| "Touching Bottom" | ||
|
"How can you see into my eyes like open doors, leading you down into my core, where I've become so numb without a soul, my spirit sleeping somewhere cold, until you find it there and lead it back home." ~ Bring me to life, Evanescence 8th June 23.50hrs Despite her apparent confidence at Michael's ability to control the problem, Saf wondered if she would ever truly feel safe from her past. Michael had told her that Rhines had been cancelled before getting to the reason why he had tried to contact them, Paige had seemed satisfied to hear that, but she hadn't; although it was difficult to come up with a good enough reason to say why she had feelings of unease, but she had dropped it. Or rather that is what they wanted to believe; instead she put it on the back burner, the pile of things to be investigated when and if she had time. She sipped at the cold beer, since killing Madeline she had ignored the instructions from Gideon and Michael to lay off the alcohol and caffeine and had felt no different. Sleep was another matter, a jumble of dreams that left her shaking after a restless night and with a head that took a while to clear of fuzz. She curled up on the couch, listening to the clear tones of Eddi Reader reminiscing about a wild mountainside, the mournful harmonies echoing a very scottishness to the words. She could almost see the scenes, smell the heather, and taste the peatiness of the air. Tonight was going to be a night to drink, and not think about the consequences, not just yet anyway. 05.00hrs She struggled to come awake, a ringing noise sounding loud in her ear, and realised through the alcoholic fog that it was her cell phone. She peered at it, trying to read the text on the screen to see who was calling, but her focus was slightly off and she only just managed to hit the button to connect. "Sage" It was Gray's quiet tones, and unconsciously she sighed heavily. "Sorry to bother you so early in the morning, but we have a slight problem that needs your touch." Damn, she thought, no way of getting out of that one. "Do you need me there? Or can I log in from here?" Gray paused, and she could imagine him talking to Rebecca and asking for a decision, finally his voice, sounding loud to her over sensitive ears, over the handset spoke, "it would be better here." She nodded, a futile gesture, "OK, I'll try and get there as soon as I can," wishing that she could ask for a car, but it would have raised too many questions. "Good, we will see you shortly." The buzzing of the handset told her that he had terminated the connection. She slid off the couch, feeling a little more than fragile, and headed for the shower. SH1 07.30hrs She pulled into the garage, glad that the early hour had meant that traffic had been reasonably light. The last thing they needed was for her to be careless and get involved in an accident, as her blood/alcohol levels would have been sky high. She found a parking space and used the time in the elevator to try and look a little less hung over. The problem, transpired to be a cycling error in the systems. Simon had done his best, but progressively more system resources were being tied up, by the error. She examined the logs, dumped the core and checked the status of the buffers before making a rational decision to reboot the systems in turn. Simon started the process while she checked the consoles to ensure that they came back on line, without causing any further disruption to the services. Once the systems had been brought back on line, she triggered an event call that would alert her if the error re-occurred and much earlier than at the stage Simon had alerted Gray. Then removed herself to the systems office and examined the logs and event files to find out the cause behind the problem. Simon stayed out of her way, she presumed in case he was to blame, but the fault wasn't his. On closer inspection the problem was caused by one of the new chips she had installed which was under performing and data had to be retransmitted by the systems, causing network traffic to flood the domain. She made recommendations to the chip manufacturer, and got Simon to assist with resolving the problem. Her headache was mostly gone, but not the tiredness; though she knew that if she slept during the day that she probably wouldn't sleep that night, not that sleeping at night was much of an opportunity just recently. Some of the dreams she was having had been bizarre, she would catch glimpses of faces and see them in the shadows of the apartment. She had tried sleeping with the light on, but it had made no difference and just recently the only thing that gave her dreamless sleep was alcohol, which allowed her short periods of rest, but not enough to leave her rested. The dark shadows under her eyes, were disguised with make up. But she could see the truth in her reflection and had resorted to wearing tinted glasses to hide that fact from everyone else. 11.30hrs She wrapped up the report, and filed it under `things to do later' and absent-mindedly started to see if the back door to Section was still intact; she didn't need to enter it, she had left enough signs to see that Birkoff hadn't found the trail, yet. Though that situation wouldn't last for long, he ran regular checks on the systems and would see it if she left it there too long. She was debating whether to pull the plug on it now, or to go into the systems when there was a knock at the door. She jumped in her chair, irritated by the interruption, but when she saw it was Gray, she choked back the words of irritation, but she knew it was too late by the expression on his face. "Saf, you should rest," he began to say. She just nodded, too little sleep, too many demons, too much paperwork and not enough action. "I know, if you don't mind, I am going to leave. I really need some fresh air." She picked up a copy of the report, and passed it to him, "This is the background information to the cycling error, I have done all I can for the moment." He waved her out, "Go on, get out of here. Leave this with me." She yawned as the lift took her down to the garage, pushed a loud CD into the music system and bumped the music up loud, her brain reverberating to the beat of the bass as she drove out and into the bright sunlight beyond, glad of the glasses protecting her eyes from the glare. She didn't go straight home, instead she took the long route home, via the marina. Walking along the shore, she felt the wind tangling the skeins of her hair and enjoyed the touch of nature's fingers, she didn't feel like energetic exercise despite her need for action telling her different; instead she took a calming walk with no point to it which matched her mood of the moment. 