Birkoff
NC-17

---

Author's note/spoilers: I started this story in 1999, almost exactly seven years ago, then put it aside for a long time. Thus, quite a bit has happened in between. This story starts in early Season Three and diverges completely from there. Consider it to have spoilers up through "Cat and Mouse," but after that, it's an AU. "Outside the Box" and everything following that never happened in this world.

Warning, part one: booty, bad language, the works. Not much violence: sex is a lot more fun, don't you think? Also, safe sex is hot sex, but this is fiction.

Warning, part two: I don't see Birkoff with Nikita (unless it's her evil alternate) and I didn't envision this story as slash (though Birkoff + Michael = yummy), so I created a character of my own in order that Birkoff might get some. If you have a problem with that, go find some other, uh, deep and meaningful fanfic to read.

Disclaimer: [clears throat] With the exceptions of Marin Rosenthal and Sunday McDaniel, these characters are the intellectual property of Warner Bros. Domestic Television Distribution and LFN Productions Inc. They surely do not belong to me, and I surely am not making any money from this. If I was, I'd move somewhere without roaches.

Dedication: To Agent Cupcake, who egged me on for seven years, the better part of a decade, from start to finish. This one's for you, dillweed.

***********

Once upon a time, there was a girl named Marin Rosenthal. She lived in a studio apartment in Portland, Oregon, and she did network security for an internet provider. She had a boyfriend, almost fiance, named Robert and a cat named Nickel. Her parents were Casper and Eliana Rosenthal, and she had been named Marin for the county of her birth and for her grandmother, Marina Einhorn, who had come over from Poland at age fifteen. Marin had a brother named Nikolai who was three years younger than she was and who lived with his own boyfriend on an island in Puget Sound.

Marin liked to hike in the Cascades, to sail in the Pacific, and to find things on computers. Finding things, she called it, not hacking: she wanted to see what was there, the same little girl who had climbed high trees so that she could see for miles. A way to know her world. She got the tip from an acquaintance in South America--there's supposed to be some crazy shit in here, but if you get caught they'll kill you. You ever seen it, Marin asked. I'm not that dumb, the acquaintance said. But you said you wanted to try everything, so here it is.

Marin let it lie for a few days, and then she tried it, and then she died.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

I know this because I remember. I remember that I am Marin Shoshana Rosenthal, who was born and lived and lives still. I remember despite this black hole that I'm in, despite the electrical shocks that paralyzed me for days, despite the hunger and thirst and time without sleep that make hours into years and shadows into demons.

I remember my grandmother's white hair. Snow on April Fool's Day. Where the knots form in Robert's back. The sun on the floor of my kitchen at three in the afternoon on a Saturday. Accidentally saying "shit" when I messed up on the Torah reading at my bat mitzvah.

I remember it all. If they kill me, my memories die, but as long as I live, I remember it all.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

They redyed the black in my hair, which had faded from the weeks of recruitment to its natural unextraordinary brown. Outside the room, the cell, that morning were new clothes, tasteful and tailored for my body. After I put them on, two men took me to show me where I would live. It turned out to be a pretty one-bedroom apartment near a park in the city, across the street from a school, in a quiet building with trees and a courtyard.

The rental papers were clean, and they even gave me a copy of the lease: it was rented to Isabel Dauphin, whose driver's license, birth certificate, and passport all lay in the file cabinet next to the desk. The picture looked like me, though it wasn't my old Oregon license picture or the passport photo I'd had taken when I was nineteen for my college trip to France. It might well have been me, taken from some obscure file somewhere, or it might have been doctored up with an image editor. There was a wallet in the dresser in the bedroom, and I put the license inside along with the money that was already there. There were some other cards in the wallet as well: Isabel Dauphin held a Visa card (with, I discovered when I found the paperwork, a very generous credit limit) as well as membership at a chain of video rental stores and the local library.

I couldn't figure it out at first, and I stood there stunned for several minutes after the men left. But then I got it: if I lost hope, if I died or killed myself, my training would be wasted, and I would be useless to them. Section had an end of the bargain to hold up, too.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Michael I'd trained with during my recruitment, and it was Madeline who had taught me to replace my inborn Pacific Northwest candor with the manners and subtlety of an operative. Operations and Walter I'd also met, albeit briefly. Though I'd heard about Birkoff since the first days--if I lived through recruitment, we would work together--so far I'd never seen him. I wondered if they'd even told Birkoff, whoever he was, to expect a partner.

He showed no reaction when we were introduced. "We brought you a playmate,"

Madeline said. "Birkoff, this is Marin Rosenthal."

"What's she for?" He keyed in a code, unsuccessfully.

"I'd try going in through the patch in the Korn shell," I suggested. "Another one of those and they'll figure out you're here."

Still not an upward glance, but a pause. "You think I didn't try that?"

"I think you didn't try hard enough. You could drive a truck through the security holes in this version."

Madeline smiled. "I'll have you two alone. I'm sure you have a lot to talk about." She left, pointedly ignoring whatever it was that Birkoff muttered under his breath.

"So how would you do it?" he asked once she was out of the room, his eyes behind their tinted frames still focused on the screen in front of him.

"The last time I cracked something like this, there were a couple of things I did. It'd be easier to show you than to tell you."

He moved over enough for me to pull up a chair and take the keyboard. "They'll roll over and play dead," I told him, "if you do it like this."

* * * * * * * * * * * *

It wasn't a bad living, being dead, and one day I bought myself a silver hairclip at a jewelry store near my apartment. The barrette was shiny sterling with a round lapis inset. In my old life, I would have feared losing something so expensive. Now I didn't care.

In the midst of surveillance on an egregiously flagrant double agent--I wasn't sure what the point of watching was, since everyone knew he'd just fuck up like he always did--I took out the clip, twisted my hair, and pinned it to the back of my head. Then I went back to spying--although given the target's stupidity, we probably could have sat next to him with video cameras and microphones and he wouldn't have noticed.

"I don't get it, Rosenthal," Birkoff said after a moment. His voice startled me; we'd both been engrossed in our ridiculous target. "How do women do that?"

"Do what?"

"That defying-gravity-with-your-hair thing. It's like a bumblebee flying. It shouldn't happen. There's all that hair and only one piece of metal. Nikita can do it, too, and I never figured out how."

"For one thing, your hair's too short."

"Didn't used to be. Went down past my shoulder blades at one point."

It was hard to imagine; his hair was so short I wasn't even sure what color it was. "When did you cut it?"

"A few years back. I shaved my whole head."

"How monastic of you. Any particular reason?"

"The person with long hair is dead," Birkoff said, and turned back to his monitor.

I reached behind my head and took the clip out, shaking my hair down around my shoulders. This move was the main reason I kept my hair dyed: it was a lot more impressive with ebony than with mouse-brown. "I'm not dead," I pointed out.

"You're as dead as I am. Shave your head and get it over with."

One keystroke by me and his screen froze. Take that, geek boy.

"What the fuck was that?" he demanded, voice rising; it was the first time I had heard him swear. He didn't have a screen to bury himself in, and so he looked at me.

"You know that Holocaust museum they built in Washington, DC?" I said. "My fucking grandmother's in there, Birkoff, with all her hair shaved off. They put her in Treblinka, tattooed numbers on her arm, and told her she was dead. Well, now she lives in Miami, she raised five Jewish children, and she has white hair down to her ass. She married a man who fled Russia to escape Stalin's purges, who walked across Europe and snuck onto a boat bound for New York just so he could stay alive. The shit they put me through to recruit me was nothing compared to what my grandmother saw in the camps, and she's still alive and so am I. So they may try to tell you that you're dead, Birkoff, and you may even believe it, but if you do, you're no better than they are."

