When Charlie woke up, he was nude and exhausted. The combination of the drugs that had been in his system, his transformation to cat form, and the long swim to shore had taxed his body to the point of exhaustion. It was night, so he was fairly certain he could sneak back into the city in his birthday suit and not be noticed until he could find some clothes.
When he sat up, he noticed that his tomahawk had been lying beside his head.
Old habits die hard. Charlie thought. Back when he had first learned of his puma form, he had trained himself to remember to take his weapon with when he left somewhere in puma form.
He sat up, and was rewarded with a bout of nausea and a spinning head. He sat there a minute to steady himself and eventually pushed himself to his feet, grabbing his tomahawk as he did so.
Looking around the area, Charlie noticed an area surrounded by a chain link fence with barbwire on the top. The area held hundreds of metal containers that looked like railroad cars without the wheels. Charlie recognized them as the containers used to transport things by ship.
Charlie headed towards the area, and noticed a small hole in the fence. The hole was much too small for Charlie to squeeze his massive frame through. He grabbed either side of the torn fence and ripped a hole big enough for even him to walk through.
Once inside he made his way through the first couple of isles of containers and spotted a small one story office building. Feeling exposed and wanting to get out of the open, Charlie tried the handle on the office door, which was locked. He grabbed the knob in one massive hand and turned as hard as he could. The whole knob came off in Charlie's hand.
Pushing the door open, Charlie saw that the small building held just one room. The room contained a computer desk, complete with computer, a filing cabinet, a punch clock, and a tv/dvd combo. A Star Trek screen saver was flashing images on the computer screen.
Charlie went over to the computer and moved the mouse, the screen saver dissolved to reveal a hand of unfinished solitaire. He minimized the unfinished hand to reveal a listing of the containers and a manifest of their contents. Charlie breezed through the contents until his eye caught a container of clothes headed to a Big & Tall shop.
Charlie found a sticky note pad and a pencil and recorded the number and location of the container. Scanning through some of the other containers, Charlie started chuckling to himself.
Isn't that ironic and convenient. Charlie thought to himself as he recorded the number and location of a container that was to be sent to an Indian motorcycle dealership.
Charlie got up and exited the small office shack and first headed towards the clothes container. After he had broken the lock, he realized that he should have searched the office for a flashlight. He had night vision that was leaps and bounds beyond a normal person, but even he needed some light to be able to see.
Once he was inside, his vision did adjust somewhat to the dark container, enough for him to read the labels if they were facing the moonlight that spilled in from the open door of the container. His first find was a crate that contained jeans in his size, he used the tomahawk to pry the top of the container off and fish out a pair of pants that were his size. Before long, he had also found some black t-shirts, socks, and some underwear.
Too bad there weren't any shoes in there. Charlie thought. I really don't want to be strolling around New York City barefooted.
Shrugging, Charlie exited that container and made his way about half way around the lot to the one that contained the motorcycles. Once he had it opened, he saw that there were about a dozen motorcycles strapped into racks and several crates in the back of the container.
Charlie made his way to the crates in the back first. Charlie was once again thankful for his dumb luck when he read on the labels that the crates contained leather jackets, motorcycle boots, saddle bags, and other motorcycle accessories. Charlie opened the crates and found a jacket and boots that fit, and he also opened one to remove a set of saddlebags and a leather bound bedroll.
Charlie moved over to the bikes next. He found one painted in red and black and trimmed in chrome. Once he removed the clear plastic sheet, he again thanked his lucky stars because the keys were in the ignition. Charlie removed the restraints that were on the back and rolled it out of the container and into the moonlit night.
After he had attached the saddlebags and bedroll, he rolled the bike to the hole he had torn in the fence. Not wanting to draw attention to himself, Charlie rolled the bike down the dock and into the parking lot. Straddling the bike, Charlie started it and maneuvered it out of the parking lot and onto the deserted side street that led from the docks back into the city.
An hour or so later Charlie had almost made it back to the night club. He parked the bike when he was still several blocks from the club, in case the government boys had the place under surveillance.
Charlie made his way into an alley and climbed a fire escape to the roof. From there Charlie traveled roof top to roof top until he was on the building that stood across the street from the night club. Before he could make his way to the ledge that faced the nightclub, he saw something move between two air conditioning units.
Charlie lowered his body into a crouch and sat still for a moment, waiting to see the movement again. It didn't take long for Charlie to grow impatient in waiting for the movement. He quietly made his way through the various air units on the roof until he was almost right next to the two in question.
Charlie cautiously peeked his head around the air unit to the right, and saw a man in fatigues lying in the prone position, looking at the night club across the street through the scope of a rifle. Charlie made a quick sweep of the roof with his keen eyes, but didn't see anyone else. Charlie then looked down onto the street itself, and spotted a blue van with the windows blacked out, and several black sedans with dark tinted windows.
Charlie knew he couldn't win the battle on this day. It burned Charlie's insides to walk away from any battle, but he was wise enough to avoid most of the ones he couldn't win.
Charlie carefully and quietly made his way back to his recently acquired motorcycle. As he straddled it, he came to the realization that the Agents, especially Finn, wouldn't stop until they either killed or recruited him.
With that, Charlie started the bike, and headed towards the freeway.
(This brings the story back to the present, with the next notable thing happening at the begining of Chapter 1.
