File Purgatorio

Echo Hagerman (echofain@aol.com) and Chris Fain (kevinfawkes@aol.com)

Fandom: Invisible Man

Disclaimer: We do not own the characters from The Invisible Man. They belong to the Sci-Fi Channel and it's affiliates. I am making no profit from this story. It is for entertainment purposes, only. The characters of Agent Ciara Mackenzie, Louisa Courtland Vance, Preacher, Dante Webster, and Harmony Corwin belong to the authors of this story. Any resemblance to any person, alive or dead, on the part of these three is purely a dirty, low-down shame. For the sake of keeping consistency, we've continued to call Arnaud by the name he was known by in the pilot: De Thiel.

Rating: R for sexual innuendo, sexual situations, violence, language, and for the sake of keeping innocents from being possibly corrupted by the works involved here. It is a story with m/m and f/f slash tones. There is also non-consensual sex, psychological and emotional torture, and some really gross stuff...

Summary: This is the sequel to Neon Quicksilver. During a trial test of a new serum that will help stabilize an unknown problem in her DNA, Harmony is kidnapped in order to gain access to information that the Agency holds. It's up to Darien Fawkes and Bobby Hobbes to help her partner get the missing Experiment out before it's too late or before a termination order comes down from the mysterious BDS that Ciara Mackenzie works for.

(Narrated by Darien Fawkes)

In William Henley's poem, Invictus, he finished the personal claim of spiritual strength with these two lines; 'I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul.'

Now, maybe he thought nothing of walking through Hell, but I really like to stay out of the pain and punishment end of things. If it hurts, don't touch. If it's not broken, don't fix it. That sort of thing. You know?

I'm not big into pain, but I believe the part about fate and being the captain of my soul. I guess you could say that when I relinquished command of my body in order to preserve my mind through the counteragent, I started worrying about my soul. Especially with that gland in my head---I mean, I could still hear the whisper of some dark thing in the back of my brain, even when there was no quicksilver madness. I still wanted to plan robberies and sleep past noon. I missed my old life of being in control over myself.

Somewhere, in my life, I remember hearing someone tell me that pain is what taught us to feel and that without it we weren't really alive. Well, call me crazy, but I think there are better ways to feel alive. You can get the same rush from being shot at by some homicidal maniac as you can get from winning the state lottery. One can bring pain and a bullet and the other can bring you a sense of some higher power being on your side.

It's all a matter of perspective, really, and whether you get your kicks being shot at by homicidal maniacs. Working at the Agency was getting easier to deal with and I was developing a deep affection for Bobby Hobbes, but I still wondered at times about not having control over my destiny.

I was sure that having some say in my fate was important, but I still had a lot to learn; and it all came down to a simple knowledge that no matter what happened to me on a day to day basis, I was still in control of my own life----I could choose whether to live or die.

Not all of us are so lucky. Some of us live life hung between heaven and earth, caught on the whims of our bodies, which cannot always be dictated to. This is the story of how I found out what real loss of control was all about and the secrets that never got revealed are probably going to haunt me for a very long time to come.

Chapter 1

He'd been sleeping hard. He had been dreaming, but he couldn't remember what he'd been enjoying so much in that dream. The telephone's unending ringing had brought him slowly to the surface and at the last moment, still fighting consciousness, he'd buried his face harder into the mashed-up pillows.

Darien groaned as he realized he wasn't going to escape it; he was going to have to answer the phone. Reaching a hand out, he fumbled the receiver off the hook. It dropped to the floor, slipping from his sleep-numbed fingers. He cursed silently and worked his way to the side of the bed, squirming, to get it back.

"Hello?" It sounded raw coming from his throat. He swallowed hard and worked some moisture back into his mouth.

He glanced at the alarm clock on the bedside table and frowned. Its neon digital glow said that it was nearly two in the morning. His apartment was dark and it was hours before he had to even think about waking up. If this was another wrong number or a prank call...

"Darien?" Her cool, accented voice brought him completely awake. Darien struggled against the sheets to sit up. If his Keeper was calling at this time of night, then it really had to be something important.

"What's wrong, Claire?" He used her first name, as he was becoming accustomed to it.

"I have lost Agent Mackenzie's number. Do you by any chance have it?"

She was referring to the cell phone that the female agent carried at all times, in order to be tied to the Agency's beck and call. His Keeper's voice sounded oddly emotional, almost out of breath. A warning tag came with that---something was really wrong. Two in the morning and she was wanting Ciara Mackenzie's phone number...

"What's going on?" He swung his long legs out of the bed and stood up. He carried the phone with him to the window and, using his fingertips to part the blinds a crack, he peered through the shades at the darkened street below. All was quiet and the world slept----at least his side of the world did.

Where Agent Mackenzie was, though, it was daytime...nearly twelve hours ahead, in fact.

"Can you come to the lab now?" There was an urgency to her tone that he couldn't recall hearing before. Her voice sounded harsh in his ears. "I mean, right now?"

"Why don't you tell me what this is about?" Darien let the edge of the blinds go and moved around to the side of the bed again. He stretched hard and sat back down, feeling the bed sink under his weight.

"I can't really talk about it now. Please, Darien, just come to the laboratory. Bring the telephone number."

"Okay." He sighed and wondered if this was another strange dream. "You want me to call Hobbes, too?"

There was a long silence on the other end and he rubbed at his face, waiting.

"You should call Agent Hobbes, yes. Hurry, Darien." And then the phone was dead in his hand. He looked at the receiver he held and tried to puzzle it out; without any clues, though, he had no way of beginning to make sense of her request.

Wishing he didn't have to do this, he dialed his partner's number. On the third ring, the call was answered by a sleepy, familiar voice. Hearing that voice made him want to smile despite the fact of his sudden concern.

Realizing whom it was, Hobbes said a few choice words. When he got an edge in, though, Darien took the opportunity to let his partner know what he'd called for.

"She called from the lab? Wanting that we should come down there---at this time of night?"

Bobby Hobbes' interest was piqued and he sounded a little clearer than he had at first. He also sounded very suspicious of the matter.

"Yeh, she called here and just told me she wanted me to come down there and that I should probably call you. She was wanting Ciara Mackenzie's number." He stood up again and began to dress quickly, balancing the phone between his chin and shoulder as he struggled to get his legs into his jeans.

"She couldn't have picked a better time to ask for all this?" His partner sounded like he was also up and moving.

Darien frowned; his Keeper didn't seem the kind to play that type of a game. He couldn't picture her as being needy enough to miss their mutual friend so much as to want to call her---not while the tall, strong-featured female agent was away on assignment on the other side of the world. "No...I think something's really wrong. She sounded funny."

"What do you mean by funny? Ha-ha or uh-oh?" There was the whispery sound of clothing being pulled on. Despite the seriousness of the situation, Darien found a mental image of a sleep-rumpled Hobbes in his mind, getting dressed. It was enough to make him smile.

"A definite Uh-oh." He slipped his feet into his tennis shoes where he'd left them by the bed. "I'll see you there, okay?"

He hung the phone up, grabbed his keys, and locked the door on his way out.

There was definitely something wrong...wasn't Harmony Corwin supposed to be in the labs tonight, for a set of trial tests of the new serum? His Keeper had said nothing about Harmony. If the young woman had been there, there would have been no need to call him for the cell phone number.

Taking a good guess that the witty, dangerous girl was behind it somehow, he hurried to get to the Federal Annex's Lab 1.

Driving through the night, he wondered again, for the millionth time since finding out about the dangerous Agent Mackenzie's past with the government's security departments, what her game really was. She was a patriot and yet, her sense of justice included the idea that murder was okay if it was done for the right cause.

He'd found himself drawn to her strange ability to step in and take over a situation. She was a natural leader, yet she allowed herself to be a foot soldier in the cause of the Agency. Her training and background, only hinted at in the information that Hobbes had come up with on her, seemed to point to her being much more than what met the eyes. How much of it was bullshit?

But more than that, she was a good person, even if she did commit herself to do what she called preservation of justice at any cost. They had much in common and had become friendly in the way teammates often did---not overly so, but enough to know that they could trust each other.

He'd not seen her since she'd left for the other side of the world. Darien didn't even have a real idea of where she was---only that she was somewhere twelve hours away, on assignment. Everything else was classified, she'd told him on the phone. She'd called to ask a favor of him, two weeks ago, and he'd agreed to the simple request.

She'd been gone a month now, having left not too long after coming back to work for the Agency. Darien suspected her assignment was a continuation of what she'd agreed to do in the first place: find and contain the threat of a man who had dedicated himself to creating a base of supply for the terrorists of the world.

Arnaud De Thiel's---de Fehrn's---days were numbered and it wasn't going to be Darien Fawkes that got him. It didn't matter, really, he knew...as long as the man went down for his crimes. Agent Mackenzie had reasons just as big as his for wanting revenge on the biochemist that dealt means of death and terrorism for the highest prices.

In the building, he looked at the security guard as he passed, despite the man's unconscious state. Did the guy ever stay awake on watch?

Heading down to the level where the lab was located, Darien wondered how long it would be before his partner would get here. He'd gunned the car, pushing it hard, to get here fast.

In the gray-walled hallway, he used his pass card to swipe his way into the chilly, sterile rooms that contained Lab 1.

Inside, he found a huge mess. Looking around, he felt a sudden panic attack. Fish tanks were turned over, busted, with their contents spilled upon the concrete of the floor. The fish were nowhere to be seen and water ran in puddles that held plants and sand. A stainless steel table had been flipped and now lay on its side. A large dent in it suggested some object had been slammed into the surface.

"Claire?" His voice was the only sound in the room. He saw the chair---where he received his counteragent shots. It drew his attention for the white sheet that was draped across it. The machine next to it was silent. A monitoring system had been set up but there was no one hooked up to it. The lead wires lay across the chair.

He was staring at the white sheet, trying to decide what was really wrong with the picture when his Keeper came in to the room, from the other part of the lab, carrying a glass container that held the fish in water. "We have a problem, Darien."

He looked at her, seeing the concern on her face, and decided that he'd been right to agree to come down here, even if it was the middle of the night.

"What the hell happened here?" He took another glance at the room, with its brick walls and the mess on the floor. His eyes came back to the white-sheeted chair.

"Did you bring the number? We need to call Ciara."

He saw it then. Passing his Keeper, he went to kneel by the table that had been turned over and bashed by some unknown blunt object. There was blood there. Just a little of it, but enough to have caught his eye from yards away.

"Yeh. Here." He still stayed knelt down as he fished his wallet out and removed the card that had the information on it that she'd requested. "You gonna tell me what happened here now? Wasn't Harmony supposed to be here? Where is she?"

The blood, the mess, the empty chair, and the look on her face told him everything.

"She was here, wasn't she." It was no question---he knew the answer to it. But, the young, intense woman wasn't in the labs anymore and he was willing to bet that it was her blood on the floor and in the bend of the stainless steel.

"She was here and we were conducting the trials on the improved serum. I don't know how they got a pass card, Darien, but three men came in and took her." His Keeper's face had gone still, as she kept herself under complete, clinical control.

He wished he could be so calm. She moved then, stepping over a large puddle of water. She seemed unconcerned for the mess. Going to the other room, he heard her pick up the phone and dial the numbers that would connect them to the other side of the world.

She came back, carrying the phone on its wire, to set it down on a counter beside the fish in their new, temporary home.

Darien's mind was putting the pieces together quickly and he figured it out without asking another question. Harmony had been kidnapped and it hadn't gone as easy as the kidnappers had thought it would. The baby-faced experiment had fought tooth and nail, from what it looked like.

"Was she hurt badly when they took her out of here?"

"She's the one who did this----" His Keeper indicated the mess on the floor. "She fought them, yes."

He looked down at the blood and listened as the telephone, set to speaker, rang. A few strands of pale reddish-brown hair were stuck to the dent that he'd found in the table that lay on its side. It was Harmony's head that had struck the table so hard; she'd bled from her scalp.

"She was out of it when they took her out of here, right? It's the only way they got her."

The phone clicked and a voice, professional and familiar, spoke. "Agent Mackenzie."

"Ciara, are you alone now?" The Keeper moved to stand at the counter, crossed her arms over her chest, and bowed her head in concentration on the telephone. In her dark lab coat, under the fluorescent lights, she looked pale and worried.

Darien got up and walked to stand beside her. His mind was reeling at the thought of what had gone down here; Harmony had fought to stop three men from taking her from the place. She'd failed and it had ended in her being injured---if that dent was any indication, she'd been badly hurt.

She was out there, somewhere, a hostage. As long as she wasn't dead already---his stomach flipped at the thought of what could happen---then her kidnappers were in for a surprise when she woke up.

"Now, that's a good question. Are you using the Agency phones?"

"Yes."

A sudden burst of cynical laughter came from the speaker. "Then, no...We are not alone."

Darien looked from the Keeper to the lab's disaster again and wondered what they were going to have to do to fix this problem and if they were going to find the college-aged experiment alive.

"I don't think it matters, Ciara. Agent Fawkes is here with me. We have a serious problem." Her voice paused as she met Darien's eyes. "Are you still watching De Thiel?"

"Of course. How's things hanging, Mister Wonder Boy? As for De Thiel, things heated up here yesterday. It's why I didn't call you." The voice hinted at an expected phone call.

In his mind, he could picture her and wondered where on earth she was; Arnaud De Thiel was close by and she'd been in deep undercover for this assignment, but yet his Keeper knew where she was.

"That is understood." A tone of restrained familiarity crept into his Keeper's accented voice. Darien cocked his head and turned briefly to examine the room again. Was he missing anything here? Something that would help him understand the situation?

When she spoke again, it was all business. "What have you seen there that suggests that he might be preparing for a houseguest?"

Darien put the final piece into the puzzle. Arnaud was behind this---he should've seen it immediately.

"Plenty, mo chara. Why?" Suspicion crept into the northern British voice on the other end of the line.

"Harmony has been taken by force from the lab." Claire raised her arm to brush at her neckline, pushing the long hair back from her throat. He saw the redness and the coming of a bruise on her wrist. "She knew one of the men who came here----she called him Jonathan. He had a badly scarred left hand."

He took her hand then and looked at the marks. Meeting her eyes again, he saw what she said to him without words. She'd been used as leverage to stop Harmony from killing her attackers. It was starting to add up to a very ugly picture. Jonathan was the man whom Harmony had injured---he worked for Arnaud as a contact with the owner of the bookstore.

There was a long silence on the other end of the line and then a soft sigh came that was broken by the crackling of the distance between the cell phone and the speaker. "I should have seen that coming. He's been gearing up for something for a few days."

"Who's been gearing up for what?" Hobbes had come in behind them. Darien turned and laid a finger to his lips. The older agent opened his mouth to speak as he walked through the mess, looking around in amusement.

"What happened down here---did your little friend decide she needed to redecorate for you?" It was aimed at the Keeper, who shook her head.

"Welcome, Agent Hobbes." Ciara Mackenzie's voice held a hint of laughter. Darien could see her in his mind, with one eyebrow raised at the comment his partner had made.

"You guys wanna tell me what the hell I'm doing here at this time of night?" Bobby Hobbes was only half-dressed. He looked tired. His shirt was not tucked in and the jacket he wore was wrinkled. He'd dressed in a hurry and come down to the Federal Annex to answer the call.

"What're we gonna do to get her back?" Darien aimed it at the speakerphone as he studied his partner, wondering for a moment if it had been a good idea to call Hobbes in on this. He had to believe that his partner needed to have this information, just like him.

"Everything we have to, of course. There's a great deal at stake." The fire and ice crackled over the speaker, making her voice louder. "Look, I need something from you, Fawkes. Go to the store in the morning at opening hour. Remy St. Cloud will be waiting on you. Tell him that you are there to meet Dante. You got that, Beatrice?"

Darien listened as she gave him this information and he remembered the little blind boy who sat everyday at the table in the window of the bookstore. Beatrice would be his way in. He looked at his partner, who still wore a confused look on his face and nodded. Hobbes nodded back. They would go first thing in the morning, together.

Harmony had given him a set of keys to the place, as a joke between them. They'd both known he needed no key to get into that building, but she'd done it as a gesture of trust.

"Is he going to take me to see this Dante?" He looked at his partner and saw how the dark eyes of Bobby Hobbes narrowed in thought. Despite the hour and the conditions, the man looked like he was ready to go to work. Pushing the other thoughts to the side, he turned to stare at the phone. As long as he didn't think about it, he could stay focused on what had happened.

"Yes. When we ring off here, I'm going to call Dante. He'll be expecting you. You'll give him something. Listen carefully. In the office, by the computer, is a gray binder. On the forty-first page, there is a column of numbers. Find the red number. Tell him, when you see Dante. He needs the number."

She took a breath that was loud and raspy. Darien leaned closer to the speaker. "Why can't you just tell him yourself when you call?"

"His phones are tapped, just like your phone is and just like Agent Hobbes'. Just like the Agency phones are right now. He will need that number if we want to save Harmony's life."

"Save Harmony's life? What the hell is going on here?" Hobbes had grown impatient to know what had happened in the lab and to the young woman.

"This is what happens when you miss meetings, my friend. Your partner will explain, Agent Hobbes." The cold voice of Agent Mackenzie continued, never missing a beat. "Claire, is there anything I need to watch for in particular---something to keep my eye open for?"

"I'm waiting on the results of the blood work, but everything seems a little off, Ciara. She received the first dose of the new serum tonight just before she was taken. I have no idea how she might be reacting to it. She could be in more danger than just from Arnaud."

"Fine. I'll take that under advisement." Her tone made it sound like this was a stranger that they were discussing. This was no stranger----this was Harmony Corwin. She was more than some acquaintance to everyone in the room. Ciara Mackenzie's cool approach made it sound like the young woman wasn't her field partner, wasn't her friend, had never been important.

He knew it was only the stress of the entire situation; no one could afford to be overly emotional about what had happened. If something went wrong, Harmony would die. She might die, anyway.

"She could be dead now." It was a realization that cut into him. She'd become a friend that shared more in common with him than just the status of being an experiment. The idea of her lying dead somewhere made him feel cold all over, like the quicksilver in his body had slipped over his skin without being noticed.

"Don't worry, Darien." Ciara spoke in a commanding tone. He remembered then that she held rank over them all, except for the Keeper, due to her time in service to the government. "Only the good die young. Harmony will be just fine, if I can reach her in time."

"Someone needs to call the boss." Hobbes had folded his arms around himself, and now stood, rocking back and forth. It was a sign that his mind was adding the pieces up for itself. Soon, he would have the same answers that they could produce for what had happened.

"Claire already has, I believe." Agent Mackenzie's voice was still as cool as the Arctic Circle. "If my suspicions are correct about him, he's already in the building and on his way down to see you."

Darien Fawkes looked at his partner and frowned. To his mind, he wanted to leave then, find out where the female agent was holed up at, and work with her to find the missing girl. It all hinged on whether the Official would send them in on this assignment.

"When Mister Play-Doh gets there, tell him to call me. I have a report to fax into his office and I can brief him on the situation." The line went dead with a click. The Keeper sighed and looked at both Darien and Hobbes.

Her concern was evident in the tone of her voice. "I have a feeling that we are going to be making a long trip soon. I need to start preparing."

"You think the Official will send us in?" Hobbes sounded doubtful.

"How could he not, Agent Hobbes? This is a matter of Agency security." She began moving around the lab, preparing to clean up the mess that had been made. "With what Harmony is able to do as a single individual, the Official will recognize that he needs to put more men out there to bring her in as fast as possible."

Darien started helping her, picking up the massive stainless steel table that had been turned over. His partner came to aid him and Hobbes' eyes fell on that small spot of blood that had been splattered in the dent. When he looked up from it, Bobby Hobbes' dark eyes were wide and knowing.

"Harmony will die before giving Arnaud what he wants from her." Darien shook his head and grunted as they moved the table out of the way to start mopping up the spilled water.

"Don't be so sure, Darien." Her worry made him turn to look at her in askance. Her face had gone pale again. "How much torture do you think you could endure before you gave away everything you know? Don't underestimate Arnaud's ability to convince Harmony to do what he asks."

"And she does have that talent for hacking..." Hobbes added to the vocalized thought as he went to the other room.

The knowledge that national security could be in danger soaked in and Darien frowned again. Taking the mop from where it leaned in the far corner, he started cleaning the water and plants from the concrete.

Hobbes returned with a trashcan and knelt, carefully starting the business of getting the shattered glass off the floor. When he spoke, it was a firm reminder of what could lay ahead for them all.

"If that trial serum doesn't work out, then she's gonna need a shot of the old stuff in only five days, right? Our buddy Arnaud wouldn't have to work hard to convince her. All he needs is five days to talk her into it----to get a fix, she might be willing to kill all of us."

Chapter 2

At eight-thirty sharp, they met in front of the bookstore. Darien noticed right away that his partner looked as exhausted as he himself felt. He'd hardly gotten any sleep. It seemed to him that he'd spent the rest of the night staring at the wall and trying not to think, but not having any success. Close to dawn, he'd dozed off, only to be awakened by the alarm.

He'd thought, after getting in his car and going back to his apartment, that he'd be able to rest. Darien had quickly found himself unable to do anything but think about the last conversation he'd had with the now-missing woman. Somehow, the words she'd given him to consider now ate at him, circling him like vultures. How perceptive was she, after all? She couldn't have been right about all of it.

He wondered if she had been ready to tell him more---only to have been stopped by some internal voice in time. What other knowledge had she harbored---things he needed and feared to hear?

And now, he was standing in front of the store with the keys in his hand and wondering what would happen. Somehow, they had to get to Harmony and remove her from Arnaud's avaricious claws.

He tried to get the idea of her death from his mind; thinking negatively like that wouldn't help. She'd be fine; he hoped...she'd become a friend that he was able to trust. Trust didn't come easy and her quirky nature didn't exactly beg for it, but she was now a part of his life.

"You sleep okay?" Hobbes' greeting was wan and tired.

"No." Darien shook his head and unlocked the door to The Neon Silence. "Looks like you didn't, either."

"I got enough." His partner stepped forward to follow him into the bookstore.

"Uh-huh." He didn't look at Bobby Hobbes, but he knew his voice held his disbelief.

They walked back through the store and to the closed office. Before he got there, a mental image of some horrible thing being on the other side of the door, waiting to get them came to his mind and he fought back both an involuntary shiver and a chuckle of self-consciousness. Why did he always come up with this stuff right when he was stressed?

Opening the door, though, he was relieved that nothing jumped out at him. The emptiness of the place was easily felt. It made him feel that the building had been empty for some time. The air was stale and the sense of quiet lent their power to this idea. Darien flipped the lights on in the office and the fluorescent hum came as the units began to heat up.

He knew, for a fact, that Harmony had been here yesterday, but it felt so very cold and abandoned without her presence.

Looking at Hobbes for a moment of breathing while they both listened to the silence, he wondered if his partner was experiencing the same emotion. His face said that he did.

In the office, he sat down at the desk in Harmony's chair and looked at the computer and the folders, books, and papers that were piled around it. It was funny...the apartment upstairs was so neat and everything seemed to belong in it's place. Here, though, the young experiment showed her other side---in the messiness of her work desk.

The gray binder was at the bottom of a pile of books. He saw out of the corner of his eye as Hobbes leaned on the doorframe and watched the bookstore with a look of concentration on his handsome features. It was a private moment and Darien saw the things in his partner's face that were often hidden beneath the sarcasm and the pseudo-smug exterior.

The concern and worry were there, as well as some subtler thing that he'd come to think of as Hobbes' external monitor. He was not looking for trouble, but he was aware of everything around him. With his hands in his pockets, the older agent was still silent.

Going through the books as he pulled the binder from under them, he discovered that they were all philosophy and grief therapy except for the one that was poetry by Walt Whitman. He recognized it. She'd been reading it not too long ago, telling him better to read Wildman Walt than to let her brain melt away in front of the tv.

Flipping through the binder, he found the page he was looking for. On it, there were columns of numbers, all in different colors. It was a handwritten page, instead of the typed rows that he'd seen before. There was only one red number on the page. He used a scrap of paper and jotted it down, carefully checking to make sure he got it right.

"Okay. I got it." He closed the binder and laid it down, piling the books back on it in their exact order. Years of work at B&E had taught him the trick of covering his tracks.

Hobbes turned to meet his eyes. "Alright, now what? We just wait on this kid?"

"Yeh. Remy'll know who I am." Darien looked towards the stairs and an idea hit him. "Stay here. I gotta go do something."

"Yeh, okay." Bobby Hobbes turned back to look into the bookstore again. With the drawn shades, the light that was cast on him from the front windows was dim and revealed the shadows on his face.

Darien climbed the stairs and entered the open studio apartment that sat above the store. All the lights were off, the curtains were drawn, and the place was just as empty as the downstairs. Without music or talking, the whole building was strangely foreign to him. He'd been here a number of times in the last two weeks and this silence wasn't something he had associated with the place.

He had come upstairs, to find the CD, in fact, that he'd heard during the last two weeks. It had stayed with him and Darien knew that if---no, when---they found Harmony, she might be grateful for something to listen to. Halfway to the desk, he stopped. The curtains were pushed slightly open on the window on the other end of the room---where the fire escape was. It was, besides the stairs, the only access to the apartment.

A thief's instinct made him go, at that moment, to check the window. There, he found the lock in place and everything, as it should be. A gold glint from the sunlight falling onto the bedside table made him stop before he went back to looking for the CD.

Darien picked up the wire-thin necklace and held it up to the light. It was never off of her neck---how had she forgotten it when she'd left the apartment to go to the lab? It should have been with her clothes and glasses, stored away on a table in the lab. She'd been taken in her underclothes, as the Keeper had said. Her examination clothes, as she called them.

Suspended from the tiny-linked chain was a golden dove. It was only as big as his little finger's nail and fragile-looking. Harmony had left without her necklace. It bothered him for some reason. She said she never took it off and she'd changed the subject when he'd asked to know more.

He laid it in the palm of his hand and flipped it over. On the back were tiny scratches that his eyes couldn't make out. They looked like fingernail marks. Darien decided to take it with him; she would want that, as well.

Passing her easel, he started to stop and lift the paint-splattered sheet. He wanted to see what she'd been working on lately---the one she'd been so busy with the other night. She'd shown him the piece she'd done to cover the safe. It was even better than the one he'd managed to keep. The new one had been taken directly from a digital shot that she'd gotten from the apartment's security camera, somewhere located on the far wall.

Done in crayon, acrylic, and charcoal, the painting was a conglomerate of mediums and styles, but it was eye-catching. It was a portrait of them all, the night she'd nearly killed him. Hobbes leaned on the edge of the table next to the chair where he'd sat---the chair where the camera his partner had planted had been. His Keeper and Ciara Mackenzie sat side by side on the couch while the sleeping Harmony was cross-legged in the floor, her head laid upon the bare knee of Claire.

In the background, of that painting that now hung on the wall over the safe, was a far different thing. As bright and defined as the five forms in the front of the picture were, the man who'd stood in the shadows was a sketchy, ghostly image. Kevin, his brother, stood with his hands in the pockets of a white lab coat in the darkened background, directly between and behind the two women. Instead of looking like the Kevin he'd last known, during his stay at the testing base, this version of his brother was younger, baby-faced.

Now, he had a chance to see what she'd been working on lately. Darien put a finger on the sheet and started to lift it. He didn't time to look, though, for his partner called up the stairs at that moment. "Hey, Fawkes---the kid's here."

Darien dropped the covering sheet back into place and stepped away. Going to the stereo, he searched for the CD that he was looking for. Finding it, he flipped the jewel case over, read the names of the songs, found what he thought he'd heard, and slipped it into the back pocket of his jeans quickly.

The day was wasting and they had to be to work in only an hour and a half to meet with the Official, who was expecting them. Jogging down the stairs, he turned the corner of the office door to meet his partner nearly head-on.

"Was starting to think something had happened to you up there, hotshot. Thought maybe you'd run into a booby trap or something."

Darien grinned. It was no secret that even if Hobbes admired and liked the two women, his sense of trust hadn't been formed yet where they were concerned.

He looked past Bobby Hobbes and found, in the dim store, the small figure of the boy they'd been waiting for. Heading towards the table where the child stood, still holding his cane, he watched as a smile of recognition brightened the creamed coffee-hued face.

"Hiya, Remy."

"Nice to see you here again, Mister. Is Harmony around yet?" The boy's ears and other senses were picking up what his eyes couldn't and his face showed concern for the different sounds in the store.

"No, she's not. Look, Ciara Mackenzie sent us to find you. She said you could take us to Dante." He saw the boy's eyes staying so still and noted the thin blue sheen over them. He'd been born blind. His other senses would be powerfully advanced; no wonder the curly-haired child had pinpointed him every time he'd come into the store.

