/ARCHIVES

Protective Marking: Confidential

Clearance: Security Check

Subject: Transcript of audio recording

Date: June 27, 1998/

/Begin transcript

::Click::

D: This preliminary disciplinary hearing is being held at oh-nine-hundred on Saturday, June twenty-seventh, ninety-eight. Present are myself - Decade - and junior agent in the field Jack Simon. Simon, do you acknowledge and consent to the recording of this conversation?

S: Yes, sir.

D: Very well. You have requested this meeting in order to further explain your actions as regards to the handling of the Canary Wharf bombing. I will remind you that I left that mission to your best judgment, and you assured me that, in your understanding of Brigid Coleman's character, there would be no safety risk to innocent bystanders.

S: Yes, sir. And I stand by that judgment.

D: You do? Even in light of the fact that Ms. Coleman did indeed set off an explosion that killed and injured dozens, just as she had done at the bus depot bombing in Belfast twelve years ago?

S: I'm afraid this is where it gets tricky, sir. The Brigid Coleman that I approached two weeks ago and recruited in our efforts to apprehend Fitzgerald was adamant that no one would be hurt through her cooperation, and -

D: Of course she would be, if she wanted to convince us that she was cooperating.

S: Sir, with respect, she had no reason to throw away the deal that we had promised her -

D: The unauthorized deal, that you promised to her.

S: Yes, that deal. She had built a new life for herself and this would have been her means of protecting it. In each of our meetings, she was anxious at the thought of being found out a traitor to her former friends, and completely devoted to following through with her sabotage.

D: Well then, do you care to explain why she did not, in fact, sabotage her device and instead detonated it in the middle of a crowded public space?

S: To be quite honest, sir, this is going to sound ridiculous - but I will explain, if you will give me your patience.

D: Carry on.

S: On Monday night, the night before the bombing, Ms. Coleman collapsed and was taken to hospital. She was pronounced to be simply overly stressed, and released in the morning. I spoke with both the nurse and physician who treated her. Both described her manner as cold, detached, and completely calm. Furthermore, she displayed no interest in the wellbeing of her unborn child, and in fact requested an abortion. This is similarly how I found her yesterday - unmoved by the news of the deaths of her husband and her former lover, uninterested in her pregnancy, and entirely focused on obtaining the amnesty that I had promised her. This was all in complete contrast to her anxiety-prone and emotional behavior in all of my previous dealings with her.

D: The woman is a bloody terrorist, Simon, do you really expect her to act in a rational manner? She set us all up, including her former gang. It was only bad luck that led to her hitting her head and being arrested at that pub. Certainly she had been planning on fleeing the country while we were busy tidying up her mess.

S: I expect her to behave consistently, at the very least. This difference was so marked that I'm convinced she suffered a personality change after her collapse Monday night. This morning I interviewed the two members of her crew that we arrested, Tim and Gwenith Ronnell, and they both confirmed the strange shift in Ms. Coleman's behavior upon her discharge from hospital.

D: Is this your explanation? A medical condition led her to set off a bomb in the middle of the financial district, and you are not to be held responsible? I'm afraid I overestimated your ability to lead an operation on your own. We -

S: Sir, if you please, I'm not quite finished.

D: You are trying my patience, Simon. You have five minutes, no more.

S: Yes sir, thank you. I agree that if it was merely a medical issue, unpredicted though it was, the responsibility for her actions would be mine. However, her explanation as to how she was injured was quite…strange.

D: Strange? You astonish me.

S: She said that the explosion at the pub was an accident; that she had been inside when it began, and she froze time in order to walk out and avoid it.

D: That is a very poor joke, Simon. We're done here -

S: I can prove it, sir.

D: Are you being serious?

