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Date Posted: 10:23:20 05/11/08 Sun
Author: Mary
Author Host/IP: cpe-69-135-186-204.woh.res.rr.com / 69.135.186.204
Subject: Good and Evil - Introduction and Chapter 1
In reply to: Mary 's message, "Good and Evil" on 10:19:52 05/11/08 Sun

<b>Introduction</b>

Death was so peaceful.

No noise. No pressure. No decisions.

For the first time in a very long time her mind was at rest. There were no alternatives, no strategies, no abeyance, no baselines, no branch missions, no hostiles, no Oversight, no Center, and no Paul.

Paul. That felt anomalous, to even think the name. No. She wouldn’t go there, she wanted to stay in the restful place. She pulled her thoughts back.

No Section, no protocols, no profiles, no recruits, no targets.

Peace. Just calmness surrounded her and she felt like she was floating.

It was soft and warm. She had expected to be cold in death but she was warm.

Thoughts of her life flashed through the vestiges of what she assumed was her consciousness. She saw her sister playing on the swing in the front yard, her mother pushing her higher and higher into the air, and her sister’s long brown hair trailing behind her in the wind. She could feel the warm summer breeze that blew that day. They were happy, all three of them were happy, smiling, and together.

Then she watched her sister as she tumbled down the stairs. Stopping on the landing with all that long brown hair splayed out around her like an askew aura. She had cried, cried because her mother was crying, cried when her mother screamed at her because she was still alive, cried when her mother hit her. But she was never sure if she had cried because her sister was gone. After all, she had wanted the doll.

Then she was older and she saw herself in college, and in her practice as a therapist, and then in jail for murdering a client. He had deserved it, he admitted to raping and strangling many young girls and he had told her that he would do it again. The police would never have caught him. He was too smart. She needed to stop him, and she needed to stop herself from possibly being successful, and certainly from ever being happy.

The white room had been cold. And then there was Adrian. Warmth seeped away from her as she thought about Adrian. A barren coldness washed over her spirit and she pulled away from it. She wanted to be in the warmth now. Paul. And suddenly she was warm again. It felt safe. Cocooned. He was holding her and suddenly she was more than just what she could produce, more than an end product, she was herself. He gave her that.

But he also took it away.

Why? Why had things turned between them? So much twisted emotions swirled through her, it felt like she was choking in the confusion and mass of sensations. She needed to find balance again, yet there was none, only turmoil and then…strangely… fright. That was it. She was frightened. It had been so many years since she had ever admitted to herself that she could even be frightened by something that she had forgotten what it felt like. How ironic that only in death could she realize and cope with that thought.

When she no longer could be sure of Paul’s motivations…when Michael so capably took over Section, especially with the teaming of he and Nikita…that was when she had been frightened. Why had that been so hard? Oh, of course, she was Madeline. She didn’t tolerate emotion in herself, she most certainly was never afraid of anything or anyone. It had been so very hard to enclose all that upheaval for such a long time. The thought of it was so very tiring and all she wanted to do now was rest.

She cleared all of the thoughts. They just went away, just because she willed them too. This was a wonderful place to be, death was so much better, so much easier. She was back to the warm and peaceful place. Here there were no harsh realities of Section anymore. Her mind rested again and became a blank slate when she simply let everything go. Just restful, serene blackness enveloped her.

Just as she was settling into the warmth she felt herself being pulled, yanked harshly back out of the cocoon that she wanted to remain in. Like cold hands clawing at her she was being yanked out of the warm place…panic momentarily overtook her….the dark, dark place awaited her….



<b>Chapter 1</b>

Myra was livid. It had been weeks and still her anger festered just beneath the flawlessly coiffed exterior that she depicted, as if the caustic events at Section One had never ensued.

She sat in her new office at Section Three and stared at the intel scrolling across her screen attempting to look like she actually cared what the results were of the last day’s missions. There were unexpected ops lost, planned abeyance ops removed from the board, terrorist’s interrogated and new missions already being prepped from the intel gathered. But she could not have cared less at this moment about the duties she was supposed to perform in her newly demoted position. She was still incredibly pissed off after the events that had occurred at Section One and she would have her retribution. How dare that overly pompous, corporate ass-kissing Jason touch her file and think that she wouldn’t know what he had done. He had no idea who he had messed with and she would make sure that he regretted ever fucking with her for the rest of his pathetic life.

But revenge on Jason was regrettably secondary at the moment. There were other more important matters that needed to engage her mind right now.

Myra knew that her colleague would be awaking soon from a deeply medicated sleep. It had taken weeks to get her fully back to one hundred percent functionality. What a stupid woman she was for coming to the conclusion that her only remaining option was committing suicide. Well, Myra thought, at least for a very good attempt at committing suicide, stopping the poison had been very difficult and had required the requisition of drugs that had been very difficult to get a hold of. And what drove this strong woman to take such desperate action to end her life? That question continued to haunt Myra. What an injudicious waste it would have been, all that strategic and psychological talent just thrown away because she thought at the last moment that she had been beaten. Myra could not let that happen.

Myra had plans and now with Jones conveniently out of the way there was only Nikita to deal with, and that would not prove to be much of a challenge. Yes, the planning had been extensive, and she had had a little luck in the chain of events that had transpired over the last few weeks. Who would have guessed that Jones would have gotten himself killed? And again she thought to herself, for what? A daughter that he never knew, a boy parented by a rogue operative that no longer was an asset to the Section? God, it was nauseating to even think about. They all had such larger things to focus their efforts and extensive resources on, how could they all lose focus so easily over the last years?

Madeline and Paul had been an unbeatable team in their rise to power at Section One. They were the best. No one dared to challenge their authority and their decisions, oh George had his trifle attempts, but they have outwitted him numerous times and quite easily. She had watched them over the years and yearned to have a partnership of that magnitude, a sense of sureness and complete trust in other person that had resulted in something as perfect as the well-oiled machine that was Section One.

Their decisions had perplexed her at times, no matter how many times she had studied the intel she had not understood their end game until it was revealed, and on more than one occasion she had sat back astonished at the level of detailed planning it must have taken to build the mission profile. She knew that detail came from Madeline. Paul was not the detail person. He was a military man through and through. He had been bred and trained to think strategically, to always see the bigger picture, details were not important to him, he just wanted the end result.

Madeline and her details gave him those results. She was the intelligence-gathering core for Paul in their relationship. She had a talent to read other people, study them, understand them, and then outmaneuver them so they never knew what was coming. Madeline scared everyone with her abilities, even the infamous operative Michael never knew what to expect from Madeline. She was always the one to be feared because when Madeline looked directly into your eyes and studied you, it was like she could see into your soul, read the very essence of what and who you were. She could strip you naked, absorb everything about you, and then redress you all within the blink of an eye.

For most people that would be a very unnerving trait to have in someone that you kept close to you. But for Myra, it was an unimaginable asset. So there had been no other course of action that she could possibly take except to save the woman’s life. Of course, this had deeply infuriated Madeline, she had made her decision to die and she had not anticipated any interruption in her objective.

However, once Myra had her lucid again and the poison was removed from her system she began to understand the work that still needed to be done. Although deeply saddened by the death of Paul, which had sent her back to bed for days, she was now completely focused on the profile that needed to be built. Section One was a living, breathing organism. As such it required, as all living things do, care and feeding. Madeline knew, better than almost anyone now, that it would starve and become completely ineffectual without the proper balanced leadership required by such a powerful entity. Madeline could not and would not let that happen to the organization that she had so devotedly served for such a long time.

Myra had completely planned for, and counted on this reaction from Madeline. It was perfect. Now it was just a matter of time, and careful planning.

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