IX. Transition

On a bright blue Friday toward the middle of November, Nikita arrived at the penultimate mark of her mission. It was time to face down Kelly, and soon it would be timeo face down Helen. She had accepted the fact that she might lose them both emotionally, but that was a worst-case scenario. Both would feel that trust had been betrayed because it had been, but it had to be done, and she hoped that they would both realize that eventually.

The intervening months had demanded much of her, but they had not been unusually stressful and her health had remained excellent throughout as she gradually became more knowledgeable about and more relaxed at her job. At thirty-nine weeks she was still wearing the same loose tops and jackets that she had worn in the fall, and if her slacks and skirts had paneled fronts, no one could see them when she was fully dressed. Her body was more oval than pear-shaped, due in no small part to the strength of her abdominal muscles, developed over years of continuous exercise. From the front she looked rectangular, but her height nicely complemented her increased girth: she looked big rather than pregnant, and although she was now unable to bend at the waist, she had experienced few balance problems. On the morning her contractions began, she weighed barely fifteen pounds more than she had nine months before, and according to Kelly, between seven and nine of those pounds were Luc's.

"You're 3 centimeters dilated, but you've been that for a week." Kelly seemed pleased and confident as Nikita dressed after being examined. "Go back to work, but come see me in a couple of hours, okay?"

"How long do I have?"

"Hard to tell at this point. Could be twelve, fourteen more hours, or it could be more. Or less. Depends on how strong your contractions get and how far apart they are. Average labor for a primip is fourteen hours, but there's a lot of variation. Not planning on going anywhere, are you?" It was a rhetorical question, asked with teasing affection.

"I'm going to London this afternoon. My flight leaves in an hour and a half."

"Very funny."

"It's not supposed to be funny," Nikita assured her calmly. "I've had the reservation since October. If I wasn't in labor yet, I was going to get Helen to induce this weekend. The Group thinks I'm not due for another month, so they'll think I went into premature labor. I've told them that the adoptive parents live in London, so it all works out."

There was a silence, and then Kelly asked in a dangerously quiet voice, "Are you out of your mind?"

"So what did you think I was going to do? Have Luc in Section and just give him up?"

"That's what you told me you were going to do, Nikita. We've even talked about what kind of post-partum counseling you'd need." Kelly's voice was now trembling a little. "You were lying to me the whole time."

"It wasn't all a lie. I won't have him with me when I come back. He'll be with Michael." The black abyss tried to open, but she resolutely averted the eyes of her mind, and when she looked back, the pit had closed once more.

"And you couldn't trust me enough to tell me what you had in mind?"

"The less you knew, Kelly, the safer you were."

"I can't believe your aunt would go along with this."

"I didn't tell her either. She doesn't expect to see me again until Christmas."

"What if she'd refused to induce you?"

"I'd have convinced her. But that's moot now, isn't it?" Nikita frowned at another cramp-like contraction, but blessedly, she was as yet in no pain. "This isn't all that bad, you know? It doesn't even hurt."

"You fool." Kelly voice had begun to rise. "You could have this baby on the plane!"

"I won't have him on the plane. I'll have him at the Helen Collingwood Clinic."

"You can't control that! Who the hell do you think you are? God?"

"No, I'm Nikita, and I am not going to give my son away."

"If we'd had this conversation before today, I'd have--"

"You'd have found some way to stop me. This way you don't have time to figure it out." Having fully dressed herself before the conversation began, she slid off the examining table. "I have to catch a plane."

"What about the Group?"

"They know I'm going. It's been a month, so they don't suspect anything. Aren't you gonna wish me luck?" She heard her own voice falter.

"Just like that? You play me like a fish on a line and then--" Nikita turned away. "Good luck." It was only a whisper.

Looking back, she saw tears in her friend's eyes. Oh, Kelly, do I ever know the feeling. "Thanks." Without another word, she left the office, and ten minutes later she was passing through Van Access, the door clanging shut behind her.

Advance to final mark....

