Enhanced Methods Day 03

"Please..." she begged weakly, tears reappearing in her stinging eyes, her tongue aching and sore... "Don't kill me...I swear...I swear I don't know what the Godspike is..."

"Of course you don't," said Scratch. He spoke with a voice as cool as a morgue. He was slowly pressing hollow-point bullets into a pistol magazine.

"I swear..."

"So do I," he said. Another round clicked into place. "I could hardly care less about the Godspike. Or you."

"...*why?*" she whispered finally.

"Because what I do care about," he said, "is Jerry Hardesty. And when he picks up his phone, and gets the videos of what we've been doing to you, he'll kick through Barcelona Cathedral and destroy his way across Spain to get here."

Dongle squeaked. Her heart iced over. She couldn't feel her fingers. It was good she was already lying down.

"No sanction, no backup, no chance," said Broley, slapping the magazine into a Beretta 92 ending in a wicked silencer. "And then I'm going to kill him."

She was startled by an explosion, and a shattering of glass.

"That'll be him," said Broley, slowly standing up. "Sweet dreams."

Broley checked his watch as he strode out into the lobby. "You're late," he said, not looking up, "to your own funeral. That's very upsetting, Agent--shit."

He found himself face-to-face, not with the enraged, unthinking, maddened figure of Agent Heretic, but the black-coated, blue-eyed, silent-footed Agent Crucible.

"Goddamn it..." said Scratch. "...goddamn it."

"Don't cry," said Crucible. "You hate me too, right?"

They drew.

Outside, the van turned the corner containing the "anti-sonofabitch squad" Broley had kept waiting in a nearby warehouse. It rounded the corner and screeched to a halt behind a junker parked across the alley. In the rearview mirror, the driver saw a slender, beautiful man in a red leather jacket runway-stride out from behind a truck, with a smile and cell phone. He speed dialed 1.

The C4 in the junker annihilated the van.

All hell was breaking loose outside. An explosion, at least one firefight, she was sure she even heard a brawl involving blunt instruments and random furniture...Dongle curled up as much as she could. Bullets punctured the walls of the room she was in. She went to her happy place, which she tearfully realized was Darnassus. She cowered when she heard the door kicked in, but even as it fell off its hinges she opened one eye and watched.

The end of a long sniper rifle protruded inward, followed by the barrel, stock and owner. He was young with short, military-cut blond hair in black military fatigues, and he stalked into the room with perfect precision, confidence, and discretion. She recognized him as Balleraphon, the NCC's resident Counterterrorist.

He looked at her like she was exactly where he expected to find her. And carefully creeping to her bedside, he wordlessly checked her for injuries, wrapped her in her sheet, and carried her out again.

---

--One week later--

Dongle adjusted herself and scurried out of the elevator. She patted down the business skirt nervously before clipping down the hall to a familiar room. G36. She pushed the blue button.

The rooms at the Clocktower Hotel that housed NCC personnel were a little different. The ringers had "door-tones." She knew this one was a brief drum theme.

"'sopen," muttered a voice from inside.

She pushed the green button. The door slid open.

Heretic sat on the edge of his bed. He was armorless and shirtless, and a chain hung around his neck. Next to him on the night table sat a Japanese marble soda. The place was in perfect order, decorated with tasteful Asian artifacts, and ornamental Far Eastern martial arts weapons. He was the picture of injured dignity. When he saw her, he sighed without sighing, and silenced the MP3 player with a nearby remote.Dongle stood before the monster that loved her.

"You've been avoiding me," he murmured.

"I'm sorry," she said softly.

"You're sorry," he said. "*You're* sorry."

She wanted to dart forward and touch his shoulder tenderly. Her hand refused to do so and she couldn't bring herself to approach him. She folded her hands nervously instead. "It's not your fault, I know you tried to..." she trailed off. Then, "listen...you heard the report..."

"Saw the report," he said.

"Yeah...well...um..." she stammered, "I just wasn't trained to resist...to...you know, stand up to...an interrogation like that..."

"I know," said Heretic. "You were brainwashed. I get it."

"Right, and it was a, you know, a trauma, and there are issues I have to deal with now," she explained, wandering herself away from him uncomfortably to innocently look at things.

Jerry said nothing. His gaze didn't chase her.

"They gave me an aversion, Jerry!" she said defensively. "An aversion to...um...men. So...I need you to understand."

"You need me to stay away," he said.

"No..." There was a ratchet-clicking noise behind him. He shot to his feet ready to leap over the bed and kill. Whatever threat he was expecting, what he saw turned out to be Dongle's big eyes looking back at him, and the pair of handcuffs she had used to secure herself to his metal bedrail. "...I need you to fix it."

Some improvised or concealed weapon dropped from his hand.

"Hmm..." he said.