I was out of breath, so I unfroze his screen--really a simple trick, I was surprised he didn't know it--and started to go back to work. I didn't hear Birkoff turn, though, and after a moment he said quietly, "My grandparents were in the purges. One side was Jews and the other side was anarchists, so they were fucked either way."

"Anarchists?"

"Yeah. Why do you think I'm so good at this? I was raised by people who collected bomb recipes."

"Remember any?"

"Nothing that would do much damage. They were trying to raise me to stay out of trouble."

"Fat lot of good that did."

"They were old-school anarchists. Didn't figure you could do much damage with a computer. By the time I was thirteen, I was doing more damage than they ever did."

"You get caught cracking the wrong system, too?"

"For my fourteenth birthday, a friend of mine gave me a way into the CIA mainframe. I got in without any trouble--their security's laughable now, but it was worse then--and started to dig. I found a file on Section and then waltzed into their system like I owned the place. It looked easy at the time, but they came for me the next day. I left that morning for school and never came back."

Birkoff couldn't have been much older than twenty, although his small frame and soft features would probably always make him look younger than he was. "How long have you been here, Birkoff?" I asked.

"A third of my life, more or less."

"You've been here seven years?"

"Give or take a month."

I thought of my brother at fourteen: carrying a skateboard, trying to be a man but still wanting Mom to make lasagna for him, still having nightmares that required Dad to sit in his room until he fell asleep again. Fourteen wasn't an age for hunger, thirst, torture, sitting in a dark cell for days to weeks while Section tried to convince you that you were dead. "No wonder you believe them," I said after a moment. It began as a thought until I realized that I'd said it out loud.

"Believe what?"

"That you're dead."

He shrugged. "I was raised dead."

In a moment his keyboard began to click again, and work resumed.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

It was a long night, and not even half over. Part surveillance and part legendary hack, we'd worked through the day and into the dark. Birkoff had been drinking coffee like water and popping caffeine pills along with his ubiquitous Oreos, but it had stopped working. I was feeling slightly more awake, so I kept an eye on a prostitute who was in the midst of stealing documents from a diplomat while I also persisted at my system crack and tried to eat a salad, my only food that day, with my fingers.

There was a loud thump, and my zone was broken. I started, turned, and saw Birkoff lying sprawled on the floor. "Make sure the woman gets out," he rasped. "Give up on the hack. We'll finish it tomorrow."

"What are you going to do, sleep there?"

"My back feels like I got hit by a truck. The likelihood of my getting up and making it to my room is minimal."

I watched the girl put the papers in her bustier and make her rendezvous with Nikita.

Thank God. The hired girl had performed well. I wondered if she would live to see the morning.

"That's all, folks," Nikita said quietly into her wire after the girl left. "We're done."

"Good job," I answered. "I'll maintain the uplink until you're back in the building."

Nikita and Michael would meet with Operations and turn over whatever it was that they had; as for Birkoff and myself, as long as they got home safely, our job was done. The crack was just icing; I really could finish it tomorrow.

The sounds that followed were normal--the van door, the terse conversation with Michael--and I tuned them out to look at Birkoff. "Ever done shiatsu?"

"Is that something you eat?"

"It's a kind of massage. My boyfriend and I used to do it."

"You had a boyfriend, Rosenthal?"

"The element of surprise in your voice is not welcome, my friend. We were both coders and we had messed-up backs, so we learned shiatsu to fix them. Turn on your stomach and stretch out your arms."

"Do you know what happened the last time a woman offered me a massage?"

"I have a feeling you're going to tell me."

"I got seduced by an evil alternate Nikita, caused a security breach, and generally made an ass out of myself."

"All because of shiatsu?"

"I don't know if it was shiatsu. But it felt really good."

"I'm not offering you sex, Birkoff. You're too young for me, and some strange part of my brain still believes that I have a boyfriend. So you can either take me up on completely nonsexual shiatsu, or you can lie there and be miserable."

"I love it when you take charge, honey."

"Don't fuck with a good thing, Birkoff. Roll over."

He did, and I sank my fingers into his back. His bones betrayed that he was bigger than he presented himself: taller, his ribcage wider, his back long. The knots were in the same places that Robert's had always been, and my hands rediscovered familiar ground as I poked and prodded. "What do you think?"

"Mnr. Rnh. Mmm. Grmp."

This had usually reduced Robert to speechlessness as well. I worked my fingers into the bony joints that connected Birkoff's skull and spine, rubbing the soft triangle at the top of his spinal column where vertebrae met cranium. His shoulder blades crackled in relief as I eased them back into place. I'd usually done this to Robert when he was shirtless, but I didn't think Birkoff would respond well to a request to disrobe. Despite the barrier between fingers and skin, I could count his ribs beneath the cloth, could feel the gentle indentation where they ended. Birkoff started when I worked my way outward from the base of his spine, towards the points of his hips. "What are you doing?"

"Finishing. I'm not pulling an evil clone trick here. I'll stop if you want."

"No. It's... it's OK."

I finished with his back and gently massaged each of his arms, my hands meeting skin where his black T-shirt ended. His skin was warm, as soft and pale as a baby's from the lack of exposure to sun. The fine hairs were a light honey brown, about the same color as what I could see of the hair on his head.

"God," he said as I pressed circles into his forearms. "What the hell are you doing? Are you sure this isn't an evil clone trick?"

"People who do computer work usually have sensitive forearms. Do you want me to stop?"

"Hell no."

I pressed the joints in his hands between the pads of my fingers, feeling the tightness give way. Then I let him go, patted his back, and stood up. "You're done. Go get some sleep."

"Slept here before," Birkoff answered, his voice muffled in the floor. "Can sleep here again."

I took the liberty of rubbing his shorn hair under my hand, feeling it bristle. "I'll finish the hack, then."

He didn't respond. In five minutes, I was eating a tomato slice and sliding into the foreign mainframe. Birkoff was asleep, his breathing shallow and even.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Some weeks passed, and I learned Section just as Section learned me. Nikita began to smile at me instead of giving her usual expressionless stare, and Walter started calling me "darlin'." I would have preferred to be at home in Portland, but I would survive here. Unless I got killed first.

I walked in one morning to find Birkoff setting the machines on autorun. "We've got a briefing in ten minutes. Come on."

"What's it about?"

"They're finally going into that building we've been getting intel on. Don't worry, we won't have to talk."

I followed him to a long narrow room where the rest of our team was gathered.

Operations was standing in the front next to a holographic projector. He waited until everyone was seated, and then began. "Thanks to bribery and some good intel, we've finally gotten enough information to send a mission into the Wallenberg Building, where we have known for some time that Dieu et Pays has an operations center. We have complete plans of the building, and we've narrowed their location down to two floors. We will have the building surrounded by a large team; however, we will only be sending two operatives inside. Michael, I want you to lead the team and go into the building. Birkoff, due to Nikita's recent injuries, you will take her place. You know the building better than anyone except perhaps Marin, and you will be able to lead Michael through it."

I could tell that Birkoff was about to argue, but a look from Michael shut him up. "Yes, sir."

