#aptor michael thorton

[agent-kentauris]

Did one of those character development ask things for Michael, and boy was that difficult. I think I have a lot more to do to make him a better character, but I’m working on it. Anyways, thought I would post this. Be warned: it’s long.

questions source

Does your character have siblings or family members in their age group? Which one are they closest with?

No siblings!

What is/was your character’s relationship with their mother like?

One of love and trust, though he often chaffed at his mother’s reluctance to set any sort of disciplined boundaries. More of a throw seven dozen activities at you and see which one sticks kind of approach. Which when things got tangly would just lead to him sitting around refusing to do anything, and her ramping up the activities. Mom does not sign the report cards. Very perceptive when it comes to her son, but more of an Intelligence skill check than a Wisdom one. Has lots of parenting books, and when she got really mad, those came out. Does have lines in the sand – no swearing, he’d better practice French, you don’t have to like family time but you will be there, extracurriculars, chores, college.

What is/was your character’s relationship with their father like?

Dad was the discipline parent, so even though he’s happier with structure, this one was slightly more turbulent. If people were verballing duking it out, it was them. Which, because his dad believed firmly in respect your parents, often got Mikey in trouble. Dad was less line in the sand, more quicksand patches you could get over if you were careful. Which Mikey quickly learned, like most kids, how to exploit. Dad’s order and discipline tempered by him actually being a softie, has to work hard behind the scenes to not overindulge Mikey. This occasionally led to him being a bit too hard on the poor kid. He would really get behind ron swanon’s don’t half ass two things, whole ass one thing mentality, but he tends to let Mom take the reigns on Michael’s school and extracurricular schedule. A good deal in part because he does not look forward to fights with her about that topic. He usually loses, even when he wins. Wisdom over intelligence. Michael comes to him before his mother with questions about friends and later on, coworkers, because he’s got good instincts about people. He was strongly, vocally, politically opposed to Michael’s career choices, and after the incident during mikey’s first internship, wanted to try and ban him from going for it again, but cooler heads – read: mom – prevailed. Still, he ended up proud of what Michael was (trying) to do. What of it he was told, at any rate.

Has your character ever witnessed something that fundamentally changed them? If so, does anyone else know?

Walked in on his dad trying to hold his mother and stop her from shaking during the aftermath of 9/11. They’d done their best to focus on the positives happening and conceal from him just how unsettled and frightened they’d been by the actions of some of their neighbors. Start of what later developed into his interest in current career. They didn’t know he saw it, and he never told them.

Mina’s larger mission

Events in Alpha Protocol I can’t talk about because I haven’t written them yet, but I promise I know what they are.

On an average day, what can be found in your character’s pockets?

Well, if this was just an average day off work, usually only a wallet, phone, and keys. Sometimes loose change and receipts he didn’t bother to put back in his wallet.

Does your character have recurring themes in their dreams?

He’s not particularly good at remembering dreams

Does your character have recurring themes in their nightmares?

Getting lost

Misremembered memories

Has your character ever fired a gun? If so, what was their first target?

HHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAyes.

If you mean ever, a small squirrel. His dad tried to take him hunting, though he wasn’t particularly fond of it.

If you mean person, that would be Unnamed Dude Number 5 during the internship incident. He missed, though, so there’s that.

Is your character’s current socioeconomic status different than it was when they were growing up?

Different, but not noticeably much one way or the other. His parents ran a business, and it did okay. Seemings as the CIA website will just flat out tell you any fact you might wish to know, the internet informs me that he’ll still be okay. The boy ain’t never been super broke, is the point, and I doubt he’s ever going to be super rich.

Does your character feel more comfortable with more clothing, or with less clothing?

That depends. If he’s talking to other people, he likes to be in something, not that he ever seems to care what it looks like (glares). But like a lot of people, home is a different matter.

In what situation was your character the most afraid they’ve ever been?

Dad calling him in the middle of class saying his mother was in the hospital, car crash and they didn’t know if she was going to make, and that he sent him a plane ticket and that he needed to get home right now

Parts of Alpha Protocol that haven’t happened

In what situation was your character the most calm they’ve ever been?

Parts of Alpha Protocol that haven’t happened

Is your character bothered by the sight of blood? If so, in what way?

Not really, no. Except that it signifies someone’s got an injury that needs to be taken care of.

Does your character remember names or faces easier?

Faces. Canonically.

Is your character preoccupied with money or material possession? Why or why not?

Not really, though if I had to say one or the other it would be material possessions. His ambitions lie elsewhere and neither money nor material possessions have ever helped. Plus, his family and friends never did, and he never really absolutely needed either.

Which does your character idealize most: happiness or success?

Success

What was your character’s favorite toy as a child?

As a child child, blocks and Spirograph

Magnets

Is your character more likely to admire wisdom, or ambition in others?

Wisdom, by several factors

What is your character’s biggest relationship flaw? Has this flaw destroyed relationships for them before?

Interwoven manipulation and self-justification of said manipulativeness

Oh yes it has. A fairly serious romantic relationship, in fact

In what ways does your character compare themselves to others? Do they do this for the sake of self-validation, or self-criticism?

Objectively, based on the results of other’s missions and stats and so on, for the purpose of (usually positive) self-criticism.

If something tragic or negative happens to your character, do they believe they may have caused or deserved it, or are they quick to blame others?

That depends on when we are. At the start of Alpha Protocol, I’d say he’s more inclined to first think he was responsible, and then check if it’s true and if not, then, who? By the end, he probably internally believes he’s caused/deserved it, even if it isn’t true, while externally blaming others and trying hard to believe that. He’s a pretty fair person, though.

What does your character like in other people?

Empathy for those around them

Straightforwardness

Durability

What does your character dislike in other people?

Self-serving ambition

Indecisiveness

Inconsistency

How quick is your character to trust someone else?

Too damn fast. Especially for a spy.

How quick is your character to suspect someone else? Does this change if they are close with that person?

Naturally, too fucking slow. With training, tolerable fast. After Alpha Protocol, that’s going to depend on how bad things end up getting. Does this change if he is close with that person? Of course, he gets like five times slower. Stop trusting people. It’s annoying.

How does your character behave around children?

He likes them, but he tends to treat them like children, which, what kid has ever liked that? The depths of hell to which children will stoop constantly surprises him, no matter how many times he’s seen or remembers evidence of it.

How does your character normally deal with confrontation?

Resorts to training, and responses vary wildly depending on the situation and the desired outcome.

When not in the field, he tends to avoid unnecessary confrontations. If it’s inevitable, whichever way is the least likely to draw attention, be it the quickest or the get someone else in trouble-y-est or so on. If there’s already a spotlight, and there absolutely no way out has to has to be a confrontation, then whatever’s quickest or whatever’s going to get him back to one of the first two ifs as soon as possible.

How quick or slow is your character to resort to physical violence in a confrontation?

He’ll do it if it’s the fastest method to end the confrontation. If he’s really, really mad, then a hell of a lot quicker. In fact, if you seriously piss him off bad enough, which is pretty hard to do, its going to be a question of how serious the damage is, not how fast he decides to cause it.

What did your character dream of being or doing as a child? Did that dream come true?

He wanted to be a travel writer

I suppose in a highly technical sense he both travels and writes, so…

What does your character find repulsive or disgusting?

Henry Leland

I’m sorry. That was automatic

Queen ants, artichokes, bananas

Describe a scenario in which your character feels most comfortable.

Falling asleep in the back of a staff lounge with a container of crappy takeout food next to him on the table and a stack of finished paperwork that just needs to be read over one more time sometime in the next day before receiving a new assignment and people in the front talking quietly over the (positive) news report they’re watching

Describe a scenario in which your character feels most uncomfortable.

When he knows something is very wrong but he simply cannot figure out what or why

For example, if someone who never uses capital letters texts him and adds a capital I, maybe, or capitalizes the first word in a sentence. Is it a message? An accident? Is something wrong? Double worse if he’s by himself and can’t ask anyone.

Like with Surkov

In the face of criticism, is your character defensive, self-deprecating, or willing to improve?

Willing to improve, provided its actual criticism

Is your character more likely to keep trying a solution/method that didn’t work the first time, or immediately move on to a different solution/method?

Apparently canonically I’m working with the first of these two, because no fewer than three no, actually, four of your plans involving walking right up to the Big Bad Place that contains the Big Bad Person, and multiple of those plans involves the actual idea that this is the best way to get to Big Bad Person. And, since this never turns out well for you, I can’t imagine you count at the later kind of problem solver.

How does your character behave around people they like?

Affectionate. Calls/messages them a lot, likes talking with them. If he likes you, more inclined to listen and let you vent/rant/bubble than talk himself. Marginally more honest, when he can be. Will bother you with book recommendations and if he thinks you’ll really like one, will just go buy it for you. Do not fall into this trap. He will buy you more. And interrogate you about them and your opinions with the full force of intelligence training.

How does your character behave around people they dislike?

On a scale from coldly professional (esp if he needs something from them) → openly verbally antagonistic → removing/having removed said people from his life

Is your character more concerned with defending their honor, or protecting their status?

What, you mean they aren’t the same things?

His status as an agent is forfeit, which he seems to accept in terms of status, but his honor as an agent he would be much more concerned over.

Is your character more likely to remove a problem/threat, or remove themselves from a problem/threat?

In face-to-face confrontations outside of work, the later. But, generally, everywhere, the former.

Has your character ever been bitten by an animal? How were they affected (or unaffected)?

He got bit by a snake on a hike when he was younger. At the time, he – read:his best friend – thought it would be really cool to get a tattoo of a snake there, and he almost snuck out to do it, but didn’t

How does your character treat people in service jobs?

Good. If it’s a place he’s likely to be seen again, he doesn’t like talking and will avoid it, even if it makes him seem a little tiny bit hostile. But if not, he has fun inventing responses to small talk questions.

How are you? How did I come to be? Well, when the asteroid hit the field about twenty years back, I emerged from the center of the rock and took over the farm, gaining my intelligence and sense of self. And that’s how I came to be, how I am, so to speak.

Does your character feel that they deserve to have what they want, whether it be material or abstract, or do they feel they must earn it first?

