Act IV: …else I am not

"In mythology, Napoleon," Illya offhandedly observed another three days later as the two were reading over Rimheac's often cryptic turned-over case notes, "the chimera was comprised of three animals: lion, goat and dragon."

"Homer in the Iliad included the creature also possessing a tail with the head of a snake," supplemented Napoleon.

"I think we can go with the more widely circulated description in this circumstance," Illya decided, "since the chimera in question described herself as being three."

"But the golden-eyed girl isn't really that kind of mythical monster, Illya."

"Frankly, we don't know what she is." Illya gainsaid his friend's inference. "Though referencing her as she does likewise correspond to mythology since the chimera of legend was always female. From the very sparse documentation with which Rimheac supplied us concerning his various moments of conscious contact with the creature, the description of her as a chimera does indeed seem apropos."

"The chimera of legend was destroyed with a block of lead that Bellerophon, from the back of Pegasus, thrust into her throat with a spear and that her own fiery breath subsequently melted to inhibit her breathing." Napoleon, who was himself certainly no stranger to the classics, detailed knowledgeably.

Illya nodded. "Exactly so."

"Pardon my denseness here, tovarisch, but I don't see how that helps us with our predicament."

"Rimheac hypothesizes in his transcripts that the bonding practice of the chimera is related to her central nervous system in some way," Illya began his explanation.

"And?" prompted Solo.

"Lead can adversely affect the central nervous system, Napoleon. That's what lead poisoning does in the main."

"Illya, that could kill her."

Again Illya nodded. "It could."

"I'm not okay with that." Napoleon emphasized with a slight shake of his head.

"We have to be free of the bonding.' Kuryakin took the logical approach. "Our choices on that score might well be extremely limited."

Napoleon released an unhappy sigh. "Why do you think she bonded with us? Simple convenience?"

Now it was Illya who shook his head. "I doubt it. Let me propose something to you, Napoleon, something that is very much speculation."

Napoleon could not suppress a small smirk. "Not like we have much else to go on here."

"The chimera of legend had three heads: one of a lion, one of a goat, and one of a dragon."

"We've already established that. You perceive that as relevant because?" questioned Solo with the quirking of an eyebrow.

"Think on what the golden-eyed girl invokes in us to manifest. Hunger in me: the earthy quality of the goat that will eat seemingly anything to survive. Loneliness in you: the ethereal quality of the dragon that seemingly makes it always separate from all around it."

"And in Rimheac?" queried Napoleon with a little squint of consideration.

"The fiery quality of the prideful lion displaying itself as a prime predator always in control of its surroundings."

"As the scientist in him sought to control the chimera herself and yet failed?"

"That would seem the most likely scenario," Illya verified.

"So the bonding was brought about by the unfortunate coincidence that we two were the agents Mr. Waverly sent to Rimheac's lab?"

"That's my guess," acknowledged Illya. "And that, at the moment when the chimera realized the resources she required to be three were readily available to her, Rimheac lost any vestige of control and the bonding took place completely independent of him."

"As a total surprise to him," conceded Solo.

"I would warrant it was. He likely thought it no more than an unlikely possibility. And then in an instant it was done and he had no ability to make it undone."

Napoleon massaged his temples, trying desperately to rid himself of this headache that was the reality of a non-fantasy form of chimera.

"Your surmise about the lead though, Illya," he then forwarded, "we don't know that this being eats or drinks or any of that. We don't know if she is in any way physical."

"We use purified lead and disburse it into the air when she appears."

"You're assuming she breathes as we do."

Illya shrugged. "As you already noted, Napoleon, we have nothing to go on here but speculation."

Napoleon stared at his friend and partner for a long while before he made quiet mention, "I don't want to kill her, tovarisch."

"Honestly neither do I, my friend," Illya enlightened him steadily.

"I have to agree that there is little choice in this instance, gentlemen," Alexander Waverly gave his approval of the plan in question.

"It's still not a move I am comfortable with, sir." Napoleon placed his misgivings squarely on the table.

"I understand of course, Mr. Solo," conceded the Continental Chief with a nod. "But we are dealing with complete unknowns here. And Dr. Rimheac refuses to be of much assistance."

"He'll have to be in the room when we do this, sir," Illya advised his superior, "as he appears to be one of the three."

