ONE

"You know, I'm kinda glad that he never really got to know you."

Walter's ploy had been crude and obvious.

"He would have been ashamed."

Shame. Whip of the older generations. Jason had internally scoffed, hiding his disdain behind his charming smile, the smile that moved in isolation from the rest of his face, the smile that tumbled many a young woman into his bed. It'd felt stiff on his lips after a few moments under Walter's scathing look, however, and he had turned and sauntered away before he could lose it.

Shame. It was the second weapon of choice for the elderly, guilt being the first. Jason thought he was well immured of both, impervious to the wimple and whine of the have-nots begging him for something they were just too stupid to get themselves. He had clawed his way without sympathy to the top of a dog-eat-dog world, good training for life in Section and Center; it had well served him these past months in his new career.

So, why did he care what Walter thought or said? The answer was as brutally obvious as the older man's methods of persuasion: his brother, Birkoff.

Much as he pretended he didn't care, he did care. He cared with the intensity that all adopted children obsessed about biological family. And it made him angry because he didn't used to care. He'd faced up to the demons of abandonment and growing up without a traditional family, cut them down with determination to succeed at everything, and emerged from college a competitive self-starter. He did it all without a biological family, he didn't need a biological family, and he did not care … until a year ago, when Birkoff had emerged from the shadows of his house, a warped mirror image smiling at him.

Oh, he had cared then, a slam of interest that had hit him like a truck, a truck that looked like a poor cousin of his (those clothes, those glasses; who dressed him?), a poor identical cousin of his. The shock had faded to a quick numbness; he'd distanced the childish enthusiasm in his own breast by gently mocking his brother's. He'd known no other way to deal with the revelation.

And then Birkoff died, and Section faked Jason's death.

No more need of feigning detachment, no need of anything, except survive in a new environment. Survive and thrive…and he did. Brilliantly, as always.

And now, a grizzled old man laid shame and guilt on him with devastating simplicity.

Jason might have shrugged it off, but his balance had been continually rocked after he'd left Walter and his moral outrage in Munitions. His slick armor couldn't hold up to the thought of a little boy, dead and discovered by his father. He had blanched at the possibility, sick in his stomach when Quinn told him until Michael and Nikita had confirmed that the dead body was not little Adam, but Alain, a momentary leader of The Collective.

Jason had listened to the entire exchange, oddly touched when he'd heard Nikita ask, "What do you have to negotiate with?" and Michael answer, "Whatever they want." Michael had been willing to do anything, even sacrifice his life to the Collective, to save his son (and a memory of Walter had said, 'Your brother gave his life to save everybody else's here. Anybody ever tell you that?'), and in the lull of activity as the team returned home, he'd found himself punching up damaging information on Myra.

It seemed a small thing. Myra, Kelly; both were ruthless and dirty on one level or another. Did it matter so much to him if one gained the position of Operations over the other? When Spec Ops escorted Myra away, Jason didn't give Walter the confirmation he was looking for, the confirmation that he was just like his brother, Birkoff. That, Jason would never be ready to do. He was his own man. And it was such an easy favor.

Soon after, Michael had left Section, expecting to give his life for that of his son's. Instead, Mr. Jones had taken the steps across a bridge to his end, sacrificing himself because …

Because …

Jason wasn't sure.

Now, Michael was gone. Where, no one knew, but it was known that Adam had gone with him. Nikita was Operations, a stoic Valkyrie standing tall in the Perch. Chosen over Myra and Kelly by Mr. Jones, her authority was unquestionable, and resented. The tremors of Paul Wolfe's death, of Mr. Jones' death, of Michael's disappearance all rocked through Section, keeping Jason busy in Comm as acting liaison with Center.

Busy was good. Busy kept Walter at bay. Jason could pull the smile and let anything roll off his back, but he found it harder to do with Walter -- Walter, with recognition for a dead man in his faded denim eyes every time he looked at Jason.

It had been easier at Center. No twin ghost there.

"Hey, Jase, just the man I'm looking for," said Walter. He sprang into Comm with more energy than a man his age should have, a panel in hand. Jason cast a glance at the old man, covering his annoyance quickly with pretty-boy, affable charm.

"What's up? You want more favors I'm not gonna give you?"

"Right, amigo," he shot back, grin undiminished. "But it's nothing that'll get you in trouble this time, just a quick analysis on this circuit." He held the panel out.

Jason looked at the screen but made no move to touch it. "This isn't my forte. Take it to R and D, get someone to do a once-over down there."

Walter's smile faded. He drew the device back, turned it around and looked at the diagram. "Really."

"Really. That's for a bomb trigger, right?"

"Yeah."

Jason shrugged. "Can't help you."

"Can't, or won't?"

"Can't." Jason frowned. "Told you, not my forte. Shouldn't you be in the Weapons Lab with this? Why are you askin' me, anyhow?"

Walter looked him in the eye as one side of his mouth curled up lazily. "Habit, I guess."

The frown dug deeper into Jason's forehead. "Well, break it, then. I don't do hardware applications like that."

"Well, Birkoff, he …."

"My brother is dead, Walter. He's not gonna help you with your circuit, and he's not gonna help me get all this stuff done, either." Jason gestured to his workstation, the scattered storage media, and the several windows open on his computer.

"You know, I've never once heard you use his name." Walter leaned back and tucked his arms in a knot, resting his weight on one hip. "Why is that?"

Jason looked up at the ceiling and tapped his temple. "Gee, Walter, I dunno. To tick you off, maybe?" He leaned forward, all business once more. "I'm busy. Take your hobby down to the lab where it belongs."

