Instinct

PART 1

Chapter 1

The jump to the target rooftop was a stretch, and one he wouldn't have attempted without Lou hollering in his earpiece that they were running out of time because, hey, most people used the ground and nanites did not equal Spider-man. But certain delusions slipped through when you were waiting any moment for half a city block to be reduced to rubble on your watch. Well, kind of on your watch, if anyone else actually thought enough of you as an agent to rate you that responsibility.

Billions of dollars in satellite and listening equipment just to triangulate the wrong building and the wrong suspects and waste a half-hour that the hundreds of government employees occupying the real terrorist target couldn't afford to waste, and Jake got the sense that Lou wasn't just now feeling any happier about the allocation of the half-billion that had accidentally ended up inside him. He'd thought about pointing out that at least they had an agent that could run above the traffic. Thought about it.

Landing jarred enough to give him a bad moment wondering how the nanites were at fixing broken bones. He also managed to fumble his gun, dropping it and then kicking it ten feet across the flat roof when he put a foot forward to catch his balance. "Damn it!"

"Jake..." Lou said warningly. Maybe there was a hint of concern. Yeah, and maybe he was 007.

"I got it--" He scrambled for the weapon, hoping like hell that the NSA didn't have any kind of visual fix on him. File for future reference, Agent Foley: holster gun when jumping off really tall buildings. Considering he'd only just been cleared to carry a firearm, he wasn't wasting any time in making a fool of himself with it - to that matter, SatOps probably had a pool running on how long it'd take before he shot his own foot. He collected himself, panting, on the rooftop, firearm safely holstered. "This is the place, right? I mean, this time, this is definitely the place?"

"We're all out of other possibilities to try." Lou's tone suggested that when he got back he was going to be treated to a course of How Not To Ask Stupid Questions In The Field 101. "Jake, back-up is on the way, but I need you to find some way to stall them. We don't have much time."

"Yeah. Assuming this is the right--"

"Jake."

"I'm on it." Concentration pulled up the sounds of the six storeys below into sharp focus. Too far - supervisor's office with the badly tuned television on in the basement, residential apartments on the lower floors, somebody playing country music way too loud on third, the groaning of the gears supporting the old elevator that was stopped on fourth. He eased back into the upper floors - subtly different echo of sound in space; larger rooms, open plan, mostly unfurnished offices. A man laughed and shifted his grip on a remote detonator, depressing keys that sparked electronic imagery in Jake's brain but didn't make the vital connection.

He tried to interface, but the nanites came back empty. Jesus, the technology was stone-age. The man's grip shifted again. Lou was gonna eat his guts with her cereal for breakfast. "They're here. There's a remote device, but I can't connect to it. The tech's kind of out of date. Maybe if I was closer..."

"Get closer. Don't let them set off the device," Lou barked. "Kyle's team have located the target and evacuation is under way, but we need time to get those people to safety."

"Okay. Uh, this roof looks in pretty crappy repair..." He zig-zagged across it, trying to pinpoint the whereabouts of the activity on the floor immediately beneath. The remote device still eluded his interface, and he figured it was hard to misread the intent of the purposeful, "Let's do this," voiced by the man holding the device.

"Okay..." He took a deep breath. "Okay. Lou, I'm going in."

"Jake?!" Lou said sharply, and it occurred to him, as he was punching downwards through the roof, that possibly she hasn't been thinking of anything so direct. Like, cut the lights, play with the electricity, any number of things he hadn't the concentration to do while he was plunging ten feet down in a cascade of dust and debris, because wow was the roof in a crappy state of repair.

Landing in the midst of a room full of nonplussed terrorists, on the other hand, Jake figured that whatever Lou's original intent had been, he was now pretty committed.

He drew his gun before they'd had time to react and yelled, still coughing, "NSA. Do not move! You - put the device down. Slowly."

There was silence and nobody moved, which was good. The silence wasn't so good, because the problem with nanite hearing was that at certain times he became hyper-aware of his own heartbeat when he'd really rather not be. Nobody moving was definitely good, though, because he'd told them to not do that. And he wasn't freaking out, not at all. The moment stretched.

Then... laughter wasn't the response he was hoping for. He turned his gun on the perpetrator, and only then noticed just how much the firearm - which he'd never actually drawn before on a living, breathing human being - was wildly shaking in his hands. You look ridiculous, a voice inside his head laconically told him. It sounded a lot like Kyle. So what? he told himself. I've a gun, they don't. It's under control, right? "You - you think you'll still be laughing when you're staring at the inside of a jail cell?" he stuttered.

It had sounded less lame in his head.

In his earpiece, Lou's voice was tinny and far away. "Jake, you need to control this situation. You've got them, that's good. Now hold them." There was an intensity of patience and concern in her voice that made him suspect more than anything else that he must have really dumped himself in it this time.

"I think you need to lose the gun before you hurt someone, kid," the guy with the sense of humour suggested.

"Wouldn't want that." That sounded better. Yeah. Jake breathed. Shit, Lou... the whole of SatOps was listening in. He was going to be hearing about this for weeks if he didn't save this pretty damn spectacularly. "I'm NSA. You're all under arrest. I told you to put the detonator down. Do it now, and do it slowly."

To his relief, the guy very slowly lowered his arm to the floor. Until halfway down, when his foot snaked out and casually hooked the gun from Jake's hands, sending it skidding into a corner of the room.

Jake spent an even more embarrassing moment staring down at his empty hands like Wile E Coyote just figuring out he'd stepped onto thin air above a really big canyon, before a fist in the kidneys from behind recalled him to action.

'Action' only loosely speaking, being that he was already halfway to his knees at that point, but hey, movement was still a step up.

He twisted aside, caught the boot that was headed his way and pulled on it hard. Punched out as a face fell within his reach. He felt the nanites kick in with a vengeance and surged back to his feet. Kyle's training advice reverberated in his head, 'You've got strength, not skill - if you do have to get yourself into a fight, get in close enough to use it and don't try to match anyone's fancy moves.' He made a try for the lights, more for confusion's sake than to blind them, but had to divert his attention from the nanites to the gun that was being levelled at him... Speed he could call to bear and did, whipping the weapon out of the man's hand before he could fire. It smashed to bits against the far wall. A yowl suggested he might have caused some considerable damage to the wrist as a bonus.

Four of them, one mostly down, one clutching his wrist... He had a pretty good idea that four was too many in any case, nanites or no nanites. The linebacker with the detonator took the opportunity to bludgeon him across the face with it, and... well, Lou had told him to get closer, but interfacing with the thing was kind of off the cards for now.

"Jake," Lou was buzzing in his ear, and probably had been for a while, "Jake, what's going on?" She stopped when the linebacker followed through with a roundhouse punch of his empty fist, dropping Jake to the floor, and he couldn't feel the earpiece any more. A fizz of energy from the nanites jolted through him, replacing fear and pain with a lot of adrenaline, and he pushed himself up onto hands and knees, momentarily high on the artificial strength. Yeah, he could take these guys...

Instead he took a kick in the gut that curled him over, and even nanite-enhanced resilience took a second to shake it off. He heard a surprised exclamation that was half curse, as he started to drag himself up again, then a loud 'click' sounded next to his ear and a drawl of a voice advised, "Don't bother to get up again, kid."

Jake's head stiffened halfway through turning as the mechanisms inside the gun strained with further movement, a grating shift quieter than regular ears would have heard. He was a fraction of an inch away from dead, and he wasn't that fast. His eyes slid to the side as he carefully froze every other part of him. Tiny serial numbers printed on the smooth black surface of the weapon sprang into sharp focus.

Oh, yeah. That was his own gun, all right.

Lou was going to be so pissed.

***

"Nobody's with me. I'm on my own," Jake said again, spitting blood with the words.

He didn't think they were interested in answers any more. He'd had the presence of mind to open with a suitably blustery assertion that the troops were just readying to break the doors down, to make damn sure they didn't, say, hurry up setting off the bomb before the cavalry did have chance to arrive. He hadn't had to fake the fear that had convinced them it was only a bluff. Or the desperation when he'd changed his story, wondering when they ever were going to arrive.

He'd thought it was pretty clever, but knowing his luck Lou and the guys had been cut off and only heard the embarrassingly bad part earlier. Not that he particularly wanted the whole of SatOps listening in as he was beaten to death, but it might come off as more heroic than, as he currently suspected to be the last impression of Jake Foley to be burned into their thoughts at his immanent demise, stupid.

Hey, Lou, I'm distracting them, Jake thought at the earpiece, wherever it might now be. Play for time? Check.

It probably wasn't a role they'd envisaged for their half-billion dollar super-agent, but he could hear the cars pulling up outside, and Agents Green and Cayman exchanging terse words as they, the mythical 'backup', finally arrived, after an eternity that probably wasn't more than seven minutes, rooftop-to-punchbag. There was a cellphone in the pocket of the guy standing on his forearm, but Jake's attempt to send a message to Green failed miserably, because it was kinda hard to concentrate with someone trying to break your wrist.

They were headed straight up for the top floor anyway, and Jake was grateful for that because things were starting to grey out. His hearing receded back in to the mere mortal confines of the room, and even the noise within the room had taken on a weird echoing quality. Then everything seemed to catch up with him at once and the rest of the world was swallowed into a confused, echoing oblivion.

He could only have been out a minute or so. Long enough for the terrorists to resume their pre-pummel-Jake-fest activities. It took him a moment to remember that large guys not beating him up anymore was bad, but the nanites were unresponsive and the rest of him was letting him know in no uncertain terms it wasn't going anywhere without them anytime soon. He had no idea whereabouts Green and Cayman and the backup had got to.

One of the bombers was muttering, "Kid can take a punch," as he shook out his fist.

"If he found us, so will the rest. We need to get the job done and clear out of this dump. Finish the kid. We're done here, and I'd rather be out of town before this hits the news." He picked up the detonator control where it lay on an empty desk, and Jake watched through half-closed eyes.

Last chance... The nanites stirred into sluggish life as he willed them to ignore his physical state and focused on the device, forcing interface with circuitry about three decades out of date... Where had these guys got their equipment, anyway, an antique market? He remembered Lou's crack about this group's 'domestic terrorism on a shoestring'. Yeah, no kidding.

His nanites might be sluggish, but his focus was better, and it wasn't going to take much, just a push here to jam the mechanism...

The click seemed to fill the inside of his head, as a finger depressed the control a hair's breadth before him; before Agents Green and Cayman, too, as they burst in the door at the head of a team, yelling that they were NSA and nobody should move, just in case the terrorists had forgotten the spiel already.

Jake still felt the overwhelming relief of their arrival wash through him for an instant before it fully hit that their arrival was too late.

"Foley--" Cayman said, with surprise descending into a curse as he took in the scene. Make that half a curse, because that was when the noise and reverberation of a large explosion in the next street block shook the building. "Jesus." Cayman's attention wavered as he voiced the oath.

Jake saw it coming, and the nanites obligingly hit him with everything they had left. He lurched upwards to clumsily knock aside the man who held his own gun, succeeding a fraction of a second before it was fired. Cayman collapsed with a bullet in his side that at least wasn't in his heart, and Green put three more into the shooter as Jake rolled clear of him.

"Damn it!" Green shouted, eyes not betraying even the briefest flicker to his partner. "I will shoot the next man who breathes. Foley, pick up the gun, you rookie piece of shit."

Out of the window, Jake could see the reflection of black smoke and flickering flames, dancing and rising in the glass of the buildings on the far street corner.

"Oh, man," he groaned, clawing for the gun with the hand that still had feeling in the fingers.

