A/N: All right, first of all I'm aware that Del Oro is probably in southern California or somewhere that doesn't really get cold, and that the above ground part of N-Tek is more than two stories, but oh well.

Whatever

He couldn't say he was exactly surprised when he heard the soft clunking of his granddaughter's crutches following him down the hallway. He had always taught her to be persistent. Oh well, it didn't matter anyway. She couldn't follow him where he was going, no matter how much she might want to. Nobody could, really. He walked briskly down the hallway in the direction of Jefferson Smith's office, a well-known route, but then turned right instead or left, placing himself in a new passageway with a large metallic door at the end of it. Perhaps one of the most secure doors in the entire complex, it was designed to accommodate only Marco Nathanson himself; it included three different security checks, and the door itself was created to be impenetrable by force. This way it was kept as a one-way door, and would not admit intruders from the outside.

Reaching the door, Dread noted with interest the lack of dust on the barrier. Evidently someone had been toying with it- Jefferson Smith would've obviously wanted to know what was behind it. It would be awkward for a CEO to have questions about his own base. After typing in his password, the last of the three security checks, Dread sighed as he heard another noise 30 or so feet away down the hall. Abigail was obviously still tailing him. He quickly took out a small pad of paper, wrote a few words, and then placed it on the ledge the password keyboard sat on. Satisfied, he walked through the door, which closed as soon as he was out of its path.

The lights immediately came on once the door had closed, and Dread surveyed the room with satisfaction. Though it had a self-contained ventilation system, the items inside were all coated with a somewhat thick layer of dust. Evidently Smith had not been able to gain access. Good. In more turbulent times, the room had been created as a shelter for the then CEO Marco Nathanson. However, being as he was the only one with access to it, he soon began to use it for storage for experiments of…questionable ethics.

Looking around the room, the storage space of nightmares, Dread felt a small pang of sentimentality. Here his dreams of grandeur had started. Examining a few test tubes, he found the primitive stages of the first DREDD probes, among with some other projects that had never quite evolved. Fighting off the urge to take inventory and check on all the things he had left behind so long ago, he went to the other side of the room where there was an elevator like the one found in the gardening shed many levels above, but much more secure.

Hearing the door swish closed, Abigail quickly peered around the corner and saw the door; her grandfather was now out of sight. Finally. Giving up all pretenses of being silent, she rushed down the hallway towards the door, excited when she saw the keypad drilled into a small ledge next to the door. Passwords were easy to guess, and if not, there were other ways of figuring them out based on the keypad itself. However, as she got closer, she saw there was also what looked like a microphone, presumably voice sensitive, and a fingerprint scanner. Deciding to try the door anyway, she found that it was of course unmovable. Looking down at the keypad, she spotted the note. Written in Dread's handwriting were the words "Everything will be explained later. Now go study."

Enraged, she crumpled up the note and threw it down on the floor. He always told her everything! Why should now be any different? What was so important that he would hide from her? Didn't he always talk about how she was to take over everything after him? How did he expect her to take over if she didn't know what was going on half the time?

She started to storm off towards the small room she had been designated but then stopped, knowing that she would most likely run into one of the goody-goody Team Steel members. No thanks. She would pass on that one. Instead, she turned and made her way towards the elevator banks. One of the best aspects of the architecture, her grandfather had always said, was the roof. The commercial face of N-Tek was only two stories high, except for the parking garage area, which was about the equivalent of one and a half stories. It was supposed to be a good place for thinking, he had said. Whatever, she thought. She just wanted some place to get out of this lousy basement.

Standing outside the opening of the unloading dock of the parking garage, Blaine sighed heavily. He hated it when people were late. Okay, he thought, holding up his wrist for a quick glance at his watch, maybe the guy wasn't late exactly. But Blaine had been there ten minutes early, to scope out the place, and now stood still and waiting, watching the monotonous current of traffic in and out of the garage. It seemed like he had been waiting for an hour, not- he glanced at his watch again- eight minutes.

