VoyForums
[ Show ]
Support VoyForums
[ Shrink ]
VoyForums Announcement: Programming and providing support for this service has been a labor of love since 1997. We are one of the few services online who values our users' privacy, and have never sold your information. We have even fought hard to defend your privacy in legal cases; however, we've done it with almost no financial support -- paying out of pocket to continue providing the service. Due to the issues imposed on us by advertisers, we also stopped hosting most ads on the forums many years ago. We hope you appreciate our efforts.

Show your support by donating any amount. (Note: We are still technically a for-profit company, so your contribution is not tax-deductible.) PayPal Acct: Feedback:

Donate to VoyForums (PayPal):

[ Login ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, [8], 9, 10 ]

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Date Posted: 13:59:46 05/18/08 Sun
Author: Mary
Author Host/IP: cpe-69-135-186-204.woh.res.rr.com / 69.135.186.204
Subject: Good and Evil - Chapter 8 and Chapter 9
In reply to: Mary 's message, "Good and Evil" on 10:19:52 05/11/08 Sun

Chapter 8

The office seemed warm, inviting, yet fairly non-descript. Michael had checked the doctor through every database that he could possibly get into and found her records to be impeccable. She would be perfect for Adam. His nightmares had increased in intensity and it was starting to scare Michael just how fragile his son’s psyche really was.

Michael sat in the doctor’s waiting room next to his young son and wondered where this next step would take them on their journey.

“Daddy, I’m not sick, why do I have to go to the doctor?”

“Adam she is going to talk with you. Make sure that you feel good inside.”

“But I do feel good inside.”

“Most of the time, yes you do. But sometimes at night your mind has the bad dreams that scare you. She is going to help them go away.”

“I don’t want to talk about those Daddy.”

“I know you don’t Adam. And I know they are scary, but Dr. Sanchez’s job is to help make them less scary and then one day they will go away.”

A door opened and the young doctor with short red hair appeared, “Hello. I’m Dr. Sanchez. You must be Michael.”

Michael stood and so did Adam, “Yes I am. This is Adam.”

The doctor squatted down to Adam’s level, “Welcome Adam. Would you like to come into my office?”

The shy young man nodded his head and Michael guided him into the bright and lovely office. There was a very large tower of interlocking blocks and Adam could not take his eyes off of them. The doctor noticed, “Adam, would you like to play with the Blocks?”

“Could I?”

“Of course. That’s why they are here. Have fun.”

She motioned Michael to a side chair and sat beside him directing her words to Michael but making sure that Adam could hear her, “Adam and I will be spending a little time together alone this morning if that’s ok with Adam. Just about twenty minutes to give us some time to play and get to know each other.”

Adam looked up at his father for confirmation that this was ok and Michael nodded and gave his son a small smile.

Michael rose and Adam rushed over quickly, “Daddy, you won’t go too far will you?”

Michael knelt down and took his son in his arms, “No Adam, I won’t, I promise. I’ll be right downstairs at the café.”

“And Daddy, you won’t be gone too long?”

“No, just a few minutes.”

Adam thought about this for a moment and feeling better about the situation turned and went back to the blocks.

Dr. Sanchez led Michael to the door, “He’ll be fine and we will have fun. See you in a few minutes.”

Michael left with the picture of Adam sitting on floor playing with the blocks in his mind. He took the stairs down and out to the café that was across the street and after ordering a coffee sat and tried to relax while his son was in his first therapy session.

The morning was warm and the breezes blew off the water. Tourists and locals passed on the busy street and Michael sat watching them, trying to just blend in, be just another local having a coffee and watching life go by.

Then he saw her. His breath caught in his chest, his hands were clammy and his heart hammered in his chest. He would be able to spot her anywhere and he knew that it was her. Nikita. She was wearing a short blue dress and high heels to match, her shortened white-blond hair just visible under the large blue hat protecting the porcelain skin of her shoulders and arms.

The gentle movements were Nikita, the sway of her hips, the way her hands moved. He heard her laugh at the vendor’s table she had stopped at and then he was positive that it was her. Then he realized that if she was here in person, if she had tracked him down, then something must be horribly wrong. She must be in terrible trouble to take this extraordinary risk and expose he and Adam.

She was across the courtyard and Michael looked down for only a second to remove the bills to pay for the coffee and when his eyes came back up she was gone. He scanned the crowd as he had been so carefully trained to do but she was nowhere to be seen. He moved quickly, checking the small shops near where he had spotted her, he looked at the winding streets that led of off the courtyard but she was not to be found. Finally he approached the vendor and in French quickly inquired about the tall beautiful blonde that had just been there.

