Entropy is a fact of life. Chaos is the only constant. It's the way of the world, and of the Section.

Take an organism out of its habitat, and you run the risk of destroying it. One of my adopted "children", the only kind that I will ever have, is having difficulty adapting to this existence. What was once healthy and strong and vibrantly alive is now only a shadow of its previous self. The original stock was good and I had high hopes that it would thrive in this environment, but a few years down here have turned it into a pale, wasted caricature of its former glory. Perhaps I was wrong to even make the attempt, but bending living creatures to my will seems to have become second nature as of late.

The dead leaves crumble to dust between my fingers as I gather them up. I estimate that the plant's remaining lifespan will be a few months at best. I've done all I can. Its survival, or lack thereof, is now out of my hands.

A flicker of movement draws my attention to the monitor at my desk. It's currently displaying live footage from a camera covering the corridor that leads to my office. A solitary figure, dressed all in black, makes her way down the passage with quick, determined steps. I took the time to calculate the odds of her coming to me in this fashion and found them to be rather high, so this visit comes as no surprise. I key the control that opens my door before she can announce her presence. There's no time like the present to gain a psychological advantage.

She glides in smoothly with no discernable break in stride and stops before my desk. "You took something from me. I want it back."

Her eyes seize mine and hold their grip with all the force of a raptor's talons tightening around prey. It's imperative that I don't flinch under the onslaught. I succeed in suppressing any outward reaction, but it quickly becomes obvious that she intends to make this a battle of wills. So be it. I meet her gaze directly; blue-gray eyes battle dark brown ones for supremacy. The end result, after a minute or so, is a draw. Good. She's learning. But it's time to break her concentration.

"You would have preferred cancellation?"

"Yes." She hears the tiny tremor of uncertainty in her voice as clearly as I do and bites her lip in frustration.

"Very well. If that's your preference, it can certainly be arranged." I reach across my desk toward the intercom control. Only rarely am I forced to actually fulfill such a threat. What matters most is the ability to adequately convince others that I am indeed capable of its execution. "I'll have him brought to the White Room immediately."

The sharp, flat crack of her palm striking the desktop a hairsbreadth from my own echoes through the room. She takes a single, deep breath. "That isn't what I meant, and you know it. I can't live like this. You have two choices: change me back, or cancel me."

She makes her demand sound almost reasonable. Was I ever that young, that naive? I suppose that I must have been at one time, but responsibility has a way of aging one far more rapidly than the mere passage of years. For all her recent progress, she is still a willful, stubborn, disobedient child, and must be treated as such until she is capable of making reasoned, informed decisions on her own.

Still, it would be dangerous to underestimate her. She may be inexperienced, but she has deep reserves of hidden strength. It required a great deal of courage to march into my office and demand the return of something that she must know I can never allow her.

"The process was experimental. I wasn't entirely sure that it would work to begin with, and I have even less faith in my ability to reverse it."

"Try," she grinds out between clenched teeth. "I'll do whatever is necessary. I want...I need...to be myself again."

The aversion therapy that I forced her to endure was crude in many respects, but it appears to have worked. She was placed under the influence of certain drugs and subjected to extreme pain while simultaneously exposed to her lover's image, his voice, and his scent. Rationally, she knows that he wasn't responsible for her torment, but her body can't forget so easily. Close proximity to him no longer produces the chemical changes that once occurred naturally when she was in his presence.

"You could be damaged. The attempt wouldn't be in your best interests, or in ours. We need your focus. We require your, shall we say, undivided attention."

"Then you'll have it. I'll maintain a distance from him."

She carefully kept the tone of her voice low and even in an effort to reassure me, but her growing desperation is obvious. I'm not so old that I've forgotten what it's like to be young and in love. Minutes spent apart stretch into hours, hours into days. The sensations of exhilaration and euphoria can become all-consuming to the exclusion of everything else, including our work. Love is a drug, and an extremely potent one. She's suffering from withdrawal now, and she will do anything, say anything, to be allowed another fix.

"I don't believe you."

Her eyes flash angrily and her lips press together into a thin line.

"There's more at stake here than you could ever imagine. Like it or not, you two represent the future of the Section. As individuals, you are both extremely talented operatives. Superlative, in fact, despite your recent breach of protocol." She drops her eyes, seemingly made uncomfortable by the mention of their indiscretion. "As a team, you are even more formidable. We're just trying to make sure that you live long enough to fulfill your potential."