Walter aimed another infuriatingly knowing smile at him, and stepped away.

_._._._._._._._._._

"Jason, come up here, would you?" asked Nikita's clear voice through the intercom speaker at his desk.

"Why, of course," he replied, lingering after the end of the word course so she might hear the implied darlin' that he resisted adding. "I'll be right there."

He found her sitting on a stool at the back of that great, glass box, tapping a keyboard occasionally with one finger, reading text as it scrolled by.

"You wanted to … see me?"

Nikita shifted her glance from the monitor to his smiling face for a moment, the hint of a smile reflecting back at him.

"I wanted to tell you something, Jason."

"And what would that be?" He moved closer, stepping that extra two inches closer than the normal boundaries of personal space allowed. A clean scent with notes of sandalwood hit his nose, a reward for his cheek.

Nikita looked at the monitor again. "I've pulled strings to keep you here in Section."

"Oh, really. I must say, I'm touched, Nikita. I really am." He edged another half-inch forward and leaned against the rail, gaining his upper body another full inch closer. "And what might be your reasons for doing that little favor for me?"

"I have your cooperation, then?"

"Completely, darlin'. Utter devotion to whatever it is that's motivated you to keep me close by."

Nikita looked at him. That same smile played on her lips, slight but genuine, and he could see her eyes leisurely take in his hair, his face, down his body and back up to his face again. She shook her head, three slow movements, side to side. "Actually, I'm doing it so you won't be a one-trick pony."

Jason's smile froze for a heartbeat, but he recovered quickly. He had no idea what she was talking about, but at least she was talking.

"One trick pony? And what trick would that be? Maybe my devastating effect on women?"

Nikita's smile threatened to break into a grin, but she reined it back to that amused lilt of lips. "In your time at Center, you did one thing, very well, it's true, but basically, it was only one skill set in Communications."

Jason straightened his spine a fraction, unsettled. He'd never before been so subtly criticized. His voice thickened, and fell back on his native accent. "Ah can do a lot of things. Very well, Ah might add."

"You could do more, and here in Section is the best place to learn."

"Are you sure it isn't just to make sure I'm around?" Jason swallowed his momentary lapse, and leaned hard on glib flirtation. "Maybe just a little?"

Nikita opened a drive drawer and took out a disc. "Here." She handed it to Jason.

"What's this?"

"Your rotation schedule. I want you to learn everything you can in the next few months."

"And then?"

"And then, we'll see." Nikita turned back to her monitor. "If you have any questions, ask me."

She ignored him, then: a dismissal. He pocketed the disc and straightened, walking quickly to the exit, not bothering to swagger since he knew she wasn't watching. He glanced at the looming windows, and resumed his usual springy stride. Nikita might not be watching, but everyone else in the entire area could see him. Much as he enjoyed his extroverted tendencies, the thought of working up here, always on display, soured the pit of his stomach.

_._._._._

Jason wasn't unhappy about his placement. As the weeks piled up under her administration, the politics in Section became refreshingly straightforward. Jason found it a nice change from Center. He still worried that rag of implied criticism that Nikita had tossed his way, but as he rotated through several divisions at One, he found he also liked his boundaries challenged. He began learning things: new skills sets and engaging sciences that educated him about advanced image manipulation, guidance missile technology, tracking systems, remote thermal tagging. Today, his on-going instruction drew him to the bowels of BioTech with a real-life lesson on slow-acting poisons.

He entered the outer office, a PDA full of the relevant data in hand. An older man pinned him with an authoritative stare.

"Hi, I'm Jason Crawford," said Jason. "I …"

"I know who you are," the man said brusquely. "You need to speak to Janklow."

"Jenkl—"

"Janklow. In there." He jerked his thumb to the door behind him.

"Why, thank you." Jason breezed past him and through the door.

People in white lab coats ambled purposefully around a large lab environment. No one seemed to take notice of him, so Jason walked to the only office desk and stood in front of it, waiting for the man sitting there to look up from the papers on his blotter. When he didn't move, Jason cleared his throat.

The dark-haired man glanced up, the lenses of his glasses magnifying annoyance in his eyes. "I'm busy. Try talking to Anita, over there …" He looked down, then snapped back again: a perfect double-take.

"I was told you're the one I need to see."

The man gaped at him for several embarrassing moments. Jason could see his eyes crawl over his face and hair, feeling a sense of dιjΰ vu. Slow realization pulled the man's features out of their stunned expression. "Oh, it's you. The twin. I'd heard about you." He shook his head, as if trying to clear it. "Damn, that's weird."

"I'm Jason Crawford." Jason stuck out his hand challengingly.

"Of course you are. Who else could you possibly be? I'm Janklow." He reached out and gingerly clasped the offered hand. After two quick pumps, he let go. "Damned weird. Almost like having the kid Birkoff around again."

Jason put on Pained Smile Number Two, one of three special expressions he'd developed recently from the cumbersome burden of being his brother's twin. Pained Smile Number One was for double-takes and that ridiculous 'er, um' sound that issued involuntarily from people; he used Number Two every time someone pointed out his resemblance to his brother, and Pained Smile Number Three was for when they mentioned the fact that Birkoff was his brother and added, "It was so tragic; that poor kid". Although attrition in Section was high, Birkoff had been such an institution, affecting so many departments, that it happened often enough for Jason to develop the specific smiles in response.

"So, Jenkle, about this analysis --"

"It's Janklow."

