Cloud sighed laboriously and continued to gaze dejectedly out the window. Her stomach was growling and the thing inside her was kicking mercilessly. The moonlight, normally quite refreshing, was now only an annoying pain in her eyes. However, she had to surpass it in order to look for Touma, who, at this point, was probably making a clean getaway from the hospital.

Just as she'd expected, Touma, a faint figure etched in shadow, came back at a running pace, his precious cargo carried in his arms so carefully it might have been mistaken for a baby. As quickly as he could, he got into the car and floored it, swerving out of sight in a matter of seconds.

"You have it?" Cloud whispered softly, sorrow obvious in her voice. She turned her head from the window, and Touma parked the car into a rest stop where they would most likely be staying for the night.

"Yes." Touma whispered and gently patted the package now seated between them. It was a crudely wrapped, brown bag that one might expect to receive in the mail. Carefully, as if it were the most treasured thing on earth, Touma opened it and revealed packets of precious, life-saving, crimson liquid. It pulsed and called to them, making their stomachs crave it even more. They were so hungry…

Greedily they each took their share of packets and set them in their laps to feast as a new, demonic look came to them. There was a feral, more vicious sense to them as they slowly brought the packets to their lips and bit in, puncturing the plastic to greedily suck in the chilled liquid. Of course, they'd much rather had it warm, but they were so very hungry…

002, also known as Jet Link, fresh from the shower, seated himself on the couch and turned on the TV to catch the evening news as he tried to catch the water droplets before they soaked his shirt.

As the black screen came to life and began to dance with color and images, a familiar anchorwoman came to the screen. She was a cubby lady with dark auburn hair, cut to her shoulders, who had a very nice voice to listen to. Her greens eyes, as usual, seemed to sparkle with love for her work, and every movement was full of grace, something you wouldn't expect of a woman of her stature.

"Konnichiwa, and welcome to Channel 9 news. I'm Midori Makamichi! Our top story today is the mysterious robbery of our local hospital! Night shift doctors and nurses say somebody broke in a stole several ounces of blood last night from the freezer, but they left no trace of themselves! The only evidence of the robbery is the missing blood and the testimonies of several nurses, who say they saw a ghostly shadow leaving the hospital with a package under their arm."

This perked Jet's interest. 'Since when would someone steal blood? What type of sicko would do that?' he wondered, an old friend, his temper, flaring at the thought. He decided to pay attention, rather than ignore the news.

"When we investigated further into this story, we found that other hospitals have been burglarized too! Even Tokyo hospitals have been included in this list! Police are baffled, and its this reporters opinion that these people are all a bunch of sicko's! Now, on other news…."

Jet didn't bother to pay attention to the rest of the report, nothing else concerned him now. Something about this burglary didn't strike a right chord with him, something was off. Humans would leave fingerprints, no one could commit the perfect crime.

Call him suspicious if you will, but he'd been through enough for it to be reasonable. With a twinge of fear as he dialed an all too familiar number, a thought ran across his mind.

What if Black Ghost was the cause behind this?

What if…..what if they found a way to build more advanced cyborgs?

Ring

Ring

The ringing of the phone resonated through 003, or Françoise Arnoul's, ears as she continued to stare at the screen in front of her. She felt dizzy and tense all at once, she didn't know what to think after hearing a report such as the one she'd just heard. All of it seemed to very unreal, and her mind was jumping all around at the plausible causes and people that could have committed this crime. The strongest was one she'd rather not have thought of.

Black ghost.

"Hello?" Joe Shimamura, previously known as 009, saved the day for all of them once again by doing one of the simplest tasks in this present-day world; answering the phone.

"Shimamura?" came the loud, but more tenacious voice of Jet from the other line.

"Jet! It's been a long time!" A smile came to Joe's face as the familiar sound of his friend's voice hugged his heart. They hadn't heard from Jet in a while, not since he'd found an apartment in the city and went to try living on his own.

"Did you….just see the news?" Jet asked seriously, and Joe could picture his friend's brow furrowing, just as his now did.

"Yes, we all did-" he was about to add what their suspicions were, but Jet beat him to it.

"And you think Black Ghost could be behind it." Jet stated, as if he were stating a fact like 'the sky is blue' or 'the sun is a star'.

"Exactly." Joe confirmed, with a nod of his head, even though he knew Jet couldn't see such an action. That confirmed between them there was a tense moment of silence.

"I'll be there tomorrow." And then jet hung up.

TBC

A.N. Wow, that's interesting, isn't it? Review and Read! Lol! Until next time!