Author's Note: Insert usual excuses and whining re work, real life, etcetera here. You've heard it all before. Alas and alack for the fate that forces me to (gasp!) earn a living!

Here is further plot thickening. I'm sure you're even sicker of that than of my excuses, but . . . trust me? I'm a professional. Sort of.

Rating: T for language.

Disclaimer: G.I. Joe and all associated characters and concepts are property of Hasbro Inc, and I derive no profit from this. Please accept this in the spirit with which it is offered—as a work of respect and love, not an attempt to claim ownership or earn money from this intellectual property.

Chapter Fifteen: Unblocking the Sink

When Anne Geraldine Gorshin decided to go into the United States Army, there was a predictable amount of family disagreement. Her father had served in Korea, but Vietnam was much fresher in everyone's minds, and her parents were having visions of her dying of trench foot in a ditch somewhere. Annie, though, was determined: she wanted to go to college. Granted, she wasn't sure what the hell she was going to do with college once she got to it, but that was something she could worry about in the future. Her plan was college, and college required money they didn't have or scholarships she couldn't qualify for, which left the US Army and the GI Bill.

It took her approximately thirty-two minutes—the length of time the intake drill instructor took to make the first recruit freak out—to realize that maybe she hadn't thought her plan through.

Nevertheless, she stuck with it. College, college, college, she chanted in her brain while doing the billionth pushup drill: it was a word that meant a good job, a degree, a life in the big city away from her no-horse home town and the grill at the Golden Egg. Generation after generation of Gorshins had been stubborn bastards, after all, and she was determined to use that stubbornness to make some kind of mark on the world. Or a pile of money. Money would be pretty good too.

She was always better at theory than at execution, busily imagining herself as a successful professional in some capacity. Army cook was a . . . a step in the plan. It wasn't a job she would be doing forever. She told herself that while she washed dishes and turned out the ten millionth pancake. Not always a cook, not always a cook.

That day, after her first successful interview with Carter Hall, captive Toxo-Viper, Annie found herself in a bizarrely good mood. There was no real reason for it: she'd accomplished nothing aside from issuing a subtle castration thread to a prisoner, and possibly putting him off hot dog casserole for life to boot. Nevertheless, she was whistling as she trotted back to the kitchen, getting odd looks from several passing Joes. She didn't even make a detour to avoid Sgt. Major Beach Head, who gave her a suspicious glance as she saluted with a smile.

It wasn't until she was elbow-deep in the lunch dishes that she realized what was going on. She wasn't just a cook any more: she was an undercover agent, a deep-cover spy using subtle threats and womanly wiles (Sort of. She'd never known a man to make hot dog casserole) to ferret out information from a captured enemy who had no idea of her true identity. On the surface, she was a grunt, a greenshirt—but she was actually on a secret mission from high command! She had a deep, dark secret. She was making the mark she dreamed of. She was special.

"Jesus Christ," she said aloud, frowning at her reflection in the dirty dishpan water and ignoring the curious expression Chopper shot her way. She knew that reading her mother's Harlequin Presents had had a bad effect on her, but she hadn't known just how bad until now. Special, Annie? Really? She had shot the man she was currently annoying, and some part of her was just enjoying the novelty of it all. Fantasies of power and escape were all very well, but now it was taking on a frightening tinge.

In a few days, Warrant Officer Flint would call her to his office for a report on her super-secret no-take-backs investigation and interrogation, and she would get to be special some more. Then maybe she could romanticize some other aspect of national security that might get someone killed—like that mission to Bosnia that half the martial artists were shipping out for tomorrow. Boy, wasn't that exciting and novel! It wasn't like people came back from those almost dead or anything.

"Hey, 'Stack," SOS said, prodding her shoulder. "You okay?"

She shook her head. "Yeah. Why?"

"You've been staring at that plate for like three minutes."

"There was a stain on it."

SOS raised an eyebrow.

"That was shaped like Jesus. Look, are we going to get this done, or are you going to play twenty questions about how I wash dishes?"

Young Annie Gorshin had dreamed of being special.

Young Annie Gorshin, who had never shot anybody or lived through the invasion of a top-secret military base, had been an idiot.