All the way to the airport, she timed contractions and the minutes between them. By the time the plane gathered itself and took off roaring into the early winter dusk, the contractions were lasting thirty seconds and the time between was averaging less than six minutes. Still she was in no pain, but the woman sitting beside her glanced her way as one of the contractions hit, and she realized she must have winced. Smiling, she made small talk until the woman booted up her laptop.

Keep seat belts fastened, the pilot reminded them. She eased the buckle and kept her seat belt fastened as the daylight faded below and thinned around them where they flew above the clouds for almost an hour. Smooth flight. No peanuts, thank you. Light dying outside the window. As the plane touched down and its engines roared into reverse, she timed a contraction at 45 seconds; it had only been four minutes since the last one. It's okay, she told herself. Active phase, first stage. Could take up to six hours.

Somehow, she didn't think it would.

Friday evening, airport mobbed. Uniformed chauffeur holding a sign with her name on it. Black taxi waiting. Plush interior. Soft seat. Bright lights outside. Sign on a bridge over the highway: "Welcome to Britain." Sixty seconds, and only three minutes since the last one. If her water broke now, she would mess up this lovely cab. Nothing broke, but as the cab finally, finally turned into Helen's street, she had a hard, ninety-second contraction only a minute after the last one and something changed. In the light of a street lamp, she tipped the driver who tipped his hat, and then began a long, slow walk up to the doorway when all she really wanted to do was squat and push. But she was there. She was there.

When she opened the door, Chauncey came to greet her, licking her hand. Voices from the office paused, and then Helen was coming toward her with Michael close behind.

"You lied to me!"

Nikita stood leaning against the examining table with Michael holding her arm and an infuriated Helen facing them both. It took a moment to realize that her aunt was not speaking to her, but to Michael.

In spite of herself, Nikita grinned. "Why did he tell you he was here?"

"He said he wanted to talk to me about you." To Michael: "You knew she was coming. You knew what she was up to, but you told me--"

"Helen, this man...." Nikita grimaced as pain spread from her back to her belly. "...Filters in the truth and then censors it back out again. The trick is to...oh, Godddd...listen to what he says first, while he's still filtering in. Right, Michael?" She set her teeth to keep from groaning. "Say yes, Michael."

Michael said nothing, and Helen said, "Get up on the table this instant."

"Don't want to lie down. Want to squat and push."

"Young woman, you came here and put yourself in my hands against my will. Now do as I say!"

"I'd have to sit first. Can't sit. Luc is getting in the way."

Still without speaking, Michael slipped one arm around her back, the other under her knees, and lifted her onto the table. Helen removed her shoes, socks, slacks and underpants with unbelievable swiftness, took one look, and muttered, "Dear God in heaven." But she didn't sound worried. She sounded awed. Then she went to wash her hands, barking instructions at Michael over her shoulder. Sterile gloves in a drawer. Gowns and drapes in a cupboard. Michael lifted Nikita's hips and something clean and smooth was laid underneath them. Feet in the stirrups.

"I hate these things," she shouted. "It's like wrist clamps in the White Room! I need to stand up! Pleeeeze!" It turned into a scream.

Helen wheeled a stool into place. Snap, snap went her gloves. "Put those on," she told Michael. But Michael, properly gowned, did not put gloves on.

"Kita, close your eyes." When she obeyed, he leaned across her, grasped her ankles, lifted her feet out of the stirrups and stretched her legs out full length, her feet on either side of Helen's head. "You're free now. You're standing. Are you standing?"

"Yes," she gasped.

Now grasping both her feet at the instep, he moved back away from Helen toward the head of the table, pulling against Nikita's feet until her knees were bent wide apart. "Can she push now?" he demanded without raising his voice.

"If you let go," Helen said tightly, "she could kick me silly."

"Can she push now?"

"Next contraction, she'd jolly well better," said the Queen of Spades. "It's got complete coronation."

"He's got--!" Nikita shouted, and pushed against Michael's hands with all her might as he braced himself and strained. She had the sensation that Helen was peeling back a thin rubber sheath from an object too large to expel, and then it was over. She heard Helen's triumphant, "No tearing, by God!" And then Luc Michael Samuelle burst out howling, supremely annoyed at being ejected into life on a star unstable.

"I want to see him," said his mother as soon as she had breath to speak.

