Chapter Ten:

Rule Number One

White threw the file down onto his desk and answered the phone with a muffled oath. He'd said "no interruptions," and he wasn't very happy to have his orders ignored. It had been happening much too frequently as of late.

"You lost them," came a familiar voice on the other end of the line. White's anger diminished instantly.

"The taskforce we sent underestimated them." He leaned forward in his chair. "How did you know where they were?"

"That's not important," came the answer. "What is important is that I know where they are headed . . . "

Asha glanced down at her watch in annoyance. The lines at sector checkpoints seemed to be getting longer every day, and at this rate the files in her backpack would be disintegrated into dust by the time she made it into Sector Nine and got them to Logan. She shook her head in frustration and took two steps forward as the line moved up a bit.

"Hey, Asha, how's it going?" Asha sighed. She knew the voice all too well, and it wasn't that she didn't like its owner, she just didn't know if she had time to deal with him right now.

She adjusted the straps on her backpack. "Hey, Alec."

"So, where are you headed?" he asked, leaning forward on the handlebars of his bicycle and eyeing her with interest.

"Sector Nine." She frowned at the line of people ahead of her. There seemed to be some sort of a traffic jamb ahead, and from the looks of things they must be suspecting someone of trying to pass forged papers. Sector Nine was on the other side of Seattle, and if she made it through this checkpoint before dying of old age, she'd still have to make it through several others. "Eventually."

"Me too." He held up a package for her inspection. "JamPony delivery. You mind if I keep you company?"

She shrugged. "No problem."

"So," Alec began conversationally, "did you know Max's sister was in town?" He made a great pretense of inspecting the handwriting on the package he carried, and Asha raised an eyebrow. So that's what Alec wanted . . .

"Jondy drops in from time to time," she said with a shrug. "The last time I saw her in Seattle was a few months back." The line moved forward a few more feet.

"So, you know her?" Even if he hadn't glanced up from the package, she could have determined his interest from the tone of his voice.

"Yeah, actually." She paused. She didn't really know Jondy that well, but she knew her well enough to know that she liked her. "She reminds me a lot of Max, actually."

Alec seemed to contemplate this as they handed their ID's to the guard at the station, and, as she did every time she passed through one of these checkpoints, Asha tried to fight the urge to hold her breath as the guard glanced down at her forged papers. Thankfully he didn't seem to find anything amiss and handed their passes back and waived them on.

"So," Alec said as he pocketed his sector pass, "you wouldn't happen to know if she's seeing anyone would you?"

Asha turned to look at him, cocking her head to the side slightly and resisting the urge to roll her eyes. Alec was so predictable. "Actually, no. She's not."

"Really . . . " A gleam lit in his eye.

"But I wouldn't hold your breath, if I were you." She stuck her hands into her jacket pockets and began to walk away.

"Think she can resist my charms?" he asked, pedaling slowly beside her.

Asha frowned for a moment, remembering what Logan had told her about Jondy's past. She shook her head. Jondy may not be one of her best friends, but she'd lived a tough life, and Asha respected her for coming through it all so well. "She's just not looking right now," she explained casually as she stepped around a yellowed newspaper that lay in the street in front of her.

Alec lowered his eyebrows, a thought coming to mind. "She's not um . . . playing for the other team, is she?"

"Jondy?" Asha nearly laughed as she caught his meaning. "No. Nothing like that. She's just . . . the last few years have been rough, that's all."

"Meaning . . . " Asha stopped to stare at him. It wasn't her place to tell him, and she honestly wasn't sure it was any of his business, but what could it hurt? Jondy had enough to deal with, and maybe if she explained it to him, he wouldn't bother her so much.

"It's a long story, but just over a year and a half ago, she watched the guy she was in love with gunned down in front of her." Alec seemed to ponder this for a moment.

"That sucks."

"Gets worse. She was pregnant at the time, but she got in the line of fire and lost the baby." She frowned. "She blamed herself for a while," she explained, glancing down at her feet as she made her way down the sidewalk. "She said that the guy that did it wouldn't have had the chance to if she hadn't made some of the decisions she'd made. She said she'd exposed him." She shoved her hands deeper into her pockets and narrowed her eyes in thought. "It must be awful, you know? To watch someone you love die and spend a couple of years blaming yourself, hating yourself, trying to work out in your mind just what you could have done to stop it? Only it doesn't matter because it's too late anyway."