"The team will assemble at the west exit in one hour. Marin, you're to stay here and provide support to the site team. Dismissed."

Everyone got up to leave, and I went back to the main floor to start setting up. Birkoff appeared in a few minutes. "You know how to run this, right?"

"Backwards, forwards, and sideways."

"Are you sure? It's complicated."

"Birkoff, I set up most of it. I'll be fine."

"You're sure you're sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure I'm sure. And even if I weren't, I don't think Operations is about to change his mind. What made him put you on this mission?"

"I don't know. I don't know what the hell he's thinking. There's got to be someone else they could have found. I hate missions."

"Maybe he's trying to train you out of the fear."

"It's not fear."

"OK, out of hating missions, then. Whatever."

"I can't believe he's sending me in. Leaving you here on your own."

"Before I came along, you always did this on your own."

"That was different. I'd been here a long time. You just started."

"Maybe he's testing me, too," I said gently. "Think about it: every other time, I've had you to back me up. They probably want to see if I can do it on my own. It'll be OK, Birkoff. Really. Remember, you said yesterday that it was going to be routine. We know where everything is. Just go in, do what Michael tells you, and get the job done."

"Right. I'll do that." He let out a long breath. "See you in a few hours."

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Four vans went out, each taking a different route. By the time they arrived at the building, I had everything I needed in front of me. Michael and Birkoff both connected to the radios at the same time. "We're here," Michael said. "Are you ready?"

"When you are."

The surrounding team went out first, encircling the building and disposing of anyone who shouldn't have been there. This was routine. "Commence stage two," Michael said, and I watched the orange dot that was him and the blue dot that was Birkoff enter the outline of the building.

"First location is second floor, north wing," I told them. "Intel shows that you're alone in the building."

"I know where we're going," Birkoff said.

"I'll stand by." I watched the dots make their way through the halls. "Team captains, tell me your status."

"All clear on the north," red captain answered.

"All clear on the south," said blue team captain.

"All clear on the east," said green team captain.

"All clear on the--" And then the signal was gone.

"Yellow team captain, give me your status!"

Nothing. And then, one floor down from Michael and Birkoff, an army of black dots appeared.

"Operatives, we have visitors. At least twenty of them, approaching from first floor west."

"It isn't here," Birkoff said.

"Second location is between tenth and eleventh floor, north end of the building. Recommend going up north stairs and then through the heating duct in the hallway. Remember that only one person can fit in the duct."

Five minutes later, they were at the duct. "Birkoff, you go in," Michael ordered. "I'll stand guard."

A breath from Birkoff, and then his wire showed that he was in, crawling slowly through the duct. I directed him as calmly as I could. "It's about an eight-foot drop to the safe," I said when he was almost there. "Don't jump too heavily or you'll go through the ceiling."

"That's encouraging, Rosenthal."

"Just hurry. They're going to know where you are soon."

"I'm down," Birkoff said after a moment. Silence as he entered the combination, replayed the false voiceprint we'd given the team, put containers inside his clothing to take back. A grunt, and then he was back up in the duct, making his way back to Michael.

"Jesus!" came the shout. "Someone fucking shot at me!"

The cameras showed nothing; motion scans of the rooms were equally silent. "They're somewhere in the ducts, Birkoff."

"Get me the fuck out of here, Rosenthal."

"Michael, I'm taking him out the back way. There's ten of them headed up the stairs towards you. Get out."

"We'll meet at the van," he said.

"Birkoff, I want you to go back to the room with the safe," I said. "This time, jump as hard as you can. You're going to go through the ceiling to the tenth floor."

Running, and then crashing, and then panting. "I'm on the tenth floor."

"Agents coming your way from the south. There should be a duct in the north corner of the room. Get into it and take a right. You're going to wind up at the elevator shaft."

Michael's dot was out of the building; Birkoff's wound its way through the ducts and then came to the main shaft. "You're going to climb down the shaft and open the doors at the second floor."

"Jesus Christ. OK."

Down, down, down, the dot made its way. "Birkoff, they've figured out where you are. Hurry."

I heard gunfire just as I heard Birkoff kicking the doors open. "I'm here."

"Good. Go down the service stairs on the south end and out through the kitchen."

"Christ, Rosenthal, there's more fucking gunfire than I've ever seen. I'm at the kitchen. There's the door."

And then Michael's quiet voice, "Operative is out and target is being terminated." Which meant that the red team had detonated its bomb.

I breathed. Breathed again. Birkoff and Michael were safe. "Good work, gang. See you back at the ranch."

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Madeline, however, sent me home well before the team arrived back at Section. Too tired to argue, I stopped by Nikita's recovery room on my way out to let her know that Michael was alright. She was too drugged to have much of a reaction, but she smiled. "Heard you got Birkoff out, too."

"He got himself out."

Another smile, her eyes beginning to close. "He needs help getting himself out sometimes." Then she was asleep again, her sun-streaked hair falling across her face.

At home, I made myself tea and curled up under a blanket on the couch, shaking. They're OK, I repeated to myself. Michael wasn't hurt; Birkoff got out; they're OK. But even though I knew this, I still sat staring at the wall until a knock disturbed me some time later.

I was going to chastise Birkoff for not being at home asleep, or maybe yell at him for almost getting himself killed, but that all suddenly became secondary to wrapping my arms around him and feeling him breathe. We held each other in my doorway for long minutes, my forehead against his collarbone. "Come in," I said after a while. "I'll pour you some tea."

The green eyes regarded me. "This was a pretty mild one, you know."

"I know. Sometimes someone gets captured, or sometimes someone dies. That didn't happen this time."

"No one died," Birkoff said.

"No, no one died."

The mug was warm in my hands, and I slowly began to convince myself that everything was alright. Birkoff was sitting on my sofa with his knees against his chest; I had some tea; maybe everything would be OK.

"You're still scared," he said.

"I'm not in the habit of listening as my friends get shot at and talking people out of mousetraps. I design computer networks, not military intelligence. Of course I'm scared. I've never had lives depend on whether I could hack something or not."

"I knew you'd been good at this." Birkoff's eyes were focused on the other side of the room. "I was the one who caught you in the system. Operations was going to have you killed, but I talked him out of it. I said it would be a waste of a damn good hacker. I convinced him you could help us. And you did."

"I guess that means you saved my life, then."

"If you call this life." Birkoff paused. "I heard that if you save someone's life, part of them belongs to you forever."

"So that means we're both free now."

"That, or we belong to each other." Birkoff's eyes still weren't on me. "Madeline and Ops almost changed their minds once they found out more about you. You had a good life; there wasn't necessarily a reason for you to prefer being in Section to being dead."

"I'm from a family of survivors. We do whatever it takes. What about you? You were fourteen. How could you possibly have wanted to stay here? Your life was hacking, baseball cards, and eighth-grade girls."

"Yes, I was fourteen. And my father was an abusive bastard and my mother was a drunk. Section meant no parents and all the computers I wanted."

"I remember my brother when he was fourteen, and it's not that easy."

"Your brother hasn't been through recruitment."

"I've been through recruitment, and I was a lot older than you, and I still miss my life sometimes."

"That's it right there. That's why Operations didn't want to bring you in. You have something to want to go back to."

"If I go back, I die, Birkoff, and the people I contact would probably die, too. I'm not that much of an asshole."

"No, Rosenthal, you're not."

"Thanks for convincing them," I said after a moment. "I'd rather be alive than dead."