"Of course it is. This analysis came in from the Beijing mission." Jason set the panel on top of the papers Janklow had been reading. "The team leader needs specific work-up and antidote in twelve hours."

"Okay. Leave it here; I'll get a team on it right away."

"I'm to observe."

"Hah? What the hell for?"

Jason shrugged disarmingly. "Nikita said so herself." He leaned forward and tapped the panel. "There's the authorization."

Janklow's gaze swept over him again, resentment plain on his face. Jason felt an urge to stamp his feet and show his teeth like a horse for sale. Or maybe he should just slip into his 'Birkoff mode', like he'd had to at Madeline's command before she shipped him off to Center. He could haunt the entire Section with a living representation of Birkoff's ghost and satisfy the morbid curiosity that swiveled heads behind him wherever he went lately.

Building resentment tasted bitterly metallic.

_._._._._

Classification of the poison eluded them for hours. The novelty of having a doppelganger at his elbow seemed to have waned; after the first hour, Janklow's eyes stopped skittering off Jason's face when he looked at him. Janklow took off his glasses and massaged the bridge of his nose after another prolonged search through the microscope.

"It's not acting like a poison, not really." He opened his eyes. He looked older, tired, lines cutting fans from where his lids met. He looked at Jason myopically. "It's really strange how it seems to affect only one system first, then … Shit, you look just like Birkoff."

"No, I'm a better dresser," Jason snapped.

"Sorry." He returned his glasses to their perch on his nose. "I hadn't seen him in ages, you know, before he, uh--um--."

Jason hung out Pained Smile Number One automatically.

Janklow shook it off. Then, oddly, he began to laugh softly. "We were stuck, just like this once, me and Birkoff. Well, not just like this. Red Cell had managed to breach the entire operation with an engineered strain of bacteria. It had a nasty curve on the death rate, and even nastier progression of systemic attack. This was in the Paris facility, you know; that couldn't happen here."

"Really."

"I sure as hell hope not. I don't ever want to be in a situation like that again, ever."

"You seemed to have survived it."

"Yeah, well, I almost didn't. The Alpha team nabbed the bug's maker, and he mixed up a special antibiotic cocktail to kill the thing, but it was a damned uncomfortable day in Comm."

"Comm?"

"Containment stuck me down there. Those barriers slammed shut and there was nothing we could do about it. Me and him, some Comm people, and that one guy who died, right there … I forget his name. And Gail." He threw a smirk up at Jason. "Gail, she was fun. For a while."

"Preaching to the choir, here. I've had a Gail or two myself."

Janklow frowned. "God, not here, I hope?"

"Ah, no. Not yet."

"No, that's right. She was shipped off to Two years ago. Frankly, that'd have been too weird, really." Janklow stared at him as if he were gaping at a sideshow exhibit, an oily mix of disgust and pity on his face.

"What?"

"Gail. She was Birkoff's girlfriend, until she was my girlfriend." He frowned again. "Kinda fickle, but good in the sack. Those hours were surreal. People falling down and dying in the hallways, and there was Gail, playing me against Birkoff, stuck together in the same small compartment for hours." He shook his head. "I gotta admit it, Birkoff had cojones when he needed 'em. Did you know he faced down Operations? And lived to tell about it?"

Jason's throat wouldn't work; a strange paralysis struck him instantly dumb. No, I don't know anything about him spun around his brain, a phrase and a curse and a cry that shouted and echoed in the cavernous void in his skull. No knowledge, no expertise, no memories. Nothing existed in his brain but that one shameful thought. Without substance, another joined it, in Walter's voice: Anyone ever tell you that? Some strangled sound escaped him; it must have sounded like a generic 'uh-huh', because Janklow kept talking.

"Oh, yeah, Operations flipped out, wanted to get out of containment, and he was ordering Birkoff to open the doors, threatening him, and Birkoff just said in this calm voice, 'No, sir, I can't do that', over and over." He turned to the microscope once more. "Then Operations just shot the damned door out, the crazy son-of-a-bitch. The real kicker is he didn't cancel Birkoff the minute the containment doors went back up. Crazy." He leaned over the eyepiece once more.

Jason worked hard to swallow with his dry mouth. "Uh, yeah. Operations was wound a few turns too tight, wasn't he."

"Hoo, you know it. Crazy son-of-a-bitch. Crazy," he repeated. Janklow fell silent for a few minutes, and then abruptly sat up. "Hey, this isn't a poison. This is a poison with an agenda! I think it's a bacteria, disguised to look like poison."

"Really."

Janklow beckoned the other team members around. Excitement grew around that one microscope, and twenty-syllable words started flying. Jason sank through the throng until he stood at the periphery of the group. They could have been speaking Chinese for all he could understand them, but the flurry of voices faded to white noise, overpowered by that marching chant in Jason's head:

I don't know anything about him.

_._._._._._._._._._

"Hey."

Absorbed in his work, the soft voice skipped off Jason's awareness like a flat stone off water.

"Hey, Jason."

He looked up when he felt a tug on his sleeve; it was Quinn, reaching over from her station behind his.

"What?"

She nodded her head towards Munitions. "That big fellow over there, talking to Walter. He was pointing at you. Do you know him?"

Jason looked across the way. 'Big' was just a warm-up for this man's description. He towered over Walter, the dark skin of his exposed arms rippling with thick muscles, making the old man look like a pale gecko in the shadow of a wall.

"No." He looked at Quinn. "Do you?"

She shook her head slowly. "No, but I think you're about to find out."

