Title: Family III

Author: Shadowscast

Fandom: Once A Thief

Pairing: Mac/Michael (parts 1 and 2), Mac/Li Ann (part 2), Mac/Vic (part 3)

Genre: drama

Rating: NC-17

Warnings: You know me. Sex, violence.... Parts 1 and 2 have some borderline n/c. There's m/m sex in all parts. Part 2 has some graphic het sex. Also, this is a WIP. I give you fair warning now, it'll be at least a month before part 3 comes out.

Archive: Anywhere you want! Just let me know.

Spoilers: the Pilot, Trial Marriage, Mac Daddy, Politics of Love, Family Reunion, Endgame

Disclaimer: Characters belong to Alliance. This was written for fun, not profit.

Notes: This fic was inspired by a couple lines in "Mac Daddy" which didn't quite make sense to me in the context of the rest of the show's backstory. I started trying to resolve those lines in terms of the rest of the series, and this story grew from there.

Thanks to Lorie for the beta!

Feedback always welcome. Always

Toronto, Canada, New Year's Eve 1998

The Director gazed over the rim of her martini glass with bemusement as Mr. Dobrinsky climbed up onto the bar. His tie was askew, and a ridiculous silver conical hat perched on his head. He glowed with enthusiasm. It was nice to see him happy, but the Director wished for a bit more dignity in her staff. Still, it was New Year's Eve.

Jackie Janczyk clambered up beside Dobrinsky and flung an arm around him. She was wearing a sparkling pink minidress with fake ostrich feathers ornamenting the hems. She obviously wasn't concerned that half the bar could now see up her dress—if she gave it a thought, the idea probably appealed to her.

"Ten!" Dobrinsky shouted out. "Nine!"

Prompted by the force of tradition, other Agency partygoers chimed in.

"Eight!" "Seven!" "Six!"

The Director's attention was drawn to a small cluster of people standing in the far corner. Vic, Li Ann and Mac—her three pets, and her most dysfunctional team—were standing together. In a few moments, the countdown would end and everyone in the bar would kiss whoever was closest. The Director was most curious to see what would come of this.

"Five!" "Four!" "Three!" "Two!" "One!" "Happy New Year!!!!"

Mac, Vic and Li Ann all stood frozen for a moment. Then Vic leaned in and gave Li Ann a brotherly kiss on the cheek. She smiled.

Then Mac grabbed Vic's shoulder and pulled him away from Li Ann. The Director frowned. She hoped Mac wasn't about to do something stupid and embarrass her in front of the gathered Agency staff and hangers-on.

She was rather surprised by what happened next.

Mac kissed Vic.

It was quite a smooch—they locked lips for a good five seconds. Mac's hands were on Vic's shoulders, while Vic's hung loose at his sides. The Director began to wonder if she was seeing the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Then Vic broke away from the kiss. He looked angry.

Suddenly Vic's fists clenched and he let loose with a furious right hook to the side of Mac's head.

The Director sighed to herself, put her drink down, and made her way briskly towards the combatants.

Meanwhile, Mac staggered but didn't fall. He let swing a wild punch which didn't have a hope of connecting; Vic skilfully side-stepped it and then used Mac's momentum to throw the younger man to the floor.

That was enough. The Director drew her gun. "Freeze," she snapped at Vic and Mac.

Taking her signal, half the agents in the bar took out their guns and pointed them at her boys. Trust Agency employees to come armed to their own staff New Year's party.

Vic and Mac, wisely, froze.

"Boys, boys, boys," the Director crooned, coming close. She tucked her own gun away and gave Mac a hand up off the floor. She saw right away that he was quite drunk—she'd have to remember to watch him. "Won't you two ever learn how to play nice?"

Hamilton, Canada, January 1983

Mac and his friend Paul were walking along the tops of the snowbanks on their way home from school. Every once in a while one of their boots would sink deep into the snow, but mostly it supported their weight. When they got to a driveway they'd jump down and then climb the mountain of snow on the other side, invariably knocking huge quantities of snow into the driveways.

"Look, we can't watch TV at my place because Mom's cleaning and she says I can't have anyone over today," Paul said.

Mac lost his footing and nearly slid down the side of the bank into the street. He caught himself, swearing. "But we don't have cable at my place," he said.

"Whatever. We could watch whatever's on. Or we could play G.I. Joes.

But we can't go to my house today."

Mac came to the next driveway. He slid down the end of the snowbank on his butt. Paul followed, getting more speed because he slid in the track Mac had made. Mac didn't want to have Paul over to his place, but it looked like there wasn't any choice. "OK, yeah. My place." He scrambled up the side of the next snowbank. "Listen, about my mom...."

"Yeah?"

"She's got kind of a weird sense of humour. So if she, like, starts talking funny, just ignore her, OK?"

"What do you mean-shit!" Paul's right leg sank into the snowbank up to his thigh. He pulled it out, and scraped the worst of the snow out of the top of his boot.

"Like, if she starts talking about these messages she gets from the ceiling light, and asks you if you can hear it humming, just ignore her, OK? Like, don't encourage her, you know? She just thinks it's funny," Mac explained.

"OK." Paul sounded skeptical.

"She's not crazy," Mac emphasized.

Paul snorted. "Grownups are all crazy." He scooped up a handful of snow and threw it at Mac.

When they got to Mac's apartment a couple minutes later, they were both covered with snow.

"Do we have to take our boots off in the hall?" Paul asked.

Mac pulled out his key to unlock the door. "Nah. Mom doesn't care."

"That's so cool," Paul said.

Mac opened the door.

Anita was lying with her head hanging half off of the sofa.

"Um... I think there's something wrong with your mom," Paul said in a small voice. "Eww..."

There was a puddle of vomit on the floor by the couch, under Anita's head. There was some on her chin, too. Her eyes were closed.

"Mom?" Mac squeaked. He crept close enough to shake her foot. "Mom?? Mom wake up!"

"Look," Paul said. "Lookit all those bottles." There were four pill bottles on the coffee table, all of them open. A few pills were scattered around—white and yellow and red. "I think your Mom's tried to kill herself."

"Mom!! Mom, wake up!!" Mac shook her harder, but she didn't respond.

Paul grabbed Mac's arm.

"We've gotta call an ambulance," he said. "Do you know the phone number?"

"No," Mac wailed, "do you??"

"No. Shit, man. My mom'll know. Let's go to my house. Come ON, we've gotta run!!"

Mac couldn't think. His brain was stuck in a panicked loop. He did what Paul said.

The two boys ran all the way to Paul's house—about five blocks away.

The door was unlocked. They ran straight into the kitchen, where Paul's mom was.

"What are you boys doing?" Paul's mom asked angrily, glaring at the dirty snow they'd tracked through the house. "Out!"

"Mom-" Paul gasped. "Call an ambulance!"

"What?" Paul's mom's manner changed instantly. "Who's hurt? What happened?"

"Mac's mom, she was lying on the couch, there was all this puke, she wouldn't wake up, I think she swallowed all these pills," Paul replied, the words tumbling over each other. Mac, meanwhile, leaned against the cupboard and slowly slid to the floor, staring at Paul's mom's legs.

"Oh dear God," Paul's mom murmured. She reached for the phone. "Mac, honey, you need to tell me your address."

Mac's voice sounded flat and far away to his own ears. "2387 Lockwood Street. Apartment 42."

He heard Paul's mom dialling the phone, and then talking to someone. Paul squatted down beside him. "C'mon, Mac, we've gotta take our stuff off. The snow's all melting."

Mac followed Paul back to the front door, and stripped off all his outdoor clothes. If he concentrated on one thing at a time—left mitten, right mitten, unzip coat—he could almost forget the image of his mom's head hanging loosely off the couch.

"Paul?" Mac said.

"Yeah?"

Mac sat on the floor to pull his boots off. Staring at his feet, he said "Swear you won't tell anyone at school about this?"

"OK, I swear."

Mac's throat suddenly felt very tight, and his eyes prickled. His mom couldn't die. Sure she was pretty crazy, and sometimes she scared him, but she was his mom. He needed her. He loved her. He started to cry.

Paul knelt in a puddle of melted snow and awkwardly put his arms around Mac. "She'll be OK," he said. "And if she dies you can come live with me."

Toronto, Canada, January 1999

Vic buried his fingers in Mac's hair and pulled him close to kiss him.

Mac closed his eyes as their lips pressed together. Vic felt Mac's tongue playing at his lips, teasing. Vic ran his hands hungrily over Mac's body, feeling the hard muscles, the rough hair.

Mac broke away from the kiss, and a moment later Vic felt Mac's mouth around his dick. Vic groaned with pleasure as Mac applied his tongue to Vic's penis. A warm glowing good feeling spread from his middle to the tips of his fingers and toes....

**beep** **beep** **beep** **beep** **beep**

Vic groped blindly 'till he found the off button on his alarm clock. He sat up in bed and looked at the clock. It was 7:45 am, and it was Monday. He had to get to the Agency.

He had a wicked hard-on. What had he been dreaming, just before the alarm went off? It had been something nice... oh, shit. It came back to him. He'd been dreaming about Mac again.

Vic dragged himself out of bed and stumbled into the bathroom. He turned the shower on cold, gritted his teeth and stepped in.

He couldn't believe he'd had the Mac dream again. What was that all about?

Vic rubbed some soap onto a washcloth and started to scrub his body. His skin stood up in goosebumps under the cold spray of water, and his erection was fading away. He added a bit of warmer water to the mix.

Dreams were like tarot cards, right? Nothing ever meant what it literally should mean. You dream about death, it means you're about to go on a trip. Dream you're going on a trip, it means you're worried about your job. Dream you're having sex with your male co-worker, it means... it means you want to adopt a puppy, or something. Now, if you dream you're eating a pickle sandwich, then damn, that means you want to have sex with your male co-worker. But Vic hadn't had any dreams about pickle sandwiches, so everything was fine.

Vic rinsed off, stepped out of the shower and briskly towelled himself dry. He would like to adopt a puppy. A black lab. He'd had a black lab when he was a kid. Working for the Agency, though, he just couldn't take responsibility for a puppy. He never knew when the Director would suddenly send him away on a mission for days or even weeks at a time—and as a secret agent, he had to keep a low profile.

He couldn't have some local kid coming into his apartment every day to dog-sit for him while he was away. So that was that; no puppy for Vic.

Vic put on his robe and wandered out to the kitchen to put on coffee and toast. The apartment was cold. Vic pulled the robe tighter around himself. Damn cheap landlord. He wondered idly if he should move into an Agency-owned apartment, like Mac and Li Ann had. He'd have to ask them how their heat was.

And let the Director get an even tighter grip on him? Naaah.

Vic went back to the bedroom to get dressed. One advantage of working at the Agency: at least he could wear comfortable clothes most of the time. He pulled on a favourite old pair of jeans, a thermal undershirt, and then a red plaid flannel shirt. It was soft and warm —perfect for the icy January day he faced. Sure would be nice to have a puppy around the house, he thought as he pulled his socks on.

Dogs are loyal. A dog never stabbed anyone in the back. Not like... He tried to cut the thought off but the names ran through his head unbidden. Stan, Ivy, Gloria, Orsini... and oh, he could go on, but he heard his toast pop.

A few swallows of coffee perked Vic up some. He reminded himself to look on the bright side. It was a whole new year. Sure, a lot of people had screwed him over in 1998, but it was 1999 now. A new year was a blank slate, and he'd learned from the mistakes of his past.

1998 had been a crazy year. It was hard to believe that a year ago, he'd still been engaged to Li Ann, and he'd never even heard of Mac or Jackie.

Mac. The Mac dream. Damn, he'd nearly managed to forget about that.

Maybe it was because of the kiss at the Agency New Year's party. That kind of thing could mess with a guy's head.

Vic finished his toast, rinsed his dishes, and remembered the New Year's party. It had been just the sort of strange, awkward celebration he'd learned to expect from his colleagues. The bar had been decorated with silver and white helium balloons, which contrasted oddly with the inexplicable Soviet cold-war era decor. There had been lots of people there who Vic saw only at Agency parties, never at the Agency itself, and most of them wouldn't even talk to him. Murphy and Camier had attended, claiming a booth to themselves and driving away all comers with their gruesome reminiscences about their finer kills in the past year.

Vic had had to twist Li Ann's arm to get her to come. He could understand that she wasn't much in the mood for celebrating; her father had been killed in early December, and then she'd killed Michael only a week before Christmas. Still, he'd managed to convince her that a night out with friends (if they could be called that) would be better than another night alone with her memories.

When midnight had gotten close, Dobrinsky had climbed up onto the bar and joyfully counted down the seconds 'till the New Year, with Jackie hanging on his arm. Li Ann and Vic had been standing in a corner at that point, talking, and Mac had just wandered over to join them. Li Ann hadn't been drinking that night, but Vic had had a few, and Mac was clearly sloshed.

When Dobrinsky'd called out "Happy New Year!" everyone in the bar had grabbed someone nearby to kiss. Vic and Li Ann and Mac had all stared at each other for a moment, a frozen tableau. Then Vic had given Li Ann a kiss on the cheek, and whispered "This one'll be better than the last one, I promise," in her ear.

Mac had grabbed Vic's shoulders then and pulled him away from Li Ann.

Vic had tensed, ready to defend Li Ann from Mac's drunken advances.

It hadn't worked out that way.

Instead of letting go of Vic, Mac had pulled him close and kissed him on the lips.

Vic had been so shocked, he hadn't broken away immediately. Mac's kiss had been rough, and tasted like vodka. Vic had never been kissed by a man, and it was the roughness he noticed the most—like sandpaper. Was that what Vic felt like to a woman?

Then Vic had felt Mac's tongue in his mouth, and his brain had finally clicked in to what was going on. Then he'd shoved Mac roughly away, and punched him in the face.

OK, maybe he'd overreacted just a little. But still—Mac had kissed him. With tongue. You don't do that to a guy without warning him, no matter how drunk you are.

Naturally, Mac had tried to hit him back. The punch had been wild, and Vic had evaded it easily, managing meanwhile to grab Mac and pull him off balance. Being completely drunk, Mac had fallen right to the floor.

Next thing Vic knew, there'd been about thirty guns on them. Never start a bar fight in a room full of secret agents. So that was the end of that. The Director had come over and scolded them, told them to play nice and start the New Year off right, but she hadn't seemed overly concerned.

Vic hadn't known what to make of the kiss. He knew that Mac was in love with Li Ann. What the hell had Mac kissed Vic for? Vic had avoided Mac for the next hour or so, hanging out with some guys from forensics, talking sports and drinking heavily. By the time Li Ann (who was Vic's designated driver) had come and pulled at his sleeve and said she wanted to go home, Vic had barely even remembered the kiss.

He remembered it now, though, at the wheel of his truck, backing into a spot in the Agency parking garage. He hadn't seen Mac since New Year's Eve. That had been Thursday night, so Friday'd been the holiday, and the Director hadn't made them come in over the weekend. Now it was Monday morning—the first work day of the New Year.

This could be awkward.

When Vic got to the briefing room, Mac was already there, slouched in the seat facing Vic at the left end of the table, wearing a black suit and dark sunglasses. That was a surprise. Mac was generally not the first one in Monday morning, especially after a long weekend. Vic glanced at his watch; it was ten to nine. Li Ann and Jackie weren't even late yet.

There were five chairs set around the table today, two to each long side and one obviously for the Director at the head. Vic took the place diagonally opposite Mac. He leaned back in the chair and glanced across the table at his partner. That was when he noticed the big greenish-yellow bruise behind Mac's left cheekbone. "Ooo," Vic winced, "Sorry about that."

"About what?" Mac asked. He touched his cheek. "This? Did you do this?"

"You don't remember?"

Mac shrugged. "Nada."

"Well, you know, that's probably for the best," Vic replied cheerfully. Any kiss initiated by someone too wasted to remember it later doesn't really count. "Anyway, take my word for it, you deserved it."

"I demand a recount," Mac muttered, slouching further into his seat.

"Hey, what are these?" Vic asked, noticing something new about the table. There was a rectangular section in front of him that looked like it would—yup. It flipped up to reveal a blank flat screen. A laptop-sized keyboard was sunk into the table's surface underneath. "Huh, new toys," he muttered. "Wonder how you turn it on?"

"'Morning," Li Ann greeted them, sliding into the seat beside Vic's.

"Like, hi, Happy New Year!" said Jackie, taking the fourth seat.

On cue, the Director descended from above.

If Vic didn't know better, he'd say that the Director was hung over from the weekend's festivities. Her hair and outfit were immaculate, of course, but he could swear there were dark crescents under her eyes. And she looked cranky.

"Good morning," Vic attempted.

