Second Contact: Total Blackout Follows First Contact

Second contact: when the moon completely blocks the sun during a solar eclipse.

Moon/La Lune (Michael)

The Turkish sun blistered the air. Its heat beat down on Nikita and me, on the crowds gathering in the plaza below. Our faces turned towards the sky as we all waited for the eclipse. From below, the sounds of the marketplace drifted up to us: the rise and throb of ululating music, donkeys braying, farewells and greetings. And added to that mix were the Amasyan merchants pitching their wares: commemorative tee-shirts, cups, prayer beads for the superstitious. Even a cosmic event like this could be packaged and sold.

I was adjusting my tripod. One bolt was a little loose. Better fix it. I took out my wrench. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Nikita lean way over the balcony. "Careful," I said, "Bricks are loose."

She only leaned over even further. "Hey, hey, look at that! Walter would like that tee-shirt. Think I'll buy it for him. Maybe I'll get a fez. How do you think I'd look in it?"

What? Immediately I imagined her in a fez and nothing else. I almost over-tightened the bolt and stripped it. I took a deep breath and relaxed my grip. I got back to work again. Should I tell her what I honestly thought? She had no idea. Absolutely none. I wondered if she would do it. Maybe tonight. I smiled secretly. But instead of responding to her question, I only said, "Do not stare at the sun. It can blind you." As I reminded Nikita for the third time, I could hear Grandperé's voice inside my head telling me the same thing.

"All right, all right. Hey, how come you get the fancy telescope and I get this cheap-o thing?" She pouted, held up the smoky welder's glass. "You hog the remote control too. It must be a guy thing."

I didn't reply. I was too busy. I fiddled with the eye-piece, my camera ready for the next moment.

"Oh, wow. Wo-o-o-ow, look at that! Check it out. Someone bit a chunk out of the bottom of a sun. It looks like a half-eaten cookie."

"First contact." I pressed the button. Shutter clicked. Camera whirred, advancing. It reset in a split second. Now the sun was turning golden, almost orange. Sunspots freckled its surface as the moon slid over it.

"There it goes," shouted Nikita. "Whoo-hoo!"

Totality. The end. Gone.

The sun completely disappeared so that we could see only the dark face of the moon. Now it looked like the unblinking eye of God in the sky. A null circle: black and blank. It lay in front of the sun, completely blocking it. A solid absolute void. The sun could not be seen, but it was still there. Since it could not penetrate the darkness, its light was stretching and reaching around it. Persistent, it was forming a faint rim of golden fire. Never giving up, still shining behind it.

I'm here ... I'm here... You can't see me, but I'm still here. Don't worry. the sun seemed to be saying. Within seconds, the rim of light expanded, radiating into a corona which stretched to all corners of the heavens. Then a moment later, a white-gold oval seemed to slip over and in front of the bottom of the darkened disc. It grew and grew until the light flashed like the fat diamond of ring turned on its side.

"Oooh." Nikita sighed as the moon passed across the orange crescent of the sun. "Come here."

"One more shot. Almost final contact." The black circle was shrinking, turning into the barest fingerprint on top of the sun. Her hands ran along my shoulders, turned me so that her lips reached my ears.

"Now," she said.

Even over the dry baked dust, I could smell her peach soap, and the sweetened coffee she'd been drinking all day. I couldn't see the sun anymore because my field of view was filled by sky-blue eyes and blonde hair like silky sunshine. My Soleil. I snapped another shot as her laughter brushed against my mouth, just a heartbeat before she turned me away and we kissed. I was not sure what I had just taken a picture of. I did not care anymore. All I cared about was this - this woman, this moment. I folded her in my arms and kissed her back, measure for measure, stroke for stroke. Out on the balcony, in the open. We kissed deeper and longer as we moved together and melded. We kissed until we reached that same blinding place together. And for a moment, we were free. And alone. For a moment, no one was watching us. No one but the sun.

###

After Genefex (the third season finale)

This place looked like a tropical paradise but it feel like purgatory. It was a month later and I was here in Kourou on the devil's business. From faraway, I could hear the steel drums sing like rain while the physicists celebrated early, drinking something with more rum than fruit juice. The air was thick with diesel fumes and the heavy perfume of rainforest blossoms. But all I could smell, all I could remember was Nikita's peach soap as I watched the rocket scientists do their final check on the Artemis satellite. Just behind the launch pad, the hot air seemed to ripple across the broad golden face of the sun.

It was the same sun, but everything else seemed different now. Even now, I could still smell the fresh paint on her apartment walls while Nikita had stared at me with those horrible blank eyes. All her love extinguished, the laughter gone. She was gone. My Soleil had vanished as if she had never existed. And I felt ripped in half, alone once again. A widower for the third time. And this time was the worst.

There was no time to mourn, no time to fight. It had been done on purpose. Quick. Clever. Divide and conquer. After Genefex, I had been sent away from Nikita. Assigned to the European Space Agency to insure that their rocket launch went smoothly and that no one tampered with our satellite this time.

It was an assignment in hell. This time of year, French Guiana was hot, damnably hot and sticky, but my team waited patiently. Even Herbie the Mouth was strangely quiet. Maybe my orders had been sharper, colder than unusual. It was possible. But I did not care. I had one purpose, one single-minded goal now. No one would stand in my way.

"It's a go. Artemis set to launch," said Herbie.

"Next mark," I replied, examining the simple umbilical tower emblazoned with ESA, the mounts for the solid boosters on each side of the rocket, and somewhere, at its top was our payload - the A2100 satellite that would link thousands of operatives around the world.

But the one person, the only person I wanted to link with wasn't there any longer. Nikita, what had they done to you?

My wrist PDA vibrated with an incoming message. Rotated my hand slightly so that only I could see. Meeting confirmed. The coordinates followed.

I smiled grimly. I had given up once and left poor Simone to her fate. Never again. I won't let them do this.

##

Sun/Le Soleil (Nikita)

There he was. There couldn't be possibly two of him in the whole universe. Only one man I knew would wear a bright orange polka dot shirt with green seersucker pants ... and of course, that porkpie hat with the brim bent up as if he'd just fallen face forward and hadn't bothered to fix it just yet. It was Stumpy all right. Had to be. He was sitting over there at the juice bar, the only customer whose legs dangled above the floor. His skin was mushroom-pale from working months underground like me. He didn't glow with a matte gold tan like the other patrons, and he was the only one who was working. Sort of. A pile of magazines sat in front of him, and he kept flipping back and forth between a couple of them. Vigorously he circled a few items hard enough to engrave them.

