Archive of Our Own

Washington, D.C., 1923. It didn’t have the glamor of New York City, perhaps, or the riotous promise of good times like Chicago, but its charm was all its own. Rich socialites and politicians mingled, and the feeling of having survived past 1918 could make anyone as tipsy as bottles of champagne. Which was fortunate, really, since the Noble Experiment of Prohibition had banned actual champagne. 

Not that that stopped anyone who wanted a bit of bubbly for long. 

At the Gaslight Club, hidden behind the men’s room on the third floor of a social club on 16th Street, diplomats and politicians only had to turn the right faucet for a chance at some champagne, some jazz, some pretty girls with short skirts and shorter haircuts. It was perfect for a night out for whoever wanted to wink at the law.

The law was handy: it meant that everyone with something to hide —and they wouldn’t be secretly drinking illegal hooch in crowded speakeasies if it wasn’t necessary to hide— could be blackmailed. Wasn’t everybody doing it? Well, yes; but not everybody had something worth being blackmailed over.

Percival Rose, who had made a fortune during the War, knew precisely the worth of each person he had blackmail material on. During the War, he had had the President’s ear, assuring him of the successes promised by the best of new guns, new vehicles, new gases; he also sold these things to those on the opposite side, with similar promises. Anyone who could prove this, though, suddenly found it in their interest to not try, as attempting to do so rather immediately resulted in mistresses threatening exposure, political misdeeds nearly coming to light, illegitimate children emerging, and secrets of a far worse variety rattling around behind closed doors. For many, though, the proof of their frequent visits to speakeasies at night after a day of railing against the evils of drink on the floor of Congress was enough to find safer targets of investigation than Percy Rose. 

The War had been a boon to many, as modern sales opportunities crossed with new developments in inventing weaponry, and great fortunes were made of the sort that only come at the expense of human lives on a great scale. Du Pont had started the gun powder trade in America with Thomas Jefferson amongst his patrons; Mr. J. P. Morgan had continued this innovation by solidifying the second-hand gun trade in the 1860s, and Sir Basil Zaharoff, who was said to have started wars to sell faulty submarines and all-too-effective machine guns, was considered the mysterious pinnacle of these heights of salesmanship. But after the Armistice in 1918, as the world settled back into relief and resentment about their post-war fortunes, the suspicion that all of this had been done for the benefit of a few rich men to become richer grew. Given the profits made, could it be possible that peace had been withheld by those who had nothing to gain from it? 

It was this sort of suspicion that could have kept a man like Percy Rose from continuing to provide the services he did during the war— not just guns and mines, submarines, or even gas, but people as well. If the assassination of a single archduke had had such an effect, then other convenient deaths might also be advantageous to speed along, and with a precision and discretion that Gavrilo Princip had lacked when he had shot Franz Ferdinand. And so, far away from the War Office that authorized Percy’s work, agents were trained to be assassins and spies whose mere existence had become a secret, people with no family and no records. They were weapons that could kill without any sign that they had been used at all, and keep the dominos that led to war keep falling, only in a direction someone considered the right one. 

One might wonder how Percy Rose was able to so easily maintain influence after the Armistice, but peace provides an abundance of opportunities to manipulate falling dominos as well, and the War Office didn’t stop existing, or stop running secret programs. On East 38th Street up in Manhattan, Yardley’s Black Chamber made deals with all the cable communications companies to snoop on private telegrams in probable violations of the Radio Communications Act, and outside of Washington, Percy’s even less suspiciously named Division was hidden in a remote large plot of land and an abundance of operations bases disguised as residential houses in the city. 

Secrecy was how it all worked, but if the president of Western Union had any reservations about sharing telegrams with Black Chamber, he didn’t wind up dead for them. The same could not be said for those trained within Division, where the only way to quit involved concrete overshoes and chickenwire, if it was a good day. It was usually not that kind of day, and Percy’s side business dealings always had poison gas or modified munitions that needed testing.

But Division’s very final methods for dealing with its malcontented agents had one exception.  

Nikita Mears was one of Division’s orphan operatives, just finishing her training as the War broke out, and an expert in their craft by the time America entered the fray. Her successes were highly lauded within Division, even as she began to wonder if she truly was doing good in the world by removing people who she was told were making the War more deadly. And then, when she became affianced to a young soldier and told him her secrets, Percy had him sent to the front to die mere days before the Armistice.

So Nikita ran, and bided her time, and thought about revenge; then she traveled the world that was rebuilding itself, finding those who had suffered most because of her and bringing them into her plans. 

Alexandra Nicoaevna Udinova was one of those, an orphan of the Bolsheviks’ revolution and the executions that followed; Percy had been a great friend to the revolutionaries, and had shown excellent foresight in betting on what the future held. Alexandra Nicoaevna had died, and the girl who walked off the ship in Halifax before making her way south was known only as Alex— except to Nikita, who found her in the streets of New York City and brought her into the quest for revenge on the organization that found it profitable to ensure her family’s death. Alex had found this enough reason to infiltrate Division as a double agent, giving her the opportunity to destroy them or herself, and she didn’t find herself either option more favorable than the other.

On a clear but moonless night in August, three agents of Division and one agent of chaotic extralegal justice were at the Gaslight Club, and everything was about to go very, very badly. 

“I counted three guards earlier. Two have disappeared, one’s still at the door, and Thom didn’t respond to my signal in either place I knocked on the wall,” Alex bent over and said in a low voice to Michael, after walking around the edge of the dance floor to the table where he sat. “Given what we learned—“

“What we learned doesn’t mean we’re done. If he’s getting in a new shipment tonight, that’s bold, but it doesn’t change the mission. We get the blackmail on his bootlegging operation along with his extramarital activities. It’s possible Thom followed them to take pictures of them unloading.”

“He doesn’t have the equipment with him for that,” said Alex doubtfully. “But fine. We stay. What’s the sign to leave?”

Michael looked around. “Possibly… this.” He frowned. The club was suddenly less crowded than it had been a short while before. Alex noticed people whispering to each other; it was no different than the rest of the evening, with an overly warm and crowded gin joint full of people getting handsy, doing the shimmy, and murmuring suggestions to each other of what they would like to spend the rest of the evening doing, but the whispers seemed to have inspired more people to slip out the secret door within the last few minutes. “Pardon me, is something happening?” Michael asked, leaning over to the table next to them, where a woman was collecting her purse and moving to leave.

“I hear there’s going to be a raid!” she answered, sounding thrilled at such outrageous excitement. 

“We need to go, if this place is about to be full of Prohibition agents,” Alex said as Michael turned back to her. 

“No,” he decided, and his tone didn’t leave it open to argument. He was in charge, and it would be on his head if something happened to his agents. “If we get arrested, we act like anyone else, and we’ll be bailed out before sunrise. If we leave early, there’ll be hell to pay with Percy, especially if there’s no raid at all and everybody’s being forced out for a liquor shipment gone wrong, since that gives us more opportunity to get leverage. Go stand by the back door, see if you can overhear something.”

Alex turned to go. “If I spend the night in jail and Percy scolds me, I’m saying this was all your responsibility,” she said before heading off.

“It always is,” he said, and she barely caught it over the noise.

<><><><><>

“He’s fond of young women,” Percy said at their briefing, earlier that day, “but that’s not any kind of secret. Even his wife knows that. This is where last week’s operation comes in; the people we photographed Alex with are seeking assurances of American support in their planned revolt, and are about to be apprehended by American officers within the very near future. Connecting our Congressman with them could… provide us with a way to convince him not to defund the military intelligence and cryptoanalytic divisions of the War Office." 

