Roger stepped off the cargo plane feeling exhausted and hung over. Michael was waiting for Roger to escort him back to Division. Percy wanted to keep the mission on the DL, so Michael, Amanda, and Birkhoff were the only ones who knew about its existence besides Percy. And it was doubtful that Percy, Amanda, or Birkhoff ever picked anyone up after a mission, so Michael was left to do the legwork.
The roar of highway traffic was overpoweringly loud, or maybe the sound was really the incessant pounding in Roger's head as a result of drinking way too much the night before. Roger knew there was a reason he tried to stay away from alcohol. He was always told that he made a good drunk, though. When he was younger, Roger's older brothers liked to get him drunk on the beer they bought with fake identification cards. Then he would stumble around like a windup toy babbling good naturedly. A more reserved man while sober, alcohol let Roger loose. He would feel happier and freer until the next morning when he would discover how out of control he had been and how empty he felt.
Michael did not attempt to engage Roger in conversation. He could sense that the recruit's head was somewhere else. Michael understood. The man had killed his former friend. Piece by piece, Division took people's lives away until all that was left was to serve Division since nobody remained on the outside.
When they reached Division, Roger was shepherded straight to Amanda to debrief. They went over each detail of the mission and Roger accounted for every moment that he spent in New Orleans. Except for after Lefévre's death. He just said that he walked around the streets before catching his flight. Some events were just supposed to be personal, and Roger was worried that he had compromised Abby's safety by making contact with her even though she had no idea who he was.
Amanda's keen instincts told her that Roger was hiding something. She took him to an interrogation cell and let him sit for a few hours while she handled other pressing matters. Once her schedule was cleared up and everything else that was crucial was taken care of, Amanda returned to Roger and grilled him again and again about the mission.
The more Amanda questioned him, the more Roger was convinced that he could not tell her about Abby. As time went on, Roger grew tired but stuck to his story. He had to hold out against Amanda's relentless questioning.
…
Arya had discovered a new form of salvation: music. She was excused from training for the day after being brought back to Division the night before so that she could have a few hours to sleep and recuperate. Arya barely needed any sleep and preferred to be awake as much as possible, so she spent all of her free time in Alex's room listening to her friend's radio. Alex had opted to go to training anyway, so Arya had the room to herself. Somehow, music was able to express the feelings that could not be condensed into words.
As an assassin, Arya had no time for music unless it was part of a cover. Carlos had really been the one to introduce Arya to listening to and playing music as a hobby. For a monster, his tastes in music and art were surprisingly refined. He had even bought her a grand piano so that she could play for him. She had learned how to dance, also to get close to a target, and Carlos had arranged for her to take dance lessons when she was with him.
When Arya had first learned all of these skills, she supposed she had liked them well enough. But that was never the purpose for studying them. All of her years of training were not for her enjoyment. They were to better prepare her for changing her identity, espionage, and assassination. With Carlos, she once again picked up old talents, and once again she did not do them for herself. It was all because Carlos wanted her to entertain him. Finally, Arya could act for her own personal pleasure. She refused to allow Carlos's memory to ruin the activities that she wanted to do.
Arya flipped through the stations and stopped on one at random. The sweet, mournful, haunting voice of a woman filled the room. Transfixed, Arya listened to the whole song. After it ended, one phrase echoed in her head again and again. She couldn't stop hearing the phrase "Don't try to fix me, I'm not broken" and it floated around in her mind. Arya wondered, was she broken? The ache inside of her seemed to say yes.
On a whim, Arya pulled out the almost forgotten ballet slippers that Amanda had given her out from under her bed. She had stuffed the note she had been given in the bathroom of the hotel in one of the shoes. Arya knew that it was risky to keep the note she had gotten at her first operation, but it helped give Arya the confidence that she could pull off her plan to bring down Division.
She tiptoed down the hallway to the workout room to make use of the gym mats that covered the floors. It had grown late and Arya was not technically supposed to be out of her room, but she didn't care. Lacing up the shoes brought back memories of Carlos, but Arya was determined to make new memories. Happy ones. She stretched, feeling the warm tug through her muscles as she prepared to dance.
No music was necessary. Arya could hear the song in her head as she moved through a familiar piece that she had choreographed herself as an exercise during one of her dance classes.
….
Michael entered Percy's office demanding an answer. His recruit had been gone the entire day, and Amanda told him nothing about where he was or what was being done to him.
"Where is Roger?"
"Amanda is debriefing him." said Percy simply.
"Don't play games with me. Roger has been gone since eight o'clock this morning. What happened to him?"
"Amanda feels that he is holding something back, and she wants to find out what he's hiding. This mission was of a sensitive nature, and it could be detrimental to Division if something went wrong and he doesn't tell us. That's all."
