Julie sped onto the highway indicated by Hiiro, maintaining a steady 80 miles an hour, the sliver skyscrapers flying by in the background.
Mayumi leaned against the comfy seat and went to sleep, Trowa soon following her example. Julie and Hiiro had to stay awake, Hiiro dictating and Julie driving. Shiris discarded her jacket and snuggled in the corner, against the window, while Duo used the jacket as a pillow.
Two hours later, just as the sky was beginning to show the faintest touch of color, Julie pulled over. If she went any further, they would be killed when she fell asleep.
Wearily, she and Hiiro jostled Duo and Shiris awake, since they were the first people they saw when they opened the door.
Shiris immediately got up, helping them to wake Duo. It was agreed that she would drive, just in case he fell asleep again.
Julie sighed happily as she slid against the window, staring out at the scenery. A black car was next to them. Wondering why his lights were off, she slipped into sleep.
Up front, Shiris yawned and pulled back onto the highway, looking for the exit Duo had mentioned. He was currently blinking the sleep out of his eyes and rubbing them, occasionally yawning.
She flicked the turn signal on and took the exit for the town of Kyto.
At four in the morning, as she merged onto a small highway, she looked in the rearview mirror. A black car was behind them, its lights off.
/what an idiot/ she thought, watching it carefully. The driver was probably drunk.
"This is it," Duo said suddenly, sitting up. Shiris drove by a large gray building, a sign for a law firm posted outside the door.
"I'm guessing it's beneath the building?" she said, driving around the block and pulling into a parallel parking spot.
"Yeah, the basement. Most high-tech place you'll ever see."
"And heavily guarded?"
"Oh yeah. Never seen a better-protected place in my life. I was there a few times, not enough to know the total layout of the place, but I did see invisible alarms, undefeatable locks, poison gas, electric shocks, and elite soldiers, just to mention a few things we'll be up against."
He said this, amazingly, with a grin on his face, apparently looking forward to the prospect of a painful and tortuous death.
"Are you excited?" Shiris asked as they jumped down and went to wake up the others.
"Yeah, a little. I always get excited before a challenging mission. Especially since I was just almost killed by these people. I'm looking forward to revenge."
Shiris smiled as she called to Mayumi and Trowa.
After much grumbling and snorting (on Hiiro's part, much to Duo's amusement), the four crawled out of the van and into the now-bright morning air.
"All cities look exactly the same," Julie complained as she pulled her hair back up into a ponytail, gesturing towards the buildings surrounding them. The others were inclined to agree-lots of tall, ugly buildings made from metal, some from glass, a few areas of grass poking in between the office buildings, and traffic lining the streets.
They were currently on the opposite side of the block from the law office, where the base was supposedly contained.
"Do we just waltz in there?" Julie asked when they began walking around to the side of the building. In the reflection of the window next to them, Mayumi saw a black car pull up behind their SUV, the driver staying inside.
"Guys, we have a friend," she said, her voice low, not turning her head, "that car was behind us when we were on the highway."
"You mean the one without lights?" Shiris said worriedly, remembering the car she had seen.
"Hey, I saw one without lights too," Julie murmured confusedly, "who could be following us? No one knows where we are."
"Maybe its one of the guards? Or the police?" Duo suggested hopefully. They heard a car door click shut quietly behind them in a lull of the noise from the cars.
"Okay, so what do we do, now that he's following us?" Trowa asked as they turned the corner.
"Split up. Three stay behind and follow him, the other three head to a different building."
"Perfect." Mayumi agreed.
As though they had been working together for years instead of two days, the three walking in the back immediately veered off to the right, ducking in between two buildings and crouching under the fire escape.
Mayumi, Duo, and Trowa kept walking.
"Should we follow him or tackle him?" Julie asked quietly as they waited, their shoes sinking in the mud-it must have rained recently.
"We follow him. There is a chance he isn't following us, and we need to watch it after that incident at the airport. We are still in uniform, you know," Hiiro answered in a monotone voice.
"Oh, right," Julie said as she looked at the other two, still in the blue suits.
She sighed and sat back on her heels, carefully pulling her pants up so they didn't get muddy.
She was itching for action, now that she was awake. This person following her scared her a little bit. Not because they couldn't handle him, but because it meant someone knew where they were, which meant they might have already moved the laptop, which meant their base could still be found.
She glanced up quickly as footsteps turned the corner, hurrying slightly. They were the light, quick steps of someone trying to be cautious and quiet; not the normal, heavy walk of a passerby.