The vendor looked at Michael curiously and told him that no one fitting that description had been at her table on this day, much less in the last few minutes. He continued to search but realized it was futile.

It couldn’t have been her. Could it? Was it possible? Was she free? Was she in trouble? Did she need help?

Then he began to realize that it might not have been her at all. There was no sign that she had been there, and she was too good of an operative to have missed him when he was so close. Perhaps his exhaustion was catching up with him, perhaps she had been just a figment of his very tired imagination. With a sigh and a very heavy heart he looked at his watch and realized that he needed to get back to Adam. His twenty minutes were up.




Chapter 9

Myra walked into Madeline’s new office, “You saw the whole exchange?”

“Of course.”

“What do you think?”

“Nikita responded exactly as expected. She’s incredibly easy to predict.”

Myra spoke carefully to her still somewhat fragile colleague, “Even her role as a mole?”

Madeline stiffened and breathed deeply to calm the disturbance that she felt over those events, “Nikita’s base emotional personality and her reactions are very easy to predict. If you think about it, it is predictable that Mr. Jones would eventually choose to test her as he did. My failure was in focusing on George and his threat to Section One. I should have had a broader perspective and realized the threat that Mr. Jones was also.”

“Your failure? I don’t think so. You had no reason to suspect the relationship between Jones and Nikita. And no one knew that the old man would finally grow a heart and actually want to play Daddy after he left her to her own devices for so many years.”

“Maybe so, but it was still a factor that I failed to calculate in the overall equation.”

“And where is Paul and his responsibility in all of this? He knew the players of Center, some of them he even knew better than you did. Where is his responsibility in the situation? “

Madeline said softly but firmly, “He’s dead. It doesn’t matter now.”

Myra let out a deep sigh, “Of course it matters now. It affects your every thought and it will affect your decisions. Don’t you see that?”

“I just need a little time to…”

“Damnit Madeline, get angry would you! Paul could never determine what he wanted from you, what game he wanted to play. Didn’t you get tired of being his on-demand marionette?”

Madeline’s voice took on a cold and menacing tone, “How dare you try to assume that you understand a very complex and dedicated relationship?”

Myra just smiled, “Good, very good. You can get angry. You are going to have to let all of that out sooner or later Madeline.”

Madeline walked away from Myra and began to tend to the plants that now sat under lights in her new office. She took the anger that she felt, folded it like one might a piece of paper and locked it away in an intangible box in her mind, “Can we get back to the business at hand?”

“Oh yes of course, back to business.” Myra said as she sat in one of the large overstuffed chairs in the office. “We wouldn’t want anything to get personal now would we?”

“Don’t push me Myra.”

“Madeline, don’t you know I want to help you? Look I have known you for many years and you now a lot about me. But you have always been so distant. Of course, you always had Paul.”

“You didn’t really care for Paul, did you?”

“He was dedicated, resourceful, and well respected through the organization. But there was always something in his eyes that just made me cold. So I guess my answer is no, I didn’t dislike him, but I didn’t care for him either.”

“He was a complicated man. He could be emotional and passionate about his beliefs. He also craved power.”

“And didn’t care who he ran over in the process. That whole business with Adrian was terrifying. I still to this day can’t believe the two of you pulled it off. She was certainly a bitch, but she was really, really good.”

“Another area of failure for me. I couldn’t kill her.”

“Let’s not go down that road. Paul never should have made her cancellation your responsibility.”

Myra noticed Madeline tiredly rub at her neck. “You are tired and it’s been a long day. I currently have Nikita where I want her and Jason is on the council as predicted.”

“Yes it did go well.”

Myra didn’t want to push, but there was one more question, “And our operative in Vina Del Mar?”

“The mission went as profiled. There were no incidents.”

“He bought it?”

“As much as Michael desperately needs to believe that Nikita would come after him, he had no trouble believing it was her. He went after her, could not find her, and then began to doubt that she was ever there at all.”

“Excellent. So it has begun.” Myra smiled.

“Yes, Michael is already psychologically damaged and physically exhausted from the dealings of the last months. He will want to believe that it is her.”

“Is she ready for this now?” Myra asked impatiently.

“Yes. It did take some time to make the modifications needed to her base personality. A few things had been left to chance previously. We however, are not making not making the same mistake.”

“Good. I’m going to get some rest. Let me know when we move into the next phase with Michael.”

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Replies:

Forum timezone: GMT-5
VF Version: 3.00b, ConfDB:
Before posting please read our privacy policy.
VoyForums(tm) is a Free Service from Voyager Info-Systems.
Copyright © 1998-2019 Voyager Info-Systems. All Rights Reserved.