“And if he isn’t interested in being blackmailed?” Alex asked.

Percy shrugged. “Democracy is a wonderful thing. Anyone at all can get elected, if there’s an empty seat.” 

Whether that seat would be made empty by destroying a career or through more permanent means was left unsaid.

“Amanda has… convinced me I don’t need to doubt my beauty and charms,” Alex said, trying another tack, “but this is a speakeasy. There are any number of pretty girls perfectly willing to spend time with a man like that. How can we know he’ll go for me?”

“Because it’s your job to make sure he does, even if you have to strangle another girl with her own damn string of pearls to make sure of it,” Percy told her sharply, and Alex tried not to cringe at the rebuke. She was at enough risk, being a double agent; she didn’t need to be taken down by a perception of incompetence as well. “But you’ll have something particularly attractive to our Congressman.” He nodded in Michael’s direction. “There’s nothing the man likes more than stealing another man’s wife. Some like that sort of thrill. Seymour?” 

Seymour Birkhoff stepped forward, and held out his palm. There were two gold bands in his hand. “Congratulations, Mr. and Mrs. White, on your recent nuptials.” 

“Thanks,” Michael said, and slipped his ring into his pocket without looking at Alex. Alex quickly slipped the ring on to check its size before putting it into her purse for safekeeping. It did, of course, fit perfectly. 

“Now, I have some more ideas I’d like to talk to you about, with regards to the mole problem we have,” said Birkhoff to Percy, already on to the next thought and turning away from them, and Alex, seeing that the briefing was apparently concluded, left for her next appointment.

<><><><><>

“We’ll be at the Gaslight Club, it’s his favorite gin joint, apparently,” Alex said a few hours later, at her meeting with Nikita at the closed-down tailoring shop that now housed Nikita’s operation (as well as the woman herself). 

“And it’s nothing more than blackmail?” Nikita asked, and frowned. “That seems a little tame for Percy.”

“He’s on the Committee on Military Affairs,” clarified Alex. “It’s about money. I guess this guy's new, got the Ohio seat after his predecessor died in office last year.”

“So he isn’t under Percy’s finger yet,” Nikita finished. “And Percy can’t risk losing control." She paced pensively across the room, which was still littered with the detritus of its previous occupant, tables and empty fabric bolts and dummies, all pushed up against the edges and the windows, rather than being disposed of. Alex was familiar with every inch of it, having spent almost a year living with Nikita futilely trying to fight Division on the outside, and then planning to do so from the inside. “What’s their plan?”

Alex pulled the folded-up map of the club she’d drawn from memory after the briefing. “Thom is going to be either in this back stairwell, or in a broom closet in the club’s public front,” she said, pointing. “He’ll get there early and cut holes in the wall, for the camera. Michael and I will be in the crowd, and coming in through the hidden inside entrance. The back stairs go down to the basement of the building next door, which is where delivery men bring in the hooch. The only instructions Division gave me were to get the Congressman to a place where Thom can get a few good pictures of us necking.” 

“Then I’ll make sure he can’t,” said Nikita. “It doesn’t sound like we can really protect him from blackmail forever, if he wants to chase married women, but there’s a vote coming up on next year’s appropriations, which means we have a chance to keep Percy from getting all the money he wants for awhile, at least.”

Alex walked over to the window, pushed aside the curtain to look outside, glancing around for anyone who might be watching the place. “It’s getting late. I need to go get ready for tonight.” 

Nikita gave her a small smile. “I’ll see you there,” she said.

<><><><><>

“Percy should have assigned me to be out with the camera, and Thom to play your husband,” Michael murmured, barely audible over the jazz as they danced close together on the dance floor that night. 

Alex held on to his shoulders, leaning into his chest as he kept one large hand on her hip, and the other on her ribs. It looked more real than it felt, she hoped, because what it felt like was that she was far, far too intimate in the moment with the man Nikita had some sort of unspoken yet uncomfortably meaningful history with, and who she herself saw as some sort of antagonistic but protective older brother. If the circumstances had been different, perhaps she could see him as something else, as he was certainly handsome enough even with his frequent scowling, but… no. She sighed, and rested her cheek against his shoulder. “Relax, Michael,” she said into his neck. “You’re hardly tarnishing my virtue. Percy seems to prefer you uncomfortable, you don’t need to give him the satisfaction.”  

Michael made a noncommittal grunt. Alex looked around the room, and didn’t see any sign of Nikita, which could mean all was as it should be, or that everything had already gone terribly wrong. Either way, there wasn’t much she could do but play her part. As the song ended, she stepped back, and said just a little too loudly, “Why don’t you get me another cocktail?”

He took her wrist and led her from the dance floor. “I think you’ve had enough, dear, how about some water,” he responded, the absolute picture of a patient husband trying to control his lush of a wife. 

She pulled her wrist free and flung it backwards, very narrowly missing another patron. “Fine! I’ll get it myself,” she huffed, and headed towards the bar. Michael sat down at a nearby table as the music turned into another song and lit a cigarette, watching her go. 

Alex smoothed down her dress, which clung to her figure in a way that said she was a little too modern to be reined in by matrimony, despite the band on her finger. She pressed in amongst the bodies at the bar, and most of all against the chest of the Honorable Oliver Warren, Congressman from Maryland. “Oh, sorry, mister, excuse me,” she said breathlessly, looking up at him.

“A drink for this young lady, anything she wants,” he said, getting the bartender’s attention immediately despite the others vying for drinks. Warren looked down at her, gazing deep into her eyes. 

“I’ll, uh, have a French 75,” Alex said. “Thank you, Mr…” she trailed off.

“You can call me Oliver,” he said easily. “And it’s no trouble at all, it’s my club, after all.” 

“You own this place?” she said, not disguising her surprise. While they had known he drank here, the fact that he owned a speakeasy hadn’t come up. Was it possible Division hadn’t known something so easy to blackmail the man with?

Or was it more possible that she had only received part of the information she needed, for a mission that was more than it appeared?

“I do,” he confirmed, “and I’m glad of it, on a night like this. Who might you be?"

“Mrs. Alexandra White,” Alex said, “but all my friends call me Alex.”

“Then I must call you Alex,” declared Oliver. “And… you’re married?” asked Oliver. 

Alex waved a careless hand in Michael’s direction. “My husband, Michael, he’s sitting over there.” She took a long drink of her cocktail. “Takes me out to a club and doesn’t want to let me have any fun, what’s the point in that?”

“None at all,” he agreed. “Perhaps I could… provide a little more fun. Care to dance?”

Alex drained the glass and set it on the bar. “I’d like nothing more,” she said, and took his arm. They walked past the table where Michael sat, and she blew him an insouciant kiss before letting Oliver Warren pull her close to dance. Michael scowled at the sight, and Alex felt very distinctly how quickly pleased her dance partner was to see a husband’s displeasure. 

“Your husband looks familiar,” Oliver said. “Have we met before?"

“I don’t know,” Alex replied, and shrugged. “He invests in a lot of different companies, does business with a lot of people. A lot of wealthy, boring people.” She looked up at him through her lashes and smiled. "You don’t seem boring enough to know him.”