Lou was gonna kill him.

Kyle was going to help her.

And even Diane wasn't going to be able to muster a tear or kind word over whatever wretched bits were left when they'd done.

***

Chapter 2

Jake groaned into the surface of the examination table as Diane's warm hands prodded at one of the more-sore-than-the-rest-of-him spots on his back. "Can the nanites heal bones?"

"Well, yeah, in theory. And I guess since it looks like you have a couple of cracked ribs here, we're gonna be finding out in fact."

She didn't have to sound so chirpy about it, and Jake found himself in no great mood to appreciate the spirit of scientific enquiry. She seemed to understand because a moment later she patted him gently on the shoulder, managing to find one of the very few scraps of his flesh that was still vaguely pink. "You'll be fine. The nanites will heal this superficial damage in no time at all. Okay, there's a lot of it, and it's... quite an achievement when you consider how you weren't even supposed to be in the thick of the action, but even the ribs and that wrist shouldn't take more than a day or two before they're good as new." She patted his shoulder again and then spoiled it by adding, "I'm pretty sure."

"Thank you so much," Jake grunted. Giving in to gravity, he sagged forward over the table, resting his forehead on the arm that hadn't been stood on by a heavyweight thug. He was aware of low-level activity from the nanites starting to fix things already.

Diane's footsteps made their way around to the front of the examination table, and he lifted his head to find her standing there with her arms crossed and her face scrunched up, looking down at him with a fond exasperation. "You seem to be spending an awful lot of time in here. Soon I might start to think you're being all stalker super-nanite guy and really, really desperate for more of my company."

He gaped at her, and felt a bit of a jerk as she coughed and ducked her head, embarrassed, to hurry on; "Seriously, you need to try to get beat up less. Make the effort, okay? Not that it isn't getting us loads of really great data on how the nanites function - 'cause it is - but seeing you bleed all over the place every Tuesday? Kinda getting to be a drag. So if you could cut it out, just for me?"

"It's not actually intentional," Jake said meekly.

Diane shrugged and sniffed. She turned back around to one of her monitors, holding her shoulders rather stiffly.

"Thanks," Jake tried, because he felt he ought to say something, "For patching me up... every Tuesday." He pulled himself up on his elbows and hissed a bit as abused nerve endings let their protests be heard. "Look, I'm sorry. It's like, the last thing I need right now is for you to be mad at me, too, right?" He tried a smile, but it still went down like a stone.

Turning with a sigh, Diane glowered at him with her head cocked to one side. "Lou's not mad at you, Jake. She's just... okay, she's mad at you. But just give her a bit of time. It's not like you gave the whole of SatOps the biggest trauma of their lives or anything, almost getting beaten to death not three miles away, right in front of their... ears. She's mad because you gave her a scare. She cares about her people... for some reason, even you."

"I... think it might be worse than that. Diane, I think this might be it," Jake confided, lowering his voice to a hiss.

"It?" she whispered back, looking baffled.

"It. You know. It. Finito. Kaputt. Sayonara, Agent Foley. That, what happened out there today, that was a fucking disaster. Worse, that was a disaster the whole of SatOps had ringside seats for the major part of. I am so done. I'm not coming back from this one. This whole agent thing, it isn't going to work, and I..."

...Am so screwed, he finished in his head, because he couldn't bring himself to say it to Diane's suddenly stricken face. And so incredibly scared, although that one he hadn't been about to admit to. Somewhere, he'd lay odds, the government already had prepared a secure, low-tech, underground bunker with his name on it - Jake Foley, NSA Lab Rat, Failed Super-Agent, and Threat To National Security. Soon as he proved he couldn't cut it, he was gonna be moving in. And if the day's events proved anything, surely it was that he couldn't cut it.

Diane's expression flickered and changed. She pouted and slapped him sharply on the cheek. "No. That's not going to happen. Don't even think it."

"Like I could not think it? And, hey! They actually didn't get that bit." He rubbed his face.

"Oh, you giant baby, it's not like the nanites won't fix that in, oh, two seconds flat." Her words stumbled with guilt and anger.

"What is it, Diane?" Jake asked, confused. He didn't think it'd be a good time to point out the nanites were slightly overtaxed at the moment. But he'd thought his concerns might merit sympathy rather than fury from his best ally in the NSA camp.

She jabbed a finger in his face. "You - you are so oblivious. All this failure and doom and gloom and... it's all about you - you - you... You are my project, mister. You don't think I'm scared, too, for... for the future of my project? Without the whole you coming in here and rubbing my face in it part?"

Jake blinked. "Are we talking about science here?" he tried tentatively. "'Cause the impression I had, the NSA love the nanites. They just don't like me."

"Oh, sure, 'cause I want to be that scientist. Unwilling human subjects and... that's so my ambition, to emulate Dr Mengele." She choked and half turned away before stopping and, with her eyes averted, waved her finger at him again warningly. "You - stay right there. I'm not finished." Then she stomped off to rummage in a store cupboard at the far end of the lab, her back to him.

"Uh," Jake said. Hey, that was eloquent. "What I mean to say is, I'm sorry. And... I can't see you doing that. The Mengele thing. Honestly."

"One word--" She brandished the finger again over her shoulder, still not turning around "--Contract."

"Oh." Jake sagged back to the examination table, feeling disillusioned, and winced because even lying on his front hurt. "It was pretty bad, then?" he asked cautiously. "From SatOps?"

"I wouldn't know," she said curtly. "I wasn't there."

Three floors above a door slammed and Jake's enhanced hearing snapped into focus on Kyle's smooth voice as the agent said, "All right, it was a mess, but he tried. It almost worked. By the sounds of things, we'd had no chance at all without Jake on the scene - Cross was ready to detonate." Kyle's voice sounded tired and strained. Jake felt a keen stab of guilt.

"Fine." Lou, on the other hand, sounded crisp and merciless even through three floors of vents. "I'm not blind to the fact we'd be looking at a lot more casualties if he hadn't given us the time to get those people out. But for half a billion, the people upstairs are looking for more than a glass half full. They're still not seeing the results they want and I am running out of excuses not to push this program to the next stage."

"Tell me we're not going back there again," Kyle said, with a heaviness that was ominous.

"Damn it, Kyle", Lou snapped, her temper crumbling. Jake couldn't remember her taking that tone before with Kyle. "I have an agent in the ICU with a bullet in his gut from the gun that was issued to Jake. He had them at gunpoint and he couldn't hold them."

"Issuing him a firearm was a mistake," Kyle said, unflappable as ever. "Obviously we acted prematurely. For the time being at least, the last thing we want is to have Jake relying on a gun. Or for us to be relying on Jake having a gun. Let's face it, a couple of month's training isn't much to harden a guy to actually pulling the trigger, and the nanites allow him to handle plenty of situations without a firearm with a better chance of success than any other field agent."

"Oh yeah." Jake could practically see Lou's sharp nod and the roll of her eyes. "You bet your ass we are taking away the gun. The next time the kid tries to take on four-to-one odds with it he might actually succeed in getting himself killed. I swear to God, he still thinks this all works just like in the movies."

"As Jake did say--" Kyle coughed, intermingling a trace of morbid laughter "--He distracted them."

"You read that report?" Oh, and now he was getting such a clear visual on the Sardonically Arched Eyebrow, even as he tried to bury his face further into the examination table. In fact, disappearing into the floor was started to look really good. He could start to hate nano-hearing.

"On the way over from the hospital. Carver kept me posted on my palm."

Lou grunted. "I think Carver emailed that report to everyone with security clearance, and probably her mother besides. In fact, in ten years' time it'll probably still be circling the internet along with the Neiman Marcus Cookie Legend."

"I guess he was pretty out of it."

Jake would have been silently blessing Kyle for the discomfort in his voice, except he was frantically trying to remember what the hell he'd put in the report. They had to be exaggerating, right? He hadn't been that out of it, had he?

...Ah. Well, maybe he had. It was possible there were one or two things in there that he wouldn't have written with a clearer head.

He heard Lou's huff of breath. They were a few corridors away, voices ringing with the tinny echo of the opening lift. He heard the 'ping' of the doors. Lou said, "I have no intention of bringing out the Agent Program unless I have no other choice. You know I'm not in love with the idea of tampering with this technology. And I know how Diane feels about it, when the nanites' current state of stability in Jake's system is so much more than we had dared hope for. But the brass are keen to try it, and I do consider that it's better than the alternative - for Jake in particular. There may come a point when it's simply the best choice."

"Lou--" Kyle made some kind of gesture; his clothes rustled with the motion. Probably it was meant to indicate that they were nearing the lab where the guy with the super-senses was crashed out. It was kind of cool how everyone underestimated the nanite hearing, even here. Except when it meant Jake ended up hearing things that he'd really, really, really rather not.

He raised his head, senses limited once again to the confines of the lab. Diane was looking at him oddly and he thought he might have been clocked, but she didn't say anything as Lou and Kyle stalked through the door, looking kind of as though they'd stepped out of a Tarantino movie, purposeful and grim and like they were just done committing a whole bunch of violence. Jake would kill to look that cool walking into a room.

He wasn't sure whether Kyle's cast arm detracted from the effect or enhanced it. Jake sat up quickly, ignoring Diane's Glare of Death from the sidelines. "Hey, are you okay? They said you were caught in the blast, but not - man, I am so, so sorry..."

"Jake." The eyebrows went up in that way he'd long since learned meant, 'Jake, you're embarrassing yourself'. "I'm fine. Two dead civilians and the agent in ICU, not so much."

"We need to talk about realistic expectations in the field and what happens when you let James Bond movies determine your strategies," Lou said.

Jake groaned. "Is there any way that we can do this scene over, where this time I'm unconscious and we leave this till morning?" Two civilians dead was one more than earlier. How many more to follow? How many more had he let die? At least, he thought, Agent Cayman was still hanging in.

"We could," Lou said. "And I could ask Diane over there with the palm pilot that reads your vital signs if you were shamming like a weasel to avoid facing up to the fiasco that was your performance in the field today."

"Lou," Kyle said unhappily. She rolled her eyes, but something in them passed on a sort of permission. Kyle turned to Jake. "I'm not going to pretend it wasn't a mess, but for the record, I need you to keep in mind there are worse things than trying and failing."

"Not when you answer to my boss," Lou said.

***

He had a meet that evening with Sarah that had been set for weeks and, whatever her activities in the hours preceding it, they didn't include having her cellphone switched on. Otherwise there was no way Jake would have been pried out of his apartment again short of fire or Lou sending a heavily armed team of agents to his doorstep. Again. Well, maybe not the fire.

The bar Sarah had chosen was quiet and scruffy and a good way removed from the kind of place where he might expect her or her peers from work to hang out. That was probably the point. In fact, Jake supposed that Sarah would have probably made a great secret agent. Better than him, no doubt.

He pushed his way through the bar to join her where she was already ensconced at a table with a couple of beers. He was a little late, but she didn't look like she'd been waiting too long.

Spider-man, he told himself, never owned a gun... But then he's got webs to shoot at people, not to mention sticking to ceilings and the fact he can practically fly from rooftop to rooftop on those babies... Ohhhh, man, would flying be handy. I totally need to ask Diane for better nanites, 'cause I'm thinking I got the fuzzy end of the lollipop on the super powers stakes.

The more cynical side of his brain reminded him that even were it possible, stuff like that would've required of him something vaguely resembling co-ordination, and was he out of his freakin' mind?

"Are you all right?" Sarah waved a hand in front of his face, and laughed worriedly. "You looked a million miles away. I said your name three times."

