Re: Military lockdown: Cat & Matt
When Cat entered he hall her body doubled in Matt's sight Then again - this was the vision he remembered, however much he remembered anything. She was a vision of that person in the flesh, sleek and black and armed. His brain supplied memories fresher after his brush with compliance - cold so fierce it could freeze the inside of your nose, expanses of snow, dark warm passages and her, moving in the dark. She had never been the black bodysuit, as much as it fit her. It was armor. It wasn't her.
The Russian was comfortable, but just a thin veneer. The people who ran this place, even now, no doubt had a translator on hand to relay anything they said to anyone who needed to hear it.
"маленькая птица," he said. "I don't listen."
Until she had entered and stepped up to the cell, he had been listening, dead-eyed, staring just past the agent who talked. Now, alone with her, he animated, if only slightly. He almost smiled, and he followed her with his eyes. "Helping," he said, as if he knew how foolish it would sound to her. He wouldn't say any more about PJ, not here. Her secrets were his secrets, now, and there was no reason for the government to hear about them. "Trying to do some good for a change. I'm sorry." She was right. Months, months of helping people around the edges, edging around approaching Rogers. He'd neglected her. That would need to change, if he ever made it out of here.
"I wanted to get in here to see what they had." He nodded, once, to himself. "I know now." Everything. They had everything, down to which words to use for what.
And apparently some others still knew, if the man and his mercenaries were any indication. He waited for her to turn toward him before asking. Before, dull and fixed on the door, his eyes had been dull and dark as marbles. But whenever he escaped that hole - a protective layer, miles deep, of engineered dissociation - he was more and more like this, pale blue eyes clear and sharp. "They say they'd try to fix it." He didn't trust them, couldn't trust them, and no doubt they expected that. But she would find a way to tell him whether to believe what they said. He trusted her. "That they'd pull out the stuff in my head that doesn't belong there. Otherwise I guess I keep headphones in and play music on missions." He tipped his hand up. A haunted smile. "Could be fun."