Good heavens, she was laying it on thick, and hopefully the man would put it down to drink and not duplicity. He hadn’t yet seemed to question anything that involved Alex being with him rather than with Michael, and as long as she kept it that way and regularly passed by the corner where Thom had a concealed camera, all would be well.  

Oliver threw his head back and laughed. “And how on earth did a marvelous creature like you end up with him?”

Alex laughed along. “Punishment for a past life? Oh, no, he’s good, even if he can be a bit of a flat tire. I suppose it just seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“And what seems like a good idea now?” Oliver asked in a low voice, his hand traveling down her back as the music slowed to something more sensual. Alex didn’t need to even look to see Michael’s face; he was sure to look every inch the jealous husband, and she almost could feel the heat of his glare on the back of her head. It was one she’d seen often enough, whenever a trainer was getting too handsy with a recruit. He really did have a strange sense of honor, for a man working with a bunch of pro skirts and trigger men, she’d always thought.

After half an hour of lively dancing, Alex begged leave of her dance partner, to go powder her nose. She’d seen Nikita pass by in the darker borders of the room, and followed her to the bathrooms, with a small shake of her head to Michael so he knew she wasn’t trying to get him to follow her. 

Down the hall in the ladies’ room, Alex stood at the mirror for a second, waiting for another guest to leave before speaking to Nikita, who she had seen enter one of the two stalls. She took her powder compact from her bag and began to dab at her face. “It’s got to be more than just a honeypot mission for blackmail photos,” Alex murmured. “He owns the joint, Nikita. And nobody does that much without being involved in a lot more."

Nikita let out a whistle. “That’s bold for a political figure, running a speakeasy on the side. Must like a thrill.”

Alex applied a fresh coat of lipstick. “Well, he’s chasing me right in front of Michael, who looks about ready to bump him off right there in front of everyone. That’s about as much excitement as any man ought to be able to take.” She blotted her lipstick on a tissue. “Any changes to the plan?”

“I’ll still take the film, but it sounds like I might need to hold onto it for leverage,” Nikita said. “Otherwise, get whatever information you can from him. I can’t imagine Percy doesn’t know about this and doesn’t have some interest in it, but until we know what it is, I need whatever you can find out. I’ll see if I can overhear anything interesting from his goons.” 

“Alright. I’m going back now. Give me a few minutes.” Alex slipped out of the women’s restroom and almost immediately into the arms of Oliver Warren. “Oh, hi!” she said. 

“I thought you might have gone in search of a more private corner,” he said. 

“Perhaps, but I don’t think I’ve found one I like yet,” Alex teased, looking around. “Course, didn’t find one with the right kind of company in it til now, either.”

With all the grace of a newborn giraffe, he stumbled into her, his mouth crashing down upon hers in a sloppy kiss. Alex let him go on for a few seconds, before pulling away with a laugh. “We’re blocking the door, we can’t neck here.” She giggled. “Here, down here, this is better,” she suggested, and took his hand to tug him back up the hall closer to where everyone else was, and not quite as inconvenient for anyone needing to relieve themselves. 

And, of course, it had the added benefit of being directly in the line of sight for the peephole Thom had made to take pictures through. “Perfect,” whispered Alex against Oliver’s neck, and kissed a trail up to his jaw. She put a hand on his shoulder, with her wedding band completely on display. “Let’s try this again,” she suggested, pressing her lips to his. He kissed her back eagerly, and squeezed her breast with one hand while his other crept downward, seeking her hemline. 

Alex fleetingly thought she wouldn’t mind if that hemline wasn’t quite as short, but really, there wasn’t anything bad about it all, not compared what was in the past, or even compared to nothing at all. He was just one more overenthusiastic man who was bad at kissing, and right now, it was her job to not express how tiresome that was.  

She reached up to weave her fingers into his hair and stretch herself closer against him, the hem of her dress rising with the motion and allowing his roaming hand to slip beneath it and up the outside of her thigh. Tightening her grip on his hair, Alex listened for the sound of a camera shutter,  and hoped it would be audible over the music. 

Then, there it was, she was sure of it. She counted to ten to make sure Thom had enough time to take the shot: a Congressman, his face in full view, petting an unidentifiable young woman with a wedding band, his hand clearly up her skirt. There were worse photos to have, but tonight, this should suffice. 

Alex came down off her tiptoes and took a step back, dislodging his roaming hands. “All that’s made me thirsty,” she said breathlessly. “Would you mind getting me another drink while I fix my lipstick, Oliver?”

He gave her an elaborate bow, old fashioned and ridiculous, and she laughed. “I am at your service, my lady,” he said, and slipped away. Alex turned back towards the restroom, passing Nikita in the hall. “We’ve got the pictures,” Alex said as they passed. “Avoid the peephole fifteen feet ahead on your left.”

After applying her second coat of deep crimson lipstick within twenty minutes, Alex headed back for the bar and the drink waiting for her there. She’d have to make it her last; it was becoming evident why the Gaslight Club was such a draw: they made the drinks about as strong as they could get without becoming a risk for blindness. She knew how to hold her liquor, and she’d nursed her first drink for a while, but if Michael had to haul her home over his shoulder, there’d be no end to it. And that was the best case scenario, because anything else would put the mission and their lives in danger. 

Oliver Warren wasn’t at the bar, though, and after a second of scanning the room, she saw him slipping out the door headed for the back stairs. She followed, keeping her distance, and when she reached the door, she could hear a heated conversation happening behind it. Carefully, and trying not to let herself be silhouetted in the light, she sidled past the door as well, hoping not to run into a surprise on the other side. 

Instead, she heard Warren’s raised voice as he said, “I pay for your stills, and then I pay you to haul it into town when you’re scheduled to be here. And then I pay you even more to not say a word about what else is in those crates, because it’s more than your life’s worth if you were to run and tell someone about it.”

Another voice, a man’s voice, mumbled an indistinct but apologetic few words. Alex crept further forward, hoping to hear better, or see anyone; from her position, she could see a little down the stairwell one flight to a glow emanating from what appeared to be a small room, and then further down, another landing where she saw a little bit of a man’s shoulder and hat, but nothing more. The stairs also continued up, and Alex looked up to see if Thom was there; since he wasn’t, she assumed he must still be stationed at the other camera hole, where she had been with Warren before. Then Alex heard the sound of some heavy boxes being set down, and at least three sets of footsteps.  

“It’s late, and it’s only half the shipment,” Warren said. “We're going to have trouble with the Albanians if we show up with only some of what they asked for.” The sound of another heavy box, and something metallic clanking against glass, interrupted him. “You hear that? If I have problems, then you have problems. If the rest of this shipment isn’t here before noon tomorrow, your wife’s going to end up dead, and so’s your brother in Rhode Island. Don’t think I can’t get to someone on a Navy base.” 

“Yes, sir,” said the man, more clearly and with a note of fear in his voice, and then there was the slam of a door. 

“Alright, get this stacked back in my office for now, I’ll check to see if anything needs to go up to the bar,” Warren said, and then Alex heard footsteps ascending the stairs. Hastily, she scrambled backwards, trying to tiptoe so that her heels wouldn’t give her away. But Warren was getting closer, enough that he would absolutely see her fleeing if she went back out through the door.  

When he emerged onto the landing, what he instead saw was Alex standing there, the door back into the speakeasy swinging closed, and Alex with one leg up in the air, propping a foot high against the wall with her entire thigh on display. “Oh!” she said, startled, when he saw her, and swiftly dropped her leg. “Oh, applesauce, didn’t mean for you to see that much!”

