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Chapter Text

The 100: Matryoshka

Cover art masterfully created by Mr. Fahim Hasan (Deviantart.com/Itzfahimhasan)

Written by Caitlyn Amelia (Katie) Hayes

Illustrated by Fahim Hasan

Blurb

A covert civil war in Russia between the renegade FSB and loyalist SVR. A small army of white nationalist Special Forces veterans terrorizing Virginia. A hundred missing nuclear missiles in Kazakhstan. And a US Presidency sticking its head in the sand going ‘I can’t hear you’.

What did all these things have in common? According to the US Government, absolutely nothing. According to Clarke Griffin, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, the pieces fit together into a disturbing picture. Plans within plans, schemes within schemes, all layered together like a Russian nesting doll that nobody else wants to believe even exists, and Clarke was the only one that could stop it.

When an unsanctioned mission to retrieve evidence results in the death of Clarke's sister Costia, fiancée to DIA Commander Lexa Woods, an intricate dance of trust and betrayal unfolds as Nia Koroleva of the FSB seems to have plans of her own involving the young Director, who for all intents and purposes seems to have betrayed America.

Who is friend and who is foe? Is anyone what they seem? And how will Lexa resolve her growing attraction to the girl that got her lover killed?

Important Setting Aesthetic Notes

The world of ‘Matryoshka’ is a real-life setting that is very similar to ours, but slightly diverged in 1948 and then much more significantly in 2001, 2012, and 2016. The streets would look recognizable, but like those of a foreign country.

In this timeline, the September 11 attacks weren't just conducted against the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and a foiled attempt against the White House, but instead were a version of the 1995 Bojinka Plot that was never called off by Al-Qaeda but instead carried out in 2001; to beyond the full intended effect, because in this version of Bojinka, the 11 hijacked liners intended to be blown up mid-flight IRL were instead used as self-guided missiles in TTL. 9/11 in this timeline is referred to as the 'Bojinka Attacks', and resulted in the American Right and Left banding together behind a global war on terror that was pretty much a Crusade, only different because the USA heavily also secularized in the aftermath.

This shift in focus on national defense means that the Big Tech Boom of the Noughties and New Tens of our real world never happened. In terms of computer networking, telecom software, and Internet infrastructure technology, the world is pretty much stuck in 2004. This means that, for example, smartphones are extremely expensive, rare luxury items only seen in the hands of the very rich, the very powerful, and important government and military officials rather than being ubiquitous amongst the general population. Comms technology is more primitive and less multifaceted than in our timeline but sturdier and more reliable. CRT monitors were never supplanted by LCD displays, which are also expensive novelties more than mainstay devices, and flatscreens aren't really a thing, with laptops being bulky, high-powered workhorses rather than sleek, lightweight entertainment devices and tablets being virtually nonexistent. Instead of consumer computer technology, it was consumer robotics and in-home nuclear energy that were rapidly developed and miniaturized instead.

As the extensive damage to US infrastructure was repaired, many landmark buildings that had to be partially or entirely rebuilt, such as the World Trade Center, George Bush Center for Intelligence, and the Pentagon took on an Art Deco look, much more imposing and grandiose than before.

Chapter Text

Persons of Importance

Clarke Abigail Griffin: Central Intelligence Agency, Director. Former Special Action Division Special Operations Group Paramilitary Operations Officer. Age 27.

Alexandria ‘Lexa’ Alycia Woods: Defense Intelligence Agency, Defense Clandestine Service Field Operations Commander. Younger daughter to US President Augustus Woods and sister to Anya. Age 29.

Anastasia ‘Anya’ Woods: Lexa’s second-in-command, DIA DCS. First Daughter of the United States. Raven Reyes’ on-and-off girlfriend. Age 30.

Augustus Woods: President of the United States of America, Army Ranger veteran. Lexa and Anya’s father. Age 59.

Bellamy Blake: Major-General, United States Army, Commanding Officer of the 11th Airborne Division and Arctic Warfare Training Center, and Pentagon attaché to the National Security Council. Clarke’s husband. Age 32.

Costia Marie Griffin: Navy SEAL Team 4 Leader, Clarke’s older sister, Lexa’s fiancée. Age 30.

Raven Reyes: Director of National Intelligence. Former NSA electronic data specialist, former CIA MQ-9 UCAV operator. All-around awesome genius. Age 29.

Luna Hilker: Vice-Admiral, United States Navy Silent Service and CIA Assistant Director. Derek’s wife. Age 31.

Niylah Merchant: General Manager of the South China Sea Development Group, former SFOD-D (Delta Force) operator, top-level external operational officer adjunct to the CIA Special Operations Group. Age 31.

Andrei Volkov: President of the Russian Federation. Former KGB Spetsnaz commander. Age 68.

Nia Sil'nayevna Koroleva: Director of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation. Age 60.

Roan Korolev: Deputy Director of the FSB. Nia’s son. Age 40.

Ontari Koroleva: GRU Spetsnaz commander and interrogation specialist. Nia’s daughter. Age 30.

Abigail ‘Abby’ Griffin: Surgeon General of the United States and surgeon in charge at Walter Reed Medical Center. Age 49.

Jacob ‘Jake’ Griffin: Director of the Office of Nuclear Energy of the US Department of Energy. Co-inventor of the hydrogen microfusion cell. Abby’s husband and father to Costia and Clarke. Age 51.

Diana Sydney: Chief Justice of the United States. Age 59.

Russell Lightbourne: United States Attorney General. Age 50.

John Murphy: Director of the National Security Agency. Age 39.

Glass Sorenson: Director of the Special Activities Division, Central Intelligence Agency. Age 32.

Derek Hilker: United States Navy Captain, commanding officer of USS Pennsylvania, SSBN-736, Ohio-class nuclear ballistic missile submarine, husband to Luna. Age 34.

Wells Jaha: Lieutenant-Commander United States Air Force attached to the Army 11th Airborne Division, SR-71 Blackbird pilot. Son of Maryland Senator Thelonious Jaha. Age 28.

Rebecca ‘Becca’ Woods (nee Franco): Late wife to Gustus and mother of Anya and Lexa. Co-inventor of the hydrogen microfusion cell and founder of Infinity Corporation. Died of ischemic stroke in 2000 at the age of 38.

Chapter Text

Act I: Rockets' Red Glare

Chapter 1: Twilight’s Last Gleaming

February 24, 2021

Langley, Virginia

A hundred feet below the main office at Langley, Virginia, headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency, a box lay buried. Within six feet of duraframe-reinforced, lead-encased rockcrete was constrained the Combat Information Center, informally known as the War Room, a secure area accessible only by two ways: one specific otherwise perfectly normal elevator tucked away in a corner of the surface complex’s front building, and one secret subway line that only connected to one station of the Capitol Transit System, itself only accessible via a select few sub-stations of the DC Metro subway net. Only a direct hit with a megaton-yield nuclear weapon could hope to put this place out of commission.

And yet, for as difficult as it was for people to get in, information was an entirely different matter. The War Room enjoyed wireless and hardline connections to banks of aerials and databases throughout the MD Metropolitan Area and far beyond, including clandestine backdoors into the information networks of all seventeen other intelligence agencies that made up the US intelligence community’s alphabet soup - like the DIA, NSA, DHS, and FBI. They also had incredible Internet connection, though going on Birdseye, the web browser that had taken the world by storm, was somewhat frowned upon if you were on Agency grounds. If people wanted to share useless details about their personal lives on ChitChat or watch cats playing the piano on ViewTube, they could do so without leaving footprints all over the CIA’s data translinks.

In the nerve center of this bunker lay a cavernous pit, a semicircular chamber arrayed in downward tiers where staffers sat behind rows of computers until the bottom level where a platform atop a raised dais with a cutting-edge holoprojector played host to the fiddling of the Agency’s most senior commanders, where the fate of the world was decided on a semi-regular basis. Giant television screens adorned the walls, using monitors that could be split to show numerous feeds at once, usually showing a mixture of news broadcasts, telemetry data, and infographics, staffers working around the clock to caption them as close to real-time as possible, since audio feeds were kept to a strict minimum to prevent unnecessary distractions.

One of these large monitors always displayed the geopolitical map of Planet Earth, its image dividing the countries of the world into the United States and its sphere, the Russian Federation and its sphere, and what it called ‘battleground countries’, states where these two superpowers jockeyed for power and influence. More recently, a fourth category had been added, one that said ‘Wagner Group’: a renegade Russian private military contractor that had gotten a hold of enough connections and resources to set itself up as top dog in Western Africa, whose leader, Evgeny Prigozhin, no longer answered to Russian President Andrei Volkov, but seemed to take his marching orders from the President’s political rival Vladimir Putin.

Map designed by Caitlyn Hayes (author) and brought to life by Fahim Hasan (Deviantart.com/Itzfahimhasan): https://www.deviantart.com/ussmidway1978/art/Geopolitics-in-Matryoshka-Commissioned-1173704200 | https://www.deviantart.com/itzfahimhasan/art/Geopolitics-in-Matryoshka-World-Map-12K-1173659177

The Russian Federation pretended like everything was fine. But bubbling just beneath the surface were currents of tension smashing into each other that came closer to breaking the surface and plunging the world into an apocalyptic war by the hour. At least, that was the opinion of Clarke Abigail Griffin, Director of the CIA, at age 27 the youngest to ever attain this important station. It was also the opinion of one of her predecessors, Leon Panetta, which validated her belief. It was, however, not the opinion of Augustus Woods, President of the United States, who believed that his friend Andrei could keep things under control. This, of course, presented an enormous conundrum.

For a year and a half, Clarke had been gathering evidence, unearthing clues, using every dirty trick in the book and then some to build her case. But it had all been to no avail - the FSB, Russia’s rogue apparatus in charge of domestic and State security, had infiltrated every level and every branch of the United States Government, armed forces, and intelligence community, so Clarke was working with one hand tied behind her back lest she tip off her counterpart across the oceans - Nia Sil’nayevna Koroleva - and cause the icy woman to shift her whole operation around. If the Russian Director believed for even a second that her plans had been compromised, she would scupper everything and go right back to the drawing board.

And Clarke knew this for a fact, because Nia had told her this herself.

Clarke had, her nerves frayed and at the end of her rope, decided to embroil herself into a lethally dangerous game: whilst publicly giving sermon after sermon about the danger posed by Russia, she claimed to be using this as a cover to make sure nobody would suspect her of supporting Russia. She had called up Nia Koroleva and gave her a false offer she couldn’t refuse: the CIA Director said that she would be Nia’s inside woman in the US apparatus and help her see her plans through to their conclusion, praying to the God she never believed in that the older woman would take the low-hanging fruit. And to her relief, Nia had . She still kept Clarke at an arm’s length, but it had been enough for her to be able to gather enough scraps of intel to be able to put together this operation: her own big sister Costia, one of the handful of people that had the full picture and trusted her completely, was now going to take point on the mission to obtain Nia’s secret nuclear arsenal.

For the longest time, it had seemed that the weapons had been proverbially buried and they simply weren’t going to be touched until it was already too late to do anything to intercept them. But there had been a breakthrough at last. The one-hundred stolen nuclear missiles, containing four-hundred 1.2-megaton hydrogen fusion warheads, would all be in the same place at the same time for distribution to the people that were entrusted with sneaking them onto United States soil. There was a window of opportunity, and Clarke was determined to seize it and secure the weapons in order to conclusively prove to the President that the danger was clear, present, and imminent.

Of course, this did entail launching an unsanctioned full-scale raid into Kazakhstan.

ISR quads were in use by the whole West, but the turreted sentry guns were exclusively in US service. This meant the strike force had to go in without Tarantula ACPs, the combat robots staying folded up in their barracks. That was okay: even as compact rectangles they'd take up too much space on the Stealth Hawks anyway. The Autonomous Combat Platforms were a mainstay on the zero line and even more in assault units, but they weren't exactly known for being discreet.

Overhead, the largest monitor split up into sixty boxes, where each of them was subdivided into a left column displaying a Black Ops officer’s name and vital statistics and the right column connecting to a live feed of their helmet camera.

Eighteen months of waiting were over. Showtime at last.

At the projector, Clarke nervously smoothed out nonexistent wrinkles in her white suit jacket, hoping that the light color wouldn’t be stained by sweat even though the batteries of powerful fans and Arctic winds blown in by the air conditioning units made the atmosphere chilly enough to counteract the hot nerves everyone down here was gripped by. She ran her hands through her hair, messing up her braid, and for a second, gold was all her blue eyes saw before she tucked the strands back into place. She was jittery, and that was not common: she’d owed her meteoric rise through the ranks in part due to her uncanny ability to simply shut off her emotions and remain cool as a cucumber even under the most intense pressure. But the fact that the stakes had never been higher combined with knowing that it was her own sister, her big role model, that was risking her life out there, proved too much even for this normally stoic operator.

Assistant Director Luna Hilker, sometimes friend, sometimes enemy, and always rival, quirked an eyebrow, silently inquiring if Clarke was good to proceed. The blonde gave a tiny nod to her golden-skinned counterpart of North African descent, and after taking a swig of sugary water, Director Griffin took the floor at last.

"Alright, Luna, let's hear the dailies before we get down to business. You got anything interesting for me regarding our new friends across the ocean?"

The curly redhead smirked a little as she addressed the gathered commanders, managing to sound bored and aloof despite the grave contents of her message: "Well, first off, Central Asia has never been safer. Those 100 nuclear warheads that went missing from Cosmodrome Baikonur that we were chasing after? They've been officially struck off the records, so Moscow's declared open season on 'em. Means every nutcase on Planet Earth with a Kalash and a couple of friends is gonna go hunting for all that firepower to claim some of that bad shit."

"Yeah, this coulda been an email." The other blue-eyed blonde in the bottom well, Special Action Division Director Glass Sorenson, mentioned off-handedly.

Glass Sorenson was one of those people who'd had the freedom to choose to become anything. With looks like hers, most men and even a fair few women tripped over themselves trying to get in her good graces by helping her out in any way she asked. She was the only child of two obscenely wealthy parents, Sonja Sorenson being one of America's most celebrated haute couture designers and Dr. David Sorenson being an accomplished biogeneticist specialized in researching ways for human cells to withstand various types of nuclear radiation, which could have allowed her to coast through life never doing a day's real work if that had been her inclination. She'd been born into the upper class of two families going back centuries, almost literally with a silver spoon in hand, with the whole world at her feet. But instead of doing something that high society would deem appropriate, she opted to stand behind a trigger on the zero line of some of the most dangerous battlefields on Earth; and to further scandalize her family name among those circles, she'd married a man who came from the opposite background, Lucas having grown up in the backstreets and eventually becoming a self-made man who would still never be good enough for David. Her father had all but disowned her, had it not been for Sonja being, well, the modern equivalent of a preppy hippie, who simply wouldn't allow such a thing, even after it was announced that Luke would take Glass' family name wholesale instead of her taking his or doing the hyphenation thing.

David had mellowed out later when it'd become clear just how happy the guy made his daughter, and the fact that Luke Sorenson ended up being a national hero whose name reflected favorably upon the in-laws had sealed the deal.

Glass liked to joke that her name was unique, not weird, and thanked the heavens that her dad had convinced her mom to not name her something hippie-ish and preppy like Crystal, happy to have avoided all the teasing and bullying that was thrown at her cousins whom her mom's sister, who wasn't preppy but an old-school Peace and Love hippie, had named 'Quartz' and 'Topaz'. Instead, she'd gotten a name that earned her the nom de guerre 'Bulletproof', which suited her just fine.

Her lips upturning at the Icelandic girl’s flippant comment, Luna continued: "It's taken a little longer than planned, but the Kiev and Ulyanovsk carrier strike groups have finally linked up with the Richard Nixon and MacArthur carrier strike groups and Joint Exercise ‘Operation’ Atlantic Resolve has finally begun." She laid out, a tech on a higher tier switching one of the big screens to a pair of live satellite feeds that zoomed in on the respective Russian carrier battle groups.

"And the world is looking a little safer every day." Came the drawling West Virginia voice of Timothy Tallcliffe, Director of Operations.

Signaling the tech to switch feeds, the AD moved on the the next bullet point: "We've also got Ivan's Western Group of Forces rotating their whole European Theater Army all at once. That means there's going to be 400,000 Russkie combat troops in Slovakia, Hungary, Greece, and the Other Two Russias instead of the usual 200,000. That's a lot of people looking across the borders into our Poland and Romania: one stray shot, and it's World War Three in Europe."

"Same shit, different day. What else is new, right?" This commentary was delivered by Lucas ‘Luke’ Sorenson, Director of the long-winded Special Operations Group Autonomous Special Purpose Unit, otherwise known as ‘The Shop’, a man who had been Clarke’s direct superior at one time and was proud to see that the student had surpassed the teacher.

"I've got some bad news for ya too, boss." Luna mentioned, gaining Clarke’s undivided attention.

"Well, shit. Let's hear it." The Director spoke, wringing her hands to keep herself from chomping all her fingernails off.

"SEAL Team Four is boarding the 11 ABN Stealth Hawks at Nome AFB as we speak and that modified SR-71's clandestine surveillance package has just been switched on successfully. Interlink with KH-20 observation sat is holding steady and it'll be in position over Kazakhstan shortly. Mission is a go."

"Son of a bitch. Why do you hate me, Hilker?"

Just a few hours ago, Clarke and Costia, looking for all the world like identical twins despite the three years that separated them, had still been sitting in the living room in Clarke and her husband Ballemy’s house - mansion, really - in western Arlington, the younger Griffin a nervous wreck and the older one acting like a squirrel on meth as always, completely undaunted by the prospect of heading off to skies unknown.

"How about we just take it easy, sis?" The elder sister had ribbed the younger one.

"I have no idea how to do that." The girl her big sis affectionately called ‘Little Griffin’ replied with a sigh. "While we're on the subject: why is it that me wanting the world to not get a nuclear bath is a bad thing? Like I'm such a downer. I can be fun. Yeah. You think I'm fun, right, Cos?"

"Remember that time you fucked that Paki guy's sister and told him about it? That's your idea of fun. What were you thinking?" Costia recalled, cracking up at the other blonde’s ridiculous audacity.

"Well, since you brought it up... I was thinking you'd need a distraction to get close enough to kill Bin Laden. And he did ask." Clarke pointed out, feeling entirely too smug.

Chuckling a little at the recent memory, she took another handful of unreasonably pricy sugar free jelly beans from the bowl of her desk and popped the first one into her mouth. When she focused, she needed something to chew on, and in the absence of jelly beans, it would be her fingernails or insides of her cheeks that got victimized till bleeding.

“Take a look at this.” Luna spoke again, pulling Clarke from her reverie. "RCS burned through 5 years' worth of scheduled thruster fuel to give us a keyhole to observe the mission area."

The KH-20 optical satellite may have hung hundreds of kilometers above, but its telescopic lenses were built to such a degree that you could make out a person’s face with clear detail even from the literal exosphere. The transmission fidelity was perfect, so there was no loss of quality as the people beneath Langley observed the goings-on somewhere on the other side of the world.

"I have reason to believe that a Priority One Alpha target will be present on location." Clarke spoke as the lens zoomed in on the person she pointed out. "Behold: Nia Sil'nayevna Koroleva, codename 'Matryoshka'. She's a nasty piece of work."

There on the ground near Baikonur were Nia, her psychotic daughter Ontari, mercenary bigshot Evgeny Prigozhin who commanded the Russians in western Africa with his private army Wagner Group, and a surprise addition: Cage Wallace, political leader of the Mountain Men ethno-nationalist militia, a white supremacist cabal of former Special Forces people gone radical domestic terrorists. An American citizen, making a shady arms deal with Russians in Kazakhstan.

“Screencap that weasel.” Clarke ordered, a keen technician jumping to comply.

"What about his father? What do we know about Dante Wallace?" Glass inquired.

Timothy pulled up some files on his terminal and shoved them over to the holo to be projected for all to see clearly: "The guy's a businessman. Failed politician, failed artist, didn't go the Hitler route like his spawn, but he's made it pretty big in the private mutual insurance industry. Health, cars, private planes, meteor strike, all of that expensive shit." Tallcliffe explained. "Dante is no ideologue. He believes in no cause and follows no flag; his only God's name is Benjamin. If it's green, he'll have his fingers all over it, but he's clean... as far as moneymen go."

"That's right.” Luna determined. “He has no prior dealings with the Mountain Men, fell out real big with his son back in '15 and hasn't talked to the man ever since, never been to Idaho in his whole life. Old man Wallace is a dead end."

So the currently known actors were the FSB, the Mountain Men, and Wagner Group. Now there was an unholy trinity.

Who were the conspirators? Mainly old men with rose-tinted glasses, reliving dreams of past glories. Koroleva was a relic of the Soviet Union still hoping to trigger the global proletarian revolution, Prigozhin dreamed of an ever-expanding Russian Empire, and Wallace longed for the colonial-era days when White Europeans had ruled the whole world.

This operation had already cost her dearly, starting long before it had ever taken off. This simply could not go wrong. Failure was not an option. Over the past year and a half, she'd become halfway estranged from her own husband Bellamy, her lifelong friendships with Lexa, Raven, and Gustus were straining, and her own mother thought she was chasing ghosts, leaving her isolated, lonely, and more determined than ever to find vindication so that she could finally have her friends back and actually have some time to spend with them. She and Bell owned a very nice house in Arlington, a three-floor free standing property fit for a family of eight, that she barely remembered the layout of: what was the point of having such a place if she didn’t even get to enjoy it? No, she was more than ready to get herself intimately reacquainted with her home, hopefully by getting even more intimately reacquainted with her husband whom she’d explore every flat surface that could be found on the property of.

The only people that fully stood by her were her dad Jake, her sister-in-law Octavia, and her big maternal sister Costia. Jake was the man in charge of nuclear energy in the United States, but Octavia was a field operative for the NSA and Costia was the commander in charge of SEAL Team 4

When most people thought 'Navy SEALs', they pictured SEAL Team 6. Some even believed that Team 6 was in fact the only one, given a number to confuse the old Soviets into believing there were more of them than there actually were.

This was a misconception. Team 6 was the Underwater Demolitions Team, so they wouldn't be much use in a landlocked country. Glass had transferred into the CIA after a stint as SEAL Team 6 commander, and she would’ve gone instead of Cos if if weren’t for the dry-land nature of this mission area. Team 4 were the guys you called in when you needed special work done on land with some subtlety that CIA SOG or Delta Force operators couldn’t provide.

Clarke Griffin loved her job. Extreme-risk extraordinary renditions of mass-murdering fanatics that got to walk free due to foreign governments holding their hands overhead, drug lab assaults, arms caches demolitions, illegal chemical weapons research labs shutdowns, counterterrorism combat missions, clearing operations against hostile foreign operatives: she liked to think that her SOG operations were making a real difference, doing something that mattered, something that allowed her fellow Americans to go to bed at night without having to worry about whether or not their loved ones would still be alive by this time tomorrow. But now, she had to wonder whether her sister would still be alive tomorrow.

She’d always been something of a loose cannon, someone the Agency couldn’t control. Luke had, however, given her largely free rein, just so see what she might run into, sensing untapped potential in the young Griffin. Then came the hunch that led her to Karachi, Pakistan and the death of Osama Bin Laden - that had been the job that saw her career truly take off to where she'd landed in the Director's chair five years ago.

But if Clarke's second husband was the George Bush Center for Intelligence, then Bellamy's second wife was the United States Army 11th Airborne Division, the famous ‘Helldivers’.

Clarke and Bellamy lived in Arlington, not too far away from Bellamy's job at the Pentagon and Clarke's office in McLean. Clarke was a DC native, born and bred in the obscenely affluent suburb of Arcadia, while Bellamy came from a much more impoverished background, a former juvenile delinquent who had turned his life around in a big way after joining the Army and even more radically when he’d met Clarke by a happy coincidence.

Her best friend Lexa came from and lived, appropriately enough, in Alexandria Virginia, right opposite DIA Headquarters at Joint Base Anacostia-Bollings on the other side of the river. Her other best friends were Raven Reyes, who like herself also made history by being the youngest-ever Director of National Intelligence at just 29, making her Clarke’s direct superior, and Octaciva Blake, Bellamy’s sister, who happened to be married to Captain Lincoln Washington, an officer in Lexa’s DCS unit. Basically, their section of the Alphabet Soup contained something of a happy family.

Standing at a modest five-foot-five in her sharply cut tailored white suit over a deep blue polo shirt that cost more than her basic analysts made in a month, her bright blonde hair elegantly done down in a crowned waterfall braid, Clarke Griffin looked more like a billionaire business mogul than one of the deadliest human beings of her age. Looks certainty were deceiving in her case.

When she shucked her white and donned the camo tan, wielded her M14 EBR SOPMOD that was almost bigger than she was, she was dangerous. When she was in her combat information center directing a paramilitary operation via overhead views provided by KH-20 Keyhole observation satellites, SR-71 Blackbird super-high-altitude spy/signal relay planes, and the helmet cams of her SOG operators, she was damn near unstoppable. Lieutenant-Commander Wells Jaha of the 11th Airborne, Bellamy's division, was one such SR-71 pilot. The division had a few of these precious aircraft in its inventory, and Bell usually let her hijack Wells for off-the-record flights.

As Director, Clarke's portfolio included directly overseeing all of her branch directors and the most critical station chiefs, actively working two dozen codeworded operations, supervising over a hundred fifty more, and ensuring that Langley's people were all in the right place at the right time, and also not where they weren't supposed to be.

As a discretionary operation outside her directorate, Clarke also oversaw the South China Sea Development Group, which was officially a communication network infrastructure development and maintenance company, in Company terms a branch that was concerned with covert intelligence-gathering on Chinese businessmen's dealings with the Chinese Communist Party, and unofficially acted as Clarke's private army. She was a major shareholder, though not one controlling enough to be on the Board of Directors, and her friend Niylah Merchant, the General Manager, was not a CIA member but pretty much did her legitimate business until this former Clandestine Service operative was called into action by Clarke's word and hers alone.

Luna's job as Assistant Director was to make sure that Clarke's work load was not unnecessarily heavy by passing on only the necessary top-level decisions and handling the rest herself, as well as keeping the President and his security advisors briefed on any developing situations that they needed to know about. Luna was the one that suggested and set up new operations, Clarke the one that decided whether or not to sign off on them, reject them, or recommend amendments for further review, and then handed down to Director of Operations Timothy Tallcliffe, former Green Beret, who would be responsible for carrying them out.

As long as Luna didn't make any particularly big fuck-ups, Clarke let the redhead do as she pleased, because despite their personal rivalry, she had to admit that Luna was the perfect woman for the job, and the AD worked best without the Director breathing down her neck. In return, Vice-Admiral Hilker didn’t interfere too closely with Director Griffin’s personal pet projects, such as the SCSDG and now this upcoming covert strike mission. This arrangement had worked perfectly well for five years, and even in the Agency, there was no reason to change a winning strategy.

Where Luna was the main point of contact between the CIA's D-suite and civilian government, not just the National Security Council but also the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Clarke mostly touched base with the directors of the other agencies, particularly General Indra Porter of the DIA, Director John Murphy of the NSA, and their collective boss Raven Reyes, Director of National Intelligence. In her opinion, Murphy was a slimy cockroach just impossible to get rid of, Raven was awesome, and Indra was terrifying and never, ever to be fucked with.

So all in all, Luna made much longer hours, but Clarke's work was a lot more stressful: she held final responsibility for everything that Luna did, as well.

Holding final responsibility and the last say also meant that Clarke could decide that Luna wasn't in the 'need to know' category and entitled to keep her out of the loop on SOG operations under certain parameters. What she was doing now was abuse of power, plain and simple.

The job wasn't particularly high-paying either: she was still a civil servant, and that meant an annual salary of about $270K a year, before taxes, and living in DC was expensive even when adding Bellamy's gross $240K annually, so her ROI on the Development Group made for a very nice supplementary income along the passive she got from the profitable shares in Infinity Corp and Conexit Telecom she held. So the couple's salaries weren't even all that great, but the Treasury covered something like 90% of their cost of living, so they could afford to spend most of what was left after the IRS took its cut however they pleased.  With the money they made, they could afford to disconnect from the main fusion grid and live off MF cells, and Clarke had some decent cash to invest into her retirement fund.

Bellamy was an active division commander in the regular Army, not Reserve or National Guard, but he worked from the Pentagon with the Joint Chiefs of Staff because he was in charge of one of the handful of active duty divisions still stationed in the US itself. That really was ideal, because otherwise, he might be stationed at Nome AFB or the Arctic Warfare Training Center command base, both situated all the way in Alaska, and they’d hardly ever be able to see each other.

Shaking herself out of her thoughts as the Stealth Hawks and Blackbird approached their destination, Clarke glanced over at the geopolitical map and all of the things it represented.

The FSB and SVR were engaged in an intra-Russian version of the Cold War, with the SVR remaining steadfastly loyal to President Volkov, where the FSB felt marginalized by the man whom they quietly accused of selling out the Rodina to the filthy Western capitalist imperialists. With any bit of luck, the FSB would blame this attack on their SVR compatriots rather than the Americans.

Nine years ago, the Russian Presidential race had been between two former KGB officers: incumbent Vladimir Putin, who had been a mid-level glorified clerk stationed in East Berlin who'd survived all the purges because he was very good at doing just enough to build power while not being noticed by the higher-ups, and challenger Andrei Volkov, one of said higher-ups, who had not been a pencil pusher like Putin but a Spetsnaz field commander. Putin had been the political chess player, but Volkov the national hero, so he had carried the 2012 election. Since then, somewhat surprisingly, Russia had been on a steady course towards Westernization, with a lot of old guard Soviets loathing the man for it and rallying 'round the old USSR flag by seeking refuge in the FSB, successor to the KGB's Third and Fifth Chief Directorates (Armed Forces and Internal Security), while the SVR, successor to the First Chief Directorate (Foreign Operations), became a counterweight, stacked top to bottom with Volkov loyalists, both camps studded with both the rising stars of the new Russia and has-beens of the Soviet Union. The Russian Federation seemed calm and placid enough on the surface, but beneath it, the whole country was a powder keg just waiting for a spark. They had taken bites out of Georgia, annexed Belarus and Ukraine in all but name, put puppet regimes in Armenia and Azerbaijan, and most recently, brutally crushed a civil rights movement in Kazakhstan to install a pro-Russia Presidency there - the last of which had happened under Volkov, not Putin, but even so, Andrei was far more willing to work with the USA to twin the nations as global leaders for international security and counter-terror operations, in his own slick words.

Andrei Volkov had taken office in the Kremlin in 2012 after beating Vladimir Putin's New Russia Party with his All-Russias Coalition, and would most likely not be leaving it again until they carried out his lifeless body feet first. Augustus Woods had won his race as an Independent in 2016 against the Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump, then won again in 2020 against Joe Biden and again Donald Trump, but had always made clear that he wouldn't try to absolve the two-term limit to stand again in 2024.

Andrei Volkov and Augustus Woods had an excellent relationship, which was one of the reasons why the American President stubbornly refused to believe that something as horrible as nuclear terrorism could be coming from that camp; seemingly deaf to the fact that Clarke was saying that the threat came from one as-yet unknown faction of Russians, not the whole nation of Russia.

Ever since the Bojinka Attacks in 2001 that saw the murder of Pope John Paul II and the use of 11 commercial airliners full of hostages as guided missiles to attack the Pentagon, World Trade Center, Langley, and several other important locales throughout the United States, the United States Armed Forces had increased in size twenty-fold to become the World Police, intervening in force in conflict zones around the world and engaging in large-scale offensives against conventional and guerrilla forces. Afghanistan and Iraq first and foremost, but also back into Somalia, to Ethiopia and Sudan, and more recently, putting tens of thousands of boots on the ground in civil war-torn Syria, Yemen, and Libya. Russia had certainly done no less, striking out towards the west and south, bringing chunks of the former Russian Empire into its sphere of influence in Europe and reoccupying vast swathes of Central Asia as it had done during Soviet times, all in the interest of national security, of course. At the moment, nobody was quite sure whether the USA and RF were bitter rivals, close allies, or both at the same time.

With only the Russians as near-peers in modern warfare following their recent wars in Georgia and Kazakhstan, the US Armed Forces were now the only battle-hardened army in the world that had extensive experience in large-scale symmetrical combat with modern militaries, even their European allies notwithstanding, as the British, French, and Germans had mostly taken care of combat mission against asymmetrical hostile forces. The US was a powerhouse, boasting a battle-hardened veteran army, and at the moment, it was doing absolutely nothing with it - because while it had rolled in and flattened all of its enemies and occupied numerous countries, it was handling said occupations... far too softly to remain intimidating to all those that sought to drive them back out. The situation they’d become mired in by the politicians that lacked the will to go all the way in doing what was necessary also caused friction between Clarke and the government, because the Director made her distaste for holding back, which she thought would do more damage in the long run than it prevented, quite vocally known.

The Chinese had had their ambitions firmly checked following failed military adventures against Vietnam, India, and Pakistan, leaving only the United States and Russia as global contenders. The Cold War had never officially reignited, with President Volkov steering the Federation closer towards the West, but turning all of the Russian ultranationalists and communists against him; and there were many, many Westerners - American Liberals and European socialists and social democrats - that were immensely critical of what they called American military adventurism and Washington's making overtures towards an increasingly aggressive, nakedly imperialistic Russia.

Of course, Pakistan had defeated China when there had still been a Pakistan to speak of. It wouldn't be too much later that Clarke had dug up Bin Laden, the Navy SEALs had killed him, Pakistan’s shadow government in its own intelligence agency the ISI launched a coup and threatened nuclear war, and the USA had curried favor with India by jointly invading Pakistan with them, Russia, and Poland, the last of whom was still riding the high of the same Catholic zeal that had turned Warsaw into DC's principal military ally after supplanting Britain, France, and Germany.

The Poles and Russians had been able to temporarily set aside their own mutual hatred for the sake of more effectively carpet bombing Pakistan to plate glass, but when all was said and done and the two big powers carved up its carcass between themselves,diplomatic  relations between Poland and Russia had been tense indeed.

At present, both the US and Russia were propping up puppet governments that controlled the coastal areas and everywhere else, respectively. But unlike in Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan, the Americans weren't pouring trillions into reconstruction, but were leaving the condemned country to its own devices. At least they weren't going out of their way to be actively malicious like the Russians were, who were saying that if the Pakis wanted to live like Medieval goat herders so badly, then let them have nothing beyond medieval technology either.

The CIA had been kept really, really busy too, undertaking tons of clandestine political and paramilitary operations in hostile countries like Venezuela, Guatemala, Albania, and Iran, and neutral but dangerously unstable countries like Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, and Egypt, where they weren't just contending with local hostile actors, but also their Russian and Chinese intelligence counterparts, alternatingly fighting or supporting local governments and militaries, rebel groups and insurgent militias, trying to secure political alliances, military access, trade deals, and mineral rights while attempting to deny their adversaries the same.

George Bush Jr. had been a reluctant wartime leader, a Republican that had preferred to focus on diplomacy and economics but found his hand forced into numerous wars by Bin Laden. Then, Obama had been the rate Democrat Warhawk, who had raised American global power and economic prosperity to a zenith it hadn't seen since the collapse of the USSR. But now, President Woods preferred to try to transition the countries under military administration to civil self-governance again, x, and neutralize security threats using clandestine paramilitary operations forces instead of overt military action. It was a policy that kept Clarke in a job, but also one that she believed made America look weak in the eyes of the non-Western world, that looked at the velvet gloves of US occupation troops and didn't see kindness and humanitarian restraint in it, but fear and weakness that only bolstered their resolve to shake off American influence so that they could go back to replacing representative governance with tribal monarchies, systematically enslaving women, murdering religious minorities and sexual 'deviants', and holding ethnic pogroms in the name of their traditional cultures the idiot Europeans were tolerating in the name of diversity, forgetting that tolerating intolerance bred only violence.

A few hours ago, sitting in her office in the above-ground portion of Langley, Luna had called her out for what the curly-haired woman considered to be overactive imagination fueled by paranoia.

"You're always overthinking, Griffin.” Luna said, tapping her temple. “Your plans are always overly complex, needlessly complicated, and composed of so many layers that it's a miracle the whole setup doesn't implode if one little thing goes wrong." She said, and it wasn’t like it was untrue, but…

“That’s what backups and contingencies are for. I can adapt my plans on the fly.” Clarke argued, even though there’d be absolutely nothing she could do in case this plan went off the rails, and they both knew it.

"All I'm saying is that sometimes, simple is better." Luna stated.

Clarke had to disagree: "In my dictionary, 'simple' means 'easy to counter'. It's hard for the enemy to figure out what we're doing if even our own people don't know what we're up to."

"The more potential points of failure, the greater the possibility that something will-"

"Luna. We've been over this." The blonde cut her off.

"I still don't like this.” The redhead said. “Going balls-deep into Pakistan was one thing, but their ISI was actively supporting and protecting the masterminds behind the Bojinka attacks for fourteen freaking years, and we knew about it by then. I know it was thanks to your gut feeling uncovering a lead everyone else overlooked. Don't think I forgot the work you did that turned you into an all-American hero, kid." Luna smiled a little, recalling the way Clarke had been crazy enough to set up her own capture by Al-Qaeda just so their eyes would be off Costia, who was the one hunting for Osama on the ground. The plan had been ballsy, pretty much insane, but it had worked out. "But this? Invading a Russian enclave in Kazakhstan, the same Kazakhstan that's under Russian military occupation? That's another game altogether." She argued in one last-ditch effort to make the Director see reason and change tack. "Look, why don't we just send some people to the fucking shop with requisition forms?" She suggested as a way to at least keep things internal to the Company.

"Because the 'shop' that you're on about has fewer than 1,000 people, they're spread all over the world, and most of them are low-level grunts. We just don't have the manpower.” Clarke said exasperated, as if she hadn’t gone through every option a hundred times already. “And we're out of time. These things are getting moved at dusk local time. It's now or never."

"So let me get this straight: you think that 100 nuclear weapons that went missing from Baikonur can, in fact, be found stashed in a cave situated a few miles outside of... Baikonur." Luna laid out incredulously.

"That is correct. And I don't 'think' it, I have actionable intelligence on it." Clarke nodded with conviction.

"Intel that you adamantly refuse to share with anyone, even your own AD, to the point that I couldn't even tell the Senate whether it actually exists?"

"The less you know, the safer you'll be. If this does go wrong, I'll be asked to resign if nothing else, and I need to know that whoever takes that chair next will be just as capable as me." The Director tried to reason.

"What the hell have you been up to behind my back to get all this set up?" The Assistant Director asked, getting more agitated by the second as she took in the enormity of what her boss had been doing to get this op set up.

"...I made some off the books phone calls. Ran a few lines that I somehow had to authorize a hand-signed directive to myself for, because bureaucracy is a bitch even at Langley.” Clarke admitted, swallowing dryly. “It's nothing illegal, if that's what you're asking. Don't worry, you won't take the fall for me. Nothing, and I mean nothing at all , could possibly point to you, not even your part in this op, as long as you keep your mouth shut." She tried to reassure the tan redhead.

"Even you don't have the authority to make that kind of a decision." Said Luna, her calm voice betraying her anger with its undercurrent of disbelief.

"I already have." Clarke stated with finality, indicating that this interrogation was over.

"You're playing with fire, Clarke. You know the stakes even better than I do. Why?" Luna asked instead, her tone softening to worry. She’d been concerned about her boss’ condition for some time, but knew that short of requesting an invasive Internal Affairs investigation that would go over Clarke’s mental health with such a fine-toothed comb that every little thing she’d ever said in private would be upturned and overanalyzed in an actively hostile way, which she didn’t want to subject the other woman to no matter how much she tended to butt heads with her over what level of force was proper - Clarke always tending to resort to gunfights first while to Luna lethal action was a last resort - there was no recourse left for ehr to stop this.

"It's like you said: I know the stakes." Clarke sighed, repeating what Luna knew about her: "I bear it, so they don't have to."

Outside Baikonur, Russian enclave in Kazakhstan

Concurrently

The AH-60S Stealth Hawks had only hovered in place for long enough to put their chalks on the ground, then had quickly waved off again. The Blackhawk variants - two flights of three birds - had come in below the usual RADAR network’s minimal altitude ceiling, but couldn’t remain on station for too long: they may be impervious to electronic detection, but skimming so close to ground level meant that they could very much ben seen and heard by people on the ground. This area may be a desert, but with a major city not too far away, there was no guarantee that they hadn’t been spotted and called in. The strike force was on the clock before they’d even disembarked their birds.

“Twenty-one minutes to bugout, Griffin.” Jaha in his Blackbird miles above radioed in. “They’ll be leaving with or without you, so better make it snappy.”

From here on out, every second counted. The danger was insane, the risks enormous - the Geiger counters strapped to everyone’s equipment harness was evidence of that - and many moving parts remained unknown. That was precisely the way Costia Marie Griffin liked it. Her frosty exterior and calm demeanor under fire were window dressing that concealed the heart of an adrenaline junkie that lived for this sort of shit. So when her sis had started talking about a nuclear threat, Cos grew determined to weasel every last detail out of Little Griffin - and being the elder sister, she’d succeeded. And as soon as she knew, there was no way she was gonna let anyone except SEAL Team 4 take point on the operation to stop it.

Everything in America ran off microfusion cells these days, but those weren't exactly usable in a terrorist plot. It would be easier to build a hydrogen bomb from scratch than converting an MF cell into a nuclear explosive device would be. Of course, it could be easier still to just appropriate some pre-existing hydrogen bombs, provided one had an inroad. The Russians didn’t exactly keep good track of their nuclear arsenal, so if 400 warheads and 100 delivery systems went missing, it would be relatively easy for an insider to cover this up as just an asset transfer, or a decommissioning as part of a swap-out for new warheads, since they did require replacing every 20 years.

And nobody would think to look in a random cave sitting right across the border of an important Russian nuclear missile base in the middle of the desert to find missing weapons that nobody acknowledged were actually gone, Cos reflected as she led her team through its maw and into the darkness beyond. She, Bragg, and Riley had unfolded their ISR quadcopters and sent them ahead to scout for threats, their telemetry coming back with nothing, so after checking the heartbeat sensors and thermal imagers on their weapons that also came up empty, she felt confident in entering the maw.

The 18 SEALs and accompanying 42 South China Sea Development Group Security people - who despite their corporate identity were very much Special Forces veterans to a (wo)man, drawn from the ranks of Army Rangers, Recon Marines, Green Berets0, and Delta Force - pulled down their helmet-mounted night vision goggles, this type being battery-less omni-directional receiver types rather than the more common battery-fed back-scatter ones, lifted their suppressed weapons - an assortment of MP5s, MP7s, P90s, and F200s - to ready-high, and began canvasing the interior, team leaders waving their radometers around to look for anything out of the ordinary.

Back in the Warm Room, Clarke’s eyes remained glued to the big screen.

“Ground team has entered the cavern, ma’am. All elements report ingress. Negative contact so far.”

Clarke never quite understood the need of battle controllers to call out what could be taken as self-evident from the monitors, but she supposed it was a useful mnemonic to keep one’s thoughts in order. Watching her sister’s camera feed, she absentmindedly brought her hand up to her teeth, to be stopped at the last second by Glass grabbing her wrist and depositing a handful of jelly beans into her palm. That’d make for a better thing to chew on than her nails, Clarke thought, smiling in appreciation at the taller blonde before returning her attention to the monitor.

“Fan out, sweep through, and secure your quadrants, people. I want no surprises when we hit the jackpot.” Costia commanded. “Keep it tight, guys.”

“Peregrine to Oriole.” She radioed up to LTC Jaha. “Cavern entrance is clear and secure. I’m getting a radiation spike from further ahead. All teams will converge on position. Please inform Redtail: extract imminent.”

“Good copy, Peregrine. Will relay to Redtail.” Wells replied, accepting the task of informing the half-dozen UH-60S helicopters to prepare to receive hazardous cargo.

Costia and her fireteam rendezvoused with the rest of the strike force inside a large chamber, going around several bends to emerge in this cavern space where there wasn’t any natural daylight, not even enough for their NVGs to do any good. Switching on their flashlights, they found that there was a second tier, a mezzanine-like structure, surrounding the chamber, which ws, save for some big rocks, otherwise empty.

The Geiger counters clicked more strongly than usual, and the radometers pointed towards the center of this chamber as an active emission zone, but of nuclear warheads, there was no sign. The ground appeared undisturbed, there was no artificial debris for as far as they could tell, and searching for alternate exits yielded not even a hold large enough for a child to fit through. It was damn dark in here, though, so without floodlights, it was easy to miss something.

“Maybe the equipment is picking up higher UBR levels. This far underground, surrounded by natural rock, it could just be natural output.” Costia mentioned, though it sounded like a lame excuse even to her own ears. Something was definitely not right here, only the blonde couldn’t quite put her finger on it.

All of a sudden, floodlights were precisely what turned on, banks of blindingly powerful lamps shining down into the cave well from the mezzanine above. The glare was such that nobody could see what was happening, the darkness of the second tier too starkly contrasting with the bottom level that was now as brightly lit as the desert under the afternoon sun above.

A man’s voice called out from a silhouette that appeared between two of the lamps: “Eto mayor Stanislavov iz Spetsnaza Kazakhstana. My poymali vas v lovushke na nizine. U vas net shansov probit'sya naruzhu. Sdavaytes' ili umrite. U vas odna minuta, chtoby podchinit'sya.” (This is Major Stanislavov of the Special Forces of Kazakhstan. We have you trapped on the low ground. You do not have a chance of fighting your way out. Surrender or die. You have one minute to comply.)

“Oriole, we have a problem. Prepare Redtail for hot extract, if you’d kindly.” Costia whispered to Wells as she and her people scrambled to get out of a direct line of fire to the best of their ability, dozens and dozens more black silhouettes appearing all around them.

“Stoy! Brosayte oruzhiye! Ya ne skazhu tebe vtoroy raz!” (Halt! Drop your weapons! I won’t tell you again!) Stanislavov shouted again, sounding twitchy as fuck.

“Shit’s fucked, Commander. What do we do?” Roma Bragg, one of Cos’ sharpshooters, asked her breathlessly, eyes scanning for what targets she’d be able to put down quickest before she’d be forced to reposition.

The Kazakh Major spoke again, sounding almost reluctant, yet resolute as he said: “Vy okruzheny boleye krupnymi silami pod sil'nym prikrytiyem. U vas net shansov. Sdavaytes' pryamo seychas, i vashi zhizni budut sokhraneny.” (You are surrounded by a larger force in heavy cover. You don't stand a chance. Surrender now and your lives will be spared.)

“Ty znayesh', chto ya ne mogu otdat' takoy prikaz.” (You know I can’t give such an order.) Costia answered, her mouth going dry as it sunk in just what kind of a clusterfuck she’d walked her people into.

“Ya poklyalsya zashchishchat' svoyu stranu i yeye narod ot lyubogo vraga, gde by to ni bylo na Zemle, v lyuboye vremya. No dazhe yesli ya tvoy vrag, eto ne obyazatel'no znachit, chto ya tvoy. Ty i tvoi lyudi vse ravno mozhete uyti ot etogo. Moi lyudi mogut zashchitit' vas i vashikh blizkikh. Zadumaytes' ob etom, Stanislavov! O tom, chto vy delayete; o tom, chem oni zastavlyayut tebya zhertvovat'!” (I swore an oath to defend my country and its people from any enemy, anywhere on Earth, at any time. But even if I am your enemy, it doesn't have to mean that I'm yours. You and your men men can still walk away from this. My people can protect you and yours. Think about this, Stanislavov! About what you're doing; about what they're forcing you to sacrifice!)

Costia’s helmet cam swung around back and forth, scanning for exit routes, but there were hostiles all around behind solid cover, and all that her guys had were a bunch of boulders that could block incoming fire from one direction, but hugging them would leave the operators exposed from another. They were caught in a hopeless crossfire.

“Kakim by shchedrym ni bylo vashe predlozheniye, uzhe slishkom pozdno, chtoby ono imelo kakoye-libo znacheniye. To, chto bylo privedeno v dvizheniye, ne ostanovit'!” (As generous as your offer is, it is far too late for it to matter. The things that have been set into motion cannot be stopped!) “Sdavaytes', inache vy vse pogibnete naprasno, za tysyachi kilometrov ot doma, i vashi sem'i nikogda ne uznayut, chto s vami proizoshlo.” (Surrender, or you will all die in vain, thousands of miles from home, and your families will never know what happened to you.)

“Dumayu, my oba znayem, chto lyudi, na kotorykh vy rabotayete, ne ostavlyayut svideteley. Ya dumayu, chto luchshe vospol'zuyus' svoim shansom, chem dobrovol'no otpravlyus' na kazn'.” (I think we both know the people you work for leave no witnesses. I think I’ll take my chances rather than willingly be marched off to my execution.)

“Tvoya khrabrost' ni k chemu ne privedet, amerikanets.” (Your bravery will get you nowhere, American.) “Chego by vy ni dumali, chto mozhete dostich' zdes', eto nichego ne znachit!” (Whatever you think you can achieve here, it won't amount to a thing!) The Major called out, his voice almost pledading now.

“Ya kommander Kostiya Griffin, spetsnaz VMS SSHA. Ya rabotayu na TSRU. Moi druz'ya namnogo mogushchestvenneye tvoikh. Ostanovites' i ukhodite, poka yeshche mozhete, potomu chto moye nachal'stvo nikogda ne perestanet okhotit'sya na vas i vsekh, kogo vy znayete, yesli vy budete strelyat' v nas.” (I am Commander Costia Griffin, Navy SEALs. I work for the CIA. My friends are a hell of a lot more powerful than yours. Stand down and walk away while you still can, because my superiors will never stop hunting you and everyone you know if you shoot at us.)

“Lyudi, na kotorykh ya rabotayu, v lyubom sluchaye ub'yut nas, yesli my vas ne ostanovim. Vy vedete peregovory ne s pozitsii sily, komandir Griffin.” (The people I work for will kill us anyway if we don’t stop you. You’re not negotiating from a position of strength, Commander Griffin.) “Segodnya net neobkhodimosti nikomu umirat'. Zdes' net togo, chto vy pytayetes' nayti. Vse, chto vam nuzhno sdelat', eto brosit' oruzhiye i poyti domoy.” (There is no need for anybody to die today. What you’re trying to find isn’t here. All you need to do is drop your weapons and go home.)

“That’s a lie, we all know it is.” Luna commented, getting a withering glare in return.

“This can’t be happening…” Clarke muttered in distress. “Where the hell are their backup teams?”

Costia addressed the Major again, trying to appeal to his logic: “Vy napravlyayete oruzhiye na voyennosluzhashchikh SSHA, imeyushchikh pryamyye svyazi s Pentagonom. Yesli vy v nas strelyayete, vy nachnete voynu!” (You are aiming weapons at United States military personnel with direct links to the Pentagon. If you shoot at us, you will start a war!)

“Razve vy ne ponimayete? Eto imenno to, chego oni khotyat.” (Don’t you understand? That is exactly what they want.) The man said back, despondently. It was becoming clear that he wanted to be in this position about just as much as she did. “Teper' v posledniy raz: bros'te svoye oruzhiye i ukhodite. Ya ne budu sprashivat' snova.” (Now for the last time: drop your weapons, and walk away. I will not ask again.)

“Ya byl na tvoyem meste; chert voz'mi, ya byl na tvoyem meste! Pomogite mne zdes', i ya mogu garantirovat', chto vy budete v bezopasnosti!” (I've been in your position; god dammit, I've been you! Help me out here, and I can guarantee you will be safe!) Cos offered, her last attempt to defuse the situation peacefully.

It was not to be. “Vy ponyatiya ne imeyete, protiv kogo vy vystupayete. Ot takikh, kak ona, net zashchity. Ty libo s ney, libo ty khodyachiy mertvets. Stsenariy o tom, kak otvazhnyye amerikantsy spasayut polozheniye, sushchestvuyet tol'ko v Gollivude. Ni tebe, ni mne nechego skazat' po etomu povodu. Teper', radi vsego svyatogo, bros'te oruzhiye i ukhodite!” (You have no idea who you're up against. There is no protection from the likes of her. You are either with her, or you're a dead man walking. The scenario of the brave Americans saving the day only exists in Hollywood. Neither you or I have anything to say in the matter. Now for the love of God, throw down your guns and walk away!)

“We’re done for if we don’t make a decision now, Commander. What are your orders, ma’am?” Roma wanted to know.

Costia could almost hear the words of Glass Sorenson, her one-time colleague and fellow Commander, in her ears from way back in Basic: ‘You’re gonna get shot in the back the second you turn away. Rule #1 of a gunfight: never, ever put away your gun.’, she had said, and that had been a rule Cos had lived by ever since.

“When your back's to the wall, where else do you have to go but forward? Push through contact!" Costia ordered, putting a hole between Major Stanislavov’s eyes.

The SEALs and SCS operators opened fire, each of them quickly taking down one or two Kazakhs, but the enemy, behind cover and still far more numerous, wasn’t intimidated enough to break. Instead, they returned fire, their shots unaimed and inaccurate but the volume of their wild spraying striking down several of Costia’s men all the same. The members of Strike Force Peregrine still on their feet began fluidly shifting from one side of the rocks to another, never staying put, sliding around facings just long enough to sight a new target and pull the trigger for a single burst before moving away again, making it hard for the enemy to hit moving targets and for them to predict where the Americans were going to be next - but they quickly adapted to this sudden turnabout by tossing grenades into the pit below

“Cover! Cover!” Costia screamed, doing her best to be heard even through their earpieces over the echoing din of gunfire, her men organizing into teams that leaped and bounded towards the entrance while other teams kept looking inwards to shield their backs and keep the enemy at a distance, preventing them from using the funnel as a killzone.

“Jesus Christ, the whole area just lit up with short-range RADAR and LIDAR gun signatures! Redtail is getting spiked by lots of MANPADS, we have to bug out!” Wells’ RSO, Lieutenant Tom Crenshaw, came over the radio.

"We do not leave our own behind, no matter the cost!" Clarke shouted into her headset at Wells.

“Pull back! Break out!” Costia barked at her men, gesturing for them to fight their way through the cave entrance and get out onto land, where they’d at least no longer have to fight from the low ground. Why the hell hadn’t she left some men to keep the entrance clear and watch her back? Oh yeah, because she didn't have enough people for that by half.

"Jaha. Turn back, get those Stealth Hawks to provide CAS and medevac. We're pulling them out."

“We have to cut our losses, Griffin. There’s nothing we can do for them now.”

"Get your head out of the movies. No-one is expendable, that's not how we work."

“This mission is over, Clarke. I won’t send my airmen to their deaths to save the unsavable.”

“I am ordering you to turn around and pull our people to safety!”

"Negative. Zone is too hot. We can't risk a Stealth Hawk falling into enemy hands."

It didn’t matter that they’d made it out of the cave. Because even more enemies were waiting on the exterior side, having just popped up from hidey holes in the ground. They’d just walked from one trap right into another.

“Diamond formation! Each facing, watch your quadrant, and push through!” Costia ordered, hoping against hope that her operators’ superior fire discipline could carry them through the day. But against far more numerous enemy forces that were now bringing machine guns to bear, she knew they were only delaying the inevitable. Beneath the scorching desert sun, still searingly hot even at the onset of night, Costia’s blood turned to ice in her veins. Six more years, and she would’ve retired from the SEALs. She would’ve liked to get to grow old together with Lexa.

In the War Room, Clarke was having an out-of-body experience. Every cell in her being felt like it was vibrating, utterly numbed as the world around her fell away and all that remained was a terrible self-conscious awareness: Costia was going to die. And it was Clarke that had sent her to her death.

"We're getting torn apart here! Where the hell's our air support?!" She could hear Peregrine calling to Oriole, Wells’ channel open but not replying with anything more than a choked, strangled gasp of helpless despair.

“Nobody’s coming for us, are they, sis? Nobody even knows we’re here.” Costia asked, sounding resigned, yet still understanding. Some part of her had always known that it would end like this. She’d just hoped that she’d be proven wrong for once. But it sounded like Clarke was just as helpless as she was to do anything about it.

“I’m sorry.”

“Tell Lexa that I tried, would you?”

“I will. I love you, sis.”

One after the other, helmet cams were going vertical, showing the ground to the left or right instead of above, and status indicators winked from blue to red. One operator after another, their BPM, respiration, and cerebral activity monitors flatlined, displaying zeroes where there'd been 120s and good waveforms just moments before. When this happened, the section displaying their ID photos grayed out, with a red X crossing the picture with the nightmarish initials K.I.A. superimposed over their faces.

Christian Pierce (SCS) - KIA. James Wolcott (SCS) - KIA. Roma Bragg (SEALs) - KIA. Nathan Miller (SEALs) - KIA. Alyson Bree (SCS) - KIA. And the list kept growing.

One by one by one, all of her boys and girls out there were being slaughtered. They gave a lot more than they took, but it just wasn't enough. It wasn't nearly enough. Caught in a cauldron, on lower ground with no cover, and outnumbered several times over, this engagement was a foregone conclusion. They took down ten Kazakhs for every operator they lost, but more and more of them just kept pouring out of the spider hole tunnels.

There were dunes all around, the strike force having entered a natural gully to gain entry to the cavern, meaning that once again, they were stuck on the low ground. Some men that tried to scale up the side of one of them were shot in the back from the lip of another, others that climbed a second dune made it over the crest, but found themselves skylining against the setting sun and were mowed down by machine gun fire. It was all starting to fall apart, the diamond formation broken as discipline broke down with casualties mounting. And even as Costia and those remaining around her tightened up and tried to push out, things went from all fucked up to even worse when they crossed a dune and were lifted off their feet by a line of landmines that had been buried beneath the sand. The explosions attracted a hailstorm of rifle- and machine gun fire, a shower of rocket-propelled grenades, and an enemy charge into bayonet range even as the remaining operators pulled their debilitated living up to the top of the next dune..

Costia’s men that were still on their feet were left scrounging for ammo from the dead and wounded, firing off on automatic now as they tried to stem the tide of onrushing Kazakhs with the scent of victory in their nostrils. Clearly, these men weren’t nearly as reluctant to kill the Americans as Major Stanislavov had been. The strike force’s tattered remnants made their final stand on the dune top, the enemy struggling to ascend the slippery, shifting sands in their much weightier kits, their climb made even more difficult by having to dodge the rolling and sliding corpses of their own comrades, having a hard time firing back to to the unfortunate angle while taking precise fire in return from oblique angles that ensured even the dips and crests up the side slopes provided no cover.

But it was clear that this was the endgame: the Americans were almost out of ammunition and the Kazakhs still had more living bodies than Costia’s people had bullets.

Even so, the Americans were still making light of their situation: such was a soldier’s way of coping with imminent death.

“They call that a formation, boss?” Sergeant Riley joked in his thick English West Country accent.

“How nice of ‘em to mash up in a mob. Shoot in any direction, and you’ll hit an enemy.” Cos said back with derision at their would-be executioners.

They just kept coming, from every direction, the sheer volume of fire going up starting to make it impossible for anybody to peek out to get a shooting angle without getting drilled. And then, in an instant, the Kazakhs were on top of the dune.

Costia, covered up to the waist by a sand wall, took aim and fired. One enemy officer leading the charge went down, then another, before the Kazakhs opened back up themselves and forced her into cover. Gunfire lit up the encroaching darkness as the enemy launched a frontal assault, their heavy footfalls making the sands quake as they used the bodies of their own dead as cover, leaping and bounding forward to come to grips with the SEALs and SCS operators whose rifles and SMGs were at last starting to click dry.

Costia realized that whoever had planned this ambush knew exactly what they were doing: moreover, that they’d used one of her own plans against her. Once upon a time in Pakistan, she and a handful of supporting units, amounting to no more than fifty operators, had gone up against an entire Taliban battalion a thousand strong. They’d known that the enemy was coming, what route they would take, and a point where they’d all be clustered together. She’d set up her people in a U-shaped ambush, her sharpshooters and machine gunners opening fire and reaping a horrific toll on the enemy, then staging a withdrawal, pretending like the shallow end of the formation was breaking apart. The enemy followed, thinking they’d won and pursuing to complete their victory, only to be led straight into a minefield. It had only taken ten minutes after that to cut down most of the Taliban fighters.

This operation had gone down almost just like that, only in the opposite way. Strike Force Peregrine had fought its way out of the cave, because they were meant to. And then they had been chased into the minefield. Push instead of pull, but the parallels were impossible to ignore. Only by the look of things, they had much less than minutes left.

She was struck by a moment of perfect clarity. With the enemy overrunning her last clutch of operators, fighting with bayonets, knives, and daggers, she felt a wave of calm wash over her. She suddenly realized what was going to happen to the warheads. And if there was anything she had to do, it was to warn her sister about it.

“Clarke! I think I know where-” Costia started to say into her radio, but found her tongue paralyzed before she could complete the message. Uncomprehending, she looked down to see that there was now a knife stuck in her throat.

How strange was it that she hadn’t even noticed? Stranger still that she didn’t feel a thing?

And why was the sky directly in front of her? That couldn’t be right…

"Shit! Peregrine is down! Peregrine is down!" Riley shouted into his mic, placing his gloved hands over the tear in his commander’s throat in a futile effort to keep the pressure on to prevent her from bleeding out. "Stay with me. Hey, stay with me now!" He called out to the already unconscious woman, unwittingly echoing Clarke in the War Room who was by now completely freaking out and had ripped off her headset without having realized it, cursing Wells for abandoning Cos and all of her operators to die.

It was over in moments. Sergeant Riley took a bullet to the temple and went down. Right after that, Costia, thankfully not having felt a thing, went brain dead from hypoxia around the same time that hypovolemic shock stopped her heart.

Up on the display, the final operator’s status indicator winked to red.

Costia Griffin (SEALs)... KIA.

“Oh my god…” Clarke whispered, her voice failing her as her headset slid out of powerless fingers, almost taking a belly flop were it not for Luke catching her at the last moment.

Glass gestured across her neck, quietly telling the AV operator to cut the feeds. The helmet cam videos and operator profiles disappeared, replaced by their monitors’ more standard fare; but it was beyond evident that the whole world had shifted on its axis. The CIC looked just like it had half an hour ago. But the place had turned as silent as the grave. An operation going this bad this quickly was unprecedented. Even the Bay of Pigs invasion hadn’t been this much of a disaster. At least some of their Cuban allies had actually survived that ordeal.

The UH-60S’es would now travel to Okinawa for resting the crews and then return to Nome in Alaska. They would need less time to go back than they’d needed getting there: they were sixty people and a few special packages short.

Luna and Timothy decided that they’d go back topside to get their house in order, everyone in agreement that an almost catatonic Director would do nobody any good. After a short consult, Luke decided to stay at Langley until the night shift and drive home alone - he and Glass were so incapable of being apart for a second longer than necessary that if they were both at the office they only used one car - and the latter would take Clarke’s M7 to take the blonde back home to Arlington.

Clarke barely registered what happened next, the last few minutes of the operation gone FUBAR playing on repeat in her mind, showing the macabre dance of death over and over again. She was unresponsive when Glass took her out to the garage, barely uttered a word on the way home, and only when Sorenson had rung the doorbell and Bellamy appeared at the door did she come back to herself. At one point, she was vaguely aware of Sorenson using her car phone to call into the Pentagon, telling Bellamy that there’d been a family emergency and asking him if he could come home right away. She didn’t register any answer, just asked ‘Is this line secure?’ as a reflex and then sunk into a fugue state again.

She was used to feeling nothing. She could compartmentalize like no other, shove her emotions into a box and push it down until they wouldn’t get in the way of doing her job. But that was a passive sort of nothing. The nothing she felt now was an active presence, a malicious absence of light and warmth that left her unable to even stand up straight when her friend and colleague helped her to her front door.

“Clarke? Clarke, what happened?” Bell spoke, concerned about seeing his wife in such a state. This had quite simply never happened before, so he didn’t know what to do other than hold her when she fell into his arms like a puppet with its strings cut, just sniffling and trying but failing to talk as her breath kept hitching in her throat. It was Glass who had to tell Bellamy that his sister-in-law had been killed in action barely an hour ago.

Glass pulled out her phone and dialed the DIA central switchboard, then requested the right extension. “Commander Woods?” She asked when the line opened, and once Lexa confirmed that it was her speaking, the Icelandic girl dropped the bombshell: “This is SOG Director Sorenson from the CIA. I think you should come to the place in Arlington right away. Something terrible has happened, and it’s not my place to say what. But Commander, you need to hear this.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 2: Contents Under Pressure

April 27th, 2021

Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling

Defense Intelligence Agency Headquarters

Two months after the ambush at Baikonur

Lexa walked into the Director’s office feeling like a whole new woman. Returning to the familiar halls of the tall, thin, dark gray rockcrete slab right where the Anacostia River met the Potomac felt like coming home. After two months of being off duty, having spent the first four weeks wallowing and the remainder trying to recenter herself and start to pick up the pieces with a sorely needed change of scenery around her, she felt like she was ready to get her head back in the game. Anya, ever the protective, concerned big sister, had disagreed, of course, but if there was one thing that could be said about Lexa Woods, it would be that once she’d decided to do something, you could either accept it or try and fail to change her mind.

General Indra Porter, Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, had long been Lexa’s mentor. The middle-aged, dark-skinned woman, ever with a severe look on her battle-worn face and a stern but fair disposition, had just told her she would be allowed to return to her duties if she so wished, and Lex had jumped at the chance. She’d needed the break, some time to get her thoughts in order, set her priorities straight, and just be away for a while so she wouldn’t have to try to sleep in the same bed that she’d shared for so many nights with her love who wouldn’t be coming back. Costia and Lexa had been living together for seven years, building something as close to a routine as two people living on vastly different and often unpredictable schedules could have, and it had become a source of comfort, knowing that she’d get to wake up in Cos’ embrace as often as her blonde could be home, head out on her early morning run, and by the time she came back, could sidle up next to a still-sleeping Costia for a little longer, just basking in her presence before her fiancée awoke and would be ready for the day in five minutes flat. It was so weird coming back to an empty bed, the sensation one she told herself she’d have to get used to, but she was pretty sure that she wouldn’t be seeing her house nearly as often anymore. She would sleep there, sometimes eat there, but she couldn’t stay for too long without being surrounded by ghosts. A part of her wanted to sell the place to get away from all the memories it held; another part wasn’t ready to let go just yet; and a third part still reminded her that it was also her house, not just theirs , and it would be childish to uproot her entire life just because she couldn’t instantly figure out how to cope with being single again: she’d lived there for four years by herself first, after all, so she ought to be able to do so now.

She still had her sister, her dad, Raven, and some colleagues she considered friends, but it still felt like her job was the only life she had left. So she was determined to hold onto it with tooth and nail.

Lexa represented a statistical minority these days: she still believed in God. Not the personal one that was described in the Bible, or the Torah, not the projection of mankind applied to an almighty creator, but in a sort of universal spirit that encompassed the whole universe which was defined through the act of being observed by multitudes of conscious life.

Incidentally, she also believed in reincarnation with continuity of personality, meaning that she wasn't terribly disturbed by death as a concept, being fully convinced that it was not the end. Lexa killed the ones that needed killing in order to secure as safe a world as possible for as many people as she could. Some people that didn't deserve the life they had would go on to see a hundred years, and many that should have gotten to grown old were cut down in the prime of their life, so it wasn't like Lexa believed in inherent justice, a master plan, or anything like that: instead, life was its own end goal, but its purpose was something for humanity to determine. Nothing was universally good or evil, but for what qualities people ascribed to it - in her case, people killing other people just because others didn't live the way the killers wanted them to was an evil that had to be fought wherever it appeared.

She still could feel sad about the fallen, though, for the sake of all the loved ones that would have to linger for perhaps decades without their company. Convinced that they'd known each other for thousands of lifetimes already, she was looking forward to getting to be with Cos for the next fifty, sixty years in this incarnation, but would instead have to bear a lonely existence until they would meet again.

"Welcome back, Alexandria." Indra greeted her warmly.

"Thank you, General." "It's good to be home."

"How was Prague?"

"Beautiful. This trip was just what I needed to clear my head. I'm glad you pushed me into going, Indra."

The sudden loss of her fiancée had crushed Lexa. When she’d found out, she’d taken some time off, locked herself in her house for three days and wouldn’t see anyone, not even Anya, and when she’d come back out, had emerged with a burning determination to discover who’d been responsible and hunt them to the ends of the Earth. She’d sworn up and down that she’d never let anyone else get close enough to her again to hurt when they’d be killed, barely able to look Anya in the eye because she couldn’t bear to see the understanding in her sister’s honey-brown eyes that she couldn’t convince herself she deserved. It was an unhealthy coping mechanism and Indra could tell that Woods wasn’t all there, so she’d bit the bullet and placed Lexa on medical leave via executive order. To say that the brunette had been angry wouldn’t do justice to the meltdown she’d undergone, but Indra didn’t get mad at her back, instead allowing the younger woman to rage until she’d exhausted herself. Lexa quickly apologized, Indra accepted it, and she agreed that some real time off wasn’t unwarranted. She’d climbed up to Prague Castle, walked across the incredibly decorated bridge of Karluv Most, ate spare ribs at a great little restaurant on Mala Strana, and in record time learned how to be herself by herself again. Living without Costia would leave a void that no other could fill, but for both their sakes, she had to learn how to adapt and keep on going. She would honor her love’s life and memory, and one day, she would avenge her death.

But until then, there was still much work to be done.

"But even then I hear you still did some business." Indra spoke again, dragging Lexa out of her thoughts and back to the present, the woman’s dark eyes shining with a certain fondness for her young protege.

"Were you expecting anything else from me ?" Lexa chuckled a little, showing the first sliver of  actual mirth since that day.

"I swear, Woods: you're an incorrigible workaholic.” The General shook her head, impressed by the young woman’s willingness to go above and beyond, but also wishing that she’d take it easier on herself every now and again. The last thing her prospect for a successor to DIA Directorship needed was to constantly forge ahead full bore until she’d work herself into a burnout: Indra had learned the hard way that pacing oneself below a sprint would get you farther ahead in the long run.

"Is that an indictment?" Lexa asked, wondering if she’d messed up by ignoring the implied order to actually take it easy by doing anything other than her job. Earning Indra Porter’s respect was difficult, retaining it was harder still, and she admired the older woman too much to want to disappoint her.

She need not have worried, as the General said "No. It's why I hired you."

“So do you wanna hear about what I found out, or did they already call ahead?” Lexa asked, some tightness in her chest dissipating as she shifted into a more comfortable pose, taking the ramrod out of her spine.

“Yes to both, child. Let’s hear it in your own words.” Porter answered. Nobody else would ever get away with calling Lexa ‘child’, but Indra, who’d lost her own young daughter Gaia during the horrible 24 hours of September 11, 2001, had been looking out for Lexa ever since her mother Becca had passed away when she’d just been a little girl. When Indra said it, it wasn’t demeaning or patronizing, but how the woman showed that she cared. Indra was known far and wide for being an intimidating person, and it was true that she expected the best from everyone under her command, not tolerating her people not giving it all they could sustain at all times, but for all that, she was also an empathic soul who’d always look out for those that looked to her for leadership and guidance.

“Alright, the Czechs are happy that we’re shifting our focus eastward. They’re just as nervous as the Poles about Russian troop buildup in Bratislava. It looks like a quick reaction force to me.” Lexa’s mind began doing its analytical rundown. “Romania is starting to feel a little surrounded now that Serbia’s government has gone from pro-Russian to an outright Russian puppet regime, so we’re stepping up our efforts to work with the Turks to keep air- and sea corridors to Italy open.”

Indra nodded, taking in Lexa’s summary, as the brunette continued: “Poland is happy that we’re willing to maintain five combat divisions on their eastern border, and they appreciate the fact that we’re supplanting the UK, France, and Germany with them, Romania, and Czechia. Ever since the Western Europeans decided that homeland defense is more important than proactively preparing to fight abroad, relocating the bulk of US military assets to the former Eastern Bloc is making them feel much more secure in their own skin.”

“I can imagine that.” Indra said. “Germany and the Western partners seem to think that they can’t stop the Russians from rolling through until their tanks are busting down Fulda Gap like back in the Seventies, so they’re not eager to even attempt to protect the Baltics, Poland, Czechia, and Romania. It’s unfortunate that these states now feel like NATO has left them hanging out to dry, but it’s allowed us to foster closer relations with our eastern flank bilaterally.” Porter summed up the new geopolitical realities in Eastern Europe.

“I’ll definitely support your recommendation to the JCS that we shift most of our assets from Western to Eastern Europe.” Lexa promised. “A Commander’s word may not count for all that much, but the President’s daughter’s might make up for that.” She was Commander Woods first and foremost, not caring about whatever ‘role’ society had ordained for the second child of the sitting President, but if she could wield the influence it bestowed upon her towards the common defense of America and her allies, she wouldn’t hesitate to leverage her unearned position as much as her meritocratic one.

"Lexa, were you ever going to mention that you also raided a black market warehouse and arrested two Russian Mafia illegal arms dealers?" Indra gently chided 

"I ran into a lead and just couldn't resist." Lexa shrugged guiltily. "The Czechs didn't mind me tagging along."

“According to the field report I received from URNA the other day, you did a little more than just ‘tag along’.” Indra regarded the young woman with the eyes of someone looking at a younger, more energetic version of themselves. “But I understand the urge to drop some bad guys and get the frustration out of your system, so you should be pleased to hear that the Czech National Police has put your name up for a commendation for valorous conduct.”

With that being said, Indra dimmed the lights, switched on the big monitor linked to the SATVIEW network behind her, and filled Lexa in on what was going on around Headquarters today.

"Today's FPCON level is Charlie. I know we were at Bravo just yesterday, but Risk Level Substantial has been elevated to Severe by the NSC." The General began. Lexa frowned: this day wasn’t off to a good start.

“Send me away for two months, and the whole world goes to hell in a handbasket.” The green-eyed woman uttered - it just figured that things would suddenly kick off precisely when she wasn’t there to head it off. Typical. “Alright, lay it on me.”

"First things first." Porter spoke. "We still have agent provocateurs in Poland and Romania trying to incite the public against their American alliance in favor of Russia. Their main angle seems to be religious: trying to press their shared Orthodox heritage over taking the side of the Godless American atheists. It’s funny how our roles have reversed since the Soviet days.” It certainly was ironic, how the Soviet Union’s State atheism had incited the USA to double down on its Christian fundamentalism, but after 2001, the USA had very quickly become secularized, with irreligion now being by far its majority denomination, while Russia was drifting closer into the hands of the Moscow Patriarchate as the Russian people tried to find comfort in the familiarity of ancient traditions and many segments of its larger society were shifting gears to become more Westernized under Volkov’s cultural shock therapy.

"The Wagner Group PMC. Russian Nazis in Africa running Moscow's proxy empire." The sat view flew over to an orbital picture of Namibia. "Word has it that they're shipping out diamonds as quickly as they can get their slaves to dig them up and are selling them to whoever's willing to pay. Evgeny is trying to raise funds for something that's gonna cost billions and billions, and DCS has been tasked to devote assets towards intercepting said shipments and terminating their recipients if possible, working with our sister agencies' own direct action units when required."

Wagner Group was on a recruitment drive, its 20,000-strong standing army now tasked with training up an additional 50,000 mercenary soldiers. Their leader Prigozhin was claiming that this was due to deteriorating security conditions in Mali and the Central African Republic that had to be contained by increased patrols and intensification of combat activities, but this buildup of fresh bodies behind triggers coinciding with massively increased diamond extraction quotas and the frantic sale of the stuff told a different story: perhaps indicating that Evgeny Prigozhin was planning on building a nice little African power base of his own, away from Moscow's control. That was what General Porter believed, and that was what President Volkov was concerned about, too.

"As for you, Commander Woods: you're being assigned to domestic counterterrorism. For the time being, your job is to hunt the hunters and do whatever you can to corner and eliminate the renegade militia known as The Mountain Men." Indra handed Lexa  manila envelope containing a stack of papers pertaining to her new assignment. “‘President’ Wallace and Colonel Emerson have been stepping up their game. The mail bombings have all but evaporated over the past few weeks, and they’ve begun shifting money around in enormous sums without doing anything with it. Furthermore, all of their known paramilitary operators have left their families behind and gone underground.” Indra laid out the troubling development. “They’re gearing up for something major, and it wouldn’t surprise me if that something involved direct combat activities.”

Lexa frowned, but not because she was disappointed. Being deployed to US soil like this wasn’t being relegated to be B-tier, not against the likes of the Mountain Men, America’s most prolific, most dangerous, and by far most competent domestic terrorist group, that every month did more damage to US government infrastructure than all the Galleanist bombings of the 1920s combined: she frowned because all of this happening at once just felt too convenient, like someone was setting the stage for something to happen inside the USA that would take Washington’s focus away from Europe and into its own backyard, which might just allow the Russians to get away with an opportunistic land grab somewhere in the Baltics or Balkans and then pass it off as a fait accompli by the time the US Armed Forces in Europe could be mobilized to react.

Lexa accepted her new assignment with grace, glad that Indra entrusted her with something so important immediately after coming back from her leave of absence. She felt somewhat reenergized, prepared to focus on her duties again without being dragged down by her grief, that was still very much present, but which she’d been able to give a place where it could be processed without taking up most of her mental bandwidth for the whole day.

There would be a sendoff soon. Costia’s body had been recovered, along with those of all her people, and they would soon be returned to US soil. Lexa wasn’t sure whether it would matter to her love’s soul if her bodily remains were buried at Arlington or left for nature to take its course in the Kazakh desert, but it was important to Lexa to know that Cos’ body was properly taken care of. So she would attend the funeral no matter how difficult it would be: she’d never forgive herself if she wouldn’t, but she was confident that wherever Costia was now, the girl was already free. Maybe not at peace, not until her death had been avenged, but Lex had no doubt that the woman she loved wasn’t stuck in a bad place. That faith, at least, gave her some measure of comfort.

Yes, the difficult day was coming soon, but before then, Lexa was more than happy to reunite with Anya, Beatrice (who’d kill her if she ever developed psychic powers and learned that Lexa’s inner monologue didn’t refer to her as ‘Tris’), Lincoln, Octavia, Monty, and the others and begin setting up a plan of attack to deal with the menacing shadow of the Mountain Men.

April 27th, 2021

The National Mall, Washington, DC

Getting out of her car and collecting her things, Clarke checked the contents of her satchel one last time to verify what she’d already made sure of a dozen times at every other traffic light on the way over from Arlington, patting down the pile of documents once again. It was a neurotic tic, really, something that helped her feel an illusion of being in control when her fate today lay entirely in the hands of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Somebody had to answer for the fiasco at Baikonur, and that somebody was going to be her. They had, in a rare act of grace and sympathy, given her two months to grieve and process the loss of her sister (as well as, she presumed, giving themselves enough time to fit the jigsaw pieces together into something resembling a coherent picture for themselves), but now, they’d summoned her to the Capitol Building to explain just what the hell had gone wrong over there on the far side of the world.

She'd parked her car - a beautiful midnight blue BMW M7 GTX - near the Lincoln Memorial all the way on the other side of the National Mall, hoping that the walk in the open air might let her put her thoughts in order.

The mere fact that this proceeding would be taking place at the US Capitol instead of the Hart Building, the SSCI’s usual venue, already tipped her off that this wouldn’t be business as usual: the Senate was taking things seriously enough to take over the House’s house, undoubtedly all too eager to have the House Permanent Committee give its own opinion on the matter as soon as Clarke’d be dismissed. If nothing else, the fiasco had forced the intelligence community to open its eyes and realize that something was terribly wrong: no missing nukes had been recovered or even discovered, but an ambush this big simply couldn’t have been set up unless somebody knew that Peregrine had been coming, which they couldn’t have known unless they had something important to protect and someone important close enough to the source to tip them off about their plans being compromised. Then again, that was the way of thinking that went on inside a spook’s head, and the former spooks that buffeted the SSCI had been as retired from that life for 15, 20 years as you could ever really get. The Cold War mentality that they’d grown up with hadn’t been applicable for some time already when they’d left their agencies and departments to become politicians, so Clarke was all but certain that after so much time in the bubble of light side political life, the eighteen men and women she was about to face would instead of thinking like Cold War operatives be flinging accusations of McCarthyism at her. In terms of Intelligence high command, things weren’t that different from international geopolitics: if you didn’t have a seat at the table, you’d be on the menu instead.

Most of these people had disappointingly short memories after stepping down. Former Director Panetta wasn't one of them. Leon could back her up, but Leon wasn't on the Committee. And since this wouldn't be a judicial hearing, it wasn't like she could call up expert testimonies.

The Kazakh government had denounced and disavowed the men that had called themselves Kazakhstani Spetsnaz, blaming Colonel Stanislavov as a renegade, and they had been considerate enough to recover the bodies of the fallen Americans and send them back home. Clarke couldn’t tell if Astana wanted to win some brownie points by releasing the bodies back home, or if this was Moscow making a statement to the effect of ‘look what your little gaffe has cost you’. Denouncing the surviving Spetsnaz was an odd move, though: it meant that they couldn’t show their faces in public again without assuming a different identity without being arrested as traitors. That had certainly come as a result of a directive from President Volkov: yet more evidence in Clarke’s eyes that it was the FSB at the heart of the conspiracy, not the Russian government at large.

She couldn’t afford to think about that right now, though. Lost in thought, she’d already reached the slope of Capitol Hill, the looming white marble-and-granite edifice of the United States Capitol reaching for the sky above her, the structure nearly invisible from farther away due to being engulfed by the gamut of hundred-story skyscrapers that now covered 80% of the District of Columbia yet still imposing and grandiose from up close. This building had been designed to physically embody the political power of the People of the United States, and it did its job very well indeed. The people within the structure’s halls were those elected by the people to represent the people, though not necessarily from among the ranks of the people, although the past twenty years had seen great changes in the makeup of its corpus of members, with Representatives of both Houses chosen far more often based on what their individual viewpoints were and no longer along partisan lines where people were elected simply because they’d run on a Democrat or Republican ticket.

Thelonious Jaha, one of the Senators for Maryland that was considered a New Democrat, was the Chairman of the SSCI. He was also Wells' father. Now there was an awkward conundrum: the elder Jaha had been on friendly terms with Clarke once owing to the friendship between her and his son. Apparently, he'd envisioned them together, until Bellamy, whom he'd never liked, had driven a wedge into his plans. He was still her own father's best friend, so maybe he wouldn't go too hard on her for sending Wells into Kazakh airspace for the sake of keeping on Jake’s good side. Then again, father and son Jaha had become somewhat estranged since the untimely death of Mrs. Jaha, so there was really no telling how he was gonna be. She'd garnered a lot of goodwill after Karachi, but that had been years ago, and she'd burned through a lot of it through constantly testing the Committee's patience by refusing to do things in their overly cautious way. Like how they'd informed the Pakistani government three times that they'd found Osama hiding out in their country, telling them where and asking for permission to strike, which was given, only for the man to have been moved elsewhere mere hours before American feet had hit the deck. The fourth time, Clarke had gone in without informing the Pakis, and lo and behold: that had been the time they'd bagged the bastard. That Costia had bagged the bastard. Clarke had merely pointed her in the right direction.

If only other people were as good at following directions as her sister had been.

Steeling herself, Clarke took a deep breath, set her jaw, and with her head held high, stepped through the doors into the Capitol Building, where Luna was waiting to face eighteen pairs of judgmental eyes by her side.

Six hours later

The National Mall, Washington, DC

Walking along the National Mall, from Capitol Hill towards the Lincoln Memorial where Clarke had somehow managed to park her car along Constitution Avenue (sometimes, being able to pull rank paid off) was the ideal way to clear her head after the brutal cross-examination she and Luna just had to endure from the SSCI. Thelonious had been merciless, picking apart every action Clarke had undertaken not just concerning the Baikonur raid, but everything she’d said and done for the eighteen months before then. He had questioned her competence, all but accused her of working towards some secret personal agenda over the public good - even if he’d phrased it so carefully that most people wouldn’t even realize that there’d been lines to read between, let alone discern what he was really saying, overpowering all the other Senators with her force of will and overbearing presence to rip Clarke’s actions apart, and probably feeling like some kind of a national superhero while he did so. He’d torn into Clarke, and interspersed his litany of criticisms with sharply pointed questions at Luna, whom he asked a lot of too personal inquiries regarding the Director’s mental health, state of mind, political leanings, general competence, and manner of conduct, as if he here a lawyer building a case to justify having her dismissed.

But Luna hadn’t played ball. Vice-Admiral Hilker had always felt passed up, envious of a much younger person catapulting past her to land in the Director’s chair instead of herself, and her rivalry with her now-boss wasn’t exactly a State secret; but the golden-skinned AD also wasn’t the type of opportunist to throw someone else under the bus when she wanted to rise to the top on her own merits, so Jaha hadn’t been able to get under either of their skins.

Eventually, he’d run out of questions, and the other SSCI members, their own patience shot to pieces by barely being able to get a word in sideways, had voted to end the hearing. At least for the time being, Clarke’s position was safe. It hadn’t been a total disaster… but she knew all too well how precariously balanced she now stood.

DC was no longer the overgrown town of the Fifties with nary a building more than four stories tall, but a skyscraper city of five and a half million. But the National Mall had always remained: a little sea of green in an ocean of steel-reinforced marble and granite, the very heart and soul of the nation preserved the way it always should be.

Clarke had been born right there in DC, inside the capital district itself, in a place on Phoenix Street in the wealthy, high-class northern suburb of Arcadia that had been home to nothing but a few blocks' worth of cul-de-sacs and wide, winding roads whose sides were studded with free-standing mansions surrounded by generous plots of enclosed land, to the sum of only twelve rather spacious sections. It was somewhat like Chevy Chase in the northwest, with Arcadia being to the northeast close to the oceanside and unlike its more diverse western counterpart being devoted almost entirely to housing. Despite that, Chevy Chase was home to more than 18,000 people, whereas Arcadia housed, at the latest census, precisely 2,659 souls: nothing but ranking government officials, top scientists, military commanders, surgeons, and their families, to the effect that Walden Avenue, the ring road between Arcadia and the rest of DC, was popularly known as the 'Go-Sci Ring' due to the sheer clustering of residents in the government and scientific communities within the area it encircled.

In modern DC, this area was one of the last few remaining ones that wasn't choked with highrises and skyscrapers that wouldn't begin to recede back to the sort of lower structures that had been the capital's hallmark for almost 200 years until you got halfway south through Alexandria and halfway east through Arlington. In fact, it was in the eastern part of Arlington that Clarke and Bellamy lived, on an old-school cul-de-sac where the homes and plots of land were easily four times bigger than old-school suburban dwellings. She enjoyed the city’s skyline, especially how it lit up at night, but was glad she didn’t live among those colossal towers: Clarke appreciated personal space to just be in. (Not to mention that she was also rather claustrophobic, a fact she’d had to conceal, with great difficulty, during her training. She was pretty sure Luke and Glass knew about it anyway, but had chosen to overlook this fact in light of her other positive merits.)

Slowing down a little as she felt someone coming up on her, she glanced over her shoulder to see that Luna was running to join her. Falling in with the blonde, the redhead jabbed an accusatory finger at Clarke’s forehead.

"What is your problem with me, Clarke?" Luna sighed, hating the fact that the two of them just couldn’t seem to present a unified front even when they tried.

"My problem, Luna, is that you just made me look incompetent in front of eighteen United States Senators, the same Senators that control our budget!” The blonde answered, more than ready for this day to be over. “I'm imagining that this is what it feels like to be a grilled cheese, or maybe an omelet flambé."

"Welcome to my world." The Assistant Director said. "I have both the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and House Oversight Committee busting my ass about the lack of results in the Western Africa situation with Prigozhin's diamonds and asking me questions about a combat insertion into Kazakhstan that I don't have answers for." She laid out, none too happy that the people that controlled their funding like Clarke just said were being shoved away with partial answers and told to just take Clarke’s word for it the same way she’d proven herself in Pakistan five years ago. The big difference wasn’t just that that was then and this was now, but that Pakistan couldn’t exactly be considered a global superpower with a chance of expunging US influence over whole chunks of the world wholesale, whereas Russia was precisely that. Congress was happy enough to keep relations with Russia close and warm even if it meant overlooking some indiscretions, such as believing a claim that four hundred nuclear warheads and a hundred delivery systems simply hadn’t gone missing at all - they probably figured that this was a Russian internal matter, as America wouldn’t be pleased either if some of its nuclear arsenal suddenly went unaccounted for and Russian agents came poking their nose all over the Dakotas trying to find them with guns in hand.

"And yet, your ability to lead is not in question. Owing to your actions on that floor, mine now is." Clarke accused Luna, perhaps a little hastily, since Thelonious had been the one that raised the matter of competence; Luna’s only fault was that she hadn’t lied about her thoughts on the Director, which was fair enough, since Clarke hadn’t trusted Luna enough to bring her in on the full picture, leaving the North African woman to conjecture and hypothesize. She couldn’t be blamed for not arriving at the right conclusion when she didn’t have sufficient information, but still, Clarke had hoped Luna would know how she worked well enough by now she might have inferred something closer to the factual truth. It wasn’t personal, really: Clarke was just mightily pissed off, and Luna made it easy to be a frustration sink with her abrasive nature.

"You played with matches, and you got burned. You can't tell me you expected they’d let you go behind their backs without any consequences, Clarke." Luna chided. Surely, the blonde knew better than that?

"Or maybe you're just hoping they'll bump me off so you can plant your ass in my chair." Said woman shot back. "Tell me: d'you pick your AD yet, Admiral?" Clarke asked with all the seriousness of an inquisitor.

"And here I was, thinking you found me a worthy successor." Luna snarked.

"We both know you live to cause trouble." The Director ribbed her AD. “Doesn’t mean I’m gonna let you get away with it easily.” It was said jokingly, but the sentiment behind it was serious, and Hilker knew it all too well.

Thinking back on the day’s proceedings, Clarke still found it hard to believe how arrogant Senator Jaha had acted.

"Senators, do you know why I think this is real?" She began her defense. "Because if you took all of this shit and pitched it to M. Night Shyamalan as a thriller plot, he'd dismiss it for being too convoluted. No-one would fucking believe it." Clarke laid out. "Real life doesn't follow narrative rules. It doesn't have to make sense. It doesn't need to be consistent. And it doesn't happen one neatly packaged chapter at a time - it's just blow after blow after blow, all at once, all the time. This shit I'm looking into, it's the real deal. They're feeling confident because they know they won't be taken seriously as a threat."

"Or maybe the reason it's so hard to connect the dots is because there's no picture there to be filled in." Thelonious countered. "Bush unshackled the CIA because you asked him to. He got the Patriot Act passed, probably the most hated, controversial, un-American Congress bill ever , a bill that received bigger blowback than the goddamn Thirteenth Amendment, because you said that this way you people could protect America from another Bojinka. You were meant to be the cloak and dagger to the US Military's sword and shield, but that does not give you leeway to go rogue and act like you're  the head of government of a sovereign nation within the USA." The man challenged her flying her own course.

“The reason Patriot was passed was to free my organization from the same red tape and ridiculous turnaround times asking for permission to do anything every step of the way that let thousands of high-priority targets slip through the cracks because when we had assets in place on the ground looking at them through their rifle scopes, they couldn’t pull the trigger because seven different people four thousand miles away that hadn’t seen action in twenty years had to review the situation and give or withhold a whole daisy chain of approvals first. I am working under the exact same principle. I don’t believe I’m exceeding the boundaries of my authority: I’m embodying them.”

“Director Griffin, you utilized combat assets belonging to the United States Military to launch what amounts to a small invasion onto the territory of a sovereign foreign state without bothering to inform the Office of the President, Joint Chiefs of Staff, or indeed this very body. That isn’t just exceeding authority, that’s ignoring the bounds altogether. We’re lucky that President Volkov doesn’t want to turn this into an international incident, because what you did could very easily be considered as an act of war against the Russian Federation.” Thelonious preached. “We gave you a scalpel, Mrs. Griffin, and you wielded it like a sledgehammer. Do you have any idea what it will do to us if we’re seen ignoring all the protocols we have in place for good reasons, that tell the rest of the world that America follows the rules it has set for itself?”

"The rules only apply to those that follow them.” Clarke insisted. “If we're having to follow ROE that the enemy blatantly ignores, it puts us at a massive disadvantage that they will exploit to take more lives. I'll start playing by the rules once they do the same. We hold back our punches while they go no holds barred, and before you know it, we’ll end up with a ketamine addict running the White House on behalf of Moscow." Swiveling her head back and forth to make eye contact with the other seventeen members, she carried on: "Senators, I know it’s a difficult thing to admit that taking the high road isn’t always the right choice. But if at the end of the day, more of us are alive than there are of them, I call that a win."

“We are aware that asymmetrical operations get ugly by nature, Director Griffin. Half of us here are old enough to have voted on the Patriot Act, and we all cast ours in favor.” Jaha reminded her. “But I want you to understand that one more fuckup, and we’ll push as hard as we can to have you reassigned to the Arctic Warfare Training Center.” The dark-skinned man issued his threat that wasn’t a threat, considering he didn’t have the means to make this happen without the President’s approval, but the warning was received and understood. Jaha clearly didn’t speak for all of the Committee members, but a large enough majority of them would be swayed to his argument if push came to shove, so Clarke could count on no support from the benches - but that didn’t mean she’d just stand there and let Thelonious drag her through the mud.

“Arctic Warfare? The 11th Airborne runs that place now. You remember who runs the 11th Airborne? I don’t think it’d be such a bad thing to put me right next to my own husband, ladies and gentlemen.” She snarked at them, being careful to keep her voice free of any sarcastic intonation. "If you're asking me to not do everything within my power to protect this country, you're asking me to commit treason." The Director asserted. "My ethics may be so muddled they hardly exist, but I’ll thank you to never question my integrity. I'm the one that volunteered to do things that anyone else would call evil so that they don't have to dirty their hands this way to uphold their beautiful illusion that there's fairness and justice in the world, but don't presume for one second that I don't know you're no better than me. I may be an evil, but I’m the least of not just two, but countless evils, and I am absolutely necessary."

“Open battle is damage control after the fact, Director Griffin.” Thelonious stated, though the wind had somewhat been taken out of his sails, going from the murmurs of approval and small nods at her statements. “It is not your task to clean up a mess, your office is responsible for preempting them. This was not a preventative action, this was kicking the political hornets' nest.” Jaha accused. “None of us wanted this inquiry to be necessary, but you gave us no choice. Your reasons and motivations have been heard and noted. Make sure we won’t need to follow up with another hearing.” The man issued a toothless ultimatum, that could still prove to be a real thorn in her side if he kept calling her to heel to answer for stuff instead of letting her have the time to actually to anything new.

“You’re dismissed.” He finished, leaving Clarke momentarily confused as to what he was saying exactly. “That means this hearing is over and we’re telling you to go back to Langley. You’re not being dismissed from office.” He clarified. Oh. She’d basically just turned on her heel and walked out the door after that, not saying goodbye, because if Jaha was going to treat her like a child, then she’d be petty enough to act like one. In hindsight, that was a mistake, but at the moment, Clarke couldn’t care less about anything else other than getting out of the Capitol as soon as possible.

“That could’ve gone better.” Clarke admitted as she finished going over the hearing with Luna.

"Well, on the plus side, the Russians are gonna have to clean up one hell of a mess." Her second-in-command pointed out. "What were they doing all the way out there, unscheduled, unannounced, completely off the records even to their own MoD, protecting a random cave out in the desert, but a stone's throw away from a major city?" She listed off the items on her fingers. "Nobody can deny that the missing nukes are real anymore."

Clarke wasn’t convinced: "Maybe they can't. But that still doesn't prove anything about using them against us."

When their conversation fell into a lull, Clarke noticed that they were being watched.

Counter-surveillance was surveilling the surveillers. Counter-detection was observing someone without your mark noticing. The FBI proved to be rather inadequate at the latter in this instance, eighteen times over by Clarke's headcount. She’d made the people shadowing her without any of them noticing her noticing them - amateurs.

Clarke had fallen into certain habits, a few predictable routines that any other spook would think counterproductive. Things like always taking the same routes to and from places. Made it easy to get jumped - but also allowed her to discern anything out of the ordinary and act immediately. And weird behaviors by people at the National Mall stood out even more than anywhere else in DC, since only tourists and those with somewhere to be usually came around here.

You couldn't really go wrong with the old looking into a reflective window trick. There were no windows near enough for that, but the Reflecting Pool was right there, so when she saw that man who was talking on his fancy-schmancy smartphone turn his head to bore his eyes into the back of her head, she knew she was onto something. When she patted the place where her concealed Beretta was holstered inside her jacket and the guy's eyes lit up like saucers and suddenly he was walking away when he'd been pacing in circles for minutes before, she knew she was right.

"We're being watched." She whispered behind a hand pretending to cover up a yawn.

"More likely: you're being watched. Even more likely: you're paranoid." Luna replied, a little amusedly.

"See that guy over there? Your garden variety public servant can't afford to be rocking a ten thousand dollar slate phone." Clarke subtly pointed out the man that had taken off like a rocket a few seconds ago and repositioned behind hard cover.

"That's what you're basing this on? Maybe he has a rich uncle who gifted him a smartphone." Luna proposed an answer.

"How did you make AD in the freaking CIA , again?"

"By proving to a lot of people that I don't need to be watched. Including you, if memory serves." The tan girl reminded the pale one. "Besides, if a stupid phone tips you off, why would he let you see it in the first place? To send a message? Nobody actually announces to a surveillance target that they are under surveillance."

"No, that's not it. Just the FBI being incompetent as always." Clarke replied, thinking back to all the bad situations that the Bureau, under the brilliant direction of Titus Templar, had made even worse before solving anything.

"If you're right, some directional mic will have picked that up and they can quote you on your opinion." Luna cautioned, knowing how nothing that people at their level said was really secret no matter how alone one appeared to be.

"My opinion is already public knowledge, and besides, I do have a countermeasure on me against audio being recorded straight from my mouth." The shorter woman shrugged off her colleague’s concern.

"Of course you do." Luna nodded, not surprised in the slightest by Clarke’s over-preparedness. "Speaking of: what will you do?" She asked, genuinely curious as to how her boss was gonna handle this.

"Look for the nearest Fed up ahead and just have a little chat."

"I don't wanna be involved in anything like that." The redhead held her hands up and stopped in her tracks.

"It wasn't a euphemism this time, Luna. I'm not going to kill anybody." Clarke elucidated.

There was one guy at a clothing stall across from the Hoover Building endlessly browsing the same few tee-shirts in a loop without actually paying attention to the items on offer, much to the stall holder’s visible consternation. Of course, there would be tacky souvenir stands right opposite the Department of Commerce.

Being tasked with close observation on someone known in professional circles as the Commander of Death had to be pretty terrifying. And she was going to scare the shit out of him.

"What'cha looking so nervous about, brother? Can I help you find something?" She said loudly, clapping the man on the shoulder with a little too much force to be friendly even though he had a good seven inches’ height over her.

"What? Oh, no thanks, I'm good." The startled man scrambled to reply.

"I'm sure you think you are." Clarke said saccharinely, knowing that this guy must believe he was doing the right thing but never really questioning why the CIA Director would need to be shadowed. "It's a pity, though. I know the perfect shirt for you." The girl piped up, having a little too much fun with this situation. It was a nice diversion, to be sure.

"What are you on about?" The FBI undercover agent, getting spooked, pretended to not know he’d been made.

"Yeah, you know those vanity tees with 'I Heart New York' on them, and stuff?" Clarke asked rhetorically. "I'm figuring you should get one that says 'Nothing to see here, I work for the government'. It'd make you look a lot less conspicuous, dumbass." She blew the lid off his cover. "Great observation work, by the way. Why not hang out a banner that says 'CLARKE ABIGAIL GRIFFIN, YOU ARE BEING WATCHED'? Amateurs, for real. Do you not know who the fuck I am?" She spoke at full volume now, actually feeling offended that Titus’ people went to so little effort to remain unnoticed.

The FBI guy looked at some spot behind her, his concealed weapon visibly burning a hole in its holster. Clearly he couldn’t wait to have an excuse to take her into custody and make his whole career, but she wasn’t gonna give him the pleasure.

"This is a busy street, not a Seven-Eleven, if you know what I mean." Seven people watching from the interior of buildings farther south out, eleven on the streets nearby, including this clown.

"Have you ever heard of a little concept called 'checks and balances', Missus Head Spook?" The guy told her, dropping all pretense. The guy squared up against her, hoping to intimidate her with his length and bulk and utterly failing in his attempt - Clarke had fought and won in CQC against men that were far more dangerous than Special Agent Macho here.

"Have you ever heard of a little concept called 'I don't give a damn 'cause I'm an oligarch and my only sister recently got murdered', dipshit?" She spat back at him, venom in her voice. "Tell your manager that they're free to disagree with me, but I tend to make my arguments with a gun. Oh, and tell them to tell Titus the same. Now get lost." She snapped off, turning on her heel and walking away just like she had with Thelonious, leaving the FBI agent dumbstruck in her wake.

When she rejoined Luna and continued heading towards the Lincoln Memorial, the redhead shook her head in disbelief at Clarke’s antics. "Talk about handing someone a lit gelignite stick and going 'hey buddy, think this is yours', big boss."

"I had way too much fun doing that." Clarke opined.

"Oh, really? I hadn't noticed." Luna answered with sarcasm equal to her boss’. "Go home, Clarke. Spend some time with your husband. At least you get to see him whenever you so choose." She suggested, jealous that Clarke and Bellamy worked in the same region and could spend a lot more time together than she herself and her Silent Service husband who’d remained on with the submarine fleet after Luna’d transferred out to the Agency.

"Yeah, you get no no argument here." Clarke conceded, knowing how terribly the redhead missed her husband when he was away for six months out of every twelve. "Speaking of which: when's Derrick coming home?"

"Not for another month. But after that, I'm keeping my gallant Captain all to myself for the next half a year. The only diving his boat with be doing is inside my-"

"Luna! TMI! I don't need to hear about your sex life!"

"Hmm. Tell me how your poor little virgin ears put up with Raven, again?" Luna asked with a quirk of her brow.

"Cus half of what she says is exaggerated or made up. At least, I think so. Okay, I hope it is?" Clarke admitted.

"I'll lean on Hoover, get them to lay off on this farce." Luna said after laughing at DNI Reyes’ expense, whose raunchy sense of humor made her the life of every party. "Enjoy your breakfast of FBI tears tomorrow."

Clarke appreciated the offer. Talking to FBI Director Templar was like trying to argue with a brick wall, and there had never been an encounter between the two of them that hadn’t ended in a shouting match without any resolution, but Luna somehow knew how to play to the man’s feelings of duty to get him to provide help, or sometimes, get off their backs.

Director Templar of the Federal Bureau of Investigation - also known as Titus the Bald Vulture, but never to his face - was a man that couldn't just see past the book, but believed that the book was the answer to everything with the same sort of zeal that Evangelical Southern Baptists thumped their overly narrow interpretation of the Bible. Actually, scratch that: his way was more like that of the Westboro Baptist Church, whose grand total of twenty-two remaining members believed that the larger SBC was looking a little Satanic these days. There was no reasoning with him, no arguing against his opinions that were immutable truths in his eyes - but she couldn’t deny that he was the best at what he did, insofar as it counted. It wasn’t Titus’ fault that his agency was so incompetent: he’d still managed to pull it up from being a flaming train wreck, after all.

Arlington, Virginia

Griffin-Blake Household

February 28, 2021

Being as intelligent as she was wasn't a picnic. It made her see connections and casual chains with perfect clarity where many others, even senior analysts in her own agency, struggled to see them through murky waters if they caught a hint of them at all. What to her were self-evident reasonings seemed like ginormous leaps in logic to most other people; where on the other hand, she also always questioned why things were the way they were rather than accepting anything at face value, which was extremely exhausting when surrounded by government leaders who believed in the system existing in its current form as its own good and its upholding as its own end goal.

Yes, Clarke Griffin was a certified genius, and it had left her very much isolated from greater society. So what better place for her to fit in than the CIA? She'd gotten her genius-level IQ from her dad, not at all watered down by her mom, whose IQ of 142 was 22 points lower than that of Jake and herself, but still in the top 1% of the world. It wasn't just about intellect, but also what you did with it that made the difference between just being intelligent and also being smart, so whatever people skills she possessed, she could largely thank her parents for. Abigail Griffin’s bedside manner left something to be desired, but that had more to do with the fact that she was a neurosurgeon and thus most of her patients were either unconscious when she worked or awake and aware but needing to follow specific instructions for their own good. Abby possessed an intense personality, just like Clarke did, where Jake Griffin was relaxed, more the laid-back sort, but also a man who would never be held back from doing what he believed was right regardless of what it might do to his career if he went against the grain. Yes, Clarke was decidedly a daddy’s girl, taking after him in looks as well as her uncompromising drive to always do the right thing no matter what price she’d be asked to pay.

In terms of peers that she could talk shop with at her own level, the list was short indeed. Apart from her parents, there had been a grand total of four other people in the world: her own sister Costia, said sister's fiancée DIA Commander Alexandria Woods, Director of National Intelligence Raven Reyes, and President Augustus Woods, Lexa's father and her own dad's closest friend. Bellamy and his sister Octavia were also not stupid by any means, but they lived in such a different world that their relationship was of a different, more person-oriented sort. They worked well together when they did, but for the most part, the Blakes were the people Clarke sought out when she needed to let go a little. Octavia was a competitive soul, always wanting to be the best at anything she did, so she challenged Clarke all the time, but in a friendly way. Had she not been straight, Clarke might have fallen for the other Blake. As it was, Bellamy made an amazing partner: trusting, almost infinitely patient, understanding of the difficulties her position in the intelligence community placed upon her home life, and all in all, being the most loyal companion she ever could’ve wished for. Her Bell was protective, romantic, never overbearing but always eager to do things for her that made her happy. Behind that fake front of machismo lay a sensitive soul who, like her, just wanted to do right by his people, and the fact that her man was an incorrigible romantic made life so much better when she found time and the headspace to devote to being together with him.

The Griffins and Woodses went way back, the unique relationship between the two families so strong that it spanned across generations and either’s parents also saw the other’s children as their own. When Cos and Lex would get married soon, the blurred lines would be erased entirely. Those two deserved each other, and she meant that in earnest, not in the sarcastic manner one would use such a line to describe two horrible people, but because they were special: nothing but the best would be good enough for either, and Clarke believed that the pairing would truly be good for each other. She almost believed Lexa’s assertions that soulmates existed and carried over from one life to the next, their connection was so powerful: Clarke certainly felt like she could easily believe that she herself and Lexa had been friends for almost three thousand years rather than almost thirty. Sure Cos and Lex had their arguments, as was inevitable when you put two personalities that strong together, but the way they made up so quickly and… vigorously… was adorable, if sickeningly sweet. They certainly gave Raven no shortage of material to tease the couple with, the Latina’s unfiltered mouth simply blurting out whatever came to mind keeping things very interesting indeed.

Lexa's big sister Anastasia was an asshole, though. For whatever reason, she and Clarke had never been able to get along. Maybe it was because they were so similar in temperament that being in the same room at the same time overcharged reality and their constant bickering was a sort of integer overflow in the universe. In Clarke's eyes, Anya was an insufferable know-it-all, my way or the highway, never compromise with anybody because I'm always right sort of arrogant, and Anya thought the exact same thing about Clarke. She was willing to tolerate Anya for the sake of keeping the peace. The woman was one of her best friends’ sister, the same best friend whom her own sister was engaged to, and also the girlfriend of one of her other best friends, who happened to be her boss the DNI. So Clarke tried to be the mature one despite being younger, not that Anya ever made it easy on her. But at least the elder Woods also kept herself under control when the families got together, preferring to just avoid the blonde, which suited her just fine.

What didn’t suit her just fine was how even among her own extended family, it felt like only Octavia took her seriously when it came to what the Russkies’ home-brewn renegades were up to, and how the government's insistence that they had all their nuclear weapons in order, knowing the Russians, was actually an admission they had no idea where they’d gone.

The Russians didn't keep proper accountability on their nuclear arsenal, let alone their old Soviet surplus that was 'decommissioned' in front of useless UN inspectors and the real warheads squirreled away across the Central Asian former Soviet Republics, where the Russian military maintained any number of overt and secret bases. Their functionaries just invented numbers on the spot most of the time, so if 100 intercontinental ballistic missiles carrying 400 1.2-megaton hydrogen fusion warheads suddenly went missing? What are you talking about, those weapons never existed to begin with. Cosmodrome Baikonur isn't just a space center and orbital launch and recovery facility, but also a nuclear ICBM base? That's just a conspiracy theory, like Area 51 was really only the spy plane R&D site at Groom Lake AFB and not also the place where the extraterrestrial bioweapon Gem-9 was being picked over. So what if there was a world-ending MWD arsenal unaccounted for in Nowhere, Kazakhstan? Deny, deny, deny, and accuse of slander.

There had been a glut of unscheduled, unannounced ICBM launch tests in Russia over the course of the past year, from land-based silos and submarine platforms, and all that Stavka had to say about inquiries as to why were that these were matters of internal security and nobody was entitled to question Russia's actions undertaken within its sovereign airspace.

According to Gerasim Valentinovich Kovalenko, Russian Minister of Defense, Alaska belonged to Russia, the Baltic States were Russian breakaway oblasts, Finland belonged to Russia, and because Finland had once belonged to Sweden, an enemy of Russia, this meant that Sweden also belonged to Russia; but never mention that by this same logic, Russia belonged to Mongolia, because the man would erupt like a volcano.

The Chinks weren't involved in it; the Chinks didn't know about it. That was weird: the Russkies told the Chinks everything these days. The North Chinks helped them take over Kazakhstan and all the other little 'Stans just a few years ago as penance for Red China’s devastating defeat in its imperial wars of would-be conquest. Then again, back then, FSB and SVR had been working together, albeit with their teeth clenched, but not openly hostile with each other the way they were now, the only reason there weren’t gn battles taking place between them in the streets of Moscow being because the FSB wanted to convince the Russian people that it had their best interests at heart, and massacring civilian in crossfires across the nation’s sacrosanct capital would be counterproductive towards making their message sink in.

Clarke suddenly found herself frantically trying to shut down an unresponsive laptop that was so badly overcooked the middle of its keyboard had turned freakin' convex, threatened to explode, connected to an external monitor that had just gone black and wasn't coming back. At the same time, she was desperately trying to get her smartphone to charge, its battery life running dangerously low, but no matter which orientation she stuck the cable into the port, it just wouldn't do anything.

Then, she woke up, and realized that this whole setup had been just a dream. That was the shitty thing: not realizing that it wasn't real until it was already over and you came back to yourself.

She really did have to take some time off to at least catch up on her sleep, because if she started doing crazy shit while hallucinating, like fighting imaginary enemies, it would get real people killed.

What was even more embarrassing was that she could recall the second daydream that had followed the first, which was about having sex with not her own husband of nine years, but her sister's fiancée. Why would she ever dream of being with Lexa Woods in that way? The woman was her best and oldest friend, it would be so awkward even if they weren't already married and engaged, respectively.

"What a scenario. Charge my phone? Low battery? Welcome back to the Nineties, Griff." She said to herself, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes along with something else as it sunk in that she’d been dreaming about her family the way it had been, not as it was, with one person struck off the list of her closest people. Costia… Her best friend wasn’t engaged to her sister… Not anymore. Because Costia had gone to Kazakhstan and never came back alive.

It was simply impossible these days for either element in this weird dream to occur. Charging cables and -ports hadn't existed since before she'd even been born, and computers ballooning from overheating would require them to be used in some ridiculous way to begin with, because both devices invariably ran on MF cells these days, which released electric energy at room temperature and simply didn't run out of juice for 250 years after installing no matter how much you asked of them. MF cells powered everything, from cars to refrigerators and from phones to blenders, so the only reason why a phone would come with a charging port was if it were old-school vintage or foreign-made in some sorry Third World country that couldn't afford to buy Conexit phones. Speaking of: why would Clarke ever own a smartphone? She saw no point to a mobile phone that could also act as a laptop when she had - wait for it - a laptop with a much larger screen. She supposed it might be useful because such a phone wouldn't require a whole satchel bag to carry around and weighed a lot less than the four-pound mobile brick connected to her desk PC, but she'd never get one for herself. She was perfectly happy continuing to stick with her trusty PDA over some overpriced novelty slate phone, thanks very much. Smartphones were a security nightmare, all possible benefits notwithstanding, and she just plain didn’t need one.

Becca Woods and Jake Griffin had been the driving forces behind the development of the hydrogen microfusion cells that now drove every car, every plane, and even many household appliances in America and chunks of Europe. 

Becca was initially interested in the concept of Artificial Intelligence and uncovering the neural architecture that made people who they were, in her early career trying to devise some method for people to be able to digitize their consciousness in a way that it would actually be them interfacing with a computer chip instead of a copy that merely believed it was them ending up in cyberspace, but gave up on that when it became clear that computing technology was at least a few decades behind being able to even start to build the software basis to make it possible in theory, so had shifted gears into sustainable infinite energy instead. Early microfusion cells had been clunky, heavy things relying on heavy elements, which made them unsuitable for daily use and prohibitively expensive. But by working together with Jake Griffin and the Autumn family, she’d developed a new kind of MC cell that would go on to revolutionize America, and then large parts of the world. Her biggest motivator was always to make life better for all mankind, and it was safe to say that she succeeded. After partnering with Conexit Telecom in Austin to secure funding, she and Jake had developed the hydrogen-helium cold microfusion cell, and Conexit had gained priority in getting to use them in their handhelds. Russia and its sphere of influence had opted to go for solar energy instead, but large parts of Europe, South America, and Asia now bought MF cells by the billions from American manufacturers, ensuring that the looming global energy crisis was firmly and permanently averted.

Alas, she had died long before her time, never having the chance to see her younger daughter grow up. For all her brilliance, even Abby Griffin hadn’t been able to save her when she’d suffered an ischemic stroke while working in her lab one day which had resulted in a fatal seizure. The woman had overtaxed her brain so much for so long that she’d quite literally worked herself to death.

The White House

Later that day

The only people currently present in the Oval Office were the President and the Director of the CIA. Gustus’ Secret Service personal protection detail had been directed to guard the door from the outside, because while they were reliable, trustworthy people, the frank manner in which Clarke and Gustus conversed was unbecoming of their stations, and rumors did abound. Clarke had a special relationship with the President, affording her some leeway in addressing him informally even in his own office that nobody else save his own daughters could - but if people found out about Clarke’s exception, all of them would be clamoring for exceptional status too.

"How real is the treat, by your reckoning?" Gustus asked, the Baikonur disaster having at last convinced him that something was the matter, though even now he still wouldn’t believe Clarke’s warnings about the sheer scope of the threat.

"Severe to Critical. It's real, it's only a matter of time.” Clarke responded. “Officially, confidence is low. Unofficially, I'm already certain. My source is words straight from the horse's mouth."

"We cannot risk engaging in a war with Russia based on hearsay, not even yours." Gustus cautioned. America and Russia fielded two and a half million combat troops along their lines of contact, so even though the countries were on relatively friendly terms, a small mistake could still easily escalate out of control. Both sides were taking great care to not provoke the other, so Gustus didn’t want to sanction any meddling in Russian internal affairs unless he had something much more substantial to show to Russian President Andrei Volkov.

"We're already at war with Russia." Clarke asserted. "An undeclared one, but a real one nonetheless. Maybe not with the Federation, but certainly an incredibly powerful faction within it. The recent provocations in Poland and paramilitary buildup in Mali only go to show my case in point. And I have every reason to believe that this faction has people compromising every level of the US Government and Armed Forces covering the bosses' tracks." She revealed, not saying anything she hadn’t told him before, but hoping that the message might sink in a little deeper in light of the unprecedented ambush the Navy SEALs had had close around them.

"And what do you suppose I have to do about it?" The President asked, stroking his beard in deep thought, trying but failing to come up with a way forward that would address the threat Clarke claimed existed without stepping on the Kremlin’s toes and make all of Russia think that America was preparing to go to war with Moscow.

"You don't have to do anything, if you want to sit back, consign our entire way of life to the history books, and watch as a nuclear death wave eats the world whole. Sir." Clarke answered, putting her face in her hands. She had a hell of a headache setting in, faced with the exact same problem as Gustus.

"You can rest assured, Clarke: I will not be the President who sat back and watched America burn." Gustus assured his interlocutor, placing a steadying hand on her shoulder. "You aren't the only one drawing up contingency plans."

"This isn't a contingency plan, Gustus. This is what's going to happen for real; it's what's already begun. Remember how nobody believed Osama was in Karachi until I flushed him out?" Clarke brought up her greatest accomplishment. She’d gone against the grain, against all conventional wisdom, and against orders back then, and brought the corpse of America’s Most Wanted villain home to show for it. But the stakes then had been so much lower, the situation wasn’t at all comparable. Clarke knew this, Gustus knew it, and Clarke knew that Gustus knew it. But this wasn’t the CIA Director asking the President to take her word for it, but a woman asking her family friend to trust her insights.

As much as Gustus wanted to do precisely that, he had one hand tied behind his back by having to maintain international relations with an unstable Russia and the other tied by his own Congress, still in a deadlock between New Democrats and New Republicans, with Old Dems and Old Reps pushing back hard, and the Independent President having to make all sorts of threats, promises, and compromises to get anything passed through the Senate and House. Even as it was, Gustus was issuing more Executive Orders per month than Obama had done for his entire administration, and Obama had already written an absurdly huge amount of EOs compared to his own predecessors. Gustus could get away with bypassing COngress in most things, but to do what Clarke was asking for was to turn himself into an autocrat, and that went a step too far.

Long story short: Gustus needed to see hard evidence of the warheads in question being in Nia’s hands before he could authorize a full-scale operation against the FSB - something he wasn’t principally against, since Volkov was also chomping at the bit for an excuse to get rid of Director Koroleva - because it would be political suicide to proceed without a very strong casus belli , and if Gustus was impeached, he couldn’t do any good for anyone.

But that evidence just wasn’t going to be possible to produce anymore: the warheads would remain dispersed until the time came to use them: Nia wasn't going to risk having them fall under attack when she was so close to reaching her goal. Not now that she was certain that her plan wasn't as contained as she'd been hoping for. If Clarke could've figured it out, somebody else might grow wise to it as well.

"The Postal Service has SWAT teams chasing down bomb mailers, the US Marshals are sweeping through the whole of Northern Idaho with a fine-toothed comb looking for Mountain Men number crunchers, and all of it seems to lead back to Wager Group and Evgeny Prigozhin, a man that Volkov wants dead, but can't touch, because Wagner is more powerful than the Russian Army in Africa and Mr. Opposition Leader Vladimir Putin is buddy-buddy with the guy!" Clarke summed up, exasperated by the establishment going around in circles and never letting her do anything.

“And there’s clear evidence of links between Wagner and the FSB, it’s true.” Gustus admitted. “But still, we can’t actually prove that they’re doing anything illegal .” The man despaired. “If you come up with something, Clarke, please, let me know at once. But unless you can do so in a way that’ll fly with the Committee - and I know that’s a tall order - there’s simply nothing either of us can do unless Nia makes another move.”

And another move wouldn’t be too long in the making, considering what was happening in Africa right now. The folder with intelligence printouts on the situation sat on the Resolute Desk between them like a radioactive brick, its contents so revolting that neither of them wanted to ever reread it. But there was a good chance that by the time Nia’s next move came to light, her endgame would have already begun, and damage mitigation would be the best the US could hope for - not an outcome Clarke was willing to tolerate.

The file was DIA Report No.: #1823.114.41, the unredacted version, all of the blacked-out bits peeled off with the begrudging courtesy of NSA Director John Murphy, who'd most likely only turned it over because under the Patriot Act, refusing to render information asked for by the CIA was illegal. A report on Wagner Group crimes against humanity in Mali, speaking of horrors amounting to 50-60,000 murdered civilians 'constituting a biological and environmental hazard' because their corpses had just been dumped into the rivers that people relied on for their drinking water, extrajudicial killings mainly targeting fighting-age males in the 20-35 age range, and another figure of people between 20,000-50,000 kept in concentration camps that fell in the age range of 12-17 and were almost all males: a good chunk of the people that would have been capable of fighting back or would soon be old enough to fight back were either dead or imprisoned. And the Malian Army was doing nothing at best, and actively cooperating at worst. Indra had made a redacted note saying ‘Evidence suggests deliberate starvation of noncompliant citizens on the orders of the government of Mali’, and spoke of escalating violence and ethnic cleansing by military forces and government-sanctioned paramilitary fighters as part of a pre-planned, deliberate, and organized series of mass killings. This was not a Wagner coup: this was Mali submitting to Wagner and declaring independence from Russia.

The report contained raw photographs. Young men bound and shot in the head, their corpses piled up in mountains along the riverside. Young boys starving behind walls of razor wire baking under the Sahara sun. Crimes against humanity that Kigali wasn’t even trying to conceal, and there wasn’t a damn thing Washington, or even Moscow, could do about it. Because while Wagner Group was led by a Russian and employed exclusively Russians, it wasn’t registered as a Russian company, but headquartered in the technically independent Zimbabwe, where dictator Robert Mugabe was certain to reject any request to impose sanctions on the profitable PMC, let alone agree to suspend its business decree. It was a great way for Prigozhin to reduce the taxes he had to pay to Moscow and not be subject to its rules, but also cut him out of the power structure in the Motherland, forcing him to rely on Putin to represent his political agenda.

Prigozhin was also pissed that Angola and Mozambique were Russian Exclusive Economic Zones, meaning that they could only do business with Russia... The Russian Federal Government, that was to say, which pointedly did not include Wagner Group. At least in the American EEZs, like Panama and Ireland, American private businesses were free to do their thing, but Moscow would much rather ensure that all proceeds from its African economic projects went directly to the State Treasury.

For all that the man was a living fossil of the Soviet Union, he was a relic of the Gulag Archipelago, not the halls of power, so he was a failed mafioso turned into a considerably more successful ruthless venture capitalist, providing Vladimir Putin, Volkov's main contender, with soldiers and money in exchange for political protection and functional independence as an African Emperor, acting as a counterweight to President Volkov and his iron-fisted rule over the Russian mainland and Russia's puppet state in its half of South Africa.

"Where is ODIN right now? Couldn't we use it to vaporize Prigozhin?" Clarke proposed, already knowing the answer would be no, but feeling like she had to remind the President that the possibility existed just in case.

"As much as I'd love to do just that, it would set an incredibly dangerous precedent.” Gustus was right: government leaders should not be subject to assassination, even illegitimate ones, because to do so even once meant that no leader would ever be safe again, and the deleterious effects it would wreak upon global political stability would be too destructive to comprehend. “Not to mention that the Russians would launch half their A-SAT missile arsenal the moment they detected ODIN's barrel moving into a firing solution on their territory." He laid out the more practical reason for not risking the only platform that the Orbital Defense Initiative had ever brought operational before public backlash had shut the program down.

All in all, Planet Earth was looking a lot like a pressure cooker right now. And Clarke could really feel it inside her head, threatening to make it burst. The one person she could always count on to help her take care of business wasn’t there anymore, and the other that always believed her no matter what was in no position to do anything about it. Octavia was in Direct Combat Support, DIA’s Special Forces unit that answered directly to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which meant that the CIA Director couldn’t just ask something of them without JCS approval, which she knew she would never gain.

Speaking of people not being there anymore: Costia was gone, but her body would be placed in the ground along that of so many other American heroes at Arlington National Cemetery tomorrow, a day Clarke was dreading. Part of her didn’t want to go and avoid seeing everyone she’d let down by failing to bring Cos home safely, but she knew that she’d never forgive herself if she stayed away from the last chance she’d have to see her sister in the flesh. She’d always known that there was a possibility that every time she hugged Cos goodbye before deploying, it might be the last time she’d get to do so, but the reality of it hadn’t sunken in until it’d actually materialized.

She couldn’t help but feel like she’d let her sister down. Costia knew that there’d be no backup teams, little chance for a hot extract, and wouldn’t want Clarke to blame Wells for refusing to send the Redtail choppers back into that mess. LTC Jaha had known when to cut his losses and run, and she knew the man had been right. You didn’t need to get a missile lock when you had fifty-plus SLAAM launchers and could just nail a Stealth Hawk with volume of fire: the only result would’ve been 78 instead of 60 fatalities and priceless secret stealth tech falling into foreign hands. But that didn’t make it any easier to say goodbye to her sister, or feel any less responsible for the way things had gone.

Sensing that Clarke was retreating into her own thoughts, needing to mentally prepare to face tomorrow, Gustus suggested they cut the meeting short and reconvene later after things had settled down a little more. She gratefully took him up on the offer, receiving a fatherly hug from the older man who understood all too well what it was like to wake up to the realization that one of your closest loved ones had simply died.

Coming home, Clarke was looking forward to getting some cuddle time with Bellamy. They didn’t have servants like most of the ostentatious Arcadians that loved to display their wealth at every opportunity, but that didn’t mean they had to do more than just make sure things weren’t in places where they shouldn’t be.

They didn't need to do a whole lot to keep their house in order: they had their Handymen for that, the reticulated, centipede-like fusion-powered self-guided robots taking care of everything from trimming the hedges to mopping the floors, keeping everything spic and span without needing human intervention. In a sense, the Handyman had done almost as much for women's liberation as the second wave of the feminist movement; saving people so much time and energy that the position of housewife became redundant and tens of millions of women and girls found themselves in a position where they could not just ask, but demand full pay for their labor.

Bellamy and Clarke had three of these machines, Swiss-made models from the Corviglia Robotics Assembly plant in ritzy St. Moritz: one as a groundskeeper, one as a housekeeper, and one for redundancy in case either of the others needed repairs and wouldn't be available for a little.

Handymen weren't much good in the kitchen - they could walk up vertical surfaces, but couldn't fly - so that was what the KitchenAid robots were for. There were domestic robots for everything now, all-pervasive to an extent that if you were American, one's economic status could generally be traced according to how withered one's basic life skills were. Humans were just lazy by nature, so why bother learning how to cook when you had your KitchenAid for that, let alone how to tie your shoelaces when even a cheap-brand Handyman could do it for you in a tenth the time?

Of course, they couldn't take over everything . There was still something about the finesse of a master chef that kept human cooks afloat in the restaurant business, albeit only at the top skill levels, and thought much of the actual handwork done by tailors was now performed by robots, the whole design process was still reliant on the human eye, because robots had no imagination. There were a lot more painters, writers of prose and poetry, sculptors, philosophers, and other scientist and artists than ever before, so for all that domestic robots had annihilated entire sectors of the job market, they had in return opened the doors for even the lower class to start to work for personal fulfillment rather than working to survive. It was a whole different sort of economy compared to the one of thirty years ago. The creative arts, STEM fields - mentally challenging, intellectually stimulating, or spiritually fulfilling jobs were now the ones that human beings got to focus on, with all the drudgery of menial, repetitive labor relegated to history. The next generation would read about assembly line work in factories and shudder at how primitive and barbaric things used to be.

The robots were stupid, and that was because they were intended to be. The potential for people spying on others through hacking into the bots was too high to allow them to, for example, have optical cameras or audio receivers. They used different sorts of locator tech to find their way around, and were given orders via a phone or special terminal, all for the sake of user privacy, so the SVR couldn't use them as convenient data-gathering platforms - nor could the NSA, for that matter.

Yes, they were dumb, but not stupid. They could, for instance, give a gentleman a clean shave with greater speed and fewer nicks than any barber could, or twist a magnificent French braid for a lady, all without causing discomfort.

Lexa, for example, had a KitchenAid herself, but didn't make much use of it, since she actually enjoyed making her own food. And Clarke had programmed her groundskeeper Handyman to not touch the fruit trees in the yard, since she liked taking care of them with her own two hands. (The topiaries were a different story, though: trimming them just wasn't fun .) Some people had grown so indolent and dependent on the machines that they made the things put on their clothes for them. God forbid there should ever be an EMP attack that knocked them out of commission, because a hundred million people would no longer know how to think and breathe at the same time.

That evening, she crawled into bed exhausted, resting her head on Bellamy’s chest, glad that she at least still had her husband to cuddle up to as she curled up around his warm, smoothly toned body. Bellamy would always protect her, she was sure of it. Not physically, because she didn’t require that sort of protection - she was deadlier in a straight-up fight than him. But he was the one she could come to if she needed to let out her emotions, knowing that he wouldn’t judge her or think her weak for it, but appreciate knowing that she felt like she could open herself up and be vulnerable with him.

She was going to need his support desperately in the days and weeks to come.

Chapter Text

Chapter 3: Ashes to Ashes

May 29, 2021

Arlington National Cemetery, Virginia

Emerging from her black Ford Shelby in similarly dark attire that comprised her formal dress uniform, Lexa was met by a pair of Marine Honor Guards who came to escort her past the security checkpoint without making her go through that procedure, that would add stress and humiliation to what was already going to be an unbelievably difficult day.

It was a pleasant enough day that could have been enjoyable if it hadn’t been for the event that was about to take place. It was sunny out, a few wisps of white clouds lazily drifting along on a soft easterly wind. It was nippy, but not so cold that it would chill your bones: on any other day, Lexa would feel invigorated by this sort of air.

Arlington was an honorable final resting place, or so it was said. These graves were sacred: protected by over four hundred Federal and Virginia laws, they would never be cleared, never be neglected, and never be forgotten. Arlington National Cemetery had been home to hundreds of thousands of American servicemen and -women before 9/11. Twenty years on, that number had increased by one and a half times, from 400,000 fallen heroes to housing the legacy of over a million that had paid the ultimate price in defense of the liberty of their homeland and freedom of its people.

The rules for who was eligible for interment in this place of remembrance had been sharpened enormously, nobody wanting to face the possibility of running out of space and needing to remove graves that had been promised perpetual preservation. These days, only the greatest of the great could be put to rest here: Medal of Honor recipients, ranking generals and admirals, Special Forces operators that had given their all in the line of duty on extreme-risk missions: Costia absolutely ranked among the latter, so it was only right that her contributions to the nation’s continued existence were recognized even if the full story on all the things she did might never come to light.

Lexa had been here before, more times than she cared to think about. Some of her DCS operators that she’d lost under her command had qualified, and she, as their commanding officer, had made sure to always attend their farewells. Before then, Gustus had taken a small Lexa to Arlington to point out the headstone that marked the grave of his own father Alexander Woods, after whom he’d named his younger daughter, who had served with MACV-SOG in Vietnam for seven gruelling years and came home not quite the man he used to be. The system had failed the Woods family to the point where Alex had taken his own life far too young, able to live with his ghosts but not the crippling physical pain that the VA refused to help him with, but the man had still always insisted that if he’d get the chance to do it all again, he’d go back in a heartbeat. That sort of dedication had been as inspiration for Gustus: it was what drove him into becoming a soldier himself, and also what had pushed him into politics, the driving force a desire to gain enough power to transform the VA and give it the funds, leeway, and requirement to actually care for the wounded warriors that ended up under its auspices.

Gustus had succeeded. Veterans Affairs actually gave a shit about its vets now. But none of that would matter much for Alex, or for Costia - although Lexa could breathe a little easier knowing that her lost love would be honored for as long as there’d be a country called the United States or a place called Virginia.

As the Marines led her to the plot where the ceremony would be taking place, a flag-covered mahogany casket sitting next to an open plot surrounded by flowers, she saw that Clarke, Jake, and Abby were already there, talking to her father and Anya. At least, Jake and Abby were talking. Clarke looked like she’d rather have the ground open up to swallow her whole, judging by how small she held herself. Catching sight of Lexa looking at her, Clarke’s eyes briefly locked with her before turning downwards in shame: Little Griffin was eating herself alive, undeserved guilt clawing at her. Lexa couldn’t say she related, but she didn’t even want to think about how it would feel if she lost Anya too, so even though some dark part of her did blame Clarke even though she knew that the woman really couldn’t have done anything more than what she had, sympathy won out over anger in their shared pain. The Woodses and Griffins had been like two sides of the same coin since long before she’d been born: Abby Griffin and Becca Woods nee Franco had been college roommates, for instance, which was how Jake had met Becca and begun their intellectual cooperation. Becca’s untimely death had punched a hole in the conjoined family that had never fully healed, and now, there was yet another absence that would be felt for as long as the rest of them would live.

So when Lexa arrived on scene, she embraced everybody, even Clarke, who looked like she was barely keeping it together. The blonde had promised herself that she wouldn’t cry, because Cos wouldn’t have wanted her to, and failing despite her valiant effort to keep it dry. So Lexa didn’t do anything but commiserate, taking what comfort she could in sharing the burden of this loss with her closest friend.

The Griffins had insisted on an open casket, unwilling to forego this last chance to see Costia’s face before it would be relegated to memories, photographs, and videos, its owner forever out of reach. At least, that’s what the Griffins believed. Lexa knew they’d all be reunited someday, but that could still take fifty, sixty, seventy years that they’d all have to get through without their dearly beloved by their side. So she could take some comfort in that security, if nothing else; but she knew that the Griffins must have it so much harder, because none of them believed in reincarnation or Heaven. Costia didn’t believe… hadn’t believed in either prospect either, and Lex could hardly wait to prove her wrong, to get back to her and say ‘I told you so’, but she knew that her time wasn’t even close to up during this life.

Either way, nothing was ever gonna be the same again. All those family get-togethers in Arcadia when Lex, Anya, and Gustus would gatecrash the Griffin parents, occupy their backyard where Gustus and Jake would hold a cookoff at the grill making their daughters judge which one of them turned a better burger, Clarke strumming her guitar providing live music while Costia ran around like a headless chicken, snatching people's food off their plates and daring them to do something about it, a challenge Anya would always take her up on. Then Clarke would get involved, because nobody got to jump her sister. Then Lexa would have to get involved, because nobody was allowed to jump her sister. And Abby would grin and shake her head, asking Jake and Gustus how it was that they'd given their wives nothing but hellcats, the men shrugging and saying that they wouldn't have had it any other way.

The elder Griffins' poor Handymen were always hard-pressed trying to keep the yard up to programmed spec. If the robots could think, their binary thoughts would no doubt resemble the grumblings of long-suffering butlers.

Costia was a sister, a friend, a fiancée, a confidant, a buddy, and just the person everyone wanted to be around because she’d just been so warm, so much fun, so inexhaustibly full of life . The reflection of a person that lay there, imitating a human being, was the opposite of that: cold, still, and just… hollow.

Wherever Costia was now, inside this body wasn't it. There was no trace of anything alive and conscious left lingering there, which at least gave Lexa some peace of mind in knowing that the Jews were wrong in believing that the soul was only released after the body was properly taken care of. It was a horrifying thought, really, to imagine that someone might be trapped inside their own decaying corpse unless someone else cared enough to set them free. Then again, Buddhists believed that the soul would go through cleansing and got to process all of their trauma and pain before reincarnation into a fresh start, which Lexa didn’t think as true either: her soul certainly felt ancient, as if it carried the weight of thousands of lifetimes.

The person - no, the figure in the casket barely resembled her fiancée. They'd caked her face in far more makeup than she'd ever used in her life put together to try to make her look like a human being and conceal the damage done by hours of baking under the Central Asian sun, having been left where she fell throughout the night and not recovered until some time after sunrise. Even after treatment, her skin looked too pale, too grayish, too sallow. Her skin was icy cold to the touch, not a single trace of the warmth she'd shared with Lex for so many years to be found, her smooth, soft contours replaced by something too rough and spongy to be human.

The Kazakh government had done its best to mitigate the decay, placing all the operators' bodies on ice as quickly as they could, but even now, the faint, sweet cinnamon-like scent of decay wafting into Lexa's nostrils betrayed just how much of a mess was hidden just beneath the tenth-inch façade: the exsanguinated broken body of a woman dead, not sleeping, the rip in her throat closed up as best they could but still staring Lex in the face.

It was just a body, no longer Costia. And that was a good thing. It made it a little easier to say goodbye.

The headstone’s inscription read:

Costia Marie Griffin

October 24 1991 - February 24 2021

Adored sister, wonderful daughter, beloved wife

United States Navy

Commander

SEAL Team 4

It denoted her age, her most important relationships, her position in the military, but everything that she’d been, who she was as a person, the majority of her entire life, had been reduced to one little dash. Only those that knew her would know how much it meant, of the entire universe that little stripe between two dates represented. But there was nothing to be done about it: if she’d wanted Costia’s personality to be described, there wasn’t enough marble in the world to even summarize.

“Costia, my love, I do not believe I can ever love another like I loved you again.” Lexa whispered, her voice close to breaking, thick, hot tears blurring her vision as she ran her fingers through Costia’s hair just one more time. A few strands of it were missing, their absence tastefully covered up, to allow Lex to keep a tiny tangible piece of her beloved with her even when the rest of her would be hidden away from the world above. “A part of my own soul perished when you went away. But I know I’ll get to see you again in the next life.” “Don’t worry, my love. That won’t be happening too soon, I think. There’s still too much I have to do in this lifetime.”

There was nothing left but a box with a flag respectfully draped over it. Inside of it was about 130 pounds of bone, flesh, sinew, and other biological materials that made up a body, but that was all that remained: a body, inert, lifeless, meaningless. It no longer acted upon the world, so it was not Costia - that’s the reasoning Lexa and Clarke kept repeating to themselves in an endless loop. Why, then, was it so important that this hollow reflection of their family should be treated with dignity? Maybe simply because this body had been Cos’, and to discard it as an empty vessel would be to disrespect her memory.

“Why is it that the good always die young? It's just supposed to be a fuckin' saying.” Anya questioned the world. She was a prickly pear, who didn’t have nor need many friends, but Costia had simply been impossible not to like. That, and Anastasia Woods just couldn’t help but respect the sort of person crazy enough to consider swimming the length of the Panama Canal to be a fun little project and actually be happy enough to succeed that she’d turned around and gone back the other way.

On the other side of her sister’s body, Clarke just couldn’t get herself to stop stroking identical blonde hair. She kept telling herself that this would be the last time, she had to stop and let go now, but never listened to her own advice. She knew that it’d get harder to let go the longer she kept this up, but she was terrified of forgetting the way her sister felt under her fingertips the moment she withdrew her hands.

It could've been worse. They could've ordered her to cover it up and give her parents and Lexa some bullshit excuse. That Cos had been tragically lost in a training accident, or something like that.  Instead, Costia would at least receive the honors of a proper military sendoff with full honors. They said that she was lost in the line of duty while pursuing a bad lead - which was technically true.

Somehow, she could sense that they would soon say that Clarke was covering the tracks of her own betrayal and putting a tourniquet on an open wound with her own sister as a victim.

“She’d be glad to know you came, kiddo.” Jake spoke up, placing a comforting hand over his younger daughter’s head.

"...They were all counting on me. She was counting on me to get her out alive like I did all the times before, but I couldn't save her." Clarke managed to squeak out between hitches, barely able to breathe. "I'm trying to remind myself that she volunteered to go, that she knew the risks, but it doesn't make it any better. It's so hard to keep going, dad. I loved her so much!" She turned away from Costia to fling her arms around her father, squeezing Jake into a bone-crushing hug.

"Excuse me. Commander Woods? It's time." The funeral director announced, as solemn as ever. He knew like no other than no matter how often you attended ceremonies like these, it never got any easier.

Lexa felt like she was in freefall. Her stomach was eating itself, which was the only real thing it'd been consuming ever since she got the news. She felt faint, and not because of hypoglycemia, because she'd drank - oh yeah, she'd been drinking a lot. Not alcohol, she wasn't that kind of person, but her tongue had felt like sandpaper, her throat parched no matter how much she gulped down, and she hadn't been able to stomach any food without it coming back up, so she'd been surviving off that horrid mixture of water, sugar, and salt. She knew all too well that Costia would be giving her hell about it if she’d been here, so it was time to get this over with and see about picking up the pieces, pulling herself back together, and getting her life back on track for the sake of her own good, Costia, and her whole family.

That was easier said than done. Her entire body was numb, forcing her into denial the same way her mind was refusing to believe that this was real. Her mind kept picturing all of those years and decades that she can Cos could have, should have, would have had if fate hadn’t determined otherwise, all of the dreams they’d dreamed and the plans they made, showing her all of the beauty, laughter, and light they’d been robbed of, all of the good they’d never get to experience together, the whole movie of their long, happy married life going up in flames like an old reel of nitrate film exposed to too much sunlight.

As Lexa pushed the button that brought the coffin into place over the hole and began lowering it down, the brunette forced herself to look away, eyes focusing on a picture of a younger Cos during happier days, her face beaming as she showed off the brand-new golden trident insignia confirming that she was a real-life Navy SEAL. Those enlarged photographs on their stands didn't do her justice. She'd been beautiful in so many ways that no picture could hope to capture.

How could she do this to her? How could she leave her with nothing but bittersweet memories and the broken promise of a life never lived?

"She made me better. In every way. I..." Lexa's breath hitched, her vision blurred by stinging tears  "I don't know who I am without you, my Cos. I don't know what I'm gonna do next. I don't know how I'm gonna go home to our bed knowing you won't be there waiting for me, asking me how my trip to Mars has been, because that's the only excuse I have for turning in so late." She gave a watery little chuckle, sniffling, trying to hold back the tears that sprang up in the corners of her eyes and failing miserably. To hell with looking weak: it would be real weakness to run away from her feelings at a time like this. No, she didn’t want her eyesight to be muddled because that would deny her these last few moments. Flanked by Gustus and Anya, her blood relations respectfully helped her stay upright, maintaining a semblance of her dignity and lending her whatever strength they possessed to let her make it through what came next.

Looking down into the pit, saw was nothing but wood. Costia was so close, just inches beneath her hands, but so far removed from her embrace. She could feel the presence of her body, so barely out of sight, but it was just a body. Costia was gone. The love of her life was dead, and there was nothing anyone could do to make it not be so.

She'd tried to be mentally prepared for this day just in case the worst should happen, one that she'd always dreaded but tried not to think about. She and Cos were both soldiers, well aware of the uncertainty of life in their line of work. There was always a chance that either of them wasn’t going to make it back to the other, which she just didn’t like to confront. Whenever she'd begun to spiral at the dark thoughts that invaded her mind, her blonde sweetheart had been there to cheer her up with her awful jokes and dazzling smile. Costia had always been chipper, the perfect counterpart to the ever-serious Lexa, who hadn't been irritated by her fiancée's sunny demeanor but had found it infinitely endearing.

Somebody would have to shovel the first scoop of earth into the hole. The director pointed out the tools and mentioned that the family could do it, or they could leave the job to the staff on site.

"It should be you, Lex." Abby told her, the otherwise so proud woman sounding beat down and tiny. As much as she might want to take point on her own daughter’s burial, Costia hadn’t been hers for years and years already - she’d belonged to Lexa in heart and soul, so it was only right that Lexa should be the one to put Cos to rest.

The brunette nodded stiffly, taking a shovel into surprisingly steady hands. A pang of something unidentifiable shot through her, starting in her chest, swirling down through her stomach before coming back up to settle in her heart, as she overturned the implement and the first load of soil landed across the hardwood a few feet beneath ground level. A huge mental barrier that had tormented Lexa ever since she’d stepped into her car in Alexandria to travel here broke down, releasing the first scoop being the most difficult thing she’d ever done, but the next one coming far more easily. Her hands didn’t tremble like she feared they would. And she figured that this was Cos’ little way of helping, saying that she was doing the right thing and making a silent promise that everything was gonna be alright. Lexa wished she could believe her love’s message.

For twenty minutes, Lexa was stood there, pacing back and forth between the shrinking mound of dirt and decreasing depth of the hole in the plot, until her arms protested so sorely that she couldn’t keep the shovel steady anymore. She wanted to finish the job herself, but also knew that it would be selfish to not allow all the others that had loved Cos just as much as she did and would miss her just as badly to have their own turn at making sure her body would be safe.

"Clarke?" Lexa said, padding over to the downcast blonde who hadn’t moved an inch since Lex began filling in the hole, offering her friend to take over.

"No. I can't. I shouldn't." Little Griffin insisted, keeping her arms clasped behind her to fight down the temptation to reach out and accept the shovel.

"I know this is really difficult, but you'll never forgive yourself if you don't." Lexa coaxed her, knowing how gnawing guilt wouldn’t be soothed by denying her responsibility but only fester beneath the surface.

"It'll be worse if I do . I don't deserve to." Clarke asserted, confirming Lexa’s suspicions, and furthering her resolve to get the younger sister to properly say her goodbyes to the elder one.

"What would Cos say about that?" Lexa asked, the question penetrating Clarke’s veil of numbness to land like a slap to the face that shook her awake. The green-eyed girl was right: Cos would tell her to stop being an idiot and remind her that ‘siblings share everything, so get your ass in gear, Clarkey, because we’re doing this together’ - that’s what she would have said about it, so Clarke was going to make sure she’d listen for once in her life.

With a grateful little smile, she accepted the proffered tool, and took Lexa’s place beside the partly-open grave, trying to keep her mind tethered to the present even as her imagination went about recalling every silly, funny, and weird thing Cos had ever dragged her into. It was such a strange feeling, knowing that that’s all there’d ever be: she’d be making no more new memories with her sister. Sometimes, having perfect recall was a nightmare. But at least she’d always be able to remember with total clarity the way Cos had made her smile, made her laugh, got her to drag herself out of bed when she’d been feeling down, and those memories would never fade, meaning Costia would never truly be gone.

Eventually, all too soon, all that was left to do was even out the topsoil. And the world would keep on turning, day turning into night until the next sunrise, in a reality that would carry on as if nothing was wrong.

Perhaps, in time, that could even be true.

"Honor guard! Make ready!" Seven US Marines in their full dress blues, wielding old-school M1 Garands fashioned in wooden bodies, lined up to begin the 21-gun salute. "Present! Fire!" Their officer ordered, and the rifles cracked out as one upon his command. "Present! Fire!" He called out again, and the Marines lifted their weapons high, squeezing the triggers in perfect sync. “Present! Fire!” Came the word one more time, and in response, everyone in the vicinity of Arlington National would hear and know: another American hero had come home.

Lexa had to turn away now. She had to turn away, walk off, and not look back again. Because if she did, she'd remain rooted to the spot until the family would have to pick her up and carry her back home, and she'd be fighting them tooth and nail all the way. A small, insane part of her was even tempted to jump in after Costia, start digging with her bare hands, and keep holding onto the casket until she'd start to feel something other than emptiness again. But she had to stay strong, for the sake of Jake and Abby who'd just lost their daughter, Clarke who'd lost her sister, Octavia, Anya, and Raven, who'd been robbed of a dear friend. None of them seemed to give a shit about trying to look stoic, either.

So she quickly said bye to an understanding family and turned to walk away, and had almost made it back to the gate when she was startled halfway to a heart attack by a hand suddenly landing on her shoulder that she should have sensed coming.

“Why’d you let me, Lexa?” She was met with Clarke’s question, one that felt like some sort of accusation as the shorter woman was right there in her face.

“Why not you? It was the least you owed her.” Lexa said back, anger starting to overtake sympathy in this lonely place.

"I should've gone in myself." Clarke spoke, the double meaning of her statement not lost on Lexa.

"This isn't about you, Clarke. Don't make this about you." The green-eyed woman insisted, ready to serve her arrogant friend a steaming slice of humble pie.

"Fuck you. She was my sister, one of my best friends. It should've been me out there. It should be me." Clarke countered, her hand squeezing Lexa’s shoulder painfully, but not with the intent to harm, only trying to ground herself.

Clarke stopped speaking, but didn’t need to vocalize for her unsaid words to be heard anyway. ‘It should be me in that coffin .’, is what the girl had meant to convey.

"This is survivor's guilt talking. Nobody would rather see you in that coffin." Lexa told her, lightening up a little. "What could you have done differently, Clarke? What could you have done that she couldn't?" She inquired, knowing that they both knew what the answer was.

"Nothing. We were just as good as each other.” Clarke admitted. “But I outranked her by so much, I should've taken my goddamn responsibility and led from the fucking front, not from the War Room like a damn coward." She said, her voice breaking at the last word as self-loathing invaded her whole being.

Lexa saw this and realized that no matter how angry she may be at Clarke, it wouldn’t amount to a thing, because she’d never be able to match just how much the blonde girl despised herself in this moment. So instead, she chose to de-escalate by reminding her CIA counterpart: "Your place is in the CIC, not on the field. She followed your commands out there because she believed in what you were doing. I know she won't hold this outcome against you."

In the background, more gunfire was beginning to sound out. Costia’s wasn’t the only sendoff scheduled for today: she was being returned to the Earth along with all of the team members that fell by her side. One at a time, they would receive their own salutes: a hero’s welcome to the place where their names would literally remain carved in stone for all the world to see and remember, generations to come being reminded of the awful fact that freedom was never free.

Eighteen Navy SEALS, all of them national heroes. They would be recognized and remembered forever. The official story involved a counterterrorist operation near Baikonur Cosmodrome gone bad due to faulty intelligence.

Forty-two SCS Security men and women. Their identities would never be known, as their biometric passes were all forged. They would be forgotten, their very existence expunged from all public records. They would never see the sacred ground of Arlington, relegated to languish in the unwritten pages of histories unknown.

Out of those eighteen Navy Special Warfare men and women, there was only one that really mattered: Team Leader Costia Griffin. She’d been a Commander, equivalent to Lieutenant-Colonel, and looking at yet another early promotion. She’d been less married to her job than Clarke, which had meant her rise hadn’t been quite as meteoric, but now, Clarke thought that maybe Costia’s way had been the better one.

If only she hadn't gotten the SEALs involved. But there was just no way her own troops would have made it anywhere near Baikonur without their expertise. SOG wasn’t available: she’d needed plausible deniability even among the alphabet soup. And SCS by itself simply didn’t have the sort of finesse that the Special Warfare team brought with it. So when the chips were on the table, this setup really had been the only viable one… cold comfort as it was.

And even if she could have somehow pulled off the impossible and convinced the JCS to deploy NEST teams abroad, into Russia’s backyard, she was 99.9% certain that the warheads would already be gone and all evidence of them cleansed so thoroughly that even background radiation levels would show nothing out of the ordinary. It had been a total failure. She’s gone behind the backs of everything and everyone, staking it all out on a limb, and she’d lost. Costia had died for nothing. And more than likely, Clarke would soon be joining her, too. She could no longer say with certainty that she cared.

She’d hugged Lexa goodbye and then virtually encamped at Costia’s grave site, unwilling to budge even as the others began to trickle away and head home. As difficult as it was gonna be, she still had a job to do, and she was now more determined than ever to see it through, the hole in her heart filled by the burning of an insane resolve to make whatever time she had left count and sacrifice her own life, if need be, in exchange for protecting that of her people.

"Hey, Cos." She talked at the fresh headstone when even the Marine Honor Guards had gone off to resume their regular patrols. "I'm gonna need to do something. Something I probably won't be coming back from." She admitted, swallowing thickly as she told her sister something that she never could before, and wished she never would have needed to. “I wish there was another way, but I’ve tried everything and then some, and I can’t sacrifice anybody else for this. I hope you understand.” Clarke implored her sister to trust her one last time, swearing that she wouldn’t get it wrong again.

