In a shadow war waged by a top secret agency, an infiltration op succeeds — only to go horribly wrong once the mission is done. How can an agent keep his partner alive when the only future his friend can see is no future at all?

 

by Randalynn

 

 

I knew she’d be up on the Overlook.

It was where she always went, when she needed to be alone. When she first came here, after the mission went south, nobody else involved with this royal clusterfuck knew where she would go to hide from her handlers. But the first time she ditched the protection detail and went AWOL when I was at the safe house, I knew exactly where she went. Maybe it was because I knew her before. Or maybe it was because, even then, months after it happened, I still knew her better than everyone else involved.

I stood for a while, watching her from behind. It was cold enough to wear a coat, being the end of October and up in the mountains. Her coat looked warm enough, even if it was something she never would have chosen for herself. It was a burgundy thing, with faux fur around the hood and at the bottom of each sleeve. It looked heavy enough, but she had her arms wrapped around her middle as if she was trying to keep warm.

Maybe she just needed a hug, and there was no one else around to give her one.

The jacket was almost form fitting, so it made her chest look bigger than it really was. I knew the fit wasn’t her choice, either. It was just another bad call by a handler trying to push her where she didn’t want to go. Usually, nobody pushed her hard enough to make her budge an inch, but at the same time, it was almost November, and nobody ever said she was stupid. So she wore the coat, even though she didn’t like it.

Below the jacket I could see her blue jeans and hiking boots, which was pretty much what she always wore. That part of her personal dress code was a minor victory on her part. But even something as “standard issue” as jeans couldn’t hide those hips, or the legs that went on longer than a pair of legs should, if all they were made for was walking.

They told me she always made a point of not giving a damn what she looked like. I knew there were whole closets full of skirts and dresses back at the country house, with the store tags still attached. Makeup was stacked on top of the vanity in department store bags, still sealed in its containers. I think she knew she couldn’t hide her body, no matter what she wore. But she still did whatever she could to avoid calling attention to her assets.

Of course, they did a good enough job calling attention to themselves.

She stood looking out over a cliff, with the whole valley spread out in front of her and below. The town was surrounded by dense forest, and as night fell, it became a glowing island in a sea of darkness. Lights were just starting to come on in some of the homes, and the main street glowed brighter with each passing minute. The air was so clear, you could almost see the bulb in every streetlight on Main Street, even from as high as we were.

I thought she was a little too close to the edge, especially after what the psych guys had told me when I’d gotten back to town. Even though I was pretty sure she wouldn’t jump, I knew her well enough to know that, as always, it was completely her decision. And after what she’d been through, I’m not sure I would have blamed her.

Maybe if she thought she was alone, she would have jumped. But I’d never been able to catch her off-guard in all the years I’d known her, and that night was no exception.

“Welcome back,” she said softly, without turning around. I could hear the small smile in her voice. “You were gone long enough.”

“A few weeks. Some things needed doing.”

“Chesbro wouldn’t tell me where you were. Controlling bastard. You’re still my partner. I’ve got a right to know.” She stopped hugging herself and stuck her hands in her pockets. “Are you just going to stand there and watch my back?”

“I don’t know,” I replied, smiling in spite of myself. “Isn’t that what I’ve always done?”

“Damn straight. In too many hot spots to count.” She looked down for a second, and I thought I heard her voice catch. “I wish you had other reasons for watching my back tonight ... besides looking at my ass.”

“Well, you know me. Never been one to turn down the tough jobs.” She shook her head, and I took a step towards her. “And like the saying goes, when the going gets tough ...”

“... the tough think about how easy it would be to bungee jump without a cord.” She heard what she said, then looked over her shoulder and smiled. “I wouldn’t, you know.”

“I know,” I said, even though I didn’t. “Giving up isn’t your style. Never has been.”