Earn it

Has your character ever had a parental figure who was not related to them?

Yeah, his extended uncle. They don’t talk as much as they used to after Michael’s dad died, and then CIA happened, and a couple years later, Alpha Protocol, but this is more Michael’s fault. His uncle would love to hear from him, though he’s always suspected (for true or not) that Mikey’s more deeply involved in his career than his parents wanted to believe, and so he has vague assumptions that are even more vaguely correct about why Mikey’s been too busy to swing by home. He hasn’t actuallyy been told by any sources, official or naw, that Michael is officially considered dead. Which is good, because instead Michael’s only a rogue enemy of the state being tracked down by legit killers and power-hungry ceos. Much more reassuring.

Has your character ever had a dependent figure who was not related to them?

No

How easy or difficult is it for your character to say “I love you?” Can they say it without meaning it?

Incredibly easy for him. Me, though, I’m allergic to love apparently so I have a hard time writing him into situations where he can say it. He’s that kind of person who even tells his superfriends that. He doesn’t like saying it without meaning it, but he can. And has. And not just on that one mission.

What does your character believe will happen to them after they die? Does this belief scare them?

Well, his mother was a practicing Muslin until a few years after marrying Michael’s dad, and his father was Christian raised as a child but left that real fast, which causes a lot of tension between him and his family. They together raised Michael with semi-agnostic beliefs. Michael himself prefers not to think about it, though if asked he will self-ID as atheistic. Internally, he’s more of a mix between agnostic and atheistic. If he’s thinking about it, he assumes when you die that’s just it, akin to closing a book. I think if he sat down and really, really thought about it, he’d be more afraid of things never ending than things ending.

[alpha-protocol-archives]

WTF and FAQ for mobile

You may be asking yourself…what the fuck is AP0?

Good question.

Alpha Protocol reputedly went through at least one supermasssive rewrite before it settled in it’s final form.

Turns out the original is still in the game files.

And it is, for lack of a better word, tear-inducingly funny and adorable.

Alpha Protocol 0 is what I refer to as the first draft. It’s very, very different from Actual Alpha Protocol. For example, you straight up work for the CIA. None of this Greybox business; Westridge, in fact, is Michael’s mentor, friend, and reason for going off the rails. AP0 is so different, in fact, that if a certain overexcited fanfic author with a penchant for massive projects were inclined to change a few names and geographic details, we’d have a solid prequel on our hands…

Alpha Protocol 0’s plot is explained in the tag #ap0 plot threads

Alpha Protocol 0.5 is what I like to call the beta version. It’s…more like an AU of the Saudi Arabian parts of actual Alpha Protocol. It’s somewhat but not entirely compliant with AP0, I think, but it’s definitely not compliant with AP. Westridge is a dear and Darcy is there, about to get his ass yeeted out a window. Those are the major things. I’m still sorting AP.5 out; it’s likely though not absolute that most of it actually is a part of AP0. (the problem with integrating the two is Darcy’s character, which…is anyone honestly surprised that Darcy is causing problems? No? No hands?)

Alpha Protocol .5’s plot, such as it is, is explained in the tag #ap.5 plot threads

As a side note to anyone familiar with what I’m about to say, I think a good deal of AP.5 will be incorporated into the final draft of APTOR, at least spiritually.

FAQS

Hi rigil, it’s rigil! Why have an FAQ page if you aint got no followers?

Because shut up thanks.

Who the hell is Atticus Thorton?

Atticus Thorton is Michael Thorton as he’s written in AP0 and AP.5. AP0 Darcy calls Michael by his full name in one scene (Michael Atticus Thorton), and, well, since actual Michael’s middle name starts with an F, I use Atticus as a way to distinguish the two.

In other words Atticus = cutcontent!Michael.

I suppose we could also call him Matt, but I already call Michael that as one of his codenames. Things would get confusing-er.

Would you die for Yancy Westridge?

Ehhhhh…

Fine. Would Atticus die for Yancy Westridge?

Oh, absolutely.

Why are some audio file icons black and some are red?

Black icons correspond to audio from Alpha Protocol 0. Red ones correspond to audio from AP.5.

How do I cope with the crushing sadness of knowing AP0 will never be a thing?

Try doing fanart or writing fanfic! I hear tell there’s even this really hyperexcited Alpha Protocol writer on AO3 you could talk to about writing if you were nervous.

Other than that…cry. It’s what I do.

That and work on my podfic'ing skills so I can upload entire missions, one day.

Can I message you to talk about AP?

ALWAYS

Hey I’m an Obsidian recruiter can we hire you to do some writing for us?

WHY YES OF COURSE!!! thank you for thinking of me!!!

[agent-kentauris]

d140, 141, 142

now with edits, yay

In my dreams, dull thudding gunshot sounds. Strange, because, the sound was not the right shape. Then I realized I was awake, or that I’d woken myself up, and there were no gunshots at all. I was staring up at the grey fabric of a car…ceiling? The faint rumbly hum of an engine. And then someone was patting my head, and I was falling, and sitting next to an old creek that used to run in the woods behind my house when I was a kid.

“Wake up, Mikey. We’re here.”

Everything hurt. Should’ve listened to Mom about…vegetables, or something. Milk? A yacht sailed by on the stream.

“No, I got him. Take care of the laptop.”

A splash snaked up around the captain’s shoulders and she pointed it at the cloudy sky.

“Yeah, of course try to stall Yancy.”

Someone shook my shoulder.

“Come on, Thorton,” he said, and I looked up at Sean Darcy. The river was gone. I tried to look around for it, but my neck was sore and besides I couldn’t remember what I had been looking for anyway.

“Good morning,” he continued patiently. Smile wide, but eyes quickly scanning me, up and down. Blue stormy grey but if you had to put it in a crayon, maybe? I narrowed my own eyes at him while he reached around me and unbuckled a seatbelt. Suspiciously sturdy arms nudged me closer and closer to the edge of the seat.

“You’re supposed to be made of water,” I told him.

“You’re concussed,” he told me. “Ya gonna help, or not?”

“With?”

“With walkin’, whatdya think?”

“Oh,” I said. “No.”

He looked like he wanted to roll his eyes or something. Jaw tight, eyebrows twitching. The hand securing my shoulder tightening, along with his smile.

“I don’t really want to help, no,” I clarified helpfully.

“You don’t wanna help.”

“You’re doing fine,” I said, with enough stumbling over letters that it occurred to me, I might have something hurt with my head. Concussion, probably.

He let go of my shoulder and I slumped back against the seat. Focused on breathing. Which was tricky. Air had to go in, but also you had to exhale too. My leg felt empty, which was good, because I was mostly certain I’d been shot and that usually hurt.

“You’re a little out of it, aren’t ya?” Sean Darcy said, leaning over the car door with one hand on the top. “Listen – I gotta get you inside, and I’m not carryin’ you, so…what do you want me to do?”

“You’re doing fine,” I said, and when I opened my eyes again, I was laying on the couch, the right side of my pants hacked off above the knee and my lower leg stuck up on a pile of folded towels.

Sean Darcy sat a large, metallic bowl back on the coffee table and looked back over his shoulder.

“Welcome back, Mikey,” he said evenly. “How’re you feelin’?”

“Good-” I started, and then pain remembered I existed and I couldn’t talk over the choking noises coming from my mouth. One hand was tearing at the damp bandage around my leg, the other shoving away Sean’s attempts to push me back flat on the sofa.

“Sorry about this,” he said, and with a swift motion that sent a sharp twinge up my neck, he twisted one of my arms around and pinned it behind my back. My other hand still succeeding at tearing away soaked strips of gauze, each moving piece burning the inside of my leg but I couldn’t stop the impulses traveling up through my wrist, not even after Sean laced his fingers awkwardly across it and yanked it away, bracing my hand against the sofa back. Too much blood in my body, I could feel it pressing on everything, felt like someone was kicking me each time my heart beat. My fingers straining without my permission, his thumb making deep indents on my forearm as he struggled to keep hold. Slowly, though, the shaking started to subside, and I could begin to stand the feeling of pressure against the inside of my skin, and I could stop making mangled collection of random vowels and start breathing more normally.

He was rubbing light, idle circles with his thumb over the sore place he’d been holding on to a second ago, and I think both realized it at the same time. I looked up at him, trying to recall how words worked, and he seemed almost frozen for a second, the remnants of concern and focus still pulling the skin tight over his jawline. The only words I was getting a fix on were ow and goddamn it, so I settled on smiling at him as best I could with little electric shocks still stabbing at my leg.

His eyes danced around, stopping everywhere but at mine.

“Do you want some Percocet?” he said, nodding and sounding uncharacteristically un-smug. “I’m gonna get you some Percocet.”

Then he dropped my arm on my stomach, and stalked out of the room.

I thought about turning on my side and checking to see if the soft noises of his footsteps was because he was in socks, or if it was just because he was light on his feet. But moving my neck sent fireworks through my head. Better to stay put.

I laid back down and watched the wicker ceiling fan spin lazily. And when that quickly sent me grabbing the edge of the sofa to stop the world from spinning around, I closed my eyes and worked on forcing the needling pain to the back of my mind.

[agent-kentauris]

day 134

dear game im not ignoring that picture sincerely me

She’d taken it better than I expected.

“Are you sure you weren’t even a little surprised?” I checked, balancing the McDonald’s bag in my arm and the phone on my shoulder.

“Nope.”

“Not even a little?”

“No.”

The inside of the house was quiet. Some of the lamps were on, casting weak yellow light over the floors. Other than that, it was dark. I dropped the bag on the side table, and went about quickly disabling security measures.

“Come on, Mina. Admit it. You were surprised.”

“Michael,” she said, sounding a touch too condescending for my liking, “you’ve befriended an actual photojournalist. You’ve agreed to meet, alone and completely unprepared, with a possibly hostile G22 agent. You said you were going to protect her Michael, so, no. I wasn’t surprised.”

“You keeping tellin’ yourself that.”

“Uh huh.”

“So…” I said, reaching the last of the devices, “you never explained the ‘oh shit I’ve gotta go’ moment.”

“It was nothing I couldn’t handle,” she said, quickly. Evasively.