"If I could, I'd go back and do things differently. But I can't." She said, wiping her eyes with the hundredth tissue of the day. "I'm so sorry I failed you. I failed everyone." Clarke kept beating herself up, solely trying to start taking all of that guilt and turning it into fuel that would feed her quest for justice, revenge, and just maybe, peace of mind.

“I don’t know if there’s a life beyond this one, but I think I’ll find out for myself soon enough.” She gave a fatalistic little chuckle, kissing her own hand and palming the headstone, hoping against hope that the gesture would somehow transform into a format that Costia could feel. “May we meet again.”

Griffin-Blake home, Arlington, Virginia

That night

Clarke lay in bed restless. She was exhausted, emotionally drained and physically spent, but her mind wouldn’t let her go to sleep no matter how much her body begged her to shut down already. Bellamy’s steady presence next to her was the only reason she hadn’t eaten all her fingernails yet, her man knowing that what she needed right now wasn’t to talk, but just for him to be there, strong and silent for the time being.

Clarke had put the preference for cremation in her will. An irrational part of her mind was worried that her consciousness would linger inside her body even after it died, trapped in a tiny, dark, damp, cold, inescapable space; and as claustrophobic as she was, the prospect was so terrifying that it overrode all of her logic and reason. She figured that she couldn't be trapped inside her body if there was no more body to be trapped in, not really concerned about the possibility of being stuck in a jar of ash instead. If they carried out her wishes, it would be scattered anyway, leaving her spirit free to drift along with the winds to be carried to every corner of the Earth, if such a substance existed.

She recalled a memory of one of Cos’ random moments when she’d decided that privacy was for losers  and she’d just barged into Clarke’s office in Langley not long after what she’d forever remember as the ‘Goose/Gander Incident’, carrying a tray with authentic pre-Spanish recipe Aztec hot cocoa and insisting Clarke drop whatever she was doing for some family time. Shaking her head but grinning fondly, Clarke had actually appreciated this intrusion: she got so caught up in her work sometimes that she forgot to eat, let alone make time for her loved ones.

"Heya, sis. Were you always this ugly?" Costia greeted her with a poke on the nose.

"We're identical not-twins, Cos, so what's that say about you?" Clarke laughed back, knowing how Cos was proud of her good looks and that between the two of them, Clarke was by far the more vain.

"I just had the weirdest dream.” Cos launched into one of her tangential anecdotes, always entertaining. “It was in this alternate reality or something, where computers were tiny and they weighted nothing but the Internet was huge , only they used it for watching cat videos and porn instead of useful stuff and Lower Manhattan was made of glass and people still drove gasoline-powered cars because fusion cells were never invented and I'm rambling I'm sorry I'll shut up now."

“I’d call you a silly goose, Cos, but I think I’d prefer a stuffed turkey over a live gander next time, so. Do with that information as you please.”

“Careful what you wish for, Little Griffin. You might end up going cold turkey without my antics to keep you from rusting into old lady bones.” Her sis had joked, her words seeming prophetic in hindsight.

Costia and Clarke were separated by a few years, but they looked virtually identical. Still, you could tell them apart: Costia was the one with a smile permanently plastered on her lips, while Clarke was the one who looked perpetually annoyed.

Her big sister was one lucky woman. Alexandria Woods was nice and tall-ish, slender and petite, with big green eyes, long, flowing chestnut hair, a richly sun-kissed olive tan courtesy of an Italian-American father and Mexican-American mother, sharp cheekbones to die for, and cute tiny ears. She was also perfectly prepared to wipe the floor with anyone stupid enough to call her 'cute' and skilled enough to do so. If it hadn't been for Bellamy sweeping her off her feet, it might've been Clarke that fell in love with Lexa, even if it might feel a little weird since they'd literally grown up together. Unlike her own bi attraction, though, Cos was fully lesbian, so she wouldn't have been able to switch partners. Their arrangement was perfect like this: the sisters were best friends with both each other and each other's respective partner, so Clarke could definitely consider himself lucky, too, that family drama didn’t extend to the quartet of them.

Clarke supposed her sickening fascination with death wasn't just clinical, but because she was extremely afraid of it. Trying to use scientific methods to look for a shred of evidence that people didn't just disappear when their body died was a hell of a lot more comforting to her than millennia-old mysticism written down by people that didn't know what the sun was. That was something she shared with George Graham, founder of the SOG ASPU, or ‘The Shop’: that she looked into the eyes of the dying as often as she could, trying to find evidence of… In Graham’s case, evidence of a judgmental God, in Clarke’s case, evidence of a continuation of consciousness. Thus far, her success rate had been a resounding ‘null’.

This mindset made Clarke Griffin exceptionally dangerous. She knew exactly what it was she was taking when she ended a life - and still chose to do so anyway, unflinching and remorselessly, when it was necessary to protect others from the target.

They called her the Commander of Death. But just like it was in military circles, she might issue orders, but there was no guarantee that Death wouldn’t choose to defy them. And God, was she scared of what that bitch could do.

June 5, 2021

CIA Headquarters, Langley, Virginia

Clarke sat typing away at her laptop, connecting it to her desktop PC to twin-link them into operating like a split-screen device. She used the laptop to do her typing and reading while using the more powerful desktop processor to handle the heavy lifting. It was an idiosyncrasy, but it worked for her.

Since the funeral, she'd been distancing herself from everyone. She didn’t even take a day off from work, figuring that the two months she’d had before the farewell were long enough to let her process things, so now that her sister’s body had been made safe, Clarke jumped right back into the Director’s seat and thrown herself into her duties just to not have to think about it all. She'd even started avoiding going home, sometimes sleeping in her office if she slept at all. She couldn't go home and face them. How could she show herself to her parents who lost their daughter, her best friend who lost her fiancée, even her husband whose would-be sister-in-law had been such a great buddy to him and Octavia?

Bell had always understood and accepted that with her job, the call of duty superseded everything else, including her family life. But the way she was withdrawing into herself now was more than that. She didn't feel like she could face anybody for a while, not with Costia still so fresh in her mind. She knew perfectly well that pushing her family away wasn't helping anybody, but as consumed by shame and guilt as she was, she simply couldn't muster the courage to look them in the eyes and see disgusting, revulsion, judgment - or even worse: sympathy and understanding. She wasn't strong enough to deal with the former, and felt undeserving of the latter. Her subsuming herself in work had gotten bad enough to the point that Raven was threatening her with a psych evaluation and mandatory time off if she didn't take a damn vacation soon. Reyes had her heart in the right place: alienating herself wasn't going to make the pain go away, but she needed more time to process it alone. Only she knew that she was lying to herself, because she wasn't taking any time to process it at all.

The Agency had long been influencers, but not decision makers. Their ability to exert direct control over any assets not under their direct control had been highly limited and discretionary powers were still subject to intense scrutiny from outside.

But then, 2001 had rolled around, and everything changed with the passing of the Patriot Act. As the ruined aboveground building at Langley was rebuilt, the organization it headquartered was also reorganized, given far more extensive powers and leeway to take independent action. Senator Jaha had been correct in stating that the CIA had been unshackled: the Agency now more closely than ever resembled the sort of far-reaching arm that it had been portrayed as in all the old novels.

These days, when the SAD wanted to appropriate an Air Force MQ-9 for a targeted assassination, the military was no longer allowed to just say no. When the PAG sent an information request to the FBI, the Bureau had to treat that request as an order and provide the intel post haste, unedited and without any redacted bits. Anybody they suspected of being an enemy of the State, with probable cause defined internally, they could legally abduct, interrogate, hold without indictment, and torture without providing evidence to any court, foreigners and US Citizens alike. The Agency was still required to keep meticulous internal records of its activities, but sharing any of it with the Joint Chiefs of Staff or the Justice Department was fully voluntary. And about the only thing the Oversight Committee could do against overstepping was by slashing its funding.

From a threat analysis think tank focused mainly on clandestine observation, deep-cover infiltration, and combat support, the CIA had become a security enforcement agency. Its new, post-Bojinka motto was 'Nemo Ab Oculis Nostris Celare Potest' - 'No one can hide from our eyes', and it 100% lived up to its ambitions.

It was simple enough to work inside the cracks in the system: when one of their assets couldn’t take someone in directly, they'd fabricate wanted posters, upload them through backdoors into legitimate systems, once the suspects were in custody there'd be a transfer request uploaded the same way, and the team they'd be transferred to wouldn't be Interpol, FBI, or local police, but CIA operatives. All of the case file numbers, serial numbers, persons and computer IDs that issued them would check out as the real deal, and it wasn't like police commissioners wrote so few APBs, BOLOs, and arrest warrants that they could say with certainty that this particular one didn't actually carry their signature. Naturally, this also meant that somebody with the right training and the right access within the Agency that became compromised would be able to issue an arrest warrant against CIA personnel, and to Clarke, the danger of that happening in the wake of failing to secure any of Nia’s warheads had suddenly become a realistic scenario, as if she didn’t have enough issues to keep her up an night already. She didn’t know whether she should just try to expunge the records on the whole operation, covering her own tracks but also ensuring that she’d never be able to build a case against Nia again, or leave the files where they were and run the risk of them being used to incriminate her in some way or another as a conspirator against the US, which she wasn’t, rather than conspiring behind the backs of the US in order to protect it, which was slightly less illegal, but also true.

When it came to assassinations, there were four groups that could do it. If you needed someone dead, you'd send a low-level agent that wasn’t on the muster roll at Langley but only got paid by someone else that was . If you needed lots of someones dead, you'd send SOG. If you needed someone dead and needed it to look like an accident, you’d dispatch a field operative. And if you needed someone dead and for it to look like natural causes, you'd go to The Shop and activate a Customer. The last resource was an autonomous branch, a SOG sub-unit with fewer than 1,000 personnel, scattered all over the world, of which only 20 were Customers. Only the Agency Director, Assistant Director, and Customers themselves knew who they were: these people were embedded in other units, where their comrades would never know of the double life they were leading, and there was no membership list that existed anywhere but in the heads of the Customers themselves. The personality prerequisites you needed to look for to take a man or woman and shape them into such an operator were exceptionally rare to begin with: you needed to look for someone who was prepared to kill anyone at any time, including literal babies if required, and not flinch or blanch away from it, but also someone who knew how to walk the line perfectly so they'd never do such a thing without an indisputably necessary reason.

Clarke knew exactly who the Customers were. She was the Director, after all. But she had also known even before then, since all Customers knew each other. And Clarke Griffin, just like Costia, had been a member of The Shop long before she'd ever become Director. She'd had that natural aptitude.

Director George Tenet, her predecessor at the time, had seen the potential in her eyes right from the get-go, and Director Leon Panetta had elevated her even higher, going from being a member of the team to its overall commander, until her direct predecessor John Brennan had appointed her first SOG Director, and then Agency Assistant Director.

Stephen King had, with significantly difficult persuasion considering the man was an outspoken critic of government surveillance and overreach into citizens’ personal affairs, been enticed to write a book about The Shop, inventing a fictionalized version he called the 'Department of Scientific Intelligence' that was tasked with hunting and studying people with literal supernatural powers, allowing the real version of it to operate practically out in the open, the fiction confabulated by such a famous author ensuring that people that went about proclaiming that The Shop from 'Firestarter' actually existed would be considered lunatics with an overactive imagination. DSI didn't actually exist, but God, the people it was based on? 'Rainbird the Indian' was once a real man, SOG operator George Johnson, and if anything, King had downplayed how menacing he had been according to the ones that had worked by his side. Clarke still felt lucky that the man had been dead for years by the time she'd first appeared on the autonomous unit's radar.

The Shop's formal name was the 'Special Operations Group Autonomous Special Purpose Unit', but that was such a mouthful, and its acronym so awkward (not to mention that it could be pronounced as ‘sog-ass-poo’, which simply wouldn’t do), that everyone just referred to it by its nickname. And unlike King’s version, that had been staffed by a bunch of trigger-happy, incompetent, over-reactive lunatics that DSI only hired because nobody with anything resembling a reputable name wanted to sully their hands on them, the real Shop was reserved for the elite of the elite. Clarke and Costia had been among the youngest ever recruited by them, an accolade that would see them immortalized at Langley, even though Costia had always remained a Navy SEAL and never joined the Agency formally.

The days of the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Nicaraguan quagmire, Iran-Contra, and arming the enemies of enemies only to have them stab you in the back later a la Taliban were over. Failure would no longer be tolerated. The Agency had been given enormous power and great leeway with which to stretch out its reach around the world, from the deserts of Arabia to the very heart of Russia, in order to protect America and the world from those that would threaten the tenets of freedom and liberty, be that in the name of God or Allah, the Socialist Greater Good, or security, since those that gave up freedom for security deserved neither. But this power came at a cost: the CIA’s upper echelons were expected to be men and women of impeccable moral fiber, with indomitable strength of will, untarnishable character, and exceptional ability to determine when to draw the line and when to cross it in pursuit of preventing greater harm by doing a little evil here and there. President Woods and the Senate had entrusted this position to Clarke, expecting her to be aware of what the consequences would be if she strayed too far off the straight and narrow. Because even though she’d be nigh-untouchable, the famous gangster Al Caopne hadn’t been arrested because of his illegal liquor sales or all the killings he ordered, but because of unpaid tax bills - bills that Clarke happened to know the FBI had fabricated wholesale just so they’d have an excuse. It had been a dirty bit of business, but done for good - so if they thought that getting rid of Clarke would do more good than harm, they wouldn’t hesitate to find a way to put her away, whether that be behind bars or below the ground. And truth be told, she wasn’t so keen on experiencing either. Hence her continuing deliberations on what to do with the mission files: was her own life more important than stopping Nia, even a small chance of being able to bring about her downfall even if it meant she’d pay for it with her own career at the very least? Clarke was afraid that the answer was yes.

Yes, a career in the CIA was full of unexpected twists and turns that were as much political machinations as bureaucratic bullshit. At least nobody was going to send her to formal functions as an undercover. She’d always been a trigger puller, not an investigator. The operatives assigned to that kind of work were possessed of an entirely different skill set, one that allowed them to not rip out their own hair in frustration and could withstand the dullness and drudgery of the people that showed up to such events. Polite small talk grated on her nerves. Having to pretend to ignore thinly veiled insults that old men thought were witty would drive her nuts. Being surrounded by rich, well-connected assholes that thought the world revolved around them because they'd been born with a silver spoon in hand instead of working their way up the proper way like she had was not her idea of time well spent. And she wouldn't be caught dead in a dress. No, being an overt combat operator was a whole lot more fun. Okay, maybe 'fun' wasn't exactly the right word to use, but it was exciting.

Clarke was playing an extremely dangerous game. She was about to get Nia involved in a way that would to all the world seem to confirm that she was indeed a traitor, in order to gain a position in which to expose Nia as the true enemy. The issue with that proposition was that those that double-crossed Director Koroleva never lived for longer than two weeks after that. 

"Okay, Griff, here goes nothing." She pepper herself up as she secured her line and dialed a certain external extension, connecting it to an international switchboard whose path terminated somewhere at the front desk of the Lubyanka Building, Headquarters of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation. The FSB. Nia’s domain.

As soon as the line connected and a voice asked what the call was about, Clarke spoke in Russian: "This is Clarke Griffin at Langley speaking. Connect me through to Director Koroleva. It's urgent."

“Very funny, lady, but we don’t have time to take prank calls.” The desk operator said, annoyedly preparing to hang up on her. Why the hell was Nia’s direct number impossible to find?

"Trace my call, asshole. This is not a joke." Clarke all but barked down the receiver, already fed up with the bureaucracy that was even worse on the other side of the Northern Hemisphere. The operator grumbled about how he’d pay to be there when the Federal Police raided this dumb phone bitch’s house for wasting FSB time, then swallowed his tongue and went as quiet as a mouse. There was a sudden click, making Clarke think he’d hung up on her for a moment, but no: this wasn’t the silence of a disconnected line, but of an open one with nobody on the other side of it, an anticipatory sort of quiet.

“Hello?” She asked, then repeated “Hello…?” after a few more seconds of nothing. “Hello?!” She now shouted, almost ready to give up and try again later, when her effort at last bore fruit.

“Come now, Clarke. Is that any way to greet an old acquaintance?” Nia Koroleva’s voice came through the receiver. In English. Nia was speaking English, almost as if she’d been anticipating this call.

"Is this line secure?" Clarke asked out of sheer habit.

"I'm disappointed you are asking me that. Not even my own son could listen in on this particular call." Was the reply, in a way that sounded literal. "Now then, to what do I owe the pleasure of speaking to the Commander of Death?"

"I've been compromised. They'll be coming for me soon. I'd appreciate an extraction."

“Who is that that will be coming for you, and why?”

"Let us speak in the language of real men." Clarke said, switching to Russian.

“Suppose for the sake of argument that I’m interested in hearing what you have to say, what would you tell me?”

"Nia. Would you betray your country... if that's what was necessary to save it?"

“Russia herself has been betrayed by those that claim to be her saviors. The answer is that betraying the betrayers is our moral imperative.” Nia elucidated. “What is it that you believe the United States needs saving from, Clarke?”

"America has let her guard down since 1991, and even after 2001, deluded herself into believing that the era of conventional warfare was over, that she'd never again have to contend with a hostile peer force and the greatest danger would be Middle Eastern guys in tee-shirts shooting shitty old RPG-7S into bazaars." Clarke couldn’t help but rant, because even though Nia was her worst enemy, the Russian was also the only one who came close to understanding her own reasoning. "We need to stop... pussyfooting around the issue and take decisive action. We are still at war.” She continued, failing to come up with a good Russian alternative to the English swear word so choosing to literally translate it instead, much to Nia’s amusement if the older woman’s little laugh was anything to go by.

“Now you’re thinking like a leader of your people.” Koroleva blew steam up her American counterpart’s backside.

"The United States is more vulnerable than she's even been, and it's because she's allowed herself to become exposed. I aim to put a stop to that.” Clarke was  determined. “And I believe, Director Koroleva, that you are the only person on Earth that can help me make them see the truth." This was doublespeak Clarke was employing, guiding Nia into interpreting her words the way Nia wanted to hear them while meaning something else entirely: she wasn’t asking Nia to help her wake America up to its own weaknesses FSB style, but for Koroleva to help Clarke dig the Russian’s own grave.

Clarke was sometimes called an ice queen because she could lock her heart away from the world and appear to be frosty and unaffected. But the Russian was the true Ice Queen, because her heart was frozen solid, and that was how she liked it.

“To what do I owe the honor of your call then? More than rehashing what we’ve already talked about, I presume.”

“They’re onto me. I don’t have any evidence, but I can feel it. And I’m not wrong about these things. Never.”

“How is that my problem, Clarke?” Nia wanted to know, sounding smug like the snake that got the egg.

“Because if they come for me, you can be damn sure they’ll be coming for you next.” The blonde asserted. “Maybe because I tell them to because if I’m going down, I’m taking you with me, or maybe just because they’ll figure it out all on their own. Maybe because they’ll assume I’m taking marching orders from you. Or maybe just to prove that they can. You’ve been in the game a lot longer than me: you know nobody’s safe.”

“All I care about is securing the future of Mother Russia. You are not one of my people, as far as I know.” Nia stated, wondering why she should lift a finger to keep Clarke alive.

"I don't care how you do it, but I need you to get me out before they execute me, because I'll be no good to either America or Russia if I'm dead ." The younger woman argued. "I need you, Nia. Do you understand what I'm saying? Consider the value of what I'm offering you, even if I won't have inside access anymore."

“Very well.” Nia agreed. “I’ll make sure that you see Lubyanka before the inside of an American concrete box.”

With that, Koroleva abruptly disconnected the line, leaving Clarke sitting there with the receiver dangling limply in her hand, blue eyes scanning her computer screen for signs of anyone trying to listen in as she wondered, far from the first time, what the hell kind of mess she’d gotten herself into.

The SSCI had let her off with a stern warning but it wasn’t going to last. Because already, investigative journalists of every level of repute already making a stink about how the story about Baikonur didn’t quite add up and had begun lobbing all sorts of awkward questions about the CIA Director into the mass media sphere. If Murphy of the NSA, Chief Justice Sydney, or Attorney General Lightbourne took a deeper than cursory interest, Clarke’s goose was cooked.

Nosy reporters sticking their noses where they didn't belong, trying to expose ongoing deep cover operations to the public that would get Americans killed, was nothing new. Snoops that thought themselves the champions of free speech and heroes of government transparency like that fucker Snowden who hollowed out the NSA from the inside out, little tabloid sleuths looking for their big break or household serious investigative names looking to etch their legacy in history by eposing the next Watergate scandel whose activities threatened to see to it that terrorist plots weren't foiled and would thus see to the slaughter of citizens, dangerous foreign and domestic adversaries weren't assassinated before they could realize their schemes, people that believed integrity was more important that preserving innocent lives. Nor was being intensely scrutinized by the media trying to get any shred of information about the CIA Director that they could use to paint her in a bad light anything she wasn't used to. None of them had come close enough to measurable success to worry her, though: after all, they were all still alive. Although she had ordered some people to scare the living daylights out of a few of them on occasion, because they'd mistakenly believed they could run surveillance on her without her noticing and taking action; and they'd started bothering Bell, Cos, and her mom and dad about her. She took her own privacy very seriously, but even more so that of her family, whom she didn't want to involve in her Agency life any more than absolutely necessary. With them being a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and commander of America's best Airborne division and Arctic Warfare Training Center, the first female Navy SEAL team leader, the Surgeon General, and co-inventor of the microfusion cell and national head of the Bureau of Nuclear Energy, respectively, they already had to deal with more than enough observing eyes without adding Clarke's reputation into the mix by association. The Patriot Act had made privacy into a largely symbolic notion with little substance left to it, but still, citizen surveillance had to have a security reason behind it (even in the post-Bojinka world, there was a policy of 'no unless yes', not the full-spectrum blanket surveillance that only existed in tinfoil hat conspiracy theorists’ worst nightmares and Ops Director Tallcliffe’s wet dreams), and for the Griffins to be surveilled by journalists was the opposite: it had a direct adverse effect on national security, so it was not an acceptable situation.

There was so much hypocrisy in the world. Berlin had kicked up a political shitstorm over the NSA spying on them, despite it being common knowledge that the Bundesnachrichtendienst, the German foreign intelligence service, was every bit as busy spying on the Americans, the French, and all of their ostensible allies right along with neutral and hostile states. Reckless reporting had already killed the successor to the failed Strategic Defense Initiative, the ‘Star Wars Project’, that had been revived in the form of ODIN - the Orbital Defense Initiative - which had yielded a grant total of one orbital laser satellite before the lid had been blown off and the public backlash ensured a second would never be deployed: freedom of the press had thus actively caused harm to national defense capabilities. And if Clarke was going to be put away for doing the right thing because some of it couldn’t stand the light of day, the damage would be equally catastrophic.

March 19, 2019

McLean Woodland Combat Training Range

Having curveballs thrown her way from out of nowhere was nothing unfamiliar to Clarke. A couple of years ago, Clarke had called up Lieutenant Finnegan Collins and his SOG platoon, the best paramilitary operators under the SAD umbrella, and put them through the wringer herself. They had gone on a field exercise at the woodland combat training range outside McLean, nothing out of the ordinary, but this time, Clarke had a little surprise in mind that Collins and his people wouldn’t know about. Normally, Clarke would be watching from the command post, but this time, she had something special cooked up that she wanted to be among her operators for, leaving SOG Commander Colonel Sorenson to run things at the top level.

Unlike Clarke, who'd come up in the SOG system and skipped the prerequisite three years of active service in a military elite or special forces unit due to being pegged by The Shop as a prospect very early on in her life, Glass Sorenson had already been a seasoned UDT operator with SEAL Team 6. There was a reason the older blonde was known as 'Bulletproof Glass' that had nothing to do with sounding ironic. Glass would be evaluating the team’s performance, being the only one clued in as to what Clarke was planning, as well as directing the OPFOR team of Force Recon Marines, using her camera feeds from SOG helmet cams and ISR quadcopters painted red so they would be easily seen precisely to denote that they should be ignored rather than treated as enemy eyes in the sky, playing dirty to make sure she’d be able to put a lot of pressure on Collins in ways he’d never see coming.

The town of McLean was a pretty affluent place on the very edge of the Capital Metropolitan Area, consisting mostly of multistory free-standing houses with ample space between them, sitting adjacent to the much smaller unincorporated designated place of Langley where Headquarters was situated.

The 'McLean' that most Agency people referred to would instead be the McLean Training Range, a hilly woodland area close to the community but isolated enough to not be so easily observed, where SOG and several other military and paramilitary Special Forces units underwent their forest combat and survival trials. Despite being so close to the capital, the McLean Range was home to ancient woodlands, the whole area protected and left undisturbed save for when it was used for these war games. A large wooded area adjacent to it played host to a Federal nature reserve, separated from the Range by a dual-layered chain link fence, so nobody was going to accidentally go wandering into the line of fire. At night, there was no artificial light pollution here, the I-76 was too far away for traffic noises to carry into these hills, and there weren't any Second Amendment hermits taking potshots at any and all strangers in this nigh-abandoned neck of Rural Virginia despite being close to civilization, making it the ideal location for a wilderness training ground.

Things were changed up drastically four times a year, so that even seasoned operators that had hit up McLean a dozen times before wouldn't really know where they were going and what to expect over the next hilltop. Some hills were flattened, others were erected; some had their direction changed, others were reshaped to be longer, smoother, or steeper. Rocks were moved to new spots, trees uprooted and replanted: it was a month-long operation every time, so that the next two months could be dedicated to training Special Forces operators in lifelike conditions.

Since this setup was human versus human, live munitions would not be distributed, but the next-best thing: both sides were issued simunitions, fascinating polymer doodads that came equipped with electric components that would give you a hell of a wallop and cause your muscles to seize and cramp, simulating the sensation and debilitation of a real bullet while only traversing at a fraction of the speed of one and made of soft materials to minimize physical damage.

The Simunitions were one thing, but Clarke also had a few special enemies that weren't OPFOR but only existed in theory, in her head, to throw at them. If she told someone they'd been hit, they would be taken out of the exercise as a casualty. Clarke herself wasn’t there as a participant, but as a sort of game master, that BLUEFOR and OPFOR were meant to ignore save for when she said something directly to them. To this effect, Clarke didn’t come clad in forest green like the others, but wore this red and black spotted uniform like she was trying to blend in with a lava flow, all to better be seen and not get hit with a simunition, because those things hurt like a son of a bitch.

Inserting via helicopters - standard UH-60 Blackhawks rather than UH-60S Stealth Hawks this time - the landing site immediately came under heavy fire from three directions as the FORECON guys had already determined where the most likely landing site would be and set up machine gun positions and treetop sniper nests along the treelines wherever they could get eyes on the clearing that SOG hit boots on the dirt at. The ambush was textbook, but Finn’s operators responded appropriately, going to ground while sending out a storm of suppressing fire to allow friendly sharpshooters to begin servicing priority targets. It didn’t take terribly long before the FORECON guys operating as REDFOR were getting their asses kicked every way back to Tuesday and they abandoned their initial line, only for Clarke to throw a spanner in the works as she padded over to Zoe Monroe, one of the SOG snipers, and smacked her in the back of the head.

"Bang, you're dead, Monroe! McIntyre, take charge of Bravo squad!" She called out, putting Harper, another sniper, in command. The two were overwatch- rather than traditional snipers, meaning they could act as squad leaders because they’d constantly be on the move anyway.

Harper McIntyre took a second too long to assume command, staying rooted to the spot just long enough for the enemy sniper that only existed in Clarke’s mind to line up another shot and squeeze off a shot. "Bang, they got you! Zinck, take over!" Clarke announced, hitting Harper’s head at a slightly different angle and hoping that her people would notice and realize what this meant, calling for assault trooper Dexter Zinck to take charge of Bravo Squad.

"Adams, Mbege, you're down. Shots came from behind - you know what to do, people." Riflemen Rhys Adams and John Mbege were the next to fall as the platoon pushed into the central treeline, fighting back the regrouping FORECON guys with great success until Clarke drilled her finger into the side of the two men’s temples.

The platoon fanned out, splitting into two wings and maneuvering to pinch the enemy flanks, attempting to squeeze them into a compact formation that they could cut apart in a nice kill box. The REDFOR people held the advantage at long distance, so the CIA operators moved quickly, bounding from one cover to the next as quickly as they could, smoothly maneuvering to use the lay of the land for cover as they sought to rob the enemy of their edge.

"Bang!" Clarke shouted in Finn’s ear, causing the man to make a ‘WTF’ face as his Director’s voice cut through even the din of simulated combat but not feeling her hand anywhere on his body to indicate being hit. "That landed half an inch from Lieutenant Collins. Come on, stay on the ball here: if you can't protect Finnegan, you lose your platoon leader." The blonde announced on platoon radio, growing agitated at the utter confusion her operators seemed to be in even as they were successfully pushing back REDFOR, chasing them from redoubt to redoubt as the enemy fell back to make a last stand around the fake arms cache they were designated to protect.

The guys didn't understand. By all means, they were kicking ass and taking names, evading landmines and tagging OPFOR people by the dozens, but for some reason, Clarke kept killing off operators every few minutes.

"Bang! Pascal, you're out. Contact left, ground level, long." She called out a direction and visual sighting, trying to throw her platoon a bone. One fireteam had the wherewithal to lay down a base of fire for their accompanying team to go assaulter and move in the indicated direction, and Clarke was happy to announce that an enemy roving sniper had just been terminated, but to keep their wits about them.

Which, tasting victory, they didn’t really do, too focused on the direction of the enemy’s last stand to bother with back clearance. They had their flanks secure, but the rear? They didn’t have enough people watching their backs, leaving some openings in the defensive cover, and another nonexistent sniper had made use of this to crawl right into the middle of the BLUEFOR platoon. One operator, Clarke smacked in the thigh, telling her she’d just been hit. Fox whipped around in the direction Clarke’s hand had come from and opened fire, hoping to get it right. She didn’t: her shots fell long.

"No dice. I'm sorry, Fox, but bang, they just got you." Genevieve Fox was told she was dead, the tall rifle grenadier letting herself fall to the ground with a hissed curse: she’d never seen it coming. Of course she couldn’t have, with the sniper not actually being there, but her lack of situational awareness had been the more important factor.

By this time, the enemy’s last stand had been overrun, a pair of hostels trying to set off demolition charges to destroy the illegal arms cache tagged and downed as Finn and Jasper descended on the crates and placed RFID locators on them.

"Condor 1. Jackpot." Collins declared, setting his people to sweep the area and establish a perimeter, calling for air extraction once the site was deemed clear and secure.

"Net call, Condor Actual. I am declaring mission over. ENDEX, ENDEX, ENDEX." End of Exercise was announced.

"Mission over? Not mission accomplished?" Finn asked.

"Unacceptance casualties, Finn. That was not a successful operation." Clarke explained.

"Ladies and gentlemen, it seems to have occurred to none of you that the reason so many of you were dying was because there was a roaming sniper pair shooting at you." She finally told her people gather ‘round her what had been happening to make Clarke declare so many of them KIA. "I was expecting to see some real initiative here, but you instead stuck to the framework of the rules. Only out there in the field, there won't be any controlled parameters.” She was preaching to the choir, but sometimes, even the best needed a reminder of the basics. Surviving too long on the battlefield could make operators start to believe that they were invincible, and that kind of thinking would get them, and quite possibly their comrades, killed. “I do apologize for sending invisible enemies at you, but trust me: there are snipers out there that you really will not see until you’ve already shot them.” The Director stated 

"Sorry it took so long, I'm a little rusty." Jasper Jordan, another sniper and second-in-command to Collins, apologized for how long it took to clear and secure the arms cache, even though it still happened in good time.

"You're Swiss potato pancakes? You're a little Rösti." Clarke replied, patting her knees in laughing at her own joke. "I'm sorry, that was atrocious."

“I guess I’m still getting back into the swing of things.” Jordan said. “Used to be I could do that in half the time.”

"But it's okay, Jas. Don't sweat it. This was your first time back in the shit after a long time recovering from that chest wound." Clarke good-naturedly clapped the Second Lieutenant on his shoulder.

"Do tell, Clarke: did my getting sniped in the chest by an asshole with a Dragunov inspire your little exercise with the invisible sniper here?" Jasper wanted to know.

"Would you hate me if I said yes?" Clarke answered with a question of her own.

"Nah, Princess, we're cool. You pulled me out of there alive, I can let you use me as a teaching moment." Jasper conceded as the UH-60s were starting to arrive. The Balochistan Liberation Army hadn’t been able to put Jasper Jordan in the ground, thanks to Clarke Griffin risking her own life to drag him into cover while under fire and perform life-saving first aid on a sucking chest wound. True loyalty had been earned that day, and he’d sworn he was going to pay it back somehow.

Only a year later, it didn’t matter anymore. All of the people in the platoon Clarke still considered her own owed their lives to each other so many times it was pointless to keep track. The kind of bonds of brotherhood that were forged under fire were beyond anything that arguments, politics, or bloodshed could break. This attitude was going to be needed in the time to come: Clarke would be relying on people like Finn and Jasper to keep America safe if she could not.

Langley, Virginia

June 5, 2021

Upon recovering from her call with Nia, which had involved grinding half a pound’s worth of jelly beans to dust, Clarke booted up her twin-linked computers setup, ordered a Handyman to pick up a hot cocoa she told a KitchenAid to prepare, and started going over some things that the other agencies had been working on that might be adjacent or even directly related to Koroleva’s still disturbingly secretive plans.

Over the past few months, the NSA had been busy tracking a lot of shady financial transfers between Chinese launderers in Seattle (ant not just in the money laundering sense, but actual launderette owners), going through numerous middlemen, and ending up in Los Angeles before going back out to Idaho, and from there on to Virginia. This corresponded with an uptick of gang-related violence in all of their states. Problem was: LA Mayor Victor Dax and General Charles Pike of the 40th Infantry Division were blowing it all off as exaggerated nonsense, acting blasé, almost nonchalant, more concerned with keeping the Feds out of LA business to avoid spooking the tourists and tech investors that kept the Sunshine State’s economy going strong than going on what they believed would be a witch hunt against immigrant communities.

Clarke’s contacts inside the NSA, partly through DNI Reyes, had informed her that there may be a link between the Chinese in Seattle and Koroleva in Moscow, though they didn’t dare speculate on the nature of such an arrangement. Clarke wanted to try to figure this out, but that required gaining access to Director Murphy’s case files in their unredacted form, and the man was always loath to part with this stuff unless directly asked - or threatened - to comply with the Patriot Act.

Picking up her phone again, she dialed the number not for the NSA’s front desk, but an interior desk that normally only serviced calls between internal extensions.

"This call may be recorded for training and evaluation purposes." The switchboard operator, a teenage girl doing her pre-selection internship at Fort Meade, rattled off her rehearsed standard spiel with practiced boredom once the line opened.

"Oh, hi. This call will be recorded for personal security and liability purposes." Clarke answered, oozing sarcasm, but also serious about the content of her words, going by the holotape audio recorder currently spinning next to the receiver.

"Real funny, Miss. You are aware that this is a secure government switchboard?" The teen said back annoyed, cursing the Gods that had decided to make her deal with all the idiot prank callers.

"Yeah, and I'm the Director of the CIA. Put me through to Murphy." The blonde stated evenly.

"Sure, and I'm the King of England." The operator replied, clearly not believing that if this woman was who she said she was, she wouldn’t just dial Murphy’s direct number.

"Backtrace the switches. This isn't a fucking joke." Clarke told the girl, tapping away at her keyboard to allow the NSA temporary access into Langley’s routing systems. She couldn’t call Murphy directly, because in this instance, she wanted to leave an electronic trail behind to be able to prove she wasn’t flying completely solo.

"You wanna turn this into a federal investigation, be my guest. I just hope it was worth bothering... Oh my god." The girl began to chew Clarke out before getting a warning on her screen that indicated she was connected to the direct line of Clarke Abigail Griffin, Central Intelligence Agency Director.

"Get me Murphy, now." Clarke ordered the shaken girl with her last shred of patience.

“Oh, yes, of course, just a second…” She mumbled, fingers flying over her control panel to find the right extension. When she’d connected the call through and could no longer hear what was being said as line security protocols kicked in, she sighed in relief and wondered why her day had turned out so weird.

"Morning, John." Clarke started when she heard the connection being patched through.

“My Lady Griffin. Come to twist my balls again?” John Murphy’s smarmy voice came over the receiver.

"A number came across my desk. A number with a DIA report attached to it." Clarke got right down to business, not satisfying Murphy’s quip with a response. "Only it's fucking useless , because all the details have been blacked out." She said, annoyed at how John always pulled this shit despite knowing perfectly well that all it did was prolong the release of the full versions. The man was just petty like that. "Yeah, I'm gonna want the full version on my desk within the hour. Just fax the damn thing to my direct number, there's no time for a courier service."

"Screw you, Clarke." Murphy snarked, but it wasn’t a no.

"Heh. Don't you wish." The blonde said back with equal snarkiness.

"No, I really don't. Emori never broke my nose." Murphy drawled, getting serious and a little butthurt at the memory.

"That wasn't me either." Clarke pointed out, 

"No, just Bellamy, while you stood there and laughed." Murphy clarified with a sneer: his nose never did grow back completely straight.

"You had it coming, asshole. Anyway, there's no time for this." Clarke got the conversation back on track. "We have a clear and present danger related to an imminent threat to national and global security, and that file is pertinent to my case. I have no time to explain it to you and the whole shitshow is looking leakier than a colander right now, so I'm already taking a big risk even asking you to make this transfer." She laid out the situation.

"And if I refuse?" Murphy asked, basically for no other reason but to assert his independence. John Murphy was Clarke’s peer, not her subordinate, and he hated how Patriot meant he still had to dance to her tune whenever she came ‘a whistling.

"Then you're going to have one very dissatisfied Customer poking around your business, John." She warned.

"Are you seriously threatening me right now, Clarke?" Murphy asked, losing his bravado faster than the IRS would launch an inquest into any $601 or more transaction made by a citizen on the popular P2P commercial website LoadingDock.

"Oh, no, not at all." Clarke distinguished: "A threat may or may not be carried out. I'm simply stating the facts here. This isn't an either/or, this is an If A Then B."

Not wanting to come face to face with the scions of George Johnson, who still cast a pall of dread across the whole Alphabet Soup even decades after his death, Murphy swallowed his pride and faxed the requested files over himself. Clarke unceremoniously hung up once the machine on her end began turning out pages, leaving him to his own thoughts. And not for the first time, John Murphy wondered how his life had gotten so weird.

Chapter Text

Chapter 4: Repercussions

June 13, 2021

George Bush Center for Intelligence, Langley, Virginia

When Clarke booted up her computers that morning, she could sense that something wasn’t quite right.

Someone had been messing with her laptop. Or at least with her profile. Nothing about the computer seemed like somebody else had accessed it, and if they had tried to access sensitive files, said laptop would have exploded. But there was still something that felt wrong, something about her user profile that struck her as just a little bit off . Because Clarke was certain that the ‘last accessed’ timer showed something after the point she knew she’d logged off for the night. CAGRIFFIN was never accessed by another device - only it seemed that it had been. And the reason she could tell is because an unusual access alert had been issued to a hidden nook in her interface shell, because whoever was messing around her files did so using the standard boilerplate CIA mainframe shell instead of her personalized GhostInThe shell. Remote access it was, then - but her laptop would have logged something, anything, during that activity that should help her figure out where it had come from.

Maybe she shouldn’t have called Nia. Maybe that’s what sent an automated Anomalous Activity Report to the NSA and put her profile on their radar. But no, she knew that building a case against someone in her position was the work of months if not years, so whatever was going on, she’d been flagged for far longer than her latest call to Lubyanka… maybe since her first call with Nia. No matter: she couldn’t change the facts, and conjecturing wasn’t gonna help her out.

No, what she needed to do was find the originator, which would at least tell her what sort of a person or organization was on her tail, and she could take it from there. If it was the FSB, it'd probably just be Nia keeping an eye on things, which would be fair enough - not like Clarke wasn’t trying to do the same to Koroleva. The SVR would pose more of a problem: they reported to President Volkov and could turn things into an international incident, which would cost Clarke her job if nothing else. And if it was the NSA, they’d consider her to be the enemy within, which would cost her her life .

Unfortunately, that supposition was more than dramatic exaggeration. Regarding accusations of paranoia, Clarke Griffin was the sort of person who'd spent every day since the moment she turned twelve years old and she'd argued her mom into a corner imbibing some poison or another in little quantities to build up as many immunities as she could tolerate. It wouldn't save her from polonium, but at this point, she was practically impervious to most of the standard fare that was in use as kill agents, paralytics, and sleeping agents, save for the couple of things she sometimes took to actually help her fall asleep.

Her predecessor Leon Panetta would corroborate her suspicions about Nia, knowing how ruthlessly the Russians pursued power. Her direct precursor John Brennan, not so much, albeit not because he didn't think it was logistically impossible, but because he didn't believe the Russians would be callous enough to gamble their newfound wealth and prosperity for an unnecessary war that they would be far from certain to win. But this was the Russians , who simply didn’t operate on the same sort of logic that Westerners, who generally still perceived humans as their own end rather than in the cold calculus of use value, so if some Moscow oligarch thought they’d win more than they’d lose by starting a war with the United States, then that was precisely what they would seek to achieve: and the Russians also didn’t believe in the fallacious nature of the sunk cost fallacy, meaning that once they began something, they’d see it through to the end no matter how much they’d have to sacrifice, because at this point, calculus gave way to insurmountable Russian pride.

Right, back to the here and now: Clarke’s user profile had been accessed by an external source. She had to figure out what they’d been looking at, if they’d downloaded or copied anything, and who the recipients were.

Knowing and comprehending were two different things, and Clarke was not a computer expert by any means. Her eidetic memory meant she could recall what to do and how to do it, but it was gonna take constantly paying active attention to get things right, meaning she was in for an uphill slog. But she couldn't call in an expert for this one without having to explain what she was looking for. She wished she could get Lexa’s IT guy Monty Green here: that man was a computer genius, who could look at a raw data feed on ones and zeroes, picture in his mind precisely what they represented in GUI output, and then reconstruct it exactly on his own Frankenstein’s Monster of interlinked devices. He’d be able to do it in an hour or two: Clarke was looking at at least a whole day’s work. So she’d cleared her schedule, delegated everything in Operations to Luna and Tim, told her PA to reschedule all of today’s meetings and briefings, and ensconced herself in her office, queueing up a train of Handymen that would bring a new coffee every half an hour until told to stop, cracked her knuckles, and got down to business. She was going to show that spying on the head of all spies wasn’t the world’s easiest task.

Getting into the CIA mainframe as root admin on a separate, parallel kernel to her GhostInThe Director’s user profile, she capped a mirror of everything that her CIA account had done in the past 72 hours and transferred the image to another laptop, a clean one that had never been used before, spoofing her own device so that her search would look legitimate and should anything go wrong, it was a random device that got bricked instead of her actual work laptop with a lethal flashbang embedded inside its hard drive. She didn’t relish the thought of her own defense system being turned against her and eating a lethal nine-banger to the face, and she couldn’t risk any dormant malware infecting her actual work systems. There was a chance that something would wake up once it realized things were being tampered with and try to embed tracking software, or try to corrupt her profile, and then she’d be even further from home.

It was proving handy indeed that Clarke’s mind worked so fast. She only had to skim each line of machine code once to get the same understanding from it as another would from five repetitions of comprehensive deep reading, and her eyes flitted back and forth across the screen at lightning pace. The source code in COBOL all checked out cleanly: not a single command issued or instruction acknowledged tracked as out of the ordinary. Lower-level assembly language logs yielded no results either: not a single instruction had been issued to the computer or her account that she couldn't ascertain had been issued by one of her own commands during one of her own sessions. Whoever had infected her system had covered their tracks well, so well that it stood to reason that their access to the mainframe server had been outright approved by said server, which further deepened her suspicions that the source of this breach of privacy originated within the US Government.

Eventually, after finding absolutely nothing at the high-, mid-, and even low-level code, she'd resorted to dumping the base level machine code into a monstrous isolated file, and spent too many hours poring over the strings of ones and zeroes that represented the computer's binary inner thoughts. Hour after hour flew by, the sun rising to reach its zenith before lowering towards the horizon again, Clarke hardly noticing the passing of time as she was so in the zone, pausing only to eat, drink, and keep her hands from developing RSI before doggedly returning to perusal of the waterfalls of ones and zeroes scrolling by like sonar contacts on a submarine’s passive search display.

Everything seemed to be in order, Clarke almost believing that she had indeed just been paranoid, until it wasn’t. Because just like that, it appeared. She scrolled by it, thinking it a piece of junk code, before something in the deep recesses of her mind told her to go back up and take another look at it.

A single byte. Eight bits, just over a handful of ones and zeroes that shouldn't be there. That was all that remained of a self-assembling program that hadn't managed to cover its tracks 100%, its self-deletion leaving a ghost behind that she could use to reconstitute its most recent activities. This was top-of-the-line stuff, extremely potent, hyper-advanced auto-adaptive software that only a handful of organizations in a handful of countries across the entire world had the budgets, sophisticated hardware, and knowledgeable personnel to employ. Monty Green at the Defense Intelligence Agency was one of those people: hell, there was a good chance that whatever this code was, the man had written half of its base. She silently thanked the young Korean man for teaching her how to understand what her own computer was doing behind the GUI when she used it, and went about reactivating the program, fooling it into thinking it hadn’t done anything and still had to carry out its original mission - that was relatively easy, since the program didn’t seem to have a memory of its own - and then traced its activities as it went about the spoofed mirror-cap of her user profile.

There it was: the somebody who’d used this sneaky little backdoor hadn’t even bothered to open and close a bunch of stuff to leave behind a confusing set of footprints, but had gone straight to the source: they’d accessed only one single file, a certain old internal memo, copied it, and sent it on a merry switching path that circumnavigated every corner of the globe, including three addresses in Moscow that appeared to be the Kremlin, SVR HQ, and FSB HQ, before finally terminating right back in DC at the Department of Justice.

The source appeared to be legitimate. Despite its less than aboveboard routing path, the originator seemed to have gotten into her user profile via a government-sanctioned method. The DoJ had received something exceptionally inflammatory, and it appeared that the source - who had used a burner computer that couldn’t be traced to any particular person - had accessed the CIA mainframe via the DNI’s network through…

Not through the NSA, but the Attorney General’s office. Russell Lightbourne had given the order. And Raven Reyes had approved it. Meaning that she’d been under investigation for a pretty long time indeed. And only now, after the Baikonur debacle and Jaha’s threat in the SSCI, did they invade her system to fetch one little text file, one that they’d known exactly how to find, probably because Raven told them how, because this would constitute actionable intelligence. Getting a hold of the file in this manner wasn’t a preliminary action, it would be the capstone on something that’d been going on for long enough to get all sorts of rare, complicated search warrants in order, and she had no doubt that there’d also be a capture/kill order prewritten that only needed to be signed to become usable.

Long story short: Clarke was fucked.

They wouldn't attach a bomb to her car's ignition, or anything like that - nobody trying to move against her would resort to something so crude. You could argue that it was so simplistic and old-school that nobody would think about it anymore because it was so predictable, which made it useful again, but Clarke would be able to tell by a mixture of training and instinct: if her car was strangely balanced even a tenth-inch off center, if there was half an ounce of added weight, she'd know. It was an unpleasant way to live, but it had kept her alive.

She'd have to cancel the promise she made to the Jordans to attend the grand opening of Maya's new art exhibition center in Bethesda. That was a real shame: Clarke could appreciate a good painting, given that she had an artistic inclination of her own and could have made her living with her drawings if she hadn’t chosen a life of public service.

Jasper's wife Maya, the painter daughter of popular thriller novelist Vincent Vie (who was much more than he seemed to be on the surface beyond that public persona), was a sweetheart: a pale-skinned brunette with a lot of brains between her ears and a heart the size of an elephant’s beating n her chest. She was a philanthropist, renowned human rights defender, prolific painter of thought-evoking emotional pieces that portrayed the duality of good and evil in everyday acts of mankind that would certainly go down in history among the famous likes of the Mona Lisa, and just all-around an amazing person.

She wasn't directly involved in the intelligence world nor a member of the armed forces, being an artist, but with her father Vincent being a DIA systems engineer and her mother an NSA medical specialist, her path had eventually crossed with Jasper the CIA SOG operator one day after he'd been shot in the chest on a mission and was up for medical evaluation that went through NSA instead of the CIA because the powers that be wanted such evals to be done outside the parent agency to prevent bias. Although second-in-command of an elite SAD SOG platoon and extraordinarily deadly sniper, he was also Jasper the goofball, Jasper the art lover, Jasper the sensitive soul who had so much affection to give. She was happy for the couple: they’d only needed a few days to realize that they’d found their soulmates, and even though they’d married very young, they were each other’s freedom.

After carrying out this regrettable task, apologizing about a hundred times to a way too kind Maya, she pulled up the file in question on her main screen via the Director’s kernel, closing the Root Admin kernel and in a fit of cold sweat throwing the burner laptop out of the window. That was a bad move: it would be seen as an admission of guilt, even though Clarke knew that they knew that she wouldn’t be so hopelessly amateurish about actually trying to erase evidence. It wouldn’t matter in any case: they already had their hands on the one note that had started it all.

Jul 14 2019

Worst case scenario?

If a terrorist organization managed to pull off the impossible and completely wipe out the Senate and House, President and VP, the whole Cabinet including the designated survivor, the Supreme Court, and all the Joint Chiefs of Staff - who would take over? All three branches of government and the armed forces would suddenly be leaderless and likely default to regional commands, so which of these would hold overarching authority over all the others? Or would there be some kind of shared command structure where all the State Governors act as a kind of council?

Note that this scenario is virtually impossible. It would require manpower equivalent to at least a full division to pull off: that sort of organization and the scope of such a strike would make it all but certain to be uncovered before the pieces are in place. That many people simply cannot keep a secret this big. Not unless their entire operation was self-contained and had help from the inside at the top level, which seems unrealistic. |

That ‘note to self’. That incendiary message. That little piece of writing that was only a fleeting 3AM thought exercise could very well be what kills her.

Clarke deliberated whether or not she should try to erase this note. Success might mean something. But if there was the least chance of it being recovered, then the fact that she tried to hide it would only appear to highlight her guilt even more strongly. Especially since this worst-case scenario indeed seemed to be unfolding right beneath everyone’s noses. It was Bojinka times a thousand, and nobody seemed to care, or even notice. The President himself kept brushing off her attempts to raise the matter as her being paranoid. It had been nothing short of incredible coincidence that, during her developing this thought exercise to use as an actual war game scenario, she’d run into a scrap of intel, just a tiny smidge of information, that had nearly stopped her heart when she’d realized that hey, this though experiment you’re working on? That’s exactly what’s happening, and it’s taking place right now .

Nia Koroleva’s mind had worked to realize what Clarke’s mind had cooked up as the worst possible scenario. The Russian had managed to pull together an international terror organization that acted fully self-contained and managed to build up enough intel to be able to launch thousands of attacks all at once in a coordinated strike to decapitate the United States. The White House. The US Capitol. The Supreme Court. The Pentagon and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Cheyenne Mountain and NORAD HQ at Peterson, the bases at Colorado Springs.... They even knew where the Designated Survivor was going to be, so if they succeeded, there wouldn’t be a US Government left.

The downtown areas of Washington DC, Los Angeles, New York City, Denver, Portland, Oregon, Seattle, Tacoma, and every State Capitol and circuit court in the country had been designated for nuclear attacks followed up by conventional combat operations to kill surviving high-ranking personnel. A time-on-target attack, hitting everywhere all at once. Nuclear terrorism using a hundred strategic-yield ICBMs as cover for surgical decapitation strikes. The biggest conspiracy in history. And America’s intelligence community was collectively sticking its head in the sand, pretending like nothing would come of it as long as they didn’t acknowledge reality. All 17 agencies in the alphabet soup were dropping the ball hard, just because the truth was uncomfortable. And with the massive blunder in Kazakhstan, the one chance Clarke’d had to nip it all in the bud had evaporated. The mission was unsanctioned, half its players operating off the books, and had she recovered what she needed to to lend credence to her claims - hard evidence that now most likely had been relocated if not destroyed -then it wouldn’t have mattered. The powers that be would have overlooked her indiscretion, her disregard of rules and procedures, because the results would have been worth it. But now, all that her illegal assault had done was put 18 Navy SEALs in caskets, blow the cover of half a dozen carefully curated covert ops in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Astana that had taken years to set up, and by all appearances portray her as a conspiratorial traitor to the nation.

It was all a fluke, really. Just a thought experiment. Until its premise turned out to be real. And now, her little note on the matter could be dated as the oldest existing piece of evidence. They would think her its mastermind, its creator. They would never believe that she was the only one trying to stop it. That sort of thing only happened in movies, in sensationalized fiction that portrayed the life of a spook as far more exciting and dangerous than it actually was. This sort of high-level direct action hadn’t occurred since World War Two, since before the CIA had even existed, and her agency was still stuck in the Cold War mindset of cloak and dagger assassinations and low-level grunts spying on each other when in reality, nuclear terrorism was the new name of the game, not the new irrational mania of the Red Scare it was being portrayed as.

"You know what the Russians are saying about all of this prying, Rae?" Clarke had asked the Director of National Intelligence a few months before the Baikonur mission, not long after the first rumors about the Russkies having ‘misplaced’ a chunk of their nuclear arsenal had begun floating around Langley. "Nothing. They're certainly not gonna confirm it, but they're neither denying it nor making absurd excuses either." She’d pointed out: if Moscow made excuses, it was worse than they were saying, if they denied it, the truth was exactly what they were denying, but if they said nothing, that was when you knew something had really gone off the rails. "It's just stone-cold silence. If you knew Ivan's mind like I do, you'd be really fucking concerned too. If Moscow is saying nothing at all, it means they're playing it real close to the chest. Probably because they're planning something big enough that they don't wanna risk as much as speculation about what it could be. Are you tracking?" Clarke laid it out: Raven was every bit the genius that the blonde was, so she could put two and two  together without having every detail spelled out for her. The Latina was having none of it, though. Raven still tended to believe that most people were inherently good, and also couldn't see how Nia was still in charge of the FSB if she was at odds with President Volkov, who wasn’t the kind of man to bow to pressure but would see to it that blackmailers suffered tragic accidents by tripping and falling off the roof of a hundred-story skyscraper.

“Clarke, you’re my friend. I like you, and you know I trust you.” Raven said honey-brown eyes desperately trying to convey the impossible split Clarke was shoving her down into. “But you have to realize how insanely difficult it is for me to take you seriously when you claim to have all this proof, but won’t tell me where you got it or even show me more than alternative interpretations of documents that my own analysis have already gone over twenty times and didn’t see a trace of what you say they actually mean.” She tried to explain, holding up her hand to cut off Clarke who was about to interject: “And don’t give me the ‘the enemy is watching’ story, because that’s always true, just like we’re watching them. My sources say Koroleva’s fridge is with Moscow, not DC. The person that’s Woods’ biggest critic, as it happens, is you . ”

“It’s not like I’m trying to be obstructive here!” Clarke defended herself. “I just want you and Gustus to forget about the book and be pragmatic for just long enough to understand that we face an enemy that doesn’t play by the same rules as we do.” She all but pleaded now, hoping against hope that the DNI would be willing to exceed her own rulebook.

"You've gone on record questioning the President's strength. You've even challenged his motives, for Christ's sake!" The Latina answered, finding that Clarke was absolutely obstructive, even though she meant well by it.

“I don’t disagree with his motives, just the duration of his timeline.” The blonde told her direct boss. “Come on, Rae, I know it sounds like I’m describing the plot of a McCarthy-funded B-movie, and how I wish I was, but I can’t let go of this, not knowing what I know. I’ll take unilateral action if that’s what it takes; but it’ll all be much less difficult if I can count on your support.” She spoke, knowing that Rae knew she couldn’t stop her and trying to entice her to throw in her aid even if just so she could do damage control.

"Clarkey, Clarkey, Clarkey, I need you to do something for me." The Latina said, shaking her head at the sight of her friend becoming so consumed by her imaginary war. "Go home. Chill out that fevered brain of yours. Relax, reorient, refocus."

"Cómete mis pantalones cortos, Reyes." (Eat my shorts, Reyes.) Clarke sniped, starting to get fed up with the recalcitrance she was met by around every turn.

"I don't have the power to put you on medical suspension, but I can certainly recommend it. Your mental health is starting to crack, chica." Raven threatened, also meaning well.

“Not as cracked as the San Andreas Fault will be when a hundred nukes go off all around it!” Clarke drew an analogy that she feared would be literal if nobody intervened in time to stop it.

“Go get fucked, Griffin.” Raven told her.

“Gee, thanks a lot, Reyes.” She drawled back, misinterpreting it as an insult.

“No, I mean it. You need to get laid, take your mind off this tinfoil bullshit.” Rae, whose mind was at least 20% devoted to sexy times at all times, clarified.

“You mean the same ‘tinfoil bullshit’ that they fed the people back in ‘48, when it turned out to really be-” Clarke started to argue, only for Rae to cut it: “Yeah, nobody needs to know about that , thanks very much. I like my microwave, and for my crystal collection to not transmute me into crystal on contact.”

“Exactly.” Clarke stated. “They’ll call anyone a tinfoil hatter if they told the truth about it, but you and I know better. So why’d you call me a crazy conspiracy theorist when we both know it’s entirely plausible that I’m telling the truth? If we want America and the world to live, Nia has to die. Don’t tell me you disagree.”

"You used to be an idealist. You were never the one to resort to violence as a first option. What happened to you?" Raven asked, no longer as the DNI to the CIA Director but as a friend concerned about her longtime buddy.

"Karachi happened to me." Clarke said, eyes glassing over as her brain decided now would be the perfect time to make her relive her brief but painful capture by Al-Qaeda. "I was confronted first-hand with the dark side of humanity, and came to understand that day what needed to be done to protect most of the rest of us from it." She laid out her motivations, nothing Raven hadn’t heard before, but sometimes you just needed to hammer things home to really be heard.

"I know you know precisely how to mask the noticeable symptoms of CPTSD so you won't be diagnosed." Raven said, not dignifying Clarke’s dark statement with an answer but cutting to the core behind its generation.

"Are you telling me I need help, or that you wish me kicked out of my job, you know, the job that I live for, trained and prepared my whole life for, the job that is so crystalized in my brain that it's literally the only kind of work that I'll ever be capable of doing, the kind of job that they don't allow anyone with PTSD, let alone the Complex type, to perform?" Clarke, now upset for another reason and taking it personally, began to get antsy. "I want you to choose how you phrase your answer with exceptional care." The blonde said, feeling her whole life slipping away because of a stupid medical issue.

“I look at you, Princess, and I see an overworked, overtaxed, underappreciated leader who needs to learn that it’s okay to delegate sometimes so she doesn’t crash over the cliff into the burnout I see right in front of you.” Rae tried to reason.

" They look at me, they don't see a battle strategist, they don't see a field tactician, they don't see a commander, they see a pretty blonde girl. They see big blue eyes, pale porcelain skin, and big boobs on a slender body, and they always underestimate me, even the ones that should know better. I know how to use beauty, brains, and strength in conjugation. How many of your operatives, let alone operators, can say the same?" Clarke countered: she knew her worth, and her limits, and knew that this was something she needed to see through because so many others than just her would suffer if she failed. "I didn't become the youngest Agency Director ever at just 22 because I'm riding the coattails of my famous parents and their friend the President, but because I'm the best at what I do. And the only way anyone will be stopping me from doing whatever it takes to protect my people is if they're carrying me out of that office feet first."

Raven had said nothing, just looked at Clarke in understanding. The only way Raven was leaving her own position, too, would be if she got too old and feeble to carry out her function or she’d end up being promoted somehow, which was unlikely, given that the only position that would be more senior would be that of the President. And Raven Reyes was no politician, she was an Intelligence operative, and would be just that for as long as she lived.

George Bush Center for Intelligence

Later that night

As evening fell and office hours ended, Bellamy called her cell phone when she still hadn’t come back for dinner.

“Yeah, babe, it’s gonna be a really long night, but I’ll be back before you know it.” She lied through her teeth, giving a watery little laugh when Bell was his usual self and just said he wished she’d have told him sooner, but that he understood how things could just come up unexpectedly.

“Hey, there’s some stuff I wanna ask you to jot down just in case we need a lot of money quickly.” She rattled off a few sequences of letters and numbers, routing, account, and access information to a nameless bank account in Bermuda that contained $5,- million in totally untraceable funds. An account like this could be accessed by anyone that had the right credentials, no ID required, as long as you could name drop the original holder. It wasn’t much, but it would be enough to ensure that Bell would never have to worry about paying the bills when his much wealthier wife got cut out of the picture. Bell was understandably concerned, so she had to lie to him again, concocting a story on how these details were for one of Costia’s secret accounts that she’d bequeathed to her sister in a will. That account did exist, it was just another one, one that contained about three and a half million, which she’d willed to go to Lexa instead. But Cos had always been forthcoming with the fact that she had a shit-ton of money stashed away and would divide it between all of her friends and loved ones  should the worst happen, so it wasn’t a difficult lie to believe.

“Yeah, I’ll see you as soon as I can. I love you.” Clarke finished the call, her phone slipping through her fingers and landing across her desk with a little thud that resounded with finality like the closing of a coffin lid.

Today would be the day of reckoning. She’d found out about her security breach and uncovered what they’d been after, and knew that whoever was coming for her knew that she knew. They’d be making their move immediately, perhaps this very night, and if they were going to come for her, the last thing she wanted was for them to go to her house and get her husband caught in the crossfire, one that was far from certain to be proverbial.

She'd mobilized the entire Agency just in case the FSB would come knocking impersonating the FBI, telling everyone on the late shift and all those that stayed in past hours to be prepared for an abrupt firefight and kit themselves out accordingly. If Nia sent some people to take her out, Langley would kill them. But she'd also told Glass that if their expected visitors checked out as US loyalists, they shouldn't be impeded as long as they left everybody else alone. She wasn’t dead yet and wouldn’t go down without a fight. Even if the USA now thought her the enemy, she still had some resources available that might allow her to bring down Nia’s conspiracy. Nothing was over until it’s over.

Her desk and the walls of her office were covered in mementos: her college degrees, pictures of her old SOG platoon back in her wetworking days, pictures of Clarke with her friends and family… These framed photographs now felt like mockery.

One picture of her with her arms slung around Bellamy's shoulders, craning up to kiss the smiling man on the cheek. A candid shot of her and Lexa somewhere in the woods of Virginia sharing a laugh about just how awful Clarke proved to be with the throwing knives Lex epically failed to get her on point with that day. A professional photoshoot of her and Costia, looking almost identical but for Cos being a few years older and keeping a shorter hairstyle, both of them decked out in full combat gear as part of a series of articles on female combatants that had made a real difference.

Most photos were just of her and Bell, though. Come to think of it: in all the pictures she had of the two of them, there was only one that didn't have them somehow touching each other, and that one was taken very early on in their relationship. After that, Clarke and Bell had always been sickeningly touchy-feely with each other. Just this morning, they’d made love twice and she’d barely been able to will herself into extricating her body from his embrace, back when it still seemed like it was going to be a normal day, as normal as could be without Cos, but otherwise routine. It was ironic, that you’d never know when would be the last time until after it’d already passed.

Her mind searched for ways to escape what was coming, and came up empty. She’d waited too long. She could probably go underground, but that would leave her adrift, alone, and toothless, forcing her to helplessly watch the world get blasted to hell in a handbasket, and she just wasn’t that person who could put herself over everybody else.

Her fancy black US passport, different from the regular blue to indicate a diplomatic immunity status holder, would have likely been already revoked by this point in time. She did have numerous foreign passports she could use, not all of them Company-issued, so some could still be usable. She'd stashed several million dollars' worth of twice-laundered cash bills in several caches across the United States, and millions more in Euros locked away in untouchable offshore accounts in Switzerland, the Cayman Islands, and Bermuda that she would still be able to access even as Clarke Griffin the Enemy of the State due to these banks’ 100% discretion policies. Regular rich people would use a place like Grand Cayman Bank, which also had a full security and anonymity package, but that was a bank on the government's shortlist for keeping as close an eye on as was logistically possible. So no, Clarke wouldn't place her own rainy day money in such a scrutinized place - not when she knew of others that were absolutely reliable while also being entirely above-board in the legal sense.

If she were willing to never set foot on her home soil again, abandon her parents and friends forever, and spend the rest of her life living in paranoia looking over her shoulder at every turn, she had plenty of exit clauses available. She had long been prepared for a hasty checkout of the sort that didn’t involve a bullet to the skull. She had an escape ticket. But to use it was a completely different beast. She would be exposed, on the run, cut off from all ears that might yet be willing to listen and trying to fight a covert war against a foreign State actor while having to dodge the bloodhounds of the agency that she herself had helped train -  that proposition was as close to the textbook definition of ‘futility’ as you could get. So all she could do was sit here, wait for whatever happened next, and hope she could find any kind of opening to work with.

At least she'd made sure that if she was taken down, a whole lot of actually rotten apples were going to be caught along with her and dealt with. Every bit of compromising material she had on the entire alphabet soup would be released to every major press outlet in the country so that all of the bad faith actors would have to be prosecuted lest the public lose faith in the government. It would deal a blow to the Agency but nothing it couldn't recover from under Luna's leadership. The CIA, NSA, DIA, ONI, FBI, DHS, and all of the others would be purged of infiltrators, bought agents, and corrupt members making deals that harmed the people towards garnering more power or money for themselves. At least that way, it would still matter. She would take the dam holding back all of the accumulated filth and blow a hole in it so big it would be impossible to sweep it under the rug. They'd come out of the woodworks to try and defend themselves and find that they only had just enough rope to hang themselves with. Perhaps that would give her some credit for patriotism, maybe. Every double agent, every double-crossing, double-dealing slimeball, and everyone who acted off the books in bad faith was going to take a fall, and that would be part of her legacy that could never be tarnished: she'd leave a purged CIA behind.

Clarke was still deliberating, just staring at her cursor at the end of the last sentence blinking in and out of existence, when her office door exploded. Huh. Glass could’ve at least sent her a heads-up? She supposed the older blonde was shielding herself from consequences by not making herself an accessory. She could respect that.

“I’m not even gonna bother yelling at you. We both know how this works.” An all too familiar voice spoke up as she could feel a dozen and a half armored bodies crowding into her personal sanctum.

“I was hoping they’d send anyone but you.” Clarke, slowly placing her empty hands out on her desk and still staring at her monitors, said dejectedly, stabbed in the gut by the fact that they’d sent her best friend to come take her to face her fate.

“Still changing the subject as always. Turn around and look me in the fuckin’ eye, Griffin.” Lexa demanded, her tone filled with ice-cold fury that burned worse than any fire and brimstone hatred. Lexa was here, Anya was too, and although she didn’t recognize any of the other 16, none of them looked like they had a shred of patience to spare.

“Doesn’t this count as a conflict of interest?” Clarke asked, swiveling in her chair, bearing a desperate smile at seeing the brunette here instead of someone that would shoot first and ask questions never that Lexa mistook for a self-satisfied grin.

“Shut up.” Commander Woods curtly snapped at her, every bit the operator right now and definitely not her friend.

“Look, I know I’m a dead woman walking. Just answer me this, consider it a last request.” Clarke inquired, knowing it was pointless to try to argue with Lexa when she was in this kind of a foul mood, yet genuinely curious: why Lexa ?

Lexa gnashed her teeth, audibly growling, but in the end, decided that she had to say something and not keep it all in, so she barked out that “They sent me specifically because I know you better than anyone else. Because Costia was the thing that tied us both together. It’s because of that that they entrusted me with the task of bringing you down.”

“Well, what are you waiting for? Let’s get this over with. Pull the damn trigger already.” Clarke said, daring Lexa to put her money where her mouth was and using a bit of reverse psychology to not get shot.

“Not so fast.” Lexa, in her blind anger, fell for it. “Will you come quietly?” She almost whispered, her trigger finger itching, just waiting for the blonde to give her an excuse.

“If it’s either that or get tased, sure, I’ll come.” Clarke agreed, knowing that the jig was up, raising her hands to the level of her eyes to show she wasn’t about to draw a hidden handgun or something.

“Good. Now stop talking.” Lexa ordered.

“Lexa, I can expl-” Clarke began, hoping against hope to just be given two minutes, to be brutally stopped by way of an HK416’s heavy-duty polymer stock being applied to the stomach with considerable kinetic force behind it.

“I said! Shut… Up.” The brunette snarled, eyes spitting fire for a second or two before she pulled herself back together into the picture-perfect stoic assault leader.

"Will these be necessary?" Lexa asked, a pair of heavy-duty handcuffs dangling from her fingers as her eyes showed an impossible to interpret twinkle that Clarke could only describe as an even mixture of rage, disbelief, and… was that guilt?

"No, Commander."

Two days earlier: June 11, 2021

Alexandria, Virginia

Lexa still hadn’t gotten used to living alone, but she was making a valiant effort. She still tended to make way too much food in the morning, stubbornly refusing to just leave the job to her domestic robots, 

Her spacious Alexandria townhouse was meant for two, had been home to two for years and years. It felt so different now, so empty. After weeks of doubting and dragging her feet, she’d finally bitten the bullet and seen about collecting Costia’s things. All of the physical things that pointed towards the fact that his house had been home to a couple were gone now: the toothbrush that had sat next to Lexa’s own, the half-empty wardrobe in what had been their bedroom, all of the photographs showing two people of whom only one still lived that were so heartrending to look at she’d put them all into a crate and hidden it in the attic, unable to throw them away but equally incapable of looking at them strewn about the house.

And still, the place was full of memories. She still anticipated seeing Cos around every corner, still caught herself setting the table for two more often than not, could swear she heard her lover’s laughter downstairs before she headed down to find an empty room. So many memories, so many ghosts. So much that she never wanted to forget, no matter how hard it would be to live with. She knew she couldn’t stay stuck in the past forever, but it still felt like just yesterday that she could still count on waking up next to the warm, smiling form of the girl she’d already thought of as her wife. She’d stacked the place up with candles, keeping them lit in every nook and cranny whenever she was home, their light and warmth a poor substitute but somewhat managing to keep the darkness in her mind at bay. If a fire safety inspector were to come by, the poor bastard would probably have a stroke on the spot, there were so many of them. But Lexa had been obsessed with the things her whole life so she knew what she was doing. She even made some of them herself when she found the mental bandwidth to do some chandling, another thing that Cos had always liked to tease her about.

This house just didn’t feel much like home anymore. It was a place where she slept, ate, and a few other things in between, but also one that she’d been avoiding as much as possible. She wasn’t even sure whether she shouldn’t try to sell the place and try to get away from it all, or keep it and try to build a new life in the house that she’d still been so proud of having been able to land at such a young age. She couldn’t run away from her past, and selling her house just because that’s where she’d lived with Costia wasn’t a solution: it was a childish delusion that would make nothing better. So she supposed she was just gonna have to tough it out until the memories faded with time and she could look back at all the things she and Cos had done in there with warm fondness instead of the dull, aching pain of absence. Her own father had managed to do it after her mother died when she was only eight years old, somehow. But he hadn’t wanted to uproot his childrens’ lives by moving somewhere else, and Lexa didn’t have kids of her own - but she did have friends, family, a career, a whole history that she’d built while living at her address. And that was worth preserving even if a fundamental part of it was missing for good.

Most of the time, Costia had been a living example of 'crackhead energy', loud, boisterous, obnoxious, and seemingly with infinite stamina and a bottomless well of terrible jokes and pranks at her disposal; but when on mission, it was like a switch got flipped in her head, never ceasing to crack jokes even while under fire, but taking things deathly seriously and handling her people with expert skill. When you were under so much pressure that all you could do was break down and cry, turn stone-cold, or laugh it off, Costia had taken the third road and her sister the second, just like Lexa herself.

In her daily life, though, she'd always been the funny one. Cos had been the perfect counterweight to Lexa’s normally dour disposition, her antics as important to Lexa’s day as the sun on her face during the brunette’s morning runs.

Even the very first day that they’d gotten together, Cos had been an absolute goofball. They’d been so much younger then, never relatively carefree like many other teens, but they’d been happy.

"Hey, can you give me a hand?" Lexa had asked, trying to service the M4 her dad had gifted her (registered in his name, of course, because she’d been too young to own one herself at the time - a thing that Gustus had vowed to change when he’d first become President) in a way that required three hands.

"Sure, here you go!" Cos’ answer had been, right before the gruesome sight of a severed hand landed across her lap.

"Whoa! Whose was this?" Lexa scrambled away, holding up the offending item as if it had been taken out of cold storage from the morgue below Walter Reed, snuck out beneath Abby’s nose, which wasn’t 100% implausible.

"It belonged to a Mr. Doll. Yeah, Rubber Doll." Costia chuckled, like this was the funniest thing in the world. "It's a Halloween decoration! Did you see the look on your face? Did you see...?"

“Why are you like this; don’t you want my heart to keep beating? For you?”

"Inside of me are two wolves. One is always hungry, horny, easily bored, and curious, and the other is a figment of its own imagination that only exists because it hallucinates its own Dasein."

“Cos, sometimes I have to wonder if you’re not completely insane.”

"I'd rather be your lover than a fighter, Smaller Woodsey."

"I think you misquoted that line." Lexa pointed out, ever so serious.

"I know what I said, and I made no mistake." Costia said, licking her lips like a predator eyeing up its next meal.

And wow, Costia had been hungry that night. Until there’d been a sudden interruption as one of their mutual friends had decided to simply barge into Costia’s bedroom like he owned the place.

"Not now, I'm busy!" Costia answered Monty’s call.

"What could you possibly be doing, this time of night?" The Asian boy had asked dumbfounded.

"My new girlfriend." The blonde’s answer had been, sounding equally proud and irritated.

"Oh! It can wait." Monty said, scrambling out the door.

" Thank you, Monty." Costia called after him, before turning to face Lexa with her porcelain skin now more resembling a beet, or maybe a tomato: "...Why the hell did I leave the door unlocked? It totally slipped my mind, sorry about that!"

Back in the present, Lexa let out a little chuckle of her own as she recalled the memory. Monty walking in on them doing the deed had been so awkward back then, but later, it’d become a funny anecdote. And a mistake they’d never repeated.

She’d been just about ready to head out the door and jump in her Ford Shelby when her smartphone rang. Caller ID: Private. Huh, that was strange - Lexa’s work phone number was only known to people whose contacts she had, and her personal phone? Almost nobody even knew its number. Yet that was the one being called by a private number right now.

“Commander Woods here.” She stated in clipped words as she answered the mystery call.

“Lexa, hey, it’s Raven. Do you have a minute?” The DNI said. Raven calling her personal phone would explain why the caller ID hadn’t shown up if the woman was using her work phone, its number being classified, but the fact that she was doing it this way at all sent alarm bells ringing in Lexa’s mind: whatever Rae wanted to say would be off the record.

“I’d really rather not today, if it’s all the same to you…” She said, praying that Rae would let it go.

No such luck. When Reyes next spoke, her words sent a shiver down Lexa’s spine. “We know who’s responsible for Costia’s death. I want you taking the lead in a capture mission. I don’t trust anyone else to take care of this, because it hits too close to home and you might be the only one who can do it without a bloodbath.”

“I’m guessing this isn’t something we can discuss over the phone?” Lex surmised.

“Not right now.” Rae confirmed. “It’ll go public soon enough no matter what we try, but it’s best to stay on the safe side for this one. Besides, I really think you should hear me say this to your face.”

“Jesus, Rae. When do you need me?”

“Right now. As soon as you can. Monty’s Bloodhound thingy did its job, and it’s got Russell salivating.” Raven explained, an odd thickness lacing her normally cheerful voice. “It’s bad, Lex. It’s really, really bad.”

“I’m on my way. Can you let Indra know I’m gonna be late?”

“Already taken care of. I’ll see you soon, Lex.”

Office of the Director of National Intelligence

McLean, Virginia

June 11th, 2021

When Lexa entered the office that actually played host to what the whole build’s name proclaimed itself to be, the first thing that struck Lexa was that Rae and Ahn seemed to be having an argument, which was par for the course for those two. They were constantly hovering around each other, breaking up twice a month to try to break orbit, but forever incapable of escaping the gravitational pull of the other that always drew them back in towards each other.

"Not everything's about sex, Raven!" Anya said in response to some unheard quip the Latina had doubtlessly made.

"Well, it ought to be!" Raven insisted, pretending to ignore Lexa’s entrance.

"Oh, I agree." Anya said, smirking like the cat that got the canary.

"Anya!" Came Rae with mock shock.

"Wanna find out how much we agree? Unless you're all bark and no bite?" Lexa’s big sis challenged. "You see, I'm a Woods. That means I'm not just awesome, I'm a genius."

"Hey, that's my line!" Raven called out indignantly.

"I know, that's why I used it. I'm hoping you'll take it back from my mouth. With your tongue." Anya said back, about to pounce on the brown-eyed beauty before her when she noticed that her sister was right there listening in, shooting to her feet and pretending like nothing had been going on.

“Oh, Lex, there you are.” Raven spoke, switching to serious mode from one second to the next. For Raven Reyes to start a briefing without cracking a single joke was… it was unprecedented. ‘Really, really bad’ indeed.

Lexa took a seat, sandwiching herself between Raven and Anya so those two wouldn’t focus on each other. Raven placed her hand on Lexa’s thigh in an oddly motherly gesture, further signaling that something was seriously fucked up, since the two were the same age. When Raven next spoke, she ripped the band-aid and got straight to the core of the issue: “The bitch who got your fiancée and my best friend killed is my other so-called best friend.”

“Bullshit.” Lexa was quick to say. “I don’t know what sort of a sick joke it is you’re playing, but Clarke is not-”

“It was a setup, Lex. We had our suspicions, but now we have the evidence.” Rae stated, shutting Lexa up with an icy voice that barely concealed the hurt bubbling beneath the surface. This was not a joke. “Clarke’s been talking to Nia Koroleva. Directly. For more than a year . She’s made some downright nasty comments about your father and talked about how America had grown corrupt, decadent, and weak and needed saving from itself. I can play the audio if you’d like to hear?”

“Is it really like that? I know her, she practically fell apart at Costia’s funeral. God, Rae, she told me she’d rather have switched places and died in Costia’s stead. I know she’s a good liar, but not that good.” Lexa wasn’t prepared to believe this kind of allegation without some really convincing evidence.

“We believe the Baikonur operation was a test of loyalty. That this was Nia seeing just how far Clarke was willing to go to be brought into her camp. Her sister’s death was her entry ticket.” Rae laid out, retrieving a holotape player.

“And this is for certain? You’re not just piecing this together?” Lexa inquired with growing dread.

“No, Lex. This is for real.” The Latina said, in just as much disbelief that Clarke Griffin, of all people, could have been throwing up such hubbub about Nia as a cover to conceal actually working with the bitch. “Here, listen to this.” She switched on the recorder, which played back several conversations between Clarke and Nia where they indeed seemed to talk about how Nia could help Clarke best betray Augustus Woods and realize her own ambitious plans for America and the world. These tapes hadn’t been doctored, raw and uncut, containing straight from the source audio; and with every minute that passed, Lexa’s face fell further. The cold numbness that had been her constant companion for months began being edged out by something else that filled the void: white-hot rage. Anger, disbelief, betrayal: had she ever known Clarke at all? The Chief of Spooks had been her closest friend for literally as long as the blonde had been alive for, and she’d adored her sister just as much as Lex had loved her almost-wife! But then again, all this talk of sacrifice and putting the common good above personal interests… It sketched an all too plausible scenario of Clarke deliberately harming her heart so badly she’d have to shut it down to continue functioning as a way to prove to Nia, whose currency was death, that she was willing to go to any distance to do what she thought was right. And that was the hell of it: Clarke, if she was a traitor, would well and truly believe that she wasn’t actually the enemy, not doing it for selfish reasons but genuinely thinking that she did what was necessary, making a sacrifice that would be worth it in the end, all for the sake of protecting her people. You didn’t gain the nickname ‘Commander of Death’ because you hesitated to take life when it became necessary - and Clarke, as CIA Agency Director, was the person who above any other, even Raven and Gustus himself, decided who had to die in order for as many others as possible to live. So yes, Lexa had to admit to herself: Clarke had the means, the motivation, and the right sort of personality to pull off a horrible stunt like this. The blonde had for years been comparing Andrei Volkov with Gustus Woods in a more favorable light towards the Russian, so as much as Lexa didn’t want to believe it, she could trust her ears. And even though her heart told her that none of this made any sense, her head agreed with Rae: Clarke was the enemy within.

“Sis, I’ll happily hold her down for you to carve out her guts for garters.” Anya told a silently seething Lexa, making it clear that she wasn’t just using a figure of speech. Anya had always known that there was something fundamentally fucked up about Clarke Griffin, something dangerous, and now she had all the confirmation she’d ever require. The blonde bitch had been the one that crushed her sister’s heart, and Anya cared about nobody more than Lexa. Clarke was going to pay for what she’d done to her family, she’d make damn sure of that.

At first glance, Anya and Lexa didn't much look like sisters. Lexa took more after Gustus’ Italian looks, with a brown olive tan, the same green eyes, and his shade of chestnut hair, while Anya inherited more of Becca's Mexican-Latin physique, with a more yellow tan, honey-brown eyes, and wavier hair than Lexa’s long curls. But upon closer inspection, you could start to see the similarities: they both had the same slim, oval face, the same sharp, high cheekbones, narrow button nose, identical slim, slender builds, and shared the same temperament of pretending to be hardasses while hiding a warm heart that only a select few would even get to see. These two would go through Hell for each other.

It took a while for Lexa to find her voice again. When she’d get distraught, she would withdraw into her thoughts. Anya would ramble, thinking out loud, but Lexa would only speak when she’d figured out what to say.

In this instance, though, the first thing that came out of her mouth was: “Forgive me for asking the obvious, but isn’t this Titus’ job?”, inquiring after the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The FBI these days was branching out, intensifying its activities, getting more proactive. Director Titus Templar did honor to his name, being an absolute zealot when it came to running his agency, and he'd even set up a new division owing to his own experiences: one that went outside CPS to track down and apprehend foster parents that mistreated their adoptive children, Titus himself having come up in that system and passed around from one set of negligent foster parents to other sets of more actively abusive ones. And owing to the steady stream of fatalities incurred by soldiers overseas, many more young children were left orphaned than ever before, even WWII notwithstanding because in those days at least their mothers weren't also fighting and dying overseas.

The FBI was busy with that, as well as many other activities, including rolling up human trafficking rings, countering white-collar financial crime in the business world, investigating corrupt politicians, and hunting down foreign spies and their agents, leaving the Bureau permanently overstretched and understaffed. Another FBI task these days was investigating possible shell companies posing as US natives holding US resources for hostile foreign actors. It simply wasn't acceptable for, say, the remnants of the Taliban to own shares in a US defense contractor via a daisy chain of proxy firms, for the Communist Party of China to sell American freshwater from American lakes to American citizens, or Turkish imams setting the agenda for humanities classes at Columbia University. It was fine for Bangladeshi businessmen to invest in US real estate - they came from a closely allied nation, after all - but the same couldn't be said for Algerians that might refuse to sell houses to black people and invent all sorts of excuses to make it appear like they had legally valid reasons to bar such a sale and contribute to the housing market crisis.

Handling domestic terrorism, though? The FBI Counterterrorism Unit was equipped to deal with crazy redneck militia groups and eco-fascists, small religious terror cells, and lone wolves, but not takedowns against system insiders so high up the chain that they'd know the instant somebody at Quantico even began raising suspicions, let alone plan a warrant service. That should have been the point where Homeland Security stepped in, only they didn't do subtle, trained for overt raids, and launching an open assault on Langley would only result in the CIA pulling out all the stops and proverbially nuking itself and all its databases and human assets out of sheer spite, which was a risk America couldn't afford to take. So the only unit capable of handling the mission was the Defense Clandestine Service of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

This logic made sense to Lexa. The odds of FBI SWAT running into Langley and tripping the ambush to end all ambushes was too high to gamble their lives on it, and to send in DHS would involve far more people than should be necessary - most of the CIA’s people would still be innocent, and traumatizing several thousand spooks just to catch one would be certain to get the Agency to declare war on the responsible institution and utterly decimate its ranks in retribution.

That just left one question open: “Why are you asking me to snatch Griffin from Langley when we know where she lives? Wouldn’t it be easier to take her from Arlington?”

“If we’d been talking about anyone else, I’d agree.” Raven said. “But Clarke’s mansion is a fortress. Even if it’s just her, the place is crammed full of so many death traps and sentry guns that you’d need a regiment to get past the perimeter, and that’s just something we can’t afford to do.”

Raven was right, of course. Who was she kidding? Raven was always right.

The Office of the DNI was situated in McLean, a virtual stone’s throw away from Langley. So it wouldn’t take long to travel from Raven’s building to CIA Headquarters. Only Raven stopped Lexa as she headed down to the elevator towards the basement where - much to her displeasure - her DCS team was already assembled and awaiting orders. “You’re not going today, Lex. Two days from now. You need to familiarize your operators with the building’s layout a little more thoroughly than usual. We’re only gonna get one shot at this, so we can’t afford any delays.” This, again, tracked. It was better to go in with fully prepared personnel and wait a little longer, because if Griffin knew what was coming, she’d be uncatchable anyway, and if she didn’t, then two days wouldn’t make a difference.

Arriving at the basement, where a pair of M1126 Stryker ICVs were waiting, Lexa addressed her assembled team: "Clarke Griffin is a dangerous woman. She'll disarm you with her looks and charm, and before you know it, she’ll have disarmed you of your weapon and will use it against you." She cautioned her operators. "This is someone who got fast-tracked into the highest echelons of seniority among the whole intelligence community. A woman who earned her PhD in National Security Studies at age 16, who's been trained in the arts of frontline leadership, armed and unarmed combat, extreme situational awareness, and weaponized psychology since she was two years old, with an IQ of 160-plus to back up all of her acquired skills and known borderline psychopathic tendencies just low enough to be cleared for duty. And her being confirmed as Director at age twenty-two has nothing to do with nepotism.” She wasn’t even laying it on thick, just giving the facts, as incredible as they sounded. Complacency killed, and she wasn’t about to lose any of her people because they’d disregard the physical threat Clarke posed just because she was a diminutive little thing. “Do not give her a chance to speak, because she will find a way to subvert you. That girl has a way with words that’s unparalleled in living memory. Keep your focus on the task at hand, and I’ll carry you through this." She promised her men and women, and Lexa Woods did not make promises she wasn’t capable of upholding. "This is an extreme risk warrant service, but make no mistake: there are high odds of this turning into a combat mission without warning."

Clarke Abigail Griffin was a walking contradiction. She had hair of gold, but her heart was ice-cold.

Under Executive Order 22531(F3), Clarke's personnel file was 99% redacted for even the directors of other intelligence agencies: eight thousand pages long, with maybe two thousand words available to read, not even enough to build a basic profile with. This was a woman who could be considered armed as long as she had a tongue and fingers and extremely dangerous no matter what disadvantage she was perceived to be held at.

Her psych eval was also classified, not just top secret, but codeworded. And there was a good reason for it: between the lines of the clinical summary, one might get a glimpse into a disturbing picture. It said that Clarke was a paranoid person who trusted nobody implicitly and interpreted any acts of kindness and helpfulness as being part of a setup unless decisively proven to be benign. The woman had some sort of cognitive dissonance to her that allowed her to completely detach from the horror show she was inflicting on her enemies and only return to a state of emotionality once the job was done.

Her ingrained combat skills were nothing to scoff at, either. For most people, these were at least partly perishable and needed to be actively upkept, but for the girl with eidetic memory, they were etched into her muscles to the point she could fight like a pro without having to think about it. She could snap from idling to having a good aim in a flash, and wouldn't hesitate to get down and dirty, employing extreme methods that were sometimes considered questionable even within SOG, but there was no denying that she consistently provided highly effective results. When wielding her M14, she worked the trigger with certainty, firing quickly and going for contact kills almost every time, oftentimes emptying a whole magazine, reloading, and emptying it again in the timespan it took a designated marksman to expend half of one magazine.

For someone who was such a powerful authority figure, she also blatantly disregarded the authority of others if she believed they knew less about the subject matter than herself, and often preferred to work alone for feeling that extra hands would only get in the way and slow her down. This sociopathic tendency was tolerated because she was a consummate professional, one who could outside missions be warm and friendly with the men and women under her command, but when switching to Warrior Princess Mode could also wield them like pawns on a chessboard and didn't blanch from making necessary sacrifices, keeping her operators on a short leash when it came to discipline and combat effectiveness. She knew that she could rely on them just as much as they did on her because of it.

Sometimes, it seemed that Clarke Griffin simply chose to not just disregard fear, but not experience it at all. For all that she demanded the best of the best from her people, she kept herself to an even higher standard, often leading from the front, charging into danger without any regard for her own safety. She was always dedicated to the team, dedicated to the mission, 

Clarke also knew how to stuff ammo pouches and magazine holders into the most impossible places, stuffing ammunition anywhere it could fit just to reduce the chances of running out in the middle of a firefight, prepared for any eventuality and mentally calculating the most likely scenarios in advance. She always projected the worst-case scenarios, and then prepared - some would say over-prepared - to face them, hoping for the best but expecting the worst. WIth razor-sharp reflexes and a finely tuned mind honed for awesome situational awareness, she could react to any developing situation at a moment's notice. She firmly believed that the best defense was a good offense, and held that most problems could be solved by the proper application of firepower against the right people at the right time.

She was a natural-born leader and instinctive survivor, capable of adapting to any environment under any circumstances at any time without needing to pause to plan out her next moves, able to plan on the fly, to improvise, adapt, and overcome without prior preparation. Her impressive aptitude for thriving under pressure and remaining calm under fire allowed her to focus on nothing but victory and how to obtain it, whether that be on a battlefield or in a command center seven thousand miles away from the action. Her people always said she was the most dependable commander they'd ever worked under, even though she had her quirks and was utterly unpredictable even to those that had known her for years and years - this being yet another tactical advantage: if even her friends couldn't tell what she was going to do next, then the enemy certainly wouldn't have a clue either. She worked with her own system, operated by her own internal logic and proven effective methodology, but the inner workings of her mind's grinding gears were unknown to all but Clarke herself. Clarke pushed herself and her operators to accomplish their missions without wasting any time, always ensuring that they didn't get ahead of themselves but also not tolerating any moments of hesitation, slacking, letting one's guard down; impermissive of performing at anything below optimal speed.

"Shouldn't this be FBI work?" Anya’s protégé Beatrice Thornton, who’d have a fit if you didn’t call her ‘Tris’ for finding her full name too old and stuffy, asked the same thing that Lexa had asked Raven not an hour ago.

"Normally it would be, but the target is considered too dangerous. They want the professionals on this." Lexa said, eliciting a little round of laughs at the expense of Templar’s organization.

The rest of the day, just like the day following, was spent going over maps, planning routes of ingress and egress, running assault courses in basement levels done up to resemble parts of CIA HQ with dozens of different variables thrown into the mix to make for a different unpredictable experience every time with a bunch of soldiers called in to act as OPFOR using simunitions, and accounting for as many contingencies as could be planned for in just two days. SWAT operations like these usually took several months to plan and prepare - there just wasn’t time for that. And by the time that those two days were up, they kept going anyway. They wouldn’t be so brazen as to launch a daytime raid: far too easy for things to  go belly-up when everyone in a ten-mile radius would be able to see that some shit was going down. So Lexa kept herself occupied, cleaning her HK over and over, soloing the assault course a few more times, pacing herself to not deplete her energy but give herself no time to think and start doubting, before a Raven looking serious as the grave popped up and announced ‘wheels up in twenty’, and it was time to prepare to hit the road. Rae wouldn’t be joining them, her position keeping her chained to her desk, but she’d asked Lexa and Anya to give Clarke her ‘best regards’, which the sisters would be happy to provide.

June 13, 2021

Langley, Virginia

They’d gotten the show on the road, going for the most direct approach and using the paved road to make the best possible time. They’d received confirmation from some unnamed insider that the Director was staying after hours as usual. They also heard that the woman had canceled all of her daily appointments and closed herself in her office, not emerging from it the entire day. So something was definitely wrong: Lexa suspected that Clarke knew they were coming for her. Maybe not them specifically, but that somebody would. She was probably busy covering her tracks in some attempt to make herself look like the victim instead of the mastermind and use her wit and charm to get away with it once again. Yeah, no. Lexa was going to make sure that this time, the blue-eyed snake in the grass would face justice.

There was no resistance at the gates, no resistance at the front door, no resistance in the lobby. The Agency had simply thrown open the doors for the Strykers to get onto the terrain, then opened the front doors to let the DCS team into the front building. Outside, the Strykers were promptly surrounded by SOG operators with Javelin shoulder-launched missile launchers, although the weapons remained slung instead of hefted. ‘Just a precaution’, Lieutenant Collins had told Lexa, explaining that the Director was expecting FSB assassins and that they might take the guise of Americans. Anya had whispered at Lexa to either open fire or GTFO of this obvious setup, but Lexa said back that they came here with a job to do and they’d see it through no matter what, her devotion to duty outweighing the terror she felt at stepping into the maw of the beast that was clearly prepared to swallow her whole if the word was given.

Inside, the spooks just kept doing whatever it was that spooks did, although their hands were hovering dangerously close to their guns in the process. Nobody seemed to be terribly perturbed at this intrusion, many of the CIA personnel making a show of displaying how much they didn’t care. Lexa fought through the sinking feeling of willingly walking into a death trap, mind buzzing with questions as to what the hell was going on in this place that there were now paramilitary operations officers everywhere but they weren’t doing anything, single-mindedly forging onwards towards her objective.

A beautiful, dangerous woman rounded the front desk, stepping right into Lexa’s personal space. "Ah, yes, I assume you're here for the Agency Director? She told us to expect visitors." This was another pale-skinned blue-eyed blonde, one a few years older than Clarke, taller, more petite, and certainly no less lethal. "Director Sorenson, Special Action Division.” The woman introduced herself. “You have no idea what you're doing, but Mrs. Griffin asked me not to kill you, so you're free to go upstairs. Clarke will be in her office. You know the way, Miss Woods." Glass told her with barely contained contempt, making no effort to hide her disdain at what was going down tonight. "If you want to walk out of here alive, I strongly suggest you restrict yourselves to doing what you came to do and absolutely nothing else. Is that understood?" The SAD Director asked, making it perfectly clear that she was the one Lexa really didn’t want to piss off. The brunette gave a nervous nod, unsure of what to say and not trusting her voice anyway, her apprehension growing just as her anger at Clarke was amplified by this insane setup.

Luckily, Anya could always be counted on. Once they’d moved up to the fifth floor where the office was situated, avoiding the elevators for obvious reasons (although Griffin might take one of them down instead, but the Strykers still had their drivers and gunners ready to respond in a pinch), she took a look at all the people they weren’t here to catch milling about and called out: "Alright, people, I need you to clear this hallway."

"Not happening." One woman in a sharp blouse casually replied as she power walked by, ignoring the DIA strike force after that, apparently in too much of a hurry to care. Anya and Lexa shared a look that said 'WTF is going on in here?', feeling increasingly nervous about being in the middle of Langley surrounded by hundreds of people that were all lethal combatants, massively outnumbering her own and making no secret of the fact that her men were being closely observed by spooks with deliberately poorly concealed MP7s that were probably loaded with armor-piercing munitions while donning suits and jackets that puffed out just a little too much, giving away the ballistic vests strapped on underneath. One misstep, and this whole operation would turn into a bloodbath. Which could still happen after they'd tried to apprehend Griffin, but since Glass already knew that they'd be here, the CIA already had its casus belli , so maybe they really did just want to keep doing business as usual and would let Lexa do her job so long as she didn't get in the way of them doing theirs. It seemed that Collins had been truthful when he’d said they’d been expecting FSB assassins and wouldn’t attack those that were genuinely American personnel working for the homeland. Why would Nia want Clarke dead, though? The answer was simple: because the girl had been compromised and would now prove to be a liability instead of an asset. And liabilities, even one as influential as the top chief of the CIA, got burned.

They were everywhere. Standing around every corner, watching from every doorway, speaking hushed words into ear pieces, tapping away at phone screens, men and women in their thirties and forties keeping a moving cordon around them while those in their twenties, fulfilling more basic functions, also came armed and armored; but these seemed to just be analysts and other staffers, not combat personnel, who were brazenly walking right through the DIA formation pretending like they didn't exist, too caught up in their own world to give a shit. An armed DCS strike force in the middle of their agency headquarters was, to be fair, probably one of the less weird things many of them had encountered over the past 24 hours.

"This is creepy.” Anya said what everyone was thinking.

"I know." Lexa replied, more ill at ease with each second that passed.

"I don't like this at all, sis." Anya again vocalized the general consensus.

" I know ." Lex hissed between her teeth. "Just stay frosty. In and out."

"Hey, hey, hey!" One of her operators suddenly shouted, reaching out to grab a spook by the arm who had - be it deliberately or inadvertently - shoulder checked him, only to be met with a handgun pushed into his forehead by said spook and no fewer than three dozen submachine guns drawn all around them. This could go bad really, really fast, Lexa knew, as her DCS people shouldered their HKs and prepared to return fire if attacked, which in itself could be seen as a challenge, enticing the CIA to open fire.

"Stand down, stand down!" Lexa called out, her mind’s eye picturing the bloodbath that was a breath away from unfolding.

“Boss, this guy just tagged me.” Her operator tried to justify himself, but obeyed in lowering his weapon.

The spook wasn’t buying this insult: “I have more important things to do. You stepped into my path, dumbass. I don’t tell you how to walk in your house, do I?”

“You got two working eyes, buddy. Why don’t you use them?” The DCS man replied. Men and their peacock moments, Lexa shook her head. But it was better than speaking with the pulling of triggers, at least.

“Touch me again, I'll break every finger in your hand, buddy ." The offended analyst spoke in a flat monotone, sounding incredibly bored, before turning his back to Lexa's officer with an audible huff and walking off grumbling about outsiders sticking their nose in other people's business.

It was unnerving, how incendiary death glares could be so chilling.

In any case, the team had made it to the corner and the Director’s office in decent time.

"Check the door." Lexa said, one of her men palming the handle and finding no give.

"Door is locked." He reported.

"Prep for det. Get the camera." Lexa ordered next.

"Det, boss? No shotgun?" Tris asked.

"No shotgun." Said Lexa. "No shotgun." Also said a random guy with a clipboard walking by. The signal was clear: We are in control here, and we're letting you do this.', it conveyed. That was easy enough to believe: there were at least a thousand people inside the GBCI, all of them forewarned, and including herself, Lexa had eighteen. An explosion would at least let all of these people, including the Special Operations Group, know that an entry was being made FBI style. A shotgun blast could be interpreted in a lot of other ways, none of them ending well for the DIA team.

"She's alone, boss. Front, long, behind the desk." Her breaching specialist said after peering through the tiny camera on its flexible wire for a few moments.

"Okay, prepare for entry." Lexa said.

"Watch for tripwires, people." Anya added.

When the door blew in, Lexa and her people fluidly streamed in, clearing their quadrants and watching the walls, the ceiling, the floor for any hidden surprises, and finding none. She'd been expecting ambushes. She’s been expecting to encounter the whole damn SOG armed to the teeth and ready to resist their Director being taken away. She’d expected the other eighteen Customers from The Shop present and ready to give their lives in defense of their commander, she’d expected SOG’s top commander Glass Sorenson and The Shop’s Director Luke Sorenson to be there with automatic grenade launchers and a keyed-in ODIN orbital laser satellite pointing at her head. The former was an extreme hothead and the latter would do anything she asked of him, and they happened to be members of Clarke’s inner circle, so their absence was disturbing. Relieving, but frightening for an entirely different reason. Glass had issued what amounted to a thinly veiled death threat, but also not impeded Lexa in the slightest. None of this had been as Lex’d expected.

She hadn't been expecting to find Griffin in her own office, and what she did expect - to find her target decked out in Grade IV full-body biohazard armor with NBC, ballistic, aural, and flash protection and brandishing an M14 EBR - had failed to materialize: she was just in plain clothes, apparently unarmed (although this meant little, since the girl was plenty deadly even without any purpose-made weapons), and hadn't even flinched when they'd blown her door down. She was clearly expecting their arrival, and hadn't done anything to stop it. Lexa knew the blonde: knew that if she'd wanted to, she could have easily skipped the country and disappeared never to be seen again, and yet, here she was. Not resisting arrest. Just making what seemed to be mildly interested casual chit-chat, trying to give some bullshit excuse - an attempt Lexa quickly stomped out of her - and then agreeing to just be taken away without a fight. Clarke really had been expecting to be kidnapped by either the Russians or her own people - were the Americans even still Clarke’s people? - and apparently decided to just roll with it. The ways of Director Griffin were inscrutable, but in any case, Lexa’s mission was halfway accomplished. Clarke was seriously not trying to flee, some of her subordinates filing through the DIA formation to hug her goodbye, which Lexa, still very much aware of the hundreds of weapons ready to be drawn at any second had no choice but to allow; and to her surprise, the blonde was telling them not to retaliate against the DIA but keep in mind all the things she’d been saying about Koroleva, because that would make things make sense later on. There was the possibility that she’d orchestrated this part as well and had already vocalized a different message beforehand, but it seemed unlikely with just how uncharacteristically she’d been behaving on this day. The way Clarke had her head held high and could afford to angrily shake off Anya’s attempt to hold onto her signaled to Lexa that this was one arrest that wasn’t going to end quietly. This, she mused, was how revolutions began. She could only hope that she was playing the part of Washington, not Tarleton.

They marched down from the fifth to the first floor, out through the lobby, and back to the Strykers without any further incident or delays despite being firmly kept inside a cordon that only gave way once they’d walked out the front doors, where Collins and his anti-tank teams were still waiting on the quad, standing at the ready and tensed enough to snap at the slightest provocation.

“So this is it? They’re betraying us, then? Betraying you ?” Finn asked numbly as he saw Clarke surrounded by DIA operators preparing to embark to be taken God only knows where.

“They’re doing what they think is right. That’s all we can ask for.” Clarke replied, defeated. Her best just hadn’t been good enough. She’d gambled and lost, and now, she’d have to see if she couldn’t make the consequences still count for something good. All she had to do was survive - and that was easiest when she wasn’t subject to a manhunt. So she’d come with the DCS team and accept that her fate in the foreseeable future was out of her own hands.

They put her inside the first vehicle, the same one that Lexa climbed into, breathing a sigh of relief when Anya made a beeline for the second one. Lexa was a woman of honor, at least. She didn’t try to cuff Clarke once the hatch was closed and they hit the road. Clarke didn’t try to speak again, not wanting to be gagged and black-bagged by a Lexa who looked to be at war with herself and ready to explode at any moment. And she didn’t fight it even when the brunette took a syringe out of the first aid box on the side wall and injected its contents into Clarke’s upper arm.

At least she hadn’t shot the stuff into her neck, Clarke tried to find a tiny silver lining as the knockout drug took effect.

Chapter Text

Chapter 5: Trial of the Millennium

June 17, 2021

Location unknown

Wherever this place was, it was definitely a black site, and there were fewer than 350 detainees, if the number they stuck her with was serialized. Okay, they hadn’t literally stuck her with a number, like being tattooed with a serialization like in a concentration camp (or even a number on a prison jumpsuit, since she was still in her own clothes!), but they hadn’t called her by anything other than it ever since she’d arrived here, whenever that was. She wasn’t sure how long it’d been: she’d fallen asleep on the Stryker, and when next she woke up, she’d been inside this tiny white room with no windows and no visible doors, still in the same clothing she’d worn before, 

Clarke was struggling to keep herself centered. Knowing that she’d been captured and imprisoned was one thing. Knowing that she might just be about to be subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques - more commonly known as torture - was another. But that, she could deal with. What she couldn’t deal with was the fact that she was now confined to an 8 foot long, 6 foot wide space, while she was extremely claustrophobic. She was literally stuck inside a living nightmare, the only reason this wasn’t her worst fear come true being that there were lights and she probably hadn’t been placed in an airtight room where oxygen was running out with every breath she took. But still, it was literally torture for her to have to confront her claustrophobia in an inescapable manner, so much so that she was seriously considering just bashing her skull into the wall at an angle that her nasal bone would shoot into her brain and she’d just escape this place in a way that not even the most modern medical technology could drag her back from - then choosing not to do it because there was still a job to be done, and she wasn’t going to let her phobia, even her worst one, take over her mind from what she wanted it to be doing.

That aspect of her psyche didn’t even show up on the unredacted version of her psych evaluation, but it wasn’t out of the question that somebody had told her captors about it. Lexa knew about it. Anya knew. Anya had probably grinned like the Cheshire cat when she’d told whoever ran this place that Clarke could withstand physical torture, but keeping her locked inside a little room would be far worse than anything else… except for being buried alive, maybe.

If she didn't know where she was, then there was no way Nia would know. She’d committed actual, honest-to-God treason by asking Nia to get her out, and if Koroleva couldn’t find her, then she’d have practically signed her own death warrant for no gain at all but for the certainty that all her warnings against Nia would no longer be discarded as too much to be feasible, but as a cover story to conceal her cooperating with the Russian. But there was still a possibility. Even if Nia’s people couldn’t get her out of this black site, she’d be - hopefully - still taken to stand trial somewhere, and then sent to… she didn’t know. Leavenworth? Florence? An execution chamber somewhere? But she’d have to be taken there by truck, helicopter, or plane, which means that during transit, there was a vulnerability. Nia’s reach went frightfully far, so who was to say that she couldn’t obtain secret transfer plans and act on them in a matter of hours?

She could be here for months or years before ever seeing a judge, though. She might be kept down here forever, never being indicted, never charged with anything, stuck without legal representation in a case of infinite pre-arrest like half the detainees at Guantanamo Bay just so there’d be no legal paper trail that could come back to bite someone in the ass twenty years down the line. The way Clarke saw it, this could mean one of two things: either that somebody wasn’t quite sure that they were doing the right thing and wanted to make sure that later on, if Clarke’s warnings were ever vindicated, they could say that they hadn’t been involved in prosecuting her, or that somebody was so sure that they’d be able to build an ironclad case that they didn’t feel like they had to bother going through the usual channels and just stuff her in a cubby hole until pulling her out to face the music. And to be honest: neither prospect was going to go down well for her.

But then, she'd been told that the administration wanted to handle this case 'in a matter of days', one of the handful of times that the guards had bothered to say anything to her at all. She wasn’t sure whether that made things better or worse: if they wanted to handle it legally, then there’d be a trial, and she could at least have her say. But if they wanted to ‘handle’ it, well, it was easy enough to make her disappear into the system and for her body to never be found. There were certain kinds of acids that dissolved human components so thoroughly that even analyzing that acid itself would yield no trace of any DNA or other evidence of what it had been used for. But if they wanted to kill her, surely they’d have just kept her sedated until doing the deed and washed their hands off the matter? Unless they wanted her to eat herself alive with worry for a while first? That was typically Clarke: always paranoid, always overthinking, always projecting - she still had a lot of powerful contacts in high places, and doubtlessly some of them had been pulling strings to make ‘handling it’ happen in a matter of days rather than years. Cases such as treason against the United States, which they were slapping her with, took years to build up, years during which the accused all but universally were kept behind bars, years that she didn’t have because not only would Nia act much sooner than that, Clarke would have gone irrevocably insane long before Nia could make her move. So supposing that she really only had a few days to look forward to in this place, she had to make the best of them somehow. And at some point, to her own surprise, she was given just the means to do that. They were serious about getting her statement, wanted her to write down everything she knew to present to Chief Justice Sydney, and so, that was what Clarke had been keeping her mind occupied with in order to not have to think about her feeling like a rat in a trap.

It was pretty clear that they - her captors - presumed her guilt as a given thing. She wouldn't have been stuffed into a government black site otherwise, even as Director of the CIA. Even the most secure, restrictive, inhumane Federal supermax prison there was: ADX Florence in Colorado, was at least still a place that you could find on publicly available maps. But this place, she was willing to bet not even the blueprints still existed in some dusty old archive, because they’d have been burned to cinders the moment construction had finished. And since this wasn’t a CIA black site holding facility, she’d find absolutely zero friends in here. The only people she’d seen so far had been the same two guards, heavily armed, wearing face-concealing wrap masks, using voice changers so she couldn’t identify them by their speech, speaking of being paranoid. There were other signs of this place being extrajudicial, too. Like how she hadn't been allowed to wash up since she got here. Not even given two minutes of shower time, sitting inside a cell without as much as a water tap, without a change of clothes, her hair turning into a tangled, matter, oily mess, and she didn’t even wanna know how bad she smelled. It wasn't hot in here, though - rather, it was cold, not cold enough to be dangerous, but cold enough to be punishingly uncomfortable.

And she could swear that they were keeping oxygen saturation levels at 80%, making it difficult to move and hard to think. It was enough to panic anyone else, this feeling like you couldn't take enough air into your lungs no matter how deeply you tried to breathe, constantly feeling on the verge of asphyxiation, but all it really did here was make Clarke too tired to give a shit: lowered oxygen was the least of her problems, certainly compared to the feeling of being crushed by the walls that sat way too close in every direction, giving off the impression of being inside a translate compactor that hadn’t been switched on yet, but could be at any moment.

All in all, they wanted to break her mind, to make her look like a deranged mess in front of the Supreme Court, to get her to fare a sloppy defense and catch her on the slightest mistake. That was how CIA interrogations worked against people that were too prominent to simply mangle but where their guilt was 100% certain - so if that was how her captors viewed Clarke, well, they were throwing her own playbook at her, which might just prove to be a double-edged sword.

And apparently the fools didn't think it would be any issue to take someone who always looked her best, who thrived under pressure and had grown infamous for steamrolling Senators on Capitol Hill, who was known to lovingly talk about her big, fancy bathtub and meticulously kept her hair perfect, and produce that same person looking and smelling like a hobo without raising some huge red flags. She'd gone nose blind to herself, but she knew that she stank. Her hair was a matted, knotted mess of tangles. Wouldn't this raise some awkward questions? But then again, a small part of her reasonable mind insisted, if they really wanted her dead, optics wouldn’t matter, they’d just kill her and make sure her body was never found. So there was still a possibility, no matter how remote, that somebody wanted to make it look like she’d been coerced, which meant that this somebody was looking out for her. Perhaps this would be one of her associates from outside the formal intelligence apparatus, one of those people who had devoted themselves not to upholding the system, but to defending the system itself from the outside, somebody from the other world that Clarke had one leg inside of herself. And that, she could work with.

A really underrated difficulty with being as intelligent as she was that the system ignored was that she got bored really quickly. If she had nothing to do and nothing to distract her, her mind would eat itself alive with thoughts upon thoughts upon thoughts. So needless to say: in the absence of any outside stimuli, Clarke was already starting to go insane between these four little walls. Attorney General Russell Lightbourne had released an opening statement in an open letter to the American public that painted her with a brush portraying a deranged madwoman, but where he'd been wrong at the time, his conclusion was threatening to fast become a reality. It wasn't prescience as much as a self-fulfilling prophecy, one that could be realized by anybody that knew of this weakness of hers. Anya had never liked her, she had been aware of Clarke’s secret, she was protective to the point of being capable of murder for the sake of her little sister, and she’d known how much Costia meant to her. Lexa must be hurting immensely, Lexa had clearly believed something she’d been told that painted Clarke as a monster, so if Anya was responsible for this… But that was unlikely. Anya and Lexa couldn’t know that she’d be taken to this place; they wouldn’t have the right clearances to know of its existence. Most likely, they’d been told that she was being kept at a regular supermax in the DC area until the hearing, stuffed in isolation and unable to receive visitors for security reasons, and they’d have no reason to disbelieve it. So she shouldn’t be so quick to pin the blame on Anya.

That didn’t make it any easier to bear being in here, though. She knew how places like this worked. They’d never turn the lights off to deprive you of sleep, bring meals at irregular intervals to fuck with your perception of time, and the cell was soundproofed so that the only things she heard were the noises of her own breathing, the beating of her heart, eventually the blood rushing through her veins. White Room torture was one of the most effective methods of breaking down somebody’s force of will and sanity without causing bodily harm. And the worst of it was that this wasn’t white room torture: it didn’t go quite that far. Clarke’s blue shirt hadn’t been replaced with something white, the food and drinks they gave her weren’t all colored white, so she wasn’t going to start hallucinating for a lack of visual stimuli. And the fact that they placed a freaking laptop in the cell with her whose shell was military dark gray brought some contrast, though not color, to the mix.

They clearly didn't want her underfed despite keeping her locked inside 24/7, though. Some way or another, they knew what all her favorite foods were. It was a lifeline to sanity, and as much as she was loath to give into anything they offered her, she knew she had to keep her strength up. She forced it down her throat, knowing she couldn't afford to be weakened and dazed from hypoglycemia.

At least she'd been given the chance to write a deposition. She wasn't granted access to her files, but then, that was to be expected. It wouldn't be necessary, anyway: too bad for them, Clarke had an eidetic memory, and she could identify all of the files she wanted to mention, their file numbers and directory paths, even the specific page that pertinent information was on. Better than photographic memory: once Clarke had seen anything even once, she would forever be able to recall it at will, with perfect clarity, her memories untainted by the normal distortions that affected other people. Although useful, this also meant that all of her arguments and fights would remain with her forever in vivid detail forever, as well.

So in essence, she busied herself with eating, sleeping, and writing, walking a tightrope of revealing as much as she could without risking implicating those she cared about in her statements, knowing that there was al almost certain chance that her deposition’s full transcript would find its way into Koroleva’s hands and she’d be picking it over with her best analysts to find something that could point towards Clarke not actually being on her side. No, the game she was now forced to play would have her phrasing things in a way that it’d look like an indictment of the FSB to the American establishment but read as a cover story to Nia’s eyes: no easy task by any means, and this challenge was what kept Clarke from retreating into her memories to escape her present reality.

They gave her a laptop and as much time as she needed. Supermax prison protocol would be an hour a day, or even just an hour a week, to write this stuff, so that they just gave her the device and left her to it proved even more that this place was a black site that played by its own rules. And the guards here did know what they were doing far better than the failed cops and washed-out has-beens that would staff normal, even say real prisons: they tended to be technophobic, whereas the guys here seemed to understand that for someone like her, it was more difficult to bash one of them to death with a portable computer than to just stab them with a pen. A pen she could also disassemble and pretty much pry or saw loose and remove any exposed joint fitting, pick any lock she could reach, maybe give herself an impromptu tracheotomy to stay underwater indefinitely with if no bigger natural breathing tube could be found to use as a snorkel.

So she wrote. Every moment that she was awake, between fitful bouts of sleep plagued by nightmares she barely remembered and memories she recalled with total clarity. She forced herself to take breaks to exercise her muscles as best she could, to prevent RSI and muscular atrophy from setting in, but she spent most of her time doing the only real thing she could. Tens of thousands of words grew into hundreds of thousands, the laptop being a modern type fed by a hydrogen MF cell meaning it would never run out of battery life. She wrote down a door stopper of a story, then went back up to summarize the most important points in a bullet list and added supertext denoting page references and sources. Sydney and her fellow Justices weren’t going to bother reading this whole thing, not on such a short notice anyway, and there was no way they could memorize a tenth of it even if they went over all of it later. But better to have it all written out for some investigator to peruse at their own leisure - rather, at their own pace - if and when the DoJ or another agency decided that a more thorough investigation was needed. Perhaps it might even be the key to her freedom once upon a day, be that three years, five years in the future, even though she’d never have a security clearance again in the aftermath, but it gave her a shred of hope to hold onto if she could show someone important enough that she’d been acting under duress, not coerced by threats to her own loved ones, but certainly in the interests of protecting her whole country.

She could just come clean, lay all her cards on the table face-up, admit to secretly colluding with Nia in order to lure the Russian woman into a trap rather than betray America together with the FSB Director, info dump every shred of secret evidence she’d collected and name the identities of all her inside sources, condemning them to be murdered by the FSB but proving that she at least was onto something real. But that would require handing state secrets to a lawyer, so no, she was gonna represent herself. There wasn't a defense attorney in the world that was going to stake their reputation on defending an indefensible position, and she knew that bargains and plea deals didn’t exist at this level anyway.

She wasn't sure what to put in and what to leave out. She was confident that the CIA was secure, but the other Acronym Salad agencies in the alphabet soup were leakier than colanders; and there was no doubt in her mind that whatever she would deposit, and anything substantial she'd say at a hearing, was going to find its way to the eyes and ears of the Russians. Okay, it was the FSB that was the enemy and SVR that was their Foreign Intelligence, and they certainly didn't work well together, but they both had moles embedded within each other: Clarke didn’t know who, but somebody in Koroleva’s inner circle was an SVR Spetsnaz officer with considerable access to inside information at Yasenevo.

Of course, there was the fact that she'd already prepared Nia for this possibility and asked her to just disregard anything incriminatory as necessary self-defense… And if Russell somehow had gotten a hold of that audio, he could enter that into evidence, because ‘inadmissibility’ wasn’t a concept in Intelligence treason trials, either.

People lied, for any number of reasons, about anything and everything, all the time. Yet for some reason, there was this prehistoric idea branded into the back of 99% of people's minds that people had no reason to lie, that human beings were inherently honest, so that anybody that accused somebody else of wrongdoing would only do so if they were speaking the truth. The idea of innocent until proven guilty was neat in principle, but in practice, it was an unfortunate reality that even judges - even Supreme Court Justices - were working under the presupposition that an accusation was almost as good as hard evidence of guilt, and unless the accused could wage a perfect defense, absence of evidence of innocence equated to evidence of guilt. And Clarke's defense would be far from ironclad because there was so much that these people were either not cleared to know - meaning that she'd get in trouble for saying this stuff even if it would help during the trial - or that she couldn't afford to mention without burning a lot of valuable assets and painting assassination targets at all of her loved ones, so the conclusion was pretty much foregone. On the other hand: by the same logic, why would she lie, for so long, and so consistently, about something so dangerous? Perhaps because they'd rather bury an inconvenient truth than face the mind-boggling enormity of it, the same way all the warnings about Bojinka were downplayed and ridiculed for six and a half years even after the initial plans were discovered before the attacks went down for real.

At least they hadn't discovered the full depths of the contact between her and Nia. If they knew about that , there wouldn't have been a trial at all. It would be so easy to just brand her a conspirator and make her disappear… Although, hadn’t they done exactly that, in a sense? She wasn’t dead, but if they kept her down here, she might as well be.

So basically, Clarke was stuck on every side, reliant on whatever goodwill of her friends, family, and colleagues might still remain among those that wouldn’t believe she’d betrayed America and her sister, relying on her worst enemy to save her life if and when she was sentenced to either death or life without parole, and almost praying to the God she didn’t believe in that she’d actually be allowed to say everything she had to say without constantly interrupting her, silencing her, or telling her to get to the point when every detail in the story was part of the point; and that everything she said would be recorded exactly as she said it and the people judging her would actually listen to the contents of her words instead of focusing on the fact that they would believe that if she were innocent, she wouldn’t have been dragged in front of them to begin with.

If she'd been some department deputy who'd outgrown her shoes, the Assistant Director of Operations perhaps, she figured that at least the prosecution might have been real and something resembling fair. But power always came at a price, so being the bitch in charge of the whole Agency entrusted with the deep end of national security meant that her perceived betrayal cut a hundred times deeper. She wasn’t a greasy pole climber anymore: as Agency Director, the only possible promotion she could gain was to be made Director of National Intelligence, and that would see her too far removed from where the action was, to the effect that she’d actually turned down an offer to become Assistant DNI just two years ago. All this meant in the eyes of certain people would be that she sought to expand not upwards, but laterally - into Russia, perhaps.

When her electronic version of the story had been done for a little while, the laptop collected and Clarke left to her own thoughts, she’d been left with nothing to do but try to dissociate. There weren’t too many memories she wanted to recall, lest they turn bittersweet and sour, just reminding her of what she’d lost, especially since when she did this deliberately, it felt as vivid as it had been when she’d actually lived them. And she wasn’t the kind of person who could not think about anything and just drift off into a waking slumber. So what could she do? Well, she was great at visualizing. So even though she didn’t have the physical implements, she had blank walls to use as a blank canvas, and so, she put her brain to work creating a fiction, using her mind’s eye to paint a portrait of a place on Earth long before human hands had ever touched it, or perhaps long after humanity had gone and returned the land for nature to reclaim. She imagined she could feel the sun on her face, smell the scent of wildflowers on the breeze, see trees all around her. It was so beautiful.

A beautiful daydream, yet one that couldn’t stand up to reality once her circumstances shifted.

Without warning, the invisible door opened, the same two black-clad guards as always filing in with weapons drawn.

"Prisoner 319, face the wall." The one that seemed to be younger said in an emotionless clip.

“What is this?”

“Quiet. Hold out your right arm.”

“How do you want me to do that while facing the wall?”

“Out to the side, dumbass.”

“Here.” “I guess it’s time to go, then?”

“Personally, I would’ve let you stew in there for another month, but Sydney wants to do this now.” The guard explained, withdrawing something she couldn’t see. When she tried to turn her head to the side, the older guard smacked the back of it and shoved her face back into facing the wall. A hiss, a stab of pain beneath her skin as a large needle was inserted and promptly retracted, and her head was let go, though the younger guard kept a grip on her arm. “That’s a DARPA Lasercom geolocator chip.” The man said. These geotag granules weren't the big, bulky, 2cm-long RFID transceiver chips of old that you'd constantly be aware of as it shifted along with your body, but no larger than a grain of rice, a small one, and with a weight measured in the micrograms. You could inject one of these into somebody while they slept and they'd never know it: they didn't even show up on MRI scans, nor would they be disrupted by them. “That’ll have embedded itself into your nervous system. I suppose you could try to bite it out, if you wanna paralyze your arm… wouldn’t recommend it.” Had this guy actually just made a joke? She supposed there was a first time for everything.

Upon checking that the geotag worked to their satisfaction, they cuffed her wrists behind her back, her ankles together, then attached a chain between the wrist and ankle cuffs, all giving her just enough slack to walk somewhat normally but be unable to run. All of these, in turn, were again chained to a belt strapped around her waist, forming a one-person coffle that she wouldn’t be escaping from unless she cut off her hands and feet: even breaking her thumb and degloving her hand wouldn’t be enough to get sufficient space to escape from this kind of special bracelet.

They weren’t taking any chances, this sort of overkill reserved for terrorist leaders, or maybe Hannibal Lecter, but certainly not a 5-foot-5, 125-pound diminutive figure like her. Rules were rules, she supposed, but the rules didn’t exactly apply at a black site; so they must be aware that she was a lethal combatant even with her bare hands, probably briefed on her bloody SOG career and not wanting to take their chances by giving any slack to the Commander of Death.

"You know, I don't mind a little bondage, but usually the one with the keys is somebody I trust." Clarke, somewhat surprised that they hadn’t gagged her along with everything else, couldn’t resist quipping. Her voice was scratchy, throaty, a little messed up from a lack of use, but it came out steadier than she’d anticipated.

The pair of guards didn't yell at her to shut up, didn't shove a shock baton into her stomach, none of the things that would happen in Guantanamo: these guys didn't even acknowledge her quip. And she would know what procedure was at Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp: she'd put half of its inmate population in there herself. She'd undergone her enhanced interrogation resistance training there. And her enhanced interrogation practical application training too.

What she’d never done, however, was witness a Supreme Court hearing from the viewpoint of the accused.

“Quick question, Griffin.” The older guard suddenly interrupted her inner musings as they traversed equally featureless, white-painted, brightly lit hallways with no identifying marks anywhere.

“What’s that?” She answered, surprised that she was even being addressed.

“I’m sure you’ve figured out by now that we can’t let you know where you’ve been, so…” She nodded, having presumed as much, “blindfold or knockout drug?”

“Yeah, there’s no way I’m letting you guys make my world even smaller . I’ll take the injection.” And she’d force them to carry her instead of making her walk, which would be a tiny measure of petty retribution. But when your life was not your own, you’d start to assign great importance to the tiniest thing you could control. Even if it meant she might be groggy and half-asleep when facing Russell and Diana; though she doubted that, given her self-immunization campaigns against so many types of drugs including sleeping agents. She’d be fit as a fiddle when the time came, for better or worse.

Yeah, she’d pass it through her system and recover far quicker than other people, but that didn’t mean she didn’t go out like a light shortly after the guard jabbed another needle into her arm.

Supreme Court Building, One First Street, Washington, DC

Date unknown

Clarke had been right. She’d come around and not been tired anymore, by that time already sitting in a holding area in what turned out to be a hidden basement of the Supreme Court building. She wasn’t in there for long, only a few minutes by her reckoning, before the two guards from before came to escort her to the hall, this time free of chains and shackles, but engulfed in an ocean of Secret Service men and women with machine pistols that were under orders to open fire and shoot to kill if she looked like she was trying to make a break for it. Unlucky for them, she had no intention of undertaking such a futile action. She was going to muster whatever dignity she had left and face Diana and Russell with a disdainful sneer.

A tribunal meant three judges, or justices in this case, but it was immediately clear that Chief Justice Sydney was top dog and the others firmly under her thumb. Hers was the controlling voice of the Supreme Court, and the others were only there to assist her, and back her up. Her two companions were Callie Cartwig and Carter Jace, all three of them New Democrats that had made their career grandstanding about being of the people, for the people, by the will of the people. Okay, Sydney was the only one grandstanding: Cartwig genuinely believed in her own message, while Jace, above all else, desired power. Callie might dissent, but wouldn’t likely do so, not if she believed Clarke to be an enemy to the people; and Jace would suck up to whatever Sydney said, so he was a virtual nonentity. Clarke’s life hung in the balance of Diana Sydney’s nonexistent mercy: this would be the case that cemented the populist’s legacy as a champion of justice for all the little people.

Attorney General Russell Lightbourne personally acting as prosecuting attorney was highly unusual: yet another element in the growing list of suspicious happenings surrounding this trial. It really had felt like only a few days had passed between when she’d first been snatched from Langley and thrown into a white hole and being dragged in front of a SCOTUS Federal treason tribunal now. They wanted to handle it in a matter of days… Which meant that there would be no preliminary hearings, no recesses, no second or third substantial hearings: this was it, this was going to be the only one, and it would continue until the judges had reached consensus on the sentence.

Clarke’s head swiveled across the witness benches, all of them only on the prosecutor’s side of the room, of course.

There was John Murphy, NSA Director. Slimy little shit would throw anyone under the bus to cover his own ass. Indra Porter, DIA. Always believed her to be a loose cannon and wasn't gonna say anything kind about her playing cowboy with the rules. And Titus Templar, FBI, by all rights a good and honest man who would still be extremely adversarial on this day, his strongly patriotic personality driving him to harshly judge anyone he found to be making America weak. The FBI was incompetent, but five years ago, before Templar, it had been a flaming train wreck. Another five years under Titus' direction, and it would actually be a respectable agency. The man could do a lot with a little, and he was being given more than a little with which to voice his support in proclaiming Clarke guilty of whatever they’d charge her with.

The deck was painfully obviously stacked against her. There was also no sign of Octavia, Grampy Christian, or anybody else that would take her side even against overwhelming apparently-evidence, even though Lexa was here. Of course Lexa was here - she’d been the hero that had arrested America’s worst traitor. Probably the only reason why Bellamy was here while her parents and grandfather were not was because they couldn't very well leave out her husband as a character witness without looking too suspicious, while Jake and Abby would be accused of unreliability due to personal bias and Clarke doubted that either Diana or Russell were too eager to have a Rhodesian Special Forces veteran have his famously unfiltered say in front of the whole nation on C-SPAN. All in all, she felt like a victim of one of Stalin’s purges, the verdict having been predetermined and the hearing serving only to quote from in justification for what they wanted to do. And what they wanted to do, by all appearances, was wash their hands off Clarke Griffin and everything that she represented.

Speaking of appearances… Were those video cameras? Her hopes for a quiet, closed-doors kangaroo court were dashed. They were turning this into a media circus.

Augustus Woods, as an independent President, had innumerable enemies among both the Democrats and Republicans, both the Old and New factions among them, and he had been the one to appoint Clarke to office during his first administration, then had her reconfirmed at the beginning of his second. His credibility would take a big ding because of this. That had never been her intention.

“Do you swear to speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?” The bailiff began the day’s proceedings.

“You know I can’t do that.” Clarke answered.

“We are aware that you’re an atheist, and swearing on the Bible is no longer required.” The bailiff mistook her words.

“I swear to speak the truth as much as I can, but I will not say anything that will expose CIA deep cover operatives in Russia and might get them killed. That’s as far as I’m willing to go.” She elucidated.

“Very well, I’ll accept it. Let us proceed.” The bailiff nodded, yielding the floor to Diana Sydney.

"No-one's forgotten what you and your sister have done for this country, Mrs. Griffin. That's what makes this so difficult." Chief Justice Sydney spoke, and to Clarke’s surprise, she seemed to mean it.

Clarke and her sister… They’d been inseparable for as long as they both had lived. She'd always looked up to Costia, wishing she could be more like her sister. Clarke and Cos were both intimately aware of the darkness that lurked right behind the veneer of civilization, but where Clarke had devoted herself to burning it away by fighting its source, Costia had decided that she wasn't just going to do that, but make her own light to act as a counterpoint, showing her sister and so many others that even in a world full of evil, you could still choose to be good.

Sydney resumed speaking: "The woman who killed Bin Laden is now dead, and by all appearances, the woman that uncovered his hiding spot is the one that sent her on the fatal mission. You have to admit that the optics are rather bad, if nothing else." She put in a smarmy, condescending tone, leaving her moment of honesty behind her.

“Do you believe I care about optics?” Clarke said in disbelief. “Costia was my sister . There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for her.”

"Are you claiming that siblings never fall out with each other, that there was never any bad blood between you and her?”

“That’s not what I said. Siblings argue, we did too. But it never went so far that I’d hate her enough to want her- To want-” To want to see her dead , Clarke’s mind said, but her tongue wouldn’t form the words.

“You are known to hold substantial ambitions and a deeply held vision for the future of America and its place in the world, and to possess the motivation, means, and personality to be willing to take unilateral actions in pursuit of such goals. Do you deny any part of this assertion?”

“No, Your Honor, I do not.” Clarke admitted, because this was a widely known fact. Taken by itself, the statement was completely true, however, “This doesn’t mean that just because I can automatically means that I will, or would. There are lines even I won’t cross, and willingly selling out the member of my family who’s my personal hero is one of them.”

"Did you not state, and I quote: 'I swore an oath to protect America from all enemies, foreign and domestic - emphasis original - enough patriot blood has been spilled, and I would say that the Tree of Liberty is looking a little parched for the blood of tyrants.'? Are those not your exact words?"

Clarke had no immediate response for that. Yes, she had said that exact phrase. Once. While on the phone with Nia . Context mattered, and she now knew that Sydney knew about her clandestine contact with her Russian counterpart, but that, in and of itself, was’t illegal so long as the content of their discussions hadn’t been threatening to national security. What did constitute a threat to national security in matters such as these would be determined by her, but since she obviously couldn’t do that now, the judgment fell to… John Murphy and Titus Templar, who were all too happy to speak out their beliefs that Clarke had acted in bad faith and was trying to play both sides for her own political gain.

Bellamy was the next person called up to give his verbal statement as character witness.

A tiny, watery little ghost of a half-smile tried to tug up the corners of Clarke’s lips in a tiny increment, the man’s soft chocolate eyes locking with hers trying to send a message that everything was gonna be alright. Even after all of this, it seemed that Bellamy, at least, still had her back.

She desperately wanted to throw herself into his arms, or better yet: wake up next to her husband and realize that the past week - no, the past year and a half - had been nothing more than a long nightmare. But who was she kidding? She was never going to feel his warm embrace again. Not after she’d be dragged away to meet her destiny, not today when it had been made perfectly clear that no physical contact of any kind would be allowed.

They were asking her husband questions about her mental state, about whether he ever suspected that his wife may be harboring delusions, though they worded it more carefully than that. Bell was too honest with his answers, not wanting to say anything bad about her but also under oath to speak the truth, so he was picking his words cautiously. He was trying to portray her as a victim of circumstance, but given the nature of the beast, instead was making her look unhinged and irrational. Bellamy was way out of his depth amongst these people despite his own rank: a barracuda used to being the meanest fish in the pond, suddenly thrust into the open ocean surrounded by ravenous sharks. And as the commander of a crack combat division and member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, his word carried considerable gravitas. And yet, whenever he hesitated to answer right away, the prosecution was breathing down his neck, refusing to give him a second to put his thoughts in order x. And the fact that it was true that she'd appropriated three of his division's half-billion-dollar a unit Stealth Hawks without his knowledge was more important than any reason as to why she hadn't asked him.

This was such a kangaroo court, they weren't even trying to make it look fair and honest, as if they hadn't decided what the sentence would be days before this sham had started.

Not a single one of her SOG operators were called to witness. Not Finn and Jasper, not Zoe or Harper, no sign of Adams, Mbege, and Zinck... These were the people that she'd come up with, the ones she'd fought together with before becoming their superior and leading them in the field for four years. The officers and specialists that she still went to as her go-to people when a platoon assault was needed that the military couldn't stomach or wasn't allowed to run. In terms of character witnesses for a treason case, there was no-one better. But then, that was probably the reason why they weren't here.

And then, it was Lexa’s turn. And the more her oldest, closest friend spoke, the more Clarke’s heart sank into her stomach. With the pain still so fresh in Lexa’s mind, she wasn’t thinking straight, and her words didn’t come from her sense of reason, but were an outpouring of pure, unadulterated grief - grief for Costia’s death that could now condemn the other Griffin sister to the same fate, only separated by different means.

"As you know, I was engaged to be married to Mrs. Griffin's older sister until our relationship was cut short due to her… death.” Lexa said, taking a sip of water to chase away the thickness in her throat as she spoke of her beloved’s fate. “Costia Marie Griffin was only one of sixty people that lost their lives due to the actions of Clarke Griffin, who sent a number of forces including SEAL Team 4 and forty-two operators from an unknown source into an ambush where they died at the hands of Kazakh Special Forces answering to the Russian FSB, the organization chaired by Nia Koroleva, the same person with whom Mrs. Griffin has been in direct contact with over the past year, as we now know. It is because of the actions of Mrs. Griffin in her capacity as Agency Director, her abuse of power, that the love of my life is now dead, so I have to state for the record that I feel like I'm personally biased in this case, given that one of the victims was my fiancée and the one that ordered her death her own sister and my best friend.” Lexa laid out, her voice booming, taking total control of the courtroom with the force of her presence. “Mrs. Griffin has, for the past year and a half, become consumed by an obsession with Director Koroleva and a supposed plot of nuclear terrorism with which to overthrow the government of the United States. She has disregarded all the bounds of propriety, protocol, and sensibility in her pursuit of this woman. But it is clear to me now that these actions amounted to throwing up a smokescreen, in the sense of accusing the enemy of that which you yourself are doing, considering that Mrs. Griffin has now been proven to have been actively colluding with Director Koroleva to effectuate the very outcome that Mrs. Griffin kept warning us about.” She accused Clarke, apparently having been given audio and text materials from the evidence pile beforehand. “Your Honors, Attorney General Lightbourne has asked me to appear here as a character witness owing to my long and close relationship with the defendant, so I believe my word must count for much when I say that she is guilty as charged.” The brunette dropped the bombshell with an accusing finger that felt like a javelin through the heart. “Clarke Griffin has gone on record numerous times to rail against the policies of my father, the President of the United States, publicly criticizing him to the point of portraying him as incompetent and unsuited to hold the esteemed highest office of the land to which the American people have appointed him.” Lexa continued her tirade, pacing her words, speaking slowly and deliberately to give those listening enough time for her message to sink in. “Furthermore, I must reveal to you that the defendant has long proven to me to be capable of sacrificing anything and anybody in pursuit of achieving the greater good, with said greater good being whatever Clarke Griffin determines it to be. She is arrogant, haughty, presumptuous, and self-righteous to the point of narcissism, to an extent where I'm certain that she doesn't even realize that what she did was wrong.” Green eyes began tearing up as she reframed her entire relationship with Clarke. “She and I have always agreed that our duty to our people superseded any personal considerations. However, we disagree in that I see the people in each and every individual, whereas the defendant believes that it is acceptable, and sometimes necessary, to sacrifice a few in order to save the many, moreover, even when she orders their sacrifice when all of her peers and superiors have advised against it. So yes, I fully believe that I am speaking about a woman who is callous, ambitious, and resilient enough to get her own sister killed in order to secure an alliance with the FSB that has proved to be more politically in line with Mrs. Griffin's vision for America's future than that plotted out by the voting people of the United States.” Lexa concurred with the assertion Justice Sydney had made earlier on. “Justices of the Supreme Court, Attorney General, I will neither forget nor forgive what happened outside Baikonur on February 24th, 2021, and am prepared to show my full and unwavering commitment to prosecuting the madwoman responsible for the murder of eighteen of America's finest defenders in pursuit of selfish ambitions. She must now be held to account and forced to take responsibility for her actions: to do anything less would be a grave disservice to the fallen and to all of those citizens that look to this august body to protect the liberties they hold so dear.” She laid out her desire to see justice rendered in the way of revenge for her murdered as-good-as-wife. “I have no summary, no closing sentence as a capstone, but I will finish by saying this: it is only right that we see this business through to its conclusion quickly and decisively, and pursue justice in such a way that this woman will never again be able to cause harm to our national security. That is all.” The olive-skinned woman clasped her hands behind her back to keep herself from wringing them, and left the witness stand to fall into her bench seat again.

"Do you have anything to say in your defense?" Sydney asked Clarke.

"For the past eighteen months, I've been openly trying to warn anyone who'd listen of what's coming. Nobody believed me then, so I won't waste my breath." The disgraced Director said, near to accepting defeat.

"Once again, Mrs. Griffin, this hearing has nothing to do with your supposed Russian conspiracy and everything to do with your taking unilateral extrajudicial actions that directly resulted in colder Russo-American relations than existed since the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis. I'm telling you to stay on topic." Sydney ordered.

"That's what I'm trying to tell you!” Clarke came alive again, irked at the whole context, the vitally important context, of her mission to Kazakhstan being so casually shoved aside. “The whole reason I went off the books on a clandestine mission was to gather the evidence I needed to show that I wasn't being paranoid!"

"And do you have evidence pointing to this conspiracy? Any incontrovertible hard proof that lends credence to your theory which could serve as mitigating circumstances to the charge of conspiracy with a foreign enemy?” Sydney threw her a bone, one that Clarke desperately wished she could take, but knew that she couldn’t.

"No. Not anymore. That's what I put boots on the ground to collect." She said instead.

"Russian President Volkov has stated that what happened in Baikonur was the result of a joint CIA-FSO counterterrorism operation gone awry. That the forty-two unknown bodies were, in fact, FSO and SVR operatives under the Kremlin’s direction. Do you have anything to add to that?" Sydney asked.

"President Volkov is correct, Your Honor." Clarke lied. This take on things was the first she’d heard of it, but it restored a small measure of confidence that those in the shadows were indeed holding their hands above her head in some capacity.

Diana continued with her dissemination of what was known: "You have refused to allow the FBI and Department of Justice access to your files, files that by your own admission might serve as extenuating circumstances or even prove exculpatory. Why would you do such a thing, even though they might result in a more lenient sentence or even acquittal?”

Yeah, right. As if acquittal was ever going to be an option. But rather than roll her eyes like her body wanted her to do, she locked eyes with the Chief Justice instead and tried to explain that "That's because those files in the wrong hands could do a lot more damage to American interests than I ever could. This isn't new. I said as much in two dozen interrogations and wrote the same in my deposition. Asking me the same questions over and over again isn't going to change my answer."

"This means you've memorized your replies and rehearsed for this situation." Justice Jace spoke up for the first time.

"Sure, and if my answers had been even slightly different on the details, you would be accusing me of being unable to keep my story straight and calling me a liar." Clarke shot back.

"Keep your witty remarks to yourself, Mrs. Griffin, or I will hold you in contempt of court and remand you to the Bureau of Prisons in whose custody you will remain until we can reschedule a new hearing, which could take up to two years." Diana cautioned, wanting to just get on with it already.

"Alright, message received and understood." Clarke conceded, not really having a choice in the matter and not prepared to lose her mind to two years of solitary confinement with nothing but her thoughts and her ghosts for company.

Russell now took the stand to issue the demands of his office: "The known facts are these: Clarke Abigail Griffin, in her capacity as Agency Director of the CIA, has continuously, over a long period of time, and with progressing intensity, denounced the sitting President as weak, incompetent, ; perhaps not in such strong words, but definitely so in sentiment. She has, in abusing aforementioned position, gone behind the backs of her peers and superiors, contacted the Director of the most adversarial intelligence agency since the days of the KGB without even her own Assistant Director or the Director of National Intelligence’s knowledge or consent, and greenlit an off-the-books black operation that resulted in the destruction of the Navy Special Warfare unit most uniquely suited to combating FSB black operations via direct action. I fail to see how these factors can be anything other than directly related.” The man painted his picture by connecting the dots in the worst wrong order possible. "All of this additionally resulted in the dissolution of numerous sensitive operations in Russia that said President spent most of his first term setting up, which leads me to believe that the incident in the Baikonur exclave was only one part of a sophisticated, multi-layered setup in a conspiracy against the United States.” Lightbourne turned his head to look at Clarke, a disgusted sneer painting his features into a contorted grimace before he schooled his countenance back into a mask of professional placidity as he faced Diana once again and went on to finish: "Your Honors, I hold that Mrs. Griffin acted with the intent of discrediting President Woods and in so doing ingratiate herself with the FSB, which has paid her to raise all sorts of wild stories about them so that they wouldn't be implicated in this plot. I hold that Mrs. Griffin acted with deliberation and intention, and hereby ask that she be punished to the fullest extent that the law permits."

The next few hours were more of the same. It was a living nightmare, seeing friend after friend take the witness stand and ripping her apart. Some of them believed she was a traitor. Some believed that she must’ve been coerced somehow, but couldn’t find an excuse to explain away how. Some thought she wasn’t actually a traitor, but definitely gripped by some sort of insanity that made her a danger to herself and others if allowed to retain her position. And save for Bellamy and her parents, who supported her and advocated for her freedom, yes still believed that she needed mental help if nothing else, every person in the witness section had turned against her.

Then came the killing blow. Russell entered into evidence an audio holotape he claimed to have received from Director Murphy via DNI Reyes, containing a recording of a conversation between Clarke and Nia, one she’d held with the woman in absolute confidence and secrecy when she’d been visiting Moscow, somewhere during the spring of 2019 not long after she’d taken down a Chechen terrorist that’d caused a lot of damage to the US defense industry.

"Apologies for the cold reception. I had to be sure you were on our side." Nia’s voice came over the speakers, speaking English rather than Russian, so there wasn’t any chance of claiming mistranslation.

"I understand. You'll have to give me a credible reason to take some time off once I come home. These marks will lead to questions I can't answer if they don't heal quickly." Clarke’s voice replied, referring to a rather violent search she’d been subjected to before being allowed to see Nia in person alone.

“You wished to spar with Commander Teles and you both got carried away.” Nia answered immediately, having already thought of the need to explain the wounds away in advance. “Anyhow, I was told you caught wind of some kind of scheme I am supposedly hatching against your President, and you want to help me overthrow him? You are a patriot, Clarke, so for the sake of argument: what could possibly move you into something so treasonous?”

“I swore an oath to protect America from all enemies, foreign and domestic . Enough patriot blood has been spilled, and I would say that the Tree of Liberty is looking a little parched for the blood of tyrants.” Clarke laid out her reasoning.

"And you're convinced that your President Woods is such a tyrant whose blood must be spilled?"

"The old man's lost the plot. He was a visionary once, and I had high hopes of helping him take my country to great heights. But now he's been throwing it all to the dogs, and I mean to stop him, no matter the cost. If I gotta break a few eggs along the way, then so be it." That was what Clarke had said, her phrasing ambiguous. Nia would have interpreted it as meaning that Gustus was the egg that needed broken, just like the judges would fill it in now. It was pointless to claim that Nia was the egg Clarke had referred to - she couldn’t save her own life by condemning untold thousands to death in her stead.

This was bad. This was really, really bad. Clarke didn't know what to say: tell them the truth, that she'd set up a connection with Koroleva to try and win her trust to take her down from the inside? That would only add fuel to the prosecutor's misguided fire. And should Nia hear that she'd been tattled on, all of her loved ones would pay the price.

So she said nothing. The only way to protect her family was to stay silent.

"I'm sorry." She muttered to them, thinking out loud. The tribunal heard and understood it to be an admission of guilt.

"Stop trying to derail these proceedings with irrelevant conjecture, Mrs. Griffin." Carter Jace admonished her after she’d tried to explain that this conversation had been part of a deep cover operation and she’d only told Nia what the woman had wanted to hear so she could access real evidence about the nuclear plot. "The crux of the matter is: you misused your authority as CIA Director to invade a foreign sovereign country without permission, utilizing highly sensitive assets from the Army, Navy, and Air Force, assets not under CIA purview, to carry out this mission, and attempted to assassinate a foreign Intelligence director in order to secure missing Russian nuclear weapons even though the Russian government denies that any of its weapons are unaccounted for. Your assassination target was also the woman we have recordings of your conspiring to overthrow the President of the United States with, and your sister was the ground commander for this operation."

In response, AG Lightbourne threw in with his own view: "Your Honor, it sounds to be like Clarke Griffin isn't trying to uncover an enemy plot against the US of A, but was, in fact, trying to cover up her own involvement in such a plot, and has fabricated this unevidenced FSB conspiracy as a cover story."

Diana looked to Carter, who nodded with vigor. Then to Callie, who slumped her shoulders, dropped her head into her hands, and then slowly, reluctantly, but definitely nodded as well.

Chief Justice Sydney regarded Clarke with cold eyes. And as she spoke, the floor fell away beneath the blonde’s feet. "Clarke Abigail Griffin, you have been found guilty of conspiracy with a foreign enemy and treason against the United States of America. The sentence is death."

Chapter Text

Chapter 6: The Female Benedict Arnold

June 18, 2021

Red Onion State Prison, Virginia

Clarke felt like death had a hangover. Okay, bad turn of phrase. But she was staring it in the face, and even the Commander of Death couldn’t issue an order for it to stay away this time. Once again reduced to nothing more than ‘Prisoner 319’, subjected to a humiliating strip search upon arriving at this hellhole prison in the boonies of inland Virginia, hosed down with icy cold water to get rid of all the gunk and grime that had accumulated during her stay at the black site because apparently the Red Onion staff didn’t want to dirty their precious floors, then blasted with a searing disinfectant powder that scoured every inch of her body with scorching heat, and finally stuck into the black jumpsuit of a death row inmate, a neat visual shorthand for any that looked upon her to see that here was a dangerous woman about to be removed from society on a permanent basis. They’d even cuffed her hands in front of her when they’d pushed her into an isolation cell, 

If only she could have revealed her sources. Substantiated her claims. Forced open the eyes of Russell Lightbourne, Diana Sydney, Thelonious Jaha, Raven Reyes, and Augustus Woods. But that would’ve ended with everyone dead. All of them would be targeted for assassination just for the fact of them being read in on what Clarke knew. Because that was how Nia Sil’nayevna Koroleva operated: she didn’t go after you to harm you, but after everyone you gave the least smidge about. And considering she was planning on dismantling the US as they knew it anyway, assassinating the American President and his two daughters was most likely part of the plan anyway, so she wouldn’t hold back from killing the head of state if she could. Clarke could rightfully be considered many of the things that she’d been accused of on the stands: arrogant, haughty, even self-righteous - but no-one could ever say that she was selfish. So she was not gonna save her own life when it would mean consigning so many others to being hunted down and shot by contract killers. She still had a ghost of hope, a half-formed plan to bring down Nia from the inside - if she’d life to see the out side of Red Onion. It was an ironic name: she enjoyed red onions as a condiment, but this place named after them only made her wanna cry.

It had been a few days, and the banging of Sydney’s gavel still rang in her ears. The woman had imperiously remanded her to this place to be kept until the powers that be had arranged for the sentence to be carried out.

There was no way to appeal a Supreme Court verdict. All of her legal recourses had evaporated. She was a dead woman walking, so to speak, because she hadn't been doing much walking at all. Once again thrown into solitary confinement for 24 hours a day, she didn’t have much opportunity to do anything other than think . And think she did, and overthink she did. She’d begun dissociating herself from reality, living in her memories to pass the time. It wasn’t like she had anything else to do anyway: she wasn’t given access to any books, couldn’t listen to music, certainly didn’t get the privilege of watching TV… Although the guards did send her a bunch of newspapers, with her still being morbidly curious what exactly was being said about her, which she was pretty sure they were handing her because it would be self-inflicted torture to read the stories and they wanted her to suffer a little extra before she’d be too dead to suffer more. And wow, the stories weren’t pretty.

Clarke had been defeated. She was down and close to out. All she could do was sit there dejectedly, alone, her mind working overtime in frantic denial and trying to rationalize itself into thinking her life would be preserved. She’d made an arrangement to this effect, but she was far from certain that Nia would be able to uphold her end of the bargain even if she’d be willing. How had Russell gotten a hold of not just the phone calls between them, but audio from a meeting in person, that had taken place behind closed doors with nobody else there, unless Nia had sent it to him? But that was in line with her MO: those she recruited from the outside, she liked to have full existential control over. She wanted to own not just their loyalty, but their lives. So in effect, a death sentence may be more fortuitous than life, because it could indicate that Nia was manipulating the pieces on the board in preparation for an extraction.

Her eyes darted about every which way, brain working overtime to plan, to strategize, but coming up empty. There was absolutely nothing in this cell she could use to get out, unable to manipulate the guards into giving her the slightest opening or obtain some sort of weapon to force or sneak her way out. They’d shoot her on sight if she tried. And even if she could succeed, there was still the problem of having to exist as being a hated traitor whose face everyone now knew living on the run from her own country’s collective military, security, and intelligence forces, who’d launch the biggest manhunt in history for truly believing that they were hunting down the incarnation of evil. That would only prolong the inevitable. She couldn’t manipulate the guards with her honeyed words and silver tongue anyway, not when they were as dense as fucking bricks with little more than sawdust between the ears, not when they looked at her and saw an insect to be crushed as quickly as possible, not when every time she even tried to address them with anything other than acknowledgement of orders, they’d beat her black and blue to make their displeasure known. They’d forbidden her from talking altogether after the third time. She’d been in too much pain by then to argue.