"It would have been a better morning," the Director confided to Vic in an icy tone, "if I hadn't had to get up at six to bail one of my agents out of jail."

Mac slouched even farther down in his seat. The others looked at him, curiously.

"That was not an auspicious start to the New Year, Mr. Ramsey," the Director said, leaning over the table in a threatening manner.

Mac gave her a twisted grin. "Well, you know, Chinese New Year is still a month away. I could try again then."

"I expect you to start trying now." The Director held him in her powerful glare for another moment, before moving to the head of the table. She flipped up another flat screen from its surface. "Over the holiday the technicians have been busy updating our technology," she explained in a businesslike tone. "You all have display screens like Vic's at your stations. Open them up."

While everyone flipped the screens up, the Director drummed her fingers on the tabletop. "There was a prison break in Alberta last month," she said once everyone's attention was on her again.

"Oh yeah, I remember, it was on the news," Vic said. The Director gave him an approving glance. "It was at a nuthouse, wasn't it?"

"Well, the official term is maximum security penitentiary hospital, but yes, the prisoners who disappeared were all classed criminally insane." The Director hit a key on her own keyboard, and a graphic showed up on all the agents' screens: an outdoor photo of a bleak, institutional building surrounded by a high wall topped with coiled barbed wire. "Unfortunately, the RCMP don't have any good leads on the break. None of the prisoners have resurfaced yet. The guards at the building were all drugged; none of them remember anything. The security cameras were all disabled. If any of the remaining prisoners know anything, they're not talking. Or rather, they're not talking coherently—they've variously given the police stories about giant pink rabbits, purple mice and green kangaroos taking the prisoners away."

"People in costume?" Li Ann suggested.

"It's a possibility," the Director agreed. She tapped her keyboard again and a new graphic showed up on all the screens. It was a photo of graffiti, spray-painted red on a beige cinderblock wall. The graffiti consisted of a wild-eyed face and the words "MAD MILLENNIUM."

The face was just two eyes and a mouth. The eyes were round, and one was significantly larger than the other; the larger eye had a diamond-shaped pupil. The mouth was grinning maniacally, showing lots of teeth, and the tips of the smile turned up into curlicues. "This graffiti was found on one of the inside walls of the prison, after the incident," the Director explained. She keyed up the next image; it was more or less the same graffiti, but this time it was in blue paint on a red brick wall which had already been tagged by multiple graffiti artists. "This one was sighted by the local police in Kingston on Saturday."

Mac perked up. "Jamaica, mon?" he asked, faking the accent. "How soon can we get there?"

"Not Kingston, Jamaica, twit," Vic muttered. "Kingston, Ontario. It's about three hours' drive from here. There's another nut—uh, penitentiary hospital there. The Harris Memorial."

"It's like, too bad, though," Jackie commented, "'cause I could really go for some beach time now. Work on my tan." She poked Li Ann and grinned. "Wouldn't that be great?"

Li Ann gave Jackie a disdainful look.

"Children, children," the Director sang out. "Please try to keep your attention on the matter at hand. Victor is correct about the Kingston in question, and you're all going to be going there today as soon as you can pack your things. Girls, you're going to be helping the prison staff improve security, and generally watching out for anything suspicious on the inside. Boys, you're going to be working the town; see if you can find any more graffiti, or anything that might give us some clues about what's going on. Let's see your detective skills, Vic. You'll have the full support of the local police; they've been told you're a special RCMP task force."

"You mentioned packing?" Li Ann recalled. "Are we going to be there for long?"

"We'll see how it goes," the Director said. "Three hours each way is too much time to waste on commuting, so you'll stay in a hotel in Kingston while you're working there, but you're not far from Toronto if I need you back."

"How 'bout a guesstimate?" Vic asked.

"Oh, I don't know," the Director shrugged, "A week? If nothing turns up."

Vic sighed to himself. Yup. No life for a puppy.

"So, class dismissed." The Director waved her hands at them. "Go pack your bags. Be back here in two hours, and I'll give you your mission dossiers before you go. Oh, Li Ann—Mac doesn't have his car. Would you drive him home? And Vic—you stay, I want a word with you."

Vic halted, halfway out of his seat. He had an unhappy suspicion that the "word" the Director wanted to have with him would have something to do with the bruise on Mac's face. Vic sat back down and prepared his defences.

The other agents slipped out of the room. The Director snapped the computer screen in front of Vic closed, and perched on the table in front of him. She was wearing a short skirt, and her long, smooth legs, clad only in transparent hose, nudged against Vic's knee. He felt the heel of her stiletto digging into his calf. He swallowed, and forced his gaze up, up, up to meet her eyes.

"Victor," she said, touching one finger under his chin. "You're the senior member of the team. I depend on you the most. I need you, to a certain extent, to look out for the others."

Vic felt himself blushing, ashamed. "I-I'm sorry I hit Mac," he mumbled. "I'll apologize to him if you want."

The Director raised her eyebrows, looking surprised. "My goodness Vic, you have such a Catholic sense of guilt. I wasn't thinking about that."

Vic felt confused. "You weren't?"

The Director slipped off the table and walked a few paces from Vic's chair, her heels clicking on the floor. She turned back to him and shrugged, with a bored expression. "You were drunk. He was very drunk. He kissed you. You're moderately homophobic. You punched him. He doesn't even remember it. The incident doesn't concern me."

Vic stood up. "I'm not homophobic," he said indignantly. "It was just—just the shock."

The Director wiggled her fingers dismissively. "Don't make me repeat myself. I said I don't care about that little incident. I want to talk to you now, as the senior member of the team, about the emotional well-being of Li Ann and Mac."

"Oh." Vic frowned, absently tucking his thumbs into his pockets. "What do you mean by that?"

"They both went through a very difficult time last month, starting with Mr. Tang's death and ending with Michael's."

"Yeah, I'll say," Vic agreed.

"How well do you think they're coping?"

Vic hesitated. He'd worked with the Director for several years before Li Ann, and then Mac, came along, but since the others had joined him they'd developed a strong sense of unity, a sense of "us" in which the Director was not included. Now the Director was asking him to talk about them behind their backs, and that felt weird—even if he was pissed off with Mac about that damn kiss.

"Come on, Vic," the Director coaxed, meanwhile wandering away from him to sit at her own desk. He followed her, stopping a meter or so from her chair. "I know you don't entirely trust me, but it's generally in my best interest to look after my agents' well-being, so let's assume enlightened self-interest and work together here, all right?"

Vic shrugged. He'd never entirely trust her, but she had a point there. "All right. I'm not sure about Mac. I think Li Ann's doing OK, considering. I mean, she was pretty upset the night after she killed Michael."

The Director nodded. "You spent that night with her."

Vic glared at the Director. She gave them no privacy, ever. What a fucked-up life. "Well, if you were watching on your little hidden cameras, then you know that nothing happened. She cried all night. I was just there to hold her hand."

"I know," the Director confirmed in a gentle tone. "You were good for her that night."

Vic didn't really know how to take a compliment from the Director; he shrugged it off. "She's been quieter than usual since then," he went on, "but the quiet seems... I don't know, lighter, maybe, than before."

"Go on," the Director prompted him.

"The first time she thought she killed Michael, she tortured herself over it. She used to wake up from nightmares where she relived the fight at the pier when his car went over the edge." Vic felt a twinge of sad nostalgia, remembering those weeks after the first time they'd thought Michael'd died, when he would hold on to Li Ann in bed and soothe her nightmares away. He knew it hadn't been easy for her to talk to him about her dreams—he still had the sense that she'd hidden far more than she'd ever revealed. He'd felt honoured that she trusted him with as much as she did.

Well, she still trusted him. They weren't lovers anymore, but they were still friends.

"And what's different this time?" the Director asked.

"I think this time she's just... sad."

The Director nodded, slowly. "You have an unfortunate tendency to trust anyone you feel sorry for, but other than that I find you a good judge of people, Vic. I agree with everything you said about Li Ann.

I believe she found Michael's ultimate betrayal of her and Mac... cathartic. I think she may finally be able to let go of the Tangs now, and get on with her life. Once she's finished mourning, of course."

Vic shrugged his agreement. "Yeah."

"Mac, on the other hand, worries me." The Director opened her cigar box and selected a cigar. She didn't offer Vic one.

"I thought you were pissed at Mac," Vic said, watching the Director light her cigar.

The Director took a puff and blew the pungent smoke away from Vic. "Oh, I am," she assured him. "'Pissed' barely begins to describe my feelings towards Mac."

"Uh, what was the story with bailing him out of jail this morning?" Vic picked up a pen from the Director's desk and fiddled with it. He admitted to himself: he was curious. He was fishing for dirt.

The Director sat back and lifted the cigar to her lips again; its tip glowed red. She exhaled the smoke and rubbed her eyes with her free hand. Vic was struck again with the impression that she was tired.

"Mac disappeared from the New Year's party sometime around one in the morning," she said. "He didn't go back to his apartment that night. I couldn't track him down Friday or Saturday. Late Sunday afternoon he was arrested downtown for public intoxication. He spent the night in the drunk tank; I was notified early this morning. Near as I can tell, he'd been drunk since Thursday night."

Vic whistled. "That's some bender."

The Director nodded. "Second only to the one he went on starting the night after Michael tried to kill you all."

Vic raised an eyebrow. He hadn't known about that.

"I was in the hospital, you and Li Ann were together—Mac slipped off the radar for four days. He came back on his own that time, slept it off in his apartment," the Director said.

"Well, the guy lost his father, and then his brother tried to kill him —no wonder he wants to drown his sorrows a bit." Vic started to wonder what the Director was getting at, telling him all this.

"I believe Mac is precariously close to the edge," the Director said.

"I need you to hold him back from it, if you can."

"Whoa," Vic said, setting the pen back on the desk. This was getting heavy. "What edge? I just work with him, I won't—I don't know— baby-sit him for you." The Director raised an eyebrow at Vic. "He's an adult," Vic went on, "he can take care of himself."

The Director blew a smoke ring. "Maybe," she said.

"Maybe?" Vic repeated. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"He attempted suicide while he was in prison in Hong Kong," the Director said. "More than once."

Vic stared at her. He didn't know how to react to that. Fuck.

"I'm telling you this in the strictest confidence of course," she said.

"Why the hell are you telling me at all?" Vic demanded, his confusion coalescing into anger. "What kind of game is this?"

"No game, Victor. I'm just telling you what I think you need to know to manage your team."

"No no, I know what you're doing," Vic said, feeling a flash of insight. "It's the wounded-bird-syndrome thing, isn't it?"

The Director gave him an innocent, curious look. "What do you mean?"

"Nikki told me. She saw my file, and she told me all about it. You think I have wounded-bird-syndrome. You think that if you get me to feel sorry for Mac, then I'll do what you want, I'll take care of him for you."

"Well, not to worry," the Director told him drily. "Now that you've seen through my brilliant plan, it won't work, will it?"

Vic glared at her. "He's my friend. I'll be there for him if he needs me."

"I do hope so." The Director took another puff of her cigar.

Vic turned his face away from the powerful smoke, wrinkling his nose.

"His recent drinking binges concern me particularly because he has a history of substance abuse," the Director confided.

"What!?" Vic could hardly believe the suicide thing, and now the Director was throwing this at him, too. It didn't make sense—he knew Mac, Mac was bright, brash, resilient, always joking. He couldn't have hidden all this darkness from Vic for so long... could he? Was the Director just messing with Vic's head? "What do you mean, he's alcoholic?"

"Not that I know of," she said. "But before his arrest in Hong Kong, he was using a number of drugs rather heavily. Cocaine, speed, ecstasy, heroin-"

"Whoa," Vic interrupted her. "Mac was a junkie?" Heavy shit, again.

Vic had seen a lot of fucked-up people while he was working Narcotics on the force. And Mac wasn't like them. "I don't believe you. Li Ann never said anything about this. And I know what junkies are like, and Mac's not one."

"Well, I believe that Li Ann never knew about this," the Director explained. "And Mac went clean in prison, obviously." She tapped ashes off her cigar into her glass ashtray. "Eighteen months' solitary confinement is handy for that sort of thing. When he came to work for the Agency I set very firm rules, and he kept to them, until now." She paused, thinking back. "Well, except for one brief incident a few days after he arrived in Vancouver. Remember the day you were all supposed to watch Robertson Graves, and Mac started a fight with a couple of Tang soldiers, and they escaped with a hostage and you chased them down on a motorcycle?"

Vic nodded. Not like he was going to forget something like that.

"By the way, did I ever tell you how pleased I was with your work on that?" the Director interrupted herself. She grinned at Vic. "I wish I'd been there to see it. The reports were quite impressive."

"Uh, thanks."

"But as I was saying—Mac went and got himself very, very drunk after that. Luckily I had another agent tailing him; my people took him into custody and," she smiled grimly, "I locked him in the basement until he dried out."

"So why don't you lock him in the basement now?" Vic asked. He still didn't understand what the hell she wanted from him. It wasn't like he'd ever worked in rehab—if Mac really did have a problem, Vic wouldn't know what to do for him.

"Not a good long-term solution," the Director said. "I need him working. I need all of you working. If he can't work, he's no good to me."

That sounded ominous. "And, uh, then what?" Vic asked.

"Well, let's not find out, all right?" The Director gave him a very dangerous smile, and squished the butt of her cigar into the ashtray.

"You'd better go pack. I want you back here by eleven thirty. Oh!" she called out as Vic turned to go. "One more thing. The girls are working inside the prison, you and Mac are working outside. You two don't go in under any circumstances, got it?"

Vic frowned. "Sure, whatever."

"Now shoo," she said, waving her hands at him. "Go."

When Vic got back to the Agency, Jackie and Li Ann were waiting in the briefing room.

"Where's Mac?" Vic asked Li Ann.

Li Ann rolled her eyes. "He's asleep in my car. I parked it in the underground garage, so he won't freeze."

So it worked out that they took two vehicles to Kingston—Li Ann drove Mac, and Vic drove Jackie. That was a historical first—the first time Vic had ever been relieved to spend three hours trapped in a small space alone with Jackie. He didn't know what the hell he'd say to Mac when he saw him, after everything the Director had told him.

Vic and Jackie arrived at their hotel in Kingston just in time to find Li Ann threatening to rearrange the desk clerk's face if he didn't find them two more rooms. Apparently the Agency had arranged for only two rooms for the four of them, and the rest of the hotel was booked for a "slash convention," whatever the hell that was. Vic just hoped it didn't involve as many knives as it sounded like it involved.

Vic put a restraining hand on Li Ann's shoulder. The desk clerk, a skinny guy barely out of his teens, was sweating visibly. "How many beds are in each room?" Vic asked the clerk.

"T-two," the poor guy replied in a cracking voice.

Well, it could have been worse. "It's OK, Li Ann, we'll make do," Vic said. "The government's gotta save money somehow, right?"

Jackie came up to Li Ann and laid a hand on Li Ann's arm. "Yeah, it'll be great, it'll be, like, a pyjama party every night!!"

"Like, what fun," Li Ann replied with venomous sarcasm.

"Could I, uh, have my room key please?" Vic asked the clerk over the heads of the girls.

Vic got the two room passkeys, and went to collect Mac. He left the girls baiting each other at the desk while the clerk watched them the way a guy might watch two very poisonous snakes having a territorial dispute around his feet.

Mac was slumped on one of the lobby couches, still wearing his sunglasses.

"Hey," Vic said. Mac looked up and Vic tossed him one passkey. "We're room 523."

Mac stood up. "And the girls are?" The guys started walking toward the elevator.

"525, next to us." Vic punched the elevator button and stole a glance back at the desk. "If they make it up there without killing each other first. Jesus, I thought they were getting along better these days."

"Oh, well, Li Ann may be in a bad mood right now," Mac said offhandedly, leaning against the wall beside the elevator. He didn't elaborate.

The girls joined them as the elevator arrived, and they all rode up to the fifth floor together and then separated into their two rooms.

Mac kicked his boots off, threw his bag onto the bed nearer the window, and flopped down beside it. "I'm going to take a nap," he announced. He didn't even take his coat off.

"You wouldn't consider, uh, doing some work with me this afternoon?" Vic suggested, his tone only moderately sarcastic.

If Mac had actually been drunk from New Year's eve until yesterday afternoon, he probably had some more sleeping it off to do and he wouldn't be any use today. Still, Vic couldn't let him slack off with no hassle at all—that would feel weird.

"What are you going to do, just check in with the Kingston police?" Mac spoke without moving; his eyes were closed behind his sunglasses.

"You can do that better without me."

"I guess... whenever police meet you they seem to want to arrest you."

"It's their way of showing affection, y'know?" Mac mumbled. "They're pretty repressed."

