Daikaijuzine

Halfway through the morning briefing, all Matt Ryan had been able to process was that there was a tiny, almost-invisible fly circling the donut box at the center of the table, and Matt could’ve caught it with her fingers, if only she was a ninja. The fly landed on the edge of the donut box, but didn’t stay long, sailing to the opposite side of the table, circling Agent Brinkman’s head, dancing on top of Agent Rodriguez’s mechanical pencil, and then soaring upward, disappearing in the glow of the fluorescent light. Matt reached out, got a donut, took a bite, and half of it crumbled on top of the pile of papers in front of her stamped ‘Classified’. She totally failed as a ninja.

“Agent Ryan.”

Matt looked up and smiled. “Chief?”

Chief Wagner scratched the back of his bald head. “Agent Ryan, your work on Project Firebridge was exemplary.”

“Thank you, sir.” Project Firebridge ended up being little more than calling the L.A. branch, having them fax over a document, and then translating and annotating it. But Chief Wagner and the other high-level good old boys, who spent the eighties assassinating KGB officers and romancing misunderstood European prostitutes, were overly impressed by detailed research and Powerpoint presentations, and Matt had always been ridiculously book-smart.

“You’re going on a field assignment,” he continued. “We believe there’s an individual impersonating an NSA agent. Chatter says he’s establishing contacts now in New York, and he could be building toward something. Page 38.”

Matt brushed the remains of her donut onto her lap and flipped to page 38, a memo entitled “Imposter SK7 May Have Links to Terrorist Organizations”.

Matt looked back up at the Chief and forced a smile. It was still her first year in the NSA, her degree was in Political Science with a minor in Poetry, and in the past five minutes she’d been defeated by both a fly and a chocolate-covered donut. She definitely wasn’t ready for imposter terrorists, seeing as how the only way she’d win in a fight was if the suspect challenged her to a Sudoku puzzle.

“Chief, I appreciate…” She cleared her throat. “I welcome the challenge, but unfortunately I haven’t completed field training, and -”

Chief Wagner silenced her with a raised palm. “It’s mostly research. Once you get a name, call it into the secure line and we’ll send in a team. You don’t have to confront anyone.”

Matt turned a page in her packet to find a plane ticket. “But I have to go to New York?” She put her fake smile back in place. “And it will be a wonderful opportunity.”

Matt spent the evening alone in her apartment reading and re-reading the background information on the suspect. He was a male who went by the aliases “Commander” and “SK7″. He communicated with his potential recruits through coded online messages, where he often referred to “Operation Green”, which the NSA believed was an environmental terrorism plot. Though his IP address fluctuated, it was often traced back to the West Village of Manhattan, and arrangements had been made for Matt to stay at a hotel in the area.

There were maps and reports and three-page footnotes to one-page memos. Matt usually spent her days writing reports like these, and she hadn’t realized before how tedious it was to read them. She lay down on her living room floor and organized the documents by priority while half-watching a movie about kickboxing. She considered calling her ex-boyfriend Alex, but quickly decided that twenty minutes of mediocre sex wasn’t worth the inevitable week of drunken 3am phone calls. Eventually Matt just made a grilled cheese sandwich, accidentally set a dish towel on fire, put two t-shirts in a duffel bag, and went to bed.

Working in her New York hotel room didn’t go much better. Matt booted up her laptop, took out all her paperwork, and then stared at a blank Word document for half an hour before ordering a fruit basket from room service, watching a Matlock marathon on television, and eating so many tangerines that her fingernails turned orange. Around midnight she finally felt guilty enough to begin her investigation log, though all she could do was summarize her objectives.

After checking her personal e-mail and logging into the NSA server to check her work e-mail, Matt opened a new browser tab and, just on a whim, Googled “commander sk7 nsa”. The first result had all three terms, and Matt clicked on it. It was a Craig’s List posting in the Casual Encounters category:

sk8 guy seeks nsa

unemployed and bored. looking for friends, maybe more, no expectations. into graffiti art, music, operation ivy, sxe. hit me! kcommander777@yahoo.com.

Matt saved a screen capture of the page. While it looked like a basic friend request, it had all the red flags: a reference to the NSA, the alias “Commander”, the alias “SK” (with an 8 instead of a 7, which had to be a code), and “Operation Ivy”, which sounded like a phase of “Operation Green”. This had to be how he was communicating with his operatives. She Googled “SXE” and found the New York Stock Exchange listing for Stanley Industries, an IT company that contracted with the Defense Department.