"Uh. Sorry. Hi." He slid into the seat opposite her. If his conversational skills were going to max out at that level for the evening, he might as well have offended her so much she'd never speak to him again by standing her up and staying at home, asleep, with the end result much the same.

"Here." She placed the extra beer before him with a flourish. "The answer to all life's worries... you are all right? Jake - oh my God, what happened to your face?" The bruising was already fading, so he figured it a pretty good thing she hadn't seen it earlier. "Did someone do this to you?"

"What? No! No, no - nothing like - I just - I had an accident at work. I fell and landed... uh, I had kind of a lousy day today." He scrubbed his hands through his hair and tried not to flinch as his fingers caught a contusion on his scalp. There was only so much he could pass off to an innocent accident. At least his clothes covered up the rest of the damage.

"It really looks it." Sarah was all over him with a kind of doe-eyed sincerity that would've been really, really good any other time. She touched his wrist in concern and an electrical jolt - of pain - fizzed up through his arm to drive a spike through the centre of his skull. "Maybe you shouldn't be here, Jake. You look really grey."

Jake wholeheartedly agreed. "No. I wanted to come." He took the beer in both hands, weight supported in the left, because it rescued his wrist from Sarah.

"You wouldn't hide anything from me, would you? If you're in some kind of trouble, I know people, maybe I can help. Those look like knuckle-marks to me..."

"They do? Guess I missed my cue when I could've been telling you how you should've seen the other guy..." Jake laughed weakly. "Sarah, I'm fine. Come on, you know me. Am I really the kind of person that gets pounded on by some bunch of guys?"

She smiled a little wickedly, seeming finally to relax. "I don't know, you do work at the NSA now. For all I know, you could be an undercover spy with a license to kill."

License to screw up, more like, Jake thought, laughing heartily along with her.

"So, what have you been doing this week that didn't involve beating yourself up with the furniture?" Sarah continued. "Save the world from any evil geniuses? Take down any terrorist masterminds?" Her humour clouded slightly; she'd heard the news. Of course she had - half of DC could still see the last of the smoke plumes rising up on the air.

"Not today." And isn't that the truth? "I did apprehend a really nasty offline server."

"Oh yeah?" Sarah's eyes glittered with humour at the fantasy.

"Meanest critter I ever did see." Laughing, Jake drank down half of his beer in one go. His aches were starting to fade a little more into the background. Obviously the human contact - or just Sarah-contact - was doing him good.

"We should do this more often."

He almost choked on his beer. "You think?"

"Yeah. I hardly ever see anybody from college any more. You know how you lose contact and suddenly three years have gone by and you don't even know all your old friends anymore. I think that's sad."

Jake swallowed. "Keeping in touch is good."

He was hoping she'd continue in that vein in the more specific, but instead the conversation meandered around to gossip about her job and some satirical commentary on the aides in the office of an arch-rival that he'd have preferred to think Sarah a bit above, After maybe half an hour she stopped halfway through a sentence and said, "What did happen to you at work today, Jake? Seriously, I don't think you can have heard a word I've said. I think you're somewhere else entirely, tonight." She stared at him, a bit too keenly perceptive. "It was bad, wasn't it?"

"I--" With that look in her eyes, he didn't see much point in trying to lie. "Look, I can't really talk about it, you know? Not - not with details. But I screwed up at work. Really screwed up. And someone got hurt - people got hurt, and one of them was a friend of mine. I feel kind of crappy right now. I would've called - I didn't want you to see me like this - but..."

Sarah's stare had turned to surprise. Whatever she'd been expecting, this wasn't it. He felt awkward again all of a sudden.

"You screwed up at work... at the NSA... You mean on the NSA computers?"

Jake blinked, and tried for a desperate save. "Yeah. And do you know, you wouldn't think that stuff - computer stuff - could get people hurt. But information age and everything... I can't really talk about it. You see? Not outside work. And the guys inside work are all pissed at me, which makes things... sorta... difficult."

He'd dried up, but she was looking at him with sympathy. "You've told me enough. I know you're good at what you do - hey, you've fixed my Dread Machine enough times. You know this wasn't your fault, not in that way. Everyone makes mistakes, and I'm sure those assholes at the NSA know it too. On the inside at least. Don't let them get you down." She pushed both their drinks aside and stood up. "I've also seen enough tonight to know you should be at home, Jake. Let me call you a taxi. We can share."

"That's not--" His brain called the pause, and said to his libido, 'Oh yeah?' "--That sounds like a really good idea," he admitted.

Fuzzy-headed as Sarah led him to the taxi, he thought with some belligerence, 'This never happens to Spider-man.'

He seriously needed a new metaphor, 'cause Spider-man was a dork and this was still making him feel inadequate by comparison.

The events of the day had probably been only slightly less embarrassing than weaving his way to the door after Sarah delivered him to the deli, while she watched in concern from the cab.

He staggered upstairs and slumped face-first onto the bed and into the depths of a coma that even Lou and her NSA team, with their noisy black boots and automatic weapons, would have found impossible to drag him from.

***

Chapter 3

The cool thing about the nanites - ignoring the not-cool part where he might as well have 'US Government Property' stamped on his butt these days - was waking up to find that the scrapes of the day before had vanished without trace. Even when he'd spent half the night stuck in a dream of being locked in the cell between a bunch of big-eyed grey X-Files aliens and a geriatric Elvis. The occasional twinge from his wrist and ribs didn't stop him peeling off Diane's careful strapping and gleefully hurling it in the trash before he made his way in to work.

"Check me out," he told Diane in the lab. She blushed, but Jake was too much on a roll to stumble over hideously embarrassing double-entendres. "I got your backing on this one, right? Yesterday sucked -- but today, I am good to go."

She adjusted her glasses unsteadily. "Okay..." She ran diagnostics while he shuffled on his feet. "You know, Jake, the last thing I expected out of you this morning was enthusiasm, after yesterday and all. Are you sure you're feeling okay? I could start to worry about the nanites affecting your higher functions..." She felt his forehead.

"Hey," he protested. "As I keep telling our stony-hearted boss, I am a go-getter."

"Right." The look she gave him was deeply suspicious.

"Seriously," he implored as she waggled her hands at him and he hiked himself up to perch on the edge of the examination table, "Get me back out there and I will go kick some serious ass." He inclined his head at the JMD in her hand. "Clear me."

"Um, I think I should run a brain scan."

"What? You've got to be kidding."

She smiled. "You're right, I am. Kinda. You are acting weird, Jake."

"Weird? I am not -- listen, I have to get back out there, Diane. I need to prove--"

"Oh. Oh. I might've guessed." She rolled her eyes. "Jake, you don't have anything to prove. Everyone knows you're still in training and you just got caught in a situation that was... beyond you."

"We both know that's not true."

Uneasily, she rolled up his sleeve and prodded as his still-twingy arm. Jake kept his face straight with difficulty. "Diane, you have to be on my side on this one. I can still rescue this if I'm only given chance to. I have to get back and out in the field again, like, yesterday..." He'd already learned this morning that yesterday's fatalities had now risen to 5. Agent Cayman at least was still holding on in ICU.

"You're getting paranoid. Maybe you need to see a psychiatrist -- and don't look at me like that, the agents here do get shrunk on a pretty regular basis, you know." She twisted his arm unexpectedly, if not hard, and gave a sly, satisfied nod as he let out a yelp. "Ha. I thwart your evil scheme. Ribs, too, I'll bet." At times, Diane could have a funny way of trying to cheer him up. "Anyway, you might think about losing all this talk of sides. It's not us and them... you don't know half of what Kyle and Lou do for you. Those guys do totally have your back."

"One word," Jake reminded glumly, "Contract."

The long noise she made through her nose as a measure of her disapproval made him jump half out of his skin. "Jesus! Nanite hearing! Don't do that to me." He scowled and shook his head to try clear his ears. "I'm not being funny about this. The government pretty much own us, after all. Me a bit more than most, thanks to half a billion in accidental investment. And if they do decide I'm not a viable channel for resources it's not as if there's anything anyone here can -- ow!" He jolted as she pressed down on his ribs. "You did that on purpose."

"I wouldn't have to if you'd stop trying to be dishonest with me." She stood back and folded her arms. "Is there anything else you're hiding in your great big delusion that they're gonna lock you up and throw away the key?"

"No. I'm fine, Diane. In fact, ask me around morning break and I won't even have to lie. The nanites are great. The nanites are working perfectly. Apparently it's just the Jake that sucks."

"Aside from the fact that referring to yourself in the third person is a sign of madness, that's completely untrue. Nobody thinks that. Although... hey, stay in this mood for a bit longer and things might change pretty fast." She tossed the JMD onto a messy lab bench, and while it was still scattering the contents of the bench's surface like dominoes, Lou took the perfect opportunity to walk in trailing a gaunt, fiftyish suit who looked a lot like Lurch from 'The Addams Family' and was wearing the stiff, humourless expression Jake had come to associate with NSA Brass.

Apparently Diane had grown to know that face too, as her hands flew to her mouth momentarily, and then she was frantically scooping up items and tossing them back onto the bench. "Hi. Just... had a little mishap here."

Jake slid down off the examination table, mainly because not being on the examination table made him feel a lot less like a subject laid out for dissection. He nodded to Lurch, who was looking at him rather intently. "Hi. Hello."

"This is Deputy Research Director Eustace Sleet. He's here for a brief inspection of the project facilities." Lou emphasized the word 'brief' with unmistakeable purpose. "Director Sleet, Doctor Diane Hughes is the researcher in charge of the nanite project. This is Agent Foley."

Diane offered her hand but took it back, laughing nervously, as the guy didn't even appear to notice. Asshole, thought Jake.

"Doctor Hughes... Agent Foley." Sleet spoke in monotone. It was exactly the kind of voice you'd expect him to have. There seemed to be a more lively interest in his voice when he shaped Jake's name. Hard to tell for sure, but worrying all the same.

Lou gave Lurch a sharp look from under her eyelashes and said to Diane, "How is he?"

"Oh, um..." She wrung her hands and shot Jake a conflicted look. "Well, yesterday he got beat to a pulp by crazy people, and today... he's fine. Perfect." She patted Jake's arm. "Good as new. Technology in action." She gave Sleet her cutest winning smile.

Sleet obviously wasn't human, because he appeared impervious to it, and Jake theorised off the cuff that a previous NSA science project had resulted in the replacement of nearly all the upper-level administration with hyper-efficient robots. He also wondered if Diane knew of the guy by name. She seemed kinda tense with him, even for the upper-level stiffs. He winced as she made a gesture with her hands and leaped after another piece of equipment sent flying.

"Yeah," Jake said, diverting attention in what he felt was a gallant and gentlemanly attempt at rescue. "Good as new." He eyed Diane sideways.

"I believe that concludes our business here, Director," Lou said in her no-messing voice. She firmly shepherded Sleet out of the labs, but he didn't resist, as though he'd already seen everything he'd come to see.

Diane released a long breath.

Jake's ears were halfway down the corridor outside still with the pair, and he caught a familiar phrase in their conversation. He jerked his head up as Diane said something for a second time. "Diane, what's the Agent Program?"

"How did you--?" She pushed her glasses right up her forehead in her surprise. "Scratch that really dumb question." She battled with an obvious hesitation. "It's a... sort of a training program, I suppose."

"Yeah, that's kinda what it sounds like, but I figure it's one of those names. You know. Meant to sound innocent?" He grimaced. "A training program for what? For me?"