He turned to look. The dark giant strode across the floor in a straight line towards him. Jason tried to match up the face with those in his memory; the size of the man alone should have trigged recognition, but he couldn't remember ever meeting him.

"I reckon I will find out," Jason said softly. He glanced back at Quinn and saw only her chair, lazily rotating, empty.

"Excuse me," said the man. He stopped just shy of the dais that defined Comm's perimeter: a newly built mountain looming over Jason. "I just wanted to have a few words with you, if I could." The man's velvety baritone rang with French undertones.

"Sure. I'm Jason Crawford." He didn't stand or offer his hand. "You're …?"

"Philippe."

"What can I do for you?" Jason had to crane his neck.

"I wanted to see the face of a man I admire. He is dead, but this strange miracle has brought you here." The man sniffed deeply, his chest swelling with a massive sigh that he released gustily. "Ah, it's good to see him in his brother."

Jason wondered if he needed a new category of smile.

"I mean no disrespect, Jason. You see, young Birkoff saved my life, four years ago. And only months ago, he saved it one last time, saved me and everyone here in Section."

"I - I'd heard about that," Jason whispered hoarsely. The sudden dry band around his throat scared him. He coughed lightly into his fist.

"I made myself available, four years ago, but the opportunity to repay him never presented itself," said Philippe. "I left One for Section Three, transferred just after he died, and I worried; how could I remove this debt of honor? It seemed I would never have the chance until I learned of you. Now, I know what I can do."

Philippe regarded him warmly, beaming down from a height like the sun.

"I don't think I'm following you, Philippe."

"I can never directly repay Birkoff for what he has done for me, the friendship he gave me, but now that you're here, I can repay him through you. If you require assistance, you ask for Philippe. Any thing, any time." He leaned down and patted Jason's shoulder. "Philippe. Remember that."

"Thanks."

Jason watched, bemused, as the giant strolled away.

"Is he gone yet?" asked Quinn. She crept back quietly as she'd abandoned him.

"He's gone all right."

"What did he want?"

Jason paused. He glanced across the way to Munitions; Walter gazed back, then turned and dissolved into the dark recesses of his department.

"He just wanted a freak show."

"Freak show?" She slid into her chair.

"Yeah. Come see the amazing living, breathing ghost!" He laughed bitterly. "I should charge admission, darlin'. I'd make a killin'."

"You know, I'd never met your brother, not in the flesh, but I did know him, just a little."

Jason rotated his chair to face her. He felt the clutch of naked curiosity grab him by the nape and shake him, hard. "How?"

"I was at Five; we coordinated on those missions that intersected. I wanted his job."

"You got it, honey. Not bad."

"That was years ago. Before Mr. Jones. By the time I'd gotten his job, my priorities had changed." Quinn looked down at her hands clasped in her lap. "I wish I could tell you about him, but I didn't know him well. He was good at what he did, and he did just about everything around here."

"That's all?"

Quinn nodded. "Oh, one thing. He seemed to like messy sandwiches. I'd caught him more than once with one at his elbow. Ugly, greasy, American-looking things."

A smile hit him, unexpectedly; the kind of smile that made his ears pull back and his eyes crinkle up.

It felt good.

_._._._._

An explosion rocked the speakers in Comm. Quinn caught Jason's eye, her brows caught up with helplessness. "We lost them," she said.

Jason took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. The mild pain of eyestrain had bloomed hours ago into a verdant jungle of throbbing ache. He'd never suffered headaches before Madeline had altered his eyes.

"Jason, what happened?" The internal speaker threw out Nikita's concerned voice.

"They got the team."

"Casualties?"

Jason glanced to his monitor at the thermal hot-spot that radiated where the van should have been. He saw nothing warmer than rocks and vegetation around the inferno.

"Hundred percent." He ground his knuckles into the hot hollows of his eye. "We lost this one."

"We can't lose this one, Jason," Nikita said, her voice steely. "That's a nuclear warhead heading into a hostile country. Do something."

"Do what? Nobody's alive!"

Quinn shifted in her chair, about to speak, but was forestalled by Nikita's voice.

"Contact the substation in Singapore. Have a flash mission flank the enemy on their way to the border."

Jason looked at Quinn. She nodded, mutely.

"Do it now, Jason. Seconds count."

He opened a secure connection to the substation, visual and audio. As he waited for the protocols to line up, he turned to Quinn.

"You knew."

"Yes. You did, too."

Jason stared at her mutely; his features stilled so he knew she would see nothing in his face, not regret or fear.

"We're open, One. Gillian here."

Jason swiveled his chair to face the screen. A woman looked out at him soberly, her face softened by his myopic vision. He fumbled his glasses to his face. For a heartbeat, he saw her clearly and caught a gestalt impression of soft brown hair, pink rose cheeks, a scatter of freckles on her nose, bright eyes.

She gasped, and blanched, the color visibly draining from her face so that the freckles stood out sharp on her sallow skin.

"We need a flash mission, priority one," said Jason.

"I – I – I –" She stuttered, blinked, and swallowed visibly. "Yes, of course. Flash mission. Priority one."

She remained in view, her head bent to her task, her voice softly calling orders through the headset she wore. Jason prepared the relevant mission files, encrypting them in preparation for rapid transmission to the substation. He spared a glance to the monitor and caught the woman darting a haunted expression to her end of the channel. Jason felt a vague embarrassment, as if he'd seen something naked in her face.

"Ready on this end," she said.

"Sending now."