And Helen said, "Michael, put on the damn gloves or I'll show him to her."

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

X. Black Hole Rising

"Lullay my dere sonne, my sweeting. Lullay my dere herte, myn own dere derling."

- from a 15th century English folk lullaby

In the days that followed, she could not get enough of looking at him.

Both Helen and Michael insisted that he looked like her, but she could not understand why they thought that. Helen showed her a photograph of one of Evelyn's grandsons as a newborn, but again she was not impressed with the likeness. Why did people always want babies to look like somebody else? she wondered, rapt with his uniqueness. To her, he didn't look like anybody but himself. Or...like the freshest of peaches, faintly fuzzy on top but with eyes like sky.

She held him as much as she could, marveling at how he seemed to just fit into her arms. When she wasn't holding him, Michael was, and he seemed to fit there too. "You two hold him too much," Helen informed them with mild, mostly rhetorical disapproval. For that bit of intel, she received one indulgent, affectionate smile and one blank stare.

He suckled hard on both bottle and breast, slept a lot during the day and hardly at all at night, and smiled a great deal, especially when he heard his mother's voice.

"You need to think about weaning him," Helen told her one Sunday afternoon while Luc slept upstairs on his sleeping father's chest. "I can give you something to help you dry up, but only after you stop nursing."

"I'm not going to stop until I have to."

Helen knitted in her chair, and Nikita sat on the window seat, staring out at a day gray and white with falling snow. There was a bustle in the street. The outdated box that Helen called her "telly" was already informing them constantly that Christmas was coming, even though that event was still weeks away. Bits of red and green blinked through the snowflakes from the lapels of passers-by. They meant nothing to her. It was as though the house in which the four of them were living these last days together were suspended in time and space.

"The chaps in the Group you describe," Helen said bluntly, "will not take kindly to leakage."

"I know. Let me think about it."

"My dear, you must begin to prepare yourself for what's to come. It will take all the strength you have just to get you through it, even if you're prepared."

Quietly: "My dear, leave it alone."

"Aren't you the least bit curious about what Michael said he wanted to talk with me about while you were on your way here?"

"I think you're probably going to tell me whether I am or not."

"He said he was concerned that you don't seem to be preparing yourself to give Luc up."

"'Preparing yourself' is your phrase, Helen. What did he actually say?"

"As I remember it, he said that when the time comes, it will be a great deal more difficult than even you can imagine. Something of that sort. One had the impression that he knows someone who's been through it." With lingering bitterness: "Of course it was all a sham to justify his coming here alone."

"No." Lightly: "He always tells the truth going in. It's just that he might yank it out from under you later. Not lately, though."

Helen stopped knitting and stared. "Nikita, you are in denial. Sooner or later that will catch up with you, and it could destroy you."

"Did Michael say that?"

"Actually, no. He'd been glancing about the way he does. When I said you were in denial, he looked directly at me and said, 'Not Nikita.'" Smiling a little, Nikita nodded. "At that point I sensed that he understood more than he was telling me, but just then you ...arrived on the scene. I hadn't thought more about it specifically until now."

"You were right. He always knows."

"What does he always know?"

"Me." Turning from the window, she dropped her feet to the floor, bowed her head, and ran her fingers through her hair, now as long as it had ever been. "Helen, I have one more week with the two people I love most--something I may never have again. I will not spend the best days of my life 'preparing' for the worst thing that's ever happened to me. Call that being in denial if you want to."

"What do you call it?"

"I don't know. Soaking up the sun?" In a whisper: "Soaking up my son?"

"How I wish I could do something to help you."

"Two weeks ago I maneuvered you into delivering my baby, and in return you've given me the home I've never had. So how do you define 'help'?"

Luc slept on his stomach in a blue knit suit with feet, his butt in the air, cheek to his father's burp-cloth-covered shirt, mouth open. Michael's hand rested lightly on his back; his eyes were closed, but when Nikita entered the room, they opened and sought hers. Not wanting to wake Luc, who had eaten well two hours before, she lay down next to them on the free arm Michael had stretched out toward her, and he pulled her close enough to allow her to whisper in his ear.

"When will Adam get here?"