"Do you have the password?" The darkness behind that blue haze was a chocolate brown. The child was so young, yet had a manner of quiet solemnity to him that suggested he probably spent most of his time at the store, silently reading with his fingers.

"Yeh." He looked over his shoulder to find his partner approaching cautiously.

"Well, as soon as we get to your wheels, we can be there."

Climbing up the building's nasty stairwell, Darien watched as his partner kept quiet and observant. Ever the operative, Hobbes rarely lost his edge when it came to watching the angles. It was something he himself knew and it was always a good idea. At the fourth landing, they were met with a door that looked like a baseball bat had beaten it at least one good time.

"This it?" Hobbes asked the child, Remy St. Cloud. The boy nodded and his eyes blinked but never moved from staring straight ahead.

Darien couldn't believe that this child would know where places like this existed. From the way the boy dressed, he came from a middle-class home...and this was a slum. Was Remy used to running errands for Ciara Mackenzie into the worst parts of town? Looking around, he knocked on the door.

"Who's there?" A man's voice, close to the door, spoke loudly. He sounded like he was the kind who probably was holding a gun that was pointed at the men he couldn't see yet. Darien's heart beat a little faster. If Ciara Mackenzie had failed to get through to the guy on the phone----they could be dead in only a few seconds.

"Beatrice." He took a breath and used the password, hoping he'd heard it correctly. Darien looked at Hobbes, who raised an eyebrow at him in response.

"Come in, Beatrice." A bolt slid back and the door opened, letting a cold rush of air-conditioning out into the humid, foul-smelling hall. The room within was brighter than the hallway had been and remarkably nicer, considering. He stepped in quickly around the doorframe, followed by his partner and the small boy, Remy.

Dante was a tall man with collar-length hair and stubble on his rounded jaw. He was as tall as the younger agent and nearly as lanky, with a look of intelligent insolence on his square face. He wore gold-framed glasses over bleary tan hazel eyes and looked like any pothead stoner that Darien could ever remember doing business with in his old life.

He looked like he'd been doing drugs already, despite the early hour. He also didn’t look half as scary as he’d sounded, through the door. Hell…he didn’t look scary at all. He looked like a nerd…kinda like Kevin…in an attractive-haphazard Calvin Klein model kind of way.

Hobbes' face dropped in shock. Seeing this, Darien couldn't help but turn and look at the way the agent's expression had changed so drastically.

"You know each other." He didn't have to say anything else---it was obvious.

"Long time, no see, Bobby." Inside the apartment, he could hear that Dante's voice was friendlier than it had sounded on the other side of the door. He watched as the tall man in the ripped jeans and worn tee shirt handed Remy a stick of Juicy Fruit gum. "Hey, kiddo, tell your baby sis I said hello."

Facing Darien now, he was once again business. It was a sure thing, from his demeanor, that the slovenly, pothead image was probably a mask or front. The serious expression belied the crow's nest of dark chestnut hair and relaxed manner with which he stood in his clothes. "Yeh, Agent Fawkes, I know Hobbes. We go back a ways. Right, handsome?"

Hobbes flushed and folded his arms across his chest, a look of disgust on his face, but said nothing. Dante's eyes narrowed as he turned his gaze from the upset agent to stare in a slightly unfocused way at Darien. He looked stoned, but his attitude told otherwise.

"Okay---I got the goods you need." Darien fished the paper out of his pocket and handed it to the waiting contact. "Our mutual friend said you could give me the matching merchandise."

Dante stared at it for a moment and then looked up, from one agent to the other. "I think I know what this is, but I'll drag it up anyway."

Going to the computer table that sat in the corner beside the battered, broken down bed that lay on the floor without the benefit of a frame, Dante slid into the chair and began searching through a stack of disks in colored jewel cases that lay beside the speaker.

It was a small system: only a laptop with some speakers and a modem. It seemed to be nearly lost in the clutter.

Darien glanced at Hobbes, who still looked upset over seeing the man they'd been sent to make contact with and then walked to the desk, to stand at Dante's side. Hobbes remained behind, with Remy St. Cloud. He couldn't believe his luck---not only was this stranger a hacker who knew Ciara Mackenzie, but he seemed to know Bobby Hobbes well enough to call him by first name.

He couldn't wait to get his partner alone and ask him what the connection was.

Sliding a disk into the drive, Dante's fingers moved quickly and he drew up, on the screen, a series of files. He quickly moved down through them, so fast that Darien couldn't make out any names. He stopped on one, its name showing easily in that moment----Purgatorio, pulled it up, and quickly wrote down something from the series of numbers that were displayed. Finished, he shut everything down and swiveled to look at them.

It had taken only a minute to conduct the business.

"Now, I'll give you this, but you can never show it to anyone but Mackenzie and that chick Claire. Got me?" The seriousness was altered by the smile he wore. "Not even Neon Blue can see this. If you screw up, your lives are in your own hands."

"You're saying this stuff is risky enough to get us killed?" Hobbes had come to stand by Darien, his arms still folded against himself.

"If Agent Mackenzie knows you let Harmony have this, she'll take you apart." Dante's smile grew. "You gotta be on the level to receive the documents. If our friend says you're cool, then I'm fine with that, but if you play with her, it's your game."

"Understood." Hobbes narrowed his eyes and accepted the paper from the hacker. "What is this---it's only numbers." His features twisted in confusion.

Sighing, Dante looked past them at the blind boy who was quietly waiting by the door to be taken home. The room was dark, but the expression of hesitating concern on the young man's face was easy to see. When he looked back around at them, his eyes were on Hobbes and it was to the older agent he spoke.

"Go back to the bookstore. The shelves are numbered and every book in that section has another number on the shelf in front of it. Find the book these coordinates lead to. It's what you are looking for, my man."

Darien watched as Hobbes studied the paper some more and then his partner looked up and met the hazel eyes that had never left his face. There was a measure of disgust in his partner's expression. "What the hell are you up to, Webster?"

Dante Webster shrugged, a slightly bored air replacing the serious concerned tension on his smooth face. He was a young man, looking only as old as Darien, maybe not that old. "Hey, Mackenzie gave me the call and I asked for vacation time. I'm taking care of my friend's needs, you know?"

"Yeh, well, what you're doing here's illegal, pal. You oughta know that better than me." Bobby Hobbes shoved the paper in his pants pocket and looked down at the hacker who'd not risen from his seat.

"And you use my services regularly---don't give me no shit, Bobby." Dante's stoned-looking face changed drastically then, turning sarcastic and his tone suggested one of years of being what could be called 'authority'. "You've never had reason to doubt my skills and I don't charge you, so you know what you can do with your illegal speech."

There was no anger, but the friendly threat of something that Darien quickly put a finger to. When he put it together, it made sense. "Dante is one of your sources. The insomniac."

"Yeh. He is." Hobbes didn't break the staring contest. "And now I know he's been working with Ciara, too, it makes me suspect that the bull he fed me was just that---bull."

"No, man, it wasn't. I gave you the truth. Not all the truth, but who needs that?" Dante Webster reclined in the chair a little and rocked the back of it with his weight. "There was a lot of crap with it, but the truth was there, too. I didn't have to go digging to tell you about the truth. She and I go back a long time. You have no idea what I know about Agent Mackenzie and I'm gonna keep it that way."

"Why?" Darien cut in, unable to stop himself. It was a part of a puzzle that he'd been seeking pieces to since first meeting the female agent.

"National security, my man. Need to know, you know?" The grin that had found it's way to the pale face told the story---need to know meant that this guy was government. He was a Fed. Hacker or not, he was someone to be careful of.

"Oh, yeh. Need to know." Darien looked at his partner and smiled at the way things had of coming around in aces. "I know all I need to know about need to know."

"I see we understand each other. Now, if you'll excuse me, I gotta get ready for work. I gotta plane to catch." Dante Webster's mask of looking remarkably drugged was back in place. "I can take Remy home."

His partner said not another word and Darien watched Hobbes turn and go the door. Following him, he paused by the blind child who still waited patiently. "See ya around, Remy." He touched the boy on the top of the head in the same way that he'd seen both Harmony and Ciara do. The child looked pleased.

Going down the stairs, he listened, waiting for Hobbes to speak. He was waiting to hear something from his partner about the stranger, Dante Webster, which would clue him in on more of the truth. It wasn't forthcoming.

"So, you guys go back, huh? How's that work anyway?" Darien jumped an extra step to catch up with the shorter man.

"We were in Desert Storm together. He was part of the surveillance team that gave us a hand." It was said in a neutral tone of voice, suggesting that Darien leave it alone. Checking his watch and seeing that they had less time than he'd thought they had, he decided that it might be best if the subject was dropped for now.

He made a mental note to ask again later, though. The familiar way that the hacker had spoken to his partner had made him even more curious.

It had been nothing to drag a stepladder from the office to the shelf that had the corresponding first number taped to it. At the top of a shelf, towards the back of the store, was a row of books without any writing on their spines.

Below him, on the floor, Hobbes watched and waited as he worked his way down the row, seeking the one that matched the coordinates they'd been given.

"Was that last number 27 or 28?" He was now looking at two identical books. They were both black leather bound with cracked spines, as if they'd been opened many times; the two were probably mates.

"28." Hobbes read from the slip of paper again and then shoved it back into his trouser pocket. He left his hand within that pocket and spoke again. "Find it?"

"Yeh. I did." Darien pulled it free of the shelf and looked at the outside. There was nothing on the cover and it was thick, looking like it might be close to five hundred pages.

"Well, come on then, hotshot---what is it that we've got?" Bobby Hobbes had reached the end of his own patience. They had to be to work in only minutes, to meet with the Official.

Darien steadied his feet on the stepladder and brushed at a dusty patch on the black leather exterior. It was not very old. It had a worn, well-used look to it. He opened it to the flyleaf and examined the hand written words that had been put there by its owner. A wave of mixed dismay and pleasure ran through him like the quicksilver he'd come to accept as being an unwelcome part of him.

"It's Kevin's journal." He looked at the date, under the familiar signature. "The last one he wrote. Looks like it's for the past four years…"

Chapter 3

(Narrated by Darien Fawkes)

Now, I shouldn't have been surprised that Agent Ciara Mackenzie had my brother's journal. After all, they'd kept contact with each other for ten years after the Chameleon Project ended. They'd been friends of some sort, but for her to acquire the last written words of Doctor Kevin Fawkes must have taken no small miracle. She must have done some serious palm greasing for the two books to have come into her possession. That, or she'd done some B&E of her own.

When Kevin died and the mainframes were destroyed, the base was shut down and a clean up was done. Everything was either destroyed or buried away somewhere in a pile of red tape under a mountain of Agency secrets. Anything personal of my older brother's that he'd kept with him while working there was lost to me. This journal should have been hidden in some file where it would never see the light of day again.

The other black, leather bound book was also a journal in my brother's hand. It was older dated between '88 and '96, and I decided to take them both...but only with the idea that I wouldn't let Agent Mackenzie know I had done this, unless I had to give it up. I knew that the government hacker Dante Webster wasn't kidding when he said she'd take us apart over these books.

And I had no time, upon finding them, to read anything written on those pages. I was curious to find out what had been put down in the journals that could hold the secret to fixing the problem in my brain. If Kevin hadn't changed, some of his work notes would be in those pages, which is why Ciara probably wanted the more current one in the first place.

Harmony knew nothing of their existence, apparently, if I was putting the scene together correctly. Just like she'd not known the contents of the letters that my scientist brother had sent to the AWOL agent while the two women were in Switzerland. She'd received her own letters all that time---but they didn't have even close to the same information in them that I'd read in the notes to the serious-minded government agent, Ciara Mackenzie.

With the things I'd read in his letters, it might have been very wise of the girl's Keeper to hide them all that time; such hope and supposition had been given for the idea that he might have a way to fix what had been slowly driving the subject of the Chameleon Project over the edge. Her body, over time, was going to wear down as it finished becoming immune to all the possible serum combinations that could be used. Eventually, something would have to be done or she was going to die from her own unique DNA.

And I was really itching to have a moment to read the journals. What they could tell me about what had been done to my head was of importance, of course, but also---I found myself very curious to discover the private man that Kevin had been. For many years before the experiment, we'd not had much contact---heck, from the first time he left home to study, I rarely saw him.

With the events of the last few days, from the conversation I'd had with Harmony Corwin, through her kidnapping, and now, the finding of his private journals---I knew I had been given a real chance to discover what I'd missed. I never thought I'd care to find out, but I found myself intrigued and even slightly desperate for the lost chances.

Which is why the poem at the beginning of the second journal---the one I'd been sent to find---really struck me. It spoke of lost chances and of plans gone wrong, which was exactly what the whole thing boiled down to.

@@@

"Hey, Hobbes..." He spoke, looking up at the narrow street as they turned off of Clubhouse Road and back onto the main streets that would take them back to the Agency offices. "You know something about poetry, right?"

"Just a little, pal. Not enough to mean anything. Why?" Bobby Hobbes didn't look away from the task of navigating back into traffic.

Darien had opened the second book and found the first pages. Handwritten, there was a poem at the beginning of the first entry. It seemed very odd for his brother to have included a poem at the start of a new journal, but then, he knew nothing should surprise him anymore.

"Listen to this." He cleared his throat, took a deep breath, and began to recite.

Finished, he looked up from where his finger had been going along the lines, keeping his place in the tightly written words. Darien watched as a look of surprise crossed his partner's face and faded.

"That's a good one. Did he say who wrote it?" Hobbes glanced quickly at him, down at the journal he held in his hands, and then back to the road.

They'd left his car at the store, parked in the back lot, next to the canvas-covered Harley. Taking the van that Hobbes had been driving, they were now headed back to the Federal Annex as fast as the thickening traffic would allow them.

Darien looked down at the page and scanned for a name. "No. He didn't mention it."

"Interesting. Keep reading, kid, maybe he says something about it later---it might be important." The older agent pushed the van up in speed and took an opening to pass several cars.

He had no idea why the poem was there, but it was a puzzle that would have to wait. Right now, he wanted to know about Dante Webster.

"I know you worked Desert Storm with that guy back there, but there's more to it. He was the hacker who gave you that info on Harmony and Ciara. You wanna tell me what's up with that?"

Hobbes sighed and shook his head. "Look, Fawkes, its no big deal. The guy's in government service like us. He's got a pretty high-level security clearance."

Watching his partner's face, Darien saw the thoughts that went across it. As time went on, the things he learned about the man Bobby Hobbes made the younger agent respect him even more. He was much more than he let on...like the poetry thing---who'd have guessed that a guy who had been doing intelligence work for the government would have a soft spot like that?

"He's more than that, right? Suddenly, you aren't trusting his judgment."

The eyes that turned to him were full of a slim anger. "He was doing info hacking for me and keeping it secret that he was a friend of the two suspects I was asking about. How's that for judgment, hotshot? You don't play games like that with Bobby Hobbes."

"So, the guy wasn't telling you everything. I'm sure if there's anything dangerous you should've known, he'd have told you." Darien closed the journal on his index finger and held it as he worked to maneuver his Styrofoam coffee cup around to take a drink of the lukewarm, watery brew. Personally, he didn't believe that, either---if the guy had held out on information, then he very likely could've been putting their lives in danger and maybe, it would've been on purpose.

Grimacing at the taste, he met the quick glance of his partner again.

"Dante is only a code name, I suspect. The name we had for him was Alan. Alan Webster. He's got the kind of clearance that'd make your head spin, Fawkes. He's doing low-grade hacking in that ghetto safe house of his for a price. Who knows what else he has sold to the highest bidder? I knew I shouldn't have trusted him---I knew it!" Hobbes smacked his hand on the horn and blasted his way through another opening between two cars.

The van, top heavy as it was, veered and dodged through the morning commuters like a runaway train off its rails.

"How long have you been dealing with him?" Darien watched in the rear view mirror as two drivers both gave them the finger and mouthed filth through closed windows.

"Since just before Desert Storm---hell, he was a kid back then, but he was quick. He got his real testing during the situation in Iraq." Hobbes' jaw was set as he pulled into the lot across the street from the office that they were headed to. "But, he's always come through for me, so I don't get that he held out on anything---it doesn't make much sense."

Getting out, Darien locked the door, leaving the journals in the floorboard, under the seat. They were running a little late, so he mentally prepared himself for the remarks they were likely to get from the Official. Once over, he'd get Hobbes to drive him back to the store, he'd pick up his car, and do what ever was going to be asked of them.

"Well, tell me something, Hobbes." He slid coins into the parking meter and hurried to catch up to the agent as he stalked down to the corner. His longer legs made it easy. Swinging around to walk backwards for a moment, he looked down at his partner. "How good is he?"

"Good at what? The hacking?" Hobbes frowned. "Probably one of the best available for government jobs, actually. It's why the Feds work so hard to keep him. They know about his outside activities and so long as he doesn't give away real classified stuff, they won't bust him. He's like a rooster in a hen house at the Pentagon. FBI, too. I don't know if he does much work for the CIA now…"

"Ah, okay." Darien grinned. It was starting to make sense. "I bet he doesn't see much action there, though. I mean, he can't, right? Gotta keep that other part of him under wraps."

"Oh, you mean the..."

"The handsome bit." Darien shook his finger in mocking reprimand and turned to continue walking beside Hobbes. "Don't think I didn't notice."

Bobby Hobbes blushed again and shrugged. "So the guy's a fruit. S'kay with me. I mean, he does his job and I do mine."

Picturing Alan 'Dante' Webster in his mind, Darien chuckled to himself. This was something he'd not counted on---Hobbes having gay friends. Before they got to the office, he'd decided to give Harmony's advice about his partner some more thought.

@@@

"Eberts, the fax."

The pasty-faced assistant handed over the file he'd been clutching. The Official opened it and handed them each a piece of paper.

Standing before the desk, Darien looked up at his Keeper and saw that she seemed to have also suffered a sleepless night. Had she even gone home? Surely, she had. Pavlov needed her to be there...but she was wearing the same clothes she'd been dressed in when he'd come to the lab after two in the morning.

It seemed that Claire had been busy preparing, as she'd said she would.

She'd already been in the office when they'd come in. After the usual remarks about being late, the Official had gone straight to the fax and the news.

"As you both know, Harmony Corwin was taken from Lab 1 last night. It seems to have been done, as some evidence shows, by Arnaud De Thiel."

Darien's mind left the paper he held for a moment and he looked up at their boss. "And Ciara Mackenzie's been watching his safe house, right?"

"Yes, that's correct. As you see, the report she faxed this office shows a steady stream of activity for the last days centering on medical equipment deliveries and a large, mainframe computer system being brought into play. Arnaud's obviously preparing for something, and we now suspect that it may have been this very kidnapping that he was gearing up for."

Taking a deep breath, the Official's blue eyes met each of theirs and then looked at Claire, who stood to his left, facing Darien.

"Gentlemen, I am sending you to aid in retrieving Harmony Corwin. No one but this Agency is involved, so we are keeping it as quiet as possible. We hope to keep this an in-house job to avoid any embarrassment or unnecessary attention. Do you understand what this means?"

Hobbes nodded, still looking down at the page, his eyes scanning the contents of the activity log. Darien looked from his partner to his Keeper. She was still distracted, but she seemed very calm compared to how she had been when he'd arrived to help her get a hold of Agent Mackenzie.

"You will follow the Keeper's orders where your own safety is concerned. You will answer to Agent Mackenzie until this is over and Harmony Corwin is safely within the fold. She is our operative there and has experience in dealing with De Thiel's MO. I'm sure that at some point, you will each think you know better, but please, boys,"

Darien looked up again at the heavy-set man and saw the concern in his eyes and watched as the Official went on. "Follow her orders to the letter. You both know what De Thiel is capable of, but we talked to his brother, in prison, early this morning. Eberts, tell them."

Eberts' eyes blinked a few times and he began to fill them in on the conversation he'd had with Huiclos De Thiel in the prison.

Listening to the attaché give a brief description of Huiclos' confession to the Official's assistant made Darien Fawkes feel sick. The questions asked had been of the nature to discover what Arnaud might be doing right now, what had been the nature of the relationship between the young experiment Harmony Corwin and his younger brother, and what could be possibly expected in the current situation.

None of what Huiclos had to say had been promising or pleasant. It was obvious from the way that Eberts looked while he was briefing them on this conversation that he was internally horrified at the ideas presented.

"And to conclude this, he pleaded with me to make sure you don't allow yourself to fall into his brother's hands, Agent Fawkes. He claimed that Harmony Corwin would cave in to his brother's demands, despite her strong sense of self-control and that if this happens, many people will be hurt. Emotional and psychological torture has been used on her before by Arnaud De Thiel and it has been successful."

The assistant's hands moved together in a nervous gesture where they were clasped in front of him. "If you fall into his brother's hands, Huiclos De Thiel is positive that both Harmony Corwin and you will die."

"I'll just have to stay out of his hands then, won't I?" Darien laid the paper down on the desk in front of him. "Where is this safe house?"

"The Agency safe house is located on an inner cove of Snake Bay only a few miles from the highly secure location that Arnaud De Thiel has set himself up with." Eberts used a small device to click on the overhead projector at the back of the office. "It is located on the northern side of Melville Island, north of mainland Australia."

Darien and Hobbes turned at the same time to look at the image cast on the screen that had been pulled down.

"This is the long-range scan that was done on De Thiel's compound. As you can see, he has made himself quite secure. As our deep cover agent on this assignment, Agent Mackenzie has been seeking a way, upon mapping out the buildings and the daily schedule, to infiltrate and take De Thiel."

"And she's been doing this alone?" Bobby Hobbes turned and looked over his shoulder at Eberts and the Official.

"Until now, yes. As of today, you are on the same assignment. Any time schedule Agent Mackenzie had for the D-day she had in mind has been stepped up to a red alert upon last night's events. Now, we have five days to get into the compound, retrieve Harmony Corwin, and take down Arnaud De Thiel." The Official's words reminded Darien that in five days, the young woman would have a meltdown that, if untreated, could kill her after it made her insane.

They had only five days to break into what looked like the best high-tech playground he'd ever seen. Turning, he looked at Eberts and raised an eyebrow. "Nice set up, but did you just say Australia?"

"Yes, Agent Fawkes. You will be going to a northern island off the coast of Australia. The bay where Arnaud De Thiel has recreated his base of operations is in a forest that lines a long finger cove. Agent Mackenzie is positioned somewhat north of there, in another cove. She will brief you on the rest of the particulars when you arrive."

Scratching at his arm, Darien looked at Hobbes, who turned and cocked his head sideways in a curious way as he met the glance.

"I get the feeling that this isn't going to be a picnic." The older agent's brown eyes went hard as he turned back to look at the map of the compound. It was completely surrounded by trees on three sides and water on the fourth side.

"The Keeper will go with you, to administer to your counteragent needs and to be on hand when Harmony Corwin is recovered. Your plane tickets are here, on the desk, as well as the name of the contact you will meet in Darwin." The Official spoke, his sonorous voice cutting through the thoughts of Australia that Darien had been entertaining.

"Be careful, people, do your jobs, and get Agent Mackenzie's partner out of there alive, if possible." And then, his voice took a little tilt upwards and Darien heard half-hidden laughter. He turned to see the boss' face and found that the sound was real---the fat man was on the verge of grinning. "Oh, and pack warm clothes. It's cold where you're going."

@@@

It was nearly time to meet his Keeper and Hobbes at the airport. He sat in his favorite chair, staring at the painting on the wall across from him. Darien's thoughts were on the mission and what Eberts had brought back with him as information from Arnaud's more human brother, Huiclos.

Everything he'd ever thought Arnaud was capable of, his brother had confirmed it during that interview. He wasn't above physical torture, but his specialty was screwing with the mind of a person he wanted to keep alive if possible, until they gave in and let him have what he wanted. It made him think of Luke Lawson and his obsession with a person's Room 101. The worst fears of a mind could be used to manipulate them into doing whatever was wanted. And for a reward, the Room 101 would be taken away.

Darien suspected that the two men had somehow learned this crap from the same warped mind, but if not, they would have understood each other anyway, even if they were on opposites of the law.

He studied the little kid in the red jersey shirt that stood in the background of the painting. It really stuck out, with it's bright shade of blood red.

What would Harmony's weak point be? She had to have one. Huiclos De Thiel had said that Arnaud had tortured her with it before---so, the terrorist had an advantage already. He could possibly get what he wanted from the young woman before she ever reached critical mass and started choking on the blood from the lining of her stomach and lungs.

In his mind, at that moment, he heard again the sounds of that choking. He had heard it the first time he'd listened to her via the bug in the store's office. When she'd attacked Arnaud's contact, Jonathan, she'd wheezed and her breath had bubbled...and the sound of blood in her throat had been nightmarish, changing her slow, pleasant voice to one that rasped like metal being ripped and rubbed together.

He didn't know the particulars of why, but she seemed to develop a slow bleed internally when the toxins in her system started reaching the dangerous levels that brought choking, possible seizures, psychosis, and even death, if it went untreated.

Before she got to that part of the toxic reaction, Arnaud might have broken the last doors in her mind and she could very easily be persuaded to give him what he was asking for----the last of the information that had been lost in the explosion in Mexico.

Darien sighed and rubbed at his face in worry. He was tired and ready for sleep; he had packed clothing in a single bag and placed the two journals in separate places within the duffel. The one that he didn't want Ciara Mackenzie to know he'd gotten, he put on the bottom. He would read the more current one first; the one that had started with the poem. It was the one that the tall, leonine agent had requested. Along with this, he had packed the CD that Harmony had turned him onto.

He looked at the picture again and thought about what Harmony had told him over the last two weeks. They'd talked a half-dozen times, over meals and just hanging out, listening to music. He'd made a promise to her partner, Agent Mackenzie, to check on her...in an unobvious way. Just to keep an eye on the young woman and make sure she wasn't spending too much time alone.

Too much time alone for Harmony meant too much thinking, which tended to be a dangerous activity. The young woman, even as smart as she was, liked trouble a little too much. A whole month of uninterrupted solitude, excepting the nearly daily visits to the Keeper in the lab, could allow for a lot of trouble coming from those random, dangerous thoughts.

And in the course of the two weeks he'd been checking in on her, he'd found himself shocked and amazed by the things she was capable of saying and doing without blushing. The girl had no shame. He was really growing fond of her---she was like a kid sister or a family friend. And, several times, without thought, they'd said the same thing at the same time, bringing laughter. In a way, it had been like hanging out with Maggie Celo…

There had been tears on her part and lots of laughter on both of their parts.

Thinking about the things she'd been talking to him about for two weeks made him realize that if he didn't hurry, he was going to miss the flight to Australia.

He got up and put his jacket on. Picking up the black duffel bag, he slung its strap over his shoulder and took another look at the angel painting. Was she right? Was it the work of a twisted mind? Or did it show that, deep inside; she was a romantic that refused to admit it? The words of advice she'd given him made him think that she was probably the latter.

Locking the door, he left the apartment and started to his car. His hand played with the necklace he was carrying in his pocket and he considered her words of warped wisdom concerning love:

'In the words of the great Harlan Ellison, love ain't nothing but sex misspelled. If that's true, then I've no chance in hell. You, on the other hand, Darien, have a chance to change it for yourself. Stop being a fucking coward and do something about how you feel.'

Chapter 4

In the air:

On the plane, he'd found out what cheap seats really meant.

Actually, they all had. Managing to have gotten three seats in coach at the last minute during a very busy part of the travel season----especially with the upcoming Olympics---the Agency had gone the way of the budget.

Darien wondered if he should count them lucky for having gotten seats apart from one another. They sat in a line, one in front of the next. Upon discovering this, he had whispered to his Keeper that it was all part of the conspiracy.

She'd not been terribly amused.

Now, an hour into the flight to Australia's international airport at Sydney, with his bag under his feet, Darien was cramped up from having his knees pressed by the seat in front and from the strain of not having elbowroom. He'd gotten the first seat, with the Keeper behind him, and Hobbes behind her.

Despite his exhaustion, he couldn't sleep. It was too hot to breathe. He'd taken his jacket off and scrunched it down behind him, but even in his shirtsleeves, it was nearly unbearable. It was like the jeans and the red polo soaked up the body heat of everyone on the plane---or at least, in coach.

Turning his head as the stewardess passed, he checked out everyone in the near vicinity. Many were either resting the best they could, or like him, listless. It was a lifetime before they would arrive in Sydney.

His mind kept returning to the journal that lay in the top of his bag. Finally, sure that the people on either side of him weren't paying any attention, he'd worked an arm down between his drawn-up knees.

Unzipping the carry-on, he lifted the book and slid it to his lap. Maybe he'd be able to rest once he'd actually started reading the words written in it. He was more than curious to know if Kevin had put any of the secrets to the quicksilver gland within the pages.

