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Project UW Base, California
Riley Finn hooks the top button of his dress shirt and slips on his jacket. He pauses in front of the bureau mirror, ignoring the reflection he casts in his dress blues. He reaches for a photograph taken in the Amazon last summer. His finger traces along the glossy print. Sam. She's smiling, alive, and so beautiful in this picture. One of the gutsiest women he ever had the good fortune of knowing. He can't imagine what she must have been reduced to those final days, those last few hours. He's seen images of other victims, catalogued and classified in the manila folder he hid at rest stop 47 in the California desert. Riley's committed an act of treason punishable by death. He's not worried. He'll be dead long before the MP's show up. There will be no military tribunal for Special Agent Riley Finn, operative of the UW Secret Ops. Unbuttoning his breast coat pocket, Riley slips the glossy print inside. He has a job to perform. A duty. He finally catches himself in the mirror. His face is cast of stone, he is still a good soldier, treason withstanding. He pretends not to note the yellow pallor of his skin, the sweat that drips across the starched collar of his dress blues. the wheeze of his lungs as he draws breath. Or the cough that worries his throat when he salutes the image in the mirror and says, "Special Agent Riley Finn, you have been released of your obligations to Project UW. Dismissed." He turns on a perfunctory heel and reaches for his holster. He clicks the safety off and cocks the trigger. The barrel of the gun is cold and greasy against his tongue. He wouldn't have it any other way. It's begun. Nothing could stop it. Not the US military and certainly not a Slayer. It's his last thought when his finger pulls the trigger that reminds him why he brought the Slayer into it, a nag of conscience if nothing more. He wishes it was Sam he pictures in his head. Sam's voice he hears instead of the nagging telltale cough of a cheerful teenager who answered the phone at the Summers residence. |