Vic went to freshen up in the bathroom, and when he came out, Mac was snoring. Vic left, shutting the door quietly behind him.

"So, like, what's biting your ass?" Jackie said to Li Ann, hefting her bags onto the bed nearer the window.

"Nothing," Li Ann said. She opened her own duffel bag and started distributing its contents into the drawers of the bureau by her bed, and the closet.

"C'mon, we're friends, you can, like, confide in me," Jackie urged her cheerfully, heading for the closet with an armful of clothes. "God damn they never give you enough hangers in these cheap hotels."

"Well, it's just Mac." Li Ann pulled a handful of wire coat-hangers out of the side pocket of her duffel and handed them to Jackie.

Jackie took the coat hangers with a delighted squeal. "Wow, thanks, that's so cool, you're all like prepared and stuff." She started hanging her clothes. "So, what did Mac do?"

Li Ann made an exasperated half-laughing sound and pressed her hand to her forehead. "He puked in my car on the way up here."

Jackie scowled sympathetically. "God, men are such pigs."

"Hey, watch what you say about my brother," Li Ann said, but she smirked.

Really, sharing a room with Jackie wasn't so bad.

Around eight in the evening, Vic made his way back the hotel room.

He rubbed his eyes. They hurt. He'd asked the local police about graffiti, and they'd cheerfully provided him with the file one of the rookies was collecting of photos of every single piece of graffiti in town, lovingly labelled by date and location.

He'd gone through the whole file, and found exactly one hit. There'd been a photo dated yesterday with the same crazy face in it, though without the words "mad millennium." That graffiti had been on the side of a dumpster downtown. Vic had asked the police to keep an eye on that area, and report anything unusual to him. They had his cell number.

Vic got to the fifth floor, and hesitated between his door and the girls'. He wondered if Mac was awake. If he was, Vic didn't especially want to face him and have to make conversation. Vic knocked on the girls' door.

Li Ann opened the door. Her eyes were reddened and her cheeks were wet.

Vic instinctively grabbed her in a hug. "What's wrong?" he whispered into her ear.

"Nothing, it's all right," Li Ann whispered back.

Over Li Ann's shoulder, Vic saw that Jackie was sitting on one of the beds with a box of tissues by her. There was some black-and-white movie playing on the TV. Jackie turned to glare at Vic and he saw with amazement that she was crying too.

"Like, shut the door and come in or get out of here now," Jackie whispered fiercely at Vic.

"I'll, uh, I'll go," he said.

Li Ann went back to her own bed and sat on it, paying rapt attention to the TV.

Vic, feeling bemused, shut the door.

OK, whatever he faced with Mac couldn't be weirder than that.

Vic let himself into room 523. Mac was sitting on his bed, watching TV. At least he wasn't crying.

"So, uh, what's on?" Vic asked. He started stripping his outdoor clothes off.

"Movie. Rumble in the Bronx," Mac said.

"Oh yeah, wasn't that one filmed in Vancouver?" Vic asked absently, checking out his partner. Mac looked better now. He'd finally taken the damn sunglasses off, and he'd changed his clothes.

"Yeah. Hey, did you notice anything funny about this hotel?"

Vic climbed onto his bed and checked out the scene onscreen. Jackie Chan was kicking ass. "Funny ha-ha or funny strange?"

"Funny strange. Like, everyone staying here except for us seems to be women."

"Hey now, that doesn't sound strange. That sounds, uh," Vic searched for an appropriate word, "Idyllic?"

"I went down to the dining room for supper." Mac gave a dramatic shudder. "They were everywhere. Women. And they all looked at me like... like the Director does."

"It's some kind of convention," Vic recalled. "Uh, 'slash,' the clerk said. You know what that means?"

Mac shrugged. "No. But it sounds like something that the Director'd be into. You know-" he made a slashing, whipping motion with one hand, complete with sound effect.

Vic laughed. "Yeah."

OK, there was no need for things to be weird with Mac just because the Director had told Vic those things about Mac, or just because Mac had kissed Vic at New Year's, or just because Vic had recurring sexual dreams about Mac. They could just sit here, watch the movie, hang out, like any two guys stuck sharing a hotel room on a business trip.

Vic figuratively gritted his teeth and tried to pay attention to the movie.

It was useless. As soon as he decided not to think about something, he couldn't think about anything but.

The most morbid thoughts possible floated through Vic's mind, and he couldn't banish them. He wondered how Mac had tried to kill himself in prison. None of the easier methods were available in prison. You couldn't shoot yourself, you never had a sharp knife, no pills. Most prison suicides were hangings—Vic shook his head to try to kill that train of thought.

Vic glanced over at Mac. Mac had shaved in the afternoon. He'd showered, obviously, not long ago—his hair still looked slightly damp. He was wearing a charcoal-grey wool sweater and neat grey wool pants. He was grinning at the over-the-top martial arts action in the movie. He looked good. Er, fine. He looked fine. He looked OK.

Mac caught Vic staring at him. He frowned. "I miss a spot?" he asked, touching his freshly-shaved cheek.

"No." Vic flushed. "I was just thinking about something the Director said."

"What?"

"Nothing." Maybe the Director had just lied. Vic wouldn't put it past her. It wasn't like he was going to check her story by asking Mac.

Mac shrugged and kept watching the movie.

When that action movie finished they found another one to watch.

The credits to "Schindler's List" rolled across the TV screen.

Jackie and Li Ann stared at them in silence. Li Ann felt more tears running down her cheeks. She grabbed another tissue.

Jackie grabbed the remote and clicked the TV off. "Wow, major bummer," she said. Her voice was thick with emotion.

Li Ann tried to speak. She couldn't. She looked at Jackie. The former mob boss's eyes were puffy and her nose was pink.

"What? Like, surprised I can feel sad?" Jackie asked defensively.

Li Ann shook her head, even though she was. She'd never really got over her first impression of Jackie as an amoral psychopath. "No," she said, "I was just thinking...." she trailed off.

"What?"

"The movie—it puts things in perspective. My problems don't seem so huge next to that," Li Ann said, waving a hand in the direction of the TV.

"Yeah." Jackie sniffled. "Like, not much seems important next to the Holocaust, huh?" She crawled across her bed and onto Li Ann's. She curled up on Li Ann's bed with her face near Li Ann's knees. "People suck," she said, miserably.

"Uh, Jackie?" Li Ann moved her knees fractionally away from her unpredictable partner. "Not to spoil the moment or anything but... you know, you've murdered a few people yourself."

"Yeah, like, duh, I know that." Jackie sat up and pulled another tissue from the box. "Shit happens," she said, and blew her nose. "I used to be a little wacko, I guess."

"Yeah." Li Ann looked at her cautiously. "Used to be?"

Jackie's eyes snapped. "Hey, like, what're you implying?"

Li Ann tensed, ready to defend herself if Jackie flew at her.

Jackie defused the situation with a laugh. "They gave me drugs, OK? When I, like, came to work for the Agency? So, like, I can distinguish between right and wrong now. It's soooo cool. And I can feel, like, sad for all those people who died in the movie because I know that's wrong. Where before, I would have, like, thought it was really boring 'cause it was all in black and white."

Li Ann frowned thoughtfully. That explained a few things about Jackie, like the fact that she hadn't actually tried to kill Li Ann or Mac or Vic yet since she'd joined their side.

So, Jackie'd been given drugs that affected her awareness of right and wrong? That rang a bell. "Who gave you drugs?"

"Oh, the Director." Jackie fished a pack of gum out of her pocket. "Want some gum?"

Li Ann shook her head. "Do you know where they came from? If they had anything to do with Dr. Bernard Fry?"

Jackie popped gum into her mouth and started chewing on it. "Dr. Fry? ... uh, the name sounds, like, really familiar but I just can't place it, y'know?"

"Oh, right," Li Ann remembered, "You weren't around the first time we met him. And the second time you had your memories wiped."

Jackie snapped her fingers. "You mean that time, oh, like, when was it?—a couple months ago, that time that I woke up in this big empty warehouse and Mac and Vic were there, and the Director, and that other Director but he was dead, and the Cleaners, and a bunch of other people but none of us could figure out how we got there?" She snapped her gum. "Yeah, like, that was really weird."

"Dr. Fry was that guy I had in custody when you all got back to the Agency," Li Ann explained. "He's a neuropharmacologist. He's made a lot of mind-altering drugs for the Agency." And a lot of trouble, too —even if Li Ann never did properly find out what was going on the last time they dealt with him.

"Oh, huh, cool, you mean like acid? I did acid once. It was waaaay weird."

Li Ann imagined Jackie on acid. Now that was a scary thought.

The possibility that Jackie was taking some Dr. Fry concoction was pretty scary, too, remembering the droogs.

Li Ann decided to sleep lightly and talk to the guys in the morning.

Vic often slept fitfully his first night in a new bed. Tonight was no exception. First Mac's snoring kept him awake. When he got fed up, Vic threw a pillow at Mac. Mac mumbled, rolled over to his side, and stopped snoring. Vic finally drifted off into a light sleep, but he woke up a couple hours later, chasing the fragments of a nightmare. He couldn't remember it properly, but it had been something about Mac.

Not the sex dream again, thank God, but something about Mac as a junkie. Vic had been walking through a crack house, and Mac had been there lying in a corner or something, and... Vic shook his head. He couldn't remember it, it was all floating away the way dreams do. Just as well.

He couldn't get back to sleep. When the room's digital clock blinked from 3:59 to 4:00, he gave up. He turned the TV on mute to the home shopping channel, sat back in bed, and stared at the overly enthusiastic models gesturing silently at their bracelets and earrings.

He looked over at Mac, and watched him for a while in the pale flicker of TV-light. Mac was lying on his side, facing Vic. He had his blankets pulled up to his chin. His lips were slightly parted. His expression wasn't quite relaxed; he looked kind of worried, actually.

Vic wondered if he was dreaming.

Vic thought again about what the Director had told him. The core of it was: Mac's had a hard time lately, and he needs a friend.

Mac stirred in his sleep, as though he felt Vic watching him.

It was a natural impulse to resist the Director's manipulations and to take anything she claimed with a truckload of salt, but Vic knew what Mac and Li Ann had both been through in December, and Vic had been there as much as he could for Li Ann, but not so much for Mac. He'd wondered where Mac was the night after the showdown with Pucci and Michael, of course, but Mac hadn't answered his cell phone and Vic had been with Li Ann, so he'd just hoped Mac would be OK on his own. If the Director was to be believed—and she probably was, in this case— Mac had looked for solace in the bottom of a bottle. A series of bottles. Well, where else could he look for it? It wasn't like he had any friends. None of them did. All they had was each other.

Suddenly Mac sat straight up in bed, startling Vic. Mac hugged his knees under the blankets, and said something in Chinese.

"Uh, hey," Vic greeted him.

Mac's head snapped around and he looked wide-eyed at Vic.

"Um, have a bad dream?" Vic asked.

Mac kept staring at Vic like he didn't even recognize him.

Vic frowned. "You OK? Mac?"

Mac sort of shuddered, and then let himself fall back onto the bed. "Yeah, I'm OK. Just had a dream."

"Must have been a doozy."

"A... 'doozy'?" Mac repeated. "Is that, a good thing or a bad thing?"

"You looked pretty freaked just now."

Mac rubbed his face, and took another look at Vic. "What are you doing up? Getting caught up on the plot of the Home Shopping Channel?"

Vic shrugged. "Actually I couldn't sleep. Had... a dream that woke me up, too."

"That happen to you a lot?" Mac asked, staring at the ceiling.

Vic was glad Mac hadn't asked him what he'd dreamed about. He didn't feel creative enough to lie tonight. "Nah. First night in a new bed, you know?" Vic hesitated, then asked "What about you?"

"Most nights, yeah."

"Damn," Vic whispered. "What do you dream about?"

"Why do you want to know?"

Fair question. Vic shrugged. "I thought it might have something to do with Michael."

Mac sat up, fast. "How did you know that?"

Vic was surprised at the desperation in Mac's tone. Looked like Vic had guessed right—but maybe he should back off a bit. "Well, all that shit just happened with him. Li Ann was pretty messed up by it but she's doing better now. You ever talk to her about it?"

Mac shook his head.

"Maybe you should."

"She's doing OK."

"I meant-" Vic saw that Mac was hugging his knees again, and rocking a bit. He looked pretty whacked out. Vic wondered whether he should have started this conversation at all. Well, too late to back out now—"I meant maybe it would do you good to talk to someone." Mac didn't respond. "The Director told me about how you ended up in jail yesterday."

"Yeah, 'public drunkenness,'" Mac said. "What is this, a police state?"

"You can't ever drink enough to make your pain go away," Vic said softly. "But you can really fuck yourself up, trying."

Mac glared at Vic. "I'm not an alcoholic, if that's what you're getting at."

Vic hesitated. Should he reveal what the Director had told him about Mac's previous drug addictions, or not? Better not to—Mac seemed pretty touchy on this topic. "I just mean there's better ways to deal with it all."

"Like what?" Mac snapped.

This was getting nowhere. Mac was just getting pissed off at Vic, and Vic had to struggle not to respond with sarcasm of his own. He tried a different approach. "I, uh, I'm sorry I left you alone that night.

After Michael tried to kill you."

Mac gave Vic a confused look. "Left me alone? I took off."

"Well, yeah... I should have looked for you." It was true. The more he thought about it, the more Vic berated himself for leaving Mac alone that night. Sure, Li Ann had needed him too—but the very fact that Li Ann had been so messed up should have reminded Vic that Mac would be, too. The two of them had been in it together, brother and sister; they'd experienced the same betrayal and loss. And neither Li Ann nor Mac had anyone to look out for them except each other, and Vic.

Mac shook his head, a faint smile on his lips. "Don't be stupid. You nearly died to save me that day. You didn't have to do anything else."

Vic shrugged awkwardly. "It's not about obligation. It's about... I don't know. Being friends. You're hurting, and I want to help if I can because I care about you." Vic felt himself blushing, realizing how sappy that little speech must have sounded. It was too easy to get emotional about stuff in the middle of the night. Vic felt a strong urge to bail out of the conversation by turning the TV's sound on and flipping channels. He couldn't do that, though. Now that he'd started this, he needed to help Mac. "So come on," he urged, "Talk to me."

Mac frowned and shook his head again. "You wouldn't understand."

That was not the right thing for Mac to say if he wanted Vic to lay off. Li Ann had pulled the "you wouldn't understand" card on Vic far too many times in the past, and it never failed to irritate him and make him determined to prove her wrong. "How do you know? You think you know everything about me?" Vic protested, a bit of an edge coming into his voice.

Mac looked sideways at Vic, raising one eyebrow. "All right, but if you laugh at me I'll kill you," he warned.

"Laugh?" Vic repeated. "Jesus, what do you think of me?"

"I think you're not... open to some things."

"Hey, I can be as open as the next guy."

Mac hesitated. Vic tried to look open and encouraging. Then Mac said "OK." He suddenly got off his bed and came over to sit on the edge of Vic's. Vic shifted back slightly, trying to keep his personal space.

Looking Vic steadily in the eye, Mac said "Michael's ghost is haunting me."

"Oh, uh," Vic stuttered.

"I knew you wouldn't believe me." Mac started to stand up, but Vic grabbed his arm.

"Wait," Vic said. "Tell me more. I promise to try to be open."

"I see him. Not just when I'm asleep. When I'm awake, too. I see him reflected in windows, I see him just disappearing around corners, I glimpse him in crowds..."

It sounded to Vic like the haunting was in Mac's mind, but hey, it could be very real in that sense. "Why do you think he won't leave?" Vic asked, softly.

"Because he's still obsessed. Because his plan didn't work."

"Came close enough," Vic muttered under his breath. If Vic and Li Ann had been a few seconds slower realizing that Mac and Michael weren't behind them.... and they probably wouldn't have clued in so fast if there hadn't been the constant tension of Mac's distrust of Michael pricking their awareness. "You were right all along about Michael," Vic said, putting a hand on Mac's shoulder. "I don't think I remembered to apologize for not trusting your instincts."

"It wasn't just instincts," Mac said. "Fuck! I should have said something about... but anyway, he fooled me too in the end."

Mac should have said something about what? Vic filed that question away for later, and asked the other one Mac left him with. "What do you mean? I remember you didn't even trust him when we got to the warehouse for the showdown with Pucci."

Mac laughed humourlessly. "No, I didn't. But after he got my back in that fight, I finally did. I finally believed him that he was changed, that he didn't want to hurt me—and yeah, that was the moment that he'd been waiting for to kill me."

"Whoa," Vic breathed, taking that in. Mac's voice had become very tight, and the younger man was staring at his hands with suddenly bright eyes. "Do you mean—Michael was playing nice all along just so you'd trust him before he murdered you?"