She turned to look back over the town. “Of course, this is something new, isn’t it? I’m not quite myself these days.” She froze for a second, then shrugged. “There’s a interesting thought. Maybe that’s a way out. After all, I’m not really me anymore. And if I’m not me, I could decide to jump without worrying about my style, or the lack of it. All bets would be off.”

“You haven’t changed as much as you think, Jack.” I took a few steps forward to stand beside her, and looked down on the town. “There’s still enough old soldier in you to head for higher ground when you feel like you’re under attack.”

“Three decades of military and intelligence work, boy and man,” she said, still looking away, not meeting my eye. “All packed into a body a little more than half that age ... with not an inch of boy or man left.”

“You’re still in there, you know.” I kept my voice light.

“You wouldn’t know it from looking at me.” She shivered and shook her head. “I mean ... Jesus, Dan, I look like a centerfold waiting to happen.”

I shrugged. “That’s what happens when you let a bunch of twenty-something tech geeks design a high school girl.”

We both went silent for a while. Then she spoke.

“They told me it would only be three months.” There was a touch of apology in her tone, and I wondered why. It was almost as if she was sorry for making a choice that made my life more difficult. “I wouldn’t have taken the mission if you hadn’t still been laid up from the knife fight with the Bosnian in Tel Aviv. You were in the hospital, and I was loose, and ... and it was only supposed to be three months.”

“I know,” I said softly, but she went on as if she didn’t hear.

“‘We need you,’ the Assistant Director said. ‘The country’s in danger,’ he said. ‘The Firm’s found a terrorist cell, run from a boarding school. They’re way too careful ... they’d suspect a new teacher coming on mid-year before you even unpacked, Jack. But we can get you in. In a way they’d never suspect!’”

Her voice took on a mocking tone. “‘New process, tested last year. The perfect disguise. Rewrite your DNA from the ground up. Think about it! Your skills in a teenaged body. Nobody would ever know. Completely reversible, of course.’”

“Of course, the kicker was that it was a girl’s school. So I had to be a girl.” Out of the corner of my eye, I watched her take a deep breath and let it out slowly. “For three months, at most.”

This time I didn’t say a word. I’d heard it all before, and she’d said it more than once, in more different ways than I could count. But she still needed someone to listen, and that’s what partners do.

Especially when there’s nothing else they can do.

“‘Not a problem,’ the psych boys said. ‘We tested you, you can handle it.’” She snorted. “Like they could really know ahead of time how a man could deal with losing a few decades — not to mention the body he lived them in. But hey, I was stupid. They needed me, and I thought I could handle it. ‘Besides,’ I told myself. ‘It’s only three months. How bad could it be?’”

She went quiet then, for a while. I’d heard her debrief for the mission, and I’d hacked the mainframe to watch the videos of her psych sessions. She was my partner, after all. She said it all before, a hundred times at least. But even months later, she still kept trying to explain ... to make the words come out in such a way that she could make sure everyone got it.

The fact that Jack kept trying to make people see what she was going through made it clear that she knew nobody understood ... and was starting to suspect that no one wanted to try.

“It wasn’t hell on Earth, I’ll give ‘em that. They said the process turned me into a girl, right down to bleeding every month.” Jack shook his head. “That was a treat. Still is. They said it gave me a ‘female brain,’ too, whatever the hell that is, so it was easy for me to blend in. And to be fair, three months of short skirts, girl talk, and slumber parties wasn’t exactly a tour of duty in the Afghan mountains.”

“There were some right bitches in the school, though. Made the mistake of trying to show me who was in charge.” She grinned, and a bit of the old Jack peered out from the young girl’s face. “But I’ve been worked over by drill sergeants that make those girls look like fluffy bunnies. They might as well have thrown marshmallows at me for all the good it did ‘em.”

The grin faded. “But after a while, seeing this face every time I looked in a mirror ... it started to eat at me, Dan. Being a girl in a school full of girls, feeling the things they felt? It started whittling away at who I was inside, a little at a time ... and it scared me.”