"For, well, for the nanites, I guess. But it's all really really theoretical and not something we'd wanna do because, hey, we've already been kinda lucky with the experimental-technology-not-killing-you part, and I think that something like that would, y'know, be pushing that luck." She waved her hands dismissively as though the name wasn't the hot topic on everyone's lips lately.

"Right." Jake nodded. She missed the sarcasm.

***

Walking into SatOps after lunch, it was impossible not to notice how the mood had changed. The thinly hidden disdain of the morning and previous afternoon had been replaced by a roomful of people being extremely careful not to look at him at all. Jake shot a glare at the unfamiliar faces clustered in conversation to the side of the big screen. The flat stares came, unimpressed, unmoving, back at him. He jerked his chin up and marched over to Lou. "What the hell is going on?"

"Excuse me?" Lou returned archly, in the pleasant tone she had that nonetheless let you know in no uncertain terms that she was quite read to rip out your liver with her fingernails if you pushed her any further. The agents she'd been conversing with melted away, the brief flicker in their eyes as they looked over Jake a little too telling.

Jake bit his tongue accidentally and tasted blood. He swallowed a pained curse and forged on. "I mean, this is getting ridiculous - this thing where you all pretend there's nothing out of the ordinary going on. There are these people everywhere today--" He glared again at the men by the screen, who were openly watching the proceedings. "I had guys staring at me while I was eating my lunch. Guys with a supersize portion of scanning equipment and paperwork with their NSA beef casserole. And by the way, hello? Nanites?" He flapped his hands behind his ears, which given the expression on Lou's face was maybe taking things too far, but he'd spent the last three hours abusing his nano-hearing like whoa and liking nothing that he overheard. "So could you possibly do me a favour and tell me - me, directly - what's going on?"

"You do realise, Jake, just because you can eavesdrop, it doesn't mean you should," Lou observed. "I did explain the chain of command here that means I don't have to explain myself to you?"

"Oh, come on." He wasn't above pleading with her, but being in the middle of SatOps, he stuck to trying to do so with just his eyes. He'd save getting down on his knees for later. "It's my life."

She contemplated him levelly a moment. There was something about the way she did that made him feel like he was still in school. Junior school. "My superiors have sent in a team from another research division to evaluate the viability of combining the nanite project with their research. Nobody's doing anything yet. And I don't care what you've blackmailed Diane into telling me - repeatedly - all morning - you're still grounded from fieldwork for the time being."

"Okay, okay, okay. Maybe I deserved that. Okay, I did deserve that. I'm sorry. And I'm sorry about yesterday, and about Kyle, and I'm really sorry about Cayman, and I'm sorry I freakin' exist. And I realise that to your bosses I'm about as significant as a really big petri dish. But as the guy with half a billion in highly experimental, potentially fatal technology irrevocably wired into his central nervous system, do you think it's really too much to ask to be kept in the loop? And, okay, that apology went astray somewhere, I know..."

A hand fell on his shoulder, dragging down the arm he'd brandished in Lou's face. Jake stopped himself from striking backwards just in time as he realised the hand belonged to Kyle, whose other arm was still immobilised in plaster.

"Problem?" It wasn't entirely clear which of them Kyle was addressing.

"None significant," Lou said.

"Excuse me." Jake would've sworn he saw the normally unflappable Kyle jump - just a little - as the voice suddenly creaked out and the cadaverous figure matching it loomed over their little group. Damn, some other time he'd have paid to see that, but today he somehow wasn't in the mood to appreciate it.

It was the android, Director Sleet. Lou nodded sharply and acknowledged him with a grunt Jake was pretty sure wasn't a regulation greeting between NSA peers. "I couldn't help but overhear Agent Foley's concerns," Sleet droned. "And I felt that perhaps now was the time to discuss the details of the Agent Program with its subject, as it were. Maybe assuage some of Agent Foley's clearly legitimate concerns."

"Potential subject," Kyle corrected.

"Please, Agent Duarte. We all know which way the wind is blowing. Possibly with Mr Foley's understanding we can make this all a little more painless."

Diane picked that moment to run into SatOps, her palm device in hand. "Jake! Lou, the readings were--" She skidded to a halt behind Lou, looking leery of interrupting, and concentrated a silenced scowl on Sleet.

"Let me explain." Director Sleet, ignoring the interruption, took Jake's shoulder from Kyle, turning him around slightly and leading him just a few steps away from the others. The move made him feel uneasy. Okay, Lou and Kyle and Diane were right there, but he felt like he'd been isolated all the same. Singled out. "The Agent Program is really very simple. Originally, as you know, the nanotechnology was intended for use upon previously specially trained and vetted personnel. But even before your own unfortunate accidental exposure, Agent Foley--" Jake recoiled as Sleet met his eyes, although he had a bad feeling that expression was meant to have been sympathy. "--Even prior to that, our superiors had already discussed and initiated research into a way the nanites might be used to turn any human subject into superiorly trained personnel, by integrating the technology itself with the know-how to most effectively use it."

"What?" Jake stared around the others, confused. "You mean this thing could make me vaguely competent? Just like that?" And they'd been scaring him to death for the better part of two days rather than just explaining this?

Behind Lou, Kyle grimaced and rolled his eyes.

"Uh - sorry," Jake said to his tutor-in-all-things-agenty. "But can someone explain to me how this is a bad idea?"

Diane jittered on her feet as everyone turned to her. "Well, I - I - it's untested. And this, what we're talking about, is totally messing with your brain, Jake. And because it's untested, because there's really no way we can reliably test it - because mice, not much with the processing of complex instructions, plus kinda difficult to run a detailed psych profile - yeah. I thought you'd prefer not ending up as a vegetable."

"Is this true?" Jake asked Sleet.

"Anything involving the nanites has risks. Even standing here--" he waved a hand "--they could kill you ten seconds from now, or ten minutes. Ten hours. Ten years."

Diane snorted. "Yeah, and the point being that, right now, they aren't doing that, and they are stable, and prodding them with a big stick is really gonna do lots to help."

"Standing here untrained, untrusted," Sleet continued, gritting his teeth at Diane in a flash of ironic one-upmanship, though Kyle was looking pretty pissed off by now too, "You are a threat to National Security. One that you know, as everyone here knows, may soon need to be contained."

"I mean the vegetable part," Jake snapped. "Tell me about the vegetable part. That could happen?"

"I doubt it," Sleet said. "The Agent Program works based on the theory that the nanites could be trained, by way of a very simple additional program, to send complex information directly to your brain from an exterior source. Complex information such as a directory of the training and knowledge an agent - a real agent - requires to function most efficiently. If it works, and we are confident that it will work - you would be more than vaguely competent. We've had some of the NSA's best people contributing to the massing of data for this project. The data itself would be located in an implanted storage device in the back of the neck, close enough for the nanites to easily facilitate a constant stream of information. Once the device is activated, your brain would have access to the Agent Program at all times. The information would be as integrated as memory. There need never be a repeat of yesterday's failures."

"Lou - is this--?" He pinned her with his eyes. "This is for real, right? No omissions, no hidden agenda, no horrible brain-exploding risks beyond those already mentioned?"

Lou nodded, her brows scrunched down intently. Concern, he thought. She really didn't want this. "It's for real. Jake, nobody wants to rush into this. Nobody is going to get authorisation to rush into this. It's still at an evaluation stage. I don't risk my people without damn good reasons." She held his stare 'til he uncomfortably looked away.

"But I'm a risk to your people," he said to the floor. "And it's ready. It's ready now - the technology is ready to test. It's just a clearance thing."

"Jake," Kyle began softly.

"It's ready," Sleet confirmed.

"Then what are we waiting for?" He realised he was shaking, but couldn't stop himself, as he forced his head back up to the guys. "This is what we need, right? Nobody else has to die, or get hurt, because I screwed up. And you can stop worrying about me, and having to defend me, and the team - I mean, if it works."

"That's what I've been trying to get through to your people for the last month," Sleet said.

Jake didn't trust the smug bastard any further than... hang on, bad metaphor, since he could probably throw the guy pretty far. And sell tickets. Well, he still didn't trust him, and he'd happily throw him, preferably off a really big building. But that didn't stop this offer from sounding like the best news he'd had in days. The possibilities were... wow. He'd be a real agent. With real responsibility, real respect. Not just the IT nerd who accidentally ended up shot full of nanites.

"You don't have to do this," Kyle said. "Maybe it feels like the NSA has you in a corner here, but that's not necessarily true. And I'm not convinced that this project will have the results they're hoping for even if everything does go right."

"Are you a scientist, Agent Duarte?" Sleet asked. "I must have missed entirely all the advanced degrees on your personnel record."

"Life doesn't come with easy answers," Kyle said flatly.

"Well, I'm a scientist," Diane spluttered, "And, and - Jake's an idiot, Director Sleet. But then you knew that, 'cause you picked just the right time to push all his buttons, and don't you think I don't know what you're doing! I still think it's a ginormously bad idea to start tampering with the nanites at this early stage, and if the idea of something terrible happening to Jake doesn't move you, think of all the data we're getting right now on how the raw nanite technology works in a live human subject. That's something, right? That's huge. They would not have cleared this for deliberate human testing for years..."

Sleet smiled magnanimously. The result was pretty scary on him. He said, "I think the decision's already been made, Doctor Hughes. And I'm not talking about our NSA superiors."

Jake ducked away from Diane's horrified, accusing gaze.

***

Part 2

Chapter 4

Thought was scattered all over the place. Like the last month's memories were a total wreckage, Jake could remember arguing with Diane over the Agent Project and Deputy Director Sleet's manipulations, but anything after that, it was as though his brain jolted off-track when he tried to access it. He caught the odd image or sensation; a deep-seated gnawing feeling of trapped futility imbued it all.

It didn't take a genius to figure out that something awful had happened. For one thing, everything hurt. For another, he was lying on a damp floor in a dark room, accessorising with about half a mile of very tightly tied rope.

Some mornings, he thought giddily, it just wasn't worth waking up.

The nanites were sluggish and didn't seem to be responding overly well to his commands, which at the moment were composed chiefly of 'some help with this rope, guys?' and 'how about doing something about the pain?' That was the kind of thing that ought to be second nature by now. It felt like something had interfered with communication between the nanites and his brain, but they didn't feel damaged - not like he'd been hit by another EMP or anything like it.

He did have a furious, grinding ache down the right side of his neck and the base of his skull, as though somebody had tried to take his head off with a blunt instrument and come close to success. He groaned at the pain of movement, trying to lie in a fashion that didn't exacerbate it. 'Guys?' he pleaded again to the nanites, but they still weren't on speaking terms with him.

He lay still and just concentrated on trying to breathe until the throbbing in his head and neck subsided.

If he could just remember what had happened to him... Was it Sleet's project? Just because it was the last thing he could remember didn't mean... he had been hit on the head, after all. But he wasn't sure that partial amnesia should feel like this, a jumble as though his brain had been rewritten, and the sure sense of time that told him he'd lost a little over three weeks.

A memory flitted past him and he snatched for it.

//"And, oh look, now you can spout pages and pages from the Good Little Agent's Handbook," Diane said sourly. She pulled the chip away and its directory faded from his brain as it passed out of range. "...And now you can stop it."

Kyle was standing behind her looking sceptical and doing all kinds of interesting things with his eyebrows. Beside him was Lou, her mouth a thin, intense line.

"That was cool," Jake said. "Hey, let's try it again." He reached for the chip. Diane pulled it away, but his hand was in range and a bunch of mission protocols and assessments flooded in through the link. He smirked at Kyle as he repeated them.

