6. Different Harbors, part 2

You are angry.

No. That's not entirely accurate. Anger is a word too mild and not near adequate to describe what currently roils beneath your chest—livid would be a better fit, and even then it falls short.

"I want to know who that fucking bitch of a pilot is."

Words that hiss through your lips as your heels clack across the vast office pretext of Reyes & Morrison located at the Hightower building on 73rd Street Bauxter.

Around you, your underlings avert their gaze and try their best to stay out of your warpath. An odd few—solicitous and plucky—approach with bandages and antibiotic ointments to try and tend your wounds, only to be met by a vicious snarl that is all teeth.

Second degree burns—ugly blistering red that lines your midriff, arms and upper thighs—all sustained when that bitch idiot of a pilot decided to blow you up with a giant rocket launcher. Really. The burns hurt a lot less than the singe to your pride. You've been outplayed by some crazy faire le clown in the field, and only because they were twittering around with a bigger toy than you've got.

Of course you are livid; of course you are indignant.

They are not better than you.

"Get me my scope feed online," your words come out a strained staccato.

There's a tensed period of silence preceding the hectic scuffle as your underlings scramble to comply. From the central computer set-up beside you, Ares' dispassionate voice sounds out above the fray: "Encrypted call incoming."

"Not now."

"It's your handler. It will be advisory to take the call."

In your already agitated state, your hands clench down into fists, the nails breaking into skin. There's something almost repugnant about an AI advising you on things. Even more so when their counsel turns out to be percipient.

"Patch it through the headset," you grit.

A series of familiar dial tones, and the breathy rasp of your handler comes out harsher than you've remembered.

"Widowmaker. Morroco, Class C. I've just received confirmation the convoy touched down intact in Rabat. What happened."

"We have been double-booked," you pause to inhale a short breath. "There was another player in the field. We engaged fire. The convoy must have witnessed the fall out from our artillery and altered course."

"So, in other words, you failed."

You failed.

Two simple words, and you've never felt more chastened.

"Yes."

"Did you score out the player?"

"No."

"Did the player ID you?"

"I don't know."

"Did you leave behind anything that can compromise your cover?"

You hesitate the slightest before answering: "I abandoned all my equipment out in the field. Code Red was not implemented."

You don't bring up the fact that there's a high likelihood your tech has been rendered invalid by the blast from the rocket. Talon has no care for the what-ifs and the might haves. To them, the only value lies in certitude.

"We do not have a habit of leaving behind witnesses." There's an edge creeping into the voice on the line, an edge cold and unforgiving. You've heard it before, but never on the receiving end. "On account of your merit, I am allowing you 48 hours to clean the scene."

"Yes."

"After that—you know what happens."

The line goes dead.

You stand there with your knuckles bone-white and quaking. You are agitated and you are humiliated, and you stand there, allowing a minute for these emotions to wash over you—wash over, so you don't forget.

After the minute passes, you rein them in. Emotions are nothing but obstacles in the way of a job and you know yourself to be above them. Right now there's a mission to be accomplished, and only after you find out who that brown-haired bitch of a pilot is, only when you have them choking and powerless in your grasp—only then, will you allow time for anger.

"New mission objective," when you next turn to address the room, your hands are steady and your voice is controlled. "Find me the name of that pilot. I want to know who they are, I want to know where they live, I want to know everything about them, right down to their dirtiest, shittiest habits."

[-]

Unbeknownst to you, halfway across the city—in the corner of fifth and sixth on Lenton—a brown haired bitch of a pilot finds herself sneezing uncontrollably as she sits in the middle of a dingy hardware shop owned by one Hana Song.

"Gods," Hana, 19-year-old tech whiz and surprising high school wash out, is huffing in dismay as she inspects the tragedy of a laptop brought into her shop. "Every time I see you it's one disaster after another. Please don't tell me you expect me to fix this."

"Can you?" The brown-haired bitch sniffs—a sound wet and sloppy—as she wipes off her nose with the back of one hand.

"Um. Like. No." Hana looks up at her with flat wooden eyes. "I'm not a necromancer Lena. I cannot revive things that are clearly dead. Look at it. What did you even do? Pitch it into a bonfire?"

"Try a MGR-360 Pulsehawk," Lena replies, dryly. "Listen, if you can't get it to boot, can you at least find out who the owner is?"

