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"Does anyone not understand their assignments?" LeShana asked, looking around at the gathered agents. Three days ago they had decided that it would be a bad idea to attempt to capture Raven by kicking down his front door, that would raise too many questions with the local law enforcement. Their other option was to try and capture him out on the streets, and for the last two days they had been waiting for him to emerge from his lair, never honestly suspecting that their task was a harder prospect than one might expect. The last two times he had emerged, he had walked to a corner store and right back to his apartment, far too quickly for the other agents to get into place. They finally saw their opportunity, however, when the agents watching his house had informed them that he was on the move deep into the heart of the city. One of the agents had followed him onto the subway to Manhattan and had reported their 'prey' was on the alert but that he had not spotted his followers. No one had any questions, so LeShana dismissed them so that they could get into place, then she nodded to Vosthan, who was giving her an expectant look, so he followed her out of the room. Vosthan was dressed in the rather severe looking clothes of a professional driver, appropriate attire since their 'getaway vehicle' was in fact a stretch limo to get Raven out of the scene. Its' darkened windows were an advantage in capturing an unwilling candidate, not to mention the added space in the back was conducive to any struggle that might take place. LeShana still had no answers about Raven, despite the fact that they had spent much of their time trying to learn as much about him as possible. They had done intensive background work and there was nothing to explain the known aberrations between his files and their knowledge of him. How he had known Dego and why had he called out the name 'Sione' when LeShana was in his apartment were the two most vital and pressing concerns in her own mind.
They left the building together, twelve agents in all, and loaded into three cars for the short drive to the area where he had last been seen. When they reached the area of the building Raven had entered, eight of them would disperse and follow Raven if he left on foot, while the others in the cars would follow if he left by means of a vehicle. LeShana and Vosthan would follow at a distance until they were ready to move in for the capture. They were all veteran agents, so they knew to improvise if something unexpected happened. The relief crew from their home planet had come in the previous day and would be able to handle any other matters that might come up while they were occupied. There was not much to do anyway, any group of green agents could handle things. It did not take them long to reach the area where Raven had last been seen, and the agents spread out just as they had planned. Vosthan pulled the car down a small side street and settled in to wait. LeShana tried not to get excited by the idea that finally, after days of tormented waiting she would be getting her chance to penetrate the veil of mystery that had plagued her naturally curious mind, but her attempt was in vain.
"This is Andiva, I've got him. He is exiting the building and moving west." The announcement made an intense surge of excitement bubble up from within LeShana.
"You are too close, Andiva." Her group leader called warningly.
"He's stopped.." Sanquin announced in the next moment, making an all too real fear that he would realize they were tracking him that made LeShana's blood run cold. "He's pulling out a cell phone.. Now he's on the move again." She breathed a sigh of relief and tried to settle her rattled nerves, the mission had only just begun after all. They needed to catch him off guard, and if his demonstration had taught them anything it was that they could not afford to underestimate him. While they might not hope to confront him out of the public eye, the fewer witnesses there were, the better it was for all of them.
"What is it with these humans and acting as if they were all permanently glued to their devices." Vosthan murmured distastefully.
"Look at it this way at least he isn't driving with that thing attached to his face." LeShana commented back to him. Soon enough, Raven hailed a cab and their groups re-gathered to follow him as he traveled north along the island. His home was in a different direction, so they could only be thankful that he may yet give them the opportunity they needed to achieve their goals. The mid-day traffic, however, was quite intense as any number of other travelers moved about the city for afternoon meals and meetings. It took more than hour to travel the several miles north before Raven was exiting the vehicle and emerging into a far quieter kind of neighborhood, where he entered a small local eatery. By the time their teams had caught up with the lead vehicle and could be dispersed around the area, they were far too late to catch him out in the open. All of them were given plenty of time to grow impatient and worried as they waited for him to re-emerge. Only too able to picture him slipping out a backdoor their sweep had missed, or worse, him simply teleporting away once out of sight, LeShana came to a decision after about an hour of interminable waiting, when her patience grew thin and her nerves could no longer wait.