"Received." The minutes stretched impossibly long. Gillian looked everywhere but into her monitor. Jason heard a soft bleat, and she said, "Mission deployed. ETA is twenty-three minutes."

Jason relayed the information to Nikita. "Keep a live interface with the Singapore station," she ordered.

He looked at the monitor. Gillian stared down at something out of his view. Her face remained paper-white, the freckles looked as if they floated just above the skin.

"Y'know, I hate this waiting game. Boring as hell," said Jason, his voice casual and coaxing.

Gillian raised her eyes in fits and starts, then snapped to his face and stayed there. The arrangement of cameras and monitors had long ago been configured to best convey the effect of direct eye contact during communications. The transmission was real-time, smooth, crisp. He could see her eyes shift minutely, lingering on his mouth, his hair.

Dιjΰ vu.

They all did that. Searching for the differences, the similarities. Gillian seemed to have a particularly vested interest. Jason had known instinctively, within heartbeats of seeing her first reaction. He knew women.

She had cared about his brother, was probably his lover when he'd died.

He felt his face brawl with the affable mask he wore, struggling to express a sudden inner turmoil he could not identify. There was no smile he could plaster on, no evasions of the slug of bitterness building in his guts.

Gillian cleared her throat, and said softly, "I'd heard a rumor so hideous, I didn't think it could be true." Her voice flowed with a genteel British accent. She leaned forward, filling the screen with her face and shoulders and folded arms. "You know who I am, don't you?"

"Yes, I believe I have an idea," he replied, as softly as she spoke.

"It was the glasses," she said tightly. A glimmer of light betrayed the fulsome swell of tears welling in her eyes. "The hair, it's different. Your face … it's, it's … you don't smile like he did. But, you, you …" Her breath came faster, caught on jagged grief in her throat. "You fumbled for your glasses, just like he did, when he was tired." Gillian bowed her head. Long, straight hair slid forward over her shoulder. She tucked it behind her ear with an impatient gesture, mussing her bangs at the same time.

"I …" Jason blinked rapidly, at a loss for what to say, what to do.

"I might have been able to … deal, but …"

She paused.

"The glasses," she whispered.

All glib words had gone. No word, not one had remained. He was empty.

"It was the glasses."

_._._._._

Jason sat on the edge of his bed, leaning his elbows on his knees and contemplating his shoes. Italian leather, expensive; for some reason, the designer's name escaped him. He cared about clothes, and dressing well, and it bothered him that he couldn't think of the name.

The mission had concluded with a surprise success. Gillian had said nothing further to Jason, and he had said nothing back. He'd felt sick with sorrow and pity for her; it choked him. When he'd stood up and retreated from his chair, Quinn had silently slipped into it, pity and sorrow for him tying up her eyebrows and shadowing her eyes.

Jason pushed the mission and Gillian from his mind, and returned to the puzzle of his designer shoes. Santoni. That was it. He toed them off and fell back on the bed. His glasses nodded up off the bridge of his nose and banged him on the forehead; he took them off and laid them on the mattress at arm's length.

The world blurred. Nothing too extreme. He could still see the checkerboard pattern in the ceiling although the texture of each panel had smoothed to nothing. His eyes swiveled, traversing the room; he could see the rectangle of door (but not the knob), a stack of entertainment equipment (but they melted into one solid rectangle of black plastic), a picture on the wall that he knew was of a sailboat on the ocean (but could only make out a light blotch which was the sail, and a dark blotch that was the water). He turned his head and looked at the clock next to the bed. He could see the glowing red numbers. If he squinted, just a little bit, he could read them: 12:43 A.M. Nope, not so bad. Not really.

"Fuck you, Madeline!"

The epithet spewed forth with hatred and spit, emerging from the bottom of his diaphragm without conscious volition. Jason was shocked that he'd yelled, and then shocked at the burning anger in his breast. He turned on his side and hammered the bed with a fist, again and again, making his glasses jump and skitter to the edge and fall off. He heard the soft thump when they hit the carpet. He stopped abusing his mattress, curled his legs up, and covered his head with his bent arm as if he could somehow stop or hide the sudden pounding tears.

"I don't -- I don't want to be my brother," he gasped, and tensed, holding his breath until the ache of his clenched muscles killed the urge to sob.

_._._._._._._._._._

A week later, Nikita called Jason to her glass box.

She leaned against the railing, her back to the glass panes. Jason felt exposed, as if all of Section One stared at him along with Nikita.

"Jason. I was worried about you."

He shoved his hands deep in his pockets and bore her examination of him. This time, he guessed she wasn't looking for traces of his brother in him, but for the obvious signs of stress, neglect, incompetence. He'd seen his reflection in the bathroom mirror this morning. Hair, with a mind of its own. Stubble. Dark circles. Wrinkled clothes.

"I, uh, I think I'm comin' down with somethin'. A cold, maybe."

"Oh, it's not a cold, Jason." Nikita drew in a noisy breath. "I've had the Psych department observe you."

His spine stiffened. This was bad.

"I'm just, just in a slump. That's all."

"Do you know what today is?"

His eyes darted one way and then the other, thinking hard, but finding no answer. Glib had abandoned him days ago. He stuck with simplicity. "No."

"This is the anniversary of your brother's death." Nikita's hands found and worried each other. She spoke soberly. "Rather than allow everyone in Section die, he sacrificed himself. It was a painful death, but quick. He's resting in a grave under your name."

Jason's mouth fell open, a soft 'oh', nothing more.

