[Zlataslawa]

stupid you just have to say it.

***********************************


Tina was angry, and it showed, because the moment they got back to her flat she'd stormed off to change, then came flying out of the bedroom, demanding a spar by the expedient of trying to maim him. Because for all that she was sophisticated, educated, sly, cunning and a brilliant hacker in her own right, deep down she was still the girl picked up by a criminal concern for her ability to bring a knife to a gunfight and still win.

And she'd taught him most everything she knew.

He dove out of her way, rolling and coming up with his own knives out, blocking her lunges with his own, because there was no way to play a defensive game with her. And part of him had missed this. Because from the age of fourteen to seventeen he really had been her protege. She'd taken that awkward teenager, moulding Connor Jacob Temple-Thompson into Jake Thompson.

"You know," he offered, "You could work your temper out on my hide in a way that doesn't risk us both being sliced to pieces." He slipped under her guard to score a thin line on her shoulder that cut the strap on her sports bra as he did so.

He paid for that with a shallow slice along his ribs, but he admitted to himself, she really was too good to play those sorts of games with. At least, while she was angry enough to damage him. "Ruining my clothing will not put me in a better mood," she snapped, a few broad cuts from her forcing him to dive and roll out of her way.

"Maybe," he said with a smirk, "But it makes the game more fun for me." It was. It was fun. nearly a decade, all the guilt and fear and self-hatred engendered by what he'd done, but he was still what she'd made him, and it was nice not to hide anymore, nice not to have to be Connor Temple to the hilt anymore. He closed with her, trying to pin her, but she was fast, evading him and scoring what would have been a hit on his back if he hadn't been wearing a leather jacket over the red and black t-shirt underneath.

She looked gorgeous in the spandex workout clothes, and he'd done this before, letting her wear out her fury in the fight before working off the rest of the excess anger in sex. He let himself think about it, letting her know he was thinking about it, and only a short time later she took advantage of his distraction to get him pinned. "You're letting your libido get away from you," she said, tracing the knife over him. For the most part she wasn't particularly creative, but she'd left scars on him from mixing knifeplay with sex.

A flick of her wrists and they'd landed with a thud in the target on the other side of the room, and she was rocking her hips over his. The cut across his chest stung, but he relegated it to that part of him where he could ignore it, and paid more attention to arching up into each downward stroke of her hips.

Just as he was reaching for her breasts, the door to the flat slammed open. "Christina Malvern, you are under arrest for theft, aiding and abetting criminal acts by terrorist organisations, aiding and abetting criminal acts by international criminal organisations, trespassing, assault, murder in the first degree, murder in the third degree . . ." the list was a long one, some of the things even Connor wasn't aware of. Then again, she'd been doing it for years before he came along, and had clearly been doing a lot more since. "Identity theft, falsification of government records . . ." he'd wondered about that, and how she'd become Christine Johnson, and it looked like they were finally coming up on the last few charges, which had to do with him, ". . . and statutory rape of a minor."

She was pulled up and dragged off snarling defiance. He braced himself for what he knew was coming. He might yet get out of this, he might not. There were some wheels he'd put in motion to get himself out, but it wouldn't necessarily be with the efficiency that Lester might have achieved. He certainly couldn't rely on Lester for this. All he could do was hope that his few contacts came through. "Connor Temple-Thompson, you are under arrest for theft, trespassing, murder in the second degree, murder in the third degree, aiding and abetting . . ." He let it roll over him. He'd heard the charges before once, when he was a terrified seventeen-year-old. But things were different now, and he was too old to play sobbing innocent.

He was bundled off into a separate car, indicating he understood the rights as read to him, and settling back for an uncomfortable wait. At the police station he was tossed into an interrogation room, mirrors and uncomfortable furniture and all. It brought back the memories of being in one before, with Duncan, Stephen and Cutter. Even further back, when he was just a teenager, terrified of what he'd become and where everything was going.

Left cuffed to the table in the mirrored room, he sighed, leaned back and began to go through dinosaur species starting at the phylum down. He vaguely wondered what the people no doubt watching were going to make of that. Out of boredom he threw in "Chordata, Aves, Galliformes, Phasianidae, Meleagridinae, Meleagris, Gallopavo," wondering if it would be noticed.

An angry-looking policewoman stormed in. "You know, I don't care what deal you cut with MI5 when you were a kid, we've done the work, we've caught the pair of you, and I will be damned if I let some government operatives who think they're too good for the likes of me let you waltz off with a slap on the wrist."

He hadn't expected such a rapid response to the feelers he'd sent out. It had been years, he'd been sure what little pull he had left from turning state's evidence would have mostly evaporated. "They've been making themselves unpopular around here?" he asked her.