"I'm going in. Destin, Solair, follow me inside. We need to make sure he didn't give us the slip." Vosthan looked as if he had many numerous objections to voice, but all it took to silence them was for him to see her worried expression. "Everyone else, keep on your toes and wait for my signal." No one really felt brave enough to question her, and most of them undoubtedly had worried about the same things during the long interim since their arrival, no few of them were above lingering along the path between the limo and the restaurant, however, making their concerns all too clear in the silent looks they gave her. Ignoring her own doubts about the wisdom in doing this, she peered deep into the front window as she passed, but saw no trace of her quarry. Growing ever closer to the edge of panic, she quickened her steps just a little more and hurried through the front door. The setting inside was a little dark, a little worn, but all together homey and unassuming, with the over all effect being rather pleasing to the eye. Even as she stepped up the receptionist stand, openly peering about in the hopes that he was still there, her eyes found his own. Seated in the far back corner, out of sight from the front window, he sat with his back to the wall and with a perfect unobstructed view of anyone who entered. What was even worse was that his eyes were on her even before she found him through the sea of people inside. In that moment, there was not even a hint of doubt within her that he had recognized her from that brief encounter inside the Weslyn building. He knew why she was there, and just by that gaze alone, he made it clear to her that in fact he had been waiting for someone to reveal themselves. How he could have known, why he had waited, and a hundred other questions rippled through her mind, even as instinct made her freeze in her spot, at a lost of what she should do next. Raven solved her dilemma when he nodded to other side of his small, out of the way booth, and made a small gesture with his hand as if inviting her to join him. "He.. made us somewhere along the way.. everyone be on alert." LeShana whispered warningly. Shaking herself from her surprised stupor, she ignored the sign suggesting she wait to be seated and crossed the room to slide down onto the bench seat across from her target. For the second time that week, she was struck by the sudden and intense sense of deja vu as she came close to an otherwise perfect stranger. It was almost as if some part of her was trying to tell her something about him or that somehow, inexplicably, they had met in another lifetime.
"Took you long enough." He rumbled at her as she awkwardly settled on the vinyl seat of the booth. Having already suffered through hours of verbal berating, debates, nasty comments, and recriminations because of his actions, the nasty little verbal jab was almost enough to make her wish to enact violence against him. It did not at all help that he was giving her a smug, sinister kind of smirk as he spoke to her. "Were all of you somehow under the impression that I was an idiot? I could sense the malice waiting for me outside while I was still on the elevator."
"It's not malice.. it's determination." LeShana snapped back at him, feeling a nearly irrational need to defend herself a
nd her people. His eyes left hers and his smile faded a little when something else managed to catch his attention, and she gave a subtle, sideways glance towards the door. She caught sight of Destin and Solair entering the restaurant and doing their very best to pretend that they fit in, even as both of them were exuding surprise to see her sitting across from their would be target.
"Yeah, because 12 against one isn't the least little bit malicious." He finally quipped back at her.
"How did.." Knowing almost instantly that she had made a mistake with that instinctive demand for information, she was even more irritated by that condescending smirk which appeared on his face in the next moment. "Fine.." She growled back at him.
"Here come the claws." He snapped back at her with growing amusement, almost as if he was trying his hardest to make her angry, and was unfortunately succeeding.
"We know who you are, we know where you live, and we know what you can do. We don't want a fight, but if that's what you want, then we are prepared for it. Now.."
"Is that a threat?" He asked her with a smile.
"NOW.." She continued with a touch more force in her voice. "..there are two ways we can.."
"By the heavens, please don't tell me you are going to say: 'There are two ways we can do this, the easy way or the hard way.'?" He interrupted her with an infuriating smugness and a roll of his eyes that pissed her off on mere principle. "What are you a third rate villain from some novel written by a monkey chained to a type-writer? I'm mean seriously, how cliché can you get! What are you going to tell me next? ‘My people have the building surrounded, you’ll never get away.'?" That smile, that nasty, spiteful, condescending, superior little smile seemed almost impossibly effective in cutting right through her and getting under her skin like nothing else in the universe. She was pissed off just looking at it, and found herself only wishing she could pull a weapon and teach him a real lesson for even thinking to try to tease her when she was only trying to do whatever she could to help him.
