(tag to the episode Gates of Hell)

The gate closed. The elevator began its ascent and the closer he was to arrival, the more the wheels turned.

Stepping inside, he engaged the security system . . . for the first time. Looking around the barren loft did not send him spinning into the darkness as it had previously.

The wheels continued to turn.

The window with the bullet hole would need to be replaced. Tomorrow. Although caffeine from the coffee he’d just shared with Nikita sang through his veins, he somehow believed that sleep would claim his weary mind and body this night.

The screen was blank and his soft quiet steps still echoed through the empty room as he walked over and bent to retrieve the tape reflecting his passage from another life. Methodically, but lovingly he encased the tape in its box sleeve and stored it in the crate table with the birthday present his son would never see.

And the wheels turned.

He prowled the perimeter of the room and the ghost of madness no longer pursued him. Denial was not the road to take. A mountain of regret would not change the past or present.

You have to find a reason to live. Nikita had said to him before the last mission.

And he had. The wheels turned and turned, backward to Simone.

She knew about the Vacek mission. Knew about the expected blood cover. She knew it all going into the Glass Curtain mission. There’d been no time for conversation. But she had suspected something wasn’t right and had requested the additional back up . . . which he had denied.

Had it been intuition? (a feeling he would never discredit or reject again) Had she known that Section . . . no, not Section but Operations . . . had decided she was expendable? Had she suspected she would be viewed as an obstacle to his ability, his capacity to be a convincing suitor, lover then husband to Elena? Never mind the fact he would be expected to father a child. Had she known her removal was preeminent?

He stopped roaming the room and took a stationary position by the window, rubbing his forefinger in an unconscious gesture over the bullet hole in the glass.

The wheels turned.

Removed, but not dead. Retrievement was not an option, and he was certain Operations had known she wasn’t dead. He had most certainly weighed her survival and the possible danger of exposure to Section against Michael’s grief and guilt and chosen to deal with the latter.

Discovering her alive had been unfathomable to him, but even after two years of masochistic torture, she had known returning to Section was out of the question. And she had her own demons to deal with by then.

And in between, Adam had been born. Then Nikita had arrived. Michael had been given something personal and professional to pull him from the edge. The foundation for manipulation was firmly in place.

He had tried to dismiss his growing affection for Nikita. Tried so hard to give her every reason to hate him. He’d used her, lied to her, manipulated her, had played the Section games with her prescribed by his superiors.

Watching her slowly succumb to the drain on her emotional fortitude had only added to his growing mountain of guilt. Nikita had been an innocent thrust into a shameful world. Her downward spiral had almost ended in death. But for his intervention, it would have.

And for six months he had wandered in a fog. A fog so dangerous that he could have easily been lost.

And the wheels turned.

Another stunt like he’d pulled in Liberia and Operations would have let him go. There was a contingency. Another scenario existed in the event he died on a mission, and that was the insertion of a female operative, a relative of his, much like he’d ended up bringing in Nikita. She would have commiserated with Elena over his death and then the life is too short card would have been played. Blood cover in place with Adam, and Elena would have been spurred on to locate her father for the child’s sake.

Madeline had known. She had discovered his duplicity, knew Nikita had survived, even when he hadn’t, and she had provided that information to the Freedom League. The only wild card had been Ackerman. And maybe she’d known about him too. Used the entire play of events for two reasons, as a flush for the mole and to shake him back to reality. It had worked. She’d fed his need for a quest, and gotten Nikita back into the fold as a bonus. Then she had used them both to bring down Jurgen. Madeline was a master strategist.

She knew his bond with Nikita was strong and she alternately used it to benefit Section and to punish him when necessary. Though he was certain neither she or Operations had seen the young operative’s strength and growing maturity as a threat, at least not until the Adrian debacle.

Michael jammed his hands into the pockets of his coat and made his way over to the metal steps. He glanced around the empty loft again.

The wheels continued to turn.

He was dead to Elena and Adam, Simone was gone and though he’d stood at the gates of Hell, being faced with loosing Nikita for a fourth time had lifted the veil of insanity and given him a reason to live.

Sitting down on the steps, he slowly began to formulate a plan. He had an arsenal of mental ammunition, he knew how to play the game . . . and he had Nikita.

The storm began to brew.

The wheels turned.

And Michael was back.

The End

~Key/February 1999