21.00hrs She stretched out on the couch, report in hand. Not that there was any hurry to read it, more that it occupied her time, and she had too much of it to spare at the moment. Section would have kept her busier, and it was with some regret that she felt that the SIA was the softer option. She sipped the whisky, her third of the evening, as she wondered if she or they had made the right choice; perhaps she couldn't function outside of the parameters, the road to self-destruction seemed to lay out before her. 9th June 2008 07.00hrs The glass bouncing off the wooden floor woke her up, and she was disoriented for a brief moment before recollecting her surroundings. The empty bottle was lying on its side, and next to it the shards of what had been the glass. Her head was pounding, filled with a venomous beat that ate like acid into her brain. She reached the kitchen and for the meds, shaking two of them into her hand and swallowing them back whole with some water from the tap. Ignoring the mess, she stumbled upstairs and into the shower, turning the power on full, feeling the force of the jets beating against her sensitive scalp until she was ready to scream with pain. 09.30hrs She felt more human, more awake and more disgusted with herself than she could ever remember being before. Even the liaison with Alexei was not down to her own making, this situation was and she was given too much spare time. She made a pot of coffee and sipped it while standing on the balcony, the glass was long since gone, and the tablets had taken the worst of the headache away. Food was another matter, she didn't know whether her stomach would reject food out of hand or not, but she couldn't stop eating as well so she put some toast in the toaster; which tasted like cold papier-m�ch�, but she forced it down into her unwilling partner. 09.55hrs Her cell phone rang, and she snatched it up; Gray was calling her. She answered it brightly; pretending that everything was fine, and she knew he had bought the sham, when he joked with her then said could she get to SH1 for a tac briefing. "Sure, I'm on my way." She disconnected the call, and groaned. Mid-morning, travel into town, she winced at the idea, before remembering the bike; It would be perfect for getting through the traffic. Even so, by the time she had put on her jacket and pants as well as the helmet and gloves, it didn't feel much quicker. 11.15hrs She pulled into the garage, her temper only just under control at the number of people out on the roads this morning that had tried to kill her. In one particular incident, she had had to kick out at a car � breaking a wing mirror � in order to survive. Muttering under her breath she entered the lift and tried to leave the temper behind; it would do no-one any favours, least of all her. She took the time the lift took, to breathe deeply and to adopt a false sort of humour that provided her with reasonable cover for her true frame of mind. As the door opened, she saw Baz carrying Brian away from her; she averted her eyes quickly before the kid could read her mind; not that he wouldn't anyway, but she wanted as little to do with him as possible just in case. The grin on her face was for Paige, "What was that all about?" as she walked into the lounge area, her hand thumbing back to where Baz and Brian had disappeared to. Paige's answer was unexpected, "Brian's gonna stay with Baz for a little bit." Saf placed the helmet down on a side table, and undid the jacket fully, before she turned and grinned, "that's scary," she paused, "so, that means he's not coming with us then?" she asked, hoping for the right answer. Gray answered; she hadn't seen him standing to one side. She tugged at her lower lip with her teeth, hoping he hadn't seen the expression on her face. "No, come on, I've got some tactical I need you two to go over," Gray said leading them to one of the smaller conference rooms. "This is what we've got..." 14.50hrs It took nearly three hours before they had finished. Saf had observed for most of it, Paige was in the hot seat, she was only necessary to ensure that Paige didn't forget anything; unnecessary, Paige had been good, Section training was thorough. She mulled over the information, getting it straight in her own mind, "I wonder if the Russians know that one of their good old boys is not being a team player," her voice was quiet. Paige snorted. "Oh, I'm sure they're quite aware of it. Question is, what are they planning on doing about it?" It was Saf's turn to snort in surprise, "doesn't really matter now since we're going to take care of it." She grinned at Paige who grinned back. For once this grin was real, now she faced action rather than the inactivity of the past few days, she was keen to get on with it. "Who's the two newbies?" Paige asked. Saf shrugged, "don't know...don't care." The ice was back, with a vengeance; the only ones she cared about were her team mates : Paige, Jordy and Baz. Outside of them, she didn't care to know or feel. Paige looked down at the papers spread across the table, Saf saw the mind behind the blondeness working, knew that she had seen the ice appear with frightening ease. She spoke softly, "I guess it's time to go." Paige didn't move, so she coughed to get her attention and started to collect the papers. "What?" Paige ejected. Professionally, she ignored the momentary lapse in concentration and responded, "I said we should go, the briefing will start in a couple minutes." They made their way to the main conference room, Saf, her arms full of papers managed to open the doors and walk in. She saw a familiar face, felt even more ice-cold, but she managed to keep walking in and to a corner of the room that was as far away from him, Jaime, as she could possibly get. Return |
||