Quartermasters occupied an odd position in G.I. Joe. Technically they were specialists, but overall they were Support, and troops like that were liable to be reallocated to any part of Support that needed help no matter what their specialty allegedly was. Annie was quickly becoming resigned to the confusion of it all, but that afternoon she was grateful for it: an afternoon spent in the laundry or the motor pool would keep her mind off her increasingly black thoughts.

Six of the cooks were paired off into twosomes and assigned to different support crews for the afternoon. Annie breathed a small sigh of relief when she narrowly avoided being assigned to mortuary services. That kind of job was never a friendly prospect at the best of times, and working as unskilled labor for any 92Mike in a high-security situation was a post only for people with strong stomachs and no sentimentality. For a woman who'd only recently wounded her first man (unless you counted the effects of her cooking), it wasn't something she could happily deal with. No, lucky Annie Gorshin got flight deck duty, where she and a few others would be packing equipment and parachutes under the watchful eye of High Time, the jumpmaster.

While High Time hovered and double-checked their work, Annie, Murphy, two junior 92Romeos, and a half a dozen other greenshirts all gathered around packing chutes and cargo. A conversation was soon struck up: chute-packing was as good as a quilting bee for the Army set. The kitchen might have been the center of the gossip, but any time two or three people put their heads together, they were apt to discuss the foibles of their fellow man in one way or another. Flint could probably trace it back to the need of primitive humanity to detect weaknesses in others, but honestly, Annie figured people just thought it was funny.

Today's blue-plate special seemed to be none other than Sgt. Duke. One of the greenies, a coarse-faced guy known as Dead Meat, had the skinny: Duke had accidentally left an opened letter in the mailroom, a letter which happened to be from his old high school girlfriend. Normally something like that would only be notable if it was mostly made up of expletives, but in this case, the two seemed to be on good terms. On the other hand, it jokingly mentioned the time they met . . . when she fooled him into thinking she was a man. With an opening like that, there was really no way to keep people from trying to fill in their own ending. Someone had already drawn mustaches on all the girls on the motor pool's Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.

Ordinarily, that kind of story would have been prime grist for Annie's little corner of the rumor mill. Today, though, she wasn't in the mood. She was still angry at herself, and possibly at Carter Hall, and definitely possibly at Warrant Officer Flint for putting her in that situation. Stupid real life, not conforming to her personal fantasies. Stupid self, letting herself get worked up in the first place.

She glanced up from the strap she was tightening just in time to accidentally catch Murphy's eye. The lean, hungry-looking cook raised an eyebrow at her expression, drawing a scowl from Annie. She automatically expected rolled eyes or a warning look, but instead Murphy sighed a little and gave her a long-suffering, 'you and me both, pal' expression.

"Somehow," he drawled, tightening a set of straps on a jump pack, "I get the idea that you're not having fun with this line of conversation."

Annie's first instinct was to snap, but checked herself. Murphy outranked her . . . and frankly, he hadn't done anything to earn her wrath. If anything, he'd been one of the less irritating parts of her new life, since he worked hard and didn't say much. Hell, he'd even taken watch for her during the move between Pits. Stomping down on her usual attitude, she gave him a weak smile instead. "Maybe," she said quietly, letting the conversation and gossip carry on without her. "I'm sort of starting to rethink this whole G.I. Joe thing, to be honest."

Murphy shook his head sympathetically and scooched a little closer, bringing his work with him. "Don't worry about it," he said quietly. "You're doing fine, kid. I've seen people come and go, but I've bet you got the chops. You just need to hang on a little longer."

"I don't know if I can," she confessed quietly as she reached for the next pack. "It's . . . crazy, Murph. I know, I know, I've already been given pep talks—Chopper and Dusty both took care of that, so please don't try it. I just had one of those 'holy shit, I'm not a nice person' moments, and I don't want this job to make me worse." She paused, frowning. "And please don't report me to that Psyche-Out guy just because everything I just said makes me sound schizophrenic."

"You're gonna see Psyche-Out whether you like it or not," Murphy said dryly. "Actually, if I know my shrinks, he should be 'accidentally' turning up right . . . about . . . now."