“Sounded pretty serious from my end.”

“I know,” she said sharply, “that you only see me as your handler, but I do have other responsibilities, Agent Thorton.”

O-kay.

“Listen, you don’t wanna talk about, I won’t ask,” I said.

“It’s not…”

She sighed.

“Another agent almost caught me. I had to wait awhile before I could contact you again. Like I said, nothing I couldn’t handle.”

“Oh.”

It still didn’t sound like nothing. But if she didn’t want to tell me, then fine.

“I’m going to go talk to Saint James. Can you do some digging on Marburg for me?”

“Look, Mike, if there was something wrong, I would-”

“I know,” I told her.

“As long as you know that,” she said quietly.

“I do,” I said brightly. “Now, about Marburg…?”

“I’ll get on it.”

“Great. Then I’m going to go check on our guest.”

“Your guest,” she reminded. “For the record, I had nothing to do with this.”

“Duly noted. Mike, out,” I said, and slid the phone closed.

 The door remained jammed, and since the bedroom didn’t have a window, smart money said she was still in there. Took me a couple of seconds to get it open.

Inside, all the lights were off.

“Miss Saint James?”

She looked up, lifted her chin off the pillow she was curled over.

“I, uh…” I started.

Her eyes were still dripping tears. Some snot had started to leak from her nose, and her whole face was red.

“I have some food?” I offered, feeling a little inadequate.

“And I can get you some tissues,” I added, watching her swipe her hand under her nose.

“Just, um…” I pointed over my shoulder, towards the main room. “I’ll be at the table.”

-----------------

It took her a couple of minutes to amble out. I looked up from my newspaper, and smiled at her. She hardly moved the chair, just sort of slipped in and stuck an elbow on the tabletop. She didn’t actually smile back until her eyes took in the McDonalds bag sitting on the table, and even then, it seemed to take most the energy out of her.

“You’re in Rome,” she said, flicking her eyes up to mine.

“What can I say? I’m a patriot.”

“That’s…” she said, slowly, like she wasn’t quite sure whether or not she was making noise, “That’s one way of looking at it.”

I put the paper down, and pushed the bag over to her. “Didn’t know what you liked, so…went with the basics.”

She grabbed the burger at the top without looking.

“How are you feeling?” I asked her.

She teased the crinkled paper, and shrugged. “I don’t really think you’d understand.”

And there it was again. The sad detachment in her green eyes that I really didn’t wanna think about.

“I might,” I said, and pulled the bag back across the table.

“I don’t know…you’ve got your family, your job-” she waved a hand around, but I was still stuck on the beginning of her sentence- “your home.”

I dropped my burger on the table, ignored the alarm and the feeling of my heart rate being unpleasantly jolted into action.

“This isn’t exactly my house,” I said studying her. She’s not an agent. She doesn’t know anything. “What exactly do you think you know about my family, Miss Saint James?”

“I…” she started, shaking her head briefly. “I’m sorry, I thought…that man in the photograph? The one on your nightstand? Sean?”

“Oh! Uh…” That was… “Yeah. Right. That.”

She frowned, opened her mouth like she was going to say something, and then didn’t, which, great. Because now I had to say something and yeah, the alarm was gone, but for some annoying reason my pulse was refusing to go down to a perfectly normal rate. I swear she was staring at me.

“He’s trying to kill me,” I informed her, working not to grit my teeth.

“He’s trying to kill you,” she repeated.

“He’s a traitor and he’s trying to kill me,” I explained, realizing as I said it that nothing I said was making much sense.

“Then…why do you-”

“He just-” I interrupted, then stopped. She was staring at me. Meanwhile my traitor face had decided to heat up. This was stupid.

“He reminds me,” I said, carefully, “of home.”

“But he’s trying to kill you.”

“You’d think that would matter,” I said, feeling the skin on my face. “But apparently, it’s complicated.”

She eyed me, tried to smile again. Didn’t get very far.

I let her sit. Let her play around with the flimsy wax paper, crunching the corners and folding the edge into half-shapes. Let her tear into shreds the edges where some tired, underpaid employee had forgotten to tuck it properly. Her eyes were starting to fill up again, and I knew I had to do it, had to fight past the need to just sit there and breathe, had to dodge the small pain in the center of my chest,had to force myself to confront the familiar look on her face. I didn’t want to. I got ready to say something but the tightness in my own throat strangled the words away. I didn’t want to, but she was starting to shake a little, and I had to.

“You know,” I said, ignoring the tactile memories of tissue paper and wood polish and – I said ignoring them-

I shook my head. She blinked at me.

“You know,” I said again, bending my lips into a smile, “I can’t go home either.”

“Why?” she asked, immediately, the shaking still there, but the beginnings of focus starting to stir behind her eyes.

“I…I did something, and I got some very influential people riled up.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

She voice was still dead, but the focus swirled and concentrated and started to bring some life to the way she was studying me.

“Why’d you do it?”

“I didn’t really have a choice.”

She paused to consider that for a moment, then leaned back up.

“Is it Mr. Marburg?” she asked quietly.

“An old friend of his. At least, I think they’re friends.”

She nodded. “Oh. Okay.”

And with that shocking underreaction, she tore the wrapper free of the burger, flipped the top bun off. She picked two pickles off, and seemed prepared to disassemble the entire thing. Went about it with a mechanical focus that was all the more alarming for the faint sense of everything in the room being too close to me, the certainty that my fingers could feel every grain in the table, the hyperawareness of electricity buzzing in the air around the TV and the phone and in the kitchen the refrigerator humming. If this was how I was handling it – and I was fine – and she was a civilian with this landing on her plate?

[agent-kentauris]

First prompt of the day: You wanted to save a princess and that's chill but I'm a prince so can you stop cursing in (insert language here) and save me

The knight stumbles up the stairs and collapses at the landing, yanking his helmet off and tossing it across the floor with a quiet fuck off. He’s breathing hard, the dragon’s blood coating his sword and covering his armor explanation enough. He lays there panting at the ceiling with his eyes closed for a few moments, then he rolls over and pushes himself to his knees and starts shouting down the stairs. He makes it through about ever curse word you know, but apparently that doesn’t satisfy him, so he starts cursing in several foreign languages, rough ones, smooth ones, melodious ones that only seemed harsh once he flips the stairs off.

“Fuck of a lot of stairs,” he grumbles at them.

“And fuck you too!” he shouts down the stairwell.

He seems to notice you for the first time, perched carefully in the tower’s single window, raising an eyebrow at him.

“The dragon,” he says, gesturing with his sword downstairs. “I…never mind. Uh…”

He fumbles with a pouch belted around his armor, sneaking quick glances back over at you every few seconds. You give him nothing but an arch shrug.

Finally, he finds a small, tattered scroll.

“I’m supposed…” he says, squinting at it. “I’m here to save a princess?”

He looks at you, and then at the small tower room. It very obviously does not have any one else in it.

“No princess here,” you say, wondering when he’s going to notice the diadem tangled up in your hair.

“God in the fuck damn,” he says, resigned, crumbling the paper up and stuffing it back into his pouch.

“The king is an ass,” he adds.

“Mm,” you agree, stretching back so the sunlight catches on the gold metal of your diadem.

He doesn’t notice. Or he’s ignoring you. Intolerable, either way.

“Well,” he says, shifting from foot to foot. “So, you live around here, then?”

You sigh, and hop down from the window ledge. You trot across your room and pick his helmet up.

“Yeah, you could say that,” you say, handing it over and making damn sure you run your fingers through your hair, playing with your diadem.

“Fuck,” he says, missing the point entirely, catching sight of the blood splattered on his cheekbones in the reflection of his helmet. “Goddamn dragon.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Well, uh…” he says, tucking the helmet under one arm. “I should probably get going. Before the dragon recovers, and everything. Do you, uh…need anything, or something? Before I take off?”

You stare at him with your best are you serious.

“So…no?” he guesses.

Fine. You gotta do this the hard way.

“As a matter of fact, yeah,” you say, crossing your arms. “Two things. First, cut it out with the cursing. Two…”

You point deliberately at the well-wrought, elaborate, sapphire-studded hunk of metal on your head.

His pretty eyes widen with surprise.

“Right!” he says. “Sorry. The message got a bit torn up, I-”

“Listen,” you say, taking the damn thing off and twirling it around your finger. “You wanted to go save some princess, that’s fine by me. Unfortunately for you, ya got me.

“So, please,” you add, dragging the word out so he can’t detect the buried concern at being left behind, “can we skip to the ‘rescuing me’ part of this operation, ASAP? ‘Cause that dragon’s no joke.”

“Right,” he says again, nodding. “Of course, m’lord.”

You roll your eyes as hard as you can without hurting yourself.

“Ya walked into my tower cursing at everything, and now you wanna go formal on me?”

“I’ve got some catching up to do.”

“No fucking way,” you say, and he grins. “My name’ll do fine. Shall we?”

You gesture at the fuck lot of stairs, and he grimaces.

“Could be worse,” you say. “I could make you carry me.”

“Hell no,” he swears, forcing his helmet back on and snapping the buckles into place.

“What, you’re supposed to be saving me.”

“I though we weren’t going formal?”

“Eh,” you say. “We’ll see.”

“Alright, then,” he says. And you can’t see the smile though his visor, but you can hear it. “Let’s go.”

[agent-kentauris]

d151

She looked over what notes I’d given her again. Rubbed her head and took another sip of what had to be the most bitter smoothie humankind was capable of making.

“So…Mr. Marburg is working for this company, Halbech.”

I nodded.

“And you think he’s using the VCI to do…something.

“Yep.”

“And you think we – he had something to with Flight 6133. How does Al-Samad fit in again?”

“They don’t,” I said. “Not yet, anyway.”

“Okay…I think I’ve got it,” she said. “Anything else I need to know?”

The people you work for assaulted an embassy? The people they work for tried to eradicate me with a goddamn missile? World War III is coming?

“No,” I said.

“Are you sure you don’t want some?” she asked, looking pointedly at the other cup of green sludge sitting on the coffee table.

“No,” I said. “No, thanks.”

“Then…are we done here?”