"Sometime this evening."

"Are you sure he won't get scared? He doesn't know Jenny and Basil, does he?"

"He knows they're my friends, and that they're bringing him to see his brother."

"So he was really happy when you first told him?" She knew the answer, but she liked hearing it again.

"Yes." A pause. "My sons are the happiest people I know."

"Then he's really okay?"

"He still has nightmares."

"Don't we all." It was a simple statement of fact. When will I hurt? she wondered. When would the black hole open and refuse to close?

He turned his head and pressed his lips to her forehead. "How do you feel today?" Something in his voice....

"Really skinny. It's still an illusion, but I love it. Shall we put him to bed and, um, explore interim solutions?"

"For me?"

She sighed. "Mostly, I guess. But--"

"Kita, you should sleep."

"You sure?"

"He had you up half the night."

"And you the other half, love. Family night every night." Just saying the words made her yawn. "So...time for a family nap?"

"Why not?"

Adam was entranced.

At first Michael was insistent that when the four of them were together, Nikita should be as physically close to Luc as he and Adam were. It was only after she explained how much it meant to her to watch the other three together that he reluctantly agreed to sometimes let her sit at some distance from them as he and his sons enjoyed one another. She watched as Adam's awe turned to nose-wrinkling disgust as he learned how his brother smelled after Luc gave a particular grunt that both his parents had learned to interpret. But the disgust was short-lived, and soon Adam was happily "helping" while Luc's parents fed and changed him. When the baby cried, his brother frowned and wiggled uncomfortably; when he smiled, especially at Adam, the little boy's dark eyes glowed. "I think he likes me," he confided to Nikita one day, thrilled with discovery. "I think he loves you," she answered, and let Adam hold Luc's bottle while they fed him together.

One evening Michael spread a blanket on the sitting room floor and lay down with a wakeful Luc prone on his chest and a delighted Adam carrying on a largely one-sided conversation with both of them. There was a stamp of enforced maturity on him now, and once or twice Nikita thought she saw shadows in his eyes. But he was talking much more than he had when she last saw him, and this particular evening he was full of non-stop chatter. Trying to deal with her own encroaching shadows, Nikita lay on the couch, her head elevated on two pillows so that she could see all three of the others. Only half following what Adam was saying, she heard the phrase "...come to see us?", followed by a quiet, barely-audible answer from Michael. From where she lay, Nikita could see Adam's face light up as his dancing eyes went from his father's face to hers.

"Daddy and me can keep him?" he asked incredulously. Feeling her world begin to shatter, she tried to smile back.

"If you want to," she managed to say.

"Cool!" He got up, padded across to her in his stocking feet, laid his head on her chest, and hugged her. "Thank you!"

"Adam--"

"I'm all right, love." She hugged the child back, trying to force the words out: You're welcome. It was what he was expecting to hear, she knew. You're welcome. So simple. Just say it. You're welcome, Adam. But saying it was beyond her. "I know you'll take good...." But she could not say that either. In fact, she couldn't say anything more.

Then Michael was there, leaning over them, Luc in his arms and tears in his eyes. "Adam, Luc needs to have a bottle, and you need to get ready for bed. Come with me." Nikita closed her eyes again; she felt Adam sit up and move away from her and her baby laid ever so gently in her arms.

"Thank you," she whispered, and felt a beloved hand brush a stray lock of hair back from her forehead. As they left her, she could hear Adam talking excitedly all the way up the stairs.

Luc was not hungry; he had had a bottle less than an hour before. But she held his cheek against her breast until he slept, her fingers lightly tracing his features, stroking his other cheek, and feeling the softness of the fuzz that now covered the top of his head.

The following day, another infant came into the house in secret, and his eager adoptive parents came into it through the front door, in full view of whomever might be watching.

Helen had selected the parents, and Michael had selected the child--born a week ago to two M15 operatives, neither of whom wanted to keep him. When, a few days before, he brought a copy of the baby's impeccable medical history for her approval, Helen had asked quietly, "Do I have your word that these records are genuine?"

"You have my word."

"And you won't...yank that out from under me at some future date?" Having said everything he had to say, Michael now said nothing. "Very well." Frowning but resigned: "Let the games begin."

