"You know, you are supposed to be dead right?" Elliot heard the words from behind him in a voice that sounded like it should have been familiar, but yet was not. He thought about those words wondering if this was going to be it for him. Was this an assassin out to kill him for his past? Was it someone that knew about his team? If so he might die, but he was going to take this guy out with him. He slowly put the knife down on the prep table, while carefully reaching for his other knife in his pants. As he did so he started to turn around to hide the motion of him grabbing a weapon. As he finally saw the speaker he stopped moving and just stared wide eyes filled with disbelief at who was before him.
The person spoke again, "Damn, I know it has been fifteen years, but do you really need a knife to say hi to your brother." The face that looked back at Elliot was his own, but yet not. The hair was shorter, the eyes softer, and the winkles in the forehead where not as deep. However it was like looking in to a mirror for Elliot. After all this time avoiding his twin brother, to keep him safe he told himself. His brother had found him.
"How did you find me?" Elliot asked feeling stupid that the very first thing he said to his twin was that.
"A hacker friend of mine." Jake replied a small smile on his face, during his whole childhood it was always Elliot that made Jake speechless, now for once it was the other way around. At this reply however Elliot tense up, just a little bit, but enough that Jake know something was wrong.
"Try again, I do not exist on the internet. No name, no picture, nothing with an address. So how did you find me, Jake. I need to know." Elliot finished upset with how this could put his team and himself in danger.
"It really was a hacker." When Elliot started to interrupt Jake continued, "My teammate, who is the hacker, heard about a beer pub selling 'thief juice' so he had to come and try it out. While he was here he saw you, noticed the fact that we look the same, came to the office and told everyone about how I had a creepy double that worked in a pub that should the worst beer he had ever had."
Elliot could not help but chuckle when he heard of the review of the 'thief juice' beer that Hardison forced him to keep on the menu.
"Of course, when I heard his story I thought he was just drunk, or over exaggerating the resemblance. To prove that he was not he hacked into the street cameras around here and found you in them. Once I saw your picture I knew it was you. So mind telling me why I have a folded up flag and medals for you in my living room if you are not dead and in fact standing here in front of me." Jake finished with the smile slipping from his face and a look of anger beginning to form.
"It is a long story" Elliot said with a sigh and a look around to see if anyone was listening in.
"I have time." Jake stated without any emotion behind the words.
"Not here, give me a second to get someone to cover for me and we will go upstairs, and talk." Elliot finished while looking around for someone. "Nick, I have to go upstairs for a while, cover for me. Call Paul in if you need too, I think I am going to be awhile."
The now named Nick was looking back and forth between the twins before nodding and saying, "Yea sure thing boss."
"Boss?" asked Jake as Elliot started to take off his apron and move to the end of the bar.
"Yea, a friend of mine bought this place. He has no idea what to do to run a restaurant, hence the 'thief juice' beer, so I became the executive chef and took over running the place. He just really does the paperwork now, but still insists upon his beer staying on the menu." Elliot said as he started to lead his brother to the back where there was a staircase heading upstairs.
"If he is up here follow my lead, he is the hacker that hid me from everyone." Elliot said with a chuckle before slamming the door open with a yell of, "Damn it Hardison!"
At the sound of the door crashing against the wall and his name being yelled out a tall black man jumped up and looked at Elliot, then Jake, then back at Elliot, and finally once more landed on Jake. "Dude, I need to get some sleep. I am seeing two of you. Although you are wearing different shirts."
Elliot just growled out, "There is two of us. Meet Jake my twin brother. He found me though a hacker friend. How did his friend find me? You are supposed to be one of the best so how did my brother's hacker find me here?"
"What, no way man. You are off the grid. As in you where never on the grid. No one could find you. According to the internet, you never existed." Hardison was standing up and walking over to his computer. After typing for a little bit he said, "Someone hacked into the street cameras outside of the pub. That must be where they found you."
Elliot walked over to where Hardison was standing and said, "Well then, how did they know what cameras to look at. Face is Hardison you messed up and someone got the best of you."
"Wait, Elliot's bro, how did you find him? Tell him it was not my fault! Come on man my hacker pride is on the line!" Hardison turned and begged Jake.
"First off, its Jake, Jacob Stone. And second I guess Ezekiel is just better then you." He finished seeing a smile of Elliot's face as this Hardison guy was almost having a meltdown.
"Ezekiel Jones?" Hardison asked in disbelief. "He does not work for anyone, why would he help you? Plus he is not better then me, I should have a least gotten a notice that someone was hacking into my files if he had gotten the info."
