Archive of Our Own ^beta

Farah can feel her heart pounding away in her chest as she exists the psych’s welcoming yet impersonal office and enters the waiting room. She wobbles her way over to one of the straight backed seats that are placed around the edges of the room and slumps. She breathes in deeply through her nose and lets a shaky breath out of her mouth. Her stomach churns like a blender that some nutrition conscious gym rat has shoved a deadly amount of raw eggs into.
Raw eggs. That’s just asking for salmonella.
Farah tries to divert her mind away from the subject. She taps on her knees, trying to convert her totally appropriately anxious energy into movement. Tries to make her heart stop feeling as if it’s going to explode.
There’s no way she made it through that psych eval. She spent most of the time trying to convince the assessing psychologist of how absolutely normal she is. Like it was something she had to prove. Which it wasn’t. It totally wasn’t.

She’s the most normal , most ordinary bodyguard slash potential CIA agent slash whatever else it is she does that she knows.

Farah allows herself a quick scan of the room once she’s decided her weird totally not anxious feelings have dissipated enough for her to not stand out.

She looks at the other occupants of the room. They all look different, and yet something unites them. She realises with a sinking feeling that their uniting feature is that they’re all looking at her.
She ducks her head again. Trying to pretend that what just happened, what they all saw just happened , never happened. You didn’t see anything .

Farah gathers her bearings, stands up, and walks out.

She straightens her leather jacket as she hurries through the weirdly crowded lobby. It’s not small, but also not as large as Farah would have expected for Seattle's CIA headquarters to be.
She’s making her way past the front desk when a throat clears just behind her. Farah spins around, trying to locate the source of the noise.
A small, plump man sits behind the desk and clears his throat again. Farah looks at him. They make eye contact. Meaningful eye contact . He holds out a manila folder.
“For me?” she asks, the words getting caught in her throat.
The man nods. She fumbles as she takes hold of the folder and yanks it towards herself. She frowns at it and thanks the man.
She doesn’t open the folder. Not on the bus. Or the train. Or in the Uber she eventually summons after realising train delays are going to leave her standing on a deserted platform. In the dark. Despite being trained in a number of self defense styles, she nopes the fuck out of that one.

Her fingers fumble around with her picks as she attempts to pick the lock on her apartment door. Of course she would remember her fucking lockpicks but not her keys. That’s just the type of person she turned into when confronted with stressful interviews.
She fumbles a few times, having to reinsert the tension wrench and start again before the lock relents and Farah can let herself into her… home is not exactly what she would call it.
Home is the Spring Mansion, no matter how long ago she left. This is just a temporary place. There’re no memories echoing around the walls that make it a home .
She slaps the manila folder down onto the island in the kitchen and struggles to pull her heavy boots off for a few minutes.
The air is stuffy and stale. It leaves her face feeling ultimately very weird. She busies herself with opening a number of windows in the apartment, letting in street sounds. Cars honking, people yelling, animals also yelling. Anything to procrastinate opening the manila folder that sits on her kitchen counter in the same way an antisocial cat might: not making any attempt at getting her attention, and yet holding it all the same.
She moves over the folder and stares at it. Stares a bit more. It doesn’t blink.
Farah picks it up and moves it over to the coffee table.

It takes an hour of procrastinating for Farah to finally confront the thing. She will be terrorised no longer by a piece of processed tree!
She stares at it for half a minute, debating what could be inside. It’s probably just her rejection from the CIA but she’s happy to leave the guessing up to Schrödinger. She stares a little more.

She uses a single finger to flip it open, in the same way one might use a stick to touch a pair of their roommate’s dirty underwear: respectfully and full of awe for its true capabilities.
A case file stares up at her.
It has a black and white photograph of a man paper clipped to the side, obscuring some details.
She shifts the cheap photograph out of the way and looks down at the actual information. She’s mildly taken aback by the fact that the files don’t look like they’ve been typed up on a dingy typewriter in some smoke filled speakeasy. No character to anything anymore. Thanks Obama.
“Project Icarus” the paper says in its sad Arial font. Farah had a Greek mythology phase in middle school, like any self respecting human, and the thing that stuck out to her most, reading the myth, was how much Icarus’ father had loved him. To send his son away to a better life on wings of plucked feathers and melted wax.

Farah feels the sides of her mouth drag down as she reads over the first page.

There’s basic information on the man currently identified as Icarus. Originally Eastern European, blond hair, blue eyes. Age thirty four.
Older than Farah by four years.
Escaped Blackwing sixteen years ago. Farah scans her brain for any mention of Blackwing. She comes up blank.

She shudders to think what kind of prison Blackwing would need to be to be so thoroughly kept out of the public eye. Hell, even Guantanamo was known well enough.
Brought into Blackwing in ‘88.
Eight years old. What. The fuck.
She continues to scan before her eyes catch on a word. Psychic.
Ah, that makes sense.
She’s being punked. The goddamn CIA are punking her. For some reason.
Or it could be real. They could have a whole heap of… clairvoyants just… trapped in a military base somewhere. Trying to find whatever it is Governments lose. Missiles?  Or something.
She stays up reading the file for the next few hours, convinced she’s being punked but too intrigued to put it in the trash and never look at it again.

*

Farah walks swiftly through the lobby of the CIA headquarters and turns down a hall. The file had a map of the interior with a path to follow to the interview room (which, in Farah’s opinion, was not very security conscious).

Her palms are sweating as she straightens out the five years out of style suit jacket she managed to dig out of her wardrobe. She bought if five years ago when going in for her last job interview. She’d been self employed since the incident with the racoon and the fire cracker. Her termination was unfounded; it’s not her fault racoons have unnervingly man-like hands.

Farah can feel her high heels pinching uncomfortably at her heels and her discomfort grows with every step. The pencil skirt she has on is a size too small and chafes at the front of her legs.
She feels like an idiot, walking through these halls after leaving flustered and panicked less than twenty four hours ago.

Now she’s practically hired by them. Hired by the damn CIA. It’s been an unrealised childhood dream that she gave up on after she turned twenty five.

Farah almost misses the door, so caught up in her own thoughts.
She double checks it against the map. Room 3B. She holds her fist up to the door and breathes deeply, preparing to knock. She stops. Would knocking show too much hesitance on her part? Would she come off as too timid?
But any attempt at barging in could expose a torrid office love affair. Or a superior picking their nose. Farah’s fairly certain that wouldn’t win her any points.

Farah decides to combine the actions. Knock, wait a beat, turn the handle, walk in.
She comes face to face with two stony looking superiors. A Colonel and a General.
They sit side by side behind a heavy desk. Farah looks at the stiff plastic chair resting on her side of the desk.

“Farah Black?” asks the General.

Farah nods, “Yessir.”

“I’m General Wilson,” she nods to her companion, “This is Colonel Riggins.”
The General gestures for Farah to take a seat in front of her and the Colonel. Farah stumbles in her haste to comply.

“You’ve read the file?” Riggins asks. Farah nods.
He leans forward slightly.

“What did you think of him?” he prods, wasting no time.
Farah is confused for a second before managing to recalibrate her brain. Icarus. He’s asking about Project Icarus.

“He’s uh…” she stammers. “He seems powerful.”

Riggins leans back slightly, looking pleased. Farah feels like she’s at a parent teacher conference.

Wilson clears her throat. “What do you plan to do?”
“A-about Icarus?”