The games began and ended on a frigid evening sliced with sleet. It was also the night before Michael would take his sons home.

He and Nikita were not present at the exchange, but watched the happy couple carry their new son to the car--as they were no doubt also being watched from some nearby window or doorway. Luc was asleep, safe in his bassinet near the bed, which had been pushed against the wall to make room. But as the car drove away, Nikita came to the brink. "I'm losing it." she whispered. "I'm gonna lose it now, Michael. When I can't see him or touch him, it'll be like he's dead." It was all she could do to keep from screaming the last word.

"I know," he whispered, lifted her onto the bed and lay down beside her. They were used to the mattress by now, curling up together in its sagging middle. Once she started, she could not stop crying--as though to make up for all the tears she hadn't shed yet. The pit yawned and would not close, and the only thing that kept her from falling into it was that Michael had been where she was now and survived.

Luc chose that night to be a model baby, sleeping peacefully for a little over six hours. Once they realized they needn't check every ten minutes to be sure he was still breathing, his parents began to rediscover one another at their leisure.

"Is this sick or what?" Nikita murmured. Even as she wept, her body still responded to the beloved touch as it always had. Her tears still flowed, and there was an occasional small sob. And yet she was almost smiling.

"What," he affirmed softly, kissing first one breast and then the other. It was another last time--the last time for who knew how long--and yet the only urgency they felt was that of keeping as close together as they could. Pleasure came and went, and still they curled together, touching in every way possible, until eventually they slept.

At five in the morning she fed Luc for the last time while Michael packed and dressed. When he went to wake Adam, she sat cross-legged on the bed, still in her nightgown, rocking back and forth as her son slept against her shoulder. Her tears still flowed as though there were no end to them, but she made no sound, only rocking back and forth on the edge of the pit.

She heard Michael come up the stairs, and she knew that Adam must be having breakfast in the kitchen with Helen, as had been agreed the previous evening. He came to the bedroom door, and something shattered in her soul.

Frantic, she pulled her legs under her and inched backwards on the bed toward the wall, Luc still warm against her shoulder. There were no tears now. Her eyes felt as though they were stretched wide as she crouched with her back to the wall, trying to stay out of Michael's shadow as it moved across the bed toward her. Strands of hair fell over her eyes, but she could not let go of Luc long enough to push them back. As the shadow fell across her, she rasped, "Take him. Just take him!" But how could he take him when she couldn't let go?

Then the shadow disappeared.

She had been looking down, soaking up her son. Now she looked up, still through her hair, and saw Michael kneeling next to the bed, a supplicant at the altar of love, his arms outstretched toward her and Luc.

"Why can't you just take him?" she whispered, and wondered if he could hear her; the whisper didn't seem to want to come out of her throat.

"Because you'd never forgive me, and you'd never forget."

Still tearless, she stretched out her legs, hooking her heels over the edge of the mattress and pulling herself toward him. Part of her mind saw the faded bruises on her bare feet as though they were new--one on the top of each instep, and four on its under side where Michael had gripped and held her rather than leave her feeling trapped and helpless as she bore their child.

Then she was on her knees too, laying her son in his father's arms. The left arm pulled Luc against his chest, and the right gathered her against him until they were cheek to cheek, her arm around his waist, both of them looking down at the baby, who slept on in the whistling void.

"Hold him too much," she whispered, dry-eyed. But when he nodded, she felt a wetness in the stubble on his cheek.

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

XI. If Winter Comes...

Christopher and Kelly stood close together near the front of the group of limo drivers meeting arriving international passengers. Nikita would be looking for a placard with her name on it, but they had canceled her limo, and they didn't need a placard.

"Sweaty palms?" He squeezed her hand. "Sure you don't want me to do it?"

"You can't, hon. If you said it, it would be true, and that won't work." She shivered. Then she saw Nikita coming through the arrival gate, and breathed, "Oh, God," her trained eye telling her instantly that not much could be worse than this.