Another long silence. She sighed. “Before I agreed to do this, I did some asking around about the guy they transformed last year. He was in high school, and Doc Phillips said he tested well on being able to handle the change, too. And yes, Chesbro didn’t lie. The kid did make it back.”

“But one of the tech guys let it slip that he didn’t quite come back all the way. Playing both sides of the fence left him confused inside, and he’s still seeing a shrink to try and sort it all out. I think the word the guy used was haunted. He said it was like the ghost of the girl the kid became for a summer hunkered down in his memory and took up permanent residence.”

“But me? I wasn’t worried. I wasn’t a teenager. Hell, I had forty-three years of manhood to hang on to. Test or no test, I was who I was. I knew I could hang on until the mission was over, and I did. And after they pulled me out, I wanted to get back in my own skin so bad ...”

“Of course, the skin I was in had other ideas.”

She stopped, took a deep breath and went on. “It’s been six months since we caught the bastards. Six months since they found that they couldn’t change me back. And six fucking months of them trying to figure out why.”

Jack turned to me, her face a sad mixture of anger and despair. “And you know what pisses me off the most? Even though they say they’re working on finding a way to bring me back, they keep trying to get me to accept what I am now. It’s like a perpetual chorus of ‘I enjoy being a girl,’ sung by every shrink and therapist they could con into making the attempt. I think ... I think they know they can’t bring me back, and they’re only going through the motions until I decide to just be the girl they made me AND SHUT THE HELL UP!”

She screamed the last part out over the town, her eyes closed and her hands wrapped tight into fists. We waited until the echo died down, and I watched her pull herself back together and shove her hands into her coat pockets before I spoke.

“Would that really be so bad?”

She looked at me, anger twisting her features into a mask. “You, too? You, of all people —”

“Not ‘me, too,” I replied, trying to keep my voice even. “This has nothing to do with them. I’ve got my own reasons for asking, and I’ll tell ‘em to you — after you’ve answered a few questions of mine.” She turned to walk away, and I reached out and touched her shoulder.

“Hey!” Jack turned back, fist raised — and stopped cold when she saw the look on my face.

“Is it really so much to ask, Jack? I’m your partner. You owe me something for that. After all the years we spent fighting side by side ... after all the places we’ve been, the things we’ve seen, and all the shitholes we had to dig ourselves out of with only each other to count on ... is it too much to ask you to answer a few fucking questions ... from me?”

She looked into my eyes, surprised at the bitterness in my voice. It surprised me, too. I didn’t really know it was there. She lowered her fist, and her shoulders slumped. “You’re right, Dan. I’m sorry. Ask.”

I let things settle for a minute before speaking again.

“Would it really be so bad to just accept it?” Jack nodded. “Why?”

“Because I look in the mirror every morning, and it’s not me looking back. It’s some girl — and she’s young enough to be the daughter I never had. All of the sudden, I’m a fucking cheerleader. The combat-ready ex-Marine, turned into a teenaged Barbie doll.”

“They needed a combat-ready ex-Marine that looked like a teenaged Barbie doll.” I spoke softly and clearly, my eyes not leaving hers. “That’s why they made you stronger and faster when they changed you, Jack. They needed James Bond in a Supergirl suit, and that’s what you signed up for.”

“That’s not the point! It never was.”

I just looked at her, and she sighed. “Look, I did my duty, like I’ve done all my life, and I wind up losing everything I was. I’m not Supergirl, but even if I was, it wouldn’t be enough to pay me back for what they did. I wouldn’t give a damn if I could leap tall buildings in a single bound and eat uranium for breakfast now. This is NOT me. No matter what I look like, no matter what they made me, I’m not a girl, and I never will be. If I do what they want, if I break down and actually accept this, then ...”

“Then what? You’re gonna lose YOU? You’re still my partner, Jack. I’m not having this conversation with Cindy Lou Who, you stubborn son of a bitch! I’m talking to the guy who’s kept me alive since long before we joined the Firm. The body you’re in now ... it changes nothing.”