The personnel elevator at the far end of the motor pool opened, and a figure with wavy blonde hair and a bright green shirt emerged. Annie's heart sank.

"Damn," she said to Murphy. "You are good."

"I've been here a long time," he pointed out with a grin. "And you've got that 'I've got a secret mission from up top and am so fucking screwed' look, which means Psyche-Out was about to come down on you." At Annie's shocked expression, he shook his head a little, clearly not fazed. "I told you already. Been here a long time. Don't worry, I'm not gonna tell anyone."

"So in addition to being the best of the best of the US military, you guys are also psychic." She frowned and paused for a moment. "Well, okay, I think I already suspected that." Damn sergeant major. How did he know she thought he smelled bad?

The man moved closer, and Annie tried very hard not to look nervous. She thought she recognized him, vaguely: Psyche-Out, all right, the supposed head of the psychological warfare group within G.I. Joe. He was in his early to mid-thirties, wearing fatigue pants with a bizarre quilted green jacket, the whole thing topped off by a modified pair of headphones dangling around his neck. And he was . . . oh Jesus . . . checking something on a clipboard.

She definitely recognized him now. The face wasn't too familiar—blandly good-looking, all-American without the lantern jaw and broken nose that gave Duke's face character—but the hair was: he'd been in the room, one of the observers taking notes, when she was initially being evaluated by the G.I. Joe shrinks. She'd barely remembered him, figuring he was just another junior lieutenant being a spooky Pentagon type, but the hair brought it all back. 1st Lieutenant Kenneth Rich was apparently pulling double duty as Psyche-Out, specialist in psychological warfare and, um, subsonic manipulation of the human brain.

"Afternoon," he said congenially, stopping next to the parachute packing party. "PFC Short Stack? I'm Lt. Psyche-Out. I'll need to speak with you for just a few minutes."

"Oh. Um." What the hell? He was a lieutenant, and he was talking like a person. One more check in the 'only in Joe' column. "Sir? I've been assigned to, uh, chute-packing-"

"It won't take long. High Time?"

The senior 92Romeo nodded at Psyche-Out, and he turned back to Annie. "See? It's fine. Come with me, please?"

Annie did not, in fact, mouth 'help me!' at Murphy as she stood up. She thought about it, though: on her list of preferred ways to spend time, a session with the team's legendary brain-peeler was right down there with unclogging a garbage disposal by hand. Auugh. Ninjas, where were they when she needed them? A little Storm-Shadow-style chaos sounded wonderful right then.

Alas, pointy deadly rescue was not forthcoming. Psyche-Out led Annie into the elevator and pressed the button for the administrative level. Admin, which was otherwise known as the place that nobody under the rank of sergeant ever, ever wanted to go—and now Annie had been there three times in two days, each time with an increasing sense of doom.

Of course, the last two times she'd been seeing Flint. And Flint, at least, was open and honest in his stuck-up way. He had a job to do, he had security concerns, and he viewed Annie as the best way to get information without torturing a prisoner of the United States government. She might not like him, but she had no reason to be scared of him. Intimidated? Hell yeah. Scared? Not so much. He wasn't going to do horrible things to her worldview.

Psyche-Out was a different story. Annie had never thought she'd cross paths with him, but she'd heard all the stories: expert in X and Y weird sciences, leading developer and utilizer of subsonic technology to literally manipulate the human brain, counselor to ninjas and generals. Nobody had mentioned the goofy lime-green quilted jacket, but Annie wasn't prepared to let it fool her for a second. It was clearly an attempt to put people off their guard; she'd done the same thing at the diner when she was twelve, dressing younger than her age and putting flower clips in her hair to make her look like a sweet little girl. The tips had added up accordingly, and Annie had kept the technique on hand as necessary.

But wait. Was that what Psyche-Out was doing? Or did he just want her to think he was trying to make himself look unthreatening?

. . . God damn it.

"We're here," Psyche-Out said mildly, blocking the tracks of the out-of-control train of thought. Annie hurriedly pulled herself back to the present and nodded as alertly as she could.

