Nikita looked cool and competent in her elegant black suit. Her long, pale hair carefully hidden by an exquisite wide-brimmed black hat, she glanced at her fellow team members surreptitiously, her well-mascara'd lashes shielding her light blue eyes.

"Michael? Where are you?" she said under her breath, activating her com link by pressing a long slender finger to the ear piece of her glasses.

"Look up," came the terse message.

Moments later, a figure in black leather dropped onto the ground next to her, simply picking himself up as if it were an everyday occurrence. He strode over to her side, his vivid green eyes hidden behind dark glasses, and placed an arm around her shoulder.

"Did you miss me?" he whispered to her, his expression completely blank.

"Of course," she replied, wondering what Birkoff would make of such extraneous conversation. Probably feel compelled to report it to Madeline. But then again, he was not a big fan of hers, either, after her latest mind-altering experiment on Nikita.

"Does Madeline suspect?"

Nikita smiled for the first time since Michael arrived. "I don't think so. And if she does, she's not telling."

"Good," Michael commented, his eyes flickering from point to point, maintaining eye contact with the rest of the team.

Eventually his eyes lit upon her face. His bright angel. Sunny smile. Casting her light into his darkness. "All teams, move out to your first marks."

A heartbeat later, when they were quite alone, he bent his head and kissed her, his mouth opening over hers, his touch as tremulous as a butterfly's wings. When he drew back, he looked satisfied.

Nikita raised an eyebrow inquiringly.

"You're already at your first mark, Kita. Stay with me."

It's been said that payback is such a bitch. Whoever coined the phrase must have been thinking of Madeline at the time.

Madeline let her dark eyes roam over the Comm area, spying Birkoff hard at work on the current mission. Creeping up behind him, more or less silently, she laid an elegantly manicured hand upon his shoulder.

Birkoff flinched. Madeline spooked him sometimes. He knew it wasn't possible for her to read minds, but all that psychological stuff she did in the White Room made that minor detail a moot point. After all, who cared if she couldn't read minds when she could persuade you to tell her anything her rapacious little heart desired?

As usual, whenever he was helping Michael and Nikita, he felt vaguely guilty. Not disloyal to Section. Just guilty. As if the real sin lay not in the act of treason, but in getting caught performing that act.

"So, how is the mission proceeding?"

Birkoff never took his eyes off the monitor. It was a great deal easier to talk to Madeline if you never looked her directly in the eye. Though her eyes were practically the same color as his, Birkoff knew there was a crucial difference. His eyes were the color of chocolate, lending him a sweetness and a kindness that was largely deserved, despite his occasionally acid tongue and generally wiseass attitude. But Madeline…her eyes were dark, almost black, sometimes tinged with a bittersweet shade that lent her the air of sympathy she liked to convey. But he didn't trust that facade for a moment.

"Everything is going as planned." Now there was a non-committal answer. It said exactly what he intended to say. Without giving away any intel that might tip Madeline to their plan.

"Good," she said, looking like the cat that swallowed the canary. If there was one thing he hated about Madeline, it was the way she looked so smug when things were going her way.

Tapping him firmly on the shoulder, she left the area, and Birkoff silently breathed a sigh of relief.

"Walter? Are you in?" Birkoff said to his good friend and sometime mentor.

"Abso-freaking-lutely, Seymour," growled the head of Munitions.

Michael rounded the corner of the warehouse, Nikita close behind, matching him stride for stride. He pointed silently to the sign identifying the building they stood in front of. Genofex.

By now, Michael found a certain irony in returning to the scene of the crime, so to speak. This was where Madeline had perpetrated her little experiment in altered consciousness, with Nikita as her prime guinea pig. It was also where Madeline would receive her comeuppance.

For a long time, he and Nikita had struggled to keep their romantic relationship going. Against all odds. Against Section policy. Against Madeline's wishes. Madeline was convinced that the two of them were plotting the overthrow of Section One, and with it, the regime of Madeline and Operations.

That had not been true. When Michael and Nikita met, they did indeed conspire. To see each other outside of work. To make love. But a coup d'etat? That was the furthest thing from their minds, preoccupied as they were with being together in a very real sense.

Now, however, things had changed. With Madeline's callous disregard for her most senior operative's feelings came a new feeling. A restlessness. A desire for change. Michael was not the blindly ambitious fool everyone took him for. He was willing to wait patiently for promotion, knowing that all good things would come to him in their own time.

