| Subject: Chapter Five/ The End |
Author:
grit kitty
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Date Posted: 19:02:10 03/12/01 Mon
In reply to:
grit kitty
's message, "Learning Birkoff" on 18:56:34 03/12/01 Mon
~~~~
FIVE
Thirteen discs.
Jason watched them all.
Birkoff, working, talking to friends, working, flirting with girls, working, eating, working, playing with computer equipment, working, working, working…
Most centered around Comm; the clearest images and sounds. One short clip had been a grainy, fisheye view from inside the mission van. The audio pickup garbled most of the soundtrack, but Jason could tell Birkoff had been frightened, voice panicked, crying out for help from Nikita. He’d ducked behind the bench and the pop pop pop! of gunfire crackled through poor audio. Birkoff had stood up and screamed, firing a handgun until it clicked, empty, yet he kept pulling the trigger.
Jason couldn’t see who had died. He didn’t want to see, didn’t need to see. He felt no pity for the corpse; the dead man didn’t matter. It was near the end of the last disc; he paused the machine and listened to his own heartbeat for a long while, speeded up in sympathy to the panic spewed forth on the wall. The smell of warm plastic and electronics radiated from the machine. He’d been sitting there for hours.
Without thought, Jason pressed the play button.
The last clip on the thirteenth disc was only seconds long. The camera had been mounted at desk height, aimed right at Birkoff. Jason recognized it had been taken shortly before he’d died from the glasses and hair. Birkoff’s face had that intent frown Jason could now identify as intense concentration; he was lost in the hunt. Walter walked up behind Birkoff in the picture.
“You still at it?”
Birkoff didn’t react. It seemed that Walter’s voice had taken some circuitous route around the room before it had reached Birkoff’s ears, for at last he said, “Did you say something?”
“No. It’s all right. What ya workin’ on?”
“Pull back from the Islamabad Mission.”
“Find anything?” Walter asked. He got no answer, and continued in a different vein. “Birkoff, did you ever think about going out for a little walk? You know, stretch your legs a little bit. Get a few rays on that pasty mug of yours.”
Birkoff looked up from his keyboard and right at Jason. He pointed to what seemed to be Jason’s left ear. “Would you hand me that thermo-enhancer there?”
“Yeah, sure.” Walter walked in front of the camera, blacking it out.
The disc ended. Light faded, his window on the past closed and became a mundane wall once more.
Jason stacked the discs carefully. He stood up, put his hands at the small of his back and stretched back, hard, and heard a few pops of protest. He looked around, and the room had not changed: practical furniture, blank white walls, and a door. The knob turned under his hand, the door swung open soundlessly. Jason paused, looked over his shoulder. The room hadn’t changed one bit. His head spun and chattered with the kaleidoscope images of a jumbled, difficult past.
He walked through the door and shut it behind him.
~~
Munitions. Walter.
There seemed no better place to go.
“Jase, man, I’m surprised to see you,” said Walter.
“Walter, I need…” Jason stopped. Walter looked at him inquiringly. “I need, uh.”
Walter smiled at him. “Well, you need a shave, for starters. Did you sleep in those clothes?”
Jason looked down. “Yeah. Yeah, I did.” He looked up again. His voice roughened. “Walter, Ah…” He cleared his throat. “I only met my brother once. Once.”
Walter’s face clenched in sympathy. “I warned him not to go.”
“Why?”
“Look around, Jase. You’re in here, and you have to ask why? I didn’t want that for you, and if he’d thought about it more, he wouldn’t have wanted this for you, either, although,” Walter paused. “From what I understand, it wouldn’t have mattered anyway.”
“What wouldn’t have mattered?”
“Birkoff was stupid to seek you out; I thought it’d only bring Section down on you, but now, I don’t think it would have mattered if he had or hadn’t, not once he died.”
Jason glanced away, thinking. “Operations needed me to replace him.”
“Yeah.” Walter picked up random parts from his workbench and set them down again, scowling darkly. Bitterly, he said, “Of all the things Paul Wolfe did as Operations, what he did to you and your brother…I hope he’s burning in hell for it now.”
Jason flicked a bit of wire with the end of his finger, suddenly unable to speak. The thick, bitter monster in his breast had seemed mollified with the old, home movies Nikita fed it, but now it began to rouse again, twisting with gross movements, squashing his organs. Static flashes from the show burst like flashbulbs in his head; it seemed that watching them all had been loading up the data, and now he felt his brain finally process the data, crunch the numbers.
No. Not his brain. Not his head at all, but his heart. The pictures fuzzed into memory, less clear than projected images but richer.
“I can’t tell you what I do,” Birkoff had told him. “It’s secret.”
And Jason had laughed. “What? Or you’ll have to kill me?”
“I wouldn’t kill you, but someone else would.” He had seemed so damned serious.
“C’mon, Seymour!” He had chucked his brother on the chin, standing close enough to smell the rain on his coat and something clean, his soap or shampoo or something. At the time, it had seemed weird to smell his brother, but now, standing in Munitions and surrounded by the sharp stink of chemicals and oil and metal, he’d give anything to smell that warm, clean smell of the only man related to him. Jason wished he could see him again, shake his hand…
The monster flexed, hard, on the next thought.