While I was watching him, he suddenly seemed to blur into two Stumpy's, and I had to wait at least half a second until he turned back to normal again before I could even think about moving. I didn't want to walk into a wall again. I'd done it last week, and once had been enough. I'd learn my lesson. There was no use pretending that something wasn't wrong with me. I had to hide it and adapt. I was getting real good at that, because Section didn't have any long-term disability plans that I was real fond of. Everything was a little too final for my taste. I couldn't let anyone know. So I just stood there kinda casual, pretending to read the menu on the wall until things got gradually back into focus, and after they had, I watched Stumpy for awhile. He slurped on his drink, set aside his magazine, then picked another from a pile that threatened to slide off the counter. Whipped out a different colored pen from his pocket and scribbled madly along the side margins of the page.

"Hey, Stumpy." I squeezed past two women in running suits and diamonds. They eyed my coveralls, which was still dusty from remodeling my apartment. Not even bothering to shrug, they dismissed me and went back to discussing the merits of bee pollen over gingko biloba. I walked down to the end of the bar and sat on the stool next to my friend. He scowled ferociously at me.

"Where's yer bloomin' 'at?" Stumpy didn't believe in manners.

"My what?"

"The spy-chicky 'at. The one I gave yer."

"Oh ..." I broke off, swallowing my spit. It was happening all the time now. Bugged the hell out of me. Didn't want to drool like an idiot.

Stumpy leaned forward, almost belligerently. "Dinnit I tell yer to wear it, regular-like? The first thing old Dickie D. said to yer. The first. Absolute first. Top o' the flamin' list. Don't tell me yer forgettin' things?"

Jeez. Was he going to ramble about mind control and the Ted Koppel again? I didn't want the attention, so I quickly said, "Sometimes. Just small things. Busy day, get home tired, and I space out. I go into a room, but then I forget why I went there in the first place. Lose my glasses. Shopping list. That kind of thing. Still can't remember where I put my keys. Had to use my spare set."

"I know what you mean," said the fifty-ish woman sitting next to me. She fluttered her hand at me, her jewelry winking under the lights. "Oh goodness! If I don't write it down, then it might as well not exist. Ever find funny things around the house? Sometimes two of them? But you don't remember how they got there?"

"Yeah," I laughed, pointing at her. "That's exactly it. I found a bunch of books on my coffee table: something about this Galileo guy ... oh, and a collection of Hansel and Gretel stories from around the world. But I don't know why. Beats the shit out of me. I hate fairy tales. Those hopeless 'ever after' stories. I like non-fiction. Biographies. You always know where you are with facts."

"Facts? Good heavens, not facts!" shrieked the woman, suddenly sitting tall in her stool. She pressed her hands against her cheeks as if I'd said "rats" instead of "facts." She shook her head back and forth until her beehive hairdo threatened to topple. "Oh, honey, that is the whole problem right there. Too many facts! Too much information. My goodness, me. Seems like the more I learn, the more I forget. In one ear, out the other. Data overload. Too much, too fast. It's the modern world," she continued, ignoring Stumpy's disbelieving noise. "It is. We're running on a treadmill. Rush rush rush. Wears a girl down. You need one of Victor's drinks. A smart drink. Vitamins, you know. Guaranteed to beef up your brain. Oh!" She giggled behind one hand. "I hope you're not vegetarian. I hope I didn't offend you." Giggling even louder, she waved to Victor the juice-jerk, then lifted her glass and pointed to me. "Another one of these for her. With an extra shot of vitamin B6."

"No, no, Tina. Gingko. Gingko biloba," cried her friend. "Gets the blood flowing. Improves my memory. Makes me warm all over."

"That's a hot flash, Viv."

"But I'm too young for that!" protested the other woman.

"Now, now. Tell that to your plastic surgeon." Clucking her tongue, Tina shook a finger at her friend.

Disgusted, Stumpy turned away from us. He was busy mumbling to himself, rubbing his temple for a moment. "Pah!" He shoved aside his magazines. A few clippings fluttered to the ground. One fist thumped the counter. He swiveled back towards me. "And 'ow's work? Muckin' that up too?"

"No," I said firmly. "No, work's fine. Better than ever. It's completely different. I'm focused there."

"Busy, eh? Too bloody busy for yer friends is wot I 'eard tell. Rabbit's been callin' yer. Why 'aven't yer called 'im back on the ole dog and bone? Yer could even call 'im collect. But not answerin' ...? My life, that's rude. That's wot it 'tis or my name innit Dickie D."

I hunched over, jamming my hands in my pockets. "Is that why you brought me here? Gonna teach me some manners? Who made you the new Cleo? Ha! That'll be the day."

"Wot are friends for, me ole darlin'? Wot are friends for? We know yer insides an' yer outsides. No mistake about that. Can't pull the wool over our eyes. Not like some people. 'Fraid of wot Rabbit might see? Is that why yer avoidin' 'im like the clap? Aw, go on. Don't take on so. Naw. I'm not 'ere to pull a Madeline on yer."

"No kidding. You could have fooled me," I muttered.

Stumpy waved a paw at me and shook his head. He grinned. "Yer gots it twisted all wrong. I brought yer a li'l gift. 'eard yer were doin' up the ole nest, layin' ev'rythin' bare, so to speak, down to the boards. That's wise. Very wise. Yer never know how deep the vermin get. Rats, bugs, them that wots don' belong. Gots to clear them all out. Me ol' mate Ted says so. Anyways, I got yer some paint. Somefin' pretty and white, right? Try it in yer bedroom. Sweet dreams. Nighty-night an' all that. Only if yer like it, yer can't buy it at the five-an'-dime. Ask Walter. He can cook yer up some real quick-like. Special like. Try it." Stumpy reached behind his pile of magazines. Paper scattered everywhere as he picked up something up. It was a small paper bag. He set it down on the counter.

I didn't take it. I shook my head. "But Walter runs an armory, not a hardware store."

"Aw, go on. 'E gots lots o' stuff. All kinds ol' bloody stuff back there. Come on, come on. Look sharp. Don' be a right Barbie. Take it." Stumpy nudged the bag towards me. He glared at me again, his whiskers quivering. Above them, his freckled cheeks were turning a dangerous shade of red. He looked like he was about to blow.

I thought about whipping out my cellular phone and pointing it at his head. Maybe if I did that and pushed a few buttons, he would calm down. "Jeez," I muttered. "All right already. Keep your stupid hat on, why don't you? What's a matter with you?" The ladies at the bar were already giving us a few looks, and I didn't want him to make even more of a scene. What else could I do? I took the bag and stuffed it into my carryall. Then I sat there, wondering how soon I could skip out. Maybe another minute or so. I killed time, pretending to listen to Stumpy rattle on about brainwashing elevator music. I was just about to leave when my drink arrived. Damn it. What rotten timing. I'd forgotten about that. Now I had to stay and drink it especially since that lady Tina was encouraging me.