“Yes.” An eye roll.
Farah has decided that the best plan of action would be to die. Right there in their offices. She feels like she’s going to have a heart attack. She feels like her throat is closing up. She uses one of the breathing exercises Lydia sent her. For some unknown reason.

She clears her throat. Realises she’s just mimicked Wilson and tries to play it off. “Uh well it looks like he’s an asset that you can’t afford to lose.” She sees Riggins and Wilson exchange a look. “I mean, you’ve obviously worked too hard on him to just..throw him away? Kill him? Kill him, yeah. It seems like a bad idea to kill him.”

Wilson looks unimpressed.

Farah’s face starts to heat up. She remembers that she’s talking about a magical human. A mutant from the X-Men.
Ah, shit. She really is being punked. This is probably how they test new recruits to see exactly how gullible they are. How easily they can be affected by their higher ups. But, isn’t that what they want? The CIA probably doesn’t want to be questioned. She freezes. Weird gurgling noises work their way out of her mouth.
Riggins gives her a sympathetic look and prompts, “How do you plan to bring him in?”

Farah shifts awkwardly. She hadn’t thought this far ahead. “Well uh. I think it would be best for his health to just... lure him in?”

Saying it out loud sounds bad. She doesn’t know how to fix that. “Like, put him at ease? Let him decide on his own that, uh, Blackwing is what’s best?”
Riggins nods at her. Wilson still looks disapproving.

“Like, if he wants to come in, he won’t use his powers to uh. Kill everybody? We could... We could have someone... pretend to need his help and somehow... lure him back in?”
Farah is kind of disgusted at herself for not thinking of a plan before she came in for the interview. To be fair, they did only give her a few hours to prepare. And yet, a better agent would have had a plan made up with diagrams by now.
Wilson stands up and gestures towards the cheap plywood door.

“Excuse us while we confer,” she says, glaring slightly in Riggins’ direction.

*

The coffee shop around Farah bustles busily with office workers, freed from their cubicle prisons for a short while. She shifts uncomfortably in the businesswoman’s outfit that the CIA had given to her a few hours before she was to make contact with Project Icarus. Her hair is pulled back and away from her face. The CIA cited it as a more ‘professional’ look.

Farah calls bullshit, but she doesn’t argue. She wants this job, and she wants it to go well.

She has a gun tucked into a shoulder holster, the outline disrupted and shrouded by her suit jacket. She’s sat in the back of the coffee shop, observing the goings-on quietly.

People mill around loudly, talking on the phone and to each other. Complaining to themselves about things that can’t be helped. Their bodies bleed together, weaving around each other like a stream around rocks. There’s a single customer entrance that is clogged with customers coming and going. Farah knows from the file that Icarus frequents this establishment.

“No sign of him,” she whispers to herself and to the agent listening on the other end of the com.

It’s one way, so whoever it is can only listen. No outside help can be given. Farah is almost completely on her own with this.

She sits still, letting her mind wander as the coffee she ordered grows cold between her hands. She’s never been a huge fan of it. Too bitter.

She almost misses him, slipping through the crowd like any other man. Farah notices two things. First, his hair is not blond. She doesn’t know what she would call it but it’s certainly not blond. Second, he isn’t what she expected. Farah had expected a person who was different. Otherworldly. She had expected him to stand out. He doesn’t. He just wanders in and waits in line.

He looks human in his dark grey cardigan and jeans. So human.

Farah’s heart speeds up. She reminds herself of a predator stalking its prey, but instead of killing Icarus she’s simply going to return him to the… zoo? that he escaped from.

He places his order and goes to stand with a pack of businesspeople, huddled together like penguins in the cold, cold world of no coffee. He smiles and makes unnerving eye contact with as many people as he can.

Not too normal, then.

“Dirk!” A barista calls out. Icarus perks up and moves towards the counters, handing the barista a crumpled up wad of bills. He doesn’t seem to care how much he overpays, and neither does the barista.
Farah looks at Icarus, deciding he does look far more like a Dirk than the name given in his file. Svlad. She doesn’t quite know what she imagines a Svlad would look like, but he certainly shouldn’t look so excited about everything.

Icarus makes a beeline for the exit, weaving his way between the now dwindling number of patrons.

Farah gets up to follow, tossing her disposable cup into the trash as she goes.

She exits the shop to heavy grey clouds drifting overhead. The sidewalk and a few people waiting at the bus station appear slightly damp. Farah feels unstable on her government-issued high heels as she hurries over the oily concrete to where Dir- Icarus, she reminds herself, is standing. He’s just looking out over the street. He doesn’t appear to be making any moves to cross, hail a cab or. Move really.

Perfect for Farah, probably a little sad for him.

Farah remembers from grade school that first impressions are commonly the most important things to people. She also remembers a few acting classes she took after grade school to make sure that it was an experience that never repeated itself.

She begins hurrying down the sidewalk towards her mark.

She slips just as she passes him, falling across and into his hands. He drops his coffee cup and lets out an undignified yelp. Farah echos him.

He catches her by the elbows and steadies her, stopping the momentum she built up from carrying her through to the ground.

His palms are warm through the fabric of her jacket.

The coffee dribbling into her shoes is also warm. They stare at each other for a moment.
“Oh god.” Farah says, her eyes widening as she looks at the mess between them. “I’m so so sorry! The pavement was wet and I just, I just… I can buy you another coffee?” she suggests, pulling away from Icarus and onto the pavement beside him. She looks at the damp cuffs on his jeans. “Or pay for your dry cleaning?”

Icarus blinks at her for a moment.

“It’s okay?” he looks confused as to what’s just happened.
“It’s just that I’m so distracted! I lost my wedding ring and my wife is going to kill me!” Farah continues, trying to prompt more of a reaction out of him.

He does a double take. “Hold on.”

She holds.
“Did you say lost ?”

Farah nods wearily at him. “I’ve been trying to retrace my steps all day.”

Dirk holds up a finger.

“I’m a detective,” he says, as though he’s not quite sure of it himself.
“You are ?”
“Yes.”
“How much do you want? It’s my wife’s grandmother’s ring. I’d do anything to get it back.” Farah realises she’s sounding more and more like she’s in a drama, but Icarus doesn’t seem to notice at all. He grips her shoulders. Her heart rate picks up.
“I don’t want any money. At all .” He looks into her eyes inetntly.
Farah nods her head, wondering just what she’s gotten herself into.
“What do you want?”
“Nothing. The Universe will pay me.”

Farah suspects that if she were an actual client in need of actual help she would turn tail and leave. But she doesn’t. She knows that CIA is keeping a close eye over the proceedings.

Farah pulls a napkin out of her jacket pocket, along with a pen. She scribbles down the number of the burner phone the CIA supplied her with along with her alias and holds it out to Icarus.

He lets go of her and takes the paper, squinting at it.
“I’ll give you a call, Isabelle!” he tells her, before spinning on his heels and moving swiftly down the sidewalk.

Farah turns back to the bus stop and starts moving towards it. A fat drop of rain lands on her cheek. The CIA didn’t hire a car for her. Cheapasses.

*

Icarus texts her the location of another coffee shop he frequents. The CIA have set up a time with him and Farah’s out the door and on the bus within the hour.
She’s slumped down in her chair when Icarus gets there almost forty minutes late due to a cat-related emergency. Farah doesn’t ask.

She leans forward on her elbows as Icarus begins to explain how he works. The file explained that he was obsessed with being a detective and solving mysteries, from the simplest missing pen as a child to murders in his adulthood.

