"Who are you, sitting here like you own the place?" There was spite in the man's voice. Spite and jealousy. Men were always jealous of their betters.

"I'm Peter." The answer was simple, as straightforward as Peter could manage, but it enraged him anyway. Peter didn't mind. It was the way of things. The way he leaned back on the two back legs of the chair, his own draped over the coffee table in the middle of the lounge, probably didn't help with his demeanor. But then, he had always had a penchant for seeing how far he could drive people before they snapped. People, and other things as well.

Peter was a stocky young man, his dark brown hair combed up into a high ridge that looked like a half-successful attempt to defy gravity. His goatee was carefully groomed when he could afford it to be, his hazel eyes always searching for some kind of deeper meaning. He wore khaki cargo pants, sneakers, a flanel shirt. And the red and black leather jacket that marked him for a Templar. Not that this man knew what that meant.

In the end, curiosity won it from anger. It always did. People are predictable things, Peter knew. "What're you doing here?" Always the same questions.

"Right now I'm sitting in your chair, I think", Peter said dryly. "I can see that." The proprietor's hand tightened around his axe. A drop of blood dripped onto his nice wooden floor. Blood that had not caked to the head. Fresh blood. Not human blood, Peter hoped. The blood looked blacker than normal. Murkier. That was reassuring. The rifle sitting beside Peter should be enough to serve as a quiet answer to that either way.

He gave up that line of inquiry and went with another. Another of the same. "How did you get in?" "Back door. Don't worry, I've resealed it", Peter was quick to assure this man, who had gone through such pains to secure his home. That earned him another scornful look. The things we do to please others. Might as well not have bothered.

Still, perhaps the game had run its course now. "Look, if you must know-" Peter paused, but the other was clearly not a great conversationalist, and gave no assent or denial. "I've been sent here. There's something going on here." That drew a disdainful snort. "D'ya think?"

Peter didn't let off. "You're Andrew Griffith." "How do you know that?" "Your name is on the mailbox." And I've seen your photograph. Blond, lazy eyes, you're even wearing the same shirt. "Can I call you Andy?"Andrew Griffith had been marked as a person of interest when the assignment came down. Or rather, his house had been marked as ground zero. Best not tell him that.

"Yours is the only safe place I could find. You got an extra bedroom?" "Bedroom, yes. Food. No." He had just pushed a whole shopping cart full of nonperishables up his porch, but the point was fair enough. "My... My son. You can have my son's room." And there it was. The regret. The fear. Fear always won it from curiosity. People are predictable things.

"My father, have you seen my father? I need eggs, eggs and tomatoes and biscuits for the dog. But it hurts, eggs won't help, they won't, they won't. The doctor could help. But the doctor's a bit unstable and I could-" The babbling didn't stop until Florentine channeled a strike down through the carved moonstone in her hand, and even then it turned into a high pitched scream.

That drew the attention of more, and the incessant talk was multiplied manifold. Another child, an old couple, a taxi driver, all of them with their heads blossoming into a grotesquery of moving, writhing, seething oilspills. Florentine knew it wasn't what it looked like. It wasn't oil. She only knew it as 'the filth'.

Florentine had straight red hair that framed her face and went down to the bottom of her neck. It made her eyes look greenish in the mirror, so people always mistook her for an Irishwoman, but they were truly grey, and as far as she had managed to trace her family, she was not Irish. She wore a simple pair of jeans, trainers, a jacket over a dark blue tank top. Most of her life, she had taken to wearing red. The Illuminati didn't like red in clothing. Once, the same people might have said she looked delicate, but she had toughened up since then. Physically, if not quite as well mentally.

"Not human. They're not human", she had to keep telling herself as she sent up spike after spike of high volatile energies. It looked like blue sparks, but that wasn't what it looked like either. Nothing was anymore. Anima, some called it. Elemantalism, said others. Magic, others still. Quieter than the handgun at her hip. Less painful too, she told herself. She told herself a lot of things.

There were more of them here, these infected people. But, telling herself she was not hurting them and they were not human, she cut them down one by one. No, not people.

The Illuminati had given her an address and a name. Andrew Griffith. They called it 'ground zero' of the 'disease'. Assess. Investigate. Contain. It sounded so much like what the Orochi group would do.

And yet Florentine bobbed her head, said 'yes', and went. She didn't know what it was. It had started as gratitude. Then it became servitude.

Now she was a cog in a system, and she had never not turned when it was required of her. Turn, little cog.

So Florentine turned to the house. Just like she was told.

The top of the cliff wasn't a safe place to be. But then, neither was anywhere else. Joseph looked down at the sleepy little town and smirked. He would not be the only one there, he expected. If the Dragon sent you, you could be sure the others would take an interest as well. The Illuminati, the Templars, Orochi, Phoenicians, you name it. They'd be there. They would always be there.

Joe was on the short side, which still made him taller than most of the Dragon's Asian agents. He blended in with them well, with his short black hair and his dark brown eyes. Hiking boots, black jeans and a striped shirt made him into another face in the crowd, when he wanted to be. His perpetual eerie smirk did not.

"Taking a tumble? A walk, a stroll, a fall. I'll go with you, I'll-" Joe could've been taken by surprise if they didn't always talk. But then he'd counted on that, or he wouldn't let his guard down. In a flash, Joe brought around his shotgun, channeled the essence of his soul into all the pellets of the slug, and pulled the trigger. The filth gurgled, toppled, took a tumble off the cliff.

The dry, loud crack of thunder belied the magic in the shot, but it was there. It had become routine to Joe to make the spells like he'd been taught. They were little more than tricks to him now. And yet without them, he knew, he would be lost.

Him and so many others like him.