"Do we really want to do this?" Kyle said heavily to Lou. "It's possible we may never shut him up."

"I'm sure the novelty will wear off after a week or two... The two of you fancy a trip to Southeast Asia?"

Kyle developed a shell-shocked, panicky 'don't do this to me' expression, wasted on Lou as she smirked with half her mouth, turned, and left the lab.

Jake laughed at his partner, and even Diane ducked her head to hide a smile.//

That was right, Jake thought. They'd tested the Agent Program's database before implanting it and everything had been fine. And the day before that - he reached, and found the memory returned more easily now - they'd uploaded the new interfacing instructions into the nanites' programming, and Diane had followed him around for 24 hours with a scarily psychotic intensity, carrying her PDA like it was an extra limb. But there'd been no apparent change in the stability of the nanites, although he'd kinda got the feeling Diane would have derived some satisfaction from proving Sleet wrong if things had gone awry.

Okay... He tried to level his breathing and organise his thoughts. If the test went well, maybe I can't blame the Agent Program for this. So what the hell happened to me? Did they have EMPs? Tasers...? The nanites interfaced with his brain, too. Maybe a big enough electrical shock would be enough to scatter recent memories and send the nanites dopey for a while.

Unfortunately, he wasn't a scientist, and none of this was helping the immediate problem of getting untied and getting out of here. Presumably Kyle, or some form of back-up, was in the region somewhere...

Shit. Surely he'd remember if they'd been killed, right? If Kyle was dead... that was important, damn it. You didn't just forget things like that, did you?

...Okay, so presumably Kyle, or some other back-up, was around somewhere, because he wasn't going to consider the alternative. If the nanites were working, he could try to find a cellphone or radio nearby to interface with, and get a message out - but the nanites weren't working, so what was the point even thinking it? Oh yeah... except for the part where, without the nanites, what the hell did he have?

Well, he was double-jointed and pretty good at logical problem-solving, so it wouldn't kill him to have a go at the ropes. Genius, he sardonically told himself.

He'd been working at them for a while when he became aware of human voices. Quiet at first, but as he concentrated and could pick out more detail it became clear to him they weren't speaking English. Somehow it didn't surprise him chances had abruptly shot up that he wasn't in the USA - in fact, no, he was sure that he wasn't. The climate felt wrong, and that same certainty that told him he'd lost a little over three weeks was equally as positive in this, too.

The language wasn't Spanish, and it didn't sound Arabic. After that, he'd pretty much exhausted his linguistic knowledge.

It occurred to him that the voices weren't getting louder because the nanites were lending a hand, but because the voices' owners were getting closer. A key grated in a rusty lock, and someone kicked back the door. Light didn't flood in to blind him because it was just as dingy outside as in, and Jake felt somewhat cheated of his rightful cliche. The two men in the door might've had darker skin than he did, and they were wearing a guerrilla-style camoflage and an excess of weapons and ammunition. Without nano-vision, that was all he could discern.

They cut the rope on his ankles and hauled him up between them, then spat curses he didn't recognise when his legs gave way. They dragged him half on his knees a short distance down the corridor and through a door at its end. He blinked gloom-adjusted eyes, abruptly dazzled. White sunlight flooded in through a long, narrow window along the top of one wall, but no outside feature was visible through the glass. He was tossed into the bare room's single chair and a third man, who was maybe an officer but certainly wasn't wearing anything Jake recognised as rank insignia, sneered at him and brandished a set-up of electrical cables fixed to a battery that looked like it'd been torn from a wrecked car.

Wide-eyed, Jake flinched away as sparks blazed between the ends of the cable. The chair fell over backwards, taking him with it, and the two guerrillas laughed as they picked him up and put him back, roughly tearing half the buttons on his shirt as they did. Wait -- that hadn't been accidental.

Shit! He'd seen this done to Kyle - if a more sophisticated version, granted - and it had not looked fun. Moreover, he'd no clue what that kind of voltage would do to him, specifically, and what would happen if they fried the nanites. As far as he understood it, if the nanites stopped working, so did he.

'Guys, come on,' he begged the nanites, pushing for all he was worth to re-establish contact. 'You want to be fried?'

The officer yelled a sentence at him that sounded like maybe it ended with a question mark. Jake bit his lip on any protest confirming he didn't speak their language, since not speaking their language seemed a pretty stellar way of making sure he didn't talk. Kyle hadn't talked... he would have to do this. The officer yelled again, and brought the wires into contact with the bare skin below Jake's torn collar.

The first shock didn't - somehow - drop him dead on the instant. But concerns over whether the voltage would actually kill him did become pretty low on his list of priorities.

***

It hadn't been the electrical shocks.

He was certain of that much as he lay back in his cell, shivering despite the heat. He hadn't had burns before, and he was damn sure he'd have had some memory - if only muscle-memory of the jolt - if he'd been through that already. Certainly his respect for Kyle had shot right up. And his respect for Kyle had been pretty high to start with.

In a way, they'd done him a favour. The experience had added focus. Now he was more angry than confused, and it had left him an overwhelming urge to get the hell out of there now and ask questions later. He didn't care where he was or how he got there so much as the fact that he was leaving. The responsiveness of the nanites had picked up a gear, whether because of the electricity or his increased mental focus he wasn't sure, but clearly despite his fears no lasting damage had been done.

He resumed worrying at the ropes while his tissues sluggishly started trudging the road to nanite-repair and traces of his strength toyed with the idea of returning. In a way it felt like at the beginning, when the nanites' effects came on in fits and starts, not really under his control. Like his brain was having to re-learn them... or they were having to re-learn him.

Memory sparked again, taking him by surprise.

//"This is still stupid." Jake could hear Diane beyond the fuzzy curtain of the anaesthetic. "This is the stupidest thing ever. Look at him--" He heard her palm come into contact with the glass of the observation room, though he couldn't see her; his slit field of vision was full of ceiling and surgeon, and those none too clear. "He's not even properly out. I mean, he's pretty out - they gave him enough of that stuff to drop a horse - but they don't know the nanites' capabilities like I do. Stupid anaesthetist! The least they could do is let me supervise. I'm Jake's doctor. I should be in there..."

Jake wished he had some way to tell her that he knew she was near. But then he supposed sending a message to her cellphone when he was in the middle of being sliced by NSA surgeons would only freak her out, even if he could have mustered the concentration.

Kyle was also there in the observation room adjoining the lab being used for the operation, but he wasn't saying much. Kyle, when he was nervous, clammed up. Kinda the opposite of Diane's reaction to being nervous, in fact. Apparently it was just the two of them. Lou was busy foiling Uncle Sam's enemies, and Sleet it seemed was not a man who felt any compulsion to watch his handiwork in progress.

He couldn't feel them cutting into his neck, but he knew they were doing it.

"Call that an incision?" Diane was jabbering. "I hope they're not gonna waste their time trying to stitch that, 'cause, hah! That? They could slap a band-aid on it and the nanites would deal with it in like - two seconds flat." She giggled, a bit hysterically. "Ooh, look, they so are. Dumbasses."

Jake heard the surgeon - or rather the other guy, who he wasn't sure was a surgeon - say, "Time to switch on," and for some reason it sounded ominous.

But it was a bit late for second thoughts. The guy reached down with a long, thin metal implement and did something out of sight that Jake queasily suspected involved sticking it into the incision in his neck. He felt the nanites' buzz of activity at the detection of new hardware.

Somewhere close, Kyle was saying, "Well, it's done. Time to find out what it is we're going to have to deal with."

'Thanks a lot for a little faith,' Jake thought at him grumpily. But even as he did, everything was receeding away from him. As if the mess of thought was being replaced by information and logical pathways, his awareness felt like it was being shifted aside, pushed into an isolated corner of his own mind, and hey... Interfacing with the chip hadn't felt remotely like this before...//

Jake sat bolt upright in his cell, barely noticing as the knot he'd been working at snapped and unravelled and every muscle in his body screamed protest about the movement.

What the hell had that bastard Sleet done to him?

***

He paced the cell, trying to work feeling back into his limbs. Every muscle burned from the strain of being pulled taut by electrical jolts. They hadn't exactly been in top shape before. His neck still ached furiously, and now that he could, he raised his hand to it. The contact hurt, but he pressed down over the remembered spot. When he'd finished almost passing out, he did think he'd felt the hard little square of metal underneath the skin. Whatever had hit him - it felt like it had been a truck - had impacted hard enough to break the chip.

And he had to concede that to be the only reason he was here, himself, able to think and feel now. Which left him wondering what had been walking around in his skin for the past month, and what Kyle and Diane had thought of it. Sleet... Sleet must have switched the chips. The test chip hadn't been the Agent Program, just some prototype database they'd thought would pass off as an unthreatening substitute.

Whoever had been walking in his shoes, they'd been sent here, out of the country, entrusted to a real mission. Maybe he'd been the perfect nano-agent, after all... but what the hell was the use of that if it hadn't been him?

Jake snarled a curse into the darkness and tried to pull back together some iota of focus. He wasn't supposed to be out of his ropes, and there'd be men coming back who-knew-when to tie him up and drag him off again. In his current state, they'd succeed. The nanites' connection was improving slowly, but still sporadic. He couldn't rely on them to fight his way out of this. He needed to find another avenue of escape.

He stood in the middle of the cell, and closed his eyes, and breathed. "Come on..." Nano-hearing told him where to concentrate... the rustle of trees and undergrowth, and unfamiliar birdsong; there was an exterior wall. No human voices beyond it that he could detect - but plenty of those elsewhere, behind the other walls.

Opened his eyes to nano-nightvision; narrowed it in on the fabric of the wall that was his barrier to freedom. Focus faded in and out as the nanites struggled to stay with him. Rough plastering, but no signs of cracks or structural weaknesses that could help him out... his hopes sank. No - wait. There had been a window, once upon a time. The change in surface was so subtle ordinary eyes might not have noticed it at all, and never in the dimness.

The window had been neatly blocked in, but the margins of where it had been would still be a line of weakness. He spread his hands against the bricked-in section and pushed, internally pleading with the nanites not to bail out on him now.

Strength didn't come easily or immediately to his call. He pushed anyway. There was a weakness in the wall; this was just plaster and cement he had to contend with, not brick or stone, and he didn't know how much, or little, strength it would take. The walls were thin and badly constructed. Surely it was possible, just possible, that even ordinary strength might exploit the weakness?

The nanites must have given him a split second's boost, because next he knew he was falling against the wall, his sweat-dampened face abrading down the plasterwork, adding more scrapes to the catalogue the nanites had yet to get to work on. Above his head, a section of the cement boundary had crumbled and the brickwork slid outward. Jake shakily reached out to bathe his hand in the beam of daylight filtering through the gap. He gulped heavily, and choked on the dust that was still thick in the air. Hauled himself back up to claw at the intact brickwork around the edges, to scrounge a gap large enough for him to fit through.

Either the nanites kicked in at last or normal fear-invoked adrenaline helped him snap away two protruding bricks, and then he was scrambling up and through, losing more skin to the coarse cement but giving thanks for his scrawny physique to any deity that was listening.

He landed on the other side in the midst of a bush that was all sharp edges and obviously in on the universe's conspiracy against him. Rolled out of it into deep undergrowth and crouched, gasping, trying to get his bearings.

The building he'd been inside backed against foliage as far as he could see. It was almost hidden underneath it. Before he could make any guesses about the best direction in which to head, he heard voices through the re-opened window space and locked door beyond. They were coming back.