It was as though she were in a trance, or on some drug that made everything look and sound and feel one step away from reality. She knew the airport was crowded with pre-holiday travelers; she was even jostled accidentally in the jetway by a man eager to greet a woman and two little girls who waited just as eagerly beyond the security barrier. She watched them hug each other, feeling only despair, but that not deeply. There was no depth to her anymore.

"Chris?" Even her voice sounded strange, as though she were hearing it from the wrong end of a kaleidoscope. Kaleidoscope's for seeing, not hearing. "Kelly? I ordered a limo." It didn't make sense. Nothing made sense any more.

"We canceled it," Chris told her quietly. And from Kelly: "We thought you might need a little company right now."

"Okay. I mean--thanks." She looked from one to the other as each took one of her carry-ons in one hand and one of her arms with the other. Her gaze paused on Kelly. "Are we talking?"

"You did what you had to do. It took guts, and it worked out. 'Nough said?"

"Yeah. Thanks." Was it the small end of a megaphone she'd been thinking of? Ear trumpet, maybe. Whatever. "Can we go straight to the apartment? I need to sleep." She'd done almost nothing but sleep and need to sleep for the past forty-eight hours. The only thing that had been worth looking forward to was evening, when she could go back to bed without any argument from Helen.

Why had they come for her in Kelly's car? she wondered as she dragged herself into the cramped rear seat. Chris' car was larger and more comfortable for three people, and he liked driving on the "wrong" side of the road while Kelly didn't. Something scratched at her mind. Something didn't make sense. But she was too sleepy to try to figure out what it was.

Before they'd cleared the airport, Kelly was asking, "How much are you sleeping these days?"

"I don't want to hear it, Kelly."

"Well, boss-lady, you're a captive audience and I'm not on duty. How much are you sleeping? Twelve, fourteen, sixteen hours?"

"Back off, will you?" A spark of pure rage shot through her and then was gone as quickly as it had come.

"Look, Nikita, snap out of it. You're just depressed. I know how you feel, but you're gonna have to pull yourself together before the Group sees you."

"Just depressed." The anger came seething back, and this time it did not recede but instead gathered force by the second. Turning her gaze from the window to the backs of their heads, she listened to her voice growing louder, sounding more and more like her voice. "You know how I feel? You know how I feel? God damn you! How can you possibly know how I feel?"

They drove on down the road, Chris and Kelly saying nothing while Nikita plumbed the depths of her rage, shouting words she had not used since she was homeless on the street. About what Kelly had said to her. About Kelly and Chris and their unbearable togetherness. About the Group, and about her father, and every stifling, smothering thing that held her captive. She was a volcano, with rivulets of lava coursing through every vein, burning away the blackness of the pit. She was incandescent, transcendent with fury, and feeling better than she had in days.

"Where the hell are you going?" She demanded abruptly, looking around and out the window for the first time since they hit the road. "This isn't the way to my apartment." Then realization dawned. "Why are we going to Center?"

"They want to see you first thing in the morning," Chris told her, and even in her rage, she realized that his voice was tight with tension. "They want you to spend the night there so they can meet with you first thing in the morning."

"Bullshit! What is going on?"

The car was now on the down ramp to the underground parking garage beneath the building where Center concealed itself in a hollow corporation on the twelfth floor. And suddenly everything became blindingly clear.

"...Before the Group sees you."

"That meeting isn't tomorrow." She spoke in her normal voice as the lava turned to white diamonds. "That meeting is now."

"You didn't hear that from me," Chris said thickly, "until you were inside the building. Have you got that? We were inside the building before you found out about the meeting. That was the deal I had to make. Otherwise Cornu would have met your flight."

Kelly brought the car to a flying stop that almost went through the parking stall.

Into the silence, Nikita said softly, "You did that to me on purpose."

"So sue me. Great natural stim, adrenaline. You got a hairbrush and some face paint in that case?" Realizing for the first time why they had placed her hand luggage in the back seat with her, Nikita nodded, mute. "Use it, baby. You look like hell, and show time's in less than ten minutes." To Chris: "How long did you say you'll be?"

"Not more than half an hour. They just want to see what kind of shape she's in."

"An hour, then. Have to have time for the cozy post-meeting coffee date, right?"

