Dana paced. Her steps were slow and deliberate as she plotted her next steps. Her office one of the few lavishly decorated rooms at The Watch was suddenly tight and confined. There was no escape from what was coming. 

Controlling Rowan was like holding a tiger by the tail. You could hold on, but he was more than capable of seeking his teeth in and ten times as deadly. She knew she could do it, but he was unpredictable at best even while being extremely reliable.

It was what had made him so damn good at his job.

The man's penchant for killing was all there - as well as his uncanny ability to get the job done just as needed.

But this last job - she'd gone over the files, checked Dik's video feed over and over again. According to the press President Enerez had suffered massive cardiac arrest. No one had been with him, he'd sent his guards home for the day. He was in his office alone preparing for his speech that weekend. It was a good story. It should have been signed, sealed, and delivered. Job done, everyone goes home, money paid, etc.

And yet, she'd checked the feed over and over again. Rowan had simply shot the man as he'd said, up the ass. It had taken some clever maneuvering on their part for him and Dik to escape through a crowd.

And then she'd lost him. Precious minutes of feed where he could have reached out to anyone.

Everything was protocol except for the take down. She should have been happy with it. Anyone else would have been. Enerez was too expensive to keep around, his appetites growing too abhorrent even for the meths in their thousand year old cages.

But Rowan's comments, his actions. He had not taken the job seriously, and that grated on her nerves. This was not the agent that had slipped out years ago. He was jaded, the mission meant nothing - which meant the organization meant nothing. The programming had failed.

She sighed. Part of her hold on the organization meant she'd have to be able to keep Rowan in check. Keep him under control. Was that possible? Even with Miranda under wraps? He was going to figure it out eventually and when he did, was there any saving him? He was one of the oldest agents still in the game. There was no protocol for retiring him, they didn't retire unless a bullet took them down. That was it, end of story.

She sat at her desk eyeing the latest skin. She wore a lovely tanned brazilian that had been stored away for her particular use. It came with plenty of modifications from sultry to battle hardened. She could turn a man on and cut his throat while he was undressing her with his eyes. The male gaze had its uses, so did a good knife.

Rowan had his specialty designed sleeves and so did she.

The Miranda unit, while it had its uses simply was just a PJ, a plane Jane, and while it was beautiful, it had no weapons mods and she wasn't a civvy.

She stopped stalking and tapped the side of her head, linking her straight to her secretary.

"Lovelace, send in Paramar."

"Yes, Ma'am."

Dik walked in, moments later, covered in sweat, knuckles bleeding. He'd been hitting the gym since his return, not taking kindly to Rowan's subterfuge. It had taken hours to get him out of the authorities hands and back at The Watch. She sighed again. Another mess to clean up.

He stood at attention.

"Ma'am?"

Dana stood behind the desk. She favored Dik with a bland stare. 

"I may have made a mistake trying to get Stevescant to return to his old line of work."

"I'm sorry?" Dik's mouth hung open before he closed it again. 

Dana ignored his reaction, maintaining a mask of neutrality. She admitted mistakes to very few but Dik she trusted more than most. "Tell me, what was he like before he went awol?"

Dik straightened. "Rowan was distant. He was never too close, but that last job, burned something out of him ma'am. They wanted to watch... and he prefers to not take jobs like that. And then they complained because of how he did it. He's not, he wasn't completely a machine - he killed one more person than he was supposed to."

Dana looked down at her desk and opened the file. The last job, a hit on a family - the entire family very wealthy but also, she scanned it. Very generous, the hit had been ordered by a politician. He watched the whole thing remotely from a camera. Rowan hadn't wanted to operate that way - he'd disconnected as soon as he could. The Counselor who'd ordered the hit had been angry, Rowan hadn't killed the family in the order he'd asked for. In fact Counselor Tennison had ordered Rowan flogged. 

Tennison had died in his sleep a week after Rowan's flogging.

Hadn't he?

"Tennison," Dana read out loud. "No mark on him, nothing Rowan could have done--"

"He wore a pacemaker," Dik said. His knowing look confirmed what Dana already suspected. 

Rowan was a gifted assassin and hacking a pacemaker already connected to the system would have been cakewalk for him. 

"Where is he now?"

Dik looked down at his busted knuckles. "He was in the gym, busting more skins on recruits."

--------------------------------

Rowan let the shower clean his body of the last vestiges of sweat. Hot water was one luxury afforded here. He wasn't going to lie to himself. It still felt good to kick some ass, to know that some part of him was still cut out for this line of work. But he was still trying to figure out his next mood and he was getting impatient. He was being handled. He understood this but it didn't make the waiting any easier.

He inhaled smelling the grime that was the gym showers and listened to the sounds of other trainees. Some were excited, a few were subdued. He didn't blame them, they'd just had their asses handed to them on the gym floor. They could take the lesson or just not last in this job. There was no going back from here. The low buzz surrounded him, reminding Rowan of better years in this place. 

