Prologue
~ Ashley ~
“You go around back, I’ll take the front.” FBI Agent Samantha Rubin instructed me.
I complied and went to the back of the house, my gun in hand. We went through the front and back doors at the same time, I could hear her moving throughout the house.
“FBI!” She shouted, for when you stormed a house like this we had to announce who we were.
“USI!” I shouted after Samantha did. We were from two different agencies, working together.
So far it seemed as though the house was empty, but when I was coming down the narrow hallway to meet Samantha in the middle of the house I heard what sounded like a struggle. I ran down the hallway, my gun held out as I was trained to do when storming a house with a suspect in it that was assumed to be armed and dangerous.When I entered the room of the struggle I saw Samantha laying on the floor, her eyes closed and her gun missing, but no sign of the attacker. I moved cautiously as I went to Samantha and checked for a pulse. She seemed fine, just unconscious.
Just as I was standing up the sharp point of a needle pierced my skin, with much force my assailant stuck the needle in my neck injecting the contents into my blood. I grabbed his arm, trying to fight him, but it was to avail. The contents of needle weakened me and it felt as though I were passing out as I slowly fell to the floor. My vision was incredibly blurred, my eyes mostly closed and every noise sounded muffled like I was underwater.
Through the haze of my vision I saw the man take away my gun and hand it to another blurry figure. I struggled to stay awake, but it was to no avail.
~ Yuri ~
At the sound of the click Storm opened the door slowly and we entered the old, dirty apartment. We searched the apartment, but didn’t find it’s occupants so we repeated our search only more carefully this time. We were looking for something, anything that would tell us what the criminals that we were chasing were up to, what their next plan was. I was searching the bedroom that looked mostly unused when Storm called from the kitchen.
“Hey, come check this out.” He called and I joined him in the kitchen.
“What is that?” I asked, gesturing to the three jars of clearish liquid that he was looking at.
He turned one of the jars around, reading the label that looked like someone scribbled something on it with a foreign language. “Oh no…” He mumbled under his breath and by the sound of his voice I knew it wasn’t good.
“What? What’s it say?” I asked, my stomach starting to knot in apprehension.
“It’s not what it says that matters… It’s the handwriting.” He said, looking back at me. “They’re working with Cara.”
“They’re… She….” I stuttered, fear beginning to take it’s hold on me. Not Cara. Of all the people they had to call upon her for help. The woman specialized in poison and was the most… insane criminal you could ever meet. In my opinion, anyway. I’d only met her once, but that was enough to scare me for a lifetime. “Then what is… that?” I asked, pointed to the jars filled with the strange liquid.
“I’m pretty sure it’s a poison of some kind. Cara’s known to put them in jars like this. So don’t touch the jars, don’t touch anything. For all we know this whole place is poisoned.”
“What about the air?” I asked, getting paranoid, but the way I saw it I had every right to be paranoid. Cara was known to poison anything she felt like at the moment. People were afraid to get near for fear she would poison them one way or another.
“Um…” Storm thought about this a moment. “You have a point there, but we can’t get too precocious or else we won’t be able to do anything or go anywhere. Making everyone so scared of her is part of what she tries to do, so technically that would be letting her win. Just, look on the bright side, at least fifty percent of her poisons have an antidote.” Only fifty percent!
“So what do we do now?” I asked, trying to keep my voice calm and neutral.
“We take these with us. I know someone who might be able to give us a better idea of what it is.” He answered. He took a large plastic bag and a pair of gloves from his army, green backpack, putting on the gloves. He put the jars in the plastic bag which he in turn put in his backpack. He took off the gloves, stuffing them in his backpack too. “Did you find anything else in the house?”
“No, it looks mostly uninhabited.” I answered, pushing my fears of Cara out of my mind for
the time being.
“Alright then, let’s go.” Storm said, but only made it as far as the door before his phone rang in his pocket. He stopped, struggling momentarily to get the cell phone out of his deep pocket. “Hello.” He answered the call.
I thumbed my fingers on the wall impatiently. It’s a cell phone, you can walk and talk, you know. I thought, but didn’t voice it.
“Yes.” He said after listening a moment. He went back to the kitchen and I followed him. “Yep, I’m doing it right now.” He dropped his backpack on the floor and put the jars of unknown liquid back on the counter.
“What are you doing?” I asked in whisper because I didn’t want to interrupt the phone call, but I wanted to know why he was putting it back.
“Yes,” He said again. “I hear you. I did it, happy now? Well that’s too bad.” He paused, listened, and then went back to the door as he did so.
I hesitated then followed him out of the apartment building.
“Okay, how about this. I leave you alone and you leave me alone?” Storm suggested to whoever he was talking to. “Fine! But if something happens then you can only blame yourself.” He hung up, still walking to the car he put the phone back in his pant’s pocket.
“Who was that?”
We got in the car and he started the engine. “That was Cara.” He said, ticked.
“What?! How does she have your number? How did she know what we were doing?”
“Come on, Yuri, this is Cara we’re talking about. She can do anything she puts her mind to. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was tracking my phone.” He paused, taking his phone back out of his pocket. “Oh great, she’s tracking my phone.” He muttered, rolling down the window he then tossed the iPhone four out of the window. That was a nice phone. “I wanted an upgrade anyway.”
“Couldn’t you have just turned it off, or taken out the battery? Not throw it out a window.”
“No. Technology is advancing, some computer geeks can do some scary stuff these days.” Storm said, driving out of the parking lot.
“So, Cara called you and told you to put her stuff back?” I asked, “And you listened?
“Yep, pretty much. She said she has eyes and ears near here, close enough to kill us if I didn’t comply to return her stuff. And, knowing her she does have at least one hired gun nearby.”
“How did she know that we took in the first place and that we returned it?”
“That’s a good question. My guess is that she had someone hack into my phone and used the camera to hear and possibly see what we’re doing. That or she has someone watching us.” He said, then seemed to more fully realize what he just said. “Great. Someone could be following us. Give me your phone.”
I gave it to him and he threw it out of the window too. “That’s littering, you know.” I pointed out. It was a good thing that wasn’t my personal phone, just the one I took on missions like this.
“Is it?” He asked somewhat sarcastically. “My bad.”
“Where are you going?” I asked, noticing that he took a turn in the opposite direction I thought he would go.
“To your apartment, I’m just taking a different rout. A more remote rout with more turns. This way it will be easier to tell if someone’s following me. After that I’m contacting the Blue Jays. If Cara’s involved then this whole thing is much bigger than we anticipated.”
Once at my apartment Storm contacted one of the Blue Jays via some kind of internet thing. (I know very little about the internet, or just computers in general.) After waiting awhile we finally got a response.
“Go to Raven Island, and be at A.J.’s Bar by three in the afternoon tomorrow. There you will meet either Uriah or Dusty.”
“Dusty’s nice, hopefully it will be her. She’s more informative and laid back.” Storm said, closing his computer. “Well, if we want to get there in time we need to leave now.”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
And there you go. I hope you enjoying. :)
