The eighth — and top — floor of the CIA's Los Angeles headquarters has been completely reconfigured since Vaughn was last here. A fresh coat of off-white on the walls and the temporary office dividers moved into a new configuration that seems to wind around more than it should.

It takes him an extra few minutes to get to Devlin's office, although it hasn't moved, still in the nicer, more permanent bank of them along the far end of the floor. It is not quite 7:30 — he'd arrived early, best behavior — and Devlin's secretary isn't here yet, but the door to the office is cracked. He knocks, twice, and eases it open.

It has been six months since he's last seen Arthur Devlin, and the man looks like he's aged considerably in that time. Grayer, more haggard, somehow, small behind the broad cherry desk that dominates his office. He wears tortoiseshell reading glasses, and his eyes seem to bulge behind the thick lenses when he looks up at Vaughn.

"Agent Vaughn. It's good to see you again — although obviously not under these circumstances." He gestures to one of the chairs in front of the desk, black leather and brass studs. "Have a seat."

"It's good to see you too, sir." He sits, and waits. The room is dark, most of the morning sun drowned by heavy maroon curtains.

"Have they explained much about the new position to you?"

"Not much. Just that I'll be working in Counterintelligence out of this office."

Devlin nods. "Well, it's a new slot. They say there's a need for it, but I half wonder if they created it for you. I don't think they could come up with a more spectacular waste of your skills if they tried."

"At any rate," Devlin continues, "Most counterintelligence work will still be done by the FBI, and the crew at Langley on the CIA side. But they wanted someone from the Agency to work in CI on this coast. Particularly looking internally."

"You want a molehunter."

"Yes, in essence. You will coordinate with the FBI branch office here. I've taken the liberty to schedule you a meeting with them this afternoon, so you all can introduce yourselves."

"Okay. Thank you."

"I meant what I said, earlier, about this being a waste of your skills," Devlin says. "You know they're just trying to make an example out of you."

Tread carefully. "Yes, I've heard that before."

"That's because it's the truth," Devlin says. "I tried to block it, or at least get them to reassign you somewhere more appropriate, but I don't have any control over what goes on in that rotunda anymore. Let a little time pass, and then we'll try to find something better for you here."

He leaves on an unexpected surge of optimism, clinging to Devlin's words. A little time, and things will get better. A little time. You can wait that out.

———

His office is not nearly the size of his old one in this building, which had come with his promotion to senior agent and garnered a whistle from Weiss the first time he'd stepped inside.

Three of the walls are solid, the fourth one of the temporary dividers epidemic in the building, covered with gray fabric and about a foot short of the ceiling. He remembers this as a conference room, now apparently halved.

The desk is mostly barren, like the rest of his office, file folders and a few forms from HR stacked in the middle, surrounded by a wide expanse of blank oak. He will need to find all of those old pictures and books and bring them back in. Maybe some new pictures — one of Sydney, if it feels like it doesn't highlight the reason he's here.

After a morning spent going over the briefings Devlin had suggested, he'd been surprised by a knock on his door. Adam Brown, whom he'd worked with, lunched with, and had a few beers with occasionally before moving full-time to the JTF, welcoming him back and asking if he'd maybe like to go to lunch with a few folks.

He'd known most of them, been introduced to the rest, and then conversation had slipped into office politics he knew nothing about. Not one of them had mentioned Agent Bristow.

He is waiting, now, for the FBI agents due at one-thirty, and trying not to think about how much he hates the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He had been listening to tales of interagency squabbles — even worked under one senior agent who referred to them as "fibbie pukes" — long before they'd essentially kidnapped Sydney.

That Kendall is FBI certainly hasn't helped his position, but he must keep an open mind. These particular agents haven't done anything to him, or Sydney, and he may well be working with them for a very long time.

He checks his watch. 1:27. They are not late, not yet, but he'd prepared for them to be early, and he's left to sit here and wonder what they'll be like, what they'll want him to do. What he's actually supposed to be doing here at all.

