"Are there residency requirements? Term limits? Who can vote?" Nikita rattles off as though she's interested in the answers. She is, in the sense that more data is always better than less. What Karen has to tell her about the council, even if they're even bigger patsies than Oversight is for Percy, maybe she can use it.

Right now, her primary focus is on the shadows in the hall. The distinctive shadows and quiet movements of agents acquiring a target at leisure. She moves 'at leisure', avoiding the laser siting with regular kitchen movements, like dropping the spatula that she bends down to grab - and pull her knife at the same time.

"Oh shoot. I'm going to have to wash this. Karen, would you mind ducking into the pantry to see if there's any cumin or anything in there?" Unrelated items, but Karen doesn't know her to judge whether that's strange or not. And if Karen goes in the pantry, Nikita can take out whoever's out there before they can hurt her.