In the act of opening her cosmetic case, Nikita froze, her gaze meeting Chris's in the rear view mirror. That the two of them always had coffee together after Group meetings had never been kept secret from anyone, least of all from Kelly. And yet...the forced lightness in Kelly's tone suggested that there was a secret to be kept.

For a moment she thought Chris would pick up on it verbally, but then she realized that she should have trusted him to know better; they did not have time for this now. Kelly should have known that. She did know that. But she'd had to say what she'd said anyway.

This needed to be attended to as soon as possible after the meeting was over. Having thought that thought, Nikita put the matter out of her mind and concentrated on lipgloss and eyeliner.

"So you thought we might go rogue together." She sat there calmly facing them all, knowing that she looked well-groomed if rumpled. But rumpled was okay. After all, she hadn't expected to be sand-bagged on arrival. "May I ask why?"

"Your psych profile strongly suggested it," said The Chair a shade wistfully. "So, I might add, did Christopher's. Your loyalty is gratifying. My compliments to you both." He now sounded a little less grudging. "Nikita, the thinking here is that if you did return, your watch should continue in force only when you leave the country."

She nodded, smiling a little. Keep calm. Keep very, very calm.

"I appreciate the confidence you've shown in me." Not a shred of irony managed to slip past her. "I understand about being out of the country, but is there a time frame?"("...See if you could improvise.") "My aunt and I have been talking about getting a time-share in the Greek Islands. It would be nice to be able to go on holiday there knowing that I was trusted not to run away."

"Where in the Greek Islands?"

"Oh, we thought maybe...Rhodes."

"You appear to give quite a bit of thought to how you spend your down time."

"Mine and other people's. You've seen how it's paid off."

"Point taken." Chair's gaze went from Hyena to Perfect to Stare Bear, and stopped there. "Perhaps in the spring?"

In the spring, she thought. In the spring.

"Mr. Chairman," rumbled the Bear in a pleasant, vaguely respectful tone, "I move that Christopher become a voting member of the Group before this matter is addressed."

She could almost see Chair's Gotcha! "Well, Alex, I believe it would be more appropriate to discuss this without non-members present," he said, almost smirking. Poor fool. He didn't even know when he was being reeled back in.

"Of course," the Bear answered smoothly. "My apologies, Mr. Chairman. Motion withdrawn."

It was Sunday, and once the Group members were gone the building was empty except for a man mopping the floor in the lobby. Nikita and Chris waited for Kelly outside the revolving doors, each leaning against the arched entryway but on opposite sides of it, the winter wind whipping their coats around their knees. Briefly they both looked toward the coffee shop, which was in a hotel and therefore open for business on Sunday afternoon. But neither of them moved to cross the street.

"I'll miss us there," Nikita said softly.

He nodded. "Me too."

"I was thinking--I should have the two of you to dinner again soon. Like, this week."

"Are you up for it?"

"I am today. There're blacker ones coming, but I'm up for it today, and nothing ventured, nothing gained. Chris, thank you again and again and again. I don't think I can ever say it enough."

"You shot the Moon, Nikita. I just stood around watching your dust."

"Michael's dust."

"No. It was the synergy. The two of you together."

She whispered, "I don't think I want to think about 'together' just now."

"Are they on Rhodes?"

"Yeah."

"Can't you get to there somehow?"

"I can't go there, and Michael can't come here. Where we live, too many people know us. One wrong move and we'd be compromised."

"Couldn't Michael bring him back to London from time to time?"

"How'd you like to do overt access and egress with an infant who might start crying any minute? Helen had to--." She suppressed a shudder. "He was pretty sedated. It was the only way Michael could get him out, but we will never, ever do that to him again."

"Is he okay?"

"Michael says 'alert and beautiful.'" Her voice broke.

There was a silence, and then Chris said gently, "I hear the Islands are awesome in the spring." She nodded. "Think you and your aunt can get your act together by then?"

"The only 'act' happened in the meeting. I don't even know if they have time-shares on Rhodes. But I'll think of something."

"You mean you improvised that?" She nodded again, and he went on soberly: "Do you have any idea how much better you look now than you did when you dragged yourself off that plane?"

"This can't last."

"Of course not. But it can come back."