I stared at the glass. Eeeee-yew. Yuck. The drink was green, green as pond muck. Slimy and just as smelly. Reminded me of Stan Beasley and his vodka health drinks that preserved your body by pickling it. I kept a firm grip on the glass but my gut was already rebelling. No scenes, I reminded myself.

Stumpy clinked his glass against mine. "Bottoms up, ducks. 'ere's to yer."

I pinched my nose and drank. It mixed with the saliva that was always pooling in my mouth lately. Then the whole sludge slid down. "Ga-a-a-ack." Cleared my throat again. I tongued the grit off my front teeth. Now my tongue felt like rough sandpaper.

"Recovered yet? Feel any smarter?" asked the woman kindly.

"Much better," I said with as much enthusiasm as I could fake. She was still watching me. They all were. They probably were going to watch me until I finished the whole thing. I lifted the glass and took another sip. Swallowed fast before it hit my tastebuds. I chugged it all down and somehow managed not to barf. Section had taught me to do this, suffer it without showing anything at all. I even smiled at the women. "I'm fine. Now I know where my keys are."

###

Afterwards, I found the keys in my inner coat pocket, the safe place that was too safe for me to remember. Let myself into the apartment, brushed my teeth, then my tongue for another twenty minutes. I must have swished and spit out at least a quart of water before I felt halfway decent again. Then I reluctantly went straight to bed. I didn't want to but it had been one hell of a day.

By the time I'd left Stumpy at the juice bar, I had a bucketload of advice and a shopping list a mile long: enhancement tapes, herbal supplements, oxygen, amino acids. Everyone seemed to have something to suggest. Now if only I could remember their suggestions. I wasn't kidding. The little daily things in life were slippery. Just as likely to stick as to not stick at all to me.

I didn't understand it. Things from childhood were crystal clear. My friend Julie. That first kiss from a boy with magical eyes. I even remembered perfectly how my mouth puckered from the lemon drops that Doctor Grün gave me after my asthma shots; his kind interested look as he waited for my breathing to even out, the chest pain to ease. For days afterwards, I could still taste the yucky lemon in the back of my throat.

The funny thing was that I remembered those things but I couldn't hold on to recent events like the Apollo project. They were all foggy. I could barely recall what had happened at Genefex. Went back and studied the tapes. A biotech facility. Michael and me. And after we returned from that mission, there was something he still wanted from me. Something I couldn't give him.

It didn't make any sense. The more I thought about it, the less sense it made. Memory sure was a funny thing. How could it work sometimes but not others? Was it like a funky old camera that worked fine one moment, then fritzed out the next? And once your mind managed to snap a bunch of photographs, what did you do with them? Maybe you crammed them into an overflowing shoebox. Or maybe you organized them into a neat scrapbook like Michael probably did. Madeline too. They seemed like the type to file everything in its exact a-okay place.

But my memories seemed different. The few I had weren't snapshots at all. Mine ran like a feature-length movie, six reels back-to-back. Non-stop action. A face, a feeling flowing from one second to the next. One flavor blending to another.

I could play through my memories like the matinees I used to watch when I was a kid. You know, those old films that spun off reels (before they had digitalized discs). Sometimes the picture was all scratched and faded. Sometimes the little holes ran along the sides as the leader ran out, clicking while the last bits let go of the sprockets, and then the screen filled with a horrible bright light, so white that it blinded me. My memories sure seemed like those old movies. But now, they looked flatter. Colors fading. Badly spliced together so that recent events seemed like jump cuts. One thing jerked to the next. I used to be in love with Michael. And then all of a sudden, I wasn't anymore. Don't remember how I got there, falling out of love. But I had. Landed hard.

Not as hard as it seemed for him. Those green eyes, sharp and patient as a hawk's, followed me all around Section, outside of Section. Michael refused to believe the facts, to believe me. And that refusal was dangerous. Dangerous for us both. Thank God our recent assignments had separated us. He'd been sent on the Kourou mission, and I'd been assigned to Honolulu. I didn't have to worry any more about his looks, his questions; the things he did that made everything jump inside me, jumble and blur together like two movies running at the same time. It made me dizzy to watch them both and try to figure it all out. It disturbed my memories. It disturbed me.

My God. Everything disturbed me. It didn't feel right. None of it did. Not painful exactly, but sort of uncomfortable. It pinched in places like when I was a kid and I'd finally realized that I'd worn my shoes backwards all day. Right was left, and left was right. Everything seemed backwards and inside out.

What was happening to me? It wasn't me doing things any more. Instead of being in the middle of all the action, I was only watching someone named Nikita doing things. Those hands belonged to someone else. Someone else was using my voice. And my mind. My mind felt like the goddam Theater Nikita. Shows nightly, seven days a week, four weeks a month. And the shows it played weren't just my memories. It showed my dreams too. They were also like movies: vivid, detailed, relentless. I watched them from the balcony seat of my head. Watched myself do horrible things in those dreams. I became that robot Nikita from outer space who floated so high above everything. And no one could hurt me any more because I couldn't feel anything. I could do anything. Efficient, no regrets. The perfect Nikita with a one-hundred percent record.

All week long I'd dream about this. A serial, each new episode worse than the last. It troubled me. Ate away at my peace so that sleep became a stranger I wanted and hated at the same time. And just like all the other nights, I lay in bed again. My eyes were glued open. I couldn't sleep. Counted the cracks in my ceiling. I tossed, turned. Nothing felt comfortable. My bed was a prison. My pillows felt like boulders.

I gave up. Did push-ups on the floor until my arms stung. Then I sat back in bed, and picked up the tech reports I'd promised to read. An hour later, set them aside again. Hadn't read a single word the whole time. Damn it. What was wrong with me? Maybe my mind was too busy analyzing facts. My wheels were still spinning when I needed to slow down. Maybe I needed to read something soothing like a story instead. Something innocent. A once-upon-a-time I could slip into and drift away.

Let's see. There were those books I'd found in my apartment. A vague pressure built behind my eyes as I glanced through the titles. Click Something made me pick up the cheap paperback about Galileo even though the sound inside my head grew louder. Click ... click-click I ignored the sounds, flipped straight to the end of the book. A Brecht play. Shit. How intellectual. That was different than my usual.

I punched my pillows, settled back against the headboard. Read a page, then two. Not bad, not too many ten-dollar words. I could get all this stuff about stars and outer space. And the Inquisition. That seemed kinda familiar. Hell, it wasn't that different from Madeline and the White Room. Before I knew it, I was really getting into it and as I read, I felt like I was travelling to Rome where Galileo's disciples waited. They waited and worried. One was saying:

You can't make a man unsee what he has seen. Force cannot accomplish everything. Man is constant in the face of death. I wouldn't want to go on living if [Galileo] recanted. It would turn our morning to night. It would be as if the mountain turned to water ... Listen all of you, they are murdering the truth.