"Thank you, sir."
Michael walked briskly to Amanda's office and burst in without knocking. It was empty. He then headed to the interrogation rooms and looked inside them one by one. At last, he saw Roger sitting slumped at a table with Amanda circling him menacingly.
"I'm not finished, Michael." she said coldly.
"Yes you are." insisted Michael.
"If he hasn't told you what you want to hear after all this time, he isn't going to talk. Just drop it."
"I've been playing nice, but I can be much more persuasive if the need arises. I can make him talk."
"Forget it. The mission was a success, and now I need my recruit back."
"Fine." growled Amanda, irritated with Roger's failure to talk as well as with Michael's attitude with her.
She left the room in a huff, her heels clicking sharply on the tiled floor.
"We're both going to pay for that later." said Roger wryly. "Amanda's bad side is a bad place to be."
"Don't worry about it." said Michael, placing a hand on Roger's shoulder. "Let's get you back to your room."
"Thanks." said Roger sincerely. "You didn't have to do this for me."
Michael gave him a small smile. He liked Roger. The recruit was frank, honest, and a genuinely good guy. He was someone Michael could have been friends with or played a pickup game of basketball with in another life. But Division was his life now, and the more he got attached to the recruits, the more it would hurt when they were cancelled or killed on a mission. No one lasted too long in Division.
Roger and Michael passed the exercise room on their way back to the sleeping quarters and a sight made them stop. Arya was there and she was . . . dancing. They did not know quite what to make of it. Her eyes were closed and her face serene. She moved with a lithe feline grace when she leapt across the mats as though she was trying to fly away. After some time she seemed to realize that the world of flight was beyond her. She took one final leap, her arms outstretched and fingers reaching for something that was just beyond her grasp. Finally, she plummeted to the ground and folded over like a flower bud waiting to bloom. When she opened her arms and rose slowly to her feet, Roger released a breath he didn't realize he had been holding.
She looked up, startled, and did not know how to react to Roger.
"I see you made it back in one piece." she said finally.
"Yeah. I'm glad it's all over, though."
"How do you feel?" asked Michael.
"I'm fine. The doc says that I need the cast for another two weeks and then my thumb should be better."
"Good to hear." said Michael.
"What happened?" asked Roger with a hint of worry.
"I'll tell you about it some other time. It was no big deal."
"Well I'm going to escort Roger back to his room, and you should get back to yours." said Michael pointedly. "I won't report you this time, but you need to be in your room after lights out."
"I'll be right there." said Arya.
Unbeknownst to Arya, Chad had also been watching her from the floor above. He jogged easily down the steps and cleared his throat when he came into the room.
"What are you doing here?" wondered Arya.
"I could ask you the same question." Chad answered playfully.
"Just getting some air." she said. "What about you?"
"I couldn't sleep either. Actually, I was hoping to find you. I knocked on your door and you didn't answer so I thought that you might be here."
"What do you want?" Arya asked, somewhat suspicious.
"To apologize." The guilt and hurt was clearly written all over his face. "I should have tried to save you on the bus."
"It's not your fault. The men were Division. There was nothing you could have done. They would have taken me either way."
Chad shook his head.
"I saw what you looked like when Michael brought you back here. You looked like hell, Arya. And I just kept thinking that it was all my fault."
Arya smiled slightly and lifted her eyes to meet his. She gently placed her hand on his cheek and smoothed out the wrinkle in his brow.
"How are you going to chase after the ladies with a frown on your face?" she teased. Chad had really been beating himself up over what had happened to her. "Let's see that famous hundred watt smile.
"Sure thing, sweet cheeks." he grinned.
"Hey. I don't feel that sorry for you. No corny nicknames."
"Okay, Arya." he said seriously. "Can I walk you back to your room?"
"Sure." she responded.
Maybe Chad wasn't so bad after all. His feelings were genuine, and Arya would never have expected him to be mature enough to feel responsible for her torture. Maybe he was changing.
….
The beeping of her computer caught Nikita's attention. She set down her morning cup of coffee, yawned, and opened the shell program. It was a message from Alex.
Something weird is going on. Percy just dropped everything and is going to Montreal. He was in the middle of an important mission, so it must be really serious for him to split like that. Fill you in with details when I know something.
Keep me posted. Canada, here I come.
Nikita smirked. This was going to be good.
After searching online, Nikita booked her flight to Canada. The earliest flight she could find was still several hours away. Not good enough. She scanned the internet for news about Canada, anything that would have prompted Percy to leave with such urgency. A bank robbery caught her attention. Apparently, a bank in Montreal was held up, but a civilian somehow stopped the robbery and disappeared. It had Division written all over it. Nikita could feel it in her bones.
