While Alycia conducts her sabotage, Nono finds moments of peace between incoming patrols to ask questions. Alycia, knee-deep in the guts of the reactor and with technical manuals open next to her, still has enough focus to respond to them.
“Like, I heard stuff, like, ‘Siberian gulags’ as a bad place. And the idea of Siberia as like the really cold part of Russia. Is that where we are?”
“Russia is broadly divided into the Russian plain, to the west - where Moscow is - and the Siberian plateau, to the east. Between them are the Ural Mountains. It’s not a former vassal of the USSR, like Kazakhstan or Lithuania, but a geographic region.”
Nono nods. “And we’re… hmm, are we north… east… of Mongolia? I really liked it there.”
“That’s approximately correct. I’m glad to see that the wretched American education system hasn’t dampened your enthusiasm for geography.”
Nono smiles a little. “Well, I had to do research for writing Agent R stuff. I liked getting details right. The reader really connects with stuff when it has verisimilitude.”
“Most lies work like that, and fiction is a consensual lie,” Alycia responds.
There’s a moment of silence, and Alycia’s voice grows somewhat softer. “Forgive a personal question. Please omit specifics. But… you don’t get along with your parents, do you.”
Nono shakes her head. “I have some distance from - from that situation now. But… yeah. It was never good.”
Alycia nods. “I realize that for all that I’ve said about, well, my father, that your parents must have had a strong influence on you as well.”
The other girl tilts her head curiously. “I guess so… I don’t think it was a good one though.”
“Perhaps not. But your upbringing has made you - I will admit - a good protege. Now come here. I want to show you how to build an ANFO bomb. I’ll keep an eye on the door for you. I can do this blindfolded.”
The girls finish up their sabotage efforts. Alycia leads the way to a command sub-station, and the pair have a brief but intense shootout with the soldiers posted there. She takes up the microphone, inhales, and begins her broadcast.
A few minutes later, the pair are on the move when Jason’s voice comes over the PA. “Charade, we are proceeding with extraction. Top level of the facility, I’ve got eyes on you.”
Alycia curses. “That lazy–”
She turns to Nono. “He could have come and retrieved us. But no. Naturally it falls to us to fight our way through a heavily fortified, well-populated fortress of professional soldiers.”
Nono reloads her weapons with a smile. “Well, let’s get started then.”
Alycia realizes Jason’s trick when she unexpectedly sees him. Several soldiers and a couple of Antibodies have located the pair, and have them pinned down. The soldiers drop unexpectedly from stun rounds fired from the other direction.
When the Antibodies turn to engage, they’re faced with Jason Quill rushing them, nanobots out. As he makes contact, Alycia can see chunks of silvery metal fall from beneath their shirts - the Poppet System.
“I needed you on the move to lure them out,” Jason says cheerfully. “Pinocchio Protocol, courtesy of Jenny Byrne. This is the key to neutralizing the Grasscutters.”
Alycia’s demeanor turns icy. “I’m gratified by the success of the mission. Please understand that if I see that woman again, I will kill her for what she did to me. I hold her responsible for that data leak.”
Jason shrugs. “I think she’s got a little plus and a lot of minus on her ledger right now, and I’m not gonna defend her on this. So let’s focus on the positives, and find us some more Antibodies.”
He looks past Alycia and waves. “Agent R. Glad you made it through this. You want your system off too, or are you using it?”
Nono shakes her head. “I’m not going to use that system, now or ever,” she declares vehemently. “I’m going to make it on my own merits.”
Alycia nods approvingly, but doesn’t say what she wants to - “I’m proud of you”. She does watch Jason rather more warily than she wants to as Nono tugs up her shirt for the nanobot contact, but is happy enough to finally see Nono free of the Poppet System.
As the trio resume running, Alycia turns her head to Jason.
“How’s my team?” she demands. “Have you been taking good care of them?”
“Relax, they’re in good hands. SNOWMAN’s watching out for Comrade X and Firebrand. The two of them took some hits but nothing serious.”
“I thought you said they were in good hands,” Alycia grouses, but Jason can hear she doesn’t really mean anything by it.
“Maybe you’d like to have yourself cloned here,” Jason suggests in a teasing tone. “That way you can look after everybody, no matter how many times the team splits up.”
“I can stun you and carry your insensate body the rest of the way to the extraction point,” Alycia warns him.
Jason smirks. “Unfortunately for you, I’m the way out. I’ll be drilling a hole in the facility’s outer walls.”
“Making you the team drill sergeant?” Nono suggests meekly, from behind them.
Jason and Alycia glance at each other. It’s not their usual banter.