Psyche-Out's office was located down at the very far end of corridor B, in the Outer Mongolia of Admin. Somebody (probably answering to a name rhyming with "Dutch") had hung a little stuffed doll from the knob and given it a miniature set of BDUs. Its head had been shrunk. Psyche-Out ignored the grisly token as he unlocked the office, leaving Annie staring awkwardly at the wall and trying to pretend she hadn't seen it. Had it really been necessary to stitch its mouth shut? Or was this more Joe humor?

Inside, the office was neat, clean, and atypical. There were the usual framed commissions and degrees, but someone had taped up a poster of the Cheshire Cat talking to Alice, and the opposite wall had a heavy red-and-black tapestry with an abstract design that kind of reminded her of an arrow. Or maybe a planaria worm. Several books, including a copy of the Physician's Desk Reference, were bookended by a little Egyptian cat statue and a bust labeled "Hippocrates," whoever that was. Annie strongly suspected that he was the inventor of hypocrisy, but it might not be a good idea to bring that up. Scholarly types tended to get crabby if you got stuff wrong.

Psyche-Out settled himself behind the desk and gestured Annie to sit in the chair opposite. As she sat, gingerly, he opened a drawer and peered into it. He sighed.

Then, after a moment, he carefully extracted a little clockwork spider and a jar of sleepy but definitely alive bees. Annie leaned back in her chair, but the shrink just shook his head. "Very funny, guys," he said wearily to the air vent above his chair, which didn't respond. "Stick to realphabetizing my files next time, will you?"

The vent still didn't say anything. Maybe it was thinking it over.

"Ninjas?" Annie guessed.

"Unfortunately." Psyche-Out opened one of the filing cabinets and, after some thought, filed the jar of bees under B. "Remind me to send those to Beach Head, would you? And yes—Storm Shadow and Snake-Eyes like to set each other challenges, and they usually involve my office." He sighed. "You've been here a few weeks now. I'm sure you've seen how annoying they can be."

"Yes!" Annie burst out. "Thank you! Everybody else just waves their hand and says 'oh, that's the ninjas,' but nobody ever thinks about the fact that this is some seriously unhealthy shit and someone could get . . ." The light dawned, belatedly. "Um. I mean. No, sir."

"It's all right. You can be honest here." He closed the filing cabinet. "From the minute you entered this office, I became your personal therapist, and therefore bound by patient confidentiality not to reveal anything that's said within these walls. And it's pretty obvious to me that you need someone to talk to."

Annie bristled a little. She recognized the shrink trick now—with the rest of the Pit playing Bad Cop, all he had to do was throw a little Good Cop in there to get her to say everything she was thinking. No dice, mister. The Official Secrets act was enough to keep her mouth glued shut.

"I don't understand, sir," she said instead. "I'm not sure why I'm here."

"An evaluation," Psyche-Out responded as he settled back into his chair. She half expected him to steeple his fingers menacingly, but evidently he hadn't seen all the right movies. "Everyone who undertakes a special mission for the first time needs to be checked over before the operation can proceed very far. Flint likes his little undercover jobs."

Possibility of an informer within the Pit, the now-gone paper whispered in Annie's head. She kept her face studiously blank.

"I don't know what you mean, sir."

"That's not necessary here, 'Stack."

"Short Stack, E3, 4320-9150-92G5."

"Name, rank, and serial number? That's not how the protocol works any more, Annie."

Annie stopped. Frowned. "Sir?"

"Annie, isn't it?" Psyche-Out tapped a closed file on his desk. "Anne Geraldine Gorshin. Born in Hollis Junction, Illinois, and originally employed as a waitress and gofer in the Golden Egg diner?"

"Er . . . yes, sir." Annie swallowed, surprised at how easily one damn proper noun had stopped her train of thought yet again. She was always Annie, or even Anne, to herself. Aggie to her grandmother, who'd been christened Agnes and liked to think that Annie's name was some kind of homage to her. But outside of her head, she hadn't heard her legal name from another human being in . . . Jesus, it felt like years. Had it only been a couple of weeks since she and her bag had landed there in the Land of Weird?

