It was another long trip back to Division from Paris. But not because there were a lot of negative emotions to sort through. Instead, the agents were impatient. Especially Nikita. They had no time to waste. They couldn't sit around or relax. Zoe had stolen the list and had completely destroyed their mission. If they didn't find her and recover the list, they were going to face irrevocable consequences- more so than usually. That constant cycle of failure caused by Amanda's involvement and the consequences Division had to face was becoming frustrated. Nikita was tired of it. She was ready for it to all end, "Tell me you have a lead on that bitch."

"Which one? There's no sign of Zoe or Amanda," Michael responded to Nikita as she burst angrily into Ryan's office. Owen and Sean trailed behind her, rushing to catch up. Yet she hardly paid them any mind. Her singular focus was on continuing the mission. Unfortunately, there was no lead for her to immediately rush off on. Zoe and Amanda had disappeared once again. Division hadn't been able to find them before Paris, and it was likely they wouldn't be able to find them afterwards. The two must've had planned for that. Somehow, Amanda had known what the agents were doing, and struck, "They must've been after the list."

"Zoe did say she was gonna make a lot of money from this job. She's probably gonna sell the list to the highest bidder," Nikita pushed for a possible lead they could rush after. She wasn't going to worry about how Amanda had known Division would be in Paris; after all, it was possible that she had simply heard about the stolen CIA list through the evil grapevine and had made an assumption. Amanda, for once, wasn't the looming threat to Division at the moment. It was Zoe, that damn list, and what the President might think of a botched blue file mission.

"Nerd, find out who Batouala had been talking to. There's no way the Russians were the only ones who had contacted him. Also, figure out who the original buyer he was supposed to meet with was," Nikita ordered Birkhoff. There was a good chance that Zoe would contact the original interested parties to sell the list to. She wouldn't make things harder for herself or do any extra work; the Dirty Thirty would just steal from other people. If Division could figure out who Batouala had originally contacted first, then they could beat Zoe to the punch and stop her. With Birkhoff's hacking skills, it should be simple and easy.

"Where is Birkhoff?" Upon not hearing a quip in response, Nikita finally looked around the office. The nerd was nowhere in sight. His computer setup was empty and had gone cold. She glanced at Michael and Ryan for an explanation, but they only shrugged. Neither had any idea where he could've gone or when he could've left. The same was said for Alex. It wasn't clear where she had gone or when. Even Sean didn't know what Alex was up to; he hadn't heard from her since texting her travel updates. Nikita didn't like the sound of that. The mission had gone to shit and they were missing two members of their team. What was going on.


Alex couldn't help but groan in frustration. She and Birkhoff had been sitting in a parked car at the edge of the woods for hours. After finding nothing while searching Danforth's apartment, the two traced and followed his cellphone. Doing so, wasn't leading to any results either, however. The two were simply left surveilling nothing. Alex quickly lost her patience. She refused to go back to Division empty handed. She needed dirt on Danforth, and she needed it immediately, "Are you sure we're tracking the right cellphone? There's still no movement. What could Danforth be doing out here all this time?"

"I don't know. Camping? Maybe he's one of those freaks that likes to rough it in the snow," Shrugging, Birkhoff went for a joke. It landed completely flat. Alex didn't even give him a side eye to express her disapproval. She continued to stare through her binoculars at the vast emptiness ahead of her. Although Birkhoff should also be looking out the car windows for anything, he couldn't stop from studying Alex. Something seemed off with her. Sure, she was always that determined and stubborn. But she'd at least engage with his or the others' jokes. She just didn't seem present enough to engage; she was in a whole other world.

The only thing that pulled Alex away from staring out her binoculars was her buzzing cellphone. She assumed it was Sean texting her once more. She should respond to at least one of his updates before he panicked and falsely assumed the worst had happened. However, when Alex glanced at her phone, she saw that it was only her boyfriend's sister. She sighed deeply as she shot off a quick reply, not willing to engage in deep conversation, "Nikita wants to know where we are. Of course it's only because something went wrong with the mission."