Hardison turned to face Elliot who quickly hid his smile before the other man could see it. "Beside man, the bet should not count. How should I know that one of the best hackers, that almost never comes to the US mind, would look for you. I would have done more if I would have known that, therefore this cannot count towards the bet!"
"Bet?" Jake asked looking at the other two men.
"Hardison bet me he could make it so no one could ever find me though the internet again. He failed apparently." Elliot said dryly. "The bet was for everyone, not just people near by. You owe me." Elliot finished looking straight at Hardison.
"Fine, I am a nerd, a geek, and so not as good as the great Elliot! Happy now man! All my pride is gone!" Hardison cried out with throwing his hands in the air. "You suck man!"
Elliot just chuckled and nodding his head and started walking over to the couch in the middle of the room. "Yea, yea, I know. Now buzz off Jake and I need to talk."
Hardison grabbed his computer and started to go to another room, muttering about how 'it is not fair. He owned the place, and he was getting kicked out. '
Elliot just smiled watching him leave before finally turning and looking fully at Jake. "I should warn you, Hardison might have some bugs listening to us. I would hope you would delete this audio but he might listen in to see if we talked about this Ezekiel of yours. Now where do you want me to start?"
"Well traditionally the beginning is the best place to start a story." Jake said trying not to let his amusement of the past few minute show in his words and face.
"The beginning huh, Well I guess for you that would be when I 'died'. You see in some ways I did die that day. I died and became part of the man I am today. When I went to war I was young and stupid. I had a flag on my shoulder and God in my heart. I thought I knew right from wrong, black from white. However war changes you Jake. Over there I saw the grey in the world, people doing bad things, not because they wanted too, but because they had no other choice. I was good, really good. So the US black ops team wanted me. At first I was happy, honored that they would choice me. Then I started to be assigned cases where I needed to kill people. After a few of those cases my boss came to me and said they had a lead on a man that was looking for a bodyguard. This was a really bad man Jake, he kidnapped little girls and sold them as slaves. During the briefing I was told I might be the only hope for these girls, but I needed to 'die' first. That way if he looked me up I would only fit in the alias the government made for me. I agreed." Elliot said while looking away.
When Jake started to make a sound, Elliot said, "please let me finish. I do not like this story and as such I rather get it over with. So the US of A killed me that day. I did not know they have you medals, but I knew they were worried someone might use you to get to me so it does not really surprise me. I watching dozens of little girls some as young as ten get sold, I even had to hide some of their bodies when their "owners" killed them. It broke me. I killed the man, and then I quit the black ops. I remembered the names of the men who were buying the girls and went and one by one killed them all. That how I found another bad man. Only this one, at first anyway, did not hurt people. He stole things, money, art, whatever he could make money on. He used me to beat people up, but he did not ask me to kill for him. I was thankful, I thought this could be my home. I knew I could not return to the army, not after what I did, so this seemed like the best option. But then Damian changed. He ordered me to kill people and when I said I wouldn't he would threaten me with my crimes. So I started killing again. It broke me again. I was order to kill a family. A mother and two young kids, twin boys. I couldn't. I was looking at the youngest and all I could think about was you. So I ran.
At first I hide out but then a old partner of mine got a hold of me and told me of a job. All I had to do was get a object. If things stayed quite, all the better. If I was caught killing was not a requirement. I could just knock them out. I did the job. And then another. Before long I was known as one of the best hitter's in the world. Then I got this call about an escort job, I needed to get a thief and a hacker in a building. We had a mastermind plan out the job and we got the information out. But then the employer tried to kill us instead of paying us, so the mastermind found a gifter and we got the man. Now it is just Hardison, Parker and I for the most part, the other two only come when we really need them. So that's my story." Elliot finished looking upset.
Jake wondered why until he realized that his brother was waiting on him to yell at him over his past crimes. "That is one hell of a story Elli." Jake hoped the use of his childhood nickname for the other man showed him how much he still cared, even if he was still a little shell shocked at the information.
Elliot chuckled and said, "You know no one has dared to call me that in over a decade. I did not know I kind of missed it. Now its your turn I guess, what have you been doing since I left? How do you work with this hacker of yours?"
Jake looked around and said, "that is also a long story I am afraid. Got any beer? Good beer anyway, the last thing I want to drink is the infamous 'thief juice'."
Elliot just laughed and went over to the back of the room where there was a fridge. He opened it and Jake could see most of it was filled with bright orange bottles of soda with two gallon sized containers of milk. Elliot was moving some of the soda around and grabbed two bottles of beer. He walked back to couch gave Jake one as he twisted his cap off and threw it on the counter in front of the brothers. Jake took a small sip before realizing and the beer was pretty good and relaxed back into the couch.