“Holy shit,” Matt breathed out. The conspiracy went further up than they’d thought.

After making notes in her field log, saving web pages and screen captures, and backing it all up to the NSA server, Matt opened a Yahoo account with the username matilda_newyork7 and sent an e-mail to kcommander777:

SK8 Guy,

I hear what you’re saying.

When she woke up the next morning, there was a message waiting for her:

matilda! awesome to hear from u! in ny? wanna hang? – kadia

Matt froze with her fingers on the keyboard. The suspect wanted to meet with her. But she wasn’t a field agent. She couldn’t interrogate someone. She’d never even been issued a gun, which was fine with her, since she was pretty sure she’d accidentally shoot herself long before she had a chance to turn the gun on someone else.

Matt hit the “Reply” button. She was supposed to get a name and call it in. Right now all she had was a Craig’s List post and a pseudonym. If she met with the suspect, she could call in a description and an address. She could even look around for evidence when his back was turned.

“If he doesn’t kill me,” Matt muttered.

Kadia,

I’m free tonight. Give me a time and a place. Maybe we could have coffee?

The response came while she was studying the room service menu for her breakfast options.

there’s a starbucks on 6th ave and 10th – not to be confused with the starbucks on 6th and 11th lol. my place is 615 10th st right next to the starbucks. i’ll be at an outside table, wearing green. 8pm ok?

“I’ll be there,” Matt said as she typed her reply. She hit ‘Send’ and added, “Try not to shoot me in the head execution-style and dump my body in the river.”

Matt spent the day doing as much research as she could, talking to some of her fellow NSA agents, and making phone calls to other intelligence offices, but other than reports of vague, coded chatter, there was no new intel. She took a shower, put on the cleanest-looking of the plain t-shirts she’d brought with her, and walked to the corner of 6th and 10th.

There were at least ten outdoor tables, and more than half of them were full, but Matt spotted Kadia right away. He was a slender young guy in a green sweater with medium-brown skin. He was sitting back in his plastic chair, sipping at a grande-sized drink, and surveying the people walking by on the sidewalk. He had a small, welcoming smile, as if he was sitting on a front porch in the country, and the passing crowd was comprised of his personal friends.

Matt stopped walking abruptly. The “Commander” was a kid. He couldn’t have been older than twenty-one. He looked like the type of person who was more likely to loiter in front of a record store than command an environmental terrorism plot. Matt turned around and ducked into the doorway of an apartment building. She had to get away before he spotted her.

But then she remembered a presentation Agent Brinkman had given a few weeks ago. Matt had fallen asleep as soon as the lights turned off and the slideshow started, but she remembered being struck by the introductory remarks. Agent Brinkman pointed out that the terrorists of the future would be diverse and not easily identifiable. “Our enemies are smart,” he’d said. “They’re recruiting college kids and old ladies, the last people you’d profile as terrorists, because these are the people who can get past security without arousing suspicion.”

Matt poked her head out of the doorway. Kadia was drumming his fingers on the table top and bopping his head to music only he could hear. A Starbucks employee was wiping down the tables, and the kid waved at him and smiled, though the employee completely ignored him. Well, Matt thought. Apparently the terrorists of the future are stoners.

When Matt approached the table, Kadia looked up right away.

“Hi,” Matt said. She held out her hand, but Kadia leapt from his seat and pulled her into a hug. Though the suddenness surprised Matt, she was oddly comfortable with it. Kadia smelled like strawberry-scented shampoo and felt warm all over, despite the breezy evening air.

“Matilda, right?” he said as he released her and went back to his chair. “Unless I just totally assaulted a stranger and now you’re gonna call the cops and I can like, hug big hairy guys in prison who won’t be nearly as cute as you.” He leaned on his elbow and half-hid his smile behind his fist. “Well, I’m sure some of them are cute.”

Matt chuckled. “I usually go by Matt.”

“That’s cool. Matilda sounds like a Disney villain, right? Like me, Kadia. I mean, in college it’s cool to be all individual and stuff, but yeah, like, having a girl’s name in junior high gym class sucked so hard.” He took a sip from his coffee cup. “Oh, hey, you want something?” He gestured to the storefront behind him. “This place serves coffee, except they make it extra-expensive and pretentious. It’s this whole thing. I think it’s gonna catch on.”