Murder the truth. Jeez. There was enough death in my life without reading about it during whatever dinky downtime I managed to grab. Death seemed like it was I ever did. It was my goddam job, twenty-four/seven. Forget this. Suddenly I let go of the book as if it were electric. My hands burned. Paper rustled as the book fell and landed face-down on my lap. Immediately I knocked it off the bed, and while my hand moved across the cover, I noticed black smears arching across the fabric. I stared at my fingertips. Oh man. Look at that. What a mess. They were stained dark with ink from the cheap pages. In vain, I rubbed my fingers but they stayed dark. Better than blood, I supposed. Oh, what the hell. I was too tired to get up and wash my hands; too tired to care.

I plopped backwards against my pillow. Then I stared at the white ceiling again. Tonight there was no escape into facts, no refuge in fiction either. There seemed to be no place I could rest. My body wept for sleep, but my mind dreaded it and the dreams it would bring. If only I could sleep and not dream. What had dreams ever brought me anyway?

###

Tonight I was dreaming that I was walking through my house, only it wasn't a house I had ever really lived in. And yet, it still seemed familiar. I knew all the smells drifting down the halls, the creaky places in the floor, which doors I lingered at or ran by. I knew all of those things because it was my house ... my house of dreams. And inside of it, there were many rooms, many occupants. A nursery where my father sings a lullaby. A dark closet for me to hide in, wondering about the hurt in places I can't name. The drunken laughter of grown-ups: my mother, who never believed me, and her boyfriends, who did the hurting. So many rooms of pain, places I wanted to avoid. Rooms with doors that I slammed shut as soon as possible so that I could float through the house and visit happier places. The places that pleased me. A garden with lush peaches, the shy scent of peonies, a golden square of sunshine. Rabbit making pizza in my kitchen. And in my bedroom, Michael: protective, ruthless, tender. So perfect that I never wanted to leave. Wanted to stay so much that I struggled, fighting to keep asleep for every lovely minute more.

I held on, pulling as I was being pulled, straining harder, my body tensing like a stretched rubber band. Then all of a sudden, something snapped and I was flying backwards, away from Michael and towards a darkness. Eventually the darkness took shape. I was in some long dim corridor that smelled like musty magazines and old cat food. The faded carpet was sprinkled with little stars and looked vaguely familiar. As I walked down the hall, I looked ahead of me. There was someone else. Robo-Nikita was opening a door and entering into a room with glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling, a clock ticking on the table. Two people lay in bed. One was Michael. Even asleep, he seemed powerful ... but vulnerable too: his auburn hair all rumpled, hard lips relaxed into a rare boyish smile, his arm around a woman with long blonde hair.

I stared down at the man who loved me, lied to me; who'd given me great joy and greater pain. And there was that woman whose silly dreams had tricked me. I saw them together, and I should have felt something. Rage. Jealousy. Betrayal. But I felt none of these things. Nothing. A droid wouldn't. Because now, I wasn't just watching that robo-Nikita. I was her. Inside my shell was nothing but circuits and wiring. No heart to appeal to. No conscience to worry. So easy to ignore their pleas. I could barely hear them anyway because of the clicking inside my head. Static fuzzed, then cut out. And next a faraway voice, accented and toneless, spoke. Target sighted.

Slowly ... slowly I raised my gun as the clock tick-clicked louder and louder so that the sound filled my ears. That mechanical pulse was thundering over and over and over again. Three ... Alpha ... Complete. Automatically my finger pulled. Metal struck metal. Fire spat. I shot that woman straight through the heart. Then I turned. Aimed again. I hit Michael some place vulnerable, not vital, but some place where he would never forget.

Ni-kee-ta. What did they do to you? he whispered brokenly. The pain from his gutshot looked like nothing compared to the pain welling in his eyes. Michael doubled over. He clutched his belly. Liquid pulsed through his fingertips, running down his sides, staining the sheets, then the body of the woman next to him. The room looked like a goddam comic book. Black ink - instead of blood - splattered everywhere. Over everything. All over my hands. All over me. All ... over.

It was over. Done. Sequence completed.

What had I done?

I jerked upright, out of my dream. I sat there for a long time, gulping air, runnels of sweat dripping down my skin. Stared at the black smears across my palms. Had it happened? For a moment, I couldn't tell if it had. But gradually I realized where I was. My bedroom. Mine. No clocks were clicking. There were no sounds at all except for the horrible galloping of my heart, my ragged breathing. I stared down the length of my bed. At the bottom, the bunched up sheets still looked white and clean. No trace of ink. Or corpses. I slumped back against the headboard. I was back. Thank God this was real and I was awake. But if I was awake, why could I still see that dream playing inside my head? I couldn't get it to stop. When it finished, it looped back and started all over again. The hall, the clock, the shots. The hall, the clock ... Oh my God, I could still hear Michael. I could smell the thick coppery blood. His blood.

My stomach roiled in waves. All of a sudden, acid surged inside me but I clamped my mouth shut just in time. Gradually it died down, but then my head started pounding again, this time worse, one thunderbolt after the next. Damn migraines. My head felt as if it were going to split in half. I wished it would, then maybe all those rotten dreams could fly out and leave me a little peace. One quiet night. Just one. That was all I wanted. Was that so much to ask for? I'd tried to make it happen. Worked myself to exhaustion. Had been even dumb and desperate enough to try Med Lab's pills. They only made me feel worse. Stupid. Doped up during the day. And during those half-awake times, I'd dream even more, not less. Later on after I'd stopped going to Med Lab, I thought they were slipping the same stuff into my vitamins. So I mouthed them, spit them out again some place safe. I hated drugs. When it got really bad, I ate aspirin instead. Jeez. That last dream had been a real screamer. A five alarm frightener. My hands trembled as I swung my feet over the side of the bed and reached for a water bottle on the bedstand. Sipped, tried to rinse out the sour acid taste in the back of my throat. Drank again, glancing at the clock. The luminous numbers read oh-three hundred. Through the bedroom windows, the pre-dawn sky still looked dark. Not quite night, not quite morning. Just three hours before the next briefing. No point in trying to go back to sleep now. And after that last nightmare, I wanted to avoid sleep at all costs, didn't want to open my mind to a repeat episode. Might as well get up.

Shakily I got out of bed and stumbled into the gutted bathroom. For a moment, I stared stupidly at the bare struts and backboard. No medicine cabinet. No shelves. No goddamn wall. That's right. I'd torn them out last week. Searched the boxes on the floor for aspirin but didn't find any. Damn it. The pressure inside my head was building. I pushed a palm against my forehead. Think. Where else? Maybe I had some stashed inside my bag. I walked out of the bathroom and back into my bedroom. At the foot of my bed lay my carryall. I upended it. A bottle and some old socks fell out, followed by the can of paint Stumpy had given me. I grabbed the pill bottle, thumbed off the cap, and poured out two aspirins. I tossed them back. Then I sat, huddled on the ground, waiting for them to kick in, my hands pressed against my temples. Gradually the sonic boom inside my head faded into a loud clicking. This I could live with. I had for awhile.