Still, things weren’t 100% bleak and hopeless: given the circumstances, it was more like 99%, and it was that remaining 1% where all her hopes lay. She wasn’t at a black site anymore: this was a public prison. A supermax that the Federal Government sometimes used to stick people that they couldn’t put anywhere else because even Leavenworth or Florence hadn’t been able to discipline them, or people they’d rather forget ever existed. Clarke most likely counter among the latter. She only had one hope left for something of a reprieve: and that came in the form of Nia’s promise that she’d get Clarke out. It was the SVR that had a unit specialized in foreign extraction. The FSB, not so much. But the FSB still had vast resources already inside the US and deep infiltrators inside the SVR: setting up an execution the legal way took time even when there were no appeals to be considered, it wouldn’t be carried out here for a lack of proper facilities, and thus, there would be a possible window of opportunity during transfer to meet Old Sparky. Yes, that was the way they’d do it: out of every execution method that had been used, only two were still allowed: the firing squad for military traitors, and the electric chair for civilians. Lethal injection had been the way for a decade or so, until after Bojinka, the public had spoken and determined that it was simply too peaceful, too painless, and over too quickly for those condemned to die. So civilian traitors were fried nowadays, and the event was always… not quite public, but open to watch for those that’d been near to their victims, and the perpetrator if possible. The families of the other 17 SEALs would be invited to witness. Her parents would be too. Gustus, Raven, Anya, and Lexa would be… She wondered if Lexa would be relieved or if it’d only hurt her more, if she’d even come to witness at all. She supposed she might find out: the barrier between the chair and the audience was force-resistant glass, not a one-way mirror, so she’d be able to look into the eyes of everyone that came to judge her to be further humiliated.

Clarke had the misfortune of being able to visualize very well. She’d never been electrocuted with lethal intent, but electricity had been part of her torture resistance training, and that had been one of the worst sorts of pain she’d experienced in her entire life, notwithstanding actually being shot. She could picture what it would be like in those last few minutes, her golden locks of hair shorn to make way for the electrodes to have a direct path into her skull to more efficiently turn her brain to mush without setting her head on fire, how her eyeballs would pop and bulge until they’d explode and melt out of their sockets, all the while people she’d always thought of as friends would look at her dying and mutter to themselves that justice had been done. Not all of them, but too many. The public turned out to be full of judgmental, vindictive assholes. What else was new?

She'd read all about how it was supposed to work. How the current would disrupt her bioelectric impulses to force her heart to stop beating. How the sensation was meant to be like being forcefully pulled to sleep.

But she'd witnessed enough executions to know that the reality of it wasn't nearly as peaceful. There would be numbness, pins and needles, nausea, dizziness, and the worst pain imaginable, her body spasming and jerking out of control and her muscles only not tensing up so violently that they'd shatter every bone in her body because they'd use high-grade leather straps to keep her close to totally immobilized. She'd be left to gasp for breath through a frothing mouth as her lungs would cease working, 

It was a disturbingly dark thought, knowing that either way it would be over soon. With a whole lot of luck, she'd be in Moscow and could move on to the next phase of Operation Snake in the Grass, or she'd be dead, and at least wouldn't have to suffer the living death of being buried alive for decades inside the suffocating confines of a tiny, cold, lonely isolation cell. She was claustrophobic enough that she'd genuinely rather be dead than be faced with the hell on Earth of a fate like that.

In the utter chaos that had unfolded after the sentence had been passed, Lexa seemed to have realized too late what she’d just been a part of, her words interpreted as calling for capital punishment. She’d tried to step back and call out that she wanted Clarke in prison, or maybe a mental hospital, but not dead, but her voice had been lost in the crowd and ignored as Sydney ordered everybody be removed from the premises if they wouldn’t leave by themselves immediately.

Bellamy had looked at her with despair, trying to reach out, only to be pushed back by Capitol Police guards. Her mother had broken down crying, her father holding Abby’s sobbing form in his arms as he looked at his daughter with the despairing eyes of a man who for the first time ever felt utterly betrayed by the system he’d helped create.

And all the while, all they'd be doing is killing the cure to a disease they wouldn’t even believe was ravaging the body of the government and people of the United States.

Too many politicians still believed that ignoring the problem would make it go away. That the world would self-correct to ensure America would always come out on top even if Washington did nothing but look inwards and pretended like it didn't need the rest of the world just as much as it needed them, as if whatever happened in DC affected the rest of the planet but not vice versa. This blissful willful ignorance hadn't stopped the Germans from torpedoing the Lusitania, or a generation later, the Japanese from bombing Pearl Harbor. Even though the Lusitania attack was justified, since the Germans had issued a public warning, and the British had been using American passengers as human shields to stuff the vessel full of artillery shells that certainly could not be used by the ship's master-at-arms like London had the audacity to claim.

But the point was that America wasn't nearly as untouchable as she deluded herself into thinking she was, as if just because security had been massively upgraded after Bojinka it meant that there was no chance of something similar recurring. Sure, the Alphabet Soup and US Military got more advanced, more sophisticated, and more powerful, but the terrorists also got craftier, sneakier, and even-more determined to do damage the more the jaws of justice closed in on them, fighting with the fanatical zeal and desperation of cornered rats. Many hands on the tiller of the Ship of State could be useful if they were all applying force in the same direction, distributing the burden. But if some people were pushing in another direction, you'd either end up in political paralysis like the United States, or functionally with opposing parallel governments like the Russian Federation. And it seemed that Clarke’s hands were the only ones pushing against Nia Koroleva.

Pre-Bojinka America had talked big about not negotiating with terrorists, then turned around and done precisely that over and over again, giving in to demands, making deals, sending money, releasing prisoners, and making all sorts of concessions to stop terrs from kidnapping planefuls of civvies and landing them in some Syrian or Lebanese desert with guns to their heads. All it had done was show the enemy that Americans were weak-willed and casualty-averse, which had emboldened them to go ever further, culminating in 9/11. That had been the day America woke up and decided to draw a line in the sand. It had never negotiated with terrorists again... But this also meant that the terrs, who now knew it was do or die, had nothing left to lose but their lives, for which most of them cared little, confident in the knowledge that eternal paradise awaited any of them that managed to kill an American devil.

And that was the devil Americans knew, the one they had become familiar with. Islamist terror groups using surplus Soviet equipment, easily wiped out by actual soldiers. But the devil they didn't know? That one lay rooted deep inside the power structure of the Russian Federation, unassailably ensconced in the Lubyanka Building, playing cat and mouse, or chicken, with the Kremlin and Washington both, just daring anyone to step up and accuse them of something they couldn't possibly prove. And in the aftermath of this public sensation, Nia must be feeling invincible, Clarke’s conviction elevating her beyond all reasonable suspicion.

All of the paper headlines were certainly eager to drag Clarke through the mud without any mention of why she could have possibly done what she said she did. They even made sure to catch her bad side on the photographs they used.

'Meteoric rise hits abrupt ceiling'  Reuters, at least trying to stick to the objective facts, stated with clinical detachment.

'Unprecedented potential strangled by unprecedented betrayal!' The New York Times declared in shock.

"CIA poster girl revealed to bear the face of the enemy' Proclaimed The Atlantic Journal, its tone a little more somber than the righteous hatred contained by most of the others.

‘Benedict Arnold returns in the 21st Century!’ The Washington Post shouted its accusation in parallelism.

‘America’s Most Hated” , Time Magazine ran its absurdly quickly assembled exposé, leaving no stone unturned when it came to taking details from what little was known about her personal life to cherry-pick whatever made her look deranged.

There was some surprising news about her case too: Sally Autumn, CEO of America's consumer electronics titan Conexit Telecom, out of Austin, Texas, was saying that if Clarke died, she would pull all Conexit support from the United States, bricking every device and blocking access to every service used by the government, military, law enforcement, and intelligence agencies. Sally didn't make idle threats, meaning that she was willing to sacrifice a huge chunk of her company's influence and bottom line on Clarke's behalf; but as touching as this thought was, she hoped the older blonde would change her mind - America without Conexit, in which its apparatus of State was heavily reliant - would be blind and deaf for months if not years, leaving everything vulnerable until an alternative provider could be found with the capability to deploy thousands of COMSATS. That would be the opposite of what Clarke wanted. Sally’s own daughters were both in the Army, Zoey as division commander of the First Armored and Summer as a communications specialist and battle commander at the Pentagon (and yes, this did mean that her name was Summer Autumn, which some people thought was hilarious), so leaving America open to invasion would be putting their lives at direct risk - but Sally Autumn was one of America’s most powerful oligarchs, so she might be able to leverage something to the effect of Clarke at least not being executed. She supposed that at least being alive meant she could wait and hold out for rescue, but she was terrified of the prospect that it might be years and years in the making and that she’d irrecoverably lost her sanity by that point if it ever came at all.

So once again, Clarke cursed the blind, stubborn optimism of the US Government that believed that just because President Volkov was acting in good faith, the whole Federation would be too. Back in the day, nobody believed the Soviet 'Seven Days to the Rhine' war plan was more than a thought exercise due to its absurdly optimistic projections of simply steamrolling through West Germany and into the Netherlands until it was verified to be Stavka's real strategy. Nobody believed the Bojinka Plot to be real because it was too ambitious and nobody would ever use airliners full of civilians as self-guided missiles rather than hostages, until September 11, 2001 saw it actually happen. And for fuck's sake: nobody believed Osama was hiding out in Pakistan under government protection until SEAL Team 4 had put the guy in a body bag. 

Clarke believed she'd earned herself a bit of credit for that one - at least Costia believed her when her sister had told her about her suspicions and had been so eager to help collect the evidence if not the weapons themselves that she simply wouldn't take no for an answer. At least Wells didn't ask questions when approached to take his Blackbird and three of Bellamy's Stealth Hawks out of Nome AFB to carry the SEALs and provide observation data. And Niylah didn't mind deploying a platoon of SCSDG Security operators to support Costia's team on the ground when Clarke couldn't arrange for her own or another SOG platoon to lead the op instead.

So now, would it truly be so absurd, so unbelievable, to state that the direct successor to the KGB, so direct that it was headed by almost the same director suite as the Soviets had installed in the late Eighties and already known to have gone rogue from the Volkov Administration, was planning a ridiculously complex bout of nuclear terrorism on US soil just because the scale and number of people that had to be involved were too high to sound plausible, in light of what had already happened for real? And it wasn’t the Russian government as a whole, just the FSB - which also had a precedent in that it turned out that the Pakistani administration hadn’t had a clue that Osama bin Laden, most wanted man on Earth, was hiding out right on their coast: it was the Inter-Services Intelligence, their equivalent to the CIA, that was running the show without approval, and they had managed to depose the government and install an ISI-backed junta once it became clear that Islamabad wasn’t happy about being responsible for shielding its own enemy, since Osama had killed Pakistani soldiers and civilians as well as Americans. No country was a single-minded monolith, not even Mother Russia.

She was shook out of her musings by the shrill sound of an alarm bell, preceding the rattling of a heavy steel door as it swung open at the end of the hall. Booted feet padded down the bare concrete floor until coming to a sop in front of her cell door, and the hatch in it opened, a manila envelope pushed through. The guard outside spoke: “You need to sign this. There’s a pen in there, but don’t think about trying to do anything else with it.”, he said, mentioning that he’d be back in an hour to collect the file, and that the pen had better be back inside the envelope without any missing pieces.

And with that, the man walked back the way he’d come, leaving Clarke to peruse whatever was in the folder. SHaking it out, she was met with the letterhead of the Department of Justice. This wasn’t a newspaper: these were divorce papers.

How insane was it, that not only did the system apparently require the consent of a traitor to formalize a divorce; and that this was what hurt more than the loss of her friends, her career, and her whole life put together? Bellamy had promised her forever, no matter what, so now that he was washing his hands off her so quickly, it showed just how much that promise was worth - even if the larger part of her understood that she came across as an utter madwoman, her heart still had held out a sliver of hope that her husband at least would believe her enough to not lose faith, and now that that last thread to the world she used to know was severed, Clarke was left truly alone.

At least Nia couldn't use him as leverage now, maybe. That was wishful thinking: she would always care about the man, and that put him in danger. But as always, she would bear the cost for her loved ones, so they wouldn't have to.

If nothing else, they didn't have any children to make things even more tragic. How would Bellamy have explained that their mother was now America's Most Hated and would never be coming home again? So that was one silver lining, minimal though it proved. Bell had liked to joke that Clarke really had two husbands: himself and the George Bush Center for Intelligence, so the topic of children had been discussed and discarded, and that’d been that. They were happy enough as a family of two, surrounded by a whole gaggle of close mutual friends to keep life interesting.

Bellamy Blake was no boy scout. The General handled the callsign 'Black Sam' after Samuel Bellamy, the most successful pirate in history. He'd been a juvenile delinquent once upon a time before bettering himself upon joining the Army, a fact that has caused a rift between Clarke and Abby that had taken years to mend. But Belly had proven loyal, dependable, and sincerely devoted to the younger Griffin girl as much as his own little sister, so the matriarch had warmed up to him eventually, coming to see her son-in-law as her own son after the rocky start they’d had.

If you did particularly well, promotions could come quickly, regardless of age or years of experience. The insane 'up or out' system had been thrown out the door, the usefulness of people occupying the same rank and position for 15 years without ever being promoted that the British employed suddenly much more attractive with the need to build and maintain a much larger standing army that couldn’t be top-heave in specialists and officers.

Bellamy was an excellent executive officer, the best there was at making sure that plans were carried out by the right people in the right place at the right time. Left to his own initiative he didn't do too well, but when given a plan, there was no better second in command to see it through. Bell needed someone to look up to, a leader to follow and be second in command to, and Clarke Griffin had become that person almost as soon as they'd met. Between their first encounter and their wedding, a grand total of 53 days passed, and that was only because it had taken 52 days for Clarke to turn 18 and Abby couldn't stop her anymore. And now, nine and a half years later, her husband had filed a request for a no-fault divorce. Clarke had no idea what to make of that: there was no mention of ‘Hey, my wife is a convicted traitor, so maybe dissolve or annul our marriage, please?’, but a no-fault claim? Perhaps that way it’d be less likely that Russell would come after him by proxy and try to get Bell’s security clearance revoked and his rank suspended. Or, knowing Bellamy, this was some kind of a showing that he still didn’t believe she was a traitor, but was in danger by association, and that was something she could respect.

So she signed her name at the bottom of the last page, jotted down her signature below it, filled out the date, and clicked the cap back on the pen, closing an important chapter of her life.

She could only hope that it wouldn’t prove to be the final chapter.

When the same guard came back an hour later to collect the stuff, he didn’t accept it through the door slot, but opened the cell altogether to exchange one envelope for another. He remained there, one hand palming the holster of his handgun as two other guards covered his flanks, while she read the second letter: one with the header of the Seal of the President of the United States, in thick, smooth legal paper, with Gustus’ signature thickly scribbled on the bottom.

"It's your lucky day, Griffin. President ain't gonna let you off so easy. He's commuted your sentence." The guard sneered.

This wasn’t a pardon, not a granting of amnesty. It wasn’t a show of clemency. It was exchanging a quick death for a slow, lingering one. Life without parole. Had he given into Autumn’s ultimatum? Had a change of heart himself? But still, this was one of Clarke’s worst fears realized - she was being transferred to the highest-security wing of ADX Florence, most nightmarish prison in the United States, where torture didn’t come in the form of beatings like the infamous Lefortovo Prison in Moscow where the Russkies stuck their living dead, but utter solitude. It was, like Alcatraz once was, a place that was said to be inescapable. It was, unlike Alcatraz, a place where nobody had really ever escaped from.

But still, she could sigh in relief, knowing that at least her death wasn’t imminent, and her mind switching gears to anticipate what she’d need to do to be ready in case her transport there would be intercepted by Nia’s people, which, knowing the woman, would be a very short and exceptionally violent affair.

When sleep finally claimed her, it wasn't peaceful either. She was assailed with images of Costia dying, of Lexa arresting her, of Lexa killing her, of hanging out with Lexa and Cos, of walking in on Lexa and Cos - that was one image she wished would burn out of her memory - some memories, some confabulations, some warped realities that began as she recalled actually occurring but turned into nightmares, some of a more speculative nature. A lot of it involved Lexa.

She tossed, twisted, and turned all night, covered in a sheen of cold sweat after being told that the transfer was taking place tomorrow morning , feeling parched and dehydrated, her head spinning, under crazy pressure that she was hardly able to rub some relief into with her hands, still cuffed even at night. And when she was rudely awoken, she was even more tired than she'd been before. At least this time, when she was made to change death row black out for lifer orange and subsequently  wrapped in enough chains to do a decent Jacob Marley impersonation, nobody stuck a needle into her to put her to sleep.

A full squad of guards, clad in the black uniforms of faceless operators and hefting M4 carbines, kept her in their center as they escorted her through the hallways, along the plaza out front, and loaded her into the central one of a waiting column of five vehicles that most definitely weren’t your usual max-sec prisoner transport vans, but M1126 Stryker Infantry Carrier Vehicles, not painted desert tan, urban gray, or woodland green, but the same black as that of the guards’ uniforms: they really weren’t taking any chances here, clearly anticipating some sort of interception and rescue attempt.

If they thought that five IFVs and a few dozen soldiers would be enough to fend off Nia Koroleva, though, they were about to find out how sorely mistaken they were.

March 19, 2020

Dirksen Senate Office Building, Washington DC

"For crying out loud, Clarke, I asked for a report." Maryland Senator Thelonious Jaha, Chairman of the Senate Select Committee for Intelligence and old family friend of the Griffins, sighed in fatigue. The poor man was always overworked enough as it was without having all of this land across his desk: it being the final version of the after-action report on the previous year’s raid on Makhachkala where the Chechen terrorist Bledar Dagtaryev had been apprehended alive in a joint op between SOG, DCS, and the SVR. "This isn't a report, this is a hundred forty pages of fine print. Half-inch margins, no space between or after paragraphs, line spacing of one, font size eight! I don't have time to read all of this!" Jaha said, overwhelmed by the sheer density of information being thrown his way.

"No-one's ever gonna accuse me of leaving out important details to skew the results. You asked for 'full and whole answers', Senator, and that's what you have in front of you." Clarke explained, earnestly trying not to sound sarcastic and probably failing. "But I did attach a keynote list with the most important points summarized plus page and paragraph references for the sources. I'm not a complete sadist, Thelonious." She pointed out.

"Be that as it may, my Committee doesn't have time to devote to the level of perusal you're asking of us. We're overseeing a lot of other agencies, a lot of other operations by other people, and our resources are always limited." Jaha explained far from the first time. “I know you believe that every detail matters, and I don’t disagree with you. However, these in-depth reports can be gone over by specialists with the time to do it. Next time, could you give me just the summary?”

“Sure, I can do that, but I’ll need to know that my actions won’t be misinterpreted by someone who's only read the summary and missed something important because of it.”

“We just want to make sure that you’re not overstepping your bounds; I’m not looking to micromanage your operations.”

“But you still insisted that we bring in the Russians on this one despite me working faster on my own.” Clarke said.

"It's a tinderbox out there. One wrong move, and we're at war." Jaha cautioned.

"We're already at war." Clarke answered. "There's a hundred thousand enemy agents inside this country at any given time that we know of , and you can bet that half of them are Russians or on some Russian's payroll." She reminded the Chairman. "And here's the kicker: in the Cold War days, at least most of those Russian assets were low-level useful idiots. But it's not like that this time. This time, at least half of those fifty thousand are combat veterans. Their age, medical records, jobs, studies, their cover identities in America have nothing in common, nor do their real ones. Save for one connecting thread: every last one of them has been involved in combat on the zero line." She identified the threat as much more kinetic than what the Americans had grown accustomed to from Moscow. "This isn't a bunch of spies come to steal our dirty laundry to blackmail us with, Thelonious. It's a sleeping army , and it is out there just waiting for the signal to awaken." She warned the perpetually tired-looking African-American man. "The enemy isn't at the gates, Mr. Senator. They're already well past them."

"You claim that there's an army waiting to take over the country where there's a rifle waiting behind every blade of grass," Jaha quoted Admiral Yamamoto who had so eloquently put why Imperial Japan would never successfully invade the United States, "when the size of that army isn't large enough to capture one major city, and they're distributed all over the States. How is it that they could represent such a massive threat as you claim?"

"Look, a few years ago the CIA organized entire sleeper armies in Mauritania, Niger, and Chad.” Clarke recalled. “We supplied them with real-time intelligence, gave them weapons and taught them how to use them. We took a bunch of civilians with zero combat experience and turned them into forces that stood up to, and then overcame dictatorial states that'd been under military rule for decades before we intervened. And to this day, nobody fucking knows it was us outside the SSCI and a handful of NSC members." She recalled. "You don't need to occupy every city and military base to take over a country, sir, only the control centers. I'm saying it's possible, sir, because it's been done before. We did it; hell, in those three cases in Africa, I did it." Clarke reminded her overseer of her credentials in fieldcraft. "The mere fact that we believe that our own counterintelligence is so superior to those of African warlord states means we overlook things that are right in front of us. Not to mention that the Russians are just as good at this craft as us, they're the only ones that can match us peer to peer."

“I am well aware of the capabilities of Russian spies, Clarke, but these aren’t Russians you’re pointing fingers at, it’s Russian-Americans. It’s immigrants, children and grandchildren of immigrants, legal migrants that came here precisely to get out of Russia. They’ve been vetted and declared zero risk to national security.” Thelonious laid out his counterargument.

"My Grampy Christian is an immigrant. A legal immigrant, who never insisted that everyone around him started speaking fucking Afrikaans. He fully assimilated into US culture and society to where you could never tell he wasn't born in DC, and looking at him now, you'd see a frail old man, the kind that takes his grandkids fishing while imparting life lessons." Clarke gave an example back. "If you didn't know him, you'd never take him for the kinda guy who reminisces about his time in the Rhodesian Selous Scouts as the most fun period of his life and thought killing ZANU-PF militants was the best thing on God's green Earth he couldn't get enough of. The guy who still keeps his old service FN in perfect condition just in case he ever runs across some 'terrs that need slotting' again. You never can tell who's a hell of a lot more dangerous than they look."

June 19, 2021

Location unknown

Clarke didn’t know what route they were taking, only that they weren’t traveling down any major roads. It would take days and days to get to Colorado at this rate, which meant possibly several days of waiting and wondering before finding out what the rest of her year was gonna look like. There were no windows in the rear part of this model Stryker, so she couldn’t tell where they were, only knowing where they were going. Maybe they were still in Virginia, maybe they’d crossed state lines into Kentucky or Tennessee. There was no shortage of unpaved backroads without any traffic cameras monitoring them to forge their way towards Florence, numerous routes undoubtedly having been prepared and the one chosen only revealed to the drivers once they’d set off. A convoy of military vehicles in black paint was going to draw attention, but not nearly as much as they would have if they’d hit the interstate network; and nobody was gonna suspect them to be carrying Clarke Griffin, being that everything about it screamed ‘Black Ops guys doing work’: they’d probably be assumed to be sneaking up on some Mountain Men stronghold, the elusive terrorist group far outstripping any local police- or sheriff’s department in combat abilities, so it wasn’t extraordinary for Tier 1 Special Forces to be dispatched to fight against the MM that had themselves been members of the same sort of units. It was an elegant bit of applied psychology - but one that relied on absolute secrecy. That the real route hadn’t been leaked, that none of the guards had talked about the true nature of their cargo, and that they’d have all the necessary tools to fend off any attempted interception.

So when things went wrong, they went wrong hard and fast, just like Clarke predicted they would.

There was a tremendous explosion up ahead, followed a split second later by another one behind. The Stryker she was in jerked to the side, swerving off the road as the driver floored the gas pedal, jostling her around violently. She couldn’t hold onto anything, with the way her ankles had been cuffed to an eyelet in the floor and her wrists to a D-ring on the outside of the bench with very little slack in either, so she sharply hit her head on the vehicles outer wall when the driver made another turn, then found herself flung into one of the guards sitting beside her who grunted and tried to shove her back into place, only for a turn in the opposite direction to send the man landing belly-down across her lap instead. The guy recovered quickly, shuddering in revulsion at having touched the arch-traitor, and never noticed that the multitool he’d kept on his belt was now in the hands of his charge.

This was a textbook ambush. She couldn't have planned it better herself.

Now the question was: were the attackers here to take her, or kill her?

Another explosion resounded, this one much closer to her than the first pair. The Stryker lurched, pitching sideways as its driver fought to bring the thing back under control, a second explosion following only seconds later putting an end to that attempt. The vehicle rolled onto its side and skidded to a stop, throwing everyone inside around every which way. Clarke’s right cuff snapped open. The guards were dazed, but they wouldn’t be for long. Rifle fire was starting to pop off outside, the soldiers inside scrambling to ready their weapons and pile outside. Any moment now, they’d notice Clarke was working on freeing herself and put a dozen bullets in her chest. The right cuff came off. No time to free her ankles. The nearest guard turned away to face the door in the rear. And found himself relieved of his pistol, and a quarter second later, relieved of a fair bit of his brain. Six more guards to go - five more bullets in the magazine and one in the chamber. She couldn’t afford to miss even once.

The guards were caught by surprise by the fire coming from among their midst, having been focused on trying to source the direction of hostile fire coming from outside. They were handling carbines, their longer, bulkier forms not great for turning in these cramped confines. They had Class IV ballistic vests: those would stop 9mm from a pistol cold. Their heads were small, moving targets, but the farthest distance to shoot was five feet. At such a range, Clarke couldn’t miss.

She regretted what she’d have to do, but it was now the lives of a handful of guards that were going to die anyway versus that of her own self which these men would take before allowing the attackers to grab her. Seven necessary sacrifices for the sake of untold millions. She could live with that.

An unnatural sense of calm settled over her. For the first time since her arrest, she could take her fate back into her own hand. She could do something. And what she did was traverse her pilfered pistol from right to left in a wide arc, sighting the nearest head, squeezing the trigger once, then turning to do it again, and again, and three times more before the magazine ran out of bullets and the Stryker’s passenger compartment ran out of breathing humans save for herself.

There was still gunfire outside, indicating that some guards must still be alive. The driver and engineer in the front compartment might have heard what was going on in the back and come through the internal partition with guns drawn to check any second now. She grabbed a fresh handgun with a full 7-round magazine just in case, and went to work uncuffing her ankles. If the attackers wanted everyone dead, they’d have blown up this Stryker already, so it would be a fair assumption to make that they were indeed here as part of a rescue mission. Very short and extremely violent.

"Za mnoy, rebyata! V ataku!" (With me, guys! Attack!) A man’s deep bass voice called out in Russian as some frantic M4 fire was drowned out by the beefier sound of AK-15s, and a thump sounded from the rear hatch. The door was opened just a crack, some kind of canister being dropped through the opening, before it was pulled close again. With a *pish* noise, the silver piece of metal began belching out red smoke, the first tendril of it that hit Clarke’s nose making her gag instantly, a tangy, acrid taste invading her throat that wanted to squeeze the consciousness out of her. Thinking quickly, she unwrapped a face cover from one of the dead soldiers, ignoring the fact that it was drenched in blood, drenched it with the water in his canteen instead, and held it over her mouth and nose with one hand while using the other to open the hatchway door. She’d had to drop her pistol, so now was the moment of truth: if these men were here to kill her after all, she wouldn’t even be able to take one of them down with her.

She clambered out of the overturned Stryker and into a world filled with more red smoke. Her eyes darted around, seeing only red, red, and more red in every direction, four burning Strykers, several dozen dead black-clad soldiers, and a handful of wounded men in olive drab being tended to by field medics, the attacking force all equipped with gas masks. They were clearly Spetsnaz, and they were everywhere, cordoned out in every direction, armed with machine guns, anti-tank launchers, even anti-aircraft weapons: they’d come here equipped for war. A bunch of Chevy Suburbans that DC apparatus staffers were so fond of using sat idling nearby, their profile suggesting them being up-armored: of course their approaching the military convoy hadn’t raised suspicions, since Senators and Congressmen liked to avoid public scrutiny by taking the backroads themselves. Nia’d sent the big guns to bail Clarke out. And her odds of surviving to see the next sunrise had suddenly risen from 1% to at least 20, by her reckoning - because getting her out of a transport vehicle was one thing, but getting out of America another problem altogether.

"Sorry, friend. But we have great plans for this one, and your short-sighted paymasters are even greater fools for sending you all this way to die." A woman spoke in a sort of Siberian accent that Clarke was too preoccupied to properly place, putting a pair of bullets between the eyes of an American who’d sat slumped against a tree with a bleeding hole in his gut and his hands held beside his head - the attempted surrender not saving him. Clearly, these people wanted no witnesses.

“Alright, there you are.”

Clarke looked at the man that appeared in front of her through bleary eyes, coughing through the strange red smoke as the tall guy deftly placed a breathing mask around her face.

"Hello, beautiful. My name is Roan, and I'm your new guardian angel. Come with me if you want to live." The man spoke with a very slight, nearly imperceptible Russian accent, of St. Petersburg stock if her ears didn’t deceive her. Definitely upper class, probably descended from nobility. Not a field operative, then, but somebody pretty high up the totem pole. Perhaps someone close to Nia. And he had just made a Terminator joke. A cultured man, a man of wealth and taste, then, no doubt. And he had just saved her from hacking up her lungs, so it was off to a good enough start.

Looking around at the people that came to flank Roan, she realized that she knew these leaders. Tall and Handsome was Roan Korolev, Nia's son and Deputy Director. The field commander was Colonel Echo Teles of the SVR Spetsnaz, whom she and Lexa had cooperated with to take down Dagtaryev in Dagestan, and next to Roan was Ontari Koroleva, Nia's daughter and deadliest assassin. All of this confirmed what Clarke already knew, but didn’t dare believe until now: Nia was a manipulator, who didn’t care about human life and would always maneuver things into working out best for her no matter who else she’d harm in the process, but she had promised Clarke she’d get her out, and Nia never lied.

Echo leaned down to look through the open hatch into the Stryker’s passenger compartment, to be met with the sight of seven dead soldiers. "Ty ubil etikh parney v odinochku? Ya vpechatlen." (You killed these guys all by yourself? I'm impressed.) The tall, pale brunette evaluated, clapping Clarke on the shoulder like they were old friends.

"Ona ne ostavila mne ni odnogo! Takaya podlost'." (She didn't leave any for me! Such a spoilsport.) Ontari grumbled.

"Rebyata, vy znayete, chto ya mogu vas ponyat', verno?" (You guys know I can understand you, right?) Clarke asked, amusement creeping onto her features. She had to give it to them: these Ivans had a sense of humor.

"Otlichno. Blagodarya dvum golubym glazam, nad Zapadom skoro vzoydet krasnoye solntse." (Excellent. Thanks to two blue eyes, a red sun will soon rise over the West.) Roan announced, to a round of nods and murmurs of assent from those operators within earshot.

Giving out some orders, Roan’s people began piling into their cars for the most part, a few of them starting to handle some specialized equipment to winch the overturned Stryers back upright and start to tow them away. The dead Americans were left where they fell. And Roan himself began to peel off his combat gear to change into a dapper formal suit instead, depositing his armor, weapons, and uniform into a box full of what turned out to be some kind of immensely potent acid that dissolved the lot of it in moments - the box being simply left behind for some hapless woodsman to find - and withdrawing a light gray-blue suit jacket, white undershirt, and deep gray formal slacks in Clarke’s size out for her to change into, explaining that from this moment on, they were brother and sister, two businesspeople from St. Petersburg returning home from a productive meeting with a new client.

Shredding evidence and throwing bags full of them in a landfill somewhere still ran the risk of somebody collecting them, scanning them in, and using an algorithm to fit the pieces back together like a huge jigsaw puzzle. SOP had become for documents to first be shredded, and then for the shreds to be thrown into an incinerator. Double destruction to ensure absolute obliteration of any scrap of useful information. In Clarke's case, she'd ordered an additional protocol that stipulated the ashes from the incinerators had to be dumped into an acid bath as well. The things you could do with a Silver Eagle clearance and blank budget were remarkable.

In the world she was a part of, you didn't live long if you weren't properly paranoid. Nia couldn't have been watching every possible transportation route possible without locals taking notice of that many strangers about. There were too many roads, too many miles, so the fact that she'd been able to hit the convoy with such pinpoint precision meant only one thing: she had an inside source at the DoJ, one who was high enough up the chain to be privy to the transport schedule and skilled enough to play this information into Nia's hands to have this communication remain undetected.

"Hey, how did you know where to find me?" Clarke asked as Roan gallantly opened the door for her to his own car.

"Russell was told the route and timeline. And what Russell knows, Director Koroleva knows." He let her know.

"It seems I owe everything to Nia, then." Clarke surmised. Everything - including the fact that she'd been thrust into this predicament in the first place.

“Just a moment.” Roan piped up, withdrawing a wickedly long, broad combat knife from a concealed holster and grabbing Clarke’s right arm, making the girl wince, not comprehending why Roan would go to all this trouble only to stab her now. “Hey! What the hell are you… argh!” She grunted as Roan deftly slid his knife beneath her arm and, with a minimal flick, dug out the GPS granule, placing it on the ground and crushing the thing beneath his shoe heel. He spat on the broken pile of junk before walking around the hood of his Chevy and climbing into the driver’s seat.

“Impressive. I didn’t even know where they’d put it.” Clarke said, impressed that Roan had been able to extract the geotag without mangling her arm, like the guard at the black site had warned her would happen. Roan just looked back and smirked.

As Roan put his foot on the gas, he and Clarke went over their thrown-together cover story, and the man, who proved to be surprisingly kind and showed no sign of deception to try to get into her good graces, spoke of how she wouldn’t be a prisoner in Moscow, but an honored guest of his mother’s. She hoped vehemently that this would be true and she’d be given the freedom to move around as she wished, eager to get back to work but equally eager to explore the Russian capital, stretch her legs, breathe free air, and spend Nia’s money on expensive restaurant dinners, just so she could start to feel alive again.

They drove to Thurgood Marshall International Airport outside Baltimore, entering the grounds through a side gate leading to the private terminal. Nobody impeded their progress. Nobody tried to stop Clarke as she, in plain view and undisguised, handed her false passport to the CBP agents who waved through Miss Natalia Medvedeva with a wink and a smile, nobody batted an eye as she walked across the tarmac and boarded the waiting Antonov airliner - whose interior had been converted into providing the lap of luxury - and there were zero delays when the plane was granted taxiing permission, then cleared for takeoff, all the way to Domodedovo International in Moscow itself.

Out of the frying pan, and into the fire.

Chapter Text

Chapter 7: Reverse Prison Break

June 18, 2021

Executive Residence, the White House

Lexa Woods may have a little bit of a pyromania problem. It wasn't that she went around setting buildings on fire for the fun of it - unless they were filled with nothing but enemy fighters - but that might have been because she had virtually infinite candles to set alight instead. Lexa presided over an impressive collection of the things that she burned by the dozens and replaced just as quickly: tall ones and narrow ones, stumpy, round, bulging, square, honeycomb, pillared, bubbly, twisted, shaped like famous buildings, and everything in between. She had them in single colors, shades of one color, multiple colors, in gradients, fractals, layers, made of paraffin, synthetic wax, or natural beeswax, scented in every combination of smells beneath the heavens: if it existed in candle format, Lexa owned at least three of them. She was fascinated by their flames, how they created tiny universes that could only exist in their own destruction as they burned. There was something poetic about the thought, something deeply, profoundly true, even if she lacked the philosophical vocabulary to put the feelings the flames evoked in her into words.

The blows just kept coming, one after the other. First she lost Costia, then Clarke was taken away, and now, Jake Griffin was dead too. Her fiancée’s father, her own dad’s longtime best friend, the man that had been like a second father to Lexa. The man that had co-invented the hydrogen microfusion cell that had changed the world together with her mother who had died when she’d been only eight years old, who had taken her and her sister under his wing like his own children. The man who would have become her father-in-law. Jacob Griffin had been the head of the Bureau of Nuclear Energy, a man of supreme intellect and an infinitely big heart who’d never hurt a fly. The man hadn’t really had any enemies, but that didn’t serve to protect him from a random act of fate. Just yesterday evening, Jake had left his office, stepped into his car, and driven home like so many times before, only this time, when approaching the Go-Sci Ring, he’d crossed an intersection and been T-boned by a Ford F-150 driven by a guy whose blood alcohol percentage was more than twelve times the legally allowed maximum. It hadn’t been a suicide attack, just the idiotic actions of a drunk driver whose bleary, intoxicated eyes and missed his light turning red and had floored his pedal, ramming into Jake’s much lighter Jaguar F-Type going 80 miles an hour in a 30-mile zone. The drunk had been killed on impact. Jake had survived for a little while, but when the firemen had cut him out of the wreck of his car, which was smoking and could have burst into flames at any second, they’d discovered too late that his leg that was pinned under a crushed dashboard and part of the engine had been the only thing keeping the badly mangled limb’s wounds under enough pressure to prevent him from bleeding out. He had begun bleeding profusely from innumerable wounds upon being leveraged free, and although the paramedics had applied a tourniquet as quickly as they could, he’d suffered from a combination of hypovolemia and septic shock and died before he even reached Walter Reed Medical Center. Jacob Christian Griffin was pronounced deceased on arrival. And the doctor that made the pronouncement had been, in a supremely cruel twist of irony, Abigail Griffin. Abby’s whole family had been ripped away from her in less than three months: her elder child dead, her younger child condemned to spend the rest of her life in a cage, and now her husband too was gone forever. Abby just wanted to be left alone, slamming the door in Lexa’s face when she’d come by to see the older woman, and Indra had issued an executive order barring Lexa from coming into office for the next 48 hours because her boss knew that Lexa wouldn’t take time for herself unless she’d force the Commander to, so she’d decided to head over to the White House to be with her father, who probably would want to have a listening ear to reminisce about his best friend with.

In the papers' headlines for this week's Justice Department business: the Supreme Court had unanimously struck down yet another corporate class action request to be allowed to place commercial advertisements on Internet websites and was threatening to sanction any more corporations that dared bring it up again, voted to decide that intellectual property rights did not prevent anybody from copying and redistributing copyrighted material as long as they didn't charge a single penny for it by the narrowest 8-7 outcome with Chief Justice Diana Sydney herself casting the tiebreaker, upheld the right of Conexit Telecom's CEO Sally C. Autumn to drive an M60 Patton tank loaded for bear to and from work each day under the Second Amendment, and had sentenced CIA Director Clarke Abigail Griffin to death for conspiracy and treason, only for the sentence to be commuted to 18 consecutive life sentences without parole barely 48 hours later by Presidential decree.

Lexa was glad to read about the first three items. The fourth, though, her feelings weren't so clear-cut about. She wasn't ambivalent, but somehow both glad that justice had been served, livid that Clarke had been proven to be such a snake in the grass, deeply saddened that her best friend would soon be gone, and even a twang of regret that she'd never got the chance to kiss the other Griffin sister, which wasn’t even shameful with the increasing acceptance of mutually-agreed polyamory.

Lexa and Costia’s first kiss in the romantic sense came with an anecdote she’d always smile when remembering. Lexa had been fourteen and Costia sixteen years old, attending the same high school and already having been great friends since forever, and Lexa had, after a couple of years’ denial, finally admitted to herself that yes, she liked other girls, only other girls, and one girl in particular.

"Cos, can I ask you something?" Lexa had gone up to her friend-slash-crush after AP Biochemistry one afternoon. Her head had been scrambled all day and she needed to get this thing off her chest, no longer able to live in uncertainty, and at least a ‘no’ would be definitive. She could move on from there if Costia didn’t feel the same way about Lexa as vice versa.

"Here, have one." Costia said instead of answering, offering her a roll of cookies.

"No thanks, I'm not hungry. I'm a little nervous, actually..." Lexa said, her stomach tied in knots with apprehension at what she was about to reveal.

"Nothing a tasty chocolate chip won't help." Cos said, wiggling her eyebrow and looking way too cute to resist.

"I don't know about that. Can I just get you alone for a minute?" Lexa pressed on: it was now or never, so if she gave up, she wasn’t gonna work up the nerve to bring up the topic to Costia again. Lexa really didn’t want to have to watch as COs found another girl and fell in love with her without the blonde ever knowing that the brunette saw her in that way.

"If you wanna talk to me, you first have to accept cookies." Costia replied back, ever the humorist. Couldn’t she tell that Lexa was shitting bricks? Or maybe that was the older girl’s way of trying to put her at ease? The blonde’s heart was big enough, and her eyes perceptive enough, for that supposition to be the likely truth.

“If you’re a website, Cos, does that mean I can search you?” Lexa had asked, feeling bold all of a sudden.

“Is that an offer, Woods?” Cos said, smiling like the cat that got the cream.

“...Yeah. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.” Lexa admitted, popping a cookie into her mouth. “Wow, these are really good.” She had to admit.

“Not as good as me, Lexie.” Costia replied with a wink, making Lexa choke on her chocolate chip.

“Oh my goodness, are you okay?” The blonde asked worriedly as Lex began coughing like crazy, cursing her startled reaction, because how could Cos find her attractive when she sounded like some kind of stuck pig?

“Get a room, you two!” Some random kid called out to them, Cos just raising her middle finger as the boy scampered off. The blonde had given Lexa her bottle - even fifteen years later, she still recalled that it’d been green Gatorade - big blue eyes checking Lexa over to make sure that she wasn’t in real danger of asphyxiating on a piece of confectionery and finally growing calm again as Lex’s spluttering subsided. The green-eyed girl licked her lips then, and Costia, for a different reason, did the same. Catching herself, the blonde had begun to pull her face back, but Lexa wouldn’t accept that. Instead, she’d grabbed a hold of the back of Costia’s head and, not giving herself time to chicken out, pressed her lips to the blonde’s, right there in the hallway of their school, not caring who could see.

Costia was startled at first, had begun to try to break contact, but Lexa had pressed forward and deepened the kiss instead, which had been all the proof Costia needed to finally relent and melt into it herself. It felt like they smooched for minutes, when in reality it probably hadn’t lasted for more than twenty seconds. But they had been the best twenty seconds of Lexa’s life up until then.

“I’ve wanted to do that for years.” The brunette admitted when she’d been forced to come up for air.

“Lexa?” Costia asked shyly, in a tone Lex couldn’t place, making her fear the worst. Had she just ruined one of her best friendships by kissing her without consent? What would Clarke say? What would Abby say? Oh God, the Griffins were all gonna hate her, she’d never be able to show her face in Arcadia again, her dad was gonna be mad at her because Jake would tell him everything, and she’d probably have to go to school in another city so Costia wouldn’t feel threatened…

“Hey. I need you to stop freaking out on me now.” Costia snapped her fingers, bringing Lexa out of the panic spiral she’d been overthinking herself into. Green eyes looked up and lost themselves in cornflower blue as she heard what Costia said next and could scarcely believe it: “I don’t know where that beautiful, silly mind of yours just went, but what I wanted to ask was: will you be my girlfriend?”

“Oh my god. You took the words straight outta my mouth!”

“Is that all you want me to take out of your mouth?”

“I, um, I was afraid you might’ve been intimidated, I mean, everyone else seems to be…?” Lexa asked, feeling some trepidation, almost shivering in anticipation at how her friend/crush would answer.

“That’s not a no, Lexa, but not a yes either…?” Costia replied with a question of her own.

“How’s this for an answer?” Lexa said resolutely, slowly leaning in towards the other girl, who by this point was still the taller, again, daring Costia to meet her in the middle. And she did. Oh, how she had…

Technically, Lexa and Anya were obscenely rich, with the controlling shares they inherited from their late mother Becca's Infinity Corp, the firm that had invented MF cells and still built by far the best ones. Costia and Clarke's birthday gifts from Becca – literally the gift on their respective day of birth – had been shares in the very same whose dividends were worth a good million dollars per year. The four of them could have easily chosen a life of luxury and ease, but instead, had made use of this wealth to turn themselves into finely tuned, exceptionality trained weapons geared towards the proactive defense of the country that Rebecca Woods had been vital in building.

Still, the United States was an oligarchy now, and almost all of its principal players either bore the family name of Woods or Griffin, because Infinity Corp was a private entity, but its products fell under the regulation of the Department of Energy's Bureau of Nuclear Energy, which happened to have been led by Jacob Griffin, the co-inventor of the microfusion cell. Infinity Corp's emblematic sideways figure-eight logo was stamped on all the best electronic devices, critically including the entire Conexit Telecom lineup, making it the apple of America's eye.

This did mean that a lot of people for the old guard whose power and influence had evaporated had a major bone to pick with the two families, and would go to any lengths to kick them off their ivory tower. Then again, the Autumn Family, the business end of the business-military-intelligence triangle of the American oligarchy, would be just as willing to fight fire with fire, hence Sally’s public ultimatum to checkmate anyone that would push Gustus to support Clarke’s execution. In this world, there was always the face value of things, and then real reasons hidden between the lines.

Coming back to the present, she hugged her father in a display of affection seldom seen from Lexa Woods.

“You have no idea how good it is for an old man to see his grown-up daughter still come to him for advice.”

“How do you get over it, dad?” Lexa desperately asked. “How did you get over it?”

“I didn’t.” Her dad admitted. “The edge dulls with time, but the pain never goes away.” Gustus solemnly spoke. “I know that’s not what you want to hear, and how I wish I could tell you something better, but you need to know the truth. I threw myself into my work so I wouldn’t have time to think about it. And I still had Anya and you to lean on as much as you needed me. I had Jake to commiserate with, and I knew how proud your mom would be about everything her husband and kids were achieving. But there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t miss Becca like crazy.”

The father and daughter pair talked for hours, their conversation flowing from their memories of Jake to those of Jake and his family, from his family to Costia, and from Costia to Clarke. So eventually, the wiki walk through their lives inevitably had them coming back to Little Griffin’s apparent betrayal, and the Woodses’ reservations about the whole ordeal.

"Lex, this isn't right. Clarke wouldn't fuck us like that. She wouldn't do this to you." Gustus insisted.

Augustus Woods was unlike any US President before him. He wore a big, long, bushy beard, looking more like a motorbike club dude than a statesman. He freely used profanity even in his State of the Union addresses, which paradoxically made him more popular with the public as they were faced with a man of the people whom they could relate to more than any sanitized image of a perfect politician. He was raw and open: appearing in front of the cameras without any makeup slathered on his face to make him look more regal, but still every bit the grizzled Army Ranger he’d never fully ceased to be. There was an honest quality about him that the people seemed to love, one that Lexa appreciated as well, since it meant she was able to really talk with her father about things knowing that she could expect an honest answer.

“Is that why you commuted her sentence?” Lexa asked.

“Something’s seriously wrong, Lex, and I think you feel it too.” Her dad confirmed. “Everything happened too fast. Clarke isn’t the sort of person who’d throw her lot in with the enemy: she changes the system from the inside. And she definitely wouldn’t let anything happen to Costia. She damn near worshiped that woman: she wanted to be her.”

“If you’re so certain about that…” Lexa said, thinking about it, “why not issue a pardon? We both also know Clarke will find imprisonment to be a fate worse than death.”

“Sometimes you have to concede a battle to win a war.” Gustus analogized. “I’m convinced that that woman bears no more guilt than you and I. But if I pardoned her, the enemies she came close to sniffing out would go to ground. This way, I can keep my rivals from breathing down my neck while I reexamine every shred of evidence, make sure Clarke is at least alive so we can get her back later, as soon as possible, and those enemies will keep making their moves.” Gustus laid out, his reasoning a sensible one. “I’m not just an old Ranger, Lex, I’m also DIA Counterintelligence, and I know a frame job when I see one.” He reminded his daughter: there was a reason Lexa had chosen the DIA over any other agency.

Things had changed dramatically since 2001. The United States had given up the northern part of Korea not because they lacked the economic power, industrial capacity, and military strength to beat back the Red Chinese hordes, but because the public, thousands of miles away and living in its imaginary bubble of safety, had grown war-weary and tired of seeing Americans come home in body bags, not understanding that so many more people would die because they couldn't persist long enough. That was the same reason the US had pulled out of Vietnam and abandoned that country to a genocidal Communist regime: US forces had won every major battle, but the war of public opinion had been lost, and the government caved. That was the problem with democratic states and civilian control of the military: the voting public was full of armchair generals that put lofty ideals of peace and the illusion of 'clean, just war' over the necessities of reality on the ground; and almost twenty years after the attacks that had changed the world, a new generation had grown into adulthood that had been very young or not even born yet when they had taken place, and they’d grown ignorant again, safe in their belief that something like what their parents had suffered through would never strike their country again.

After Bojinka, though, the military had been unshackled, and it had remained so. The Joint Chiefs of Staff no longer answered to the Department of Defense, but to the Office of the President. And where before, the President had to ask Congress to declare war, nowadays it was the President that decided upon matters of war and peace unilaterally. This gave the JCS a lot more leeway to act quickly and decisively, although the President was still beholden to public opinion - and that was one big reason why Gustus was holding back on speaking the same language as the barbaric terrorists whose homelands were now home to millions of US service members. But it had to be this way, because a military that didn't answer to the government at all would become a power in its own right, and that opened the doors to a junta state.

The Pakistani Inter-Service Intelligence had managed to take over the whole country wholesale not by threatening the government, but the wives and children of government leaders and military top brass. They'd kidnapped a lot of people, hidden them away somewhere, and told the civilian and military leadership that the ISI was in charge now and do as we say or else. Love for their families and fear of anything happening to them had overruled their sense of duty to their country and their dread at facing the United States in open war, and so, the ISI had plunged Pakistan into destruction by exploiting the very human weaknesses of the men in nominal charge. Even when the Special Forces blew up Pakistan's nukes in their silos, even when the Indian Army had rolled in from the south, the Russian Army from the north, the US Army from the west, and the US Marines from the south, they hadn't even begun to negotiate a surrender, rather seeing the country bombed to rubble and hundreds of thousands of random soldiers and civilians killed than accept the certainty of their own families being murdered if they went against ISI orders. And by the time the Chinese Special Forces, a ninety-strong Intelligence direct action unit going by 'Crane Team', had raided ISI Headquarters and discovered the truth, the ball had already rolled so far downhill that its momentum had become unstoppable: the war had taken on a life of its own and the instigating factor of coercion hadn't made a lick of difference anymore.

The point was: leaders were still human, and humans had emotions. Humans had connections with other humans, and this always presented a potential pressure point. So it wasn't entirely without real-world precedent that Clarke had sketched out her working theory that Nia had taken the FSB and gone rogue without Volkov being able to stop her because the woman had some kind of immense leverage over the man and the Russian State. And if that proved to be the case, then it followed it would also be true that Nia had sources embedded deeply inside the US intelligence apparatus that would report back to her any suspicions they had that the alphabet soup began closing their jaws around Koroleva - and she’d do just about anything to prevent that from happening. Including framing the woman with by far the highest chance of success for collusion and treason to cut Clarke Griffin out of the picture and make the CIA direct its resources away from whatever delusions Griffin had been working towards, meaning they’d take the crosshairs off the FSB. And so, Lexa thought, Clarke had infected her mind once again with doubt even from the inside of an iron cage in Colorado, spurring her to do something illegal.

June 19, 2021

Office of the Director of National Intelligence, McLean, Virginia

Their talk yesterday had made clear that her father was running a clandestine investigation from the PEOC with the aim of exculpating Griffin. And if Gustus could do it, Lexa figured she could do the same. Indra would never allow it, but she could go over Indra’s head and get permission directly from the DNI, knowing that Raven, as passionate as she could be about her opinions, would also want to know if there was the remotest possibility that something had been overlooked: Director Reyes was the rare sort of woman who could and did change her opinion based on new evidence without feeling humiliated by it. Lexa still couldn’t come back to Anacostia-Bolling until tomorrow, but that didn’t mean Indra could prevent her from doing work of her own accord elsewhere.

It wasn't her business to follow up on her arrests. She apprehended the target, delivered them to a drop-off point, confirmed the handover, and that was the end of it. She knew she’d done her duty, and she slept well each night.

But nothing about the Griffin case made a lick of sense. And hearing her father confirm that he shared the same suspicions that she held inflamed her curiosity to where she felt like it would burn her out unless she dug up some answers. So she resolved to pay Raven Reyes a visit, not as Commander Woods of the DIA, but as Lexa, friend and trustee to Raven and Clarke and concerned citizen.

When given the chance to make her closing statement at the end of the Supreme Court trial, Clar- Griffin had used the opportunity to go on an absolutely unhinged motive rant like you'd expect from the villain in a Hollywood drama, speaking about how America had allowed itself to become weak and complacent, talking about a sickness within that had to be cut out, traumatizing the body in order to save the rest of it. How the government had become corrupt and indolent and needed to be rescued from itself, how sometimes a building was so badly damaged that you had no choice but to tear it down to reconstruct the whole thing from the ground up, and that they’d all be sorry for not listening to her when they had the chance.

None of that sounded like the words of the Clarke Griffin she'd known for most of her life. The girl was always a patriot, but not a nationalist - the distinction Lexa made being that a nationalist would either ignore the flaws in their country or seek to redress them with extreme force regardless of who would be hurt in the crossfire - the latter definition fitting Cla... Griffin's rant to a T - but the woman she knew was a patriot, one who wanted to bring about the greatest good for the most people and had always been very explicit about it. Yes, sometimes America needed to be protected from itself, but Clarke always had believed in ensuring that as much power as possible actually lay in the hands of the voting public and did the things she did to make sure that they'd have as few existential worries to take up their attention as possible so that they could vote with the social, economic, and judicial good of their families in mind rather than being guided by their fear of terror attacks.

Then again, she had looked haggard, exhausted beyond all reason, like she'd neither slept nor washed up for days beforehand, absolutely not in character for the Princess of Personal Grooming. Almost as if she'd been tortured. And that might have just made her mind crack. If she was tired and frayed enough, the girl might have been experiencing life in a dreamlike state, dissociated from consequences and unable to think rationally. She would've just blurted out whatever came to mind without a filter in that case, and given just how suspicious the whole thing had been, it wouldn't surprise Lexa if that was what had actually happened. It was certain that Clarke's actions had gotten Costia killed, and she hated her for it. But it might just have been the case that she hadn't been a paranoid delusional spook chasing ghosts, because everything following her arrest smelled like a frame job. Perhaps the government simply wanted to cover up the missing nukes scandal as a favor to President Volkov, but her father was too honest a man to have a hand in such a thing.

She wanted answers. Better answers than what the ridiculous trial had produced, and more comprehensive answers than what the woman had told her in person, always making bold assertions without ever mentioning her sources. Lexa knew that there were a lot of things that the blonde couldn't tell her about due to operational security, codeword clearances the brunette didn't possess, and the risk of exposing sources for hostile actors to go after.

But now that Clarke had been disavowed and all of her resources placed under lock and key, said sources would actually be easier to see divulged than when the blonde had still been in the Director’s chair, provided that she could convince Raven to grant her access to Clarke’s work laptop that was sitting somewhere in John Murphy’s archives at the NSA.

No, Lexa was going to get what she wanted, and that meant talking to Clarke directly. Only she knew that nobody was gonna allow her to do that and would go to great lengths to stop her if they knew. And even just speaking in a private visitation room would still do her no good, because she knew that these were stacked with snooping devices and if she'd smuggle in a scrambler, the control center would notice and raise hell.

She could, however, use her credentials and overpowering presence to get them to let her take Griffin somewhere alone for a while, just long enough to get her answers and be gone again before Indra, Raven, or her dad would catch on and tell the guards to kick her out.

So she had to cover her tracks and take a trip to Florence, Colorado. But first, she had to find out what Clarke was hiding so she could confront the blonde with new information, a clearer, fuller, more truthful picture that she might use to entice her old friend to finally stop speaking in riddles and just admit what she knew, already. With any luck, she might even be able to use it to force the DoJ to grant Lexa personal responsibility over Griffin and get her placed under house arrest at Lexa’s place, where she could keep a close eye on the woman and protect her from whoever wanted to kill her while forcing Griffin to work with her in good faith to uncover the threat posed by Nia, which Lexa now firmly believed was real and present.

All she needed was an excuse to fly out under a reason that Indra wouldn’t suspect was a cover story. And that meant it had to be something real. Indra had tasked her with heading up the task force charged with bringing down The Mountain Men, the terrorist organization that was increasingly proven to be closely linked with Wagner Group and the FSB, so there was an overlap between Lexa’s formal investigation and whatever the fuck Griffin had been working on. There had to be a point of overlap somewhere, something she could leverage as a believable enough reason to take an abrupt trip to ADX. She would go over all of their operations of the past few years and find that connection, and at the same time, she’d work another angle: taking a deep dive into Clarke Griffin’s private catalog of operations files, the kind that only existed in one single place: the integrated hard drive of the former Director’s work laptop that was now under Director Murphy’s jurisdiction.

Bledar Dagtaryev. Chechen terrorist. One of the truly blackhearted sons of bitches that she and Griffin had worked together to bring back from Dagestan alive during an inter-agency extraordinary rendition after he'd fled to a safehouse in Makhachkala following a spate of terror bombings across the USA in early 2019, setting off powerful IEDs at busy public places in Detroit, Boston, and Chicago in a sophisticated time-on-target attack that had resulted in nearly 900 deaths, most of them businesspeople involved in the US defense industry. Moscow called him an Islamist; Dagtaryev always maintained that the FSB had turned him into an asset and he'd been working under Lubyanka's orders. He represented something of a common thread, linking Nia, Clarke, and Lexa herself. And he was being held at the same facility that they’d shipped Clarke off to. If she could pull some strings and schedule an interview with him, she was sure she could cook up a way to gain access to inmate transfer records and figure out where to find Griffin without tipping anyone off. She didn't have a clue how to get inside an unmonitored room alone with her, but she'd take it one step at a time: Lexa was pretty good at improvising battle plans on the fly, if she did say so herself.

"Raven, I need your help." She addressed her friend and superior, explaining what she was up to, praying that reading the DNI into her private covert operation would be enough to convince the ravenette Latina to help her instead of reporting her to Senator Jaha and probably being ordered to clear out her desk and hit the street by this time tomorrow. Her prayers paid off: Raven agreed to have the laptop confiscated from the NSA and brought to the ODNI under some excuse or another, where she’d hand over the thing to Lexa under the table.

It didn’t take long for the device to arrive, neatly packaged and escorted by one man in a business suit carrying the thing inside a briefcase handcuffed to his wrist and four men wearing SWAT tactical gear just in case. Raven took possession of the item, thanked the NSA agent in charge, and when they had left, called Lexa back to her office, where she promptly handed it over to her along with a promise of further assistance in actually getting the thing to work. Lexa would have to establish a hardline connection to the CIA mainframe, meaning she’d have to wait until tomorrow and plug the thing into the grid at DIA Headquarters, not being able to turn it on at her house for being unable to access the right files there. So she was in for one more restless night of pondering and wondering, but soon, she would have the answers she sought. Soon.

June 20, 2021

DIA Headquarters, Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling, Washington, DC

The following morning, Lexa, feeling somewhat like a zombie, shuffled through the front doors of her agency’s headquarters on the far side of the river from her house, ordered up something that was more caffeine than anything else from an office KitchenAid robot, and padded over to her big, fancy corner office overlooking the waters, greeting her task force members and sister along the way before settling into her chair behind her soundproof windows.

She wanted - she needed - to see the proof that Clarke had been withholding, if she’d been arrogant enough to keep it in electronic format. Which, knowing Clarke, there was a fair chance she had. She needed to know the full story behind the raid into Baikonur, including secret files that even the NSA hadn’t been able to crack, and the only way to do that was to access them via the former Director’s work laptop: the one that now sat on her desk at the DIA building.

She could bring Monty in on this: the guy was the best tech wiz she’d ever heard of, and he’d be able to help her sift through what she needed to do much faster and with fewer mistakes. But she didn’t want to involve him, or anyone else of her team, in her personal investigation any more than necessary: Raven would be willing to cover for her, but Indra absolutely wouldn’t be so merciful. What Reyes was allowing Lexa to do was extremely illegal, and Indra was a by-the-book sort of woman. Moreover, Indra was a person that Lexa respected immensely, looking up to her as a sort of surrogate mother figure, and she hated the thought of disappointing her. So the fewer people she made accomplices, the less likely it was that somebody would talk, and the fewer might take a fall along with her.

About the only person in the world more talented with software than Monty Green was Douglas Autumn himself, lead design engineer at Conexit, and he had more than thirty-five years of experience designing base code and architecture from the ground up. Doug had shot up through the ranks at IBM back in the day, back when he'd still been called Douglas Granite, before branching off to co-found Conexit Telecom together with a brilliant young Texan investor, an oil fortune heiress turned venture capitalist called Sally Charlene Autumn, who soon became his wife.

Doug's father Franklin ‘Frank’ Granite had been one of the OG members of DARPA, and young Doug had always taken a keen interest in his dad's work. So it was little wonder that his own intelligence combined with expertise garnered from a young age would turn him into a formidable programmer in his own right: one who had, in fact, personally mentored Monty and taught the young man just about everything he knew.

Raven had warned her that the breaker algorithm they’d used to get into CAGRIFFIN the first time was one-time use only and the CIA’s anti-malware matrix had already adapted to be able to detect it and stop it cold, so Griffin’s profile would now be locked behind its standard security gates - made accessible for the purposes of this investigation from a legal standpoint, but it would be up to Lexa to get past Clarke’s safeguards herself, since without the breaker, not even the NSA’s finest had been able to figure out what her passwords were. She was the person that knew the blonde’s mind better than any other, even better than Bellamy, so guessing her passwords should be relatively easy. She wasn’t going to be hacking into Griffin’s profile trying to conceal all signs of her activity: all she wanted to do was go through the woman’s files straight from the source. Raven, Hilker, and Murphy would be alerted, but they knew that Lexa was going to do this and Reyes had assured her that the other two weren’t about to inform General Porter about it, since murmurs had begun to arise that there was more going on that what it seemed and Indra was more than ready to declare the case closed, the investigation done and over with, Griffin’s guilt a proven fact, and the DIA’s time better spent on hunting down other enemies that were still alive and free.

So Lexa booted up Clarke’s work laptop and connected it to the CIA mainframe via a hardline shunt that Raven had arranged. She took an empty thumb drive and inserted it into a port, opening it in a new window and minimizing it again so the CIA server shell took up the full picture. This wasn’t the normal DOS-GUI used by government machines, though, but a custom-built, personalized shell Clarke had named ‘GhostInThe’ that only she fully knew how to use. As for its name, that had been chosen just for the pun it made.

Instead of a home screen, a logic screen immediately appeared, reading 

Central Intelligence Agency

Nemo Ab Oculis Nostris Celare Potest

and displaying a simple gray box with two fields for entering USERID and PASSCODE.

She knew Clarke’s user ID: like with all other intelligence agencies, it would simply be the initials of her first and middle name and her full last name in all caps, owing to a Seventies legacy system originally developed by the Navy nobody bothered to overhaul because it still worked just fine and changing OSes over tended to not go smoothly.

CAGRIFFIN

917201999

She entered into the respective boxes, and clicked the login button. No dice. The passcode wasn’t ‘pancakes’ (Clarke's favorite breakfast food). Not bad for a first try, but there were other options: Clarke had always been a little gamey with things like this, in a very literal sense, seeing network security as a challenging game of cat and mouse. But only someone who really knew her would be able to guess their way into her account.

138184288

She tried ‘Alohomora’ (Clarke being a self-proclaimed Slytherin with the brain of a Ravenclaw) and hit enter. No, not that either, and she only had one try left before the system would lock her out and alert security, at which point all access from this terminal would be revoked and the files transposed to a secure digital container that could only be directly accessed from the mainframe computer at Langley.

84738586816

Bingo. Of course that sweet potato’s passcode would be the periodic table elemental code for ‘potatoes’. For all her smarts, Griffin could be predictable. She was in - and knew that the CIA had altered its system to make sure that whoever was accessing this profile was aware that to do so without authorization would be getting into a lot of trouble. Because where normally, there would be text denoting the user’s name and rank, there was instead a red all-caps message that read:

DISAVOWED

TREASON

That was fine, though: she had permission to snoop about Clarke’s profile from a source that superseded even the executive powers of Director Hilker, so Lexa could disregard the warning.

Her thumb drive began to execute its preprogrammed set of instructions once she got past the login screen: it wouldn't be copying the files from the device, not even the files she opened, but was only saving screen captures of every frame of difference, ensuring that there wouldn't be any malware piggybacking onto the USB because there was no metadata being pulled from the laptop itself; though this meant that it would be saved categorized by timestamp, meaning a lot more manual trawling lay in the future to organize things into category by content.

This capture method meant a lot of redundancies that would have to be consolidated into single pictures so she wouldn't end up with dozens of PNGs that amounted to one single scroll line of difference, but once again, Monty could be counted on to whip up a program to do that. As long as he wasn’t directly involved in data acquisition, its handling would be a whole lot less suspicious to Indra, who had better things to do than micromanage her tens of thousands of personnel.

For just a split second, Lexa thought she saw the words change. The angry red letters that were spelling out

DISAVOWED

TREASON

had for just the blink of an eye said something else, something that looked suspiciously like

CLANDESTINE

DEEP COVER OPERATION

in normally colored text, before she'd blinked and the red-colored accusation was back in her face. She blinked twice to clear her vision, making sure that the screen hadn’t gone glitchy, and when nothing else happened for a few minutes, Lexa decided to just carry on with the job. The screen she was looking at now was the nexus of the CIA Director’s operations, containing hyperlinks to a ton of different areas: access to every division within the Agency and their respective branches, an intra-Agency chat system, and most importantly: access to Clarke’s personal area, which she entered.

What was this? Cla... No, Griffin's file directory was incomprehensible. All of her folders, and all of the files within, were named in an eclectic sort of code that only made sense to her, leaving Lexa to have to browse it all manually. She knew Clarke well, but not well enough that she could devise the meaning behind this code language without some really deep thinking that she wasn’t sure she’d get right in the first place, so she started at the beginning and worked her way down reading the names of all the top-level directories.

'LlamasAreAwesome', 'AFishNamedDog', 'NoCandlesForYou', 'TravelersBlessing', 'MountWeatherGenocide' - okay, best steer well clear of that one - and a dozen more equally bizarre names stared at her, daring her to open any of them. ‘TravelersBlessing’ looked promising, in the sense that Clarke sometimes referred to operations as a journey.

It appeared to be a mixture of projects Clarke was actively overseeing and old ones whose files she inherited as part of previous directors' legacy packets. There were some operations files with referents flagging them as 'cross-agency', which an op involving USAF and Navy assets would fall under, but not for the one she was looking for. Lexa skimmed through them just to make sure that there weren’t any hidden surprises adjacent to Baikonur.

'Operation PEGASUS' was about the R&D on a new UCAV, the MQ-47 Pegasus, that was to replace the trusty old MQ-9 Reaper, the pilot program to be flown by the DIA Special Use Drone Center. 'Operation DARKWATER' was a signals intelligence surveillance program undertaken by the Office of Naval Intelligence in Kola Bay off the coast of Northern Russia where the CIA was given access to the raw data and asked to put it through their databases in case any important names came up. 'Operation ODYSSEUS' was a joint project the CIA was running with the Israeli Mossad to make sure that Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities would suffer a supercriticality 'accident' and kill everyone near those grounds should they manage to enrich uranium to weapons grade. A scrapped program called 'Operation ESCOBAR SPECIAL', which apparently involved intercepting Colombian coke as it traveled through Mexico, putting some explosive powder into the bricks that would detonate when exposed to air, that would then kill the wholesalers Stateside when they opened their product for inspection; which was deemed too risky because of the odds of failure en-route being too high and canned for risking too many innocent lives. Griffin herself had noted that the chance of these things blowing up in the faces of CBP, DEA, and unwitting drug mules' faces wasn't worth the payoff. 'Operation EXOSPHERE' was an ongoing monstrously expensive twelve-nation project whose funding accounted for 90% of all money officially determined to have been embezzled over the last decade, intended to be able to, apparently, strap together a bunch of space stations to turn into a lifeboat in case Earth became unlivable due to a global thermonuclear war, intended to last for 500 years until the ground would become survivable again. And then there was 'Operation JADE CONTINGENCY', which was - thank God - a hypothetical scenario, a think tank simulating a situation where the administration became so corrupt, ineffectual, and hostile towards the American public, in a climate where the government had been hijacked by greedy corporate oligarchs bribed by hostile foreign leaders to weaken America on their behalf and align the USA with what should by all rights be enemies of the free world; and how the CIA would then go about eliminating the right people in the right ways to allow the center of power in the country to be shifted from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest, DC, to 1000 Colonial Farm Road, McLean, Virginia. This included a scarily detailed operations manual on how to kill the sitting President of the United States and blame it on the FSB, and a recommendation to fill the vacancy by rigging elections and if necessary bypass the minimum age 35 rule in favor of....

In favor of Alexandria Woods? Now that was inexplicable: surely Clarke knew better than to think Lexa as President would be a puppet ruler who’d dance to Langley’s tune? Unless that was the whole point of it? She might never know, but resolved to ask Griffin about it - unable to stomach thinking of her as ‘Clarke’ at the moment – if she’d get the opportunity.

There were two dozen more operations folders in this directory, and all of them were duds.

Going back up a level, she chose the folder referring to candles, halfway sensing that the blonde had intended for Lexa to find this. Lexa's love for candles bordered on obsessiveness and it was a running joke within the Griffin-Woods clan that she'd have married the abstract concept of the Candle if Costia hadn't burned just a little bit brighter in her heart and soul. ‘NoCandlesForYou’ seemed like it was actively taunting Lexa, whose love for candles meant she felt personally affronted by the message, so that was the rabbit hole she decided to go down next.

Inside the folder was a set of other folders with equally bizarre names, like 'IceNationQueen', 'RingOfFire' like the Johnny Cash song, and 'CommanderRaccoon', which was the nickname Costia and Little Griffin had come up with for Lexa. Yeah, this could be important…

It was nothing but personal photos and videos of Lexa and Costia, Lexa and Clarke, Lexa alone, the Griffin sisters and Lexa, Lexa and Anya, Lexa and Gustus, Lexa and Mr. and Mrs. Griffin - this was a photo archive, plain and simple, with Alexandria Woods as its main subject. Okay, that was a little creepy, and maybe a little flattering.

Going back up to 'NoCandlesForYou', she continued perusing the names. Monty could probably whip up some kind of search algorithm that could look into the file contents and separate the wheat from the chaff, but she didn't want to get him involved in her insanely illegal action. He was already in hot water over his incorrigible propensity to install moonshine stalls in every single safehouse they used and would have already been fired for it if he hadn't been the absolute best computer guy the DIA had. So dragging him into the equivalent of a digital drunken bender would inflame Indra’s ire for sure.

Hmm, there was one that looked useful. Lexa moused over a folder named 'BloodMustHaveBlood' and double-clicked. Only to be met with a lock screen demanding another password in 20 seconds and tutting that she hadn't said the magic word.

'LiquidNitrogenShower'. She tried, after that one James Bond movie Clarke had always loved so much. She’d found that bit hilarious, so it would be just her style to turn it into her L2 password. Alas: no luck.

'IAmInvincible'. She tried next, typing in the catchphrase of the character that’d gotten a liquid nitrogen shower. No dice.

'GhoughpteighbteauTchoghs'. She tried next, after the meme showing how English phonetics were a mess by offering this as an alternative spelling of ‘potato chips’, only to come up empty yet again. At least this security level seemed to be giving her infinite tries, in whatever remained of the 20-second timeframe, that is.

"Come on, Lex, think!" She hissed through her teeth, trying to get into the blonde’s mind, visualizing what Clarke would do if she were playing a hacking computer game instead of handling top secret classified information.

Then the answer came to her. That stupid training video where the guy had been paid by the word to weave a whole story around a concept he could have explained in a single sentence. 'TheMissileKnowsWhereItIs', she typed.

The lock screen disappeared. The countdown timer stopped. And Lexa let out a sigh of relief.

BloodMustHaveBlood contained only three sub-folders. 'Family and Friends Special Protective Measures', 'Operation EXECUTIVE ORDER Auth. 8-5Z DirPAG Discretionary', and 'Call Log Nia Koroleva'.

"God dammit, blondie, what have you been doing?" Lexa asked herself out loud, wondering what in the blazes had been going through the Princess’ head when she’d written it down so blatantly, not bothering with the weird code names from higher levels. Probably because she’d believed that nobody else was ever going to dig deep enough to access this area, which despite existing only on her hard drive couldn’t be accessed unless you routed through the mainframe server. This was Clarke openly stating that she’d been holding phone calls with Nia. And upon reading this line, Lexa once again felt like a bullet went right through her heart. She’d been so disturbed by hearing that Clarke had been talking to the very woman she professed to hate, and now, she was this close to finding out what exactly had transpired between those two. She knew that she’d only heard cherry-picked excerpts at the Supreme Court, so there was a possibility that accessing transcripts or audio logs would shed much more light on the full picture: talking to one’s enemy only to kill them later was something that so much historical precedent that there was even a special word for it, called ‘diplomacy’.

Operation Executive Order was the raid into Kazakhstan. And it contained a fucking treasure trove of information: lists of operators and units that had the right skills narrowed down until only SEAL Team 4 and the SCSDG SF had remained not crossed out, the full inventory of scraps of intel and, most crucially, their sources that had led Cla- Griffin to believe that 100 stolen ICBMs and 400 attached hydrogen fusion warheads had been taken from the Russian Strategic Rocketry Division and shipped to the cavern system, and even memos to self discussing how Nia might be convinced that this attack hadn’t been because of Clarke’s sniffing her plans out whether it failed or succeeded so that she wouldn’t go underground and keep speaking with Griffin about what she described as ‘Project MATRYOSHKA’. Special Protective Measures turned out to be a whole suite of secret service personnel deployed to covertly shield a bunch of people from afar, including Clarke's parents, Lexa and her family, and Bellamy using assets that always kept their distance and never impede them from living their lives but were ready to intercede with lethal force should they ever be attacked. This constituted Clarke going way out of her league to secure personal protection for her loved ones, and was dated to the very day the blonde had been sworn in as Agency Director, well before the first call with Nia, meaning she’d been serious about not wanting any harm to come to her people no matter what - maybe her talking to Nia really was just part of a setup to get Koroleva to reveal incriminating information about herself, just like Clarke had tried to argue. There were also references to customers at the shop, which she only knew referred to a unit of elite black ops assassins under the SOG umbrella but acting autonomously because Clarke had told her about them, breaking about fifty Federal laws in the process. Clarke and Costia were both Customers, Lexa knew this. What she hadn’t known before now was that Clarke had still assigned such an ‘FFSPM’ protection detail on Costia, one stacked to the gills with elite snipers that knew how to stay hidden in plain sight, snipers that had even been ordered to follow her to Baikonur – they were supposed to be the ‘backup teams’ that Clarke had asked Wells Jaha about, the ones that never showed up. Because Clarke had issued a secret order for them to stand down? No, that didn’t make any sense: she wouldn’t even bother to mention their existence then, it would’ve only raised more awkward questions. More than likely, the reason that the snipers hadn’t checked in when ordered was because they were dead too. Clarke had tried to shield Costia with all her might until the very second that Big Griffin had been killed. Those were not the actions of a woman who’d sold out her own sister to show her commitment to some Russian spook’s political cause.

As for the call log, though? That would be the meat and bones of this one-woman investigation, perhaps leading her to the smoking gun that could result in Clarke being doubly condemned as a two-faced Janus, or the evidence that would confirm her story, exculpate her, and set her best friend free. She needed to access this folder, right now.

But when she clicked it, she wasn’t met with the folder’s files in a neat list like with the others, but another security screen.

'WARNING - UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS DETECTED

Keystroke anomalies identified! USERID confirmation required.

LIGHTNING'

It read out to her, with a fourth line displaying 10, then 9, then 8....

That last line was a challenge by L3 security. If she typed in the correct response, the laptop would resume to function normally. But this time, she only had seconds to do it and would only get one chance to get it right. One wrong key might send the screen at her in a million sharp little pieces... And her mind drew a blank. She knew Clarke well, but not that well that she could emulate her mind. The answer wouldn't be 'strike', 'flash', or 'thunder', because that would be too straightforward, and Clarke Griffin didn't do simple.

Lexa just didn’t have the time to think straight under this much pressure and couldn’t afford to guess wrong. The machine had been checked over by experts and declared safe, but they hadn’t gotten on Clarke’s bad side before. The blonde was perfectly capable of hiding some sort of explosive in the machine in a way that would never be detected even by experts, so for all Lexa knew, the thing was about to literally blow up in her face.

With the last few seconds counting down, she chucked the laptop as far away from her as she could, spun on her heel, and sprinted away, ripping her door open and dashing out just in time for the sequence of nine immensely loud bangs and white flashes intense enough to give someone an epileptic seizure even if they weren't photosensitive to go from crippling or fatal to merely debilitating. Clarke had somehow hidden a nine-banger grenade inside her machine, and if it’d gone off with Lexa still sitting behind it, the brunette would have been dead. As it was, she was still sent crashing into the corridor wall by the sensory overstimulation that temporarily took control of her own movement away.

“Jesus, boss, what happened? Are you alright?” Tris came running to help Lexa to her feet. The brunette’s ears were ringing so badly that she’d hardly made out Thornton’s voice, and it wasn’t until now that she realized she wasn’t standing up anymore but was sitting in a crumpled heap in the middle of the corridor in full view of over twenty concerned colleagues who were calling for EOD, medics, and the fire brigade.

"I'm fine, I'm alright." Lexa stammered, graciously accepting the younger woman’s help. "I was just reexamining some evidence from an old case when it exploded. Looks like Murphy's guys overlooked a fail-deadly." She vaguely explained.

"Boss, you're bleeding!" Tris accepted the answer, more concerned with the streams of blood trickling from the Commander’s nostrils. "I think you should see a doctor."

"Nah, it looks worse than it is." She shrugged off her officer's concern. "I have to report this to Raven right away. Can you tell Anya she has the bridge and inform Indra I'll be out for a while?"

"I'll do that as soon as you take a couple of Diclofenac at least. Your nose is gonna be twice its normal size in a minute if you prefer to ignore it."

"By your command, Corporal Thornton."

When she checked the smoking four-pound carcass, its integrated drive was just gone. Everything that had been on the machine’s local storage had been flash-fried along with it.

There was a little note, made of flame-resistant polymer, sitting where the drive had been. 'only strikes once', It said. That had been the proper response. The challenge and reply would have read out 'Lightning Only Strikes Once', even though that absolutely wasn't true. Proverbial lightning, though - that must’ve been what Griffin had been referring to.

Clarke’s laptop was destroyed, but Lexa found that her external drive had been flung away but appeared undamaged.

She inserted the USB drive into another laptop, not her own and one that she'd had the network router removed from to ensure that nothing tried to get out and infect the DIA network.

As soon as she tried to access the drive's contents, though, the thing fizzled and started to smoke, as did the laptop she'd paired it with. The computer gave a high-pitched whine, its screen freaked out into a prism of chopped graphics devolving into nothing but colored lines before going black, and a second later, the four-thousand-dollar machine was a brick, reduced to an expensive paperweight.

The treasure trove of evidence and clues she'd just uncovered was now gone. All she had left to work with was whatever she'd managed to memorize. And Lexa was left with more questions than answers as she once again was forced to reexamine everything she thought she knew about Clarke Griffin. It was now painfully clear that the blonde had anticipated her personal files being looked into and prepared an explosive surprise for anyone that wouldn’t know her passwords. But part of Lexa’s mind told her that Clarke wanted her to find this stuff. For what reason, though, she didn’t dare speculate.

4,900 miles away, at the Lubyanka Building in Moscow, FSB Head of Internal Security Artemida Fedorovna Vlasova's desk terminal received an encrypted message that simply said Бабах!'. Clarke read it and wondered which poor sucked at the NSA just had their optic nerves flash-fried. Part of her hoped it was John Murphy himself. It was, after all, a well-known fact that cockroaches couldn’t survive in the light. At least she was confident that it hadn’t been Lexa: the green-eyed woman knew how to navigate through her security system, since it would be an unlivable burden of guilt if she’d hurt Lexa again.

June 20, 2021

ODNI, McLean, Virginia

The militarization of the CIA could be seen in more aspects than its new motto and new building replete with anti-ballistic missile batteries on its roof: SAD, formerly the Special Activities Division, had also been renamed to the Special Action Division. The ODNI had likewise been overhauled, not rebuilt from the ground up as Bojinka hadn’t struck this facility, but still beefed up significantly, hardened against all sorts of aerial attacks including EMPs. Only Americans were crazy and stubborn enough to take a look at a totally leveled building and put it back in the exact same place, and damage from jumbo jets was no different than that from earthquakes or tornados.

“So Rae, you wanna read me in on why you were so easy to convince to give up the laptop?” Lexa asked without preamble as she barged into Raven’s office, interrupting a steamy makeout session between the Latina and Anya.

"The last time the CIA didn't take a threat like this seriously because my predecessors thought it was too unfeasible, they rammed a fucking jumbo jet into Langley and flattened half the compound. They hit the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, Andrews, Hampton Roads, only didn't hit the White House because the passengers fought back." Raven remembered, Anya making herself scarce as quietly as a mouse while Rae simply shrugged off the interruption. “I’m starting to think Griffin may have been onto something, went way overboard as usual, and painted herself into a corner.”

"You wanna tell me the real reason you didn't wanna grab Griffin at her house? Because even if you'd need a regiment to take that mansion, taking Langley in a fucking assault would've been even more difficult." Lexa pointed out.

"Two reasons." Raven spoke, expecting a question like this. "The first: Langley is in the middle of nowhere, and CIA Headquarters is ever farther in the middle of nowhere even from the town. But the Arlington place was smack in the middle of an upscale residential area, and the neighbors would've raised all kinds of hell seeing uniformed personnel not on their own payroll launch a raid; it would've made them feel unsafe, wondering who'd be next, and we couldn't afford that sort of political blowback." She laid out the public reason behind her decision to hit CIA HQ directly. "Secondly and more importantly: it's a hell of a lot harder to discard something you have on you at the time if you're in the middle of an intelligence agency's main offices than inside your own house."

Something still didn't track. This was Clarke Griffin they were talking about: the embodiment of paranoia, someone who wouldn't even walk into a room without first charting out half a dozen exit paths. She wouldn't make a sloppy mistake like that, not even under the extreme pressure she must've been feeling: she was too good at compartmentalizing, too good at acting on pure intellect and training when she shut down her emotional responses.

The woman could've dumped her laptop into an acid bath and completely erased every file that existed only on its integrated hard drive. All of her Discretionary records didn't exist on the mainframe, only on the device, with no copies, no backups, no mirrors anywhere, yet it would only be accessible via the mainframe for security purposes. Clarke could have easily melted it down in that acid: she always kept a container of the stuff inside her damn office! But she hadn't done that. She'd allowed the device to be seized. And that meant that whatever was on it was important, it was so heavily encrypted and/or hidden that the NSA SIGINT Division wouldn't stand a chance at finding it, and yet it was meant for someone to see.

Who was it that Clarke trusted enough to share secrets with that she wasn't legally allowed to talk about yet did so anyway? As far as the brunette knew, that was Costia and Lexa, and no-one else. And Costia was dead. Which left only... her.

She knew that she'd seen the words change. 'Clandestine - deep cover operation', the screen had said when it'd glitched out for half a second. Monty had been kind enough to go over the fried USB drive and had managed to recover some of its contents, piecing together whatever remained into a semi-coherent data packet that was missing huge chunks of information, including Clarke’s sources (which Lexa could no longer vet, but at the very least now knew actually existed and had been credible), but was still marginally useful in giving her leads to pursue that might prove the blonde wasn’t genuinely on board with Nia and what she’d said to the Russian had been a strategy of necessary self-preservation.

But when she looked at her screencaps from around the time that she accessed the list of paid confidential informants, all she was met with was the electronic equivalent of a pile of vomit: a random arrangement of differently-sizes colored glitchy cubes and rectangles depicting absolutely nothing but abstract modern art, the visual evidence of a computer having a stroke.

Nia was a known enemy of the President, and Andrei Volkov was not the kind of man that bowed to blackmail. So whatever leverage Nia had to get the man to stay his hand and not simply dismiss her from office or disappear her must be something much more threatening and substantial than threats and dirty laundry.

Perhaps her MO revealed a clue. Nia's SOP with her rivals and enemies that she didn't just kill was to not threaten them, but their loved ones. Volkov was unmarried, with no children, no siblings, and no living parents, so that couldn't be it. But as the President, he relied on a government to help him run his country. And the Federation Council, State Duma, and Stavka were full of people that did have familial pressure points. The FSO, the Presidential Security Service, only had so much manpower available: not enough to protect all of those high officials and their relatives. Other protective details just didn't have the quality to stand up to Spetsnaz kill teams, and the FSB had more manpower than all other Russian agencies combined. So it was possible that Nia was threatening a lot of people into silence if not complicity.

When she returned to the DIA not long thereafter and walked into her office, which had by now been cleaned and fixed, she called her head tech out from the open-plan working space that sprawled out behind her interior windows.

"Monty, I need a favor." She said, beckoning the young Asian man to listen intently.

"Sure thing, Woods. What can I do for ya?"

"I need you to get me into the ADX computer system and download their prisoner transfer schedules and inmate registry lists going from today to 3 months ago.”

"Lexa, what you're asking me is to become an accomplice in a federal crime! I never thought you’d ask me to do something like this! Honestly, I’m shocked that you of all people would suggest such an illegal activity!” Monty exclaimed dramatically, clutching his heart like a Catholic grandmother who just found out her granddaughter was gay.

"So you won't do it?" Lexa asked, disappointed.

"Hell yeah, I'll do it." Monty smirked back. "Um, what are we doing it for?"

“I’m gonna take a little trip to Colorado to run an interrogation on an old acquaintance of mine.” Lexa said, revealing no more than absolutely necessary. She didn’t want to spook his gentle soul by admitting that what she really meant was she was going to brutally torture said acquaintance until he gave her what she needed. “But that’s only part of the reason. I need to know where they’re keeping Griffin. I need to talk to her alone.”

‘How crazy do you have to be to break into a Federal supermax prison?’ Monty said, flabbergasted.

“It’s not exactly breaking in, just concealing the primary purpose of my visit with a legitimate secondary one.” Lexa countered, as if that made things any less illegal.

“Indra isn’t gonna be happy if she finds out about this…” Monty said apprehensively. Everyone was scared of Indra.

“Which is why she’s not going to, am I right, Mr. Moonshine?” Lexa questioned, getting somewhat coercive.

“What do I get in return, boss? Is it something fun?” The Korean took it in stride, already excited at the chance to do something a little different than usual.

“Why, you vulture!” Lexa laughed - actually laughed - at her IT wizard’s audacity. Monty was a good kid.

“Titus is here?” Monty joked, whipping his head around as if expecting FBI Director Templar to materialize behind him and smack him around the ears for behaving so childishly.

“Green, you’re simply hilarious.” She said drolly. “I’ll buy you that new video gaming console thing you’ve been salivating about if you’ll help me discreetly, deal?” Lexa made her offer.

“I have just the thing.” Monty nodded, running out of the office and disappearing into a storage room off to the side, returning moments later with the excited energy of a puppy eager to show off a cool toy. To Lexa, it just looked like a pistol-sized red dot reflex optic. “Feast your eyes, Commander: this sight has a surprise inside of it. There’s little nodules of microchips distributed throughout the construction, forming a decentralized remote-access slicing system that won’t show up as anomalous on any sort of scanner.” He explained how the thing worked in language that she could understand. "It’s ultra-low-power, though, so it needs to be within ten feet of a networked terminal and the connection has to be constant." He cautioned. "So if you can place this inside their security room, I can remotely hack into their database and do my thing."

“Won’t it not work if they put it inside a metal lockbox, like a Faraday cage?”

“Oh, no, I can get past that. Your phone doesn’t stop working inside an elevator either, right?”

“Monty, if you’d have been a girl, I would kiss you.” Lexa exclaimed, feeling ten years younger and giving him a high-five.

“Woods, if I had been a girl, Harper would still kill us both.” He replied, smiling at the thought of his badass CIA SOG operator girlfriend.

ADX Florence Federal penitentiary, Colorado

Later that day

Lexa caught a flight from Dulles to Colorado Springs, then a charter to Florence Airport, where a government-issue armored Suburban was waiting to take her to her destination. Some of the perks of being a DCS Commander was that she had high-level access to ultra-secure government facilities and could visit them at very short notice, and when Warden Miller had heard that a visitor was coming for everybody’s favorite Chechen, who may be connected to everyone’s favorite domestic terrorists the Mountain Men, he’d been all too happy to accommodate her that very same day. Modern aircraft, fueled by MF cells, didn’t need time to fuel up or for fuel tanks to be cleaned, moreover were capable of sustaining near-sonic speeds in the most adverse weather, so the flight from DC to CO only took a few hours, leaving her with enough time to do what she came to do and still be back home in time to make it back to work tomorrow.

ADX Florence was a nightmare prison. Meeting her at the front gate, David Miller, the middle-aged, dark-skinned Warden, took great pride in explaining how their inmates were kept in 7-by-12 soundproof cages 23 hours per day, weren’t allowed to speak to each other and would in fact never even see each other, and had minimal contact with the guards. He boasted of how the place was not only escape-proof, but contraband-proof, with nobody being able to smuggle anything in and out. No visitors were allowed and the guards, carefully vetted for their lack of empathy and devotion to the rules, were also thoroughly checked upon entering and leaving to make sure they didn’t smuggle anything to or from the prisoners kept here. From the opening date in 1994 to late 2001, it had been possible for next of kin to visit inmates under extremely strict conditions, but after Bojinka, even that was no longer permitted. “What this means,” Miller said, “is that your man Dagtaryev hasn’t been able to have a real conversation in two years straight. He may prove chattier than usual just to have someone to talk to.”

“Place your gun inside the locker, please.” David asked her upon passing through the X-ray machines just inside the front doors. She’d already parted with her wallet and phone, so prayed that Mony’s plan would pay off.

“No can do. There’s some proprietary tech in it that means my ass is grass if I mix it up.” She shook her head, pretending to be annoyed by silly regulations. “I could put it inside your security room so you can keep an eye on it yourself?”

“Yeah, that’s acceptable.” Miller conceded immediately, much to Lexa’s relief. The man wasn’t too fond of being micromanaged, himself. “Nathan, my boy, could you take the Commander’s sidearm and keep it safe inside the main observation center?” He asked a younger man whose familial resemblance was unmistakable.

“Sure thing, dad.” The Warden’s son said, nodding with a smile as Lexa handed off her piece, and its special optic, to the younger Miller, who wore the chevrons of a Sergeant.

As Nathan walked off, David escorted Lexa through the inside of ADX Florence, using his keycard to pass this door and physical key ring to pass that gate. Alarms blared shrilly as every passageway was opened, guards stationed there speaking into their radios to announce to the control center which door was being opened and promptly locking them again as soon as the Warden and his visitor had passed.

“I’ve taken the liberty of putting your man inside an interrogation room before you arrived.” David told her.

“Much appreciated, Warden Miller.” Lexa said, pleased with the man’s speedy thinking.

Two more guards, in full tactical gear, joined the pair, Miller explaining that the rules were that nobody could talk to an inmate without extremely serious protection, because these people could prove to be lethally dangerous even under their circumstances as max-sec inmates at the most security facility on Earth. Lexa had expected as much, so she simply agreed that there was no overkill when it came to people like that.

Filing into the room, she could see that the man in question had been chained to the table via handcuffs that ran through a D-ring, the table itself deadbolted into the floor so it couldn’t be moved. The Chechen looked up as the small group entered, locking eyes with Lexa as his own widened in recognition. Bledar Dagtaryev had severely underestimated the joint strike force that took down his fortified manorial compound as all three of its elements had been led by women - which proved to be a fatal mistake for all of his guards and almost fatal to the man himself. The battle had still been a bloodbath, but Lexa still remembered how she’d held Bledar at gunpoint when the man had taken Nikolai Petrenko, the SVR Deputy Director, hostage with a gun to his temple, keeping him talking and distracted long enough for Clarke to sneak up behind him, disarm him, and kick him to the ground, after which she and Lexa had jumped the man and beaten him into unconsciousness.

“Hello, Bledar. Remember me?” Lexa said, still a little bitter at the remembrance of how many good people had been lost that night. “Let’s talk about Nia’s deep cover network.” She began without further ado, making it clear that she knew exactly who this man was and who he worked for.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. Nia gave her orders through an intermediary, and I never met any of her other contacts.” The guy said, lying through his teeth: not off to a good start.

"Bledar, I'm not gonna lie to you. Not because I respect you or anything like that, but because I want you to understand that this is serious, and if I tell you one lie, you won't believe another word outta my mouth ever again." She told him, betting that his psyche couldn’t be very resistant anymore after so long in isolation. "Believe it or not, I can still make your life a whole lot worse. I could make sure you spend 24 hours a day inside your cage instead of 23, permanently locked in a fucking straitjacket and fed through a nasal tube because I’ll order a gag to be fucking welded around your head. But I could also make it better." She said, launching into a routine where she could be either the good cop or bad cop depending on the responses she got. "Let's be straight here: you're never going to see the outside of this facility again. But I have the power to grant you certain privileges. Better food. More time outside your… dog kennel. Entertainment options. Visitation rights. But before I give you any of that, you need to give me something first.”

“Visitation rights?” Bledar spoke, perking up for a split second before schooling his face into a scowl, clearly not believing her. But she had found his pressure point: the man was still a father, after all.

“I can imagine it must be lonely, being away from your family for so long. Knowing that they have no idea where you are, not knowing if you’re even still alive, living with the thoughts endlessly going around your head that you’ll never see your daughters grow up, become women, find families of their own, with nothing to distract you.”

“You have no idea what loneliness is, Commander Woods. You cannot imagine the pain you put me in.”

“Oh, I can imagine. The only woman I ever loved was murdered just days before we would’ve been married. A part of my soul died along with her, and I will never feel whole again. My mother died of a stroke when I was only eight. The man that was like my second father got killed just days ago by a drunk fucking driver. My best friend who I loved is not who I thought she was. Don’t you dare tell me I don’t know what you’re feeling, because had I been on the other side of the law, I could’ve been you.” She said, deciding that the truth would be the best way to overwhelm his senses.

“A stroke. A drunk driver. A murder.” The guy summed up with an incredulous little chuckle. “You speak of these things, and think that it means you and I have something in common.” He said, getting fired up. “You are wrong!” He shouted, trying to stand up only to be stopped short by the cuffs that kept him attached to the table. Miller reached for his shock baton; Lexa waved him down. And the Chechen continued, now speaking with the profound sadness only experienced by those that knew true, senseless loss: “My parents were killed when I was five years old by a Russian airstrike on Grozny, by a Russian missile fired at coordinates provided by your CIA. They were not part of the Ichkerian Armed Forces - they were there to attend my brother’s wedding.” The scruffy man bristled, reliving the moment President Dudayev had personally come to him to inform him of what had happened. “The SVR decided it was perfectly fine to murder my entire family simply because my brother’s best man was an officer in our army. So they didn’t call it murder, they called it collateral damage. He wasn’t even there to speak of politics, he was there as a family friend. But Petrenko made the call and killed him anyway, along with my brother, his wife, my father and mother, all four of my grandparents, and a dozen of my cousins. The only reason I survived was because I had car trouble that day! Nikolai Petrenko, Robert Gates, Echo Teles, Andrei Volkov,” He began summing up, taking a deep breath as his eyes bored into Lexa’s. “Clarke Abigail Griffin, and Alexandria Alycia Woods. My family’s souls will find no rest until all of these people are dead.”

“So your family got killed by an airstrike against a terrorist hiding among civilians, and in retaliation, you decided to throw your lot in with the FSB and figured that the world had harmed you, so you were going to harm the world. Ordering and overseeing the deaths of countless thousands more people so, what, that other families would feel the same pain as you? What sort of fucked-up logic is that?” She questioned him, understanding how he'd become radicalized but not grasping why.

“We are what we are, Commander Woods.” The man sighed, all energy draining from his body as he slumped back as far as his chains allowed. “What is it that you want from me?” He got to the point at last.

"Wagner Group, the Mountain Men, the Chinese, the FSB! It all ties together, and I want to know who's coordinating it! Who is the point of contact?" Lexa didn’t hold back any longer, cutting to the chase.

“I’m sorry to tell you that I wouldn’t know who it is even if I believed that you would let my family see me.” Bledar spoke, but there was a strange gleam in his eyes that told her he knew more than he was letting on.

"You were the Head of Counterintelligence of the Republic of Ichkeria and then the Caucasus Emirate for twenty-one years. You fooled the Dagestan Special Police into thinking they were protecting an FSB asset instead of the very terrorist they were meant to capture or kill and tricked them into giving you a safehouse fucking mansion in Makhachkala protected by two dozen OMON and a hundred more hired guns commanded by Dmitri Utkin, co-founder of fucking Wagner Group. Don't give me that bullshit. Nothing that passed through Chechnya, Dagestan, and Ingushetia happened without your knowledge. Any notable Russians passing through making deals would have been on your watchlist." Lexa slammed her fist on the table, startling the man that hadn’t been so directly addressed in years. "We know you had contact with Evgeny Prigozhin. You claim to have been working on behalf of the FSB. Koroleva and Prigozhin are colluding. That much we know." She summarized. "So I want to know from you, straight from the source, who handled the diamond transfer in Gudermes. We know who bought them, we know who sold them, we know you oversaw the transfer, but we don't know who coordinated it. You know. And you're going to tell me, one way or another." She stated, now nakedly threatening the man. She glanced over at Miller to make sure that this was still okay, and the man gave a silent thumbs up in return: the worse Bledar suffered at Lexa’s hands, he thought, the more he would repay the impossible debt he owed.

"Please! I have a wife, I have three daughters! If I talk, then..." Bledar was actually pleading now, for the first time since she’d walked in showing not anger or sorrow, but terror. The terrorist was terrified. Now that was ironic.

"Who would ever know?" Lexa asked in a whisper, pointing out that there were no cameras inside this room and no listening devices, with the only ears that heard anything he said being those of Lexa, Miller, and his two guards.

"You have no idea how far they can reach. How deep their penetration goes.” Dagtaryev spoke defeatedly. “They can listen to what I say even inside this room."

"Who are 'they', Bledar? I can't help you if you don't tell me who it is your family needs protecting from." She asked him, but the man remained stone-faced, not saying another word. Whoever it was that had his family in their sights, it was somebody dangerous enough that Dagtaryev wasn’t willing to even speak their name in fear of their retaliation. That wouldn’t do.

All the while, from almost the beginning of their conversation, Lexa’d been fiddling with one hand beneath the table, making it look like nervous energy finding a release, when really, she was slowly unscrewing a screw inside one of its legs. The guards could see what she was doing, but they were consummate professionals who had been ordered not to interfere with Lexa’s business, so they pretended like nothing was happening, even though they wondered what the DIA Commander would need a small metal object for. They supposed all they had to do to find out was wait and see. This was all well enough: Dagtaryev was the scum of the Earth, and maybe they’d get to see some application of a special enhanced interrogation technique with their own eyes. It would certainly liven up their otherwise incredibly dull day.

"Gentlemen, you're gonna wanna step outside for what comes next." She told David and his men.

“I can’t do that, Commander. Myself and two of my men have to be present for interrogations at all times. I can’t make an exception without finding myself on the other side of the bars at Leavenworth.” He explained, understandably so.

"Then whatever you do, don't interfere. Whatever I do, don't bother me. Is that in any way unclear?" Lexa countered, David promising that he wouldn’t get in the way of an active DIA investigation and she could use whatever enhanced methods she deemed necessary as long as the man would live.

“Bledar, my friend, I can see that you’re scared.” She said, rounding the table to stand to the man’s side, somewhat creepily stroking his hair with one hand. “But I’m afraid that whoever it is whose identity you’re protecting?” She started, her voice taking on a bone-chilling iciness, “They’re not the one you should really be scared of.”

Her one hand now turned to grip the guy’s head in place. And with the other, she put the screw between her index and middle fingers, the pad of her thumb on its rear, and stabbed the rifled piece of metal straight through the soft skin of Bledar’s neck and into his carotid.

"You have about 75 seconds until you lose consciousness. I can fix this, but I'm gonna need something from you first."

“Sixty seconds.” Miller announced, shouting into his radio to “Run a medic to Questioning 307 with a stitch kit now!”

Lexa nodded her understanding and turned back to the man whose head was now on the table, gargling and screaming, his cuffed hands scrabbling in vain to try to reach the hole in his neck that was just out of their reach. “I wouldn’t do that.” Lexa tutted, “The only thing keeping you from bleeding out right now is this piece of metal in your neck. If I lose my grip and it falls out, it’s sayonara in moments.” She lowered her face to his level and forced her own eyes to drill holes into his as she spoke: “You know, it’s funny, how people are so eager to say that they’d rather die first before they’ll talk, right up until you’re actually killing them?”

“I don’t… I don’t know.” He choked out, leading Lexa to grab him and shake him all about while maintaining a firm grip on the screw. His eyes were already starting to glaze over: she hoped he still had the presence of mind to pay attention.

"Come on, Bledar, give me a name!" She bellowed, her face morphing into a terrifying rictus as she channeled the spirit of the Commander of Death. She had learned a thing or two from watching the CIA’s torture techniques, after all.

"She never told me her name!" The Chechen screamed at last, the gravity of his situation at last beginning to penetrate his foggy mind: this woman was seriously going to simply kill him if he didn’t answer.

"Describe this woman." Lexa said, maneuvering him back into his seat.

"She is tall, tall for a woman, about 175, 176 centimeters? She is slender, athletic, just like you. Um," Bledar paused, sucking a desperate breath in through his mouth, trying to think of any identifying features through the increasing brain fog his blood-starved gray matter was suffering, "she had... light brown eyes, light brown hair with blonde streaks, very clean face. There are no scars on her face, I mean. Her nose is... like that of Romans, almost as big as mine. Pale skin, like your CIA friend's. And an oval face. And she's Russian, but pretends to be American. That's all I know!"

Satisfied for now, Lexa asked one of the guards for his handgun. The man was apprehensive, but seeing their prisoner about to bleed to death, he handed the DIA spook his M9. She flicked off the safety and discharged the weapon into the floor at the far corner where the bullet wouldn't ricochet, caught the ejecting casing in her gloved hand, and pushed the hot brass into Bledar's neck, cauterizing the severed artery. Because it had only been nicked, not fully severed, it wasn't burned all the way shut, leaving just enough room for blood to flow to ensure Dagtaryev's brain wouldn't suffer from hypovolemia. It was quick and dirty, but it got the job done. And the guards here, hand-selected for their callousness, didn't mind at all: this was like free primetime entertainment to them.

Moments later, the medic with the stitch kit came in and almost passed out upon seeing the sheer amount of blood that painted the table and half the floor red. Miller ordered the man to make sure Bledar wouldn’t bleed to death while Lex told the medic to stick an epinephrine shot into him so he wouldn’t pass out. Miller told his medic to obey, and so, Dagtaryev was stabilized. And to his horror, the interrogation immediately continued.

"Your bombings. Those attacks were preliminary. You were softening the ground for something. Speak!" Lexa demanded. And Bledar, unwilling to be brought to the brink of death again when he might have a chance to see the remnants of his family in this world before they’d be reunited in the Gardens of Allah, answered.

"More than two years, and you still haven't figured it out?" He still wasn’t gonna spell it all out to this infidel bitch.

"You did a lot of damage to our defense contractors. Disrupted the pipeline of materiel and munitions, set back numerous DARPA projects by years, caused a chaotic reshuffle at a dozen major companies that cost us tens of billions. Your operation single-handedly delayed the deployment of the F-35 to where we're still not flying the damn things. I'd say that the motivation is pretty self-evident. You wanted to weaken our national defense. Question is: why?"

"That was all collateral." Dagtaryev claimed. "Don't you see it, Woods? You don't, do you." He said, surprised and a little disappointed that one of the people that had taken him down was so incapable of assembling the bigger picture. "The damage to the defense industry was secondary. It was the people that were the real target. It wasn't random mass killings: I used such powerful bombs to make sure that many people died, so the real targets would not be sniffed out from among them." The bomber dropped the proverbial bombshell.

"Explain." Lexa demanded.

"You swear my family will be protected?" Dagtaryev asked, a lot more contrite now.

Lexa looked back to Miller, who gave one little nod, sharp, curt, but decisive. "I swear it. You have my word." She told Bledar. "Now answer me."

"Many directors, managers, researchers - all high-level people with government security clearances - were killed and needed to be replaced. Who do you think made recommendations for the people that should take their seats?" He asked, then upon realizing that Lexa thought it was a rhetorical question instead of a real one, answered his own query to avoid facing her banshee-like wrath again, convinced now that American women were a whole other breed that the ones he was used to: "That was Cage Wallace, Evgeny Prigozhin, Gerasim Kovalenko, and Nia Koroleva."

"Not Clarke Griffin?" Lexa name-dropped the blonde for the first time, its utterance making her stomach coil in disgust and develop another coil somewhere lower of something considerably less unpleasant.

"Griffin? Your blonde partner who looks like Muscovite socialite?" Bledar, starting to drop his articles to speak in a more Russian-like syntax as he was getting close to passing out despite the epi now, "Prigozhin and Kovalenko want Griffin dead. They would never allow Griffin to hold any say in their decisions."

“You say that as if there were ever a possibility of my friend cooperating with the cabal. Why is that?” Lexa wanted to know, surprised that Bledar spoke of the blonde with a certain unearned familiarity.

"From one spook to another, I will tell you this: Nia is obsessed with the girl. She will never allow her to be taken to execution." The man said casually, making Lexa’s eyes bug out of her skull. "Don't look so shocked, Commander Woods. Even in here, they let me watch the news." Dagtaryev announced. "Koroleva has been... lonely, since her husband died. She has a son that hates her, a daughter that is an extension of her, and nobody that understands her." He psychoanalyzed. "I believe she sees Clarke as a kindred spirit. Something of a surrogate daughter, maybe. It is a sick possessiveness, but one that will motivate her to get the girl in her hands. It would not surprise me if you can find her at Lubyanka right now."

With that, Lexa figured she wasn’t gonna get anything else useful out of the guy. After telling him that he’d earned the privileges Lexa had mentioned, with Miller’s displeased approval, she asked the Warden to escort her back to the front gate, where the Suburban’s driver would still be waiting to take her back to Florence Airport.

"Were you really gonna let the guy bleed out?" Miller made conversation.

"He would've been fine if a medic stitched him back up within six minutes of passing out." Lexa explained. "Yes, I was gonna just wait for him to come back around and then do it again with a different artery, if that satisfies your query?"

"You Intelligence people are insane." David proclaimed.

"And that's why I'm DIA and you're prison guards. To each their own." She shrugged it off.

"Color me impressed, Commander." Miller whistled. "All this time with us, and he hasn't said a peep but for his endless raging against the FSB. But fifteen minutes with you, and he's singing like a canary."

"That's because you guys still have rules to follow and I don't. It's easy enough for a professional if you know how to tell when he's lying." She told him, as they reached the front checkpoint and Lexa retrieved her items, including the handgun.

Hoping that Monty’s doodad had done its thing, she concluded her visit and headed for home.

Alexandria, Virginia

That night

With a new fresh laptop placed on her home office table, Monty having already converted the raw data from his trawling through the ADX mainframe to a thumb drive with properly categorized file folders, Lexa began her querying by pulling up the list of current inmates.

First she searched for 'Griffin', but there was only one inmate by that name, and that one turned out to be a disgraced private surgeon in his sixties, very much male, who'd been convicted of deliberately poisoning some of his rich, powerful patients to embezzle a portion of their life insurance payouts. No dice there, obviously. So next, she narrowed down her search to females – only to come up empty. There was nobody named ‘Clarke’ at ADX, male or female, so she spent the next few minutes going over facial photos, trawling through the catalog of blonde white women, of which there were only a handful, none of whom were Clarke. Figuring that perhaps someone had changed her appearance to make sure she wouldn’t be recognized and murdered, she went over everyone on the inmates list, looking for someone flagged as male whose face showed them to be female, then the females with different hair- and eye colors, always looking for something recognizable but consistently finding nothing.

In the end, she could only conclude that Clarke Griffin was not at ADX, because she'd simply never arrived there.

The next step on Lexa's to-do list was to go over the transport schedules. Raven had been kind enough to narrow down her timeframe and told her to focus on Red Onion State Prison. Entering these variables, the list narrowed down to only one single result: bingo.

Top priority, maximum secrecy, high security transport. One single prisoner, thirty-six armed guards in full tactical gear, five military armored vehicles. No helicopter escort to avoid attracting attention, and a dozen potential routes all pathed out to avoid major traffic arteries. They'd practically been asking to be ambushed.

The convoy had lost its transponder signal and gone off the grid somewhere in eastern Kentucky less than an hour and a half after initial departure, its vehicles recovered by a helicopter search two hours later miles removed from their last reported position with all personnel accounted for as KIA and one prisoner missing. Signs of explosives being used, heavy gunfire, assailants unknown. Lexa frowned as she thought back to what Bledar had told her. ‘It would not surprise me if you can find her at Lubyanka right now.’ Raven would know. It was time to pay her Latina friend another visit.

End of Act I

Chapter Text

Act II: Waltz of the Matryoshka

Chapter 8: Matryoshka

June 20, 2021

Moscow Oblast, Russian Federation

The fight to Domodedovo had been halfway nerve-wracking and halfway pleasant: Clarke was alive, Nia was honoring the deal and bringing her own worst enemy into her ranks, the Antonov was stacked to the gills with the latest amenities, most tasteful luxuries, and most comfortable upholstery, and if things went halfway right from here on out, she would be able to seize her moment and bring Nia’s schemes to light in a way that she could prove to the world that she had never actually betrayed her own people.

But half the reason she’d been downing full glasses of vodka, whiskey, and champagne also had to do with the fact that she halfway expected the US Air Force to show up with a flight of F-22 Raptors at any moment and tell them to divert to Andrews AFB for landing or be taken out of the sky. Roan had tried to put her mind at ease, explaining how their plane had crossed paths with another of the same model a few hundred miles over the Atlantic and swapped IFF signatures with it so that the American ATCs thought they were tracking a corporate aircraft heading for St. Petersburg rather than Moscow, how the destroyed quintet of Strykers had already had their own transponders jammed as soon as the Russian SUVs had gotten close and then physically destroyed by the same drivers that had towed the wrecks away, and that even if DC would find out where Clarke was going, they just didn’t have the means to abduct her back Stateside.

All in all, Clarke believed that she’ gotten off to a good start in developing a working relationship with the FSB. She let her guard down minimally, trying to relax and get a little bit of rest, because soon enough she’d be working as a double agent, and would need all of her skills and expertise, not to mention energy, to weave her web of lies and deception so that Nia would continue to think Clarke was on her side until it was too late to foil the blonde’s own plans.

So they arrived at Moscow’s largest international airport without incident, and Clarke was actually starting to feel confident about what steps she could take next, already drawing up schemes to get closer to Nia.

Until she’d stepped out into the skybridge between the plane and the terminal and found herself with yet another needle piercing her skin, and blackness rose up to meet her like an old friend once more.

When her sight came back into focus, Roan's face swam into view. Looking around, Clarke noticed that she had no idea where she was: all she knew was that she was lying in a large, comfy bed in an even larger, comfy room, one with a rather beautiful view out over a distant heavenly blue lake behind the canopy of a woodland vista. This wasn’t the city of Moscow – perhaps a place close to it, though. Some kind of long-term safehouse, if she had to guess.

"What the hell did you... What day is it? She said groggily, her throat parched, trying to shake herself back to sensibility. At least she still possessed the presence of mind to ask her question in Russian instead of English. They weren’t the only two people in here, after all.

"Hydroxipam. Sorry about that, princess. Mother didn't want you to make a fuss during transit." Roan explained, handing her a glass of water that she disregarded all safety measured for to gulp down at once. "I'm impressed, really. It's supposed to keep you under for three days. You woke up after a sixth of that time." Roan laid out with an appreciative nod.

“Yeah, you know what? I’m getting really tired of people sticking knockout drugs up my arm!” Clarke groused, rubbing the feeling back into her appendages after they’d sat dormant collecting pins and needles for twelve consecutive hours.

“That ought to have been the last time.” The tall Russian man said in his deep voice, one that demanded respect and sounded like it carried wisdom well beyond his forty years. His voice was one that put the listener at east, made you want to believe him; and that was precisely why Clarke decided not to trust him.

Roan, seeming oblivious to the threat assessment being performed on him, continued: "For your information: this lovely house is your new home. Believe it or not: there's no bugs in here. Feel free to check around."

"I guess that's what all these Spetsnaz guys are here for instead?" Clarke countered, pointing out the six armed and armored men in FSB Spetsnaz gear loaded for bear loitering about the room.

"Not really." Roan said, to her surprise. "Look, it's self-evident that you aren't going to trust us any more than we trust you at the moment. We got you out of America, as you requested, but I can imagine you feel like you've been abducted from one frying pan into the fire, or however it is you say it." He translated the English idiom pretty well, hitting the nail on the head about Clarke’s thoughts on the whole situation. "So this is a token of... call it appreciation as much as a show of faith on our part. These men answer to you now, the new Head of Internal Security of the FSB."

Clarke’s mind was still reeling at the staggering implications of this statement, grinding her gears adjusting all sorts of preliminary plans that had been made under the presupposition that Nia was going to stick her somewhere in a low-level clearance dead-end where she could do no harm, and inflating her ambitions a hundredfold. She could do some real damage with a position like that, which Nia would know about: it was a classic carrot and stick situation – she was being given the opportunity to amply prove her loyalty, but also a lot of room for things to go wrong.

The blonde’s head was still spinning when she walked through the door. And just like that, for the first time in a year and a half, Clarke Abigail Griffin found herself face to face, eye to eye, with Nia Sil’nayevna Koroleva: the FSB Director had come to greet her in the flesh. Nia was an older woman, not quite elderly but close to getting there. She was well past retirement age for civilians, let alone Intelligence people, but wasn’t going to let the annoying features of old age slow her down. Her piercing hazel eyes shone bright with a wicked light, her dirty blonde hair faded but still immaculately drawn into a complicated braid that she wore like a crown, and though her face was wrinkled from decades of weathering, half of its creases could be traced back to significant muscle tone. This here was a woman full of malice, whose life energy still flowed strongly in her veins, and who would never, ever quit until she’d won. This… was a version of Clarke Griffin as she might be forty years from now, if she were to give herself over to the Dark Side.

"If I were to hold a gun to your head and told you to give me the name of another person to kill in your stead?" Nia began, asking a loaded question – pun not intended – as a cold opener to wherever this conversation would take them.

That was a classic Nia strategy brought down to street level. So of course, Clarke didn’t even need to think to give her answer: "Then I'd say that there's nothing stopping you from coming back for me afterwards, or shooting me now and the other person later." She laid out.

"Meaning what?" Nia asked.

"Meaning that I'd take my chances and try my damndest to kill you first." Clarke responded.

“Excellent answer.” Nia smiled wickedly. "You can no longer serve us in America, but you still have your uses." The woman announced. "I need to know everything you can tell me about US contingency plans, continuity of government protocols, and any infiltrators your country has inside mine. Unless you’ve really come here to kill me.:

"Let's cut the bullshit. If I was here to kill you, you'd be dead already." Clarke smirked, pulling together every facet of her own Ice Queen persona. Nia wasn’t getting Clarke: she was only getting the infamous Commander of Death.

"And yet, you sent your own sister to come kill me?" Nia interrogated with a fascinated eyebrow.

“The ones we love most are those whose betrayal cuts deepest. I will say no more on the matter.” Clarke clipped back.

“So you thought you’d use me as a disposal device.” Nia said, sounding disappointed for some reason.

“I thought I’d show you what I’m capable of when the chips are down.” Clarke replied, and Nia’s lips rose again.

"What about the attack in Baikonur?" She wanted to know.

"Sorry, but I had to get your attention somehow. Get you to realize that you and I share the same beliefs." Clarke said, putting on as smarmy a voice as she could muster. "I sacrificed my own sister for this opportunity, Nia Sil'nayevna. I strongly advise you do not make me regret it." The younger blonde said, this time with genuine scorn.

"Yes, the tipoff your source provided was very much appreciated. I never would've gotten the weapons out in time, or gotten the drop on your Navy SEALs, if they hadn't warned me in advance."

Clarke nearly had a stroke at Nia’s words. She hadn’t sent word to Koroleva through any sources! She couldn’t very well admit to there being a source if Nia already knew there wasn’t one: that would clue her into the fact that Clarke’s defection was staged, at least in part, and she’d eat a bullet right then and there. Nor could she admit that the source didn’t exist, because where had the information come from then, other than Nia’s people? So instead, she chose to neither confirm nor deny her handling such an asset, and said: "You're welcome. This source must now die."

"Don't take me for a fool, Miss Griffin. He's already in the belly of a shark." Nia revealed.

That wasn't good news. This was the first time she'd heard about this tipoff, and assuming Nia was telling the truth about it, it means that there was somebody close to Clarke's circle of trust, someone that had been involved in setting up the operation, who'd been talking to Koroleva. And she could think of no reason why this wouldn't be the truth – there was no other way the woman could have known to prepare for the strike so far in advance that she could've secured the weapons without anyone noticing on the SOG's side and set up a devastatingly effective ambush that her people had walked straight into. She'd hoped that by calling for the leak to be eliminated she might get Nia to reveal their name, but with this person already being dead, she had no doubt that every last shred of evidence about this collusion had gone to the bottom of the ocean along with his body, again leaving Clarke with zero workable leads.

"What is the South China Sea Development Group?" Nia asked her next question.

"Classified." Clarke deadpanned back.

"Classified as what?" Koroleva wanted to know.

"Classified as 'none of your business'." The blonde declared.

“I don’t think you’re in a position to withhold information from me, Clarke.” Nia said glibly, with practiced ease.

“Alright, listen.” She sighed, deciding to tell the top-level truth so she could conceal the organization’s deeper purpose. “Actually, that’s a lie. SCS Group is a private paramilitary organization overseen by my personal discretionary branch office set up for the purpose of eliminating China’s nuclear missile silos in case of a first strike scenario, but I can also call on them as wetworkers when I need someone silenced off the books. Satisfied?” The blonde followed up with describing the scenario, a mad, unhinged grin she hoped looked convincing splitting her face as she did so.

The best way to confess was by doing it with so much sarcasm that the listener would assume you were playing them for a fool. Nia and her cronies would expect Clarke to know that, so they would never assume her to resort to such a simple tactic, and actually believe her to be lying at first.

“For the love of… Did you see the looks on your faces?” “SCS Group builds data links in South China that we use to tap into phone calls made by shady business executives. Private army. As if they’d let me have one of those.”

“What is your personal involvement with them, if they don’t belong to your portfolio?” Another question, this one with a simple answer that actually couldn’t hurt if she’d just tell Nia the truth about; so that was what she did.

"SCS holds my personal slush fund. My off-record retirement account. Call it what you will. And I fucked their manager once, before I met my hus... ex-husband. She was nice."

“That’s all I had to hear.” Nia nodded again, moving on to her next question without further pause: “You knew that you were going to be arrested even before I did, and that doesn’t happen often. What went wrong?”

"I used the Göbbels playbook for a year and a half to keep the heat off you. But then they started suspecting me, and Baikonur sealed the deal." Josef Goebbels once said that the best way to divert attention to one's atrocities is to accuse the enemy of that which you yourself were doing. Clarke was thus saying that she'd made a big show about talking up Nia's master plan because it was so unbelievable that nobody would take it seriously because of all the noise. But the situation had changed, abruptly and dramatically. "The heat is gonna be turned up big time. Whatever your endgame is, we need to accelerate the timeline." She put the screws on Nia, hoping that by convincing her to act quicker, it would translate into some agents behaving just a little bit sloppier and tipping off Luna, or Titus, or Indra.

"You will need a cover identity if you're to move about Lubyanka without being challenged at every door." Nia said after a moment, digesting the information and apparently being satisfied with it.

"I suppose Artemida Chornoyeva is out of the question?" Clarke said, using a psychology trick Nia would likely believe herself too smart to fall for in her pride to maneuver herself into being allowed to pick her own cover name, because she had already prepared the basics of one years in advance in case she needed a Russian alias. That could now come in handy, if Nia wouldn’t insist on deciding the details herself.

"There are too many bookworms around here. Artemida would be well, but you must pick another family name." Nia shook her head: stealing the female form of Artyom Chernyy, protagonist of the popular book ‘Metro 2033’, was just too obvious to be taken seriously.

"I see. In that case..." She paused for dramatic effect, then gesturing at herself with a theatrical flourish: "Let's make Artemida Fedorovna Vlasova from Rostov-na-Donu appear."

Looking for something incriminating at Lubyanka pertaining to one particular plan wasn't like searching for a needle in a haystack, it was like looking for a needle in a pile of other, virtually identical needles. Whatever she did, if she wanted to hit the jackpot, she was going to bleed for it. But at this moment, surrounded by Spetsnaz operators that looked like they could do some real damage, speaking with Nia Koroleva and Roan Korolev, she’d already begun getting a read on the both of them, and felt more confident about success by the minute. She would soon have a new passport replete with a new identity as a Caucasus Russian, high-level access to all the personnel and restricted areas of the Lubyanka Building itself, and Nia seemed genuinely eager to have Clarke aboard. The pieces on this complicated 4D chess board had been set, and she intended to be the better player, no matter how many pawns she might need to sacrifice.

June 21, 2021

Lubyanka Building, Sub-Basement 4, Moscow

Nia hadn’t wasted any time embedding Clarke into the fundamental architecture of the Federal Security Service. She’d been introduced as the new Head of Internal Security, transferring in from the Rostov office after her predecessor had retired (a tired old man from the Soviet era Nia had actually asked to step down, which the man had agreed to with the promise of a very generous retirement package including a dacha in the luxury resort town of Sochi on the Black Sea) and holding a reception that Clarke had navigated with expert skill even though this was precisely the sort of undercover cotillion she’d always been glad to not have been assigned to – even flirting a with some guys and girls here and there, much to their appreciativeness – and then had gotten right to work… Only to almost immediately be summoned to join Nia in Sub-Basement 4 to aid with a prisoner interrogation. The normal cells and interrogation rooms were on the top three floors: windowless levels with a confusing mazelike layout that were a fortress unto themselves even within the fortress that was Lubyanka. Sub-Basement 4 was where they took those men and women that they wanted to question in the knowledge that they would never see the outside of them again alive.

In the heart of Russia’s most potent intelligence agency, listening to Shostakovich’s Second Waltz of his Seventh Orchestra on an earphone as she went down the secure elevator to the proper place, she called up what she knew about the situation inside the Russian Federation anno 2021.

Russia wanted, above all else, to offer everything and need nothing: to be fully self-sufficient in every respect and export for profits without needing to import anything from other states that weren’t its vassals to immunize itself against Western economic sanctions. All of the big Russian oligarchs and their corporations were strip-mining the North China EEZ for the rare Earth materials needed to construct photovoltaic cells. The Kalashnikov Concern nowadays built assault rifles and solar panels, Mikoyan-Gurevich built fighter aircraft and solar panels, and Rosneft drilled for oil and dug for REMs used in solar panels.

The Russkies had also figured out a way to not require American proprietary technology to keep their planes in the air, developing a new type of ultra-efficient kerosene that wasn't based on limited fossil fuels but used processed maize as its primary ingredient, making it cheap and plentiful in functionally infinite quantities. Huge chunks of formerly undeveloped land in the Federation and its satellite states were now occupied by corn farms, utilizing the latest techniques and technologies to prevent soil depletion, ensuring they would never need to buy foreign foodstuffs to meet their dietary staples, only important luxuries and exotic goods to show off Russia’s wealth and influence.

PV parks now stood where the old fission, oil-, and coal-fired power plants were once situated, forming the nexus of the power mains grid, while smaller arrays of panels festooned the sides and ceilings of every other building in the big metropolises and tiny Siberian hamlets alike; with the grounds of mansions owned by the rich and powerful often playing host to private PV parks. The mansion they’d given her was no different in that regard.

Yes, Russkiy Mir was fully self-sufficient, to a level that the Soviet Union could have only ever dreamed of. That's what made the modern Russia potentially a far more dangerous foe than the old USSR: Moscow well and truly didn't need Washington, so could afford to simply do whatever it wanted so long as they didn't step on America's toes to a level that the US would be willing to fight over the matter.

There were many voices that now considered America and Russia to be two peas in a pod, accusing them both of being stratocratic oligarchies led by cabals of intelligence and Special Forces veterans and active personnel masquerading as democracies under the guide of judicial systems left toothless to do anything to check the legislative power that wielded the executive power as a rubber stamp factory. And there was certainly some truth to this. The Russians were completely apathetic towards politics, and the American public just couldn't get its priorities straight, so somebody had to keep their hand on the tiller of the ship of State.

At least a bunch of spooks running the show would make more sensible decisions than a cabal of industrialists and billionaire tech bros would.

America had never been the same since the Bojinka Attacks, September 11 becoming the new December 7th as the day that would live in infamy. The people were baying for blood, Democrats and Republicans uniting for different reasons but with the same demands: to bring an end to the ideology that had given rise to these terrorists. You couldn't kill an idea, but it certainly hadn't stopped the US Military, with flowing support from other countries including Frange, Germany, the UK, Poland, and Romania, from trying to achieve this anyway.

Greater American society had behaved in a reactionary way, even all but the very staunchest Evangelical Republicans coming over to accept, sometimes support, things like gay marriage and female equality simply because the Islam that Al-Qaeda believed in was so violently opposed to these tenets. Many Democrats already wished for such things, and Republicans figured that if Muslims thought something was bad, the same Muslims had attacked America so brutally, then this meant that it was actually good by default. It was reductive and simplistic, unfairly universalizing, but that was how social politics worked: it all had to be boiled down to bite-sized generalizations.

Long-standing deep rifts between Protestants and Catholics had been mended on common cause, and the nation as a whole had rapidly secularized in the wake of this event, now boasting multiple openly atheist State Governors, for example, with the laws disbarring atheists from holding public office in 17 States struck down as unconstitutional.

And as such, nobody had raised moral objections to an openly bisexual woman being appointed Director of the most powerful intelligence agency in the United States and perhaps the world, at age 22 at that. The fact that Clarke Griffin had also been the operative that had managed to locate Osama bin Laden and his cronies' hiding place in America's former ally Pakistan and was responsible for their deaths had worked in her favor massively, too.

In Bush and Obama's era, most of the occupation troops had been male, and the women soldiers had been 'strongly recommended' to wear headscarves off base and let their male colleagues, even lower-ranking ones, speak for the US forces. During Woods I, that had shifted dramatically: combat troops now reflected the gender ratio, and women were encouraged to showcase American liberation instead. In fact, certain posts in the major cities were now deliberately staffed by mostly female personnel to force the locals to take women seriously, because to get approval for anything, you had to go through US Occupation Army channels, and the necessary permits were now only given out by female officers.

Clarke could remember reading an article once about how an Afghan father took his tiny daughter to a US outpost, the girl having suffered a grievous wound from a roadside IED. The FOB commander had told him that this outpost lacked the facilities to treat the girl and directed him to a hospital three hours away, only for the Afghan to walk away with the doomed child, stating that 'it's just a girl, it's not worth the drive', even though everyone knew that the guy would have driven three days if the girl had been his son instead.

The commander had been forced to let the guy take the girl away to die, his hands tied behind his back due to bullshit cultural sensitivity regulations. These days, under Woods, an Afghan father doing that would immediately see him lose custody of the girl and an ER helicopter called out to save her life. Granted, that girl would then end up in the US foster care system, so it was far from ideal, but even then her life would be objectively better than with such a 'father'.

So there was a lot that Gustus was doing right; Clarke simply thought he didn't go far enough. Because the American girls over there were now free to be free, which only made things worse, because Afghan, Somali, and Yemeni women could now see how much better they could have it, but didn't do anything about it, because the US troops still weren't allowed to do shit when husbands threw acid in their wives' faces behind closed doors if she went out to talk with an 'American whore' with her hair visible. And those were the people that Gustus wanted to eventually transfer political power to vote in their own government onto? That wouldn't be happening in a hundred years unless female equality was enforced in such a way that it wouldn't be made A Big Thing(TM) but simply the way things were: the cold, emotionless, matter-of-fact application of equalization that Clarke advocated for.

In a nutshell, the modern United States was a country where an interracial homosexual married couple who had wed without parental consent could use legally unregistered fully automatic M249 machine guns to shoot down drones observing their commercial weed plantation and controversial book library with armor-piercing high-explosive bullets, and nobody would bat an eye at this arrangement anymore, just tut in disapproval at whatever idiot though to breach private airspace like that. It was supremely ironic, how where American feminism had succeeded in gaining equality before the law but failed to establish it in practice, it was a devastating attack by misogynistic Wahhabi Islamists that brought about practical gender equality in America. The fact that millions of women had enlisted into frontline units, saw combat on the zero line, and proves that they made up for shorter endurance by being even more vicious fighters than their male counterparts that it was finally acknowledged that women were just as capable, and hordes of soldiers returning home had carried this cultural change over into civilian life. The first wave of girls with guns coming home had run out and patience and had precisely zero fucks to give, so much so that the changes they forced through ensured that Clarke and Lexa had grown up feeling like being lesbian was about as important a trait as having blue or green eyes.

America was waging a global war on terrorism. Mother Russia needed a buffer zone against foreign enemies, so she too was simply protecting herself from terror. Or so Gerasim Kovalenko, its Minister of Defense, loved to proclaim.

Out in Africa, in the countries of Mali, Namibia, Zimbabwe, and the Central African Republic that now only existed as independent polities nominally but were really firmly within the Russian World, their overlord PMC Wagner wasn't an occupation army: you didn't occupy four countries with 20,000 combat troops, you were there because they wanted you to be. Split between those countries, 5,000 Wagner troops were responsible for training national armies ten times as numerous and fulfilling the role of special forces 

They also weren't restricted to being a PMC: Wagner Group also provided a wide range of engineers and technical experts, finance people, infrastructure designers, and political advisors: basically, those that could fulfill highly educated and knowledgeable critical roles in economics and governance with a level of competency that you'd be hard-pressed to find domestically in most of Africa. It was a mutually beneficial arrangement – Prigozhin and his people got protection, passports, and a cut of the profits, and the regimes they propped up got rich and powerful, relative to their neighbors anyway. Prigozhin didn't offer master classes, but post-PhD courses for dictators on how to most effectively oppress their population and milk them dry for everything they were worth, and Moscow was just letting it happen. Because Wagner Group paid a shit-ton of taxes.

It was supremely ironic, considering how Robert Mugabe, dictator of Zimbabwe who had ethnically cleansed the country of white people, had invited Wagner in, including five thousand lily-white soldiers. But these were Russian white people, not Westerners, and that apparently made enough of a difference to not evoke the spirit of Rhodesia and its minority government – probably reminding them of the Soviets that had deployed in the thousands to fight the Portuguese in Mozambique and Angola.

The United Nations lay defunct, existing in name only and its meetings relegated to little more than formalities. Without US and Russian peacekeeping forces operating all over the world, tribal wars and ethnic cleansings in Africa would explode all over the continent, drug gangs better equipped than Central American militaries would tear the region to pieces fighting each other over who would have the biggest slice of the pie, and tensions between India and divided but still independent China might flare up into another major regional war. That was only going to happen if Nia’s schemes came to fruition: she had revealed that she intended to make sure – without saying a word as to how, of course – that Russia and America would have to look inward first and leave the rest of the world to its own devices, re-igniting old conflicts and resetting the geopolitical board to force the two superpowers to see that their cultural efforts were in vain and the only way to ensure a stable, lasting peace within was by declaring total war on the rest of the world.

In short: Nia's vision for global peace would begin by plunging the entire planet into a bloodbath. A forever war over there, to keep the people strong and united over here. There would be no more room for selfish decadence, no more voice for the bleeding hearts. It would be survival of the fittest via the rule of the strongest. All weakness in the national spirit would be burned away as those that stood against the strong, patriotic martial state would be silenced one way or another. That was Nia's ideal society. And to build it, she said, Clarke would play a role just as important as Nia herself… Although said woman hadn’t been able to pry any scraps of actual substance out of Koroleva just yet.

She was so sorely tempted to go on Birdseye and search her parents, her old friends, desperate to find out how they were doing, if they were safe, how badly her vanishing had affected them. But she couldn't: Nia would know, and make ruthless use of this pressure point. So she couldn't look at any of their ChitChat feeds, ViewTube uploads, or query them on some online newspaper, without letting Nia know that she still cared for them.

Arriving at the checkpoint granting access to the interrogation area, she found Nia waiting for her there. "I want to see how the Commander of Death handles witnessing a Russian interrogation. You'll be expected to carry out the same from time to time, and I need to see with my own eyes that you aren't afflicted with the delicate Western sensibilities that make you treat prisoners like people." The FSB Director let her know.

“I ran black sites that make Lefortovo look like daycare. Maybe I’ll teach you a thing or two.” Clarke boasted, playing up the callous, ruthless side of her nature.

"Disarm, please." A guard asked the young woman.

"What, you're worried I'll kill your pet prisoner?" She asked Nia instead of complying right away.

"Only the guards are armed in this wing. Even I don't carry my gun down here." Nia stated, turning over her own gun indeed. Koroleva was too powerful for the system to contain, but she did play by her own rules.

"Oh, I can give up my gun for now, but not disarm. The only way to disarm me would be to kill me." Clarke pointed out, handing the Makarov she’d been given over the guard.

"Good." Nia declared.

Entering one of the interrogation rooms, she found two additional guards, Ontari, and a man with a bag still tied around his head handcuffed to the table there.

"If you don't tell us what we need to know, maybe your daughter will." Nia’s ravenette daughter said to the man, having already interrogated him to bleeding in her mother’s absence.

“My daughter? No! She has done nothing wrong!” He said breathlessly, out of pain or panic. Every loving parent would do just about anything, including betray one’s comrades, for the sake of protecting their children.

“She’s the child of a criminal. Back in the days when Russia was still strong, we knew that criminals beget only criminals. Perhaps you’ll be more willing to talk if I pluck out her teeth one by one instead of hurting you directly.” Ontari mentioned, sounding way too casual about the idea of brutally torturing an innocent girl.

“Okay, okay, I’ll talk. Just don’t hurt my daughter, please!” The prisoner choked out sobbing.

“Well? I’m waiting.” Ontari said, rolling a pencil back and forth across the desk.

And the man spoke: “It’s the Ushakov. Operation Pennywhistle’s target ship is the Admiral Ushakov.”

“What is the purpose of this operation? Its goal? They want to blow up the ship in harbor?” Nia now asked.

“No. The nuclear materials are not in use as a bomb.” The unidentified man, who Clarke could now tell spoke in a Bosnian accent, admitted. “The Bosniaks have infested the ship with it, infected the crew with a form of radioactive material that will cling to them and spread!” He shouted with the second wind of energy that religious zeal imbued him with. “When the ship docks and the crew goes on shore leave, they will spread radiation all over Novorossiysk, and then the whole country. Thousands will die before it runs its course.” He revealed, making Clarke feel sick to her stomach, Nia angry, and Ontari? She just looked bored. “The crewmen are already dead men walking, they just don’t know it yet. But they’ve been exposed to enough radiation to make their grandchildren glow in the fucking dark.” The guy said, somehow able to make a joke even though he must have known that his end had come.

“You just saved your daughter’s life. At the cost of yours, of course.”

Ontari took the pencil in her hand, twirled it a couple of times, then proceeded to chew on its end. With her other hand, she picked up the notepad, put down a reminder to herself to pay the guy's daughter a visit, and, ignoring his pleas to leave his family out of this, promptly drove the business end of the pencil into his eye, through his eye, and into his brain.

“Send word to Black Sea Fleet command. Tell them to sink the Ushakov. Do not let her approach our harbor.” Nia spoke to her daughter.

“What shall we tell them the threat is?” Ontari asked, already pulling out her long-range radio.

“Inform them that the ship has been taken over by Bosnian terrorists and the crew are already dead. That is close enough to the truth.” Nia determined.

As the three woman left the level and headed back up to the main floor, Nia expressed her disappointment that Ontari had already broken the man before Artemida had arrived – taking care to use Clarke’s cover name when it wasn’t certain they wouldn’t be overheard – because she’d been looking forward to seeing the woman at work.

“There’s always next time?” Ontari opined. “I could see her look into his other eye after I took the bag off. Nobody does that unless they are like us.” The ravenette appraised her new colleague.

"You and I are nothing alike." Clarke said plainly. "You enjoy it. Yeah, I look into their eyes too, but not because I like it. I don't get off on the sight of seeing the light drain from my victims' eyes."

“You are looking for a higher purpose to death, then?” The younger woman inquired, curiosity piqued.

"Oh, nothing like that. I'm not looking for some sign of God's judgment telling me it was all for something that makes it worth it. I'm looking for..." Clarke had to think for a moment, because it sounded ridiculous to say it out loud: "There's no way to put this without sounding melodramatic, but I guess I'm looking for the essence of humanity, or any trace of it that isn't tied to our psychosomatic being. Something that separates humanness from our living body."

"The mighty Commander of Death, and she's scared of her own minion." Nia said, with some mockery.

"Maybe the thought of oblivion gives you peace because you know there's no devil waiting to torment you for the things you've done, but I'd still take that over nonexistence, thank you."

"Did you ever find anything? Any sign of what makes you you existing outside the brain?" Ontari, who’d already decided that she was going to like this American, asked with open morbid want to know.

"Not a damn shred." Clarke answered, much to her own disappointment.

Clarke killed people because they were a threat. Nia killed people if they got in her way. Whatever parallels the Russians were trying to draw between them, Clarke would play along and not believe a word of it.

When they spilled out onto the atrium and went their separate ways, Clarke was stopped by a little tug on her pants. Looking down to find the source, she found a small boy looking at her with awestruck eyes.

“Yes, can I help you?” She said, not knowing what to make of this encounter.

"Miss, are you a bad person?" The boy asked her bluntly.

The unfiltered nature of a small child's mouth made many adults fear the confrontation it could cause with themselves. But Clarke didn't worry about having to justify her actions to someone that could literally not comprehend them – to use a child's underdeveloped mind as a measuring rod for one's adult morality was an exercise in idiocy.

"That depends on who you ask." She chose to respond, trying to think of a way to hint at the truth in a way that wouldn't confuse or overload the small boy’s sense of rationality. "My people don't think in terms of good and bad like yours do. We question the necessity of things."

“You sound just like my dad.” The kid told her, making it clear that the comparison was a positive one. “My dad is in the force of special,” the little boy bungled the term cutely, “and he says that only Russia is his real dad. He says he was not really born until he joined the KGB, but it’s not the KGB anymore, and he says I’m too little to understand.”

"I was also young like you, once. But I was never a child. Childhood is a luxury that... wasn't reserved for me." Clarke said to him, allowing herself a small moment of vulnerability with someone too small to use it against her.

The Russian boy regarded her with his thinking face on for a minute, trying to digest the meaning behind her difficult words, and finally came up with: "Do special FSB people not have one mom and dad? My dad says that people like you and him have lots of... Um... 'guiding figures'? Is that true?"

"It kinda is. We have two parents, but a lot of people help them out in raising us. You could say that we have a hundred moms and dads, and even more siblings, even if we don't share the same blood. People like your dad and me, we're all one big family." She settled on phrasing it as. The boy nodded enthusiastically that he understood, and scampered off with a “Bye, my dad’s sister!” before vanishing. So young, and already so involved in thinking like a spook… Clarke wasn’t sure whether to be proud or horrified.

Night of June 21^st to the 22^nd

Pushkino, Moscow Oblast

It had been a taxing first day at Lubyanka, but a surprisingly productive one. Her cover story as a Rostov native had held up well, owing to her obsessive knowledge of Russia and all things Russian, and she had now witnessed firsthand not only how dirty Nia was willing to play, but also what kind of terrifying enemies Koroleva faced that had radicalized her. Sinking a large missile cruiser of the Russian Navy and ordering there be no survivors, but because some Jihadists intended to use it as a platform for nuclear terrorism, if the story was true? That was what Clarke would do as well.

Padding over into her new bedroom, she was startled to find Roan already there.

“Roan. Come to interrogate me some more?” She asked him sarcastically. She was tired to the bone, but still too full of nervous energy to be able to go to sleep any time soon.

“No, Princess,” he replied, using the nickname she hated that everyone seemed to come up with independently, “I’m here to offer you to blow off some steam. You look like you need it.”

The man had just propositioned her, seemingly with no strings attached. Roan wasn’t bad looking, though, she had to give him that much. He was a fair bit older, but she didn’t mind that – nor could she hold a grudge against him just because he was Nia’s son. He supported his mother as Deputy Director, but it had already become clear that the two of them didn’t see eye to eye on all things, so he probably hadn’t been sent to tempt her into deeper loyalty. Not so soon after she’d been divorced by her husband of over nine years: but the past few days and weeks had been so stressful that they felt like they’d aged her by a decade. So really, why shouldn’t she be allowed to choose to get laid?

‘The things I do for my country and its people…’ She thought to herself. It was only halfway true. She’d never resort to acting like a Sparrow to get her way, too proud to use her body transactionally, but Roan was right: she needed to blow off some steam. And if this was how she could rationalize it to herself, then she’d grasp onto it like a lifeline.

It didn't matter that he wasn't Bellamy. It didn't matter that he was the son of her worst enemy. All that mattered right now was that Roan Korolev was good in bed. No, scratch that: Raven would certainly call him a sex god. Just what the doctor ordered to forget reality and just enjoy herself for a while.

That was a bad turn of phrase. Her mom was a doctor.

“Hey. Where has your mind gone?” Roan, sensing something was off, asked her with surprising tenderness.

“Home. Family. The parents I’ll never see again. I just…” Clarke trailed off, trying to focus on the silver lining.

“Do you want me to stop?”

“I don’t wanna talk about it. I just want you to fuck me.” She told Roan, and the man complied, doing anything she asked of him. He clearly needed the distraction just as much as she did. But when they were done and Roan left for his own house inside the city proper, Clarke could fall asleep at last.

And when she did, she dreamed of the first time she’d brought the whole ordeal to Gustus’ attention.

Executive Residence, the White House

July 16, 2019

"I'm not wrong about this, sir. Last time I went rogue and started chasing leads that everyone told me were phantoms and would never pan out because I was accusing our own allies of being deceitful bastards, I found Osama and Costia got to shoot the bastard in the head." Clarke finished her argument trying to get Gustus to declare a national emergency to those that needed to know. "I'm right about Nia too. The nation didn't trust me then, either. Why can't you trust me now?"

"It's not that simple, Clarke. We need more than a gut feeling to authorize something on this level.” He explained.

"But if they won't let me grab actionable intel, I can't produce it, can I?" Clarke said, thinking herself reasonable.

"My colleague in the Kremlin shares your concerns. But no investigation into Koroleva has ever turned up anything condemning." The President pointed out. “Or is this about your reservations about my foreign policy?”

"You know it isn't your goals I question, Gus, it's your methods.” She said, choosing to address his latter statement, since she was clearly going nowhere with the first. "We sent tens of thousands of female combat troops into Afghanistan, spit in the face of their culture by letting our girls walk about the country showing their hair, without a man to accompany them, give them to authority to stop and frisk Afghan men, and this pisses them off so much that in that sandbox alone, we're dealing with an average of 40 armed attacks against US personnel a day. Because we try to show them that women are equal, but then do too little to enforce it. It’s never gonna take hold this way."

“What do you want me to do about it, Clarke? We can’t force people to change their fundamental beliefs.” Gus asked.

"Punish them for their intransigence and reward them for adopting modern thinking in earnest, in what they do, not just what they say. You know, I do appreciate the way President Volkov runs the show in his Islamic satellite states."

The Russians had taken over by, after defeating the conventional military forces, stationing troops in every city, every town, and every village, sweeping them clear section by section the way the French Airborne had done to such great effectiveness in Algeria in the Sixties, giving the Hajis nowhere to run and hide but the open countryside, which other troops then scoured inch by inch and dousing the corpses of dead Islamists in the blood of female pigs to deny them entry to the Gardens of Paradise, until anyone that dared take up arms against Mother Russia was either dead or too terrified to continue fighting. It required immense bloodshed, but preserved more lives in the long run.

"The problem is also that we don't have the budget and we lack the manpower. We’re already stretched too thin as it is.” Gustus said, knowing that even the largest army in the world and all its allies cold only field a fraction of the total populations of all of the occupied countries.

"Every year, we pour trillions into development and infrastructural aid in these places, hand them over for the locals to run – into the ground, mostly – and then do it all over again. I say the hearts and minds bullshit should wait until after our areas are pacified. Reallocate those funds to the military, and its budget literally doubles. That’s how we sustain a surge in manpower. That’s how we can get to where the Russians already are in their geopolitical sphere.”

"I say that hearts and minds are necessary the moment major combat operations conclude.” Gustus disagreed. “We have to provide security to the locals and our own troops, show them that they're better off working with us than sticking to the old ways, and build up their countries so that they can have a Western lifestyle which will show them the benefits of a liberal way of thinking, of individual freedom, democracy, and equality. Most of these people are innocent, Clarke. They don't deserve to be punished just because they were born in an enemy country. And if their children are going to grow up in bombed-out third-world shitholes, of course they’re going to radicalize by the thousands."

"You think I don't know that? That's precisely- Argh!" She trailed off, throwing her hands into the air in frustration, taking a moment to breathe and find her bearings. "No, sir. They'll happily use what we provide, but this way, any cultural shifts are gonna be superficial, vapid, and hollow. There'll be people buying 'I Love New York' tee-shirts while building a dirty bomb to blow up Manhattan. If you want structural changes that matter, that will last longer than two weeks after we pull out, we need to first stamp out the old ways that all the insurgents cling to, with a fist of steel."

"You think I don't want to win all these wars? You think I don't want them to end? That I enjoy the prospect of keeping more than three and a half million American men and women overseas indefinitely?" Gustus asked Clarke pointedly, refuting what the Old Republicans were complaining about in their smear campaigns. "But I cannot pull them out if I leave behind half a dozen countries where the people wholeheartedly believe that we're the bad guys. They'll rearm and come at us again in a decade, maybe two, and all the people we've lost will have made the ultimate sacrifice in vain. If we go about treating everybody as a potential terrorist, lots of people are gonna figure that if we're gonna see them as the enemy anyway, then they may as well make it real. 'Innocent unless proven guilty' still has to mean something, even in places under military administration. Especially in those places."

Innocent until proven guilty, especially in these places. Clarke wondered, as she awoke, whether Lubyanka counted among them. And if her own guilt might someday be counted as a necessary evil and therefore redeem her in the eyes of the law if not the public. She did it all for her people… But would appreciate some credit at the end of it all.

June 20

DIA Headquarters

"We may have something." "We received word of a huge power draw at a location in Serbia that has zero reason for lighting up like a Christmas tree for ten minutes before going back to normal. Oh, but it gets better: the people on site didn't know it was happening, because the draw was external: they took little bits and pieces from a bunch of different stations in different countries to juice up something massive." "Now, that massive thing was a ballistic missile test launch, unscheduled, unannounced, but I think they wanted us to look at the showy boom tube so we'd overlook what else was happening at the same time."

"The FBI, being useful for once, pinged a suspicious wire transfer going from accounts associated with Wagner Group operations in Namibia to flagged accounts belonging to shell companies under Cage Wallace." "It sat in Novi Sad for a while being laundered through the Serbian government. The physical location of the transfers was not in the city itself, but in a military base just northwest of it, towards Hungary." "Commander, that base is controlled by the Russian Army. And it has an FSB annex on its grounds."

"The initial purchase was several billion rubles for something flagged 'ice cream. Sounds a little suspicious, no?" "In any case, that stuff got exchanged for a bunch of guns, the guns were traded for energy credit, the energy credit got converted to dollars, and those dollars ended up in Idaho. All in the span of ten minutes."

"I think we can nail some MM moneymen for colluding with a foreign enemy. Let's get our strike force together, we'll roll into Idaho, take them alive, and we'll have a little talk. We'll convince them to lead us to the people they were meant to be disbursing those funds to."

"No money, no equipment; no equipment, no army. We take out the moneymen, we cripple the Mountain Men. And we may be able to take out most of their trusted civilian-embedded operatives too. Force them to stop moving in the light, push them into the shadows, and they'll be as blind as bats. It's time to go on the offensive and push Wallace into a corner."

“Are you authorizing a day trip to Idaho, sis?”

“Not a day trip. A night raid.”

Night of June 20^th to the 21^st

Outside Post Falls, Kootenai County, Idaho

"Okay, people, I don't need to say this, but I'm gonna do it anyway: pack subsonic rounds. It's gonna be tight quarters, so even our suppressors won't be enough on their own, and we can't afford to go fucking deaf from our own weapons when situational awareness is what carries us through this op." Lexa spoke softly into her radio, using an encrypted channel under P2P protocols to not trigger any enemy SIGINT people that were watching the local telecom towers. They were about to head out, getting in their up-armored cars to drive relatively close to the place the enemy was using to keep its bean counters. They’d pull over about two miles out and hoof the rest of the way on foot to maintain maximum stealth. The enemy would know that they were under attack as soon as the first shot was fired, but things would start to move very quickly after that; so the longer DCS could avoid detection, the better the odds they had of totally overwhelming the MM before they could get their shit together and wage an effective defense. The target building was surrounded on all sides by low, gentle hills, providing good positioning for Lexa’s overwatch snipers, and it appeared as though the enemy hadn’t established a security cordon outside the building.

The people Lexa had designated '4M' (for 'Mountain Men MoneyMen) were ensconced inside a very large free-standing house just outside the urban area, insofar as it existed, of the town of Post Falls, Idaho. The state was proving to be a hotbed for literal fascists that embodied the old-school definition of the word just as much as the people of Vermont had taken up arms and resurrected the Green Mountain Boys to drive out the same sort of assholes at gunpoint. Vermont was a stronghold of the New Republicans along with Montana, while Idaho was the last bastion of the Old Republicans, specifically the radical faction of it that had taken over its branch by simply shouting louder than all of the moderates that still represented a vast but mute majority of the Grand Old Party’s pre-Bojinka platform membership.

She had her DCS strike force here to clear through the building, the State Police to secure a perimeter, and FBI SWAT to protect DCS from the State Police. Des Moines was leaning a little too far into the Heil Hitler side of things these past few years, and Lexa checked the Old WASP Rage Boxes(™) of being an employee of the hated Federal Government, while being a woman, who wasn't lily-white, happened to be lesbian, and openly not Christian. So it wasn't outside the realm of possibility that the Staties were full of officers that were sympathetic to the MM if not outright working for them, but the State of Idaho would sue the Federal Government with all the four pennies it could muster if its own forces weren't somehow involved in this operation. Lexa thanked her lucky stars that at least it didn't look like some bastard politician whose address probably said '1488' hadn't tipped them off, since all hostiles were still accounted for as present on site.

“You reckon they’re expecting visitors?” Tris, looking through the scope of her M24 sniper rifle, asked her Commander, calling out confirmation of numerous armed uniformed personnel on site, conducting patrols even in the dead of night.