Matt stood up. “Yeah, I could use a latte.”

Kadia jumped to his feet. “I’ll get it. What kind?”

“Caramel?”

Kadia grinned. “Awesome, you’re like me! It’s not coffee unless it’s eighty percent sugar, right? Be right back.”

When Kadia returned with a caramel latte for her and a new mocha for himself, he dove right in to the personal questions Matt was completely unprepared for. One of the standard cover stories given to NSA agents is that they worked as consultants for a mergers and acquisitions firm, and they were in town for business. It explained why the agent lived in a hotel, and mentioning “mergers and acquisitions” usually bored people and didn’t lead to many follow-up questions.

Except, of course, with Kadia.

“That sounds so awesome,” he said, leaning forward on his elbows. “So like, what exactly does that mean?”

“Um, well.” Matt paused to take a sip of her latte. “Well, I merge things, and then I…” she tore a corner off the cup’s sleeve. “Acquire them?”

Kadia laughed. “It’s probably crazy complicated, right? Don’t even bother trying to dumb it down for me.” He took a sip of his coffee. “So do you wanna hear some music? I just got into this new band, and they have this amazing single. You know how it is when you find something totally awesome and shiny and new, and you just want to tell everyone?”

“Where is this music?”

“At my place.” Kadia stood up. He noticed Matt’s hesitation and his eyes widened. “Oh, hey, please don’t be freaked out. To be honest, you could probably kick my ass. I’m like, not very coordinated.”

Matt smiled. “I bet I have you beat in that area. Ever set a dishtowel on fire? I did that just last night.”

Kadia raised a fist in triumph. “I set a potholder on fire making toast just this morning.”

“Then I guess you win,” Matt said as she stood up.

Kadia reached out and took her hand. “Come on. I promise I won’t murder you and slice your body into delicious cuts of meat.”

“Does that mean you’ll slice my body into sub-standard cuts of meat?”

Kadia turned to look at her and laughed, smiling with his whole face, his eyes filled with the stars above them, were they not washed out by light and smoke.

Kadia’s building was right next door, the one where Matt had briefly hidden. Like most places in the neighborhood, it was large and immaculate by New York standards, and Kadia’s apartment had high ceilings, huge windows, two bedrooms, and a spacious living area.

“Wow,” Matt said as she walked in behind him. “I didn’t know the sub-standard meat industry was doing so well.”

Kadia laughed. “Nah, I’m just housesitting. I kind of dropped out of college this semester, and my parents kind of hate me for that, so if it wasn’t for housesitting, I’d be living in the park.” He went to the stereo and fiddling with the ipod sitting on top of it. “Okay, ready?”

Matt took her jacket off and set it down on the leather couch.

Kadia hit a few buttons on the ipod, then turned to face her. “Okay, this is one of those songs that just gets stuck in your head all day and you write down the lyrics and tape it to your dresser so you can sing it in the mirror and you tell all your friends to download it and you listen on your ipod while you’re skating behind the grocery store thinking how cool it would be to make a skate video with this song playing in the background and then right before it hits the chorus have some random kid break their wrist just for the shot, you know?”

“What?” Matt said, but Kadia hit a button on the stereo and the music began playing.

It was an upbeat song with a dirty guitar riff and a vocalist that sounded like he was either choking to death or having an orgasm. While Matt hadn’t followed any particular style of music since high school, she liked the song enough to nod her head along with the beat.

Kadia rushed up to her and took her hands, and they launched into a silly dance, swinging their hands back and forth and shaking their hips. Kadia tried to sing along, but the lyrics were so unintelligible that eventually he just made up his own, and soon the chorus became, “Dance with me Matt. / You’re awesome like that. / Dance with me Matt, / You’re awesome like that.”

The song ended with each of them twirling in a circle while headbanging, and Matt collapsed on the couch as Kadia went to the stereo and turned the volume down. She pushed her hair out of her face and tried to catch her breath.

“That was so much fun,” Matt said as Kadia sat down next to her. “I can’t remember the last time I was exhausted from dancing and not from working all night.”

“Oh yeah, working sucks,” Kadia said. “I gotta tell you, being a drop-out loser is totally the way to go.”

Matt turned to look at him. “Will you show me how to make money killing people and slicing them into meat?”