Now what? I wondered dully. No sleep, no reading, no work. What else could I do? My eyes fell on the paint. Well, why the hell not? I had a couple of hours to kill. I might as well paint my bedroom. Shrugging, I took my keys and pried off the lid of the paint can. It was off-white, faintly glittering with aluminum-colored specks. What a weird color. It kinda reminded me of the old motel rooms Bobby used to drag us to: the ones which charged by the hour or the week, with the speckled cottage-cheese walls and the burnt orange shag rugs. I guess it was the closest thing I had to home. It almost made me feel nostalgic. Slowly I got up and crossed the floor to where my coveralls hung on a hook on the wall. I took it down and stepped into it, one leg at a time. Then I slipped my shoulders in, zipping it up over my pj's. I walked over to the boxes lining the wall and rummaged around them until I found a paintbrush. I hunkered down. I dipped it once, twice into the can of new paint. The bristles glistened. The silvery speckles in it caught the light and twinkled at me like something ... like a star, I guess. A what? Frowning, I tried to figure out why I'd be thinking about stars of all things. Maybe it was that stupid Galileo book. Yeah, it must be that, all right. I was under the influence. Why else?

Something cold and wet dripped on to my foot. Startled, I looked down. Damn it. A fat drop of paint sat on top of my toes and was running between them. No more spacing out. Better get started. I cupped one hand below my paintbrush and straightened up. Then I began painting. Slowly, smoothly I applied a coat. The longer I painted, the more relaxed I felt. The slick hiss and rasp of the brush sounded almost hypnotic. I continued for some time, and by the time I'd used almost half the can, even the clickety-clicks seemed to fade inside my head. Thank God for aspirin. That stuff must be really kicking in. Finally. Whatever the reason, I didn't care. I was just thankful to feel better. I continued.

##

Ever smell power? Some people wear it like musk - attractive, overwhelming, a little repellant. And places of power are the same. Places that draw you as much as they scare you. Places like Stonehenge, Machu Picchu, Haleakula. Places like the briefing room where we held the fate of nations in our goddam hands. And there we played only one game. The power game. The rules were really very simple.

First strike. Opportunity. Taking it or making it, not letting it break you. It was all about advantage. Why had I been so slow? I had resisted that basic rule until now. Now everything had changed. Time to change. Time to seize my moment. The new Nikita.

My footsteps echoed in the empty conference room as I walked in and grabbed the "power seat," the one in the middle of the table. Arrived thirty minutes before everyone else so that I was early again, just the way I liked it. Early enough to see the quick glimmer of surprise cross Michael's face when he strode into the room just a few minutes after me. Ha. Beat you this time.

I hadn't seen since he'd returned from Kourou yesterday. He looked as if he'd lost weight. His black suit hung looser, and there were new hollows under his cheekbones. Michael seemed smaller, a little shorter. "Hello," he said.

"Hello." There. It was done, the first actual meeting since he'd been stupid enough to come to my apartment. The first time since he'd forced me to say it, to tell him that I didn't love him anymore. I hadn't seen Michael in nearly a month, and now that I had, nothing had happened. The sky hadn't fallen. My heart hadn't stopped. I couldn't remember why I'd been so afraid of this meeting, why I'd dreaded this since my return to Section.

"I heard the Kourou mission went well." I forced a smile. "Congratulations."

"Thank you ... And you closed the Honolulu situation." Michael's lips remained parted as if he were going to say something else, but then he seemed to change his mind. He looked away for a moment, then back at me again. His eyes quickly flickered over me. "You look ... tired."

So much for expensive cosmetics. My twenty-buck Lacombe concealer. More money just pissed away if I looked as bad as I felt. When I'd been painting, I had actually started to feel a little better, but the moment I hit Section, the headache had started all over again. Now it felt like jackhammers were drilling through my skull, but I'd die before I admitted it. Hell, what was the point? It was just stress. I could handle it.

I stared straight at Michael, who looked alive and well, clean and cool. He didn't look anything like the man in my nightmare. Not screaming in pain, not a drop of black ink anywhere. This was real. My dream was not.

Click. Click. I listened to the high-pitched sound for awhile, wondered if it was the ventilation system again. Couldn't exactly placed it. Then I realized that Michael was still looking expectantly at me. I knew from experience that he could wait forever if he wanted to. Stubborn to the core. I swallowed my sigh. Finally I said, "I'm not wiped. Really, I'm not. I'm A-Okay. Fine."

I didn't say anything else. Neither did he. For the next half-hour, we sat next to each other like polite colleagues, silent as stones, while everyone else gradually arrived for the briefing.

Birkoff and Li-Huan came next, arguing about some rematch as they walked in together. They sat down at the far end of the table, and immediately huddled over their latest computer game. Something called Space Rangers. They were competing head-to-head, his brown buzz-cut jammed next to her wild eggplant-colored spikes, while they whooped over their small panels. Plenty of body English. None okay for the briefing room, but I sure as hell wasn't going to say anything. I wasn't the senior person here.

Suddenly Birkoff slumped in his chair. "Oh, man. I don't believe that. I do not believe that. You got my space station. Lucky hit."

"Luck? No way. No stinkin' way. That's not luck. That's skill. That's Rrriot girl power. Death to the evil Emperor Gork. Two out of three. I'm smokin'." Li-Huan's round face glowed with absolute triumph as she pumped one fist into the air. "I win. Big. Take your lumps, Mister He-man. No whining this time. Hmm. I think ... pink. Definitely pink again." Li-Huan nodded, cackling. "Cotton candy pink."

Birkoff's eyes widened behind his glasses. "Come on. How about ... three out of five?" His question ended on a hopeful note.

"What? Three out of five? Don't be a geek. The odds of you pulling through ..."

"...are exactly ..." Their argument grew more heated as time passed.

Somewhere in the middle of that, Walter arrived, grinned his usual greeting to everyone; casual, then a big flirtatious one to me. He sat down on my other side. I watched him shift uneasily in the conference room chair, which were small, hard; designed for function, not comfort. "How's things, sugar?"

"Fine."

"Fine?" Walter glanced around. "Heard work got a little rough in Honolulu. That thing with Maumau ..." He pursed his lips, whistled low. He shook his head.

Walter was saying something else to me when all of a sudden, he seemed to go blurry for a second. I tried to blink back my tears but they ended up running down the inside of my nose instead. Jeez. If this got any worse, I'd have to report this to Doctor Genova. Between this and the headaches, they might as well pop open my head and give me a tune-up. How about a brain transplant? Nothing seemed to be working right anymore. I swallowed some more tears. Finally I said, "Nothing I couldn't handle. Really."