Panic set in and he crashed off into the undergrowth without a thought - well, with one thought; that the NSA could track him, they had Diane's PDA and satellite surveillance and they had to be looking for him...

He wasn't sure how long he ran or what guided his steps. Maybe he subconsciously followed the faint pulse of technology. But somehow, he finally stumbled into the concealed camp just as if he knew it was there.

The stationed guard he passed stared at him with a freaked look that held, nonetheless, familiarity, though Jake couldn't consciously remember ever seeing the guy before. The man grunted at him in a sort of acknowledgement and called over his shoulder, "Duarte? Guess I owe you that twenty after all."

"The robot's back?" Kyle's voice, even though it came without enthusiasm, had to be the most amazing sound in the world. It preceded the man himself out of the tented-off back of a camouflaged truck. Kyle looked grubby, dishevelled and hardly in the best of moods, but Jake had never been more relieved to see anyone.

"Kyle! Buddy! Am I glad to see you..."

Even as Kyle's expression was changing, Jake's legs embarrassingly chose to give out. Kyle bolted across the short distance between them in time to stop him falling any further than his knees, and the last thing he saw for a while was Kyle's stunned expression as his mentor lowered him to the ground.

"Jake?" His voice was fading out, but Jake registered the astonishment in it. As if he was addressing someone he'd never expected to see again.

***

Chapter 5

Kyle had him sitting bundled up in a blanket in the back of the truck within ten minutes of his arrival. In defiance of all improbability, apparently hot chocolate was counted an emergency NSA field ration, because someone had scrounged a cup from somewhere and pressed it into his hands. Crouched to avoid the truck's low canvas roof, a field medic poked at Jake's bruises and burns.

The superficial cuts and the marks left on his wrists by the ropes were already fading like three-day-old scrapes. He tucked his wrists under the blanket, wrapping its edges over his fingers to save them from the full heat of the tin mug in his hands.

The medic paused midway through his examination of the extensive bruising on Jake's neck. "Shrapnel?"

Kyle's eyes darted to Jake and back, and he nodded minimally. "Leave it. Is he okay?"

"Physically, he'll be fine. As for the total personality change... you'd know more about that than I would."

Kyle waved a hand that sent the grimly smiling agent packing.

"You called me the robot," Jake said, as the truck slowly rocked from the disembarkation of the medic. "I heard." He frowned at the closed flap of the truck. "That's what they call me, too?"

"The past few weeks, you've developed a reputation for a certain machine-like quality... in the field." He could see Kyle try to smile, then his partner looked down at the floor. It hadn't escaped him how the end of that remark had been so belatedly tagged on.

"I... don't think it was me," Jake admitted. "And I don't remember any of it. You know, whatever it was those guys hit me with, I have a bad feeling I am so, so incredibly lucky that they did. And considering how bad my head hurts right now, that is really saying something."

Kyle looked grim and guilty and, most of all, away from him. "You changed, Jake. We didn't know what to make of it. I knew you had always wanted to be an agent, but it was frightening how much you latched onto the job after you got that chip. Like people didn't matter any more, like... normal things didn't matter any more. Even NSA agents have to have lives. Friends. Diane's been... well, she's pretty upset."

"That wasn't me," Jake said. "It was - I don't know, the chip they put in my neck, or... Kyle, I haven't been at home since they turned that thing on." He tapped the side of his skull. "Boom! The next thing I know, I'm waking up in a cell with a bunch of guys with an electric shock fetish."

Slowly, Kyle nodded. "I'm getting that. You think Sleet's people switched the program on us?"

"Hell, yes. I don't know what that thing did to me, but that was not the test chip, Kyle." He leaned back, gulped at the hot chocolate and tried to stop shivering while Kyle's eyebrows did thinking-contortions. He almost spilled the tin cup as he was hit by a flash of maybe-memory, of Kyle staring at him stony-faced in this same truck, like they had never been friends, like he hated his guts. He remembered the tone of Kyle's voice outside when he said, "The robot's back?" And he blinked and stared across the narrow confines of the truck at his partner. "You didn't come in for me." They had satellites, Diane's monitoring device... the NSA could pinpoint just exactly where he was. They had been camped out within a few miles of him.

Kyle flinched, and the flicker across his face wasn't good. "I didn't know it was you, so to speak. Jake, you should have seen this guy you turned into. It was unreal. In more ways than one."

Jake looked down at his fingers. "He was good, then, as well as a creep? Guess the Agent Program worked, and when we get home, they'll want him - Evil Robot Jake - they'll want him right back." He raised his hand to where the chip lurked under his skin. Broken as it was, he didn't like the thought of it still inside him.

"No." Kyle spoke the word with vehemence. "Jake, I left him to get out of that place. I thought he could, and... I wasn't going to risk these men's lives in a rescue operation if he didn't. But you got out of there. Not him. I don't need any more proof of what you're capable of - you just have to learn and grow into it, without leaving human behind to get there. And that's what I'm going to tell Lou, and anyone else that asks. We gave this thing a chance. Now it's their turn to give you a chance and stop pushing. No more shortcuts."

Jake pulled a smile from somewhere. "Thanks."

There was some commotion around them, and Kyle disembarked from the truck briefly, exchanged some hushed words with the rest of the team that Jake couldn't muster the energy to listen to, then clambered back inside. The vehicle jolted into motion before he'd gotten sat down again. "We're clearing out. We got the word from Lou that an aerial retrieval team is on the way, but we can't land choppers here. This mission's a bust, and Diane wants you back in the lab for a diagnostic. Says she wants to check out some odd readings she's been getting." His eyebrows sketched irony.

"The mission - did I--?" Jake stopped, feeling a lump in his throat.

"Sometimes things just do go wrong," said Kyle. "And even if you did screw up, it would have been with the best Sleet's team could come up with plugged into your brain." He gave Jake an assessing once-over. "You should try to get some sleep, if you can. Diane isn't going to let you rest much once we get back to Fort Meade."

"What?" His eyelids had been drooping, but he hauled them open in protest at the suggestion. "And miss the choppers?"

He winced at the enthusiasm that rang in the words, half expecting Kyle to say something impatient and archly condescending that would make him feel about ten years old. Instead, a slow grin spread over Kyle's face, and he gave a bark of laughter, and relaxed back with that little smile still playing at the edges of his expression. And Jake had another flash of almost-memory, of Kyle floating a rare joke, and he... the eyes he viewed the memory out of moved past his mentor, uncaring, uninterested, as though he wasn't even there.

Drifting, he jerked himself awake again. Mumbled, "Hey, Kyle?"

"What is it?"

"That electric shock thing. That thing? That thing sucks."

Kyle raised an eyebrow, and said with surprise, but nonetheless very, very feelingly, "It does."

***

Apparently Kyle hadn't sent any word back ahead of them that the 'Robot' was dead, only that there had been a problem with the chip the extent of which he'd not defined. So when Kyle shepherded him into the lab dressed in someone-or-other's spare civvies that bagged on his frame - needless to say, they hadn't considered a stop at his apartment first a priority - Diane was pottering around inside looking hassled and fed up.

"Hey." Jake gave her a tired smile. "Looks like I didn't do so good with the not-getting-hurt thing."

She stopped short, frowning, and pulled up her glasses to peer narrowly at him from underneath them. Then she yanked them firmly back down her nose, pointed a finger, and said with a marked lack of goodwill, "Exam table."

"Nice to see you as well," he choked, voice rising to a squeak as she seized his oversized shirt and gave him a yank in her stated direction. "Okay, okay..." He cast a bewildered look at Kyle, who was watching the proceedings pensively. He focused it into a rather more annoyed look as Kyle continued to stand there and watch.

"Diane..." The agent cleared his throat awkwardly. "Perhaps you should let Jake explain what happened while we were out there."

Diane wagged her head side-to-side, unimpressed and not paying a vast amount of attention. Whatever Evil Robot Jake had said or not said to her, she had clearly exhausted her patience and washed her hands of him. It stung. She'd been his best friend in this place. Now she was all business, divesting Jake of his oversized shirt with a critical eye for the healing flesh underneath. "Ooh, burns. Was there torture? Tell me there was torture."

Jake gaped at her. "Yes, there was torture!" He snatched for her hand as she looked like she was about to reach up and punch the air. "You... really hold a grudge. Wow. Remind me never to get on your bad side."

Kyle looked like he was struggling manfully with the decision whether to laugh or wince.

"You." Diane backed away from him abruptly, waving her palms toward him. "Wait, wait, wait. This is not part of the script. This is... smalltalk. With people. And... joking, sorta. You want to tell me what's going on, Mister Data?" But she evidently rethought the attempt at direct contact, because she swung around to Kyle before Jake had chance to say anything.

"I did try," Kyle said, more heavily sarcastic than Kyle was generally prone to, but then it'd been a strange day. "You should probably ask Jake." He uncrossed his arms to point. "And by the way, the emphasis on that name? Was a big clue."

"Hi." Jake limply waved to her from his perch on the examination table. "Remember me?"

"He--" She turned to Kyle again, who re-crossed his arms over his chest and shook his head, cutting her short. "You," she finally addressed him reluctantly. "Jake... thing. You're acting normal. Why are you acting normal -- oh, my goodness." She gave a little gasp as she took in the bruising around his neck. "Oh." She reached out, and a tentative touch quickly transformed into a doctor's thorough and practical examination. Which actually kinda hurt.

"Ow!"

"Don't be such a baby." She paused to take in what she'd said, but only briefly. Jake grimaced as her hands pressed down. At least the nanites had gotten their act in gear sufficiently that direct pressure on the injury no longer made him want to pass out. After a few minutes, she stood back. Jake looked at her expectantly.

"The chip... the chip was broken." As denouements went, it was a bit disappointing. "You - you're not acting normal, you are normal. Well, as normal as nanite enhanced and, um, you ever can get. Ohhh..." She fanned her face with her hands as though she suspected she might pass out. "Okay... total personality reversion, you and Kyle are talking again..." She scrunched up her face, stepped forward, and punched him in the arm.

"What was that for?" Jake yelped.

"That's for being such a, what's the word - oh yeah, asshole - under the influence of far too much knowledge for your swollen nanite-crammed head!"

"Yeah, operative word being 'influence'! Thanks to that damn chip, for three weeks, I got nothing but a blank in here." He waved a hand in the vicinity of his earlobe.

"No argument from me," she said sulkily.

Kyle rolled his eyes. "Diane, he doesn't remember anything."

"That is such a lame excuse!"

"It's true." Jake moved to slide off the exam table, and quickly backtracked when Diane brandished a fist at him. "Look, this is crazy. It's like I left my... my damn brother to house-sit - except for the part where I'd never do that because I'm not insane - and I come back three weeks later and the apartment's trashed, there's cans everywhere and somebody didn't even clean up the vomit on the floor. Except it's worse, because it's not my apartment, it's my body! Do you have any clue how much that blows?"

She winced and frowned at him severely. After a moment, a trace of conflicted sympathy seemed to creep into her eyes. "Vomit?"

"Metaphorical vomit, okay? Can we... can we work on the assumption now that I'm me, and... I don't know what he was, but I'm pretty sure he wasn't me?"

"Wait." Diane held both sides of her head like she was trying to keep her ears from falling off. "The chip took over your brain? That's what we're talking about here, isn't it? And I mean - " She laughed unevenly " - as excuses for acting like an overstuffed butthead go, that's a little... science fiction."

Jake pointed to his chest. "Guy full of nanites."