Darien opened it and looked at the poem again. It was a sad poem, but full of hope. Below it, the first entry was listed as being just over four years before, in '96, when Harmony was only sixteen. He began reading. It wasn't an hour before he found himself drowsy enough to think about trying to sleep again.

Reaching the end of an entry, he yawned. Most of what he'd seen so far, he skipped through, scanning. Most of what he was seeing was his brother's thoughts about what he'd been doing and how it could be used for the good of mankind.

In fact, as he leafed through the journal, scanning, most of it did seem to be about the work Kevin had been doing. There were mentions, here and there, of more personal matters, but for the most part, the journal seemed to be mainly about work.

So far, though, he'd not found anything that pointed to a possible solution to the problem.

Darien started skipping ahead, passing whole pages of entries. Here and there was mentions of family members, work that Kevin had been doing, things he'd been thinking about, and the mentions of trips made. He didn't pay much attention to any of it, preferring to scan for certain words---like quicksilver and gland.

Finally, coming to a passage that caught his eye, he widened his eyes to come fully awake and read it several times to make sure he was getting it right. Harmony's name and a few other words had jumped off the page at him just before he'd started to close the book, intending to sleep for the rest of the flight.

"When I spoke to Harmony about this, she laughed and said that there was more to it than I understood. She wouldn't elaborate, but something tells me she is bearing a grudge against me for something. I really must take time and talk to Ciara about this before I leave to go back to the US; perhaps I've inadvertently hurt my friend's feelings. I don't know."

Darien smiled; he could hear Kevin's voice, as if he were there, saying it out loud.

Scanning above this, he looked for the reference to what his brother had spoken to the girl about. Harmony would've been eighteen, according to the date for the entry.

He found it. A reference to her developing sexual behavior, something not unforeseen considering her age and several things, only vaguely mentioned, that had been found. Reading carefully, the words made him want to turn around and look at his Keeper, to see what she was doing.

Scooting around sideways in his seat the best he could in the cramped conditions, he watched her for a moment as she leafed through some computer print-out pages and made a note on one with the pen she held; it scratched over the paper as she pressed downwards on the book that she'd braced them on. As he watched, she rubbed the tension spot between her brows.

Wasn't she going to rest today, while she could? Her forehead was creased with concentration and her eyes moved over the printout that she was reading. More notes were made and Darien turned back around, to look at the passage he'd just read again.

"There is some proof that a more intimate relationship has developed between Ciara and Harmony. I visited last month, for a week, and there was no sign of such a relationship, but now, during this visit, I have been informed, after finding evidence, that Ciara has taken Harmony as a lover. During a check-up I did, to chart the furthering illness in Harmony's cells, I found physical marks that indicated sexual maturity. She confessed and I confronted her Keeper about the things I had been told. I disapprove, but considering what my two friends have presented me with, what can I do? The alternative would be to remove her from the house. I have agreed to allow this relationship, against my own wishes and beliefs. This development isn't unusual and since she has become legally an adult, there's nothing wrong with the idea. I only wish circumstances could be different. It really bothers me. Many times, a long-term situation like this turns very personal, as my own experience has proven. It could be worse---but now, Harmony is secretive. I wonder if such a thing is healthy for her, since she's chosen to have such a relationship with the person responsible for her well-being. Before now, she felt free to tell me anything she thought and felt, as friend and as her doctor. Since last month, there's been a dramatic change."

Reading this, Darien rolled his eyes and sighed. Kevin had been a great genius, but he had been dense when it came to recognizing subtle details in other people's natures. He'd missed the truth, unfortunately, about Arnaud, and it looked like he'd missed the truth about Harmony.

"Kev, you should've been paying attention---" He whispered and went back to following his finger along the lines of tiny, ink-written script.

"She holds herself distant and instead of telling me about what she'd been doing for a month, Harmony has done nothing but ask questions about the new work I've been doing. I am happy she wants to know about the studies and research of the new project, but I am concerned for her mental state. This is very different behavior from what she exhibited only a month ago. Silence in her is indicative of hiding, as it is with many others. I fear I have done something to upset her, destroying the strong trust relationship we have built. There are other issues involved, but again, what can I do about it? It's not something I'm prepared to deal with yet."

Looking around again to make sure no one was paying any attention, Darien sighed again and rubbed his own forehead and then laid his cheek in the palm of his hand. His brother had missed the proverbial boat at that point----had it ever come to light for Kevin that the young woman had been confused at that point about how she felt for him? He hoped that somewhere, in the journal, he would find some mention of his older brother having figured it out----the reality couldn't have gone unnoticed.

In the first really private conversation he'd had with Harmony, upon coming to check on her for Ciara, he'd found her crying. This was something he'd not counted on---not from Lab Rat. He'd let himself in and gone up to the apartment with the intention of only looking in on her and then leaving, to go home and have a beer before it was time to hit the hay.

What he'd found going on in the apartment had made him wish he'd been checking on her for the 'first' two weeks that Ciara Mackenzie had been away on assignment. Apparently, the time alone had not been good for the young woman. Without her partner, she had turned her thoughts inwards, beginning the process of gnawing on her own soul with the pressure of the solitude.

It had been a side of her that he'd not suspected. She seemed so self-accepting and able to deal with anything. Some hidden guilt or pain had worked its way to the surface during the quiet moments and she'd been defenseless to stop the sense of self-loathing. Her own meditations had failed and Harmony had taken up the job of destroying herself internally.

Harmony had been sitting cross-legged on the couch, dressed as if ready to sleep. She'd been wiping her eyes, as he'd hit the top of the stairs as silently as he could go. Invisible, he'd watched her reading a piece of paper as she bit at her thumbnail. And then, she'd laid the paper on her knee, scrubbed at her face with the palms of both hands until the skin of her cheeks was red and swelling, and then closed her eyes.

He'd spoken to her, asking if she wanted to talk about it. But, instead of launching herself at him with a murderous intent, like she should've, Harmony Corwin had just kept her eyes closed and shook her head no.

"Go home, Guinea Pig." It was all she'd said, at first...but later, after he'd ordered her something to eat from the diner around the corner, she'd said plenty.

Harmony had finally told him what the tears were for. She'd not been eating very much and she'd been listlessly refusing to talk to Claire about what was on her mind. There had been some problems with blood tests---Harmony had refused to let anyone draw blood and that meant that all the work on the new serum had to stop.

This meant that the saturation levels in her brain were rising and she was going to get sicker because she needed the new serum due to the way her body was absorbing and becoming immune to the old one. He'd been told that she was a possible liability when upset, which is why the Keeper had talked to Ciara, who'd called him from around the world to ask the favor of him. Fearing for her health, the two women had asked him to see if Harmony would respond more favorably to his presence.

She'd been having really bad headaches and Harmony said she was missing Kevin again; she'd wanted to talk to the doctor who'd saved her life and been her friend for so long. Harmony told him, over some apple pie, that she'd dreamed about the dead scientist again. It was an on-going thing; from time to time, she had very detailed dreams. They always seemed to come when she was on her own for a while. He'd noticed that she seemed to be having trouble focusing at times---she said it was okay, that was normal.

And what the girl had told him wasn't such a shock. He'd had to badger her, tease her, and coerce her into talking. Once she'd gotten past the need to keep it all a secret, she'd been able to tell him a few things about the last ten years...but she'd never mentioned torture at the hands of the man who had taken on the responsibility, like Kevin, to help her. And the terrorist and the young woman herself only knew the details of anything Arnaud De Thiel had done to her.

Reading his brother's journal entry dealing with the same subjects---love and sex---as the one that Harmony Corwin had given him to think about, Darien wondered what had been the kicker for Harmony----what had been the deciding factor that had driven her to take comfort in her Keeper's arms?

Shutting the book, he knew that if they didn't get her out of the compound at Snake Bay, then the journals were the last link to what he'd been told about her life before coming back to America. They would be the last links to the brother he was only now really getting to know, through the written word. Not even the things Maggie Celo had told her had been as intensely detailed. But, then, Maggie hadn't wanted to talk about the past. He never told Maggie, in the letters, about what he was slowly finding out.

He never told her about the young, blue eyed woman who had come to the States and to the Agency for help. He never told her about the fact that she hadn't been the only one in the lab, in Kevin's life. There was too much grief in what Maggie told him already. To give Kevin's one-time charge and Kept the truth he now knew would only cause her more pain. Seemed that nobody had known all of his brother's secrets. He hadn't told Harmony anything, either. The pain she'd been going through was big enough to keep his mouth shut.

As a friend, he knew Harmony needed him to talk to---he was the closest thing she had to Kevin Fawkes anymore and the similarities in their physical conditions---experiments---had made it easy, she'd admitted, to tell him the things she'd been keeping from Ciara and from Claire. She had been reluctant to talk to him about any of it, but he'd insisted she could say anything she wanted. And she had, opening up a line of dialogue that had crossed from being about her to being about him.

She'd said things that should have made her blush or cry more, but she'd handled it all well, once she knew he was serious about hearing her side of the story.

That first night's conversation hadn't been long---only an hour or two had been used. But, it had certainly made him sit up and take notice of the things he missed the most about his brother----she missed those same things and more. The other things that had happened between them that night…had changed the way he looked at Harmony Corwin.

He put the large book away and got the CD out. Harmony had painted to this music---using headphones. Her hands and her body had moved in time to the sounds of it, creating instead of destroying. Darien had seen her dancing, to many types of music, but this one---this CD had been the one that had defined the first nightly visit he'd made to the apartment over the bookstore. That had been the night---and the morning---when she'd finally convinced him at last to consider what he was hiding from himself.

Putting his headphones on, he began to listen to the sounds of the music that had played in the background of their conversation. It made him wonder what his own partner was doing. Was Hobbes reading like his companions, or was he sleeping?

The things she'd had to say about Bobby Hobbes had been chasing themselves around in his brain ever since. It'd only been two weeks of talk, but she'd made a lot of sense. He knew she was right about it, but he didn't see any way to make the first move to talk to the older agent about how he felt inside.

Harmony's face, sleepy and glowing in the morning light, came to mind and he remembered the thing she'd said to him after he'd done his best to help her get past the sense of loneliness and isolation that had brought her to her emotional knees before him. It had been the first in a series of conversations that they'd had about Hobbes.

'It's not love, Darien. It's a one-time thing...but it's different with Bobby, right? That's the one you were thinking of.'

He closed his eyes and let the music take him back to the night where the situation had changed so dramatically...the night he'd realized how he felt about his partner.

@@@

Sleep came and brought dreams that became nightmares. Darien startled awake several times, to find himself still safe on the plane with the music playing in his ears softly. He'd slept while they crossed over the International Date Line. It had been after noon when they'd left California. Now, it was many hours later and a whole new day as well.

Looking around as the plane began its descent to Sydney, he took a moment to change the time on his watch. Darien worked his jaw around a little to let the air pressure pop freely. He'd automatically checked his monitor. More than safe, it was almost completely green. The last shot he'd gotten was two days past---and it had been the morning when he'd been confronted by his partner about where he'd been spending evenings the last two weeks. He'd made a remark to Bobby Hobbes that it wasn't that way---but he'd not gone into details. Hobbes wouldn't have understood, he knew.

"Weren't you just head over heels about Doctor Kate? What about Mags?" Hobbes had been sarcastic about what looked like a change in affections. Darien had not wanted to go into trying to tell the agent what had been going on for over two months now, since before Kate Easton. It would lead to explaining the discussions he'd had with Harmony about both Kate and Casey O'Clare...and he didn't want to go there.

"It's not like that, Hobbes. I've been keeping Harmony company." He'd tried to explain, but it hadn't done any good. His partner had ribbed him about it unmercifully. "Ciara said she gets weird when she's alone for too long."

"And what do you keep her company with? Words?" The look his partner had given him made his heart hurt. It had been cynical and difficult.

He'd tried to forget Kate like he'd worked to forget Casey. And dealing with the letters full of hidden misery from Maggie hadn't made him want to talk too much about how he felt about anybody. It hadn't been easy, but he'd moved on where both female doctors and his fellow experiment, Maggie Celo, were concerned.

Casey had, very quickly, given up on him again...it had been no time at all before she'd told him in no uncertain terms, that she couldn't deal with this new part of him and that it had been a mistake to think she could. She'd never even tried to re-kindle the relationship that had been dampened by Darien getting busted by the security guards in the retirement community. Any trust she had in him had been ruined and he'd lost her for a second time.

He didn't want to talk about it with Hobbes. Darien trusted his partner, but he knew, in his gut, that his partner didn't trust him enough yet to hear what might spill from his heart and soul. Harmony might have some idea of the truth, but she couldn't have known all of what he saw when he looked at the older, more experienced agent.

"As a matter of fact, yeh. She just wants to talk about my brother, that's all." It was a half-lie that had been easy to tell. He'd been far from ready to tell Hobbes what they'd actually been talking about. How would his partner take it if he knew that he himself had been a major topic of the long conversations they'd had?

Now, the plane was landing. They'd officially hit Australia and the next flight was only minutes away. The second plane was smaller and would carry the three of them and their carry-on bags to Darwin, in the northern territories. Hurrying, they'd made the plane with only a minute to spare. It was indeed cooler in this part of the world. Darien was glad he'd worn his jacket and wondered if it was going to be enough.

Seated between Hobbes and his Keeper, he'd studied the ceiling of the plane for a long time and wondered about the rest of the journal he'd been reading. It was a story, told by his brother, that he'd never been privy to before. It wasn't like he was robbing Kevin or Ciara by reading the thoughts that had been put to paper. He desperately tried to believe that Kevin would have wanted him to know these things.

Looking at his blonde Keeper, he watched her as she stared out the window for a moment, biting her lip. She'd then bent her head to write something else on the papers she'd been working sporadically at since boarding the plane in the States. He didn't think he should pry, but he took a glance over her shoulder to see what she'd written. A mathematical equation stared back at him in black and white, underscored by a pen mark.

"What does that mean?" Darien watched as she lowered the pen and her green eyes met his gaze. She had slept some on the first flight, unable to keep her eyes open any more, but she still looked tired.

"It is a set of ratio figures dealing with the level of hormones in the blood I took from Harmony last night." Her eyes moved, searching his face and then she went on, at his nod.

"I took blood, ran a blood hormone ratio test on the particular hormones that are affected by the serum, and then set the sample up for a full comprehensive before I administered the test serum. The results were finalized before we boarded the plane." Darien saw the gears turning in her mind, behind her eyes. Something about the report was bothering her.

"And you've been working hot and heavy on it ever since." He looked down at the papers with their computer-printed numbers and strange abbreviations. "So, you wanna explain why it's got you worried?"

"I'm not worried about this, mate." She forced a smile. "I'm worried for Harmony."

"I know." It was as close as he could come to admitting how concerned he was for the young woman he'd come to understand on a deeper level. "We're gonna get her out, Claire. I know it. We'll just sneak in and take her right out from under that bastard's nose."

She turned her head away for a few moments, during which Darien looked at Bobby Hobbes, who was leaned back in his seat, eyes shut. He couldn't tell if the agent was actually sleeping or if it was a fake. Didn't matter, he knew. As long as his partner was there, by his side, he felt like he could keep a hold on his own emotions.

"Tell me about the blood results."

His Keeper brought her eyes back to gaze at him, in silent thought. Then, she looked down at the printout that she'd written notes all over.

"I need some information from you before I disclose what is in this report." The smile she offered him was full of the trust she had been giving him from day one. "In the time you spent with Harmony, did she tell you what she does when she's not with one of us?"

Darien didn't understand at first, but as realization hit him, he took a deep breath. "It's the alcohol, right? She's been drinking, I know. Can that show up?"

His Keeper nodded. "Yes, there were small levels of the metabolized sugars in her blood that would indicate that she'd been drinking recently. Have you actually seen this?"

He thought about the things he'd seen her do and nodded. "Yeh, she's had a few drinks in the last two weeks. Would that hurt her?"

"Not necessarily."

He let his breath out in a sigh. It was a weight off his mind. When she'd done it the first time, he'd been mildly upset and he'd watched her every time after---hoping that it would have no real adverse effects on her blood's hormone balance.

His Keeper nodded and smiled at the sound of relief he made. "I'm sure she was simply experimenting. She does other things, Darien, that show up in her blood, but she's always been careful with what she puts into her body. Don't look so worried, mate. Our friend likes keeping control over her body too much to lose herself to an addiction."

He knew this, too, without being told. It was something they had in common. A loss of control brought mistakes and mistakes could bring death. Harmony had been taught a sense of self-control that made him curious about the training she'd been through.

"Tell me what else is on that report." Darien nodded downwards towards the thin paper printout and pushed the memory of the hazy, soft look that Harmony Corwin had possessed the night she'd cried herself sick in his arms.

"Has Harmony told you anything at all about a social life? You told me before that she misses Agent Mackenzie and that she's been dealing with her grief lately. I know these to be normal points in her adjustment, but could she be seeing someone that I don't know about?" Her eyes moved over his face in another search and he heard the subtle, deepening change in her accent, as her professional mask slipped a bit.

Darien Fawkes shook his head no. "Nothing she's told me about."

He moved his hand to take the papers from under her hand. Before he could do so, she shuffled them together and slid them into the briefcase she held on her lap. He knew for a fact that it was where she'd stored the components for his counteragent and the things she'd need to care for Harmony if---no, when---they found the young woman.

"It's nothing then. Just a few hormones out of their normal balance. Considering the upheaval her life has taken in the last months, it wouldn't be an unknown factor." Her voice suggested that she was going to drop the subject now; that this conversation was over, even though she was still disturbed. Darien watched her as she used a finger to push her hair back from her ear on one side.

He couldn't let it drop yet. She'd not told him what was bothering her so much---there was more to it than wondering about Harmony possibly acting out her fears in new ways.

"This has happened before---the balance has been wrong? What about the trials you were running?" It suddenly occurred to him that something was desperately out of place. If Harmony's body had been going through a new change, then the serum that had been given to her could be wrong for her chemistry.

"I won't know for sure until I see her, mate, but I looked at the comprehensive blood test results and it looks like she might be in trouble." His Keeper's tone was lighter, but he saw the worry that remained, accenting her sultry features. She frowned then, as if considering something, and didn't say anything else.

"Trouble? Don't you think the rest of us should know about all this before we go in after her?" Darien leaned towards his Keeper, to catch her eye before she could turn away, to stop the conversation.

"I'm sure it's nothing, Darien. A few of her body's natural chemicals are higher than they should be and another, altered chemical, has dropped far below the normal ratio. They're severely out of balance with each other and they shouldn’t be. It wasn't obvious in the first test I ran before I administered the trial dose of the test serum. It shouldn't affect her much since she doesn't…have a sexual relationship anymore, but she might need a shot of inhibitors and anti-seizure serum before the five days are over."

"Come on, Claire, spill it. What exactly are we looking at? Is she going to trip on Arnaud before we get there or what?" Darien tried to whisper it, pressing the matter while putting his hand on the briefcase. If he had to, he would take it from her, he knew. If something was seriously wrong, then he needed to know it---they all did, before they tried to go in after her. It might mean stepping up the pace.

She looked past him, to study Bobby Hobbes' face for a moment before she brought her curious gaze back to him. The expression on her face made his skin feel too tight. It was as if she could see into his soul in that moment and it made him want to squirm. His Keeper didn't look away from him as she snapped the lock on the briefcase and took the papers back out. She laid them down on the flat surface.

"See this sequence?" Her index finger moved over a line of blue numbers that ran under a line of black numbers. Among the numbers, there were three that were bolder than the others, as if to bring them to the reader's attention quickly. They were the ones that she'd underscored twice.

Her finger moved over them, to follow along the black ones now, as she went on. "These are natural, non-frameshifted hormones. These mean that they are the ones that were never altered and were the ones that never responded to a genetic change of any kind."

Darien looked at the black numbers and then the blue numbers. The blue numbers were higher than the black numbers. "Okay. I see that, but what does the black numbers represent?"

"The first sets of numbers represent what her hormones 'should' have read during Phase Three of her normal cycle. They are the control that has taken years to establish, but since Harmony's not having normal cycles anymore, these are only subjective figures. The blue numbers represent what her actual blood hormone ratio count is---which can fluctuate from time to time, but rarely does it go over the control ratio at Phase Three." She looked up then, meeting his eyes again. "The natural, non-frameshifted hormones are the ones that are causing her body to resist the serum."

He broke the stare and looked down at the hormonal abbreviations and the sets of numbers that indicated a higher than normal ratio had been reached just before the trial serum had been injected. It had been unknown and unguessed at before the tests had started.

"Can those three change how the new inhibitor stuff you gave her works?" He studied the abbreviations, trying to figure out what they meant.

"Unfortunately, yes. The serum I researched and came up with was based on her normal, cycle-to-cycle ratios, according to an average count that I compiled. Any thing below the controls would be fine. A few points above the control would be fine, but I fear that the higher level seen here could be devastating to her balance and her health."

When Darien looked up again, it was with confusion. He didn't understand some of what she'd said. What had happened? Why hadn't she seen it coming before giving the test shots to the young woman?

"What'll happen to Harmony? Is she gonna be okay when we get there?" When she didn't answer him, he spoke again, more urgently. "Claire?"

"She could be in real trouble, mate. Her body will probably reject the serum, but it will also work to lower the hormone levels on it's own. This could have an effect on the things that are changing in her chemistry. The hormones responsible for the changes will be forced down by her body's immune system. Whatever's causing the balance distress in her chemistry will be eliminated." He watched as her face went pink with a strong emotion that she worked to keep from being obvious.

Darien looked at the other numbers, so close to being identical across the page, studied the differences between the natural hormone's figures, and then frowned. "What would cause such a change after so much time?"

She didn't answer at first, but when she did, it was not really addressed to him. "I wish I had some way of checking this against the files on her early treatments. There has to be something that could tell me about what's really going on in Harmony's body. I know about the surgeries, but this new development seems to point at something having gone wrong. But I know of no way to get her records before we land. I can call the Official then and have him fax her full medical background to the safe house."

It was speculatively said. He turned again to study his partner, who still slept peacefully beside him. It was a comfort to know at least part of his new world hadn't turned itself upside down.

"Why, what are you looking for?" He said, quietly, as he brought his attention back to the woman who sat on the other side of him, still staring at the seat in front of them. They were squeezed in tight, but not so badly as they'd been on the flight over the ocean. She sighed deeply and her shoulder brushed his arm. Darien watched her slowly shake her head.

"I need a way to re-read exact details of what your brother did to Harmony in his attempts to slow her cellular functions' deterioration. I know the surgeries that were done, but I need exact facts about how he did the work. There seems to have been some damage done to her cellular make-up along the first set of frameshifts that deal with certain, very important functions of the human body, as well as a hormone difference that I can't understand. It could make the difference. I know that Agent Mackenzie sent you after a book that held certain information, but it's probably not the one I need..."

Her voice faded and he saw the way her eyes had focused on something unseen before her as she sat, in deep thought. Darien took a deep breath and readied himself for the truth he needed to tell.

"Actually, there were two journals and I brought them both. Maybe the first one has got something you can use before we land." He bent and dug through the black duffel bag, keeping his head down so that he wouldn't see the look of shock or even possible anger that might be on her face at finding out he'd lifted the other journal without permission. "What do you think could be wrong? Maybe something Kevin knew about?"

Looking up, he handed the book he'd hidden below his change of clothes over to her. He saw the sharp, clinical look in her eyes again as she took it. She was reserving judgment on him. His Keeper glanced over his shoulder at Hobbes, leaned in close, and whispered into his ear. Her breath tickled his skin but he didn't rub at the offended part as it sunk into his brain the meaning of what she'd said. He felt his heart drop into his shoes and his eyes widened.

"Oh, crap."

Chapter 5

In Snake Bay, Arnaud's Compound:

"Open it and stand back, Mao Sanrui."

The voice was approaching and she stilled her breath to listen to the footsteps. It was what she feared. Her enemy had gotten his hands on her, as he'd sworn he would one day. After hearing no voices for a few hours, she'd started to think maybe he had abandoned her somewhere to die.

Last thing she could hear anyone say had been in Chinese---something about it being after dawn. She'd been in the box forever, it seemed. A day?

With a grinding, ripping sound, the wooden crate she'd been put in was pried open slowly. The nails squealed in protest as the crowbar was put to work. Slivers of light began to form at the corners of one side as pieces of the pressboard fell away under the steel lever.

She'd been in the box when she had come back to consciousness. Staying quiet, she'd held herself still for most of what seemed to be a day's worth of being jostled and moved inside the crate. It was a shipping box from looking at the inside.

The hay she'd been sitting on had gotten dirty----it had been used to transport a foul animal before it was implemented to take her from an unseen Point A to the Point B, where she was now. The box had been dark, but not completely, as a haze of light had filtered through the air holes and the cracks.

When she'd seen Jonathan, she had known what was going on---Arnaud had plotted and sent his men to find her. He'd known where she was and how to get his men past all security measures to take her right from Lab 1.

In her mind, she kept seeing the Keeper's face, in pain, as Jonathan had squeezed down on the woman's wrists and reminded Harmony that the woman wasn't vital---she could be killed, if necessary.

What had been done after she'd been thrown backwards, she feared she might never discover. She'd slid fast into unconsciousness and for the entire ride in the crate, she'd wondered if Claire was still alive.

She'd mourned without tears.

Unconscious when they'd put her in the crate, she had no idea of where they'd brought her, but it had been a long trip in what seemed like a couple of airplanes and then the back of a truck that had jounced over rough roads.

Harmony had slept most of the journey through the air. For some time, though, she had been awake, and she'd become aware of the cold air coming through the air holes. She'd not bothered to press her eye to any of them, preferring to keep still as much as possible.

Her bladder was full and aching. She was very thirsty. It was like being trained for the Box as a child all over again. Physical endurance was a strong point with her, so she'd handled it like she'd handled being jounced. Until she reached the destination and was let out, she'd keep her judgments to herself.

Now, the box was open. The side fell, slamming to the ground with a sound that fully roused Harmony. Squinting against the bright light, she found a figure standing before her, only a few feet outside the box.

Without a sound, she used the tensed muscles she'd been squatting on and jumped at him. The light hurt her eyes, burned them like hot pokers going into her brain. Carrying her prey downwards, she felt his sudden release of breath as they hit the floor.

He was a young, punk Asian who fought her grip. Crouching atop him, Harmony felt his ribs creaking in the second before she lifted her hand in a knife shape. Driving downwards with the blade of her stiffened fingers, she heard with satisfaction his larynx crunch inwards under the blow.

Coming back to her feet in a quick sweep, she stared around and found his companion. While the one who was probably Mao Sunrui was dying on the ground, she began to stalk towards the smaller man. He stood, shaking, with a gun trained on her. He, too, was Chinese, as his voice gave him away.

"Yao niang guai!" He yelled, his eyes wide and scared. The gun shook unsteadily in his hands as he tried to back away from her. Harmony moved towards him, smiling. The idea that he thought her a baby monster or young devil was appropriate. She'd not entered madness, but it was worse----she wanted his death in cold-blood.

There was no shame behind what she wanted now, despite the things she had been taught to believe. Cold blooded murder or not, he had a gun. That made this self-defense.

Still creeping towards him on her bare feet, she lowered her head and grinned bigger at him from under the tangled hair hanging into her eyes. He screamed at her to back away and she laughed softly, squinting to focus. As satisfying as his partner's death had been, this one would be better. He had time to see what was coming.

Feigning sideways, Harmony saw the fear in his eyes growing as he dodged in the opposite direction. It was almost as if the moment couldn't be set up better for her---he moved like this was just a training exercise. Jumping at him, she wheeled up into the air and brought him down with a wide swipe with her leg as she landed, practically on top of him.

He screamed one more time as she bent her knee into his chest and took his head in her hands under the sides of his jaw. A look of panic crossed his shriek-tightened face and he tried to get the gun up between them, to shoot her.

Wrenching hard upwards, she twisted the head that struggled to move from under her fingers. She felt the bones of his neck pop and grind, as they broke free of the disc moorings that held them together.

The scream was gone. His eyes were blank.

Back on her bare feet, she stood over him and studied the suddenly silent form.

Applause. The sudden sound of flesh slapping flesh made her turn slowly. She knew he was there; somehow, she'd known unconsciously that Arnaud had seen the entire thing.

"Bravo. You do such great work. It's like sex-death art." He said it with a deliciously nasty laugh. His green eyes were cold. It was the face that she had pinned to a mental door and shot full of emotional holes in the months since she'd seen him last. His accent slid over the praise like oil over water.

"I can smell the fear coming off of you, De Thiel." She used his last name. Her eyes had finally adjusted and she clenched her hands to loosen them up again. Harmony began a slow approach towards him.