"With a little help from my friends?" she asked wryly. "Whoever thought up that one might have saved my life."

"Kelly's the resident shrink, but we brainstormed the mission profile together."

As though on cue, Kelly's little car turned the corner and began to cruise along the opposite curb, its driver scanning the sidewalk in front of the coffee shop. Not seeing anyone she knew, Kelly parked in an empty spot and got out of the car just as Nikita and Chris left the shelter of the archway entrance. Catching sight of them, she folded her arms against the wind and watched them cross the street toward her. Her gaze went from Chris to Nikita and then back to Chris, and when they were close enough she said, "I am so sorry. I swear to God I didn't know that was there."

"Shut up and drive, sweetheart." Chris kissed her cheek, whacked her lightly on the behind, opened both driver's side doors, and then went around to the sidewalk.

As he climbed into the car, Nikita leaned forward in her seat, made a fist, bounced it lightly on Kelly's shoulder and then let it rest there. Without turning, Kelly bounced her fist off Nikita's. Then, as Nikita settled back into her seat, Kelly started the car.

The adrenaline high wore off as she had known it would, and by nine o'clock that night she couldn't make up her mind whether she wanted to cry forever or sleep forever. There was unpacked luggage in the bedroom, unopened mail all over the kitchen counter, a peculiar smell in the refrigerator, and no food to speak of in house. But that was fine, since she wasn't hungry. Everything was gray except the ache in her soul, which was as red as an open sore. At least gray was better than the black hole, she told herself. If she could somehow manage to banish the blackness, then she just might--

Standing at the sink, in the act of making herself a cup of instant coffee, she froze, staring unseeing at the bottom of the cupboard door directly in front of her.

Banish.

Banished.

"If you're reading this, I am dead or banished."

Banished?

Her hand let go of the coffee mug, which dropped into the sink and shattered into half a dozen pieces.

She got out alive.

Adrian got out alive.

"IDIOT!" She raised both fists and slammed them against the cupboard door so hard that they throbbed. Lowering them, she found that she was shaking.

It was right in front of me all this time. It's been right in front of all of us all this time.

Adrian got out alive.

But how?

Banished for doing what?

"George lectured me on how important it is for AlphaGroup to believe that I think like a man."

"You've chosen your battles perfectly so far...."

Wrong thinking?

Or not.

Something political?

Paul wanted in, and Adrian had lost that battle.

But how? Why?

She had no answers. All she knew was that she was going to find them. It wouldn't happen tomorrow, next week, next month, not even next year. And as long as Section was not what it could be, she still had a promise keep. But Adrian had gotten out alive, and she was going to find out how.

Still shaking a little, she went into the living room, turned off all the lights, and retrieved her PDA from her travel tote. Michael had sent on arrival: "All safe. A's brother alert and beautiful." Barely able to keep her eyes open, she had sent "Thank you" and nothing more, knowing that she should have roused herself to say more but unable to do it. Now she sat on the couch in the dark and told herself that she must not--must not--type "I've found a way." and hit Send. She had found nothing but what had been hiding in plain sight for years, even from him, and there could be a dozen reasons why that discovery would ultimately lead right back to nothing.

Or not.

Letting her head fall back against the cushion, she closed her eyes and for the first time allowed herself to remember her last sight of Michael. Shortly after dawn on a chill winter morning. Matted grass in a country field, hard with frost. Chopper squatting, its blades slapping the frigid air. Michael looking back at her, Luc in one arm and the other around Adam, the bitter, chopper-generated wind tugging at his hair and the new sun reflecting in his eyes. ("I face the sunrise/ And do the things my fathers learned to do.") Lips moving. Three words, no sound.

Hugging herself with empty arms, she had answered him. Three words, no sound....

She opened her eyes, brushed away her tears, and typed words that appeared on the faintly illuminated screen.

Four words this time: "I love you both."

Then came another memory: a little boy with dark, dancing eyes. "Daddy and me can keep him? Cool!"

She backspaced across the last word written, typed "all" instead, hit Send, and went off to write a grocery list. She didn't need to wait for an answer, for she knew what it would be.

finis

"If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?" - Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind"