Edited by: Waning_Crescents

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“Oh Lucy, my dear Lucy, how I have missed you!” Vergil rubbed his cheek against his well-cared-for sniper rifle with sparkles in his eyes. “I am sorry I have neglected you; I promise I will play with you more.”

This sounds so wrong on so many levels. Elena’s eyelids twitched, disturbingly, at that sight. “You two want to be alone and tango it out or?”

Vergil shot a brief glare at Elena before he put his attention back to his favorite weapon. “She is just jealous, don’t listen to her.”

“Who is freaking jealous of a damn rifle?” Elena lost her composure for a moment before she shook her head in disbelief. “Please, stop being a creep and concentrate on the task at hand.” She sat down on the open roof which was located right opposite of the factory and turned the volume up in hope to catch any sounds from inside the building. The bug they had hid in the suitcase made it into the building without being detected. Until now, however, they just had heard some frivolous conversations, nothing that gave away any information about what was going on inside.

After a few minutes she let out a sigh. “It became awfully quiet in there.”

Vergil propped his rifle on the edge of the roof and gazed through the visor into the building's windows. “If we go by the noises we heard before, they probably locked up the money somewhere. But if we can’t hear anything for now, then let’s peek into the inside of the building, shall we?”

 

While Vergil and Elena operated from high ground, Asher and Nowe covered the lower area around the building from a safe, yet close enough, distance. The factory appeared like any other small business unit where employees fulfilled their tasks to gain their daily income; at first glance nothing appeared out of the ordinary.

“They are not very careful, are they?” Nowe wondered as he peeked around the corner. “No guards either. Is this really the right place? Maybe they are deceiving us?”

Asher thought for a moment, but then said, “No, no doubt this is the place. The car stopped here, and the signal from the suitcase also came from inside this building. My guess is that they might think it’s not necessary to guard it.”

“They can’t be that confident, can they?”

“They don’t have to be. Take a closer look.” Asher pointed at the people that casually walked in and out. “If I remember correctly this is an active legal chemical plant. They don’t act as employees; these are real employees who work there.”

Nowe’s eyes followed the people who entered the building, and he said in surprise, “Seriously? So, they are using this as a cover up?”

“Most likely, which makes this even harder than expected.” Asher lifted his hand and tapped with his fingers on the little gadget in his ear to open communication with the CIB. “Are you guys set-up?”

“We are.” Vergil’s voice resounded over the device.

“Anything you could find out about this place yet?”

“I just got notified by my colleague.” Elena chimed in. “It is a registered small chemical plant which opened a few years ago. They have their connection with some industries that deal mainly with hygienic products. Their work entails small scale testing and even producing.”

“Damn, I knew it.”

“There is a lot of cargo inside, could be their usual products or illegal ones.” Vergil moved his rifle a bit to adjust the visor to another window. “There are a lot of people inside and I doubt they all belong to that group. There is a possibility they use this factory to conceal their tracks.”

“Figured.” Asher sighed. “What now?”

“All we can do for now is lay low and observe. Our team is digging more into the background of this plant to see if there had been changes in leadership or anything else that stood out lately. Better get comfortable down there, this might take a while.”

 

In the late afternoon, their investigation hadn’t progressed even one bit. Nothing extraordinary transpired outside and neither inside the building, as far as they could tell at least. The bug also stayed silent through the whole time which got both teams worried that it had been discovered and destroyed. While sitting tight for this long took a toll on everyone, Nowe got especially antsy about this situation. “I can’t take it anymore! What if they destroyed the device and something is going on inside where Vergil can’t see it? We might miss our chance here.”

“I know, but we can’t just storm in. Aside from the innocent people we might drag into this, if the boss of this organization is in there and escapes while we are carelessly marching in, then we are back to square one.”

“Their subordinates might spill the beans, though. Better than waiting.”

“Nowe, no.” Asher shot him a serious glare. “We wait.”

Nowe clicked his tongue in annoyance, but eventually gave in, murmuring, “I should have brought a pocket gaming console with me. This is boring.”

“Be glad you didn’t or you would come crying to me again if it gets broken during a fight.”

“This only happened once.” Nowe’s lower lip shifted slightly forward like a sulking kid.

Asher rolled his eyes. And it just took me a whole day to calm that idiot down afterwards.

“Say.” Nowe sat down on a wooden box in the alleyway where they took up their position. “Do you still believe Cal has anything to do with that?”

Asher briefly glanced at him before he redirected his eyes back to the area around the building. “Fifty-fifty. We did confirm he deliberately deceived us and now with his memory loss…this all still looks too convenient to me.”

Nowe fell into silence for a moment, letting his thoughts wander. “I feel sorry for him.”

“Huh? You don’t even really know him.”

“Neither do you.” Nowe rejoined. “But I don’t need to know him to understand how he must feel. People judging or misunderstanding him without knowing the entire truth, I felt that for a very long time as well.”

Asher gazed at him with a complicated expression. If his partner put it that way, he hardly could argue against this.

“It’s only thanks to you that I am who I am right now. You never judged me, nor were you ever scared of me, no…” A soft smile appeared on Nowe’s lips. “You became my anchor instead.”

A stupefied expression appeared on Asher’s face. While he knew that Nowe craved for acceptance in this world, he never realized how much their encounter really meant to him.

“So, I don’t want to judge anyone either before I don’t know the entire story because everyone deserves to be heard. That’s what you taught me.”

Asher let out an exasperated sigh. “You are so annoying. Fine, I will keep an open mind, happy?”

Nowe giggled at the sight of Asher’s abashed expression and his eyes curved into crescents. “Mn.”

 

Static noises traveled over their nano-transmitter in their ears, causing both to put their attention back to the task at hand. They heard clicking sounds as if someone opened the suitcase before a man started to talk.

“This is all I could collect today.”

“What do you mean that is all? Are they all too useless to sell a few drugs?” Another said with anger ringing in his voice.

“That’s not it, but…” A short pause followed, but then the man continued in a lower tone as if he was slightly frightened. “Another disappeared.”

“What?” The other man clicked his tongue. “Boss won’t like this. If this continues, we have to give in.”

“W-what should we do now?”

“All we can do is report this to him and then we will see.”

Asher and Nowe exchanged glances as they listened to the conversation. Vergil had reported to them before that Lee had told them that a friend of his went missing. At first all indicated that this organization must have gotten rid of people they deemed useless or too dangerous to keep, but what they just overheard refuted their assumptions.

As soon as they had this information, the group met up to talk about further steps. At this time the special forces already got notified that even if there hadn’t been visible changes on paper, that there had been a significant change in the company’s income and expenses. This all led them to believe that a change in leadership had happened, but they never changed the name on the documents. This was nothing unusual; to save money some companies often didn’t follow through proper documentation and because as long as they didn’t draw attention to themselves this would remain undetected for quite a while, thus, they were willing to risk it.

However, according to the conversation of the two men inside the building, their main target still didn’t present itself, so storming in was out of the question. After they contemplated for a little while how to proceed, Vergil came up with another plan which could get them closer to the target.

 

***

 

After Sigal confirmed that Cal fell asleep, he turned his attention to the recording Kristian sent him. He sat in his office at home, opened the file and listened closely to the voice playing. The recording had some static interruptions as well as some hubbub in the background which made it hard to distinguish the voice from the noise, just like Kristian told him. He put on a headset, adjusted the volume, and repeated the recording a few more times while he mainly tried to concentrate on the voice itself.

Just as I thought. His expression darkened as he took the headset off and stared at the screen in front of him. The day he met that bastard branded itself in his mind and soul, filling him with tormenting regret. So, how could he not recognize that voice? There was no way he wouldn’t, no matter if he heard it clearly or not. That man who called in for the Lester case, was without a doubt that bastard, Axis.

That means he was tailing us back then and… Another realization hit him in the next second. The one time when he went after Cal outside of the Conciliator’s apartment complex, he felt someone was watching but couldn’t spot anyone. This must have been Axis as well. He was there!

Does that mean he is constantly watching our every move, or does he have people doing that for him? Sigal gritted his teeth. How far do his eyes even reach?

He contemplated for a little while about Axis’s obsession with Cal. For what did he need him that he would go so far as to put him through so much pain? What was he gaining from all of this? When he thought about what Vince said about this being related to drugs, a shiver ran down his spine. Everything he could imagine was only worse than the other and he hoped that none of this proved to be true, but after what he saw, it also didn’t seem impossible.

He shook his head, throwing his thoughts to the back of his head for the time being and only concentrated on the matter at hand, the information he gained. Therefore, he picked up the phone and dialed Vince’s number to report his newfound findings to him, who in exchange had news himself he wanted to share.

Sigal listened intensely as the chief reported to him how the investigation progressed so far and that they uncovered a possible new lead which caused them to change their course of action.

“I see. I hope this will bring us closer in solving this case. Thanks for letting me know.” He ended the call right after, letting out a sigh. While the investigation didn’t hit a dead-end, it still took longer than Sigal had hoped. Moreover, his colleagues’ next steps could be more dangerous than originally intended.