| Subject: Priority Mail 239 |
Author:
Nikita507
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Date Posted: Sunday, May 15, 01:19:31pm
In reply to:
Nikita507
's message, "Priority Mail 235+" on Tuesday, May 10, 07:21:46pm
Nikita pulled up the Bluetooth headset as she started her logon process. She hated to admit it, but she had been away from her research for too long. She waited as all the various alerting systems started to report in first, nothing to be worried about on the radar, but still it was going to take time to wade thru all of the alerts.
Nikita flipped quickly to the chat connection and instantly got into Jason’s system. She pressed the Bluetooth and heard Jason swearing. “It was just me.”
“Nikita? What are you doing?” Jason inquired as he groaned. “I’m continuing the search. You go worry about your family.”
“It’s Michael’s family,” Nikita replied sternly as she looked at his screen. “That’s not even the work for the search on my daughter.”
“Yours and Michael’s daughter,” Jason commented firmly. “And I do have to do my ethical hacking to pay for things.”
“No you don’t,” Nikita answered quickly and Jason swore again. “I needed a break.”
Nikita blinked and flipped back to her screens quickly. “Have you made any progress?”
“Yeah,” Jason admitted as Nikita deleted alerts that were just reporting back that everything was fine. She thought for a moment that she should hand all of this work back to Jason, but she stopped that thought. He had moved onto ethical hacking and stopped the search for their daughter. Michael was sick and it was important to find their daughter still.
She couldn’t trust her protection for everyone to Jason, not yet.
Nikita typed for a while and then pulled her hands away. She was making a lot of mistakes but she would find a way to push through that. “Why do I have to wait to ask what progress you have made?”
“Because we aren’t in Section One any longer,” Jason sighed heavily. “I had a chance to go to Daisy’s house before the storm hit… I could have been spending this time with her… instead, I was following a lead… a lead that went dead.”
“This is all petty excuses.”
“You are upset that Michael has had to have surgery, Nikita. And you are taking it out on me. It isn’t fair,” Jason challenged as Nikita flipped back to his screen. She saved his work on the hack that he was doing and closed that pane down. She tapped her fingers and then looked into his system. “You’ve tried to block me out.”
“Because it will only hurt you, Nikita,” Jason groaned as he wished that Nikita would let him work on this at his own pace. He had information to tell her, but with Michael not his best, Jason felt it was wise to wait.
“What hurts is that I thought I could count on you,” Nikita fired back as she eyes stung with tears. “I just want something that is going right.”
“I heard from Adam about the great gift you got him… it meant a lot to him.”
“Mick got it for him,” Nikita closed her eyes and lifted her hands to wipe at her tears. She hated that she was crying right now. She had to catch up with work and she wanted to know if they were closer to finding their daughter.
“He knows that too… but he knows that you came up with the idea,” Jason offered as he hated to hear Nikita’s voice so bitter but also so hurt. He knew that she wanted to go shopping for that wallet and that she was trying to do the impossible very early that morning. “You know, Nikita... You’ve had a long couple days. I’m still confirming information up right now and you should spend some time with Michael and just rest up. We are all snowed in.”
Nikita exhaled and saw an alert flash on her screen. She looked back to it and saw that it was only a weather alert from one of her other sites that was in the process of getting snowed in just as much as she was right now. In fact, it seemed as if half of the nation was underneath this huge blanket of snow.
Maybe their daughter was snowed in.
“My daughter hasn’t had a birthday with her real family, Jason. We don’t stop,” Nikita directed as she went back to look at his screen. “Now show me what you have.”
There was a pause and then there was movement and opening of screens, but it was done very carefully. Nikita knew that she should be tracking what Jason was doing so she could get into his protected zone on his system at will the next time, but her mind wasn’t thinking that far ahead. It didn’t matter; she could get in if she really wanted too.
To think that Madeline and Operations thought that she was stupid when it came to computers!
“I’ve accessed a list of marshals that were given assignments related to the protection of the children,” Jason explained as he pulled up the list. “All of them are now technically retired.”
“That’s a long list,” Nikita stated as she looked at the thirty names. “Were they assigned one child per?”
“Remember, all of the children had to be identified and processed… so they had big caseloads because even though the older children knew their names, they had to treat them all the same,” Jason explained with a measured voice. Nikita blinked as she saw an instant message come up from Daisy, but she didn’t say anything.
She did feel guilty that Jason wasn’t with her.
“Mixed aged caseloads?” Nikita inquired.
“No,” Jason replied as he flipped and the list shortened dramatically. “These are the six marshals that I think were assigned up to the toddlers and infants. Unfortunately, the organization was in the process of having a record number of toddlers and infants in their system…. They were blaming the economy.”
“And it probably only has gotten worse,” Nikita whispered.
“This organization didn’t survive this event,” Jason rasped as he exhaled. They had tried, but the bad press had done in any of the good programs that weren’t even related to the orphaned children. “So I can’t access those records because they are gone too… but I’m starting to locate these marshals.”