"Yup."

"That's psycho."

"That's Michael."

"What did you mean, a minute ago—you said it wasn't just instinct that you didn't trust Michael?"

Mac shrugged. "Just that—I knew him."

"So did Li Ann," Vic pointed out. "And she was ready to trust him again."

"Li Ann is a little blind when it comes to family," Mac said. "And she didn't know everything about Michael that I knew," he added, quietly.

"Like what?" Vic asked. "Why didn't you tell her?"

Mac shrugged, looking unhappy. "I should have. But I never could, I thought she'd hate me. And we kept it secret for so long..."

"What?" Mac was obviously having trouble getting to the point, but Vic was getting frustrated.

"Michael's a sadist."

"Was a sadist," Vic corrected Mac automatically. "He's dead. What, you mean with leather and whips and stuff?"

"No, just with pain and fear. That's what he needed."

"For sex?"

"For anything. It's just... the way he was wired, I guess."

That went a long way toward explaining Mac's hostility to Michael, but some things still didn't make sense to Vic. "Why didn't Li Ann know?"

"Because..." Mac halted. Vic reached over and touched his arm. He was shaking.

"What's wrong?" Vic asked, knowing it was a stupid question, afraid he'd gone too far.

Mac let out a high pitched laugh. "Because I was Michael's lover," he finished his sentence. He gave Vic a challenging look.

Vic whistled, low-pitched. "Fuck," he whispered. Well, that explained a lot. It explained the intensity he'd seen between Mac and Michael. But it sure as hell raised a new set of questions. "At the same time you and Li Ann were lovers?"

"Yeah, so you can see why I didn't want to tell her," Mac said. He flopped down onto Vic's bed, looking drained.

Vic felt awkward. "I, uh, thought you were straight," he mentioned.

"Really?" Mac asked. He sounded honestly surprised.

"OK, hello, Li Ann, Kathy Chao, Claire Holland, Angie Rivers, Vivian Vixen... these were all women, right?"

"Hey, Vivian and I were just friends."

Vic rolled his eyes.

"OK, I see your point," Mac admitted. He shrugged. "But the Director told me once I didn't make a very convincing straight boy."

Vic let himself smile. He could see her saying that. "She just says whatever she thinks will get under your skin."

Mac sat up again, and looked carefully at Vic. "So, uh, you're not freaking out?"

"Why would I freak out?" Vic asked, offended. The Director's words that morning echoed in his mind—'He kissed you. You're moderately homophobic. You punched him.' I am not homophobic, Vic assured himself silently. I'm just... not used to gay people.

"Well," Mac said with the beginnings of a really irritating grin, "Li Ann told me in the car on the way here about how I kissed you at the party, and you flipped out."

"I didn't-" Vic glared at Mac. "I did not flip out."

"Uh huh." Mac raised an eyebrow, and gingerly tapped the bruise on his cheek.

"Well, Jeez, you had no right to kiss me. That was... that was sexual assault," Vic blustered. He felt his cheeks getting warm. Mac was grinning widely now. He was having way too much fun with this.

"Aw, Vic, it was New Year's! Everyone's allowed to kiss everyone."

"Not everyone. The guys kiss the girls, the girls kiss the guys." Vic crossed his arms, protectively.

"Hey Vic," Mac said earnestly, quite deliberately laying a hand on Vic's arm, "Did you know it's a documented fact that the most homophobic people are often gay themselves?"

Vic shook Mac's hand off. "I am not homophobic," he snarled.

Mac grinned. "So prove it. Kiss me."

"What?!" Vic yelped. "Just because I'm not homophobic doesn't mean I'm gay, idiot. And even if I was gay, I wouldn't be attracted to you." That was a lie. If Vic were gay—which he wasn't—he'd definitely be attracted to Mac. He'd agonized long nights over what Li Ann ever saw in Mac, and he'd found plenty. Mac was tall, strong, and elegant. His full lips just begged to be kissed. You could get lost in the depths of his dark brown eyes— and the fact that Mac so often kept the windows to his soul shuttered away behind sunglasses only made them more intriguing. Mac was clever, resourceful, and playful. And he was a good person—even though Mac was a thief, even though he saw the world in shades of grey, Vic had learned over the past year that Mac knew right from wrong, and he was willing to put himself on the line to do what was right. There'd been moments, like that time they'd got messed up with McCoy and the Human Liberation Front, Vic had found himself looking to Mac to show him what was right.

Vic's heart was starting to beat really fast. He realized he was staring at Mac. Damn.

Mac snickered. "You don't have to love somebody to kiss them. A kiss doesn't have to mean a thing—unless you're afraid of it."

"I am not afraid," Vic growled. Mac still sat across from him on the bed, a satisfied expression on his face and a taunting smile playing on his lips.

"Are too," Mac mocked, very quietly.

Vic's self-control snapped. With a growl, he lunged towards Mac, caught his shoulders, shoved him down onto the bed, and kissed him. Hard. On the lips.

There. That'd show him who was afraid.

Vic sat up, breathless. Mac still lay on his back; he touched his lips and stared at Vic with a cryptic expression.

Mac was wearing navy blue silk pyjamas. The delicate fabric did nothing to disguise his erection. Vic caught himself looking and stood up quickly, fixing his eyes on the TV.

"I have to go to the bathroom," he mumbled, and escaped.

He shut the bathroom door behind himself and leaned on it, almost dizzy.

Mac had been turned on when Vic had kissed him. Jesus.

And Vic... Vic had been turned on by it, too. His dick was half-hard.

He thought about the feel of Mac's lanky body pressed under his, and felt himself become even more aroused. Damn! That was wrong on so many levels.

Vic turned on the cold water in the sink and splashed some over his face, then scrubbed his face dry with a snowy-white towel. The sex dreams were getting to him, that was all.

When he opened the door he found that the TV was off and Mac was curled up under the blankets in his own bed, facing away from Vic, apparently asleep. Vic doubted he could have fallen asleep that fast, but Vic was willing to accept that charade. He crawled into his own bed.

Lying there in the dark, he remembered that when he'd started the conversation with Mac, he'd been trying to draw Mac into talking about why he'd started drinking. How the hell had he got so off track?

With that question unanswered, Vic finally drifted off to sleep.

Mac started on his second cup of coffee, and nibbled at his toast. He felt like crap for, approximately, the thirtieth day in a row. Ever since Michael had showed up in town, alive and well and accompanied by a new gweilo in Mac's place, things had been getting steadily worse.

Vic was working on his second cup of coffee, too. Mac wondered if he'd gotten back to sleep after the scene in their room last night. Mac hadn't. First there'd been the nightmare. In this one, Michael had tied Mac to a wrought-iron fence in a field somewhere and then Michael had left, and Paul, Michael's new "brother," had pounded the shit out of him. Finally he'd stuck a gun in Mac's mouth, said "This is for betraying Michael," and shot him.

And Mac had woken up.

And then Vic, for some reason, at four in the morning, had suddenly decided to grill Mac about the drinking binges. Which he shouldn't even have known about. The Director must have told him—but why? Still distracted and shaken by the dream, Mac had let slip way more than he should have—he'd told Vic about Michael's ghost, and he'd told him that he and Michael had been lovers. He was pretty sure that Vic didn't believe him about the first, but the second... he could only hope Vic wouldn't tell Li Ann.

Mac glanced at Vic. Vic stared at his plate and played with his scrambled eggs. He was probably embarrassed about the kiss. Teasing Vic about his sexuality had been a very effective distraction from the questions about Michael, but Mac was still surprised he'd actually managed to taunt Vic all the way into kissing him. Vic was always so very protective of his straightness.

And maybe that had been a mistake on Mac's part. He'd provoked Vic until Vic had practically attacked him with a kiss. And in that moment when Vic had lunged at Mac, full of anger, it hadn't been Vic's face Mac saw—it had been Michael's. Michael's ghost had taken over. Michael had kissed Mac, and left Mac frightened and longing for more when Michael changed back into Vic.

"So, uh, did you learn anything yesterday?" Li Ann asked the boys. Her breakfast consisted of whole-wheat toast, yoghurt and a fruit cup.

Right now she was picking at the fruit cup with her fork.

"Well, I went through their graffiti files and found one match," Vic said, sounding eager to talk shop. "It was on a dumpster downtown, and it was spotted just two days ago, though of course it could be older than that."

Li Ann frowned. "Doesn't tell us much."

"Hey," Jackie interjected. "I found out what 'slash' is."

"Huh?" Vic said.

"Duh, you know, the conference? The reason we couldn't get extra rooms?" She grinned widely.

"OK..." Vic held his hands up. "Enlighten us."

She giggled. "Nah, you like, don't want to know."

Mac sighed and swallowed some more coffee. "You obviously want to tell us. That's why you brought it up."

"Nah, I just think it's, like, funny." She put her knife and fork down so that she could tweak Mac's and Vic's noses simultaneously. "You two are pretty cute. You'd better, like, watch your backs. Check out the next table checking you out."

Despite himself, Mac glanced over at the next table. There were three women, a blonde, a brunette and a redhead. Just like the women last night, they were watching him—and Vic—in a very Director-like way.

As soon as he looked over they looked away, as though they hadn't been looking at him in the first place.

Jackie laughed, obviously delighted to have the upper hand. "I'm going back to the buffet table for more French toast," she announced.

"Anyone wanna come with? Li Ann? No? OK, like, ciao!"

"What is with that?" Vic muttered under his breath, nodding his head towards the table with the scary women.

"Never mind that," Li Ann said quickly, "I've got to tell you what I found out last night about Jackie."

Mac and Vic gave her their attention. She looked over her shoulder to make sure Jackie was occupied at the buffet table, then leaned in towards the boys. "Did you notice how different she is now than she was when we first met her?" she asked, quietly. Mac and Vic nodded. "Turns out the Director's got her on drugs. They give her the ability to make ethical distinctions, and I think they calmed her down a bit, too. Does this ring a bell for you guys?"

"Dr. Fry," Vic whispered. Mac nodded. What Li Ann described sounded like the exact inverse of the drug that Fry had given the droogs.

"He's not around anymore, right?" Mac said. "Hey, what happened to him after that last time—you know, the time we all lost our memories except you?" he asked Li Ann.

Li Ann shrugged. "The Director took him off my hands and never said anything else about it. Anyway, he wouldn't have to be around to give Jackie the drug—once he's invented one, other people can produce it, right?"

"Sure," Vic said. "But what does this mean?"

Li Ann shook her head. "No idea. I just wanted to let you guys know as much as I know."

"Well, she's been pretty stable for—how long's it been?—four months?" Vic whispered. "Might not be a problem. But watch your back, OK?"

"She's coming back," Mac warned quietly, and grabbed his coffee cup.

Jackie sat down at the table and grinned happily at them all. "Like, hi again, everybody! I miss anything?"

"Jackie's not answering hers, either," Mac said, putting away his cell phone. "Shit. Think they're in trouble?"

"I hope not," Vic answered. "Maybe they can't get reception in the prison building. Should of thought of this before." Damn. Vic had told the local police to inform him of anything out of the ordinary, and they'd just called him to let him know that a Kingston costume shop had been robbed last night. The thieves had left the money in the register, but taken about twenty adult-sized full body costumes— things like a hairy gorilla suit, a plush panda costume and silver robot suits. Considering that the inmates left behind after the last prison break had described the assailants as giant pink rabbits, purple mice and green kangaroos, Vic and Mac thought this robbery might be significant—and the girls definitely needed to know about it. "OK," Vic said, thinking aloud, "We'll find a payphone and we'll call the main reception and we'll get them to page the girls-"

Mac interrupted him. "Hell with that. We're, what, ten blocks from the prison? We'll be there in two minutes. Faster than finding a payphone in this neighbourhood."

Mac had a point. "But, uh, the Director told me not to go in the prison," Vic remembered.

Mac rolled his eyes. "And since when do we listen to her?"

"Good point," Vic acknowledged. He put the truck in drive and pulled back out into traffic.

It didn't take them long to get to the Harris Memorial Penitentiary. They showed their badges to the front gate guard, and got him to call into the prison and page the girls. Li Ann called back on the internal phone a minute later, and asked the boys to meet them down in the prison cafeteria. Since they were there, she wanted their opinion on how to patch a couple of potential security holes she and Jackie had found.

Mac and Vic went through security, handed in their guns—all their guns—and got visitor's passes. Then a guard led them to the cafeteria in the women's wing, where the girls were waiting.

At this time of day, the cafeteria was empty. The room was, not surprisingly, drab, institutional and ugly. The long particle-board tables were bolted to the floor. On one of these tables, Jackie and Li Ann had spread out blueprints of the prison, which they were studying intently.

Vic delivered the cautionary message about the costume store robbery, and then Li Ann and Jackie explained their concerns about the building design. Mac and Vic helped them brainstorm quick fixes to the weaknesses they'd found, and Mac found another problem the girls had overlooked. Vic was amazed, as always, at how useful Li Ann and Mac's criminal past was when it came to finding holes in any security system.

After an hour or so, they'd figured out what they all needed to do next, and Mac and Vic asked their guard to escort them back out again.

Vic still wondered why the Director had told him not to come in here.

The guard led them back out through the cell block. Vic kept his eyes forward, trying not to get drawn in to the spectacles of human misery he was passing by. He'd dealt with lots of criminals in his time, but the criminally insane were a class unto themselves. Most of the women in the cells had blank, haunted expressions. Some of them were howling like animals. Some wore straight-jackets. One woman was throwing herself against the bars of the cell again and again. Vic wondered why she hadn't been put in a padded room.

In an effort to distract himself from the madness surrounding him, Vic focused on supper. "Hey, I'm hungry," he said to Mac. "Want to grab a bite to eat after this?"

Out of the corner of his eye, Vic saw the woman in the cell to their right stand up quickly. "Mac!!" she cried out, her voice raw and hoarse.

Mac and Vic stopped walking and stared at the woman. She was a wasted figure, tall and gaunt with hollow eyes and wild grey hair, and she wore a straight-jacket. She stared intently at them, and shuffled another step forward. "Mac!" she said again.

She looked strangely familiar, but Vic couldn't place her. He wracked his brain, trying to remember if he and Mac had arrested her. They might have—they certainly had arrested enough crazy criminals in the past year.

"Come on," Mac said, tugging at Vic's arm. "Let's go, I'm hungry."

"Who was she?" Vic asked, letting himself be dragged along.

"Who?" Mac asked, walking quickly.

"That woman back there." Vic frowned, looking over at his partner. Mac seemed unusually pale all of a sudden.

"How should I know?" Mac asked in a cross tone, not looking at Vic.

Vic and the guard who was escorting them nearly had to run to keep up with Mac.

"Well, she knew you," Vic pointed out. "She called you by name."

"She must've heard you say my name."

"I didn't say your name."

"Yes you did," Mac insisted. "You said 'Want to grab a bite to eat after this, Mac?' She must have heard you."

Vic frowned. "That's not what I said. I didn't say your name."

"Well, you must have." Mac gave a tight grin. "Otherwise, how would she have known it?"

"Oh, right," Vic agreed. But as soon as he'd turned it over in his mind once more, he realized that didn't make sense at all. Mac was hiding something.

Vic let it go for the moment, because they were at the exit and they had to fill out the paperwork to get their guns back.

Out in the parking lot, where snow had started to fall, Vic tried again. "Come on, who was she?"

"Nobody." Mac sounded pissed off. "I don't know. Why, you have a crush on her?"

"Did we arrest her? Should I remember her?"

"I've never seen her before in my life," Mac snapped. "So fuck off and get in the truck."

Vic held up his hands. "Cool it. Jesus. What's going on here?"

Mac, scowling, crossed his arms and leaned against the truck. "You going to let me in, or not?"

Vic unlocked the truck and Mac hopped in. Vic didn't follow him. Vic was a detective deep down in his bones, and he couldn't stand to just leave a mystery standing like this. "Look, if you won't tell me, I'm going to go back inside and ask them who she is."

Mac shrugged, staring straight forward. "Fine with me."

"You gonna wait out here?" Vic asked.

Mac didn't budge. "Yup."

Vic shrugged, and trudged back toward the guardhouse, tugging his hood up. The snow was falling thickly, and there was a good inch on the ground already. It was damn cold out, so the snow was powdery fine.

He got back inside, and found the guard who'd escorted him out. She was a medium-tall woman, well built, with a blonde buzz cut, and her name tag identified her as "Kim Majors."

"So, uh, Kim, do you remember that woman who called Mac by name?" he asked her.

"Sure," Kim answered. "Cell 341. How do you guys know her?"

Vic shrugged. "I'm just trying to figure that out. What can you tell me about her?"

"Not much," Kim said. "I can tell you she's in for life, for murder.