He slowly walked, as if unafraid, around the other side of the crate. He'd been behind it when she'd been released, and now, he was keeping it between them. It was not so tall that she lost sight of him. He'd seen everything she'd done just as easily as she could see nearly every move he made now.

The air was cold and without taking her eyes off him, she looked around. It was a room of metal about the size of the laboratory at the Federal Annex building. The floor was ice under her feet, made of steel sheets that ran together with only the tiniest cracks. The lights were bright, reflecting like diamonds on the smooth surfaces, and the dark suit that her enemy wore contrasted harsh against the glare of steel walls and floor.

Dr. Arnaud De Thiel looked much the way he had the last time she'd seen him, many months ago. Cool, professional, handsome, and as deadly as Harmony in his intent. And she hated him more now than she ever had at seventeen.

"A sensible man fears the power of a nature not his own until he has mastered it. I can pride myself on being sensible." His voice never changed in tone. He was calm---despite the flicker of fright that she could see appear in his face as she took each new step.

"You can also pride yourself on being my next kill. Remember that promise I made you?" Taking a larger step, she circled the box at a close polar opposite from him.

Now, she had come to her original point and watched him as he stepped backwards over the body of the first man she'd killed in some time. It had felt good to wield the strength she'd been taught to use for destruction.

Adrenaline pumped through her, making her itch and burn inside as the hormones raced to bring her cells' changed nature into focus. She kept the invisibility at bay.

Harmony didn't want to sneak up on her prey this time. She wanted him to see it coming; it had been everything she'd dreamed of for a while now. S he'd not be deprived of the pleasure of seeing the same panic on his face that she'd elicited from his men. If she had to die from her cells' inability to function normally, then he was going to hell before her.

"Of course I remember. What a pity you never keep those promises you keep making." Arnaud's smile was sharp and false. "I'm very curious right now. Tell me something, Harmony... Why do you feel the need to maim or kill my associates when you're very capable of controlling the impulses you feel?"

The tiny smile that curved the corners of his mouth at the edges became more honest. The coldness had faded from his features and he now looked younger, more like the medical student she'd been fooled by.

As pleasant and clinically intrigued as he sounded, she knew that the mind behind the friendly eyes and the gentle smile was more than willing to sacrifice anyone and anything in the pursuit of his goals. Arnaud was a monster, not unlike herself...he just did his dirty work a different way.

"I'm only warming up, mother fucker." She took a larger step again, cutting the distance from him by a third. They'd been steadily moving away from the box and the bodies since Arnaud De Thiel had stepped over the silent, still Mao Sunrui. "You won't feel a thing. Nothing past that first little prick."

She turned her tone and voice to match his, as it had sounded in her inner ear. The accent she mimicked was perfected, coming naturally to her. She'd spent many nights whispering to herself the things he'd told her in Neuchatel when they were alone, crying herself to sleep, wishing for what had been taken away.

"I have a proposition for you, Harmony." The edges of his smile were still genuine. "A very profitable one. You know that I'm not good at asking for things, so I thought perhaps you would enjoy my company long enough to conduct a small business transaction."

"Fuck you." She laughed, deep in her throat, still moving slowly towards him. "When I get done with you, business deals'll be the last thing you're worried about."

Arnaud gave a small, knowing laugh. "Time in America has had a terrible effect on your social skills. Perhaps a refresher course, as you would call it, is in order?"

"Oh, yeh...sounds like we both need to go back to school." Picking up her pace, she shot forward for the kill. Harmony watched him as he stood still, waiting for her. She saw the movement of his eyes as he looked past her and nodded.

Too late, she wheeled fast on the arches of her feet and was knocked to the floor by a body she didn't see in time. Once there, she saw the faces that bent near and felt the hands that held her still and the knees that pushed her to remain prone and open to attack.

Lifting her hips, she arched her back to come to her feet---to escape the larger bodies of the two men in suits who pressed her to the acre of steel floor.

One of the men straightened her left arm by force, holding her wrist tightly. Harmony saw the needle cap as it fell, hitting her in the chest and rolling to click on the surface beneath her body.

She began to yell, cursing the biochemist that had sent his lackeys to bring her to this place. Working her muscles in frantic jerks, trying to break their grip, she went on fighting the grasp of the hands on her.

"No! Fuck! Dammit, Arnaud---no!" She swung her head, to sink her teeth down into the knee that was pressed to her shoulder.

One of the hands released her long enough to bring stars to her eyes with the quick punch to her face. Eyes tearing up, she lost focus and she went on yelling, trying to make her words coherent in English and failing.

Her stream of profanity came out in French. "Encule! Canard!"

Total terror made her unable to form words now. It was what he was best at. He'd proved it once before---with the results that she'd do anything to get her hands around his throat to pay him back for inflicting the wounds he'd ripped into her subconscious.

There was a pinch in her inner elbow's soft skin, coming from the syringe. Her scream became hoarse as the needle slid in and then back out and she fought still yet to get loose. Not alive---they couldn't take her alive. Arnaud's face leaned down into view as she went blurry on the edges of her mind.

Harmony lost the grip she had on her voice and her mind went numb as her screams stopped, making the sudden silence overwhelmingly frightening to her.

"I believe we'll come to an agreement this time, Harmony." He deliberately thickened his French accent. "Your life depends on it, ma chere."

@@@

His Keeper was flipping pages in the first black book. It was a big journal, but she scanned dates on the pages. Darien sat, looking at her and thought about what she'd said. It wasn't possible, was it? Not all of it. It couldn't be.

"I thought Kevin did something about that." His voice was louder than he meant it to be. Cringing at the words he'd spoken, he lowered his tone. "I mean…that's what you said."

"Darien, I know how badly it upsets you. It makes things more complicated. It means we have less time to get Harmony out of that compound." His Keeper was quiet as she read down through some more entries, searching for some private knowledge that his older brother might have put in his journal about the procedures that had been performed on a girl just after her tenth birthday.

"No, it makes things damned near---Claire, she's not, she can't be." Shaking his head at her, he saw her eyes narrow in thought. Had she found something? He leaned over her shoulder and looked at what she was looking at. It was an entry from the time period when Harmony had been living in Lab 2. It mentioned the surgery.

"...a simple crimp plug was inserted. This will ensure that someday, she might lead a normal life, once I can discover how to reverse the genetic shift to ensure that saturation levels will return to normal. I'll be able to remove the crimps and allow her body to produce the secondary estrogen that enables a natural puberty. I watch her and wonder if that day will ever come. Could she be normal, even if the hormones weren't killing her? I wonder. I've run another test and it's now evidenced, by her genetic responses that she has a proverbial time bomb planted within her cells due to the secondary frameshifts that were done on her cellular ability. It has nothing to do with her adrenal cortex, from what I've been able to discern, but how her cells function and process the hormones could destroy her mind and body. The mitochondria are working too hard, too sporadically, causing her body to retain the by-products of hormone release. They are deteriorating so fast now that she's going to burn herself up from the inside."

Darien looked up at his Keeper and felt his blood grow cold in the veins. What did it mean? A simple crimp plug? Proverbial time bomb?

"What does that mean---time bomb?"

"I don't know for sure. I don't remember seeing anything about it in her files. It must have been something that your brother kept to himself, despite its obvious importance. Or, in another case, it might've been taken from the medical records by anyone who had access to them." She flipped the pages backwards, her eyes moving over the words. "I'm looking for a reference to something to do with those cellular tests he ran and what they were for."

"Claire, she can't be pregnant. You said yourself that the hormone levels have gone up like this before---so, it has to be something else---" He pointed at the book she held and frowned. "Maybe that time bomb Kev..."

His mind was shouting at him. How could he have been so stupid? What had seemed like a way to ease both of their momentary solitudes and the grief they'd both felt had bloomed into a disaster. They'd committed an act out of need to forget what was hurting them inside---and it looked bad now that he saw it from a new light.

"The progesterone levels could be what's causing the decay cycle to be sped up in her body, yes, but they are normally found in such levels only in pregnant women. Did she say anything to you about anyone she might be seeing socially? Men that she might date?"

"No, Claire---" He started to admit his guilt and shut his mouth. Gathering his thoughts, he looked at the journal again. She'd flipped through more pages, still going backwards. "I've seen her nearly every evening for the last two weeks. She's been alone when I get there... Harmony said she has a friend---a girl---that she hangs out with, but I don't think she's seeing anyone seriously. Not a guy, anyway."

He stopped as she looked up at him again. Her brow creased in thought and she spoke, her voice low again as she pointed to the entry she'd been reading. "According to this---Kevin didn't perform the surgery that was listed on the medical files. He chose to simply stop her system's heightened hormonal release by putting her reproductive system to sleep with a procedure that crimped her ability to release ovum every month."

Darien's sense of growing fear rose and he laughed. It was a harsh, nasty sound. "He hid the truth about this. Dammit."

He read over her shoulder again, finding the passages easy.

"It is only a matter of maybe four years before I will crack the code of how her genes are recreating the hormones. Once that is done, I can introduce an inhibitor that will clean the cell's mitochondria, allowing her body to release the by-product phagotoxins in a natural way as bonded with carbon dioxide. When the cellular function has been returned to a normal state, Harmony Corwin's body will no longer retain the altered epinephrine, NE-hormone in its dangerous state. Flushing the toxins would enable her genes and cells to return to a normal state of growth. She'll be able to continue puberty."

Sighing, his Keeper met his gaze again. "Your brother found out later that such a thing couldn't be done. It's in the reports. He found a way to inhibit the cellular destruction through the serum, but the results of more testing showed that she'd never be free of the chemicals her body accepted and learned to create on it's own. They're created in a part of her brain that resists change. Her body would suffer a central nervous system shutdown if anything were done to stop her adrenal gland from creating the altered hormone."

She paused, gave a small frown, and went on. "Harmony'll always be able to go invisible. What he wanted to do was find a way to chemically alter her DNA, enabling it to release the cellular by-products that her body can't pass naturally. His notes mentioned that the original research for the procedure that created the frameshifts was missing from her files, but no one ever found out what happened to it."

Darien felt his chest hurt as his heart jerked at that knowledge. Kevin Fawkes had done this, thinking to go back later, when she was able to live without the hormones, and fix the results of his surgery. What had his brother thought when he'd found out that there had been little that could be done? That the surgery he'd done couldn't be reversed because her body couldn't be allowed to complete a real puberty?

It looked like something had gone wrong. Somehow, her body was producing the estrogen necessary to ovulate. Somehow, she could now complete the cycle that most women took for granted. Something was going horribly wrong---the hormone, prolactin, that had altered her body's puberty, which kept her estrogen below normal levels, had fallen far below that normal level.

Now, it had come back to bite Darien on the ass.

All because he'd understood her loneliness and thought he might ease it just one night.

"Now, Darien, keep this to yourself. Do you understand? Nothing is certain until we find her. I have to examine Harmony---you're right, the high progesterone levels could be a reaction to the cellular malfunction in her cycle, but it seems unlikely." Her eyes were serious and he nodded, trying to convince himself that it could be only a sign of the time bomb, as Kevin had called it in his journal.

"What is that thing he called a time bomb?" He had to know more about it. It sounded like a reason to get Harmony out of that compound right now. If she was in worse trouble than just what Arnaud might do to her, then they really should prepare for the worst.

"I'm not sure. I need to read this journal and then read the other one, as well. There has to be something there---if he wrote this much on the matter, then he had to have covered the subject at least one other time." The plane passed through some clouds and the light that streamed in the window at her right cast shadows over her blonde hair and changed the shades of tan in her linen jacket.

The pilot's voice came then, telling the passengers that they would be crossing the border into the northern territories soon. They were officially in the northern hemisphere again, where it was a little warmer. The calm, even voice sounded bored when he announced that they'd also gone through another time zone. If they pleased, the passengers could adjust their watches. His Australian accent was polished as he added that Darwin was only an hour from their current position.

"Well, keep reading, Claire. I'm gonna get the other one and see what I can find." Darien pulled it free, feeling the smooth leather of the spine in his fingers.

If there was anything they needed to know about what could be happening to Harmony, it could be in either book. He had to know---he had to find out if there was a remote chance that the young woman's life was really in worse danger than from a terrorist who was using her as a tool to gain information.

One by one, he turned the pages, scanning them quickly. As he did, his mind went back to that first night, when he'd snuck in and found her crying. What had it really been about? Memory took over and he found himself back in the moment, two weeks ago, when she'd asked him the questions that had led to more questions and eventually, had led to talking about Bobby Hobbes.

He looked at his partner then. The older agent looked peaceful and innocent, sleeping away while Darien relived the night when this whole mess had really gotten started.

She'd sat cross-legged, on the crushed velvet of the couch. It had been an antique, bought to replace the brown one that had sat in her studio apartment when they met. The dark red of it had looked strange against the cream color of the boxer shorts she wore. Wiping at her face, she'd told him it didn't matter. She'd be okay.

'That's bullshit.' He'd sat down next to her and taken the pages from her fingers. She'd turned the letter loose easily. Darien had read it and felt miserable for what grief she was feeling. He, too, was still dealing with Kevin's death. And lately, his mind had been occupied by love and what it could do to him. What it had already done to him.

'You wanna talk about it?' He had suspected, nearly from the beginning, that the young woman had felt more for his older brother than just as a beloved friend or an authority figure. It had been in the way she'd trusted Darien so easily, when she didn't know him. With her past of not trusting anyone, particularly men, it had been remarkably easy for her to accept him.

In some way, he had come to represent Kevin to her. Or some part of Kevin.

'How did he die, Darien?' She had pulled her knees up to her chin at that point and wrapped her arms around them. He could see, then, the dark bruise on her inner arm where the Keeper had taken blood that morning. 'No one will tell me how he died.'

Harmony had been like a little, lost kid in that moment and he'd sighed, closing his eyes on her. In his mind, he'd seen his brother again, blood on his lips as he had gasped to drag air into lungs that had been punctured by bullets.

'You know how he died, Lab Rat. He was shot. He died in my arms.' He could hear, in his mind, Kevin's struggled attempts to speak, to breathe. Darien had clenched his fists tight to erase the image and opened his eyes to stare at her.

With tears still in her eyes, she'd laid her cheek on her bare knee and he saw the sob that twisted her mouth, but never made a sound. He had tried to dissuade her from pursuing the knowledge. 'We don't need to talk about this, Lab Rat. You're thinking too much.'

'I need to hear this, don't you see?' It came out, a whisper cut in half by the hard sound of her swallowing the sob that had threatened to break free of her swollen throat. Her eyes had been red, unfocused, and shiny with the tears that she'd gotten a hold on.

She was a very pretty woman, but the emotional hell she'd put herself through made her face like that of a child who'd been beaten down into the floor. She'd gone on to tell him. 'I don't have a home anymore and it's what I want. I'll never have home again. I'm alone again and I just wanna know what's coming for me.'

She'd swallowed again, and closed her eyes as she spoke. The tears had seeped from her lashes and her words were still whispered, as if she didn't trust herself to stay in control any more. Harmony had asked. 'Did he die okay? I mean, was Kev scared? Did he know it was coming? How, Darien? I gotta know...'

He'd not understood her words about being alone or what she'd meant about something coming for her---he'd not known at that point what had really been going on behind her eyes and what had been done to her heart. Darien had just not understood---this woman was so strong, why was she crying so hard? He'd not believed she could be anything but the sarcastic, overwhelmingly 'alive' experiment that she presented herself to be.

That had all been before she'd dropped the mask she wore and let him see what she'd shown no one else. Not even Kevin had probably seen the truth he'd been given in the last two weeks. It had shaken him to the bottom of his soul.

He'd told her of his brother's last moments; how he'd saved Darien by shoving him aside and taking the bullets in the chest. He'd told her of how Kevin had choked on his own blood. How he'd not been able to catch his breath. He'd paused when he saw her face go white as ice and her blue hazel eyes had gone soft with a knowing pain that he'd never seen in her before---the pain of her own memories of his older brother.

Darien had gone on to tell her of what Kevin had told him in those last moments, when his brother wouldn't stop trying to fight for breath to get his words out. How the scientist had become more than human in a single moment's time and he'd told her, watching her expression the whole time, of the gentle smile that had crossed that blood-splattered face. Kevin had been trying to tell him something and he told her he never had really been able to second-guess what the dying man had been trying to express.

She'd stopped crying. Her eyes had been peaceful, even with the red tint to them from hours of crying. It had torn him up to remember so much detail, but he'd given her Kevin's death. And it had helped her, somehow. He'd not known why or how.

'He saw my physical meltdowns, when there was no help for what was happening and it hurt him, Darien...I can remember how it seemed to scare him, watching me choke for air.' Her words had been louder, stronger. Whatever had been tormenting her seemed to have been laid to rest in some way. 'I can't hate him for this, you know.'

Darien hadn't understood that, but he'd let it ride, thinking that she'd explain with time.

'I ought to, but I don't. God...he didn't deserve to die like that. Not like that.' At the end, her words had faded again, and she'd watched him for long minutes before speaking again. Once the floodgates were opened, he had been helpless to stop what had come with her confessions. She'd been holding a lot of information in her heart.

'I loved him, you know.' And he'd nodded, thinking of her devotion to the faith Kevin Fawkes had professed to have in his friend, Songbird. He'd answered her by saying that he loved Kevin, too. She had shaken her head at him, sighing as she rubbed her bleary eyes with the backs of her hands like a small child who had stayed up too late. 'Not like you think, Guinea Pig. I mean, really loved him…'

She'd lifted her face from her knees and laid her head back on the couch's cushions. There was no embarrassment in her---no shame.

'I don't know if he ever knew it was the real thing. I told him so a few times, but he didn't seem to mind, so it must have kinda---' Her eyes had searched the ceiling for the words she couldn't find. 'Floated over him like clouds over the earth.'

'I think he did know, Harmony. I bet he did. It's kinda normal to get a crush on people you care about---especially on someone who's taken care of you.' He'd tried to pacify her sense of guilt, but it wasn't to be.

'No, I mean, I know things about what he'd done before that were wrong. And it didn't matter what he'd done to me, I loved him anyway.' Her eyes had met his then, as she'd rolled her head sideways, a sad smile on her full, curving lips. 'I know, it's sick.'

'Are you hungry?' Darien had worked to change the subject. His stomach had been ready to eat for hours. He'd bought a six-pack and left it in the car. He also had stopped to get dinner. It was getting cold on the passenger seat.

'No.' She'd smiled, her eyes crinkling upwards. 'But if you are, I can fix something.'

'No need. I have dinner waiting down in the car.' He'd gone downstairs and gotten it and when he'd come back, she'd changed the CD she had been listening to and gotten her face cleaned up. Harmony had pulled her hair back into a ponytail and she'd looked more like the young woman he'd come to think as being one of a kind. Her mask had been back in place.

Telling her a story about his childhood over a meal at the table, he'd been surprised to find himself actually enjoying the chance to share the past with someone. He'd thought it was not important---his childhood. But, she'd never had a real one. It all seemed like a dream to her: the chance to have a sibling, to ride a bike, to have a pet. She'd had none of this until she was almost twelve, having grown up in a laboratory and in a house devoid of family.

And instead of being saddened by these things, they'd laughed and carried on about the things he'd done with his brother that had been never shared anywhere else. Harmony had picked at his plate, eating a few bites here and there.

Finally, he'd gotten her to take some of her own and get some real food in her stomach. With a lowered blood sugar level, the hormones in her system would overload faster. She'd eaten and gone on, wide-eyed and laughing, listening to him as he had exaggerated some things that had happened.

At one point, he'd been talking, holding his beer and explaining something about an early bedroom science experiment that Kevin had done---chemicals had been mixed wrong---and how bad the house had stunk for weeks.

Harmony had reached out as he talked, taken the beer from his hand, and turned it up. She had drained the bottle and he'd stopped suddenly, aware of what had just happened.

'You shouldn't be drinking---you're not old enough to drink.' As he said it, he realized how much like a parent he sounded and had shut his mouth on what was coming next from him.

Darien's concern for her blood's balance would have caused her to shut herself up and the companionship she'd needed would be cut off from getting through. He'd recognized it early, from watching her with Claire and Ciara…she didn't like having people tell her what she already knew about her own body.

She lowered the bottle from her puckered lips and swallowed. A single drop of the brew lingered on her mouth, hanging in the corner of the fullness. Meeting his concerned look with a defiance that was more like the Harmony he'd come to know, she'd raised an eyebrow at him.

Her voice had come out in a whisper. 'That's funny. You sound just like Kevin…last time I saw him, he let me drink a beer with him. We stayed up all night and watched TV together on the couch…and talked about me coming back here, to live…'

It was all there had been to that part of the evening. They'd gone on to talk about Claire and Ciara. She'd explained the relationship and it got so complicated that he couldn't believe she had simply stepped aside for the Keeper. But, she'd finally told him that the physical end of the relationship between her and Ciara had ended when she started college in Neuchatel, Switzerland, where she'd been living.

What she'd told him was--- 'They deserve it and considering what I've got going for me, it's for the best. You ever been loved for pity? Two years of knowing you're being loved for pity kinda ruins it for you. Stay away from loving Keepers, especially your own.'

Still thinking about this, he'd looked up at his own Keeper and watched as she leafed through the earlier journal. Whatever it was that Ciara Mackenzie meant to Claire, it had done much to make her a more likeable person. And with the way Harmony had explained it to him, it had made sense to let the two women alone, even if he felt some shred of resentment for the fact that these events had wounded the twenty year old.

And that had been before he'd asked her to tell him how she realized that her love for Kevin had changed. Harmony had told him, trying not to cry, about falling in love when she was too young to do anything about it. That she'd been aware her doctor and friend could never return her affection.

When she'd finally cried about it, the break had come when she had told him she was miserable cause she'd never gotten to know what his arms felt like. She'd dreamed of knowing love from him---but that she hated having never had a chance to tell him what she felt with every cell of her being. She'd never been with a man. Ever. She had held off on that part of her physical life…because of Kevin.

In holding Harmony, letting her cry it out, things had changed…

He went back to searching for references to genetic time bombs and surgeries done to only momentarily sterilize a ten-year-old girl. His sense of guilt for having let Harmony get under his skin that way, even if only for a few hours, had grown since he'd understood the meaning of the hormonal changes in her last blood tests. What the hell had he done by trying to erase their mutual frustrations? He'd wanted it just as much as her---but now it seemed his reasons had been just as screwed up as hers.

Darien sighed and looked at Bobby Hobbes again and found the man watching him, finally awake. His heart jumped painfully against his ribs. The older agent's brown eyes were narrowed in thought.

"What?" He turned his back to the Keeper and leaned in close to Hobbes, whom was staring at him as if he'd crawled out from under a rock.

His partner pushed his seat back to an upright position and leaned close as well. Practically nose-to-nose, Hobbes' expression hadn't changed. "I want to see you alone right now."

With that, Bobby Hobbes had stood up and walked to the back of the plane. Darien sighed, laid the journal down in the seat, and made his way to meet his partner. In just his shirtsleeves, Hobbes' arms were folded against his chest in a thoughtful manner, but the look on his face told Darien that his partner had a serious problem---it was written there in the expression of anger and disgust.

Alone, they faced each other.

"What's wrong, man?" Darien shoved his hands in his jeans' pockets and looked up over the heads of the tourists and the business people who had caught the flight.

"You really didn't just talk, did you?" Bobby Hobbes' expression didn't change. "I'd say you have got some real problems now, sport. You wanna be the one to tell a six foot tall ex-assassin that you knocked that kid up?"

Darien ducked his head. Damn. His partner hadn't been sleeping. Hobbes had heard most of the conversation between him and his Keeper about Harmony. When he looked up, he watched the older agent's face drop as he sighed heavily.

"I can't believe you've done this. Dammit, Fawkes, you were supposed to just be checking in on her, not popping her one."

"It wasn't like that, Hobbes." He wondered how much he could say before he incriminated himself. "She was lonely, afraid, and missing my brother---she wanted someone to talk to."

"And you pushed it another step, huh?" His partner lowered his head and shook it, as if he couldn't believe how incredibly stupid Darien had been. "Boy, Junior, you really screwed up."

"I know...but we'll find a way to fix it. It could be nothing---it could be that genetic thing." He struck upon the idea. "I mean, if Harmony was---she'd say something, right?"

"Are you aware of what your Keeper is thinking? She thinks---" Hobbes pointed up the cabin of the plane to where her blonde head was bowed over the journal. "That kid's been doing stupid shit like playing peek-a-boo with some jerk-off. And that stuff about that genetic time bomb? You don't know what that means?"

Darien shook his head. "That's what we were looking for."

"Let me ask you something, hotshot. Did Harmony Corwin ever tell you what happens to her when her body can't take the crap going on? There has to be a cap on how much junk can happen before her body can't accept that serum, right?" Hobbes' voice was still angry and low. He was talking of a woman's life and it seemed to not bother him.

Darien saw the look in his partner's eyes, though, when he looked around again and met the shorter man's stare. It was bothering Bobby Hobbes...more than his words and tone and face showed. He was actually more than a little concerned for Harmony.

"Boom." It was a whisper. It was all he could manage.

Bobby Hobbes nodded. "Yeh, boom. Bombs do two things. They blow up and they do it after a certain amount of time. How do they blow up? Huh?"

Darien shrugged. His mind was lagging behind, thinking of how the Keeper and Agent Mackenzie were going to take the news when they found out what was really going on. Would he find himself a casualty of a sniper? He could imagine how the cold-faced Ciara would brief their boss about the accident that had happened to Agent Fawkes.

Hobbes' next words came through loud and clear, going over top of the imagined scenario that would happen if he died here in Australia. Would his partner rat him out to the Keeper and Ciara Mackenzie?

"They destroy themselves and everything they can reach. Sounds like you Fawkes boys just don't know when to quit. Between the two of you, you fucked that kid up six ways of Sunday."

Chapter 6

In the Compound:

There was no light at all. At first, Harmony couldn't tell if she'd even opened her eyes yet. Blinking, she became aware finally of the difference between open and shut. Sure at last, she'd looked around at the dark and decided that she was alone.

Her face hurt where she'd been hit. She couldn't tell, but it felt like her nose might have been broken. It whistled when she breathed through it. Her eyelids felt funny, like they were swelling.

She was laying on a cold, metal surface with her legs and arms spread wide, leaving her exposed to the elements. Had they just let her lay where she'd been tackled?

What had woken her up? The last thing she could remember was----

Jerking completely cognizant, Harmony shuddered at the feel of the cold steel beneath her and the sensation of wet that was seeping up. There was a new sound---that of running water.

And she was unable to fold her arms and legs in close---she couldn't get up. Testing it, she found that she'd been strapped spread-eagle down to the floor with what felt like nylon. Her hands wouldn't come off the floor more than what felt like maybe four or five inches. Her legs were the same.

The water began to soak her exam clothes. It had a bitter smell, like maybe there was a disinfectant in it. It ran from somewhere to her left, but she could see nothing that would show her where exactly it was coming into the room.

Where was she? She'd been given a tranquilizer. Not a strong one---her body had roused fast, so she'd not been heavily dosed. Just enough to put her down for the little while it might take to attach her to straps and to secure her.

Holding her breath for a long moment, she listened to the sounds that the water made. The room was small, from the noise she could hear. She'd been moved from the last place she could remember. Okay, she'd been out just long enough for Arnaud's punk lackeys to take her somewhere else and strap her to the floor.

Water reached her ears and she began to hear things beyond the walls---vibrations that could be felt through the cold liquid.

'Okay…' She thought. 'I'm in trouble here. He's gotta be out there somewhere.'

The coldness began to seep inwards, chilling her to the bone. Hard to believe how cold it could make her---she could feel her normally over-warm skin growing cool. The water had more than a stinging disinfectant in it, it stunk of brine. Seawater. The level had increased inches in only a minute or so.

When it reached her chin, Harmony tilted her head backwards. Thrusting her eyes under the water that burned her nose and eyelids, she brought her mouth up farther away from imminent drowning. Was Arnaud going to kill her now? If he'd gotten nothing from her, he'd surely try again, using a new tactic...and killing her was not an option right now for her enemy. Not as long as he was convinced she'd give up...like she'd done before.

She smiled at the linear thoughts. He was a sick bastard, but he wasn't insane or stupid. Coming up with some ideas of how to play this more dangerous angle, Harmony decided she'd wait him out.

Unsure of whether he could see her at all, she let her head drop back to it's resting place. This put her mouth under the water. How much could she endure before he took the threat of death away?

Counting, she noticed immediately after she reached sixty that the water was draining from the room. It moved quickly away from her mouth and nose. It left her even more chilled after it was gone.

When it was completely receded from her body, she could smell the salt brack that lingered. Now, she knew that he'd been watching. There was at least a camera in the darkness, as well as a way for water to come in and go out. It was more than Harmony had known before when all she had was that she was tied to the floor. How long had she been in this place?