“Nah, I don’t think they know we’re here yet. Their movements are too lazy to be practiced.” Lexa replied

The building was connected to net power – a connection moments away from being severed – most likely in order to not draw undue attention to itself. There was a fair chance there were backup MF cells that would kick in the moment net power was lost, but that was what DCS’ directional precision EMP emitters were for. Conexit didn’t like giving up its secrets to the Federal Government, but CEO Autumn had been persuaded to provide information on how to temporarily disable the devices, provided that they were of Infinity Corp design: 90% chance they would be. It was a four-story self-contained tenement building with shared facilities and numerous bedroom units that could comfortably house up to 16 people: there was still a good chance there’d be twice than number, because the MM combat personnel were Special Forces veterans used to hacking it out in the wilderness. There were two main entrances, no side entrances, and no known basement levels, so this ought to be a fairly straightforward affair.

“Be advised: our primary objective is to secure the moneymen. They are civilians, likely with only rudimentary training in firearms handling and running lightly armed. Expect handguns and sub-compacts, but the MM will want to keep those guys from getting in the way, so their operators will be placing themselves between us and our marks. Take the bean counters alive if at all practicable.” Lexa laid of the rules of engagement. “As for the combat personnel? We leave no witnesses.” She stated, much to Anya’s approval, as the nodded for Monty to kill the power. The lights inside went out, calls of confusion began emanating, and backup power… didn’t seem to be kicking in: Sally’s EMP guns were working.

And so it was that once again, the Defense Clandestine Service group would be taking on the role of Direct Combat Support, the alternative interpretation of the DCS acronym.

“Strike Force Flame, weapons free.”

With the issuing of this order, Lexa’s assault team moved in to engage the target building.

Lexa separated her team into two units, one for the front and the other for the back. Upon DCS gaining entry, the FBI and State Troopers were tasked with ensuring nobody would make a break for it by sneaking out through the doors behind Lexa's people and provide sniper support from the surrounding hilltops.

The frontal entry team, led by Lexa herself, with Anya and Tris, Lincoln, and Ryder forming the tactical maneuver team and ten other lower-ranking operators providing the meat of the trigger-pullers, stacked up to both sides of the front door, staying low and moving slow so that they wouldn’t be noticed by anyone looking out of the windows. Unless they had night vision equipment, which they most likely did, but the MM hadn’t had enough time to set this up yet even if they realized they were under attack rather than suffering from an inexplicable blackout, which would be any second now.

The rear entry team radioed in that they were in position. The overwatch teams responded in kind. Everything was good to go. Lexa ordered Ryder to ready his breaching shotgun, four others getting ready to deploy CF gas grenades: lethal grenades were out of the question due to needing to take the HVIs alive and knockout agents would take too long, so tear gas was the name of the game today.

As soon as Ryder fired his shotgun and kicked the door in, the breaching team deployed their grenades, waited for three seconds for them to start spewing their payloads, then a couple of seconds more for them to take effect. Shouts of surprise soon followed by violent coughing and retching followed from the front and rear rooms, voices from the upper floors calling for reports and just as quickly announcing that they were under attack and to get the ‘bill boys’ to safety.

The point man stepped through the door, quickly gunning down two MM operators in front of him, only to himself go down to an enemy standing to the left, perpendicular to the DCS man, popping off a trio of high-powered 7.62 rounds that defeated his armor and bisected his heart. Not that he felt it as such: hydrostatic shock had rendered him totally unconscious before the malformed lead had pierced his right atrium. This was the extreme danger that came with being the first one in: the enemy operator had a pair of goggles protecting his eyes and had simply held his breath. It was still taken out of his lungs when his chest took the full force of Ryder’s shotgun, his armor protecting his skin but still forcing him off his feet and sucking in a lungful of tear gas. The man began convulsing and clawing at his throat, soon to be stilled as Anya put a three-round burst from her HK into his cranium.

Hostile fighters were starting to mobilize from the upper floors, pulling breathing masks over their faces and switching on NVGs. With only seconds to spare, Lexa’s and the other entry team swept through the floor, executing those in uniforms and ignoring the ones in civvies for now: she’d tell the support teams outside to take them into custody later. She’d been right in her assessment that there’d be a lot more than sixteen hostiles on site.

She quickly set up an ambush, waiting for the MM to come thundering down the stairs, then lighting up the first three-man fireteam that hit the ground floor landing. Seeing their comrades fusilladed in front of them, those that were getting ready to follow behind retreated back up instead: the first floor was now firmly in US hands. That left three more floors to go against an enemy that now knew it was cornered and would be watching those stairs like hawks.

The enemy had NVGs on, though, just like Lexa’s people. That would be their undoing. The brunette quietly signaled her guys to close their eyes and pulled out a flashbang together with Lincoln, the two of them having the best throwing arms. In tandem, they deployed the nonlethal weapons through the railings running along the side of the staircase, bright white lights violently flashing out to blind the enemy. They were caught off guard, but retained the wherewithal to start shooting – at the top of the stairs, expecting a charge, not down into the well. This left their flanks exposed, so quickly moving up the first few steps, Lexa, Anya, Tris, and Lincoln each dispatched one MM fighter, clearing the way for the rest of the team to flow up the stairs and begin fanning out through the rooms on the second floor. One guy trying to hide behind a bed was caught at a bad angle and perforated before he could even turn his gun. In another bedroom, the second team’s assault marksman deftly executed a uniformed man who was holding a guy in civvies out in front of his as a human shield, blowing the fighter’s brains out through his eyeball, a rifleman following behind to clap the moneyman in irons. Two more MM fighters appeared from around a corner, firing into the hallway and forcing the DCS team to go to ground, Lexa’s people getting pinned for a second, but only for as long as it took for the other team to take them out from the other side. With that, the second floor had been swept clear.

The MM didn’t even try to defend the landing to the third floor, instead choosing to throw down a couple of frag grenades to buy themselves some time to set up. Flowing up these stairs as soon as they’d gone off, the team spread out and began opening doors to deploy more CS gas into the rooms behind them. The room off to the rear of the landing proved to be empty. But when an entry team prepared to set up to the nearest door to the left, a quarter of auto-shotgun blasts tore through the thin plywood just as an operator was crossing in front of it at the worst possible time, numerous pellets finding their way through the gaps in his armor and burrowing into his neck, inflicting lethal wounds. The door collapsed off its mangled hinges, the dead operator’s battle buddy deploying a flashbang in retaliation, the team streaming in to take down one hostile front, right, and left before declaring the room cleared. All that remained now was the top floor.

The sounds of arguing could be heard from up there, the moneymen engaging in a shouting match with the combat troops, the former wanting to surrender to save their lives and proclaiming that Cage would find a way to get them out of prison while the operators were having none of it and seemed determined to fight it out till the end. They were getting in each other’s way so much the civilians proving to be liabilities as always, that the enemy could mount no defense of the final landing, allowing Lexa’s people unopposed access to the fourth-floor main hallway. Gaining entry into the first room, two moneymen were quickly secured as a hostile fighter darted through an open door into an adjacent room, a buddy waiting in there firing through the opening yelling at DCS to ‘fuck off!’ and giving up his exact position in the process. They followed through the doorway, the shouting guy put to pasture as he was stuck reloading while awkwardly positioned beneath a low table, dying just in time for his running buddy to round another corner and dip out of sight.

This hallway wrapped around the outside of the building to spill out onto something of an upper atrium, where all additional rooms adjacent to it proved to be empty, save for one.

The remaining enemy had holed up inside a room with a door too heavily fortified for shotguns to do any good against, but this wasn’t a saferoom, as it had exterior windows.

"Snipers, anyone have eyes?" Lexa asked her exterior teams.

“Affirm. Drapes are closed, but we’re seeing targets on thermal. We can separate those with rifles from those without.” The overwatch leader reported back.

“Good. Whenever you’re ready, take the shot.” She told him.

The leading sniper fired. His bullet hit the glass – and deflected off.

“Shit, it’s bullet-resistant.” Lexa thought out loud. Nothing a few det charges couldn’t take care of, though. Anya and Ryder went to work setting the explosives at the door, placing charges over its hinges and the lock attached to the knob, confident that the enemy wasn’t gonna be shooting through this one but keeping their bodies pressed off to the sides as much as possible just in case one of them was packing AP rounds and wanted to try his luck.

Inside, there were half a dozen operators and four moneymen. Seconds later, there were no operators and four handcuffed moneymen. All they’d managed to do was shoot a DCS operator, putting one in the chest that was deflected by her armor and one in the arm that would require medical attention to stem the bleeding but otherwise proved to not be threatening.

“Alright. Alpha Squad, commence SSE, sweep this place and see what intel you can find. Bravo Squad, conduct back clearance. Charlie Squad, round up the POWs and stack them up out front.” Lexa gave her final orders of the op.

As the State Police moved in to secure the bodies and the FBI SWAT people prepared to take possession of whatever physical information and objects of interest were being brought out by the DIA specialists; amongst their number was a nondescript man who opened a screen on his equally nondescript work phone that appeared to be a control panel for adjusting screen brightness, but in reality, upon the push of a button, would send out a detonation code to certain exotic pre-placed explosives that would sour the Americans’ victory.

Two seconds later, a series of blinding white flashes went off, and all of the assembled 4M personnel keeled over dead.

“Shit! What the hell happened?!” Lincoln called out.

“Their eyes… are gone!” Tris, going green in the gills, examined the scene. “I’ve got gunpowder residue in their sockets!”

“Who the fuck has ocular flashbangs implanted in their eyeballs?!” Anya exclaimed, using a tautology

There were no survivors. This raid had been a dead end. The flow of money to Wallace and his people had been cut off, but all of their intelligence agents, combat operators, and non-financial resource acquisition specialists were still out there. “Mission fucking failed.” Ryder summed up everyone’s thoughts in a single sentence. They’d recovered a fair bit of information relating to financial transactions that may prove to have something actionable among it, but for the most part, all they’d done was temporarily remedy a symptom while leaving the disease otherwise intact.

In any case, the FBI would go over the records, copy them over to the NSA where Murphy’s guys would go over it, at which point Raven would pull electronic copies to hand over to Lexa’s own analysts. If somebody could make sense of them and sniff out anything they could pursue as a lead, it would be Monty.

But first things first: Lexa had a flight to catch. She had to be back in DC by morning, take a shower, change into more formal clothes, and then drive down to Arlington…

Because only hours after putting a few dozen people that deserved to die down, there would be a funeral held for one man that certainly had more than earned the right to grow much older than he’d been given the chance to.

June 21

Arlington National Cemetery, Virginia

For the second time in far too few months, Lexa Woods’ black Ford Shelby pulled up at the parking lot to Virginia’s most sacred ground.

This time, though, no Marine Honor Guards came out to greet her. She’d only heard about the burial through the grapevine.

Jacob Griffin was a civilian; had been all his life. He’d never been a part of the military, not directly adjacent to the armed forces. So the fact that the powers that be were making an exception and allowing his body to be placed at Arlington just went to show how much of an impact Jake’s word had had on the quality of life in the United States and regions beyond. It said that he was one of the heroes of this country.

She could see the ceremony taking place up ahead. There were many people there, just about everyone that Jake had known. Many of his subordinates from the Nuclear Bureau, business partners that became friends like Sally and Douglas Autumn, Gustus had come to honor his slain best friend dressed in a black suit and groomed more neatly than she’d ever seen her rough-and-tumble father… The Griffins were all avowed atheists, so no clergyman could be seen: in his stead stood Christian Griffin, who now had to live the nightmare of being a father having to bury his son.

And all around the gathering of friends and dear ones stood a cordon of guards. Not Marine Honor Guards, but hired men. These weren’t the sort you’d find on a personal protective detail, or bodyguards of the quality that accompanied the Autumns, as their PPD stood close to them looking much beefier and much more solemn. Even they had come to know and love Jake: the man had just had that effect on people. He was so genuine it’d been impossible not to life him.

Lexa started down the path, Anya following closely behind still trying to talk Lexa out of showing up, which the younger brunette tuned out, determined to not be stopped. But as soon as she tried to make her approach, three private security guards walked to stand line abreast on the path, blocking her way. These guys were dressed in business suits that clung too tightly to their frames to conceal armors beneath them, and they had handguns strapped into hip holsters on them, but were very lightly armed: bodyguards meant to protect against hecklers and muggers and such, not combat personnel. Still, the fact that they were here at all, desecrating the grounds of Arlington by standing with guns where only the Honor Guard should ever come armed, hit her the wrong way.

"Sorry, Miss, but this area is closed for a private function." The one in the middle, who looked to be in charge of the other two, announced without a shred of emotion. Just a guy doing his job, that was all.

"I wasn't aware there would be. I thought Jake Griffin's..." Lexa paused, swallowing to get her emotions under control. Just the thought that Jake’s body was laid in state barely fifty yards away made her want to break down, but she wasn’t going to give this asshole the pleasure. "…funeral was supposed to be here?" She finally asked.

"That is the function in question, Miss. It's invitation only. No invite, no admission." The guy said, brokering no further argument: in his eyes, the wife of the deceased who paid him had made her wishes clear, and he would see them upheld.

“I’m Lexa Woods, and this is my sister. We’ve known Mr. Griffin since the day we were born; we were like his daughters as much as his biological kids.” Lexa argued, trying to push past the trio to no avail as they checked her every step.

"Miss, be that as it may, you cannot be here." The man put his foot down, annoyed that some people just didn’t get it.

"He's my father-in-law!" She called out, her voice pitching up at the torrent of emotions swimming in her gut made themselves known. What gave them the right to bar her from getting to see her own family?

"Be that as it may, Mrs. Griffin made it clear that nobody that doesn't have an invitation is allowed to attend." The head guard said, growing agitated.

"I can see my father right there! That's your President!" Lexa said, pointing out Gustus, whose distinctive bushy beard, even slicked with whatever hair care product he’d put in it, was one of a kind.

"President Woods was invited, Commander. You and Lieutenant Woods were not." The man said, infuriatingly calm. He didn’t have a care about the grief he was amplifying with his obstinacy.

"Here's my fucking invite." Lexa growled, pushing her DIA badge into the guard’s face. These private security goons couldn’t legally defy an order from a Department of Defense official, especially not on military-owned land. "Now get out of my way before I have you arrested." She hissed, desperate to see Jake one last time even if it meant pulling rank.

"Alexandria Woods, you are not welcome here. Doctor Griffin made it crystal clear she doesn't want to see you today." The guard said, growing angry. "You wanna gatecrash her husband's funeral, be my guest. But I'll take no responsibility for what happens next." He snarled at her, but wisely stepped out of the way.

"Lex, it's not worth it." Anya spoke up, grabbing her arm to try and drag her away back down the path. Lexa shook off her sister's grip, Anya looking at her with a mixture of pity, understanding, and concern that Lexa didn’t care to be on the receiving end of: she didn’t want pity, she wanted her people back, though knowing what she wanted was impossible.

As soon as Abby felt that something was off, she turned her head and saw red. She came storming over like a hurricane, her eyed red-rimmed and puffy, thick, hot tears still leaking from their corners even as the Griffin matriarch’s expression morphed into one of pure rage.

“Lexa Woods. Commander.” Abby began, spitting out the last word like it was a curse.

“Abby, I know you can’t be happy to see me, but I’m not here to fight.” Lexa began, “I just wanted to see Jake-”

“I gave you my daughter, and now she’s dead. I trusted you to help keep Costia safe, and you did, but now that she’s gone, you went and took my other daughter from me too.” The older woman said, her voice raw with anger and sorrow. Lexa heard her ow nagging thoughts of guilt about the part she’d played in Clarke’s conviction verbalized and thrown in her face by Abigail, and it hit her far more forcefully that Dr. Griffin’s fists might have: like a flaming sword being rammed into her gut. Why couldn’t she just switch off her emotions the way Clarke always could?

“I won’t apologize for speaking my opinion.” Lexa defended herself. “All they did was ask me to confirm things that we already knew: that she was losing her mind over this obsession of hers.” The excuse sounded hollow even to her own ears.

“You called for Clarke to be punished to the greatest extent of the law. In Federal treason cases, that means death. Don’t pretend like you didn’t know. You know damn well that my Clarke didn’t betray anybody, and you turned against her anyway.” Abby stated what was nothing less than the truth as it was known to her, and Lexa felt her heart sink into her shoes.  “You don’t deserve to be here, Lexa. Jake would be so ashamed of you. You’re no family of mine.” She said, setting off a landmine beneath Lexa’s feet that blew up what was left of her heart. Jake would never say it, but she could see it in his eyes the few times she’d spoken with him after Clarke’s arrest: he had been disappointed. And the fact that Abby knew about it was almost more than she could bear. “Get out of here. Leave me to say goodbye to my husband in peace. Don’t you think you’ve caused this family enough pain already?”

“The pain I caused?” She said bac, switching gears as sadness transmuted into a sort of pressure wave of anger that she simply couldn’t contain. “I’m not the one that got Costia killed. I’m not the one that pulled the wool over everyone’s eyes to better betray us. I’m not the one who-” Lexa snapped, firmly pushed on the defensive in an impossible position.

“Shut up. Just shut up.” Abby demanded. “It was that bitch Koroleva who killed Costia. She may not have pulled the trigger, she didn’t wield the knife, but it was her that did it, not Clarke.” The elder Griffin insisted, spitting mad that Lexa could even entertain thoughts of it being any other way. “And you? You were the prime character witness. They wanted to hear your opinion above all others’. Clarke may not have been executed, but the place they put her in might as well be worse than Hell.” She choked out, horrified at what her sweet girl was being put through right this second. “You killed Clarke, Lexa. You murdered my little girl. You did. And I will never forgive you for what you’ve done. Just go away, Lexa. Leave me alone.” Doctor Griffin all but pleaded now, just wanting the brunette to be anywhere else but here.

“Sis, I think it’s time to go.” Anya tried again. It wouldn’t do anybody any good if Lexa didn’t disengage and put some time and distance between herself and the devastated mother. Knowing her sister, she was only gonna press forward and make things even worse to where she’d push beyond the point of no return.

Lexa, for her part, was so tempted to tell Abby that Clarke hadn’t been put anywhere: that she’d been sprung out of prison and was probably free as a bird in Moscow right now. But that wouldn’t make it any better. Abby wouldn’t feel any relief at knowing her daughter might be in the clutches of the woman responsible for her other daughter’s death. And Lexa wouldn’t be exculpated from the fact that she had turned against Clarke based on just a few isolated audio recordings.

“I can’t change the things I heard at One First Street, Abby. Please don’t ask me to lie under oath.” The green-eyed girl tried to change tack. “I didn’t want it to be true. But the evidence-” She started to try to explain, but Dr. Griffin was out of patience and didn’t wanna hear another word, too exhausted to keep arguing and not eager, but ready to go back to her final view of Jake. And she certainly wasn’t about to let this judgmental bitch spoil her last goodbye.

“You only heard what Russell wanted you to hear.” Abby cut her off sharply. “I may not be a spook, Lexa, but I know that Clarke never does anything if it isn’t necessary. She’d do anything for her people, even if it means letting herself be seen as a traitor, because that’s the kind of person she is. And you, just like that coward Bellamy, you of all people ought to know that just as well as I.”

Lexa was struck dumb by the awful weight of the truth in Abby’s words. “…You’re right. I’m sorry.” She eventually managed to stammer out, her tiny ears burning red with shame.

“‘Sorry’ doesn’t bring either of my daughters back, does it?” Abby pointed out, the fight draining from her body as her adrenalin rush at seeing Lexa appear began to dissipate, leaving her more tired than she’d ever been.

“I…” Lexa considered, figuring that revealing a little bit of the truth might prevent the last frayed strand of the bridge that had once stood between them from snapping. “Abby, I found out a few things. I’m gonna sink my teeth into it like a bloodhound and I won’t rest until I find out the truth. If that means I can help get Clarke back, I swear I won’t hold back.”

“That’s too little, too late.” Abby sighed, too old and world-wise to still believe in happy endings. “If… If you can bring my daughter back to me, I might allow you to claim familiarity with my husband and children again. But unless you can, I want you to turn around and walk away. I want you out of my life. What I really want is to forget that you even exist.”

“I understand.” “Goodbye, Abby. I hope you can find peace again someday.”

Abby looked at her for five seconds, ten, fifteen. Then, she gave her a single, stiff nod, before turning on her heel and walking back to the site of the waiting coffin. Lexa knew that she was on sudden death with what was left of the Griffin Family: Abby hated her, Clarke more than likely did too, and if she wanted to be honest – a thing in increasingly short supply as of late – Lexa hated herself, too.

So as she let Anya walk her back to her black Ford Shelby and watched as her sister get into her own yellow Porsche Cayenne, Anya driving off to some unknown destination, Lexa sat there alone with her thoughts for a while. As the sun began creeping down towards the horizon, Lexa was struck with a powerful clarity of purpose. Then and there, she swore an oath to herself that she would do whatever she needed to do, and prayed to the Spirit that it would be enough.

Chapter Text

Chapter 9: Safehouse

June 21, 2021

Executive Residence, the White House

Lexa Woods did not take her oaths lightly. She intended to make good on her word starting immediately after promising both Abby and herself that she’d take another deep dive into the Clarke Griffin Conspiracy Case, and to do that, she needed more than just Raven’s support, which had been oddly unwavering. DNI Reyes had been a close family friend to the Griffin-Woods Clan for as long as the woman had been alive for, sort of a protégée of Becca’s who’d taken the young genius under her wing after her father died and her mother turned to drink and began to neglect her child, Rebecca Woods unwilling to see a then-teenaged Raven slip into the horrors of the foster system. She’d basically been something akin to a sister to the Woods girls long before then, although Lexa was loath to think in such terms, because Anya and Raven had been, pardon her French, fucking each other’s brains out for over a decade, but Raven was very close to Lexa and Anya, close to Gustus too, and besides Costia, Octavia, and Lexa, Raven had been Clarke’s best friend, and Clarke Raven’s. So it was understandable that Raven had some very serious doubts about the kosherness of the trial and the evidence that surrounded it, even though Rae had to admit that Clarke was the sort of person who could manipulate her way into doing what Lightbourne accused her of. She had the ambition, the motive, the skills – and yet, Raven felt like there was so much more to it even if the blonde had committed treason. The ravenette Latina had been mightily pissed at not being called up as a witness, even more pissed that Lexa had basically ruined any chance of getting the blonde handed over to them instead of the prison system, and now that Raven was aware that Clarke had never arrived at ADX, the DNI had activated all of her most trusted operatives to find out where the hell she’d gone. Lexa wanted to know this too, and so did her father. If Octavia knew what Lexa knew, the pale-skinned ravenette would most likely cuff herself to Lexa just so she could drag the brunette to Moscow to canvas the whole city looking for Clarke.

Lexa was very much of two minds about it all. She’d loved Costia – been deeply in love with her – and knew how much Clarke adored her sister. She also knew Clarke personally, more closely than anybody else, and while this made her aware that the blonde would take extreme measures and ignore all orders to the contrary if it pertained to some course of action she was convinced would be for the greater good, she couldn’t reconcile that with the fact that the woman was still human and cared so deeply for her family that she’d always done her absolute best to actively shield them from the fallout of being associated with the CIA Agency Director. Still, she just couldn’t shake the feelings of… anger, disappointment, and sorrow: she’d even told Clarke at Costia’s funeral that Little Griffin hadn’t been responsible, only Nia was, but now, she wasn’t sure about that anymore, either. Would Clarke sacrifice Costia to be able to get closer to Nia? Lexa honestly couldn’t say whether that was a burden the younger Griffin was willing to bear, and that there was even a possibility that she might disturbed Lexa immensely.

After the media tempest of the trial, everything had been hushed up. They had their culprit, their traitor to showboat and parade around, only they'd never done that. The woman had simply disappeared off the face of the Earth, and nobody was talking about it anymore. Whoever had given the order, the newspapers, talk show hosts, and even predatory politicians hoping to make a quick career jump by pretending like they'd been a part of bringing down the disavowed CIA Agency Director weren't screaming from the rooftops, and that was deeply disturbing. The obvious coverup was obvious: everyone was being hushed to bury the story, but nobody she talked to was able to tell her why. The only thing she knew for sure was that the orders hadn't come from her father, nor Reyes, Hilker, Murphy, or Templar, certainly not from Sydney or Lightbourne: they were legitimate, they were legally binding, they were being actively enforced, and they seemed to have come from nowhere. Every inroad she made, she was met with legal roadblocks - it was as if the orders had materialized in the void and insinuated themselves into existence already in effect. Something about its wording looked familiar: about how 'this system of ours must be protected from within and without', sounding like the way Clarke sometimes used to talk about things. But if these were Griffin's friends shielding her, they weren't any friends that Lexa knew of - certainly nobody with the authority to simply issue commands to kill the biggest news sensation of the century since 9/11 would actually be willing to do so! Then again, show Lexa an honest politician with zero skeletons in the closet, and she'd show you a liar: that even included her own father. It was just part and parcel of statecraft: everyone else lied, so if you didn’t, you’d be at a permanent disadvantage.

Clarke had gone on record, not long before everything went off the rails, holding interviews about what she believed were Gustus’ failings and shortcomings as a wartime President presiding over a small array of states under military occupation that just weren’t being pacified; and arguing in favor of an expanded policy of interventionism to bring states like Venezuela, Colombia, and Cuba under direct US control, which Gustus had given his own interviews about stating that the US couldn’t go around launching preventative interventions just because a foreign country might grow to pose a threat, saying that it would turn the entire world against America. Knowing Gustus Woods as only a daughter could know her father, this could just as easily be a last-ditch effort to preserve the tattered remnants of the UN and its rules-based international order as a lie wrapped in the truth simply because the US couldn't roll up on any other hostile countries like Venezuela anymore since there were barely enough soldiers left to protect America herself. Her dad had been an Army Ranger, wading neck-deep through the shit of mission after mission for 17 years and resigning to a political career only after his first daughter was born. He was certainly no craven, nor the type to shy away from a confrontation.

But then, if troop shortages due to foreign deployments were the problem... It was still Gustus who'd decided that Afghanistan was best controlled with kid gloves and not by showing the Hajis the only language they respected – that of peace through superior firepower and the willingness to apply it, and it was her father actively choosing not to emulate the proven-successful Russian strategy of demolishing the local traditions instead of trying to fruitlessly integrate them into a liberal Western worldview, meaning that those troops would simply never be made available because they'd have to stay there forever. This strategy had worked in Germany after World War Two because the Germans had been at least respectful of the ideas of individual freedom and personal liberty, and frankly because they'd been forced to adopt this system so thoroughly that the people had internalized it and made it their own. This forcefulness was not being seen in Syria or Iraq, and that made the locals perceive the Americans as being too weak to go the distance, so they'd simply never quit fighting for the right to brutally oppress others.

In other words: while Lexa certainly couldn’t get on board with Clarke’s actions, she completely understood her arguments and even agreed with them. Still, in Lexa’s worldview, that did not mean the CIA could just act unilaterally without consulting the American people and going through the proper decision-making channels along the chain of command that had been assembled for very reasons such as this.

It was increasingly apparent that Lexa’s hunt for the Mountain Men and Clarke’s hunt for Nia Koroleva and the FSB were interrelated, though she couldn’t say yet how they were connected. PMC Wagner was the point of overlap between the two operations; and then there were the money launderers that seemed to work with everyone. How the Chinese in Seattle were involved in this remained to be seen. Being Asians, they would not be allies of the white supremacist Mountain Men nor the ethno-nationalist Wagner Group. Then again, there were those among them that would do anything for money, and strange times made for strange bedfellows. The PRC most likely wasn’t involved, not with its country being bifurcated into an American and Russian Exclusive Economic Zone and rendered virtually toothless outside its own borders. Seattle was home to a community of Chinese immigrants and their descendants who had left specifically to flee Communism, and a far larger community of people that had come in during the Gold Rush times well before the end of the last Chinese Empire who had built America’s railway network and had integrated into a beautiful fusion of traditional Chinese and modern American cultures, so ideologically, the Sino-American landscape was a mishmash that just didn’t mesh with Cage Wallace’s message that wasn’t just anti-Communist, but also anti-Asian in a wholesale manner. It seemed likely that they represented a neutral third party that mediated between the Mountain Men and Wagner Group, since neither side trusted the other; and using an intermediary meant that if either side tried to fuck over the other, they’d both take the fall as word would spread of untrustworthiness, incentivizing them to play nice with each other.

The People’s Republic of China was now a non-entity, its Asian Tiger economy revealed to be nothing but as much of a hollow paper tiger as its thrice-humiliated military. The PRC was out of the running for global power status, its territories now the scene of influence battles by both overt diplomatic attempts from Moscow and DC and covert actions by Lubyanka and Langley, even as the Republic of Taiwan, now officially an independent sovereign state, looked across the Strait of Formosa with hungry eyes, sizing up Eastern China and only barely restrained from invading and annexing everything from Guangdong to Jiangsu because the USA and RF had both made it clear that this sort of action would not be tolerated and granting special trade privileges to Taipei instead that would be more profitable than an occupation.

The USA these days maintained a standing army of 4.5 million combat troops, the highest number it had been in decades, but most of them – every five out of six – was deployed abroad, either to bases in allied states or as part of the foreign occupation forces across Africa and the Middle East. Especially in Afghanistan there was tension, with 400,000 American troops sharing a direct land border with the 'Stans to the north that were under Russian puppet regimes and crawling with Russian soldiers, but also between US forces in Romania, Croatia, Czechia, and Poland staring at Russian troops stationed in Hungary, Greece, Slovakia, Belarus, Moldova, and Ukraine. The Russian pocket in Eritrea and Djibouti was  virtually engulfed by the US military occupations in Sudan, Ethiopia, and Somalia, but an out of control Wagner was sitting pretty far away from US holdings overland; and Central Asia was especially vulnerable on the American side, while Europe was a powder keg ready to blow. For the time being, bilateral Russo-American relations were very friendly on the surface, and joint exercises between their respective militaries had become regular occurrences, but behind the scenes, Russia was in internal chaos and the US sat virtually paralyzed. In the Federation, firefights between the FSB and SVR/FSO were relatively common, usually covered up as gang violence, as President Volkov and Director Koroleva played their high-stakes game of 4D speed chess while Vladimir Putin watched from the sidelines and stoked the fires by supporting both sides, hoping to weaken them enough to be able to take over himself someday. And in the States, there wasn’t just the traditional deadlock between the Democrats and Republican, but also their internal split into Old and New factions that jockeyed for the topmost positions, constantly blocking and vetoing each other’s motions, all but rendering the US administration incapable off responding to anything quickly if at all bar for the unshackled military-intelligence community assuming responsibility to act, meaning that the republic-in-name was really led by an oligarchic cabal of Generals and Intelligence Directors that held the power to save America – or remake it in their own image after burning it down from the inside out, like Russell claimed was Clarke’s master plan.

On September 10th, 2001, the US Army, National Guard, and Marine Corps put together boasted some 2.4 million total personnel, with only 200,000 of these being combat troops. By September 10th, 2002, that latter figure had ballooned to 5 million. And even after some drawdowns and demobilizations following the transition from offensive to occupation force, she still maintained 4.5 million combat troops just in case: better to have a huge, expensive army and intimidate the rest of the world into not needing to use it than a small army that might be called to handle a conflict it lacked the numbers to win. Still, this was the absolute maximum the US could sustain without shifting to a wartime economy, and nobody was waiting for that to happen: even the Warhawks, the Congresspeople most pro-interventionism among all four major factions, were drawing a red line at the thought of turning America into a hollow state reliant on military factories.

The Russian Army was actually not one army, but two armies: SVO and MSO, respectively standing for Ground Forces Command and Special Forces Command. These days, the latter was not actually SOF, with the Army Special Forces being organized under GRU Spetsnaz. Instead, these abbreviations now referred to a tier system, with the SVO being made up of conscripts serving under the national compulsory draft system, spending 6 months in training and another 30 months on duty, essentially being used as expendable meat shields; and the MSO being the contract soldiers, the full-time professional army of patriotic volunteers that served for twenty or forty years as their lifetime career. MSO was far better trained, better equipped, and better funded, even if MSO had only 600,000 frontline troops compared to SVO's numbers that were closer to 2.3 million. Then, there were an additional 800,000 troops organized under MSVR, the National Guard Forces Command, who were tasked exclusively with homeland defense. With the USA’s population of 325 million legal citizens far outstripping Russia’s 140 million, the Russian military was disproportionately massive, but the Russians were hardy people that didn’t mind seeing a huge chunk of their GDP go towards defense: they’d tough it out for as long as they had do, especially after Volkov’s purges had mercilessly crushed the institutional corruption that had plagued Russia for so long, the man’s reforms effective enough to increase Russia’s GDP literally tenfold just by removing systematic inefficiencies and killing off the top men that were skimming off the top and threatening the rest to stop doing it or else.

So here Lexa was, in the Executive Residence of the White House once again, wondering if she’d ever have a conversation over the next three years where she was certain she’d only be talking to her dad instead of some combination of Gustus Woods the family man and President Augustus Woods.

Lexa had been a DCS officer long before she'd become the Second Daughter, something she'd never asked for, and her condition for supporting her father's campaign had been that should he win, he would do nothing to try to keep her away from the danger. No Presidential personal protective detail, no Secret Service shadows, no interfering with DIA procedure to get her posted to the safer sort of missions: that was what she wanted, and in the end, that was what she received. Technically, it was illegal for the First Family to refuse PPD protection, but Lexa desired neither special treatment nor special protection: she’d learned how to take care of herself from a young age, with free-range parents for the first eight years of her life and growing up very fast after her mom’s sudden death. She supposed she could cut Clarke some slack: Lexa also went her own way, it was just that she tended to follow the rules more closely – because she chose to out of respect for the men and women that had given their all to make the system work, not because she felt coerced to.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t like she could tell Griffin’s ‘Family and Friends Special Protective Measures’ to back off, but only because she just couldn’t find them. Exasperatedly, she’d written a note telling them to GTFO and stuck it to a tree for them to find, coming back an hour later to find it had been replaced by another note that said ‘sorry, no can do’. But for all that, those people weren’t actually doing anything other than keep her safe from assailants while letting her live her life, so they weren’t exactly being intrusive. If they wanted to harm her, they already would have: instead, they were still carrying out the orders Clarke had stipulated for them to the letter. And that only made her even more suspicious about the legitimacy of the verdict: even now, the condemned woman carried enough respect among some exceptionally dangerous people that they’d rather follow her orders even in exile than look to someone safer to pledge loyalty to.

Plopping down on a lime-green sofa with spindly little legs that were so much stronger than they looked, the hideous piece of furniture burning her eyeballs but massaging her burning calves like no hot water could hope to match, she faced her father, who’d already been sitting in a big white armchair with a genuine Cuban cigar in one hand and a champagne flute that looked far too dainty for his giant, calloused hands in the other.

“So, when were you gonna tell me about Jake’s funeral?” Lexa began, disappointed at being left out of the loop.

“It wasn’t easy for me to keep quiet, Lex. I never meant to hurt you.” Her dad rumbled, his big green eyes shining with barely contained anguish at the whole situation as he drained his glass.

“You were there, dad. You were invited. Anya and I weren’t. And you didn’t tell us anything.” Lexa accused, not really angry with Gustus, but at the whole situation in general.

“Abby asked me not to tell you and your sister anything until after the ceremony.” Gustus revealed. “She didn’t really want me there either, but Jake was my closest friend. She couldn’t disbar me because Jake wouldn’t have wanted that, but Abby didn’t say a word to me the whole time, either.”

“But still! You were there, and we weren’t. I wasn’t. I couldn’t be. That hurts, dad.” Lexa said, picking up the decanter sitting on a side table to pour herself a champagne too, the stuff going down like hot glass in her throat, but soon enough spreading a comforting warmth through her belly in a parasitic parasocial relationship with alcohol – she’d be careful to not try to drown her sorrows, knowing that inebriation only amplified current feelings so would make it even worse, but needing something to dull the edge.

“If I would’ve told you, you would’ve come with a lot more people, I feel like. The last thing we wanted was a confrontation between you and Abby.” Gustus spoke, clearly feeling like he’d been pushed into an impossible decision and chose the lesser of two evils. “I know you’ve been conflicted, Lex, and I think I know why.” Gustus spoke, but no, Lexa didn’t know why, and that was half of her problem. “Not letting you get to say goodbye to Jake was a horrible thing for Abby to do, but she’s hurting so much worse than either of us right now, I can’t even begin to imagine.”

“Just because Abby’s suffering is greater than ours doesn’t mean that mine doesn’t matter!” Lexa decided.

“I know, and I wish things could’ve gone better. But you know Abby is a creature of intense emotions, and for all she knows, you’re the reason that her last blood relative couldn’t be there to support her in her time of need. It isn’t fair to you either, but nobody’s reasonable when it’s about their own family.”

“She hired private security to keep me out, dad. Specifically to keep me away from Jake. That takes conscious effort to think of. That wasn’t an impulse decision, that was premeditated reasoning.” She determined. “Private security invading a cemetery! Their sort of agent isn’t even allowed at Arlington unless you have… Unless…”

“Unless you’re the Surgeon General of the United States, Lex. I had nothing to do with that, I promise you.”

As always, their conversation took a turn into politics, from politics back to family, from family to their family’s involvement in politics, and inevitably, they circled back to the elephant in the room, the main reason why Lexa had come here  in the first place: Clarke Griffin and what exactly the blonde had been up to when Lexa’d blown her door down.

"Doesn't it strike you as odd that Russell didn't call up any character witnesses that would have sided with Clarke no matter what?” Gustus opined, voicing Lexa’s own thoughts. “Octavia and Raven's absence was conspicuous to say the least, and the excuse that they were too close to be reliable is just that, because Bellamy, and you were just as close if not even more so."

"There's something fishy going on here, and I don't care one bit for it." She agreed wholeheartedly.

"I don't like this either, darling." Gustus started to say. "I've never had any reason to distrust Clarke. We had our arguments, but she never meant anything bad by it.”

“Still, it’s convenient that she disappears right before being stuffed into ADX, and right after I learn about that, a mutual connection from our past says that she may be in Moscow by now.” Lexa summed up, having confided in her father her activities with Clarke’s laptop and the somewhat fruitful interrogation of Bledar Dagtaryev.

"Wherever she is now, I fear for what is happening to her." Gustus said, taking a drag of his expensive cigar.

“I’m worried about what she might do if it turns out she really is working with Nia now…” Lexa mused. “Knowing her, if she wasn’t actually on Nia’s side before, the US did a great job at forcing her into Koroleva’s corner. Clarke’s paranoid enough that she’ll believe the only way she’ll ever be safe again is if every actor operating under the current US playbook is dead.” The impetus of the system would ensure that Clarke would remain a target forever unless extremely drastic orders were given to leave her alone, which might not even be obeyed, and the blonde knew it – in part because she’d co-written the modern counterintelligence operations manual – so if Lexa were Clarke, she’d stop at nothing to save her own life, figuring that she’d still be able to do more harm than good as long as she’d at least be alive.

“I can imagine that.” Gustus agreed. “Which is why I have a plan in the works to make sure that Clarke will be safe. But it isn’t gonna be easy, and she’s gonna have to accept that she’ll be a prisoner for as long as it takes to… settle things.”

“Which she won’t agree to in a billion years even if she agrees with your reasoning.” Lexa pointed out.

“So we’re not gonna give her a choice.” Her dad was resolute. “She’ll come around in the end.”

“Well, I can only say that I’ll hope and pray you’re right.”

“So do I, Lex.”

July 11, 2021

FSB Headquarters, Lubyanka Building, Moscow

'Artemida Vlasova' was quickly becoming one of the usual sights at Lubyanka. She could often be found diligently poring over data archives, cross-referencing and cross-checking, questioning one staffer, analyst, and operative after the other and making good headway cooperating with Head of Security Lev Kutuzov in purging the agency of SVR plants. All the while, she was collecting information on where to find the substantial intelligence she’d need to bring Nia’s plan to a halt, and in a show of irony, the FSB was helping the American infiltrator set up its own downfall.

Even at Lubyanka, the Bavarian Fire Drill Principle applied: most people didn't have a clue what was going on, so if you looked like you knew what you were doing, they'd fall in line. She walked the halls of the FSB headquarters with purpose, making quick strides to compensate for her short stature as much as to make it clear that she was somebody you didn’t want to get in the way of, her credentials and glowing falsified background paired with her wealth of actual experience she was now applying making the whole organization quickly grow to fear and respect the new arrival from Rostov, for when she called Kutuzov and he came to bring you to have a chat with Vlasova, you would almost certainly never see the outside of Lubyanka alive again. She was doing real work to root out and destroy Nia’s enemies from the camp of President Volkov, calculating that they were necessary and acceptable casualties in order to buy Nia’s faith and confidence and getting the FSB to let its guard down inside its own building so she’d be able to do her surveillance work more easily. It would all be worth it in the end. She had to believe in that.

She was also establishing a great relationship with Roan that straddled the lines between a professional working relationship and casual sex into actual friendship, even to her own surprise. Roan was not much like his mother and even less resembled his psychotic sister. He was actually a reasonable man, one who wanted Russia to be beholden to the will of no other power but itself and was willing to climb over mountains of corpses to see the Motherland come out on top, butt on the whole, he detested unnecessary violence and would choose diplomacy over lethal action if possible. In this, they shared many similarities. They were playing a game of ‘Work the Asset’, both of them using every trick they knew of to try to root around inside the other’s psyche for handholds to pull him or her closer toward the other’s agenda, and both pretending like they didn’t know that they other knew and that each of them knew that the other knew that they knew. It was exhilarating, if Clarke had to be honest, to match wits with somebody who was actually just as good of an operative as she was when the stakes weren’t life or death, as Roan had made it clear that he wouldn’t stop her from still serving America as long as she didn’t harm Russian interests along the way – which she was able to piece together were something entirely different from Nia’s interests in Roan’s mind.

Speaking of American interests: America seemed to be oddly disinterested in the disappearance of a certain Clarke Abigail Griffin. She wasn’t really allowed to access the American Internet – she’d butter up Nia about that later – but still had some sources, though vetted by Koroleva, telling her some things pertinent to her personal security.

This coverup was strange. She'd anticipated being plastered all over global news, her face taking the #1 spot on the Interpol Most Wanted list, but instead, Washington was covering up her disappearance, pretending like Clarke Griffin was in ADX Florence and by all means seeming to believe that Artemida Vlasova was just some Russian spook making minor waves trying to become a rising star at the FSB. The conspicuous timing, Vlasova showing up in Moscow right after Griffin had disappeared, was being chalked down to coincidence because the cover story she’d already pre-prepared was proving to do its job with Nia’s active help in making it come to life, but still, that even Raven didn’t seem to suspect seemed too much to be coincidental: somebody was actively pulling the wool over the Latina’s eyes.

She would continue to service this problem later. For now, she’d been called down to the infamous Sub-Basement 4, where another infiltrator had been apprehended and taken to. Nia was finally about to get her confirmation that the Commander of Death was her ideological partner, not just an expendable asset and ally of convenience.

It was time to burn the first asset. This man had been caught red-handed, accessing information well above his clearance level, using a computer that he shouldn't have been. It was an incompetent move, so this guy couldn't have been too high-level. Of course, he vehemently denied that he'd known he couldn't be looking into those files, but Clarke did recognize his name from a vague memory of a briefing a few years ago. So this was definitely one of the handful of CIA people inside Lubyanka – an agent, not an operative, an egg easy enough to break for the sake of the omelet.

The CIA was one of the handful of agencies of global significance that still focused heavily on human intelligence over signals intelligence. Sure, its analysts trawled the Internet, and more specifically the Dark Web, insinuating themselves into criminal networks, sifting through communications logs, and trying to piece together actionable intel from digital footprints, but not nearly to the same obsessive level that the NSA did. It was a simple truth that in large parts of the world, especially those where regimes and populations were hostile towards the USA and the West in general where they didn't have the same resources and technology as America and Russia, simply didn't have nearly as large, convoluted, and sophisticated Internet, or even telephone, networks as there were in the West. You needed actual people on the ground in such places, people that talked to other people, who observed and listened, who would report back their findings to the Agency with a quick enough turnaround time to be actionable.

That was the difference between operatives and agents. There weren't many operatives in these countries, because most Americans were white and among local populations would stick out like sore thumbs. Even those of the right descent would have a hard time passing themselves off as native due to it being immensely difficult for modern Americans to even emulate the cultural attitudes of the target countries. They could act as coordinators by posing as businesspeople, but the sort of intel that you'd only get from standing close to its source would need to come from people Langley could convince to spy for them. The easiest method was by simply offering them money: US Dollars were in high demand, wages were often low to nonexistent, and there was never a shortage of people desperate enough to be willing to risk life and limb for the chance of a better tomorrow for them and their families, but this ran the risk of the Russians simply offering them more to become double agents, to reveal to the Russians what they'd told the Americans or to just lie to their CIA handlers. Ideological allies were far more reliable, and commensurately more difficult to find. There were dozens of states around the world where even speaking to Americans was suspicious, and where being accused of it, even without any evidence, would be enough to have a lynch mob pointed in your direction.

So combining those contingent factors with the face that Russia was America’s only near-peer close enough in economic strength and technological advancement to go toe to toe with the USA in an arena battle and stand a chance of winning meant that the CIA’s assets in Russia, let alone inside the FSB, could best be described as next to nothing. Russians were fanatically patriotic, quite wealthy, and living under an all-encompassing surveillance state the likes of which people like Titus Templar of the FBI could only drool over. So to take out even one source of human intelligence operating from inside Lubyanka would be a significant blow. But the alternative would be even worse, so once again, Clarke had to choose the lesser of two evils.

Walking into the interrogation room, Clarke was surprised to see that nobody else but the prisoner was here. There was no sign of Ontari, Echo, or Nia herself, nor any guards. That was odd: those three loved to witness, if not participate in, these sort of interrogations. She also knew from prior experience that these cells were bug-proofed, because the FSB didn’t even want any possibility of internal documentation about what was really going on down here haunting them to come back later. Even still, Clarke had obtained an electronic doodad she didn’t fully understand but was assured would work: some kid of a metal coil with wires wrapped all around it attached to a battery that, when activated, would blanket the entire EM spectrum with white noise loud enough to drown out all electronic devices. So she placed the item on the table, switched it on, and then pulled the black hood off her victim’s head.

"You? I know your face." The bald man in his early thirties, whom she now knew as Paul Jensen, a CIA external asset hired off the books from the Office of Naval Intelligence, said in passable Russian.

"Speak English." Clarke told him, deciding that this place was secure enough to drop the act.

"Very well.” Jensen said coldly. “I take it you're not here about my assignment? All of Langley is out looking for you."

"That's beside the point. Did you get the intel out?" Clarke, pretending like she knew what she was talking about, asked.

"I don't know what you're talking about. You're not exactly trustworthy these days." Paul pointed out.

"You got sloppy, man. Your carelessness got you into this mess. And now, I'm here, talking to you, and what are you gonna do about it?" Clarke said, knowing that the answer was ‘nothing’: they both knew that Jensen wouldn’t be leaving this room alive. "Did you accomplish your objective?" She interrogated him.

"Will it save my life if I told you yes, or no? I'm not sure that I'm not fucked either way." The ONI man shrugged.

"You're not as dumb as you look, then." Clarke said, dripping sarcasm. "I'm gonna be honest with you: you're going to die. But whether that be quick and easy or by Nia's hand remains to be seen. And whether or not it can still mean something is now up to you telling me the truth." She laid it out for him to consider his severely limited options.

"I didn't manage to get anything out. I didn't even manage to secure the thumb drive before they took it off me." Jensen revealed, putting his last card down face up.

"The contents? The purpose?" Clarke asked, letting Jensen know that she’d been bluffing about how much she knew, but it was too late to matter now: he couldn’t scramble back without being slowly and gruesomely tortured to death, and not giving Griffin something to work with would ensure that it would be a death suffered in vain.

"I was supposed to send Langley a message with a list of names of compromised assets. Only that list would've been false. To throw HQ off the scent in a scramble to do damage control. Problem being that I needed real names, and those were locked behind a security firewall. Nia is playing Luna for a fool." Jensen explained, his logic making a lot of sense: that was exactly the sort of thing she would set up, herself. She’d taught Luna well enough to recognize such a trap.

"It looks to me like there's only one fool around here, and she's not it." She defended Hilker, for despite the fierce rivalry between the two, the only one allowed to insult Luna was Clarke, thanks very much.

"I did everything by the book. I have no idea how they set me up. They lured me to that computer, I just know it." Paul decided to say, wanting to make the most of this meeting with Benedict Griffin and at least put her to some good use.

"If what you say is true, this arrest amounts to Nia shooting herself in the foot." Said woman surmised, not understanding why Koroleva would prevent the mole from placing a falsified list of infiltrators in Luna’s hands.

"I guess I'm unreliable now. I couldn't hack it, so she doesn't want any loose ends." The guy shrugged again. This sort of politicking was well above his pay grade: he carried out missions, not interpret them.

"Who'd do the luring, if you've been a triple agent all along?" Clarke asked her next substantial question.

"Beats me. Maybe that son of hers, he always looks like he's got something going on behind the scenes." Paul guessed. The man was clearly shooting in the dark, but the mere fact that he’d pegged Roan as a likely source of resistance against the Director was valuable information.

"Why'd you do it?" Clarke wanted to know, always interested in knowing what a dead man had to say for himself, feeding her morbid obsession about the nature of mankind when staring its own oblivion in the face.

"What can I say? I'm a mercenary, and the FSB pays more.” The ONI infiltrator-turned-traitor summed up. “You being here tells me you of all people can understand, Director." He told her, as if he knew anything about her.

"You're just a cheap shit selling names for money?" The blonde said, flabbergasted and disappointed: she’d been hoping for something more… just more. “How much does she pay you per person, you damned rat?” She got up in his face.

“Heh. How much did she pay you to come here and do her dirty work by proxy?” Paul snapped back, calling her a hypocrite, and she had to give it to him: he faced his end with burning anger rather than paralyzing fear.

“Some things are more important than money.” She said noncommittally, phrasing things in a way that it could be taken to mean anything, therefore meaning nothing.

"I have nothing more to say. Go on, finish it." Paul Jensen dared her. She looked into his eyes, saw that there was no lie there, and by the way her blue ones shifted dangerously, his brown ones were engulfed by the black of expanding pupils.

"America thanks you for your service." Clarke said sarcastically, wasting no more time to draw her Makarov and shoot the man square in the forehead, putting two between his eyes. That was the Russian style. Two in the chest, one in the head would give the killer away as American, so when in Moscow, she would do as the Muscovites did. They guards had even let her keep her gun on her, and if that didn’t mean something, nothing else ever would.

"It's done." Clarke said to Nia once she’d gone back up to the main building and walked up to the second (first in Russian notation) floor, where the FSB Director was waiting in her office to debrief her, Commander Teles standing to the side like a sentinel watching over her real boss and Ontari lounging like a languid cat in an armchair next to her mother, eager to hear all the gory, juicy details.

"Good. I already knew this man was a double agent. You just proved yourself trustworthy, Clarke." Nia spoke, practically purring in satisfaction that her latest acquisition was already starting to pay dividends.

"You already... What do you need me for, then?" Clarke asked, alarmed that she hadn’t suspected a thing. Koroleva was proving to be a hell of a lot wilier than she’d anticipated: then again, one did not make it well not their sixties as a KGB officer without being the absolute best at your craft and suspecting allies just as much as foes: the allies of today were the enemies of tomorrow, and people tended to grow to hate those that had helped them rise to the top because their mere existence broke the delusion that they hadn’t done it all by themselves.

"I knew he was an infiltrator. I don't know about the others." The Koroleva matriarch said.

"Alright, so maybe I ought to leave a few of them alive, just so you don't run out of uses for me and put a bullet in my skull." Clarke challenged, knowing Nia would know that Clarke wasn’t amateurish enough to reveal a possible plan of action without her desiring Nia to find out about it.

"Doing this would risk you becoming exposed to the CIA and having a... Customer? assigned to check you out." Nia spoke, revealing a little bit more of the sheer extent of her knowledge of the inner workings of the Alphabet Soup that should have remained self-contained. "I did not go to all this trouble to free you from a prisoner transport convoy and bring you to Lubyanka itself just so I could kill you. I have other plans for you, great plans indeed."

The Shop was America's first and last line of defense, its Customers both the ones you sent out when you wanted to prevent a full-scale war with a single bullet to a single person's brain and the ones you deployed to end a war via the application of a scythe that would mow down the enemy's chain of command until so many links were broken that US regular forces wouldn't be met with an organized army, but a scattered, blind, deaf, disorganized mess of halfway paralyzed units that could be reduced piecemeal via defeat in detail. Costia had been a Customer. Clarke, by virtue of drawing breath, was still a Customer. Glass and Luke Sorenson were, too, though Luna Hilker and Timothy Tallcliffe weren’t. Point being that only Customers themselves, and their support staff at The Shop, were even meant to know that the Autonomous Special Purpose Unit existed – even DNI Reyes wasn’t privy to it – so this only further confirmed Clarke’s suspicions that Nia had people embedded inside the highest levels of the US intelligence community.

Being in Sub-Basement 4 was a far less unpleasant experience when you were the one doing the executing rather than the one being executed, Clarke had to admit the self-evident. But Paul Jensen’s death, and the things he had revealed right before she’d plugged him, had indeed served Clarke’s true purpose well, and with it, the worthless sellout had, albeit unwittingly, done America a great service after all.

Maybe Roan and Nia weren't as closely aligned as the latter wished for everyone to believe. But maybe, she shouldn't put too much stock in the word of a condemned man who knew he was going to imminently die. Still, she had looked into his eyes as the life drained out of them, and with the man’s mental defenses evaporating as his consciousness dissipated, she had seen nothing but the usual: no lies, just the same old sequence of shock, denial, grief, and acceptance. The former ONI agent had handed her a critical piece of the puzzle: she just wasn’t sure where it fit into the big picture just yet. But that would come: Artemida Vlasova had entrenched herself as Nia Koroleva’s right-hand woman, and the Director informed the Head of Internal Security that more substantial work was soon to be coming her way, telling Clarke to be prepared to take a more active role in shaping the field for things soon to come. Score one for the good guys.

Chapter Text

Chapter 10: I Am Become Death

July 14, 2021

Lubyanka, Moscow

Colonel Vlasova was sometimes called to see Director Koroleva abruptly, and when Colonel Kutuzov was the one that delivered the message in person, Clarke knew that it was about Nia’s plans involving the American blonde directly. So when the call came this time, she shut down everything else she was working on and went up to the second floor office. Roan, Ontari, and Echo weren’t there this time – there were things that she didn’t even tell her most trusted top lieutenants – but there were a few of Nia’s bodyguards and a GRU Spetsnaz officer, for some reason.

“Director Koroleva.” Clarke greeted the dirty blonde with as much respect as she could feign, “I came right away, as you asked. Lev said it was urgent.”

“Colonel Vlasova, it is good to see you take Kutuzov’s word seriously. There is indeed something urgent that’s come up.” Nia began, leaning forward to capture Clarke’s full attention. Whatever this was, it felt a lot more substantial than the Jensen infiltration case. "I called you here because my GRU contacts have found out that there is a plant in my organization. More importantly, SVR knows that you are here, and they are not happy about this." Nia revealed, shocking Clarke to the core. She’d been wondering how long it would take for somebody to discover Vlasova’s real identity, but had always figured it would be the ODNI or CIA that did the deed, not the SVR.

Nia continued speaking: "I believe they may try to kill you if they get the chance. There is also a possibility they will try to recruit you. I have my own plants in their house too, you see. I am working the angles and will let you know which is which once I find out. This interest could turn out to our advantage." The older woman said, gears grinding in her head to churn out the path towards the best results. “In the meantime, I want you to purge the FSB of your CIA inside men. Paul Jensen was not the only one, but I haven’t been able to find out much about the cover identities of the others.” She told Clarke. “You were their Director, so I know you can recognize them even if you weren’t the one that sent them here. Point fingers, name names. Even if they pulled everybody out as a security risk, you will tell me where I can find the people that were involved, and Ontari and Echo will kill them.” She said, as if it were a foregone conclusion. Which is most likely was: Nia wouldn’t be fooled by stalling tactics, and the other two women were stone-cold assassins. None of this explained the presence of the GRU officer, though, but Nia wasn’t forthcoming about this new woman.

Koroleva told Clarke to go back to her own office and be ready to return to hear the results of Nia’s investigation.

She didn’t have to wait for long before Nia had her answer: it appeared that the SVR was indeed interested in recruiting Clarke Griffin into their own camp. It would be the intelligence coup of the century to get their hands on America’s most successful and one of its most knowledgeable operatives, and tip the balance of the covert civil war between Koroleva and Volkov in favor of the Kremlin. Of course, if they couldn’t entice Clarke to join them willingly, they would try to abduct her, and if she still proved unwilling, they would kill her just to deny her as an asset to the FSB. In short: Clarke was once again stuck in a corner, forced into working with Nia to remove the SVR from the equation to save her own life in order to even be able to continue trying to thwart Nia’s endgame. And the more dirty work she did for Nia, the less likely it would be that anyone back home was going to show her any sympathy, because in many eyes, the collateral damage she’d done to achieve her main objective would never be justified and not go towards balancing the scales, but be treated as isolated criminal cases that would still see her condemned again even if they had to admit she’d saved the world in the process.

But that was a problem for later. Right now, Clarke had to act quickly to make sure that there would still be a ‘later’ for her. So upon heading back up to Nia’s, she was resolved to do whatever was necessary to pull this off.

A tall, pale, blonde woman in military fatigues, with a name tag that read 'Teles' and rank insignia of a GRU Colonel was waiting there alongside Nia, and she looked familiar.

The strange officer from earlier. The one that hadn’t worn a name tag, hadn’t said a word, and wrapped her face into anonymity. And Colonel Teles whom Clarke had met before. They were the same person. This was Echo Teles, the SVR Spetsnaz Commander. Only she wasn’t: she was actually Echo the GRU Spetsnaz Commander, who was Nia’s top-ranking plant inside the SVR, whom Koroleva now revealed was fooling the suits at Yasenevo by making them think she was feeding them intel on Nia. One hell of a double agent.

"You must sign these forms." The woman said in English, handing her a folder with some papers in it that, when she skimmed them, were your boilerplate black ops liability waivers accepting that you’d be a deniable asset who’d be cut loose and disavowed if you got made. Nothing personal, then: just Nia covering her own ass.

"You know I can read Cyrillic and speak fluent Russian, right? You can't sneak anything by me." Clarke replied, indeed in fluent Russian, as she saw no choice but to sign the documents – as Artemida Fedorovna Vlasova, not Clarke Abigail Griffin, making them legally useless since Vlasova didn’t actually exist, but Volkov wouldn’t know that.

"Good." The woman replied, this time also in Russian. Even though she was lily-white, Clarke detected a hint of Yakutian in her pronunciation – making her probably one of the ethnic settlers meant to outbreed the local Sakha. So that was the accent she hadn’t been able to place before. "Then you will understand that you don't have a choice either way. You either sign and gain our protection, or refuse, and we will inject an air bubble between your toes and give your body an acid bath. You owe us your life, so now it is time for you to prove your loyalty."

“I was under the impression that I already did that when I killed Jensen.” Clarke said back, no longer bothering with pretending like she and Echo were perfect strangers.

“That was you proving your loyalty to the FSB. Now you must prove it to Nia herself.” Echo, also dropping the charade, said back; not with hostility, but a matter-of-factness born of her own unquestionable loyalty.

“How do you want me to do that? Is this related to the SVR situation?” Clarke questioned.

It was Nia who answered: “You will make contact with Nikolai Petrenko. I believe you’ve met him once before.”

“Yes, he was the one coordinating the three agencies involved in nabbing Dagtaryev at Makhachkala.” Clarke confirmed.

“That man knows too much. He knows about you, but we are confident that apart from maybe Volkov, nobody else at Yasenevo does. In short: Petrenko must die.” Echo laid out the mission objective.

"So, what, you want me to put polonium in his tea, or something?" Clarke quipped, halfway joking.

"No. He'll be expecting that." Echo, apparently not getting the joke, said back seriously.

"Well, how do you want me to kill him, then?" Clarke asked, getting earnest.

"That's your problem to figure out. With your reputation, I'm sure you'll think of something." Echo smirked.

"Thanks for your vote of confidence." The American spoke sarcastically.

“Do this for me,” Nia spoke, “and you will be inducted into my inner circle.”

“As long as I don’t have to shoot up a Romanian embassy, I’m game.” Clarke said, feeling closer to her goal than ever before, but for this one immense hurdle standing right in front of her.

“How many times has that actually happened?” Echo asked curiously. The embassy hostage situation turned into an armed assault had been a major embarrassment for Bucharest, and nobody not already in the know ever had figured out just who had commanded the extermination of the terrorists.

“Only the once, but it’s still weird that it happened at all. I’d rather not do it again.” Clarke answered, not too happy at the thought of assignments that would end up with political families dragging your name through the mud because you hadn’t been able to perform magic and retroactively resurrect their murdered relatives.

The moral strength required to kill one person to save a hundred more was possessed by few. She had killed many, many people, but never murdered, not even once. Clarke and her people did not kill preemptively, they didn't take lives just because of what someone else might do if there wasn't actionable intel indicating a clear and present danger. That was a record she'd much rather have kept clean, but she was at the FSB now, so she would do what she had to do to survive. If she wanted to save America and the world from nuclear hellfire, she couldn't give Nia any reason to doubt her commitment. Nikolai Petrenko would have to be an acceptable casualty.

“If you want me to do this for you, there is one thing I’d like answered.” Clarke told Nia, knowing she didn’t have solid ground to stand on, but still trying to make small bargains because to not push back at all would be suspicious: Clarke was not the type to do as she was told without getting something in return, and Koroleva knew it perfectly well.

“I think I can do as much for you.” The woman in question answered. “What is it you want to know?”

"You must've been beautiful once. What turned you so sour?" Clarke asked. This wasn’t even working an asset, this was genuine curiosity, trying to understand Nia to get into the mind of her enemy, for sure, but also one person wondering how another, who wasn’t all too dissimilar, had gone down such a different path. Clarke saw herself reflected in Nia’s eyes, and it frightened her. If she could dig up some scraps on the woman’s redacted personal life, she might be able to learn something she could use to avoid ending up becoming such a person herself.

Nia asked Echo and her bodyguards to give them the room. They did as asked, not without Echo giving Clarke a dirty look at the woman’s temerity at asking her boss something so personal, but Teles did extricate herself from the situation.

Nia first took the time to pour herself a thumb of whiskey, a strong smoked Scotch Famous Grouse, and emptied the shot to steel her nerves: clearly, Clarke had struck something sensitive the woman didn’t like to think about.

“I was married once.” Nia began. “Fedor Korolev was a KGB Spetsnaz officer, one of the best the Soviet Union had ever known. The day I turned eighteen and my father introduced me to his protégé, I knew he was the only man I would ever love.” “Now, all I have left of him is his family name.” "He died for his country. A black operation to steal CIA secrets in Berlin went wrong, all of the operators involved were killed, and you can imagine who their ground commander was.” And Andrei Volkov, Fedor’s boss, his confidant, his friend, covered it all up. My husband was denied his due honors. They said he was killed in a helicopter crash during a training accident, destroyed every scrap of evidence about the mission, killed everyone else that knew about it in the first place. They only didn’t kill me because my father couldn’t bear the weight of ordering his own daughter murdered.” “To this day, I do not know whether Father did it because he loved me, or because he didn’t want to lose the replacement he had spend decades grooming to be his successor.”

“My God. I had no idea. I’m sorry.” Clarke stammered out, feeling a pang of actual sympathy for Nia. She may be a monster, but monsters were made, not born. And just because she intended to kill Koroleva didn’t mean she wasn’t allowed to feel some level of understanding and pity for her.

“I still serve the Soviet Union, because Fedor did.” “He would have never given up on the USSR. He wouldn’t have accepted this… dissolute, pathetic derivative called the ‘Russian Federation’, but done everything in his power and more to resurrect the legacy of Lenin. I cannot bring back my Fedor, but I can keep his dream alive.” Nia spoke, for the first time since Clarke had ever been acquainted with her showing real emotion.

"Roan is forty, but Ontari's my age. There's twelve years between them." She pointed out. “You must have known love again.” Clarke surmised. Ontari was younger than the Russian Federation: she couldn’t have been conceived in Soviet times, and Nia didn’t strike her as the type to engage in casual unprotected sex.

“So I believed, Miss Griffin. But you will not replace Bellamy Blake and find new happiness. Trust me.” Nia told her, correctly deriving the hidden question in Clarke’s statement.

“You were abandoned?”

“I was loved again. I thought I could have a whole family again.” Nia said bitterly, internally cursing herself for how naïve she had been. "Until I fell pregnant with Ontari, and he decided that he didn't want to be tied down by a child. I was loved, only to be betrayed, abandoned, and forgotten.”

"You're not the type to feel bad about killing for expediency. Why didn't you abort?"

"I couldn't do that." Nia said forcefully, angered that Clarke would be callous enough to suggest such a thing. "You are not a mother, Miss Griffin. It’s nothing you could hope to understand.” The Matryoshka, who had chosen her own callsign out of a sense of pride that she had borne children of such quality as Roan and Ontari, pointed out to the American woman who had once said on TV that she thought pregnancy was carrying a literal parasite and never would consider it herself.

“I have a feeling that Nikolai was also involved, somehow. Is this about me, or your own revenge?”

"Deputy Director Petrenko is more competent than Director Medvedev himself. Taking out Nikolai will cripple the SVR." Nia laid out. "And yes, there is something personal as well." She admitted. "Nikolai is married to a fine woman. Under a fake identity, of course: an Intelligence Director has no family outside the world. But his taste in partners is like yours." She stated, leaving Clarke surprised: she certainly wasn’t polyamorous. Nia, sensing the mistaken interpretation, further elucidated that she meant Petrenko was bisexual: "That is to say, he is also seeing a man on the side. That man is Andrei Volkov." Nia dropped a bombshell. Volkov had a gay lover? That was his big secret? How interesting…

Nia didn’t give Clarke any time to digest this information as she snarled, bloodlust in her deadened hazel eyes: "Nikolai will die, but it is Volkov whose heart will be pierced."

So that was how the pieces fit together. Just like Clarke, Nia never did anything for just one reason. By making Clarke kill Petrenko, Artemida Fedorovna Vlasova (her false middle name now proving to be ironic, given Nia’s late husband’s first name) would be inextricably bound to Nia Sil’nayevna Koroleva just as tightly as Clarke Griffin was, the SVR would lose its most skilled Director leaving the organization stumbling around crippled, and Nia would have some measure of revenge against the man she held responsible for denying Fedor Korolev his dues.

“You’re right that I’m not a mother, so I can’t fully understand where you’re coming from.” Clarke said just as resolutely. “But I have been a wife, so believe me when I say: I will do this, not for you, but out of principle.”

“As long as you get it done, you could do it in the name of Mars, the God of War, for all I care.” Nia spoke, offering a glass of smoked Scotch to Clarke, who took it without reservation: Nia wasn’t gonna poison her right before sending her off on a veritable suicide mission. “Come straight back to me when it’s finished. I want to hear every detail.”

July 15, 2021

Foreign Intelligence Service of Russia, 11 Yasenevo Square

Clarke, now with her hair in a waterfall braid style that she’d never used before and draped in a ridiculously expensive handmade full-length black sable fur coat from Siberia over a golden Brioni cashmere suit and haute-couture John Lobb platform shoes that she’d put together to resemble a rich Russian woman and style herself in a way that wouldn’t be associated with Clarke Griffin but a Caucasus oligarch, graciously accepted the proffered hand of her staff driver and, in a movement far too dainty to be like herself, allowed the man to help her to her feet in front of the Yasenevo Building, the SVR’s equivalent to Lubyanka. It wasn’t like the FSB was going to run out of money by upholding Artemida Vlasova’s lavish lifestyle, one she’d meted out to herself as a measure of escapism from her despondent situation as much as to more believably fit into her new role, so she was going to take Nia’s money and spend it by the oodles, and feel good about every ruble she burned through in the process. She’d ever considered dyeing her hair pitch-black and getting colored contacts to turn her eyes green, but decided that hiding in plain sight might be the more prudent action, just because they’d never expect it, and she wasn’t feeling like herself enough already.

She’d bought a blue Lamborghini Urus off Nia’s dime, using the same credit line she’d assembled her wardrobe with, but given the sensitivity of this situation and the probable need to make a quick getaway unidentified, she’d taken an FSB staff car with a driver: he was expendable in the grand scheme of things, and she’d make an easier escape if she wasn’t behind the wheel of a conspicuous luxury car with known license plates. She had her PM Makarov-UM 9mm handgun, a heavily modernized, upgraded, and modified version of the traditional Russian officer’s sidearm, and otherwise ran unarmed: carrying anything heavier would set off alarm bells, just as carrying no firearm at all would look suspicious. It wouldn’t do her much good if she turned the whole SVR against her, but even the illusion of safety that the handgun provided was enough to trick her into calming her nerves.

The compound that formed SVR Headquarters was, like CIA’s Langley, situated inside the city limits of Moscow, but lay in a park area with at least a kilometer between itself and the nearest urban district in any direction. The main building was a Y-shaped multistory structure with a taller tower attached to one side, with the long end of the structure having a covered walkway connecting to a squat square building that served as the main entrance. There was a quad out front with a visitors’ carp park, which was where her driver pulled up to, as the garage beneath the compound was for personnel only. The main building was so much bigger than Langley’s two largest structures put together that if it were up to Clarke, she’d recommend they build a tramway wrapping around the building like you’d find at Dallas-Fort Worth International, because how did people have to walk from one end to the other without being completely out of breath (or time) when they reached their destination, and then go back again?

Clarke had never been inside this compound before: she’d been given access to the FSB’s copies of its blueprints, but these might be incomplete, so even though her eidetic memory allowed her to store what was known of the layout in her mind, being under pressure could make it difficult to will herself to call up the right information: she really was throwing herself into the deep end without a floatation device on this one.

Walking into the spacious antechamber, she showed her FSB credentials to the checkpoint guards, allowing her to keep a hold of her sidearm. She strode over to the reception desk looking like she owned the place: when it came to clandestine work, including infiltration, confidence was key. Petrenko may or may not know her true identity, but that sort of intel was more than likely contained to the Deputy Director and the bulk of SVR’s personnel wouldn’t be read into it.

“Good afternoon. What can I do for you?” The desk attendant asked when she came up to him.

“Yeah, I have an appointment with Deputy Director Petrenko. The name’s Vlasova.” She spoke casually, in a manner that suggested she expected him to know her name and require no further explanation. It worked.

“Ah, yes, the Deputy Director is expecting you. He’ll have most of the day available, so you can head on in whenever you’re ready.” The man told her, tapping away at his keyboard to see that the FSB Colonel was indeed here on an open-ended invitation by the second-most powerful man in the agency, the one running the show behind the scenes.

“No reason to keep him waiting, then. I’m more on the clock, myself.” Clarke said, ready to get this show on the road. The longer she waited trying to think of a plan, the more nervous she’d get; and the more she tried to plan out any details in advance, the greater the odds of something going wrong and derailing – at this level, it was actually best to just wing it.

“I’ll let him know you have arrived.” The attendant smiled politely, picking up his phone to dial an internal extension. “Mr. Petrenko? Thai is Utkin. Your guest from Lubyanka is on her way to see you now.”

Whatever response he got, Clarke couldn’t hear, but the attendant put down the receiver and told her to proceed, giving her instructions on how to get to the Deputy Director’s office. They may or may not put a tail on her, but weren’t overtly sending an escort. Still, she decided not to raise any red flags and follow the described route directly.

The eighth pill of propantheline bromide she'd taken would hopefully be enough to control excessive sweating without stopping her perspiration entirely, which would look even more suspicious than rivulets of sweat dripping down her brow.

Nikolai’s office at Yasenevo was a corner office much like her own in Lubyanka, only where hers was bright white and blue, his was dark red, lined in rich mahogany tessellation and top-quality maroon wallpaper, with green linoleum carpeting to keep the floor warm and cozy. There was the front door, another door in the back left that presumably led out into another hallway, and some windows to the right that looked out over Yasenevo Square that didn’t look like they could be opened. The place was situated high up on the attached tower to the left of the entryway, close to an elevator bank and interior staircase: one could make a beeline from here right to the front door.

Clear all sight lines. Identify all potential exit paths. Stay mindful of the locations of suspicious individuals. Keep a count of the number of people in the area, who was entering, who was transient, and who was staying close. Was anyone lingering where it made no sense? Repeating the same few mundane actions over and over again? Slowly closing in on you while pretending not to notice you? You had to have your escape strategy ready at all times. Being conditioned into second-nature paranoia was all part of the program, a prerequisite for being cleared for field work, in fact.

Trying to door handle, she found that it was unlocked. Deciding that this counted as an invitation, she entered the office.

“Ah, there you are. Just a moment.” The Deputy said, finishing up a phone call about yesterday’s MLB game of all things. This could be code talk, or some sort of message. To his interlocutor, or to her, she couldn’t say yet.

“My money’s still on the Red Sox. They took last year by storm, they will do so again. I want you to double my bet.” Petrenko spoke, holding up a finger for patience. “Chuvak, I have an important visitor. I’ll call you back soon, alright?” He said, saying bye to his bookie before turning his attention to the new entrant.

"Do you know who I am?" The man asked her, not much bothering with subtlety.

"Nikolai Viktorovich Petrenko, Deputy Director of SVR. I know of you. You're Ukrainian, what are you doing in Russia?" Clarke said, asking him something back right away to take a modicum of control of the situation.

"That's where you're wrong. I am not from Kharkiv, but Kharkov. And this proves that indeed, you know of me, but you do not know me." Petrenko, a square-faced, six-foot man in his later middle age who still maintained an athletic build, said to her, stating that he too harbored loyalties to the memory of the old USSR.

"I can say the same about you and me." The blonde American pointed out: all that the public knew about Clarke was what she wanted them to know; and Artemida Vlasova’s ‘background’ was even more heavily curated.

"Ah, yes, the curatorship of the personas of those that do not exist. We let the public see only those facts of us that we wish for them to know." Nikolai said in understanding. "Can I get you anything? Would you like some tea?"

"I prefer coffee, actually." She replied, both telling a factual truth and ensuring that she wouldn’t be imbibing something the man had already brewed that may contain something harmful that he had an acquired immunity to which she didn’t.

"Not a problem." The man said, calling up an attendant to bring the requested beverage. It was still such a curious thing, how the Russians stubbornly refused to use anything like Handymen or KitchenAids and do everything manually.

“Thank you, I appreciate it.” She said, straddling the line between honesty and operating.

"You work in Moscow. Why do you have a Caucasus accent?" Nikolai continued, abruptly switching to English.

"Because I was born in Rostov and spent the first 18 years of my life minus one month there. Pochemu vy sprashivayete menya po-angliyski?" (Why are you asking me in English?) Clarke replied in two languages.

“Not many Russians speak English. Call it a safety precaution.” The Deputy explained, sounding reasonable enough. Even if somebody was recording this conversation, which Clarke doubted, they would need time to find a good enough translator, and that might allow Petrenko to pull off some stunt to ensure his own safety if he felt like he was being entrapped. With Nia having people inside this very building, it was a safety precaution she could respect.

An attendant arrived with Clarke’s coffee – no milk, two sugars, as requested – and quickly left again, not wanting to overhear anything that might get her into trouble. Nikolai was a good boss, in the sense that he never bothered any of the girls and could forgive small mistakes, but she still didn’t want to get caught up in anything above her pay grade.

Nikolai, using a weird brewing thing on stilts, poured himself a cup and began drinking his piping hot tea: apparently the guy had a throat of steel. “My sources tell me you’ve taken it upon yourself to make life in the Lubyanka Building a tad more interesting. One can never know when one’s colleague might disappear never to be seen again anymore nowadays.”

“It’s quite interesting doing with the FSB what the FSB does to the rest of Russia. Such a fascinating microcosm.” Clarke replied, and such was the truth: she was rather enjoying culling the numbers over there.

“Unfortunately, your activities are getting a lot of my people hurt in the process, so I need to ask you to stop doing your work with quite so much discernment. I wish to make you a proposal.” Nikolai got down to business.

Clarke was willing to play ball and see what the man would offer her: even against Nia’s dire warnings, she may be able to work some angles to use the SVR to her advantage. "My source tells me I am of some interest to you. I came here in good faith that said interest doesn't involve putting me in a body bag."

“Indeed. We would like to offer you our protection.” Nikolai got to the point. “Our real, legitimate protection, unlike what Nia and the FSB are giving you.” He said, currently interpreting that the woman was under a lot of scrutiny and would end up on the wrong side of an interrogation table if she stepped out of line. “I’ll get straight to the point, we want to bring you into our fold, Clarke Griffin.” Petrenko said, playing his trump card. Clarke’s stomach nearly turned over, acid crawling up her throat, as she understood that her cover had been blown and she might have walked straight into a trap. If she wanted to leave this building alive and not a hostage, she’d have to tread exceptionally carefully now.

“Please, there is no need to look so spooked.” Petrenko held out his hands to indicate he posed no danger, Clarke knowing that the guy was just as capable of fighting unarmed as she was. “We both know that the Russian Federation has no extradition treaty with the United States.” The man laid out, clueing Clarke in that whatever game Petrenko, and maybe Volkov, were plying didn’t involve Washington and all of the people there that wanted her dead.

“Maybe so, but we both also know that these countries engage in extraordinary renditions, including with each other.” Clarke replied, thinking back to the time that the SVR had supported the CIA and DIA in abducting Dagtaryev, a Russian citizen, from Russia to America to stand trial for his crimes committed on US soil. If they were willing to do this to one of their own, there’d be nothing stopping them from handing over an American national.

“I am a reasonable man, Miss Griffin, as far as us spooks go. If you help me, I will help you.” Nikolai offered. “Your Secretary of Defense Marcus Kane is very concerned about what the FSB has been doing behind closed doors, and he approached me with a request to see if you might be willing to divulge anything you know.” He said, and the scenario sounded believable enough at first value, but she also knew that it Marcus knew she was here, he could have only found out from Murphy, meaning Raven would also know; and instead of talking with Nikolai, she’d have already been facing down a kill team or rendition squad – nothing about this tracked with how the US intelligence system worked.

“You presume too much, Nikolai.” She decided to say, giving him nothing either way.

“How is that?” He inquired, looking like he still knew much more than he was letting on.

“Clarke Griffin was sentenced to death, only to have her fate commuted to life in prison without parole, which some, myself included, would argue is worse.” The blonde began to explain. “If I was her, I wouldn’t want anything to do with the people that, should they gain knowledge regarding her whereabouts, would go to any length to make sure she suffered such a living hell.” She pointed out, absentmindedly patting the place where her Makarov was concealed. This wasn’t a threat: she didn’t even register doing it, but she’d just realized that her plausible deniability had been evaporated by her unconscious action and even the drug couldn’t stop her from breaking out in a cold sweat now.

“People like us seldom have the luxury of freedom of choice.” The Deputy Director spoke from experience. Clarke didn’t know what he was aiming at: apologizing for being about to tranquilize her again, or simply telling her he understood how she felt? “We are handed our missions, and we must carry them out. How we go about this is up to our own discretion, but our orders must be fulfilled, irrespective of our personal feelings on the matter. Marcus understands this. He shares your worries about the immediate future, and asked me to give you this.” He spoke, taking a folder out from a desk drawer and handing it to her. Leafing through its contents, and seeing no signs of doctoring or alterations, she was confronted with the sight of a Presidential pardon to be issued to Clarke Abigail Griffin, offering full and unconditional clemency stating that the moment she’d set foot back on US soil, she’d be cleared of all present charges and receive immunity from anything else she could be charged with in the future regarding her actions while on Russian soil.

Nikolai sipped his tea; Clarke didn’t drink any of her coffee. She just blew on it a little, as if it were too hot and she didn’t like to down it so quickly after boiling that it would scald anyone else’s tongue. She still wasn’t convinced that something nefarious hadn’t been slipped into it by the attendant or someone else down the line, acting on pre-issued orders to do it without ever being told why. Spooks of any nationality would simply obey their superiors in matters like this.

“I’ve been a busy man as of late.” Petrenko resumed speaking. “Not that I have much free time in my usual routine, but most of my job these days consists of approving operations handled by other people. To my great regret, I am rarely called upon to do anything substantial myself anymore, at least until I was handed a special case.” He finished off his cup of tea, promptly refilling the cup.

“Suppose, for the sake of argument, that I am indeed Clarke Griffin, who I aren’t, and would be interested in defecting from the FSB, which I’m not. What’s to stop you from saying that if I’m willing to betray one agency, I won’t be equally willing to betray another, and tie me off as a loose end the moment I ask too many questions or run out of usefulness to you?” Clarke asked a compound question, the Deputy Director clearly having some difficulty parsing it all as he wasn’t that used to speaking English. An overwhelmed Clarke at this point was starting to flag, so she took a chance and downed half the coffee mug in one long tug.

Nikolai seemed to have finished translating in his head, as he resumed their conversation: “I had been warned that you do not trust easily, so let me answer your questions with one of my own: what do we in the SVR stand to gain by having you killed, and what could we gain by having you on our side without you feeling like you should looking over your shoulder expecting a knife in the back at any moment?”

“Asking me, the disgraced traitor, the one-time leader of your biggest foreign rival, to act as a mole inside your biggest domestic rival, gives you the perfect excuse to use me to your own ends and then dispose of me as a favor to the new management in Langley.” She laid it out for him, painting a picture of what she would do in his place.

“Please, you’re only hyping yourself up for a disaster that will never happen. We both know Luna Hilker only resorts to violence as a last option. Why go through all the hassle of securing a pardon only to never use it?” Nikolai asked.

“Even if it’s real, I have zero guarantees that anybody else but the President himself, you, and me ever saw this file. I know how to remap directories so that this document’s serial number refers to something else entirely. It’s easy.”

“I am Russian. Ukrainian by birth, but Russian in spirit. You are the expert: since when do my people bother with the carrot if the stick is right there in front of us? You could say that people motivated by freedom rather than fear are better agents, but then again, in our line of work, freedom is hardly more than an illusion, and I will not insult your intelligence by pretending that a pardon will give you your life back. It’s better than staying under Nia’s thumb halfway across the world or rotting in a tiny prison cell forever, though.”

“Yeah, I’ll fucking drink to that.”

“Na zdorov'ya.” (To your health.)

“Bottoms up.” She replied, this time in English. It felt good to speak her own language again, even if it was just for a moment. Now was the time she found out if Nikolai was full of shit and she’d soon be choking on her own saliva.

She downed her mug in one big gulp and waited for a long moment. Novichok, polonium-210, anything she knew of could be in it. It could start acting in seconds, or take days to kill her, but if she’d drop dead at Lubyanka shortly after visiting the headquarters of its known rival, it would raise a lot of awkward questions, so she figured that any poison would be of the quick-acting variety. When after a few minutes of tension, nothing had happened, she allowed herself to marginally relax. Nikolai, sensing the shift in her mood, now offered to fetch her something stronger of a more alcoholic variety. She couldn’t tell if this was out of true kindness or an attempt to loosen her tongue by getting her drunk, so she turned it down, her mind already cracked enough without adding vodka to the mix.

“You and I are not so different.” Nikolai said after a pregnant pause, his eyes, a lighter shade of blue than Clarke’s, sparkling as he reminisced about days gone by. “We’re two people that made it to the top long before we grew old, seeing things that no-one should ever have to see because we’re too discerning for our own good.” He said, trying to get Clarke to see that they were playing for the same team. “Like you, I too am driven to take care of everyone and fix everything. I love my country, and it is because I am a patriot that I choose not to ignore the suffering that Russia is going through and desire, in my heart of hearts, nothing more than to heal her gangrenous body. Nia is a cancer, Clarke, and the only cure for a cancer like this is chemotherapy.”

“You won’t be surprised to hear that she warned me you would ask me to kill her.” Clarke said, deciding to throw Nia under the bus, because she figured that if Nikolai was going to tall Nia anything, he wouldn’t have been so forthcoming about all the things he knew so quickly.

“I am not. And I assume that she sent you here anyway so you could kill me instead.” He deduced.

“Which explains why I was apprehensive about accepting your tea. But just maybe, well… Maybe we can strike common ground. I’ll have to think about it.” Clarke said, hoping to extricate herself to a place where she could think.

“You may take some time to think things over. But please, do not take too long to decide. The fate of untold millions may be at stake.” Petrenko accepted, but not without bringing up the stakes at play that Clarke knew all too well.

“I hope you appreciate how ironic it is that an SVR man is taking the threat posed by the FSB more seriously than my own CIA.” Clarke told him, dropping all pretense and admitting that, indeed, she was Clarke Griffin.

“This is your wife, Anna?” She asked him, seeing a picture tucked away somewhere on his wall that didn’t fit the pattern of the others. There was Nikolai standing in front of his old helicopter, Nikolai climbing a snow-capped mountain peak, but only this one contained him and another person. “You made a very handsome couple.” Clarke opined honestly.

“She is still the most beautiful thing in my life.” Nikolai said, turning to face the framed photograph – which gave Clarke the chance to take a tiny vial of liquid out of a concealed pocket inside the lining of her coat and empty its contents into Petrenko’s still-full tea mug.

“I thought you weren’t married.” Clarke continued making conversation as if nothing happened.

“And I think you know what it means to lead a double life.” Nikolai said, turning back to her and – thank goodness – taking a deep swig from his mug.

“She doesn’t know you’re in the SVR.” She surmised.

“She does not. And as far as Russia is aware, Nikolai Petrenko has never been married.” The man explained.

“I can understand why you wouldn’t want to get your family involved with this sort of life. You can never quite tell when you won’t be coming back, though, and what do you do to your family then? At least Bellamy knew who I was, just not exactly what I did.” She asked him, forcing herself to stay human by confronting herself with the thoughts on his own mortality of the man she’d just sentenced to death.

“You make a good point. But my Anna is a florist, not a General. If I were to die, she would be told that it was a hit-and-run by a drunk driver, and she would be taken care of for the rest of her life. Thank God we have no children to leave behind.” He said, and this made things… not better, but a little less awful.

"Not a whole lot of survivors from that op in Makhachkala, were there, Nikolai?" She switched back to the Bledar op.

"You and I are still breathing. As long as we remain, our comrades shall remain alive." Nikolai said, refilling his teacup yet again and offering another to Clarke, who accepted it this time. If the tea was poisoned after all, well, Nikolai would also be poisoned soon. It might be a good thing, if they were both discovered laying motionless in the same room, Nikolai dead and Clarke, with her immunities, probably still alive: it would send the SVR on a witch hunt for a third-party assassin that did not exist, buying her invaluable time to retrench herself inside the FSB.

“Here’s to our lost comrades, those who will never grow old.” Clarke hefted her mug, proposing a toast.

“I’ll drink to that. To young friends that should have lived, and here’s to living for them.” Nikolai spoke his own toast, clinking mugs with Clarke, the pair of them downing the tea – an excellent jasmine – in a matter of seconds.

"It can be difficult to keep going when the whole nation you're trying to protect scorns your name." The blonde spoke when her lungs were full of air again. So far, nothing had happened. Huh. Maybe the guy was genuine after all.

You give up your whole life for them, and they hate you for it." Petrenko agreed. "Still, this is the choice we make. We both know why."

"Because if not us, who?" She answered.

“Who indeed? Nobody. Because who’s like us?” Nikolai asked, harkening back to a classic saying.

“Damn few, and they’re all dead.” Clarke finished.

With that, the meeting concluded. Nikolai Petrenko had imbibed a fatal dose of ricin, Clarke may or may not have some kind of knockout drug coursing through her system, and she very much needed to use the restroom. So upon leaving the Deputy Director’s office, she found the nearest one, did her business, and walked out back into the hallway, ready to call her driver to tell him to bring the car out front, when she nearly had a heart attack.

Because Petrenko was right there. And he was neither dead nor looked to be dying. Huh. Maybe she'd been wrong after all. She was certain that the vial of ricin had been poured into the correct cup, since she wasn’t feeling the effects of such a horrible substance – Nikolai seemed no worse for wear himself, although he was sweating like he’d come sprinting down the hall, which was a little strange, considering it had been some minutes since she’d left his office and hadn’t gone all that far.

“What are you doing here? I thought we were finished.” Clarke, her eyes flitting around looking for ambushed being set up by men with concealed SMGs, asked her counterpart.

“There was one more thing I wanted to ask you.” The man replied, out of breath, his voice scratchy. Yes, something was definitely up: had he somehow known and used the past few minutes to take an antidote? “Perhaps we can talk more privately. Let’s go to the sauna, where there is no chance of listening bugs surviving the humidity. Maybe there we can be more frank than in my office.”

“That sounds reasonable to me. Lead the way, Nikolai Viktorovich.”

The sauna: the place to be for Russians of high standing. Oligarchs, generals, politicians, and intelligence directors loved coming to such rooms, the curtain of privacy provided by its damp confines allowing them to speak freely. It also meant that there could be people hiding in there ready to shoot her – or she could get Petrenko alone and shoot him if necessary, pretty sure that she could draw her Makarov-UM quicker than he could reach for a weapon of his own.

The only objectionable element to this plan was that saunas required nudity. Russians didn’t have hang-ups about this, far less squeamish than Americans when it came to showing their natural bodies in their birthday suits, but Clarke had never been happy about putting herself on display in front of anyone else but her closest relations. Nikolai seemed to understand as much, offering her to use a wrap towel and to be somewhere else while they disrobed. This was good enough for Clarke: if Nikolai were nude, he couldn’t hide a gun, while Clarke did have the skill to hide hers inside its fabric while also preserving her modesty.

"I, um, I think I'll have that vodka now." Clarke spoke up once they were in the basement room containing the facility.

“Very good. Don’t mind if I join you. This has been no less stressful on my part.” Nikolai admitted.

“Hey, it’s your bottle. I don’t judge.” Clarke told him: if the man was still alive, he was a master at his craft, so he’d certainly earned her respect.

“So are you going to try to kill me again?” Petrenko asked, pouring them both a glass. So yes: Nikolai had known, he’d identified the kill agent, and he’d taken a fucking antidote. And he hadn’t tried to retaliate – not yet, anyway.

“I don’t have a reason to be that stupid. Nia expects me to, but I’ll find an answer to explain why I wasn’t able to take down the second man of the SVR right inside his own office.” She said, her brain coming up empty.

“You may tell her that you were unable to meet with me because of an accident. I am sorry for this.” Nikolai said, picking up the vodka bottle, smashing it, and quick as lightning, throwing a shard of it at Clarke’s face. She flinched, the piece of glass cutting her cheek even as she ducked, Nikolai chickling as though anything about this was funny.

She’d only looked away for a split second, but something had definitely happened.

“Drunks get violent all the time in Moscow. A corpse will be delivered as the form of your retaliation.” He told her, now much more serious. “I’ll find a way to protect you from the fallout, but I want Nia dead just as much as you want this.”

“You’re asking me to take horrible risks. Then again, I suppose I’m asking no less of you.”

“Are you married, Clarke? Do you have a family?”

“I did. I had a family of my own that made me happy, people whom I lived for. I had a husband. No children, but I had my sister, my best friends who were like sisters, nothing but memories now.” She spoke to him, almost choking on her breath as her mind’s eye was flooded with bittersweet memories that cut far deeper than the glass shard had, “I know that I’ll most likely never see them again. Maybe it’s for the best. But I don’t want them to remember me as a traitor. And I’m willing to do almost anything to make them understand why I had to do the things I’ve done. But the way things played out, I won't even get to tell them how sorry I am for failing... everyone.”

“I know you won’t believe me, but I am truly sorry for what you are going through.” Petrenko said sympathetically. “I have a bottle of fine Scotch here. Good vodka was wasted, but this should be even better.” He spoke, taking said bottle out of a box full of half-melted ice and pouring two fresh glasses.

“Do you know what it feels like to be rejected by your own home?” Clarke asked him, feeling less confident than ever and supposing now that there was poison at play, not in the Scotch, but inside her glass.

The man closed his eyes for a split second as he ruminated on how to answer. Just a split second, but it was all the time Clarke needed to switch the glasses around. And just so she had an alibi for obviously moving, she had the glass that was Petrenko’s to her lips and was in the process of draining it when the man refocused on her.

“Lagavulin single malt, 2005 vintage. A very good year.” He said, eyeing the eagerness with which she gulped down the soothing drink. “To answer your question: I cannot say that I do. I’ve never had much of a home to begin with. No real family, met all my friends here on the job. My wife is my world, but she is isolated from the rest of my life. Yasenevo has been my home for decades, so no, I won’t know who I’d be without this place.”

Clarke could relate to that better than Petrenko might know: she'd been planning on keeping her ass planted in that chair until she was 56, then retire to spend the rest of her life globetrotting. It wasn't just about it being the Director's chair, but also that it was the Director's chair. It was the only one so far that she could sit in indefinitely without getting back pains. It was just a really nice chair.

It was true that nobody ever fully retired from the Central Intelligence Agency. A lot of uninformed civilians who read too many books and watched too many TV shows thought this was because ‘retirement’ was CIA code talk for ‘being executed’, but that couldn’t be further from the truth, which was that, no matter how old you got, how long you'd been disenrolled for, or how far away from the world you lived: youngbloods would always keep sending you classified stuff if for no other reason than to get your opinion on it; and this went all the way from rookie basic analysts to D-suite members. Clarke would know: she’d still regularly asked for advice from Leon Panetta and John Brennan until that fateful day of March 13, and the men had been happy enough to provide their insights into her cases. If only she could ask them what to do now: she was certainly missing the decades of experience that might have prepared her for a scenario as out of control as this one that they could have provided.

“Have you ever known anything other than this life?” She asked the man after a pause, quietly working herself up to make her respiration and heart rate increase. It was time to finish this, one way or another.

“I used to fly an Mi-24. That was what gave me freedom. But even then I was a… What do you call it… A CSAR pilot for SVR Spetsnaz.” Nikolai explained, wiping his short-cropped blonde hair out of his face. “Now all I can fly is this desk upstairs, and I do miss being in the air more often than I like to admit. But that crutch over there in the corner isn’t for decoration, it was a courtesy gift by an Afghani Taliban fighter with a Stinger missile provided to them by your CIA.” He said, pointing out the aid implement she hadn’t seen before.

“Thinking that the enemy of my enemy wouldn’t be my enemy tomorrow was a mistake we’ve never repeated since then.” She said, huffing and puffing, pissed at the knowledge that the Taliban had been so eager to turn against America and the CIA immediately after they’d kicked the Soviets out of Afghanistan.

“Clarke, what’s wrong?” Nikolai, noticing that something was off, asked her, starting to rise to his feet.

That was when it happened. Whatever latent stuff was coursing through Nikolai’s system was activated by the exertion, the blood pumping through his veins flowing faster at the exertion, his muscles requiring more power and thus more oxygen, and next thing she knew, Petrenko’s hands were clutching his own throat as he began to choke on his own tongue. Poison after all. Sometimes she really, really hated being right.

Nikolai flailed about, helicoptering helplessly as his lungs failed him, his heart racing in his chest as blackness overtook his vision. Within seconds, he fell to the floor with a groan, exhaling deeply as his lungs deflated, and by all appearances, did not fill again.

Clarke could tell that he was done for, but she had been taught to always dead check. She put her left hand on his neck and the right beneath his nostrils, checking for pulse and respiration. She had to stay calm, so she wouldn't mistake her own heartbeat for his. Ten seconds, twenty, thirty – nothing. No heartbeat. No beathing. Nikolai Petrenko was dead.

And Clarke was now alone in a room with a corpse.

“I gotta get out of here right now.” She said to herself, thankful that the man had told his people not to disturb them. She quickly toweled herself off and pulled her clothes back on, re-holstered her weapon, and let her emotions wash over her, counting to five to feel utter panic before forcing it all down into a box. Building up her walls and becoming Ice Queen Clarke, the Commander of Death, she was ready for the final act of the day.

“Hey, where is Director Petrenko?” The sauna attendant asked her as she emerged alone.

“He, um… He’s staying down there for a while longer.” She told him, playing coy.

“This is highly unusual. Why would he need more time and leave his guest to her own devices?”

“The man made a move on me.” Clarke said, referring to him recruitment effort but in a tone of voice that suggested something more physical, “I shut that shit down, but he was so worked up that he, um, wanted some time to…” She trailed off, leaving the power of suggestion to fil in the blanks.

“Typical Nikolai, always talking about the girls.” The young man said in understanding: Petrenko’s bisexuality was a closely guarded secret in this homophobic country, so by playing the womanizer, he could also explain why it appeared as though he had never married.

I believe he’s, well, helping himself… to the thought of me… So he probably won’t appreciate being disturbed.”

“I can’t say I blame the man. No offense.” The young staffer said, eyeing Clarke for a second before fixing his gaze firmly on her face lest he find himself on the receiving end of an offended fist.

“You may want to alert a cleanup crew to be on standby.” She mentioned, the guy nodding his understanding and making a call to that effect, telling someone to come down with a mop and bucket in no fewer than thirty minutes.

Clarke had bought herself some time before Petrenko’s body would be discovered, but she wasn’t gonna risk her action coming to light while still underway. So she wasn’t going to go back in the official black sedan – it was too conspicuous, too noticeable, and would certainly be tailed. She was gonna be tailed herself, but she knew how to shake them. The SVR would be aware that she’d go back to Lubyanka, but couldn’t possibly set up enough blockades to intercept her on every possible route until they’d be too close to FSB headquarters to make the attempt without getting shot at, so she had to make do by appropriating a civilian car, getting rid of pursuers, swapping it for another under cover, and then take that one back to Lubyanka. It wasn’t gonna be easy, but it was straightforward. So she left the building, got into her staff car, and told the driver to go not to Lubyanka, but to Kitai-Gorod Metro Station. There, she told him to drive back to Lubyanka directly and not stop for anything or anyone no matter what. Herself, she got out of the car in a place where no cameras were watching, and dipped into the subway station, entered a subway car headed towards Chistye Prudy, stepped back out of the train from another car just before the doors closed, crossed the station to the other side while evading having her face caught on camera, and entered the car park there. Picking out an inconspicuous civilian vehicle with a driver who was about to pull out, she closed in on it and knocked on the guy’s window.

“FSB! Vylezay iz mashiny! Sheveli!” (FSB! Get out of the car! Move it!) She called out, flashing her Russian ID badge and awkwardly pointing her Makarov at the guy with her right hand, all so she wouldn’t be made as Clarke Griffin who was somewhat famously left-handed; holstered the pistol as the driver complied, handed him a stack of 200,000 rubles (equivalent to $10,000 USD) for his troubles, and left Kitai-Gorod. She drove to Alexandrovsky Sad, all the while checking obsessively to see that she wasn’t being followed, and was satisfied that she had shaken any tails the SVR had put on her. At the larger metro station, she switched out the appropriated car for another one that she’d told an FSB agent to drive there and leave behind for her. The keys were left in the agreed-upon place, so she simply stepped into the vehicle and drove back to Lubyanka at last, her eyes never losing focus on sweeping the 360* arcs around her.

Later that day

Lubyanka Building

"You will be aware that you can no longer attempt to play both sides by being friendly with the SVR. They seek your death now. You are being hunted by everyone." Nia told her as soon as she returned to give her report.

"Don't insult my intelligence. I know this was you using me to tie up a loose end on your part in a way that it would also tie me to you even tighter." Clarke shot back, offended that Nia had felt the need to state the obvious.

"They always did say you were one of the smart ones. How did you figure it out?" Koroleva asked her, impressed.

"It's what I would've done." She shrugged, and that was the truth.

She just hoped that Nia would never find out that Clarke had been tempted to take Nikolai up on his offer and render her services as a triple agent. If you crossed Nia Koroleva, she wouldn't have you killed, not the first time. Instead, you would come home to find your wife and children skinned alive and hanged upside down from the rafters. Then, if you went against her again, she would take your life, and that of all your friends.

“It is clear to me now that we are of one mind.” Nia spoke, flashing her the most bone-chilling smile that Clarke had ever seen. “It is time to speak of the part you will play in the new world that is about to dawn.”

“I’m listening, Nia. I can hardly wait.” Clarke replied, once again layering her words. She couldn’t wait to find out what Nia was planning – and couldn’t wait to kill her for it, either. Nia had promised that Clarke would be made a member of her inner circle if she killed Petrenko, and Nia Koroleva may omit many things, but she did not lie.

"Our President." The older dirty blonde began to monologue. "He used to be a great man, a visionary, a true leader worthy of the Soviet Union. He was a paragon, awarded the Order of Lenin and Gold Star Hero of the Soviet Union while still alive, an exceptional rarity." She laid it out. "But these days, I no longer recognize him. The man he has become is weak and corruptible. He has sold our country to the West, given our economy over to the hands of... gangsters and prostitutes." She seethed, her fingers flying over a control panel to darken the lights in her office and switch on the largest computer screen in there, displaying a geopolitical map not dissimilar to the one that was always visible inside the War Room beneath Langley. "Look at the map. There's the Russian Federation, right here, but those aren't Russia's borders, are they?" Nia asked rhetorically, the answer self-evident in her eyes, but not to Clarke’s.

"Look at these countries labeled Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan. What are they now, save for Oblasts of questionable Autonomous status of Greater Russia? It was Putin that began it, but Volkov who consolidated it all. And he did it without needing full-scale invasions like his predecessor, preserving millions of Russian soldiers' lives in the process. How is that selling out to the West?" The younger blonde desired to know.

"For all that you are a genius, Miss Griffin, you are yet possessed of the mindset of a Westerner. I don't expect you to understand when you cannot see the world the way we do." Nia told her as if addressing a child.

"Try to explain it to me. You may be surprised." Clarke challenged.

And Nia did not disappoint: "The people have become used to a life of luxury and plenty. They are coddled, spoiled, and entitled. This has made them weak. Their survival instinct has been dulled, their force of will eroded down to getting their next fix of fleeting pleasures provided by the decadent investment bankers in New York. Nobody cares about another anymore, only out to enrich themselves no matter who else they throw to the bottom while climbing the greasy pole of capitalism." She began the motive rant Clarke had been fishing to hear for weeks. "Meanwhile, our people are put to work raping our country, extracting our mineral wealth for selling to Europe and America for what you can call pennies on the dollar, for them to fashion into products they sell back to us for ten times what they are worth. This way, they keep us dependent, beholden to the imposition of their will, because Russia is no longer owned by her people, but by... computer algorithms in Wall Street stock exchange cubicles." Nia explained, she Clarke had to give it to her: she could see where the FSB Director was coming from. It wasn’t so far from the objective truth, after all.

"All of which is to say: the White House says 'jump', and Volkov asks 'how high?', is that right? Because the people are no longer willing to fight for their homeland, because they've been given so much that they're too afraid they may lose it if they resist?" Clarke interrogated.

"Hmm. Perhaps you and I think even more alike than I had believed." Nia conceded.

"Why the hell else did you figure I was so critical of Augustus Woods?" Clarke asked a rhetorical question of her own, only it wasn’t: she wanted to know why Nia thought she had, for he real reasons had been precisely the face-value ones. Someone like Nia would not expect Clarke to not have been hiding an agenda between the lines.

"Yes, you have accused him of weakness many times. To level such charges at your national leader, from one in your lofty position, and not find yourself in freefall? This is the weakness of President Woods, as well as the weakness of American democracy. Your people are too soft to do what needs to be done, hiding behind words like 'due process' and 'innocent until proven guilty', until it is a man in Iraq that needs to be killed by a Reaper drone at his own daughter's wedding." Koroleva leveled her somewhat justified accusation of hypocrisy of Washington.

"At least that UCAV operator has the balls to pull the trigger." Clarke defended her home country.

"Indeed. And such operators are the only reason your country hasn't fallen apart under the weight of its own bleeding-heart moralizing." Nia argued, again striking a chord with Clarke’s own sense of reason.

"Which is why I want to strengthen it. I've seen the moral decay, the corruption that festers and spreads like a deadly cancer. I've grown up there, I lived in that system, and I know that it'll never last. I want to save my country while there's still something left worth salvaging. And I'll drag them kicking and screaming into a new era of power if they refuse to see the truth that's right there in front of them." Clarke, once again employing doublespeak, cozied up to Nia.

"And when we have taken our rightful place, we will steer mankind into a new golden age. A new Russia, and a new America. Together, your country and mine will rule the world. Not China, not the United Nations, but the two greatest powers in the world, aligned like they always should have been, our potential unlocked and our power unleashed upon all that would shackle us down." The woman laid out her grand vision. "That is why I brought you here. I do not intend to hold you as a hostage of mine. You have proven your worth along with your loyalty, so I will tell you what my objective is." Nia said, pausing for no other reason than dramatic effect, keeping Clarke in suspense, who was dying to find out why Nia had agreed to bring her here. And at last, the woman revealed the truth: "I am going to be the Premier of the restored Soviet Union. And you will be the President of its most formidable partner and ally, the United States of America."

“You…” Clarke began, taken by complete surprise, “You want me to…” She just couldn’t wrap her head around it. Because something like that would require real trust from Nia towards Clarke – something that the latter didn’t think the former was even capable of. “But you must know I will never be a puppet on your strings.” She spoke, knowing that Nia knew Clarke was uncontrollable and absolutely wouldn’t be answering to anybody else if she really were to be put inside the Oval Office on the window side of the Resolute Desk.

"Roan tells me you are to be trusted. Ontari says you are a spy. But of the two of my children, I can say that Ontari tells me what she thinks it is I want to hear, while Roan always speaks the truth, no matter how uncomfortable it is." Nia laid out, explaining that she wasn’t looking for a stooge, but a partner.

“And what about Echo?” Clarke questioned, because Colonel Teles was still one of Nia’s top commanders and associates, one whom the older woman respected enough to value her opinions.

“Echo hates you. I think she’s in love with you.” Huh. Why did that make sense? Echo probably saw a reflection of her own temperaments in Clarke, grew to really like her, and had no idea what to do about it because she had no precedent, so anger would be the default visceral response to feeling… weak and needy. “Either way, she thinks you’re the real deal.” Nia laid out, formally inducting Clarke as the person most crucial to realizing her envisioned new world order. And it all fell together. This was why Nia had agreed to extract her from America. Why she’d met her in person many months before that in the first place. Why Nia seemed to have developed a personal obsession with Clarke throughout those months, one that may have existed even long before then.

Nia Koroleva was completely insane. No, she wasn't insane: she was very, very sane. She was smart, mentally sharp as a razor's edge, perceptive, discerning, and analyzing. Nothing got by her. What she was... was delusional. During this conversation, she had made several contradictory statements, mutually exclusive assertions, and seen no problem accepting parallel truths at the same time. But she was convinced that Clarke shared her vision, her ideals, her dream, and was going to help her make it all come true.

And that, Clarke promised to herself, was gonna prove to be the greatest delusion of them all.

Chapter Text

Chapter 11: All In

July 16, 2021

"Heya, sis!" Costia walked in through Clarke’s office door at the GBCI, the older blonde’s greeting echoed by a loud, affronted *HONK!* coming from the bag she carried. Clarke's 'big' sister had come to greet her carrying a large plastic bag containing one extremely angry live goose.

"Costia! What the hell are you doing with that?!" Clarke asked, eyes bugging out at this display of weirdness.

"Oh, Lex and I had the day off. She won’t be waking up until the afternoon after what we did last night, so I just thought I'd come and take a gander at what my big little sister is up to." Costia said, smirking at her prank that she’d set up just to make a visual pun: the woman’s dedication to humor was equal to that to her SEALs.

"How did they let you into my office carrying a live fucking goose?" Clarke, flabbergasted, wanted to know.

"Because it's me, and I'm just awesome like that." Costia shrugged casually, as though that was self-explanatory.

"Sure." Clarke drawled, rolling her eyes like a teenager at her sis’ to-be-expected antics that she pretended to be annoyed by, but knowing that Cos knew she actually loved.

Costia casually put the packaged goose down in a corner like you would a piece of luggage, then smoothly vaulted over a swivel chair to land in its seat like a reclined cat. Big Griffin reached over to tap away at Clarke’s desk’s side panel to order something that could best be described as sugar with a little bit of coffee, writing upside down and in mirror image. What a showoff her big sister was.

"Do you know why meiosis went to Iraq?" Said woman, whose own IQ and knowledge base were every bit as broad, deep, and genius-level as those of Little Griffin, piped up, no doubt setting up for another awful play on words.

"Um... Do tell?" Clarke said, overthinking as always and wondering how a sexual chromosomal bifurcator would play into something involving a Middle Eastern militarily administered country.

"Cause it was diploid overseas!" Cos shouted out, doubling over at her own joke.

"Cos, you suck!" Clarke said, failing to sound stern due to the fact that she was too busy howling with laughter.

The half-forgotten goose in his bag tried to flap his wings, found that he still couldn’t, and screamed like the whistle on a midnight freight train crossing a combination bridge before settling down with an insulted huff when the waterfowl realized that he was being ignored by these idiot humans.

"No, no, that's Lexa's line, sis." Costia pointed out. Big Griffin’s bedroom activities weren’t much different from Little Griffin’s, but at least Clarke kept her exploits to herself, whereas Cos’ mind was some kind of cesspool she seemed to be incapable of not spewing out everywhere and had never heard of the concept of ‘too much information’.

"La-la-la-la-la, I don't need to know about my sister's sex life!" Clarke stuck her fingers into her ears, not caring how juvenile she was behaving right now: Cos was the one that’d started it.

"Oh, but Clarkey, let me tell you aaaaallll about it!" Costia got up in her sister’s face, identical blue eyes engaging in a stare-off as Cos forced Clarke to lipread. “So you know how Lexie lasts for about 10-15 minutes before she imitates Old Faithful? Well, I found out that I can make that go up to 60-90 minutes if I take, like, three strips of duct tape and put them over her clit-” She started explaining in excruciating detail.

"I'm still not listening!" Clarke shouted, trying to drown out the sound of Costia’s voice and now squeezing her eyes shut to avoid being dragged further down into smut town by her sex fiend sister. It wasn’t easy, because Costia was giving her ideas – Cos was the dominant one in her relationship and Clarke very much submissive, but Bell wasn’t a wellspring of creativity when it came to that, and she hated to admit how much she lifted from her sister’s lewd tales.

"So, Octavia hooked me up with a pair of those really heavy-duty handcuffs, because you know, Lexa likes me to- Umph!" Costia started to say, pressing her lips into Clarke’s ear so she couldn’t escape it, but got cut off when her sister clapped her over the ears instead, making them ring like the Bells of Notre Dame at noon.

“You stole mine and Bellamy’s supplier?!” Clarke, feigning offense, got ready to pounce. “You’re gonna pay for that, you thief!” She said, jumping Costia and pinning her to the floor. Cos was by far the better melee combatant, though: more muscular, heavier, more experienced – and Clarke soon found herself the one being straddled by her sister, who mercilessly attacked her flanks with flying fingertips.

"Alright, alright, alright!" Clarke screamed out between gulps of air fueling peals of laughter. "I yield, I yield! Just stop it!" She begged, not too proud to ask her sis to make this tickle torture stop.

"Look at you, big, bad Director of the CIA, The Shop's homegrown hero, and you're awfully ticklish." Costia said evilly, but let up on her relentless assault and helped her sis back to her feet – who promptly took Cos in a headlock and twisted her arms behind her back, allowing her to declare victory… And see a piece of paper Cos had in her pocket, which she promptly snatched as she let go of her identical not-twin.

“Hey, what’s this drawing you made?” Clarke asked Costia, the two sisters also sharing a love for drawing.

"Oh, you know, one of those weird dreams again." Cos explained: Clarke tended to write down the dreams she remembered, whereas Cos liked to storyboard them instead. And her mind came up with some creatively bizarre scenarios indeed! "I was back at grad school, but messed up a dissertation so badly they sent me back to eighth grade."

"Costia Marie Griffin, I have never." Clarke laughed: the thought of Costia being held back at all was a joke in its own right! "And then they say my mind works in strange and mysterious ways." She thought out loud. "I love you, doofus." She said, giving her sis a noogie, Costia responding by screaming in Clarke’s face just like her new pet goose, who would soon come to understand that living with an insane human in Alexandria who’d feed him gourmet cuisine whenever he asked was a hell of a lot more convenient than foraging for food out in the wild.

The fact that this half-baked turkey was the same dangerous, scary badass in charge of SEAL Team 4. That this jokester that made light of everything was the same person that had once remapped the controls of a missile bunker in Kyrgyzstan so that the twinned fire buttons had activated the self-destruct instead ad given almost 400 Hajis a taste of the fires of Hell they wished upon the Western infidels. (Or the Uzbeks, with Tashkent having been the missile’s target rather than any place in Europe or North America.) That Costia Griffin, nuttier than trail mix jokester, was the same person that had literally assaulted the stronghold of and personally killed Osama bin Laden, never ceased to amaze Clarke. But then again: they were like two sides of the same coin, and Clarke, though she was the serious one most of the time, could display a wickedly mean prankster streak herself. The Griffin Sisters were at thick as gravy, and Clarke thanked her lucky stars every day that she’d been blessed by Abby and Jake with the most awesome big sister in the world.

Clarke woke up with tears in her eyes, in a mansion on a lake in Moscow Oblast, years and thousands of miles removed from the memory that’d come to her in a dream and viscerally reminded of everything and everyone she’d lost.

At Lubyanka, she was out of her depth, way in over her head. She had no resources but for what Nia gave her

In short: she felt isolated, alone, cast adrift up shit creek without a paddle.

Improvise, adapt, overcome. Start networking. Gain trust. Build a power base. She wasn't Clarke Griffin here, but Artemida Vlasova. The first sub-basement, 30 meters underground, contained the data vault. The second sub-basement, twenty meters below that, contained the real data vault, including a mainframe computer with zero remote access points and zero terminal computers. That was the one she had to convince Koroleva to let her access. Whoever the woman would send to watch her while she did that, she had to be certain would be people she’d already firmly won over to her side.

Sub-Basement 3 was yet more archives, but of the paper kind: old Cold War relics too sensitive to ever see the light of day, too important to ever be destroyed. And Sub-Basement 4… That was where all the bodies were buried.

Her objectives: get ever-deeper into Nia's good graces and gain access to enough of the information she needed, not necessarily enough to piece the whole plan together but enough to convince the Presidents – Volkov and Woods – that action was necessary. Give Nia no excuse to throw her in Lefortovo Prison, that torture-filled hellhole where the FSB stuck people it wanted dead but hadn't fabricated the necessary excuses to execute yet, and avoid Sub-Basement 4 at Lubyanka at all costs, unless asked to participate in the extrajudicial killings that happened there where the FSB cleaned up internal loose ends.

Putting on some classical music to provide background noise as she logged in to begin coordinating with Lev in rooting through every person that had come in and out of Lubyanka over the past 96 hours, Clarke cracked her knuckles and prepared for a day of deep diving into the rosters. Colonel Lev Kutuzov, Head of Security, was quite high up the Lubyanka chain of command, but not the FSB chain of command: it had quickly become apparent that for as much as he respected and admired Director Koroleva, he was not within her circle of trust. The man was a Russian patriot through and through, too young to have served the Soviet Union yet nostalgic for a time he had never known. But he was concerned with the security of the building, not necessarily the people within it: that was Colonel Vlasova’s job. So when the two collaborated like this, Clarke could get a read on Lev, and she’d pegged him as being as straight a shooter as you’d ever find among a bunch of spooks. And the fact that Kutuzov was so clean, relatively speaking, meant that he wouldn’t easily be suspected of being snared into acting as an unwitting agent for Clarke’s own secret plans to destabilize the FSB from within. She sincerely hoped that the guy would survive the fallout: he wasn’t Clarke’s enemy nor America’s, so she hoped he wouldn’t prove to be another necessary casualty.

She actually rather enjoyed the young man’s company, spending hours with him talking about a great many things, about the security business, but also their personal lives, their thoughts and opinions, and funny things they’d seen and done: she was working him into an asset, and the best way to do that was by finding real common ground and cultivating actual friendship. Having some skin in the game would make things that much more believable, and she was no stranger to having to pretend to be somebody else only to betray and abandon the friend she’d made under an alter ego.

When Clarke Griffin had posed as Hannah Carson, the security vulnerability expert, and embedded herself into the Mountain Men in Idaho hoping to repeat there with Cage Wallace what she’d done in Karachi with Osama, she’d actually befriended the man’s field commander Carl Emerson. The man had fallen on hard times and was doing evil deeds, but his heart wasn’t evil, and that was what made it all so difficult. But Emerson was a murderer, Kutuzov merely a killer.

Sensing something was off on her monitor, she took a big bite out of a white strawberry chocolate tablet: she’d obtained this from the obscenely expensive brand Läderach, imported straight from Vaduz, Lichtenstein. No, Clarke had zero qualms about splurging Nia's money to make her own life more comfortable.

Several of the people that had checked into Lubyanka two days ago had come and gone seemingly as normal, but there was a discrepancy: the people checking in had different faces than the ones checking out. When she and Lev traced the activities of both groups of people, they found out that the original entrants had only been at the building for less than an hour, looking for, by all appearances, Paul Jensen, the ONI officer turned CIA agent turned sellout turned corpse.

The people that came in had simply left and dispersed, proving to be highly skilled at evading CCTV cameras watching the roads and subways. They’d ditched their company cars, stolen others, ditched those and set them on fire, stolen a second set of cars, and gone to ground: this group was definitely made up of Clarke’s former employees.

The second group, that had used the IDs of the first – now with altered pictures in the photo boxes – had apparently been busy pulling files on the FSB Rostov office, obviously trying to research Artemida Vlasova. Who knew what they could have found out, hunting a false identity of someone that hadn’t actually ever set foot inside the city?

And the second group’s members had both recently received payouts in amounts just beneath the Rosbank limit for manual checks, a classic CIA tactic to pay its external hires that had a glaring weakness in that this money could be traced to who accessed it. Normally, that wasn’t a problem if the account holder was unknown, but in this case, the owners, though likely using falsified identities, were already under scrutiny because they were posing as FSB personnel.

But the strangest thing was that they’d shown their faces on camera at Lubyanka. Of course, it was hard not to, with facial recognition being part of the check-in process. But to so brazenly walk in with FSB credentials only to vanish in a way that made it inescapably clear that they were foreign agents was not standard tradecraft: it was a message. They wanted to be tracked. They wanted their Russian identities to be traced and discovered as fake. It wasn’t too difficult to use technology and makeup techniques to make your face unrecognizable for long enough to pull off an identity switcheroo, so the first group’s members might still be close by and she’d never recognize them by looks alone.

What this meant was that Luna was working something, and Clarke had to worry that this something might be her. This was Hilker sending Clarke a message: ‘I know where you are, and you aren’t safe even in there’, it went. ‘I know you know that I have people here, and you’ll never find them.’, Luna said.

The real kicker was that the people in the second group were in the building right now. And they were, Lev discovered by tracing their switching paths, combing over the agency’s financial records. Now that was interesting: Colonel Kutuzov’s men would soon move in to arrest these men, and Clarke couldn’t help but shake the feeling that this would be exactly what Luna had planned. She wasn’t going to stop it, though, too curious to see how this was gonna play out.

Embracing the free market, more or less, had done wonders for the Russian economy. Where the exchange rate had hovered around 100 rubles to the dollar in the Nineties and Noughties, Volkov's shock therapy had seen it soar to 20 rubles to the dollar, with a commensurately big increase in the wages of the Russian worker and no increase in the cost of living: the quality of life in the Federation had leapt lightyears ahead of the Soviet era. Some people took this as a sign that they could have both economic prosperity and Communism, refusing to admit that it was turning away from Communism that had allowed this economic prosperity to develop to begin with.

More importantly right now was that trawling through financial records may be boring, but it constituted a large part of counterintelligence work. If these people wanted to know how the money flow translated into operational resources, it meant they suspected the FSB of something that would be monstrously expensive and immensely dangerous to the USA.

They had been hung out to dry by the proper operatives, though. So something certainly wasn’t adding up here – pun not intended. It felt like a clandestine version of the honey pot trap.

What she knew was this: Nia’s plan involved the stolen nukes, it involved smuggling them past the US border rather than launching them – Koroleva didn’t want the Patriot ABM grid, recently upgraded from PAC5 to PAC6, intercepting them or ODIN to shoot them down from space – but Clarke didn’t know how the Russian would seek to achieve this, as she’d been infuriatingly tight-lipped about operational details.

She knew that it involved a time-on-target attack wiping out all fifty State Capitols and the highest offices of State in DC in a single knockout blow, followed by a conventional assault that would seize the remaining military command and government control centers, and most likely critical junctions like railways, airports and seaports, and news broadcasters and -papers to restore order and consolidate command as quickly as possible. She’d also need to make sure Volkov couldn’t retaliate with his own, much larger forces, which entailed keeping them blind and deaf to the goings-on overseas somehow, but again, Clarke wasn’t made privy to the details.

To achieve this American coup d'état, Nia was going to need an army: an army where Evgeny Prigozhin’s PMC Wagner would provide the bulk of the assault troops and The Mountain Men formed the Special Forces alongside the FBS’s own Spetsnaz. This army would be financed by African blood diamonds and generous donations by the New Russia Party under Vladimir Putin, where equipment was bought with laundered money courtesy of a cabal of Chinese moneymen operating from Seattle.

You'd only need a relatively small army to hijack much of the CONUS area: apart from the National Guard and State militias, the only proper military formation would be the handful of divisions that made up 80 Corps, the formation tasked with homeland defense, that was scattered all over the country. The formation largely existed only on paper: it had a designated headquarters building in Denver, but its division commanders operated autonomously in every way too large defense zone. They wouldn't be able to respond to a multi-vector threat as a unified force: by the time American units overseas could be pulled back, they’d have to basically invade the United States without supply lines, because Nia’s people – because Clarke – would have already seized control over the remaining State apparatus and its military.

It was a convoluted setup that Nia had explained with pride, and Clarke had been stupefied by just how many moving elements the woman had been able to keep self-contained without leaks springing everywhere. One could admire somebody that they otherwise hated with all their being for the sheer skill at their craft they displayed.

But for all that she’d told her what was going to happen, there’d been precious little as to the how – and knowing that was precisely what Clarke’s entire plan hinged on.

She was going to need to break some eggs to make this omelet. Nia had ordered her to rat out CIA assets within her organization, and would never believe that Clarke didn't know exactly who they were. As if she could memorize the real names and faces plus cover identities of everyone involved in the over a hundred operations Clarke oversaw worldwide, not to mention that deep cover infiltration wasn't even part of her portfolio. By far most of them were agents, anyway, not Company operatives. But she did know of a few because their loyalty was in question already, and they had to be burned anyway: they would be necessary sacrifices, thrown to the wolves to keep her own one-woman DCO intact.

It would also be self-preservation, because if any of those assets recognized her and sent word back to Langley that Clarke was now, by all appearances, squarely in Nia’s camp, Luna might just stick an assassination order on her head. And especially now that Clarke knew what Nia’s endgame was, though unfortunately knowing almost nothing on how she sought to achieve it other than that it involved the nukes that were still in Koroleva’s possession, it was more important than ever that she remain free and able to do her thing without SOG kill teams breathing down her neck. No matter the case, she had to figure out how to get her hands on some concrete evidence, and it had to be soon.

In a way, the second group being compromised was like throwing a starving dog a bone. She could work with Kutuzov to catch these men, tell Nia that they were the bulk of the CIA’s infiltrators without actually blowing the cover of most of the real DCOs that weren’t disposable external hires, and… And…

And that was what Luna would expect her to do. Son of a bitch, she thought, Luna was still on her side even now.

The calculus was bitterly cold, so she had to ice up her heart, too. She could do this: compartmentalize, dissociate, get the job done, take a deep breath, and move on to ensure that the casualties weren't for nothing.

For the time being, Nia was somewhat preoccupied with a situation that had arisen in Bosnia. Or rather: directing countless airstrikes from bases in Russian puppet state Serbia and its vassal Hungary to bomb Bosnia’s military capabilities to the ground (in Bosnia and Hercegovina, not the Republika Srpska, which she was busy arming to the teeth instead!). This was the principle of disproportionate retribution at play in retaliation for the nuclear terrorism that had cost the Russian Navy the large cruiser Admiral Ushakov and all those that sailed in her.

At least it was slowing down the operation against the United States. Nia wanted no distractions once the time came to act, and all enemies of Mother Russia needed to learn that if they lifted a single finger against her, the Bear of the East would chomp off their whole arm.

Clarke was not a clandestine operative. She wasn’t used to subtlety. Covert missions, yes, but covert wasn’t equivalent to unnoticed. She was a trigger-woman, a combat operator, not an infiltrator. But she was also a Customer, and The Shop’s 14-month training program had large chunks of its curriculum dedicated to the art of blending in and covering one’s tracks in plain sight. And the fact that Lev and her had used the FSB’s mainframe computer to track down the infiltrators was starting to give Clarke something of an idea on how to find the information she’d been after all this time.

She had one innate advantage if she’d go snooping about the mainframe: Artemida Vlasova didn’t have Clarke Griffin’s reputation yet, yet she was short, beautiful, and nothing muscular. If people didn't look like they were dangerous, they'd be assumed not to pose a threat. Jason Bourne-looking assholes that you could tell on sight would kill you stone cold without breaking a sweat if you so much as looked at them wrong tended to stand out, which would be a little bit inconvenient for an agency whose operatives relied on not being noted.

Real field operatives didn't look like smooth, suave heartbreakers sipping martinis while making casual conversation with the bad guy right next to him, but like out of shape, middle-aged accountants or young guys and gals that might be flitting between their PhD studies and their tech startups; and SOG operators weren't testosterone-poisoned, lantern-jawed Rambo types, but looked like the sort of laid-back chill dudes you'd hang out with for a cold one on a Friday night.

Even among the people inside GBCI, that were in no uncertain terms best described as some of the most dangerous people on the planet, by far most of them looked like they’d fit right in behind a teller desk at a municipal DMV office; even if the Center itself had been rebuilt to more closely resemble a fortress than the old office complex building after the Bojinka attacks. (The only thing on the side of the compound where the 747 had rammed into that was still standing to this day was the freaking water tower, and then only because the plane had skimmed just over it.)

This was all by design, of course: to be underestimated was a hell of an asset. And assets, she needed desperately.

The Russians played this game well with their Sparrows: attractive young female operatives that could coax sensitive information out of you without you ever becoming aware that you were divulging it. Clarke had alluded to such a practice when she’d escaped Petrenko’s motionless body, and she wasn’t above using her looks and charm to get her way, but actually letting people touch her would be a last resort. Roan didn’t count: their casual flings were a pressure release, with the mind games between them being unrelated to the physical needs they satisfied with each other.

This being underestimated as a weapon was also the reason the Company funded movies like ‘The Bourne Identity’: to throw a lot of people off the scent of the real deal by shaping pre-assumptions, so that anyone screaming about the truth on social media would be assumed to have been watching too many movies rather than actually being onto something.

That's the way it went: the military paid through the nose for movies and TV shows that made them look more awesome than the true drudgery life in the service often offered, while the CIA paid for written and visual media that portrayed them as being less competent than they were in actuality.

To be fair: people like Jason Bourne did exist – Clarke was one of them – but they didn’t operate like he did in the first movie, the only one in the series that her predecessors had been involved with: operators (and yes, they would be considered operators rather than operatives) like that would always fight to kill. They didn’t incapacitate, they didn’t knock out – if they got involved in a combat situation, it would be lethal action only. Clarke was not even sure whether she was still capable of performing non-lethal takedowns without accidentally killing the target anyway; because they weren’t covert assassins, but overt paramilitary operations officers. (Also, the concept of conditioning operators to where literally thinking about going against orders would cause unbearable migraines fell somewhere in the same category as MK ULTRA: a nice idea on paper that just didn’t pan out whatsoever because it didn’t have a scientific basis in reality. And MK ULTRA had only been set up because the Soviets were lowkey bragging about Project NEMO, allegedly a setup that could read people’s thoughts to turn into AV output, which turned out to have never even existed in the first place because they just wanted to get the Americans to waste money. Score one for Counterintelligence.)

Whatever else was going on, Lev’s men would soon be moving in on the low-hanging fruit, Clarke-as-Artemida would join Echo and Ontari in interrogating them, and then, these men would die. No matter what came of it, Clarke could feel that she was running out of time. Certain actors were poising themselves to make a drastic move, and she didn’t dare speculate on what was going to happen. Luna might seek to make contact with her, or she might try to have her abducted back to America. If the latter were the case, she needed to have more than hearsay to make her case with, because otherwise, she’d be a traitor twice over and would never see the outside of an iron cage again if they didn’t strap her into Old Sparky after all – or be stuffed inside another CIA black site to be interrogated uselessly, telling everything she knew only for it to be acted on too slowly through endless levels of verification and rendered inactionable by the time anything was greenlit, while tortured for information she genuinely didn’t have. And after Jensen, after Petrenko, let alone after what would take place later today, she had no doubt that the Presidential pardon – if it had even existed in more than the single, easily deniable copy she’d seen in the first place – ha been wiped off the table.

Going back to America eventually was always part of the plan. She was counting on a rendition team managing to snatch her up. She’d trained a fair few of them herself, after all, so she knew that it could be done. But it couldn’t happen yet: she still needed hard evidence. The clock was ticking and time was quickly running out – Clarke’s endgame at Lubyanka was upon her. But she still didn’t have a fully formed plan on how to achieve her goal.

But not having the full picture had never stopped her before. It would not be allowed to impede her now.

July 9, 2021

ODNI, McLean, Virginia

"Morning, Woods." Raven greeted Lexa as the brunette walked into the sable-haired Latina’s office, then immediately doubled over laughing. Lexa wasn’t laughing, though: she didn’t have it in her to be amused after the things she’d recently found out about. Owing to their skin tones, Lexa didn’t easily flush red with anger and Raven didn’t easily blush with shame at having been caught, but somehow, reality itself made an exception in this case, as if it wanted to accentuate just how serious a pickle the two women were in.

“Raven.” She simply greeted her in a clipped tone that warned the DNI that she was not in the mood for bullshit today and her patience wasn’t to be tested.

“Geez, sorry, Lex. Who pissed in your porridge today?” Raven gave a non-apology. When it came to making light or getting all upset, she preferred the former, even if it irritated one of her best friends.

“Not Clarke Griffin.” Lexa said, unthinkingly copying Raven’s mannerisms to make a joke of her own. “Because I went looking for her, only she wasn’t where she’s supposed to be.” The green-eyed girl got straight to the point.

“I haven’t got the slightest idea what you mean, Commander Woods.” Raven replied – because she had considerably more than a slight idea. She wasn’t going to give it to Lexa before the woman asked for it explicitly, though

"Give up, Reyes. I nearly had my face blown off by the woman’s laptop. I want to ADX, and I know she never got there. After all these years, I deserve the truth. Spill." Lexa demanded, growing more agitated by the growing complexity of this thing by the hour. Things were happening she couldn’t even begin to guess at, things above her pay grade and security clearance, but if she had to brute-force her way through, that’s what she would do.

"She's in Russia." Raven answered, leaving Lexa waiting for the ‘just kidding’, which never came.

The brunette’s face contorted into a scowl. “Bullshit. Indra would’ve been all over it if that were true. Spirit, I would’ve been the first one she told!”

"We didn't find out until recently. It's even more recent that we confirmed her identity. We had nothing actionable to go on for nearly three months, but I was actually just about to call for you." Raven explained. “Captain Hilker got good intel two days ago, and I received it yesterday morning. Gustus kept me occupied for the entire afternoon and into the evening, and I had to go over some stuff last night.” She told Lexa what had taken so long. “So now that I have time, you’re about to hear what I want you to do with this info.”

"You want me to do something crazy, don't you?" The DIA Commander could feel it coming.

"What I want you to do is go to Moscow and stick a pipe bomb up Nia Koroleva's ass and make her go boom, but that's not what I've been allowed to ask of you." The DNI said, sneakily not mentioning who was doing the allowing. "Instead, I want you to go to Moscow and get Griffin back to DC. Alive and unharmed, if at all possible." The brown-eyes Latina told her friend and ally, making it clear that she had to mentally erase the final clause. ‘Bring her back alive and unharmed, or don’t bother coming back at all’ was closer to the orders Rae had received from them.

Lexa staggered, reeling from this information. Hearing that Griffin was in Moscow confirmed what she already suspected, but that somebody above Raven, maybe even her own dad, wanted Lexa to bring the blonde back from Moscow was something else entirely. “How do you even know it’s her?” She questioned her boss’ boss.

"The Pennsylvania intercepted a message from Gerasim Kovalenko to Vladimir Putin, bitching about how Nia told him not to reveal to Prigozhin that 'that blonde bitch from Makhachkala' was now sitting at Lubyanka and lamenting he couldn't have her killed.” Raven stated. “The details he mentioned relate back to someone named Vlasova, who isn't from Dagestan but supposedly Rostov, and who retroactively appeared in the records not long ago." She dissected the suspicious paper trail. "We have a photograph. It's Clarke." Raven finished with certainty.

"So what's in this for Putin?" Lexa, stalling for time to digest what was happening, focused on a detail instead.

"I don't know, but I can tell you this: he's an opportunistic narcissist, not an ideological ally." Raven explained to the best of her ability, needing the extra time almost just as badly.

“Okay.” Lexa breathed, finding her center again. If anybody was going after Clarke, it had to be her. There were too many questions left unanswered, and Lexa couldn’t wait to get alone in a room with Clarke in shackles, so she could interrogate her and she couldn’t run away or divert the conversation like she usually did when things got uncomfortable. Clarke had kept so many secrets from Lexa that it hurt the brunette immensely, even knowing that there were some things she wasn’t allowed to know – but everything was different now, and she wanted her answers one way or another. “Okay. Tell me how you expect me to grab Griffin.” She asked, all but accepting the mission then and there.

“By kicking down the front door of Lubyanka and dragging her back kicking and screaming if you have to.” Raven said, not at all relishing the thought of the diplomatic shitstorm this event would cause, but people higher up the chain, including the President and some others that she didn’t even know the identity of, were rather insistent that national security depended on getting Griffin back Stateside. Raven knew better than to question these nameless men and women who operated from the shadows: the DNI was the highest Intelligence boss that people knew of, but even she wasn’t omniscient, and the ones vaguely grouped together as the ‘Protectors’ had proven their intel was credible time and again.

“Who the hell authorized such a raid?” Lexa huffed, knowing that what she was being asked to do constituted an act of open war and might easily trigger an armed conflict with Russia.

“Look at these papers. You tell me.” Raven said, handing her DIA counterpart a folder.

“Augustus Woods and… And…” Lexa thought out loud, skimming over the pages.

“And Andrei Volkov, President of the Russian Federation.” Raven finished for her. There would be no war with Russia because of this: the government of Russia was going to be brought in as a partner on this one.

“SVR Spetsnaz elements will be joining you on this mission.” The ravenette began to explain, but Lexa quickly held her hand up, asking for silence.

“No.” She said after a moment. The word came out with a distinct finality, but Reyes couldn’t let it go so easily. She had her orders from above, Lexa was the only commander she trusted to do this successfully, and Raven had a score to settle of her own: she wanted to get answers from Clarke that she’d only get by speaking with the blonde directly.

“They’ll be under your direct command, Lexa-” Raven tried to convince Lexa, knowing that the latter would think it a suicide mission, and not of the ‘long odds and low chances’ variety, but literally suicide by proxy.

“I said no!” Lexa reaffirmed her denial, raising her voice.

"We have armored personnel carriers." Raven attempted to pain things with a brighter brush.

"Yeah, and they have anti-tank missiles." Lexa pointed out. "Best case scenario? We expend all our active countermeasures without eating any hits, and then, the next Kornet or Konkurs overpens instead of going off inside the damn compartment." She sketched her scenario. "A Tigr costs a hell of a lot more than the price of the number of ATGMs you need to take one down, and they're not gonna run short on ammunition in goddamn Moscow."

"If you won't do it, I'll find somebody else who will." Raven said, daring Lexa to call her bluff.

To her relief, the green-eyed woman didn’t – she’d bitten into the dangling hook already, and wasn’t letting go anymore. "No. That would drop the odds of success from... maybe 2%... to a big, fat zero." She determined.

"So if you're gonna accept this, why all the complaining? You know it doesn't change anything." Raven pointed out.

"Because I'm too personally involved now. You are not taking this case away from me.” Lexa said, doing a complete 180 from her earlier insistence to walk away. “But that doesn't mean I'm gonna keep my opinions to myself, Director Reyes."

“Hey, I’m not judging.” Rae held her hands up in placation. Director Reyes also wasn’t the type who’d ever stop asking questions and digging up leads even if they were buried in the Earth’s inner core until she was satisfied she knew everything. “I’m just wondering if you won’t bungle this op and make sure Griffin ends up between a bad guy and your rifle so you can claim it was the fog of war.”

“Is that a concern of yours, or are you projecting?” Lexa cocked her head, studying her friend’s expression.

“Couldn’t it be both? I don’t know what to think. I mean, its Clarke.” Rae replied, encapsulating Lexa’s thoughts exactly. Everything about the blonde caused a swirling mess of contradictory emotions in the brunette’s stomach: she wanted to get Clarke back home to keep her safe, keep her under lock and key so she couldn’t betray anyone else again, interrogate her about the conspiracy that had gotten her involved with Nia when Nia was supposedly the enemy, wanted to trust her, felt like she couldn’t trust her because of all the secrets, and understood why she’d kept them secret… But for all that she was furious with Clarke, Lexa couldn’t stomach the thought of seeing her harmed.

"You may wanna consider not bringing O on this one." Raven spoke when it’d been hashed out that yes, Lexa was going to accept the mission, and no, she wasn’t going to get Clarke friendly fired.

"Out of the question." Lexa shot the suggestion down. "Octavia's never gonna forgive me if I ask her to sit this out."

"It's a big risk, Lex. Octavia may become emotionally compromised-" Rae voiced her concern: Octavia had always been Clarke’s most vehement supporter, who even now refused to believe that the blonde had done anything unjustifiable. There was a larger than zero chance that O would open up on even her own colleagues if those colleagues threatened Clarke, because those two shared a bond that transcended traditional understandings of human connection.

"As opposed to me, who certainly won't be? Are you listening to yourself?" Lexa asked, her head spinning: she’d just been asked to abduct her best friend to deliver her to the hands of people that had already consigned her to execution once before, who’d at best interrogate her for all she was worth before shipping her to ADX for the rest of her life; and the thought of being responsible for such a thing made Lexa feel sick to her stomach – but so did the thought of leaving Clarke to sit in Moscow under Nia’s ‘care’; let alone handing off the mission to another commander, one that would follow protocol, who didn’t know Clarke, and would certainly mistreat her, ensuring that the blonde would never cooperate with the American government and intelligence community again. Lexa had a surprising amount of skin in the game, she realized, as she was so disappointed in the blonde, so mad at her, and yet, still loved her so dearly…

"Listen, Lex." Raven said, leaning over to take her friend by the arm. Lexa didn’t usually enjoy being touched, but this time, she allowed it, needing the Latina to be her grounding rod. "I did a lot of really awful shit when I was still in the CIA. A lot of it was ordered by Clarke Griffin. It got so bad for my conscience that I had to transfer out to the NSA instead and go into a completely different specialization."

"Tell me something I don't know – this is old news." Lexa wondered where this was going.

"My point is that I couldn't bear it anymore even when I thought she was 100% legitimate, and I wasn't even a field operative, but a UCAV pilot." Rae explained. "Whereas Octavia? The Russkies call her the Grim fucking Reaper for everything she’s done in joint ops with SOG, and she relishes the name. She has Clarke to thank for a lot of things, so I just want you to realize that O’s loyalty to Griffin may outweigh that she holds even for Indra.” She sketched out a not implausible scenario: Indra was Octavia’s big hero, role model, and mentor, but Clarke was Octavia’s religion. "But you, you set hard lines and you don't cross them. You're unwilling to compromise your integrity even if it means you can’t see another way forward, until you make one. That's why I want you for this. You’re the only one who can.”

“How is this happening?” Lexa felt a little woozy, accepting a glass of water from Raven. “This is the second time you ask me to apprehend Clarke Griffin in less than four months, but moreover: why now?”

"Gustus told me that the first extraction attempt he made fell apart, but he didn't see fit to mention anything else about what happened, only that something went spectacularly wrong and the SVR isn’t confident they can hack it alone anymore." Raven mentioned. "So now he wants to bring us in on this. What's going on between you two that I have to act as a message relay station between a father and his daughter, that he tells me things he keeps from you?" The sable-haired woman asked, a little bit annoyed and a lot more concerned. Lexa had always been her daddy’s girl, so if there was anything at all driving a wedge between them, it would break the brunette’s heart all over again.

"I was hoping you'd tell me." Lexa said back. "I guess I'm not in the right agency, or don't have high enough security clearance. I mean, you're the DNI, so of course you know a lot of things I'm not cleared to hear about." She grumbled: though understanding the importance of compartmentalization, she wasn’t always happy to be left out of the loop. But if this roundabout way circumvented either Lex or Gus from getting into trouble, she’d have to accept it.

“Quite frankly, Lex, the reason I came to you first and foremost is because you’re the only person that ties us all together. You’re the only one I can think of that stands the slightest chance at convincing Clarke to help us.” Raven spoke, knowing that Lexa’s unique position as Clarke’s oldest friend, President’s daughter, and protégé of General Porter gave her the power to get the blonde to trust her enough to make a deal without expecting a knife in the back.

"People like her need someone else like them to tether them to the here and now. If they don't have a counterpart, they go insane. That's what happens to the best of us when we become isolated from everyone save our own mind. But pair them up, and they become... the closest thing to unstoppable that reality allows for." Raven tried to articulate her reasoning. "It happens instinctively. There's something innate to the human condition that compels us to seek out other people that we can most strongly relate to. You know what sort of a person Clarke Griffin is. One of her is bad enough. When it was Bellamy keeping her on the straight and narrow, well, General Blake isn't ambitious for its own sake. Suppose she runs into someone in Moscow who is. Who possesses her level of intelligence, her utter dedication to the mission, someone who's charming and sensible, but who happens to be ideologically opposed to everything we represent and doesn't possess her sense of scruples. Suppose he or she used the sense of betrayal Clarke must be feeling to turn her against us in ways we have no defense against." Rae’s scenario made too much sense: even someone used to being as isolated as the CIA Director was still human, and she’d been exiled, cast adrift, abandoned by her friends and family and likely knowing that she’d never have a real home again – unless she forced a new one into existence in Russia.

Raven carried on: "She's been cut loose by Blake. Who knows what the hell she's doing in Russia to try to get that human connection back? The damage she could do if she finds somebody there, if she defects fully... You know the alphabet soup takes care of our own. In every sense of the term."

"So that's what this is about? You want me to be her, what, her partner?" Lexa asked – Raven’s reasoning had gone from tactical skills to personal trust and history to something that sounded a lot like cooperation under much more equal terms than what Lexa was surmising the case would be if this was anything like the ‘assistance for sentence reduction’ deals she’d had forced down her throat a couple of times.

"We need her to feel like she can trust us. She knows Octavia, she trusts Octavia, and so do I." Raven stated, her syntax leaving it ambiguous whether it was Octavia or Clarke that she trusted. "I want you to be her grounding rod, and to see what sort of lightning she attracts."

"You made it sound like you want me to kill her after the thunderstorm is over." Lexa questioned, wondering just how much danger the blonde would be in if she’d be forced back to America. Wondering what, if anything, she could do to protect her, which amounted to practically nothing if she was left to her own devices.

"That is a last resort if you fail to get her under control." Rae said flatly, as if phoning in a tasteless script line reading.

"‘Under control?’ Clarke Griffin? If that's what you genuinely expect, then just send me to Moscow with a kill order, because it'll save us both a lot of wasted time and effort." Lexa said in disbelief that she’d just had to state the obvious.

"Gustus doesn't want that." Raven explained, echoing her dad’s sentiments from her earlier visit to the Executive Residence. "I have no idea what your dad has cooking under the hood, but he's got plans of his own."

“And you mean to tell me my father thinks it’s a good idea to bring Clarke back when Miss Paranoid’s first and only assumption will be that if we weren’t there to kill her, we mean to chuck her in a supermax for all eternity – which wouldn’t even be paranoia, but factual truth?!” Lexa, getting worked up on Clarke’s behalf for reasons she only halfway understood and preferred to ignore, shot at the DNI.

"You don't have a choice, Lexa, because I don't either." Reyes spoke sadly. She too would rather that things be anything different from how they had to be. "The President is breathing down my neck, telling me to either get you on board or find someone else who will. He's going to boot me out of office if I don't get you to play ball." She revealed.

"Both our careers are on the line here, as well as God knows how many American lives. Griffin is an intel gold mine, a walking encyclopedia who knows everything about how the whole alphabet soup works, and she's working for the Russian internal security agency whose leadership is known to oppose President Volkov's being on friendly terms with the United States. Who knows what kind of damage she could do if she spills the beans?" Raven kept digging into Lexa’s sense of duty. "You know I'm right, Lex. We need you on this, because nobody else who can is willing, nobody who's willing can, and nobody who's either isn't mad as a hatter, except for you. You've the only one that can pull off an extraction like this. It could be what makes you Lexa Woods the DIA bigshot instead of Lexa the President's daughter."

“If you think you can play on my ego and lust for power, I’m gonna have to disappoint you. I know that I’m more than the Second Daughter, and that’s good enough for me.” The brunette, not one to give into self-doubt, shut Rae down.

"Clarke knows how Koroleva thinks. She's been right by her side for months; knowing the way she operates, she'll be pretty deeply clued in by now. And that woman sees the world in a way that you and I simply can't imagine." The ravenette said. "Gustus believes that the FSB is planning to strike America and cost us who knows how many lives. President Volkov agrees that there is a clear and present danger that threatens Russia as much as it does the US. And whatever else, Clarke Griffin is involved." Raven sighed, wondering just as Lexa did just what the hell the blonde had gotten herself into. "We need to get her back, one way or another. That's why you're here."

"Fine." Lexa said at last. "But I'll make it clear I take this under protest. I'll accept no responsibility when this blows up in our faces." She stated resolutely, for the record.

With the tense confrontation between the two friends, who didn’t even understand why they were arguing as they both clearly wanted the same thing, came to an end, all that remained was the preliminary briefing.

“You’ll be inserting into Russia via Domodedovo Airport in Moscow using a Foreign Affairs Boeing 747 VC-25A with full countermeasure kit in the guise of escorting a diplomatic envoy, peeling off and hitting Lubyanka directly at ground level after being flown close to the area by FSO Mi-24 Hind helicopter gunship on a ‘routine training exercise’, then extracting via any ground vehicles in the form of a convoy of Tigr armored cars provided by the SVR to Sheremetyevo Airport where Mr. Shaw will be waiting with an Ilyushin IL-96-300 from President Volkov’s personal fleet to fly you back straight to DC. This is one of the ones that’s been converted to fly on MF cells, so there’s no need to worry about kerosene getting set alight.”

“That’s all good and well,” Lexa began, “but that’s presuming we make it to that airport alive in the first place.”

“It’s not as difficult as it sounds. Lubyanka is an office complex, not a fortress. The Russkies don’t build their public servants’ headquarters like we do. Compared to Langley or the Pentagon, it’s gonna be a cakewalk. You just kick in the front door, nab the girl, and be back out before Moscow even realizes what’s going on. The whole city won’t be fighting back tooth and nail, not with Volkov’s approval on your side.”

"Anya's just going to love this, Rae."

"Don't I know it. She's probably gonna break up with me again. But she'll come back, she always does."

Yes, that may be so, Lexa thought, but then again… Costia always came back, until she didn’t. But that was only because she couldn’t. Anya loved Raven and always would for as long as she lived – leaving the brunette hoping that she wasn’t about to lead her own sister to her death the way Clarke did hers. Clarke also always came back, now likely only not doing so because she couldn’t. Well, DCS would kick in the door, and the rest would be out of her hands.

As far as Lexa was concerned, 'Defense Clandestine Service' could best be renamed to 'Direct Combat Support', for all that she and her guys were being called upon to do work reminiscent of Army Rangers platoon attacks that the 75th couldn't handle due to the sensitive nature of everything surrounding the people that she had to dispose of. Extracting people alive wasn’t really her ballpark, but she’d managed in Makhachkala, so she’d just have to trust in her skills and stay frosty for long enough to see the mission through: then, she could look Clarke in the eye ask her ‘why?’.

July 17, 2021

Lubyanka Building, Moscow

Moscow was a lot bigger than Washington DC, and certainly a lot older. Clarke could understand why Roan lived in the city rather than in a country dacha like his mother, sister, and ‘Artemida’.

There were certainly many surface-level similarities, but where American architecture looked imposing, Russian architecture (that wasn't as old as Peter the Great and the cultural heyday of the old Empire) just looked... impoverished. Brutalism was said to expose the naked soul of the Russian people, without bells and whistles to conceal what truly mattered, what went on beneath the veneer of civilization, but in Clarke's view, the structures it resulted in just looked like they'd been abandoned halfway through being built. No, America's favored style of Art Deco was far more pleasing to the eye; but there were still plenty of old structures in the city that made it a jewel to look at if you knew where to go.

Where she was going was the Lubyanka Building, and where she’d come from was Roan’s townhouse that wasn’t a house as much as a mansion, having gone there to take her mind off yesterday’s tribulations and revelations. But she always found herself back at FSB Headquarters, inescapably drawn to the intrigues that stalked its half that she’d deftly insinuated herself into, still struck by the similarities as much as the differences between the Russians and Americans, and even smaller distinctions between Russian and American spooks, every single day.

Lubyanka really was just an oversized office building, albeit a very decorative one that had a few more than usual doors that you couldn't access without a keycard and that were guarded by soldiers that would shoot to kill any unauthorized personnel that even loitered too closely to them. There was an entire heavy infantry regiment embedded for security here, and your average cubicle farm didn’t have BUK anti-air missile batteries installed on its roof.

But on the inside, the place was downright pleasant-looking, studded with eye-catching artworks depicting the history and triumphs of the Rodina; and the fabled secret rooms that supposedly contained R&D facilities for experimental nerve gas that could selectively target people based on their ethnicity and cloaked orbital weapons mounting electro-lasers that could kill anybody, anywhere, at any time simply did not really exist. There was every chance that the FSB itself was responsible for spreading some of these wild stories, to discredit rumors about special projects that were real, but these proved to be of the much more mundane variety that all had an American equivalent.

The place was the public façade for a house of darkness, painted in bright colors, decorated with artful frescoes, historical paintings and statues, posters and tapestries, with lush red carpeting covering the floors, white granite and blue marble walls studded with gilded decorations held up by carved columns lined in bronze forming the halls and corridors while the interior rooms came in tessellated white oak and red mahogany paneling that were more complicated the higher the rank of the person that occupied those spaces.

Ornate crystal chandeliers with powerful electric lights supplemented large domes that let in natural light through special glass reinforced enough to withstand a direct missile impact. There was no sign of austerity to be found here: no expense had been spared in catering to the comforts of those that worked at Russia’s most powerful intelligence agency.

At least the first few floors and entrance area were just... cubicles, meeting rooms, waiting rooms, computer labs, and a whole slew of bureaucrats. There were even tons of civilians coming through every day, all day, doing God only knew what in the publicly accessible areas and turning those into a surveillance nightmare.