“What are you doing back here?” he said, the terseness bleeding from his tone in distraction at having actually seen what he had only felt before. 

“I was looking around the bar for you, and thought I saw you come in here, and then my shoe gave way, and I had to check if the buckle had snapped and run my stockings, so I ducked in here so no one would see me,” she said gaily. “So much for not being seen, huh?”

“So much for that,” he agreed, drawing closer. “It’d be a shame if your shoe was too damaged for any more dancing and we had to… stay back here, after you went through the trouble of looking for me.” 

Alex’s mind raced. She had an idea of what Warren might actually have in those crates, and she needed to talk to Nikita about it. She needed to tell Michael. She could duck out now, but if Warren thought she wasn’t back here for him and him alone, what she had just heard would make that far more of a gamble than she’d bargained on. He wasn’t at all what she thought and that meant if he tried to stop her from leaving, she didn’t know what he was capable of, and if her fighting skills would be up to the task. But keeping him on the line might mean a little more than posing for a hidden camera, if they stayed back here.

Fate saved her from deciding if she’d do what Warren clearly imagined she may have followed him to do, in the form of more metal clanking against glass from down below. “It looks like your shoe can probably hold up for a little bit longer,” Warren decided, reaching past her to open the door and guiding her back out into the warmth and noise of the speakeasy with a hand low on her back. He pulled the door firmly shut behind them. 

Two songs later, Alex claimed Warren’s handkerchief to dab at the perspiration on her brow and pulled him to the bar to finally get that drink he’d promised. While they pressed up against the bar trying to get the bartender’s attention along with everyone else, Alex found herself hip to hip with Nikita. “I found out what’s the ‘more’ he’s into,” she hissed. “He owns the bootleggers, too, the whole operation. And it sounds like that’s just a cover for moving something worse.”

“What kind of worse?” Nikita asked, the her low voice in the din of the crowd not muting the sharp question. 

“Weapons, I think. No specifics, but I’ve heard people talk about selling armaments, and they sound just like the conversation I heard. I think a partial shipment is down in his office off the back stairs. His friend was worried about if they could still meet with the Albanians if their full supply wasn’t here by tomorrow.”

“I take back what I said about a thrill,” Nikita said. “The man has a death wish. That’s too many enemies.”

“Percy probably has more,” Alex replied. “I have to tell Michael about this, Nikita, it’s too big to hide, and I can’t be enough of an idiot to miss it.”

“Then I’ll just have to get to it first.”

Nikita melted back into the throng as Warren turned to Alex with a glass of champagne. Alex beamed up at him. “I think I need a break from the calisthenics, baby, you’ve tired me right out,” she said. “And I better go make sure my fella doesn’t think I’m up to no good.” She winked. “For now, anyway.” 

She sauntered back to the table where Michael still sat, and dropped into the seat next to him. Taking a cigarette from his silver cigarette case on the table, she leaned over. “Got a light?”  

Obligingly, he struck a match. “We got more on our hands than we bargained for,” she said while still leaning over to him, never dropping her smile. “Warren’s not going to be afraid of blackmail, not the stuff we got. He’s worried about getting  the shipment of booze in late, and only part of it, cause he’s got a bunch of weapons he wants to sell to some Albanians tomorrow afternoon in the boxes under the bourbon.” She leaned back to take a sip of her champagne and blow smoke up towards the ceiling. “He’s storing what came in tonight in an office down the back steps.”

“Is he suspicious of you?” Michael asked, picking up what looked to be the same Manhattan he’d been drinking earlier. 

Alex shrugged. “Gave me a good pinch when we were alone and thought I was looking to get fresh with him, I don’t see any reason he should be.”

“Well,” said Michael, “the fact he’s staring at me from across the room does make me wonder.”

“I’ll take care of him,” Alex muttered, grinding out her cigarette in an ashtray at the next table over before getting back up again, wending her way through the crowds drifting towards the door in Warren’s general direction. But after failing to see two of the three guards she had detected over the course of the evening, she changed course to head back towards Michael, warning him of the change in number of guards before heading towards the back door on his orders. But before she made it all the way there, the single remaining guard briefly conferred with Warren before stepping forward. 

“Ladies and gentlemen, there is about to be a raid, please leave if you don’t wish to be arrested!” he called out in a voice that carried over the fading music and the rising commotion. Alex paused, looking around, unsure whether this was the time to go with the crowd or not, and in that moment of indecision, a hand seized Alex’s. 

It was Michael, keeping her in place, and as the room emptied, he drew his pistol from the holster beneath his suit jacket. 

“I recognized you,” Oliver Warren said in tones of sudden comprehension. “I know exactly who you are.” And then the Congressman frowned at the gun in Michael’s hand, as if he couldn’t quite believe that someone was rude enough to be a threat to him at his own club. He nodded sharply to his guard, and said, “Carter. Get the girl.” 

With that, the man yanked Alex from Michael’s side, gripping her arm tightly enough to leave bruises, Alex was sure. She tripped at the speed she was pulled away, almost right off her feet; when she regained her footing, it was between Michael’s gun and Oliver Warren and his guard. Warren pulled a gun of his own, a derringer with gleaming silver plate, almost pretty enough to be a lady’s gun, if that lady had exceptionally strong garters. 

Michael’s eyes darted between the two men and Alex. She tipped her chin up at him, just as she had done in defiance a thousand times before during her training. Then she let out a wail that made even the guard holding her start. “Oh my god, oh my god, please don’t hurt me, just please let me go,” she babbled, forcing tears as she was dragged backwards. “Don’t let them take me, Michael, Michael!”

“I’m not letting Percy just bump me off when I step on his toes,” Oliver Warren said over Alex’s head. “And I’m not going to be threatened by his attack dogs. You get your girl here back when Percy backs off, you hear? Because if I see another one of his agents coming after me, coming after my business? She’s dead, and I’ll make sure you go down for it."

Michael clenched his jaw and a vein in his temple twitched, but his hands with the gun were steady. He didn’t move from where he stood, but didn’t lower his weapon, as Alex was pulled back through the doorway. Alex looked around frantically, as if to find someone who could help her, but she was only looking for one person.

Nikita stood on the dark landing of the stairwell, half a floor above them and the crumpled form of Thom at her feet. She held a gun in her hand as well but not pointed towards Alex’s captors, even though she could have dropped Warren without a problem from her perch. Alex shook her head incrementally, willing Nikita to pick up her message. Let me handle this, she thought as hard as she could, as if maybe she could send it straight into Nikita’s mind. You complete the mission, I’ll deal with this.

She was relieved when Nikita nodded back. 

Then the Congressman, his guard, and Alex descended the dark back stairs to a car waiting in the alley behind the club, and they drove off into the moonless night.

<><><><><>

Nikita went directly from talking at the bar with Alex to the edge of the dance floor, taking care to stand behind taller men and out of direct visibility for Michael, who maintained his post at a table at the other side of the room, watching out for Alex. Nikita held the back of a chair and gave one of its legs a swift hard kick, never looking away from the band as she did and breaking it thoroughly; then she bent down to prop the chair on its broken leg, which would be obvious to anyone paying attention, but the drunk and exhilarated patrons of the Gaslight Club were hardly doing that. Then Nikita went and waited near the door to the back steps for the inevitable crash. 