"Welcome home, Harmony." It came as she held her breath, hearing the sound of a door close by.

His voice came from near by, sounding remarkably pleasant, as if he were just coming to check on his favorite patient. Craning her head, she sought him out. He was somewhere near her feet.

"You son of a bitch." It was more a whispered prayer before she spoke up, answering him. "You're getting nothing from me. Nothing you do'll change that."

"You'd rather die than give me a such a little thing? I need your help and I'm willing to pay for your services. They shouldn't hold your loyalty, Harmony---you owe them nothing. Look at what they did to you." His words were soft, sympathetic.

"Look, Arnaud." She kept her voice low and nonchalant. "I don't care. Threats don't work with me."

"All I want is the last disk of information and your skill surpasses anyone else who might have access." He sounded impressed, as if he'd already seen the competition and was now ready to deal with the best. "You already have the passwords in your head, so it doesn't require any extra effort on your part. Why do you have to withhold information that could do so much good?"

Harmony knew what he wanted the data for---he never had been subtle. She didn't see herself as being what he claimed she was---there were better hackers out there, she knew. There had to be. Just like there was no way in hell that she was going to give it to him.

"Boy, are you original. I must have left it in my other nightmare. How about you let me jog over there and get it for you." Keeping her voice light, she smiled despite the fact her teeth were chattering from the growing cold. She hated it when her blood pressure started to drop like this---she needed that excess body heat. "I'll give it to you free of charge cause we're friends."

There was nothing but silence for a moment. Then, a tiny ray of light shone down on her. It was a small chemical lamp and she watched as it illuminated the tar-black of her new environment.

Arnaud was crouched next to her, just out of the range of her fingers. All she could see was the light that fell on him, exposing the shape, the form, and some features of his hands and face.

Harmony watched him as he prepared a syringe. "What the hell is that? Can't you see, Doctor Demented, that I'm all drugged out?"

A dry chuckle came from his throat as she saw his expressive, green eyes turn to her. "No, this is not meant to hurt you in any way. I'm just giving you something to sustain you during our negotiations. You shouldn't have to dehydrate and suffer unnecessarily just because you're being difficult."

"Suffer unnecessarily, huh? Pain doesn't mean anything to me, Arnaud." She felt the slice of the needle as it went in and winced against her will. "When're you freakin' people gonna learn that a smaller gauge works just as well as that monster you just stuck me with? Geez---someday, I'm gonna ram one of those needles in you and see how much you like it."

He ignored her threat and spoke in a gentle, professional tone. "Now, I'm going to leave and you're going to think about what you want to do, what you might want in exchange for your services. All you need is time and maybe some persuasion. Remember, Harmony, one of your weaknesses is that you act upon foolish impulses of your heart, instead of rationally thinking things through. You have a very logical, grounded mind. Use it, please, for your own sake."

The light disappeared. There was a whispery sound of footsteps and the door opened and shut. She was left alone with her thoughts in the dark.

It was only a few minutes of shouting curses at the man who'd just departed before she felt the tightening of her chest. The muscles at the base of her lungs began to hurt from the effort to breathe. It was as if there was less air in the room.

Was it the drug he'd given her?

"Hey, Asshole!" Pushing her throat and lungs to work at drawing the air, Harmony shouted for him again, concentrating on keeping herself calm in the face of suffocating. "Quit the crap, De Thiel! This stuff doesn't work with me."

She barely managed to get the last of it out. Her lungs were collapsing and she could feel the pull of her throat as she tried to breathe enough to get air. There was no air in the room. It was being taken out. She could feel the pressure of it on her skin, in her ears and eyes. Her sinuses shrank and she found herself gasping.

Sparkles behind her eyelids were now the only way she had of knowing whether her eyes were open. They were swelling and the pain grew behind her face. Wheezing for a shred of oxygen, Harmony's lungs worked in vain---the pressure had grown to the point where she was choking.

Somewhere, beyond her, she could hear that sound that was like whispering voices---but she knew it was just an imaginary sound caused by the immediate dementia of brain cells reacting to the suffocation.

Wasn't that what Kevin had told her every time she mentioned it? It had been so long ago, but she would never forget that look of horror on her friend's face every time he saw her choking on the blood that was the response of hormone-laden tissues.

It was just like the blood...just like the sensation of the insides of her lungs swelling from bruised tissues. Her heart was beating madly against itself, making her chest ache worse as the powerful muscles of that organ fluttered and jumped. Her body was fighting to get oxygen---to simply take a single breath. It was a worse form of drowning than by water.

Attempting a cough, Harmony felt the lining of her lungs draw painfully close to being overwhelmed and then she tasted the blood. The muscles were straining too hard.

Panicking, she struggled. Working her arms and legs against the restraints, she screamed without air and felt the pressure in her head and chest expand. She was going to die---he was going to do it---she wouldn't see daylight again. Just like he'd promised before.

The pressure remained for a moment or more and then, just as her mind began to fold again, it began to drop just as fast as it had risen. Drawing air in huge whoops, she began to cough and her throat worked again, bringing a dry, sour feeling---like she'd been left in the desert to die.

"Let's run an experiment, shall we, during the course of our negotiations? Let's see how your endurance abilities adjust to such new conditions as being systematically drowned and suffocated." His tone was cold, like the water she'd been drenched with.

He was the researcher now, an entity that tortured with no thought to the emotions such tests brought. Just like the men, in their white coats, that she saw in her memories of childhood. They'd never cared if it hurt or if it meant anything to her. Her physical and mental response had been all they'd been looking for. She knew, though, that Arnaud was not detached completely. His reason for the 'experiment' was to gain that emotional response from her.

"Fuck you." It was a harsh sound; she hadn't caught her breath yet.

"Think about what I'm offering you, Harmony, as opposed to what they offer you and tell me later where your real friends are standing."

He was gone completely then, and she was left alone. The darkness was complete and silent again, except for the sound of her ragged breathing. Turning inwards, she began to shut herself down, to conserve energy and to need less oxygen. For the moment, there was plenty in the room, but she had no idea what he had planned for her future.

Harmony began reciting Whitman to herself and she felt the beginnings of the slowing of her heart that signaled better control over her biological response. Sliding into that quiet place within, she drifted inside her mind and stayed.

@@@

She strode towards them on her long legs as if she were crossing the world to catch the afternoon sun. Ciara Mackenzie didn't look like herself and Darien stopped walking and stared in shock when he realized that it was really she.

Her hair was gone. She'd cut her hair. Instead of long, tawny strawberry blonde waves that hung down past her shoulders, she now had a cap of wavy dark hair that lay in a flattering way against the curve of her skull. It was a dark chestnut, even darker than his hair, and seemed rather elfish for her strong, angular face.

Standing still with his duffel over his shoulder, he felt his stomach lurch at the idea of telling this woman what had gone down between him and her partner. She looked deadly in leather and now, in the suit she wore, she seemed a different creature altogether. What would 'this' version of Agent Mackenzie do to him?

The jacket of the charcoal-colored suit was silk and fluttered against her thighs as she moved quickly. Her smile was the same one he'd seen on her face last; the sideways, cocky-sly grin that had been part of the reason he'd been drawn to her in the first place. She had a way about her that was battle-weary but strong and able to go on forever.

Her leathers had been exchanged for a silk suit that had been designed and cut for her long torso and even longer, slender legs. The collar of her jacket had a flat collarless lapel that rose on her throat a few inches. Long and tapering at the waist, the coat flared at the hip and down to her knees in an oriental fashion. It even had the slits on the sides.

Darien felt Hobbes standing beside him. He knew that the smaller man was staring in the same way---in shock and not believing what had been given to them to see. His Keeper moved ahead, to greet the woman who'd come to meet them at the airport. Her blonde brown hair swung free on her shoulders and she turned in mid-step upon reaching her friend's side, to move back towards the two male agents.

He saw Ciara take the overnight bag from Claire's shoulder, leaving the briefcase in the Keeper's hand. The two looked as different as night and day now. The grin on Agent Mackenzie's face was far from the deadly serious look that the other woman wore. It was like a complete role reversal had occurred.

"So, Legs, have you been working on the Tantra anymore?"

She didn't look worried in the least---considering that her partner was missing and presumed injured or dead, it was not what he'd expected. Darien looked at his own partner for a moment, saw the confusion there, and knew that the same things were going through Hobbes' mind.

"Come on, then, and get in the Cessna." Behind her, there was a man standing by a small, lightweight plane. "We've got to get going."

"You were here by yourself, right? Who's minding the shop?" Hobbes stepped forward and met her side as she turned again and started moving again towards the plane.

"I've got help now. I called someone in who knows how to handle these things." Her voice was low and Darien trailed behind, watching as his Keeper and his partner walked on either side of the agent who was probably going to kill him in a few hours or maybe a day.

"Ciara, the situation has changed---how soon can we get Harmony out of the compound on the bay?" Claire's words made him go cold. Scratch that, he thought. Maybe minutes before Harmony's tall, dangerous friend-Keeper and partner turned and nailed him for what only she would guess. She wouldn't have to be told. She'd know.

"Well, I saw them bring her in hours before dawn, in a crate. I suspect that she's just peachy for the moment. Arnaud won't hurt her if he thinks she can give him what he wants without much effort. Why, what has changed?" Her accent had grown since she'd been in this country; he could hear the brogue of the highlands in her words.

Darien hefted his duffel tighter and waited to be shot and left to bleed to death on the asphalt. He wondered briefly what his partner would do. Would Bobby Hobbes do anything? Yes, Hobbes would, he knew, but what would become of it?

"I received Harmony's complete blood test results before we left the Agency and it has some very disturbing information in it." Claire's voice was neutral. "I'll give you the details when we are in the air."

He breathed a sigh of relief and watched as Hobbes looked over his shoulder to shoot him a sympathetic look through his dark sunglasses. A thought occurred to him then and he moved quickly to catch up with the three.

"Fill me in on this---if a crate came in this morning, how do you know that Harmony was in it? Could've been more computer stuff." He turned to walk backwards a few steps before falling into place at Hobbes' side.

"Air holes, Legs. You ever see a computer crate with air holes?" The female agent grinned lopsidedly at him. "You know, it's so good to be working with you two again---I needed this. I got enough to worry about without the added bullshit of wondering what you might be doing, too. Now, I have all of you where I can see you---makes me feel safe again."

Darien looked at her, caught the laughter in her gray eyes and he chuckled at her. "Yeh, well, we haven't done too bad on our own, you know."

"You feel unsafe? Now, that's something I like the idea of, personally." Bobby Hobbes, with his travel bag over his shoulder, had a smirk on his face.

"Would the three of you behave? We have more important things to think about beyond your mutual need to run at each other with scissors." His Keeper's voice sounded upset and Darien looked around Ciara's shoulder to see Claire, noting the pale look in her face. She was withdrawn and distant---her mind was obviously still on what she'd been reading in the journal, things that Dr. Kevin Fawkes had never told anyone.

"You're right." He agreed with her, causing her eyes to turn and focus on him. "And I think we need to go on as we have so far, doing our best to get Harmony outta there without letting our emotions get in the way."

His agenda was easy---let Claire know that she didn't have to spare him if she thought it was best that Ciara Mackenzie knew the possible added variable. He'd rather she didn't tell about the possibility of a pregnancy, but if it was necessary, he'd take the rap...as long as the team they were creating right now went on and rescued Harmony Corwin as fast as they could. He knew, once the lanky female agent knew about a problem like this, she'd look at him. She would just know that he was responsible.

"That's the way it hangs here, Darien, and I know we can do this---we only have to get our boy in the compound to look the other way." Ciara frowned then, in thought. "I've got an idea of what to do, but I need to know something now, before we go to the safe house."

They stopped walking and looked at her. Three pairs of eyes focused on her cold, stone-eyed face.

"Are we agreed that any measure necessary should be implemented to conduct this rescue mission? That, if it becomes a worse situation than has been presented, we'll all understand if circumstances concerning Harmony's life change?" Her arms were folded across her chest, pulling the silk tighter against the curve of her breasts. He saw the line of a shoulder holster under the smooth material and the gun she carried showed as a lump against her ribs. She went on. "We're going to get her out, one way or another."

She had the look of a new woman, to a stranger's eyes. The new haircut and dye-job were oddly perfect for the sleek, cool look of Agent Mackenzie. Only the scars couldn't be erased and they were only seen if you got as close as she stood now---which was too close for comfort for those who would do harm found out. Darien recognized the need to hide her previous appearance. She'd not exactly been difficult to spot before and she'd not be hard to notice now.

She cut a long shadow that would be hard to hide in any situation. Changing her appearance in some way gave her an edge of staying unknown for a minute or two longer---a minute was all she ever needed to get on top of a sudden change in any environment.

Darien nodded. He'd go along with whatever was necessary to retrieve the missing young woman who had brought them all together again, to work. He saw his Keeper and Hobbes do the same, though he noticed the look and the hesitation that his partner showed.

"Good. Then, I will call ahead and have it started." She drew the edge of her jacket to the side and pulled out her cell phone. Dialing, she put the phone to her ear.

"Yes. Start it. I'm sure he'll agree that it is what would work. No. I'll do that when I get there." She clicked it off and shut, put the small, black phone away, and smiled grimly. "It's our ball, then."

Darien met her gaze and thought about what he'd been worrying about. The look in those gun barrel-colored eyes made him shiver inside---this was her partner that they were going after. A young, dangerous woman who could kill and laugh at the same time, but someone he'd seen fall apart emotionally with the knowledge that she was alone in the world.

Did he want to find out what the experienced agent was capable of when she discovered what her two favorite experiments had been doing while she was away from home? He felt like he had no choices left. If Claire told the truth of her suspicions about Harmony's health, then he'd tell the truth to Ciara Mackenzie about what he'd done, if he could. He owed it to himself to be honest...even if it was the stupidest thing he could do.

The Cessna's pilot was a handsome Australian with a thick accent, sounding like he rarely came out of the bush. He'd introduced himself as Todd. Just Todd.

He was a short, stocky man with coal black hair and a grin that seemed to be nearly ear-to-ear. Darien couldn't decide whether he wanted to smack the man to shut him up or thank him for shuttling them to the distant safe house. He flew the plane and the two male agents sat by him, while Claire and Ciara talked quietly in the back seat, heads bent over the blood test results.

"Been knowin' Pommy Ciara'r years now. Met that sheila back of Bourke, I did, and been hard nosin' for her ever since. She done put the bite on me to hump ya'll on up to th' coove." It all came out as half-heard shouting over the roar of the engine that sat only a few feet in front of them.

Darien and Hobbes looked at each other. The younger agent saw his partner's eyebrows lift behind the shades he still wore and decided he liked the Aussie, even if he didn't understand half of what was said---it was worth the knowledge that Bobby Hobbes didn't understand him, either.

"Okay. You're independent, though, right? Not working for government or nothing?" Darien saw, out of the corner of his eye, the sharp intake of breath that Hobbes took as the older agent removed his sunglasses and put them away.

"Who, me? Naw. No way, mate. It's a bonza pozzie, tha's all. Me cobbers and meself, got a back block up on the dot and we's gamin' ta have a bash at bein' cockys, is it."

"I didn't get a word of that, but if you say so." Darien nodded at the man, wide-eyed, who was still grinning ear to ear, showing very white teeth. He knew they still had an hour in the air, but he was sure it was going to feel like two or more. Personally, he could use the time to rest or read, but the man didn't stop talking.

Now, it was all addressed to Hobbes, who looked at him with a near-helpless expression. Just then, the Keeper leaned up over the seat and spoke in a low tone. "Darien, we need to speak with you."

"What's he saying?" Hobbes shook his head and frowned. "Between the engine and his idea of the English language, I can't understand a word!"

His Keeper smiled thinly. "He said, firstly, that he's known Ciara for a long time and that they met in the outback. She forced him into coming here, calling in a favor, to give us a ride in his plane. Secondly, he said that he doesn't work for the government, he and some friends have land on the island where they've been working as cowboys of a sort."

"You understood all that?" Darien couldn't believe it.

"Of course. Now, can you come back here?" She sat back in the seat where Ciara Mackenzie was examining the printout with her eyes narrowed in concentration.

He slipped around the side of the seat where he'd been sitting and crouched in front of the two women. Jet lag was setting in and it was going to be a hard sleep when it came.

In front, he heard the pilot named Todd telling Hobbes he used to be Anzac, but that he'd gotten out. Darien watched as the dark-haired female agent looked up at him, her pale eyes full of concern. He knew that the Keeper didn't know what Hobbes had hinted at...so she couldn't have said anything, but the expression on Ciara Mackenzie's face told him all he needed to know about what she knew. She'd put the pieces together.

"We got problems, Legs. When we get settled in and start working full on the details, I need to talk to you about how we're going to get into Arnaud De Thiel's compound and get Harmony out."

"No big thing---I'm here for that, right?" He sighed; glad she wasn't going to announce what he'd seen in her face. Somehow, she knew what her partner had been doing.

"Yes. Indeed. I think you are here for that. I think we need to have a long talk about your part in this when we have gotten on the ground."

Her eyes drilled into him and he knew, in that moment, that this coming conversation had more to do with what she'd decided to do about the knowledge she held in her hands than with her plans on how to get Harmony Corwin out of trouble. The computer printout had proved something that she'd already known or suspected and Darien knew that she'd found the person she needed to talk to about it.

His body felt heavy then, at the idea that she was going to take him off and kill him quietly. Somehow, she knew and she wasn't going to forgive the breech of his promise to her. He had told her he'd watch over the young woman she had been caring for all these years. He'd told her he would make sure she was doing fine and taking care of herself. Hobbes was right---he was going to die for what he'd stepped into.

And while death occurred to him now and then as the way out of his own sticky situation with the gland, recently he'd not been in the mood to die. Darien had found reasons to endure his job and feelings for certain people he saw everyday that made him want to see the sun come up every morning.

Now, it looked like he might not see another morning.

@@@

Back in the Dark:

It had either been an eternity or it had been only minutes. When the pressure began to rise slowly again, Harmony had been forced up out of her deep meditation. She had been dreaming that it was all a horrible nightmare and that she'd woken in her own bed, in her own apartment, with Ciara by her side again.

Ciara Mackenzie was trust---a living proof that someone who was stronger in more ways than one loved her. Dreaming of waking beside the red-gold, lanky woman, she'd been enfolded in those understanding arms that hushed and soothed her back to a gentler, more peaceful dream state.

Now, she knew it had been a dream of a dream and that reality was the nightmare.

This place was cold, damp, and dark. She wasn't afraid of the dark. It had all been part of the training and the sensory deprivation programming she'd received as a child. The cold didn't bother her and neither had the water...not even having it cover her nose and mouth. As long as she could get those parts up out of the water by tilting her head, it was no threat.

The pressure was something else, though. It was part of the nightmare...even as slow as it was rising with the oxygen being sucked from the air. It had been the bubbling in her lungs. It had been the sensation that a steel band was wrapped around her chest and pulled tight.

Coming back to herself, she glanced around, searching the dark. The pain was growing, moving cell by cell. With the wet air, she'd become aware of the bubbling in her lungs immediately. The whistling of her septum, where she felt the swelling of the break, filled her ears. Combined, the two sounded like some creature from a horror movie, like the ones she loved to watch as a young child. Creature From the Black Lagoon.

Her breath caught in her chest and she coughed against the pressure that was building, making it feel like the steel bands were growing wider, tighter, and lined with sharp spikes that had punctured inwards along the hard ridge of muscles at the bottom of her ribs and deflated her lungs.

A medical impossibility, she knew, but at the moment, Harmony didn't care about medicine. She wanted out of the confinement. She could taste the mist of blood in her breath, where the dry tissues were swelling against each other, rubbing. It was going to start all over again---it already had.

"Hey!" It had been meant as a shout, but it came as less than perfect. Barely qualifying as normal volume, she still knew that someone---Arnaud De Thiel---had heard it.

Second by second, the pressure grew more intense. It was becoming unbearable and she knew she wasn't getting free. Ever. Resigning herself to the idea that she would die here, Harmony closed her eyes again and tried to melt back into the warm red and gray that stayed behind her eyes.

Death held no terror. True, she had reasons to live, but lately, it seemed like the only person who took her seriously at all was Darien Fawkes and look at what she'd done to him! Just because she needed some warmth before it went too far for her to turn back the hands of her deterioration.

'Maybe.' She thought as she clenched her hands into fists over and over, counting her breaths on the exhale. 'If I'd just told him to go home and not come back---' And the guilt swirled around her head like a whirlwind catching slips of paper upon which was written her life.

She'd told him that she was born to be alone and so she would die alone. And in his usual fashion, he'd denied it, but when he heard what else she'd had to say, he'd started getting very quiet and he'd stopped shaking his head. It was as if Darien couldn't bear the idea of *not* being alone himself. He knew what it was like to have no one, too.

Counting backwards again, she started at one thousand and worked on keeping her ever-shortening breaths steady by whispering the numbers. She became positive that the air being taken from the room was leaving faster this time. The pressure was greater, the pain more intense.

"Nine hundred thirty four, nine hundred thirty three, nine hundred thirty two, nine hundred thirty one."

Arnaud was going to kill her. She was going to die here, unable to say goodbye to anyone who'd come to mean anything to her. She would die and no one would find her. But at least, she'd die quicker than what was eating her from the inside out; that chemical cocktail in her blood that was on an ever-quickening decay cycle.

"Eight hundred ninety seven, eight hundred ninety six, eight hundred ninety five, eight hundred ninety four."

The pressure on her chest and in her throat increased until it was in her sinuses once more. As the popping began in her head, she cried out, making no sound. It brought tears to her eyes against her will.

Her body wanted to fight the wheezing; she wanted, involuntarily, to bang on her chest, to claw at the disappearing air. Her limbs and her body itself had begun to shake with the need that was being denied.

She reached eight hundred fifty and paused, trying to inhale deeply.

"Eight hundred forty nine, eight hundred forty eight, eight hundred forty seven, fuck." Harmony lost her breath fast, as the oxygen content was depleted fast in the liquid wheeze of her lungs.

It was cold and dark and she knew why the water had been allowed to soak her before. She'd lost control of her bladder when she'd fought to get loose from the two goons who'd held her down and injected her with the tranquilizer. The water had cleaned the spilled urine away and left her cold and shivering, but disinfected.

"Eight hundred forty, eight hundred thirty nine, eight hundred thirty eight, eight hundred...thirty seven, eight hundred thirty six..." Her voice faded as her throat gave a spasm and she gave in to the coughing fit.

And salty. The brine on her skin stank. Harmony flexed her hands and felt the tightness of the flesh that had shrunk against the bone with the heavy water.

"Eight hundred fifteen...eight hundred fourteen...eight hundred thirteen..." It was gasps now instead of whispers.

The worst part was the smell. The salt and the dampness combined created a scent not unlike blood---and she flared her nostrils as she inhaled it. Heady, it made her mouth water and her mind lurched in protest. The primitive part of her brain was starting to wake up in response to the shutting down of her cognitive powers. How long had it been since she'd been taken from the lab? Her stomach growled.

"Eight hundred...eight hundred. Uhnnh." She swallowed the sharp feel of the dryness. "Seven hundred ninety nine. Nine hundred..." Harmony stopped counting, the fuzzy feeling that her brain had skipped a gear or slipped a groove taking over. Now, she was confused. She was upset, but she didn't remember why.

The air had been coming back for a few minutes now, but she'd not been able to take much in. Her lungs burned and it hurt to even think about breathing anymore, since her brain had decided it was time for a vacation. It was down to survival and nothing else.

Sipping at the cold air that began to fill the room again, Harmony became sure that she could beat him. Arnaud De Thiel didn't have to win. He couldn't win. She wouldn't let him. If she had to die here, she'd go with something left of herself, even if it was only her determination.

The door opened again; she could hear it in that darkness that was like floating in a starless sky. She raised her head and peered out into the blackness she couldn't penetrate with her myopic eyes.

"I'm sorry it has to be this way, but you must see reason." His accent grew stronger as his false words came out as a plea. The earlier coldness was gone from his voice.

"You---you're a sick. Bastard." Shuddering against the pounding in her head and chest, Harmony fought for words now. "I won't. I won't hack shit. For you."

"Why do you insist on treating me like that? I dedicated ten years to helping you. Kevin Fawkes didn't do that." Arnaud sounded worried for her; like he cared.

"That's...a lie." Harmony finally got her breath, but she couldn't grip her reason for the belief.

"I've brought you here to save you." She felt him settle on the damp ground beside her. She could picture him in her mind; his smile would be smug. "You know that the deadline I told you about is growing close."

The chemical lamp came on and she found him with her light-blinded eyes found him. He didn't look self-satisfied; he looked concerned. Squinting against the glare that encircled them both, Harmony's anger came back.

"You're so full of shit. I'm not going to give you a damned thing, so why don't you just kill me and get it over with?" Licking at her cracked lips, she watched the compassionate expression become one of worry on Arnaud's face. His greenish eyes were darkened by the shadows, but she could see the concern there.

He produced the syringe and gave her a shot. It didn't hurt nearly as much this time. Was it a smaller gauge or was she dead and didn't know it yet? Upon finishing that, he'd wiped at her arm again with the cold sting of alcohol. Harmony cringed as he laid his hand on her forehead.

Trying to pull away, she slid her head to the side, turning it. The hand persisted and she lay still again, loathing the touch. "Poor Harmony. Been missing Kevin again?"

She didn't answer his conversational tone. It didn't matter if she spoke, she knew. Keeping her breath was what was important.

"I understand perfectly. We all have a person we adore who doesn't deserve that loyalty. It is only human." Meant to soothe her, it fried her nerves and she breathed deeper. Arnaud couldn't have her grief. He might have her body and her life in his hands, but he wouldn't have her grief and he sure as hell couldn't be allowed to kill the part of her that still believed in Kevin Fawkes.

"Get out of here." It was a whisper. Not because she couldn't do better, but she kept it soft because there was a part of her that knew if she lost her temper and yelled, that he would have won the battle. Arnaud was trying to reach her emotional self, the way he'd done this before.

Last time, though, he'd not seen the need to strap her to the floor and take her breath from her. Could she hold out as long now as she had before?

"I watched you all those years and wondered how it felt to be such a beautiful, strong person. The perfect killing machine...and when I found out about the malfunction, I felt so sorry for what he'd helped do to you." Arnaud went on speaking about the man, the doctor, who'd worked so hard to preserve her life even after it wasn't worth living---and everything he said was a lie.

It had to be a lie. She had to believe it was a lie. She saw him take the syringe apart from the vial. They went into his shirt pocket again.

"And he did worse than that, Harmony, but I think you know that already." Arnaud lay down and stretched out on his back, his hands behind his head. "He knew what I told you about your life span and he didn't do anything to stop it."

Lying beside her, he seemed comfortable on the damp floor---as if it were a featherbed or a field of grass. He put his hands behind his head and lay there, staring into the dim edges of where the light faded into the cold darkness again.

His profile were reflected in the pale mix of light and shadows and she wondered, as she watched him settle in beside her, if he knew the terror she was feeling and working so hard to keep buried. She turned her head to watch him, feeling the pillow of her wet, loose hair shift under her skull.

Staring at him, she knew that he was going to stay here with his little lamp until she gave him something, but there was no way---

"You're a liar. Kevin tried to stop what happened to me. I know he did. He must have…just not been able to find anything." Her voice shook as she watched him purse his lips and turn to look at her with amusement in his green eyes.

"You believe that, don't you? My god, they really have brainwashed you." Those eyes softened in sympathy. "There are ethical laws concerning experiments on children, you know. Kevin knew that and when he came on board, he did nothing about it. He tested an altered form of quicksilver on you, Harmony, to see if it would work on cells in a different way. You think that he cared? You weren't the only person he brainwashed."

"He cared. Get the fuck away from me, asshole. You're not doing this to me again." Clenching her teeth, she kept her voice even and low.

If she started screaming now, she might not stop. He'd done this before---worked her over inside. And he'd bought her silence about what he'd done to her before he finished betraying Kevin. He’d hidden his own affections or put them aside.

"You killed him." She let up on the words. Her jaw ached from biting down. It was now a whisper again. "You say you feel so sorry for me and for what happened before...and you killed Kevin. Don't you know where that puts you with me?"

"I do know and I'm sorry. It was all business. I did none of it in pleasure, Harmony. I made my choices based on profit. You know I didn’t want him dead. We have no reason to discuss the…other parts of what stood between us as friends." His voice had dropped to a near-whisper as he pleaded for understanding. "I couldn't have done it without *your* help, though."

She chose to ignore his insinuation that she'd assisted him in the murder of a man who had been a friend to them both. The rest of it, though? Some part of her knew it was a ploy to gain her trust and she fought the way her mind bent to listen to him.

