Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of Kudos and BBC. The original characters and plot are the property of the author of this story. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.

Author's note:  If you've managed to read this far, thank you thank you thank you for bearing with Alexa and Lucas for so long.  I hope you're enjoying the ride so far!  

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“Into the eternal darkness, into fire and into ice. ”
-Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy 

“No!”

The ship’s horn yanked Alexa from the darkness and she sat up, gasping for breath, her eyes wide.  She brought her hand to her temples, feeling the skin for any pain but not finding any.  Instead, she found a deep scar that ran along a straight line along the left side of her head, hidden by her thick hair.  Tears had dampened her face and for a moment she thought she was bleeding.

Her wrists were bound in a pair of handcuffs, but she didn’t care.  Alexa only knew that she was alive.  And that it had all been a dream, nothing but a dream of the past that she had forgotten.

Breathing heavily, she kept her fingers on the deep groove that ran all the way along the side of her head, the memory of that night slowly returning to her.  She closed her eyes, her breath coming in heaves now as the images came like a flood into her brain.  

Didn’t Harry insist on her seeing a psychiatrist when she first returned to London?  Didn’t he say that it would help her remember and in remembering, she would understand and forget?  But as Alexa touched the scar along the side of her head, knowing she’d touched that scar many times for years yet refused to understand or learn how she had gotten it, she knew that there had always been a reason why she refused any such help.  

She had wanted all of that locked up, like a part of a house never meant to be opened up to anyone, not ever its owner.  A chamber of secrets so dark, she knew that learning about them would only lead her to more pain.

But as she folded her knees in front of her, bowing her head, Alexa remembered it all now.  The doors leading to the chamber of secrets so dark were never meant to be locked forever.  It had waited for the right time.  

Don’t move.

Alexa shut her eyes tightly, seeing the flash of light as the bullet left the barrel of gun and slammed onto the earthen floor next to her, the bullet grazing a deep groove on the side of her head, blood coating the floor beneath her head.  A part of her remembered the smell of blood as it splashed across her face and fanned below her head like a halo.  

>>><<<

Nine years ago, Mikhael had shot her.  And for nine years, she never once remembered the source of the deep groove along her scalp, the faint stitches of fine needle that had seamed it shut.  She remembered it all now, and as she did the world rushed towards her, swallowing her whole.  Her skin grew clammy and cold, her eyes seeing nothing but darkness.

Alexa had been in some kind of coma for almost a week, unable to wake.  She would remember nothing of that night, only that Mikhael had beaten her almost to death in his anger over running away, and nothing more.  

It was probably for the best, Alexa thought now, as she struggled back to the present.  She felt as if she were in deep water, where it was murkiest, and as she tried to swim upwards, the memories rushed at her, unrelenting.  The visions slammed into her like a movie playing scenes again and again, some with sound, and some without.  

The ones without the sounds gave her pictures, vivid and so real, the faces etching themselves in her mind.  The ones with the voices assaulted her ears with words that made no sense to Alexa.   They went on and on, words that conjured images of a knight chess piece again and again inside her head.  

Alexa fought to get away from them all.  There had been a reason why her mind had stifled such things.  She could see the light above her and she swam towards it, knowing it would be her salvation. 

When she broke free of the flashbacks, shutting the doors of her mind to the past that was left undiscovered, she let out a cry of agony, the sound of the bullet exiting the barrel of the gun a thunderclap that brought her back to the present.  As she opened her eyes, the visions were gone.

Alexa looked up.  

Mikhael was sitting in front of her, forearms on his knees, head bowed low.  He was listening to her, yet he did not look up to face her.  His massive arms were covered with tattoos and for a moment, Alexa could feel the sadness that seemed to emanate from his pores.  There were so many things that needed to be said between them now.  

Everything had just changed between them.  And Alexa’s mind began to fill up with questions.  But as she opened her mouth to speak, only one word managed to emerge.

“Sugar Horse.”

Mikhael finally looked up, his eyes sad.  Where he had been tattooed with the mark of a pedophile by the prison guards and prisoners, he’d applied caustic acid on them to erase them, melting the skin almost to the bone.  The acid had almost eaten through the joint of his jaw, and when he spoke, it often clicked in and out of place.  

Where once he had been a handsome man, someone who had resembled Robert Redford and thus earned the nickname “Kid” for his resemblance to the Sundance Kid, now there sat before Alexa someone that looked like  a man burned almost beyond recognition, his face a mass of melted skin.  

But Alexa recognized his eyes still.  In those eyes were hatred for the world around him that dared take away the one person he had loved the most, and the child he had helped bore into the world that he himself had created.  In those eyes now was a sadness whose depths Alexa dared not seek.  