"Your performance in the past few weeks has slipped. Your numbers are down, you make obvious mistakes. I've had to assign Quinn to check everything you do."

"I'm sorry. I, I…"

Nikita smiled sadly. "I told you, I was worried about you. Was. Now, I think with the right help, you're going to be all right."

He blinked. He knew confusion was plastered all over his face, there for the world to see.

"I thought you'd never mourn for Birkoff."

That strange, bitter pressure in his gut moved, made him nauseated, gagged him.

Nikita pushed off from the railing and approached him, her hand out. She gripped his upper arm with firm pressure. "It's time you got to know him."

_._._._._

Nikita personally escorted Jason to a small, white room. A simple metal table and chair stood, utilitarian and stark in the middle. A boxy machine and a stack of discs sat on the table, wires trailing off the edge.

"I'll see to it you're not disturbed. Take as long as you'd like. Just close the door when you're done," said Nikita, her voice neutral.

Jason watched her leave the room, walking though the doorway and quietly closing the door behind her, leaving him standing mid-way between the wall and the table, lost.

He could imagine what waited for him. The machine was a simple projector, the discs filled with complex images and audio information. Jason resisted an urge to batter the equipment and miserly pile of plastic circles away and instead forced himself to walk to the chair, pull it out, and sit down. He looked at the discs. None had labels. He spread them out, mixing them up with swipes of his hands, and then counted them. One, two, three …

My brother's life has been summed up in thirteen discs.

One.

Light projected onto the curved, white wall, flickered and slowly resolved. White on white, a vague form of browns and grays loaded and loaded and became a sharp image of Birkoff, bare-faced, sitting in a steel chair, not like the casual, utilitarian seat Jason sat on, but a chair with wires and restraints.

Audio feed invaded the room with quiet clarity: the disembodied voice of Paul Wolfe, Operations, called out hard questions and Birkoff answered, sounding like they stood next to him.

"She said she heard them mention Kiev. I had to delay the mission to check it out."

"And?"

"It was false, not even close." His feet paddled up and down, but he remained calm, pale.

"Do you think she deliberately misled you?"

"Well, she was dazed, in pain. Who knows what she …?"

"Birkoff! Do you think she deliberately misled you?"

His chin came up. "I don't have an opinion that."

A loud buzzer jumped both brothers. Jason watched Birkoff's expression fall, defeated.

"Yes, I think she did."

A woman walked into the frame and began stripping the wires from him.

"You did the right thing, Birkoff," said Operations.

Birkoff's head came up from studying the floor. He stared to a point over Jason's right shoulder, his face stony and his eyes broadcasting both resentment and self-disgust.

"Yes," he said. "Sir."

Two.

Projected, dark light. Comm. Birkoff sat at his station, calmly issuing directions for a mission. He wore rectangular, amber-tinted glasses.

"Go deeper. I'll coordinate with other units."

A flattened voice talked back to him. "A description would be nice."

"Still no update. A male, under twenty is all we know."

"Could it be a child?"

"It's possible."

More Comm babble. Details of the mission, getting the job done; at last, confirmation on the target came through

"Are you sure this is the one? He doesn't look eighteen to me." The speaker crackled.

"That's got to be him. Kill him." Birkoff looked unflinchingly into the upper monitor. His expression never changed. "Do it. Kill him."

Jason shivered, and hit stop quickly.

Five.

Comm, different angle. Jason could see Birkoff clearly; he looked like a teenager. No glasses, faced marred with a spot of acne. Behind his right shoulder, he could just see Michael and Operations. Birkoff spoke to someone out of the camera's range, a low purr Jason identified as Nikita.

"Didn't you just go shopping?"

Nikita's voice, faint. "Couldn't find anything."

"Uh-oh! She's hot for the guy!" Birkoff teased her easily.

"Up yours, Birkoff!"

Birkoff grinned, a mega-watt smile. Jason felt his face respond helplessly, grinning right back at the wall.

"Anytime, babe, my number's in the book!"

Nine.

Comm, the back corner, a different configuration than Jason had ever seen; the old Paris facility again. Birkoff sat, working as always, glasses reflecting light from the monitor. A tall, blonde woman approached him.

"I'd like you to give Walter a message for me."

Birkoff glanced around, then shrugged. "Give it to him yourself when you get back."

The woman looked down at him. "You know I'm not coming back."

Birkoff looked down, bit his lip. The woman demanded his attention with a gesture.

"Tell him he's the best man I've ever known," she said intently. "Tell him I love him...and it's not such a bad thing to die on the happiest day of your life. Will you tell him that for me?"

Birkoff stared at her a moment, mouth open. He swallowed, and softly said, "Sure."

"Thanks." The woman seemed satisfied, and walked away.

Eleven.

Comm. Always Comm, thought Jason. Different clothes, different glasses or hair, but always Comm. This time, the camera angle was low and wide, the picture not quite so clear. He saw people move about, tried to pick out his brother.

Birkoff entered the projection from the right, striding right through the middle of the image, his movements crackling with energy, his brow furrowed, continuing until he disappeared on the left side. Jason's mouth opened, stunned. He'd seen the exact energetic swing and determined expression … in the mirrored doors of the elevator at the job of his old life. Jason remembered how it'd felt, to be energized, nearly jogging to the elevator in anticipation of a tight negotiation, the feral joy of a boardroom battle about to play...

Birkoff's image reappeared, a tape in hand and accosted a young, dark-haired man sitting in Comm.

"Nice try!" snapped Birkoff.

