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The keys clattered on her table, lights in the small apartment still off. Julia flicked on the fan before the light. Even at night, Rome remained disgustingly hot. She longed for the States, and her air conditioning unit in her nice house and her nice neighbourhood. Sure, the work was fulfilling, and she saw every day how the refugees coming off the boats needed her help. But still, a few creature comforts wouldn't hurt.
She washed her hands, lathering them in soap. Erik was in Geneva. She'd have the bed to herself. At least that was something.
It wasn't until she emerged from her kitchen that she noticed the open door to her bedroom. She had learned not to ignore that sick feeling in her stomach that told her both that she was in danger, and the cops would be insanely out of their league. She grabbed a steak knife from the kitchen, tiptoeing slowly to her door. Then, with a crash and a yell she burst in.
It took a moment for Julia to register the figure on her bedsheets.
"Don't, don't --!"
The accent was clipped, British, and familiar. A slight desperation at the end of it, though.
"Ilsa?" Julia breathed, the knife clattering on the wood floor. The spy managed a little wan wave, revealing a pool of blood, just above her heart.
Julia gasped and rushed towards her, but Ilsa cried out.
"Wait! Do you have your phone on you?" she spoke with an urgent fire. Julia's hand instinctively went to the pocket of her jeans. "Get rid of it, in the freezer.”
Right, she’d heard of this trick. It went into the freezer, the door firmly shut. She grabbed a first aid kit from beneath the sink, running back into her room and flicking on the light.
Ilsa winced, her pale face turning even more white, and it occurred to Julia just what a terrible shape the woman was in. Such a contrast from the confident, cocky professional from Kashmir, disarming a nuke and emerging from a fight to the death with little more than a twisted ankle and a bruised neck.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I had nowhere else to go.”
Julia would be a fool to believe every word that came out of a spy’s mouth, but she believed that at least. The woman in the bed did not seem the type to make friends easily.
She knelt beside her, examining the wound.
The wound was deep, and it desperately needed attention. Not fatal, though. Just about.
“Where were you?”
“Venice.”
“This is Rome.”
“I am aware,” Ilsa said dryly.
She should be used to the idea of these spies being capable of extreme physical feats. She’d shocked her ex-husband back to life, and watched him climb onto a helicopter in the air. Hell, she’d disarmed a nuclear bomb.
But this threw her for a loop.
“A half inch lower and --”
“I know,” Ilsa gritted out. Julia looked at her apologetically, and got to work.
Julia wasn’t gentle -- even now that she worked regularly without anaesthetic, her surgeon's hands never regained their softness. At least she was certain that the spy could handle it, the British woman lying deathly still. It was such a deep stillness, that it left her feeling disconcerted.
“How’s Ethan?” She asked, partly to distract Ilsa, but mainly because she needed to know her former husband was not, what was the term they used? Permanently disavowed.
Ilsa looked lost, just for a moment.
“I don’t know.”
Julia felt a frisson of déjà vu at the look on Ilsa’s face.
Perhaps it was the unique ability of all spies to sound like that -- to go from a force of nature to a small child in need of comfort. Or perhaps it was yet another trait shared between the woman and Ethan.
Much like the shutter that came down in front of the woman’s eyes after a mere moment, her blue gaze focusing despite the pain.
“You could say that it's all part of the plan,” she said coolly, even if her voice shook on the final word. Julia shook her head.
"And this? Was this part of the plan?" She kept her voice steady as she stitched the woman up. "Getting stabbed in the heart?"
Ilsa managed a sweat-soaked grin, and it was one far too familiar for Julia's liking.
"Less of a plan and more…"
"Exploiting an opportunity?"
The other woman's grin was wolfish and her voice lilted in a teasing song. "Can't kill me if I'm already dead."
Julia pursed her lips.
“So you had an opportunity?”
“Moreso the opportunity was… thrust upon me,” the spy rolled her ‘r’ obnoxiously, even as Julia’s sterilised needle weaved in and out of her skin. She was considerably rougher than she needed to be. Ilsa winced, then sighed. “We made an agreement, before everything. If I had a chance, I’d fake my death. I had one, so I took it.”
Ilsa’s voice was small by the end, almost innocent.
Julia didn't think too often of her short-lived marriage to Ethan. A good man, but their story was only ever going to end one way. With the years of hindsight, and Erik by her side, that was obvious. Ilsa, on the other hand?
Oh, of course he liked her. They were the same brand of insane.
It was evident in the way the spy rolled her shoulder back, wincing in pain before shrugging it off. Julia handed her a donated t-shirt, it made her look like a child when she put it on. Gaunt and vulnerable.
Ilsa Faust: former MI6 operative, part time IMF agent and now, an anonymous refugee.
Still, Julia knew she would not stay down for long. She was careful in her next wording, knowing that Ilsa would pick up on any flaw in her logic.
“I want to know what’s happening.” she said firmly. Ilsa cocked her head, but said nothing. She looked at her bare feet, and Julia noticed the woman was ready to bolt. “Please.”