"Well my story was pretty boring until a few years ago. I stay home and helped dad with the company, after awhile I realized that no matter what I did the company was going under. Dad was drunk more often then he was sober, so I left. I started to work on the oil pipelines in the next town over. One night I was at the bar when this hot as hell chick came in, she was turned guys down left right and center. So of course I needed to try myself. She told me she would give me her name if I could tell her what her tattoo meant. I acted stupid at first but when she dismissed me like the others I told her what it meant. That's when she tried to kill me."
Elliot tensed up when he heard that and started to look at Jake closer to see if he missed anything before. Jake held a hand up and said, "I was fine. You see Lamia, the hot chick, was on a mission to kill people like me. However, my current boss learned of this and sent Colonel Eve Baird out to protect me. We got out and made it to New York to help stop the group that was killing us."
Elliot interrupted, "Ok, when you say people like you what do you mean, and Colonel Baird of NATO?"
Jake sighed and said, "Ok so you know how I always hid my intelligence from people?" "Yea, I helped you all the time in school." Elliot answered.
"Well when things started going downhill with pops, I started to write papers. Over time I had five different identity's all where doctors in different fields of history and art. By the time Lamia found me I was one of the leading art history experts in the world. My IQ is in the top 0.1% I am honestly speaking one of the smartest people in the world today. That is what I mean by people like me. We teamed together. There are four of us genius. Baird, yes of NATO, protects us. Besides myself there is Flynn Carson, he is maybe the smartest of us. He was the one to figure out the plot against us. He is kind of like our boss now. Then there is Ezekiel Jones, he is an expert on all things digital and computers. He is also one of the best thieves around, maybe your Parker knows him since it seems Hardison does. Then lastly there is Cassandra Cillian. She had a tumor in her brain that caused her to see math. She was more or less a human super computer.
"Well most of the story is classified and really hard to explain without seeing it in the first place, but over time Ezekiel, Cassie and I went on missions and kind of grow into the people we should have been. Now we are all a team that goes around the world in search of certain items with weird histories. I will take you to the office soon to show you everything and fill in some of the blanks. But I really cannot tell anyone, and it is really hard to belief, trust me."
"Ok, well then I guess I will need to trust you. Just one question, where is it you work?" Elliot asked wondering what the hell his brother has gotten himself into.
"The New York Library." Promptly answered Jake knowing there is no way Elliot would ever guess what it is he does. "Although I live here in Portland. Flynn mostly works out of New York while Cassie, Zelk and I work out here."
Elliot nodding in thought trying to piece together the thought of people trying to kill his brother, the genius, who works in a library, which has two offices on either side of the US.
"Yea, I think I am going to need more beer." Elliot finally said to which Jake just grinned.
"What for?" Asked a new female voice
"Damnit Parker, I told you to stop doing that!" Yelled Elliot, as both him and Jake had jumped up to look for a threat.
"Sorry but when I saw two Elliots I had to check it out." Parker was hanging upside over the couch looking down at them. "Did Hardison clone you Elliot? I want a clone, why did he not clone me? There is already two guys, so why clone a guy first. He should have cloned a me first. That way there would be two girls and two guys, one for each of us." Parker said using her fingers to point at people as she talked.
"Enough Parker," growled Elliot with a faint trace of red on his cheeks. "Meet Jake, my twin brother, not my clone."
"You never talked about a brother before, what was I suppose to think?" Parker asked as she fell down from her harness to land smoothly on the couch next to Elliot.
Elliot started to reach out a hand to smooth her hand before turning and looking at Jake. He turned back to Parker as he let his hand down. "Cloning is impossible, maybe think of a more likely reason before asking."
Parker's eyes followed Elliots hand as he dropped it in his lap. She looked up at him and then asked, "Do you not want to touch me in front of your brother?" Elliot just dropped his head in his hands and mumbled, "Today is the first day in fifteen years I talked to Jake, I was just trying to catch up on the past before talking about the hear and now. I would have told him sooner or later, just not today. There was a lot to listen too today." Elliot finished while looking up at Parker. She looked into his eyes for a minute before turning to look at Jake, "If you hurt my Elliot I will hurt you. I will take everything you love and then drop you off a really big building. Got it?"
Jake smiled and held his hand out to Parker, "I understand." He said solemnly. Suddenly he grinned, "Although, to take everything I love you would have to get past my roommates. One you might of heard off. Ezekiel Jones."
At hearing this Parker happily cried out, "You know Jonesy? Where do you live? I got to restart our stealing war!" Both brothers looked at each other and then back to the hyper thief.
"I'm going to regret asking this, but, stealing war?" Elliot asked Parker.