Her name's Anita Ramsey."

Hamilton, Canada, August 1984.

Mac woke up. It was dark. He wasn't sure why he'd woken up, but now that he was awake he had to pee. He rolled over and looked at his clock. It was 2:47 a.m.

He sat up. He'd been sleeping in just his underwear since it was so hot. He pulled on an oversized t-shirt before he left his room, in case Mom had a visitor staying over. He knew why the men came, and he didn't want one to see him without clothes on.

He rubbed his eyes sleepily. The kitchen light was on. Was Mom up? Curious, he padded down the hall and into the kitchen.

Mom was singing. Very, very quietly, so he didn't hear her until he came into the kitchen. She was crouching on the floor in the corner against the cupboards, singing under her breath, "London Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down, London Bridge is falling down, my fair lady, London Bridge is falling down, falling down...."

She was wearing a white shirt, splattered all over with red. Her hands were red, and her knees. Her face was flecked with red, around her wide, staring eyes which didn't focus on Mac at all. Her arms were clutched around her knees, and she rocked as she sang.

A big knife lay by her toes. Her toes were red and wet, and so was the knife. It was the biggest one, the meat cleaver.

"...falling down, London Bridge is falling down, my fair lady, London Bridge is falling down...."

Mac backed out of the kitchen, keeping a wary eye on his mom. She didn't even seem to have noticed that he was there.

Something bad had happened. Something really bad had happened.

He hadn't noticed the footprints when he first came out of his room, but he saw them now. Smears of red, leading to the kitchen at one end, and Mom's bedroom at the other.

He had to see. He didn't want to know, but he had to find out. The door to Mom's room was ajar. He nudged it with one finger and it opened inwards with a creak.

The room was too dark. He could see that someone was on the bed, but that was all. He flipped the light on.

The man's eyes were open. His mouth was open. His head was open, split down the middle of his forehead with the white bone showing. He was naked, his legs splayed apart, covered with deep gashes. Between his legs, where his private parts should be, there was just dark red blood and torn edges of flesh. His guts spilled out of a hole where his belly should have been. His arms were covered with deep gashes too, and one of his arms ended at a ragged stump. The hand lay near his feet. The bed was soaked red-black with blood. Blood was everywhere. Mac was standing in a warm, sticky puddle.

A high-pitched whimper escaped Mac's tight throat, and he turned the light off again.

He ran to the bathroom and slammed the door shut behind him and locked it. Then he felt his stomach turn inside out, and he barely made it to the toilet in time to puke. When his stomach was empty it kept heaving, the painful convulsions bringing up just sour bile, with the image of the dead man floating in front of his eyes. The image got darker and darker until all he saw was black; his legs gave out and he slumped to the floor.

He woke up with his cheek on the cool tile floor. The side of his face hurt; it must have banged either the side of the toilet or the floor. He hadn't been unconscious long, just a few seconds. The blood he'd tracked into the bathroom was still wet.

He stood up and ran the cold water tap. He rinsed out his mouth and splashed water over his face. Then he put the toilet lid down and sat on it, holding his head in his hands. He had to think. He had to figure out what to do.

Mom had killed the guy. That was pretty obvious. She'd totally flipped this time. Mac quickly wondered whether he could protect her from this, hide it from everyone. She'd be OK in the morning and they could keep going like they had been. He wouldn't have to go live in a foster home again the way he had after she'd tried to kill herself last year.

No. OK, that was a stupid idea. First of all, to hide it, he'd have to move the dead guy, and Mac knew he couldn't bring himself to touch him. Even the thought made him feel like puking again. And second, they couldn't keep going like they had been. He could handle Mom talking about hearing voices and screaming at him for leaving the curtains open in the day because 'they' were watching her. And she wasn't like that all the time, sometimes she was OK, sometimes she was great. But now she'd fucking killed a guy. She was really hard-core crazy, and Mac was scared of her, and that was why he was still hiding in the bathroom with the door locked.

OK. He had to call the police. He knew the number; he'd memorized the emergency numbers after that time he and Paul had had to run all the way to Paul's house to call an ambulance.

There were only two phones in the apartment. One was in the kitchen, with Mom and her meat cleaver. The other one was in the bedroom with the dead guy. To get out of the apartment, he'd have to go past the kitchen; last time Mom hadn't seemed to notice him, but he was too scared to go past her again. He'd have to go back to the bedroom.

Mac pressed his ear against the bathroom door. He couldn't hear anything. He knelt on the floor and peeked through the crack under the door. There was no one in the hall.

He opened the door, and tiptoed quickly to Mom's bedroom. He left the light off, and crept toward the table where the phone was. His toe hit something soft and moveable. He remembered the missing body parts. Oh Jesus. He doubled over, retching, but there was nothing left in his stomach to come up. He stumbled forward, and caught himself against the bedside table. He winced at the noise it made banging against the wall.

His hand was on pack of cigarettes. Mom kept cigarettes and a lighter by the phone. Suddenly Mac wanted a smoke more than anything else in the world. He knew that he wouldn't be able to speak on the phone without one. He shook one cigarette out of the package and grabbed the lighter. He held the cigarette between his lips; it was an effort not to crush it. His hand was shaking and it took him about seven tries to light it; he focused his eyes on the tip of the cigarette, not letting himself see anything farther away. Finally it lit and he sucked on it, watching the red glow and feeling the hot, comforting smoke fill his mouth and throat and lungs. The harsh smoke covered the smell of death. He felt a bit less nauseous.

He dialled the police. A woman answered.

"Hamilton Police. Can I help you?"

Mac realized he didn't know what to say. His throat closed tight. "I need police here," he squeaked. He took another desperate pull on the cigarette. "2387 Lockwood Street. Apartment 42."

"What's happened?" she asked. "Are you in danger now?"

"Um, yeah, m-maybe. There's a d-dead guy here. My mom she's in the kitchen." Mac's knees were shaking, but he didn't want to sit down because the floor was covered with blood. He sucked on the cigarette.

Its tip glowed bright orange.

"The police are on their way. Can you get out of the apartment? Can your mom get out?"

"No... I can't get out, I'd have to go past her." Mac thought he heard a noise outside the door. His heart leapt into his throat. He dropped the phone and ran out of the room. There was no one in the hall. He skidded around the corner into the bathroom, and slammed the door shut behind him. He locked it again and stood there, panting. He looked down at his feet and saw the blood and whimpered. He sat on the toilet lid and smoked the rest of the cigarette and waited for the sirens. He heard them the same moment the stub of the cigarette got short enough to burn his fingers. He yelped and dropped it onto the floor and put his fingers in his mouth and listened to the sirens get louder. Soon there was a loud crash from the front of the apartment, and voices, and heavy footsteps. Someone hammered on the bathroom door and he thought he should open it but he couldn't make himself move. Then the door crashed inwards anyway; Mac blinked at the noise.

A big policeman stood in the doorway. He held a gun, pointing it towards the ceiling. It was the first time Mac had ever seen a real gun.

"I found the kid!" the man called out. Then he tucked his gun into its holster, and held out an open hand towards Mac. "Come here, it's OK," the man said softly. "It's all over now."

Kingston, Canada, January 1999

Vic stood in the parking lot in the place where his truck had been, and swore. He turned around once, sweeping the whole snowy parking lot with his gaze. The truck was definitely gone. Mac had stolen his truck. Vic had taken the keys into the prison with him, but he'd forgotten to take that whole expert thief thing into account. Fuck!

The woman in the prison, the one who'd known Mac, had Mac's last name.

Now that Vic thought about it, she sort of had Mac's features, too— that's why she'd looked familiar to Vic.

Shivering, Vic took out his cell phone and dialled the Director's emergency number.

"What?" she answered.

"Who's Anita Ramsey?" Vic demanded.

"I told you not to go into the prison," the Director snapped. "Where's Mac?"

"Wish I knew. He stole my truck. He's gone."

Vic could hear the Director groaning in the background—or maybe growling. He'd be afraid of her wrath, except he was feeling pretty wrathful himself. If she'd had a good reason to keep him and Mac out of the prison, she should have told him.

"Well, luckily, your truck is bugged," the Director told him.

"Lucky day," Vic agreed sarcastically. Not that he could claim to be surprised.

"You borrow a car from the police there. Call me back and I'll patch you in to a tech who can tell you where the truck is." The line went dead.

With a little bit of fast talking, Vic managed to borrow a police cruiser from the prison lot. He called the Director back.

"He's on the 401, heading for Toronto," the Director said by way of greeting. "I want you to catch him."

"I'm on it," Vic said, pulling out of the parking lot and fishtailing.

Damn, the roads were slick. "So, you going to explain things now?"

"You don't deserve an explanation, Victor," the Director said in a tone of voice that made Vic very glad he was three hundred kilometres away from her.

"Maybe not, but I might need one when I catch Mac," Vic said. "So who the hell is Anita Ramsey?"

The Director answered quietly and precisely. "His mother."

Vic whistled through his teeth. "Oh, man. But I thought she was dead?" He'd thought Mac's father was dead, too, he recalled, until the man suddenly showed up one day. "Did he know she was in there?"

"No, he didn't, and he would never have found out if you had followed my orders and stayed out of the prison," the Director replied testily.

"Well, why didn't you tell me it was this important?" Vic noticed a red light and slammed on the brakes. The car skidded over the snow, finally stopping with its nose well into the intersection. He swore, and felt cold sweat trickling down his neck. The light changed to green.

"All of my orders are important. Why do you think I give them, Victor? Because I like to hear myself talk?"

Sometimes, Vic replied silently. "OK, well, I'm sorry, I fucked up, but now he knows, so maybe you could tell me a little about what's going on?"

"There's not much to tell. Anita Ramsey was a prostitute. One night fifteen years ago she went crazy and hacked one of her clients to pieces. She's been in the Harris ever since."

Vic did a little quick subtraction in his head, meanwhile trying to stay on the road and not drop the cell phone. Fifteen years ago would make Mac, what, about twelve? "Where was Mac when this happened?"

"In the next room. He's the one who called the police."

"Did he tell you all this?"

"No. It's in his file."

"How...?"

"We investigate our agents thoroughly, Victor." The Director sounded impatient with him. "We've been through this before. I know everything about you."

Vic frowned, focusing for the moment on the road signs directing him to the 401. "So what do I do when I catch up to him?"

"I'm concerned the shock of seeing his mother may have unbalanced him.

Just make sure nothing happens to him, all right?"

Vic could hear the unwritten warning in her words. If anything happens to him, it's your fault, Vic. "He's heading back to Toronto, right? He might just be coming to see you."

"We can hope."

Vic swore as he narrowly missed hitting a car that skidded out of a cross street. "I've got to get off the phone, the driving is awful here," he said. "How do I keep tabs on Mac?"

The Director gave him the phone number for the technician who was tracking the bug in Vic's truck, and Vic committed it to memory. He tossed the phone onto the passenger seat, put both hands on the wheel, and concentrated on not crashing into anything.

In another minute he was on the highway. A snowplow had obviously been by only a minute or two ago; one lane was clear.

It was only five o'clock in the evening, but in early January that made it pitch black. His headlights lit a wild dance of snowflakes, and he couldn't see far beyond the nose of his car. All he could see were the rear lights of the one car ahead of him. He couldn't even see the car—just the glow of its lights.

The traffic was creeping along at about sixty kilometres per hour— half the speed it would normally be going. Vic felt his vehicle skidding and slipping even at that speed. He wondered how good his tires were. He longed for the four-wheel drive of his pickup truck.

He picked up the phone and, one-handed, dialled the technician who was tracking the truck. "Where is he? How far ahead of me?"

"Um. Just a minute..." a nervous male voice answered. The guy sounded about fourteen. Where did the Agency find these people? "He's, um, about twenty kilometres ahead of you. Still on the highway."

"How fast is he going?"

"Um, hold on... OK, he's going about eighty-five."

"Shit," Vic breathed. "Right, thanks, call me back if anything changes?"

"Sure."

Vic threw the phone back to the seat and looked at his speedometer. It was hovering around sixty. And the car barely felt under control.

He groaned.

The truck would be better on this road, but not that much better. Mac was driving recklessly fast. Almost like he didn't care whether he made it alive....

Vic cursed the Director's reticence and his own idiocy. Mac had been messed up enough already, what with Mr. Tang and Michael. Oh, and that unrequited love thing with Li Ann, which Mac had been being uncharacteristically quiet about. So now Mac's mother gets thrown into the mix. Vic remembered her haunted, hollow face. He'd guess Mac hadn't seen her since—well, probably since the night she'd killed some guy. No wonder Mac had flipped out and stolen Vic's truck. Vic shouldn't have gone back into the prison. He should have seen that something was really wrong, he should have stayed with Mac instead of going back in just to satisfy his curiosity.

Vic growled under his breath. He would find Mac, and he would find some way to make things better.

Only as things stood, Mac was getting farther and farther ahead.

All right. Vic had one advantage. He was in a police cruiser. He flipped on his flashing lights and his siren.

The effect was dramatic. Suddenly the road in front of Vic cleared, as cars pulled off to the side of the highway to let him pass. Vic smiled grimly. There was a familiar rush of power. I own the road.

He pressed the gas a little harder.

It was the longest drive of Vic's life. No contest. After an hour or so his shoulders ached with cramps from the tension. After a couple hours, he noticed that his stomach was eating its way through his spine—he hadn't eaten anything since a light, early lunch with Mac.

Cold sweat dried on his neck. Whenever he checked in with the Agency tech, Mac was still well ahead of him. Vic could keep up, but he couldn't manage to gain on him—the danger of going off the road was too great, he couldn't speed up another five kilometres per hour. When Mac finally did slow down a bit, Vic was forced to slow down too, with strong winds blowing off Lake Ontario nearly taking his car off the road. Vic saw a car upside down on the side of the road, and without slowing down he called it in on his car's police radio. Vic's fear coalesced into rage. He became convinced that somehow, Mac was tracking Vic, too—that Mac knew how far away Vic was, and how fast he was going, and so was able to stay consistently ahead.

Finally, the road signs told Vic he was only thirty kilometres away from Toronto. And then the phone rang, and the tech told Vic that Mac hadn't turned off into Toronto. He was still on the highway, heading towards Hamilton now.

Vic groaned. Would it never end? He checked the gas gauge on the cruiser. It still had half a tank. How full had the truck been at the start of the day? Full—he'd gone to a gas station in the morning.

Vic called the Director to tell her that Mac hadn't gone into Toronto.

She didn't answer her phone.

Finally, the tech called and let Vic know that Mac had actually gone into Hamilton. No idea what he'd want with that city, but Vic followed the road signs to get there. The tech called in again, not long after, to tell Vic that the truck had come to a stop somewhere in Hamilton. Vic nearly wept with relief. Mac had stopped. Vic could catch up to him now. It was almost over.

Then he started to worry. Why had Mac stopped? What the hell was in Hamilton? What if he'd stopped because he'd finally crashed into a telephone pole, or another car? What if he was dying? What if he was already dead?

Vic followed the tech's directions towards the truck. It had finally stopped snowing. The city of Hamilton was an eerie wonderland, all sweeping curves of glistening white.

Then he saw it. The pickup truck was sitting, intact, at the side of the road on a residential street that hadn't been plowed. Vic followed the tire tracks down the centre of the street and whispered prayers that he wouldn't get stuck.

Vic stopped beside the truck; he kept his flashers on and left the car in the middle of the street. He could already see that Mac wasn't in the truck. He got out of the car and looked around.

The street was quiet like a grave, all sound muffled by the snow. The area looked like mostly low-rent apartment blocks. Just where the truck had stopped, there was a playground. One nearby streetlight lit the playground. The equipment was all disguised by its thick blanket of snow.

Coming around to the other side of the truck, Vic saw footprints in the snow leading into the playground. At the other end of the footprints, a black-clad figure huddled on a snow-covered bench.

"Mac," Vic whispered, feeling immense relief, entwined with rage. Mac had led him nearly four hundred kilometres in a fucking blizzard at insane speeds just so he could sit on a bench in a playground in Hamilton?

Vic slogged through the snow over to where Mac was. Mac sat hunched over. He wasn't wearing a hat; a few snowflakes glistened in his hair. His black wool coat hung open in the front. He didn't acknowledge Vic.

"Mac?" Vic said, gently shaking his young partner's shoulder. "What are you doing here?"

"This's where I useta live," Mac answered. His words slurred into each other. "Wasin'a playground. Was a building."

When the hell did Mac have time to get drunk? He'd only been about half an hour ahead of Vic. Vic patted the sides of Mac's coat, looking for a bottle or flask. He didn't find anything. He hadn't had anything in the truck, had he? Shit. "Come on, Mac, it's time to go back home," Vic said. He put an arm under Mac's shoulders and hoisted him to his feet. "The Director's worried about you."

