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It’s difficult to admit, but Cypher has become arrogant in his old (middle) age.
Half of his safehouses are compromised; the other half are probably on the verge of being discovered as well. He should have scrubbed the records better, paid the landlords more, should have torched them instead of keeping them, out of what? Laziness? General incompetence? Maybe sentimentality, if having the knowledge of a safety net is a sentimentality. Either way, he should have been better.
The age-old adage, he drums his fingers along the steering wheel, I should have been better . Samm Henshaw’s “The World Is Mine” plays through the old stereo; the music crackles and skips at times, which is rather par for course for hotwiring an old car in an impound.
It’s fine though. There’s only one safehouse that matters.
He’s driving down a scenic, back route that can barely be called a road – it’s more accurate to say it’s a trail, suitably tough on the old car’s tires. The Moroccan landscape flits by; in this part of the country, the greenery is more like yellow-ery and the arid soil is more like rocks.
The blackmailer is still on his mind. They may have found his safehouses and his real name (which isn’t a particularly close-kept secret, some of the other protocol agents know his first name and his birth certificate is public record), but they don’t know his history .
“Because what’s another year without Nora seeing your eyes…”
The words flash in his mind and there’s a bead of vindication within him. They think they have frightened him – they’ve only revealed how little they know.
Because Nora is dead.
Legally, she’s alive. There is no death certificate. However, Aamir has seen Nora with his own (then real) eyes and buried her with his own hands, in a grave outside of “Bind” marked only by a wilting bouquet of white lilies, poeticus daffodils, and peonies. A promise of rebirth, resurrection.
He pulls into the dirt driveway of a cottage in the middle of nowhere. Aamir examines his appearance in the rear-view mirror, at the bright, all-encompassing blue of his prosthetic eyes. It’s unnerving – the lack of discernible pupils, iris, sclera… the lack of anything except that blue.
They say that eyes are the windows to a person’s soul. Cypher doesn’t have one.
The cottage door swings wide open and a little girl comes flying – not literally – out. “Baba!” Imane shrieks with delight and he sweeps her into his arms. He sets the 8-year old on his hip and immediately her hands go to his face, looking at him with the adoration that only children possess.
“Hello little one,” he says, his words soft and hushed. “How have you been?”
It’s strange to speak Arabic again after weeks of not even hearing the language.
“Good! Awesome!” Imane grins. “I missed you, Baba .”
“I’ve missed you too. Are you still breezing through your schoolwork?”
“I’m not breezing through , but I think I’m doing good,” she says modestly. “I’ve been learning about the solar system. Jida says that Pluto isn’t a planet because it’s tiny and it doesn’t go in circles.”
“Oh, would you like to go to Pluto someday?” He asks, simply to hear her admonish him for not knowing about how astronauts have only just gotten to Mars, but maybe she can go there or to Mercury, since she can’t go to Venus because the air there is bad.
In the cottage door stands Nora’s mother, who watches upon the scene impassively. Aamir has never been particularly close to his in-laws – his career of choice caused disdain – and their relationship has deteriorated to a one-sided hostility after Nora’s death. But they love and care for Imane and so Aamir loves and cares for them in turn.
“Why don’t you tell me more inside?” Aamir interrupts and his daughter acqueises, gesturing to be put back down.
Inside, there’s a pot of harira on the stove and his father-in-law sits at the dining table, going through some architectural drafts, and his mother-in-law reluctantly sets out a bowl for him. “You should have called ahead,” she chides. “We would have had more food prepared.”
“I ate before driving down here. If there isn’t enough–”
“Don’t be silly. The drive from the airport is several hours long and we don’t get many guests,” she says the last part pointedly and Aamir struggles to keep the guilty wince off of his face.
Living in isolation in rural Morocco is… difficult, especially for Imane, but Aamir couldn’t convince them to relocate outside of their home country.
“Then thank you, Eama, and I’m sorry to impose.”
She clicks her tongue disapprovingly and Imane takes the opportunity to continue her earlier ramblings about space, though this time she talks of a cartoon that takes place in the future.
After the lunch and hours of being, playing, talking with his daughter, Cypher turns to his last task: checking on the defense systems of the safehouse. There are camouflaged cameras posted in various parts of the house – a few of them have been turned towards the wall, most likely for privacy. He, futilely, turns them back around, ignoring the judgemental glare from his father-in-law. The tripwires in the windows are undisturbed and the cages that are set to detonate when the wires trip are still primed and ready. The panic room and escape tunnel’s rations aren’t set to expire for another 2 years.
The house is fine. It will hopefully continue to be fine.
Aamir hugs his daughter goodbye, tells her that she can no longer call him on the secure line, that things are getting too dangerous and her safety is important.
“But it will be alright,” he says, “I’ll try to visit more. And as long as you hold me in your heart and I hold you in mine, as I always will, then I’m with you.”
Imane nods into his shoulder and he can feel her tears and snot bleed through the fabric of his button-down. He cannot cry anymore, but he thinks he would everytime he leaves her.
His family is not whole or safe anymore, but it will be.
Cypher will make sure of that.