"Me, too, Rosenthal. Most of the time."

"I have a first name, you know. A middle name, too. You can start using either one at your convenience."

"Marin Shoshana. You're about as Jewish as the day is long."

"Yeah, well, I wouldn't talk, Seymour. If you hadn't been a hacker, you would have been an podiatrist."

"You know, you're a cold bitch, Rosenthal. Besides, I called my last partner by her first name. I figure this is a good way to get a fresh start."

"Gail," I said. "Heard she was your girlfriend."

"In a manner of speaking, I guess. Who was that Robert guy?"

"Robert Marcavelian. He ran Portland State's Unix systems."

"Did you love him?"

"I was going to marry him."

"But did you love him?"

"Buy a brain, Birkoff. Of course I did."

"People don't always marry for love."

"I do." I took another drink of tea and stretched my legs out on the couch. I'd put on comfort clothes: flannel pajamas, a Polartec sweatshirt, and wool socks. Despite Madeline's best efforts, I'd stayed a crunchy Oregonian at least in matters of dress. "So you knew about me before I came in. What did you know?"

"At first, not much. That you were in Oregon, and that you somehow romped your way into a Section computer. Later they told me you were female, a little older than me."

"So why did you act like you didn't know why I'd been brought in?"

"Didn't want you to get to cocky. It wouldn't have done you any good to know that you were specially requested." The same smile. "Oh, and I knew your hacker name: North Star. Not very aggressive-sounding."

"I wasn't a very aggressive hacker. There wasn't much I wanted to fuck up. Except the time I got into the accounting division at Microsoft."

"Nikita argued for you, too." Birkoff's voice had become slower and sleepier, and he stretched his legs out alongside mine. "She was mad about the system break, but mostly at me for not having better security in place. She told Operations he'd be a fool if he had you killed. She said I needed someone to back me up. She was even more adamant when she found out you were a woman."

"Feminism in Section?"

"I don't think that was exactly her motive." Birkoff's head had fallen to the side; he would be asleep soon.

I pulled my blanket closer around me. "Thanks for arguing for me."

His hand settled on my foot. "No problem."

* * * * * * * * * * * *

When I woke the next morning, the sun was shining pale yellow around the room. Birkoff's arm was slung across my lower legs. Asleep, his face was years younger, more a boy than a man. He slept with sprawled limbs: one arm across me, the other across the back of the couch, his legs tumbling over mine. It was the same way Robert had slept, like an amoeba engulfing the bed.

I sat up, and Birkoff's eyes blinked open. "Is it morning yet?"

"Nine thirty. Go back to sleep."

Birkoff rubbed his eyes. "Once I'm awake I stay that way. I don't think I've slept this late in years. Usually I'm busily hacking at this hour."

"Well, if Section wants either of us, presumably they know where to look."

"Hell, Madeline's probably watching right now."

"Yuck, Birkoff."

He swung his legs off the couch and got up. Still a little clumsy from sleep, Birkoff wandered into the kitchen. "There's juice in the refrigerator if you want some," I called.

"Your apartment's so cute, Rosenthal." I couldn't tell if he was saying it with distaste or admiration. "Have you seen Nikita's?"

"Yeah, Nikita and I have girls' night every Friday at her place."

"You do?" He wandered back into the living room and saw my smile. "No, you don't. Anyway, hers is all postmodern and black and white. Elegant, but you feel a little on edge inside."

"And when have you been in Nikita's apartment, Birkoff?"

"Not under the circumstances I'd like, I can tell you that. Just a couple of times, and only in emergencies." He leaned on the frame of the arch between kitchen and living room. "It really is cute in here. Near a school. Who are your neighbors?"

"No one I know very well. There are a couple of art students downstairs and a family across the hall with a new baby."

"I bet they think of you as that sweet girl with the pretty black hair. She's almost never home, though. She probably has a boyfriend somewhere. Wonder what she does for a living: maybe a teacher?"

"I actually have a teaching certificate, not that I can use it now."

"What are you certified in?"

"High school math. I was planning to quit my tech job and teach after Robert and I got married."

Birkoff laughed delightedly. "Rosenthal, the schoolmarm. Can I take you up on the juice offer?"

"Sure. Pour me some, too. Glasses are above the dishwasher."

Birkoff returned with two glasses of orange juice and made himself comfortable on the sofa again. "So did they just give you your apartment?"

"Basically. The day my recruitment ended, they gave me clean clothes and took me here. Everything I needed was all set up, even the silverware. It's nicer stuff than I've ever owned. Everything in my old apartment was either a hand-me-down from my parents or something I bought at a garage sale."

"That's what they did for Nikita, too."

"How come you still live in Section?"

"I came in before I hit puberty, remember. You can't exactly give a pre-adolescent boy his own apartment. It's not bad; it's just that there's no privacy. Whenever I walk into my room, I feel like I should wave hello to Madeline on the closed-circuit."

"I'm not sure it's any different here."

"But at least it feels like it has some kind of distance."

"That's true. When they let me leave, I can go home."

"Can I see the rest of it?"

"There's not much, but go ahead."

Birkoff stuck his head into my bedroom, but seemed nervous and didn't go in. He called from the bathroom, "You've got fish on your shower curtain!"

"I like fish!"

"So do I," he said, returning, "but not enough to look at them when I'm naked." Birkoff took another swallow of juice and studied me. "Polartec, flannel, and fish. You're a nice girl, Rosenthal. Probably the only nice girl in Section."

Nikita was friendly, but I knew what he meant. "I think I'm destined to be the nice girl everywhere I go. Even if I'm doing covert extralegal intelligence operations."

"Well, no one said that Section changes your personality. I'm sure Madeline was a scary bitch even before she was recruited." He glanced up at an imaginary--or maybe not imaginary--camera. "Hear that, Madeline?" Birkoff refocused his attention on me. "Nice apartment, nice girl. I could get used to this."

* * * * * * * * * * * *

A few days later, I had a debriefing scheduled for 0930. For some reason, though, the door had remained shut even past 0945, with no explanation at all. I leaned against the wall and waited, wondering what was taking so long, hoping they weren't killing anyone while I was standing outside.

To my surprise, when the door slid open, Birkoff came out, Madeline behind him. "I must tell you that I think this is a terrible idea," she said, voice even as always but her forehead tight with just the tiniest skein of tension.

"I've been here seven years. I want to be on the outside."

"Marin, please excuse us for another moment," Madeline said, and the door slid shut again.

What the hell, I thought. He wants to be on the outside? Does that mean he's leaving Section? Impossible: you only leave this place in a body bag. But what in the world could be taking so long? And what could make Madeline run late?

Ten minutes later, the door opened again and Birkoff walked out without looking at me.

"Marin," Madeline said as if nothing were unusual, motioning me inside where Operations was waiting.

Playing along, I sat down across from them and set my folder on Madeline's desk.

"Here's the profile I have so far. Joanne Lucey began her career as an IRA sniper before being recruited by Red Cell...."

* * * * * * * * * * * *

An hour later, when I returned to my workstation, Birkoff was plugged in, apparently oblivious to the world. I logged in and started the second part of my profile. After a moment, a small message box popped up on the lower corner of my screen:

// Have something to tell you later. //

// Care to enlighten me? //

// Not now. Later. //

His face was expressionless. I could have shot him. But I forbore, and kept working.

