If I Can Walk

 She was right. Of course.

Having condensed the Hollywood-style ambush into a concise fifteen-minute capsulization, I am left with a thousand questions. Chief among them is the alarming failure of our intelligence and subsequent ineffective response to the strike. I stand primarily responsible for one of the hits, as, with guard down, on the cusp of putting the many months of preparation and planning into action, I allowed an enemy combatant to eliminate any further participation on my part. Exactly how this happened has been the focal point of my every lucid review over the last eight months.

Equally as disturbing is Julie's choice of modifiers in describing the circumstance of TOM's death. 'By all indications?' he died of a major heart attack? What the actual fuck does THAT mean? What did the autopsy show? Why is there any doubt? What took place immediately before the alleged myocardial infarction?

Even more troubling that my own appalling lack of spatio-temporal awareness and TOM's elipsis-like series of question marks is the issue of The Queen's demise. An internal hostile takeover? Towards what objective? These are domestic terrorists not House Republicans, further, they were, by the ring leaders own intel, actively working on a major hit, a dubious target normally augmenting malevolent motivation, not diminishing it. In a frustrated state of investigative review, I am left with what is perhaps the most oft used line in the TV police drama screenwriters tool kit.

It just doesn't add up.

She was right.

I have a thousand questions.

I look around the dimly lit room that has been my home since early March. On the small leather couch sits the security officer assigned to whatever shift we are currently on, graveyard being my best guess. He is reading a magazine, shoes off, the smell of bad coffee wafting from a styrofoam cup. I cough to get his attention.

"I need your help," I open the conversation, a mile from the normal muted silence of the room.

"With?"

"I want to see if I can walk."