But Madeline wrested that decision away from Michael. By directly challenging him. By seizing the woman he loved more than himself. By provoking him into acting sooner rather than later. It was said that in Section, if you did not move up, you moved out.

Michael didn't always believe that. But now he knew it was true. Madeline was going to get a taste of her own medicine. Literally.

It was up to him and Nikita to set things into motion at Genofex. Walter and Birkoff were in charge of the mechanics they would need once Madeline was taken.

Together they would destroy Madeline's chances of ever taking over Section One, of ever sitting at Oversight, of ever being more than George's puppet.

Michael was not going to waste any time lamenting his inability to return Nikita to her former self. He was not even interested in finding out how to change her back, if it were possible. Michael knew two things: that he was more than capable of making Nikita fall in love with him again, and that Nikita, despite her memory loss, was more than willing to take revenge on Madeline for crimes Nikita could not honestly claim to remember.

Michael's cell phone chirped. Clasping it to his ear, Michael answered, catching Nikita's eye. He continued to stare at her meaningfully, his other hand playing with an errant strand of her pale blonde hair. When he spoke finally, it was to confirm that their plan would proceed.

"It's a go, Madeline's on her way."

Nikita smiled. She didn't have to remember Madeline's crimes. Michael did that for her. But she would take her vengeance.

A mind was a terrible thing to waste.

Michael didn't hate Madeline. Hatred was too mild a word to describe what he felt for her. But his own feelings, about what she had or hadn't done to him over the years, were inconsequential. What counted was Nikita's feelings.

Now Madeline was operating on the assumption that Nikita no longer loved Michael, but she was drawing a number of dangerous conclusions from that assumption. She was forgetting that Nikita was fully aware that 'something' had been done to her, and if she thought that Nikita did not know who had altered her, she was very wrong.

Michael stood with Nikita and waited for Madeline's arrival. If one of Madeline's favorite games was chess, she might be used to winning against ordinary opponents. But against Michael and Nikita, not to mention Walter, Birkoff, and Davenport…well, this wasn't insurrection, it was war.

And this was one queen Michael was going to enjoy seeing toppled.

Madeline blinked when the black hood over her head was removed. She disliked playing games. Unless, of course, it suited her. Then she liked them almost too much. Like the one she was playing with Nikita and Michael.

She admitted, to herself, that she had made a serious error in judgment when she discounted Nikita's ability to retaliate. But she was nothing if not full of herself. She had Section behind her. What did they have?

She said as much to Michael. But Michael laughed. "You know, Madeline, for an educated woman, you have a curious inability to think in more than two dimensions. You think everything is black or white, like your chess pieces." Pause.

Michael pointed to the operatives now standing behind her. "Let me introduce you to the gray."

Madeline was no stranger to pain. She had lived through torture at the hands of Dorian Enquist when Michael was on mandatory refusal two years ago. His equipment was so third-rate, she nearly died. Something that particular SOTW would have regretted mightily. For he had an unsatisfied yen for the Lady of the White Room.

Nevertheless, when Madeline saw the size of the needle that Walter produced at Michael's command, she winced involuntarily. "Where, pray tell, is that supposed to go?" she asked imperiously.

In your butt, Walter wanted to yell, but despite his unholy reputation, he was a man with more common sense than good taste. "We were going to start an IV, Madeline, but we knew you would only pull it out."

In less than a full minute, he applied a tourniquet, swabbed the antecubital fossa of her left arm and found the vein he needed. "Have a nice nap," Walter said as he injected the light blue liquid.

Michael stood at attention, watching as the fluid flowed easily into Madeline's bloodstream. She didn't even have time to struggle. "What's in that, Walter?" Michael asked in his softly accented voice.

"Limbic suppressors. This'll give her temporary amnesia. When we decide to bring her back—"

Michael interrupted Walter. "When? You mean if we bring her back."

Walter looked surprised. "I thought the whole idea was to bring her back afterwards."

Michael smiled tightly, the warmth never reaching his glacial green eyes. "Not in the same condition as she came in."

Walter nodded. "Does Operations know she's been taken yet, Birkoff?" Walter asked the young Comm Op.

Birkoff gave Walter a lopsided grin. "Nope. I rerouted all of her incoming intel to this computer here," he said, indicating a desktop model on the desk. "No one will suspect that she's gone…unless we want them to."

Michael glanced at Nikita. She was unusually quiet. He put an arm around her waist, pulling her closer. He could sense the tension in her. "Are you worried about what we're doing, Kita?"

She shook her head.

"Then what?"

"What if Operations doesn't care that we altered Madeline?"