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Anson watched Nikita from across the room as she drove her fist into her victim's abdomen and then clenched his head in her arm as she twisted his body around. Anson felt a flicker of nausea deep in his stomach as he heard the man's spine snap, but that was all. Soon the tiny pricks of conscience still left after three years with the Section would end, he knew, and leave him in peace. All that would be left of him then would be unfaltering callousness. Like everyone in the Section. Like Nikita. She pushed the body aside and continued the mission.

All Anson knew about Nikita he had heard second hand from gossip, which was mostly guesses and made-up stories stimulated by Nikita's mysterious silence and tomb-like face.

He heard form his jabbering trainer that Nikita had been with the Section five years before he arrived. Eight years. He wasn't surprised she had survived it. She did have mettle.

She was ruthless too. The greatest shock of his life had happened when he performed his first mission with her. He watched her seduce a man, sleep with him, exchange pledges of love, and then turn to Anson and order him to kill the man. Anson had hesitated and heard the man plead for his life. Nikita unflinchingly had turned her gun at Anson. "Shoot him or I shoot you." Anson pulled the trigger and felt a part of him die with the man, and each subsequent time he was ordered to kill a person in cold blood he knew that pieces of his soul fell with the bodies, and he left them there.

But Nikita haunted his mind at nighttime the first two years he was at the Section. She was a myth with the recruits. Stories were told. Songs were sung. And her prestige grew.

Where had she come from? It was clear why the Section had inducted her: she was smart, beautiful, intriguing. So what was she doing in a place like the Section?

The reason Anson was there was obvious, and he made no effort to hide it. When he was thirteen he joined an inner city gang. He killed his first man when he was fourteen. He saw many others die at gun point over the years, but he was too high on drugs to remember or care.

One night he and his comrades raided a drug lord's house, only to find it was a set up by the police. When Anson looked to his friends for help he saw they had already fled, leaving him with broken promises of love, loyalty, and honor. He put bullets into two cops before they caught him. The police dragged him to headquarters, beat him up, threatened him with death if he didn't disclose intelligence on his gang. Despite the fact they had abandoned him, Anson refused the police's offers of freedom in exchange for information, and was put on trial.

On his nineteenth birthday he was found guilty of murder in eight cases and sentenced to death.

He could only vaguely remember the Section the first few weeks he was there. Besides the confusion cased by the circumstances of the Section, he was suffering withdrawal from all the drugs he had been using. He had even found enough in prison. But at the Section there was none to be gained.

When he was acting acceptably again they started his training. He met Nikita early on though she wasn't his trainer. She did oversee his progress, however, and she was the one who brought him the news that he was finished with his training and it was time to begin missions.

He made a good operative. Trough his training they encouraged him to regard the Section as his saviors. They rescued him from prison and immediate death. They taught him how to survive without drugs and how to save the nameless innocents. And the Section became his home. He ate, trained, learned, and slept there. They transformed his life - taught him how to dress, how to talk, and how to think. And through it all he fell in love with the quandary they called Nikita.

Perhaps it wasn't love exactly...more like infatuation. But who could help being infatuated? Section was full of attractive female operatives, but Nikita eclipsed them all. She held more than the norm behind her ravishing blonde veneer. Something like substance.

That she was obedient to the Section, and loyal, was all she had in common with the others. She was smarter, faster, wiser, and worth more to the Section than anyone else, but she has an unsubdued glint in her eyes. Like she was biding her time and fooling them all.

She ignored Anson unless they were on a mission together, but she ignored all the men who were in love with her. She walked right past adoring gawkers, never slowing her pace, never blinking an eye. Now there was a mystery. She could have any man in the Section, but chose not to. She deliberately disdained even a trace of friendship in anyone.

True, she was higher up on the "Section Ladder" but that didn't mean she wasn't lonely. She looked lonely sometimes, and hungry, prowling the halls late at night, but she continued her abstinence.

She was an excellent operative, the best, and she worked exorbitant miracles for the Section.

She rarely ventured out on missions anymore. And when she did she remained in the van, barking orders. A rare once in a while she was found remedying the situation by storming the mission, but afterwards she crept back into the shadows.

She was too well known to do field work. The enemies knew to look out for tall, seductive blondes. Anson rarely saw blonde female operatives in the Section anymore, for that reason. It only made Nikita stand out more. And she knew it and used it, especially with male operatives. There were several bitter tales about solicitation and abandonment floating around in the Section, but they were hushed whenever the authoritative figures came around. Nikita was very indulged by the heads of the Section.

Two years ago it was thought that she might have taken Madeline's place when the legend departed, but Nikita remained on the ground, although she was more often up with the new Section leader, Operations' replacement.

Anson pondered over and over again all the information he had on Nikita. It never amounted to much.

As he showered the filth off from his last mission he fought off the urge to fantasize about Nikita. He could never reach her, not even in his dreams.

******

He stealthily moved down the shadowy hall. The carpet masked the sound of the heavy guard falling, a gun shot through his heart. Anson didn't even bother to conceal the body. He was bent on his own purpose.

He pushed the door open with his shoulder, slowly because he was wading knee deep in something that was pulling him backwards. He struggled through the last tunnel, knowing he should hurry, unable to run.

There! He was past the threshold. The room was filled with an erethal radiance and a beam of light fell on a prostrate figure. He felt a sudden release of his legs as the shock of seeing her surged over his body.

He knelt beside her, touching the red blotch on her back, seeing the blood on his fingers. Trying to make his mind function he grabbed her shoulder and turned her over.

The doll-like face was ghoulish as he realized she was dead. The cry, his voice but not from his mouth, reverberated through the room like a wounded creature's last moan, "Alayna!..."

*****

He felt his back hit the wall and he opened his eyes and saw he was in his office at the Section, looking down into the eyes of Nikita.

"Shut up," she sternly said. She let go of his shirt and he slid down the wall until his feet touched the floor.

"Was I...was I dreaming?" he asked, still disoriented.

She sniffed disdainfully, "You were yelling. I heard you down the hall. Were here to work, not nap. Get back to your job." She was about to walk out, but turned around. She silently regarded the sagging figure, hunched over his desk. He stared blankly at the computer screen in front of him. He visibly shivered as if it was cold though the locks of hair on his forehead were mottled with sweat.

******

He felt her near him like the presence of a shadow. He slowly lifted his head and met her gaze.

She leaned against the desk, arms crossed. She spoke in a dispassionate voice, "Alayna again?"

He shuddered a little and nodded.

"We all have our ghost, Anson," she said.

He looked at her beseechingly, "Who is your ghost, Nikita?"

She looked at him in his anguish for a moment. She saw the sanity slipping away from him with every second.

Her face went deadly pale as she stared at him. For the first time he noticed the wrinkles around her eyes and mouth and her sagging jawline. He traced grief and horror in each line, bitterness and suffering in every curve.

She lifter her gaze from him and looked beyond, seeing things not of this world. She was shocking to see: swathed in black, waxen, luminescent skin, the features of her face cutting across the white skin.

She turned a look of rancor on him. And just before she walked away she said through clenched teeth, "Michael. His name was Michael."

THE END