No more pretend now; her younger self had fled 20 years into the past, and Rebecca had just stranded her there. What a goddamned nightmare. It wasn’...t nearly over yet, either.“Revert my suite to normal, please.” The house she’d slept in nearly every night of her long stay in Arcadia lay safely concealed behind a manipulation field. Ever the sensible mother-figure in her life, Gudrun had insisted on Procurement dismantling the structure during Rebecca/Iris’s stay in the palace, but Rebecca had. He held up one finger and pointed to the ground. Then he held up two fingers and pointed to the space ship. He repeated that, again. I looked at him, at the space ship, and then turned around looking at my world. I nodded to him, held up two fingers, and walked to the ship.I was a marine. Trained as a marine. A team leader of macho men. I was tough, quick, decisive, emotionally and mentally strong. For a human. I thought I could handle anything, confident in the extraordinary challenge and. ‘You look positively wonderful,’ I said. I wondered how long it had been since I’d last said that to her. ‘And you look good, too,’ she spoke softly. In that next instant, we stood there, looking into one another’s eyes. Gazing into one another’s souls, reconnecting after the lost months of no contact between us. I always felt that when I looked into Gina’s eyes, I saw so much more of her than she was willing to reveal. I used to wonder about her mysteries–her life before mine crossed her. This was the first time he had been up close and personal with the femme fatale of the green leather benches. Jenny's political career had been one of a ladder of success. A junior minister after two years in politics, a senior position in the treasury and then the youngest Home Secretary for a hundred years. “Do I make you nervous, Gerry? You’ve written all these salacious allegations. Am I so scary in the flesh?” Jenny swivels her chair, nonchalantly hitching her skirt higher. “I ummm… didn’t.