Christen woke with a scream locked in her throat, but the second her conscious mind took over from her subconscious, she lost her grip on the memory in her dream. She only knew three things with any certainty—one, in her dreams, she was someone else. Two, in the shifting realities of her dreamscape, she was on board a massive alien spaceship. Three, whatever happened was important, and not remembering caused an odd sense of frustration.

Since Alexander's vague assurances and puzzling predictions, his presence in her mind didn't allow communication. Did he realise she would have questions but wanted her to figure it out for herself? Yet the answers remained locked away inside the dream.

Christen froze when cars screeched to a halt in the driveway.

Dana's house sat tucked among the trees, almost four hundred meters from the road in an affluent neighbourhood. They had a security guard at the entrance to the property, and no one had asked for permission to enter.

Did someone turn the alarms off remotely?

Boots hit the ground on the gravel in a very familiar fashion. The men flanked the house to cover both front and rear entrances. Dearly thirty of them.

A frown tucked at her brow—this wasn't Dana's people.

Christen swung her legs out of bed and dressed for work, and her HUD put the time at 2 AM.

She understood what would happen next, yet she didn't remove her gun or badge from the drawer. Had she not done the same thing a hundred times to suspects alongside Moore and Doc?

The door burst open, and men wearing masks streamed into the room. This was a Special Operations unit, and she had worked with them a few times too. Despite being unable to see their face, she recognised them from their eyes, scents, and general build, and at least ten of them had made it to their shortlist of dirty operatives.

Christen didn't resist when they took her down with unnecessary force.

The agency didn't arm these men with handguns; they had their MK4s ′s out. Whoever sent them intended for her to get hurt or dead if she resisted.

"Don't resist if you wanna live," Peter Phelps barked. "Come with us, and no funny business."

He shoved a bag over her head, zip-tied her hands, and roughly led her down the stairs, following no procedure for the arrest of a suspect.

"Hurry up; we don't have all morning."

He pushed her into the back of a van, and although she could probably have escaped before they surrounded the house or during the ride, which definitely wouldn't end up at Special Operations, she didn't.

She wanted to learn who gave the orders and why.

They used a signal jammer at the house, but there wasn't one in the van, and her HUD came online and functioned, and so did her tracker.

Dana and her team would realise something was wrong, but Christen used the HUD to change her status from green to compromised.

She wrote a full report on her abduction while they were driving, and when they stopped, sent it to Dana just as they opened the door.

The low frequency of her tracker would not register with any sniffer device, but they would have a jammer inside the building.

Sunlight greeted her dimly through the hood, and if they were not underground, they were either at a private home, which she doubted or outside the city.

Phelps manhandled her, and Christen tripped, but she did it intentionally to determine the soil.

Loamy, not gravel, near the river. She added the information using infrared to determine how many people were inside the building.

None. Abandoned, most likely or seemingly.

They opened a door and led her inside the building, and cement flooring squeaked beneath her shoes.

"Stairs, check your feet," Phelps warned. "We're going down."

Her infrared hadn't picked up on body heat below the ground, but she could hear at least five heartbeats. Was this some government bunker lined with materials which made it impossible to penetrate with sonar, radar or infrared?

Her stomach churned.

Phelps escorted her into a room, left the blindfold in place, and tied her to the chair so she couldn't move without proving she wasn't human and left her alone.

The light was so bright she could see it through the cloth. The slight smell of must permeated the air, slightly damp cement and age.

***

Twenty minutes passed before the door opened, and Christen nearly swore.

She recognised that expensive, subtle perfume, those pumps, and the vitals attached to them.

Moorland.

The woman had connections, and she wasn't alone.

Was that Director Finch? Christen knew him well, and he wasn't on their list of moles, so what story did Moorland feed him to make him do this?

Moorland yanked off the bag, and even as Christen adjusted to the light, the look of triumph on the woman's face greeted her. The agent leaned forward and whispered near Christen's ear, "You should not have messed with me." 

Christen barely resisted the urge to headbutt her. She caught the look in Finch's cool blue eyes, and he incrementally shook his head at her.

He didn't want to do this, but Moorland somehow manipulated him into obliging her, which meant this was very serious.

Christen curbed her urge to snap the cable ties and knock the obnoxious Brit on her arse.

"The last person who dared come that close to VSA Strickland, while they had her tied to a chair, had to have facial reconstructive surgery. She has a very hard head," Director Finch warned.

The Director's distinguished air nearly betrayed his amusement at the idea of Christen knocking that too-perfect face to a bloody pulp.

Did he dislike Moorland as much as she did? Seemed like it. Christen believed Finch was a dangerous man behind that controlled, almost distant, and watchful exterior.

Moorland leaned back slowly, not wanting to give Christen the satisfaction of acknowledging her caution.

