Sacrifices for the Greater Good

Mission X

Everything seemed to slow to a crawl as Gaby dragged her gaze from her fallen lover to look over at the suddenly silent and grinning Rose, in the woman's grip was a small device shaped similarly to a gun but seeming to use small darts as its ammunition. An unknown liquid glimmered in one of the remaining darts. Instinct soon kicked in, and Gaby felt a voice in the back of her head telling her to disarm the woman in front of her before the weapon could be turned in her direction. But before she could do so, all the air was knocked out of her lungs as a huge weight slammed into her side and knocked her to the floor. The weight crushed her against the floorboards, and stunned for the second time in such a short while she did nothing for a moment as she tried to process what had just happened.

Her confusion only lasted a few seconds before her fight or flight reflex kicked in and she began to struggle and buck against the force, but to no effect. The object pinning to her ground did not move an inch no matter what she did. Her eyes found Illya's face where he was laying only a few feet away from her. His eyes were closed, and if it weren't for the regular rising and falling of his chest she might have thought he was dead.

"Get a chair, Rosie." A rough voice near her head ordered, and Gaby realised with a start that it wasn't only Rose that had somehow escaped police custody, it was also her father. At the moment he was occupied with stopping her from escaping his steel-like grip. She stopped fighting as she realised there was no way she was going to get George off of her, and watched as a pair of legs walked between her and Illya to the other side of the room to choose a wooden-backed chair. A large pair of hands manhandled her into the chair and held her in place while duct tape was used to pin her to the chair. Gaby could do little more than glare at him as her arms where fixed behind her back and her legs were taped to the chair.

"What did you do to my husband?" She demanded, reverting back to character in the hope that perhaps they would be able to straighten out this mess without there needing to be violence.

"There's no need to pretend you're together anymore sweetheart." George said with effortless calm. "I know now that you two were plants sent by the FBI." The words were said with such conviction that Gaby knew immediately it would be pointless to try to convince him he was wrong, and she felt her heart sink with dread as it slowly began to dawn on her the danger she was in. She remembered in the original mission briefing Waverly telling them that George had moles within the FBI, maybe someone had been able to warn him when the police were sent to arrest him.

"What did you do to my partner then?" She spat venomously, stealing concerned looks over at the individual in question. She didn't bother correcting George about her and Illya being together, worried that such information could be used against them. Illya still hadn't moved since the dart had struck him, whatever had been in that vial had been potent enough to take him down and she only hoped that his current state was not permanent. She didn't think it was a poison, there was little point in using something fatal when they could have just shot him.

"Drugged him with a tranquilizer. I had one of my friends make up a concentration that would subdue a man of his size back when I was still considering him as a candidate. He'll be luckier than you by the time I'm finished." There was pure malice in his voice, but Gaby barely reacted at the thinly veiled threat as she turned her attention to Rose who was idly sitting on a table nearby, not seeming to have any interest in the ongoing conversation.

"Why have you got her involved? She has nothing to do with your sick business." Gaby snapped back. "Does she know you sell women and drugs and weapons?" The question had been intended to provoke a reaction from the other woman but she did not bat an eyelash at the listing of her father's crimes. Maybe Illya had been right- maybe she had known and condoned his actions, Gaby realised with a sudden sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. She had misjudged her innocence. Rose had always seemed a little self-absorbed and materialistic, maybe she didn't care how her father acquired his wealth as long as she was given access to it for all her whims.

"I will ask the questions." George slammed a fist into the wall beside her head, causing her to involuntarily flinch. His sudden anger almost reminded her of Illya's rare tantrums, with the obvious difference being that Illya had never turned his anger on her. "Who do you work for?" He demanded.

"The FBI." She lied easily, and for her efforts she was backhanded roughly across the face. She had not expected the blow and she felt her eyes water at the force he had used, her cheek stung painfully and she knew that within a few hours it would leave a purple mark. That is, if she had a few hours. The prospect seemed more and more remote as the interrogation proceeded.

"I know you don't work for the FBI." George said coldly, and oddly calm considering he had just assaulted her. "I have a mole there that would have told me. They only found out about the operation today when the arrest orders came in. Who do you work for?" Unknowingly he had confirmed her suspicions, but she took no satisfaction in it as she spat directly in his face.