…
Back in the communications room, Michael was making the same conclusion for himself with Birkhoff's help. The computer genius knew better than to mess with Michael when the man wanted something, and Birkhoff was also curious as to why Percy had rushed off to Montreal. Perhaps he was being blackmailed or coerced into doing something? That did not seem likely. There were codes in place for such a situation, and Percy had not used any of them. He seemed worried but not afraid. Michael would get to the bottom of things even if Percy did not see fit to trust him.
The man involved in thwarting the bank robbery was Owen Elliot according to the Montreal news broadcast covering the incident. Birkhoff searched the name through Division's personnel database, but Michael knew that there was no way they would get that lucky. There was no Owen Elliot on file. Michael knew it was because this Owen was working off the books. There was a lot that even Division personnel did not know about their agency. Even though Owen's name did not appear in any file, he was still very much a part of Division. He worked directly for Percy. And the only reason why he contacted Percy was because something went wrong with his assignment.
Between the ongoing issue of Nikita and the tentatively balanced mission happening in Pakistan, whatever Percy was going to do must have been of the utmost importance. Michael had the nagging feeling that Percy was leaving him in charge of a sinking ship.
….
Nikita found Owen's address from the Montreal news broadcast and pulled up in front of the classically pretty apartment building in her rental car. There were cops posted outside the door, and one of them stopped Nikita as she attempted to enter.
"Chill, CSI." she said breezily. "I'm not a reporter. I'm just here to see my friend, is that legal?"
Aware that the cops were watching her, Nikita knocked on the first door she saw. The woman who answered it looked at her expectantly with warm brown eyes and was surprised when Nikita asked to buy the stained glass butterflies that were hanging in the window. She pretended to work for an interior designer, and the woman, Emily, gave her a few pieces of exquisite glass. Nikita casually questioned Emily about the policemen and about Owen.
"He kept to himself." she said, looking uncomfortable. There was clearly more going on there.
Nikita then dropped the subject to relax Emily and switched her focus back to the butterflies.
As she was leaving, Nikita had an idea. She jimmied the door of Owen's mail slot until it opened. She grabbed the mail inside it, stuffed it under her shirt, and hurried out the door. She got lucky. Nikita found a phone bill and called the cell phone company who had sent the bill. She pretended that her husband lost his phone and that she wanted to find it using a GPS tracker. She was able to give Owen's name and account number, but when asked for the password Nikita was stuck.
"Listen." she said to the operator for the cell phone company. "I'm not actually looking for the cell phone. I'm looking for the cheating bastard attached to the cell phone. The password is probably his hooker of the week's name like Bambi or Chloe or Jeni. The man could not keep it in his pants if it was tied to his zipper, you know what I mean?"
Nikita hoped that her angry rant evoked some sympathy from the woman on the other end on the line. It did. Most women would feel sorry for a fellow woman who was being cheated on by a scumbag. Within minutes, Nikita had Owen's location and the operator's deepest wishes that she'd divorce the jerk and get every penny she could out of him.
Squinting, Nikita tried to make out the address on the building in front of her. This was it. Nikita was surprised that Owen had chosen to hide out in a school. Walking inside, the choice made more sense. The school appeared to have closed down. While it once must have been impressive, the floors were dirty and it had fallen into disrepair.
An uneasy silence filled the air as Nikita searched the building. With her gun raised, she entered a science lab and saw Owen standing with his back to her.
"Show me your hands." she said firmly.
He complied. Nikita could see the prominent muscles in his arms as he raised them higher and slowly turned around to face her. His blue eyes watched her warily.
"Good place to hide." she remarked. "A school gone to hell. Remind you of Division any?"
He stepped closer to her as though he was preparing to fight her, but Nikita realized that he was actually placing himself in front of the black box that was sitting on the lab bench.
"So is that what you got from the bank?"
"Percy sent you?" he asked, speaking for the first time.
"Hello, I have the gun. That means question time is for me."
Owen could see that the answer was no. Nikita wasn't going to play that angle.
"Well, I am here because of Percy." she continued. "That's one of his black boxes, isn't it?"
"See for yourself." replied Owen, tossing it at her.
Nikita reached up to catch the box, taking her gun off of Owen who leapt with inhuman strength to kick the gun out of her hand. They fought and he sent Nikita rolling into a cabinet. The stained glass butterflies that she had received from Emily fell out of her pocket and clattered onto the floor.
"Where did you get those?" demanded Owen.
Nikita stood up with her hands out.
"Listen," she began.
Owen ran at her and they tussled again. He had Nikita in a chokehold.