Again Waverly nodded. "Also understood, Mr. Kuryakin. I'm sure we can arrange to have the good doctor sufficiently sedated in order to insure he doesn't provide a hindrance to what must be done."

"The doctor, Napoleon and I will all require protective gear." Illya detailed particular necessities of the proposal.

"Something to which the golden-eyed girl won't have access," commented Napoleon rather glumly.

Waverly's gaze focused on his Chief of Enforcement. "The situation isn't ideal, Mr. Solo. Of that there is little question. But after what you and Mr. Kuryakin reported to me regarding the interference of this… being during your last mission, we cannot take the risk of her further intervention in any of your future actions."

"I do know that, sir," conceded Napoleon. "It's just she always seems so…"

"Lonely, Napoleon? Hungry?" prompted Illya meaningfully.

"Sad," finalized Solo rather sadly himself.

"Destruction is always a sad business," Kuryakin analyzed coolly. "And a chimera is always a creature of destruction."

"What we are seeking ourselves to destroy in this case, gentlemen," Waverly pointedly reminded his operatives, "is nothing more than her bond with you."

"Yet sir, she herself told us: she is always three, else she is not," came Napoleon's plainspoken conclusion.

There was a small enclosed porch in Rimheac's safe house that was to be used for the procedure to hopefully break the bonding of the chimera with her three. As Solo and Kuryakin were suiting up as necessary for that attempt, Illya put forth almost apologetically to his partner, "I know you don't really want to do this. I know it is seemingly more difficult for you than for me. I don't really understand why, but I do recognize it is so. It's just that being robbed of my mental independence, Napoleon: that absolutely terrifies me."

Napoleon bit his lip, ruminating on how difficult it likely was for Illya to confess this, even to him. "And I know we have to do this, Illya. Yet I just can't pretend it doesn't make me feel somehow like a cold-blooded murderer. Not like someone killing out of necessity for a greater good.

"You see," he furthered, willing himself to match his partner's difficult confession with one equally as difficult for himself, "when I heard her voice that first time, in my head, what I heard her say was 'Save me'."

Kuryakin cocked his head at the other man. "Funny, what I heard her say that first time was 'Destroy me'."

Napoleon blinked. "Are we being manipulated even now, Illya?"

Illya shook his head in bafflement. "Who can say, my friend? Who can say?"

Napoleon took a deep breath. "Let's get this over with," he determined steadfastly.

Illya silently nodded his agreement. He pulled on his visored hood and spoke into its internally housed microphone, a means of communication to HQ as well as amplification of his voice to make it heard through the headgear by those in the immediate vicinity. "We're set on this end, Control."

"Understood, Mr. Kuryakin," an U.N.C.L.E. tech responded. "I do want to remind you fellas that purified lead particles can prove quite combustible."

"Understood," acknowledged Illya in turn. "We are all wearing our flame retardant HAZMAT gear. Dr. Rimheac is already inside. I saw him properly outfitted once the tranquilizers had kicked in. As soon as Mr. Solo masks up, we will enter the enclosure."

"I will remotely activate the lockdown immediately upon receipt of the auto-signal from your monitoring equipment showing you both likewise within the target area," finalized the tech."

With proper protocol established, Illya again nodded to his partner, who subsequently donned his own visored hood. Both men then made their way into the enclosed porch. Behind their entrance the door locked with a somewhat unnaturally loud and perhaps ominous audible click.

The shutters on the numerous floor-to-ceiling windows of the porch were all tightly closed. Thus again the atmosphere in which sat a definitely mellowed Dr. Rimheac was extremely dark. Wearing the same type of protective gear as were Napoleon and Illya, he was seated quietly in his chair, the tranquilizers having done their work to leave him somewhat somnolent.

"How did they manage to get the tranquilizers in him without benefit of an on-site physician?" quietly questioned Napoleon of Illya, his voice somewhat distorted by the microphone housed in the appropriate position within the hood. "Sleep dart?"

Illya shook his head. "In his food, so to produce a more gradually sustained effect, as I understand. And I was advised by Section VIII that the lead particles have been stored in a separate tank of the internal air filtration system. Bit of a risk to be sure," Kuryakin furthered.

"Not any more so than this whole operation, tovarisch," Solo pointedly reminded his partner. Then addressing Rimheac directly, Napoleon stated in a louder voice," "We wish to make sentient contact with the golden-eyed girl, Doctor."