I stuck a foot up on the coffee table, pulled my PDA out and checked the time. 8:09.

“Why?” I asked, “You got somewhere to be?”

“No,” she said, “but I need to make a few lists.”

“Lists?”

“Lists,” she said, and stood up. Swiped the other smoothie-thing.

“Good luck with your notes,” she added.

-----------------------------

Saturday

Let’s see if I can’t remember the hell this week has been.

Yesterday…yesterday was Friday. Has it really only been a week since the embassy? It can’t be.

It is. Only a week. What would I be doing at home? With a week? Laundry, maybe. Maybe. Half a book if I was lucky. Time feels so strange right now.

Okay. I’m kind of glad we left Saint James’ stuff behind. I mean, logistically, she needed something. And I probably should have convinced her to stay in the safehouse, but…it was nice to get out. And she seemed happy about it. Not that she talked much. Anyway, today was slow for the first time in a long time. It won’t last. I caught Saint James up to speed. We’re gonna tackle Marburg’s villa soon – I need answers, and they’ll be there. But first, I think it might be a good idea to address this NSA post. I’d rather tackle the CIA one, but Mina says she has some codes or something for the NSA. And there’s probably less people.

You know, I’m almost glad I’m off the books right now. A week after the Moscow embassy – I can’t imagine being on duty right now.

On duty. With resources. And backup. None of this hiding business. I hate hiding.

But I’d rather not die. Not with so much on the line

[agent-kentauris]

d150

d150, or: the many reasons trying to write a lawful good character into a spy thing is a horrible decision

its not like it was my decision, though. she does carry on about the authorities. anyway our regularly scheduled missions should hopefully resume tomorrow. we get to go back to the gelato man, hurray!

-----------------

Saturday, 6:32

Alpha Protocol Safehouse

Rome, Italy

-----------------

I shuffled several pages of notes around on the coffee table.

1.       Halbech smuggling weapons into Moscow via Surkov.

2.       VCI bombs the embassy

-   To kill Surkov?

-   Hired by Halbech?

-   Terrorism – sells more weapons

i.      But sells more weapons through official channels. So why the investment in the black market?

ii.      How important is it that Surkov stay legit?

iii.       And what “disagreement” did they have?

-   Is the VCI connected to Alpha Protocol (via Halbech)?

-   How is the VCI connected to Halbech??

I added yet another question mark to it, looked over a second page.

1.       Yancy Westridge

2.       Sergei Surkov

3.       Conrad Marburg

And of course, the one thread connecting them all, Henry Leland.

So they wanted to fake a war. Wanted money. Leland owned Marburg, Marburg had said as much. And if Marburg’s got something to do with the VCI, if he has the kind of sway I thought he might, then probably the VCI was under Halbech control.

Except the trainyard, the VCI wanted the train. The train full of Halbech weapons, why would Halbech make it that hard? And why leave them? And who were the Russian gangsters trying to make sure they didn’t? Plus Grigori asked me to ship them to him instead of wherever Halbech intended, and he knew where the weapons were from. Of course, he seemed an equal opportunity kind of dick, so that doesn’t have to mean anything.

But if he friends with Surkov, it might.

-   How is the VCI connected to Halbech???

-   And how if that gonna affect what they’re doing here?

Marburg was using Al-Bara. For something. Once his use to me was at an end… But what? Al-Bara probably knew something about Halbech. Fine. Kill him to stop him from acting on it. But here I am, and I know a hell of a lot more, and if I’m dead, I certainly don’t feel it.

Revenge?

Marburg didn’t seem the type. But he as awfully touchy about Halbech. So maybe.

I grabbed another blank sheet.

ROME

1.       What did al-Bara know?

a.       Why kill him?

2.       Why is the VCI in Rome?

a.       Halbech business, clearly, but what?

3.       What is Al-Samad planning here?

Too many questions. Way too many. And probably not enough time to get answers, not with just one of me, not with one of me who was going to have to spend half his time keeping a civilian in check-

Speak of the devil. Quick footsteps came from behind the couch. I shuffled the papers into one stack, flipped the over, twisted around-

She was holding her blackberry, reassembled, her thumb hover over the buttons. Face locked in a frown.

I smiled at her pleasantly, walked a hand over the couch cushions towards my pistol-

“Don’t move,” she said, “or I’ll press call.”

“Can I at least ask who you’re calling?” I said, and moved my hand much, much slower.

“The police,” she said.

I stopped.

“Uh,” I said. She shook her phone, pressed her lips together even tighter.

“Miss Saint James, they won’t-”

“My name is Madison,” she said forcefully.

“Okay, Madison. The thing is-”

“And I have a deal for you.”

“A what?” I said.

“A deal,” she repeated, her finger moving a little closer to the buttons. “Do you want to hear it, or not?”

She was trembling a little. Trying to keep her eyes fixed on me, but they kept sliding, just a fraction, summoned to the place behind the sofa where my pistol was.

I mean, she couldn’t know for certain, but I bet she could guess.

“Go for it,” I said, and slung both hands over the back of the sofa, free and clear where she could see them.

She nodded once, then nodded again. Swallowed.

“Good,” she said.

Then she lowered her phone a bit.

“You killed those two guys,” she stated. And it wasn’t a question, but she waited until I nodded.

“Yeah,” I said.

“And you’re some kind of…I – I don’t know, but if my boss is as bad as you say he is… and he’s trying to kill you…”

“Yeah?”

“We go to the police,” she said.

“No,” I said, and she tensed back up. Gripped the phone.

“I’ll do it,” she warned.

“After yesterday, you do that, and both of us dying is the good ending.”

“You don’t know that,” she said, her voice darting even higher. Eyes flicking to the screen of her phone, thumb slipping a little closer.

“Madison-” I started, when she turned to face the windows, a flash of light caught across her eyes, and she smashed the button down.

“Shit!”

I vaulted the sofa. Her eyes went wide as we slammed into the ground. Her cell phones spun off across the floor. While she was blinking with a dazed expression on her face, I went for the phone. Checked the tone – it was still ringing, thank the goddamn stars above – tore it apart and flung the battery halfway across the room.

“What the HELL were you thinking?!”

She’d pushed herself into a sitting position, had scooted across the floor until her back met with the sofa, and now she was watching me, hastily unbuckling a high heel and holding it like a makeshift whatever the hell kind of weapon she thought it was a good stand in for.

I tried to stay calm. “Miss Saint – Madison. I’m not gonna hurt you, I’m trying to protect you, but you have to understand that I can’t do that if you bring the cops and everyone else this. There are people looking for you, you understand that, right? Those two guys – they were literally there to murder you. You know that, yeah? You can’t go-”

“You want to talk about understanding?” she said, her voice watery and sounding like she was about the cry, but her face serious and stony. “Here’s something to understand: I’m bringing this to the authorities. You can’t watch me all the time.”

“You’re right; I can’t. So here’s a counteroffer.”

She stared at me. “I don’t want one.”

“Part one: you can tell them after we’re all done, after we’ve got your boss dead to rights, we’ll give the cops everything we’ve found. You get your law and order, we get to not die in the process. Okay?”

Her eyes narrowed slightly. “How do I know you won’t just…what you did with those other guys.”

“Well,” I said, “it’s like you said. I can’t watch you all the time. So, I get you a new cellphone, and if I don’t keep up my end, you get to handle your end. Which brings me to part two: if you’re in, then you’re in.”

“In?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said. If you wanna help giftwrap him for the cops, then you’re gonna help with pinning him down.”

“I already said I would,” she said.

“Then we don’t have a problem.”

She stared some more, shoulders pressed deep into the sofa, shoe still tight in her hand.

“You mean it?” she asked.

If I didn’t, would you be able to tell? I thought.

Probably not.

“Of course I do,” I said. Fortunately for her, I did mean it.

Enough of it, anyway.

--------------------

“I certainly hope you don’t blame me for something you could have prevented, Mike.”

Leland was holding on to the letters like he had a fucking right to say my name like that, like he had a right to say it at all.

“Oh,” he said lightly, and looked over at me. “How did that turn out, by the way? Saving the damsel in distress and all?”

---------------------

She looked over what notes I’d given her again. Rubbed her head and took another sip of what had to be the most bitter smoothie humankind was capable of making.

“So…Mr. Marburg is also working for this company, Halbech.”

[agent-kentauris]

d149

back to saint james. i had to rewrite some stuff. still getting a handle on her personality. esp. because at least in my playthroughs (what do i know, this game varies wildly from pt to py) she was hardly ever around? besides adding plot details. i mean clearly she has character its just been tough for me. but i digress

“You know,” I said again, bending my lips into a smile, “I can’t go home either.”

“Why?” she asked, immediately.

“I…I did something, and I got some very influential people riled up.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why’d you do it?”

“I didn’t really have a choice.”

She paused to consider that for a moment, then leaned back up.

“Is it Mr. Marburg?”

“An old friend of his. At least, I think they’re friends.”

“Oh.” She nodded. “Okay.”

And with that shocking underreaction, she tore the wrapper free of the burger, flipped the top bun off. She picked two pickles off, and seemed prepared to disassemble the entire thing. Went about it with a mechanical focus that was all the more alarming for the faint sense of everything in the room being too close to me, the certainty that my fingers could feel every grain in the table, the hyperawareness of electricity buzzing in the air around the TV and the phone and in the kitchen the refrigerator humming. If this was how I was handling it – and I was fine – and she was a civilian with this landing on her plate?

“How you feeling?”

She smiled vaguely. “Good.”

“Really?” I couldn’t keep the surprise clear of my tone.

She paused.

“I don’t really have a choice, do I?”

“I – of course you do. You can feel however you want to. Those two men were trying-”

“You murdered those two men!” she shouted suddenly, slamming her burger down and smushing it under a palm. “You- I don’t- You-”

“Madison, you have to understand-”

“-And now the police are trying to – to – so I can’t call them either-”

“We’re on the same side, Miss-”

“SHUT UP!” she yelled, brandishing her burger at me, a pickle falling loose. Strand of hair breaking from her headband and falling loose too. “Just- just-”

She froze, muscles tight and shoulders raised and breaths coming in huffs. Then, inbetween inhales, as quickly as it came the rage disappeared. The limp deadness back in its place.