"You mean this piece of junk isn't even yours?"

"Not really. I just wanna know who owned it prior that's all."

"That might be a little tricky." Hana jabs the laptop's husk with the tip of a hot-pink screwdriver. "Considering this thing is totally fucked."

"Surely, there must be somethin' you can do?" Lena flashes the girl her best wide-eyed puppy dog impression. "C'mon Hana, can't you work your mojo? You are the best in this biz and if anyone can do the thang, it will 'ave to be you."

Hana shakes her head. "Sucking up and acting cute won't do you any good." So she says, yet she's already turned back to the charred remnants of the laptop, eyes burning with renewed vigor as she flips it over to place it flat on its back. Lena watches as she pokes and prods meticulously around the burnt plastic casing before gingerly prying open a thin, melted slot with her screwdriver.

"Think I might have something here, pass me that magnifier glass over there?"

Lena does so, and Hana brings the optics up to her eye as she inspects a small black chip extracted from the wreckage.

"Well?"

"Well… this RAM module's a little melted but… you know what, I might be able to track the chip for you."

"Really?"

"Keyword being might."

Her words must have fallen on deaf ears because Lena is already cheering and doing a little jiggly dance whilst still seated in her stool; at one point, the woman almost topples over.

"How does Amélie put up with this?" Hana muses out loud with real bafflement as her fingers clack across the keyboard of the shop's computer, running the RAM's serial number through a custom software. A series of soft bleeps ensues as the system does its job. "Speaking of, how are the two of you anyway?"

The question catches Lena off-guard and she freezes in the midst of her embarrassing chair-top shimmying. "Um," she coughs. "Same old same old, I guess."

"You know I'm still insulted I wasn't invited to your wedding right?"

"Hah," Lena lets out a small laugh. "I doubt your parents would have let you fly off to Malta alone at fifteen. Besides, it was a closed-off service anyway, just her parents and mine and a few of our best pals."

"Sounds cozy. Must have been nice."

"It was." Lena murmurs, her eyes taking on a faraway quality as she turns to stare out the stained, dusty windows of the shop.

"Aww. Still seeing stars, Oxton?" Hana chuckles. "Amélie must be something."

"… She is."

"Never thought you of all people could be buckled down this long. I'm glad you finally found room for someone who makes you happy."

Lena says nothing, but the smile stretching across her lips is brittle and hints at rain. A series of rapid buzzing from the computer and the conversation effectively halts.

"Assa! We've got a hit." Hana is grinning as she claps her hands together. "Looks like the chip's retailed by MEKA, no name on the retail receipt, just a billing address."

"What's the address?"

"You are in luck, it's right here in this city. 73rd Street Bauxter, Hightower Building, suite A332."

"Come again?"

"73rd Street Bauxter, Hightower building, suite A332—"

There's an abrupt sound of palm slapping against flesh, and then a: "Holy shite!" Hana looks up to see Lena with one hand against her forehead, the blood draining from her face.

"What's wrong?"

"Bloody buggering shite! I know exactly where that is."

[-]

It's midday.

Most of your employees have filed out of the complex for lunch despite having accomplished next to nothing in the search for that accursed pilot.

There's not much you can do about it. Even an agency such as Talon is bound by State Labor Laws—a fact you find both baffling and regrettable.

Your mood is currently as dark as the mug of steaming black coffee in your hand as you sit at your immaculately kept office table, your shoulders stiff and your back ramrod straight. Taking an absent sip from your mug, you let the bitterness stew in your mouth as you stare obsessively at the scope feed playing and replaying on your desktop screen.

Even with the pixels now digitally enhanced and blown up eighty times over, the quality is still too fuzzy to make out anything of substance. It doesn't help that you keep getting distracted by that mess of windswept hair nestled atop the pilot's head like some poorly constructed nest. The more you stare at it, the more you really can't get over how much it looks like—

Your phone rings.

Lena.

This is strange. She's never had a habit of calling you at work. She's never had a habit of calling you, period.

You pick up the phone, one eye still glued to the footage on your monitor.

"Amélie? Amélie?" Lena's grating cockney chirps out in your ear and your first instinct is to roll your eyes (to be fair, part of you isn't even aware you do this. It's almost like an automatic reflex now every time you hear her voice).