“It changes everything!”

“How, man?” She cocked her head, and I sighed. “Look, it’s not a hard question. We’ve seen guys come off battlefields with arms and legs blown off, with so many holes in their bodies they were hanging to life by a thread. A few months later, and they’re in rehab, figuring out how to get along without the parts they left behind. I’m not saying it’s easy for them, because it’s not. It takes guts and commitment to move forward, but they don’t just give up. You ... I know you’re not a coward. You never give up.” I lowered my voice. “They find a way, Jack. Why can’t you?”

“Look, it’s different for them,” she said, “They’re trying to find a way to get on with their lives, to move forward, and I ...”

“You what?”

She paused to think, and then continued. “I’m trying to hang onto mine. Or what’s left of it.”

Her tone was matter-of-fact, as if it was the most obvious answer in the world. The fact that the voice behind it trembled just a little made me see that she knew it wasn’t.

“No, Jack,” I shook my head. “That’s bullshit, and you know it. You can’t hang onto your old life, because other than me, the Firm, and agency business, there’s nothing left to hang on to. Even if there were friends or relatives out there after a few decades of black ops, none of them would believe you’re Jack Murphy — even if you could tell them the truth, which you can’t. Chesbro says the whole process is top secret, need to know.”

“So this is you, Jack. Like it or not, you are a girl. You’ve been bitching and moaning about it since you found out you couldn’t change back, but the fact is, you volunteered. You’ve been a soldier long enough to know what a stupid idea that is, but you did it anyway. Now you’re stuck looking like a prom queen, and you hate it. You put your manhood on the line, and you lost. But think about it for a second. It’s not the worst battlefield injury either of us have seen, is it?”

Her bottom lip quivered, and she turned away.

“I know you’re wounded, Jack,” I said softly. “I know you’re hurting. We both know this wasn’t what you wanted. But fighting the way things are now isn’t going to help anything. You need to accept your Purple Heart, throw your shoulders back, and move forward. But you won’t. So where does that leave you?”

She stayed silent. I turned to look out over the town and took a step closer to the edge.

“I said I had my own reasons for asking these questions,” I said softly. “I need to know if you can get past this. I need to know if you can move forward — if it’s possible for a guy like you to let go of the past and go on living.”

“Why?”

“Because I have cancer.” The words hung in the air between us for a minute, and I sighed. “Chesbro wouldn’t tell you, but I’ve been in the hospital, getting tested. It’s advanced, and it’s terminal. I’ve got a few weeks, maybe less. In fact, they’re amazed I’m walking around.”

“Oh, God ... Dan.” She moved closer to me, and I felt her hand touch mine. It was an oddly feminine gesture for someone who fought what she’d become as hard as Jack did. “I’m sorry.”

“The Firm says they can cure me,” I went on, my tone as conversational as I could make it. “But the only way to be sure it won’t come back is with a total genetic rewrite, top to bottom, with the clock turned back and safeguards in place.”

“I’d have to be a girl ... just like you are now.” I took a deep breath. “That’s why I had to ask — why I needed to know.”

“Know what?”

“If you can get past it. If you can move on.” I turned my head and looked down at her. “I mean, look at you, Jack. You’re almost thirty years younger, and they made you stronger and faster than you ever were, with all your skills and knowledge intact. But the girl part has got you beat. You aren’t less than you were. Far from it. You’re just different. But it’s eating you alive anyway, to the point where you’re thinking eating your own gun is actually the best choice you’ve got.”

“What’re you talking about?”

I turned to face her and looked into her eyes. “When I came back from the hospital, Chesbro told me you come up here every night, and you stay a little longer each time. The psych guys and the handlers think you’re working your way up to jumping, but they don’t know how to get you to stop. I don’t know, either, but I’m hoping I can.”

She froze, and so did I. Then she turned away and folded her arms. I waited, watching her carefully to see what she’d do next. When she spoke it was almost too soft to hear.

