CHAPTER TWO.
121

"Can you imagine the pain of a bird's wing tearing?"

KAZ made his way back to the club. When he entered back all of them had gone back to their drinks and their music and their kisses. The bartender confirmed his suspicions, the ambulance had arrived but they had not been able to save him.

He shouldered his way out the club into the cold Parisian wind, head ducked, on his way to the hospital. He fiddled with the pin, twisting it and examining it. It looked newly made. But the Widow program was over, wasn't it? It was put on hold. The ground base had been destroyed and Dreykov had been succeeded by Nikolai. This thought did not comfort him as it once would have. For all of Dreykov's boiling hatred and soulless sins, he was not as ruthless as Nikolai. Where Dreykov had always preferred the shadows, Nikolai was never satisfied with the legacy, always wanting to grow, to pick more, to start new programs. Kaz shook his head as if it would discard these thoughts.

The Apostles and its sister program, The Widows, were legends to some, legacies to others. To some it was their life's work, to others it was the reason they no more had lives. This immoral truth had stayed stuck like a cancerous shard in Kaz every time they tried to make him forget. For the first few years he had believed what they had told him, you see, which was why when the others were put in suspended animation from the beginning, he wasn't. He was born into it, the First Child of The Invasion. Which was why he remembered so much, so much more than the others. Part of it he had to thank Henry for. He didn't know how she had gotten those files, where, from whom ─ these restricted, classified HYDRA files with his name and part of his life before he became a ghost. Ghost, he guessed was the perfect name for him.

Why did people become ghosts? Anger, guilt, grief, maybe their love refuses to let go of them ─ they become a distorted image of their selves, a blurred photograph taken at too far a distance to properly distinguish the mistake. A shell of themselves trapped in something ineffably miserable and incapable of escaping because it is all they know. Front sight, trigger press, follow through.

Point, aim, shoot.

The light from the hospital flickered overhead and Kaz came to a preemptive pause. A readying inhale. You don't have to do this, Henrik nagged. You could stay hidden. Forever.

The thought was tempting, surely, but even Henrik's ghastly tone was lacking conviction this time. Kaz's demons knew that he could not stay hidden forever. He would not. Not when his sister was scared to death somewhere. A long exhale. He stepped inside.

Not the best morgue in town. Head-to-toe white made his ebony black hair stand out, and his black clothes made it hard to hide. Hide? No more hiding. Not until Henry was back with him, safe. His shoes scuffed against the cold tiled floor as he made his way to the reception desk under the death lighting.

He stilled by the desk and leaned in. "I was told Tommy Watts was brought here," he said in French.

"Only family members and those on the visitor's list can visit, sir."

"Yes," Kaz nodded, improvising, a somber look on his face, "I'm his brother."

The second attendant glanced at his coworker before he said, "We'll need some identification."

"Identi ─ sure." Kaz dug around in his pockets as he surveyed the front desk, littered with personal belongings in a sealed package, all labeled with numbers ─ 234, 117, 121, 25. The two morgue attendants watched in half-bewilderment as he put down a hundred-euro bill. They glanced at each other, a wordless conversation happening before the first one picked up the cash and inquired in French, "What was the name again?"

Kaz gave a thin-lipped smile. "Tommy Watts."

"It's number 121," the second attendant said. Kaz's eyes flickered momentarily to the plastic bag on the table labeled 121.

Kaz nodded. "I want to see the body."

"Our boss could come back," the first attendant protested. "We're not supposed to." Kaz was already pulling out another hundred by the time he finished his words.

The second attendant hung back by the door of the morgue freezer room as Kaz entered, following the first one. He pulled open the freezer and . . . Kaz sagged. The attendant himself looked baffled. Kaz guessed he wasn't aware either. "What?" The second attendant asked and his coworker replied in mild confusion.

"It's empty."

Kaz clenched his fist. This was his only lead. What was he supposed to do now? Behind his eyes flashed Henry's wide-eyed face, the widow's hand around her throat. He exhaled through parted lips. Anger would not get him anywhere. He needed a clear head to think. Think, think, think. His thinking was interrupted by a loud shout in French by the boss of the morgue.

"What the hell's going on here?" Kaz half-turned, here came the boss back from his break ─ a little drunk? Kaz's eyes slit.

The first attendant answered his boss in French, "This guy, he came to see the American, but the body, it's missing."

"They came last night," he answered. "His sister."

"It's not in the ─ ," the second attendant answered.

"Who is he?" the boss asked his employees, then he turned to Kaz, asking in English as if Kaz hadn't been listening in on their whole conversation. "Who are you? What's going on here?"

"Where did this body go?" Kaz asked undeterred.

"I said, someone came last night ─ " he puffed his chest, full of attitude now. "Look, this isn't a carnival ─ people call and they make an appointment and they follow the rules ─ everyone signs in and out ─ " Kaz's eyes lit up. "This is a serious place ─ serious work ─ it's not just to come in whenever you like ─ "

Kaz ducked his head. "Shit, I didn't sign in."