"Right, but the nanites are real science. Although... all right, we still don't really know everything about how the nanites work in a human subject, how they interact with the brain, the consciousness... The neurological impact is more the purview of Sleet's team than mine, I'll admit. But mind control? Using the nanites as a method by which to hijack actual human synapses and..." She frowned. "I-I-I suppose it's theoretically possible."

"Reprogramming," Jake said. "By any other name. Not just possible, either, it happened. And for the record, when we've finished telling me how much of an asshole I've been the last few weeks, I'm not too happy about it myself."

Diane looked like she was still struggling, but after a minute of her lips moving silently she rallied to the point of, "Um, in that case I really think I ought to run that diagnostic - like, right now. I should check how the nanites have taken to the malfunction - well, more like semi-pulverisation from the looks of things - of the chip. 'Cause that would tie in with the weird readings I've been getting." She cautiously reached out past Jake for the PDA where it lay on the table, and equally cautiously brought it close to him. She smiled nervously, still evidently unsure how to take the transformation.

"Earlier," Jake began, a bit choked. She was his friend, was the trust between them gone? "In the prison, the nanites weren't working. They've been, uh, perking up, though. I think they're almost back to normal now."

"That's probably just a cognitive pattern recognition issue," Diane said absently. "Like before... except you won't know about before. The other--"

"Evil Robot Jake."

"--ahaha, well he said the nanites were slow, the first day or so. Of course, he - you - whoever - wasn't out running around on missions getting locked up and tortured and - oh! Jake, I am so--" She broke off with her arms still outstretched toward him. "Are you sure you're really you again?" she demanded. "I can't exactly suspect a joke, but if this is some kind of a trick--"

"Diane," Kyle intoned warningly.

Diane nodded slowly to herself before resuming her forward lunge as though she hadn't stalled. "Jake, I am so sorry about that comment about the torture. I'm really glad you got back in one piece."

Jake grimaced slightly in the grip of her apology-slash-welcome-home. Having Diane mad at him had been less painful.

***

"What is it?" Lou asked, unimpressed, as they filed into her office without invitation and arranged themselves in front of her desk. Kyle shut the door quietly behind them. "I'm still not reassigning any of you from this team."

Diane gave a little jump and looked guiltily at Jake.

"You asked to be reassigned?"

"Can we stick to the topic?" Kyle suggested.

Lou sat back in her chair slowly and travelled an unhurried, assessing gaze over them all. Jake knew it well; it was the one that made Kyle stand to attention and even made he and Diane dig deep to find some rigidity of stance in their naturally slouchy souls. Lou's eyes returned to him last of all. "What happened?"

It was Diane who spoke up, even as her straight stance broke down. "Lou, Jake's last mission killed the Agent Program. Look--" she gestured wih both hands at Jake's neck "--okay, the nanites have been at work, but I think you can still see the extent of the original soft tissue trauma. As far as the Agent Chip was concerned, it looks like they - unknowing, I'm sure - scored a perfect hit. The chip's kaput." She beamed. "Ding, dong, the chip is dead." She bobbled her head happily.

"That's the boring part," Jake put it, while Lou was still sourly regarding Diane. "We haven't got to the fun stuff yet."

"Am I to take it that we have Agent Foley back to his usual self?" Lou asked, inclining her head and one hand, and causing Diane to snap her mouth closed on another overexcited tirade. Lou nodded to herself at their reactions, then to Jake. "Welcome back. While that was an interesting experiment, I don't think it's one we'll be repeating. I'll pass along our sentiments about that to Deputy Director Sleet. Does that conclude this irregular audience? I have a meeting I need to be at."

"No, uh..." Jake struggled to resume his thread. "There's more that--" He gave in. "You expected this?"

"No," Lou said coolly, "But I can say I'm neither surprised nor sorry. Field hardware gets broken. Kyle, was there something else?"

Kyle soberly looked down at his clasped hands. "We think that Sleet may have switched the chip from the test program," he said, and met Lou's eyes directly. "But then you already knew that."

"What?" Diane squeaked.

"Kyle." Lou sighed, and turned to Jake. Still with a rather businesslike dismissal, she said, "I didn't know he was going to do it. I suspected afterwards, and confronted him with it. Sleet admitted the deception and convinced me to allow a three month trial before disabling the chip."

Jake knew his mouth was hanging open, but the muscles in his jaw had thrown off all voluntary control. Fortunately, Diane got there for him. "I - I can't believe this. You knew what that chip was doing to him? You knew and let the whole thing proceed? I don't understand it. I know you're dedicated to this agency, but I thought you were against the Agent Program."

"I am dedicated to this agency - and my people in it - and against the Agent Program. But the program was already in place and Jake had consented. Sleet and I came to an arrangement. Three months, and he'd push for no more tryouts of any further experimental additions to Jake's nanites."

"I didn't consent," Jake said thickly, "to be brainwiped. Sleet conned us. He conned you. Are we just going to accept that?"

"Frankly, yes," Lou rapped, "because we're all of us practical people who don't want to involve ourselves in an argument with huge potential to backfire. I was against this program from the beginning, but my hands were tied. The NSA spends money on research, it expects its people to be open to the implementation of that research. Blocking it dead would have achieved nothing but to undermine my own position. You grey the moral ground here, Jake - you're a human subject. An accidental one, maybe, but the fact you exist gives people ideas. The best way to protect you for the future was to let this run its course."

"But - but it didn't," Diane said. "The chip was broken, and he didn't get his three months. Will Sleet even honour that deal?"

"Don't worry," Lou said grimly. "He will." She inclined her head towards the door. After a pause, deflated, they began to shuffle out.

"As far as I'm concerned," Lou added, head bowed to her paperwork as Kyle's fingers touched the handle, "The Agent Program was a failure. It created a trained super-agent, perhaps - but one that caused an unacceptable amount of disruption among my team, and in doing so placed my people at risk in the field. Further to that, the breakdown of the Agent Program and the situation into which Agent Foley was placed indicates an unreliability in its field application that I just can't condone. I will not be recommending further development or testing of the complete program."

"Thank you." Kyle gave her a soft nod, pushing Jake and Diane out of the room ahead of him while they remained too stunned to respond.

***

Chapter 6

"Hey," Kyle said with deliberately pitched reserve as he descended the last few steps of the fire escape, and then spoiled it by glancing back up to the third floor.

"Hey." Jake grinned, still recovering his breath as he flopped on the ground next to the very unconscious DoD guy and, more importantly, the unconscious DoD guy's briefcase.

Kyle holstered his gun and held out a hand to help pull Jake up. "That was quite a jump. Are you all right? I'm not sure I dare face Diane if anything's broken."

"No, I'm good. I'm fine." He brushed himself off while Kyle rolled the unconscious man over onto his front and efficiently handcuffed him; picked up the briefcase. "That jump? Man, that jump was nothing. You should've seen me on the rooftops a few weeks ago, before..." He faltered. He hadn't wanted to think about that. But he'd forgotten, in the midst of everything else that had been happening - it had been a hell of a jump. He rallied and chivvied the grin back onto his face. "I had this whole Spider-man thing going on. That was a cool jump. Way better than the simulator, too." He frowned. "I never did tell Diane about that."

"You should tell her," Kyle said. He opened the case only briefly before snapping it shut again. "Looks like the documents are here." He reached up to switch on his earpiece. "Tell Lou we have it and we're coming home." On the other end of the wire, Jake heard Agent Carver's voice acknowledge. Then Kyle was lowering his hand and carrying on as though the interruption had never happened. "Diane's the one that calculates your limits and keeps the rest of us up to date." He frowned down at the unconscious man.

"What kinda worries me is, if I tell Diane I can jump fifty feet, does that mean I'll be expected to do it again for an audience? One thing I don't think the nanites can do is stop me going splat on the pavement if I fall fifty feet."

Kyle gestured expectantly to the unconscious body at his feet. "You want to lend a hand here, Nano-Man? The car's three blocks away, thanks to this guy."

"Right - yeah. Yeah, of course." Jake hurriedly slung the DoD guy over his shoulder and jogged to catch up with Kyle, who'd set off down the back street. "Guy must spend his time off at the track when he's not selling out his country to the Chinese. I've had workouts with Diane's treadmill that were less taxing." He grinned. "So how do you want to work this? We swap over halfway, and I'll take the briefcase?"

"That's very funny," Kyle said dryly. "Unfortunately I'd just have to remind you that even if you weren't the one with super powers, I'm still your boss."

It was a crisp, pleasant morning and the sun filtered down through the skeleton framework of the fire escapes on the backs of the big old terraces, dappling the ground. Jokes aside, the guy on his shoulder didn't weigh enough to slow him down and Kyle, still breathing heavily after the chase, wasn't exactly in a hurry. For once, everything had gone smoothly, at least as these things went. It was nice. It was a nice feeling, success.

Also a nice feeling that the three lost weeks and the events just before were finally starting to recede in his mind, to be replaced by other things. According to Diane, his actual memories of those weeks had been stored primarily in the chip. He would likely never regain any more than the fragments he'd remembered in his captivity, when the chip had been in its death throes.

"Speaking of last month," Kyle piped up then, and Jake groaned - because he had, hadn't he? He should've known Kyle wouldn't be keeping his considerate silence on that score forever. But his partner gave him a sharp look for the response and carried on, "I heard this morning that Agent Cayman's coming back to work next week."

"He is? That's great!" Jake meant it. The last he'd heard was that Cayman was out of danger. It had been a huge relief to hear that that the guy who'd been shot with his gun was going to live. It was even more a relief that he'd recovered sufficiently to be returning to work so soon.

Kyle nodded. "I thought it would interest you to know. He'll be on light duties for a while, but he should be back in the field within a month or two."

And - oh, crap. That also meant that Jake was very likely going to have to work with him again. Agent Green was bad enough, and he didn't have to feel guilty about Green hating him - well, not so much, anyway.

They both thought you were ridiculous to start with, he reminded himself, the NSA agent who got elevated from Tech Support. And he grinned at Kyle. Cayman would return to work. Things weren't fixed - there had been six civilian deaths, in the end, from the blast he might've prevented - but they were improving.

"You know," said Kyle, as if reading his mind, "Chances of stopping that bomb were always very low."

"I've heard it said."

"You should believe it. Lou was never angry because you failed. She was angry because you went in."

"--and failed."

"No." Kyle stopped, catching his shoulder and swinging him around so they were face to face in the alley. "Well, maybe a little. But the point is, she'd have been just as pissed at you if you'd succeeded. It's not about gung-ho heroics."

"...It's about following orders?" Jake suggested. "Tried that, too, remember?" Well, Kyle would have to remember, since he didn't.

"No," Kyle said again. "It's... I don't know how to put this. There are orders, and there's instinct, and you need both. It's about finding a balance. And you can't... program that in, or read it in a book, or download it from a database. You have to find it for yourself. From experience, and even from mistakes."

"Yes, Master Yoda." Jake saluted - and staggered, trying with difficulty to re-balance the unconscious guy on his shoulder.

Kyle gave him a rather intense frown. "Yoda's the ugly little green guy. Mark Hamill's teacher. Am I right?"

"Yeah." Oh, cool - Kyle had at least watched The Empire Strikes Back; maybe there was hope for him yet. "Yoda's the green guy."

"You think I could be someone less ugly and green?" Kyle asked a bit plaintively, as they resumed walking.

"But Yoda's cool!" Jake protested. "That's totally a compliment, man."

Kyle looked sceptically like he suspected he was being had.

No hope, he corrected himself. No hope at all.

***

"Hey, Diane." He held out both arms in a 'look at me' pose as he walked into the lab. "Not a bruise. How about that?"

"Very good." She nodded approvingly. "You and Kyle got the bad guys, then?"