The knock on his already-open door doesn't come until 1:32, and he stands to greet them. One thin, charcoal hair, charcoal suit. The other fighting nearly the same 50 pounds as Weiss, but younger, suit a little more modern. Thinner, older enters first and shakes Vaughn's hand.

"Lawrence Brooks."

"Michael Vaughn. Good to meet you."

Brooks sits in one of the chairs in front of Vaughn's desk — standard cheap gray fabric on rattling plastic wheels — as the second man approaches.

"Andrew Morse. It's nice to meet you, Agent Vaughn."

"Likewise." Morse sits beside his partner as Vaughn moves around the desk to his own chair. Both have come empty-handed — not much of an agenda today, then.

"Devlin set this meet up," Brooks says. "We'll make it quick — we've got a lot on our plates."

Bit abrupt, aren't we? Give him a chance. "Okay."

"At any given time, Morse and I have up to 500 case files running. Anything suspicious — reports from coworkers, bank activity out of the norm, travel that stands out — we start a file. Then we start looking for more activity that rings our bells. Occasionally, we find it, and then we launch a full investigation. We've got two of those running now."

"Devlin gave me the briefing papers on those."

"Good."

"Is there any of that I can help with?"

Brooks has a pale, sullen face. His brown eyes are surrounded by wrinkles, and he narrows them a bit. "No. I was under the impression you'd be drumming up your own work. Your director Devlin said you didn't have any experience in CI."

He leans back, chair creaking. "Look, I appreciate that the CIA wants to take on some more CI work, but we don't have time to be training you. You come up with something in your investigations that might help us, you pass it along. We'll do the same for you. But I don't look at us all as a team, per se. We can't be babysitters."

Damn. Fuck that chance you were offering. "I wasn't — I just thought that since you sounded swamped you might need some help."

"Agent Vaughn, it's nice of you to offer," Morse says. "But it's probably better for you to get your bearings first rather than have us dump a pile of cases you're not familiar with on you."

Morse seems nice enough. Vaughn wonders how often the younger man has to smooth things over for Brooks, if Morse considers the older man a mentor. How the hell does he work with this guy on a regular basis?

"Now, if you've read the briefing papers, I think that's all you need to know," Brooks says. "You let us know if you've got something going on next week. Does one-thirty Monday work for a weekly meeting?"

Vaughn nods.

"Good," Morse says. "Although if you have anything more urgent come up, feel free to contact us. We'll do the same for you."

"Good, thanks," Vaughn says. He stands, puts on his best office-play-nice smile and offers Brooks, then Morse a second handshake. "It was good to meet you both."

———

After Morse and Brooks leave, he sits and rifles through the files again, his earlier optimism gone, his future here stretching long and unfilled in front of him.

What are you supposed to do for the rest of the day? Fuck the day, what are you supposed to do for the rest of this job? Face it. You're fucking lost. You haven't done anything other than try to take down SD-6 and find Sloane for years. It's all you know.

Another knock at the door, and he glances up.

Sydney, standing there in his doorway, long and lean in a black pantsuit.

"Syd — hey."

"Hi." She smiles broadly. "How are you doing?"

"Bored out of my mind."

"Oh." Her smile wanes to nothing. It would be so much easier for her, for both of them, if he was happy here. "It's just the first day, Vaughn. Give it time."

"I know," he says. "It's just frustrating. I knew how to do my old job. I was — I think I was pretty good at it."

"You were very good at it. You'll be good at this one, too." She closes the door behind her and moves over to one of the chairs. "Your office is a hole."

"Yeah. I think that's more of my punishment. So did you come here to see how my day went, or make fun of my office?"

"I — actually I came here to tell you I'm going to have to miss out on dinner again tonight. We had another mission come up. I'm on my way home to pack and then I'm off to the airport. I'm really sorry, Vaughn. Please tell your mother that."

"It's okay. I've had to cancel plans plenty of times on her. She doesn't like it, but she understands. She really did want to meet you, though."

"Some other time," she says. "I wanted to meet her, too."

He wonders if that is the truth, if Sydney really wants to know his mother despite her guilt over what her own mother has done. "What time do you have to be at the airport?"

"Five."