"He was quite the con artist, Harmony. Kevin used you and left you to die when he couldn't finish his work. You were only a child---and there were others, you know. He used his brother the same way...Darien Fawkes has lost what chance he had at a normal life because of his older brother."

Shaking her head, she worked her mouth and got some moisture back. Twisting her neck up and sideways, she spat on him.

Arnaud didn't move. He didn't even respond. He did get quiet for a moment before he took out a white handkerchief and wiped her spit from his face, blinking.

"You're a disgrace, you fucking pig. You didn’t love him. You couldn’t have." It was all she could do now to keep it quiet. Why was she bothering any more? He wasn't going to stop until he'd had what he wanted from her. She might as well scream at him, but Harmony made a decision, based on her own sense of diminishing self-worth.

She'd not give him the satisfaction until she had nothing left to give him. "A waste of air. Kevin loved us, me and his brother. He wanted to fix what's happening to me---and you killed him. You killed him before he took the gland out of Darien. You. Are. Nothing."

His smile never faded. He didn't seem to feel anything different about what she'd thrown at him. Arnaud De Thiel sighed and put away the handkerchief that had been so bright in the dimness immediately surrounding them.

Lying side by side, with her chained this way…he began to talk of new things in his familiarly accented voice. "Kevin didn’t know what to do. That fat pig of a man at the Agency was pressuring him to hurry, hurry, find one who would willingly put their life in our hands. Funding was lower than it should’ve been and it was being threatened---the project was going to run out of money just because we could find no one who would sign those papers…"

She sucked a breath in and tilted her head to watch Arnaud, to keep her eyes on him. He was talking so low, seriously. The way they had talked, between themselves, for so many years. As friends. They’d been friends. Until the supply cabinet. But still, they had talked this way, once the rage and taunting was over with.

"His brother, whom he hadn’t seen in a few years, presented the perfect opportunity. The only problem was…Darien Fawkes has his pride, you know. He’d rather die in prison as someone’s bitch than to be stuck into such a risky situation…and it was very risky. There were other gland receptacles, Harmony. Darien wasn’t the only one, you know. Kevin told me that the base ideas of the gland came from their uncle’s work. Someone whose life, as I’ve been told, was wrapped very tightly to your own…though I do not have the authority in these matters to inform you of how that relationship worked…."

He paused and she worked up the moisture in her mouth again---precious wetness that she didn’t dare give up by spitting at him again. Harmony breathed quietly and listened.

Arnaud sighed heavily, as if grieved. His eyes moved in the dimness. "Sometimes, a lie can be the tool you use to save your life, save the life of a comrade, or just bandage something that must be salvaged for later. He lied to Darien and told him that it was not a risky thing, that it was going to be nothing to reverse---without telling his brother what was going to happen to him, he inferred that taking the gland out would be as easy as putting it in…"

"Kev…Kevin was brilliant…he had to know some things that he never told you about it…" She whispered harshly. Keeping it between them. "I know about the other test----about the guy Ciara worked with---I don’t think Darien knows, yet. I know what happened to him, too. But…you fixed that, right, with the hormone construct? That’s not all you did. Darien told me you tweaked the gland to cause the madness. The cortical breakdown is based on some kind of weakness…from earlier versions, isn’t it? Maybe…taking it out was only a matter of reversing the steps of putting it in and he just never told you, Arnaud. Consider that. He HAD to have had some secrets from both of us."

There was a long moment and she drew a ragged breath in, feeling the temperature of her skin starting to change. Again, she was going to have trouble controlling it…it was heating up against her will. And it was purely physical…this desire…to be touched.

"The gland wasn't going to be coming out, Harmony." He said in his most understanding tone. "Kevin lied to Darien---if he'd taken that gland out of his brother, Darien Fawkes would have died. At best, he'd have been a vegetable. He *lied* to his brother."

"You're full of shit." She gave a sour laugh, testing her wrists again as she worked to forget what her skin was telling her. "Why would Kevin've lied to Darien? You say he had no choice but to tell the damn lie about how risky it was. He had to have known something about how to take it back out."

"It was designed to become a permanent part of the brain and central nervous system. I know he never told you much of these things, did he? Okay." At her side, it was as if they were friends again. Which pissed her off. Arnaud spoke in a gentle, eager way, his accent thickening. "I have data----I’m close to figuring out how to make a gland of my own. I could show you…I could let you look at the data and see for your self. All there in Kevin’s own work. The gland was to be put in and left there, becoming a new and solidly permanent part of the brain. Like upgrading a computer, yes?"

It was horrifying to contemplate. But this was science and she knew enough to realize he might be telling the truth…only, she needed to see it with her own eyes. To see what might have been hidden from Darien about the gland. Her friend knew next to nothing about the biosynthetic organ that was buried in the back of his head.

She’d never told him what she knew. What she could remember hearing. Kevin hadn’t been one to tell her things about his other work or research, but she’d heard some things. And the little things she’d heard had added up to big things.

Arnaud could be telling her the truth about what had been intended. He could tell what Kevin’s gland project had been about and how the science of it worked. He could show her the data and she had enough science under her belt to know whether he was telling the truth then.

"You think the two of you were his only lab rats? He used both of you, used others just like you, like any good con plays a mark...Darien could tell you all about that if he were here. Kevin never had to be taught how to work words against people---you know how he was. He could look at you and you'd do what he asked. You were brainwashed, Harmony, but I'm offering you a chance at something more. I'm offering you a chance at survival, at a partnership."

His tone made her breath catch in her throat. She struggled against the idea. Freedom from the hormones in her body. He'd offered it once before, in the form of some new technique he'd discovered---as a biochemist, he had the ability to fix what was killing her by inches.

All she had to do was let him have that one disk---just hack into some files and give him what he needed to cure her. She’d refused…and he’d withheld a very vital piece of the compound needed to create her serum. And it had been like having no serum at all, in a way. Claire was only now starting to find ways around the parts she couldn’t synthesize in the lab.

"No. Get the hell out of here. I mean it. Go. Please." Her voice shook and she hated herself for the weak moment when she wanted his help again---like before. He'd known how she felt about Kevin since she was seventeen, just like she’d known how he felt. It had been a strange friendship ever since.

She hated him, he hated her, and they both wanted Kevin, but were too chickenshit. So it made them brother and sister, in a twisted, pathetic way. He'd gotten past that barrier once before...and he'd tormented her with the idea that Kevin Fawkes had turned his back on her. He'd been able to talk her into doing the work he needed and it had cost people their lives.

He sighed again, sat up, and his face was full of that condescending sympathy again. "You know I'm right. I never lied to you, little one. Not like your friends have. Please, let me help you before it's too late. Think of what we might accomplish working together….in Kevin’s name."

The man got up and left, taking his lamp with him. Once he was gone, she was unable to stop herself; she sobbed a single time, thankful he'd left before she'd given in. Oh, it had been close. The monster had nearly convinced her again. She wanted the information on the gland---to see if he was honest about it. God…Kevin wouldn’t have done that to Darien. Would he?

And Arnaud knew she needed that data, knew that what he could say to her would make all the difference, if he said it the right way. Was she weakening, like before, under the barrage of suggestion or did the strange torture of having her breath stolen have much to do with it?

Harmony felt the cramp in her muscles as it went through her again, electrifying nerve endings in a tense, harsh crescendo for a minute and then settling down. Not hunger or muscle exhaustion, she knew now. It was starting; Phase Four had begun and she'd need a shot of her serum soon.

Why hadn't the new stuff that the Keeper had given her worked? She shouldn't be feeling the pain yet. She had days yet before she should have to think about the toxins racing through her blood, saturating her brain, lungs, stomach. It was a sign that the trials had been a bust; the test serum was not going to slow the cycle down. If the muscle spasms were any indication, it felt like maybe the new chemicals were speeding up Phase Four.

Harmony rode the pain through, gritting her teeth, and knew that a variable had just been added to the torture. Between the choking, the water, the breaking of her emotional self, and the hard, horrible pain of the spasms, she knew what time she might have to hold out against Arnaud had been cut in half.

She couldn't let him see this. He'd use it. He was wrong about Kevin; wrong about her friends. He was wrong. Everything he said was a knife-twisting lie, like he'd never learned to tell the truth...but he'd never lied to her about her health. He'd been honest about what was happening to her when no one else would be. Why not other things?

Not even Kevin had been willing to tell her how long she had before it would kill her. Hell, he hadn’t bothered to tell her she was going to die. Arnaud De Thiel had---and promptly offered her a chance to change it. But, she didn't dare let him have what he wanted from her---it was like making a deal with the devil.

Chapter 7

He was exhausted; jet lag was really getting to him. Darien saw that it was doing Hobbes the same way. It was now dark outside the plane---they had come around the world, ending up half a day away from their own time zone, then traveled hundreds of miles north. It was nearly time to be arriving at their destination.

Opening the first journal, he made his eyes focus and wished he could have a cup of coffee. Caffeine right now might be the only thing that would sustain him. He'd found, with a quick search through the first forty pages or so, the start of an entry that went on for some time. Scanning down the pages, he'd realized quickly that he'd found the first mention of the girl Harmony had been over ten years ago.

Going back, he read the date. July of 1988. He rubbed his face, scrubbing at the grainy feeling that made his eyes feel like they'd been rolled in sand. It meant that the ten years were actually twelve that they'd known each other, but for those two years he'd worked with Harmony in the lab, Kevin Fawkes had grown very fond of the girl.

Darien started reading, in some detail, the story of his brother's first meeting of the young experiment. According to the previous entries, Kevin had been taken into the project and set to working on something within the realm of his science. He'd not been told anything about the person that he'd been given so little information on. He'd not known the real purposes behind the project he'd been assigned to.

His first meeting of the child who'd come to mean so much that he'd risked his career as a research scientist for her well-being was rather interesting and even funny in a few places, but he'd not found himself really wanting to laugh as much as frown. Had either of them guessed at what would come in the future of their association?

"I was taken into Lab 2 today and told that a guard would wait outside, which I understood was for my good, since the subject is very dangerous, when provoked. I was determined to not cause any problems of this nature. I stood and waited, but there was no sign of anyone in the room. It was a small cell beyond the main room of the lab, with only a bed and some small things that suggested that someone actually lived in the place. I thought at first that maybe the subject, which I knew nothing about until then, had been taken out for some reason. After a half hour had passed and I'd paced several times through the two rooms, I decided I'd been told wrong---that maybe I wasn't going to meet the subject today. I was headed to the door, to leave, when a voice behind me made me turn. A shimmer, like a heat wave, moved towards me. I don't remember my exact thoughts or what I said, but there was a laugh---and then she appeared, slowly. I was startled to see this girl. I might have even stepped back a few times from her. She was there all along. She asked me if I was the new one. I said I believed so. Her response was positive---the old one, she said, had been taken away. It was the way she said it that stands out. Taken away. That implies nothing more than subtraction of something unnecessary or unwanted."

Darien read this and frowned. It wasn't what he'd imagined, but it was still interesting. He bowed his head back to the journal and went on, deciphering his brother's handwriting.

"Let me describe her here. Light brown hair, very short, and her eyes are a strange shade of blue and brown mixed together. She's smaller than other children her age that I've seen. She said she is only eight (and a half) now. She told me her name is Harmony R Corwin and showed me how she does it---the invisibility, that is. I can't believe what I've been brought into. How is it possible? I need to read more of the files and see how this has been accomplished. It is something straight out of H.G. Wells and something I'd only dreamed of. She's intelligent, despite her emotional age, and has some new, different takes on the world and the things she knows about it. There is so much she has never seen or even heard about, but I know, from the files that I was given access to, that she can kill. That single fact bothers me. A child with the ability to kill anyone. She's had no parental guidance and no proper schooling outside of this lab. She has been cooped up in the lab and the building where these experiments have been conducted. What kind of life has she led? She seems unusually gifted in sciences and math, but shares a hunger for books that I can appreciate; she informed me that she's not given much to read and seems to not understand fun. I've decided to take her my old copy of Whitman's complete Leaves of Grass tomorrow. I'm sure she would make good use of it."

He grinned to himself now; the love of Whitman had started with the very beginning of the relationship she'd built with his brother. R was her middle initial? What did it stand for? Darien leafed on through the book, continuing to search for a reference to the disorder that had come with the cellular changes done by the introduction of a new hormone.

He'd have to ask her what her middle name was. If he survived the day.

And then his eyes fell on a passage, in the first half of the journal, where he'd flipped the pages. He'd come some distance, through what looked like nearly two years of entries. It read like the one they'd found earlier, about a time bomb being planted in Harmony Corwin's cells. Two years into their friendship, Kevin had discovered something beyond the fact that she could never be allowed to complete puberty…

Reading to himself, he became aware at some point that his partner was hanging over his shoulder. The airplane was droning it's way through the sky. In just a few moments, they would get in a car that would take them the last few miles to the safe house.

Behind them sat the two women who spoke in their soft voice about something he couldn't hear. Todd, their pilot, had become quiet at some point and he hadn't noticed. And Bobby Hobbes had been reading through some of the more recent journal, that covered the last four years of his brother's life.

Now, his partner had leaned over, to read through the same journal that Darien had been slogging his way through.

"It has become known that there's nothing I nor anyone else can do about it, that the genetic changes exhibited by Harmony's body have taken a bad, permanent turn. Once I discovered how quickly her body accepted the altered quicksilver that would fix the shooting star syndrome, I was able to quit the treatments, for her cells adapted and began to create the hormone on their own, through the added function of her DNA's altered ability. She is making her own form of the hormone now and it seems to actually have cured her problem as well as have enhanced her ability to go invisible. I only wish I had some way to explain all of this---it would take decades to explain how this is happening to her. I've figured out what really happened to the scientist, Uncle Peter’s friend Doctor Steven M. Rose, whom I've never met but greatly admired as a fellow researcher through the written papers that I had a chance to read, who discovered and implemented this method of changing the body's DNA structures. He disappeared. Literally. He had to have done so, in order to leave behind no traces. I asked around, including my uncle. I was told that it's classified. No one knows where Steven Rose is or why he's not involved in his own project. I can find no one who knows what happened to him or the project notes that would tell me something of how the frameshifts were 'supposed' to have occurred. There are no notes concerning how this was done or if it was meant to be like that for Harmony. She seems fine with it now, but surely there’s another way. A way to fix the imbalance of her hormones. If I had the original notes and the enzymes that were required, I could do it, I’m sure."

Darien and Hobbes looked up at the same moment. Meeting his partner's dark eyes, Darien frowned again. "Disappeared, huh? Sounds fishy to me."

"People do it all the time, champ."

Going back to the journal's pages, he skipped ahead and found one of the secrets that had never been revealed to anyone by Kevin Fawkes. At eleven years old, Harmony's life had been put under a pending termination order.

"I cannot tell anyone what I know now. There has been serious talk in certain circles of the committee that Harmony's dangerous and must be put down, in the manner of a rabid animal. I have difficulty believing that it's necessary. She's rational, but she reacts differently than another rational person. With some training, she could be convinced---she is nearly to that point already---that she doesn't need to kill to protect that which has no need of protecting. In her nature, she makes me think of a lioness I once saw at the zoo, when I was a child. Even as young as she is, she has taken it as her responsibility to take care of me, her Keeper. I asked Agent Mackenzie, when I saw her the other day, whether this would be a good analogy. She said it was perfect. I tend to believe that the woman may be a link I should cultivate even further, in case I have need of her help. We've spent some time together; talking, and I have found her to be amazingly well informed and easy to accept the idea behind what my patient is. Not surprising, though, considering what she is herself. The way things are starting to look here, I would be better prepared if I had a high-ranking agent willing to back my claims. She has pull among powerful people and I know that when she says she will do anything she can do to help us with Harmony's case that she is telling the truth. Oddly, knowing her less than two years, I've come to think of her as an ally, maybe a friend."

Again, meeting his partner's eyes, Darien had the idea that the whole situation was deeper than he'd had any idea of. Looking at Hobbes, he guessed out loud at what this meant. "She ruined her career for this."

Bobby Hobbes blinked and a flicker of a smile went across his handsome face. "Yeh, it looks that way, doesn't it? I wonder what else she's done that would be seen as openly seditious. Obstructing an investigation or helping a scientist get a dangerous individual out of the country is only a step. We still don't know what or who she really is---but your brother did."

"We're not going through this again, Hobbes. She's on our side, even if she's done some questionable things in the past." Darien glanced over his shoulder at the raw-boned woman who was watching them through her half-closed eyes. The expression on her face was disturbing---he couldn't make out the emotion, if any, behind the look.

"Yeh, I know. Look, pal, she's gonna shred you for what you've done, but it's okay." His partner laid a hand on his bare arm. It was warm and very comfortable. Looking around and down at it, Darien felt his pulse quicken. He brought his eyes upwards to meet Hobbes' sympathy. "She won't kill you---the Agency needs you. She works for them, remember?"

"Huh?"

"I just wanna tell you---I didn't mean to make it sound so bad back there on the other plane. I'm sure you did what you thought was right---even if it's not what I would've done. Well, not with her, anyway. I'm sorry I raked you like that. Let me ask you something, okay?" His voice was low, under the sound of the plane's engines, preventing them from being overheard. Darien strained to hear the words, leaning near his partner.

"Did you think you were falling for her or something like that? Is that why you did it?"

Darien shook his head. "No. I didn't."

He laid the journal in his lap and scrubbed at his head with the flat of his hand, making it stand up crazily. "She was---man, I don't know how to talk about this---Hobbes, she told me that she'd been in love with Kevin. I guess she feels kinda neglected nowadays and she's not been feeling so good with him gone."

He looked at his partner, took a deep breath, and tried to find the right way to say these things without exposing too much of what he was feeling. With that hand on his arm, he feared he might give his own heart away and be rejected for it.

"She's missing him and some other stuff was going on in her head---hell, I don't understand all of it, but she's screwed up inside over Kevin. What I did get was that she's afraid. I mean, really afraid, and I didn't figure out what was spooking her. Anyway---"

Hobbes' familiar brown eyes had gotten large. They seemed to swallow his face with surprise. "Okay, now tell me what made you go through with it, Fawkes. I got the whole thing about feeling sorry for the kid."

"It wasn't so much feeling sorry, Hobbes. I understood what she was feeling, but the…it was a total heat of the moment thing. You see? I got the same thing going on in me---I'm fucked up because of the gland and it makes me afraid. Yeh, afraid." Darien shrugged and looked down at the hand. Was he misinterpreting what he was experiencing?

"I wasn't falling for her. I was missing someone and didn't know it. It just kinda happened between us and it was okay---I think. She doesn't think anything about it, what we did. I mean, get this, Hobbes, when it was all over---" He lowered his head and spoke quieter. "I told her I was so sorry cause I couldn't love her the way she deserved. She told me that it wasn't about that---she didn't need my love. Besides, she said, I mean---she kinda blew me away with it---she said I was in love already and that it was the right kind of love."

Looking up at his partner, he saw the surprise and the puzzlement in Hobbes' face getting more intense. He smiled, trying to lighten the air between them.

"So, who's the lucky lady? You still mooning over little Dr. Easton? Stuff between you and Mags hotter than I knew?" Bobby Hobbes lost the surprise fast and a cynical light in his eyes made Darien sigh and wish he could just say what was on his mind. It was what Harmony had suggested...and he knew she was right. She'd called him a coward.

"I thought so, too, at first, until I---aw, hell. I'm gonna shut up now before I say anymore. Okay?" Glancing down at the hand that slid away from his wrist, he wished he was as ballsy as Harmony seemed to be.

The young woman was as brazen as brass, but then he remembered the way she'd told him about not being able to confront the man she'd loved, that it had cost her any chance at being happy. That all she'd wanted was for Kev to know how she felt---even if he didn't feel the same way. Wasn't that a form of cowardice, too? Her attitude had been that he shouldn't let anything stand in her way the way she had.

And the hand was gone. Hobbes had looked away. But, there was more coming from his partner. As he flipped on through the journal that he picked up again, he heard a long sigh. Turning to look at Hobbes, he found the man watching him again. "What?"

"Has it occurred to you yet that kid knows she's got a clock ticking in her? Could that fear of death be why she chose to go through with that whole thing between you? That it might be why she's so screwed up inside?" Hobbes' sympathy was back.

"I don't know...she did say that about something coming for her." Darien looked from his partner back to the journal. "I'm betting Harmony knows something."

Reaching this conclusion, he met Hobbes' eyes again and a cold feeling seeped through him, starting at his head and moving fast down through his body. The gears turning in his partner's eyes matched the things he was putting together as fast as he could.

When the older agent spoke, he was at the same conclusion and sitting there with his mouth hanging open a little, trying to assimilate what his brain was telling him was logical. They'd managed to stay quiet with the conversation, but what he'd just figured out was so big and painful that he felt like shouting it, just to clean it out of his mind. It was an awful thought.

"Fawkes, if you maybe knew you were gonna die and you decided to get laid, when would you do it?" Hobbes shook his head, a strangely sad look in his dark eyes.

"When I knew I was out of time."

Chapter 8

In the Dark:

She'd slept and dreamed again. Waking, Harmony had thought at first that she was back in her own room, in her own bed, in Switzerland; in the home she'd shared with Ciara Mackenzie. It had been enough to bring tears to her eyes when she woke and realized that she was still trapped like an animal, in the dark and cold room.

It hurt to breathe. The jagged edge of trying to inhale was a slow burn. She breathed shallow, so that her aching lungs wouldn't be overworked. It was nearly too much effort to take deep breaths anymore.

Lying there, strapped to the floor and aching all over from her bruises, she had tried to relive the things she'd seen in her sleep.

In the dream, Ciara had been gone---away on some task that had taken her from home for a week. She knew it as being just a week or two after she'd turned eighteen...it had been spring and the air had been full of the hum of bees and the smell of the lilac bushes had filled every breath she'd inhaled. And she’d been in love…had been in love for over a year.

Back then, she remembered, she'd been studying; going to school without leaving the house or the grounds. And she thought, laying on the cold steel, about that weekend---the one she'd been dreaming of, again.

Harmony had been having the dream for a while now---a real memory turned into a night-haunt. Since she'd had the experiences of that week, it had been a regular thing to wake up, having just relived the moments of discovering how deep her long-time mature affection for Kevin Fawkes was and how betrayed she felt by not having a chance of have it returned.

She'd been alone in the house for a day at that point, studying strategies for hand-to-hand combat mixed with heavy doses of literature and math sciences in between her physical workouts.

Shivering, she slid into the memory and let it wash over her, taking her mind away from the constant throb of her broken nose, her swollen eyes and the hard knot on her crown that felt like the point where her head had met the steel table in Lab 1.

Back there in her past, she didn't feel the pain anymore. It didn't exist and she'd become warm and dry. With her eyes closed, she could see the sunlight in the garden that grew in the backyard of the little house in the country.

She spoke to herself, trying to bring the memory into complete focus. Her whispers made the picture clear.

"A lake near by, foothills at the base of the mountains. College town on the other side of the lake. Swimming pool past the garden. There was a wall that surrounded the entire place---it was big and like living in a kingdom all my own...and I was alone most of the time."

And in that memory, she wasn't strapped to a cold, damp floor in near nakedness. There, she was practicing in the garden, going through a set of hand-to-hand combat techniques that could be used to take down a much larger opponent.

The sun had been warm on her skin---she'd been dressed in the absolute bare necessities to keep her body from being exposed to the private world she lived in. There had been no one in the house---she'd thought.

"All alone for the week, I know, because Ciara stocked the fridge before she left and I'd just had a shot and the laundry had been done and I'd been given techniques to learn---something enough to keep me busy a week..."

It was still a whisper and it made her muscles remember then the feel of the stretch and pull of a half-turning upward thrust of a hand that could both break a nose and shatter the partition between sinuses and brain membranes.

She relived the moment when she'd turned on her toes and brought her leg up to cut sideways with her bare knee, her hands wrapped around the head of an imaginary enemy. The movements, designed as a close grapple, were for a tactic of breaking the ribs and taking the breath of anyone she could use it on.

"And the way I shouted the names of the individual movements and the power behind the last cry that came with the actual killing blow..." Harmony smiled broadly at the idea that she had learned so much so fast at the hands of her Keeper, Ciara Mackenzie.

It was all just a continuation of the things she’d learned as a child. Ciara had said it was better for her to learn useful things and keep herself balanced through physical exertion than to allow the knowledge to go to waste in her head.

Turning in that moment, she'd opened her eyes and found Kevin Fawkes watching her from across the garden. He'd been standing on the patio, behind the wall, with his hands braced on the bricks. His face, without the glasses, had been soft, his dark eyes full of an odd expression.

"And I shouted his name right then, happy to see him...he was standing in the sunlight there, between the herbs in the pots and the low wall that I used to jump over, rolling across the grass in practice..."

Harmony had gone then, to receive his greetings. Sweat pouring from her, she'd known how her appearance was---she'd been messy with grass cuttings where she'd rolled several times through dropping maneuvers and her hair had been down around her face, soaked with the wetness of a hard work out.

She'd not had her breath back yet when she hugged him. Kevin'd laughed, sounding different, as he'd hugged her back. He'd been dressed in trousers and a shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows. No tie at his throat and his hair had fallen against his forehead, out of place as she had tackled him with her hug---he'd been unexpected but he was more than welcome.

"I'm glad to see you, Kev! And he said he was there to make sure I was okay. He sounded so worried right then..."

Asking him what the matter was, he'd just told her that he was there to visit and see to her physical himself; he had come to spend some time with her and Ciara. Upon being told that Ciara wasn't there, he'd gone quiet and his face had taken on that look again. It was as if he had already known her Keeper had to be gone for a while.

They'd talked all week, about this and that, staying close---he'd wanted to know how things were going for her and had she gotten past the new computer math theorems? Just staying close to him had made her feel good---and she'd come to realize that he seemed to enjoy their time together more than he had in the past.

"He helped me plant the new flowers as a surprise for Ciara and told me a little of what he'd been doing, which sounded great---been doing more work with Arnaud on an inhibitor of some kind. I didn't know..."

The things that crossed her mind during the check-up he'd done had made her blush and hang her head. Knowing what she was experiencing had made it worse for her---she wasn't fool enough to not recognize the emotions that made her suddenly stuttering shy in his presence, which Kevin had found amusing. She’d been hiding them for a long time…at that point.

"He said I must be dying to get away from his constant prying into my life. I didn't know how to tell him of the new angles I could see him in, the way I'd been looking at him for a long time. I wish I'd told him everything---one of us should have been honest about something."

In the flashes of the daydream, the week was cut down into bare minutes; here and there, the moments where her heart had sang and dropped and the long minutes when she thought she must surely blurt her feelings out at just any time.

Sitting out on the balcony one night, looking out over the near-by forested hills; she had heard his footsteps, as he'd come through the living room. It had been dark and the sky had been full of stars that were so bright that they were like diamonds against perfectly black velvet.

"The perfect late spring night for confessions of the heart..." It came out in a cynical way and she flinched inwardly to hear the verbal showing of her pain.

Just about ready to go to bed, she'd not turned when he'd come to talk to her. She'd thought her scientist friend would sit down beside her and ask what she was thinking about.

What he'd done, in fact, had taken her breath away. Kevin, dressed casually, had wrapped his arms around her from behind and hugged her around the shoulders and waist, his cheek pressed to hers, side by side looking in the say direction, as he sighed in that deep, familiar way. Her heart had leaped into her throat and she'd lost her sense of place for a few moments.

In that few seconds, she'd closed her eyes and made a fevered wish.

"I wish I could live in this moment forever..." Harmony remembered the wish well; she'd repeated it several times to herself since then, especially when she'd been alone and she could swear that she felt Kevin Fawkes near by, watching over her.

She hiccupped against the sob that tore her throat's tense muscles. The air had remained the same, but the effort to continue breathing was making her so tired and weak. Harmony knew that if she wasn't already lying on the floor that she'd have probably have been sitting or lying down anyway, due to the lack of oxygen. How much had Arnaud De Thiel left for her to breathe? The ratio didn't seem good---

Kevin had then come around to face her and he'd presented her with a gift as he'd leaned on the balcony's black iron rail. For her birthday, which he'd missed by only weeks. The necklace was beautiful and she'd told him so with overwhelmed tears standing in her eyes, still having not regained her composure.

He had said that the dove's flip side had writing on it, so tiny that it was only to be made out under a microscope. He'd had the little symbols inscribed by a microchip designer, he had told her. He'd laughed when she wanted to know what they said.

"It's 'a secret for me to remember. I’ll tell you later'. He said---his own personal secret. I was dying to know, but I couldn't ask him...not anymore."

Kevin'd held his breath as he put it on her with his fingers. She'd been aware of the sensation of holding her own breath because she couldn't believe the moment's beauty.