Within five minutes, a woman sat on the broken chair and went over backwards in a rather spectacular fashion, upsetting the table (and her date) in the fall. All eyes turned to this distraction, and Nikita slipped unnoticed out the door. The resuming music covered the sound of her surprising Thom, just half a flight up the wooden stairs; he gave her a grim face and launched himself at her, just as he had been trained. As she had been trained similarly, and then learned how to best those trainers, she blocked his attack and then dealt a breath-robbing blow to his chest, followed by a backhand to the side of his head. As he reeled backwards, she caught him and pulled him back, wrapping an arm around his neck. “Shh, shh,” she hissed in his ear. “You’re going to wake up, Thom, in a while. And I want you to remember, I left you alive. I’m nicer than the people you work for, just think about that, will you?” 

Then she bent her arm tighter, increasing the pressure on both of his carotid arteries. That was the way to do it, so much quicker and quieter than choking them; they passed out rapidly when the blood flow to their brain was cut off, and she felt the unmistakable slackening of the tense muscles in the back of his neck when he lost consciousness. She lowered him to the floor, beside his camera, and shielded it from any faint light reaching it as she popped it open and gently pulled out the film. She rolled it up and put it in the hidden pocket down the front of her dress for safekeeping, and later development if it proved necessary. 

That done, she ran down the stairs to the office below. The soft glow of one bulb hanging from the ceiling didn’t give off much light, but it allowed her to see bottles cushioned by crumpled newspaper when she opened one of a half-dozen crates stacked along the wall. She pulled out a few newspapers and felt for the bottom of the crate in one of them; instead of feeling wooden slats, her fingers brushed over cold metal shapes. Her time at Division had made her able to identify weapons by their feel alone, and these were barrels of Browning machine rifles.  

There were any number of countries with a use for guns like that. Sure, mobsters from New York to Chicago wouldn’t mind them, but neither would some Greeks, Italians, and Albanians, if the rumors of unrest she had been hearing were true. The guns had certainly been popular enough, in the last year of the War.

Replacing the lid of the crate, she went over to the desk to peruse the papers there. There was scratch paper and sums, newspapers with a few classified advertisements circled, but little of importance. However, once Nikita picked the lock on the desk drawer, she discovered a well-worn ledger, and was about to pull it out when she heard a wail from upstairs, and something about the sound of dancing footsteps transitioning into the footsteps of people leaving over the past several minutes clicked into place in her head.

Swiftly, she slipped from the office and back up the stairs. Yelling was happening, and sounded like Alex’s voice along with a man’s. The noise covered the soft tapping of her shoes as she ran upstairs to where she had left Thom, and she drew her gun just as a large man backed through the door, dragging Alex with him and shielding the Congressman.  

Nikita, after the nod of understanding with Alex that Alex would take care of her kidnapped self and use the situation to gather whatever intelligence she could, shoved her gun back into its garter holster and ran back down to the office; she had to look through that ledger before anyone else could interrupt her, and the Congressman had just left while extremely distracted. If the rest of a shipment of weapons was arriving tomorrow, though, she had to know where they were headed next. She was flipping through the pages, seeing columns of orders over the years since the War, and had gotten as far as 1921 by the time she felt a pistol pushed against her ribs.

Michael really was good. He was the one trainer of hers from Division who she hadn’t been able to regularly beat when sparring; that was probably part of why she ended up feeling as she did about him. Somehow, for him, his inclination towards being absolutely stiff with honor and belief in Division’s noble stated mission to prevent war also led him to take her as seriously as a fighter as he would another man, and he didn’t pull his punches. She hadn’t really had anyone respect her strength like that before, and leaving a trail littered with unconscious men in her wake hadn’t intrigued her as much as this man who she couldn’t always beat, and who had always protected her. 

Well, up until she turned on him and everyone else, compelling him to be as responsible for killing her as he had once been for making sure she could take care of herself. 

Michael got as far as saying, “Hello, Nikita—“ before she spun, knocking the gun from his hand and bringing her other hand in for an open-palmed strike to his chin. He lost the gun, but caught her wrist before her blow would snap his head backwards. She used the moment to punch him in the side, aiming for his kidneys; he twisted, and she only managed to land a blow to his ribs. He grunted but absorbed the hit without being incapacitated. “I need to get to those crates,” he ground out, kneeing her in the thigh and forcing her back against the desk. “If I’d been sent to kill you this time I wouldn't have bothered talking—“ 

“You’re always supposed to kill me, these days,” Nikita pointed out, having no luck snaking a leg around his to pull him off his feet. She settled for an ear-ringing blow to the side of his head with her free hand, instead. “Where’s the fun in being Division’s Most Wanted, if I don’t even have as many people wanting me dead as Al Capone has?” As she said that, Michael caught her other wrist, and pinned both her hands flat on the desk behind her. 

He sighed with annoyance. “Your Al Capone envy aside, I didn’t expect to see you here, but since you are, would you be more interested in working with me to figure out what’s being shipped in those crates? I’m down two agents, and to be honest, I’m hesitant to bring all this back to Percy until I know what I’m bringing back. ”

“Browning M1918s,” Nikita said shortly. “And he has more coming. I was trying to find out who the buyer might be, and maybe what else he’s been selling lately.” She jerked her head at the ledger. “Looks like quite a lot.”

“That’s what I guessed,” Michael said. “Look, are you helping or not? I’d like to go through those crates instead of standing here waiting for you to knee me in the—“ 

“Yes, Michael, truce,” Nikita responded, and rolled her eyes. “Just let me know when that expires, so I can get a head start before you’re out for blood again?”

Michael didn’t answer that, and stepped back, releasing her hands. She massaged the blood back into them as he walked around the desk to start opening crates. Nikita went back to flipping further through the ledger, into 1922 and then the beginning of 1923. “I suspected this,” Michael said, and she looked up. 

He was holding up a metal canister, which had ‘M1’ printed on the side. Nikita wasn’t familiar with the designation, although she knew only too well what type of canister it was: she’d seen more than enough of them sent to battlefields where mustard gas or chlorine gas had been used during the war, when it wasn’t being launched at the enemy in artillery shells instead. It would have been sent in huge amounts to the battlefield to which her fiancé had been sent, after she had told him she worked for Division, and what she did. She didn’t know if he would have still taken weeks to die from choking on his own lungs, had she not been in his life, but he wasn’t supposed to be deployed to where he had been. “How—“ she started, her mouth dry and her voice a whisper. “How many are there?”

“Looks like half the crates are guns, half are gas,” Michael said. “Lewisite. The War ended before it could be used.”

Nikita swallowed back her memories and turned a few pages further in the ledger. “Looks like he’s been selling a lot of it lately. Some to the Germans, but… I’m seeing Serbs, Albanians, Greeks…”

“There have been tensions around that area lately, and the Germans keep building up their factories,” mused Michael. “I think Italy has announced that they’re going to try to mediate some disagreements between the Albanians and Greece.”

“Oh, is Division sending someone to Italy to stop that?” Nikita couldn’t stop the acid question from escaping, and wouldn’t have, even if she might have. She once would have been sent to Europe, or anywhere else, for that reason; once, she had believed she was ensuring peace, not preventing peace from depriving rich men of the money of killers. And she still couldn’t understand how Michael could stand it, how he still thought he was doing good somehow. 