As they leaned further back into the shadows, a black shape passed the opening moving swiftly and surely. He turned his head, looking directly at them as he passed by, and Shiris saw his features clearly.
His blonde hair was thick and wavy, falling almost to his chin, a few bangs covering one side of his face. His face was masculine, with a sharp, angled jawbone and a straight but pointed nose, and his build looked slight but strong through the tan trench coat he wore, hands in the pockets. In his mouth was a cigarette, held loosely by full lips.
But Shiris was stunned by his eyes, cold, gray eyes, swirling as though made of mist, and she felt she knew him. She had no idea why she would feel that, but she knew she had seen him somewhere, a long time ago. The eyes were the trigger, the link, the past. In her mind a vision rose up, a grinning face, half of it taken up by mist, swirling at her, towards her, for her…
Then he was gone, sweeping by, his footsteps hurrying on. She blinked in the sunlight that leapt in after his shadow was gone.
"Lets go," Hiiro whispered after a moment, waiting for the footsteps to fade.
Julie peeked around the corner and saw the man hurrying across the street, the collar of the trench coat up around his neck. A few yards up, Mayumi and the others disappeared around the corner of the opposite block.
Shiris, Julie, and Hiiro followed at a leisurely pace, afraid of being caught. The stranger knew how to follow someone professionally, which meant he could spot someone following him.
"Who do you think it is?" Trowa whispered as they headed onto the main street. People began passing them, a few jostling them. Most were women with shopping bags, having hit the most fashionable stores in the town.
"I have no idea. My guess is the Federation." Mayumi replied, narrowly missing a biker on a mission.
"Yeah, maybe, but then what are we doing here? They would have moved the laptop, not sent someone to follow us." Duo argued, then flipped off a driver honking his horn as they crossed the street.
"Maybe. Or maybe it's someone who wants to help us. The Federation would never send someone to simply follow us, they would be sent to kill us," Trowa said.
"Good point. Okay, lets duck in here and find out," Mayumi said, walking into a grunge clothing store.
It wasn't very crowded, only a few teens were browsing the racks of cheap clothing, which consisted mostly of torn jeans and ripped shirts.
"We can grab some new clothes too," Duo said, running a hand over a rack of black shirts with a various patches sewn onto them.
Mayumi led them to the back room where the dingy bathrooms were located.
"Okay, so we get him when he comes in. Be quick, I don't want any bystanders getting involved," she added when they tuned the corner and sidled against the wall. The boys nodded, muscles ready to spring at the next sign of movement.
Outside the shop, the man paused and took a long drag of his cigarette, blew the smoke into a ring, and flicked the spent cigarette away. Then he walked past the shop and around the corner into an alley.
"Okay, what the hell is he doing?" Julie muttered form across the street, the passing cars hiding them form view.
"Come on, let's go," Hiiro said, following the man.
"You mean down the dark alley? Don't you watch movies?" Shiris exclaimed as she navigated through the standstill traffic to catch up to him. "You know, the part where the hero thinks he's so invincible that he follows the bad guy, who is invariably leading him on, and gets caught and beat up, or caught and killed?"
Hiiro didn't reply.
Shiris made a frustrated noise and turned to Julie for help, who shrugged helplessly.
"We might as well go just to help him not kill himself," Julie whispered. Shiris frowned as they came up to the alley.
When they looked down into it, they couldn't see a thing except for a large puddle of water directly in front of them. Beyond that, the street melted into black.
"Okay, I can't see a thing. Lets go get the others," Shiris whispered fiercely.
Down at the end of the alley the stranger turned to face them, hidden in the darkness, his element.
He surveyed his followers at his leisure. There was the boy, about 19, who looked fairly tough to beat. His muscles showed he worked out, and his eyes, the icicles, he called them, were hard and deadly. He would be a minor challenge.
The girl in pants with her hair pulled back, she was very pretty. Her blue eyes sparkled in the reflected light from the sun, dancing in their sockets. She was tall as well, and her arms firm and toned. She would put up a fight, but he had no doubt a simple move on his part would bring her down.
The final girl disturbed him. She was as tall as the boy, her short hair loose and wavy. Her body was trim and fit and she was standing with her feet slightly apart, looking cautiously around. But it was her face that startled him-he knew her. The large brown eyes and high cheekbones, the full lips and thin eyebrows. This was a face from his childhood, a face that was important. He was looking forward to killing her and putting his thoughts to rest.
It was unfortunate that he wasn't allowed to hurt them.