The bathroom of the hotel's presidential suite was awash with the lambent glow of the late afternoon sun. The golden rays flooded the space, creating scintillating bursts of color as the beams were endlessly reflected by hand-polished Italian marble and elegant silver fixtures. An enormous sunken bathtub dominated the center of the room. The lovers occupied its depths, bodies nestled intimately against one another, limbs entwined in sodden disarray. Michael's head lolled against the back lip of the tub. The dazzling display ignited his sable curls, transforming them into a bronze halo. Cradled loosely in his arms, Nikita lay sprawled across him in silent repose as her sun-burnished hair cascaded over his chest.

Although their union would never receive the sanction of either church or state, Michael and Nikita had signed the hotel registry as Mr. and Mrs. Samuelle. They had been wedded in their hearts for some time, but an official commitment had been made impossible by their line of work. They had lived with, and bridled under, its restrictions for a number of years, but in the end, their break with Section One had been breathtakingly swift and almost savage in its finality. The absence of the traditional ceremony didn't concern them. The depths of their devotion to each other went far beyond the simple symbolism of a scrap of paper or a circle of gold.

They were together, they were free, and they were beyond the reach of the Section. But the speed and manner of their deliverance left Michael with an uneasy sense of detachment. He had spent what seemed like a lifetime fighting for not just his own survival, but Nikita's as well. The only thing that had kept him sane during those dark years was the distant hope that they would one day have the liberty to love each other without threat of pain, punishment, or reprisal. That day had finally arrived; he was still unsure whether to feel elated by the sudden victory or cheated by the way in which they had obtained it.

"Freedom." The air around them reverberated with the power of the word. Nikita repeated it, this time in a whisper. "Freedom. It's not exactly what I expected."

"For me either," he admitted. "I had hoped...but I was surprised that I was able to find you again. I thought I'd lost you for good this time."

The series of events that had brought them to this point was still fresh in his memory. Their final mission on behalf of the Section had been an unmitigated disaster. The meeting with their contact had been uneventful at first, but just as they had been about to close the deal and take possession of the intel, a third party had intervened. His team had been caught in the crossfire. He had seen Nikita go down and then--

"I didn't intend for you to follow me here, you know."

The sound of her voice pulled him out of his grim reverie. He had to struggle for a moment to reconcile his memory of the spreading scarlet stain on her chest with the aura of strength and vitality that now surrounded her. "There was no way that you could have prevented it."

"I did the best I could, but after so many years in Section..."

Nikita let her words taper off, seemingly reluctant to detail any of the atrocities that had been a part of their everyday lives. He was grateful for her silence, as he had all too often been an accessory to her manipulation. She had spent a six-year sentence in a living hell. And how many years had he spent in the same service, atoning for his crimes? Enough, apparently.

She continued, "I couldn't bring myself to want to stay any longer, not even for you. When I saw the opportunity to get out, I took it. I never even tried to resist the temptation."

"I should never have let you go to begin with." As soon as the first shots were fired, the mission had begun spiraling out of his control. He had no sooner realized that Nikita was gone than, without conscious thought or volition, he found himself following her. "I failed the Section." A sudden surge of guilt welled up and threatened to choke him. "I failed you."

"Operations wrote the profile," Nikita reminded him gently. "The Sudan mission had us stretched too thin and he used that as an excuse to refuse us decent backup. He failed us not the other way around."

"I'm ultimately responsible..."

"As much as you act like one in the field, you're not a machine," she argued. "You showed that you were human, Michael. Fallible. Mortal." Her tone softened. "But I promise not to hold it against you."

Mortal. The word echoed softly in his head. He silently conceded the point, but she apparently wasn't through trying to sway him yet.

"Look around you." She indicated the splendor of their surroundings, but he had eyes only for the deep, luminous glow that she exuded. "We're together now, and they'll never come between us again. I don't consider this a failure. Do you?"

Her newfound joy was infinitely precious to him, and he refused to diminish it with his uncertainty. "No. Not if you're happy."

"I'll miss Walter, though," she said wistfully. "Birkoff too, I suppose. How do you think Operations will explain this to Oversight? The sims predicted a success with 95 percent confidence, assuming the presence of adequate backup."

"He'll tailor his story to fit the details." His former mentor was, if nothing else, more than capable of guarding his own back. "When we don't return, everyone will assume that we double-crossed Section and sold the file to finance a new life. The absence of backup won't be an issue."

"But that will only work if..."

He finished her unspoken thought. "If he makes sure that all the evidence is destroyed."

They looked on dispassionately as the man from Housekeeping reentered the bathroom. The cleaner took two flasks from his briefcase and poured their contents over the bloodied bodies, ignoring the regard of the sightless blue and green eyes.

Nikita averted her gaze. "That's not acid, is it?"

The technical notes had been sent to him when Housekeeping had perfected the technique. "It's new: a mutant strain of bacteria, combined with carefully engineered enzymes. It's very fast. Very...efficient."

"I'm sure it is," she said soberly, "but I don't think I need to see it."

Dissolution...He experienced a sharp pang of regret at the thought of the destruction of that lovely body. A sudden deluge of memories threatened to overwhelm him: strong, supple fingers that seemed equally at home holding a weapon or a glass of wine, muscular legs tightening around his back, urging him on as he made love to her, sky-blue eyes incapable of concealing her innermost thoughts from him. He mourned their loss only briefly. The things that had attracted him to her most, the things that he had fallen in love with, hadn't changed. The soul, the spirit, the heart and mind, all of those remained intact. Her new form was far less fragile than its ephemeral predecessor, but not one whit less beautiful to him.

"Neither do I." He turned his eyes toward the heavens. "It's time to go."

The dark angel and his radiant companion never looked back as they soared up into the light and allowed it to embrace them.

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