S: I've thought about it all night, and I believe I have an explanation. The beginning of one, in any case. I reached out to a contact of mine in the Science Division, who provided me with some interesting data. That new star that has all the astronomers in a fit, UB-001, first appeared in the sky late Monday night - at approximately the same time that Ms. Coleman collapsed. It is positioned over Southall, where Ms. Coleman and her compatriots were meeting when it appeared. Furthermore, that star emitted a pulse of radiation that was apparently very unusual for a star - at the same time that the pub was destroyed in the explosion. An explosion which Ms. Coleman claims she avoided by stopping the clock. I was able to confirm this yesterday afternoon: I witnessed her stopping time, and that action again lined up with an emission of radiation from that particular star. I have no idea why any of this has happened, but I do know what it means: MI-6 has in our custody a woman who can step in and out of time as she pleases, and who feels not an ounce of remorse for the deaths of dozens of people.

::long silence::

::Click::

End of transcript/

"Who is this?" Brigid looked the newcomer over in mild disinterest. He was middle-age, of average height, with glasses and an obviously receding hairline. Even more obvious was the fact that he must be with government. It was the suit. It was always the suit.

"Good afternoon," the man said with a fake smile. " My name is Decade. I've been looking forward to meeting you, Ms. Coleman."

Brigid noticed that he didn't approach her hospital bed like Simon had, but rather stood well out of reach. Not that she could have done anything, now that both of her wrists were cuffed to the metal rail. It was decidedly uncomfortable; she'd had an itch on her nose for the past ten minutes.

"Decade is my superior in SIS," Simon explained. "He's rather reluctant to approve the amnesty that I promised you, given the fact that your little bomb caused quite a lot of damage."

Brigid frowned; she was getting tired of having the same conversation. "Dillon is dead and you've caught all the members of the Cause that survived. Isn't that what you wanted? Logically, I fulfilled my end."

"Yes, I see what you mean about the lack of affect," Decade said to Simon. "Interesting. But also explained by an underlying brain condition. Hm." He turned back to Brigid and nodded his head at the television that was mounted in the corner. A newscast was replaying their report on the Canary Wharf bombing; a security camera across the square had caught most of the explosion. Brigid had been watching it for a complete lack of anything else to do. "How do you feel, seeing your handiwork?"

"It was too sloppy," Brigid said. "I could have designed a device that was much more targeted if I'd thought about it. And remote detonation would have been more rational. The whole thing was poorly planned; I'm not sure why I agreed to it." She'd been thinking about it all morning, watching the news reports, but she still wasn't sure why she'd made the decisions that she had, up until the morning of the bombing. Very few of them had been logical; if she'd been thinking rationally, she would have fled the country the night Simon had approached her. Her only explanation for why she hadn't was that it had seemed rational at the time to stay, despite that it objectively wasn't.

Decade raised an eyebrow at her answer, and Brigid didn't miss the significant look that Simon cast him.

"Dr. Cajal administered the Hare Psychopathy Checklist this morning," Simon told his superior. "Ms. Coleman scored exceptionally high."

"And no brain damage?"

"None that can be detected thus far, anyway. The neuropsychological exam would suggest some sort of damage following the trauma to the head, but as I explained, the personality change seems to have occurred prior to the head injury."

"Hm. And then there's the matter of this…other detail."

"Quite. Ms. Coleman, would you mind demonstrating that neat little trick of yours again?"

"Why?" Brigid had spent most of the previous evening with Simon directing her in various tests of her newfound ability. While she could admit that the knowledge they'd gained was useful in understanding what exactly it was that she could and could not do, she disliked the idea of…performing…for another person. Something told her that this knowledge would be much more valuable if she could keep it to herself.

"I'm afraid I haven't quite decided what to do with you, my dear," Decade said, his smile once again failing to reach his eyes. "Prison is the most logical answer; but Simon claims you may yet be useful to SIS."

Brigid considered. Prison was not an appealing option. "Alright," she said at last. "Uncuff me."

"No," Simon said. "We've already determined that you don't need your hands. Sir, if you would step forward though, and place your hand your hand on her wrist. Immunity to the effects of her power requires direct physical contact."