"You need to understand something, Annie." Psyche-Out folded his hands and leaned forward a little, aiming hundred-watt baby blues at her. Annie squirmed, just a little. "Flint has briefed me on your situation. As G.I. Joe's counseling specialist, my job is to make sure that everybody is capable of handling the greatness that's been thrust upon them." He smiled a little, evidently pleased at the cleverness of something he'd said. Annie stared blankly, and he cleared his throat and continued. "Quartermasters aren't typically chosen for field work of this nature, but the demands of G.I. Joe are unique, and I wanted to make sure that it wasn't too much for you to handle."

"And what if you do decide I can't handle it?" she said softly. There was an odd, sick feeling growing in the pit of her stomach, and Annie wasn't even sure why it was there.

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves." He picked up the clipboard, made a couple of check marks on a form, and smiled at her. "Shall we begin?"

Annie Gorshin was familiar with psychology, in a vague sort of way. It was usually one of the departments touted in college brochures, and people on TV always seemed to be using it to get criminals to confess. The phrase "reverse psychology" and the technique's applications were familiar to anyone who'd ever fought with a brother. And of course, she could milk tips for all she was worth, and back in the day had quite the sideline in ferreting useful gossip out of people. That was the extent of her expertise with the mind.

If she was a psychology kindergartner, though, Psyche-Out had a quadruple master's degree and a tenth-level black belt of shrinkiness to go with it. His words did things to logic, horrible things that poor logic was never meant to deal with, and out of confusion Annie would find herself telling the truth. No, she wasn't sleeping very well. No, she wasn't having nightmares . . . or many, anyway. No, she wasn't having homicidal thoughts about her teammates, aside from the occasional urge to bash someone with a frying pan. No, her family didn't have a history of mental disorders, unless you counted Great-Uncle Kazimier who decided to celebrate his first day in America by getting plastered and wound up taking a long walk off a short pier. No, she wasn't having night terrors. Yes, she'd passed all previous evaluations. Yes, she'd applied to sniper school, but her nervous humming had kept her out. Yes, she'd chosen the Army as a method of earning college tuition. No, she didn't know what she wanted to study yet. Yes, she thought Beach Head smelled bad—wait, what?

"Just confirming that all your senses are in full working order," Psyche-Out said calmly. Nice poker face, shrink: Annie thought he must clean up on game nights.

No, she had never been charged with or convicted of a felony. No, she had never been arrested. Yes, she had once been cautioned by law enforcement—a minor spree of mailbox baseball when she was eleven. No, she didn't believe that good and evil were relative values. She half expected him to ask if she was or ever had been a member of the Communist Party, but it didn't come up.

After almost an hour of intense questioning, Psyche-Out unclipped the papers, rubberstamped them, made a few notes, slid them into a file marked 'CLASSIFIED,' and picked up his desk phone. "Two pigeons in the cannibal kingdom," he said, as if it was the kind of thing people said every day.

Thirty seconds later, there was a knock at the door, making Annie jump. Two MPs were standing there, looking stern, morally inviolable, and scary as hell. She didn't recognize either of them, but their expressions said they were clearly senior graduates from the Beach Head School of Pain.

"Flint ASAP," Psyche-Out said, handing the folder to one. "Beach Head, same," he added, forking over the jar of sleepy bees and the clockwork spider.

"Ninjas?" said the shorter of the two MPs

"Three guesses, and the first two don't count," Psyche-Out responded dryly. The two men saluted and vanished as quickly as they'd appeared, carrying Annie's personal details and a jam jar full of stinging insects as if that sort of thing happened every day. Which . . . okay, it probably did.

"Two pigeons in the . . . ohh," Annie said, frowning. "Pigeons—carrier pigeons. Couriers. And the cannibal kingdom . . . headshrin—er, psychiatrist."

"Headshrinker," said shrink responded with a note of cheer in his voice. "Now, PFC Annie Gorshin, thank you for your time. The orders will be processed immediately, so I suspect you'll be getting a visit from one of Low-Light's people by the end of the day."

