Part Seven: The MRU Pops In

The atmosphere in the Operations room was electric. News of Dr. Hawthorne's death had spread through the entire building and Major Taylor had twice announced that everyone should stop their theorizing and speculating, and get on with their work. It was just a heart attack for Christ's sake. The trouble with working around intelligence gatherers was that anything out of the ordinary that happened was always twisted into some sort of conspiracy.

The Major's job was to keep everything in the Signals Center operating at peak efficiency, and if he was ever to make Lt. Colonel, he needed everyone focused on their work and maintaining communications with their agents around the world. They had a multitude of messages that needed to be encoded before their scheduled broadcast times, and it was coming up on 1400 when the barrage of incoming messages would arrive. Peter had been the one to devise a computer algorithm to receive, digest, and separate a large quantity of incoming messages. It was really a stroke of genius to have all of their assets broadcast simultaneously. Without his program, anyone intercepting the coded messages would not be able separate one message from the others, thus creating a jumble of completely random words that were indecipherable.

"I think I found another one, Major!" a young code-tech by the name of Harvey Jenkins shouted from his corner desk. The man had been tasked with reviewing recordings of daily wavelength scans, looking for unusual broadcast signals. It was a 'needle-in-the-haystack' type of job, and usually went to whoever was lowest on the totem pole, or on the Major's shit list.

Peter walked over so he could view the man's console.

"See? You can just make it out. It's the same ultra low frequency data stream piggy-backing on a high frequency signal." The man was using the fine tuning knob on his console and watching the oscilloscope on the panel. He turned the knob until the squiggling lines all converged into a steady wave pattern. "I've got it!"

"Record that fucker," Peter said quietly. "Are you sure there's a message there?"

"It's the signature HF frequency used by the KSN, sir. I'd bet my life on there being a message attached to it."

"Well, I won't hold you to that, Harvey. What's the time stamp on it?"

"Day before yesterday, 2230, sir. The outgoing signal I found this morning went at 2200."

"From London, two days ago...that's interesting." Peter stood behind the signal tech, watching the lines on the scope dance around, then go flat. It was a short message, that was for sure. It wouldn't give them much to go on.

"Yes, sir, first from London and then later, back from Glasgow."

"Give the recording to Captain Meyers, he's the best analyst we have, and Harvey...good job."

With a wide smile, Harvey removed a flash drive from the computer and headed off across the room. Neither he nor the Major held out any promise that either message would be deciphered. They'd had better, and longer, recordings than these and never recovered any data from them. Whoever was coding for the KSN was damn good.

By the end of the day, no breakthrough had been made on the KSN signals, only that they were confirmed to be actual messages and not just background noises. The Major wondered if Meyers would ever crack the coding of the KSN messages. With his shift replacement updated and wired in, he left the Center and headed for home.

"Hey, babe, how was your day?" Peter asked Abigail as he walked into their kitchen.

"Oh, hi!" Abby seemed perkier than normal, which Peter was happy to see. Maybe the roll in the sack they had the other night was all she really needed to get out of what-ever funk she seemed to be in lately. "I made a stew, are you hungry?" The petite brunette stood on her tip-toes to give her husband a peck on the lips.

"Famished! That sounds..." his words were cut off by the sound of his cell phone ringer. "Excuse me," he said as he stepped into the living room. When he came back into the kitchen he said, "damn telemarketers!"

Peter leaned against the counter and watched Abby busy herself with the dishes she had dirtied while making the meal. He folded his arms and said, "I'd like you to go change for dinner, hun. Dress up for me tonight, maybe that white blouse and little black skirt you have, with the heels. You look so good in that outfit. Put on your chastity belt for awhile, too. You can take it off before bed."

Abby glared at him for a split second before turning away to hang up her dish towel. When she turned back she had a pleasant smile on her face, and said, "Sure, darling, if that would make you happy."

"It really would."

Abby left the room to go to the bedroom. Several minutes later the doorbell rang.

"I'll get it," Peter yelled out. When he opened the door there was a man in an expensive suit standing there with two men behind him wearing MRU uniforms. One of the men he recognized as Bret something-or-other who used to be a security guard at MI6 headquarters.

"Peter Taylor?"

"Major Taylor," Peter corrected him.

"Dr. Morgan with the MRU. I'm here to see your wife, Abigail." The man stepped past Peter, uninvited, and into the living room.