"That's who I work for, arsehole." He hit her again for that comment, the blow this time hard enough to cause a few reluctant tears to escape from her eyes. She tried to blink them back even as she heard a very female laugh nearby. Raising her head, Gaby could see the slight smile on her friend's face and the realisation that she had badly misjudged the girl only became more concrete.

"Rosie, get the things from the trunk darling. I'd rather not spend more time here than absolutely necessary." George never took his eyes off her as he spoke kindly to his daughter. "I don't think you realise, girl, exactly how much you've pissed me off. I can't work in this country again."

"My heart bleeds for you." She said sarcastically.

"Oh I'm sure it will." He laughed ominously, and watched with some amusement as Gaby strained against the restraints that held her in place to no effect. With the adrenaline wearing off, she suddenly realised with no small amount of horror that with all the bugs taken from the house, there was no way Napoleon or Waverly would know what happened to them until it was too late. She fought harder but to no avail, George's booming laughter the soundtrack to her struggle.

"Now I do understand neither of you are the organ grinders. I'm still going to kill you both for betraying me, but," he leaned in close, "I really want to make the people who organised this pay for what they've done." She missed most of what he was saying, focussing on what Rose was doing behind him. She appeared to be rigging up explosives around the house, her fingers expertly working through the wiring. It was clearly not the first time she had handled such items, and even with Gaby's limited knowledge of such things she realised with the sheer amount of explosive material that there would be nothing left of the house or them when the mechanism was triggered.

"You can save your breath, I won't tell you anything. My partner won't either when he wakes up." Perhaps if Gaby could drag this out long enough, someone would come calling and help. It was a faint hope but hope nonetheless. She was deeply aware that she was fighting for more than just two people, and her false display of bravado was used with the intention to prolong the interrogation. The longer she held back the information the greater the chance was that someone would realise the two had not been arrested and maybe send someone to the house.

Rose reappeared before them, her expensive perfume wafting over them both and its cloying sweetness nearly made Gaby gag. She kicked Illya in the side on her way towards them, his prone body not even reacting to the blow. Gaby tried her best not to look at him, wary that they might use him to try to get the truth from her, or vice versa. The fact they had drugged him instead of killing him outright might mean that they intended to question him if they didn't get any information from her.

"Why are you doing this Rose? I thought we were friends." She tried to appeal to the woman, Rose looked at her with a strange look on her face and burst into girlish giggles.

"I know." She said cheerily. "We could have been such good friends. I even started to like you more than the other wives, especially when I heard about what you did to poor Frank." The smile on her face suddenly turned hard. "But then you had to ruin it all by selling us to the FBI." The tone it was said in was strangely reminiscent of a spoiled child having their favourite toy taken away from them.

"What on earth do you have to gain from helping him?" Gaby pleaded. Out of the corner of her eye she watched as George left both of them to inspect his daughter's handiwork. Maybe she could seize his momentary distraction, convince Rose to help her. The cold behaviour from the other woman could all just have been out of anger that Gaby had used her and betrayed her.

"Oh I've always helped him." Rose pronounced proudly, not noticing the totally shocked expression on Gaby's face. "I'm a division leader, after all. I deal with the whores, there's rather a lot of money involved. The girls are all so trusting and stupid, you wouldn't believe how easy it is to collect them."

Gaby felt suddenly sick. She had always thought Rose to be so sweet and even with her recent behaviour taken into account she had still struggled to understand that there was something malicious about her, but now she could clearly see that her smile wasn't just amused there was something truly deranged about it. All those secrets they had shared over the past few weeks, Rose disclosing her feelings of her mother's death and her one serious relationship with a man that had ended awfully. None of it mattered to the girl before her, and now she considered that maybe the confessions part hadn't even been true. It seemed difficult to think of this woman caring for other people. Gaby recoiled suddenly as one of Rose's hands found its way to her hair, which she gently stroked as though she would do with a particularly favoured pet.

"You know, Dad has always had a thing for petite brunettes." Rose said conversationally, in the same voice as they had discussed dresses and fashion before. "What do you think of Gaby, Dad? She's pretty isn't she?"

"She is." George had returned some time while Gaby had been trying to understand her friend's true character, it appeared that he had found a hammer in the basement and was now toying with it. He had probably found it in her toolbox, she realised with some horror. Would he turn her own devices on her? The thought filled her with fear, and not just for herself. "She might not be for much longer." He commented.