He didn’t answer her question. Somewhere above them, there was the noise of movement. Michael motioned for her to be quiet, grabbed his gun from the floor where it had landed, and walked out the door. Nikita silently moved to the wall beside the door, for the half second of advantage she would have if anyone else came in. 

“Thom,” she heard Michael say, and the sound of footsteps. “I need you to head back to Division,” he continued, and then she couldn’t hear the rest of what he said. But the young agent made a noise of agreement, and left, his feet quietly tapping down the stairs. Another minute passed before Michael returned. 

“We need to move this stuff,” Michael said in a low voice. “I sent him back, which will keep Division off us for now. But I don’t want these boxes to get where they’re going, and I don’t want Division to come pick them up without us knowing who the gas is being sold to or where it comes from. I know an old safehouse nearby, and I have a car I can bring around the back alley, but if we’re going to do anything about these, we’ve got to do it now.”

So for the next ninety minutes, carefully listening for the return of Warren’s men; Nikita removed the bottles of liquor and lined them up along the wall before moving the weapons into a smaller number of boxes, and Michael carrying the boxes down to the car. She could have protested this, and insist that they both carry the boxes down, but there wasn’t really time for extensive negotiation of trust. And for all their divided allegiances, she did trust that he wanted to keep chemical weapons from those who didn’t care how they were used. Anything else that was actually up for debate could be a problem for later.

It was nearly four o’clock by the time Michael and Nikita made it to a brick row home in Kingman Park, its windows dark and the neighbors unseen. They quietly unloaded all the boxes, locking the door behind them to study the ledger, try to figure out where the morning’s shipment would arrive and where the afternoon’s meeting to sell it all would take place, separately hope Alex would soon escape and figure out how to tell them any of it, and then, briefly, to get a few minutes of sleep before the next day began. 

<><><><><>

Alex let herself be hauled down to Oliver Warren’s car, not wanting to surprise the guard holding a gun to her head, since he didn’t seem to be confident in his control of the situation. There were any number of points she could have jumped to push off of a support beam, twisted out of his grasp, and found a way to escape, but neither Michael nor Nikita had any idea yet where the rest of the weapons were, who the buyers were, or where the meeting was set to take place. There might be clues in the speakeasy’s office, but there might not be, and this was too important to leave to that kind of chance.  

So instead, she sat in the back seat with Oliver Warren and the guard in sulky silence. They only took a short drive, to a nearby townhouse. “If you make a sound, I will tell him to kill you,” Oliver said to her before opening the door and ushering her quickly inside. She was hustled through to the kitchen in the back by the guard, and she watched the Congressman pull the front curtains closed before he turned the lights on, and then came to search through a drawer and pulled out a length of laundry cord, which was used to tie her wrists behind her as she sat in a kitchen chair. She bent her wrists as the guard tied them, to give herself more wiggle room, and was grateful he didn’t think to bind her ankles as well.  

Not that it would have really been a problem, but it would be quicker to free herself when the time came. 

She tried not to look too bored or expectant before the questioning started; they didn’t necessarily have anything to interrogate her over,  since Warren had behaved as if she was no one, but if they didn’t try, she’d have to manipulate them into talking to her. And just as she was getting ready to summon some tears again, Warren stood in front of her and crossed his arms. “What were you doing at my club tonight? I know that man isn’t your husband.”

Alex sniffled a few times. “He paid me,” she said. “He said he’d pay me more after, and get me some dope, too. I thought—“ Her voice cracked.

“What did you think? Who are you?” Warren demanded. 

“I’m Alex, I told you the truth! He told me to call him Michael, he gave me a ring and told me to pretend I was his wife,” she answered, finally getting real tears to spill. “He pointed to you and he said, go get him to dance with you, make him think you love him,” she added, letting some of her old Russian syllables slip through, the ones she had trained out of her voice by the time she got to New York. Everything was a tool, she had learned from Nikita, and then from Division; the truth was your best lie, your history was ammunition, and there was nothing she had confessed to yet that hadn’t at some time been partially true. “I never met him before, I just thought he was the kind of man who liked that sort of thing.” 

Warren frowned. “You never met him before? Are you sure?”

Alex tried to shrug. “I meet a lot of men, I don’t remember them all.” She let out a short laugh. “The dope helps. You have any?”

Warren looked down at her, visibly relaxing. “I should think you’ve had quite enough to keep you hopped up, tonight,” he remarked, then motioned to the guard. “Alright, leave her. She’ll pass out, I bet. We have more important problems than her right now."

As Warren and the guard went to discuss their plans in the front room, Alex pretended to go to sleep in the chair, taking her time loosening the cord around her wrists so that she would have them free whenever the time came. About half an hour after they had arrived at the house, the phone rang, and Warren picked it up, said a few terse words, and hung up. “They’ll meet us tomorrow near the Navy Yard, at the pumping station. Get a message to the Albanians to meet us there at two, I can’t get out of committee meetings until half past one.”

The guard left, and Alex, still feigning sleep, heard the Congressman walk back towards the kitchen, pause, then close the door and lock it. Footsteps going up the stairs followed the click of the lock, and the lights were switched off. 

“What a maroon,” muttered Alex to herself, lifting her head. She waited for any more sounds, but heard nothing after the creak upstairs of a bed frame. She was honestly insulted that he didn’t even think she was a risk, but he clearly had other things on his mind. She looked up at the wall clock; it was nearly five. Without any further ado, she slipped free of her bindings, quietly unlocked the back door, climbed the fence into the next yard and snagged a flowered dress from off the laundry line, shrugged it over her head and buttoned it up before jumping the fence and heading for the street. She was nearly to Capitol Hill by the time she even saw a taxi, but decided to avoid it, despite her aching feet. She kept heading east while watching the sun rise and climb into the sky, and stole a few things for breakfast as she neared the safehouse, knowing how rarely they contained properly stocked pantries beyond some survival rations that no one would be inclined to eat unless the alternative was starvation, and perhaps even not then. 

Eventually, finally, she made it to the safehouse, and as she unlocked the front door, didn’t even really care that much who might be there, so long as they let her sleep. 

<><><><><>

By eight o’clock, Nikita and Michael were awake and having a disagreement. 

“You’re letting your hatred for Division blind you from seeing that we have resources that can keep this gas from being sent to the Balkans, or wherever else might it may be used. I’m not saying that our hands are clean, you know that I’m not. But I think it’s more dangerous to go after someone we don’t know, whose criminal network is clearly larger than either of us guessed and who is using his political power to benefit that enterprise, and risk ending up helping him. Unless you’re satisfied with letting chaos be your ally in attacking Division on all fronts.” Michael paced the empty kitchen, having already searched the cabinets for coffee and finding none. They had been trying to decide whether to go back to the club and hope the shipment arrived there, or figure out where the Congressman would be meeting his buyers that afternoon and attempt to intercept whoever was bringing the supply on the way there.

“Look, just because I think Percy needs to be stopped doesn’t mean I’m interested in letting his competition thrive, nobody needs to be peddling these wares on either side of the Atlantic,” Nikita snapped, her patience thin at Michael suggesting she would be favorable to other groups as bad as Division thriving instead, when she knew that he was perfectly aware she would never approve of such a thing. "You want to go after Warren, take him down? I won’t stand in your way. But Michael, you have to admit, there’s something Percy has to be gaining from this beyond blackmailing a politician, and I don’t think you’re willing to hand him a brand new weapons supply of his own—“ 

Nikita jumped at the sound of a slamming door and the sound of footsteps. Woman’s shoes. “Did you tell anyone else you were here?”