Two hours later, I was close to finishing, and another message flashed on my monitor:

// Level three. Twenty minutes. //

// What is this, James Bond? //

// You'll see. //

"Bastard," I said under my breath, and kept working. Fifteen minutes later, I rose and went upstairs; Birkoff followed me. We found an unoccupied room and closed the door.

"What's this all about?" I asked.

"What are you doing tomorrow night?"

"I hadn't thought that far in advance. What's going on?"

A grin broke onto his face. "I'm moving out of Section tomorrow. I had the argument with Madeline today."

"Jesus, Birkoff, was that what this morning was about? Madeline, who is never late, kept me waiting for half an hour to discuss an apartment for you?"

"She's weird like that. But yeah, that's what that was. I guess it could have sounded ominous, if you didn't know the context."

"Why all the secrecy?"

"I don't know. It just kind of seemed like a big deal. So do you want to come over tomorrow night and see it?" He paused. "Actually, I'm not even sure I could give you directions. It's on the subway, but I haven't quite figured out the train yet."

I smiled; I couldn't help it. "I know the subway pretty well. Why don't I just leave with you tomorrow?"

"Wow, that'll get the gossip flowing. Marin Rosenthal, Section slut."

"Pot kettle black, Seymour. Don't forget to find me before you leave tomorrow."

*************

As it turned out, we wouldn't leave at all before tomorrow evening: a mission was called for the next morning, and Birkoff and I stayed up all night doing intel. At 0800, Birkoff went with the team again, although this time he stayed in the van to do on-site intel. I was still too new, apparently, to go out.

When the team got back in the building, I started closing up: shutting down, setting the macros to run for the rest of the night. If something went wrong, we'd know, but otherwise this could run on autopilot. I was logging out of the last station when I noticed a man--a boy, really--standing much too close. "Can I help you?"

"You must be Marin Rosenthal."

Well, I thought, I'm sure as hell not Madeline or Nikita. "That's right. Who are you?"

"Greg Hillinger." His hair had more wax on it than the bodies of most sports cars. "I've been doing some work for Admin, but I'm a techie at heart. I just wanted to compliment you on the mission today."

"Birkoff and I work well together," I answered, wondering who this trying-to-be-suave boy was and what he was doing in my personal space.

"I'd love to work with you sometime. I think our methods would mesh."

I saw Birkoff come in a few feet away. "Are you ready-- Oh, hi, Hillinger." If Birkoff had been a dog, his hackles would have been gone up. I could almost hear him growl.

"I was just complimenting your assistant on her tech, Seymour," Hillinger said.

"She's not my assistant. She's my partner."

I slipped my arm through Birkoff's and put on my best dumb-female smile. "It's been lovely talking to you, Greg, but we have dinner reservations in an hour."

To my utter astonishment, Birkoff played along. "Do you need to stop by your place first, Marin?"

I looked down at my outfit and made a face. "I really should get out of these disgusting clothes, sweetie. Do you mind?"

"Not at all. Hillinger, good to see you."

Outside, we broke into laughter. "Jesus, Rosenthal, where'd you learn to channel Sandra Dee?"

"I'm a female comp sci geek, Birkoff; you don't get anywhere if you don't learn the tricks of defusing the male ego. Do you have the apartment address?"

He fumbled a folded piece of paper from his pocket. "Yeah. You said you knew the trains?"

"My apartment's on the subway, too. You should know; you went there."

"I took a taxi," Birkoff admitted.

"You can break into any system on the planet, but you can't figure out the subway?"

"No wonder they were reluctant to let me out."

His tone was bitter enough that I took his arm again. "You'll figure it out, Birkoff; you just need some practice."

The apartment was on another line, and I made Birkoff navigate us through the station where we had to change trains. A few stops before ours, the train emerged onto street level, and Birkoff pressed his nose against the glass and watched the last of the sunset, as the sky turned the color of blush wine. We found the grocery store and stopped there (milk, juice, cereal, soup, a bottle of wine, and four boxes of Oreos), and then ran across a Vietnamese takeaway farther down the block. Birkoff looked askance at the menu, but I dragged him inside anyway, then had another argument with him when he discovered that a number of Vietnamese dishes contain peanuts, which (I never knew) he loved. I was allergic to them-- not deathly, just enough that my sinuses would go into overtime production if one came near me)--and we were finally able to agree on two things with peanuts, and one without. I'd never known that Birkoff felt so strongly about them, and wondered what else I didn't know- -what else, even, that he didn't know.

It was a short walk to the address he'd been given. It was near the university--a deliberate move on Section's part, I suspected, as a geeky boy living alone would be even more inconspicuous in this part of town--and we passed hurrying professors and laughing students. My own neighborhood was mostly families, and I often felt like I stood out as a single woman living alone. Here, though, we were just two more twentysomethings. For all that the passersby suspected, Birkoff was just another mathematics undergraduate and I just another master's candidate in (let's say) philosophy. We might have been dating; we might have been friends; we might have been study partners. Our history was whatever the onlookers made it out to be.

Birkoff's building was actually a converted warehouse, brick with enormous windows on each side. We directed ourselves to the second floor, as the instructions read. It took him a few minutes to find the key--it had disappeared into the depths of his pockets--and as he was trying to find it, two of his neighbors passed us. Two men, as it happened, holding hands, the taller of whom smooched the shorter before they turned the corner. Birkoff abandoned the key search and stared.

"What's the matter, boy, ain't you never seen homosexuals before?" I asked when they were out of earshot.

"No. I mean, yes. I mean, not in public!"

"You haven't seen much of anything, gay or straight or otherwise, in public since you were fourteen."

"Well, I know I never saw gay people before."

"You're looking right at me, Birkoff."

"What about Robert?"

"He was something of an exception to the rule."

"Did he know about this?"

"He knew about all my exes, genders notwithstanding."

"So you're telling me you used to do it with chicks, Rosenthal?"

"That's what I'm telling you, Birkoff."

"Section never told me that."

"Some things are on a need-to-know basis."

"Do you still have that bottle of wine?"

"Yes."

"Good. Because I'm going to need the whole thing." The key finally found, he shouldered open the door and we walked into the quiet apartment. "Wow," Birkoff breathed. It was a studio, an enormous one, one room of wood and light and windows that probably had the same amount of floor space as a two-bedroom, if not more. Copper pots hung in the kitchen to our left, while streamlined black furniture filled the living space to our right. The bed was a futon, set further to the back along with a host of electronic equipment.

"Swanky pad, Seymour," I said.

"God. I'll say. My computers are even here. Oh my God. I can leave Section and still hack. I can keep all the Oreos I want twenty feet from me. Oh my God. I am in heaven."

I rooted through his cupboards and located wine glasses. "Have some wine with me to celebrate."

"I'm old enough to drink wine?"

"You have been for quite some time."

He sniffed the cotes du Rhone suspiciously before taking a sip. "Hmm. This isn't bad."

"Stick with me, kid, I'll show you the good stuff."

We spread out the Thai food on black dishes, using the angular silverware that Section had provided. We lounged on the couch, which was soft black leather, and drank some more wine. Our feet tangled comfortably. After the long day and long night, and the glass of wine, I found myself sliding into the softness, closing my eyes.

"Why is it that I inspire you to sleep, Rosenthal?"

I blinked my eyes open and laughed. "Maybe if you'd stop nearly getting yourself killed around me, Birkoff, I'd have more normal reactions to you."