"I've been trained to handle torture." Gaby lied desperately. "It won't work."

"I would take the hammer if I were you." Rose said, almost pityingly. "There is more than one kind of torture, I should know I have to find someone employ it sometimes when the girls misbehave." Gaby's head shot up at that as she tried to figure out the girl's meaning. "Dad isn't gentle, that's why Mother left and we had to run her off the road." She said, her sweet tone contrasting harshly with the content of her words. "I've always found him such pretty little things to play with, and you especially look like his type. It would not be a pleasant way for you to lose that baby." Her smile seemed to widen as she saw fear suddenly enter Gaby's eyes.

"She's pregnant?" George asked, not appearing too concerned that they were currently discussing how best to extract information from her, and she doubted that such a revelation would grant her any mercy.

"Yeah I know, stupid right?" Rose replied with a laugh, before turning to look at her seriously. "You probably should have thought about that before you gave us up."

"It doesn't change anything." George added, and to Gaby's horror she noticed he had set aside the hammer and was now eyeing her up proprietarily, as though she was an object being auctioned off that he was considering bidding on. "It has been a long time, Rosie, maybe you're right. I could do with some stress relief after the day we've just had."

Gaby stole another glance at Illya's prone body, mentally begging him to show some sign of life, but he continued to remain unmoving.

"I double checked the concentration for his weight." George said, following her gaze. "He's not going to be able to help you." Briefly assessing the situation, Gaby came to a difficult decision. If she was going to die anyway, a prospect that was more likely by the minute, she thought that she would rather die quickly than endure anything from this man. She mustered up her courage, and turned defiant eyes on him, a light smile playing on her lips.

"I'm not sure I'm really your type." She drawled bluntly to George, looking him directly in the eye. "I might look pretty, but I don't think you'll be interested when you find out what I am." She could tell he wasn't taking her seriously even as she spoke, but she was confident that the bombshell she would drop would be sufficient to change his tune.

"Like that would matter to me."

"Oh I think it will." She grinned viciously. "I lied about which side of the wall I was from, I'm East German."

"That means nothing." He still looked completely undeterred, but she wasn't finished.

"That's true." She said sweetly. "But the fact that the father of my baby is a communist might not be so palatable. What can I say? The Russian accent drove me wild. Does that bother you more?" As she expected he abruptly took a few steps back in disgust. It had been a calculated risk, she had heard him rant enough about "fucking Russians" and "communist scum" in the past, and she knew that the information would either horrify him or make him more determined to hurt her in the worst possible way. As she watched his face turn purple in anger and he spluttered his way through several sentences, she knew that it was the former.

"You let that filth touch you?" He demanded angrily, and she arched an eyebrow in response, finally feeling as though she had the verbal upper hand. It was measly consolidation but she took it gratefully anyway, taking satisfaction in that she could continue to horrify and inconvenience him.

"Well obviously I let him do a lot more than just touch." She taunted.

"She's just trying to piss you off, Dad." Rose cautioned him. "Don't get carried away." She leaned back against the table she was standing next to, a freshly poured glass of wine in her hand.

"You're right." George spat. "You're too dirty for me to go near." She almost breathed a sigh of relief as she realised that at the very least she would avoid that. "Rosie, get ready to set off the explosives." Gaby's smile was abruptly wiped off at that, and even Rose looked surprised at the order.

"Don't you want to know who they work for anymore?" She asked, a trace of annoyance in her voice.

"No. We've spent too long here already, I just want to blow this place and these people to smithereens and be done with it." George snapped. He made to leave her, but something in him made him hesitate and he turned back to her. For a moment Gaby's blood ran cold as she wondered whether he had reconsidered his disgust. "Any last requests?" He asked tauntingly.

She wasn't sure how genuine the offer was, and she found herself bowing her head, not wanting them to see the tears that were now streaming down her face. There was no avoiding it now, no more false hopes or trying to convince herself that any moment now the cavalry were going to burst through the door. This was going to be the end for her. It was difficult to accept, but something she had to do. Gaby closed her eyes and felt another stab of grief as she realised that Illya would never find out about the baby, and that she would never get the experience of being a mother. Had she the luxury of it she might have dwelled on the point for longer, but she forced herself to put it out of her mind. Raising her head again, she found herself nodding at the question and hoping that they would grant her this last small mercy.

Author's Note: …