"One bad guy. I think Kyle and Agent Bell are still grilling him downstairs... and I realise that possibly makes it sound less impressive with the coming-back-in-one-piece part. Kinda fast on his feet, though."

"Never mind." She beamed at him, finished up whatever she was doing to a couple of glass vials, and picked up the PDA from the table beside her. She'd been keeping that thing pretty close lately. "Maybe you can catch two bad guys tomorrow without a scratch, and - you know - work your way up." She waggled her hands. The PDA narrowly missed a metal stand. "Here, let me do a quick diagnostic anyway."

She meant it - she was reaching for the penlight. Jake sighed and hoisted himself onto the edge of the exam table. It seemed to him that having super-powers really ought to involve less time being poked, prodded, and stuck with needles.

Definitely the fuzzy end of the lollipop.

Still, at least Diane was back to talking to him like a normal human being. His friendship with her, and with Kyle, made this new life of his bearable.

He sat still while she took some more of his blood. It was a good thing he did have nano-healing, else he'd look like he'd been used for a pincushion by now, the number of blood work-ups she'd done this week. Diane was worried about him. Or maybe overcompensating from guilt.

"You've gone quiet," she said, her cheer a bit skittish and forced. They both knew there was no shortage of material for introspection.

He smiled for her, though it maybe came out a little crumpled. "Just thinking about how things seem to be getting back to normal around here. I guess soon it'll be like nothing even happened."

"Yeah." She focused on the blood sample and, seeming satisfied, turned away to deposit it in a tray for later examination. "It'll be nice to have things back to normal."

"That's not--" Jake shook his head. "No. No, it's not nice. Because I can't believe that that's just going to be it. I get... mind-frelled, and Lou... Lou does nothing at all."

Her face fell. "Okay, that part's not so good, but at least they should leave you alone now, for a while. We got something out of this. Lou's right, I don't think it would help us if we pushed things." She paused. "If there was something I could do about it, I would. I'm... really not happy that these people hurt my friend." She tentatively touched her hand to his shoulder; patted it shyly. "Almost made me hate my friend. Because I didn't know... I didn't see what they'd done. And I should have seen, I really should have, but it was only Lou that saw it. I guess maybe Kyle and I were... too close. Too busy feeling hurt to see the truth. And I totally have to find a tissue now before I drip on you." She lunged away from him to rummage under a lab bench, pulling a box of tissues out like a magic trick. "I guess it's just the, uh, the chemicals in the latest batch of... sorry."

Jake shifted his eyes side to side and tried a wary smile. "I guess Lou is right. It's all over now, after all."

He almost jumped out of his skin when Diane threw the box of tissues at the wall. It bounced back and skidded across the floor with one cardboard corner caved in. "Oh, it just makes me so mad! I want to - to rip out their eyeballs. Or... possibly something just as painful but less gross..."

"Memo to self, I really have to never get you mad at me," Jake said wonderingly.

She turned on him, finger brandished. "Don't you try to joke this off! I know how you feel. I know you." She played a tissue between her hands, twisting it around her fingers, and seemed to calm just a little. "When it happened, before - I thought - I think we both thought, me and Kyle - that we had done this to you. We'd taken this sweet, funny, naive guy and... well, turned him into a protocol-obsessed killing machine."

"Sweet and funny? You think that?" His brain belatedly caught up to the rest of what she'd said-- "Hey, I am not naive! Well, I'm not that naive. I'm really not. Am I? Stop looking at me like that."

Diane laughed. He felt the odd tension in the air ease, and supposed he really wasn't going to get an answer to that question that he'd like. He watched her pick up the tissue box and try to straighten it out, then finally give up on it and hide it under the lab bench again. "You can get off the table," she said, "Things all seem a-okay. Super, in fact." A flash of a smile. "Try not to get beat up tomorrow if they send you after two guys?"

"I'll try. Look, you wanna come get some lunch? I know it's early, but..."

She shook her head. "I should run your blood and get the numbers onto the computers. But maybe I'll come join you in quarter of an hour, huh?" She turned away, and he watched her sit down at the computer and start tapping on the keyboard, while he fastened the last few buttons on his shirt slowly.

He was turning to leave when she made a noise of frustration that drew him back. "What's up?"

She jumped slightly in her chair. "Oh! I thought you'd gone..." She beat at a key with her index finger. "These computers are so weird the last few weeks. I can't find anything wrong, and Tech Support say they can't find anything, and I guess you'd know how those guys know what they're doing, right? Oh, look - it's worked now." She laughed, and made to carry on.

"Let me take a crack at it," Jake suggested. "Maybe I can get them to co-operate."

She shrugged and pushed back from the desk. "Sure. Crack away, If you can fix it, I'll come to lunch. And I'll even let you eat something other than fruit for dessert."

"If that means 'yoghurt', no deal," he muttered, sliding into place in front of the offending machine. He focused his interface and delved into the workings of its electronic mind. "That is odd..."

"I knew it!"

"No, no, no - not odd. Bad. Really bad. Diane, I think we're gonna have to scratch lunch. In fact, I think we need Lou here, right now."

She gave a small gasp. "You think someone's been in my computers? Jake! Someone after the nanites?"

"It's..." He grimaced. "I don't know if I can say it's not that bad. I think it's more complicated... uh, I know whose handiwork this is. I know this guy's trail. I'm sure of it."

"Really?" she asked with surprise. "How? Who?"

"Diane... it's me."

***

Deputy Director Sleet walked into the lab just as Diane was picking up the scalpel. "What exactly do you people think you're doing?" he demanded, his corpse-like face actually animated in rage. "I submitted in writing a request for my team to extract the Agent Chip from Foley. Examining it could prove vital to our research! My team should be handling this - why, you could do incalculable damage, cause crucial data to be lost!"

"Good afternoon, Eustace," Lou said dryly. "Won't you join us?"

Diane put the scalpel down, and Jake rolled over and sat up. Kyle folded his arms.

Sleet's eyes narrowed. "Shouldn't Foley be under anaesthetic?"

"Observant of you," Lou commented. "On the other hand, I find your reaction particularly interesting to observe - especially taking into account what we found when we examined the chip that was removed from Agent Foley this morning."

"Nano-healing?" Jake prompted, seeing Sleet's eyes go sharply to his unmarked neck.

"Sorry about the improvisational theatre," Lou continued, "But we wouldn't want you making any claims that you didn't know exactly what additional program was embedded into that chip. Agent Foley?"

Jake slid off the exam table. Something in his face - or more likely it was just a memory of the guy he'd temporarily been, the one who'd been an efficient killer, because he had a hard time believing anyone could be that afraid of him, Jake Foley, geek extraordinaire - made Sleet lose what composure he had left. He made a bolt for the door.

Kyle was waiting for it, and intercepted him ready with an armlock and twisting manoeuvre that looked like it really hurt. Jake couldn't quite manage not to be too unduly gleeful about that, but then Kyle was smiling, too. Now there was a guy who could do scary pretty well.

"Going somewhere?" Kyle twisted Sleet's arm around until he got a choked cry of pain and Lou shot an arch look in their direction.

"I find that reaction even more interesting." Lou turned to address the camera that was so well hidden it was to all practical purposes invisible, and touched her hand to the wire at her ear. "Executive Director Warner? I believe I've made my point."

The cool female voice on the other side of the monitoring cameras responded dryly into Lou's earpiece, "I believe you have. If you could escort Mr Sleet to a cell, I'll see he gets all the TLC that he deserves."

Lou's delighted smile was positively feral. It only lasted a moment before melting back into her set professionalism as she nodded to Kyle, a gesture apparently enough to convey her superior's instructions because Kyle turned and marched Sleet out of the door. Outside, two more agents waited to lend a hand, and he left Sleet to their care.

Diane laughed with giddy relief, but Lou glared and swiped one hand sharply. Apparently the brass was still on the line.

"For the record, Lou," the cold-voiced Warner said, "I'm still a long way from convinced about having an agent around who's this easily compromised - against his will or not. Not even one as clever as Agent Foley."

"Compromised by another member of our agency," Lou said, her eyes on Jake. And he thought, that was a threat. He'd been meant to overhear it. Both women knew he could hear every word. "An outsider couldn't hope to gain access to try anything similar. Even in a worst case scenario, none of our enemies have the knowledge of nanotechnology we do."

"By happy accident, on this occasion," Warner said sharply, and cut the link.

Lou reached up and ripped the wire from her ear. "Switch off that camera," she ordered Jake.

He interfaced with it and did so, with some bemusement, leaving them alone and unmonitored. Given what he'd just overheard, he kind of hoped the brass wouldn't hold it against him.

"Now, that - that was worth seeing," Diane said, still jubilant. "Do you think we can get copies of that tape? I want to watch the bit where Kyle did that arm-twisting thing again."

"This incident doesn't go beyond these walls," Lou said sharply. "We're very lucky that the brass let us prove Sleet's involvement in this. The only trace in the computer was Jake. Fortunately Jake was also the only person who could have caught it, and we had him back in time to do so."

"Pretty clever, really," Kyle said. "Who else do we have who is exempt from metal detector tests - and who has a data storage device implanted in his neck? Why risk selling out in person when you can program someone else to do the work for you, with none of the risk? I just wish we knew for sure how much he'd got out, and where it went."

"They'll get it from him. And we caught it early. The Agent Program worked against Sleet's own plans - Diane's been so damn pissed at Jake she hardly let him set foot in her labs for more than ten minutes while the chip was working." Lou arched an eyebrow at Diane, who ducked her head to hide her reddening face.

Jake cleared his throat. "Speaking of, when are you gonna get this chip out of my neck? I know it's broken, but it kind of freaks me out to think of it still in there. Plus, don't you - you know - want to get the evidence against Sleet?"

Diane beamed at him. "Oh, the chip's useless now." She blinked as all three of them looked sharply at her, and stuttered a bit before continuing on, "Um, I thought I'd outlined the process? In the lab report...? Oh. Well, I guess none of you here are scientists... and it's a really good job Sleet doesn't know the nanites like I do..."

"Diane!" Jake protested.

Lou said, less patiently, "Get on with it."

"Well, the nanites are self-replicating, which you know, but they need materials from an exterior source to do that. Now, normally they'd take that from the trace minerals present in Jake. We, um, had to include in the nanite reprogramming before the chip was implanted an instruction to leave the chip alone, but... we erased that new program a week ago with the rest of its associated instructions. So even if there had been anything left on the chip to salvage after the original damage, the nanites have had a week to scavenge it for materials." She shrugged. "I really doubt there's anything left by now. I mean, the data will be completely corrupted. And eventually there won't even be anything left of the chip any more. It'll maybe take a year or two - the nanites are tiny, after all - but, see?" She smiled at Jake. "Nothing to worry about." And to Lou and Kyle she added quickly, "But it was a really fantastic bluff. I mean, as far as knowledge regarding the physical effects of the nanites is concerned, Sleet's team? Pffft."

"The cut-throat, competitive world of the scientist. Such an ugly thing," Kyle murmured.

Lou's grin was huge.

"I was kinda looking forward to telling him," Diane said, almost regretfully. "Sleet, I mean, when he was all hot to get his 'precious chip back'." She made air-quotes as she mocked Sleet's graveyard tones. "I guess now I won't be allowed to... What's so funny?"

Kyle shook his head and leaned over resting his hands on his knees, trying to regain control. Lou rolled her eyes and exited herself from the room and, presumably, from all association with them by implication. And Jake surprised Diane into silence by folding her in a fond hug.

END