"No, next I tell you that you can either walk out of here on your own two feet, or we can drag your ass out of here by your hair." She snapped back at him, no longer able to contain her intense, bitter dislike for his infuriating attitude. Even if she might have enjoyed seeing that smile disappear in the heartbeat that followed, the expression that replaced it made her blood run cold. His eyes grew dark, his lips narrowed, his heavy brows dropped, and his large muscular body tensed, and all at once his smug sense of calm, confident defiance was gone to be replaced by a disturbingly terrible sense of real danger sitting right across from the table from her. For first time in her life, LeShana had met someone who could give her an angry glare and truly put a little fear into her world. It was as if Raven had a depth unseen until that very moment, and that depth contained the stuff of nightmares.
"Now, it's your turn to listen…" His rumbling baritone voice rippled through her, conjuring up the image of a demon given human form, causing her heart to race and her mind to scream in near terror at what might follow. When he spoke those first words, he shifted to lean forward over the table, making her wish desperately she had more room to slid back and keep her distance from whatever terrible monstrosity sat behind that dark gaze. From the table he picked up a spoon, and even that rather blunt object was somehow enough to make him even more menacing than the a mere moment before. "I don't care who you work for, Weslyn enterprises, the military, NSA, FBI, Homeland Security, or whatever damn foolish thing you use to identify yourselves. Because whatever it might be, whomever you might be, you tried to drug me, kidnap me, and use me.. and I don't like it one damn bit. And it's not just about me lady, it's also about my friends, and one thing you never need doubt is WE DON'T LIKE THREATS!" He growled at her like a vicious, blood-thirsty predator, not even needing to raise his voice. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Destin rising to his feet as both he and Solair felt her fear and panic, but she wasn't the only one to take note of that subtle change to their surroundings. Three sharp strikes of the spoon against the side of his glass was all it took for the entire atmosphere to suddenly change.
Never in LeShana's entire life could she have imagined a trap so very, very devious. It was so well thought out, arranged so hastily, and executed with such precision it would have been unthinkable to her, or even the most paranoid of her agents. To have had an entire public place arranged so perfectly as to leave not even the tiniest of clues that the patrons were anything less than normal, and to have done so in such a small amount of time staggered the limits of imagination. The three sharp sounds brought everything to a complete utter silence. The mumbling, murmuring crowd all around them could have disappeared for all there was not a single audible clue that they were still there. Even as her eyes snapped around, the three of them found every single eye turned to glare at one of them, and no few of those angry gazes fell upon LeShana. The room, which had seemed pleasant and mostly peaceful just seconds before, suddenly took up a dark and angry sort of malevolence that permeated everything. Even the kitchen and wait staff stood somewhere nearby, filling the space with an unavoidable sense of danger, burning in low, dark tones across the room. And all of the hatred, anger, and mistrust was focused entirely on the three of them. If she and her friends weren't at serious risk in that moment, LeShana might have admired the kind of mind that could create such a perfect lure.
"I told you, I am not a moron." Raven's voice was soft, but in that silence his words struck her as if they had been shouted. "And the fundamental rules in any conflict is, you do not confront someone on their home turf. And here's a tip for the future. The best way to trap someone is make them think they are the ones with the advantage. Now we know who you are and we know what you are after, and if you and your friends think you are going to get away with what you are doing without a fight, I'd suggest you'd better correct that attitude right quick. I think the three of you had best be on your way." It was perhaps the best bit of advice LeShana had been given in quite some time, but even as she slid out of the booth, something deep down stopped her.
"I'm.. sorry I said it like that.." She found herself whispering, even before she really had any concept what she might say to him. "The thing is.. we don't like what your government is doing anymore than you do.. only.. we.. we can't stop them." For just a heartbeat, the past three years of frustration came bubbling up to form a foamy froth of rage, betrayal, and impotence, and LeShana discovered to her horror that she very nearly started crying at her own words. "Even if we were to leave you alone.. you're still not safe.. none of you are. Admiral Teg is going to keep chasing you for the rest of your lives.. and unless.. someone does something.. he's just going to keep doing what he has been doing. We were simply trying to help you by keeping you away from him.." LeShana was thankful when Solair stepped over to her a moment later, putting a comforting arm around her and guided her away before she really did start crying. Once outside, she recovered enough of herself on the way back to the car to tell everyone to pull back with a calm and steady voice. Her gratitude went only as long as it took to reach the back of the limo where Vosthan reported to her that serious trouble was brewing at the Weslyn building.