's round face. "Eh? What are you on about?" His eyes landed on the image of the blond agent, and he suddenly had the sense to look properly grave. "Oh, that one."

Seymour was seconds away from throttling him. "He abandoned a mission – a rather important one – and then refused to check back. He transmission is off and now he's walking around Marseille with some woman who's not affiliated with us. Care to explain?"

Kinoc shrugged. "Like you said. He's faulty. Maybe I should have pulled him out of training, but damn it Seymour, you've never seen a kid like that before. He's unbelievable. Weapons, hand to hand –"

"Yes, we've been already been properly dazzled," Seymour said dismissively. "That's beside the point. You knew he was flawed, and yet you continued to let us use him in mission after mission. Give me one good reason why I shouldn't report you right now for endangering the whole –"

"Oh shut it, Seymour," Kinoc laughed. "You can't get me fired and you know it. Let's just be rational about this, all right? What's our plan of action?"

Seymour ran a hand through his hair, struggling to control his voice. "We sent out an agent to take care of him."

Kinoc snorted. "You've obviously never seen him in action. One man won't be enough to kill him."

Seymour narrowed his eyes. "You think we should just let him walk free? He knows too much. There's a chance he'll talk."

Kinoc shook his head. "I doubt he'll talk, unless he feels threatened. You should have sent more than one guy. That's your first mistake – underestimating him. Hitting fast, hard, and with a lot of agents was probably your best shot. Now he'll be twice as alert, always on the lookout."

Sometimes, on the rarest of occasions, the man did have marginally useful things to say. Seymour grunted. "We'll get him, you can be sure of that."

000

Yuna was reluctant to open her eyes. Part of her knew that everything she had experienced since leaving the hospital did in fact happen, and that there was no way she could deny it. Another, less rational part of her desperately hoped that it had all been some bad dream and that she was at home in bed with the sunlight warming her feet from the skylight above.

"How are you feeling?"

"Fantastique," she grumbled, at last forcing herself to face reality. She sat upright and noticed for the first time that she was in a car. A moving car. They were still in the city, but she could see the outskirts drawing near. The sun was beginning to set.

"I thought you said you were going to let me go," she pointed out, though she had to admit she was glad that he hadn't. She still had questions. He seemed to notice the lightness of her tone and gave her an odd look.

"Yeah," he said, suspiciously. "I will. But I have the distinct feeling that you're not telling me something. And in a situation like mine, it helps to get as much information as possible."

Yuna swallowed. Was she really that obvious? His eyes kept darting between her and the road, waiting for a response.

"What do you mean?" she asked. Surely he could hear her heart pounding.

"You're afraid of me," he said. "I guess I can't blame you for that. But even before I dragged you out of the hospital, before we even spoke, there was something about me you felt you had to fear. A regular doctor wouldn't have reacted the way you did if I was just a regular patient. So tell me. What do you know that I don't?"

When she hesitated, he slowed the car down and pulled over, stopping at the curb. He unlocked the doors and gave her a pointed look, staring at her with complete focus.

"Do you know who I am?"

"No," she replied, truthfully. She was careful to keep eye contact.

"Do you know why I was shot twice in the back and left for dead in the water?"

She had to force the word out, struggling to speak around the lie clamped in her throat. "No."

"Yuna, listen to me," he said suddenly, gently taking her wrist in his hand. His skin was surprisingly warm. "I don't know what I did to you that scares you so much, but whatever it is, I'm sorry. I promise you that if something did happen, it won't ever again. Or if you're afraid that I might do something, I swear I won't. Not to you. But this is important. You're lying to me, and I have no one else to turn to right now. I need the truth."

Her mouth went dry and she had to look away. The blueness of his eyes weakened her, the helpless plea making her lose sight of why she was doing this. She needed to be strong. Her father nearly died because of this man. Even if he really didn't know who he was – if he really had amnesia – he was still a dangerous man. She imagined the broken bottle jutting out of that man's neck and shuddered.

But when she dared to look at him again after the silence got too heavy, she found that there was an innocence in him that was just as scared and unsure as she was. Maybe by helping him she could get the answers she needed. If people were out there wanting her father killed, she was going to do everything in her power to find out who they were and how to pull the carpet out from under their feet. To do that, she was going to need this man's help.

She took a deep breath before blurting it out. "You tried to kill my father."

He stared at her. Just stared, like he had not heard her properly.

"Last night," she went on, desperate to get the words out of her mouth as quickly as possible. "He and I were sailing out in the harbour. I fell asleep down below and I woke up when I heard two gunshots. My father was on the deck with his gun out. He told me that a man had come aboard with a gun of his own and tried to kill him, but my father fought back and got him in the back as he tried to escape."

The following silence was suffocating. She had kept her eyes out the window, fixated on the pavement, but was painfully aware of his gaze burning into the side of her head. When she finally chanced a look in his direction, he was staring back at her, tight-lipped and pale. She decided to keep going before he had some sort of a panic attack. Quickly she reached into her pocket.

"I . . . pulled this out of you on the operating table. It was in the back of your head."

The metal object glinted invitingly, warm in her palm from being smothered in her jeans. A look of revulsion past over his features. He reached a hand up and felt the back of his neck, his eyes widening when he felt the fingernail marks for the first time.

"The man who attacked us," he said softly, taking the object and staring at it with distant eyes, "had one of these too." His fingers paused over the word SIN.

Yuna's eyes widened. "What does that mean?"

"It means I'm an assassin," he said, his voice suddenly calm. He leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes, his body seeming to deflate with the weight of this revelation.

Yuna bit her lip, curiously in pain for this man. She wanted to say something, but was unsure of what words to use. Instead she leaned over and put her hand over his, forcing him to squeeze the object as she had done in the operating room back at the hospital. He jumped slightly at her touch, and then frowned at the red letters and numbers flashing on the dashboard.

"Zurich?" he asked dully. Yuna shrugged slightly.

"We might find some answers there," she offered gently.

"We?" He turned and looked at her sharply. "You want the two of us to go to Switzerland?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Absolument," she said, somewhat defensively. "Someone sent you to kill my father. I want to know who, and why. I deserve to know."

"Isn't this something he should be worrying about, not you?"

"He is my only family," she shot back. "If he were to die, I would have no one left, monsieur. I need no other reason." A hard edge had crept into her tone. He seemed to recognize it, but his expression was still uncertain.

"This is dangerous. Somebody obviously wants me dead, Yuna. That guy probably won't be the last to come after me. If you get caught with me, this might –"

"Assez!" she commanded, holding her hand up. "I know. I do not care. Just let me go back to my apartment for a moment to prepare. After that, we can drive to Aix-en-Provence and catch a train."

There was a long, drawn out silence in which she refused to meet his gaze, though she could feel him burning holes in the side of her head with his eyes.

"Look at me."

Bracing herself, she did. He leaned forward slightly. "You need to be completely serious about this. There might be a point of no return somewhere along the way. If you are going to get involved, you're in this until the end."

Fighting the nerves that threatened to overwhelm her determination, Yuna gazed back firmly. "If I was not serious," she said, slightly imperiously, "I would have gotten out of this car and called the police by now, no?"

For a long time their eyes held. He was searching her, and she was allowing him to. Suddenly his gaze softened, and he nodded.

"All right. Zurich it is, then."