A little father back, behind the public access areas, were interrogation rooms, armories, data entry centers: everything the organization needed to stay safe and secure and do its daily grind jobs in peace. It wasn’t until you got to the top floors, where the internal prison was situated, or the sub-basement levels, housing the computer mainframe, that things got really interesting. And those sub-levels, she had by now become intimately familiar with. Yes, Artemida Fedorovna Vlasova had rapidly established herself as one of the power brokers at Lubyanka, and she was very subtly making inroads towards inciting rebellion even as she rooted out more of Nia’s detractors every day.

The Lubyanka Building was not at all the shabbiest backdrop she'd ever had to conduct business from. Nia had even given her an honest-to-God day job at the FSB, one that was more than window dressing but included actual duties, sticking her in the Internal Security Directorate that was tasked with monitoring insiders' comings and goings, keeping track of who talked to whom about what, nothing down suspicious behavior and strange ways of wording things, keeping track of motivations and potential weaknesses that enemies could use to subvert or coerce them, and such things.

She even had a private office and a suspiciously high security clearance, one that she was certain Nia had set her up with so she'd be able to dig her own grave if she was having rebellious thoughts. Clarke had initially been skeptical regarding the fact that she'd been able to determine most of her cover identity's details by herself, but Nia's argument that it would be easiest to remember a fake background that she'd made up herself instead of having to memorize what another had picked out actually made sense. So Colonel Vlasova from Rostov-on-Don, brought to Moscow to act as a new Internal Security head honcho based on meritorious conduct, had quickly been accepted by the Russian spooks.

This work was actually fun to do, not least of all because she was assembling a Mount Yamantau's worth of blackmail on half the senior personnel here, and it gave her a lot of opportunities to network through the cracks in the system. Funnily enough – or maybe not – it seemed that there was a lot of overlap between the people Clarke approached that may not be entirely on board with Nia's agenda, and the people that Roan Korolev liked to go out for late-night drinks with. A conspiracy within the conspiracy, perhaps, but all she could say with certainty about Roan was that Roan was on Roan's side, and whatever that was was whatever happened to benefit him most at the moment. So even if he might be a co-combatant against his own mother, he was certainly not an ally. He sure was good in bed, though.

The trick was in not trying to be liked. Trying too hard to fit in at a place like Lubyanka would be more suspicious than sarcastically confessing to being a CIA plant. No, she wasn't here to be friendly, but also not to be background noise either – Nia had seen to that by sticking her in a first-floor corner office, one of the four most important ones of the kind that wasn't the Director's own. So she’d devoted weeks towards making herself be expected. Bossing people around was a great way to get them irritated enough that they'd chalk down tiny little voices telling them that the new girl wasn't entirely what she seemed to the natural frustration that came with being under new management by someone who thought she was one of the masters of the universe.

Clarke couldn't help herself: she hadn't been on the ground end of a deep cover operation for years, and the kick of excitement that came with gambling stakes such as these, walking a razor's edge between suspicion and being do disliked people would slam doors in her face was a hell of an addictive drug. You could be the best there was at your tradecraft, but unless you also had the sort of personality where putting your life on the line 24/7 energized you instead of turning you into a jittery nervous wreck, you weren't cut out for the Agency.

The fact that her brain was literally incapable of forgetting anything she'd ever seen and she had obsessively researched the city of Rostov-na-Donu specifically to build a Russian alter ego with should the need arise made it considerably easier to pull off, though. Not that eidetic memory couldn't be more trouble than it was worth, since she could also recall every argument and fight she ever had with her loved ones with perfect clarity. But rather than being brought down into a depressive spiral, thinking about unresolved fights and the pain of being turned against by her closest people, she transformed the grief into anger, and the anger became the fuel that spurred her on to get back to America with the evidence in hand that would allow her countrymen to thwart Nia’s war plans… and hopefully serve as a good enough reason to grant Clarke that pardon after all, because she wasn’t going to die like a dog in a cage.

After the hell she’d put herself through, she deserved better than that. She just hoped that her people would think the same way, once they’d be told the whole story. If she’d even be allowed to tell the whole story… If she could just tell Lexa and nobody else, she’d get the ball rolling. She’d make sure to release her information to every news outlet in the world: all the tabloids and respected papers, legacy media and social media, assemble a trigger that would automatically paster the Clarke Griffin Investigation all over in such a way that not even the alphabet soup could suppress it if it proved to be necessary. After all, it would be hard to justify imprisoning a hero.

Clarke didn’t feel much like a hero, nor did she desire to be one. She just wanted to do the right thing. Just like Lexa. So yes, perhaps she could trust Lexa – if she could get Lexa to trust her again. And that would be the real challenge.

Chapter Text

Chapter 12: The Other Side

July 7, 2021

Beneath Kola Bay, Russian waters

In the icy waters of the far northern ocean, the surface was broken by a series of three thin metal poles with various electronic doodads affixed to them. They came coated in a radar-deflecting polymer, a special paint that made them difficult to visually identify, and were otherwise treated to make them virtually untraceable to magnetic scanners. They were the electronic support measures (ESM) mast, radio antenna, and periscope of a US Navy Silent Service submarine, one that was taking an immense risk by running so close to the surface in broad daylight, sitting just outside of a Russian Navy standard patrol route with a Northern Fleet submarine on course for the American boat’s position.

USS Pennsylvania, SSBN-736, was not like the other Ohio-class nuclear ballistic missile submarines. Under the callsign 'Cat-Eye', Captain Derek Hilker's boat had been heavily modified by the Office of Naval Intelligence to act as a sophisticated listening platform, tasked with collecting, collating, and disseminating sensitive data that the Russians would rather keep internal. She had a team of expert ONI analysis on board that spent every waking moment trawling through piles of raw data from the live feeds, deciding what to send to storage for scheduled burst transmission and what, if anything, was critical enough to send back to Suitland Road immediately.

At present, Derek's boat was prowling somewhere in Kola Bay off the coast of Arkhangelsk, using her ultra-sensitive scanning equipment to listen in on Russian chatter over the airwaves, holotaping radio and Internet traffic. The latest interesting news the Captain had been made privy to: the Northern Fleet submarine base at Polyarny was being prepared to conduct some unscheduled refits and upgrades on a Belgorod-class boomer, the Slava-class missile cruiser Admiral Ushakov had fallen out of contact with Black Sea Fleet Command and a massive search effort was now underway, and the Foreign Intelligence Service was mightily concerned about a recent development at the Federal Security Service.

Recently, Yasenevo had been making discreet inquiries regarding the arrival of a new Head of Internal Security at Lubyanka, one whose physical description lined up perfectly with a certain missing in action Clarke Griffin. Captain Hilker of the US Navy wasn’t supposed to know that the ex-CIA Director had never made it to ADX Florence, but Hilker the ONI operative whose own boss shared intel to his wife the new CIA Director was privy to it. He’d been asked to keep his instrument tuned for any word about Griffin coming from Russia and to report back any findings immediately, so he determined that this would be a strong enough lead to risk an unscheduled communique for.

Word had only recently come in that Artemida Vlasova from Rostov-on-Don had just popped up at Lubyanka, because all evidence that could place her at the Rostov office seemingly appeared overnight and was backdated to look like legitimate evidence of a long career. Combining this information with a recent, hitherto deemed low-priority signal intercept sent by the Minister of Defense to the Duma Opposition Leader, determined that Artemida Fedorovna Vlasova and Clarke Griffin could very well be the same person.

Needless to say: this discrepancy made Langley, now under the direction of the skipper's wife Luna, very interested. And anything ONI got on this matter, she'd want to know too. So Derek had ordered the Pennsylvania to come up to make a surface burst transmission, then shake off any pursuers, and finish this damn frustrating tour already.

"UHF transmission complete, skipper." His RTO reported after several minutes that had crept by like hours. Even though the Conn’s air cooling systems were blasting Arctic wind into the room, every man was covered with the sweat of anticipation, no-one happy at running so close to the surface in hostile waters with a Russian patrol sub’s passing being so imminent. UHF transmissions were a damn sight faster than ULF, using up far more broadband width, but also using up much more energy, giving off a powerful signature that was much easier to pinpoint the origin of. But this information could prove to be extremely time-sensitive, so using the ULF might see the window of communication close. And with something this important, sending a partial message could do more damage than not sending it at all.

But it was finally done, so now it was time to get back to safety. "Down scope, down the ESM mast and antenna. Retract towed array. Dive officer, down four degrees all planes. Make your depth 650 feet. Helm, come left to zero-seven-five, make rotations for eight knots. XO, rig the boat for ultra-quiet." Captain Hilker gave his instructions to his senior officers, all of them responding by verbally relaying back their orders and finishing with an ‘aye’.

Russian subs usually kept their keel depth at increments of fifty meters, so US submarines in the area could avoid collisions by making their own depths uneven in meters, or so the theory went.

Derek braced himself on an overhead handhold as the deck pitched forward, his boat making depth and doubling its previous speed, still keeping well below the cavitation limit. No air bubbles were going to be generated that could alert the Russian sonar operator that something was amiss.

“Passing 100 feet.” The dive officer reported as the hatches atop the sail covering the masts slid shut. “Passing 200 feet. Attained and holding speed of 8 knots.” He spoke again as the boat’s propulsor – which didn’t turn at all, but parlance changed much slower than technology – was now pumping enough compressed water through its jet to maintain a steady speed. “Passing 300 feet. Heading zero-seven-five attained, holding steady.” The officer said, acknowledging the helmsman’s thumbs-up that the vessel’s bow was now pointed in the right direction. “Passing 400 feet.”

“Boat rigged for ultra-quiet.” The XO reported, meaning that all across the Pennsylvania, people wouldn’t be moving unless they absolutely had to, could only speak in the most careful whispers, secured everything that might shift around, and had turned off any device that produced noise that wasn’t absolutely necessary for keeping the boat operational. The transmission may or mau not have been detected and pegged as foreign in origin, so until and unless proven otherwise, Derek was going to operate under the assumption that his boat was being actively hunted.

Not long thereafter, the sonar operator radioed the Conn with the expected news. Acoustic readings indicated two propellers, seven blades each, making turns for twenty-two knots. His waterfall display’s lines, specifically those taken over a few minutes of passive search designated as ‘Track 1-1’ that all fell together into a consistent series of returns, formed a pattern corresponding with the signature of an Oscar-II-class nuclear-powered attack submarine. For once in their lives, the Russians were right on time.

"Conn, sonar. There's our friend the Oscar-II, right on schedule." The officer stated. "We're in her baffles, Sir."

It seemed that Ivan was clueless, much to the bridge crew’s relief. The Oscar, a big, heavy killer designed to single-handedly take on US carrier battlegroups, would be hammering away on active search sonar if they believed there was anything out of the ordinary going on around here, but so far, she was following her usual patrol route.

"She'll be making her baffles-clearing turn soon.” Derek, knowing how Russian skippers worth their salt liked to make abrupt sharp turns to make sure there was nothing hiding behind them, anticipated. “Torpedo room. Ready tube two, load noisemaker with whale programming."

"Conn, torpedo room. Flood tube two, aye. Prepping decoy for biological." The response came, acknowledging the order.

"She's throwing her helm, coming right full rudder." The radar operator reported: the Oscar was behaving as expected.

"Open outer door." Derek spoke to another channel.

"Ready." The torpedo room responded.

"Shoot tube two." Captain Hilker commanded.

Slight tremors vibrated through the deck beneath his feet as a burst of pressurized water was expelled through the narrow tube as it propelled the nonlethal torpedo far enough away from the boat to where it wouldn’t do any damage once it activated its jet propulsion engine.

Now the wait was on. Hilker was betting that the Russian skipper had at least heard something, and just didn’t know what it was. If Derek was right, total silence would be more suspicious than there at least being a whale in the area the noise could be attributed to. With the Pennsylvania’s stern sitting at a 45* starboard angle towards the Oscar’s bow, the Ivan only had to ping on active once, and she’d acquire the American, calculate a firing solution, and have a full spread of torpedoes in the water before Hilker could even turn to calculate a return fire vector: they’d just be done for.

The direction he’d ordered the noisemaker torpedo into went in the opposite way from the Pennsylvania, the sharp angle meaning that the guidewire was several almost immediately, leaving the weapon out of control and running solely on its programming. It also meant that if the Oscar followed, the Pennsylvania would slip into her baffles, at which point she would make a run for it and disappear.

A tension-filled hour later, Hilker was proven right. His Russian counterpart had come charging after the noisemaker at speed, not coasting along – a major risk, as a boat that displaced as much as the massive Oscar-II-class didn’t stop on a dime – but speeding up to a blistering 34 knots for at least 10 minutes, until she seemed to ne satisfied that they’d responded to a false alarm. The Oscar-II, having investigated the ‘biological’ contact and coming up with nothing, would now be returning to Severomorsk.

Derek relaxed his muscles as the tension flowed out of the bridge: it wouldn’t be much longer now before his interminable 6-month deployment would be over and he could finally go home to spend some quality time with Luna.

Two hundred nautical miles further north-north-west, at a keel depth of 200 meters, Captain Alexander Maksimovich Novikov, commanding officer of the Belgorod-class submarine Sergei Korolev, ordered his RTO to reconfirm the orders he'd just received from Northern Fleet Headquarters at Severomorsk. His boat had only set out on its three-month sub-Arctic patrol four hours ago when he'd suddenly been told to turn his rudder around and head back to Polyarny for a refit and upgrade including the installation of special equipment. He was also told that his current cadre of young, up-and-coming officers that had been released to his expert hands for training into the next generation of Red Banner Navy boomer captains were to be disembarked to make way for older, more experienced men.

When the RTO returned with a fresh message reconfirming his orders and restating the names of the replacement officers, Novikov smiled for the first time in years. He knew who these men were: they had been his finest trainees, his comrades and colleagues of many years. They were the ones that had stood by Admiral Novikov when he'd raged and railed against the United States Government that had ordered a spy sub into Russian waters that had crashed into the Russian submarine his son Alexei had commanded, an incident that had left no survivors on the Russian side, and who had supported him when he'd criticized the Russian government that had done nothing more than lodge a formal protest that everyone knew would go nowhere, even after he'd been sharply demoted for his thankless efforts and relegated from active-duty officer to being stuck on training missions.

Alexander Maksimovich knew what 'special equipment' the message referred to. Officially, it was a new type of experimental radio transceiver that was said to be capable of sending and receiving ULF-band signals even though up to 30 meters up Arctic pack ice. Unofficially, the hidden code embedded in its serial number tipped him off that it was also a one-of-a-kind transceiver allowing him to talk directly with his real commanding officer: not Admiral of the Fleet Yuri Pavlovich Vlasenko, but Nia Sil'nayevna Koroleva. And as for the refit? The Captain was certain that it would involve discreetly swapping out his missile inventory of conventional warheads for ones of a significantly spicier variety.

Soon, Novikov thought to himself, the West would know the wrath of the father that had been made to outlive his own son at their wretched capitalist hands.

July 18, 2021

Lubyanka, Moscow

“I will let you know if anything turns up.” Kutuzov spoke over their direct phone line.

“Thank you, Lev. I know it sounds insane, but…” Clarke trailed off, having planted the first seeds of doubt – and false evidence – in Colonel Kutuzov’s mind regarding the Defense Minister’s true loyalties.

“That man is not one of us, and envy may drive such a person to shoot himself in the foot.” Lev surmised.

“Exactly. I appreciate you keeping this discreet. I’ll talk to again you soon.” She said, hanging up the phone and returning to running security checks on people using computers without authorization. She’d recently begun an intense hunt for personnel that were accessing sensitive files, or calling up information above their clearance level, all in order to prepare for her imminent information grab while making Nia believe she was shoring up Lubyanka’s data security.

The office for Head of Security Kutuzov was situated right next to the first interior checkpoint, overlooking the personnel atrium right behind the visitor lobby on the other side of the checkpoint. As Head of Internal Security, Clarke's new office was the one on the opposite end of the atrium, deeper towards the inside of the building to the left from the front doors, right there on the first floor, meaning that the pair could look right at each other across the atrium.

It was important to keep in mind that the Russians called the first floor the ground floor and referred to the second floor as their 'first floor', because apparently using base-zero for spaces that actually existed made sense to them.

It was a corner office with large one-way mirror windows that allowed her to observe all the foot traffic going through the big atrium without them knowing whether they were being looked at right now. And the place had surprisingly grown on Clarke, who’d caught herself starting to think of it as her own. She supposed that, when you had very little control left over your own destiny, you would naturally latch onto anything that you could still call yours.

Nia held her own court on said second floor, called the first floor, up the stairs on the right-hand side, her personal office sitting close to the ornate boardroom where all her various deputies and division directors held their briefings sitting around an enormous mahogany table. Well, that table was about to be hosting all of the top brass as Lubyanka if Clarke got her way: she’d finally decided on how to move forward with her intel acquisition plan, it would involve setting up Minister Kovalenko as a patsy, and it was beginning today. The guy despised her. Clarke was halfway certain that he knew exactly who she was, but he hadn’t squealed: she’d have been getting a lot more sidelong glances if he had. Still, Gerasim didn’t make his distaste for her a secret, which she found to be awfully convenient.

It was the perfect setup. Nobody would defy Internal Security if evidence was produced that implicated people in shady business practices, because that was their job. And this relatively new arrival to the posting would naturally be assumed to act extra zealously in order to prove that she belonged there – that was the Russian way. Especially since the story went that the previous occupant of this position had tried to double-deal behind Nia's back, drank some tea with an old friend one day, and had died almost immediately afterwards of an inexplicable heart attack. The former Head of Security had resigned upon Artemida’s arrival, seemingly with a generous pension plan, and Clarke had been shocked to learn that he had died a few weeks ago; shocked, but not surprised. In any case, nobody was going to challenge a witch hunter showing up after that, at least not for a while.

Under this cover, she could weed out the CIA's infiltrators as well as any other foreign agents, along with doing genuine internal cleanup within the FSB, which had its own rogue and renegade elements. She was getting closer to uncovering Roan’s conspiracy against Nia, the Director’s own son working behind the scenes to build up more and more resistance to her that would allow Roan to commit an internal coup. Problem being: it would take far too long to materialize. Nia’s plans would have already been enacted, so she couldn’t afford to just let it play out – not to mention that she herself was in imminent danger of being rendered unable to carry out her side of the equation. So she was doing what she could to cover Roan’s tracks while crushing down hard on third-party dissenters, ensuring that eventual Roan’s transition to power would go down smoothly, without any other claimants luring to come out of the woodworks before he’d be able to settle in securely in his mother’s old seat. Roan Korolev as FSB Director would decrease global tensions immensely.

All of that was still secondary to the most important thing: get the incriminating stuff, get home, stop Nia.

Still, it was supremely ironic that Clarke had more actual freedom right here at FSB Headquarters, lair of her greatest enemy, than she would be afforded in her own country. Although to be fair: that bar was so low, it wasn't even there.

The computer technology here was primitive. The machines were bulky and heavy, with limited computing power, not much in the way of graphic displays: all very bare-bones and Spartanly functional. Then again, this also meant that Lubyanka's computers were incompatible with any external hardware, securing the building from hardline intrusions and ensuring that internal activities could easily be logged and tracked – or relatively easily altered, since the flow of end-user information wasn't done digitally, but via paper printouts. This made it possible to subtly alter digital fingerprints in ways that the system would think it had always been that way, and Clarke caught onto the methods quickly. Once the physical readouts were fresh from the presses, whatever they said became gospel truth, because it was impossible to determine whether any doctoring had been taking place beforehand: that was one of the myriad ways in which Nia enforced compliance with her wishes, but also one that could be exploited by someone with a high enough system administrator rank and a whole lot of guts.

Clarke certainly didn't go wanting in the latter, but didn't have such admin privileges in the former. The people in the security room would always be watching what was going on inside the data center where metadata could be falsified, which was also guarded by numerous hawk-eyed soldiers at all times, so what she needed was a legitimate reason to go messing about computer systems in those areas – which her witch hunt provided her with – and a fall guy to pin the actual system intrusions in, which Kovalenko would be.

Minister of Defense Gerasim Kovalenko was one of the usual suspects at the daily briefings. The man was the GRU's top dog and a frothingly rabid ultranationalist who could spin a tale into making anything at all look like an imminent critical threat to Russian state security and endlessly argue about how every piece of land on Earth actually belonged to the Russians in one way or another.

From the primary access point to the central mainframe, information was transferred through several switches, each of them logging activity along the way. Only at the data center, those switches could be remapped, making the mainframe believe that, for example, a search conducted from a terminal in the mainframe server room had actually come from the records office, down to determining precisely what computer had been used and whose login information would be displayed as being associated with the command. Clarke had been hard at work mapping the layout of Lubyanka’s switching infrastructure to enable her to do all the necessary accessing and pathing rewriting by memory, slowly but surely piecing together the whole mesh network that serviced FSB Headquarters’ Intranet system.

Nia did enjoy popping into 'Artemida's' office at random times to have a friendly chat, or an in-depth discussion, but always without warning. This kept Clarke on her toes, because even if Nia didn't show up for hours and hours, there was always the threat of her barging in at any time, which meant that Clarke's office computers were nigh-unusable for doing anything sensitive with. If Koroleva saw anything suspicious on those monitors, things would get really awkward, really fast. That meant she had to reposition a lot, use any terminal anywhere for only a few minutes at a time, and come up with a believable excuse for hopping from one machine to the next: Nia’s own paranoia combined with the woman’s knowledge that the FSB had enemy agents inside its walls proved to be aptly weaponized to deflect suspicions.

At some point in the day, Kutuzov announced that Nia wanted to see Vlasova alone. So she’d shut down her setup and gone up to the Director’s office, only to find that Nia wasn’t there alone. Ontari was there with her – and Only Ontari. Clarke gulped at the predatory look the ravenette was giving her: this could be bad.

“Our people in SVR report that your American friends are finally on their way to uncovering where you have disappeared to. It took them longer than I anticipated.” Nia spoke with an unconcerned smile, motioning Ontari to step up and hand Clarke a file containing a list of… Oh no.

"Bellamy Blake. Octavia Blake. Jacob Griffin. Abigail Griffin. Raven Reyes. Alexandria Woods." Ontari read off. "These are only some of the names at stake in this game you are playing. If mother believes you are trying to double-cross us, she will send me to kill these people."

"And I will know. We have our agents and operatives embedded everywhere. CIA. FBI. NSA. You will be watched to ensure your compliance." Nia spoke, as though knowing Clarke ending up back in America was a foregone conclusion. She wouldn’t be surprised if Nia was even pulling strings to help them along.

"You know, if anyone else were to threaten to kill my family unless I did what they told me to, I would assume that they were either already dead, or you'd kill them anyway even if I did what you said." Clarke spoke up, acting unperturbed even though her stomach clenched with a sudden nervous cramp. "However, since I think you're smart enough to know that I understand as much, I also think you're smart enough to know that there's no lengths I won't go to to kill you if you lay a finger on any of them. I'll start with your children, and gut your entire organization, forcing you to watch as your life collapses in around you until you're standing in nothing but the ruins of what could have been, and in the end, you will beg me for the mercy of death." Clarke, sounding more and more like the Commander of Death with each word, getting closer to Nia and growling at Ontari to back the fuck off when she tried to get in between the blonde and her mother, issued her promise. "And that, Nia, is why I am your new best friend." She finished with a smirk, grinning with downright cruelty as Nia visibly took it to mean that this was Clarke declaring that she and her were the same, when in reality, Clarke was grinning because she realized that Nia had, in revealing her hand, just lost all her power over Clarke, leaving the younger blonde salivating at the thought of parting the older woman’s head from her neck.

“Are you completely certain you want to go through with this?” Clarke said to an affronted Nia. “Because if we’re moving forward the way I think you’re suggesting – getting me brought back to America in chains – I need to know you’re committed all the way. I won’t risk my life if I have the least bit of doubt you’ll back off at the last moment.”

“I have committed most of a decade to seeing this idea come to life. I will not risk losing the only person, you, who is capable of seeing it come true.” Nia said calmly. “When they come for you, you will work with them, subvert them from the inside out, and when the time is right, you will escape and join me… in Washington.”

“And what makes you think they won’t just throw me in prison and throw away the key without even letting me have my say? You can’t guarantee that the system won’t decide to ‘lose’ me inside its bureaucratic maze.” Clarke demanded.

“Because the system you speak of doesn’t really exist, and your tongue can convince anybody of anything.” Nia explained her reasoning. "Checks and balances, legal procedures, separation of powers: all fancy words on paper, all finely crafted theories, but Mao was not wrong when he said that all power – real power – comes from the barrel of a gun." She quoted the man who had been single-handedly responsible for more innocent civilian deaths than any other person in history, including Genghis Khan himself.

Nia now launched into an ideological rant: "A people are not strong because they are rich enough to afford not to care about the woes of the rest of the world. True prosperity only comes to those that have the military means to impose their order upon the rest of the world, and the political will to enforce it. Russia today has the means, but not the will, while America has the technology, the inventory, and the budget, but lacks the drive. The motivation is not there. You possess the most powerful armed forces in human history, but are so averse to taking casualties that you dare not use it to more than a fraction of its potential. You would have conquered Afghanistan years ago if you stopped trying to win stone hearts and empty minds and instead built pyramids with the skulls of dead Jihadists doused in the blood of female pigs. General Pershing won the Philippines this way, yet your Congress is too scared about looking bad to the hippies of our age."

"But together? American weapons wielded with Russian courage can turn tomorrow into whatever we wish it to be. We need only say it, and it is as real as though it were already a memory. No longer will the world be dominated by Wall Street, by ghosts in Beijing, and by nameless, unaccountable bureaucrats in the United Nations, no longer by men and women with no moral fiber and no true loyalties, but by those that will build a lasting legacy of peace through superior firepower. I now believe that you and I are those people." The older woman finished the world’s calmest rant.

If only Clarke had an audio recorder: this speech by Nia was like looking for gold and striking diamonds. But even then, Russian spooks enjoyed holding confidential conversations in blisteringly hot saunas precisely because they messed up such equipment, so the fact that Nia was talking like this in her office meant she was totally unconcerned about being overheard. It was, after all, nothing that her real confidantes didn’t know about already.

For having supposedly inducted Clarke into the inner circle, Nia was keeping infuriatingly tight-lipped regarding details and specifics. All she'd given up was her endgame, what she wanted to achieve, but still hadn't said a word about the how. Even Roan and Ontari seemed to not have the full picture. So the mainframe idea had to go through – it was too late today, any longer and the CIA might have snatched her, so it was going to be happening tomorrow.

“Do you really believe the people will side with you?” Clarke asked once the story reached its conclusion.

“The masses never revolt of their own accord, and they never revolt merely because they are oppressed. Indeed, so long as they are not permitted to have standards of comparison, they never even become aware that they are oppressed.” Nia quoted from ‘1984’.

“You know your Orwell.” Clarke said appreciatively, sensing that Nia’s comprehension of the Western mindset ma have gone somewhat deeper than even Koroleva herself realized.

“It is prudent to familiarize oneself with the ways of the enemy.” The Director pointed out.

“Amen to that.” Clarke nodded. “But if you think it’s gonna be that easy, I have a quote for you as well: 'The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them.'”

“Ah, yes, your Second Amendment is much vaunted, but do you truly believe that citizens, civilians mostly, will band together to fight against a force that brings real soldiers, and equipment impervious to their mere rifles, to your shores?” Nia chuckled: Clarke was smart as a whip, but still too young to have enough life experience to see the bigger picture of how entire demographics behaved under such pressures. “No, my young friend, it is likelier that when their government fails them, and a new President takes the helm in the aftermath of this nuclear catastrophe and announces that America will ally with Russia to bring the perpetrators to heel no matter where in the world they are hiding, they will not fight against us, but line up at recruitment centers for us. 'All warfare is based on deception. Therefore, when capable, feign incapacity; when active, inactivity. When near, make it appear that you are far away; when far away, that you are near. Offer the enemy a bait to lure him; feign disorder and strike him.' The American people will fight for their own conquerors, and they won’t even know it.” Nia finished by quoting Sun Tzu’s Art of War.

Nia spoke passionately, but her eyes told a different story. Try as she might, Clarke couldn't detect a trace of emotion in them, not the slightest flicker of humanity. The Russian was like a robot. She was a hollow shell of a person, driven by spite and fueled by vengeance, using her ideology as a justification for committing atrocities and the grief of losing her husband Fedor as her reason for making the rest of the world feel her pain, rather than Clarke whose own pain after losing Costia had spurred her on to fight to ensure that others wouldn’t have to feel such pain. And that alone was reason enough why Clarke was never going to side with Nia for real.

“You do this for America, Clarke?” Koroleva asked her.

“For my people, Nia.’ She replied. For her people. For the America public. For her family. For Lexa. Yes, she did this to pay off her debt to Lexa and make sure that Costia’s sacrifice wouldn’t be for nothing. But not for Nia – never for Nia.

"Listen to me real fucking carefully." "Over the past twenty years, we have had to bury too many of our fallen. Arlington alone saw fresh graves dug for six hundred thousand of our soldiers." "How many more will follow before it's enough? The endless occupations, the hundreds of armed attacks – firefights, sniper attacks, IED explosions, DIY mortar shellings – do US forces suffer every single day across the world, barely able to respond to them because our rules of engagement seem to be designed to protect the terrorists?!" "You and I may have blood on our hands, Nia, but Augustus Woods is drowning in it. The occupations must end. And they will not end in withdrawal. Because Americans don't go home in shame, our tails tucked between our legs: we go home as victors. If doing this means saving millions, you bet I will see it through to the end."

"Why turn against Volkov?” Clarke inquired. “That’s the one thing I don’t fully understand yet. He made Russia mightier than she’s ever been, even at the height of the Empire and the USSR. Why does he have to go?"

"Unfortunately, trust can be misplaced. I trusted the government of the new Russia to build something better than the cesspit of corruption the Soviet Union had become. My husband trusted them too. Now, because of that trust, my son has no father, my daughter was sired by a rat, and Volkov sold the Motherland to the highest bidder.” “He may have enlarged the Motherland and enriched her people, but he did so by the most despicable means that leave us beholden to the will of outsiders that care nothing about us. After Putin was defeated, I will not trust that things will fall into place without my intervention and make the same mistake twice."

“Do you truly believe you are what’s best for Russia?” Clarke said, trying to not sound disrespectful and tick Nia off, but to sound like a daughter in awe of her mother.

“I am Matryoshka. I will be the mother of this new world we are bringing about, and you, Clarke Griffin, will be its first daughter, my scion, my heir, my legacy made flesh.” Nia grandiosely stated. “Roan is too honest to fulfill the role of a politician. He lacks the will. Ontari is too shortsighted and vicious: she lacks the ability. But you, Clarke, you possess both of these vital qualities at once. I am too old to shape the world into what it needs to be, but if I can be the one that enables you to finish paving the way that I began laying down, I can go to meet my Fedor with a mind at peace.”

July 18, 2021

Dulles International Airport, Washington, DC

Lexa, Anya, Octavia, and their people arrived at the airport bright and early. Well, the day was bright: the mood of the DCS operators was anything but. They were surly, churlish, irritated, confused, and agitated. It’d been a hard sell for Lexa to convince her team of the necessity and odds of success on this mission, repeating Raven’s talking points that Lexa was the only commander who was capable of pulling something like this off.

That wasn’t the big obstacle, though: her people knew Lexa and what she could do on the battlefield, so if their Commander said they’d make it through, then they’d believe they would. No, it was the reasoning behind it that had them up in arms – and not in the ‘let’s storm Lubyanka’ way, but the ‘you’re insane for agreeing to this’ manner.

Anya had been utterly unwilling to risk her life, and her sister’s life, to dive into the hornet’s nest to render a convicted traitor back to the States for any other reason that to make her pay for her crimes, still furious at the blonde for breaking her sister’s heart, for getting Costia – who’d also been a good friend of Anya’s – killed, for collaborating with a foreign enemy and conspiring against the Woods Sisters’ father: Anastasia Woods hated spooks and everything they represented, living affronts to the tenets of liberty, due process, and transparency that she’d grown up being taught to hold as sacrosanct. No, the older Woods sister didn’t like the idea of getting Griffin to work for them one bit.

Octavia Blake was no less combative, for the opposite reason. The pale ravenette was livid at the thought of being asked to bring Clarke back to the US Government that had already betrayed and mistreated her, that distrusted her and would rather shove her in a box to forget about rather than being asked to go to Moscow to rescue a national hero who was clearly being held against her will.

Clarke and Octavia had come a long way. Early on, the green-eyed ravenette had detested the blonde, first for taking her brother's previously undivided attention away from her, then because Octavia pictured Clarke as a spoiled little know-it-all princess who presumed way too much about her own abilities. The younger Blake sibling had soon started to see just what her big brother saw in the blonde, as she delivered results time and again in ways that O couldn’t even wrap her head around: that’s when her case of hero worship had begun, which just as quickly transformed into a much deeper and more equal friendship when Clarke made clear that she didn’t want to be a hero, she just wanted to do right by her people. Octavia and Clarke had come to deeply respect one another, to the point that Octavia now only agreed to join Lexa on this mission under the provision that Clarke would stay with the DIA and not be handed off to Lightbourne and the DoJ under any circumstance – which Lexa could promise because Gustus had said as much – and that Anya wouldn’t lay on finger on Clarke – which she couldn’t promise, because kidnapping a deadly operative wouldn’t be a cakewalk.

Anya, for her part, had only been brought aboard after being promised that she would be allowed to shoot her beloved NLAW anti-tank rocket launcher at Nia Koroleva’s face if the Russian ice queen showed up in person – Lexa would give up all of her billions just to see that happen – and making Lexa swear that she’d grill Griffin until the ex-CIA girl had been bled dry of every last fact, which, again, was exactly what Lexa intended, although not in quite as violent a manner as her sister was envisioning.

Lexa sighed: 48 hours from now, provided that things went well, the brunette would have the blonde in front of her, somewhere in the DC Metro, at a secure facility, having full control over Clarke Griffin’s movements. Lexa would be authorized to determine where Clarke went, what she did, what she couldn’t do – a relationship between warden and prisoner than Lexa neither desired nor found justifiable, but would have no choice but to accept, for as much as she wanted to protect Clarke and shield her from harm, if she’d cut the blonde any slack and the greater establishment found out about it, they would launch their own investigations and issue demands that Lexa, obviously unsuited to the task, be replaced by someone far more willing to crack the whip. In short: the part the green-eyed girl would need to play was one where she had to deceive Clarke, lie to her, and hurt her, shattering whatever trust might still exist between them, just for the sake of being able to retain her post so she could keep her friend safe.  And it was this realization, when extrapolated to the level of geopolitics, that made Lexa understand why Clarke had done what she’d done – if it was true that the blonde was playing a long con to gain Nia’s trust to bring about her downfall. If Clarke hadn’t genuinely defected by now. If Clarke wasn’t going to defect after being dragged back to America in chains out of sheer spite and the feeling that she was well and truly a pariah now who’d never be safe until her captors were wiped out, because she knew that was how the blonde’s mind worked.

So this was quite the conundrum: Lexa couldn’t wait to see Clarke again, but honestly couldn’t answer to herself what she’d do: would she punch Clarke or hug her? Perhaps both? Would she scream, would she cry, would she laugh? No, she had to dissociate and focus on her target as an objective rather than a person, at least until they were back in Washington. Because half of Lexa did want to kill the blonde, but the other half wanted to kiss her. Either way: she was going to get her answers, for her own sake, for that of her father, the American people, and for Costia…

At least the expansion of Presidential executive powers meant that this mission could be set up without Congressional approval. If that had been necessary, it would’ve never happened at all. The Senate would’ve wanted to stick one of their own observers in DCS who’d questions every action and every decision, making Lexa answer for every step she and her team members took and getting in the way to make life impossible. The House would’ve bickered among itself, all four factions tearing at the other three’s throats to get their way pushed through. The Conservative Republicans would want to can the mission no not piss Russia off, the Conservative Democrats would push to expand it into annihilating Lubyanka wholesale and gutting the FSB while Lexa would be there anyway, whereas Progressive Democrats would want to cut their losses and let Griffin have her fun in Russia because she clearly wasn’t American anymore, to which Progressive Republicans would answer that yes, that’s exactly the problem, so let’s not bother getting the traitor back, let’s kill her instead. American factionalism had utterly paralyzed the country, and its government was now being run either by Executive Order from the White House or undeclared decisions made by the intelligence community.

The US Government today was no longer the monolith united in purpose it had been under Bush Jr. These days, it wasn’t a circus show run by clowns, but only because instead, Arkham Asylum had been emptied into the fucking Capitol.

'Conservative' used to mean 'small government, minimal spending, no social security, no regulation on businesses, keep foreigners out of America and keep America out of meddling with foreign affairs' isolationism. These days, 'Conservative' meant 'pro-military, pro-interventionism, pro-equality, protect and preserve the new status quo.'.

'Progressive' used to mean 'in favor of gender equality, gay rights, trans rights, racial equality, pro-social security, and for separation of church and state.' And now that all of these things really did exist, and in practice rather than just on unenforced legal paper, they needed something new to be progressive about, so their focus had shifted to pushing towards not treating the occupied countries' population as adversaries, but as potential friends, desiring to build them up into modern democracies filled with secularized, free citizens; and domestically, had swung the pendulum too far in the direction of what they called 'restorative justice', which meant taking black and gay people and placing them on a pedestal above the straight white majority (also throwing Asian-Americans under the bus for being ‘too successful’, whatever that meant), which would burn as a pet issue for a few years and then die down as more rational, moderate voices took over this extremist discussion on assigning collective guilt that had no place in an individualist society.

So in effect, the modern Democrats and Republicans largely wanted the same things, they just differed in their desired methodology, and the old-style D and R politicians no longer controlled a large enough plurality of seats or voting bases

to not become marginalized. The New Democrats and Republicans were the largest factions now, but the Old Dems and Reps were still big enough to throw constant spanners in the works – keeping each other too busy to look too closely at what their President was doing, leaving Gustus with a free hand to set up a cross-border raid with Andrei Volkov.

The 747 prepared to take off from Dulles, where once in the air they'd be met by the customary diplomatic escort of six F-15 Eagles from Andrews. Loads of crates containing weapons, armors, munitions, and special equipment were being loaded into its belly together with the more standard fare, the man they were escorting to the US Embassy in Moscow none the wiser as to their real contents, his Chief of Security being the liaison to DIA instead.

"Delegate Clarkson, Commander Park." Lexa greeted these respective men as she walked off the boarding ramp into the converted airliner’s spacious interior.

"Commander Woods." Delegate Clarkson greeted her back, extending his hand.

William Clarkson, an elderly Caucasian man with snow-white hair and a big, bushy mustache, was one of the old guard politicians, a man of science rather than the field who was so unwilling to adapt to the changing world that he held onto the belief that if he just talked enough, he could bring back the old one.

Major Gilbert Park, a round-faced Korean-American who’d served in the Air Force for a decade, was a far more practical man, one who was willing to roll up his sleeves and get his hands dirty when there was a job to be done.

Park was the only external person aboard who was in the loop on the team's real objective, and then he only knew that they were going to grab someone from Moscow, not being told who. Clarkson didn't know – he didn't need to, and in fact, his knowing would be actively detrimental. Old man Bill staunchly believed in the democratic process, in open forums and government transparency, and he hated any shadowy organizations full of unelected officials that held power over the people without the people being able to censure them for it. Needless to say: William Clarkson was no friend of the alphabet soup. Major Park, on the other hand, had been recruited by the DIA as an external consultant way back in 2009 and consistently delivered quality work. It was Park who had suggested Miles Shaw as the pilot for the return journey, having worked with the young man on clandestine flights before and knowing how coolly he acted under pressure.

Clarkson was meant to be speaking with his Russian counterpart to try and smooth tensions in Eastern Europe, to try and iron out a bilateral agreement regarding the mutual troop buildup on the Polish-Ukrainian border and the Russian intervention into Bosnia and Hercegovina that left Romania feeling squeezed and rather nervous. This meeting had been planned months in advance, so his mission was 100% public knowledge: the best cover for a clandestine operation was, after all, tacking off of an aboveboard one.

When the crowded aircraft was in the air and its fighter escort formed up around the Boeing at cruising altitude, Park took Lexa and Anya aside while Clarkson was in a preliminary briefing in another room.

“DNI Reyes called me to let you know that President Volkov’s men will be waiting and ready to follow your command the moment you link up with them, Commander, Lieutenant.”

"FSB, FSO, SVR... A joint op with one against the other... How do we tell the good Russians from the bad ones?" Anya asked Commander Park.

"The good guys will have blue ribbons on their uniforms." Gilbert explained. “They’ll have them banded around both their upper arms and on their helmets. The bad Russians will be the ones without such markings.”

“Good to know. That’s clever.” Anya admitted.

“How are we meant to give Clarkson the slip?” Lexa inquired.

“Embassy security will be waiting at Domodedovo. Your people will mix and mingle with them for a little while, and switch places as soon as Bill leaves for his station, which shouldn’t take more than half an hour.” Gilbert explained. “He’s eager to get to work, so won’t be paying close attention to who’s running his security detail. He finds it unnecessary, anyway, says it’s a show of aggression. So he’d rather pretend you and yours don’t exist, Commander.”

“That’s fine by me.” Lexa mentioned. “The sentiment is mutual.”

“I don’t even wanna know what you’re up to, Commander Woods,” Gilbert said, “but best of luck to you.”

“Thank you, Major Park. We could use some of that just for once.” She sighed again.

Domodedovo was only a few hours out. Lexa’s stomach was twisted in knots, getting closer to facing her old friend again, closer to launching the most audacious mission she’d ever been on, and perhaps, just a little bit closer to settling the turmoil that’d been tearing her mind in two ever since the Supreme Court.

First things first, though: she would put her head over her heart and see the mission to its end. Everything else would follow. She could only hope that the hate Clarke surely felt for her now wouldn’t get in the way of getting the blonde to see that her own best chance for vindication lay in cooperating. And Lexa, for her part, had no idea how she was going to stomach working with Clarke again after all that had happened – but she was certain she would find a way.

After all, she’d made a promise to Costia, to Abby, and to herself. And she’d see it through, no matter what.

Chapter Text

Chapter 13: Pandora’s Box

July 19, 2021

Lubyanka Building Moscow

Today was the day she’d been waiting for. It had been one day short of a month since she first arrived in Moscow – goodness gracious, had it really only been that long? It felt like a lifetime ago that she’d still been behind her desk in Langley, married to Bellamy, in America’s good graces. One month since she’d been broken out of an armored transportation convoy. Less than half a year since she’d still been safe and secure as Director of the CIA, chasing Nia with the full resources of the Agency at her disposal, the full faith and trust of her friends, and her family still intact. She’d been looking forward to Costia and Lexa’s wedding. She was going to be her sister’s not-maid of honor. She’d even made a truce with Anya, who would be Lexa’s best woman, to not spoil their sisters’ best day. Now, that day would never come, and Clarke was alone against the world.

Her people – in the sense that they were Americans – would soon come for her: that much she knew. They’d probably want her alive, and she’d have to let them take her if she wanted to stand the slightest chance at stopping Nia and maybe saving her own life and freedom in the process. But the SVR would also be after her, and knowing the reputation of SVR Director Dmitry Medvedev, especially without Deputy Petrenko to moderate his hand, the SVR Spetsnaz might come knocking on her door too, and they’d be servicing a kill order.

The Lubyanka Building was home to a whole regiment of embedded Spetsnaz, fifteen hundred strong, so nobody was going to be idiotic enough to charge into the place without starting a full-blown civil war; but snatch teams using much more subtle methods to force her to walk out the front doors with them like nothing was amiss might be another option.

She also had her dacha to consider: the place was heavily fortified, well-protected, and a stone’s throw away from quick reinforcements – but traveling between there and Lubyanka, there were only so many routes she could take, and all of them had several possible ambush points along the way.

She was running out of time: she could feel it in her bones. There was a strange hum-buzz of excited, almost electrical, energy in the air, like the EM field of a ticking stopwatch counting down to zero whose display was concealed. Yes, Clarke was now going to initiate Operation Snake in the Grass’ final phase – forgive her unoriginal name, but this wasn’t a sanctioned DCO and she didn’t have time to devote to coming up with something witty (and she had to discard ‘Operation Battleaxe’, because she hadn’t wanted to insult Abby), so this was a good enough way to remind herself of what her true role at Lubyanka was.

At least it hadn’t been terribly difficult to blend in. Five foot five, slender though curvy build, blonde hair, blue eyes, alabaster skin, and relatively sizeable bust? That sort of a person barely stood out in the States. In Moscow, it described every second woman, and the other half were tall, slender, curvy, pale-skinned, ample-chested blue-eyed blondes. Muscovites were selected for their phenotypes as much as skills and abilities: the Soviets and the Romanov Emperors before them had wanted Moscow to be the home of the Truest Russians(™), so had meddled in demographics to fill half the city with the most beautiful women.

Nobody was going to recognize Clarke here. No, she could walk about the streets of the Russian capital without bothering with a disguise, because she'd just look normal. Nobody was going to do a double take out of anything more than admiration (or lust) for a pretty girl: she was just Artemida Vlasova the FSB Internal Security chief and fabulously stylish oligarch here, not Clarke Griffin the disavowed ex-CIA director with an outstanding life sentence for treason.

The trial was not all over ViewTube anymore, but there were still plenty of illicit mirror sites where it could be found. Even the glut of takedown notices and direct-action takedowns hadn’t been able to fully stem the tide of the footage spreading. But even so, she could just head out without worries, because nobody would expect Clarke Griffin to be walking around Moscow, so this Vlasova girl just happened to resemble the infamous American, just like millions of other Americans and Russians did.

It wasn’t half bad, as far as these things went. Artemida Vlasova was an oligarch, a mysterious but influential woman who lived in a beautiful, spacious, luxurious freakin’ country mansion between Dubrava and Boltino in the woods right on the picturesque Klyazma River, with a small private army to keep her safe. Granted, they were also there to keep her in Moscow, but as long as she didn’t try to directly defy Nia’s orders, she found that these men would obey her orders. She’d even built a good relationship with the security commander, Captain Vladislav Sverdlov, in its own right.

Clearly, they were kept unaware of her true identity and really believed her to be a rich girl from Rostov. This meant that they wouldn’t be resorting to force if she’d try to escape – but Nia had ensured that she wouldn’t dare do so to begin with, so it was a moot point. She would place her faith in them, 200 strong, to keep her safe from any SVR attackers.

She’d actually grown to like Roan, as well, and believed that the man had come to genuinely care about her, too. Roan had gotten her alone and told her that he knew what she was doing, saying that Nia’s plans were too far along to fatally disrupt from the inside, but wishing her the best of luck and promising to try to buy her as much time as possible to get the Americans back on her side. Roan knew that his mother was insane, and though he too was not the biggest fan of Russia tying itself so closely to the United States, he at least understood that a new Russian Empire would require a living population to rule over, which would be somewhat difficult if there was nothing left of it but a pile of radioactive dust.

Roan Korolev was on his own side, that much was true. But on this occasion, his side was with Clarke, not Nia; and though his reasons were egotistical, beggars couldn’t be choosers.

Nor could Clarke choose not to come to Nia’s office that morning after clocking in, the woman deciding that she wanted to have another chat with her as ‘President Griffin’ to go over redrawing the geopolitical map of the world, stipulating American and Russian spheres of influence that would expunge all of the spots on the map that were currently denoted in the purple of influence battles between the two and those depicted in green grid dots on a black background stipulating political neutrality. Most importantly: once the dust had settled, Nia made it clear that she wanted Roan to be the President of the New Soviet Union, but for Clarke and Echo to work together to keep him under control – and that Putin, Prigozhin, and Kovalenko had to be put to pasture to consolidate control over the Bear of the East.

“You still don’t trust me.” Clarke spoke as Nia stopped talking before she’d gotten into the details on how she sought to achieve these ends. “That’s okay: I don't trust you, either.” The younger blonde said honestly. Come what may, by the end of today, she’d either have the files she required, or find herself on the wrong side of Sub-Basement 4.

"You Americans are such hypocrites.” Nia replied, though making it clear that she was talking about Americans in general, with Clarke as the rare exception to the rule – using the ‘general you’, as it were. “You condemn us for Kazakhstan, the Caucasus, White Russia, and the Ukraine, but say nothing of your own military occupation of no fewer than eight countries you call 'sovereign' in the Middle East and Africa and claim to wish to hold popular elections in that never materialize." Koroleva laid out, not mentioning that those elections never happened because the locals kept killing each other over disputes on which tribes were and weren’t allowed to vote in the eyes of all other tribes. "America and Russia are both empires. Our differences are linguistic and semantic, and it is time we set them aside and recognize that we would both be much better off as allies than adversaries." The hazel-eyed grand old dame argued. “This line of thought has never made me popular with the Politburo back in the good old days, but then, I am not that old yet. I am not so rusted in my ways that I cannot see the necessary changes to bring about global order and stability. Even if it means I must betray my own country in order to save it, as you once asked me over the phone."

"I never betrayed my country, Nia, only its government." Clarke stipulated. "I know that in your European mind stuck in its Old World monarchist slave mentality there is no distinction between the two, but in America, leaders are meant to be representatives, not rulers. Rebelling against a tyrannical government is my moral duty." She said, paraphrasing Thomas Jefferson. "These people overseas don't know democracy, these people don't trust democracy, they don't want democracy forced down their throats. They want someone to tell them what to do because their whole culture is based around slavery. Everyone's a slave to the Sultan, who is a slave to Allah. That's what they know, and that's what they've come to like. They don't want the responsibility of free choice and they're terrified of having to be held accountable for their own actions. That's not something we can just make go away in a generation or two without ripping down the whole system wholesale like we did denazifying Germany and enforcing what we replace it with without exception.” She said, speaking from the heart, because the best lies were always covered in truth. “And that's exactly what I'm arguing we should do, Nia. You don't feel the weight of your chains if you're born already wearing them, until someone strikes them off. Let that be our purpose." She determined, "We can't give them freedom, but we can give them the knowledge, the tools, and the education on how to take it for themselves, and uphold it against the reactionaries sure to sprout."

"Boris Yeltsin tried this in the Nineties. He failed, and got his... What do you Americans call it? 'Just desserts', I think?" Nia questioned, taking a potshot at the man who’d wanted to free the Soviet people and ended up shattering the USSR from the inside out instead as the people had no idea how to handle being free and tried to change everything all at once, resulting in utter chaos that they’d soon elected Tsar Putin to sort out for them rather than with them.

Yeltsin had been a hopeless drunk who'd chugged vodka like it would cease to exist tomorrow, and eventually met his end when he'd managed to, while visiting Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, somehow walk straight off a cliff into the Pacific Ocean and drown before he could be pulled back ashore. The Company had speculated for years that it had been some kind of hit, but in the end, it really turned out to not be a covert assassination, but sheer dumb luck: the President of Russia had literally drank himself to death.

"But then that mudak Putin that took his place opened up our borders to imported crystal meth, then Volkov bought American television licenses by the millions, and look at us now." Nia said, referring to the degeneracy of a people grown soft and indolent and wishing for a return to times when one’s neighbors still knew who their own neighbors were.

"You want me to kill Uncle Vlad?" Clarke asked, offering to remove one potential post-war power player who’d already been marked for death, but for whom the timeline of execution had not yet been set.

"I don't see how you could." Nia answered.

"That's not a no." Clarke pointed out.

"You know how this works. Words matter. I will say no more about it." Koroleva capped off the topic.

These mind games Nia was playing with Clarke were starting to get under her skin.

Trying to kill Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin was a hopeless task that would be best off never even started. Nia had been deliberately ambiguous, so much so that Clarke really couldn't tell whether she was being tested and Nia did want her to kill the man soon, or that even Koroleva understood that some people were just so untouchable that a successful assassination would do more harm than good. The New Russia Party may be playing second fiddle to the All-Russias Coalition these days, but was still the second largest in the Duma and enjoyed massive popular support, well ahead of the Communist Party of Russia sitting in third place. No, turning that man into a martyr wouldn't be a good idea – not until the Federation was so thoroughly under Nia’s command that she was impossible to challenge.

“I hope you realize that the Russian people may not be too eager to see their freedom to choose their own way in life evaporate after they’ve gotten a taste of independent choice.” Clarke issued a warning more dire than it sounded.

"Ah, yes, your vaunted American freedom." Nia waved it off. "What you have is the illusion of freedom. When you need a government permit to collect rainwater on your own property, you are not free." She pointed out the absurd American law, which was indeed hypocritical. "Freedom to do what? To waste your life without purpose, without direction, without a goal?" Nia rhetoricated. “No, our purpose must be clear. Freedom is the freedom to choose in what manner you serve the homeland, so that the right people fall into the right place at the right time. That is what ensures the least harm for the most people, not the freedom to recklessly destroy one’s own life and harm one’s country in the process.”

“Speaking of harming countries: you don’t seem to mind plunging the rest of the world into war in order to keep the peace on the streets in yours and mine.” Clarke spoke. “I understand why, but don’t the foreigners deserve peace too?”

"How many people have you killed, Clarke?" Nia asked back, not answering the query. "I mean by your own hand. Not by signing off assassination orders or calling for airstrikes. With your own bullets, your knife, your bare hands. How many?"

"I have no idea. I stopped counting after 940. It didn't seem to serve a point anymore." Clarke answered truthfully.

Now Nia looked impressed. The Commander of Death had graced Lubyanka with her presence, indeed.

Later that day

The Head of Internal Security's office

"What sort of an intelligence agency still uses punch cards, for goodness sake? Welcome back to 1984, I guess." Clarke thought out loud – though in Russian – as she turned hers over in her off hand.

These things were childishly easy to copy, assuming there wasn't some trick hidden on the inside that identified the card as legitimate. Which there was: namely an RFID chip. Manufacturing a card and placing a pilfered chip into it might be one option. It was, in fact, the only viable option she’d come up with so far in all this time. Defense minister Kovalenko’s card had full access, including to the armory, data center, server park, and mainframe, which he could use so long as he logged his activities and reported them to Kutuzov. So if she pretended to be him, going about without reporting in…

External communications, that was to say anything from conversations with people outside the Lubyanka Building to just searching the Internet for something mundane, had to be authorized by the office of the Chief of Security and then be subject to Internal Security review. Unauthorized comms wouldn't be blocked, but they would be flagged, stored, and tracked, allowing less than reliable people to dig their own graves if these communications were of a sensitive nature and perhaps laughed at if they were just using their work computers to look at porn. Suspicious comms also included data requests for information from other departments, above one's clearance level, and into certain matters or people that were meant to stay contained.

Kovalenko may have kept an office at the FSB Headquarters, but he was still a GRU man, ergo an external source, so whatever he wanted to pull from the FSB mainframe, he needed to get clearance for, lest he look suspicious. And Clarke had designed it so that she would soon be able to make it look like he'd been doing quite a lot of snooping without Nia's knowledge or Colonel Kutuzov's approval. And that was going to be her angle: to access the real mainframe, the one in the sub-basements, print off a metric ton of microfilm carrying FSB secrets including Nia’s personal dossiers and operational details, find a way to hide them on herself in an unreachable place, and set things up so that somebody else would take the fall and be tortured and probably executed without any red flags pointing at Clarke.

She's been inside the Defense Minister's office a few times already. She'd seen his access card and memorized the layout and size of the punch holes therein. It was child's play to appropriate a blank one and replicate this bit by taking down a programming computer for a security inspection that was really just her isolating it from the network to use it, purging its internal memory banks to fool it into reporting it had been offline, and making sure that nobody had seen her do this by bribing the pair of guards that were there with an offer they couldn't refuse – she'd told them she broke her keycard and needed a new one: that was true, since she'd snapped it in half herself. She also asked them to not mention her using the punch computer to anyone in exchange for some nice goodies because she didn't wanna look incompetent: that wasn't true, as she did issue a priority request for a new one through the proper channels that had already arrived, but these simple guards couldn't possibly know that.

So now she had a new personal card, plus a copy loaded with all the right security clearance credentials, just not mapped to any identity yet. Now she just needed a counterfeit RFID to go with it so she could frame poor old Gerasim. She wasn't gonna be able to get a hold of a mainframe keycard and actually use it, because it would be in her name. Swiping one was out of the question, because whoever she took it from would only have to place her in the general vicinity around that time and she'd immediately be implicated. But copying one might just be a possibility.

So now, she was tapping away via a faked routing path, looking up classified information about herself – about Clarke Griffin and Artemida Vlasova both – and making it look like it was Kovalenko doing the deed.

The system would flag the suspicious activity immediately and notify the proper authorities. Luckily enough, the 'proper authorities' in this case would be her. That would be Step One. She still had a few hours before the system would realize that nobody was responding and send another notification to somebody a little lower on the totem pole, namely Lev, but he trusted his colleague Artemida by now and knew that Kovalenko had some strange beef with the Rostov girl.

So she would be able to get the right security clearance temporarily, but the moment she began printing off microfilm reels, it wouldn't be Internal Security, but just Security that got notified. So by then, she'd need to have measures in place that ensured the data trail led to somebody else.

She had a pretty good idea on how to make all of this happen, though. And as for the person she was going to frame? It would need to be someone with high enough access to make it credible that they'd pull it off, but also not a Lubyanka insider, because they simply wouldn't have the motive. Gerasim Kovalenko, though? Yes, the Minister of Defense fit the necessary profile to a T. He was a loose cannon, and Nia despised anybody that she couldn't control. He was ambitious, wanting to see the USSR restored just like Nia, but the sort of ambitious that would much rather see himself as its new Premier rather than anybody else, and for the President to once again be a largely ceremonial function – the Presidency being what Nia was after for her own son.

Gerasim made no secret of his distaste for having to work with the FSB, hating the cloak and dagger backroom dealings and much preferring to keep Russia powerful through direct application of military force. They were allies of convenience brought together by a common ideological cause, but their ethical differences might just prove to be insurmountable enough to turn the man into a scapegoat. Now, to get the security cameras to depict Kovalenko instead of her at the time of access was going to be a little trickier: she was gonna have to become a chameleon. Luckily, she now had an inside man for the job. She didn’t even need to hide from the cameras: just make sure that Gerasim could be seen in the same places as her a little later; and the time codes in the system access logs would be switched around to make it look like Gerasim was following Artemida, stalking the woman to try to cover the tracks of his ‘treason and conspiracy’.

Her desk phone rang. Looking at the tracer on her computer screen, she could tell that this was coming in from a direct line, but one that was spliced into the security office: all by the books, nothing suspicious. This may be the call she was expecting, however, so she wasted no further time in picking up the receiver.

“Internal Security here. What do you have for me?” She spoke to the caller.

“Yes, hello, Chief Vlasova? This is Anatoli Ivanovic from the Data Center. I discovered some suspicious activity that I thought you’d want to take a look at before anyone else. The system has flagged some unauthorized requests for sensitive information printouts, and we’re having trouble tracing it back to the source. We would appreciate your help without getting Colonel Kutuzov involved.” Her inside man spoke, the both of them knowing that Kutuzov was, in fact, listening in on this conversation, but Lev too would have his part to play, though a more unwitting one.

“Of course. Thanks for letting me know.” Clarke said, and the next part of the plan began.

She put the phone down and sighed in a mixture of relief and apprehension. Her inside guy had come through and she now had the excuse to go messing around the computer switch controls. The first phase of Operation Get The Microfilm And Get Gerasim Killed For It had been completed. All she needed to do now was bite the bullet and go through with the rest, and make up a shorter codename for this whole shebang, because it took too long to pronounce even in her head.

Clarke was by now an expected regular at the data center. Nobody would suspect Artemida Vlasova working an admin terminal in that room, not after she'd been doing work on Director Koroleva's behalf for weeks and put away dozens of enemy agents in the process. The guards weren't gonna pay attention to what she was doing exactly, she hoped. She'd been tracing switching paths dozens of times, so remapping a few of those would look virtually identical and anyone watching the screen without knowing what they were looking at couldn't tell the difference.

'Alright Griff, you can do this. Just stay frosty.' She gave herself a mental pep talk. Turning back to her personal desk computer, she established a secure connection, meaning that what she did from there on out would only be recorded on tapes accessible by Nia herself and the Chief of Security, neither of whom cared all too much about the data center and mainframe room as long as nobody tried to get in there that shouldn’t be, and Vlasova now had an official reason to go there. Just to cover her tracks even further, she would now firm up her alibi by telling a lie that was close enough to the truth to be indistinguishable, and dialed the internal number for Nia.

“Director Koroleva, I’ve just secured my station. Mr. Ivanovic warned me about a security breach, and I believe there is a mole that is responsible for it. I’m going to go check it out.” She announced, hoping Nia would be too busy to bother.

“I do not like to hear this, Artemida. But you are a problem solver, so go and solve it.” Koroleva said, much to her relief.

“I’m already on it. I may need to take drastic action to get this under control.” Clarke said, setting the stage for explaining why there might soon be a dead Minister of Defense staining the green carpets of Lubyanka red.

“You have my leave to do whatever it takes.” The FSB Director spoke, ending the call soon thereafter.

All that she could do from her office was now done: Clarke would now head deeper into the building to hunt the hunters and set the conditions that would allow her to eventually get inside the mainframe room alone.

She didn’t need to worry about appearing on camera per say, could even do her work out in the open right beneath the noses of the staffers and guards present, so long as they didn’t pay close attention to what exactly she was doing. She’d change up all the falsified access times anyway and would create an alibi for herself by doing real work from those places under her actual credentials – well, Artemida’s credentials, not Clarke’s.

Her tracing switching paths usually resulted in somebody being arrested not long thereafter, so her fall guy being taken down for questioning wouldn't raise any hackles either. No, the part that was going to be difficult would be to get Gerasim to be seen at the same computer she was using on a genuine video log that she would backdate later, which meant somehow maneuvering him into tracing her footsteps in the same order and for around the same duration of time. If she could engineer the man into checking out her own computer activities with his own hands, that would be the red herring she needed to implicate him as the mole. If all went well, Anatoli would come through again, and next contact the Minister to voice his concerns about the Head of Internal Security and stroking the man’s ego to get him to bypass the Head of Security and go play bloodhound himself.

The first step on her roundabout journey would take her to the armory, where not only weapons, but other sensitive devices and components were kept stored as well. She had the layout of the proper punches in the blank card memorized. Now she needed an RFID registered to somebody else. There would be spare ones stashed in the armory, which she could overwrite with the Minister’s dataprint. Taking that RFID and stuffing it into a replicated card should do the trick: easier said than done, of course.

The armory access was located behind a checkpoint where you’d be asked to empty your pockets, be wanded by an MRI scanner, and pass through an X-ray machine. Nobody was allowed to take weapons or anything emitting an electromagnetic field into the armory unless you were checking such items back in. This did make sense: EM interference could disrupt sensitive systems and ruin them. But it did mean that sneaking out an RFID chip would be impossible, unless she took drastic measures. Invasively drastic. But she had no other choice.

And she also had to come up with a legitimate reason to be there, which would be checking out a Dragunov SVD sniper rifle for using down at the shooting range, a thing she had done several times before and had gained some respect for mastering, since she wanted to become proficient in a long gun that wasn’t an M14, of which there weren’t any available here, and she’d taken to the sniper rifle with natural acumen.

All she needed to do was get through security, grab a spare chip and stuff it so deep inside herself that even the most invasive body search couldn’t find it (while trying not to make a peep at the hellish pain this would entail), check out a rifle, do some shooting, check it back in with the chip still concealed, and then walk back out. An alarm might or might not go off, but they wouldn’t be able to find anything, and they most likely weren’t going to risk the wrath of the Head of Internal Security by ordering her to strip naked and let them violate her privates in search of a contraband item that most likely didn’t exist, so really, the possible points of failure were calculatedly minimal.

When she arrived at the checkpoint, she didn’t face the detail commander but addressed him anyway, speaking in a soft voice, telling him not to react and listen carefully, because something was amiss. When the Sergeant in charge told her that she was safe to talk, she addressed the guards while undergoing the usual screening.

“You guys, I think Kovalenko is after me. He’s doing something strange and doesn’t like me poking around his business. I think he wants to kill me.” She said, committing to her big act. It was too late to scramble back now. “If he shows up at the armory within half an hour, could you just give him whatever he wants without raising suspicion and then give my mobile phone a call as soon as he leaves? And inform Chief Kutuzov too, please, while you’re at it.” She asked the guards, who by now were also aware that Lev and Artemida got alone, Artemida was one of Nia’s favorites, and Kutuzov disliked both their boss and Colonel Vlasova: the scenario, though extreme, was terribly easy to believe.

And that was what the Sergeant did. “No worries, ma’am. We’ll get things under control. We’ll take care of it from here.”

At the armory, she spent a few minutes rooting around the weapons lockers looking for a good SVD (and waiting for an opening where she could swipe an RFID unseen), and once both tasks had been achieved, she took the identification chip and placed it somewhere she was hoping she wouldn’t have needed to, but doing so anyway. It wasn’t even all that difficult: the chip was tiny, so getting it back out was gonna be trickier.

She checked out the weapon, spent the next hour down at the firing range and shot with murderous precision, pretending that the silhouettes on the moving targets bore the faces of Nia Koroleva, Diana Sydney, Ontari Koroleva, and Russell Lightbourne. That made it even easier to land a whole lot of solid hits with great precision, and it took her mind off what she was actually doing quite well until the buzzer went off and the green light next to her turned red, indicating that the timeslot she’d booked had expired.

She padded over to the armory and checked the gun back in without incident, then left, with the RFID still tucked away inside her body, without setting off any alarms. The next place she hit up was the private bathroom attached to her office, where she managed to extract the chip without passing out in pain, cleaned it as thoroughly as she could, and then placed it inside the blank card, ensuring that it could not be traced back to her as the original RFID registered to Colonel Vlasova she stuck in her desk drawer.

A little later, inside the data center, she logged in at an admin terminal using her own credentials.

Now, she quickly logged out and switched her access card with the forged one, re-entering the system under the identity of Defense Minister Kovalenko. Accessing the mainframe network, she began backtracking the switchboards to the man’s own terminal computer in his FSB office, where the man kept a Stavka annex. She had to go up a level from the data center to the mainframe, then down from the mainframe to the High Clearance Private switchboard, and from that board, she determined which switch connected to Gerasim’s terminal. It was now as easy as typing the command lines that would remap Clarke’s earlier messing about the system from her own office as having come from the Minister’s office instead, planting the first seeds of imagined betrayal.

Once this pathway had been established and logged by the monitoring system, she ran a high-level search algorithm scanning for unauthorized data requests, at this point calling over a few analysts in the room to show them how a professional did it: she was trying to make it look like she was actively hunting down a mole instead of being one, after all; so when Gerasim himself would soon enough come barging in here and start hammering away at the same keyboard, it would make him look like he was the one trying to cover his tracks from her pursuit instead.

The computer came up with an output screen detailing a list of times, dates, and contents of the forbidden files that were called up and an abortive attempt to connect to an external pathway leading somewhere at Yasenevo where it hit a security wall that the FSB could not get past. Before that, the digital path taken inside Lubyanka was isolated, which had its switching path traced back to… the private terminal of Gerasim Kovalenko, successfully remapped away from Artemida Vlasova. During her visit to Yasenevo, she'd memorized a few switching names and numbers, meaning that she could piece together an actual routing path to the SVR to use for this frame job. And the cries of outrage going up from the staffers watching her work went to show that they didn’t seem to be very surprised at the ‘fact’ that the hated man had been trying to play them all for fools.

She printed out the documentation twice, placing the first set into a folder that she tucked into her coat pocket, and ordering a guard to take the second and deliver it to Colonel Kutuzov.

It was only minutes after she returned to her office that her work phone rang, and on answering, Kutuzov spoke to her: “Comrade Vlasova, I have just received your evidence. It seems insane that the man would try something like this, but I cannot say I did not see it coming. This would have gotten past me if you hadn’t gotten to him so soon – I hear he was about to leave for the Kremlin when he suddenly began chasing after you for some reason, Chief.”

“Excellent news. Don’t take him in just yet. Let him follow me, I want to see what he does next.” She told Lev.

“This is very risky, Artemida. Are you sure this is what you want to do?” Kutuzov asked, sounding concerned.

“Every moment he is on my tail, he isn’t trying to escape Lubyanka. Let him stew in it for now.” She explained.

“Very well, then. I can see the logic in that. Let him dig himself even deeper.” Lev answered, somewhat amusedly.

“Once I am back from the mainframe with the master files, I will call him to the atrium. Then, you may apprehend him.” Clarke told the Chief of Security, who took his duty very seriously and wanted people to witness that he did.

“For all the passersby to witness the fate of traitors. I will do this for you.” Kutuzov spoke to her.

“I must say: when Ivanovic called the Minister sharing concerns that the mole was you, I believed Anatoli was our traitor. But then, why would he not try to close off my splice into his phone line? No, I believe we have an insider here.” The Colonel said next, all the pieces starting to fall into place: the mind of Russian spooks was not too different from her own, so she could predict with some certainty how Lev was going to interpret certain incongruous actions.

“I feel the same way. Anatoli called me beforehand and said he would fool the old man into coming out of hiding.” Clarke explained, Ivanov having done things like that before.

This answer satisfied Lev, who wished her good luck on her pursuit and prepared to enact his own role in the scheme to expose Kovalenko as an infiltrator, dreaming of the medal he would surely be granted when the day was done.

Stepping into one specific elevator that granted access to some levels that were not reachable by other means, she punched her card into the secure reader and pushed the button for Sub-Basement 2. Nothing happened for a second, but when it flashed green, granting her access to this normally restricted area, Clarke knew that her forged card was working right.

Just as the doors began to close, Echo came running up and stuck her hand between them, prompting Clarke to push the button for the doors to open. It would look suspicious if Echo got the impression that Clarke was trying to avoid her.

“Thanks. I’m running late for a meeting.” Commander Teles puffed breathlessly.

“No problem. You seem to have that a lot; same thing happened last week. You being overworked a little? I can relate.” Clarke replied, trying to sound casual and unsuspicious, but not overly so, because coming across as too casual meant that you had something to hide. This was the FSB, pretty much the KGB, so everyone had something to hide and they all knew it, but not all things were okay to keep behind closed doors.

Echo nodded her confirmation: she’d been servicing kill order after kill order all week and was close to a burnout. Looking at the lit-up button, she spoke: “Heading down to the mainframe, I see?”

“Yeah. Somebody’s been digging up things that had better stay buried, and I’m going to make sure this stays contained.” Clarke explained, employing a quick bit of doublespeak.

“Sounds interesting if that’s your line of work, I suppose.” Echo shrugged, finding all of this information stuff dull.

“We all have our interests. Most don’t leave as many dead bodies in their wake as yours and mine, but hey, it keeps life from getting stale.” Clarke joked, the quip coming out easily as it was also the truth for her.

“I hear you, Artemida.” Echo smiled, relating to her American counterpart. “Well, I’m continuing down to Sub-Basement 4, speaking of dead bodies. I’ll be seeing you later.”

“Sure thing. I’ll be wanting details, alright?” Clarke forced herself to stay friendly and engaged as the elevator dinged and its doors opened to the hallway leading to the antechamber.

“Well, that wasn’t awkward at all…” She said to herself as the elevator continued down to take Echo to another one of her lethal interrogations, which the Russian blonde would find much more fun than Clarke’s chasing data trails.

“Gentlemen, the armory, data center, and Kutuzov already know this, but let me fill you in.” Clarke addressed the mainframe checkpoint guards, ensuring that if cross-examinations were going to happen, each station would have the next chapter in the same story straight. “Anatoli Ivanovic gave me information that Minister Kovalenko is a traitor. I now have concrete evidence on me that he is selling our secrets to the SVR and on to the American government. He has been following me all over this building, trying to get me alone so he can silence me. If he comes here…” She trailed off.

“We will not permit him to even get within eyesight of you.” The Sergeant at the front desk spoke.

“Thank you. Please just brush him off and don’t try to stop him, I don’t want him to get suspicious. Lev and I will take care of him shortly.” Clarke laid it out, keeping her story straight. Everything now depended on Gerasim actually following her footsteps, but after the call the armory gave her earlier, and another message from the data center not long thereafter, everything was proceeding as desired for once in her life.

Once again, as she was waved through the security gates and came up to the mainframe room, she punched her card into the reader, waited for it to flash green, and pushed down the lever that opened the vault-style door separating the mainframe from the rest of the building. ‘Seriously, what is this door meant to protect against? Direct impact by an 80-megaton nuke?’ She wondered at the absolutely overkill piece of reinforced titanium.

The next thing that went through her head was ‘Oh, you have got to be kidding me!’ as the door began to open… At the rate of about five millimeters per second. It took a minute and a half before the ancient, massive, immensely heavy blast door was opened far enough for her to squeeze through, and unwilling to wait for the thing to open properly, she loudly exclaimed a choice word or two so the guards would know of her displeasure and not think she was trying to hide something, but rather trying to outpace Gerasim.

When she heard the Sergeant tell his men to prepare to deflect the Minister’s attention and make him go anywhere else if he showed up here while the Colonel was still inside, she knew that she’d played him like a fiddle. Most men wanted to be helpful to somebody that looked as attractive as her and had the trigger skills to match, after all.

There it was at last: the mainframe computer that contained the files full of photographs of the documentation she needed, and right there in the corner: the microfilm printer that would produce the evidence in physical format. She’d spent the past month working tirelessly to set up a scenario in which she could be here without being doubted, and now the time had come at last. One last hurdle, and then, the moment of truth.

Using her punch cards once again, as Artemida, she logged in and accessed all data kept on the Defense Minister and his closest friends and allies, those known to be his business associates, and ideologically aligned politicians and generals.

Then, as Kovalenko, she went in and downloaded everything the mainframe had on Artemida, Nia, Roan, Ontari, Echo, and whatever dealings they had with American contacts and Wagner Group, including Cage Wallace, Carl Emerson, and Evgeny Prigozhin, and backdated ‘his’ query to yesterday.

For both these queries, she sent print orders to the microfilm printer, and as its presses warmed up and print rolls began to spin, she logged in as Artemida again and, just to pass the time, queried up a search on all the files about Clarke Abigail Griffin. Nia was gonna be pissed about that one, but she’d probably not make a big deal out of Clarke looking up intel about herself, since she was genuinely curious to know what was happening on that front in America. That was how she learned that as far as the US public was concerned, Clarke Griffin was rotting in USP Florence ADMAX in permanent isolation, and the intelligence community seemed to be spinning in circles because there just didn’t seem to be any leads pertaining to her whereabouts, at least not as far as the FSB and SVR were able to discern. Or at least, that was what the FSB had access to – even they hadn’t been able to secure backdoors into every inter-agency chat server yet, much to Clarke’s relief, though their level of intel proved to be disturbingly high and far too broad for comfort.

Once the printer had done its job, she took the files on Gerasim and Company and stuffed them into a canister that she placed inside her coat to hand over to Lev for further investigation, then stripped down her pants and underpants halfway to take the second canister containing the files on the nuclear conspiracy and stuff it somewhere rather different – not just up her vaginal channel like the RFID chip, where it could be found via a body cavity search (not to mention the thing being still rather small, but much larger than the chip), but even further in, pushing it through the opening into her uterus. There, it would be safe indefinitely.

There'd been an operation in Algeria once, where she’d tasked some assets with smuggling out some tiny thumb drives containing a wealth of files regarding government plans to support terror groups against Israel.

They'd developed the intel extraction by wrapping the containers in a biological film that would fool MRI, CAT, and X-ray scanners into thinking they were benign tumors, and implanted them into the breasts of female operatives. Algerians were extremely sensitive about men touching strange women and their border control only used male personnel, making for a glaring exploitable hole in their security. Obviously, this had only been possible because the Agency had a few trusted doctors within the country that could perform the necessary surgeries, which wasn’t an option at the moment, so she had to improvise on the spot, and this was the first and only thing that came to mind: swallowing the canister would give her three days before it’d come out again, and that could easily be way too quick.

But if she’d thought that period cramps were the most hellish sort of pain a human being could experience short of childbirth (which she was adamant about never finding out) – and that was coming from someone that had more than once been beaten up, stabbed, electrocuted, and shot – trying to force the damn canister past that second opening was worse. A lot worse. Thank goodness that this room was soundproofed: there’d be guards swarming into the mainframe center thinking Colonel Vlasova was being murdered if they could hear the animalistic screeches that were shredding her throat as she self-performed what could be best described as a reverse abortion.

But eventually, after five minutes or five days – she really couldn’t tell which – it was done. She didn’t feel the canister’s presence inside of her, which was a silver lining. She did need to take a few minutes more to catch her breath and wait for the pain to subside enough to allow her to walk normally again.

A loudspeaker inside the mainframe room was switched to active, indicating a guard at the entry desk wanting her to hear what was happening outside the soundproofed chamber.

“This area is off limits. You’re not supposed to be here.” The leading Sergeant said, apparently not for the first time.

“I have an access card, I have the proper clearance.” An annoyed voice replied. Shit, that was Kovalenko! If he’d catch her down here, she’d have nowhere to hide and no excuse.

“You know how it works: one person at a time only.” The Sergeant answered, getting antsy that this outsider had the gall to act like he was the king of the castle. “The mainframe is occupied. You’ll have to go back upstairs and wait your turn.”

“Very well. I’ll look forward to seeing who steps out of that elevator once she’s done.” Gerasim said, his face full of venom, stressing the gender of the occupant and tipping her off that Kovalenko knew he was being set up.

“You know I cannot say who is in there, Minister. Now get out before I have to detain you.” The Sergeant told him curtly, fed up with his entitled shit.

The speaker went silent after that, and the vault door began to reopen. Huh, she’d been so in the zone she hadn’t even realized it had closed: presumably by the security detail wanting to keep their Colonel safe.

“Thanks, I really appreciate it.” She told the Sergeant in honest relief.

“My pleasure, Miss Vlasova.” The man nodded at her.

Clarke took her leave with a wave that the guards answered in kind, calling for the elevator that Kovalenko currently occupied. Taking her phone out of her pocket, she called the Head of Security directly. “Lev, he’s coming up. Express elevator from the mainframe level to the forward atrium. He just tried to get inside a soundproofed room with no cameras alone with me. Seize him when he comes out. I’ll be with you shortly.”

“Very good. I’m moving into position.” He answered, sounding giddy at the prospect of frying such a big fish.

She emerged back on the first floor just in time to see Head of Security Kutuzov ordering four guards to drag Minister Kovalenko off to the interrogation wing.

"You! You set me up!" The Minister shouted when he caught sight of Clarke standing there with a huge smirk plastered don her face: she loved it when a plan came together. "It was her, you idiots! She's the traitor, not me! Get Vlasova!" Gerasim screamed in outrage that nobody believed his accusation.

“Did you really believe you could spit in Mother Russia’s face and have your filth run off onto a patriot?” Lev asked Gerasim with a permafrost-like calmness masking utter fury.

“You’ve gone insane! She’s framing me for this! I don’t even know what you’re accusing me of!” Gerasim countered, trying to defend himself.

Clarke couldn’t help but insinuate herself into this situation, since she was already so heavily involved that it’d look better if she bragged a little: “You’ve taken a very personal interest in my affairs as of late, Mr. Minister. It’s not so easy covering one’s tracks as the movies make it look, is it?” She chided the Minister as though he were a child.

“Let me go, you idiots! Arrest her, it’s Vlasova you want! ARGH!” The man, who by now had gone as red as the inside of a ripe beet, bellowed at the top of his lungs, finding no support from the small crowd that had former to watch.

“I’ll be seeing you at Interrogation soon.” Clarke said to Kovalenko, before turning to face Kutuzov with a friendly clap on the shoulder: “Okay Lev, I’m done here. Take him away. Do your worst.”

“Is this your way of getting closer to the top? I’ll look forward to seeing what Nia has to say once the truth comes out!” Gerasim barked out at Clarke, who didn’t feel threatened at all.

“There is no truth, only what we choose to believe. And the hard facts have your fingerprints all over them.” She answered, very much proud of herself at the scheme she’d concocted going off without a hitch.

“Shut up and come with me. Any further accusations you have to make, you can state behind closed doors.” Lev told Kovalenko, ordering his guards to take the man away.

“I will see you suffer for this! The both of you! Get your hands off me- Umph!” He tried to break free from the guards’ grip, only for one of them to smack him in the small of his back with a shock baton. The old man went limp as the resistance was fried out of him, allowing Lev and his boys to put Gerasim behind lock and key. Problem One solved.

Now back in her corner office, an e-mail popped into her inbox, titled 'PRIORITY 1 MESSAGE – POSSIBLE HAZARD DETECTED!’

With her hands shaking in trepidation, she clicked it open... And let out a little giggle of relief as she realized that they'd found the smoking gun, and chalked it down to completely the wrong thing.

'Dear Colonel Vlasova,

The armory X-ray scanner you went through earlier today returned some results that may be disturbing. An unidentified mass that appears to be biological in nature was detected along the inner wall of your – ma’am, this is quite awkward to mention, but, the interior of your private parts. This has not shown up before on any prior recorded scans of you.

It is possible that you have a malignant tumor resulting from cervical cancer. This may be a false positive, but I strongly recommend you get this checked out ASAP just to be safe.

Kind regards,

 - Colonel Lev Kutuzov, Security Chief

All in all, Clarke was extremely glad that computer technology hadn’t advanced much since Bojinka. If the Internet, digital networking, and digitalization had taken front and center stage of the US tech development cycle instead of fusion power technology and the advanced robotics that it made possible, this whole operation would’ve been impossible to pull off, even with Lubyanka’s hardware being prehistoric. That was a passive security measure designed to keep the building’s systems more secure from outside intrusion, but in this case, had also enabled Clarke to pull off her scheme perfectly. If she’d get the chance, she’d have to thank Monty Green for trying to explain IT stuff to her.

Lev’s email was one thing, but the man himself showed back up at her door not long thereafter.

“Chief Vlasova, Director Koroleva wants to see you in the conference room to discuss this security breach. She says it’s urgent. The Director and her children are waiting for you right now.” The Colonel explained.

“Of course. I’ll be right there. Anything I should know?” Clarke inquired, getting a little worried that something had gone wrong and Nia knew what she’d really been doing after all.

“All I can say is that all of the department heads will be there. Whatever you have unearthed, it is big, and it will not wait.” Lev said apologetically, sensing how stressed out his friend was already.

“In that case: lead the way.” No sense in putting this off: it was time to face the music. With any luck, it would be a victory tune rather than the drummers signaling a hanging.

"Ah, Artemida, there you are. Take a seat." Nia said as Clarke was ushered into the Director’s conference room.

"I've taken a personal interest in this unfortunate security breach. To think that the Defense Minister himself, one of our most important allies, thought he could gather blackmail material on me to satisfy his own ambitions is a national tragedy." Nia put grandiosely, though believing every word of it.

"But be that as it may, he has betrayed my trust, and so, he has betrayed Mother Russia. And a man in his position will not have been working alone.” She spoke, locking eyes with Clarke, who, at that moment, could already picture herself being skinned alive over the course of three days and left to the elements to finish off.

“Comrade Vlasova, I believe Data Center Chief Ivanovic has informed you of a mole in our organization that led you to the Minister. Surely there must be others that were working with him, because only an FSB officer could have given him the clearances to do what he did. Have you unearthed anything useful about this infiltration yet?" Was what Nia directed at her instead, and the knot in Clarke’s stomach unraveled just as quickly.

"Yes. I have a few leads to pursue, but it will take some time to track down the men responsible. The people I interrogated were... stubborn, and most of them did not survive." Clarke laid out, and this was again the surface-level factual truth,

"Your lack of compassion makes you the perfect woman for the job, but I urge you to show more restraint in the future.” Nia spoke with some level of understanding. “It is hard to interrogate prisoners when they're dead."

"I understand, Director. This will never happen again." Clarke acknowledged.

Roan was the one to speak next: "What I just can't understand is why Gerasim Kovalenko, of all people, would imagine that it would be so easy to betray us. Nevertheless, if he proves to have placed his own interests over those of the Motherland, we will bury him." He stated this while looking directly at Clarke and giving her a strong nod: the gesture could be seen as appreciating Vlasova’s work, but also as Roan telling Clarke that he knew and approved.

Nia nodded, turning to her Head of Security, Colonel Lev Kutuzov. "Do you have any recommendations?"

"Yes, Comrade Director.” The impassioned young man spoke. “We should restrict access to all sensitive areas concerning data and information, and run a thorough search on everyone that was there at the time of this betrayal. I want to know the depths of their ideological conviction, their personal circumstances, their greatest ambitions: anything that can help me paint a picture of who would be willing to help this Stavka man move against us. Unfortunately, not everyone here is as devoted to the cause as we in this room are."

"I concur, Colonel." Clarke spoke. "Leave no stone unturned, but remain discreet. Take it slowly, only a few persons at a time. We don't want to cause a panic by letting the whole staff know that we've been compromised."

"As you say, Comrade Vlasova." Lev, in a professional clip, agreed. “Do not worry, Comrade Director: all of those responsible for this betrayal will be uncovered, and they will pay the ultimate price.”

And with that chilling declaration hanging in the air, the meeting concluded, Clarke went back to her office just as Nia did hers, and now there was nothing left to do but wait and see what tomorrow would bring.

March 13, 2019

Outside Makhachkala, capital of Dagestan, Russian Federal Subject

As the 747 VC-25A began its final leg of the journey towards Moscow, Lexa excused herself from Major Park and Delegate Clarkson to call her senior officers to another meeting room for a walk down memory lane.

Lexa found herself reliving that operation in Dagestan more than two years ago, the one where she’d been part of a joint strike force with the SVR Spetsnaz that she would soon be cooperating with for the second time in her career.

That mission had gone tits up almost from the get-go. It’d left a lot of bodies behind. And some of the people that had been on her side then wouldn’t be now. Nikolai Petrenko, the inter-agency coordinator, was dead. And Echo Teles, the SVR ground commander, turned out to be working for Koroleva, so would now be on the other end of Lexa’s guns. But by going over this mission again, walking through it step by step with her colleagues that had been on the ground alongside her, she hoped to maybe find something she could use to anticipate what the upcoming assault was going to be like, discover something she missed that might help her prepare for what was about to happen later today.

The idea had been that the three agencies involved would establish a cordon a kilometer and a half out from the target zone: far enough away that they could remain unseen but still be able to provide sniper support and interdict anybody trying to get in or out, while a few smaller detachments would move in under cover of night to evade any patrols, silently take out hostiles that they couldn’t get past, grab Dagtaryev, and extract him before the Dagestan Special Police detachment and the guy’s own Wagner hired guns would find out that they were under attack.

It had been a workable plan. But it hadn’t survived first contact with the enemy.

The Russo-American task force had begun arriving in staggered waves in the late afternoon and into the early evening, slowly making their way towards their initial battle positions on foot under the creeping cover of night.

Their leaders had divided the tasks between them: Clarke and SOG would go in to capture Bledar through a direct approach, with Lexa and DCS holding and securing a mobile perimeter around the CIA unit. SVR under Echo Teles, providing the bulk of the boots of the ground, would hold the outer perimeter and serve as a QRF in case the compound went under alert and turned out the guard in force; and Nikolai Petrenko would serve as mission controller, keeping communications between all elements flowing smoothly and staying in radio contact with the three field commanders to make sure that information was relayed quickly and accurately.

The area was covered in moderately thick forest, gently sloping hills surrounding the compound where the terrorist had made his home. The crests of these hills would make for excellent observation posts, whilst providing concealment and cover for the grounds of the manor and its auxiliary buildings that sat in a dip in the land. GAZ light trucks, shining their high beams in a display of total idiocy as this would ruin their occupants’ night vision, blinding them to anywhere the lights weren’t touching, patrolled around the area, keeping a lookout for any intruders.

OMON and Wagner personnel working together wasn’t a common sight, and it was clear that the two forces weren’t too happy at being forced to work together. This could prove to be useful if things went south: if these elements maintained separate commands, sowing confusion could throw the whole AO into chaos, though Lexa hoped they wouldn’t need to resort to that. They’d come prepared for every eventuality, though, so if they’d need to shoot their way out of this one, Clarke and Lexa were prepared to do so, and Echo seemed like she wanted things to go loud.

The snatch team under Clarke herself was joined by Lexa, who’d coordinate her part right from where the main action would be, with Anya taking over for one of the other two avenues of ingress – the JTF coming in from three sides for redundancy and to possibly confuse the enemy – with Echo leading the third force. Lexa had Lincoln and Ryder with her for personal protection just like Clarke was accompanied by Finn and Jasper, the ranking officers also being their best snipers/sharpshooters who’d prove to be very deadly in a pinch.

Costia had wanted to take her SEALs and join the operation and had almost gotten her way too, but the outbreak of a sudden crisis in Tajikistan had required her to be redeployed there post haste, leaving the logistics a little less complicated, but Clarke and Lexa a little less sure of themselves.

The combined CIA-DIA team began its entry by following an overgrown goat path flanked on the right by the woods and on the left by a raised ridge in the land that would hopefully allow them to bypass the roving Dagestani patrolmen.

Clarke and Lexa stuck close together, Clarke hefting her M14 EBR and Lexa hugging her HK416, both of the SOPMOD variant, choosing to act as a fire-and-maneuver team together. Their operators spaced around, keeping about 3 meters between them shoulder to shoulder and front to back, ensuring clear lanes of fire for each of them and allowing them to dip out of the way to minimize casualties from possible explosives and any machine gun fire. They walked slowly, taking great effort to not snap any twigs, crunch large leaves, or kick pebbles – anything to reduce their sound profiles – and were cautious of stepping into holes or gulleys unseen in the underbrush.

Equipped with omni-directional receiver night vision goggles, the many shades of green that their visual output rendered narrowing their users’ fields of vision but turning a dark night into virtual daytime, the entry team advanced on their target. Bledar Dagtaryev wouldn’t know what hit him.

An OMON car passed by on the raised road beside them, its beams failing to dip down into the side of the gulley that the Americans were hugging, passing by without noticing anything amiss.

“Looks like standard patrols.” Clarke needlessly pointed out – but it was nice to hear verbal confirmation sometimes.

“Let’s do this thing while the clock’s on our side.” Lexa said softly in reply, pacing ahead with feline grace.

“It’s a little too quiet, if you ask me.” Clarke made her gut feeling known.

“ISR said Bledar is home. Don’t think he’s expecting any visitors.” Lexa discarded the paranoid blonde’s concern.

“Still, let’s take control of the situation quickly.” Clarke insisted, whispering into her radio: “Petrenko, something doesn’t feel right. Can you have your snipers ready to drop any and all visible targets at a moment’s notice?”

“Yes, my friend. Teles’ overwatch teams have at least forty men in their sights. They will not last five seconds if you need us to engage them.” The good Russian responded. This was still a dicey proposition: even if all visible enemies were killed too quickly for them to raise the alarm, somebody else in concealment might see their comrades inexplicably drop dead and call out the attack after all. There’s be a lot fewer bodies to work triggers in response to it, though.

“We’ll assume that they know we’re coming, but aren’t sure we’re here yet. Let’s keep it that way.” Clarke ordered.

“The compound is crawling with hostiles. Most will be asleep, so if we stick to the shadows, the advantage will be ours for a few minutes longer if you’re right.” Lexa responded, Clarke’s nervous energy starting to infect her as well.

As they came up on the electric fence that surrounded the main compound, they quickly dispatched two guards manning searchlights in towers opposite the gate after making sure that nobody would see or hear them get taken out. The team was on the clock now: whenever a radio check went out without response, a search team would go out, and once they’d discover the bodies, all hell was gonna break loose.

Lincoln applied rust spray to the gate’s hinges, which soon came loose with a bit of careful prying so the things wouldn’t clang. And just like that, the team was within the inner defenses and coming up on a shed. This building appeared to be empty, and time was at a premium. So a DCS fireteam was peeled off to clear through the structure just in case, while Clarke and Lexa proceeded to the right, where a larger storage structure loomed – with several Wagner soldiers in between them and its door, at a small car park lit up by numerous flood lamps. On this mission, they hadn’t been able to sever the lights, because that would make the garrison way too jumpy to sneak up on; but it did mean that a dangerous game of light and shadows would need to unfold damn near perfectly to bring this mission to a successful end.

“Too many to take quietly. We’ll circle around.” Clarke determined, beginning to cloverleaf to the right, Lexa sticking to her hip like glue, keeping her HK ready just in case they’d be made.

Bypassing the storage building to the left, they completed their turn without incident, tasking a small element with keeping an eye on the place from the shadows while proceeding towards a stables that appeared in front of them. Clarke dipped down low and prepared to open the door, Lexa covering her with her rifle. Lincoln severed the fuse box line proving this outbuilding with power, an annoyed voice exclaiming from within when the door opened and the two leaders opened fire on the men inside whose eyed hadn’t had time to adjust to the sudden darkness. Four Wagner soldiers were quickly eliminated, and the horses thankfully weren’t awoken by the sound of the suppressed guns.

Upon exiting the L-shaped building on the far side, they found their path blocked by four more Wagner men, milling around in a pool of light. Lexa shot out the floodlamp they were using, upon which Clarke, Finn, Jasper, and Ryder each plugged a few new holes in the surprised bad Russians before they could even exclaim their surprise.

So far, so good; but in this quiet night, even the suppressed rapport of gunfire seemed deafeningly loud. It really was only a matter of time before the attack would be discovered, and by then, Lexa hoped they’d have their subject and be on their way out already. If the enemy was still searching for them, things could go okay. But if they were already engaged and aware of the JTF’s position, things would get real ugly, real fast, hence the splitting up into three separate entry teams.

In any case, after moving up, they found themselves at an overlook, atop a steep, deep ridge with the mansion’s main residence below in front of them and a separate pool building to the right. A large scenic tower occupied the center of the main plaza, with a building that suspiciously resembled an army barracks sitting behind the plaza at a 90* angle to the house and pool and a motor pool much bigger than the upper one farthest left.

What followed was a long, slow, and frustrating trek down a semi-paved road that constantly looped and switched back on itself, providing only a minimal shoulder to move through for concealment. If a GAZ game driving up or down here, the Americans would have to lie still and stay silent to avoid being discovered and caught out in the open. But this wasn’t their first rodeo, and their patience, though frayed, won out over their eagerness to get on with it already,

Having made it to flat ground once again, they were almost discovered by a foot patrol coming down the road from behind them, only for Echo’s snipers to eliminate all four of them in short order. Four-man teams seemed to be the standard configuration of the security detail here: in separate groups, these should be easy enough to handle.

With a few sniper teams having detached from the entry team earlier to provide an additional layer of cover and fire support from the ridge above, the rest of the CIA-SOG force split into three: they were going to hit the lookout, tower, pool, and barracks first, clearing them out at the same time, before converging on the manor house to strike it as one unit.

Coordinating deftly, the snipers took care of the four-man enemy team holding the top of the tower just as the ground team made entry onto its ground floor and dispatched the surprised four-man team sitting there at a game of cards. The guys there had been OMON, not Wagner: a regrettable loss, since they weren’t the enemy, just happened to have been tricked into protecting an enemy, but they were still in the way, so they had to be dispatched.

The team handling the poolhouse soon reported back that it had been minimally occupied: two Wagner teams, eliminated in short order.

Clarke and Lexa led the most dangerous part of this phase: assaulting the barracks.

The team made its entry and began sweeping through, expecting mostly sleeping men with a few guards on night shift, only to be met with enemy fireteams actively patrolling around, flashlights in hand and guns at ready-high, and way too many empty beds between them. These men were on combat alert, prepared for a fight, and even though the JTF people were quick on the trigger with their excellent situational awareness, they had to really work the angles to stay out of the enemy’s lines of fire and avoid unsuppressed weapons fire from alerting the entire compound that there were hostiles killing their guys inside the barracks right this second.

There had been about twenty OMON and Wagner guys: not a shabby force by any means, but far too few hostiles inside the barracks at this time at night, and they’d anticipated being hit. Something was definitely off.

Once all three elements had finished their jobs and prepared to move on the main house, a UAZ light truck mounting a PKP machine gun came roaring down the road a searchlight mounted on its roof swiveling as its gunner scanned around for targets, the vehicle’s crew working in dead silence.

“Well, that didn’t look ominous at all.” Clarke spoke.

“Griffin, Woods, they know something’s wrong.” Nikolai confirmed Clarke’s fear through the radio. “The garrison men have begun searching the compound. Numerous teams eliminated by the other two friendly entry teams, but the bodies are starting to pile up and the garrison is stepping up its patrols. They know they are under attack now.”

“Good copy. Will proceed with caution at best possible speed.” Clarke acknowledged, Lexa using her own radio to tell her men to prepare to go loud.

The sound of firefights starting to break out pierced the night, both suppressed and unsuppressed rifles speaking out in anger: this was not good. It meant that the other teams had been made, and would now be dispersing to hit the enemy from as many angles as possible as quickly as possible to keep them off balance, giving Clarke and Lexa an opening to hit the main house from the angle the enemy wasn’t concentrating in to grab Bledar and GTFO.

“Enemy radio chatter just spiked, guys.” Nikolai reported. “They are preparing to move Dagtaryev to another safehouse. This must not be allowed to happen.”

“Copy that. Get the QRF ready to move in. All snipers, engage at will.” Clarke gave her instructions.

“You know, I really hate it when you’re right, sometimes.” Lexa casually mentioned as the pair worked together to eliminate an enemy team that popped around the corner straight into their waiting guns.

“Don’t I know it, Lex.” The blonde responded, repositioning their unit to remain hidden from the roving UAZ that was moving around in an area where none of the snipers could take out its driver and gunner.

Friendly snipers began dropping hostiles by the dozen elsewhere, though, the Dagestanis manning the outer checkpoints and observation posts quickly wiped out as the bad Russians deeper within found their ranks decimated from out of nowhere and their precious floodlamps exploding into sparks of showers.

Seconds later, alarms started wailing. Some men spilled out of the mansion’s back door, taken down by JTF personnel that had circled around to that side to cut off escape, but many more weapons opened fire from within the mansion, and before long, the Americans were also taking fire from other parts of the terrain farther back, leaving them pincered.

“Fuck! It’s now or never! Storm the house!” Lexa commanded as Clarke told Nikolai to tell Echo to gather ass in gear and launch a general assault on the compound, where the cracking of rifles was now joined by the booming rapport of machine guns and banging of grenades. The raid was quickly devolving into a pitched battle, with the pincered men at the back of the mansion getting hammered, sustaining losses, and being pushed into an untenable position, cut off and surrounded even as the attackers from without now were themselves taking fire from the flanks and rear by mobile fireteams and snipers from JTF.

This did explain where all the men that should have been inside the barracks had gone: scores of them had piled into the mansion before the JTF had even got here, and scores more had been waiting on the far side of the compound, safely hidden away from thermal cameras and telescopic lenses until called into action.

They had no choice now but to assault the front of the mansion and force their way inside before the enemy could punch a hole through the rear and extract their quarry from there.

“We should’ve brought a fucking Havoc.” Clarke grumbled as she led her SOG guys onto frighteningly open ground to engage some enemy teams that were on sentry duty protecting the path towards the front door, with only a bunch of boulders providing hard cover.

One man came leaping through a window that he’d shot out, trying to play Rambo, only for Lexa to put a three-round burst into the Wagner soldier, ending his escapades.

But now, the armed GAZ was coming up on the right, trying to get an enfilading position on the entry team. Sniper fire sparked, pinging off the vehicle as it pulled up, the Pecheneg gunner still rattling off a long, widely-sweeping burst of 7.62 that tore up the ground and ripped through the armors of several operators before finally being silenced, leaving at least three friendlies dead and two more badly wounded.

The guys in the rear had by now been broken free of their encirclement by Echo and her SVR operators, but they were still getting hammered by an entire line of hostiles at least 30 strong, three squads all centered around supporting a PKM machine gun plus embedded sniper with a Dragunov, doing lethal work between them. Casualties were mounting fast, and if the Dagestani government was made aware of what was going on, they would send their MSVR National Guardsmen to engage the attackers before they could be convinced that this was a government-sanctioned operation and they’d been firing on their own countrymen. This thing had to end soon.

The screams of SVR operators hit by the PKMs whose bursts were doing the real killing work could be heard every few seconds even as friendly snipers were working their hardest to relieve the pressure on the men and women below.

Another gun truck, this time a PKP-sporting GAZ, pulled up around the mansion, this one staying far back enough to avoid the JTF snipers, its gun booming out as it sought to suppress the attacking forces. High-caliber bullets ripped through the chest of an operator right next to Lexa, making her duck low as the machine gun continued to fire. Clarke’s M14 clapped twice a split second later, and the Wagner support gun fell silent. Lexa nodded her thanks, Clarke responding with a smile even as she spurred her people on to stay low and keep bonding forward from cover to cover, the firefight behind the house picking up in intensity as MGs kept on chattering back and forth. Echo’s unit alone had already lost over twenty men by now as these assault operators were now engaged as line infantry, out of their element against mercenaries and police commandos more used to sticking it out.

Lexa was the first to enter the three-story house, disregarding all rules to act as point man, Clarke hanging back to watch over her shoulders. Their operators flowed into the structure and provided 360* security around them, others taking over point position as one fireteam detached to keep the door clear.

Hostiles were waiting around every corner, the first person to pull the trigger usually the one that survived the encounter. The mansion was surrounded and being invaded from every entrance the building possessed, but the SVR guys forming the main assault had lost the element of surprise just as much as the CIA-DIA teams had, and they weren’t up against poorly trained Haji terrs, but professional uniformed combat personnel with ample experience on the zero line. The fight was all about speed and angles, about correctly identifying friend from foe, and it quickly turned into a bloody scrum as neither force was willing to yield an inch. At one point, Lexa turned a corner and raised her rifle at the person down the hall only to find that she was pointing her barrel at her own sister, Anya doing the same on the other side, and it was only their instilled discipline that saw to it that neither Woods sister accidentally shot the other.

Nobody was quite sure where all of their friendlies were, grenades being exchanged up and down the several stairwells and fireteams on both sides trying to stay mobile to avoid being pinned down, outflanked, or isolated. The SVR men wearing uniforms virtually identical to the Wagner soldiers’ made it even more confusing, with only their blue ribbons serving as identifiers that these were good Russians, not bad Russians. One SVR man to Lexa’s right misidentified the guy that came around the corner and had two holes drilled in his forehead for his trouble, Lexa quickly avenging the dead man with three shots of her own. Another man, appearing hostile, dashed from one room across the hallway to the next, Lexa mirroring from her own end to try to engage him only to be faced with two hostiles instead: there’d been one waiting in that room already. It was only Clarke’s quick reaction that saved her life, as Lexa took down the guy farther down with Clarke taking care of the closer man that was lining up a shot into Lexa’s side. A third hostile killed the SVR operator guarding the pair’s backs from the rear door, the man’s skull splitting open with a nauseating *crack* as he fell to the floor lifelessly. His killer darted into the room where the two girls were still waiting – and never made it back out.

After a few more minutes of vicious skirmishing that saw grenades exchanged like they were going out of style, the pair found themselves on the third floor, faced with a security door into a panic room. Their quarry hadn’t been sighted leaving the house and wasn’t accounted for anywhere else, so Bledar must be right behind it.

Echo took great pleasure in setting the breaching charges herself, Lexa ready to shoot anyone that wasn’t Bledar on the far side while Clarke prepared to bound through the opening and tackle the man to the ground, an M9 in one hand and a 10-inch black-steel combat knife in the other.

When the door blew in, there was nobody there save for the man in question. He was alone, sitting behind a desk, frantically leafing through a stack of papers that would later turn out to be fallout dispersion maps, ballistic trajectories, and the names of people in the Tajik and Uzbek governments that wouldn’t be amenable to an Islamist government.

Clarke body-slammed him out of the chair and into the wall, holding her knife to his throat, while Lexa slid around to the side to be ready to shoot the guy in the leg if he proved uncooperative without risking hitting Clarke.

“Teles? If I’d have known it’d be you-” The bastard began to say, only to be cut off by Clarke slamming the back of his head into the wall, turning him around, and repeating the close encounter with his forehead – the short woman weighed about as much as a wet noodle, but was still deceptively strong.

The three women worked together to tape the fucker’s mouth shut, ziptie his wrists behind his back, pull a blackout hood over his head, and tape that around his neck too. The firefight outside was slacking off, but still intense enough that nobody could tell which side was winning, so they had to make their exit right now.

Machine gun fire continued to hound the strike force as they backtracked all the way along the path they’d came, fighting their way through enemies coming from all sides even as said enemies were themselves taking fire from all sides. Another UAZ tried to block the road, only for Anya to use her favorite NLAW for the first time during this op, the anti-armor rocket it projected flying straight and true and char-grilling the vehicle in a gout of flames. One operator was still hit by enemy fire and went down, wounded but alive, yet unable to walk. Another picked him up in a fireman’s carry, the rest of their squad forming a protective diamond around them as they continued to push towards the exit.

The enemy was starting to falter now, their numbers depleted and their momentum expended, but the JTF, and SVR in particular, had paid a high toll – Teles and Petrenko’s agency would be leaving a lot of bodies behind. The Dagestani government would be briefed in the morning and tasked with ordering the surviving OMON men to stand down, remaining Wagner guys to fuck off or be arrested or killed, and to secure all the bodies for transportation back to their next of kin. But before then, three more corpses were added to the pile by a Wagner soldier hefting an RPG-7v loaded with an anti-personnel rocket that streaked out moments before the gunner’s own life was ended.

His battle buddy took offense. The close explosion had ripped the rifle from his hands, but he drew his knife and jumped on Clarke, dropping the blonde on the floor as he began trying to plunge the blade into her throat. Lexa brought up her HK, but it clicked dry: she drew one of her throwing knives instead and embedded it in the Russian’s neck.

At least two more enemy fireteams blocked the exit, having slipped in between the ground force and perimeter teams, and began firing in their direction as Lexa helped Clarke to her feet and reloaded her KH, Echo’s AK-15 clapping back along with Jasper, Finn, Lincoln, and Ryder, these last enemies being downed in short order.

“All clear.” Echo announced in English when the lead team had made its way out of the compound at last, slipping into the woods to begin trekking back towards their waiting vehicles with one terrorist scumbag in tow.

“Your head still on your shoulders, Lex?” Clarke asked, patting Lexa down checking for unnoticed wounds even though she’d been the one that ate a knuckle sandwich to the face just minutes before.

“Never better, Griff.” She replied, absent-mindedly noting how the Griffin Sisters had the exact same reaction to the mere thought of her being in danger.

Speaking of whom: her sister was who Clarke brought up next. “Cos’ op in Tajikistan has to do with a nuke launch against Tashkent. Those files on this guy’s desk… This is not an isolated incident.” The blue-eyed operator mused once Echo was out of earshot, dragging Bledar along by the scruff. The CIA girl wasn’t supposed to say something like this aloud to an outsider, but hey, this was Lexa, and she could be trusted with almost everything.

“Whatever scheme this guy was a part of, we’re taking it all down. Scout’s honor.” Lexa answered resolutely.

And what a scheme this turned out to be. Costia and her SEALs had stopped some Tajik Jihadists from blowing a huge hole in the capital of Uzbekistan, but Bledar, who’d organized the whole operation the same way he had his own bombings in the Northeastern US, would later claim that he’d been acting on orders by the FSB, not the Caucasus Emirate that he nominally served. Perhaps the Chechen hajis were being used as a pawn in a greater game – the nuclear aspect certainly tracked with what Clarke had been talking about. And it hadn’t been more than a few months after coming back from Makhachkala that the blonde had become obsessed with the thought of a giant conspiracy headed by Nia Koroleva, Bledar’s self-admitted paymaster: but the plot was just too… too big, too convoluted, and too otherworldly to be real. That was the only thing Lexa could think of that made any sense. And yet… Clarke had never been wrong yet.

The 737’s pilot made an announcement over the intercom: “Thirty minutes out from Domodedovo. We are beginning our runway approach. You might wanna strap in, people. Moscow awaits.”

“Alright then. Listen up, people.” Lexa called her officers to order. “We all know what we’re up against, and I know that some of us aren’t gonna be making it home.” She said, not trying to reassure her people with empty platitudes. “But if we keep our shit together, all of us here are gonna make it through. I’ll consider this a mission failure if even a single person in this room eats it out there. Am I understood?”

“You got it, sis.” Anya firmly stated. “This isn’t gonna be a one-way trip.” The dirty blonde told her sister, trusting that Lexa’s cool under pressure would see them succeed once again.

Lexa vehemently hoped that her sis and all her subordinates were right to place such faith in her.

Chapter Text

Chapter 14: Acceptable Losses

July 19th, 2021

Lubyanka, Moscow

“I can’t believe Kovalenko is a traitor.” Nia sighed, her tone indicating that she meant this proverbially, not literally, much to Clarke’s relief. “I knew I had a mole high up in my organization. For a time, I thought it was you.” Koroleva said to Clarke, who just nodded in understanding. “But no, you have proved yourself a dozen times over. Gerasim, on the other hand? I now believe I made a mistake bringing in an outsider.”

“Am I not an outsider too?” Clarke inquired, curious where this was going.

“You were an outsider to the FSB, but not anymore. More important: you and I have always been spooks, Gerasim was a soldier. His worldview proved, in the end, to be incompatible with ours.” Nia specified, disappointed in herself that she hadn’t seen this surprise blow coming. She had done well bringing Clarke aboard: the girl’s discovering that it was the Defense Minister who had been gathering kompromat on her proving conclusively that bringing Colonel Vlasova to life had already paid major dividends with that one act, all of her other ‘cleanup’ notwithstanding.

“The allies of today are the enemies of tomorrow.” Clarke paraphrased, her double meaning going unnoticed by all but Roan. Seriously: Roan had become a rock in the storm for her, still not someone she trusted, but one whom she genuinely respected, and whose objectives, at least for now, aligned more closely with her own than his mother’s. He was not gonna sell her out. And the way he kept her mind occupied from racing into doom spirals at night was greatly appreciated, too.

Nia continued speaking: “Gerasim had developed an obsession with you, as I’m sure you’ve figured out by now.”

“Yeah, I figured as much. That’s what made me look at him as a suspect in the first place. Stupid bastard.” The American blonde answered: if Gerasim hadn’t been so blatant about his petty jealousy, she’d never have pegged him as a target.

“Chasing after you, trying to kill you inside these very walls, printing off microfilm on topics so highly classified that I would have killed him anyway for even knowing that they existed?” Nia rhetoricated, building up a head of steam. “Which is why I must ask you to allow a cavity search. It’s nothing personal – this way we can clear your name quickly and move on to more productive business, like discussing the American question.” The older woman spoke as if discussing the weather, making Clarke suppress a disgusted shudder although she understood that this was just standard procedure, nothing about it indicating that Nia had grown suspicious of her.

"Okay, okay, but if we're gonna do this, let's have Roan take care of it. You're never gonna get me to let Ontari r some random guard touch me down there." Clarke insisted, knowing that Roan wasn’t exactly going to be thorough (not that it mattered all too much, since you’d need special equipment to dig deep enough to find the microfilm canister’s hiding place!) and take care not to hurt her.

“You and my son have gotten very close as of late.” Nia observed. “To choose him over another woman with a task so delicate, this only further confirms that we were always meant to work together.”

Director Koroleva was being friendly with Clarke now, trying to foster closer relations, a more personal connection, between herself and Clarke. Perhaps in losing someone she’d thought of as a close ally, she was now trying to get Clarke to replace him rather than looking for someone new at this advanced stage in her plans. And Nia had also proven herself to be somewhat obsessed with Clarke, so this seemed to have put blinders on the older woman’s vision, with Ontari and Echo, the only ones observant enough to detect incongruities in the younger blonde’s behavior, placated enough to believe that she really was on their side. So all in all, the Russian element of Operation Snake in the Grass was now complete.

Where Roan was level-headed (though arrogant), Ontari was a full-blown psychotic. Clarke was slightly psychopathic, not in terms of having a mental disorder but in personality, which were distinctly different things with an unfortunate shared name. Partly it was a genetic predisposition stemming from left-handedness that resulted in a more adversarial than cooperative nature, partly it was inherited from her mother (you couldn't last long as a trauma surgeon at a military hospital if you weren't able to detach your mind from your feelings!), and part of it came from the PTSD she'd contracted in Karachi that she'd self-treated for fear of an official diagnosis getting her kicked out of the Company. So Clarke could be cold, detached, aloof, and brutal, but only if she chose to be – only if she allowed it to happen. Ontari was not cold and brutal – she was hot-blooded and brutal, reveling in causing mayhem and destruction, gleefully enjoying inflicting pain and torturing people to death because pushing down on others made her feel better about herself.

Echo Teles was more like her. Cunning, calculating, perceptive. Unfortunately, she was also fanatically devoted to Nia. Echo didn't really care for the older woman's political machinations, she wasn't an ideologue, but her loyalty to Nia personally was absolute.

Speaking of the operation: that meant getting back to the USA, in a manner that she’d be able to hand off the microfilm to someone she trusted to handle. Which meant not being grabbed by someone that would simply throw her straight into an isolation cell without even allowing her to speak, like Indra Porter. So who could she trust? Lexa had told her at Costia’s funeral to stop blaming herself and that she knew Nia was culpable, but also ripped her character to pieces at the Supreme Court. Raven? The woman had a keen eye for detail and had known Clarke for decades, but could also be a little self-righteous and shortsighted, so might not even understand what she was looking at. Luna? Clarke was pretty sure the Mediterranean redhead was looking out for her in a sense, but Luna wasn’t the type to keep things contained – she’d want to bring John Murphy into the loop if nothing else, which risked blowing the whole thing apart. Octavia would always take her side, but Lieutenant Blake just wasn’t high enough up the chain of command to make a meaningful difference. She’d have to give it up to Lexa, who may or may not give it up to General Porter – but if the evidence came from Lexa rather than from Clarke directly… The dark-skinned lady might take it much more seriously. Of course, that was contingent on getting Lexa to look past her personal judgment and treat the evidence objectively.

That, and she didn’t even know how she’d go back to the States in the first place.

Once the annoying search was done and she and Roan rejoined the others, Nia wasted no time in talking about what she wanted to see happening next.

"I need you back in America because you did too good a job at cleansing the CIA of anybody I could have used to get an inside perspective. The DIA, NSA, FBI, they were not so lucky; but your agency, you ran too tightly for me to get my little toe in the door. So you must be the mind that lets me look into the workings of Langley."

“Look, I don’t have a clue how I’d even get access to their systems. It’s not like they’ll say ‘welcome home’ and reinstate me.” Clarke pointed out, surprised that Nia was acting so blasé about such a major contingent factor.

“I’m sure you’ll find a way to win back their trust and sneak your way into accessing the CIA mainframe.” Nia waved it off. "Echo will find a way to receive your messages. She will come to you under the name 'Natalie Ash', who some of my US assets believe works for the CIA."

“I’ll do the best I can, but no promises.” Clarke replied, feeling less sure about her odds of success than Nia apparently did. “Remind me again why the Russo-American alliance as it is is such a bad thing?”

"The more the Kremlin gives in to Western demands, the weaker we will become." Nia argued. "We all know how the fool Neville Chamberlain appeased Hitler, time and again, saying that England was not ready for war and that giving the Germans what they wanted would make it stop. As we know, all it did was embolden them instead." She drew a parallel to history, with the USA bizarrely taking the place of Nazi Germany in this context. "The French struck into the Rhineland, with success, and then left again. That, too, was weakness. They showed the Germans could not even protect their own country, but by falling back, they gave Berlin a reason to take revenge and the evidence that made them see they could." Nia continued, and this did make sense: failure to retaliate again a weaker enemy would only make them think they’d get away with it if only they didn’t act quite as weakly as before. The French effort had backfired spectacularly.

"So when Operation Barbarossa commenced, when the Great Patriotic War that nearly destroyed the Motherland began, every Russian death was the responsibility of Western cowards in London and Paris." Nia claimed. "What I mean to illustrate is that if you give in to a bully, they will never stop, only continue to demand more and more, until you are too weak to stand up to him when he comes to take your life as well."

"Volkov is the appeaser. He is the one that is responsible for making Russians play second fiddle inside Russia, beholden to corporate interests on Wall Street. But if he will not speak the language that colonizers understand, then the FSB will. Volkov will not take back Poland and Romania, because you Americans are there. But if we will not contest occupiers in our own Soviet backyard, who can ever rely on Russia to protect them from United States predations when they come knocking farther abroad? How long will it take for Russia to be so isolated, so weakened, that American appetites will salivate over the thought of placing a Langley insider inside the Kremlin?" Koroleva laid out her deepest concerns; hypocritical ones, as Russia was a far more explicitly expansionist power, which sought to annex and assimilate its occupied territories whereas the US merely desired to turn theirs into ‘little brothers’ of itself.

"Then how do you figure it making sense to put a Lubyanka insider in the White House?" Clarke wanted to know.

"Because you and I understand what those arrogant fools Andrei and Augustus refuse to see, or choose to ignore. Because we understand that if the USA and Russia can cement our place in the world together, on the same page, we will be in a place where the good we will do through dividing the rest between us will be far greater than the harm the necessary conflicts will initially cause. The logic of grand strategy: pay a big price immediately, so all the little prices in the long term will no longer stack up to outweigh what was saved by inaction." Nia spoke, making way too much sense for comfort. If Clarke didn’t already know how insane the woman really was, she’d consider defecting for real. "Once the final pieces are moved into place, the old order will fall, and a new world shall rise from the ashes to take its place. This will be our world, my young friend. Our world."

"You don't know the half of how right you are, Nia." Clarke answered, her words again laced with a double meaning. "By the time I'm through with this fight, humanity won't be able to look back at its past self without lamenting how it had let things get so far that the only way to restore health to the body was by cutting off a gangrenous limb." She put it somewhat graphically, not voicing that the proverbial gangrene was Nia Koroleva.

"The first chapter of the history of the new world will be written in fire." Said woman spoke ominously. "Moscow will be surprised, but we will use that moment of indecision to press our advantage and take over everything. For the sake of all mankind, we must either force their eyes open, or close them forever. And those that cannot see the value of the opportunity we will present them with to change the Course of history will become part of it instead. We are now only reaching the end of Phase One. There is still much more to be done."

"Don't worry about me. I'll do what's necessary. I can go the distance." Clarke said. Nia appeared appeased, and dismissed her interlocutor to do whatever it was that she did, which in this case was… go home. Or the closest thing to a home as she had here, on the far side of the world: the surprisingly comfortable mansion in the outer part of the capital’s Oblast.

July 19, 2021

Domodedovo International Airport, Moscow

“Gotta call for ya, boss.” Monty, come bearing a heavily encrypted phone, pulled Lexa out from her reverie. Her DCS platoon had met up with the SVR company that would run support for her, and they’d gone over the details of what was going to be an absurdly time-sensitive assault until her ears had virtually bled from all the talking.

Clarkson and his ‘new’ security people had taken to the road towards the embassy, Lexa and her guys having switched places with them, with Old Bill not taking notice of it just like Major Park had said he wouldn’t. So for now, she was trying to catch forty winks to keep her energy up, until Monty had interrupted her beauty sleep.

Groggily rubbing the tiredness out of her eyes, she accepted the proffered device. “Yeah, Woods here.”

"There's been a change of plan." Raven’s voice came over the line.

"Fuck my life." Lexa groaned: Spirit, was it too much for one mission to just go right without last-minute alterations?

"No, I think this one's good." Rae replied, trying to placate the agitated brunette.

"We're not hitting Lubyanka directly after all.” The DNI explained. “We've just received word on where they're keeping Griffin stashed when she isn't at HQ. It's a manor house on the outskirts of Moscow: lots of open space, lots of attached ground. Close to the city, but nice and secluded, private, safe. Let's show them that the latter one's just an illusion."

"Oh, but that's just great!" Lexa groused. "Don't they know that these ops take weeks of planning if not months, and now they want me to put together an attack in a few hours, when we’ve barely gotten off the plane to Moscow?"

“We’ll put you guys up at a pretty great hotel for a little bit.” Raven said, sounding something that vaguely resembled contrite, an emotion the exuberant Latina was incapable of experiencing in full. “I’m sorry to spring this on you past the last minute, but it’s a lot less risky to attack an isolated country dacha than assault Lubyanka, wouldn’t you say?”

“Normally I’d agree, but unless you can give me another two weeks to come up with a new battle plan…”

“No. It has to be within 24 hours.” The ravenette snuffed out Lexa’s last flicker of hope. “The FSB will soon catch onto our little deceptive entry into their country and be all over us. Volkov can protect us from diplomatic fallout, but not from Koroleva’s kill teams.”

“Well, that’s just great…” She groused, channeling the spirit of Anya. “Fucking hell, Rae, if I didn’t know any better, I’d almost say you want me to get myself killed.”

“Don’t be absurd, Lex. Nobody’s gonna go to this much effort when a drive-by does the same for less.” Raven replied, in a way that didn’t sound like she was joking.

“Thanks for letting me know your crisis plan for getting rid of me.” Lexa drawled sarcastically, wondering which of her friends didn’t have a plan on how to assassinate all of their other friends. In her world, the answer was most likely ‘none’, and that was a fact she knew she couldn’t change, so just have to live with.

Upon finishing the call, she and her people walked to what was indeed a pretty great hotel, right on the edge of the airport. They couldn’t afford to settle in, though: time was ‘a ticking, and now they needed to really put their heads together to come up with a new plan of attack with just no time at all.

Thinking back to their memory exercise on the plane, the bungled op in Makhachkala had revealed one incontrovertible fact: the snipers had saved their bacon. A similar approach could work, although assaulting the compound from multiple angles wasn’t workable owing to it being wedged between a lake and the river that fed it.

"Okay, I just received the design schematics. There's no guarantee the place won't have been extensively rebuilt since then, so we can use this as a guideline, but cannot count on them being accurate." Monty reported. "Looks like the place is disconnected from the power grid, using its own PV arrays and emergency generators in case solar can't cut it."

"PV? Not MF?" Lincoln asked: this could make things a little trickier to get under control.

"Nah, man.” Monty replied. “The Russkies always figured they weren't gonna bother with hydrogen and helium fusion on Earth when they could just catch the release off the massive sustained nuclear explosion beaming more harnessable energy than we'll ever need at us from space."

“Sounds a little weird to me.” Tris, the youngest of the senior officers, opined. “Why wouldn’t oligarchs go for infinite power over relying on the sun and a bunch of vulnerable capacitors?”

"Hell, man, I say they just hate us cause they ain't us." Ryder, usually the quiet type, surprised everyone by making his rumbling voice known. "Russkies resent being late to the party, don't wanna become dependent on America's Infinity Corporation, so they detached themselves from the rest of the modern world cause Ivan be jealous."

"It's 300 meters from the fence gate to the front door." Monty began to explain, cutting the developing shit-talking conversation short to bring things back on track, describing the place’s layout with the aid of an enhanced holoprojection of what was known of the blueprints.

"Now for the bad news." Mr. Green stated, switching the display hovering in the air to that of an ISR feed from a few hours ago: "There's one-hundred-plus FSB Spetsnaz assholes protecting the place, and a QRF element from their GRU counterparts the same size sitting just five minutes out by road. Accounting for the time to respond to an alert and mount up, we'll have twenty-five minutes before they get there, maybe thirty." He said, stressing just how fast everyone had to move after kickoff. "Oh yes, and putting the icing on the cake: we're pretty sure that our recon bird marked down a couple of mortar batteries in the area."

“Sure, no biggie at all…” Anya said, oozing sarcasm as she added “Why does it always have to be mortars?” under her breath. US forces used the squad machine gun as their primary support weapon: for the Russkies, it was the man-portable 40mm mortar tube, and that could prove to pose a significantly larger problem.

“This will be a precision assault.” Lexa stated as the briefing came to an end. She’d gone over the quick-and-dirty plan of attack, including the recurring elements of dismounting a distance away to sneak up on foot under the cover of darkness, and waiting until just after the changing of the guard before making their move right before sunup, at a time when the enemy would be at their most relaxed and least prepared. Artemida Vlasova was not gonna be clocking in at Lubyanka come tomorrow morning: Clarke Griffin would be the one answering questions for once, instead.

“Keep it tight, people. Outer snipers will cut off all avenues of escape and interdict ingress by any QRF elements. Inner snipers will provide overwatch and neutralize any and all targets of opportunity that you can PID as anyone other than Clarke Griffin.” Commander Woods determined. “Don’t stray outside the AO, check your targets with care, and for the love of God: don’t get in each other’s way. Last thing we need is for SVR and DCS operators gunning each other down because our assault squads couldn’t coordinate their movements.”

“One last thing.” Lexa looked each of her field commanders in the eye. She hated killing when she didn’t need to, but understood that sometimes, sparing lives would only come back to haunt them later. “No loose ends. We take Griffin alive. Everybody else gets shit-canned. Hooah?”

"A pre-dawn raid, then?" Lincoln asked to a curt nod. "Sure. Why the hell not."

“This time, we are bringing a Havoc.” Lexa finished, deciding to use Griffin’s logic against her to call on the support of an attack helicopter that could have saved a lot of lives during the Makhachkala mess. Octavia’s eyes lit up in giddiness at the thought of getting to see an Mi-28 in action shooting away from them for once.

Only the command team here knew that they were after Clarke: everyone else – the DCS grunts and entire SVR unit – was under the impression that they were grabbing Vlasova for the Americans. With any luck, her dad had told her, this operation would form the basis for deeper cooperation between the White House and the Kremlin against nefarious internal enemies, such as the Mountain Men that Lexa’d been tasked by General Porter with destroying. She hoped that these Russians turned out to be reliable: she could use some new friends hunting down the elusive Cage Wallace.

But first, they had to get their hands on Griffin and leave this place alive.

Post-Bojinka, all civilian airliners came equipped with infrared sensors that would tell the pilots if someone had just tried to lase them with a homing missile, came equipped with chaff and flare canisters, and now carried enough parachutes and oxygen tanks for everybody on board to bail out even at high altitude if required.

Government aircraft that weren't military but still fled at the Federal level were beefed up even more thoroughly, coming equipped with an advanced AEW suite and active optical- and laser guidance scrambling systems. Though they still didn't carry stuff like missile interceptors of their own, because only military aircraft were permitted to carry more than small arms, but planes like this did boast several point defense lasers, so even if the FSB was insane enough to try to down a Russian government airliner over the skies of the very capital, their odds of doing so unless they straight-up used a full-size S-400 SAM battery (roughly equivalent to the American MIM-104 PAC-6 Improved Patriot), their odds of success were rather low… But getting that plane in the air with everyone aboard was gonna be a little trickier. Still, the odds had never stopped Lexa before.

July 20, 2021

Vlasova’s Safehouse, Klyazma, Moscow Oblast

The approach to the compound had been slow, but steady. Everything had gone well, and a few outer foot patrols had been silently killed without further incident as the snipers took up their overwatch positions.

This place really was quite beautiful, Lexa had to admit. It was tranquil, almost peaceful but for the gun battle that was soon to commence in earnest; and if this hadn’t been Russia, she might have even looked into the possibility of acquiring this plot of land for herself. The land sloped upwards, with the estate’s lower portion being densely wooded, the middle area opening up into grasslands with some trees, boulders, and outbuildings sitting there being overlooked by the house on top of the tallest hill, behind which the area sharply descended to roll into the river. A pre-prepared defense here would have been able to resist for quite a while, so Lexa thanked her lucky stars that they’d managed to get inside the wire, as it were, undetected, as a stolen enemy radio had revealed no chatter out of the ordinary-

A landmine abruptly popped out from the ground and went off maybe fifteen meters in front of Lexa, blowing old man Vinson in half at the waist. Several other ‘bouncing betties’ jumped up right after that, but this time, they were all ready for it and hit the dirt, the projection of the ball bearings sailing overhead harmlessly. But their momentum had been abruptly taken away along with Vinson’s life, and there was no way to sneak in any closer without the guards noticing now. They were gonna have to go loud.

"Bouncing Betties! Bouncing Betties! Watch the fucking ground for disturbances!" Ryder, as explosives specialist, warned the team to mind where they set their feet down with exceeding care from now on.

"They know we're here now! Batten down the hatches, people: this is gonna be rough!" Lexa called out over her radio. "There's no time to do this methodically! Push to target, push to target!"

Spetsnaz guys were now literally crawling out of the woodworks, appearing in front of them in a semicircle, bearing an assortment of weapons ranging from 5.54 and 7.62 assault rifles and battle rifles to machine guns and rocket launchers. These guys weren’t just guards: they had come prepared for war. And they were dressed in ghillie suits that came lined with some kind of material that made them not appear on thermal imagers, explaining why they’d been able to get the drop on the JTF. ‘Shit, she knew we were coming!’ Lexa cursed herself for not anticipating this ambush: if she’d been able to use Makhachkala as a playbook, then Clarke certainly would have done the same.

The JTF snipers providing overwatch from the ridge to the southeast reacted quickly, firing into the enemy’s heavy weapons men just as the opposition was setting up to fight, buying Lexa’s people just enough time to raise their own rifles, take aim, and disperse to find whatever cover was available while suppressing the sudden influx of targets.

“We have greenlight on hot extraction. Weapons free.” She called out, and after that, pandemonium broke loose.

An enemy RPG gunner twisted his torso out from behind a tree, taking aim at the largest concentration of scattering operators. The HE-Frag RPG he launched landed right behind the rock where Lexa and some others had slid into cover around, the highly resistant stone directing the blast force into a shearing cone sideways that cut through the squad. Assault specialist Amanda Byrne's right arm was blown off at the shoulder, the woman losing consciousness immediately to the hydrostatic shock and bleeding out in seconds, while grenadier Terry Shumway was slammed full force into a tree, his chest caving in even as his back was lacerated by razor-sharp shrapnel. He too died virtually instantly.

Lexa winced as her face was covered in a splattering of Shumway’s blood, painting her visage red: at least the blood wasn’t her own, she supposed, palpating herself to make sure that she was still alright.

“Same shit, different day, eh boss?” Tris called out with a nervous giggle as she laid down covering fire to allow Lexa and the others to move up to the next decent covered position, with not all of them making it as the sharp cracking of an unsuppressed sniper rifle, distinct from all the Kalashnikovs and Heckler & Kochs, made its deadly contribution from inside the manor house.

DeGroot and Baines were cut down by the enemy sniper, Rankin and Dexter trying to source the fire to a specific room and window while the others went to ground and laid down a base of fire for the marksmen to begin picking off enemies under support from. A couple of RPG rounds fell just short of the team’s leading elements, throwing up columns of smoke and dirt that wrecked visibility and allowed some enemy MG gunners to creep a little closer, locking down the entryway towards the mansion with their long ammo belts until they were silenced by the overwatch snipers – snipers that quickly began having mortar shells rained down on them, forcing them to break form their positions and circle around to somewhere else, leaving the guys and gals in the thick of it exposed until the snipers could find safer ground.

More enemy RPG gunners began shooting rockets at the attackers, explosions on or near tree trunks turning chunks of bark into shrapnel. Lexa cursed herself for not having thought to equip her people with face plates, but then again, her way of thinking was too conventional to figure out what a combat team led by a spook would devise.

Bounding over to the next piece of cover, Lexa was surprised by a bad Russian who’d had the exact same spot in mind.

The guy was right in her face and swung her HK out of the way – no problem, Lexa thought, as she made use of the Russian's preoccupation with trying to bash her skull in to sink her knife into his neck with a brutally swift and powerful movement, pushing it down inside of his clavicle, and followed it up with a point-blank shot to the face from her USP .45 that practically blew his head in half. She quickly wiped her blade on his ghillie suit, then moved on once again.

On the third floor of the mansion (which Clarke had to continually remind herself never to refer to as the third, but call it the ‘second floor’ like Ivan did), inside the front room with huge windows overlooking the grounds, Clarke had been going over some blueprints when the perimeter mines began detonating.

"SVR Spetsnaz are here. The traitors are attacking!" Captain Vladislav Sverdlov, commander of Artemida's personal security force, announced needlessly after squeezing off two shots and signaling two kills.

"Finally. I was wondering when they’d come to claim their revenge for Petrenko." Clarke, not having any idea that this was the rendition mission she’d been anticipating but some sort of nonexistent termination op, decided to take things deadly seriously. "Deploy everything we have but two squads to the inner treeline. The rest of you, stack up around me. Let's get ready to head below. But first, hand me that Dragunov." She told Sverdlov.

"Do you really think they can stop these guys, Vlasova?" Her Captain asked, looking skeptical even of his own men. The fact that the enemy had penetrated so deeply before even being noticed meant they weren’t your average hit squad, and there were a whole lot more of them than was warranted for a quick snatch-and-grab.

"Heh. Not a damn chance." Clarke admitted as she took Vlad’s SVD into her own arms. "But they can tarpit them, maybe slow them down long enough for something a little heavier to come in." She explained, referring both to the GRU QRF that had by now been alerted – as the enemy had been unable to jam their radio comms – and FSB reinforcements that would be dispatched with heavier weapons and armored cars instead of just infantry and light trucks.

She took careful aim with the Russian sniper rifle and pulled the trigger. Once, twice, six times she killed those Ivans that had come to kill her, and then, she began taking counterfire and it was time to seek shelter. She had all of these men here for a reason: to buy her enough time for a relief force to arrive, which would be in vain if she insisted on sticking it out on the zero line and getting herself killed before reinforcements could bail her out.

Back on the other side, Lexa ducked behind a new rock as Jenson and Rabe got holes drilled in their heads from out of nowhere within a quarter second of each other, quickly followed by another four Russkie SVR guys that had popped out of cover for a split second to return fire, apparently to no effect but to get themselves killed. The enemy had one hell of a sharpshooter on their side, and Lexa wasn't about to become his seventh victim.

“Lay down a smokescreen and counterattack! We gotta push through to those mortars!” She screamed over the radio, yelling to be heard over the din of extremely heavy exchanges of gunfire and the booming of exploding ordnance.

What followed was a confused, close-range scrum within the smoke, among the trees, with people rounding the trunks needing some time to identify friend from foe, the FSB and SVR Russians that looked virtually identical but for the latter’s blue ribbons sometimes getting so close to each other in the confusion that they ended up in melee, fighting with their stocks, bayonets, daggers, and bare hands, wrestling each other to the ground in one-on-one fights for survival even as gunfire kept popping off all around them.

At least the mortars had ceased fire for the time being, their crews unwilling to risk shooting blindly and having explosives fall among their own comrades.

With her command squad taking point, Lexa dipped around a rock to see two hostiles covering behind it, shooting the first in the flank and then ducking low as the second raised his rifle, allowing Tris to blow his face in half. To the left, a machine gunner opened fire and walked a line that intersected with the bodies of two SVR men, ending their lives and giving away his position, Charmaine Diyoza sourcing the fire and silencing the man in return.

Lexa took her squad left and into a gully, using its upslope as cover and risking getting grenaded to lead a deep strike into the enemy rear, seeking to outflank their firing line and wheel in to hit them in the rear from higher ground. With fresh smokes and plenty of trees providing cover, her team made good headway, encountering a few Spetsnaz in twos and threes and making quick work of the surprised men.

Up in the center, the SVR men were trying to clear a path down the paved road leading to the front door of the mansion, machine gunners covering as assault infantry dashed up, managing to keep the FSB men pinned in cover behind the trees, only for a pair of rockets to streak out of the now broken third floor overlook. Unlike earlier, these projectiles didn’t fall short, and caught with no cover, the SVR operators took the full brunt of the blasts, killing eight of them instantly. The enemy made use of the opening by moving out of the trees to the side and into cover in front of the mansion, locking down the road again, but by now, the overwatch teams had assumed a new position and resumed firing, making short work of these defenders in conjunction with the assault troops.

“Okay, I want two lines! All odd teams, surround the mansion and ensure nothing gets out. All even teams, establish security and make sure nothing tries to come in.” Lexa gave her orders, knowing that time was already running low and the more casualties she took, the less likely that they’d be able to fight their way through an enemy relief attempt if they took too long to secure their HVI.

Lexa and her squad stacked up at the front door, with others taking positions to breach the kitchen door to the side and the garage door out back. The teams placed their charges and blew their way into the interior, just as the enemy’s mortarmen, pushed up against the riverbank, resumed lobbing shells at the outer perimeter.

Over her earpiece, she could hear the SVR commander telling half his men to sweep the area and clean up the mortar crews and for the rest to find the best available cover. With this in mind, and quickly making sure the other entry teams did the same, she had her people throw frags through the door, six in total: down the middle, to the left, and tow the right, one short and one long in every direction. She had to take a gamble that Clarke would be in a saferoom somewhere or at least not on the first floor and bet she hadn’t just peppered her with shrapnel.

Upon the last of the explosives going off, the team stepped inside and quickly fanned out, each man or woman covering their own sector in pairs, the one in front crouching low and the one behind standing up for optimal firepower.

Many of the enemy on the first floor were dead or incapacitated, but there was a mezzanine overlooking the entryway stacked with unharmed hostiles that didn’t need long to recover from the surprise and start working their triggers. Bullets ripped through several American and SVR operators before a round of rifle grenades put a cold stop to the problem, the mezzanine’s front being just a simple wooden railing rather than solid cover. This time, it was the bad Russians eating facefuls of wood splinter shrapnel: payback was a bitch.

With the main entryway and open-plan sections of the first floor now clear of enemies, it was time to fan out and clear the side rooms. If you entered a room without checking your near corners first, you could end up getting shot in the back. As other fireteams went to secure the first floor, Lexa’s squad went up the stairs to the second floor beside the mezzanine. An enemy ran through a blind door, and shot her point man square in the forehead, his buddy appearing a split second later to do the same to another SVR guy before a rifle grenade from Anya took them both out of the picture.

On the radio, which the enemy had failed to jam despite their best efforts, the team sweeping the basement reported the level had been cleared at the cost of one friendly – and reported a veritable armory down there, with rifles, MGs, RPGs, and a bunch of mines being secured. Back on the first floor, the kitchen, pantry, and dining room were also reported cleared, meaning that some fireteams would now detach to hold the entryways to prevent any leakers from escaping while the rest of the entry teams continued to clear the building room by room.

After sweeping through the master bedroom and library to find them empty, Lexa proceeded on to the top floor. A frag came rolling down those stairs, and an SVR man, thinking quickly, ripped off his helmet, threw it over the grenade, himself over his helmet, and was grievously wounded, but in doing so saved the lives of Lexa, Anya, and Tris. A pair of medics quickly appeared to carry the man into the nearest room where bullets weren’t penetrating through the wooden walls to stabilize him as the assaulters continued to push through the remaining hostiles.

There on the third floor, in the damaged front room full of scattered blueprints and torn-up expensive furniture, they found an officer with an SVD in hand and an RPG slung across his back – looks like they’d found their sniper, and this guy appeared to be somebody in charge.

“Tase, tase, I want him alive!” Lexa said as the man turned to level his rifle at them, Tris reacting quickly, dropping her rifle – which was arrested by its sling meaning it never hit the ground – and drawing her taser instead, pulling the trigger before the Russian could do so. Thornton was damn quick, that was for sure.

The electrodes connected with the officer’s unarmored spot parts, one attaching itself to a cheek and the other to his throat. At 25,000 volts slammed into his nervous system, the guy fell to the ground almost immediately, Lincoln moving forward to kick his weapons out of reach.

As the building was declared clear, though not secure, as the SVR men outside were still fighting with the FSB men guarding the mortar teams, Anya ziptied the captured officer’s hands and ankles and asked him where Griffin was, then where Vlasova was, to be met with stoic silence both times. Understanding that being nice was gonna get them nowhere, she next drew her knife and sat on the guy’s back, pushing him into the floor while her other hand pried his pinky finger away from his clenched fist – and sawed it off in a motion born of practiced quickness.

"You cannot do this to me! You Americans have rules!" The Russian yelled through screaming of surprised pain.

"Yeah, the overt service has rules. We don't, because guess what, buddy: we don't exist." Anya said casually. "Now start talking. You have nine chances left to tell me where she is."

"I strongly suggest you answer. My sister will not run out of anger before you run out of fingers." Lexa, not agreeing with this sheer level of brutality but understanding that time was of the essence, played into the visceral terror that most humans experienced when threatened with the loss of limb over life. Dying was one thing, but having bits chopped off was much harder to bear, even though prosthetics technology in the advanced countries of the world was by now advanced enough that an artificial finger would feel like the real thing. That sort of tech certainly didn’t help the pain of the experience of being carved up like a Thanksgiving turkey, though!

Coming over the radio, the SVR commander reported that about ten of his guys were dead, but they’d captured the mortars and were now preparing to destroy them by way of thermite charges.

“There is a sub-basement! A panic room!” The FSB man shouted a few minutes later, three fingers, four teeth, and one eyeball short.

“How do we get in there?” Anya demanded, then, when the guy didn’t speak, jabbed the tip of her knife into his thigh, threatening to cut off something less easily replaced by even modern technology. “How?!”

“You can’t!” He said, cussing up a storm in Russian.

“Anya?” Lexa said, willing to do whatever it took to extract the answer they needed.

“No, you can’t, even I can’t!” The Russian pleaded. “There is… biometric security… A titanium door… Only the Chief can go in there.” He explained. The most terrifying green eyes he’d ever seen bored into his own as the enemy commander turned him over, two American men hoisting him to his feet.

“Where’s the entrance?”

“I don’t know!’

“Lincoln, Ryder, balcony.” Lexa ordered, her two officers carrying the FSB man onto the overhand and pitched him over, grabbing a hold of his ankles to keep him from falling to break his neck on the ground.

“Chert voz'mi! Vy, lyudi, chertovski sumasshedshiye!” (Holy shit! You people are fucking insane!) The man screamed, then in English, “The pantry! Behind the meat locker! It has… hinge!” Sverdlov revealed, hating himself for being so weak and betraying his employer and friend, but too overcome with terror not to comply.

“Good. Pull him back up.” She told her men, who complied with some surprise: Lexa had ordered that they’d put everyone else but Clarke in the ground, hadn’t she?

“Thank you for your candor.” Lexa spoke as her examination of Captain Sverdlov’s expression showed no lie, then kicked the man square in the chest, sending him sailing out through the broken window and plummeting five meters to land on the concrete pavement below.

Dashing through the building, wasting no time trying to save their breath as every second counted – for all they knew, the saferoom had a secret escape tunnel attached to it that might end up outside the overwatch perimeter – Lexa and her command team managed to get the meat locker to move, revealing a hatch in the ground that gave access to a short, steep staircase that terminated in a sheer wall taken up almost entirely by a door that looked like it’d been designed to withstand direct artillery shelling. Monty might be able to crack its security, but the man was not a combat operator so had already traveled to Sheremetyevo ahead of time to rendezvous with their escape pilot Miles Shaw, and there was no time to set up a remote access point for him here.

“There’s that armory down below, right?” Lexa thought out loud.

“Yeah. Lots of ordnance down there.” Ryder confirmed.

“Maybe we burn through some of their rockets and blast that door off its hinges.” The Commander strategized.

Anya and Ryder, the explosive nuts of the group, giddily moved away to gather the necessary ordnance.

In the end, it took no fewer than six armor-piercing rockets before the experts were satisfied that some normal breaching charges would now suffice to blow the damn door down. As Anya and Ryder set the devices in question, Lexa couldn’t appreciate the irony that once again, there was a closed door between her and Clarke Griffin, just as there had been at Langley, but this time, it had taken a much higher toll to get this far. She would be made to answer for every life lost, Lexa promised herself: Clarke would be sorry that she’d tried to blow her up.

When the security door fell at last, Charmaine took point, entering the room and clearing her angles before moving deeper, Lexa, Anya, Tris, and the others following behind. Nobody seemed to be there, but as always, looks were deceptive: Lexa could feel that they were being watched.

Charmaine went to examine a bank of computers and monitors on the far wall, looking for any hidden hatches, when it happened. Before Diyoza could register what was going on, Griffin had popped up from behind a false wall, gotten a hold of her knife, used it to slash the back of her knee and then cut her throat, retrieved her handgun, and shot four more men dead with pinpoint precision before Anya jumped in and tackled her from behind, clinging to the shorter woman like a koala and forcing her to pitch over forward, the blonde’s forehead painfully connecting with the metal floor and dazing her just long enough for Anya to jerk Clarke onto her knees and try to take her captive.

But no sooner had she taken the girl in a stranglehold than Clarke was trying to gouge Anya's eyes out, the impact and loss of oxygen not enough to break her resistance but making her that much more frantic and determined to hold off these people that she was convinced had come to take her life.

"Tase her, tase her, come on!" Lexa shouted, in fear for her sister’s life.

"I got it! Hold her steady!" Tris called to her mentor, which was easier said than done. The blonde was trashing about like an angry crocodile, and if Anya was making the slightest bit of skin-on-skin contact, she too would be electrocuted. Anya, sensing what her protégé needed, let go for a split second, Clarke taking the chance to try to dart forward out of her grip, only for Anya to extend her arms again and grab the girl around the waist, pinning her arms to her side.

This was the opening Tris needed: Clarke was wearing a ballistic vest, but not full-body armor. So Thornton took aim at the girl’s uncovered shoulder, sent up a quick prayer for her eyes to be true, and pulled the trigger.

Both electrodes found their mark. They hit Clarke, not Anya, and the circuit went only through the younger blonde.

And did absolutely nothing. Trist was certain that the voltage had been discharged, but the blonde’s struggles hadn’t abated – if anything, they’d only intensified – and the adrenaline coursing through her system combined with her torture resistance training to drive her madly into a single-minded determination to get away.

Thinking back on it later, neither Lexa, nor Anya, nor Clarke herself could recall how exactly the latter had done it, but somehow, Clarke managed to twist in such a way that her mouth lined up perfectly with the back on Anya’s right hand. And just like a crocodile, she bit down with the force of muscles unlocked to their full potential in a life-or-death situation, her teeth sinking deep into Anya’s hand. Lieutenant Woods let go of Clarke, trying to wrench her hand free of the chomping mouth assaulting it, Lexa screaming her sister’s name in fear and fury as she drew her own taser. As soon as Anya’d pried Clarke off her, Lexa took her shot, the electrodes biting into Clarke’s thigh. But again, she didn’t go down, only being paralyzed for a second. It was long enough for Anya to grab a hold of their HVI again, and now, reinforcements were rushing in to help her wrangle this absurdly tough cookie.

Clarke was screaming incomprehensible Russian now, apparently not realizing that her captors were Americans. Lexa could make out a few swears and curses, but everything else was locked away behind the veil of incompatible linguistics. The blonde still wasn’t giving up, though, and at this rate, she was liable to start snapping her own bones. That was unacceptable – they wouldn’t be able to safely extract her if she was so injured. (And Lexa didn’t want to be responsible for inflicting that much pain on her friend, though she refused to allow that thought to fully form.)

Anya still had Clarke in a bear hug from behind with one arm around her waist pinning the blonde’s arms to her side and the other snaked across her throat, Ryder was gripping her ankles as tightly as he could, a heavy-set SVR man was literally sitting across her to keep her midsection pinned to the floor, and still, even after being tased five times, the blonde was squirming so furiously that it was clear she wouldn’t be passing out any time soon and might actually succeed in blinding Anya before that. Her big sister’s arms and face were painted red in bloody scratches where the blonde’s deceptively sharp fingernails had gouged out whole divots into her flesh, Anya certainly going to need a full course of antibiotics and a lot of stitches to recover from this, and Lexa decided to take more drastic measures.

The Commander came in with a sedative autoinjector, Clarke’s eyes, wild with terror, tracking the thing as Lexa tried to drive it home, jerking her head left to right to deny her a clean target.

“Sorry about this…” Lexa muttered, moving around to plunge the needle into the nape of Clarke’s neck instead. This was a riskier place to put it, but it was the only one where she could do so without risking the needle breaking off.

The anesthetic began taking effect quickly as it spread through its victim’s overactive cardiovascular system, Clarke’s eyes glazing over as the stuff jumped the blood-brain barrier to force her down into the waiting abyss.

They ziptied the now unconscious woman’s hands and feet, lacking the means to do anything more thorough at the moment. Lexa knew that if she woke up, Clarke would happily tear her own thumbs off to get out of the ties, but that wasn’t gonna happen any time soon, so this was more about turning her into a worm so her limbs wouldn’t go flopping about everywhere to make her easier to carry.

“Flame, this is Okhotnik. We are about to have unwanted visitors. Enemy QRF is inbound. We will need to fight our way out of this.” The SVR commander that had been seconded to her reported over the radio.

“We have a couple of minutes before they get here, and we’re sitting atop a small arsenal. Let’s take some of these mines and use them against their manufacturers, shall we?” Lexa addressed her officers. “And anyone who knows how to use them, grab those RPGs as well!”

“Where do we put this one, sis?” Anya asked, pointing at Clarke’s vulnerable body.

“Let’s stash her behind that panel for now.” Lexa answered, pointing to the false wall Clarke had been hiding behind. “We’ll regroup, defend this house, and pray we can keep them away from the meat locker.”

The battle to get here had been difficult enough, resulting in numerous, heavier than expected casualties. And now, there was going to be an even more difficult battle ahead to get back out. They’d taken too long. The QRF was inbound, and JTF stood a better chance at fighting it out from this place than engaging the enemy on the road.

Lincoln and Ryder picked up their quarry, the former and Octavia detaching to guard the panic room with three SVR men for backup, as Lexa and Anya began making their way to the captured armory, ready to take stock of what tools they had at their disposal. Alexandria Woods knew just one thing: she was not going to be thrown into some unmarked grave in fucking Russia. At least their own support – the Mi-28 Havoc – would soon be on station to rain hell on the enemy.

Chapter Text

Chapter 15: Exit Wounds

Klyazma, Moscow Oblast

Ten minutes later

“Put those last mines along the side of the driveway facing perpendicular. There’s no time to dig them down, so just put them in a dip and throw some soil on ‘em. I’m not even gonna question where the Russians got Claymores, but they’re gonna regret stockpiling this stuff here.” Commander Woods gave her last-minute instructions to the gaggle of men and women hauling ass to set up machine guns and entrench them with whatever could be built up as makeshift cover, emplace a minefield of their own, and zero in on killzones that others would force the enemy into, setting all of this up in only nine minutes and leaving them with one minute to scramble behind cover and make themselves as unseen as they could, some pilfered ghillie suits going a long way towards making this happen.

Having taken stock of the situation, Lexa decided that it wouldn’t do them any good to lay in a deep defense along the approach towards the manor, but focus on holding the enemy at bay from inside the main building. The JTF didn’t have the numbers to spread out and couldn’t risk any hostiles leaking through to extract Griffin from the panic room, which would result in mission failure even if the rest of the operators could fight their way out. So they would defend the outside of the house for a little while, inflicting as many losses on the enemy as they could, and then fall back into the interior, where they would use the angles to slow the enemy’s movements to a crawl while the snipers from outside decimated the enemy’s rear ranks, putting the pressure on them from two sides.

That didn’t mean she wasn’t going to do her best to cut down the enemy’s overwhelming numbers before they’d get within range to exchange fire with the mansion, though. Lieutenant-Colonel Okhotnik, the commander of her SVR element, had reported that the GRU QRF wasn’t the only unit inbound: there were also VDV helicopter troops coming, and the ground element had been further bolstered by even more FSB Spetsnaz. They’d stirred up one hell of a hornet’s nest: there weren’t just a hundred fresh enemies coming in, but closer to five hundred. No, they’d have to batten down the hatches and hold out until air support would arrive: the Havoc would need to be their salvation.