"What?" said the young man, looking confused and innocent. "Are you talking to me?"

"You're the one who tried to kill me." Birkoff loaded the tape as he spoke.

"What are you talking about?" Jason's gut yelled liar!

"What am I talking about?" echoed Birkoff mockingly.

He pushed the tape home with a decisive move and then leaned down, invading the other's personal space. "It's called 'black track'. It shows what you tried to do."

Birkoff stalked away and pointed to an overhead monitor as information began dumping in a long scroll of code lines.

"Right here, you cut the surveillance loop and gave away my position." He pointed to another display. His voice was righteously angry. "You knock out my monitor, then you send me out to get killed!"

The dark-haired man stood up. Birkoff moved forward aggressively and stood nearly nose-to-nose with his adversary. Jason found himself leaning forward in his chair.

"You didn't know we could do that, did you, resident genius!"

Birkoff's fixating stare shifted focus, and Operations' profile invaded the frame.

"He's the one who screwed up in Bucharest." Birkoff's voice was stone. "I covered for him."

Jason felt his lips pull tight in satisfaction.

_._._._._._._._._._

Thirteen discs.

Jason watched them all.

Birkoff, working, talking to friends, working, flirting with girls, working, eating, working, playing with computer equipment, working, working, working …

Most centered around Comm; the clearest images and sounds. One short clip had been a grainy, fisheye view from inside the mission van. The audio pickup garbled most of the soundtrack, but Jason could tell Birkoff had been frightened, voice panicked, crying out for help from Nikita. He'd ducked behind the bench and the pop pop pop! of gunfire crackled through poor audio. Birkoff had stood up and screamed, firing a handgun until it clicked, empty, yet he kept pulling the trigger.

Jason couldn't see who had died. He didn't want to see, didn't need to see. He felt no pity for the corpse; the dead man didn't matter. It was near the end of the last disc; he paused the machine and listened to his own heartbeat for a long while, speeded up in sympathy to the panic spewed forth on the wall. The smell of warm plastic and electronics radiated from the machine. He'd been sitting there for hours.

Without thought, Jason pressed the play button.

The last clip on the thirteenth disc was only seconds long. The camera had been mounted at desk height, aimed right at Birkoff. Jason recognized it had been taken shortly before he'd died from the glasses and hair. Birkoff's face had that intent frown Jason could now identify as intense concentration; he was lost in the hunt. Walter walked up behind Birkoff in the picture.

"You still at it?"

Birkoff didn't react. It seemed that Walter's voice had taken some circuitous route around the room before it had reached Birkoff's ears, for at last he said, "Did you say something?"

"No. It's all right. What ya workin' on?"

"Pull back from the Islamabad Mission."

"Find anything?" Walter asked. He got no answer, and continued in a different vein. "Birkoff, did you ever think about going out for a little walk? You know, stretch your legs a little bit. Get a few rays on that pasty mug of yours."

Birkoff looked up from his keyboard and right at Jason. He pointed to what seemed to be Jason's left ear. "Would you hand me that thermo-enhancer there?"

"Yeah, sure." Walter walked in front of the camera, blacking it out.

The disc ended. Light faded, his window on the past closed and became a mundane wall once more.

Jason stacked the discs carefully. He stood up, put his hands at the small of his back and stretched back, hard, and heard a few pops of protest. He looked around, and the room had not changed: practical furniture, blank white walls, and a door. The knob turned under his hand, the door swung open soundlessly. Jason paused, looked over his shoulder. The room hadn't changed one bit. His head spun and chattered with the kaleidoscope images of a jumbled, difficult past.

He walked through the door and shut it behind him.

_._._._._

Munitions. Walter.

There seemed no better place to go.

"Jase, man, I'm surprised to see you," said Walter.

"Walter, I need …" Jason stopped. Walter looked at him inquiringly. "I need, uh."

Walter smiled at him. "Well, you need a shave, for starters. Did you sleep in those clothes?"

Jason looked down. "Yeah. Yeah, I did." He looked up again. His voice roughened. "Walter, Ah …" He cleared his throat. "I only met my brother once. Once."

Walter's face clenched in sympathy. "I warned him not to go."

"Why?"

"Look around, Jase. You're in here, and you have to ask why? I didn't want that for you, and if he'd thought about it more, he wouldn't have wanted this for you, either, although," Walter paused. "From what I understand, it wouldn't have mattered anyway."

"What wouldn't have mattered?"

"Birkoff was stupid to seek you out; I thought it'd only bring Section down on you, but now, I don't think it would have mattered if he had or hadn't, not once he died."

Jason glanced away, thinking. "Operations needed me to replace him."

"Yeah." Walter picked up random parts from his workbench and set them down again, scowling darkly. Bitterly, he said, "Of all the things Paul Wolfe did as Operations, what he did to you and your brother … I hope he's burning in hell for it now."

Jason flicked a bit of wire with the end of his finger, suddenly unable to speak. The thick, bitter monster in his breast had seemed mollified with the old, home movies Nikita fed it, but now it began to rouse again, twisting with gross movements, squashing his organs. Static flashes from the show burst like flashbulbs in his head; it seemed that watching them all had been loading up the data, and now he felt his brain finally process the data, crunch the numbers.

No. Not his brain. Not his head at all, but his heart. The pictures fuzzed into memory, less clear than projected images but richer.

"I can't tell you what I do," Birkoff had told him. "It's secret."

And Jason had laughed. "What? Or you'll have to kill me?"

"I wouldn't kill you, but someone else would." He had seemed so damned serious.