The door swung open. The conversational buzzing stopped.

"Attention!" Rowan tried to fight it but hundreds of years of training didn't go away in an instant and he found himself snapping to attention before finding himself face to face with Dana Margrave. 

She'd at least had the decency to put on a different skin.

"I'm impressed, you lowered yourself to come see me in the shower," he said. "Is it my birthday?"

Dana stepped aside and ten more seasoned agents came in with her. All heavily armed and armored, they weren't taking any chances. "We need to talk."

"You could have called," Rowan muttered, his voice dripped sarcasm.

"You didn't answer."

"Can I get at least one decent shower?"

"Move," one of the nameless agents said. 

"Fine," Rowan stepped out of the shower and did not bother to grab a towel. He marched up to Dana. "So, talk."

"Stasis." 

Rowan stiffened. Stasis was simply a cyberscape chamber. You could be tormented to death repeatedly with no damage to your skin. He must have hit the end of the rope this time. 

"Fine," he snapped and walked out. Water dropped on the floor as he went making a glistening trail. The first thing you did in stasis was strip naked, so there was no point in dressing. 

Dana followed him, hand clasped behind her back and her heels echoing in the now quiet corridor. The tension was palpable, but Dana's face and posture was a mask of finality. 

It was a sharp contrast to the cocky resentful anger Rowan barely kept in check. The agents flanking them maintained a vigilant, watchful stance as they approached the stasis chamber. They were nameless, faceless, in their armor by design. And too well trained, Rowan thought. He did not miss the sterility of this place. The nameless form and void that permeated the building, the people, everything. Even the halls were bare, gray, the lights slightly brighter. Stasis might be a vacation in comparison.

At the door Rowan halted and turned. Dana moved up and placed her palm on the door, the DNA in this particular sleeve was able to access the room. Rowan made a mental note of that. It might come in handy later. Everything from the number of guards to the type of armor they were wearing, he took in. The guy in the back looked like he was about Rowan's size. Rowan was still naked after all. Their other weaknesses registered as tangible hit points should he have an opportunity. The guy closest to him had a shoulder that was lower than the other. Probably due to a tilted hip bone. It would make him weaker on the right side of his body. Rowan took one last sweeping look and tensed as the door slid open with a hiss revealing the cold, sterile interior lit by dim, ambient lights. 

Two chairs dominated the room, with plenty of cold grey needles in the arms and head.

"Lay down," Dana ordered.

"Jesus, don't you want to wine me and dine me first?"

A gun clicked but Rowan was already heading for the seat. Trigger happy was his shoe guy anyway. 

He eyed the chair before settling himself in it. It reclined instantly. The needles on the arms would hurt going in, he remembered that much, and then depending on what was waiting on the other side, there would be nothing but the blackness stasis or an interrogation room. Fifty fifty on the interrogation at this point. They could easily blow a hole in his stack to save themselves the trouble.

He looked up at Dana, she turned her back and he was surprised to see her start to unbutton her shirt to head for the second chair. "This going to be fun fun time?"

"You know the protocols," she said. There was a trace of regret. "This is the first time we've had to use this particular one."

"You're going to debrief me?" Rowan couldn't hide his surprise as he sank into the chair. The clamps covered his arms and legs in place on the cold sterile surface. It leaned back and the armed escort stepped back. 

"You know the rules. You're too valuable to eliminate, but too risky to leave uncontained."  Dana's next words were cold but not without a trace of regret.

Rowan grunted as the needles were placed into his arms, none too gently by the green clad doctor. The doctor's boots looked similar in size to his feet. Rowan noted that as the man shoved the needles in harder than necessary. His face was a well trained expressionless Watcher Face. He'd probably run into Rowan before and taken his leaving as a betrayal. Most of them did.

He turned to watch as Dana got into the other chair, and leaned back as the straps went over her now bare arms and legs. Any man would have appreciated the view but under the circumstances, the moment held a strange sort of intimacy. He turned away abruptly. 

"Iron sharpens iron," Dana voice floated over to him.

"So a man sharpens the countenance of his friend," Rowan finished. It was emblazoned on them during their training. Their partners were their friends, team, everything. He glanced at her and found her staring at him, her expression unreadable. The world was fading out and he struggled against the encroaching blackness. He hated this part the most. You didn't just wink out and jump into cyberspace. The body didn't necessarily enjoy being pulled from one reality to another. There was a general fading as your body relinquished control of your senses. You'd wake up in a dream. Or a nightmare depending on what you'd paid for.

He shot one parting glance back at Dana and could see that she too was pushing against the blackness. 

"Just remember, Dana, every weapon you polish too finely becomes too sharp and you'll cut yourself. Think of it - like a paper cut, for those of you who like to wield pens." 

The blackness fell over him then as he slid out into the digital world. 

Word Count: 2050