"Why do you call?" Your tone is icy. It's no secret you dislike being bothered at the office.

"Sweetheart? Where are you?"

"At work."

"Ah. So you are still on that business trip yea?"

"No." Another subconscious eye-roll. "I'm back."

There's a brief pause on the line and then a quiet: "oh", Lena almost sounds disappointed. "When did that happen?"

"This morning."

"Oh… I see—that's… that's fast."

A wave of irritation crashes over you and the eye roll builds up into a full-blown mouth twitch: "Why are you calling."

"Right. That—yes, I was just wantin' to ask you, um, what time's dinner tonight luv?"

"Mon Dieu." If you were any more expressive, you would have smacked your forehead against the tabletop. Lena is so clueless sometimes. It can almost feel like she's doing it on purpose to irritate. "Dinner time has never changed chérie," you snap. "Dinner has always been at—" and as you are about to complete the sentence, something clicks in your brain, like a puzzle falling into place, "—wait. You mean you are back from your trip too?"

The sound of breathing on the other end intensifies before Lena finally replies with a: "Yea…?"

From the streets outside, you hear the sound of siren screaming as an ambulance passes through. There's a slight delay, and then the sound of siren screaming echoes out from the receiver of your phone.

Your eyes narrow down to slits.

"Where are you?" You hiss, both eyes now staring hard at the footage on your desktop screen, at the pilot hopping out of the cockpit, their slender frame stretching lazily moments before they duck down to the ground when the bullet drills their Tiltjet. You rewind the feed, playing through it again in slow-motion.

"I'm in my office luv." Lena coughs, her voice sounding tight and her words inflected in all the wrong places.

Your brows furrow. You hear what sounds like honking coming from her end, mingled in with the soft dinging of elevator doors opening and closing, the chime pattern resembling the ones you have in the lobby of the Hightower complex. Your heart clenches, your hackles rise. You tell yourself it's impossible.

It's impossible. But years in the field, and you've learnt to trust your instincts.

Pilot with windswept hair the color of brown sable. Lena going on a business trip the same time as you. Lena returning the same time. Lena acting strange.

There are too many coincidences at play here and the thing about coincidences is, you don't believe in them.

"Dinner's at 6.30," you tell Lena, before promptly hanging up on her.

Dinner at 6.30 pm.

Lena's R8 quietly pulls up the curb two hours earlier at 4.16 pm. Ten minutes later, she silently tries to slip in through the backdoor—

"Why are you crawling in like a cockroach, chérie?"

—only to find you already there waiting for her in the kitchen.

"Christ!" Your wife jumps, looking more than a little startled. "Amélie! Jesus! You scared the crap out of me!"

"Did I?" You deadpan. "I apologize. I saw your car out front and I became curious what you were up to. It's so rare to have you sneaking home this early."

It's true, Lena never comes home before six, and she's only ever sneaked out at ungodly hours.

"Just wanted to surprise you is all," Lena says without skipping a beat. "I missed you."

"Really? It's only been two days…" you drawl out slowly. "Then again, I must admit I missed you too. About this much." Your face is expressionless when you hold out a thumb and forefinger spaced half an inch apart.

Lena offers you a strange look. "Why are you home this early?" She asks, an undercurrent of suspicion in her voice.

"Half day at work. Decided I would come back and make you a special dinner."

Lena doesn't seem too excited by the prospect of your special dinner. You see her eyes dart around the kitchen; they linger on the two boxes of rat poison near the sink.

"Sounds brilliant," she tells you, her tone lackluster. Gesturing at the black turtleneck and grey cotton slacks you currently wear to obscure the blistering burns on your body, she asks: "What's with the sweater and long pants? A little warm innit?"

"Not really," you walk over to her then, movement slow and deliberate. "I don't really feel the heat. In fact, right now I'm feeling rather chilled to the bone." As you say this, you lean in to press a kiss to her lips.

Lena flinches. She pulls back, and your peck ends up glancing off the side of her cheek.

"What's the matter? Why do you seem so jumpy."

"Nothin'... it's just, I wasn't really expectin' that. You don't—you don't usually do that—"

"Don't I? Well, today I want to." You slither over to position yourself right behind her, the front of your body pressing stark against her back as you wrap your arms around her waist. The extra five inches you have on her allows you to rest your chin easily in the nook of her neck. Lena visibly stiffens.

