“Always me, in the van, waiting for him to get his ass kicked, and then call me for help,” he muttered. “Bobby Hobbes would make a rescue in record time, I tell you that!” Just then, the backdoor of the van opened and the two piled inside.

Darien slapped his shoulder, “Petal to the metal, Hobbes.”

“Yeah, ‘bout time,” he quipped, throwing the van into gear. “I was tearing the precious hairs out of my head waiting for you.”

The vehicle fishtailed out of the parking lot and swerved onto the nearest highway back to the downtown precinct. Thera collapsed against the surveillance equipment and closed her eyes, blocking her dancing vision that tempted her to black out.

Well on their way, Hobbes called to the back of the van, “How is she?”

Fawkes took out the syringe from his coat pocket, “She’ll be fine. Just a mild case of brainwashing.” Thera shrank away-

(Needles)

until he said, “It’s okay. The Keep told me to give you this to help your memory.”

She took off her jacket and rolled up her sleeve, watching him administer the antibiotics. “I really did want to kill you, up until you mentioned my stepmother. Then I had to convince Stark…for a moment, I thought I gave it all away.”

Darien looked up, “What made you remember?”

She pulled on her jacket and looked him in the eye, her original softness finally showing through, the mist was thinning. “At first I wasn’t sure, and all of a sudden I had this feeling that I could trust you; that I have trusted you before. That everything you mentioned to me was familiar. Like I knew who Bobby and Claire were, I just didn’t have their faces to match their names. And there was something else-”

“Here we are kiddies,” Hobbes announced. His van rebounded against the curb as he turned off the ignition before the transmission blew out.

Darien took her hand, regaining her attention. “What?”

Thera looked down, hiding her eyes. “I don’t remember.”

Bobby was standing with Claire in front of the gurney that served as Thera’s bed for the last month. “Well, one way to keep Chrysalis out of your hair is to make him disinterested. In other words, reverse the action of the gene; making it become dormant.”

Thera looked at her tentatively as Claire administered a saline IV with a fast drip, “I would go back to normal.”

“The other option is agency protection,” added Hobbes. The mechanical hum of the lab door followed Darien’s arrival.

She bit her lip, “I don’t know…I need to think about it.”

“You do that. But make it fast because you got until this evening,” said Hobbes. He stood close to Claire and nudged her, nodding in Darien’s direction.

“I’ll decide by then,” Thera nodded and looked past them in time to see Darien walking back down the hallway before the door closed, and finally Bobby heading after him.

“Hey, Fawkes!” he yelled at him in the dim corridor. But the obvious was spoken as Darien disappeared around the corner.

On the agency’s roof, Claire handed her a business card, “This is the number of a friend of mine, and he’s classified, just right for your situation. If you have any medical problems or questions, he’s the one you can go to for help.”

“Remember, we still have a rematch. Your day will come, missy,” said Hobbes, elbowing her.

Thera shoved the card into her pocket and smiled, hugging them separately. “Thank you, you two. You’ve given me more help than I could ever ask for.” She turned and walked towards the helicopter, biting her lip and trying not to take a second glance back for Darien.

“Take care of yourself, hon,” Bobby called after her, and Claire stood by him in her trademark blue lab coat, waving. The sun was setting along the coast and casting the sky in a warm tint of orange that turned red farther in the east. A warm wind seemed to push at her back, encouraging her towards the helicopter.

(Is this the right thing to do?)

“Thera!” Fawkes was running across the platform, past Claire and Hobbes. “Wait.” He caught her before the doors of the cabin and stood over her.

“There you are,” she said without much emotion, avoiding his eyes by looking out beyond the skyscrapers and shoe-laced highways. She was still in her green suit and it stood out against the white concrete sandblast of the landing platform.

He couldn’t say anything, just pinned her to the spot by her arms so he could think. Only until the helicopter blades started turning above their heads did Darien begin to get desperate. “The Keep said that she wasn’t sure of the long-term effects.”

“That’s a chance I’m willing to take.”

Their coats began to flap in the wind as the blades picked up speed. “You realize…if you do this, we can’t help you anymore, you can’t see us, can’t-” he cut himself short. “No contact. Do you really want that?”

She looked at him in her softness and the voice he remembered from the museum, waiting for the rescue crew. All the noises drowned out until nothing but two feet of space existed in the world between them both. “I know that this is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Like I’ve been waiting for it all my life. It’s brought me to you and to everyone at the Agency. It’s made me a better person and that’s something I don’t want to get rid of. I’ve become what I’ve always wanted to be.”

(Which is an agent.)

He shook his head, “You can always come back, for the gene therapy.”

She let out a small, good-natured laugh, “Trust me, if I change my mind, this is the first place I’ll come to.”

(All the women in my life leave me.)

Thera took his hand, turning serious. “Tell me that you know how much you mean to me.”

He looked her dead in the eye, “After all we’ve been through; you’re going to leave.”

She started to cry, her hair floating about her in the wind as it rose up to dance with the spinning blades. She whispered, but he could hear her voice in his head; “All you have to do is tell me to stay.”

The words almost spilled from his mouth, but he realized that she was right. It was her intention to work for another agency in the future. Doing the same that he was, and Stark was foretelling the inevitable. She had become a successful government experiment that worked for the greater good. Out there in Thera’s imminent life as an agent seemed more comforting to Darien than to have her back inside the lab at the Agency as the ordinary girl that the world had too many of.

He allowed the words out of his throat, “No…this is the best for you.”

Her tears ran down his shoulder as she hugged him and turned away quickly to hoist herself into the chopper and close the door. Pressing her fingertips against the glass, she faded back into the shadows of the cabin until the sunset reflected a flash of orange that made him stagger back.

Film strips were playing in front of him like bittersweet memories. He saw Steve McQueen hug Candice Bergen for the last time, and then sent her away so the Chinese army wouldn’t capture her. He saw Rachel Weiz being taken away by Imhotep in front of the helpless Brendan Fraser to be sacrificed at Hamunaptra. He saw Thera Averough fly away from Darien Fawkes so that Chrysalis couldn’t find her.

It was the past replaying again when he walked away and shadow of the helicopter left the building.

One slick actor named Stephen Baldwin said that; “The future is just like heaven. Everyone exalts it, but nobody wants to go there right now.”

Well, the future is heaven. As I see it, the gland is out of my head, Chrysalis is long run into the ground, Claire gets all of the fully-paid, state-of-the-art lab equipment her little scientist-heart desires, and Hobbes has a job that pays him six figures. That’s a great future, but to me and to Thera, it just doesn’t get here fast enough.

Fin