“Will you show me how to merge and acquire things?”

“Will you burn me a CD of weird rock music?”

Kadia bit down on his lower lip as he smiled. “Will you kiss me?”

Matt only hesitated for a second. A kiss was harmless, and it would make him trust her, and then he’d be willing to let her in on his plot. She could bring down his entire operation, earn herself plenty of praise in the NSA, and maybe even get a promotion.

But when she ran her fingertips along his jaw line, grabbed the back of his neck, and pulled his face against hers, it was because she wanted to, because he smelled nice and smiled all the time and danced with her in the living room. His mouth was warm and tasted like chocolate. He put his hand over hers and squeezed it gently, and she sucked on his lower lip and didn’t think about anything.

But when Kadia pulled away, it all came rushing back, and Matt realized she was kissing a suspect. She hadn’t read much of the NSA handbook, but she was sure “making out with terrorists” was in the “Don’t” column.

“Um..” Kadia began.

“Yeah,” Matt said. “I should go.”

Kadia inched away from her on the couch, breaking each point where their bodies were touching, eyeing her warily.

“Maybe I could see you tomorrow?” Matt asked.

Kadia’s face brightened with his smile. “Yeah, totally,” he said. “I’m usually at the Gristede’s parking lot in Park Slope until like four, and then I come home for dinner.”

Matt stood up and retrieved her jacket. “How about I stop by around five?”

“Yeah, awesome.” Kadia stood up, but didn’t make a move toward her. “I’d kiss you again, but then you might like, think I’m too easy.”

Matt smiled. “Yeah, you better watch out, slut.”

Kadia laughed.

Back at the hotel, Matt typed up her notes about meeting Kadia, including his address, but excluding the kissing. In addition to uploading her investigation log to the NSA server, she e-mailed it to Chief Wagner, along with the note, “Strong suspect. I will attempt to retrieve more evidence, but proceed with counter-terrorism measures at will.”

Matt closed her eyes and took a deep breath before clicking “Send”. She wanted to see Kadia again before she got him arrested, but she wasn’t about to put millions of people’s lives at risk because she liked dancing with the suspect.

There was a missed call from Alex on her phone, but Matt deleted the voicemail without listening to it and went to bed.

The next day when Matt buzzed Kadia’s apartment, he appeared at the door with a crazed grin on his face and an armful of snack food.

“You’re just in time!” he shouted. “Come on, come on!”

Matt followed him up to the fourth floor landing, where he sat on the floor and dropped the food between his legs. “What’s going on?” she asked.

He gestured for her to sit beside him. “Every day at five, Mrs. Katz in apartment 7 comes home and yells at me, then locks her door and screams on the phone about linoleum.”

Matt sat down and took the orange juice box and bag of potato chips Kadia handed her. “Linoleum?”

Kadia nodded as he unwrapped his straw. “It’s the weirdest thing. She’s always screaming about someone about selling her linoleum. And she totally hates me.”

“So you sit here and wait for her to yell at you?”

Kadia put the straw in his mouth and grinned around it. “Young people these days watch too much TV. I try to get some of my entertainment from, you know, the real world.”

Matt laughed and took a sip of juice.

It was just a few minutes later when a tall, thin, gray-haired woman stomped up the stairs with an energy that seemed impossible at her age. When she caught sight of Kadia, she stopped on the stairway and narrowed her eyes. She pointed one long, bony finger at him and shouted, “Hooligan!”

“Good evening, Mrs. Katz,” Kadia said cheerfully. “What a pleasure to see you.”

“You are a filthy hooligan,” Mrs. Katz said, her finger still extended. “Get away from my door.”

Kadia hugged his knees to his chest and tried to stifle a giggle. “I’m not near your door. I’m near the stairs. The stairs are the property of like, everyone.”

Mrs. Katz stomped to the landing and glowered down at Matt. “Stay away from this hooligan, young lady. He’s nothing but trouble.” She shot Kadia a nasty look. “He was probably smoking drugs all day.”

Kadia waved at her as she turned away. “I’m straightedge, but thanks for your concern.”

“Lousy bastard,” Mrs. Katz muttered, then slammed the door behind her.

Kadia collapsed into giggles as he leaned against Matt’s shoulder. “I swear, I never did anything to her.”

Matt put her arm around his shoulders. “She’s just always hated you?”