Mac stumbled forwards a couple steps and then his knees gave out and he fell into the snow.

Vic groaned. This wasn't going to be easy. He shivered, and hugged himself. It was cold as a witch's tits tonight; it had gotten even colder since it'd stopped snowing. Vic knelt down to help Mac up. "Come on, let's go, it's freezing out here."

"S'OK, I'll wait here," Mac mumbled into the snow.

"You can't wait here, you'll freeze," Vic insisted, grabbing Mac's arm again. Thinking about what he'd just said, Vic suddenly realized that Mac wasn't shivering. He'd been sitting out here in the severe cold for maybe half an hour, probably not moving, no hat, a thin coat and that not even done up.... Damn it! Maybe Mac wasn't drunk, he was hypothermic. That was worse.

Vic put two fingers to Mac's neck to check his pulse. His skin was ice-cold, and his pulse was sluggish. Fuck! Vic started to get scared again. Mac was severely hypothermic.

Mac mumbled something incoherently.

Vic thought back to his first aid training on the force. When he'd first started out on a beat, hypothermia had been a major concern in the winter, dealing with the homeless. So what do you do when you find a guy lying on the street in the winter? You've got to be careful, Vic remembered. Hypothermic people go into cardiac arrest very easily—that's how it kills. You can't let them move around. And you've got to get them warm. "We've got to get to a hospital," Vic said, thinking to himself out loud. "We'll take the cruiser, it's still warm. I remember passing a hospital on the way in here, I can find it." He looked at Mac, who was still curled up on the snow, not acknowledging Vic at all now. Vic's insides twisted. He was going to get him out of this.

Vic scooped Mac up in his arms, straining at the dead weight. All those hours at the Agency gym were worth it now. Vic staggered through the snow, desperate to keep his feet, to carry Mac as gently as possible. Mac's head hung back, exposing his neck, and his eyes were closed. His face was ghostly pale, and snowflakes clung to his cheeks without melting. Fear gave Vic strength. He made it to the car, got the door open, and laid Mac on the back seat. Then he rushed around to the driver's side, turned on the heater full blast, and started to drive.

Vic used the lights and siren again to get the sparse traffic to give way, and to allow him to run through red lights. He breathed something like a prayer of thanks when he found the hospital where he remembered it, and the sign marking "Emergency Entrance." He pulled into the drive with his siren still going, and paramedics rushed out to meet him.

The paramedics might have found it odd that Vic drove a Kingston police car in Hamilton, and that he wasn't wearing a uniform, but all they asked was what he knew about the patient as they transferred Mac onto a gurney.

"Exposure, I think," Vic answered their questions. "I'm coming in with you—he's a friend."

Someone called for heated oxygen, and a mask was strapped over Mac's mouth and nose. Vic stayed by his side, dizzied by the light and noise of the ER after the long solitude of his drive. Vic took Mac's hand; it was icy and limp. Mac seemed to be completely unconscious now.

"Are you a family member?" a woman in green scrubs asked Vic.

"Uh, no," Vic said, and found Mac suddenly being wheeled away from him while the woman blocked his way.

"You'll have to wait here, then," she said firmly.

Vic would have ignored her and followed anyway, but at that moment his cell phone rang.

"What?" he barked into it, following Mac with his eyes as he vanished around a corner.

"Vic." It was the Director.

"This isn't a good time," Vic said.

"No, it isn't," the Director agreed. "Have you caught up to Mac yet?"

"Yes-"

"Good," the Director cut Vic off before he could elaborate. "The Mad Millennium folk hit the prison. They got away with about twenty prisoners. The guards were drugged again, including Li Ann. Jackie is unaccounted for."

"What!?" Vic sat down in a nearby seat. He hunched over his phone and lowered his voice. "Is Li Ann all right?"

"She and the guards are in the hospital—they should all be fine. The guards at the prison in Alberta regained consciousness after a few hours. I need you back in Kingston."

Vic frowned. "No way. I'm at the hospital here with Mac."

"Hospital?" That got the Director's attention. "What happened?"

"We're in Hamilton. I found him sitting in some park. By the time I caught up with him he was nearly frozen."

"And he's receiving medical treatment now?"

"Yeah."

"Then he'll be fine. I need you in Kingston. You're the only operational agent on the team, Vic. Jackie's missing and the trail is getting colder by the minute."

"It's cold all right," Vic muttered. "Look, I barely survived the drive from Kingston, and—"

"This is not a discussion question," the Director interrupted Vic in her no-nonsense tone. "Mac is safe for now. Jackie isn't."

"I don't know if he's safe!" Vic felt his voice crack; he cleared his throat, and took a deep breath. He rubbed the back of his neck with his free hand. His neck ached. "We just got here. They took him away, I don't know what his condition is."

"All right, Victor, new orders," the Director told him. Her voice took on a maternal edge. "Go to the hospital cafeteria. Get a hot meal. Wait until you hear that Mac's stable. Then come back to Toronto. I'll find you a ride to Kingston, so you can rest on the way there."

"All right," Vic agreed, reluctantly. He could live with that. He'd rather stay here, but at least the snow had stopped so the highway was probably getting cleared. He'd be able to take his truck; he'd leave the squad car here in charge of the local police. As soon as he was sure that Mac would be OK....

"It's an order, Mr. Mansfield," the Director repeated. "I expect you to obey my orders from now on."

Mac slouched in a chair in the Agency infirmary. It was the middle of the night. When the doctors in Hamilton had released him, some agency guy he didn't recognize had been there to collect him and drive him back to Toronto. An Agency doctor had looked him over for herself, and then told him to wait here for the Director. So he waited.

He shivered, and he pulled the blanket tighter around his shoulders. He was warm enough now, but he was shivery and he felt dull aches all over, and his throat was sore.

He wished Vic had left him in the playground. It was beautiful there.

Much nicer than it used to be. He wondered when they'd torn the apartment building down, why they'd replaced it with a playground. He wondered if it was because of his mother—had no one wanted to live there after the murder?

The door to the infirmary opened, and the Director came in. She was wearing an oversized grey cashmere cardigan over a black wool pants suit, her hair fell loosely to her shoulders, and she was wearing her glasses.

"It's been a long night, hasn't it, Mac?" she said, keeping her voice soft. She closed the door behind her, and dragged another chair into place right in front of Mac's. She slid into the chair, and reached up to caress his cheek. He refused to look up at her. He wished he had his sunglasses to hide behind. "They say you're all right now," she went on. "You should stay warm, and rest for a few days. Oh, and you're coming down with a cold. You haven't been taking very good care of yourself lately, have you?" She stroked his cheek with her thumb as she talked. There was no sign of the Dominatrix or the Seductress; the Director was playing the Mother tonight.

"Did you know?" Mac asked.

"You mean about your mother?"

Mac nodded once.

"I know everything, Mac."

He was sure she was wrong. She didn't know that Mac and Michael had been lovers, for instance. But it wouldn't be so hard for her to find out about Anita. Mac could have found out where Anita was, if he'd tried. He hadn't. He'd worked hard for the last fifteen years at not thinking about that at all. His mother was dead. She'd killed herself when he was twelve.

"I knew there was danger that you'd meet her, when I sent you to Kingston... it was a calculated risk. For what it's worth, I'm sorry."

Mac shrugged.

"I need you to stay here, tonight," the Director went on. "There's a cot in the back room there," she nodded towards a door.

"I think I'd rather just leave," Mac said, finally lifting his head to look her in the eye.

She raised an eyebrow. "You don't have a choice."

"No, you know, I've been thinking about that." Mac reached up and took her hand, and pulled it away from his face down onto her lap. "How did you blackmail me into working for you?" he asked, conversationally. "The Tangs. But the Tangs don't exist anymore. What's left of the Family doesn't care about me. You don't have a hold on me anymore."

"Yes I do," she replied, her tone soft and confident. She twined her fingers through Mac's and squeezed his hand gently. "You'll stay with us because you have nowhere else to go, no one else to belong to."

"That's bullshit," Mac croaked. OK, it was true, he had nowhere else to go, but that wasn't a problem if he was willing to go to nowhere. Such as, for instance, a park bench on a cold January night.

The Director leaned in closer, and tipped her glasses down on her nose so that she could look Mac directly in the eye. "And you'll stay with us because deep down, you want to live. Your half-hearted attempt to freeze to death tonight was an act of pain and confusion, and a cry for help. You need to stay with us so that we can help you live."

Mac laughed, a short, derisive bark that turned into a cough. "Help me live? The first day I came to work in Vancouver, Dobrinsky—the other one—told me you take a fifty percent casualty rate. I can't count how many times you've nearly got me killed."

"Ah, but you've survived, haven't you? You've got the skills to stay alive, Mac, if you could find the will again. You're an excellent agent."

An "excellent agent," huh? Mac didn't think he could remember ever hearing such high praise from the Director. He should try to kill himself more often. It seemed to bring out the best in her.

Fuck. He had tried to kill himself, hadn't he? Mac started to shiver again. He barely remembered the wild ride from Kingston to Hamilton, but he knew he hadn't been trying very hard to stay on the road. By some miracle he'd made it, and found the block where he used to live, and found the playground where his home used to be. Then he'd got out of the truck and gone to sit in the playground. His intent hadn't formed in words in his mind, but he knew. You fall asleep in the cold and you never wake up.

It had been peaceful in the park, and wonderfully quiet. No one walked by on the street. The snow'd made the bench soft and comfortable, and Mac hadn't really noticed the cold.

After a while, Michael's ghost had come to sit beside him. Michael had been in a good mood tonight.

"So, you're finally dying, huh?" Michael had asked Mac.

Mac had shrugged. "I guess so. What's it to you?"

"It would have saved us both a lot of frustration if you'd just stayed in the warehouse until it exploded," Michael had pointed out, rather piquantly.

"Well, I would have, but Vic and Li Ann came and pulled me out."

"You know, I tried to kill Li Ann, too," Michael had mentioned, in a conversational tone.

"I know, I heard about it later. But she killed you."

"Yes, she did." Michael had shrugged. "I really didn't think she had it in her."

"There's a lot more to her than you ever saw." Mac had smiled, faintly. "I think she's actually the strongest of the three of us."

Michael had grinned, amused. "Well, in a few more minutes she'll win that contest by default."

"What do you mean?" Mac had asked, even though he sort of knew.

"Oh, your heart's slowing down. You'll die pretty soon."

Mac had put a hand over his heart. It did seem to be going pretty slowly, but he felt fine. He said as much to Michael.

"Well, that's because you're a ghost already," Michael had explained.

"You're still linked to your body, though, for the moment." Then he'd leaned over and kissed Mac.

It hadn't felt like being kissed by a ghost. It had felt like being kissed by Michael. Michael had pressed his lips hard against Mac's, as he always did. He'd bit Mac's lip almost hard enough to draw blood, and shoved him back against the bench.

"I want to fuck you," Michael had breathed, sexy hot breath against Mac's cheek.

"Just like that?" Mac had asked, part wondering, part teasing. "Without any guns, or fighting, or anything?" Michael needed violence to get hard, he always had with Mac.

"It's sexy enough that you're killing yourself over me," Michael had whispered in Mac's ear, nibbling his earlobe, again not quite hard enough to draw blood, but almost.

"Hey, this isn't about you," Mac had protested.

"Don't you know Mac?" Michael had asked with a tight, scary grin. "Everything's about me." Then he'd looked over his shoulder, and frowned. "Fuck," he'd said, and disappeared.

And then Vic had been there.

"Come on, Mac," the Director said. "I'll tuck you into bed."

Mac blinked, reorienting himself. He let the Director give him a hand out of the chair and lead him into the small back room. There was a counter with a sink. A cot unfolded in the middle of the room took up most of the floor space. Several blankets were folded at the foot of the cot.

Mac climbed into the cot, still wearing his clothes. He had nothing else to change into. As with every other cot he'd ever slept on, his feet hung out over the edge. To his surprise, the Director literally tucked him in; she unfolded the blankets and spread them over him, and tucked them around his feet so they wouldn't get cold.

"Are you going to tell me a bedtime story, too?" Mac asked when she was done, trying to give her an endearing grin. He wasn't eager to admit it to himself, but he didn't want her to leave him alone.

"Actually, yes," she said, crouching by the head of the cot. "I do have a story for you." She stroked his forehead with her cool, smooth fingers. "Hm, you're a little feverish," she fussed.

"Tell me the story," Mac whispered.

"All right. Once upon a time," the Director began in a crooning tone, "there was a little boy whose mother couldn't take care of him. He was put in a foster home, but he kept getting in trouble. He stole things. He got in fights, he even hit his foster parents. So he was moved to another home, but he got in trouble there, too. He couldn't stop stealing, or fighting. He hid in the basement and smoked cigarettes, and one time he accidentally started a fire, nearly burned the house down. The family couldn't keep him, and he got moved to another home, the third in four months, and as soon as he got there it was the same old problems again. Then the boy's father came to town.

The social worker thought maybe the boy would be happier with his father, so she let the father take the boy. The father was supposed to check in with the social worker after a week, but he never did."

Mac, with his eyes closed, listened to her story. It was his story, of course. His old case files would be available to her. He'd never guessed before tonight that she knew he'd lived in Canada as a child, or that she knew anything about his life before the Tangs. But of course if she knew about Anita, she could find out the rest. He wondered where the story was going. His head hurt.

"When the father didn't check in, the social worker asked the police to find him," the Director continued, still in her soft, lullaby voice. "The police couldn't find a trace, and they turned the case over to the RCMP. It landed on the desk of a young detective who was exceptionally good, the best on the force, but the father and the boy had disappeared so thoroughly, even she couldn't find them. Not long afterwards, the detective was recruited by a Shadowy Government Agency. All traces of her past life were erased, and she was told to forget it like it never existed—but her last unsolved case haunted her. She always wondered what happened to the boy. In her new job, she had access to all sorts of information. She would sift through it sometimes, looking for a trace of him. Finally, almost a decade later, she found something. A young man with the boy's name had been arrested in Tokyo, in connection with a crackdown on the Yakuza. The boy wasn't part of the Yakuza, but he was part of a triad gang, and had connections powerful enough to get him out of jail quickly—but not before his photo and fingerprints were taken. Her records confirmed the boy and the young man were one and the same. She sought out information on the young man. There wasn't much, but what she found was intriguing. He'd been adopted into a powerful Hong Kong crime family, and trained as an expert thief. He and his adoptive brother and sister worked together to pull off jobs that shouldn't even have been possible. The woman who had once been a detective realized that any of the three of them would be well suited to the needs of her Shadowy Government Agency, if only she could bring them over. She bided her time. Then opportunity and tragedy struck at once. The young man and his sister tried to escape their family. He died in the attempt, and she was arrested by the Hong Kong police. The woman who had once been a detective negotiated with the police for custody of the sister, and soon won it. The sister was everything the woman had hoped for, but still the woman mourned the loss of the boy she'd sought for so long. Then, nearly a year and a half later, the woman found out that the Hong Kong police had not been entirely honest with her. The young man had survived and was in their custody, but they'd kept this secret for reasons of their own. Whatever those reasons were, something had changed, and now the woman was able to convince the Hong Kong authorities to let her have him. And so she finally brought him home."

She stopped talking. Mac felt a little dizzy. He opened his eyes and grabbed her hand. "Is that true?" he demanded. "The whole time— when I was on the street in Hong Kong—when I was in jail—when I knew for sure that no one cared if I lived or died, you were looking for me?"

She shook his hand off and stood up. "Well, don't get excited, Mr. Ramsey," she said in her usual dry tone. "It's only a story."

She left, turning off the light and closing the door behind her.

The Director's heels clicked on the floor as she approached her desk, but Dobrinsky didn't turn to look. He was sitting in her chair, transfixed by the computer screen. He was wearing the same clothes she'd seen him in last night when she finally went home—only six hours ago. He obviously hadn't left the office, and probably hadn't slept at all.

When she was close enough to touch him, she cleared her throat. He finally turned and looked at her with bloodshot eyes. She pressed the coffee cup she'd been holding into his hand. "I thought you might need this," she said.

He stared at it blankly for a second, like he'd never seen a Starbucks cup before and didn't know what might be in it.

"Anything?" she asked.

He shook his head, and took a sip of the coffee.

"I'm going to have to pull Vic off it," the Director said. "It's high-profile, and the RCMP are dealing with it. Too visible for us. There's not much he can do at this point, on his own, anyway." She perched on the edge of the desk, and ran her hand over Dobrinsky's smooth head; she massaged his temples gently. "We have no reason to believe Jackie's dead."

"I know," he agreed. Worry lines showed at the corners of his eyes.