“Why, Dan?” Her voice trembled. “Why can’t you just walk away and let me ... make the call?”

“Because I’m a selfish bastard, damn it,” I replied. “Because you’re my friend, and my partner, and the closest thing I have to a family.” I took a deep breath. “And because if you die ... I die, too.”

“Why?” It came out a whisper.

“I need to know if you can do this — if you can live ... like this. If you can’t ... if the strongest man I’ve ever known isn’t strong enough to be a woman ... than neither am I. If you jump, I’m jumping, too.”

She turned and started at me, too shocked to speak. I stared back, and she could see the determination burning in my eyes. “I’m not going to spend my last weeks in a bed feeling my body eat itself alive. And I’m not going to have the Firm fix me the only way they can, just so I can spend the next few months fighting a fight I know I can’t win — because if you jump off this cliff, you’re admitting you’re beaten. And after everything we’ve been through, Jack ... I know you’re a better man than I am. If you could move on with life as a woman, you would. And if you can’t ... that means I couldn’t, either.”

The quiet between us made the whole forest feel like a freeze-frame in a foreign film. Jack looked up at me, half frightened and half confused. I took a step toward her, a little closer to the edge.

“So what’s it gonna be, Jack? You know I’ll back your play, whatever it is. We’re partners, and that’s how it’s gonna stay. But it’s go time, now. They want to start the process on me tonight. We’re cutting it kinda close as it is. But I won’t do it unless you’re watching my back, because that’s how it’s always been with us.”

I reached out my hand and took hers. It was small, with thin, delicate fingers, and softer than I’d expected. “I’ll follow your lead, just like always, but you need to make the call. We either move forward together, over the edge ... or we move forward into the future, and take whatever comes ... together.”

“So? What’ll it be?”

Douglas Chesbro looked at the video window on his monitor, at the two girls in the hospital room. Jackie had actually put on a dress to welcome Danielle to her new life, and had been mercilessly teased about it from the minute Dani had opened her eyes after the procedure — especially since Jack still wore those stupid hiking boots. Dani had all of the enhancements Jackie had, and both of them seemed to be doing just fine.

It was dark enough outside to turn the window behind his desk into a pale mirror. His eyes rose from the monitor and caught his reflection, starting a flood of regrets that stopped seconds later when he saw the door swing open behind him.

“Happy, Doug?” Declan Phillips stood in the doorway. Chesbro knew how to read people, a skill acquired from years of field work before he wound up behind a desk. But he didn’t need that expertise to know the doctor was angry.

He turned from the monitor and leaned back in his chair.

“Tell me something, Doctor,” he said, his tone conversational. “In all the years we’ve worked together, have you ever known me to be happy?”

“Not especially, no. But after the stunt you just pulled, I thought you might be just a little pleased with yourself.”

“Stunt?”

Phillips walked over and tossed a heavy file onto Chesbro’s desk. “This file is a joke, and a bad one. We both know Dan Pendleton didn’t have cancer. He was as healthy as he could be, considering how many years he’s put himself in harm’s way.”

“So?”

“So you violated all manner of protocols, falsified test results, and told a healthy man he was dying ... just to get him to agree to a totally unnecessary sex change.”

Chesbro pursed his lips and looked up into the doctor’s eyes.

“Yes. Yes, I did.”

Phillips leaned over the desk, deliberately invading the Director’s space. “Why?”

“To save Jack Murphy. And Dan Pendleton, too, come to think of it.”

The doctor pulled back, surprised. “What the hell are you talking about?”

The Director eyed him for a moment, then waved a hand to the chair near his desk. Phillips sat slowly, and Chesbro sighed.

“Before we sent Murphy on his mission, you tested the hell out of him,” he replied. “Every test you gave him said he could handle being a woman for three months, and even adapt and grow into it if something happened to keep him one. You told the Assistant Director he was a good candidate, and the AD gave the go-ahead ... without bothering to consult me. By the time I knew what the hell you were doing, it was too late to stop you. Murphy was already a girl.”