“Am I safe here?” she asked, eyes dull and voice flat.

“Yea-” I started, and she held up a hand.

“Am I safe here?" she asked again.

I sat back. Looked out the window at the sky, half-expecting the clouds and the blizzards and the freezing cold to be back.

“Yes,” I said. Lied. It didn’t matter.

“Good,” she said. “I’m going to sleep.”

She scraped her chair back. Walked back to the bedroom following an uneven line. She was still wearing her heels.

As soon as I heard the door click shut, I grabbed the bag from the table, brought it to the kitchen. Stuffed everything in the fridge. I didn’t feel much like eating.

Outside, it was a familiar kind of cold. An errant snatch of conversation floated up from the lane, but I couldn’t make it out.

[agent-kentauris]

146

kay so im not sure where in the world i am with this, esp, given the number of cuts and mergers its gone through, so im just going to say this is 145 and 146

In my dreams, dull thudding gunshot sounds. Strange, because, the sound was not the right shape. Then I realized I was awake, or that I’d woken myself up, and there were no gunshots at all. I was staring up at the grey fabric of a car…ceiling? The faint rumbly hum of an engine. And then someone was patting my head, and I was falling, and sitting next to an old creek that used to run in the woods behind my house when I was a kid.

“Wake up, Mikey. We’re here.”

Everything hurt. Should’ve listened to Mom about…vegetables, or something. Milk? A yacht sailed by on the stream.

“No, I got him. Take care of the laptop.”

A splash snaked up around the captain’s shoulders and she pointed it at the cloudy sky.

“Yeah, of course try to stall Yancy.”

Someone shook my shoulder.

“Come on, Thorton,” he said, and I looked up at Sean Darcy. The river was gone. I tried to look around for it, but my neck was sore and besides I couldn’t remember what I had been looking for anyway.

“Good morning,” he continued patiently. Smile wide, but eyes quickly scanning me, up and down. Blue stormy grey but if you had to put it in a crayon, maybe? I narrowed my own eyes at him while he reached around me and unbuckled a seatbelt. Suspiciously sturdy arms nudged me closer and closer to the edge of the seat.

“You’re supposed to be made of water,” I told him, and when I opened my eyes again, I was laying on the couch. The right side of my pants torn off above the knee. There was a pile of bunched up towels elevating my leg,

Sean Darcy sat a bloody washcloth back in a large, metallic bowl on the coffee table and looked back over his shoulder.

“Welcome back, Mikey,” he said evenly. “How’re you feelin’?”

“Good-” I started, and then pain remembered I existed and I couldn’t talk over the choking noises coming from my mouth. The pieces of gauze invading and burning the inside of my leg, sending spasms up and down. One hand went tearing at the damp bandage around my leg, missing, digging deep scratches around it instead and the other shoving away Sean’s attempts to push me back flat on the sofa.

“Sorry about this,” he said, and with a swift motion that sent a sharp twinge up my neck, snatched and pinned my hand on my chest. When the other one started at tearing away soaked strips of gauze, he laced his fingers awkwardly across it and yanked it away, bracing it against the sofa back.

Too much blood in my body. Pressing on everything, someone was kicking me in time with my heart beat. My fingers straining without my permission, his thumb making deep indents on my forearm as he struggled to keep hold.

“Goddamn-” I started when another gut-wrenching spasm caught me and it became mangled, mangled vowels.

It seemed like forever before the shaking started to subside, before I could force the feeling of a sledgehammer against my skeleton to the back of my head, began I could before to stand the feeling of pressure against the inside of my skin. My eyes were watering.

“Okay,” I said, fighting a little to keep a waver out of my tone. Fighting to breathe. “Okay, okay. I’m good.”

Also, working to ignore how close he was to me. A fact that seemed so much more present how that my leg wasn’t trying to murder me.

“Yeah?” he said.

“Yeah,” I lied.

“Right.” He sounded unconvinced. “I’m gonna get you some Percocet.”

Then he dropped my arm on my stomach, and breezed out of the room.

I laid back down and watched the wicker ceiling fan spin lazily. And when that quickly sent me grabbing the edge of the sofa to stop the world from spinning around, I closed my eyes and worked on keeping the needling pain at bay.

 The only noise of him coming back in was the sound of pills shaking as he tossed a plain bottle of them at me. Unfortunately, red and maroonish purple was beginning to crowd out the few unbruised patches of amber-brown skin on my arms, and everywhere the stairs had hit hurt. I was a little too slow in going to catch it.

It bonked my forehead, and a whole new type of pain ricocheted through my skull.

“Oww,” I said, with a purposeful glare that didn’t quite cut it.

Darcy knelt in front of the coffee table, busied himself with gauze and gloves and the silver bowl.

“Take one of those and for four hours you can hit your head on whatever ya want,” he said, moving things around.

“And don’t worry-” he added, finally looking up and smirking at me, “It’s from your medicine cabinet, not mine, so you should be okay. Think you can handle it?”

“I wasn’t worried until just now.”

He stopped sorting things into neat rows on the table, and shook his head. “Yeah, well, don’t be. This is a mission, remember?”

“This was a shitshow,” I said, and he snorted.

“Speakin’ of that, I gotta go talk to Westridge. Take one-” he flicked one finger up sternly- “and gimme fifteen.”

“Hey, wait,” I said, as he pushed a hand against the coffee table, “Little brown book next to the TV. Can you toss – bring it here? I have to do my logs.”

He glanced back at the TV stand, then at me. “Keeping classified info out in the open – that’s a dangerous game, Mikey.”

“It’s not a game, Darcy. Can you just hand it to me?”

He frowned. “Whatever you say,” he said, picking it up.

I took it, the twinge running down from a still not entirely okay shoulder making the motion sharp, harsh.

“Okay then,” he said, raising his hands in mock surrender. “Maybe do take two.”

I had to fight not to snap at him. A dull ache crept up along the underside of my skin, and a headache was beginning to make the back of my eyes sting. Breathing just made sore spots on my ribs hurt.

And then there was the tiny bump on my head from the goddamn Percocet.

I held the book tighter, and willed the aggression and frustration into the cover.

“Agent Darcy,” I said, the rounded spine of the cover pressing into my palm, “I have been shot across the shoulder. I have been shot in the shin. I probably have a concussion and we don’t got a goddamn thing to show for it, so, please, pretty please, can you please give me a fucking break!”

He blinked. And I blinked, surprised at how quiet the room seemed now. My ears hurt. My ears hurt, and now they tingled with an unpleasant amount of heat.

“Look, I didn’t-”

He held up his hands again. “I’m gonna stop you there. This is a mission, and I shouldn’t have been pokin’ at you. Don’t bother apologizin’.”

“I…” I said, faintly feeling like I’d just lost an invisible argument. “I wasn’t going to?”

“Sure you weren’t,” he said, back to smirking. Then he stopped himself, winced, smiled more gently this time.

“I should probably go talk to Westridge. Sit tight for me, all right?”

“Yeah, well,” I said, “fine.”

Nom de dieu, great comeback.

Amusement crinkled the corners of his eyes.

“I’ll try not to bleed out while you and Westridge chat about the weather,” I said, sighing internally because that wasn’t any good either.

“Shouldn’t take us long,” he said. “The weather is still terrible. I’ll tell him you said hey.”

I couldn’t twist around to watch him go. A spasm forced me back down the moment I tried. So I talked at the ceiling instead.

“Save me some trouble and tell him I died,” I grumbled.

“Will do!” he said, and then the sound of his footsteps disappeared into the kitchen, leaving only the burbling of the fountain and the faint rush of wind outside.

  Day 12, I wrote, having a harder time keep the pen on the paper and a slightly harder time ignoring what that might mean for my mission readiness.

No backup, Westridge said. None. And yet Sean Darcy is in the kitchen right now, talking to Westridge.

Plus the mission today was…bad. The missiles were gone. There, once. Gone now. If I took the camp before the airport then maybe… or maybe didn’t try that stupid Spanish gambit. They wouldn’t have felt like moving the other weapons.

Got some data, though. And Nasri’s laptop.

The Percocet was starting to kick in. I was losing words. The warm, fuzzy, a-dozen-puffy-blankets sensation looming.

Don’t know what we’re going to do about Shaheed. Two days. Walking is not good. It’s not as bad as it was but standing is…

Well Westridge is probably going to send me home. Hm. Now Sean being here makes sense. Come to get his mission back. How’d he know I was gonna get shot? Nope.

Stop it. You suck at hiding and I can see you reading, Darcy.

“For the unofficial record,” he said, leaning on the back of the sofa, “we got a report that the camp might be expecting extra backup. Westridge thought you’d do fine, Talin and I disagreed. You’re right about backup, though – I’m in as much trouble as you are.”

“Great,” I said, while he grinned.

“We went rogue to pull you outta prison – cheer up, Mikey. As far as the last mission you’ll ever get goes, you coulda done worse.”

“Great,” I said again.

“You take your pills?”

“Regretfully.”

I settled back down on the couch, chucked the log onto the ground.

“How are you feeling?” he asked, looking over the sofa as it landed.

“Regrettable,” I said.

“You’re a linguist, aren’t ya?” He circled around to grab several packs of gauze off the coffee table. “You got your derivational morphology wrong.”

“What do you know about linguistics?”

He laughed, a low, short sound mixing in with the water fountain. “I’m a Wikipedia editor,” he explained. “I know a little about a lot of things.”

“I knew it.”

He looked over at me, expectantly.

“Not that I was thinking about it,” I said, cottony comforter drug hell heat starting its attack on my skin.

“Well,” he continued, with a half-shrug, “as far as linguistics goes, I think ya mean something like regretful.”

“Can I mean both?”

“Not unless-” he started, then cut himself off. “This is a mission. I should be takin’ care of your leg.”

“Instead of…?”

He shot me a dirty look. “Instead of nothing.”

“Alright, then.”

I sunk down another degree into the sofa. Looked down at my foot to make sure I still had one. I wiggled my toes and instead of pain, I felt only the faint, tingly reminder of it. Meanwhile, he started ripping apart gauze packs, rolling latex gloves on, getting an assortment of plastic tweezer things ready.