Farah can’t quite believe that this is what they meant by being a detective.
“So… not a real detective?” she asks him.
He huffs. “No, Isabelle, I said I don’t look for clues.”
“But… Don’t detectives look for clues?”
“ Most detectives, yes. But I’m not most detectives. I’m a holistic detective.”

“A holistic detective?”
“Yes! Exactly!”
“And, uh, what does a holistic detective do, exactly? If you don’t detect, that is.”
Icarus leans forward into Farah’s space. It’s quite a feat given they’re on opposite sides of a table.
“I believe in the fundamental interconnectedness of all things. I believe that if I keep doing what I’m doing, which is nothing, the Universe will eventually lead me to an answer.”
Farah nods skeptically. “Like a… psychic?”
Dirk rolls his eyes at that.

No , Farah tells herself, Icarus rolls his eyes at that. Icarus.
“That’s absurd!” he interrupts her thoughts. “I don’t know why everyone insists on asking me that!”
Farah scratches her head. “Maybe because that’s how a lot of psychics market themselves? The Universe leading them to impossible conclusions and all.”
Icarus huffs. He huffs a lot.

Farah looks down at her plate with a half-eaten chocolate muffin on it and tries to figure out how to diffuse the tension. She imagines whoever is listening into their conversation must be bored out of their mind.
“Do uh, do we have to ask the Universe to help us or...?”
Dirk- Icarus damnit - shakes his head. “Now that I’m on the case, I’m on it. We don’t have to do anything else except wait for something to happen.”

“Is there usually a time limit on these things?” she asks him.
“It could be a matter of days or months. Once I had a case that lasted a full year .”

Farah’s heart skips a beat. Wilson will not be happy to hear that.
“So you’ll find my ring... at some point?”
“Some point, yes.”
“So... What do we do until some point comes?”

Farah and Icarus have been walking and talking around the park aimlessly and in circles. It gives Farah a chance to stretch her legs and Isabelle’s backstory. There’s a natural lull in the conversation that lets Farah rest her brain for a few moments.
“You know, Isabelle,” Icarus says, pulling Farah out of her head, “This is probably the longest conversation I’ve had in the past,” he stops walking to do some mental calculations, “three months? Three months.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah.” he smiles wistfully, “It’s nice.”
Farah nods her head. It’s probably one of the longest conversations she’s had in that amount of time, too.

“No friends?” Farah prompts.
“No one ever seems to stick around longer than they have to.” he shrugs in an attempt to seem unaffected, but Farah can almost swear she sees something crack slightly underneath.

“So, uh. How do we know when the Universe is giving you something?” Farah asks in a poor attempt at changing the subject.
Di- Icarus shrugs. “We’ll know.”
Farah also knows that if Icarus’ methods really do work and the Universe leads him to lost cats and pens and rings, then he won’t solve this case. He won’t find her fake wife’s fake grandmother’s made up ring. Because it’s made up. By her.
She feels something weird in her chest. Indigestion , she tells herself. After all she did exercise just after eating.

She’s not fully convinced.

*

Farah’s hand is poised above the plywood door of room 3B. Her heart is thudding in her chest, so much so that she’s shaking with the sheer force of it thumping against her ribcage. Her brain feels as if it’s filled with cotton and she can’t get her head screwed on right.
She can hear Riggins and Wilson through the door. Their voices filter easily through the cheap material. Farah was lead to believe that CIA agents were better at concealing what she’s assuming is a confidential conversation.
The debate behind the door sounds heated, just like the debate going on her head. To listen in or to walk away?

She’s only human. She strains her ears to distinguish the hostile sounds.
“We just don’t have the budget.” Wilson is saying. “That’s why we hired her! We couldn’t afford to hire a real agent. She’s taking less than half of what a normal agent would demand. She’s a neurotic mess and would probably be paid peanuts if it meant she could work for us .”
Farah’s heart stutters and her face begins to heat up. Surely they can’t be talking about her.
Riggins clears his throat. “We can’t use fire power to bring him in. We might hurt him.”
“That’s never stopped you before.” Wilson points out. Her voice is venomous.
She hears someone breathe out heavily. She attributes that to Riggins.
“If we can’t bring him in within the week we’ll go with your plan.”
The hair on Farah’s neck begins to prickle. She begins to back away from the door. She’s not fast enough. It swings open and Farah makes eye contact with Wilson’s shirt buttons. Farah almost gives herself whiplash as she straightens herself out.
God, she is a shit agent.

“General,” she addresses Wilson.
Wilson glares at her and almost shoves Farah out of the way as she makes her way down the corridor.
Riggins exits more slowly a few moments later ad brushes past Farah. She follows him. She’s not sure what she wants to ask him. She’s not even sure she wants to speak with him.
She just wants him to confirm that she heard wrong. That there was a beginning to his and Wilson's’ conversation that would change it with the right context.

She follows the Colonel into the break room. He has some files tucked up under his arm, like a parody of a sitcom dad from the 60’s.

The break room has a small kitchen on one side with linoleum floors separated from flattened carpet by a small bump of plastic. There’s a lounge that takes up the opposite wall.
Farah suspects that an agent or two can usually be found stretched out across it, trying to get a wink of sleep, but today the break room is deserted. An almost empty pot of coffee sits on the counter. Riggins places his files on the table in the center of the room and walks over to it.
“You heard all of that, didn’t you?” Riggins moves slowly.
Farah nods a moment before realising he can’t see her. “Yessir.”
Riggins sets the coffee to brew. He walks over to the table and puts a hand on the files. “This is my life’s work.” he tells her. “I love every one of the subjects that have passed through here. They’re like children to me.”
He sucks in a tired breath and the wrinkles around his mouth deepen. “But I can’t pretend that they are my children. We need them for research.”
Something about Riggins’ love for the subjects strikes Farah as far worse than Wilson’s obvious disdain.

“Why... Why don't you just. I don’t know?” She furrows her brow. “I... I went to a sleep study once. As a student. I needed the money. They stuck electrodes to my head and I was allowed to go home afterwards. Why don’t you just-”
Riggins makes eye contact for the first time. “These subjects are dangerous . There’s one who can kill with a wave of their hand. We don’t know the full extent of their powers. After twenty eight years we still don’t know . They’re not safe in the community.”
Farah shakes her head. “I don’t believe that.”
Riggins sighs, all fight draining out of him. “I thought the same way. Until I saw what they were capable of.”

He stands, leaving the now brewed coffee. He stops at the door to the break room.
“I know you’ll make the right decision,” he tells her.

*

Walking into the coffee shop where she first saw Dirk brings back some weird emotions. She doesn’t know what she’s doing anymore.
Riggins told her to make the right decision but she just. Isn’t sure what that is.
Believe what Riggins, her superior, has said about the Blackwing subjects? He ran a twenty year study on them for fucks sake! Or believe what she’s seeing in Dirk? Unbridled optimism and a desperate need to help others.
Of course, she can’t base all of her assumptions of the Blackwing subjects on him, he’s one man. But she also can’t base all of her opinions on what Riggins is telling her.

She lets her eyes skip lazily over the few seated patrons until they land on Dirk.
He’s still in the ugly grey cardigan that drapes over him in weird and unnatural ways, although he’s switched out his bare neck for a busy kaleidoscope tie.
Just as her eyes land on him, Dirk looks up. A smile spreads across his face.
“Hi, Isabelle!”

She feels a twinge of guilt. Farah weakly raises a hand in greeting and hurries over to him. The skirt she’s wearing bites into her hips. She’s got the suit jacket draped over her arm and has unbuttoned the top button of her dress shirt.

