Catherine Mills stretched, cracking her neck. She walked to the bathroom in her rented apartment, turning on the light,and looked at her reflection. Mid-30s, dark hair slightly mussed from sleep, and blue eyes staring back at her. She brushed her teeth methodically, the same two minutes she'd done every morning since the age of 5, then splashed cold water on her face to finish waking up.
Back in the small kitchenette, she filled the electric kettle and flicked it on, the heating element beginning its familiar rumble. While the water heated, she poured herself a bowl of cereal - generic corn flakes, nothing fancy. She pulled a PG Tips tea bag from the box and dropped it in her mug, then poured the boiling water over it once the kettle clicked off. Three minutes steep time, just like her mother had taught her. She added milk from the small carton in the fridge, watching the tea bloom into that familiar caramel color, then two spoons of sugar. A quick stir, and she fished out the tea bag.
She ate standing at the counter, alternating between spoonfuls of cereal and sips of hot tea while scanning yesterday's newspaper. Once she'd finished eating, she washed the bowl and spoon immediately, dried them, and put them back in the cupboard.
She stretched again, working out the last remainders of stiffness from sleep, then grabbed the floptical disk from yesterday. Walking to the desk where her computer sat, mug of tea in hand, she slotted the disk into her workstation.
She powered it on and ran a script:
The terminal scrolled through pages of records. She took another sip of tea, settling into the chair. The designations were familiar - she'd spent years reading reports with these headers.
She almost laughed. UK eyes only. Lot of good that classification had done. The agency had been brought down by an aristocratic moron—Blackwood-Smythe, the logistics head, who'd proven that a posh accent and the right family connections could get you security clearances that common sense should have denied. Upper-class twit had practically gift-wrapped S.T.R.I.K.E for Vixen.
Catherine had heard the rumors after everything fell apart. Sketchy activities in Soho, photographs, leverage. Once compromised, Blackwood-Smythe had dismissed security protocols as "tedious procedural nonsense" and waved through requisitions and new hires without proper vetting. Equipment disappeared, personnel with questionable backgrounds appeared on the roster, and by the time anyone noticed, Vixen's people were everywhere.
Still, she thought with grudging fairness, not all the aristocrats were useless.Fairfax-Hayes had pulled strings to get her into MI6 when everyone else was scrambling for the lifeboats. Old Harrovian, family money going back to the Conquest, but he'd actually done the work, bled in the field, earned his position rather than inherited it. He'd remembered that she'd saved his section in Vienna back in '78, and returned the favor when it mattered.
She shook her head and returned her attention to the screen. Dwelling on the past didn't help her with the database.
Catherine scrolled further down the list, writing on her notepad. This should be straightforward. Empty BARNET, secure the safe houses, verify the human assets, document everything. Then call in an extraction team, and get the gear back to the UK.
This was a milk run. Relatively speaking, anyway. After years running operations behind the Iron Curtain, skulking around an allied country felt almost leisurely. The sort of assignment that kept ex-S.T.R.I.K.E. personnel busy without putting them anywhere that truly mattered.
Fairfax-Hayes had called in every favor he could to get her into MI6 after S.T.R.I.K.E. imploded, but even his influence could only stretch so far. MI6 took her onboard and promptly buried her in Soviet Technology Assessment. Safe, contained, no operational authority. Endless reports on the Crimson Dynamo program. Theoretical assessments of armor capabilities, power source analysis, strategic implications that would likely never matter. MI6 had inherited chunks of S.T.R.I.K.E.'s supernatural intelligence workload while new agencies were being spun up, and frankly didn't care about most of it. The Crimson Dynamo program fell into that gray area, important enough that someone should track it, unimportant enough to assign to damaged goods.
Then intelligence came in about Vixen sending a team to the States. Fairfax-Hayes pitched his case: Ava Smith, one of Vixen's favorite operatives, was a near-perfect match for Catherine. Same height, same hair color, similar features. MI5 detains Smith, Catherine slips into her place. The beauty of it was that Vixen's people would send Catherine to America themselves, never knowing they were placing an MI6 officer directly into their overseas operation. This time, Fairfax-Hayes had operational necessity on his side. Even the skeptics had to admit she was the only viable option. Simple, elegant, deniable.
She reached for her tea, found it lukewarm, and took a sip anyway.
Back to work.
The human assets were predictable. Two utility company contacts taking automatic payments to keep the power flowing and suppress anomaly alerts. Three NYPD officers on the take, probably vice squad, useful for early warnings and looking the other way. A trauma surgeon at Bellevue for discreet medical attention, no questions asked. Basic overseas support infrastructure. She'd helped set up similar networks on the continent back in '77.
The fact that DANEGELD was still making payments suggested the assets were either still active or hadn't noticed their employer no longer existed. She'd need to verify each one personally, feel them out, see who was still reliable and who needed to be cut loose. The NYPD contacts worried her most—their status was listed as "Unknown," which meant S.T.R.I.K.E. had lost touch before the collapse. Could be they'd moved on, could be they'd been compromised, could be they were working for someone else now. She made a note to approach them very carefully, if at all.
Catherine scrolled further down the list.
The mug stopped halfway to her lips. Steam curled past her face. She stared at the screen, unblinking.
She placed the mug onto her desk with a dull thunk.
The memory hit her unbidden. West Germany, 1979.
Soviet power armor emerging from Hangar Four at Tegel Airport. Ten armored men in industrial gray and pale blue, seven feet of Soviet engineering surrounding her van. The lead trooper's wrist laser powering up to cut her down.
She'd heard the distinctive whup of a high-powered energy weapon three hundred meters out, watched the lead trooper's helmet explode in sparks and smoke. Then everything became a hurricane of chaos. Plasma bolts carving through armor, what she could have sworn was a spell flying past, figures sprinting impossibly fast across the tarmac. One of them was blue-skinned.
Her BND liaison pinned his foot to the floor and drove straight for the waiting Gulfstream. They wrestled their cargo aboard and scrambled into the passenger cabin as energy bolts scored the concrete around them. One shot should have vaporized their wing, except something shimmered and the plasma splashed against a glowing barrier. Catherine knew the jet was a bog standard Gulfstream, and assumed it was the mystery wizard at work.
Four minutes of evasive taxiing, then aggressive rotation into a climb so steep her vision grayed. The mention of the firefight in debrief back in England was brief: "The cover story is a Agence Byzantine terror attack. It was stopped by a joint response from the BND and the French, all terrorists were neutralized."
Catherine and her debriefing officer both knew it was bollocks.
Catherine blinked, the memory fading. Her tea was now lukewarm.
That had been her first and only glimpse of one of S.T.R.I.K.E.'s special operations sections in action. She'd known they existed from years of reading reports with TACTICAL OPERATIONS redactions, but she'd never been cleared for details.
But knowing they existed and seeing what they could do were entirely different things.
Catherine reached for her notepad. The tea sat forgotten, cooling beside the keyboard.
This, she reflected, was going to be considerably trickier than advertised.