“Sugar horse was the reason why you were taken in Paris,” Mikhael said quietly.  He was tired, his mind had reached the limits of his exhaustion.  Where hatred had dwelt upon seeing Lucas North leaving her flat that morning, a sense of relief had taken its place.  For she was with him now.  Safe from Arkady or anyone else for that matter.

“Your father learned about it, quite by accident.  They thought that by taking you hostage, your father would cough up the names.”

“And did he?”

Mikhael shook his head, smiling ruefully.  “You know the answer to that, matryoshka.  The time for pretense is over.  It’s time to wake up.”

“Mischa, what is Sugar Horse?  What are those names?”

Mikhael looked up at her.  What he had feared the most was true.  Alexa knew.  She had remembered, and he knew that with one moment of remembrance, there would be others.  And because of that, she would never be safe again.

“I don’t know,” Mikhael replied.  “But whatever those names stand for, it is worth killing you for.”

“Is that why Arkady is after me now?”

“Yes, but Arkady likes to play games.  He’s a chess player, you know that?  You are his queen, and your spy lover, Lucas North, is the king.  He thought you were dead for nine years, but then you started your foundation and became its spokesperson.  To him, you became the phoenix - one who rose up from the ashes.”  Mikhael laughed a humorless laugh. “One who must be killed before you managed to cough up your secrets.”

Mikhael touched his face.  “Do you know he did this to me?  The scars that I had to melt away myself because no one would do it for me.   No one would help me for fear of Arkady Kachimov.”

Alexa shook her head.

“He found out our little secret.  That you were alive.  Not only that, but that his own little pet, Lucas North, had been the one to find you and return you back to England.  Did you know that he was the only one who had access to the spy when he was imprisoned in Russia?”

“You paid for it,” Alexa said, bringing back the conversation to what was important to her.  She would learn about Lucas’ imprisonment through Lucas himself.  There was no time to dwell on hearsay.  “This lie you told him about me being dead.”

“It wasn’t a lie,” Mikhael said.  “He saw it with his own eyes.  He saw me shoot you, saw the blood, and he left.”

For a few seconds, Alexa didn’t speak.  She couldn’t find anything else to say.  All she wanted to do now was listen to Mikhael speak and maybe in so doing, she’d be able to put the puzzle together.  How could she have managed to hide such event from  herself and lock it up in the deepest recesses of her brain?

“I thought I missed at first,” Mikhael said bitterly.  “I saw all that blood and I thought I had killed you, that you didn’t listen to me tell you to not move.” 

“But I did listen,” Alexa countered.

Mikhael smiled, nodding.  “Yes, you did.  That gave me some hope, Alexa.  It gave me hope that maybe you...you trusted me after all.  Just as you need to trust me now.”

Alexa looked away from his gaze.  For months she had thought Mikhael to be the devil, sent to capture and torment her.  But when she met Arkady, she knew then what mask the devil really wore.  How could she have suppressed such memories, not even recognizing Arkady when he had come to visit her at her office months earlier.  And even then, at the foundation gala where he told her that he knew about her relationship with Harry.  How could she have not remembered him then?

“You trusted me with your life, did you not, Alexa?”  Mikhael asked, breaking through Alexa’s thoughts.

Alexa nodded.  “Yes.”

“Well, now the chess master is at it again, and all his pieces are on the board, ready for their next move against the queen.  But it seems that your king, this Lucas North, has abandoned you, yes?”

The mention of Lucas’ name made Alexa’s pulse quicken.  She wondered if he even knew where she was.  Had Lucas really abandoned her?  

“What about you, Mischa?  What are you in Arkady’s game?”

Mikhael took a deep intake of breath as soon as she called him by the one name Oksana used to call him, the same name he would hear from Alexa’s lips when she played the role years ago.  Such was the treachery of women, he thought to himself.  Alexa had played the game of pretending to be Oksana to save herself, making herself party to her own fate.  But as he gazed at her, his breath caught in his throat. 

Memories of his Oksana refused to die away, not now that he had found Alexa again, the perfect twin to his own Oksana.   Oksana would have looked just like her still, he thought, but Mikhael forced himself to be alert.  His Russian wife was of a different world, just as she now existed on a different realm, so far from where he was now.  Let her rest in peace, he reminded himself.  Let her and Niko get the peace they deserve.

The ship hadn’t left port yet, the delays in its departure enough to warrant suspicion on his part.  But for now, as long as the horn blasted once more, it meant that the ship was on its way.  