"I have a task to get your mind off it for now." She crossed her legs and leaned forward. "I want you to discipline Mac."

Dobrinsky raised an eyebrow. She knew he knew everything she did about Mac's flight from Kingston, except for the why of it. "What sort of discipline?" was all he asked.

"Something that'll keep him here all day. Keep his hands and mind occupied, but nothing physically taxing—Medical told me to let him rest for a few days."

Dobrinsky nodded, not even attempting a trademark sadistic smile. "I'll think of something."

Vic knocked on the door of room 525. Li Ann opened it a moment later.

"Ready to go back to Toronto?" he asked.

She nodded her head toward the packed bags sitting on the bed. "Ready if you are."

"I grabbed a few hours' sleep. I'll get some coffee on the way out and I'll be fine." Vic was wearing his coat, and he had his own bag and Mac's slung over his shoulders. Mac's stuff had all been left behind yesterday, of course.

"How are you feeling?" Vic asked Li Ann as she put on her coat and boots.

"Still a bit hung over, but they say I'll be fine by tomorrow." She picked up the bags—her own and Jackie's. "Let's go."

They headed through the hotel, toward the parking garage where Li Ann's car was parked. Vic had left his truck in Toronto, so he'd be driving them back in Li Ann's car.

"So, the Director brought me up to speed on the case but she told me to ask you why the hell you and Mac left town right before the attack," Li Ann mentioned, with a definite edge in her voice, as they rode the elevator down.

Vic grimaced. Trust the Director to make everything harder than it had to be. "She didn't tell you—? Jeez." There was too much. He didn't know where to start.

He waited until they were in the car and on their way out of the city before telling Li Ann "We met Mac's mother in Harris."

Li Ann turned to him with a puzzled frown. "Mac's mother is dead."

"Yeah, well, that's what I thought, too." Vic tapped his fingers on the steering wheel, waiting for a red light to change. He thought back to the moment in the corridor—was it just yesterday?—when Anita had called Mac's name. "Well, she's not. She's in the nut-house, in a straight-jacket. Apparently she killed some guy. Chopped him up, the Director said."

"Oh my God," Li Ann whispered.

"Yeah, and Mac was there, he was in the apartment when she did it." Just thinking about it again made Vic's guts twist. He felt an unusual twinge of affection towards his own mother. At least she wasn't an axe-murderer.

"And the Director knew? Why didn't she warn us?" Li Ann asked, shock and rage mingling in her tone.

Vic rubbed the bridge of his nose uncomfortably. "Well, she sort of did order me to keep Mac out of the prison," he admitted. Feeling the weight of Li Ann's accusing glare, he added "She didn't make it sound like it was very important at the time."

Out of the corner of his eye, Vic saw Li Ann take a piece of paper out of her jacket pocket and unfold it. "What's Mac's mother's name?" Li Ann asked in a muted voice.

"Anita Ramsey."

"She's one of the missing," Li Ann said. "She's one of the prisoners who was kidnapped in the attack." She turned, wide-eyed, to Vic. "What does that mean?"

Vic shook his head. "I don't know."

Li Ann fished in her pocket for her apartment keys, bemused that Vic had insisted on seeing her to her door and waiting until she got in. He wasn't even coming in with her—he'd said he'd rather go straight home and collapse than stay for tea.

Her thoughts were full of Mac. His mother was alive. He'd lied to her. She felt hurt by this, but considering the truth she could understand why Mac had hidden it. Still... this made her wonder about other things he'd told her.

Vic had told her about the drive to Hamilton, too, and about finding Mac freezing in the playground. She felt furious at Mac for risking his life, and Vic's. Underneath the fury, where she could barely feel it, there was cold fear. Somehow, something was going deeply wrong with Mac, something she couldn't understand, control or fix.

She was so preoccupied that she nearly missed seeing the scratch marks around the keyhole—but she was a professional.

"Someone's picked this lock," she whispered to Vic. "An amateur. Left marks."

Instantly, Vic had a gun in his hand. He nodded towards the door. "Wanna open it and see?"

Li Ann set her duffle bag on the floor, got out her own gun, and unlocked the door. She eased the door open. The apartment was dark.

Vic made a move toward the door. "Cover me," he mouthed.

"Stop," Li Ann whispered, putting a hand on his chest. Something was wrong, she could feel it.

That flashing red LED light on the opposite wall. That shouldn't be there.

"Get away from the door!" Li Ann shouted to Vic, throwing herself to the side. Vic hit the floor on the other side of the door.

A moment passed, and Li Ann felt a little silly. Maybe she was just being paranoid....

And then the apartment exploded.

Mac sneezed. He reached for another tissue, and saw Nathan wincing at the other end of the table.

Dobrinsky had outdone himself this time, in terms of sheer, psychological torture. As punishment for going AWOL, Mac had been assigned today to helping Nathan scan the Agency's apparently infinite stacks of old paper records into the computer.

Spending the day with Nathan in Records would be bad enough under normal circumstances. But today Mac had a cold. The worst cold he'd had in years. His throat was sore, his head ached, his body ached, he felt hot and shivery by turns, and he'd gone through two and a half boxes of Kleenex so far.

And Nathan (surprise) turned out to be severely germ-phobic. He was wearing a surgical mask and latex gloves, and all day he'd stayed as far from Mac as he could get and still do the job. Mac wondered, bitterly, if Nathan was also being punished for something, and his punishment was having to spend the day with Mac. Every time Mac sneezed or coughed, Nathan got twitchier.

It was really wearing Mac down.

Finally, like a signal from heaven, the PA system crackled to life. "Mac Ramsey," Dobrinsky's voice came fuzzily through the speaker, "report to the briefing room."

"Yes, sir," Mac saluted the speaker on the wall, simultaneously sarcastic and enthusiastic. Anything that took him away from Nathan and his baleful looks was a blessing at this point. Mac grabbed the half-empty Kleenex box and headed for the door. "Bye, Nathan."

When Mac got to the briefing room, Vic and Li Ann were there, sitting at the long table. They looked bedraggled. Their faces were dirty. Vic's left hand, resting on the table, was wrapped in a white bandage.

"What happened to you?" Mac asked, grabbing a chair for himself.

"There was an attempt on Li Ann's life this evening," the Director said. Mac spun around to face her—he hadn't realized she was in the room. She was sitting at her desk, bathed in shadows. Her elbows were resting on her desk, and her hands were steepled in front of her.

He couldn't see her face. She didn't elaborate. Mac turned to Vic and Li Ann.

"There was a bomb in my apartment," Li Ann explained. "It went off a few seconds after I opened the door."

"Everyone got out of the building safely," Vic added. "But it could have been bad. The bomb started a fire. The fire department's still at the building."

"Holy shit," Mac swore softly, actually forgetting to be miserable about himself for a moment. He felt a rush of adrenaline, belated and useless, at the idea of Li Ann's life at risk. "So your whole apartment was destroyed?" he asked her.

Li Ann shrugged. "It's just things," she said. The tightness in her voice suggested she wasn't quite as philosophical about it as she was trying to seem. How many times in her life would Li Ann have to lose everything she had?

"At this point, we know nothing," the Director said. "The bomb may be related to your current case—or not. The security tapes show nothing. We'll get Forensics in as soon as it's safe."

"What are we going to do?" Vic asked, leaning forward in his chair. "We have to do something."

"No." The Director stood up and moved forward out of the shadows. Mac was shocked to see that she looked tired and frustrated. She wasn't wearing makeup, and her hair hung limp. "There's nothing you can do. Not one of you is fit to operate right now. Jackie's missing. Someone's trying to kill Li Ann. Vic's hand is burnt and Mac is... sick. The best I can do for you now is to try to keep you safe."

"How?" Vic protested. "We don't know anything. We don't even know if Li Ann is the only target."

The Director nodded. "Absolutely right. But I've had teams go over your and Mac's apartments—at least I can tell you there are no bombs in either one, at the moment."

Mac opened his mouth to protest the Agency's invasion of his home, but he sneezed instead. Fucking cold. He sneezed again and grabbed a tissue to blow his nose. Meanwhile, he'd missed the Director saying something.

"Not his place again," Vic was protesting. "Why is it always his place?"

"Because Mac's place is more secure, because the Agency administrates his building," the Director answered. "Now go. The three of you. Try to keep each other alive until I call you again, all right?" On that tender note, she stalked away from them.

Mac's head felt fuzzy, and he knew he'd missed a detail somewhere. "Where are we going?"

Vic clapped Mac on the shoulder with his good hand. "Your apartment," he explained, with a strained sort of pretence of enthusiasm. "All three of us. Until further notice."

Vic debated whether to take one of the painkillers the doctor had given him. His hand was throbbing.

He decided to tough it out. It suited his mood.

Li Ann and Mac were sitting at opposite ends of the white couch, both obviously miserable but withdrawn deep into their shells. They both sat with their legs tucked up under them, practically mirror images of each others' postures. Mac had flipped on the TV as soon as they got in, and he and Li Ann had been staring blankly in its general direction for the last half hour. Vic doubted either of them would be able to name the show they were watching, if he asked them.

Li Ann's apartment had been blown up. That was harsh.

Mac sneezed, twice.

"Bless you," Vic murmured for about the tenth time. Mac had obviously come down with one mother of a cold since Vic saw him last. And he hadn't even complained about it—he hadn't said five words since they left the Agency. That worried Vic. Mac was never quiet.

Vic groaned silently to himself. His partners were casting such a thick pall of gloom over the apartment that Vic could taste it. And he didn't have a fucking clue how to cheer either of them up.

"Hey, I'm starving," Vic finally said. "Anyone interested in ordering in?" No response. "If nobody says anything I'm going to get pizza," he warned them, hoping that one of them would perk up enough to insist on their usual weird and inedible version of Chinese food.

Mac looked up, and managed half a grin. "You're not gonna cook?" he asked in a raspy tone.

Vic shook his head, holding up his bandaged left hand.

Mac frowned slightly. "How bad is it?"

Vic shrugged, dismissing it. "It's just a second-degree burn. Hurts like a bitch right now, though." Vic normally wouldn't complain about pain, but he was hoping he could get Mac or Li Ann to talk about their problems by starting the ball rolling himself. This silent moping was just unnatural—especially from Mac. "How are you feeling?"

Mac rubbed the bridge of his nose, and blinked rapidly. "heh-tchshh," he sneezed, and reached for another Kleenex. "I feel like microwaved cat puke."

A tiny giggle escaped Li Ann's corner of the couch.

"How are you doing, Li Ann?" Vic prompted her.

She shrugged helplessly. "Adjusting to being homeless again."

"Hey, you're not homeless," Mac said. "You can always stay here, for as long as you need to."

"Thanks, Mac." Li Ann smiled slightly, and reached over to squeeze his hand.

"Or with me," Vic had to add. Even though right now the Director wasn't making that an option.

The moment had the feel of Mac's and Vic's rivalry over Li Ann in the early days. Each of them tugging at her, trying to convince her to stay with him. And Vic was definitely feeling a twinge of jealousy here. But... he was over Li Ann. He could think, abstractly, about her being with someone else, and it didn't bother him. So what was this jealous feeling about?

"Anyway, I guess I am hungry," Li Ann interrupted Vic's train of thought. "How about I order us something from Chang's? I promise I'll order chicken fried rice for you, Vic."

Vic shrugged his agreement. He'd already decided that Li Ann and Mac needed comfort food more than he did tonight. "Sounds good. Go ahead and order it. I'm going to have a shower now, wash the soot off."

Li Ann frowned. "You can't get that bandage wet."

"I'll put a plastic bag over it."

"That'll be awkward. Want some help?" Mac asked. He looked over at Vic and grinned for the first time that evening.

"With what?" Vic asked.

"Soaping, scrubbing, that kind of thing."

Vic felt his face flushing, and Mac's grin got even wider. "I can do that myself, thanks," Vic said with as much dignity as possible.

It was not nice of Mac to tease him like that. Especially not in front of Li Ann, who was looking at both of them quite curiously.

Leaving Mac to explain himself to Li Ann if he wanted to, Vic left the room quickly.

The shower was awkward with one hand in a plastic bag. While Vic fumbled with the shampoo bottle, his mind drifted back to Mac's joking offer, and before he knew it he was imagining Mac, naked, in the shower with him, soaping his back.

It was a nice thought.

Fuck.

Vic was attracted to Mac.

Vic stood still in the shower, letting the hot water beat against his front. His eyes were closed against the onslaught.

He set the shampoo bottle back on its rack.

"Fuck," he whispered to himself.

It was Mac's fault. He was so physical, always touching Vic, always so obviously aware of his body. He flirted with everything that moved, including Vic, especially Vic, right from the beginning, even when they were fighting over Li Ann.

The last time Vic had been attracted to another guy, well, that had been in high school, and that was just a phase. He'd grown out of it.

Anyway, there were so many things wrong with this idea, Vic hardly knew where to start counting. Vic wasn't gay. That was one. Two: Even if Vic did fall for another guy, it wouldn't be Mac. Vic recited the litany under his breath. "Mac is irresponsible, egotistical, immature, argumentative, and lazy. He's annoying." Yeah. And three: Mac was in love with Li Ann. Everybody knew it, except maybe Li Ann. And four: Mac was going through major shit in his life right now. The Director had asked Vic to help him out. Coming down with a stupid schoolboy crush on him did not count as helping.

When Vic finally emerged from the shower, all he knew was that he couldn't possibly say anything about this to Mac.

Li Ann told Vic that the food should arrive in about fifteen minutes, and then she went to take her turn in the shower.

Mac was lying on the sofa with his eyes closed, a green wool blanket draped over him. Vic wondered if Li Ann had gotten the blanket for him.

Mac looked so strangely fragile, lying there. His cheeks were flushed under the stubble of his beard. He was breathing through his mouth; Vic could hear his soft breaths.

Driven by deep instinct, Vic leaned over and placed his hand against Mac's hot forehead.

Mac's eyes blinked open.

Vic pulled his hand back as though he'd been scorched. "Uh, um, sorry, I, um, didn't mean to wake you up," he stammered, backing away from the couch.

Mac lifted himself up onto one elbow. "I wasn't asleep." He pulled another Kleenex out of the box, blew his nose, and tossed the tissue into a waste basket that had been pulled over to the couch.

"I just—I wanted to check—you sound awful," Vic continued to awkwardly explain himself. He sank into the round red chair near the couch, and promptly fell out of it. "Ack!"

"Don't try to sit on that. It's just for show," Mac said. He was giving Vic a funny, evaluating sort of look, which was only natural since Vic was stumbling and stuttering all over the place, trying to explain away the hand-on-the-forehead thing. Mac tucked his legs in and patted the couch next to him. "Sit on this, it doesn't move."

Vic sat on the couch, not quite as close as Mac had indicated. "When I was a kid, when I was sick, my mother used to do that to see if I had a fever."

Mac reached over and laid his hand across Vic's forehead. "You mean like this?"

Vic swallowed. His mouth was suddenly dry. Mac's hand was warm and rough against his face.

"Kind of silly. You need a thermometer to really tell," Mac noted, withdrawing his hand. "Anyway, don't you hate your mother?"

Vic silently cursed himself for bringing up the topic of mothers. What if this got Mac thinking about Anita? But Mac didn't look freaked out or anything. Vic answered his question. "Well, yeah, we didn't get along. It got worse when I got older. She was pretty good when I was sick, though. She did the mothering thing—made me soup, let me watch TV in bed all day, took me to the doctor, whatever. Problem was she didn't tone it down much when I wasn't sick."

Mac half-smiled. "There wasn't much mothering with the Tangs. If you could stand up, you could work."

"Sounds harsh," Vic commented.

"Just... not soft. In a crime family, it's all about strength, right?

You gotta show that you're strong, even when you're not." Mac turned away from Vic suddenly, and sneezed. "Fuck," he muttered under his breath.

"I don't think that's right," Vic said. Mac looked at him curiously.

"You shouldn't have to put up a front. Not with the people you trust." What Vic was trying to say was that Mac could talk to him about losing his father, or about Michael, or even about Anita— instead of keeping it all bottled up.

Vic had made his point very obscure, so naturally Mac didn't get it. "Well, the old man wasn't completely cold, he just had high standards," Mac explained. "It was a different story if you got really sick. I got malaria once, when I was seventeen. It was pretty bad—I was in the hospital, and there were a couple days in there I don't remember at all. Father stayed by my side 'till they knew I was going to be OK." Mac's eyes glimmered. He put his hands over his face. "I miss him," he whispered.

Vic put a hand on Mac's shoulder, feeling awkward. He thought he should say something but he couldn't think of anything.

And then the door buzzer went, and Li Ann stepped out of the bathroom at the same time.