“It’s gotta be a skin color thing,” Kadia said. “Either that or she’s just nuts.”

The sound of shouting came from apartment 7, but the only phrase they could make out clearly was “fucking delivery”. Kadia pressed his face against Matt’s shoulder and started giggling all over again.

“You are a strange boy,” Matt said, though she couldn’t help laughing as well.

“I know, I know.” Kadia raised his head. “I have some real food at my place if you want. We could leave Mrs. Katz alone for now.”

“Sounds good.” Matt stood up and reached down to help Kadia to his feet.

After a dinner of sandwiches and chips in front of the television, Kadia cleared the paper plates and said, “Wanna see something top secret?”

Matt’s ears perked up. He was going to tell her about Operation Green, Commander SK7, or the terrorist cell he was building. She would be able to give the Chief some solid intel.

Before she could respond, Kadia dashed out of the room, and returned with a plastic three-ring binder, which he placed carefully on her lap.

“Don’t think I’m weird, okay?” he said softly.

“I know what this is,” Matt said.

Kadia’s eyes lit up. “You could tell? Like, about me?”

Matt nodded. She ran her hand over the front of the binder. “You can trust me to keep this confidential.”

“Thanks,” Kadia said. “It’s just, you know, I’m always afraid people are gonna laugh, you know? And if my friends knew, they’d be all like, dude, you’re such a pussy.”

“What?” Matt opened the front of the binder to find a typed poem. She scanned it once, then read it again, and looked up at Kadia. “Where is this from?”

“From, uh…” He smiled. “Me.”

“Holy shit.” Matt turned the page and read the next one. “Holy shit. This is like if Yeats and Ginsberg had a baby together.” She looked up at him. “And the baby was fucking brilliant.”

Kadia’s smile widened. “Shut up. You’re just saying that because I’m so cute.”

Matt turned another page. “I’ve studied poetry. This is brilliant.” She tucked her hair behind her ear and leaned down, as if getting closer to the page would make the words even more powerful. “Can you print me a copy? You have to print me a copy.”

Kadia ducked his head, suddenly shy. “Yeah, sure, if you want.” He ruffled the edge of the pages. “The ones in the back though, they’re like, older stuff, and probably not as good, so you can skip those if you want, and I won’t –”

Matt leaned over the open binder and kissed him. The binder stabbed her in the stomach a few times before she could be bothered to move it to the side. She wrapped her arms around Kadia’s neck and kissed him again and again.

“That impressed you?” Kadia asked between kisses. “‘Cause I was gonna buy you flowers but I –” He paused to kiss her again. “I don’t have any money.”

Matt kissed him a few more times before pulling back, though she kept their faces close together. “I don’t want to…” she said. “Well, I want to, but I can’t –”

“It’s cool, we don’t have to do anything but this,” Kadia said, kissing her softly on the nose.

When Matt kissed him again, she pushed him backwards, and ended up lying half on top of him. They made out for what seemed like hours, until they were both too exhausted to move. And it wasn’t until Matt was walking down Sixth Avenue, hugging a copy of Kadia’s poems to her chest, that she realized she hadn’t gotten any information about his terrorist cell.

The e-mail from Chief Wagner said, “The Commander posted on an extremist website today, and we traced the IP to your suspect’s building. A team is going in tomorrow at eight p.m. Stay clear of the suspect. Good work, Agent Ryan.”

Matt closed her laptop and collapsed on the bed, still holding the sheets of poetry. She couldn’t believe that Kadia wrote terrorist propaganda online and then grabbed some juice boxes for them to share while hanging out in a hallway. She couldn’t believe that Kadia plotted environmental terrorism and then wrote the most beautiful amateur poetry she’d ever read.

She got up and shoved the poems in the trash can beside her bed. Criminals were often charming, and she’d fallen for it like a rookie. She decided that when she woke up in the morning, she would get the first flight back to D.C., go home, take a day off work, get her tires rotated, and never think about Kadia again.

Matt woke up the next morning and did the exact opposite.

“I am so bad at my job,” Matt said that evening as Kadia poured them some grape juice in his living room.

“So quit,” Kadia said, taking a seat beside her. “What did you always want to be when you were a kid?”

“A ninja,” Matt said immediately.