“Starting?”
“I just found this list, Nikita,” Jason reported. “The first two are off-grid. The one is a bit more connected because he has grown-children that he is still in contact with… the other… it’s like he has disappeared.”
“The other four?”
“I just started this hours ago, Nikita,” Jason sighed heavily. “I needed a break after confirming the lack of connectivity of the men. The second one is the one that I’m most interested in because he seems to be completely unconnected.”
“Yet, someone has to be able to get in touch with him if someone on his caseload is contacted,” Nikita stated firmly. “I know… but this isn’t easy work.”
“The likelihood of the others being off-grid?”
“I don’t think all of them will be… but I don’t think they are going to be easy to track down… and then trying to connect their caseloads with them… it’s going to be tedious,” Jason admitted and Nikita clicked off of his screen. She rubbed her forehead and felt her headache growing in intensity.
“Take a break, Nikita,” Jason suggested with a firm voice that he wouldn’t use with Nikita if he was in the same room as her. This was safer and he could do this in this manner. “Go to Michael and sleep.”
“I have to tell him…”
“He is recovering from surgery and from leaving the hospital early? Don’t tell him anything about this because there is really nothing to tell him yet!” Jason raised his voice. Nikita swallowed hard and pushed away from the desk. “I didn’t make him leave.”
“I didn’t say that you did,” Jason carefully spoke as he could hear Nikita’s shaky voice. “I’ll call you if I get a breakthrough.”
“Go have your cyber sex chat with Daisy now,” Nikita hissed as she broke the connection and tossed the Bluetooth across the room, more tears rolling down her face.
”Hey baby,” Roberta smiled as she placed a bottle down on the sidewalk. She put her arms out for her and slowly Nikita walked to her mother in the misty rain. “This is why… you don’t listen to men… they make you cry.”
“He was nice,” Nikita protested gently as she looked over her shoulder at the apartment building where until an hour ago she had lived with her mother for a couple months. She had a friend in there named Sonia. Things almost seemed like they were getting better.
“What would you know?” Roberta pushed Nikita away with such voice that she fell backwards onto the sidewalk. “I should have never taken you back…. When you came crying back to me.”
Nikita sat there on the ground and watched as Roberta staggered up. “You’ll screw everything up like I have… just do yourself a favor… promise never to have a wretched child… a baby screws you up… you have responsibilities…”
Nikita watched as her mother walked away. Nikita looked over her shoulder, wondering if Hans would keep her even if he had thrown her mother out. But he was looking out to the street now and caught her eyes. He turned his back on her and turned the porch light off.
“You’ll be alone… with this parasite… that you can’t get rid of… that when it cries… you do things that you know that aren’t good for you…” Roberta continued to ramble as she walked down the sidewalk. Nikita stood up but didn’t go after her mother. She looked at the small book bag that she had and knew that she wouldn’t be going back to that school.
“Come on, baby…. I have a friend who will keep us dry…” Roberta called out as she reached out for Nikita again. Nikita trotted after her mother and helped steady her as she started to cross the street.
Nikita swallowed hard and forced her mind to stop. It was ridiculous. She used to have control and she could have control again. She needed to find it because everything was falling apart around her.
She looked around the room and knew that Michael was in the dining room. She reached out for one of his hoodies and pulled it over her head and over her body. She swam in it, but she held her head up.
Soon she was downstairs and in the hallway. Helen had just stepped out of the dining room and looked at Nikita. “I’m going to check in on him in four hours.”
Nikita stood there for a while with no one around and then stepped into the dining room where Michael was awake in bed, watching television coverage of the removal of the snow and the report of the next wave of snow that was expected to give them at least another six inches of snow. He turned his head and looked at Nikita for a while before smiling. “Coming to sleep with me?”
Nikita shook her head from side to side. “You need to recovery.”
“This is a really big bed,” Michael indicated the room that was available on the other side that could easily fit three of Nikita in it. Nikita shook her head but sat down in the chair that was close to the bed. She looked at the screen and Michael saw her body rocking with exhaustion. “Kita… I need to sleep and I sleep best with you beside me.”
“I’ll hurt you,” Nikita rasped as she leaned her head down to the edge of the bed where the metal bars of the bed had been kept down and there was just a sliver of the mattress and blanket there. Her eyes hurt so badly and she fought to try to keep them open, knowing that she should go back upstairs to sleep.
Michael moved his hand, now free of the IV that Helen had established the previous day. He stroked Nikita’s hair carefully on the edges first before moving to touch her head. He felt her body ripple with acknowledgement of his touch. He was afraid that she was going to pull away.
But instead, she fell asleep.
Michael continued to rub her head as his eyes drifted asleep, knowing that there was no reason for her not to be sharing the bed with him, but at least slightly relieved that she was sleeping for now.
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