Alex walked into view. “Michael, I was able—“ she said, and then saw Nikita. Her mouth opened wordlessly for a second, and then her eyes hardened. “What the hell are you doing here, back for another round?”

Nikita crossed her arms. “Anytime, if I get bored enough. But I have actual problems right now, so make yourself useful or go away.”

Alex huffed out a sigh. So they all had arrived at the same conclusion—the mission was more complicated than any of them had realized at the beginning. She looked to Michael, hoping he wouldn’t send her away. 

“I’m… we’re temporarily collaborating with Nikita,” Michael said, looking from Alex to Nikita and then back. “It’s necessary, and I expect you to do as I say and not let your feelings about her compromise what this mission has become.”

“Will you?” Alex shot back at him, and he winced as the words hit their target. In response, he walked over to grab her arm and haul her into the front room of the house, his face stormy. 

He let her go roughly. “I said, I expect you to do as I say, Alex. We will work with Nikita while we have the same interests. You’re going to debrief us on what you learned from your time with the Congressman. We’re going to come up with a plan to take these weapons he’s selling out of the picture. You are going to use Nikita as an asset while we are out here in the field. And when we’ve done that, I will have Division agents ready to take her in. Do you understand?” 

“Yes, Michael, I understand,” Alex said, leaning back against the wall. She’d have to tone down her antagonism to maintain her cover, or at least enough that Michael wouldn’t lose it entirely. “Be a good agent, play nice with Nikita, do my job. I got it. Don’t think I can’t do what I need to just because I don’t like her.”

“Good. Act like it."

"Hey, are you stuck on her or something?” Alex ventured.

Michael looked at her as if he was about to answer, then thought better of it and stalked back into the other room. “Question answered, I guess,” Alex muttered to herself, and followed. 

In probably the only happy twist for any of them that morning, the gas stove still could be lit with a match, and the bag of coffee and the pastries Alex had lifted could be turned into something better than the rations hidden somewhere within the safehouse. They made a breakfast of it as Alex debriefed them on what she had learned.

“His men weren’t even in the house when I lammed off,” Alex said, and shrugged, “I think they’re just security for the joint, not for him.”

“We’ll have to keep that in mind if we go back to the club,” Nikita noted, looking at Michael. He lifted one shoulder in a shrug; he still wasn’t convinced that was the best plan for getting the rest of the shipment.

“I think we might actually have a better chance if we catch him meeting with the Albanians,” offered Alex. “He’s having the rest of the shipment brought there, and I assume he didn’t know about you two stealing the other half. I didn’t find out where it all came from, though.” 

Michael tipped his head, thoughtfully chewing on a pastry. “His district is near Cleveland. It’s been bothering me ever since I saw the Lewisite— there was a factory there that was making it secretly up until the end of the war, it was mentioned in a report I saw once, ages ago.”

“You think he got his hands on that supply?” Nikita said. “If he has that much at his disposal, stealing a few crates isn’t going to do much to slow him down.”

“It’ll just get his attention, and I don’t really care for any more of that,” said Alex. “But we could take something worse than gas and guns— his reputation.”

“We tried that last night,” Michael remarked dryly. “It wasn’t that much of a challenge.”

“Not that reputation,” Alex corrected him. “The one he’s clearly got if he’s so neatly set up to bribe any Prohibition agents with booze so they won’t ask about anything else, and keeps him looking out for the factories in his district so they’ll look out for him, the whole system. It doesn’t work if his customers don’t think he’s got a handle on all that.”

“She’s right, these Albanians had to get his name from somewhere, and from somewhere else before whoever that is,” Nikita agreed. “If we take the shipment, he looks like he can get them anything when he replaces it. But if we don’t just steal it…”

Realization dawned on Michael’s face, and rose into a grin. 

<><><><><>

In the end, it all went off more smoothly than anything had any right to, but they were hardly willing to question their luck when everything else so far had not gone nearly as smoothly. 

Alex and Nikita strolled nearby the meeting location, watching for the arrival of the shipment. They had a truck of their own nearby, loaded with crates (although only one of them held any weapons; the rest they had emptied back at the house). Michael stood by, waiting for the Congressman to arrive and for the moment before he made contact with his customers. 

“Michael plans on double-crossing you,” Alex remarked conversationally to Nikita, out of earshot of anyone. 

Nikita looked over at her and smiled, a little sadly. “Yes, I know.”

Alex gaped at her. “Did you… overhear, or—“

“I didn’t need to.” Nikita looked down for a moment, then went back to surveilling their surroundings as they walked. “He has to, and you’ll help him, and you’ll both tell Division the truth that I was after Warren too and interfered with your mission. I don’t like that he still works there, but I’m not going to put him in danger by making him protect me. I can take care of myself.”

“You sure?” asked Alex. 

“Well, you’re going to make sure I can escape when his back is turned, of course,” Nikita informed her. “He won’t stay with Division. He cares too much about… being part of some larger good, and Percy keeps taking on more and more of these side jobs that only line his own pockets. I’ll do what I can to keep him safe until he makes that decision to leave.” 

Alex glanced sideways at Nikita. “Didn’t you shoot him last time?”

“I’ll keep him alive,” Nikita amended. “And I only shot him a little bit. He was just going to let me go! I had to make it look like he had at least tried to stop me.”

Alex was saved from having to come up with a response that was both supportive and relayed how much of a piece of work the two of them collectively were by the arrival of one of the guards she recognized from the speakeasy and another man she didn’t know, but suspected might have been the other voice that she had heard down the stairs the night before. A minute later, the guard who had held Alex hostage as well as Oliver Warren walked into view, and Michael put up his hand in their agreed-upon signal. “Okay, let’s get the truck,” Alex said.  

It took just enough time for them to pull up with their truck to see the signal Warren’s guard made towards three men approaching around the side of the pump station. Michael appeared in front of the Congressman, slapping a familiar hand on his shoulder and loudly saying, “Alright, sir, here comes the rest of the boxes, don’t worry about the empty ones, and the Bureau thanks you for helping put these war profiteers where they belong again, after all your help last time.”  

And that was why what the Albanian arms dealers saw, as they approached, what appeared to be a federal sting operation, two loads of weapons that could easily be returned to an evidence lockup, and the man who had seemed so eager to sell them guns and gas being on apparently very friendly terms with the law. This inspired them to draw their guns, which drew rather a lot of attention from the naval officers coming from the nearby Navy Yard. In the commotion and fleeing that followed, the Congressman got away, as did one of his potential customers, while two of his guards and the rest of the dealers were apprehended in the hopes that detaining them would make the reason for all the shouting and guns being waved around a bit clearer. Michael took advantage of the distraction to start the other truck and drive away, and just like that, two trucks’ worth of lewisite canisters and automatic guns were whisked away along with the reliability of the man who had regularly sold them. 

Back at the house, they unloaded the crates of guns from the truck first, carrying them into the front room. Nikita set down the last box and announced she was getting some water, and did anyone else want any?

Michael drew his pistol, and nodded at Alex to do the same. “Uh, yeah,” Alex called after Nikita. “Can you get me some water too?” 

A moment later, Nikita returned from the kitchen, carrying two glasses. “I— ah,” she said, seeing them. 

“Nikita, you know I have to take you in,” Michael said.  

“You really don’t, Michael,” she responded. “And it’s going to go just as badly as any other time you’ve tried.”