For a brief moment, Asha could have sworn that Alec turned a light shade of green, but she decided that it must have been her imagination. Taking his silence for interest, she continued with the story.

"Last time she was here, she was having a rough time dealing with it, but Logan says that she seems to be getting better."

"Oh." Alec's response was little more than a whisper, and Asha raised an eyebrow in his direction.

"What?" She watched him shake a strange expression off. It was as if a mask went down over his face. He cleared his throat.

"So you don't think I have a chance, huh?"

"With Jondy? No. She's still dealing with losing Brian."

Brian . . . . Briefly he remembered what she'd said when he'd asked if anyone had ever told her how beautiful her eyes were. Yeah, she'd said, he did.

"Well, I guess even I can't win 'em all," he said in the lightest tone he could muster. Then he pedaled slowly down the street beside Asha as they made their way towards the next sector checkpoint.

For the life of him, he couldn't figure out what he was doing.

Well, Zack knew what he was doing. He was kissing Katya. What he didn't know was why.

Oh sure, she'd looked pitiful and sad, and she'd been crying. Any guy would have gotten flustered by that, but he couldn't remember being quite so bothered by the sight of a woman in tears before. Well, not in what little of 'before' that he could remember, at least.

And if this was just some misguided attempt at comfort, why was there an entire flock of butterflies practicing aerial maneuvers in his stomach? He was stomping through uncharted territory, he realized, and it was territory where he had no business stomping. He pulled away with some reluctance.

Green eyes. They were staring up at him, and he was sure that if he were standing, the intensity there would have knocked him back onto his ass. He reached a hand up to tuck a strand of loose brown hair behind her ear, realizing hazily that his hand was shaking, trembling like a leaf in the breeze. His eyes skimmed over her face, taking in every line, every curve. There was something very big going on, he realized, something much bigger than the both of them. And it scared the hell out of him.

"So," Alec asked as he walked his bike along the sidewalk. "Doing the legwork for Logan while Max isn't feeling up to it?"

"Something like that . . ." She smiled lightly, turning her footsteps onto a different course. The sounds of childhood laughter carried out to them through the breeze. "Let's cut through the park, it'll save us a few blocks."

Alec shrugged. "Fine with me." He lowered one corner of his mouth in a frown. As parks went, this one wasn't all that impressive. The grass was dead, the flowerbeds were a mess, and there was garbage everywhere. Off in the distance, a group of kids was playing a game of baseball on a makeshift field. It made him think of his own childhood, or rather his lack of one.

"Well, well, what have we here?"

Alec wasn't quite sure why he heard those words carry through the noisy park and across the field to him. His hearing was certainly sensitive enough, but it was something about the tone of the voice that uttered that phrase that caught his attention.

"We've been looking for you, Matthews," came another voice. "Didn't we make it clear to you that it was safer for you to not be found?" Alec stopped in his tracks. Asha knitted her eyebrows together in confusion at the expression on his face.

"What is it?" He held up a hand to silence her. Stepping around a bend in the path, he saw the source of the commotion. A group of eight rather tough looking men was circling a teenaged boy like a pack of hungry wolves, and from the looks of things, the boy seemed to be on the verge of getting the beating of his life . . . or maybe worse. He frowned as he watched the first punch being thrown.

"Hold on a sec, Asha, I'll be back as soon as-" He froze in midsentence as he realized that someone else was already taking the situation into their own hands.

Never think about the things you want that you just can't have. It was rule number one, and as Katya stared up into a set of incredible blue eyes, she couldn't help but break it. Sure, she could hold her breath under water for a good five or six minutes, but at the moment, she just couldn't seem to pull enough oxygen into her lungs. That was why her head was spinning. It had to be.

"Well, well, what have we here?"