Her first thought was that she'd failed the examination and was now going to be terminated with extreme prejudice. Fortunately, her second and third thoughts jumped on the first thought and kept her from doing something she'd regret.

"Sir?" she said instead. She seemed to be saying that a lot lately.

"Sniper training," Psyche-Out clarified, making a couple of notes on a fresh piece of paper. "There's been some concerns about whether you can handle the stress your duties have been placing on you, so I've put my stamp on the administrative request to put you in with Low-Light's classes. Things tend to work fast in Joe when they're not being actively held back; I'd be surprised if you weren't reporting for duty by 0700 tomorrow."

There was a moment of silence.

"I'm sorry, sir," Annie said carefully. "I, um, I don't think I understand. The unit is worried about my mental health . . . so they're going to give me a sniper rifle?"

"On my recommendation, yes," Psyche-Out responded mildly.

"Permission to ask a question, sir?"

"Granted."

"Is this some kind of shrink thing?"

"How do you mean?"

Like a shrink way of making sure I get killed, Paranoid Anne whispered in the back of her brain. Paranoid Anne was usually only allowed out during (at home) closing times or (at work) heavy shelling, and Annie didn't like her cropping up so soon in what was essentially a still-friendly situation. She struggled to find a way to explain herself. Psyche-Out, bless him (how often was she going to think those words?), seemed to realize what she was trying to say.

"Is this some complicated scheme to get you into trouble?" he interpreted, a much less psychotic-sounding way of phrasing it. "No, as a matter of fact. But since you've been shanghaied into high-security business, your clearance is being adjusted. And you may find yourself in a situation where that nervous humming isn't going to be an issue."

"But you said—concerns about my, uh, ability to handle stress?"

"Yes, you shoved a Marine under a sink, among other things. Which is why we had this little conversation." Psyche-Out arched an eyebrow. "Unless you'd prefer not to receive any further training?"

"No, sir! I mean—er—I'd like the training, yes sir. I was just confused."

"Dismissed, then." He finished his writing and tucked the piece of paper away.

He didn't have to tell Annie twice. She saluted, but probably set a new land speed record escaping from Psyche-Out's office. The little shrunken-head doll swung forlornly from the doorknob as the door drifted closed behind her.

After a moment, Psyche-Out picked up the phone and dialed a number. "I hope you know what you're doing," he said into the receiver. A pause. "No, I don't think she's 'crazy.' Incidentally, that's not the right word, and you know it. But you don't need me to tell you that this is a highly irregular way of going about things."

Another pause, and Psyche-Out's brow furrowed. "Understood. Sir."

Annie walked in a daze all the way back to the flight deck. The parachute-packing party was still in swing; as she emerged from the elevator, she could hear Dead Meat's voice raised in what was definitely a prime piece of inside information. Funny, she thought vaguely: members of a super-secret military unit, all doing their bit to continue an operation that could possibly get them all killed, and nothing brought them together like simple cheap gossip.

She rejoined them and got back to work. Murphy shot her a curious look, but she just shook her head and kept working. Funny how quickly things changed, wasn't it? She was just starting to find her feet, and things were changing yet again. It would've been easier to tapdance on sand than keep yourself completely oriented in G.I. Joe.

Sniper training . . . a small smile edged its way across her face, in spite of her confusion. Irony strikes again. A month ago, she would have jumped at the opportunity without hesitation. Now, what with shooting her first man and bringing him breakfast afterwards, she wasn't exactly so sure if she wanted to be a more active part of the war. But it just went to show, didn't it? No matter what, she couldn't be the drama queen she was afraid she'd become. She was just too damn confused and incompetent for that.

It was a good thought.

"You look happy," Murphy observed in a low voice, edging a little closer to her. Dead Meat was currently illustrating his story with some questionable hand gestures.

"I feel good," she said quietly. A hint of the smile still lingered. "I think I just figured something out."

"Weird," Murphy said. "People usually look a lot more brain-fried when they come back from Psyche-Out's office. But if that makes you happy, who'm I to question your insanity?" He paused, apparently struck by a thought. "Wanna help me clean the garbage disposal later?"

She snorted. "Even if I was crazy, Murph, I wouldn't be that crazy."