Five and she's on her way to a mission without him, somewhere, anywhere. Mystery mission not known, not approved, not double-checked by him. Someone else working comms, someone else reviewing op-tech. And Sydney still taking the risks.

He knows this feeling. It came in paper bags and phone calls, arrived like a stranger at the door, knocking loud, unannounced, bad-news letter in hand.

Seeping through him, now, a deep, tense dread. He'd thought there would be more time to prepare.

"Are — are you going solo? They haven't had a whole lot of time to replace me."

"No. Weiss is going with me," she says. She reaches up to the top of her head, smooths her hair. "Vaughn, I'm sorry, but I really can't tell you more than that."

May as well have slapped me in the face, Sydney. He knows it wasn't her intent, and that she's likely been lectured on just what — nothing, probably — she's allowed to tell him, and that she hated that she had to say it. It still hurts. Hurts us both.

"It's okay. I don't want you to feel uncomfortable. I just want someone out there I can trust to back you up. I'm sorry it ended up this way, Sydney."

"It's not your fault," she says, eyes dark and pained. "I really should get going."

"Do you know when you'll be back?" Can you even tell me that?

"Tomorrow evening, hopefully, unless things are delayed. I'll call you when I get in."

"Okay." He stands and strides around the desk, glad suddenly that this office is all solid walls — no windows and blinds. She stands, leans into him, arms around his waist. Slow, soft kiss.

"Be safe," he murmurs into her cheek.

———

Outdoor restaurant, always his mother's preference if the weather's halfway decent, and it is today, if a bit chilly. Good to get out of the hospital air, she always says. It's why she spends much of her free time in the garden, or on her porch, reading. Large-print books, lately, he's noticed, and tried not to let it trouble him.

She must have made reservations for three; she is sitting at a table for four by herself, drinking coffee from a wide, squatty mug. Large-print books and a few more prescriptions aside, she has hardly aged in the last 10 or 20 years. Hair streaked with gray but back in the usual braid, and probably more lines on her face, but he sees her often enough they're hard to notice. Still tall — only a few inches shorter than him — and lean, up on her feet most of the day. He has taken to thinking of her as ageless, a comforting notion.

"Mom." She rises, and he embraces her.

"I don't see Sydney."

"No." He sits down across from her. The table feels far too large; the extra place setting makes him think of Sydney, probably in the air now, file folder in her lap, someone else's mission inside. "She had work come up. She's really sorry, but she's not going to be able to make it."

She sips her coffee. "I was under the impression the two of you worked together."

"We did, but I was transferred to another department."

"Transferred?" Her voice a motherly I should have heard about this by now.

"Yeah. It just happened yesterday. They didn't want us working together while we were involved in a relationship."

"Michael, you've just started dating." Her hand on the coffee cup, poised a few inches above the table. "It's a relationship already?"

"I've — I've known Sydney for several years. But there were — circumstances at work that made it impossible for us to date until now."

"I see." She finally raises her hand for another sip of coffee. "How do you like your new assignment?"

"I'm really not sure yet. I've just started." He feels worn down by the questioning, as if she's interrogating him. He'd thought this would be a celebratory dinner — here, Mom, meet Sydney, isn't she wonderful? Instead, it's been her slowly prying the mess his life has become out of him. "Sydney really does want to meet you. Hopefully we can reschedule for some other time."

"Of course. And this will give you some time to tell me about her, first." She smiles. "This girl is very important to you, isn't she?"

———

This night is going to be like the old days, and he had really hoped that was over. Back then it was Sydney, his new recruit, and then Sydney, just Sydney, and Alice asking where his mind was at this evening. So many evenings, sitting on the couch, his stomach tight, only slightly relaxed by drink.

And this night back to the very beginning, when he'd sent her away and waited for her to contact him, back when he didn't have satellite surveillance, couldn't talk to her over a comm link.

At least back then he knew the mission.

He arrives home to a cold, empty apartment, almost expecting Donovan to come scampering in from the dog door as fast as his old bulldog legs can carry him. He'd thought briefly about getting another dog after he'd had Donovan put down several months ago. But he'd decided that Donovan — adopted from the local shelter shortly after he'd graduated college, long before he'd even applied to the CIA — ought to be the last until he had a job with more regular hours.