"And what might a normal reaction be?"

"Whatever one's normal reaction is upon seeing a cute shaven-headed geek boy. I don't know. It's just that lately all my non-work time, including that spent with you, seems to be when I'm exhausted."

He began poking my feet with his. "Wake up. If you fall asleep, I'll be bored."

"The wine didn't make you sleepy?"

"No, I'm even more awake now. Don't go to sleep, Rosenthal." His voice was plaintive.

"Too late."

Before I realized it, Birkoff had clambered across the couch and was sitting on my stomach. "Rosenthal, you're no fun. Come on, wake up."

I couldn't help it; I started to laugh. "Birkoff, you're a really funny drunk."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I've never known you to climb on people."

"I'm not climbing... well, I guess maybe I am."

"You win, anyway. I'm awake. Move a little bit so that I can sit up."

He did move, but not very much, and when I sat up I found myself face to face with him, his eyes huge and green. "Hello, Birkoff," I said quietly.

"Hi, Rosenthal."

He was close enough that I could reach up and run my hand over his short hair, feeling it bristle under my hand, which came to rest, almost of its own accord, on the back of his neck.

I moved to cradle the side of his face in one hand, letting the tops of my fingers trail over the curve of his ear. Hesitantly, Birkoff wound a lock of my hair around his finger, and when I didn't stop him, he drew his hand through it, smoothing out the tangles, brushing it back from my face. I found myself kissing him. He tasted like red wine.

"I thought I was too young for you," Birkoff murmured after a moment.

"You are."

"Are you fucking with me?"

"How do you want me to interpret that, Birkoff?"

He didn't smile. "You know what I mean."

"I fuck with computers, not people. You're not getting anything that isn't offered at face value."

"You know what happened the last time a woman kissed me."

"Should we stop?"

Birkoff thought it over for a while, his hand still idly stroking my hair. I waited, and then suddenly I was on my back, looking up, Birkoff's leg in between my thighs. "No," he said. "I don't think we should."

His mouth was warm on my neck, biting gently, and I snaked one leg around his hip to pull him closer. I put my hands on the skin under his sweater, a thin cotton V-neck, and traced the knobs of his spine and the outlines of his ribs. There was more solidity than I'd expected, muscle cording around the bones. I pulled his sweater over his head and trailed my fingers up his chest. Hesitantly, Birkoff undid the first button of my shirt and cupped my breast in his hand. I unbuttoned the rest of the buttons and Birkoff ran his thumbs over my nipples. He pushed the shirt down over my shoulders and I reached back to unhook my bra. Birkoff bent to push that away, too, and his mouth found one of my breasts.

Birkoff's skin was silky against mine in a way I hadn't felt for a long time. Tongues found collarbones, navels, trails of soft hair that led to a southward promise. It was only when my jeans were undone, and I tried to shift to give Birkoff better access and nearly fell off the sofa, that I realized where we were. "Birkoff," I said around a gasp as his fingers brushed over my clit, "you have a bed now, remember?"

"Mmm," he said. His other hand started to push my jeans down, and there really wasn't room for this.

His fingers found a circular pattern, and I arched to meet them, moved one of my legs to the side--and almost fell off the couch again. Birkoff snickered, and I said, "I'm serious. You have that bed for a reason."

We made it over there slowly. Halfway across the floor it came to seem like a great waste to have this beautiful boy half-clothed and not being touched, and I kissed him again. The slide of hands up my sides, fingers playing back and forth again on my nipples, and they were wet with my juices. It was simplicity itself to snap open the buttons on Birkoff's cargo pants and reach for him. His murmured, "Oh yeah," was the most satisfying thing I'd heard in months. The hardwood would be hell on my knees, but I decided that I didn't care, that I wanted the musky taste of him hard and full in my mouth now and if I waited I would die--

"Hey Rosenthal," and his voice was guttural and amused. "Remember that bed?"

I had thought at first that I might be the one in charge. I was older, more experienced-- but maybe it wasn't that clear-cut. Because when Birkoff pushed me onto the futon, I went, and he knelt between my legs and first my jeans were gone, and then he leaned forward, hands flat on the mattress, and circled his tongue down my ribcage and drew a line just parallel to where my panties still covered up the good parts. He dipped down a little further, let his fingers recover the territory they'd been exploring before, and meanwhile the warm wetness was just a couple of frustrating inches above. "Please, Birkoff," I said, but it came out little more than a whimper.

He tugged on the black cotton, and I shimmied and then I was naked. Tongue on my inner thighs, a little bit of teeth and then soothing lips, and when I tried to push his head closer to where I wanted it to be, he pinned each of my wrists under his hands and then his tongue was in exactly the right place. This was something he'd done maybe a few times before, but what he lacked in experience he made up for in enthusiasm and willingness to learn, and I came with my pinioned hands clenching at the black sheets.

Then it was my turn, and I undressed him and explored him in a way I hadn't done to anyone for years. I had known Robert like the back of my hand, but now I got to discover Birkoff. Naked, he was fuller than he looked in his clothes, more muscular than I'd have guessed, and I got to taste the hollows that delineated his hips. I remembered, too, that I'd wanted a taste of other parts, and I took Birkoff's cock into my mouth, licking the head and moving with him as his body arched. One of his hands found my shoulder; the other clenched itself into the sheet. He would have thrust against my mouth, but I held him down by the hips, and I could hear his moans become more strangled.

So I moved my mouth away, and he fell limply against the futon. "Jesus, Rosenthal, why did you stop?"

"Because I'm not doing all of this on my own." I straddled him and sank down, and his eyes flew open. He stared up at me, eyes luminous, and linked his fingers with mine. I set our pace and let Birkoff keep up, until he gripped my thighs hard enough to bruise and came with a cry, his head thrown back. I could feel myself tighten around him and then I came, too, leaving marks on his upper arms where my nails dug in.

I collapsed on his chest, listening to his heartbeat return to normal, feeling the sweat on my body cool. I pulled a blanket around us. I didn't mean to sleep, but Birkoff's hand was gentle in my hair, and I did.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

For years, I had slept with a long, lanky heater of a man. I had been able to tuck myself around Robert, inserting myself between his narrow bony spaces. I had fallen asleep with him as my pillow, curled up around Robert while one of his hands lay on my back. I had held on to him like a tree clutching the ground during a storm, and Robert's light touch had kept me anchored during dreams.

Birkoff, though, clung as tightly as I did, and we lay in a tangle as complex as knotwork.

Alone, I'd seen, he slept sprawled out, the king of his domain, but I suspected that lying in bed with someone else brought out the cravings for affection that he usually kept hidden behind tinted glasses and edgy clothes. His body stayed wrapped around mine, as though he needed my warmth as much as I needed his.

"You're awake," his quiet voice said.

"How did you know?"

"Your breathing changed."

I trailed a finger down the nape of his neck, where soft hair met soft skin, and in the intimacy of the dark Birkoff allowed the caress. He traced gentle patterns on my back, and I lay there and let myself be held for the first time since the last night--an ordinary Thursday, nothing special, I'd showered and set the alarm for 6:45 and climbed in next to him--I'd spent with Robert.

"What are you thinking?" Birkoff asked.

"I don't know."

"You're lying." Not an accusation, just a statement.

"Not as much as you think I am."

"Do you think Madeline's taping this?"

"If she is, I hope it was good for her, too."

