#1

She knew she'd said those heinous words for the best of reasons. Walking through the forest, Nikita's head hung dejectedly; her body numb, mind racing. The thought upon which she finally focused told her she should feel 'something', but what?

Why did it seem as if her world was ending? Because it was? Walter was safe, Madeline dead, and Michael free. She'd done her job. Not only had she faithfully completed her assignment for Center but also managed to protect her Section family and now was to be rewarded with intel on her father. What more could she want?

#2

Recently, whenever Michael returned to Elena and Adam from a 'business trip', he found guilt a passenger for the drive home. Tonight the unwelcome emotion was so powerful as to prevent him from getting into character as loving husband and father. Needing time to suppress the guilt, he pulled to the curb and assessed his situation.

He was following the profile exactly as designed - by himself; the necessity of eliminating Vachek undeniable - this was the only way. If ever there was a case of the greater good outweighing the loss of acceptable collateral, this was it. But... This time it was personal.

The evil moved slowly through Section, its unctuous presence at first undetected, its effects minor and easy to overlook—dizziness, coughing, hoarse voice—all mistakenly attributed to lack of sleep and stress overload. By the time they noticed others' similar symptoms, dry reddened eyes and annoying aches had begun to compromise their concentration. Slight apprehension had even begun to build amongst them, evidenced only by puzzled expressions and covertly darting eyes.

Suddenly, from the bowels of Section, a muffled explosion broke the tension. Shaking heads, relieved sighs and wry smiles commiserated with each other in recognition. Walter was experimenting again.

She had known what her course of action must be since she left the house that morning. He was walking into a trap, a trap set by section. A good man. Or section. The choice had seemed obvious as she profiled her course of action. But now three of her comrades were lying on the ground before her. She set her lips with determination, but cringed and turned away as she pulled the trigger, and the colors of her world blended from black and white into shades of gray.

Good men are hard to find.

"Section let those people get slaughtered. I told Walter exactly when and where it was gonna go down. Who are these butchers we're working for, Michael?"

"Don't do this Nikita. You don't have all the information."

"I don't care. You don't stand by and watch innocent people die. You find a solution."

"What solution?"

"You grab Bauer and lock him up. You don't let him walk into that building!"

"Most likely Bauer had a fail-safe. Instead of a dozen dead, there'd be thousands."

"You don't know that..."

"That's right. And neither do you... Just do the job."

She's so right!

Ala Rod Serling

“Join me for an excursion into good and evil. Come into a twilight zone, where doing something for ‘the greater good’ is tinted with personal ambition, where having ‘humanity’ is considered a bad thing. A place where the truth is twisted to suit the circumstances and where vital information is kept secret. A location where anguish is common place and the emotions are not meant for externalization. Join me in a venture where the inmates run the asylum. Come with me to Section One.”

She was talking, but his mind wandered off into his own thoughts. He despised himself. If he was somebody else, he would consider it a moral imperative to kill one such as himself. A soul so decayed and rotted, why did it still hurt inside to do what he did? It didn’t show on the outside. Indeed, word would reach him that the man must love murder and torture to do it so well. That didn’t bother him. He was that evil inside. But, why did it still hurt?

“Yes, I agree with you Madeleine. The entire team is expendable.”