"Do you think these measures will offer you protection?" queried Rimheac with a careless gesture indicating their dress as well as his own. "They will be of no more use against the chimera than was the special safety glass of the enclosure in my lab."

"Still, when facing an unknown," expounded Illya, "it is always the wisest course to take what precautions one can."

"We will take our chances," Solo informed Rimheac. "Can you summon her?" he further inquired.

Wearily Rimheac nodded. "That little I can still do," he admitted. "Though I warn you that I cannot any longer waylay her other desires."

"Then summon her," commanded Kuryakin firmly.

Rimheac submissively closed his eyes and within no more than an instant she was there, manifesting before them all. Her huge golden-eyes seemingly more intensely sad than ever.

"I am here," came her unspeaking declaration.

"You must detach from us," demanded Illya in a no-nonsense tone.

"I am three. I am always three," was her only response.

"We would not be part of the three." Napoleon employed a gentler tone with her.

"I am three, else I am not," she persisted with one-note obduracy.

"We cannot be of your three," Illya stated unequivocally.

"We are beings who can only be one, who must always be only one." Napoleon attempted to explain. "It frustrates and bewilders us to be other than singularly ourselves."

"I am three," she repeated, her lips never so much as moving. "I am always three."

"She doesn't understand, Illya," forwarded Napoleon.

"Or doesn't wish to," suggested Illya in turn. "In any case, we can't use reason here, Napoleon. If she is without higher intelligence, we will never get through to her. Or if her need to stay bonded as three doesn't permit for any mitigating circumstances, we will never convince her of the logic or right of those circumstances. We have no choice."

Napoleon bit his lip behind the cover of his visor, but nodded his reluctant agreement.

"Operation Bellerophon: go." Illya made the necessary declaration into his visor's microphone. Immediately a flurry of purified lead particles were released into the air around them, the motes initially darker than the dark itself. In the next moment, those particles blazed out hotly and briefly, tiny sparks blinking like stars in a midnight sky.

"No!" screamed out Rimheac suddenly, no longer mellow. "No, no, no! You cannot do this!"

With both hands the doctor yanked off his protective headgear.

"Emergency pull-out!" yelled Napoleon into the mike in his own visor as he and Illya both leapt toward Rimheac. In the end the two agents wrestled the surprisingly resistant man to the floor, dragging the defected Thrush scientist bodily from the room. The door was remotely unlocked briefly, permitting their exits, even as a vacuum system started suctioning the very air from the porch enclosure. Immediately as their monitors signaled them all clear of the target area, the door was remotely relocked behind them.

As for the golden-eyed girl, she had vanished… but how or why or even if permanently, neither Solo nor Kuryakin had any clue.

Three Weeks Later

Neither Napoleon Solo nor Illya Kuryakin were plagued by any further nightmares invaded by the presence of the golden-eyed girl. The two men underwent an exhaustive battery of physical, psychiatric and psychological tests and were subsequently declared perfectly fit for active duty, much to not only their own relief but also that of Alexander Waverly. Dr. Rimheac did suffer some adverse effects from his short exposure to the airborne lead particles when he had removed his protective hood. However in the end those effects seemed more a boon than a hardship.

"He doesn't remember anything about the chimera, gentlemen," Mr. Waverly informed his two best operatives. "He has been questioned and undergone psychological evaluation multiple times with the same result. He doesn't recall anything at all of that particular. He does recall defecting from Thrush because of some experimental project, but he recollects no details at all of what that was and seems perfectly content not to recollect any such details."

"He believes U.N.C.L.E. purposely wiped those memories?" surmised Illya.

Waverly nodded. "He does, and seems as well to think such amnesia a necessary facet of his defection."

"So he holds us responsible but doesn't attach any blame?" queried Napoleon with incredulity.

"Exactly so, Mr. Solo. He firmly believes he was previously in great danger and that the Command has done only what was inherently necessary to assure his present and future safety."

"A convenient turn of the screw for us to be sure," noted Solo, still with some astonishment.

"Sometimes good fortune does indeed seem a welcome turn of cosmic intervention," acknowledged the Continental Chief easily.

That seemingly offhand remark resulted in an askance look passing between the other two men in the room; yet neither verbally remarked anything at all in that regard.