Lexa and her task force couldn’t afford to get bogged down in a straight-up firefight, attritional warfare certain to not go in their favor even if they exchanged one life for five, because there was still the trip to the airport to consider, and Lexa had a sneaking suspicion that this wasn’t gonna be straightforward either. She might have some additional SVR and FSO support, but Nia’s forces were turning out in vast numbers and would do anything in their power to make sure that there’d be no witnesses to this attempt to abduct their Chief of Internal Security.

The QRF didn’t come in as a convoy: they’d made their approach in a snaking line of vehicles, but about five hundred meters out from the compound entrance, they’d fanned out to form two staggered lines of armored cars and -trucks and floored their gas pedals, ramming through the perimeter fence and opening up a wide-front lightning assault. GAZ, UAZ, and VPK vehicles careened through the forest towards the stronghold, tires screeching as drivers deftly harnessed the shifting mass of their vehicles to slide around trees and rocks while making it difficult for hostiles to hit them directly.

Still, there were a whole bunch of vehicles and Lexa’s people knew what they were doing.

They managed to use their pilfered RPGs to send four Tigr armored cars and their occupants to meet their maker in a timed opening volley before the enemy got wise, parked their vehicles in hull-down places, disembarked their chalks, and proceeded on foot. Lexa was wishing right now that her SVR counterpart had just captured the mortars instead of melting them, while Okhotnik, for his part, lamented not having brought a lot more rocket launchers.

The overwatch teams reported that two Mi-8s full of helicopter troops were putting down boots on the ground near their position and they’d need some time to service this threat before they could provide sniper cover: things were about to get real dicey for the infantry.

The enemy advanced in good order, keeping it tight, with only about ten feet of space between them abreast, moving in a sort of checkerboard formation whose elements fluidly shifted along with the bends and dips in the terrain without letting it pull them apart. They were taking this as a ground assault, not a raid, and they clearly knew what they were doing.

And yet, no amount of skill could save the first line of them when remote detonators clicked and send activation signals to the buried Claymore mines that evaporated dozens of Russians, swiftly followed by the booming and chattering of machine guns of various calibers as the DCS and SVR troops set up behind the windows, at firing positions deeper within the building, and dug down just in front of it opened fire, quickly scything down half the second line before the enemy scattered for cover and began returning fire, the mangled second line laying down a base of fire to cover the advancing third line, who tried to push forward through the hailstorm of counterfire whilst callously ignoring their wounded comrades that carpeted the ground alongside their dead.

"We get to Sheremetyevo, we'll be in the clear. They won't follow us into a packed civilian airport." Lexa told her officers.

"Are you sure about that?" Anya asked her sister.

"Hell, no." The brunette admitted, quickly plugging an enemy RPG gunner that was setting up for a shot.

"FSO and SVR will be out there in force. There's no way Nia can start a firefight with the Presidential Security Service at Moscow's biggest, busiest airport if she wants to keep public opinion on her side. Hundreds of dead civilians doesn't look good, no matter how you cut it." Lexa laid out, trying to keep her comrades’ spirits up.

"Somehow, I don't think Koroleva cares about optics." Tris snapped back, using her own rifle optics to line up a shot against a Pecheneg gunner inside the cupola of a GAZ, the man falling back into the truck, his PKP silenced.

The Russian military fell under the control of GRU, which was in collusion with the FSB. So the Moscow garrison could not be counted on to help: at best, they would be ambivalent and pretend to ignore the developing firefight, while at worst, they'd shoot on sight and shoot to kill. And whereas the guards of this place had been FSB Spetsnaz, the QRF consisted of GRU Spetsnaz: they would be a much tougher nut to crack. FSB Spetsnaz were assassins not meant for open battle, but their GRU counterparts were frontline combat troops, and the VDV that were joining them were the greatest light infantry fielded by the regular Russian Army – men that should have been under Volkov’s command, not Koroleva’s.

As the enemy kept pushing forward, machine guns on their supporting vehicles joining in with the infantry’s squad machine guns and RPGs, the withering storm of hot lead was starting to overwhelm the outer defenses. Woods and Okhotnik could no longer keep their guys outside without seeing them get cut to ribbons, so gave the order for those already inside to shift their fire towards covering the maneuver while the external defenders moved back inside the house, which was gona take a hot minute, and they’d had to dodge their own booby traps in the process.

About thirty of the enemy’s landmines had been placed in a second layer, unfortunately highly visible since there’d been no time to dig them down, so they’d been put inside the mansion, around corners and to the sides of doors and windows so they’d hopefully catch a few Spetsnaz by surprise. And that it did, five or six enemies having their length abruptly halved, but the remainder of them caught on quickly and proceeded with much more caution, yet weren’t deterred from trying to force entry into the mansion. They were coming in through the doors, the windows, some men rushing around the wraparound deck to get as many angles for a crossfire as possible, others climbing up the side walls to swing in onto the second and third floors as a constant rotation of VDV transport helicopters, flying zigzag patterns to throw off any machine gun fire sent their way, kept the pressure on as their chalks of elite Airborne soldiers roped down to hit the deck extremely close to the house, allowing them to get inside almost immediately after detaching their guidelines.

“You still think she’s not really a traitor, sis? Ivan doesn’t go to this much trouble to hold onto a political prisoner!” Anya asked, taking down two VDV troopers that were leaping in through two separate windows.

“They might be here to try and kill her!” Lexa argued back, only halfway believing her own statement.

“Probably not, but they sure as shit are trying to kill us!” Her big sister pointed out, having trouble finding a firing angle as the men and women trying to get deeper inside kept getting in the way of her sight picture on the Russians, who had no qualms about shooting the DCS and SVR operators in the back.

An Mi-8 Hip dipped down from a higher altitude directly above the house, its chalk of VDV troopers fastroping down onto the roof, allowing the bird to bug out within seconds. The SVR men atop the roof managed to dispatch the interlopers, but not before losing almost half their own squad in the process, the slackening of sniper- and MG fire from the rooftop ledge allowing the fourth line of GRU ground troops to bound forward and set up supporting positions closer to the front wall, putting the manor’s occupants under much more intense pressure.

All three levels of the house were now carpeted with the bodies of dead Russians, and still, more of them just kept pouring in. A rocket flew through a windowsill and exploded against the back wall of the room, the blast force causing an overpressure wave that killed the two men on a machine gun crew and sent said weapon tipping over, out of the window and onto the driveway below. An exchange of frags continued as bad Russians flooded into the open area and good Russians and Americans fell back, up to the mezzanine and to the first floor’s side rooms, throwing and shooting blindly around corners, the strike force now cut in half, but due to an enemy that had placed itself in a crossfire in the process; and so, bodies started piling up rapidly on both sides. With DCS, SVR, VDV, and GRU men (and some women) all using the same tactic of ‘lure and skewer’, drawing attention from the front with one pair of shooters for another to take down from the flank, every corner became a death trap and every open space a shooting gallery.

The overwatch snipers, having repositioned again after terminating the VDV helicopter troops that had been pressuring them, went to work at thinning the herd from behind. What had looked like an ocean of GRU men just moments ago had now been reduced to more of a river, and a lot of their vehicles had been damaged by anti-materiel rifles that made them less of a worry. Still, an enemy RPG gunner who hadn’t been freaked out by the sudden onslaught from behind managed to send an accurate rocket straight through the already blasted front door and catch an SVR man right in the chest, the detonation blowing him down to something that wouldn’t look out of place atop a plate of spaghetti.

A pair of flashbangs landed inside the first floor’s main area, one man dazedly stumbling about to be caught in an enemy sniper’s scope and sent packing permanently. An enemy rifleman came up behind a DCS operator and pumped half a dozen 7.62s into his back, killing him on the spot, Lexa retaliating with a fatal burst of her own 5.56.

At least the waiting Tigr armored cars prepared to extract the strike force to the airport had remained undetected so far, so if they broke out of this assault, they still had a chance of succeeding and coming out alive.

Another Mi-8 filled with VDV came swooping in, this one skimming low over the treetops. Its pilot wouldn’t have enough time to regret this decision as two rifle grenades from down below were expertly placed at its tail rotor, leaving the heli pitching out of control – directly towards the top floor. Many JTF people had seen it coming and were able to evacuate to the second floor: some were too late, though, and got crushed by the mangled wreckage of the helicopter as it plowed its way into the building and promptly caught fire, its ruptured fuel tanks sending gouts of burning kerosene washing over the floor and trickling down the stairs to force men on the second floor out of position as well, more than one having their fights ended by hostile machine gun fire cutting through the wooden walls in deadly saturation fire.

The time had come to egress. With most of the GRU men down for the count, there was a window of opportunity to escape before even more reinforcements would arrive, or they’d just call for air support to lob a pair of really big AGMs at the mansion and kill everyone, Clarke or no Clarke. An equivalent or two to the American Hellfire would be enough to bring the those down in its damaged state without collapsing the panic room, so they might just try to do that, mop up survivors, and then dig ‘Vlasova’ back out before she’d run out of air.

Calling Octavia and Lincoln back up with Clarke held between them, Lexa, her command team, and their HVI were kept in the middle of a defensive diamond formation as they exited the slowly collapsing building – the Mi-8’s wreck starting to sag through the second story floor and threatening to slam all the way onto the first – proceeding down the driveway to make the best possible time, flankers sent forward to sweet through the woods and prevent enemy remnants from taking potshots at them from the sides. Lexa had to admit that it was a lot easier fighting downhill, and the remaining enemy appeared to be in retreat. They were retrograding in a disciplined manner, but it was clear that they no longer thought they’d be able to take the field as things stood, not with their vehicle fleet taking murderous AMR fire and the enemy snipers not having been silenced by their VDV compatriots.

The friendly Tigrs, a dozen strong, had been driven up and parked right outside the front gate, only a driver and gunner for each of them so there was maximum space for other occupants. There appeared to be something of a clear lane towards them, the Tigr gunners laying down covering fire towards the side where the enemy was trying to reorganize, so Lexa knew she had to seize the moment and bounded forward, dashing across the unfortunately open ground between the treeline and the extraction vehicles.

A tremendous explosion rocked the land between the strike force and the Tigrs, sending Lexa flying. The wind was knocked out of her as her back slammed into the rough ground and for a moment all she could see was black. Anya quickly helped her sister back to her feet, looking up and whistling in equal parts annoyance and worry as she saw the source of the explosion: an AGM, courtesy of an Mi-24 Hind helicopter gunship.

"Uhh... That's a Hind. They sent a goddamn attack helicopter at us!" Anya called out, misidentifying the role that the Hind fulfilled but getting the message across anyway. She hefted her NLAW and switched to manual targeting, knowing that its guidance computer was designed for anti-tank work and not meant for use against aerial targets. The rocket streaked out towards the Hind, but its pilot, the IR sensor on his airframe having detected being lased, was already dipping the bird to the side while an automated voice was still speaking ‘Ostorozhno: zakhvat rakety.’, and the weapon missed wholesale.

The Mi-24’s gunpod opened fire, high-powered 30mm bullets ripping into the outer treeline with a vengeance, but didn’t stick around for long as half a dozen machine guns began counterfiring against the bird with everything they had. Anya was still reloading and an SVR guy with an RPG likewise found his shot defeated by the gunship pilot, who deployed a second missile against his attackers and then swiveled around to make a pass over them.

A Havoc attack chopper with SVR markings swooped into the area, firing off a missile that skewered the winged beast. The enemy Mi-24 gunship, bulky and sluggish, didn’t stand a chance at outmaneuvering the much nimbler Mi-28 attack helo. Dodging anti-tank rockets from handhelds was one thing; evading an air-to-air missile from a dedicated attack chopper was another. The stricken bird came down like a brick, landing barely a hundred yards away from Lexa and Anya, its rotor blades ripped to shreds as they smashed into the ground and the fuselage being engulfed in a ball of fire as burning jet fuel cooked off its remaining munitions whose heat washed over the Woods sisters with such intensity that it stole the breath from their lungs for a few terrifying seconds. There was no way anyone aboard could’ve survived that.

Their savior’s voice came over the radio: “Sorry it took so long; I ran into some trouble along the way. Good thing I do not mind hunting girl deer: this was the third one today!” The pilot, a young woman sounding far too gleeful, made a stupid ‘hind’ pun in English – easy for her to take it lightly, not being the one with three dozen machine guns tracking her.

“I’m sure glad you missed us, honey.” Lexa drawled back with a pun of her own.

“Somebody ordered a surgeon? Because Hip replacements are underway. Check your fire.” She now called out, indicating that the Mi-8s that were now seen incoming were of the SVR variety.

"Remind me why we aren't just flying to Sheremetyevo, again?" Octavia asked Lexa as Okhotnik and his surviving operators piled into the helicopters, leaving only the Tigr skeleton crews to help the Americans get away.

"Yeah, why do those assholes get to go by helicopter and we're having to use trucks?" Ryder pitched in.

"Because flying directly through the densest SAM network on Earth is such a great idea, nobody else thought of it." Lexa said, her nerves making her irritated. Her ears were still ringing from her impromptu flight. "FSB isn't gonna blatantly shoot down an SVR bird and declare open war on the President, but if they know there's American state actors aboard, the equation changes, and the outcome won't be in our favor."

"Mr. Shaw, get our plane warmed up and ready to take off as soon as we're aboard.” She spoke into her radio, contacting their pilot at Sheremetyevo. Their Ilyushin IL-96-300 was fusion- rather than kerosene-powered, but unlike with ships and submarines, you couldn’t keep a plane’s reactor running all the time without causing serious wear and tear, and cold-starting it might cause it to break instead, hence the need to literally warm it up. “We may get shot at and I don't wanna fly over the capital city of Russia spraying radiation all over the place."

“If we make it back home in one piece, how much trouble do you think we’re in?” Lincoln asked, picturing Indra skinning their hides for boots when Porter found out about this clusterfuck.

“We won’t be in any trouble.” Lexa answered, “I might be, but not the rest of us.” She wasn’t happy about this either: she was gonna have to explain to Indra why she’d come back looking like she’d been in battle, and knew that she couldn’t – leaving her hoping that Raven would shield her from being… demoted, or investigated, or the likes.

"I don't know, it mighta been easier to raid Lubyanka! Now they have their control center still intact!" Octavia piped up next, as she helped her lover place Clarke inside one of the friendly Tigrs.

"I know they say that pressure makes diamonds and all, but I figure most people just come out broken!" Lincoln, happy enough that they didn’t attack FSB HQ and a three times larger garrison, spoke his mind.

"You're right, but we aren't those people!" Lexa replied, sliding into the driver’s seat of this Tigr while Anya took shotgun, the SVR man that had been behind the wheel taking another seat with his rifle at the ready.

The dead weight in the car took up a valuable space that could have been occupied by a shooter. Still, she was valuable in that she was the whole reason they'd come out here in the first place, so Lincoln and Octavia and stuffed her beneath their feet in the well behind the front seats. The Tigr, now holding nine people: six passengers, the driver, gunner, and unconscious HVI, followed its compatriots as they hit the road towards Moscow Proper, Lexa unwilling to take the country road towards the airport which would leave them sitting ducks for enemy long-range weaponry: now was the time to see whether the FSB would damage its own capital in pursuit, and Lexa though back on how she’d told Raven that it would take a lot fewer RPGs to kill a Tigr than the stockpile the enemy would have in its possession.

As the little convoy entered Severnoye Medvedkovo District, it was clear that the American-SVR group was no longer alone. They were being pursued by FSB assets, entirely too many black sedans that looked a little heavy for their size class, most likely due to being armored, heading the same direction as they were, several of them slowly creeping closer to catch them in a net. Still, Lexa told her people to hold their fire: the longer they could hold off on engaging, the more bullets they’d have to use between here and their destination and the shorter a distance to fight their way along.

Lexa wished that the Havoc was still flying top cover, but knew that Volkov would never allow its weapons to be discharged onto the streets of the capital when he could spin the story against the FSB alone.

Upon entering Bibirevo District, the streets were now suspiciously empty, the Russian capital looking like a ghost town were it not for all of the cars full of armed men swarming around them.

Monty came over the radio with a situation update: "This just in: the President and the FSB have both ordered civilians to leave the area or shelter deep inside buildings if they cannot."

"I guess it can be as easy as that. One little phone call from the right guy, and half the city's cleared out for action." Octavia spoke, white-knuckling her HK and wishing this tension would break already.

"We have to get off the highway. We're too easy a target out here." Lexa said, redirecting the convoy into the city streets.

Everyone anticipated the shooting would start, but when it began, it still took them by surprise.

Infantrymen bearing grenade- and rocket launchers were now appearing on street corners, rooftops, and balconies, with snipers firing from windows, risking their lives by sitting in front of the rooms rather than shooting out from the internal walls due to the low angle they had to work with. At the same time, windows were rolled down on the sedans and men popped through roof hatched with weapons in hand, adding their own fire into the mix.

An RPG round slammed into the trailing vehicle, scoring a direct hit on its tail end, the angle of the explosive force making its front pitch up. The Tigr lost speed, slamming back down surrounded by FSB sedans, where machine gunners and rocket gunners swiftly executed its entire crew. Another RPG came in for the front vehicle, trying to trap the rest of the convoy between two hulks, but with it being Lexa at the wheel, she managed to see it coming before it was even fired and jerked the wheel to the side, throwing the FBS man's aim and making the rocket swerve past them, careening into the side of a residential structure where it exploded more or less harmlessly.

The PKP and PKM machine guns the Tigrs came equipped with weren't remotely controlled, so somebody would have to go topside to man them. And violence was now the only option, with the FSB having already opened fire in the very streets of Moscow against what by all appearances was a Russian Army convoy.

"The City of Moscow has just declared a terror attack. Everyone knows we're here now." Monty declared.

"No, this is a cover story for us. We can fire on the buildings now. Weapons free." Lexa commanded.

The convoy vehicles raced through the grid of city streets and roads, turning this way and that to give the enemy less of an idea what to expect. They couldn't have enough people out here in this little time to lock down a quarter of Moscow, so the strike force was determined to punch through by confusing the enemy even if it meant taking that much longer to get to Sheremetyevo. The sedans were more numerous, but the Tigrs were a lot heavier armored, and the FSB men appeared to be somewhat confused, as though they didn’t know exactly what they were doing: this must be a standby unit ready to respond to developing situations, not privy to details and conflicted about firing on the ‘Russian Army’.

As the lead vehicle careened around a blind corner, three unfortunate Spetsnaz guys on foot got scooped up and sent flying over the roof, landing against the windshield of the second vehicle only to slide off and end up on the street, where they were eventually run over by the FSB cars in pursuit. One of the sedans skidded over a body and lost its grip, careening off to the side to plow itself into a wall. The car behind it couldn't take evasive action in time and ended up in a fender bender, the two hulks barring the road and forcing four more armored sedans to slam their brakes.

At a bridge up ahead, half a dozen hostiles were waiting for them with RPGs at the ready. A little behind Lexa's Tigr, an SVR man spun up the PKP Pecheneg mounted on a roof pintle and began laying into them, striking one or two and sending some of the others into cover, but not all of them. Several rockets shot off, Shtora-3 electro-optical jammers sending some of the munitions plowing into the ground short of their marks, shotgun-type APS systems hard-killing a few others with kinetic impacts, but it wasn’t enough to stop everything.

One RPG-7v round struck a Tigr in the nose, hitting the very front and detonating against its slat-bar armor, saving the engine and occupants but covering the widow with a spray of soot, leaving the driver going forward blindly, trying to maintain speed as he switched on the window wipers with squirts of cleaning agent that were just enough to restore enough vision to where he could make out the silhouette of the Tigr in front of him, avoiding collision.

A bullet caught the Pecheneg gunner that was now turning around to suppress the bridge from the other end in the side of the neck, making him collapse and slide back into the Tigr's interior, where his corpse landed in the lap of another operator, wo promptly puked and then took the vacated place behind the trigger.

Back inside the convoy lead vic, Lexa’s ears perked up as Octavia called her name.

"How much tranq did you shoot her up with, again?" The ravenette asked about Clarke.

"Enough to make an elephant go comatose. She'll be out of it all the way to Dulles. Why do you ask?" She replied.

"It's just because I'm wondering why she's waking up right now!" Octavia revealed, to Lex’s bafflement. She might’ve seen it coming: the girl was known to deliberately poison herself, so there’d been a chance that this stuff would pass through her system much quicker, but that was why the dose had been so high to begin with!

"Ready another dose." Lexa ordered after a moment’s deliberation: she really couldn’t afford for a confused and combative Clarke to start squirming around behind her.

“Are you sure?” Octavia wanted confirmation of this high-risk order. “I don’t wanna stop her goddamn heart!”

“You think I wanna, I don’t know, give her a seizure?” Lexa snapped back, not in the mood for being talked back to. “She’s strong, O. We’ll get her an antidote on the plane, but for now, she has to stay under!”

Octavia reluctantly moved to comply, digging up a new syringe for the injector gun while Lincoln twisted and bent to keep the blonde’s body as still as he could in this ever-shifting environment.

“I’m sorry, Clarke, but there’s no other way.” The ravenette apologized to her friend as she depressed the trigger.

With the streets cleared of civilian traffic, the high-speed chase through Moscow's long, winding roads continued

An enemy popped up from a roof hatch hefting a 9K111M Fagot Faktoriya AT launcher, the best shoulder-launched weapon in the Russian arsenal. Getting hit by one of those would kill a Tigr and all of its occupants outright.

“Fuck!” Lexa exclaimed as she saw the imminent threat, dipping into another street and then quickly turning again, straining against her harness as gravity and momentum did battle with Lexa’s force of will. Behind them, the Fagot shot out of its launcher, locking on to the Tigr behind Lexa’s and piercing through its rear armor, the detonating warhead making mincemeat of everyone inside, forcing the others to swerve to avoid the crashing wreck.

Exiting Bibirevo and heading into Dmitrovsky District, yet another problem presented itself.

"We gotta roadblock ahead!" Anya called out.

Two sedans were parked across the road facing each other, six guys with machine guns kneeled down line abreast behind them and two with RPGs standing in the hatchways.

"We're gonna give 'em a nudge. Hang on!" Lexa called out, bracing herself as best she could. She put the pedal to the metal, the VPK armored car growling like its namesake, shrugging off the impacts of 7.62 rounds that cracked its windscreen but failed to penetrate the armored glass while the RPG gunners, panicked by knowing that they were inside the cars and couldn’t jump out of the way, fucked up, one of them firing way too high and sending his rocket sailing off into the sky while the second didn’t loose his shot at all.

The lead Tigr bashed into the sedans' hoods, forcing their noses to part and grant unobstructed passage to the following friendlies. Lexa was grateful that she’d bothered to put her seatbelt on, it being the only reason the impact hadn’t sent her face into the dashboard, although her head still slammed back into the headrest when the vehicle picked up speed again, tires screeching as the rubber tried its best to keep a solid grip on the asphalt.

An Mi-8 gunship swooped in from the left, its guns blazing as it strafed the convoy, stitching two parallel lines of HMG rounds across the road before turning to face the vehicles head-on, dipping its nose down in preparation for using its rocket pods only to be forced to wave off by a Stinger missile streaking towards it that missed by a hair’s breadth, the Hip waving off for the time being, but nor before its 30-mils had peppered two Tigrs, causing some casualties from spalling.

"They're working their way back to front! We're running out of allies here!" Lincoln reported.

"These guys don't care much about blowing up half the damn city, do they?!" Came Octavia, perplexed at the lack of restraint the enemy showed at blasting away in the middle of Russia’s very own Holy Land.

“Better destroyed that in the hands of Americans, I guess.” Anya answered, putting away her empty launcher and switching it out for her HK, which by now only had two and a half magazines of ammo remaining, while Tris dutifully set about digging up a new RB-36 to reload the anti-tank weapon with.

Up ahead, Spetsnaz guys were fastroping out of an Mi-17 Hip hovering over an apartment complex, a modernized, redesigned version of the Mi-8, bearing more Fagot launchers. This was really bad news, these weapons much more capable than the RPG-7v, and the Tigrs were indeed running low if not empty on countermeasures. Anya decided to do something about it. She leaned out of her window, hefting her NLAW. “Keep it steady, Lex!” She asked her sister, who did her best to keep driving in a straight line even as the spiderwebbing cracks in her windshield made it difficult to see.

The NLAW was an anti-tank weapon, not intended for use against aircraft, but the Hip was hovering in place, Anya had good aim, and unlike the FGM-148, the NLAW could be fired without a target lock. So it didn't matter that the RB-36 missile wasn't a SAM: it would fly straight and true and detonate on impact, and was more than potent enough to take down a helicopter. The rocket pierced its skin and detonated on the inside, flying through the cockpit before sending a shockwave of heat and pressure throughout the crew compartment, before finally touching off its fuel storage.

Enemy operators went flying like confetti as the burning helicopter fell like a stone, crashing on top of the apartment building where its munitions began cooking off, secondary explosions eliminating the FSB men that had already landed on the roof, its rotor blades splintering as they whacked into the rebar.

Another guy in another car did have a FIM-92 Stinger MANPADS, and one of the SVR guys still with them had a 9K38 Igla MANPADS, and between the two of them, they managed to lure the Mi-8 into trying to engage one of them while the other took a kill shot from behind, sending the helicopter into a tailspin that saw it plow into the street and skid to a halt against the side of a building about two blocks over. This appeared to end the aerial threat for now.

They were now in Zapadnoye Degunino District and about to turn onto the MKAD, the Moscow Ring Road highway, approaching the final stretch towards their destination. The number of pursuing enemy cars had decreased significantly, far from all of them explicable by being destroyed, disabled, or blocked.

An FSB car appeared from the side, having hid behind the structural support of an overpass, and a man with a Kord machine gun began firing out the side window. Anya's rocket launcher made short work of them, but she'd just used up her last rocket in doing so.

At the far end of the bridge crossing the Moscow Canal into Khimki District, an angry Mi-28 appeared that unloaded its missiles into the bridge deck not far ahead of the convoy before bugging out as fast as it could, unwilling to deal with Stingers and Iglas and NLAWs, oh my!, but slashing numerous rather large holes in the road top that would force the Tigrs to swivel and swerve to avoid them, which would make them bleed speed, and therefore be made vulnerable.

They were lucky that these Russians weren't shooting at them directly and actually seemed to be avoiding friendly fire, but it would do them no good if the bridge deck got mangled too badly to drive across.

Lexa knew they had no other choice, though: there was another bridge a little father north, but it would take time to divert there, and the enemy Mi-28 could easily beat them to the place and blow holes into that one as well. No, it was now or never: Lexa put her Tigr on the mangled deck, made sure the others were still following, and told all of her gunners to keep a lookout for the Havoc, which soon made another appearance. This time, it approached perpendicular to the convoy, clearly intending to make a direct attack pass. Its guns were already spinning up, Lexa’s anti-air men using up their last rockets to no effect, when another anti-air missile came racing in for the heli, which waved off, popping chaff and flares as it did so, answering with two AGMs of its own that were quickly shot down mid-air. A new missile came racing for the attack chopper, which tried to dive low and turn away, only for the explosion to catch it in the right fuel tank, engulfing the entire thing in a ball of ignited kerosene, sent sinking into the Moskva River.

The missile hadn't come from the Stinger or Igla aboard the convoy, but from the far side of the bridge.

"Uh, guys? That's a tank. That's a fucking tank!" Tris was the first to take note of where the AAMs had come from.

There were, in fact, two tanks: a pair of T-90 main battle tanks were set to either side of the far end of the bridge deck, in a hull-down position just off the road, and their main guns were tracking.

"We've had it." Anya cursed, damning Raven for sending them all on this suicide mission.

The first T-90 fired – and scored a direct hit on an FSB car. The second one followed suit to similar effect, and when a quarter of BRTs added a fusillade of autocannon fire into the mix that invariably targeted the FSB sedans instead of the SVR Tigrs, Anya knew that she’d been wrong.

The screeching sound of an external speaker, obviously made with Russian quality (meaning its output was tinny and distorted), preceded an announcement in accented but comprehensible English: "Commander Woods, this is the Presidential Security Service of Russia. We will escort you into Sheremetyevo from here."

A squadron of BTR-4 IFVs, BTR-90 APCs, and T-90 MBTs flying the flag of the President of Russia took up positions around the remaining Tigrs as the mangled convoy exited the damaged bridge into Khimki, on whose outskirts the airport was situated, seriously beefing up their firepower. Whatever FSB assets remained quickly broke off pursuit as they weren’t willing to pick a fight with FSO and bring down the hammer of Andrei Volkov’s wrath down on them personally, racing back to Lubyanka or whatever safehouses they’d driven out from to lick their wounds and count the score.

Moscow Sheremetyevo International Airport loomed ahead. President Volkov was nowhere to be seen, but that was understandable, as he was all but cloistered inside the Kremlin with the threats too his life on one end and his myriad duties on the other. The man had come through, though: when it had mattered, he had ordered Russians to kill others Russians on the behalf of Americans, and thanks to their obedience, Lexa’s surviving DCS operators and their precious cargo were able to board the Presidential airliner on their own feet instead of being carried on in body bags.

Twenty minutes later

FSO Ilyushin IL-96-300, Moscow airspace

They were safe now: in the air, with no missiles coming after them, with a half-dozen SU-57s Felons under Presidential control escorting them to the midway point where equally many USAF F-15EX Falcon IIs would take over escort duties.

They were safe. But Lexa wasn't out of trouble, she could tell, as she spotted Octavia glaring daggers at Anya. The ravenette was anything but happy about how the older brunette had handled the 'acquisition' of Clarke, and the brewing storm had only not burst yet because there's been no time, what with the prolonged firefight and stress of taking off.

Now, though, there would be hell to pay.

And Lexa wasn't out of O's crosshairs, either, as the latter very politely asked for the Woods Sisters to follow her to another room in a tone that said 'we either do this privately, or right here where everyone can hear, but we're doing it now'.

"I hope you're proud of yourself, Anastasia Woods." The lithe girl made of pure muscle began her tirade. Anya knew she was in trouble: O used nicknames for everyone, and wouldn't usually call you by your full name unless you really pissed her off. "You may have just blown the one chance we had at getting Clarke to not see us as the enemy with your Hulk Hogan bullshit." She accused the tan brunette, whose hand needed more thorough looking after soon.

"She sees us as the enemy already, unless you were suddenly in another room when she killed five of our operators in less than a second?!" Anya said back, annoyed at Lexa for insisting that they needed to bring Clarke’s white knight on this mission and even more annoyed that Octavia just ignored that Clarke had tried to kill her.

"Yeah, no." O raised her hand to shut Anya up. "You don't get to tell me that if I were to make your door explode and then charged in with twelve heavily armed people in tow with guns raised, you wouldn't shoot first and see what they want later, if at all." She said, making what she believed to be a reasonable argument.

“Did you see the way she looked at us?” Anya asked. “There was no way we were going to take her without a fight, and I’m having a hard time picturing you trying to restrain your infallible hero.”

“You, Anastasia, had better have a long, hard think about what you’d do if someone sentenced Tris to death for a crime you know she didn’t commit.” O spat out, taking the wind out of the AT specialist’s sails.

"And you, Alexandria," Lexa braced herself, "you should've let me take point." Octavia said, and that was a lot milder than what Lexa'd anticipated.

"If I'd gone in first, she'd have recognized me and known we weren't there to murder her." The ravenette argued.

"Or you would've switched positions with Charmaine. It was too dangerous for any of us to try to confront her – simply put: we're less expendable." Lexa spoke, finding it distasteful that she had to preserve certain lives and be willing to risk that of others instead for the sake of maintaining the chain of command (and keeping her friends alive).

"That's rich, coming from the CO who insists on taking point position herself half the time, even though point man is the deadliest occupation among assault troops, already the deadliest element to be in?" Octavia called Lexa out on her hypocrisy.

“Sorry to interrupt, guys” Monty’s head popped in the door, “please don’t tear my throat out,” He directed at Octavia, then to the trio: “we still have to get Griffin settled in.”

The women agreed to table their fight for later and see to the blonde girl first, one utterly convinced that she was a traitor, one knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that the wasn’t and one unsure of what she believed – just that if she was a traitor, it was only so under duress, but if she wasn’t, then she sure did a lot of damage to make it look like she was.

With the argument squared away for now, they went back forward to see the blonde girl and finally got to work securing her properly. They cut off the zipties to replace them with heavy-duty steel cuffs, then, at O’s insistence, injecting her with a neutralization agent for the second dose of knockout drug to stave off overdosing symptoms. They then followed procedure, some with markedly more reluctance than others, by taping a blackout hood over Clarke’s head so the girl wouldn’t be able to see where she was and where they were going, though not gagging her because the tranq was so heavy-duty that she might choke on her tongue if her mouth wasn’t free.

They then prepared to tie her to a chair, only to stop before they were done, because Clarke Griffin, after being choked so hard she couldn’t get a trickle of air in for over a minute and a half, tased five times, and shot up with two doses of horse tranquilizer in as many hours, was waking up.

“Oh, you’ve got to be joking!” Lexa exclaimed in irritation.

“Yes, I’m telling you! I’m sure she’s coming to again, already.” Anya groused.

“Do you want me to ready a third dose?” Lincoln asked.

“No.” Lexa waved him off. “For all we know, that could stop her heart or liquefy her brain, and we do need her alive.”

“I swear, this chick is a living disaster area.” Monty shook his head in disbelief.

“…Nadeyus', ty ponimayesh', chto nasha raznitsa v roste delayet tebya ideal'nym kandidatom dlya udara nozhom v gorlo…” The blonde’s groggy voice slurred.

“Hey, what’d she just say?” Lexa wanted to know.

“I don’t know, I don’t speak Russian.” Anya told her sister.

“Mine’s a little rusty, but I believe that was something like ‘I hope you realize our height difference makes you ideal for stabbing in the throat.’.” Octavia did her best to translate.

“You still think she’s on our side, O?” Anya inquired.

“You don’t know who she’s talking about.” The lithe ravenette said back.

“Everybody quiet.” Lexa ordered.

July 20, 2021

To put it bluntly: Clarke had no fucking clue what was going on. One moment, the SVR was blowing down the door to her panic room and she’d been so freaked out that she’d hid behind the false wall without her guns, stupidly, stupidly leaving her Makarov-UM and AK-15 behind on the computer board, then decided it’d be better to at least try something rather than wait to be discovered and shot, had engaged the enemy, and then…

Then Nia had strode through the door, Ontari and Echo in tow, revealing that the attackers hadn’t been SVR all along, but FSB men playing dress-up.

“We know what you did, American.” Echo said icily, giving the unarmed woman a death glare.

“And to think that you made Mother think that poor old Gerasim was the real traitor.” Ontari mocked her, wiping away a fake tear while keeping a Kiparis SMG pointed squarely at Clarke’s chest with her other hand.

“Tell me, Clarke,” Nia began, striding up to the ex-CIA operator, “did you really believe you would get away with trying to deceive me? I knew it was you all along, foolish girl.”

“I hope you realize that our height difference makes you the perfect candidate for a knife to the throat.” Clarke replied. She didn’t know where the knife in her hand had come from, but she didn’t care – she’d take it anyway. So she lunged forward, ready to extend her arm and slit Nia’s windpipe…

Only to find that she couldn’t move at all. And then, she was burning, and she could see no more.

“...sure she’s coming to again, already.” A voice spoke questioningly, barely discernable through the buzzing in her ears.

“D’you want me to ready a third dose?” Another person asked, leaving her more confused than before.

“No. For all we know, that could stop her heart or liquefy her brain, and we do need her alive.” Came a third one.

Wait a minute... These voices... They were speaking English. American English. And they were saying other things too, but her brain was too scrambled to make sense of their words.

She couldn’t place the voices, too out of it to recognize them even though there was this nagging feeling in the back of her head that told her she should be able to. Her eyes were open, at least she thought they were, but she couldn’t see a thing, either. And when she tried to rub her eyes, she found that she couldn’t move for real.

She began testing out her situation, quickly realizing that she’d been shackled down, her hands cuffed behind her back, her ankles to each other, and her limbs furthermore taped to a seat. There was a strange whining noise all around and she discovered that she’d been robbed of her sight, not blinded – enough to surmise that she was on an airplane, probably being taken to Siberia for torturous interrogation and execution?

But then, why were there people speaking English in American, not Russian, accents?

She soon got her answer when the strips of tape keeping the hood affixed around her head were cut away and the fabric pulled off. The sudden onslaught of bright light was too much: she squeezed her eyes shut, then slowly opened them again. All she could make out where silhouettes for a while. She swallowed dryly: her throat was parched as hell and incredibly sore, just as there were various other spots around her body that throbbed dully all the time and stung sharply whenever she moved. She was in pain, dizzy, nauseous, disoriented, and more than a little scared, even though she wouldn’t give these motherfuckers an inkling of the latter.

“Awake so soon? Figures.” Somebody said, who was right in her face. Blinking her eyes repeatedly, trying to get her vision back into focus, the person that materialized from the silhouette was… She blinked again, just to make sure, but indeed: it was Anastasia Woods.

“Oh, shit.” Clarke said, coughing as her parched throat caught up to her, then inhaling a few quick, wheezing breaths that only made the dryness even worse.

“Move it.” Another person said, bodily shoving Anya aside. This newcomer, she could identify after a few seconds as Octavia Blake? What was going on?

Clarke’s eyes traced a path from left to right and back again, doing nothing to make her feel any less vulnerable as she still couldn’t make out anything beyond what was directly in front of her, Octavia the only person close enough to see right now. If O was here, and Anya was too, then surely…

“Is Lex-“ She tried to speak, only to inhale sharply and have her throat clench shut due to dehydration.

“Here, have some water.” O said, humiliatingly feeding Clarke who obviously couldn’t accept the canteen herself. She still drank, too eager to chase away the uncomfortable sensation in her mouth and throat.

“Thanks, O.” She said when the mental fog had cleared a bit and she felt like she could think again. A lot of things were missing: she wasn’t sure what was real and what was a dream, and there were holes in her recollection anyway.

“Um, Octavia?” She asked eventually.

“Yeah, buddy?” The ravenette said back without hostility.

“There was an attack. Real or not real?”

“Oh, yeah, that happened, alright. Your defenses had me wondering whether I’d get to walk outta this one a few times.”

“Jesus, I’m sorry. I never wanted to put you in danger.” The blonde spoke, hanging her head.

“Yeah, well, that’s always your problem, isn’t it?” O laughed it off. “Besides, who else would they send?”

“I, um…” Clarke licked her lips, this time in concentration. “Nia came to taunt me and I tried to cut her throat. Real or not real?” She asked her friend.

“Not real, I’m afraid.” Octavia answered, then turning to address… somebody else. “See? I told you that wasn’t about us. Why’d she say it in Russian then anyway? Idiots.”

“Whatever.” Anya’s voice came in. “Now that we know the bitch isn’t about to swallow her own tongue, it’s my turn.” The woman said, shoving Octavia out of the way now to continue trapping Clarke more thoroughly with a roll of duct tape that she began winding beneath the seat and over her thighs.

“Anya, listen, I know you must hate me right now, but I did it.” She began, quickly realizing her error as the woman would absolutely take that as an admission of guilt. So she took a breath and tried again even as the woman continued using up tape unperturbed: “I have the evidence. I can prove everything! Please, I need to talk to Lex-”

"Give you two minutes to talk, you can convince anyone of anything. This is just a precaution. I'm sure you understand." Anya said, moving on from Clarke’s thighs to her face, shutting her up with a wind of tape over her mouth.

'Sure, I can convince anyone about anything, except for the one time it actually matters.' Clarke thought wryly, taking note of just how extra Anya was being with the roughness of her manhandling. Or would that be woman-handling? Really, there was no need to wind that tape over her hair, that was just being cruel for its own sake.

Lexa was watching the goings-on from behind, somewhere Clarke couldn’t see her even if she turned her head as far as she could, shaking her head at the unfolding mess. Anya, Octavia, and Clarke herself were behaving like such children. The blonde kept trying to shout through her gag, having now taken to clanging the metal bracelets around her wrists and ankles against the chair legs and armrest, respectively, and making a hell of a lot of noise in the process. Clearly, whatever it was she wanted to show Lexa was worth making a huge racket about.

Anya, disagreeing, wound up her fist and punched Griffin square in the gut.

But even after having the wind knocked out of her and doubling over, the blonde merely spent a few seconds regulating her breathing, and simply started up again.

She could see Anya balling up her fist again, only for Octavia to step in between them and raise her own in defense. “You wanna pretend to be Russian, Ahn? Because I’m game.” The ravenette prepared to put the older Woods on her ass.

“Enough.” Lexa curtly stated, their Commander’s word enough for both women to break away from each other and step away from the blonde…

Who had clearly recognized who this new voice belonged to, because the girl wasn't just randomly making angry noises of indignation anymore, but grunting out freaking Morse code. ‘N-O-T-M-E-N-E-E-D-H-E-L-P.’

"Creative." Lexa had to admit.

"Speak for yourself, I'm about to go deaf from all this fucking clanging!" Her sister shouted over the noise.

"Oh, fuck me!" Tris exclaimed. "Let the damn girl have her say already, boss!" She pleaded with Lexa.

"I'm pretty sure I have a spare taser and a can of mace on this plane somewhere, or maybe some chloroform..." Anya thought aloud, already missing the time when the blonde had been drugged and out cold.

"I'm not letting you kill her. Or electrocute or choke her. You already had your fun doing that." Octavia cut in.

“Yeah, sure, ‘fun’. That’s why my face looks like I got into a fight with a damn bobcat.” Anya sniped back.

"Someone just do something to make this stop!" Monty exclaimed. "I can't hear myself think, and I need to concentrate to keep this stupid plane off the FSB's search radars!"

Now the annoying Morse just went 'S-O-S' on repeat, and the girl clearly wasn’t gonna give up unless she got knocked out again – which was too dangerous – or be beaten silly, which would certainly make sure that this supposed evidence was never gonna make its way into Lexa’s hands.

“Alright, stop it already!” The brunette yelled in Clarke’s ear, the other woman falling silent immediately – an anticipatory sort of quiet, not a defeated one.

“We’re going to war, you and I.” Lexa spoke, drawing her dagger and making it clear that she was not, in fact, about to stab Clarke, but cut off the tape gag. “Whether that’s against each other or beside each other remains to be seen. Aren’t linguistic ambiguities fascinating?” The brunette said, consciously choosing sarcasm over bitterness.

"Lexa-" Clarke started to talk once she could, but said woman wasn’t ready for that level of familiarity.

"Don't." She went, sighing. Hadn’t this day been long and complicated enough already? "Whatever it is you want to say, I don't wanna hear it. Not until I have a recorder ready." She laid out. "Also, you haven't earned the right to address me by my name. You will call me 'Commander Woods', Griffin." Lexa demanded, wanting to keep some distance so her confused feelings wouldn’t leak into her analytical mind.

"For whatever it's worth: I'm sorry for taking down your men. I thought they were SVR." Clarke tried a different tack.

"Graham Quint, Penn Tomac, and Charmaine Diyoza." Lexa recited, then upon seeing Clarke’s confused expression, the girl clearly not fully recovered from the drug-induced daze, "The names of my people you killed in Moscow. The other two actually were SVR Spetsnaz."

"So I guess it's back to America for a public execution, then?" The blonde asked as if she already knew the answer would be ‘yes’, and Spirit, Lexa was fed up with entertaining this idiot’s paranoia.

"Not quite." She told her. "Although it has crossed my mind to do it extrajudicially. I can always claim you were killed in the crossfire – my men don't exactly use body cams." She said, hoping that the intended message beneath the hostile wording: ‘If I wanted to kill you, I’d have done it already’, would be received and understood.

"So why don't you?" Apparently, it hadn’t been. Because the blonde’s voice was small, apprehensive, not sarcastic or haughty, but… conveying disbelief, distrust, wanting to figure out what angle Woods was working.

"Because Raven wants you alive, my father wants you alive, and for some reason, Volkov wants you alive."

“Volkov wants… That’s a good one. Real funny. Now the truth, if you please.” Clarke said, rising in volume, aggravated by Lexa’s words for a reason she didn’t understand.

“It’s not a joke.” Lexa insisted.

“Then the poison that Volkov’s boyfriend tried to feed me that made his throat swell up until he choked to death on his own flesh was the joke? Because something doesn’t add up here.” Clarke explained, and this was the first Lexa had heard of it: Gus had told her of a failed extraction, not a failed assassination attempt!

“I have no Earthly idea what you’re talking about.” She admitted.

“Of course he’d sweep that one under the rug.” Clarke replied, referring to the Russian President.

“Who tried to poison you?” Lexa interrogated: this could be important information.

“Na-ah. You’re not being nice to me.” Clarke scoffed, a dopey grin breaking out on her face, her eyes getting a little distant. The lingering knockout drug was overpowering the antidote, but rather than putting Clarke to sleep again, was making her high. That could be useful: stoned people usually weren’t capable of lying.

“Are you fucking for real right now?!” Anya exclaimed, only to be silenced with a glance from her sister.

“How about a deal.” Clarke proposed, cocking her head like a puppy.

“You’re in no position to bargain, Griffin.” Lexa told her in no uncertain terms.

“Oh, I guess you’ll let Anya torture me then? After all, you only need me alive, but your orders didn’t say anything about the condition I had to be in.” Paranoid Griffin’s mind, its higher critical thinking faculties shorted out by the concoction of mind-altering substances in her veins, defaulted to the worst-case scenario.

“I don’t know for sure what’s going through your mind right now, but that is not it.” Lexa tried to assure her.

“So about that deal.” Clarke said again, going from doom and gloom to that weird dopey smile again.

“Will it get you to play ball?” Lexa, curious, asked the taped-up girl.

“Like you said: I’m not in a great position here. But you fucked with me, so now I’m gonna fuck with you.” Clarke declared, and that was how Lexa knew for sure she was, literally, out of her mind: because Clarke Griffin never openly declared what she was doing until after it was done. She’d just given up her strategy, so that was not properly Clarke.

“Do you still think I want you dead?” Lexa inquired, shooting straight for the truth. If she could gauge how much the blonde distrusted her, she might establish a baseline for how difficult Clarke was going to be.

“Oh, let’s see: after what happened back there? Yes!” Her old friend bit at her, devoid of emotional regulation, her pretty pale face first going red with rage and then turning a disturbing shade of blue as she began to cry.

“Is that why you’re shooting the shit with me right now? Because you think it won’t matter in the end?” Lexa, growing concerned, asked her more gently than before.

“After the gifts I’m about to bestow upon you give me the right to say ‘I told you so’, I’m really hoping that you won’t want it to end.” Clarke said, hating herself for being so weak and easy to manipulate but unable to help herself until the drug’s effects wore off. “Seriously, you’re my last and only chance at stopping Nia, which is what all of this has been about, and I’m your only chance at putting you in the right position to strike her down.” She tried to circle back to the reason she’d insisted on talking to Lexa in the first place. “Not to mention that you’re the one person in the world who might listen to reason and not hand me over to Russell once you realize how spectacularly mistaken you were, so it’s kinda lucky that it was you that found me. Again.”

“What do you want.” Lexa deadpanned, beyond confused at the way her interlocutor kept jumping from one emotional extreme to the other, having never seen a simple knockout drug have this effect before.

“For every actionable name I give you, I want something of equal value. Something that I find equivalent.” Clarke said, feeling the need to include that it’d be her that did the evaluating.

“If I find it reasonable, I have been authorized to make such concessions.” Lexa grit out through her teeth, because there was no reason to withhold this information and would probably be the only way forward anyhow.

Clarke’s eyes gazed into Lexa’s with that mesmerizing blue kicked puppy look that made it almost possible to forget just how deadly its owner could be. “For each name that checks out, you’re going to kiss me. On the mouth. For at least ten seconds.” She declared, pausing for effect two times just to make sure the brunette couldn’t tune it out.

Ten seconds, the blonde had asked for. Ten seconds for each name. Ten seconds after each name, per her own request. But even ten years later, Lexa wouldn’t be able to tell you what came over her in that moment. Because some insane part of her brain urged her to preempt the blonde’s demands, convincing her that there was an obvious way to put the girl in her debt, and to stop thinking and do it already.

So she kissed Clarke. She kissed her lover’s sister. The woman who’d allied with the bitch that ambushed Costia and cost Big Griffin her life. The sellout, the traitor, the friend, the confidant. She tuned out Anya’s screech of horror, Octavia’s gasp of indignation, Monty’s flabbergasted ‘What the fuck?!’, and focused only on giving the blonde exactly what she asked for: ten seconds, no less, no more.

Clarke was shocked, paralyzed by surprise at first, then began kissing Lexa back. Lexa’s lips were soft, plump, and warm, tasting like a breath of fresh air, tasting like more, so after the first second or two of inaction, she reciprocated, forgetting all about her miserable surroundings and helplessly being trapped to focus on nothing but her best friend, the woman that had betrayed her, who should have been married to her sister right now, who had risked her life to get Clarke away from Nia, but not because she cared, only because she’d apparently been ordered to… A thought that woke Clarke up.

Lexa, for her part, found that Clarke’s lips tasted like the first flower honey of spring, warm and smooth, having the same shape as Costia’s, the same texture, but still feeling so different: Costia’s kisses had been gentle, light, timeless as if they’d have infinity to do it again, where Clarke was needy, almost aggressive, making every moment count. But Clarke was not Costia. Clarke was Lexa’s prisoner, and nothing about this was couth. The horror of this woke Lexa up.

And then, the ten seconds were up. Lexa automatically broke away as the timer in her head ran down, a tiny part of her instantly missing the contact, another part was yelling at her that she’d just committed a crime by smooching somebody who by default was unable to give consent, and the greater part of her mind was just confused and disgusted by the fact that she’d just let herself be tricked into giving Clarke Griffin something to use as leverage against her: the girl had played her like a fiddle, and Lexa couldn’t believe she’d actually kissed the crazy bitch (and enjoyed it…)!

“Hey, what the fuck is going… Lexa?!” Clarke’s eyes opened again, no longer glazed over, no longer soft, or sad, but blazing fire and brimstone, her look razor-sharp and peering down on Lexa even from her lower position from atop those famous unassailable walls of Griffin arrogance. “Where the hell are we? What did you do to me? Get me the hell outta here!” The blonde demanded, feeling like a slap in the face to Lexa as it was apparent that Clarke couldn’t remember anything between when she’d woken up and now. At least she wouldn’t have blackmail material now and would probably not bring up that ridiculous deal again (which a tiny part of Lexa felt disappointed about, for some reason), but it also meant they were all the way back to square one.

“You aren’t leaving that seat until we’re back in Washington, so shut the fuck up.” Anya snarled.

“What’s the matter, Ahn? Afraid I’ll do to you what I did to your kill squad?” The blonde snapped back: oh yes, this was the real Clarke Griffin, returned in full force.

“They had names. They had families.” Anya hissed, her gut still roiling from processing her friend Charmaine’s sudden death at the hands of this turncoat, this sellout, this… sister-stealer?

“So did I!” Griffin shot back, agonized, as Lexa had once counted as part of that family just as much as Costia did.

“Charmaine had a little girl. Hope is gonna have to grow up without a mother because of you.” Anya accused her.

“And that, Lexie, is why Bell and I never had children.” Clarke casually mentioned, shrugging Anya off.

“Call me what she did one more time, and that tape-and-bag goes back on your head, smartass.” Lexa, wanting to restore face after (practically assaulting/satisfying her curiosity with) giving into Clarke’s crazy terms so easily, threatened. She was ready for some peace and quiet without the blonde sitting so close to her, turning her thoughts into a jumbled mess.

“Fine.” Clarke griped, literally sticking her nose into the air. Not that there was much else she could do at the moment.

“Fine, what?” Lexa questioned her – if Clarke was gonna be so obstinate with the littlest thing, then good luck, Lexa!

“Fine, Commander Woods.” Clarke said at last, realizing that for the time being, she had no cards to play.

That reaction was not what Lexa had intended. She’d been prepared for venom, for anger and hate, for the usual sarcasm that Clarke Griffin normally oozed, but the last thing she’d anticipated was resignation. This was a woman that never quit without putting up a hell of a fight. So there must be something that she really wanted to say. Or perhaps needed to say?

“I tried to warn you.” The blonde replied when Lexa asked her what it was that she needed her help with. “For a year and a half, I tried to warn you, and I kept being dismissed as delusional. The DNI told me I was full of it, the President, your own father and my dad’s best friend, basically told me to get my head checked, and even Cos and Bell thought it was impossible because nobody could conceal an operation of that magnitude. Only now that it turns out I was right all along, I’m the enemy? Make it make sense, Lex… Commander Woods.”

“I think you know damn well why, Griffin.” Lexa sniped at her friend/prisoner, “You talk the talk about Nia being the enemy, but then we took you away from Nia, so forgive me for being skeptical.”

“Yeah, well, I’m gonna show you a few things that’ll make you change your mind, but I can’t do that yet.”

“And why not, pray tell?”

“Because I carry the secrets within me, so I literally can’t show you until they’re developed.” The girl spoke cryptically, Lexa not knowing how literal it was – microfilms needed to be developed before they’d be usable.

"You told everyone not to let her speak, but now you're doing it yourself." Anya chided her sister. "You're not as immune as you think you are, sis."

“The great Commander Woods, letting someone else tell her what to do. Never thought I’d see the day.” Clarke drawled. “Oh, no, wait: I already have. I look just like Cos: maybe someday, you’ll let me use duct tape on your cl-”

"Do you want me to let Anya gag you again, Griffin?" Lexa, knowing exactly where that sentence was going, decided to shut her up, so that the others wouldn’t think she was actually attracted to her. Because she wasn’t, was she?

"Are you threatening me with a good time, Lexa?" Clarke smirked so damn (cutely) insufferably.

"You are impossible!" Lexa sighed in irritated/sexual frustration.

"I don't know if I should feel insulted or complimented." Clarke pointed out conversationally.

"What's that even supposed to mean?" Lexa wanted to know: the blonde was too good at keeping tight-lipped when she wasn’t higher than a kite, so it was gonna be next to impossible to figure her out unless she wanted to be understood.

"If I'm predictable, I'm not doing my job right." The blonde spoke, even though she no longer had a job.

"The only job you have right now is to be helpful enough to me to keep me from deciding to tie you off as a lost cause." Lexa told her as much, letting her know who was in control here.

"That's harsh. After all this shit you went through to kidnap me, you're just gonna cut me out?" Clarke said, a tone of real hurt in her voice. Perhaps the woman was just keeping up this shit-talking as a way to cope with fear of the unknown: or what she believed to be a future known.

“You know what?” Lexa sighed, deciding to put this thing to an end. “I’ll put this as simply as I can: you’ve been given to me. I own you now. So for whatever it’s worth: I’m not gonna give you back to Lightbourne, as long as you give me no reason to.” She said, trying to placate the blonde’s worries.

“And here I was, thinking slavery had been abolished.” She said back, once again on her high horse.

“Not if it’s a punishment for a crime.” Lexa pointed out the Constitutional stipulation.

“What ‘crime’ would that be?” Clarke wanted to know.

“You tell me.” Lexa countered, unamused.

“Fine.” Clarke huffed.

“Fine?” Lexa questioned.

“Fine!” Clarke said again, not giving further details.

“Okay, fine.” Lexa answered, done with her opponent’s mind games.

“I thought you were leaving?” Clarke rhetoricated.

“Volkov gave me this whole plane as a gift. I don’t have to leave.” Lexa pouted like a spoiled little rich kid.

“Guess you’re stuck with me then, cause I can’t leave.” Clarke said reasonably.

“I could knock you out again for some peace and quiet?” The brunette proposed.

“Um, no thanks, I think I’ll just shut up now.” The blonde stated, not eager at having her hair ruined a second time.

“Fine.” Lexa said once again.

“Fine.” Clarke answered.

“Will you stop it already?” Lexa huffed out exasperated with the blonde’s antics.

“Sorry.” Clarke said, and actually seemed to mean it.

Because Clarke didn’t say anything else after that.

In fact, for the next five and a half hours it took to reach Dulles final approach, she said nothing at all.

And if she was being honest with herself, getting the silent treatment from Clarke bothered her more than it should have.

Undisclosed secure location, Dulles International Airport, Washington, DC

Still July 20 2021

"You call this 'unharmed', Woodses?" Was the first thing Raven said when she entered the saferoom where Lexa and Anya stood in opposite corners, the two sisters still giving each other sidelong glances, Anya wondering if Lexa was okay while Lexa didn’t wanna talk about it, with Clarke having been deposited in a chair and cuffed to the table in an unfortunate resemblance to how her own victims at Lubyanka had been interrogated before being killed. Octavia was also there to act as a third party, insisting on being there to prevent Anya and Clarke from jumping down each other’s throats, which Lexa had reluctantly agreed to.

"She didn't come easily. She put up a fight." Anya explained.

"Yes, I imagine she did." Raven, knowing how the blonde tended to jump to conclusions, smiled a little.

The sable-haired Latina slid into another, much more comfortable chair on the other side of the table, and for the first time in months, laid eyes upon the woman she’d long considered to be one of her closest friends. "Hello, Clarkey. It's been a while." She started, scanning the blonde’s weary, exhausted-looking face. The woman was tired, and jot just physically so, but in her eyes, there still burned that fire that threatened to consume anyone that crossed her path.

“Why’d you do it, Clarke? Help me understand why you sided with the FSB.” Raven began the interrogation.

Clarke, who’d apparently been spending the remainder of the flight quiet so she could bank up on words, was affronted and disappointed that Raven too could just believe this of her, that she’d gone over to the other side for real. "It's people like me that do the dirty work people like you would rather pretend wasn't necessary, so that Joe and Jane Average can go about their lives not having to worry about being randomly murdered in the street by some lunatic who claims to hear the voice of God and keep living in their bubble of imaginary safety making plans to start a family like everything's alright in the world because America is untouchable so it'll never happen to them." She talked a lot, and said nothing, like a good politician. Heh. ‘Good politician’, now there was an oxymoron.

"If this is your 'there are no good guys, only lighter shades of gray and all we can do is try to be better' speech again, save it. I've heard it before, and you know how I feel about it." Raven did her best to shut this avenue down.

“I’ve saved a hell of a lot more lives than I’ve taken, and don’t pretend like you don’t know.” Clarke, never knowing how to de-escalate, couldn’t help but fight back.

“How many people have you killed, Clarke? You do things, but other people pay the price.” Raven accused her. "You got Costia killed. Heh, I bet you'll get Lexa killed too." The Latina bitterly scoffed, Lexa clapping back with a ‘What the hell, Rae?’ that went ignored.

“I’m sorry, okay? For all of it! I never meant for you to get hurt.” Clarke went, unthinkingly trying to reach for her friend only to be yanked back into her present reality by the cuffs that held her short. “But no matter what I do, someone always dies.” The woman lamented, hating every second of being thought of as the enemy by her own people.

"Being left-handed is a sign that your genes chose competition over cooperation. It keeps the rest of us on our toes. Also goes to explain why you're such a psycho." Raven observed venomously.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Octavia asked on her friend’s behalf.

That 9:1 ratio seemed to recur in nature, specifically human nature. Right- to left-handedness, hetero- to homosexual, neurotypical and neurodivergent: all seemed to be in a biological balance designed to prevent stagnation. As it happened, Clarke was all three of them, well, if bisexuality could be lumped in with lesbianism for convenience's sake.

“You’re not God, Clarke. You don’t get to decide who lives or dies.” Rae spoke to the blonde in lieu of answering.

“Yes, I do.” She said back matter-of-factly, because she was still the Commander of Death.

“She’s right. For nine years, all she’s done is save us. Take a look out there: do you think she has a choice?” Octavia interjected before Raven could send out another retort. “It’s either they die now, or we die later.”

“How is it that you’re my superior?” Clarke now questioned, annihilating whatever goodwill Octavia’s assertion had generated. “Because it seems to me that everyone’s always counting on me, looking to me to lead, but no matter what I do, I’m told that I’m not good enough. But I don’t see any of you stepping up to the plate. It must be easy, shoving off all the decisions onto me so you can blame me for the price we have to pay.” She threw in Raven’s face, his interrogation at the end of already far too eventful day getting under her skin. “But guess what? There will come a day that I’ve had enough. And you know, I think today might just be it.” She tried to shrug, only to be stopped again by the cold bits of steel. “Fucking… Not… Acceptable.” She snarled, then said nothing again, starting to dissociate.

“If I take these off, what will you do?” Lexa asked, stepping forward.

“I guess I’d be a lot more amenable to continue listening to these insane accusations of me being a monster.” Clarke said, unable to keep the hurt out of her voice even as she understood where her so-called friends were coming from.

Lexa looked at Raven. The DNI stiffly nodded “Whatever.”, and that was good enough for Lexa to release Clarke’s hands. Said woman ribbed her reddened, raw wrists in an unfortunately stereotypical gesture, mumbling out an awkward ‘thanks’ before looking at Raven again, as if asking ‘what now?’.

“Do you ever see their faces?” The Latina asked her after a moment’s contemplation.

“...What?” Clarke, who could interpret that question half a dozen ways, asked back.

“Of all the people you’ve killed.” Raven clarified. “Everywhere you go, death follows. The great Commander of Death.”

"I may be a hypocrite, Raven, but you're a liar." Clarke replied, becoming more animated. Lexa observed that whatever had happened in Russia, it had changed the other woman, and not for the better: she appeared to be emotionally out of control, aware of it and hating every second, but acting much more on impulse than ever before. Something inside the blonde’s head had just cracked, and Lexa found herself desiring to fix this damage as much to be able to more effectively pick through Clarke’s mind as to make her stop hurting so much.

Clarke carried on speaking, oblivious to the scrutiny: "Between the two of us, I'm not the one that cackles at the prospect of making people go boom. I'm not the one openly proclaiming my own awesomeness. And I'm not the one hiding behind the old 'just following orders' bullshit that hasn't held up since Nuremberg anyway, Reaper girl." She said, referring to the time that Raven had worked as an MQ-9 operator for the CIA. "So you don't get to judge me while washing your hands in innocence. You don't become Director of National Intelligence by keeping clean. You're the one that knows where all the bodies are buried. Hell, you helped me bury half of mine!"

“Really. That’s the best you have? I’m not the one that shot at my own rescue team.”

“Some rescue this is turning out to be, Director.” She drawled. “And I thought they were SVR coming to kill me.”

"You thought they were SVR? You thought they were there to kill you, so that makes it all okay? Well, you thought wrong." Anya said, speaking up for the first time since setting foot on US soil again.

"And I was just supposed to stand there and let you take me without a fight on the off chance that you weren't there to take revenge for Petrenko, even though Nia put me in a position where he would've killed me first, or she would have had I refused?" Clarke said, giving up information that Lex filed away for dissecting later.

"You should've thought of that before siding with the bad guys. I'd rather let a thousand terrorists walk free than kill one innocent person!” Anya proclaimed from the saddle of a moral high horse.

"Even though those thousand terrorists will kill ten thousand innocent persons?" Clarke questioned. "You see, 50/50 odds are not acceptable. I'm willing to do what's necessary while you're too caught up morally grandstanding. And that's why you'll lose." She issued her warning – this kind of thinking would hand Nia victory on a silver platter.

"You're the one that sacrifices anyone to save many. I'm willing to sacrifice many of my own to save one civvie, but not many civvies for just one of mine. We are nothing alike. My men know the risks and accept them. But those SVR guys died for nothing." Anya continued to argue.

"Is it ever worth it? Saving someone now, even though it means many more die later?" Clarke asked pointedly.

"Depends on the one being saved. Or the one being sacrificed." Anya replied, not playing ball.

"Excuse me, but did I do something to you?" Clarke now inquired.

"You cut Charmaine's throat." Anya growled in Clarke’s face.

"She shouldn't have tried to attack me." The blonde hissed back lowly.

"We do not kill without a cause. There has to be a reason, it has to matter. Sometimes, that means pulling the trigger on someone who truly believes that they're doing the right thing. Sometimes, it means taking the knife out of a good woman's hand and using it to slash her throat because if you don't, you'll be the one that's pushed into a position where she can do nothing other than either watch the world go to hell helplessly or be too dead to do anything about it." Clarke defended her actions for the greater good. "None of us is a villain here. It saddens me to know that you can't accept that."

Anya and Raven ganging up on Clarke was like being put on a roller coaster with no exit.

Raven had somehow wormed her way into Anya's good graces – and eventually her pants – with her stubbornness and incessant raunchy bad jokes.

"If I were gay, I'd totally date you." Raven had told Anya one night at a Halloween party.

"Reyes, you are gay." Anya’d answered with a questioning brow.

"I know." The Latina had replied, wiggling her eyebrows more suggestively.

Nobody quite knew how, but this approach had worked. Because the next time anyone had seen those two, they were in a dark corner making out like lovestruck teenagers.

“It sucks not being in charge, doesn’t it?” Raven directed Clarke’s way. “Now you get to know how I feel every time you go behind my back.”

“Screw you, Rae. The difference between us is that I had no choice, and you have no sense.” Clarke barked out.

“What makes no sense is that ‘Death by Clarke’ is about as common as ‘death by terrorist attack’. The thing you say you tried your hardest to avoid, but I don’t see much proof of it. Guess you should’ve tried harder. All of this is on you.” Raven spoke with ire, projecting her own feelings of guilt about collateral casualties onto her former boss.

“Shut up!” Clarke snapped at her, her voice breaking as she too was forced to relive memories like that.

“You can hide behind the selfless martyr act, but we see you for what you really are.” Raven carried on.

“Why is it that we only ever talk about my involvement in this? How come you get a free pass?” Clarke demanded, fed up with this hypocritical interrogation that’d devolved into an ad-hominem offensive, led by someone that had been so close to her for so long, which made it even more difficult to bear.

“We’re black ops operators soaked in blood. All of us are killers. But you’re the only murderer here.” Raven spat.

“Tell me something, Clarke: when you plunged Diyoza’s knife into her throat, did not you wish that it was mine?” Anya said next, leaving Clarke abysmally stunned: she hadn’t even known Anya was there until afterwards!

“I’m not gonna apologize for defending my own life!” She snapped. “I’m sorry about your friend, but I can’t-”

“You’re the one going too far and using the same old justification. Every time you do something horrible, you say you’re sorry, and then you do it again.” Raven cut her off. “If you’re looking for absolution, you have to earn it through good deeds and works, not words. All of those lofty things you talk about, you have to put into practice. You’re poison to anyone who gets close.” She threw in Clarke’s face, who felt like she was the one being poisoned by these words.

“Our actions don’t define who we are. Someone has to make the hard choices, and you keep forcing me into a position where I have to take the decisions that you’re too weak to stomach. You wanna blame someone for my body count, take a look in the mirror.” The ex-CIA Director told the DNI, whose own actions were every bit as morally gray. “We all do what we have to. Who we want to be and what we have to be to survive are two very different things.”

“You left us out of your survival plans. You kept everyone blind.” Was all Rae could muster to counter with.

“No shit. You would’ve tried to stop me. I tried to bring you in for over a year before I started planning the strike mission, only to be rebuffed at every turn. I’m not sorry for doing what I had to. I’m just sorry things had to end this way.”

“Shove your regret up your ass.” Anya seethed. “You crossed the line. You didn’t pull the trigger, but it was you. Their blood is on your hands. And even if you’re right about this, I’m afraid you won’t be able to wash it off this time.”

Raven fixed Clarke with a death glare, telling her that “You always wanna save everyone… What you don’t realize is you’re the one we need saving from.” The brown-eyed woman regarded her onetime friend with uncomprehending eyes. “Who are you? When did you become this person?”

“I never said I was a hero. Cause I’m not one. I haven’t ‘become’ anyone. We are what we are.” Clarke sighed tiredly.

"What you are is a two-hundred-million-dollar guided missile whose firing computer's gone haywire." Raven replied, calling the interrogation to a close.

Next thing Clarke knew, Anya, Lexa, Octavia, and Raven stuffed her in between them, and escorted by four more DCS operators, who were giving Lexa WFT looks when they noticed the blonde was no longer cuffed but received nothing but stoic silence in return, the blonde was deposited into a holding cell for the night, told that they would reconvene tomorrow to decide what the hell to do with her and that she’d better be ready to give them something substantial to avoid being shipped off to ADX after all by then.

“I get it.” Octavia said, lingering behind when all the others had left.

“What is it you get? Sorry if I sound sarcastic, I’m just fried right now. Can’t really think.” Clarke explained.

“I understand not wanting to bring anyone in on this that wasn’t completely on your side. I even know why you didn’t share it with me.” Octavia patiently answered Clarke’s query.

“I’m not letting you live with this alone. You’ll always have me.” The ravenette declared, silently daring anyone to reprimand her for breaking protocol to draw her friend into the best thing to a hug she could give through the bars.

“Thank you. For not leaving me dangling.” Clarke said earnestly, overjoyed that O was still fighting the good fight.

“I’m glad you’re okay.” Octavia told her friend.

“I’m not so sure about that.” Clarke had to admit, not with everything hanging in the balance so precariously.

“Point. I’m glad you’re alive.” The green-eyed ravenette elucidated.

“I’m glad you’re here.” Was all Clarke could say in reply.

“Me too.” O smiled. “I know you don’t believe it now, but one day they will thank you for what you’re doing here.”

“I can only say I hope you’re right, O. I’m not sure I deserve forgiveness after all that I’ve done.”

“If it’s forgiveness you need, you have it. You’re forgiven.” Octavia told the blue-eyed girl strongly. “We both know Lexa’s gonna act like an absolute bitch for a while, but she’ll warm up to you again. Wait and see! Just wait and see.”

“It’s not like I have another choice.” Clarke halfway joked, vehemently hoping that the microfilm would change the brunette’s mind and to have a chance to produce it in the first place sooner rather than later.

Because when Octavia had to leave and she was left with nothing but her own thoughts for company, all she could think about was how bad it would be for her if Lexa realized that Clarke did, in fact, remember their kiss – and regretted nothing other than the fact that it was most likely a one-time thing. At least she’d always have her perfect memory.

She did wonder what Lev would be thinking. What sort of story Nia was spinning at Lubyanka to explain Artemida’s disappearance. How her parents must be faring under these awful circumstances – both their daughters were gone in some way or another, and all they had left was each other. Would she ever get to see them again?

Because for as much as she wanted to put a stop to Nia’s plans, she’d rather die in the attempt than live to see the end of it only to be carted off to Colorado. That was Clarke’s own endgame. Victory – at a tremendous cost of sacrifice. The price she’d be demanded to pay – to give up her life and freedom for crimes that she had indeed committed even in service of the protection of America and the world – was the one burden she was unwilling to bear.

But that was still some time away. If she could just see her parents one more time, she would be content to do whatever it took to put Nia Sil’nayevna Koroleva in the ground, avenge Costia, and then, probably, go to join her sister.

End of Act II

Chapter Text

Act III: Pandora's Box

Chapter 16: Terms and Conditions

(CONTENT WARNING: SUICIDAL IDEATION!)

July 21, 2021

Undisclosed holding area, Dulles International Airport, Washington, DC

"Lincoln, is that you?" Clarke spoke up as a familiar face: mocha-toned, kind-eyed, bald-shaven, came into view.

"Hi, Clarke. I'm glad to see you." Lincoln, Octavia’s husband, former Army Ranger scout turned DCS operator, and all-around good guy, greeted his friend. Clarke still didn’t know who exactly had been involved in the Klyazma raid, her eyesight having been too messed up to make out more than Lexa, Anya, and Octavia. She knew Monty and Tris had been there based on their voices, but everyone else’s identities were still up in the air.

"Good to know that at least one person around here is." She said to him, relieved that Linc wasn’t also convinced she was not to be trusted no matter what she said. Granted, that brought her allies up to a grand total of two, but it was already a damn sight better than none.

“How is it that you always manage to insinuate yourself into the worst possible circumstances?” He wondered.

“What could possibly compare to this, Linc?” She asked.

"Clarke Abigail Griffin, when you're helplessly suspended from a ceiling beam by your wrists in chains and some Pakistani psycho terrorist asks you who else you fucked, only you would answer 'just your sister'." Lincoln laughed, the memory having passed from terrifying reality into an anecdote of a kind that only soldiers found amusing.

"Hey, in my defense: I knew rescue was only minutes away and I wanted to piss him off to throw his balance. Plus it stopped him from beating you up, so I'll say it was worth it." Clarke, forever the martyr, explained. "And I really did fuck the guy's sister, just not in the way he meant it." She added: that had been a nice bonus, and one that Bellamy had even encouraged her to try to weaponize, to boot.

"Karachi really was loads of fun apart from that one day, wasn't it?" Lincoln said, thinking back on this crazy off-the-books mission that had eventually resulted in the termination of Osama bin Laden.

"Best damn time I ever I had that wasn't off duty, for sure." Clarke smiled for the first time in a while, happy to have a moment alone to just reminisce with an old friend.

"And I never would've met Octavia if she hadn't led the rescue team, so I guess I owe you one for that, you nutcase." Lincoln stated, raising his fist for a bump that fit somewhat awkwardly between the iron bars that separated them, but did a lot to put Clarke’s mind at ease. She knew that she’d be hauled back in front of Lexa, and possibly Raven, again imminently, and this time she was neither dead tired nor doped up, so it was time to begin plotting a way to make Lexa protect her from having the intel tortured out of her, moreover, from being thrown into Florence forever. Not that she saw any way to make the latter happen but to take extreme measures, but if that was what it took…

Soon enough, more guards came that Clarke could only place as low-level assaulters from Lexa’s usual platoon, whose names she’d never really heard. Lincoln still remained close by as they opened the gate and told her to turn around and put her hands behind her back.

“Oh, for the love of… Is this really necessary?” She grumbled, as if there was a realistic flight risk – pun not intended – of world’s most wanted fugitive from the hands of the freaking alphabet soup with the Director of National Intelligence and her oodles of invisible bodyguards on scene that would shoot to kill?

“Standard procedure, ma’am. I’ll be the next one in cuffs if I don’t follow the rules.” One of the guards explained, not unkindly, and Clarke had to admit that they were also just doing their jobs.

So she complied, letting them restrain her and lead her back to the same interrogation room from yesterday, noting that she hadn’t been gagged or blindfolded this time nor clasped in leg irons as well, which would have been the real standard procedure for an ultra-high-risk prisoner. This must be Lexa’s doing, but if the woman thought that Clarke would feel grateful for this, she’d have another thing coming.

Interrogation room, CBP annex, Dulles International Airport

July 21, 2021

Lexa arrived back at the interrogation room before the others, having slept soundly and getting more than enough energy to face what would undoubtedly prove to be a long, difficult day. In fact, she’d requested to get some alone time with her most and least favorite blonde, which Raven, still pissed off about yesterday, had wished her good luck with.

She'd been briefed that unlike her own, the night hadn't been peaceful for the blonde, whose normally immaculate hair had been a mess. It was such a shame: Lexa had always loved the sun-kissed coloring of the Griffin Sisters' hair just as much as they enjoyed her own earthy chestnut tone. Clarke was a little bit of a diva, so if she'd not even tried to fix her hair, it tipped Lexa off that Clarke was in a serious dip if not outright depression – just one more thing that needed fixing.

Her guards reported that the girl had given them the silent treatment too, tossing and turning and barely getting any rest in between rather visceral nightmares that she wouldn't say anything about either. Lexa was a little disturbed that, according to the bits of spoken language the night guards could make out, Clarke's dreams had involved Lexa being shot and dying, which on the one hand was kinda sweet of her to worry about, but on the other made Lex nervous as to who would be doing the shooting, because Clarke's dreams often involved her real-life contingency scenarios. If there was a credible threat to Lexa's life, she needed to know.

Clarke'd eaten a little in the morning, but hadn't been able to keep it down for long. Apparently, she'd broken her newfound vow of silence to chalk it down to stress and requested a very specific remedy called 'nux vomica' to keep her stomach from overturning again, which Raven had approved and allowed her to eat something else that had stayed down, meaning that she at least would have the energy to talk. And Lexa was eager to resume talking now, having slept surprisingly well in the knowledge that her old friend was safely stowed away nearby and feeling reenergized, ready to get down to brass tacks and search for clues (without splitting up her gang) regarding why Clarke had been in Moscow and about this evidence she claimed to have in her possession yet refused to share details of. Not without a hefty price tag, Lexa surmised. But she was willing to upfront a significant cost just to see if whatever Clarke revealed in return would be worth it – and already, she had to catch herself and try to think of her as just Griffin, not ‘Clarke’ – feeling confident that she could recoup the cost if it turned out to be a dud.

Little Griffin had always been like this: unable to pick one lane and stick to it, always trying to occupy all of them at once just in case she'd made a mistake somewhere. The ex-Director was infamous for hedging her bets, so was it really that unthinkable to imagine that she might also have backup countries to pledge her loyalty to? Because that posed one hell of a conundrum: either Clarke had betrayed America, making her Lexa's adversary, or she hadn't, in which case America had betrayed Clarke, making Lexa her enemy. Either way, it was gonna be tricky to pry anything out of the girl now. And Lexa really couldn't stomach the thought of stooping to enhanced methods, because those only actually worked on people you were already certain were withholding knowledge you needed, and anyone else would say anything just to make it stop, including total confabulations. They couldn't afford to have the already murky waters get muddled any further.

And besides, hurting Clarke even more wasn't something Lexa wanted to be responsible for: she already felt guilty enough about throwing her friend under the bus so viciously in front of Justice Sydney and wished to make some kind of amends – keeping her safe would have to be the method, since there wasn't much else she had leeway to do, at least for the time being. Keep her safe, and keep her to herself, because Lexa intended to make this very, very personal.

The first thing that Lexa noticed about Clarke when said woman was brought into the room and had her handcuffs undone only for long enough to re-cuff them to the table, was just how much like shit she looked. Her face more closely resembled that of a raccoon than a human, with the deep black and purple rings around her eyes showing that she practically hadn’t slept at all. The brunette had to choke down a pang of unwanted sympathy that threatened to peek through: she knew that her own eyes were like an open book to the blonde, and she'd surely capitalize on the slightest whiff of weakness.

She'd been cold, haughty, aloof, even arrogant. She'd certainly displayed a borderline narcissistic personality. Clark- no, Griffin had always been composed, always looking like she was in total control and all that her adversaries did was mildly amuse her, as if their best efforts were nothing but pre-planned parts in Clarke’s – dammit, Griffin’s – schemes.

That was no longer the case. The girl didn't look dignified now. Oh, she was trying to hide it and she did it well, but Lexa always had been able to spot the blonde's tells: she was terrified.

But for all that, she still wasn’t budging. Not a word was said by those lips that were normally open to make words flow out like droplets in a thunderous waterfall.

"Will you say something?!" Lexa snapped after half an hour of fruitless questioning. Clarke knew that the other woman wasn’t going to torture her, leaving Lexa with very limited options and quickly fraying nerves.

"No." Clarke said. She had said something, but in a way that now precluded her from saying anything else. Now that was just typical. So many layers of utter bullshit.

"... Okay, that's actually brilliant." Lexa hated to admit.

“Alright, I’m ready to talk.” Clarke suddenly announced.

“Why now?” Lexa inquired.

“Because you were nice to me.” Was the answer, and looking into her eyes, Lexa could tell that Clarke was serious about it. What a motivation, just like on the plane… Something to keep in mind, for sure.

“You mentioned something about Volkov’s boyfriend. I didn’t know he had one.” Lexa asked her first question with any hope of getting an answer. It wouldn’t surprise her if this was a closely kept secret: if it was true and were to become known, Andrei wouldn’t be the President of Russia for much longer. For as many strides as Russian culture had taken towards Westernization over the past twenty years, there still remained a deeply rooted homophobia that affected gay men a thousand times worse than lesbian women, so Volkov would end up persona non grata in his own country.

“Neither did I.” Clarke spoke, halting Lexa’s train of thought.

“Who tried to poison you, Griffin?” She kept pressing the matter.

“You want his name? He’s already dead.” Clarke answered with the obstinacy of a grazing mule.

“Who.” Lexa said once more, taking a long drag from a coffee cup and wishing it was whiskey instead.

“How about a deal.” Clarke proposed, smirking.

“Go fuck yourself.” Was Lexa’s answer to that.

“Worth a try.” Clarke said, wisely swallowing down her initial reply of ‘Don’t you wish?’ as she did need to ask for Lex’s help soon. “Nikolai Petrenko, SVR Deputy Director. Nia said he wanted to recruit me and sent me to…”  She trailed off, unwilling to fill in the blank conclusively and immediately condemn herself to being hauled off for murder. “He did a recruitment pitch, then tried to poison me to death. I switched glasses with him and he drank his own death instead.” She explained, putting it in a way that she could claim self-defense.

“It’s unlike you to close off an avenue so thoroughly.” Lexa stated, bumping off Petrenko outright was more Nia’s MO than Clarke’s. “Didn’t you stop to think that such a drastic action would raise all kinds of alarms back home?”

"I suppose you think you're terribly clever." Clarke deadpanned: as if Lexa didn’t know that Clarke knew that it would paint a huge target on her back. "Don't think too highly of yourself. I knew you'd come. I will admit that I didn't expect it would be so soon. A little earlier, and I wouldn't have gotten a hold of the materials I'm sure you're going to want." She continued speaking, making it sound like everything had gone exactly according to plan even though Lexa knew that it hadn’t: the shorter woman had been thoroughly surprised by the raid on her lakeside compound.

Oh, boy, had Lexa done it now. She wanted to unlock Princess Griffin’s mouth, and she’d succeeded: because now the woman wouldn’t stop yapping. And she was still referring to things she wouldn’t share any details about!

"At present, you are an EPW under DIA jurisdiction.” The Commander began putting on the thumbscrews. “But you're not completely screwed: General Porter doesn't know you're here. But don't do as I say, and that could change quicker than you can bat those pretty eyes and say 'please don't'. Understood?"

Indra Porter was Lexa's boss, the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, and a living legend among those in the know if there ever was any. And this woman, who held Clarke's immense respect and admiration, who had long been her hero and inspiration, also happened to scare the living shit out of her. Indra was one of the three people in the world that Clarke Griffin was truly afraid of, the others being Nia Koroleva herself and Abigail Griffin.

"She... But... How..." Clarke stammered, mind spinning as she tried to square being told that Indra didn’t know with the fact that Clarke was back in America at all. Raven went over Indra’s head, that was the only answer. …Meaning that Reyes and Woods could use reading Porter in as a highly effective threat.

"Operational compartmentalization. I'm sure you understand." Lexa, sensing the change in blue eyes that exploded into near-total blackness, sassed her prisoner/friend. "The only people outside the observation room beyond that window that know you're here are DNI Reyes, General Blake, Commander Blake, and the President. I have been given full discretionary authority, and that includes looping in General Porter if I feel it necessary." She laid out what sort of dynamic would exist between them going forward. "Will it be necessary, Griffin?"

"No, Commander. I swear to God, you don't have to go that far." The blonde whisper-yelled, choking on air, all of her earlier cocky bravado gone as she squirmed in her seat, trying to disappear into the floor.

"Outside of this room, the only people that know you're back Stateside are Raven, Gustus, Andrei, and most likely Nia and her ilk." Lexa explained. "I'd like to contain this information for as long as possible. It's unlikely to last, but every minute might be the difference." She went a little deeper, giving away that she was taking Nia seriously as a threat, hoping Clarke would take the bait.

“Difference between what and what, if you don’t mind me asking?” She asked, falling into Lexa’s trap.

“I was hoping you’d tell me.” She said back to Clarke.

“I have been telling you. Repeatedly. For almost two years now.” The younger woman insisted, growing antsy.

Then, something Lexa’d said clicked, as the next thing out of her mouth was “Bellamy knows I’m back?”.

“Yes. It was impossible to keep him out of the know. But that’s the extent of his knowledge: he was no clue why you’re here or where you are.” Lexa answered. “The others are fully aware, though. Especially Raven. She’s the one who authorized this whole thing, and my father who ordered it to begin with.” She elucidated. “So place your bets, because there’s some powerful people out there that think you can still be saved, and others who can’t wait to see you fall.”

"You're smart, Lexa. I know you know perfectly well that I'm not going to give you the littlest thing without getting something in return." Clarke replied, carrying on a more serious iteration of the conversation aboard the Ilyushin.

And Lexa didn’t rise to the bait, wanting to minimize the cost as much as possible: "You kept talking about how Nia was the biggest threat to American lives since Bin Laden, claiming that you were working to stop her. You've been inside the belly of the beast for months, and now that you're talking to a representative of American interests, you're just gonna let Koroleva do whatever she wants, because you don't like being told what to do?"

"See? I told you you were smart." Clarke pointed out for whatever reason. "Although, there's a bit of a disconnect in your argument." She continued. "You people have been convinced from the moment I started wanting you about Nia's intentions that I was, what was it again, 'chasing ghosts'? So as far as I know, you're just trying to play my heartstrings and you still don't think Nia's a threat at all." The ex-CIA spook finished, sliding into Clarke Griffin Paranoia.

"She wanted you so badly she attacked a prisoner transport on US soil and embedded you into the FSB. Whether or not your theory is correct, that tells me she's up to no good. And I want you to help me figure out what that is, in a way that'll hold up to peer review." Lexa told Clarke what she expected of her captive.

"And what makes you think that I can do such a thing from captivity when I couldn't even do it while freely moving about Lubyanka?" Her interlocutor said back, obviously trying to work Lexa like an asset.

"You said you have materials. Let's start with those." The DIA commander, not easily fooled, countered.

"Okay. Unshackle me. Let's start with that." Clarke replied, slamming her cuffs on the table for effect.

"You are a finely tuned living weapon. I can't risk doing that, Griffin." Lexa shot it down.

"Then I believe this conversation is over. You can send me off to the chair now." Clarke said with finality, squaring her jaw and gluing her lips shut once again, continuing her infuriating mind game.

Leaving the interrogation room and entering Observation, Lexa met with what had become the usual group – Raven, Anya, and Octavia – leaving Clarke stewing in her own thoughts for the moment.

She sighed loudly and called up a Handyman to go fetch her a whiskey after all: she was a 29-year-old grown-ass woman who could handle a single shot to take the edge off without it dulling her senses.

“Okay, people, what are my options?” She asked the room.

Anya was the first to suggest an idea: “I could go in there and pop her hip joint out of place?”

“Yeah, let’s try it on you first, see what sort of crazy shit it makes you say.” Octavia responded in the expected manner.

“Torture is not an option.” Lexa said, defusing the brewing argument between her officers. “There’s no way of telling whether whatever she’d say is the truth or misdirection; and besides, I’m trying to win her trust here.”

“I suppose you could try to guilt trip our little martyr into giving up the goods?” Raven suggested, much more reasonably, as Clarke was a total sucker for a sob story and had some latent self-esteem issues to jab a thumb into.

“Yeah, no. She’ll recognize that, see we’re manipulating her, and clamp down harder than an oyster protecting its pearl.” Lexa shot down this idea as well, still trying to think of one of her own and coming up empty.

“Or,” Octavia began, “you give the girl what she’s asking for, and if she doesn’t play nice, take it away again.”

“That would depend on what she’s asking for. I know I have full power here, but I don’t want to make her think that she can use me as a checkbook.”

“So make it clear that granting her requests is a boon, a privilege, not a claim right.” Octavia suggested.

“I hate to say it, but I think O is right.” Lexa told Rae and Anya. “If you guys have another plan, I’m all ears, but I just don’t see a way forward that isn’t give and take.”

Raven counted to ten in her head before speaking: “I suppose I owe you for leading Moscow.”

“More than one.” Lexa said back, reminded of the terrible toll in human lives reaped yesterday.

“So I’ll support this under protest, only because I can’t see another way either.” The DNI begrudgingly spoke. “But Lex? If she steps a single toe out of line, I wanna hear about it, and I’ll bring a slow-burn fuse with me when I ask her why.”

When Lexa walked back into the interrogation room, Griffin immediately perked up.

“Ah, excellent.” She said, breaking her silence again. “I see you’ve arrived at the inevitable only conclusion.”

“You don’t know what goes on inside my head, Griffin.” Lexa engaged her again, against her better knowledge.

"You're thinking about what you stand to gain, weighing it against my considerably less costly demands, and you hate yourself for being unable to devise an excuse that you can use to justify saying no." Clarke psychoanalyzed, and didn’t Lexa resent the fact that Clarke had such extensive medical training alongside their 27 years of knowing each other.

“You win this round, Princess.” Lexa let out a long-suffering sigh at being outmaneuvered by a woman in shackles.

"I have four preconditions. Fail to meet these, and this conversation won't even start.” Clarke began issuing her demands. “You can stick me in ADX right now, because in about six months, you're gonna be begging to have me back because forty-seven million US Citizens will be dead." She gave her dire warning to Lexa, whose own pupils dilated as she took in the enormity of what such a casualty figure would entail: equivalent to the whole Eastern Seaboard being wiped out.

Clarke, for her part, wasn’t actually having a good time playing this game, rather hating the situation that forced her into abusing Lexa this way (or at all). But she wasn't gonna admit where the evidence was, allow them to extract it, and then leave her to rot. Not without some seriously beefy guarantees of safety.

She was going to set some conditions first to ensure that she could at least count on being kept around long enough to see Nia die first: she believed she deserved that much. And there was simply no way she was gonna let anyone else touch her in that area where she’d put the canister without her permission ever again – she'd put that medical training to use to perform the extraction herself, knowing that she'd be a lot gentler on her own body than some establishment surgeon who'd literally treat her like the enemy.

“What guarantee do I have that this evidence really exists?” Lexa asked when she’d collected herself.

"Because I have no reason to lie." Clarke answered. "If I fail to produce the evidence quickly, I know what the consequences will be. I won't need more than... Two hours, maybe...? Once I get some guarantees. And privacy. Yeah, that one's so important, it's non-negotiable." She stated, knowing how invasive and painful the extraction was bound to be. "Give me two hours of uninterrupted privacy, and I'll come back with the files in my hands. Literally. I won't need a computer or anything, just... Just put me in a hotel room somewhere and leave me to it."

“Very well, but all knives and other sharp objects and blunt instruments will be removed from it beforehand, it’ll be somewhere too high to jump from, and there will be armed guards outside the door and snipers watching from other buildings to make sure you don’t try to scale down the damn walls.”

“Done.” Clarke responded immediately, not putting up a fight, letting Lexa know that this was serious for her.

“Now, let’s hear those demands, and I’ll see if I can arrange them. Don’t go crazy.” Lexa spoke, green eyes boring into blue in a silent warning that Clarke had better be reasonable or else.

"I want to not be spending the nights in a cage, but actual comfort. I was thinking maybe the Statesman. Oh, no, let's do the Hay-Adams." Clarke began, and even though that was gonna put a big dent in the operational budget, it could be covered, and would also provide living space for Lexa’s task force who could stay close to their prisoner at all times, so Lexa took no issue with accepting this condition.

Clarke issued the next one: "Secondly, I want a blank check for personal purchases within reason that don't pose a security risk, including food purchases, and I want some things discreetly because it's nobody's business." This was already a much more bitter pill to swallow: asking for infinite money and discretionary spending power was ridiculous! When Lexa asked about it, though, she was placated: Lexa and her people would still be able to see every purchase Clarke made, and when she pried out what Clarke meant by ‘discreet’ items, she just blushed, shut up, and approved the demand.

"Thirdly, privacy bubble.” Clarke continued, giving he details: “If I put my arms out horizontally and touch anyone in any direction, they're standing too close. That means I will not be touched without my explicit consent. There will be no manhandling. And somebody standing in a place that body-blocks my access anywhere, I will consider it intimidation and as falling under a breach of privacy." She said, and all things considered, if that was all it took for the woman to not feel like a prisoner so be more amenable to cooperation, that was acceptable. "In all these things, I'm not gonna work on a three strikes system or a cooldown timer, it's all just gonna depend on how annoyed I happen to feel at the moment." Clarke went on to say, which rubbed Lexa the wrong way, but she still okayed it regardless – if Clarke was serious about withdrawing her support so easily, then Lexa could revoke her privileges just as easily.

"Your price is steep, Griffin." Lexa spoke, not noticing that Clarke’d neglected the fourth precondition.

"My price is minimal. It's gonna get really steep if the doomsday clock strikes midnight and you're gonna be sorry that you blew your one remaining chance to head it off at the pass right here and now." She got in reply.

"And finally, once this talk ends, I want to speak with Commander Woods. Alone. That means nobody observing through that window, no cameras or listening devices being active, and all external speakers shut down.” Clarke issued her fourth condition. “And trust me, I can hear and feel the EM fields emanated by those things, so if you break your word, I will know." She further detailed, desperate to get real privacy to discuss the true fourth condition.

“You want to get me alone so badly, what is it you can only tell me and not my own sister?” Lexa asked.

"Fifty million people are going to die if you don't listen to me, and that's only the beginning." Clarke said, not answering the question.

"Because of the conspiracy that Nia Koroleva set up." Lexa surmised.

"Yes!" Clarke shouted, irritated as fuck that her friend could be this dense sometimes.

"The conspiracy that she abducted you to Moscow to so she could bring you in on it. The woman that you have had prior unauthorized contact with and shit-talked my father with, discussing the need for his removal from office."

"I never actually said that. I implied it, but kept my wording too vague to be anything solid. Nia heard what I wanted her to, nothing more." Clarke tried to explain.

"Luckily for you, dad agrees with you. Why is beyond me, but I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt. Anya won't be so gracious." Lexa warned the blonde, who was looking paler by the minute as her anxiety ramped up.

"In my defense: I thought you guys were the SVR coming to kill me. Nia did maneuver me into assassinating their Deputy Director.” Clarke said, latching onto the ‘benefit’ comment.

“You’re being oddly forthcoming all of a sudden.” Lexa pointed out suspiciously.

"I'm being so forthcoming because I'm just trying to tell you what's about to happen. I'm not trying to threaten you, just warn you." Clarke clarified. "And frankly: considering she's threatened to kill anyone who talks, and I'm in no position to protect you, if you decide that blabbing is what you wanna do and you get flatlines for it, it's not my problem, is it?"

Lexa really didn’t know what to say to that: she still had no idea what Nia’s plan even entailed. Death threats were nothing new to her, either, so she just wished Clarke would get on with it, which she eventually did.

“Now that my preconditions have been met, I’ll tell you what I’m gonna need to work with you guys.” The CIA operator spoke when Raven and the others had come inside at her request, Director Reyes only accepting because it seemed like they were finally getting somewhere. “Don’t worry: this is logistical stuff, not personal demands.”

“We’re listening, Griffin.” Rae said, at the end of her patience.

“I will need an Internet connect-” Clarke began to speak, but Raven cut her off immediately.

“Out of the question. Next item.” The DNI said: did Clarke really think she was just gonna be given access to the outside world and do God only knows what sort of damage by contacting other friends of hers?

The blonde had an argument ready, as always: “Then your intel won’t be actionable anymore by the time it gets to me, and you can just go away right now.”

“Do you really think we’re stupid enough to give you real-time cyberspace access?” Raven asked incredulously.

“Then assign some hawk to watch every character I type and install a keystroke logger that also copies every pixel on my screen six times a second, for God’s sake, but if you want my help, you need to enable me to actually be helpful.” Clarke answered, but looked at Lexa for support with pleading eyes while she did so.

“I trust Monty will be able to keep a handle on this. And if she tries anything funny, I don’t think I need to repeat myself.” Lexa spoke after some consideration, prepared to let Griffin se herself up to get shit-canned if she thought she could pull off any funny business online. Her demand made sense: at this high level, intelligence could go useless incredibly quickly, so a convoluted setup with Clarke only being allowed to see approved materials would be a liability.

Clarke now spoke again: "Raven, I'm gonna need you to do something for me, and you're gonna hate it."

“Why do I get the feeling you’re about to ask me to do something illegal?” Raven lamented.

"I need to be someone else. Like, officially. I was thinking I'd dye my hair red, put on an Australian accent, and be Captain Eliza Taylor, on loan from ASIS under the Five Eyes understanding." Clarke sketched out the scenario, leaving Raven stupefied at her gumption and Lexa somewhat unsettled.

A Captain would be of a high enough rank to access most pertinent information, but not far enough up the totem pole to be closely scrutinized. It was a decent way to gather on-the-ground HUMINT – or gather resources to plan an escape with.

"I'm pretty sure Lize is willing to lay low and let me steal her personality for a bit. She owes me big time." Clarke continued, sensing that she was in for a tough sell.

"Wait, this person actually exists?" Raven wanted to know.

"Yup." Clarke confirmed. "Think of it this way: if I cross you, you can point at the Australian Secret Intelligence Service and she'll burn me for you. No need to get the DIA or CIA involved: it’ll be a case of impersonation and the Aussies will handle it without causing a diplomatic ruckus for Washington. That oughta make you feel better about the whole charade." She proposed.

"You're asking me to put a lot on the line, Griffin.” Raven sighed. "If your Aussie friend says no, I'll be responsible for a major international incident with one of our most important Taipei Pact allies. That'll be a career killer for me."

"She's not a friend, as such." Clarke corrected, glossing over Raven’s career for now.

"Don't tell me." The DNI wanted to know just how these two were involved: if Captain Taylor was a close associate’s of Clarke, she could very well be part of a breakaway scheme.

"We had a thing. It didn't work out. But we parted on amicable terms and she does owe me her life. She'll agree." Clarke stated resolutely, not remotely planning to use Eliza’s identity as a getaway vehicle.

“And how do you suppose that I’ll explain that Captain Taylor is actually Clarke Griffin, the convicted traitor, yet operating right under my nose?” Raven had to have answered.

"Look, I'm assuming that as far as the public is aware, I am currently rotting in isolation somewhere in a Federal supermax, because I doubt the big bosses would allow anyone to know that the CIA's disgraced golden girl was sighted working with the fucking FSB. Right?" Clarke supposed correctly, to a round of reluctant nods. "So you spin a story. I sweet-talked the guards, I got some stuff snuggled in, I used that to escape, then impersonated an ASIS officer to get back into the game and feed intel to the Russkies. Sound plausible?"

In the end, it took several more hours to hammer out the provisional agreement that would see Clarke spared from immediate permanent imprisonment in exchange for her working as a clandestine consultant under Lexa. Clarke’s hands were freed again, much coffee and booze was imbibed, and in the end, the agreement was not sealed in ink, as nobody involved wanted to leave a paper trail for their own reasons, but a simple handshake: a gentlemen’s agreement between ladies, each of them knowing that if one person broke their part of the bargain, everyone else would collapse onto them.

A new version of Gustus’ pardon was even introduced, being dangled at the end of the hook as the reward for total cooperation towards a meaningful end, which Clarke believed in about as much as she had the first one: not at all.

---WARNING: Skip this paragraph if you are susceptible to thoughts of self-harm!---

"I have one more condition." Clarke said after all but Lexa had exited, this time going home rather than withdrawing to the observation room: Lexa had given Clarke ten minutes of privacy before she’d call some of her guards and escort Griffin to the hotel she’d mentioned that Lex was also ready to settle into for a while, awaiting a change of scenery at a place not so full of ghosts as her house in Alexandria.

"This is not a negotiation, Griffin." The woman whose full name was Alexandria said, pissed that Clarke thought she could add yet another condition to an already agreed-on settlement: spoken like a true Russian.

“I think you know me well enough to realize that I understand when I’m being sold shit for gold.” She told Lexa.

"Clarke Abigail Griffin, I thought I knew you. I really did." Lexa said back, sighing for the thousandth time today and barely resisting filling her glass with booze again. "But what I got handed to me the other day was a personnel file three thousand pages long that has maybe as many words in it not covered in inkblots. That all adds up to a whole lot more than you ever told me about, so right now, I don't know who I have in front of me." She tiredly told her… hopefully one day she could be her friend again, but right now, Lexa truly didn’t know.

“27 years, Lexa, should be enough- I’m sorry.” Clarke started to say, cutting herself off for a reason unknown. “Commander Woods, you’ve known me long enough to understand that I don’t trust easily.” She finished, only now reminding Lexa that she’d forbidden Clarke from using her name. And though it was Lexa’s own command, she still felt shitty about it being implemented.

Clarke carried on, though: "All of the things we talked about before were window dressing. It's irrelevant. How fucking naïve do you think I am? Even if that pardon is legitimate, I'll bet my life that it's the only copy in existence and you guys chucked it in an incinerator the moment it was out of my sight." Princess Paranoid declared. "No, Lexa, there's something I need you to do for me. You specifically, and it's a personal favor that won't cost you more than maybe a dollar, unless lead suddenly got a lot more expensive. Do that, and I'll do anything within my power to help you stop Nia. But if you don't, then you're shit outta luck." Clarke said, her tone of voice warning Lexa that what she was about to ask was the real make or break moment that everything else would hinge upon.

"Fine. What do you want from me?" Lexa said, bracing herself for something ridiculous: ridiculously expensive like demanding an attack helicopter, ridiculously impossible like operational command of Lexa's task force, or just plain ridiculous like again demanding a kiss for every name.

What Clarke asked for was not ridiculous. No, what she said after gulping own the two cups of whiskey left in a bottle that could serve as a shiv but was simply put back down once empty was a hell of a lot more… Impossible in a far more gut-wrenching way. Clarke locked eyes with Lexa, and slowly, calmly, enunciating every syllable, issued her last demand, the one that Lexa knew she had no choice but to say yes to or lose it all: "When all this is over, I need you to take that handgun of yours, flick off the safety, put its barrel against the back of my head, and pull the trigger."

---END OF TRIGGER WARNING---

Lexa began laughing wryly, not finding this absurd comment funny at all, only for the sound to peter out when she saw that Clarke was just staring at her unmoving, with watery eyes and her lips turned down.

"I'm not kidding.” She confirmed Lexa’s fear when she found her voice again. “I know that the odds of me surviving this thing are minimal, but even if I do, they'll throw me in Florence ADMAX and melt down the key. I'm not going to subject myself to that. So this way, we all get what we want. Your father gets Nia's head on a plate, you get your revenge, and I get my freedom, in the only way it can still count." She laid out, letting Lexa know precisely how much faith she didn’t have that the promise of a pardon would be honored. It was no wonder she wanted Lexa alone to issue this outrageous demand: Octavia would’ve blown her lid if she’d heard, Raven wouldn’t ever allow it under the terms and conditions of her own orders from Gustus, and Anya… Knowing her sister, Anya would probably tell Clarke that it was the only acceptable outcome anyway because she didn’t deserve to live after what she’d done.

Lexa cared too much. She couldn’t possibly say yes, and yet, she’d been painted into a corner with no exit other than by agreeing. She’d promised herself she would protect Clarke, and that included shielding her from harming herself. Would it be okay to do that if she didn’t want to be protected? Could she justifiably protect Clarke from herself, when all the woman saw in any potential future was either being KIA or put away forever lest she embarrass the government?

Lexa wouldn’t want to live like that. Lexa was convinced that her father would keep his word. But she knew that Clarke would never believe it until and unless she had conclusive proof of it, which wouldn’t be forthcoming until after their current predicament had been resolved.

So with her spoken words, Lexa agreed to Clarke’s term, fully intending to honor it should the blue-eyed girl’s prediction come true. But inside herself, Lexa also resolved to change Clarke’s mind no matter how much effort it would take, because come what may, Lex would never be able to live with herself without first giving Clarke the best possible chance she could provide at letting her clear her name and living a long, good life after all was said and done.

Because deep inside her, Lexa was certain that Clarke Griffin was… an arrogant idiot, a self-righteous bitch, a stuck-up princess… but also a loving sister, a dear companion, a sweet friend whose soft side only emerged around those she trusted but whom she protected with the ferocity of a mama lioness, and certainly not a traitor.

So when Lexa asked Clarke what made her believe that an express checkout would be the best option, the reply was: "You stop Nia, they give you all the credit, a nice promotion, plaster your face all over the headlines, maybe stick a bunch of medals on your chest." That was the picture Clarke sketched of her predicted outcome.

"But you know what I have to look forward to?" She rhetoricated, answering her own question right away: "Living death." She stated somberly. "Six by eight feet of bare metal walls for twenty-three hours a day. Your shower is inside that cell, and that's where you get your meals too. No contact with anybody else except the guards, whom you aren't allowed to make conversation with. You never see another inmate, let alone get visitation rights. And the one hour you get to leave your cubby hole, they take you out in more shackles than Hannibal Lecter and shove you in a separate courtyard, alone." She explained, knowing this was how things worked because she’d helped Lexa put some terrs into those very conditions she described. "The only reason why they'd stick anyone in those memory holes instead of just killing them that makes sense to me is because they want to make those poor bastards suffer for as long as humanly possible." Clarke opined. "I'm not even thirty yet, and I refuse to spend what could be fifty or sixty years like that. In permanent separation for longer than I ever got to live outside." She spoke, shakily but unwavering. "So here's the deal: I help you end Nia Koroleva and you shoot me, or you don't, and I'll find a way to do it myself."

"Why are you acting like there isn't a signed pardon underwritten by the Attorney General and the freaking President right there in front of you?" Lexa asked, desperately trying to make Clarke see that she did have a positive exit clause.

"Stop playing naïve. You're too smart for that." Clarke said, drained of energy and lacking hope.

"You've been reading too many shitty spy novels if you believe that we're actually that callous. A deal is a deal. How many burned assets have you let go without putting them down?" Lexa challenged her.

"About four dozen, I reckon. But none of them were convicted traitors with a death sentence." Clarke recalled. "Does anybody outside a fifty-foot radius of this room know of your father's pardon? Is there anyone who can attest to its existence that can't just claim no such promise was ever made? Do my parents know?" She asked Lex, then coming out with a "What?" as the beautiful brunette suddenly looked like she’d been slapped in the face.

"Clarke..." Lexa began slowly, not wanting to make it even worse.

"You don't get to call me by my name if I can't call you yours. Fair's fair." Clarke said, getting angry again now that the immediacy of the situation was fading. "Now, about my parents?"

"I don't know how to tell you this, but... Your father..." Lexa knew that Clarke was never gonna stop asking and most likely stonewall until she had her answer. So she told her everything. And if she thought Clarke couldn’t possibly look any more dejected, she hated to be proven wrong.

Clarke couldn’t believe her ears, yet the way Lexa’s own face drooped so naturally left no space for doubt that her friend was telling the truth. And its weight hit Clarke like a freight train. Being in control was her business. Even this long, vacillating, taxing debate had ended precisely the way Clarke had wanted it to from the beginning. But sometimes, random acts of nature asserted themselves to prove that humanity was nowhere near as potent in deciding its own destiny as many liked to believe.

She may have been in Moscow when it happened, but even if she'd been in DC, there was simply no way that even the full resources of the CIA could've predicted, let alone prevented, a driver getting behind the wheel drunk, ignoring a red light, and plowing into her father's car at high speed. He’d been cut out of the wreck and rushed to Walter Reed, where he was pronounced dead on arrival by her own mother, his own wife.

At least the drunk had been killed on impact too. But that didn’t make her feel any better. It didn’t help at all. He would never be able to take another life, but that wouldn’t bring her father back.

“For what it’s worth, Clarke: I’m truly sorry.” “If it makes you feel any better: Abby had me kicked out of his funeral because she wanted me to suffer for what I did to you.”

“It doesn’t, Lex. It really doesn’t.” Clarke shook her head, trying to piece her broken mind back together.

“So what do we do next?” Lexa asked cautiously.

"What's next?” Clarke parroted, needing another moment to collect herself. She had to dissociate, push her grief into a box, because she had to stay focused on the task at hand. She would mourn later, and when it hit her, she knew she’d fall apart. But right now, she had to shove her humanity aside and bear the mantle of Commander of Death once more. “Well, now you prove that you can keep your word; and then, we get to work and I'll fetch you my microfilms." Clarke forced herself back to the here and now. "It's time to put that operational budget to use. You're taking me clothes shopping."

Chapter Text

Chapter 17: The Enemy of My Enemy

July 22, 2021

The Hay-Adams Hotel, Washington DC

"Wowie. Now this is more like it." Clarke nodded appreciatively as she took in the space around her. Second only to the Statesman Hotel in Chevy Chase and far less gaudy than it, the legendary Hay-Adams, with its neo-classic Italian Renaissance architecture and brightly colored spacious interiors, would serve as an excellent base for staging the headquarters of an off-the-books clandestine operation. Luxurious and ornate without overdoing it, this was the sort of environment that Clarke, Lexa, and Anya were used to, and Octavia as well as her closeness to Clarke, first via Bellamy and then in her own right, had netted her a rather luxurious life as well, but for most of the others, this was like landing in the lap of luxury of a kind that was so lavish they had no idea how to behave.

Clarke found it far too amusing, looking at the DCS guys and gals milling about gaping at a place like this, that they’d most likely only ever have seen on the inside in passing, never able to afford even one night’s stay here. And now, they were being put up at one of the fanciest hotels in the world indefinitely. It couldn’t quite hold up to the place on the Klyazma in Clarke’s discerning eye, and she missed her Lamborghini Urus from Russia almost as much as she did her original BMW M7 (she was tempted to ask where it was, but wasn’t gonna push her luck), but the place was infinitely better than a CIA black site or a detainment center usually used for illegal immigrants at an airport.

Clarke had perked up significantly during their shopping spree, as if a crushing weight had been lifted from her shoulders. She was clearly still affected by the news of her fathers untimely demise (and quietly raging at Nia for having withheld the information, given how long ago it had been!), but was no longer talking about the inevitability of her being fucked over by the government but considering ways in how to fool Nia into thinking she was still on her side to more effectively fuck the FSB over instead, so Lexa supposed that that was a good enough start.

The evening had almost been like a hangout between friends. It would have looked odd for a bunch of big, burly guys to come along with Clarke and Lexa, so Lincoln and Ryder couldn’t tag along. Anya really didn’t want to leave her sister alone with the psychopath but was immensely reluctant to be near the Griffin girl for any longer than she absolutely had to, so Tris had eagerly volunteered to go in her stead, wanting to impress her mentor and show that she too could handle herself without being babysat. She was 24 already, not a child that needed constant supervision anymore. Anya disagreed: when it came to Clarke Griffin, there was no such thing as being too careful, and Tris Thornton also tended to see the best in people. So Octavia had come along too, as if that didn’t stack the odds even further in Griffin’s favor, but none of the DCS’ rank and file girls were quite on the same skill level, and if Anya was reluctant to go, Raven absolutely would not, which left their candidate pool woefully short.

In the end, it turned out that they’d had nothing to worry about. Apart from draining Lexa’s bank account, which, let’s be honest, was never going to be emptied no matter how much she splurged. And Clarke’s tastes were highly refined, which was another way to say ‘expensive as hell’. Her only two selection criteria seemed to be ‘do the colors match’ and ‘is it comfortable to wear’, though, and that rubbed Tris the wrong way. The youngest member on the team turned out to be something of a fashionista, talking about brand compatibility, thread count, solar permeability, and other terms that neither Clarke, Lexa, or Octavia understood nor cared about, but which Tris insisted were critical to Clarke fitting into the DC Metro haute culture scene in a way that she’d blend into plain sight, catching eyes for only the right reason. Clarke described what sort of a look she wanted, Tris helped her assemble it, and after far too many hours of fitting things on only to discard them again that Lexa and Octavia had only survived because they’d thought to bring their phones with them, Lexa had paid the monstrous bill, told Clarke that this better be worth it, and then accepted that she was gonna have to fork over even more when Octavia announced it was time for dinner – at a place so expensive that the prices weren’t even on the menus and you usually needed to reserve at least two months in advance, at least until ‘Doctor Hannah Carson’ showed up with her entourage and requested a table for four, which magically appeared.

Lexa, not wanting to explain to Indra why the hell her company accounts were being charged for pufferfish Fugu, Kobe beef in Matsutake mushroom sauce garnished with Ruby Roman grapes and Densuke watermelon cubes, and sea urchins with real wasabi, decided to fork it over from one of her own checking accounts, nearly burned a hole in Clarke’s head when ‘Hannah’ explained that her girlfriend (ergo, Lexa) was treating the friend group tonight but responding only with a smile that promised she was gona make her pay it back later.

But she couldn’t deny that it was money well spent. Lexa rarely took the time to make elaborate dinners, with her usual routine being that she’d have a homemade hot breakfast after an early morning run with lunch and dinner being afterthoughts of takeout or pre-mades, and was starting to appreciate why Clarke swore by eating out almost every night even as she also made Clarke swear to not repeat this stunt and pick a slightly less fancy place next time.

As it turned out, the task force had rented out two entire floors for an indefinite duration, the upper floor having the suites they'd be staying in and the lower one being a utility level containing a large conference room, common lounge area, and several multifunctional spaces that the rest of the team had spent the time the quartet had been in town for dragging all sorts of stuff into, getting the area ready to use as an operations center.

One big space had been converted into an armory, another now played host to a server park for Monty to do his best work at, and a smaller place now contained an illegal moonshine still that was Mr. Green’s personal bribe: he cared little for money or fame, but mostly the thrill of the chase, the latest video games, and his beloved blue-tinted rotgut.

“Here we are.” Lexa announced as she guided Clarke to the suite where the latter would be staying. She made Lexa step inside first – probably another paranoia thing, but Lexa wasn’t even gonna question it anymore – and whistled as she took in its features.

There was a 36-inch ‘flatscreen’ TV, one of those top-of-the-line newfangled models with a casing only three inches thick. A very beefy Conexit laptop had been provided as requested attached to an 18-ich external monitor, the computer looking like a brand-new acquisition courtesy of the DIA rather than the hotel. A decent desktop PC would set you back about a grand. Even a basic laptop would cost you four, and a laptop with full desktop functionality was easily twice that. The setup in front of her, though? 25 grand, easily. Lexa had really come through on her side of the deal, so Clarke was determined to uphold her end of it now: Lex wouldn’t live to regret agreeing to the set terms and conditions.

Clarke had something to ask Monty and turned to go see him, only to hold short at the still-open door, looking contemplative. Lexa knew her well enough to intuit what was going through her mind.

"I know what you're thinking, and you're wrong." She told Clarke.

"You a mind reader now, Commander?" Clarke sort of joked.

"I've known you for over 25 years, Griffin." Lexa responded. "No, the door can be opened from the inside without a key. Yes, there will be people on the other side, but no, they won't try to stop you from leaving so long as you don't try to shake them off." She spoke, allaying Clarke’s worries, which she had correctly identified.

With that being said, Clarke exited the suite and Lexa followed as the shorter woman moved quicker than her legs should be able to carry her towards the new data center, where Monty had some goodies ready and waiting, including a new passport and ID card, showing Clarke’s face with fiery red hair instead of the usual platinum.

"Your Captain Taylor came through." Monty announced, somewhat surprised that the foul-mouthed Aussie had been so eager to help once the scheme Clarke had concocted was described to her.

Lexa snatched the new IDs out of Clarke’s hands, not wanting this success to go to her head: "As of this moment, your biometrics will point to Eliza Taylor, ASIS, not Clarke Griffin, former CIA. But we will be monitoring the Captain's signs of life, and if I catch the slightest hint of deceit on your part, I'll ask Mr. Green to restore the proper information and I'll drag you to Colorado myself. Am I understood?” She said, using the same phrase at the end that Costia always used to, making it clear that Clarke may be living it up on her dime, but Lexa was in charge.

“Crystal.” Clarke confirmed – probably, because she could also be calling out the material the decanter full of fruit juice presently in her hands was made of.

"This is a slate phone of the smartphone kind. Not a normal bar slider phone, not a PDA, but a freaking smartphone." Lexa said next, waiting for Clarke to finish drinking something that was neither coffee nor alcohol – another out-of-character moment for Little Griffin as the sweet stuff (apart from iced coffee) had always been Big Griffin’s scene – before handing over Monty’s next not-Christmas gift.

"I can see that. Your point?" Clarke asked, a little absentmindedly. She was never gonna need something like this…

"The point is that this thing costs more than I make in a month and we're not gonna get another unless I pay for it out of pocket, so do not lose it." Lexa explained.

"Come on, Commander, it's not like you're ever gonna run out of money." Clarke pointed out: Lexa’s own lifestyle may be relatively modest compared to Clarke’s usual, but the Woodses were actually a whole lot richer than the Griffins.

"It's a matter of principle." Lexa replied, not one to waste money just because she could.

Planned obsolescence was forbidden nowadays, the practice of manufacturing products designed to break down after a set number of years abolished towards resource conservation.

This meant that the initial cost of purchase for consumer electronics was really high, meaning most people would have to pay in installments, and that was how businesses coped with staying afloat despite much, much fewer items being sold annually than before MF cells became commonplace.

The Texas oil barons and predatory OPEC cabal had to adapt rapidly to a new reality, since all of a sudden, there was no more American market for fuel oil, the only uses left for the stuff being lubricants and plastics. Tech giants Microsoft, IBM, and Apple had to give way to Conexit Telecom as market leader in all things consumer electronics, relegated to playing second fiddle to those of fewer means. And all of the automotive manufacturers that had fled to China for cheap labor and lower taxes were instead coming back to America, with the new MF cell-driven engine assemblies capable of being produced only domestically. Moreover: giving Clarke a Conexit phone (though hamstrung) and Conexit laptop (With the keystroke logger and screencap tech she’d suggested herself) meant that she couldn’t complain about the quality of her hardware, so she had no reason not to use them productively.

There were some other items in Monty’s goody bag (which was really a box, or perhaps a crate), which included a credit card and, to Clarke’s bafflement, a beretta M9 pistol, of the kind she always used to carry a pair of.

"Don't go getting any bright ideas.” Lexa spoke to her as she examined the stuff. “This phone only calls a handful of approved numbers and can't receive calls from any others. The credit card is legitimate, but we will be monitoring every penny you charge to it. Your ASIS credential will work on civvies, but it's not gonna get you any access to real agency systems without my say-so."

"The gun is real too, but I don't need to remind you that so are all of ours." She added after a moment’s pause.

"The bullets are fake. Got it." Clarke deduced with some disappointment of having a bad expectation fulfilled.

"No, they're not." Lexa corrected her.

"Why would you trust me with a loaded pistol?" She inquired, because she’d never do that in Lexa’s place.

"Because I trust you know what will happen if you misuse it." Said woman answered.

“Sure.” Clarke decided to just roll with it. Give her a loaded gun, why not? Perhaps she’d been wrong about Lexa: maybe those green eyes still shone with some level of trust, and she’d be certain not to abuse it.

“There is one more thing.” Lexa spoke, retrieving one last item, which looked like a heavy-duty medical injector.

“Wha… Are you for real gonna knock me out again?” Clarke asked worriedly, only for Lexa to laugh at her expense and explain that no, this doodad didn’t contain a sleeping agent, but a geolocator granule that was a whole lot more advanced than the one Roan had dug out of her arm those months ago. Knowing that she really didn’t have a choice in the matter, Clarke accepted having the thing shot into her neck, where Monty explained that it would now embed itself into her brain stem and at signs of being physically tampered with by anyone without proper authorization, it would disintegrate in a rather fatal manner, so for your own sake, please don’t bother trying to remove it.

"You could always try climbing out through a window, but I wouldn't recommend it. That geotag tells your position down to the millimeter, including elevation above ground level." Mr. Green finished his spiel.

“Who can see my position?” Clarke asked, desiring to know what she had to work with.

"We're operating as a self-contained task force that reports directly to the President. The Director of the DIA is on a need-to-know information drip feed at my discretion." Lexa gave a non-answer, which didn’t go unnoticed by Clarke. "And dad isn't here. So in effect, you're mine and mine alone." She told the curious woman.

"Oh, Commander, that's so romantic!" Clarke exclaimed with a dramatic flourish. "But you know we're not Chechens, so there's no need to kidnap a girl to get her under you."

“Trust me: there’s no need to get you under me when you’re already beneath me.” Lexa said, wincing at the sharpness of her own quip: it hadn’t sounded quite as mean in her head.

Clarke seemed to take it in stride, though, taking this to mean that aside from Monty and Lexa, nobody would be using this geotag as a homing beacon. Probably even Nia couldn’t hack into it.

“Can I get my two hours alone now?” She decided to go with instead of debating any further. “I can hardly wait to show you what I brought you, but, um, I’m gonna need some time to recover after fetching it.”

“I don’t even wanna know, Griffin.” Lexa stated, dismissing her with an order to come back after the two hours were over because she wanted to speak to her alone, which Clarke was happy enough to agree to.

Returning to her suite, she inspected what she had at her disposal. True to her word, Lexa’s people had removed all knives and blunt instruments (as if a laptop couldn’t pull double duty as a cudgel), but she wouldn’t be needing those.

There was a pair of tongs in the kitchen: that would have to do the job. She called up room service and ordered a quart bottle of 46% triple-distilled peated Scotch to use as disinfectant and to wash it down with afterwards, and hoped that it would work without giving her some sort of awful UTI or accidentally DIY-ing an impromptu hemorrhaging hysterectomy. She was never gonna use her body in that way, but that didn’t mean she was prepared to give up part of her innards unless it was medically necessary to save her life, which this very much shouldn’t turn into.

Stuffing the canister in had been excruciating. Somehow, she was pretty sure that pulling it back out was gonna be even worse. But there'd once been that Russian doctor in Antarctica she’d read about that'd performed surgery on his own innards without anesthetic, so this should be a piece of cake in comparison. Although she wished she could also order one hell of an analgesic, but that would make Lexa start to ask questions she didn’t wanna answer, so like a cavewoman of prehistoric times, she was just gonna have to tough it out.

Most garden variety kitchen implements didn't need to come with a warning label to 'do not stick directly into your vagina'. Most people wouldn’t even dream of using them for something so dangerous. But Clarke Griffin wasn’t most people. She’d have to do everything by the sensation of vibrations traveling through the handles and hoping the canister hadn’t moved too far from the exact spot she remembered placing it.

As soon as the Scotch arrived, she drank half the bottle – careful to pour the contents into a glass so she wouldn’t contaminate any of it with her saliva – and waited for the buzz to put her pain receptors into a somatic state.

She still chickened out. Deciding to do this thing at the last second, she first got a change of clothes ready that was a little more practical than the Russian oligarch mink and carmine she’d been captured in she’d still been wearing, swept the room for bugs and collected nineteen of them that she put in a pile on the bed for now, and stepped into the shower, turning the dial to ‘low-viscosity lava’ and making use of the suite’s embedded surround sound systems to blast power metal that would hopefully drown out what were certain to be blood-curdling exclamations.

After she’d showered for a bit, using three rounds of conditioner, shampoo, and body wash just to try and feel a little less dirty, she disinfected the tongs with some of the remaining whiskey and got to work.

Clarke had thought that it would feel like ramming a sword into her belly, that was also on fire. She’d anticipated it would hurt worse than the worst period cramps she’d ever had, and she was proven wrong.

Because getting the thing to pop out was so much worse than that. If there was one thing she could consider a silver lining, it was that it hurt too much for her to be physically able to scream.

It felt like it took forever. Glancing at a digital clock sat on a cupboard next to the wash basin, she saw that it had only taken about four minutes. The canister – thank heavens – had barely moved. And now it was here, on the bottom of the shower floor, blood and other unmentionable bodily fluids washing off it under the powerful hot jets of water; and Clarke found herself praying that the outer shell was as totally waterproof as its manufacturer boasted about as all she could do was lie there curled up on her side clutching her abdomen, slowly draining the remainder of the whiskey as her innards settled back into their normal positions and the pain slowly, slowly began to subside.

She had no idea how long it’d been, only that she’d fallen into a daze born of a mixture of excruciating burning and enough alcohol to put a walrus into a coma, when she finally managed to pull herself back to her feet and turn the water off – and that was only because she heard the padding of someone else’s feet moving closer to her bathroom. "Griffin, you better not be up to any shady business in ther-" Lexa called as she yanked the door open – why hadn’t Clarke thought to lock it? – and invaded her personal space, stopping cold at the sight before her but not moving away either.

"GET OUT!" Clarke, standing there wrapped in nothing but a bath towel, screamed in surprised outrage. "What the fuck are you doing?!" She demanded of the stupefied intruder, whose jaw would’ve actually hit the floor if it had been unhinged like a snake’s. Lexa’s eyes were… not looking as high as propriety demanded.

"Shit, I didn't... I was wondering what was taking so long!" Lexa managed to stammer, then quickly made her exit, so quickly that she came close to reaching escape velocity when she all but flew out the suite door back onto the hallway.

Clarke now sat about gathering herself, finding that she was capable of walking again as long as she kept her movements slow and controlled. Lexa had asked her to meet alone after Clarke’s two hours, and so she would, choosing to pretend to ignore the beautiful brunette’s blatantly ogling her, because it wasn’t like Clarke minded all that much.

Problem being: Lexa hadn’t specified where she wanted to meet. She supposed that the Commander’s own suite was the natural first choice, so she headed over there, carrying a box of secrets with her.

"Yeah, I think you misplaced these, so I took the liberty of collecting them for ya." She greeted Lexa and her annoying sister as the two could indeed be found in Lexa’s suite.

Clarke overturned the box, electronic and analogue devices spilling out onto Lexa’s table. All of the listening devices were there, save for one.

Anya took one look at the collection, then looked at Clarke, and promptly punched her in the head, striking her temple. And left herself open in the process, because next thing she knew, she'd been smacked in the neck with the butt of her own handgun, Clarke was six feet farther away than a split second before, and she was staring down the barrel of a weapon that no longer had its safety on. Griffin wouldn’t have taken a hit if she had her head in the game, but her instincts had drawn her into acting on pure reflex, allowing her to disarm Anya and turn her own weapon against its owner.

Clarke looked surprised about the last bit and flicked it back into the safe position. Realizing it had happened on pure reflexive instinct. She lowered the gun just as half a dozen DIA men came charging up with their own weapons drawn, only for Anya to wave them off, telling them to stand down. 

"Are we done?" Clarke asked, rubbing the impact site.

"For now. I've got my eyes glued on you, Blondie." Anya replied, the glare she was getting from her sister letting her know that she was not going to get off so easily from the Commander’s wrath.

“Here, let me look at that…” Lexa began with surprising gentleness, still feeling self-conscious about the little incident from before, but trailed off as she saw what else was inside the box.

"Did you just down an entire $1,200 bottle of imported 30-year-old Talisker in one go?" Lexa, who despite her modesty was still a fine connoisseur of all things culinary, was surprised the blonde was even awake right now, let alone coherent.

"Yyyep." Clarke slurred, even her built-up tolerances unable to cope with so much alcohol.

“That’s just great…” Lexa said, as she’d hoped to talk to a slightly more coherent Clarke.

“Later, then?” She asked.

“Um, yeah, probably…” Lexa answered, adding “Don’t forget your box.” as she made a mental note to tell Monty to find better hiding spots to put them back in.

‘Later’

Another two hours passed. Clarke had not, in fact, taken her box back with her. There was one curious item remaining she couldn’t place that Lexa wasn’t gonna touch without Clarke and her own officers present, which she supposed contained the elusive evidence that Clarke had claimed to possess. Maybe this deal would pay off after all.

Only two hours, until a Clarke Griffin who looked stone-cold sober appeared at Lexa’s door and actually bothered to knock before letting herself in this time.

The first thing Lexa took note of as she called for the blonde to enter was that Clarke Griffin sure cleaned up well.

She'd tied her hair off into her favorite waterfall pleat style: a braided crown behind which the rest of her hair fell in loose waves, whose naturally golden locks were now the deep red of simmering coals.

Clarke's new outfit consisted of a black trench coat that was much thicker and sturdier than her usual white suit jacket and far easier to move around in, a dark blue-gray polo shirt a little less fancy than the normal light blue dress shirt that also covered considerably more skin, and tight-fit black pants. Not that her new style, courtesy of the expert eye of one Corporal Beatrice Thornton, was any less conspicuous, still being tailored to a perfect fit and quite high-end in terms of quality and refinement. Even if she was a prisoner in all but name, she was gonna take advantage of getting to live off the Treasury's dime and feel as much like herself as she could.

"I feel dirty." Lexa started the awaited conversation, admitting to her being of two minds about the episode on the IL-96. Clarke, naturally, took it the wrong way.

"Oh, so I'm filthy now?" The pale-skinned girl began turning red.

"So you do remember?" Lexa inquired, trying to head off the other's outburst at the pass.

"I couldn't forget if I wanted to?" Clarke reminded Lexa of her unfortunately perfect recall. The holes that had existed in her memory had mended by now as information backfilled into the front of her mind.

"So you'd rather forget, is what you're saying?" Lexa asked, relieved that Clarke felt insulted rather than violated, but also downcast at the prospect of the blue-eyed girl finding that she'd rather not have done it at all.

"That I made you feel 'dirty'? Yup." Clarke answered, much to Lexa's relief: the problem hadn't been the kiss itself, but that Clarke mistakenly believed that Lexa thought she'd been tainted by locking lips with her oldest friend whom she'd pretty much abandoned back on First Street.

"That's not how I mean it." Lexa began to explain.

"Enlighten me." Clarke told her, trying to reserve judgment. She knew that she could jump to conclusions before getting the full story, so reined herself in for the moment.

"It wasn't right. You couldn't have stopped me if you wanted to." Lexa said, revealing that her conscientious issue had to do with lack of consent rather than finding Clarke unappealing.

"I asked you for it." The woman in question pointed out.

"You still weren't in your right mind." Lexa answered: Clarke had been effectively high, so hadn't really been in control of what she was saying. And no matter how much she meant it, at the time or now, Lexa knew she should still have waited at least until the other girl had at least been sober; and even then it would still have been unacceptable even as an exchange currency. Attitudes around physical intimacy may have gotten considerably less Puritan over the past few decades, and you could call it old-school, but Lexa Woods still believed that physical touch should be something special, something to be cherished. She wanted it to mean something: something emotional, not just transactional.

"And I am sober enough now?" Clarke asked, curious to hear what Lexa really thought about her.

"I guess so, but that just means you're my prisoner instead of intoxicated, so you still can't give consent." Lexa replied, laying out her honest thoughts on the matter. She wasn’t saying never, though.

"What that tells me is that you'd do it again if there wasn't a power imbalance." Clarke, observant as ever, got right to the point. She had to admit it: she was... intrigued by the gorgeous green-eyed woman in front of her, now forced to admit to herself that perhaps she had always seen Lexa in a more than friendly way and only ignored it because she'd already been with Costia. She wasn't willing to jump into anything yet, though, her own divorce and her sister's death still too fresh in her mind, the power imbalance Lexa was concerned with also being an insurmountable obstacle for Clarke, and the woman being unwilling to desecrate the memory of her sister by trying something with the one that should have been her wife. Alexandria Woods was 100% off limits, she had to tell herself.

"Are we really talking about this right now?" Lexa took evasive action, equally unwilling to face her own feelings.

"You started it." Clarke spoke petulantly, displeased at not getting a straight answer – or as straight an answer as a lesbian could give a bisexual person, anyway. She chuckled at her internal play on words, which Lexa interpreted as part of a nonexistent mind game, proving why explicit communication was so vital.

"And I'm finishing it." Said woman shut the conversation down. "We have more important things to focus on." She told Clarke, wanting to get back on track about the Nia case.

"This is not over." Clarke told her forebodingly: they hadn't combed through everything, meaning this thing would never leave Clarke's head until it was properly addressed – but there would, hopefully, be time to do that later. "But you're right: stopping Nia comes first." She admitted.

“So we should see about getting ready for a confrontation.” Lexa, happy for the way out, however temporary it would prove to be as she knew Clarke was not done talking about this, opined.

“Yeah, probably.” Clarke agreed. “Lead the way, O Great and Powerful Commander.”

Back to the sarcasm it was. But that was a world removed from the pit of despair Clarke had been wallowing in at Dulles, so Lexa was content to take small steps, so long as they’d keep moving in the right direction.

Her steps were not so small when she took Clarke down to the armory where Octavia was settling in, though.

Five minutes later, converted armory

"So..." Clarke began, addressing Lexa: "Does Silly still live with you?" She tried to make conversation, bringing up Silly the Goose. Costia had, in one of her moments of acting like a chipmunk, decided to wrangle a wild gander just so she could use him for a pun and had someone not been bitten black and blue in the attempt, then decided to take him home to see if she could convince the fowl to stay, which he had. The goose had become Costia’s pet, of a sort, also acting as a guard dog who, much to Lexa’s irritation, liked chasing mailmen around, but proving capable at his job.

"Not anymore. He flew away when Cos didn't come home." Lexa replied after a few second of deciding whether or not to engage with the blonde on a topic that still weighed heavily on her mind. "He still comes by sometimes, though." She mentioned: Silly the Goose had taken flight again, but occasionally dropped down in the front yard of the Alexandria house to check in on Lexa, whom he’d gotten much friendlier with after Costia’s passing.

“Is there something you needed?” Lexa asked, seeing Clarke fidget: her question about the goose had just been a way to break the ice, and there was clearly something on her mind that was actually important enough to make her nervous.

"There's a little thing I maybe forgot to mention?" Clarke said, looking a little sheepish. Having a perfect memory didn’t automatically mean that she could automatically apply it, it had to be noted.

“Now you’re telling me?” Lexa said back, almost rolling her eyes.

"Recall how I said Lize and I had a thing?" Clarke brought up, wringing her hands guiltily. "Well, Lize and Bell had a thing, too..." She trailed off, maybe reliving something, maybe just embarrassed.

"I'd been wondering about that." Lexa said: Clarke had never been the cheating type. "The way the timeline adds up, you were already married." She pointed out.

"We were in Bangkok. It just... happened." Clarke vaguely explained. "And then it happened again, but it was all mutual. It just petered out into friendship after that, though: we'd found each other sexy, but there were no romantic feelings, so the three of us decided to just be friends without benefits."

“But if Bellamy hears about Eliza Taylor being in DC, he might go trying to contact her for old times’ sake?” Lexa got to the brass tacks of why Clarke’d brought this matter up.

“He may wanna catch up with her. Only she’s really in Canberra. So that could get awkward. At least Bell already knows that I’m back in the States, otherwise…” She shrugged, not quite having considered this possibility until just now.

“Then we best keep our movements from intersecting with his.” Lexa determined. “And if he should catch wind, we’ll have to come clean and bring him into the loop at least a little bit…” She had to concede, because placing Bellamy Blake in protective custody would instantly cripple 80 Corps and leave homeland defense short one of its best commanders.

With the matter being settled for now, Lexa led Clarke into the armory, where Octavia was standing behind three tables put together where a mess of disassembled parts belonging to various small arms could be found, from handguns and SMGs to anti-materiel rifles and heavy machine guns.

“Holy shit, O, you preparing to go to war?” Clarke joked, hugging her friend.

"I'm here as this turkey's procurement specialist." Octavia said, pointing out a bemused Lexa. "You name it, I get it. Nothing's beyond my reach."

"But nothing she gets from you goes behind my back, capiche?" Lexa needed to make clear.

"So if I were to ask for an M107A1 AMR?" Clarke, blatantly ignoring the woman, asked O.

"I'd remind you that you're not qualified on the Barrett, and you'll find it under your bed tomorrow morning wrapped in a neat little bowtie." Octavia told her. Knowing O, she wasn’t even kidding about the bowtie.

"How about an FGM-148 Javelin, but the British configuration where they use it as a MANPADS?”

“That would take some time, but give me 18 hours, and I can give you twenty of them with twenty rockets each.” Octavia, salivating over the thought, proclaimed.

"Ah! How about those little self-homing HE mines on spider legs that run at their target and latch on-" Clarke began.

"No need, Princess. I already brought those." O smirked, pointing out a box full of Running Mines in the corner.

“ISR quads?” Clarke asked next.

“Standard issue.” Octavia said: no operator would take to the field without at least two of those nowadays.

“ISR quads with integrated kamikaze bombs?” Clarke, thinking of her Laptop Surprise Flashbang, suggested.

“Now you’re talking sense.” Octavia laughed, jotting down a note to ask Monty and Raven about making it happen.

"And if I wanted a Pave Low rotor-wing gunship?" Clarke asked next, making Lexa mentally facepalm, since she could tell that Fake Redhead said it jokingly, but also wanted to know if it would be possible for real.

"You mean the Sikorski MH-53 Pave Low that was discontinued in 1970 for which only a dwindling supply of old spare parts exists?” Octavia laid out, sounding incredulous, yet going on to say "Sure. Give me a couple of days, and I can have one put together loaded for bear built from scratch-"

"And I'd tell you to go fuck yourself and appropriate it, because there is no way you deserve to handle something as awesome as that." Lexa cut in with a jab at Clarke.

"Fair enough. I'm not the one that's gonna be paying for it anyway." The former blonde nodded. It was strange to both O and Lex seeing Clarke as a redhead: the woman’s hair color had always been one of her easiest identifying features as a glance, so now they both had to take a moment longer to place who exactly they had in front of them.

"You're right, and neither is the Agency. It would come out of my own pocket, so I'd be the only one flying that beast." Lexa responded. Few people knew that Lexa hadn’t actually started as a DCS operator, but began a military career as a CSAR pilot with the 160^th SOAR flying an MH-60L DAP heavy gunship, but had made the switch to land forces after deciding that she’d rather be on the ground where the action was to try and make sure that Combat Search & Rescue wouldn’t be needed in the first place. So yes, she may not have been trained on the old MH-53, but she could most likely pick up how to fly one in a couple of hours.

“Now then, I assume you guys are here for more than chit-chat?” Octavia asked.

“Yes, actually.” Lexa spoke. “Anya’s spitting fire about this, but I’ve decided that ‘Captain Taylor’ here is going to be cuffed to my own wrist – just as a figure of speech – whenever I take the door kickers out, so I can make sure she’s not up to any mischief while I’m away. And she is a hell of a shot.”

"I'm not giving you guys shit for field ops unless you take me with you, and I'm not going anywhere without my M14." Clarke added, telling Octavia what she already knew.

“She can’t have her old one, obviously.” Lexa pointed out. “So I want you to procure the right parts to replicate it. Woods giveth and Woods taketh away, so one pull of the trigger without my say-so, and we’ll know whose side she’s really on.”

"You think that's a threat?" Clarke asked Lexa. "I don't think you understand how this works. Because the way I see it, I'm already dead. So I hold all the cards here but one, and that one in your hand is something I couldn't care less about." She laid out, having already resigned herself to the thought that she wasn’t gonna live long past the end of the mission either way, betting that Lexa would at least want to see it through, and making no secret of her thoughts on the matter.

"I don't believe that." Lexa responded. "You care, Clarke. Maybe not about yourself, but you care about your people."

“And who do you think my people are, Commander?” Clarke, emphasizing the last word with a not entirely wanted sneer, inquired: Lexa was right, as she often was, but her words were ambiguous, and Clarke didn’t like that so much.

“That’s what I’m giving you the chance to find out.” Lexa explained. “I’m hoping that you’ll prove me right and Anya wrong. But I wouldn’t be handing you a marksman rifle if I didn’t think I’m still one of your people.”

“That’s all I wanted to hear. Thank you, Lex- Fuck. Commander.” Clarke hastily corrected herself.

“Oh, forget about it already.” Lexa waved it off – she’d issued the demand in a moment of anger now since faded, and was too awkward and clunky to get used to after decades of using each other’s first names.

“I’m curious.” Clarke began, “In your place, I would lock me inside a room with a dozen guys in full tactical gear whenever there was a combat mission on the ground, not take me along strapped for bear. Why aren’t you?”

"I have an ace card." Lexa simply stated.

“Hehehe. No, you don’t.” Clarke chuckled, the picture of smugness.

Time to wipe that smirk off her face: Lexa told her that "I could lock you inside a room alone with Indra."

"Y... You would.... You wouldn't really do that? Would you?" Mission accomplished: Clarke now looked like a deer in headlights. Even invoking the name of Indra Porter was enough to strike fear into the stoniest of hearts.

“Why don’t you tell me what the canister is about, and then I’ll answer you?” Lexa countered.

“Okay. Let’s get all the officers together in the conference room and check out what I brought you.”

A few minutes later, with the last daylight of evening twilight having faded as nighttime fell over the capital, the leadership of Lexa’s special task force, plus their new off-the-books consultant, gathered around the triangular mahogany table in the conference room, whose windows had been replaced by impact-resistant glass and its walls made soundproof, to take their first look at what would hopefully be the beginning of the end for Nia Koroleva.

Clarke, Lexa, Anya, Monty, Tris, Octavia, Ryder, and Lincoln – accounting for the full command team plus one ex-CIA double agent – piled in around two edges of the triangle towards a point, the buzz of anticipation so thick in the air you could practically feel it shaking the foundations of the Hay-Adams.

“Mr. Green?” Clarke began the meeting, handing over the canister (that she’d had to awkwardly collect from Lexa’s room first) to Monty with a flourish. “Would you care to pop this open and tell everyone what they’re looking at?”

The eager-eyed young man twisted the lid off, shook out its contents onto the tabletop, and went slack-jawed as a handful of thin, long, extremely tightly rolled-up reels of glossy black material imprinted with God only knows what emerged.

“This is… I’d approximate…” The young man said, putting his epic math skills to use to run a quick sum in his head, “Roughly twenty thousand fiches of microfilm. Where’d you get did this from, the Museum of Antiquities?”

“The real mainframe of the FSB beneath the Lubyanka Building, as a matter of fact.” Clarke explained full of pride.

“And this contains all of Russia’s dirty little secrets?” Anya said, not believing for one second that this stuff was legitimate. Monty, though, had already determined that this was no forgery, and his heart rate promptly doubled.

"I don't think the Kremlin knows what's really going on." Clarke said, narrowing down the search. "Look, they told me a lot of lies, a lot of half-truths, and a lot of cherry-picked facts. It wasn't like I had an Internet connection, so you bet they told me only what they thought I wanted to hear."

“Do you have hard evidence proving that this is a rogue outfit operating outside the government wholesale?” Lexa was next to issue a question, and a pretty logical one, Clarke admitted.

"Hard evidence, like what? It's not like I have a damn thumb drive full of classified documentation." She pointed out. "I got a bunch of microfilm with that stuff, though." Clarke

"This microfilm? That’s what’s on there? Welcome back to the Sixties, I suppose."

“Twenty thousand fiches between these rolls, each fiche containing an 8*8 grid of pages. That’s… a lot of information.” Monty, already working on creating sorting and search algorithm, opined.

“Sorry to bury you guys in paperwork, but I had to grab everything wholesale. I wasn’t able to sort of what was or wasn’t important.” Clarke apologized for this overload of data, yet knew that locked away somewhere in these rolls were all the puzzle pieces that would fit together into a picture proving her right once and for all.

"Where'd you even hide that thing?" Tris asked, taking minds away from the enormity of this information dump.

"You don't wanna know, and I don't wanna talk about it." Clarke winced.

"Ouch." Tris replied, sensing where this had come from.

"But they do invasive cavity searches. How did you manage to-" Lexa began to ask, Clarke replying immediately:

"They do search down there, but they usually stop before they get into your uterus." She said, her tone stating that this was the only thing she was ever going to say on the matter. The guys in the room looked queasy from awkwardness; the girls gave her a sympathetic look of horror; and it was eventually up to Lexa to get things moving again.

“So tell me what we’re looking at here. What do all these files contain?” The Commander inquired.

Clarke laid it all out: "Financial transaction records. Weapon and munitions shipment manifests. Lists of shell companies, white-side fronts for black-side backroom deals, and sock puppet account information. Transcripts of phone calls, emails, and recorded in-person conversations. Between the FSB and the Mountain Men. The FSB and Wagner Group. And between Wagner and the Mountain Men. It’s all interconnected: all threads in a web centered on Nia Koroleva."

Anya, ever the skeptic, remained unconvinced: "All this proves is that a known domestic terrorist organization has backing from a hostile foreign agent. But this doesn't prove your story: it's not so different from the CIA arming the Taliban against the Reds back in the Eighties."

“Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it isn’t real.” Clarke drawled like a high school teacher with a burnout.

“There’s a difference between being intelligent and being smart. They say insanity is the other side of the coin, Griffin, which at least would explain why you’re such an annoying little brat.” Anya snapped back like one of those turtles.

"You think I'm being the grandstanding smug intellectual, I feel like I'm having to try and explain quantum mechanics to toddlers on a daily basis, so which of us do you figure is more annoyed?" Clarke retorted, annoyingly calm.

“Did anyone ever tell you how creepy it is when you do that robot thing?” Anya tried to get under her skin.

“Enough.” Lexa said in her Commander voice, making the two bickering women lay off each other for now. “Indra tasked me with hunting down the Mountain Men before the Langley raid, and I haven’t made much progress. It’s ridiculous how well these people know how to hide. But I have found points of connection with the FSB and Wagner Group as well. It’s not too far-fetched to say that Miss Griffin may be onto something substantial.”

The Mountain Men were an extremist white supremacist paramilitary outfit based in Virginia, but also operated in Maryland and Pennsylvania. Extensive manhunts over the course of years had come up with very little results, and what few members were captured alive didn't stay that way for long, always devising some manner in which to kill themselves before they'd talk. They were fanatics, people who believed that they were the only legitimate heirs to the United States and entitled to have their families rule it in the style of the Third Reich, ethnic cleansing and all. Their leaders, Cage Wallace and Carl Emerson, were public enemies number one, most wanted on the FBI and Interpol manhunt lists, and as untraceable as a wisp of smoke. These men and their organization were known to have contacts with the Russian government, although nothing could ever be conclusively proved. How deep the rabbit hole went was anyone's guess.

It was an odd situation: the Mountain Men were isolationists, believing that America had no business in the world and the rest of the world should stay out of America's business. They weren't out for imperialistic expansion and would in fact much rather forget that there were people out there that weren't Americans - after kicking everyone else they considered 'not American' out of the country, like legal immigrants, African- and Asian-Americans, and Democrats. It made little sense that they'd be colluding with Russians - foreigners, Communists, an outside interference - but then, strange times made for strange bedfellows. For whatever reason, ethnic ultranationalists from different countries seemed to enjoy making common cause and forging the very international alliances they proclaimed to be against.

Trying to come to grips with the Mountain Men was like trying to grasp a handful of fog. It was like wading through a thick mist bank: it obscured everything, you could see it all around you, you knew that it was there, but you just couldn't touch it. Lexa was more than ready to get some actionable intel at last, and if what Clarke said checked out, then the records in front of them could indeed hold the keys to the kingdom. All of these interrogations, armed assaults, counterintelligence work, and renditions; and at least 75% of all actionable intelligence was still garnered by following the money trail. Money talked, even when it was trying not to.

“All of this is useless in its current format.” Lexa said, looking over the rolls of film. “Can you turn this into legible documentation that we don’t need a microscope to see?”

“Yeah. I need a darkroom, a fine scanner, a self-contained server, and Monty.” Clarke confirmed.

Octavia knew what to do: “I can get that here without it being traced. I’ll make the arrangements.”

Lexa nodded: progress at last. “Good. Let’s get to work.”

With that statement the meeting was adjourned, leaving Octavia and Monty to make some preliminary preparations while the rest of them went to bed. Lexa hadn’t bothered replacing the listening devices in Clarke’s suite: she’d see to that tomorrow, and there was still one right next to the blonde’s bedside, which would suffice for one night.

July 22, 2021

Lubyanka, Moscow

Gathering in the Director’s office on the first floor (which was not, like the Americans insisted, the second floor), Nia met with her son, daughter, and right-hand field commander.

The sudden disappearance of Colonel Vlasova had sent shockwaves throughout the Federal Security Service. The young woman had swept into Lubyanka like she owned the place, cleansed it of traitors, moles, and the corrupt, had made herself a known and expected sight that many had come to appreciate as much as they’d learned to fear her wrath, and now, the SVR had come and taken her, with nobody knowing if she was dead or being tortured for information. The FSB staff at Lubyanka was pissed at Director Medvedev and President Volkov, trying them even closer to Nia’s political agenda and ideological worldview now that their own Director’s words about Russia facing destruction at the hands of the sellout in the Kremlin were starting to look prophetic.

“My influence in the SVR has grown considerably since Petrenko was taken out of office.” Echo spoke with pride. “Old man Dmitry has no idea that I am truly working for you. More GRU resources, including additional VDV assets, can now be made available to the FSB without Volkov being any the wiser.”

“Clarke carried out her task with remarkable skill.” Nia spoke evenly. “I heard that Clarke’s ricin did not work because Nikolai chugged half a liter of liquid anthracite to bind it, only to end up choking on his own poison.”

“You heard that correctly. It is a major embarrassment to the Foreign Intelligence leadership. There are some in Stavka who are now no longer certain that their allegiance to the President and his supporters will protect them.” Colonel Teles spoke of the shifting of the political balance of power, “And others among them that were sitting on the fence have come over to our side once they learned of the FSO opening fire against our personnel.”

“What about the Volkov diehards?” Roan wanted to know.

“We will deal with them soon enough. They may not fear their own deaths, but that of their wives and children?” Nia rhetoricated. “Stavka will pose no threat to our plans once the invasion commences. Putin and Prigozhin will keep the Duma and Federation Council under control, and the military leadership will take its orders from Lubyanka rather than the Kremlin within the week. I already made sure of that.” Koroleva informed her companions.

Turning to Echo, Nia spoke again: “Have you found out who was responsible for Klyazma yet?”

“We now have confirmation that it was the Americans who abducted Griffin, not the SVR alone. Everything happened as you predicted, Director.” Colonel Teles reported to Koroleva.

“Do you also know which agency was the one behind it?”

“Everything points towards it being the Defense Intelligence Agency.”

“Perfect. I couldn’t have asked for better.” Nia said with satisfaction.

“Director?” Echo asked, not seeing why this was a good thing.

“This means that Clarke has been taken by Alexandria Woods, her best friend.” Nia explained. “She will be able to turn that girl to our cause, I’m certain of it. Clarke will maneuver her way into being in charge behind the scenes whether Miss Woods knows it or not, and she will use this position to operate beneath the very noses of Raven Reyes and her subordinates. Having the Second Daughter of the United States in her pocket will serve us perfectly.”

“You sound very certain of yourself, Mother.” Ontari spoke, trying not to sound challenging to her authority, but cautious about trusting a plan in which so many things hinged on moving elements beyond their control.

“I would have never allowed them to take Clarke away from me if I wasn’t.” The Director stated firmly.

"Russell is concerned too." Echo reported, summarizing her latest chat with the American Attorney General. "He said that Gustus forced him to sign another pardon, and they're dangling it in front of Griffin to get her to cooperate."

"I know she will never take that deal. Clarke won't trust them to keep their word." Nia shot down the concern.

"These are high stakes, Mother. I know she's paranoid and distrustful of her country’s government, but suppose she tries to play both sides? We will lose people." Ontari sketched out a realistic possibility.

"That has been accounted for.” Nia revealed. “She will be leading the DIA to some of my lower-level associates, and cover the tracks of more important ones in the handling of them. This has always been part of the plan."

"I have to admit, Director: every day, I find that you're full of more surprises than I imagined before." Echo piped up, her voice full of wonder and awe.

"Do you need me to pay Russell a visit? Talk about brilliant young Josephine a little?" Ontari offered.

"After Panama, I think there is no need for that." Her mother said, confident that Papa Lightbourne would do anything to prevent his ‘little’ adult daughter, who spent most of her days in the jungle doing her biological research, from being abducted and tortured by a South American cartel on Nia’s payroll a second time.