"Fuck my potential." She straightens up and backs away from the desk. "If you don't have sufficient nerve to cancel me, I'll take care of it myself." Her manner is haughty now. She believes that she's gained the upper hand.

"Frankly, I don't see that happening."

"And how do you intend to stop me?" Her tone is sharp and condescending. "You've effectively eliminated your only lever."

I open a file on my desk, take a photograph from it, and turn it toward her. A brown-haired little boy looks back at her with a shy grin. "Such a beautiful child. The only one he'll ever have, of course. The boy has his mother's eyes, but I think he's going to have his father's chin, don't you?"

She's predictably furious. "You wouldn't."

No, I wouldn't. And I loathe having to resort to this particular tactic, but I was an expert at bluffing before she was even born.

Signs of an internal struggle distort her features only briefly before her shoulders sag slightly with defeat. She makes her way back toward the door, but just before she reaches it, she turns back to me and I see a lingering spark of defiance in her eyes. "This isn't over."

"No, my dear, it's not. In fact, it's just beginning. You're getting a new start here. Make the most of it."

After the door closes behind her, I leave my desk to stand before the world map that takes up an entire wall of my office. My fingertips caress its smooth glass surface. The green areas denote places where we're winning, places where, for the most part, terrorism hasn't been able to gain a foothold. The yellow areas are the regions that we can partially control, and the red ones are countries currently outside our sphere of influence. Only about a third of the world glows green. It's nowhere near enough, but it's the best we can do for now.

The words of Yeats were never more appropriate, and I recite them from memory as I idly slide my hand over the representation of the so-called "civilized" world. "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world." The crimson warmth of the Middle East pulses gently against my fingertips. "The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned. The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity."

Why is it that this century's madmen seem to hold others so tightly in thrall? Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, all were responsible for untold millions of deaths. The rest of the world waited and watched and did nothing to stop the carnage until it was far too late. Never again. Our days of inaction are over.

"Surely some revelation is at hand?"

I was aware of his presence as soon as he stepped into the room, of course, but his voice still startles me out of my reverie. "No. No revelations. Only relief, and perhaps a small measure of regret."

The man who shares not only my dream of peace between the nations, but also, on occasion, my bed, crosses to me and places an arm lightly around my waist. "Regret?" The corner of his mouth lifts up in a sardonic little half-smile. "I hadn't realized that the word was in your vocabulary."

I resist the impulse to rest my head on his shoulder and take the comfort from him that I've only just denied to another. "I regret the means I was forced to use to ensure their separation. The solution was inelegant, at best, but you'll be pleased to know that the modification appears to have been effective."

"That comes as no surprise. You know I have the utmost confidence in your abilities." I accept the compliment in silence and he continues, "How long can we expect the change to last? Will it be permanent?"

"It's too soon to say for certain. The negative associations will likely be diluted over time, but the romantic aspect of their relationship will never be the same again. They'll be a very efficient team."

He touches a control on my console, and the image of the entire populated world turns a bright, steady green. "A brave new world...but not in our lifetimes."

"No, nor in theirs. There's only a slight chance that their successors will live to see it."

"Has the timetable been set yet?"

"I'll see to it that they're ready when the time comes. I'm curious to see how they'll perform when given more freedom, more power." Two new Sections are currently under construction. A few years from now, they will be complete, and, if all goes well, our proteges will command one of them.

"They'll remember this, of course."

"And they will hate us for it. In time, they'll come to understand that it was truly the only choice left to us, but logic is small comfort when one wakes up cold and alone in the middle of the night."

His brow furrows slightly. "Will they retaliate?"

I calculated all the possible results of this operation long before I implemented it. The potential for disaster always exists, of course, but it was outweighed by the likelihood of tremendous success. "Perhaps. But not for some time, I think. In order to defeat us, they will have to become us. And that, after all, is our goal, isn't it?"

After a brief hesitation, he nods his agreement. "The two of them will bear close watching."

I will observe them, of course. And I will be forced to see the agony in their eyes when they look at each other and the fury in them when they look at me. They are no longer bound together by love, but a shared hatred of a common enemy can also be a powerful unifying force.

There are days when I simply don't feel capable of continuing our work, but if we fail to wage war against anarchy, then we are doomed, not only as a nation, but as a species. "I wish it hadn't come to this, George."

"As do I." He takes my hands in his and squeezes them lightly. "But mark my words, Adrian. One day, assuming that they survive long enough, Madeline and Paul will eventually realize that we were right."

End ***************************

Author's note: The poetry passage recited by Adrian is taken from "The Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats.

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