The gun is in her bag, Farah having decided that Dirk posed no immediate threat after their first meeting.

Farah sits at the table and places her bag and jacket down. “So, Dirk. Do you have any leads?”

Dirk swirls a mouthful of tea around in his mouth and looks as if he’s going to say something after he finishes.

He continues swirling the tea. He’s been swirling it for an uncomfortably long while now, looking just past Farah.
Farah turns around. She sees a woman standing in line. A woman with a tattoo of a raven twisting around her upper arm.
Ah.

Farah moves her body between the woman and Dirk, cutting off his eyeline.
“You okay?” she asks.
He opens his mouth to reply and tea drains out of it.
“Shit.” He doesn’t try to move away from the waterfall of tea that begins to drip from the table and onto his lap.
Farah looks at him. He looks at her. She looks at him. Some other patrons are looking at them.
“Let’s… Let’s go get cleaned up.” Farah suggests as she stands.
Dirk nods and she ushers him towards the back of the shop.
Farah steers Dirk into the women’s room without thinking much about it.

Dirk somehow situates himself on the counter and Farah doesn’t question it. She wets down a few paper towels and hands them to him to start patting the tea off of himself.
She whips out a few dry ones as well, waiting for him to finish up.
“What happened out there?” she asks him, leaning her hip against the counter.
Dirk shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Yeah. It kinda does.”

Dirk throws the paper towels into a sink to his right, holds a hand out for a couple of the ones Farah is holding. She hands them over.

He sighs. “I just don’t like black birds.”
Farah nods her head. “Okay.”
“Okay?” His eyes look like they’re trying to escape his skull.

“Yeah, okay. I...” Farah drags a hand down her face, “I get that.”
“You… don’t like black birds? Or just birds in general?”

“What? Neither.”
“But you just-”
“I mean I get the panicky feeling about weird things.”
“Ah.”

She and Dirk stand and sit respectfully in the bathroom for a while. A woman tries to enter at some point but turns on her heel as soon as she sees them, Dirk covered in paper towels and Farah leaning awkwardly next to him.
Farah’s hip begins to ache after a while and she hauls herself up next to Dirk.
Water seeps through her thick skirt almost instantly because apparently no one has the courtesy to wipe down the stuff after they’ve splashed it everywhere.

Dirk swings his legs absently.

She sucks a breath in through her nose. Her borrowed clothes, her costume, feels too tight when she breathes. She undoes another button. She pulls off the fake earrings/microphones she was wearing and deactivates them with a press of a button. They clatter in her fist.
If she confesses, she blows her first mission. Her first real mission. She proves Wilson right.
But if she stays quiet then she sends Dirk back to them. Back to a life of... whatever it is they did to him that made the world around him disappear at the sight of a raven. She becomes exactly what Wilson wants her to be.

Dirk glances over at her. “Are you okay?” he raises a hand to rest on her shoulder.
“I’m sorry Dirk.” Farah feels the confession drag itself out of her throat.
“I’m... Isabelle... what?”
Farah shakes her head, pulling away from him.
“I- I need to go.” she says, pushing herself off of the counter.
“What do you mean, Isabelle?” Farah hears him follow her lead to the floor.
“That’s- That’s not who I am. That’s not me .” Farah can’t tell if she’s talking to Dirk or Wilson now.
“What do you mean ?” A note of fear starts to creep into Dirk’s tone, his nose crinkles up in confusion.

Farah shakes her head and leaves.

*

Farah is sat on her lounge, her palms are sweating and her heart is beating so hard against her chest that it’s shaking her whole body.
It’s been a few days since The Incident in the coffee house bathroom and Farah has sent Dirk a text. A text from her phone. As in, not from the CIA mobile.

A text from her own burner phone that she bought at a corner store.
It was a simple text, just her address and a time.
Farah has swept her apartment for bugs thrice and is relatively comfortable sitting and waiting for Dirk to show up.

This meeting is between her and Dirk. Farah and Dirk. No Isabelle, no CIA, no whoever else might want to tune into their conversation.

Farah’s CIA burner phone buzzes in the way that phones do. She glances at the text, already quite certain she knows what it’s going to say.
Sure enough, it’s a message from Dirk.

Think I’ve got a lead!!
A string of over exuberant emojis follow in quick succession.
Farah smiles. And Lydia told her that she was a double texter.

The setting sun outside is just beginning to dip its toes behind the skyline when there’s a weird noise at one of her windows.
The shadows in her apartment are long and ominous, exacerbating the unease she feels.
Farah creeps towards the window. She pulls her gun from the back of her pants and holds it cautiously by her side.
The window is closed to prevent any eavesdropping from the fire escape. There wasn’t much Farah could do to ward against long range listening devices. She really should think of buying instead of renting.
Dirk’s face pops up over the window sill.
Farah thanks God, Mars, her gun coach, and whoever else is out there that she didn’t have her finger on the trigger.

“Dirk, what the fuck?” she hisses, pulling open the window and dragging him bodily through it.
“Isabelle! What are you doing here?” he narrows his eyes, “Did you get the text, too?”
“I sent the text.”
Dirk frowns and leans in close, “Why didn’t you use your phone?”
“Because it’s not mine!” Farah moves back to her poor excuse of a lounge room and slumps down on the couch.
“Yes it is. I’ve seen you use it.” Dirk sits cross legged in one of the plush seats opposite her. He leans forward. “Unless this has to do with why you were acting so weird yesterday?”
Farah tenses.
“Are you a spy?”
Her heart jumps into her throat.
“Were you hired to steal the ring form you ‘wife’” He makes finger quotes, “Is she a spy? Is this like Mr. & Mrs. Smith? Except two women. Mrs. & Mrs. Smith?”

Farah grips the bridge of her nose and shakes her head. “No I’m not. I’m not actually married.”
Dirk scoffs, “Explains the apartment.”
“Will you just listen to me?” Farah can feel her anxious energy beginning to turn sour and mean in her chest. Dirk shrinks back from her slightly. She sighs.
“I’m not. My names-” She leans back, trying to hide herself in the worn fabric behind her. “My names not Isabelle. My name is Farah. Farah Black.”

Dirk’s mouth turns up into a smile of confused disbelief. “Why did you tell me it was Isabelle?”

Farah pushes her hands back into her hair. “You know why.”
“No. I don’t.”
“Yes, you do.” Farah doesn’t want to say the truth out loud. She doesn't want to be the one to tell him that all of their interactions have been orchestrated by Blackwing. Like some horrific, government sanctioned parody of the Truman Show.

“Why. Why are you telling me this?” he asks. He’s on his feet and backing towards the windows.
“Because it’s not right to keep playing this game. They tricked me.”
“ Tricked you ? What did they tell you? That you had to what? Talk to me? Befriend me? And then what? That your job was done. No more questions asked-”
“No!”
“Then you knew exactly what you were doing. The whole time.” Dirk spits the words at her with all the venom of an Eastern Brown Snake.
Farah flinches.

“Yes.” she admits.
She’s on her feet now, not quite sure exactly when she stood up. She tries to move towards Dirk, but his hands go out in a defensive position and he backs even further towards the exit.

“Why are you telling me this? Why not just bring me in and take the money and never look back?”
“Because I just. You need to. I’m.” Farah sighs. Her lips are trembling and she doesn’t know how to make them stop.
“Because you need to know. They’re never going to stop. They’re never going to leave you alone.”
“Why did you even take the job?”
“Because I thought you were a criminal!”
“I was a child .”

