by Gemini Lassiter and Michael Blakeney
90504.11
Soundtrack: Moonlight Sonata, by Beethoven
Following In Sixty Seconds and No Time to Lose
-=Office of the Director of The Alchemy Project; Starfleet Command=-
90504.11
Soundtrack: Moonlight Sonata, by Beethoven
Following In Sixty Seconds and No Time to Lose
-=Office of the Director of The Alchemy Project; Starfleet Command=-
The sound of the communications panel blaring at ever-increasing volume brought Gem back to the present, far removed from the evening thirty-two years ago that had, without her knowing it at the time, signified a defining and unalterable change in the course of the history of the rest of her life.
Struggling to steady her hand as she set down her half-empty glass of Scotch and reached for the panel, her voice was a raw, harsh whisper as she spoke only her surname in response to the hail.
[We're on our way,] The voice of Keiran O'Sullivan informed her. [Thought you'd wan'ta know.]
"Keep me advised of your progress." She requested simply, and much more calmly than Keiran would have expected. "Lassiter out."
She closed the channel without additional comment, and resumed her previous activities: drinking, and trying to relive though memory events that seemed so real that she could swear they were happening now. Thoughts, feelings, and sensations so vivid and gripping that for a moment, she could feel the cold rain as if it were just this instant seeping into her clothing.
She could smell the fragrance of the lush, fresh-washed grass of the Embassy grounds as the water bent the blades; weighing them down and bathing the world and her toes anew through her strappy, open shoes.
She could feel it all, just as she had that night as she'd stood in the chilling shadow cast by the lavish architecture and watched Michael Blakeney disappear into nothingness.
-=Flashback continued: 2357. Current Timeline=-
Gem swore softly as she realized that she'd missed her chance to stop him.
He could be gone for good, she feared. Then she'd never know who he really was, or why he'd been here tonight.
Or worse he might come back, and use whatever he'd learned to his advantage, and that of those he worked for, if he was indeed involved in the plot to assassinate Ambassador Braylan.
Had the attempt been successful, it would have destroyed any chance the Federation had for working out any kind of peace with the Talarians. Worse, if those responsible, whomever they were, had succeeded in bringing any harm to the Talarian delegation as well, a full-scale war would have ensued; one that would have the potential to go on for years, taking hundreds of thousands, if not millions of lives.
Fortunately the attempt had failed, and Gem only hoped that she could assist those running the investigation and that they could soon find out the truth of who was behind the abrupt ending to tonight’s festivities.
She had a feeling, somehow, that whether or not his involvement was that of a man working for the 'good guys' as he’d claimed or the 'bad guys' instead that Blakeney was key to every other answer she sought.
She couldn't believe she'd simply let him get away.
“Idiot,” she cursed herself. Why hadn't she taken him up immediately on the offer of dinner? Then at least she'd have had a chance of finding out the truth.
To add insult to the injury to her pride, the sky once again gathered and began to pour, copiously. The liquid spilling from heavy, metallic-toned clouds above was much colder than one would expect for this time of year. But then, very little this night had gone as Gem had expected it to.
She knew one thing for sure, though. She was in a hell of a lot of trouble.
She shuffled along, her shoes making a stomach-turning squishing sensation with each step as she wended her way home.
The walk, which really was not a very long one, seemed an eternity as she continued to wonder what had gone wrong with her scanner. By all accounts, it should have been able to trace where the man calling himself Michael had gone. She was frustrated, she was tired, and she wanted little more at the moment than to strangle Jonas until he was limp as a rag doll before her.
If it wasn't for him, she wouldn't be in this situation. She'd be on a Jump where she belonged, and not forced to undertake these messy, pedestrian, terrestrial duties.
She opened the door to her second-floor flat to find that the companel was flashing in red, indicating an urgent incoming message was waiting.
Not even pausing to remove the shoes that were now expelling moisture on and along her meticulously polished wood floors, Gem slammed an angry fist against the panel.
The water accumulating in a pool around her, cascading down from the fabric of her dress as well, was the only blemish to be found in the space surrounding her.
She was a woman of thought, of logic, and of order above all else.
Every book on the shelves lining the walls organized alphabetically by author and by title.
Every uniform tunic and pair of matching pants she owned was hung in the closet with the greatest care so as to preserve their appearance; pressed, pristine, and free of so much as even a speck of lint to detract from their flawlessness.
Setting herself even further apart from many of her gender, the only off-duty, civilian clothing contained in the space consisted of a few identical pairs of plain khaki trousers and crisp, white, men’s button down cotton dress shirts to be worn with them.
Her boots, two functional pairs in black, shined as brightly as the day that they were replicated; careful attention being paid always to making sure that any scuff they may incur during a Jump or other mission was buffed away the moment that she was able to take to the task.
The only dress she owned- newly acquired as ordered- was the one currently clinging to every rain soaked curve of her body and she could hardly wait to get out of it.
Soon enough, she assured herself, as she crossed the room and found it a pleasant new reality that everything around her was still in order, right where she’d left it earlier this evening.
It was a relief, really, since she'd taken the last of Jonas' things and tossed them out, along with him, after the hearing had gone so wrong.
