Drop off Dr. Goldstein and drill her on Vaarvel

Dr. Nora Goldstein wouldn't make the whole trip back with you to Washington's CEDIT base. Instead, your team had been ordered to drop her off at the western European installment... you hoped that didn't mean she'd be delayed in delivering the antidote to you. Still, you understood that she couldn't simply be slotted right back into position in a CEDIT laboratory, just like that... She'd been undercover for a long time, from what you'd heard on the plane ride. You imagined she would be rigorously tested in confinement to see where her loyalties lay, evaluating her mental condition thoroughly before setting her loose on the antidote designed to fix her own work. You wondered if at some point she should have stepped in to stop that work... maybe it was impossible in her position? You were polite enough not to ask about it...

... Still, as you accompanied her off the Gambit and through security at the CEDIT base, you thought you sensed her watching you. She knew you had something to ask that you couldn't ask in front of the others.

That's right! In the middle of all of this craziness with Adder, you'd forgotten to do much with the important task that Goodbye had assigned you: finding out more about the operatives in the Goodbye Girls. After all, one of them was potentially a murderer who had it out for her handlers, if not her whole team. If so, every mission like the one you'd just completed was one in which the criminal could potentially get their hands on world-threatening technology. Rooting out the individual at work here was almost as important as stopping the terrorists you could see.

Once you were away from other agents, you called out to Dr. Goldstein and asked her to stop. After explaining that you were new to your handler's position, you asked her if there was anything you needed to know about your agents...

The snake-like woman smiled, her eyes unreadable behind her glasses as she tilted her head. "Which one?"

You answered: Vaarvel. The deception artist of the Goodbye Girls was a complete unknown to you... she was eager to share all sorts of personal info, but you could only trust about half of it, due to her tendency to lie to friends and foes alike. You had all kinds of questions, but you tried to make your tone seem urgent: was there anything you needed to know?

The doctor raised her eyebrows, looking surprised. "What, do they not tell you about your own operatives when you become a handler?"

You sighed, then answered truthfully: CEDIT was, in some ways, at the mercy of the Goodbye Girls. Your superiors knew practically nothing about them, beyond what the elite field agents in the Goodbye Girls let them know.

The girl cupped her long-nailed fingers to the sharp angle of her chin and reared her head back, still smiling. "Well, Vaarvel shouldn't be a mystery at this point, should she? She's been a CEDIT agent longer than any of them. And yet... well... she's actually a point of curiosity among the science team. Have you ever seen her... do magic, Ciao?"

Now it was your turn to be surprised. You shook your head dumbly... then remembered, you had seen her do a thing or two you'd call "magic tricks" before. She performed them rather effortlessly... it was as though she was a real illusionist. Still, the world of science fiction was supposed to be about science fiction, not sorcery! You'd need more evidence if you were to believe that Vaarvel 'did magic.'

"Don't go spreading this around, but... I don't think I'm the only genetic scientist you shared a plane ride with today. I don't think I'm the best in the field either. Years ago, in CEDIT Africa, a certain scientist vanished, the brightest in all of CEDIT, was supposedly killed when a base was raided by Adder. All of the details were considered need-to-know... I only know the fate of the science team, and she was one of the dead. Anyway, to make a long story short... less than a week after, reports of a masked agent in CEDIT started popping up. A super-agent... the first super-agent, even. The kind of agent that made James Bond look like an amateur. That was the start of the Goodbye Girls... but if you want to know more about how it really started, I think you need to look back to the Adder raid on the African base. And the key to her magic? Well... I think we should be thinking of it as 'science fiction.' If she's really the vanished scientist from years ago, then her previous lab work may be tied to her ability to disguise herself so thoroughly and furthermore, to reconstruct a persona from nothing after an incident like that one."

The conversation wasn't just engaging; it was critical. You felt like you were on the cusp of understanding something that could relate to the murders. Desperately, you questioned Nora for anything else she could tell you.

"I've said enough to get me in trouble already. This is a CEDIT science secret, Ciao... You'd best not let anyone know you're wise to it." The lanky woman flashed you a peace sign, then disappeared beyond security, where you no longer had a reason (and thereby, no longer had the clearance) to follow. "I'll be off the grid for a while! Good luck figuring out the rest yourself... I've got a blood-borne genetic disease to cure! You'd better wish me luck too, for your sake! Oh hey, if I can make a suggestion... why not give her a gift and be nice to her? That's a pretty good way to make sure she doesn't kill you! Geeeh ha ha ha ha!"

You wished her luck... while privately cursing under your breath that you hadn't found out a way to learn more from her.

Could you really believe what you'd been told? Vaarvel escaped from an Adder raid on a CEDIT base in Africa years ago and reemerged as a super agent? But if so, why the mask? Why the secrecy? For the moment, the explanation escaped both reasoning and imagination...

At any rate, Dr. Goldstein had given you some decent advice. You decided to grab a gift in the city before the meetup time came around.

Once aboard the Gambit, Tschau took her place at your right and seemed to doze off again. Vaarvel, on the other hand, leaned back and appeared to watch you the entire time, smirking and leaning her cheek on her fist. It occurred to you... as much as you'd laughed about Tschau's ability to sleep with her eyes open, you hadn't seen Vaarvel sleep either. Feeling awkward and knowing she must have already spotted something out of place, you told her you had a gift for her, then handed across a gift to her.

"Oh? This new into the job and you're already giving your underlings inappropriate gifts? For shame, Nathaniel." Chuckling with dry mirth, she pulled the item free of its wrapping, the inspected it in the low, red light of the Gambit. "Playing cards, hm? We can hardly use them right now, can we?" Her eyes curved into amused crescents as she noted that you'd sprung for a fairly cheap gift, but one that suited her to a tee. This gift was more about intent than lavishness. "Should I interpret this as your intent to challenge me to a game once we get back to the base?"

You gulped nervously, but nodded. {if Weakness for Gambling = 1}Goodbye had warned you not to gamble with Vaarvel... this was all but a commitment to defy that warning.{endif}

"Magnificent... I'm looking forward to that!" The girl's body shook with laughter; her tone seemed a bit more genuine with this one... Maybe?