I Saw the Lights Go Out

You Watch the Life You're Living Disappear

So I had some trouble writing this chapter, not sure why but I ended up writing it, and then deleting the whole thing and starting again. Anyway, here's another update, hope you like it!

"Could you just run through the plan one more time?" Louise asked, panic written across her face. Dan couldn't blame her, Louise had never been involved with any missions before, so she was essentially going in blind.

"You'll meet Zoe wherever it is you're meeting her-"

"The cafeteria." She interrupted. "Sorry, carry on."

"Right, the cafeteria." Dan continued. "Then you convince her to go back to your room where Tanya will be, and hopefully she'll remember."

"Right... And what if she doesn't remember?"

Dan opened his mouth to reply, but Emma beat him to it:

"Then she'll shoot your head off." She deadpanned, spinning a throwing knife idly in between her fingers. Dan glared at her, but she either didn't see it or ignored it completely. Louise let out a squeak of fear.

"She isn't going to shoot you." Dan comforted her, placing an arm on her shoulder.

"But what if she does?" Louise said, her voice an unusually high pitch. "What if she panics and tells everybody?"

Dan could see that Louise was working herself into a panic attack, and quickly jumped to stop the little seed of doubt before it was planted in her brain. "Louise, Lou, it's Zoe." He said, his voice calm. "Would Zoe shoot you?" Louise shook her head 'no' and Dan took that as his cue to carry on, "no she wouldn't, she's likely to remember at least something, and if she doesn't, well, she'll listen to you."

Louise nodded, and Dan was satisfied that she was relaxed enough to do this.

"Joe has comms units set up for us all, so we'll be able to communicate like any other mission. As Joe is staying by the computer, he'll be our surveillance guy, meaning he will be able to hear everything we do and say so if anything goes wrong just say the key word and he'll warn everyone, got it?"

There were a series of nods, but Carrie raised her hand. "What's the keyword again?" She asked, her voice nervous.

"Mothballs" Joe supplied, not lifting his eyes from the rapidly changing computer screen.

"...Right," Carrie said, side eyeing Joe speculatively. "And, how exactly are we supposed to speak to anyone other than him?" She asked, aiming her question at Dan but keeping her gaze on Joe's back.

"There's a button you press and it connects to everyone, press it again to turn off the connection." Dan explained, using Carrie's finger to show her where the button was.

"Is everyone alright then?" Emma asked, finally placing the knife back in her belt holster.

Louise nodded nervously as she wrung her hands together, cracking a small smile to a beaming Tanya as the woman moved to stand beside her, giving her own cheery affirmation as she did so. Joe gave a strange sort of salute, the clacking of his fingers against the keyboard only pausing for a short moment.

Chris nodded, his emotionless eyes finding Dan's from across the room where he was leaning against the wall casually, though, Dan could see his hand shaking slightly. Carried grinned and gave a curt nod, she and Emma were going to be planting bugs around the base for Joe and Caspar. Dan just fixed Emma with his usual stoic expression, which she cleverly interpreted as an 'of course'.

"Lets move out then."

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Dan trudged slowly down the corridors with Chris, who obediently followed in his wake. Dan knew that the CCTV was monitored constantly, and that he had to keep up pretences as he strutted down corridors, lower ranking soldiers moving out of his way as he approached.