"Well, don't let the pressure get to you. You know what I mean?"

"I'm fine."

"Sure you are, sugar. Sure you are." Walter gave me another one of those looks that people had been giving me all month. Pinched smile, anxious eyes - a face full of false reassurances like when people introduce you to the little men in the white coats who are going to take you away to some room somewhere. We had plenty of those rooms in Section, and believe me, none of them were good for your health.

Now what was Walter going on about? It sounded reassuring, but I wasn't sure. I couldn't ask him to repeat himself. That would just draw attention. The wrong kind. Since I didn't know what was going on, I fell back on an old lesson. When in doubt, stare back. Maybe I had trouble remembering a couple of things lately but I sure remembered that one. I'd learned it from a master, so I used to good effect. I sat quietly in my chair and just stared at Walter for a long time until his gaze finally dropped to the floor. He cleared his throat. "Well. Where the hell is Operations? Where's our fearless leader?"

"Patience," I said.

###

"This is the Apollo project." The satellite looked like a plumber's helper, its long solar panels arrayed on either side. Cool photograph. The satellite in its geosynchronous glory, with the moon just on its wing, a silver flash of sunlight reflecting off the iridium. And behind its transparent picture, stood Operations so that he looked omniscient, larger than the moon or Earth. His voice seemed to travel through outer space as he briefed us at the conference table.

"Two months ago, Lockheed Martin launched Apollo, the largest commercial satellite of its kind. High speed transmissions for phone, internet, cable. All virtually real time. We have more than a casual interest in it. Birkoff?"

"On the last Apollo mission, our team obtained detailed intell on the satellite. Before its launch date, we analyzed the data, infiltrated the project, and added several modifications of our own. Now we can monitor the relays and use it for our system as well. Our com speed is up by a factor of fifty."

"But efficiency is not. It's down by twenty percent. Our transmissions have been breaking up, a number of brown-outs here in the northern hemisphere. Sectors alpha, beta, gamma." Operations pushed a button on the console, and the holographic screen now showed a map of the world. "Then a recent series of blackouts, primarily there, in sector beta."

"In Northern California," Michael said. "Near San Francisco, where Lockheed Martin is located. And the satellite's guidance system. So someone is using Apollo to disable our communications."

Walter rested his arms against the table, leaned forward. "Yeah, that's the way I see it. That's the problem with link-ups. They don't usually stay one-way only. Gets real reciprocal. We tapped into their system, but now they're using it to tap ours. Sweet. Real sweet. But once the satellite's launched, we can't go into outer space and take a monkey wrench to it. Can't tinker with it now. It's too late for that. Hey, Birkoff. Too bad you can't zap it with your ray gun like that Space Rangers game you guys are always playing."

"Well, someone's been zapping our communications," I said. "Not just Apollo. Other satellites too. It's unacceptable. Dead air. Mid-mission drop-out. We had to scrub Jakarta. Barely finished the Honolulu mission."

"The team handled the Maumau situation well. It was ... unfortunate, but satisfactory from our standpoint," said Operations. His lips pulled back until some of his teeth showed. I guessed it was a smile. Whatever it was, he bestowed it on me.

Well, big whoopdee-do. Compliments weren't worth piss. Promotions were. Let's hope it was all going to add up to something in the end. So I sat there like a good little girl, my hands neatly folded on the table in front of me. I could see the reflections of my team mates on the holograph screen. Michael, calm as usual. Li-Huan's pierced eyebrows lifted to her purple hairline. Walter and Birkoff exchanged a look, then both openly stared at me. Fine. Let them. I didn't need their approval. Sure, there'd been collateral damage, but we'd gotten results on that mission. That's what counted. The only thing that did. Took me long enough to learn the rules, but I finally had. I needed to if I wanted to stay in this game. And I wanted to. Had to. There were no sidelines here.

You were either in. Or out.

Operations pushed another button, and the holographic images dissolved into a blue line, which vanished a split-second later. "But we can't continue operating like this. Only eighty percent of our capability. We need to stabilize the situation before it cripples us. Get our communications back under control. Someone's penetrated Lockheed Martin. Two suspects. Robert Tanner, a level-two technician. Margo Beasley, a secretary who moonlights as a rock 'n roll singer. Thanks to Nikita, we now have a good ID on Beasley. Both seem ordinary, but are suddenly living beyond their means. New Jag, expensive vacations, fat accounts. The usual amateur mistakes. Probably Red Cell approached them, then compromised them. Turned them into techno-terrorists."

Operations glanced around the table, and pinned his stare on each of us, one by one, as if we were all targets on his firing line. "You know the problem. Fix it. I don't want the same thing happening to the new Artemis satellite. Michael, the profile's being downloaded into your panel. Assemble your team."

The unspoken dismissal was clear so we all rose from the table, our chairs scraping softly against the floor. I turned to go.

Then Operations said, "A minute, Nikita."

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Michael's foot hesitate for a fraction before he continued out of the briefing room with the others. "Yes," I said.

Operations examined me carefully as if he were meeting me for the first time. Cautious. Dissecting. More than a little interested. "Madeline and I were reviewing your recent numbers. You've improved considerably. Up to ninety-nine, point nine percent. Excellent. We're pleased with your progress."

I folded my hands in front of me. Tilted my head to show acceptance.

"You've overcome those unfortunate impulses that were keeping you back. Especially on the last mission. The way you handled Maumau's interrogation. A little rougher than the original profile ..."

"We needed to improvise. His resistance wasn't ... productive. No time to waver."

Operations smiled. "Just so. Good results. Congratulations."

I waited for the other shoe to drop, but it seemed there was none. No catch, just more positive feedback. He seemed almost giddy with it, almost drunk. An eagle in his eyrie, high on juniper berries. "Thank you," I said at last. "Is that all?"

Operations nodded shortly, then turned his back towards me and looked once more at his console, which showed a new map of the world carved up like a side of beef into color-coded pieces.

"Veni, vidi, vinci." He pulled a thin cigar out of his pocket. Carefully trimmed one end, tapped the other. Scraped a match against the desk, and puffed very slowly, almost sensually, while he lit his cigar. Then Operations exhaled. Thin blue smoke streamed out of his nose as the corners of his mouth lifted into a smile full of secret unholy pleasure.

I quickly walked out of the room. It didn't seem fast enough. His smoke clung to my hair, my clothes for a long time after I'd left Operations. All the washing in the world wouldn't rinse away the smell.

##

Moon/La Lune (Michael)

It had been a long time, so my pulse raced as if I'd just run up a mountain. My eyes feasted on her. Nikita's black suit made her look even slimmer and longer like a tall licorice stick. So sweet and strong. Not the typical female. Not a flavor that most men wanted. But I did. I needed to taste her again.