"C'mon, Seymour!" He had chucked his brother on the chin, standing close enough to smell the rain on his coat and something clean, his soap or shampoo or something. At the time, it had seemed weird to smell his brother, but now, standing in Munitions and surrounded by the sharp stink of chemicals and oil and metal, he'd give anything to smell that warm, clean smell of the only man related to him. Jason wished he could see him again, shake his hand …

The monster flexed, hard, on the next thought.

I never hugged my brother.

Too odd, the circumstances; a meeting in the dark of his house over a year ago, hours ticking away, trying to make up for a missing lifetime together, and at the end, Birkoff had to slip away before he was missed, and just as he took his leave, he'd paused, and stepped close, but the forward movement had been aborted when Jason had leaned back and said, "Go on, get outta here. Don't get all mushy on me. Gimme a call, we'll get together again, real soon."

No hug. Too weird.

Jason could throttle himself for missing the only hug from his brother, was throttling himself with that looming, choking monster in his guts. If I had known it was the only chance I'd ever ever ever get …

He covered his face with his hands, every muscle tensed.

"Jase? Jason? You okay?" Walter's voice moved around him; Jason felt a hand on his back. "Jason? C'mon, you're scaring me, here. People are starting to stare."

No smooth, charming Southern gentleman remained. Just a boy, lost and orphaned and close to tears.

"Oh, jeeze, c'mon!" Walter sounded alarmed.

"Walter."

Nikita. Operations.

Jason dropped his hands.

"You two. Follow me," she ordered.

Curious faces turned like satellite dishes, tracking the threesome's course across the floor. Nikita led them up to her perch. She picked up the remote and darkened the glass with a press of a button, set the device down and faced the two men.

"Walter, I'm taking you off Munitions for a while."

"What?"

"I'm assigning you to a special project," she said, and then paused, and smiled faintly. "I'm assigning you a new recruit. Jason is now your material."

Jason knew Walter gaped as hard as he did at the cool blonde woman.

"Jason is blocked," she explained. "His psychological profile indicates that he'll be in abeyance soon if steps aren't taken, so, over the past weeks, I insured Jason would come in contact with as many reminders of Birkoff that I could, and today, I gave him selected archives from surveillance."

"What are you saying?" asked Walter.

"I'm saying that if Jason doesn't pull himself together and deal with not only being in Section but also his brother's death, he won't make it."

"Nikita! This is Birkoff's brother! How could you even say that?"

Nikita looked at him, her gaze level. Jason noticed she remained cool, her dark suit impeccable. Time was, he could stare down a glacier just like that. Never let 'em know what you're thinking. Right now, he felt as though his very guts hung out for anyone to stomp through, and he hated it, hated himself.

"I can say that because I've got a world to defend, Walter, and I want the people under my command to have the best chance at success. Including Jason." She looked at Jason. Her eyes softened, just around the margins of her determination. Jason lost some respect for her for tipping her hand, even if so slightly, and gained more because she was doing everything she could to balance Section's needs with his.

"But …!" Walter sputtered, speechless.

"Two months. I can give you the two months that Birkoff never got."

Silence. It seemed a ghost stood there, invisible and silent and able to mute the sounds of the world.

Walter drew in a deep breath and blew it out. "We should visit his grave."

"No," said Nikita. "He's buried in Jason's hometown. The chance of exposure is unacceptable."

"But ---"

"Walter, Jason hasn't yet served his two years as a recruit. You know the rules. He's to stay here."

"Rules? First you break them when you want, and now you're quoting the manual?" Walter accused.

Nikita smiled tightly, and flicked a glance at Jason. "I'm Operations. I can do what I want."

"But …!"

"Go, Walter. Teach Jason about Birkoff, and then bury his ghost." Nikita turned to the windows, putting her back to the men, and flicked the button. Section reappeared, bustling. "Do it well. I want Jason to make it, too."

_._._

Walter and Jason returned to Munitions.

"C'mere." Walter gestured.

"Where?"

Walter walked back beyond the gates; Jason followed. "Back here. Have a seat."

"On the floor?"

Walter fetched a small box and then sat, cross-legged on the floor, his back to a rack of stacked ammo, and patted a spot next to him.

"Sit."

He did.

Walter opened the box. A heavy compass and a worn coin lay within. He picked up the compass, and set it back. Then he picked up the coin.

"God." His voice shook. "A coin. If I'd known." He sighed. "It's been insane around here forever; it doesn't take a smart man to know that. We do what we do, and we try to forget … no one can pretend otherwise. Birkoff … he made do with his life in here. He was happy -- well, happy as someone can be in here."

Walter turned the coin over in his fingers. "This coin. I flipped this coin. You were heads, he was tails. You got to go free. He, he got a life here."

Jason reached over and took the coin. "So, tell me about it. Tell me about his life."

The slug in his guts rumbled and sighed. He could put names to it now. Regret. Sorrow. Anger. Frustration.

Grief.

"Will you … would you tell me about yours?" asked Walter. "Tell me about your life, out there?"

Jason felt a funny tang in his heart. Fear, and a strange empathy. Seymour Birkoff was dead, and now, so was Jason Crawford. One had a name on a headstone, the other had the grave under it.

"My life, outside?" Jason suddenly flipped the coin with a sharp ping. It arced up, faintly humming, and dropped down. Jason snatched it out of the air and slapped in on the back of his other hand.

Tails.

"Maybe later. Right now, I want to hear about my brother's life. Birkoff's life."

_._._._._._._._._._

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