"I do have more news for you both," Waverly continued. "You know of the Thrush lab that was taken down by some of our operatives last week?"

Both men nodded. It was an assignment they might have been part of, but for the fact the medical personnel had strongly suggested the Number 1 in Section I wait upon the full results of the testing on his Number 1 and Number 2 in Section II before again sending them out on missions.

"Some unexpected notations written by a fellow supra-national scientist were found on file there relating to Rimheac's experiments."

"Really?" questioned Kuryakin with obvious interest as he reflexively leaned forward in his chair.

"All somewhat cryptic, I'm afraid," admitted the Chief. "However the suggestion within that material is that Rimheac's supposed chimera was actually some sort of internal manifestation of his own nervous system."

"Internal manifestation?" queried Napoleon with a blink. "You mean like a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde scenario?"

"Exactly so," pronounced Waverly. "We can't know what he did to exactly trigger the phenomenon of course, but it all seems to make more sense now, doesn't it? The disappearance of the chimera coinciding with Rimheac's accidental exposure to the purified lead and his subsequent memory loss?"

"Perhaps," hedged Napoleon. He just wasn't convinced.

"Self-experimentation is always dangerous, but we know Thrush doesn't halt its scientific personnel from taking such risks, if that self-experimentation could prove to their advantage," put in Illya. Contrary to Solo's reaction, this hypothesis made everything perfectly clear to him. "Sir, has the possibility been considered that this whole chimera episode, including Dr. Rimheac's initial defection, was all just an elaborate Thrush scheme to somehow discredit U.N.C.L.E.?" he posed a further thought.

"Indeed that possibility has been considered and is accounted a very viable one," Waverly enlightened them, "postulating from what you two men experienced during your last mission. That whole affair could have been disastrous in the extreme and thus might have tarnished the Command's reputation rather badly. However in the end Thrush wound up shooting themselves in the foot, so to speak, as Rimheac likely had less control of the phenomenon then they had hoped. And now he is our creature instead of theirs."

Kuryakin nodded his accord with this view of the situation. Solo remained silent and skeptical.

"You are dismissed, gentlemen." The CC, having shared what new information was available on the chimera incident, now concluded the briefing. "I suggest you both enjoy the rest of your day of semi-leisure as I expect to have a new assignment for you as soon as tomorrow morning."

As the two men were walking the hall after leaving the inner sanctum of the Number 1 in Section I, Napoleon inquired straightforwardly of his friend, "Do you really think that is all she was, Illya? The golden-eyed girl? Just some alter-ego Rimheac conjured from a test-tube?"

Illya shrugged. "Does it truly matter, Napoleon? Either way, it appears she exists no more, if she ever existed at all."

"The explosives you didn't arm, Illya. The sleep-darts I shot that acted like bullets," Napoleon reminded his partner.

"If she was some delusion foisted upon our minds, likely we were as well deluded regarding the nature of our own actions."

"Meaning you actually did arm the charges and I actually did use real bullets?" prodded Solo dubiously.

Illya stopped up short to stand face-to-face with his partner. "Napoleon, the line between what is perceived and what actually is can often be blurred. How many times has Thrush used drugs or brain-washings or other nefarious methods in attempts to blur that line for U.N.C.L.E. field agents?"

"Too many times to count," granted Napoleon.

"Take comfort then in the reality that they failed yet again. And, as Waverly suggested, accept this bit of good fortune as but a welcome turn of cosmic intervention."

Solo sighed heavily. "You're right, tovarisch. Of course you're right."

"And remember, my friend," Kuryakin furthered as he placed a companionable hand on Solo's elbow, "you are never truly alone. Our friendship bonds us much more strongly than the supposed magical intervention of any would-be chimera."

Now Napoleon smiled his most brilliant smile. "And on that note, how 'bout I treat you to lunch? I mean I wouldn't want you to ever go hungry either."

Illya gave the other man his best patented half-smile. "I thought you would never get around to suggesting it."

Solo laughed and good-naturedly slapped his partner on the back.

The two men continued down the gunmetal gray corridor of the New York Headquarters for the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement as the soft whirr of the air circulation system seemed to whisper "You are always one." If, however, that gentle hiss offered any improbable formation of actual words, neither man heard it as such.

—The End—