"How was the business trip, chérie?" Your voice is low as you breathe heat into her ear.

"It was ok." You watch the tiny knot in her throat bob up and down as she swallows. "How was yours?"

"Mine could have fared better, really." Your arms tighten around her little ribcage, hands taking the opportunity to pat her down—no guns or concealed weaponry as far as you can tell. "I guess you could say, things really blew up in my face."

It's not your imagination; Lena's heartrate goes up by several beats per minute. You can feel her overworked heart hammering away beneath her ribcage as you dig your nails into her skin—

The oven dings, your wife takes the opportunity to pull herself free. You let her go, eyeing her like a hawk as she scurries over to the kitchen appliance.

"Mmm smells good! Looks like this meat loaf's ready! I'm so famished, shall we push dinner forward?" Lena is blabbering as she hastily opens the oven door with a pair of kitchen mitts. "Let me just bring this out to the table alright?" And she scampers away without waiting for your reply, plate of steaming meatloaf stolen in her hands.

You think to yourself that there's definitely something wrong with her. Deep down, you are praying that it doesn't turn out to be what you think it is.

[-]

For the first time in four years of marriage, dinnertime rolls about early in the household at 4.45 pm.

Lena sits on one end of the long, rectangular table carved from an expensive heartwood. You sit across from her on the other end.

Silence weaves in your midst, stretching longer than the physical distance in between. Most days it chips away at you, today you find yourself preferring it to the alternative.

"You try somethin' new, luv?" Lena asks from across the table.

You do not look up. You chew daintily with your mouth closed and you push your food delicately around your plate before forking another stem of broccoli between your lips.

"Luv?" Lena asks, louder this time. There's an accompanying sound of metal clinking against glass as she taps a knife against her wine stem. "Amélie? Oi!"

You finally blink up at her from the tiresome chore of inspecting your nails. "Quoi?"

"Did you add something new to this meatloaf?"

"Oui." You smile at her, sweetly. "Do you like it?"

"What's in it?" Lena looks worried.

"Nothing much, I'm surprised you could tell at all."

"What did you add?"

"Just a little peppercorn, basil, rosemary and arsenic."

"Oh ok, peppercorn, rosemary and… wait, WHAT?!" Lena's mouth hangs open in mid-chew, her face turning as white as a sheet. "Did you… did you just say arsenic?" She chokes.

"No." You look at her oddly. "Parsnip. Are you sure everything's alright chérie? You've been acting strange ever since you came home."

Lena doesn't reply, you see her discreetly bring a paper napkin up to her mouth.

Something is definitely wrong.

"My poor petit chou," you say in a soothing voice. "It must be because you are so tired, aren't you? Maybe a little wine to loosen you up?"

"No thanks…" Lena starts to protest, but you've already gotten up from your seat and sashayed over to her side of the table, taking her empty wineglass into your hand.

As the wine pours out, you find yourself looking down at your wife. You see the veins in her neck throbbing beneath pale, translucent skin, and you see her legs bouncing up and down restlessly beneath the tabletop—it's a quirk she has whenever she is extremely nervous. Or whenever she's hiding something.

The wine goes past the halfway mark of the glass and you gracefully rotate the bottle away from you as you cease pouring. It's now or never. Handing the glass back over to Lena, you pause, before casually letting the bottle slip out from your grip—

—in the blink of an eye, Lena's hand shoots out, reflexively catching the bottle in her right even as she accepts the wine glass with her left. There's a brief moment where her gaze snaps up to meet yours, her eyes infinitely wide.

If there were a timer present, her reaction time would have been clocked at 0.128 seconds, well below the human average of 0.250 when exposed to a visual stimulus. The ability is one that is cultivated, not born with.

Your mouth parts.

Lena lets go of both the glass and the bottle. They fall to the ground, ruby red pumping out and soiling the priceless Venetian carpet lining the floor.

Oh dear God.

There's no denying it now, the evidence lines up. Lena is an agent. A hostile—that last word triggers something inside you and almost on instinct, your foot lashes out, kicking the leg of Lena's chair from underneath her.

