I'm not the first you sucked down
I drank your pleasure slow
Then stumbled out from your veil
Still I've come for you tonight
Choke my faith and stab my pride

My head jerked up when she touched me, consciousness suddenly boiling over my senses. The first thing I realized was that I couldn’t move. I was seated on a chair, my hands were cuffed behind my back, and Nina was pacing in front of me, glancing every so often at the man she had stationed in the corner.

Fuck. Fuck! I had been trained better than this – Nina should be the one cuffed to the chair, not me. I tested the strength of the cuffs. They were strong – I wasn’t going anywhere. That bitch. That fucking bitch. Just the sight of her had me reeling. I knew I couldn’t get to her, but it didn’t stop me from wanting to. I wanted to charge at her, to rush her and knock her to the ground and break her neck.

Every single time I saw Nina, I thought of Teri. And Nina was everywhere. The picture in her file at CTU, the photographs from a weekend vacation that I had never quite been able to burn. And now the bitch was here, somehow tangled up in this deal, and those memories of Teri that I’d tried so hard to forget were here too. They were never happy memories. I never remembered the Christmases and the picnics and the nights Teri and I cuddled on the couch watching TV. Nina had reduced my memories to a single moment – the moment when I cradled the dead body of my wife in my arms.

I tried to swallow my hatred. I’d come for the virus, not revenge. And to get it, I had to get Nina in with the Salazars. Trying not to let her see how badly I needed this to happen, I offered her money. It was her one love; she would do anything for it. There had been a time when she’d looked at me with lust, but when she looked at crisp dollar bills, her eyes lit up in a way that I had never seen before.

This is the last time
This is the last time
This is the last time now
I'll bleed for you

She was convinced that I still worked for CTU. It didn’t take much to pretend that I didn’t. I didn’t have to fake the bitterness in my voice. I’d lost everything, I told her, and I had. My wife was dead, my last relationship was shattered, and Kim had never quite forgiven me. I hadn’t had much left, but when I went undercover with the Salazars I gave it all up. I told Nina I’d given them my soul. It was true. Whatever was left of me after all that had happened had disappeared into a needle. There was nothing left.

I kept talking, desperately trying to make it believable but at the same time, believing every word I said. No one had been waiting for me when I brought Ramon Salazar in. All I got was a slap on the back for a job well done. Fuck that. I’d put my life on the line for my fucking country, and what had it ever given me besides a dead wife and a demotion to director of field ops? No one. Nothing. I was disgusted with myself and the organization I worked for, but despite all that I was going to do everything within my power to stop this virus. Not for CTU, and not for my government, but for the millions of innocent people that would die if I didn’t. Only Nina could help me make that happen. There was no other way.

The man in the corner wouldn’t shut the hell up. He was butchering my concentration, and that could easily ruin my chances of convincing Nina that the Salazars would pay her. The bastard threatened to call someone if Nina didn’t shoot me. She pulled a gun and the cold metal stroked across the side of my face before pressing against my head. Oh, God. Only a short time before, I’d been on the other end of a gun, holding it to Chase’s head. It should have been me then, and it was finally me now. I closed my eyes, praying it would be fast.

Suddenly the pressure on my forehead was gone and there was a shot. My eyes flashed open. Jesus! The man in the corner slumped to the floor. I exhaled, relieved that I was alive and furious that I wasn’t dead.

Preservation or predation
As I'm reeling I don't know
Crumbled I spill out of your hand
I want to fall
And you see it all

Nina dropped to her knees in front of me, her hands on my thighs. I looked down, surprised, the touch both new and familiar. She had beautiful hands. So graceful. I couldn’t help but remember how her hands had felt on me – running through my hair, down my back, clutching at me in ecstasy. But those same hands had held the gun that killed my wife. I met her eyes, fully understanding what she wanted. That manipulative little bitch.

Her hands slid further up my legs and she leaned closer, asking if I could forgive her. A million things flashed through my mind – Kim as a baby, holding Teri’s lifeless body, fucking Nina, Teri’s funeral, the night I’d woken up in sheets soaked with tears and semen with Nina’s face imprinted on my mind. Forgive her? No. I couldn’t. But I couldn’t tell her that. I sidestepped the question and told her that if I’d wanted her dead, I would have killed her. God, I did want her dead, but I couldn’t think about that now. Right now, I needed her – and she knew it.

She asked me to convince her and leaned even closer. I stared at her. No, no, God, please. I’d always loved the taste of her lips. They were so different from Teri’s - more exotic, like a rare wine. Teri had tasted domestic, like cinnamon. Teri. My wife. Oh, God. My head was spinning. I knew what Nina wanted, but sweet Jesus, I didn’t think I could do it. I could do anything else – I could put my own ass on the line, I could shoot my partner, I could listen to him being mercilessly tortured, but I didn’t think I could kiss the woman that had killed my wife.

And everything I feel I know you know
And everything that heals I know you know
And everything that steals I know you know
And everything that kills you know

She leaned closer. That bitch. That dirty traitorous bitch. I tested the strength of my cuffs again, desperately hoping that there was some way out of this. I couldn’t do it, I just couldn’t. There was no way I could live with myself if I allowed Nina to do this.

But . . . I had to. I fucking had to. If I could get her to believe me, to trust me at all, I might be able to stop the virus. No matter what the cost, I had to make that happen. I had to get to Nina. I tried to tell myself that there was no other way, tried to convince myself that out of all the things I’d been forced to do in the name of my country, kissing Nina Myers was hardly the worst.

But my mind screamed that it was, that kissing the woman who had murdered Teri was the purest form of betrayal. I didn’t want to do this, didn’t want to make this decision. It wasn’t a decision at all, really. Nina was on her knees in front of me, and there was a man somewhere in possession of a deadly virus. And so as the traitor who killed my wife leaned closer – I kissed her. I’m sorry, Teri, I thought. So sorry.

THE END

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