Discovering that he had started to get a little twitchy from the cold air, he pulled out a cigarette from his inner coat pocket, and leaned against the cement building, trying to relax. Clients liked to see a calm, collected man when they spoke with him- not someone who looked like they had a collection of nervous ticks and might go off at any minute.

Feeling a little less tense, he decided that the cigarette had served its purpose, and flicked it into the path of one of the eighteen-wheelers exiting the garage. Maybe if he was lucky the truck would have some kind of gas leak and explode, creating some goddamn heat. No such luck. The truck passed by without incidence, leaving the cigarette lying on the pavement.

Holding back a heavy sigh, he turned his wrist and checked his watch for the third time. Looking up, he almost jumped; there was a man standing right next to him.

"Hope you haven't been waiting long," Dread commented.

"Um…no…not really," Blaine was a little uneasy. He wasn't used to people surprising him. "You are John Dread, right?"

After pacing back and forth for fifteen minutes, trying to think of someway to figure out where her grandfather had gone and how to follow him, Abigail finally gave up and leaned against the railing. If John Dread didn't want to be followed, he wasn't followed. End of story. She kicked the railing and was rewarded with a hollow "clung" sound, and a sharp pain in her foot. Genius.

Standing there for a while, trying to think of ways to bring chaos to N-Tek, she suddenly caught the smell of cigarette smoke. She wrinkled her nose. She hated smokers. She looked down to see who the culprit was, and saw a guy with shaggy black hair and a baggy denim jacket standing there, looking a little cold and smoking a stupid cigarette. She was thinking about finding a small chunk of cement to drop on him when she saw what the man had missed as he checked his watch. She saw her grandfather seem to emerge from the side of the building. She blinked. Now she really wanted to see what was behind that metal door.

She moved away from the railing just enough so that she wouldn't be visible from below, and congratulated herself on her luck.

"Hope you haven't been waiting long," she heard her grandfather say, but just barely. She couldn't make out the second man's response. She got as close to the railing as she dared, and listened until she heard Dread's voice again.

"I'm afraid I don't have much time before I'm missed, but here's the paperwork."

Abigail edged still closer to the edge of the roof so she could peer down. If either of the two looked up, they would definitely see her, but she had to take that risk. She saw Dread hand a thin manila folder to the second man, who opened it and leafed through the contents. She couldn't see what they were, but the folder only contained about six pieces of paper in total.

The stranger was silent as he browsed through the file. "N-Tek, huh? So he works in this place? What's so important about sporting equipment?"

"He works for N-Tek, yes, but not the sporting equipment side of it."

"So, are you going to tell me what the "other side" is, or do I have to guess?"

"Oh, you'll see for yourself. You're going to be staying there."

"I already have a place to stay-"

"It's part of the job. You do remember the payoff we're talking about, don't you?"

The man sighed. "All right, all right. I'm listening."

"Thank you. Now, I'll get you into the base, and you'll stay there for as long as it's required."

"Fine, whatever." The man went silent again as he continued to read over the papers. "…He's pretty young for where he is, isn't he? I mean usually it takes years to-"

"Special circumstances, I assure you. He shouldn't even be alive right now."

"And I guess I'm here to fix that fact?"

"Exactly. Get acquainted with that information, and be back here at six tomorrow morning."

The man looked up from the folder and started to protest, but Dread was already gone. "I hate morning jobs."

Abigail quickly backed away from the ledge, and headed towards the elevators. She was supposed to be studying, so that's where she'd be. She hadn't heard anything. Nope. She smiled to herself. She was getting good, she thought, if she could get one over on her grandfather.

One of the elevators arrived, and she entered, then watched the doors close with a swish sound. So, someone was finally going to get rid of that Max Steel nuisance. But what made Dread think that some freelancer could do it? Hadn't they tried that before? Abigail was disappointed. This big important plan was to get some nobody to whack Max Steel? And keep it a secret from her? She didn't care if he found out she was listening. She was going to have a little talk with her grandfather and see what the hell he thought he was doing.