He'd talked to her for a time about the reasons why he was going to be coming to see her more often for a while. He had a project coming up that was going to take more of his time. He'd not seen her in a while and he wanted to spend more time with her since, in less than another year, he was going to be gone for an extended period.

"Has to be the gland he put in his brother...but a long time before…" Harmony blinked against images that threatened to seep through and invade the memory that she was recreating.

Images of Darien and his wonderful partner, Bobby Hobbes...the Keeper and the lab...and the things she'd said to Darien came back to haunt her again. No, she couldn't let that stop the sweetness of that reoccurring dream from coming through loud and clear.

He'd put the necklace on her and told her that he only had another day before he had to leave. He had promised to go see his younger brother. He'd mentioned his brother several times, but never in great detail---but the love was obvious. Once he was gone, she had known that she'd be alone and now she was sharply aware of it at last.

"Lonely...days and even more lonely nights. Why didn't I tell him when I had the chance that I couldn't take that?" She tried to keep it soft, but with the pressure of catching her breath, the last of the words came out in a loud squeak.

Her face hurt. The back of her head didn't hurt as badly, but then she'd not handled having her nose broken well. It'd happened only once before and the pain was the same.

Somehow, after he'd given her the gift, she'd started working on getting the nerve to tell him what was on her mind. Again. After all…it had been a year. Maybe he’d be able to accept her words now. Maybe she’d be brave enough this time. Maybe Arnaud was wrong. Maybe, just maybe what she said wouldn’t matter----that he’d see the intent and understand that she needed to get it out in the open. She'd wanted to do it just right, seriously, so that he'd know what this meant to her.

And in the moment she'd opened her mouth, on the balcony over the yard, intending to tell him that she loved him as more than a friend---the telephone had rung. He'd gotten up and gone to it, leaving the sliding glass doors open.

She'd heard the conversation as it had been played on speakerphone---it had been Ciara, calling home to check on them. Kevin Fawkes had laughed easily with the woman and told her that he was having a good vacation with their girl.

"And we did---we had a great time. It was his vacation and it was my life." Now, the tears were threatening to come back and she swallowed them fast, to stay focused within the recall.

Listening without a cause to leave before her feelings got hurt, she'd found the tears easy to shed when she'd heard his other words. He'd told Ciara, with the grin on his face, that she'd not changed and that she was still a pain to care for---she still wanted to play the same old games and didn't she take anything seriously? He'd laughed then, in response to something that Ciara Mackenzie had said. It hadn’t been important…

Not able to decide what to do, Harmony had walked by his turned back and gone to her room, shut and locked the door, and pretended to be nonexistent when he'd come to talk to her. He'd stood outside the door, talking to her for a while, asking her to let him in and tell him what was wrong. He’d heard her crying…heard her words then…and done nothing about it.

"How could he? Wasn't he thinking of me hearing what he said?"

She'd leaned on that door at last, confused and hurt, and listened to him standing so close and yet so far away. When at last he'd sighed and spoken his questions, she'd had to answer.

"What's wrong, he asked...are you feeling the pain again?" Harmony smiled harsh in the dark, remembering the pain she'd been feeling and how it'd not been what he meant by the question. "I had to tell him, I know. I love you, I said. I said I love you, Kev."

He'd gotten quiet and then said it back to her...but it sounded different than all the other times. She'd cried hard against the wood of that door, wishing she could let him in.

When he'd gotten tired of standing there, he'd left and gone to bed. Sometime just before dawn, she'd crept to stand inside the room where he slept. Invisible, she'd wished for a chance to make him think something of her besides that she was a pain to care for. Harmony had sat beside him and watched him dream his own dreams, and thought about what she could do if she dared, to show him what 'she' took seriously.

She'd not dared to go through with it and he had whispered a name in his sleep that she’d never heard before. The name of a woman. It had stolen the last of her courage. Sitting on the chair by the bed, she'd stayed like that until he'd gotten up and come looking for her.

He'd searched the house and grounds, calling her name. Stalking him barefooted within a few yards, Harmony had wanted to answer. Instead, she'd remained silent. All her tears were gone for the moment, but the ache had remained...

Finally, she'd watched him get ready and leave, driving away, headed back towards America. When Ciara had come back home, she'd gone to the woman that same night, in need of comfort and willing to accept what her Keeper could give, what her Keeper had been suppressing in her own self…a desire to consummate a new relationship between them. She'd taken Ciara by surprise and even some trepidation, but it had been easy to convince the tall, strawberry blonde that she meant business and knew what she wanted.

"He came back and tried to make it the same, but it wasn't the same anymore. Why? Why did it have to change?" It was louder, as she sighed in the cold air of the cell she'd been left in.

Harmony's heart broke again, remembering how she'd treated him then, when she'd felt she had no other choice---to keep from burdening him with her emotions, she'd pushed him back a few steps. It hadn't mattered that she screwed the hell out of Ciara every chance she got; it had never been enough to satisfy what was burning in her soul. And Ciara knew it. Had understood it and tried to be what her charge had needed.

Ever since, she'd worn the necklace, as a reminder of that night. She needed no reminder of how she felt---she'd not forget that---but as a way to constantly have him near. She wanted to go on remembering the way he'd looked in the moment he'd put it on her throat when he had held his breath.

It was all she really had left of him and the one moment in time when she'd been sure of who she was and what she felt and knew.

Crying, she shuddered and settled her back against the floor again. It really hurt to lay spread-eagle like this for so long. Her arms had been pulled back in a way that exposed the inner, more sensitive flesh. It made her shoulders ache.

Coming back to herself, she felt the muscles in her body shaking with the spasms that seemed to be coming nearly every hour now. Phase Four had been moved up and it was going to be a mad rush through pain and fear for the rest of her stay in this airless cell.

After she reached a certain place in the phase, she'd start throwing up the blood that would be the result of the toxins building in her body...she would start coughing up the blood that came from the toxin-laced lining of her lungs. She'd choke to death flat on her back, suffocating on her own blood.

And then, within only a day after that, she'd lose her grip on the ability to keep the killer in her head at bay, but since she was tied down, it wasn't such a big deal.

There was a dark place in her that enjoyed murder and degradation---she worked to keep that part of her away from the surface. It was only a side effect of the NE-hormones, Kevin had told her. Something to do with the cellular memory having been partially destroyed during gene changes, like erasing an audiocassette.

But, now she knew---the man she'd loved and trusted so much had not really known that it was the quicksilver. He'd put a gland in his brother's head. By doing that to Darien Fawkes, Kevin had turned another monster loose. She didn't think he'd known the truth about what Arnaud had done to the gland.

"Why didn't he know? God, Kevin..." She spoke to his image in her mind, wanting to shake him by the shoulders. "Why didn't you know? You were so smart and good---"

She hoped he had not known.

@@@

Starting at a farm in what looked like it could have easily been Arizona or Nevada in the dark, the small ATV had taken them quickly over ground. Ciara Mackenzie drove as if she were a stock car racer, sparing no one's feelings with the bone-rattling speed and agility.

It was a quiet machine and beside him, his partner was just as silent. It was definitely the most unusual situation Darien could imagine himself being in---except for the one that had brought in into the picture in the first place. If the gland weren't involved, he'd never have known any of them. Did that make it a blessing or a curse?

He'd been riding for what seemed nearly an hour before it started to look like the forest he knew the safe house was located in. Keeping his hand in his jacket pocket, he had been playing with the dove that hung on the thin gold chain. It was all part of the mystery, embroiled in the things that Harmony Corwin had shared with him and the journals that were in his duffel bag.

Did he really want to know the truth behind the mystery? Would it make him feel better to know how really human his brother had been? Would it take away the feeling that he himself had done wrong by the young woman? He had no idea, but he couldn't wait to have the time and privacy to read both of them in depth.

They held so much. In his mind, he got a clear picture of Kevin and heard that sudden laughter that had been the man's response to making a great discovery---it brought a sensation of having been thrown into a cold tub of water.

The journals that he had were only part of the picture. The best he could tell from leafing through it, the first journal actually contained the first eight years of his association with the young subject of the Chameleon Project and the second book was about the last four years of his life.

There had to be more journals…there was so much more, in the last twelve years, which had happened. Could Kevin have kept more than one set of diaries?

And so much more, from all the years before, that Darien knew he'd missed. He'd only touched the surface of the secrets his older brother had known about the world. It was all gone---except for the gland in his head, the memories he held, and the girl they were in Australia to rescue.

He frowned and rubbed the tiny dove between his fingers, letting the chain run like a cool silk thread over his skin. No one knew he had it yet; as far as he was concerned, no one would know that it had been brought along until he gave it back to Harmony Corwin.

Darien Fawkes had come around the world, more than a day's journey, to put his mind at ease and to bring the girl back to safety.

He became aware of the sharp scent of the ocean close by. It had been masked by the more powerful smell of the black-green trees as they'd driven along the tiny path through the forest.

A dark shape loomed in the woods ahead. Ciara Mackenzie drove over a narrow track with just a minimum of light to steer by. The safe house came into view and he could see how small it was. It looked like a summer cabin or a shack, but there was electricity he could see, from the generator that sat by the door.

"Where's De Thiel's place?" Hobbes got out, hoisting his small bag onto his shoulder. His breath puffed a little in the cold air.

"Up the cove fifteen kilometers." The woman took the Keeper's things and led the way to the covered porch that hung on the front of the cottage. The place looked decrepit in the yellowish, dying light of a lamp that hung from a banister.

"Isn't that kinda far away?" Darien wondered how they'd gotten information on the place if they were so far down the cove from their objective's compound.

Stepping up on the porch, he watched as she used a key to open the door. As she entered, letting more light past her from within, her face turned to look at him. In the half-light that played with the shadows, Agent Mackenzie was a stranger. It made his skin raise in goose bumps to see the reality of the woman he'd been thinking of as a friend for a little over a month now.

Her voice was solemn. "You think Arnaud De Thiel doesn't know we are here?"

Inside, the room was warm and tight, despite the outward appearance. It was homey and looked like most lake or ocean-side cabins he'd ever seen. Darien looked around as he pushed the door shut behind them, locking it with the deadbolt.

The couch and chairs, the fireplace, stove, the tables and chairs...it was like some family was living here for a vacation. A small, apartment-sized refrigerator sat, humming to itself next to a shut door. There were even knick-knacks on shelves that hung on the wall.

It was all for show, though, as he could see from the television that sat in the corner showed various, constantly moving shots of the exterior of the house and near-by woods. It was not cable---that was for sure.

Ciara turned on another lamp that sat on a table and moved on towards the doorway that led to the other part of the safe house. A short, dark hallway exposed three doors.

"Bathroom's back through there, people, past the fridge. Here are your rooms for the duration. Claire, you're in here---" The accent had lightened with the silence that hung in the air---her voice was gentle, but Darien could see the darkness that waited in her face.

He watched as his Keeper took her things from the lanky agent. When the first door had shut, she'd turned to face them. They were standing before the other open door.

There was a closed door, on the other side of the room that Claire had gone into. A light shone from a crack at the bottom of it and a few sounds suggested that someone was within. The person she'd spoken to on the cell phone had to be in there.

"This, gentlemen, is your room. Enjoy."

She followed them in and turned on the light. It was empty except for two cots and a small window that had a dingy lace curtain over it. The cots were on either wall, leaving only a few feet between them. It was a small room, barely qualifying as a large, walk-in closet.

"Normal Agency accommodations, I see." Darien tossed his old duffel on one of the cots and sighed.

"You're not here on vacation, Legs." She stood with her arms folded across her chest again, that dark, determined expression having never left.

"I've seen worse." Bobby Hobbes sat down on the other cot and let his own bag down off his shoulder with a groan. "And with just hours til dawn, it looks like paradise."

Darien shrugged. It would have to do---he just couldn't believe that he was going to get some sleep at last. With the situation at hand, it didn't seem likely.

"Sleep as long as you need, Agent Hobbes. We've got time still yet. Our associate needs time to prepare the bait."

"Bait?" Hobbes looked up, his brow creasing in concentration. He suddenly didn't look so tired.

"Yes, but we'll go over the particulars of my plan when you've woken up. Rest now. You need it if you're going to be any use to me in this mission." Ciara Mackenzie's eyes had turned upwards in a small smile that changed the shape of her face's contours. The angles had sharpened. "There will be breakfast, of course."

Darien started to sit down on his cot as she turned to go. He didn't get the chance.

"Agent Fawkes, I would like a word with you. Alone."

He looked at his partner, feeling his heart skip a beat. Hobbes' sympathetic expression didn't help. The dark eyes that met his showed an understanding of the fear that Darien felt. What was coming now? The older agent's ruffled exterior made his fear more acute. If Ciara Mackenzie could get to Hobbes, she could get under the skin of nearly anyone.

Sure, he'd ribbed his partner about the little fiasco that had happened in the van when the woman had caught him asleep at the soundboard, but the fact remained that she had proved herself to be more than resourceful---she was dangerously fast and deadly.

She'd not turned to look at him as she said it and she'd not stopped as she'd left the room.

Silently hoping for the best, Darien followed her. His shoes made little sound on the wooden floorboards as he entered the front room.

Standing at the fireplace, she stood with her slender, silk-jacketed back to him. He kept the table and chairs between them.

Her short hair shone like a very dark wine in the crackling firelight. There were a few little strands of curl that lay against the pale gold of the nape of her neck. The flames were still high; it had been tended to recently. He saw the way the light jumped on her sleek suit. Ciara didn't speak.

Darien Fawkes stood still and watched her from behind. She was an assassin. She was a spy. She'd been working for the government for an undetermined amount of time.

For the ten years that she'd cared for Harmony Corwin, in Switzerland and in Scotland, she'd done things he had no idea of---but if what the girl had hinted at were truths, then the woman who stood in the room with him had done independent work as a killer and bodyguard for hire before coming back to the States.

Had his brother known this? What had Kevin known that he'd never said about his friends? Had he known many like her?

Harmony had told him that she'd spent those ten years between Ciara's homeland and Switzerland---she'd preferred the latter. Scotland, she said, was nice, but she'd been more alone there, in Edinburgh, than anywhere else on earth. She'd learned how to be a hacker there, at fifteen years old. She'd learned from an unmentioned teacher.

In western Switzerland, which she called home, she'd been on her own for as much as two weeks at a time during her more stable periods, but she'd never felt so totally isolated from the world as she had during her time in the highlands of United Kingdom.

Now, he was in a room, by himself, with a woman who thought nothing of murder except as a means to an end that brought some profit or use to the government. Her reasons might make it savagely noble, but it was still taking a person's life from them. And once taken, it couldn't be returned. It was wrong and Darien knew that for the time he'd known her, he'd been working hard to not think about that part of her.

Harmony had told him that the woman had done it to pay for the serum and for the life they'd led, but he suspected that there was more to it than that. As her Keeper, Ciara had taken her job seriously enough to compromise her sense of justice; wrong and right had been put on a back burner for a number of years in the cause of protecting the young girl's life. He had ideas about what she'd really been doing during those years.

She might have taken only jobs that called for the extermination of a criminal or a despot, but it didn't excuse the fact that she was a killer who could be bought, if a buyer had the blood money. She didn't come cheap and her biggest price was hanging between them. Harmony was her charge and she'd been taken---it was why he was here.

But there was also the knowledge, still unspoken between them, that Darien had crossed a line where Harmony was concerned. There might be a desperate price to pay; he had no idea what the female agent would do if angered. Could she be angered?

When she spoke, she didn't turn. Leaving her back exposed to him, she kept her voice soft. "Come here. These words are not for the world, Darien. They are between the two of us, you and me."

His legs were stiff from the ride across the world and from the long hours. Darien walked to stand at her side, hoping that whatever friendship she'd held precious for his older brother would preserve him now.

"I speak to you now, not as an agent of the government we serve, but as someone you make promises to. Perhaps a friend." She didn't look at him.

"Yeh, I know." He shoved his hands in his back pockets and cocked his head to the side, wondering how it would come out of his mouth. "I need to talk to you about that, actually."

"Shhh." When she turned to look at him, Darien saw the expression in her eyes. They were as serious as they'd been when she'd asked him to destroy Harmony out of mercy if their assignment failed at the Hotel Rimbaud. She'd meant what she'd said then and it was obvious that the same steel was in place now. As she stared into his eyes, he grew uncomfortable but couldn't look away.

"Tell me that Harmony asked for it. That she offered?" Ciara's tone was emotionless.

Darien sighed and shifted his feet. "Ciara, I can't---"

"Did you use her grief for Kevin?" It came quick, nearly a hiss. The light of the fire shone in her gray eyes like gold on silver. Instead of looking warm, it was like seeing the eyes of a cold-blooded reptile.

"No!" He lowered his voice again, glancing at the doorway that led to the hall. "It wasn't like that. I swear."

She took a step towards him, her arms folded to her ribs. Darien had a mental image of a moment, only seconds from now, when she might use those long hands to take his life. She was carrying her gun against her ribs.

He hit the wall and stumbled. There was nowhere else to go, but she advanced until she was only a few inches from him. He worked to contain his sense of panic. She wouldn't hurt him because of what was in his skull; at least, he hoped she wouldn't hurt him much.

Searching his face, she kept her face neutral and her eyes were narrowed down to slits as she stared into his. Finally, her expression changed and went a little softer. "No. I think it wasn't a bad thing. I see that. You're just like her. Searching for answers."

His breath came out as a shudder and he sagged a little as she took a single step backwards. With her feet planted, she continued to look at him, but the expression on her face was more like the woman he'd started to think of as a friend. Darien wasn't fooled---she'd kill him if she wanted and there was little he could do to stop it.

"Ciara---we got problems if she's pregnant." Shifting the subject just a little, he watched as she smiled now. Confused, he shook his head as she went on smiling.

"No, she's probably not pregnant, Darien. It would be a real miracle if she could be, despite what Claire might think. Believe me when I tell you that." There was a hint of laughter in her words that made her brogue thicker for a moment.

"But, Kevin's notes said---" He was confused by her half-hidden laughter and by her sounding so positive and sure.

"Your brother wasn't a saint. He was human." The look on her face grew serious again, but not deadly. It was the expression of a person who'd seen too much. "I may be many things, but I'm also human. I am pretty sure, from what he did to her body, that she can't have gotten a child from your one little moment together."

Darien looked away, feeling a mix of disbelieving relief. Could she know what she was talking about? Was it possible that the test results were really something else entirely?

"Kevin was human, but he wasn't incompetent. He was no saint, as I said before, but he knew far more about Harmony's health and mind than you can possibly have discovered in your few days with her." The cynical smile lifted one side of her mouth and he recognized her sense of humor. There were secrets behind that sly grin.

"She loved him." He met the gray gaze and didn't back down. "Do you love her?"

It was a challenge that wasn't met with the anger he'd expected. Darien wasn't sure why he'd done it, but some part of him still felt disgust at the way that this woman had turned her back on Harmony, who had relied on that love always being there.

"I love her, but she made a choice to go on grieving for what can't be changed. When she deals with that, I'll deal with her." The cold words cut into him. It was definitely not what he'd expected---he didn't know what he'd thought he'd hear, but a callous put-off was not it. He saw her lower her head, hiding her face from his eyes.

"She just needs time to get past it, don't you see?" He licked his lower lip and plunged on, prepared for the possible rebuttals. "Harmony feels guilty for what happened."

The sigh that came from the suddenly lowered head of Agent Mackenzie was not what he'd thought he'd hear. When was he going to stop being surprised by her? Her dark hair lay flat against her forehead in soft tendrils as she glanced up at him, smiling sadly.

"And she's haunted by that love and the lost chance, I know. She knew nothing of the truth behind your brother, Legs. She doesn't need to know." The eyes were gentle and he saw down into her deep soul and found himself hanging on the edge of a cliff that lurked there. "If she knew, she'd be in worse shape. I'm protecting her, as always, the best way I can."

"By hiding the truth from her?" He put his hands on his hips and tugged on the waistband of his pants. Now, he was getting some truth at last and without having to find out how much pain she could inflict in payment for his breech of conduct.

"It is a truth. That is all. A truth that might destroy her. My job isn't to destroy her, if I can avoid it. Would you make this worse?" She finally brought her head up and leaned it to one side, adjusting her arms where they clasped her sides.

"What truth? I don't know it---and how can I decide what she shouldn't know?"

"Right. You don't know the truth and you can't make that decision---it's mine to make. Leave it alone, Darien. Your brother was more than you knew and the journals you brought with you are only the tip of the truth he was carrying." The smile that flickered with the mention of the journals was brief and bright, like the flames of the fire behind her.

The light shining at her back created a nimbus of gold around her head. The scars on her face were like little shadows of previous injury. He'd bet money on her not having cared when she was cut. She, like his brother, was a mystery that he might never know the answers to. Her brows lifted in silent question, asking him to agree. Darien didn't give her what she was expecting. He stayed quiet.

"Don't feel guilty, kid. If I see this the way I think I do, you both deserved some warmth." When she didn't get his agreement, she went on and explained that there were some things in Harmony's heart that couldn't be touched by anyone but Kevin. That maybe Darien had done the best thing possible, even if the pain had still been there.

When she'd finished speaking, he'd been shocked. She believed that it was okay? Ciara Mackenzie wasn't going to do anything to him for carrying his promise too far? "You're not gonna---"

"Not what? Kill you?" Ciara laughed. Her eyes were lit up with the emotion. "No. I won't kill you for being a guardian angel to our girl. At least you're brave enough to face what she had to offer."

He shook his head again, not understanding. Narrowing his own eyes at her, he felt the sensation that somewhere above, someone was laughing at him. If heaven existed, then there were some souls who were getting their kicks at his expense. It wasn't such a bad thing. "I don't understand."

"Your brother never meant to hurt either of you, Darien. You know that. He never wanted you involved in his problems. But, you are involved." Her smile suggested that she might be one of the souls laughing at his discomfort.

"I know---and I'm paying the price now, right?"

"Don't look at it that way, Legs. You may have given Harmony Corwin a reason to believe. That's not so bad." If she was laughing at him, it wasn't such a bad thing; compared to what he'd come here worrying about, it was actually a good change of the situation.

"Believe? In me?" He looked away, sighed, and shrugged. "Sure, why not."

"Oh. No." When he looked at her again, he saw the seriousness returning. "Don't make the mistake of thinking it is love she wanted from you."

"That's what she told me. She said it wasn't love." He left his hands fall to his sides in surprise at the knowledge that Harmony really hadn't needed an emotional response from him to fix something inside of herself.

"Believe her. Harmony's a smart girl and she's aware of her own body and heart more than any other person. She's completely self-aware." Ciara Mackenzie stepped back from him a few more steps, giving him a way to escape if he wanted it. Her voice was softer now, as she lowered her arms and put the long-fingered hands in her pockets.

"It's not love for you, Darien. It's not love for her. But you've given her something more." She finished with a sigh. In the lamps and the firelight, he saw her features go wide with the emotions she felt. Whatever she was thinking was hidden---it was all part of the secret.

"Something more? I don't---" He came off the wall and approached her. No longer fearing that his life would end in this room, he felt sure that he could get close enough to get a peek at the truth that was just out of his sight.

"You gave her Kevin back in some way---didn't you guess that already?" Her chuckle was as sad as her eyes looked. "It was what I was 'unable' to do. Let's just hope Harmony keeps that part of herself now."

The seriousness was there, tinged with the blood of secrets that had his brother's fingerprints all over them. The man his older sibling had been was the inspiration behind the truth that he couldn't quite see.

"I didn't, no. How?"

"When we get our girl back, you need to finish that conversation." Ciara's mouth twisted upwards in that strange, cocky grin. "I'm guessing you talked about many things. Finish the conversation and keep in mind that she'd not just a kid with a bruised heart."

"When we find her, I will." Darien nodded, thoughtfully. She was right---there had been more to say. Harmony had indicated as much without words. "How did you know any of this, anyway, Ciara?"

The seriousness deepened and he saw, from his place a few feet away, the depth of her eyes that seemed to have no bottom.

"I am me. I know." Then the door was shut between them and she was the government agent facing him once more. "Get some sleep, Darien."

She stepped around the table and turned her back on him once more. There was nothing else to say about the matter, her actions told him. It was closed; to be opened again only by Harmony when they got to her. Reaching the door that led to the hallway, she spoke over her shoulder, a hint of laughter back in her voice.

"Tell Bobby I said good night. I know he's not sleeping yet. Not while he wants to be in here, protecting you."

Back in the room he was sharing with his partner, he took his jacket off and sat down on the bed. Laying the duffel in the floor, he stretched out and covered up with the blanket that had been left for him.

From across the small room, he heard the shift of the older agent's cot. A change in the breathing told him that she'd been right---Hobbes hadn't been asleep. He'd been laying in the dark, probably with his gun drawn and ready. What would Bobby Hobbes have done if the unmistakable sounds of murder had come from the front room? Would he have come in, ready to retaliate for the death of his partner?

"It's okay, buddy. She's not gonna kill me." A mirthless smile crossed Darien's mouth as he put his hands behind his head. "Not yet, anyway."

A sigh that sounded relieved came from Hobbes. "Glad to hear that, sport. To think I was laying here wondering how to tell the fat man why she shot your ass."

"Yeh, it would be a hell of a way to be remembered." He closed his eyes and relaxed against the hard cot's mattress. "All that money blown away with a little piece of lead that cost only pennies."

"Actually, I was picturing her ripping your arms off and beating you to death with them." The sound of his partner's relief wasn't marred by his words. "I was thinking maybe I ought to sneak in and watch."

"You're not really still pissed over that, are you? I told you it was a little thing---Harmony handled it better than you." Darien frowned. It was true. The girl had not thought a thing about what they'd done. But, his partner, who showed no real sign of affection towards him on a day-to-day basis, seemed to be bothered by it.

Was it possible that Bobby Hobbes was thinking or feeling the things that he himself was only now dealing with? Nah, it wasn't possible.

"She really didn't care?" Hobbes whistled softly. "Damn, that's cold."

"Who? Agent Mackenzie or Harmony?" Sliding over onto his side, Darien opened his eyes and found his partner in the gloom. Hobbes was up on his elbow. The white of his undershirt gleamed from under the edge of the dark blanket.

"One. Either. Both. I don't get it." The older agent shook his head, barely seen in the darkness.

"Our friend in there---" Darien used a hand to wave at the door. "Thinks that it was necessary. Harmony...well, she has unusual ideas about what love is about."

"Man, where have I hiding been all my life that I never found a woman who didn't care for the confusing sentiment of love?" Hobbes lay back down with a grunt.

"I didn't say she didn't care for love."

There was a long silence that went on for what seemed ten minutes. Darien stared into the air, at the ceiling, and thought about the idea of Harmony needing someone to remind her that it was okay to feel love for someone she'd lost. It had been a strange thing to find out that he may have helped her remember some thing she had been on the edge of forgetting about his older brother. He didn't know what to think about the idea.

Her payment had been to reveal some truth hidden in him that only she'd been willing to say out loud. He'd known what he was feeling before she'd voiced it. When she'd smiled and told him it was for his partner, he'd felt like he might burst with the surprise.

She'd told him it was obvious; that his face and body told on him. She'd not only been fine with that, she'd actually spoken for some time about love and how he shouldn't be afraid to show it in some way. Maybe, Harmony had said, he could escape being left as alone as her. The strength he'd seen in her face at that moment had been tempered by a sadness that was only a hair from tears again. She'd not cried, though.

From the other side of the tiny room, Hobbes' voice was low and in awe of the entire thing. "This was a sympathy fuck, right? If that's true, then who needed the sympathy?"

Darien didn't answer. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and pretended that he wasn't going insane by wanting to tell his partner what Harmony Corwin had to say about them. It was better that he went on acting like he'd not heard it or that he was asleep already.

But, some deep-rooted part of him that sounded suspiciously like Harmony doing her half-accurate imitation of his brother's voice spoke up and asked him. "Better for who?"

Chapter 9

In the Dark:

Harmony shivered and sighed, blinking. Right now, she decided with a sarcastic grin, she’d give anything for some coffee. She whispered. "Wonder how much he’d ask me for if I told him I wanted a pot of coffee…? God…Kev would be so freaked. I’m gonna die, I’m stuck in hell, and all I want is coffee."

She had to hold out. No matter what it took. Even if it cost her the last shreds of sanity, right up to the very end. Her friends would have to come looking for her. The Official knew what she was and that meant she would be just valuable enough to keep.

Besides…when Ciara’s superiors found out…she’d be considered a factor to perhaps eliminate. Who would they send? Would it be Ciara….or her old beautiful friend, the ageless and familiar Angel? God…which one would she prefer?