“I didn’t realise!”
“How could you not realise? I’ve seen the files! They have our dates of birth. The dates we were take in.” Dirk’s face has lost it’s colour and emotion. His eyes are watery and redder than the jacket he’s wearing.

Farah stays silent. She knows she has no excuses, no way to divorce herself from the filth she’s entangled herself in. She’s covered in it. Head to toe, inside and out.

“Was the park real, or was it all an act? How about the coffee shop?” Dirk spits, “Is this even real, or are agents going to come in through your door at any minute, take me back to be experimented on?”
“It’s real Dirk, I promise. I promise .” Farah doesn’t know what she’s going to do after tonight. She’s blown her cover to Dirk, and come morning she doubts she’ll be able to get into the CIA headquarters without being swarmed by the authorities. “Dirk, please. Pretend none of this has happened. Pretend you still trust me. I need them to think I’m still on their side.”

Dirk shakes his head and slips out the window. Farah doesn’t know if he’s going to consider her offer. She doesn't even know that he’s heard her through the blood she can guarantee is roaring in his ears in time with hers. She doesn’t know what to do. She feels numb in her chest and her eyes sting from the tears that are bubbling up in them.
She suspects she won’t sleep tonight.

*

Farah’s limbs feel heavy as she navigates her way through the halls of the CIA headquarters. She has bruises under her eyes and her eyelids keep dragging themselves shut. She walks blindly for a few steps until she realises her predicament. She opens her eyelids.
At about three am last night a plan had come to her. An admittedly bare bones, most likely to fail plan, but a plan all the same.
Her sleep deprived mind had thought it was a great idea at the time. Now her mind is sobering up in the harsh fluorescent lights that streak along the ceiling. The strap of an old duffel bag digs into her shoulder.

Her resolution wavers as she comes to a halt in front of a filing room. It looks inconspicuous. The door is the same flimsy wood as every other door in the headquarters. The same off white paint runs along the walls around it.
It is not, however, as innocent as it pretends to be. Farah knows, for a fact, that the early Blackwing files are kept under lock and key rather than encryption hardware. This is because she overheard Wilson moaning about photocopying a few of the files. Farah had offered to take over, but was shut down almost immediately with the citation of her clearance level.
Farah pulls out her lock picking kit. She hopes it has the same shoddy locks as every other room, too.
She runs her fingers along the picks, pulling out the tension wrench and a simple rake pick.
Her eyes track over to the wall mounted camera.
Farah also knows for a fact that the footage is not recorded, and that the security guard tasked with manning the cameras is out of commission for the foreseeable future due to a generous free mixed drink of coffee and oral laxatives.

After a few minutes of dedicated and very, very systematic poking and prodding at the lock, it pops open with a close to inaudible click.
Farah runs her tongue over her teeth as she pushes the door open. It creaks slightly, but not enough to be cast in a haunted house. She steps in and closes the door behind her.
The room is dusty; a few abandoned spider’s webs cling to the sturdy metal shelves in a losing battle with time.
The shelves themselves have rust on their joints and are packed tightly with rotting boxes. Farah screws up her face at the neglect, a performative action for no one but the straggling spiders to see.
She wades deeper into the darkness, away from the weak light that filters through the crack between door and floor.

As she draws closer to the boxes it becomes clear that many of them are waterlogged and Farah suspects that the files in them are useless.
The air is heavy and stale as it drags through her lungs. She creeps over to a wall of boxes labeled from the late 80s through the mid 90s. Her fingers dancer over the lids of the filing boxes as she searches for a file entered in the year that Dirk was brought in.
She lifts the lid of a box and her hands begin to shake as the extent of the Blackwing project is revealed. It’s packed full of thick, intimidating folders.

She eases out one of the earlier files. Project Cain. Another. Incubus. Succubus. Marzanna.
On and on and on.
Her gaze catches on the file labeled Icarus. She flips it open in her arms. It’s the same file she received when she was accepted into the program, except it has more pages. Many more pages. And no redacted words, sentences, or paragraphs.
She shoves it down to the bottom of her duffle, not wanting to read more than she should.
She snags another file. Project Harpie.
One of the earliest subjects. It’s all chronological, starting from the date they were brought in.
The file is one of the thicker ones, and Farah marvels at how well the single manila folder has managed over the years.

Her eyes scan over the file. Born 1979. Active from 1988 until death in 2003. Deceased.
She flips the page away from her and finds herself swimming in handwritten notes.

“February 17th, 2003. Project Harpie terminated.”
It’s Riggin’s handwriting.
Farah feels sick. She takes that file, too.
She begins taking files randomly. She doesn’t have time to triage the most horrific files.
She stuffs a total of eight files in her bag before she hears voices echo down the hallway just outside the filing room door.

Distorted shadows creep in under the door, the faces attached to them are out of Farah’s grasp. She freezes as they stop outside of the room.

Her heart beats steadily against her ribcage as she waits for them to leave. It’s beats become far more hysterical as she makes out one of the voices. Wilson.
Fara can just make out the name Friedkin and something about idiots and guns.
She doesn’t breath for the entirety for the exchange. Her lungs are burning and protesting inside her ribcage, along with her heart it feels like a sports team just lost the finals of… whatever sport it is that offal plays.

Wilson’s voice begins to recede, along with the footsteps of the other agents or paper pushers. Farah breathes out and pushes herself up off of the floor. She dusts off as best she can and tries to compose herself before leaving the arguable safety of the filing room.
She pushes the door open and starts to walk.
She makes it to the middle of the foyer before she sees someone she doesn’t want to. And that person sees her. Farah quickly turns her head away from Wilson and tries to pass off her nervous, sleep deprived shakes off as... who she is. Which is true. Technically.

Farah glances behind her one last time, Wilson is speaking rapidly into her cell.

Farah makes it through the door and out into the street, cold air brushing against her face. She hurries as fast as she can away from the building and realises she doesn’t have much of a plan after this. Shit.

*

Farah spreads the files out in front of her. They engulf her coffee table and spill onto the floor to both her sides.
She’s in a nest made of ink, paper, and the truths only shown in horror stories or on password protected conspiracy blogs.

She gives herself time to skim over the files, taking in the hidden faces of Blackwing.
The tests got more difficult and the punishments harsher as the subjects grew.
The files contained pictures that made Farah’s stomach turn and her eyes water. The victims of Blackwing and her subjects.
Project Marzanna. Bartine Curlish. A still from security camera footage. Her face is stuck in a perpetual snarl, blood and grime are spread liberally over her skin.

Escaped December 15th 2002.
Farah closes the file. She gathers it into a pile with the others and stuffs it back into the duffle along with her toothbrush and a change of clothes.

*

Farah loiters outside the coffee shop Dirk frequents. All sign of the CIA has been shed from her like an ill fitting skin. She’s wrapped in her sturdy leather jacket and well worn jeans.
She bites her lip, looking up and down the street. There’s no guarantee that he’ll show. For all she knows, Dirk could have walked down the street, seen her, hopped on a plane, moved to California and not looked back. She hopes curiosity or his good nature might somehow get the better of him. She hopes that that happens soon because her shoulder is aching from the weight of the duffle hanging from it. She’s not put it down for fear of somehow losing it.

Farah spots a bright pink blur out of the corner of her eye.
She can’t help but glance towards it. She stops and holds eye contact. Not with the jacket, but with its occupant. Dirk.