"Wait. Outlet shopping? Come on, who's gonna believe that?" Birkhoff complained as Alex sent an obvious lie of where they were. Alex and Nikita were the shopaholics of the team. Sure, Birkhoff tagged along when they went to the mall, but that was mostly to stop by the videogame and comic book stores. He didn't buy all the clothes and accessories they bought (just a few on some occasions). No one would actually believe that he randomly left Division to shop with Alex. Except, just as he said that, Nikita replied with a scathing text to hurry up and return. Maybe it was that believable. Or maybe Nikita was too distracted to truly comprehend the text.

"I spoofed our cell signals before we left. Anyone who looks for us will think we're in Elizabeth," Alex shot another text off to Sean, stating that she was glad he was home, then she put her phone away for good. What she and Birkhoff were doing was just as important- if not more so- than what the team was up to. The two shouldn't stop their actions just because Nikita told them to. She wasn't the boss. Her ideas and missions were the only ones they had to follow. Other members of the team, like Alex, could be leaders as well.

"We should probably get back. After a blown mission, it's gonna be all hands on deck," Birkhoff debated whether or not he should reply to Nikita's taunt (how had she texted him that fast after Alex's response). He and Alex should undoubtedly return to Division. If the op to kill Batouala and steal back the CIA list had gone bad, then the whole team would be needed to correct the mess and keep them from trouble. However, Birkhoff wasn't sure if he would give Nikita a time of when he and Alex would return. He wasn't certain if he would be able to drag Alex away from her position. She seemed too determined to stop.

"They have plenty of hands. They don't need ours. We don't always have to be on call for their missions," Before Birkhoff could make up his mind about texting Nikita, Alex took his phone from his hands and dropped it next to hers. If Nikita, Sean, Owen, Ryan, and Michael had been sufficient enough to go to Paris, then they were sufficient enough to deal with the fallout. Alex and Birkhoff weren't needed. Also, they hadn't been involved in the first place, so why bring them in once things got worse. That didn't seem fair.

Birkhoff glanced incredulously at his phone, then at Alex. What had gotten into her lately. The team was asking for her help, yet she was going to do her own thing. Since when had Alex ever ignored them like that. Well, besides when she and Nikita had that falling out. However, that situation was different. She had been hurt, and she had been looking for revenge. Now, she just seemed angry and mean, "You have got to tell me what happened in South Ossetia. Ever since you came back, you've been all, 'I am Alex, hear me roar'. Well, more so than usual."

Dropping the binoculars, Alex felt like screaming. She didn't understand why she had to keep saying that nothing had happened in South Ossetia. Besides Nikita leaving her and Larissa dying, nothing had happened in that god-awful place. So everyone should stop worrying about her. What they should've been worried about was Division and what the team was becoming because of it. That was the scarier topic, "Birkhoff, you ever think that maybe we're not changing Division? Maybe that hellhole keeps changing us?"

"Every damn day," Birkhoff sighed. There was no doubt in his mind that Division changed the very essence of your being the instant you stepped inside its walls. The longer you spent in the bunker, the less like yourself you became. The team tried to fight it, yet it was pointless to resist. There was corruption embedded in the walls of Division. It had the power to eat them alive and turn them into what they hated most, "You know, say what you will about Percy. But at least the guy was actively evil. He made the decision to keep crossing the line. We just keep letting ourselves get pushed over."

That was exactly what Alex felt. The mistakes the team kept making led them down the path Percy and Amanda actively chose to go down. Alex couldn't pinpoint where it had started. Maybe it had begun when Ryan had accepted to run Division and the rest of the team had decided to stay and help. Or maybe it had begun much later when one wrong choice led to another after a particularly awful mission. Yet, no matter how it started, Alex knew exactly where it was going to end- Division permanently open and the agents trapped forever, "Nikita thinks it's the only way to protect all of us. Just these four goddamn missions."