The snort of a laugh. "Don't forget about Ops. Now they can augment their extensive Nikita-and-Michael collection."

"Is it really all that extensive?"

"It's not as extensive as either Nikita or Michael would like, that's for sure."

I shifted to make myself more comfortable, resting my head on the space between shoulder and chest, settling my leg over Birkoff's hip.

"Should I take that as an invitation?" he asked.

Birkoff's skin beneath my mouth was sweet. "If you want it to be one," I answered after I'd finished licking him.

His hands moved down to cup my ass and press me against a burgeoning erection. "What do you think?"

* * * * * * * * * * * *

The second time was slower, less exploratory, and this time I let Birkoff pin me while he thrust, and when I came I bit his shoulder hard enough to bruise.

"You bit me," Birkoff said a few minutes later.

"It's a compliment."

After another pause, "What does this mean?"

"It means you're good, boy."

I wished I could see the blush I knew was spreading. "That's not what I meant," he mumbled.

"I know what you meant, Birkoff. And I don't know what it means. I think it means that we can let it happen, but we can't get too attached. One of us might be dead tomorrow, and if so, the other one is going to have to keep on working like it never happened."

"I don't want to become like Nikita and Michael. It's stupid to pretend that--that nothing exists. Because everyone knows what's between them, and they try to act like it's not."

"For what it's worth, I don't think Nikita does. I'm not saying shut it off and ignore it like Michael tries to; I'm just saying that we lead high-risk lives."

"I know what you mean."

I kissed the declivity underneath his ear. "Maybe in another life, I'll get lucky and be reincarnated as your high-school girlfriend."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean you'll take me to the movies in your dad's car--"

"My parents didn't have cars."

"That's why I'm talking about another life here, Birkoff. As I was saying, we'll live out in the Midwest somewhere--"

"Like Manitoba?"

"Are you Canadian?"

A pause. "I might have been."

"I was thinking more Nebraska than Manitoba. But someplace with wide cornfields and bright stars. You'll take me out in your dad's old Caddy, and we'll drive down the farm roads on the outskirts of town, and you'll put your arm around me and tell me about the constellations. And you'll know about all of them, too."

"So will you."

"Yeah, but I'll let you tell me anyway. And then you'll stop talking and start kissing me, and we'll kiss in the back of the Cadillac, and I'll have to fix my hair and try to cover up my flushed face with powder before I go inside."

"You'd be wearing makeup?"

"Like I said, this is another life." I moved onto my back. Birkoff curled up against my side, nose against my shoulder, arm across my middle. Idly, he drew hieroglyphics on my skin while I talked. "So one night--it'll be right around graduation, warm outside, and we'll have had a little bit to drink at a party--we'll take each other's clothes off and have sex out there. It'll hurt the first time, and it'll be a little cramped, but then we'll get out of the car and go make love in the field between rows of corn, on soft earth.

"We'll go away to college that fall, me to Berkeley and you to MIT. We'll break up, because that's what happens."

"It does?"

"It's pretty rare for things like that to last. Yeah, we'll break up. You'll stay at MIT, doing research on cryptography after you get your doctorate. And I'll become a physics professor, and I'll stay on the west coast. But one semester, I'll stop in the hall to get a drink of water, and I'll hear an astronomy class going on next door. And I'll sit in on that class every day that it meets, and I'll stare at the star charts and think of you."

Birkoff's hand stopped moving for a while and he was quiet. "Maybe that's not such a bad life, Rosenthal," he said after a moment.

"That's going to be us in one life. Another life might be something different. I don't know. But it can't be this one. We can't afford it now."

We fell back asleep after a few silent minutes. When I woke up, it was daylight, and my cell phone was ringing for a mission.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

"Marin?" Nikita's voice made me think of a fairy tale I'd once read, about a girl from whose lips jewels fell whenever she spoke. Her voice was rich, the accent adding color like light through a gem. "Could I speak with you for a moment?"

I set the program on autorun and got up. "Sure."

Nikita was dressed in a slim gray suit, her hair pulled up elegantly behind her head. Her shoes made sharp clicking noises as she walked. I had on overalls, hiking boots, and one of Birkoff's V-necks.

By comparison, I felt like the sister who cast forth toads and snakes whenever she opened her mouth.

Nikita's smile was slight, and seemed to hold no malice. She reached out and fingered the collar of my shirt. "That's Birkoff's, if I'm not mistaken."

"Yes."

"He's young, you know."

"He's twenty-one. I'm only three years older than he is."

"You're both young, then." She paused. "Do you love him?"

"Maybe."

"Does he know that?"

"It's not the kind of thing we say to each other."

"He's in love with you, Marin."

"He hasn't told me so."

"He doesn't need to. It's clear without being spoken." Nikita paused. "He was in love with me once, you know."

"I know."

"Although I'm not sure that's really accurate," Nikita continued. "He was in love with what he thought I was. He thought I was--I don't know if I have the word for this, at least not in English. Intangible."

"Out of his reach," I said.

"Out of his reach," Nikita agreed. She looked at me directly, through crystal eyes. "He loves you for the person that you are, tangible and human. Just remember that you've had a life full of experiences that Birkoff will never have. He doesn't know a lot of the things that you do. A lot of the things you don't even know you know." A second's pause. "I love Birkoff, too, and I don't want to see him hurt."

"I would never hurt him."

The brief smile again, and a shake of the head. "Never say 'never' in Section."

* * * * * * * * * * * *

It was slightly more than three weeks later when Birkoff went missing.

"Missing" was what everyone called it, though that wasn't accurate: We didn't know where he was, true, but we knew exactly who he was with. We just didn't know where they'd taken him.

They'd wanted Michael. It was Michael, the leader, the kingpin and the lynchpin, Operations's protege and Madeline's right hand, not Birkoff, the geek sent along for tech support. What did he know? How to program the computers, sure. How to hack the mainframe for any security agency or terrorist organization or any combination thereof in the world, sure. Section One's rubrics and strategies? Very little. We knew what we needed to know. Nothing more. If we were tortured, they would get nothing, because we knew nothing.

If we were tortured.

*You bastards, if you hurt one quarter-inch hair on his head or bruise one centimeter of that perfect skin, I will take your skins off with a paring knife. I will take your eyes out with a meat cleaver. I'll castrate you with a corkscrew. Bring him back, you bastards. Bring him back.*

The mission had been routine. So, so routine. Go in, steal a couple of hard drives, get out. Drunk security guard, with some Xanax in his Jack Daniels to help him along. Empty building. Warehouse district. Late at night. What could be easier? Go in, get out.

They went in, and Birkoff got out, but not the way he was supposed to.

He went in with Michael, because Michael knew next to nothing about computers. Bombs, yes. Linux servers, no. We'd scanned that building top to bottom, and the only life signs that came up were from the sluggish pulse of the drunk security guard, but we hadn't known about the subbasement. It was shielded. And it was shielded better than we could scan.

We hadn't known that you could shield a building better than we could scan one.

They started off with a rocket launcher, and when they'd reduced the guard team to smoking bits, they went upstairs. They went up one floor above the server room and came down through the ceiling, thinking they'd find Michael dismantling the machines with his clever fingers. Only Michael was standing guard by the door, and Birkoff was dismantling the machines with his clever fingers, and Birkoff threw the drives at Michael and screamed at him to run.

It was between the data--access codes and identification information for Red Cell operatives in the Middle East and eastern Africa--and Birkoff. Section had another hacker as good as the first one. They didn't have duplicates of the data.