"So get the hell out of here."

"Fine," Kaz nodded, stepping back. "But I'd like to sign in. In fact, I insist on it. Where's the book? I gotta sign in ─ " he slipped out of the room and towards the reception desk. The rest of the men followed after him, all of them confused.

Reaching the desk, he sorted through a stack and pulled out a register. "Is this it?" He gestured to the attendants. "This is it, right?"

"Slow down," the morgue boss warned. "You can't just take the book like that ─ "

Kaz dismissed him with a wave of his hand. "Don't worry, I have a pen ─ no problem ─ just let me find the page ─ " He put the book down, the open register covering and hiding the plastic bags on the table, and slipped out the bag labeled 121 from under it.

"We have rules here," the morgue boss objected, "this is a very serious place ─ I'm the one who decides who gets in here, okay?"

"What do I?" Kaz asked, sifting through the pages searching for the right one. "I put the name of the person I came to see?"

"This is serious business down here and we cannot have people coming and going ─ "

"Here we go!" Kaz almost cheered. "I found it." He fisted the page in his hand and pulled, ripping it, tearing the page out of the book.

The morgue boss went on a frenzy, cursing in French at Kaz who discarded the book back on the table. Whatever compound-worded curse word that was about to come out next of the morgue boss' mouth was cut short because Kaz turned and in the same movement, with a half-pleased smile, slammed the man's head against the wall. The crack echoed down the white hallway. The room descended into a dreadful silence. The two attendants rushed to help their boss and Kaz ran out of the room, out of the hospital.

He stepped out on the sidewalk and crossed the street. He kept straight, striding down the sidewalk, tunnel-visioned. Turning a corner, he shuffled down a narrow alley and reached up, curling his fingers around the hanging ladder of the fire escape. He pulled himself up with minimal effort, climbing and sitting on the stairs. He took out the plastic bag and unzipped it, examining all the belongings of Tommy Watts. There wasn't much there. A fake passport, identification, some money, a restaurant bill. And a phone. Then he dug out the torn page from his other pocket ─ now all scrunched up. He smoothed it out and slipped out his phone. Under its flashlight, he read over. Eyes taking in information and feeding it to receptors that processed it and made realization come to him.

The phone in his hand wavered infinitesimally.

The woman who paid a visit to Tommy, his sister, was Marianne Duran.

Kaz sat back. Marianne Duran. She had been once a middle-woman, a contract between the Programs and Tommy. Why would she be here? So far from Morocco? Was she still a supplier? To whom? There was only one person who would know this. Kaz's head felt like it was about to burst open from so many questions. He dug the heels of his palms in his eyes, holding back a scream perched under his tongue.

There was only one solution to this. A solution that was a solution to many varieties of questions and problems ─ the same. The one and only, Agent Forty.

Kaz unlocked his phone and opened the call log. His thumb hovered over the name. Time was running out. Was he really willing to risk Henry's life because of his pride? He pressed call and closed his eyes. The phone rang twice, thrice, four times ─ Kaz began, "Hello?"

"Ah," Forty's voice crackled through the static. He did not have good reception there inside the control room in Berlin in the JCTC Headquarters. Thaddeus Ross stood at the head of the room, taking another look at the geo-profile and Forty was running out of patience. Also, he was incredibly hungry. "The prodigal returns. What can I do for you now?"

Kaz swallowed harshly. There was something in his throat that was making it impossible. Something like the word sorry. Sorry, sorry, sorry ─ "Where are you?"

"Been around," Forty said, checking his watch. It made him pause momentarily. It had been a gift from Kennedy Kershaw who was no longer here. Unfortunately for Forty, that meant most of Ross' berating was pointed at him. He tried not to get hung up on it. She was one of his oldest friends and yes it made him sad that she was not here anymore, that she was also on the run; but he tried not to get sad if he could help it, it was an impediment. "Bucharest, Berlin, Borzonasca . . . I like the Bs. Why?"

"It's Henry," Kaz sighed and buried his face in his hand. "They ─ they took her."

"What?" he shouted. A few of the computer techs turned to look at him. He quietened himself and exited the room before Ross spotted him talking to a fugitive. "How did that happen?" he hissed. "I leave you two alone and ─ !"

"This is not the time," Kaz snapped, cutting him off. "There's ─ there's something else, too." The widow emblem flashed behind his eyes. Marianne Duran. "Something that might be too important."

"Okay, well, how ─ " Forty tried to comprehend what he was being told, being asked off and looked around where he was standing in the presence of General Ross, talking to an assassin. An idea possessed him for a fleeting moment but he discarded it. He would not betray Kaz. He would not betray his friend. Steve Rogers was on the run. Natasha Romanoff had just fooled them and was off somewhere on the other end of the world. Forty had not imagined the consequences of The Sokovia Accords to be so severe and devastating. He closed his eyes and sighed as he slipped out of the control room and made his way out of the building towards the parking lot. "You know what? Sokovia. You know where."

Kaz was filled with gratitude and relief. Maybe he had a chance. "Thank you."