I never hugged my brother.
Too odd, the circumstances; a meeting in the dark of his house over a year ago, hours ticking away, trying to make up for a missing lifetime together, and at the end, Birkoff had to slip away before he was missed, and just as he took his leave, he’d paused, and stepped close, but the forward movement had been aborted when Jason had leaned back and said, “Go on, get outta here. Don’t get all mushy on me. Gimme a call, we’ll get together again, real soon.”
No hug. Too weird.
Jason could throttle himself for missing the only hug from his brother, was throttling himself with that looming, choking monster in his guts. If I had known it was the only chance I’d ever ever ever get…
He covered his face with his hands, every muscle tensed.
“Jase? Jason? You okay?” Walter’s voice moved around him; Jason felt a hand on his back. “Jason? C’mon, you’re scaring me, here. People are starting to stare.”
No smooth, charming Southern gentleman remained. Just a boy, lost and orphaned and close to tears.
“Oh, jeeze, c’mon!” Walter sounded alarmed.
“Walter.”
Nikita. Operations.
Jason dropped his hands.
“You two. Follow me,” she ordered.
Curious faces turned like satellite dishes, tracking the threesome’s course across the floor. Nikita led them up to her perch. She picked up the remote and darkened the glass with a press of a button, set the device down and faced the two men.
“Walter, I’m taking you off Munitions for a while.”
“What?”
“I’m assigning you to a special project,” she said, and then paused, and smiled faintly. “I’m assigning you a new recruit. Jason is now your material.”
Jason knew Walter gaped as hard as he did at the cool blonde woman.
“Jason is blocked,” she explained. “His psychological profile indicates that he’ll be in abeyance soon if steps aren’t taken, so, over the past weeks, I insured Jason would come in contact with as many reminders of Birkoff that I could, and today, I gave him selected archives from surveillance.”
“What are you saying?” asked Walter.
“I’m saying that if Jason doesn’t pull himself together and deal with not only being in Section but also his brother’s death, he won’t make it.”
“Nikita! This is Birkoff’s brother! How could you even say that?”
Nikita looked at him, her gaze level. Jason noticed she remained cool, her dark suit impeccable. Time was, he could stare down a glacier just like that. Never let ‘em know what you’re thinking. Right now, he felt as though his very guts hung out for anyone to stomp through, and he hated it, hated himself.
“I can say that because I’ve got a world to defend, Walter, and I want the people under my command to have the best chance at success. Including Jason.” She looked at Jason. Her eyes softened, just around the margins of her determination. Jason lost some respect for her for tipping her hand, even if so slightly, and gained more because she was doing everything she could to balance Section’s needs with his.
“But…!” Walter sputtered, speechless.
“Two months. I can give you the two months that Birkoff never got.”
Silence. It seemed a ghost stood there, invisible and silent and able to mute the sounds of the world.
Walter drew in a deep breath and blew it out. “We should visit his grave.”
“No,” said Nikita. “He’s buried in Jason’s hometown. The chance of exposure is unacceptable.”
“But ---“
“Walter, Jason hasn’t yet served his two years as a recruit. You know the rules. He’s to stay here.”
“Rules? First you break them when you want, and now you’re quoting the manual?” Walter accused.
Nikita smiled tightly, and flicked a glance at Jason. “I’m Operations. I can do what I want.”
“But…!”
“Go, Walter. Teach Jason about Birkoff, and then bury his ghost.” Nikita turned to the windows, putting her back to the men, and flicked the button. Section reappeared, bustling. “Do it well. I want Jason to make it, too.”
~
Walter and Jason returned to Munitions.
“C’mere.” Walter gestured.
“Where?”
Walter walked back beyond the gates; Jason followed. “Back here. Have a seat.”
“On the floor?”
Walter fetched a small box and then sat, cross-legged on the floor, his back to a rack of stacked ammo, and patted a spot next to him.
“Sit.”
He did.
Walter opened the box. A heavy compass and a worn coin lay within. He picked up the compass, and set it back. Then he picked up the coin.
“God.” His voice shook. “A coin. If I’d known.” He sighed. “It’s been insane around here forever; it doesn’t take a smart man to know that. We do what we do, and we try to forget…no one can pretend otherwise. Birkoff…he made do with his life in here. He was happy -- well, happy as someone can be in here.”
Walter turned the coin over in his fingers. “This coin. I flipped this coin. You were heads, he was tails. You got to go free. He, he got a life here.”
Jason reached over and took the coin. “So, tell me about it. Tell me about his life.”
The slug in his guts rumbled and sighed. He could put names to it now. Regret. Sorrow. Anger. Frustration.
Grief.
“Will you…would you tell me about yours?” asked Walter. “Tell me about your life, out there?”
Jason felt a funny tang in his heart. Fear, and a strange empathy. Seymour Birkoff was dead, and now, so was Jason Crawford. One had a name on a headstone, the other had the grave under it.
“My life, outside?” Jason suddenly flipped the coin with a sharp ping. It arced up, faintly humming, and dropped down. Jason snatched it out of the air and slapped in on the back of his other hand.
Tails.
“Maybe later. Right now, I want to hear about my brother’s life. Birkoff’s life.”
~~~~
FIN
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