Ilsa thought for another long second, and then told her.
Of course it was completely insane.
"So what's the plan now?" Julia asked once she was done. Ilsa gave her a look.
"There's no further plan. There can't be," she said.
"But we don't even know if Ethan --"
Another sharp look. Ah.
That was the point.
Blind faith.
Ethan would stop Gabriel because he had to, and Ilsa would stay hidden because there was no other way. How else could they outsmart a purely logical god other than by being completely illogical ?
That should go on the coat of arms of the IMF.
“So he gets the key, finds where the AI hardware is located…”
“And then he’ll get in touch.”
She felt shaky on her legs. Her marriage to Ethan was the best thing that ever happened to her, because it taught her all that she was capable of being, and all that she was decidedly not able to handle. This was the latter.
“And you’ll just drop everything? Join him?”
Ilsa nodded, covering her t-shirt with a denim jacket pilfered from Julia’s wardrobe. “I’ll have a few hours to get there, but yes.”
Julia scoffed.
"I think you'll have a bit longer than that."
Ilsa frowned, tensing at the surgeon's words. An absurd thought crossed Julia’s mind at the look on the spy’s face.
They believed this Gabriel guy's hype just as much as he did. The greatest spies in the world, tricked by a clever sleight of hand.
"This AI thing? It's not sentient," Julia said. “I doubt it’s even a true AI.”
Ilsa shook her head.
“You’d be surprised. This Entity? It’s like nothing you’ve ever seen.”
Julia sighed. The woman was blinded. Her fear of this thing, and of the man who wielded it, was clouding her judgement.
“I’m sure it’s extremely clever. I don’t doubt that it’s the most advanced machine on the planet. I just…I don’t think it’s sentient.”
"No, you haven't seen it, I saw --"
"I know what tech can do, Ilsa. For god's sake, I was a surgeon at Mass General for four years," if the woman before her was to succeed in her chosen mission, she needed to hear this. "I once saw a claw-handed machine remove shrapnel from a little girl's bullet wound. I couldn't do it, my hands were shaking so hard at her little heartbeat. Her father shook my hand in gratitude with tears pouring down his cheeks and I had nothing to do with it. I just watched."
Even now, the memory evoked a twinge of guilt in her stomach.
"That machine saved the life of that little girl, but that doesn't make it sentient. It makes it the opposite."
Ilsa squirmed, so unlike her. "But it knew . It knew to threaten me, and Benji. It knew Ethan wouldn't choose between --"
Julia tried not to laugh.
"That means it took a bunch of data points and extrapolated a pretty obvious outcome from that. It can analyse data, but that doesn't make it sentient."
Ilsa was silent, considering. Recalibrating, maybe.
She took a step forward, looking Ilsa directly in the eye.
"Don't mistake shadows dancing on the wall of a cave for the real light."
She watched as Ilsa's eyes narrowed, and focused. Another familiar glance.
"It's a very well-programmed machine," the spy said finally. Julia nodded.
"Which means?"
Realisation dawned in the other woman's intelligent blue eyes. Realisation and a fierce resolve. Another feeling of déjà vu.
"You can't make that jump!"
"Why not?"
"Because to do it, you'd have to be insane."
He made the jump with ease, because of course he did, and a sheer canyon drop separated the pair for the rest of their hike in the Sierras.
"There's a programmer, and I can find them."
Julia felt a rush of warmth for the spy. She was so glad that Ethan had found someone who understood him. And it stood to reason that the only person who could ever understand him would basically be him. She offered her a warm smile.
A thought occurred to her, and she grabbed a scrap of paper by her bed, jotting down a name and address.
She pressed the piece of paper into Ilsa's hands.
"No plans, I know, but this guy…if you need him, he can get you into Morocco. He owes me a favour."
Julia didn’t have many contacts, and she knew the other woman would likely not need such a person. But it made her feel better to know that maybe she’d helped her. Maybe she’d offered her something useful, even if it was only the assurance that she was not alone in this fight. Ilsa smiled, it softened her, made her seem a decade younger, unburdened by the weight of the entire world and Ethan's fate.
The smile faded when she caught sight of something behind Julia. The freezer. She nodded towards it.
"Throw it out," she shifted uncomfortably, as though terribly embarrassed for her concern. "Just in case."
Julia squeezed her hand, and removed the phone. It was cold, but probably not as cold as it should be, given the time it had spent in there. She threw it, and the phone landed perfectly in the heart of her kitchen trash can. This AI was almost certainly not sentient, but it was dangerous. That much could not be denied. Still, she felt better being rid of the phone.
She smiled and saw the spy's shoulders relax slightly, and saw her chest deflate in relief.
"I won't tell you to stay safe, or even in touch," she said to Ilsa, simply. Julia searched her brain for the right words, but none came. No logical conclusion for the statement, just that same fondness she held for the spies who had lied their way into her life. "Just, give Ethan my best."
Ilsa nodded silently.
It felt like Julia simply blinked and the spy was gone into the Rome night, leaving nothing but an open window in return.