Salvatore grimaced and grabbed the phone that was charging on the base station, of all the people who COULD have called him it had to be one of the few he never wanted to have any involvement with if he'd had a choice. Deeoh flicked his ears back at his masters irritated body language as the demon in disguise took the call and put a hand on the terriers back to calm the dog down, animals were sensitive to things in nature and even though the terrier was use to being near a relatively benign demon he still had to be careful or the dog would get upset and tremble for the rest of the night.

"Why is it that every time you call I have an unnatural desire to consume half a bottle of Tylenol laced with rat poison?"

A dry chuckle met the disguised demons words and the Auditor could just imagine Hank standing in the kind of run down motels he preferred with a cell phone in hand that' he'd toss in about a month or so to avoid any possibility of being tracked down like the paranoid mass murderer he was. All of Nevada acknowledged that Hank had done a great service by taking out the Drives and restoring everything to the way it was minus all the corpses.

"I bet you wish you could die from that instead of getting violently ill."

"Death would have been better then waking up in a tank only to get locked in a padded room."

"Reminded you about what happened to those MAG agents you made?"

Silence stretched over the phone between the two men and the sun started to set outside and the Fae flitted into the room silently with a reproachful glance at her savior for not coming to let her into the house and buzzed her wings in annoyance before she disappeared into the shrine that was set aside as her personal space. It was easier for the hand sized fairy to come in with her master than to enter on her own since crossing any threshold took a lot of energy from smaller beings even if they had a token of passage on hand like the medallion she'd just dropped.

"More like what I put VAL through. I never paid attention to the process for the MAG agents other than cleaning up the failures and disposing of them."

The Auditor shook his head at the memories and gently ran his fingers down his pets back which made the little dog sigh in contentment and lean against his master. He remembered perfectly the leet's and ATP's he'd sacrificed to get the calibration for the MAG project correct, or mostly correct, and all the points where the subjects could suffer irreparable damage that would require their elimination and where some mistakes were allowable as in the case of Agent Torture.

"What is this about Hank you never call unless you have a point to make and my patience with you has always been thin."

"We need to talk, someone broke into one of the Organizations facilities and whoever it was left a note behind with a symbol on it I've only seen in one place and that's you."

Auditor looked out his window at the advancing darkness and rubbed his forehead while the choker around his neck seemed unnaturally heavy. He couldn't believe what he was hearing and his mortal Skin was reacting to his emotional state with the natural human manner to a potentially life threatening a problem making it more uncomfortable to have on that it was before the call. He could feel his Skin's temperature rising in waves as adrenaline was pumped into its systems to prepare to fight or run like all the useless prey animals on this planet.

The demon sighed and dropped his chin to his chest to feel the choker there as a constant reminder of his place and reason for being in this world. He lived on not one but two allotments of borrowed time from two very different sources and this collar was just the physical reminder of one of them. As long as he played by the rules the anti AAHW had set down he could live outside their facilities on a very long leash and in the company of two of their operatives to make sure he didn't slip from their grasp.

"You have to be joking."

"We'll see. I'm coming for you in three days, be ready."

With that Hank hung up and left the demon in the darkness of its rented house more confused than it had been and dreading the future more than it already was. The only man who had brought the demon close to death was coming and that was never a good thing.

Outside thunder rumbled as the unnaturally early winter storm got serious and threw sheets of water on the houses and streets under it like a child throwing a tantrum. Something felt very wrong in the world but the demon would be blessed if he could figure it out any time soon.

Salvatore was walking in the rain with an umbrella in one hand and his terriers leash in the other. It was three days after Hank had called and the demon had been on pins and needles the whole day expecting to be greeted with a gun to the back of the head or a knife at the throat accompanied by his enemies voice telling him not to fight back or try to run. The dismal weather hadn't helped him avoid that unwanted train of thought.

Speaking of the weather, the meteorologists on all the local news stations had said a second storm front had moved in behind the first and was dropping so much rain on the region that records were being made and broken several records in the county for this time of year and set many meteorologists scratching their heads at a loss for a way to explain how a second storm could develop without warning.

The locals however were thrilled for the rain because they'd been suffering from a drought for years but it still bothered Salvatore that the rain had come in earlier than normal any explanation he could accept, Global warming wasn't as much of a threat as Mortals seemed to think it was and they blamed all sorts of things on it instead of taking care of the problems directly.