“I’m still not convinced Clarke won’t try to break away to do her own thing. She’s known to fly solo.” Echo said next.

“Clarke fears me. She knows better than any other – who is still alive – what I am capable of doing.” Nia laid out. “The Americans will never let her go unless she gains the cards to be able to force them to, and I am her only resource towards making that happen. She will not abandon me, because she cannot.”

“Griffin is a nationalist.” Echo pointed out. Ontari could wring her neck for questioning Mother so persistently; Roan wished he could bring the pretty dirty-blonde woman over to his side and lamented that before all this was over, Echo Teles had to die. “If she feels that America is threatened by us, she will defect back to them, I can feel it.”

“She will soon come to realize just how generously America rewards its heroes when they can no longer be used for propaganda.” Nia sneered, remembering the way her own beloved Fedor had been sucked dry and discarded like an old rag. “Clarke will know despair; she will know betrayal and heartbreak. She will know what it feels like to be betrayed, forgotten, and abandoned by her own. And it will feed her anger. She will feel the walls closing in around her, the threat of lifelong incarceration hanging over her head, and then she will remember who it was that gave her a way out.”

“You’ve never been wrong before, Ma’am. I’ll take your word for it.” Echo said, to Ontari’s satisfaction.

“Colonel Kutuzov has been asking questions.” Roan raised the next topic.

“Do you think he suspects?” Ontari asked her brother.

“No, I think he merely misses his new friend.” Roan answered: he knew that the American blonde had felt terribly lonely, and made a few genuine friends to keep herself from going cray, Lev being first among them.

"Lev does not think too deeply, but he follows orders well. He will soon have an important role to fulfill." Nia revealed. "I must finish our business in Bosnia first. Then, when the first stage of the incursion is ready, I will leave Lubyanka." She dropped a bombshell: none of the other three had thought that Nia herself would be anywhere else but her War Room when Operation Golden Bird went into full effect. "Colonel Kutuzov will take charge of running this place in my absence, while I will personally command the war effort from aboard the Akademik Aleksei Borgov."

Echo was a sharp mind, Koroleva thought. She asked all the right questions, her head set firmly on her shoulders and keeping both feet on the ground. But of course Nia didn’t think she made a mistake. She was Nia Koroleva, and she had not lived to be nearly seventy years old after a lifetime spent in the KGB and FSB because she left anything to chance. If there was the remotest possibility of her making a mistake, then she also made sure to have a dozen backup plans in place. Echo was the foremost of them: she would soon return to the USA to discovered where young Griffin was being held and continue monitoring her friends and family. Should it become necessary to send the American a reminder of where her loyalties now lay, Echo Teles, and if not her, then Ontari, would ensure the message was received loud and clear.

No, by this time next year, Clarke Griffin would either be wearing the pin of the President of the United States and announcing a comprehensive no-limits partnership with the Russian Federation under President Korolev, or she would be rendered down to the individual seven octillion constituent atoms of her body courtesy of an acid bath.

So Nia Koroleva had decided on the matter, and so she would see it done.

July 23, 2021

The Hay-Adams Hotel, Washington, DC

Clarke Griffin was an evil genius, Lexa decided, as she went as red in the face as Monty had when he’d first listened to some… peculiar audio picked up from the one remaining audio recorder in Clarke’s suite.

The following morning after dumping nineteen of the twenty bugs on Lexa’s table, it became clear why Clarke had left one device: not because she'd overlooked it, but because she knew that Lexa would be listening to its recordings, and she'd decided to have a little fun. Which was to say that she'd left the audio recorder closest to her bed in place and had spent a good part of the night getting herself off while audibly fantasizing some unspeakably lewd scenarios that involved Lexa's name easily a thousand times. And Monty had been listening to those recordings before she got their hands on them.

Lexa didn’t know whether to feel horrified, disgusted, offended, violated, or flattered; so in the end, settled on all of them at once. She couldn’t deny that some of the things the blue-eyed beauty had talked about sounded… interesting, but still, there were a thousand reasons why they could and should never come true, and she was pissed that Clarke had decided to embarrass Lexa like this – she must have known that she’d make poor Monty’s ears bleed, and if he ever told anyone else, Lexa was never gonna live it down.

"Sis, did you just bulk order 600 books?" Lexa was saved by the bell as her sister came in carrying a cardboard box that was heavy even in Anya’s capable hands. Lexa had placed the order with as much expediting as possible, but wasn’t expecting some of them to be arriving the same morning as making the purchase, however.

"Um, yeah." She said, a little sheepishly. “At least it wasn’t 600 candles?” She made a lame comeback.

"Boss, that's more than I read in, like, ten years!" Monty exclaimed, wisely choosing to pretend like he hadn’t just heard a smoking hot combat operator whose whole ‘treacherous hero’ schtick only made her shine with the allure of the forbidden fruit paint far too vivid a picture in his head of private acts done with his boss. He felt lucky that Harper wasn’t a mind reader, because she would kill him if she ever found out. Then again, it was Clarke Griffin – Harp had fought under her command for years, so she’d understand.

"You're not me. This'll be enough to last me for maybe one." Lexa said. "I read a lot, okay? It's how I unwind, and I have a feeling like I'm gonna be devouring those books at lightning speed given what sort of stress is about to come down on my head." This placated Anya, who knew that Lexa was a voracious reader who could burn through two full-length novels in one sleepless night an somehow still have the energy to function as a human being the following day.

A little later, as the command team congregated at the conference room that had been converted into the task force’s nerve center, Clarke took one look at the storm brewing in Lexa’s eyes and realized that last night had been a terrible idea.

All she'd wanted to do was blown off some pent-up frustration and annoy Lexa. Instead, at some point, she'd gotten a little too absorbed into her fantasizing, and started to enjoy the thought of Lexa in earnest. Lexa, her late sister's lover. Lexa, who was her captor and could send her off to Colorado with a word. Lexa, who hated her. Lexa, fierce, protective, loyal Lexa, with her gorgeous green eyes, lush chestnut waves, and soft olive tan, whom she had made listen to the smutty commentaries involving her from the lips of the woman responsible for denying the poor girl her wedding night.

Lexa Woods was terribly attractive, and Clarke was horrified to learn that when it came to thinking about her, she just couldn't keep her wits about her. This presented a weakness she absolutely had to clamp down on: she couldn’t afford to be distracted by the brunette and those luscious fucking strands of hers to be manipulated by her, especially not with Lexa knowing that there was something going on in Clarke’s head owing to the latter’s drug-induced deal-making.

There had only ever been one letter of separation between them: the first letter in the acronyms of their respective organizations. CIA versus DIA. But now, the letter was different: the letter that separated them now was called a Presidential pardon, and only one of them was in need of it. Lexa would never stoop to the level of exploiting somebody quite literally under her total control, and Clarke wasn’t going to engage in anything that wasn’t fully mutual with somebody who didn’t trust her completely. There was no time for romance, anyway.

"Have you heard of the term 'maskirovka'?" She asked the table once everyone had settled in. "Don't look at me like that, it's an honest question. I have no idea how common that knowledge is." She spoke when she got a mixture of looks ranging from ‘How stupid do you think I am?’ to ‘Is that some kind of Russian masquerade ball and how could that possibly be important?’, hence deciding to qualify her question.

“For those not yet in the know, allow me to put in in plain English.” Lexa piped up, wanting to prevent a jargon-laden five-minute monologue. “Maskirovka is the Russian term for a matrix of techniques based around deception and misleading. It encompasses things like false-flag operations, releasing false political statements, issuing contradictory orders, and deliberately leaking falsified intelligence.”

“Thanks for putting that simpler than I could.” Clarke took over, saying it without sarcasm. Huh, maybe she wasn’t totally stuck up after all, Tris thought: she’d come to like the ex-CIA girl a lot more than her mentor did.

Clarke spoke at some length about the pieces of Nia’s plans she’d been able to puzzle together from her prior investigations plus what she’d been told straight from the horse’s mouth and her own scraps of new intel gathered at Lubyanka. The microfilm would still need a lot of time to be developed, and even longer to comb through, but she was at least able to sketch a comprehensive picture: that of 15 nuclear missiles targeting Seattle, Los Angeles, the District of Columbia, and New York City, numerous other warheads being used to blow up every State Capitol at once, and how this would be followed by a Special Forces attack on all the remaining centers of command, control, communication, and transportation, with the end goal of forcing the United States to accept… the Presidency of Clarke Griffin.

Listening to this last part, Anya saw red, deducing that they most likely wouldn’t be content with removing Gustus from office but having her father assassinated, while Lexa reckoned that Koroleva was not as mentally sound as the woman wanted everyone to believe, if she really thought that Clarke, who hated politicians, was going to become one.

There wasn’t a whole lot to work with just yet, but Clarke was able to recall several bank account details where the FSB stowed away some of its discretionary funds for black operations, some of which were related to Nia’s nuclear terrorism plan. Clarke suggested breaking into those accounts and sucking them dry, all of them, so Nia would have no reason to believe this one operation in particular was being targeted; and that was something Lexa could work with – provided these accounts checked out as not belonging to random uninvolved fall guys Clarke was throwing under the bus for her own benefit to make it look like they were getting somewhere. She would get to work on it immediately, though.

"So all in all,” Octavia began once this first course of action had been agreed upon and the known pieces fitted into the puzzle frame, “we are up again a thousand Russian Spetsnaz and another five hundred actual fascists with an actual militia full of SOCOM veterans, plus God knows how many more police and military units they've subverted who'll be misled into thinking we're the attackers; and that's in DC alone?" She summed up the situation laid out before them.

“Yup. And that’s only gonna be the first wave, though I have no clue how the Russian military would get involved. Most of them remain loyal to President Volkov. That’s just another thing to figure out as quickly as we can.” Clarke replied.

"Sure, no biggie." O said sarcastically: she trusted Clarke could handle it, but acting so blasé wasn’t smart.

"We need to thin the herd." Lexa opined.

"We can't." Clarke responded.

"Excuse you, Griffin, but nobody asked." Anya barked at her.

"They're coming to us, aren't they? Why not interdict them the moment they hit our soil?" Lexa inquired.

"Because, genius, if they see that we're bumping off their US allies, they'll know they've been made, and their plot will never unfold." Clarke explained, emphasizing the need for restraint, which she hated herself more than even Anya did.

"Which is a bad thing because?" Lincoln asked, wondering why not being invaded would be inadvisable.

"Because it still leaves Nia in control of a hundred nuclear missiles with four times as many warheads and we won't have a clue when and where she'll use them instead?" Clarke put, Lincoln seeing where she was coming from.

"How could anyone smuggle a hundred nuclear weapons across the US border without anyone noticing?" Octavia asked the obvious question.

"I don't know. I'm still working on it." Clarke admitted, fueling Anya’s suspicion.

“Would these be the same alleged weapons outside Baikonur that, oh yes, there wasn’t any trace of?”

"Look, all I can tell you is that all of the weapons she stole to use towards this attack were sitting together in a cave in fucking Kazakhstan, right up until they weren't. I have no idea how they were planning on bringing them into America, and Nia wasn't forthcoming with that sort of intel either."

"But you're certain that it's going to happen." Lexa surmised.

"Positive." Clarke confirmed, wishing she’d be proven wrong about this sort of thing just once in her life.

"With 100 missiles, not 15." Lexa continued.

"Yeah." Came Clarke, wondering why people kept asking the same questions and expecting different answers.

"So where's the other 85?" Lexa wanted to know.

"...I don't know that, either." Clarke sighed: that was the problem, wasn’t it? If she knew, she’d have sent more SCS assets and had a high chance of securing at least one of the weapons, meaning she wouldn’t have been convicted of treason!

"This all sounds like the plot to a Sixties Red Scare dime pulp thriller, you do know that?" Tris contributed.

"I wrote my thoughts on my little worst-case scenario off as an impossibility until I randomly stumbled into a nagging little piece of info that eventually clued me into finding out about it being real, did you know that?" Clarke said back, it coming out sounding like an accusation when it wasn’t: Corporal Thornton probably knew the least about the situational background out of everybody here, even Lincoln and Ryder, so gave the frightened-looking girl her best attempt at a disarming smile, knowing that her mere presence could be enough to scare the hell out of people.

"And that's when you decided to contact Nia?" Lexa pressed, pushing the wrong button.

"I am not being interrogated right now. This conversation is over." Clarke went, shooting to her feet. “I’ll be in the darkroom if anyone has something constructive to add.”

“Well, that could’ve gone better.” Monty piped up.

“You don’t say.” Tris said back.

“At least now we know what we’re up against.” Lincoln stated.

“Allegedly.” Anya pointed out.

“The microfilm will tell. Sooner or later, it will show us what’s what.” Octavia offered.

“Assuming it doesn’t take so long to parse it all that President Griffin won’t have killed us long before then.” Went Anya.

“Ahn, even now, you may not believe it, but I do.” Lexa said, much to Anya’s confusion, who didn’t know what the hell her sister was referring to. “If Clarke wanted us dead, none of the people in this room, and none of those guarding it, would still be breathing by now.” Lexa thought to inform Anya of Clarke’s ‘Family and Friends Special Protective Measures’ security teams, but since she didn’t even know what to make of them herself, decided to keep that information tucked away for now.

As the team dispersed to do their own things, Lexa followed Monty to the darkroom, where Clarke was already busy developing the microfilm. She’d roped two DCS trigger-pullers into assisting her, the men happy enough to have something better to do than stand around looking menacing just in case one single prisoner – who didn’t even much feel like one, considering the woman was walking around unrestrained wearing clothes of the sort of designer brands that didn’t bother sticking their name on them and could even leave the building at will as long as she wasn’t alone – decided to try something stupid by turning the gun their boss had given them on her.

“I gather you’ve got me – well, Captain Taylor – in the role of an external consultant.” Clarke began without looking up. She’d identified Lexa by the sound of her mouselike footfalls alone.

“That’s what your friends in ASIS and the members of this task force will say if anyone with a high enough clearance level comes asking.” Lexa confirmed, wondering how in the blazes Griffin had figured that out. “There’s no record of it filed anywhere, physical or digital, that doesn’t exist apart from Monty’s self-contained server here, though.”

“Not bad.” Clarke praised with a nod, her padding back and forth between water tanks, clotheslines, and an ultra-fine digital scanner uninterrupted. She could multitask, and processing this stuff took top priority.

“I knew you’d say that.” Lexa preened a little, then schooled herself back into Commander Mode: “Being as you are a consultant, it’s time for some consulting. I need something actionable to show for our expenses, and soon.”

"My first policy recommendation is this: we change internal comm frequencies every three weeks; that oughta be shortened to every three days. That way, when the details leak to Lubyanka, the channels will have already changed before it's actionable on their end." Clarke gave her suggestion: stemming the flow of information could help a lot, going a long way towards keeping Nia searching for intel instead of acting on it.

“I’m sure Monty can cook up some sort of self-adaptive algorithm to make that happen.” Lexa, of the same mind, nodded.

“I don’t just mean the task force, Lex… Commander…” Clarke stumbled over her words, unsure of herself.

“Lexa is fine.” She said, her olive tan concealing something of a blush.

“I mean the United States Government. All of it.” Clarke continued as if it were the easiest thing in the world.

“How can you possible expect me to push that recommendation through to the entire alphabet soup, military command, and civilian administration? Coming from me, it’ll be laughed off, and coming from you…” Lexa questioned.

“But coming from the Director of National Intelligence and President of the United States, we can make it happen without tipping off Nia.” Clarke argued.

“This is a big ask, Clarke.” "If you want us to trust you enough to make such a drastic policy change, you have to give me something to work with."

“I already told you everything I know for sure.” The woman groused, carefully dipping a microfilm reel into a basin.

"You lived among them for three months." Lexa pointed out.

"Yeah, 'among' them, not as 'one of' them. Not for real." Clarke issued a significant distinction.

“You were still pretty high up the chain at Lubyanka, and claim to have been part of her inner circle. You must have a name, a location, anything like that?” Lexa kept on pressing, hoping to jostle the girl’s mind.

“Hmm… There may be one thing…” Clarke said as she hung another reel out to dry, then took a third one off the drying line to put its first section into the scanner. "Run a background on a 'Natalie Ash'. Nia said the woman is ‘believed by some’ to work for the CIA, but I can guarantee you that this person has never set foot inside Langley.” She told Lexa, having never heard or seen this name on the muster rolls, though this could mean Echo’s alter ego had found work as an external consultant for the Agency. “Find her, take her, question her, it's not gonna matter, cause she will never break. I don't even know if or when she'll be in the States. What I can tell you is that Natalie Ash is Echo Teles, GRU Spetsnaz officer, Koroleva’s long-time mole inside the SVR whose own Spetsnaz she’s also been made a Commander in, and Nia's field commander for all operations run directly by the FSB. You put Teles in a body bag, make sure Nia doesn’t find out I was involved, and she’ll be spending months running around looking for a new field commander. That will set her offensive back by a lot and buy us invaluable time to find other angles to work."

"We're gonna be calling up a lot of sensitive information without warrants going down that road." Lexa was cautious.

Clarke wasn’t deterred by a lack of permission, though: "You have the DNI's standing permission and an imperative to not let any outsiders know what you're working on."

"It's easy for you to rationalize; you've already been prosecuted for treason, so you’ve got Double Jeopardy to work with. I'd like to never see the other side of a Supreme Court tribunal, if it's all the same to you." Lexa shot back

"So what am I missing here?" Clarke questioned. "You guys have the protection of the DNI and the President. Even Russell can't nail you for doing off-the-books work. No, it seems to me that your issue is that you've been ordered to go against the book, and that means you're suffering from some kind of morality crisis." She did some psychoanalysis, Lexa not happy about this presumptuousness. "But take it from somebody who knows: you let that get in your way? Everyone you're trying to protect ends up getting killed, and it'll be your fault." The former CIA Director spoke from ample experience. “I don’t want that for you, Lexa. That isn’t something you should have to live with.” She told her, not condescendingly, but seeming to be actually concerned about Lexa’s wellbeing.

“If I don’t feel guilty about taking lives, even if it means saving others, it means that I’m going off the deep end, and that worries me more than having to reexamine my moral compass in light of new facts.” Lexa spoke, placing too much value on the lives of people as individuals to make such calculations for the greater good. That was one fundamental difference between her and Clarke: Lexa would save rather than sacrifice one life today if it meant putting a hundred more at risk tomorrow, because she knew she’d be there tomorrow to save those hundred, as well. “Besides, it’s not like guilt has ever held you back from doing what you believe is right. Hell, you can just choose to ignore it altogether.”

"For you, guilt's a natural response. But me? I choose to feel it. I choose to experience it every single day, because it's so easy to dehumanize your enemies to dissociate from taking responsibility, but if you do it once too often, it's you that ends up becoming something less than human." Clarke retorted, defending her idiosyncratic decision-making process. She tried to look as many of her targets in the eyes when they died precisely to remind herself that they were, regardless of anything else, still human beings, and somebody had to take responsibility. "I know you don't believe a fucking word I say, Lex, but the thought of ending up like that scares the hell out of me." The blue-eyed girl admitted to Lexa’s shock.

She examined Clarke’s eyes, studied her face, and found no lie in them. Granted, Clarke was a hell of a good liar and a stellar actress – to anybody else, but Lexa knew her tells even better than Costia had.

“You’re right, Clarke.” Lexa chose to say. “I don’t like keeping secrets from Indra. I don’t like running a special task force that technically doesn’t really exist. And I certainly don’t like committing a host of felonies to be able to prevent something much worse.” She admitted, getting up in Clarke’s personal space so the woman would sense how seriously she was taking this. “But do you know what I like even less? Being kneecapped by procedures and regulations when the world as we know it is at stake. So I think I can live with doing what must be done. And I’m going to prove you wrong by getting those shorter comm frequency change windows pushed through, because I’m not as weak as you think I am.”

“I never said you were weak, Lex, just that you’re so used to coloring inside the lines you might forget that there’s a hidden world that exists outside of them, and it is hungry to devour everything we love.”

Lexa took a moment to process these words. She wondered once more why Raven hadn’t brought in Luna on this, because Hilker was a fellow spook who could follow Clarke’s job-related logic more naturally. Lexa was no spook: she was a field commander most at home on a firing line, and this sort of thinking was alien to her. And yet, she had to admit to herself she understood Clarke’s logic to some extent.

“Everything you do goes through me. I’m willing to bend the rules, or break them, but you’re gonna tell me exactly why we need to and what goes bad if we don’t.” Lexa told her companion at last.

“As long as you don’t hesitate when seconds count and don’t hesitate when we need to be decisive, I’ll accept that.” Clarke replied, not needing any time to think about it herself.

“We have an accord, then?” Lexa asked, extending her hand to seal the deal.

“Deal.” Clarke agreed, the two women clasping each other by the forearm like the Romans did – that was how the two had always sealed their more solemn agreements rather than shaking hands like others did. “Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to focus on getting these fiches ready to use?” She reminded Lexa with a cheeky little smile.

“Yes, of course.” The other woman agreed. “I’ll see you tonight at dinner?” She asked Clarke by way of goodbye.

“Sure, count me in.” She replied: with a concrete objective to focus on, she could stay grounded in the here and now and the grand strategic objective, so her stomach had begun reminding her that she had a few days’ worth of malnutrition to make good on. She had some catching up to do, and she’d also use it to try to chat with the team a little, get to know the people she’d be working more closely together with that she’d only met in passing before, since they were gonna have to live and work in close proximity for potentially many months to come. And she had to admit that for as much as Anya was a hemorrhagic A-hole, her protégé Tris seemed like someone Clarke would like to be friends with.

For as long as it would last, anyway.

Chapter Text

August 1, 2021

The Hay-Adams Hotel, Washington, DC

It would be about a week before the task force got its first big break.

In the days preceding, Lexa had had her hands full. The task force had split itself into one element trying to convince the right people of the need to beef of radio security protocols like Clarke had recommended, and another that worked with the bank accounts she’d listed.

Clarke had roped Monty into forming a little splinter cell concerned with the microfilm together with a small coalition of the willing operators, while Lexa and the other senior officers busied themselves following the money. Lexa had to coordinate with Raven to gain access to the resources and authority of a slew of agencies outside the DIA, including the FBI, to actually be able to check out the bank accounts Clarke pulled out of her bag of tricks and either block access to them or drain their balance wholesale. There were accounts strewn about Switzerland, the Cayman Islands, the Bahamas, the Azores, and freaking Zimbabwe – all over the place, each bank more inaccessible than the rest, but the combination of official clandestine US resources and Clarke’s own contacts enabled them to slowly but surely strip away the layers of anonymity and stonewalling bureaucrats to hit Koroleva’s cabal in their wallets.

Robbing the enemy of its money could go a long way towards enhancing national security. America's national defense policy relied on 80 Corps being backstopped by a group of private military contractors to provide bodies working triggers long enough for US troops deployed abroad to be brought back home, who would guard the flanks of the regulars that would be unable to prevent enemy maneuvers elsewhere once engaged.

The obvious problem with mercenaries was that there was always a chance that whoever did the invading would simply offer them more. Nobody had more money to spend than the US Federal Government, but there were certain perks and benefits that other states or entities could offer that the US wasn't willing to grant that might prove too tempting for mercenaries to resist. But such benefits also came with a price tag, and if Nia didn’t have hard currency to convert into such boons, she’d lose one hell of an ace card for getting US assets to go turncoat.

Although the PMCs involved were the more reliable kind, the ones that understood that a single breached contract meant that nobody else would ever trust them enough to hire them again, some of their foot personnel may not be so thoughtful, and mercenaries opening fire on their own comrades and US soldiers would present a nightmare scenario, because everyone would become a suspect, including all the true loyalists, who could not be trusted until each of them was cleared on an individual basis, leaving the JCS chasing their own tails for months while half the ‘home army’ lay paralyzed.

Another interesting development concerned a certain Corporal Beatrice Thornton, which was of particular concern to First Lieutenant Anastasia Woods. Namely that Tris was developing something too: a huge crush on Clarke.

Bellamy had brown hair and olive skin, Lexa did too, and Tris did as well. Maybe Clarke had a type.

Tris' increasingly unsubtle attempts at flirting with the red-dyed blonde – although shy and awkward, because Thornton was also evidently scared shitless of Griffin, which the former seemed to not find objectionable in the slightest – left Anya incredibly worried and Lexa feeling oddly possessive.

The old fraternization rules had been thrown in the incinerator and rewritten. Nowadays, like the Thebans of Ancient Greece, the understanding now went that if you put couples on the frontline together, they would fight all the harder in defense of something - someone - far more concrete than the abstract ideas of duty, honor, and country: they'd fight to protect the one by their side, and should they fall, fight all the harder to avenge them.

It was even okay now for officers to date their own subordinates, even enlisted, so long as they could prove that the more senior one's tactical decisions weren't unduly influenced by concerns about the ore junior partner.

That was to say: the only thing that could technically prevent Beatrice Thornton from romantically pursuing Clarke Griffin would be the fact that the latter was technically a prisoner, and even then, that didn't even count, since officially she wasn't even here.

Lexa had to get down to the bottom of this before Anya chewed her ears off with her incessant nagging about the matter: she'd told her protégée time and again to stay away from Griffin, but where Tris was normally all about looking good in the eyes of her mentor, it seemed that her newfound infatuation had made her grow a pair and decide that this was where she drew the line, stating that she was an adult and fully capable of making her own life choices.

"Tris, I need to talk to you about Griffin." Lexa took the young woman aside.

"Oh God, not you too." Tris said, huffing in exasperation at this undue micromanagement.

“You have no idea what you’re after, Tris. You could put twenty of us in full kit in a room with an unarmed Griffin, and she would still be the deadliest thing in that room. She’s way beyond your ability to handle.” Lexa cautioned, leaving Tris feeling insulted and belittled even though Lex hadn’t made a value judgment, just stating the facts.

"Listen, boss, I can like Miss Griffin even while knowing that she's a 'manipulative, scheming bitch who can play you like a fiddle and make you do anything she wants you to while making you believe it was your own idea' – Anya's words, not mine – and keep my head in the game.” Tris said back, getting the point: she was not gonna let herself be manipulated. “I'm not a child anymore, and I for one see no trouble keeping work and pleasure separate."

Tris knew exactly what imagery her phrasing would invoke. Thornton was forcing Lexa to confront her own feelings,

“I don’t even know why you’re making such a big deal out of it.” The younger brunette, who Lexa had to admit was very pretty indeed, shrugged her shoulders. “You keep telling everyone you’re not interested, so Clarke is fair game.”

“Is that what this is to you? A game?” Lexa said back sharply, wishing Tris would take things more seriously and, if she meant it, take Clarke’s feelings more seriously too – wait, no, that was none of her business.

“Is that what this is really about?” Tris sniffed out the deeper meaning. “You’re not worried Clarke will turn me into an asset; you’re worried I’m gonna hurt fer feelings. You think this would just be some fling to me. And that bothers you.” She hit the nail on the head, the young woman much more lighthearted than Lexa, but no less keenly perceptive.

“I’ve known that woman since the day she was born, Corporal. Clarke Griffin doesn’t trust easily, and when you’ve won it, it’s even harder to keep. If she were to start something with you and you’re not totally committed for the long haul, it’s only going to destroy you both.” Lexa explained, telling herself that she was only trying to protect Clarke’s feelings and wanted to save her from getting her heart broken by a woman barely more than a girl who had known her for a grand total of ten days, meaning she effectively didn’t know Clarke at all.

“Yeah, I get the message.” Tris spoke out. “You’re scared I’m gonna betray your best friend the way you did at One First Street, but there’s no need to project your own insecurities on me, Commander. Unless there’s something you’re not telling me?” She pierced right through Lexa’s armor with an uncannily pointed question. “I saw you kiss her on that plane, remember? And then I saw you mutually push each other away. She’s not your girlfriend and clearly doesn’t want to be, so what is she to you, that you see me as a threat? Tell me I’m wrong.” The girl got all up in Lexa’s personal space, daring her to say anything contrarian. Because either Lexa would now admit to finding Clarke romantically attractive, which she’d never hear the end of, or she’d deny it, and Tris would grab onto that, quote her on it, and use it to justify intensifying her pursuit, the thought of which made Lexa feel like she was in freefall.

Lexa knew that Clarke wasn't exactly putting distance between herself and Tris, but the latter had claimed that she merely wanted to be friends with Thornton. This didn't deter Tris, who believed the blue-eyed girl was just playing hard to get and/or still not over Bellamy, too focused on stopping Nia to want any distractions, or too gloomy about not being free even though she was pretty much free to do whatever she pleased; leaving the younger brunette determined to wait it out and seize the opportunity when it materialized.

Lexa didn't want to admit why she cared so much. It wasn't like Clarke was interested in her, or the other way around...

But that was a lie, wasn’t it? And Lexa made a point of never engaging in self-deception.

Clarke had made it clear that she didn’t trust Lexa as far as she could throw her. Nobody dated someone they didn’t trust. Besides, the woman had accused Lexa of being naïve a few times, and if Lexa was naïve, then Tris was like a child. That would certainly put a damper or any reciprocity. Clarke liked Tris, but probably wouldn't grow to love her: their age difference of 3 years wasn't that daunting when they were both well into their twenties, but Thornton simply didn't operate on the same level, and Clarke and Bellamy had worked so well together because they'd been an equal team. So Lexa most likely had nothing to worry about – not that there was anything to be concerned with other than keeping her sister's pseudo-daughter safe! But then again… Maybe the fact that Tris didn’t have a complicated history with Clarke, offering something of a clean slate to build upon, could prove to be a decisive factor…

“I’m still waiting, boss. Come on, we have placed to be, things to do, and I’m not letting you get away with deflecting.” Tris spoke up, making Lexa realize that she’d just spent several minutes in deep thought, staring into space.

Beatrice Thornton, from what Lexa had seen of her and heard from Anya, was loyal to a fault to those she cared about, brave to the point of recklessness, and would never change her mind once she’d set her sights on achieving anything; so she certainly wasn’t gonna be daunted by the prospect of courting someone who’d already said no (although not in such terms that it could be interpreted as a total impossibility, though Lexa couldn’t tell whether that was because Clarke hadn’t wanted to hurt the younger woman’s feelings so worded things politely, or because she was keeping her options open and didn’t want to close off the possibility of future developments) who also scared the living daylight out of her: Tris wasn’t nearly as scared of Clarke as Clarke was of Indra – heh, as if that was something that could be exceeded even in theory! – and in fact seemed to find this fear factor to be somewhat of a turn-on.

Tris’ eyes were emerald-green while Lexa’s were jade-green, Tris’ wavy brown hair was  shade lighter than Lexa’s dark chestnut but of similar length and form, the younger girl’s skin was tanned a shade lighter too: basically, Thornton and Little Woods resembled each other closely, and Lexa finally admitted that she was comparing herself with the other because yes, she did worry that Clarke would change her mind, and that she cared because Lexa Woods wanted Clarke Griffin for herself, and she’d be damned if she let anyone else have her.

She absolutely couldn’t begrudge Tris for seeing in Clarke the same prospects that Lexa did. At least Tris had the guts to admit to it freely and not hold back from making her interest known, which was more than what Lexa could say for herself. She couldn’t order Tris to back off either, not without overstepping her authority: she simply didn’t have the right.

Lexa blinked slowly, her gaze meeting the other green-eyed brunette’s. “You’re right.” She said through gritted teeth.

“I’m sorry, what was that?” The younger woman mocked, channeling the Spirit of Anya.

“I’m telling you that I’m jealous, okay?” Lexa sighed, breathing deeply to re-center herself. “Clarke doesn’t hate you, she doesn’t distrust you, she thinks you’re nice and fun and you get to hang out with her doing all the things I used to…”

“I knew it.” Tris beamed, proud of her boss for finally stating what was so obvious it could be seen from orbit. “Don’t worry, Lexa. I won’t say a word to Anya.” She promised, much to the older woman’s relief. “I know it’s gotta be difficult to be stuck like this, crushing on your best friend who thinks she’s your enemy.”

“You don’t care that she colluded with Nia fucking Koroleva like she did, even if it was for a good reason?” Lexa inquired: her own biggest hangup was that A: Clarke had still done some extremely dangerous, questionable, reckless things, while B: she was Clarke, so as far as Lexa’s heart was concerned, none of that mattered.

“Fuck, no. I’d have done the same.” Tris chuckled. “And it’s a pity about Charmaine, but again: I’d have done the same.”

“So what’s next?” Lexa wanted to know, sweating bullets. She was the Commander, the DIA’s rising star, an operator per excellence who could choreograph the room like no other, but she’d never been the best with people.

“Talk to her, damn you.” Tris advised. “Let it be her choice. I’ll stop being so, um, predatory if you’ll just talk to her, we’ll agree to not compete against each other, and let the chips fall where they may. It should be her choice.”

“You speak with wisdom beyond your years, Corporal. I just need some more time… to put my thoughts in order.”

“Don’t sweat it. We’ll keep this between us girls.” Tris kindly offered. “If you’ll let me give you some advice, though?”

“You wanna give me advice on how to win over the woman you want?” Lexa asked incredulously.

“You care about her. I’m a newcomer here, I don’t know your history, but if lose, at least I’ll know why.” Tris answered, very maturely. “If you want her to be your partner, you should treat her like she is. Professionally, personally – you’re not gonna get anywhere unless you cooperate just as much as she does.”

“Yes, I… Thank you. I think I needed to hear that.” Lexa admitted, feeling lighter already.

“No problem.” Tris smiled. “I really do have someplace to be, though, so excuse me.”

The DIA occupation of the top floors of the Hay-Adams was officially listed as an indefinite Infinity Corp R&D conference, making a neat cover story for why such a big chunk of the place was suddenly off-limits to even most of the hotel staff and explaining the huge increase in power draw coming from its address. There was going to come a day where MF cells were so ubiquitous that there wouldn’t be a need for full-sized power plants anymore, but that was still some decades away at this point; and people got suspicious when you were running a clandestine server park.

Lexa and Anya were, at least nominally, on the Board of Directors of their late mother's company, so it was a believable enough story, only Lex didn’t want people to come snooping around looking for her, either, so officially, she and Anya were in Australia for a while, where snooping noses would find themselves entangled in a labyrinth leading nowhere.

In the darkroom that had become Clarke's domain, Monty was stoked about working with such interesting technology that showed just how similar Stone Age humans were to modern people.

There were hundreds of codewords in use by the FSB that only Clarke could interpret, bizarre colloquialisms that only Clarke could decipher, but Monty's raw Cyrillic-to-Latin, Russian-to-English double whammy conversion script was already granting some usable outputs, the brilliant young man refining his algorithms ever further hour by hour.

Once everything had been processed and passed on to the analysts, it would fall to Clarke to properly translate rather than just transliterate everything. 'Everything' being roughly one million, two hundred and eighty thousand A4-sized pages of text. Which was literally impossible. So she'd come up with an idea, informed by how they translated foreign texts in the North Korean intelligence service: she wouldn't suggest going so far as to have a separate analyst translate individual sentences orphaned from the greater text, because the output would be completely incoherent (which explained why Nork intelligence sucked), but for a team of expert Russian translators to be given individual pages without being told where they came from and why they had to be translated. This way, Clarke would be able to focus on interpretation instead, sniffing out messages hidden behind codes and ciphers to pass onto Lexa.

Lexa, now there was a riddle wrapped inside an enigma. Sometimes the woman acted like her best friend, sometimes full of venom, fire and fury, then all shy and demure: Clarke just couldn’t put her finger on it. Then again, she’d never been the best with people. All she could say for sure was that she didn’t trust Lexa, but she wanted to, wasn’t her friend anymore but wanted to be again, and yes, maybe she was grasping at straws, but she did entertain some fleeting thoughts about the possibility of something happening between them later, if there was ever going to be a later for her. She had no doubt that they’d be able to stop Nia together, but after that? It still very much remained to be seen whether that was also going to be the end of the road for Clarke, and that uncertainty put a stop to thinking about the future.

Two hours later

In the more immediate future, there was going to be some action taking place.

Monty had received a message from one of his analysts, and as he’d gone over its findings, he had called the command team to the conference room to hold a situation briefing.

"Yeah, somebody just tried to withdraw a million and a half dollars cash at an ATM in the DC subway, the first level of Anacostia Crossing Station, north side." Mr. Green began to explain what had tripped his alarms. "It was one of the accounts we emptied he tried to access. The withdrawal bounced, so he immediately used another card to grab $40,000 and now he's on the run."

"Any CCTV of the perp? Can we put a tail on them?" Lexa inquired, salivating at the thought of getting out of the hotel and getting her hands dirty before she’d forget what it felt like to not be cooped up inside.

"Yes, ma'am. I can do you one better: I just pulled the second account's details. He used his own bank. I think we're looking at a patsy here, the guy didn't even try to hide his face." Monty laid out.

"Let's set up a snatch and grab. Whadda we know about this guy?" Lexa went on.

"Scott Rhodes, African-American, age 57, six foot one, a little pudgy. Mid-level executive at Vitae Mutual Health Insurance out of Los Angeles, heading up their East Coast branch office in Bethesda. And that forty grand was all he had left." Monty explained. "The company checks out: it's legit. No connections to the FSB or Mountain Men; no dealings with Dante Wallace's business empire, either. But Mr. Rhodes? The man's in over his head. Look at his financial records: he's a hair's breadth from getting him house repossessed."

“So they hired this guy to get some operational funds in exchange for a clean slate.” Clarke surmised.

“We can intercept him in the subway net. Let’s mount up, people.” Lexa ordered.

Clarke quickly dyed her hair red with a fresh coat of coloring, practiced her Melbourne accent a little, and called up that ridiculously expensive tailor she’d been rubbing in Lexa’s face to come away with a tasteful combination of cream-colored formal slacks, a sharp anthracite-black coat jacket, and blue-gray button-up undershirt that looked like it cost more than what Corporal Thornton earned in a month. Then she asked Tris to put her hair up into a fishtail braid, a style she’d never used before, the young brunette skittishly complying even as her brown doe eyes flitter about nervously, as if expecting Clarke to suddenly turn around and gouge her eyes out – which, to be fair, wasn’t entirely without real-life precedent when it came to Griffin. But it gave the girl an excuse to put her hands on Clarke, meaning she happily seized the opportunity: Clarke hoping that she’d back down eventually when she figured out it was going nowhere.

Then it was a drive through the city, several subway stations being sectioned off by covert teams in civvies, while Monty kept an eye on the DC Metro’s live camera feeds tracking the cash man.

It was almost disappointing how easy it was to catch Scott Rhodes. He clearly possessed zero tradecraft in the ways of counter-detection and evasive maneuvering, so it had been as simple as waiting for him to get off the train at Chevy Chase Station, drag him into an empty bathroom, shooting a mild tranq into his neck, and waiting for a little while before having Lincoln escort the man, now wavering on his feet, to a waiting car, where they restrained their capture, blindfolded him, and drove him to a safehouse on the Anacostia, where they deposited him inside a room, securing him to a table bolted to the floor, administered an antidote, and waited. Lexa and Clarke were going to handle the interrogation alone, Lexa wanting to see how Clarke would play this to gauge the other woman’s mood while Clarke was just happy to have something more exciting to do than go over pictures of files all day.

It didn’t take long for Rhodes to come to, shaking his head clear and trying to rub the confusion out of his eyes, only to find that he couldn’t. The older man went from dazed to panicked in a microsecond, which Clarke found amusing.

"My, my, my, are we in trouble." Clarke tutted like a teacher admonishing a naughty grade schooler. "Actually, scratch that: you're in trouble, and I'm getting paid. Which is the core of the problem, isn't it?"

"It didn't work! It didn't work!" Rhodes shouted: clearly, he’d been expecting trouble, and reacted like a normal-ass civilian would: he was no asset, that much was obvious. "I don't know who you people are, but the card you gave me did nothing! It said the balance was insufficient, so I freaked out, okay?" The man said without pausing for breath, trying to justify himself to the people he’d been hired by, mistakenly assuming that he’d been grabbed out of the subway by them rather than the enemies of these people.

“Slow down, Mr. Rhodes.” Lexa told him. “We’re not associated with the people you mention: we’re with the government. We may be able to help you if you’ll just answer our questions.”

“You’re not… Why is the government kidnapping me?” The man asked, clearly confused for real.

"We know about your debts, Mr. Rhodes. Your bad investments, your gambling addiction." Lexa revealed Monty’s findings. "We suspect that you took a deal to make a cash withdrawal in exchange for a portion of the money. We think that you have no idea what you got yourself into."

Clarke tacked onto it: "That is the DIA's opinion. The CIA isn't willing to extend you the benefit of the doubt. Lucky for you, I'm just here as a consultant."

“The CIA?!” “Look, madam, I don’t want any trouble, but they’ll kill me if I talk!” Rhodes shouted, really panicked now. That was just great: if the guy couldn’t screw his head on straight, he was gonna be useless.

"Sounds like your ballpark. I'm gonna head out and get some air." Lexa opened, deciding to let Clarke handle it and assess the results as part of her ‘can I still trust you’ investigation.

"Sure. I'll chill here with our new friend." Clarke said breezily, happily fitting into her Eliza persona.

"Don't do anything I wouldn't." Lexa warned, halfway serious, halfway shooting the shit to unnerve Scott. Clearly, the man’s opinion of the CIA was more informed by pop culture than reality.

"No worries. I'll keep your chat with Bledar in mind." Clarke replied, leaving Lexa slightly off balance.

"I'm not even gonna question how you found out about that, Miss Taylor." She said a little snappishly.

"Mr. Miller is an old acquaintance of mine, Commander Woods." Clarke explained, forthcoming enough. Okay, so she’d been using her dinners on the town as Dr. Carson to slip messages to her contacts: fucking figures.

“Okay, we’ll go over some things later. Call me when you’re done.” Lexa said, announcing that the two of them were going to have a little chat about sneaking information behind her back, but taking her leave to stretch her legs a little.

Once the door had closed behind Lexa, Clarke rolled out a duffle bag, its inside containing all the pieces of her M14 EBR SOPMOD tied to the fabric separately.

"You have however long it takes for me to reassemble this weapon to come up with a name. If not a name, then a detailed physical description." Clarke, in a perfect impersonation of Eliza’s Melbourne brogue, hummed.

She began whistling 'O Danny Boy' seemingly without a care in the world, starting to fit the first pieces together lazily yet purposefully: this was the first time she’d assemble the weapon Octavia procured for her, so it felt a little different than her old M14, but she could fit it together with her eyes closed, so did it with deliberate slowness. Either Scott Rhodes was the most pathetic man in the world, or a grade-A actor, and she wasn’t taking her chances on it being the former.

“I can’t tell you! This guy is bad news, he’ll kill me if I say his name!” Rhodes said, starting to sob.

“And I’ll kill you if you don’t say his name.” Clarke pointed out, meaning every word. Scott might actually be this sad little figure, but he still knew, and that was damning enough.

"Let's have a little test fire..." She said once she’d finished assembling the rifle, popping bullets into its magazine, feeding the mag into the receiver, and cocking one into the chamber. She lifted the barrel at Rhodes’ chest, began pulling back on the trigger, then swung the rifle a little to the side so that the bullet flew right past his ear.

"Ah, good, it works!" Clarke chirped, before turning serious again: "I still haven't heard anything."

"Turgut!" The man said when Clarke aimed at his kneecap next, deciding that he’d rather take his chances tomorrow than certainly die today. Lexa crashed through the door after hearing the gun go off, not knowing what to expect, but standing down when she saw that all was well just in time to hear the confession. "Turgut Özlem, that's what he said his name was. Some Turkish guy who wanted me to get some money for him because he said he was being watched and had to run; and he'd let me keep a third of it!"

"Turgut Özlem? You're lying." Lexa spat at him.

"No, I swear I’m not! He’s a client at Vitae; I met with him before!" Rhodes tried to convince the psycho Aussie.

"Thank you for your cooperation." The scary redhead told him pleasantly, releasing his cuffs. "You're free to go. Get back to your own life, but don't try to disappear. If this name doesn't check out, I'll be paying you another visit."

"That was unnecessary." Lexa started when Rhodes had sprinted off into the sunset.

"I got results." Clarke shrugged.

"The man pissed himself!" Lexa pointed out with a look of disgust at the ammonia smell now permeating the room.

"The man shoulda known better than to willingly violate the Rico Act." Clarke mentioned, still was too casually for Lexa’s taste – Spirit, this girl and violence went together like chocolate pudding and whipped cream! “Anyway, what’s so hard to believe about it being this Turkish guy?”

"He's the Turkish military attaché to the US Air Force at Incirlik Airbase! He works for the FSB!" Lexa shouted in her face: man, Griffin really could be inexplicably dense sometimes!

"That's not good, I suppose?" Clarke went, still not seeing how this man would fit into a Russian scheme.

"DoD keeps a lot of sensitive stuff stowed away there. Including hard copies on USAF patrol flights schedules, IFF frequencies and ID codes, and even an ACS command module..." Lexa listed off, to Clarke’s growing concern. "If an enemy reverse-engineered that module, they could hide aircraft from all of NORAD, and we'd be down to civilian radar to spot them. They could spoof friendly IFF signals, chart flight paths to avoid aerial detection, pass by all of our Patriot batteries without triggering alerts..." Lexa trailed off, the possible consequences hanging thick in the air between them.

"You wanna know what else is at Incirlik?" Clarke said, now getting on with the program. "A hundred twenty air-launched nuclear missiles and two dozen airframes capable of launching them. If even a single one of those pilots goes rogue and hits Turkey, the whole country will fall squarely into the waiting hands of Mother Russia."

“I’ll get General Porter and contact Defense Counterintelligence Service to put all of those pilots and handling crews under the microscope. In the meantime, let us focus on the Turk.” Lexa decided.

The heart wanted what the heart wanted, and it tended to know better than the head who was friend and who was foe. Lexa's head wanted Griffin to shut up and stop interfering. Her heart wanted Clarke to shut up and kiss her.

But this wasn't just about Lexa. This was about the Mountain Men. About the 325 million citizens that constituted the American body politic. And about the thousands, if not millions, of civilian lives at stake should people like Cage Wallace and Carl Emerson land their asses in the White House and the Pentagon.

“Turgut would be clued in as to the location and specs of those weapons, as per our agreement with Ankara. But I’m far more concerned about the ACS module – something tells me he’s already found a way to clone it.”

“Bullshit.” Clarke replied, because while this was DIA business, she did know that the Pentagon didn’t just hand out personal access to classified materials to foreigners, even if they were military attachés. “The only way a guy like Özlem could even get close to that kind of equipment without getting ventilated is if he had legitimate access, which would require a written order from the Joint Chiefs of Sta- Oh my god.” She stopped herself as the truth sank in.

Scott Rhodes had not been lying. And what this meant was that the enemy had an infiltrator sitting inside the central command center of 80 Corps. And not just at its headquarters, but sitting at the fucking generals' table. 80 Corps was the overarching command for the handful of combat divisions assigned to homeland defense within the CONUS area, so whoever the mole was, they were a General entrusted with one of the seven national defense sectors (California [plus Guam and Midway], Pacific Northwest [which also spanned Alaska and Hawaii], Gulf Coast [including Puerto Rico], Rocky Mountains [which also encompassed the Midwest for convenience], and Upper- and Lower Eastern Seaboard), so they would be able to tell Nia every detail of whatever defense plan would be enacted during an armed attack on the US mainland. If nothing else, the list of suspects was narrow, but the fact remained that if they'd be placed under investigation, who knows what kind of damage the culprit might cause.

Who were the Generals of 80 Corps?

Bellamy Blake of the 11^th Airborne, headquartered in Nome, Alaska: him, she could rule out immediately. If he'd been up to anything nefarious, she would've known about it. She had zero suspicions, but would run him through the works anyway just so she could officially clear him.

Zoey Autumn, 1^st Armored, in Fort Hood, Texas. The elder daughter of Sally and Douglas Autumn, a violently independent type who never let her parents tell her what to do, and surely wouldn't give up her freedom to the Russians and their belief in the Cult of the Family.

Charles Pike, 40^th Infantry, based in Los Angeles; a National Guard rather than Army or Marine unit, but one of exceptional quality. He was an Old Republican who bled red, white, and blue. He’d made his career lobbying politicians endlessly about having to be actively prepared for a full-scale conventional war with the Russian Federation and emphasizing the importance of sustaining much more powerful garrisons in Alaska and the Left Coast than were currently in place. The man had even written a bestseller in 2018 regarding a fictionalized narrative of what a real war with Russia would look like under present conditions, so it seemed extremely unlikely that he’d do a 180 and end up in a Russian’s pocket, unless he’d been playing a duplicitous game of smoke and mirrors since 2001, which was very hard to believe.

Elizabeth Snellgrove, 4^th Infantry, at Colorado Springs. Scion of an unbroken line of military officers that went all the way back to the War of Independence, a powerful historical family name to uphold which she was eager to do, to prove herself the equal or superior of any of her male peers that came before. Her father Martin was the State Governor of Colorado, who ran on an anti-government overreach platform and whose most damning skeleton in the closet was the fact that he was hiding an affair with his Cuban maid Sandra. Lizzy was a daddy’s girl, so she wouldn’t want to upset him when by all appearances, the man was very particular about not being hamstrung by imposed rules. If he didn’t want to be hindered by rules imposed by the homegrown Fed, he certainly wouldn’t be open to rules imposed by foreigners.

Charles Pettigrew, 69^th Infantry, sitting in Newark, New Jersey. Though a Colonel rather than a General, his word carried just as much weight as that of his peers, and his command was a separate regiment rather than falling under a higher divisional commander. He was the son of an English immigrant. The man was a noble with a dual citizenship in the UK: he would have a lot to lose if he threw his lot in with the enemy, the UK being an extradition country and the SAS quite good at tracking down and eliminating traitors all over the world.

Jackson Vaughn, commanding the 7^th Infantry in Seattle. He was old enough to remember a time long before Bojinka, growing up in a system where the dark color of his skin had counted for more than the content of his character in the eyes of the government, yet had fought his way through West Point with tooth and claw. He might have a grudge to settle with the old government, but that quite simply didn't exist anymore and hadn't for over twenty years: General Vaughn had a very personal reason to be invested in protecting the current social system where he wouldn't be looked down on just because his skin wasn't porcelain or ivory like a 'real American', or a real Russian, for that matter.

Frederick DeKalb, 3^rd Marine Division, operating from Camp Pontchartrain, Louisiana. Here was a man of Cajun stock, full of Southern pride and stubborn blindness. That man sent his division into meat grinders, saw massive casualties being taken, and thought it was good, because it was evidence that his boys and girls were fighting hard. There was no way he was ever gonna be persuaded to link America’s destiny to the will of an outside force.

And Martin Ridgeway, 10^th Mountain, in New York City. There was a man whose entire life was the Army: he’d attended military prep school, military college, had been gushing about the armed forces and wanting to be a part of them since he’d been old enough to talk, and was now living the dream. The guy loved nothing more than a good war to fight and enemies of America to destroy… which might, perhaps, include an illegitimate American government.

Which external people would have top-level access to 80 Corps' internal memos?

Only four people, and one of them was the President: it wasn't Augustus Woods that was in league with Nia, so she could scratch him off her mental list without issue. So who were the others? Thelonious would be able to see it easily: he was obviously read in on every DoD SCI-graded project including DARPA experiments, so national defense was well within his purview. Marcus Kane, Secretary of Defense, was the one in charge of making sure that 80 Corps got its funding and materiel and had to be answerable for every penny disbursed, meaning he also had to be made aware of what they needed it for and where. And the NSA cockroach would be able to view anything without tripping any wires. Even Raven would need to prove reasonable doubt to go sifting through JCS files, but Murphy's portfolio allowed him to call such stuff up at will. Luna could, in theory, send a fetch order, but that would be too obvious – and she couldn't have done it without Clarke's permission before she'd become Director herself, so it couldn't be Hilker.

Information flow at this level was ridiculously self-contained and restricted to on-site storage, only transported via special courier on SUB drive. Perhaps Sally Autumn could use her own powers to open a backdoor into the DoD, but she was the sort of person that had ordered the development of the untraceable CATBOS (Certified Authentication Threat Barrier Operating System) intercom system for perfect privacy and wouldn't invade someone else's even to save lives for fear of setting a precedent for government overreach.

So any leak, especially a sustained one, had the potential to deal unmitigable damage to the national defense strategy.

Perhaps it wasn't one of them that was the mole, at least not directly. Maybe one of them was sharing information with somebody else who they trusted, someone who was handing information to one of Nia's agents unwittingly, like Rhodes hadn’t known anything more than that Turgut was dangerous enough to kill him if he’d said no to his request.

Once the ground team was back at the hotel, Monty waved the leadership to the conference room:

"I looked up this Turkish guy? He's on a plane bound for LAX right now. He'll be setting foot on US soil in less than four hours. Flying out of Moscow." He revealed. The threat had just become real, and far more imminent than any of the task force leaders found comfortable. Had Rhodes not talked so quickly, who knows what might’ve happened?

“There’s no time to get there ourselves. Activate our West Coast unit and mobilize our California counterparts. Guess it’s time for me to delegate.” Lexa announced. “I’ll retain operational command from here, but TACOM will run the show on the ground over there.”

As the Western branch of DCS prepared to interdict the aircraft, under the command of Commander Aidan Andrews, a highly capable young man who was one of the handful that Lexa could honestly consider a peer, Lexa called the commander of Incirlik AFB on his personal number, establishing a secure connection with the primary US military installation on Turkish soil.

"Colonel, this is Commander Woods with the DIA. I was hoping you could answer some questions regarding a recent containment breach of sensitive materials at your base."

"First things first." The man said to her, sounding on edge. "I need to verify you are who you say you are. Please tell me your full name, division, and position. I will then contact your commanding officer, who will repeat the same information back to me. Then I will call you back on this number to answer your questions."

"Standard procedure, I understand." Lexa said, not taking it personally. "Alexandria Woods, Defense Clandestine Service, directly under General Indra Porter." She spoke crisply, also rattling off her service number for completion's sake: the cautious Colonel would have no avenues of denial left open to him. "I'll be waiting." She said. "Oh, and Colonel?", Lexa held the line open for a moment longer. "I would strongly prefer to keep this matter between us. The United States can ill afford the DIA to be seen investigating such a delicate internal matter. I'm sure you agree."

The Colonel hung up, and less than fifteen minutes later, Lexa’s phone rang. “I received confirmation from General Porter that you’re the real deal.” The CO of Incirlik stated. “What do you need me to do, Commander Woods?”

“I need you to run an inventory check, see if anything’s been stolen or shows any signs of tampering. We believe that our air defense may be compromised.” Lexa explained.

“Affirmative. I’ll forward anything my guys dig up to your Mr. Greene. Good luck, Commander.” The man said professionally: he was taking the threat seriously, and that was all she could ask for.

“And to you, Colonel.” She said, terminating the connection.

The next thing Lexa did, now that they could only wait for Andrews’ team to stop Özlem’s aircraft at LAX, was turn to Clarke: "I thought you were supposed to be ASIS. Why'd you name drop the CIA?"

"Because I'd rather not get Eliza involved any more than necessary and it would be a lot weirder for an Aussie to interrogate a US citizen about a Turkish national for a nonexistent joint op with Canberra than an Aussie immigrant working for the Company doing the questioning." Clarke rattled off, using one of those running compound sentences that were nigh-impossible to parse that she loved so much. Lex was used to deciphering them, though.

"Where is the real Captain Taylor, anyway?" She asked next, not expecting an answer.

"Wouldn't you like to know." Clarke confirmed with a little smile.

August 2, 2021

LAX Los Angeles International Airport, Los Angeles, California

Aidan and his platoon were waiting on the tarmac and swarmed the private plane as soon as it had taxied to its hangar. Nobody would be disembarking without Commander Adams’ say-so. And with nearly fifty excellent DCS operators at his back, Lexa’s California counterpart felt confident about his odds of success: the plane couldn’t even fit fifty.

"Commander, don't open that door." Clarke told Aidan frantically over the radio after she took stock of the situation and something clicked in her mind. Adams, not recognizing the voice, prepared to ignore the request and make entry.

"You a vulnerability specialist now, Griffin?" Lexa questioned Clarke, annoyed at the intrusion.

"I know my own tradecraft a damn sight better than you." Clarke said, sounding harried. "You wanted me to teach you how Nia thinks, right? I'm begging you not to open that door!" She pleaded with Lexa.

Deciding to take her expert consultant seriously, she mouthed for Aidan to hold his ground for a moment while she asked Clarke why he should hold off on apprehending Turgut.

The blonde answered: "There will be a trigger attached to it that'll spark off enough explosives to kill everyone on that tarmac in a 1500-foot radius. If they open that door, all of your men out there will die."

“That sounds insane. Why would a Turkish military diplomat risk his own life like that?” Lexa asked.

"Because that's what I would do, and Nia loves her fail-deadlies even more than me. Unless it's her, her spawn, or her SVR pet aboard, she will have taken every possible measure to erase everything and everybody on and around that plane if there was the slightest chance of it falling into enemy hands."

“We’re intercepting an army man, not a spook. This is a DIA operation, not CIA. The longer we wait making entry the bigger the chances Özlem is destroying evidence. I’m telling Aidan to go in.” Lexa said, taking back control.

"Commander Woods, I will take no responsibility for the corpses you're about to see blasted to a fine red mist. I have warned you to the best of my ability in my severely limited capacity, so every death that occurs after this point rests entirely on your shoulders." Clarke said with force, daring Lexa to call her out on it.

"...God dammit." Lexa gave in. "TACOM, hold off on entry. Hold security and stand fast for two mikes."

"Monty, pull up the CAD for that make and model." Lexa ordered, then: "Griffin. Options for safe entry?"

Clarke had already prepared her answer: "She'll be prepared for a top attack. Parachute commandos or SOF ziplining in from another plane. The roof will be wired to detonators too. But she'll have left its soft underbelly exposed." She told Lexa, advising her on how to proceed: "Tell your people to cut into the cargo level from below, well away from the landing gear. They might sever something that makes it go boom if they're too close to the side walls."

"Okay, boss." Monty interjected. "I've got the layout up; now I'm gonna take the guys' IFF transponder locations and use their present values as a base, setting up pins for them on the CAD where they are in real life right now, and slaving those pins to the motion sensors..." He thought out loud, working his keyboards and touchscreens like a maniac, "And bam: real-time 3D visualization of where our boys in black are on the plane."

"Monty, did I ever tell you that you're a genius?" Lexa praised her IT specialist, thoroughly impressed.

"You might have mentioned it once or twice." Monty answered without a shred of humility.

Aidan and his people did as advised, Commander Adams liking the ingenuity of whoever had devised this plan of approach. Using blowtorches, they cut themselves a hole into the lower level and hoisted themselves into the plane’s belly upon making sure that the area was unoccupied.

"Commander, we've got hydrazine canisters everywhere." One operator told Adams, his video- and audio feeds patched through to DC as well, "There's some kind of plastic explosive attached to them, lots of wires going everywhere, I don't see a timer." He reported, confirming that Clarke had correctly predicted the trap.

The operators next gained entry into the main passenger compartment, and were met with an area that was covered top to bottom in a strange red residue that Clarke felt like she'd seen before.

"Oh my god..." The point man exclaimed in horror as the red wasn’t all just this residual dust, but also human blood, courtesy of around three dozen deceased Turks still strapped into their seats.

"Yeah, check them!" Commander Adams ordered: maybe one or two of them had managed to hold onto life.

No such luck. "...They're all dead, Sir." His point man reported a few minutes later.

"You got that, Woods?" Aidan asked his Eastern counterpart.

“Yes, I see it. There may still be live hostiles deeper inside, proceed with your sweep, but be careful.”

"Two bullets to the back of the head. Looks like there was no resistance." The point man reported.

"This is some sort of exotic knockout gas. That red residue... I've seen it before." Clarke spoke up, recalling the red knockout gas that Roan and his strike team had deployed when they’d extracted Clarke from the transport convoy.

"They executed their own people?" Tris asked in horror, livid at how callously they wasted their comrades.

"They became liabilities the moment Nia received word that you were underway to intercept that plane. Loose ends get tied off." Clarke explained: Russian spooks had very little room for considering the human cost.

In the meantime, Lexa received a call back from the Incirlik commander, who reported that it appeared like copies had been printed off of a lot of sensitive data: flight plans, patrol routes, IFF frequencies, and the likes; but the nuclear arsenal and ACS module looked to have remained untouched – Lexa promptly informed Aidan of what to look out for.

"Will you look at this?" Adams exclaimed, whistling as his entry team breached the conference space towards the back of the upper deck.

It was burning. It was all burning. All of the papers were piled into containers, liberally doused in fuel and accelerant, and set alight. It was already far too late to recover any of it.

And strewn around the containers were the bodies of four men – clearly Russian, not Turkish – clad in dark drab olive-green combat fatigues that looked like somebody's attempts to resurrect the Warsaw Pact, wearing no identifying patches, foam still dribbling from their mouths from the cyanide pills they must've swallowed only minutes ago.

"Every time we think we'll catch a break, something like this happens." Anya grumbled. "This is just like what happened in Post Falls." The killing their own, the gas, the destruction of evidence: the Mos matched nearly exactly, only differing in methods. Gunshots to the head were no less effective than ocular flashbangs, though.

"This proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that whatever else is at play, the FSB and Mountain Men aren't just colluding: they're directly allied." Lexa surmised. She could work with that: if chasing Clarke’s leads against Nia meant getting closer to fulfilling Indra’s mission for her of bringing down the MM, she might be able to generate some additional support. It was certainly disturbing to see just how correct Clarke had been proven thus far, though…

"You wanna tell me what Post Falls was about?" Said woman asked her.

"Not a damn chance." Lexa said, still not 100% convinced Clarke wasn’t feeding intel back to Nia.

"If it's about the MM, it's about Nia. If it's about Nia, it involves me." The girl with the discerning blue eyes pointed out.

"What, you weren't told anything while you were in Moscow?" Lexa asked, wondering just how close Nia and Clarke had really been, that the latter knew so much yet so little.

"About active operations Stateside? Fuck, no!" Clarke exclaimed, just as frustrated about the fact as Lexa.

“Let’s just say that Idaho was just as fucked up as LAX.” Lexa shut the conversation down.

"No shit. This was a total loss, plain and simple." Clarke determined. "The Turk is dead. Whatever he was carrying from Incirlik has been irrecoverably destroyed; we don't even know what it was. What the Colonel reported coulda been deliberate decoys; CIA’s done it like that before. We don't know if they made any copies, we don't know-" she ranted, frustrated at being thwarted at every turn, "we don't know anything."

“You…!” Anya erupted, getting up to loom over Clarke with a snarl on her face. “I don’t know how you did it, but somehow, you tipped them off that we’d be waiting for them!”

“And how could I have done that, Cheekbones? I was right here the whole time.” Clarke, not at all intimidated, replied. “What, you think I snatched a phone and texted Nia in plain sight of three dozen DIA operatives? Even I’m not that good.” She told the older Woods sister, because really, now Anya was just reaching for straws.

“Can it, boss.” Tris intervened, pushing Anya back into her seat with a wink at an amused Clarke.

"You want me to help you, but I can't do that if you give me nothing to go off of." Lexa told the ex-CIA girl.

"Remember Karachi?" Clarke said in response.

“I wasn’t there. What about it?” Lexa wanted to know.

"Costia figured out where Osama was hiding. She chose not to tell anyone, not even her own SEALs until they were already on the road, for knowing that if she did, the CIA was gonna roll in hot and heavy, they would've spooked Bin Laden, and he would've disappeared again. She knew the value of discretion for the right reasons." She told Lexa, knowing that she’d receive the message that there were still things she just couldn’t tell Lexa, or anyone else, about without putting people in unacceptable danger.

“For all our sakes, you better not be hiding anything important.” Lexa told Clarke.

“I’m not: scout’s honor.” She replied, putting her hands together like in praying.

“You were never a scout!” Lexa said back, her annoyance temporarily forgotten: forgive her, but she believed Clarke.

“Still, I can’t reveal all my sources, but what I find out that’s actionable, I’ll give you right away.” Clarke promised.

“I can live with that. You’ve still got a long way to go, but I’ll admit: you’re off to a god start.” Lexa confessed.

The operation to intercept the Turkish officer may have yielded nothing directly, but everything around it did go to show that this rabbit hole went deep, so Lexa was willing to give Clarke the benefit of the doubt and work under the assumption that the terror plot existed as she described unless proven otherwise.

With any luck, the final form of the microfilm database would confirm it beyond further doubt.

August 5, 2021

The daily routine they settled into following the failed operation at LAX – well, that Clarke pushed them into – was fast-paced, unrelenting, and harsh. Clarke was completely in the zone, ignoring that she wasn’t the one running the show to basically do precisely that anyway, and Lexa, though insisting that Griffin run everything by her anyway (which she did, and happily so, as she got to rub it in Lexa’s face that more evidence pointing to her being right was uncovered by the hour), pretty much allowed it, no matter how much Anya and Raven protested. She had her finger on the pulse of everything Clarke Griffin just as much as Raven was breathing down Lexa’s neck – the DNI would be coming by later today for an in-person briefing, as a matter of fact – so unless the girl stepped out of line, she was willing to let her do her thing. Clarke worked most efficiently when she wasn’t hamstrung by protocol, at the same time as thriving under pressure, so Lexa took Tris’ advice to treat Clarke as her (business) partner rather than a distrusted prisoner.

The woman in question spent twelve hours a day frantically scanning for information, canvassing for new data and scouring what was already there while scribbling endless notes across two dozen Word documents and other, far more sensitive notes on a paper pad with an actual pen, four hours more teaching Lexa the Russian language in an intensive crash course that the Commander had asked her for as much because she wanted to finally learn the language of their enemy so she too would be able to read the mountains of mounting evidence as to have an excuse to spend alone time with Clarke, who took no more than two hours to eat and look after personal hygiene, and the remaining six she was in bed for, often sleeping for only three of those hours as her mind kept swirling with thoughts and ideas that just wouldn't leave her alone until she'd noted them all down lest she forget a single morsel. She was capable of sustaining herself on minimal sleep and a steady stream of various flavors of iced coffee – not indefinitely, but maybe long enough.

And it was starting to pay off. She and Monty had by now developed, dried, scanned, and translated all of the microfilm fiches and digitized them, where they were currently undergoing categorization while Lexa’s team of external translators had begun poring over hard copies of the files to do idiomatic, context-sensitive instead of literal translations.

Clarke was settling in rather well, Lexa was pleased to note. In the beginning, she was curt, snappy, easily irritated, and couldn’t take the slightest joke, everything even remotely reminding her of the fact that life had taken her from behind facing intense backlash. There were a lot of fights, a lot of confrontations, a lot of arguments, and the two women constantly got in each other’s way: Clarke asking for things that Lexa didn’t want to acquiesce to, and Lexa making behavioral demands that Clarke wasn’t willing to give into, leaving the two of them at an impasse.

Lexa couldn’t pinpoint what had changed. They’d been getting along decently, even trading jokes, until Los Angeles. Whatever it was, Clarke had turned very hostile with Lexa, who, having very recently admitted to herself that she was interested in pursuing Clarke romantically and decided to try after the whole mess had been resolved and Clarke was a free woman again if she didn’t decide to go for Tris instead, was now confronted with the prospect of losing her forever instead. She was pulling away, spending most of her off time with Octavia, Lincoln, Monty (who had forged a quick and easy friendship with her because they both turned out to be nerds, go figure), and Tris, who had indeed stopped actively pursuing Clarke’s affections as per their agreement, but also wasn’t standing down on her interest.

So Lexa had finally had enough after four days of virtual radio silence that felt like four months, and asked Clarke to come to a peace negotiation.

"You do you, I do it me, and we won't do each other – that came out wrong." Her old friend’s position had been, making an accidental innuendo that Lexa could swear had made her pale face flush red in more than embarrassment alone (or maybe that was wishful thinking), which Lexa had agreed to under provision of a mutual feedback loop.

So they called a ceasefire, and from there on out, things had gotten measurably less tense between most of them. Anya still didn’t care about Clarke being given so much freedom and leeway, and now even less so upon seeing that her sister had all but capitulated owing to her emotions that she was just masking with reasonable-sounding excuses (that, in Lexa’s defense, were equally valid reasons and indeed proved operationally determinant in streamlining the flow of information), but Lexa made sure to make up for that by trying to spend more time with Clarke as a friend, like they used to, and this day had been reasonably successful…

Until the evening, when Raven had showed up, and the raven-haired woman had begun tearing Clarke a new one.

"I'm sorry." Clarke said, her emotions already shot to hell from the taxation of the past few days, the girl unwilling to dissociate because that would only make Raven even angrier. The whole argument preceding this declaration had involved tons of examples of where Raven believed Clarke had crossed the line and inflicted too high a toll on the innocent people around her targets in order to achieve her operational objectives. Anya, of course, threw her support in with her girlfriend, while Tris looked increasingly starstruck as she was now hearing about a whole litany of victories that she’d never known of before – all clearance levels thrown to the wind in Raven’s impassioned attack.

Lexa thought Raven was being unreasonable: the woman’s fiery spirit made her act like a bloodhound, which made her ideal for running an entire collection of intelligence agencies, but also meant that her opinions were… outspoken.

"You keep saying that. And then you do it again." Raven said, not buying that Clarke was even capable of feeling remorse. With a track record like hers, it wouldn’t be surprising if she’d begun to think about lives as an abstract.

"Raven..." Clarke implored her old friend, her eyes watery and red-rimmed: of course she remembered all of these operations. Every mission, every strike, every kill. Every collateral casualty. She couldn’t forget if she wanted to – she was physically incapable of it. And even if she could, she didn’t want to forget.

"You keep thinking you have to save the world, but guess what, Princess: it's the world that needs protecting from you." Raven accused: you didn’t gain a nickname like ‘the Commander of Death’ because you were known for showing restraint. "It's a good thing that you're not in charge, cause when you are, people die."

“It’s true.” Clarke spoke softly, infuriating Raven even further with how calm she was being, even though on the inside, she wept for the fallen, because nobody else would. “People die when I’m in charge. But guess what? People also die if I don’t. And looking at the facts, when people listen to me, most of the deaths are the enemy’s, and when they don’t most of the deaths are ours.” She told Raven what everyone knew yet few wanted to admit out loud. “Twenty to one ratio doesn’t apply to me, Reyes. Or have you forgotten UVAC protocol already? Maybe I’ve killed a lot more people than you, but at least most of them weren’t innocent bystanders!” This protocol stated that it was worth causing the deaths of up to 20 innocent civilians if it meant terminating one terrorist, which grew commensurately, so that 400 civvie deaths was an acceptable toll for eliminating twenty hostiles.

“You damn hypocrite. Don’t you pretend like you care about collateral.” Raven clapped back, a huge chip on her shoulder. “I’ve seen you execute wounded men, women, and children in cold blood without breaking stride. You’re so casual about it, so matter-of-fact about killing, it’s like you’re a Terminator. You can just feel nothing, because in your mind, every corpse is automatically justified because it’s doled out by the Commander of Death.”

"Did it ever occur to you that the reason I switch off my emotions is because I could never get the job done if I allow myself to feel the full horror of what I'm doing while I'm doing it?" Clarke, considerably more emotionally charged than ‘feeling nothing’, replied. "I have to be level-headed. That requires emotional detachment, because otherwise, if I let my doubts, my reservations, my morals, my personal judgment, anything not purely pragmatic get in the way, I would be paralyzed." "They trusted me to take these decisions because they knew I wouldn't make them lightly. That I wouldn't let my personal attachments get in the way of doing what was necessary to protect the American public, and that, and nothing but that, is all I've been doing since the day I turned sixteen."

All of this made sense to Lexa and Tris. Octavia and Lincoln already knew and had never doubted as much. And even Anya had to admit that Clarke spoke true – she was gona pay for that later, she was certain. But it didn’t deter Clarke as she continued addressing Raven: "So what makes you the morality police, Raven Reyes? You, who's made a career blowing people up in Middle Eastern sandboxes that never saw the MQ-9 that launched the Hellfire that vaporized them coming? People that had families, people with hopes and dreams, aspirations and motivations, people who believed with all their heart and soul that they were doing the right thing, the only way they could, the only way they knew how to protect their families, and you killed them anyway." She said, calling Raven out on her double standards. "Why is that? Because you had to. Because if it's a choice between protecting our people and sparing their own, you know that isn't a choice at all." Clarke spoke, her monologue having turned into an address for the whole task force to hear, as she wanted them all to know that she wasn’t some callous murderer, but someone who killed only if she had no other choice. "So what's the fucking difference between someone who tells a UCAV operator to take the shot from five thousand miles away and someone who actually orders boots on the ground? That you had sanctioning and I didn't? But if you knew that you were tracking a target that, if you waited for permission to engage, would slip out of reach and kill hundreds, thousands, millions of innocent people, would you take the shot and face the music, or cover your own ass because you were just following orders?” She laid out, knowing that Rae couldn’t say that she wouldn’t do anything in her power to protect all those people. “That shit hasn't worked since Nuremberg, so the difference I see is that I did take the shot, and paid the price for it. It was a shot in the dark, but don't think for one instant that I regret doing what I did. I wish the outcome had been different, I wish Costia had lived; but God dammit, I'm not omniscient, and I was only doing what I believed was right. And don’t think that I wouldn’t have rather traded places so she could be here instead of me, you absolute…" Clarke trailed off as she began choking up, flashes of memories about her sister zipping by in front of her minds eye.

“You stare into their eyes as they die. It’s like you enjoy gloating over your kills.” Raven said lamely, her arguments waylaid, her anger defused, yet her outrage far from placated.

“No. I do that because I don’t want to forget what they look like. I don’t have the luxury of watching on a black and white television display, I was in the sticks wetworking for years, up close and personal. I memorized all of their faces. So at least I can remind myself that I’m not shooting at pixels on a screen, but human beings with a whole inner world that I extinguished. I have to take responsibility for that.” Clarke explained, Lexa and Tris gaining more appreciation for how she went about forcing herself to not keep a distance from her enemies. It was a mindset that would drive any lesser person headlong into being unable to function, just going to show how strong Clarke Griffin actually was.

“Are you done with the sermon?” Raven asked, not buying the sanctimonious bullshit.

“Don’t pretend like your hands are clean, Reyes.” Clarke called her out again.

"You think I don’t know that? You told me to airstrike a hospital, Princess. A hospital filled with wounded people." Raven revealed the real reason why she’d been so worked up: one mission in particular: Gaza City, 2008.

"Filled with wounded Haji militants, you mean." Clarke, recalling the one in question, specified.

"They were defenseless! It was like kicking a man when he's down!" Raven, for some reason, argued.

"They would recover and go on to commit more murders!" Clarke exclaimed, annoyedly glaring at Raven. "You knew that, Rae, so you pulled the trigger. Don't try to exculpate yourself."

"I pulled the trigger because if I would've said no, you would've just found someone else that would've done it." The DNI, once upon a time a CIA drone pilot, told her one-time superior.

"We both know that killing doesn't always equate to murder. The Hajis don't play by the rules, so I'm not gonna put us at a disadvantage and innocent lives at risk by following the limitations that they ignore." Clarke explained her views.

"There were civilians in there. Doctors, nurses, people that had nothing to do with Hamas." Raven spoke.

"Yeah, a few dozen medical staff, and four thousand terrs." Clarke said, using the term that her Grampy Christian liked to sue from his time in the Rhodesian Special Forces. "Four thousand men that would kill a lot more than a few dozen innocents the moment they'd have recovered enough to jump back into their precious struggle."

"So, what, they were collateral damage?" Raven demanded.

"Yes, exactly.” Clarke said evenly. “A few dozen lives for the sake of twenty, thirty, forty thousand other innocents. Depriving dozens of families of their loved ones through no fault of their own, for the sake of sparing countless other families from having to grieve the same. I can live with that."

"Could you live with it if someone lobbed a missile at Walter Reed and killed your mother for the sake of public security?" Raven said, turning the tables on Clarke.

"So this is why you left the Company and went NSA." She surmised: she’d always wondered why Raven transferred out.

"Don't change the subject, Princess." Raven stopped the attempted tangent.

"Abby Griffin wouldn't treat terrs." Clarke said, not answering the question.

"And if they burst in and threatened to shoot everyone that didn't help? What if she didn't know it was a terrorist she was treating?" Raven added some variables into the mix, the former having been the case in Gaza City.

"Ethics are a luxury we cannot afford so that the majority of people can live by them without getting killed for it."

"That's still not an answer." Raven pointed out, Clarke knowing that she wouldn’t get away with not being forward.

"I'd be devastated. I'd be livid, I'd demand answers, I'd overturn every stone and deck anyone that got in my way, but if it were really justified? Is it okay to kill someone innocent when the stakes are that high? Let me think... Yes!"

“Clarke Griffin and her impossible choices. You bear it so we don’t have to? What a joke! You’ve killed more people than you saved. I hope you realize that.” That was an exaggeration, but it still stung. A lot.

"Tell me where I draw the line, Raven. Remind yourself." Clarke asked her old friend to remind herself.

"You... Um..." Raven searched her feelings for something she knew to be true. "You wouldn't allow the SAD to take their families hostage because you said they weren't in control of anything and shouldn't be punished for happening to be related to terrorists. Even when Indra argued that they'd grow up and radicalize into new terrorists anyway because of their fathers and husbands being killed by us, and she wanted to send in DCS to do what the CIA wouldn't." She admitted at last, granting Clarke that she could have rolled hot and heavy into the Gaza Strip and killed thousands upon thousands more with the sanctioning of the US and Israeli governments but chose to block the DIA from doing that very thing.

“The reason people like us cross the line sometimes is to make sure the rest of humanity can see where it is.” Clarke spoke, mostly for the benefit of the less high-level and less experienced members of their audience. "They say that if you let yourself be taken over by your pursuit for justice, you become what you hate."

"Hmm, okay..." Thornton piped up, trying to defuse the tension, which everybody, even Raven, seemed to appreciate. "I hate billionaires." Tris declared, pulling out her phone and checking her bank balance hoping for a miracle. "Aw, shucks."

“Don’t think it works that fast, Thornton.” Raven said, smiling for the first time since she got here. “Fate travels like a slow, meandering river, so don’t expect a speedboat. That’s what my abuela used to say, anyway.”

Raven was satisfied that the task force was running optimally, and she’d had her say: the verbal spar with Clarke left her tired and emotionally drained, but she was glad that they’d been able to put it all out there. Raven could now deal with a few of her lingering demons, and she’d perfectly maneuvered the team into seeing Clarke as a human being who made mistakes and could atone for them rather than the infamous traitor (not knowing how close she’d already grown to several team members) – she was still mighty pissed at Clarke for the way she’d handled things, but couldn’t bring herself to hate the woman. Everyone deserved a shot at redemption, but from here on out, Griffin was on her own. “I think I’ll take my leave. You’ve given me a lot to think about, Princess.” Raven said honestly, then headed out the door. She left like she was being carried along on a riptide, powerless to fight against the current, capable only of trying to dodge obstacles and see where the inertia of these events would see her wash up. Hopefully, it would be a place where she'd at least be able to stand with her head above water.

“That was intense.” Lexa observed.

“Yeah.” Clarke replied, covering her mouth to hide one mighty, long yawn.

“I have some news. I didn’t wanna tell Rae yet, not when she was… like that.” Anya revealed.

“What have you got, sis?” Lexa asked.

"Natalie Ash fell off the grid. She never checked into work one day and vanished." Anya spoke, to a loud exclamation of "Dammit!" from Clarke, who stalked off towards her suite to sleep it off, most likely.

Lexa watched her go. And Anya watched Lexa watch her go.

"Trust is the first step necessary for betrayal, sis." Anya told her conflicted little sister.

"I trust you, Ahn. Does that mean you will betray me?" Lexa rhetoricated. "There is always that possibility. That doesn't mean we must act as if it were a certainty." She insisted.

“Okay, maybe she’s not as full of shit as I thought, but she was still with Nia Koroleva for three months, and had been talking to her for much longer than that. Who knows what crazy ideas that Russian had put inside Griffin’s head that might have crystallized without her even knowing?” Anya said, and it was a fair point she made. “Be on your guard, is all I’m saying. She already broke your heart once, Lex. Don’t let it happen again.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll keep my distance.” Lexa answered. Anya prayed to the Spirits that her little sis could keep her word. When it came to Lexa and Clarke, there was a lot of history to unpack, but she knew that Lexa would never truly deny that girl if she asked with enough insistence. She just hoped Clarke wouldn’t take advantage of that. Because if Griffin tried to manipulate her little sis, Anya would make the bitch regret it. That, she could swear on.

Chapter Text

Chapter 18: Just Like Old Times

August 10, 2021

The Hay-Adams Hotel, Washington, DC

“Do you like it?” Lexa heard Tris’ voice coming from up ahead in the common room.

“I don’t like it…” Clarke’s voice came in response, “I love it.” She did her best Simon Cowell impersonation.

“Thanks so much, Tris! You’re awesome.” The ex-CIA girl said, hugging Tris just as Lexa entered, getting an eyeful of an interaction she had to remind herself was only friendly. Clarke had promised her that they’d revisit the possibility of moving forward if (yes, ‘if’, though Lexa called it ‘when’) the case was closed and Clarke got her guarantees that she would actually receive immunity and be allowed to walk free. Clarke literally never forgot anything: surely she remembered their agreement and wouldn’t just randomly jump into Tris’ arms instead while the same fears and worries still plagued her mind? Clarke was, after all, all about consistency and permanence.

“You know you can wear clothes more than once, right?” Lexa spoke up as she drew close to the other two women.

“I used to have seven identical white and blue suits as a sort of work uniform.” Clarke reminded her: one for each day of the week and two in reserve. “I just like having options.” She said, giving a sidelong glance to Tris that Lexa didn’t miss, giving off the impression that there was more than just clothing options on Clarke’s mind.

As for what Clarke had liked: now that was something Lexa didn’t mind getting an eyeful of.

Clarke had somehow acquired a flared jacket that narrowed at the waist and cut outward at the hips and shoulders, making her look somewhat like a Jedi. Or a Dark Lady of the Sith, depending on one’s point of view. Lexa had no idea where the blonde kept getting all these outfits; only that Tris was heavily involved in their acquisition and Corporal Thornton wasn't going to spill the beans unless Anya made her.

Anya wasn't going to make her, because that would require bringing up Griffin, which she avoided like even circumspectly mentioning the woman would give her septicemia. So the blonde, even though her hair was more often red just for consistency’s sake these days, was free to continue adding new outfits to her wardrobe. Expensive, tailored to fit outfits, that she was buying on the Agency's dime.

How was Lexa gonna explain these charges to Indra during the next budget meeting, she lamented. Clearly, Clarke hadn't been exaggerating when she said she was gonna make use of every penny – spending so many of them on private tailors was unexpected, though. At least the woman hadn't told Octavia to actually get a Pave Hawk helicopter gunship, she supposed. She had no doubt that Blake could pull it off if she wanted to.

It looked pretty good on her, though. Lexa figured she could appreciate a sexy body even if the person inhabiting it was an incorrigible player with some strange priorities. Only too late did Lexa's mind flag the inappropriateness of her internal monologue's choice of wording – she meant that Clarke treated life as a strategy game, not that she was a ‘player’ in that sense. Sure, she’d been with a few other girls once or twice, but always with Bellamy’s knowledge and approval if not his, ahem, participation, so Lexa had nothing to worry about – right?

There was something else she’d come here for other than angsting about the status of a nonexistent relationship, though. Miss Griffin had asked for the senior members to gather because there was something important she had to divulge, something that she said could be mission-critical, so after everything else that had already happened, they knew better than to ignore these words.

Lexa had been the first to arrive as usual – or so she’d thought: she and Clarke had always been early risers, but by the look of it, Tris had already been here. Or she’d been with Clarke inside her suite. That wouldn’t be the first time, come to think of it… ‘Geez, Lex, what are you, thirteen?’ She asked herself, reminding herself that cozying up to one girl to make another jealous was not the sort of tactic employed by reasonable adults, which all three of them were. Maybe she really should follow Tris’ advice and just talk to Clarke, but she wasn’t ready to face that awkwardness just yet, knowing that pushing the girl was only going to make her shut down even more, and that was the last thing Lexa wanted.

For Clarke’s part, she had to admit to herself that there was an infatuation forming: the way the shorter brunette, who stood at Clarke’s own length (Tris and Clarke being 5’5 as opposed to Lexa’s 5’7) kept her distance now and didn’t try to push for a relationship that Clarke had told her she wasn’t ready for but still was honest about her continued interest was endearing. Maybe someday, there was potential for something more long-term, more emotionally deeper than infatuation: she wanted to see whether Tris’ interest would fade with time or continue to persist the more she got to learn about her person of affection. And there was also the Lexa situation: Clarke knew that she liked Lexa, and that Lexa must like her back at least to some extent, but the woman had backed off a lot more than Clarke had expected following their talk, now acting as if that awkward kiss hadn’t happened at all and being all business-like. If Lexa wasn’t interested anymore, but here was somebody else, somebody new, with whom she didn’t have a complicated, impossible to unpack history that involved X – and, oh yes, the woman being engaged to be married to her sister who was now dead because of a mission that Clarke had ordered – then she was willing to see where things went naturally. She wasn’t gonna actively pursue anything romantic with Corporal Thornton, but wasn’t opposed to just letting it happen if it felt right.

Clarke had three worries to think about.

The first was that Beatrice was young. Not so young that the age difference – 24 and 27 – would be problematic in its own right due to developmental gaps or being in different life stages, but in the sense that Miss Thornton only possessed a small fraction of the sheer life experience that Clarke (and Lexa) had under their belt and more than likely didn’t have the thick skin or the iron stomach that Clarke had. Clarke’s tolerance for heinous acts was astronomical, and while Tris was proving to be an absolute Pitbull on the battlefield who’d tear through the opposition without remorse, there was a lot of difference between simply shooting someone and slowly torturing them to death for information.

Tris was clearly enamored by the idea of Clarke’s job and her effectiveness in carrying it out, but would she have the stomach to digest the brutal reality of it if she’d be dragged into observing it up close and personal? She didn’t want to traumatize Miss Thornton, and didn’t want Tris to think badly of her because of the things she sometimes did, either.

Plus there was the simple truth that Tris may not come with baggage and represented a fresh start, but she also hadn’t known Clarke for long, so the common ground that she and Lexa had built up didn’t exist, meaning that a relationship with Tris wouldn’t have the strongest foundations; and Clarke was too old, especially after nine years of marriage with Bellamy, to try to build something new from scratch on ground she wasn’t certain was solid.

Secondly, even if she was wrong about Lexa and it turned out that the woman was just pretending not to be interested, Clarke was Lexa’s prisoner, Lexa had put a bomb in her neck that only she had the control codes to, and that created a humongous power imbalance that Clarke simply wasn’t willing to work with. Yes, Lexa had known her since the day she was born, just a two-year-old brown-haired toddler who’d been introduced to a tiny blonde mite, and they had grown up together, had a lot more good times than bad, but…

But Lexa had fallen in love with Big Griffin Costia, not Little Griffin Clarke, and she wasn’t willing to become the replacement goldfish to her own dead sister. Not to mention that she just couldn’t get over the way Lexa had dragged her through the mud at One First Street and effectively told Sydney to go ahead and kill her already, even if a part of her understood that Lexa’d fallen into a snare by being called to witness so shortly after arresting Clarke: Lex had never been able to regulate her emotions quite as well as Clarke could. There was no denying that Alexandria Woods was incredibly attractive, but for all that, she’d also deeply traumatized Clarke, causing scars that might never heal, so she was absolutely of two minds about Commander Woods.

And an overarching one that pertained to both women: namely that Clarke still was 98% convinced that even if they managed to thwart the FSB invasion and kill Koroleva, the US establishment would renege on its word, Gustus would crack under pressure, Russell and Diana would use their own power to galvanize public opinion against her, and she’d be executed or thrown in a hellhole prison forever after all. Could she really justify her own happiness, and make someone else happy, under the understanding that it would more than likely only be temporary and at least one green-eyed brunette was gona be left heartbroken by losing Clarke? Then again, they both knew this and both denied that such a thing was going to happen – neither were particularly naïve regarding the way the system could be dysfunctional, so maybe it really was just her own paranoia working overtime and she should try to cut back on the doom thinking?

And besides, there were others ways of looking at it. If a few months was all she had, and all she could give, but the other would find it worth using that time even if it meant spending the rest of their lives alone or with someone else because it was better than not having been together at all… Then yes, it would be justifiable.

Back to the present, though: the other leaders had begun to trickle in, meaning the gathering could be taken to the greater security of the conference room.

“Well, you’ve got us all here,” Octavia began once everybody had settled in, “so what’s going on that you have us all up at the ass crack of dawn you’re being so secretive about?” Lieutenant Blake, the farthest thing from a morning person, yawned without covering her mouth to make her point more clearly.

"So, please hear me out before you skin me alive, but I've been feeding Echo breadcrumbs-" Clarke began, addressing Lexa first and foremost, dropping a bombshell that triggered Lexa.

“You’ve been going behind my back again?!” She shouted, shooting out of her chair outraged.

"Down a false trail!" Clarke emphasized, holding her hands out in a disarming gesture. "Peace, Commander. I swear I'm not trying to fuck you."

‘I know that, Clarke. I’d probably be less frustrated if you were.’ Lexa thought. It was almost what she said, but she stopped herself in time, so the words that were verbalized came out as “I see you’ve been passing notes, ‘Doctor Carson’. Would you care to share with the rest of the class just what the fuck you think you’re doing?”

Anticipating an Anya Outburst, Octavia spoke up before the other Woods got the chance: “If Clarke is sending messages to Commander Teles, let’s hear why she’s doing it before grabbing the torches and pitchforks, shall we?”

“Thank you, O. I was just getting there.” Clarke smiled at her friend, then looked at Lexa again: "Echo's the one that's meant to be keeping an eye on me and report back to Nia to make sure I don't defect back to the States." She reminded the officers. "So the way I figure? False intel that can't be falsified, fed through a drip feed, will keep Nia's guard down, allowing me to keep helping you bump off her goons without her suspecting why."

Lexa wasn’t so sure: “You believe that false intel can keep her from realizing that you’re the one that led us to Özlem, for a start? The bank accounts we breached? I doubt she doesn’t suspect you’re our asset after all of that.”

"She'll believe I'm leading you to expendable assets to protect more important ones.” Clarke explained. “What she doesn't realize is that those assets fulfill key roles that support the top level and aren't as easily replaced as the FSB likes to think. Think of it as a Jenga tower with a bunch of missing pieces that looks stable, but is structurally so unsound that the whole thing collapses when you remove one more piece."

“For the sake or keeping the peace, I’m going to allow this scheme of yours to continue to play out and see where it leads us, but Clarke, no more going behind my back. Alright? If you want me to trust you, I need you to prove that I can.” Lexa said, sounding harsh, but the look in her eyes imploring: she really wanted to be able to trust Clarke, and she wanted Clarke to know that she could also trust Lexa in return.

"I don't know.” Clarke sighed sadly. “I'm giving messages to my SPM contacts – if you need to know what that abbreviation stands for, you already know, otherwise, though luck – they drop them off for Echo's contact to find: there's a whole bunch of dead drops involved in every transaction. We haven't been able to follow the trail back to Echo herself: she's too elusive." She told the command team, the irritation in her voice enough to convey that she would wring Echo’s neck herself if her people could deliver her to the DIA. "But she's playing the part of the useful idiot right now, so keeping her alive for the time being actually serves our purposes more than Nia's." She had to admit, to her own annoyance.

"Why are you telling us now?" Lexa wanted to know.

"Because I had an idea... One that I want to run by you first." Clarke told her.

"And if I say no?" Lexa inquired, suspecting she'd carry it through anyway and her even bringing it up was nothing more than a courtesy call.

"Then I won't do it. I'm not too sure about it myself; that's why I'm asking you." Was Clarke's answer, who almost never admitted that she didn't have everything under total control. So if she was asking for advice now, it wasn't a manipulation, but actual apprehension. Fascinating.

"Okay, let's hear it." Lexa was intrigued.

"Glass had been working a problem for a while before I was disappeared. Something about a unified Islamist resistance movement coalescing in Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan that's being supported by sympathetic individuals within the US military-intelligence apparatus. The Shop is overstretched as it is, so..." Clarke began, forgetting that only Lexa knew what The Shop was, leaving the others curious and especially Anya a little bit ticked off. Monty, Octavia, and Tris all muttered some variation of 'I knew they were real', Anya's reaction was more akin to 'Are you fucking kidding me', with Lincoln and Ryder being like 'Oh hell, even more spook bullshit.'.

"So you want to divert Echo onto Sorenson's case?" Lexa kept the ball rolling.

"Exactly." Clarke stated. "What if I were to pass a message to her that I've uncovered the names of a bunch of US assets working against Nia, but give her the names of the assholes supporting the resistance instead? That could save a lot of American lives overseas, if Echo kills them for us."

"That sounds incredibly illegal." Lexa pointed out.

"It's what the CIA would do." Clarke replied, dodging the substantial question. Strictly speaking, everything the Agency did was illegal, so what was one more black op on US soil.

"It sounds brilliant, boss." Tris egged her Commander on.

"Of course you'd say that, Corporal Starstruck." Anya chided her heart-eyed protege.

"Hey! The source doesn't inform the merit." Tris argued back.

Lexa, opting to ignore the bickering like between a teenage daughter and her exasperated mother, kept engaging Clarke's idea: "You'll forgive me if I'll ask for those names first to run my own background checks before letting you use a Russian assassin to commit murders on US soil."

"You're forgiven. It's a reasonable precaution." Clarke said. "That means you'll do it?" She leaned forward, hope in her eyes. If Lexa thought it was a worthwhile idea, she could pat herself on the back for coming up with it.

"That means I'll greenlight the exploratory phase, but if I decide to let you keep passing notes to Teles and work her as an asset, you let me read them first." Lexa set the conditions.

"Agreed. See? We can work together if you just hear me out." Clarke smiled, hanging back in her chair. She'd sounded like a smug asshole again even though she'd meant it seriously, rolling her eyes as herself for her seeming inability to ever talk right with Lexa.

"So it would seem..." Lexa admitted, absorbing yet another blow to her ego, even though there was no shame in being outmaneuvered by Clarke Griffin.

Lexa needed a moment to digest all of this information. Everything Clarke said made sense, but then again, taking the absurd and making it sound self-evident had long been a critical part of her job.

“You want us to believe that the only reason you’re here is because Nia let you go?” She asked her old friend.

"Tell me, Lexa: why do you think it was so easy to recover me?" Clarke said back.

"If that's what you call 'easy'." Lexa spoke, oozing sarcasm.

Clarke began to lay it out: "You launched a successful raid into the capital city of the most powerful enemy we have, breaching the fortified compound of one of the highest-ranking officers in their consolidated intelligence agency that's the direct descendant of the fucking KGB, engaged in a running gun battle on the streets of Moscow, and the Kremlin hasn't raised a peep about it, passing it off to the public as a domestic terrorist attack. What element of that story sounds organic to you?" She rhetoricated, putting all the elements in a tow. "Nia wanted you to come get me. She was counting on it."

“I didn’t even know I’d be going to Moscow until two weeks in advance. And wasn’t told about a chance of target until the day before the raid. I refuse to believe Nia knew I was gona be there.” Lexa laid out her suspicion.

"Oh, not you specifically. Just the American intelligence community.” Clarke replied, mollifying the Commander somewhat. “She believes I’ll subvert you from the inside, that’s why she let me go. Only she’ll have another thing coming if I have anything to say about it."

“You really think she let us take you away instead of, what, killing us all?” Tris now asked incredulously: this whole setup sounded too convoluted to not have been lifted straight out of a Hollywood movie.

“Yes, she let you go. She put just enough pressure on you guys to make it feel like you were in imminent danger, and a lot of her people got killed for real, but that was all calculated costs. The only thing she wasn’t counting on was the SVO opening fire against fellow Russians.” Clarke confirmed.

“We had to fight three consecutive battles against what amounted to an entire regiment of FSB, GRU, and VDV. They had attack helicopters, Clarke. It felt real enough to me.” Tris said back, her confidence a little shaken.

“Think about it.” Clarke began to walk her through it: “There were no FSB UCAVs flying around trying to airstrike you. There were no Kosa ACPs,” Clarke said, the Kosa being the Russian answer to the American Tarantula Autonomous Combat Platform, “and from what I’ve been told about the chase through Moscow, they only used Sedans, not IFVs or anything else with a little beefier weapon than machine guns.”

“That’s because she didn’t want to risk killing you by accident.” Tris pointed out.

“Sure, because hosing down the convoy with missiles, helicopter autocannons, and Fagot AT missiles instead would ascertain that I’d remain alive and unharmed?” Clarke drawled back: the Sedan convoy had actually not been acting on Nia’s direct orders, and the reason some of them had begun peeling off and the fired slackened was because Nia had been told of what this QRF was doing and ordered them to switch from termination to containment precisely because Clarke’s life had been at  risk for real on that leg of the journey. “No, Tris, it was all calculated. She wants me to be here.”

“If Nia knew we were coming for you, she must’ve also known that there was no way we’d let you get in touch with her – although it seems like you pulled that off anyway.” Lexa picked up the conversation. “So why risk it? Why feed intel to Echo, even if you think it’s for the greater good, when that lets Nia know that you’re in a position better than a hole in the ground?” She wanted to know.

“Because she made it clear that she has people here in the US watching me like a hawk, including some in senior positions. She never mentioned who and I never got to find out. Hell, I’m taking a mortal risk telling you about it, but since you’re the ones that got shot at, I figure you aren’t part of that particular plot. Ergo, she’s always known I’m not being kept in a cage deep underground in Nebraska, so if I stayed radio silent, that’s when she would’ve known I turned against her.” She told an incredulous Lexa. “Disbelieve me at your own risk, that’s fine. But Nia said she was gonna kill my mom and dad, Bell, and you, Lexa, if she caught the slightest hint of me turning on her.”

“Well, thanks for telling us about your note-passing voluntarily.” Lexa said, taking in the fact that Nia had gotten Clarke to cooperate by threatening her life: if Clarke cared about her that much, then that she was telling her about her illicit activities that Lexa hadn’t had a clue about was a show of faith, wasn’t it? She could appreciate that.

Just after 8, the meeting was interrupted by an out of breath tech soldier of Monty’s team knocking on the door.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we have some very bad news.” He said after being let in, dimming the lights and turning on the projector, attuning its feed to the real-time geopolitical world map developed by the CIA and zooming in on the Balkans.

“As of 01:00 EST this morning, the capital city of Bosnia is no longer Sarajevo, it’s Banja Luka.”

“The Bosnians have capitulated, then?” Clarke, closest to this conflict among the Americans, inquired.

“The Bosniaks have capitulated.” The tech soldier specified. “It’s the Bosnian Serbs running the show in Bosnia Proper now, and the Bosnian Croats are preparing to defend Hercegovina with everything they have. The Croatian government in Zagreb is calling for US support against potential Serb aggression against Croatia or the Bosnian Croats, and CENTCOM has agreed to transfer four divisions away from France and the UK to deploy to Croatia.”

“Which means placing them a day further away from returning to the States if we fall under attack at home…” Clarke thought out loud, growing more concerned by the second.

“That’s not all.” Monty’s man continued. “As of 01:30 EST, the Republic of Serbia has launched a full-scale invasion of Kosovo. Albania said it wants to intervene, now Russia has said that if a single Albanian soldier or paramilitary sets foot on Serbian soil, including Kosovo, the Russian Federation will bomb Tirana back to the Stone Age.”

“This is Nia using Volkov and the Federal Government to take revenge for the Admiral Ushakov attack.” Clarke determined. “Volkov won’t hesitate to engage the FSB if they’re working to fulfill the Kremlin’s shared goals.”

“The Ushakov was lost in an accident, wasn’t it?” Tris asked – the sinking had made headline news around the world.

“There’s what Russia Today says, and then there’s the truth.” Clarke stated. “The truth is that the ship and its entire crew had been infected with a slow-acting form of radiation poisoning using a transferable material that would have turned them all into carriers of transmissible radiation sickness by some Bosnian Jihadists. Nia was so angry that she slowed down Operation Golden Bird just to free up more resources to destroying Bosnia as an independent state because of it.”

"What is 'Golden Bird'?" Lexa wanted to know.

"Now what. Who." Clarke specified.

"Don't fuck with me. Who?" She demanded.

"Well... Me." The younger woman admitted sheepishly.

“So she named her entire invasion plan after you, using the tacname she devised for you?” Lexa went, staggered.

"Look, this isn't a tacname, not one that..." Clarke tried to defend herself. "It's a fucking codename that predates my involvement with Nia. Predates it by five fucking years."

"Bledar told me Nia was obsessed with you. I thought he was exaggerating at the time." Lexa admitted, deflating. She really shouldn’t assume that Clarke knew everything: she wouldn’t be bothering with the microfilm if she did. Griffin clearly wasn’t in Koroleva’s camp, even if she made it really difficult to tell what exactly she was after – maybe all of her scheming and maneuvering really was nothing more than doing anything possible to bring Nia down.

"This is news to me too. This tells me that she's been observing me from the day I first sat down in the Director's chair." Clarke spoke slowly, reminded of how oddly she’d felt like Nia was acting overly familiar with her.

“Okay,” Tris spoke, trying to break the tension and get things back on track, “so what we have here is essentially a Russian border expansion, triggering a reaction that draws US troops away from US home soil, putting more pressure on 80 Corps because reinforcements are now a longer time coming.”

“And all of this plays perfectly into Nia’s hands.” Lexa determined.

“She’s been delayed by Bosnia, but came out stronger than before.” Clarke confirmed, beating her fist on the table as she took in just how effortlessly Nia had played everyone, Clarke included, like fiddlesticks.

“Don’t blame yourself for this. Even you can’t look into the future.” Tris said, placing her hand over Clarke’s clenched fist, the warmth of the contact making her begin to relax. “We’ll figure this out. We’ve already made inroads, and there’s still tons of microfilm to work with.”

Lexa felt a pang of jealousy churning her gut: she’d told herself to try to get closer with Clarke again, but instead couldn’t stop butting heads with her, and yes, this was becoming a real distraction.

One that, unfortunately, her sister was starting to take note of.

“Lexa, can I have a word with you in private? Now?” Her big sis asked her pointedly, her brows pinched together in a worried frown.

Lexa excused herself and left the others to strategize, to begin formulating a response to the brewing regional war in the Balkans and how this played into Nia’s American plot, following Anya back to her sister’s suite.

“What’s going on, Ahn? Can’t this wait? That discussion was important for us both to attend.” Lexa asked.

"Can't you see Griffin is driving a wedge between us?" Anya said, and Lexa released a little bit of tension: Anya didn’t think her little sis had developed real feelings for their ‘consultant’, but was only seeing signs of manipulation.

"That is only because you don't trust me because I am starting to believe that she is not the enemy." Lexa stated, having decided that Clarke’s revelation to the whole command team that she was in touch with one of Nia’s top men and explaining why was proof of her being on their side after her initial startled gut reaction had been digested.

"I trust you, Lexa, and I'll always have your back." Anya said more kindly, never enjoying having a difference of opinion with her sister whom she loved more than life, "It's her I don't trust. Even if she means you no harm, she's so far off her gourd, I think she's only fit to stand at a squash court."

“You still think she’s drawing wrong conclusions from seeing threads between unrelated events?” Lexa asked, as this had been the Woods Sisters’ initial opinion for a long time when Clarke had first begun talking about a crazy nuclear terrorism plot. One that had now evolved into even greater insanity, what with said nuclear strikes not being the end goal, but only the first step towards installing Griffin as US President to help Koroleva usher in a literal new world order of peace in and between the USA and RF via perpetual war against the rest of the world. It was an insane proposition to believe. And yet… Every new piece of the puzzle was making it harder to deny the emerging picture.

“To be honest, Lex, I think that girl has the ego to want it to happen and the ambition and skills to make it come true even if it isn’t real at the moment.” Anya, knowing that to underestimate Clarke Griffin for even a second was to invite defeat, told her sister. “What I think is that she wants to recruit you to help her achieve it. And not because you’re the President’s daughter, but because she wants you to be her dark lady mistress of evil, or something.” Anya told her, correctly albeit unwittingly deducing that the real reason Clarke kept pushing Lexa away was because she was crazy for her sister.

“Sis, I don’t know what alternate reality you’ve been in, but Clarke doesn’t seem to even like me anymore, let alone want me to be her paramour.” Lexa said, her own words feeling sour on her tongue. “Whatever you think Griffin feels about me, I’m telling you: if it isn’t scorn, it’s nothing at all…” She said, hoping she’d be proven wrong.

"I've never met anyone else that can just switch off their emotions like that. It's fucking creepy." Anya opined.

“Tell me about it.” Lexa agreed. “But she’s emotional now. Means she’s letting herself be vulnerable. I think she trusts me more than she lets on; and I mean to use that. These messages of hers could prove to be a boon.”

"We're talking about a quadrilingual polyglot who speaks not only fluent English and both Latin and Castilian dialects of Spanish, but also Afrikaans and Russian. Who knows what secret messages she could be encoding in normal-looking letters." Anya laid out, and it wasn’t like Clarke was incapable of it, but Lexa trusted that she wouldn’t.

They should be safe from discovery even if these messages were being traced to their source. Clarke had admitted that even she couldn’t find Echo’s hidey hole, meaning that most likely, the inverse was true as well.

The CIA wasn't the only agency that used false identities: the DIA task force' cover as an Infinity Corp R&D conference also involved using well-developed, long-standing personas that were as legitimate as any real person.

So Alexandria Woods wasn't even at the Hay-Adams: the olive-skinned, green-eyed brunette in charge of the Infinity get-together was a certain Alycia Carey, with its resident expert being not Monty Green, but Dr. Jordan Larkin.

Unless Clarke had told Echo about their cover identities. But if she’d done that, Echo would be watching them all right now, and there’d be no need for multiple dead drops in between. Besides, Lexa had seen SPM operators – and no Russian assholes – hanging around in DC, near the hotel, around restaurants, and along the way: they made sure that Lexa could tell they were there while remaining hidden from detection by everyone else, meaning that A: Clarke wanted Lexa to know she was being protected, and B: that meant keeping Echo far away from the task force.

She supposed that Clarke was lonely too. She still had a living mother, Octavia and Lincoln, and probably Tris as close friends now, but she no longer had her husband, her father, her sister, her house, her job, her money, and her freedom. Lexa could only conclude that she didn’t want to have to bear the death of her oldest friend on top of all of that.

She could only relate to Clarke’s thinking, for she knew that this was what was going through the spook’s mind. There'd been too many funerals of loved ones as of late. First Costia, the love of her life, and now Jake, Cos' father, who'd been like a second dad to Lexa too. The fact that Abby had been alone in a sense, surrounded by friends and found family yet still devastated by the absence of her last living blood relation, also made Lexa feel awful for the role she'd played in that being so. Abigail had been so upset at seeing Lexa show up to Jake's farewell that Mrs. Griffin had gone into Mama Bear Mode and almost literally kicked the brunette out of Arlington National. It was clear that she wasn't gonna be welcome in Arcadia any time soon.

Lexa could understand: she was the reason, even if the reason was entirely justifiable, that Clarke couldn't be there. And Abby was many things, but forgiving wasn't one of them. The older brunette was giving Lexa and Anya the cold shoulder, ignoring them when she was working in the White House with Gustus, and most likely only refraining from screaming in their faces due to it being unacceptable in the most important building in the country and the respect she still held for Gustus. She knew that the Woodses' hands had been tied and that it was Gustus' hand that signed the order to commute Clarke' death sentence into life instead. She knew that there was still a deep-cover investigation ongoing into what exactly had happened, and so, she could live with Gustus, but she simply would not tolerate the fact that Lexa, and Anya especially, refused to believe that Clarke had been set up, livid at the thought that her younger daughter's best and oldest friend, who would have, should have become her daughter-in-law, could think so lowly of her princess. And Lexa, growing increasingly isolated from those she cared about as the old clan was falling into something of a civil war, truly didn't know if she'd done the right thing anymore.

If it had been Titus Templar and his FBI SWAT making the arrest, she was almost certain that he would've found an excuse to open fire, the man sensing betrayal everywhere and having never liked Clarke in the first place. So Lexa couldn’t say she wasn’t relieved that it had been her leading the mission on the ground, but was she happy about it? No, not at all. She’d been the one to take Clarke down, so now, she’d be the one to build her back up. Anya would grumble, she’d argue, but she wouldn’t get in Lexa’s way. And she would come to understand her little sister’s actions someday.

August 11, 2021

FBI Academy Camp Barrett, Quantico, Virginia

"Hey, where's our favorite Griffin?" Octavia asked Tris, who would surely know where Clarke was. She always did these days – it’d become weirder to find the short brunette not standing at Clarke’s side practically 24/7.

A bunch of the command team and a few people for a PPD had gone down to the lair of Titus Templar for Lexa to follow up on the names Clarke had given her of the people supposedly working as double agents for a bunch of Middle Eastern Hajis, hand-signed authorization form from Raven in hand to gain access to the FBI’s central database without Titus being able to do anything about it. She’s see if these people had any criminal records before taking their profiles to the NSA for John Murphy to run his own type of deep personal background checks on.

Clarke had insisted on coming along, but not to breathe down Lexa’s neck: instead, she said she wanted to do some training at the Bureau’s facilities to keep her reflexes sharp, adopting her Captain Taylor persona for the day.

"Down at the range." Tris’ answer was, directing O into the basement area where the shooting range for precision work was located. With Clarke being a sharpshooter, that was where she’d gravitate towards to hone her trigger skills.

As Octavia stepped onto the range, she quickly spotted a now familiar head of red hair, this time with a few pink highlights, standing in one of the booths with a small arsenal of scoped rifles laid out in front of her, ear protectors on, and a green light burning indicating that she was clear to fire live rounds.

She looked to be completely zoned out, holding her 9mm Beretta handgun rather than any of the long guns at the moment, mechanically going through the motions of operation. Load, sight, squeeze the trigger, control the climb, re-sight, squeeze. Two in the chest, one in the head. Switch magazines, rinse and repeat.

Her groupings were so tight that those bits of the training dummy she was targeting were just gone, only the girl didn't seem to be aware that she was slamming bullets straight through the practice target and into the backstop wall. The blood was rushing in her ears, totally tunnel visioning to where she didn't even notice Octavia's approach even after the light blinked to red and she’d pulled her headphones off. This concerned the ravenette to no end: Clarke was the one always berating people for having no sense of situational awareness.

Asking Clarke to withdraw with her to the upper end of the room, behind a soundproof separation glass, Octavia watched as the range master instructed a technician to remove Clarke’s target and replace it with a less mangled one.

"What did that dummy ever do to you?" O asked Clarke with a tinge of worry: spacing out like that just wasn’t normal.

"Look at its face. That oughta tell you." Was the growled answer she got.

"All I see is a piece of ballistics gel with a tunnel dug through it." Octavia pointed out, an observation which seemed to pull Clarke out of her trance.

“Sergeant Sandilands, could you retrieve that paper for me, please?” The woman asked the range master over the intercom in her Melbourne accent, Octavia finding the incongruity of that voice coming out of this person hilarious.

The range master gave a thumbs up and soon returned with the shredded remnants of a printed life-sized photograph of Nia Koroleva's face, barely recognizable and full of so many holes that it was no wonder it’d been blasted off the gel form. Octavia smirked: “You oughta show this to your girlfriend. Let her know what Nia can expect when you get her in your sights for real, unless it’s a ‘shoot your own asshole boss’ thing like Anya would claim.” She joked.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, O.” Clarke said back. “I’m totally single.” She went on, Octavia realizing that her friend hadn’t meant the ‘shoot your boss’ comment – that had landed without saying, of course!

“Is that why Lexa looks like she wants to strangle Tris? Because there’s nothing going on?” Octavia said back, having observed some pretty interesting developments over the past few days.

“Well buddy, truth is I haven’t decided yet.” Clarke admitted, feeling free to entrust her thoughts to Octavia, secure in the knowledge that Lieutenant Blake was the best there was at keeping secrets.

Then she turned to the range master, who’d wandered off to oversee some other shooters down at the booths, and pointed down at the M14 at her currently abandoned one. "The receiver's on the wrong side. Could you find me a conversion kit, maybe? I don't wanna burn my fucking arm every time I pull the trigger."

“I think we may have a left-handed one somewhere…” The Sergeant said, scratching his head. “I’ll see if I can find it.”

“Right on, mate. You’re golden.” Clarke said, laying it on thick, the range master walking off with another thumbs-up.

"You know, you can be really scary sometimes." Octavia said, whistling impressed.

"Only sometimes? I gotta step up my game." Clarke chuckled.

“So now that the Sergeant is gone and we have some privacy…” O started to say.

“Did Lexa send you here?” Clarke, immediately going into Paranoid Princess territory, asked.

“No. I actually came because I wanted to talk to you without listening devices or prying ears.” Octavia revealed.

“We have a few minutes, then.” Clarke nodded her agreement. “What’s on your mind?”

“I know you’ve been worried sick about what’s gonna happen after… all this, so I need to know if you trust Lexa.” Octavia said, cutting right to the chase.

Clarke, to her credit, didn’t need to think long about it. She did trust Lexa as a person, and as an officer. She was a woman of integrity who would keep her word; it was just that “Lexa will do her best to see our agreement upheld, but there’s a lot of other power players that will want to see me gone either way.”

“Do you need an escape route?” O offered sincerely. If she could make a hole for Clarke to disappear through, even if it meant she would never see her friend again, she was willing to make that happen.

“I appreciate it, but no, I don’t think it’ll do me much good.” Clarke turned her down with a defeated little shake of the head. “I don’t wanna spend the rest of my life running from one place to another, always looking over my shoulder for FSB, CIA, and FBI snatch- or kill teams.”

“So you’ll take your chances with Lexa, then?” O inquired, utilizing an obvious double meaning.

“I’ll take a chance on Lex. Whether that’ll be with Lex remains to be seen. I’ll admit I find Tris… interesting.” Clarke pondered aloud, wondering how the hell a global terrorism plot had seen her land not only in the middle of it, but also a bizarre love triangle that left her feeling far more unsettled than she should, to go along with it.

“You know Lexa’s been debating whether or not she should smooch you again, right?” O asked seriously.

“Like I said: it’s complicated.” Clarke sighed. “I don’t even know if I’m gonna have a future to share with someone else.”

“Still, if this thing with Lexa and the pardon doesn’t work out, you know I have my own resources to call on. I’ll help keep you safe, buddy. I’m sure Sally will, too.” Octavia nodded resolutely.

"You always had my back, O.” Clarke smiled, drawing her friend into a bear hug.

Their private moment was interrupted by Sergeant Sandilands returning. “Captain Taylor, I found that left-handed M14. It’s the only one we have on location, but it’s been kept in excellent condition.” The man said proudly.

“Perfect!” Clarke, effortlessly slipping into her Aussie voice, exclaimed, ready to kill some more ballistics gel.

“Mind if I join you in some jolly cooperation?” Octavia smirked, seeing that a booth adjacent to ‘Eliza’s’ had just been vacated by a Bureau trainee and her own trigger finger itching something terrible.

“First to 300 hits gets to watch the loser mash a custard pie in Anya’s face?” Clarke proposed a semi-lethal wager.

“Oh, you’re on, bitch!” Octavia took her up on the challenge.

There were many dummies this time, sliding laterally, closing in and moving away, popping behind cover, going up and down, and hiding behind other dummies marked as civilian noncombatants; and none of this mattered as bullets began finding their marks time and again. Two exceptionally precise shooters, quick on the reload, both eager to take on bets and challenges and utterly unwilling to lose, were going head to head in this competition, and the loser was going to have to face the wrath of both Woods Sisters while the winner got to laugh at everyone’s expense.

It was the perfect way to spend an afternoon between friends with nothing else on their minds for a little while.

August 12, 2021

The Hay-Adams Hotel, Washington, DC

The darkroom was busy as hell as Clarke, Tris, and six other DIA tech specialists fed information to a dozen translation teams off-site, Mr. Green coordinating everything from his server park under Lexa’s watchful gaze.

All of the microfilm really was on a micro-scale. The stuff added up to tens of thousands of fiches, every frame containing 64 individual pages that all had to be converted from film to digital, enlarged to A4 size, then significantly sharpened in a way that the picture quality was good but visual fidelity preserved, and then printed out on paper so the digital copies could be put through the proverbial shredder so there'd be no possibility of such information finding its way to the media, or worse: the Internet, and then back to Lubyanka, before they would be useful to the task force.

Poor Monty was being run ragged, but nowhere near as much as Clarke, who was painstakingly recreating all of the files in English. There was no software that could translate the pages for them directly from the source, because there was no embedded linguistic encoding in the files: this storage medium used nothing but raw images without metadata, just a reflection of physical pages without anything in the output that told a computer what those pages said. So they first had to be printed off full-size, then digitized in order for translation software to run a too literal translation to generate a preliminary database.

And even if there would be a program that could automatically translate based on a visual index of Cyrillic script and the Russian language, it would still produce gibberish, because the writing style they had to work with was idiomatic Russian, full of cultural references and expressions that made no sense unless you knew the referents, shorthand, abbreviations, words only partially written out for brevity's sake because the right people would know what they meant anyway 

It was going to take a damn long time to separate the wheat from the chaff. At least there were people Lexa could call on to analyze the translated info, determining what was probably important enough to send back to Clarke for a much deeper fine analysis, which made her workload... slightly less unmanageable.

That had been the order of business every since the film had begun development. So far, it had yielded nothing actionable, the only real operation being the result of Clarke’s memorized bank information getting Özlem to fuck up by contracting Rhodes, eventually resulting in the Turk’s death. A treasure trove of raw intel had been discovered already, but this mostly pertained to money: who owned what accounts, what money was coming from where and towards what purpose, but nothing yet on Nia’s agents embedded in the US defense sector.

But all of that was about to change. Because an off-site translator had sent a priority message to ‘Captain Taylor’ with a request to take a second look at the Cyrillic pages to make sure she’d gotten it right.

And boy, did that translator deliver! Because the pages in question described a massive order for dark olive drab uniforms, helmets, balaclavas, boots, equipment harnesses, ammunition pouches, socks, fingerless gloves... Dark green, dark green, and more dark green, to the tune of more than 60,000 sets. Enough to outfit four Russian-style infantry divisions, but why would the FSB want to equip people with stuff that the GRU could just procure from its official budget? They weren't for Wagner's 30,000 new mercenaries, because Prigozhin paid for their equipment himself... Maybe Nia wanted to hire an army of Kazakh mercenaries and make them look like Russians for plausible deniability? Northern Kazakhstan was 40% ethnically Russian, so there was no shortage of people that could play the part.

Speculating would be useless, though, so the search for Nia’s manpower pool continued.

In the meantime, the task force now possessed hard evidence in usable format pointing to the fact that a small army was being mustered. And best of all: right there, in black on white, was the name of the guy responsible for handling all arms shipments. The person sitting at the nexus of Nia’s coalition’s military hardware acquisitions was one Robert Whitman. And according to the files, he was right here in DC.

“Rob Whitman? I know that name.” Lexa revealed once Clarke had excitedly run up to her to shove the papers under her nose, all awkwardness forgotten for the moment.

“You’ve had a run-in with him before? Because I’ve never heard of the guy.” Clarke inquired.

“You wouldn’t have: he’s too small to appear on the CIA Director’s radar.” Lexa explained. “Whitman is a businessman, handling international transshipments. Mostly stuff that originates in South America. That’s not important. What matters is that he’s also the main heavy weapons supplier for the Mountain Men.”

“So that’s why you’ve heard of him. Why’s he still walking free, then?” Clarke asked.

“Because I’m having him tailed, hoping to get him to lead us to Cage, or at least Emerson.” She explained.

“Well, I’m willing to bet that if you grab the guy now, he can lead you to a lot more baddies than just Wallace and Emerson.” Clarke opined. “Your mission against the Mountain Men and mien against Koroleva are one and the same, just different levels of countering the same operation. This tells me that they’re not just in cahoots for convenience’s sake: they’ve got an ideological coalition.”

Lexa was of the same mind: “I’m starting to see it too. Tajikistan, Makhachkala, Kazakhstan, the FSB, the Mountain Men, Wagner Group, Putin – it’s all related.” She said, gnashing her teeth. “I’m gonna call Indra and ask her if I can start setting up a snatch operation against Robert Whitman for aiding and abetting a known terrorist organization. The moment Indra hears the word ‘terrorist’, she’ll greenlight it, I have no doubt.”

“You’re the best, do you know that?” Clarke chirped, promptly hugging Lexa who was too surprised – in a good way – to react. Clarke smooched Lexa on the cheek, gave her a huge grin, and had run off back to work before the brunette could halt her. Lexa debated going after her, touching her hand to her cheek to make it last longer while resolving to never wash that spot on her face again, but decided against it, not having a justifiable reason to do so and unwilling to drag Clarke out of the darkroom when it’d certainly mean getting teased to hell and back by Thornton about it.

It was almost domestic, Lexa reflected, the living situation they’d constructed at the Hay-Adams.

Somehow, some way, she'd started looking forward to seeing the blonde in the morning (it was still so odd to think of her as anything else, even if she kept her hair permanently red now unless she had an appointment as the blonde Dr. Carson rather than Captain Taylor, and holy shit, Hannah Carson knew a lot of people!), constantly wondering whether she’d done anything similar to what she’d done the first night, or if that had only been a psyop with no genuine intention behind it. Not that she could know: Clarke kept removing every bug no matter how well-hidden it was!

Each day, Clarke would condescendingly explain something she’d dug up from the microfilm, Lexa would argue why it didn't make sense, Octavia and Lincoln would argue that they should trust Clarke, and Anya would make sarcastic snipes at everything Clarke said and did. Ryder, Tris, and Monty had quickly gone over from detesting Griffin to coming to enjoy her company, and even took to calling her by name now, a fact which annoyed Anya to no end. In fact, Tris had glued herself to Clarke’s side, and the latter had no problems at all with letting it happen.

Clarke was being cooperative, while continuing to stick to her guns regarding the existential threat posed by Nia and what her real role had been. The picture that was emerging also lent credibility to her initially ridiculous story: somebody really didn't want anyone to talk about the missing warheads and was going to untold lengths to block any inquiries into where they might have gone, including foiling the Russian MOD and the Kremlin itself.

She was also being polite, no, genuinely just nice to everyone except for Anya, and to Griffin's credit: her sister really wasn't making it easy to get along with her.

All in all, it was becoming really, really, really hard to stay mad at the disgraced head spook.

Perhaps Lexa's judgment was clouded. The fact that Clarke was someone she'd been very close to for most of her life on one hand, having to reconcile that with an apparent treason and the certain responsibility for the death of the woman she loved who looked exactly like her on the other, and the knowledge that her dad wanted Lexa and no other to handle this task force because she was the only person that could say she not just understood but comprehended how Clarke Griffin's mind worked presented quite the conundrum. And now Tris Thornton’s carrying a torch for Clarke to nearly the extent Octavia was only made things even more difficult, because it added yet another complex emotional dimension to a case that by all rights, required detachment and a purely professional working relationship: as if that had ever been in the cards when Gustus and Raven decided to put Clarke in close proximity to Lexa, of all people.

They had achieved something of a détente, at least, and could be in the same room without it coming to a screeching halt.

Still, there were awkward moments. Like the way Clarke was using her DIA-issued credit card like her personal spending account. She couldn't access her own money and all of her personal effects were elsewhere, of course; but it was Lexa that had to explain to her bosses, face to face, why an intelligence agency checkings account was being charged for Chinese takeout, a DVD of 'Crocodile Dundee', and a wand vibrator. (At least Lexa could suppose that the latter means Clarke wasn’t satisfying her urges with Corporal Thornton, unless they were up so some really weird shit, which might just be the case; only she had no doubt Tris would be bragging about it if they were!)

Not to mention having to cover the substantial costs of needing to replace about two dozen listening devices literally every single night that were irrecoverable for having invariably been crushed to a fine powder: Clarke wasn’t showboating by dumping boxes full of them anymore, but just pulverizing the things with, apparently, her bare hands.

Privacy was, as Anya had so helpfully pointed out, a citizen's right, which meant that Griffin was definitely not entitled to it, but she wasn't being malicious about it – just infuriatingly casual. She just kept putting them back as a matter of following protocol. And precisely that was what pissed Clarke off so much.

Anya was extra pissed off today, though, because just this morning, out of freaking nowhere, Octavia had come up to her, shoved a whole custard pie in her face, and had then ran off while being chased in circles by Anya throughout half the building while Clarke had just about died laughing – until Ahn had tackled the ravenette and tickled her until she’d been begging for mercy. And then had gone twelve rounds in the sparring ring until her big sis had eked out a victory with 7 rounds to 5. Anh and Lex were both convinced Clarke had somehow been behind it all, but in the absence of evidence, there was nothing that could be done but leave Anya to nurse her wounded pride.

And even thought it’d pissed her off as much as she’d found it entertaining, Lexa had to admit that she still cared. She had to, if she wanted to retain any chance of keeping Clarke in her life upon the mission’s success. (Failure was not an option, so it would be a success.) She couldn’t picture her life without at least one Griffin as a part of it, and if she treated Clarke as nothing but even a colleague now, even though the woman herself had wanted to keep her distance, she stood a very real risk of seeing the woman she was… highly interested in falling so deeply for Tris instead of her that Lexa’d miss her opportunity for good, which was not something she could blame Thornton for trying, but was unacceptable to her.

She knew that Clarke was suffering from untreated CPTSD, which made her erratic, rude, arrogant, self- righteous, arrogant, ruthless, reckless, and even a little sadistic. Clarke was willing to go the distance, but even so, she never killed unless that was the only feasible option left and took no pleasure in it when it had to be done, two things that couldn't be said about Nia. And now armed with the knowledge that the ordeal she was being put through had made the girl suicidal was much more difficult to deal with. Clarke had so little faith left in anything resembling a good outcome that she'd made Lexa promise to shoot her, for goodness sake, so try as the brunette might to hate her, she just couldn't help but be determined to show Clarke that on the other side of this, there would still be a life waiting for her that was worth living.

"I really wish you'd stop doing that." Anya grumbled as another handful of silicate dust was resigned to a trashcan.

"I'll stop destroying your bugs when you start putting them in places that aren't so obvious I can just reach out and grab them. Think of it as a challenge to get good, noob." Clarke clapped back, having already made a game out of it.

Lexa fondly rolled her eyes at the antics between the two most important women in her life. "...Next time they call me to appease the Intel Committee, I'm gonna recommend just stopping that kind of surveillance. There's no point in trying, is there?" She asked, already knowing the answer.

"Now you're using your brain, Commander." Clarke replied, ever so smugly.

“If only you could crush that geotag against your brain stem without it giving you a personality upgrade, yeah?” Anya said to Clarke, satisfied that she’d finally gotten in a good quip of her own.

“How will I ever live, knowing you’ll forever be reminded of how near to you and your sister I am?” Clarke retorted, unperturbed and equipped to trade blows with words as easily as in the sparring ring.

“Even closer to me, boss!” Tris piped up, sensing a perfect opportunity to create some juicy, juicy dramatic tension. “The Golden Bird is teaching me how to fly.” She stated, brazenly leaning into Clarke, who didn’t look terribly uncomfortable with the gesture even as Anya and Lexa both gagged for completely different reasons.

“So!” Lincoln came in, cutting the lit fuse off the powder keg. “How are we looking with getting the perms for the Whitman op, Commander?”

“It’s gona be great, Lex!” Clarke interjected before Lexa could answer. “You and me taking down the bad guys together, just like old times, nah?” She smiled, squeezing Tris’ hand but giving Lexa a wink, leaving the latter wondering what the hell was happening on that front.

“Um, so, I’m still working on it, but Raven says she’ll give us the OK real soon, so we can start planning the takedown now, I figure.” Lexa spoke, switching gears to get her mind back into Commander Mode.

“Awesome. Let’s get to work!” Octavia, giddily anticipating some live action, hijacked the common room.

Leaving the Anya situation, the Tris situation, and Lexa’s awkward place in between them all for another day.

Chapter Text

The principal players in our romantic intrigue are the following:

Clarke Abigail Griffin, (former) Agency Director, Central Intelligence Agency. Age 27.

Beatrice 'Tris' Thornton, Corporal, Defense Intelligence Agency Defense Clandestine Service. Information Technology expert & field ops sharpshooter. Age 24.

Alexandria 'Lexa' Woods, Defense Intelligence Agency Defense Clandestine Service Field Commander, assault specialist, and battle commander. Second Daughter of the United States of America. Age 29.

Chapter Text

August 13

The Hay-Adams Hotel, Washington, DC

Lexa was fretting. She just couldn’t take her mind off Clarke, in a manner that was starting to consume her thoughts to an extent that her jealous insecurities – for that what they were – were starting to interfere with her work in the line of duty. She had to talk to Clarke to get things settled, even though they’d agreed that they shouldn’t, because the other woman was clearly starting to move on and it left Lexa feeling abandoned.

But it wasn’t easy to get her alone: for most of the day, Clarke was in the server room with Monty and Tris, doing time-sensitive work canvasing the translated pages, and in the evenings, they’d either go out to dinner as a group and then retire to the common room as a group, or order in and be there as a group. Not that Lexa couldn’t get Clarke alone for a little while even then, but ‘a little while’ wasn’t long enough, and Anya would start asking awkward questions if she took Clarke aside for longer. Lexa already felt awful about omitting information to her sister, so she couldn’t stomach the thought of outright lying to her, but this did mean that Lexa effectively could only be around Clarke for a few hours a day while Tris was with her constantly, and unlike Lexa, had no reservations about openly flirting with the girl even if it made Anya clutch her pearls, because Tris still came to her mentor for advice on literally everything else.

Of course, with Tris being Monty's assistant and the only member on the task force who could remotely keep up with his tech speak, it figured that Clarke would be in constant close proximity to the pretty young brunette. And being cooped up together in a pressure cooker when one of them was being so sweet and nice and respectful and painfully obviously thirsting for the other, it was only a matter of time before something would give, really.

The only way Lexa could think of to actually have the talk she needed was to do it late at night, hours after everyone else had gone to bed, at a time she could be certain Anya would be asleep and only Lexa’s own night shift guards would be wandering around the halls: men and woman who knew better than to question their Commander and could be counted on not to start powering a rumor mill.

So this evening, she decided to just get on with it already. Maybe the way to do it was to stop thinking about what could go wrong and just do it. So she’d snuck out of her own rooms like a teenager going to meet her crush beyond her parents’ back like they used to have to do back in the olden days of… the late Nineties… and padded over to Clarke’s door, only to stop short of knocking when she heard voices – plural – coming from inside.

One was Clarke’s, as expected. And the other belonged to Corporal Beatrice Thornton. Who was in Clarke’s suite. In the middle of the night. Lexa wasn’t allowed to be in there at all without Clarke throwing a fit. But Tris was, apparently.

So rather than acting maturely, swallowing her pride, and just knocking, Lexa did the next-best thing, which was to channel to spirit of a jealous schoolgirl and put her ear to the door.

"I can't believe she turned against you just like that. After so many years?" Tris’ voice came, obviously referring to Lexa. "I mean, I've only known you personally for a few weeks, and I can already tell that there’s just no way you’d ever do anything that wasn’t necessary to protect your people.” Thornton said, and damn it all, Lexa reflected, the girl had already started absorbing Clarke’s speech patterns. The younger brunette really had it bad, and Lexa couldn’t say she didn’t relate. More importantly: Clarke wasn’t pointing out that Tris had also pointed a gun at her just like Lexa had. Twice. Why was she cutting Thornton so much slack when she hardly knew the girl, but kept giving Lexa hell about it?

“Tell me about it.” She heard Clarke reply, letting out a long-suffering sigh. “I don’t know how to fix this mess. I don’t even know where to start.” Little Griffin lamented, making Lexa perk up: apparently, her friend/crush did want to make things right, so that was something, at least. “Part of me is devastated that she believed that I could be so twisted that…” Clarke trailed off, not even wanting to vocalize her referent. For Clarke Griffin to hold back from stating something explicitly, she had to be in a lot of anguish… “But she does seem to understand that she made a mistake. Only she still holds it against me, and I know I’m far from the easiest to get along with, but I’m not the one risking decades of friendship because of a misunderstanding. I’m trying to atone for everything, but it’s never gonna be enough.”

“That woman really needs to get over herself, or she’s going to lose you.” Tris said sagely, leaving Lexa wondering why Thornton was trying to help her when she wanted Clarke for herself – then again, the younger woman had been the more reasonable of the two, and really did seem to want an even playing field so if she won, it was fair and square.

“To be fair: I did bite her sister so bad she needed antibiotics and a whole bunch of stitches, tried to claw her eyes out, and slit her friend’s throat before that. Anya’s allowed to be pissed at me. I didn’t know it was her, but hell, I’d be pretty damn angry too if it happened to me.” Clarke said, taking a small measure of responsibility. “The thing is, I get Anya being mad at me for attacking her, but she’s still convinced that I’m some kind of double agent, and I don’t see Lexa doing much to counteract her. Meaning she must believe it, too. She says she doesn’t, but what she doesn’t do tells another story… And the hell of it is that I understand why!” She revealed, making it clear that understanding didn’t equate to forgiveness. Lexa did believe that Clarke also had a thing or two to be contrite about: constantly going behind Lexa’s back even long before the Langley raid, evidently not trusting her to keep secrets even though she very much could; not informing her that her fiancée was about to embark on an insanely dangerous mission which meant news of Costia’s death had come out of left field; that horror show of walking through CIA HQ surrounded by hundreds of armed officers that had made her feel the gaze of the Commander of Death darkly upon her; the broken trust and blundering came from both sides.

On the far side of the door, Tris continued: "You deserve someone who cherishes you, and respects you. Who trusts you without second-guessing everything you say. The burden of proof shouldn’t be on you anymore, not after everything you’ve already given us.” The young woman determined. If only if were that simple…

“And you think that Lexa isn’t that someone, but you could be?” Clarke asked, sounding intrigued.

“That’s not exactly what I mean.” Tris replied. “Yes, I think I can be that someone. But don’t write Lexa off just yet.” She said, taking one for the team yet again – which was doubtlessly only gonna make her more attractive. “Did you ever consider that maybe the reason she’s trying to keep you tethered so close to her is because she’s afraid you’re gonna reject her and walk out of her life?”

“No, I doubt that.” Clarke rejected the supposition that Lexa wanted to shout was spot-on. “Lexa’s always been a straight shooter. She doesn’t play mind games, and she’s too mature to not know that something like that would only backfire.”

“Maybe you’re right, or maybe you’re applying logic to a field where it doesn’t belong.” Tris argued, pointing out how impulsive people were about ither people. “Reason flies out the door when it comes to love, Clarke.”

“Lexa Woods doesn’t love me, Tris. She’s made that abundantly clear. The only one who sees me like that is you.” Clarke scoffed – she scoffed as if the thought of it was absurd – and that was when Lexa began thinking that maybe she shouldn’t be so interested in a woman who obviously didn’t see her in the same way.

“Well, have you talked to her about it?” Tris asked, because of course, that would be the best way to find certainty!

“Of course not. I don’t think I can handle it. She’s already pushed me this far away; another rejection is just gonna… I don’t know what I’d do if I ruined our friendship completely because I think of her like my sister did. Costia called her – never tell her I told you this, okay? – she called her ‘Sexy Lexie’, and I… understand why… But she doesn’t want me like that, so it’s a moot point, isn’t it?” Now that was a revelation that made Lexa reverse course from her earlier thought immediately. Clarke was interested, only she thought she didn’t have a chance because Lexa didn’t want her. Which was the opposite of the truth; so why couldn’t she just go up to Clarke and tell her already?

“Speaking about sexiness… There’s something I’ve been really curious about, and nobody else can answer me but you.” Tris went on, possibly closing in for the kill.

“Hmm. Sure, why not? Lay it on me.” Clarke agreed.

“So, you’re bisexual, right? I’ve just been dying to know what it’s like to have sex with you.” Tris asked, getting a little too sultry to not convey that she meant to find out right now.

“I can’t say I haven’t been wondering what that’d be like, myself…”

“So that means you’ll give me a chance?”

“When I look at Lexa, I see a girl that I used to know. Yeah, I still care about her, a whole lot. But I don’t think I could be with someone that’s hurt me so much, and she’s way too intense anyhow…” Clarke laid out, in a way that might as well have been shooting Lexa in the chest. “But you? You’re so nice, you’ve been so sweet and understanding, and your eyes are the most striking green… You’re beautiful” She told Tris, sounding a little too breathless for things to remain PG for long. “Yeah, I think I wanna know what it’s like to be with you, too.”

Tris’ reply confirmed what Lexa suspected: “I’m in love with you, Clarke. I know it sounds crazy, but I love you so much.” She said, her voice high and shaky, like fearing a rejection. Lexa fervently hoped that this would materialize…

“I don’t know if I can talk about love just yet… I’m sorry… But I know I could love you.” Clarke admitted. And Lexa’s heart sank into her shoes.

“If it weren’t for Lexa?” Tris asked shyly.

“If it weren’t for me.” Clarke answered. “I mean, what if you find out I’m damaged goods? I haven’t been… happy. I mean, how could I be, when my so-called best friend is keeping me prisoner? And expects me to thank her for the privilege of not being put in a cage, when that was all about reason that I never committed?”

“Hey, look at me.” Tris now spoke, full of warmth. “I don’t care. I think you’re perfect. At least for me you are.” She told a dumbstruck Clarke. “Lexa’s an idiot if she can’t see that if this is her trying to protect you, she’s only making it worse, just like you said. And an even bigger one if she keeps holding onto all that doubt about your intentions. But me? You’ll never have to worry about whether I support you or not, because I do.”

“You know I’ll need evidence. How can you say that you’ll always be with me when you’re a part of the same team that shot horse tranquilizer into my neck on two occasions?” Said woman wanted to know.

“Because Lexa Woods worked her trigger finger on you, whereas Tris Thornton’s finger is about to paint your thighs with slick.” Tris said, getting worked up. “Get over here already. Let me show you why I won’t ever give you up.”

“Lexa? What are you doing out here in the middle of the night?” Monty materialized out of nowhere.

“Hey, Lexa, are you listening to me?” Mr. Green began shaking her as she tried to reply, but found that she could neither speak a word nor move a muscle. Paralyzed by the knowledge that what was going on behind that door should have been with Clarke and her instead. “What’s going on, Lex?” Monty said, his voice sounding too high to be coming out of his mouth. “Lexa? Hey, Lexa? Lexa…?”

“…Lexa?” Anya’s voice came, her sister’s face materializing as she blinked open bleary eyes.

“Hey, are you awake?” Ahn asked: Lexa’d been drifting in and out of it for a couple of minutes now.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m up. I’m here.” She stammered, trying to catch her bearings.

“Sounded like you had one hell of a nightmare.” Ahn told her, golden eyes shining with concern for her little sis.

“I did. It was just a dream. I’ll just dump some cold water on my face and forget about it.” Lexa lied.

“Are you sure you’re alright? You’ve been out of it for a few days.” Anya inquired, having aways been able to tell when something was bothering her only sibling.

“It’s just that I’m worried that other people playing with fire are gonna get me burned.” She answered vaguely. Let Anya interpret that as she will: she seemed to have drawn a conclusion vaguely in the correct ballpark already, and Lex didn’t wanna talk about it.

That conversation she’d overheard had been real. But what happened afterwards hadn't been what Lexa's subconscious mind had decided to torment her with by showing it to her in the form of a graphic audio play.

Clarke had not slept with Beatrice Thornton. Yet. They'd talked about sex – only not about doing it with each other, but because Tris had curiously asked about the difference between being with a man versus a woman, which Clarke had answered in disgusting detail, before moving on to something else entirely. Every word that had come after ‘to have sex with’ had been a confabulation of Lexa’s dream. Tris’ actual inquiry had been ‘a guy, like, how does it compare?’; definitely not going in the direction her mind’s eye (or ear?) had taken things.

The whole discussion about Lexa had only been one small part of a much longer conversation that had meandered every which way, but Lexa's mind had honed in on that part, naturally, for her subconscious to turn into a nightmare.

She couldn't talk to Clarke about it: the woman would be absolutely livid if she knew that Lexa had been snooping on a private talk, even if it hadn't been about anything secretive. So all in all, it was back to square one…

Which meant a frustrated Lexa continued vacillating between being curt and snappy towards Clarke one moment and all sunshine and rainbows the other, leaving the poor girl more confused than ever and gravitating even more towards Tris as a result – Lexa had managed to lock herself into a feedback loop of awkwardness, not helped by the fact that she really did also want Clarke to apologize for a bunch of stuff as much as she wanted to say sorry to her, but knew she couldn’t bring that up without it coming across as a personal attack, which would backfire even worse.

In other words: before she could talk to Clarke, she needed to have already talked to Clarke. Awesome.

August 15, 2021

The Hay-Adams Hotel, Washington, DC

Lexa returned from the ODNI late in the morning. There had been a breakthrough in the case against Whitman: Raven had handed her the warrant authorizing an arrest by any means necessary. Pressuring AG Lightbourne had made the man fuming mad, but even he couldn’t withstand the combined efforts of Lexa Woods, Raven Reyes, and Indra Porter when they’d dangled the possibility of avenging his daughter’s kidnapping in his face along with the higher probability that there would be no recurrence. Josephine was doing fine and still spent most of her time south of the equator, but the areas she worked in were far from the most stable, so if authorizing the takedown of the guy providing the people that threatened Josie and others like her with weapons would advance American interests and protect his daughter, he had to admit that the political fallout would be well worth it.

Lexa wanted to call the command team together to begin planning the raid to snatch the guy, only a crucial member of it – the one she wanted to have by her side to lead the mission with – wasn’t present on the premises.

"Where is Griffin?" Lexa asked Monty, the man with the keys to the geotag on his phone.

"Oh, she went out." Mr. Green shrugged.

"And she didn't see fit to inform me?" Lexa shot back, annoyed that Clarke was again going behind her back even if she could see why the woman would rather avoid her: but this sneaking off wasn’t helping Lexa build the trust Clarke claimed to want from her.

"She said you were gonna say that, and asked me to remind you that the conditions said two of us need to be with her, but you don't have to be one of them, nor is there anything about you needing to know." Monty recited a verbatim quote.

"Typical..." Lexa mused: she coulda seen that one coming. "So where did she go out to?"

"She asked me not to tell you." Monty deflected.

"Okay, then I'm hereby ordering you to tell me." Lexa stated, because two could play this game.

"She, um, went to McDonald's. I'm not kidding." Monty gave up, showing Lexa Clarke’s indicated position.

"Who's with her?" The Commander wanted to know.

"Lincoln, Ryder, and Tris." The tech expert revealed.

"The black holes on legs. That figures." Lexa groused: this sounded a little too close to a date between the girls.

"What's the trouble, Commander?" Monty asked, wondering why his boss was so agitated.

"That she'll be digging into their brains along with their shitty fast food." Lexa laid out one half of her annoyance.

"With respect, ma'am, but wouldn't she be doing that every night if that's her plan?" Monty said back.

"How is it that every time someone says 'with respect', they mean 'you're an idiot'?” Lexa wondered, Monty raising an eyebrow. “No, she wouldn't take the chance of someone else listening in on her private conversations. She knows her rooms are bugged – because she keeps destroying the things and pretends not to notice when we put new ones in – so she can find privacy only out among the public."

"Privacy. Clarke. With Tris there. And I let her go. Anya's gonna kill me." Monty gulped, realizing his mistake.

"No way, Monty." Lexa put her officer at ease. “You try telling Clarke Griffin ‘no’. I’ll handle Ahn.”

And Lexa did handle Ahn, for the afternoon. Because with Lincoln and Ryder chaperoning the pair, her protégé wasn’t going to be taken advantage of by Clarke; although odds were that it’d have been the other way around. In any case, her big sis was mollified – until the evening, for a reason that again involved food.

"What the hell, Griffin?" Anya said, storming up to Clarke when the latter emerged into the common room.

"What'd I do this time, Ahn? You hate everything I do, so you're gonna have to be more specific." She drawled, one of those insufferable amused smirks splitting her face in two.

"Care to explain this charge?" Anya held up a receipt that looked like it would never end. "You spent twelve hundred dollars on room service in one night!"

"Oh, that..." Clarke chuckled at a joke only she understood. "Ryder wanted to sample some of the good stuff, so I figured: why not? I'm not paying for it – with money – and I wanna live it up a little while I'm still breathing."

"Oh, get over it, Princess. You're not gonna fucking die; you just do your job and you get your freedom. You used to be a top dog at the Company, you know damn well that 'retirement' isn't a euphemism for getting bumped off." Anya engaged with the pessimistic girl who translated her fatalism into considerable credit card charges.

Lexa could believe her ears: this was a typical Clarke move. "Ryder wanted the good stuff. You mean you banged into our discretionary fund because Mr. Ennis was hungry for luxury foods?"

"He was so eager to try it, I couldn't say no! Being who I am, I can never afford to let my guard down." The woman joked, making a play on words that she had to have set up in advance.

"That usually doesn't apply to one's bodyguard." Lexa pointed out, deliberately taking things seriously. Clarke had her awful puns; Lexa had her dry humor.

“That man doesn’t get paid enough to get shot at, so there’s nothing wrong with treating him to some luxury now and then as a token of appreciation.” Clarke said earnestly, then instantly switched gears into assholery again, reminding Lexa of why she had such a hard time getting back in Clarke’s good graces: Griffin was making it really hard to be liked sometimes. “Besides, unlike someone else whose name I won’t mention, Ryder’s been nice to me.”

“If Ryder’s so nice, why don’t you marry him already?” Lexa shot back, falling onto the same old trap of engaging with Griffin on the same low level when she got like this. Why couldn’t she just be the bigger person and force Clarke to admit that acting like a jerk wasn’t gonna get Lexa to start being nicer, if that was so important?

“No can do: he doesn’t have green eyes.” Clarke cracked wise; and wasn’t that just a vague answer? Because who did have green eyes around here that wasn’t Octavia? Why, only Lexa and Tris. Maybe she was reading too much into it, but then again, when Clarke said things, there were almost always layers of meaning to peel back.

So for the next few days, as the team worked to set up the perfect abduction plot to make a prominent businessman disappear from the streets of the American capital city, Lexa did her best to be nicer to Clarke. And also tried to get her to talk about the things Lexa had sitting heavily in the pit of her stomach that she needed resolved; which the CIA spook, as expected, took as an ad hominem, meaning that for each step forward, there was another step back, leaving them at a standstill that Tris made use of by consistently inching her own way forward.

Eventually, though, the plan was made. It would be executed on the 21^st, Lexa and Clarke would take point (much to Anya’s objections), and Lexa was absolutely determined to hand off the interrogation to her specialists so she could corner Clarke and talk this thing through once and for all, so they could shift their focus on the mission.

August 19, 2021

The Hay-Adams Hotel, Washington, DC

Clarke awoke from a nightmare. In it, she'd been a little girl again; tiny, unarmed, helpless. She'd been on what had been the usual route between her childhood home and their local supermarket, the one she'd traversed daily and could still navigate blindly. Only there had been Spetsnaz guys everywhere, decked out in full combat gear, and the streets of DC were choked with corpses.

She awoke feeling disturbed, like she’d just witnessed a parallel reality, or something that was going to happen in every town in America if Nia got her way. And she felt the urge to talk about it. The person she sought out to do this with wasn’t Tris, but Lexa, to the latter’s relief: apparently, there was still a part of Clarke that drew on their shared experiences to make her feel safe to open up about things she couldn’t talk to anyone else about.

"When the Bojinka Attacks went down, I was seven years old, a high school freshman – still being held back if you ask me, considering I got my first PhD at 16 – and I was so fucking bored... The teachers had pretty much given up and let me do whatever I liked as long as I finished my work, so I decided to put on CNN..." Clarke told the tale of how she’d gotten her first real taste of the horrors human beings were capable of inflicting on one another. "And that's how my whole class watched the South Tower impact on live TV." She said, shaking her head at the absurd memory. "What was really weird was that the teacher thought that now would be the perfect time to have a round table about Islamic terrorism. Seriously, that's literally how it happened. God, my mom was pissed at my homeroom teacher."

“I remember how angry you were when you came back home that day. That was the moment you decided you were going to be the person that tracked down and killed the bad guys before they could do something else like that.” Lexa recalled.

"I can tell you for a fact that there'd be a whole lot fewer people alive in the world if I hadn't killed the ones I did. Am I sorry for any of it? Yeah, some, for the ones I couldn't save... For Costia. But on the whole, my conscience is clear."

"Tell me something I don't know." Lexa said understandingly, glad that Clarke was talking to her at all.

"Okay." Clarke readily said. "November 22^nd, 1963. Dallas, Texas." She began a story. Lexa had meant her comment rhetorically, but sensed that this was something Clarke needed to get off her chest, so turned in to listen intently.

"There was a second shooter. That was one of our guys. He was supposed to take out Oswald before he could pull the trigger. He missed. Oswald didn't." Clarke spoke, revealing a literal state secret if this was true. "The man was a young SOG hire called George Johnson, Comanche tribal name Nuhki Tivka or 'Red Fountain', one who'd spend the rest of his life doing penance for his fuck-up. He would go on to found The Shop and go down in Agency history known only as 'the Indian'. Betcha you didn't know either of those things." She finished, staring at Lexa intensely, like scrutinizing her to see whether or not some hidden meaning had been discerned by the older girl.

“I really don’t think you ought to be telling me stuff like this. You could pain a target on your back.” Lexa said, somewhat concerned with how easily Clarke was spilling the beans about one of the greatest conspiracies in US history.

"To hell with state secrets. What are they gonna do? You can't sue someone that isn't a person." Clarke pointed out, and Lexa gulped: indeed, as it stood, officially speaking, Clarke was a ward of the State, meaning her civil rights had been forfeited – something she said she didn’t blame Lexa for, but still couldn’t help but feel betrayed by her.

Choosing to file this away for later, not wanting to derail the conversation and make Clarke run and hide again, she continued engaging the story instead: “I always thought the Agency despised Kennedy. The official story always sounded like a heap of bullshit to me, but I figured it was the CIA that’d contracted Oswald to do their dirty work. Now you’re telling me your predecessors actually tried to protect him?”

"Kennedy approved more black ops every month than MacArthur during his whole term; and we're still praising providence that MacArthur won over Eisenhower.” Clarke revealed, recalling the 1952 election that the CIA definitely hadn’t rigged. “JFK was willing to go to full-scale war with the Soviets if Nikita refused to take the nukes off Cuba and those weren't empty words. The so-called tension between him and the CIA was a psyop, nothing but make-believe to fool the Ivans. Why would we wanna kill him when he was our biggest friend? If there was any President we should have killed, it was that pinko-loving coward Truman and his Let's Appease Genocidal Red China's Regime Because What Could Go Wrong policies. He's the SOB that gave half of Korea over to a regime that used 1984 as a how-to."