Field medicine. I hated it. Almost more than Percocet.

“Regretsome,” I thought out loud.

“Not a word, Mike.”

“It is now. You know,” I added, and shifted over on my side a little, “everyone says Shakespeare invented thousands of words, but it isn’t true.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. They counted wrong. It has to do with…” I paused, the phrase I needed to describe the reason why disappearing into the foggy void of - actually, I felt great. “Data gathering and field work, I think.”

“Field work,” he echoed, giving me a small, distracted nod as he circled back around to inspect the bandages on my leg.

“Yeah, it’s, uh-” I’d had a point, I knew- “It’s why you have to do good field work. And not get shot. Or you’ll start inventing words.”

No, that wasn’t it. He made an mmhm noise, poked at the bandage and made a face.

I’ll be damned if I’m not being ignored.

“So,” I tried, pushing myself up on my elbows.

He waved a hand at me sharply without looking at me. “Take it easy, Mikey.”

“Fine,” I said, and went back to staring at the ceiling fan and getting dizzy.

One, two, three rotations. The breeze was nice. My skin felt like someone had injected space blankets into it. Miserably hot and itchy. Fortunately, my hands were busy clinging to the sofa so a wave of vertigo didn’t shove me off.

“Mike,” Sean Darcy said, interrupting the quiet.

The fan made another three quick rotations. It looked like one. But it was faster than I could count; it probably was three.

“Thorton, do I need to explain what I’m about to do?” he asked.

“No,” I said, after a second’s deliberation. Pack the wound full of gauze, let it heal from the inside out back home, in the good old US of A.

“Good. You ready?”

Home, off the mission. And never gonna get another one.

“Mikey,” he said, waving a blue-gloved hand in front of my face.

“Right, right. Sorry. It’s the Percocet.” I said, then remembered I was supposed to be counterignoring him.

“Just say no,” came the immediate deadpan response from his side of the sofa.

“Oh, ha ha,” I said, despite myself. God damn, my skin itched. “Let’s get this over with.”

[agent-kentauris]

d144

okay so this excruciating exercise is over. and all of them need a hell ton of editing but its nice to be past that

“Hey, wait,” I said, as he pushed a hand against the coffee table, “Little brown book next to the TV. Can you toss – bring it here? I have to do my logs.”

He glanced back at the TV stand, then at me. “Keeping classified info out in the open – that’s a dangerous game, Mikey.”

“It’s not a game. Can you just hand it to me?”

He frowned, lips making a grimace in the corner. “Whatever you say,” he said, picking it up.

I took it, the spasm running down from my shoulder making the motion seem sharp, harsh.

“Okay then,” he said, raising his hands in mock surrender. “Maybe take two.”

I had to fight not to snap at him. A dull ache crept up along the underside of my skin, and a headache was beginning to make the back of my eyes string. Breathing just made sore spots on my ribs hurt.

And then there was the tiny bump on my head from the goddamn Percocet.

I held the book tighter, and willed the aggression and frustration into the cover.

“Agent Darcy,” I said, the rounded spine of the cover pressing into my palm, “I have been shot across the shoulder. I have been shot in the shin. I have a concussion and we don’t got a goddamn thing to show for it, so, please, pretty please, can you please give me a fucking break!”

He blinked. And I blinked, surprised at how quiet the room seemed now. My ears hurt. My ears hurt, and now they tingled with an unpleasant amount of heat. “Look, I didn’t-”

He held up his hands again. “I’m gonna stop you there. This is a mission, and I shouldn’t have been pokin’ at ya. You got every right to be mad and you don’t have to apologize.”

“I…” I said, the fuzzy headache stuffed into my head making it hard to follow along with the 360 that’d apparently just happened. “I wasn’t going to?”

“Sure you weren’t,” he said, back to smirking. Then he stopped himself, winced, smiled more gently this time.

“I should probably go talk to Westridge. Sit tight for me, all right?”

“Yeah, well,” I said, “fine.”

Nom de dieu, great comeback. Amusement crinkled the corners of his eyes.

“I’ll try not to bleed out while you and Westridge chat about the weather,” I said, sighing internally because that wasn’t any good either.

“Shouldn’t take us long,” he said. “The weather is still terrible. I’ll tell him you said hey.”

I couldn’t twist around to watch him go. A spasm forced me back down the moment I tried. So I talked at the ceiling instead.

“Save me some trouble and tell him I died!” I called as he went.

“Mmhm,” he said, and then the sound of his footsteps disappeared into the kitchen, leaving only the burbling of the fountain and the faint rush of wind outside.

[agent-kentauris]

d143

idk what day im actually on but we’re gonna call it for 143.

I laid back down and watched the wicker ceiling fan spin lazily. And when that quickly sent me grabbing the edge of the sofa to stop the world from spinning around, I closed my eyes and worked on forcing the needling pain to the back of my mind.

The only noise of him coming back in was the sound of pills shaking as he tossed a plain bottle of them at me. Unfortunately, red and maroonish purple was beginning to crowd out the few patches unbruised amber-brown skin on my arms, and everywhere the stairs had hit hurt. I was a little too slow in going to catch it.

It bonked my forehead, and Sean Darcy and I winced simultaneously.

“Ow,” I added.

He knelt down in front of the coffee table, busing himself with gauze and gloves and the silver bowl.

“Take one of those and for four hours you can hit your head on whatever ya want,” he said, moving things around.

“And don’t worry-” he added, finally looking up and smirking at me, “It’s from your medicine cabinet, not mine, so you should be okay. Think you can handle it?”

“I wasn’t worried until you said I shouldn’t be.”

He stopped sorting things into neat rows on the table, and shook his head. “Yeah, well, don’t. This is a mission, remember?”

“This was a shitshow,” I said under my breath, and he snorted.

“Speakin’ of that, I gotta go talk to Westridge. Take one-” he held up one finger sternly- “and gimme fifteen.”

“Hey, wait,” I said, as he pushed a hand against the coffee table, “Little brown book next to the TV. Can you toss – bring it here? I have to do my logs.”

He glanced back at the TV stand, then at me. “Keeping classified info out in the open – that’s a dangerous game, Mikey.”

“It’s not a game,” I said. “Can you just hand it to me?”

“Whatever you say,” he told me, and waved a hand around grandly before swiping it off the stand and handing it over.

[agent-kentauris]

d139

i sure do love scriptmedic. also I redid 138 mostly. not that there was much of it to begin with

“You’re doing fine,” I said, and when I opened my eyes again, I was laying on the couch, the right side of my pants torn off above the knee and my lower leg stuck up on a pile of folded towels.

I had one moment of detached confusion – one moment of listening to the calm burbling of the fountain and the slightly less calm hiss of the kitchen sink, one moment of focus on the thin trail of blood droplets and gravel strewn over the wood floor, one moment of being able to wiggle my fingers and toes and even swing my legs off the couch. One moment, and then pain remembered I existed and socked me in the gut, and I fell over and curled up around my leg feeling very much like someone was kicking me every time my heart beat. Too much blood in my body, I could feel it pressing on everything. Needling pressure that was either going to tear my skin open or smush my lungs, probably.

Not a thing that happens, I reminded myself, the effort of thinking distracting me for a moment from fingers that were actively trying to tear the bandaging free from the back of my leg.

“Stop it,” I hissed at them, and my index finger unwound itself from the top loop of bandage.

Better. Not good. I had to keep looking down at myself to make sure someone wasn’t whacking me in the side with a hammer, so, definitely not good. But better.

I pushed myself back up on the sofa with my arms, shook my head clear. Instant headache, and I resolved to stop moving, if possible.

Then I heard soft footsteps from the hallway, and staying still was not an option. I went for a gun that was no longer in its chest holster, kicking the coffee table over and hitting the ground when my leg seized up in protest.

“I’m armed,” I intended to say menacingly, but it came out as more of a squeak.

Someone stifled a snicker. Several memories chose that moment to resurface.

“Hello, Sean,” I said, without getting up from behind my protective table.

“Welcome back, Mikey,” he said, and padded over. “Brought ya’ somethin’.”

I rolled my eyes upward, and he shook a white, unmarked bottle of pills above my head.

“First, good news.” He gave them another shake. “We have these. Bad news – no lidocaine, and I don’t have time to go get some. So your stitches are gonna hurt. Any other questions?”

Oh, fuck.

“Oh, fuck,” I said.

“Not a question.”

“Is it too late to go home?” I asked. Forget hammer, felt like I was being smacked with a baseball bat.

He dropped the bottle into my lap. “Shoulda thought about that before you stole my mission.”

“Second question.”

“Make it quick.” His foot started to tap. “I do got a gunshot wound to fix.”

“Yeah, about that. Before you start stabbing me with a needle…” I started. “I just wanted to say I thought we were cool.”

“Oh, we are,” he said, smiling politely. “Don’t worry about it.”

I flipped over, dragged myself up to the edge of the table. “I’m very worried about it!” I shouted as he walked off.

He waved a hand briefly without looking back.

 When he came back I was laying on the sofa, eyes squeezed shut, trying not to move and send fireworks up through my leg.

[agent-kentauris]

d137

this is still back in SA. still in fixing my own stuff mode. would be much easier to not make mistakes the first time, i think. if only

In my dreams there was the sound of gunshots. Which almost woke me up, because there are no gunshots in my dreams. Then I realized I was awake, or that I’d woken myself up, and there were no gunshots at all. I was staring up at the grey fabric of a car…ceiling? And just the faint rumbly hum of an engine. And then someone was patting my head, and I was falling, and sitting next to an old creek that used to run in the woods behind my house when I was a kid.

“Wake up, Mikey. We’re here.”

Everything hurt. Should’ve listened to Mom about…vegetables, or something. Milk? A yacht sailed by on the river.

“No, I got him. Take care of the laptop.”

The water curled up on the captain’s shoulders and she pointed it at the cloudy sky.

“Yeah, of course try to stall Westridge.”

And then someone was shaking me lightly.