But maybe he's got it now, and wouldn't that be the ultimate revenge, to Kendall, to the Agency, to get a dog and work eight to five? He does not want this. He wants to do his job — the old job — and do it right.

Keys with a clank on the end table nearest him, the living room fairly neat, although probably a bit dusty. The room is predominantly beige, like much of the rest of his apartment. Tan carpet, darker couch and chairs. One of the throws from his mother covers the back of the couch; it is navy blue and red, knitted, and provides most of the color. Pictures, mostly family, on the end tables. He definitely needs a picture of Sydney, or maybe one of the two of them together, for here if not work. He'll need to track down his camera in the hall closet, buy film.

He turns, pounds up the stairs to his spartan bedroom, the larger of the two in the apartment. The other bedroom, too small to hold much beyond a twin bed, serves as an office instead. It is rarely used — he's long since reached the point where much of his work is too classified to bring home — and so it has become a place to pile other things he doesn't use as often as he'd like — hockey stick and skates, basketball, baseball gloves.

He avoids the temptation to drop his suit in a heap on the floor, hangs it instead. The first day of his new job and his mother's interrogation have left him weary and it would be nice, so nice, if he could just crawl into bed and sleep. Clean T-shirt, sweatpants, back the living room.

It takes him a minute to find the remote under the far end table, and he stands, thumbs through the channels, decides on a basketball game he doesn't care about. Volume low; he'd rather try to make some headway on the new Economist.

Into the kitchen, to grab bottle of Bass from the fridge and pull the magazine from the foot-high stack — all unread — on the counter.

Back to the living room, the couch. He opens the magazine, tries to read, but he finds his attention drawn to the television. Eventually drifting into the questions:

He is familiar with the cycle, with the thoughts that race on some uncontrollable level of consciousness, rising surreptitiously, striking, until he realizes he's doing it and halts them, but only temporarily. This is already as bad as it's ever been, as hard as he's ever been pummeled by these fears, and this is his indefinite future.

Back to the magazine, U.S. terror policy. The last thing he needs right now, but he tries. The words stretch in front of him, an endless, impossible train. Start at the beginning and let's go.

Stop it. Back to himself, back to the living room. He is clutching the beer bottle — now warm — dangerously tight. He sets it on the coffee table in front of him, doesn't bother with a coaster. It rattles a little on the glass top.

She's fine. She's fine. Lakers 53, Raptors 42. What if she's not? Shaq in the paint, Lakers up by 13. What if she's not and you never see her again? His magazine abandoned on the coffee table. She'll be fine. She's the best.

You have got to stop, damn it. He stands, too agitated to remain still on the couch any longer. The remote control falls, thud on the floor. Pacing through the kitchen, checking out the back door for a dog no longer there.

Up the stairs, and he can see her. Formal ball, her hair done up and a long red dress, stunning. Filthy nightclub, too-short skirt, hair some shade of red or blue or purple not found in nature, save maybe for tropical fish. The desert, or maybe the mountains, simple camouflage, her hair back in a braid. One of these, none of them? He wonders how he's going to last the night, all the unknown hours until she returns.

Running shoes, dragged by the laces out from under his bed. He'll go for a run, now, although he knows it won't help. He's got to do something, and maybe if he is lucky, this will leave him exhausted enough to drift for a few hours on the couch. She's fine. She's fine.

He steps out of the front door into a cold, thin drizzle and the last bit of twilight. Keys clenched in his right hand, some part of him registering that it's probably not a good idea to be out here now, that he's asking to get sick, but he needs this. He starts without bothering to stretch. No particular distance planned, no particular route.

He knows, feet on the wet pavement, spat spat spat, that he can't — won't ever — overcome the tense restlessness that marks these nights. He stares through the rain, misting in his face, and watches Sydney in the evening gown, stabbed in the back, blood dark on the dress. Sydney with the crazy hair, gunned down as she exits the club. Sydney in camo, climbing, rope cut and falling from the mountain, arms flailing, screaming.