Vic went to the door to buzz the delivery guy up, and Li Ann went to Mac. Vic heard her ask Mac what was wrong, and he heard Mac reply in Chinese. When Vic came back in with the bag of food, Mac and Li Ann were talking softly in Chinese with their heads close together, and both of them had tears running down their cheeks.

Vic felt uncomfortable, isolated by the intimacy of their pain. He also felt jealous, even though he knew it was a petty feeling. He wanted to remind them of the rule they'd established right in the beginning: no talking Chinese while Vic's in the room, it's not fair.

He found the container of fried rice, took it to the dining room table, and ate alone. He could make out the murmur of their conversation, and after a while there was laughter interspersed in it.

Mac and Li Ann came out to the dining area just as Vic was finishing up the rice. They were both red-eyed, but smiling.

"You didn't eat all the eel, did you, Vic?" Mac asked, sitting down and checking out the containers.

"Yeah, sorry about that. It just smelled so good...."

Li Ann gave Vic a puzzled look, until Mac showed her the untouched eel and she realized Vic was joking. "Sorry we left you to eat by yourself," she said softly to Vic.

"s'OK," Vic said, feeling vaguely guilty for having felt jealous. "I guess you two have a lot you need to talk about."

"Yeah." Mac reached across the table to take Li Ann's hand in his. Seeing this, Vic felt an envious twinge. He wished Mac had reached for his hand... or was he just feeling remnants of the old rivalry over Li Ann? It was so confusing.

"It was good to remember some good times, for once," Li Ann said, smiling at Mac. "It was good to laugh." And she squeezed Mac's hand, and then gently but firmly pulled her hand away from his.

A hurt-puppy look flashed in Mac's eyes, so quickly Vic wondered if he'd imagined it, and then Mac snapped apart a pair of chopsticks and reached into the container of eel, muttering something about the food getting cold.

Jesus, Vic groaned silently in his thoughts, It's like we're teenagers again. Vic likes Mac but Mac likes Li Ann, but Li Ann doesn't like Mac. Maybe I should lock myself in Mac's bedroom and light a candle and write some bad poetry.

Vic woke up to the sound of coughing. He rolled over—and nearly fell off the couch.

Vic and Mac were sleeping on the two couches in the living room, yielding Mac's bed to Li Ann. Mac wasn't sleeping now, though. In the dim city-glow from the window, Vic could see that Mac was sitting up.

Mac coughed again.

"You OK?" Vic asked, rubbing his sleepy eyes. What time was it?

"Yeah, go back to sleep," Mac replied. His voice was stuffy and raspy —he sounded even worse than he had in the evening. Go back to sleep?

No way—Vic's protective instincts drove him into action.

Vic padded into the kitchen in the dark, and opened the fridge, hoping Mac would have orange juice or something. He didn't—but there was a carton of lychee fruit juice. Vic wasn't exactly sure what that was, but hey, it said "fruit" and the expiry date hadn't passed, so he poured a glass and brought it back out to the living room. "Here," he said, holding the cold glass out for Mac to take, "have something to drink, you'll feel better."

"I doubt it," Mac muttered darkly, sniffling, but he took the glass and sipped at the juice. Vic turned to head back to his own sleeping place, but Mac said "Wait! Stay here?"

"Uh—" Vic stuttered, taken totally off guard. "Um, OK—what?"

Mac moved his feet off the couch and patted the spot beside him. "Sit down?"

Vic sat, wondering what was up. Mac didn't sound quite normal. OK, obviously he didn't sound normal, he had a vicious head cold that was messing up his voice, but now he sounded... tentative? That couldn't be right—Mac was never tentative about anything. Full speed ahead and deal with the consequences later, that was Mac's style.

"This reminds me of that time you brought me a glass of water," Mac said. He sounded pensive, sort of wistful. He sipped at the juice again.

"Huh?" Vic rubbed his forehead, confused. Had he ever brought Mac a glass of water? Probably, but no incident stood out as memorable in any way.

"The night after you broke my hand, I mean," Mac clarified.

"Uh?" Vic looked sharply at Mac, frowning. "I never broke your hand."

"Yeah, sure," Mac shrugged, "It was my fault, right?" Before Vic could protest in confusion, Mac added "Seems like you're in a good mood tonight, huh?"

Vic shook his head slowly, trying to remember Mac breaking his hand. Vic hadn't just forgotten that, had he? No—there hadn't been many injuries in their team over the past year, and Vic wouldn't forget a major one like a broken hand. "You never broke your hand," he insisted.

"Forget it," Mac said. "Thanks for the juice. Wanna have sex?"

Vic choked. "ah, huh, what!?" he spluttered, barely remembering to keep his voice his voice down so as not to wake Li Ann.

Mac looked at him expectantly, waiting for an answer.

What the hell what the hell what the hell? Had Mac somehow picked up on the fact that Vic was maybe, kind of, attracted to him? And decided to act on it, that fast? Well, Vic knew now that Mac was bi.

And Vic had always known that Mac was, um, forward.

No way. Vic was not going from zero to sex in five minutes flat.

Was Mac just teasing Vic, trying to get him uncomfortable, like always —or was he honestly attracted to him?

Vic stared at Mac, trying to sort through his whirling thoughts. Mac sipped at the juice, staring back at Vic over the rim of the cup. In the semi-darkness, Mac's eyes looked black. They were brown, really.

How did Vic know that? He was a detective, he was observant, that was all. The silk pyjamas Mac was wearing looked black, too, but Vic remembered they were really navy blue. The top couple buttons were undone and at the bottom of the pale triangle of exposed flesh, Vic could just see Mac's dark, curly chest hair. He had a crazy impulse to reach over and touch Mac there, which he resisted. So different from the smoothness between Li Ann's breasts—but different didn't mean better or worse.

Vic's heart thumped wildly; he could hear his blood pumping. He was terrified that he was having these thoughts.

"Is something wrong?" Mac asked.

Vic realized he'd been silent for quite a while. But if Mac didn't think that there was anything wrong with randomly asking Vic, in the middle of the night, if he wanted to have sex, well then he certainly had a different understanding of their working relationship than Vic did. "No," Vic finally managed to say. His mouth was almost too dry to talk. He grabbed the juice glass from Mac and gulped a couple mouthfuls. The lychee juice tasted sweet and smooth and light—nice, actually. "No, I don't want to have sex," he elaborated.

Mac slumped back against the couch. "OK, whatever," he said softly. He sounded profoundly hurt.

The hurt in Mac's voice cut into Vic like a knife. Fuck. Why was he hurt? Did he have... feelings... for Vic? It seemed crazy, impossible. But he'd kissed Vic at the New Year's party—not Li Ann —Vic remembered. Maybe Mac had secretly been attracted to Vic for a long time. And now he'd finally managed to say something about it— not the most appropriate something, but Li Ann had mentioned before that Mac had a lot of trouble talking about his feelings for her, and maybe Mac had the same problem with anyone. So Mac had just managed to tell Vic, in a roundabout way, that he liked him, and Vic had shot him down. Fuck. Vic was messing things up here completely, wasn't he?

Vic tentatively put his hand on Mac's shoulder. Mac didn't move away; he looked at Vic. "I mean, um, everything doesn't have to go so fast, right?" Vic said, feeling so awkward, like a teenager. He was grateful for the darkness; Mac wouldn't be able to see him blushing, or see the sweat that Vic felt breaking out on his forehead. He was so nervous. "Maybe we could just try... kissing?" Vic's voice faded away on the last word, and he wasn't sure if Mac had even heard him.

Mac sniffled. "I have a cold," he reminded Vic, like Vic could have forgotten. "You'll get pissed with me if you catch it...."

"Jesus," Vic swore, almost laughing. "I already drank out of your glass. We're sleeping in the same room. If I'm going to catch it, I'll catch it without kissing you. And I won't blame you." It was weird for Mac to worry about Vic getting mad at him, anyway. Didn't they traditionally spend half their waking hours trying to antagonize each other?

And then Mac leaned over and kissed him.

Vic wasn't ready for this. He was. He wasn't. He was.

Vic's eyes popped open in stunned surprise when Mac leaned in and his lips met Vic's, but after a second or two, when they weren't struck by lightning for this transgression, Vic let his eyes close.

This was the third time they'd kissed, actually. The first was the New Year's party, which Mac didn't remember. The second was two nights ago at the hotel in Kingston. This time, Vic wasn't surprised by the sandpaper feeling of Mac's beard stubble. He was already familiar with that.

The surprising thing was how nice this felt.

The kiss went on, and Vic lifted a hand to Mac's chest, touching him in the V of his unbuttoned collar, just as he'd imagined doing a few moments ago. The hair on Mac's chest was softer than Vic had imagined it. Vic's fingers trailed upwards, over the ridge of Mac's collar bone, up the side of his neck. Mac shivered when Vic's fingers traced the side of his face, but he didn't break away from the kiss. Mac's face was warm against Vic's fingertips, and his lips pressing against Vic's were hot—too hot, actually, Mac was definitely feverish. Vic suddenly felt desperately afraid that for Mac, this was all a surreal fever dream that he wouldn't remember in the morning. Vic broke away from the kiss. "Tell me this is real," he whispered.

"You're acting weird tonight," Mac said. "I'm not used to you being so... gentle. What's wrong?"

Vic was seriously confused. "Nothing's wrong. I mean, I thought you realized... I'm sort of realizing that I like you..." OK, that didn't come out right at all. Vic sounded like an idiot to his own ears. This was all so fast and confusing.

"I don't understand why you don't want to have sex tonight," Mac said.

He was using that strange, hesitant tone again. "I'll do whatever you want. Anything."

Vic sat back against the couch, making space between him and Mac. He needed space. "I don't... I don't move that fast." Vic stared out the window at the distant streetlights, his mind racing, trying to sort out Mac's mercurial advances. Mac was acting like it should be a given that Vic would have sex with him—where the hell had he got that idea?

"Anything you want," Mac repeated, and he grabbed Vic's hand. Vic turned to look at him again.

Since it was so dark in the room, it took a moment for Vic to resolve the new shapes and figure out what he was seeing.

Mac had grabbed Vic's gun off the table near the couch. He held it now with the barrel between his lips.

Oh God.

White-hot adrenaline flashed through Vic's veins. He'd left the ammo in the gun. He couldn't see, in the dim light, whether the safety was still on or not.

Mac was pulling Vic's hand up towards the gun. Vic didn't dare resist. He didn't dare make any sudden movements. "What's wrong with you?" he whispered.

Mac pulled the gun out to the edge of his lips, so he could talk. "Nothing's wrong," he said. "You taught me this game and I like it now."

Mac's eyes were black hollows in the pale glow of his face, and the gun was a deadly dark shadow in the middle. Vic wanted to pull it away but it was still Mac's finger on the trigger—Mac was just holding Vic's hand against the side of the grip. Vic could feel his hand shaking, but Mac was steadying it. Fear buzzed in Vic's ears. Mac had flipped, completely lost it. He didn't even sound upset, and he was sticking a gun in his mouth.

The only important thing, now, was to get the gun away from Mac. Vic could figure out everything else later. "OK, know what? I want to have sex after all," Vic said, forcing himself to sound calm.

"Really?" Mac sounded instantly happy. He let the gun drop a bit, but it was still pointing at his face.

"I'll put the gun away," Vic offered, keeping his tone casual, level.

"OK," Mac said easily, handing it butt-first to Vic.

Not quite daring to breathe, Vic re-engaged the safety—holy fuck, it'd been off the whole time—and popped the clip out. Beside him, Mac sneezed roughly. Jesus, what if he'd sneezed while he still held the gun to his mouth? Vic breathed a silent prayer of thanks for deliverance and, with trembling hands, put the gun and clip on the floor and shoved them both away, in different directions.

Mac was still waiting, co-operatively, on the couch. Vic took a deep breath, then grabbed him, shoving him face-down onto the couch and pinning his arms behind him in one motion. Vic pressed his knee against the small of Mac's back, making sure the other man couldn't move—but Mac didn't even resist.

"LI ANN!" Vic yelled, practically screamed. "LI ANN!!"

She appeared in seconds, gun at the ready. "What's going on?" she asked, scanning the room for threats.

Underneath Vic, Mac yelled "Hey!" and started trying to resist—but Vic had a really good hold on him.

"Call the Director," Vic demanded, straining to keep Mac immobile.

Li Ann, meanwhile, had come around to where she could see the boys. "Mac? What on earth is going on?"

"Mac's flipped out completely," Vic said, "he just tried to shoot himself!"

Li Ann made a choking sound of shock and horror. Meanwhile, Mac shook his head and struggled harder and insisted "No I didn't! Don't listen to him, Li Ann, he's lying!"

Li Ann hesitated for a moment, then ran to the phone.

Over Mac's continuing protests, Vic heard Li Ann speaking into the phone, distinctly but with an audible edge of panic, "My friend just tried to kill himself. .... No, he's not hurt but my other friend is holding him down now, and he's struggling, and I don't know what he might do next..." Li Ann gave Mac's address, and hung up.

Vic looked at her. "That wasn't the Director."

"No," Li Ann admitted. She flipped on the overhead light and came quickly to the couch, staying clear of Mac's flailing legs. "That was 911. The Director had him yesterday and she didn't do him any good, did she?"

"Li Ann, Michael's making stuff up to get me in trouble!" Mac shouted.

"Michael?" Li Ann repeated. She and Vic stared at Mac for a moment, both of them confused.

Vic suddenly had a terrible flash of insight. "Did Michael ever break Mac's hand?"

"What?" Li Ann stared at Vic now, still confused. "Uh, yes, actually.

Years and years ago—I was still in high school."

All the inconsistencies, the strange questions, fell into perspective.

"He thinks I'm Michael," Vic said dully. "Ever since he woke up, he's been thinking I'm Michael." When they kissed. When they kissed, Mac thought he was kissing Michael. Vic felt profoundly hurt, and enraged, and scared. He shoved Mac hard down into the cushions of the couch, drove his knee into his back. "I'm not Michael!" he shouted at Mac. "I'm Vic! Vic! VIC!"

"Vic!" the shout echoed in Li Ann's voice, and Vic found himself flying sideways to land on his ass on the floor. Li Ann had thrown herself at him to get him away from Mac. "What the hell were you doing?" Li Ann exclaimed. Her eyes were wide—they darted back and forth from one apparently crazy partner to the other, as she obviously wondered which one needed restraining more.

Mac sat up but he didn't try to go anywhere. "Vic?" he repeated in a small voice.

"I, uh, think he's been hallucinating," Vic explained himself lamely to Li Ann, standing up and rubbing his ass.

"Michael?" Mac said, still very softly, looking at Vic. He stood up and Li Ann and Vic both lunged toward him to grab him—so they both managed to catch him as he fell. He was staring blankly in front of him, now. His face was pale, he was shaking violently and his teeth were chattering. Vic wondered, wildly, if he was having a seizure of some sort.

The door buzzed. "The paramedics," Li Ann said. "Have you got him OK?"

Vic got a better grip on Mac and lowered him to the floor, holding him in a tight hug. Mac seemed completely oblivious to his presence now.

He was making low-pitched gasping, moaning noises, like weeping maybe but his eyes were dry. Vic held on tight. His confusion and hurt buzzed in the background, shoved aside by fear.

Li Ann let the paramedics in. There were two, a black man and a red-haired woman. They both came and crouched near Mac and Vic. "What's his name?" the woman asked briskly.

Mac's shaking subsided a bit, maybe in reaction to the paramedics' calm, professional demeanour. "It's Mac," Vic said.

"Mac, can you hear me?" the woman asked. Mac didn't respond.

"We'd better take him in," the man said, and the woman nodded. "Mac, we're going to have to strap you to this chair to get you down to the ambulance."

Vic and Li Ann hovered close, ready to help out if Mac resisted the paramedics, but they didn't have to do anything. He'd gone completely passive and unresponsive.

"Can one of you come with us in the ambulance?" the female paramedic asked as she tightened the last strap.

"I'm his sister," Li Ann said immediately. "I'll come." Ignoring the slightly puzzled look the paramedic gave her, Li Ann squeezed Vic's arm. "You'd better call the Director," she said.

Li Ann pulled her winter coat and boots on right over her pyjamas. The paramedics wheeled Mac out the door. Li Ann shot one worried look back at Vic, then followed them.

Vic closed the door to Mac's apartment, and locked it. He leaned his back against the door, and slowly sank down to the floor, ending with his face resting on his knees and his hands entwined behind his head.

Alone in Mac's apartment, with no immediate responsibilities, no one to react to, no one to see him, Vic let the stress and the emotional roller-coaster ride of the past three days catch up to him. He sat on the floor with his back to the door and his head on his knees and wept, without wondering why.

end part 3