“Come on, Thorton,” he said, and I looked up at Sean Darcy. The river was gone. I tried to look around for it, but my neck was sore and besides I couldn’t remember what I had been looking for anyway.

“Good morning,” he said, patiently.

“You have really pretty eyes,” I said, too tired to bother with not saying it, or thinking it. Blue grey like stormy river with rain, but if you had to put it in a crayon, maybe?

“You have a concussion,” he said, very pretty eyes widening a little even if he sounded a bit stern. He looped my arm around his neck. “Ya’ gonna help me, or not?”

“With?”

Then I was out of the car again, leaning on him.

“With walkin’, whatdya think?”

“Oh,” I said. “No.”

I could feel my leg. In a distant kind of way. In a if I stepped on it I would definitely feel it kind of way. Didn’t really want to feel it.

He looked like he wanted to roll his eyes or something. Jaw tight, eyebrows twitching. The hand securing my arm tightening, along with his smile.

“I don’t really want to help, no,” I clarified helpfully.

“You don’t wanna help.”

“You’re doing fine,” I said, with enough stumbling over letters and blinking that it occurred to me, I might have something hurt with my head. Concussion, probably.

He deposited me on the ground, and suddenly, I was sitting in the gravel of the driveway. He unlooped my arm, the loss of skin contact and the evening cool making my arm feel coldish.

[agent-kentauris]

day 136 (d34)

Well its mostly the same but I broke a lot of parts and put them back together different. I had to, cause man I tried to build off of what was there an just no. So. new tomorrow.

The missile wasn’t the first thing that caught my attention when I hit the surface. No, that would be the flaming car wreckage that scattered as a truck in the center of the clearing exploded. Time slowed, a charred shard of metal slicing through the air next to my neck. Then the missile. I could see it streaking past my face, like it too was moving in slow motion. Time snapped back to full speed as it nicked the top floor of the building I was in, spraying mortar and bricks and stone. A man with a shoulder missile launcher ran past the door, leaping over a burning tire.

“Mike,” Darcy cut in, as several guards opened fire at once. “Havin’ a little trouble here.”

No kidding. I dropped Nasri’s laptop, unslung my AR and got a shot off at the man with the missile launcher as he started to reload.

“Their radio tower is down,” Who next? “But we’re getting more resistance than expected.”

There. A guy taking cover behind a sandbag wall beside the gate, aiming another missile launcher as the Blackhawk came into view over the opposite ridge. I ran, ducking as he swung the thing around like a bat, made a mess of his stomach with a close range burst from the AR.

“Can you secure the landing zone?” Darcy asked – ordered.

Across the clearing, in lookout tower, a man at the turret started spraying the sky with bullets. I pointed my brand new missile launcher at him, and watched as his tower crumbled in fire.

Who was left? A couple of guys in the gate towers, going crazy with their turrets. Two guys at the radio tower, grenades in hand. One guy charging at me with a knife. Shit.

I swung the missile launcher around, his knife connecting, skidding down the metal, nearly knocking me back with the force of his strike.

“Not-” I said. He pulled back, prepared to slash under the launcher, but I kneed him first and brought the tube down hard on his head- “a problem.”

At the end of the gate, next to the radio tower, the man behind the first turret jerked and fell over. Good. Someone on the helicopter had firepower.

Bullets peppered the ground in front of me, and I fell backwards instinctively, swinging the missile launcher around, it was empty, yeah, but the guard on the roof of the camp entrance building didn’t know that. He froze at the sight of the barrel. I dropped it and ran, hitting the wall. How to get up there? How did he get up there? A grenade dropped over the edge, beeping. I dove back towards the entrance, grabbing my AR, centering it on the guard as he dropped a second grenade and fumbled to get his own gun back out. The second grenade hit the ground a moment before his body did, one detonating the other another moment later.

No more guys on the roof.

The Blackhawk hovering over the cliff edge.

One of the guys at the radio tower hoisting a missile launcher, but he didn’t have the angle to shoot it.

The last turret, then, while they were distracted.

 Compared to the ringing cacophony of the turret, the beeping of the grenade was nothing. The final guard on the turret couldn’t have heard it, and he didn’t move. The detonation shook the tower, and the turret fire stopped. At least, it temporarily stopped. I had it going again soon, cutting down the man with the last missile launcher as he got off a pointless shot, and then one running for the first turret.

For one peaceful second, silence. Mostly silence. The wind and the welcome heavy noise of copter rotors. I took a deep breath, fingers straying for my earpiece, and-

Goddammit, the laptop.

Across the basin, two more Al-Samad assholes in elite gear with missile launchers strapped to their backs came rappelling down the cliff face. I gritted my teeth and all but jumped down the ladder, sprinting for the laptop and skidding to a halt, dropping to one knee in the dirt and locking my rifle on to the bastard who’d decided to skip the last few feet of rappelling. He dropped on to the same platform I’d used to gain entrance in the first place, pivoted to point his unstrapped launcher behind me, then collapsed in a pile with what I will admit was a very lucky shot to the chest. The second elite’s boots hit the platform right after. I swear I could almost hear the clicking of a new missile settling into the tube, could almost see from all the way across the basin the contorted mask of fury that his eyes and lips made.  

I was dive-rolling towards the camp entrance before I knew he was firing, saw a flash of the rocket after I felt the detonation, or so it felt, I was at the bottom of the first flight of stairs every limb aching skin on fire covered in dirt right around the same time my brain dragged itself back into the fight.

I propped myself up on my elbows, lay back down very quickly when a slow, rolling wave of dizziness pushed back. That was fine, laying down was good. Nothing hurt, but that was going to wear off fast. Tomorrow morning was going to be shit.

If you live that long, my brain reminded.

I felt the impact of something detonate outside, rather than heard it, and it occurred to be that nothing was, in fact, making any noise. Faint noise. Humming. Buzzing. It was already coming back, pretty quick, too. I forced myself into something like an upright position, tried to breathe past the swimming sense of the world turning around, tried to move past what was going to be a nasty pattern of bruises, and got back up the stairs with a minimum of wincing. The laptop had missed the stairs, had skidded off into a corner. My rifle was in front of it.

I peeked outside quickly, but the man who’d shot at me didn’t break his laser focus. He pulled off another rocket, and then with short, swift motions began loading another missile. Didn’t even duck when my first shot went wide. He got the next rocket out, and locked it in. Damn it. He started raising the barrel again, making minute adjustments and heaving it up to his shoulder. I didn’t have time to track the path, to see if his shot would hit. Only to line up my own shot, walking closer, centering in.

Now!

He shot, and I shot, and he fell over, grasping at the edge of the platform as he toppled – it didn’t help – but his shot was first, and now I definitely had time to track it.

The thing headed straight for the where the Blackhawk hovered, and I started swearing, but that damn pilot was already swinging the tail around in a spiral that made me dizzy all over again to follow. The rocket barely blew past, and hit rock. The helicopter jerked for a moment, the pilot visibly fighting for control. They nearly hit the same cliff the rocket had just detonated, but it finally stabilized, and headed for the small space beyond the gate and debris.

“All right,” Darcy growled tensely, not an ounce of his usual affected composure. Still, I could hear him now, and that was good. “We’re clear, let’s do this!”

No complaints from me.

I scooped the laptop up, strapped my rifle back on. Happy to leave this place. I would have ran, except even walking, I was having a tiny little bit of trouble judging how far my foot was from the ground. The aches starting to settle in didn’t help. Neither did the blood dripping into my eye– okay, cut on the side of my head. Good to know. I reached a gate tower, threw the laptop up – if the screen wasn’t broken before that, I’d have been shocked – and started up after it.

 Gun in my face. Eh? Couldn’t focus on it. Every sense hijacked by the piercing, white-noise pain in my lower right leg. The gun shook, someone said something. Arabic? I tried to focus, tried to ignore it.

“Wha?” I managed. Shot? Hot, cold. Burning both ways. Been shot worse before. Still, this? Vise-like, insistent, gnawing on the bone.

The gun shook in my face again. It was attached to a hand. That hand, to a guard. He spat out fluid Arabic. Another guy showed up, walking to stand next to him, shook a laptop at me. A laptop. I blinked.

Right. The mission. I got shot. Had to have only been out a few seconds. The mission.

Fuck the mission, said the spikes digging into my leg.

Fuck you, I thought back, and tried to curl the fingers in my left hand into a ball. They were, however, already bent into a fist, fingernails cutting into my hand.

The guy with the gun bent over, shouting louder, pistol trained on my head. I let him finish before I decked him with my left fist, reached out with my right hand, and grabbed his pistol from where it had fallen. It wasn’t a very powerful strike, but it was surprising. He was too close, too stunned to dodge the pistol shots, even as poorly aimed as they were. And the second guy had to drop the laptop before he could get his gun out. He grasped at it, and I shot him in the leg first, then the chest.

There. The adrenaline was back. Or it never left, doesn’t matter which. What did matter was I made it up the ladder without using my leg too much. What did matter was the turret was heavy and sturdy enough to lean on. What did matter, when two more guys emerged from the entrance to the camp, was that you could lean on the turret and shoot at the same time.

What mattered was the hint of exhaustion that was beginning to creep into the edges of my vision. Very much time to go.

I chucked the laptop on the ground outside the gate, and clambered out onto the walkway. Back at the entrance to the camp, the doors started to swing again.

I grabbed the edge of the walkway. Please, let them look somewhere else for a minute. Let them not notice the helicopter kicking up dust. The two guards emerging did, of course. I looked down, keeping both hands on the walkway. The gate offered no cover at all. The only thing I had was that they were too far away to be accurate, which wouldn’t last long. I swung over the side and let go of the walkway, no time for getting down gently, not able and not caring enough to stop the gasp that fought its way out when I connected with the ground. Even less able to stay standing when the shock of the impact ricocheted up through the pulsing know of pain in my shin. Just about able to tear my AR free and use it to push myself up again.

That did it.

I grabbed the laptop by a corner, fighting to keep hold of both it and my AR, and started shooting blindly through the gate, limping backwards, trying not to put any weight on my leg but failing. Miserably failing. Every other step was torture.

Strings of curses bubbled up, and pain, and raging fury too, at the bastards dodging my wild shots on the other side.

“YAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!” I shouted, and if they thought I had been firing before…my AR kicked in protest, recoil threatening the shake the gun free from my already shaky grasp. I dare it. And I dare my shoulder to start complaining, too. One guy stopped, taking a step back and then another, turning and heading back into the safety for the entrance. That’s right.

“You better run!” I yelled at his back, feeling a little out of breath but I shouted it anyway.

The other – red mask, elite – kept calm, kept advancing, kept picking off shots that came closer and closer. I nearly lost my hold on the laptop, had to start returning fire one-handed as my hands started shaking and as sand started to kick up around me. One shot nearly swiping across my cheek, and this time I did let go of the laptop, training and experience be damned as I threw up a hand instinctively. He cocked his head, took another step, pulled his rifle a bit higher.

Then his head flipped backward, blood splatter fanning out over the sand around him.

I turned – stumbled, was a better word for it – and Sean Darcy was there, rifle in hand, locked on to the spot where the elite had just fallen. Sandy wind tangling in his hair, remains of a snarl curling his upper lip.

“Sean?” I asked, stupidly. The hell was he doing in Saudi Arabia? On the mission?

A second guy reached down for the laptop. Sean ditched the rifle, and reached out for me. When I didn’t do anything but stare, he sighed, swiped out and grabbed my arm anyway.

“Good job, Mike,” he told me, fuzzy feedback from my earpiece overlapping. Hard to hear. “Not bad for the new guy.”

He tugged me to the edge of the helicopter, and I complied. The man's grip was steel, unbreakable. I thought about helping, but then again my leg felt like hell and his arms, on the other hand, were nice. I could feel the muscles shifting under his skin as he hooked his arms under mine, braced himself, and hauled me up.

“All missions…” I started, laying on the floor of the copter. Above my head, the Alpha Protocol guy started shouting things into his radio. Sean Darcy stepped over me, grabbed a rifle.

Probably not safe to lay like this. Takeoff was starting. Everything swayed, tilting dizzy. I should sit up.

“All missions,” I tried again. I really should sit up. Strap in, or something. “Go…as smoothly, as this?”

“You’re alive, aren’t ya’?” he said curtly.

I suppose I was. That was good.

Data, laptop. Good as well.

Above my head, the other Alpha Protocol guy swapped a handful of bandages for Sean’s rifle. I needed a nap is what I needed.

“Mikey,” Sean said, suddenly crouched down beside me, a knife in hand. He slit a triangular flap in the fabric around my leg. “Gonna patch that up. Try not to die on me, yeah?”

“I’m fine-” I said, and then I couldn’t talk except to choke out some air. The electric pain zapping through my bones ended as soon as it has started, though. Left me trying to remember how to use my jaws.

“Really?” he said, calmly. Several more bursts of pain. “Forget hair. You must be havin’ a bad everything day.”

“And then there’s the shakin’,” he pointed out, and yanked another loop of bandage tight.

“That’s the plane,” I grunted, trying not to get my tongue punctured by my teeth. He tightened another loop, and I could taste the blood.

“Uh huh,” he said. “One - it’s a copter. Two, we haven’t taken off yet. Now, are you gonna strap yourself in, or do I hafta do everything myself around here?”

“Nap,” I said, because we most certainly were flying and I was tired.

He looked like he couldn’t decide between rolling his eyes or smiling. Settled on a soft pat to the bullet hole, and I winced.

“I’ll…” he said, and seem to be lost for words for a second. “That’s gonna need stitches. I’ll fix it at the safehouse.”

We? Hell, no. In enough trouble, already. He paused, seem to expect the argument that I should have made, but I was too tired to debate it. In for a penny. Or something like that.

A nap would be nice.

“All right,” he grumbled, and then I was standing, most my weight on him, and then I was sitting again, straps coming up over my shoulders.

“What?” I asked.

“Nap,” he said firmly. And that I understood. The sand kicked up by the wind and the hum of the rotors stopped nap from happening, but only for a minute.

[agent-kentauris]

day 135

i sure do like saying ‘for one moment’ don’t I? ‘for one moment’ and ‘and then’. I need to stahp.

And with that shocking underreaction, she tore the wrapper free of the burger, flipped the top bun off. She picked two pickles off, and seemed prepared to disassemble the entire thing. Went about it with a mechanical focus that was all the more alarming for the faint sense of everything in the room being too close to me, the certainty that my fingers could feel every grain in the table, the hyperawareness of electricity buzzing in the air around the TV and the phone and in the kitchen the refrigerator humming. If this was how I was handling it – and I was fine – and she was a civilian with this landing on her plate?

“How you feeling?”

She smiled vaguely, but when she spoke, color had returned to her tone.

“Mr. Thorton, you may not have had a choice, but I do. I want to go home. If Mr. Marburg is breaking the law, I want him caught. I never wanted anyone to get hurt, and I’d still prefer to go to the authorities, but if it has to be this way…”

She flipped the top bun back on and patted it with her hand.

“I may not be sure what’s going on, but I want to make it better.”

She nodded again, and then began munching on her burger. The tear tracks weren’t dry on her face yet, but she was animate now, looking for all the world like she needed to count every sesame seed on the bun. Maybe I believed her, that she could actually be as fine with this as she said she was. Maybe it didn’t matter if I believed her.

“Are you sure?” I asked her, and she stopped chewing for a moment to give me one final sharp nod.

Mina was going to – you know what, if Mina was going to kill me she’d have done it by now.

“I need to get you caught up, then.”

“M’not goin’ anywhere,” she mmphed.

“Gimme five minutes,” I said, and picked my own burger back up.

Hopefully, the world could keep itself together for at least that long.

[agent-kentauris]

day 133

day 133 of this, interfering with real life, probably about time to admit i have a serious escapism problem that ignoring is not going to help

anyway. mikey sure does a lot of leading madison around. BUT SHE WON’T MOVE. WHY WON’T YOU MOVE?! I have a story to write here, saint james.

I trudged out of the living room, down the hallway, to the small kitchen. There was nothing in the cabinets but a few boxes of Russian crackers and tiny snack cakes, leftovers courtesy of G22. Right. Hadn’t exactly had a chance to go out yet.

Although…the cakes were pretty tasty. Sweet, and almond-y.

That might work.

I swiped the box and headed back towards the loft stairs. Inside, with the door open and letting the breeze carry through, it was cold. Outside, though, it was even worse.

Madison stopped at the ledge, circled around, and ran into me. Her shoulders were slumped over, eyes alarmingly unfocused. I redirected her, guided her over to the spindly metal patio furniture in the corner.

“Miss Saint James,” I said, sitting and wishing I’d brought my laptop. Would have looked more official, professional. More reassuring. At least, to a civilian.

“Miss Saint James, you’re going to be okay.” I told her.

She stared at the table, hands in her lap.

“Those guys,” I tried, “they were pretty bad guys. We’ve…been tracking them for a while.”

If she believed the lie, if she’d even heard it, I couldn’t tell.

“Your boss, we can stop him, we-”

She pulled her head up.

“Please stop talking,” she said, quietly, monotonously. “I believe you, Mr. Thorton.”

“Oh.”

She returned to eyeing the table.

From the street, the noise of a bicycle and its squeaking wheels.

The wind cut across us both, and I shivered.

She didn’t move.

“Uh,” I said.

I dug one of the almond cakes free of the box, and scooted it across the table.

“They’re good,” I told her.

Finally, she looked up at it.

She looked at me.

She looked back down at it.

And then her face twisted into a lopsided smile that kept growing, and growing, until she was breaking out in manic, staccato laughs.

“Miss Saint James?”

In between gasping laughs, she grabbed it, waved it in front of my face.

“I – can’t – eat – nuts,” she managed, wheezing. “I have – an – allergy!”

She doubled over, banging the cake against the crisscross metal strips of the tabletop.

“Miss Saint-”

“I have an allergy!” she shouted, and smiled widely at me even while tears started squeezing out of her eyes.

“HA!” she added, and squashed her palm on the wrapper.

I stood up, pulled her out of the chair, got no resistance.

“Let’s get you inside,” I told her, and since she kept up a steady stream of giggles, leading her into the safehouse, down the stairs, and to the bedroom wasn’t exceptionally difficult.

I let her collapse on the bed, tears coming freely now.

“Miss Saint James, I-” I started, and then got saved by the sudden buzzing of my phone, out on the table. “Hang on a sec.”

In the main room, the phone clattered around impatiently.

“Mina!” I said the moment I answered.

“Mike?” she asked, sounding reasonably confused. “Are you okay?”

“Am I okay? What the hell happened to you?”

“I asked first.”

“You aren’t going to like it, not even remotely.”

She sighed. “One day, my faith in you will be rewarded.”

“Not today,” I said with forced cheerfulness, over the sounds of a new burst of giggles from the bedroom.

“What’d you do this time?”

“It’s going to take a few minutes to explain.”

“I’ve got time.”

“Yeah…” I said, and looked back over my shoulder towards the bedroom. “I might not exactly be able to talk openly right now.”

“Do I want to know why?”

“Nope. But if you give me a sec, I’ll tell you anyway.”

“Fine,” she said.

I pulled the phone away for a minute, quietly approached the bedroom, knocked on the open door.

Saint James, hugging a pillow, twisted around to stare at me.

“I’m just going to close your door,” I said, and she twisted back around without responding.

Unfortunately, I had to close it and lock it. And then I had to carefully jam the lock, enough to stick but not enough so I couldn’t get it open from this side when I got back. This was only going to take a few minutes, and I doubted she was going to flee after what happened at her apartment, but she might.

I glanced down at the knob. This, actually, might be the first of many huge problems with having her here. Not like I could sit around the safehouse all day making sure she didn’t get herself killed.

I felt a sudden deal of very uncomfortable sympathy with Mina.

“Hey,” I said, returning to the phone and heading for the front door. “Are you sitting down right now? You might want to be sitting.”

--------------------

She’d taken it better than I expected.

“Are you sure you weren’t even a little surprised?” I checked, balancing the McDonald’s bag in my arm and the phone on my shoulder. The key in my other hand clicked into the lock smoothly.