“Why stop us? Murphy did his job. He got the bad guys.”

“That was never in doubt,” Chesbro said. “But the AD never worked with Jack Murphy before. He was new. He didn’t know just how stubborn a man like Jack is. Your tests didn’t take into account the one personality trait that made him our best agent for twenty years, and a damn good soldier in the years before that. He doesn’t know the meaning of a ‘no win’ scenario. When faced with a challenge, he doesn’t surrender. He finds a way to beat the odds.”

“So when the return process failed, Jack didn’t give in. He ... she doesn’t know how to. She hung on tight to who she used to be, and was determined to tough it out until you could fix the problem and bring the old Jack back.”

“But we can’t fix it,” Phillips said, a touch of frustration in his voice. “We don’t even know why it’s not working. It should have worked perfectly.”

Chesbro nodded. “And Jack’s no fool. She began to realize that you were lying to her about two months back. She started seeing just how impossible escape was going to be. She was, after all, trapped in her own skin, with no way out she could see. She couldn’t give up the fight, but she also knew she couldn’t win. That’s why suicide started looking attractive — less like surrender and more like escape.”

“That’s where Pendleton came in. He’s been partners with Murphy for so long, they’re practically married. He watched Jack getting more and more withdrawn, and started getting worried.”

“Six weeks back, we gave Pendleton the same set of personality tests we gave to Murphy,” the director said, swiveling his monitor and hitting a few keys. “We told him it was to provide a control ... a baseline. The results were surprising, to say the least.”

“I never heard about this.”

“That’s because I never told you. It is my agency, you know. We’re supposed to be good at keeping secrets.” Chesbro leaned forward, turning the monitor to face Phillips. “The tests showed that, deep inside his mind, Pendleton was more female than male, and way more female than Jack ever was. He’d never admit it, not even to himself, but when Pendleton was questioned under hypnosis, it was clear that he’d realized this about himself when he was very young.”

He sat back in his chair and let the doctor look at the test results on the monitor. In a second window on the screen was a subtitled video of Dan, obviously in a trance.

“When he first told his parents,” Chesbro continued, “his father refused to accept it, and kept abusing him physically and emotionally for years until Dan buried that part of himself so deeply, he couldn’t even remember why his father hated him so much. That’s part of what made him such a great soldier and a good agent. He kept trying to prove to his long-dead Dad that he was the man his father had always wanted him to be.”

“So, I had Jack, who was so mission-focused that he started thinking death before dishonor was a decent bargain. And I had Dan, who was really a woman deep inside, but was so far in denial that he could practically see the pyramids. He wouldn’t even think about going there unless he had a damned good reason — thanks to the stupidity of a dead man’s anger.”

“So I lied. I told Pendleton he had cancer, showed him the fake test results, and told him what he had to do to fix it.” The Director looked up at Phillips, and smiled. “It took him less than thirty seconds to say ‘bullshit.’”

“He knew he didn’t have cancer?”

“With no physical symptoms and a terminal prognosis of only a few weeks? I knew he’d see through it before I opened my mouth. My agents aren’t stupid, Doctor. They can’t afford to be when lives are on the line.” He waved at the desk. “That file is just in case Jack ever comes looking.”

“Then why ...?”

“Because I told him what I’d already figured out — that in Jack’s head, the mission was always going to be ‘hold the line,’ even though the battle was already lost. We both knew Jack well enough to know she’d keep holding the line until it killed her, but we needed a way to get Jack to change that mission. We needed her to accept what she’d become before suicide became her idea of an honorable retreat.”

Chesbro turned his chair around and looked into the eyes of his reflection. “The only way to make Jack abandon the first mission was to give her another mission — one with a much higher priority.” He looked at the Doctor’s reflection, his voice level and emotionless. “We had to put the only person in the world Jack cared about in danger, and make Jack’s acceptance of her new body the key to keeping Dan alive.”