“My role changes depending on what part of the game we’re in, kitten,” Mikhael replied.  “In the beginning, I may have been nothing more than a simple pawn to Arkady, to be ordered here or there.  But as the game progresses, my role changes.  It becomes more important.”

“How important?”

“I’m the only one that stands between you and Arkady.  That means, I’m the only one that stands between you and death.  You see, because of Sugar Horse, there’s a price on your head.”

Alexa frowned.  “That’s absurd,” she said.  “I can’t be that important to Arkady.  I know nothing.”

Mikhael’s lip curled.  “Oh yes, you do.  You see, Alexa, for a rich man’s daughter, you’re very smart.  You knew then when to keep your mouth shut, when to see nothing, or hear nothing.  You knew then what secrets men kept and what secrets they were willing to give up in a moment of weakness.”  Mikhael walked towards her and ran a finger down her cheek, tracing the outline of her neck, just where her neck joined her shoulder.  “And yes, you knew just how to make a man give up his deepest, darkest secrets.”

Alexa’s face reddened.  She looked away and Mikhael returned to his chair.  His fingers tingled, the desire for her growing inside him.  But first, they needed to talk.  She needed to know just what she was, not the innocent girl she thought she was.

“I did not send you to entertain just any man who came into the club,” Mikhael said.  “You passed on secrets to me, remember?  It was our agreement.”

Alexa said nothing.  

“You’re not quite as innocent as you claim to be.  Did your father know that, Alexa?” Mikhael continued. “Did he know that you passed on many of my government secrets to me?  Ones that you obtained during your sessions with those men?  It was my insurance in staying in business, even if the FSB was watching me carefully.  That only means that you could have passed them on to your government, too.  Or even to your spy lover.”

“I only did as you told me,” Alexa said.  “You promised me freedom.  What other choice did I have?”

“Plenty,” Mikhael replied.  “You had every reason to say no.  What I don’t understand is why you didn’t tell your father, or anyone else about what you learned during your stay in Russia.  Why you kept every secret you heard to yourself?  And believe me, you heard plenty of them.”

Alexa looked at him, frowning.  She was silent, not sure what to say.  Mikhael, she knew, was not lying.  He did send her to entertain them, men who fancied themselves spies for the FSB, who did nothing on the field but worked behind computers and equipment all day, yet learning so many secrets.  And when they arrived in Mikhael’s clubs, they had wanted nothing more than to impress the girls, make them believe they were who they weren’t, and during the process, divulge highly secret information to girls like Alexa who fed them with compliments, alcohol and drugs.  

Yet there were those who worked in the field, who were powerful men, capable of killing her in an instant.  Alexa had discovered that she had a skill in detecting just who they were, her senses sharper when she was around them, teaching her when to remain deaf and dumb, and when to rely on her instincts and step away.  

Yes, Mikhael was right.  She had learned her lessons well, though they were not gleaned from him at all.  But the simple answer to his question was that she had completely blocked everything she had heard in those sessions, the secrets men and women told her, the things she had seen.  She had simply locked them all away, never to be seen again.  She had done it just as she had forced herself to believe that Lucas, during his imprisonment in Russia, was dead.  She had never wanted to return to that place again. 

“And now you sleep with Lucas North,” Mikhael almost spat out the words.  “Do you know he’s a double agent?  Do you know that’s why Arkady let him go?  So he can spy on  you and even get the names from you.”

Alexa shook her head.  “Not Lucas.”

Mikhael’s lips curled into a smirk.  “I saw him with Arkady just yesterday, entering the embassy.  They were together, you see.  Do you want to see the photographs?”

He pulled out a manila envelope from beneath the mattress and pulled out photographs for Alexa to see.  They spilled out on the bed before her and as Alexa stared, she shook her head again.  “That’s impossible.”

But the pictures did not lie.  There was Lucas on a rooftop overlooking the city talking to Arkady, his tall lean frame unmistakable.  Another photograph showed Lucas with Arkady entering the embassy, the photograph gleaned from cameras all over the building, all angles showing that it was indeed Lucas with Arkady.  

Yet there was another one and this one sent a chill through Alexa’s heart.  It was Lucas sitting on a bench at Highgate cemetery talking to a woman with dark hair.  

“His handler is his ex-wife, did you know that?” Mikhael was saying.  “He has already passed on some sensitive information to her, to Arkady.”

Alexa picked up the last photograph with shaking fingers.  The pictures did not lie, she thought.  Why didn’t Harry say anything to her?  Most of all, why did Lucas lie to her?

“Don’t you think he would have been here by now?  Your lover?”

