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The interrogation room smells of disinfectant. Aside from the hydrogen peroxide and chlorine water there is only dirt, blood and sweat remained. Adler feels this woman trembling under his touch. He looks down at her, the former team member whose jaw he clamps down on is twitching slightly, her vacant eyes are looking back, physiological tears running down.
"Bell." He says gravely, "Where is Perseus?"
He could have been less harsh with her, but their actions had revealed that they were desperate. Bell is their last hope, though he never wants to expose that. He is used to staking all his bets and knows he would always win. Experience had fed his arrogance over the years, something he fears would never change until the last day.
Bell looks on the verge of breaking under his pressure, her skin taut, eyes numb and fearful. For any test subject who had been subjected to the MK-ultra, she has been more than expected. She should have died of tachycardia from the overdose a long time ago, instead of still lying in front of him breathing. Even so she remains silent as dead, just as she has been when he first saw her in the interrogation chair. Nothing has ever changed. Adler feels his chest tightened, it was frustration he’d never admit beating at his heart. His fingers are unconsciously straining, as if in a last ditch effort to squeeze intel out of this tenacious woman. Suddenly, as if guided by something, she exhales softly.
"Duga. Radar array near Duga."
His chest relaxes.
"You made the right choice, Bell. You're still one of us." He quickly releases his hand and takes hers instead, pulling the almost prisoner up from the bed with a gentle force that lends itself to keeping her on her feet. Bell's skin is cold, feeling like touching the darkness. She keeps her head down, her left hand clasps with his, and they lean so close, like enemies closer than friends.
From that moment on, something has changed. Bell no longer looks at him, or listens attentively to the commands he utters. She becomes someone who acts entirely on one’s free will. This gives Adler an unfamiliar sense of strangeness. He knows that there is no going back to the unnatural superior and subordinate relationship they’ve been attached in the past, for that path has been wrong from the most beginning. He accepts the reality openly, but there is always a dullness weighing on the heart. When Bell is on his passenger side, her extraordinary silence starts to become too much to bear. His hands squeeze the steering wheel at the thought that he may no longer know what is on her mind.
He raises his hand to check the time, 2pm. They don't have much time wasted, the priority is to stop Perseus' insane terrorist attack, and after that - He always has time to think about Bell. Maybe they will transfer her, or get her a false identity to go incognito on this.On either way, he will know where she is.
He does think that way when picking up the gun.
It doesn't need to take long to realize the deception. There is only disconcerting silence all around them, in the marching trail or signs of Perseus, facts that can be easily recognized as present - He loses the bet, wiping out entire fortune in hand. Even if they know Perseus' location again now, there is nothing to stop him from pressing that button.
His eyes are sore behind sunglasses, but he still looks at Bell calmly, as he did so many times over the past few weeks, only this time he can't tell what she is thinking through her eyes anymore.
"You pull us out to the middle of nowhere Russia so Perseus can detonate those nukes?"
Bell looks back at him, making him feel that a little bit ludicrous. Whatever words come out of her mouth in a moment will only make that laugh louder. He thought he could change her, and in the end, she is still the same loathsome Soviet terrorist fanatically plotting the destruction of the free world, a madwoman who couldn't communicate with. He hates the pathetic end, and that hatred is projected onto his creation, the one who seems as if she had never been broken. But Bell just looks at him. With that look she shakes her head, and reaches out to make a signal.
Need no warning, her movements telegraph the ambush. The piercing sound of an armor-breaking head cuts through the air, smashing a chasm between them that was already there. Adler grips on his gun tightened and turns. He can hear shouts in Russian coming from behind him, filled with all the disgusting blindness and agitation .He hasn't heard Bell open her mouth, not a single word from the time she has awakened from brainwashing to she returns to the arms of her Soviet cohorts.