But after a moment, and to Nono’s immense relief, they both laugh.
They fight their way through more encounters, with Jason neutralizing Antibodies as they come, and Alycia and Nono shooting down the soldiers.
SNOWMAN is surrounded by a large number of bodies - soldiers, groaning or unconscious, and even a few Antibodies - when they meet up at the Nanotech Lab. Evidently he’s been busy too.
“I’ll fuck up those magnetic motherfuckers too, once I figure out how,” he boasts, miming cracking his knuckles. “We doing this?”
Alex reports back from the laptop. “More soundboard shenanigans,” they report. “I can’t puppet the TALOS any more - he put in some kinda password that can’t be countermanded. But I’ve been splicing together the radio traffic, the commanders reporting our position and stuff. I’m ready to send General Failure some highly misleading intel on our movements through the facility. Hopefully he’ll redirect his dudes elsewhere.”
Emma seems to be back on her feet. “Pilot light’s still hot. I’ll soften up the concrete for ya. Just don’t be too boring, chief.”
Alycia nods toward Nono. “Agent R and I will cover the exits, in case someone interrupts.”
Jason looks at his comrades, at the team coming together around him. “Okay. SNOWMAN, clear the area of debris. Grapples once there’s a clear passage. Firebrand, when you’re ready.”
The drilling trio get to work, moving like clockwork on the vital task of finding an escape from this underground base. Alycia and Nono stand guard. Alex gets to work on the laptop, spinning lie after lie about a team of invincible operators moving through the complex.
Minute after minute go by. More than once, Jason must halt operations to patch up a hole in a water main, or seal off a sparking electrical cable. But finally, he breaks through.
SNOWMAN rockets up the hole that was made, and after a few moments they hear him call down. “Some kinda basement. Clear out, grapples coming down.”
The lines shoot out and down. One by one, the team grab hold, and John hauls them up. Alycia is the last to leave.
The team find themselves in the basement of one of the apartment complexes. After careful surveillance, they exit and find themselves on the upper end of the Winter Cradle.
TALOS are patrolling the skies, held aloft by their prodigious magnetic fields, but their patrol patterns are regular and hence predictable.
Since there’s no need to remote the Chimeras for a quick evacuation, they opt to go back the way they came - the sewer system.
It’s a long and smelly trek, but every part of it is an enormous relief after all that’s happened. It falls to Alycia to metaphorically whip some discipline into everyone. “No slacking off,” she snaps from time to time. “They might still find us. No surprises.”
They exit, and find the Chimeras concealed where they expected them to be. The snow John piled over the machines is still there, but there’s fresh footprints nearby. Evidently, the General was canny enough to realize the team had to reach the Winter Cradle somehow, and had sent soldiers to find their route.
The flight back to the concealed jet plane is uneventful.
Once on board, Alycia establishes the Baker-2 protocol for contacting MIA.
Parker’s voice comes on the radio. “Charade. Report.”
“Ma’am. It’s good to hear your voice.” Alycia allows herself that moment, and continues in a more subdued voice. “We located a secret facility in the far eastern portion of Russian territory. Please ask your contacts in NATO and other western countries to aim spy satellites at this location over the next few hours. Events of interest should transpire. I’ll transmit the coordinates.”
After doing so, she resumes. “We succeeded at our primary mission. We’ve obtained a sort of nanotech passkey, the ‘Pinocchio Protocol’, which can remove the Poppet System from people in direct physical contact.”
She tries to recap what she understands about the situation. “In the end, it seems like Jenny Byrne - an Antibody, and product of the facility - used us to get access to Pinocchio for her own purposes, to neutralize a security vulnerability in her own Poppet System. She was operating under orders to lure us there, but seems to have betrayed those orders in a way that give her plausible deniability with her superiors.”
“In the meantime, I believe our strategic objective now is to locate Grasscutters and neutralize them as circumstances permit.”
Costigan’s voice comes on. “Roger, and I concur. Shut them down, however and wherever you can. Is there anything else?”
During this time, Jason has been writing an extended note. He now holds it up for inspection. Alycia gawks when she processes what’s written there.
She mouths, “are you sure?” at him.
He nods, solemnly.
After a moment of deep concern and furrowed eyebrows, Alycia resumes. “Regret to inform you - for dissemination to appropriate parties at your discretion - that Jason Quill has been killed by Jenny Byrne.”
There’s a long pause on the other end. Finally Costigan comes back. “Is this accurate intel? Has it been verified?”
Alycia glances at Jason, who shrugs in that irritatingly uncaring way he does. She makes an executive decision.