“Maybe it won’t,” Alex challenged. “I’m here, this time, and I actually did bring you in once, remember?” 

Nikita spared her a humorless smile. “Everyone gets lucky once, little girl. But you don’t count on luck.”

“Well, I don’t see any aces up your sleeve,” Alex said. 

“Back into the kitchen, please, this doesn’t have to be difficult,” Michael said, motioning with the gun. Nikita backed up, and at his direction, sat in one of the kitchen chairs, much like Alex had been held captive the night before. “Keep your gun on her,” he directed Alex, and got a rope out of the cupboard. As Alex covered Nikita, Michael looped the rope around her wrists and then her ankles, binding her much more securely than Alex had been, although she could see him fumble once when his hands were shaking enough to drop the line.  Once she was secure, Michael replaced his pistol in its holster. “I’m going to the store on the corner, Division is waiting on my call,” he said. “Keep an eye on her. I’ll be right back.”

“Go faster. I don’t want to bash your skull in, but choking a person out takes time, and I don’t have any chloroform handy,” Nikita replied, shifting her shoulders to slip her hands free as soon as the rope was loose enough. “You sure you won’t get in trouble?”

“Not any more than usual. I got overconfident and you slugged me, Michael should believe that,” she said.

“Michael should believe what?” Alex heard from behind her, followed by the sound of a pistol being cocked. “Drop the knife and keep your hands up, Alex.”

Alex turned her head to look, and saw exactly what she was hoping she wouldn’t. Michael had his gun aimed directly at her, and stood far too close to miss. She dropped the knife to the floor with a clatter, and he stepped forward to kick it away from Nikita. “Michael, I can explain—“ 

“I’m sure you can,” Michael said, “I’m sure you have a lot of explanations, Alex. Guess it was a good thing I found myself short on nickels, so I wouldn’t have to hear them.”

Nikita craned her neck to see them, and tried rocking the chair she was tied to in an effort to turn herself around. “Michael, you don’t want to do this, I told Alex—“

“You can shut up, too, Nikita,” Michael snarled. “So she’s your mole. Nikita, you’re so set on saving Division’s victims, but do you know how many people Percy’s mole hunt has put in danger? How many recruits are on the list to be killed the next time something goes wrong on a mission assigned to them? That’s what you started, Nikita.”

“No, that’s what Division is,” she shot back, “it’s a pit of paranoid vipers, and you’re the one choosing to stay in it. Do you want me to feel sorry for you, that Percy would make you kill recruits you trained just because I’m trying to stop the damage he’s causing? It’s your choice, Michael! Yours!”

Michael clenched his jaw. Alex tried, “You’ve always protected me. I know you’re angry. But please, please, Michael, don’t kill me. You’re supposed to, and I know it, and I’m asking you not to.” 

“This isn’t a decision that’s up to me!” Michael looked supremely frustrated. “Goddammit, Nikita, what were you thinking?”

Before she could respond, a door crashed open in the next room, and the sound of many heavy boots followed it. Michael took his finger off the trigger and lowered the pistol. Alex heard voices she recognized. “Here’s the ledger, grab that. Alphonse, you find Michael, he’s supposed to be here.”

“I’m thinking I can trust you to do the right thing,” Nikita hissed at Michael, pulling her hands free and leaping to her feet. “Alex?”

“I’ll meet you later,” Alex said. “Go!”

Without another word, Nikita turned and ran, disappearing out the back just before Division agents came through the door. “Found Michael and Alex,” one called back. “Are those boxes all of it, sir?” he continued, asking Michael. 

Michael looked at the agent, then back at Alex. She could see him reach a decision, but she wasn’t sure what it was. “That’s it. I’ve got some I’ll be bringing in a truck nearby. Make sure we don’t have anyone watching us leave, everyone get one, split up, and meet back at Division.”  

“Yes sir!” With that, the agent returned to his colleagues and relayed the instructions. 

“Michael, what—“ Alex whispered.

“Not here,” he cut her off tersely. “Don’t say anything.”

She pinched her lips and nodded.

<><><><><>

He didn’t speak again until they were nearly back to Division, and she didn’t say a word. “Follow my lead,” he told her quietly, just as they approached the garage in the truck full of crates of lewisite. “Don’t lie about Nikita showing up at the club, or about her being there when we got all this from Warren, but don’t tell them anything they don’t ask about. They’ll know if you lie.” They pulled into the garage, and he took the key from the ignition. “It’s going to be alright, Alex,” he added, and walked inside without meeting her eyes. 

As Michael debriefed Percy on the mission, Alex stood by, staying quiet, but it was hardly noticed. “You’ve disrupted an entire arms operation,” Percy enthused. “Now that we know where it’s coming from, we can control where that gas ends up, and Congressman Warren won’t dare move against us when we know all about what he’s been up to. Truly, Michael, this may be one of the most successful missions you’ve ever run, failing to bring in Nikita aside.”

Michael twitched, but only Alex saw it, as Percy turned and walked around his desk. Michael cleared his throat. “Sir, there is one truck still out there, with the rest of Warren’s supply. I won’t consider this mission complete until we’ve located that truck as well.”

Alex nearly let her jaw drop, but clamped her mouth shut just in time. She could believe that he could get some lies past Percy, or even Amanda, but this one was more than just abstaining from a few details, like the specifics of how much Nikita had been involved. “Of course, of course,” Percy said, too caught up in the victory, it seemed, to detect whatever Michael was concealing. He dismissed them from his office, and after looking around for other agents, Michael put a hand on Alex’s back and guided her back out the way they had come in. 

“He’s going to sell it,” Michael said, once they were outside. “That’s what he always wanted. It was never about blackmail. He just wanted to take over Warren’s operation.”

“Yes?” answered Alex, unsure where this was leading. They had been used to uncover the source and customer list of a secret arms dealer who was clearly using his political seat to protect his own interests, but if that was a surprise to Michael, she wasn’t entirely sure why. “Did you think he wouldn’t?”

He looked at her. “I didn’t,” he said, and opened the door to the garage. “Keep an eye out, while I back the truck out.”

An hour later, they showed up at the door of the tailors’ shop where Nikita lived, Alex on the step behind Michael making apologetic faces. “I’m done,” Michael said. “I’m in. I can be another mole inside Division, or we can all leave right now, but it’s over. I’m not doing this so Percy can do the same thing we just stopped.”

“And we have a truck full of lewisite,” Alex added, but assumed she wasn’t quite heard, as Michael and Nikita embraced, kissing as if they had years of not doing so to make up for. As far as Alex could tell, they probably did.

After a certain amount of that, the three of them drove south, towards the coast, past Norfolk to a remote stretch of land along the ocean, with some cliffs dropping straight down into the water and a tide about to go out. “You got the rock?” Nikita asked, and Michael hefted the big rock he had picked up onto the gas pedal while Alex held down the brake.  

“Okay, one… two… three!” Alex counted off, and released the brake, letting Michael pull her free of the vehicle as it launched forward, gaining momentum as it sped towards the cliff’s edge, and then going over and into the ocean and taking crates full of sealed canisters of poison gas with it, to sink under the waves forever. Then they headed back for the road, Michael and Nikita holding hands while Alex strode ahead, walking into an uncertain future with just the three of them up against men who would use any means to profit from war and destruction and protected by many layers of of government conspiracies. 

But there were worse odds, and none of them were alone anymore.