Peter stepped back in front of the man, blocking his further intrusion into the house. "For what purpose?"

"You're aware that Dr. Hawthorne passed away yesterday?"

"Yes, of course. It's all anyone at the office was talking about today."

"Ah yes, you're in the Intelligence business aren't you? Then you may have heard that the doctor's briefcase was taken sometime between the time he left the clinic and the time his body was discovered."

"No, actually, I hadn't heard about that. So you suspect foul play?"

"We can't rule it out."

"What does any of this have to do with my wife?"

"Oh, we're just following up on the women who the doctor interviewed during the previous week. All of the dossiers from his work was in that briefcase. Your wife saw him on the day before he...passed."

"We're just about to eat, can't..."

"Ah, there she is...Mrs. Taylor, I'm Doctor Morgan from the MRU, pleased to meet you."

Abby shook the man's hand and then looked over at Peter. Her face had drained of all of its color. "From the MRU?" was all she could muster.

"Yes, I've come to talk to you about your checkup the other day, can we sit down? My, what a beautiful dress, and what's that I see, a little bit of a chastity belt peeking out there?"

Abby blushed and quickly felt around behind her to discover she had tucked her blouse into the belt, and not the waistline of the skirt. Her mistake was quickly corrected.

"If we could have a moment alone, Major." The man ushered Abby towards the sofa while the two armed MRU men nodded towards the kitchen. Peter led the way.

Once in the kitchen, he went to the stove to lower the heat under the stew. Turning back towards the MRU men, he said, "It's Bret, isn't it?"

The man he had recognized smiled. "I wondered if you'd even remember me, sir." He reached out to shake the Major's hand. The two began chatting about the old days, while the other MRU man relaxed against the counter and listened.

After they had exchanged a few humorous remembrances, Peter asked in a lowered voice, "So what's this all about? Why all of the house calls?"

Bret looked behind him at the door to the living room and whispered back, "The guy who transcribed the session tapes remembered that there was one former lesbo that Dr. Hawthorne suspected had not been fully Regenerated, but he couldn't recall which one."

"Really?" Peter said, his face showing a disbelieving frown. "How can that even be possible? And how is the doctor going to figure out if it's true?"

Still whispering, Bret confided, "After talking for awhile, the doctor hooks them up to a portable analyzer and shows them some good old lesbo porn on his laptop. The data will show which one of those freaks gets turned on by it."

"Hey! That's my wife you're talking about!" Peter gave him a playful shove and then went to the cabinet to get some glasses. "Water anyone?"

Both men accepted, and after serving them, he took two glasses into the living room, saying, "Be back in just a sec," as he passed them. The man with Bret started to object, but he was waved off by his partner.

When Peter entered the room, the doctor was just hooking up some wiring to his laptop, and he saw the fingertip clamps on Abby's fingers. It looked like an old fashioned lie-detector kit, but was probably much more advanced.

"How's it going? I brought you each some water," he said as he came up next to them and handed one of the glasses to Abby.

"Thank you, darling," Abby said as she took the glass. "All of this talking has me parched!"

"Oh, thank you," the doctor said as he reached for the glass and took a sip.

Peter turned around and headed right back into the kitchen.

Fucking amateur! He walked back into the kitchen and sat down with the two MRU men and continued chatting.

Meanwhile, in the other room, Dr. Morgan had positioned his laptop in front of Abby and started his video. The scene opened with two fairly attractive women, one blonde and one brunette, sun bathing by a pool. They were chatting about their college days and the friends they had hung around with back then.

Abby looked at the doctor and then back at the screen. It seemed like such an odd video to be showing her. What was she suppose to be doing? What was the purpose of all of this? The doctor had been talking to her about her session with Dr. Hawthorne, and how that had gone, and now she was hooked up to his little machine and made to watch this video.

The blonde women on the video had asked the brunette to put some more tanning lotion on her, and had turned over onto her stomach. The brunette knelt down next to blondie and unhooked her bra before lathering up her hands with lotion. She began to apply it to blondie's back in a very sensual way. She lowered her head and began kissing blondie's back from the top, down her spine, to the area just above her bikini bottom. Blondie rolled over and removed her bra, and lay there while the brunette applied more lotion to her hands.