The funny thing was, Nikita had been against the blue files when they had first appeared after Kosovo. Yet she had eventually changed her mind about them, claiming they were Division's way out. Birkhoff hadn't understood her shift in attitude at first. However, he soon began to realize that her beliefs came from her desire to stop seeing her loved ones hurt. If they made the President happy, everyone would stop getting hurt. Although that was a great thing to wish for, it wasn't going to happen. Division would always be used, not saved, "It's not gonna be just four. We're lying to ourselves if we think otherwise."

"Exactly. That's why we can't go back to Division just yet. We need more on Danforth than just his tax returns and the contents of his sock drawer," Alex repeated her fiercely determined comments from earlier. How the team had gone about saving and protecting people wasn't effective anymore. They had to be more forceful. They had to be more proactive and less reactionary. That included during stakeouts. Alex couldn't just wait for Danforth to make the wrong move; she had to go and find it. It was time to get out of the car, "Let's go."

"Hey. Where are you going?" Hurriedly, Birkhoff scrambled after Alex. He was far less graceful and quiet getting out of the car and traipsing through the snowy woods than her. As she easily moved towards wherever she was heading, he tripped and fumbled and eventually landed right on his face. He was beginning to understand why Michael and Nikita didn't have him join them in the field. He was absolutely not suited for it. And he honestly didn't want to be, "I'm beginning to think life in the field isn't as glamorous as it looks from Ops."

"At least you haven't been kidnapped or arrested or shot," Alex huffed. She couldn't think of a single mission where something hadn't gone disastrously wrong. Someone was always getting hurt. And it wasn't just a member of the team of former rogues. Other agents in Division were shot or blown up or other atrocious things. And innocent civilians were caught in the crossfire, always so unlucky- always having their lives stolen from them. There had to be a way to make that stop. Shutting down Division wouldn't be enough. More had to be done to save people. Alex had to do more to stop people from dying.

"Don't jinx it. I don't want that happening again," Birkhoff shot Alex another judging side eye. He had been kidnapped and tortured while on a mission before. He had also been arrested a few times; though, that was because of his own stupidity, not because of an op. He knew exactly what she was grumbling about. She didn't need to act like she was different. Unfortunately, she missed his gaze once again. Alex remained in her own world, staring pointedly at something ahead of them. When Birkhoff finally looked at it, he immediately understood her interest, "I didn't see anything on the map about a military base around here."

"No, this can't be a base. It looks like they're building something. Doesn't look guarded, though. Come on," Alex left without checking if Birkhoff was following her again. Although she knew she should be more conscious of her surroundings and of her partner, Alex didn't have the patience for it. The sooner she got what she wanted, the sooner things could start changing for the better. Those changes would never happen, though, if Birkhoff kept tripping and falling. Alex glanced back to say something, but he seemed to be trying to keep quiet, so she stopped herself from being mean about it. Instead, she quipped, "Nice camo scarf, by the way."

"Gee, thanks," Birkhoff glanced at Alex warily. He was sure she meant the compliment, but that wasn't why he was staring at her oddly. She was all over the place. First, she was fiercely determined to defy the team and dig up dirt on Danforth. Then, she sounded so frustrated that Division was changing them. And finally, she cracked jokes like nothing was wrong. Birkhoff didn't get it. Even at that moment, her fractured attitude changed drastically again. She forgot all about him, and snuck into the building and intently studied the area. Birkhoff had to ask his question aloud to get her to focus on him once more, "What is this place?"

"This is a kill house. They're planning a mission," Alex muttered quietly to Birkhoff. She only had half a mind to respond to his questions, however. Her complete attention was on watching the soldiers perform some kind of drill. They moved like Navy Seals- well, how Sean described how Seals moved. They were deadly and quick, and well-prepared to kill whoever they were facing. It didn't take Alex and Birkhoff long to realize who it was that the soldiers were planning to kill. The area they had staged, the people the soldiers were briefed about, it was all reminiscent of Division. Danforth was training Seals to wipe out the entire black ops unit.