Kadia gasped with delight. “Me too! I was always such a screw-up, you know, but ninjas –”

“Ninjas can do anything,” Matt said. “Ninjas don’t let their bosses pressure them or their ex-boyfriends call all the time.”

“Or drop out of college and hide from their parents,” Kadia added. “Totally. We totally have to be ninjas. What’s the first step?”

Matt set her glass down and leaned back against the couch. “Well, we’ll have to get some nunchucks.”

“Awesome. I love when the first step is shopping.” He leaned back beside her and put his arm around her.

Matt closed her eyes. “I might have to go home soon.”

“Sucks.” Kadia kissed her temple. “But we can still e-mail, right? And maybe I can see you again like, next trip you make.”

Matt just smiled in response. She would probably see him next at his trial when she testified against him, if he didn’t disappear to a secret overseas CIA prison.

She felt Kadia brush her hair away from her ear. He leaned over and whispered, “Don’t be sad.”

Matt opened her eyes, and his smile was so honest and bright that she just had to kiss it. She wrapped her arms around him and let herself get lost in the feeling of their lips pressed together, and his hand soft against the side of her face.

When Matt hooked her fingers underneath the waistband of Kadia’s jeans, he took in a sharp, audible breath, and his entire body tensed.

“Let me.” Matt felt dizzy just at the first touch of his skin. She undid the top button and let her hand slide in further. Kadia buried his face in the crook of her neck. She could feel his chest tremble and his breath stutter, and she felt a sudden surge of protectiveness. She closed her eyes and tried to think about the rhythm of her heartbeat and her hand, instead of how she would need to get out of the apartment in less than an hour unless she wanted to get arrested by the NSA tactical unit.

Kadia’s breathing became quicker and more ragged, and he gasped, “You’re seriously awesome” into her ear. Matt started laughing in spite of her worries, and when Kadia tried to kiss her, she still couldn’t stop. When he came into her hand, their arms were wrapped around one another, and they were smiling against each other’s mouths.

Matt rolled off of him and pulled a throw blanket over them. Kadia looked at her with heavy eyes, rubbed her shoulder, and said, “Can I…?”

“Go to sleep.” Matt kissed him on the cheek.

“Okay.” Kadia turned on his side and gave her a long look before closing his eyes. “I’ll see you when I wake up.”

Matt waited until the motion of his chest became steady before gently untangling her limbs from his and getting up off the couch. She noticed a backpack in the corner of the room and went over to it. When she picked it up, a skateboard almost fell out from behind it, but she caught it before it could make too much noise.

As she tried to lean it back into place, she noticed the letters “sXe” painted graffiti-style on the bottom of the skateboard, and her heart sank. It was the business the Commander was involved with. But then she looked closer, and underneath the logo was written, “straightXedge 4 lyfe”.

Matt knelt down and opened the backpack. Inside was a Columbia University folder with a doodled “sk8r” on it. She opened the folder and a bent student ID fell out. The picture was of Kadia with shorter hair, and the name read “Kadia Commander”. Matt reached further into the bag, finding only unlabeled CDs, except for one, with a picture of a dancing figure on the cover and the title “Operation Ivy”.

Matt dropped the bag and ran into the kitchen while dialing her cell phone.

“Chief Wagner,” Matt said when he answered. “Abort the team headed for 615 Tenth Street.”

“Are you on a secure line?” the Chief asked.

“I have the wrong guy,” Matt continued. “Commander’s his last name, SK8 means ‘skate’, and Operation Ivy’s a band.”

“Agent Ryan,” the Chief said firmly. “You are not permitted to call me from the field. This is not a secure –”

“Call off the tactical unit!” Matt shouted.

“They should be there already!” the Chief yelled back. “Give them the suspect and we can sort this out in processing.”

“Processing? He’ll be in Guantanamo before I can even – ” Matt began, but he’d already ended the call.

“Motherfucker,” Matt muttered as she rushed back into the living room. She almost ran into Kadia, who was standing up and looking half-asleep and confused.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

Matt grabbed him by the shoulders. “Listen, they’ll be here any second. I’ll do whatever I can to help you, but sometimes prisoners disappear –”

Kadia smiled and put his arms around her. “Matt, what are you talking about?”

Matt sniffled. “I wish I could just stay here with you forever,” she said as her eyes filled with tears. “I wish we could just dance and drink juice and laugh at your crazy neighbor with the linoleum –”

“Oh, wait,” Kadia interrupted. “Did I say linoleum? I meant petroleum.”