Your wife is quick—she springs up in time just as the wooden furniture clatters to the floor—but it turns out you are just that little bit faster. Before she can react further, you've already grabbed the nearest object in your reach—a white porcelain gravy boat—and you smash it unceremoniously into her face.

You hear a loud, sickening crunch, followed by a piercing cry as the dish connects with her nose. There's a pause in the thrum of things as Lena stares down at the fresh red now staining her fingertips and then back up at you with something like disbelief.

"You broke my nose," she says, stunned. "Amélie, you broke my nose."

And you couldn't resist the urge to roll your eyes. Lena's always had a knack for exaggeration. You know what a broken nose looks like and what she has is nothing but a tiny nosebleed. Nothing compared to the second degree burns you suffer on nearly one-third of your body.

"Suck it up," you tell her. There's an instantaneous effect whereby Lena's face collapses and her lips thin out, and she lunges at you, tackling you down to the ground.

You think: it's like being attacked by a puppy.

You wrap your legs easily around her waist and twist, and now you are on top of her.

Lena bucks under you.

"No point struggling, chérie," you hiss low into her ear. "We both know I'm the stronger one here."

It's true. The two of you have done a lot of play wrestling in the past and needless to say, you always come out on top.

"Ohh sweetie, oh luv." Somehow even with all the blood running down her face, Lena still manages to come across condescending. You barely have time to wonder why. There's a sudden sharp pinch in your neck and then an abrupt rush of air as Lena takes you completely by surprise, and she flips you over onto your back, small hands slamming you hard into the ground.

What the?—the little shit!

Your eyes widen. You gnash your teeth at her, shoulders pushing forward and muscles straining from exertion as you try to force your way out from underneath. To your consternation, you find that Lena's just as strong as you are, and with the weight of her body now straddling atop of yours, she has the added advantage.

"All part of the cover, sweetheart." She mouths out grimly, droplets of blood splattering down her nose and onto your face as she leans forward to pin both your wrists above your head.

Is your slovenliness part of it too? You can't help but think with much venom.

The current position you are in is entirely foreign to you. Amélie Lacroix is never one at the bottom, Amélie Lacroix does not get pinned down ever. The more you think about this, the more infuriated you get and your rage eventually culminates in a bout of incensed, violent thrashing.

The futility of your efforts soon becomes apparent when Lena's hold does not relinquish and she continues bearing down at you with her maddening blood-smeared face. It's not working!—you snap at yourself to stop—you need to get out of this, Amélie. Think.

Inhaling a deep breath, you force yourself to relax, gradually letting your body go limp as you lie there on the ground, your head turned to the side in some measure of defeat. After a beat, Lena's body subconsciously relaxes along with yours—

"That's it," she tells you. "Good girl, now you just take it easy so we…"

—and you take the opportunity to muster every ounce of strength, jamming your knee up into her groin.

"Fokin'—!"

It must have really hurt, because you've never heard Lena scream like that. Not even in the midst of her greatest climax. Keeling over, she slumps to the floor, her features twisting in agony as she cups both hands to her crotch.

Rationally, what you ought to do now, is snap her little chicken neck right there. But you are all but rational at the moment. Your emotions are a mess, and your thoughts are in jumble.

Picture this scenario: you find out after four years of marriage that everything about your union has been a complete and utter lie.

Coincidences don't happen, not of this magnitude, not to this degree of implausibility. Talon has more than its fair share of bitter competitors and you are the best agent Talon has. Somewhere along the way, one of the rival agencies must have found out and sent Lena after you like the mark that you are.

You've been made a fool of, and you don't even know.

Your mind flashes back to Lena on the night of the proposal, kneeling down in front of you with her hair full of gel and a mouth full of promises; Lena, with her hands trembling atop the dining table of that corner French bistro when she told you that she was falling, and she might never wish to stop; Lena, the things she made you feel when you made love to her a tender sort and she'd looked up at you with those big brown eyes too innocent to hurt, too kind to break—

Fuck. A hard lump forms in your throat, it doesn't go away. Fuck, Amélie. Fuck.

What a total fool you've been.

Lena's played you like a fiddle, and you've all but fallen for her doe-eyed act: hook, line and sinker. To think, four years—four fucking years of a lie.

