You throw up after your first kill.

After you let that gun fall to the ground and listen to its metallic clatter that rings in your ears, you feel nothing. Not even after you're on your way back to Section, sitting in the van with Michael's eyes resting on you the whole time.

No, you're almost in a trance during that first real debriefing of yours, describing with a steady voice how Stan had been captured, how Michael had shown up for the grand rescue, how you'd shot that man standing behind him.

You didn't even blink when you took aim, and you're thinking that you don't even know his name. Funny how that seems so very important to you now.

And after that, you go home. You sit on a bus and watch people passing by. You wonder briefly how they'd react if they knew what you'd just done… and your eyes close.

You take the stairs up to your apartment instead of the elevator, because walking will take longer, and you don't really want to enter your supposed sanctuary yet. You meet Carla standing in front of your door, just about to knock because she wants to know how your job interview went. She's concerned because you left so suddenly, without any real explanation. You dimly remember telling her about it ((I have to make a living after all)) and you begin to feel sick.

You kill for a living now.

But Carla doesn't know that, so you hug her, muttering something about it not going well, and more or less shut the door in her face. You take one look around your apartment, seeing the big room without really noticing it, and when you feel your stomach revolt at the sight of colourful wires strewn across the table and the string of sunglasses hanging on the wall, you run to the bathroom and throw up.

You kneel on the cold bathroom floor and retch until your stomach and throat burn. Your lips feel numb as you touch them hesitantly. You slowly flush the toilet, then watch your hands as they fill a glass with cool water, wondering why there's no blood on them, imagining if there was. No one can see that you took a life today.

But your hands are clean. It would somehow be easier if there was blood, something to remind you of what you've done, something to wash off.

Later, you take a shower, letting the hot water run over your unnaturally cold body until the skin is red and tender to the touch. You try to forget everything while wishing yourself back to prison where life was hard but infinitely easier. You remember the picture of your funeral that Michael gave you two years ago ((Row 8, Plot 30)) and you ask yourself if that man you killed will have any grave at all.

You don't think so.

You feel that the Nikita you knew, the Nikita you were, was killed along with that nameless man lying dead with his eyes wide open. And so you wait for Michael's voice ((Josephine)) calling you to do your duty, while burning the last shred of evidence of the former Nikita's existence, watching as the flames eat away at the picture.

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