Matt just stared at him.

“Oh, wait,” Kadia continued. “I meant plutonium.”

Matt’s eyes widened. “Plutonium? She’s buying plutonium?”

Kadia nodded. “Yeah. Is that like petroleum?”

“Wait, what’s her first name?” Matt asked.

“I think it’s Sarah.”

Matt took a step back. “Sarah Katz in apartment 7. SK7. She’s the Commander.”

“Cool,” Kadia said. “So like, what are we talking about?”

Matt rushed to the chair where she’d dropped her jacket, took her NSA badge out, and shoved it into her pants pocket. “Stay here,” she called back to Kadia as she rushed out the door. “If you hear gunshots, get down.”

Matt got out onto the third floor landing just as she heard the front door of the building splinter and break open. She saw the first of the tactical unit enter, men dressed in riot gear and carrying automatic weapons. If she rushed them, they wouldn’t hesitate to shoot her, regardless of the badge. She needed some way to get their attention before they could take aim.

As the armed men moved up the stairway, Matt grabbed onto the railing, climbed over it, and hung down so that her feet would be the first thing the men would see as they turned the corner to the second floor landing. She took one hand off the railing, dug the badge out of her pocket, and held it up just as the team rounded the corner.

“NSA! Hold your fire!” she shouted. “I’m agent Matilda Ryan, and I’m the lead in this investigation. The suspect is in apartment 7 with possible nuclear materials.”

The man at the head of the group pressed his earpiece and spoke into his wrist. “We need a Hazmat team at 615 Tenth Street. This is NSA priority code 11B.” He turned to the men behind him. “Its number 7. Let’s move.”

Matt felt a wave of relief that lasted only until the last armed man had passed her and she realized she was hanging from a railing by one arm. She dropped her badge and reached up to get a better grip, but her hand started sliding immediately.

“Shit,” Matt said, and she fell onto the second floor landing.

She tried to cushion her fall by leading with her shoulder, but all she accomplished was hitting her shoulder hard on the concrete. Still, she would’ve been relatively okay if she hadn’t clipped her ankle on one of the stairs as she fell. After a few minutes of reassuring herself that she wasn’t dead, Matt rolled onto her back, closed her eyes tightly, and managed to pull herself into a sitting position using her one good arm. But the pain in her ankle was blinding, and there was no way she could stand by herself.

She opened her eyes, and Kadia was standing in front of her.

“That was the most bad-ass ninja move I’ve ever seen,” Kadia said.

“Thanks,” Matt said. “I think I broke my ankle.”

“Yeah, I already called an ambulance.”

“So, um…” Matt looked up toward the third floor. “Your neighbor’s a terrorist. And I’m a federal agent. And I thought you were the terrorist.” She forced a smile. “Sorry?”

Kadia sat down on the floor across from her. “Nah, that’s cool.”

“Just help me out with one thing,” Matt asked. “Why did your personal ad say NSA? I thought you were impersonating a National Security Administration agent.”

Kadia’s eyes widened. “That means No Strings Attached. But now it’s like…” He looked down and smiled shyly. “It’s like, I kinda want to be attached to you.” He looked up at her, his eyes sparkling. “With string. Or, you know, any substance.”

Matt laughed, then winced as she felt a shooting pain in her ribs. “When your housesitting job’s finished, do you want to come stay with me in DC? My apartment’s nothing special, but it’s right next door to a big parking lot.”

Kadia’s smile stretched even wider. “Yeah, I’d love to.” He reached out and took her hands. “And hey, I can totally come to the hospital with you. I even brought my ipod, and I just downloaded this song, you so have to hear it. It’s the kind of song where you hear it once and you spend the whole next week singing it even though you don’t know the words and then you finally find out the title and you download it and skate around the sidewalk all day listening to it over and over, and then you grab onto the back of a truck and let it pull you all the way up the West Side Highway and you think you’re gonna get arrested but you just end up in like, Jersey and then you’re like, man, I can’t wait until like, twenty years from now, because there’s gonna be like a hundred cover versions of this song and I’m gonna rock out to every one even though I’ll be like, old.”

Matt leaned forward, even though her entire body ached from the movement. “That’s awesome,” she said, and she kissed him there on the cold concrete floor, in the echo of sirens and automatic weapon fire.