It didn't diminish Christen's pleasure in that small victory.

"Why am I tied to a chair in a blackout facility, Director Finch?" Christen asked calmly, ignoring Moorland and addressing her boss.

"Shut up; I will ask the questions," Moorland bit out and slapped Christen.

Although she barely flinched, instinct almost had her freeing her hands to snap the agent's neck, and the unexpected intensity of her fury almost escaped her control.

"Agent, you face charges of treason, murder, sabotage, espionage and giving false testimony," Moorland chortled gleefully as she listed the crimes, and Christen frowned.

"What? Are you insane?" She protested, and Moorland punched her in the mouth.

This time, she expected the rush of emotion but curbed it with reluctance as blood trickled from her lip.

"Agent, you have been in the country for nearly ninety-eight hours, and someone rescued you, but it wasn't Director Finch or his people. Who rescued you? You smuggled someone into the country—the senator's daughter. You collected the ten-million-dollar reward on her life.

"Why did you not immediately inform Director Finch or your agency of your return or whereabouts? Why did you not report to them the circumstances of the bombing at Manos or the fact that only you survived along with your accomplices, Michael Williams and two others?" Moorland attacked calmly, and Christen realised the game that Moorland was playing.

She couldn't admit the truth of her being in Moorland's bloody custody without revealing Dana and their people or their purpose. She couldn't jeopardise three years of work when they almost identified all the players, but Moorland and whoever she really worked for, just made the list.

The agent was the government representative tasked with the cover story of a daring marine rescue that brought Christen and the senator's daughter home, but that never happened.

Someone also claimed the reward, and how did they learn about Michael's return? That was classified information only available at the highest level.

Moorland counted on the fact that if Christen revealed the existence of a covert government project to someone like the Director, it would qualify as treason, followed by a quick and clandestine execution. Yet the agent had no true idea of the project's extent or the pot of shit she had just stirred. 

And Christen couldn't prove she'd been in Moorland's custody without involving Dana.

The agent had just framed her for the leak of information, the bombing, the death of the survivors, the kidnapping of the senator's daughter, and just about everything else, bringing Christen to the conclusion that she was either a vindictive opportunist or one of those responsible for what happened. Maybe even both.

"Why would I do any of those things?" Christen asked with a great pretence of calm, watching Finch, who levitated between believing Moorland and not buying it.

She let her gaze shift to Moorland. Christen rarely hated people, but she would make an exception for this woman.

"Money, love, or the thrill of it," the agent suggested.

"Agent, I've seen VSA Strickland's classified file, Agent Moorland. She has more money than she can spend in a lifetime. And if you're implying that she did it for this Corporal Williams? She didn't meet him until Manos, and they barely had any contact until after the incident. They would have had no way to obtain the ransom until they arrived, and someone picked it up before VSA Strickland entered the country.

"When the first three contacts with the kidnappers happened, VSA Strickland was tied to a chair along with twelve others, enduring training for withstanding interrogation. I saw the footage. She never wavered, and you're wasting your time; she is no traitor," Director Finch informed Moorland, and this, too, the agent didn't know.

"Is that your professional opinion, Director Finch? Who brought her here, and why is she alive? Who delivered the senator's daughter, and who took the money? Why didn't she enter with Williams? Where did Williams and his people disappear to, and why didn't she call you for help? Who did she call, and why? If she didn't commit treason, we'll find out and if she did? We will find out. This is not your jurisdiction, Director Finch, and I don't work for you. You are dismissed," Moorland spat with the air of someone who practised the words in her head a hundred times.

Finch scowled, sat down and crossed his arms.

"Agent, I have every right to be present. Christen Strickland is alive because she is one of my best operatives, and I will make sure you don't railroad her into a quick execution to cover up some intel leak. In the meantime, my superiors are aware of the charges, and they will make their own inquiries," Finch calmly stated, staring her down.

"But I ordered you to keep this under wraps!" Moorland hissed.

"That order went against policy, and I had to inform Special Directorate," Finch revealed, and Moorland looked fit to murder him.

If he hadn't called his bosses, the agent might have assassinated him and blamed it on Christen, but now Moorland wasn't sure if he told them about this location or what else they had learned.

The agent had tried to manipulate Finch, but he didn't allow her, and Christen would have applauded him if her hands were free. These two had so much information yet lacked crucial bits of it that made her unsure who they worked for.

Moorland definitely had access to the government unit that monitored A23, but she didn't have all the information available to that covert unit. Did she go off-book? Was this all a matter of the agent trying to make her chops? Yes, and no. The agent also covered up what really happened, marking her as a double agent trying to swat two flies with one blow.

Few things were more dangerous than ambition and politics.

Christen suspected she would find a way out of here, and soon, Moorland's plans might include killing her to make the charges stick. Then again, escaping would play right into the agent's hands.