"What did you do to her?" he cried. "What did you do to Emily?"
"Not Division." gasped Nikita.
"Who are you?" he asked, confused.
Nikita took advantage of Owen's momentary distraction to ram her elbow into his groin. She freed herself and grabbed his leg, knocking him to the ground. Nikita ran, leaving Owen on the floor with the black box tucked into the back of his jeans. He grabbed her gun and ran after her. Nikita pushed open the door to the school as she ran past it, and Owen saw it close as he entered the hallway. It seemed as though she had fled. In reality, Nikita was hiding down another hallway with the gun from her ankle holster securely in her hands.
Since Owen assumed that Nikita had left the building, he scooped up his jacket and clambered out the window of the science lab. He ran until he was certain that the woman had not followed him. Then he proceeded to call Percy from his prepaid phone.
"You're early. What went wrong?" asked Percy.
"My position had been compromised. An operative made a play for the package. It's still secure, but you may want to move up your time table."
Percy stood up from the couch he was sitting on as his blood began to boil. There was only one operative who would do such a thing.
"Female. About five foot six, right?" Percy did not need to wait for a confirmation.
"Who is she?" Owen asked, panting slightly from the exertion of the afternoon.
"Nikita." muttered Percy darkly. "A rogue agent."
"How come I wasn't briefed?" said Owen indignantly.
"Briefed?" countered Percy. "Owen, what did she say to you?"
"Nothing. She wanted to know who I was, but I was able to get the drop on her."
"But you let her live." said Percy, disappointed.
"Now, I had a choice to pursue her or protect the package." said Owen with conviction. "And my job is to protect the package."
"You made the right choice. Beat location alpha in one hour, and I'll pick up the box myself. One more thing. If you see Nikita again, you have to terminate on sight."
Percy hung up and turned to Roan, his chief cleaner. Or without the euphemism, his most ruthless killer.
"I'll take care of her." he offered, his silver hair glinting in the lamplight.
"No. For once she's not the priority. I need you and your men to secure the rendezvous point. When the delivery has been made I want complete containment."
"You want me to cancel the courier." said Roan, catching Percy's drift.
"He's had advanced training, so be ready."
From her car, Nikita contacted Alex and asked her to find out anything she could on Owen Elliot. Nikita hoped that her mole would pull through in time. Luckily, Alex had a plan.
….
Birkhoff was attempting to instruct the recruits as to how to crack a cell phone or Bluetooth encryption. While he was preoccupied with dealing with Jaden and Thom's bantering, Alex got Birkhoff to press a button on her device giving her an excellent thumbprint. Alex said that she had to use the restroom and ran out of the computer lab. Back in her room, Alex brushed eye shadow on the Bluetooth and then lifted the print with tape from the Bluetooth. She stuck the tape on the plastic casing from her lamp which fit nicely on her thumb. Now she had a copy of Birkhoff's thumbprint which would give her access to Percy's office.
When she returned to the lab, the class was still in session. She saw Chad leaning over Arya who was struggling with breaking the safety code on the phone.
"Here." he said, pressing a few buttons. "You do it like this."
"Thanks." she said.
"Now you try it." Chad said encouragingly.
To Arya's astonishment, she cracked the code on her first go at it. Chad had been surprisingly helpful. From across the room, Roger felt a stab of jealousy as he watched Chad being so close to Arya.
"Take it easy, man." said Thom. "Let it go."
Roger had not been aware that his fists were clenched.
"Arya's smart. She won't fall for his act." reassured Thom.
"She better not. Or she'll end up cancelled."
Feeling his eyes on her, Arya looked over at Roger. She smiled tentatively. She felt awkward around him after rejecting him before his mission. She would have to deal with her feelings for him. They could never be romantically involved. That was clear. Arya had a mission to accomplish, and she could not afford any distractions. That had always been her rule no matter how tempting those distractions might be. She and Roger could be friends, Arya decided. Just friends and nothing more.
Alex took her seat next to Arya and tried to focus on her work instead of on Thom who kept trying to get her attention. Glancing around the room, Alex noticed that Michael was standing in the doorway with a faraway look in his eyes. She had never seen his face so unguarded. It made him look younger and full of possibilities as though anything might happen. As though his touch when he had held her after he saved her from the "terrorist" could turn into something more. Alex shook herself out of her daydream. There were more important things at stake. She had to sneak over to Percy's office and find out something about Owen Elliot. Nikita was counting on her.
Author's Note: I'm putting our love triangles to a vote. It's all up to you guys. Should Alex be with Thom or Michael, and should Arya end up with Roger or Chad? I'd also be happy to hear about any other couples that you might have in mind.
You know the drill: read and review!