The conduits were cold, and the human brain simply renders them as dark tunnels. The travel is instantaneous even if it doesn't feel like it.

Within seconds Rowan found himself in a mainframe - scaling through firewalls. He had all the right coding to get through, stolen off of Dana Margrave. He laughed at the notion. Any techie would review this as Dana sabotaging The Watchers herself and not the half brained lunatic assassin she was banking her career on dragging back in.

He would have laughed if he could have heard it. But there was nothing but the mind numbing blackness and the craze inducing lack of stimuli. He needed a room.

Rowan crafted a new environment: a control room with view screens displaying various parts of the organization's digital defenses. Two could play at this game. He sped his own perception up. Dana herself could easily fix the time if she thought he was no longer in the room with her. He would use the digital realm against her the same way she'd used it against him. She'd either not paid enough attention to his file or didn't understand the full rules of the simulation. He shrugged it off. He was a hundred years older. Shit happened. Today just wasn't her day. 

There was still the matter of getting his physical body out of the doors, plus Miranda.

Where is she? He passed through records looking for Miranda or any sign of her. In the age where everything was recorded the Watchers had surprisingly few records on her. There he was coming in but a few days earlier there was still no video of Miranda walking or being dragged through those doors. 

He looked up Dana's files and found her family listed with one known family name.

Miranda Margrave.

He stared at the name, let it sink in. Sisters. Fraternal twins even. Holy shit.

No wonder Dana Margrave had taken the case. This was more than personal. He scanned again. He might have to go and interrogate Dana. For all he knew Dana was keeping Miranda's stack on her desk. It would easily explain why there was not even a body. Dana had the clearance to hide that information. He was floored. If Miranda was Dana's sister - did that mean she was in on it?

Miranda had been a lot of things, sarcastic, funny, good humored. But she would never have made it as a watcher. She wasn't blood thirsty enough. It was one of the things he loved about her. 

But still, he couldn't ignore the gnawing feeling that there was more at play here. Who were the Margraves in the first place? He'd find that out later. 

But first...

He initiated sequences to unlock doors, and disabled security protocols geared to let him through and him alone. There was very little chatter on the system. As far as anyone knew he was still in the simulation with Dana.

Every move was calculated to cause maximum disruption, to sow confusion and chaos in the organization. With a little luck he'd walk out of here with the building burning down around him. He opened the server to the net.

The influx was instantaneous. The firewall came down and hundreds of pokes came online. Some were hesitant - as if they couldn't believe their good fortune. Others dove right in looking for identities, anything juicy they could post. The Watchers were prime ground for delicious information. He'd just unleashed a beast and there were a few willing to try it. He could see it all over the net in his head. Watcher HQ down. 

"Have fun," Rowan muttered to his fellow hackers.

The room faded around him and he was sliding back through the mind numbing conduits. 

The table was cold against his backside. He leaned back staring at the shocked expression on Miranda's face. He'd almost lost the identity of both earlier. 

Time sped up again.

Dana's eyes widened in shock. She stopped moving and set the cannister down. Her expression had gone from slightly sorrowful to annoyed that she couldn't continue to play with her favorite toy. 

"I knew you were good, but--"

"We need to talk," Rowan interrupted. He moved swiftly to her. "First you are going to tell me what the fuck you did with your sister."

"How?" Dana tried to step back but she was against the wall, trapped in her own simulation.

Rowan snatched her arms and pinned both over her head. A cuff appeared out of thin air. He attached her wrists to the wall over her head. She gasped when they clicked into place. "This isn't right, you can't just --" 

"Shut up and listen to me." He had her attention now for better or worse. "In a few seconds, this place is going to dissolve and we'll be back in our real skins. The building is going to come down and if you want to walk out of here alive, Dana. I need to know - where is she?"

"You still don't believe I'm her?"

"Of course not," Rowan snapped. "Dana wouldn't hurt a fly, let alone skin me alive. You two are like yin and yang, day and night."

"You liked me as her though," she said. "That last month. You never even noticed. I could give you things she can't."

"Fuck, listen to yourself." Disgusted Rowan stepped back. "You played her, that wasn't you. Last chance."

He paused, the digital image of her flickering before him. "Desk," she whispered eyes cast down. 

The first cracks appeared in the system. Rowan stepped back a satisfied smile on his face. The walls faded and then there was nothing. The last look Dana gave him was pure hatred. He wondered if she'd still have that expression when they came out of it.

His eyes opened. He was lying on the bed, his wrists were unshackled thanks to his time in the system. 

The guards weren't focused on him at all. 

"Shit, they're getting in," one of the techies was at a desk in the corner. "Digital says they can't stop them."

"Get her out, wake her up."

"She's coming." Rowan stood rubbing his wrist. The building shook with the explosions he'd ordered. That was the problem with people putting in a self destruct. He sighed as Dana's eyes popped open. She was covered in sweat - she quickly pushed herself up.

"Clothes," Dana snapped. "Keep your guns drawn on him. He's still the enemy."

"We got worse problems," one of the guards said as the room shook again. "This building is falling apart."

"What did you do?" Dana pinned him. 

Rowan smiled down at her. "I told you what I did. Checkmate."

WC: 1101