Gunfire finally intertwines, the thick smoke reminding him of the first time he caught Arash in Turkey. In the dust raised by the engagement, he hears her shoot Park, brutally, precisely, just as he would have done. After that is Mason, Woods, and he feels a stabbing pain in his lower back. He has to drag his body inside the nearest facility, sliding down slowly against a cabinet. Through the shattered lens, he sees the spots of blood he has left along the way. He knows this ordeal wouldn't last long. Bell won't let him go, hell she shouldn't. She will follow his path. she will find him.
In the few minutes he waits, Adler has enough time to think about him and Bell, those......little things happened between them. He has taught her quite a bit, and likewise took a part of her forever as a price. Even so he hasn't taken away her loyalty to Perseus. He doesn't blame her for being a Soviet spy, just doesn't think it was a good time to tear open the wounds. There was a chance to make her one of them.
Bell had parted with a few of his cigarettes during the few difficult nights spent at Die Landebahn. Not out of past habit, probably just a kind of pry. Her gesture of holding the cigarette was rusty. It was obvious that the Soviet ghost didn't have a preference for smoking. She leaned against his desk, frowning slightly as she tucked the filter between lips with two fingers.
The lighter was held in his hand, and when Bell turned her head to look at him, the time between them suddenly produced a brief freeze for a few seconds. He felt his mind leave his own for a moment, giving him an urge to light her that cigarette. Until he realized that Bell was being disturbed by his gaze at her.
"Take this." He handed out the lighter.
Bell lit cigarettes and they sat quietly together. Park and Lazar had left. Mason and Woods, out in the field. Sims was slumped over the table in his room making light snoring noises. They tacitly remained speechless, sipping solitude and nicotine together for the few hours they were temporarily away from Perseus, Operation Green Light, or the nuke. Time flowed along with midnight, smoke rising slowly in the dimly lit safe house. As she reached up to wave it away, through the haze he could see through in her moist eyes, trust in him, and perhaps a little bit of curiosity.
His breathing is heavier and limbs are starting to get cold, a sign of blood loss. He is a little skeptical if Bell can find him before he breathes his last. Lucky for him, she almost never lived up to his expectations, and after only ten seconds or so, she pushes the door open.
"Gald to see you still care." He feels an urge to cough, blood rushing outward along his breath. But he manages to finish the whole sentence, coughing up a little froth of blood right after that.
Bell's reticence is disappointing. Adler tilts his head up to look at her, only his eyes are blurry and it is hard to identify if there is that Bell he remembered. Soft shadows fills the space between them until she walks up to him and crouches down.
"Mind giving me a light?" He says.
She knows where he keeps his cigarette case without reminding. He can almost imagine the usual coldness of her fingertips when she shoves the cigarette into his mouth. When she comes close enough, it takes him a moment to finally look clearly into her eyes. It's her trust in him. A little bit is enough.
He straightens up violently, one hand clamping down on her shoulder, stabbing out the dagger that has been hidden for far too long. He watches it come closer to her unprotected neck. Bell manages to dodge the blow until she reacts by gripping the hand in which he has grabbed the dagger with both of hers, sending a thrust towards his chest. A powerful force is against his hand as he knows he has hit the end wall.
He lets go, letting Bell plunge the dagger into his chest. The free right hand caresses her left cheek. She isn't wearing a balaclava hood, so for the moment her cheek is slightly reddened by the cold Khabarovsk wind. When he touches that part, it is like stroking a piece of goose down that has grown cold.
Bell freezes, her reaction to that actually hitting him less than the sharp pain coming out of his chest. He is tempted to open his mouth and say something more, in the case nothing about the Soviet or America, nor all the blame they’ve been carried with, but liquid rises up from his stomach and stops him from speaking. He sees Bell still clutching the weapon that will soon kill him in a moment, but sinking her face hard into his palm. The expression on her face shifts from disbelief to another he can no longer find out. She opens her mouth, as he——
Fell into his own abyss, then.
Death should not be painful, at least not in this kind.