She was walking with her no-nonsense strides that just ate up the ground. The end of each step stretched her sheath skirt at the knees and across her hips just under the hem of her tailored jacket. My fingers curled as if I were touching her there. I walked a little faster to catch up with her. She was approaching one of the radio dead-zones in Section.

"Nikita."

"Yes." She didn't stop or even slow down.

Merde. Now we had less than a minute before the monitors could pick us up again. "How about ... coffee?"

"Busy." Her smile was polite, nothing more, as she walked away from me.

That was it. After a month, that was it. I didn't know that I'd been holding my breath until it whooshed out of my chest all at once. I felt empty like an old balloon, my insides flapping around where my heart should be. And the emptiness grew with each second.

##

Denial, they say, is good for the soul. If that was the case, then I had already earned a place in heaven and was working my way into sainthood. Saint Michael. Everyday I was denying myself. My Fraises Haribo was one addiction. A comfort I had found to counteract the sourness of my childhood. But when I felt my discipline slipping, I would hide my candy. Out of sight, out of mind until eventually my temptation would ease, and everything would be under control again.

But what about my other temptation? There was no way of hiding Nikita. In fact, it seemed as if Madeline and Operations were doing everything possible to throw us together. Briefings, a profile, something that needed both our inputs. One damnable test after another. A test I needed to pass not just for me but for Nikita too. We were being watched. We were both in danger. I saw Nikita every day, and the stress of our continual meetings was wearing away my control, bit by bit. I felt like I was rock-climbing on a sheer granite face, holding on to the lip by my fingertips. My muscles strained against gravity that was pulling me down. At any moment, I was going to fall. Nikita, where are you? Even though I saw her, she was lost to me. And I felt lost without her. Absolutely lost. It was later that day when I found her again. Nikita was working in one of the abandoned pods in Section. Maybe old living quarters or an interrogation room. Hard to tell the difference. It was small box room without any amenities. No light, no ventilation, no heating. The air was damp, chilly, stale. It smelled flat. Like nothing. Not even peach soap.

Nikita sat on a folding chair in the middle of the empty room. She was doing something on a credit card-sized computer that fit neatly in her palm. Except for the faint clicking of her computer keyboard, it was quiet. As utterly still as a tomb. I stood at the threshold.

I watched her shoulders hunch up. She knew I was here, but she did not say anything. She did not even look up from her computer. Her stylus continued to click on her keyboard.

"Hello," I said finally, entering the room.

"Hello."

"What are you doing?"

"I'm working. It's quiet here. No distractions." With a little sigh, she turned off the split screens but not before I caught a glimpse of the Apollo profile, another one on B.F. Skinner.

"No," I said. "This is the deepest level. Below Containment. Nothing gets through here ... They say this used to be a bomb shelter. Even before Section was built here."

"That's ... interesting." Her flat tone totally contradicted her words. Nikita sounded anything but interested. "I like it here. I can hear myself think. I can be alone. Absolutely alone."

Alone? Was she hinting? Yes, we were alone, so deep underground that there were no monitors. The signals could not penetrate through all this rock and metal. "Nikita."

"Yeah?" She stood up, pocketed her computer. "I already reviewed the profile. Whaddya want? Do you need to go over something else?"

"Maybe I do." I stepped slowly towards her. The closer I got, the more her eyes widened. Her nostrils flared, her chin tilted upwards. That defiant look, those sweet lush lips. I watched them pinken. "You seem to have forgotten something."

"Nope. I got it memorized. Completely." She was already turning away from me. Picking up her jacket that was slung over the back of the folding chair. Her back towards me, face averted. I was being dismissed.

"I do not ... think so. I think you have forgotten the most important part of all." I reached out and gripped her arms. The moment my fingers closed over her, she gasped softly. I turned her. I meant to talk with her, to make her stop and see reason. But I felt the little goosebumps prickling her arms as her hip bumped against me. Her suppleness under my hands. Jésus. I was slipping. My fingers dug deeper. As soon as I felt her warmth, her silky skin, the softness of her hair brushing against my face, I forget all the warnings. I slipped farther. And then, I couldn't stop myself any more. I pulled her to me. Heard her jacket hiss to the ground. She stood there, immobile, not trying to pick it up, not trying to evade me any longer.

Her name rumbled from somewhere inside me. Soleil. Come back to me. Please.

Her lips seemed to form a "No" but no sound came out except for a sigh that caressed my mouth before her lips met mine. Mon Dieu. It had been so long. The feel of her, the scent, the flavor that was only Nikita. I couldn't wait. I was greedy. She opened for me, her moan vibrating into my mouth, and my tongue swept inside. So hungry. Hot. Seek and taste. Seek and destroy. Destroy all the barriers. Every last one. I gathered her softness to me. See, my love. Here. Feel it there? Nikita. Please. Feel it again. Don't you remember? One touch and I remembered everything. The magic. The want. The terrible drive for completion. I needed her. We needed each other. My hunger grew.

I kissed her deeper, devouring her as if I were going to eat her whole, as if I could keep her always inside me. I slipped down, my hands stroking, recalling, worshipping. I tasted the sweet flesh of her neck, where her pulse doubled, trebled, bounding under my mouth.

"Michael," she said.

My hands ran up her back, started to pull her even closer, but I felt her stiffen all of a sudden instead of melting like she once did. Her body curved away from me. Her shoulders hunched up even higher. Something was wrong, very wrong.

"Stop!" Her voice was low, sounded half-choking.

Stop? I didn't want to stop. My body almost refused, but I forced my fingers to unlock, open, let go. I made myself step back. When I did, she stumbled sideways. I reached out to steady her, but Nikita twisted away from my touch. She backed away from me. One foot, two, three. Then Nikita stopped, her chest heaving, her eyes wild with confusion, anger, and something like fear. It was the fear that killed me. How could she be afraid of me? How could she think I would ever do anything to harm her? Her mouth was trembling. All of a sudden, it puckered, clenching until it blanched. Her cheeks bulged for a moment, then eventually relaxed. Afterwards, she gave me a long, low look as though she wanted to wipe her mouth with the back of her hand. As if I repulsed her.

Shuddering, she straightened up. She looked coldly at me. "There. Finally. Did that help? Did you get that out of your system?"

What? Shock would have been too mild a word. And death right now would have been a release. What would be the point of living after this?

"Listen, pal, and listen up good. You've been watching me. I know you have. Inside of Section. Outside of Section too. This has to stop. Stop it now, Michael, before you kill both of us. Don't you get it? It's over. It's all over. I'll work with you ... if I have to. I can do my job if you do yours. But keep your goddam hands off me. Do you hear me? Who do you think you are? Coming back and doing that to me? Like nothing's happened ... You make me ... make me ..." Her mouth twisted tight again as if she were trying to keep something in, something down. Then she abruptly turned and grabbed her coat from the ground. Nikita rushed across the room, knocking over the chair on the way. At the door, she paused.