Sal's train of thought was disturbed as a black car splashed through a puddle rolling to a stop a few feet away where it idled until the pair walked up. He had a good idea who had nearly gotten him wet and as expected the murderous Albino known as Hank Wimbelton was staring at his old enemy from the front seat of a banged up Subaru that had seen better days.

Contrary to popular belief Human albinos lacked the red eyes of animals and fell cleanly into Hitler's description of the Arian Race, blond haired and blue eyed because of the lack of pigment.

"Get in."

"I would rather not be in a car with you Hank, every possible offense intended. Deeoh needs his exercise and he's yet to do his business.

the dog shivered in the rain and shook himself vigorously to get the water out of his fur before sitting down miserably under his masters umbrella. Like most short haired breeds the little beast didn't like getting wet and had spent the last ten minutes trying to drag his owner under every inch of cover the terrier could find.

"Besides you never liked Deeohgee and I refuse to let you put him in the trunk like last time."

The pale skinned man scowled at the disguised demon and leaned over to push the passenger door open much to the dogs delight and his owners private dismay. Apparently that excuse wasn't going to work this time.

"Just keep it away from me and I won't have to."

Lead by the terrier the collared demon reluctantly got into the car and shook out his umbrella before putting it and Deeoh into the floorboard where Hank couldn't reach safely while driving.

Deeoh sniffled at his owners' legs and nudged the hand that kept the purebred down where he would be safe, the dog was use to sticking his head out of the passenger window whenever he was in a car no matter what the weather was and not being allowed to do that in a new car seemed to depress the little animal.

"The Portable Drive's been stolen and parts of the other two as well, parts that might make the Portable Drive start working again. "

The demon couldn't help but to scoff at the idea of anyone taking a broken drive from the Organizations clutches and looked out the rain splattered window. He'd been in one of their facilities and so thoroughly inhibited that all he could manage was to put a mortal Skin on after nearly a year in their care.

"Why should i care, it's not my problem anymore. If i get involved even by proxy i get to see the inside of that transparent cell again."

"Then find a way to explain how and who could because so far you're the only suspect and that cells been so empty without you..."

Hank smirked darkly which made the scars at the edges of his mouth stand out like small canyons. Trust the Albino to have enjoyed seeing the cause of Nevada's misery trapped in a box with only a few books to distract him and a small hole in the side so a tray food could be shoved in to keep it's occupant alive if somewhat unhappy.

Barring the memories of the past and looking at the problem at hand the Auditor really couldn't care how this had managed that feat but not knowing how it had been executed was driving him to distraction unless one of his former colleges had committed the theft. No one without his former abilities was capable of doing such a thing without being caught and the list of those that qualified and who might be able to reconstruct one of his Drives much less know which parts were needed to fix one could be counted on just one hand.

"Those drives were more trouble than they're worth, what makes you think I'd even care if you've somehow managed to lose one or all of them? I have nothing to do with this and after running into you I wish I had never left home to disturb you Mortals at all."

The cookie cutter houses had rolled by steadily as the God-touched murderer navigated the car though rain slicked streets with ease of long practice before speaking a few blocks from the poorly maintained house the demon helped to rent.

"You'd be the only person to fix a stolen Drive that we know of, and the first person the person on the security tapes would approach. From what I've heard about the intruder they were a lot like you right down to how they disappeared and reappeared. Call it whatever you want but the similarity is suspicious."

Hank turned the car and stopped across the street from the old house, either Hank was satisfied for now or the killer was going to follow him in.

"Whoever did take it won't get far without the parts I left out of the blueprints. You, Jebus and Sanford wrecked a lot of the same components with a few exceptions."

"And which part is that?"

"The Bloodcrystals and the matrix that held them, the crystals that power the Drives can't be found here and it's imposable to synthesize. I'm sure those technicians have noticed the red shards that litter the inside the secondary CPU that appears to have no purpose? Those can only be found back in Hell and are so difficult to collect without life threatening consequences. Not worth the effort if you do possibly have access to a less volatile material. Whatever or whoever you're looking for is supernatural in origin"

Hank grunted and killed the engine with ease and leaned into the driver's seat to look the Auditor over carefully the telltale signs of lying. Something about the demons eyes and body language told him that there were some things going unsaid that might be important.

"You've going to have to do better than that if you want to get rid of me this time."