Decade frowned, his trim mustache twitching slightly. But he did as Simon had asked, and stepped forward to place a clammy hand on Brigid's arm.

Simon turned to little table beside her bed and the metronome that rested on it. He set the device ticking at a steady one hundred twenty beats per minute before following his superior's example and placing his own hand on Brigid's other arm.

Brigid closed her eyes, the tick tick tick of the metronome beating steadily in her ears. It was getting easier and easier each time she tried to access that spark of power and bring it forward.

The pendulum reached the end of its arc, and Brigid pulled.

Ti-

She opened her eyes. As always, the light was muted, and the air surrounding her was cold. The silence was all-consuming.

Decade was frowning at the metronome, poised to swing back in the opposite direction, but unmoving.

Simon squeezed her arm, a satisfied expression on his face. "And the television as well, sir," he said, and his boss turned to face the silent screen, the picture frozen as if on pause.

"Astounding," Decade breathed. "Just think of the implications! You say she was able to stop an explosion like this?"

"I didn't stop it," Brigid said. "I just…paused it, so that I could leave without getting hurt." She could feel the time draining away from her again, slow yet inexorable. It was the cost of using her ability, she was coming to realize; as she stole minutes from the world, this strange new power was stealing seconds of her life away as relentlessly as a metronome ticking off the beats, and she didn't like it. "We're done," she said, and with a blink of her eyes started the flow of time once more.

-ic tick tick tick clicked the metronome, until Simon reached over and halted it.

"Astounding," Decade repeated, blinking at the return of life to the room. "My word. We'll have to prepare a battery of tests. Full neurological analysis to see if we can understand the basis for this - this ability. And of course we'll want to test the limits, find out exactly what Ms. Coleman is capable of; and bring in the physicists, of course. It makes no sense, this purported connection to UB-001, but I don't doubt your conclusion, Simon, not with something so unprecedented as this."

"What about our deal?" Brigid pressed. Being turned into a lab rat did not sound much better than prison.

Decade paused in his outlining of tests to conduct and looked her in the eye. "Ms. Coleman, let's say that we do grant you your amnesty. You walk out of this hospital a free woman, your past no longer hanging over your head. What will you do?"

Brigid hesitated. She hadn't thought about that. Before the bombing, her plan had been to carry on living and working at the pub with James, but nothing about that seemed interesting anymore. Notwithstanding the fact that James was dead and the pub was a pile of ashes. She supposed she could find another job somewhere, maybe leave the country - but do what? And why? She didn't actually need a job, she realized; with her new power, she could simply take whatever she wanted. But that sounded rather…boring.

"I don't know," she said at last.

Decade nodded towards the television. "Does it make you sad, at all, to think about the people who died?"

"No. Why should it?"

"You killed them, you realize - you as good as stuck a knife in the heart of each one."

Brigid shrugged.

"If I asked you to kill Simon here, now, would you do it?"

"Sir -" Simon began to protest, but Decade held up a hand, effectively cutting him.

Would she? She couldn't think of a reason not to, but she couldn't think of a reason to either. "What's in it for me?" she asked.

The hint of a smile crept into the older man's expression. "I have a new proposition for you, Ms. Coleman. If you agree to work with us, first as a test subject to explore your new abilities, and then as an operative with MI-6, we will provide you everything you need. Pay, lodging, even a new identity. Your past will be wiped clean."

Working for the English government? Her old self, the echoes of whom were fading more and more with every hour that ticked by, would have been appalled, she knew. But rationally speaking, it did seem like a good option. The best one that she had at the moment, anyway.

"Deal," she said.

And if she changed her mind, she could walk away any time she wanted. Time was hers, after all - who could stop her?

Simon and his handcuffs notwithstanding.

A/N: This is the last Brigid chapter for a while; next up will be a run of Tian chapters! Have a tissue box handy...