He’s caught in her gaze like a deer in the headlights. Farah doesn’t want to be a car in this deer metaphor, she wants to be. Who helps deer? Wildlife conservationists? Park rangers?

She scraps the metaphor.
He’s caught in her gaze like a man who’s just seen a former friend, turned traitor. Except she doesn’t want to be a traitor in this life. She wants to be a friend. Just a friend.

Dirk cycles through a face journey, starting at flummoxed, then moving through fearful, angry, and confused again. It stays confused.
He begins towards her. The jacket is a searing shade of pink. The pigment appears to radiate out of its designated lines and seep into everything that so much as glances at it.

“Dirk, we need to talk.”
Dirk scoffs, “So you can reveal to me that your name isn’t actually what you said it was?”
“Farah?”
“I know what it is. I was just pretending I didn’t.”

Farah nods. “That’s fair.”
They continue staring at each other. Awkward silence stretches between them. Farah clears her throat. “I need you to come with me.”
“So that you can ship me off to Blackwing. Again ?” His voice cracks.
“So we can shut them down once and for all,” Farah explains, opening her duffle to underline her statement. She pushes a bra out of the way to reveal the files.
Dirk freezes as soon as he sees them. He bounces on his toes for a few seconds, the gears in his head turning.
“Promise me you won’t send me back?”
Farah nods.
“I have a car!” he tells her.

The car is a conspicuous bright green Mini. Dirk throws open the passenger side door and gets in. He swears and gets out. Farah hears him muttering about America under his breath.
Farah gets into where Dirk just was and unzips the duffle fully as he orients himself in his seat.
He looks down at the files, just poking out from under Farah’s dark clothing.
“I only managed to recover a few,” Farah tells him as she pushes his hand away from the bag. She reaches in and pulls out about half of them.

She hands Dirk is own file. “I haven’t read it.”

Dirk nods numbly, his world narrowed down to the words “Project Icarus” printed boldly across the front, the Blackwing logo embossed just below it.
“We need to do something with these.”
“Y-yeah..”
“I’m going to copy them onto some encrypted hard drives.”
“Okay.”
Farah pulls out the file on Project Harpies. “We need to tell people what happened to you. To her .” She hands the file over to him and it seems to break his trance.
His hands clench around it.
“They started terminating them. Killing them when we tried to escape..” His voice wavers dangerously and tears start to gather in his eyes. “It was almost impossible for Blackwing to bring us in using force. And so- and so Riggins would try to use them against us. He would send people out with copies of the files. What they did to them. Graphic images.”
“Dirk I’m so s-”
“Don’t. Just. Please. He would always tell us how sorry he was for doing it. That he loved us. That he wanted us safe.” Dirk hands back the files. He places his hands on the steering wheel and breathes in shakily.
“I want them to stop. I want to be left alone, not constantly worrying that every new person I meet has been sent to bring me in.”
Farah flinches at that.

“I’ve set up a safe house.” She tells him. “I have a few contacts from when I was younger. There’s a mansion just outside of town. They’ll take us in.”
Dirk nods.

*

Fara has been white knuckling her seat since Dirk took off in the car with her strapped (un)safely in beside him. She watches in horror as the car eats up the white lines on the road, at least forty miles over the speed limit.

He started chatting idly to her around ten minutes into the drive and hasn’t stopped. He talks about this case and that case and the case of the impossible couch, whatever the hell that means, and Farah has not been listening because soon they’ll end up a case. The police will be trying to figure out what exactly caused this ugly little car to fly into a ditch and why the passenger had her hand wrapped around the driver's throat…

Then Dirk looks over to her, gesticulating wildly with both hands off the wheel .

“I’ll drive!” she almost screams, the very slightest hint of hysteria creeping into her voice.

“Oh, thanks!” Dirk smiles over at her.
He pulls over to the shoulder of the road and almost off of it.

Farah sits for a few moments trying to gather herself when there’s a knock at her window.

Farah opens the door without a word and lurches over to the drivers side.
It’s a manual. She can’t quite figure out how Dirk avoided stalling it for the past hour.

Dirk looks at her curiously as she starts the car up again.
“How do you know these friends are expecting you if you haven’t called them?” he asks, “Unless you communicate via telepathy! Or a microchip implanted in you brains. But then, that would probably also be called telepathy...Telepath-E?”
“They’re not.” Farah interrupts, “They’re also not home.”
His eyes go wide, “Breaking and entering! And squatting!”

He looks positively gleeful.
“Well, not really. I have a key.”

Dirk huffs.
“And an invitation to stay there whenever I need to.”
Farah peels the car back onto the road.

Dirk stays blessedly silent for a few minutes. The only sound is coming from the radio.

“Is. Is this k-pop?” Farah asks as she turns it up slightly. So she can hear it better. Not because she likes it.
Dirk nods enthusiastically.
“I didn’t know they played k-pop on the radio.”
“Oh, they don’t.”
Farah turns to im and raises an eyebrow. Dirk undoes his seatbelt and twists his body so he can reach into the back seat. Farah doesn’t bother protesting until an elbow hits her in the back of the head.
“Hey!”
“Sorry.” Dirk wriggles back into his seat and places a pile of CDs on his lap. “I also have j-pop and a few Dixie Chicks CDs.” He picks one up and waves it near Farah’s face.

She pushes his hand away.

“Why do you have these?” she asks as she turns on her indicator and takes a side road.
“Because I like them.” Dirk tells her.

“Weird combination.”

“We’re a weird combination and I like us too.”
Farah doesn’t know how to respond to that. She settles for an indignant, “You think I’m weird?”
“Well duh.” Dirk replies like it’s as obvious as his jacket.

“Why. Why would you think that?” Farah asks him.
“Because you turned against your bosses to go on the run with a crazy detective you’ve only just met.”
“I met you a few weeks ago, Dirk.”
“Not as yourself, though.”
Farah cringes at that, “True.”
“Besides, being weird isn’t a bad thing, Farah. I’ve been weird my whole life and I’m doing fine.”
“You’re on the run from your former captors with someone who was hired to bring you to them.”
“True.”

*

The duffle thumps heavily on Farah’s childhood bed. She and her father were given free board by the Springs due to her father’s profession. A bodyguard is no use if they’re a half an hour drive away.
Farah moved into the mansion as she was just entering high school, and according to a few of her cousins, she was lucky to avoid the horrors of being a freshman. And sophomore. And juniour. And senior.

Basically she traded in the horrors of public high school for social anxiety and isolation, and a surprising knowledge of mechanics courtesy of Patrick.

She sits down next to the duffle on her bed. The mattress is softer than she remembers. Softer than she would like.
She wonders if the Springs replaced it when she started the long winded process of getting qualified for entry level CIA jobs.

She wonders if she’s the one who’s changed.
No doubt she is; the heavier a person is the harder the mattress they need. She’s put on a lot of weight in muscle in the last decade or so.
The peeling stickers on the side of what’s sure to be an antique dresser catch her eye. She remembers putting them there years ago.
The memory makes something well up underneath Farah’s lungs. She pushes the memory down, focus on something else. Something that doesn’t cause weirdly located heartburn.
She moves her train of thought on to something more practical. Clothes.

Farah has a spare change in the duffle, although she doesn’t doubt the need to dig around in the back of her old closet for something that might fit her by the end of the week.
Dirk, as far as Farah knows, has no clothes. Well, he has the clothes he’s wearing but other than that he’s got nothing.

All of his brightly colourful jackets were abandoned in his apartment and Farah doesn’t know when, or even if , they’ll be able to go back for them.