The People's Republic of China was a great example of things that could have been. The country had undergone an economic boom and stood poised to turn itself into a great power, ready to turn its harbors into the transshipment center of the world, renting out its people as cheap labor to attract American and Western European investors away from their traditional domestic production bases, investing massively in development of public infrastructure and military modernization, and making deals with Third World countries in Asia and Africa to build up their roads, telecom, and factories in exchange for gaining massive chunks of their natural resources and mineral rights. Yes, the PRC could have had it all – and then, the power had gone to the Standing Committee's head, they'd simultaneously invaded Vietnam, Pakistan, India, and Taiwan, and had the collective shit kicked out of their Communist asses by an unholy alliance of these four states, the US, and Russia. The whole shitshow had been the perfect practical example of the adage 'if you can't handle the heat, stop lighting fires'. Mainland China was now undergoing a second Century of Humiliation that might just last for much longer than that, capped off with Taiwan formally declaring itself an independent sovereign state and dropping its claims to the mainland just to rub salt in the wounds and not be associated with the political hot potato that was the PRC anymore.

As it was, the vestigial state operated under 'one country, two systems', but no longer the autocratic mainland and marginally more representative Hong Kong, but Russian North and Indian-Western South.

Shanghai and everything south of the Yangtze River were under the American and Indian sphere of influence, with the US and its allies holding exclusive trade rights, mineral rights, and total freedom of navigation with US, Indian, and some European nationals inside the territory falling under their native rather than Chinese domestic law, with Beijing and everything north of the Yangtze being under the Russian sphere under the same conditions. The Communist Party of China had lost a lot of its decision-making power to these foreign influences, with the country basically split into two separate economic zones where the locals, if they wanted anything they couldn't produce domestically, had no choice but to buy Russian or American goods.

Unlike in Pakistan, where the division was fully territorial and two separate puppet governments danced to respectively DC and Moscow's tune, the Chinese government still ran most of its own internal affairs, but was essentially neutered on the international stage as it could no longer project military power or make trade deals without Russo-American consent, meaning that the PRC was bent over a barrel and they knew it.

“You figure the world would’ve been in a better shape if Truman woulda let MacArthur carpet nuke China?” Lexa asked skeptically: deploying such weapons against 30 Chinese cities so shortly after using only two against Japan would’ve meant that MAD never materialized and superpowers would be flinging nuclear bombs around like popcorn.

“No, nothing like that. The world would’ve been a wasteland instead.” Clarke confirmed Lexa’s thought. “But if Truman would’ve authorized an invasion of Red China instead of bowing down to Communist demands that any foot on Chinese soil would mean war with the Soviet Union even though the Chinese were sending hundreds of thousands of boots on the ground into South Korea – talk about double standards – the Commies woulda had to think twice before trying to go head-to-head with us, and the Cold War would’ve been over a whole lot sooner.” She opined.

“But that’s not important.” She continued after a pregnant pause. “The reason I bring all this up is because Nia apparently took a look at MacArthur’s war plan proposal and decided to use it as a basis for her own, expand its scope massively, and count on people being too used to peace now to hide a Cold War-style plot right under everyone’s noses.” She drew a parallel. “I know I don’t look like it, but I’m scared, Lex. I’m terrified of what will happen if… we don’t succeed.”

“Failure is not an option, Clarke. And I say that because it’s not a possibility.” “We have you, we have me, we have Raven Reyes, we have Augustus Woods; and soon enough, we can bring in Indra Porter. You take those odds, stack them against Nia’s, and it’s a foregone conclusion that we will win.”

“Maybe you’re right.” Clarke sighed. “But the cost of victory… will it be manageable, or too much to bear? Because every time I close my eyes, I can picture mushroom clouds drifting over the East Coast, and it’ll all be my fault-”

“Clarke, I need you to stop that line of thought right now.” Lexa cut in, taking Clarke’s hand into her own and hoping the hunched-over girl wouldn’t pull away, which, to Lexa’s relief, she didn’t. “Nobody ever would’ve known about the possibility if it hadn’t been for you discovering it in the first place.”

“Yeah. Yeah, but you still hate me for what I had to do to bring it to light. Do you know how hard it is to live with knowing that I lost my best friend over…” She trailed off, putting her hands together into fists, Lexa immediately missing the contact. “And I’d do it again. I’m not selfish enough to think that two, three, even a hundred people can stand up to half a billion. You know I’d do it again. So you can’t forgive me, can you?”

There was the real snare. Because she was right: Lexa couldn’t forgive Clarke. Some things that were justifiable still weren’t excusable. But maybe it wasn’t about forgiveness: maybe it was about finding a way to move forward in spite of what had happened and find new solid ground to stand on. And she told Clarke as much, the woman listening without interruption at long last as Lexa laid out the things that had been keeping her mind awake for weeks.

“But that’s the problem, isn’t it?” Clarke shook her head sadly as Lexa finished speaking her mind. “I don’t think that ground can emerge until after this is over.” She told Lexa, even as she struggled to take in the enormity of the realization that yes, Lexa did see her as a romantic prospect.

“If you’d rather be with Tris, I understand.” Lexa said at last, despondent but clinging onto a shred of hope, knowing that this wasn’t a battle between her and Clarke anymore, but between Clarke’s own head and her heart.

“It’s a hard choice, Lex. One I wish I didn’t have to make.” Clarke admitted. “I don’t know Tris well enough to fall in love with her, but I know that I could. And I know that looking at you releases too much… sadness, anger, and shame for me to be in love with you, but I know that the balance could still tip over. Whichever happens first…” That would determine the winner, wouldn’t it?

“I think,” Clarke carried on, “no matter how it goes, we all end up with a broken heart anyway. I’m not polygamous. Nor is either of you. Someone will have to live with coming second; the other with doubt whether she’s really the one. What have we come to for our lives to turn out this dramatic?”

“Maybe we should save the world first, and then, when we owe nothing more to our people, we can figure out a way.” Lexa suggested, mindful of the other woman’s boundaries.

“Yeah. I guess there’s no other way about it.”

“Either way, I’m glad we finally had this talk.”

“Me too.”

“Can I…” Lexa said carefully, holding her arms out.

“Yeah.” Clarke whispered, leaning into Lexa’s embrace.

It was awkward at first, neither of them quite knowing how to deal with it. Until they simultaneously concluded that this was still Lexa/Clarke and just roll with it. After that, neither of them knew how to let go.

Later that day, well after dinnertime, Lexa came back to the sound of suspicious silence; the source of it being a gaggle of shit-faced officers well past the point of raucousness.

Lexa wasn’t happy that the others had apparently decided to throw one hell of a party without inviting her, safe in the knowledge that the Commander would be occupied with smoothing things over with an unamused Senator Jaha.

Everybody was drunk. Well, everybody who held a significant position – the foot soldiers hadn’t been partaking, but they weren’t part of the core group, so didn’t warrant an invitation.

Lexa wondered what it meant that they hadn’t included her in their bender, either, while even Anya was right there.

Clarke and Ryder were facing off against each other, more than one empty bottle that looked… handmade standing between them and two small piles of used shot glasses shoved aside to make space for a current, relatively cleaner pair. She'd been necking those shots, trying to match Ryder ounce for ounce, obviously out of her league against a man almost twice her mass but too stubborn to give up.

"Lexa... Please kill me now." Clarke drawled slowly as she took in the sight of the Commander’s return.

"Damn. Girl can hold her liquor." Octavia opined, immediately returning to her best impersonation of a vegetable.

“You tookalongtime to get back here.” Lincoln slurred his words together. “We wanted to warm up, but things got a lil’ outta hand, and now Monty’s supply is almost gone.” He said, still looking like the second-most sober person apart from Lexa herself. “Clarke knows how to have fun. Try it, boss, it’s good for you.” He told Lexa, although too preoccupied with stroking Octavia’s hair to look at the Commander.

So Clarke had instigated this. People like Clarke Griffin never did anything without at least three reasons. They were always working an angle, always trying to attain some goal. Then again, if the stressed-out girl’s purpose right now was to switch off her mind and have some fun, that was a valid objective, wasn't it? But then again…

“You wanna tell me why Tris is asleep across your legs, Clarke?” Lexa observed, making the girl look down at her own thighs and gaze back at Lexa surprised, as if she was only just now becoming aware of it.

“’s Not illegal.” She said eventually. "Monty breaks the law." She accused. "He's my friend, and he made us the good stuff. It's blue." Clarke said, inspecting a half-empty moonshine bottle to make sure that the clear liquid did, in fact, still have a blue tint to it. “Is it blue, or just cause of my eyes filtering it?” She wondered aloud, confirming that she was completely hammered – no way else would it make sense to think that your eye color would have that much effect.

“Yeah, you’re out of it, alright.” Lexa smiled at the ridiculousness of this scene, deflating now that she knew it wasn’t that they hadn’t wanted her here, but Thelonious had spoiled her part of the fun with his incessant bleating.

“And you should be in it.” Clarke retorted. “You’re too sober. It’s no fair. Jaha kept you for too long. Now you gotta catch up…” She egged Lexa on, who was left wondering if there was enough moonshine left to catch up with. She’s always been more of a whiskey and champagne kind of girl, though, so they should’ve left enough for her if that was gonna be a problem. After all these weeks of constant stress and with a major assault only a couple of days away but effectively nothing to do until then, Lexa figured she could afford to let loose and live a little.

"I've done this before, I swear." Clarke, having gotten Ryder and Lincoln to pick Tris up and deposit her on a nearby sofa, where she curled around a pillow like it was the center of her universe, had made a little bet with O, now more animal than vegetable, but certainly not mineral, that she could balance a bottlecap on her nose, which was easier said than done as her face had gone halfway numb and the cap had quadrupled in her vision.

The cap kept sliding off, and Clarke kept resetting it, Octavia raising the bet, which involved chocolate truffles, with every reset. If it would slip through her fingers and hit the floor, Clarke would lose – and Clarke Griffin did not lose. Even if losing only meant buying Octavia a pile of truffles, the bragging rights were more important.

So when the cap fell off her nose yet again and disappeared, Octavia shot forward, grabbed her head with an ‘Aw, shit!’ because the sudden motion had set off a lightning bolt behind her eyes, but then poked Clarke in the nose, saying that “It’s gone, you lose, and I’m gonna be eating truffles like a pig.”

Only for Clarke to wink and pop the bottlecap out from inside her mouth. That’d been an impressive sleight of hand… or lips? for someone who could hardly stand up straight.

“Showoff.” O laughed. “I’ll get you yet.”

“Not if I do it first.” Lexa, with a dose of liquid courage backing her up, did something radical. Which was to say: she leaned in and used her own teeth to pluck the cap out from between Clarke’s lips – lightly brushing them with her own, which was still impactful enough to make Clarke’s mouth fall open.

Lexa grinned at her victory, pleased that she could have this effect on the shorter girl, and spat the cap out on the floor, Clarke’s grabby hands missing it entirely. “We’ll split the winnings, O.” She told the ravenette.

"I'm in hell." Clarke, with her mouth now free, dramatically declared, flopping back into her chair.

"Strange definition you’ve got, there.” Lexa said. “You've got everything set up to a T, you've organized an operation that runs smooth as butter, the only one here that still doesn't like you is Anya and she's a grumpus anyway."

“Hey! I resemble that remark, you tiny sister of mine with your… tiny ears that can’t hear anything. Bleh.” Anya, who was wishing Raven was here so they could school these young scoundrels in how to drink like a bunch of real cowboys, actually vocalized the sound effect of sticking her tongue out at her lightweight little sister.

"…So why are you acting like somebody pissed in your porridge?" Lexa asked Clarke, ignoring Anya’s comment – she was somewhat self-conscious about her ears, which were not that small, thanks very much!

"Because...!" Clarke began, gasping for breath like a fish on dry land, "I am surrounded..." She flapped her arms about to indicate, well, everyone around her, "By all these handsome guys and beautiful girls, pretty much nonstop, and I can't touch any of them. I'm in hell." She finished, rubbing her aching temples.

“What’s stopping you, exactly?” Tris, suddenly wide awake, had the audacity to ask, batting her eyes faux-innocently.

‘Don’t think so, missy!’, Lexa’s mind went into Clingy Mode, making her say “Maybe because I’m here, and Clarke’s favorite color is jade, not garnet.”

Anya, thank the spirits, was too out of it to really notice. So were the others. Apart from maybe Octavia, who was looking on with a sudden rush of interest, but then again, Octavia always paid attention when people talked about Clarke. It was probably just getting drunk that was making her paranoid. ‘Heh, just like Clarke.’, her mind uselessly provided.

“You’re not nice to me. Tris is nice to me.” Clarke said, so far gone that she’d lost all access to her higher vocabulary. Was it really that simple? Was being nice all there was to it? Fascinating proposal to test later…

“If you want me to be nice to you, could you stop doing stupid stuff that makes Jaha… be Jaha?” Lexa asked, once again coming on way sharper than she’d intended: damn, Clarke could be really sensitive for such a purported ice queen.

Clarke had gone from happy drunk to sad drunk and started getting miserable over how Lexa didn't like her anymore, then began crying over how disappointed her dad must be. Anya made the mistake of agreeing. Clarke proceeded to punch Anya. Anya punched her back, leading Octavia to punch Anya in turn, Anya trying to retaliate only for Lincoln to sit on her, Ryder looking at Lexa trying to figure out what to do, and Monty trying to pretend not to exist. Tris was clinging to Clarke like a koala, trying to prevent her from tackling Lincoln off Anya so she could attack the older Woods Sister herself, leaving Lexa to pick up the pieces wondering what the fuck had just trigged all of this.

An angry Griffin wouldn't do the Cobra Dance. No, they would just rip your throat out, maybe spit on your still-twitching corpse, and walk away with a smile on their face. But it was Woodses that were far likelier to come to blows out of anger: Griffins that killed mostly did so to remove an acute threat. Woodses, like Gustus during his Ranger days and his parents Edward and Zoey before him, were known to do it because it was more expedient.

"Enough!" Lexa shouted, putting four bullets into the ceiling. Now that got everyone’s attention. Including that of a dozen DCS guards on patrol that came into the room weapons drawn, convinced that their commanders were under attack: oops, she really should’ve thought it through better. She’d pay for the repairs tomorrow.

"This is a DIA special task force; we are not in Congress!" She took a jab at the circus show on Capitol Hill.

“I disagree!” Clarke said, because she just had to be contrarian. “I motion for a recess.”

“That’s actually not a bad idea…” Octavia said, gesturing at the poor collection of idiots strewn about in various states of wakefulness, trending towards the somnolent side of things. “My bed calls me, and Linc should carry me to it. Hmm?”

“Great idea! I’ll sleep with Clarke!” Tris chirped, then went even redder in the face when it sank it just how she’d phrased it. “Um, I mean, next to her, not ‘with’ with… It’s none of your business anyway!” She stammered defensively.

“Maybe she’ll pick me instead… Corporal Thornton!” Lexa shot back, getting possessive.

“Yeah, I hope you two won’t remember this in the morning.” Clarke spoke up. “I know I will.”

“I wanna cuddle.” Tris whined, tugging on Clarke’s pant leg.

“Not when you’re like this, we can’t.” Clarke turned her down: she was too drunk to give consent.

“Well, let’s revisit this tomorrow.” Lexa suggested, to general approval. She’d been the last to join in, but that meant she’d ended up the least intoxicated, so it fell to her to make sure nobody was about to trip over their feet. Literally.

Another day would soon dawn. And a hell of a collective hangover along with it. Thankfully, they’d already decided to take the day off so they could nurse themselves through the aftermath.

Lexa could only hope that Tris wouldn’t decide to nurse Clarke so she could play doctor with her.

Chapter Text

Chapter 19: Nevermore

August 21, 2021

ODNI, McLean, Virginia

It was two days since the most epic bender Lexa’d partaken in in years, one day after the worst hangover she’d had in just as long, and a few hours after something Clarke had told her about not long before that which the alcohol had temporarily suppressed had come back into the forefront of her mind.

She didn’t really care about the revelation that the CIA had tried and failed to save JFK – though she’d certainly come back to that later at some point – but that she suddenly got slapped in the face with a clarity of understanding about why Clarke had given her some details on the man that had been the failed counter-sniper.

Luna wasn’t gonna tell her anything, she was sure of it, but Raven? Raven just might.

"Hello to you too. Please, come in." Raven deadpanned as Lexa burst through the doors of the DNI's office. It had been a long-standing tradition that Rae and Lexa could simply barge into each other’s offices without making a prior appointment, but that didn’t mean Rae couldn’t get her sarcastic quip in.

"George Johnson. Nuhki Tivka the Texas Cherokee. The Indian. I need everything you have on him. Personnel file, case files, adjacents, any and all external referents, the works. The unredacted versions." Lexa got right down to business, a fire lit under her ass as she felt like she was onto something that could result in a major breakthrough.

"That's a hell of an ask, Lexa." Raven spoke, instantly confirming that she knew exactly who Lexa was talking about.

"Like asking me to raid Lubyanka in broad fucking daylight?" Lexa argued back: the initial plan may not have gone through, but it had been authorized, approved, greenlit all the way before the last-second target swap, so Lexa had suffered for two weeks anticipating a mission she’d been tasked with planning herself.

"Okay, I suppose I owe you one for that." Raven conceded, recalling how close Lexa had been to just saying no and walking away. Rae hadn’t had someone else to take Lexa’s place, and they both knew it.

"More than one." Lexa pointed out. Then again, all of them had saved each other’s bacon so many times it was pointless to try keeping score. "I need to delve into that guy's psyche to better understand Griffin. This could be important."

“Before I do anything, I’m gonna need to know what your source is. This could be a big problem-” Rae began.

“She dropped his name in my lap herself. I think she wants me to have a point of comparison.” Lexa quickly interjected.

“She has no right at all to force my hand like this, but since the only choice I have now is to either comply or kill you, well, there’s no way I’m gonna kill you.” Raven answered. Raven was the queen of sarcasm, even Clarke being second to her, so for DNI Reyes to get completely serious, the threat was real. Apparently, even knowing that The Indian had been real without prior authorization was enough to be assassinated over… And Lexa knew that Raven really wouldn’t want to do such a thing, but in opting for the only possible alternative, she’d be bringing Lexa into the know in a way that, should it come out, Raven’s own life might be in danger.

Holy shit, did she owe her friend massively for this.

Normally, she'd have to go through General Porter for top-level intel, who'd ask Director Hilker, who in turn would ask DNI Reyes. But Indra Porter was so far above Lexa that she could hardly make out the soles of her shoes with a telescope, and Porter had been explicitly left out of the loop for good reasons. So given that Raven was dating (most of the time) her sister and they'd known each other for decades, Lexa'd decided to go straight to the source. Rae never bothered with knocking before letting herself into her office, so she figured that that sword cut both ways.

Raven poured herself a stiff one, then went to work on her computer, staring so intensely at the screen that Lexa began to worry about Raven developing cataracts, until she’d done what she needed to do.

The printer in Raven’s office began spitting out pages of documents that certainly fit the aesthetic of the Sixties, then Seventies and Eighties, ending up in a stack hundreds of pages tall.

“I put his profile last, so it’s all the way on top. Still fifty pages, but the rest is secondary to that.” Raven explained. “Lexa, I can’t let you keep this. You’ll have to read it here, and when you’re done, I’m gonna burn this shit and pretend like you never told me that name, just like you’re gonna pretend like I never let you see this.”

Lexa settled in and began reading the documentation.

After the first five pages, she was thoroughly impressed: despite his regrettable early failure, Nuhki Tivka could be called nothing short of an American hero.

After the first ten pages, Lexa had gotten to the nitty-gritty of the man’s psych profile and his modus operandi, and poured herself a drink from Raven’s bottle.

After page twenty, she vomited it back up, no longer able to stomach the horrors lovingly described in clinical detail that George Johnson had inflicted for the sake of preserving the nation and the peace of mind of its people.

And after page fifty, she’d gone gray in the face, was receiving sympathetic back pats from a Raven who wished Lexa had never been told this name – Woods was handling the reading of his profile a lot better than Raven had, and that was saying something – and was finally beginning to understand why Clarke hadn’t been able to divulge her confidential sources even when it could have saved her life: because for as irredeemably evil people like Osama Bin Laden had been and Nia Sil’nayevna Koroleva still was, those were the evils people knew about. The sort of people that The Shop went after, that Clarke hunted? They were so much worse, it’d be like comparing firecrackers to hydrogen bombs. If the case files were truthful, there had been, and likely still were, people out there trying to develop selective pathogens to exterminate entire ethnic groups, people doing their damndest to keep Earth in as chaotic a state of perpetual warfare as possible so they could profit off endless arms sales, people that controlled entire governments from the shadows without them ever knowing about it, and even people that were willing to deploy extinction-level weaponry against whole swathes of the planet just out of scientific curiosity to see what would happen; along with your more mundane targets like cabals that specialized in human trafficking specifically the sons and daughters of the rich and powerful, doctors running illicit human trials on unsuspecting patients/victims involving deadly diseases and experimental cures, and men that played the government like puppets to take down rival criminals so they could grow their own underground empires.

This was the sort of enemy that The Shop fought against: Nia, at least, was an ideologue, but most of these were driven by pure, simple greed, for money, for power, or just because it was possible, so why not let it be them rather than someone else? Men and women who were driven by a total disregard for everything that made one human: denouncing love, loyalty, and friendship as threats to the bottom line, as holding back the advancement of science, and would not hesitate to cross all moral, ethical, and legal boundaries in their ceaseless pursuit to get more, more, more.

Some of them weren’t even human. Literally. Because the reports stated that some of them weren’t from Earth.

Most importantly, though: Lexa Woods had just been given an unprecedented look into the worldview, mindset, and knowledge base of Clarke Griffin. And holy fuck, the fact that she still had any faith in humanity as a whole just went to show how indomitable that woman really was.

But did all this mean that Clarke wanted to stop Nia for the sake of stopping Nia as an end goal, or was she working towards fulfilling some inscrutable grand strategy at the same time? Because the things Lexa was reading, about the real and credible threat of alien invasions that all dated back to the ‘Roswell ’48 Bardoan Gem-9 discovery (do not conflate with Roswell ’47 weather balloon incident)’ – that was the sort of enemy you’d need a unified global government to contend with; and Nia certainly represented an obstacle to that, but Nia’s end goal of perpetual warfare abroad for a strong and united America and Russia might also strengthen humanity as a whole to be able to more effectively fend off enemies like never seen before. Maybe it was just that Nia wasn’t the right person to head such a government-

No. That was insane. That was tinfoil hat bullshit. Even if aliens existed and wanted to kill all humans, Clarke Griffin was a skeptic who’d cheered at the downfall of the UN, an American patriot, all about independence of the nation and the rights of the people as individuals. Then again, a population of free citizens with a strong identity would also be one that could prove invincible in fighting threat both foreign, domestic, and, apparently, extraterrestrial.

In short: reading the Johnson files were the prefect example of ‘be careful what you wish for’.

It was all too much to handle. Lexa needed to get back to the here and now. Stopping Nia may only be part of a much larger scheme, but it was still a damned important one, and she had a vital role to play in realizing it. Her world may not have much overlap with Clarke’s after all, but at the points of contact, she could say with certainty that they had the same kind of goals and motivations, so she would work with Clarke to see it done. But after that, well, she still had a lot of questions, now including many new ones, and even fewer answers than she’d initially believed she possessed.

It was a good thing, then, that Clarke was still Lexa’s to keep. She felt ashamed that the thought had even occurred to her, and discarded the idea that much more powerful people would come break her out if Lexa held onto her, because Clarke’s terror about imprisonment was real, and she wouldn’t be experiencing that if she was confident about her freedom and power being restored just because she was a Customer and ‘Protector’, or at least had been.

But still, Lexa felt that she deserved some answers: real ones, full ones, and believed that Clarke wouldn’t have pointed her in this direction if she wasn’t prepared to supply them. When that would be was the question: after Nia’s defeat and death, most likely, so the sooner they brought that about, the better it would be.

Lexa’s admiration for Clarke grew, but so did her suspicion about the woman’s fundamental motives. She hated playing 4D speed chess with only half the pieces in the lineup available to her.

But now she knew who held the other half, and was starting to feel like Clarke wasn’t just trying to win Lexa back over to her side: she was trying to recruit her into her world. Lexa supposed she should feel flattered – then again, all of this secrecy made her feel sick.

Or maybe she was overthinking. Maybe all Clarke wanted… was for Lexa to truly understand her. Maybe the only ulterior motive at play here was that Little Griffin, bereaved of her father and sister, with a wedge driven between her and her oldest friend, was also sick of having to withhold things from Lexa, and this was her way of trying to make things right: by playing open cards even if the hand they showed was too horrifying for any weaker mind to comprehend. Meaning that Clarke trusted Lexa would be able to keep the secret and stomach it, and for that, she really was happy.

August 22

The Hay-Adams Hotel, Washington, DC

Following a night full of awful nightmares involving levitating brass circles within circles studded with symbols that opened portals to other planets, swirling green mist that took your memories away, blue-gray powder that would crystalize any biomatter it came in touch with that spread rapidly like a virus and could decimate entire species, hopeless gun battles against people that could conjure up plasma bombs with their mere thoughts, and other horrifying remnants from the Johnson files, Lexa awoke back with her feet firmly planted in the here and now, forcing her mind back into the world that she knew and understood and focusing on the job at hand.

Only for that to turn sour, as well.

“We have a situation with the Whitman raid.” Lexa announced to the command team as they assembled in the conference room. "He's gone into hiding. He's still in DC, but on foreign soil, that is to say..." She trailed off, locking eyes with her confusing, mysterious friend. "Clarke, you're gonna hate this."

"No fucking way." Clarke exclaimed, already sensing where this was going.

"Yep. He's gone to the Romanian Embassy." Lexa admitted.

"Now that's just fucked up!" Clarke couldn’t believe her ears: she’d said that she was willing to do just about anything as long as it didn’t involve having to shoot up a Romanian embassy again, and now… The forces of the universe were playing some sort of twisted joke on her, she would say, if she believed in such things.

"Romania's an extradition country. It's one of our two biggest NATO allies. He'll find no shelter there?" Anya asked, wondering what had come over Whitman to go into hiding there, of all places, rather than the embassy of a country like Argentina, Indonesia, or Brazil, where he would’ve been safe indefinitely.

"That's because he's expecting some Russians to get him out of the place and out of America." Clarke surmised. "Private planes don't need to put their passengers through the TSA hoopla. That's how Roan got me out."

“I’m still going to move forward with a snatch operation.” Lexa determined. “We’ll have to adjust our plans on the fly, but that’s nothing we haven’t done before.” She said, referring to the anticipated Lubyanka raid that had turned into the Klyazma raid instead. “We’re going to send a small team into the building: this’ll have to be covert, as we don’t want to cause an international incident by having armed US personnel forcing their way onto sovereign foreign soil. One detachment will locate our target and create a distraction; the other will have to devise a way to quietly extract him.”

"Eliza Taylor has no business in that place. Alexandria Woods might, but it'd be conspicuous for the Second Daughter of the United States to make an unannounced visit to a foreign government." Clarke spoke up, taking stock of the situation and considering the options. "Clarke Griffin certainly can't show her face there, but Doctor Hannah Carson could."

“Anya and Lincoln, will you act as the snatch team?” Lexa asked, knowing her sister wouldn’t like being in the same vicinity as Clarke, but given a different role and objective, wouldn’t need to encounter her.

“Sure thing, boss.” Lincoln said, ready to do something interesting again, with Anya, just as eager to combat the cabin fever that came with sticking around the hotel and meandering around DC aimlessly in off hours, throwing in her yes too.

“Clarke, that leaves you as our undercover infiltrator. Identify and locate, but do not engage.” Lexa laid out.

“I have a plan on how to create a distraction.” Clarke nodded. "I'll need to bring a date, though..." She said, because it would be odd for a prestigious MD to show up alone, and with her looks, she’d absolutely get hit on: normally nothing she wouldn’t have a little fun with, but under these circumstances, an unacceptable distraction.

"So, Tris, I was wondering if maybe you would...?” Clarke asked shyly. “I know it's a covert op and hardly the time and place, but I do like you a lot, so maybe..."

"I don't make a habit of mixing business with pleasure, Clarke." Tris said, Lexa letting out a breath she hadn’t known she was holding. If Clarke could go in disguise, maybe Lexa could too, and she could be Clarke’s date after all?

"Oh. Yeah, that's alright, I get it.” Clarke told Tris, somehow sounding both disappointed and relieved.

"But I'll gladly make an exception for you." Thornton concluded, her pale golden skin turning tomato-red.

"Awesome!" Said Clarke. Now that didn’t sound like second thoughts at all.

“We have our infiltration team, then.” Octavia spoke. “What about the rest of us?”

“I’ll take Monty and set up a mobile command center a few blocks away.” Lexa spoke, shaking off her disappointment. Fucking figures that Clarke would use a deep-cover operation to ask Tris on a real date. “Our infiltrators will be equipped with micro-cameras so we can see and hear all that they can from the TOC, who will coordinate with two QRF units ready to intervene if things get hot. Ahn, Ryder, you take Team One; O and Linc, Team Two.”

“Sounds good to me, boss.” Ryder gave a thumbs up. “Clarke, what can you tell us about this Dr. Carson persona?”

Doctor Hannah Carson, she explained, was a field scientist at Georgetown University School of Medicine, which entailed being almost always unreachable, making it an easy enough cover to maintain. It also meant she had formal access to a lot of classified information regarding genetic research going back over half a century, a fact she was going to put to good use once inside: the Embassy was hosting a soiree tomorrow, and one of the guests there, Clarke had discovered, would be somebody she could use to set up the prefect reason for Dr. Carson to attend.

Georgetown Medical was Abby Griffin's alma mater, one that Clarke could have easily gotten into by either nepotism or pure merit had she chosen to go into the medical field professionally, so she had actual experience with having been behind secure doors inside restricted rooms in the place before. And once Clarke had been somewhere once, she’d remember its exact layout and the function of each room forever. So she’d have no trouble pretending like she belonged there – she even made visits as Hannah Carson once in a blue moon, meaning that she knew the top heads of the university and they’d be able to vouch for her if her identity was ever questioned.

“Lexa, do you have a moment?” Clarke took Lexa aside once the briefing had concluded.

“Of course, Clarke.” Lexa agreed, hoping she was about to explain where the hell that date idea had come from. Sure, it made logical sense to not show up without a plus-one, but why did it have to be Tris if it couldn’t be Lexa? That way it would be real, like Clarke had said: why not go with someone she wasn’t actually attracted to and wouldn’t be a potential distraction? …Because somebody might notice the fake affection and grow suspicious, obviously.

Alas, no such luck, and what she said instead was: “You must know that if I’m going out there, there will be SPM people around the embassy building as well as inside of it.”

“Yeah, I figured as much.” Lexa admitted: these shadowy operatives had been background noise since before the task force had ever been set up. “I don’t know how much you pay them, but they’re about to have to work for it.”

"You didn't tell Anya about SPM. You didn't even bring it up. Why is that?" Clarke asked, ignoring the quip about their payment – it must be a considerable sum.

"It'd be counterproductive." Lexa stated, then, seeing Clarke trying to parse that meaning in two dozen ways at once, specified: "I told them to fuck off, they said no. But they didn't try to stop me from bringing you here, they haven't tried to bust you out, and if they did, I have all the firepower I need to just shoot them. I figure they might be useful at keeping Nia's stooges away from us."

"Maneuvering my people into supporting your cause without them ever being aware of it. Are you sure you were never in the CIA?" Clarke asked, wondering how the Agency had missed out on such a promising prospect. Lexa’s mind was wonderful, it was amazing, and Clarke was glad indeed that it wasn’t plotting her downfall for the time being.

"You don't trust your own people to keep us safe? Between my DCS and Glass’ SOG…" Lexa responded instead; they both knew why Lexa wouldn’t have said yet to joining the Agency, it being too opaque for her liking.

"I know there's always risks. There'll always be threats, and we know that better than most." Clarke began. “We're better equipped to deal with it than others, too. But the level of danger we're in is, frankly, totally unprecedented. The enemy only has to get lucky once. One mistake on our part, one slip-up by SPM, one lucky shot by one of Nia's people, and..." She trailed off, it being too painful to even discuss the theoretical possibility of Lexa getting hurt or worse. "I can't take that risk. I may be willing to gamble with my life, but not all of yours. That's not my right, and it wouldn't be right."

“You can’t keep me safe from blocks away while you’re in there. With Thornton.” Lexa felt justified in pointing out, even though being around Clarke made her act like a teenager, which the put-together woman found disturbing.

“It’s just a date, Lexa. It’s not like we’re gonna be jumping down each other’s pants right afterwards.”

“We’ve already established that there’s no romantic love on my part for either of you, okay? I know you’re worried that this’ll tip the scales in Tris’ favor, but you… You could’ve asked me out too, you know? Tris has been putting in all the work so far.” Clarke spoke, like she wished that Lexa would do something more, even though she’d told Lexa herself that she wasn’t ready for that. When the hell did ‘I’m not ready’ start to mean ‘try harder’ in Clarke’s dictionary?

“You owe me one for comparison, Little Griffin.” Lexa stated, to Clarke’s agreement and astonishment: Lexa kept claiming to be interested, and she appreciated that she respected the boundaries she’d set earlier on; but that was then and this was now. Couldn’t she take a hint and see that if Tris wasn’t being shut down, Lexa could do the same?

Tomorrow would prove to be interesting in more than one way, indeed.

August 23

The Hay-Adams Hotel, Washington, DC

It wouldn’t be long now before the first team would set off towards the embassy. It was towards the evening, the task force having spent the day going over contingencies, poring over maps and blueprints (even though the place could have been changed since they were filed, as diplomatic structures could be altered without notice under US agreements with foreign governments), and, in case of the interior teams, getting themselves ready to blend in.

Earlier that day, Lexa’d had a thought: it wouldn’t make any sense for her to not be in the building along with Clarke. Sure, the girl apparently wanted to have a date with Tris, but from an operational perspective, it would be more dangerous, but also more prudent to have Lexa in the thick of it.

So she’d taken Clarke aside to talk about it. Not that the Commander needed permission, but she did want to make sure that the two of them were on the same page so there wouldn’t be any friction getting in the way.

“Look, I was thinking…” She told Clarke, rubbing the back of her neck. “Maybe Lexa Woods the known DIA officer and Second Daughter would draw too much unwanted attention, but Alycia Carey the Infinity board member wouldn’t.”

“You mean Alycia Carey who looks exactly like Lexa Woods?” Clarke said, cocking her head thoughtfully.

“Your point being, Hannah Carson who looks exactly like Clarke Griffin?” Lexa said back, pointing out the obvious: people tended to see who they wanted to see, which even applied to those with famous faces.

“Does Infinity Corporation seek to expand its business in Romania? Acquire new strategic partners? Secure an overseas R&D site? Why Romania and not anywhere else?” Clarke rattled off her objection. “You have three seconds to pick one of those questions and find an adequate answer.” She told Lexa, then counted them off in her head. Lexa didn’t reply, just stood there working her jaw. “Too late. You took too long. I have answers ready about Carson’s work. Ask me anything. If you can’t react as quickly and convincingly as I can, it’s too dangerous for you to go as a corporate dignitary. You’ll be expected to come armed with a lot of topical knowledge.”

“Why, Romania is only a sensible country to offshore certain new investments to, Doctor Carson.” Lexa began speaking in a voice that made her sound like a different person: lighter, more nasally, more… pampered sounding. “Recent developments in the country’s educational system have yielded an exceptionally talented workforce with skills in the IT sector that provide an optimal price-quality ratio of eager young minds that will certainly appreciate the opportunity to be a part of a joint project between Infinity Corporation and Conexit Telecom towards the development of a next-generation global intercom infrastructure that we’re looking to trial in a non-American area for the purpose of quality assurance.” She said, talking as if addressing a panel of potential investors. “We wish to circumvent certain American business laws restricting the working hours any employee is allowed to clock in a week; and feel that the lower costs of labor will prove mutually beneficial, as higher profit margins for my parent company mean that we will be able to invest more in Romanian IT infrastructure while paying wages that are admittedly lower than what our people would receive in the US, yet comparatively so much higher than what people in the telecom sector can expect to make from any other employer in the Danube and Balkan area that it should provide a significant increase in their quality of life to afford them a standard of luxury no less than that of their peers in Silicon Valley.” She laid it on, making an argument that actually sounded exactly like one Director Carey would posit. “The government in Bucharest’s willingness to overlook silly little things like ‘worker’s rights’ in light of generating superior results combined with its tax incentive for American firms to register in Romania turns the country into the ideal testbed for our prospective project.” She sold the story with an air of detached nonchalance that would make her fit right in with the shiver of sharks called the Fortune 500 CEO group.

This time, it was Clarke who was dumbstruck: Lexa had just taken her argument and demolished it completely. “You just overwhelmed me, Clarke. Believe it or not, I actually know what I’m doing. Undercover may not be my forte, but I’m far from helpless in playing the part of the snooty executive.” Lexa swaggered a little.

“Holy shit. Are you like this in your actual boardroom meetings?” Clarke whistled, impressed at Lexa’s acting skills.

Lexa shook her head smiling: "Give me some credit. I'm the daughter of a prominent politician and grew up around businesspeople. I know better than you what sort of scummy deals are made under the cover of events like this, so I figure I can cut some actual agreements to grease Sally's palm; we might use it as a fungible asset later."

"Very well. We'll call this Round Two, then." Clarke said, slipping into her Doctor Carson persona to simulate a possible conversation. "You must be in the market for a local partner if you mention government benefits. Your new project sounds very broad in scope; would you care to divulge any details? I may be able to connect you to the right people, and perhaps you might be enticed to make a... friendly contribution to my own research." She tried to grift ‘Director Carey’.

"I already have an organization in mind, but thank you. I'll certainly consider it." ‘Alycia’ glibly brushed off the attempted tit-for-tat: she didn’t even have to lie.

“What might that be, if you don’t mind me asking?” Clarke said back with a haughty affect.

"We’re hoping Trillion Galactic will be amenable to our proposition.” Lexa answered, looking down her nose for effect.

"The space exploration people from Ploiesti?" Clarke questioned: this was getting interesting. "I take it Infinity's next development has to do with satellites, then. I admit that I know less about that sort of technology than I'd like."

“Like I said; it’s all very next-gen. Nothing I can talk about just yet, I’m sure you understand.” Lexa deftly deflected, taking control of the conversation: "Now, Doctor Carson, what brings you here?"

"Why, it's quite simple, really." Clarke began without missing a beat. "When I was working on my first PhD, which concerned mitosis-based genomic degeneration, I cooperated with a Professor Santiago, a Colombian gentleman who obtained his PhD in Bucharest and decided to turn it into his home base.” She said, injecting her voice with a tinge of melancholic fondness for the good old days with her old friend. "I had heard that some associates of this program would be in attendance, so I wanted to reach out and speak to them in person to discuss the possibility of resuming that cooperation. I've made an exciting discovery regarding the potential held by a certain sequence of genetic markers in the ERCC endonuclease group that I believe might hold the key towards reversing cellular senescence-based telomeric decay, but don't want to move forward without a second opinion from our esteemed expert colleagues in Bucharest." She finished, injecting just enough parlance into her phrasing to sound legitimate but not overwhelming.

"That was pretty good." Lexa had to admit.

"Same to you." Clarke said, reappraising her standpoint and deciding that resistance was futile. "Alright, Commander, I've changed my mind. You'd be damn handy to have on the floor." 

"Are you sure I can't come as your date?" Lexa went on, hoping for the best but expecting the worst.

"I already promised Tris, Lex." Clarke said somewhat darkly, not happy with this development.

“You owe me one then, for comparison’s sake.” She replied, waiting for a terse nod okay from Clarke before, perhaps somewhat jealously, asking if Tris could keep her story straight if challenged by an expert.

“I don’t know: can our information technology expert who’s second only to Monty Green himself, possibly making her third in the world at what she does, talk shop about computers?” She put sarcastically, before turning serious: "Her field is less risky than yours. Your story is playing with fire, Lex. If Trillion Galactic hears you're talking about cooperation, you do realize they're gonna send actual reps to negotiate a deal?"

"Refer to my earlier statement about greasing Sally's palm. I know, Clarke. That's the point." Lexa pointed out. "Those people in there are like a knot of venomous snakes, but should they try to bite me, they'll find that I can be very fucking poisonous." She said, because self-satisfaction wasn’t reserved for Clarke Griffin alone.

“Stay out of the way. I mean it. And I won’t ruin your evening in return.” Clarke demanded, making it clear to Lexa that the real reason she hadn’t wanted her there was to have more alone time with Thornton.

“No problem. I play fair.” Lexa said, meaning it. “How many SPM operators will there be?” She asked next, getting back to the operational details.

“Only four inside. Smallest possible diamond formation. Too conspicuous to send in more.” Clarke laid out.

“So it’ll be eight minimally armed people against one fugitive, surrounded by three dozen Romanian soldiers with body armor and short-barrel assault rifles.” Lexa broke down the situation.

“In a word? Yes. But with any luck, we won’t need to fire a shot.” Clarke hoped.

“Have we ever been that lucky?” Lexa questioned rhetorically.

“That’s why it’s a good thing there’ll be oodles of rich and powerful people between us and any bullets: they’ll never risk it.” Clarke stated. “If we have to get into the guts of the building, things will change, but that’s what O and Anya are for.”

This was when the call went out to prepare for departure, and Lexa had a contact of her own to quickly drum up.

Two hours later

Oh no, Lexa though as the infiltration quartet assembled in the common room: this was a nightmare coming true. She knew Tris and Clarke had put a private tailor on retainer – on her dime – and had put him to outstanding use. Lincoln could get away with a simple, sharp yet elegant three-piece black tux and white polo shirt with gold highlights: it was so much easier for men to dress for any occasion; but Lexa wanted to make Clarke a little jealous, so had called on her own family tailor to make her look irresistible.

Lexa thought she’d succeeded. But looking at Clarke and Tris, she felt like she had serious competition.

Tris had done herself up great, enhancing her natural beauty by applying rich ruby-red lipstick, dark eye shadow that brought out the striking emerald shade of her eyes, and had penciled in her eyebrows to make them look thicker, richer, drawing yet more attention to her face and those captivating eyes that rivaled Lexa’s own.

She’d put on a mildly risqué hunter-green dress with a low cut, letting her hair down to flow freely, prettily framing her face and on the front falling just over the exposed skin of the top of her breasts; the only girl among the three to also wear pants, although these too were tight formal slacks of a deeper green that showed off her figure nicely.

All in all, Beatrice Thornton didn’t look like an elite sniper/black ops IT expert anymore, but like a classy young woman heading for a night out, pulling off what Lexa never could and looking harmless. Tris looked rich, sassy, like an Arcadian heiress used to getting her way, but more the type to throw a temper tantrum when told no rather than break off your middle finger to stuff it up your ass, like anyone could tell Lexa was capable of even when she dressed up (or down) and tried to pass herself off as your average, non-Black Ops Commando officer.

No, Tris looked perfect for playing the role of a prestigious MD’s date to a formal diplomatic soiree. And sexy.

Clarke wore a tight, guarded expression as she took in the Commander’s stunning new appearance.

Lexa had outdone herself. She looked every bit the billionaire heiress she technically was. The Commander had transformed herself from a leader of soldiers into an empress of the boardroom, wearing an anthracite-black and maroon red diagonally cut 3/4^th length dress with a slit up the more covered side for ease of movement that also happened to tantalizingly show off her long, tanned legs, a silver cummerbund wrapped around her waist that brought the curvature of her spine and hips into relief, looking for all the world like a true classic femme fatale: beautiful, yet deadly.

She'd applied a dark smoky effect around her eyes that made the jade in them pop out extra brightly, the kohl drawn back in curving lines towards her jaw, cheekbones, and ears to give the impression of a majestic eagle spreading its wings ready to soar, and her hair pulled into a plait at the front cascading over her shoulder, flowing freely below the tie she’d placed at neck height. Lexa’d been on the money: she didn’t look like Alexandria Woods at all like this.

Lexa, for her part, had trouble keeping her own eyes locked on Clarke's face rather than dipping a little lower. She'd washed the dye out of her hair, revealing natural platinum blonde locks pulled back in a tight French braid, her bright blue eyes complemented by golden eye shadow dotted with silver specks that resembled a starlit morning twilight.

She'd acquired a deep ocean blue and seafoam green floor-length sleeveless dress that hugged her contours closely, with just enough room between fabric and skin to conceal her pistol rig but leaving very little to the imagination. She’d selected an outfit that dipped into not inconsiderable cleavage to make tactical use of her ample bosom to keep wandering eyes away from her hands and the pistol it could produce in half a second, and it worked so well that Lexa, Tris, and even Lincoln, to Octavia’s amusement since she wasn’t the insecure type, had trouble keeping their eyes up.

Clarke could tell. And she was satisfied: if it worked so well on her own friends, then strangers would certainly be underestimating her, which could buy her the split second longer that might make all the difference.

"Director Carey." Clarke said a little stiffly: she’d never seen Lexa look quite so, well, traditionally feminine, and she wasn’t sure what to make of it.

"Doctor Carson." Lexa replied formally, getting into character pretending like they were only mild acquaintances.

"You didn't want me to come." Lexa said, snapping back into being herself. "Worried I'll spoil your date?" She accused. Tris, to her credit, didn’t engage with this display of jealousy, though not out of maturity – Clarke was oddly oblivious, so if Lexa wanted to ruin her own chances, she wasn’t gonna interrupt the Commander while she was making a mistake.

"It's gotta be awkward to court someone you like when your direct superior is hovering around." Clarke admitted, squeezing Tris’ hand to reassure her. "But there is a real reason." She spoke, staring Lexa right in the eyes. "I wanted you on the outside to get us out if things go tits-up inside. But if it's Octavia taking that role instead, well, I can live with that. She's a hell of an operator." Clarke praised her ravenette friend: O would keep them safe, she was sure of it.

Clarke now revealed that her ‘external sources’ had informed her of the reason behind this oddly public venue: Robert Whitman didn’t pick the Romanian Embassy because of the country; he did it because he wanted to surround himself with people, lots of powerful, wealthy, influential foreigners that wouldn’t take kindly to an armed assault on the premises. And the Romanian Embassy was the only part of the DC Metro marked as nominally foreign soil among all the embassies and consulates in the capital that was hosting a function today. That meant Whitman was getting extracted before midnight, and it meant he’d planned this strategy as an exit path well in advance. He’d known he could fall under acute threat, so the moment he’d caught wind of the jaws closing in on him, he’d dropped everything and ran.

"Ceramic guns loaded with plastic polymer bullets. Those shouldn't show up on any hand scanners." Octavia provided, showcasing why she was the team’s resident acquisitions expert. "As long as security doesn't pat you down too thoroughly, you should be able to carry these right into the building. Mind you: one loaded gun and one extra mag is all you'll have, so don't go around popping off like machine gunners, and you should be fine."

"It's a good thing they're not so strict as the British or French.” Clarke spoke. “They use X-ray gates. The Romanians don't want that, because their clients wouldn't appreciate that level of scrutiny."

"Score one for systematic corruption, I guess." Lexa said back.

Three ladies of class and standing could, as Americans, be understood to be carrying the means of their own defense in DC – on Romanian soil, where civilian ownership of firearms was outlawed, not so much.

Even within the DC Metro, there were sharp cultural distinctions: if you open carried in Baltimore, everyone would think you were insane, if you didn't open carry in Fairfax people would think you insane, and if you carried in Arcadia, people would assume you were too poor to have an armed bodyguard.

Open carrying in DuPont Circle would be frowned upon. Concealed carrying was more acceptable, but this still left the problem of only the embassy guards being permitted to bear arms: but Whitman’s extraction team would most likely be rolling in with ballistic vests and submachine guns, so they had to be ready for any eventuality.

The Romanian soldiers on site were most likely not part of Nia’s scheme, but they would fight to protect one of their guests from being kidnapped if they caught wind of something being amiss. And tipping off Ambassador Antonie Adamescu (alliterated names never went out of style, it would seem) was out of the question, because there was no guarantee that such information wouldn’t leak out to Whitman or somebody further up the chain. Although they had provided Monty with a hardline shunt into the Embassy’s security systems, meaning they could exercise some measure of control over the building in the likely case this would prove necessary.

So an unsanctioned covert infiltration op on foreign soil with the risk of a major international diplomatic incident it was. Thelonious was just gonna love hearing Lexa’s justification about this one.

"Shall we go, my lady? We will want to be fashionably early." Tris, snaking her arm around Clarke’s waist in a way that left Tris’ right and Clarke’s left, respectively their dominant, hands free to fight with, said possessively.

The two infiltration detachments would arrive separately, traveling different routes some time apart, switching vehicles halfway there to confuse any tails and prevent observers from realizing that they'd come from the same location originally. Lincoln had been chosen to accompany Lexa, because sending Anya in with Lexa would ascertain that people were going to realize that their covers were forgeries and they were looking at the Woods Sisters: a thing to be avoided.

Once inside the Embassy, Clarke and Tris would move around to PID their quarry, while Lincoln and Lexa would stay in a central location to mix and mingle and be in a prime position to quickly move to intercept in any direction.

Lexa wasn’t sure how Clarke had obtained four very real invitations, for their false identities, on such short notice, and Clarke wasn’t forthcoming with the answer. But she wasn’t gonna look a gift horse in the mouth: showtime had arrived.

Embassy of Romania to the United States of America, DuPont Circle, Washington, DC

The white, three-story, 19^th-century Neoclassical French-style manorial building that housed the Embassy showed, at least on the outside, no signs of the gun battle that had marred it ten years ago. Clarke hoped that after tonight, it would still be in the same pristine condition as they’d found it in.

The place was by no means the largest foreign embassy in DC, which proved to be a double-edged sword: there were only so many places for someone to hide, but also a lot less room to maneuver, increasing the risk of discovery.

Not that discovery proved to be too much of a problem. Tris and Clarke had handed their invitations to the gate guards, been wanded at the entrance but not even patted down, and been let into the building without incident. Clarke smiled as one part of her little plan for the evening had already fallen into place: she was now in the same building as Gabriel Santiago, and she had a loaded gun on her. Not that she meant to shoot the Doctor – far from it, she needed his help! – so these were unrelated, but heartening facts.

Lincoln and Lexa, posing as Director Carey and her personal assistant, arrived not long thereafter, and were also let in with minimal fuss; although Lincoln was the only one that had to suffer the indignity of a still rather lax pat-down, the tall, muscular man being the quarter’s only physically impressive-looking specimen.

In any case, identifying Rob Whitman hadn’t taken long at all, because the man wasn’t even trying to be discreet. He was right there, moving about in the open, introducing himself as himself, still taking shop with one Eastern European arms dealer after another and making introductions to men that looked decidedly more South American. As tantalizing as it would be to roll them all up, technically, nothing illegal was happening here; and everyone knew that functions like this were little more than elaborate dress-up games for the movers and shakers to feel better about themselves as they dealt in all sorts of dangerous commodities that kept the world running behind the scenes.

Rob Whitman was a dull-looking guy, the kind that you’d pass by without a second glance and forget about ten seconds later. Everything about him was average: the perfect man for blending into any crowd. But he’d been made now, and the DIA team would not lose sight of him for even a millisecond.

“What an arrogant brat. Still chasing the profit till the end.” Tris said into her hidden microphone, the TOC run by Octavia and Raven, who’d insisted on being part of TACOM for this sensitive operation, overhearing everything in crisp HF.

"We'll strike at the opportune moment. Until then, I just wanna be a girl on a date with a beautiful woman." Clarke said to Tris, her companion obviously taken in by the elegant string music, opulent crystal chandeliers, beautiful centuries-old paintings, ornately dressed men and women, and delectable delicacies on display everywhere one looked.

"Then let's make this a night to remember." The young green-eyed beauty smiled back.

"Hello, guys? You know we can all hear you, right?" Monty spoke from the command van a few blocks away.

"Are the cameras working?" Clarke asked him, a stupid idea popping into her head.

"Yeah, all are good." Mr. Green confirmed.

"Then watch this." Clarke said, grinning as she palmed the back of Tris' head and drew the girl in for a kiss.

She knew that they were on camera. They both knew. Neither of them cared. Everyone could see the growing attraction; Clarke was pretty sure that Raven had started a betting pool by now. Tris’ lips tasted like artificial cherries and natural honeydew, claiming hers back just as greedily as they explored each other’s mouths. Soft, sweet, and warm were the sensations Clarke was rewarded with as she gave in to the slow, timeless rhythm of the night.

Tris’ skin was smooth, her hair soft, and they only broke apart once their lungs were fighting for their lives.

“That was…” Tris began, gasping for air. “Everything I hoped it would be.” She beamed at Clarke overjoyed.

“You’re the only one I can feel like myself with,” Clarke whispered, “and now I think I know why.”

Clarke still had her hands on Tris’ shoulders, Tris’ hands on Clarke’s waist, just staring into each other’s eyes, when they were rudely interrupted by Lincoln bumping into Clarke’s shoulder.

“Oh, excuse me. My eyes weren’t in the right place.” He fake-apologized, reminding the lovebirds that their date was secondary to the objective of their mission.

“Of course. Happens to the best of us.” Clarke said back as Lincoln went to rejoin Lexa.

Closer to the center of the main reception hall/ballroom, Lexa's head was spinning. This could not be happening! She'd been so sure she'd come out on top in the end. Dammit, she should've taken Tris' advice and just talked to Clarke... And now it was too late.

That was a problem for tomorrow. Tonight, she had to force herself to stay focused on surveilling Whitman and seizing the earliest opportunity to intercept him: perhaps when he went to the restroom, maybe when he wandered off to a less public place – but until then, she had a part to play, and she would perform it well.

Over the next hour or so, Clarke stealthily observed Lexa even as she kept one eye on Whitman and the other mostly on Tris. They’d made their way over to a richly laden refreshment table and made use of the time they had to swap stories about their youth, considering that they truly didn’t know much about each other and figuring that this would be a safe topic to discuss while out in public. Beatrice Thornton, as it turned out, had always been a rocket: she knew exactly what she wanted, pursued her interests with undeterred passion, and once she had a goal, she didn’t care how she got there, as long as she found a way or made one. She’d become fascinated by the eclectic duo of sniper rifles and computers at a very young age, and decided to combine her interests in a way that she could use them to help protect other people: a laudable choice down a high-risk, high-reward career path. Yes, Tris really was one of the good ones, Clarke thought to herself.

Clarke had to hand it to her: Lexa was far more in her element here than Clarke herself. Just like Doctor Carson was a respected member of the small human genomic research community, Director Carey was a renowned investor in the high-tech R&D sector. Lexa was charming the whole gathering, striking deal after deal, making ample use of this observation phase of the mission to genuinely advance the interests of Infinity Corp and Conexit Telecom, which meant expanding Lexa's own white side influence and lining her pocketbook. The best cover for an infiltration was to do something real, and Lexa was proving to be pretty skilled at this covert thing. Getting in Sally Autumn's good graces was also nothing but prudent practice, the business mogul oligarch being a powerful eminence grise in American and NATO politics.

Trillion Galactic played a critical role in the CIA's Operation Exosphere, its primary public missions being the deployment of a next-gen global SATCOM network and working with NASA towards Mars expeditions and possibly offworld colonization, but off the books had been contracted to construct three 'Ark ships' intended to host a select few thousand hand-picked by expert geneticists to form a perfect cross-section of the human race's diversity whilst ensuring long-term viability: this connected the CIA, Trillion Galactic, Conexit, Infinity, and Georgetown in an intricate web. Sally Charlene Autumn had the Securities and Exchange Commission in her pocket, and she was a lifelong benefactor to both Clarke and Lexa. It was brilliant. Lexa was brilliant.

Clever girl, Clarke thought. The company had been listed in the files on her laptop she now knew Lexa had accessed, and also mentioned in the Johnson files that she'd pointed the Commander in the direction of. So this was Lexa showing off what she could do to Clarke as well as working numerous business, political, and intelligence angles. Yes, Lexa Woods would make an exceptionally talented member of those that protected the system someday; Clarke just hoped that she would live to see Lexa become her peer rather than her successor.

Deeper into the area, a certain older gentleman had just finished discussing something with Whitman and was turning towards the exit when Lexa, having noticed all of this and lamenting that she didn’t have a directional mic that could’ve picked up what they’d been talking about and filter out all the rest, moved to intercept him. "Supreme Court Justice Carter Jace, as I live and breathe. Is that you?" Lexa chirped in the high-pitched voice of a socialite.

"Miss Carey? How splendid to see you! I wasn’t aware you’d be coming tonight?" Carter, ever the embodiment of politesse, halted in his tracks as he was approached by one of such considerable means.

“Believe me, Your Honor, I had to fight and argue my way into an invitation. It only arrived a few hours before commencement.” Lexa explained, using the truth to her benefit.

"I have hardly ever seen you in person, but your reputation precedes you." Jace said, shaking her hand. Lexa left dirty just touching his skin: at least he didn’t insist on kissing her hand instead, which, knowing his reputation, was a sign he was open to doing serious business with her.

Director Carey hardly ever sat in on board- or shareholder meetings for Infinity, let alone Conexit, preferring to run most of her correspondence via email and telephone. And there was a good reason for that: look too closely for too long, and you might start to see an uncanny resemblance between Alycia Carey and Alexandria Woods.

Jace was a major Conexit shareholder, with a long history practicing Business Law with a focus on international business, and as corrupt as they came. He'd have gone down for insider trading a hundred times over if he hadn't been shielded by his lofty position. The guy was a crook hiding behind a waterfall of memberships in charitable foundations where his contributions made him a known philanthropist yet whose sums added up to little more than a skim off the top of all the money he was collecting through various embezzlement schemes.

“There is a matter I’m looking into for Director Autumn, regarding trialing a new type of telecom satellite on the Romanian market. I’m hoping to bring Trillion Galactic on board, but so far, I haven’t seen any of their representatives yet. I’m sure word of mouth will spread soon enough, though.” Lexa said, not delving into details.

"If there's anything I can do to help things flow more smoothly, anything at all, you just let me know." Jace offered, practically salivating at the thought of what prestige he could gain by being one of the first people to make such a venture take off. Carter knew a good business proposal when he saw one, a point of particular pride for the man!

“That would simply be splendid.” Lexa spoke, buttering the man up. “I’m certain my partners would be most appreciative of your offer. Perhaps the gentleman you were speaking to just then would be interested?” She asked, gauging what Carter’s connection to Whitman was.

“Oh, who, Mr. Whitman?” He replied, needing a second to place his previous conversation partner: their talk had been rather mundane. “No, I’m afraid not. He came to me asking for some advice about how to navigate CBP regarding some fruit shipments that got turned back, something about contamination risks?” The Justice spoke, clearly having come out of a legitimate consult that he didn’t know pertained to a criminal mastermind’s empire.

“I see. More’s the pity: it’s always good to share the risks and reap the benefits together. One can never have too many friends.” Lexa opined, her corporate doublespeak going down Carter’s throat like a finely aged whiskey.

“Well said, Director Carey.” He offered his hand again. “Well, I must be off. I’ll contact you about moving forward with this project of yours as soon as I can make some time.”

“I can hardly wait, Your Honor.” Lexa smirked: she would turn him into a valuable asset at that point.

Carter Jace was the youngest member of the Supreme Court, which still meant he was well into his fifties. And Lexa was twenty-nine, meaning that he wasn't trying to flirt with her, just following what could be easy money: she was over a decade older than his usual fare, after all. He was a glib, silver-tongued silver fox who seduced naïve little social climbers with the promise of wealth and then the allure of proximity to power. The man was a player who’d never settle down, styling himself the modern-day Hugh Hefner, but without any human kindness to go with this self-aggrandizement.

Clarke had long held that the judiciary ought to be a part of the Executive branch rather than being its own separate power. Interpreting the law ought to not be in the hands of those that did not make it, she believed – carrying it out was Justice's only rightful duty, and this smug snake oil salesman was the perfect illustration why.

Lexa’s primary focus of the night was to ensure that Whitman wouldn’t slip away and instead spend this time tomorrow in DIA custody being squeezed dry for everything he knew, with her business deals being a useful secondary purpose.

Clarke was more of a two-track mind: she was here primarily to identify Whitman, which was a done deal already meaning the goal had now shifted towards observation; but also to ask a favor of one particular old friend of Hannah's who would be here tonight.

Not too long after Lexa’s talk with Jace finished, Clarke reoriented herself and found where her own guy was standing.

"Doctor Carson? Is that you?" Doctor Santiago, the Colombian emigree to Romania and long-time acquaintance of Clarke-as-Hannah, greeted her with a warm hug.

"Gabriel, my friend! It's been far too long!" Clarke squealed back, because all else being equal, Santiago was a man whose work and personal ethic she greatly admired.

"I had heard you were back in town. There was talk of you being seen at Kobayashi's with a beautiful tan-skinned brunette you said was your girlfriend." Gabriel revealed, Clarke filing away the knowledge that people had been talking, as the man addressed Tris: "I must say, miss: the rumors about you understate the truth. Hannah is one lucky woman."

"This is Professor Gabriel Santiago from the University of Bucharest. He and I worked together on that telomerase project I told you about earlier, and we’ve kept in touch ever since.” Clarke told Tris like you would a real partner.

Doctor Gabriel Santiago, Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Bucharest, was someone Clarke had first met twelve, closer to thirteen, years ago, when she’d been working on the first of her many doctorates, and had come to respect immensely. The man was an absolute genius, and a true humanist at heart.

He was also the long-time lover of AG Lightbourne's biologist daughter Josephine. It sure was a small world this high up.

"Beatrice Thornton, but everyone calls me Tris. And I'm not the Doctor's girlfriend... At least not yet. But with any luck, after tonight, I will be." Tris introduced herself, speaking from the heart.

"You look like a soldier. Hannah always goes for the ones in uniform. You have found a good one, Miss Thornton." Doctor Santiago pointed out, his intelligent eyes picking out every detail about her bearing.

"Well, I mean, we've been around each other a lot, and we practically live together, but it's not official yet. Emphasis on the 'yet'. By this time tomorrow, though?" Tris replied, again telling nothing but technical truths.

"If I were a betting woman, I would tell my dear friend here to go all in on the answer being 'yes'." Clarke put in her own two cents, holding Tris a little closer to her, not for effect, but because she wanted to.

Down in the TOC, Raven winced as she overheard the exchange between Clarke, Tris, and Gabriel in high-fidelity audio. "Ouch. I'm sorry, Lex. I had my bet on you. Most of us did. Ahn is gonna be rich." She spoke into one channel.

"Thank you for wagering on my love life, Rae." Lexa muttered back unhappily.

"Technically it's about Clarke's love life." The DNI specified.

“Yeah, that isn’t helping.” Lexa grumbled, taking Lincoln over to the dance floor as a more upbeat traditional jaunt began on the cello and violins: you might be surprised, but those two could dance. Jace had left, Whitman had enticed a partner to waltz with him and was passing information back and forth in the bungling manner of a civilian pretending to be a covert operative, and damn it all, Lexa had to take her mind off Clarke.

"Your advance guy mentioned you were in the market for something?" Gabriel asked the woman in question.

"Yeah. I'd like to engage your services for something delicate. I need a genetic profile. I have a sample, but my usual sources aren't discreet enough to compile it without triggering all kinds of flags in the system." Clarke put the offer out, revealing the real reason she’d come here in person tonight – all part of Operation Open Lexa’s Eyes To My World (Shorten It, Clarke!). "I'm willing to pay a seven-figure sum for your services, provided no questions asked."

"All you want is a DNA test and you're willing to cough up ten million for it? I'd have to be insane to say no to that." Gabriel uttered, whistling as he realized that Hannah wasn’t exaggerating.

"Your words, not mine." Clarke said back, crossing her arms in challenge.

"If this is related to Project Shoreline-" Gabriel began, a dire warning in his voice.

"I said no questions." Clarke said pointedly.

"I haven't agreed to anything yet." Gabriel responded, getting a little agitated due to increasing nerves.

“My goodness, Gabe, this is for Behavioral Department. It’s not about that nightmare, thank heavens. Still dead as a doornail, last I heard.” Clarke spoke, putting Gabriel’s mind at ease.

“Good, good.” He said, flagging down a busboy for three champagne flutes that disappeared almost as quickly as they’d been handed out. “In that case, you can send me the sample and I’ll have a full workup in… I think four days.” The good doctor agreed. “I’m residing at Georgetown for the next six months, so feel free to drop by anytime.”

“Thank you so much, Doctor Santiago. You have no idea how much this means to me.” Clarke said, smiling sincerely. This agreement was halfway to Mission Accomplished. “And I think I’ll take you up on that offer.”

After an amicable parting, Clarke asked Tris if she would care to accompany her to the dance floor. The music had grown faster, more dynamic, and livelier with every new song, and she felt like taking the opportunity to celebrate a little.

Tris readily agreed, happy that the mission had gone down easily thus far and she’d gotten to spend some real quality time with Clarke, even if it wasn’t quite as private as she would’ve liked.

The good part about dancing like this was that all the twists, turns, and twirls meant she could look around in every direction and take in all the faces of the other attendees without drawing suspicious looks in return, plus she got to see (and touch!) Tris from just about every possible angle.

She could see Lexa also bestriding the floor together with some blonde Romanian girl who looked to be of noble stock and far too smitten with the American businesswoman to know what was good for her, but she wasn’t here to make the other brunette jealous: she wanted to have a good time with her own brunette.

So for the next half an hour or so, Clarke and Tris engaged in the sensuous interplay of seduction and denial, teasing and surrender called the flamenco. For just a little while, Clarke could forget the world, her place in it, and all of the woes that weighed down heavily on her shoulders: for as long as it lasted, there was only her body moving to the rhythm, an incredible girl beaming in happiness at her with every step they shared, and the beginnings of a manifestation of something in her chest, her gut, and her head that felt suspiciously like hope, like happiness, like, perchance, love.

But this moment cold not last, and a movement out of the corner of her eye brought her back into the here and now, into the real world where Clarke was an undercover disgraced spook on a mission to ensure the apprehending of a man whose least crime amounted to aiding and abetting an international terrorist organization.

There was Rob Whitman, disappearing through a secure door, out of the publicly accessible area, under escort by several soldiers that didn't look like they were taking him in for questioning but rather like they were closing in around their paymaster. They looked like they were going to take him through a hidden exit, meaning that whoever he was waiting for was about to arrive or already had – they’d grab them too if possible, but Rob was the real target.

"TACOM, Tango 1 is attempting to extract. Tell exterior teams to watch rear and side doors." Clarke murmured into her micro-microphone, to the acknowledgement of Raven, Octavia, and Anya.

They could have only observed and waited for Whitman to leave the premises, but that would involve grabbing him off the street while surrounded by his own armed guards or engaging in a car chase, when avoiding attention was the whole point. So no, they could not allow Rob to leave the embassy.

Now for the distraction.

'This is gonna suck...' Clarke braced herself, then before she had the time to really think about it and chicken out, walked over to busboy and requested a fresh champagne, with a flick of her wrist added something to it, drained her glass, and before she had the chance to think better of it and chicken out, ingested the lidocaine. Hopefully the dosage was low enough that it wouldn't kill her outright.

She hadn’t told Lexa, Lincoln, Octavia, Raven, or even Tris what her distraction was going to be. She needed their reaction to be real. Hopefully, Lexa and Linc could keep their heads focused and not worry about what was happening with Clarke as they pursued Whitman and extracted from the Embassy.

It didn’t take long for Clarke to lose control over her nervous system, fall to the ground, and begin seizing.

While all the guests and staffers in the vicinity were crowding around Clarke, Lexa and Lincoln took the opportunity to tranquilize the two soldiers guarding the secure door using a fast-acting paralytic. Lexa swiped one of their access cards and opened it, the DIA pair dragging the guards through the opening and shutting to the door behind them, nobody being any the wiser owing to Monty splicing in some old footage to fool whoever was watching the security cameras. There would be a notification going off in the security room that somebody had entered the area, leading to a bare-walled concrete tunnel down into what had once been the boiler room but should have been abandoned a few decades ago, but they’d have no reason to think anything was amiss – unless they did a radio check and received no reply.

"Monty, isolate the basement level and shut down all cameras. Jam the radios. I want the rest of the embassy blind and deaf to what's happening in here, but the main building must stay up." Lexa ordered over her own radio.

“Sure thing, boss. Twenty seconds.” Monty replied, already working his keyboards and touchscreens.

There were many twists and turns in the tunnel, many acute angles and steep little staircases, but there were no security cameras and a suspicious lack of guards. Lexa and Lincoln followed Whitman’s only possible route slowly, because they didn’t actually want to catch up with him, only make sure he had no way to double back once he’d been taken outside and he and his guards would be taken out by a volley of tranq darts.

Of course, nothing could ever be that easy. Because upon rounding one blind corner and emerging onto a catwalk on the upper level of the old boiler room, they found Rob Whitman and four Romanian soldiers, all with tactical vests and hefting ASK-74U short-barreled assault rifles with suppressors fitted to them, ready and waiting for them.

The pair were barely able to dip back behind the corner before the wall behind where they had been standing exploded as a few dozen bullets slammed into the bare old concrete, their rapport deafening in this echoey space despite the suppressors, Lexa’s expensive dress and Linc’s handsome tux ruined by cutting shrapnel and abrasive dust.

“Domnule, trebuie să ajungeți în siguranță repede. Șoferul tău așteaptă. Luați doi bărbați; îi vom reține pe americani.” (Sir, you must get to safety quickly. Your driver is waiting. Take two men; we will hold off the Americans.) One of the soldiers called out, Lexa and Lincoln unable to understand their words, but gathering their meaning when three sets of running footsteps moved deeper into the boiler room while two other sets came closer to them.

“We need to move fast, boss. I’m not so sure our outside guys can make an intercept.” Lincoln opined, to Lexa’s agreement: if Whitman had come prepared for a fight, he’d be expecting an exterior ambush.

The pair had drawn their concealed weapons and made ready to fight: 9mm handguns, one mag and one reload, only 28 bullets total between the two of them. Against 7.62 assault rifles hefted by armored men, most wouldn’t stand a chance.

But these Romanians had never been on the wrong end of Lexa Woods yet.

The two men rounded the corner side by side, weapons at the ready and prepared to shoot the Americans. They’d been expecting the attackers to be crouched like they’d been trained to do themselves, only to find themselves lodging bullets into another wall rather than bodies. It took them just too long to sight their targets, just too long to bring their rifles down to bear, and it was all the time Lexa and Lincoln, who were in fact lying prone, needed to put four rounds each into the unarmored legs of the soldiers.

It was a calculated risk. If they fell while jerking back on their triggers, they could pump the pair’s faces full of lead after all. But with their guns having already been traversing, all they did was send two or three rounds into the floor instead.

The DIA operators quickly put their remaining three rounds into the enemies’ heads, then relieved them of their rifles, stuck a fresh mag into them, and bounded after Whitman and his remaining guards, hoping they weren’t too late to cut him off. Dashing across the catwalks, they traded fire with the two remaining guards who had correctly deduced what their comrades’ fate had been, backstepping from one covered nook to another even as Whitman ran for his life. The Americans had very limited ammunition to work with, but they made it work: Lexa feinted, a Romanian turned out to fire, and Linc perforated him in the flank. Lexa took up the dead man’s old position, grabbed his full rifle, and laid down cover fire for Lincoln to move forward, allowing her operator to shoot the last soldier in the back as he, feeling the pressure, tried to reposition. Now all that was left was Whitman himself, who had thrown down his gun to reduce encumbrance as he took some rusty old stairs up two steps at a time.

Lincoln, who could outrun Lexa, dashed ahead while Lex protected their backs, Lincoln shouting for Whitman to surrender as the guy came to a standstill at the top of the stairs. Lincoln, for a split second, thought the guy was actually giving up – until he had to duck to avoid an impromptu craniectomy as a heavy steel plate slammed down that blocked access to the service tunnel beyond the stairs. A padlock snapped shut on the other side, and Whitman was off running again: he’d only paused to create this obstacle.

“Son of a bitch!” Lincoln shouted in frustration, dumping the remainder of his AKS ammunition into the plate around where the lock was, hoping to shoot it loose. But as he jostled the heavy piece of steel, he found no give.

“O, Tango 1 is alone and running.” Lexa said into her mic. “We’re stuck behind a barrier; would appreciate someone with a breach kit come to break us out. We’re in no shape to head back through the embassy.”

“Not so fast, buddy!” She could hear Octavia’s voice on the other side of the channel, followed by shouting, a crashing noise, a car’s tires screeching as it GTFO, and finally: “Tango in custody. Sending Ryder with a blowtorch. Hang tight.”

Robert Whitman had been captured after all. “Way to go, O.” Lexa said appreciatively.

Meanwhile, an ambulance staffed by DIA personnel had arrived on the scene, and the paramedics that worked for Lexa administered a dose of carbamazepine, then safely evacuated Clarke from the Embassy and took her back to US soil; the paramedics in the back working to stabilize her while the driver headed to a drop-off point from where she’d be taken to a pre-arranged rendezvous location to await Lexa’s return with their prisoner in tow.

A few minutes passed, and Clarke regained control of her faculties quickly. The dosage had been low enough, the antidote effective, and her built-up tolerances great enough, to allow her to quickly recover from what would have admittedly been, in the absence of a potent anticonvulsant, a much more horrible and dangerous allergic reaction. For her part, she just felt glad that she could finally stop drooling.

“Are you alright, ma’am?” One of the medic-trained operators asked her once she’d come to her senses.

"I can't move half my face," Clarke grimaced, the whole right side of her head feeling numb, "but I expected that. It'll come back." She sat up, accepting a much needed glass of water, before asking about the status of the mission. She was satisfied to learn that Whitman had been taken alive and Lexa and Lincoln were alright, though unable to suppress a wry chuckle at learning that rather than Clarke shooting up the Romanian Embassy, instead it’d been Lexa who’d shot up the Romanian Embassy’s basement.

Whitman, she knew, may pose as a helpless idiot, and the man was certainly not eager to be on a firing line; but she knew he had been trained in resisting torture by the CIA – unfortunately, as he had once been an important member of a task force entrusted with bringing down the Colombian drug cartels from the inside only for him to go turncoat and join them instead – and would sooner die than give up his secrets.

Clarke was rather looking forward to exacting some revenge by proxy and release her frustrations about her own sordid situation on the man, because she had her own ways of making people talk.

Chapter Text

Thirty minutes later

Undisclosed location; DIA black site

Cleveland Park, Washington, DC

Lexa and Lincoln had arrived at the rendezvous, Ryder having managed to cut off the mangled lock and get them to safety out through the back before the Romanians had realized they’d fallen out of touch with the basement detail and sent another team to investigate. It had been a close call – too close for Lexa’s liking – but they’d made it out, alive and well, and with Whitman sedated and tied up inside an up-armored car.

The observation teams had gotten the (likely fake) license plate number of what was supposed to be Whitman’s getaway car, and had been presented with an opportunity to interdict it and snatch its driver, but another party had beaten them to it – a party armed with an RPG that had sent the car to hell along with its occupant. Clearly, somebody didn’t appreciate loose ends; and whoever had done the deed was skilled enough to vanish from under their very eyes.

They could deal with this later: Lexa was going to pass off this part of the investigation to the DEA, ATF, and FBI, and let them squabble over jurisdictions as the car and corpse remains were scoured for clues.

No, instead, Lexa had been given the audio recordings of what Clarke had been up to before doing the thankfully still vertical Argentine tango (and then the flamenco, not that that was much better) with Tris: she wanted to know who the South American man she’d been so chummy with was and what they’d been talking about. She’d go over it more finely later, but for now, as she approached the blonde, relieved that she seemed to be alright now but pissed that she’d once again gone behind her back, she wanted to talk about one specific thing Dr. Santiago had mentioned.

"Your 'advance guy', Clarke?" Lexa cold opened as she padded over to the bed Clarke was splayed out in, still recovering and looking way too pale, with Tris sitting next to her concernedly stroking her arm.

"Well, I had to have a reason to just pop into the place." Clarke said, as if it were self-evident. Maybe in her mind, it was.

"This better not actually be about Shoreline.” Lexa warned: if Trillion Galactic was playing with fire, Shoreline was like playing with a neutron star.

"You're talking about a project that was dissolved in '89 along with most of the scientists that worked on it.” Clarke explained – there had been a point of origin for her fondness of solving problems in acid. “Funding dried up as Apartheid broke down and they found that the desired results were physically impossible. Shoreline was something that, I might remind you, the Agency opposed. Too great a risk of uncontrollable mutability."

Lexa wasn’t convinced yet: "If some psychopath revived it 36 years later, knowing what we know about human genomic functionality now, could it succeed?"

"No. The markers they were looking to target simply don't exist." Clarke laid out, to Lexa’s satisfaction. Clarke knew a lot more about DNA and stuff than Lexa, so she’d take the woman’s word for it.

"I'm sorry, but can somebody clue me in here?" Tris asked. "What the hell is 'Project Shoreline'?"

"Um..." Clarke stammered, looking to Lexa for approval. After some pondering, realizing that Tris had heard the term now anyway and seeing that she was Monty’s second-in-command, she decided that bringing the other brunette into the loop might do more good than harm

So when she nodded her approval, Clarke continued: "Project Shoreline was an SCI-level clandestine operation run by the South African government from 1984 to '89, approved by F.W. De Klerk for the purpose of..." She began to say, then dialed back as she wanted to put things in less technical terms: "They wanted to create a selective aerosolized pathogen that would trigger fatal cerebral hemorrhaging after a built-in tome delay expired to ensure the victims would transmit the kill agent far and wide. Its intention was to infect the entire global human population with a virus that wouldn't affect the desired people, but kill off anyone that wasn't..." She gulped, recalling her revulsion when she’d first been read in on this insane ploy that would make Nia proud. "Anybody that wasn't 100% Caucasian."

“But there isn’t anyone like that left in the world!” Tris chose to react rather than engage with the absolute horror of the way the project was meant to work, which was a little too much to digest right now.

“Didn’t we have something similar once?” Lexa asked Clarke.

“Yeah, Project El Dorado. Didn’t work out either; only we didn’t kill our own scientists, we just reassigned them.”

“Was Gabriel Santiago one of those scientists? Why else did he know about Shoreline?” She wanted to know.

“Oh, not at all.” Clarke denied, going on to explain: "I went to him because he works for Romanian counterintelligence, bioterrorism division. It's his job to know about those things. Hannah and Gabriel are both part of an unofficial task force with the mission to prevent those projects from ever being restarted."

"You just can't stay out of intel even if you try, can you?" Lexa chuckled: Clarke was a character, alright.

"Hey, do you know how many doctors are sources, if not outright assets?" Griffin replied in CIA parlance.

"But still. You sent an advance team, Clarke? Without consulting me. Again." Lexa changed tack.

"I know our agreement and I'm upholding it whenever possible. But sometimes I don't have time to argue with you.” Clarke replied, outraged that Lexa was choosing to use the fact that Clarke was in no condition to get up and walk away to start another argument with her now, with Whitman just in the other room waiting to be interrogated for what could be time-sensitive intel. “The turnaround between issuing an order and its being carried out has to be minimal. I don't need to remind you that the stakes at play are frighteningly high."

“Can I talk to her alone for a minute, Corporal Thornton?” Lexa directed to Tris, making clear this was an order.

“Oh, yeah, sure.” She had no choice but to give in. “But give her back to me in one piece, you get me?”

“What is your problem with me using my private assets to help you, Lexa?” Clarke groused, still groggy from the deadly analgesic, the seizure it had caused, and the antidote that’d made her drowsy, once Tris had taken her leave.

"I want to trust you, Clarke, can't you see that?" Lexa started, trying to break through that unbelievably thick, tunnel-visioned skull of Clarke’s. "But you're making it impossible when I don't know what you're doing."

"Meaning that you implicitly distrust me, which is already not a good foundation." Clarke said back, believing it herself. "What, Lexa, you think I'm two-timing? That I'm hedging my bets to see if maybe Nia will win after all? That I'm so eager to become military dictator of the United States and be handed half the world to do with as I please if only I let Nia Koroleva commit the greatest atrocity in the history of mankind since the genocides of Genghis Khan?!"

"Now you're just projecting, Clarke. You're putting words in my mouth that I never said." Lexa replied, staggered by the implications of what Clarke thought about her.

"But you can't admit that you never thought of them." She said, recalling the SCOTUS tribunal.

"Are we allowing unspoken thoughts into evidence now? That’s harsh, Clarke." Lexa sighed.

"Considering that you have a well above-average but still typically structured memory and I have perfect recall, allow me to cite your own spoken words from June 17^th.” Clarke said sharply, reliving every moment of fear, doubt, and pain Lexa had caused: “Ahem: 'I fully believe that I am speaking about a woman who is callous, ambitious, and resilient enough to get her own sister killed in order to secure an alliance with the FSB that has proved to be more politically in line with Mrs. Griffin's vision for America's future than that plotted out by the voting people of the United States. I will neither forget nor forgive what happened outside Baikonur on February 24th, 2021. She must now be held to account and forced to take responsibility for her actions. It is only right that we see this business through to its conclusion quickly and decisively, and pursue justice in such a way that this woman will never again be able to cause harm to our national security.'"

"I have been almost totally discredited because of your little speech.” The girl went on as she, uncaring about any awkwardness it would cause for Lexa, began to peel off her dress to change back into her now-signature black jacket, “I lost all of my light side influence, my gray side connections have almost all distanced themselves from me, and my dark side connections no longer trust me because I've been compromised in the public eye, meaning they won't be insane enough to risk being seen with me and targeted by association by both the Fed and high-level criminal cabals." She laid out the practical side of the equation, before moving on to the more important part. She stared Lexa straight into those treacherously pretty green eyes as she spoke: "Not to mention that you might as well have stabbed me in the heart. You, my best friend, who's been there since the day I was born, and it didn't take much for you to pass out the torches to the pyre, did it?" She scoffed bitterly, "I may be the Commander of Death, but it's my death that you hold in your hands, thanks to that custody ordination that makes me your personal property without citizen's rights."

That was what this was about. The power balance was the big stumbling block after all. Lexa knew what Clarke was thinking: one word for her, and she’d be dragged off to a place where she’d disappear forever without any means to defend herself. If Lexa would regret it, it would be too little, too late – and it only ever had to happen once. That sort of leverage, she’d never asked for, but it had been given to her anyway; and its mere existence meant that, fundamentally, Clarke could no longer trust her. And it hurt like hell to know that there was nothing she could do about it.

"So you see my problem now? You're not my friend, and you certainly can't be my lover, because what you are, Commander Woods, is my ticking clock, my jailer, my slave master, so forgive me if I can't take you seriously when you start making claims about wanting to keep me safe because you claim you care!"

"I wasn't in my right mind when I said that, and you know it!" Lexa argued back, knowing that it was an exercise in futility but determined to have her say anyway, knowing that Clarke would look back at this confrontation later and re-assess every single word, just maybe drawing a slightly less pessimistic conclusion. "I know it doesn't exculpate me. I know what I said was wrong. I know I said it under oath and that I meant it at the time; but I instantly regretted it and did whatever I could to try to protect you. I even asked Dad to pardon you immediately rather than just commute your sentence." She revealed: that part, Clarke hadn’t known about. "I already lost Costia. I'm not gonna lose you too." Lexa said, taking a chance and taking Clarke’s hand in her own, only for the blonde to sadly withdraw her fingers.

"I'm afraid you already have." Was Clarke's answer. But she didn't say it with malice – she said it with tears in her eyes.

Lexa excused herself after that, needing some time alone with her thoughts while Clarke, against doctor’s orders, got out of bed and looked to preparing Whitman for a rather unique sort of interrogation she’d taken a lot of care in preparing.

Octavia intercepted the Commander, sensing that something was terribly wrong with her since she didn’t even realize Octavia was there until she’d spoken to Lexa three times. So she simply asked what was the matter. And Lexa, in a moment of weakness she’d realize years down the line had been precisely what she’d needed to show, told her everything. Octavia, Clarke’s closest confidant for a long time, would understand everything without needing it spelled out for her the way Clarke sometimes required. And that she did. In fact, as soon as Lexa had finished talking, Octavia told the Commander to go somewhere ensconced and cry about it, telling her she’d feel better and more able to face whatever came next after, and then went to confront Clarke herself.

"Clarke! What the hell are you doing?" She said, barreling into the CIA girl’s area that she’d been preparing with heavy medical-grade plastic sheeting all over the walls and floor. "Don't you know Lexa's desperately in love with you?"

"Yeah, right. I'm sure she is. Cause she's been showing me so much affection." Clarke snapped back in irritation.

Octavia couldn’t believe her ears: this was the Clarke who only saw things her own way, disregarding what Lexa must be feeling. "She hasn't been pursuing you because You told her you wanted to wait until Nia was dead. She's been trying to give you the space you asked for, and it's been taking a big toll on her. And now you pull this shit?"

"Lexa's a 29-year-old woman. Tris is 24. But the younger one has been acting a lot more maturely, if you ask me. At least one brunette had the balls to talk to me about the way she feels." Clarke, completely missing the point, replied, directing some techs to place some metal poles on the floor and drill them down to anchor points.

"Dude, it's Lexa. She doesn't talk; she acts." Octavia pointed out: Lexa had never been the type to talk about the way she felt, but preferred to show it through what she did, or didn’t do. It had been so… contradictory, though, that Clarke had trouble interpreting Lexa’s behaviorisms as of late, and she couldn’t find a good time to bring it up, because Clarke was afraid of rejection and Lexa kept rubbing salt in the wounds. Only she’d just rejected Lexa, hadn’t she?

“She told me that I’m her property, O. You don’t do that to someone you care about.”

"For God's sake, that was a statement of fact, one that she resents. Think about it: she kissed you, Clarke!"

"And she regretted it." Clarke said, deflating: she just couldn’t make up her mind about the girl.

"Because she thought she was taking advantage. You both agreed that you couldn't do anything while this case lasts, and she's been patiently waiting, only for you to go 'fuck it' and get with another woman?" Octavia accosted her friend.

"Since when are you defending Lexa? I thought you were on my side?" Clarke, taking things way too negatively, mistook this admonition as a defection.

"I am on your side!" Octavia yelled, needing to get through. "Sometimes you're just too stupid to see what's best for you."

“And you think Lexa’s what’s best for me, rather than someone who adores me the way I am?” Clarke wanted to know.

"Of course not. Tris is an amazing girl, but she’s in love with the idea of you. Lexa knows the real you – she just thinks she doesn’t anymore, but you can shake her awake if you only try. I think you’ll be surprised.”

It was at this time that Lexa and Tris both appeared, along with a few guards and one Robert Whitman. The man was awake and aware, fully cognizant now that the tranquilizer had worn off, yet still under the effect of a paralytic that ensured he wouldn’t be able to resist, or indeed move at all, while being prepped for what was about to happen.

The man’s eyes honed in on Clarke the moment he saw her, a malicious gleam of recognition in his face that didn’t most past Lexa’s detection. The meek, stuttering businessman from before had transformed into someone whose sharklike eyes, upon closer inspection, had seen more than their fair share of death: it was evident that Whisman was far more used to violence, and doling it out, than his public persona suggested.

Robert Whitman’s record was squeaky-clean. Even his criminal enterprise, insofar as the alphabet soup had been able too divulge it to Lexa and team, was something he only ran the business side of, without getting involved in the nitty-gritty of its daily operations. But that only held true if one looked at Rob Whitman: accessing the far more highly classified records on file regarding a Major Lee Hunnings painted a rather more sordid picture.

The man was fastened to the metal frame that had been assembled with bands of – ironically – Russian titanium, too tight for him to be able to escape if he broke his thumbs, even if he’d slice his thumbs off wholesale.

This was necessary: Clarke had asked Lexa to do something truly, truly inhuman to the man. Lexa had flat-out refused when Clarke had shared the details with her, arguing that this would lower them to Nia’s level, but then Clarke had shared some intel that had, regrettably, changed Lexa’s mind. (That, and since Tris would be attending, Lexa figured that the younger woman wasn’t prepared to see this side of Clarke, whereas Lexa already accepted it.)

The first thing that happened was that Octavia and Ryder cut all the man’s clothes off his body: what Clarke had in mind was in no way sexual, but that didn’t make things any less heinous. Still, it left a foul taste in Lexa’s mouth seeing Whitman’s body on display like a prize hog – not because she felt sorry for the man (although she almost did), just because she found that part of the human anatomy unique to males utterly repulsive.

But she would force herself to watch, anyway. She wasn’t going to participate: this was Clarke’s show, her scene, but she needed to remind herself what Clarke was capable of, for better or worse.

"Listen up, pal." Clarke began, stepping forward to regard the considerably taller man with a sneer that would make one believe that she was the one towering over him. "As far as the US Government is concerned, I'm sitting inside a hole in the most secure prison on Earth to be forgotten about. As far as those who actually matter are concerned, I'm the one running point on the most sensitive black operation in the history of the United States. Ergo, I don't exist. And if you don't give me what I want, neither will you."

The man’s weight was resting on his own legs now, not just held up by the shackles, so the paralytic had worn off. Still, he didn’t utter a word.

"Robert Whitman, you have been tried in absentia under far more generous and fair conditions than me, and found guilty of arming terrorist, drug smuggling, human trafficking, assassination, torture, and political corruption and coercion on more counts than I care to recite. Do you have anything to say for yourself?” Clarke leveled at their prisoner. Lexa took note of her tone: whatever was happening now, it sounded personal.

"Or should I call you Lee Hunnings, former Green Beret, former PAG operative, one-time business associate of your fellow former Green Beret Mr. Carl Emerson, and big Padron of the Zacatecas." Clarke spoke next, and the insane intel Clarke had showed her – of Colombian neckties, buses full of schoolkids buried alive, bombing funerals and machine gunning weddings, burning ballot boxes, and far worse – suddenly clicked into place.

"When I was Agency Director, I was given access to all the confidential files of my predecessors. Your false identity was immaculately set up. Too bad for you that my memory is just as immaculate, and I knew who you really were the moment I saw a picture of your face. The jig is up, Lee." Clarke said to the man, turning her attention to unrolling several duffel bags Octavia had provided on a side table and starting to lay out its worrisome contents.

"I know much about you. I know the exact day you went turncoat and joined the Zacatecas Cartel. I know what you did to help them recover in Colombia when they relocated there after the US Army rolled into Mexico, and all the strings you pulled, and throats you cut, to become their Padron; a white American in charge of a Mexican cartel based in Colombia.” She said, shaking her head at the absurdity of it all. “I know you used your Agency training to disappear and hide in plain sight as a transshipment mogul. And I know you and the Mountain Men collude with sources inside the DoD and defense industry to provide modern, high-end US-made weapons to all kinds of scumbags as long as they can cough up the dough." She finished her summary of what this man was all about. "What I don't know is how you started working for Nia Koroleva. But that's what we're here for." "You're about to find out the other meaning of the saying 'we take care of our own'. You betrayed the Agency, so now, buddy, it's time for you to die."

Whitman (or Hunnings?) spoke at last, his voice dropping two octaves from the one Lexa had overheard him using at the Embassy. The man had come across as a nervous, somewhat neurotic type, but this turned out to have been a cover, as his affect now was... oddly confident. Spiteful, dismissive, unafraid. His whole face changed, knowing that this was game over for him, and he seemed determined to go out with dignity.

"Did you hear that, folks? Stop the presses, everybody: there's something Princess Griffin doesn't know!" He mocked.

Lexa really had to talk to Clarke about withholding critical information regarding, oh, things like the fact that the 'cravenly businessman' Lexa had traded fire with was, in fact, a highly experienced, CIA-trained black ops agent? No fucking wonder he’d set up that ambush in the boiler room: it was like second nature to assume he’d be pursued.

“Koroleva was unfortunately tight-lipped on the operational details, and I’m not a wizard.” Clarke spoke. “That’s what my toolkit is for: to loosen your lips, or remove them – I haven’t quite decided yet.” She threatened, though Lexa knew it wasn’t a threat at all. That’s what all the plastic sheeting was for.

"Still playing the long game, are we, Griffin?" Whitman, now known as Hunnings, spoke condescendingly.

“I am a complicated woman with very simple desires.” Clarke tutted her answer.

"Look at you. Youngest Director ever, all high and mighty, reduced to cleaning up Nia's loose ends." Lee chuckled darkly, then spewing a mouthful of spit in Clarke’s direction. She simply wiped her face clean with a tissue and carried on.

"Is that all you are to her? A loose end?" She asked: leave it to Nia to discard even important people the moment they no longer mattered to her plans, as Defense Minister Kovalenko had found out the hard way.

"Don't think she won't do the same to you once you've run out of usefulness to her." Lee replied evenly, stating the self-evident truth that he’d only learned too late. "Tell me, Clarke: you don't actually believe she'll make you President?"

"Aren't we the chatty one all of a sudden." Clarke said, ignoring his question and beginning to pull medical scrubs of the sort that surgeons used over her jacket.

“She’s using you, Griffin, just like she used me. Just like I’m sure you think you’re using her, but Nia only keeps one-way relationships. Whatever you think you’ll achieve here? You’re dead already, you just don’t know it yet.” Lee claimed.

"You know, I thought of giving you an unanesthetized root canal, but that would be too quick." Clarke said, not engaging with the guy’s poor attempt to discourage her by getting under her skin and telling her what she already knew – apparently, the guy thought she was still working for Koroleva.

"You know better than to think you can break me. We went through the same kind of torture training, so you already know you aren't getting shit." Lee went, somehow sounding bored. "Stop wasting our time and get on with it."

"Oh, I'm not going to break you," Clarke said back, picking up a wickedly sharp hunter’s knife and twirling it in her hand for inspection. "I'm going to part you. From your skin."

Now something resembling a human emotion flickered in Hunnings’ eyes. She was bluffing: she had to be.

Observing from the side, Tris and Lexa looked to each other, one in disbelief and the other with a knowing grin.

"So Thornton, you ready to spend the rest of your life next to shit like this? Cause I could." Lexa casually shrugged. She never enjoyed this kind of thing, but she understood its necessity and was glad it wouldn’t be her wielding the knife.

“She’s not actually gonna do that, though. Is she?” Tris, not so cocksure anymore, asked earnestly.

“If you’ve known Clarke for longer than a month and a half, you’d know she never bluffs.” Lexa quipped: Tris may have believed that she knew what Griffin was all about, but you couldn’t beat 27 years of knowledge in just 6 weeks.

Back with Hunnings, Clarke prepared an autoinjector, slotting an ampoule of some liquid into its dispenser and releasing just a small measure of it to make sure the needle was working properly. "Some people say that trigeminal neuralgia is the worst sort of pain a human being is physically capable of experiencing." She began to say, speaking like a professor at a postgrad seminar. "Others argue that it's the sting of the tarantula hawk wasp, or perhaps the Irukandji jellyfish – both of which are so excruciating that victims have been known to kill themselves just to make the pain stop." She explained, clearly going somewhere with this line of reasoning. "Box jellyfish stings hurt even worse, but those just kill you outright, and that, ‘Mr. Whitman’, simply will not do." She hissed through gritted teeth. "And considering you lack the tools to accurately simulate the crucible of pain called childbirth, well, I had to improvise. Lucky for me, I'm rather good at that."

She now presented the injector gun to Hunnings, waving it back and forth in front of his face, his eyes tracking the thing as he stood there helpless to stop it when Clarke pushed the stabilizer ring at the front end into the side of his neck and depressed the trigger, shooting the needle into his skin. "So this here is a little something cooked up by the guys and girls at Georgetown Medical that are in it for the science of the possible rather than the human element: it's a neurostimulant that greatly enhances physical sensation. Isn't that fascinating?" She asked sadistically, relishing the opportunity to externalize her own pain and frustrations and do some cleaning up for the Agency along with it. "This stuff, once injected, increases the intensity of physical stimulants affecting particularly pain receptors by anywhere between 400 to 600 percent, taking only roughly thirty minutes to take full effect and not starting to wane for 72 hours." She explained. "So what am I going to do with this? I'm glad you asked."

“Sadly, there is no way yet for pain stimuli to be controlled in a way that it shifts from receptor to receptor optimally, so your body never acclimatizes to the sensation.” Clarke opined. “But there are ways of making sure that your natural defenses are bypassed, based on the simple principle of sustained overstimulation surpassing the threshold of the mental barriers that allow us to tune out physical pain.”

"You know, it really is remarkable how far medical technology has advanced in the past few decades. Used to be that they'd stick a hook on your stump if you lost your hand. These days, they can just fit you with a bionic one that handles and even feels like the real thing, nerve sensations and all." Clarke went on to say, outlining one of the most incredible and significant advances America had made owing to the sheer number of maimed soldiers coming home year after year that the people wanted to give a normal life ack to. "I know what you're thinking: that I'm going to cut you into tiny little bits and replace you just as quickly, until you're more cyborg than man, and the thought had crossed my mind..." Clarke spoke, admitting to the dark ideas that lay at her disposal just behind those soft blue eyes, "Until I came up with something better." ‘Better’, in this case, meaning ‘that much more gruesomely painful’.

"There's this ancient Icelandic practice my friend Glass told me about once, that the Vikings used to execute traitors they wanted to be 100% certain to deny the slightest chance of getting into Valhalla." Clarke launched into one of her monologues. "Are you familiar with the Blood Eagle? It was this practice where they tied a man down across his belly, sliced his back open from the ass to the neck along the spine, pinned his skin flaps up and out, hacked his ribs loose one by one and pulled them away from the center to point upwards, and then removed his lungs from the inside of his chest to splay them out next to his broken ribs. To make him look like an eagle in flight, hence the name, you see?" She asked faux-pleasantly, the imagery nauseating both Hunnings and Tris. “Anyway, the point was that… sometimes they added salt to the lungs, that would still keep breathing even like that, which would increase the pain massively, but also ill the victim that much quicker. If the victim could endure all of this unto death without screaming out once, their sins would be forgiven and they could join Odin’s side in Valhalla with honor.”

"Yeah, this one's worse. It's called 'Helrer', and it makes being skinned alive look like a cakewalk. Designed to make sure there was no way they wouldn’t scream and damn their souls to Hel. With one ‘l’, for your information." Clarke pointed out. "So this is what I'm gonna do: I'm going to strip off all your skin, a tenth-inch at a time, starting at your scrotum and working my way around, until I can peel your entire epidermis off like plucking a fucking grape. Then I'll proceed to the second layer, then the third." She explained, sliding the flat of her knife along his genitals as she did.

“It used to be that, once those Viking executioners had you rendered down to nothing but sinew, muscle, and bones, they'd either grant you the mercy of a stab through the heart, or leave you out to the elements for exposure to claim you. They could keep you alive, awake, and conscious for every agonizing second of it for up to three days." Clarke explained, and Hunnings had begun to shake, though still keeping his teeth locked together in defiant silence.

"Oh, but the wonders of 21st-century medical technology!" Clarke went on. "When I've finished stripping you down and tanning your skin to fashion into a fucking cape, I'm gonna synthesize you a new skin and graft it to you. Wait for it to bond with your body, for those nerves to reconnect and calm down." She spoke, knowing that this could in fact be done at places like Georgetown or Walter Reed – not that she had access to them and not that they would comply, but she didn’t need to and Lee didn’t know that. "And then? Then I'll get to start the process all over again. And again, and again, and again." Clarke stage-whispered, grabbing Lee’s head to force him to look her in the eye, searching for that elusive something called the immortal human soul she’d never been able to pin down.

Hunnings still didn’t say anything. Because the man had passed out in sheer terror.

"Um, Lexa?" Tris looked at her commander. "I think I'm gonna be sick."

"So, you change your mind yet?" Lexa asked, growing more sympathetic to the young woman’s plight: there was no way she could’ve been prepared for the bare rictus of the Commander of Death. This was the legacy of Nuhki Tivka, the training of Glass Sorenson, and the passionate dispassion of Clarke Abigail Griffin distilled into a horrifying art form that turned torture into haute culture that the Dark Eldar of Warhammer 40K would surely appreciate.

"Um, yeah. I don't think I can stomach... that." The girl had to admit she way in way over her head. "I think I'll be content just being friends. You can have her, oh my god, I'm not ready to watch stuff like... holy shit."

"Yeah, she isn't bluffing, either." Lexa wanted to make sure Thorton understood.

"I know. She's awe-inspiring, isn't she?" Tris, finding her smile again, asked her boss with new respect.

"And terrifying." Lexa pointed out: even she was scared of Clarke when she got like this.

"But that's what we like about her, don't we?" Tris said back, realizing that she’d burn like an ant under a magnifying glass if she got closer to the warmth of Clarke Griffin, but finding her thoroughly impressive all the same.

"You said it, Thornton." Lexa smiled back, all her grievances with the younger woman forgiven and forgotten.

Another thirty minutes later

The team had some time to kill while waiting for the substance shot into Hunnings to take effect, so they split up to do their own things. Octavia and Lincoln found a nook to snog somewhere, two unfortunate operators got stuck on babysitting duty, Monty kept remotely observing the embassy to monitor for signs of trouble, Lexa did… whatever it was Lexa did when she didn’t have any pressing concerns, which mostly entailed calling Raven, Gustus, and Indra, and Tris had separated herself from everybody else to catch her bearings.

Clarke, not content with leaving things be as she had overheard the exchange between Tris and Lexa while she’d been softening up Lee, decided to be forthcoming with the younger woman as she sought her out.

"Tris, I don't think we should go through with this-" Clarke began to say, at the exact same time that Tris said "Clarke, I don't think I can do this after all-"

“Oh man, sorry about that.” Tris awkwardly chuckled.

“No, it’s okay. You go first” Clarke replied with a shy smile, scratching her neck.

"Look, you're crazy awesome and badass and sexy as hell, but you're just way above my level of, well, gore tolerance. I'm afraid I'll just slow you down." The IT expert admitted, each word feeling like sandpaper on her tongue; but she knew she’d bitten off more than she could chew and they both deserved to speak the truth about their feelings.

“That’s funny, cause I’m afraid that I’ll drag you down.” Clarke said, not wanting to induct the gentle woman into a deep, dark world there was no coming back from once you’d touched your toe into the water.

“Maybe I acted a little impulsively.” Tris stated. “It was great while it lasted, but yeah, you’re just too much for me to handle, and I mean that as a compliment.” She said, smiling sadly but her eyes full of understanding.

"But... We'll still be friends?" Clarke asked in trepidation, not wanting this thing to ruin all the other good they’d built up.

"Of course!" Tris smiled, her own apprehension that Clarke would want to put distance between them allayed. "I'll be your bestie forever." She declared, nonverbally asking Clarke if it would be okay to hug her.

Clarke happily accepted her embrace with a relieved sigh. "Oh, thank god. I was afraid you'd hate me."

"Hey, I know when to quit." Tris put, again displaying that uncommon maturity that Clarke had come to learn was a staple of her personality just beneath her playful upper layers. "It's alright. It's Lexa. I get it." The young brunette said: she admired that woman, too – Lexa wasn’t her type, but she could easily imagine her being Clarke’s. "Thank you for letting me know what it feels like to drift on cloud nine, even if it was just for one night." She said, grateful for the experience. Now she wouldn’t be forever wondering what it would be like, but had made some good memories to last a lifetime.

"You're gonna find someone who looks at you the way you look at me. I know you will. You wanna know why?" Clarke said back, not letting go of her now-just-friend, but a very, very dear one, just yet as she smiled at the spirited young lady. "Because you're you, and the world's a brighter place because of it."

Now that, Tris thought, was a thought she’d be happy to live with.

Clarke had another stop to make. She’d been thinking about Lexa, and all the things that had gone wrong between them. Of all the tension that existed. And she came to a realization that she’d never addressed something that could easily have been a traumatizing event for the older brunette that Clarke hadn’t directly set up, but had been responsible for.

So when she found Lexa, pacing back and forth with her phone glued to her ear, she waved to get the other girl’s attention, then waited for a few minutes until she’d finished her call.

“Clarke. You want to see me?” Lexa asked, walking up to her friend.

"Hey." Clarke began a little awkwardly: she’d never been stellar at apologizing, but knew that she had to, because she didn’t want Lexa to associate her with danger any more than Lexa seemed to want the same for her.

"About that thing with my laptop, I wanted to apologize." Clarke began, Lexa surprised that she brought this up seemingly out of nowhere. "I should've known better than to think you could get inside my head that well that you'd just beat all my security challenges. When I got notified that the banger had gone off, I was hoping it was Murphy. I never imagined it could've been you; I'm so glad you were quick enough to get your face out of the danger zone."

Lexa was silent for a second. The memory had already faded, not affecting her all that badly because she’d been in a lot more dangerous situations, but it still stung because it’d been Clarke’s doing. So was she mad at her for it? Not really, not anymore, but there was still something to be made clear. "I still nearly broke my nose. It wouldn't stop bleeding for half an hour and swelled to twice its normal size for a week and a half."

"Sometimes I forget that for all our similarities, we still think in completely different ways.” Clarke said, eyeing Lexa in embarrassment. “It's all on me. I'll never set another trap that you could fall into for the rest of forever." She promised.

“I’ll hold you to that, you know?” Lexa replied, somewhat jokingly yet also meaning it.

“I’d expect nothing less from you.” Clarke acknowledged, promising herself that she’d find other, safer ways to make sure Lexa could discover what she wanted her to know but couldn’t tell directly.

“Lightning can strike more than once.” Lexa, referring to the guard phrase that had tripped her up, said. “Like this.”

Lexa, moving as fast as lightning, pulled Clarke into a hug. And for once in her life, the latter didn’t resist being touched without warning. Today was a hugging day, it seemed, and it made her feel that much more human again.

It wouldn’t last for long, as the thirty-minute window had expired, meaning the drug would now have taken effect. Hunnings had already woken back up some time ago but had zoned out, refusing to acknowledge reality, so upon reconvening there (minus Tris, who chose to sit this one out), Clarke forced him back into the present by means of applying a bucket of cold water to his body, the only evident response being a round of shivering, a surprised exhale, and a weird sort of burring sound, but Hunnings stayed annoyingly composed regardless.

“Welcome back, Lee. You’re about to find out that there’s no such thing as ex-CIA, only CIA and late CIA.” Clarke, retrieving her hunting knife with far more dangerous intent that just an inspection this time, greeted her victim.

“You will never even have a star at Langley: I’ll make damn sure Luna hears about everything you’ve done. How you abused our company resources to make yourself a kingpin in Colombia.” She told the man, whose legacy would forever be ruined and the stain he’d left on Langley about to be expunged.

“But before we’re through, you will tell me everything you can about your arms network. Inventory, sources, buyers and sellers, banks and accounts, your attorneys, your accountants, your logisticians.” Clare listed off, Hunnings laughing: the man claimed that it wouldn’t make a difference for him, so he wasn’t going to say a word.

And indeed, Major Lee Hunnings, Green Beret, didn’t utter a single intelligible word, his larynx too preoccupied with producing animalistic screeches of agony as Clarke did exactly what she said she would and making her first pinpoint-precise incision that began to separate the epidermis from the dermis, leaving the hypodermis untouched for now, along the centerline of his testicles going forward from the perineum.

“Oh, will you look at that? Uncircumcised. How convenient of you to give me a natural handle.” Clarke announced as she carried on to the next part of his body, flaying his first skin layer of the other two with absolutely minimal bleeding even as Lexa and Octavia kept issuing demands to the man, commanding him to speak of what he knew.

Octavia eyed the CIA turncoat, determining that despite his howls of agony, this was a physical reaction his body forced upon him, his mind having already resolved that he was going to die anyway, accepting there was nothing he could do about it, and determined that he was gonna take his secrets down into the grave. Lieutenant Blake turned to Clarke as a thought occurred to her: “Hey Clarkey, you said you’re gonna peel his skin like a grape in one big piece. Eardrums don’t count as part of that piece, right?”

“What’cha thinking, O?” Clarke said, satisfied that her neurostimulant was doing its work splendidly.

“I was thinking I could drive an icepick into his head, puncture his ear Lenin-style but stop short of his brain, just to make it hurt even more?” Octavia suggested as Clarke had finished with the penis and was now moving on to the tips of Lee’s fingers, choosing to start with the most sensitive bits, because he was already showing signs of passing out again and she wanted to make it last.

“Lee, I’ll let you die after the first round if you just talk. Otherwise, I’m perfectly happy doing this twenty times over.” She said, slapping the man in the face as his eyes glassed over.

“Ah-ah, no checking out yet.” Clare said, preparing an epinephrine shot and thinking to herself that once done with the fingertips she’d start on the soles of his feet, forcing him to stand on only two layers of skin and put his weight on flayed extremities for that extra touch of sadistic meanness.

She expertly shot the needle straight into his heart, getting the correct angle and depth to ensure that it wouldn’t cause cardiac damage, and forced the man to stay awake and dreadfully aware of what was happening to him.

Weakly scanning Clarke’s eyes and finding nothing but the icy judgment of the Commander of Death staring back at him, Lee Hunnings took stock of the situation and decided that this was not something he could endure more than once.

The proud, defiant arms merchant began to sing like a canary.

“Clarke.” Lexa, quickly having second thoughts as she was reminded of how destructive this execution method was, grew truly concerned when, after the guy had been squeezed dry to everyone’s satisfaction, Clarke prepared to just continue skinning him as before. “He’s told us everything he knows. There’s no need to keep doing this.” She said, stepping forward to put her hand around Clarke’s forearm and gently pushing it down, knife still in her hand.

“Oh, I feel the need.” Clarke, starting to shake as she couldn’t reconcile her overwhelming need to kill something with her burning, self-disgusted shame at involving Lexa in this unhinged catharsis-by-proxy scheme, growled out.

“I understand you feel like you must do this, and the guy’s a scumbag who doesn’t deserve any mercy; but you are not the sort of person who hurts others because she’s been hurt first.” Lexa reasoned with Clarke, hoping to draw her mind back from the abyss of pointless revenge it was freefalling into. “This isn’t gonna make you feel better, Clarke. Believe me.” She pleaded, turning her body to stand in between Clarke and Hunnings, placing her other hand on her friend’s shoulder as gently as she could. “Let’s just finish this and go back… to a more comfortable place.” She said, swapping out ‘home’ at the last minute, because there was no going home for Clarke yet, if ever. The woman probably couldn’t expect to walk into her Arlington house after all of this, considering Bellamy owned 50% of it and still lived there.

“No more listening devices. Ever.” Clarke stated emotionlessly, hoping Lexa would give her a reason to stop this madness and interpret her demand as a request for help rather than dictating terms.

“Done.” Lexa readily answered, glad to have brought her friend back from the brink and intending to honor the request.

“Fine…” Clarke finally agreed, her tense shoulders slumping as the fight drained out of her, leaving her weary and exhausted down to the bone. Only Lexa could rile her up like this – but only Lexa could calm her down, as well.

When Lexa stepped out of the way, Clarke turned back to Hunnings. She looked him in the eyes one last time, still trying to find that elusive trace of consciousness existing outside the body, expectedly coming up empty as always.

“She’s right. None of this is gonna save me.” Clarke said, more to herself than Lee. “Doesn’t mean she can save you.”

And with that, Clarke plunged her knife into the man’s heart, following it up by raggedly slashing his throat. She didn’t bother stepping out of the way as gouts of warm blood projected out of his body, painting her scrubs red and dyeing her face in the most macabre way. This was a form of penance: she’d clean her visage later, but for now, needed to feel the consequences of her choices on her skin, lest she dissociate and deny the willful part she played in this atrocity.

“What about the body?” Octavia, unperturbed as always, asked after a moment of silence.

“Have it taken to the nearest location with an acid bath. Then burn this place. I wanna leave a message for the Zacatecas.” Clarke determined.

Within the hour, the body, implements, bolted frame, plastic, and DIA team had vacated the premises, Monty had rigged up what would grow into an intense electrical fire, and all that any investigators would find was a fireproof note.

‘He aquí el destino de los traidores.’ Behold the fate of traitors. The Cartel would know what it meant. Luna would know what it meant. And with any luck, Nia would think she knew what it meant, too.

RV Akademik Aleksei Borgov, Arctic Sea

In her main office aboard the Russian research vessel she had chartered to act as her offshore mobile command facility, Nia Sil’nayevna Koroleva looked at the latest intel reports with a happy grin. "Lee Hunnings’ death represents one less loose end. He has served his purpose, and will no longer be supplying arms to our rivals." She declared, impressed with the fact that Clarke had discerned that the man’s arms shipments had been all but arranged for and Nia didn’t want his involvement to come back to haunt her later.

"His network is paralyzed for the time being. My people are prepared to take over in his absence, Director." Echo, attending via teleconference as she hadn’t been able to return to see Koroleva in person just yet, still lying low from doing damage control on Griffin’s dumb fuck-up and sending a Fagot missile into the getaway car, signaled her readiness to act.

“I need you to remain in America, Commander Teles.” Nia issued her instructions. “You are my only field commander who can keep Wallace and Prigozhin from trying to murder each other, and we still need both of them alive and playing nice with each other, for now.”

“Shall I call on Ontari to take the direct-action units into South America, then?” Echo asked, accepting her orders.

“Yes. It is time mu daughter had something to do – she is starting to feel bored and underappreciated, so let’s let her cut her teeth on something bigger than her usual.” Nia spoke: once word reached Lubyanka, Ontari would be delighted. Yes, Echo’s loyalty would ensure that Ontari would do anything Nia asked of her.

And Clarke? She was proving to be of a remarkably similar mind to Nia. Flaying a man alive that was going to, but did not yet, pose a potential threat and making his cartel believe that this was a retaliation by the CIA was inspired, she had to give it to the American who was proving to not be the soft-hearted Westerner Nia had been concerned about the girl turning out to be after all. Yes, Clarke Abigail Griffin would make a worthy successor, indeed.

Late that night

The Hay-Adams Hotel, Washington, DC

The hour was growing close to midnight, and Lexa had just finished decompressing, pulling her night clothes on after a long shower she used to digest the eventful day and nursing a glass of expensive cabernet for a nightcap when there came a knocking at her door. More like rapping, actually: quick, soft little jabs, almost timid in nature, cluing Lexa in as to who would be dropping by at this hour that wasn’t professional like Monty or boisterous like Anya.

Padding over to open the door, she found her expected visitor waiting there, Clarke standing in her own night clothes of thin gray slacks and a white-blue shirt looking more casual than she’d seen her in months. This wouldn’t be business-related then: going by the tight, nervous look on Clarke’s face, she wanted to speak about earlier today. And to be honest: Lexa was glad that Clarke was making the first move this time. They were in for a difficult talk, but it was one that needed to be held, and Clarke always had been the bigger people person, relatively speaking, between the two.

"Lexa, hey. Can I...?" The blonde, still blonde for now as she would dye her hair red again come morning, asked softly.

"Of course, come on in." Lexa ushered Clarke into her suite, taking a seat on her main sofa. Clarke made to plonk herself down in a plush armchair at a 45* angle to it, only for Lexa to chuckle and shake her head at the other girl’s insecure antics and pat the spot next to her in invitation.

"Is this 'I told you so'?" Lexa began as Clarke sat down next to her, careful to keep enough room between them for… a small mouse, perhaps, but certainly not the invocation of a two-thousand-year-old corpse. That was hopeful, at least: Clarke wasn’t leaning against her, but also sitting much closer than was strictly proper, so maybe she didn’t quite distrust Lexa as badly as she’d told the brunette and herself.

"No. This is 'thank you'." Clarke said, her tone cautious and apologetic. “I came really close to losing myself back there. Thanks for convincing me not to go through with it.” She said slowly, sincerely, her head dropping into her hands in regret at what she’d been fully prepared to let herself become.

Lexa took a chance and boldly wrapped her hand around the other woman’s forearm, hating how forlorn she looked. And unlike the previous attempt, this time Clarke didn’t shake her off.

Lexa didn’t want to take advantage of Clarke being in an emotionally weakened state, so didn’t proceed beyond that.

Clarke remained silent, lost to her thoughts as she tried to find a way to phrase the words inside her head. Eventually, she spoke up, cutting right to the core with the most vulnerable question Lexa could’ve thought of: “How do we move forward when we’ve betrayed each other’s trust so many times I’ve lost count?” She asked, the weight loading down her words indicating she wanted to find a way back to her best friend, but truly didn’t know where to even start.

“We always do what we believe is right for our people, you and I. As long as we remember that, we can recover.” Lexa spoke, reminding the pair of them that they differed in methods, but never in purpose.

“You’re not sure if we still fight for the same people.” Clarke reminded Lexa of her own doubts and accusations.

"Why did you need the microfilms developed before sharing anything about what they said?" Lexa, picking up the thread, asked, directly requesting an answer that would help her determine what Clarke had been, and was, thinking. “I know even you can’t speed-read 1.3 million files, but you already knew some details about what they said.”

"Firstly, you would've never believed me if you couldn't see their content with your own eyes." Clarke replied, making a fair point. "And secondly: I just printed them; I didn't have time to look at the fucking things."

"So you had a printer spit out over a million pages, just hoping what you needed would be on some of them?"

"Not exactly: I printed everything knowing that the intel I needed was on them, just not where on the reels."

“But you were counting on something substantial turning up before I’d do something stupid and put you away.”

“I was working with the knowledge that you’re too curious to make a final decision until you knew for sure whether I was telling the truth or full of shit.” Clarke laid out, admitting to her applied psychology directed towards a person she once knew so well. “That’s why you’re still holding onto reservations even now.” She sighed melancholically.

“For whatever it’s worth: I don’t think you’re a traitor.” Lexa admitted at last, some of the veil between them lifting as a result. However, there were other things on her mind that were the cause of mistrust besides only that. “But I won’t lie to you: I have no idea what you really want. There’s still so much that doesn’t make sense.”

“There are things I want to tell you. You have no idea how desperately, but I can’t.” Clarke said imploringly, ardently wishing Lexa had seen enough of Clarke’s world to make her understand that sometimes, knowledge was not power, but mortally dangerous. “I can point you in the right direction, though. Time will tell.”

The silence of the wee hours of the night blanketed the world and its prying eyes, making space for a badly needed soft, tender moment between two best friends who found themselves on opposite ends of the judicial spectrum through nothing but a series of unfortunate circumstances and bad judgment calls on both their parts.

"We need to talk. I think it’s important." Clarke broke the silence after a while.

Lexa didn’t like where this was going. “Every time I hear that sentence, it’s the prelude to something awful.”

"O told me something real interesting about you. I don’t know if I can believe her. I’m not sure if I want to." Clarke began, alluding to something without pointing it out, leaving it to Lexa whether to engage or shut it down.

“O and I talked for a little while.” She chose the former, feeling backstabbed. “I had assumed she would keep the matter confidential between her and me.”

“She didn’t cite you, or anything. Didn’t even say what you talked about. In fact, she didn’t mention you talking to her at all, so you just filled in a blank for me.” Clarke revealed, exculpating Octavia. “I could infer what she was alluding to, though, so don’t blame the messenger, blame my brain for doing its pattern recognition thing.”

“What do you want to know, Clarke?” Lexa asked, prepared to talk openly about almost anything.

“Octavia told me you’re in love with me.” Clarke went for the kill shot.

“Octavia is right.” Lexa spoke, too caught up in a maelstrom of thoughts and feelings to say the words herself.

“But if that’s true,” a shocked Clarke began, “why’d you never let me know? Because I told you once to keep your distance? A lot has changed since then. And I had no idea, Lex. No idea at all.”

“Why did you ask Tris on a date if you weren’t ready? What made you change your mind?” Lexa asked her own question, curious about what it was the other brunette had that Lexa wasn’t able to offer Clarke.

"I said I wasn't ready to try with you. Tris is another matter." Clarke sighed, deciding that ripping off the band-aid was the best choice here. "We have no history together. No years and years of fun and laughter we shared. We didn't spend just as many years side by side in the trenches." She admitted, "But she also never told a Supreme Court tribunal that she wished to see me strapped into the electric chair; you did. Not in those words, but that was the effect of them. She never believed I was the enemy even in those first few days when you were putting me through the wringer.”

Clarke poured herself a glass from Lexa’s wine bottle, needing the time and alcohol to fortify herself. "So it's really fucking complicated. Do I think you're all sorts of wonderful, awesome, amazing, and admirable? You bet your ass I do! But can I love you without all of that outweighing my trust and affection? Not yet. And that's the real problem. Because I don't know if there's even going to be a later, and she makes me feel like maybe there could be." She admitted.

"Tris doesn't know what you made me promise. Does she?" Lexa asked, frowning.

"It doesn't matter anymore. We broke it off." Clarke dodged the question, confirming its veracity.

"It still isn't right!" Lexa exclaimed, willing to protect the young woman now that she knew that the competition between them had been resolved in Lexa’s favor. "You have to tell her, or... Or..." She didn’t know where to take that sentence.

Clarke did, though, and she wasn’t happy: "Or what, Lexa? You'll blow up the bomb you planted in my neck?!"

“That’s not fair, Clarke. You know I’d never do that. I’m not like Nia.” Lexa retorted, not even angry, just disappointed that Clarke seemed to be so badly broken she could believe Lexa was capable of such a horrendous act.

"You know what?" Clarke began, Lexa bracing for a cutting remark, "You're right. I'm sorry."

Well, that was unexpected. And appreciated. “I’d understand if you choose to be with Tris. I won’t hold it against either of you. I just wish you would’ve thought of me before making your choice.” Lexa said, surprising Clarke, who for all her mental acumen really was as dense as a ball of lead when it came to sensing affection towards her.

"Tris is sweet, she's smart, she's a lot of fun, and she's interested. I don't wanna be alone, Lex.” Clarke said meekly. She felt so utterly isolated it was starting to cloud her judgment. And that was dangerous to everybody.

Tris was there, she was available, she was willing, she was sweet, fun to be with, absolutely no slouch in combat, with razor-sharp intellect and remarkable maturity, not to mention the girl was drop-dead gorgeous: she was everything Clarke could wish for and more. The only real problem, and one that was in no way Miss Thornton's fault, was that, for as amazing as she was, she just wasn't Lexa.

And Clarke couldn't shake the idea that if she'd give herself to Tris, there would always be a part of her that'd keep whispering that she was only using her to substitute for Commander Woods, which just wasn't healthy, it wasn't right, and Tris deserved to be with someone who could give their all to her without reservation. If Clarke remained hung up on Lexa – and let's be honest with herself: there was no 'if' about that proposition – there could never a full mutual commitment, and that, Clarke realized, was something she wasn’t willing to subject either of them to.

Lexa had simply played too an integral part in her life, for far too long, to take any distance from. With Miss Woods, any motion was one-way only: they could get closer, but not further apart, not without it hurting the both of them so immensely they'd fight their way back to where they had been tooth and claw whether they were aware of it or not: they were like two planets tidally locked in each other's orbit, drawn together by an inescapable shared gravity well.

Clarke's anger at Lexa was ferocious. Her shame at the way she'd been treating her, intense. Her frustration with Lexa's continued suspicions that Clarke was working more angles than just trying to save the country and the world, palpable. And the intensity of the fires of admiration and desire that burned for her, scalding. Lexa Woods evoked emotional extremes that Tris just didn't, for better or worse. Being with Tris would be so easy, whereas Lexa would fight and argue with her every step of the way: then again, Clarke enjoyed a challenge.

“You don’t have to be alone. You could have me. Why wasn’t that an option in your mind?” Lexa asked cautiously.

"Because it's you." Clarke said, then went on to break down that statement: "You make me feel a lot of things. And not all of them are good. I see a woman who’s convinced herself that I’m the enemy, and just can’t seem to talk herself out of that mindset no matter how much she tries. I know I’m not easy to understand, not with all the things I’m doing without your knowledge, and I get that you can’t fully trust me because of that, but it’s never been an issue before. And I just can’t be with someone who’s expecting me to put a knife in her back.”

"I get it. Tris is safe. She adores you, and trusts you as much as Octavia by now.” Lexa spoke, refilling her own glass as well as she took in the hopelessness of Clarke’s words. “And I…” She mentally facepalmed, “I left you to the wolves.”

"You were in love. That's the one force that goes against all reason and drives you to ignore logic." Clarke said, surprisingly tender. "I'm not saying what you did was right, and I'm not saying I forgive you. But I am telling you that I understand why you did it." She spoke to Lexa’s immense relief. “I’m telling you that, if you play your cards right, you still have a chance.”

"Tris is like Anya’s daughter. She’ll never allow anything to happen to Corporal Thornton." Lexa went down a side road, needing some time to digest this huge revelation. "Anya would've killed you for breaking my heart; now she's gonna kill you for breaking Tris'." She said with some concern: her sister was regrettably going to pose a major obstacle.

"It was a mutual decision! We didn't get far enough for it to be as bad as a real heartbreak... I think. I hope." Clarke, understanding Lexa’s need for time, still defended herself.

"She might change her mind. And that means she might change your mind." Lexa pointed out.

"Are you actually jealous right now?" Clarke asked, unsure if she should feel flattered or offended.

"I'm not jealous; I'm afraid." Lexa answered, and Clarke went bug-eyed. "I can't lose you. Jog that perfect memory. Recall when I told you that you were mine and mine alone, and you quipped about how romantic it was?" She inquired; Clarke nodding that yes, she did recall that moment.

"Yeah, I knew exactly what I was saying. And it meant precisely what you think it does." Lexa revealed.

"It hasn't even been a year since Costia." Clarke pointed out, revealing her fear of just being the replacement.

"It hasn't even been half a year since Bellamy." Lexa retorted, believing that time had nothing to do with it as long as it felt right. Yes, she’d needed to process Costia’s loss, but also knew that Big Griffin would’ve wanted her to move on.

"Tris doesn't look exactly like Bell." Clarke said, still comparing herself to the ghost of her late sister as if she had to worry that she couldn’t live up to what Cos and Lexa had shared. And that might have been true with many another woman (or man), but not with Lexa Woods.

"But she does look remarkably like me." Lexa replied, equally insecure about being substituted for.

"That's not..." Clarke, catching on, tried to scramble her Ready Five fighters to mount a defense of the mothership. "Okay, I have a favorite aesthetic the two of you happen to meet, but that's about the eyeballs. With a partner, I go for an emotional bond. Tris is awesome. She's sweet to me without fail, she's smart as hell, maybe a little reckless behind the trigger but really knows her shit, and she's just fun. She's like..." Clarke caught herself short of what she was about to say, realizing that just maybe, Lexa was right. "Fuck. She's like a more lighthearted you. Her soul is young, unlike ours, which feel as old as humanity itself."

“Is that something you find enticing? The thought of someone who’s less jaded by life?” Lexa asked, sitting firmly in the middle on the optimist-pessimist scale between the extremes that were Tris and Clarke.

“Not at all. If anything, I was afraid I’d corrupt her.” Clarke replied. “I love arguing about all sorts of things with people who know what I’m talking about, but not if I end up talking them into PTSD.”

“I hope, for both of you, that you made the right choice.” Lexa said, understanding Clarke’s reasoning and approving of how the blonde was proving to be so considerate of Tris’ more vulnerable nature. “But why do half your arguments have to be so high-level that it makes people question whether you secretly hate my father?”

"We can have political issues without it meaning we can't be friends." Clarke answered, finding it utterly ridiculous how the public seemed to believe that you had to always agree on everything in order to like each other.

"But do you really have to discuss your disputes with the freaking President in live interviews?" Lexa asked, because that had been one of the factors in convincing Russell and Diana that Clarke had uncouth business under the hood.

"Well, I don't make a habit of keeping my opinions to myself because I don't live in goddamn Afghanistan, and the people have to know that the head spook isn't some stooge who's just gonna swallow the administration's orders without critical thought." Clarke explained her own thinking, which also did make sense to Lexa, although Clarke seemed to be grossly overestimating the discernment capacity of your average public media consumer. And acting out of spite because she, as a bisexual woman, was upset about the appalling treatment of women in Afghanistan, was definitely not a smart course of action for the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency! Then again, intelligence and smartness weren’t the same thing; and Lexa couldn’t fault Clarke for being fallible. She was only human, after all.

Yes, Clarke was human. She was a woman. She was bisexual. And Lexa was lesbian.

And Lexa couldn’t not remind herself of how right those ten seconds on the Ilyushin had felt.

And she was curious, her memory not being flawless, if she’d stored her recollection of the sensation correctly.

So she wanted to create a point of comparison to find out.

Alexandria Alycia Woods cupped the face of Clarke Abigail Griffin in her hands, thumbs gently stroking her cheeks as she beckoned the somewhat shorter woman to come closer.

"Lexa, please! You told me yourself we couldn't do this..." Clarke, sounding desperately scared, but not because she didn’t want this to happen, though terrified of what the consequences could be, whispered.

"Tell me you don't want to." Lexa offered: she’d back off immediately if Clarke told her no.

"You know I can't." Clarke, her pretty pale face getting redder by the moment, softly shook her head.

"Tell me to stop." Lexa spoke again, gently, letting Clarke know it would be okay to just turn away and she wouldn’t be upset about it – well, she would be at the situation, but not at Clarke.

"You know I won't." Said woman replied, biting her lip to try to ground herself.

"Tell me that I'm taking advantage." Lexa asked her last question: if they did this, there’d be no turning back. Lexa would forever regret messing up if this wasn’t what Clarke wanted, and also feared that Clarke would regret giving in should something new come in between them that might validate either of their worries. They had to be certain.

This was decision time. To accept that Lexa was for real, that she’d make the effort, that she would not betray her again. Clarke had to stop thinking and listen to her heart. And it was clear about what it wanted. "That would be a lie." She told Lexa. Clarke too recalled those ten seconds. She’d been out of her mind, quite literally, that time. This night, though, she was in full control of her faculties.

So she closed her eyes and invited Lexa in.

And she did. She let her best friend claim her lips. The person she’d known for just as long as her father, with only her own mother going back even longer for the mere fact that she’d grown inside of Abby before meeting the rest of the world. The woman who was set to marry her big sister. Who had hauled her away from her base of operations believing her to be a traitor not once, but twice. Who wanted nothing more than to expunge the past and move forward into a new future where they could be together.

And God, if this was only how it was going to start, she couldn’t wait to see how their story would develop.

At least twenty seconds passed before Lexa broke away for air. Both their eyes opened, locking gazes with each other, looking for any sign of doubt, of regret, of uncertainty. They found none.

So Lexa closed the distance again, deepening the angle to get even closer contact, threading her fingers in Clarke’s hair as Clarke tugged Lexa closer by the waist, smooching like the act was them saving each other’s lives: perhaps that was precisely what it was. The imagery it invoked in the two woman was like a first drink of clean, cool water after days of trekking through a desolate, unforgiving desert, like the first breath of fresh air after choking on an impenetrable cloud of smog, like a confusing pile of puzzle pieces finally fitting together into a beautiful picture.

It wasn’t even close to being enough.

Only this time, there was nothing and no-one holding them back from doing it again.

And again. And again. And again.

They had fallen asleep still trading kisses with each other. When they woke up and found themselves tangled up together on the sofa, neither of them minded. And before facing the new day, they made out some more.

It was like finally coming home. Clarke had almost forgotten what it felt like to be able to trust. Lexa had almost forgotten what it felt like to be wanted like you were one half of a shared universe. This… tasted like so much more.

Chapter Text

August 24, 2021

The Hay-Adams Hotel, Washington, DC

Early in the morning, Lexa had awoken naturally, to find that Clarke was also awake. Clarke usually wouldn’t get out of bed until after Lexa had already finished her morning ablutions and then take her time to get ready more lazily, so to see her already up and about was a surprising sight – maybe not so much, considering neither of them wanted someone else to witness Clarke coming out of Lexa’s suite in the morning.

Not that there was anything wrong with that. Tris had been in Clarke’s suite at night, and they hadn’t done anything uncouth, either. And Lexa was perfectly entitled to face-to-face time alone with the one she’d been entrusted with – Lexa refusing to think of the term ‘prisoner’ because it turned to ash in her mouth – but still, they wanted to avoid awkward questions for a while longer. They’d agreed to take things slow and see how it went, not wanting to place a label on a relationship that was so young and uncertain, so fraught with doubts and conditionality, that neither of them looked forward to trying to explain exactly what was going on between the two of them to the others. Especially Anya.

“I have to make a quick supply run before the morning meeting, so I gotta head out soon, but it won’t take long.” Clarke said after she’d stretched out like a cat to loosen her joints, Lexa blatantly drinking in the sight of her body. Aha, that explained why she’d been up so bright and early. She’d been doing that with Octavia and… and Tris, a few times to acquire specialized, heavily restricted equipment that Indra was better off not knowing about, but never this early: it could just be time-sensitive enough to want to avoid getting stuck in traffic, so there was nothing to worry about. Lexa decided to give the girl, now with red hair once again, the benefit of every doubt for once.

“Hey, I just wanted to say sorry for treating you with such suspicion.” Lexa decided on verbalizing, giving Clarke a quick, soft kiss, more secure in the knowledge that she wouldn’t need to make it last because she’d get to do it again.

"I'm sorry too." Clarke replied, understanding where the other was coming form. "I know I've been giving you a hard time. I'm sorry for fucking with you, and all the weird purchases – I've been feeling so... angry, and spiteful, but it's not really your fault, and I need to stop breaking your back about things you had no say in." She told Lexa, promising that she’d try to do better by her. "Raven's right: I'm a goddamn hypocrite."

“So were you. You’re a hypocrite, but you’re not a liar.” Lexa recalled that fire-spitting debate between Clarke and Rae.

"You, um, mentioned something about the Langley raid that's bothering you?" Clarke now asked, wanting to begin making amends for all the things she’d done to make Lexa feel like shit on her part.

"It was like living through a horror movie." Lexa swallowed a lump in her throat, not eager to think back to that morning: how tense it had been, walking through the building surrounded by hundreds of armed spooks in body armor that had been tipped off to expect unfriendly visitors. “I honestly wasn’t sure whether I was about to be gunned down along with all my team members until we were well out of ATGM range of your HQ building. The way half your people were watching us, keeping us corralled between them, discreetly showing off their SMGs while the other half just went about their business trying to walk through us like we weren’t even there, that was the stuff nightmares are made of.”

“I had to be absolutely certain that whoever came for me wasn’t working for Nia.” Clarke explained, understanding that it wouldn’t invalidate the dread Lexa had felt at the time, but perhaps simply knowing what was going on might earn her a mote of forgiveness. She did want to put Lexa’s mind at ease about the whole ordeal, so she went on to say: “If I’d have known it was gona be you, I would’ve ordered Glass to stand down. Yes, I was prepared to let a snatch team walk into the heart of Langley and make sure they never left again, but only if those were FSB agents or their stooges, and it was because I knew that there was also a chance of real patriots doing the deed that I told my people to be really careful and not open fire without explicit orders. I was never going to let you get hurt, Lex. Not on my order, not on my watch. That has always been true.” She spoke, squeezing Lexa’s hand, letting the green-eyed beauty know that she really did care.

Lexa found her eyes constantly drifting towards Clarke, as if drawn by magnets. For weeks ongoing, she was hyper-aware of the other woman's position, her posture, every move she made. She told herself that this was just her keeping an eye on a potential security risk, but she knew she was just fooling herself. There was something there, Lexa just wasn't sure what to call it. If this was love, romantic love, it felt nothing like what she’d experienced with Costia. But then, maybe it wasn’t just that different people experienced love differently, but that the same person could love different people in different ways, too. Because where being around Costia had felt like warming in the sunshine, drinking the sweet drops of morning dew, like being able to relax in the secure knowledge that all was gonna be well; being near Clarke was like skirting the edge of a hurricane, drawn in by its magnificent power despite knowing the lethal danger it represented, it was exciting, it was thrilling, it was a sensation that held the promise of something new every day, and it was… irresistible.

Whenever Lexa stared at Clarke and she caught her, the brunette would quickly look away. But when Clarke was caught staring at Lexa, she wouldn't be so polite and instead stare at her even more intensely. Lexa Woods did not get unnerved by people looking at her. But Griffin? The (faux-red, still odd to see!) blonde both looked like she wanted to rip her throat out with her teeth, eat her in a completely different way, and like she didn't give a shit, all at once.

And after their talk that morning, with Clarke at last airing out her own dirty laundry and taking responsibility for some of the things that had caused Lexa grief, hurt, and fear, she hoped that she could continue to grow closer with Clarke and entice the girl to let her into her tiny circle of trust – she was prepared to go the distance to make that happen.

The only problem was: Griffin wasn’t there anymore. Everybody else was accounted for, meaning Clarke didn’t have two others with her, and nobody could tell her where the woman had gone. Even Octavia had no idea: Lieutenant Blake admitted to having heard nothing about a supply run nor seen her head out of the building.

Just like that, Lexa’s newfound faith in the wily ex-Director shattered. Scrambling for her radio, dialed into the intra-task force secure channel, she spoke with urgency: "This is Woods. Declaring emergency. The tiger is out of the cage. I say again: the tiger is out of the cage."

She quickly sought out Monty and Tris in the server room and asked him to put a trace on Griffin. Lexa told her tech experts that “She’s spoofed the signal. Don’t ask me how, but it’s showing her as being right there in the next room, and I can’t get a read on her accurate location.”

“She mentioned a supply run, right?” Tris spoke up, rapidly starting to work a set of devices doing something Lexa couldn’t identify but Monty, to his pleased approval, pegged as setting up a frequency-hopping scalper algorithm designed to weasel its way into making any encryption, encoding, and scrambling tech think that it was part of its own source code to give it access to anything it was tracing and its own geolocation data; with the purpose of deceiving Clarke’s geotag into giving up its real location after all, or at least blanketing the DC Metro in enough piggybacked surveillance that if any other device was picking up its signal, she could use those readings to get a general area down if nothing else. Monty explained as much to Lexa as the man himself began breaking into the Washington cameras: the public surveillance network, traffic cams, CCTV from private institutions like banks and schools, feeds from any and all satellites, helicopters, and drones in Capital airspace – holding out little hope at spotting Clarke, who could move like a ghost in plain sight if she so chose, but still wishing to work every angle to find back their most important asset.

Unbeknownst to the other two, Tris’ fervor wasn’t out of anger, annoyance, or disappointment, but rather because she was instantly convinced that Clarke had somehow been kidnapped; and she wasn’t the sort of person who wanted to see someone she cared about harmed because she’d turned her down. So she’d help Monty and Lexa find Clarke, get her back here, and then shield her from Lexa’s wrath too, if such a thing proved necessary. She was sure Lincoln and Octavia would be willing to lend a hand against Lexa and Anya: there’d be no point in bringing Clarke back if the Woods Sisters were just gonna kill her themselves.

West End, Washington, DC

Simultaneously

“I’m going to the police. Or maybe the FBI. I think I’m being followed.” Clarke had told the Hay-Adams’ front desk clerk, engaging in a bit of misdirection.

“You’re one of Miss Carey’s experts, I believe?” The young man asked. That tech conference on the top floors was a secretive affair, and corporate espionage was a serious business: he knew that absolute secrecy could sometimes be a literal matter of life or death, so he was ready to do his part in protecting the Infinity higher-up and maybe receive a golden handshake in recognition of his efforts.

“You got that right.” Clarke confirmed. “Director Taylor, from the Melbourne branch office.” She said, slipping into an adaptation of her usual persona. “If there’s a backdoor I could use; maybe some less conspicuous clothes I could borrow?”

The clerk had readily agreed, seeing her to a wardrobe where they kept some high-quality but more regular than her usual custom-fitted garments handy in case somebody was in need of a quick temporary replacement suit or anything.

The hotel security manager did not know the truth, also believing that upstairs was home to a high-security business operation, so upon ‘Eliza’ telling him of her suspicions, he was happy enough to temporarily disable the security cameras at a side door and allow the Australian businesswoman to slip out wearing a much less eye-catching outfit.

Both the security manager and desk clerk came away with a roll of ten thousand dollars for their efforts, and an irate Lexa screaming in their faces about fifteen minutes later. It had been long enough for Clarke to slip away from the hotel without any of the DIA perimeter guards recognizing her, though; and her own SPM personnel would be sure to alert her in case anybody was closing in on her location. She was counting on that. She just needed a few hours alone.

She had to get the sample to Dr. Santiago as soon as possible. She couldn't just hand it over to him at Georgetown, or risk sending it by parcel and take the chance of it being delayed, lost, intercepted and destroyed or passed into evidence, or have a tracker embedded into it and delivered after all: she didn’t wish to entrap the man.

Which meant she'd have to use a middleman courier without tipping anybody off, which involved giving Lexa the slip. Oh man, she was gonna be so fucking pissed. Clarke could only hope that she'd think before acting and understand, because Lexa's worries about not knowing what Clarke was up to were valid. She only had to be gone for a couple of hours, but the fact that it had to happen at all would cause them both enough stress to age them five years. Clarke wished she could just do it in the open, admit to Lexa what she was up to and why, but the Commander had to be blindsided by it, or she'd never draw the right conclusion, and that too was an unacceptable risk.

The need for damage control would be acute and intense. The possible fallout, enough to undo all the progress they’d made since the day of the Klyazma raid. But if Lexa couldn’t trust Clarke to do the right thing, knowing that she’d been the CIA Director and thus operating halfway in the shadows even during their earlier friendship, then perhaps she’d made a mistake in accepting her advances: now there was a thought Clarke wished hadn’t occurred to her. Lexa wasn’t the real problem here: the problem was that Lexa may be Black Ops too, but she at least was forthcoming about her objectives to the ones inside her inner circle, so it was only reasonable she’d expect the same in return. Only that was the one thing Clarke couldn’t do for her, for reasons too complex and numerous to describe – she hoped they would find a way to make things work regardless, but Lexa was a woman of staunch principle and Clarke tended to overreact before letting others get their side of the story out, so there were a lot of points of failure in the near future.

Because the sample’s contents, drawn just this morning, would begin deteriorating very quickly unless refrigerated. She’d manage to acquire some liquid nitrogen canisters that would slowly give off their contents into the little case, but only enough to keep it fresh for a few hours, so she had to hurry. Clarke needed to hand off the sample to someone who was utterly reliable; someone she could trust without question and who would also trust her enough to be willing to perjure themselves if hauled in for questioning, who wouldn't hold it against or over her head either. She needed a believable cover story, which would involve doing something real, because Clarke Griffin never did anything for just one reason, and to cover the truth with another aspect of the truth was only good tradecraft.

In short: Clarke needed to see her mother.

She bought a bus ticket towards Fairfax in cash, using her fake ID, then got on a city bus towards Bethesda, in the opposite direction, paying in cash again – misdirecting anyone trying to trace her activities, since city buses were hop-on hop-off, not needing passengers to ID themselves like the long-haul interstate ones.

"I'm sorry, excuse me, sir?" She asked a man who looked like a decent fellow after fumbling with her handicapped smartphone a little, having already made sure that it too couldn’t be traced, using her natural American accent this time. "I really need to call my mom, but I'm afraid my phone isn't working... She's a doctor and my father, he’s been in an accident…” She said, displaying real emotion on her face. "So could I borrow yours for just a minute? I'll pay."

“There’s no need for that, miss.” The man smiled kindly. “Here you go. It’s no problem at all.”

“Thanks so much!” She beamed back at him, genuinely appreciative.

She dialed her mother’s business phone number, knowing damn well that the NSA most likely had it tapped and would be listening; but she’d have just enough time to do her business if she made every second count and couldn’t take the chance of wandering around looking for Doctor Abby Griffin, who might be in surgery for hours, when anyone there might recognize and report her, or be caught by Lexa charging into the place where she’d expect Clarke to go.

To her immense relief, her mother picked up on the fourth ring. “Good morning. This is Doctor Griffin, head of trauma surgery. Who am I speaking to?” Abigail spoke professionally, sounding like she hadn’t had a good night’s rest in a long, long time – evidently drowning herself in her job to stay away from a now-empty house. It was so good to hear her voice, regardless: she’d been worried she ‘d never get that chance again.

"Hi mom! It's Eliza, using a phone I got to borrow from a nice gentleman.” Eliza, not Clarke. It’s not safe for me to be myself right now. “This is about Cos and Dad. I heard he died from… From Lex, and I really need to know… I was told you were there when he… Can we meet? Today?” She asked her mom, hoping and praying that Abby, from whom she’d inherited her need to know everything, right now, would read the room and just say yes right away.

“Are you sure it’s okay for you to come by right now? I heard you have important work to do.” She asked Clarke, engaging in doublespeak of her own – Abby wasn’t a spook, but she knew the world better than most people were aware of, having been entrusted with caring for wounded people no questions asked since long before Costia’s birth.

"I know I'm all grown up now, but I need my mom." There is something I need your help with that I can't do on my own. "Can we meet somewhere in town? I don't wanna be alone right now." Remain in public, a busy place where they can't make a stink without attracting unwanted attention.

“I don’t think I can get away. I have an unborn infant with Spina Bifida scheduled for in-utero emergency surgery within two hours. I’m the only one who can save both mother and child and the clock is ticking. I’m sorry, honey.” Abby replied, “But you can stop by the courtyard and we’ll grab lunch together? I’ll bring my own security detail.” She offered, a stroke of brilliance in that nobody was going to draw a gun in the vicinity of the Surgeon-General right next to a major military hospital even if it was to grab a ‘traitorous terrorist’ because it could be misconstrued as a political assassination attempt even if the perpetrators identified themselves as DIA, FBI, or whatever else.

“You know what? That sounds wonderful.” Clarke smiled lightly, knowing that the few minutes she’d get to see her mom wouldn’t quench her thirst for connection but only leave her wishing for a few minutes more, yet unable to resist the very human temptation to seek her mother’s comfort and validation: Clarke and Abby argued a lot, about a great many things, but that didn’t mean they disliked each other: they argued precisely because they cared so much.

“When can you be there? I’ll go get ready!” Abby said, apprehensive about the possibility of seeing her last surviving daughter be abducted from under her nose, but equally unable to say no to just getting to see her again.

“I’m about… ten minutes out. I’ll see you within fifteen!” Clarke confirmed, finishing the call with a string of ‘I love you and miss you’’s back and forth that Clarke cut short because she didn’t want to make the kind gentleman feel awkward about listening in on such a personal situation. She gratefully handed him his phone back and insisted on giving him a twenty for his troubles, which he adamantly refused to take.

Maybe, come to think of it, that was better – accepting money might be interpreted as being commissioned to aid a crime, and she didn’t want this act of compassion to come back to bite him.

Later that day

Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Bethesda, Maryland

Walter Reed was, all things considered, a hop, skip, and a jump away from the Hay-Adams. Literally within walking distance. It might’ve been safer to get there on foot, but she needed to account for time spent and needed to minimize that. Besides, she wasn’t going to stay outside: she’d get back to Lexa and face the music, but not until after she’d concluded her business that really couldn’t wait.

Up ahead, at one of the courtyard tables at an area of the complex grounds flanked on three sides by various restaurants, she spied Abigail Griffin in the flesh, looking worn down to the bone, pale, gaunt: somewhere between the end of February and the end of August, Abby had gotten old.

"Clarke! Sweetheart, is that really you?" Abby asked, her face lighting up as she recognized the young woman who awkwardly took a seat across from her. The girl’s hair was the wrong color, but there was no mistaking those eyes. Jake’s eyes. Yes, this was her daughter, and she looked a lot better than Abby was expecting. There’d been virtually no news about her from any source, leaving Abby concerned that they were torturing her for information, but her daughter seemed to bear no signs of physical or mental abuse, which was a burden lifted from the older Dr. Griffin’s heart.

"Hi, mom." Clarke began, not really knowing how to handle this.

“None of that.” Abby chided, standing up and making Clarke fear that she’d fucked up right out the gate, until she found herself crushed in a bear hug by her mother. That was unusual: it had always been Jake that’d been more physically affectionate, and she sorely missed the way he’d tousle her hair in greeting, but if Abby needed to feel Clarke to make sure she was really alive, here, and relatively well, she’d eagerly accept it.

After making a tasteless joke about Spina Bifida sounding like yoghurt in typical Clarke style, a waiter popped by to take orders, which Abby insisted on paying for. Clarke could recognize the need to do something, anything, to feel helpful, so she didn’t contest the argument, to Abby’s pleasant surprise. But this also showed the Doctor just how bad a situation Clarke was in, because not seizing a chance to assert her independence was against her daughter’s character.

"Did they let you go?" Abby asked, pretty much knowing the answer already, but wanting to hear it confirmed straight from the source.

"No. I'm sorry." Clarke admitted, sensing as much. "I don't have much time before they come for me, and I wanna be somewhere else when they do. I don't want you to have to see them take me away again. But first, I need you to listen. This is important, okay?" She implored her mom: she wished this could have been a social call, but she needed her mom’s help, and she needed to be out of here before Lexa’s people tracked her to Walter Reed and might even arrest Abby for the terrible crime of speaking to her daughter (let alone acting as a courier for her…).

“I’ll do anything you need me to.” Abby, eager to help her daughter in any way she could, agreed.

"Can you promise me you’ll be careful?” Clarke, grabbing her mom’s hand and clinging to it like a lifeline, asked thickly. “I lost Cos, I lost Dad, and Bell, and all my friends..." "I don't wanna lose anyone else. I can't lose you too. If I lose you too, I'll have nothing, be nothing."

“Don’t worry about me. I know how to handle Russell Lightbourne and his circus.” Abby promised.

“I need you to do something important for me. It’s not illegal, and it’ll help. But you can’t tell anyone about it.”

“Talk to me, Clarke.” Abby said, not wanting to argue with her daughter when she had no idea how long it would be before she’d see her in person, and be able to hug her which she’d never done enough of, again.

“There’s this DNA sample that I need to get delivered to Dr. Gabriel Santiago at Georgetown Medical, in the name of Dr. Hannah Carson. Nobody else can ever know about it; especially not Lexa.” Clarke explained, handing Abby the case containing the sample and little liquid nitrogen canisters keeping it cool, which she warned her about.

They had to pause their conversation for a moment as the waiter arrived with two generous servings of Pad Thai, with Shanghai sauce for Abby and Japanese teriyaki for Clarke, which the latter dug into like she’d been starving, even though that clearly wasn’t the case: Clarke always was something of a stress eater, her mother recalled.

“Isn’t it too hot to be wearing that shawl?” Abby asked, noticing that Clarke’s brow was beginning to drip with sweat even though they were sitting in the shade, and not the kind that came from nerves.

“Yeah. But I can’t take it off yet.” Clarke admitted, wiping her skin with the back of her hand.

“How come? Are there scars? Did they hurt you?” Abby, expecting the worst, inquired.

“No, it’s nothing like that…” Clarke spoke. “It’s just that I used some aluminum lining to turn it into a signal blocker. They put a damn tracking device into my neck, and this way they can’t follow it. But only for as long as there’s a complete circuit.” She explained how she’d been able to fool the locator’s homing signal – some of the parcels she’d received had contained foil lining that she’d surreptitiously been sewing into the fabric.

“Oh, baby… Can’t I take it out for you?” Abby asked, perfectly willing to place herself in the line of fire.

“Not without make it explode, I’m afraid.” Clarke answered, to Abby’s horror: she couldn’t believe Lexa would let something like that happen, reigniting the fury that had been kindled by the brunette bitch’s audacity at showing up during Jake’s funeral after testifying against Clarke in the worst backstabbing of a friend she’d ever witnessed.