The door opened in the dark. Harmony took a deep breath in, craning her neck to see him. She was pretty sure it had been a few hours anyway since he’d come in last. Would he have changed clothes, taken a shower, shaved?

Arnaud wasn’t her favorite person----she hated his damn guts. Right now, though, a face would be welcome. Anyone to shout at---express thoughts with. Even if it was just to go on arguing. If she argued with him, maybe she would feel like she was vindicated in telling him to fuck off, to go to hell, to take his precious business deal and shove it up his narrow ass.

At least…she would have a reason to argue with herself…there was a part of her mind that was beginning to bend around the ideas he’d given her. The idea of a partnership.

It wasn’t Arnaud. The lamp flared into existence and she felt her stomach lurch as her eyes went wide. Her heart began to pound with fear, making her feel like she was going to lose control over the sweat that would cause her invisibility.

It was a young woman…wearing nothing. Wearing nothing at all. No clothes. She had a gorgeous body and a solemn look on her round-cheeked face. She was lovely, in a fresh, gentle way. And the horror of it?

Her face…her hair…the way she smiled just then. "Hi there. I was wondering if you were awake. He told me you might be getting lonesome in here."

"What the----" Harmony struggled against the restraints, fighting to sit up. Futile, she knew. Settling back, she continued to crane her neck to examine the other girl. "Okay…now, I know who I am. I know this shit in my head’s not gone bad yet. I see and hear crap all the time, but this…this…this…oh, fuck. Fuck."

"If that’s what you want, but I thought we might talk instead." The girl laughed in a gently sympathetic way, approaching with the lamp. She had a southern accent…like Georgia or maybe even Louisiana. "The guy who takes care of me right now…what do you call someone like that? A Keeper? Yeah. He said you’d probably say those things. That you’d been bad and he was interested in making sure you were okay down here."

"Fuck you. Get the hell away from me. This is fucking unreal shit. You…you…Arnaud sent you in here to screw with me, didn’t he? Who the fuck ARE you???" Harmony shouted, her nerves going crazy. "I know who I am----but who the hell does he think YOU are??"

The girl, her pert breasts swinging for a second, settled down on the floor. The lamp was set to the side. She folded her hands into her lap where she’d crossed her legs. Harmony worked to examine her, blinking fast in the yellowish light.

No tattoo. No necklace…but then hers was in the apartment, by the bed. There was a pair of small, golden earrings visible. Tiny hoops. And this chick had body hair. She had some hair on the half-hidden mound of her pussy.

There were differences…her hair was thicker for one thing. Her eyes were slightly different, more slanted and cat-like. Her mouth was not quite as full and it looked like she didn’t have that little bit of an overbite. Maybe she had kept her retainer in, like she was told to. Her nose didn’t have the little curve in its bridge from being broken as a child.

The other girl’s cheeks were not quite as round, either. There was more baby fat on her, too. It was obvious that she didn’t jog or exercise using martial arts. She had a soft, sweet look to her that was familiar, yet alien.

Familiar, hell. It was like looking into a mirror. A darkened mirror…kind of.

"Who. Are. You?" Harmony gritted her teeth, getting control over her mind. It was obviously not part of her memory playing tricks on her. It was obviously not the sickness making her feel like she’d stepped outside of herself again…like it had been doing for a while.

"Well…" The girl flipped the edge of her auburn hair away from her shoulder and slouched, her shoulders going round. It caused her breasts to change contour vaguely. "My…Keeper calls me Louisa…cause that’s my first name. My name’s Louisa Courtland Vance. I come from just south of Atlanta. Newnan? You know where Newnan is?"

"No. I don’t." Harmony shivered at the peach-sweet accent. "Arnaud calls you Louisa…okay, what do you call yourself and don’t you fucking dare say ‘Harmony’."

"My momma called me Courty." The girl laughed again with a flash of teeth, ducking her round face. "Arnie’s my Keeper, so I let him call me what he wants. He sent me to go stay with a friend, but I’m back now. I been working in some place. Switzerland. For a friend of his. The boss calls me Songbird. Said it’s some kind of a petname…"

Cold chills went all over her and she felt like she might start screaming any moment now and never stop. Harmony turned her face away, taking a deep breath in the cool air.

A few moments went by and Courty spoke again. "You wanna hear what I learned over there? Arnie said you might like to know it."

She started to sob and bit her lip to shut it off. This was unreal. This girl…had to have been altered. Surgery and crap like that. God…what was he up to?

"He said you’d been bad…that you’re giving him a hard time about some kind of deal. You do business with him? He and Preacher seem to be fighting about something now. Ol’ Preacher, he’s my boss----he can’t get something for Arnie."

The voice had changed. Accented…for Zurich…or maybe Bern. And was starting to sound a little more like hers…as if she’d been trained to talk this way. And only needed a warm up to get going with it. God…

She kept her face turned, to keep from having to look at the face that was a strange twin to her own. "Preacher, huh? Shoulda fucking knew he’d been in this up to his goddamn eyes. He loves this kind of crap."

"You know Preacher well, don’t you? Used to work for him?" Courty asked, quietly, her accent finally slipping into a finished product that made her sound ‘just’ like she’d grown up in Switzerland. "He said you belonged to him, that you quit and ran. He’s not exactly the nicest guy sometimes, you know? When I don’t do what I’m supposed to do, he has a way of getting mean about it. I’ve been staying with him, working. Arnie told him to make sure I got my meds, but…he’s not always on time."

Harmony moaned then, against her control. God…it was starting to sound and look like a hell of a plan. Now…without being told, she had an idea of what Arnaud was going to do. Which had to be what he wanted her to know.

If she didn’t give in…if she didn’t give in…he’d send this girl. Or try to. When----If----her friends ever came here, this girl, Courty, would be given to them. To take home. She wasn’t going to leave…he wouldn’t let her leave.

Steeling herself, she took a deep breath and made a decision. She could do this…could get it under control. ‘Think like Ciara,’ she told herself. ‘Be like they taught you to be…think fast and cool and remember that you’re not the fastest bitch…that you can’t outsmart them all…He’s expecting an emotional response. Don’t give it to him…’

"Hey…you said they’re fighting?" Harmony turned her head now, wincing at the pain. "What’s wrong? Preacher trying to hack those files for Arnaud? He can’t…there’s a security measure in place there. A friend…a friend and I built the new walls. He won’t get through them."

Courty’s eyes went wide. "You do that computer stuff, too? Yeah…I think that’s what’s going on. Arnie said Preacher’s useless now. That he can’t even break the codes of some stupid place called the…"

"Agency." She said, smiling, settling her mind to accept the conditions of what had been given to her to work with. She could do this…could face this. "I work there…or I used to work there, anyway. Arnaud wants me to hack some files that belonged to a friend of…ours."

It actually hurt to say the words. To wrap her mouth around it. The girl she was studying gave a nod and seemed to be thinking about it. She swallowed the tight lump in her throat and went on, speaking in a calm, gentle way. To handle this scariness the way her teachers had taught her to handle it. Ciara and Daniel…she could do this. She’d make Daniel proud.

"Courty…you know Preacher…talk to him. Tell him I can’t do this. That it’s something I made a promise to myself about. That I can do anything else they want, but I can’t give them those files. A friend of mine…a guy named Darien…is counting on me not to do that. His life is in my hands…and if I hack those files, Arnaud…Arnie…will kill him anyway."

She was trying to appeal to the softer, more understanding side of a girl who seemed a few bricks short of a full load. It couldn’t be so hard…if she worked to gain an edge in this girl’s mind, she might be able to create a sliver of hope for her own sanity.

When was Courty going to leave…? God…looking at that face was horrible. The surgery had been done great. Would it pass in full daylight? Her most casual acquaintances might be fooled…but her real friends would know the difference. Wouldn’t they?

Ciara would know instantly and do something about it---probably something ugly. So would Dante and Daniel. In her worst nightmares, she saw images of herself losing control over what lurked in the back of her head, beyond the memories. In those images, Ciara found it easy to pull the trigger, to erase the lab rat Arnaud said she was.

Darien wouldn’t fall for it, either. He’d know something was wrong…cause this girl was ‘nothing’ like her. The Keeper would see a difference, not just mentally and emotionally…but physically. Cause this girl could not possibly be as fucked up as she was, chemically.

"Arnie told me about your friend Darien. Said that Darien’s part of the reason you refuse to do business. How hard can it be? He’s just a guy you work with, right? I mean…" Courty leaned near now and she felt the brushing touch of the long hair that stroked at her arm.

Her voice was her own again, sweet, light peach. "He’s not…your boyfriend or anything, is he? Cause…if he was, I could see why you’re saying no. Arnie said that the Agency treats you guys like the hospital treated me. Maybe you could work out a deal to get both you and Darien out of the Agency if you had Arnie helping…?"

"Not…my boyfriend." Harmony fought a shiver that made her teeth chatter at the sensation of being touched by the auburn hair. "No…no deals. No fucking way. You’re mental, aren’t you? Some kid he picked up in a nut ward cause of the…way you kinda looked like me. You’re not me. Don’t let him fool you. You don’t want to be me. I have problems and I’m gonna fucking die and I have no family and my life’s nothing but shit."

Courty lay down, on her side, close enough to touch. Harmony shuddered and closed her eyes tightly. No…this was so unreal. The sensation of this girl’s skin touching hers so lightly…oh. It was the strangest fucking day of her life. Without a doubt. And she’d never get a chance to ever talk to Dante about this. He’d never believe it. He’d probably laugh and pass her the bong again, saying that she was exaggerating all this crap.

"I know you think that…but, see…we got things in common. We’re kinda like sisters, really." Her strange twin whispered in her magnolia accent. "See…Arnie said you’re an orphan. That you got no family and that a guy named Kevin used you as an experiment----"

"Kevin didn’t use me!" She shouted, causing the other girl to startle, moving back a few inches. She went on, her voice loud in the small room. "Kevin cared about me! He saved my life!"

"Then…um…" Courty waited until she got quiet again. The girl licked her lips and frowned, her brows knotted in thought. "Why’re you dying? You said you were gonna die."

Harmony moaned, biting down on her lips to silence it, as she turned away. She fought for control over her throat muscles.

Finally sure she could speak without her voice cracking, she turned again and looked at the girl who lay by her side. "Okay, that’s a fair shot. Listen, Courty…you’re not me. Don’t let that sick bastard tell you anything else. Maybe Kev was responsible for some of what’s wrong with me, but he taught me something important. He taught me how to love and he loved me as his friend…he taught me that I don’t have to be what they wanted me to be, what Arnaud wants me to be. I can be more----because I’m better than that. So can you."

"God…that’s so sweet. Must be nice to have someone who believes in you that way. Wish I had someone who loved me so much as you love that guy." Courty was bracing her head on the palm of her hand. Stretched out beside her as if it were really a bed. "He said you were something called a Deathangel. That you were changed to do the same things I did."

"Deathangel?" It was a familiar word…somewhere, in her subconscious mind, she knew she’d heard that word. Was it a part of the things that Ciara said she’d fixed? The things that the scientists had done?

"Yeah." Her twin went on, curiosity in her lamp-lit eyes. "That you were meant to be a killer. You were supposed to be like…some kind of super-trained smart spy? Arnie said deathangels come in pairs and that you can do stuff real fast and go invisible. That you’re trained to kill other killers, but that you’ll even kill your own family, if necessary…"

Harmony felt her blood going cold at the thought. She whispered, keeping her eyes focused on the eyes that hovered so near. Eyes that weren’t hers…not quite. "I have no family. I have no one that I could’ve been paired up with, Courty, so Arnaud must be telling a lie. I was alone til Kevin came along and I’ve been mostly alone ever since. I’d know if I was a…deathangel. Ciara would’ve told me."

"The Golden Wolf? You know the Golden Wolf?" Courty’s eyes went large with surprise.

She smiled sourly at the knowledge that Preacher had been talking. Maybe she could work this angle, in her favor. "Yes. I do. Why, you want an autograph?"

@@@

"Check out time is eleven o'clock, Fawkes. Get the hell up."

He fought the urge to rise up and slap at his partner. "Please, go away."

Bobby Hobbes, chuckling, pulled the covers free of his body and he shivered. It was cold in the room. At least, his body told him it was.

"Come on, hotshot, I'm not telling you again."

Darien dragged his head out from under his arms. "How long have you been standing there?"

The jet lag was in full force now. It was going to be days before he felt like himself again. His partner's face, above, was still smiling. He sat up weakly, rubbing at his face, and tentatively felt the air. His mouth tasted like someone had poured dirt in it and shut it for him while he slept.

"Australia sucks."

"Yeh, you'll be used to it by tomorrow morning, pal. Get up. It's time to work." Hobbes threw the blanket at him and moved away.

Forcing his eyes to stay open, he sniffed. Coffee. He could smell coffee and food. And it wasn't a bad thing. Someone here knew how to actually cook. Darien licked his lips and realized how badly he needed to brush his teeth and wash his face. A shower wouldn't be a bad thing, now, either. He could smell himself.

Looking around, he saw that the sun was up and the day had really begun without him. He'd nearly gotten to sleep to noon. It had been awhile. It sure didn't feel like he'd had much sleep, though.

His partner was already showered and dressed in a clean pair of trousers and a short-sleeved shirt. No jacket. Bobby Hobbes looked just a little too slick in the khaki polo.

"It can't be possible that you're a morning person." Darien yawned hugely, stood up, and stretched. Immediately, he lost his footing and fell back to sit on the hard cot.

"I'm not." Hobbes left the room, calling over his shoulder. "But, then, I live for the job."

"I live for the job." He couldn't resist a jibe at mocking the older agent. God, he felt bad. It was like he'd gotten drunk but he didn't remember drinking.

Suddenly, he remembered last night...or this morning...or whenever it had been that Ciara Mackenzie had backed him to a wall and talked very softly at him about his brother's secrets and about what he himself had done with Harmony.

Harmony's face came to mind then and he frowned. He'd not forgotten why he was in Australia. It had haunted him last night---he'd thought about it for over a whole day now and if he took into consideration the time difference and the international dateline---

"Aw, crap. Forget it." It was too much to think about at this point. Maybe later.

Getting back to his feet, he unzipped his duffel. In there were the two journals and the clothes he'd brought. Grabbing some clean jeans and a tee shirt, he added the flannel he'd brought, in case it was really as cold as the Official had hinted at. The two journals, he laid on top of the pile that he now carried.

He didn't think it was this cold when they'd arrived at the safe house. In Sydney, it'd been cold enough to need a coat. Here, maybe it was just his thin skin. Toothbrush in his back pocket, he left the room he'd shared with his partner.

In the front room, Claire and the female agent who'd scared him last night were waiting. He stopped for a moment. In his nightmare, Ciara had not been dark-haired. Her hair had been long, thick, and red blonde. Nightmare. He'd remembered it. He'd been having a nightmare. He just couldn't remember it. Lately, his dreams were fuzzy---he had trouble recalling their details.

"Good morning, Legs." She looked up from the stove, giving him a sly, crooked grin. Today, she was dressed in jeans and a silk shirt that had a distinctly poetic flare to it. It was so unlike her that he blinked several times, as he looked her up and down. Wow. With the short, dark curls of her hair still wet and her skin glowing peach, Ciara looked like she'd slept very well.

He'd count on it, if she were sharing a room with his Keeper.

She had more facets than her partner, Harmony Corwin, did. It was like stepping out of reality and back into the dream...but in the pieces of nightmare he could remember, Ciara had been dressed in black leather and she'd been very angry with him.

He watched as she poured him a cup of coffee and set it on the table.

"How do you eat eggs?" She flipped a pancake in the air as she turned back to the stove. "Scrambled or sunny side up?"

"With a fork." He moved around the small refrigerator and pushed the bathroom door open. Standing there, he looked back at her. "Is there hot water here?"

"There was when we got up." His Keeper glanced at him from the table. She was finishing a plate of food and dressed as casually as the agent at the stove was. Her boat necked knit shirt was a pastel rose.

She looked at ease with the world as if she had nothing to do. Which was true, from this point, if he thought about it. She was there to take care of the counteragent for him and to help Harmony when they found her.

Darien groaned. Then, he heard a laugh from the other rooms, past the hallway. Raising his eyebrows, he looked around. Hobbes was nowhere to be found. He'd not come back in here. He'd gone to the room that had been shut last night---the one that the light had been coming from.

He laid his clothes on the table and passed his Keeper, lightly touching her on the shoulder. "Maybe a few more minutes will give me some hot water."

"Darien---"

Her words were lost to him as he pushed the mysterious door open. He had to see who had been brought in as Ciara's partner until Harmony could be rescued from Arnaud De Thiel.

Hobbes stood in the small room, his hands in his pockets, telling a joke. It was a very funny blonde joke, but the way the older agent's face moved as he expressed the sentiment behind the humor made it better.

It was a joke that Bobby Hobbes had told Darien just a week before. It was a good one, but it was not the joke that suddenly made him smile in memory. It was the look on his partner's face right now that was absolutely delicious---the completely relaxed attitude.

"And 22, 22, 22, 22."

The abrupt laughter from the younger man who sat in the chair before the computers was loud. He covered his mouth and clenched a fist against the surface of the desk he sat at in response to the punch line.

"Hi, guys." Darien shrugged his way on through the door and watched as both his partner and the newcomer turned in response. Somehow, he wasn't surprised to see Dante Webster or his computers.

It was starting to fall into place. Along one wall of the small room were two completely assembled computers with their monitors turned on. There was a program running on both. He glanced at them and then at the small bed that sat against the other wall.

Alan 'Dante' Webster was sitting in front of one of the computers.

"Hello, Agent Fawkes." Dante stood up and took a step towards him, hand extended. "You look like pure hell."

"And you got here faster than we did." It had to be some strange miracle.

"I took a short cut." The stoned smile was friendly enough. "It's good to be working with you. I've actually heard some great stuff about you from Bobby and Ciara both. Well…and Harmony said you're pretty cool."

The guy knew Harmony, too. The hazel eyes that met his were foggy, as if the government computer expert were looking at him through a haze. It was drugs. It had to be.

Shaking the man's hand quickly, he looked at Hobbes. "I'm gonna guess you two worked out whatever was going on before?"

"Oh, yeh." Bobby Hobbes didn't move. His hands stayed in his pockets as he began to rock on his heels. "He explained something to me I guess I needed to ask back there."

"Back where---oh, never mind. I've got to clean up and eat." Backing away from the two men, he headed back towards the front room.

Passing his Keeper, he saw her look up at him as he snagged the coffee that sat on the table, waiting for him. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched her thin, sympathetic smile. What the hell was going on? It was like he'd become Alice and had fallen down the rabbit hole.

Any moment now, he expected to hear Jefferson Airplane start playing in the background. "White Rabbit."

It would only fit and Harmony would understand intimately. She'd call this one a definite White Rabbit moment. It had to be the jet lag.

"Scrambled or fried, Legs."

"Huh?" He turned his bleary eyes to look at Ciara where she stood at the stove. Two plates sat there with pancakes on both. He saw either bacon or ham on the side of each.

"Eggs."

"As long as they're not green, I don't care."

In the bathroom with the door shut, he quickly drank the cooled coffee and began brushing his teeth. It was time to get a clean bill of health from a shrink. He was sure it was only a reflex of jet lag, but now he wasn't so positive that something wasn't wrong.

And Ciara was right...he needed to finish having that talk with Harmony, before he lost his mind over his partner. Apparently, he and their young, blue-eyed friend still had a few things to talk about---his brother was only one of them.

He jumped in the shower before he'd realized that the warm water was an illusion. It was only slightly warmer than room temperature and proceeded to get colder. Hurrying, he scrubbed at himself with his hands and the liquid soap that was sitting on the little window ledge at the top. It was the only light showing in the tiny bathroom.

He ached all over from the last days' rushed activity of hurry up and wait. It seemed that the last two weeks of working and going to visit Harmony had been a holiday in comparison. A vacation.

Getting back out, Darien shivered all over. It seemed even colder than before. But, he was definitely more awake. He lifted the last folded towel and began drying himself fast. It was too cold to be standing here naked when he could be dressed, getting warm in front of that fire he'd seen in the other room, and drinking more coffee. Eating breakfast.

He rubbed the last of the water from his head and looked at his reflection. Not bad. He might not have bodies dropping before him as people swooned, but he had something to offer. What was this thing with Dante?

Darien shook his head and erased that last thought. No. It wasn't reasonable for him to be jealous. It wasn't like anything had been going on in that room; Hobbes had been reliving old times with a guy he'd shared time with in Iraq. They were buddies and pals and good neighbors. And he had no claim on his partner's laughter---hell, he'd never even done anything about what he felt for the guy.

Dante was a friend who'd been giving Hobbes free, hacked information for a long time when it was illegal to do so. The two of them worked for the government and they both seemed to have seen a lot of the same things. The tall man with the wavy chestnut hair was his partner's secret insomniac friend whom he called The Happy Hacker.

'This is insane' He told himself. 'So what if you have a thing for the guy? It doesn't mean he has a thing for Dante Webster, who definitely does like men and who definitely does have a thing for your partner.'

But, then again, maybe Harmony was right about taking chances after all. Maybe if you didn't make your opportunities, they never came at all.

'If you never try, how will you know? It's like shutting yourself up in a damn cage and swearing you'll never go outside the door just because there's a world out there that has a taste for your blood---Darien, you have to make your own opportunities or learn to live with regrets. They won't come on their own.'

She'd scared him with that. It sounded like his brother talking to him from beyond the grave. It had been worse because the pretty face had been looking at him from behind her glasses with a very serious expression of barely held grief. She'd said it while standing at the plain white headstone with a handful of roses clenched tight to her chest.

It had been on his day off, just a week ago. She'd called him very early, just after he'd gotten up, and asked him to do her a favor. She didn't know the exact location of where Kevin was buried and she wanted to see. He'd asked her why she didn't ask someone at the Agency to look for it in the records department.

Or, as he'd suggested with a laugh, she could hack the information herself.

He'd just been joking with her. He'd not expected to hear the nearly audible pain in the long silence on the other end of the line. When she'd spoken again, her voice had sounded normal, but he knew he'd cut her to the quick.

'It's cool. I can do it.'

She'd told him she'd see him around. It had been less than two hours later that he'd pulled up at the store and gone in, determined to make sure she was okay. They'd shut it down for the rest of the day and spent hours hanging out together.

He'd taken her before the sun set, to the cemetery. Spending an hour there, he'd listened to what she had to say. She'd talked to him of lost opportunity and what it meant to be alone. It'd been very soft and friendly of her, but he had seen the shadows in her eyes and the haunted way she'd studied the writing on the tombstone, as if memorizing it.

Then, she'd put the blood-red roses on his older brother's grave, closed her eyes, and seemed to die inside. He had watched her go pale and frightened-looking with her eyes clenched shut. He'd never seen a look like that on her face---not even when he'd seen how afraid and lost she was the first night he'd gone to check on her.

Guessing that she was deep in her memories of his brother, he'd turned his back. She needed the time alone, he knew. When she spoke again, it came low and husky. He'd been surprised to hear the words coming from her---a very young woman who had the power to kill without much thought---quoting from the one book he'd have thought she would have never read. Poetry and art aside, it didn't seem like her style.

'Whither thou goes, I will go. Where thou dies, will I die and there will I be buried.'

Darien had turned to find her on her knees, at the side of the grave. In the failing sun, she was red and gold and very small looking, despite her height. She had taken one of the roses and wrapped a little piece of folded paper around the stem at the base of the bloom, like a ring; the white of the paper stood out starkly on the green and red.

Harmony Corwin had not looked up as he had crouched down by her side. He'd seen the look on her face. She didn't want to be hugged or anything---just to have him there was all she needed. She'd been saying goodbye, it seemed…but maybe it was more.

Darien had known, then, that she'd had already found the grave and just hadn't been able to get there on her own. Physically, she was fine...but emotionally; she'd not been capable of it. She'd been unready to face the proof of loss alone.

'Bought a plot here three days ago.' She confirmed his suspicions for him about her having known where this place was.

Her eyes never left the white marble of the headstone as she shook her head, making her newly dyed light red-brown hair stir on her shoulders. 'Don't know why, really. When I talked to the people here, while trying to find him, to find this place, I went ahead and spent the money. I actually used my credit card.'

She'd grinned then, turning to look at him. There'd been no tears. 'You believe that? I've had that thing for over a year and never used it. Ciara always took care of things for me except where the store was concerned.'

'Why'd you buy a plot here?' Darien had finally settled onto his knees beside her, seeing that she wasn't ready to get up yet.

'Why not? Someday, one of us will need it, right?' He knew what she meant. Her or him. One of them. Eventually, one of them would die and what better place to be buried?

'You got a point there. Did you max it out or did you actually have the money for it?' He had tried to turn the conversation away from the morbid subject.

Death was no stranger. He had been sitting at his brother's grave talking to a girl who, like him, was carrying a little piece of death in her.

'I got most of the funds I needed from my savings account, but for the plot, I maxed it.' Her grin had been punctuated by the chuckle she gave. It wasn't a happy sound. 'I guess that means I either cut it up or learn some responsibility, huh?'

As the owner of a bookstore, he'd known that she had a great deal of responsibility and she had a credit system for the business...but this was her own, personal card and she'd spent her whole line of credit in one whack.

On a cemetery plot and a headstone, which she said was on indefinite hold.

'You mean the Agency won't give you one here?' Cheap bastards, he'd thought.

It was already being done---all that had to be added on to it was going to be the day of her death. He'd been shocked at how calm she'd talked about it. Harmony had gone on to tell him that if something happened to him first, she'd make sure personally that he got this plot---she would get another one.

Darien couldn't believe how easily she'd spoken of dying and the simple, quick preparations that she'd made. The young woman explained that she knew of the Agency's plans for her body immediately upon her terminating breath.

That was how she'd put it. Terminating breath. She was pretty sure they were going to want to do horrible things to the remaining genetic material they could use after she was gone.

'But.' she had said with a sly smile. 'Legally, I'm not their slave anymore, since I had a guardian when I left the States the first time and I went to a free country where amnesty is a state of mind. Now, I'm an adult. I did a few things to take care of that---and the sons of bitches can't touch me other than a basic autopsy. I’m just afraid they’ll do it anyway…'

She had a lawyer, gone to him and written a will, and bought life insurance through the store. Most of what she'd been doing had required money that she'd managed to gather. She'd done the best she could on such funds as she could find. The insurance wasn't much, but it would pay for any extra costs, such as if Ciara wanted a memorial service.

'Can do without one myself. I've never been to a memorial service and I'm not sure I'd know how to behave at my own.' The laughter she'd given him was warm and gentle and belied the morbidity; honestly, she'd told him, she had no idea how these things ran.

The insurance policy named him and Ciara Mackenzie as the two who would take care of the details and who would receive the money after her death.

He'd argued with her that maybe Claire should be responsible for that...or just Ciara?

'I'm not telling anyone but you, Darien. This way, someone knows what I want.'

When he'd started to protest, she'd cut him off and the look in her eye told him everything he needed to know about where she stood on the matter.

If something should happen to her someday, whether on assignment or through some horrible reaction to her experimental state, he had to make sure that the Agency didn't put Harmony Corwin in a pauper's unmarked grave as revenge for not being allowed to cut her body up and use it for paperweights, as she had so aptly put it.

'Don't leave it up to that bunch of assholes, Guinea Pig. They've had me by the flesh and blood my whole life, even when I wasn't here.'

The plot Harmony bought had been to the left of Kevin, where she had been kneeling. Now, looking at himself in the mirror and thinking about the things she'd said that day, he realized what had been going on with her.

She'd been telling him goodbye, in a way. Harmony had to have known she was sick and possibly dying.

How had she known? Kevin? Could his brother have told her? For that matter, if she'd known that much, had she also known how long she had before that 'terminating breath'?

Shuddering in the cold and from the memory, he had turned from the mirror to start putting clothes on.

Clothes. No clothes.

"Hey." He called through the door.

"What's up, Legs?" Ciara stood on the other side of the door, her voice serious. "You going to hurry? Your breakfast is ready."

He'd not been in here long---just long enough to make himself even crazier. First, Hobbes and the idea that he'd be jealous over some guy. And then, the memory of Harmony preparing for her own death in advance, knowing that it was coming soon...

"Could you hand me my clothes?"

There were a few mutters of laughter outside the door. It was just his luck, he guessed.

"Sure thing, Darien." There was some sound and then, as he pulled the door open a crack, he found Ciara's solemn face on the other side. She held his clothes. "Hurry up or you're going to catch some death in this air. It’s cold as hell."

Closing the door on her, he'd sighed and started getting dressed. The air on his skin was so cold that he'd started really shivering. But, it was nothing compared to what he was feeling inside---which couldn't be fixed with a flannel shirt or a cup of coffee.

"You have no idea."

END