She tries to imagine Dirk in Patrick’s more practical, duller outfits. She’s amused and slightly horrified at the results.

Her gaze drifts from her open door to across the hallway where the door to Dirk’s accommodation is cracked open.

A shadow on the sliver of wall just visible through the crack in the door grows and recedes like breath. In and out. Out and in.
He’s been given the room that Farah used as a play room and then a study as she grew up in the hallways of the old house.
She’s not too sure how she feels about it.

Farah pushes up off of the bed and shuffles across the hallway. Knocks on Dirk’s door.
“Come in!” He sounds startled.
Farah nudges the door open and gestures to the bed.

“Can I sit?” she asks.
Dirk nods and she sits down next to him. The bed creaks under her added weight.
She feels shaky and uncertain. She wonders if perhaps this was the best idea. Bringing Dirk here. Of all places.
Although as far as Farah knows, the Springs are out of the country, but she can’t help but feel as if she’s put them in danger somehow. By bringing Dirk here. Letting the lines between personal and professional get as tangled as an old doll’s hair. She can’t think of a single profession where this would be a good idea. Doctors aren’t allowed to fraternise with patients. Shrinks can’t treat family.

CIA operatives shouldn’t be allowed to pick and choose who they do and don’t save.

“Should we be doing this?” Dirk sighs her thoughts out next to her. Either through coincidence or… something else. Farah doesn’t dwell on it.
“Too late to go back,” Farah replies.
“You can tell them I coerced you into taking the files. That I blackmailed you.”
“Where would you get anything to blackmail me with?” Farah turns to him with a wiry smile. Dirk gestures around the room.
“The Universe, Farah. Duh.” He rolls his eyes.
Farah smiles at him for a second before sobering.
“It’s too late to back out now,” she says.

“But-”
“Look, Dirk. I feel like I’m going to throw up and my palms haven’t stopped sweating since I stole the files. I can think of a million things I’d rather be doing than this. I can think of a million other people more qualified for this type of thing but. This is the last thing I’ve wanted to do with my life, but this is how it’s turned out. I’ve made my decision. And you don’t have much of one anyway.”

Dirk nods at her. Either realising the truth in her words or deciding he doesn’t want to argue. “What are we going to do?” he asks.

*

Farah holds out one of the black hard drives for Dirk to inspect. The drives are made of a sturdy, matte plastic and about the same size as Farah’s palm. “You plug them into this thing at the same time as each other,” she explains. “This thing” is a bulky black box with four USB ports in it. “It scrambles all of the data fed into it, so it’s basically an encryption device. Then you plug it into your computer.” She demonstrates with one of the older computers that are gathering dust in the Spring Mansion library.

“Because the information is scrambled between the hard drives, if you don’t have one, you don’t have anything.”

Dirk nods at her. Pauses and then asks, “Well, if they’re not for saving data, then why did Spring create them?”
Farah waves him off. “Patrick creates a lot of things for many reasons. I don’t remember why he made these. Something about a long running feud with some other tech company I think.”
“Did he ever sell them?”
“Never even thought about it. Private use only.”
“That sounds a bit sketchy.”
Farah shrugs. “Good for us that they never made it into the market.”
He nods.

Farah stretches a bit before bending down to pick up the first of the files.

“I suppose we’d better get to work.” Dirk says, picking up the one under it. Farah nods and takes it over to a scanner that’s sitting underneath a pile of dusty boxes.

*

Farah lifts her head off of her arms. She fell asleep at some point. A blanket is draped over her shoulders and she can feel dried drool on her chin. Her neck and shoulders ache. She looks groggily around the room, shapes drifting in and out of one another as her eyes acclimate to the darkened room.

She hears a creak and a dull thud from somewhere outside the room. Her heart rate jumps and her breathing stutters.

She reaches behind her for her gun. She’s gripped by panic for a few moments before she sees it sitting a few inches away from her. A sticky note sits in front of it.

Don’t shoot yourself!

She folds the note and puts it in a pocket in her jeans before she picks up the gun.

Creeping out of the room, Farah double checks that she’s holding her gun correctly. She doesn’t want to be responsible for the death of any casual burglars or the Springs, if they were returning early. She checks her watch: four am house cleaner.

As Farah pads along the cold hallways, her leather jacket keeps out most of the air chill, but her socks are back in the computer and electronics room. The cold from the tiles seeps into her feet and up into the rest of her body. Farah turns to go back to the study. She should have secured the files before she left.  

The hallway is empty as far as Farah can see.

She turns a corner when,
“Hi!”
She slams her elbow into the figures nose and has her gun pointed at him before she knows what’s happening.

“Ow!”

The figure sounds offended. The figure is wearing striped pajamas and a bright pink jacket.

“Dirk? Oh my god, don’t sneak up on people!” She relaxes the her aim.
“How could I know you were going to do that!?”
“We’re being hunted!” she hisses at him.
She bends down to have a look at his nose. He has a hand clutched to his face that she has to pry away. His eyes and nose are streaming, albeit different fluids.

“Fuck...” he moans, and it sounds nasally and congested. Farah can just imagine how he’ll look in a couple of hours.

“We should go to a hospital. Or find where Patrick keeps the first aide kit. I can probably do something... How do you feel about snoring?”
“Fuck...!” Dirk says again, with slightly more urgency.
“Yeah, I know it’s probably not that nice but it beats-”

A pulse of electricity surges through Farah. She feels herself go stiff for a moment before it stops. It happens again and she tilts to the side. A dark figure looms above her and she looks to her gun out of the corner of her eye. The figure kicks it away.
Farah sees Dirk get slammed into the ground by a blond man.
“Freidkin! She wants them alive .” says the woman over her.

“I know , Azat. Don’t speak to me like I’m-”
“Just do it.”

Freidkin rolls his eyes as he starts to tie Dirk’s hands behind his back. He wrestles him roughly up from the ground.
Azat binds Farah’s hands, too. Pulling her to her feet and then pushing her along the hallway.

*

They’re frogmarched out to Pepe’s barn.
It’s insides are covered in a heavy layer of dust and cobwebs. Farah feels lightheaded when she lays eyes on Wilson. Wilson who is holding three of the hard drives.

Farah turns her head to the left. Dirk’s eyes have started to bruise and his eyes look lifeless.
“You okay?” she asks him.
Dirk stays silent. Staring ahead. Not at Wilson, but through her.

Farah looks back at Wilson. Her whole attention is on Dirk, it’s as if Farah isn’t even there. Farah can understand why, but come on. She betrayed the whole of the CIA. She should get at least a little recognition.

Wilson advances on them, kicking up dust with her heavy boots. The dirt under her feet may as well be concrete, pressed flat from the years of Pepe wandering over it.

“Are you going to kill us?” Farah tries to divert Wilson’s attention away from Dirk.

Wilson smiles at her. It makes Farah feel uneasy.

“Now where’s the fun in that?”

Wilson bends down to Dirk’s level. If Farah wasn’t sure if squatting could be menacing, she is now.

Wilson tilts Dirk’s head up so that his eyes meet hers.

“I told Riggins’ that this plan of yours was too complicated,” she begins, facing toward Dirk but directing her words at Farah.

“As soon as you left the room I asked him if we couldn’t just kill you and bring Dirk in some other way. Or at least just kill you and give your plan to a more... competent agent.”

Wilson leaves a pause, expecting a response.

Farah doesn’t say anything.