The uncharacteristic wave of emotions threatens to overwhelm and you are suddenly bogged by the dire desire to get out of there. You need space to clear your head, before Lena recovers and you end up doing something you are not entirely sure you won't regret. Without thinking, you make for the front door.

Lena's R8 is hanging off the side of the curb, her key still in the ignition. You realize with a bitter taste that she must have left it there for quick getaway after she's all but done with you.

"Amélie!" You hear Lena's voice calling out from behind. "Amélie stop!"

Turning, you see her half-limping, half-running out the front door, her weight leaning heavier on her left and her legs awkwardly knocked at the knees.

"Amélie, you come back here! You come back here right now or I swear to god—"

You tune her out and jump into the car, your knuckles clenching white on the steering wheel as you gun the accelerator down the street.

From the rearview mirror, you see Lena dashing for the garage. She must be going for your SUV—but what is she going to do? Run you off the road? The R8 is smaller and more vulnerable to impact, but the V10 plus engine it possesses makes it a lot faster. Regardless of what Lena plans on doing, you are confident she'll never catch up, not with the head start you've been given.

But as it turns out, you must have grossly underestimated how good of a driver your wife is, because as you wind through the myriad of curves and bends leading down the hill from your rich-people estate, you soon see the high-beams of a white SUV barreling down the streets after you, and only getting closer by the minute.

A particularly sharp bend comes up on the road and there's a harrowing moment where you fear you might actually lose control and sail right through the crash barrier—but you decelerate, and you manage to drive right by, albeit clunkily.

Looking up in the rearview mirror, you see Lena—the little shit Lena.

Picture this scenario: a white SUV, that is really fucking bulky, drifts (flies) through a sharp bend without the acceleration even slowing.

You bite down hard on your lips. You taste copper.

Lena's subsequent loud honking from behind, and you start to regret not snapping her neck when you could.

The proximity between the two of you is steadily bridging now; the SUV charging towards you until finally, Lena pulls up alongside, her hands making rapid gestures you can't quite make out from your peripheral. The two of you lean into a bend, your cars side by side, and then another one, much narrower, and that's when the flank of Lena's SUV rams into the side of your car, the impact causing your little R8 to swerve wildly and nearly straight into a hulking tree.

Oh mon Dieu.

There's a poignant moment of hurt when it finally sinks in that your wife—your fake wife—is in fact, trying to kill you. And unlike you, she certainly has no qualms about doing it. Why. It's only about the second time she's attempted it now, and hell it'll be if you let her strike for a third.

Hell it will be if you let her strike for a third.

The thought streaks through your mind fierce and hot: Non. This is not going to be how it ends for you. This is not going to be the way Amelie Lacroix goes down.

Right beside you, Lena is still honking wildly, the girl trying her best to distract.

"Fuck you," you hiss out loud in the car, even if Lena doesn't hear. You would have flipped her the finger too if your hands weren't so busy on the wheel.

The two of you speed through another 100 feet on the hillside road, and you see a familiar sign turn up on your windscreen, warning you of a steep bend coming up, this one located near the edge of the hill. There's a darkened raincloud simmering in the forefront of your mind and you find yourself thinking that Lena's not the only crazy heartless one here, because really, two can play the little game.

The sides of the road flash by in a blur as the two of you race towards the bend—your car on the outer edge—but instead of leaning into it this time, your hands wrench down viciously on the steering wheel. You can feel the harsh impact from the way your teeth judder in your mouth and your brain rattling in your skull as you smash the side of your car right into Lena's—effectively preventing her from turning.

She must have realized what you were trying to do, because her car suddenly drops momentum and she tries to decelerate—but it's a little too late. The two of you had simply been going too fast.

At the very last minute—right before your R8 guides her SUV off the road and straight through the metallic crash barrier—you afford yourself a brief moment where you turn, see Lena's mouth wide open in a long, soundless scream, before you fling open the door of the car and hurl yourself out into the night with careless abandon.

Your body tucks into a protective curl as you slam hard into rough asphalt.

It's a miracle you are even alive.

You lie there in the middle of the road, bruised, broken and bloodied, the dreadful cacophony of metal twisting and shrubbery crunching under rubber wheels sounding loudly from behind you as Lena, the SUV, the R8—the whole lot of it—careen headfirst down the hill.