Michael ran. Birkoff disappeared.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

We heard nothing. They didn't ask for ransom; they didn't ask for the drives back. There was no point: Section wouldn't have paid, and the data was compromised now anyway.

What Michael could tell them was more important.

Except that they didn't have Michael.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

*Still missing. Still missing, God, and he's been gone for almost three weeks now and I just want to know if he's alive or not alive and not in pain, that's all I want. They say they don't know where he is, and maybe I believe them, but Madeline always knows more than she's telling, and I want to wring her elegant--no, scrawny--neck until she talks.

Give me back to me, you motherfuckers. Give him back.

I've done the work for both of us, and I foisted Hillinger off on Walter, who was kind enough to take him. My work hasn't slipped. If anything, it's better, because it's all I do when I'm there. I don't laugh, I don't talk, I don't throw Oreos at Birkoff. I just hack, and I watch, and our intel is better than it's ever been.

Maybe Section planned it that way.

It couldn't have been Section. They're not that stupid.

I can't keep going. I get home and I bawl. Or drink. Three glasses of wine is the only way I can sleep, and even that's getting less effective by the day. Maybe I should try something stronger. Vodka. Valium. Morphine. Cyanide.

One of these days, I'm going to crack. I'll let through some fifteen-year-old wanker from the Republic of Uzbekistan. Then they'll take me into an interrogation room, strap me into a metal chair, and shoot me. Fucking good for them. Being shot has to be better than this.

If I can make it through tonight, maybe he'll be back tomorrow. I'll walk in the briefing room and he'll be there. Maybe he'll have a black eye or two, maybe a cut on his lip. Please God. Let that be all. I'll never ask for anything again. Just bring him back.*

* * * * * * * * * * * *

That was one night, that was two, that was twenty. It had been days or weeks--I didn't really know--when Walter paged me one afternoon. "Need your assistance, darlin'."

But instead of handing me a weapon or a piece of code to look at, he closed the door and lowered his voice. "What I'm about to tell you, I didn't tell you, right?"

"Right."

"They've got Birkoff down on Level A. Found him half-dead in an abandoned mine. No one's allowed to see him, so don't ask."

*He's back. Oh my God, he's back. He's back and he's alive and maybe my grandmother was right about this God business after all.*

"Walter, are you sure? Are you sure it's him? There are always crazy rumors in this place. It might--"

Walter set a hand on my shoulder, light but firm. "Sweetheart, I'm as sure as I'll ever be. Saw the team come in, heard Michael talking to Ops. They got a tip, and they went out after him. I didn't want to tell you until I was sure--until I was sure that he was OK."

That he was alive.

"Is he OK?" *He's alive. That's all that matters. That has to be all that matters.*

"He'll live."

I threw my arms around Walter. I felt him hesitate--I wasn't sure I'd ever touched him before--and then he hugged me back. The words burst out of me in a helpless rush. "Oh my God. I'm so glad he's OK. I was so worried. Thank you so much. I thought... I don't know what I thought. I was so scared."

"When you're scared for someone you love, it's like dyin' inside."

"I didn't say I loved him."

"You didn't need to, darlin'." He let me go and smoothed my hair back from my face. It was gentle, almost paternal, the same thing my own father had done when I'd come home crying from a skinned knee or a fall off my bike. Put a Band-Aid on it, smooth down the ubiquitous tangles in my hair, and fix me a glass of juice. It was that, it was Birkoff, it was everything from the past weeks; I almost burst into tears.

"Darlin', darlin,'" Walter said. "He'll be OK, and you've got to be OK, too, until then. So dry those tears, you hear?" He took a clean bandanna from his jacket pocket, and I pressed my face into it until my eyes were clear. "Right as rain, darlin'. Now get back to work."

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Four days, Birkoff had been in the recovery rooms. It felt like four years. I tried without much success not to pace outside the unit and wait for him to get better. On the fourth day, Nikita said gently, "Why don't you go in?"

"I can't. The doctors--"

"Aren't there. Go on."

The hallway of the medical unit was sterile white walls and steel equipment. The rooms were no different. The bed was near the far wall, windowless as were the other three, and Birkoff was asleep, curled up on his side, his back to me.

I went back out. Nikita looked surprised. "Was someone in there?"

"He's asleep."

With a roll of her eyes and a click of her heels, Nikita strode into the recovery room. I could do nothing but follow. Gently, she curled her hand around Birkoff's skull and spoke quietly. "I'm glad to see you back, Birkoff."

Slowly--painfully, it was clear--he turned to look at her. "Nikita."

She kissed his forehead. "There's someone here to see you." And then she was gone, as quickly as she'd come.

"Rosenthal?"

"Hi. It's me." I sat down on the edge of his bed and took his hand. "I've been really worried about you."

There were dark circles under Birkoff's eyes and just the hint of a bruise on his lower lip.

"I wanted to see you, but they said I wasn't well enough."

I leaned down and put my arms around him as best I could, one around his neck, the other on his shoulder. He moved over and pulled me down next to him, and we lay there for several minutes while I re-remembered the smell and feel of him.

"You didn't miss much around here," I said after a while, as though he'd only been away on business in Reno for a few days. "Hillinger got some Internet girlfriend. She thinks he goes to college in Toronto."

"Has she seen him?"

"No way. Michael's about to kick his ass as it is. Hillinger's just lucky he hasn't told Operations about it." We lay still for a few more minutes in the white-tiled silence. "They never told me where you were. When you came back, I mean. They never told me where you'd been."

"I'm not sure. Some safe house somewhere--well, and then the mine. I don't even know where the house was. They thought I knew a lot more than I really did. They wanted the strategic stuff, and I don't know any of that."

"My neighbors kept asking me where my boyfriend was."

Birkoff cracked a smile. "What did you tell them?"

"That you were out of town."

With no small amount of effort, Birkoff reached up to stroke my hair. "Which I was, in a manner of speaking."

"So when do I, uh, get to welcome you back?"

A faint laugh. "Anytime you want, Rosenthal."

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Three days later, a week after he'd been brought out of the mine, Birkoff went home.

Operations had agreed to let him come into Section three days a week, on the understanding that he would do intel from home the rest of the time. Since Birkoff did that anyway, it wasn't a hard bargain on either side.

Madeline had, not very subtly, told me to leave Birkoff alone for a few days. And I did. I worked eleven hours a day, puttered around in my small garden, and read the entire Herald-Tribune every morning. Finally, after another five days had passed, I decided that enough time had elapsed and that Madeline could go fuck herself, and I took the train to Birkoff's apartment.

He answered the door looking much stronger than he had since he'd come back. I pushed him against the doorframe and we kissed in plain sight of anyone who might happen to walk by. Birkoff was as hungry as I was, hands on my ass, erect as soon as I touched him.

I closed the door and we managed to maneuver to the bed without falling.

Birkoff had lost weight in captivity and recovery, and I could trace his ribs after I stripped his shirt from him. He took off my clothes as though unwrapping something breakable, his lips following his hands on my body. The bed was soft and I felt myself shudder as Birkoff explored me as intently as the first time.

Afterwards, we lay in a tangle of arms and legs, my head on his chest as I listened to his heart rate slow. "I missed you," I said. There was more that I wanted to say, but I stopped there.

"I missed you, too." For once, there was nothing mocking in his voice.