The words broke through Katya's clouded mind, and she blinked several times, staring up at Zack in confusion

"We've been looking for you, Matthews," came another voice. Confused, they turned their heads towards the source of the sound. Several yards away a group of men were ganging up on their victim, a rather terrified looking teenager. "Didn't we make it clear to you that it was safer for you to not be found?" Dusting off the seat of her jeans, Katya rose with a sigh and headed towards them. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see her siblings following suit, and behind of her, she could hear Zack's footsteps in the dry grass. She took a deep breath, trying to clear her head from what had just happened to focus on the task at hand. It was harder than she'd hoped.

"Didn't we warn you?" A bald man in a tattered leather jacket slammed his fist into the boy's gut, causing him to double over and gasp for breath as he tumbled to the ground. Behind the boy, the flash of steel glinted in the sunlight, and Katya was across the field and kicking the weapon from the man's hand before they even saw her coming.

"Didn't your mother ever tell you not to play with knives?"

Recovering from the shock of her sudden appearance, the would-be attacker narrowed his eyes and growled at her. "What's it to you, bitch?" Katya raised an eyebrow.

"I see your mother didn't teach you any manners, either." She saw Tanya grab for another man's hand as he reached for his own weapon. Her sister's quick reflexes beat him to the draw.

"Here's a tip," Tanya supplied. "Never ever call someone who can kick your ass a bitch." The bald man grinned slightly, his eyes darting over Katya's left shoulder for just an instant.

After sixteen years of training, Katya wasn't stupid, not that she ever would have been that stupid anyway, and when the man he'd signaled tried to jump her from behind, he found himself lying on the dirt on his back without being quite sure what had just happened. "Bitch," the man coughed up at her weakly, the oxygen knocked momentarily from his lungs.

"You guys are no fun, and you have such a limited vocabulary. Can you even read?"

Katya's comment was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back, and as Matthews looked up from his spot in the dirt, he had to wonder if he'd hit his head. It all seemed to happen at once.

As two men dove towards Tanya simultaneously, she stepped neatly out of the way, and there was a 'thud' as they crashed against each other. She clucked her tongue in disappointment. "Pitiful. Just pitiful." Another man pulled a knife and made a dive towards Sergei. Like his comrades, he found himself in the dirt. When a fourth assailant made a lunge towards Mikhail, his target merely sidestepped and grabbed the man by the collar, lifting him off the ground and leaving his feet dangling several inches above the brown grass.

"Don't you know how to treat a lady?" he asked the terrified man before shoving him back against the man who'd first attacked his older sister and was now trying to rise once more.

As the bald man made a lunge for Katya he found that her small fist did indeed pack a great deal of power. One punch to the face and he was out like a light. Zack's flying kick left another man motionless on the ground, and as another tried to grab Katya from behind, he found himself lying on his back gazing up at her in confusion.

Sergei walked forward and offered Matthews a hand up, which he accepted nervously. Glancing about her, Katya leaned forward to the man she'd just flipped over her shoulders. His eyes were large, and he was still trying to catch his breath. "Now," Katya said, leaning over to place her face only inches above his, their noses nearly touching. "When your buddies wake up, let them know not to mess with our friend here." She jerked her thumb back towards the young man, who was still staring at them all in astonishment. "If you get any ideas, we'll be watching." Turning, she patted the teenager on the back. "You'd better get home, okay, kid?" He didn't waste time arguing and took off across the field towards home.

"It's not fair," Sergei muttered as they walked away. "There weren't enough of them to go around . . ."

Alec's jaw nearly hit the ground as he watched the action before him. He knew those moves, and he'd seen that sort of speed before. The eight men hadn't even been a challenge for the five people who'd come to the young man's defense, and to be honest, two or three of them could have dispatched them just as easily. Squinting his eyes, he tried to get a good look at their faces, but they were walking in the other direction, so he focused on the backs of their necks, hoping to see a familiar barcode, but there was nothing there, absolutely nothing. And then he got a glimpse of something familiar.

"Shit."

"What? What is it?"

"Zack. That's Max's brother."

"Huh?"

He shoved the bicycle in Asha's direction, ignoring the bewilderment that showed on her face. "Take this and get over to Logan's, now. Just tell them that Zack's in Seattle. I'm going to follow them. I'll catch up with you later."