“Sir… you should report that as fact to uh, to appropriate parties. But I encourage you to remember my code name and its meaning.”
The silence on the radio implies an understanding. Costigan’s voice is much calmer when he speaks next. “Roger, Charade. I’m sure if Mister Quill were still with us, he’d want to know that I’ll see to it people are told the truth about him. Stay safe. Costigan out.”
As the radio clicks off, Alycia wheels and stares at Jason. “Why?”
The young man is fully ready with an answer. Alycia can practically hear the bullet points in his presentation. “First, Pinocchio needs nanotech to work. My nanotech. I’m vital to your, ah, ‘strategic objective’. And I wouldn’t let you do this without me anyway.”
“Second. I retired from the Menagerie, and I wanted to do good in the world in other ways, and I proved to myself that I didn’t have to be, you know, how I was.” He gestures around him, at the occupants of the plane. “But this kind of stuff is in my blood. I couldn’t stay retired for too long. So I’ll join your team - if you’ll have me, and with your collective permission.”
“We will discuss that momentarily,” Alycia tells him. “Continue.”
“Third. It’s a low-impact move. You know, I’ve been preparing for my own death for awhile. Those preparations are still good. The Quill Compound will function without me. The staff will keep getting paid. The gadgets in the warehouse will have other caretakers.”
Alycia narrows her eyes. “And that digital copy of me in your computer? ‘Mirage’, was it?”
Jason grins. “Also taken care of. The HHL member Vigil vouches for her, and he’ll be keeping an eye on her. He’s one of the good ones.”
“I don’t like it, but I will accept your logic,” Alycia concedes. “But…”
She hesitates, not sure how much she wants to talk about this, especially in front of her team. “You’d be giving up your life, at least for awhile. I expect you’ll inevitably want to be resurrected. But until then…”
She lets out a sigh. “It’s not easy, Jason. Not having a home to go back to.”
Jason’s grin widens, and his blue eyes sparkle - god dammit, Alycia thinks to herself.
“We left our art project behind. I promised you a new life, a new relationship. Not bound up in our past violence, but our future as creators. So, how’d you like to go to that Antarctic city with me?”
Alycia feels her cheeks flame red. “What? What are you–?” she sputters.
Jason grins. “The city! The Stone Builders! That enigmatic technology that Pyrrhus built his base around. It’s our mystery to solve. We could analyze their elemental manipulation tech. We could learn about their culture. We could - eventually - tell the world about these people. Hell, Atlantis is still using their tech to make their cities habitable, and they don’t know much about it. It’s a mystery - it’s an adventure - and nobody has to get hurt, nobody has to suffer, nobody has to lose.”
He glances up at the jet they’re flying inside. “Plus, it’d make a great base. I’m sure this jet will fit into the hangar I remember down there, once we pull the rubble out.”
SNOWMAN pipes up. “Otto and the boys did some of that already, getting me outta there. Pretty sure I can rig up some stuff to do the rest.”
Jason aims his hands at SNOWMAN and grins at Alycia, as though saying “see? see?”
Alycia isn’t sure what to say, not at first. The audacity of it, at least, impresses her.
“What do you think, team? Do you want to live in a secret Antarctic base?”
Emma flashes a thumbs up. “We can get anywhere in the world. And I got lots of advice from Mr. Big on how to build a proper villain lair. Leave construction to me.”
John Black smirks. “My code name is literally SNOWMAN.”
Alex thinks. “Tough to get a satellite uplink from down there,” they say at last. “But I think I can do it. Mostly I wanna know how you’re gonna get food and snacks down there.”
Jason nods. “Sure, sure, logistics will be a challenge. But I think I have a few ideas.”
Alycia turns to the one person who hasn’t spoken yet. “Nono? How would you feel living, so far away from a normal life?”
Nono’s smile is gentle, with only the faint hints of regret and worry. “Bold of you to think anyone here has ever had a normal life. But if we’re on the run, one place is as good as another. Why not go somewhere with a hint of hope for us to make something new?”
Jason nods. “Then it’s decided. A new life, a new base of operations for an international black ops team, and a new hope of achieving world peace. At least for today.”
Alycia smiles. “Welcome to the team, Mr. Quill.”
The others share their feelings about this announcement. “Hear hear.” “He starts at the bottom and is on KP duty.” “Better not mess with my stuff, newbie.”
Alycia can’t say what she most wants to say. Once, she felt like she’d been making the sacrifices for Jason - being the hunted outsider, forced to surrender to AEGIS and live under their watchful eyes, while he continued to live his indulgent American life with nary a care. But now?
He’s willing to give all that up, for a very indefinite amount of time.
For this.
For me.