My heart lifted.

###

Sun/Le Soleil (Nikita)

I stopped at the threshold. Everything was turning dim, the room narrowing into a long, long tunnel with Michael at the end of it. He was saying something. I couldn't hear him over the noisy pain inside my head. It was squeezing my brains out, making my chest heave. My throat was closing up. I had to force a breath through, then another. I had to say it. Now before the hurt took me under. I made myself lift an arm. I jabbed a finger at him.

"Stay away from me!" I tried to snarl but it sounded damn pathetic to me. Something like a mewl. Shit. I could never do anything right. All my years on the street, in Section; all that stupid training they'd made me do, and I still sounded like a half-drowned kitten. It only made me feel worse than ever. Turning, I ran out the room and into the hall. My leg still ached from when I'd bumped into that stupid chair. But that ache was nothing compared to the pounding inside my head right now.

Click-click. The metal grillwork rang under my feet as I sped down the hall. The corridor was a blur that blended into the next. I don't remember how I exactly found my way out of the catacombs and back into Central Section, but somehow I did. Even though my eyes blurred and that terrible clicking filled my head, I could tell I had returned to Communications. Someone said, "Hey, Nikita."

I think I said hello back. I wasn't sure. I couldn't really see anything. All I could see were Michael's hands. Those wide palms with the long fingers. Touching me all over. In the dark. Where I should have been safe.

I could still feel his hands on me. I shivered inside, remembering his touch. Maybe once I'd felt something. Something more than pleasure, beyond what words can describe. But then I remembered other things too. Terrible things. Things that came to me in my nightmares, in my waking dreams. I could still feel it as if he were doing it right now. His fingers turning stiff, jabbing me once, twice under the ribs to my liver. Beating me. My face, belly. Hearing the crack, feeling my bones bust. My lips swelling with blood instead of kisses.

"Enough?" he had said. I remembered that. That one quiet word before the punishment started all over again. Until I had passed out and couldn't remember anything else except someone lifting me over their shoulder and carrying me back home.

Jeez. Why was I doing this? I promised myself that I wouldn't but my promises didn't mean shit. Like mother, like daughter. Like mother, like daughter. The phrase turned into a chant inside my pounding head, repeating with every step I took. I hated Bobby, hated everything she did, everything she allowed. She'd loved the men who had beaten her. Who had beaten me. She'd let them do it over and over. I didn't understand it then. And I sure as hell didn't understand it now. I'd tried so hard to be different from my mom, but in the end I was just like her. I was weak. Why else would I still want to kiss Michael's hand when he'd done those things to me? Some part of me still wanted him despite everything. God. That was sick. And it sickened me. Pitiful. Stupid. It made me feel ashamed. The sickness grew.

I walked a little faster down the hall. The clicking grew louder so that it sounded like one of Walter's bombs about to go ka-Boom. T-minus ten, nine, eight ... Any moment and my head was going to explode. My guts twisted. I made it, just made it to a bathroom in time. Flung open the door, rushed into the stall. Didn't know if anyone else was there. Didn't give a damn. Just bulldozed my way, practically blind with panic; leaning over, half-falling, head spinning, grabbing for anything solid. Then I puked my guts out like Bobby did after one of her weeklong benders. Kept retching even though there was nothing left inside of me. As if my body was trying to turn itself inside out. It seemed like a long horrible time before the spasms finally stopped. I slipped to the ground, my head banging against something. I lay there for awhile. Afterwards, my belly quivered every now and then.

I felt weak and drained, my head resting against the porcelain bowl. It stank. It smelled of sickness, of me, but I couldn't move. I couldn't see a thing. I was inside some dark hall but the walls were collapsing on top of me. The pain pushed on my head from all sides.

In the middle of all this, someone's hands slipped under my shoulders, half-lifted me, and dragged me out of the stall. My face was wiped with a cold wet paper towel while a voice said soothing things I couldn't really hear yet. When I could see again, it took a little while longer for those bright white lights to finally stop popping like flashbulbs. Gradually they formed into a bright halo around something fuzzy and blue-violet. Something like a psychedelic stuffed animal. Jeez. I was still hallucinating. No, wait a goddamn moment. The colors took shape. It was hair, wild hair, and a worried moon-face went with it.

It belonged to Li-Huan. "Wow, girlfriend. You okay?" She helped me sit up.

"Of course," I said, still flopping against her. Like puking was second-nature to me. Sure, sure. I did it all the time.

"Yeah right. Puh-leez tell me you didn't eat in the canteen. Ohmigod, I hope not. I hope I didn't eat what you ate." When I didn't say anything, she glanced down at my stomach, then looked a little puzzled as if she were counting.

"Forget it," I said weakly. "That's not possible. I can't get pregnant. None of us can."

"Oh, then what's going on? You can't be one of those bulimia queens. Binge and barf. Got too much sense for that. Is it ... booze? You better lay off until your liver recovers. Next time you want to drown your sorrows, come over to my place. You can play Space Rangers with me instead."

"What?" I was sitting up on my own now, but my head still swam. Space Rangers? I couldn't have heard her right. "What are you talking about?"

"You know. That web game I invented before I got recruited. It's a rrriotgirl thing. I started it for my friends when the boys shut us out of their stupid cyber-games. Now they're all begging us to play. Even the pill-Hillinger. As if. He's such a little turd."

"You let Birkoff play."

"Oh, him. He's an honorary girl. Almost as good. And Rabbit. I let him play too. He goes by the name Lulu. But they're the only guys we let in. I guess you call them my tokens." Li-Huan giggled as she helped me stand up. My legs felt wobbly as I walked over to the sink like a drunk on stilts. I turned on the faucet, then scooped some cold water into my mouth to rinse out the bitter taste.

Li-Huan handed me another paper towel. "Don't say 'no'. C'mon. Are you kidding? With your reflexes, you'll make alpha level in no time. We'd make a great team. The Rrriotgirl and ... "

"Robo-Nik, the Cyber-Queen. Empress of Droids. From a galaxy far, far away," I muttered, dabbing my lips. I stared into the bathroom mirror. Jeez. Raccoon shadows ringed around my eyes. Pale pasty skin like raw dough. Even shit looked better than this. All the concealer in the world wasn't going to help this girl.

"Yeah, cool. The Rrriotgirl and Robo-Nik. I like it. We could shoot Birkoff down, right out of the galaxy. Let's do it, Nikita. Good for ya. You've been working too hard. Everyone says so. Just aim, shoot. KaPOW. All your troubles zapped away."

If only it were that simple.

##