The hearing during which he'd let her take the heat for a decision that he, and he alone, had made and enforced during their last Jump. A decision that she was told she should have known better than to support; even though he was the ranking officer and made the action a direct order.
They'd made a mess, she'd been told. And he'd gone back to clean it up. Having cohabitated with the man for the past year in addition to being his partner the past three, she had fought to stifle a bitter laugh at the idea that she would ever make a mess he'd be the one to clean up.
Joseph, or Jonas, as they'd renamed him only recently- was flashy. He was arrogant, and he really didn't care if his clothing was strewn around the room or hung neatly in a closet.
He couldn't be bothered with such trivial, meaningless matters, he told her. They were too busy, saving 'the very way of life of Federation citizens as they know it every day while they slept, unaware.' He couldn't bother with dishes or laundry, or even making sure the plants he loved so much were watered. Which was a good thing, Gem supposed, as he had never known when they were over-watered and often ended up killing them if he did try to tend them.
He never knew when enough was enough, in any aspect of his life.
Higher.
Faster.
Better.
More.
Those were the words by which Joseph Vale- no, she corrected herself internally- Jonas Vox, lived his life.
All she'd ever done was clean up his messes and stand back while he took the bows after Jumps gone right. She hadn't really minded letting him have the praise, since in the past, he'd at least been willing to take his share of the blame when things hadn't turned out.
After his last resequencing procedure, however, he was different.
Every month, it seemed, TI continued to adjust and refine the process that they had only recently stopped calling memory re-writing and changed to resequencing.
It used to be they'd inject the subject with a potent cocktail of intravenous drugs in a series of 'therapeutic sessions'. Amnesiacs, mostly, but also powerful sedatives. Then while the subject was vulnerable to suggestion, the medical staff, following orders from TI superiors spelled out to the letter, would tell the subject exactly what they remembered.
Now, with new and different procedures, shrouded in such secrecy that even the agents themselves who were to undergo them were not informed of their actual modalities, they were picking and choosing with much more detail and accuracy which memories they wanted an agent to keep- and which they wanted to erase from that person's history. Or from History itself.
While he'd never been perfect, in the past Jonas had possessed his own manner of charm, in his way. His thirst for excitement and passion for life. His desire to better the lives of future generations and to make his mark in Starfleet, had managed to attract Gem.
Yes, his manner had been just interesting enough to attract her, but not exactly enough to cause her to fall in love with him.
Gem was quite certain, in fact, that she'd never been in love.
That really didn't trouble her any, though. Life with Joseph- no, she sternly corrected herself once more, with Jonas- had been satisfying enough without the drawbacks that 'love' seemed to cause other pairs she'd known and observed in her lifetime.
At some point she had decided that this was the best working and 'romantic' for lack of a better term, partnership she could hope for. It was controlled, or rather, she could control her own feelings and that gave her a sense of stability and of having the upper hand in their personal life if not their professional one.
She could get to him. She could make him feel passion and desire for her, and she could use that to her advantage in a logical and constructive way when needed. Being he wielded no such power over her, she considered the lack of what others may call chemistry a more than acceptable trade.
She was, for want of a better descriptive term, content with her life until only recently.
They'd fallen into a routine that suited her with its logic and its comforting repetition; something of a constant amidst the chaos of the job that they did.
At the end of every Jump they'd come home, to the city. They'd live in her flat and he'd leave his clothing on the floor. She'd pick it up and water his plants. They'd eat way too much replicated food, they'd sleep together when it suited them and then they'd get on with the next job.
Predictable.
Safe.
Rational.
Yes, her life, as insane as her choice of career inherently was, was really quite sane in all other respects. She wasn't given to impulse, or wild swings of emotion. She wasn't ever 'up' but then the good part about that was that she was never 'down', either.
From the time she was five years old and had vowed to leave the country where she'd grown up to seek a life that was more than the one that had satisfied generations of Lassiters before her, she had planned out every step of her path. She'd made list upon list of things to do and the order in which to do them, and she had, one by one, ticked off that list, so far.
Graduation from the Academy. Taking on work as some sort of 'secret agent' as she'd imagined it in her youth- though she never could have imagined as she watched the sun set over the fields of her parent's sprawling land in the countryside that she'd ever work with any agency as complicated as Temporal Investigations.
There were still a few things she wished to achieve, mostly promotions in rank. The last item on her childhood to-do list read 'Achieve the rank Admiral before the age of sixty'.
She figured she had, until only recently, been making great progress. One carefully planned step after another in that course of study, career, and service to the 'Fleet had led her to exactly that work, and this life.
Led her to TI, which led her to Joseph...
...which led her, eventually, through a course of events barely to be believed to standing in the middle of her perfectly arranged apartment, at what should be the best time in her perfectly arranged life- dripping rivulets of icy water down onto the perfectly polished floor and listening, as her stomach clenched, to the words that she never, ever imagined she'd hear from a superior officer as they were shouted at her in an audio recording sent only a few moments before she'd gotten home.
//// Gemini Lassiter
Director, The Alchemy Project
And former TI Agent
and
Lt. Commander Michael Blakeney
Starfleet
Director, The Alchemy Project
And former TI Agent
and
Lt. Commander Michael Blakeney
Starfleet