Wilson continues on, “I said we should terminate the last of the subjects and burn the rest of the files. But no, Riggins didn’t want his life's work to go up in a bonfire. He wanted just one more go. And then you got in and stole some of the files.

“It didn’t take much convincing to get Riggins decommissioned and thrown out.

“Now I have the files and the copies that you’ve made. You’ve given your life for nothing.”
Wilson holds up the three hard drives and waves them in the direction of the north facing barn doors. Behind her, smoke is wafting in.

“Do you have anything to say?” Wilson goads.

Farah looks to Dirk, his eyes are watering and some tears make their ways down his cheek.

“Fuck you.” Dirk manages to get out. Wilson slaps him across the face.
He whimpers at the renewed pain in his nose.

“Take them out back.” Wilson orders.

*

Azat pulls Farah to her feet and Farah sees Friedkin begin to pull Dirk up before they disappear from her line of sight.
They’re led through the north facing barn door and smoke chokes Farah’s lungs as she’s led past the now smouldering remains of the Blackwing files. Remains was an almost too generous word to use. They’re a pile of smoking black sludge.
Farah turns her face into her neck in an attempt to keep the smoke out of her airways.

She hears Dirk choking behind her.

They’re led further out into Pepe’s field. The grass is beginning to grow back after years of being stamped out by a thousand pounds of domesticated rhinoceros.
She’s forced to her knees. Execution style it is, then.
Dirk is forced down next to her.
His head is hanging and when he lifts it to look at Farah she sees resignation in his face.
Farah hears a magazine clip into a gun behind her head, the noise echoed by the agent behind Dirk.

They take aim. Farah screws her eyes closed and gets ready for whatever happens next.

click .

She opens an eye.

Confused muttering behind her.

She looks over at Dirk whose expression she imagines mirrors hers.

She hears the agents unclip their magazines.

She launches herself backwards into Azat. Her force sends them toppling over each other.

Azat wriggles out from under her. A fist comes down in the place Farah’s head was.
She kicks out at Azat and gets one of her knees.
Azat drops to the ground with a yell. Farah launches herself forward, her shoulder connecting with the side of Azat’s head.
Azat thumps back onto the grass and manages a groan before Farah kicks her in the side of the head.

Farah spins to see Friedkin kneeling over Dirk, a serrated knife pressed into his throat. Farah rushes forward and knocks Friedkin off of Dirk. She rolls off of him and manages to get a knee on his throat. He struggles underneath her weight.
“Dirk, pass me the knife.” Urgency bubbles up beneath her ribs as she turns to where he’s panting on the ground. Dirt streaks his cheeks and pajamas.
Dirk manages to roll onto his side and struggles to get to his knees with his hands still bound behind him.

Friedkin goes still underneath her.

Dirk locates the knife and after fumbling it a few times, bring it it in behind Farah. He begins sawing at her bindings. The knife bites into Farah’s skin and her wrists become slick with blood.

Eventually the bindings begin to fray and she’s able to struggle out of them herself.

Farah makes quick work of the rope around Dirk’s wrists.
His hands pass over his wrists a few times, trying to sooth irritated skin.

A gunshot echoes from inside the barn.

“Shit.” Farah hisses as she shoves Dirk to the ground.

“Wilson.” he breaths out underneath her. He struggles to take a full breath again.
“Sorry.” Farah rolls off of him and tries to make herself the bigger target. She shoves him towards the treeline that’s just past the confines of Pepe’s enclosure. “Go.”

The ground beside her head explodes as a bullet impacts.

Farah turns her head so that she can see Wilson silhouetted against the sickly yellow light hanging in the barn.
“I’ll take care of her. Get out of here.”

She shoves him. Dirk’s eyes look wild as he begins crawling erratically in the direction she shoved.

Farah looks around her. A rusting water trough is a few feet away from her on her left. The Blackwing agents and their guns are a few feet to her right.
Farah goes for the guns. Maybe she can get them working again. If not, she’s sure she could do some damage with them as they are.

She’s Farah Black. Bodyguard extraordinaire.

She slides across the ground and can feel rocks and twigs catching at her clothes and scratching at her already shredded wrists.
If she gets out of this alive, Farah suspects she’s going to have to dip her arms in a tub of medical grade alcohol.

She snags a gun and begins to make her way back to the trough.
Another shot rings out and pain blooms across Farah’s shoulder.
She makes a final dash to the trough before inspecting her wound.
When she reaches behind her, the wound doesn’t feel deep, but it stings like hell when she touches it.

Her hand comes away smeared with blood. She wipes it on her jeans. They’re ruined by dirt and memories that will morph into the traumatic anyway. No point in saving them.

Farah peeks over the top of the trough and sees Wilson is still in the same position as before. She doesn’t have much cover except for the bullets she’s managing to keep firing off.
Farah ducks her head as said bullets whizz past her head. A few ricochet off of the already dented metal of the trough.

Suddenly, the gunshots stop.

Farah’s heart beats uncomfortably under her ribcage and her head is foggy with pain and anxiety. She looks around the trough to where Wilson has finally run out of bullets and has had to reload.

Farah gives up the questionable safety of the Rhino trough and starts to crawl towards Wilson.
Wilson looks up to where Farah has her stolen semi-automatic pointed at her.

Wilson points her gun at Farah.

They stand off.
Farah still can’t see Wilson properly, the light behind her casting weird shadows and throwing off Farah’s perception.

A gunshot rings out.

Farah watches in horror as Wilson is blown backwards by the force of the blast. Wilson’s eyes are wide with shock, and her mouth gapes at someone over Farah’s shoulder.

Another shot.

She begins to tilt backwards. Her balance goes and she thumps onto the ground.
Farah turns around slowly, her hands up and her gun held loosely.

Dirk stands a few feet away from her.
He drops the gun he was holding. It’s one of the guns that belonged to the agents.

“Dirk,” Farah breathes out.
He looks up at her.
His face looks drained of blood and his expression is that of slack disbelief.
“I didn’t. I didn’t even realise I had it. I didn’t mean… shit...”

He begins to tilt forward.

Farah catches him, then lowers him onto his knees and pulls the gun away from him.

“The Springs have security cameras installed. They’ll be able to prove it was self defense.”

“Why?”
Farah frowns. “Why what?”
“Why do they have security cameras in a barn?”
“Poachers are everywhere,” Farah sighs as she lets go of Dirk. “Stay here.”

Farah makes her way over to the barn. The pile of files has stopped smouldering and instead looks like a slightly too dark pile of Pepe waste. She keeps moving.

She tries to keep her eyes off of Wilson’s lifeless form. There are bullet holes through her chest and her abdomen. Blood leaks out and seeps into the ground.
Farah kneels over the corpse, its milky eyes staring up to the splintering ceiling. Farah closes them, then reaches into its jacket pocket. All of the hard drives are fully intact. All three of them.

Her heart skips a beat.

Farah turns her back on Wilson, a shiver climbing its way up her spine as she does. The bulb above her blows out.

The grounds are shrouded in darkness, the only light coming from the full moon and the distant lights of the Spring Mansion.

She moves quickly back to Dirk.
The three hard drives dangle from her hand.
She puts them down next to Dirk and kneels. “There’s only three.”

Dirk nods numbly.
“I’m sorry Dirk.”
He shakes his head. “What do you think I was doing when you hit me earlier?”

He pulls the last hard drive out of a hidden inner pocket in his jacket. “I was trying to find somewhere to hide it.”
He puts it with the others.

Farah pulls Dirk into a hug, his head resting heavily on her shoulder.

“It’s over.”