"You're going to shut up and answer my questions," she snapped. "And then you're going to spend the rest of your life in prison for helping get a bunch of people killed that never did a thing to anyone."

He took a closer look at her. "You lost someone to one of our clients," he said. "I'm sorry."

"Clients," she snorted. "Fancy way to describe a pack of bloody monsters."

"They were our clients," he said calmly, "They paid us for our services, we did the job. And I am sorry."

The door opened and a new voice broke in. "I'll thank you to stop interrogating my agent, detective."

So, that was why the rapid response. "Yates, I've told you before, I'm not your agent. I just wanted out."

"And I told you before, Thompson, we could use someone like you," Lucas Yates said. "Let me put this another way. You're going to prison unless you let me sign you on. Consider it blackmail. You know you won't last a week before you find yourself killing someone in self-defense."

"You're not taking him anywhere!" snapped the detective.

Yates sighed. "I do hate doing this, but what he and Malvern got into of late is above your pay grade. It's above mine, actually, but since I was one of the people who brought in the bulk of the group last time, I've got the chance to wrap up my case once and for all." Then he turned to Connor. "Look, we've wanted you since you were seventeen. You're damned good and what you did here, making up a trail for us to track down Ms Malvern is exactly the sort of thing we need. Jake-"

"It's Connor," he said firmly.

***********************************

"I don't bloody believe it," Danny said, staring at the computer in front of him.

"What?" Sarah asked from where she'd been fiddling with a pen.

Becker was just leaning against the wall, wondering if the ARC would ever feel right again, now that Connor had turned out to be some sort of rat-mole for Christine Johnson all along, Cutter was dead and Abby was drifting around like the ghost of herself. Not that he could blame her. If he'd lost his entire team the way she had he'd be pretty lost himself.

Danny continued, "I just got an email from one of my mates back on the force. He remembered Con -- Jake," they'd all taken to differentiating between who they'd thought the young man was and who he'd turned out to be, "And it seems he and Johnson have just been brought in on a bunch of charges, everything from helping the Mafia and IRA to murder to trespassing and . . . statutory rape?" Danny finished, sounding a little odd. "Seems she got her claws into Connor early. He was fourteen."

"Fourteen?" Sarah said, hurrying over to read over Danny's shoulder. "God, do you suppose . . ." she trailed off.

Abby looked oddly hopeful. "Maybe it's like Stephen and Helen," she said, joining them. "Helen got her hooks into Stephen and sort of . . . confused him."

"What assurance do I have that you weren't to blame?"

"You know quite well I was in too deep for that."

"I'm not sure of that, Abby," Becker said cautiously. "If he'd been in this for that long, I'm not sure you could even really expect he's got a normal perspective on ethics."

Danny looked sad. "You see it sometimes. Kids who could've been good, but they never got a chance because someone got to them."

"I just . . ." she looked close to tears. "He said he loved me once. I was going to fall, and he wouldn't let go. Even when he knew that I was going to pull him over with me, he didn't care and he said he loved me. And then I walked away, acting like being his girlfriend would be the worst thing in the world."

Sarah hurried to her. "Oh, Abby, don't start thinking this was your fault."

As the day passed, though, Becker wondered. Because Connor or Jake or whoever he was, didn't add up. If he'd been Johnson's pet the whole time, the anomaly mission should have had her at the helm from the beginning. It would have been too easy at the start for that to happen. So why hadn't it? Of course, Connor had said something about thinking she was dead, but the role he'd played all this time didn't make sense unless he was sort of playing at sleeper agent.

But what Abby had said, and he had no reason to disbelieve her, that Connor had been willing to be pulled over a cliff rather than let Abby fall, which was the sort of thing he'd seen time and again from the techie, didn't tally either with Jake Thompson. Those risks had had no calculation to them. There'd been nothing Becker could see that would be an ace in the hole. And during the mess with the mould, he could have taken Johnson's side then, got her in, made her coup so much more legitimate and thorough, and instead he'd been busy giving himself hypothermia to kill the thing. But he could have been biding his time, unsure of making his move.

Every argument either way had a counterargument, and he simply had no way of knowing whether Jake was real or Connor. They'd both seemed equally real, and entirely different, save for those flashes he'd seen from time to time of one in the other. Connor's affability in Jake when they'd sparred, Jake's sharpness and slightly amused smirk when they'd gone to rescue Rex together. Connor's intensity at his devices appearing on the trail of the terror birds, Jake's deadly intent making a showing a few times when Connor had shot something about to take a bite from someone.

They were the same person, and damned if he could tell which one was more real than the other.