“You’re lying, Mikhael,” Alexa whispered.  “Lucas would never do that.”  Yet as Alexa spoke, her words were hollow, spoken automatically by someone who wanted desperately to believe that everything was perfect.  But as Alexa looked at the photograph of Lucas with his ex-wife, she knew she was only fooling herself.  Worse of all, Lucas was making a fool of her.

“How well do you really know him, Alexa?”  Mikhael asked.  “He comes to you only for one thing, yes?  Maybe he wants to learn what you know, and then give it to Arkady.”

Alexa said nothing.  Her face hardened as she forced herself to look away from Mikhael’s penetrating gaze.  Suddenly she wasn’t sure of anything anymore.  What Mikhael said about Lucas shook her and she wrapped her arms around her, suddenly chilled. 

“I’m the only who stands between you and death, Alexa,” Mikhael said.  “I’m a businessman, remember that. I take no sides but my own and what and who matter the most to me.”

“You’ve got a strange way of showing it, Mikhael,” Alexa said, touching her jaw, the pain still radiating from where he had struck her earlier.  

“That was an unfortunate consequence of hitting me with the crowbar,” Mikhael said, glancing outside the window behind Alexa.  He saw a black car drive up and two women emerged, flashing their badges at the men who had run after the car to stop it from continuing.  Mikhael watched as the women headed towards the warehouse, relieved that they weren’t coming for him.

Maybe Anatoly was drawing them away from the ship, he thought.

“What about my son?” Alexa asked.

“He should be safe,” Mikhael replied.  “But I won’t lie to you when I say that I don’t know where he is right now.”

He walked over to one of the chests and flipped open the lid.  It was filled with clothing, folded neatly one on top of another.  He rummaged through them, wondering what had happened to all the sensible clothing he had purchased just the day before - the coats and the sweat shirts and pants - clothing that would have made Alexa inconspicuous among the crew.  The last thing he had wanted was for her to look like a cheap prostitute throughout this entire voyage.  

Instead, what his hands touched now where cheap women’s clothing, lingerie that were crass and flimsy.  Mikhael dug deeper into the trunk, freezing as his hand touched something cold and hard.  Tossing all the clothes out of the trunk, he drew a long breath as he stared at what lay halfway from the bottom of the trunk.

This had to be all Anatoly’s doing, Mikhael thought, on orders from Arkady.   Mikhael felt the sweat gather upon his brow as the realization hit him.  It wasn’t just Alexa who had a price on her head.  

“Alexa,” he commanded, his voice hoarse.  “Open the other trunk and carefully look inside.”

Alexa did as she was told.  She swallowed hard, finding that her throat was dry.

In front of them, each chest was filled with explosives, gallon-sized containers lined in rows, filled with fluid and connected to each other by various colored wires.  Bags of steel nails were tied at the mouths of each container and sitting right on top of it, was a computerized panel, the numbers ticking backwards from 04:17.

They both stared at the panels before them.  The digital clock face was counting down.  And as Alexa stared, her mouth turned dry at the sight of the numbers counting down before her, her brain refused to register what it was seeing.  

“You wanted to know why Arkady wants you dead,” Mikhael said, his voice low.  His eyes never left the bomb in front of him.  “It has something to do with that information you managed to extract from the FSB mole I sent you to see.  He was your last assignment, Alexa, but you got caught.  That’s why he wanted you dead nine years ago, and that is why he wants you dead now.”

03:45

“But I don’t know what Tiresias is,” Alexa said.  “Or even this Sugar Horse, you just mentioned earlier.”

“It doesn’t make a difference now, what you know or don’t know.  It doesn’t matter whether you have the information or not,” Mikhael growled.  “We’re both dead.”  

Mikhael took a key from his pocket and unlocked Alexa’s one of the cuffs from Alexa’s wrist.  She looked up at him expectantly as she brought her other wrist towards him.  He was setting her free, she thought.  But Mikhael only held her eyes with his own as he slapped the cuff around his own wrist and clicked it shut.  

“Maybe this will jog your memory, Alexa,” he said.  “Sugar Horse or Tiresias.  One or the other.  Or both.  You have to remember them now.”

Alexa screamed at him, her free hand pounding against his chest as she fought to get away from him, but Mikhael grabbed her hand in his.  

“I’ve let you go for nine years, kitten,” he said.  “Not again.  This time you will remember and I will not wait another nine years for you to do so.”

“Mikhael, you bastard,” Alexa whispered, loosening her hand from his and as she did so, she slapped him across the face.  

“Either we make it out of this alive, together,” Mikhael said as he got to his feet and pulled her up with him.  “Or we die together.” 

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