Adler pants as he tries to open his eyes. He feels some sort of liquid over his face, mainly over his eyes, which is exactly what makes it difficult to blink. He wipes it off his face with sleeves, each step carrying a dull ache. The bottom line is that he notices that his body reacts a little slower than it used to be, not noticeable, but a reminder every time he tries to move quickly that no longer getting any younger. He struggles to make his eyes clean. His aviator sunglasses are missing, which is probably why the blood splatters into his eyes.
He looses his hands. A heavy body slips from his grasp.
"......the fuck" he mutters, straightening up and looking around. In the few seconds it takes to adjust to his vision he realizes that this place is a far cry from the hell he perceives it to be. More than likely, it's a modern facility below ground that has just been covered in a mess from a gunfight. He stands in the middle of a pile of specially armed corpses, the red warning lights rotating their shine.
He takes a moment to process the status. He finds his sunglasses in his breast pocket——a new pair, obviously not the one he is familiar with. Searching the bodies for information takes as much of energy. He observes the enemy's attire and tries quickly moving his arms again. For some reason, a suspicion looms in his mind.
He finds a note from the lining of a corpse and stares at the row of "10.1991" on the record. Fingers rub the rough surface of the paper. What else can he express now? Perhaps best of all: He is glad to see that on the tenth anniversary of the detonation of the nuclear bomb, there are still American agents messing all around in the world with guns.
Waking up after a decade of sleep isn't an experience everyone can get, and what's even more critical is that you don't remember why you're fighting, why you're here, or even if you're supposed to be alive ten years later. Maybe Bell doesn't kill him back then——not enough for another tenable inference apparently. Even if she missed, Perseus wouldn't. He searches his pockets again, finding a case of cigarettes and a copy of the note in his usual pocket. The latest message is for Woods: underneath Washington Union Station.
So Woods is still alive. Normally, dead people don't send messages to each other. This is another mystery that needs to be solved.
He stands up and picks up a gun that still has a surplus of ammunition. In the face of the current predicament, all of these questions can be left to be answered later.
Enemies are still pouring in, and he can already hear disorganized footsteps coming from the hallway. He looks around, searching for a temporary hiding place. A moan of pain from an interrogation room off to the side catches his attention. He holds the holster on the right side of his waist, where he is used to, and still has a 1911 under his touch. He draws it out and steps into the interrogation room.
It still takes several seconds to get the wounded interrogator to cooperate. His sunglasses are knocked out during the brief struggle. He has to point his pistol at the man's temple and stare intently at the frosted glass wall until a short, piercing shot rang in his ear.
There is caught in a crossfire outside, and if one group is intent on putting him to death, then the other group is clearly someone he could use. The interrogator he has grasped tries to bite, so he flexes his knee, poking the man hard in the soft tissue of his backside until he grunts in pain.
The door is slammed open and the first step the two uninvited guests take after barging into the interrogation room is to raise their hands, holding the guns. "Easy Adler." The guy in a ducktail hat and SWAT police uniform puts his weapon down, "We're here to help."
Troy Marshall. He's met the man, Woods' protégé.
So——"I guess Woods got my message." He says uncertainly. The interrogator is useless, so he fires wearily, sticking the 1911 back in his leg-side holster as the body falls down.
"Old man says you worth it." Marshall assesses him kindly as the mood finally eases. "Hope he's right." He turns to contact his teammates. Adler watches as he moves his body, revealing the face of his silent partner.
An absurd wariness suddenly hits him. He blinks just a little, letting the shock run down his spine. It's not often in a person's life that they can experience two wonders of experiencing temporal dislocation and coming back from the dead world in a short period of time. Adler doesn't consider himself a man ruled by luck, or he wouldn't have died in Duga. But he does, for the first time in his life, mistakenly believe that he has misread the situation. He closes his eyes, then opens again, slowly enough to recover from dizziness.
Doesn’t change, that is Bell.