“Pendleton agreed, of course. He had to. He couldn’t let his best friend die because he consciously couldn’t bear the thought of becoming a woman ... especially since a part of him he wouldn’t even admit to having wanted to be the girl Jack was with all her heart.”

He hit the key that brought the video feed from the hospital room up on the monitor again. Phillips watched the two girls talking, Dani on the bed and Jackie sitting on the edge of it. They both looked a little embarrassed and a touch awkward, but there was a happiness there, too, because neither of them would be dying any time soon. Jack’s mission had been changed, Dan had what he didn’t even know he wanted, and the road ahead would be made easier for both of them, because they had each other. He sighed.

“You’re still a manipulative son of a bitch, Doug.”

Chesbro turned his chair around and looked up at the physician.

“It’s what I do, Doctor. In fact, it’s the reason I’m sitting behind this desk. I look at situations and I send people out there to fix ‘em, however they can. A lot of times, I send them off to die, because I know that’s the only way to make things right. I know they’re going to die, but I send ‘em anyway. Because if I don’t, alot of other people will die instead — innocents who didn’t volunteer to be in harm’s way. The people we’re sworn to protect.”

He jerked a thumb at the monitor. “Those two have saved a lot of lives over the years. I wasn’t about to let either of them die ... and Pendleton would have died inside and eventually eaten his own gun if Jack had managed to kill herself on that mountain. I couldn’t let that happen.”

“You really care.” Phillips looked at Chesbro, and smiled. “Damn, you really do care about your people.”

“Don’t be stupid, Doctor.” The Director looked down at his desk. “It’s not about caring. They were my best agents, and they will be again. It’s not going to take long before they settle into being the women they’ve become, and having two skilled agents that look like high school girls, think like Jack Bauer, and fight like Rambo is going to make my job a whole lot easier in the years to come. That’s my motivation.”

Phillips stood and picked up the file from the Director’s desk.

“Whatever makes you feel better, Doug. Lie to yourself if you want. It doesn’t change the truth.”

The doctor turned and walked to the door, hesitated for a second, then let himself out.

Chesbro turned the monitor back to face him. Jackie was helping her partner to the bathroom, and he sighed.

‘He’s wrong. In this job, I can’t afford to care,’ he thought. ‘There’s too much blood on my hands already, and if I start to care, I’ll have to carry grief around, too. Then I’d never be able to sit behind this desk and send another man out to die.’

But even as he thought it, Doug knew he was lying. For the first time in a long time, he was happy. He’d managed to save two agents after so many others had died under his command, and they’d both have years to live, even if they decided to get out of the business and retire.

Retirement. Doug watched the empty room, waiting for the two girls to come back. He thought about how much longer he could do this job, and what he planned to do when the time came for him to leave it.

There had always been another reason why he’d fought tooth and nail to have this technology in his agency’s hands. To keep it secret from the rest of the government, and to put it to good use protecting the country? Yes, that was certainly important, definitely primary. And it worked well. Aside from Jack, no one had ever been trapped on the wrong side of the gender divide before. So fulfilling the mission? Yes, the technology helped him do his job. That was a given.

But the other reason he wanted the process was locked in the bottom drawer of his filing cabinet, in a folder labeled Deborah Anne Cheswick. She was a pretty blonde teenager who lived only in Doug’s heart, for now. But someday, when the time came to give this chair to somebody else and step down, she’d be waiting. And Doug’s last order as Director would be the beginning of his last day on Earth, and the start of a new life — the one he’d wanted since he was four years old, and never thought he could have.

He saw the partners come back into the room, then reached out and touched Dan’s image on the screen.

“Someday ...” he whispered, smiling just a little. “Someday ...”

Douglas Chesbro watched for a few more minutes and thought about tomorrows, both theirs and his. Then he shook his head, shut down the video feed, and went back to keeping his country safe.

© 2010, all rights reserved. Posted with permission of the author.