By this point, Abby knew full well what was going on, and why she was being shown the video. The sensors on her fingers would pick up her blood pressure, and probably moisture content. If she began getting aroused by the video, the data would show it. At the moment, though, she wasn't too worried about that. Her stomach felt weird somehow, like she was getting queezy. Was that a result of something on the video? Was this a response the doctor was looking for, or expecting?

As the video proceeded, blondie's bottoms had been removed and the brunette had moved to a position between the blonde's legs.

"I don't feel well, doctor..." Abby said.

"In what way?"

"I...I don't think I can watch this..." The turmoil in her stomach was increasing and she feared she was about to throw up.

By the time the brunette had her face buried in blondie's bush, Abby was trying to get up off of the couch. Too late, she threw up all over the coffee table.

"Oh shit!" the Dr. Morgan yelled and pulled his laptop away.

At the sound of the commotion, Peter came through the door from the kitchen. "What is it? What's going...Abby! Are you okay?" He looked down to see the video still playing on the laptop.

"What the hell?" he yelled. "You come into my house and show my wife this...this smut? Get the fuck out of here!"

"Major!" the doctor yelled back, "I had to test her responses."

Abby was running out of the room towards the bathroom as she continued to hack and spit up vomit.

"Isn't that what you people do? Make that sort of thing repulsive? What did you expect?"

"Well...I didn't expect her to feel quite that repulsed by it!" The doctor was busy wiping off his equipment, and putting everything back into his briefcase.

"I don't need your damn sensors to tell me my wife is regenerated. She was just fine until you came in here with your porno." He went to the front door and opened it.

"Yes, yes, I can see that now...thank you Major..." the flustered doctor motioned for his two men and they all left the house.

Two hours later, Abby's stomach had calmed and she felt well enough to come out their bedroom. Peter had already cleaned up the mess she had made in the living room. She asked if he had gotten around to eating, and when he said he hadn't she went to the kitchen to serve him.

While she had been recovering in the bedroom she had time to think about what had happened to her. She had seen one woman at the Moral-Regeneration clinic who had been so brainwashed by the programming that she got physically ill when exposed to any lesbian activity. She really feared that the Regeneration process was still working on her like an insidious worm, burrowing into her brain, slowly taking over her subconscious. But there was something else that was nagging at her, too. Coincidence.

When she had taken her training at Fort Monckton it was drilled into her that she always had to be alert to coincidences. If she saw a person on one street, and then saw that same person four streets down, it was not a coincidence, she was being tailed. Coincidence recognition was worked into many of the field exercises that they were put through.

Maybe because of this training, Abigail's recognition of two glaring coincidences was troubling her deeply. First was the telephone call soon after Peter arrived home. Okay, telemarketers call all of the time, and especially around dinner time. No problem. But right after that, Peter asked her to change her clothing for dinner, and right after that the MRU showed up at their door. What she was wearing when the doctor arrived made a much better impression than the jeans and t-shirt she had been wearing before. Besides that, women were really suppose to be wearing dresses all of the time now, although Peter hadn't started enforcing that inside the house.

The second coincidence was that she got sick to her stomach soon after Peter came in and gave her that glass of water. Abby went to the cabinet, opened both doors, and reached for a bowl to serve her husband's stew. On the right side of the cabinet were their plates, bowls,and glasses, while on a shelf on the left side of the cabinet was their stockpile of medicines. Aspirin, vitamins, cold and flu relief, cough drops; they were all there, nice and neat like she was suppose to keep them - and she knew where each one was normally kept. She was looking for one particular bottle, though.

When she found it, it was not exactly where she expected to find it. Poor tradecraft, Peter... The bottle of Ipecac tablets had been moved. Maybe a leftover precaution from their time in the field, the tablets were on hand in the event one of them were to swallow something poisonous, as it induces vomiting.

She closed the cabinet door and ladled a serving of stew into Peter's bowl. Two things were now clear in her mind - Peter had been warned that the MRU was popping by, and most likely told the reason, and he feared she would fail the test the doctor was subjecting her to. A third coincidence, maybe too far-fetched to even consider, was that the good Dr. Hawthorne had a heart attack just days after interviewing her. Now that was stretching things a little bit, but still...a coincidence?

What this all meant would require further thought. For now though, she would continue with her charade as Major Taylor's Regenerated wife.